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Tuesday, 26 February 2008
For Bobo & Hullaballoo
Many moons ago I once went to the Edinburgh tattoo.
Whilst there I saw many a kilt being worn and they have fascinated me since.
Am I a closet kilt wearer or perhaps I have an unconscious desire to display my sporran?
Here is a guy who looks so cool wearing a kilt one could even be convinced to do so. This guy really knows how to make kilt wearing look good.
However there are hazards to wearing a kilt as is shown in this picture.
Did I ever see a Dr Who in a kilt?
Maybe this was wearing a kilt?
Would wearing a kilt take away from its aura in the pursuit of world dominance?
Graffiti
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Sunday, 24 February 2008
Infectious youth
I love teenagers.
I had a BBQ lunch today with my eldest son who now lives away on his own for the first time.
Amid our discussions he mentioned how he and two of his friends made a pact the other day.
They decided not to eat anything from 10am to 10pm and then they went to Kentucky Fried Chicken and ate $50 worth of fried chicken. Apparently the guys serving at KFC were pissed off because they wanted to go home and these three teenagers rolled up late, made a big order and then sat down and ate it all.
Why?
A funny story which we laughed at and made obtuse comment about. Then there was a bit of silence as I waited for the part that as missing.
But it never came.
The part that was missing.
And what is that?
Why?
Why agree to not eat for 12 hours and then go and eat $50 worth of KFC?
But there was no answer because there was no reason.
I love teenagers.
Why?
There is something about teenagers, children and the early 20 somethings that adults just don’t have and this is a good example. Also in the discussion he says things about what they do and I think inside my head, “Shiiiit, I hope they are OK”. Of course I don’t say anything, I just wait for 4 sentences further on and then I make some sort of oblique comment.
There is an energy in children and teenagers that is just good to be around. It is kind of infectious and rubs off on you a bit. There is a newness, risk taking, aliveness, hopefulness, lack of reason, unpredictability about them. These words don’t really capture what I am trying to say but it is as close as I can get.
To interact with them or just have them around gives you something and I don’t really know what the word is for it. I saw a movie recently called December Boys. An Australian movie that stars Daniel Radcliffe (the Harry Potter kid in the movie).
Why?
Four orphaned boys who happen to all be born in December (hence the name) are invited on a summer holiday to the beach by this kindly couple who would be in their late 50s. As the story evolves it becomes apparent that the woman is dying from cancer and this is probably her last summer holiday ever. At one point in the movie she is discussing this with her husband and makes the comment that she just wanted some youth around her at this time and hence the 4 boys on the holiday.
I understand what she is saying as their mere presence is sort of life giving and life generating.
3 of the 4 December Boys. Life with a dash of risk.
Make note to self:
Remember to make sure I keep youth around me in my daily life
Graffiti
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Saturday, 23 February 2008
Facing facts?
I was watching this show on TV last night and it was about various species of animals that were heading for extinction. It included things like some types of elephants, deer and tigers. Such beautiful looking animals I think most would agree.
As they were talking I saw how we humans seem to be tricking ourselves, how we are pretending that what does exist actually does not.
For instance they discussed the tiger
Without a doubt a beautiful and magnificent animal indeed. Also very sad indeed that it is heading for extinction as the TV show stated. But that is the part that I had trouble with. I was told that the tiger is heading towards extinction and unless we act soon then the tiger would become extinct.
What does extinct actually mean? I looked up the dictionary and it says a species is extinct when it has no living members. So the TV presenters seem to be correct in their statements and we all breathe a collective sigh of relief knowing that tigers are not extinct. Maybe this is where we lie to ourselves just so we can feel better.
Perhaps we need to reassess what we actually mean by extinct. If these tigers were left to fend for themselves, that is they got no assistance from humans then I think it is safe to say that they would be extinct and there would not be one tiger alive on the earth.
So what do we humans do? We put them in zoos and game reserves and thus they are protected and thus they do not die out and become extinct. In essence what we have done is put them in a museum. There maybe tigers alive but they are not living naturally. One could say that there is not one tiger alive on this planet who is not living in an area that is fenced off to some degree. There is not one tiger on earth living in conditions that it did 100 years ago.
Don't see many of these nowadays, perhaps they have evolved into something else?
So is the tiger extinct or not? There are some alive but they are cocooned by humans. So tigers living naturally are extinct already. Tigers living unnaturally are not extinct. I am not for a moment suggesting that we don’t protect them, what I am suggesting is that we be true to ourselves about what has happen to these magnificent creatures even if it does not taste pleasant. I suggest we stop lying to ourselves about this and don’t continue to say that the tiger is not yet extinct, because in one sense they are. I would say that in real terms the tiger is already extinct. We basically have these tigers living in what amounts to a museum.
There was one other thought that came to me as I watched this TV show. There is an assumption in all this that extinction is a really, really bad thing.
Last time I read Charles Darwin’s book - The origin of the species - it seemed to say that extinction was an integral part of evolution. As species evolve, some species will become extinct and other species develop to fill in the space left.
Heading for extinction?
As you read this right now there will be a species of frog that is becoming extinct somewhere in the world. So why are we not putting in the same effort to put that frog in a museum like we do with the tiger? Maybe its because the tiger is so big, magnificent looking and cuddly whereas the frog is small, ugly and slimy.
Perhaps we need to be more realistic on this as well. Species have been reaching extinction since time began and it is all very natural, indeed that is exactly what evolution is! So the extinction of the tiger, which I argue has already arrived, is a natural thing and maybe we need to not be so terrified by it and thus pretend that it hasn’t really happened.
And there seems to be one other given as well. Sooner or later it will be our turn and the human species will become extinct. The day will arrive when there is not one member of the human species alive in this planet and then some other species will evolve to fill in the space that we leave. Alas however we are so death phobic at least here in western society, that we will all work very hard at lying to ourselves about that one for sure.
One day this species will be extinct but we will do everything we can to pretend it will never happen. When the facts taste bad humans are very efficient as somehow, sort of, kinda thinking that this extinction thing will never really, actually happen to us. Maybe that is the real reason we don't like thinking that the tigers are extinct, because it reminds us that species do become extinct and then that means it will be our turn one day.
Graffiti
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Thursday, 21 February 2008
What clients want
Madeleine, myself and Kahless have commented on therapists who want to fix problems, clients who want to tell their stories and make connections, and solution focussed therapies. Perhaps a good time to examine what clients want.
In my now 28 years of counselling I will make some off the cuff calls on percentages. How long clients come for counselling.
1 session = 10%
2 - 10 sessions = 80%
10+ sessions = 10%
This is a rough guess but it is meant to show that there is only a small group of clients who actually do want to tell and look at their story in any depth.
Retail therapy. I once had a client come in and say, "I was looking in my wardrobe last night and saw just how many tops I had. I realized that every time I felt bad I went and bought a new top!!"
There is a small group who only come for one session. Sometimes these people have a clear and specific question or goal and they come for one session get that information and go away satisfied. This group can also include those infrequent times when the personality of the therapist and client just do not fit. In fact there can be a big mis match so the client does not return and/or the therapist refers the client.
Then there is another subgroup here that is well articulated by KazzaB’s recent comment:
“The first therapist I went to, I was only about 23 I think and she was so in my face it was the first and last appointment. “
In such cases like this the therapist may not have been perceptive enough to pick up what was going on in the client. Sometimes there are counsellors who are of the view that one size fits all. The theory and practice they learnt at counsellors school is what they apply to any client that walks through the door. They make the client fit the therapy and not the therapy fit the client. Sometimes these are the newer therapists because they as yet have little experience and they only know of one way to do therapy. If the client happens to fit for the counsellor’s approach then that is good. If they don’t fit then that is not so good!
Group therapy
Then there is the scenario when the client is just incapable of articulating what they want and thus the therapist can not do anything. Years later you hear these people (at 40 years old) say things like,
“I tried counselling when I was a teenager and I was just not ready for it then”.
Their frame of mind was not right at the time or they had not felt bad enough for long enough to take the risks that intensive psychotherapy requires. So they have one session and don’t come back.
By far the largest group come for no more than ten sessions. They are interested in telling their story but they don’t really want to go that deeply into it. They have a problem such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, smoking and they want the problem to go away and they can do some very good work to achieve that. They want to reduce their problem but have little interest in changing the basic script path that they are on. So sometimes this group is referred to as those who come to counselling to improve their neurosis. They are just making their neurosis more pleasant to live with which really is an unkind way to describe them.
The dog of Pavlov
This group is less concerned with a connection with the therapist, or a strong desire to be heard and accepted, or to feel like they can trust the therapist. All these things are nice and good but this group is not actively seeking such things.
Then there is a small group who are very interested in these things like connection, trusting, feeling heard and understood and so forth. This of course takes longer as it requires the development of a relationship between therapist and client and that takes time to evolve. So this group enter into longer term therapy. The good part about this is you can get some significant changes in the client’s basic script as well as the more surface problems being addressed.
Body dysmorphia. A misperception and belief of ones self physically
In such cases I usually see a client once a week or once a fortnight. That usually seems to be enough for the person to get a sense of connection, trust and so forth. And there is also a luck factor here as I have mentioned before. The more the personalities of the client and therapist naturally click the better.
There are variations on the number of times I see a client and sometimes it can be twice a week. I am reminded of one woman whom I saw three times per week for what would have been three years. That was quite a challenge really as the relationship is quite intense when you met with a client three times per week for such a long period of time. Of course this cannot happen very often as there are financial considerations in meeting so regularly. However there are some people in the world where money just is not an concern!
Shame. The cinderella of the destructive emotions
Also at this time I have 2 clients whom I see about once a month. These are revisiting clients . I did see them before quite intensively and then they stopped coming for a few years and now they have reconnected and we meet about once a month. I see this as a kind of check in therapy. Yes there are times when they do struggle a bit with life and will probably do so for the rest of their days, but generally they cope OK with life now. Having that connection there seems to be important for them and I like meeting with them so that is what happens.
Probably the longest client I have ever had is about 14 years. But the vast majority is much shorter than that. That seems to be what clients want.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 20 February 2008
More to come
This comes from a strange Transactional Analysis book titled
Structural symbiotic systems
by
Robert Phillips, MD
"Instead of making affectional or assertive contact. I am waiting for...."
Santa claus
Rigor mortis
Others to change
Knowing who I am
Clearer understanding
Perfect conditions
Certainty
My turn
Fairness
Justification
Revenge
Hitting the bottom
The right feelings
Permission
A certain age
It does highlight how people keep themselves where they are. It is good to wait for something and then I don't have to change.
More on this later and more on magical thinking.
Maybe we really do need magicians to keep us sane
Maybe that is what psychotherapists really are - magicians with magical tricks
Maybe the good therapist is the one who can convince the client to believe in magic
Time for the land of nod and will either delete or add to later
Graffiti
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Tuesday, 19 February 2008
The novice client
Its good when you get one like this. A rehab centre referred me a woman aged about 40 to assist in the rehabilitation. Quite a timid and fragile person who seems to have struggled most of her life. Terribly bullied at school and then got into a marriage that certainly was not good for her. That is now finished and she is by and large free in the practical sense.
She was admitted to a psychiatric hospital about 6 years ago due to a “nervous breakdown” and this is the bit that threw me off the scent in the first place. She has been through the mental health system with a hospitalisation, strong psychiatric medication and had met with many people like psychiatrists, mental health nurses, social workers, psychologists and so forth. She has been intimately involved with the helping professions on numerous occasions.
Institutionalization
So I thought I had a person who would in once sense be institutionalised and a seasoned client indeed. In the practical sense she was these but as we talked I discovered that she has never actually told anyone her story. No one had ever asked her for it and she had never said it. So in this sense she was a novice client.
The novice client is that person who has never been to a counsellor before or has never really spoken about their childhood with anyone. Sometimes when a person tells their story for the first time it can be quite a cathartic experience and thus sometimes quite significant changes can result from it. This can particularly happen if the counsellor also gets the person to express their feelings for the first time as they tell their story. It can have quite a significant impact on them. She had been holding in her life story and all those feelings about that story to herself for in this case 40 years. So to finally let it go and say it out can be quite an event.
We all want to tell our story but we all know it will hurt to tell it. So some try this solution
The difference here is that she had seen many different types of counsellors over the years but no one had ever actually asked her to tell her story. So in this sense she was a novice client whilst at the same time having well and truly been though the mental health system. Quite a juxtaposition.
So she tells me her story over the last 5 sessions and keeps saying things like, “I can’t believe I am talking about this” and “I have never spoken about my feelings like this before”. And it has been very therapeutic for her and she has made quite significant alterations in the way she feels, some psychosomatic difficulties and her close relationships. She reports how others report to her that she seems quite different. I would anticipate that some of these changes may unchange as the positive transference wears off (assuming we actually get that far) but I think some of them will be long lasting.
Until you tell your story you will feel like this
The good part about this is I get elevated to magician status. I am the hero at the moment and she and the referrers want to know what is my secret. She also keeps saying to me, “You don’t seem to do anything”. I respond to this with a smile and just move on. So in essence I don’t respond to her statement come question.
Whilst I would very much like to be a magician one also has to be realistic. Her practical life at this point is largely unencumbered by strong scripting factors, she was ready to change, she was a novice client and she got to tell her story for the first time. I also accept my role in being able to assist her to get the most advantage from telling her story for the first time.
So there is a luck factor as well, but it is good when situations like this arise. An unusual one.
Look at the faces of the children. They want magic to be real. The good magician does not just do the magic trick but gets the child to convince itself that magic is real.
Graffiti
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Sunday, 17 February 2008
What's in a name?
Kenoath states:
You do seem to see Gilly as the 'perfect' kind of public guy Graffiti. I think I hear some cynicism in your post.
Gilly
I think you make point Kenoath and your intuition intrigues me. Perhaps you feel my unconscious in action with Gilly.
Upon deliberations I would not say that I am cynical about Gilly but I would say that I am in two minds about him. In my head I know he is a good model for youngsters and being the good family man that is good for his children. I like that and know that society needs these people who always do the right and good thing. I benefit from that which of course is good for me and others.
On the other side I know that those who always do the right thing lack a significant Free Child. I have seen in my job the consequences of people who live like that and how much they miss out on and how it is sort of a half life. They lack an sense of who they are and what they are. So perhaps this is what Kenoath has intuited as a cynicism. I feel it more as a sense of dismay and a sense of I certainly do not want to be like that.
Those with a high Free Child sooner or later will collide with society and that causes difficulties. It seems that perhaps Shane Warne has more FC than Gilly
Here is a picture of the then married Shane Warne with two ladies in London. They invited him back to their apartment and had a camera secreted to capture all the action. Hardly the family man like Gilly, but the best spin bowler of all time.
So he is taking much more personal risks than Gilly and thus will end up either the winner or the looser, but he wont be living the emotional half life that the highly conforming person does. Part of me prefers that and does not like the part of Gilly that always does the right and good thing.
Related to this I find courtesy of Nick that Ian (Beefy) Botham has since become Sir Beefy Botham with a knighthood. Psychologically this is an interesting situation. The problem with receiving such accolades like knighthood's and titles like “Australian of the year”, is that as soon as you have it then you have to live up to it.
I see that this happens in two ways. First there are others who will now expect you to behave in certain ways. You are much more closely scrutinised and if you do something ‘bad’ then the press will seize on it and name and shame you. If Gilly was bad then that would be a front page name and shame for days on end. The pressure to conform to the norm can be immense and the Free Child cops a battering as a result and in this sense there is psychological deterioration.
But I think there is also a more insidious psychological effect
Beefy Botham. England all round cricketter
Script analysts have known for many years how people’s names can have quite an impact on them psychologically.
Do you like your name?
What does your first name mean?
Who named you and why?
Has you name been shortened?
What are your nicknames and what do they mean to you?
Have you ever read your birth certificate?
These are questions commonly asked and can reveal considerable psychological information about why a person feels about them self the way they do. For instance a person may report that they were actually named after a grandfather who died in world war one, or their uncle who was a womaniser and a drunkard, or their grandmother who was depressed all her life.
Some people go through life hating their name. This is not a good situation as your name is who you are. It is your title that is shown to the world, it is how all others know you and most importantly it is how you know yourself. It is a thing that you have lived with since day one and have been called thousands of times ever since.
Each one of them has a name that defines who they are.
Nicknames can also be of considerable importance. I had the nickname “ynot” given to me by my mother. Ynot is Tony spelt backwards and I have indeed used it in my website address. Most people assume that it is pronounced - why not - as in asking a question. It is actually pronounced “ee-not”, and was a name that my mother would use for me when she was being affectionate and caring. So this nickname is a nice thing for me.
The story I was told was that as a young child once I wrote my name and spelt it completely backwards - ynot. My mother delighted in this and thus it became a nickname for me. What has this meant for me? First it is a demonstration to me that my mother likes me and wants me. It also says to me that its OK to be different and it says to me that I don’t have to spell correctly in order to be OK. (By the way my mother was a world authority on the early identification of dyslexia as well). So I have taken this as a strong permission for me to write. Many people have reported to me over the years that they find it so hard to write because they have to make it perfect before others can see it. This nickname I have taken as it is OK to write and not have it perfect. If I don’t write with perfect grammar and spelling I am still OK. So I write relentlessly and have continued to do so since I was in late high school
So when Beefy Botham becomes Sir Beefy Botham his very name has changed. His title of who he is has changed and how all others now know him has changed. This can have a considerable psychological impact on how Beefy changes his view of himself. Whilst titles and accolades are wonderful to get sometimes they can have a psychological down side.
Graffiti
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Saturday, 16 February 2008
What parents want
I got an email yesterday from someone who was asking about a photograph that I used in a previous post
Because of this child’s age I used this to indicate that sometimes parents can want a child to be a certain way (educated) regardless of weather the child wants it or not.
My emailler asked that isn’t it the job of parents to give a child some direction. I thought this was a good point that questioned my assumption here that this girl might not be benefiting from her parents vigour in getting her educated.
Its funny sometimes how you end up with a client. There is a local restaurant near me that is run by a family who have immigrated from Malaysia. It’s a real family business type thing and I have got to know one of the women quite well over quite a long period of time. She is sort of the face of the business. In our discussions she learnt that I was a psychologist and so forth.
So about 5 years ago she got her sister who would also sometimes worked in the restaurant to bring her 8 year old son to see me. This child was the first born, chinese and male so he was going places and of course that meant he was going to be highly educated. Education was a really big deal in this family.
The problem was he was struggling at school and he was in year 3. They wanted me to basically diagnose him as ADD and thus he could be given medication and he would then do well at school. In essence they were wanting him to be given an intelligence pill!
Maybe a famous cricketer in the making!!!
I assessed him and he was well below average in IQ. This child was not going to go to university, indeed he would battle to pass a couple of years of high school. You didn’t need to give him an IQ test to see that. He was in year 3 at school and already a long way behind his peers in the academic sense.
So I wrote the report and sent it to the parents. About a month later I was dining in the restaurant and the mother actually appeared from the kitchen and confronted me with the report in hand. There I was chomping on my spring roll and she comes up and tells me in no uncertain terms that her child is not dumb (her word) and basically that I had got it wrong. She wanted to know what medication he could be given so he could be smart again.
I counselled her that there was no such medication and she finally left obviously dissatisfied with my intellectual assessment of her first born son who now in her mind would bring shame on the family.
Since that time I have never seen the mother again but I do often talk with the sister who runs the restaurant. I have discovered that the mother and father have essentially abandoned the child as they commute a lot to Malaysia and they have left the son in the care of the sister (my friend at the restaurant) in Australia.
An extreme example of parents wanting something for a child who does not want it, or in this case couldn’t even do it.
However getting back to the point of this email, my correspondent friend suggests that perhaps parents should give children direction. As a counsellor I not uncommonly hear clients in their 30s and 40s say that they had wished their parents had given them more direction. Upon further discussion it sometimes becomes apparent that the parents were giving direction and the teenager fought it so the parents backed off. Then 20 years later they say they wanted it. Whoever said parenting was an easy thing to do!!
Indeed sometimes a mother will see me with her young teenage daughter who is being very rebellious and defiant. Sometimes that happens because the parent is holding on too tight and when they do back off a little bit the conflict situation is defused. However, if I ever find myself suggesting such an approach I always wonder that if in 20 years time this child will be telling their counsellor that she wished her parents had given her more direction!!
Teenagers
Yes I agree that parents do need to give children direction. I also ask parents to look inside themselves and ask how much they want their child to be a certain way for their own needs. Not easy questions to ask and even harder to come up with the answers.
Graffiti
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Friday, 15 February 2008
Games children play
The game of happy to help
The good child. This child does what it is told, follows the rules, can be overly helpful, can be quite shy, is reluctant to express what it wants or needs, will put others before itself. If they are not so much the shy one they can become high achievers if they have natural talent in some area. They learn that to be good you do well at school, or in sport or in civic work and so they achieve in that way, by doing ’stuff’, rather than hiding away.
Why would such a youngster exhibit excessive Conforming Child ego state and give up their Rebellious Child and Free Child ego states?
Ego state structure of the good child
There can be a number of reasons for this
There can just be an excessive pressure for the child to conform by the parents who may be quite conforming themselves. “What will the neighbours think” is often the motto of such a family. The parents are reluctant to be non-conforming themselves and perhaps are merely parenting the way they were parented.
The pressure can also be applied because the parents use the child as a status symbol. Often this is the eldest child in the family or the one the parents believe have some natural talents. I recall one instance of an individual who was relentlessly pressured by mother to go to university and become a doctor. When ever there was a family get together it was repeatedly announced particularly by mother that he was a doctor. She was using her sons achievement to compete or gain credence in the wider family. You see people like this in counselling room in their 30s or 40s and they say things like, “I never wanted to be an economist, I just wanted to be an opera singer”.
Is this what she wants or what someone else wants for her? Being good and doing the right thing certainly gets lots of strokes and reinforcement.
This can be the oldest child in the family and the parents use that child as a live in baby-sitter for the younger siblings which frees up the parents. If the eldest child accepts this role this very much fosters the child to put its needs behind those of its younger siblings. Alternatively it can be a child who has a sibling who is disabled, or sick, or has extra needs of some sort. The parents simply do not have the time and energy to deal with the non-sick youngster so they force it to be good so it requires less attention. In large families as well you can get the ‘forgotten child’. In today’s culture any family that has over three children is quite possibly emotionally damaging to the children for the reason just cited.
People who are this type of good child often will tend towards the helping professions in adulthood. They can quite easily become counsellors because in such a role you focus on the needs and wants of others and do not discuss your own such wants. Your needs are secondary at least while you are working.
Sometimes it is the only position left in the family. As a new child enters the family and grows into it he has to find where he fits. The parents have the Parent and Adult ego states covered and a sibling may have the outspoken, demanding position taken so the ‘happy to help’ good child position is the only one left. If the child’s natural temperament is of that kind than it can very easily fall into the good child position in the family.
Kids seek out what is their position in the group or family.
The good child can be anxiety driven. If a child develops significant anxiety for some reason (abuse, abandonment, threats, etc), it can make the early decision, “To make myself safe I need to sit quietly and watch what is happening” or, “I must not rock the boat or bad things happen”.
The good child can be the result of a low self image or low self esteem. This is not so much an anxious position but a despairing or given up position. This child can feel - “What’s the point” or “Why bother asking for anything as I will never get it”. If there is some anger in the child then this is often self directed and can include significant feelings of self loathing or self hatred.
The ‘Happy to help’ game in essence involves a contraction of the Free Child ego state. As mentioned before such game players often present for counselling in their 30s or 40s and ask the question, “Who am I?” in some form. Without access to the Free Child you cannot answer that question. If you are high Conforming Child the answer to that question is - “I am who you want me to be”. If the person if high Rebellious Child then they answer - “I am the opposite of who you want me to be”. Both the RC and CC are adaptations to the parents. If they are left to do what they want then they are lost, they do not have a sense of who they are and thus will not have a direction in life and will never find their true passion in life. The person with good access to their FC will be able to answer the question, “Who am I?”. They can answer that with the practicalities of life, but they will also have a sense of who they are. They will feel it inside. The RC and CC do not feel it.
Gilly is a very nice guy and great servant to cricket. Married his childhood sweet heart, good father and family man, "Walks" when he thinks he should, never had an off field incident, great team man.
Is that it? He always does the right and good thing. Is that what it is all about?
What will they write on his tombstone?
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 13 February 2008
The psychology of sorry
In Australia today it is Sorry Day. Today the Prime Minister has said sorry to the aboriginal people for what past governments have done to them when they took some of the children away from their families.
Playing twister. The politics of saying sorry.
So there is a lot of discussion and comment around the place about saying sorry and so forth. Forgetting the politics and the social and legal implications of this I would like to look at saying sorry and apologising from a purely psychological perspective.
In a local newspaper a prominent aboriginal is quoted as saying that for him an apology will help ease the pain. One could restate him with - I have been in pain for the last 40 years because there was not an apology given. By waiting for the apology he has suffered pain for a long period of time.
From a purely psychological viewpoint, I don’t believe him, or it may help ease the pain a very, very little bit. In counselling when the situation arises I often say,
“Don’t wait for a sorry or an apology. Don’t make getting an apology important for you”
For instance, perhaps someone insults you quite badly and you feel very offended about it. If you felt like you wanted an apology I would counsel you that you ask for it and if it is not forth coming then drop the want for the apology. Sometimes life is not fair but one thing is for sure it always rolls on.
Would you say sorry to this guy?
The problem is that if you don’t get the apology then it is very easy to feel bad about that. If one felt pain about not getting an apology for 40 years then when the apology was finally given there would be very little easing of the pain.
There are two reasons why that would be so. First humans are very habitual creatures. They behave habitually, think habitually and have feelings habitually. If one has felt a pain for 40 years then that is a very habitual feeling and it is going to take some time and effort to break such a habit. It will not change significantly in relation to a simple apology.
Feelings become habitual even the good feelings.
Secondly, if one had a sense of pain for many years then that emotion gets ingrained into the very structure of the personality. It becomes a part of the personality, part of you and effects how you think and behave and how you view life and the world in general. Such a thing will not change rapidly. So to stop feeling such pain means one is also changing the structure of the personality and ones world view of life in general.
In trauma counselling the best scenario is if the debriefing can being within 72 hours of the traumatic event occurring to the client. Then there is a rule of thumb, that if trauma debriefing has not occurred within 6 weeks of the trauma occurring then the counselling is much harder as the behavioural, emotional and thinking responses to the trauma have become part of the clients personality structure. It has become part of the very who they are and is no longer just a reaction to an event
So this is why I would counsel a client to drop the want for an apology if it is not forth coming. If the angst about not getting an apology remains then it becomes habitual for the person and becomes part of their Weltanschauung or view of the world.
If you don't let go of feelings about the past they make the present like this.
Some times life is a bitch and just not fair. People with this view of life are much less likely to get psychologically stuck on the actions of others to them. They will be more likely to keep psychologically moving on in life and thus less encumbered by the past and stuck in it. They are far more able to live in the here and now which is a very nice psychological position to be in.
(Also note that this is a comment on individual psychology and is not making any comment about the politics of Sorry Day)
Graffiti
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Saturday, 09 February 2008
No secrets and lies contract
It’s been along time since I suggested a no secrets and lies contract to a client but I did so just the other day. The client agrees to not keep any secrets and tell no lies to the therapist either by omission or overtly. It is obviously naive to think that a client will walk in and tell a therapist who is a total stranger all their most intimate thoughts. I wouldn’t if I was the client no matter how highly recommended the therapist was.
Most clients will initially use their calling card and present their safe problem. A difficult relationship with a teenager, giving up smoking, loosing weight and so forth. This gives them a chance to check out the therapist and see if they can then move on and tell some more personal facts about them self. If the client feels they can trust the therapist then that is what most do. Of course this is important as the more the therapist knows about the client the better counsel they can give.
However there are some clients who will withhold significant information over a long period of time for a whole variety of reasons and thus the counselling suffers. Of course a no secrets and lies contract has to be agreed upon by the client or they will just lie about the contract in the first place. In the recent instance the client had a habit of living his life in separate sections. He has separate groups of friends, family and associates who he kept very discrete and they basically do not even know the others exist. He was sort of lying to them by omission, or not telling them about the others.
So he agreed to the no secrets and lies contract. He stated that he found this quite disarming (his word). So he felt that his armoury had been taken away, or his defences were down. Thus this allowed for deeper work to proceed about feeling at threat and trust and so forth.
When you think about it, it is a bit like the confessional where you are supposed to tell all, and in particular all your bad bits. Quite a vulnerable position when you think about it, especially when the other person is telling nothing about them self to you. But of course it has to be like that to have any real impact.
This reminds me of another man who I saw a number of years ago over about a 5 year period. He came to a whole variety of counselling, individual, group, residential weekends and so forth. It wasn’t until right near the end, say 3 months before I last saw him that he told me that he had to have a major heart, lung operation at some point. He stated that the doctors had told him he had a 50% chance of surviving the operation. Now that is a fairly significant piece of information for a psychotherapist to have about a client and would significantly effect the counsel one gave. This man had attended all this counselling which he had paid for out of his own pocket and never told me about his illness until right near the end! Apparently only the doctors and I knew. He had never told his wife, kids or parents about it either. It also raises the question, what else has he not disclosed?
I never actually asked him why he had done that and now in retrospect I wish I had. I still send him information on workshops and therapy groups via email and the post. None of it has ever been returned as undeliverable so I assume he is getting it but I would not have heard from him for over a year now. I suppose it just reminds me of how the Child in different people can do what seems to me to be a very strange thing to do. What some of the very private and intimate worlds of people are like. My reaction to him doing that is a feeling of how singular it must be for him in his private world. Of course he may not feel that way at all and it could just be how I would feel if I did such a thing.
Graffiti
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Thursday, 07 February 2008
The foundations of group process
In the previous post - New group psychotherapy - KazzaB makes some interesting comments about the group member who says very little and why a person would do such a thing. After that Madeleine coat tails on it and states some of her views.
This post is a comment about their comments
In psychotherapy, group process or group dynamics usually refers to the interactions between the group members. Sometimes they are positive and sometimes they are not so positive. However it is imperative that the group leader be aware of them and handle them satisfactorily or else the group will “ail” as they say and eventually fold.
As Madeleine mentions our early group experiences are with our family of origin, then at school and with our peer group. It is in these ways that we learn how we fit into a group, what is our role or position is in the group, how others fit in and how we react (particularly emotionally) to various other group members. So in adulthood when we enter a therapy group we will know where we fit in, our role and so forth.
Peer group
So if in childhood one had a younger sister who was very quiet then as a child you will learn how to feel and think about her. This to a large extent is determined by how the parents handled the family dynamics, well or otherwise. So in adulthood if you come into a therapy group and there is a quiet woman it is quite possible that you will have a similar emotional reaction to that person as you did when you were a child in the family of origin. If you never had a quiet younger sister then in adulthood quiet females will cause no emotional reaction in you.
This bringing the past onto the here now is done by everyone. So group members who say little, and those who say a lot, and those who say a middle amount will get reactions from some other group members. What is important in group dynamics is not a matter of how much you say or participate its others reactions to you due to your level of participation.
Some of the common reactions are listed below, but it must be remembered that the list of possible reactions is extensive indeed and these are but a few.
The highly talkative active participator in the group.
1. This person can be viewed as trying to take control of the group and dominate it and as a result some people dislike this type of group member. They can get an angry and rebellious response sometimes.
2. This person is seen as taking a leadership role and is viewed well by some other group members who feel more secure that someone has taken charge. They like this and will look to this person when feeling unsure about something.
3. This person can be seen as trying to be the ‘teachers pet’ and wanting to get the leaders attention at the expense of others. So other group members can get competitive with this person as they fear that they will miss out on some of the strokes and attention.
The quiet group member who participates very little in the group
1. This person can be viewed as being shy and having a low self esteem and thus can attract the attention of bullies who will seek to bully this person. This person can also attract the rescuers in the group who will seek to help and save this ‘damaged’ group member. They can do this by trying to include them in the group activities for their own good.
2. This person can be seen as not doing the right thing and not contributing to the group by not participating. So they are seen as errant in their behaviour for doing this way and they should be contributing to the group more.
3. This person can be seen as being aloof and like they feel they are above the rest of the group members. This obviously attracts a negative response from other group members who feel this way about them.
Both the quiet and active participator would have experienced these reactions many, many times in their life before. So at least at an unconscious level they know what will happen if they stay quiet or active in a group. So in this way they take this covert agenda into a here and now therapy group.
Of course this post is only half the equation. It is how others view the quiet group participant.
How the quiet person views these reactions is a whole other area. They can view them accurately or inaccurately.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 06 February 2008
New group psychotherapy
We ran an experimental therapy group the other night and it produced some interesting results. Most participants reported differing reactions and things which they got out of it.
This is by an large a leaderless group and there is very little direction given to participants. They by and large simply state their current thoughts and feelings particularly in reaction to other participants in the group and how they have contributed or not. It almost exclusively focuses on group process rather than doing therapy with the various participants and the therapist. I have not before been in such a group with such focus only on group process. Group process in this instance is how the members of the group relate and interact and how they collectively form a group. In this sense the group becomes more than just a collection of its members but becomes something else.
The human group
Of course there are many ways to look at humans and groups of humans. Many, many different perspectives can be taken so this is my perspective of this group on that particular night alone. I somewhat spontaneously had this sense of the group and its members in terms of their psychological energy even though I hate that word. A spontaneous sense of the psychological impact that they had on the group or the psychological space that they took. At this point that is the best I can describe it. So I came up with this diagram
This is meant to indicate my perception of the psychological energy or impact of each member of the group. There was myself and 6 group members. The size of the circle is meant to indicate the size of the psychological presence that this person had on the group process according to my perception at that time.
Obviously M4 was seen as having the most impact. M2, M3, & M6 were seen as the next most impactful and basically of equal size. M5 was a bit smaller and to my mind M1 had the least. M1 is interesting in that this member had the least to say in that group meeting so for me its the smallest. However for others such a person can be seen as having a big presence in the group because they are not saying much. It is possible over time if this same group met then the size of M1 could increase quite dramatically as some of the other group members reacted to him and the less active overt participation in the group. Of course in the next meeting all the members ‘sizes’ are likely to be different in my perception, but I would suspect that over time the larger ones would generally be larger and the smaller ones would generally be smaller.
There was one other thing that quite surprised me also. There was one point in the group when there was a good deal of interaction between myself and M4. A bit later M5 made the comment that their experience of that was like the group had been cut in half. My instant intuitive response to that was yes that is how it also felt to me also - “it cut the group in half”.
Define that?
What was cut in half? In the practical sense nothing was cut in half as there is just empty space between the group members. But both M5 and myself at least had a sense that there was something there and it had been cut in half. Perhaps we are beginning to get a sense of, or beginning to define what it is when one says that the group becomes an entity in itself. A group is more than just the collection of its members. M5 and myself had sensed that or perceived that. So what is it? Some might call it the group unconscious or intersubjective space, but there was something there or M5 and myself had perceived there to be something there.
One other thing that I was particularly struck by was the conflict or desire by the members to define the group how they wanted it. Perhaps to define the group unconscious how they wanted it. For instance M4 and M6 both made a number of statements and attempts to get more structure into the group process. This is a very leaderless and structureless group and they tried on a number of occasion's to redefine that. M1 by what he was doing was attempting to define the group as a place where one could participate very little. There were three occasions where I did intervene in a leadership role and that was when various members tried to define the group by moving it to theoretical discussion of what was going on. I intervened and stopped that, other than that I managed to stay out of the leadership position in the main. However I was struck by the vigour by which the members endeavoured to do that.
Its nice when things are the way we want them.
It is possible that this is a temporary thing. As this group is so new and we seem to agree that we don’t really know what we are doing but we are going to continue to do it and see what happens. Perhaps over time as the members get used to it, a pattern will form in at least in their own minds. There then maybe less desire to attempt to define what this group is and how it works. Then again if it stays quite structureless then what it is and how it is done will stay undefined over time.
Going into the unknown
Graffiti
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Saturday, 02 February 2008
Where I grew up
Madeleine says:
“I love surf photos. I never learned, lived too far away from the ocean and didn't even see waves and salt water until I was 18.”
I am always interested in how each of us has our story. The beginning of mine at least in geography is very different to Madeleine. I find it hard to contemplate not being near and in the ocean as it is where I lived half of my childhood.
Here is a picture of me at the beach with my older brother. I look under 1 year old there don’t you think? So I was at the ocean by at least age 1.
Here is another one of me at the beach with my older brother and the nanny. YES, the nanny!!!
My parents brought this nanny on our annual vacation and dumped us with her and took off. Latchkey children I think it is called. No not at all and I am being very disingenuous to my parents who were not neglectful in that way at all. BUT photographic evidence none the less!!
When you are that old you take in the world like you can never again. The ocean and the beach is in my bones and when ever I go to the beach which is many days of the week I just have a sense of that connection.
Obviously Madeleine does not have that, but as she tells us she is a Quebecois. So she would know a heck of a lot more about snow, skiing and skating than I would. That is what would be in her bones and all that French being spoken as well. Apparently in Quebec there are parts where that is all they speak and the road signs and so forth are all in French.
Oh well that is the French I suppose. My mother tells a story about many years ago when her and my father were at an international psychology conference. One of the key note speakers was Jean Piaget. There are about a 1000 people in this auditorium and he gets up to deliver his speech. He spoke French obviously so most people had ear phones where they would get the translator’s translation as he delivered his paper. In english he begins with, that anyone of any intellect obviously spoke French and proceeded to pull out all the wires so the translators could not hear him and then delivered his 30 minute speech in French.
C’est la vie.
Anyway back to me. here is a picture of my mother (NOT the nanny) teaching me how to dive when I was about 6 years old. That is her holding the floaty thing and that is actually my younger sister on the extreme left. She has the pot belly but don't tell her I said that!!
The connection with ones physical surroundings where you grew up as a child. The meaning of that connection for each of us. An interesting topic of study.
Graffiti
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Friday, 01 February 2008
Taking risks
For Kenoath,
Surfing can be an intense experience.
You think you are indestructible and take some 'hairy' risks as they were called in those days. See how much the lip (tip of the wave) spits out. Its huge and perfect for the tube ride. It happens when the swell moves from deep water to shallow water very quickly.
If it works out you are the king, the boss, the main man, the supremo, numero uno.
If it doesn't work out you cry for your momma and wonder what the fuck you are doing.
This is me surfing at "the spot". No I am not a wimp and only catch small waves. This is called a 'cutback'. I have gone from the big part of the wave out to the edge which is much smaller. I am turning my surfboard back into the main part of the wave. You can tell it has been a big wave because of the speed I must have been moving at to be able to turn like that on a surf board.
Graffiti
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Psychological similarities
Here is a workshop exercise I devised a long time ago. If you want to actually do it don’t scroll down until you have done it or the exercise will be wrecked.
Think back to the first 10 years of your life. If you can think back that far! Recall your mother and father or two people who were like a mother and father to you. Now write a list like the one below. On the list write down what your mother and father were like. Describe them and their qualities, the list can be one word long or ten words long.
For instance father may have been
FATHER
1. Fun
2. Depressed
3. Critical
4. Always working
5. Distant
6. Good provider
Now do the same for your mother. Any words which describe her and the quality of the relationship that she had with you. Do not describe her as she is now but as she was then.
Now look at your two lists and cross out the titles mother and father and write at the top “I AM”. Like below
You have just described your Parent ego state, the things you modelled from your parents. They must be in there because you just itemised them. They came out of your head, not any one else's so it means they are in there even after all these years. It does not matter if they accurately portray mother and father its just how you perceived them at that time.
Perhaps you wrote “Critical” for mother. So what does this mean? Firstly we are not just mindless clones of our parents and we have two other ego states which will modify how we behave. For instance if your Child ego state decided that it was - I’m not OK, You’re OK - then it is highly unlikely that you will go around criticising others. What it will tend to do instead is turn the criticism inwards and be critical of self or it will tend to form relationships with others who are critical of her.
What I am also saying is that there is a psychological similarity between the person who is highly critical of self and the person who is highly critical of others. They are both similar in the sense they they both have criticism as part of their personality in their Parent ego state. In addition there is a very big difference between these two people in how they express such criticism, so I am not saying they are the same. In particular I am not saying that the self criticiser is a bad person like the ‘others’ criticiser.
It works the other way as well. Sometimes you get clients who present saying, “I am hard on myself, I drive myself and never have a nice word to say about myself”.
So as a Transactional Analyst, I then make my diagnosis and think. This person is saying that they have little Nurturing Parent (NP) for them self. So the next thing I do is ask them how they are with their children, or if they see some one who is in need or has hurt self what do they do. When they answer I watch for how much NP they use with the person in need.
Some show lots of NP and some show very little NP and these are two very different clinical states. The best scenario is when the person displays adequate NP to the child. If this is the case then I know that the person does have functional nurturing in their Parent ego state. The problem here is in the way it is being directed. So the therapy is about changing the direction of the NP from others to self.
If the person displays very little NP to others then this is not a good situation. It can mean that the person simply does not have any NP in their Parent ego state. If that is the case the person sort of has a hole in their Parent because there was very little nurturing in their life when they were growing up. Thus they did not incorporate any like you showed what you incorporated when you did the initial exercise. There is simply none there. This is not common and perhaps restricted to 5% of the population. To treat this is harder and longer as the client has to incorporate a whole new NP from scratch. It has to start right from the beginning.
Also when I come across a client like this I start hunting around for other serious psychopathology. If a person is raised in an environment where there is very little NP from the parents then there it is likely that there will be other significant psychological problems.
So in this sense one can say there is a psychological similarity between the the person who is kind and nurturing to self and the person who is highly critical of self but nurturing to others.
Graffiti
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