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Monday, 31 March 2008
What’s your racket feeling?
A racket is a feeling but not a here and now or Free Child feeling. It is an Adapted Child feeling or an inauthentic feeling. It is not a real feeling but a feeling the person has for some other motive.
One way a racket feeling can develop is by how children are raised. That is, children will be given strokes for some feelings and no strokes for other feelings. In Australia and I assume most of the western world boys and girls are raised by getting different strokes for different feelings. This can result in racket feelings.
Young children and feelings, what sense do they make of them?
When a young girl is in the school yard it does not take her long to learn that when she shows angry feelings then things are not right. She is accused of being a bitch and good little girls don’t get angry. She in later life when angry she is told she is being an aggressive woman and that is a very bad thing by society’s standards.
So the girl and woman are encouraged not to feel and show anger. However should that little girl fall over in the playground at primary school and cut her knee, then she may cry. When she cries she discovers that lots of people give her attention and good attention at that. She is looked after and told that she is a good person.
So she is encouraged to be sad and discouraged to be angry and that is how she ends up with a sadness racket . We get a layering of feelings. Sadness is layered over anger like the diagram below:
Everytime she gets angry all of a sudden she is sad and crying even without her even realising.
When a young boy in the school playground falls over and cuts his knee and starts to cry what happens to him. He is called a wimp, a whoose, a girl, and so forth. He quickly learns that it is not the thing to do. However when he gets angry and shoves and pushes the other boys he earns respect and is see as being a real boy. He is encouraged to be angry and discouraged to be sad. So he layers his feleings the other way and ends up with an angry racket.
Everytime he gets sad all of a sudden he is angry even without him even realising.
So the young girl grows up into an adult woman. She goes about life and at some point a person is insulting to her and she states to this person that she is angry about the insult. Then all of a sudden she is crying!! When you are angry you are not suppose to cry. You cry when you are sad. She feels angry but changes it into racket sadness and is crying rather than being angry.
If she is quiet how will people relate to her?
The young boy grows up into an adult man. As he goes about life one day he hears that his lovely pet dog has been run over by a car. Instead of crying with sadness all of a sudden he is angry about how this person should have done that and this other person did not corrctly keep the gate locked an so forth. Instead of being sad he has changed it into anger, which is his racket.
The other thing about feelings is they are a great way to manipulate people. They really do work. This is another definition of a racket. A racket is a feeling that is used to manipulate others. Boys and men learn over time that if they get angry then often women will back down and give them what they want. The anger manipulates the woman into giving the man what he wants. So she actually encourages him to be angry by backing down.
On the other hand young girls and women learn that if you turn on the waterworks and cry then often men will take a very sympathetic role and give them what they want. The woman can manipulate the man by turning on the waterworks and the man encourages her to do so by agreeing to be manipulated.
So what happens?
Men are more prone to racket feelings of anger and women are more prone to racket feelings of sadness and crying.
Graffiti
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Sunday, 30 March 2008
The Here and Now
There is a person in Australia called Chris Mainwaring. He was a star footballer and after that he became very well known as a media personality. Apparently he was a very nice person who was widely liked. About a year ago he died in somewhat suspicious circumstances where there was illicit drugs involved. He died in his front yard late into the night. Subsequently it has become apparent that he had significant financial difficulties.
Also since then it has become apparent that his wife and his parents despise each other with a vigour and a passion. It has come to the point where the wife has now agreed to give his parents half his ashes from the cremation.
To my mind that is just sicko! Ghoulish to say the least. You can’t just divide a deceased person in two as that is treating the dead with complete disrespect and contempt. What are they going to each get? One gets the left side and one the right? Maybe the top half and bottom half? Perhaps they could later trade a leg and hand for his head?. How will they divide it, by weight and split on the kitchen table with a credit card?
This is on a par with Keith Richards snorting his father’s ashes.
Keef
For heavens sake people move on! That is taking your bad feelings to knew heights. They can’t even cooperate enough so as to keep the poor fellows ashes intact. This is a very good example of not living in the Here and Now
One concept central to psychotherapy for many years has been the idea of the Here and Now and the diagram below is used.
If you stay in the Here and Now it is virtually impossible to feel bad. People stop themselves from staying in the Here and Now in two ways. First they can remove themselves in time. They can move back to point A, which is a time in the past and feel bad about an event from then. Or they can move to a time in the future (Point B) and feel bad about an event to come.
Secondly they can remove them self by going to another place (Point C). In this case the person feels bad about the starving millions in Africa or the civilians in Iraq that are currently suffering.
There are plenty of injustices in the world to feel bad about.
If you stay in the Here and Now in time and place then one avoids their racket feeling. That is the feeling that they have most commonly. The reason why they have it most commonly is because they don’t stay in the Here and Now. And of course it can be any feeling such as depression, anxiety, shame, happiness and so forth.
The key with the diagram, is that you can use it to isolate how you keep out of the Here and Now then you are in a position to change that and thus avoid the racket feeling more. Obviously Chris Mainwaring’s wife and parents aren’t spending much time in the Here and Now and probably are doing a lot of being in the past when she and he treated me so badly. Thus the angst between them can remain for years and years.
Graffiti
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Wednesday, 26 March 2008
Family first
You can choose your friends but you can’t choose your family.
A saying that is very common in Australia and perhaps other parts of the world as well. It also highlights a difference between friends and family. The saying implies that you are stuck with your family and that you belong to them.
Who are you supposed to celebrate Christmas with? Family.
Who’s birthdays are you supposed to remember? Family.
It is that group of people whom you have a primary attachment to (and in some ways an obligation to).
No matter where you live, family is family and has tremendous impact on who we become
Humans are primarily communal beings and are much better off psychologically if they have a sense of community or belonging. The basic family unit can provide this community. It is that group of people who you grew up with. Your childhood was spent living with these people. In psychological terms that means a lot. Then there is your biological mother and father, the two people who created you. If it weren’t for them you would not even exist and that carries a good deal of psychological weight weather you like it or not.
A sense of belonging is a primary human motive.
In addition to this most societies and religions structure them selves around the family being the primary group in a society. Perhaps this is why adultery is such a big deal in some societies and why affairs are so disapproved of. It is the primary structure in which to raise the younger members of the society. So the basic family unit is given a very high status for economic, political, social and psychological reasons. Powerful forces indeed!
However there is just one problem. What happens if you don't get on with some of your family members? Indeed what if there is strong and intense dislikes as there sometimes is. My busiest time of year for counselling is christmas because it is when families get together. For the rest of the year they can by and large avoid each other. At christmas time they are ‘forced’ to be together because that is what families do at christmas. Add in alcohol and all the old feelings and conflicts come out from years ago and it becomes a shit fight and they end up in my office seeking counsel.
Of course none of this happens with friends because you can choose them.
Families vary in terms of their degree of community or belonging. At one end of the continuum is the enmeshed family.
The family members are all close and intertwined and there is a sense of a big barrier around them. This barrier is to protect them because out there it is scary. They say things like,
“You can only ever really trust family”
“Blood is thicker than water”
This is typical of Italian and Greek families.
So these people have a very strong sense of belonging and community and in this way it is good psychologically. There are lots of big family get togethers and everyone knows everyone else's business. The attachments are very strong and people will at times even die for them.
However it has a downside as there is a lack of a sense of independence and it is very hard to break away from if one wants to go away and live somewhere else in the world. Lots of pressure can be applied to stop such things so a sense of smothering can result and a sense never being who you really are (self actualisation).
We all want to be free to achieve what we can for ourselves. Achieve our full potential.
Also there can be problems in marriages. If the son marries a woman who is not acceptable to the family then she can for ever be treated as an outsider and she is never really accepted into the family. Sometimes in couples counselling the husband will let slip with a comment like,
“After going to the supermarket I just popped in at home for half an hour”.
Of course the wife instantly sees red at this because “home” is where mother and father live not where the wife and kids live. In enmeshed families sometimes the son (or daughter) never really leaves home in this way and that can result in considerable marital problems.
At the other end is the distancing family.
In this instance there are very tenuous connections between family members and often there is no contact for long periods of time. There is very little sense of belonging and the family being a close knit group with a clear sense of boundary between it and the rest of the world. The downside to this a lack of that sense of community or belonging which goes along with psychological health. Many anxiety problems can result from this type of family upbringing. On the other hand these people are very free to go out into the world and be themselves and achieve their own potentials to the fullest.
Sometimes you hear people say
“One of the reasons I married her was because I liked her family a lot”. This can indicate a person from a distancing family who manages to obtain a sense of belonging to a family by marrying not only the wife but her family as well.
With friends there is none of these dynamics.
Graffiti
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Sunday, 23 March 2008
Racism changes
It seems a bit strange to me that racism is culture specific. Its like it shouldn't be, but it is. I see in the press at times that there is a person in the USA called Barrack Obama who is trying out for the next presidency. I see that he is referred to as an African American. Apparently one must not call him a black man as that is considered racist.
Here in Australia we have our indigenous Australians or aborigines. As far as I know it is quite all right to refer to them as the blacks. They certainly refer to themselves as that and I hear the term black being used and not causing any ire.
One of the greatest musicians of all time, but in terms of understanding and dealing with difficult social issues it was, "Don't give up your day job John". However, having said that idealists have an important role to play like Bob Geldorf and his sidekick Bono. Did they really think a rock concert could change the G8 (or is that G7)?
Indeed I am reminded of a situation when I worked in a prison where aborigines are vastly over represented as compared to the general population. My main job was to run the program that identified and managed suicidal and self harming inmates. In other words it was up to me to keep the 750 inmates alive, particularly the black ones. The company that ran the prison did not want a ‘black death in custody’ as that rapidly gets political including coronial inquests and so forth.
The aborigine meets the white man
Fortunately in my years there, there was not one completed suicide although there were many attempts of varying seriousness. However there were three who went very close. Indeed it was just plain luck that two of them did not complete the suicide attempts. One of them was an aborigine. After the attempt the other inmates gave him the nickname of ‘black magic’ as he was black and it was magic that he did not die. This became his name in the prison and he thought it was great. He spoke of it often. So obviously calling and aborigine a black man is not racist in this country.
Graffiti
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Make feels
Can you make me feel, and can I make you feel?
This is a question that psychotherapists have been debating and asking for many, many years and they are still undecided and divided over the answer of yes or no.
But I thought I might have my say on it. How can I resist.
As it is easter I thought I would let the eggs give us what I think is the answer.
As you can see Humpty Dumpty has had his great fall and the other eggs around are having their feeling reactions. There seems to be triumph, fear, sadness, shock and so forth.
If humpty can make the other eggs feel, then how by one action how can he make the others have such a diverse set of feelings? He can't.
Look at the different feeling reactions in the crowd
But maybe there is another answer. By having a great fall Humpty Dumpty can make the others feel. But he cant make them have a particular feeling. That is up to them. That is their choice.
So Humpty can't make someone feel angry, but he can do something to make them have a feeling but what feeling that is, is the choice of other egg.
It is easter so I thought I would give this post a religious leaning.
However the plot thickens as there is another question that therapists are equally as divided over. Can one person feel another persons feelings or not?
Shall I answer that one, or at least give Humpty Dumpty's thoughts on it?
Graffiti
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Log book fraud
Being at that age where one’s offspring are getting their drivers license of course adds to new observations of life and society. In Australia you can get your drivers licence when you turn 17 years of age.
First you get your driving lessons and then go for the test. If you pass you are awarded a drivers licence and then you have to keep a log book and obtain 25 hours of driving with your parent beside you. Once that is done then you get your drivers licence proper and you can go driving by yourself.
Base jumping breaks the rules
Well from what I have observed of various teenagers and their long suffering parents, the fudging of the 25 hours in the log book is rife, one could even say it is at pandemic proportions!!!. There are lot of youngsters apparently going on very long drives with their parents at their side!!!
Interestingly not only is it the teenager who wants the 25 hours to be over as quickly as possible but it is the parents that are mainly driving this evil log book fraud. What parent wants to sit for 25 hours in a car being driven around and around by their son or daughter. From what I have observed, not many.
When he grows up what will he think of the log book?
I find it a good example of the law being an ass.
One cannot simply make a law or regulation and expect it to work. It has to have the support of the majority of the people or it will ‘fail’. In fact it makes things worse because in this instance the youngster gets to see his or her parents breaking the rules of society.
Its like the marijuana laws. In Australia over 50% of people have tried this illegal drug and one would imagine that there are a sizeable group who have not tried it but see it as harmless and think it shouldn’t be illegal. And yet it remains illegal and this puts the police in the very difficult situation of having to enforce a law that the majority of a society do not want. Not good for a society in general I think you would agree.
In Australia road safety is a very big deal that gets lots of time, money and attention. As you drive around when was the last time you saw a motor vehicle accident happen? I can’t remember the last time for me but it would be years and years ago. Very occasionally I come across an accident that has happened in the recent past. I live near a busy intersection and there must be thousands and thousands if not millions of cars that go through it every year. There are perhaps one or two accidents there a year. In the state where I live there is about 250 road deaths per year and the population is 2.1 million. By my calculations that amounts to 0.00011905% of the population. That many people would die choking on a peanut per year! Motor vehicle accidents are a very small killer of Australians.
This is the part that I don’t like - how the government lies to the people. The dangers of car accidents are grossly over exaggerated and they expect the population just to accept that. Its like the road safety council expects people to just believe what they say. Fortunately they don’t and they will go out and make their own observations and come to their own conclusions. As Mr Average drives around the streets everyday he is going to see there are very few accidents, let alone any fatalities.
But road safety is great politics. Anyone with any political agenda who wants more popularity can get up and say loudly they they take a ZERO TOLERANCE approach to road safety and want MANDATORY SENTENCES for violators of the road rules. So road safety is grossly over funded for the danger that it poses to the general population and the dangers grossly exaggerated. But the general public are not dumb and maybe that is one reason why the log book is treated with such disrespect.
Graffiti
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Friday, 21 March 2008
Waiting on a friend
Kahless and Roses ask about friends.
Lets see what Mick and the boys have to say about it.
WAITING ON A FRIEND
(M. Jagger/K. Richards)
Watching girls go passing by
It ain't the latest thing
I'm just standing in a doorway
I'm just trying to make some sense
Out of these girls go passing by
The tales they tell of men
I'm not waiting on a lady
I'm just waiting on a friend
A smile relieves a heart that grieves
Remember what I said
I'm not waiting on a lady
I'm just waiting on a friend
I'm just waiting on a friend
Don't need a whore
I don't need no booze
Don't need a virgin priest
But I need someone I can cry to
I need someone to protect
Making love and breaking hearts
It is a game for youth
But I'm not waiting on a lady
I'm just waiting on a friend
This comes from a recent ruling in California USA against home schooling
“A primary purpose of the educational system is to train school children in good citizenship, patriotism and loyalty to the state and the nation as a means of protecting the public welfare.”
It does raise an interesting idea about friendship and how children have to learn it. Or in the case of California the children have to be taught it. Indeed school is a place where many children for the first time are left on their own with their same age peers or as psychology sometimes refers to them - their cohorts.
The problem.
From its very earliest day at birth a child forms a very close and strong relationship with mother (& father). This relationship however is not a friendship instead it is a parent child relationship. One of the key features in such a relationship is the power differential. It is a one up and one down relationship. The parent has much more psychological and emotional power and potency than the child. Humans as we know are very keen to behave in patterns and thus when they grow up they will tend to form relationships of the same quality and type.
Some people never get past this type of relationship. So when they grow up they start relating to their peers in the same way as in the diagram above. In an emotionally one down position. And indeed when they get married they do the same again. Hence we have the saying, “Who wears the pants in that relationship”. The one who does not wear the pants has never been able to go beyond that original parent child relationship. This person is to some extent what is known as the Dependent personality and this can form one of the dynamics in domestic violence. The dependent personality finds it very difficult to leave a relationship because they are precisely that - dependent. “How could I ever survive without him?” is what the woman may think.
Some relationships are like this but the dependent party will never leave
Often a the youngest child in a family can end up like this because everyone in the household is older and thus they are always relating to everyone in the one down position in an emotional sense. One the other side we have the eldest child who can relate to their siblings in the parental position because they look after the younger ones. So when this person grows up they can take on the role of the ‘pants wearer’ in their relationships.
When a woman becomes a mother herself if she happens to be the childlike person as shown in the diagram above then that is most unfortunate for the new-born. It can lead to some significant psychological difficulties for the child as it grows up. Then you hear people sometimes say, “She was just a natural mother”. When a child is born the mother for whatever reason just slips into the parent like person and naturally takes on the parenting role.
Of course the child like person and the parent like person often end up marrying one another as they both know how to be in a relationship. It may not feel all that good but they both know it well and thus will fall into relating like that.
Then finally we can have a relationship where there is no power differential
Friends
This is where you get a friendship in the psychological sense as is shown in this diagram. This most often happens when a child has the opportunity to relate to peers of about the same age and psychological power. Hence one of the arguments against home schooling as school provides plenty of opportunity to do that. Home schoolers need to provide this some other way.
Of course siblings can also provide this if the age difference is not too large and the parents do not interfere and make one the parent like person and one the child like person. So in one sense one can say that a friendship like this is the most sophisticated type of relating, or the most psychologically developed way of relating. It is the furthermost away from the primal mother and child relationship. It is the most actualised relationship one could say. If the person is capable of this type of friendships then they can be seen as quite emotionally mature.
Friends
It also shows one way in which husbands and wives can get into trouble and clarifies the client and therapist relationship.
Hubby and the missus have been getting on fine and have a relationship where the power is reasonably equal like in the friendship relationship. Then one day hubby’s mother dies and he starts having anxiety, insomnia and so forth.
It is fine and good for hubby to go to the missus and look for emotional support and help and for her to meet his emotional needs as long as it is not too much. The more he does that and the more she takes the caring parent role the more pressure it puts on him and her to stop being friends and become more parent and child like in their relating. If it is too much then the missus stops being the missus and becomes his therapist and that is one quick and sure fire way to the divorce courts.
As Mick says:
But I need someone I can cry to
I need someone to protect
So it is evened up in terms of being looked after and looking after the other.
A marriage can end up like this if hubby and the missus stop being equal power friends
You don’t want that to happen and a way around it is to go and hire a therapist to deal with the needs that hubby has. Then hubby and the missus can retain that equal power relationship.
To finish I go back to Mick and see what he says. He sings about same sex friendships, perhaps because it is not possible for a male and a female to be just friends. Another post on that one I am afraid.
Graffiti
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Monday, 17 March 2008
Relational group therapy - Part 2
On Feb 6th, 2008 I wrote about the previous relational group therapy we had. Since then we have had another. The first group looked like this
Structure of first group
The most recent group looked like this
Structure of second group
On this occasion the relative contributions of psychological potency or impact on the group was more evenly distributed and hence the same size circles of myself and the other 4 members.
The thing which I most noticed was how different the two groups were. What happened in the groups and the overall emotional tone of the groups were quite different between the first and second group. At first this concerned me as I thought they should be the same but then I had an awareness that it was good that they were so different as it means we not assuming the therapy roles that we thought we should have.
Its hard to be another brick in the wall when there is no wall there in the first place!
In this way there seems to be a realness emerging in this type of group therapy. Certainly some of the participants directly report this. That there is an authenticity to the relating between members and that there seems to be less of people taking roles and a persona. This could be a consequence of the lack of structure and the fact that the participants are not sure about the process as there are very few rules. This certainly does seem to be quite cutting edge group therapy and going into new territory in the sense that we have no idea where we are going and what we are doing. All we do is relate!
The group lasted 2 hours and 20 minutes for the first hour and a quarter the members kept the relating at quite an intellectual level until M1 stated that she felt we were doing that. Then it was almost like everyone instantly dropped down a level, out of their heads and into their Child more so. And we started relating at that level. I was surprised at how members were able to do that so quickly and uniformly. Perhaps we are starting to get some understanding of what this relational group therapy is all about.
Graffiti
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Benign suicide
I have been working with this guy recently and he presents as such a clear instance of possible benign suicide. A long history of prolonged injecting drug use. For many years it was amphetamines but in recent times it has been heroin. Plenty available at the moment apparently as it has been a bumper crop this year in the opium fields of Afghanistan.
There is not an anger in him like there is with some people. He almost has an acceptance of life and the things that happen to him and there have been some quite unfortunate things that have happened to him. He states that he is not suicidal and I believe him. The desire to kill self is just not there. He states he has no plans and so forth
However he also states that he sees very little future and that when I ask him where he will be in 5 to 10 years he states that he could easily be dead. Also life is just a trial for him as the days go by and he has that ‘what’s the point of living’ feel about him.
High risk behavior
I have not before come across such a clear example of the inconsistency that exists here. At this point he has no suicidal thoughts or plans and yet he could easily die and to die is no big deal for him. A good example of benign suicide perhaps.
When asked about how he might die he reports the possibility of an overdose and with injecting heroin that is always a potential reality. In addition one of the seven types of “Don’t exist’ decisions is,
“I will get you to kill me”
That is also a possibility as he is heavily involved in the drug subculture and indeed about 5 years ago he went very close to getting murdered when he endured a prolonged abduction and a severe assault.
High risk?
The line between a suicide and an accident sometimes is quite blurry as indeed is the line between suicide and being murdered. A good example is described above.
Again I am brought back to the current Jake Kovco inquest (previous post) where the coroner is endeavouring to determine if his death was suicide or an accident. As mentioned the line between the two can be unclear and I suspect it was with the Aussie soldier in this case. It probably will never be able to be determined and indeed Mr Kovco probably didn’t even know himself. If he didn’t know then certainly no one else is going to be able to find out. The coroner needs another category of death and that being benign suicide.
Going to a war zone is benign suicidal behavior
One of the specific clinical signs of a suicidal person is a history of high risk behaviour. This is one thing the psychotherapist can look for in determining the suicidality of a client. People who repeatedly and voluntarily engage in high risk behaviour. Examples can be involvement in the criminal world, high risk drug taking, extreme sports, severe anorexia, going to a war zone, being a dare devil, car racing, working with dangerous animals a trapeze artist in a circus, having unprotected sex in high risk populations, prolonged very heavy cigarette smoking, morbid obesity.
Obviously this list would include Jake Kovco, Steve Irwin and Peter Brock. So from a clinical perspective these individuals do show some signs of suicidal impulses. However if you had asked Steve Irwin if he felt suicidal I would imagine that he would be emphatic that he was not. However he did repeatedly place himself in situations where he could have been killed and eventually he was killed by ‘accident’ or was it by ‘benign suicide’. The line is unclear.
Drinking and driving
Also consider the drunk driver. The person who gets tanked on a carton of grog, takes to the car and drives at high speed. This person is engaging in high risk behaviour and thus if they do die then it again is as much an accident as a benign suicide. However it should be noted that the government statistics on road deaths does not even have a category for suicide being a contributing factor to a road death. So according to the government not one Australian has ever died from a road accident where it was either a direct suicide or a benign suicide. Obviously absurd contention by the Australian government but one that they will not relent from for some reason.
Research on prison populations in the US have shown the high rates of inmates on death row who have suicidal urges. Perhaps this is also a form of benign suicide by getting the state to kill them.
Graffiti
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Friday, 14 March 2008
Relationships and tattoos don't mix
I know I shouldn't but I can’t resist -
I told you so.
In September 2006 I wrote a post about Jake and Shelley Kovco. Jake Kovco is an Australian soldier who was shot by his own pistol in his barracks in Iraq. Since that time there have been numerous inquires and even more conspiracy theories than there is about Princess Diana and her Egyptian concubine. Was Jake murdered, suicided or was it an accident?. There is a new big one going on right at this time and is covered widely in the press with murder being basically ruled out.
The happy husband and wife.
However at that time in 2006 his wife got a large tattoo of him on her arm. I asked who was providing her counsel at the time because if I was, I would be most strongly advising her against it. First it is magical thinking in trying to keep him “alive” and second you never get tattoos of people or dates or events. But at the time everyone thought it was such a lovely thing for her to do and my views were certainly in the minority
Displaying her love for her wonderful husband who has so tragically died.
Well as it turns out he had a mistress that the wife knew nothing about.
Oppps!
So is the tattoo such a lovely thing now? Now she has a large irremovable picture on her arm of the husband who cheated on her for a good deal of time. And of course how many other mistresses are there? Why should there only be one?
Also it wasn’t just some floozy who was a passing fling for our Aussie soldier. The mistress has been giving evidence at the inquest about how he was feeling at the time. She states that he was not suicidal. So obviously she had a close intimate ongoing relationship with him which of course makes it much worse for the then missus.
So what does she feel about the tattoo now? Never get a tattoo of a name or a face. After 28 years of providing counsel I have found that human relationships are changeable entities, constantly in a state of flux. This one here even changed after the guy had died! With your our most intimate contacts come strong emotions and as we know there is a thin line between love and hate.
Crossed fingers. Human relationships involve all sorts of communications and motives and agendas. Which is fine and just don't get a tattoo of one.
Perhaps another celebrated example of this comes from the Big Mac - Paul MacCartney. Remember Paul, next time get a pre-nup!
Graffiti
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Thursday, 13 March 2008
Are you a moral person?
We all have a Parent ego state where we have our beliefs about what is right and wrong and what is moral and immoral. To find out if you are a moral person or not complete the exercise below.
Morality
Once upon a time there was a woman named Mary who was in love with a man called Tobias. Tobias lived by a river and Mary lived on the opposite shore of the river. The river separated the two lovers, and it was full of lots of crocodiles.
Mary wanted to cross the river to be with Tobias but the bridge had been washed out by a recent storm. So she went and asked Gary the river boat captain to take her across to Tobias. He said that he would be glad to if she would sleep with him. She promptly refused and went to a friend named Nancy to explain her plight. Nancy said she did not want to be involved at all in the situation.
Mary felt her only alternative was to accept Gary’s terms. She spent the night with him and he then fulfilled his promise and took her across the river to Tobias.
Mary then told Tobias about what happened and Tobias cast her aside in disgust. Mary then turned to her brother Tom with her tale of woe. Tom went into a rage and called his friends who went around an gave Tobias a good kicking.
Mary, or was she just so in love?
What would you do in her situation?
Rank the five characters, with 1 being the person who behaved best and 5 being the person who behaved worst. Do the ranking of number 1 first and then ranking number 5 second and then fill in the rest in between.
Good and bad behaviour
The answers will be provided later.
Graffiti
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Tuesday, 11 March 2008
Teenage suicide.
This is some writing on teenage suicide
They understand what suicide is in their Adult ego state but not in their Child ego state. This highlights the idea of intellectual understanding versus knowing and believing in the Child. For instance consider superstitions. Most adults intellectually know that if you walk under a ladder it does not give you bad luck BUT many will avoid doing such a thing. Touching wood we know in our Adult ego states does not bring us luck but many will do it just in case. Many who go to casinos know intellectually that they will loose their money but still believe that somehow they will be different and win money. People with OCD know that washing their hands 20 times is not going to make them any cleaner or safer than if they wash them once but they will go ahead and do it anyway.
We all have this situation where our Adult intellectual understanding is actually different from what we believe and know is true in our Child ego state. If it relates to touching wood and avoiding ladders then it matters very little. However it can also relate to other matters such as suicide and death. If you ask a 15 year old what would happen if someone suicided they would be able to tell you all the facts accurately. They would say that the person would die and be buried and those left behind would be left with great grief. However what they actually know and believe in their Child ego state may be quite different. They can have all sorts of other beliefs about not really being dead and being able to sit up and still watch others and so forth.
Indeed many adults can have this as well. However it is accentuated with teenagers due to their stage of development. They can have more of a rudimentary understanding of death. Consider the development of the understanding of the concept of death.
Teenagers are going to be teenagers no matter where they are from.
It is sometimes noted that children can develop a death phobia. This means at about 8 years of age the child can get what is sometimes called “8-year anxiety” where they develop a pronounced fear of death. As Piaget has shown prior to age 8 the child is egocentric with magical thinking that is prelogical. As a result of this up to the age of 7 children often think that death is reversible and that the dead can still see, hear and feel. At about age 8 the child’s thinking allows it to understand that death is not reversible and thus it can hit that stage of “8-year anxiety” when it realises what is going to happen one day when it dies and when mummy and daddy die. In essence the child has an ‘existential crisis’ and has to come to terms with its own mortality which the vast majority do. (Mussen et al(1974))
How many people are capable of a significant regression to a age younger than 8?
A significant number especially if they are currently experiencing considerable emotional distress. Like many suicidal individuals are. If they regress then one’s Child ego state understanding of what suicide is, is vastly different from the reality of the Adult ego state.
The regressed individual.
They will act in a very childlike manner.
Their way of coping with significant stress in the now is to become childlike. Indeed this is a natural reaction for us all. In adulthood the more stress we are put under the more we will regress to the coping strategies we had when we were young. For instance if as a child you tended to hit out when stressed or frustrated then the more stress you are put under in adulthood the more likely that you will act in a similar way. The same if you reacted by verbally attacking others, or froze, or became compulsive or got depressed or got asthma and so on. The more stress we are put under the more Child we will become in our reactions. However there are people who will use the defence mechanism of ‘regression’ and they will become quite child like in their reactions and thinking and beliefs and can maintain this over extended periods of time whereas most of us cannot. So if they regress to about age 5 then a whole big part of them will believe that some how death is reversible.
Graffiti
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Teenagers
Teenagers - stuck in the middle.
I recently saw a description of teenagers or that stage of development being:
As suffering turmoil
As being pathological
As having a marginal status
As being at a not-quite-age
As in a no-man’s land
As at the way station
As the new rebel-without-a-cause
As being sexually unemployed
As being narcissistic
As being a not-quite-somebody
As being an idealist-perfectionist
As being in the learner’s permit stage
As being caught in a period of rolelessness
As being disenfranchised
Are the ladies impressed?
I have always liked this as well.
Your changing role as a parent
Graffiti
15:15 Permalink | Comments (5) | Email this
Wednesday, 05 March 2008
B'day
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday to me,
Happy birthday dear Graffiti,
Happy birthday to me.
Rooster risk taker
Born the year of the rooster
Graffiti
11:15 Permalink | Comments (33) | Email this
Sunday, 02 March 2008
Insomnia and hypersomnia
I found this on the www recently
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Sleep hygiene
Paying attention to good sleep hygiene is the most important thing you can do to maintain good sleep.
Do:
Go to bed at the same time each day.
Get up from bed at the same time each day.
Keep the temperature in your bedroom comfortable.
Keep the bedroom dark enough to facilitate sleep.
Use your bed only for sleep and sex.
Keep your feet and hands warm.
Don't:
Exercise just before going to bed.
Engage in stimulating activity just before bed.
Read or watch television in bed.
Use alcohol to help you sleep.
Go to bed too hungry or too full.
Command yourself to go to sleep.
If you lie in bed awake for more than 20-30 minutes, get up, go to a different room (or different part of the bedroom), participate in a quiet activity (e.g. non-excitable reading or television), then return to bed when you feel sleepy. Do this as many times during the night as needed.
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Not the thing to do just before going to bed
Of course insomnia is a common problem that is presented to the counsellor and this seemed like a couple of good lists. I particularly agree with the last point. If you are lying in bed awake then don’t just stay there, get up and do some uneventful task. Many insomniacs have spent long periods of time in bed awake and it can feed frustration. The other thing that can happen is the person gets into thinking lots of negative strokes about self (and others for that matter). So I would add these to the lists with:
Do give self lots of positive strokes and don’t give self negative strokes when going to bed.
When you go to sleep this is what happens. The Adult and Parent go away and you are left with the Child ego state. So bringing the other ego states back in, like Critical Parent telling self off or Adult and working out your schedule for tomorrow is counter productive to getting to sleep.
So one could say that sleep is one of the more sensitive human activities. As it is just Child with no Adult or Parent then it will be particularly sensitive to things like stress. When people are stressed often their sleep is disrupted. The Adult or Parent are not there to protect the Child so it suffers as a result.
A dream sometimes reported is being naked in public whilst everyone else is clothed. This can be a particularly important dream psychologically. When people report repetitive dreams that can also be important.
The ego state diagram also explains why dreams and dream interpretation have been studied so extensively. If the Parent and Adult are gone and the person is just in Child then one can get a great deal of insight into the person, their unconscious, their ulterior motives and so on.
However there is just one problem, you can’t ask the person anything as they are asleep!! But you can enquire into their dreams as that is a pure Child creation by the person. As there is no Adult then this creation by the person (their dream) will lack any logic. A dream is the pure Child of the person in action. So to make sense of the dream the therapist then must become the dream interpreter. Some are good interpreters and some are not.
Dreams sometimes will put together two completely unrelated activities such as snow skiing and horse racing. That combination can also provide much insight into the psyche of the person.
The hypersomnias. Another aspect of sleep is that it can be a great escape, but one needs to distinguish between sleeping and dozing. Each of us has our own sleep requirements each night. For some it is as little as 4 hours and for others it can be 12 hours. Once you have been asleep for that period then you can’t sleep in the same way until another 12 to 18 hours later. It is not physically possible to do. However what you can do is doze or have a very light sleep. So when you hear depressed people say things like I was in bed and slept for a week. They weren’t sleeping they were dozing. People can do that for very long periods of time
So this dozing can be a great escape from whatever the individual is trying to escape from in the awake world. It is a very withdrawn state and thus in counselling one would ask the client why they are withdrawing. What is it that they are escaping from?
Graffiti
12:42 Permalink | Comments (15) | Email this