18APR2012

From the “Something That Came Up Today” Department… More on “Stopping”

by Petar Sardelich LMFT/PT/MAC in addiction, anxiety, behavior, counseling, depression, feelings, psychology, relapse prevention, self esteem, therapist Tags: addiction, counseling, depression, feelings, mental-health, psychologist, self esteem, therapist Edit

Truth, it comes up a lot.

We’re all trying to “give up” some stuff, trying to stop doing some things, but often have difficulty doing it.  Aside from a blog I wrote about this a while ago, we might want to think of such things as surrender instead of “quitting”, stopping, etc… but I digress.  We endeavor to stop drinking, overeating, eating poorly, isolating, perfectionism, controlling things, spending, video games, TV, and a host of other things.  Sometimes we’re trying to avoid things that are actually good for us- exercise, going to a support group, going on a job interview, self care and the like.  Most of the time we point at a lack of insight, “willpower”, or related ideas.  For dozens of years, people have been going on *wince* Dr. Phil, Oprah, Donahue (I don’t watch too much TV- who do we have now?), and others asking why people can’t stop __________.

There’s an interesting colloquialism in 12-step programs that addresses this.  Some say that “what makes people drink is sobriety”.  Whatever one feels about 12-step programs, this is a pretty elegant, and deep idea when applied to alcohol or drugs or other things we might want to give up.  Consider it this way- what if our inability to stop something (or start something) is not the difficulty in stopping or starting, presence or absence of “willpower”, but the difficulty of how we will feel if we do?

Try this thought experiment.  How would an alcoholic feel if they stopped drinking?  Someone that stopped “obsessing” over __________?  A person obsessed with control feel if they stopped controlling things?  Someone that stopped overeating?  It’s intuitive to say that these folk might be “relieved”, but I’d argue that’s a superficial look.  I think these persons (and other people with other issues) would feel pain, fear, sadness, even shame and anger.

What I’m getting at (simply) is this: if we have trouble surrendering something, it’s more likely that is difficult because of how it would feel to do so.  More difficult than the effort or organization or “insight” about what we need to give something up.  If that’s the case, it points to why much deeper “work” is more often necessary than simply will-ing our way into stopping something.

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Therapy, Counseling, Mental Health: Things That Put Me OUT of Work

17APR2012

by Petar Sardelich LMFT/PT/MAC in addiction, anxiety, behavior, bipolar disorder, boundaries, critical thinking, depression, feelings, letting go, loss, principles, relationships, sadness, self esteem, shame, spirituality, therapist Tags: addiction, counseling, depression, feelings, mental-health, pasadena therapist, self esteem, therapist, therapy Edit

My last piece of course is begging for a follow up.  If there’s semi-tangible things that put me in a job, there should be some things that will put me out of a job, so to speak.  Ideas, principles, behaviors that clients do that get them and keep them out of our offices, clinics, and hospitals.  Again, we as clinicians talk about them fairly often, but I rarely hear/see them showing up in discussions outside of our colleagues.  In all fairness, as with all professions, there’s arguably some things we don’t agree on or see a little differently, but if we’re really endeavoring to be socially responsible and progressively-minded about our responsibilities, I think we ought to be transparent about some of these things.

Should mention some of the spirit of where these ideas come from.  One day at a hospital I was hired to create dual diagnosis programs at, it dawned on me that there were a lot of suggestions that most clinicians of all types, gave to clients of all diagnoses/problems, in an effort to be helpful.  I created a beginning list of these as I saw them, and asked different psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, nurses, and recreational therapists to add/change/delete parts of the list.  After compiling 60 or 80 different items or so, we began using this as a resource tool for the clients.  The list below is some of those ideas, but am leaving some of them out for brevity’s sake.

They’re not really new.  Most of these appear not just in different forms of therapy, but some religion, philosophy/worldviews and the like as well.  It should also be said that they ought to be useful for most any problem- not a panacea, but consistent across categories of problems… depression and sadness, low self esteem and shame, anger, pain, grief and loss, abuse, “thought disorders”, affective disorders (depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorder, addictions, etc).

As with my last blog, would suggest that these might take deeper explanation and guidance, and hence, some of that work is beyond this medium.  That said though, I think that some of these ideas are extraordinarily useful (despite their age… ;-p  ), and can be applied a lot of places.  Some of these are simply ideas that I think “getting a handle on” and using them as a start for problem-solving is really helpful.  Not an exhaustive list, but as a start…

  • Knowing who we are and how we are is one of the most important things- and arguably the basis for dealing with a lot of our problems.
  • Have a “congruent affect” (affect is “feeling” or “emotion” in this context)… let your outsides match your insides.
  • Learn how to identify feelings, and share them with supportive/healthy people in ways that are easy to understand.  Might want to try using the “six basic feelings” of mad, sad, glad, afraid, ashamed, and/or hurt.
  • Don’t treat all feelings as facts.
  • Have “boundaries”.  Know where we each “start and stop” mentally, emotionally, “spiritually”, and physically.
  • Eat healthy, exercise, regulate sleep.
  • Remove thoughts/behaviors that put distance between us and us, us and others, or are used as simple distractions.
  • Being “right” is not necessarily more important than being loved.
  • We have to “have” something to “let go” of it.  This arguably applies to how we feel.
  • Is there another choice besides acceptance?
  • Mindfulness.
  • Using critical thinking.  Skepticism, defining terms, consideration of alternate interpretations, considering how an idea might not work/go wrong, resisting oversimplification/generalizing, comparing/contrasting with other people’s ideas…
  • Have a “resource group”… people with whom we exchange ideas, get support, do critical thinking with etc that have experience and/or education with the things we struggle with.
  • Treat happiness as an inside job.
  • Avoiding self-medicating with drugs, food, alcohol, shopping, gambling, sex, TV, etc.
  • Be self-supporting through our own contributions, mentally, emotionally, “spiritually”, and physically. (this particular item is a lot deeper than it may seem at first blush)
  • Don’t just read literature related to our problems and difficulties- actually try the ideas contained.
  • Give up comparing our insides with other people’s outsides.
  • Delay gratification.
  • Know and work on our “issues”.
  • Consider and act on “love” as a verb.
  • Get out of abusive relationships, maybe even relationships that are “potential” rather than “actual”.
  • Stop trying to control other people, places, and things.
  • Be of service.

Again, this is a painfully truncated list, some of the ideas are certainly arguable, and none are a substitute for working with a professional for learning how to do them if they are going to be useful.  My experience though, is that my clients who take up these things, with a pro, have a pretty common experience of feeling and behaving better themselves.  In some ways, it’s hard to imagine doing treatment without these things.  Of course, a lot of these are hard to do, but not impossible, and easier if made practical- things we can measure and point at.  Would love to hear ideas from other folk about things that they think are fairly indispensable, and might work for a lot of folk in a lot of different circumstances…

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Therapy, Counseling, Mental Health: Some Things that Keep Us in Work

16APR2012

by Petar Sardelich LMFT/PT/MAC in abandonment, abuse, addiction, behavior, blame, boundaries, counseling, critical thinking, depression, feelings, mental illness, principles, relationships, sadness, self esteem, self help, self worth, spirituality, suffering, therapist, therapy Tags: addiction, counseling, depression, mental-health, principles, relationships, self esteem, therapist, therapy Edit

As I’ve said before, I try to work in the spirit that it’s my job to put me out of a job.  There’s some things I see pretty often though, that seem to be both counter intuitive and appear to keep me and my type in work.  My experience with therapists is that we often see these things, but rarely talk about them in a semi-organized way.  As much as loss, abuse, and abandonment cause depression, sadness, shame, low self esteem, anger, pain, addiction and etc, there are things we do that perpetuate our suffering in this way.  Some of these are survival or coping skills and thus necessary, but don’t really go very far to help someone get, and stay out of places like my office.  Here’s a list of some of those things off the top of my head:

  • Absence of critical thinking.
  • Responding to struggles by simply “staying busy” or just “trying harder”.  AKA, operating as a “human doing” instead of a human be-ing.
  • The kind of thinking that “Time heals all wounds…”, “It’s water under the bridge…”, “You’re just giving __________ power over you…”, “The past is in the past…”, “Just stay positive…”…
  • Using ideas and principles that got us suffering in the first place, to resolve that suffering.  Drugs, alcohol, isolation, shopping, food, gambling, etc.
  • Simply not knowing, and/or avoiding feelings.
  • Thinking and/or behaving as if the only answer to our suffering is for someone else to change or stop their behavior- even if their behavior was the cause.
  • Money, property, prestige.
  • Carrying the torch (or stick, if you will) of someone else shaming or diminishing/devaluing us.
  • For those that can and should, not being self supporting through one’s own contributions mentally, emotionally, physically (food, clothing, shelter…), and “spiritually”.
  • Perfectionism- both imposed on others, and ourselves.  Same is true for managing and controlling everything.
  • Going where the love “should be” in our lives, instead of going where the love is.
  • On a related note- staying in abusive or emotionally unavailable relationships.
  • This one is a little backwards from the context in the opening paragraph: took me a while to realize that I don’t have to do everything I think.
  • Blame.
  • Poor boundaries.  More specifically, not knowing where one person “stops” mentally, emotionally, physically, and/or “spiritually”, and another “starts”.
  • Operating as if our feelings are facts.
  • Euphemistic language.
  • Behaving or thinking as if we have to not be, or stop being afraid, before we can accomplish a task.
  • Same as the above, but instead of stop/not be afraid, that we have to be “motivated”.
  • Being an “island”.  Meaning, not having closeness with other folk, using ourselves as a sole resource for support or perspective or interpretation or encouragement, etc.
  • An inability or unwillingness to be “present”.
  • Can’t emphasize this one enough: not knowing who we are, and how we are.

Am guessing I’ll be adding to this list as time goes on.  The ideas above certainly warrant a deeper look/discussion to both understand and make them practical.  It appears to me that there’s a lot of fairly simple myths that might be dispelled that could help us all reduce chaos, and “increase the signal to noise ratio” in terms of our perspective and thinking.   The ideas above, I think, are a pretty great start at doing that.

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Depression, Shame, Community, Intimacy

15APR2012

by Petar Sardelich LMFT/PT/MAC in abandonment, abuse, community, counseling, depression, feelings, intimacy, loneliness, principles, relationships, sadness, self esteem, self worth, shame, therapist, therapy Tags: community, counseling, depression, feelings, intimacy, pasadena therapist, relationships, self esteem, shame Edit

Though depression, shame, fear, anger, pain and the things that cause them (abuse, abandonment, loss) keep me in a job (some of you know I think it my job to put me out of a job), another thing that keeps me in work are ideas and terms that are ill-defined.  One of these terms is “intimacy”.

I was told once of a rumor that someone had asked Confucius what he would suggest doing to help society, and he replied “I would revamp the language.”  A lot of my work is about what we speak about, how, and how we define things between one another.  According to Alexa.com, Facebook is currently the number two most visited site on the internet.  For many years before that, MySpace was most frequently visited website.  It seems to me that these are about two things- being known and knowing/connection others.  Intimacy and community.  I think we all want intimacy and community, and the presence of these sites are great evidence to support this idea.

As I started to mention above though, the terms we use are rarely common between us.  At the suggestion of my partner, the woman I call “The World’s Most Dangerous Librarian”, I use Wordnik (www.wordnik.com) as my internet reference source for words.  “Intimacy” is most frequently/commonly defined as (using Webster’s here):  “n. The state of being intimate; close familiarity or association; nearness in friendship.”

What’s “close” though?  Association?  Friendship?  Am only tackling “close” here though, and think I can offer something that might be a helpful principle.  When describing intimacy to my clients, I suggest that intimacy is “me having feelings about your feelings about your life”.  Frequency, disclosure, and intensity of course mediate the depth of that intimacy, but I think this is a pretty principled way of defining that closeness or “intimacy” we’re most often talking about.

As Tom Waits said though, “The large print giveth, and the small print taketh away.”  This capacity for depth in closeness is largely dependent on both parties being in touch with their own feelings to begin with (see my previous blog “You Can’t Heal What You Can’t Feel“).  How clearly, presently, and transparently we both have our emotional experience affects our ability to be intimate with one another.

These also obviously affect our capacity for community.  Without a sense of my place and my purpose on this planet, a sense of purpose and community, we all suffer.  Absence of this breeds shame (low self worth/low self esteem), loneliness, sadness and depression.  As confusing and difficult and even painful as it might be, us having our own feelings, giving others access to them, a willingness to risk and be intimate with one another, seems to be our best shot at avoiding these things.

You can find out more about Petar at: April30th.org

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