Tag Archives: Therapy

We-ness and the Fog of Buts

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Therapists often get caught up in trying to find unique ways of expressing fairly common ideas.  On the one hand, this can be a great way to get clients to recognize a simple truth by, for example, visualizing it in a new way.  On the other hand, expressing an idea with some catchy, novel phrasing can have unintended consequences, frequently making the idea or its expression off-putting or even comical.

A short while back, I was watching a video feed of a seminar where the speaker, discussing elements of couples and family therapy used the phrase “we-ness.”  The first time he said it, I was jarred out of my passive viewing of the seminar.  Did he just say what I thought he did?  I scanned the image of the PowerPoint slide projected on the wall behind the speaker.  There was nothing there that could sound like what I was relatively certain I had heard.

Now, for those of you who don’t immediately recognize the hilarity of the phrase, say it out loud.  If that doesn’t work, take a moment to have any eight-year-old read the word, and check his/her reaction.  If need be, ask them to follow up with an explanation of what is so funny. 

For the non-eight-year-olds (and those completely out of touch with their inner-eight-year-olds) who might be reading this, “Weenis” or “wenis” is one of those ultimate insult-sounding non-insults.  It combines “weiner” with “penis” yet doesn’t actually mean anything ‘dirty’ at all.  Depending on the source, some claim the word refers to one’s elbow, or the skin of the elbow.  At any rate, it’s one of those words you (or your eight-year-old self) could say again and again, even with adults around, as you protested that you didn’t say anything wrong.  “All I said was ‘weenis.’ That’s not a dirty word.  I don’t know why he’s so mad that I called him an elbow.”

The seminar speaker used the phrase “we-ness” again, but clarified by contrasting it with “me-ness,” which I suppose could be confused with “meanness” to those of us using actual words.  The we-ness/me-ness (weenis/meanness?) divide essentially means that members of couples or families have to recognize their connection to one another, and make decisions that are mutually beneficial, not get caught up in their own individual  and frequently selfish needs.  A quick “Google” search led to the knowledge that “we-ness” is really a ‘thing’ (pun intended?) in certain therapy circles.  Or perhaps it’s some sort of maturity test for couples.  If a therapist uses the phrase and gets no giggling reactions, the members of the couple are mature—or perhaps not paying attention.  If the couple has a sudden, jarred reaction, they weren’t paying attention, but now they are, if for no other reason than to wonder what the hell the therapist just said.

But the phrase immediately got me to thinking of other botched ways people could present concepts.  The following night, I was discussing with a client how she was closing herself off from each possibility of how to resolve a particular issue by saying, “yeah, but…” or “I could do that, but…”  For each route she could run, she was predicting a negative outcome, so refusing to even try.  There are plenty of clinical and non-clinical ways to explain this kind of thought pattern, and I used one of those go-to explanations involving cognitive distortions and how to get past those, but it occurred to me that I could have engaged the following explanation, perhaps to much more memorable effect…

We are always and forever at the intersection of many roads, like at the hub of a wagon wheel, forever faced with the option to go down one road or another.  Even when you have nothing pressing to do, there are all kinds of roads…read a book, take a bath, watch a TV show, clean out the closet…  It is only when we become aware of a decision we have to make that we really begin thinking about the roads.  The more important the decision, the more deliberately we need to consider the roads.  But also, with the increasing importance of a decision, the more likely it is that we are going to cloud that decision with doubts, fears, or paralysis of some sort, the more likely we are to mentally block some of the options. 

Now, each time we look down a road, we have the option to take that road, or to consider that road as one among many choices.  As long as we have not closed that road off, the path is clear.  But as soon as we shut ourselves off from a possibility, as soon as we say, “I could take that road, but…”, we have decided that that road is no longer a possibility.  It becomes obscured, cut off.  A fog settles on that path, blocking your view, a fog you have place there with a “but.”

Each road that you look down and say, “I could do that, but…” becomes yet another road, obscured with the fog of a but.  This road gets a but so it becomes fogged.  That road gets a similar fog of but.  That road gets blocked by but fog as well.  Pretty soon, we find ourselves standing at a hub that was once a center of possibility, but is now just a point from which we cannot see anything.  We are at a point of loss and confusion, surrounded by the fog of buts.

Now that we are all fogged in by buts, though, we need to remember that fog is not permanent, fog is not solid, fog can be lifted.  We don’t even have to commit to a particular path to lift the but fog from that path.  We just have to shut down the but.  Shut down the but, and the fog will lift.  The path will become a possibility again.

Certainly some paths will be better suited to our goals and needs.  However, it is much better to consider the pros and cons of each decision, leaving all of our options open so that we can make an informed choice, rather than fogging ourselves in with a bunch of buts.  

America’s Hate/Love Relationship with Sex Offenders

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If you use social media enough, it’s not that uncommon to come across ‘memes’ about how sex offenders should be maimed or killed in some horrible fashion, memes involving ideas like “Why use animals for laboratory research when there are so many sex offenders available?” or ugly, violent images tagged with bombastic proclamations of homicidal ideation toward anyone who would “hurt my children.”  Now, I understand the desire for a simple solution to a complex problem, but is there really some ‘debate’ about whether any of us want somebody to sexually abuse our children?

Arguably, the source of such black-and-white statements is a lack of knowledge, even a commitment to ignore any real information that might lead to a greater understanding of how to address the problem of sexual abuse, or even what is encompassed in the term “sex offender.”  “Sex offender,” to the oversized segment of the population desiring to eradicate problems through violence, is synonymous with “rapist/murderer of children.” 

But the reality of the term “sex offender” is that it applies to plenty of people who have never had any sexual contact with a child, let alone murdered anybody.  I don’t say this to minimize the seriousness of sex offenses, but to point out that, unlike the term “serial killer, “ “sex offender” does not have a single, well-defined meaning.  What’s legal in one state based on, for instance, the age of the participants, can be illegal in another.  What is normal, adult sexual behavior may be criminalized in a state, while much worse forms of sexual abuse are not defined as crimes, or are given much lighter penalties.

For example, if your 16-year-old son’s 16-year-old girlfriend sends him a nude or semi-nude photo of herself via phone, even if it may be legal for them to be having sex in your home state, your son may now be in possession of a depiction of a minor engaged in sexually explicit conduct, aka child pornography, which can lead to being charged with a crime and labeled a sex offender.  The label “sex offender” is also applied to exposers, who in the not-too-distant past were characterized as oh-so-comical ‘flashers’ and given a slap on the wrist. 

The sex offender label includes those convicted of statutory rape, which can include people who, if they had waited a few months, or lived in a different state, would have been having perfectly legal sex.  A 35-year-old software engineer engaging in a sexually-charged chat with a 38-year-old insurance salesman pretending to be a 13-year-old girl is disturbing and isn’t going to lead anywhere positive.  A 35-year-old software engineer engaging in a sexually-charged chat with a law enforcement official posing as a 13-year-old girl could lead to being labeled a sex offender under charges of communicating with a minor for immoral purposes, or attempted rape of a child–if the police can get the engineer to take the admittedly-twisted fantasy a bit further. 

To be sure, those convicted of sex offenses have almost certainly done things that range from the unsettling to the unthinkable, things that provoke reactions from disgust to outrage, things that require some form of restitution to the victims and to society at large—forms of restitution that are provided for in law.  But to lump ‘sex offenders’ into a uniform group whose members are all deserving of murder is to take the Carl Spackler approach to problem-solving: blowing up the golf course to get at the gopher, ultimately making the problem worse.  And, no, I’m not suggesting that the gopher was a pedophile.  I am saying that outright hostility toward “sex offenders” ensures that we will never get to a point of dealing with the problem in a way that might eventually reduce instances of sex offenses—but that’s an argument for another day.

For now, what most baffles me is how the self-righteous anger of those who would annihilate all sex offenders can so quickly reverse itself from being focused on the offender to being aimed at the victim.  While there are numerous recent and not-so-recent examples of this, Steubenville immediately comes to mind as a town that is now synonymous with rape and rape cover-ups.  It is also synonymous with blaming the victim.   And blaming the victim is just a different way of saying “siding with the sex offender.”   Let’s be clear about that: to whatever degree one blames the victim, one is, to that same degree, siding with the sex offender.

So how does the threat to smoke out and crush every evil, lurking sex offender get transformed into threats of violence against sexual abuse victims?  Well, when the offender is no longer some random, unshaven, greasy-haired creep in an arrest photo shown on the local news, but instead a high-school football star who is well-known in the community; and when the victim is no longer an unquestionably-innocent seven-year-old, but a 16-year-old girl who got drunk at a party; large swaths of the public suddenly decide to love the sex offender and hate the victim. 

In such situations, all of the Internet-clogging-bravado that fuels adolescent fantasies of being the slayer of sex offenders suddenly gets channeled into death threats and, astonishingly enough, rape threats aimed at high school girls.   Justifications are created to excuse the ‘dumb mistakes’ made by the teen sex offenders who apparently no longer deserve any consequences for their behavior.  And the Internet equivalent of pitchforks and torches are taken up in service of ridiculous arguments about how teen girls need to recognize that if they are going to behave like drunken sluts, they have to accept the responsibility for being sexually assaulted.

So, if you’re going to be all black-and-white about how much sex offenders deserve to be burned at the stake, then don’t pull them from the fire so that you can toss their victims in.  If you so enjoy black-and-white thinking, the only absolutes involved are that nobody deserves to be sexually assaulted, and that nobody has the right to sexually assault anyone.

If things are so black and white, then ask yourself why you would ever choose to side with sex offenders against their victims. 

Relaxation for Nerds Part One: A Carbon-Thawing-Based Stress Reducer

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Ideally, therapy will involve a component of providing clients with new tactics for addressing everyday difficulties. For example, one way to get clients to develop skills in the area of anxiety management is to walk them through a relaxation exercise, maybe even aiding them in creating or recording one that works well for them. While doing my practicum, my supervisor had me create a stress-reduction ‘scenario’ of my own and present it to a very high-anxiety client.

Now, while the relaxation exercise I actually used in session had to do with the client feeling warmth spread through his body, thawing ice/tension in his veins, it actually came to me first as a relaxation exercise that I didn’t dare do. For the original relaxation exercise involved a certain space pirate emerging from a block of carbonite, inside a desert palace (carefully avoiding overly-specific references that might result in cease-and-desist letters from the lawyers of a certain film director who is still apparently cheesed off about those pirated copies of a certain 1978 ‘Life Day’ Holiday Special that frequently pop up on eBay). And, hey, for any of you overly-ambitious types who want to turn this into a full-blown relaxation video production suitable for YouTube, I’ve been told I have a voice that’s made for radio…or was that a face for radio? Both?

Anyway, it goes a little bit like this…

Close your eyes.

(We start with deep breathing, so sit comfortably in an upright position feet flat on the floor, arms resting on your lap or the arms of the chair. Now breathe in slowly through your nose. Take in a deep breath, all the way into the trunk of your body. You want your trunk to expand. You want to breathe from your diaphragm. You want to do some belly breathing. When your diaphragm has expanded with the air to its maximum stretching point, pause for a few seconds, then breathe out through your mouth, slowly and deliberately. Try to make the count of your breath out match the count of your breath in. Do a slow count as you take in air through your nose, expanding your belly…four, five, six, seven. Your breathing is at capacity. Pause, two, three four. Now breathe out…four, five, six, seven. Continue your breathing in this fashion, aware of the feeling of calm it brings.)

Everything is darkness, and silence, and immobility. In fact, you cannot remember the last time you saw daylight, the last time you heard anything other than the faintest, muffled sounds. You cannot remember the last time you were able to move, to stretch. You realize that this lifelessness, along with the negative feelings it brings, the fear and anxiety, are all the result of your inability to move, to experience the world around you. But you still feel your calm, measured breathing. You still feel a sense of hope…a new hope?

You have a vague sensation that you are in an awkward, standing position, as with your hands up in front of your chest. But you cannot move. Still, this realization of frozenness brings awareness, and this awareness brings with it the possibility of movement.

You have the briefest sensation that you are falling, and feel a slight, jarring in the solid material around you. And then all is silence and darkness again, but you feel a change.

As you continue your deliberate, measured breathing, a slow warmth starts to expand near your forehead. The warmth spreads slowly down your face. You feel as though your head is no longer pinned in one place, that you can move it ever-so-slightly. You feel the stiffness begin to fade from your head and neck. Along with the warmth, you begin to take in other sensations. Your eyes are registering light, even if only a little. There is a reddish light to the transformation that is freeing you. The confined space begins to give way to open air.

Another wave of warmth begins in your fingertips and spreads over your hands, up your arms, to your elbows, your biceps. The warmth moving down from your forehead meets the warmth climbing up your arms at your shoulders. You feel the tension melting out of your facial muscles, out of your neck, out of your shoulders, arms, and hands.

The warmth spreads down your chest and your breathing becomes easier, deeper. The warmth envelops your torso, trunk, your hips, your buttocks, your groin, your thighs.

Your senses are still overwhelmed by the chemical changes, and mechanical whirring around you. But soon, smells other than the faint chemical burning start to reach your nose, smells of desert air, of stale but fragrant smoke, exotic fruits, odd beasts.

As the warmth reaches down past your knees, releasing the tension in your calves, your ankles, your feet, you feel a sense of being freed. And you recognize in amongst the smells reaching you, something familiar, intimately familiar. As the tension, and the binding solidness melts away, you feel no fear, even as you realize you begin to fall. For that familiar smell that reaches you is the smell of security, the smell of one who will not let you fall, of one who will catch you, the smell, the words, the touch all grip you at the same time…the smell, and clutch, and declaration of “someone who loves you.”

Therapists’ Therapists

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It’s a well known fact that a majority of people who go into the field of psychology do so because we—I mean they—are self-absorbed and trying to figure out why they are such human train-wrecks.  They self-diagnose, bolster their negative behaviors with justifications born from that self-diagnosis and then set about diagnosing everyone else and recommending therapy, all while avoiding engaging in therapy for themselves.

To help compound the failure of future mental health professionals to seek much-needed help, grad school programs for such people often fail to require that students engage in even a minimal amount of therapy.  There are roughly 12 billion reasons why this should be a requirement, and essentially only one reason why would-be-therapists reject the idea that they should get therapy: “I don’t need it.”

But therapists and would-be-therapists arguing that they don’t need therapy, is like meth-heads arguing that they don’t need dental care.   It’s the voice of fear, not confidence.  Or if it is confidence, it’s confidence born of meth—at least for most of the meth-heads, and a few of the therapists.  It’s saying ‘I’ve messed around in my stuff enough, and don’t need anybody else poking around in there, because Lord knows it could all come crumbling apart like that bust of Martha Plimpton I made out of things I picked off my scalp, after I forgot to mist it for four days running.’

And, really, if a student is going through a Master’s program to become a therapist, and doesn’t have at least one or two experiences that frighten/disturb that student into recognizing her/his need for therapy, that student is either the most together person ever, or has built up such impenetrable defenses around his/her frail psyche that she/he is probably in danger of eventually dismembering, freezing, and eating his/her clients bit by bit—either metaphorically or for reals.  (Or else the student is just in a really shitty program where he/she never actually gets challenged to explore much of anything about her/himself beyond early childhood experiences that contributed to his/her preference for natural fibers over synthetics or vice versa).

A large number of mental health professionals, and people in what are dubbed the ‘helping professions’ have a sense that they need to exude confidence, avoid negativity and doubt, and just generally have, or appear to have, their crap together across the full range of life activities.  Any admission that such is not the case can be looked on as an admission that one is not fit to help others.  The big twist, of course, is that if one can’t admit when one needs help, and stop trying to fix everything for everyone else, one really does start to lose the ability to be effective at providing help for anyone, oneself included.

As a confession of sorts, I am not currently seeing a therapist—not because I feel I wouldn’t benefit from it, but because I like to pretend I’m together enough to recognize when I need to seek help, and also because I kind of like the idea of seeing what would happen if I let everything just completely go to hell.  On top of that, I am what I would call ‘therapy-resistant.’  I approach therapy like a jealous magician watching another magician’s show—noting the ‘re-directions,’ and countering with an extra helping of defense mechanisms—‘Just try and abracadabra your way out of that underwater straitjacket, before my Buick hits your milk can, buddy.’  Okay, I don’t really own a Buick.

But, what the hell—I was trying to say something about the problem with therapists not actually getting therapy, and then presented myself as an exhibit to bolster that argument.  But don’t worry about me. I’m completely together.   And I like cotton more than rayon.