It's Not Rocket Science

Not infrequently I hear myself saying this to clients: "It's not rocket science."

What I'm referring to are the concepts involved in understanding how the psyche generally works.

I'm not even talking about the subconscious, or the unconscious, collective or otherwise. I'm simply talking about the basic rules of the road that seem to apply to everyone. For example, when we're afraid of being judged, we often employ a defense strategy - a "mechanism" - that will keep us protected from feeling the painful feeling of being judged by another. We might decide, internally, and probably out of consciousness (ok, I AM talking about the unconscious) that we don't care what anyone thinks or says about us, and present to the world, to other people, an outward demeanor that looks carefree and confident.


If it's too difficult - embarrassing, shame inducing, contrary to our image of our self - to admit that we were not able to be truly present for an intimate when they really needed us to be, we might offer any number of "rationalizations" or justifications, or just plain excuses, rather than feel the depth of the anger or the betrayal or the pain that our intimate is experiencing.


These sorts of things are very common. We have all learned and invented personal versions of them, and other strategies, to protect ourselves from unwanted feelings or thoughts. It's this sort of thing that I refer to when I say "It's not rocket science". Coming to understand these common psychological behaviors isn't all that difficult. What becomes difficult is to learn to see how they operate within ourselves, to learn how to "bust" ourselves when we're doing them, and to learn new ways of seeing and behaving that will contribute to freeing us from our own self defeating ways of doing things in relationship with others and with ourselves.


It does indeed take time, and effort, to learn and to establish new habits, and more self supporting ways of being in the world.






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Simple In Principle, Maybe Not In Practice

Here's the principle: you can experience whatever you want to, if only you'll focus your "consciousness" on that, or "put it" there.

Example: if you want to experience the ever present energy of love, you only need to choose to focus your consciousness on that energy within yourself, instead of on whatever else you may be experiencing, like fear, or anger, or sadness, or any train of thought. As long as you're focusing on the thoughts, or the feelings other than love, you won't be able to experience the love. So it becomes a matter of desire, and of re-focusing whenever you move off track.

Sounds simple enough, in principle. And I agree that it is simple. So what is it that prevents people from being able to do it easily? Is it, simply, a matter of different desires? If I'm depressed, and struggling with hopelessness, and an overwhelming sense of powerlessness to change anything, is it simply that I don't want to change this strongly enough? Are there other operative factors?

I'm quite certain that there are other factors in operation as well, and yet there may be a way in which it is possible to consider the simplicity of this principle as real. One factor that I come across with some frequency in my work is just that people don't understand that the changes they're after will come about in steps, over time, and not all-at-once in a flash of transformation. This implies that it will be necessary to "practice" certain new ways of understanding and of doing things, until a new experience is stabilized, or learned, or established. An obstacle that can then present itself is that people don't "want" to have to make that kind of effort, and so don't, and so don't experience the changes they say they "want".

Disappointment may then follow, and a belief that therapy doesn't work, and resentment may develop on top of that, or a client may come to believe that they themselves are just not good enough, not deserving enough, not strong enough, not capable enough, etc. It can become quite complex, whereas the principle we started with remains in itself, pretty simple.

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The Risks Of Therapy

It would be nice to think that therapy will make you feel better all of the time. After all, that's why people enter therapy, isn't it? I mean, who enters therapy if they think it's going to make them feel worse than they already do? Well, maybe a masochist would do that; would even count on it. But short of that, I think it's realistic to suppose that people enter therapy because they believe it will help them to feel good. There have even been therapy self help books written with titles like "The Feel Good Book".

It may come as a surprise then to discover that the therapeutic process can elicit difficult, painful, frightening feelings also, and that every session will not end with you, the client, feeling better than when you arrived. Along these lines we have other therapy related books with titles like "I Never Promised You A Rose Garden", and "Love Is Never Enough".

If we conceive of therapy as a journey of healing, as a process through time, we will be better able to imagine that this journey might have down's as well as up's; bumps and turns in the road;
bad weather as well as good; and a guarantee of changes along the way. From this point of view we can say that the process of therapy requires a certain amount of courage; a certain adventurousness of spirit; a certain willingness to be surprised, disappointed, challenged, and ultimately strengthened by our experiences.

Not much different from a life well lived, you might say. And you might be right.





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Give An Hour.ORG

Give An Hour.org is a non-profit, non-partisan service organization established to help provide free counseling/therapy services to returning veterans from the Iraq/Afghanistan wars. Services are also being provided to veteran families. Many of these men and women, as well as their children, are affected adversely by the experiences of combat, family disruption, and the often very difficult re-integration process following deployment.

Here are just a few astounding facts to consider:

According to the DoD Taskforce on Mental Health, among troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq, 40% of soldiers, 1/3 of marines, and fully half of National Guard members are suffering from psychological problems following deployment;

children from military families are twice as likely to die from severe abuse as other children are, and rates of abuse and neglect rise dramatically (40%) during the time of deployment;

a recent Rand Corporation study reports that some 300,000 US troops returning from Iraq/Afghanistan are suffering from Major Depression or Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, while another 320,000 are suffering with brain injuries. Only about half of all of these women and men have sought treatment;

there are an average of 18 suicides a day, among America's 25 million vets.

I've taken the step of signing up, along with some 4,000 other therapists (so far) across the country, with Give An Hour, in order to be able to contribute something in the way of compassionate care to some of these men, women and children. This is not an issue of politics or party lines, but a matter of offering some measure of help to people in dire need.

If you'd like more information on Give An Hour, please click on the title of this post to visit their website.



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Reality Tends To Intrude

For a while, things are going much better. Insights have been gained, new and considerably more compassionate relationship dynamics are being employed with oneself, self care is becoming a real and active part of everyday life, and as a result, you're feeling "exited about life" for the first time in many years. You're experiencing genuine hope for the future, a more open expanse of possibilities, instead of the dark tunnel of despair and depression that has been your abode for so long.

Then, it's as though the wrathful hand of God has slapped you across your beseeching, uplifted face. Not you! it seems to say. Did you really think I'd let you feel good about yourself! Who do you think you are?!

To make matters worse, you are, without really knowing it, the one playing God. It is actually your own self judgment and self criticism, along with your own unrealistic expectations about your recovery, that is exacerbating your slide back down the slope of old behavioral and emotional habits. You were doing things right, you figured, and the results were real. I've arrived! It's been a long journey, but I've finally arrived! Whew!

What you haven't accounted for is what I like to call your "defaults". Those patterns that are simply programmed deeply into your personality, and are the places you will tend to "default to" under stress. The familiar. The well established. The original. Everyone has them, and learning to live with them in more creative and loving ways is a key to continued recovery and development. The reality of "two steps forward, one step back", has to be understood and integrated as a natural part of the healing and growth process. Especially in the early stages of recovery.



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What's Normal?

"I'm stuck", she tells me, a little tearfully. This is an utterly unknown condition for her. She doesn't recognize herself lately, and neither do her friends, who are encouraging her to "snap out of it" and get back to the familiar, capable, get-things-done person they know. She doesn't understand why she can't seem to do this, and she believes they're right: she should be able to simply snap out of it, whatever "it" is.

In the course of our first conversation I learn what the last three years or so of her life have been like: major stressors, family emergency, a medically predicted child death (which didn't happen), uprooting and moving across country, a challenging new marriage. She's always been the "strong" one, doing whatever needed to be done, taking care of others, having no time to stop, or to fail, or to be needy herself. A survivor.

"I don't have time to break down" she tells me, so instead she has become depleted emotionally, physically and I suspect spiritually. She is experiencing multiple symptoms of depression, and can't "move forward" with her life as she's known it. She cries easily and "all the time", and feels that something inside of her has died. She derives no pleasure or satisfaction from anything, and her creative activities have dried up. Coming to see me is the first time in her life that she's ever talked with anyone about her distress, and it's because she feels scared, powerless ("For the first time in my life I'm dealing with something I can't handle on my own") and defeated that she has finally sought help.

One of the first things I have started to do with this client is to begin to frame her experiences in ways that will tend to "normalize" them, that is, help her to see that, given the challenges she's been up against, and the circumstances of her current and past life, her responses are pretty predictable, if not guaranteed; connecting the dots between circumstances and "normal" human needs and reactions; validating the sense of overwhelm that exists; reassuring her that she's not going crazy, but rather is needing to learn what it means to have a complex emotional life, and what it might look like to begin, very probably for the first time in her life, to have good support, and to take good care of herself emotionally.

\There is hope.



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Surprises Happen

I continue to be surprised by clients who, at times, seem to be able to find solutions to very distressing problems that simply wouldn't, or didn't occur to me. Not that I should be finding these solutions. After all, it is in the client's best interests, and it is the most liberating and the most empowering when they find their own solutions. Following the principle that each of us somehow knows, ultimately, what we need in a given situation, it shouldn't be too surprising when this sort of insight occurs, yet it is.

I can allow myself to experience my own biases as they arise in any situation, and I can allow myself to observe my inclination, my desire, to inform a client of what I think they ought to be doing, and it is part of the art and skill of good counseling not to do so at the wrong time. This is not to say that there are never situations in which it is appropriate to "direct" a client. There clearly are, either because the client is simply unable to "protect" her or himself, or because this is the most likely strategy to yield good results with a particular client. These "directions" are often delivered in the form of "suggestions", but sometimes they are more blatantly "instructions".

But when a client arrives at what seems and feels and looks like the right solution for themselves, this is a lovely and important moment in therapy and in life. And when it is outside of my own thinking on the subject, it is a sort of secret delight, and a pleasant surprise as well.

For me, it is one of those things that serves to bolster my faith in humanity, and in the potential of good therapy. Let the surprises begin!



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