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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Choice Points

There are times in therapy, and they are very challenging times, when we arrive at what is sometimes called a "choice point". This occurs when, as a result of therapy progress, or life events, or a combination of factors, a client arrives at a juncture in their life; a crossroads. The question becomes then: "which direction do I take?" The options can be starkly differentiated. Often, one road represents the "old ways", a continuation of the direction from which one has come. The other road represents the "new me", a progression of the healing work that has been taking place in therapy. While it might seem an easy, or perhaps a simple choice to make, it is actually, typically, frought with inner conflict and turmoil, clashing loyalties, fear of the unknown vs. the comfort of the familiar, and direct challenges to one's courage and commitment to self.

Taking the road that continues the past can mean a dangerous journey away from healing, away from one's truth, away from one's Self. It can amount to a denial and a rejection of what one has come to experience as one's healthy core. Contemplating the "new" road comes with numerous difficulties of its own. It might mean turning away from what others in one's life want, or think is best. It might mean taking a leap of faith into unchartered psychological, emotional and spiritual territory, without even the comfort of what one has known all of one's life. It will certainly mean testing one's willingness and ability to trust: to trust oneself, as well as to trust the "bigger picture", or "higher power", or God, or The Universe, or simply what one has begun to tap into in one's own journey of health.

In a universe where there are few, if any, absolutes, we can perhaps take some consolation in the thought that nothing is absolutely right or wrong, and that whatever choices we make, while they will certainly have their effects and their consequences, might not be absolutely un-repairable. We can afford, perhaps, to make even serious mistakes, if we are willing to learn from them. While some people seem to need to be "hit over the head" by reality in order to learn from their mistakes, it is also possible to follow, or to learn to follow, more subtle cues. This, of course, requires practice and experience, and choice points are examples of opportunities which can provide this experience, and which can be built upon as we journey through life.



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Being Present

There are virtually inummerable ways to "check out". We all do it. In its more extreme forms, this checking out takes the form of dissociative states or disorders, such as multiple personalities, or losing track of place and time. In its more common forms we can think in terms of ordinary activities like spacing out on TV, over eating, risk taking behaviors, any of the possible addictions or compulsions from drugs and alcohol to running or exercise. In other words, anything can be used as an escape.

And what is it that we need, or want to escape from? Could be anything from the routine and tedium of everyday life to extreme trauma. There is good reason to conclude that the need or desire to leave ordinary reality in some form is hard wired in our brains. It would be impossible, I suspect, to find a culture, current or historical, that did not incorporate an understanding of this need, and provide methods for its satisfaction. So, given the fundamental human experience of "escape", or altering consciousness, what can be said about the importance of "being present"?

While "taking a break" from the stresses of life can be both healthy and productive, making a (bad) habit of it ultimately creates more stresses and multi-layered problems. Cultivating the capacity to be present with one's experience, to "show up", to "be real", to be "in the body", is necessary in order to be able to work effectively with our lives and relationships, and to experience true health and happiness. The term "real time" takes on a significant meaning when it comes to mental health. Of course, cultivating this capacity involves cultivating the ability to be present with, to experience, and to manage or modulate difficult, intense, or distressing feelings.



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The Importance Of Listening

One of the striking hallmarks of the new Obama administration, at least to me, is the repeated references one hears to "listening". Mr. Obama instructs his State Department emmissaries to listen to what the leaders abroad have to say. Yesterday, in his meeting with bank CEO's, he is reported by one of them to have done a lot more listening than talking. In his response to the students to whom I referred in my last post, and their video "Is Anyone Listening?", he assures them that he is.

Although skillful listening is a basic of good counseling, and learning how to listen actively is a basic of good communication for everyone, every now and then I am reminded in a session of just how powerful and inescapable this ability is, and how essential it is in helping people to connect, to heal, and to make desirable changes. What careful listening says is that: I care about you; I want to understand you; I respect you, and what you have to tell me; I want to engage with you so that you can feel acknowledged, appreciated, and, of course, heard.

This speaks to a fundamental need that, I think, all people share: the need to be received; to feel that they are in some way welcomed and valued. There are those, of course, who will say, and who may even believe, that "I don't need anyone." "I don't care whether you approve of me or not." "What you think of me doesn't matter." In fact, these sentimeents are considered sexy, especially for men, but also more and more for women. Just spend 15 minutes looking at the images in any movie theater, in any magazine, on TV. I went to a movie just the other day, and was struck, again, by the movie posters in the lobby, advertising current and coming films. Almost every one of them, maybe 4 or 5, featured images of men with scowling, hard, penetrating, threatening faces. Real men. Men who don't give a damn what you think. Men who clearly don't need any one. The "sexiest" images of women, especially in "fashionable" media, are all of pouty, aggressive, sometimes cadaverous looking models. They don't need you. You need, and want, them, and they know it and thereby have all the power.

But really, we all want, and need, to be genuinely welcomed. Listening carefully is one of the most potent ways to give this welcome. Amazing things are possible from this basis.



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