Therapist's Notebook

Quote for today

2010-09-01T12:07:00.003-04:00

"It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the ones most responsive to change." – Charles Darwin
[Take that, all you social Darwinists!]

Another Homophobic Hypocrite Outed.

2010-05-19T22:13:00.018-04:00

By now just about everyone has heard that George Alan Rekers hired a RentBoy called Lucien to accompany him on a ten-day trip to Europe. He claims that he did not realize the young man was a prostitute, and hired him to help carry his luggage. This is a patently ludicrous defence if one takes even a brief glance at Lucien’s profile(NSFW) or the Rent Boy website (n.b., explicit sexual imagery) from which Rekkers admits having hired Lucien. Moreover, Lucien has told the press he gave Rekkers nude massages "across his penis, thigh... and his anus over the butt cheeks."
In case you’ve been in a medically induced coma since the beginning of the month, Rekkers is a psychologist and anti-gay activist, co-founder of the Family Research Council, and of NARTH, the National Association for Research & Therapy of Homosexuality. He is a practitioner of conversion therapy, a pseudo-scientific religious conversion “cure” intended to change homosexuals into heterosexuals.
He is famous for charging state’s attorneys extortionate fees to testify that gays do not make good parents, and should not be allowed to adopt, because they are more likely to suffer from depression, substance abuse, and emotional problems. But then again, he’s also claimed that Native Americans make unsuitable foster parents, because they are at a high risk of alcohol abuse and psychiatric disorders. He has testified that the Boy Scouts of America should be allowed to exclude homosexuals, and has generally done everything within his power to pathologize homosexuality and justify discrimination against gay people. He has written a book, Shaping Your Child's Sexual Identity in which he advises parents that they can prevent their children from becoming homosexuals if they punish early signs of behaviour that does not conform to the child’s gender. He has also advised parents that “Biblical spanking may cause temporary and superficial bruises or welts that do not constitute child abuse.” Under intense and repeated criticism for his misuse and distortion of psychology, Rekkers has resigned from American Psychiatric Association.
So, what makes a virulent, anti-gay extremist want to take a 20 year old male prostitute with him on a ten day overseas vacation, and pay him for nude erotic massages?
The easy answer is that he is a hypocrite. And of course, his behaviour is blatantly hypocritical. Another answer that many people have proposed is that Rekkers, and all those other “Christian,” right-wing, anti-gay haters are “closet fags.” The Miami New Times, whose journalists were the first to uncover and report the Rekkers story, included him in a list of Top Ten Outed Right-Wing Homophobes. Also on that list are Richard Curtis, Republican member of the Washington state House of Representatives; Bob Allen, Republican member of Florida House of Representatives; Glenn Murphy, Jr., Chairman, Young Republican National Federation; Roy Ashburn, Republican California state senator Edward L. Schrock, Virginia Congressman; David Dreier, Republican member of the U.S. House of Representatives in California; Larry Craig, U.S. Senator from Idaho; Mark Foley, U.S. Representative from Florida; and Ted Haggard, evangelist. When readers commented on names left off the list, the authors answered that it had been difficult to choose only ten. One can understand why Dan Savage pointedly asks, Is Every Right-Wing, Anti-Gay Christian Bigot Sucking Off Rent Boys?
However, in a very thoughtful essay, True/Slant’s Ethan Epstein writes, When people ...charge that Rekers is “gay” or a “fag,” they are engaging in a form of identity-imperialism that they typically detest. And he has a point. We generally uphold people’s right define their own identity: of transsexuals to identify with the gender they experience, mixed race people to identify themselves as they will, and we are increasingly resisting pigeon-holing men who identify as heterosexual, but have occasional same-sex encounters as “gay.” We refer to them as men-who-have-sex-with-men (MSM.)
There is a danger, and a disservice to the gay community in pigeon-holing George Rekkers as a “closet gay.” True/Slant’s Laurie Essig writes, it’s so NOT funny because this feeds the stereotype that all homophobes are actually closet cases. This actually happened recently at a local college when homophobic incidents were attributed to someone who is probably actually gay.
Personally, I don’t believe that Rekkers has earned the right to be called “gay.” He has done everything he can to make life miserable for same-sex oriented people, to de-legitimate the concept of gay identity. To “accept” him as a gay person devalues the very idea of “gay.”
How then are we to make sense of this person, of who and what he is?
Ironically, an answer is suggested by Rekkers own supposed profession. Psychologists have long known that when a certain characteristic is intolerable to a person, they will develop a reaction formation against that way of being. Motivated by this defence mechanism, a person will develop the opposite trait(s) to an exaggerated degree. For example, if a man resents his child for limiting his freedom, or for coming between himself and the child’s mother, he may develop into an overly solicitous and over-protective father. He defends himself against the possibility that he might be a “bad” father by becoming a “super-dad,” to assure himself that he is a good father and a good person.
Now, think about what happens to a child growing up in a homophobic* world. All children are exposed to all of our cultural dialogue. That is to say that children who have a homosexual orientation learn all of the negativity, the loathing, the contempt for homosexuality, AND they believe it to the same extent that most other children do. As difficult as coming out is for most gay people, the most difficult person to come out to is oneself.
And some cannot do that. Some cannot bear the thought, nor even the suggestion, that they might be a “loathed and contemptible” homosexual. To a person like Rekkers, raised in an ultra-conservative religious environment, where even the most righteous people stand on the brink of Hell, the idea may be so intolerable that, not only must they never admit it, even to themselves, they must negate it, make it impossible. By becoming the exact opposite, the complete antithesis of ‘a homosexual,’ he preemptively defends himself against any hint that he could ever possibly be homosexual.
But there is no perfect defence, and our real self, our true self, keeps demanding the right to exist, to live our own lives, as we truly are. And so, Rekkers is not a “closet gay.” He was not in the closet. He was in denial that the closet even existed.
We will go on hearing stories of these homophobic hypocrites unwittingly outing themselves. Because we will continue to produce more Rekkers, and Haggards, and Foleys, and Craigs, et al., unless and until we choose not to.
Choosing not to requires speaking out against homophobia every time we encounter it. When you see a gay stereotype on TV, name it as such. When you hear anti-gay sentiments, speak up. Ask your children not to use the phrase “that’s so gay” as a pejorative. Insist that your school board's sex ed curriculum teaches the facts, not some religion's belief, about sexual orientation. When you encounter someone who says that all gays are going to Hell, ask them where those who disobey the injunction to “judge not, for judgement is God’s” will be going?
We must stop producing more Rekkers, who visit untold misery upon others in service of their own denial. We must stop making homosexuality such a terrible and intolerable identity that countless young people kill themselves every year rather than accept themselves for who they are. And make no mistake, through action or through inaction, it is we, you and I, who are responsible.

________________________________

* And please, no quibbling over whether anyone is “afraid” of homosexuals. The word refers literally to ‘fear of homosexuality.’ But even that’s too literal, as phobias can be expressed as aversion or even as disgust.

4000 Years For Choice

2010-03-07T21:40:00.006-05:00

As someone who sees a great many clients with a variety of issues, I am often surprised by the amount of misinformation people are saddled with. But I am just as frequently angered by the amount of dis-information they have been exposed to.
Dis-information is better known by it's franker, and shorter name: lies.
For something to be considered dis-information, it has to be a special kind of lie. It has to be information, presented as if it were a fact by people who know it is not a fact, but who are pursuing an agenda that has little or nothing to do with the dissemination of reliable information.
Dis-information is rampant about sexual issues. That's a subject I hope to blog about at a later date.
For now, I'd simply like to post this link to a site called 4000 Years For Choice. This site is at the heart of a campaign to educate, through visual narratives, about the practices of contraception and abortion from around the world from the past four-thousand years. It contains a timeline with fascinating information about practices used throughout history and across the globe.
My purpose in posting this is not to persuade anyone of anything. It is to offer good, honest information about a subject so shrouded in misconception and dis-information that it's safe to say that almost everything that most people think they know about abortion is wrong.
Be for or against abortion, as your conscience dictates. But do it with good information.
The truth shall set you free.

Don’t feed the elephant

2009-05-16T23:50:00.009-04:00

What do the number one reason couples seek therapy, Paul Simon’s “The Sounds of Silence,” and Natasha Richardson’s untimely death earlier this year all have in common? If you guessed “a lack of communication,” congratulations.
Richardson took a tumble on a beginner’s slope at a Quebec resort and struck a sensitive area of her head. Intimidated, perhaps, by her celebrity, the resort personnel did not insist on her receiving medical attention. When she later developed a headache and dizziness, she did not tell anyone at first. No one wanted to “make a big deal out of it.” As a result, the problem worsened until it was beyond control, with tragic consequences.
In 1964, Paul’s Simon’s, “The Sounds of Silence” mused lyrically on the dangers of non-communication. “Silence like a cancer grows,” he warned, and so it did in the conformist, “don’t rock the boat” culture of the early 1960s. Segregation, poverty, the ghettos, alienated youth, pollution, militarization, and impending nuclear holocaust were topics no one wanted to discuss. Simon sang that “the words of the prophets were written on the subway walls and in tenement halls,” and these prophets turned out to be reliable, with their graffiti of “up against the wall,” “Black Power,” “stick it to the man,” and “off the pigs!” By 1965, the Watts ghetto had exploded in flames, the SDS was marching in Oakland, and “drop-out, turn-on” youth movement was headline news.
We keep silent about problems at our peril. Very few problems are disasters when they are first noticed. But when we ignore them, avoid making a big deal about them, they grow and grow until they become the legendary elephant in the room.
So many times when a couple comes to me for counselling, I know that part of the work will be getting them to name the problem. Oh they come in with a
problem, but that doesn’t mean it is the problem. I remember one couple whose presenting problem was that they hadn’t had sex in almost two years because of his lack of desire. After his doctor determined that his testosterone levels were normal, he recommended they seek sex therapy. It took several weeks until the man admitted that he didn’t like – hated, in fact – the way his wife kissed. “It’s like she’s trying to suck my whole face into her mouth,” he blurted.
His wife immediately burst into angry tears.
“You see!” he exclaimed. “THIS is exactly why I didn’t want to tell you.”
He was assuming she was hurt. He was wrong. Those were tears of exasperation.
“Two years,” she hissed between her teeth, “you don’t touch me, over something you could have said in a minute, and I could have done something about?”
It took a while to settle them down after that. And that wasn’t the only issue. But it was central. The fact they often did not let their partner know what they really felt had caused more than one problem between them. And those problems grew and grew until neither one of them really felt like making love in the same room as that big, smelly elephant.
Silence feeds the elephant, makes it grow bigger and bigger. A small problem (“you know, the way you kiss bothers me”) becomes enormous (“you haven’t touched me for two years!”).
So, if you want some advice from a sex therapist, don’t feed the elephant! If there is a problem, don’t hold back, talk it out.
Generally it’s a good idea to check with yourself first. “How much does this matter to me? Will this continue to be a problem? What would it be like for me if this didn’t change?” But if you’ve been honest with yourself, and there is still a problem, your partner needs to hear about it.
Far too many people feel it is their responsibility in a relationship to keep the other person happy, and avoid rocking the boat. Not only is that unrealistic, but it violates the spirit of the wedding vows. Remember that we promise to accept our partner for better or for worse.
Put that elephant on a diet, and let your partner see inside of you. Your relationship will be better for it.

Quote for Today

2009-05-12T23:17:00.003-04:00

Distrust all in whom the impulse to punish is powerful. – Friedrich Neitzsche.

Quote for Today

2009-05-04T22:47:00.003-04:00

The most dangerous human discovery may have been leisure. Hardship and necessity make cooperation essential; they rub people together and wear off the abrasive edges; they create a polite and gregarious society. Given half a chance, people will go off on their own tangents, cherishing their idiosyncrasies, glorifying their likes and dislikes into universal truths.
– James E. Gunn; Kampus.

Sex and politics; why can't they just get along?

2009-04-20T20:47:00.010-04:00

Word comes today that Ray Lam , a candidate for British Columbia’s Provincial Parliament, has withdrawn his candidacy and stepped aside.

The reason given was the controversy that arose over two photos posted on his PRIVATE Facebook page.

One photo shows him mugging for the camera with a female friend, his hand on her breast. The other shows him in his underwear, posing suggestively with a male and a female friend.

Ironically, based on the records of elected officials currently holding office in both Canada and the United States, if Lam had convictions for drunk driving, partner assault, or financial fraud, there would have been no problem with him continuing to run for office. However, because his private, consensual, and COMPLETELY LEGAL behaviour offends some people’s aesthetic sense (they can dignify it by calling it morality…but I refuse to go along with that cop-out), the party loses an otherwise qualified candidate.

People often wonder where the leaders are today. Here is their answer. They’ve been hounded out of office, or scared away from politics by an intolerant, infantile public, who think it is their business to judge the private lives of candidates for public office. In their stead, it seems the public would rather elect drunks, batterers, and, swindlers, and then moan in despair when these people act like irresponsible, abusive, cheaters.

Who could have guessed THAT would be the outcome?

Quote for Today

2009-04-18T16:55:00.003-04:00

Nothing softeneth the Arrogance of our Nature like a Mixture of some Frailties. It is by them we are best told that we must not strike too hard upon others because we ourselves do so often deserve blows. They pull our Rage by the sleeve and whisper Gentleness to us in our censures.
– Sir George Savile.

Quote for today

2009-04-16T10:27:00.003-04:00

"Love has nothing to do with what you are expecting to get, only with what you are expecting to give, which is everything." – Katharine Hepburn

I want to comment on this one. I feel it's true (else I wouldn't have posted it, would I?) It reflects the spirit of my earlier post, TANSTAAFL.
But there is a catch here, and I have seen many smart, strong, sensible people tripped up by it. This attitude MUST be reciprocal, or the door is opened to exploitation and abuse.
Mutuality is at the heart of a healthy relationship.

Quote for Today

2009-04-15T16:25:00.001-04:00

Acceptance is not a state of passivity or inaction. I am not saying you can't change the world, right wrongs, or replace evil with good. Acceptance is, in fact, the first step to successful action. If you don't fully accept a situation precisely the way it is, you will have difficulty changing it. Moreover, if you don't fully accept the situation, you will never really know if the situation should be changed. – Peter McWilliams, Life 101.

Quote for Today

2009-04-13T12:42:00.002-04:00

The world is smaller than you think, and the people on it are more beautiful than you think.
– Bertram van Munster; producer/director.

Why I am posting quotes.

2009-04-13T12:10:00.011-04:00

I sometimes regret that I do not post here more often. It takes me considerable time to compose a blog entry. Posting, as I do, from the position of 'therapist,' I know that some people will take what I write as the view of a person "in-the-know." Therefore I try to compose very carefully, so that my words will be read as I intended, and not misinterpreted.
Additionally, in truth, sometimes I just don't have anything relevant to say. As I've posted before, I am not one to speak just to hear the sound of my own voice.
However, I do have thoughts I want to share, but sometimes those thoughts are not my own.
I have what my wife calls a weird hobby. I collect quotes. When someone else's words resonate with me, speak to me, I record them and save them. Today it occurred to me that I can share those words with those who read this blog. So, from now on, that's what I will do. Not daily, perhaps, but far more often than I now post.
I'll be calling these postings, "Quote for Today," rather than "quote of the day," so as not to set up the expectation that they will be a daily feature. They will happen when they happen.
And, as always, your comments are welcomed.

Punishing Paedophiles

2009-03-07T12:02:00.007-05:00

Recently, on a social site I frequent, there was a thread about paedophiles and what the people responding to the thread would do to a paedophile if they caught one. As you can imagine, some suggestions were pretty gruesome.
I was a bit conflicted about whether to respond. Emotions tend to run very high around this issue, and I really do not need to be the target of a flame war, nor have I any interest in starting one. After thinking about it for a while, I felt I owed it to the abuse survivors I have worked with to post the following message:
“The kind of display of self-righteous outrage exhibited in this thread harms sexual abuse survivors. PLEASE think twice before posting this kind of shit. None of us have any idea who may be reading it, nor who among our regulars may be a survivor themselves.”
One of the posters asked me (bless her heart) to explain. So, here’s my attempt.
You see, I have had more than one client tell me that the abuse was nowhere near as bad as having to deal with the reactions of other people who learn of their experience. The anger, the revulsion, the ranting can actually make them feel far worse than the abuse ever did.
One told me that the sexual acts themselves felt strange and shameful, but the reaction of people toward her abuser (the case was in the media) made her feel as if she were diseased, dirty and ruined forever. Why else would people be so vile and spiteful?
To me, that was a clear case of a survivor being re-abused by people who used her experience to vent their own anger and outrage.
This is very similar to the stigma and shame attached to rape in many countries. Including our own countries here in the West. I have a client who was sexually assaulted as a teen. She stopped telling people. They would get so worked up, so violently outraged that they literally scared her. Worse, it wasn’t what she needed. And when she told people that, they’d look at her differently, treat her differently. So, it took her years to seek counselling, to get the courage to ask for what she needed. I often wonder how many abuse survivors out there don’t seek help for the same reason.
I remember the transcript of a case I read during my training. The woman, who’d been abused by her father, felt a tremendous sense of guilt over what happened to him after her abuse came to light. He went to prison where he was badly beaten by other inmates (on a side note, I’ve always wondered how convicted felons get to be society’s morality watchdogs), was divorced by her mother, and lost everything. To her, the people who punished him forgot one thing: he was still her father and she still loved him. There was nothing “wrong” with her thinking. She understood that he’d done wrong, but “the abuser” was not all there was to him. Even while working through her anger and hurt, she felt that, aside from his criminal assault on her, he was a very good father, hardworking, generous, nurturing.
Contrary to the popular stereotype of the paedophile lurking in the bushes, most children are assaulted by a loved one; a parent, sibling, grandparent, relative, close friend, or clergyman. And, not always, but far more frequently than most people seem to realize, the abuse survivor does not lose their feelings for their abuser, and does not want to have their abuser out of their lives forever.
Many survivors have a great deal of sympathy for their abusers. More than once I have been greatly humbled by the depths of compassion and forgiveness of which human beings are capable.
During the Catholic Church paedophilia scandals, film-maker Dino de Laurentis disclosed to an interviewer that as a boy he had been kissed and fondled by his parish priest. He said that he felt no animosity toward the priest, but that even as a youth he felt that he was simply a lonely old man, and pitied him.
Now, let me be clear, every person deals with the experience of abuse in their own way. Some with tremendous anger, some feel an overwhelming need for revenge. That is something they work thorough in therapy. The aim is NOT to make them feel sympathy for their abusers. Far from it. An earlier part of the therapy is usually to help the person identify the extent of the wrong that was done to them. The aim is to help them to deal with their anger in useful and constructive ways. Becoming a person who commits assault themselves is not considered a helpful or constructive way of dealing with their (very justified) anger.
Nor are mob “justice,” castration and torture-fantasies. Angry mobs have, on occasion, tried to burn houses where paedophiles were reportedly living. One mob in the UK reportedly succeeded in killing a 14 year old girl who was staying in the house they burned. A mob in the U.S. reportedly torched the house of an innocent 78 year old woman because a “paedophile watch-list” posted by a community group got the address wrong.
This is not a responsible way for adults to deal with injustice. And the more it happens, the more it’s advocated, the more it “normalizes” the use of violence, the idea that “right” and “might” legitimize the abuse of other human beings. And that is exactly what survivors have experienced at the hands of their abusers.
Perhaps worst of all, there are many people who, acting from ignorance* and misinformation, believe that those who have been abused go on to become abusers themselves. this is simply not so. There has never been any credible information to suggest that rates of offense among sexual abuse survivors are any higher than among the general population. So, again, these people find themselves unfairly stigmatized, and re-abused.
Ignorance and misinformation also feed into one of the most persistent myths about paedophiles: that they cannot be effectively treated. Psychologists, psychiatrists and criminologists who work with paedophiles consistently dispute this claim. In fact, convicted paedophiles who receive treatment have the lowest recidivism rates of all criminals. The fear industry, however, doesn’t like that fact, and they systematically shout it down with distortions and counter-claims.
The very best treatment that paedophiles can receive, the factor that as been shown again and again to lower their risk of re-offending, is the one thing that most people are opposed to giving them: a community that provides a network of support. Instead, they are released after serving their sentence and then ostracized, hounded, driven from one community after another until they can find a way to slip under the radar and go underground.
So, it was with great admiration that I attended a presentation by a church group from a small city in Western Ontario who set themselves up as a community network for convicted paedophiles. Church members would sign up to volunteer to be available to the released paedophiles 24/7, in eight hour shifts. They’d be available to talk, to accompany them on trips to the shopping mall (where there might be children present), to keep them from drinking. Lonely, friendless people will often drink, which impairs their judgement. That puts them, and the community, at risk. Here was a community that really was living its faith: to hate the sin, but love the sinner. Once again, I find myself in awed admiration for their courage and dedication.
Regarding the thread that started this, that was not the first time I’ve seen such posts about what to do to paedophiles. You can find them all over the web. Participants usually try to outdo each other in inventing new forms of torture and cruelty to punish offenders. The rationale is the horror the poster feels for the crime and the sympathy they feel for the victim.
But it also serves as an outlet for sadistic aggression, and for claiming the moral high-ground. The poster is able to assure themselves of their “righteousness.” (That, I think is part of what motivates those convicted felons I mentioned earlier.) “We,” the righteous, get to look down on “them,” the despicable, the repugnant, the sub-human. But in so-doing, the survivor is made to feel that instead of being the victim of wrong done to them by an irresponsible and flawed person, they have been ravaged by monsters and forever despoiled.
No wonder so many of them find it impossible to sleep at night, to feel sexually normal, or worthy of being loved.
It is fairly common for survivors to say that the worst part of abuse was not the sexual acts themselves. The worst and most lasting effect is the breach of trust, and the experience of being used and controlled, without their consent, by another person for their own purposes. That, they say, is the real abuse. When they encounter the outraged diatribes of people who would like to torture and castrate paedophiles, they encounter that same dynamic all over again: other people are taking control of and using the survivor’s experience for their own purposes.
And so, if we are sincere in our sympathy for the victim, then we must remember that when we whip ourselves into a frenzy about what we would do to paedophiles, we are actually re-abusing their victims all over again.
_________________
(*The dictionary definition of ignorance is, “a lack of knowledge.” That is the sense in which the word is used here; not in its pejorative sense.)

How do you send a kid to outer space?

2009-02-27T21:21:00.005-05:00

I was listening to a CBC-1 radio interview yesterday with Canadian astronaut Dr. Dave Williams. He is a medical doctor, a specialist in neurology, trained as an emergency doctor for extreme environments, like the Arctic, undersea, and outer space. He is also Director of Medical Robotics at McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario.
At one point, the interviewer asked him if it was obvious that he’d excel from an early age. He replied, “Oh, not at all. If you’d asked any of my teachers to pick out the kid who’d be an astronaut, I’d have been the last person they picked. I was a very average student. What got me into the space programme was my passion for space and the confidence to pursue my dreams.”
That got me thinking about the amount of energy I see so many parents putting into worrying and stressing about their children’s future. I see parents making themselves and their children absolutely miserable, pushing the kid to excel, to work harder, get better grades. “You’ve got to think of your future,” is the refrain.
But what Dave Williams says got him where he is are things that are not as measurable as grades: passion, dreams, confidence. Not high marks.
It is not our job as parents to make sure our kids are at the head of their class. Not our job to push them to graduate Summa Cum Laude. It is our job to nurture their passions, encourage their dreams, and to help them develop the confidence to aim for the stars.
I wonder what Dave Williams’ life would have been like if his parents had nagged him to put down those stupid science-fiction novels and concentrate on improving his grades?
Not nearly as interesting, I’d bet.

Male rape

2009-02-21T13:01:00.004-05:00

As a sex therapist I work with men and women who have been sexually abused, and/or sexually assaulted, in adulthood or in childhood. I have, obviously, received specialized training in order to do this.

Many people believe that it is more traumatic for a man to be raped than it is for a woman. One thing you learn early on as a therapist is that you cannot compare pain. I have had clients of both genders who were able to get past the event in a relatively short time, and others, of either gender, who were devastated for years and years. You don’t look at the severity of the event, because that is, inevitably, your own reaction, not the survivor’s. What you look at is the extent of the impact this had on the person, and on their ability to function and feel emotionally safe.

Still, it remains a fact that the rape of a man is seen differently than is the rape of a woman, by the victim, the rapist, and the rest of us. Due to the way our society constructs gender identity, not just sexually, but in all areas of life, men are supposed to be in charge, in control, masters of their fate and captains of their soul. But nowhere more than in the area of sexuality.

Over the last century it has become more and more acceptable for a male to relinquish control in bed. But, when it comes to rape we enter a whole new arena, because rape is not, of course, about relinquishing control, but about having it taken from you forcibly. And that is not simply through physical force, but through threat, intimidation, manipulation, coercion, drugs, alcohol...the list goes on. The point is, one’s power to consent, or withhold consent, is taken away. It is this, much more so than the sex, that the rapist is after. This is what provides the rush.

There are any number of misconceptions about male rape. Contrary to what many people believe, male rape is not rare. There is a lot of evidence that suggests that more males are victims of rape than are women, just as more men are victims of every kind of violence than are women. And let’s not forget, rape is violence, even when there are no bruises. However, due to the stigma of rape, men tend to report being the target of sexual assault even less frequently than women.

The second myth is that a man cannot be raped if he is not willing. FALSE, FALSE, FALSE! First of all, erections are a function of the autonomic nervous system, and are not really under voluntary control (or rarely). If they were, I would not see so many clients with erectile dysfunction. If a guy has E.D. and he does not respond to Viagra, the doctors send him to me, or my colleagues. We do not, and cannot, teach him how to have an erection. What we do is teach him to relax, let the autonomic nervous system do its work, and focus less of his sexuality on the state of his erection.

But, more importantly, the state of a man’s erection has little relevance to rape. That’s because of a third misconception: most men are NOT raped by women. Some are, but the incidence of males raped by males is much, much, much higher. And a minority of men who rape men are homosexual. We seem able to accept that when male-male rape happens in prison, the rapists are not necessarily homosexual, but that is true of all male-male rape. Don’t forget, rape is NOT sex, per se. It is violence.

Nor does the sexual orientation of the victim matter. That’s another misconception. For gay men, being raped can be just as devastating, and often more so, than for a heterosexual male. Nor does it matter whether the gay man is a “top” or a “bottom.”

Some men and boys are raped by women. There is a common myth that such men are “lucky.” The reality is that it is anything but luck. Such men often are left with a lifelong hostility toward or suspicion of women. Don’t forget, rape is not giving in to an aggressive partner’s advances. Rape is violence, having consent stripped from you, being made powerless.

I hope I don’t have to convince anyone that the sexual use of a young male, a boy, for sexual gratification is a form of child abuse and a criminal act. It is so, not because we want to keep them from sexual experience, but because the potential for devastating consequences is so real. Let me say that I have spoken to men who had early sexual experiences with girls and women, who felt that it had not had any negative consequences on their lives and relationships. If they were kidding themselves about that, there was nothing in their lives or relationships to show it. The problem is, no one can ever tell in advance who will or won’t be traumatized. For that reason it is and must remain a criminal act.

Often, under-aged males are sexually abused by women who fear that they may be too effeminate, and think that this will help steer them toward heterosexuality. Ironically, it can have just the opposite effect. Sexual orientation is NOT determined by trauma. However, males who have been traumatized by women sometimes become avoidant of women, and to whatever extent they may have some inherent same-sex orientation, focus their sexuality in that direction.

The rape of adult males by women is almost never like in the porn fantasies. The man may not find the woman (or women) sexually attractive, may be drugged, may be beaten, often quite badly, may be threatened with violence (threat of castration is often used), may be tied up, may be anally raped with strap-ons, or other objects...and believe me, the average rapist is not interested in lube, or other such niceties. They are there to inflict pain and humiliation, not sexual arousal.

Finally, one topic that I find truly disgusting: popular culture finds the rape of men titillating and funny, and sees male rape as deserved in many cases. All too often we hear comments about people who have been sentenced to prison, that they are going to have to get used to “taking it up the ass,” or “hope he is having a nice time being Bubba’s girlfriend.” We speak in scathing language of societies where the rape of women is used as a means of intimidation and control, and we do so rightly. But, in this, we are no better.

For example, in one episode of “My Name is Earl,” Earl works for a guy who is a real bastard. He’s mean to people, cheats, lies and embezzles from his employer. A running joke through the show is his collection of coffee mugs with “World’s Best...” sayings on them (World’s Best father, World’s Best Lover, World’s Best Golfer, World’s Best Boss, etc.). At the end, Earl helps reveal his duplicity and he is sentenced to prison. The final scene shows this man behind bars, a burly, ugly man in the cell behind him. The man Earl helped convict has a stricken expression on his face and is holding a tin cup on which has been written with permanent marker, “World’s Best Bottom.” The message here is that this man deserves, in addition to his sentence, to be anally raped, and that it is funny that this is happening to him. I guarantee you that if a similar joke about a woman being raped were aired, the writers and producers would have been fired before the night was over.

That is not the only example. There are plenty out there. A popular song from a few years back, “Date Rape,” (by Sublime) had a similar theme. There is lots of evidence that prison authorities, know about, use and encourage rape in prisons as a means of intimidation and control. Judges have been known to sentence men to prison for short times, just enough time for them to be likely to experience rape. Civil rights organizations have been lobbying on this issue, and even trying to file suits, with little effect. There is simply too little political will, and too much public acceptance of the loathsome notion that if a man goes to prison he deserves to be raped.

In January 2009 an Australian judge warned a young man arrested for street racing that if he gets sent to prison, "You'll find big, ugly, hairy strong men (in jail) who've got faces only a mother could love that will pay a lot of attention to you -- and your anatomy." Imagine a woman in any 21st century democracy being sentenced to be raped, or threatened with being raped, for committing a crime. Makes it pretty clear how disgusting this practice is, doesn’t it?

This goes far beyond “feeling sorry” for people who are sentenced. Most male rapists are men who have themselves been raped or molested. By expressing outrage that male rape continues at the levels it does, that it is so taken for granted, we are, in fact, helping to protect ourselves. Preventing even the most heinous criminals from being raped may, in fact, reduce the risk that they will become rapists, in turn. Still, this remains a dirty little secret that no one wants to touch.

Happiness and comfort.

2009-02-14T23:17:00.003-05:00

I often wonder if they’re compatible. I wonder if you don’t have to choose between them. In a way, they may be opposites. Happiness, it seems to me, is a state of arousal, of excitement, of positive energy. That’s not comfort. It’s too dynamic to be comfortable. Comfort is not challenging, not really engaging either. Comfort has an element of inertia to it. Saying I’ll sit down and watch TV rather than exercise may make you comfortable, but will it make you happy?
Exercise gives you energy, relieves stress, prolongs your life. Watching your favourite TV program, then getting up and doing something else doesn’t seem incompatible with happiness. But slouching in front of the tube for hours sure doesn’t seem compatible with happiness either. And I suspect that often, when people say doing such-and-such makes me happy, what they really mean is it makes me comfortable.
So, there is a danger here. The danger of settling for comfort, because happiness is just too risky, or maybe it’s just too much work.
I see this happening in relationships quite often. When people describe themselves as being happy in their relationships, I’ll ask them to tell me about that, describe what lets them know they are happy. More often than not, what they’ll describe is being comfortable.
As I’ve said before, relationships are work. Our stories and folk wisdom are full of cautionary tales against getting too comfortable. That leads to taking each other for granted, which can sap all the vitality out of a relationship. It’s work to keep your partner’s interest alive, to keep a touch of the unexpected in the relationship after decades together. And it is not without risk. People have been known to fight tooth and claw, resorting to ridicule and contempt when their comfortable cage gets rattled. So, you need to decide whether taking a chance on being happy is worth that risk.
For myself, I’d rather look back from old age on a life filled with risks and a mix of sad and happy memories, than a lifetime of comfortable “same-old.”
But maybe that’s just me.

Hannah Montana and the Female Eunuch

2009-02-12T23:24:00.016-05:00

(originally posted July 23, 2008)
Earlier this year a furore erupted in the media when fifteen year old entertainer Miley Cyrus posed for some fashion photos in Vanity Fair magazine. The photo that caused the stir was a classic “draped nude” portrait. Very little skin was actually visible, but the appearance of nudity beneath a cloth was apparently enough to throw self-appointed “morality” watchdogs into a panic.
And as usual, the media entered “feeding-frenzy” mode.
Widely reported was the fear that her photographs send a harmful message to young girls, making Cyrus an unfit role model for young women. Try as I might though, I can’t find many specific statements about what that “bad” message might be...except for Dr. Robyn Silverman’s Powerful Parent Blog, where she warns parents that their ‘tween daughters may “show up to playtime loosely wrapped in their Beauty and the Beast bedsheets...”
However, while the Cyrus photos appear to have raised more concern than they warrant, a question that hasn’t been asked is, what message does the alarm over the photos send to young girls?
It seems to me that the message being given to young girls everywhere is clear, specific and destructive: that in order to be considered good, acceptable, admirable, and worthy, a girl, a young woman, must remain completely sexless. That girls who, like Miley, even hint that a sexual being lies beneath the coverings has done something bad, unacceptable, and shameful.
A girl does not have to be very old, nor very sophisticated, to understand that her parents and the talking heads of alleged grown-ups on TV feel that Miley has been bad. And Miley’s widely publicized apology, her embarrassment, her tears, her reportedly feeling ill at a subsequent concert all reinforce the message: girls are not supposed to HAVE any sexuality. Not only must they not openly display it, they must never even hint at it. Bad things happen to those who do, and people will stop liking them.
Even her supporters urge others not to condemn this teenager for having “made a mistake.”
Hinting that you may be a sexual being is a mistake? Apparently it is in 2008.
The TV talking heads bristle in outrage over the fact that the person in these photos “is only 15.”
News flash: Human beings, males and females both, are sexual beings from before birth until the day they die.
As a sex therapist, I see many adult women, married, or in committed relationships, who are very conflicted about their sexuality. Is it any wonder?
The prescription is that a girl, a woman, should not be sexually active until marriage, that she should “save” herself for her husband. Then, all of a sudden, her husband (ideally a virgin himself) will “awaken” her sexuality, and she will suddenly go from a person who has denied even the possibility of having sexual feelings, who has been trained from toddlerhood to say “no, no, no”, to being a fully sexual being who moans “yes, yes, yes.”
Fairy tales like this keep my profession going and provide me and my colleagues with an income.
But the cost in human anguish and misery can be staggering.
Is it any wonder that women are conflicted about sexuality, when the media continually indulges in its insidious game of set ‘em up and knock ‘em down with young female celebrities? To be acceptable as celebrities, even the most timid or plain females are required to be sexualized, made-over, enhanced...their sexual appeal must be hyped to the max. But then, to be an
acceptable role model, they must be “pure.” And when young women who must be both “sexy” and “pure” make a personal decision regarding their own sexuality, be it starring in a film with “adult themes,” posing for pictures, or becoming sexually active, the media fall all over themselves to denounce her. She is now part of the morality play known as “fallen woman,” and is gleefully branded with today’s updated scarlet letter...no longer an “A” for adulteress, but an “S” for slut (or should that be an “H” for ho?).
We’ve seen that again and again. Jessica Simpson and Britney Spears publicly took virginity vows. They were then dressed by their handlers in the sexiest and most revealing outfits available. The Swift Report tells of rumours that her handlers may have pushed Britney Spears into marrying in order to boost her slumping record sales.
According to market research, CD choices are increasingly shaped by the morality of the female artists, with teenaged girls saying they prefer to buy music by female artists who put off sex until marriage. This is resulting in pressure on struggling record labels to keep young starlets chaste—or quickly marry them off.
Notice that these categories allow for no middle ground. A young woman cannot be a “little bit sexual.” Only two states for young women are recognized. More recently, some pictures of Cyrus at a sleep over with friends were posted on the internet. One photo shows Cyrus and a female friend in chaste cotton nightgowns leaning against each other while sitting on the floor, mugging for the camera. The person who posted the photo has superimposed the word “slut” on it.
And if even hinting at your sexuality makes you a “bad girl”, well why not go all the way? The notion that you may as well be hung for a sheep as a goat makes sense to many teenaged minds. Having been branded a “bad girl, dismissed as a “slut,” many of our “fallen” female celebrities spiral out of control.
I have to wonder how many young non-celebrities put themselves at risk using the same logic?
Back in 1970, when I was about to graduate high school, Germaine Greer published, The Female Eunuch, the book that changed the way the world looked at women’s sexuality and the way women looked at themselves. Greer wrote, "Women have somehow been separated from their libido, from their faculty of desire, from their sexuality.”
38 years later, that situation persists. Rather than relenting, the focus has shifted to younger and younger women. Girls in many high schools today are subjected to pressure to take a “purity pledge,” a pledge to remain a virgin until she marries. As Marshall McLuhan noted, the medium is the message. What message does the very name of this phenomenon convey? Purity equals sexlessness. Therefore, any girl who is sexual is impure, flawed, dirty...a slut.
And, of course, there is the unspoken but ever-present expectation that the natural outcome of any young woman reaching adulthood is marriage, undoubtedly followed soon afterwards by motherhood. Nearly half a century after the emergence of second-wave feminism, the gender straightjacket is alive and well and invading your daughter’s bedroom!
There is, on the part of many adults, an unhealthy, unsavoury fascination with young women’s hymens. A question we need to ask ourselves as a society is this: should we allow their obsession to be passed onto our daughters as focus for anxiety, for self-loathing, for self-neutering?

How long does “good sex” take?

2009-02-12T23:17:00.008-05:00

(originally posted April 7, 2008)
The Associated Press recently reported on an new study published in the Journal of Sexual Medicine.
The study surveyed fifty members of the Society for Sex Therapy and Research in the U.S. and Canada , and asked them what they considered to be the optimal amount of time for sexual intercourse. Thirty-four members, or 68%, responded. While some said the optimal time depended on the couple, the majority concluded that the optimal time for intercourse was 3 to 13 minutes, and that anything less than 3 minutes is too short.
The time did not include foreplay.
The report goes on to say that the lead researcher, Eric Corty, “said he hoped to give an idea of what therapists find to be normal and satisfactory among the couples they see.
"People who read this will say, 'I last five minutes or my partner lasts 8 minutes,' and say, 'That's OK,'" he said. "They will relax a little bit."

I'm of two minds about this study.
I think that if I'd been asked (I'm not a member of SSTAR) I'd have been one of those who answered, "it depends on the couple." I’m not a big fan of using numbers and statistics to tell people what constitutes “good sex.”
That being said, I think it can sometimes help people to have their experiences "normalized." That is the intention I get from Corty’s quote in the article.
When I was growing up, in the '50s, '60s, and '70s, there was a revolution concerning the publication of and access to sexual information. For the most part, that was a good thing. It educated people about sexuality, and one of the things people learned is that 2.4 minutes of thrusting during intercourse was not enough to get most women off.
The down side is that it gave rise to the belief that a "real man" gave his woman pleasure by pounding his hips into her pelvis for half an hour at a stretch. If the information in this article helps dispel that misconception, so much the better.
Based on research in sexology, and on what I have learned in my practice, here are some realities:

A great many women, and some studies say a majority of women, do not reach orgasm through intercourse, no matter how long her (male) partner thrusts.
Unless the woman is orgasmic through intercourse, thrusting for much more than about 5 minutes can become physically irritating. And BORING!
Even if a woman can be orgasmic through intercourse, she won't necessarily always be. On those occasions when she's not, prolonged thrusting may communicate an expectation for her to have an orgasm in this way.
For some women, not being able to reach orgasm through intercourse produces feelings of inadequacy. Prolonged thrusting by her partner can reinforce these feelings.
If a woman can reach orgasm through intercourse, prolonged thrusting may be the only way for her to do so. However, that does not mean that this is the most pleasurable or most satisfying way for her to reach orgasm.
“Good sex” does not necessarily include vaginal intercourse. Nor does it necessarily always result in orgasms for both partners. While people generally enjoy having an orgasm, for many, it is not a requirement every time.

So, it really does depend on the couple, the self-images and the expectations they bring to the sex act, and especially how much they are communicating openly about those to each other.
Communicating openly with our partners about our sexual needs and expectations can sometimes be challenging. But that’s a topic for another blog.

TANSTAAFL

2009-02-12T23:10:00.006-05:00

(originally posted April 11, 2008)
It’s an acronym. It stands for “There Ain’t No Such Thing As A Free Lunch.” The term was coined by author Robert Heinlein. In days gone by, when food was cheaper, bars would set out food at lunchtime for patrons to help themselves at no extra charge. Of course, the lunch was not free. Its cost was figured into the price charged for the drinks.
Heinlein’s point was that anything that seems free has a price built into it, and we are kidding ourselves if we think we can have something for nothing.
Another way of expressing the same sentiment is that you can only get out what you put in.
Now, once explained, these are fairly simple concepts. Yet they seem to elude us in several important situations.
One place they seem to escape notice is in relationships. Am I saying that relationships come at a cost? Of course they do. The cost is to love your partner, as they love you. To respect your partner, as they respect you. To care for your partner, as they care for you.
You can only get out of a relationship what you put into it. If you ignore your partner, don’t expect them to be excited when you come home. If you snap at your partner, don’t expect them to be patient with you. If you aren’t willing to work at your relationship, how can you expect it to keep on running smoothly? We wouldn’t expect our cars to keep running smoothly without regular maintenance (although some people DO seem to expect that!)
Another place the TANSTAAFL concept seems to escape notice is in what we expect from our societies. We expect peace, but what do WE do to contribute to social peace? We want civility, not rudeness. But how thoughtful are we of the people around us. Do people who get off an escalator, and stop dead in their tracks to look around, expect civility from those behind them? Do drivers who speed up when someone is trying to enter their lane expect that they will be able to change lanes when they want?
You get out what you put in.
On an even broader level, we want crime-free societies. We’ve tried harsher laws, and more prisons, and that doesn’t seem to be achieving our goals. However, we know what conditions make crime more likely. So, why aren’t we demanding that officials take action on eliminating those conditions? The answer, of course, is money.
Fighting poverty, adequate housing, quality health care, good education, treating mental illness, all cost money. We don’t want to spend on money on those things. We want our money for ourselves, for our own uses. TANSATAAFL! You do not get safe streets and low crime-rates for nothing. You gets what you pays for.
When horrors like the Virginia Tech shootings occur, we are quick to vilify the gunman, to blame his rampage on “evil.” Yet, Cho Seung-Hui had been identified as mentally ill, and a danger to himself. By no stretch of the imagination did he receive adequate care. But, as a society, we are reluctant to take on responsibility for that. We don’t want the burden of identifying and treating people struggling with dangerous depressions or psychoses. But we don’t want them going on shooting rampages. And many people also don’t want gun sales or ammo sales restricted so that people in his condition won’t have access to them.
This sounds an awful lot like wanting to have your cake and eat it too. As if people were saying, “I want to be safe, but I don’t want to have to do the hard work to bring about real safety.” Well, sorry, but TANSTAAFL. We can continue to think of mental illness as an individual problem. But we will pay the price of that shortsightedness as communities.
When I was a young boy, John F. Kennedy was President of the U.S. I still remember the challenge he issued to his fellow citizens. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” My values were shaped, in part, by those words.
And so, ask not what your relationship can do for you. Ask what you can do for your relationship. Ask not what your society can give to you. Ask what you can give to your society.
But what about the role of other people? Should we be expected to take all the responsibility ourselves? No, of course not. But our own behaviour is the only thing we can control, and that is where our own work must start. We can, at least, be secure in the knowledge that we have paid our share of the bill.
Author Robert Fulgham (Everything I Need to know I Learned in Kindergarten, and It Was On Fire When I Lay Down On It) has written, “I am not interested in what you value, I want to know what you will do. I don’t care what kind of world you want. I care what kind of world you are willing to work for.”
So, the next time you feel like complaining about your relationship, or about society, I would recommend that you ask yourself, what kind of relationship are you willing to work for? What kind of society are you willing to work for? And what is the work you are doing to bring them about?

Evangelicals.

2009-02-12T23:03:00.004-05:00

(originally posted October 5, 2008)
Watched some on TV recently. They were all constantly talking about how happy they are, how full of joy, of peace, of happiness, of zeal for life they are, always, all the time. On and on they went.
Now, when anyone tells a counsellor that they are ALWAYS happy, we tend to figure that they are in denial. That they are kidding themselves. But these people could give a good reason for their constant joy. Whenever they have any problem, any problem at all, they simply give it to God. Then there is no reason to be unhappy, because God is taking away all their problems.
This is an entirely different sort of issue. When we encounter this therapeutically, we call this “splitting.” If a person has a part of themselves that they don’t like, because it is sad, or bad, or problematic in some way, one way to deal with it is to split it off, to disown it. To not accept that it is a part of you, of who you are. These evangelicals were not only able to split off those parts of themselves that would make them sad, or cause them problems, they could give all that unwanted stuff to God, and they’d never have to deal with it, because it was in God’s hands. And whatever He decided to do with it, that’s what would happen.
That struck me as a more than a refusal to acknowledge oneself as a whole person. There was a whole subtext of, “Here God, I don’t like this part of me, you can have it.” A kind of shortcut to perfection through lopping off anything that didn’t seem consistent with perfection. Isn’t that what this is? A kind of theological perfectionism? If you are sad, you must not have let Jesus into your heart enough?
My mother, who was a “good, Christian woman,” had a very strong, indomitable faith. She never lost faith, even in the hardest times, and she did see some very hard times. She believed one thing very strongly, and ingrained it in me so thoroughly, that it remains internalized as a core value to this day. She always taught me, “God helps those who help themselves.”
This was no cynical irony. She meant it literally. One does not give one’s problems to God. One prays to God to stand by one’s side, to give one strength to bear the burden, to do the work necessary to resolve the problem. One doesn’t disown and dismiss the things one doesn’t like about oneself. Face it, and work to make those parts of yourself you don’t like serve you in ways that enable you to be a good person. And she taught me that no one is perfect. Perfection is for God only. Accept yourself, and do your best with what you have.
That seems to me to be a much healthier, much more psychologically-whole approach to theology than that “happy, happy joy, joy” proposition.

Should you, really?

2009-02-12T22:42:00.003-05:00

(originally posted in 2008)
At some point in therapy I’ll usually ask my clients to try removing the word “should” from their vocabulary. An often repeated therapeutic “joke” is the phrase, “stop should-ing on yourself.”
My reasons for asking my clients to do this have nothing to do with being cute, nor even with being compassionate. In fact, my request for them to eliminate the word “should” is based on the most hard-nosed and pragmatic of reasons.
“Should” is fantasy, not reality.
Think of any statement that uses the word “should” and you’ll find that statement does not talk about what IS, but what we think ought to be, or what we would rather, instead of what we have.
“My friend should be here by now.” Sorry, but reality is that he/she ISN’T. Maybe they got delayed. Maybe they have a problem with time management. Or, as you are really trying to avoid considering, maybe they are standing you up.
“You should be married at your age.” So, what you really want is for people to live their lives according to a timetable YOU feel is proper? What is it you get out of that? A comforting illusion of control? Sorry, but reality is that people get to decide for themselves when to marry, or not.
The “should” statements I encounter most frequently are not about others, but clients’ statements about themselves.
“I should have gotten over this by now.” Sorry, but reality is that you haven’t. Feelings don’t work on a schedule. They are what they are until they get resolved. That can be terribly uncomfortable, but that is the reality.
“I should be a better person.” Sorry, but the reality is that you are what you are. Not accepting yourself for who you are is a real problem. You may not like everything about yourself. Odds are that you don’t, if you are in therapy. But not accepting the reality of who you are won’t make your life easier. It will make it harder.
“Should,” implies the existence of an ideal against which we are measuring ourselves. Ideals make for great comic book heroes, or legendary characters, but they are not reality. We are all imperfect human beings who struggle daily to live a life that meets our needs without being unfair to others. Sometimes we don’t succeed.
A more realistic approach is, “This is who I am right now, and these are the things that I would like to change.”
Another frequent “should” statement: “I should have known better”; or “I should have never done that.” Sorry, but the reality is that you have made a choice that you now regret. You have to live with that. The good news is that you can learn from your experiences and make different choices in the future.
Expecting all our choices to be “good choices,” “the right choice,” “the best choice,” is perfectionist and unrealistic. Everyone makes choices they regret, and sometimes with tragic consequences. The effects of your choices are real. But the realistic approach is to recognize that hindsight is 20/20, and that instead of getting bogged down with guilt, or criticizing yourself for what you’ve done in the past, you have an opportunity for some very valuable learning.
You may want to try eliminating the word “should” from your vocabulary for a while. It can be a very instructive exercise. People often find it difficult, which is a sign of just how deeply most people’s thinking is rooted in fantasy. If you find it challenging to restate your thoughts without the word “should,” try stopping first and asking yourself, “What is my reality, right now, this minute?”
Also remember that no matter what your present reality, change is possible, as long as you are alive and willing to work at it.
One more caution: I frequently have a conversation with my clients about the irony of telling themselves, “I shouldn’t say ‘should’.”

Totally Devoted

2009-02-12T22:27:00.005-05:00

(originally posted Saturday, April 5, 2008)
I was, as usual, reading “Dear Abby” in the newspaper with my morning coffee, and came across a letter from a woman who signed herself “True Blue in Allentown PA.” She wrote in because she can’t seem to hang onto friends. She describes herself as a divorced mother of two, who likes to develop a close friendship with just one other woman. Other friends are “casual acquaintances.”
As a friend she describes herself as "truly devoted,” and goes on to say, “I am totally accommodating, to the point that I rearrange my activities and forgo my own wishes -- the ‘whatever you want to do’ type.” However, her friendships usually end after 5 or so years. “The other person is usually not quite as committed as I am.”
The scenario caught my attention because I encounter it frequently in counselling. If I have a client who tells me that they are “totally devoted” to their husband, wife, boyfriend, girlfriend, children, or parents, I know that I’m going to hear a sadly familiar story. A story of “giving and giving, asking nothing in return” that ends with feeling unappreciated, taken advantage of, and abandoned.
Many people get the idea that a good relationship means being “totally devoted” to the other person. As other person becomes their total focus, not only does the other begin to feel overwhelmed, but paradoxically, they often feel like they are alone in the relationship. The devoted one merely reflects their wants and whims, and brings none of their own to share. The devoted one sincerely believes that this is what a relationship should be like. Even the name this writer chose for herself, “True Blue” reflects the idealized notion of friendship that she holds.
“True Blue” goes on to ask, “Why does this happen when I try so hard and go out of my way to maintain the friendship?”
Abby didn’t come right out and tell her why (although she did so indirectly), so I will. This happens BECAUSE you try so hard and go out of your way. You are trying so hard that you wind up doing all the work of the relationship (yes, every relationship is work), and there’s nothing for the other person to do. So, of course the other person takes without giving. That’s all you’ve left for them to do.
And from the other’s point of view, you are kind of boring. You have no other friends you can talk to them about. You never come up with anything interesting for the two of you to do. All they ever hear from you is, “whatever you want to do.” You’re so busy seeing to their wants, you develop none of your own, and so there is nothing they can do for you. Nothing that is, except what you really want...to let you continue to make the relationship all about them, so that you can avoid your persistent fear that you will be rejected if you become an independent person, with needs, wants and interests of your own. Ironically, behaving this way leads to the very rejection you fear. Your idea of what a relationship should be like couldn’t be more wrong.
This could very well be the reason "True Blue" is divorced. And if her kids are older than about 7, they probably resent her for being overprotective and domineering. Usually the approach we bring to any kind of relationship reflects the approach we use in all of our relationships
In a healthy adult relationship of any kind, each party contributes 50%. (Of course, with a young child we cannot expect a full 50%. The child is not yet developed enough to do as much as an adult.) Our partners may not always understand or be able to meet our needs. But for the relationship to grow and thrive in a healthy way, it has to be between two individuals who participate equally in its give-and-take. The relationship must be a two-way street. If it isn’t, you may soon find that it has come to a dead end.

The Lessons of Laurel Canyon.

2009-02-12T22:17:00.004-05:00

(originally posted Sunday, February 10, 2008)
[NOTE: If you have not seen the movie “Laurel Canyon,” this contains major spoilers]

I saw “Laurel Canyon” when it was first released in 2002. The Canyon is a famous drive in the Hollywood Hills of Los Angeles that has been home to many of the most famous names in the entertainment industry.
In the movie, Christian Bale brings his brilliant fiancee, Kate Beckinsale, to his mother’s home in Laurel Canyon. His rock-legend-turned producer mother, played by Frances McDormand, is supposed to be gone. But when they arrive she, and a motley rock band are still all about the place, as they try to put the finishing touches on a new album.
Beckinsale’s character, the daughter of an old-monied New England family, is a brilliant and accomplished scholar finishing her Ph.D. dissertation in some incredibly complex branch of genetics. She starts the film as a squeaky clean little-miss-perfect. She has always excelled at everything, always been every upper-crust parents’ dream of the perfect daughter. But as Bale, working as a resident in a psychiatric hospital, becomes more and more unavailable, Beckinsale succumbs more and more to the hedonic lifestyle of McDormand and the band.
At the climax of the movie, Bale finds Beckinsale necking with the band’s lead singer at a stoned-and-drunk party hosted by his mother. During their confrontation, Bale asks how she could have done this. “I didn’t know how,” Beckinsale’s character screams. “Know how to what?” Bale demands. “I didn’t know how to fuck up!” she cries.
I absolutely loved this line. I loved it so much that I embarrassed my wife by hissing “YES!”in the movie theatre.
That is such an important idea. We need to learn how to fuck up. Because if we don’t learn, then the first time we do so, it’s going to be a whopper.
Another way of putting this is that we need to learn how to make mistakes. We need to learn how to blow it, mess up, ruin a good thing, act stupidly, make a fool of ourselves, make bad judgements, let people down, let ourselves down. But I really wonder how many people get a chance to do this, and even more, how many people give their kids a chance to do this
I have written earlier about the growing problem, seen among counsellors at colleges and universities, of young people who cannot take the stress of living away from home. They have been protected from an early age by their parents, not only from physical harm, but from “doing the wrong thing,” from making mistakes. Without mom and dad around, they run the risk of screwing up every time they make a decision. And that is just too scary.
I occasionally see parents who are worried sick because their teen is starting to break free, and they don’t trust the kid’s judgement. Rightly so, in my opinion. Teens’ judgment is not yet completely developed, and needs to be monitored. “But then,” they ask, “how can I keep them from making mistakes, from getting into problems?”
“Don’t,” is my advice.
Now look, I am definitely not advocating allowing teens to run hog-wild and get into legal trouble or physical danger. But they NEED to fall down. They NEED to fuck up! Otherwise they will not know how to do it. And then they will be in real trouble.
The flip side of the students who can’t take being on their own are the students who, once free of mommy and daddy’s watchful eye, go totally berserk, with sex and booze and drugs and partying until they get sick, flunk out, or wind up in court.
And I see the parents who never figured out how to fuck up themselves. They see their kid do it, and instead of treating it as a teachable moment, take it as a total disaster, the ruination of their kid’s life, and proof of their utter failure as parents. I remember one couple, successful professionals, who were aghast at their teen’s behaviour, which was actually well-within the norms (no sex, no booze or drugs, no law-breaking). When I described it as fairly typical teenaged rebellion they looked at each other, then at me, and lamented, “Neither of US ever rebelled.”
And I believe them.
Most troubling of all, to me, are the young clients who come to me in various stages of depression. They have had a setback, or done something stupid, or made a serious error in judgement. They have fucked up. And now their life is ruined, over. They have no idea what to do next. And so they have to pay someone to sit and listen to them, and help them learn what they should have learned as a part of their normal development.
We are people, not paragons. As parents, our children’s lives are not our achievements, they belong to those unique human beings who are living them, for better or for worse. We must let our children get it wrong, and help them learn what to do afterward.
And when we get it wrong, we must try to accept it as an unpleasant but necessary part of life, allow ourselves to grow from the experience, and learn to forgive ourselves.
For, and this is my whole point in writing this, only by learning how to fuck up, do we learn how NOT to.

Validation

2009-02-12T22:14:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Tuesday, January 15, 2008)

Some clients label themselves insecure because they feel a need for other people to support, or in some way acknowledge the validity of what they do, or who they are. This is mis-labelling. What they are looking for is not approval, it is validation.
The need for validation is not a sign of insecurity. Indeed, it is a sign of a healthy personality.
You see, we are a social species. We have all heard that a thousand times, but seldom stop to think about what it implies. It means that we have an inborn need for connection to other people, and that like it or not, to function healthily we must rely on other people.
Our brains have developed several specialized functions that allow it to process a great deal of information quite efficiently, and to use information in new and creative ways. This, more than any other faculty, has enabled us to be such a successful species, and has transformed us from savannah-dwelling primates into city-building, cyberspace dwelling, high flying, undersea sailing, space-explorers.
The ability to accomplish these things requires a well-developed imagination. However, imagination can run away with you, lead you astray. And from cognitive science, we know that our perceptions can often be inaccurate, and that the way our brains process information frequently leads to errors and unreliable conclusions.
Of course, there is a well-known remedy for those short-comings: Reality Check. And reality check depends on having our perceptions, our feelings, our conclusions, and sometimes even our behaviour commented on by other people. They may tell us that we are wrong, or disapprove. But that doesn’t feel good. What does feel good is validation. And when something feels good, we want it repeated. So, we are subsequently more likely to act in ways that gets us that good feeling, that validation. This, in turn, motivates us toward more socially responsive behaviour.
People who repeatedly seek, and are denied validation, tend to give up seeking validation, to avoid the bad feeling that comes with disconfirmation, and to develop unhealthy personalities. The unhealthy personality rejects its need for validation, cannot stand the risk of disconfirmation, does not wish to have its view of reality checked by anyone else. They feel they should be able to stand alone. They want to emulate the lone wolf or the tiger. Sorry, wrong species. You’ll need different DNA for that.
In my work I find that many people do not have friends or family that have sufficient empathy to provide them with the validation they need, particularly where things like their emotions or sexuality are concerned. One of the most valuable and healing things that happens in therapy is when the client receives validation from the therapist.
This does NOT mean that the therapist agrees with all of the client’s choices. I have often said to clients, “Given what you have told me, it seems completely understandable that you would have reacted as you did. On reflection, do you think that your reaction has served you well?” In other words, it is entirely possible, and appropriate, to validate someone and question their choices at the same time. The validation motivates them to critically examine the appropriateness of their behaviour.
Validation does not mean agreement. Validation means acknowledgment, and a willingness to see things as the other has seen them, if only for a moment. Even if the way they have seen their situation is, on reflection, inappropriate.
So, please remember that when someone asks you for your opinion, for a reality check, or even for your attention, that they are asking for validation. You don’t have to agree, or support. You just need to see them as you’d have others see you...compassionately.
The desire for validation is not a weakness. It is a very human need, and a sign of our connectedness to the community of people around us. In other words, it is a strength.

Client Beware!

2009-02-12T22:07:00.003-05:00

(originally posted Friday, January 4, 2008)

I saw a client recently whose therapist told her she was wrong to want to leave her marriage and would be sorry if she did. On another occasion, I spoke to someone whose therapist "guaranteed" that if the client began a new relationship with another person, that relationship would end in failure. A while back I saw a fellow whose therapist told him that he was to give up his fetish; he was to put it away, never indulge in it again, never think about it again. He was told to re-orient himself toward "normal" sexual relations with a woman. For the record, his fetish, while not shared by his partner, was harmless.
These are just the latest examples I have encountered of what I feel is a misuse of the position of therapist. There have been others.
A therapist is not there to make decisions for the client. A therapist is there to help the client sort through the various factors and issues clearly, so that they can make their own decisions. They are, after all, adults. And it is they, NOT the therapist, who will have to live with the consequences of their decisions.
To my mind, what these so-called therapists are doing is unethical. It amounts to no more than using their counselling room as a bully-pulpit. Anyone coming to a therapist, opening up about matters that they would ordinarily not discuss with a stranger, invests the counsellor with a great deal of power, and a great deal of trust. Using that position to impose your own values, your own preferences upon a client is a misuse of that power, and an abuse of that trust.
If you, or anyone you know, is seeing a counsellor, therapist, psychologist, etc., and that therapist TELLS the client what decision to make, or pressures them to make a certain decision, I would advise them to LEAVE that therapist immediately, contact the therapist's professional association immediately to file a complaint, report them to the regulatory body that oversees therapists in your jurisdiction, and find yourself a therapist who takes their ethical obligations seriously.
It is an unfortunate fact that, as in every other profession there are good therapists, and not-so-good therapists. If your views, your ability to make decisions, your right to be in charge of your own life are invalidated, ignored, dismissed or over-ridden, run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.
EXPECT RESPECT!

On not having much to say.

2009-02-12T22:04:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007)

It appears that I don’t have as much to say as I initially thought I had.
Or at least not as often as I thought I would.
I feel okay about that. I remember Nietzsche once wrote that most people do not feel adequate until they have wrapped themselves up in opinions about everything. He felt that interfered with curiosity, exploration and openness to ideas.
For myself, I never wanted to be someone who blogged for the sake of blogging. I’d rather write a few blogs of well thought-out substance than add to the gigabytes of garbage and trivia already out there.
I hope that you, my dear readers, prefer quality to quantity as well.

Getting hit where it hurts.

2009-02-12T22:01:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Wednesday, July 25, 2007)

The other day I was sitting at breakfast, reading the newspaper as usual, when I saw “Dear Abby’s” column. She was answering a letter from a woman whose boyfriend kept coming up with excuses for not getting married. Abby, correctly in my opinion, chalked this up to a fear of commitment. And then she added a line that really took me aback. She said, “he is not man enough to give you what you need.”
Not man enough?
I wonder, if this woman had said her boyfriend refuses to get on an airplane because of his fear of flying, Abby would have said that he wasn’t man enough to travel with her? Or if he refused to get rid of a spider in their bathtub because of a fear of spiders, would Abby have said he wasn’t man enough to protect her? Where then, does she get off saying that his fear of commitment means he is not man enough?
We are, after all, talking of fears, of phobias, of anxieties that are not subject to rational control. When men who are commitment-phobic come to see me, they are quite ashamed of their inability to commit. They frequently mask it with bravado, hide it behind a carefree facade, but inside, they are desperately lonely and afraid. Afraid that they will never be able to have a “normal” relationship, afraid that they will die all alone.
Actually, I endorse Abby’s advice to the woman who wrote: Get out now and move on. I think she needs to do that for her own health. But there is no need to add to the shame of her boyfriend — and other commitment-phobic men — in giving that advice.
Now, if this were the sort of thing that was said by Abby alone, I’d have ignored it. However, this kind of reaction is all too common. We have a tendency to look at other people’s weaknesses, their inabilities, as character flaws. When other people do not satisfy our needs, or meet our expectations, we tend to label them deficient. And, depending on how deeply disappointed we feel, we can be quite vocal, and quite vicious in that labelling.
My experience as a counsellor has taught me this: every weakness is a wound.
Human beings are born with a deep need for attachment, for relationships with others. When people are unable to form close, stable attachments, it is because, somewhere in their development, they have had experiences that have made them fear closeness. Other weaknesses and inabilities develop in similar ways. Maybe I’ll blog about those another time.
Disparaging someone who displays a weakness is a lot like hitting someone right where it hurts. If we see someone doing that to a person with a physical wound, we would be horrified. But when people do that to someone with an emotional or developmental wound, we often see them as justified. But putting people down for what they cannot do makes as much sense as mocking someone who is physically disabled. And is about as compassionate.
If people are unable to give us what we need, we may have to distance ourselves from them in order to take care of ourselves. But there really is no reason for adding insult to injury. And it will be an injury. For while this woman will be hurt and disappointed that the relationship did not work out, her boyfriend will also be hurt, ashamed of what he perceives as his failure, and deeply afraid that he will never be able to have a lasting relationship with anyone.

When “better” is worse

2009-02-12T21:55:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Sunday, June 3, 2007)

It’s been a while since I posted. In part, that is due to my perfectionism.
One of the things about being a therapist is that it is really hard to get away with things, because your therapist is always right there watching. :)
Anyway, I have been very busy, and telling myself that I haven’t time to blog. And now that I was sitting here trying to decide what to blog on, it struck me that I haven’t been blogging because I am holding myself to a standard that says that if I blog, it has to be “such-and-such.”
I mean, think about it. It’s my blog! I could post that I am sitting here scratching my bum and wondering what to blog about, and who is to say that isn’t acceptable? It’s not like I am going for a high-traffic internet soapbox whose entries will get quoted on CNN.
And that is just how insidious perfectionism is.
We live in a culture that promotes perfectionism. We are repeatedly bombarded with injunctions to “improve” ourselves, work smarter and faster, get in shape, be more efficient, eat more healthily, get more out of life, and so on, and on, and on, and on...
What the heck ever happened to “I’m O.K., you’re O.K.?
In part, we have all been sabotaged by well-intentioned messages from previous generations (and we know what road is said to be paved with good intentions.) Messages such as, “if you are going to do anything, do the very best you can,” or “Always give 110%.”
I do it myself, as I’ve implied above. I’m frequently asked to give workshops and other presentations. I say this as a matter of fact, without brag, I have NEVER given a workshop or presentation that got anything less than glowing reviews. But I still sweat them, and try to make them better, unless I catch myself, and make myself stop.
And, of course, you can ruin something good by trying to make it better. You can over-engineer a product, over-think an idea, over-produce a movie, or piece of music, over-explain a concept (hmmm...), and overload a workshop or talk to the point where there is no room for discussion, interaction, FUN!
Recently, in Penelope Trunk’s blog, Brazen Careerist, I read her entry on Breaking the perfection habit. She makes the good point that not being a perfectionist actually allows her to set more goals for herself, because she gets more things done, instead of over-doing them. Among the comments, many were supportive, some said they could relate, but still others were derisive, calling her a corner-cutter, and scoffing that they’d never hire her.
So, there is one of the problems with trying to break free of perfectionism: the influence of others. Workaholics, the folks that are first-in and last-to-leave, tend to get rewarded for their behaviour with promotions to management positions. They account for a lot of the stress-related productivity-loss in the workplace. And many of us find ourselves in relationships of one kind or another with people who seem impossible to please, who are never satisfied.
Another type of comment came from those who wrote about “that kind of person.” Here is where I think it’s all too easy to kid ourselves. Perfectionism shows up in so many ways, and is so prevalent, that instead of focusing on “those people,” we really need to tend our own gardens.
I remember one author, writing about parenting, who said, “perfectionism is the enemy of the good.” I believe that is true. As we struggle for perfection, we often miss out on the good in life, and don’t do a good job, because we are trying so hard to be perfect.
Parenting is an especially important place to try to overcome our perfectionism. I have had young women in my practice who tell me that they did not want to be mothers because they know they could never meet the standards set by their mothers, the bar has been set so high. And I think that's sad. Other clients, who have had kids, are burning themselves out through overfunctioning, never giving themselves a break, because that's how mom did it, and they feel they need to live up to her standards, even though their circumstances are markedly different. And I think that's even sadder.
And there is a lesson there, in the way we pass perfectionist standards on, across generations, and perpetuate, not high standards, but misery. When we have a good sense of our priorities and our limitations, we are providing a much healthier role model for our children.
So, I try to urge my clients, to try to do a good job, not a better job. Stop being the enemy of the good, and you will be well on the way to breaking free of perfectionism.
And so will I.

There is no safety anywhere

2009-02-02T21:14:00.004-05:00

(originally posted Saturday, May 5, 2007)

That is something I truly believe. We spend so much of our energy trying to be safe, and trying to make things safer. We avoid taking any risks, protecting ourselves and our families. We are willing to give up so very much for safety. But safety is an illusion.
The reason I believe so is that we live in a capricious universe.
A number of years ago, a young girl of about 15 was in the stairwell of her high school, in between classes along with a large number of other students. According to witnesses, a bright, glowing ball dropped through the ceiling and down the back of her blouse. The upper half of her body burst into flame. After the fire was extinguished she was rushed to hospital where she died of third degree burns. Based on eyewitness description and expert analysis, the medical examiner decided she’d been killed by ball lightening.
I’m sure her parents, her teachers, and she felt she was perfectly safe where she was. But we cannot foresee all dangers, and I doubt ball lightening is on anyone’s radar. Many other freak accidents occur on a regular basis. My point is this: no matter how safe we think we are, there will always be dangers. So, it is important not to be inordinately cautious.
Counsellors at colleges and universities say they are seeing increasing numbers of young people who cannot deal with living away from their parents. Protected and kept from all risk until they reach 18, they drop out and return home, unable to cope with standing on their own two feet. Meanwhile, other counsellors tell of young people deliberately courting danger, taking stupid risks. They say they do it to feel alive. Background checks reveal they were forbidden from taking any risks as children.
Risk is a part of being alive. When we try to avoid all risks, what we are avoiding is real life. A fear of death is, at its core, a fear of living. Trying to maximize safety makes us miss out on many meaningful parts of life. Just as the price of never risking having your heart broken is never having dared to love, the price of trying to never experience any physical risk is never having dared to live.
Meanwhile, the pursuit of safety results in tremendous amounts of misdirected energy. In the United States, for instance, many people insist they need to be armed to protect themselves. Yet, an estimated thirty-thousand U.S. citizens are killed by gunshot every year. That is more than an average year’s fatal car accidents plus all the U.S. personnel who have died in Iraq, plus all of the people who died on 9/11. And yet, all the public focus and energy goes toward border security.
I do not mean that it is okay to be reckless or imprudent. We are well advised to take steps to minimize real danger, things like wearing seatbelts when driving, or not walking alone through a dangerous area at night. But we need to remember that there really is no way to be safe from all harm. To live our lives, we must face our fears, and accept such risks as cannot be avoided in living a full and meaningful life.
For many years I have tried to let myself be guided by these words:
The is no safety, and there is no end. The word must be heard in silence; there must be darkness to see the stars. The dance is always danced above the hollow place, above the terrible abyss. – Ursula K. LeGuin; The Farthest Shore.

Don't analyze your partner

2009-02-02T21:09:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Sunday, April 29, 2007)

So many of the couples that I see spend their time analyzing each other. Trying to figure out each other’s motives. What they are REALLY thinking. What makes them do what they do.
I always advise them to knock it off.
It doesn’t help, and usually hurts. For one thing, it is a sign of mistrust. If you don’t believe what your partner tells you, why would they reveal to you their deeper feelings? So, even if you get it right, you won't know, which makes it an exercise in futility.
Besides, social psychologists have shown, experimentally, that people usually do not know their own motives for much of what they do.
But those are practical reasons for not analyzing. There is a much more compelling reason. When you are in love, your place is in your partner’s heart, not their head.
When you are analyzing, you are not interacting with your partner, but with your own head. To have a relationship, you need to get out of your head and lead with your heart.
Instead of analyzing, communicate. Instead of trying to deduce what they are thinking, ask them.
Never say, “Oh, you probably feel this way.” Which of us likes to be told what we are thinking or feeling?
ASK: “I wonder if you feel this way?”
That will make them feel respected, and will show that you are interested in how they feel.
Unfortunately, the way our culture treats knowledge in the 21st century mitigates against this approach. “Knowledge is power,” goes the folk wisdom, and “without power, you are weak,” seems to be the corollary. So, opinions get more respect, because they feel strong. Questions, get less respect, because they seem weak. Questions make it seem like you don’t know, and need someone to tell you.
Well, I DON’T know. And I DO need people to tell me anything I want to know about them, if I want to have a relationship with them. I’ve been with my partner for almost 27 years, and I am still learning about her. That means our relationship isn’t boring. There’s still more to discover.
If having power and being strong is what you are looking for, a relationship is exactly the wrong place to do that. Maybe you should try to get into politics.

Be Here Now

2009-02-02T21:06:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Saturday, April 14, 2007)

One of the simplest, and hardest lessons to learn is this: Be Here Now.
Back in the early 70s,when I was in my late teens a friend, concerned that my head was always everywhere but where I was, gave me a book entitled, Be Here Now, by Ram Dass. The author had once been called Richard Alpert, a Harvard psychologist who worked himself into a state of great distress worrying about what would happen, what would come next, what he was going to do. Like many of his generation, he travelled to India, seeking a spiritual awakening. His gurus taught him that before he could achieve peace, he had to learn to be here now.
I internalized that message, and repeated it to myself more and more over the years. When I found myself worrying about what was going to happen, I’d remind myself, “Be Here Now.” When I’d find myself longing for people I’d once known, or something I’d once had, or something I wished to have, but didn’t have yet, I’d remind myself, “Be Here Now.”
That message is all about reality, and accepting reality, and living in the here and now. It is also about letting go of attachment to maya, illusion, things that aren’t here and now, no matter how much we may wish they were. Wrapped up in what isn’t, we forget about what is. We miss our lives, because we aren’t living them, but focusing on maybes and might-have-beens. We are like the child who is so focused on asking, “Are we there yet?” that they miss the fun of getting there.
We all do this much of the time. Stuck in traffic, we fret about being late. We rage against the stupid traffic. We curse ourselves for not taking a different road. And all this passion and effort accomplishes...what? We are still stuck in traffic. Instead of enjoying the comfort of our seat, or the music on the stereo, or the fact that we are alive, healthy, living a better life than most of humanity lives, or ever has lived, we focus instead on what isn’t (the traffic...moving).
I now pass this lesson onto clients, and am constantly reminding them, be here now. I’ll discuss a possible step toward change with a client, and they’ll ask, “But what if...?”, and I answer them, be here now.
I’ll discuss something to try with a someone I’m counselling, and they’ll fret, “But if I do as you suggest, I am worried that this or that could happen,”and I say, then you will have to decide what to do then, but it hasn’t happened yet, and may not happen. Be here now.
Or I’ll be seeing with a couple, and they’ll be working on a way to improve their relationship, and one will say, “That sounds good, but then, I wonder if maybe that will cause another problem.” I’ll tell them that they must not leap ahead to the outcome without giving themselves a chance to see if they can make things better. Be here now.
Their attachment is to their fear: “What if I fail, again?”
I am urging them to let go of their fear. To be here now.
A very similar philosophy has been popularized over the past decade or so, by Jon Kabat Zinn, under the term, “Mindfulness.” It teaches about letting go of attachment, and staying present, being rather than doing, valuing what we have, rather than longing for what we don’t have. I’ve taken mindfulness training. It is a valuable and useful model, and I pass along its practices to my clients. But, without wishing to detract anything from it, for me three words encapsulate its core message. Be here now.
The young woman who gave me that book, some 35 years ago, wasn’t a girlfriend. She was a friend. There was no occasion for the gift, no birthday or whatever. Only her caring. Her gift has helped me immeasurably, enriching my life with all of the wonders and joys and challenges and sorrows of each passing moment. And the sense of peace that living in the here and now brings has helped me to be there for my clients, helped me help them, and has given me a valuable teaching to pass along to them. The ripples of a single deed of ours spread far beyond our ability to imagine.
Thank you for the book, my friend. But thank you even more for caring.
And thank YOU, each of you who has taken the time to read this entry. And please accept from me this heartfelt gift:
Be Here Now.

Getting it Backward

2009-02-02T20:59:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Saturday, March 24, 2007)

When we need something, we often tend to talk about our partner. When our partner needs something, we often tend to talk about ourselves (not in therapy...in the situation.)

It works like this: Sue needs to know whether Bill will be coming home on time tonight. She begins by telling Bill about all the times he hasn’t come home on time, all the times he could have called and didn’t, all the times he’s made her wait, dinner getting overcooked, worrying whether he was alright. Before she’s half finished, you could boil a lobster on Bill’s forehead.

On another occasion, Sue asks Bill, "Could you please take the kids outside so I can get some work done?" Bill launches into a speech about how he watches the kids a lot, and how he has lots to do himself, and how he never seems to get any recognition for his contributions. Sue is seething, saying to herself, "You’d think I asked him for something unreasonable."

These are prime examples of how NOT to have a relationship. In the first example, Bill feels criticized, and with good reason. Sue is being critical. In the second example, Bill is being defensive. Criticism and defensiveness are two of the four toxic habits in relationships that psychologist John Gottmann has labelled "The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse" because of their catastrophic effect.

In the first example, the situation is very simple. Sue needs Bill to call home to say if he’ll be late. But instead of talking about what SHE needs, she talks about Bill, all the things HE’s done wrong, all the times HE’s let her down. No matter how you slice it: "you done me wrong, you let me down" is criticism. Question: Would Bill have gotten quite so mad if she had said, "Bill I need you to call me if you’re going to be late tonight. Can I ask you not to forget?" That is, if Sue had confined her comments to herself.

In the second example, Sue is being much more straightforward. She needs Bill to take the kids and says so. Instead of reacting to what SHE needs, he starts to talk about himself. He is defending himself when he isn’t being attacked. It may be the case that he is used to being criticized, and feels a need to pre-emptively defend himself. But Sue reacts with anger because her request is falling on deaf ears. She isn’t being heard.

Question: Would Sue have gotten quite so angry if Bill had said, "Sorry honey, I’m right in the middle of something. Can I finish up and take them out in an hour or so?" Or, "Sorry honey, I’ve got a ton of work today. Is your work something we can do together when the kids are in bed?"

Sue still isn’t getting what she wants when she wants it, but at least Bill is addressing the issue, not making it about him. If what he offers won’t do, perhaps they can negotiate a different compromise.

The cure for criticism is to ask for what you want. Talk about yourself. Sometimes negative comments MUST be made. If so, talk about the SITUATION not about your partner: "I worry when you’re not home on time. Can you call if you’ll be late?" That statement not only avoids blaming, but it communicates caring about the other.

The cure for defensiveness is listening for the other’s need, and taking responsibility for addressing it. NOT necessarily for fulfilling it. No one gets everything they ask for. But at least let them know you are aware of their need. If Bill replies to Sue, "I realize you worry. I DO tend to forget when I have a lot to do. I’ll do my best to remember," then there is no defensiveness. As long as Sue does not respond with a blame statement (e.g., "That’s what you always say,") the conversation remains civil, with each acknowledging the other as a partner, rather than a competitor.

Do you find success elusive?

2009-02-02T20:57:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Tuesday, March 20, 2007)

Often we can be thwarted in our goals by habits that are counterproductive, or by not having developed productive habits.

Today I was reading a career blog by a man named John Anthony. His entry was entitled, 9 Reasons You Are Not Successful.

The reasons he offered to explain the elusiveness of success were good ones: not thinking positively, not taking action, not setting concrete goals, ignoring the neccessity of life-long learning, not being persistent, ignoring details, not being efficient with time, being afraid to be different, not communicating effectively, failing to lead by example which, in order to do successfully, he emphasizes being honest, dependable and responsible.

Now this is a good list. I heartily endorse every single point on it, and I recommend reading it. But there are a couple of things about it that concern me.

One is the excessive zeal with which this sound, good message is pitched. It is almost as if the author lacked sufficient faith in the value of his message and feels compelled to sell it. This is particularly evident in his use of absolute terms. For example, he says that when it comes to success, "How you think is everything."

Now, I believe that how you think is very important. There is a whole field called cognitive-behavioural therapy which focuses on how the ways people think, and behave in response to their thoughts, affects their lives. It uses interventions, such as cognitive restructuring, to help people think in new and more constructive ways. But to say it is everything simply overstates the case. For starters, if that were the case, then his other eight points would be unnecessary.

He also says, "If you are not 100% sure that you are capable of becoming successful, you won’t." I frequently find that kind of all-or-nothing thinking in many of my clients, and I find it very counter-productive. Yes, people actually do stress over whether they are confident enough if they are only 85%, or 90% sure that they will succeed. I think that it is self-deceptive to shut our eyes to the possibility that we may not be able to succeed. Thinking about that possibility is not only realistic, it is helpful. If things do not turn out as we wish, if we do not, for some reason, have the ability to rise to this particular challenge, then contemplating that possibility beforehand helps us to prepare for and to cope with it.

There is a wonderful line in the movie, "Batman Begins." Young Bruce Wayne’s father tells him that the reason we fall is so that we can get back up again. I think there are very few habitually successful people who do not know how to cope with failure and get themselves past it. To do this, it is only necessary that your belief in yourself outweighs your self-doubt.

"To be successful, you can never follow the herd." Again, there’s that word "never." Surely, there are successful people who knew when it was time to hop on the bandwagon as get as much as possible out of the ride. However, if your only strategy is to follow the herd, then you risk the same fate as the lemming.

About being honest, dependable and responsible, he says, "If you do not have these 3 qualities, then nothing else matters." Well, again, why bother with the rest of the list? I think that these three qualities are extremely important, and I try my best to live them in my own life and practice. But haven’t we all known honest, dependable, responsible people who never rise above mediocrity?

I am not dissecting these points to be fussy. My reasons have to do with the other reservation I have about this article. While I approve of John Anthony’s list, I think it is flawed in the way that most of the material on this topic is flawed. While these nine habits are essential to success, they are not a formula for success. It is possible to do all nine of these, and do them well, and still not succeed. They do not guarantee a successful outcome. There are no guarantees of success.

The world is a complex place. Scientists keep discovering that it is much more complex than they ever imagined. That is the whole reason for the development of chaos theory in physics. The universe is so complex that it looks like total chaos to a human observer. Finding order in the chaos is difficult, and requires something that seems in short supply these days: an appropriate level of humility. By that I mean a recognition that sometimes even our very best is not enough, that no amount of preparation can assure the outcome we want. The world is much, much bigger than we are. That we can achieve as much success as we have, and do, is a good basis for pride.

So, we must not cease from striving for success. But the fact remains that it is still possible to do everything right, be the best that we can be, and still not get what we desire. It is important not to lose sight of that as we struggle to make improvements in our lives.

(I think I’ll work on an entry about the use of absolute terms. Thanks for the inspiration, John Anthony:)

Miracles Do Happen

2009-02-02T20:35:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Wednesday, March 14, 2007 )

Successful therapy requires a certain amount of faith. Not so much in the therapist, as in oneself, and in the possibility of change. A great deal has actually been written about that, and I won't attempt to improve on that here. But there is another sort of faith that I think must be acquired for therapeutic changes to have a lasting beneficial impact on the person's life. They must have faith in life...or in the Universe, if you prefer. They must come to see the Universe as a place to play and thrive and grow, and not as a problem they need to solve, nor a mess they need to manage.
If you come to see the Universe in that way, you get to see its miracles.
Miracles do happen, but you’ve got to open yourself to them. I don’t mean by getting religion, or meditating, or submitting to the Will of God. I mean by getting on the same page as the Universe. By conceding that you are NOT in control of the Universe, but live within its process, its flow. So, that if the Universe hands you shit, instead of bemoaning your fate, you look around for something that needs fertilizer. Later, when that thing has grown and flourished, you get to say, “Holy Shit! It was a miracle that showed up just when it did.”
To see the universe as a place to play and grow, you must be willing to play with and nourish yourself on what it has to offer.

Being "Too Nice" to Our Kids

2009-02-02T20:32:00.003-05:00

(originally posted Tuesday, March 13, 2007 )

Many parents resist being “too nice” to, or “coddling” their children. “The world is a tough place,” they reason, “and I need to prepare them for it.”
I would argue that this is terribly misguided. We best prepare our children for the tough parts of the world (rather than the monolithically “tough world”), by giving them a foundation of unconditional love, acceptance, and sense of self-worth.
So many people find it difficult to trust, to believe in the possibility of being loved without ulterior motives, or hidden agendas. They find it hard to believe in unconditional love, or unconditional positive regard, never having experienced it themselves. When they experience conditional acceptance, negativity, mistreatment, they don’t feel confident about rejecting this, and seeking something better. Because after all, the world is a tough place, and their role is to suck it up and deal with it.
However, people who were raised with a firm foundation of love and acceptance from their parent(s) have far less tolerance for mistreatment. They will seek an environment in which “tough” is not accepted as a given. They will seek out those people who believe that we can do better than “tough.”
Unconditional love does not mean spoiling your child, nor being a pushover. It means that we respect the personhood of our children, and lovingly accept them as they are, even when they aren’t doing what we want. Even when we are disciplining them.
And for those who have never experienced unconditional love, the quickest way to experience unconditional love is to GIVE it.

Emotional Literacy

2009-02-01T22:55:00.004-05:00

(originally posted Monday, March 12, 2007 )
I am often struck by the frequent observation that men are not good at expressing their feelings. The reason for my perplexity lies in this question: “In what way are men taught to express their feelings?” From infancy, girls are rewarded for being emotionally expressive, and invited to explore and comprehend their feelings. Boys are taught to “suck it up,” to “get over it,” to “be a big boy.” The underlying message is, your feelings aren’t important.
We seldom believe that we are doing this. Yet it can be shown. Researchers who have been allowed to monitor the homes of parents of newborns have found that parents take significantly longer to respond to the cries of a boy baby than to a girl baby, and invest significantly more time and effort in soothing girl infants than boy infants. Without realizing it, from birth, we expect boys to be tougher, and have fewer emotional needs, than girls.
As a result, when you ask many men about their feelings, they often don’t know how to respond. Not only don’t they have the vocabulary, they seldom have the skills to identify their feelings. They do not know what they are feeling. They’re not used to thinking about it.
I lead a therapy group for men. Part of what we teach in the group is Emotional Literacy. This is the process of identifying and articulating emotions.
It goes like this:
Step 1) Pay attention to the feeling. Often we try to distance ourselves from our feelings, or shrug them off. All too often we try to judge our feelings, trying to decide whether we should or shouldn’t feel what we are feeling. But as I wrote in a previous entry, you feel what you feel.
Step 2) Name the feeling. Identify it, give it a label that “fits.” This may take some thought, and may require you to expand your vocabulary a bit. The most basic part of this is to identify whether the feeling is good or bad, positive or negative, and how intensely you’re feeling it.
Step 3) Identify the meaning that this feeling has for you. We not only feel what we feel. We feel it for a reason. Feelings are your subconscious’s (or your body’s) way of sending you a message. What is the message here? Are you telling yourself that something isn’t right? That everything is okay. That you need something different, or more of the same? To hear the message, you need to pay attention to it and think about it.
Step 4) Decide how to act on your feeling(s).
There are, of course, a lot of dysfunctional and unhealthy ways we can act on our feelings: with violence, with hostility, by shutting down, with resentment, by numbing with distractions, drugs, or alcohol, by blaming others, by denial.
But we can also give ourselves the choice to connect with others, and with ourselves. We can take responsibility for our emotions, communicate them, and decide how and how much tom communicate. When we connect with our own emotions, we are connecting with our true selves.
So, the process is Feel, Name, Think, Act. By following this process, we become less reactive, and more authentic. We could all benefit from developing our emotional literacy more fully.
(Based in part on material from Tian Dayton, 2000. “Trauma and Addiction.”)

You Feel What you Feel

2009-02-01T22:42:00.003-05:00

(originally posted Sunday, March 11, 2007 )

There are times when I fear my clients must get tired of hearing me say this: “What you feel is what you feel.” But I keep repeating it. It is the truest and most important part of knowing oneself that I know.
So often I’ll hear people say, “I know I shouldn’t feel this way...,” or “I know I’m stupid for feeling this way...,” or “I know it’s wrong to feel this way...,”
Depending on context, I’ll either stop them right there, or bring them back to this point as soon as possible, and ask, “How do you know? Know that you shouldn’t, it’s stupid, it’s wrong? You feel what you feel, and it is okay to feel as you do.”
Feelings aren’t right or wrong, not subject to "shoulds" and "shouldn’ts," and are certainly not stupid...they simply ARE. Your feelings are the most genuine part of yourself, and by invalidating them, you are invalidating yourself.
When you invalidate yourself, you become self-critical. This leads you to act against your feelings. This is not being genuine. It is being at odds with yourself, your head warring with your heart. That is what being conflicted means. And when two parts of yourself are giving you conflicting messages, well it’s no wonder you get so confused that you seek therapy.
Rather than denying or invalidating your feelings, you need to find a way to honour them and work with them. And note that there are two steps mentioned in that statement: 1) honour your feelings, and 2) find a way to work with them. Step number two is the real work of therapy. Because while you are allowed to feel whatever you feel, it is very important to be careful about what you do regarding your feelings. That is what makes all the difference. That is where right and wrong become relevant.

Real Boats Rock

2009-02-01T12:10:00.002-05:00

(originally posted Saturday, March 10, 2007)

Often, when working with couples, I find that despite having a great deal to say to each other, they haven’t talked about the issues that bring them to therapy. They fight when they are angry about the issues. But they don’t discuss them when they are calm. And when I suggest this, they are often reluctant to do so. The idea makes them feel uneasy. They fear opening up the issue will only ruin those periods of calm.

We are taught by conventional wisdom not to rock the boat. But the only conditions under which boats don’t rock is if they’ve been beached or sunk.
If you want a relationship that’s been beached or sunk, you can have stillness, sameness. But if you want a relationship that floats merrily down the stream, or sails over the bounding main, you need to develop some sea-legs. This may involve putting up with some queasiness at first. Yet in time, you may find yourself so accustomed to the rhythms of a dynamic relationship that staying on your feet becomes almost second nature.

What is the opposite of conflict?

2009-02-01T11:56:00.004-05:00

(originally posted Friday, March 9, 2007)

The opposite of conflict is not peace. The opposite of conflict is indifference. Or withdrawal posing as indifference.
Peace is a dynamic process that encompasses conflict, and keeps it at manageable levels. Peace cannot be conflict free, for when we are at peace we are actively engaged – with the world, with each other, with ourselves. Conflict is an integral part of engagement.
To have no conflict is to be disengaged, indifferent. Not moved by the contradictions between what we want and what we get.
The question is never, can we live without conflict? It must always be, can we manage conflicts peaceably?