the great pumpkin strikes again

alter ego (noun) : what you dress up as on Halloween
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Happy Halloween!

what have you done with your hair?

passive aggressive (adjective) : a type of behavior or personality characterized by indirect resistance to the demands of others and an avoidance of direct confrontation
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Passive aggressive behavior has always been a bit difficult for me to recognize. (Much like my ability to pronounce the word, "narcissist" - for years I called the flowers, 'Paperwhites' because I couldn't say the word correctly). Neither is a coincidence, believe me.

Sure, the definition might sound simple - a non-active form of anger such as pouting, passive obstructionism, chronic lateness, asking things like, "You're not going out like that, are you?", sulking, stubbornness, and intentional procrastination when these behaviors are motivated by the intent of irritating or getting back at another person - but there are sooooo many ways to indirectly express anger, and passive aggressive people are very, very good at this behavior.

The key now for me is to recognize when I'm triggered to feel aggressive or angry, and then examine what triggered me, whether it was someone's behavior, and what about that behavior did the trick.

Not easily done when you're angry, but practice makes perfect, right?

laughter [oddly] revisited

laughter (noun) : the experience or manifestation of mirth, amusement, scorn, or joy
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In doing a bit of follow-up research on laughter therapy, I discovered that a couple of years ago, a group of health professionals at the Edinburgh Centre of Health and Wellbeing "prescribed" comedy DVDs to patients with depression. The health workers even put on a stand-up comedy show in the Edinburgh Queens Hall which was filmed and the film later handed out to GP surgeries across the country.

The aim was to give people with depression an alternative to antidepressants.

http://www.scotsman.com/news/health_staff_prescribe_comedy_for_patients_with_depression_1_1222777

Funny thing (pun intended) - there is no follow up research reported on how this all worked out for the Centre's patients.

downward spiral revisited

debilitating depression (noun) : a mood disorder characterized by one's feelings of sadness, unhappiness and misery that interfere with one's ability to engage in normal daily activities
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Just in case anyone's forgotten about this dark cloud that lurks out there for so many! Go cheer someone up today!

disregard for boundaries

boundary (noun) : the line separating you from me
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In exploring the concept of setting boundaries for myself and of the disregard for boundaries, I realized that instead of looking at other people's actions around the disregard for boundaries, I'd be better off investigating my own.

Most definitions of this concept will describe when boundaries are crossed and will give advice on 'setting boundaries' so that other people don't cross them. But I think the real issue is setting your boundaries and then making sure that YOU don't cross them. Maybe I'm just a slow learner.

Take for example when you feel taken advantage of or taken for granted or resentful when you've been generous and another person hasn't reciprocated (or even been appreciative). Damn that person, right? Wrong! This isn't a sign that that person has disregarded your boundaries - it's a sign you've disregarded your own by going overboard in doing things for someone else.

Sometimes this happens with people at work and sometimes with people you love. Loads of good intentions: the job needs to get done, the person needs help, it's easier to do it yourself, you want to satisfy a loved one's needs. Also a few not so good intentions: you are the only one who can do it correctly, you want to maintain control over the work or the person, you don't want to feel guilty or hurtful to a loved one.

So rather than blame those other people or feel sorry for yourself because 'the investment didn't pay off', it's time to recognize when you are crossing those lines you set and step back and think of what you're doing and why you're doing it before doing something that might be considered 'overboard'.

Wish me luck!

brains vs. beauty

insight (noun) : in psychiatry, one's awareness and understanding of the origins and meaning of one's attitudes, feelings, and behavior, and of one's disturbing symptoms
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An old friend once asked me if I could choose either to be a genius but very physically ugly (hideous even), or dumb-as-a-doornail but very physically beautiful, which would I choose? (You have to ignore all the politically correct talk around "what is beautiful" and go with the looks on the front covers of magazines on this one.)

Easy answer, right? Beautiful but incredibly stupid. Why? I'd be so stupid that I wouldn't know how dumb I was (and wouldn't care), and I'd be so beautiful that everything would be taken care of for me. Beauty beats brains in this world. (Especially for a woman, but that's another blog post).

And what makes it worse for the geniuses is that they know this to be true. They understand that they are brilliant and that it doesn't matter, because the beautiful stupid people will make just as much money doing much less work (if they have to work at all). The beautiful and stupid people are blissful in their ignorance and live longer, happier lives. The super smart and ugly people are tormented in their knowledge and die young, often at their own hands.

Meaning that sometimes, insight isn't much fun.

let's get naked

online (adj) : controlled by or connected to another computer or to a network; (adv) : while so connected or under computer control
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Despite the apparent connection to the computer and not an individual, online therapy has become more mainstream.
(See http://www.nytimes.com/2011/09/25/fashion/therapists-are-seeing-patients-online.html?_r=1&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=tha26)

So how does a therapist distinguish him or herself from others online? Sarah White does so by getting naked. She strips during the online session until she is nude, claiming that it helps to free inhibitions, especially sexual inhibitions.

Without debating this 24-year old's theory around stripping off her clothes so that her (predominantly middle aged male clients) 'strip down' to deeper emotions, one can only wonder whether she would have any business if she wasn't a hot young babe. I mean, do you think that world renowned sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer doing naked therapy elicits the same interest?

i gotta be me

self-esteem (noun) : one's overall evaluation or appraisal of one's own worth; it encompasses beliefs ("I am an expert at this job", "I am worthy of a raise") and emotions (triumph, pride)
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All well and good until that nasty talent assessment at work, eh? Where one is left believing, "I suck at this job", "I don't deserve a paycheck never mind a raise" and feelings of despair and shame.

That's why it's always good to get one's resume updated before the talent assessment!

And it's also good to remember that with all the myriad of talent assessments out there (from Gallup to Myers-Brigg to 9-Box), in the end it's always going to be about relationships that matter! Good enough reason to stay with that therapist, eh?

9.11 tribute to my friends and family

post-traumatic stress disorder (noun) : a severe anxiety disorder that can develop after exposure to any event that results in psychological trauma
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So many writers have tried to put context around the September 11th of ten years ago, especially those based in NYC. Each piece recalls a different experience that somehow also feels similar – a sense of the world changing, a lack of words to express the grief and horror, a deep mourning for the loss of lives and of innocence and of the ordinary. Each piece brings back the emotions of that morning and of the days and weeks and months that followed, especially for those in the city, and most especially for those who lived and worked downtown.

I was fortunate (my brother still comments on how I seem to “dodge bullets”): a business trip placed me in Santa Fe, New Mexico that morning and not at my office across the street from the north tower. A colleague who was with me interrupted my morning yoga practice to tell me that a plane had hit one of the towers next to our building. She told me to turn on the television in my hotel room.

Like so many others, I watched the events unfold from very far away. I watched people (whom I likely passed on the WTC plaza every day) jump out of the flames and fall to their deaths. I watched the second plane hit the south tower and explode. I watched, while my friends and co-workers were running out of our building and running away from the destruction. I was still watching when each of the towers collapsed.

Even now I can’t describe how I felt, sitting in a peaceful hotel room in the desert on a beautiful day, just watching. I seemed not to be myself somehow – not in my body, not living this life. I believe that I tried to telephone family and friends and colleagues, many of whom I couldn’t reach, and many who told me later that they thought I’d been killed.

The days that followed blur together in a congealed memory of a cross-country drive with a friend who was stranded in Albuquerque. I remember that we met other groups of stranded travelers in rental cars at petrol stations. I remember we commented on seeing no planes overhead. At one of our rare stops for food, we watched the news and saw that my office building had been damaged and was at risk of collapsing. One newscaster commented on all the women’s dress shoes abandoned in the debris, and I thought of my own pairs of dress shoes in my office that might be joining them.

I remember dropping the car off somewhere in New Jersey but I don’t recall how we got into the city. I remember the bad smell of my neighborhood, the dust that covered everything and clouded the air, the hundreds of flyers of missing people posted on every corner, the memorial that sprung up in the park across from my local FDNY firehouse for the dozen or so men from the unit who had died performing their jobs that morning. I remember bringing the survivors from that unit a few six packs of beer (a tradition that I continued for years until they asked me to stop because they couldn’t accept it). I remember joining the crowds along the desolate West Side Highway to cheer the volunteers going to and from the WTC site as they passed. I remember commenting to my brother that we needed dust masks as we walked to the site to see it for ourselves. I remember that I didn’t return to that site until my office building re-opened ten months later, when it looked like just another NYC construction site.

I don’t remember talking about any of this with my therapist, nor ever thanking my friends across the world who left so many messages for me that it took several days to respond (there being no FB or Twitter at the time).

Ten years later, I live further downtown, even closer to the WTC site. I walk by it daily: I’ve watched the clean up, the opening of WTC#7, all the stages of the rebuilding of WTC#1 and #4, and the construction of the memorial park. Every day I maneuver around gawking tourists crowding the sidewalks to take photos. Lately I have stopped cursing them and simply make my way to the job. Each year since 2001, my September 11th edition of The New Yorker goes “missing” in the post. This year is the first year that I didn’t curse the USPS for absconding with it. Like the tourists, perhaps they just need to feel some connection to what happened.

I’ll be out of town again this September 11th. Many of my friends who used to live in New York have moved away, and I don’t see them very much. I am rarely in touch with the colleague who was with me in Santa Fe, and I don’t often see the friend who made the mad dash back home with me across the US in the rental car. But even though I don’t have much contact with them and other friends from that time, I am thinking of them all as I recall the only feeling that I remember from that time – love.

they're baaaack

September (noun) : the month in the northern hemisphere when all the analysts who were on holiday during the month of August, return en masse to their analysands (who have now added 'separation anxiety' to their list of ailments)
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We in the Northern hemisphere know that our summer holidays are over when the last long weekend holiday (Labor Day) arrives in early September and the therapists return. The release of Cronenberg's new movie, "A Dangerous Method" about Freud and Jung in the early 1900s coincides with this return.

(And maybe the new FoxTV show, "I Hate My Teenage Daughter" set to begin just before the holiday season also is no coincidence - the number of therapy sessions increase over the holidays largely in part due to family stress.)

Some non-therapeutic factoids about September from Wikipedia (for what it's worth) -
(1) the beginning of the meteorological autumn is 1 September in the northern hemisphere and the beginning of spring in the Southern hemisphere;
(2) in Latin, septem means "seven" and septimus means "seventh" and September was the seventh month of the Roman calendar until 153 BC;
(3) September begins on the same day of the week as December every year, because there are 91 days separating September and December, which is a multiple of seven (the number of days in the week); and,
(4) no other month ends on the same day of the week as September in any year.

summertime blues

august (noun) : the typical time for one's well-deserved annual holiday away from one's therapist; see also "What About Bob?"
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Otherwise known as my current excuse for not posting this month!

cheers redux

intervention (noun) : an influencing force or act that occurs in order to modify a given state of affairs, such as a punch in the mouth of a person saying something you dislike [NOTE that this is not recommended in light of current laws against battery and the moral implications of what such an act says about you]
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To better explain a post from last week around going out and buying a drink for the alcoholic who will not get help for his/her problem, I wanted to delve into a process that usually precedes that purchase - the intervention.

Strictly speaking, an intervention can be any outside process that has the effect of modifying an individual's behavior, awareness or emotional state. There are less violent ways of creating an intervention than the aforementioned punch-in-the-mouth: you can walk away from the person speaking (or someone else can walk you away); you can take ten deep breaths (or someone can tell you to take ten deep breaths); you can talk with a therapist; you can apply the Dr Steve 'laugh it off' approach. Whatever works for you.

Sometimes a formal process of an intervention is used to break through denial on the part of a person with a serious disorder (usually drug or alcohol addiction). This represents a carefully orchestrated confrontation in which friends, family members and employers confront the person with his/her addiction and its negative impacts and consequences. The goal is to get the person to acknowledge that he/she has a problem and agree to treatment.

Alas, this goal is not often realized. Denial represents such a strong unconscious emotion and is such an effective defense mechanism that all attempts at intervention never really cause that person to acknowledge his/her problem. Worse, an intervention may result in the person acknowledging the problem but refusing the cure with more denial.

Rather than beat yourself up over the failure of this process, understanding more about denial and defense mechanisms may just help you accept the person and his/her problem.

So go buy that person a drink and be done with it.

please don't let me be misunderstood

misunderstanding [as therapy] (verb) : proof that anything can be used in psychoanalysis (for example, "marshmallows as therapy" and "kleptomania as therapy")
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The concept is funnier than anything I could say.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/m327m0t47261g273/

Farewell Harry Potter

projection (noun) : a psychological defense mechanism where one subconsciously denies one's own unacceptable thoughts, desires, feelings or motivations, and instead ascribes them to other people
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Another theory developed by Sigmund Freud and it goes something like this: Suppose you don't like someone but (for whatever reason) you've repressed this or are in denial about this (meaning that your unconscious mind doesn't allow you to feel this dislike). Instead of admitting dislike, you project your dislike to the other person and end up with the feeling that the person doesn't like you.

Mumbo jumbo, right? I mean, who can't simply say "I don't like that person"? Some of us say it all the time. (Perhaps I'm speaking for myself here.)

I've discovered that, unfortunately, when the unconscious gets involved, you really don't know what you're repressing or denying. If the feeling or desire is too unacceptable or shameful or dangerous or obscene, then it's easier to attribute it to another person and save yourself the horror of finding out that you actually have that feeling or desire. The solution I've found is to at least ask the question about whether any denial or projection is going on and be open to the idea that it may be. It may not be, but why not be sure.

And where is Harry Potter in all this? Is the bluestraveler simply riding the wave of JK Rowling's success? (Would that I could, readers, would that I could.)

I believe that the fifth book (Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix) clearly shows Harry Potter's projection of feelings and desires that he doesn't want to have onto his friends, feelings that he's ashamed of having. JK Rowling brilliantly allows Harry Potter to discover that he is having those feelings, not his friends. That awareness makes all the difference.

And by the end of the story, JK Rowling tells us that all of us have those feelings and desires - the key is only whether and how we act on them.

cheers

denial (verb) : the state of being oblivious to all the crap in one's life
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When considering the reasons to begin therapy, it's easy to believe that everyone should do it. Why should anyone live an unexamined life? Wouldn't everyone be better off knowing more about their feelings, why they have those feelings, who triggers certain feelings, etc.? Isn't it better than drinking or doing drugs or whatever in order to avoid those feelings?

Maybe.

But not everyone is that strong or able to handle all that talk therapy and the subsequent examination brings. So maybe for those folks in our lives, we should simply buy them a drink and accept them for who they are and who they're not.

if you can't lick 'em, join 'em (part 2)

joining technique (noun) : the idea that one "joins" the experience of another's misguided/misplaced emotions (ie, not an expression of their true feelings) rather than respond with a reaction to those misguided/misplaced emotions
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So what does the "joining" technique mean off the therapist's couch?

Apparently, in dealing with all those people who resist their true feelings (of shame, of inadequacy, of guilt, etc.) and instead express other feelings that are directed at you (at an unconscious attempt to make you feel ashamed, inadequate, guilty, etc.), the technique is supposed to help you deflect and NOT react to their misguided emotions. It's confusing, but if you think of your mother and the proverbial guilt trips she may provide for you, then the concept becomes clearer.

Say that your mother expresses her disappointment/frustration/anger (does it really matter?) with something you've done. Rather than say, "Get over yourself you narcissistic b*&%ch, this is about me not you" or "You're right, what was I thinking" (depending on how you currently handle her), you "join" her feelings (misguided as they may be) by simply saying, "I understand you would feel that way, and I'm sorry that happened for you." Supposedly the act of "joining" her misguided/misplaced feelings allows you not to take on the feelings that she creates by this misguidance (much in the way that the therapist does not take on the blame/guilt of the the patient).

Now I say "apparently" and "supposedly" because I actually haven't experienced this myself outside the therapist's office.

While I've moved away from self-loathing as the miserable daughter that my mother bore (and everything that feeling leads to, like bad relationships and depressions), I still react to the outrageous (misguided?) feelings that this woman expresses when we have those rarer and rarer conversations. Perhaps if I can get to a point where I don't react to her misguided/misplaced feelings and instead understand that the actual expression by the woman is one of her resistance to her own self-loathing, I may be able to have more than a quick conversation with her every few months. This idea of the "joining" technique might do the trick.

And if not, my technique of avoidance seems to be working fine for me!

if you can't lick 'em, join 'em (part 1)

joining technique (noun) : the idea that one "joins" the experience of another's misguided/misplaced emotions (ie, not an expression of their true feelings) rather than respond with a reaction to those misguided/misplaced emotions
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Apparently this technique of modern analysis (developed by Dr Hyman Spotnitz), assists the analyst in helping analysands previously thought to be beyond help. Meaning that the analyst agrees with the analysand when the individual expresses his/her feelings, even when the analysand actually is resisting his/her true feelings.

http://modernpsychoanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/clinical-techniques-4-joining.html

So when a female patient says she keeps falling for the unavailable guys and getting hurt and expresses a feeling of anger towards the guys (who don't necessarily say that they are unavailable), or even anger towards the therapist for not helping her choose better men, the therapist "joins" her feelings and agrees with her by saying things like, "I understand that you would feel that way, and I'm sorry that happened for you" instead of reacting defensively to the misguided feelings that the patient is having.

Because most likely deep down in some repressed place, the woman feels unworthy of a good guy. And there's no way that the therapist (or any friend for that matter) is going to get that woman to stop repressing simply by pointing it out or reacting to the misguided/misplace feelings that replace the repressed feeling.

Head spinning a bit? It gets worse in part 2.

Is June the new April?

June Gloom (noun) : a Southern California term for a weather pattern caused by the Catalina eddy that results in overcast skies with cool temperatures during the late spring and early summer in the mornings and afternoons; the reason that there are only 3 posts this month
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Just kidding folks!

With few exceptions, nothing but great things this month and THAT'S the reason for so few postings. Here's hoping that July and August (and we know what happens in August, don't we Bob?) are wonderful.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_About_Bob%3F

whiner vs wino - who's the better companion?

help-rejecting complainer (noun) : the frustrating individual in your life who constantly (and often needlessly) complains yet refuses to take steps to change
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A recent suggestion from a reader on this topic, and an acquaintance who seemed depressed but rejected all suggestions to get help or improve her life, prompted a little research on this type of personality. And of course, this is a "type" of personality.

After much research (and reading all the references to The Happiness Project in the blogosphere), the question comes down to whether a person is a true ‘help-rejecting complainer’ (HRC) or just someone who needed a little sympathy. The answer - it depends on the consistency of the behavior.

Those who side more with the HRCs maintain that not every complaint needs a solution offered; sometimes a person just wants someone to listen and perhaps offer a bit of sympathy. (So, they suggest, instead of saying, "maybe you should do this" say instead, “you sound really down/sad/frustrated/etc.; what are you going to do about it?”)

Most likely those folks are just whiners themselves. Because the true HRC will say that nothing will help and there’s nothing to be done about it. End Of Story.

And that’s when you agree with them and prove them right by no longer being available to listen. Unless you're a bartender and it's your job.

Joe Black's recent visits

death wish (noun) : in Freudian psychology, the desire for self-annihilation
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Two doctors' deaths are noted in the New York Times this weekend - Dr Death himself, Jack Kevorkian, who believed that people had the right to be helped to commit suicide if they were terminally ill, and Dr Leo Rangell, a noted Freudian psychoanalyst.

While neither really seemed to have a death wish per se (they died at age 83 and 97, repsectively), that seemed a more interesting opening than "obituary". Dr Rangell's obituary (which provides his and our friend Dr Freud's belief that talk therapy and not medication is the cure for most emotional issues) is worth the reprint here (from the New York Times):

'Dr. Leo Rangell, a leading psychoanalyst during the heyday of classical Freudian talk therapy in the 1960s and ’70s, and a relentless advocate for the slow approach to treating emotional distress even as antidepressants and managed care made short-term treatment the norm, died on May 28 in Los Angeles. He was 97.

His family said the cause was complications of a surgical procedure the day before at the U.C.L.A. Medical Center.
Dr. Rangell, a practicing psychoanalyst and emeritus clinical professor of psychiatry at the Los Angeles and San Francisco campuses of the University of California, remained active until the end of his life — teaching, writing for scholarly journals, seeing patients until a few days before he died and contributing articles about public affairs to The Huffington Post.

His stamina as a writer and teacher, and as a major player in the often contentious political world of the psychoanalytic profession, was legendary. He published 450 academic papers during his lifetime and nine books, the last at the age of 94. Dr. Rangell’s prominence in his field coincided with a sea change in American attitudes about psychological treatment during the late 1960s. The emerging availability of psychoactive prescription drugs, as well as competition from psychologists, social workers and even New Age practitioners, began to diminish the appeal of classic psychoanalytic treatment, with its arduous exploration of unconscious feelings in sessions two or three times a week that could span years.

In an interview with The New York Times in 1968, Dr. Rangell acknowledged the changes in the air but attributed them to a kind of cultural misunderstanding. In the can-do, post-World II American imagination, he said, psychoanalysis had become wrongly perceived as a cure-all. “The hopes of the general public exceeded all reasonable expectation,” he said. “There were hopes that a generation of children could be brought up free of problems, that psychoanalytic insight would rid the world of crime, divorce and learning problems. Now there’s a big letdown.”

Throughout the subsequent decades, as new forms of therapy continued to multiply — and managed care insurance limited mental health coverage for many people — Dr. Rangell remained an advocate for the fundamental insights laid down by Sigmund Freud at the beginning of the 20th century. “There are always fashions and fads and pendulum swings,” Dr. Rangell said, “but no explanatory system of human behavior has as yet supplanted the psychoanalytic one.”

Peter Loewenberg, a psychoanalyst and professor of the history of psychoanalysis at U.C.L.A., described Dr. Rangell as one of the profession’s “leading statesmen” and a voice for humanistic values in an age of quick-fix therapy. “Everyone today is led to believe that they will feel better if they take a pill, and that is sometimes true,” Dr. Loewenberg said. “What Leo Rangell promoted was the analytical tradition of understanding the self.”'