Tag: Therapy

Three steps forward…

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Two steps back, is still progress right? At least movement.

In the therapy process we are looking for movement, doesn’t matter which direction. Movement shows struggle, shows vitality, shows emotional effort, even if in the seemingly negative direction.

Aristotle defines life as movement between contraries. If we are all composed of many parts, many contradictions, the movement of our attention and energy signals our soul in motion, alive and becoming. Like a designed work of art…

...”For a house is generated from objects which exist not in composition but are divided in a certain way, and likewise for a statue or anything that has been shaped from shapelessness; and what results in each of these are order in one case and composition in the other.

If, then, all this is true, everything that is generated or destroyed is so from or to a contrary or an intermediate. As for the intermediate, they are composed of contraries; the other colors, for example, are composed of white and black. Thus every thing which is generated by nature is a contrary or composed of contraries.”

from Aristotle’s Physics, Book A

Therapists will recognize this as resonant with Internal Family Systems, grief and loss integration, Dialectical Behavior Therapy and other systems that are premised on behavior change by integrating internal opposition.

In working with a client, we as counselors or therapists are guiding the recognition and acceptance of conflicting emotions. Here is my question for my fellow counselors out there….

How do you as a therapist integrate a conflicting sense of relief and shame when a client goes inpatient?

As you can see, I am trying to intellectualize and hide in my happy place of philosophy. This is still difficult for me to digest. If feel like I go three steps forward and two steps back in these situations. I have to remind myself that movement is good regardless of direction.

What are your strategies in addition to talking with peers and supervisors for support as I am now?

Thank you for reading the long prelude to the question.

Hope you are fully alive with contradictions,

Hungryphil

Therapist for Artists, not Art Therapist

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I studied architecture. I studied philosophy. As my studies of social work comes to an end, I find myself thinking about how I can combine my skills. I wonder if there are any models out there. If there are and you are reading this please comment below. For now this is how I feel….

“I don’t know who you are. I don’t know what you want. If you are looking for meaning I can tell you I don’t have answers, but what I do have are a very particular set of skills. Skills I have acquired over a very long career. Skills that make me a guide for people like you. If you find your own meaning now that’ll be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you, but if you don’t, I will look for you, I will find you and I will find meaning with you.”
Hungryphil ( modified from Liam Neeson, Taken)

My husband and I came up with this parallel. We thought it was funny for those of you familiar with the movie reference. I do have a very particular set of skills that verges on irrelevance. Yet, one that can be very useful to people who confront the seemingly meaningless everyday.

Why therapist for artists you might ask? What makes them different?

It is not so much that artists are different but they may be, in so many ways, avant-gardes of emotional ownership and expression. Artists struggle and transform their pain into material expression. They own and give trauma, life. Some can’t bear the process and fall. Others manage to integrate and map their maze of reality, dream, nightmare, hyper-reality, delusion and ecstasy. Some rely so much on their pain as a creative source that they rather remain depressed, enraged or erratic in order to feed their work. To be a therapist for artists, one has to respect the creative power of dark emotions. It is never about eliminating such powerful feelings. Rather the goal is to harness the power. Without this ability, either the artist dies or the art dies.

I admire the audacity of artists. I fear their invitation and vulnerability to dark emotions. I love art and self-expression. I love self-awareness more. As a therapist for artist, I need to “see” not only the artist as client but also their artwork as client. In essence, my therapeutic commitment must be to both: artist and artwork.

Only with this dedication would an artist trust me.

Show me your art, show me your heart, so I can help you see yourself at the center of all the chaos.

I’m sending this wish, to serve artists, out to the universe. May it guide me on this beautiful warm February Sunday and beyond.

It has been cold and dark for so long. I am so glad to see the sun and see the completion of another piece to my particular skill set.

With love,

Hungryphil

The Nourishing Opposite

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Yogic psychology says there’s more. Encountering these stuck and painful knots is the path. This perspective teaches us that we aren’t stuck, we’re only identifying with less satisfying “things.” One remedy, Patanjali tells us, is to look for the opposite (II:33). I think of it as the Nourishing Opposite (Fay, 2010) not just any opposite, but something that will actually invite more nourishment into our experience. Pain, then, is a process of pointing out the way to remember and return ourselves to our true nature. In integrating opposites, holding these opposites simultaneously (Bryant, 2009; Miller, 2014), a third higher synthesis occurs (Patanjali 2.48), in which suffering is eased.

Fay, Deirdre. Attachment-Based Yoga & Meditation for Trauma Recovery: Simple, Safe, and Effective Practices for Therapy (pp. 16-17). W. W. Norton & Company. Kindle Edition.

The prescription to nourish the opposite when feeling stuck is the same process as identifying presenting issues and corresponding client goals. In seeking the opposite of what pains us, we seek joy. Treatment plans that include objectives, interventions and modalities chart the path of the nourishing opposite. Together we seek ease for the anxious, joy for the grieving, elevation for the depressed, reality for the delusional, focus for the inattentive. Therapy invites the nourishing opposite.

What pains you? What is this pain’s opposite? Can you invite the nourishing opposite?

As a therapist-intern, I find myself sometimes wobbly having absorbed client anxieties, fears, angers, sadness and confusion. Why am I angry? Is this anger even mine? Is this pain mine? Am I mirroring client feelings? Or maybe my feelings are responding, like a song?

I have been feeling irritable this weekend. What is the nourishing opposite? Feeling agreeable? How do I feel agreeable? Accept what is, accept that for now I’m feeling irritable, sensitive, overwhelmed, cranky without shame.

Writing helps me. Sharing with you nourishes me. I already feel a bit more relaxed, allowing myself to feel irritable and agreeable at the same time.

Now you try it. What feeling is bothering you? What is the opposite? How do you invite the nourishing opposite? How can you sit with the contradiction?

This takes practice, doesn’t it…

May we return to our own nature by listening to our discomfort (over and over again),

Hungryphil

Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

Nourish Hope

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Chronic anxiety is a crisis of hope. It is the fear of a failed future. Depression is a crisis of hope. It is the belief in a meaningless future. Delusion, addiction, obsession — these are all the mind’s desperate and compulsive attempts at generating hope one neurotic tic or obsessive craving at a time.

The avoidance of hopelessness — that is, the construction of hope — then becomes our mind’s primary project. All meaning, everything we understand about ourselves and the world, is constructed for the purpose of maintaining hope. Therefore, hope is the only thing any of us willingly dies for. Hope is what we believe to be greater than ourselves. Without it, we believe we are nothing.

Mark Manson from Everything is F*cked: A Book About Hope

How can we nourish hope within when we have lost, been disappointed, hurt or rejected? This is what the same author suggests,

Don’t hope.

Don’t despair either.

In fact don’t deign to believe you know anything. It’s that assumption of knowing with such blind, fervent, emotional certainty that gets us into these kinds of pickles in the first place.

Don’t hope for better. Just be better.

Be something better. Be more compassionate, more resilient, more humble, more disciplined.

– Mark Manson from Everything is F*cked: A Book about Hope

Wishing the few of you reading this a holiday season being better,

Hungryphil

Guiding self-awareness

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Can self-awareness be taught? Yes and no. I prefer the idea that self-awareness can be guided, safe guarded. As someone guiding efforts of increased self-awareness and self-actualization, I see my role as holding space and sometimes modeling, similar to teaching a yoga class. The sequence I call out is not the experience. Parallel to every call to move into a pose is a reminder to stay within one’s own body and breath. Therapy and counseling is no different. Leading someone to an emotional or physical point that hurts, stretches, aches requires careful awareness in order to avoid additional pain and injury. There is a balance between guiding one to their edge and protecting their choice to grow, move, change, ache, beyond hurt.

Therapists are always weighing the balance between forming a trusting alliance and getting to the real work so the patient doesn’t have to continue suffering. From the outset, we move both slowly and quickly, slowing the content down, speeding up the relationship, planting seeds strategically along the way. As in nature, if you plant the seeds too early, they won’t sprout. If you plant too late, they might make progress, but you’ve missed the most fertile ground. If you plant at just the right time, though, they’ll soak up the nutrients and grow. Our work is an intricate dance between support and confrontation.

Gottlieb, Lori. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed . HMH Books. Kindle Edition.

This dance requires emotional muscle memory and compassion that comes from having attempted personal variations on the same dance of confronting life’s challenges. There is personal investment for both therapist/social worker and client. It is a much deeper conversation beyond assessment and diagnosis that demands full participation by both. The creation of meaning demands this attention and presence. I cannot be present in your life, if I am not present in my own. Therapist and patient, Lori Gottlieb describes this struggle to move beyond the easy and removed task of giving advice towards self-actualization as a person and as a therapist.

… in the sense that therapy is a profession you learn by doing—not just the work of being a therapist, but also the work of being a patient. It’s a dual apprenticeship, which is why there’s a saying that therapists can take their patients only as far as they’ve gone in their own inner lives. (There’s much debate about this idea—like my colleagues, I’ve seen patients reach heights I can only aspire to. But still, it’s no surprise that as I heal inside, I’m also becoming more adept at healing others.)

Gottlieb, Lori. Maybe You Should Talk to Someone: A Therapist, HER Therapist, and Our Lives Revealed . HMH Books. Kindle Edition.

Healing must be collective. Learning how to balance self-aware ease in myself as a precondition to guide others is a formidable task. Deep breaths and try again.

May we heal from life together,

Hungryphil

Catch a glimpse of yourself in the space around you
Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Production

Self-Aware Ease

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It is not surprising that I’m drawn to Existentialist Psychotherapy in the lineage of Rollo May, Irvin Yalom, Vicktor Frankl practicing the philosophies of Kierkagaard, Nietzsche, Heidegger, Sartre, Husserl and others. The basic premise as Irvin Yalom explains below is the humble defense of the ancient belief that self-awareness leads to a meaningful fulfilling life even if the process of self-discovery is painful:

Wisdom does not lead to madness, nor denial to sanity: the confrontation with the givens of existence is painful but ultimately healing. Good therapeutic work is always coupled with reality testing and the search for personal enlightenment; the therapist who decides that certain aspects of reality and truth are to be eschewed is on treacherous ground.

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 190-192). Kindle Edition.

In working and volunteering at different contexts such as hospice, domestic violence shelter, food pantries, community health, grief and loss counseling, my role and mission is simple: To invite self-aware ease in myself and in others with me. Sometimes that means asking gentle guiding questions, sometimes breathing, sometimes guiding meditations, sometimes just sitting in silence and making space for self-inquiry.

Self-inquiry is painful, as Plato describes in the Republic, the released prisoner is blinded and stumbling, heading out of the cave. The turning towards truth or meaning is daunting and frightening. The journey inward can only be sustained by moments of ease. Self-awareness rests on self-care. This is the balance I’m trying to learn and practice. Each person sitting with me teaches me a different version.

The existential position emphasizes a different kind of basic conflict: neither a conflict with suppressed instinctual strivings nor one with internalized significant adults, but instead a conflict that flows from the individual’s confrontation with the givens of existence. And I mean by “givens” of existence certain ultimate concerns, certain intrinsic properties ties that are a part, and an inescapable part, of the human being’s existence in the world.

Irvin D. Yalom. Existential Psychotherapy (Kindle Locations 107-109). Kindle Edition.

I hope to practice the humility of the Existentialist perspective: I can never know your experience, your suffering, your confrontation with life, however, I can guide you to map your internal valleys and mountains, joys and sorrows, to know yourself . I am able to do so because I walk with self-aware ease despite the sufferings of my own life. This of course leads to concerns of therapeutic transference. That exploration will have to wait for another post.

Whether you are a counselor, therapist, teacher, creative, what is your mission? Why is it your mission? How do you confront the givens of existence: death, isolation, freedom or meaninglessness?

Bring self-aware ease. Seems so simple, yet it is a life’s work. Mine.

Wishing you self-aware ease,

Hungryphil

Photography by Nate Dale – New Adventure Productions