FIRE YOUR THERAPIST !

GOODNESS IS ALWAYS THERE

You have something in yourself that is fundamentally, basically good. It transcends the notion of good or bad. Something that is worthwhile, wholesome, and healthy exists in all of us….Such goodness is synonymous with bravery. It is always there. Whenever you see a bright and beautiful color, you are witnessing your own inherent goodness. Whenever you hear a sweet and beautiful sound, you are hearing your own basic goodness. Whenever you taste something sweet or sour, you are experiencing your own basic goodness….Things like that are always happening to you, but you have been ignoring them, thinking that they are mundane and unimportant, purely coincidences of an ordinary nature. However, it is worthwhile to take advantage of anything that happens to you that has that particular nature of goodness. You begin to realize that there is nonaggression happening all around you in your life, and you are able to feel the freshness of realizing your goodness, again and again.

From "Facing Yourself," Chapter One of SMILE AT FEAR: AWAKENING THE TRUE HEART OF BRAVERY, coming in August from Shambhala Publications.

FIRE YOUR THERAPIST!  If your therapy does not CHANGE your brain it is a failure and may actually be harming you. With effective therapy the therapist’s way of being (is she secure and sound in herself), her intentions, and her paying attention, put into motion a process that facilitates the client’s brain, neurons, and body changing. In neurologicial terms this is called re-wiring.

With every experience we have, the brain fires off a chemical reaction or electrical impulses are sent across synapses and this is what causes us to feel a certain way. For instance, cocaine "re-wires" the brain as it causes the neurons to send dopamine across the synapse, and of course, this creates a pleasurable sensation. The downfall of this is that an external drug is required to cause this sensation and may cause dependency. In the same way, without dependency, a therapeutic experience can generate very similar responses in the brain.

Here, when the client can sense that the therapist has the best of intentions to connect emotionally with him, and the therapist holds the client in her own mind and heart even in the first session, even on the phone prior to first meeting, then this changes the chemical reactions in the brain (of both participants). Neurons will start firing in a new and different way which is most beneficial to the client.

Research has shown that the therapeutic technique is not as important as what the therapist does to create a mutual relationship where the client is understood for what he is feeling, thinking, and viewing things in his life. The c;lient can also tell that the therapist cares and is being genuine.

Myths about Pornography     

1- “It is normal…everyone is doing it…it doesn’t hurt anyone”

2-      You can stop if you want to.

3-      You are a sexual deviant if you use porn

4-      It will take years to stop this behavior if you can stop at all.

Just because many people are using porn does not make it harmless. It is unhealthy to use pornography. It is harmful to you, the individual, to your family, to your spouse or partner. It is detrimental to career, family, and dignity. What is harmful is that you end up becoming reliant on fantasy and images to get through a day of boredom, anxiety, unrest, depression, and unhappiness. He cannot really live in the real world and enjoy the everyday experiences of family, work, leisure time, etc.

     Typically you cannot stop because you are addicted to a dopamine fix in your brain. You have to have a high level of erotic stimulation in order to be satisfied. Porn gives you that out in a most powerful way. The impact on the brain is comparable to heroine, in fact, it is even more lethal since you don’t need a pusher or a drug, you only need an imagination filled with erotic images or a computer screen. And it is fairly easy to conceal from others.

     You are only a sexual deviant if you rape or are violent with sex. Your porn use is more an addiction, a need for high intensity erotic stimulation. Your brain is addicted to high levels of dopamine and endorphins, and you are unable to experience pleasure with low levels of dopamine you would get from ordinary life situations with your family, friends, at work or at play.

     My Therapy helps you change from needing high levels of dopamine to being able to enjoy everyday life situations that you probably now see as boring and unpleasant. I had a client tell me recently, “I just realized over the past few days that I am now enjoying my work where before it was mundane and boring. This is much better”. And if you are dedicated and consistent with participation in Therapy I can help you in 2-12 months.

Pornography is sometimes viewed as “normal” or an “art form” or person might say: “What’s wrong with it?…I am not hurting anybody….everybody does it.” Those who promote, want to use, or can’t stop using porn, often have this perspective.

Here are some of the harmful consequences:

1.  Porn often leads to more harmful sexually addictive behavior; e.g., compulsive masturbation, fantasy, promiscuity, exhibitionism, soliciting prostitutes, pedophilia, and rape. The user tends to gravitate toward the type of porn most being observed.
2.  Porn by its very nature isolates an individual-making him more intent on satisfying selfish needs even at the expense of his marriage, family, financial stability, and career.               

3.  Porn stimulates a very powerful sexual desire followed by sexual release, most often through masturbation. Unfortunately, the release provides only momentary satisfaction, then an escalation of the behavior is required in an attempt to maintain a high level of sexual arousal.
4.  Porn has the ability to control the user where he cannot stop. The fantasies occur more frequently as the addiction progresses.
 
Of the two pleasure centers in the brain, one is high impact, thrilling pleasure stimulated by pornography, erotic fantasies, or new sexual encounters. The other is a steady, less intense pleasure realized by walking on a beach, making love with a long term partner, helping a child with homework, experiencing deep feelings (painful or pleasant) and sharing them in a significant relationship.

A man doesn’t have to act out in dramatic ways to create harm in his life. Satisfaction can be achieved in small ways and still be detrimental. A beginner gets tastes of the high impact pleasure and slowly starts to integrate fantasies, images, and desires into everyday thoughts and behaviors. Even if he does not graduate to more involvement, this infiltration will still have a negative impact.

Supermodel Christy Brinkley’s family was destroyed by pornography. She and her husband, Peter Cook, had viewed porn together and considered it harmless. Then she discovered he had been masturbating via a web cam over the internet and had an affair with his 18 yr old secretary whom he had groomed for sex since she was 15.  Bitter and vindictive, she insisted on a public divorce trial to openly display his shameful behavior. In the settlement she was awarded full custody of the children. Greater loneliness without his family would further compel him to act out dangerous, risky behavior.

Mr Cook’s unmanageable behavior obviously involved the more high impact pleasure center. As is usually the case, his desires were controlling him to where he could not get enough satisfaction. Porn can generate this type of pleasure with little effort. Once a man is hooked, he will have an extremely difficult time transitioning to healthy, more stable pleasure.

In my psychotherapy practice, couples enter therapy where the man has been caught using porn or acting out sexually. His wife is shocked, dismayed, and extremely angry about the betrayal. More often than not, they both believe it is about willpower and if he could only stay away from the computer, the prostitutes, or the porn, everything would be okay. As with Mr Cook, the sexual behavior is the symptom not the problem.

This is not like a substance addiction where a user can avoid a drink, a pusher or a drug. This compulsive behavior is lethal since a man cannot simply avoid erotic thoughts. Especially in our culture, provocative images are everywhere. The underlying problem is that he is addicted to high intensity pleasure and does not know how to experience pleasure from everyday, ordinary life situations; such as, spending quality time with his family or having intimate talks and sharing with his wife. Frequently, neither partner knows how to enjoy these simple pleasures, therefore, it is not just the man who needs therapy. The marriage needs an overhaul where both have to address emotional issues.

I inform the couple, “this unfortunate, painful event can be used to open your eyes and turn your marriage around…you can end up with a wonderful marriage, one you never knew was possible. Yes, your husband betrayed you and he is responsible to repair the damage done to you…and his behavior is indicative of a person who is unhappy, bored, anxious, even depressed in his marriage. He did not know what to do to address his unhappiness. If he is that unhappy that he is willing to endanger his marriage, then more than likely you also are in an unsatisfying marriage….at some point you both will look back on this and the porn will no longer be an issue…in fact you will even be grateful that he got caught.”

The couple needs to learn to replace the depression, loneliness, anxiety and the high intensity pleasure with the everyday pleasures of delight and wonder for their marriage and their family life.

A later blog will further discuss this reparation.

This post is in response to Michael Formica’s article on Psychology Today Blog where he speaks of the recent developments of brain science and neuroplasticity; namely, "Dendritic and synaptic connections have been demonstrated to rewire themselves via experience, and, most intriguingly, through mind training. The implications of these findings for neuroscience, cognitive science and applied psychology are staggering."

And Michael while I do not question your contention that mind training plays a most intriguing role in rewiring the brain, I have found that experiences in meditation (mindfulness development) combined with relational exchanges where emotional resonance occurs makes for the most substantial changes in the brain. And I must say that I am less knowledgeable about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If you could fill me in on CBT and its significance, I would be indebted to you.

My experience lies mostly in the emotional realms where both client and therapist experience deep, core emotions and then share that experience in the session and both "feel felt" by the other. This emotional resonance occurs when emotional states converge and the two people share in the experience of the other. This also occurs when we read of a tragic war death and are moved to emotion by what we imagine the family must be experiencing.

In Daniel Siegel’s most recent work, The Mindful Brain, he speaks, like Michael does, to the significance of meditation and mindfulness. He also goes further and speaks to the concept of Mirror Neurons. And Sue Johnson in Hold Me Tight identifies these "nerve cells that activate in sympathy and in the same brain location as the nerve cells of the person whose actions we are watching. ..These neurons help us sense what others intend and help us connect with what the other feels…Scientists suggest that the more active a person’s mirror neuron system, the stronger his or her empathy will be."

This empathy is what Buddhists refer to as Compassion. Meditating alone in a cave or in isolation can bring about changes in our caring or compassion for others.And the resonance along with the mindfulness allows for a greater capacity for Compassion.

I won’t take the time right now to discuss Oxytocin but this is  the neurotransmitter which is probably most relevant in the rewiring and the changes that take place in the brain.

In our just released book on Amazon, In a Cradle of Words: Intimate Encounters in Relational Therapy, my co-author Laurel Vogel reveals her personal story mostly around her father’s death and there is an interplay between her pain, the creation of new neural pathways using Relational Therapy, and her healing.

 David at www.goodtherapy.org/custom/blog/2008/06/10/joined-at-the-hip/  directed me to

www.morethansound.net/store/index.php  I listened to the dialogue between these two creative scientists and I liked the part about the 90 year old woman who never learned to talk about feelings or learned the language of the mind. I was moved by the event where she was sad that she did not get the part in the play and was punished for being sad. I was reminded of being in my own family and being punished or humiliated for having feelings. I did not learn the language of the mind either and what this really comes down to is not learning the language of the heart.And it is my own pain that allows me to connect with my clients pain and allowed me to connect with this 90 yr old woman in Dr Siegel’s story.

The pain of the loneliness for the child in these situations is much worse than the disappointment of not getting the acting part. This lack of connection, the pain from this, the rise of cortisol levels cause damage to the brain, the limbic brain and creates neural pathways which lead one to certain, unhealthy behaviors like what John Gottman calls the four horseman- withdrawal, stonewalling, contempt, and blaming.

And the healing process occurs when the individual learns to create new neural pathways as the plasticity of the brain allows this to occur. This new science, Interpersonal Neurobiology, is a wondrous discovery. There are also suggestions that we can not only change neurons but genes as well. All of this happens as a result of connecting with core emotions and establishing the emotional connection with others.

www.relationalcounselingseattle.com

Christopher Diggins

A post from www.goodtherapy.org  touched on another of my favorite topics- the balance between intimacy with another and intimacy or connection within oneself. We must be able to connect internally or innerpersonally and externally or interpersonally. The post eloquently addresses what is problematic in relationships, merging and dependency, and it is common for these to occur since growing and connecting in relationships can only occur in relationships. We cannot do it alone. We must find that balance between inner and outer connection. How do we do that?

http://www.goodtherapy.org/custom/blog/category/articles-relationships/

My experience as a therapist and as a relationship partner tells me that we have to be able to use this "problematic" behavior as the catalyst or as the pathway to develop a solidity in ourselves and from this place be able to be present in our own experience and then be present for our partner as they go through their emotional healing experiences.

The reason for dependency and merging is our emotional past stored in "implicit" memory. We must be able to identify and separate our unhealthy dependency from early life relationships and not "act it out" in current adult situations since the relationship partner cannot fix this dependency. The other can help us heal this dependency from our past by helping us be with and heal the pain. This is a slippery road.

Hedy Schleifer’s online presentation a few weeks ago on goodtherapy.org was extremely helpful in this endeavor. She spoke of "crossing the bridge" where one person crosses into the others world to be with their experience and to set ones own experience aside temporarily. This is not supporting depency or merging and it is extremely helpful for both partners to be in one’s world and get to know this experience. Most people have never had the benfit of this connection.

In Interpersonal Neurobiology this connection is seen as having an impact on the limbic brain of both participants where new neural pathways are created as well as oxytocin being generated. The more oxytocin the more potential for connection and the more connection the more oxytocin. This process of healing is based on these neurological changes which can bring about permanent changes not only to neurons but also to genetic makeup as well. (See Daniel Siegel)

I found this blog,  http://thetherapyandcounselingblog.blogspot.com/  and just had to comment using trackback and since I am a beginner I have no idea if this will work out but here I go!  Ms Lisa Brookes Kift blogs about both boundaries and effectiveness in therapy- two of my favorite topics. In fact, I have just co-authored a book, In A Cradle of Words: Intimate Encounters in Relational Therapy. I am commenting as both a therapist and a client. I personally believe the best  therapists must be able to be hardworking clients as well. There is a situation I describe where I am in therapy and my therapist makes a mistake. Here it is:

“With my own therapist I had a session where I got to some important feelings, and I felt really touched by how he had helped me, but when I told him how touched I felt, he just looked away. He didn’t seem to hear or see how much gratitude I was feeling or see the significance of it, because he was already going on to the next thing…I was really angry.”…. “He started to talk about something else, but I stopped him, and I told him that I had been feeling all this appreciation for him, but that he had ignored me…First, there was a look of shock on his face. He said something like, ‘Oh, I can see you have feelings about this. I didn’t realize that I did that. Tell me, what are you feeling?’

It was really important to me that he didn’t get defensive and discount the anger—that made me feel safe. He showed caring and concern when he asked me to express my anger to him….I said something like, ‘I’m angry that you didn’t see how appreciative I was, and I felt really sad and hurt that you were ignoring my feelings….once I expressed the sadness and the hurt to him, I realized that I was feeling the same painful feelings that I had felt with my dad—anything I felt was unimportant to him. I would either be criticized or ignored. And the two feelings, the one with my therapist, and the one for my father, were identical. My        therapist acknowledged the painful feelings I had in response to his mistake. If he had not made that mistake, I would not, at least in that session, have worked through those feelings connected to my
father.”

Our book is a memoir and this Relational Affective Therapy. Hopefully it will be released in early July.

Best

Christopher Diggins, M.A.

 Tell Me You Love Me is an intriguing TV series. I am writing this initial blog because I am fascinated to see a program where some of the intricacies of therapy and couples struggles are demonstrated to the public as interesting stories. I will post my opinions and ideas about what occurs in the characters lives and how the therapist addresses the issues with her interventions and approach to the therapy. Hopefully, both therapists and psychologically, interested others and even those with questions concerning their own relationship issues will comment. 

The therapist, Dr May Foster, takes a CBT- Cognitive Behavioral Approach where the client(s) thoughts, feelings and behaviors are addressed in the therapy. Dr Foster makes interventions to both evoke feelings and to change unhealthy behavior. Intentionally, this blog, at least among the therapists, will be provocative, interactive (respectful of course) and a venue to freely discuss Dr Foster’s intentions and our mutual responses to them. My hope is that this will be entertaining, stimulating, and enjoyable. My partner, Laurel Vogel, also a therapist, and I enjoy watching the program and then discussing what is happening for the clients, what is Dr Foster approach, and what we would have done differently. Please join us.

My therapeutic approach is quite unique and different from CBT and Dr Foster. Relational Affective Therapy focuses primarily on the expression of core emotions and the emotional engagement between the therapy participants. This includes the therapist and individual, the therapist and the couple, and the exchange of emotions between the couple. See my website, www.relationalcounselingseattle.com 

DEPRESSION/ ANXIETY   4-21-08

Depression and anxiety are greatly misunderstood  and mistreated. By misunderstood, I mean that traditional medicine, the typical doctor, psychologist or practitioner, views depression as a disease/illness that can be treated with medicine and/or cognitive/behavioral therapy. I am not here to dispute that some sufferers may benefit from these treatments, but I will say that they are not getting to the cause or the reasons for the depression or anxiety.

The symptoms of depression and anxiety are the result of unconscious (normally) emotional pain. Depression, often described as a physical sensation of a void or emptiness in the chest. Anxiety is experienced as a sense of muscular tension, nervousness, jitteriness, panic, or like jumping out of the skin. In this writing I am going to address anxiety and will speak to depression a little later although they are actually two sides of the same coin.

Anxiety is often related to fear where a person is under stress, fearful of outcome, or threatened in some way. Fight or flight mechanism is engaged, heart rate elevates, blood pressure goes up, adrenaline kicks in- all of this because a check was bounced or the garbage was not put out or gas prices are rising. The limbic brain, the emotional center, is engaged and “implicit” memory, unconscious emotional memory from past events, maybe even childhood, is triggered. So it is not these stressors which are causing the body to react as if a threat is occurring but the emotions stored in the limbic memory which are causing the fight or flight response.

Emotional pain is what is stored in the limbic brain which causes the anxiety, and if therapy does not address this pain and only works with thoughts, surface feelings, and behavior then the anxiety will always be present. It may be medicated and reduced but it will be like an underground river, impacting the person’s life, possibly debilitating but at least causing distress when a stressor occurs.

A later blog will focus on healing this anxiety. Responses are welcomed.