Psychoblog

What pokies teach us about true love

cal@whychange.com.au — 2012-01-17T14:09:02+11:00

The current tiff over mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines demonstrates again the lengths that humans will go to win the object of their desire. What none of the parties are acknowledging is that pokies can actually teach us something essential about human nature.

Psychologists have known for decades that people tend to work hardest in situations where the rewards are only sporadic. Whether it's Sydney-Hobart amateur yachtsmen throwing up in the rain (no names mentioned here), or Wile. E. Coyote biting the Road Runner's dust over and over again, many of us are willing to be punished repeatedly, in our attempt to reach the reward we crave. What's more, the greater the punishment is, the greater the longing becomes. Treat 'em mean, keep 'em keen, as the saying goes. Poker machines contain programming that is an attempt to distil this principle into a machine; Punters know they will win, they just don't know how many pushes of the button it will take. The solution is obvious: push it as often as you can, for as long as you can keep it up. If you haven't won yet, try harder. This intermittent reinforcement is the same type of reward system used by researchers, when they want to get their laboratory rats to display addictive behaviour. It is also an essential ingredient in the madness of true love.

"I had an affair. And because of this affair I had lost everything and ended up going bankrupt." Thus spoke a Canadian poker machine user on the ABC's 7:30 program last week. So the phrase, 'It's better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all,' isn't really true if the object of your love only rewards you intermittently. But it's not just the pokies. From teenagers playing hard-to-get, to South Sydney NRL supporters, intermittent reward keeps people endlessly on the hook everywhere. Corporations exploit the phenomenon to generate consumer interest that borders on obsession, simply by keeping people guessing. Apple's secrecy around product release dates leaves people feeling a deep, powerful longing, that turns into overwhelming joy when the latest iThing does finally come onto the market. The next day, rumours begin abut when iThing version two-point-oh will arrive. And so it goes.

Nick Xenophon and Andrew Wilkie's proposed mandatory pre-commitment for poker machines is a little like applying the principle of 'true love waits'. We could place an obstacle between the punter and his beloved, but is it possible that, faced with a machine playing 'hard-to-get', a committed punter will just work harder than ever? Meanwhile, the same intermittent reward effect seems to be driving the pollies ever onward in pursuit of their own political objectives. "It's not dead in the water," Mr Wilkie told reporters today. Time will tell if his efforts, against increasing resistance, will win him the jackpot.

Getting defensive

cal@whychange.com.au — 2012-01-05T10:26:14+11:00

Life is painful.

This would be apparent to anyone who witnessed your emergence into the world. Healthy newborns clench their fists, curl their toes, and scream in shock and agony. Life is a gift, the receipt of which none of us is consulted about in advance.

We each find our own individual ways of managing the pain of being alive. As we grow, and the circumstances of our life change, our methods of coping are continually challenged. Sometimes, we encounter a situation for which we have no established coping strategy. This may happen within minutes of being born, or not until much, much later.

To begin with, newborns have no way of coping with even the most basic challenges of being alive; They are not able to eat, talk, move independently, or even make sense of the signals their eyes, ears, nose, mouth and other body parts send to their brain. They must therefore rely on a parent to cope for them, to make sense of life on their behalf, to digest it and filter it, in order that they might be able to at least take some small parts of it in.

When you were in the womb, your mother breathed the air, ate the food, expelled waste and moved about in the world, filtering what she took in and providing sustenance to you via the umbilical, whilst human-shielding you from the outside world. Once you left the womb, much of this parental 'filtering' continued; your mother continued to provide food for you; changed full nappies for clean ones, and so on.

As well as managing bodily functions, the mother also manages sensations for the baby. If the baby is hungry, or tired, or cold, or something else, she will simply cry out; The mother must make sense of this discomfort and attend to the baby's emotional need. If there is no mother, for any reason, even for a brief period, then the baby is left exposed to the reality of life, 'unfiltered'. If the baby is confused, there is no-one to make sense of things for it. If the baby is hungry, no-one to feed it. If the baby is tired, she must somehow find sleep herself.

Of course, the parent cannot be there all the time. There will inevitably be at least a brief period in which the baby must experience life 'unfiltered'. What, then, does an infant do at these times? The answer is that they erect some sort of shield, or 'defence' to the onslaught of reality. The simplest form of defence might be to simply deny what their senses are telling them. The hunger pain they feel is ignored, and thereby, no longer painful. This works for a while, but cannot work forever. Some defences are more helpful than others. As the child grows, new, more complex forms of defence become possible.

As childhood progresses, children are forced to cope with more and more of life's painful realities; they must manage their own bowel movements, for example. As the tasks of living life become more complex, so too do the defences to life that must sometimes be erected in order to manage the pain of it. A pre-schooler, faced with a room full of unfamiliar faces, may retreat into the comfort of his own intellect, looking away from the curious eyes, downward instead in intense concentration on a lego tower. A toddler, struggling to manage overwhelming and confusing feelings triggered by an absent mother, may become frantically busy, rushing from one activity to another, never allowing the external world to settle, keeping her attention ever-moving, and thereby forever postponing the moment when those dreadful internal feelings must be somehow felt.

When an adult is presented with an experience that is overwhelming, they may be 'traumatised' by it. It is reasonable to consider that trauma can in fact occur at any age, and in fact someone like an infant, with so few defences of their own, might actually be even more suceptible to trauma than an adult. This is indeed the case, although infants and children, with their remarkable capacity to learn and adapt to new situations, seem to recover better from traumas than older adults do.

What, then, is mental illness?

Mental illness, in all its forms, might occur when one or more of an individual's defences is malfunctioning in some way. It may be that the efforts a person is going to, to cope with the pain of reality, are themselves causing needless pain. For example, a person who repeatedly checks and re-checks all the power switches in his house, is doing this to manage a deeper sense of dread, or some otherwise overwhelming notion about himself, or the world. He is arguably suffering more than necessary from the effort of maintaining this defence - more than he would suffer if he had to confront the deeper dread he is afraid to feel.

Or consider a person who manages the pain of loneliness by overeating; he may only be substituting one pain for another delayed-onset form of suffering. Or a person who finds herself simply overcome with sadness; she may have reached a point where some of her defences have ceased to protect her adequately from one or more of the painful truths of life. A man full of barely-contained rage may become violent when he encounters a situation with which he cannot cope. One way or another, the problem relates to reality, and the way in which the person copes with it.

So the next time you are accused of being 'defensive', take it as a compliment. Imagine where you would be without your defences?

Getting it wrong

cal@whychange.com.au — 2011-12-05T13:47:10+11:00

I was lucky enough to be invited to a wedding a couple of weeks ago. As is usually the case, it was a very romantic occasion. There were beautiful people, in a beautiful place, saying beautiful things to one another. I was surprised and moved by the single reading given during the ceremony. I have taken the liberty of reproducing it here:

“We're all seeking that special person who is right for us. But if you've been through enough relationships, you begin to suspect there's no right person, just different flavors of wrong. Why is this? Because you yourself are wrong in some way, and you seek out partners who are wrong in some complementary way. But it takes a lot of living to grow fully into your own wrongness. And it isn't until you finally run up against your deepest demons, your unsolvable problems--the ones that make you truly who you are--that you’re ready to find a lifelong mate. Only then do you finally know what you're looking for. You're looking for the wrong person. But not just any wrong person: the right wrong person--someone you lovingly gaze upon and think, "This is the problem I want to have."

This was written by Andrew Boyd, who, it turns out, has some equally wise things to say about a number of other areas of life as well.

I work with individuals, and with couples. In every case, there is a relationship. One of the most common difficulties people seem to encounter is to do with their expectations - their hopes - for the future of their relationships. What many people do not realize is that a relationship is no different to a person: it is riddled with flaws. As with a person, the trick is not to erase or repair the flaws in a relationship, but simply to know them, and find some ways to live with them. A healthy, strong relationship is one in which problems are well known, and accepted by both parties. You can see why this takes a long time to establish, regardless of how ‘compatible’ the two people might be. This is true not only for marriages, but also for other relationships, such as friendships, business partnerships, or even the relationship between a person and their therapist. The key here is not that everything is known, but that at least all the problems are known and accepted. This acceptance does not need to be gracious; it may suffice that one person feels able to say to the other, “I can’t live with your golf obsession any more,” in order to then be able to keep living with it after all. The key here is not neatness, harmony, or even honesty; it is acceptance.

So if you are questioning a relationship, be it a marriage, a friendship, or something else, ask not what’s going wrong between you and the other person; ask yourself what are going to do with the wrongness that will always be there.

The Blanket

cal@whychange.com.au — 2011-10-13T14:58:52+11:00

I’m not going to write about an obesity epidemic. I would, however, like to make a couple of observations about weight loss, based on my experiences working with people who are trying to do it. All of their quotes and comments below have been shared anonymously and with permission.

cautionary note: please do not take the following video seriously...

Fact: Most people who try to lose weight, regardless of the method, are unsuccessful. I once researched the issue as part of a doctoral thesis on people’s unsuccessful attempts to change. It turns out, there is a surprisingly large amount of research data on this topic. If you are interested in the area, and would like to read more, you are welcome to contact me. Basically, it seems that most people around the world who set out to lose weight, or in fact try to change anything about themselves, have very little success. There are many explanations for relapse. But consider this: you are the way you are for good reasons. It’s going to be difficult to change the way you are, without at least an equally good set of reasons.

It is just not realistic to declare that you want to lose weight, and then simply begin a weight loss endeavour on that basis. Do you know why you put the weight on in the first place? Or, to put it another way: Why don’t you want to lose weight?

For some people who are overweight, their body shape and other lifestyle elements (such as overeating or inactivity) seem to provide an important, and much needed, source of comfort. I once heard someone refer to their extra weight as ‘my blanket’. For some people, it seems that their excess weight, and the process of eating, makes it easier to hide from other people. Easier to hide the parts that others might reject, such as anger, or neediness, or vulnerability. It may also enable them to feel more protected from other people’s intrusion, their curiosity, or their judgement. So: In order to successfully lose weight, that individual must first work out how they are going to manage their relationships without the comfort and security of their ‘blanket’.

Of course, for many people who are overweight, their weight itself is no comfort at all; it is a source of real and ongoing anguish. By implying that excess weight allows a person to avoid uncomfortable things, I do not wish to deny the equally uncomfortable aspects of being overweight. I also do not deny that there are important medical and physiological factors leading to obesity. However, I believe that anyone setting out to lose weight weight ignores the psychological aspect of their predicament at their peril. There is an even greater source of anguish than being overweight, and to discover it, you only need to talk to someone who has made a transition from being overweight to being in a lower weight range, for example as a result of bariatric surgery. One individual I spoke to referred to it as going “out of the frying pan and into the fire”. For example, she described how she began to lose her temper more often, and in fact had a permanent falling out with her best friend after their first ever fight, which took place after she had lost 25% of her body weight. Glad of her new body shape though she was, she nevertheless longed for (and eventually had to grieve for) the earlier time, when she was better able to hide her feelings and didn’t have to be “so honest” about them with other people. She felt “mortified” that her thoughts and feelings were “spilling out”. She felt like a burden, and feared that all the people who were closest to her, would now be driven away.

Not losing weight is disappointing. But maybe losing it is even more challenging. I admire anyone who sets out to change something about themself, regardless of their degree of eventual success. If you are thinking about changing something about yourself, make sure that you give some thought to the reasons why the change hasn’t occurred already. If you aren’t sure, than you may find changing harder than you expect. I do wish you the best of luck.

Four benefits of therapy, before you've even begun

cal@whychange.com.au — 2011-08-11T13:05:08+10:00

You may have wondered whether therapy is really helpful to those who do it. According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics, around 45% of people will experience a mental health disorder at some point in their lifetime. About half of these people will experience a mental illness that lasts for more than 12 months. It appears that around 30% of people with a mental illness seek some form of treatment, usually from their GP (this includes medication). Around ten percent of people go to see a psychologist or other therapist.

So what’s the benefit of doing therapy? Answers to this question are many and varied, as it turns out. While it is easy to establish the benefit of a medication such as an antidepressant, it is much trickier to work out if, and how, therapy helps people to recover from their difficulties. If you’re interested in the research about the effectiveness of therapy, you can check out a good review here. There is an excellent group of researchers who continue to investigate the issue here.

In the meantime I thought I’d list four ways that therapy helps you, before you even attend your first session:

1. The waiting-list effect.
It turns out that just knowing that help is on the way is helpful. The anticipation of therapy can probably improve your symptoms by around 10%, when we average out the different results of research in this area. I did my own research in this area, using people in Sydney who were waiting for group therapy for anxiety, and found that some individuals’ symptoms improved as much as 40% while they were on the program’s waiting list. Just the act of making an appointment can lead to an improvement of your situation.

2. A space is created.
Many people with depression, anxiety, or other psychological difficulties lead cluttered lives, which allow them little time for reflection on how they are feeling. It makes sense to try to avoid focussing on your problems if they seem overwhelming, insurmountable, or just make you feel down or defective. The process of seeking help of some sort for your difficulties forces you to confront the issue. It is only when you do this that you will discover two truths. The first is: most problems are much smaller when you look at them up close. The second is: the person who is in the best position to make changes in your life is you. When you start to tackle your problem front-on, the issue begins to shrink, and you also begin to grapple with the issue yourself (rather than leaving it up to others). By the time therapy starts, this process is well underway.

3. Others get involved.
Therapy is a confidential process, but many people starting out will put the word out somewhere that they are ‘seeking help’ at some point along the way. Often, this involves contacting a close or trusted friend to seek advice or a recommendation. Even if you don’t intend it, this process brings you a little closer to the people around you, and subtly changes the relationships you have, in a healthier direction. The experience of sharing your experience with others, even if it’s just the practice receptionist, is itself therapeutic.

4. Re-evaluation begins.
Therapy takes time, costs money, and is inherently emotionally challenging. In order to begin the process, you have to re-evaluate your priorities, and put your own feelings and needs ahead of other issues that might have otherwise taken precedence. It seems logical that putting your own personal needs first is a healthy thing to do. Getting yourself into a financial and practical position to undertake therapy has the added benefit of getting your own needs higher up on the list of what’s really important.

When it does get underway, good therapy takes some of these initial changes, and expands on them, bringing you more and more into a space where you understand yourself and those around you better, take better care of yourself, and feel more hopeful about the things taking place in your life. This process also continues after therapy sessions have finished. It’s important to understand that you are the main mechanism of change in the therapy process. The therapist’s job is to do him or herself out of a job. It’s your life, after all.

The 3BL in relationships

cal@whychange.com.au — 2011-06-26T14:05:39+10:00

It’s the end of the financial year, so many businesses are checking their financial waistline. With the Global financial crisis, many companies had to tighten their belts to make ends meet financially. Since 2007, larger organizations have been interested in balancing their books in more ways than one. The ‘3BL’ is short for the ‘triple bottom line’. No, it’s not about people with three backsides... You’ll probably know that the financial bottom line is healthy if the company has made more money from its customers than it has had to spend earning their business. The other two bottom lines are ‘people’ and ‘planet’. So: a company watching the 3BL is not just interested in whether it has made a monetary profit, but also whether it has taken care of staff and the people in the local community (people), as well as having a small or neutral impact on the environment (planet).

It’s a nice idea. Companies should be thinking about people and the planet as well as making a profit, evaluating their ‘bottom line’ across three areas, not just one.

The 3BL also happens to be a clever way of thinking about the state of your relationship. You can use three areas to judge whether things are going well between you and the other person. The three areas are:

1. Behaviour. This is a pretty obvious one. Are you being kind, polite and thoughtful enough in your dealings with this other person? Are they behaving to you in a good enough way as well? If you break promises or forget their birthday, this might send your behavioural account with them into the red.

2. Communication. This is also one that most people are mindful of most of the time. Are you keeping in touch enough with the other person? Do you tell them what’s happening? Are you honest enough with each other, or are there too many secrets? If the two of you are communicating well enough with one another, this should keep your interpersonal budget in the black.

3. Emotion. This is the one most people struggle with. The best way to work out how the emotional balance is going in the relationship is: How fully do you share your feelings with the other person? And in return, how confidently can you judge the way the other person is feeling, when you are with them? If the other person feels like a bit of a ‘closed book’ to you, then they may not be sharing their feelings with you for some reason. There are usually two reasons for this: one, because the other person already feels shut out emotionally by you, and so is reluctant to share with you when you don’t share with them (not enough emotion). The other possibility is that they are overwhelmed by the emotion you are sharing with them, and so are turning away from you in order to manage this. Ask yourself: how much of your feelings do you share with your partner?

A healthy relationship, be it a friendship, a marriage, a business partnership, or a parent/child relationship, needs a healthy exchange in all three areas: healthy behaviours, healthy communication, and healthy emotion. As a rule of thumb, there needs to be a good enough quantity of ‘helpful’ behaviour (eg. remembering birthdays); there needs to be a good enough quantity of helpful communication (keeping in touch), and there needs to be a good enough degree of emotional honesty (this is how I feel) in order for a relationship to be a healthy one.

If you are starting to wonder about the quality of your relationship, try checking in each of these three areas. The one that most people have trouble with is the emotional one. Are you sharing how you feel with your partner, and are they doing the same with you? If not, why not?

Often, in arguments, there is confusion of one ‘3BL’ area with another. She says: “You just don’t care about me!” (Emotional bottom line), then he says: “I do! I work a forty-hour week and fold the laundry when I get home!” (Behavioural bottom line). So she responds: “But we never talk these days,” (communication bottom line). He says: “well, when’s the last time we made love?” (Behavioural bottom line). If you are having trouble working things out with your partner, first work out, for each of the three areas in turn (behaviour, communication, emotion), where the problems are. Then make sure you deal with each of them separately. As soon as you start mixing them up, you’re likely to end up in an argument with no resolution.

It’s not fair if one person in the relationship is balancing the books all the time. If you feel this way, maybe you should tell the other person.

A Strange Situation

cal@whychange.com.au — 2011-03-16T18:34:45+11:00

There are essentially two opposing forces at work inside us all. The first is a drive for exploration, adventure, growth, change. If you ever find yourself feeling bored or trapped, this drive is probably at work. The second driving force is for safety, comfort, stability, reassurance. Homesickness is probably the simplest manifestation of this.

There is perhaps a fantasy that we all share, of being able to satisfy both of these forces at the same time: the phrase “and they lived happily ever after” might reflect this. In reality, most of us spend much of our lives striving to manage an uneasy balance between security and exploration. The branch of Psychological research and practice that is most concerned with this balance is called “Attachment Theory.”

Attachment theory seems to be undergoing a bit of a renaissance at the moment, particularly in a growing movement generally referred to as ‘Attachment Parenting’; you can read a bit more about attachment parenting here and here. Basically, the idea is that you should parent your kids in a way that ensures they have access to you when they need it. In my experience, nearly all parents aspire to a strong bond with their children, but some struggle to achieve it. Thinking about the security of your attachment to your kids can help you form a bond with your kids, but can equally confront you with the nature of your own attachments to your parents, partner or other people over the years. If you watch the video above, consider what feelings are stirred up inside you when the child’s mother leaves the room?

Similarly, most people who seek therapy for depression or anxiety want to form a good working relationship with their therapist, but this does not always occur. In the ‘strange situation’ clip above, I think the second phase of the test, when the mother is gone and the stranger comes in to try to comfort the child, is a simple but powerful model of what happens when someone begins therapy for the first time. Most people I’ve encountered find at least the start of therapy to be very difficult. When you think about that in terms of attachment, it makes perfect sense. Therapy is truly a strange situation. If you can persevere with it, then you and the therapist will be able to work together, using your emotional responses to the process to understand your own attachments, and how other connections in your life may or may not be secure.

Detox your mind

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-12-29T16:01:07+11:00

As the ‘silly season’ winds to a close, you may be thinking about a ‘detox’ after the annual festivities. I can’t offer much advice in the area of liver function, but thought instead I’d offer some suggestions about how to help your mind recover from the tumult of the season.

The whole point of a detox seems to be to spend a short period of time being ‘healthy’, so as to make up for a period of time spent doing ‘unhealthy’ things. So, here are seven ideas for detoxing your mind in the next week or two before work kicks back in:

1. Preserve some old habits. This may be at odds with the idea of taking a break, but it’s a fact that many people find christmas/new year the most stressful time of year, and this is mainly for one reason: all your routines grind to a halt. You will find yourself doing things that you only ever do once a year, and not doing familiar things that you were doing daily, before christmas arrived. Even the absence of simple routines such as getting up and dressed in the morning, or driving the familiar route to work, can add to the mental effort of the holidays. An easy way to reduce this effort is to do what you can to preserve some of these routines. If you find yourself waking up too early or late, or feeling aimless at times, then try going through some of your normal morning rituals, as if you were going to work. You might even (shock, horror!) spend an hour going over your work diary, or reading e-mails, or making mental contact with work in some other way. Such small touchstones can in fact soothe your mind, by re-establishing contact with familiar things.

2. Reduce your caffeine intake. If you drink coffee, switch to decaf for a few days. If you drink tea, switch to herbal (green tea has a lot of caffeine in it too). If you drink coke or energy drinks, you might not be interested in detox regimes in the first place! The benefit of cutting back on caffeine is simply that it will help you relax. You’ll probably find it easier to get to sleep in the evening as well. The effect of caffeine on your brain is a bit like the effect of putting more wood on a raging fire; it will generate more heat and energy, but then you will find that a bigger, hotter fire also keeps needing more wood to maintain its high output. Since you’re not at work, why not slow the process down a little?

3. Balance solo time with family time. One way or another, Christmas time is family time, and the hurly-burly of interactions can take a mental toll. If you’re on holidays with family, make sure you give yourself an hour or two away from everyone, or just with your partner, doing something simple and enjoyable. This will make the family time all the more fun once you return.
On the other hand, If you are missing family this year, then make some time to connect with them, even if it isn’t in person. Write, call, visit a familiar spot. If you get an invitation from someone else around you to do something, accept it, even if it’s not your usual crowd.

4. Use your brain. Human beings are stimulated by productivity. Being on holidays often means the complete cessation of productive activity, and this can eventually lead to boredom or restlessness. By all means, veg out on the sofa or in a banana lounge for most of the time, but do your brain a favour and give it something interesting or stimulating to do once in a while. Cook a nice meal; play a game of cards; do a crossword puzzle or soduku; or for something more social, find a game to play with others.

5. Commune with nature. Most people, when asked to think of a safe or soothing place, think of a nature setting. Some think of a lake, or ocean; some think of a forest or park. What do you think of? Perhaps this is the once time of year that you have the space and time to actually go somewhere like that for an hour or two. This doesn’t have to involve camping or long trips; it can be as simple as taking a rug to a park and lying down under a tree to listen to the birds.

6. Reduce your retail intake. There are bargains galore after christmas, but if you sat down on christmas eve and wrote a list of essential items you needed to buy, how many things would there be on it? Before you dive into the sales, write a shopping list, and then confine your shopping expeditions to those things only. Retail outlets are, by their nature, designed to create conflict in your mind and undermine your capacity to plan and make calm decisions. Shop in moderation.

7. Sleep. The best way to catch up on lost sleep is to go to bed earlier. If you’re planning to stay up on New Years’ Eve, see if you can plan one or more early nights prior, so you’ll be at your partying best on the night. If you have trouble sleeping, there are some tips for getting to sleep here.

I hope you’ve had a rewarding christmas, and wish you creativity, comfort and safety in the new year.

Who gets the burnt chop?

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-12-09T09:32:18+11:00

A man calls his mother. “Mom, and how are you."
" Not too good," says the mother. "I've been very weak."
The son says, "Why are you so weak?"
She says, "Because, I haven't eaten in 38 days."
" Mama," the man says, "that's terrible. Why haven't you eaten in 38 days?"
The mother answers, "Because I didn't want my mouth to be filled with food if you should call."

The family is sitting down to dinner: lamb chops, an Australian favourite. Mum has cooked the dinner, and arrives at the table with a tray full of meat. Who does she give the best cut of meat to? Dad, of course. Other bits are served out to others at the table. There’s a burnt chop at the bottom of the pile. This, it almost goes without saying, ends up on mum’s plate. The kids look at mum’s burnt self-offering, and experience a dilemma created by masochism: How do I, in good conscience, eat my nice chop that mum has slaved over, while mum has to chew on her crappy one? To sit by and let her suffer makes me callous, unloving. How to resolve this? Perhaps I try to swap my portion with mum’s... and mum immediately puts up such a fight for her piece of carbon that eventually everyone gives up, with the impression that she’d rather die than have anyone else endure her terrible cooking.

This masochistic dynamic plays out in families and relationships everywhere. For some, it can make family dinner something to dread. For others, it may over time develop into an entrenched feeling of guilt; how can I enjoy my life if there are people suffering out there? In some cases, this guilt-ridden person may go on to become a mother herself, and in turn fight tooth and nail to be left with the burnt chop from the bottom of the pile.

It is a common stereotype of the masochist that they are self-sacrificing martyrs, who want the other person to have pleasure at their expense. The term ‘masochist’ was first coined in 1883 by German neurologist Richard von Krafft-Ebing, from the name of Leopold von Sacher-Masoch, the Austrian novelist who enshrined his submissive sexuality in a novella titled "Venus in Furs." The relationship depicted in this story involves a man asking his lover to make him her slave. Initially she is excited at this game, but eventually finds it tiresome. Early psychoanalytic theorists such as Jacques Lacan insisted that, rather than masochists wanting the pleasure to be in the other, they instead need the other to feel anxious on the masochist’s behalf. The masochist’s anxiety is about not being able to be a free, independent and autonomous human being who can have desires fulfilled. Rather than act to achieve this independence, for example by having someone else cook dinner for them, they hold onto the trapped part of themselves, and project their anxiety into another person - the person who is forced to eat their well-made dinner and watch mother eat her overcooked one.

You may be reading this, and thinking about christmas day get-togethers. Will there be any masochistic moments on christmas day? After all, ‘tis better to give than to receive! So, is there a good strategy to use when dealing with masochists? Well, yes and no. Ultimately, someone has to eat the burnt chop. But maybe someone, perhaps dad, can step in and establish a fairer division of pleasure and pain. One way this fairer deal might be found is by saying “look, I’ll have the burnt chop tonight, and tomorrow night it’s your turn.” That way everybody gets to have a fair share of pleasure and pain.

The Value of Nothing

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-10-20T16:02:42+11:00

Nothing is worth something. How much space do you have to do nothing? “...when I have some free time”, is a phrase people seem to use when talking about things they could do, would like to do, usually for themselves. Strange how many of us talk about wanting more ‘free time’, but may baulk at taking opportunities for free time when they do occur. The idea of free time seems to have become more and more threatened (or perhaps more threatening?) over the years. If you catch the train or bus, you may have noticed a shift over the past decade or so: fewer and fewer people are just sitting, not texting, or listening to music, or reading the paper or a book, or talking to someone on the phone, or writing a blog, or preparing a powerpoint presentation, etc. Imagine the anxiety that might occur if electronic devices were unavailable for a set period of time? Maybe the scariest sort of free time is enforced free time.

There is something of an art to doing nothing. Occasionally, in therapy, someone may decide they wish to come less often, or may be forced to come less often for some external reason. Many people in this situation find it helpful to preserve their regular therapy time, even if they do not come in for a session, and go somewhere quiet, such as a park or cafe, and simply sit and reflect for a period of time.

Perhaps the greatest challenge you might face when going about doing nothing, is to manage your expectations about what will occur when you do. When you do nothing, be ready for something to happen. In fact, if you allow it to, you will find that a LOT will happen. You will become aware of thoughts, sights, sounds, feelings, and other phenomena that you were blissfully unaware of before you stopped your own activity. Consider: it’s psychological that the less you do, the more the environment around you will seem to do.

So approach nothing with caution: as soon as you stop, many other things will start.

Fire and Ice

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-10-05T11:19:41+11:00

A relationship – any relationship – has two ingredients. The challenge you face in making any of your relationships work is to find a workable balance of these two ingredients. The problem: these two elements are fundamentally incompatible. What are these two things? The first is your boundaries. The second is your connection.

Without boundaries, the relationship is not safe. Your partner/friend/lover/parent/significant other/business associate/child/etc may have the best intentions, but they can still do you inadvertent emotional harm if they don’t realize they’re intruding on your territory. They may mean the world to you, but that makes it all the more heartbreaking if you ever feel they have taken advantage of you. They may be exciting company, but do you feel safe to be yourself around them? All relationships need clear boundaries. Boundaries do put some distance between you and the other person, but it’s essential to know where you stand.

Meanwhile, your connection to the other is your reason to be involved at all. Your partner may be respectful and considerate; you may feel safe to be yourself with them; but there’s not much reason to spend time with someone if they don’t mean anything to you. They may be kind and thoughtful, but are they someone you feel like making plans with? What’s the point of spending time with someone if it doesn’t ever feel good to be with them?

It can feel hypocritical to set a boundary with someone you care about. Phrases such as “if you loved me, you’d…” or “love is blind” reflect the struggle to reconcile the need for connection with the need for boundaries. A simple but well-known example of this struggle: failure to use condoms during casual sex. The condom is there to keep both partners safe from harm, but the problem occurs when they must break the connection – ‘kill the moment’ – in order to put it on. The conflict between strong boundaries and strong passions is found in every relationship: for the parent who can’t bear to say no to the child they love; for the teenager who breaks up with his girlfriend via text message; for the dog owner who doesn’t want to bag up their pooch’s poo.

Strong, healthy relationships need passion. They also, to an equal extent, need boundaries. Maintaining adequate levels of both can make being in a relationship hard work, at times. Perhaps this is what a ‘labour of love’ is.

Twitter therapy

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-09-28T14:49:08+10:00

Here’s a simple, cost-effective way to improve your mental health: get online. All it takes is an internet-connected computer or phone, and an e-mail account.

There are many, many benefits of social media that outweigh the potential costs and reported risks. In fact there are some myths about sites such as Twitter and Facebook that deter many people — people who would otherwise greatly benefit from increased social activity. Some of these myths are:

1. The internet is not safe.
Okay, this is not really a myth. Accessing the internet, like, well, just about everything else in life, involves a degree of risk of harm. The point here is: What, exactly, are the risks, and are they a reason to steer clear of the internet? If you’re brave enough to go to the internet for ideas, then you are welcome to see some thoughts about the issues here and here. My opinion is that the internet is a largely unregulated community. Any such community will
contain dangerous people, as well as helpful people. The challenge for anyone entering that community is simply how to tell the difference. In my personal experience, the best advice on how to spot and avoid danger as a newcomer to any community can best be found from members of that community. So if there’s something about the internet you don’t understand or don’t trust, do some research.

2. I can’t control my privacy on Facebook.
A lot of work has been done to make it easier to keep your facebook presence private. It is now a lot easier to do this. However the easiest and best way to protect yourself and your online presence is to assume that everything you post online is visible to the entire world. Some other problems people have had with facebook privacy are covered in a humorous way in the youtube video above. As with any new activity, it’s important to learn how it’s done before you launch in. In my view, a little effort is worth it if it means you get to make new social connections safely. Limiting your exposure online also does not limit your ability to benefit from it (see point 4 below).

3. It’s too complicated.
Sorry, but it’s not. In behavioural terms, posting a letter is less complicated than getting on Facebook or Twitter, or even writing a blog. It’s not complicated - it’s just unfamiliar. If you take some time to familiarise yourself with it, you will find it is more straightforward than it looked from the outside.

4. I don’t have anything to put up.
This is probably the single biggest misunderstanding about social media (in fact about any social interaction): you don’t have to contribute in order to participate. Evan Williams, CEO of Twitter, recently tweeted that, “You don’t need to tweet to get value from Twitter any more than you need to make a web page to use the web.” This is another reason why the concerns about privacy are exaggerated, in my view. If you’re concerned about personal information being made available on the web, then don’t put that information there. You can still go online and see what others are doing, and even comment on it if you like (you can comment on this blog too, if you scroll to the bottom of this page).

5. I don’t have the time.
One of the most attractive things about online interaction is how brief it can be. Twitter, which is probably the briefest form of social media, limits all communications or ‘tweets’ to 140 characters. Tweeting a thought can take around ten seconds. How many other things do you do through the day that take less than ten seconds?

Now, some benefits:

1. It broadens and deepens your social sphere.
The whole purpose of social media sites is to facilitate interpersonal communication. Most people who join Facebook find that they resume contact with at least one friend they haven’t seen or spoken to for ages. You may be surprised to find out how many people you know (or knew) are already online, and how willing to be contacted they are.

2. It keeps you humble.
The internet is now interactive; you will find that there are hundreds of places to visit and people to follow. Many people who start exploring the internet discover how many other people there are out there, who are just like them. This can be both reassuring, and challenging; can you put your opinions out there as well?

3. It might actually help you feel better.
In the midst of angst about the ills of new technology, new research is begging to show how social media might just be helping people feel more connected. My experience has been that, rather than internet use causing social withdrawal, it tends to be the other way around; internet chat can be an important first step for people emerging from depression, who are beginning to look for initial way to reach out and make new connections. The internet isn’t a cure for loneliness, but in my opinion it’s a valuable tool for people who are seeking to reduce their sense of isolation.

4. It can help build interpersonal confidence.
Online interactions are far ‘safer’ emotionally than face-to-face meeting. You have far more control over the process; you can end it when you want, you can edit your communications as you go — you can even delete Facebook posts that you have changed your mind about. This is a shy person’s dream: you can chat to your heart’s content without even having to make eye contact! As confidence builds, so too can the depth and breadth of your online presence. This can eventually become a stepping stone to ‘traditional’ social contact, such as meeting face-to-face over a meal, for example. By then, much of the hard work is done...

5. It can assist in a process of personal development.
Socializing online, as with any kind of lasting relationship, is a bit like smoking: the reason you begin is different to the reason you continue. Your first few tweets or blog entries may feel a little like, well, talking to yourself. After all, you’re usually the only one in the room when it’s happening. The thing to remember is, regardless of who reads your posts, writing things down is far from pointless. Fundamentally, personal development is a process of self-reflection. If you ever want to see this process in action, visit a blogging site such as this one and read back through a blogger’s posts. Compare the early posts with the recent ones, and you might begin to get a sense of how that person has used the space to develop their ideas and hone their sense of themself. Early blogs often have a hesitant, brittle quality, while more seasoned blogs seem to issue from a clearer, more integrated voice. Blogging is free and unlimited. Why not try it?

Finally, some tips to get started.

Get a twitter account, and start following people. You don’t need to tweet anything, just see what others are saying. Try visiting my twitter page and see who I’m following; you might like to follow some of these people too. When you join Twitter you will regularly be given suggestions of people to follow. Who knows, some of them might start to follow you back!
Get on Facebook and have a look at some of the groups you can join, such as this one. If you want to preserve your anonymity, create a new e-mail account for yourself on gmail.
If you’re feeling confident and want to start getting ideas out there, start a blog. You can use your gmail account to do it here.

Julia Gillard has kids after all...

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-07-14T19:44:32+10:00

Julia Gillard has now fulfilled her political destiny, to take the custodianship of the nation from a long line of men.

All of the PM’s before her were dads. Many, most notably Bob Hawke, expressed their regret at the way their careers took them away from their children. The most common reason for retiring from politics seems to be ‘to spend more time with my family’. Well, Julia has around 20 million of us in her care now. How does it feel? More to the point, with the nation being an electoral ‘tinderbox’ this week, it’s worth asking: What kind of mother will Julia turn out to be? Will she be an attachment parent, a helicopter mum, or Australia’s super-nanny? Are we in for some ‘tough love’, now that she’s overseeing the kitchen cabinet?

If Julia turns out to be a follower of the growing number of ‘Attachment parents’ out there, the model will be one of close involvement, frequent reassurance, and a focus on the relationship above all else. Attachment parents co-sleep with their kids, breast-feed for as long as possible, and make themselves unconditionally available to their charges. This ‘community consultation’ approach may turn out to be somewhat labour-intensive for Ms. Gillard, particularly when there are so many sibling rivalries going on at once. Perhaps last week’s problems with asylum-seeker policy showed that being all things to all of your kids is a tough ask for any parent. You simply can’t please everyone all the same time.

Perhaps Julia will be more of a disciplinarian. Kevin Rudd certainly knows what it feels like to be put on the naughty step by his own family. Julia’s magnanimous comment when announcing her cabinet reshuffle was that Kevin would be “most welcome” back to the front bench if Labour wins government at the upcoming election. ‘Until you’re ready to play nice, Kevin, you just need to sit on that bench there and have a think about your behaviour.’ I wonder if this model is more what Magda Szubanski had in mind when she likened Julia to a Catholic School Nun.

Having Julia Gillard as my new mum also casts some of my peers in a different light. Commentators such as Miranda Devine and Andrew Bolt feel even more like older siblings, sniping about mum: “The woman I’ve praised for warmth and directness has started her reign with the same cold deceit with which Dad, er, I mean, Rudd ended his,” Bolt wrote last week. Devine, the next day: “Gillard's speech (about asylum seeker policy) was astonishingly patronizing…” It feels like we’re witnessing some teenage rebellion – ‘I’m going out with Tony tonight, and you can’t stop me!’

This week our parent’s focus will move on to climate change policy. It will be interesting to see who we end up feeling safer with. Perhaps, on a purely psychological level, this election will be about choosing a guardian. Who would you prefer to be adopted by: Julia Gillard or Tony Abbott? Remember, either way, there’s always Uncle Bob Brown at the market garden down the street…

Johnny Cash and Oedipal issues

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-07-07T15:59:32+10:00

The Man in Black famously performed his song ‘A Boy Named Sue’ in front of prisoners at San Quentin Prison, and in the clip below you can hear the inmates sharing his delight as he sings of the confrontation between a man and his father.

I don’t know if it was intended, but Cash has elegantly captured the oedipal tensions that exist between a young man and his father, in a song that becomes a roller-coaster of emotions from sadness, to anger, to hatred, to love, and even redemption.

Cash sings:
“My daddy left home when I was three
And he didn't leave much to ma and me
Just this old guitar and an empty bottle of booze.
Now, I don't blame him cause he run and hid
But the meanest thing that he ever did
Was before he left, he went and named me ‘Sue.’”

‘Sue’ receives four legacies from his father: a relationship with his mother, the guitar, a drinking habit, and a girl’s name. Note that Sue uses the same guitar to tell his story. The boy idolizes his father: “I don’t blame him ‘cause he run and hid”, but struggles with the legacy his father has left him.

Cash continues:
“Well, he must o' thought that is quite a joke
And it got a lot of laughs from a' lots of folk,
It seems I had to fight my whole life through...”

Perhaps if Sue’s father had stuck around he mightn’t have had to keep fighting quite as long. The fight Sue is waiting for is the only one that matters: the one with his father...

“Well, I grew up quick and I grew up mean,
My fist got hard and my wits got keen,
I'd roam from town to town to hide my shame.
But I made a vow to the moon and stars
That I'd search the honky-tonks and bars
And kill that man who gave me that awful name. “

Finally, the boy named Sue confronts his nemesis, in a father-son scenario that is played out in songs (such as Cat’s in the Cradle), books, movies (such as Star Wars), plays (such as Hamlet) and popular culture (such as media coverage of the Packer family) across the ages:

“Well, it was Gatlinburg in mid-July
And I just hit town and my throat was dry,
I thought I'd stop and have myself a brew.
At an old saloon on a street of mud (Oedipal issues are a dirty business!),
There at a table, dealing stud (Stud, huh?),
Sat the dirty, mangy dog that named me "Sue."

Sue only has a simple memory of his father, cobbled together from stories, the memories of a toddler, and most of all from the mixed emotions of rage and longing he’s carried through his life until this moment, when reality is finally confronted:

“Well, I knew that snake was my own sweet dad
From a worn-out picture that my mother'd had,
And I knew that scar on his cheek and his evil eye.
He was big and bent and gray and old (Not the man of Sue’s memories!),
And I looked at him and my blood ran cold
And I said: "My name is 'Sue!' How do you do!
Now you’re gonna die!!"

A moment of pure oedipal fantasy. The young man feels he can resolve his oedipal tensions of love, rage and longing about his father by killing the object of these tensions.

“Well, I hit him hard right between the eyes
And he went down, but to my surprise,
He come up with a knife and cut off a piece of my ear.
But I busted a chair right across his teeth
And we crashed through the wall and into the street
Kicking and a' gouging in the mud and the blood and the beer (was it good for you, Sue?).

“I tell ya, I've fought tougher men
But I really can't remember when,
He kicked like a mule and he bit like a crocodile.
I heard him laugh and then I heard him cuss,
He went for his gun and I pulled mine first,
He stood there lookin' at me and I saw him smile.”

Sue sees his father looking at him with love for the first time. It is, in my opinion, part of a father’s job to show his son the respect of engaging him in battle. It’s not about who wins the fight, it’s about the fact that the fight can even occur in the first place. If the father and son can work through the battle in this way, then the son is ultimately the winner, as Sue’s father explains:

“And he said: "Son, this world is rough
And if a man's gonna make it, he's gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn't be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you'd have to get tough or die
And it's the name that helped to make you strong."

(Listen to the roar of emotion from the prison inmates in the room.)

“He said: "Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn't blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I'm the son-of-a-bitch that named you “Sue.”

The conflict between father and son has enabled them both to reconcile the feelings of love (‘you just fought one hell of a fight’) and hate (‘kill me now, I wouldn’t blame you if you do’) for each other and in themselves. By finally allowing the conflict to occur together between them, rather than separately inside each of them (for example by Sue killing his father, or his father running away again), then the emotional tensions in each man can at last begin to be resolved jointly. The impact on Sue is palpable, and ultimately transformative:

“I got all choked up and I threw down my gun
And I called him my pa, and he called me his son,
And I came away with a different point of view.
And I think about him, now and then,
Every time I try and every time I win,
And if I ever have a son, I think I'm gonna name him...
Bill, or George! Anything but Sue! I still hate that name!”

Sue still hates his name, but he no longer hates himself, or his own father. This is the gift any father can give his son (or any parent their child): by engaging with his son in conflict, the father allows the son to channel his hate somewhere other than back into himself. Liberated from his father’s legacy, Sue is now free to pass on a different, healthier legacy to his own son - ‘anything but Sue!’ Who won the battle? It doesn’t matter any more. What matters is that the battle could be fought together.

Does my bum look big in this?

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-06-30T15:29:07+10:00

A question that many husbands dread. Why? It should be so straightforward, right? “How do I look?” Perhaps this scenario, played out in households around the country, gives a clue to the nature of a deep and troubling disconnect that is often found, but rarely confronted, by many modern mums. I will attempt to put this disconnect into words as follows: You love your husband, every bit as much, probably more, than when you were first together. Yet it is still possible to look at this man you’ve known, loved, traveled with, slept next to and made love to for years now, and feel that they are still a stranger to you in some ways.

Many modern mums on the go had distant workaholic fathers, which made it difficult to get to know the male object of your early admiration and affection very well. How many gen-x women were able to hang out with their dad, go shopping with him, chat with him about the bitchy girls at school, hear him talk about his own hopes and fears in turn? A much more common scenario was an early precursor to today’s feature topic, viz: Teenager emerges from bedroom in latest fashion, with high skirt, hour-long harido and makeup all done. The father looks her up-and-down and says something like: “where are you going looking like THAT?” Is it any wonder that years later the thirtysomething woman sometimes only has an impersonal way of pleasing her husband; she get dressed up with him in mind, but doesn’t feel that she can consult with him about her choices. The only way she can easily include him in the process is to present the finished product to him for some feedback.

Many husbands feel put in a strange position when they are asked to comment on their wife’s appearance: They’ve been put on a pedestal they don’t feel entitled to occupy. They are used to a different type of relationship with their own mothers, where things (such as clothes shopping choices) WERE negotiated with mum, often with mum calling the shots about what’s ok and what’s not. To be asked to evaluate their wife’s choices feels bizarre - rather like how they might feel if their mother was to ask for comment on her clothing selections, or how they think she’s doing as a mum.

I propose that many married women have trouble including their husbands in self-esteem-linked activities such as shopping for makeup or choosing an outfit, because they have no earlier precedent for such an interaction with their own fathers. Meanwhile, modern dads have trouble responding to some of the questions they get from their wives, whom they love unconditionally, about questions of self-worth. When she asks “how do I look?”, does he say “you look beautiful”, thus putting himself in the (arm’s-length) role of judge? Does he offer a more intimate, connected, honest answer, such as “I don’t like what you’ve done with your hair”, and risk bruising his wife’s self-esteem? The roots of this dilemma can be found, I believe, in the childhood relationship that each person had with their opposite-sex parent.

1 + 1 = 3

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-05-09T14:13:46+10:00

This month’s psychoblog comes to you courtesy of the Mums on the Go Guide.

To view the blog, click here.

Happy mother’s day to you mums!

Split the difference

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-03-30T14:45:33+11:00

Let’s face it: life is rarely black and white. You meet someone, you like them, it all feels good, then they do something unexpected that makes you wonder what you ever saw in them.

You plan a purchase, pay, take the item home, try it out, but a few weeks later it just looks shabby.

Worst of all is when someone you hate does something unexpectedly nice, and you find yourself SOOO wanting to dismiss it as the exception that proves the rule.

What about YOU? Are you a good person, or a bad person?

If you bit the bullet and answered “both”, then you’re taking what’s called the ‘depressive position’. This is a way of looking at people that allows for contradictions, such as that they have good parts and bad parts, and if they do something hurtful this doesn’t mean THEY are a hurtful person. Or: You don’t need to keep doing good things in order to be a good person.

I like to think that this compassionate way of looking at things is called the ‘depressive position’ because it’s a bit sad to accept that in life things aren’t clear-cut: life always finds a way to be more complicated than you thought it was (*sigh*). Many Buddhist philosophies seem to reflect this way of looking at things. A Buddhist quote I once heard: “If your compassion doesn’t include yourself, it is incomplete.” This sits nicely with the other Buddhist-type observation that “life is pain and suffering”.

By comparison, if you find yourself using what a person does to judge who they are, then you’re engaging in something called ‘splitting’. This may be useful if you’re angry, and want to take a strong stance on something, or resist someone else’s pressure (“no, I won’t do that, it would be just wrong!”); however it may be problematic if you get bogged down in this way of looking at things. You may find yourself having to resort to magical thinking in order to cope with what’s happened. Splitting can also be problematic when it’s positive: think of the jeopardy cult members place themselves in when they choose to see their cult leaders as perfect, and incapable of harm (and everyone else as either evil or blind).

Basically, the safest position to take is... both. When things are generally ok and you feel like life’s on track, take a compassionate view of people, and don’t be fooled into thinking that what a person does in any given moment defines who they are. When things are tough, and you feel under pressure, take a strong position, and don’t be fooled into thinking that just because people are complex, doesn’t mean they can get away with doing hurtful things. Incidentally: this is also the safest attitude to take toward yourself: when others are happy, be compassionate toward yourself. When others are upset, try to be flexible. You can always switch back to a more self-interested position later if it doesn’t work out.

The Boob Tube

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-02-27T14:15:16+11:00

This blog entry published via The Punch: click here

Ctrl-Alt-Delete

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-02-22T14:42:36+11:00

If you use a PC, you’ll probably be familiar with the ‘Control-Alt-Delete’ key combination. If your computer freezes or becomes somehow stuck, pressing these three keys all at once on the keyboard will allow you to reset the computer; it will shut down, then restart, returning to its original state, as if nothing bad had happened, just like magic. The only problem is, if you didn’t save your work in permanent memory, that work will be forgotten, along with the glitch that got the computer stuck in the first place.

Control, Alt, Delete. If only relationships were so simple. Jerry Seinfeld jokes in one of his stand-up comedy routines about needing a set director in some of his conversations - someone in a flak jacket who can march into the middle of the interaction, yell “cut!!” and get the two people to “start that scene again.” Meanwhile, you may have someone you know who really does try to re-write history, by exploding or shutting down a conversation, then ringing you up days later, and acting as if the altercation never took place. In relationships, this editing of reality may also come after a period of ‘silent treatment’.

In his mighty psychoanalytic tome, ‘The Primitive Edge of Experience’, Thomas Ogden recounts a patient who “often would laugh and say that he was only kidding after having said something extremely cruel to his wife. Having said, ‘you know I was only kidding,’ he felt that he had undone the damage by magically changing the assault into something humorous (just by re-naming it). When his wife refused to participate in this magical rewriting of history, the patient would escalate his efforts at joviality and begin to treat her with contempt, accusing her of being a baby for not being able to ‘take it.’”

Magical thinking is in this case a defence that we might use to avoid feeling guilty about having hurt someone; or we may simply feel the need to re-write history because we forget the role of repair in relationships. It is inevitable that sooner or later in a relationship, one person is going to upset the other. So many problems in relationships occur when the couple is unable to repair this hurt. Typically, effective repair in relationships involves use of the word “sorry” - but repair can take many shapes and sizes.

Try it yourself: next time you feel like hitting the ‘delete’ button in an interaction, try repairing (start by saying ‘sorry’, even if you don’t feel sorry), and see whether the situation can be recovered after all. That way, you won’t have to lose all the good work you’ve done up to that point. Who knows, you might even get a “sorry” back from the other person!

Dummy Cravings

cal@whychange.com.au — 2010-02-04T14:58:16+11:00

Here’s how it works: children are discouraged from being ‘greedy’. Parents are criticized for ‘spoiling’ children. We are all familiar with the idea of ‘guilty pleasure’. Indulging yourself is a ‘treat’. The message here seems to be that the feeling of craving something is somehow shameful. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that there is nothing wrong with wanting. It’s not naughty, or special, or a treat, or secret, or wicked, or any of the other things that wanting is frequently associated with. It’s just a feeling: a feeling that we all have from time to time.

In fact, wanting is actually the early stages of anger. Yes, you read it right. Consider: You have a craving for chocolate, or some other pleasurable thing. You go looking for it, and it’s not there for some unexpected reason. How do you feel? Outraged! Can you recall a moment when you went looking for your keys, and they weren’t there, right where you left them, and moments later you’re stomping around the house, huffing and puffing and furious that things are never where you put them… It’s interesting that such behaviour is sometimes called a ‘dummy-spit’. Dummies, or pacifiers, are a good example of how mouth satisfaction can be used to dampen emotion down from a very early age. So if you are feeling irritable about something then you may find yourself using pleasure to dampen your anger down. Whether it’s food, drink, or masturbation, a pleasurable activity can also be a quick way to deal with feelings of irritability, frustration, or even longing. Try it for yourself: next time you feel like a treat of some sort, set your watch for 10 minutes and wait. See what your anger does.

The main problem with using pleasure to eliminate anger is that anger is probably the most useful emotion you have. Anger is the driver of most the things you do to take care of yourself in the world, particularly if it involves other people in some way. Think of the anger of Martin Luther King, or of Winston Churchill. Anger is good. Without it, bad things happen. The word we use to describe our own helpful anger-driven behaviour is ‘assertiveness’. So before you reach for the bikkie tin, consider if there’s something you might be irked about: will satisfying yourself in private undermine your ability to be bold in public?

understanding pleasure

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-11-08T20:19:25+11:00

What is the most truly satisfying experience a person can have?
Everyone will answer that question differently, of course, but most will think of their own sources of satisfaction when coming up with an answer. One person’s nectar is another one’s poison, as the saying goes. But when it comes to gratification, nearly all of us can be divided into two categories: The seekers of pleasure, and the seekers of understanding. In your circle of acquaintances, you will know of both types. The pleasure-seeker is typically bold, effective, and appreciates the finer things in life. The understanding-seeker may be more reflective, patient, well-liked, and be the kind of person you’d ring if your dog has just died.
Pleasure-seekers are not selfish people; in fact most pleasure-seekers are keen to share their sources of pleasure around. They enhance their pleasure by seeing other people enjoy what they enjoy. This is an important aspect of satisfaction, whatever the type: we tend to give to others what we most want for ourselves. This means that pleasure-seekers may give generously to charity, or to friends and family, but will do so in the hope (conscious or unconscious) that what they give will be returned to them in kind. The saying ‘you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours’ is the kind of thing you’re likely to hear from a pleasure-seeker. Meanwhile, your kind and caring aunt, the one who seems to shower everyone around her with patience, goodwill and empathy, may be overcome with delight if her compassion is returned. She’s more likely to say “do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
There are ideal role-models for each type of person: Three archetypal understanding-seekers are Gandhi, Jesus Christ, and (closer to home) Greens MP Bob Brown. We tend to see these people as giving more than they receive, and as putting compassion above other values. Such people may be loved by some for their humanity, but resented by others (particularly pleasure-seekers) for being unrealistic or having a holier-than-thou selflessness. Meanwhile three standout examples of pleasure-seekers are Richard Branson, The Cat in the Hat, and whoever the winner of the latest reality TV show is. These folks are loved for their ability to have fun and share the fun. We don’t expect them to heal the world, or to cure cancer, as long as they don’t try to take credit for things they didn’t do.
And this is the curious thing about pleasure vs. understanding as a way of finding fulfilment: we don’t seem to be able to combine the two. Can you think of any powerful yet understanding people? Barack Obama seemed to come to power on a wave of understanding, and many are now struggling to reconcile some of the decisions he has made with their idea of him as a person who understands the true problems his constituents face. Meanwhile, the quickest way a pleasure-seeker can fall from grace is to get themselves into a situation where they need understanding - Britney Spears, anyone?
We tend to see people as either compassionate or fun, and struggle to accept people who are both. We prefer to see the inventors of Google, or the head of Greenpeace, or our next door neighbour as either acting in self-interest, or thinking of others, but not both. We may be cynical about a movie star who travels to a third-world country, or a pillar of the community who is discovered to have particular sexual predilections. In my view, the only way to find happiness is to find room in your life for both yourself and others.
So, are you a pleasure-seeker or a seeker of understanding? The path you take to satisfaction is probably most strongly influenced by the sources of satisfaction you found in childhood: did you get lots of understanding as a kid, or did you have to find your own fun? As an adult, if you can’t get no satisfaction, try living how the other half live: Pleasure-seekers, trade in your fancy car and head down to the local soup kitchen. Compassionate people, why not hire a convertible sportscar for the weekend and drive to an expensive restaurant? You may discover avenues to satisfaction that you though were out of your league.

Undertow

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-11-06T12:33:25+11:00

Going to the beach was always something she’d enjoyed, albeit with a little apprehension. Something about the quiet roar of the waves, the occasional spectre of bluebottles, or perhaps the jokes people sometimes make about sharks.
As a child she’d sat and paddled in the wet sand, watched people bake in the sun, and, as she got older, she enjoyed wandering up and down the waterline, her eyes combing the foam, flotsam and jetsam that last night’s storm had dislodged from somewhere out to sea.
As an adult, she would swim into the waves, feeling the push and surge against her chest; the shifting sands underfoot. Then one day she found herself being drawn strongly against the flow of the waves. She began to swim back to shore, and the effort tired her all to quickly. Before she knew it, the safe familiarity of the shoreline looked smaller and more distant than she had ever seen it.
She swam and swam, feeling growing shame and dread as she sensed a losing battle with the current. She didn’t want to be one of those foolish-looking people who let the surf get the better of them - she’d always been a confident swimmer. Even as she panted and pulled against the relentless rip, she chuckled at how ridiculous the situation had suddenly become. A surfer paddled over to her. “Are you ok? You need help?” “No,” she puffed irritably. “Maybe I should call the lifeguard,” he said. “I’m fine, I know how to swim,” she countered, and began to stroke harder against the tide.
A lifeguard on a board appeared beside her. “I don’t need help. I’m just caught in a rip I think. I can swim back, just when this lot of waves passes,” she spluttered as another broke over her. The beach was looking so distant now. A wave of sadness rose in her, as she felt the longing to be back on the firm sand.
“Help!” she yelled, and the lifeguard began to pull her onto the board. “Paddle with me back to the shore. When a wave comes, paddle harder,” he stated. Tired as she was, she began to paddle. After a minute or two, she was just so tired. She lay down and rested on the board. “Keep paddling, or I’ll have to leave you behind!” said the lifeguard. “I can’t,” she sobbed. She found herself back in the water, drifting further out to sea. She was crying freely now, certain that this current would not let go of her.
That’s when a voice she could not place began to speak softly to her. “Sometimes this happens. Let the current carry you. Swim with it if you can.” “I’m scared. I’m drowning,” she thought to herself. “You are safe if you don’t struggle.” murmured the weird voice. “Sure, and I’ll get carried out to sea forever,” she mused. “Not forever. For as long as it takes,” sounded the voice.
And so she gave up and let the current take her. Within what seemed like a few seconds, she found herself becalmed. The beach seemed a long way distant, and the rows of waves between her and the sand, but she could only hear a soft murmur of the surf. The current had brought her to deeper water, and she felt a strange peace. The disembodied voice spoke again: “where do you want to go now?”
“Home.”
“Where’s that?”
“Here.”

The G word

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-10-30T20:15:22+11:00

Eat more vegies.
Eat less carbs.
Have sex with the light on.
Be more mindful.
Smile.
Stay in touch.
Obey the speed limit.
Learn how to use the internet.
Don’t watch so much TV.
Chocolate is good for you, in moderation.
Lose weight.
Think about it.
Do a budget.
Take a long hard look at yourself.
Consider others.
Dress for success.
Read more.
Sleep better.
Walk 10,000 steps per day.
Fix your hair.
Smile!
Dance like nobody’s watching.
Act locally, think globally.
Go easy on yourself.
Don’t believe a word of it.
Go with your gut.
Eat more superfoods.
Smile.

Yellow Cake

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-09-09T17:37:03+10:00

Of all the emotions, anger is probably most maligned. What do you associate with anger? Yelling, pushing, hurting, breaking? Or maybe you have been on the receiving-end of the silent treatment? Fundamentally, anger is an emotion, like any other: it is an internal state of being. But terms like “getting angry” lead us to think of anger as a behaviour, not a felt sense. Other emotions, like sadness or fear, are more associated with their internal sensations, like feeling heavy, or restless.
In the same way that other emotions are profoundly useful and needed parts of our lives (how do we grieve without sadness? how do we avoid danger without fear?), anger is an essential component of healthy living and relating to others. To get an idea of what life would be like without it, think about how you would feel if you were accused of a crime you didn’t commit. Without anger, you would meekly sit there, and accept your punishment.
Too often, though, anger becomes a problem not so much for its absence, but for it being all-too-present. Rage, or unchecked anger, is something to justifiably be afraid of.
So what to do with anger? I suggest you think of anger the same way you might think about uranium: You can use it to make a big explosion, which leads to harmful destruction; you can swallow it, in which case it will do you harm internally; or you can use it to generate power (of course, here the metaphor breaks down - anger power doesn’t create the toxic waste that uranium power does!).
So the next time you feel angry, consider how you can channel your anger in such a way that it makes you more powerful. You may find then that you are able to use that power to put right the wrong actions that made you angry in the first place. Or, to put it another way: ‘don’t get mad; get justice.’

The Upside of being Down

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-07-22T14:48:50+10:00

Depression is the most common mental illness in Australia, and is expected to become the no. 1 disease burden as rated by the World Health Organisation in the next few years, beating stalwarts such as Heart Disease and Influenza. When you think about what depression actually is, perhaps you think of feeling down, having no interest in life, and being withdrawn. Have you ever felt like that? As with most mental illnesses, we can all feel some or all of the symptoms to some degree, from time to time.
But is depression really an illness? What makes it an illness? Feeling sad is, in and of itself, not a bad thing, even if it takes you a while to work out why the feeling is there. If someone you love has left, or if a chapter of your life has ended, or you have lost something that meant a lot to you, then you are bound to feel sad - in fact, feeling sad is a healthy response to loss, evolved over millennia to help you come to terms with the loss that is an inevitable part of life.
Just because it hurts, doesn’t mean it’s wrong. Imagine where you’d be if you couldn’t feel pain, for example: you might injure yourself and then not realize it for hours, doing more damage in the meantime. Sadness is similar: if you didn’t feel sad, how would you really get your head around the fact that the person you loved so much has really gone? The first stage of grief is typically ‘denial’. It’s only when you get around to feeling sad, you are well on the way to the final stage of grief: acceptance.
Maybe depression is a deep sadness without an obvious cause (but not with NO cause). ‘Treating’ depression with therapy might therefore involve sitting with the sad feelings and thinking about things, until you work out WHY you are feeling sad - what it is you are really greiving for.
In an excellent review paper, Andrews and Thompson (2009) suggest that Depression is “...an evolved response to complex problems, whose function is to minimize disruption and sustain analysis of those problems by (a) giving the triggering problem prioritized access to [mental] processing resources, (b) reducing the [depressed person’s] desire to engage in distracting activities, and (c) producing psychomotor changes that reduce exposure to distracting stimuli.” In other words, they are suggesting that being depressed helps you focus better on the problems in your life, so that you can deal with them in a more effective way. Dealing with your problems might involve solving them, or might involve grieving for them and accepting them as a fact of life. This process is in fact beautifully captured by the ‘Serenity prayer’: “Lord, help me to change the things I can, to accept the things I can’t, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Perhaps depression is there to help us all achieve this kind of serenity.

Ref:
The bright side of being blue: Depression as an adaptation for analyzing complex problems.
Andrews, Paul W.; Thomson Jr., J. Anderson
Psychological Review. Vol 116(3), 2009, 620-654.

Push me, pull you

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-07-01T14:58:47+10:00

“exclusive!”
“three’s a crowd...”
“she’s the odd one out”.
“us and them.”
“no boundaries.”
“children should be seen but not heard”.
“you crossed the line”.
“there’s no ‘I’ in ‘team’.”
“are you in our out?”
“you’re either with us or against us.”
“The enemy of my enemy is my friend.”
“members only.”

What do these expressions have in common? They all relate to oedipal dynamics in relationships. These dynamics are what can make interacting with people so exhausting at times; perhaps this is partly what prompted Sartre to comment “hell is other people”. So much of the angst of interacting with others springs from questions of who’s in and who’s out. Sales pitches such as “exclusive!” “don’t miss out” appeal to the fear we all have of being ‘on the outer’, left to survive alone while the herd moves on without us.

Politicians on both sides of the ditch are able to powerfully and subtly harness fear or excitement when talking in terms of ‘us and them’. Think of George Bush’s “You are either with us, or you’re with the Terrorists”. Think of Barack Obama’s “together we can”. By invoking ideas of unity or division, of belonging and ostracism, our deepest fears can be either threatened or reassured.

Essential to the idea of inclusion/exclusion is the boundary itself: by talking about ‘us and them’, we implicitly create a boundary between the two - where the boundary is defined by the ways that ‘they’ and ‘us’ are different. Is it a division based on skin colour? Gender? Sexual orientation? Political allegiance? Religion? Species? Age? Our brains are predisposed to seek these groupings out and position ourselves so that we are not excluded. This need for inclusion harks back to the very beginnings of our lives, when we needed to remain with the family in order to survive. These old fears of abandonment, whatever form they may take in adulthood, form the basis for so much of how we see others and ourselves, and more specifically, how we position ourselves with or against others in relationships. We may align ourselves with others who we feel a connection to, not only by seeking out more of their company, but also by thinking more favourably about them. We derive soothing satisfaction by noticing all the ways in which we are the same. We like them, we are like them, and thus can we like ourselves.

Conversely, we may distance ourselves from another who we dislike, not only by avoiding them, but also by angrily reflecting on all the ways we are SO unlike them. We hate them, we are not like them, and thus can we like ourselves. The problem, and the truth, is that we are all very alike in many ways, and we are also all quite different from one another. So we can never realistically be satisfied in the knowledge that we are utterly unlike that bad person, or completely identical to that good person. This is the dilemma explored in so much literature over the years: Romeo and Juliet, the lovers from warring tribes; Les Miserables, the story of prisoner 24601 who masquerades successfully as a pillar of the community; or Pride and Prejudice, the story of how elitism almost prevented two lovers from seeing each other for who they were. ‘Us vs Them’ has also been the basis of so much political intrigue over the years: The Cold War and the War on Terror are two examples that spring to mind, where ‘us and them’ perceptions have fuelled political careers, wrought death and destruction, and made a lot of people very scared of each other. To quote Pink Floyd: “It can’t be helped, for there’s a lot of it about.”

touchy-feely

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-06-20T13:25:09+10:00

“My family wasn’t very touchy-feely.” This is often a comment made by people when talking with a therapist about their family. Why should this be important? There’s no entry in the DSM-IV Diagnostic Manual listing “wasn’t hugged by parents” as a mental illness. However there is a powerful link between touch and emotion and this is both a blessing and a curse, depending on your situation. A newborn infant doesn’t have an established sense of her own skin; she doesn’t have the ability to close her eyes and know where all her limbs are; she doesn’t even know that the limbs that she sees in front of her as hers. Touch has a key role in helping the newborn ‘feel herself’. The things that parents may do instinctively, such as cuddling, rocking, patting, whispering or murmuring in the ear, all serve to soothe the baby by giving a sensory ‘anchor-point’ to herself and her surroundings.

Much the same way a musician may use a ticking clock to keep time, a baby uses the palpable feelings of surfaces, sounds, familiar shapes (such as circular faces) and even smells to re-orient himself and ‘find his feet’. Without the availability of such cues (for example, if left lying unwrapped in a dark, quiet unfamiliar room), the experience might be a bit like free-falling through space. Adults who have experienced serious deprivation as infants sometimes report terrifying nightmares where they are falling, flailing through the air, or where their skin is flimsy and unable to stop their insides from ‘leaking out’.

Scary stuff. Without the grounding experience of touch, children may develop ‘autistic’ soothing behaviours, such as rocking, tapping, humming, or staring at a repetitive visual such as a flickering light. Ever catch yourself doing one of these? Puts Rave parties in a new perspective, doesn’t it? Add the sucking of a lollipop and you’ve got the complete infant soothing package!

Touch can also be used to activate or de-activate a person quite effectively. A light brushing touch has the effect of jangling-up the senses, causing restlessness and neurological arousal. One nice example where this might occur is during foreplay. Meanwhile, deep, heavy touching or squeezing can dampen-down the nervous system; anyone who has had a long deep tissue massage will know the woozy sleepy feeling that it leaves you with. More simply, a five-second hug can be immediately soothing, if you can find someone to provide one.

If you don’t have access to people (or pets!) who can provide soothing touch, you may find it hard to regulate your emotional states, and have to resort to alternatives such as food, drugs, electronic devices or even ‘doof-doof’ music. Next time you’re feeling your nerve-endings jangling, why not try asking a passer-by for a hug?

A Nervous Rex

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-05-25T21:12:22+10:00

Here’s why Freud thought the Greek tragedy of Oedipus Rex was a useful thing to base nearly all Psychology on: Everything that made life difficult for Oedipus, is also what makes life difficult for you and I. First, Oedipus was abandoned by his parents. This deprived him of the ability to get to know them as people. The struggle to see our parents as everyday, mortal humans, when they are a source of such joy and pain, is something that all of us, whether we are ‘well-adjusted’ or not, struggle to achieve through and beyond childhood.

When he got older, Oedipus went into battle with his father, and killed him. This part of the tale reflects the damned-if-you-do-damned-if-you-don’t problem we face when we come into some sort of conflict with our parents: if we let them win, we ourselves are annihilated; yet if we defeat them, then we are orphaned. What was Oedipus supposed to do?

As if this wasn’t bad enough for the Oedmeister, he was then invited to marry the queen of the defeated army, who just happened to be his mother, unbeknownst to him. He did so, and when he later discovered who she was, she killed herself, and he tore out his eyes. We could think of what he did as a way to restore the blindness or blissful ignorance about his parents that had been there throughout Oedipus’ life. But again, here is one of life’s great dilemmas painfully represented: What do we do with ‘taboo’ feelings (such as feeling attracted to another person’s partner)? It is a normal biological response for one person to be attracted to another from time to time, but what do we do if that person is off limits? Do we pretend the feelings aren’t there (go blind, like old Oedipus)? That may not work because then we may not notice if the feelings get stronger, or not notice how we are acting on them in an indirect way (we may not notice or admit to ourselves that we are flirting, for example). If, on the other hand, we embrace the feelings, we then increase the risk of acting on them directly, thus harming ourselves and the other person by crossing an uncrossable boundary (such as is crossed when one family member has sexual contact with another). The dilemmas aroused by these Oedipal issues do not have final solutions; they are a part of life. The trick is to understand them, and to live your life in such a way as to make room for them to be dealt with throughout life. The only way to ensure that these issues do not become toxic is to continually talk about them, with yourself and with others - to make sure you are not blind, like Oedipus was. That way, the ghost of poor old Oedipus might have a chance to rest in peace.

Being Framed

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-04-26T20:17:53+10:00

Therapists sometimes talk about the “therapeutic frame”. The term doesn’t refer to being made a scapegoat, or even to the mounting for the therapist’s qualifications up on the wall. The therapeutic frame is the sum total of all the ‘rules’ and ‘limitations’ inherent to the therapy process. The cost of sessions, the availability of the therapist by phone after-hours, the provisions and limits of confidentiality, the regularity of session times, and whether the therapist would also see one of your friends or family, are all part of the therapeutic frame. While some of the aspects of the frame, such as the adherence to rules about confidentiality, are important in themselves, it is also important that the therapeutic frame, once established, remains secure, consistent, and predictable. How do you feel when someone makes an appointment with you, then doesn’t show up? Having a clearly established therapeutic frame allows you, the client, to form clear expectations about your therapist that you can then rely on over time. Every time the frame changes (for example, if your therapist goes on holiday), it falls back upon you and the therapist to spend time re-establishing the frame; time that could have otherwise been spent focussing on you and your problems.

One aspect of the frame that you may find challenging is the lack of information available to you about the therapist. This can be disconcerting, particularly if you don’t trust your therapist to see things from your perspective. You may find it difficult to talk openly when your therapist is not doing the same. One reason most therapists don’t like to discuss themselves in sessions is that it shifts the focus of the conversation onto them, and away from you. Even a small detail, such as knowing that the therapist is feeling a bit tired today, has the potential to affect the flow of the session adversely. For example, knowing your therapist is tired, you may feel more reluctant to show difficult feelings to the therapist in case you tire them out too much. Some therapists ask clients to lie on a couch for this reason: you are lying down, looking at the ceiling, and can’t see the therapist’s face, so you can’t judge how they are feeling about what you are saying, and therefore are less likely to ‘censor’ what you say to avoid distressing them.

Of course, you may quite like the fact that you don’t know what’s going on for your therapist (or you may simply not care!), as it allows you to get on with the work you need to do in session, without having to also deal with their issues. If you are attending therapy, consider how little actual factual information you have about your therapist, and yet how many assumptions you still make about them. These assumptions are actually very important, and useful to be aware of. They will tell you a lot about the assumptions you make about people in general. Many of the ideas, feelings and reactions you have towards your therapist are a reflection of these assumptions. Understanding your reactions to other people and the history behind these reactions is part and parcel of understanding yourself, which is the point of therapy after all.

Yours, mine, ours

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-04-02T12:05:46+11:00

One third, one third, one third. In any relationship (and I mean, any) there are two (or more) people who differ in at least some small ways. In my threadbare experience this is probably the most fundamental challenge of the human condition: how do we, who are all so different and unique, nevertheless relate to one another? Many people resolve this struggle in an ‘either/or’ way, by being themselves only when alone, and being accommodating to others when in an interaction, thus hiding their ‘true’ self from others.

When trying to find harmony in a relationship, there is a useful rule-of-thumb to use: yours, mine, ours, a third a third a third. In other words, the two of you should be devoting a third of your time/energy towards what you think is important (even if the other person doesn’t), a third towards what the other person thinks is important (even if you don’t), and a third towards things that are important primarily for the relationship (even if both of you wouldn’t do it if alone).

For example, a married couple might sit together and watch a game of football (based on what he thinks is important), then go and visit friends for dinner (based on what she thinks is important), and the next morning lie in bed and talk about the week ahead (even though both individuals have other things they’d rather be doing). A mother and toddler might spend 45 mins. playing together with the child’s tea set (what the child wants to do), then the child will have a sleep before lunch while the mother reads a book (what the mother wants to do), then after lunch the mother and child attend a local play-group (even though the child is still interested in the tea-set and the mother’s not very keen on one of the other mothers at playgroup).

As you may have deduced, the demarcation between ‘yours’, ‘mine’ and ‘ours’ is not always obvious. In new relationships, for example, everything feels like ‘ours’ (you and I don’t matter; all that matters is that we’re together). Further, the idea of ‘ours’ as opposed to ‘yours’ or ‘mine’ can be difficult to see unless you realize that the relationship is a ‘thing’, separate and additional to each of the two individuals in it. The relationship has a life of its own, and needs and interests of its own. If a metaphor would help, you can think of the relationship as a car that the two of you are travelling in. A lot of the time, you can simply use the relationship for your own ends, but it would soon stop working if you never refilled the tank, got it serviced, kept it fairly clean, etc. So sometimes you are driving the car (yours), sometimes I am driving the car (mine), and sometimes the car is being maintained (ours).

In a therapy relationship, this principle also holds, although by necessity there is less time/energy spent on the therapist, and more on you. Sometimes you will be talking about something that upset you during the week (yours), sometimes we will be reflecting on how the therapy process is going (ours), and at some point you will need to pay the fee (mine).

So this rule of thumb may be useful to you if you have one or more relationships, be they friendships, love affairs, workplace interactions, or altercations in the street. It’s worth remembering that there are always three parts to a relationship: you, me, and us.

Einfeld: a case study in narcissistic blindness?

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-03-25T12:18:48+11:00

This week, former Federal Court Judge Marcus Einfeld was sentenced to a minimum of two years’ gaol for perjury. For a reasonable background to this story, checkout the wikipedia entry via this link. Suffice it to say here that Einfeld was convicted for lying under oath about a speeding fine, saying that a person who was later revealed to be dead at the time was driving his car when it was photographed travelling up to 10 km/h over the speed limit.

You may have read my earlier post about naked narcissism; about the legend of Narcissus, who fell in love with a reflection of himself. While the obvious frustration of trying to interact with a naked narcissist is their persistent self-absorption, in my view there is a form of madness at the heart of the narcissism, and it is this: If real-life events contradict a narcissist’s view of himself, he will ignore, deny or otherwise eliminate the inconsitency by favouring his own view. When pushed, a naked narcissist will simply refute reality itself if it contradicts part of her own perfect self-image. This wilful blindness is exemplified by comments Mr. Einfeld makes in a pre-sentencing interview conducted on ABC’s Four Corners Program.

For example, when asked by journalist Sarah Ferguson “Do you have a habit of dishonesty?”, he replies firmly: “No I'm not dishonest, no, no. I mean, I don't want to be offensive but that's a bit offensive and I don't think I'm in the slightest bit dishonest. I just made a mistake.” The point here is that, honestly, all of us can be dishonest at times. To say otherwise is itself dishonest. It is discussed in the program that Einfeld had received infringements notices in the past and “On each occasion in sworn statements he named friends of his from the US and the UK as the drivers, when records showed that none of them were in Australia at the time.” When asked if this shows a “pattern of dishonesty”, Einfeld states that these were not deliberate lies, they were “mistakes”. When Sarah Ferguson says there are “it looks like a lot of mistakes”, Einfeld initially agrees, then says “No it's not a lot of mistakes, I'm sorry. There were three events plus this one. I've admitted to this one. If I'd been called upon to meet the others I might have admitted to one of those when I'd got the facts and I'd checked up on them. It might have been, it might have been possible. But so ah, and I might have not, I might have not admitted to two or one or something of the kind. So maybe there were two occasions let's say at the majority, at the maximum in the past which I might have admitted to if I'd been called upon to do so.”

That’s the thing about narcissism: it’s all about being married to a rigid, ultimately unrealistically idealized view of one’s self, and sticking to that view, even if reality (in the form of a TV journalist asking the question outright on the eve of your sentencing for dishonest behaviour) shows otherwise. So here’s some more honesty: you are narcissistic too. We are all narcissistic, to some degree. Without at least a bit of it, you’d be a complete doormat, easily led in whatever direction someone else with a bit of narcissism wanted to lead you. Narcissism is only a problem if you deny your faults, try to pretend you don’t have them, or otherwise get caught up in a naiive fantasy about your own flawlessness. To do so is itself naked narcissism, and may result in you eventually getting a rude shock, like Marcus Einfeld did. To quote him: “obviously [with hindsight]I would have not done what I did, and it was an aberration, completely mad.” The self-delusion that is required in order to sustain that narcissistic view of self is the madness at the heart of naked narcissism. “I don't have any idea how and why I did it now. I just lost my senses at the wrong moment. I'm certainly sorry to the public at large because they have been in effect my audience over the years, audiences over the years.” A naked narcissist is a performer who never admits lying to his audience.

Let the longing linger

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-03-17T18:35:02+11:00

What does it mean to want something, someone? Ask yourself: What do you want? You may find yourself dreaming of a desired holiday, object, or treat. “What do I want to eat?” might be the sort of question you ask yourself when planning meals for the week. In affluent western society, “want” is synonymous with “anticipate” most of the time. In other words, as soon as we think of something we want, we also think of how we might go about getting it, and usually won’t think about it much more unless it’s to plan or anticipate getting what we want. Depression could therefore be understood as being confronted with one or more powerful desires that cannot be fulfilled. The worst way to be, even worse than not having something, is not having something we want.
“I want to lose weight.”
“I want to quit smoking.”
“I want to be more organised.”
“I want to see more of my family.”
If you have said one or more of these things to yourself or someone else, consider what the feeling was that went with these statements.
“I want to order pizza tonight.”
“I want another drink.”
“I want to go to bed now.”
How about these? Does the word ‘want’ here refer to a longing or an anticipation?
“I want my money back!”
“I want to go home.”
“I want off this merry-go-’round.”
These, in my view, are the types of statements that reflect true ‘want’. You can’t ‘want’ something unless (a) you feel a longing for it; (b) you can’t see how to get it, and (c) there’s nothing you can do to change the situation to make the feeling go away. Sometimes, frustratingly, the only way to get what you ‘want’ (lose weight, quit smoking, be more organised), is to allow for the unpleasant ‘wanting’ feeling to linger long enough to do its job. Think about it: if you ‘want’ to lose weight, sooner or later you’ll have to spend some time, simply sitting with a feeling of ‘want’ (in this case, hunger).
If you really ‘want’ to get what you ‘want’, then you have to let the ‘longing’ linger.

"I've always sorted out my problems on my own..."

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-02-27T18:34:19+11:00

If you've reached a point where you are seriously contemplating getting some counselling or therapy, you may be feeling apprehensive about what you could get yourself into. It's difficult to walk into a strange room, with a complete stranger, and talk to them about things you have barely ever talked about out loud, let alone with someone else there. The anonymity of therapy is an important comfort, but there are still a lot of unknown factors: What hidden parts of me might be uncovered? Will I go mad? Will I spend a whole lot of money with little real result? Is there a better way? Can I trust this person to do the right thing by me? If this is you, I wanted to offer some basic, fairly universal things to consider before you start, and some questions you may want to ask your therapist at your first session. Consider asking yourself: - If therapy is about change, what parts do I want to remain the same? - Do I want someone to help me help myself, or do I want someone to tell me what to do? - How will I know that the therapy is working? - How long do I want this therapy to last? - What will I do if I think the therapy isn't helping? - What sacrifices am I prepared to make in order for the therapy to work? Consider asking your therapist: - Do you have regular supervision? Would you be talking about me with your supervisor? - Do you do any other professional development? - Have you ever had therapy? - What do you do with your notes? - Do you use a particular approach, and if so, what is it called? - Are there any types of client who you usually don't work with, and where do you refer those people on to? You may also want to sit down and come up with some different questions of your own. If you are feeling depressed, for example, you may want to ask for more specific information about depression, or whether your therapist can recommend any good books on the topic. Therapy is difficult, often in ways that you don't expect. It is also very rewarding, when it is working well. If you are just starting therapy, I wish you the very best, and commend your bravery in trying something new.

Narcissism is not a dirty word

cal@whychange.com.au — 2009-01-05T18:31:36+11:00

Here's a new year's resolution: be more narcissistic. The term has gotten a bad name over the years, what with it being related to a Greek Tragic Figure and all. Freud (1910) first coined the term as it is used today in an essay on Leonardo DaVinci, where he described Leonardo's favourable treatment of young male students as narcissistic, because he loved them "in the way in which his mother loved him when he was a child...for Narcissus, according to Greek legend, was a youth who preferred his own reflection to everything else..." (p. 100). An entertaining article on narcissism in Psychology Today opines that narcissism "...isn't just a combination of monumental self-esteem and rudeness...it ranges from a tendency to a serious clinical disorder".
So what is Narcissism? Popularly it is a term used to describe an arrogant, self-absorbed person. In her magnificently assertive self-help book, "Children of The Self-Absorbed", Nina Brown describes the "Destructive Narcissistic Parent" as having "behaviors and attitudes that are designed to preserve a self-image of perfection, entitlement, and superiority" (p.1). The key idea here seems to be that being narcissistic means trying to cling to an image of yourself, in spite of the feelings or needs of the people around you. This may seem like a selfish, and therefore bad way to be; if you are putting yourself and your own sense of self above that of other people, you certainly aren't going to win friends or influence people. However, stop and think for a second what life would be like if you had no capacity to put your own needs, feelings and opinions above those of the people around you? How would you fare in negotiations? How suceptible to influence would you become? How would you deal with a narcissistic person if you encountered them?
Perhaps it's better to view narcissism as part of a well-rounded self, taking its place alongside other helpful attributes such as curiosity, sexuality, intelligence and emotion. Wtihout any one of these elements, your wellbeing diminishes, yet if any of these elements was to become too dominant, you might begin to have difficulty relating to other people, or to yourself. This might be a way to understand what is means to be "well-adjusted"; you have all of the necessary components of a well-rounded self, and all of these parts of you are in balance with each other. If your emotions start to get too dominant, you intellect may be activated as a way of bringing things back under control. If you start to 'over-analyze' things, your sensual side might allow for you to simply sit and let life happen. Similarly, if your strong sense of self starts to poison your relationships with other people, your curiosity may kick in to allow you to be more aware of their feelings or way of seeing things.
So it's naked narcissism, unchecked by the humanizing influence of empathy, which is the real source of distress, particularly if you are trying to have a close and satisfying relationship with a naked narcissist. If you are in such a relationship, the most concise advice I can offer is: fight fire with fire. The best protection you have against another person's malignant narcissism is your own narcissism. This is why victims of domestic violence are often encouraged to get in touch with their own anger. Why assertiveness training typically includes lessons in handing over responsibility to others for making the interaction go smoothly. This is why Nina Brown devotes a chapter in her book to helping Children of the Self-Absorbed 'Build, Develop and Fortify your "Self"'.
So if you want to build healthy narcissism, try the following:
- Try to begin more sentences with "I..." - Try saying "no" when you want to say "yes". - Reverse the golden rule: "do unto yourself as you would have yourself do unto others".
References:
Brown, N. (2001). Children of the Self-Absorbed: A Grownup's Guide to Getting Over Narcisstic Parents. New Harbinger, Oakland.
Freud, S. (1910). Leonardo Da Vinci and a Memory of His Childhood. In J. Strachey and A. Freud (Eds.). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Vol. XI: Five Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Leonardo Da Vinci and Other Works. Hogarth Press, London.

Change is the only constant

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-10-05T18:30:55+11:00

Here are my 8 principles of change, learned from direct and observed experience: 1. All change comes at a cost. 2. Change is always harder than you expect, in ways you don't expect. 3. You cannot change one thing about your life without changing other things as well. 4. Change always takes longer than you expect. 5. For change to be enduring, it must be repeated many times. 6. For every reason to change, there is an equal and opposite reason not to change. And vice versa. 7. Change is never finished. 8. You cannot change by yourself; others must and will participate in some way if it is to happen. Consider each of these when you are planning or in the middle of trying to change something in your life.

Who decides?

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-08-28T18:30:07+10:00

Here's a secret: nobody makes decisions on their own. The idea that you weigh up your options, considering the pros and cons, and then pick a course of action to take, is a myth. That may be the way things happen in a commercial or legal or other professional setting, but when it comes to individual people, nobody ever decides to do anything before they do it. The truth is, we only decide after we have acted. We go about our lives, and one day, for whatever reason, our behaviour changes. If we like the change, we maintain it. If we don't like it, we may go back to the way we were. With hindsight, you may look back at your life and wonder about the decisions you have made. From this angle, they look like strong, discrete forks in the road, and you may feel a sense of agency; that you have pro-actively and decisively chosen the path that your life has taken. What happens when you look ahead? Do things look so certain when you look to the future? Why doesn't your life's path seem so well-lit from that angle? And, as if the future didn't look hazy enough, how certain and decisive do things look right now? Perhaps you are currently wrestling with a big decision. Maybe you are thinking about making a significant purchase, leaving or starting a relationship, or changing the way you behave in some other way. Do you feel like you are at a clear fork in the road? When will you make your "decision"? When will you act on that decision? Do you feel sure of what you will decide, or do you feel more like you are trying to guess at where things will be in a years' time? There is a phenomenon Psychololgists refer to as "cognitive dissonance". It goes something like this. Let's say you apply for two jobs, and are accepted for both. Which one do you choose? You like both, otherwise you wouldn't have applied for them both. There are relative advantages and disadvantages to each. Perhaps one has longer hours, but is also better paid. Perhaps one is closer to home, but the other has a bit more prestige. You think about it, and talk to people about it, and eventually accept one of the jobs, and reject the other . This is where the cognitive dissonance kicks in: You soon feel very relieved with the choice you made, and the advantages of the job you now have seem to far outweigh the disadvantages of the other job, which, now that you look at it, "really wasn't for you." You may struggle in the new position, but are likely to ultimately feel that, all things considered, you were luck to have made the right decision. But did you really make a decision? To what degree was the decision made for you? Who and what influenced you, and how predictable were those influences? How helpful were they? How much freedom to decide did you have? When you look at it, decisions are much more automatic, or involuntary, than we care to admit. If you leave this site and spend time "surfing the 'net", you'll be getting a taste of the way that decisions are made most of the time. The truth is, you never really know where you'll end up, so you may as well enjoy the process, and expect the unexpected.

It takes two to tango.

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-08-08T18:29:37+10:00

When Jo and Sam first met, they had little in common. Sam, being a generation older than Jo, seemed to know all about life, while Jo felt there was still so much to learn. They soon discovered a shared passion: dancing. At every opportunity, Jo could be seen dancing "like no-one is watching", as the saying goes, while Sam was an avid Tango dancer. Watching Sam Tango, Jo felt that no other dance could offer such perfection, such subtlety. Jo was in love. Sam sensed Jo's awe and longing, and graciously offered to teach Jo how to Tango. Of course, the burgeoning relationship offered rewards to both of them, in the beginning. Jo's beauty and lust for life made Sam feel new excitement about the dance, while Sam came to be Jo's 'rock', opening new possibilities for mastery of a world-renowned dance form. Mutual friends were happy for them both, and soon held Sam and Jo out as a model dance couple - "they've got this great connection... some people are just made for each other." For Jo, dancing with Sam was like a dream; the safe hands, the sure feet, the feeling of security all brought Jo the confidence to go beyond the free-form flailing that had come before. Meanwhile, Sam found that Jo breathed new life into the tango, and with that new life came new joy. Both Sam and Jo felt immense happiness about their partnership, and each came to look forward to dancing happily ever after. There were the occasional and inevitable conflicts, and early on the rocky moments were dealth with quickly and without lasting resentment. Both Sam and Jo knew that all good relationships have their rough edges. Sometimes Sam would get frustrated with Jo's impulsiveness, undermining the discipline that good Tango requires. At times, Jo found Sam's rigid adherence to the rules infuriating. But Sam knew that Tango is a timeless dance and, with patience, Jo could become a truly perfect Tango dancer. As time went by, Jo became more and more aware of the limitations of the timeless dance. True, there were opportunities for the free expression Jo was used to, and increasingly longed for, but even when these openings came, Jo felt eclipsed by Sam. Sam was disquieted by Jo's growing restlessness, and tried to help. Sam demonstrated the moves with increasing insistence, and tried to revel in the opportunities for creative expression when they came. Eventually, Jo and Sam reached a crisis. Much as Jo loved the Tango, it had come to represent a way of dancing that offered no freedom. Jo felt unable to breathe, unable to move without restriction. In secret, Jo began to indulge in the flailing style of dancing that used to be so much fun, but it had a sense of urgent furtiveness that hadn't been there before. To Jo, the Tango felt more and more like a prison dance, but the alternative felt like no dance at all. Sam sensed Jo's unhappiness, but could only look to the time-honoured form and function of the Tango for solutions. Sam sought to reassure Jo, talking of the awe and perfection that Jo had witnessed in the early days... perfection that was still within their grasp. Jo saw the logic of Sam's reassurance, but was torn. There was just no more room for Jo to be Jo any more. Beautiful as the Tango is, it had come to feel lifeless for Jo. To Sam's despair, Jo drifted away. Sam continued to dance the Tango, but it had lost the wild joy that Jo had brought. Sam found new dance partners, many of whom had more discipline than Jo, more precise adherence to the form, but Sam found that somehow this precision still had an emptiness to it. Sam's new-found refinement brought the accolades of friends and admirers, but for Sam, the dance had lost its vitality.
And the music kept playing.

Dead languages, dead relationships

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-07-30T18:28:51+10:00

Latin is sometimes referred to as a 'dead' language (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_death). This refers to the fact that Latin is not really spoken by anyone as their first language, and there are no large communities that routinely communicate in Latin. The result is that latin words retain the same meaning over time, and no new words are created. By comparison, English is routinely spoken and new words are being created all the time (is there a latin word for 'blog'?). In English, existing words also change their meaning (how gay are you feeling today?). To get a feel for how alive and dynamic the English language is, try reading Chaucer, and see how the form and function of English words is different to today. in 200 years' time, Latin will still be Latin, while English will look and sound noticeably different to how it does today. The idea of a 'dead' language is also useful as a way of understanding how relationships can become stale or otherwise difficult. Relationships need to be 'alive', flexible, able to incorporate new ideas and 'grammar', new styles of interacting. 'Alive' relationships continually change to reflect the living, changing beings that inhabit ('speak') them. Established terms may be re-written; old, irrelevant or unhelpful terms may be discarded, while new terms may emerge to reflect new circumstances. If the relationship does not change, then it becomes progressively more difficult for the people in it to interact effectively or in a satisfactory way. When this happens, one or both people in the relationship may become frustrated or dis-engaged. How do I bring my new ideas to the relationship if it doesn't make room for them? Change is the only constant, as the saying goes. This is as true for relationships (and languages) as it is for people. Sometimes relationships become 'frozen' because people in it are afraid that bringing new things into the relationship will somehow undermine it. People complain when new 'Americanisms' enter Australian parlance ("turn out the light" is apparently now replacing "turn off the light", for example). Don Watson, Paul Keating's speechwriter, even wrote a book titled "Death Sentence" about the importance of keeping our language alive and untainted by 'weasel words'. In a similar way, you might fear that if you allow new behaviour or new ideas into a relationship, it may be the 'death' of the relationship. A new job, a new friend, a new pursuit (do you know any golf widows?) or a new toy can strike fear in one or both people that the relationship will be eclipsed or changed beyond recognition. In fact, the opposite is the case. There will always be new things entering the relationship, and to remain alive, the relationship must adapt and change to accomodate them. If the relationship is kept rigid, static, and inflexible, it is in danger of becoming as obsolete as, say, the slide rule, or the horse and carriage, or Latin. These are sometimes still used for the novelty value, but, overall, life has moved on - as it should.

Why "Why change"?

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-05-25T17:43:09+10:00

This phrase reflects the central philosophy of my practice: people don’t need to know how to change; they just need to know why they haven't. Sometimes, people don’t really need to change at all - they just need to know why things are the way they are. Many schools of clinical psychology, such as cognitive therapy, solution-focussed therapy, schema-focussed therapy, or narrative therapy, are designed to provide you with a system to bring about change. What these models don’t really offer is a rationale for why that change should occur in the first place. The most widely used reference among Clinical Psychologists is the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, currently in its 4th edition. It is typically referred to as the DSM-IV. The DSM-IV lists every mental illness, and describes each one in detail. This is an important guide, because it sets out universal definitions for illnesses such as depression, schizophrenia, and autism, so that psychologists in Sydney, London, or Mongolia can identify it using the same criteria. One of the main criticisms of the DSM-IV is that it is “atheoretical”. This means that it describes the illness, but does not provide any information about why has occurred. For example, the DSM-IV lists detailed criteria for the diagnosis of depression, describing symptoms such as depressed mood, sleep difficulty, and loss of interest in pleasurable activities. Yet no information is provided about why the person may be experiencing these symptoms. By comparison, other medical texts will describe not only the symptoms of the illness (say, coughing, runny nose, headache for the common cold), but also the cause of these symptoms (viral infection). Most people know what they want to be different in their lives. Depressed people want to be happier. Anxious people want to be calmer. How does it help a sad person to be told that they need to be happy? A person who wants to quit smoking doesn't need to know how to quit; they already know: just stop smoking! What they need to know is WHY they find it so hard to stop. Once they know that, they will be able to find a way to quit on their own. It’s not the therapist's job to decide for them what needs to change, or even how they can go about making that change: the therapist's job is to do what the DSM-IV doesn’t: to help you understand WHY you feel the way they do, and help you answer the most difficult question: why change?

The joy of "no"

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-04-17T17:42:06+10:00

Scenario: a young child sits playing with some toys. Her mother walks into the room, and says "come on, it's time to go and pick up your brother". The child looks up, and with the smallest hint of a smile, says "no." Now what? In every toddler's life, there comes a moment when they discover that they exist independently of others. It dawns on them that they have feelings, needs, wants, and ideas that are uniquely their own, and not anyone else's.
This creates both a crisis and an opportunity.
The crisis: Because they are unique, then there will necessarily be times when they are the only one who feels how they feel, thinks what they think, or wants what they want. This is a crisis because it has the potential to be a very isolating experience: what if no-one understands how I feel, or wants what I want? If I'm the only one who wants it, can I still have it? How can I co-exist with others who are not the same as me? The opportunity: It feels good to be me. My uniqueness is proof-positive that I exist. To mis-quote Descartes: 'I am unique, therefore I am.' The toddler who simply, but triumphantly, says, "no" to his mother, just for the sheer rebellion of it, is experiencing a joy that many people these days deprive themselves of. Many people are unsuccessful in their attempts to change for the simple reason that they couldn't work out how to safely say "no". The fear of "no" is that it will be met with guilt, shame, or rejection. The joy of "no" is the joy that comes from feeling safe to be yourself, be different to others, but not have to pay a penalty for it. So the next time you meet a non-compliant child, or a teen 'rebel', be grateful. Just think how boring the world would be if we were all the same! Of course, you may read this and decide that you disagree with what is written here. What joy!

A lightbulb moment

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-03-31T17:41:16+11:00

Q: "How many Psychologists does it take to change a lightbulb?" A: "Only one, but the lightbulb has to want to change". Do you know anyone who needs to see a Psychologist? I sometimes get phone calls from concerned friends and relatives asking me to work with someone they know "...who really needs to talk to someone". The first question I ask is how the friend feels about it: do they agree that there is a problem, and do they agree that talking to a Psychologist will help? Often, the motivation to change actually sits outside the person who has the 'problem'.
Doctors do not have this problem to the same degree, because most medical treatment is done 'to' or 'on' their patient. Your surgeon does not need you to help him make the incision! But for psychologists, the patient must be an active partner in the treatment process; rather than me doing it 'to' you, we must do it together. This subtle difference actually has huge implications for the whole process. When you go to the GP, how often are asked about your motivation to attend? When was the last time your doctor invited you to comment on your diagnosis? For psychologists, your active involvement, through contributing your own ideas and efforts, is essential for changes to occur, and is the only way ensure they last.
So, if you have a friend in need, who is a friend indeed, then you may simply have to wait and watch while they work out what they want to do about their difficulties. If you want someone to change, first consider if they want the change as much as you do.

In deepest empathy...

cal@whychange.com.au — 2008-02-12T17:40:26+11:00

Today, the prime minister apologized to "the indigenous peoples of this land". The apology, which can be read in full at ABC online, was resisted for a long time, because it was felt that we shouldn't, or can't, apologize for something that someone else did. As was justifiably said, the people who took children from their families genuinely believed they were doing the right thing. Meanwhile, it was argued, we current generations know better, and it would be wrong for us to say sorry when we weren't the ones who did the harm. So, what would be the point of saying sorry for something that someone else did? What sense is there in walking up to a stranger who has just tripped over in front of you, and saying 'sorry about that'? The answer to this may lie in the distinction between sympathy and empathy. Sympathy is defined by Dictionary.com as "harmony of or agreement in feeling, as between persons or on the part of one person with respect to another." Meanwhile, empathy is described as "the intellectual identification with or vicarious experiencing of the feelings, thoughts, or attitudes of another." For the recipient, it is the difference between between solidarity and understanding. You may express sympathy for the wife of a friend who has died. This means you feel sad too; her sadness and your sadness are "similar", but not the same, since each of you has lost something slightly different. Sympathetically, you may say to her: "I'm devastated. I can't imagine what you are going through." Empathy makes different, and perhaps far deeper demands on you, because it requires you to place yourself in someone else's shoes, and discover for yourself what their bunions really feel like. Empathetically, then, you might say "I can sense how hard it is for you." Pondering the difference between sympathy and empathy, I began to wonder if this explains why it might be worth saying 'sorry' to the stolen generation. It doesn't really matter if it wasn't our fault, if we are trying to empathise (not just sympathise) with this group of people. Once we start to empathise with them, we realize that being told "sorry" simply helps because it feels right.

A resolution

cal@whychange.com.au — 2007-12-31T23:59:59+11:00

"This year, my only resolution is to stop making new year's resolutions," a friend declared recently. She said that she was sick and tired of making promises to herself that she couldn't keep. It turns out she's not alone: according to many psychology researchers, you are more likely than not to fail if you attempt to change an aspect of your behaviour, such as smoking, or exercise, or brishing your teeth. Soberingly (or not), researchers in areas ranging from dieting to depression to drinking now ackknowledge relapse as the norm. Five years ago this led American researchers Janet Polivy and Peter Herman to coin the rather disheartning term 'False Hope Syndrome' to explain our tendency to repeatedly fail in our attempts to change. According to Polivy and Herman, you approach the change you want to make to your lifestyle in completely the wrong way. You start by picking something really hard to change, like smoking, or eating, or gambling: something that has been a satisfying part of your life for many years. You then give little or no thought to exactly how you will fill the void that is left gaping once you have somehow miraculously shed all the ritual behaviours involved in your chosen vice (try going to your favourite pub and NOT drinking allong with your friends). You start off with the best will in the world - full of motivation, optimism, and great expectations - and then reality strikes. It becomes too hard, and, like 95% of new year's resolutions, is abandoned by the end of January... until the end of the year when you go and make the same resolution to change all over again. "I was so close this time, next year it’ll be easier..."
According to Polivy and Herman, we tend to interpret such failures "in such a way that that failure is seen as far from inevitable". In other words, when our hopes for change are dashed to oblivion on the rocks of reality, we comfort ourselves by saying that "it was only a small snag, it will be much easier next time". We keep on keeping-on, dismissing each repeated failure as just another worthwhile step towards living happily ever after as a size eight.
Five years ago, my friend decided to quit smoking. She now says that the hardest part, and the part she never expected, was the impact that not going out to the front of the building for a ciggie would have on her work relationships. She went from knowing all the office gossip, to knowing none of it. This, in turn, presented renewed temptation, as she had lost something important along the road to maintaining her resolution. To her credit, she has now all but quit, but maintains that making the change was not what she thought it was going to be.
In 2008, I encourage you to make only one New Year's Resolution: Be more realistic about change. But how? And what does real change, successful, 'pick-and-stick' change involve? How do you insure yourself against the dreaded false hope, and the smug “I-told-you-so” of friends, family and Polivy and Herman? First, you need to be realistic about what you want to change. There's no such thing as a free lunch, particularly if your resolution is to lose weight. Change specialists (often referred to as 'Psychologists'), know that in reality, change is a slow process – or at least slower than you expect. If you use something as general as what you eat from day to day, as a way to change something as specific as your body weight, you probably won't get immediate results. It won’t happen overnight, in fact, it probably won’t happen over several weeks… but it will happen. Hang in there. As well as being slower than you anticipate, it is also harder than you think. You can’t just change one part of your life without dragging other elements of your life along with it. Change your diet and next time you go out to dinner your friends may notice, and mention it. Some might even try to sabotage your efforts (“go on...you can make an exception just this once for us, can’t you?”), placing an unexpected new pressure on your worthy ambition. In case you thought this wasn’t demoralising enough, it turns out that we’re also very bad at predicting just how many things will need to change in order for us to get to where we want to be. Ask someone who’s just moved house if they knew in advance all the tasks that would be involved, and they’ll almost certainly say that they didn’t, “but we got there in the end”.
And this is the final reality check for those of you still sufficiently motivated to make a change: even if you succeed in making the change you want, you won't necessarily live happily ever after because of it. Permanent change requires on-going maintenance. If, after reading this, you are still determined to make a New Year’s resolution, do yourself and your chances of success a favour. Make your goal realistic – for example, try losing only 5kgs instead of 20. Expect the unexpected. Take your time, and don’t give up at the first hurdle. If at first you don’t succeed, change your expectations. It will be worth it in the end.
Ref: Polivy, J., & Herman, C. (2002). If at first you don't succeed: False hopes of self-change. American Psychologist, 57, 677-689.