The Working Date

I've been waiting for this.

Sue Shellenbarger (Wall Street Journal, 6-28-07, Personal Journal, Work & Family) titles the story, Dinner and a PowerPoint.

She tells us, in case you aren't in the know, that for powerful people, dating now means bringing along the laptop, or more commonly, staying in, having dinner and perhaps a little wine, then working for a nice satisfying stretch before perhaps going out for ice cream. Sex included if agreed upon.

The date, interestingly, is mapped out, which I've always thought a good thing, so that prime-thinking hours aren't wasted. Ms. Shellenbarger quotes Beth Schoenfeldt, co-author of "Ladies Who Launch," saying that entrepreneurs don't really separate work and life so it's best that they find dates who don't stop working, either.

Sounds like a good idea. Matching a date's attachment to work means probably having compatible needs for psychological space, which can work well in a relationship. Of course, I'm always pushing to decrease that need for space, to increase the need for intimacy. But oh well. High powered people might not have time to see a therapy doc, either.

WSJ quotes Ian Kerner, a relationship therapist (my team). who feels that a work date says a lot about a person's inability to put a relationship first in life.

My feelings exactly.

Work is a quest for Money

Not that I'm down on money! It's good, it's important. Work is creative and expressive, too, and it makes everything else flow, except, of course, if a couple's relationship is lacking in other areas. But being able to share work hours can be phenomenal.

It's when one is watching another who can't stop working, it seems, that there's a problem. But when both are happily clicking along?

I think about back to back computing with FD, monitors aglow, only three feet apart, our chairs potentially touching if we move to get a bite to eat. It's a type of work for we're sharing what we know, but it's fun, and we can talk if we want to talk, and we do talk.

So don't get me wrong, I'm not totally against being able to share the same space to do something solitary, as toddlers do in parallel play, by the way, before learning that playing TOGETHER is much more of a blast.

My take is that work is that it's wonderful and necessary, and that all kinds of work, including stay at home work, are equal. Work and academic pursuits amount to the same type of time commitment. If 8-16 hours of a person's day is tied up in work or school, then there's much to talk about.

The real focus in intimacy, however, isn't the screen that's glowing on the table, it's talking. Is it a good thing to relegate your best talk hours of the day to a screen?

Wouldn't it be nice to spend at least half of that time, the better amount of time on the date, talking about families, past experiences (if they're not too embarrassing), issues with George Bush, preferences on toothpaste (don't use some overseas brands, apparently they're tainted), difficulties with friends and co-workers, dreams or fears about having children, fantasies, thoughts about future avocations or vocations, sharing funnies in the New Yorker, or singing?

I'm thinking if you can LIVE together, as in really LIVE, the relationship has a much better chance than if you mostly work and sleep together. Money comes, money goes.

There's only so much time, you know, before time's up.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc

Dream Production 101

Anonymous asked if my spin on dreams, that everything and everyone in a dream is the dreamer, is research based.

Not that I know of, and I don't know who first presented it to me this way. But try to think of it as follows.

A dream is ALL yours. You're the only one "creating" the dream. It comes from your head, or perhaps your dinner.

Steven Speilberg did not direct it, neither did George Lucas, even if ET or C3PO make star appearances as themselves!

So every movement of every actor, every word that is spoken, every nuance is conceived, directed, and produced by the dreamer. It's a DreamWorks Production, so to speak.

We are our art in that way. Everything I write, for example, is a reflection of me, the way I feel, think, or behave.

So how can the therapist in your dream be anyone but you?

The real art of therapy is exactly that, too.

copyright 2007, therapydoc

About It's Fictitious

Already the email is coming in, folks worried that their comments made me uncomfortable, like people are talking about the therapydoc family.

Like we're so important. Sorry about that. Let me clarify a little.

a) I love comments, there isn't a blogger out there who doesn't, except maybe one and I know him. The only exception would be if comments are "inappropriate" or I feel in any way immodest, I won't post or respond to them, likewise e-mail.

b) Gossip was the wrong word and too harsh! I wouldn't suspect my readers of that, honest. I meant that I'm not gossiping, exposing anyone.

(It's not about you.)

So I'm editing that part out about gossip. If you haven't read it already, the last sentence will say,

take it as a learning experience, a creative learning experience

As long as we're sharing and talking creatively, did I tell you I didn't make it as an art major? At UIUC I took about every type of course imaginable and chose art as a major because it was much more fun than anything else (tennis was good, too). I loved design and got A's but could not draw. There was a time you had to draw to be an artist. I called home in a panic, for at some point you really do need enough hours in one particular subject to graduate. Mom suggested social work.

Thanks Mom.

But of course, had I chosen art, you'd have a much better looking website to visit. No regrets.

therapydoc

It's fictitious

At the top of this blog, under EveryoneNeedsTherapy, it says,

This social work blog reflects my multi-disciplinary scholarship, academic degrees, and all kinds of letters after my name that make me feel big. Patients wanted more feedback, but it's morphed, so you get how I cope, too. If you're in a warm, sunny climate, I'd consider guest lecturing at your institution, topic your choice. The blog is not to diagnose, treat, or replace legal or medical advice from a licensed professional. All references to people, named or otherwise are entirely fictional.

Or should that be, entirely fictitious. Any English majors out there? I'm reminding readers right now that indeed, even if you think that a presentation on this blog brings to mind situations or people that you know, they're all entirely made up. Or they're about me. Or they're about me making me up.

You know, occasionally I get tagged for memes, these Tell us 5 reasons you blog. . .or something else, Or Name 10 things that people don't know about you. . .or Name 100 things. . .

I've resisted them most of the time, mainly because I don't feel like it or don't have time, really. I have to be in the mood to blog and when I do it's because I have something that I want to say, something to teach, even if it's by metaphor or via a story about me.

I'm going to share something now, however. Sharing about self for a therapy doc is very, very weird. It's not something that we do easily, and we're VERY protective about sharing things about other people, too.

So just a reminder, the stuff you read in EveryoneNeedsTherapy is pure fiction. Or is that, purely fictitious. Whatever it is, take it as a learning experience, a creative learning experience.

therapydoc

Lying Down

I once had a patient who told me this dream. He dreamed about me.

"I was driving you somewhere, you were in the back seat. I don't know why I was driving you somewhere, but I deliberately went in the wrong direction. I didn't want to take you where you wanted to go, and I didn't want you to know that we were going in the wrong direction. I was deliberately misleading you."

Fascinating, isn't it?

I always push people to give me their interpretation first, then I'll discuss the other alternatives. He continued:

"I try to hide from you. I hope I can mislead or deceive you, not let you see the real, horrible me."

But of course we talked plenty about the real horrible person, and he's not horrible at all, simply a little disabled.

And he worked pretty hard in therapy. We had designed a treatment protocol, a difficult therapy, honestly, and he resisted it and I knew that. But he agreed with it and wanted to do it, and for the most part did do it.

I think maybe I'm perceived as much more exacting than I really am. That could be because I do call people on their stuff (if it won't hurt them, sometimes I'm totally fine with a person lying to me, as you know from reading other posts).

We talk all the time about compliance or lack there of, especially since a treatment plan is designed with the patient's input. At one time we both thought it would help.

But if a person doesn't want to work on the plan, or if the plan is too hard, then that person is tempted to hide or to lie about what he or she did outside of treatment between visits.

Some people call that lying resistance, but I call it good communication. When they 'fess up, which usually doesn't take long, we have much more to talk about. Nobody really wants to keep up a charade. It's very boring and unproductive and we talk about the process.

Not working a plan tells me more that a person is either burdened or it's too difficult or both. And that's okay, we can dial it down.

Now the dream? The cool thing about dreams, as I've said before, is that they're ALL about the dreamer. If you're the dreamer, then everyone in the dream is you. The therapist in this man's dream is him, not me, because face it, I'm at home in my bed, not with him. He looks a lot like me in the dream. He's the driver and he's TherapyDoc.

So if you dream that you're hiding from your therapy doc?

I would say that means that you're hiding from yourself. A little silly, no?

copyright 2007, therapydoc

At What Age Do You Start to Teach about . . .

The other day I went to see a cringe movie, Knocked Up. I'll explain why I cringed so much when I post the 3rd Carnival of All Substances in mid-July. It wasn't the gratuitous bad sex, strangely enough.

Anyway, I was doing pretty well. But at the end of the movie the camera pans an air shot of the Pacific Palisades . This is where I take my grandkids when I visit them in California. So it broke me up that there I was, figuratively speaking at the Palisades, but not with the kids.

Could've threatened to make the evening un-salvageable, not that every evening can be salvageable. And I didn't behave. I started ranting about missing them, which made me feel worse.

You see, expressing emotion does not necessarily make a person feel better.

No one could make me feel better, really. There was nothing to say.

Got home and called the kids knowing they were already in bed. But I love talking to Empath Daught, and in truth, of her crew, I miss her the most.

Empath Daught answered, juggling her second shift, cooking Friday night dinner. We talked awhile, then A., the 2.75 year old got out of bed. I could hear him through the speaker phone. "Hi Mommy. " He's not a great sleeper. There's so much to do.

"Let me talk to him," I said.

She put him on the phone and he talked non-stop for 20 minutes. It was amazing. He talked about his little cousin, HH, and he talked about his older brother's grateraton from nursery school (or is it pre-nursery, what is it at 4 almost 5?). He talked about Michelley, the girl in his class who doesn't share her chips, and about Shadow, the dog everyone loves to hate, and about his Daddy and his mother's neck.

"And I tried to kiss Michelley but she didn't like it."

"A," I said, "You always have to ask permission before you kiss a girl, you have to ask her, Is it okay if I kiss you?"

Pause. Long pause. I could see the wheels in his head turning.

"Oh. I will do that next time," he said. "I will try to remember to do that."

Ya' gotta' start 'em young.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc

Therapy = Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

First there was B.F. Skinner, the behavioral conditioning guru. A few years later, the rat in the maze concept didn't sit so well with the intelligentsia and Albert Ellis's rational emotive therapy got the nod.

On Ellis' heels, Aaron T. Beck engineered a fusion of the two that he called cognitive behavioral therapy or CBT, the Lexus of all individual therapies. We now feel that ALL talk therapies are really forms of CBT because talking is a behavior and listening is cognition.

But there are forms and there are forms. Is a dodo bird a dodo bird a dodo bird?

The relationship therapy I push here on the blog is heavily laced with old fashioned CBT. Using a relationship therapy to reinforce cognitive behavioral therapy is like having a freaking Rolls Royce.

I like driving the Rolls, but totally will accept CBT, the Lexus, if that's all they've got at Avis Rent-A-Car.

The National Institute of Mental Health knocked off the big study on affective disorders and determined that the best way to treat depression is to use a combination of psychotropic medication and cognitive-behavioral therapy (CBT).

Of course.

So you should learn it. You'll get better. You'll stop spleening me, Why aren't I better?

It's an interactive therapy that requires the patient to think and behave differently. One would think they're all like that, all therapies require you to think and behave differently, but this one has a nice structure to it, so anyone can learn it. No huge amount of psychobabble, no tricks. I use it to manage emotions. Yeah, mine, too.

So it can't hurt you to know the basics of CBT to help control your anxiety, anger or depression.
Everyone needs help with at least one of those. Tell me you don't.

The emphasis in CBT is on rationality.

Rationality is not nearly as sexy as emotionality so people resist it like crazy. But at some point you have to grow up.

The path to staying rational is countering irrational beliefs that make us emotional, especially those nasty core beliefs. Irrational core beliefs are deep. They're what makes us deep, all of us. People discover them in therapy, or if they're lucky, when their significant others and friends wriggles them out in intimate conversation.

Sometimes it's perfectly obvious to us, that a negative core belief is disabling, dis-empowering us. They're the windows that slow down our computers, the ones we forgot to close years ago. There may be only one or two programs running back there, using the ram we need for other things, but they're a real pain to shut down. They slow up the whole works.

Sample core beliefs: I'm a loser, I'll never amount to anything, I'm a charlatan, a fake, I'm not a good person.

Such beliefs (thinking) trigger automatic negative feelings. The feelings (always bad) don't let up. They feel unmanageable.

So there you are, feeling down and looking for something to do to feel better, searching for some coping strategy, some behavior to make you feel better. The chosen behavior, unfortunately, driven by uncomfortable arousal (anger or anxiety) or grinding depression, and negative thoughts, tends to be dysfunctional.

Sample dysfunctional behaviors: drinking, over-eating, sending a letter that shouldn't have been sent, having a tantrum, missing work, beating the spouse or kicking the dog, buying a boat.

The dysfunctional behavior fuels a feedback loop. STAY WITH ME HERE. IT'S NOT THAT HARD.

I'm a loser (thought). I feel bad because I'm a loser (feeling). I'll eat a pint of ice cream (behavior). I'm such a loser (thought for having eaten it), I feel bad I'm such a loser (feeling). . .repeated over and over, reinforcing the core belief.

The therapy is as simple as A-B-C.

A stands for affective, or feeling.
B stands for behavior,
C stands for cognition, or thinking

Intervene ANYWHERE, but intervene.

Docs like me have you go home and analyze the events of the day using the A-B-C s. I make you write stuff down, go over it, argue with your thoughts, think twice about your default behaviors. The doc's your worst nightmare, the new program in that computer.

But the doc disappears over time and you take charge of your life pretty soon. You do the therapy yourself. You won't just do it in your head, by the way, you'll have to put the ice cream back into the freezer and find something else to do. But you will challenge your beliefs, become your own advocate, the best lawyer in the hood. Your own best friend.

That said, it helps to have someone else, a friend or a family member help you. Or get a therapy doc. I'll give you some more examples in future posts, I hope. I'll leave out the ice cream, go for the nail biting, pen smashing. Maybe.

The therapy is always about thinking, feeling, and behaving, and how these processes constantly reinforce one another.

Doesn't matter where you begin. Begin anywhere. It'll be work. Sorry about that.

Any questions?

Copyright 2007, therapydoc