Snapshots: Book It

I didn't really have to go to school all those years, we're finding. So much self-help out there, catchy titles and awesome covers to grab our attention, and much of it is surprisingly, helpful. If only to talk about it, half the time. Still, there's a lot of wisdom to be found at $15.99.

In graduate school in the previous century, academia beat us over the head with the notion that what we heard on the radio, watched on television, read about in magazines, newspapers, and self-help books, journalism, is not science, isn't even social science. But that's not the way it is today.

Research-based academic journals, think Science, Cell, Lancet, Nature, Nature Genetics, Human Relations, Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, Family Process, American Behavioral Scientist, Qualitative Research, and dozens more, are invested in public relations, shoot out press releases to the AP to herald new scientific discoveries, the ones about to go to print in their publications, of course. Journalists follow up and we get smarter.

Researchers publish their own books, too. Two of the three mentioned below, for example, The Compassionate Achiever and Proposing Prosperity: Marriage Education Policy and Inequality in America as products of scientific study, really took years to write. The authors lived these books.

You won't find Proposing Prosperity for $15.99, but if you are a student of social policy and have always wondered how the government works to turn around the number of single mothers on welfare, this is an excellent choice. Plus, the author attended so many relationship therapy workshops  you can't help but learn something.

Compassionate Achiever

The Compassionate Achiever: How Helping Others Fuels Success,  by Christopher L Kukk, PhD proposes four steps that maximize compassion, a little known key to success. I'll try to write more on it in a post about compassion, but for now it is enough to know that the definition is very different than the definition of empathy. An empathetic person intuits, senses another's feelings. One with compassion does something about it.

What about Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick ___. Repeat.

Sarah Robb O'Hagan's Extreme You

Not academic, but we learn from the stories of others. A good anecdote is data, too.

Sarah Robb O'Hagan is entertaining, full of energy, confidence and creativity. So her book is too. I admit, I jumped around to find the stories.

Extreme You: Step Up. Stand Out. Kick ___. Repeat

If I got it right, it is about risk, putting yourself out there.

Well, from a therapist's chair, it isn't easy to take risks. We can work in therapy for months, years sometimes, before a naturally anxious, safety-prone person is willing to step out of a comfort zone. But this is the message of Extreme You, a just do it book. In all fairness, she did work for Nike. This one is about how she made it in marketing. The road, if it works in that field, probably generalizes to others, too.

Go ahead, try out your latest brainstorm, tell it to your boss, get an audience if at all possible, with the Pope. Silence won't get you anywhere.

Assert, assert, assert. Any therapist will tell you this is key to beating depression, and passivity is depression's friend. So act. Just do it.

Whether or not Sarah Robb O'hagan will sing to you might depend upon how you were raised, because it is the message of supportive families, the ones that raise kids to hold their heads up, to strut their stuff. But supportive is the active ingredient.

Our author holds nothing back as a writer, doesn't edit out words that once upon a time would have been edited out, censored. Some of us liked it that way. But the author's intent, remember, is that we try the wild side, for once.

And we wouldn't want to throw the baby out with the literal bathwater, right? The tone of Extreme You is very Mindy Kaling; her voice is the same, too. Some of us first saw Mindy on The Office, became huge fans. Her books are in the airport bookstores, with titles like Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me (and Other Concerns). and Why Not Me?  She dishes out advice, as does Sarah, from her experience, lately writes about the Impostor Syndrome, something else we should discuss one day, on CNNBC's Make It. 

If you're wondering whether or not this concept is a good fit, if perhaps you are too conservative, probably should shake out the emboli, take a walk over to Sarah's website and take her quiz. I did it but didn't leave my name or get more information, like is the quiz reliable and valid. Still, what have you got to lose?

The premise of Extreme You, that we're all highly individuated and the world needs to hear different sounds, new ideas, works for me. But are we all talented, so talented that we can and should cross lines, step out of line, take risks?

A systems therapist would say, know your system, know your audience, before you express yourself. I'm pretty sure Sarah tells us that, somewhere in there, because heads do roll, we hear about them in therapy, patients who hardly know the names of their teammates before the team changes.

That said, lathered with sensitivity, we can get away with almost anything. If you have to draw attention to yourself to make it, let it be known how incredibly sensitive you are. And empathetic. And compassionate. Extreme, to all of the above.

Because when all is said and done, really successful people work really, really hard.

therapydoc

One for the Weak Side

It happens quite a bit, and we’ve talked about it before, that the weak get weaker and the strong get stronger. There’s a Harry Potter metaphor in there somewhere.

What happens is that a perfectly wonderful individual, one who would give the shirt off his or her back to help a friend, gets a reputation for giving. And some people use people like this, prey upon them to get things done.

My father used to call the guy who drives 90 mph on the expressway a pigeon. He’s the guy that’s going to get the ticket. We get to drive at 75 mph but for the grace of the pigeon. No pigeon in sight, don't speed.

He would see someone who is being used, in general, as a pigeon. But that isn't a nice way of looking at it at all. I just see them as nice people who can't say no.

Nice people do come to therapy because they are exploited by others. When it becomes a pattern, they tire of it, burn out, even get depressed. This is exactly the kind of person that those who practice Brief Family Therapy love to get their hands on. No need to go back to childhood, get to the solution. Personally, I think going back to childhood, going into the reasons, is very, very useful. But let's try Brief Family Therapy right now.

It’s surely a disrespect, a dismissal, and a put-down when a perfectly capable individual asks a good-hearted, less assertive person to do their dirty work. We parents do this all the time, ask our kids to do our bidding, but we're teaching them life skills, obviously, when we ask them to take out the trash.

Consider adult to adult relationships instead. At the beach a good-hearted soul gets up to get drinks for everyone. (S)he will self-sacrifice for the sake of friendship, might go back and forth on the hot sand, if necessary, to serve everyone. This same individual, at some point in life, gets sick of it.

In therapy she'll learn to ask, “Does anyone want to come with me to go get us all some drinks?” There’s usually another volunteer. If there isn't, she gets a drink for herself, tries that out, feeling what it's like to take care of Number One. It doesn't feel that bad, really.

The relationship issue is that the good one, the thoughtful one, gets resentful of the thoughtless, even come close, at some point, to feeling a terrible emotion, hate. The burnt out exploited person is crying more often, suffering panic attacks at the very thought of hate, which means giving up the relationship. Before, by saying Yes, there was an element of control, predictability. Lose that, the predictability, the relationship for better or worse, and abandonment anxiety bubbles over. It is a situation becoming of the Pink song, Please Don't Leave Me.

If the crisis precipitates therapy, some of us would suggest we work on one-liners together, the baby steps of assertiveness. Assertiveness is always the facts, dispassionate.

(1) Really? You can’t do that yourself? Really? Are you kidding?
(2) Why would you ask me? You always ask me, ever notice that?
(3) I'm starting to feel used here, and it isn't feeling good.
(4) You’re a big girl, seriously, get more into the role, you'll like it.

And then there's the situation specific response.

(5) You’re out of your tree if you think I’ll be your alarm clock. Buy one. And no, don't ask me to buy you one.

That sort of thing. Responding dispassionately, saying No, empowers us, strengthens. It's a great skill, and we grow stronger every time we flex the muscle.

We learn that it can be great fun, too, seeing the expressions, the surprises looks.

My suggestion? Practice with a friend.
On the second thought, it might be better to practice in front of the mirror.

therapydoc

Do You Feel Better Now?

FD and I were bantering about them. You know, the bad drivers, the ones who drive poorly, cut you off and then "flip you the bird." It doesn't happen to me very often because I opt out, ride a bike.  But it did last week.

"You know what you should do?" FD tells me. "You should get that vanity plate, the one we talked about years ago."

He's talking about the one that says,

GET THERAPY

I had always wanted that one.

"Except that people who rage like that aren't going to connect the dots," I reply.

"Then a bumper sticker," he continues. "It's bigger, more visible." He suggests:

Slow down, you'll live longer.

This is also something we have talked about in the past.

The real issue, I tell him, isn't the occasional road-rager, because he's so obviously out of control and we'll never see him again, and who cares? The real problem lies in everyday communication, where we're struck by insults or barbs, non sequiturs out of the mouths of people we actually know. They are generally just letting off steam, and it's usually displacement. I.e.,

The boss makes you work overtime, you come home tired and angry and kick the dog.

Kicking the boss will get you fired.

Online today a blogger opines, It is much easier to displace anger online, to cause tremendous psychological pain via viral messages, malicious gossip, or exposure and shame, and the audience can reach thousands. Beats the schoolyard for impact.

In that situation, the violence of bullying isn't coming out of nowhere. It is planned. Most verbal and emotional violence, however, isn't like that. It isn't premeditated, it isn't intentional bullying. Outbursts are the outcome of emotional overflow. Tears are more mature, to be honest. When the flood is anger, not tears, look for displacement.

But it isn't always displacement, of course. Any of us can be triggered, might have a difficult time holding back our words in many different situations. All of us are capable of becoming a little over-reactive, or a lot, especially when a memory or an event lights up those neural pathways. Or when we're just tired.  Or drink too much.

In family therapy, when one family member complains about another member's frequent verbal assaults, the recommended response is variable; it depends upon the circumstances.  But often we suggest assertiveness-- labeling what's going on without emotion.

Overt and covert permission from our parents to be colorfully expressive, adds to that emotional vortex that rises to overflow. We learn from our parents, and from our teachers, and now from the media (what we see in the movies and on television), that lashing out sometimes feels really good. Raging families unconsciously know this and can be fairly robust, meaning members become immune, in their way, to feeling emotional or verbal abuse. It is the toughening up process of childhood.

That doesn't make it a better way to communicate, of course.  At some point, no question, going off will be dysfunctional, somewhere, somehow, and may even cost the rager a job, or a relationship, an account or a recommendation.  Loyalty, trust.  Bye bye.

Which is why I told FD, "The bumper sticker I'd really like to see would be more to the point, process-wise. How about something like this?"

Do you feel better now?

Because that's what it's all about, discharging negative energy. It's hard to contain negative emotion and we feel better when the arousal, the irritability is gone, the baby delivered. And that's okay, letting it go, assuming everyone knows that nothing is really meant by it. Nothing personal.

Big assumption.

Safer, we suggest, to wait it out. The irritability will go away.

Forget the bumper sticker! It's a good idea, but make it an intervention. In situations that seem safe, when we're fairly sure there will be no retaliation, when someone insults us or flings blame, or just lets loose with a couple of well-timed expletives, we should ask . . .

Do you feel better now?

With concern.  Make it come from the heart.

Then overflow-ers, aka ragers, get a pass with people who love them. Sometimes. 

But you know, you can take back the words, the memories still stick. People have long memories for this sort of thing.

If I remember correctly, it was a white Honda, maybe an Accord with a beat up bumper, and there was one of those bobbing things in the rear window.  No chains dangling from the mirror.

therapydoc

The Power of Confusion

Patient complains that I'm not educating anymore, that all the good stuff is in the archives, 2006. He doesn't say it in a critical way, he says it in a just saying way. He says it so nice, I hear it..

So back to work.  Do I have to remind you that I make up people? The patient below doesn't exist, so if you think it's you, it's not.

The Story:

A woman who has been passive all her life determines to make a change. No more Mrs. Nice Guy. She wants to level the playing field when her husband's family criticizes her.  She wants to err on the side of aggression, and wants me to teach her how to criticize, to insult back.

I'm thinking: No.  Let's not.  It would work, would make her one of them.  But it's not who she is; she's better than that.  Why regress?

The joke is that her spouse has married her because she is really, really nice. She never hurts anyone's feelings. Before she opens her mouth she thinks, "Is this going to hurt someone's feelings? Am I going to be disrespecting this person?"

I know, unbelievable. But there really people like this. If you find some of these, don't let them go. Hang on for dear life.

Anyway, he marries her because she's so nice, and he's very happy. But she discovers that his family is very difficult, very different from hers, very quick to criticize. She has married the white sheep, a nonjudgmental, easy-going person, but they judge people, especially her and how she looks, expect her to be perfect, at least to look perfect, to be like them.  And they carp on her when she's not.

Perfect, in this family, means every hair in place, dressed to the nines, make-up. Some people dress up to go to the grocery store, others wear sweats. Our friend falls somewhere in the middle. She asks me,

Should I have to put on heels to visit a sister-in-law in the middle of the day?  Is this normal?

I'm thinking: No.

But maybe, yes. Maybe she should.   Maybe if she does this, dresses up like them, looks like they want her to look, they'll feel more of a connection to her. The subtext, the unconscious text, is that when we conform, when we follow the herd, the other sheep assume we admire them, that we're not judging them, irony of ironies, so their unconscious anxiety is mollified. That's why like attracts like. So fake it 'til you make it, baby.  Join the club.

Those of you with self-esteem are thinking: No.  Let's not and say we did.  (This is a sarcastic remark, passed down to me by my older brother, very useful, although in general I frown when it comes to sarcasm).

And you are correct. No matter how hard we try, we'll come up short with a person who wants us to come up short. Sometimes I think the world is binary. There are only two kinds of people* -- those who communicate in a sensitive fashion, and those who don't.

Many would say we learn more from those who are not esteeming, who are insensitive. We hear a negative message and think, "Wow, I really am a zjihlub!  (Yiddish, two syllables, je, as in the French je, and lub, rhymes with tub  Means slob). I should change!"

Except most of us are just hurt when someone insults us, so we don't change. We get angry and resistant and depressed, immature. We're regressed when it comes to criticism. We feel like we did when we were little and our parents shamed us for things like playing with our food.  It is an art delivering a message that fosters emotional growth, personality change, and still doesn't hurt feelings in the process. It is why parenting is so hard.

But back to our story; better would be to assert:   When the sister-in-law frowns, turn on the baffle, that confused look.  Act as if you seriously don't get it but want to understand.  If you use the following script, first emphasize that you don't want to be interrupted.

The long version, for the short, skip the first paragraph:

I notice you always make a point of making nasty remarks when I'm not wearing nice clothes. In your family, seems to me, people can take it, the nasty remarks, it just bounces off of you, and you seem to enjoy jumping on one another, or on anyone who isn't dressed up.  You'll even laugh about total strangers if they don't meet your approval.

But you need to know that  when you say something negative about how I look, it hurts my feelings. I wasn't raised to be judgmental. So I take it as this huge put-down, a comment about how I look. Could you try not to do this? Just don't comment about how I look and I won't go home feeling badly.

And why do you do it, anyway? Why is it so important for everyone in this family to have to look fabulous all the time?  I don't know how you all pull it off, always gorgeous.   I don't understand why it's so important.  Seriously, what's the deal?  Where's this come from? How do I get to be like you?  How did you all get so fashion conscious?

This should stimulate dialogue that you can steer to the topic of criticism in the family.  It can be a really decent, intimate dialogue. Often about child abuse.  Don't back down if they shrug and say, "Don't know."  Someone knows.  Someone's got some psychological saichel.  (Rhymes with Rachel, but a soft-gutteral ch, means smarts).  After the dialogue you predict the future.

"Okay, so when I come over here in pajamas, you are not going to say anything, right? But I'll try not to come over in pajamas if it's a disrespect to you.  I'll wear sweats."

Then you label the process. When it happens again, the criticism, you say,

"See? You're doing it again. I thought the new deal we have it that it's okay that I be the zjilub, and you be the gorgeous one.

Works every time.

therapydoc

*Binary thinking is shallow, black-white thinking, and virtually nothing is black and white. That's what the bell curve is all about, normality, the normal curve. To be exceptional, extraordinary, abnormal, one's score on a certain trait must be in the tails, must be rare. But you can be anywhere, totally normal, and still not know what's flying when it comes to relationships.

Really Good Tissues

When I was in graduate school they told me that you shouldn't hand people the tissues when they're crying because you want them to know that it's okay to do that, cry, and if you hand over the tissues then you're giving the message that you want them to stop.

I thought that was powerful but dumb, because you could hand over the tissues, which might make some people more comfortable, blowing their noses into a tissue, as opposed to say, on a sleeve, and you say,

"This is not to tell you to stop crying, cry away, please. Crying is good for you. In moderation, obviously, to a degree, for sure, but with me, it's always good."

Anyway.

We've joked about me wanting a sponsor for the blog, mainly Puffs or Kleenex.

But who has time to really pursue this? I did go after one of the tissue companies, actually, maybe both, and remember a resounding rejection. Life hurts, is the truth.

Generally, when I shop, it's a guerrilla mission, no time to go through all of the aisles. I know, however, when I'm getting low on tissues at the office, that this will be on my grocery list-- KLEENEX.

Because Kleenex is another word for tissues, right?

As a c0-parent of five, and a person who likes to eat, I save a few cents if possible, buy the generics. So the cart fills up with generic tissues, off-brands if they look okay, especially if they come in a pretty box. You have to buy in bulk if you're a therapist because they go, as we say, in a good week. A good week is a good cry or fifteen.

Anyway, in over the years, very occasionally, someone will say,

"You need better tissues. Buy Kleenex or Puffs. People don't want to think they're using up all of your tissues."

Pretty amazing, but it happens, and of course I say thank you for the advice, because you have to thank a person for asserting, for trying to get the needs met.

I might even say, "Thanks, I don't hear this much, but I'm not going to take it personally." This makes the event an intervention. People take way too much personally and it gets them into trouble emotionally. Something to talk about.

"No problem, Glad to oblige," my clientele will say. People are nice like this.

So this morning I go to the grocery store, and buy several brands of tissues thinking, "We'll give this a whirl, see which one really is the best, which is the best for the money, which makes a person feel worse, might make a person think, My life is so bad, I even get a cheap therapist! Everything is bad! I'm born under a dark star.

We'll see what happens.

therapydoc

War is Agressive

I know we're doing what we can to end the war in Iraq.

Last week I listened to the news and puttered in the kitchen while FD attended the synagogue in the morning. He attends every day. When he came home for breakfast all smiles, I reconsidered telling him. But a couple of minutes later I solemnly reported, "Three boys were killed in a bomb this morning in Iraq."

He groaned. I groaned. We hate hearing about boys killed anywhere.

Then the very next morning he came home from shul and said, "You know those three boys you told me about, the ones killed in Iraq? One of them belonged to our synagogue."

That first degree of separation. The funeral was yesterday, at our shul, but we couldn't go.

I wasn't going to tell you this, but I'm out of the country. I took off for Switzerland on Sunday, left Dov and Cham to watch my fish. There's a lot to say about Switzerland, but it's peaceful and pleasant there, so it can wait.

What I want to tell you about is what it's like living in Israel, now that we have this peace with the Palestinians. For as you may know, we gave up a significant stretch of land for peace relatively recently, a long stretch of beach property, a place called Gaza. Jews left their homes and their synagogues in Gaza and now live in tents because, as you must know, this is a step in the right direction, a step for peace. Yes, read the sarcasm. You don't need an interpreter.

No, this is not a political blog. And I had no intention of posting about my trip while away, certainly no intention to talk Israeli politics with you. I had several drafts in Blogger to pick and choose from that I could have posted instead of this.

I did post one this morning, ironically, about determining when to be passive, when to be assertive, when to be aggressive. And now I see that here in Israel, that is exactly what needs to be determined.

Why not just tell the story? Because I'm in a bad mood, and that's never a good thing. But I want you to think about this passive, assertive, aggressive thing. Assertiveness, speaking just the facts, has always been my default.

We have a son learning in a yeshiva in the south of Israel, not terribly far from Gaza. Gaza, the land the Israeli's gave the Palestinians for their very own last year, is where Hamas takes credit, although sometimes competes with Hezbollah for credit, for shooting rockets into Israel. These rockets, Kassams, are fired every day. Thousands of rockets a year. We don't have this problem in America. If the Canadians shot Kassams at us, or if the Mexicans shot Kassams at us, there would be some explaining to do.

At the very least, some asserting, at worst, some aggressing.

When they take out an Israeli citizen here in Israel, the terrorist organizations cheer. I think of Hamas and Hezbollah as gang-bangers, but instead of using pistols they use rockets.

The story.

We picked up our littlest (19) at his school yesterday and shlepped him up to his aunt's apartment in a town north of Tel Aviv, where we'll be staying for a couple of days. We took him out for dinner and caught up, and this morning, after a great pancake breakfast that my sister-in-law had no right to make us, since this is a work day for her, took off in my nephew's Fiat. Little One had to get back to school.

Well, he didn't have to get back, but that's the kind of kid he is. We'll steal him back soon enough for a little more vacation.

Anyway, he's a kid and you have to feed them regularly, so on our way back to his school out in the country, we stopped in one of the coastal cities for a slice of pizza. We carried out the food to eat in the car, a bit in a hurry to get back in time for afternoon prayers. You have no idea what it's like, constantly having to be back for the praying.

No sooner had we turned onto the highway when we realized we were going nowhere. Nowhere. Cars were backed up EVERYWHERE. This didn't feel good, sitting in traffic. And for some reason my nephew does not keep his radio in his car (something tells me he worries it will be stolen). It's a scaled-down five-speed, a stick shift, white, like all the cars in Israel. Did I say stick shift? One day remind me to tell you what I do to clutches. Not pretty.

Anyway, we sat in traffic for about an hour when we finally made it to an intersection and could turn off the main highway. FD gunned the motor to get us anywhere but there. At the next intersection, same thing. Another parking lot of cars, all idling, nowhere to go. He started driving in the only direction that didn't have traffic, towards the coast.

Fine, fine. The coast is safe, but you can't just go ANYWHERE in Israel. Anywhere isn't necessarily safe. He drove south a bit (toward Ashkelon and Gaza) and I nagged him, Let's not end up in Gaza, PLEASE. I can assert with the best of them.

He turned around and headed north towards Tel Aviv, then found a stretch west to my son's school, and then south again, and eventually we dropped him off, safe and sound.

The highway we would have ordinarily taken back to FD's sister's apartment was cut-off to the south at this point, but we were going north. We still had no idea why everything had shut down. With me behind the wheel now, and heading away from whatever was going on, it didn't take long to get back home.

I'm not going out again, I told him. I'm in for the night. FD drove off to see another nephew. He's borrowing my nephew's piano for a gig in Israel. Incredible, that.

My brother-in-law is cooking and I ask for help. He says, Not now, and I'm out of there! The t.v. and the elyptical machine are free! In a better mood already, I flip through channels and find a movie in English with Hebrew subtitles, something about a mule and basketball and Chicago. I'm really pumped. Just as I'm getting into a groove b-i-l steps into the room.

Uh, can I turn on the news? There were 40 rockets landing in Sederot this afternoon. At least one person is dead. That's why you were delayed. All the traffic south, didn't go anywhere. You were right there, you know.

Well, not right there, at all. But the range of these rockets seems to get longer and longer.

I watched the news. If you've never seen footage of a decent explosion, how the walls and ceilings cave in and people bleed and sirens sound and people cry, and if you've never seen missiles take off into the sky in pillars of smoke through the clouds, well, you've missed out, I suppose, assuming you like this sort of thing.

WHY? I ask the chef.

He tells me that the police had stopped a car of terrorists at the border this morning with explosives and killed all of them. The 40 kassam rockets, this mess, these casualties, these deaths, are revenge.

The Israelis have to decide, although it's likely they've already decided, do they reciprocate in kind? The chef turns to me and says, almost tearfully, because here life is so precious, each life:

We give them land and from this land they shoot rockets at our hospitals. We never turn down anyone in a hospital, no Arab, no Jew, no one (the insurance issue isn't like it is in the U.S.) But they shoot missiles at our hospitals. They shouldn't even show this footage (we are looking at the wreckage of a cafeteria outside the hospital at Sederot, the Israeli city nearest to Gaza).

They cheer in the streets, celebrate. They LIKE to see this. They don't care about human life. We treat their wounds. They shoot rockets at us. We should retaliate. We wait like sheep for these attacks. We stop them at our borders with explosives, and kill them before they murder us. Then it is an excuse for them to try to kill us again.

For them, it's a win-win situation. If we don't kill them, they blow us up. If we do kill them, they fire missiles and hope to kill us.

Always a problem. Passive? Assertive? or Aggressive? The Israelis have never gone after Palestinians in the past, knowing they would kill innocent civilians. They won't start now. The kassams are fired from civilian neighborhoods. They don't send missiles into civilian neighborhoods.

What's a country to do?

therapydoc

Asserting at the Bar: The Con

Maybe it happened to you. You were conned out of money but you never quite could forget about it. This happens in drug transactions all of the time.

A dealer sees a guy seeking drugs and asks, Looking for something? I've got something.

He brings you to a bar and the bartender is amazingly nice, knows the dealer. She gives you free drinks. You're starting to enjoy yourself.

The dealer defines the drug deal, asks you for money so he can get you your drugs. You tell yourself, Don't do this. Your rule is, always get the drugs first, THEN pay. But he insists on money up front and you're drunk, so you give him the money with that funny feeling that you've been duped.

And you never see him again.

Until one day you do. You're at a bar and he's there.

What do you do? Ah, such a marvelous variation on assertiveness. You don't always find such examples in the literature, do you?

So seriously. What do you do?

You're thinking,

Do I deck him? Do I talk to him? Do I say nothing? Do I run?
Do I make small talk? Can't I deck him?

Don't look at me. I don't know. I'm serious in that I don't know. I should say, NO, of course you don't hurt him, you don't hurt anyone, but there are some places where people do aggress and they seem to gain respect for aggression. Sure, they're gang-bangers, but perhaps that's the culture we're in right now, in this example.

But let's say you don't want to be in that culture, that perhaps although you've been conned, you've been done wrong, you're a little reluctant to act as they act, to do as they do. Should you say something?

Ordinarily the therapeutic directive would be a resounding YES! Be assertive! Sure you should say something, perhaps something meaningful that teaches a lesson, as in, I know you conned me once, but FYO, I'm a nice guy and I won't risk going to jail to punish you for that. But the next guy might, so you should clean up your act, get a real job.

But I feel that in that case, if you say that, you might get decked. It's a dangerous thing, dealing with dangerous people. Assertiveness isn't the law everywhere, and it's not understood everywhere.

So just as I've suggested before, that you don't tell a big scary guy who cuts in front of you while you're in line waiting for a show, Excuse me, sir, but I'll bet you didn't know that the end of the line is actually back there (pointing to the end of the line), likewise I would suggest, Don't start with a drug dealer.

And why are we dealing with drug dealers, again?


therapydoc

What Faking it Til You Make It Really Means

I get that blank look from people when I assign the behavioral task, Fake It 'Til You Make It. The blank look is fear of confrontation, usually, fear of a situation you know you have to face.

You know that you have to rise to the occasion, that you really should face a problem, a person. And your therapist and everyone else is saying that you have to Just Do It.

But how can you just do it if you've never done it and you're afraid you'll look like an idiot if you do?

The classic example is making the call. Say someone owes you money. It's your employer. And you know he knows that he owes you money. But he's been getting away with it because you haven't been able to confront him on it.

So your therapist says, Just get on the phone and don't confront. No need to be angry.
Just assert, meaning explain the facts nicely and reiterate that you haven't been paid yet.

Then nag. (My spin on this intervention). Keep calling. Call every day until you're paid, perhaps twice a day, until someone in management says, "Would someone kindly get this guy off my back? Just PAY him!"

This is still very hard, even doing it without anger, for many people. It's still hard to pick up the phone, and especially hard to do it every day, to become a nag.

I'll say, try to make it like you're just repeating facts, like you're reciting multiplication tables. Rote, no emotion. But to you, bringing forward the facts feels impossible. You're a little shy. You don't like asserting. So how do you fake it 'til you make it THEN?

It's not easy, but I think you have to make it fun. You have to raise the serotonin in your brain by seeing this as play, not work. And the way to do that is finding the other you, the other person inside (you have MANY you hardly even KNOW). The one who can do it.

People like to focus on the people inside that they're more familiar with, the ones with the faults and deficits their parents introduced to them as children (yeah, I get to bashing parents sometimes, as unpoplar as that is; this is one of those times).

But there is a person inside who is probably very angry at the self for not asserting, and angry at the other person for taking advantage of the person who doesn't assert. This other self is someone we can call The Advocate.

Or the Hero. This person wants justice in the worst way. This person isn't known as you, not yet, since no one, not even you, has ever heard from him except in fantasies. But this advocate resides in the wish department of everyone's psyche. The advocate, the hero, really wants you to be that person who opens up that mouth and gets you what you want.

You also want to get to know the actor. Yes, another one of the people in us who occasionally gets trotted out to play, but not nearly often enough. There's a potential actor in everyone, and this actor needs attention. You have to let the actor flex a few muscles now and again. You need the actor here to help the hero do her stuff.

This ISN'T faking it. These are real selves tucked in your brain.

Think of any movie, any television show with a leading character who tells it like it is even if no one wants to hear it. Someone like Marie, on Everyone Loves Raymond. (A whole post in and of itself, right?) Or think of ANYONE else who asserts that you can relate to, especially if that person makes you laugh. You want to act like that person. Keep that person in front of you.

We all have a little Homer inside of us. (Maybe not the best example). Act like your role model would act in the situation. Pretend to be righteously indignant. Deserving.

Aren't you?

Larry David, on Curb Your Enthusiasm is a good example. He's always asserting himself, but to a fault. He would return a torn shoe that he wore for 11 months and 28 days to Nordstrom. If you try to be like Larry you'll fall short, most definitely, of being as obnoxious as he is. You're not made of the stuff of cringe.

If you try, however, to be indignant, you'll be heard.

You don't have to be a Martin Luther King, a holy man. But we can say he inspired the idea. It was his birthday this week, and you observed it, right, so you maybe can learn from him. Have a dream. Make it so.

Once you feel a little righteous indignation, the next step is to bring out the hero and behave as righteously indignant. There is nothing to lose here.

You say, "Hey, I think you forgot to pay me for those six hours that I worked on Thursday doing inventory. When do you think you'll get to that, anyway?"

And when you do that, do you know what that other person is thinking, feeling?

Busted.

Way to go. You just brought out The Cop. You'll make a great parent.

copyright 2008, therapydoc

Using What You've Got

I think I've told you that a systems therapist, someone who uses family, significant others, employers, teachers, and cats, a systems therapist will use everything and anything to make a point. And sometimes the patient will literally hand over the material.

Here's what happened last week. Remember: I'm changing details for you. I'll say, for example, that the story happened last week, but it didn't. SHE could be a HE. HE could be a truck. No, that wouldn't make much sense, would it. But let's talk.

You may know that it's Chanucha. This is an 8 day festival. There are many interesting lovely things about the holiday, but for me it's about being home, lighting candles, and making sure the house doesn't burn down. Each of us in our family has an oil (olive) burning menorah. We have visitors from out of town this week, making that doubly important, not burning down the house.

It's the evenings that are important in this holiday, and most of us don't like leaving our comfort zone. We stay home at night, but work during the day. I try to get home a little earlier. I try not to schedule new patients who may or may not show, may not call. I try to be especially forgiving when patients cancel last minute. I try to stay in the holiday spirit because I know how stressed everyone else is in general. Merely trying to get it together or keep it together is very hard.

It's no small thing to say that it would be nice if everyone tried to stay in the holiday spirit always. But this is impossible. Even trying is impossible. (Is it?)

Somehow, the week before last, when I scheduled an appointment for last week, but made a mistake. The appointment didn't get saved on Outlook. Obviously it was me who didn't save it, since I make all of my appointments. This probably happens once or twice a year, me completely blowing an appointment. Yes, therapists are people, too, very fallible. It is possible that we can completely screw up, try as we will not to make mistakes. In this case, I'm guessing, I entered the appointment in the calendar and did not push Save and Close.

Save and Close is PRETTY IMPORTANT.

But I didn't know it and was in a pretty fine mood starting work on Thursday only to hear a VERY upset voice on voice mail.

Therapydoc! Where were you! I had an appointment at (such and such a time) and you were nowhere to be seen. Why wasn't I informed? Why didn't you call me if you knew you weren't going to be there? I brought (so and so).

I was looking forward to doing great work today. I'm so upset. I can't begin to tell you how upset I am. This is so unprofessional. What kind of doctor are you?@!

We're in the Being Late territory we've discussed before. **

I don't know about you, but I get a message like that and my chest clutches and I feel simply terrible. I call the patient right away, apologize, offer a next day appointment, meaning, in this case, that someone else will make an airport run, not me. I feel cornered, embarrassed. I say, The rule is in this case that I forgive your co-payment tomorrow.

She sounds quite fine with that.

Then, since I've got a few minutes before my first patient walks in, I look at her chart. I've only seen her once before. I have scrawled across the top of the page, Has assertiveness issues.

Would you agree?

Thus this is a good place to teach you how to use that sort of systems event in therapy. But understand. What a therapist really wants to say when the patient has Let it Fly on voicemail, is, Find someone you like better, someone who will do a better job. Someone who will never ever make a mistake. A better match. Seriously. In our heads we're thinking all kinds of edgy things, basically trying to make ourselves feel better for being slugs and making mistakes. But being a professional is not about doing that, taking our own error and turning it into the patient's fault.

The next day the patient comes in with her S-O and I'm on her team, of course, since I totally do want to tackle that relationship; I really do. To me it's all about everybody getting better, the challenge of it all. I want her needs met and I'm quite sure the direction we're going in is just right for the two of them, for him, also. The therapy flows very naturally and she's pretty happy that I'm getting him to talk about some of the things that bother him, approaching his issues, too, and for sure it's pretty easy to see where each of them is coming from and we're confident about making changes. Then at some magnificent point she really rails into him about something*.

He looks at me, stunned. She looks at me. I smile. I thought you said you had assertiveness issues, I say.

She smiles. I'm getting better already.

Oh, how I love people.

Copyright 2007, therapydoc

*Having assertiveness issues generally means a person doesn't speak up enough. But while working on it, I'll ask them to overshoot, to try for aggression even. Usually, that means they'll fail and the communication will come out just right. A passive overshoot becomes an assertive statement. If it becomes a rant, and it seems a little aggressive, THAT we can tone down relatively easily.

**This would be a good time to read that post on Being Late, if you like this sort of thing.

You're Not Alone

So maybe, as an anniversary celebration, I'll pick one or two posts of the past that teach you what I feel are the more important things I learned in school. I'll edit (make FD and all you other obsessive compulsives happy out there) and add a little.

This one is about empowerment, assertiveness, sensate therapy, eco-systems, and love. If I forgot something, let me know.

The original running title for the academic paper read:

Being a Part of a Cultural Ecosystem

But I could have also called it, Biking and Making Friends, Not Necessarily in that Order.

Have we talked at all about social ecosystems? I don’t think so.

A social ecosystem is your social system with the cool word "eco" in front of it. It has nothing whatsoever to do with the green movement.

1. There's you.

2. There's your immediate family, the one you live with, could be friends or just your cat or a fish (I forgot fish on the original post. Can you believe that? Crazy.) Immediate could be you and your partner, spouse, significant other, or step-son, niece. Whoever is immediate. Whoever's gonna' call 911. I'm loose when it comes to immediate family. (don't start)

3. There's the family of origin, the people who raised you and your siblings, it’s possible you don’t live with them any more.

4. There's extended family, includes all blood relatives, step-relatives, even people who've married into the family. I'm very liberal with family trees. Some people aren't. You could say I haven't been tested yet.

5. There are your close friends, both near and far, some on the other side of the world, perhaps. That kills, doesn't it? It used to be that we had to shout into the phone to make sure we had a good connection. Now we talk through our computers, can see our friends with our web cams. Miraculous. I knew there was a reason to look left, then right, when I crossed the street.

6. There are acquaintances you see in your neighborhood on a regular basis This would include that little subculture that you see hanging around in Starbucks or Borders. Maybe all you do is smile or nod, comment on the weather. But they're your people.

7. There are the people you know from work, school, or place of worship. Also your people, like it or not. And there's the barking dog next door. You might actually get more out of your relationship with the dog next door, sometimes.

8. There are people from the bar, sports center, work-out club, church, local government. You might call them acquaintances. Sometimes you use them. Sometimes they use you. But they're there and you can tap into them if you need to.

9. There are the people you connect with directly via your computer or telephone, annoying sometimes, but there. Even telemarketers are a part of your ecosystem.

10. There are those people you watch on television, the talking heads at night, the ones who make you laugh, the William Shatners, the Ellen's, the Oprah's, the Gilmore Girls. And the columnists or authors who divest of their words so that you get all of that information you get from television, newspaper, and radio. Media expands our life experience, colors our world.

11. If you're an astronaut, then space might be part of your eco-system. I'd imagine the galaxies talk to astronauts.

12. There's your Higher Power/powers/karma/past lives and the eco-systems of past lives.

Maybe I left someone/something out, hope not. You get the idea. The ecosystem consists of all of the people and all of the information that has a direct influence on how you feel, think, and behave.

Sometimes people feel VERY alone, even when their entire world is VERY big. They
They don't feel connected to their ecosystem, not intimately.

OKAY, OKAY, THE STORY

F.D. and I make a big deal about riding our bikes. Getting around the city this way has worked for us on a lot of levels, but these days when I personally talk about my bike it's generally to complain about how people in cars seem to have to swear at me or blast me with their horns.

They act as if I should MOVE OFF THE ROAD. Like roads are for cars, not transportation.

Truth is, I’d have given up riding my bicycle years ago were it not for F.D.'s nagging. I’d have succumbed to the lure of potato chips and television, effectively, perhaps permanently, locking the serotonin in my neurons forever, wondering if I should start Paxil or Zoloft, knowing I'd hate them both.

The bikes, our original bikes, are a common thread with F.D. and me. They’re a link between us, one of those historical reminders reaching back to the first day we met. We were buying bus tickets at the student union to go home before a Jewish holiday.

“Come out with me for a Pre-pesach beer?” he asked. Beer has malt, so you can’t drink it on Passover, the 8 day holiday that was coming up on us.

“I’m in.”

That day, or was it the next, he won his Raleigh ten-speed in a raffle for the North American Indians, I think that was the cause.

I didn’t have a bike at the time. My original red ten-speed, a bike I had used to explore my world throughout high school, had been stolen freshman year and I hadn’t replaced it.

The bike I ride today was our first big pre-marital purchase at a little under a hundred bucks. So you could say it’s a piece of our marital history.

He would say we keep the stupid bikes because we’re too cheap to get the newer more fancy ones with all 36 to a thousand speeds. I would say we're sentimental. But the truth is we've kept them because they FEEL good and we don’t trust the new ones. And they remind us of a very romantic time. Keeping stuff like that alive is key in marriage, in case you're wondering.

Oh, and the new generation, now an old generation, the mountain bikes, were always just plain silly for Chicago, a very flat town.

So before we even had children we were that young couple that took out the bikes at the first sign of spring to shake the lead out, feeling better about having cheese cake or ice-cream when we got home.

But even during pregnancy F.D. would nag me to go out riding with him. “Come on,” he’d say. “You know you’ve never fallen off a bike in your life, let’s go, you need the exercise.” He needed the exercise.

Being a doc he was also afraid I’d throw an emboli and have a stroke during pregnancy. He was always afraid of things he wouldn’t tell me about but I could tell from that far away look in his eyes that he was thinking something very scary.

So I’d go with him well into the pregnancies, nauseous, fat, get on the bike and tool around in the suburbs late at night when everyone else was tucked away in bed or watching a warm TV.

Because he felt the need to exercise. Face it. I could have done yoga if it was about emboli. There are simply some things one does for a relationship. This would go under "recreational intimacy."

When my excuses started to mount (the seat feels too hard, the handle bars are too narrow, I’m bored, bored, bored and want to throw up) he’d work on my bike and make it friendlier. The wide seat, wide handle bars, the perfect high stem that gave me the leg length and stretch that I needed-- all thanks to F.D.

So he'd have someone to ride around with late at night.

But at the end of the day I got pretty addicted to the feeling I’d get from riding, much more than he did. I had the longer ride to work. The fresh air, the visuals, the sounds woke me up. I liked that it was me who KNEW the geese were back in the city in the early winter. Because we talked. “Yo geese.” “Yo back, watch what’s on the bike path. Don’t look up so much.”

Well, one day a group of dog people were out enjoying a summer evening and their dogs were off their leashes. The dogs saw me, a red speeding bullet flying through their park (they had marked it) and of the same mind this pack of dogs thought, “Deer.” They were off to the chase. A pack of dogs. Domestic dogs.

I saw them coming and got an adrenaline rush that helped me out-distance them in seconds. But it was thoroughly terrifying. I shook for days after thinking about it.

The next night, as I approached the park, I stopped, looked around, saw the dog people and their dogs way ahead of me. I slowed it down to a crawl until I was close enough to get their attention and explained that it wasn’t safe, letting their dogs run around unleashed. This wasn’t an official dog park.

What if I hadn’t been able to out-distance the dogs the night before? What then? What if I was sixty-five?

“It’s because you have that flashing light in the back of your bike,” I was told.

Thanks. In other words you’re not leashing them?

“No, turn off your light when you pass through.”

I don’t think so.

I wrote a letter to the Chicago Tribune and the editors published it! But still, the dogs sniffed and roamed and I was stuck slowing down to a halt whenever I passed through. Didn’t seem fair. It's at least a half-mile of park we're talking about.

Then one night I saw a police car parked at the very end of the park. I pulled over to him, casually mentioned the problem.

He cruised on in and fined them all $500 bucks a pop. That's what it'll cost you if you don't leash your dog in Chicago, unless you're in a designated "dog park".

Should I have felt bad that they were fined? It's not like they didn't know the consequences of breaking the law. So no, I didn’t, still don’t. I worked that ecosystem to my advantage and in the end the advantage paid out and I could brag about it at parties.

The system even worked for the dogs who are less likely to be impounded for eating the flesh of the bikers or pedestrians who invite their jaws to nibble. It's not the people we put in jail when dogs bite. It's the dogs who are confined.

So the dog people have leashed their dogs in the park by the river with the bike path.

The interesting thing is that now when I see them? Things are different. The dogs have been on 30 foot leashes since that day, and when their people see me they're very friendly. We have this strange genuine bond going. We smile and wave. Sometimes I’ll even stop and talk for a couple of minutes, just comment on construction or the weather.

It’s like I’m a Park Person, if not a Dog Person, I'm a part of the culture.

They must not know it was me who worked my ecosystem, right, to get them in trouble?

But I've become a part of their world, the person on the red bike. I’m ONE OF THEM.

People like familiarity, being in the same place at the same time with the same people. This is why I tell single people to become a part of a mini-culture, a system within the ecosystem. Become a regular at the library, or at a bookstore or a coffee shop. Go to a church or join a political organization. Meet people or not, if they see you they get comfortable at the thought of you, like you are comfortable with certain checkers or baggers at your local grocery store.

Being lonely is a state of mind, you know. You’re never really alone.

Oh, and don’t be afraid to work your system. If one thing doesn’t work (direct communication, assertiveness, the things we’ve talked about in this blog) then something else will. Just maybe don't brag about how you get things done.

Copyright 2006, TherapyDoc