Checking In

I seem to be somewhat inconsistent in writing in this blog.  I apologize to those who check in periodically for new postings only to find the same old entries.  It’s been awhile since my last one so I am taking a few minutes to catch up.

On April 22^nd my wife and I celebrated our 35^th wedding anniversary.  I enjoyed our celebrations, one of which was white water rafting on the Kings River in Central California.  We had done that before a few years ago and it was just as enjoyable.   That is a long time to be married, although my brother and sister have been married to their wonderful spouses for 57 and 53 years respectively.  In comparison to them, I’m a greenhorn!

I attended many of the BYU Men’s Volleyball games held in Southern California and cheered them to victory a number of times.  They won their league and made it to the Championship Game of the Final Four.  Sadly, their play was far too predictable against a Cal State Irvine team that they had beaten twice in the season and who obviously knew how BYU plays, and were beaten in a three-game sweep.  I really thought that they were going to win it all.  Oh well, there is always next year.

My daughter and her family need to move out of their rented home in New Jersey by June 30 so the owner can move in.  This sudden turn of events has placed Adam and Emily in crisis mode attempting to find a home that they could purchase that would not significantly add to Adam’s commute into the City, and would not cost significantly more per month than what they’re paying for their current rental home.  This is an optimal time to purchase a home with interest rates and prices being what they are.  It’s just not very convenient or optimal to have to make  decisions so quickly.  My thoughts and prayers are with them.

My brother Tom celebrated his 76^th birthday on May 6^th.  He is in reasonable good health and is mentally fit, working at his employment every weekday, unless he is coming to LA for the Rose Parade or going to Gilbert, Arizona to see his oldest daughter, Caren, and her family.  Again, at 58, I’m just a whippersnapper!  My desire is that he lives as long as he wants to, which by all indications is a long time.  He has been a constant in my life, as I have written in this blog, and I love him and his lovely wife, Janeen, of whom I have written in this blog as well.

I have finally finished my 3000 hours of therapy and must now fill out a form and send it to Sacramento to enable the regulating agency to schedule the test I need to take to become licensed.  That testing should occur before the end of this year and with heavenly help, I should be able to pass it and “hang the shingle.”  I have learned so much and continue to learn as I do this important and challenging work.  I am grateful to those peers who have helped me along the way and to the many folks who have sat across from me or surrounded me as I have led groups.

The earth wobbled a little bit recently when I decided to join the social media world and have a presence on Facebook.  Although many of the 190+ people who have “friended” me are young folks in their 20s or 30s from my time as a YSA bishop in the LDS Church, there are some connections with people that I haven’t had any communication with for years.  I have to say that one can get “sucked in” to the social media phenomena rather easily, and I am controlling how much time that I allot to it.  One of my motivations for having a Facebook presence was to let folks know there about my blog and about new postings such as this one.

I do have a challenge with both Facebook and this blog and my profession as a psychotherapist.   Obviously, whoever I deal with and whatever occurs in my sessions must be kept confidential.  Most therapists do not do Facebook and most do not blog, although I have seen exceptions to both.  I guess that it is a matter of what you want to reveal about yourself and what you choose to write about.  I need to be very careful.

So my life is full, I am quite contented (for better or worse), and I am very blessed.  I appreciate having this outlet to my feelings and thoughts, and having the few of you that do read this blog.    

A Daughter's Work on Shame

For those who have recently read my blog, you will remember a post about my desire to investigate my shame.  That work continues.  Also, many of you who know me will know that I have a hard time believing in coincidences.  To find out that my #2 daughter Emily is presently on her own journey of investigating her shame, just as my #1 son BJ (Robert) is presently on his journey to addiction recovery, IS NO COINCIDENCE!  

Just as I decided to include my son's thoughts about addiction, I feel impressed to likewise include Emily's recent blogpost about her "awakening" to the shame that has governed her life.  It made me feel privileged to have her as a daughter (I am grateful for all of my children) and for her vulnerability to share her struggles with the world. I hope this can in some way be of benefit to you. 

Emily's Awakening: Part 1

    As many of you know, I am not one to shy away from talking about my struggles with anxiety and depression. I’m always glad to talk to someone who has dealt with similar issues, so I figure it’s helpful to others, not just therapeutic to me, to share my experiences. I also think society as a whole needs to suck it up and start being comfortable dealing with mental and emotional health issues, just like it is with medical issues. We shouldn’t feel embarrassed to acknowledge that we struggle with anxiety any more than we should feel ashamed to tell others we have high blood pressure. Privacy I can understand. But shame, never.

    Over the course of my adult life, I’ve sought help through psychotherapy a number of times. I started in college, my freshman year, when I was having a really hard time making the transition. I also sought help on my mission, when I was in Texas, waiting for my visa to allow me to go to Venezuela (which never happened but that’s another story.) The anxiety was so bad, that it was all I could do to put one foot in front of each other as we’d walk the streets near UNT. It took me six months and a transfer to Florida (and the subsequent sunshine and friendlier folk) to feel slightly normal again. The commonality of these and other events in my life that caused me to seek professional help is that they all brought on anxiety and depression.

    If you’ve ever experienced either, and maybe you didn’t even know that’s what it was, you’ll know what I’m talking about: The feeling of nameless but impending doom; The tightening of the chest; The aching pain of nausea in your stomach; The numbness; The feeling of walking through water; the despair. The complete and total despair—that no one understands; that God has abandoned you; that you’ll never feel good again; that you are going insane.

    In my time in therapy, I’ve figured out that a lot of my anxiety comes from an irrational, though deeply rooted fear that I am not worthy of love. Or, to put it another way, I am not a good ______ and therefore not worthy of love. So all my life I’ve tried to be a good daughter, a good student, a good missionary, and now, a good mother.

    So now, here I am, the mother of four under four, and my life is filled with stress. And I get angry. Very angry. All the time. In fact, it was only recently in therapy that I figured out that the anger is almost constant because I am almost always anxious. It’s not the crippling anxiety I felt on my mission; it’s not anxiety attacks that come and go; it’s more of a baseline anxiety that simmers just below the surface and boils over anytime I get provoked. And living with toddlers is, in case you didn’t know, very provoking. So I lose my temper, I do something I regret, and then fall into the pit of shame and despair over how terrible a mother I am. One time, it got so bad that I had to put all the kids in their beds, for their own protection, and then had to talk myself out of taking the pile of sleeping pills I held in my hand. (Google helped. You can’t kill yourself with 12 sleeping pills. You can only make yourself violently ill.) At any rate, that’s the depth of the pit of shame and despair.

    Several weeks ago, when I was telling my therapist about this incident, I was saying something like, “I used to be such a good mother! With Elizabeth, I was such a good mother! Now I’m a monster!” followed by a lot of sobbing. But then I stopped as I thought about what I’d just said. Wait a minute. I was a good mother? That sounds … actually … really prideful. And that’s when it hit me. I wasn’t a good mother when it was just me and Elizabeth. I was just a mother with more time and more resources. Now that I have the triplets, I am still a mother, but with less time and less resources. OH. MY. GOSH. You mean, all my accomplishments, all the things in my life that make me feel like I’m so awesome … THEY DON’T MAKE ME A “GOOD” PERSON!??!?! I just am!?!??!?!?!? I. JUST. AM! It’s ironic, but it took me looking at all my successes, not my failures, to realize that they do NOT define me! Think about it. I graduated from college with honors. Does that make me a “good” person? NO! It means I made good choices, yes. But it doesn’t increase my worth in any way. I lost my temper and yelled at my daughter. Does that make me a “bad” mom? NO! It means I made a bad choice, yes. But it doesn’t have to throw me into the pit of shame and despair, because, it doesn’t take away from my self-worth!

    Another way of looking at it is through the Atonement—the sacrifice Jesus Christ made for us. God loves us—every last sinner of us—and his love doesn’t depend on how “good” or “bad” we are. He loves us. Period. End of sentence. And by falling into the pit of shame and despair, I was only telling myself, “You are BAD. You can NEVER change. You are not worthy of God’s love.” What the WHAT?! That’s not true! That’s a LIE! Jesus gave his life and suffered for our bad mistakes—our sins—so that we can change and improve and so we’ll have the chance to make our actions match the incredible worth we ALREADY HAVE.

    Sitting in the therapy session, figuring all this out, I felt a physical weight lifted off my shoulders. And it didn’t end there. When I got home and I, once again, got angry and lost my temper, I didn’t fall into The Pit. I took a step back, saw my mistake for what it was—something wrong I did, not something bad I was—and could move forward from there. Incredible.

    This, my friends, was an awakening. It has set me free.

Drawing Upon Life Experiences

Maybe it is due to the schooling I received and the types of therapy that I embraced there.  Maybe it is due to the types of clientele that I see.  Maybe it is due to the style of supervision that I receive as a therapist intern.  Maybe it is due to where I am in my middle age as I see people each week.  Maybe it is due to the decisions that I have made through the years and the enormous amount of experiential knowledge I have gained recently. – Whether it is one, some, or all of these, what I know is that I often draw upon my marriage, my parenting, my spirituality, and indeed, my life experiences, as I do psychotherapy.

I have wondered if a fellow therapist with much more experience might be alarmed or even aghast that I would share who I am with those who come to see me.  I have likewise wondered if a veteran fellow therapist might condescendingly take me aside and state, “that’s how it is done.”  I can only say that I feel comfortable sharing who I am as I endeavor to help those who come seeking help.  And perhaps because I have not had clients with overwhelming psychopathologies (code speak for being “really messed up”) or perhaps because I am not disposed to pathologize them (code speak for telling them they are “really messed up”) or perhaps because I have pathogical issues (code speak that I am “really messed up”), I seem to relate and connect with most of them.

Somehow the experiences of my life seem to have a measure of relevance.  Being a 57 year old intern allows me the luxury of having experience from which to draw, and while not always directly applicable, they seem to be close enough.  For example, I have not had what I would consider a full blown addiction, but I do have experience feeling triggered and obsessing over not-so-nice thoughts, and I have seen addiction first hand.  I have not been through a divorce, but Ann and I got somewhat close some years ago.   I did not have parents who physically or sexually abused me, but I did have a mother who occasionally would emotionally abuse me, a father who was emotionally distant, and their marriage that lacked emotional and physical intimacy.  I did not have siblings at home, but I know what it is like to be an only child, and I did witness four siblings interact as children in my home.

I have been in psychotherapy for quite a while and know what it is like to be “on the couch.”  I have had a son who has been addicted to drugs and I know that heartache.  I have had experiences with the Twelve Steps and the whole recovery milieu.  I have had a wife who knows and understands how behavioral boundaries function in a marriage, and who knows how to be a loving and supportive.  I have had children who have made decisions that were not wise, and I likewise have made decisions that were not wise.  I have overcome my fears to go back to school to get a degree in my 50s.    I have learned many life truths, such as “recovery/change happens when the pain of addiction/not changing becomes greater than the pain of recovery/change, and will not happen when the pain of recovery/changing is greater than the pain of addiction/not changing,” and “let go and let God.”

I am in the transition of learning to be an effective psychotherapist.  Occasionally, I will get down upon myself (another life experience with which I am extremely aware), but I know that I am making progress and constantly learning.

A Place to Pursue Change

As I near 2000 hours of doing psychotherapy, I am becoming more comfortable with how I do it—my “style” so to speak.  When I was still enrolled at Philips Graduate Institute and started meeting with those first clients, I had all kinds of therapies floating around my head.  I was trying to identify which one I would embrace or which one felt right.  I was meeting with “generic” clients, individual and couples, with “generic” issues.  I was still doing pastoral counseling with the Young Adults.

I focused in my later semesters on Sexual Addiction, and I eventually became involved with LifeSTAR Network, a co-ed program for sexual addicts and their spouses.  That involved leading couples and groups and occasionally doing individual therapy with them.  About the time that I graduated I was released from my pastoral calling and asked to be a group leader (along with my wife Ann) of the Addiction Recovery Program of my Stake (my diocese).  Since then, I have been leading or participating in the direction of two groups a week that focus on the Twelve Steps.  Presently, I am leading or participating in four groups a week (two LifeSTAR and two ARP) four nights a week.



The Mechanics of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy

 A number of the people I see these days in individual counseling are recovering addicts.  That has been a function of people being referred for that specific purpose either by my agency for whom I work and by whom I am sponsored, Pilgrimage Counseling, or by local pastoral figures of my stake who know that I am a therapist and who have come to know me as an addiction “specialist.” 

I have become very comfortable working with people in addiction, particularly sexual addiction.  My “style” has evolved to be an amalgam of cognitive behavioral therapy, Imago therapy, narrative therapy among other therapies, LifeSTAR recovery, and a healthy dose of Twelve Steps.  

Harville Hendrix - The Creator of Imago Therapy

I use whatever I sense the individual needs to begin a new narration in their life.  I am directive.  I go to their past only to get context for the present and to understand what issues they need to be dealing with going forward.  If they have been exposed to the Twelve Steps or have some kind of religious foundation or sensibilities, I will freely discuss how their spirituality might affect their journey or their recovery.  I go a positive place with them and express to them my belief in their ability to change.  For better or for worse, I see my relationship with my clients as being horizontal rather than vertical; that is, I do not see myself as the all knowing, all wise poobah, but rather, a fellow traveler down the dysfunctional path who has learned some things along the way that have worked for me and that might be useful for them.  I am real; what you see is what you get.

So are there still oodles and gobs of knowledge and experiences that I lack in this new profession to be sure.  Do I catch myself occasionally saying things that perhaps would be better left unsaid?  Yes sir.  But am I improving as the days and months go by?  Undoubtedly.  It has been a gradual transition from where I started to where I am now and it will continue to be a transition to greater competence in the years to come.  But I am enjoying the journey and enjoying each session, and feeling like I (and God) are doing some good.