I am wired. And unless you have recently emerged from your bomb shelter, chances are you are as well. Cell phone. Check. Laptop. Check. IPad, IPod, another laptop, desktop, work desktop, Wii, Xbox, Roku, really crappy laptop, satellite radio. Check and check. TV’s and technologies everywhere I look. Check. It’s time for a break. I commented to a friend today that I am not sure cell phones and the internet have really added much to my life. As a therapist I see a frightening array of what I have started calling our cultural ADHD behaviours, behaviours that didn’t seem as prevalent even a few years ago. My youngest son used to read, and paint, and create. Now he would play his Xbox 16 hours a day if we let him. If I make him stop he looks around like a wounded and confused zombie. He has lost his ability to entertain himself. If it’s not the Xbox it’s the laptop or a smart phone. He doesn’t seem to understand that they are the same damn thing. The television now seems innocuous for some reason. I have found myself saying to him, “why don’t you watch some TV?” It seems like it was only a few years ago that I was telling him not to watch the boob tube; now it’s the healthy sounding alternative. What happened? I can tap my credit card now because it takes too long to put in a password. I am frustrated if the internet is slow (remember dial-up?). The automated teller takes forever. Cultural ADHD… I was in Hawaii recently for only a few hours when people were Facebooking me asking for pictures. I’M ON VACATION! People get upset if I don’t immediately return their text, email or Facebook message. I have come to loathe FaceTime. Surfing the web has become work. People can get in touch with me 24 hours a day, no matter where I am. It’s time to go kayaking. 
This summer I’m calling it “wireless weekends”. I am going to turn off the two cell phones I have, stay off Facebook – heck I’m going to stay off the computer all together. No texting, no surfing, no electronics… except a bit of television because I’m not Amish. It’s beyond time for a change. Years ago, when I went on vacation or left for a conference everyone understood I would be out of touch for a while. No one texted me an hour later to find out if I arrived safely or had any friggen pictures yet. Time for a blast into the past. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not a Luddite. I love technology, love it. I used to be a I.T. guy. I own a complete sound system for my band. I have five or six computers, but enough is enough. Time for a break. Ever considered how you and yours are affected by technology? I have no solid data on this but it seems, in my little part of the world, that we are becoming less and less able to sit still. I cannot remember the last time my sixteen year old sat out in the sunshine without some electronic device. People have stopped reading books. Clients appear more and more frantic, more stressed, more impatient, and less happy. I sometimes wonder if the growth in technology has really made our world a better place. My world has become a more frantic place filled with text messages and phone calls and Facebook updates. Maybe I am an Luddite. Tomorrow I will say goodbye to my MacBook Pro and hello to my kayak. See you again on Monday.
Summer Zen
I went water skiing last summer with a few of my closest, nearest friends. We have a spot on the other end of Alouette Lake and my buddy Rod brought his ski boat for entertainment and transportation. Nathan surfed in the wake, Martin learned to wake board, and the old timers pulled out the slalom ski.
Slaloming is very zen for me. For just a few minutes every other year-or-so I can con my way on to the back of a boat and feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. It is perhaps my best moment. Skydiving once gave me that charge but one day, as I was falling backwards at 125 mph through a pillowy cloud, I realized I was a single-parent and I was bored. The thrill wasn’t worth the risk, in the end. To this day when I look up at the clouds I see them as only a skydiver can. I look and I am still falling through the sky on that stormy, stormy night. As I feel the wind in my face and turn to the magnificent Nimbus cloud I glance to my left and there is my father, co-pilot in a cockpit racing me to the earth, nose to the ground. I see him seeing me and that moment is imprinted in my mind forever. In that moment.
Water skiing didn’t come easy to me. It seemed like it took years of begging to learn how to slalom well. Huge rooster tails, clockwork rhythm, sapped my strength and threatened to slam me into the water at every turn. I have tried other things behind a rope (I have a newspaper clipping of me in the air, parachute unfurled, being dragged down the frozen Snye River by my buddy Ferguson and his truck). There is one legend about Scott Williams that reads that once, while on Kalamalka Lake near Kelowna, I was completely submerged while still trying to get up on one ski. Apparently there was only a ripple on the surface, I was totally under. I seem to remember deciding at one point in my submarine dive that I should probably point my ski up, back towards the surface. Like the Hunt For Red October I finally came charging out of the abyss, a mighty destroyer careening through the waves..
Feel the rhythm. Feel the rhyme.
Getting good at anything takes time and rhythm. Change comes to those who are persistent, who refuse to quit and put in the time. Change takes time so put it in. I can always find lots of reasons to throw in the towel. Persistence is a mind game, pure and simple. You will be tempted to feel sorry for yourself, go ahead but then stop… defeated. You will lose sight of the goal at some point. Dust yourself off and get back on the tennis court. The task sometimes feels insurmountable but keep making those gross protein shakes if that floats your boat.
How is your rhythm? Still racing around and stressed? What is really important for you to do this week? Is whatever is bothering you worth so much head time? Are you happy with your life, right now?
I’m learning to play bass. As Bob, my guru teacher told me, bass is about locking in with the drummer. It’s about finding the pocket and feeling the rhythm. Never mind the sweaty freaks playing guitar and drop into the groove. Be cool. That’s pretty good advice for life. Sometimes I get so busy being busy I forget to lock in, I forget to groove. I forget to feel the rhythm, feel the rhyme. The screaming urgencies of life suck the life out of me, and probably out of you. As I told a friend today, there is no end to the misery if I let it lock me in.
Don’t forget to be cool. Don’t fight the waves; strap on that slalom ski and feel the tug. Slice through those waves, if only for a few minutes. In skiing, as in life, it’s about learning to ride the wave, not submarine through it. It’s about finding the pocket.
Welcome to summer.
How Big Is Your Brave?
Casual Friday – What is the deal with women and water bottles?
I made the mistake of teasing a friend about her carrying of the sacred water bottle all day and I almost did not live to tell you about it. The women in my life are militant about hydration. Frankly, I don’t get it.
It happened one day, or so it seemed, very long ago (I believe it was a Wednesday). Women started carrying water bottles everywhere. I remember clearly watching women running about a small indoor track which had not one, but two water fountains virtually on lane one. It was all of three or four seconds between them but for some bizarre reason, that day every woman in the gym was running with a water bottle. At one point I witnessed one of them actually filling up her bottle at the fountain, an act that took far longer than actually taking a drink.
Back to my rabid friend. In no uncertain terms she described for me this miracle liquid that had transformed her life. Before she had been overweight and pale. Now she was overweight, pale, and hydrated. I am completely sure my wife is going to blow a gasket one day with her vast consumption of tasteless, lukewarm water.
I simply cannot pee that often.
Forgive and Forget?
Probably not.
Many of us have talked to someone about our painful past. Most likely you have heard the advice, “you can forgive (with help) but you probably will never forget’. This is generally good advice and is given when people ask, “how am I supposed to forget what he/she has done?” In cases of violence against persons, hurt, or abuse, unfortunately forgetting is rarely an option. Even years of intense counselling cannot erase some memories. Anyone who says otherwise is probably selling something.
But what about forgiving? We have all been taught in church or school or by a guardian that we need to forgive those who have harmed us. There are a plethora of stories of individuals who have chosen to forgive the person who has murdered a family member, or done egregious harm. Let me make this perfectly clear so there is no misunderstanding of where I am headed with this. In my experience this is the EXCEPTION, not the rule. Most of us in similar situations spend our entire lives seeking to work through such pain. There is counseling and prayer and screaming and tears and more counseling. We are taught to move forward, and many of us do. It takes time and tears and work to loosen the grip such experiences have had on our lives.
Most of us have been taught that moving forward is primarily a matter of forgiveness. This is not always good advice. Telling a patient that he or she must eventually forgive their rapist, for example, is overwhelming and inconceivable at the beginning of the journey. It may be possible for some to eventually forgive after working through much of the pain, but is this the only option?
Let me suggest a third option (as opposed to bitterness or forgiveness). Many of us will never be able to fully forgive those who have injured us. Common wisdom dictates, therefore, that we will never “truly be able to move forward.” As a result, even with counseling or prayer or whatever floats your boat, we remain in bondage to that trauma for the rest of our lives. This often has catastrophic ramifications. Untreated trauma can lead to all manner of mental health issues from depression to hoarding to constantly painting our front room, to being unable to commit to a healthy relationship, or have an orgasm, or cope with catastrophic shame and pain. “Trauma trumps all” as the saying goes and leaving it untreated is often a prescription for a haunted life.
So what is the answer?
Over the years I have worked through hurtful memories with hundreds, even thousands of people. We are taught in school that tools such as Exposure Therapy help clients to deal with such issues. Clients are often encouraged to tell their stories over and over again until they can do so without the emotional discharge. There is some wisdom in this, in spite of the fact that Exposure Therapy no longer enjoys the popularity it once did. What is good about such methodologies is that contained within is a nugget of dynamic truth.
Here’s what I often tell clients. Sometimes moving forward is more about boredom than forgiveness. Let me put this another way – Let’s deal with you story until it bores you (figuratively speaking). Let’s work through your stuff until you learn enough, hurt enough, think and feel enough, that the tragic parts of your story lose their power… until one day you realize that you want to talk about something else.
And therein, as the bard said, lies the rub. There is real power in teaching your heart to listen more to your head. Most of us are a raging bundle of hormones and emotion and tend to make decisions and have opinions based on how it “feels”. Therapy will help you gain perspective. The real message of counselling is, “change your mind and your ass will follow”. You are hurt. It often becomes virtually impossible to see beyond the pain. I often tell clients, “when you are really hurting it can feel like you are insane. You think and do things that are born out of that pain and it is almost impossible to be objective. You may not understand, in such times, what is the best for you. You may not care. Movement involves wrestling with the demons until you are able to loosen the emotional hold such memories can have on you. Until your story becomes less interesting to you. Until you are able to push ahead without being ambushed by the pain. It still hurts, but you are on the move.”
Goalies and Gatekeepers
I have never been very good at being a goalie. It has gotten me in trouble all my life.
There is something to be said for encouragement. I have always tried to be that cheerleader, even when someone didn’t believe in themselves. I’m not saying this to brag, I often suck at life. It has always been my heart’s desire to help people see the future and believe in hope, idealistic dreams, dragons and heroes.
There have been times in my life when I have been commissioned to be the keeper of the flame. I have led organizations – some successfully, others were flaming balls of amazing failure. I grew up with parents who believed in me, but few others. I was the mouthy kid, the highly energetic kid before we knew about things like ADHD, and way before it was trendy to talk about. I had grandparents who I saw far too often who were soul-destroying alcoholics who demeaned us children and belittled our dreams and aspirations. That has molded me, somehow, into the person I am today. I can’t abide dream-killers. I am an idealist though I have much evidence to the contrary. This all sounds somewhat self-indulgent but as a Canadian I must remind you that I have faults a-plenty, just ask anyone. I have people who hate me. I know people who firmly believe I am going to hell. I’m human, like you.
You can do it. I have to believe that or I wouldn’t know how to live. I don’t really know if you can become a millionaire or get that jetski you have been dreaming about but I am firmly convinced that anyone can be whole, can find the meaning of life, can make a difference. I have to believe that.
I would be remiss if I did not mention that most of us will not live up to our potential. As I have written many times on this blog, emotional/mental/spiritual health is not a given and often requires more effort than many of us can give. We are also not taught about this stuff anywhere growing up so most of us have had to stumble around, looking for band-aids and triage kits. Most advice is, frankly, bad advice. Like any profession the worlds of psychology and religion are replete with superstars trying to tell you how to live your life. Most of them are, unfortunately, very wrong. Get happy quick solutions and fad remedies don’t tend to work in the long run. In the long run we need to run a great deal longer than we thought we would have to. Most people end up as “realists”, pessimists too afraid to admit they might be negative.
Idealists get beaten by life. Even with a multi-billion dollar movie industry spewing out feel good cartoons and love stories we still cannot convince most people to believe in the improbably after they hit 35.
We thought we could find Mr. Right and we were wrong. We believed that we would reach all our childhood dreams and we fell short. What now.
My dad is back in college. At 75 he has decided to go to university to study children’s literature. He wants to write kid’s books. You see what I am spawned from? What chance did I have? Most people are preparing to buy their burial suit at that age and he’s starting the slow route on a four year degree. I like my pop.
Most childhood dreams belong in our childhood. You may not, in point of fact, grow up to be a princess or a firetruck. As Robert Frost pointed out, “Two roads diverge in a wood…”. Life is almost like that. As I grow older I can choose to bring that trauma, that pain, the dreams dashed and the people who have hurt me… or I can choose to live in a world of children’s books and magic. I am prone to become too analytical, too rational. This has often kept me from allowing myself to believe in mystery. The older I get the more I seek hope in the midst of truth.
I suck at goalkeeping. I still want to score.
Spring Is In The Air
“Change is needed, change is good”. Vaughn
Time to change it up a bit. I took a different job this week, one which a family member termed a “demotion”, but by choice.
I was tired of my life. Tired of sitting still all day. Tired of the grind, the relentless wheel of need that has no end. I knew I was getting this way months ago, but I didn’t do anything about it. I could have. I was going to. This week.
I quit my major part-time job. Well actually not really. Another position came up, outreach, and someone asked me to apply. Thank you someone. You know how it is, you don’t realize how badly you were doing until you look back. I realize now that I was coasting, coasting while doing a few other amazing things. But even those other amazing things couldn’t compete with the grind.
So here I sit in a new office, in a trailer, at a local First Nation Office. The people are amazing and the office is awesome. Tomorrow I hang out with teens at a unique high school for those who can’t handle the norm. Wednesday I will gratefully sit back in my counseling chair to help out for a day because Thursday is my day – I’ll find something to do. Friday I’m at the Laser Clinic and private practice, after seeing my two babies of course. Life just got mixed up.
I am a big believer in mixing stuff up. I have an entire life of variety and all I had to do to get that was to give up any hope of dying with a nice boat. Others do it better but I have a habit of getting bored, just when things get secure. My wife tells everyone I have ADHD but I’m the counselor and I’m firmly convinced that I don’t want that diagnosis. But then again, I’m bored now so let’s move on.
Change is good. It reminds us that we are alive. Change brings back our creative passions and exposes us to experiences. When this happens I like to call that “living”. Sometimes I can go weeks without really living, just getting by. I have no idea if I am going to like this decision, but there is no turning back without repercussions. I like that, in theory.
The chairs in this little corner office are very retro cool, and I have no idea what color they are. In my ear I can hear several creative females in my life-giving me “the look” before condescending to tell me the color is sea-foam hippy sweat or some such. They remind me of the talking chairs in Alice in Wonderland or The Beauty and the Beast or Sons of Anarchy, I get them mixed up. It may all seem strange but soon, like anything and anyone, it becomes normal, regular. I’ll worry about that some other time. Today I’m just happy that it’s sunny out, I’m off to meet a Chief, and my sea-foam hippy chair mixes nicely with the 1978 carpet and the trailer paneling. I’m content.
This Is Water
How Long Can This Take?
It’s very sad. I have watched it happen for years but it continues to haunt me, just a little bit. She quit. She had been coming for just over two months and she was frustrated. The change that she was promised has not happened and probably never will. Something inside of her suspected this would happen but she thought she owed it to herself to at least give counseling “a shot”. Two and a half months.
So close.
I’m very weird. When I want to unwind I love to strap on my ear buds and listen to cosmology or physics or history. Atoms fascinate me. So does the universe. Like most of us who endured Physics in high school I learned that Physics is boring; and the only people who became physicists were the kind of people who would never have to worry about things like having a girlfriend or being popular. Physics was cylinders and math and radiuses..es. Bill Bryson was the guy who introduced me to this alternate reality. There was a book I once read about a journalist who was on an airplane flight and he realized that he didn’t know why the airplane was in the air, didn’t know anything about geography or science or the stars so wrote a book about a bunch of cool things I had never really taken the time to appreciate. I can’t remember the name of that book but if anyone has read it, let me know.
It was Bill Bryson’s book “A Short History Of Nearly Everything” that really rocked my world. I have read it cover to cover four times and will probably destroy it when I eventually read it again and again. Bryson helped me imagine 10,000 billion billion stars. He wrote about how on the very smallest level, far tinier than atoms, the basis of life is music. I am naturally a storyteller and this book has provided hours of fodder. It has helped me understand how precarious and unlikely life is, while showing me that there could possibly be a million worlds that could support intelligent life, though probably nothing like us for many reasons that I have learned from books like this. I met people like Michio Kaku and actually read Hawking. I am listening to “The Magic Of Reality” by Richard Dawkins but he is bitter and is killing my fascination with the magic of reality so I may listen to the original BBC radio dramas of Sherlock Holmes next to cleanse my palate.
So what do trilobites and neutrons and anxiety have to do with each other? I almost forgot… quitting.
I never took that second Physics class that Bryson talks about, the one that introduced you to real physics – the universe, the atom, the amazing. I was stuck with the volume of a cylinder and boredom and the pledge to never read physics again the rest of my life, so help me God. So close.
Apparently the next year you were introduced to the meaning of life, the beginnings of the universe and the mysteries of existence, so all-in-all I probably didn’t miss much.
I have mentioned in other articles here, here, and here that most people do not really change, especially if they are dealing with anxiety or trauma, because change is very hard and takes a long time. We have been sold the lies that promise to transform us with little or no effort. We are in love with shortcuts and our brain in neurochemically wired from an amygdala level on up for novelty. Many of us have also helped evolution along through our excessive use of drugs or alcohol, maybe our parents drank a bit when we were in the womb, perhaps we have inherited the douche bag gene, etc. Whatever the situation you can bet your 1984 Klondike Days Commemorative Coin Collection that you won’t be over your mental health issues in two months… or six months… or probably a year or two. It just takes however long it takes. There is no epiphany day for most of us. After three months of intense introspection (literally a few weeks after she quit) most people begin to notice something happening, though they are hard-pressed to describe it or even understand what “it” is.
We meet and something about you is different. Maybe you decided to go for a walk this week after ten years of depression and guilt because your psychiatrist, who never took the time to meet you, told you that you needed to walk for an hour, every day. What an idiot. Don’t even get me started…
Don’t quit. You only have one shot at this and contrary to what I really, really really want I probably won’t find a time machine so that I can go back to high school with all I know now and rule! Being free of those demons that haunt us is something that must be earned, and comes at a terrible price for some. All I can say is, I know personally that it is worth any price. I’m not there yet, but to paraphrase Martin, I can see the mountain top.
Some of you know what i mean.
Experimenting With Deductive Reasoning
I watch a lot of Sherlock Holmes. No one is as good as Basil Rathbone, no matter what you might think. I can see him clearly in my mind’s eye, which is amazing when you consider I cannot imagine the faces of some of my relatives. Cumberbatch may be second, his latest take outstanding and entirely believable (as long as you don’t mention the utterly ridiculous plot twists in the last episode. An assassin? Seriously? Moriarty?). Watson’s wife notwithstanding (although I love her as an actor and it’s cool that they are married in real life), I have endeavored to incorporate Sherlock’s love of deductive reasoning more and more into my life (Don’t even get me started on Iron Man’s version with the dude from the movie about Stalingrad).
Years ago watching Lie To Me led to a fascination with John Gottman’s techniques, even enrolling in the online version of his facial recognition course and reading his magnum opus (dry). The power of television.
Back to my experiment with deductive reasoning. I work part-time at an addictions center (www.alouetteaddictions.org) and on any given day you can find a needle or sterile water container, maybe a rubber tie or a cooker, in our very parking lot. I have mentioned this to other colleagues who have, without exception, been surprised because they have never noticed anything amiss. This is interesting inasmuch as there are often several of these discards within feet of their cars. Several.
One day I had a banana on the way to work. When I got to my regular parking spot I found myself in a quandary. It was icky and I didn’t feel like carrying it to the front door, unlocking the door, doing the stairs and hallway, unlocking my door, etc. I am, by nature, a lazy person.
Fully intending on grabbing it later I slid the banana under the driver’s seat car door and under the car. I would simply grab it once I sat in the car at the end of the day. My car (1985 300zx) is a very low riding vehicle and it would be as simple as reaching my long arms under the car. I forgot.
About a week later I noticed a dark brown old banana peel that looked as if it had been there for six months. And it dawned on me.
Recently I have gotten into the habit of eating a banana for breakfast on the way to work almost every day. Every morning I am faced with a dilemma. Then I thought of Sherlock. He loves to say, “you look John, but you do not see”.
How long would it take, at a rate of a banana a day, for people to notice that the parking lot was filling up with bananas? They don’t tend to notice a tiny syringe but surely, within a few days, someone would mention in my hearing that there is a preponderance of bananas where no bananas should be. A week at most?
It’s March 18 today. It seemed only appropriate to begin the experiment at the beginning of the month. I can look out of my window and clearly see…. 11 bananas. The others are out there, they have become a more integrated part of the landscape and are not as easily detectable from the second floor.
18 bananas.
I promised myself, back on day two, that I would shovel up every single banana. The task now seems a little daunting. Within a few days I will have over 20 bananas to scrape up and it is going to be noticeable. People will want to ask me why I am shoveling up 38 bananas won’t they?
Look but don’t see.
(UPDATE: I just asked a co-worker, shrugging as I pondered, “Have you noticed that banana peel in the parking lot?”
“What banana peel?”)
From time to time my clients hook up with new partners. Never do this if you are seeing a counselor. Ever. We will make you miserable. I often tell clients that counseling, if it is really working, totally sucks. Counseling rips open your life and exposes stuff that you have tried to keep away from for decades. The very coping skills that have worked for you all your life are the very things we will take from you. You are not in my office for a good time and I spend a lot of money on Kleenex. It is one thing to look at your inner life – your emotions and motives and hurts and private junk – it’s another thing altogether to really see what is going on.
So why would I pick on you for dating someone? Most of us who have a history of making poor relational decisions will continue to make poor decisions until someone stops us. We do not naturally understand our dysfunction and are prone to make the same mistakes, time after time after time. Unfortunately there is no roadmap for life and no one taught us how to understand this stuff. I am finally, at my old age, figuring a few things out… someday. We may learn eventually and we call this “experience”. My job is to help you have less experience.
Tomorrow will be banana number 19. It’s actually already here, sitting beside me as I write. We are down to a few bananas at home and I did not want to have to go to the grocery store after work so that I could continue my precious experiment tomorrow. I am counting on the fact that everyone else in our household likes bananas and Annette will go get more before I have to get my lazy butt off the couch. I try to be an equal partner, but this is science and I need to preserve my strength for the investigation.
Bore Me To Life
I have spoken with a lot of people about trauma. It’s kind of my job. Rarely a day goes by without hearing about someone’s life taking a tragic detour, of heartache and ruined families and ruined lives. That’s pretty much what we call “a week day” around here. I love it and I hate it.
Most of us know a little something about trauma. We’ve seen enough and heard enough to believe that people who have deep-seated resentments need to “get it out”. Pain breeds bitterness and bitterness breeds an ugly and petty life. Just get it out.
I used to think that “getting it out” meant that we had to go over every little ugly detail, line by line, over and over again. We called it Exposure Therapy, we called it CBT. We called it a lot of things. Over and over and over.
There may be something to that, though maybe something different from what was initially intended. Talking does, for reasons that often even escape me, help. This is not even a controversial truth. Everyone, with the possible exception of a few Scientologists out there, understands that counseling can have value.
Quite a bit of this is really about boredom.
The jury may be out on whether or not rehashing your childhood “until you can let go of it” is even possible. What I do know is that if we talk about this stuff long enough you are going to grow tired of rehashing it over and over. Eventually I am going to wear you down until you care about that issue – 1% less. With time the emotional death-grip that this hurt has on you begins to loosen, very very slowly. With time the details seems to matter a little less. Talking about something you have spent your life trying to ignore helps to loosen up the vice. There is insight and perspective, arguments and pain. One day you realize you haven’t grieved in a few days and you know that you are learning to walk again.
Time heals, sometimes.
Working through your issues and coming through to the other side is less about techniques and more about showing up. If you find a counselor that doesn’t suck and are willing to put in the effort, anything is possible. It may take a lot longer than you first imagined but it is always, always worth it. You have only one life, and I don’t know about you but I do not wish to spend that life broken.
Maybe moving forward begins with some of us walking into a counselor’s office and saying, “bore me to life”.
Quote Of The Day
Counseling is about trying to change the way we think – so that we are happy in spite of our situation, not because of it.
The Great Perhaps
I’m tired of pessimism. It is the world I live in. It is the state of things around my chunk of the party. I have often said that by the time people get to be about 40 they have seen enough pain, been abused and slandered enough, that it’s hard to be an optimist anymore. Most of us have more than enough reason to be pissed off.
My dad is an optimist. It would be fair to say that he is “the optimist”. If you got in a car accident and lost a leg he would encourage you and remind you how much cheaper it’s going to be only having to buy one shoe. That’s my Pop. They don’t call him “Happy Howie” for nothing.
Annette likes to talk about how, no matter what news you give my dad, he somehow makes it sound like a good thing. He recently released his memoirs and named the book ever so aptly, “Life is Great. And It’s Getting Better”. My kids hold him in near-mythical awe. When I recently told one of my sons that I was buying my dad’s old CRV he turned to me with a straight face and said, “You’re so lucky, Grandpa sat in that seat.” It does not suck to be my old man.
I want to get better, getting old. So mature and wise that I think I understand the meaning of life. And cool. Someday I hope to be cool again. I think I’ll wear a fedora everywhere and put on suits again. And flirt with younger women. Give out sage advice with a wink. Have my first mint julep. Spend some time in California with my two buddies who live there. I’m going to float on a small boat in a hot place with the woman I love.
I go to seek the great “perhaps”. Perhaps the next part of our lives can be the best part. Perhaps this time we can deal with it and let it go. Perhaps there will be more time for good friends and food, more moments lying on the grass in the sun and swinging little children. And laughter.
One of the surest signs that a person is working through their depression, for example, is the renewal of hope. One day they come into my office and don’t talk the way they did in our previous appointments. They walked a bit more, talked a bit more, and felt a few more somethings. I am constantly surprised when this happens, and it happens around this office quite often. We can never identify the “when” and rarely even the “why”. It just happens. Hope can do that to a person. Allowing yourself to think about a different and happy future is one of the first – and always one of the most important – steps in any recovery.
Perhaps.
What Do You Want?
You can pretty much do anything you want as an adult. The question is, what do you want?
Didn’t you imagine, back so long ago, that once you became an adult you would run free, drink deep, love long, and chase rainbows? I remember thinking that someday, someday no one will be able to tell me what to do. Someday I will make all my own decisions, someday. Someday I will have it all.
Someday is still coming.
I still don’t do “anything I want”. This is most likely because “what I want” isn’t what I usually need. I want to sleep late, eat chocolate, make love, get high, be lazy and become rich and famous in spite of all that. And sometimes, just sometimes, I want to burn my world.
We all have moments, don’t we, when we are tempted to throw everything away for a minute of guilty pleasure. The honest truth is, if it feels good I probably shouldn’t do it. Hedonism sounds fun on paper but I’ve been dealing with its effects all my adult life. And honestly, is that what I really want?
That’s the thing about getting all the candy you want – eventually you get sick and the vices you thought you could control end up controlling you.
Wisdom is understanding what you really want, not what you thought you wanted. There is a huge difference.
Working as a counselor has its big perks. I have the opportunity, every day, to think about my own life and mental health issues. As a result I no longer care as much what people think about me. I no longer feel the need to lead the parade, or steal the show. I’ve also learned that I am definitely not qualified to make all the right decisions in my life. Left to my own devices I have a tendency to grow lazy and become selfish. I continue to learn lessons about myself, my weaknesses, and my need for some form of accountability. When I am hungry, or angry, burned out, or tired, I am learning not to trust my immediacy. I recognize, better than I once did, that little evil voice inside me that wants to blow stuff up and eat at McDonald’s.
Right now I’m thinking about going to the drive-through on the way home. Apparently I still have a ways to go…
Instructions For A Bad Day
Mindfulness moments – from Shane Koyczan
Remember the times you could have pressed “quit” but you hit “continue”? Every bad day has an end…
Men and Toilet Seats
We have a joke around here, though it’s not a good one. It goes something like, “Women make sure you put the toilet seat back up!” Like I said, not really funny, though the men tend to laugh.
Don’t get me started on toilet seat etiquette. Ok, now you’ve gone and done it.
Men, put down the damn toilet seat. Every time. It’s not rocket science and you aren’t a Neanderthal so grow a pair and quit being a child. There, I said it. Talk therapy does work… thanks for listening.
Nothing ruins a day faster than sitting in pee. Can we all at least agree to that? That is not the primary issue with toilet seat etiquette but I have a teenage son and there are a few times when capital punishment has crossed my mind as that wet feeling hit. I may be a passivist but there are limits. It is beyond disgusting when a male decides it is too much work to put the lid up to urinate. We haven’t even gotten to the ‘put it down after’ part.
Toilets are ugly. Closing the lid just looks better. In fact, close both lids.
The primary issue, in my mind, is about chivalry. As a man I want to be known as a strong person who cares selflessly for my girl, for any girl when you think about it. What is wrong with ensuring that someone does not have to clean up after my messes? As a man I wish to retain my perk of being able to stand to pee but at what cost? Nothing irks me more than going into a unisex bathroom and seeing yellow on the toilet seat. What do I do now? If I leave it the next person will be convinced that I was the moron who was so inconsiderate. Now, in order to clear my good name, I am forced to clean up some other dudes ignorance. It is galling.
I was raised to believe that to be a man was a good thing; that things like strength and chivalry and honor were important. I don’t apologize for the fact that I am a male. I like it a great deal, to be honest. There are times, however, when it’s embarrassing to be labeled with those who are emotionally unavailable, or mean or cocky or, god forbid, pee on the toilet seat.
500
Five hundred. … 500 fights, that’s the number I figured when I was a kid. 500 street fights and you could consider yourself a legitimate tough guy. You need them for experience. To develop leather skin. So I got started. Of course along the way you stop thinking about being tough and all that. It stops being the point. You get past the silliness of it all. But then, after, you realize that’s what you are.
Taylor Reese (Vin Diesel) Knockaround Guys
It takes time to be good at anything of value. Working on my black belt, a few years ago, it became apparent that I was going to have to practice, practice, practice. Sure I could have bought one on the internet for twenty bucks, but somehow that just wasn’t the same. The sense of accomplishment, the joy of achievement, cannot be purchased for a few dollars. Recently I decided to work on my PhD in Psychology and, looking at the requirements, was immediately intimidated by the process. Again, for a few dollars I could lie about the accomplishment and get one online, but again…
Growth, real growth, takes time and pain. There are lessons you can only learn in battle, being shot at. The lessons I have learned have usually come through struggle and sweat, and sometimes tears.
I often write about the reasons why counseling usually doesn’t work. In case you haven’t read any of these posts it boils down to the fact that counseling is really hard, change is super tough, and it takes practice.
It takes a ton of practice.
I am fond of telling clients information that they already know, but have never practiced. As I find myself constantly saying, “I have seven years of post-secondary education so that I can tell you stuff that you can Google.” It’s true. Going to a counselor is usually an exercise in the obvious. I hope I have a few insights that my clients haven’t thought of, but most counseling tips are obvious – learn to live in the moment (mindfulness), practice stopping your racing thoughts, understand the systems that are shaping you, attack your cognitive distortions… that kind of stuff.
Most of you know this stuff. You could teach this stuff. The issue isn’t knowledge, the issue is practice.
It takes hundreds and hundreds of attempts before most of the concepts you learn in counseling “kick in”. Often people will come see me for a few months and realize that nothing has really changed. They become frustrated by the lack of movement, in spite of their hours of showing up. It is hard to understand, when you are frustrated and hurting, that you may be just on the cusp of something amazing, something that is in the process of happening. When you are in the midst of the battle it’s hard to see anything but bullets.
Counseling works. Don’t ask me why, but it does. I’ve seen it transform seemingly impossible situations. I’ve witnessed people who had all but given up find hope and healing. The problem is, it’s slow. It has taken years to get where you are and it may take years to dig yourself out. That’s the real truth, no sugar added.
Don’t give up. You have only one precious life and no one else is going to fix it for you. You know that. I know that.
So I got started.
From a Presentation I Gave To A Bunch of Middle-class White Business People About Drugs Last Week
When I was a kid my dad took me fishing on Primrose Lake. Primrose Lake is a private military lake that is used for target practice and inaccessible to the general public (If you look on a map of the Cold Lake area in Alberta there is this big dotted line called the “Air Weapons Reserve”. There was an urban legend that if you could fish that lake and didn’t mind being aimed at by F-18’s, that the fishing was out of this world. My dad pulled a few strings and before I knew it we were fishing between bombardments. It was incredible. the fish practically jumped in the boat. It took 20 minutes for three of us to catch our limit of big, big fish. The cleaning took far longer than the catching.
We filled our freezer with fish that summer. Summer also brought holiday time and before long we were off to the family camping trip, thoughts of Primrose Lake far behind us. What we didn’t know was that, just before we left, someone had accidentally pulled the plug on our huge freezer.
Fast forward two weeks later…
We got home, tired and travel-worn and the first thing we noticed when we walked in the house was that it reeked of bad fish. Why, we wondered, was that odor so pronounced? It didn’t take us long to find our way downstairs and finally open the now completely defrosted freezer… full to the brim with brine and water and dead smelly fish. What to do?
It was tempting to just close that lid and walk away. We could have dressed up that freezer; even painted it a new color, but that wouldn’t have changed what was inside it. We could have hired a psychotherapist to talk to the fridge; maybe a minister could have come by and cast a demon out of the thing. It would not have mattered. Dress up that thing any way you want and the fact remains that it still is a freezer full of rotting fish. Unless you deal with what is going on inside you are not going to make any difference at all.
That’s a lot like our issue with drug and alcohol abuse in this area. It’s tempting to make excuses for the problem and blame someone else but at the end of the day the fact remains that it is still our mess-o-fish. It’s not the school’s fault, or the RCMP, or even the fault of the addict alone. At the end of the day we can blame whoever we want, it’s still our problem.
As a middle-class person who is trying my best to protect my kids from the horrors of addiction it’s really tempting to want to shut that lid and believe we don’t have a problem… but we do. We have a huge problem, an epidemic.
This isn’t a few of us smoking a doobie in 1985, kids in our middle schools are regularly offered meth-amphetamine (you can get high for a whole day for ten bucks), alcohol, oral sex, ecstasy, magic mushrooms, cigarettes, pot, Ritalin, pornography, cough medicine (Dextromethorphan), and prescription drugs. And a lot of those kids are getting their stash from their parents. Tons of teens smoke weed with their parents. Virtually all prescription drug abuse among children (Oxycontin, Percocet, T3’s, Emtec, T1’s, cough syrup, Benzos, sleeping medications, muscle relaxers, etc.) is directly connected to the family medicine cabinet.
The British Columbia (Canada) Adolescent Health Survey (2009) – 24% of adolescents reported using cannabis 20 or more days in the past month. 20 or more days! That’s shocking, isn’t it? Among students who use marijuana most reported that they started smoking cannabis at 13 years of age… 13.
Same with cigarettes (35% at 13) although 9% reported (those who had the courage to report), that they had their first cigarette when they were 9!
26% report having oral sex before the age of 15.
We regularly see parents who tell us their 12-year-old (or younger) has been offered or engaged in drug use, alcohol, high-risk behaviors and oral sex. Most of my female clients who have a history of sexual abuse tell me that they were 12 or 13 when they started dating men in their 20’s, 30’s and 40’s. It’s twisted and scary and statutory rape.
Kids today have crazy access to all kinds of stuff they aren’t emotionally prepared to handle – and with the immanent legalization of cannabis that access could potentially go through the roof.
Throwing these kids into jail doesn’t work and you can only scare the hell out of them and ground them for so long until they figure out we don’t have much power as parents anyway.
That’s the bad news.
So what can we do?
We have tried to force people to be good and that worked fantastic in 1920 (if you don’t mention Prohibition). We can’t force people to obey anymore, just ask the Catholic Church, but we can teach people to make better choices.
And that’s where places like this organization, and drug forums, and parenting groups, and mentor programs and better information and organizations like Alouette Addictions come into play.
If we have any hope of keeping drugs from becoming a plague it’s going to have to happen in the Elementary Schools. And we have absolutely no one working in the Elementary Schools in Maple Ridge and Pitt Meadows. We have Drug and Alcohol Counselors in every high school in the area but that’s too late. We spend most of our time cleaning up messes. By high school kids have been offered drugs dozens, maybe hundreds, of times. My 16-year-old told me this week they smoke weed at the high school smoke pit.
As you can probably imagine, it’s weird working at a counseling service for addictions. Let’s start with the fact that most people who walk up the stairs are breaking the law and are, by definition, a “felon”. Those who aren’t are usually seriously hurting and frustrated and scared out of their minds that they or someone they love, and often that’s a kid of 14 or 15, is going to kill themselves or end up homeless and a “junkie”. People who were active clients at Alouette have died. Sometimes people overdose in the bathroom. That’s kinda scary for the soccer mom who is waiting to talk to you in the waiting room.
What I’m trying to say is that it’s easy to get jaded. It’s easy think that it’s an unwinnable thing.
I had a conversation with someone a couple of weeks ago and I said, in a kind of condescending way, “You have no idea what’s going on out there. Everyone is smoking pot. Every kid is probably going to use drugs at some time.”
Here’s the thing – I was wrong. I really hate to lose an argument but it dawned on me, “that’s not right”. There are thousands of kids out there who, though they may try drugs, won’t go down that road.
And the reason they won’t is because they know that drugs and alcohol abuse is a stupid way to waste your life.
And where did they learn that? They learned that from someone who knew what they were talking about.
We call that Prevention.
Prevention is teaching parents, educators, and citizens the real truth about addiction. Ever try to argue with a teenager about the evils of smoking pot? How did that work out for you?
You know why?
That’s because they are educated. They may be educated with the wrong information but they are educated. The Internet has told them that pot is all natural (which it isn’t) and that drug use is cool and mind expanding and harmless. Their stupid friends are telling them fictitious statistics and facts that they learned from some other stupid friend or a stoner parent.
Prevention is about knowledge and science and facts, not stories made up by people who want to justify their own addictions.
Prevention is also about educating kids. Getting to them while they are still open to teaching and guidance.
I have had parents say to me, “well isn’t that wrong, shouldn’t we try not to manipulate our kids and let them decide for themselves”.
I try to put on my professional face and act all unbiased but what I really want to say is, “That’s Nuts!”. Everyone is trying to influence your kids.
- The Internet is telling them what to believe.
- The music is telling them,
- Miley Cyrus and Charlie Sheen are telling them,
- Their immature friends are telling them what to believe.
- TV is telling them what to believe.
- Their hormones are telling them what to believe.
- Their immaturity and selfishness and childishness is telling what to believe.
Prevention is about helping kids learn the facts, get the whole story, so that when you’re not there and someone is embarrassing them in front of their friends and telling them to use drugs – your little voice is in the back of their head telling them that they are amazing and they don’t need to do this. That’s prevention.
Prevention is about helping kids know where to turn and who they can talk to.
Prevention is about teaching parents not to freak out and helping them understand that sometimes you have to parent in a different way, sometimes in a way that seems almost wrong, if you want to help your kids.
Prevention is about giving kids a choice.
I wish I could tell you that we are doing a stellar job at Alouette teaching every elementary school kid about making good choices but that would be a lie.
Get help because there are options. Contact a good Drug and Alcohol Counselor. Don’t necessarily trust your doctor, many know next to nothing about addiction and that was one of the reasons medical clinics hire me part-time. Doctors are often brilliant but probably grew up in a world of middle to upper class, a couple of decades ago, and have their own often skewed or uninformed opinions. Talk to a person who understands addictions. Even if they haven’t struggled with one themselves a good addictions counselor will understand neurochemistry, the Limbic system and Amygdala, impulse control issues and addiction as larger counseling issues regardless of it’s expression.
People who are middle age often have a hard time understanding the scope of the issue, the sheer impact and influence that drugs have in modern high schools, even middle schools. In many places it’s a plague, not just a problem. My 16-year-old told me this week he gets offered drugs a dozen times everyday. Imagine the fortitude required to say no, day after day after day. I didn’t have those skills, I may not have the perseverance even now.
We are going to need new solutions, not old guilt trips and groundings and yelling.
I’m back soon…
Life got in the way… back soon.
No, I’m serious… I’m not ready to break up yet.
In the meantime, this guy is my hero.
Beginnings And Endings
It’s that time of the year again. Time to look ahead in anticipation of what is not yet. We are in a state of becoming. Everything has been made new.
It’s also a time to say goodbye. Gone are those opportunities, those days and days of petty complaints and problems that seem now, now that time has gone, to hold little lasting meaning. What has been done has been done and it’s already slipping into our long-term trashcan in our memory. Time is moving so very fast.
I’m not the guy I was a year ago. I have felt change this past year and am moving towards that day when I will know myself fully and accept myself completely. Life is good, in spite of its constant inconveniences. I am seeing some successes, even if they aren’t financial. There are people in my life who love me and I am in love with my family.
In spite of the relentless passing of time it is important to live a life of gratitude. There are many things, so many things, to complain about. So many reasons to be bitter.
I have found that as people age they tend to become a caricature of themselves. The happy people become radiant old gentlemen and ladies. The negative people spend their days telling others like themselves their litany of physical aches and pains while discussing how this world is “going to hell in a handbag”. They are miserable and want you to know all about it.
There are two roads that diverge in this world, and you know what I’m talking about. We all know where we are aiming on that road, as much as a few of us hate to admit it. It’s not too late.
scott-williams.ca 
