Tag: Cognitive behavioral therapy

Self-Medicating

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

Chocolates

I have radically changed the way I think about addictions.

I work part-time in addictions and see it’s effects literally dozens of times each week. It’s easy to believe that the problem is the addiction – if we can just help people stop drinking than their life will work itself out. Unfortunately this is not even remotely true and people who understand people are realizing that the addiction is simply another symptom of something much deeper.

When I was young and drugs came calling they were just another solution to the problem called “My Life”. Chocolate made me happy right now. So did cocaine and boobies and volleyball. Basketball sorted me out, so did pot. My only crime was that I grabbed too hard at one of my solutions to stress. Why couldn’t I have developed an addiction to body-building instead? Chocolate is nice, why couldn’t it have been to chocolate?

Dealing with your maladjusted life by stopping only one of the symptoms does not make sense. Somewhere along the line in many lives drugs became medication, not recreation. Cocaine helped you not have to think about your crumbling life. Drinking and sex helped you believe you were important. Being high kept you from thinking about your struggle to hope that things could change.

In counseling I encourage clients to look beyond their need for medication and address the actual disease they have been medicating. We need to learn to put our lives in perspective and change dysfunctional thinking patterns. Taking responsibility for your own heart and happiness truly is the best thing you can do to improve your life.

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Are You Still A Christian?

Published on by Scott Williams5 Comments

Image of the human head with the brain. The ar...

from my friend Lori:

I’ve been reading an awesome book lately by Rick Hanson called Buddha’s Brain – The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness. Hanson is neuropsychologist, author, speaker and meditation teacher. His book isn’t about Buddhism as much as the intersection of psychology, brain science and contemplative practices. I discovered him on my friend Scott’s blog in the article I referred to above.

I’m massively interested in brain science, because it gives concrete evidence and  thus strategies for dealing with the nebulous emotional things of life. This has added to the foundation of CBT techniques I’ve been learning and practicing. Coming to understand the science of the brain and the inner universe has had as large an impact on my thinking as coming to understand the science of the physical world and the larger universe. Bill Bryson has a great book called, ‘A Short History of Nearly Everything’, if that’s something you’re interested in exploring.

I’ve spent over half of my life exploring christianity. I ’found god’ at 24, married in to it, and it continues to impact me, though not always in positive ways. Although there are parts of it I love, there are also other parts that have stripped me of my ability to appreciate it overall.

These past years, I’ve deconstructed my belief system and in doing so, have become a dissenter within the circle I once belonged.  Sadly, in such circles, alternate views have little place. If you’ve ever stepped outside or challenged the belief system or code of conduct of a religious community, you’ll know what I mean. It usually involves at least a questioning of your character and faith, and often far more.

As I’ve dissembled the thinking I once accepted, some big issues have come up. This is my philosophical shortlist, ignoring the other practical and relational impacts.

– If there’s a benevolent god,  interested and acting on my behalf in the minutiae of my daily life – why then is that god seemingly absent in the daily lives of people in far more extreme circumstance?

– Would an all-knowing benevolent god insist we belong to an exclusive ’club’ of understanding or  would that god take in consideration our differing cultural and religious upbringings and sexual preferences?

–  Is truth really a narrow path or is it an encompassing one with room for the many positive contributions from other avenues of thought?

– How, given the vast scientific evidence for the evolution of the world and it’s species, can religion blind itself to such findings?

But perhaps most notably for me, is the question of how religion can claim to understand the complexities and mysteries of eternal life, when we can’t even comprehend the complexities and mysteries of this physical life. At least not yet.

A few years ago, I was taken with the book, ‘Eat, Pray, Love’ which was later made into a movie. The movie was dismissed as a chick flick, a romantic comedy. At the best of times, I can barely endure chick flicks, but Elizabeth Gilbert’s story is more than that. It’s a memoir, a personal recount of her journey in, an awakening of sorts.

Gilbert  traveled a path of personal healing. faith and self discovery that began in Italy, progressed to India and concluded in Bali.  Each of those parts of her life contributed to her evolving, broadening spiritual mosaic. I imagine her journey in continues still.

The idea of a spiritual mosaic is new to me and in some ways makes me a little uneasy. It’s not the well-traveled road I’m familiar with, but I’m liking what I’m learning. I’m incorporating into my daily routine meditation, mindfulness and visualization – because they literally change the physiology and landscape of the brain toward peace, love and self-mastery.  Whether they answer the existential question of what lies beyond, is still, well, a question.

I have no idea what lies beyond this life.  Is it jeweled streets?  Is it the music of string theory? Is it one-ness with the universe?  Is it nothing ? I don’t know.  And neither does anyone else, no matter what authority they claim it upon.  But I do know it’s within my power to live and love well.

My youngest son asked me anxiously the other day, ‘Mom are you still a Christian?’ And honestly, I’m not sure I am, except by my own definition.   Just as I’m an art student, a student of  philosophy, religious studies,  psychology, literature and science – by my own definition.

Is that enough?  Is a rose by any other name still as sweet?

I’m beginning to think so.

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Dreams

Published on by Scott Williams19 Comments

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the Dreams shall never die.
~Edward Kennedy

As the Cooper brothers sang, “Dreams never die, just the dreamer”. Growing up, most of us had huge dreams and unrealistic expectations. We dreamed of being rock stars and rich tycoons. The world lay before us, our oyster as the cliché goes, and anything was possible.

Then reality kicked us between the legs and throat-punched some of our dreams.

If you’re anything like me, and I know I am, then you have realized that life has not always turned out the way you thought it would. I had no idea that I would be living and doing the things I am now. It’s not a bad life, it’s just a different one.

Time has a way of healing hurts, or so the cognitive distortion goes. It also has a way of killing dreams and shoving reality in your face. That storybook romance you signed up for has turned out, after a number of mind-numbing years, to be a series of boring and hurtful years with someone who does not understand you and never will. By now, if you are close to forty, you have a storehouse of trauma to deal with, or not deal with. The older you get the harder it is to be an optimist. We become realists about life, or pessimists, if we are honest enough to admit it. If you have ever found yourself almost yelling at a wedding, “Don’t do it!”, then I’m talking to you.

I have developed a theory which I call the “37 year itch”. This theory propounds that somewhere around the age of 37-45 women (and obviously some men) who are married or in a long-term relationship wake up one morning and look at the aging, snoring, drooling person beside them and realize that they do not want to spend the rest of their life waking up to this schmuck. The children are in school now, their career has been stunted, and the thought of forty more years with Mr. Entertainment is too much. You would be shocked at the number of marriages that end when the players are in their late thirties and early forties. A majority of these break-ups are initiated by the woman (in a heterosexual relationship… and obviously in a lesbian relationship…).

Dreams never die – if only it were so. Some of us become afraid to dream any more. Dreams can remind us of our failures, of opportunities lost, of hopes deferred.

It’s not too late to dream again. Your mature dreams may not involve superpowers or thirty-day orgasms, but they can still be amazing. Every time I hear of a fifty year old going back to university or a grandfather dating again I believe in dreams. Every time a woman has the guts to try again, or a person believes they can be whole again, I believe in dreams. Here’s to everyone who didn’t have the brains to stop while you were behind, who started something wonderful, who faced down their fears and rebuilt their world. Here’s to those of you who are too stupid to quit. It is a powerful thing when someone dares to hope.

Here’s to hope.

the-shawshank-redemption-1994-bluray-720p-x264-wiki19875022-11-05I love this quote from Shawshank Redemption. Red, the narrator, is finally released from prison after a lifetime of incarceration and decides to get on with living, ” I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

May you be free.

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Cheesy Counselling Stuff That Works

Published on by Scott Williams13 Comments

Like most counsellors I have tried many ‘techniques’ in my years to order to help individuals deal with a panacea of mental health issues. I remember studying psychology in university and learning about the importance of clinical integrity, the need for evidence-based best practices, the importance of double-blind studies. I love to learn and enjoyed/enjoy learning about neuropsychology, serotonin, beta waves, the amygdala, freudian theories, behaviorism, etc. etc. etc. I still endeavour to learn something every day, if I can, and realize that my understanding and incorporation of therapeutic principles continues to grow (and hopefully mature).  As I have said to my children, “I used to know everything, when I was your age.” The older I get and the more I study the less I seem to know. The world of knowledge continues to expand, and I realize now how little I understand.

Many years ago I would pride myself on my education and knowledge. Like all younger people I believed sincerely that though we are all equals, some of us were a little more equal. Helping people learn concepts, and apply them to life with success, can produce a heady sense of “humble” arrogance. It becomes easy to believe Nietzsche that people are the ‘herd’ or sheep, and you are a shepherd. I no longer believe that. I once would pride myself on my ability to impress people with knowledge and insight, now I am just humbled that people would come to see me.

There has also been a gradual, yet profound, change in what I teach people. For some reason very few of my clients care about my profound psychological storehouse of information (if I had one). They are less interested in my dazzling intellect than they are in what works. Many of them have been in therapy before, with varied results. They are tired of sitting across the desk from a psychiatrist who does not offer any insights but merely reflects their thoughts back to them. They are tired of hearing, “so what do you think?”

I have become a pragmatist. There I said it. I no longer laugh at neuropathy, or acupuncture, or breathing exercises. For some reason I had this ridiculous notion that people only needed to get smarter to get better. I was an idiot. I have come to realize that methodology is not as important, as Scott Miller suggests, as the relationship I have with my clients. Helping people find change and relief has become a great deal more important than my personal need to look good and sound smart.

These days I realize the power of things like STOPP Therapy, dealing with cognitive distortions, self talk exercises, realistic affirmations, and breathing techniques. I am reading a book on meridian tapping (EFT) and, in spite of the part of my brain that wants to yell “bullshit” I know that things like EMDR and acupressure really seem to help people. I’ve even known people who use primal screaming or laughing therapy and swear by it. I may be a little too Canadian for that, but if it works, mazel tov. I am in this world to help people and am now convinced I would stand on my head and spit nickels if I was convinced it worked.

When I introduce such concepts, however, I almost always begin by backpedaling. I know I am doing it, I know I should not do it, but on some level I’m embarrassed. Embarrassed that you have come to a counselor who you expect to give you brilliance and instead I’m about to teach you something a grade five could. I’m about to teach you something that you could google – in fact the information I am going to give you I just stole from a website that I used ‘White Out’ to hide the address so you won’t know I get much of my stuff off the internet.

I went to school for years, learned philosophies in their original language, studied with brilliant professors, and have thousands of hours of counseling experience; now here is something I read in Reader’s Digest, please pay the MOA on your way out.

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