Creatures of Habit and Natural Seekers of Happiness

This will be the final in this Series and the last Blog on Relationships and Families.  Now that everyone has written their lists on which areas of their lives they want to change. Have drawn up a genogram to find the origin of their family and also where some of their most unwanted behaviours may have come from.  Everyone knows how to change a behaviour through changing the chain of behaviours through replacing unwanted behaviours with more desirable productive behaviours. I feel like my work here is done. So to finish this series of blogs for in home relationship therapy I'm going to give a broad overview of what the different schools of thoughts are on making a happy life and a happy family.

As you might have guessed I do think Sigmund Freud had some pretty good ideas and formed the basis of what we know as human behaviour and psychology.  Many people don't like what he says however a lot of what he observed in humans is really still accurate. When challenged we do become defensive for example.  Considering the time in which Freud worked and studied psychology he did unlock a lot of unknowns regarding human behaviour. He gets a bit a bad wrap I think undeservedly. Overall here is a man who was dedicated to making people's lives better. When I think of Sigmund Freud I remember that he lived in a time where women weren't seen as equals. He supported his daughter in following in his footsteps and Anna became very influential in her field of child psychology. This is a man who recognised that his patients who were living in asylums were suffering on many levels and living in abnormal conditions. Once a year he took three or four of his patience along with him on his family holidays to give them a break for these conditions. He was a good man with good intentions and he did the best he could with what he knew and that's all any of us can do.

Ericson connected the links between the individual and the social environment around them. He helped us to understand the impact of the culture we grow up in. He helped us to understand how we are not just an island. Eric Ericson believed that human development continued through our lifetime and that people are capable of change. The idea of people being a part of a complex system was his and that to change humanity changing the system of operations was a crucial part of making a better life for everyone.  This is true as far as I can see we do develop through our lifetime. When we get to different stages of our lives our understanding is different our focus changes as we age. Perhaps this is why at the age of 50 painting is important to me and passing a long my knowledge through things like this blog is important to me. Spending time with my family now is more important than anything else rather than the focus being on supporting them financially.

Skinner took the works of Pavlov and created something resembling what we now know as CBT Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.  This theory has been very popular recently.  It fits nicely into our Medicare system. Psychoanalysis takes a long time there's a lot of work involved in this type of counselling. We delve into things like the family system, early childhood, dreams and reality going deep into the subconscious and searching for the root causes of our troubles. It's the pandora's box of worms I said to one of my counselors "Every time I come here I have to drag something out of that box and look at how it got there and then figure out a way of making it better and chucking it back in there". This takes years. CBT however 6 weeks and you get results. There's no jumping into pandora's box I think it has a "Just Do It" approach. There's nothing wrong with this idea, it's great for giving up smoking, getting back into the gym or changing bad eating habits.

In conclusion, this is just my belief and I am far from perfect believe me. People are complex individuals as Freud discovered.  We do have an Id, superego and an ego in my opinion the subconscious mind can be unlocked through dream analysis.  We do respond to certain things with our lizard brains. I believe we are part of a system and that our early childhood is not the end of our development. I also believe that there comes a time in which we have to stop mucking around in pandora's box of misery and just do it. We are creatures of habit the best way to change our lives is to be consistent in forming new patterns of behaviour. To be honest we are all in the pursuit of happiness.  We all look for happiness in different places for some of us it comes with the possession of material things, for some of us it's spending time with our loved ones, perhaps happiness comes to some people in the search for meaning and living a meaningful life. To be happy in my own opinion is a natural thing. I think sometimes happiness is so close to us that we fail to see it sometimes. However or in whatever way you find happiness that's just fine as long as you aren't hurting other people or yourself.  I do hope the people who have read this blog have enjoyed it as much as I have enjoyed writing and researching for it.


References

Corey, G. "Theory and Practice of Counselling and Psychotherapy" (2007) Publisher Pearson Education Australia.

Watson & Tharp "Self -Directed Behaviour"(2007) Publisher Wadsworth

The Power of Making a List

I love lists.  I write them on paper, whiteboards, in my head as I'm going about my day. It's very satisfying to cross a thing off a list and often visual cues are great for self accountability.  There's a commitment to a thing that is written in black and white that isn't there if it is just floating around in your head as something you might do one day.  For example, if I write down clean the fridge, tidy the bookcase and clean out the pantry cupboard there's more chance of me actually doing those things.  If I'm just thinking I must do these things one day I find I rarely commit my time to doing these cleaning tasks. If it's written on the whiteboard I'm reminded every time I walk by the whiteboard that I want to get those things done and I haven't done them yet. It's a visual cue and prompts me.

The idea of writing lists for therapeutic reasons is featured in a few therapy types.  The lists that I am going to give you to write are from A.C.T. (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy). They come from the book "Get Out of your Mind and Get into your Life" which I have been referenced a few times in some of my other blogs.  This is a great book which is aimed at assisting people through the process of self awareness giving practical exercises and tips on how to change your thinking and behaviour. These exercises are designed to be done with or without a therapist.  This is why I've decided to use these particular exercises and they are list based which I think is an awesome idea. I highly recommend this book it's available as an ebook which is also terrific.

The first step is this; make a list using the following format I did this using word then insert table. Write as many or as few as you like.  I found it useful to write everything I could think of.  A long list.

Painful and difficult issues I experience

How long this has been the case

Rank

Second Step, copy and paste this table and put them in order of which is most important to you and which is least important. Keep the other list as it serves as a comparison.

Third step, draw lines to the problems that are connected to each other.  I did this by copying and pasting my list to a drawing program you could just print it up or find the drawing program on word which I couldn't do.

I don't know about you, I found this very interesting to see how my problems were related to each other.  It did look like a colourful mishmash of lines and I used different colours in the end to group the problems up into different categories.  You could do the same.  You could maybe have childhood, present day and future concerns.  Another way might be physical problems, emotional problems and social problems. You could give them Ugent, Immediate or Non-urgent as headings.

The last step for today's exercise will be imagining how different life were without one or two of these problems so the next exercise is going to be writing the following sentence using one of the problems from your list you can repeat this exercise as many times as you like.  However, a caution don't do too many you might do your head in and I want you to feel good not go crazy.

 If.............wasn't a problem for me, I would..............

I hope you have fun imagining your life without the things that might be holding you back next week I will be writing about how these problems might be tackled in order to make those sentences a reality not just a list.

References

Steven Hayes, PH.D. With Spencer Smith “Get Out of Your Mind and Into Your Life The New Acceptance & Commitment Therapy” (2005) New Harbinger Publications Inc.

The Rocky Road Between Ideas and Reality

Last week I wrote a rather messy unedited piece about the ever trendy diagnosis of Narcissism and Sex Addiction. This week I'm going to talk about the rocky road which we travel when translating great ideas into reality. Concepts such as, acceptance, forgiveness, letting go and reflecting among other things seem like wonderful ideas.  The problem with wonderful ideas is that they often are just wonderful ideas that seem highly obtainable in thought however, instantly seem highly unobtainable when translating them into action. There are so many variables in this transition, we just don't know how other people are going to respond. We have fantastical ideas when we first set out which are abruptly halted by the reality that confronts us.  We have a misconception about what success looks like we aren't prepared and often we give up before we have given these ideas a really good try.

I remember when I first graduated from my Associate Diploma of Social Science and Community Development I had also done years of self-help manual reading and hours of counselling and self exploration. I was keen to stretch my wings and practice what I had learned: Talking in the "I",  reflecting content, empathising and not sympathising. I was keen as mustard to be strength focused, to be accepting of my clients and their situations and treat everyone as my equals. I had  textbooks and self help books stacked high in my many bookcases amongst a healthy amount of children's books for my sons. I had diligently read them all and committed them to memory. What a pain in the bum I was. Probably I still am sometimes :)

Lucky for me my first job was with intellectually disabled people and their families. I launched into a conversation based on all my training, my own self discovery.  I was talking to a young guy who had made several attempts on his life, his father had committed suicide and so had his older brother. My job for the day was to take the fellow fishing and try to talk to him about his depressed mood. My leading sentence, after the formalities were over, was "Is there anything you'd like to share with me today?".  You can only imagine my shock when the very honest young man looked me dead in the eyes and said to me rather harshly "Can you just cut the crap and talk to me like a fucking human being?"...from that point on I understood that those books might have been pretty helpful for my own personal development  and formed a good foundation.  Reality required that I come up with something more authentic and meaningful right now or I would not be successful at all in helping anyone including myself.

So with this is mind we are going to cut the crap and have an authentic blog about the reality of acceptance.  Let me start with meditation, the goal of meditation is to empty your mind and find a place of peace and serenity.  I've been practicing Meditation for many years, since I was 13 years old. At 50 years old I can empty my mind and reach a place of peace and serenity sometimes, not all the time. The expectation of emptying your mind and finding a place of peace and serenity is a goal and perhaps some of us are perfect meditating guru's and can reach nirvana after 12 months of practicing meditation. The rest of us however, will never be able to achieve that pinnacle. This fact is probably why the focus on meditative goals has changed so much since I first learned this life skill. It's the practicing which is important. It's important to be realistic about it and congratulate yourself on your success and not spend too long analysing what went wrong. The important thing is you gave it a go and you learnt a little bit more about it than you did last time you had a go at it.

With this in mind in regard to practicing acceptance, do not have the expectation of being able to accept everything all at once. If you are in a full on argument with someone over politics, sex or religion forget the idea of accepting the other person's arguments. Try at first to see that their argument might be just as important to them as your arguement is to you. Does that mean you shouldn't challenge them? No it does not. Challenging and withstanding a challenge is very character building. Being open to accepting that you might be wrong or you're opinion isn't fully formed is also a good idea.

Have you ever had an argument or debate with someone, a conflict of any kind actually and then 24 hours later realised that you were in the wrong or you missed an opportunity to learn something or you may have prematurely burned a bridge? If you have never experienced this congratulations to you. If you have welcome to the club of imperfectionism.  You are not alone. Most of us have had that feeling. It takes a great deal of self acceptance and humility however, to fix it all up. I would like to say it is never too late to apologize. It's never too late to clarify. It's never too late to complete a conflict. The completion of a conflict is "resolution".  As one of my very wise son's said to me "Conflict is the gnarly tree we have to climb to eat the sweet fruit which is resolution"

This is the first practice of acceptance which may surprise a lot of people. Conflict is a good thing and is a crucial element of acceptance because when we complete the conflict we reach resolution. This is true of "inner conflict" as well. In order to achieve acceptance we must resolve our conflicts. The first point of call is learning how to climb the gnarly tree without bleeding to death before we reach that sweet fruit. You might want to revisit the earlier blog on genograms to look at how your family taught you to manage conflict.  Next week let's tackle our hardest conflictual nemesis "ourselves". There will be some writing and thinking to do so come prepared.

References

Stevens, Bruce "Happy Ever After?: A Practical Guide to Relationship Counselling for Clinical Psychologist" (ebook, 2015) Publisher Australian Academic Press

Hayes, S phd with Smith S "Get out of your Mind and Into your Life: The New Acceptance Commitment Therapy" (2005) New Harbinger Publications

Acceptance Application

Recently I've been hearing about a lot of Narcissistic Fellows with Sex Addiction.  In fact nearly every male friend who is currently going through a breakup or has been having relationship issues has been diagnosed by their significant other as a narcissistic sex addict.  A few of my friends and colleagues have also had the misfortune of having partners afflicted with this combination psychological conditions.

Firstly, I would like to remind everyone of the dangers of diagnosing something as serious as narcissistic sex addiction in your husband and partners. Even trained psychiatrist and psychologist have trouble with this kind of diagnosis.  The Diagnostic tool used for this kind of diagnoses is often questioned as being the most effective methods.  Many psychologists, psychiatrists and counsellors believe that the DSM 5 isn't helpful professionally or in fact to the clients who see them.

A professional would never diagnosis their family member or friends or someone who they haven't seen themselves.  For example a counsellor told a friend of mine "Your husband sounds like a narcissist" My friend took this as a diagnosis and went directly home and told her husband. This was a very unprofessional thing that the counsellor did, even if at the time she felt that my friend was married to a narcissist she should never have made this assertion as she had not met the husband and is not qualified to make a diagnosis of this kind.  This is a very unethical practice.

Let's work from the basis that the worst possible scenario has occurred and you find yourself married to and in love with a Narcissistic Sex Addict who has been appropriately diagnosed and is refusing treatment. The percentage of men in the general population under 40 with Narcissism is about 6% this number decreases with age. So, the likelihood of this happening is pretty low. For argument sake let us imagine the worst scenario.

Going back to the poem by Francis is your partner's Narcissistic Sex Addiction diagnoses something that you can change? If you can't change your partners diagnoses or his reaction to it e.g. refusing treatment what can you change? If you think nagging your partner will be an effective method you could try that. Perhaps you could accept that your husband is a Narcissistic Sex Addict who doesn't want treatment perhaps he is getting some benefit from his condition and wants to stay in this state. The benefits may far outweigh the negative aspects.

What can you change maybe you can write a list of things you can do.  You might consider ending the marriage, you may consider looking for benefits to being married to a narcissistic sex addict and embrace those and accept the negative attributes, you might question the diagnosis, you might change how the marriage works to incorporate the difficulties of living with a Narcissist Sex Addict.  You might seek out counselling yourself to decide how to approach this diagnosis. You might research Narcissism and Sex Addiction to increase your knowledge.

There are a lot of things that you can do in this example which might give you a sense of empowerment and peace of mind.  I'll return to my initial concern regarding diagnosis.  You probably aren't married to a narcissistic sex addict most probably you are married to a stubborn normal guy who is a bit of a pain to you at the moment. Next week we will do some exercises from Acceptance Commitment Therapy.

References

Saxena, Shekhar, Esparza, Patricia, and Regier, Darrel A., eds. Public Health Aspects of Diagnosis and Classification of Mental and Behavioral Disorders : Refining the Research Agenda for DSM-5 and ICD-11. Washington, DC, USA: American Psychiatric Association, 2012. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 31 October 2015.

Emmelkamp P. & Kamphuis J "Personality Disorders" Published by Taylor and Francis (2013)

Ronningstam, Elsa. Identifying and Understanding the Narcissistic Personality. Cary, NC, USA: Oxford University Press, 2005. ProQuest ebrary. Web. 31 October 2015.

Acceptance of Differences

This morning I was having a lovely online chat with my soon to be daughter in law (fingers crossed) about acceptance.  We were actually talking about a lot of stuff the topic of accepting differences was one. I thought it might be interesting to look at this concept over the next few weeks. In relationships accepting differences can be a very difficult thing to do. However, often the differences between us is what makes the relationships we are in interesting. Who wants to be married to or friends with someone who is just like us really. It would be highly unlikely because no two people are exactly the same.  Even if it were possible to clone people its our experiences that shape us. Your clone would go off and end up being completely different from you living their own life, having their own experiences and shaping them in a different way. That's my hypothesis on clones.

Acceptance is a tricky thing in relation to yourself and others.  I remember as a young woman I read the Al Anon poem and thought it was a wonderful idea, despite it having a heavy religious tone. It goes like this:

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, 

the courage to change the thing I can

and the wisdom to know the difference.

The author of this poem, Francis of Assisi, an Italian Monk, believed that laughter is divine as tears. I agree, I'm sure most of you have heard me say "you need a good cry, it's like lancing a boil" nobody could dispute the therapeutic value of a good belly laugh. It's very nice to know that even in the 1200's when Francis wrote this poem, people were struggling with acceptance. I'm sure shed a few tears and had a few good belly laughs on this journey.

How do we accept things that we can not change? How do we relax in the face of situations which seem almost unbearable. In my work as an Assistant in Nursing particularly in palliative care supporting people through the process of acceptance has been a large part of my job. Finding meaning in what would appear to be a meaningless situations such as the death of a child, the death of a partner and my patience's own death or change of circumstance such as adapting to a disability or having to learn to get around with an Acquired brain injury or a wheelchair or just simply adapting to getting old. As one of my clients said, "I'm 96 years old, everyday brings a new disaster, I hear less, I see less or I can't move as well as I did last year. I don't know why I'm here, I really don't even want to be here, I just have to accept that I'm here and make the best of what I've got".

The next few blogs will be about acceptance. What steps can we take to reach the serenity Francis of Assisi wrote about. I'll be looking at the different approaches and philosophies of acceptance. Hopefully we will all learn something of letting go and living life without the burden of running ourselves ragged trying to change things that are unchangeable.

References 

Assisi Francis, Amstrong J(editor)Brady I (translator) "Francis & Clare: The Complete Works. Classics of Western Spirituality"(1988) Publisher Paulist Press.

Hayes S. phd with Smith S. "Get out of your Mind and Into your Life: The New Acceptance Commitment Therapy"(2005) New Harbinger Publications Inc

Changing Behaviours

Last week I talked about the difference between Behaviours and Responses and this week I'm going to write about how to change behaviours that are unwanted and replace them with wanted behaviours. For the purpose of understanding how this can be done I'm going to refer to my own addiction to nicotine and how I kicked the habit of smoking.

The first step to changing a behaviour is understanding that behaviour.  By this I mean understanding why you are choosing to use this behaviour in your life. What are you getting out of it? Why did you start in the first place? What is going on before you start the behaviour? Do you really want to change the behaviour what are the pro's and con's? How much do you want to change the behaviour? Are you prepared to do whatever it takes to change elements in your life to remove the behaviour? Then you need to monitor the behaviour before even thinking about changing it. This will give you a better understanding of how this behaviour is impacting on your life.  It helps you to be honest with yourself.  Food diaries are something that is used in changing behaviours related to weight and weight gain or loss. Exercise journals and apps such as Runkeeper help to monitor good behaviours. All of this leads toward being accountable for your actions. It also identifies key times or danger times where the negative behaviour is most prominent and least prominent.

In my smoking addiction key times for me were in the morning, times of stress and after the evening meals. I loved my cup of coffee and ciggy in the morning.  I still love a cup of coffee in the morning and it taste so much better now that I am a non-smoker.  However, when I first gave up I had to stop having that morning coffee for a little while.  I replaced it with a herbal tea which was also lovely and instead of having a cigarette I had a slice of toast. Lemon herbal tea isn't compatible with a ciggy but it is with toast and lemon butter. In times of stress instead of going outside to have a cigarette I replaced that behaviour with 20 sit ups or 20 push ups, sometimes I would just go for a walk. A rather fast paced walk with a bit of swearing under my breath about what was annoying me. After the evening meal I worked  a tapestry while watching TV.  I lapsed a few times as my husband was still smoking. I just got back to the program I had made for myself and didn't beat up on myself or considered myself a failure. In fact the few times I did lapse back into smoking I found that I didn't enjoy the cigarette and it reinforced that I didn't want to be a smoker anymore.

This brings me to the stages people experience before they can attempt change.  The pre-contemplative stage which is the part where smokers might think "I'm going to die anyway it may as well be of smoking related illness or my grandmother lived for ages and she smoked so I'll probably be the same". The contemplative stage this might be signified by the smoker saying to themselves "Do I really want to die of smoking related illness" or "My Grandma did only smoke one or two cigarettes a day while I smoke a whole packet" this might lead to "Maybe I should give up smoking"
This thinking might be followed by some actions like phoning up the quitline researching ways to give up smoking. The next stage is the planning stage. During this stage you might start putting some things into place as I did regarding methods of replacing the unwanted behaviour of smoking with some healthier behaviours. You may return to the planning stage periodically and adapt to your changing circumstances for example I can enjoy my morning coffee now without thinking about having a cigarette yet in the early stages this would have been impossible for me. The next stage is the Action stage this is where your plans are implemented. The first steps toward changing the behaviour are underway. The final stage naturally is the maintenance of the wanted behaviours over the unwanted behaviour.

There we have it behaviour change in a nutshell.  I do hope that if you are considering changing a behaviour this is helpful to you. You can apply these to family patterns of behaviour as well for example if there is a history of smacking kids you can apply a plan for change. An example of this would be to think about alternative methods of relating to your children.  You could withdraw a favourite toy or send your child to their room. You could even talk to your child in an age appropriate way to teach them that throwing a tantrum is not an effective way of getting what they want. Persistence and consistency is the key to any kind of change.

Image from website (http://www.livestroo.com/?p=32)

References

Bowles T."Developing Adaptive Change Capabilities Through Client-Centered Therapy" Published in Journal, "Medical Sciences Psychiatry-Neurology". Australia, Bowen Hills (Dec 2012)

Caltabiano M, Safafino E. &Bryne D. "Health Psychology Biopsychosocial Interactions" Publisher Wiley & Sons Australia (2008)

Watson & Tharp "Self-Directed Behaviour" Publisher Wadsworth (2007)

Patterns of Behaviour

The description of "Behaviour" has somehow evolved into meaning things people do which are disruptive or bad.  As I have worked in the Disability Service Sector, the word Behaviour has become very negative.  I worked for one organisation that attempted to call a Behaviour a Response. While these two things a similar the definitions are very different.  The problem with how we define behave is really more about our treatment of the person who is demonstrating this behaviour. We tend to attach behaviour to the concept of character and personality which blurs the lines between what a person does and who a person is.

To clear things up a behaviour is an action a person takes.  A toddler throwing a temper tantrum is an example of an action being taken. A response is a reaction to an event. A response is I pinch you, you say "ouch". A response is reactive and spontaneous.  I have an anaphylactic response to penicillin.  When I get angry I tend to yell and give lecturers. My behave is yelling and giving lectures the antecedent to this behaviour might be leaving dirty laundry in the bathroom. If I treat this as a response it almost mitigates my responsibility in the event of dirty laundry being left on the floor.  If you didn't leave dirty laundry on the floor, I wouldn't respond by yelling and screaming. A behaviour can be changed, a response is not so easy to change.  Just try getting pinched and not saying "ouch".

Now personality and traits are a different thing completely, worthy of a blog of their own.  So, let me say this your behaviour is not part of your personality or character. One of my parenting phrases constantly in use when my kids were young was "I love you very much, it's your behaviour I'm unhappy about".  This separates the behaviour from the person.  However, we can learn behaviours and this is how we end up sounding like our own parents when we ourselves become parents. You might have had an experience where you've been saying something to your children and your mother's words just came out of your own mouth.  This is why last week's learning about genograms can come in handy for recognising some of the behaviours that you may have inadvertently learned from your parents.  The good news is we can change behaviours.  Its very difficult to do.  I gave up smoking almost two decades ago, every now and then I'd love to have a cigarette.

Next week we will have a look at some of the ways behaviours can be changed.  Break down behaviours and replace bad behaviours with good ones.  Instead of yelling about the laundry on the floor we're going to behave like the adults we should be and be reasonable.  We might even learn to take this as an opportunity to reward the good behaviour of our partners or kids when they put their laundry in the washing basket.