The Paradoxical Theory of Change

The curious paradox is that when I accept myself just as I am, then I can change.   ~ Carl Rogers

Try that quote on for size and see how it fits for you. Does this seem right? How can this be? What does he mean by “accept?” How can I accept my shortcomings, dysfunctions, etc.? If I accept them, then why change? But I want to change!!

Most people go to a therapist to feel better or solve a problem or get “fixed,” so to speak. They know, going in, that this will involve some kind of change. Amazingly, these people suffer because they don’t allow themselves to just plain be who they are and be content with that for a while.

A great deal of our culture seems to work against this. Madison Avenue won’t hear of it! Dare I implicate various religious practices and other cultural traditions as well? With very little effort, most people can call to mind dozens (hundreds?) of “shoulds” that they learned as they grew into adulthood. How many shoulds can you name? Which are your favorites? Least favorites?

In a sense, the first big change one makes in therapy is to unlearn how to be someone other than one’s self! This may sound simple, but it’s incredibly hard, if you think about it. So many shoulds, so little time! And so ingrained in us!

Once you get back to being you, you have a foothold, a place to stand, from which to move in a desired direction. Or you may decide that being you is good enough. You don’t know until you try it, do you?

What do you think of this idea? It seems to go against the grain of many therapy approaches and conceptions of what a therapist is. Would you prefer to have a therapist tell you how to be? Or would you be OK with a therapist who was just fine with who you are right now? Think on this and let me know.

The Secret to a Happy Marriage

I’ve been married a good long time, over 28 years at the time of this writing. And, so far, so good, I’m happy to report. Because of this, people have asked me, “What’s your secret?” In the past, I’ve fumbled to answer this question, feeling embarrassed not to have a quick response. But, now I think I’ve finally figured it out and I want to share this wonderful secret with you.

So, at long last, here it is, the secret to a happy marriage:

NEGOTIATING DIFFERENCES!

Now, of course a lot of other things come into play, such as taking “The Best Advice I’ve Ever Heard,” dealing with alcoholism, drug abuse, gambling, sexual dysfunction, etc. But, in the long run (and I do mean long), the trouble with most troubled marriages comes down to the fact that you and your spouse are different. The solution to these troubles lies in figuring out how to deal with those differences.

Is one of you a male and the other female? (Uh-oh, major differences there!) Is one of you introverted and the other extraverted? (Yikes!) Does one of you have ADHD, Asperger’s, or Bipolar Disorder while the other is a “normal?” (Oh! My! God!) You see what I mean?

In the beginning of a relationship, various hormones become active within your body and brain to enhance the experience of coming together. Love becomes blind, so to speak, minimizing differences and magnifying similarities. When you recognize differences, they seem attractive at this stage: “Oh, she talks a lot about interesting things!” or “He never talks and that really helps calm me down!”

A while later, those hormones that helped bring you together fade away and another set of hormones becomes active, ones with the purpose of helping us hang in for the long term. Unfortunately, with the fading away of the first hormones also comes the fading away of the filters that made differences attractive. Now, it’s: “Oh, she talks a lot!” or “He never talks!” Then the fun begins (he said sarcastically).

It’s important to keep in mind that this is perfectly normal. It’s a challenge that virtually all couples face. The differences between you represent an opportunity for tremendous personal growth, both for you as an individual and for you as you connect to your spouse. How you view those differences and what you do about them hold the key to that growth.

Take some time to notice the differences between you and your spouse. Notice also how you view those differences, what attitude you take toward them, and what you do about them. I will say more in future articles about where to go from there.

I would be very interested in hearing your reaction to this topic and anything that comes to your awareness as you notice how differences between you and your spouse play out within your relationship. Thanks!

The Best Advice I’ve Ever Heard

Here it is:

“Make sure you know where you’re going. Then figure out who’s going with you. And never get these out of order.”

Or something like that. This is a paraphrased quote from Howard Thurman, someone I consider very wise. It strikes at the very heart of many relationship issues I run across in my practice where couples are trying to figure out why they chose who they chose and what to do now.

Of course, this advice is most useful before you’ve gotten yourself involved in a committed relationship. Figuring out who you are and what kind of life you want to live, while not easy, seems quite important in living a meaningful, if not happy life. Having a companion who understands and supports your personal journey, even if they don’t directly participate in it, also seems quite important. What could be better than being with someone who respects you for who you are, wants to help you develop in your own direction, and who you respect enough to want to do the same for them. (Note: Respect is very important to men; women readers can substitute the word “love” for “respect” in the above.)

Now, on to the more frequent problem of having gotten this advice out of order. So, you’re attracted to someone, have “fallen in love” with them, and have made a commitment to them. Then, later on, you figure out who you are: someone whose values, goals, religious beliefs, views on having children, desire for sex, etc., etc., don’t exactly line up with theirs. As Homer Simpson would say, “D’Oh!”

If you find yourself in this pickle and are expecting me to provide you with the magic answer to what can be a very large problem, well … what can I tell you? The bravest thing to do, in my humble opinion (IMHO, for you younger folks), is to replay a version of Mr. Thurman’s advice:

1. Determine who you are, as an individual, and where you want to go.
2. Figure out how to be that person within the context of your current relationship, if possible.

This might be best done with the help of (shameless plug alert!) a good therapist and/or a good couples counselor; people who can provide a place for you and your partner to learn about, accept, and share your personal and interpersonal realities.

Easy, huh? Of course not. But, you might find that just (just?) doing the first step goes a long way toward providing you with a more satisfying life. If you’re really lucky, the second step will just fall into place. If not, you’ve got your work cut out for you, but I claim it’s very much worth doing. You may find out that your partner is willing to support you anyway; and wouldn’t that be great!

But, what if you do step 1, begin step 2, and determine that you’ve made a mistake in choosing your partner? Then you will need to decide what’s most important in your life, including your self, your relationship, your family, your religious beliefs, your values, and so on. Again, a good therapist or trusted clergyperson can help guide you along the path that’s right for you (keeping the results from step 1 in mind at all times).

I would be very interested in hearing your reaction to this topic and any further advice you’ve found helpful. Thanks!

* I use the word partner to represent the words husband, wife, spouse, life partner, boyfriend, girlfriend, etc.

Why Psychologists “Ignore the Evidence”

Note: This is a response to an article called, “Ignoring the Evidence: Why Do Psychologists Reject Science?” by Sharon Begley in Newsweek on October 12, 2009. Click here to go to this article.

Psychologists reject science because it’s too primitive to be useful! The human brain and mind are far too complex for the current state of psychological science to be truly useful in the treatment of many or most real-life psychological issues. Academics, such as Timothy Baker, choose methods such as cognitive and cognitive-behavior therapy for their experiments because they can boil down these methods to a cookbook where, allegedly, one size fits all and results can be easily measured. The former assumes that all humans are alike. The latter assumes that you should look for your lost contact under that streetlamp only because the light is better over there.

These “scientists” use subjects who are convenient (we do know an awful lot about college freshmen who elect to take Psych 101) and that fit their purposes. They then demonstrate that those subjects who comply with the cookbook method get good results. This is like you calling technical support for your computer and having a problem that fits nicely with the script the person at the other end of the line is reading. However, if your problem is off-script, what happens then? The tech person just keeps reading the script to you and hasn’t a clue as to how to help you. How great is that?

In my private practice (I am a licensed psychologist with a Psy.D. degree), I can’t imagine using a cookbook with a client who has multiple personalities to help one alter address his or her panic attacks. What do I do if another alter doesn’t want to do that? What if the first alter gets too scared and the client switches to another alter? You get the picture. I then have to rely on my training (scientific or not), experience (empirically verified or not), professional intuition (developed over years of dealing with this type of situation), and a tad bit of on-the-fly creativity. Put that in a cookbook and run some statistical models on it!

Many academics seem to have a need to gratify their egos by thinking of themselves as real scientists. No doubt they do their best with the tools they have and the knowledge they have upon which to build theories. These are very primitive at best, relative to modern physics, chemistry, biology, and the other “hard” sciences. But then they whine about how we “in the trenches” don’t use their results. I say, thank you very much, but keep trying until you’re useful to us.

Unfortunately, Ms. Begley’s article served to take one person’s journal article and generalize its propaganda. I’m sure Dr. Baker is delighted. However, all of us chickens who were unfairly denigrated by the article (in my mind) now have yet another misunderstanding to explain to an already skeptical public about the value of our work. Did we forget to thank you?

Lastly (yes, I am winding this up), the first person to apply scientific methods to psychotherapy was Carl Rogers, Ph.D. He was president of the American Psychological Association (APA) and the first recipient of the APA Award for Distinguished Scientific Contributions. This was back in 1956 when the APA was dominated by academics (as Rogers was). He scientifically developed a set of conditions therapists must establish within their relationship with a client (he coined this term) so the client has the most likely chance of improving psychologically. Therapists still learn and follow these criteria to this day. So, maybe psychologists are not ignoring all the evidence, just the evidence that does not help them help others.

This is Your Brain on Therapy, Part Deux

Note: If you have not read Part One, please do so before embarking on this article. Thanks!

In Part One, we looked at how therapy can change our brains regarding relationships. Now, let’s look at how therapy can change our brain in another way.

Let’s imagine our brain is a large (very large) collection of roads, ranging from dirt roads to superhighways (or freeways, depending on where you’re from). These roads get built according to what we learn as we go through life. They allow the mind that emanates from our brain to locate information that the brain collects. In childhood, these roads get built and information gets collected at a frantic pace. Then things start to taper off in our late teens and early twenties. After that, our brains continue to collect and connect information, but more slowly.

Along the way, new roads get constructed. Old, unused roads get destroyed. Some small roads become larger. Some large roads become smaller. Highways acquire entrances and exits. All this happens in the service of more effective access to collected information.

Now, imagine a child whose brain is building roads like crazy connecting all the various things he (for sake of pronoun ease) learns. Some of what he learns comes from his father, say, in the form of insults, criticism, and outright neglect. The more the boy learns these negative “facts,” as the boy’s brain comes to treat them, the more roads his brain builds heading toward them and the larger those roads become. In the parlance of brain science, “the brain cells that fire together, wire together,” meaning the more a road gets used, the more substantial it becomes.

Sooner or later, the boy grows up to become a (chronological) adult. For better or worse, this man carries with him into adulthood all the facts his brain collected and all the roads his brain built between those facts while he was growing up.

Can you see where this story is headed?

Let’s say that within our hero’s brain lies a pile of information with the basic message, “I am worthless.”  This information has formed into a “fact” as far as his brain knows. Along with the pile, there is a superhighway, with lots (billions?) of entrances, heading right into “Worthless Town.” Our hero’s sense of worthlessness gets “triggered” or “activated” constantly, as a result. You get the picture?

If our hero enters into therapy, the therapist helps our hero become aware of his “fact” of worthlessness and helps him change the roadway system. This might involve building exits off the highway. Some of the highway entrances (e.g., negative self-talk) might get identified and demolished. Maybe our hero will spend more time visiting Worthless Town and either start to feel more accepting of life there or develop the ability to leave whenever he wants to. This all happens due to the plasticity of our hero’s brain, its ability to change, re-wire itself, create and undo connections within it.

At some point, our hero either spends less time in Worthless Town, feels OK with being there, or never gets there in the first place. This feels wonderful to our intrepid hero and he gets to experience his brain after therapy.