A month ago I participated in an event called Earth Hour, where I used no electricity between the hours of 8 and 9 at night. It took some doing to get everything off–there are so many little lights on my gadgets that let me know they are powered down! Then I remembered that this is only one kind of “phantom load,” or energy use by appliances that are supposed to be off. I unplugged my refrigerator, thinking that even though I had turned down its thermostat all the way, there may be part of the thermostat using electricity by monitoring the temperature in there. Then I decided to just shut off the breaker that supplies my part of the house. In doing so accidentally shut down power to the rest of the house for a minute–sorry Katie!–but at least I could be pretty sure I wasn’t using any electricity.
I spent most of the hour, then, just enjoying the silence and dark. I realized that these various glows and hums that I live with are anxiety-inducing. I love silence. I really dislike that my refrigerator makes noise, whenever I notice it. I want cold food, but why am I also paying to move the air like that, producing annoying sound waves? It’s inefficient and irritating. I don’t always notice, thank goodness, but sitting there in the silence, I believed that part of me is aware of all of that stuff all the time, and it drains me.
I also liked how I was not subject to be contacted and that I had made a clear, conscious decision not to contact anyone. It reminded me of a lecturer I saw several years ago who preferred the term “tethered” to “connected.” Don’t get me wrong, and don’t stop calling me! I love talking to my friends and family. It’s just that the possibility of constant connection creates a conflict between my desire for connection and my need for time just being in my body, slow, internally focused. And there are always people who it’s been too long since we’ve caught up, and the emails keep pouring in…
My means of production were mostly off the table, too. No computer, so no Word, WordPress, Excel, or Protools. No electric or electronic musical instruments. I played a some acoustic guitar and sang a little, but mostly I just rested, calm.
Then I decided to take a walk, maybe see if there were any signs of others taking part in Earth Hour. This is Eugene, after all. I was disappointed. Outside it was brightly lit up, just like it always is, and it pissed me off. It wasn’t that my neighbors all had their lights (and TVs and everything else) on. They probably didn’t know and/or didn’t care about Earth Hour and maybe even energy issues in general. I can understand that. I’ve been there. The thing that got to me was that the whole town of Eugene is brightly lit. For example, there is a huge parking lot just north of my house and even though it is not used at night, every square inch of it is brightly lit up, all night. Who benefits from this and how? It’s an empty parking lot. It’s not just a waste of energy, it’s an eyesore. Who decides about lighting up this parking lot? Do they think I want it lit up–that they are doing me a favor, spending all that money? I’d rather it was dark.
And it’s not just the ground. At least with that parking lot there is a chance that someone might want to get across it, climb the fence, and stumble on an unseen pebble or something if it was dark. But because of the level of illumination and probably the design of the lights, the whole sky is lit up, too. The light of Eugene illuminates the underside of the clouds over Eugene. Who benefits from that?
I do not. It’s ugly and I hate it. I would rather have darkness at night. If there are no clouds, I’d like to be able to see the stars. Why should we waste energy obscuring our view of the stars? It makes me miss the desert, where it is dark at night, where the stars are bright, where people use their cars’ headlights to see where they are driving, and flashlights to see where they are walking, if they need to, if there is no moon out.
Even in the desert there is an occasional street light, which has always baffled me. If we can get along just fine in the hundreds of miles of dirt roads in Joshua Tree, why did it seem like we needed that one streetlight on Hacienda Road and Willow Lane? As far as I’m concerned, all it does is waste energy and hurt my eyes at night. Many times over the last 25 years I’ve fantasized about shooting it out. And then there are the people who insist on lighting up their yards as bright as day. I suppose it makes them feel as if they are safer. My dad says, “City people… always afraid the Indians are going to sneak up on them.” I want those folks to believe they are safe, but I want them to do it without shining a light onto my property.
Posting about Albert Ellis yesterday reminded me of this cool film series made in 1965 called Three Approaches to Psychotherapy. It shows three very famous therapists talking with the same client, named Gloria. First is Carl Rogers doing his non-directive Person Centered Therapy. Next is Fritz Perls doing his demanding-total-authenticity Gestalt therapy. (This was developed with his wife, Laura, making it the only one having significant female authorship.) Last is Albert Ellis doing his the-way-you-are-thinking-about-things-makes-you-unhappy Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy.
I don’t know how much of the following is true, but this is what I’ve heard: Part of the deal in making this film was that Gloria could choose a therapist based on her very short sessions with each of them. She chose Fritz Perls. Later, she struck up a friendship with Carl Rogers that lasted the rest of her short life. She died in her 50s.
Recent research on what makes therapy effective suggests that the style of therapy you use is not a major factor. It seems to do more with the quality of the relationship between the client and the therapist and how much the client believes the therapy will help. In light of that it’s striking how different these approaches are. You will see what I mean.
Each therapist’s section is about 30 minutes. Each therapist presents his basic theory, talks with Gloria for a bit, and then talks about what he thinks he just did. Rogers’ is broken up into several clips–that’s the only way I could find it. Perls’ and Ellis’s videos are each in one piece, and from Google video instead of YouTube, so they take longer to load. You might let each of the longer clips run through before watching it to avoid it breaking up if you have a slow connection like I do.
Albert Ellis was one of the guys who invented cognitive therapy, which began as a kind of wacky-fringe psychotherapy in the 1950s and has grown to be one of the dominant and most-researched forms of therapy today. It’s effective and simple–easy to teach. Ellis’s version of cognitive therapy, Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy, is alive and well too.
Ellis’s basic tenets were that thoughts or beliefs, not events, cause emotions and that irrational thoughts or beliefs cause our emotional problems. Most people think it’s their situations that are causing their problems, but Ellis said that we feel bad when our situation is in conflict with an irrational belief, and that it is the belief that makes us feel bad. So his style of therapy basically consisted of deconstructing people’s irrational thoughts and beliefs.
I think that he was right in a lot, though not all, cases. There are many other effective forms of therapy that, instead of cognitions, target behavior, emotions, social systems, or some combination of the four. There are also, of course, non-therapy interventions that aim to improve people’s psychological experience by targeting biological systems, like drugs or the prefrontal lobotomy, and interventions that target political systems–various kinds of activism.
But irrational beliefs are as good a place to start as any. Here is Ellis’s list of our major irrational ideas, quoted from Jacobs, Masson, & Harvill’s Group Counseling: Strategies and Skills (pp. 285-6). Keep in mind that these don’t usually exist as overt beliefs–you might have to dig to find them in yourself, running you.
Which few are your main irrational ideas?
1) It is a dire necessity for an adult human being to be loved or approved by virtually every other person in one’s life.
2) One should be thoroughly competent, adequate, and achieving in all possible respects if one is to consider oneself worthwhile.
3) Certain people are bad, wicked, and villainous and they should be severely blamed or punished for their villainy.
4) It is awful and catastrophic when things are not the way one would very much like them to be.
5) Human unhappiness is externally caused and people have little or no ability to control their sorrows and disturbances.
6) If something is or may be dangerous or fearsome, one should be terribly concerned about it and should keep dwelling on the possibility of its occurring.
7) It is easier to avoid than face certain life difficulties and self-responsibilities.
8) One should be dependent on others and needs someone stronger than oneself on whom to rely.
9) One’s past history is an all-important determiner of one’s present behavior and because something once strongly affected one’s life, it should indefinitely have an effect.
10) There is invariably a right, precise, and perfect solution to human problems and it is catastrophic if this perfect solution is not found.
11) One should become quite upset over other people’s problems and disturbances.
12) The world should be fair and just and if it is not, it is awful and I can’t stand it.
13) One should be comfortable and without pain at all times.
14) One may be going crazy because one is experiencing some anxious feelings.
15) One can achieve maximum human happiness by inertia and inaction or by passively and uncommittedly enjoying oneself.
I’m on one of the new fliers for ELLA, the group that I teach Lindy with in Eugene. It’s the group that gave me my first swing lessons, too. We have a dance every Wednesday evening, with a drop-in, beginning lesson just before. If you’re in Eugene, come join us at Agate Hall, at the University of Oregon.
I just read in Brock & Barnard’s Procedures in Marriage and Family Therapy about Wolin and colleagues’ research into rituals in alcoholic families. Apparently, the negative effects of an alcoholic parent were predicted better by the amount that family rituals were disrupted by the alcoholism than by the presence of alcoholism itself. For example, if the family continued to eat dinner together every night, continued with their bedtime rituals, etc, children remained about as well off as those in non-alcoholic households. But if the family rituals were destroyed, the children were much worse off, including much more likely to become alcoholic or marry an alcoholic themselves.
I haven’t read any of the original research, so I don’t know for sure if it is that these rituals actually provide resiliency or if the presence or lack of rituals served as a proxy measure for how bad the alcoholism was. It could also be a combination of the two. It does look like the family therapy literature considers that rituals promote resiliency in general, providing structure and comforting predictability for kids, and resulting in better outcomes. (I doubt they are bad for the adults, either.) Something to think about, parents!
According to the fourth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Text Revision (DSM-IV-TR), there is a mental disorder that is usually diagnosed in childhood or adolescence called Oppositional Defiant Disorder. It afflicts somewhere between 2-16% of people, more boys than girls before puberty, but equal numbers of boys and girls after puberty. Family therapists are not into giving medical-model diagnoses in general, but in many cases, a DSM diagnosis is the only way for a family to get their insurance companies to pay for them to get help. In one of my internship sites, for example, I will need to provide a DSM diagnosis after the first session with a family in order to get the clinic paid for our work. As I understand it, this is a common diagnosis for kids who are giving their parents and teachers a hard time.
Note that the word “often” is used to mean something like “more than usual,” so whichever kids who are most like this will qualify for this Disorder, as long as someone important believes that their behavior is significantly impairing their social or academic functioning. Note also that these symptoms could be occurring in just one setting (say, just at school) and the kid will still qualify for ODD, unlike the symptoms for ADHD, which have to occur in at least two settings to qualify for the diagnosis.
Outside of family therapy, ODD is very commonly treated with Ritalin for “comorbid” ADHD. Kids diagnosed with ODD are also fairly commonly given antidepressant and/or antipsychotic medication, on the guess that they have an underlying Mood Disorder or Bipolar Disorder, though there is little to no research on these medications for children, especially in combination.
The following is word-for-word from the DSM-IV-TR, page 102:
Diagnosis criteria for 313.81 Oppositional Defiant Disorder
A. A pattern of negativistic, hostile, and defiant behavior lasting at least 6 months, during which four (or more) of the following are present:
(1) often loses temper
(2) often argues with adults
(3) often actively defies or refuses to comply with adults’ requests or rules
(4) often deliberately annoys people
(5) often blames others for his or her mistakes or misbehavior
(6) is often touchy or easily annoyed by others
(7) is often angry or resentful
(8) is often spiteful or vindictive
Note: Consider a criterion met only if the behavior occurs more frequently than is typically observed in individuals of comparable age and developmental level.
B. The disturbance in behavior causes clinically significant impairment in social, academic, or occupational functioning.
C. The behaviors do not occur exclusively during the course of a Psychotic or Mood Disorder.
D. Criteria are not met for Conduct Disorder, and, if the individual is age 18 or older, criteria are not met for Antisocial Personality Disorder.
My favorite new term from my family therapy program is parataxic distortion, coined by the “American Freud” and one of the grandfathers of family therapy, Harry Stack Sullivan.
A parataxic distortion is when a current situation or person reminds you of something from your past, often without you knowing it, such that you behave to some degree as if you are in your past, dealing with that situation or person. Parataxic distortion is an umbrella term for confusions like Freud’s transference (client gets inappropriately emotional about therapist) and countertransference (therapist gets inappropriately emotional about client). It is also very much like to co-counseling’s “restimulation of distress.” Most likely every psychotherapeutic school has its own name for this phenomenon.
The idea is that there is a way in which your memories are categorical, not specific. That is, if your dad hit you when you were a kid, you not only attach fear and anger to your dad in your memory, you also attach it to a range of things, maybe bald men, short men, men in general, authority figures in general, certain kinds of places or rooms, etc.
Mostly, our memories are useful. This ability to generalize, for example, helps us avoid burning ourselves on hot stoves in general instead of having to painfully learn not to touch each hot stove. Neat trick!
But with a parataxic distortion, our unconscious memory keeps us from being able to understand and deal with situations as they are, in the present. It patterns your behavior. It limits your options. Usually without your knowing it, it makes your life more scary, sad, irritating, and ultimately isolated than it needs to be. Most therapeutic modalities have some version of this three-stage recipe for resolving parataxic distortions: 1) Form a trusting relationship with someone who has less distortion in the area you have trouble with. 2) Have a “corrective emotional experience,” where you basically re-experience your distortion-driven emotional pattern while demonstrably safe in this trusting relationship. 3) Have a “cognitive reappraisal,” meaning come to a new understanding of your behavior in light of current reality as it is. Go meta.
Easier said than done, of course, but well worth it!
I listened to a story on NPR a couple days ago about a how high divorce rates and teen-pregnancy rates are correlated to the state’s political ideology. Republican states have significantly more divorce and teen pregnancy. In fact, as a whole, the US divorce rate has been holding steady since the mid-90s, while the “red state” divorce rates (and teen-pregnancy rates) continue to rise. That means the blue states make up the difference and their rates are falling. NPR speculated that it’s because in family-values states, people get married earlier because of social pressure or so they can have sex, but choose badly because they don’t know themselves as well as they would several years later, when Democrats tend to get married. They also note that states that are swinging Democratic, like New Hampshire, are starting to have less divorce and teen pregnancy too.
It makes some sense, though I wouldn’t have guessed it. There are a couple of things not made explicit in the story that I wonder about. First, I wonder if the Republican fixation on “family values” issues is being driven by this phenomenon; to someone living in a Republican state, divorce and teen pregnancy are really pressing issues, because their ideology and behavior are not matching up. It could even be a vicious cycle: Values driving divorce driving values…. Second, I wonder how much of this has to do with money. Social class, really. Red states tend to be poorer, and poverty puts serious stress on a marriage. And poverty is correlated with a lot of other stressors, like substance abuse, domestic violence, and child abuse. Also, they mention that the demographic whose divorce rates are dropping the most are women who have graduated from college. I’ve been attending a state university for a few years now, and I can tell you that it’s not full of poor people. These kids (‘ parents) have money.
My mother, Darlene Lester, is an amazing woman. I am lucky to be her son. Someday I will write a more eloquent post about that. Tonight I’ll just show you a couple things. First is a note that I wrote her when I was about four:
This note says a lot about my mom. First, she had taught me how to write letters by the age of four, which I think is unusual. I can still remember her teaching me to write “N.” (The secret, by the way, is to remember the phrase “Up, down, up.” That’s how she taught me.) The second is the story of the note. (This is as I recall you telling me, Mom–correct me if I’m wrong) I asked her to tell me what letter made each sound over quite a long period of time, maybe an hour or two, as I painstakingly sounded out my message. She was so available and patient with me! Third, the note says, translated, “I would like some orange juice. Signed Nathen.” I handed her the note when I was done with it, probably translating it for her, too. I was asking for orange juice, which was about the closest thing I ever had to candy until I was about nine years old. Mostly I was eating from my mom’s garden, goats, chickens, and the whole-foods co-op my mom helped run back in the 1970s in Joshua Tree. Fourth, my mom kept this note for thirty years. She gave it to me a few years ago and told me the story, still so delighted and proud that she had gotten to be with me, to spend so much time with me as a kid. My mom loves her sons so whole-heartedly! It’s been a pleasure and a privilege to be one of them.
I’m learning about child abuse and neglect in my Child and Family Assessment class. Today I read about the ACE study, by the US Center for Disease Control. It is a huge study, with over 17,000 participants, where they gathered information about childhood abuse, neglect, and household dysfunction, and then proceeded to see what health outcomes and behaviors they could predict with that information. It turns out they can predict a lot. They’ve published 50 articles on the study and the research is ongoing–they are continuing to collect health information as the participants in the study age. I’ll present a few of their findings below. For more, see the ACE Study.
Here are some of their findings. I’ll paste in the definitions of the categories of adverse childhood experiences below. Strong correlations were found with the following:
alcoholism and alcohol abuse (4 or more categories of ACE meant 4-12 times increase)
chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (that is, lung disease)
depression (4 or more categories of ACE meant 4-12 times increase)
fetal death
health-related quality of life (way more inactivity, severe obesity, bone fractures)
illicit drug use
ischemic heart disease (IHD)
liver disease
risk for intimate partner violence
multiple sexual partners (4 or more categories of ACE correlated with 50 or more sexual partners)
sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) (4 or more categories of ACE meant 4-12 times increase)
smoking
suicide attempts (4 or more categories of ACE meant 4-12 times increase)
unintended pregnancies
Here are the kinds of abuse, neglect, and dysfunction they asked about, quoted from the site:
Abuse
Emotional Abuse:
Often or very often a parent or other adult in the household swore at you, insulted you, or put you down and/or sometimes, often or very often acted in a way that made you think that you might be physically hurt.
Physical Abuse: Sometimes, often, or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at you and/or ever hit so hard that you had marks or were injured.
Sexual Abuse:
An adult or person at least 5 years older ever touched or fondled you in a sexual way, and/or had you touch their body in a sexual way, and/or attempted oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you and/or actually had oral, anal, or vaginal intercourse with you.
Neglect
Emotional Neglect1
Respondents were asked whether their family made them feel special, loved, and if their family was a source of strength, support, and protection. Emotional neglect was defined using scale scores that represent moderate to extreme exposure on the Emotional Neglect subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) short form.
Physical Neglect1
Respondents were asked whether there was enough to eat, if their parents drinking interfered with their care, if they ever wore dirty clothes, and if there was someone to take them to the doctor. Physical neglect was defined using scale scores that represent moderate to extreme exposure on the Physical Neglect subscale of the Childhood Trauma Questionnaire (CTQ) short form constituted physical neglect.
Household Dysfunction
Mother Treated Violently:
Your mother or stepmother was sometimes, often, or very often pushed, grabbed, slapped, or had something thrown at her and/or sometimes often, or very often kicked, bitten, hit with a fist, or hit with something hard, and/or ever repeatedly hit over at least a few minutes and/or ever threatened or hurt by a knife or gun.
Household Substance Abuse: Lived with anyone who was a problem drinker or alcoholic and/or lived with anyone who used street drugs.
Household Mental Illness:
A household member was depressed or mentally ill and/or a household member attempted suicide.
Parental Separation or Divorce: Parents were ever separated or divorced.
Incarcerated Household Member:
A household member went to prison.
Nathen's Miraculous Escape 