Talking, listening, and Not

   Some people talk a lot.  I get to see them in treatment.  Often I don’t have to say six words in the whole hour.  They want to hear what they have to say even more than I do.  Therapy often helps them as few other people will to listen to them that much.  Many of these people really do get to hear what they have to say, and it does them some good.

            Some people are very good listeners.  They don’t say much.  They pick up a lot of information and they roll it all around in their heads.  Many of these people have nimble, open minds, and they can take in new ideas and make use of them.  They may not say much, but they have a lot going on.

            While most people fancy themselves some combination of the two, and most people are, there are also those at the wrong ends of the spectrum.  There are those who talk a lot and really don’t know what the hell they are talking about, but they don’t want anyone else to talk, because it may prove frightening and embarrassing, as their lack of knowledge may become apparent to them, as it already is to most others.

            There are also those who don’t talk, but they don’t listen either.  They are stuck with the ideas that are already in their head, and do to fear, a rigid personality style, personal conviction, or just plain stubbornness, they are not very open to new ideas, and don’t want  to hear about them. Sometimes, these people make it even worse, when they think that other people ought to know what they are thinking and feeling, even though they have never said anything.  Then they get insulted when those other people don't respond correctly.

            Sometimes, especially in couples therapy we call that "a misunderstanding."  It is caused by the always popular "lack of communication."  But really, it is a serious form of magical thinking.

For this?

We have all this marvelous new technology:  The Facebook I love everyone, the Google I can be everywhere, and the Apple iBrain.  There is a commercial on that mocks people for learning this 15 seconds later than their friends.

But what is much of our newly discovered powers of search, find, learn, store, categorize, compare and retrieve.  Two things I read over the last week:

1.  The NYT Magazine article about how Target targets it's customers.  It has the data and it uses it to bring you back into their store.  Nothing sinister or illegal.  All their brain and computer power goes to get you to spend your money in their store.  Things you may want and need, and other things you may just get sucked into.  It's all fine with them. Just spend your money.

2.  The New Yorker article about the goings-on at the Davos World Economic Forum among the most  rich, most famous and most powerful, ends with a scientist and an entrepreneur walking out together.  The scientist is intrigued that the entrepreneur has decoded an algorithm of  human behavior.

What has he been able to track and predict?  He can tell when a gambler has lost so much money that he decides he must quit and leave the casino.  But with this new knowledge the casino can send someone up to him, give him a meal or a coupon that will lure him back into the room so that this poor loser will then give even more money that he does not have to the corporation that is raking it in.

Fighting world hunger?  Don't see it.  Finding out the algorithm for preventing wars between rival nations? Not unless there is a major profit.

Perhaps I'm just reading the wrong articles.

I should be listening to Rush.  He wants the new technology just for porn videos.

Win an Oscar

I looked at the list of nominees for The Best Picture of 2011.  It was a long list of meaningful movies.  Many of them had important messages, some more subtle than others. 


These messages are not new.  They keep coming around and around.  I think of them often myself.
 They are the basic themes of 56% of the novels, movies, documentaries and philisophical essays.

   The creativity is in finding new, somewhat relevant, clever ways to present them.

Ideas that always get attention:

1. The world is tough for humans to negotiate

2. Most people mean well, but are flawed

         A. Given a chance they will be selfish and greedy before they are compassionate and altruistic.

         B. Some people believe that this is the way it is and we should all do the best we can for ourselves.

         C. Others believe that we can, and should overcome our more base instincts and cooperate, so we can all live better.

3. The world is generally run by assholes

Most people want to live their lives, watch TV, get laid, Hang with friends, get a buzz on, and be left alone to do that.

The people who need to “Be someone” and have something to prove are the ones with the commitment and energy to get stuff done.  Most of them are narcissistic, ego-maniacal or have some kind of missionary zeal.  Not good.

This has always been so: crazy kings, crazy generals, crazy prophets, crazy clerics, crazy industrial tycoons, crazy bankers.

 People get sucked into thinking that these guys (and most of them are guys) are heroes. They are often charming and charismatic, but their ideas are usually about how “we are better than them” and how we should fight, steal, swindle, pound, drive away, or even kill “them.”

It almost always ends in pain and suffering for those who got sucked in, and even for those who weren’t paying attention.

4. Relationships are always difficult.

Anyone, especially those you love, won’t always do what you want him or her to do, so it pisses you off because they should.  It would make your life better

If you do find someone who always does what you want, you immediately realize that they have no judgment of their own, that they are lesser, and you punish them for it.

Almost everyone wants to fuck someone else, at least some of the time, and many, many people do.

--- and when they do it’s special, unique and they should be forgiven. But that won’t come easily.  People like to act surprised and to judge.

So now that task is to take those ideas as jumping off points and meld them into one story.  If I do that I may be able to explain all this in a way the world can understand, and that will bring about an amazing transformation of thought and action.

Of course there is this play called Julius Caesar.  ……. Or Caesar and Cleopatra, or something called Hamlet, or…….

Cultures, subcultures

A person's sub-culture, by which I mean the community that he or she identifies with and spends most of his or her time within, is such a powerful determinant of any one's emotions and behavior, but it is rarely discussed  by psychologists and psychiatrists, and  it is not given the influence that it deserves.

Psychiatry has become so biological over the past twenty years.  It is difficult to get any psychiatrist to talk about anything other than brain chemistry when they discuss a diagnosis or treatment.  Psychologists are more varied. They consider a great many family influences and the role of interpersonal relationships, and see how they greatly affect how people think, feel and behave.

Yet, the values, mores attitudes and behaviors of those who anyone sees himself as most like, do so much toward determining what they feel is the right thing to do, or think, or aspire to.

If both your parents are are collecting checks for disability, and your brother is selling drugs and your seventeen year-old cousin is having her second child, and you three best friends have already dropped out of high school, it will be very difficult for you to "pull yourself up by your boot straps" stay in school, go to college, look for, expect to get, and find a well paying job.

By comparison, if you go to a high school from which 98% of the kids graduate, and 94% of those go to college, you will probably not only expect to go to college, you will go.  You may feel badly that you are going off to State U, instead of Yale, but you expectations and aspirations will be so different from the person in the previous paragraph.

Now, this all seems pretty obvious.  What may not be so obvious to many people is that if almost all of the kids who live the lives in the first paragraph switched cribs with the kids in the second paragraph before they were fourteen months old, all of their lives would live up to the expectations of the new subculture.  I think that many people would not believe that, but I am sure of it. Here in America, people still like to believe that kids are born smart or not so smart.  That's not the case.  94.768% is learning how to learn, living up to expectations, and seeing how the world around you works.

I see so many smart, attractive, personable adolescents and young adults who all do marvelous things and live healthy, prosperous, creative enjoyable lives, if they get the opportunity.  But some of them have no one to show them the path, many even have people around them who are negative and discouraging.

I get great satisfaction when I can be part of the process that helps someone find a way to use their talents and skills.  But it is often disheartening to see how some people have so many more obstacles to fight through and overcome.  Forging a life is difficult enough for anyone.  The journey is much more difficult without a guide, or with someone stepping on your head.

We now also have so many examples of how growing up in a very religious community influences the way someone thinks, sees cause and effect and expects change.  What is "normal in that community may not fit in well in San Francisco, and vice-versa, with an emphasis on the"vice."

 No one can get from here to there alone; not John Wayne, and not Clarence Thomas. Our thinking, feeling and behaving is constantly being influenced by those around us, not matter how much we try to resist. Even the act of resistance is created by the living in the community.

None of this may be groundbreaking, but as John says:  Copy, Transform, Combine (repeat).
The more things get brought to light, the better.

Parenting fuss

Again, a new wave of books about how to raise you kids.  It all mostly began with Dr. Spock, who did a pretty good job. Since then there have been thousands, some have been decent, but most have been terrible.  Many have been very harmful. Many are really no more than political polemics created to develop true believers.

But now we are living in a time when the pressure on kids to grow-up quickly and learn the right skills is greatly magnified.  If you don't have a strong, sophisticated education it will be difficult to find a job or to create one for yourself.  Robots now do the kind of work that kept millions of people employed thirty years ago. Kids have to not only learn how to do things well, they have to do things better than others.  Harvard and MIT have only so many seats each year. Be strict, be tough, teach your kids to focus, to learn, to succeed and achieve. Fun will come for the satisfaction of achievement, play will come at 55.

Predictably, in three to five years there will be another huge pile of books written that will refute the ones coming out today.  Any parenting style that goes to any extreme may work for some kids, but will fail for most.  Every kid is different, every parent is different, every family is different and every time period is different. 

Parenting is wonderful, and should be the most engaging and productive thing that anyone does with his or her life.  But it involves a lot of time and a very delicate balancing act:

Independence but with structure
Fun and Happy, yet internalized delay of gratification
Achievement through pleasure, achievement through work
Intellectual development; emotional intelligence
Firm but Fair
Organized sports, or disorganized play
Discipline yet with Emotional self-regulation!
Learn the rules, but learn to think for yourself.
Solve problems traditionally, solve problems creatively
Play, roam, waste time, watch TV, make-up games, be a pain in the ass

A parent has to slowly instill all of these things in a smiling, running, teasing, messy, fussy, naturally playful totally innocent child.  I remember when my kids were young that as soon as I could determine out how much freedom and independence they could handle, they had grown and changed and their stage of life was different, the challenges they faced were different and I had to begin all over again.

I know that it is more difficult today with so much information, so much stimulation, so many more ways of measuring, and what seems to be much less time.

The one basic rule:  Pay Attention!!!

What seems to have improved is that Grand parenting is much easier and a great deal of fun.

Guilt

Over the past week I have had several people talk to me about how guilty they feel.  Now, I am not one of those therapists who feel that guilt is always a bad thing.  I think it is very important for someone to realize they have done something wrong, or bad, or offended someone, and to feel guilty about it.

Hopefully, guilt will be a motivator to do something good to relieve the guilt. People don't like to feel guilty, so I hope to help people find a good way to change things.

However, guilt can be so ingrained in a person's early in life that they just become overwhelmed and immobilized.  A parent, whose style is to let a child know that what they have done may not only not be the right thing, but that it hurt someone, in some unseen but emotional way, can plant the seeds of constant doubt.  Religion, as we all know, can be a big creator of guilt, which will lead to feelings of unworthyness.

But this week, one of the people I have been seeing really upped the whole guilt thing to a new level.  She was talking about how her mother always blamed her for having ruined her, the mother's life. The mother also was constantly letting this woman know all of her faults, all of her mistakes, and how they affected the family and the community.  The answer to any question about school, a friend, the family, her chores, her comments, was always that my patient was at fault; guilty unless proven innocent, and even then there were still major doubts.

To illustrate the result of such an upbringing, this woman told me that on 9/11/2001, very soon after the twin towers had tumbled and the planes all over the country were being grounded and the search for the terrorists had begun, she carefully reviewed her activities of the day, and wrote down where she was, and who she was with.  She said she did this really, without thinking about what she was doing.  It was not that she wanted to remember the day, she realized, she really wanted to make sure her alibi was in place.  She expected someone to come knocking on her door, but she was sure that this time she had nothing to do with it, and she needed to have the proof available.

Another not surprise

Americans it seems, more than those in any other country, like to avoid responsibility and also to seek a quick fix.

That's why it came as no surprise to anyone who has been in practice for more than ten years, to learn that the diagnosis of ADHD, is not as real or as widespread as it has become, and the the treatment of it, whatever it is, with stimulant medication is not effective.

In truth, a lot of what is called ADD, or ADHD, is the result of a chaotic environment, not enough consistent discipline, and certainly a lack of having learned self-discipline.

Now I don't want to run around pointing fingers and yelling "bad parent" at anyone who has been told their kid has ADD.  In truth, some teachers tried to pin that on my own son when he was ten, and the description may have even fit me for a couple of years when I was a kid.

The reason for the increase in the diagnoses was two-fold:

1. the increase in the complexity of life.  Parents now are often both working, everyone is scurrying around.  Schools are more high paced, stimulation comes from everywhere and very rapidly.  Kids hardly have time to take a break and just have random, unplanned, un-educational fun, which is the kind that really leads to the most learning.  It is very difficult for young boys to sit still and focus for more than half an hour.  Most of them just are not built that way.

2.  The drug industry found a drug that works.  They failed to point out that the drug is a stimulant (speed) and that it helps everyone focus, from seven year-olds to eight-seven year-olds.  They also did not report the studies that show the effectiveness wears off over time, and that their are often side-effects, such as headaches, sleeplessness and stunted growth.

But, once again, there was money to be made.  And the drugs do make a difference, for a while.  But they don't really help anyone learn, and they seem to hinder people learning how to learn, or learning to control themselves.

There have been so many times when I have had a parent tell me that their son won't do his homework, but  if he is interested in something: science, football, skateboarding, girls; then he will learn all he can about it.  That is NOT a symptom of ADD.  It shows that the kid is motivated to do what he feels is relevant.

Many psychologists have made a living on testing and diagnosing brain pathologies, and ADD is right up there.  But everyone has a brain, and every brain is slightly different.  Still, we can all learn to do what we need to do.  We are all good at finding ways at doing what we want to do, under pressure we can do what is necessary, unless we give ourselves an excuse.

It is also interesting to note that something like 94% of people taking medicine for ADD are in the U.S. of A.   Is it something in the soil?

Well, I guess you can't blame your brain any more if you work is late and you watched re-runs of Cheers instead of getting it finished.  You might have to tell everyone, including yourself, that you just didn't want to do it.