Or?

In 2009 I wrote a piece about how the simple word "and" has tremendous therapeutic potential.  I still begin some counseling sessions by just gently saying to my client: ".....and?"  It acknowledges that all stories are ongoing, that endings are often merely pauses, and that each moment is always ripe for development.  I also pointed out how "and" can serve as a marvelous replacement for the word "but".  Try it and see!

A little over a year later I wrote a follow-up reflection on how the phrase ".....and yet?" helps to draw out healthy alternative perspectives on any issue at hand.  It's a way of asking "what's on the opposite side of the coin?"  As I wrote then:

Sometimes I will simply alternate between asking "...and?" along with "...and yet?"  in a friendly fashion.  Rocking gently back and forth between these two simple questions can lead to a great deal of consideration of the relative merits of any position, decision or course of action.

It's now time for my yearly comment on another therapeutic conjunction, and this year's candidate is "or".  This is a true powerhouse of a word for therapeutic change, for its job is to bring choice into the forefront of consideration.  Without choice freedom doesn't exist and real consciousness is reduced to a merely mechanical process.  As an example, there's no "or" for an engine: it just does the job it's built to do.  Choices are the domain of the driver who determines which way to go.  If you're not consciously considering what your choices are in this moment you're not really driving your life.  And there's no choice without the concept of "or". 

This may seem like meaningless wordplay, but there are times when the absence of "or"  is serious business.  An addict experiencing a powerful compulsion has the "or" squeezed out of him, leaving nothing but more of the same familiar pain ahead.  Couples get locked into the same no-win conflicts because they lose the ability to make truly mindful choices when the heat is on.  Part of a successful therapeutic experience is building more "or" into any sequence of behaviors.

"Or" is the sound of freedom.  It's absence is inevitability.

I'm already wondering what conjunction will be up for examination a year from now.  My prediction is "yet".  Stay tuned.
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Bill Herring, LCSW, CSAT is a well seasoned Atlanta-based counselor and psychotherapist who helps individuals and couples live fuller, happier and more meaningful lives.  While working with a wide range of adult clients, Mr. Herring is a nationally recognized specialist on helping good people maintain consistent, safe and ethical sexual boundaries.  He is available for in-person and online consultation and counseling, and may be easily reached by phone or email .

Flooding vs. Washing

A flood is not just about what happens when a river exceeds its banks.  It can also refer to what happens when a person is subjected to more intense stimulation than he or she can effectively handle.  Some brief comparisons between the natural world of geography and the inner experience of the mind will illuminate this point.

Whenever a person is overwhelmed by more cognitive or emotional input than the brain can effectively process, a kind of neurological flooding occurs.  The nervous system can only handle so much before it starts to withdraw from the source of stimulation.  This is when people begin to compensate in a number of ways: the ability to pay attention diminishes or emotional responsiveness begins to ‘numb out‘.  

In more drastic situations a person who is flooded with intensely unpleasant emotional stimuli can start to shut down along several dimensions of healthy functioning.  Reactions become either blunted or excessive, a sense of emotional security can begin to wither, and a person’s overall ability to cope with even minor events can falter.  Once effective neurological processing ceases to keep up with the excessive demands placed upon it, long-term traumatic repercussions can develop.  Just as in nature, the damage caused by flooding can continue long after the waters recede.    

But the amount of water that falls is not the only reason why a flood occurs.  How the land is contoured can make all the difference.   A well-irrigated field can handle a lot of water, and even benefit from it, while a barren plain has no place for the water to go.  Similarly, good drainage goes a long way toward keeping the current moving without backing up to cause even more extensive damage.  Ground that is already saturated can’t absorb any more.  And finally, the strength of the barrier between water and land is as crucial as anything else.  The flood doesn’t happen unless the levee breaks.  

All of these variables have correlates within the human coping mechanism.  Based upon the above, it’s possible to be as prepared as possible to prevent emotional flooding when a deluge of stress occurs in life.

For instance, are you well-irrigated or barren?  This is determined by the extent to which you have ways to expend the energy of anxiety in the most effective ways possible.  Exercise, hobbies, creative outlets, adequate sleep and diet, spiritual and philosophical sources of support and other aids to the development of resiliency all help to dissipate and even productively utilize some measure of stress in productive ways.

What does it mean to have good psychological ‘drainage’?  This is achieved by having trustworthy people to confide in about the full range of your emotional experience.  This is why friends, healthy family members, support group peers and even counselors and therapists are so important.  This helps your emotional ground from becoming so saturated that you can’t handle any more difficulties constructively.

Self-awareness can’t be over-emphasized.  Remaining mindful of your entire state of being is crucial to insuring the health of your intellect, emotions, body, relationships and spirit.  This is the equivalent of monitoring the levee when the waters rise and insuring that areas of ‘high ground’ remain fully tended.  This is not the time to realize you have holes in your boat, no oars and no provisions to use until help arrives or the waters recede.

This whole extended metaphor emerged from a simple reflection in a therapy session about the distinction between ‘flooded’ and ‘’washed’.  To finish the analogy, this is the benefit of keep all gutters and drains free of emotional debris so that they can effectively carry the stress away.  With these characteristics, you can withstand the inevitable deluges of life stress to come into and go out of your life in the best way possible.

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If you like this post (and I hope you do) please visit my primary professional website for related articles on emotional growth and development, individual and couples counseling, tips for successful living, trends in the field of mental health, addiction treatment and many other interesting and useful topics.

Airplane Metaphors

From time to time I share some of the many therapeutic metaphors I use in my counseling work with individuals and couples. I find that analogies are often useful ways to highlight important points in a memorable, illuminating and lasting manner. I was recently reflecting on four metaphors involving airplanes that I find myself using from time to time.

The first "airplane metaphor" highlights the importance of engaging in positive behaviors sufficiently enough to account for shifting circumstances that may otherwise prove too much to handle. Although I've often written about the value of small or incremental change, the fact remains that sometimes people don't alter their behavior enough to guard against "crashing and burning" under dire conditions.

A classic example of this principle is a person with an alcohol problem who continues to associate with former drinking buddies. While successful sobriety is possible for a period of time under such circumstances, the risk of an eventual relapse is unnecessarily high. Another example that is common to many people is to fail to save sufficient money to handle the typical kinds of unexpected expenditures that befall everybody, such as large car repairs or purchases, job loss, sudden illness and other financial hardships. I think of these situations as being similar to a plane flying a mere 50 feet above the ground: a slight change in the terrain or a sudden downdraft can result in devastating consequences.

A second and related "airplane metaphor" involves the importance of gaining sufficient momentum to bring about the sustained process of positive change. For example, I recently worked with a client who began medication for depression but who only took one-half of the recommended dose. Not surprisingly this approach wasn't very effective, which only reinforced her sense of futility. I emphasized the importance of taking the full dosage long enough to give the medication a fair chance of working. I used the example that although a plane may roll down a runway at 40 miles an hour it will never fly at that speed.

A third "airplane metaphor" involves the importance of 'flying solo' with a new behavior. As I've previously written, a pilot-in-training needs a minimum amount of "stick time" before being considered competent enough to fly without an instructor on board. Simulating an emergency situation is a useful way to safely evaluate the student pilot's ability to handle the "real deal" when it comes along. In a similar manner I sometimes encourage clients who have made great gains to consciously create and resolve a high-risk situation while we are still working together in order to gain a sense of independent competence that can prove to be very helpful in the future.

The fourth metaphor involving airplanes is a tragic condition known as the "graveyard spiral", in which an increasingly disoriented pilot gradually allows the plane to enter into an ever-tightening spiral while under the mistaken impression that it is still flying straight and level. By the time the pilot realizes the mistake it is too late, and the plane crashes. This underscores the reality that sometimes we think we are on the proper course when in fact we are heading toward destruction. For this reason we all need to have reliable and accurate feedback about our true heading and not make matters worse through our own well-intended but misguided actions.

Finally, there are times when a therapy session is rollicking along but the time is running out. I don't want to end the meeting too abruptly so I will let the client know of our dilemma and suggest we both look for "a plane to land the plane". We generally are then able to wrap things up quickly but smoothly.

Through the use of metaphors such as these, clients are often able to apply deep truths to their lives in a way that wouldn't happen by direct instruction. This is why I consider metaphoric language to be so very useful in helping people to lead happier, healthier lives.

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Searching In The Darkness

Thank you for wanting to read "Searching In the Dark", an essay botu the value of moving away from comfort in order to reclaim the gifts of the past.  It has been renamed "Searching Where You Haven't Looked" and has moved one quick click away to my professional website, which I hope you will visit.

Make A Pearl

Thank you for waanting to read "Make a Pearl", a simple metaphor for using pain to create something beautiful.  It has been moved one quick click away to my primary website, which I hope you will visit.

Dr. Seuss Bridge

Sometimes in a therapy session an image will come into my mind, often revealing to me a theme or insight to explore with a client. This happened today when I found myself thinking of a picture from a Dr. Seuss book as a client was talking to me.

People who don't have small children might not have much of a frame of reference for this metaphor, although many Dr. Seuss images have entered the popular culture. Laws of gravity and physics exist in a haphazard fashion in the worlds drawn by Dr. Seuss. Houses or even whole cities are held teetering high in the air by the flimsiest of supports. Bridges or elephants rest on a single branch. It's a fanciful world where everything is poised to fall and yet most of the inhabitants are trusting and happy.

Sometimes the logic of the human mind is as winding, tenuous and rickety as a Dr. Seuss bridge. It's very easy to rationalize a decision or course of action without regard to how it violates the laws of nature. Addiction, infidelity and other actions that proceed without regard to likely consequences are like a Dr. Seuss bridge: the flimsiest of support holds up reality until the whole contraption comes crashing down.

Fanciful thinking plays a valuable role in preventing toxic seriousness, but major life decisions are best made on the basis of reality. Since humans are very skilled at self-delusion it's important to have ways of reality testing your assumptions. Sometimes the most important aspect of therapy is the simple grounding of assumptions that comes when two people can talk in a very open, honest, supportive and objective fashion.

Dynamic Tension

This is another in a long series of posts about therapeutic metaphors, which are ideas or images that I use from time to time to explain or highlight a concept that can be useful in my work with clients. The topic today is about the inevitable level of tension in life and ways to work with that reality we all must face.

Most people "get it" that a certain amount of stress is actually useful. The very act of standing upright requires some of your leg muscles to be tight, and as you walk there is a continual shifting of tension among various muscles. Even when asleep certain muscles tighten without your conscious control in order to allow you to wake up with a dry bed.

The usefulness of tension is not just limited to the physical level of life. Emotionally, a certain amount of stress is adaptive. A person who never worried about anything would never take steps to avoid potential danger of any sort and would likely be blindsided by life very quickly. A requisite degree of tension is necessary to protect what is important.

Of course, so many people take tension to the extreme and worry about things that are out of their control or potential scenarios that will never realistically take place. Tension can achieve such great proportions in some people that it paralyzes them from taking action against the very thing they worry about. Others guard against the sources of their anxiety to such an extent that they avoid opportunities to live life fully by never taking growth-producing risks.

But there is another type of inevitable tension that can go unnoticed, which I call the tension of paradox. A mere conflict pits a truth and falsehood against each other while a paradox brings two opposing truths together. As Niels Bohr said, "The opposite of a correct statement is a false statement. The opposite of a profound truth may well be another profound truth." Paradoxes transcend mere logic, and this is where the trouble comes in for some people. How can something be one thing and its opposite at the same time?

Examples of paradox abound: the more you treat others with compassion the more you will have available for yourself; the origin of true power is to admit defeat; you create your best future by living fully in the present moment; hurting others hurts yourself. Even in the healthiest of relationships paradox can raise its mischievous head: just ask any man who simultaneously craves both connection and autonomy.

We are therefore poised as humans between many pairs of opposing truths. Sometimes we lean by nature or circumstance more toward one side or the other but essentially we are like guitar strings stretched between two immovable posts, and the way we vibrate to the tensions that play upon us dictates the music our lives are capable of making. The dynamic tension of life emerges from the very fact that you are alive. Eventually your strings will go slack and your music will cease on this earth except for the echo of your actions upon the world. From time to time a string may break from being stretched too taut or plucked too hard and it's time for a repair.

A good therapist is one of many resources you can use to help you get your life in tune. The theory and technique for living the kind of life that resonates with rich melody and harmony comes from good instruction, from playing along with others and by practicing the right techniques until the notes are practically playing themselves.

Fill the world with the music of your life.

The Most Important Play In Sports

Thanks for wanting to read "The Most Important Play in Sports", a short reflection on a concept that applies just as much off the field as on.  It has been moved one quick click away to my primary website.  I hope you will visit it to read this and many other observations about ways to achieve a happy, healthy and meaningful life.

Ready Position

Thanks for wanting to read my short reflection on how a piece of old sports coaching advice can apply to all aspects of life.  This blog post hs been move one quick click way to my primary website, which I hope you'll visit for this and other commentaries and observations.  Thanks!

Long Train, Big Mountain

"Long Train, Big Mountain", a short motivational reflection on the value of engaging in your own personal development even if no one else notices, has been moved one click away to my professional website, where you will find many other topics related to various aspects of personal growth and emotional development.  Please come visit and stay awhile.

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Bill Herring, LCSW, CSAT is a highly experienced Atlanta counselor and psychotherapist offering a respectful, motivational, non-confrontational approach to individuals and couples seeking to live a happier and more meaningful life.  Mr. Herring offers discreet and confidential counseling and consultation for a wide variety of life issues. He is also a nationally recognized specialist on compulsive sexual behavior and chronic sexual infidelity.   He is available for in-person and online consultation and counseling, and may be easily reached by phone or email .

Pigs, Chickens and Perspective

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The Emotional Bermuda Triangle

There is a popular legend about an area of the Atlantic Ocean where airplanes and ships have supposedly been mysteriously disappearing for years, making it a dangerous place to sail or fly over. Many explanations, both convincing and far-out, have been given for what happens in this area, but I'll leave that for others to explain. My purpose here is to explain how I occasionally use concept this as a therapeutic metaphor.

My use of the phrase "emotional Bermuda triangle" refers to a risky psychological area that people can get themselves into but don't always easily escape. This area is bounded by depression on one side, anxiety on another and obsession on the third. Here's how it works:

We all get sad, but sometimes people fall into depressive funks that cause them to interpret the events of their life in a consistently negative way. When they struggle to escape this depressive outlook it unfortunately sometimes comes at the high cost of increasing their sense of anxiety. I've known some people who were so anxious it made them depressed and other people so depressed it made them anxious, but in either case it's a profound one-two punch.

As if that's not hard enough to deal with, it's the third leg of the stool that can really trap a person in a never-ending cycle. Obsessive-compulsive tendencies can serve as a way for a person to manage his or her anxiety or sadness. When you're always thinking, planning, reviewing and acting in a compulsive manner it's hard to notice the pervasive sadness and anxiety that's lurking close by.

This is the emotional Bermuda triangle: to avoid depression a person stays obsessively occupied in mind or body (or both) until eventually anxiety becomes an inevitable byproduct, eventually tumbling back into depression, and on and on. When efforts to decrease one of these three symptoms causes an increase in either of the other two, that may be one way to keep floating but it's sure not a pleasure cruise.

I find that counseling can help a person to increase awareness of this emotional danger zone and navigate forward in life without excessively suffering from any of these three difficulties. If you find yourself consistently paddling in these treacherous waters I hope you will take steps to find someone to help guide you to smoother sailing.

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If you like this post (and I hope you do) please visit my primary professional website for related articles on emotional growth and development, individual and couples counseling, successful living tips, counseling, essays and observations about psychotherapy and change, recovery from sex addiction and many other interesting and useful topics.

Ten Will Get You Fifty

Thanks for wanting to read "Ten Will Get You Fifty", a short essay about the value of small life improvements.  It has been moved one quick click away to my primary website, which I hope you will visit.

"Round Up The Usual Suspects"

Thank you for wanting to read "Round Up The Usual Suspects", a short essay about unhelpful beliefs.  It has been moved one quick click away to my primary website, which I hope you will visit for read it and other essays about personal growth and development.

Therapeutic Metaphor: Jigsaw Puzzle

I seem to be writing a lot about metaphors I use from time to time in therapy. The fact is that I don't use metaphors all the time, nor do I use any of the ones I'm writing about a lot, but I think they're fun, sometimes they're very useful, and I'm finding them easy to write about.

From time to time a client just starting therapy may profess some confusion about what to talk about. This can especially be the case with people who have a lot of issues going on or who haven't previously talked much about their life experiences and are unaccustomed to organizing their thoughts into a linear narrative. There are a lot of ways I help them ease into a productive discussion, from simply asking "what do you want to change in your life" to suggesting that we focus on whatever is causing the most distress, to asking what happened that lead to the decision to pick up the phone and schedule an appointment.

Since I like to cover a lot of ground with my clients from the first meeting, I am apt to ask questions that lets us explore a wide variety of topics, so we often wind up addressing a lot of things. Sometimes I use the example of a jigsaw puzzle: the first thing to do is to simply turn all the pieces facing up so that we can start to look for the big picture, patterns and boundaries of the puzzle. Similarly, when clients simply begin putting all of their issues "face up" we are able to quickly begin sorting them in a way that starts to make sense.

A couple of other metaphors sometimes come up along these lines. I may just reassure the person that they can "jump into the pool anywhere", either the shallow or the deep end. In other words, whatever topic we start talking about will inevitably lead us to where we need to go. Sometimes (generally later in the therapeutic relationship) I may speak of "letting the dog off the leash" and following the conversation where it needs to go. Like a trusty bird-dog it will generally pick up the scent and lead us in the right direction.
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Therapeutic Metaphor: Japanese Movie Monsters

Sometimes clients describe situations in which they are arguing with another person in their lives (usually a significant other) where it seems like everything they say or do gets turned against them. At such times I may ask if they've ever watched a Japanese monster movie such as Mothra, Gamera or Godzilla. Such monsters are generically called "kaiju", Japanese for "strange beast".

I bring this up because one of the qualities of many kaiju is the ability to absorb whatever energy is used to try to stop them. Bullets, bombs, even atomic explosions just make them larger and more powerful. Some people act the same way in arguments. Whatever you throw at them will only feed their destructive energy. It's unfair, it's verbally abusive, it's jerk-like behavior, but none of that matters when it's happening. The best thing to do is to recognize what you are up against and pull the plug. Walk away.

At most you have one shot to say "that's verbally abusive, stop it or I'm leaving this discussion." If the other person says something "what are you talking about" you have the option to say "look me in the eyes: stop treating me like that". If they continue to argue unfairly, walk out of the room. Anything else is feeding Godzilla.

Patricia Evans is a therapist and author who has written a lot of useful information about verbally abusive people who attempt to control others. She has a helpful website for more information on this important subject. I'm not attempting to give an overview on how to respond to the kaiju in your life, but I hope this image is useful in helping you see them for what they are.
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Therapeutic Metaphor: Turkey Pan

Here's a graphic image I use from time to time when a person is experiencing a lot of emotional turmoil from a past event despite having worked hard to come to overcome its legacy.

Have you ever seen a pan used to cook a turkey after the bird is removed? There is a lot of baked-on 'crud' at the bottom of the pan. After soaking, sudsing and lots of elbow grease the water in the pan is going to look very unappetizing. When you pour the water out you will discover even more layers of baked-on residue. Do you throw out the pan or quit cleaning it? No, you soak it again and then scrub some more, even though you are likely to find that the water is still nasty-looking as gunk continues to rise from the bottom! A turkey pan needs several cycles of soaking and scrubbing before the water is going to stay clean.

The point is that a lot of emotional trauma and turmoil doesn't come off easily. But the good news is that all that mess repeatedly rising up from the bottom is a sure sign that you are heading in the right direction. Keep scrubbing.
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Therapeutic Metaphor: Walking the Dog

An essential skill for good emotional health is being able to manage our emotions so they don't rule us. It's appropriate to experience a wide range of emotions, including all types of anxiety, sadness, anger, happiness, etc. Our goal should be the ability to experience these emotions in such a way that they influence but don't control us.

Picture a person struggling to walk a large and unruly dog through a park. Every time that untrained dog sees a squirrel he is likely to chase after it, dragging the poor human on the other end of the leash through the bushes. This is the way some people are with their emotions. Any direction their feelings take them, that's where they're going to go whether they like it or not. It takes a lot of effort to discipline your emotions, but the results are well worth it.

I enjoy reading jokes from different eras, and I remember one from the 1920's, in which a rich woman told her butler to walk her beloved poodle Fifi through the park. The haughty butler sniffed, "But Madame, Fifi and I hardly know each other", to which the Madame replied, "Then it is Fifi who shall take You for a walk."

When it comes to your relationship with your emotions, who's taking who for a walk?
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Therapeutic Metaphor: The Godfather

This is a metaphor I use from time to time with certain male clients, involving Don Corleone, the mafia boss in the "Godfather" movies.

Sometimes in my work with couples I will come across a man who yells a lot when he's upset with his partner. I'm no fan of couples who do lots of screaming at each other because not only does it do nothing to resolve the basis of their disagreement but it inevitably escalates the intensity of the argument until somebody storms off or says something they later regret.

I worked with a couple recently where the guy did this a lot, which was really turning me off to him. Finally I had the inspiration to ask him if had ever watched the "Godfather" movies. It turns out he enjoyed them very much, considering the first two to be classics of American cinema.

I pointed out that in those movies nobody with real power ever yelled. Both the character of Don Vito Corleone (Marlon Brando) and his son Michael (Al Pacino) were men of immense power, who held lives in the palm of their hand, and neither ever resorted to raising his voice. It was only the characters who pretended or wished to have true power who ever screamed at others: Sonny, Fredo, Connie, etc. all threw tantrums and fits when they were frustrated for not getting their way. The moral is that the way to tell if someone lacks true power and is full of bluster is this: they yell.

He got the point, and after that moment he worked to catch himself when he found himself reverting to childish ranting. His girlfriend, on the other hand, got the subtle extra message that some men essentially act like gangsters in their intimate relationships, and she made some healthy decisions that are the subject of another post.

The "Godfather" metaphor is one I reserve for a certain type of hyper-masculine male who is horrified to conceive of himself as fundamentally Fredo. I would not, however, use it on a man who I considered to be dangerous enough to act with Don Corleone's ruthlessness. I don't want any horses' heads in my client's beds.
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Therapeutic Metaphor: Titanic

Here's another in my on-going series of therapeutic metaphors that I occasionally use in my counseling practice.

I often come across situations in which a person demonstrates many fine and admirable attributes while also possessing one tragic flaw that outweighs all of his or her positive qualities. For instance, a woman may be enthralled by a man who is a hard worker, funny, exciting and romantic, but if he occasionally gets drunk and violent this negative feature can quickly negate all of those positive qualities. In pointing this out I might remark that the Titanic was an absolutely wonderful ship except for one problem....the hole under the surface that sunk it.

We all have character flaws, and it's generally best when they are visible to ourselves and others so that they can be recognized and dealt with openly. But certain issues are so hard for some people to face that they are kept hidden "below the waterline" where they go unnoticed until the damage that has been done is too great to repair. It's tragic when a good ship begins taking on water, but it's foolish to pretend not to notice that it's happening.

The other "Titanic" metaphor I like refers to "upgrading to a better room on the Titanic" or "rearranging furniture on the Titanic", both of which are variations on the concept of making a superficial change or improvement without recognizing the larger, more important and more dire circumstance. Sometimes it's hard to grasp the degree of change we must make to stay afloat, which is where good feedback from someone we trust can be a lifesaver.
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If you like this post (and I hope you do) please visit my primary professional website for related articles on emotional growth and development, individual and couples counseling, successful living tips, counseling, essays and observations about psychotherapy and change, recovery from sex addiction and many other interesting and useful topics.