Empathy and the "wounded healer"

Empathy has been one of those popular buzzwords lately, like compassion or mindfulness, but it often gets confused with its cousin sympathy. Let me tell them apart for you.

Sympathy is to look at what is happening to someone else from your own perspective, and to feel for them. For example: "his grandmother just died. This is what I would feel if my grandmother died".

Empathy requires more, it is about trying to see what is happening to someone through their eyes, from their perspective. It is more "if I were him, and had his personality, his history of trauma etc, I would probably feel this in his situation".

Empathy will allow you not to judge, by not just looking at someone's situation "she is a victim of domestic abuse - why doesn't she just leave?" but by looking at it from their position in life "if I had been systematically made to feel unworthy, small and incompetent through years of domestic abuse, and had learned from my own family of origin the same thing, how would I feel? What would I be able to do or not do? How can I support her rebuilding her own self-esteem?"

Where sympathy is instantaneous, empathy requires a sustained effort of imagination and understanding. And this is where we can all work on dialling up our empathy.

It's about putting ourself in someone else's body, brain, heart, not just situation. When we feel sympathy, we are tempted to give advice. When we feel empathy, we offer support.

My work as a therapist is squarely on the empathy side. The more I listen to my clients, the better I can understand not just their situation, but also how they feel, where they're coming from and what they want to change. Only then will my work also encompass helping them see different perspectives - not by giving them my opinion, not by telling them what I would do in their situation and definitely not by giving them advice, but rather by offering them a different way to look through their own eyes.

In the world of psychotherapy there is a concept called "the wounded healer". It acknowledges that therapists, by the nature of their work, are not just vicariously exposed to other people's trauma, depression or grief, but that may also have suffered of these themselves.

And that is not a bad thing. Our clients' problems are not just abstract concepts, but surprisingly often things we have gone through ourselves.

So, if you find yourself seeing a therapist, rest assured that we will be empathetic, not because we have "studied empathy", but because we too may have faced those emotions you're feeling.

The experience of pain is the common ground of humanity we all share, and it allows me to feel - no matter what my clients bring to therapy - empathy and compassion, and never judgement.

Why Christmas so often ends up being shit

Are you starting to get that feeling?
Christmas around the corner, and still so much to plan, to do, to buy?
What about the seating plan? No-one wants to sit next to weird Uncle Gary, and Cousin Jo has recently to converted to (insert whatever religion you find offensive) and so is the black sheep?

But this year, it's all going to be different, right?
You'll get organised better, earlier, and this time, everyone will get along, the food will be perfect, and anyway, it should be all ok as long as there is enough booze.

What could possibly go wrong? I mean apart from the all stuff that has been going wrong every single year before this one?

Well, maybe we're approaching this whole "festive season" the wrong way.
According to my favourite blogger, the equation for happiness is pretty simple:
Happiness = Results minus Expectations.

And what happens at Christmas time?
Well, for one we expect things to go according to (a very ambitious) plan.
Then we expect to get along with people we barely see (if at all) the rest of the year (mostly because we don't like them that much).
And to make sure it all goes pear-shaped, we add copious amounts of alcohol to the mix.

So basically we expect the best case scenario, and feel cheated if a less ideal scenario gets played out - despite having lived through all sorts of stuff-ups, from average to full-blown shit-storm the previous years.

So, how can we turn this around?
How can we, for once, make the festive season a time for love, understanding and joy instead of resentment, stress, sadness and anger?

We could start by reducing our expectations.

Simplifying the menu so it's quick and easy to cook, and we could do it in our sleep.
Inviting only the people that we will actually be happy to see.
Reducing the gift-giving to only the most meaningful people in our life, so buying presents is about finding something to really give joy, rather than an obligation.
Spending less of our money, and more of our time.
And most importantly, finding compassion inside us, so we can forgive others for not fulfilling our expectations, even on Christmas day.

Have a peaceful and loving holiday.

Intimacy and resentment: impossible bedfellows

I have previously written about resentment and the harm it does to those who hold on to it and I just love the definition AA uses:

"Resentment is like drinking a cup of poison, and hoping the other one dies from it".

Yeah, put like this, it doesn't make much sense to indulge in it, does it?
But I would like today to highlight another aspect of resentment, the impact it has on intimacy for couples.

Resentment typically builds when one person feels wronged, and the situation is not being remedied by the other - but there is another sneaky element to it - usually the one holding on to resentment isn't doing all they could be doing to clear the air, but rather they seem to wait for the other to "know" that they are hurt and why and how to fix it.

Now, as a couple's communication strategy, hoping for the other to read our mind is not the most efficient way to get our needs met.

Let me give you an example: you don't like it when your partner stays at work for drinks on a Friday night. But because you want to be "the cool girl" or "the cool guy", or not look "needy", you don't say anything, thinking "they must know that I'd rather like to spend that time with them than going out on my side with my colleagues" and you don't want to nag. In the meantime, your partner is convinced that all is rosy, and that you're having just a good a time as they do.

The problem is that after a while, it really pisses you off that you never spend a whole Friday evening together and you start withdrawing from your partner. They may interpret that the right way ("oh no, what have I done wrong?") and start asking questions, but they may just find you more difficult to be with and hence stay out longer on Friday nights.

To cut a long story short, eventually you'll both be further away from each other, and your needs further than ever from being met.

Resentment is about building a wall to keep ourself safe (from rejection, from abandonment, whatever your particular fear is) and hence effectively shutting the other out to prevent them from hurting us.

Intimacy on the other hand is our capacity to make ourself vulnerable, making our connections stronger by opening up. How can you connect on an intimate level, if you don't express your needs in a way that allows you to be heard, and yet does not come across as aggression?

How can you even want to connect, if all you can think of when looking at your partner is that they have done this or not done that? And more importantly, how is your partner supposed to know about this, if you don't say until you're too angry to be reasonable?

You get my drift. I find that the more I cringe about expressing my needs, the more I use plain language to make sure I am heard (nothing worse in my eyes than trying to express my feelings in a way so careful that the other person doesn't hear that it's really important to me or what I'm actually trying to say).

For example: "I have a need to be heard right now - so it is really important for me that you look at me while I'm telling you about my day". Or in the above example, "I would love to spend some more time with you on Fridays - could we maybe meet straight after our workday on some Fridays?"

Talk about what's not OK for you in your relationship, preferably by focusing on what your needs are rather than blaming the other for not fulfilling them.

According to David Schnarch, the main reason for a lack of sexual intimacy is a lack of the other types of intimacy, due to unprocessed resentments.

So basically, if you want intimacy, you first need to kick resentment out of the marital bed...

How alcohol and drugs stunt the emotional growth of adolescents

As I have previously written, there is a great difference between festive alcohol and drug consumption and the use of them as chemical crutches to make difficult emotions "go away" for instant gratification/relief purposes.

In the first case, the use of them is close to the pleasure of sharing fine foods with people who you feel connected to, and in the second case, it's all about making yourself forget that your life is not as you would like it and removing those difficult emotions (which are actually there to remind you that you need to change these things that are giving you those unpleasant feelings).

During adolescence, the problem is unfortunately compounded. It is a difficult time of life, where the skills you're meant to learn are actually to adapt to new and changing circumstances; alcohol and drugs can interfere severely with the process.

How? Well, imagine being faced for the first time with a break up. You can either go through the suffering, eventually coming out on the other side having learned that even heartache is a temporary condition, or have numbed your feelings with alcohol and or drugs, in which case the only thing you learn is that alcohol and drugs have helped you and hence are necessary to deal with life's vicissitudes.

Or what if you failed an exam? If you feel the shame and pain of that failure, odds are that you will realise that you'd rather work harder to avoid it happening again. Or you could just instantly make yourself feel better by drinking or drugging those pesky feelings away - and probably failing the next set of exams as well...

You get the gist.
But for adolescents, the learning process of dealing with emotions and the difficulties of life is on-going, and if instead they learn that alcohol and drugs is all it takes to make themselves feel ok, guess what they will turn to as soon as the going gets tough? Yep, alcohol and drugs.

One of my questions to a client consulting me about their addiction issues is to ask them at what age they started with their addiction - because there is a rule of thumb in psychotherapy, that whatever age you start "using" is the emotional age at which you're stuck. So if you first used alcohol, drugs, gambling, sex or whatever it is that you discovered made you instantly "feel better" at age 14, then you will be stuck with the capacity of a 14-year old to deal with difficult emotions.

Because (unfortunately) pain is the only thing that feels harder, more awful than change. So if you remove the pain, you also remove the intrinsic motivation to change and adapt.

Please have the chat with your teenager.
Please have the chat with yourself if you recognise this pattern in how you deal with life's difficulties...
And please, don't hesitate to reach out.

"Trust the Process" - a case-study on how therapy works

Some time ago I had a client who was angry with me, unsatisfied and wanted to "sack me".

Now I completely understand that I am not the best therapist for everyone in this world, but what made this case a little bit different is that we had developed just the sort of relationship that is normally conducive to a successful therapy, whereas it usually becomes quite clear early on if we're not right for each other.

I believe in my clients' right and ability to choose, so in this case I was OK to let him go, but used the time we had left to look at why he didn't want to continue. His anger was mainly around the fact that I didn't "offer him enough support". Now I do pride myself in exactly the opposite - being there for my clients, above and beyond what can be expected.

The big misunderstanding was that he believed I should take responsibility for him and his decisions, whereas I was convinced he needed to make his own choices - and that he could do so successfully.

The process in psychotherapy is to use whatever comes up, in this case his anger with me, and to use it to gain understanding on how the client functions in his other relationships, as there normally are patterns that keep being reproduced.

In this case, he was looking in his life for other people to take care of him, and this was undermining his relationships. In a way, he was looking for a parent. In my role as a therapist, I often will play some parts of that role, in that I offer a therapeutic relationship where I am completely there for my client, without judgement, and with an unconditional (platonic) love.

But the great difference is that I don't consider my clients to be children, so I don't tell them what to do. On the contrary, I consider them to be functioning adults, and I offer them support to work out what they want and how to change what they decide they need to change.

My work with this particular client had a happy ending. Once he realised that he was only reproducing with me what was a non-working pattern for him in real life, he decided to continue his therapy with me and successfully worked on that pattern that he hadn't been aware of.

"Trust the Process" in this case meant for me not to try and frantically give my client what he was asking for, not pleasing him or colluding with him, not playing the "rescuer", but instead to stay in my role as the therapist, fully trusting my client's ability to find his way, and supporting him along his journey.

The 3 types of intimacy - let's talk about sex! (and the other types)

"Intimacy" is a close connection between two people. There are three types of it, and their presence, absence and interplay lead to different types of relationships. Let me define them.

The first type of intimacy is mental, intellectual, spiritual - I'm talking about the intimacy of the mind. It is that wonderful space where you can share what goes on in your internal world, in your brain, with someone who not only listens, but actually "gets" you. It doesn't mean you have to necessarily agree with each other, but there is a profound interest in and respect of the other's thoughts.

This form of intimacy is usually present between good friends - that lovely feeling of being able to say what is going on inside yourself, and also discovering another person's internal world. Ideally it comes without any judgement (but we are human - let's strive for it, but not beat ourself up if we don't reach that ideal).

The second form of intimacy is physical touch (of a non-sexual nature). This type of intimacy can often be found between family members (hugging, holding hands) and with your pets (snuggling with my cat definitely qualifies in my eyes lol). Sometimes also between good friends - this is when we talk about a close or intimate friendship.

The third form of intimacy is sexual. But don't get mistaken, not all sexual contact will qualify as intimate,  I think there needs to be a desire to give and (or) receive for it to be truly intimate.

According to the brilliant book "Passionate Marriage" by David Schnarch, when there are issues in the sexual intimacy within a couple, it is often due to resentments about one or both of the other forms of intimacy - i.e. if you don't feel "heard" you may feel less inclined to engage in sexual intimacy, and similarly if there is an absence of tenderness.

What it boils down to is that one or more forms of intimacy have to be present for a relationship to last - otherwise it is solely a partnership of convenience; and that will only last for as long as there is whatever goal to be achieved (study-buddies, going-out-only friends, and some couples who stay together "for the kids" or to save on rent are all examples of relationships without intimacy).

There are many ways to meet your needs for intimacy. I am particularly privileged because my work is one of the most intimate experiences (of the mind only!) that I have lived. When someone opens their entire internal world to me, with all the trust that implies, the connection is as close as you can get to someone without touching them. And for some of my clients, it is their only source of intimacy, and sometimes even their first - and that trust they give me I treat as sacred...

How Fear keeps us safe - and imprisoned

Fear is one of the strongest emotions.
It is the ultimate survival instinct.
Its purpose is very clear: to keep us safe from danger.

Like all emotions, it gives us feedback on what is going on in our environment, in order to help us recognise threats and protect ourselves from them.

Fear triggers some of the most powerful responses: fight, flight or freeze.

Most of these responses were highly appropriate when faced with a tiger (flight, preferably up a tree), a hyena (fight - if it is only one hyena, not a clan) or a bear (freeze - play dead).

In our modern, highly safe and sanitised world though, these responses can often be excessive, inappropriate or simply don't work. Also, there is a choice to be made between the three reactions engendered by fear, and we don't always get it right.

Freeze is a common response in cases of domestic violence or sexual assault - when flight or fight might be safer options.
Fight is a usual reaction when being provoked - which might get you a jail term.
Flight is often used in cases of conflict, when standing your ground might get you a better outcome.

Fear asks us to "play it safe".
Safe was the only good option for cavemen, but in today's world, we don't want just to be safe, we also want to be happy, in our relationships and work.

Safe is not going to be enough. Safe is "no risk, no gain". Safe means not changing, because it feels familiar, and "better the devil you know", right?

Safe means not choosing the best option, but the one that doesn't challenge us or the one that triggers us the least. Can that possibly be why we are here on this earth? To endure and defend the status quo?

In my opinion - no.
I like to think we are here to become the best version of ourself, in the limited time we have (and better start now, because we don't know when that time runs out), as well as changing our world, be it human or environmental, for the better.

Are you ready to face your fears, to decide for yourself which ones help keep you safe, and which ones hold you back? That is one of the questions I help my clients to find their own answers for.

Are you truly generous?

I hope it is safe to say that most of us try to be giving.

We give our time, to listen, to care, to help, or just to be there. And sometimes to say "no".
We give our money or possessions to look after those we love, and for some of us, even to those we don't know personally.

And we get something in return.
I don't mean gratitude - that is actually often not included in the deal.

But we get this feeling inside ourself, this warm and fuzzy feeling, of giving freely and out of love.

I truly believe that for most of us, we like making others feel good about themselves and in turn, that makes us feel good about ourselves.

Some are better at giving than others. Some are world champions in giving.
I do hope you have some people like that in your life.

It doesn't matter how it is expressed, whether in their readiness to be there for you, their completely non-judgemental way of listening to you, or the way they cook or care for you.

But even they often have a flaw - they know how to give, freely, endlessly, but they may not know how to accept from others. And by always being the giver, they take away our opportunity to spoil them in return.

So, if you want to be truly generous, by all means, give as much as you can - but please remember to allow others to give to you as well, so they too can experience that lovely feeling of being generous.

The one answer to any doubt or question: Compassion

Let me explain what I mean when I say that whether you are dealing with others, or trying to deal with your inner self, compassion will always be the right answer to any question or doubt:

Compassion is a feeling of kindness, a reaching out, an understanding.
It's as close to unconditional love as we can get without pronouncing the word "love".

Why do I think that it is the answer? Surely there must be people who don't "deserve" compassion?

Well, this is where the beauty of compassion comes in - it doesn't judge. On the contrary, it is about not judging the other. If anything, those who we may be tempted to judge are probably those who need our compassion the most.

Compassion is not accepting someone's terrible acts, but seeing the human being, his suffering, and not judging that person - by separating their actions from who they are.

Where this comes up in my work is often the severity with which my clients initially judge themselves. It's their difficulty in looking at themselves with loving, kind, understanding eyes.

A question I ask to help them shift their perspective is "if your best friend were in your situation, what would you tell them?" - and so rarely would they condemn them, but rather be supportive and compassionate.

It is easy to feel compassionate about others who seem to deserve it - the kind, the clean, the nice, the people we see as our people. True generosity is to feel compassion - and express it - to those who are different, who bother us, who are not "our kind", who are not grateful, who may be "smelly", literally or figuratively. Those who, like us, are all too human, all too imperfect.

It doesn't matter where you start, but any time you feel compassion instead of judging, whether for yourself or someone else, you add a little bit of kindness to this world.
And it seems to me the world right now needs any kindness it can get...

Anti-depressants - the good, the bad and the ugly

Anti-depressants divide the opinions - for some they area miracle drug, for others the work of the devil. I thought I might add my personal take on them.

The good: the right anti-depressant taken for the right reasons is simply fabulous. You go from a terrible state spending your days crying to normal life in 3 weeks or less.

The bad: if you're not very lucky, the wonderful effect of making your brain functional again comes with annoying to bad side-effects - from nausea and diarrhoea to migraines, headaches and/or a complete disappearance of your libido. Those side-effects may be temporary, the time your body adapts to the anti-depressant, or permanent for the whole time you're taking them.

The ugly: if you're very unlucky, your anti-depressant will have the opposite effect. It will take you from a bad place to a worse place, increase the despair, push you to suicide.

So why take them at all? Especially when the onset of depression has an identified trigger like grief?

In my experience, depression  can be so debilitating that no psychotherapy is possible, simply because you are stuck in such a fog of awfulness, that you cannot think rationally.

Then, if you are lucky and get the right chemical for you (no anti-depressant works for everyone unfortunately) you can regain enough brain power to start processing whatever it is you want/need to change in your life.

Please reach out and talk to your friends, your GP and/or therapist if you think you may be experiencing depression.


Disclaimer: I am not a medical doctor, nor in any way affiliated to the pharmaceutical industry, I am only describing what I learnt from my personal and professional experience...

What if the grief that we are "stuck" in triggered depression?

Seeing friends and family members with depression, listening to my clients with depression, and having suffered myself from depression, I started wondering if the common denominator, the trigger, could be grief that for whatever reason we cannot find our way out of.

I guess I need to define what I mean by grief and by depression. Depression is not just a "feeling low" but a disease that can be measured in terms of serotonin levels and other physiological cues, i.e. it is not "just in your head".

And when I talk about grief, it comes in so many different forms. Of course, the obvious one is the grief of losing someone, to death, disease or divorce. But that is only one version. Then there can be the grief of being childless, the grief of realising that you'll never achieve your dream job, the grief of not being able to save our planet - basically that feeling of loss and powerlessness that in turn can make us doubt our own value.

I watched this video of this very articulate woman telling her story of giving birth to her much-desired child and of finding out that her daughter has Down syndrome (please watch it, it is one of the most heart-opening videos I have seen - she's a stand-up comedian, so she's not your average woman). And this is when I realised how we can get stuck in that grief. When we keep holding on to the dreams we had, the potential we saw, the plans we made, all of which are now obsolete. 

And as long as we hold on to those dreams that can't be realised, to those hopes that have no way to be fulfilled, as long as we hang on to the potential of "what could have been" in that parallel universe where the outcome would have been different, we don't accept what has happened to us.
If we can't let go, we become stuck.

If we don't find a way back into this world, where the loss has occurred, then that grief stays with us and takes away our joy in life. And eventually all things become grey. 

So how can we find a way back into this world, the one where not only our grief and loss is happening, but also the rest of our life? 

Only if we reconcile ourselves to the new reality, the one with the emptiness, can we start to move forward again. Only if we spend less time wondering what "could have been", what "should have been", what "would have been", hanging on to the dreams we had, can we make space for new dreams.

Holding on, one day at a time.

That little voice in your head? Stop agreeing with it!

You know that little voice in your head - the constant internal monologue that disguises as a dialogue, the imaginary conversations with imaginary versions of the people in your life that run in the background of your mind (see the Peanut Theory).

That voice that usually tells you everything you're doing wrong, how worthless you are, how generally unloveable. The voice that might even tell you you have no reason to be here, that no-one will miss you if you're gone, that actually the world would be a better place without you. 

For some it's just the voice of self-doubt, an incessant questioning of their choices.

For others, it's the voice of depression.

For others still, it's the voice of despair leading to suicide.

For all those whose voice brings them down, whose voice is not one of self-love, I have a simple yet brilliant piece of advice (simple, brilliant, yet not necessarily easy to apply):

Stop agreeing with it!

You see, the voice in our head originates inside us. Yes, it might be a continuation of messages we repeatedly received in our childhood or adulthood, but that voice you hear, that nasty internal "dialogue", is nonetheless a product of your own brain.

And like everything that originates inside us, we can change it. We can change the way we look at things. We can even change how we feel about things. 

The first step, as always, is awareness. It's to isolate the voice in our head and identify it "oh, that's just my inner demon talking" or "funny, sounds exactly like what my father/mother used to say to me".

The next step is to stop agreeing with it. 

Make it into a habit to interrupt the internal voice by telling yourself you don't agree with it. 

When you hear it tell you that "you're not loveable" - don't agree with it. Remind yourself of all the things that make you loveable and all the people who do love you.

If the voice tells you that you're incompetent, and that your colleagues are bound to find out any day now, stop agreeing with it, and tell yourself of all the reasons why you are good in your job.

If the voice tells you that you're worthless, don't agree with it, but rather remind yourself of all the good things you do for those around you, even if they can't see it.

This is about changing the way we think about ourself, which then in turn will change the way we feel about ourself and then life in general.

Don't get me wrong, it's not an easy exercise. Sometimes you may find it necessary to enrol a little bit of outside help - your friends, your family (as long as they are not already struggling with their own demons) or a therapist.

In the same way you wouldn't agree with a good friend describing themselves as useless, incompetent or unloveable - please stop agreeing with it for yourself.

Why does growth always hurt?

Have you noticed how much it hurts to grow?
Whether it's to grow up, mature, improve, whatever form growth is taking?

It's because growth is change.
And change always hurts.

So why should we try and grow?
Because growth is more than just change - it's change in "the" right direction.

Of course there are lots of directions that are right for growth.
And the good news is, you get to pick and choose.

There are the physical ones - pick up a new exercise regime, grow some muscles.
The intellectual ones - learn a new language, or geometry in space, whatever tickles your fancy.

And then there is emotional growth - my quest, both personally and professionally.

Emotional growth is about becoming more of who you can be, in a good way.
The same way that growing doesn't change a child, but fulfils their potential, emotional growth doesn't change who you are, but makes you "more of you".

That growth can take many different shapes.
For some, it's to allow themselves to be vulnerable, to let others in.
For others, it's about letting go of an addiction, by finding other, healthier ways to deal with life's challenges.
For others still, it's about forgiving, others or themselves.

I am tempted to say that all growth is about the letting go of fears.
The fear of not being good enough or not loveable.
The fear of not being safe.
The fear of suffering and dying.

When we hold on to our outdated fears, we let our past (and sometimes our parents and ancestors' pasts) dictate our future. When we choose to let go of our fears, we become free to grow - a bit like a small tree sapling might first be tied to a stake so it grows straight (our fears served a purpose at some stage in our life), but eventually that stake needs to be removed to allow the tree to grow all the way.

How would you like to grow? In which direction?
What fears, what belief systems may be holding you back?

Yes, growing will probably be painful.

But I promise you this: it will allow you to live more truly, more fully and most importantly, it will make it possible for you to live as yourself.

A definition of depression for the "Lucky Ones"

The "Lucky Ones"? They are the people who have never personally experienced depression, and hence struggle to imagine it, even if they're otherwise empathetic.

Here is what I tell them.

Imagine grief.
Losing someone really close to you.
This overwhelming feeling of not being whole anymore.

Now imagine going to work the next day.
You can barely concentrate. It takes all your efforts not to burst into tears.

You try to eat lunch.
None of what is on your plate has any flavour, nothing even wants to slide down your throat.

It's the evening, and you're supposed to meet friends.
You force yourself to go. You're surrounded by people who like you and whom you like.
But all you experience is this overwhelming feeling of grief and loss.

Nothing you normally enjoy has any taste.
It's like all the pleasure has been drained from your life.

Now imagine well-meaning people telling you:
"I've heard exercise is great".
"Don't worry, you'll feel better soon".
"You just need to pull yourself together".
And my personal favourite: "just snap out of it, you've got such a nice husband/ children/ house/ job, other people are so much worse off".

The bitch about depression is that there is not necessarily a visible trigger (but yes, there often is a hidden one), someone who died, or some personal tragedy.
So there is no official "mourning period".
No people who take turns in cooking for you.

Just the overwhelming feeling of a completely joyless life, often combined with the shame of not being able to "will yourself out of it".

So, if you're one of the "Lucky Ones", imagine bottomless grief, sometimes causeless grief - and you're close to what depression feels like.

Now please, think again, whether those who suffer from it will benefit from your (well-meant) advice...

Let's talk about suicide - because it is literally killing us.

Is suicide the new "S" word?
A word only to be spoken quietly, or even hushed?

I do get that distinct feeling...
Why? Because nine people die from suicide every day in Australia.
Do you recall the last headline mentioning any of them?

If you don't, there is a good reason for it, because there is a media black-out on suicide.
Yes, because you see, if we don't talk about it, it won't happen, right?
Because apparently people get encouraged into suicide by reading about it.

To me it looks more like people are still committing suicide in large numbers (it's more than twice the number of deaths from traffic for comparison), despite it never being mentioned.

So I'm saying, let's talk about it. Let's bring it out in the open.

There is one message I would like to get across.
As long as there is life, there is hope. 
The only thing that cannot change is being dead.

As long as you are alive, there is hope that your life will get better.
Or, in the case of depression, that your outlook on your life will get better.

Things change, they are always in flux. What was despairing for my 17-year old self is by now little more than a footnote to my 44-year old self. What nearly broke me as a 25-year old, is only a (bitter-)sweet memory now.

My pastor at boarding school, when quizzed on suicide had this nice answer: "whenever I get so desperate that I think about suicide, I make a deal with myself to first sell all my possessions, and cycle around the world for a year. I can always kill myself later".

I like that, because it is a reminder that what we feel is so difficult in our life, our circumstances, can be drastically changed by so many other actions than suicide.

One of those actions is to reach out to others. To pick up the phone (to a friend, or to Lifeline), or even to turn up on someone's doorstep (someone we know, or even the local church), with our despair in tow. Because what do we have to lose when we are already considering suicide? Nothing.

If you consider suicide, please put it off.
You can always do it later, and maybe by then you won't need it anymore.

Things do change. You can change them.
Help is available.

Please reach out.

charlotte.stapf@yahoo.com
www.blackdoginstitute.org.au
www.beyondblue.org.au

Hypnotherapy - weird or wonderful?

Have you ever wondered what hypnotherapy is about? Hypnosis?
Whether it's a cheap stage-trick, or something deeper than that?
The answer is kind of both: weird AND wonderful.

Hypnosis is a state of deep relaxation, when your subconscious is opening up to suggestions.
Where hypnosis differs markedly from hypnotherapy, is that hypnosis can be used for any purpose - even entertain people by "making" others act like chickens, whereas hypnotherapy is only the therapeutic use of hypnosis.

I always thought it quite fascinating, so I did an elective course in hypnotherapy during my psychotherapy degree. It was quite eye-opening, and I've used hypnotherapy in my work ever since - but only as one of the many tools in my toolbox.

Let me answer some of the questions I always get asked.

Can you be "made to do" anything you don't want to?
Definitely not. That's one of the reasons I never use hypnotherapy in a first sessions, even if my client asks for it. I need to find out whether my client actually wants the change s/he is trying to achieve, or whether they're just trying to please someone else (as would be the case if they came to stop smoking for example, not out of their own volition, but rather because of the pressure their family put on them to quit).

Will you fall asleep?
No. You will be aware of everything that is being said and done, though on occasion your mind will wander.

Is it pleasant?
For the great majority of people, it is as refreshing as a nap, and as relaxing as time spent in a spa. The more you do it, the easier and faster it is to relax (I usually teach my clients trigger words, so they can do it by themselves). For some rare clients, the ride is a little bit more intense, and hypnotherapy - like any therapy - can bring up long repressed emotions.

Think of it as guided meditation - first a few relaxation exercises, followed by a walk through a park, with some trigger words added into the mix to help you achieve what you really want, by talking straight to the subconscious mind.

I have used hypnotherapy successfully in my practice for issues as diverse as smoking, binge-drinking, over-eating, social phobia, anger, but always integrated it into a holistic psychotherapeutic approach.

Curious? Just ask me any questions you might have or read more about the father of hypnotherapy, Milton H. Erickson.

What is the point of winning if you don't choose the game?

Most of us have been taught that winning is everything.
For the older generation, only those winning got a prize. For the younger generation, winning is made important by stating that "everyone is a winner".

Of course, coming first has a certain number of advantages. Adulation of the crowd, prizes, and that glowing feeling of being better than the rest.

So what exactly am I asking?
I am questioning whether we ought to pour our energy, time and passion into winning when we are in a race that doesn't "do it for us".

And I am asking, because way too often, we're told to compete in areas that are actually quite indifferent to us.

For example, take "keeping up with the Joneses".
How often do you take into account what your neighbours/colleagues/friends might think when you choose the car you want, the suit you wear or the handbag you carry?

This is a race, a game, which is about outshining others.
Do you choose to play it, or are you just going along with it, in the process spending money to "win"?

Or take your professional career.
Do you want to be the boss? Really want all of the responsibilities? Or just the prize it comes with?
Do you want to be a lawyer or a doctor just because your high school results are so outstanding that those courses were open to you?

The games we play, the races we run, the choices we make are so often about satisfying other people's expectations of us.
Winning those will only ever give us a fleeting moment of satisfaction.

Because we are not true to our real selves, it doesn't make us happy, because whilst we work so hard on winning those, we neglect what we really want.

For some of us, the connection and time spent with our friends, children or family.
For others, to do meaningful as opposed to (outwardly) successful work.

What are you giving up when you run a race you don't actually want to be in?
What price do you pay?

How can you start choosing your own game?

Those are some of the interesting questions that I regularly look at with my clients in my work as a therapist...

Change is the hardest thing in the world - but is it?

Have you noticed to what extreme lengths we humans go to avoid change?
The sort of situations we put up with just so we don't have to change?
We will even convince ourselves that change isn't really necessary in order to avoid it.

Some examples?
We consume way more resources than the earth can possibly grow back - but hey, let's just continue, because not to receive free plastic bags at the checkout is such a hassle.
We're stuck in loveless or downright abusive relationships, but it's easier to blame the other than to leave.
We hate our employer, but better the devil you know, right?
We don't like our life, but with enough alcohol (or drugs, gambling, porn, fill in the blanks) it becomes bearable - and it is so much easier to drink than to change it...

So often we become stuck in a rut, and instead of investing our time, money and energy into changing our life into a better one, we use the same time, money and energy to make the unbearable bearable.

Remember the relief you feel after you've done something you really dreaded?
Remember thinking that wasn't as hard as I thought it would be?

What you invest into change will bear fruit, whereas investing into making/keeping a situation bearable is investing into a stalemate.

What are you really fed up about in your life?
Which areas of your life do you want to change?
What price do you pay by putting off change?
What can you do, today, this week, this month, to change it?

And most importantly, if you're not doing anything about it: what is keeping you stuck?

The book I wanted to write - done so much better by Alain de Botton

"The course of love" by Alain de Botton is the best book on relationships I've read.
There, I've said it.

I would have loved to have written it - it is spot-on, extremely well written, and most importantly eminently readable.

It is the story of two people, who meet fairly early on in the book, get married and have children and navigate the vicissitudes of relationships over something like 20 years.

So far, so banal.

What makes this book so brilliant, is that every few pages Alain de Botton describes in italics what goes on for each protagonist on a psychological level.

How they act or rather react out of their own emotional baggage. And, more importantly, what they are trying to get (love, reassurance, attention) and how their ways of going about it (nagging, fighting, isolating) are not successful. How the way they were parented creates automatic responses that don't serve them well.

Although there is only that one couple in the book, what he describes is so universal that I challenge you not to feel like he's describing some of what you have experienced or felt before...

This book depressed me and reassured me in equal measure: depressed me because if it's this universal, what chance do we have to do it differently; and reassured me because hey, I'm not alone in needing help!

I recommended this book to all my friends and some of my clients - because it not only explains why we do what we do, but offers ways of doing things differently; it raises our awareness on how we relate, and shows us alternatives.

This book shows us how we can love better, by becoming aware of our own unprocessed shit and how it impacts on our relationships.

So, if this feels like something you'd like to do, feel free to start psychotherapy or just read Alain de Botton's "The course of love" and do the work on your own ;)

We are all emotionally colour-blind

Do you know what colour-blindness is like?
You see things, just not like everyone else does. Things have a different "tinge".

It looks like we all are colour-blind, for the way we emotionally perceive the world and the people around us. Our emotional set-up, that was developed in our childhood and still is evolving now, colours the way we perceive others, and our relationships with them.

In some ways it goes hand in hand with the peanut theory: we "colour in" the blanks of what we don't know. We project. It is a way to deal with the unknown.

The problem is that our colour-blindness is different to everyone else's. We each experience the world in a slightly different, unique way.

So what we see as an inalienable and certain reality is in fact just our perspective, our take on "the Truth". And what we try to do, is to communicate as if everyone around us could see the same thing, could see in the same way as we do.

But they can't. We can't. They can't see things in our particular shade of colour-blindness, just as we can't see things in theirs.

So what can we do?

Maybe realise that we are all emotionally colour-blind. That the shade of the world as we see it is not reality, but our own individual perception of it.

Maybe accept that other people's perception is not less "right" than our own. That it is all about subjective perception, theirs and ours, each a unique shade of colour-blindness.

It's bloody hard of course. To accept that what we each perceive as an objective reality is after all only our own projection, prejudice and perspective.

But if we hang on to that fiction, that we are right, that there even is a "right", then that means the others have to be "wrong" if they don't see the world in the same colour - and then what chance do we have of ever connecting?

Australia has a "domestic" violence problem - and it's spilling over

What happened yesterday in Melbourne, and a couple of years ago in Sydney with the Lindt Cafe siege, is great violence, inflicted on innocents, by men guilty of domestic abuse.

I am sick of reading in the media each week about another woman who has been killed by her partner. I am even more sick to think of the even greater number of people living in fear and violence in their own homes, abused and beaten by their partners on a daily basis.

Or the brave ones who leave, only to be stalked, tracked down, and in too may cases, killed by their ex-partner, who cannot bear the thought of them finding happiness elsewhere.

And what is done about it?
Nothing, or so little that it makes barely a dent into the statistics.

We don't have a "terror attacks on home soil" problem. Not because extremists don't try. But because the government throws a lot of money at that particular issue. People are monitored, followed, and most of the time successfully apprehended before they can commit mass-murder.

Now compare that with domestic violence victims. First of all, if the wounds aren't visible, tough luck. In one fell swoop, unless you are lucky and there is someone knowledgable at your police station, financial abuse, psychological terror, complete control over who you are and aren't allowed to see are discounted.

And even for those with great physical wounds - gashes, bruises, strangle-marks - too many offenders get away without being sentenced to prison. Some government statistics can be found here.

So what am I saying? I am saying that domestic violence is not about domestic, it's about violence. Men and women who resort to violence on a regular basis as a means of getting what they want will not stop unless they are stopped.

There are some great programs for offenders, to teach them words to use instead of violence, to say "I don't like this" or "this hurts me". Because violent behaviour comes from somewhere, and there are things that can be done to help offenders too. But the reality is that they usually don't seek help or get offered help until it's too late.

I would like to see some of the anti-terror money funnelled into combatting domestic violence. Into offering more refuges for victims, rather than cutting the funding for them, as the Abbott government did. I would like offenders to be sentenced to get help if they're not sentenced to prison.

I would like to see violent offenders to be monitored in the same way as terrorist suspects. Because contrary to the latter who are only suspects, the former already have shown that they are capable of violence.

I would like us to stop talking about "domestic" violence.
I would like us to talk about "violence"- and how to stop it.

The motherhood myth

The motherhood myth is very simple: it states that having children is a woman's greatest achievement and most fulfilling experience.

I hear you say, "OK, what is wrong with that? If not completely true, isn't it at least a lovely statement of intention?".

My issue with it is this: we show an image of motherhood that is completely impossible to attain, preferably while adding "and of course women can/should also have a career at the same time" and then we sit on the sideline and watch them fail, whilst commenting "she must not have tried hard enough" or, my personal favourite, "she's not a natural mother".

So, let me debunk some aspects of the motherhood myth.

Pregnancy: for most of us, it doesn't mean a lovely glow and a tiny bump; it means looking fat, green from nausea, with some form of back pain, and a bladder that requires hourly emptying, even at night.

Birth: unless you sign up for the complete package with epidural, it is the most savage experience of your life. And I use the word savage on purpose. Like an animal. And the myth stating "you'll forget everything about it as soon as the baby is out"? Rubbish. If you had a traumatic birth, you're more likely to not have another child. Three years down the track you still remember every single bit of it. And if you don't, your torn perineum and leaking bladder will remind you.

Babies: they are so wonderful. If you feed them on demand, co-sleep, have a routine for their feeds, breastfeed (even if it literally kills you), use controlled crying, never leave them alone, make sure from the beginning they sleep on their own, they'll be the wonderful beings they show you in ads. Hang on, did I just tell you to do everything and its opposite?
Yes, I did. Welcome to the world of mothering advice. You are sure to fail.

I could go on and on.
The most insidious bit being that you are told it is possible, or even "normal" to raise a perfect child and to be perfectly happy whilst doing it. Preferably whilst also holding down a job. Where you get dirty looks because you need to leave at 5pm sharp to make the crèche/preschool/after school pick up deadline.

So what is left?
Yes, motherhood can be a rewarding experience.
And some mothers thrive on it like nothing else they've ever experienced before. But please, let's stop making mothers feel guilty, on top of everything else, for not falling in that small category.

Let's stop telling them they are "unnatural" for finding it boring to play blocks with a toddler, when they have a PhD in architecture; let's stop pointing at them when they lose their cool; in short, let's stop judging mothers against a set of criteria that are near-impossible to match.

How about we find compassion for them?
How about we ask them, respectfully, how they experience motherhood. How about we create a space where it's OK for them to say "yes, it's really tough, it's messy, no, I don't necessarily want to give them back, but some days, I fantasise about what my life would have been like had I remained childless"?

How about we make motherhood and fatherhood an individual experience again, not to be judged against some myth, but rather understood in the context of our world today, as never before in history the demands put on parents have been so high.

We cannot have perfect children.
We cannot be perfect parents.


P.S. For a scholarly yet readable book on the history of maternal instinct through the ages, read the excellent "The myth of motherhood" by Elisabeth Badinter (translated from the French "L'amour en plus").

Negative thoughts overwhelming you? Here's how to STOP them.

You know the moment.
When you go from thinking about something that went wrong to blaming yourself.
When you start off with "this sucks" and come to the conclusion "I suck" without realising it.

When you turn something over in your head, again and again, something that happened or was said, imagining what else you "should have said" or "should have done".

When you can't seem to escape the memory of trauma, the memory of hurt, replaying it and each time feeling the pain again.

It is easy to get caught up in this downwards spiral.

But there is a way out.
A simple way to STOP the thought train that rattles on at a 100 miles an hour, requiring only two simple steps:

1. Imagine a STOP sign. Yes, the one you see on streets.
But you need to imagine it vividly.
To picture it visually.
See it: red, hexagonal, the writing in white, bold capital letters.
When you can see it with your "mental eye", move to step two.

2. Say the word "STOP".
Say it aloud if you can, or just say it in your mind if you're not alone and don't want the people around you to look at you weirdly.

That's it.
Your thought train has stopped, you can now choose to move to think about whatever else you'd like - I usually use the opportunity to think about something positive (kittens always seem to work for me 😊)

Now, the first few times, this exercise feels quite artificial. But it works. The more you use it, the easier and quicker it becomes to stop negative thoughts in their tracks, before they even establish themselves.

For those interested in theory: this method comes from cognitive-behavioural therapy - not my usual set of tools, but hey, whatever works! The way it does the job is that it literally takes your neuronal activity from one area of your brain to another - you get a different set of neurones firing. I have used this method with my clients, even those suffering from severe post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), with great results and positive feedback.

Try it - and please let me know how it works for you!