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!

"Honey, we need to talk about death and dying"

"Honey, we need to talk about death and dying" has never said anyone. Well, at least no-one under 70.

We actually avoid the subject entirely, not just as individuals, but also as society.
Have you noticed the euphemisms we use? "He passed". "She left us".

Now I hear you asking - what's wrong with that? Who wants to think about something as morbid as death and dying?

There are a couple of compelling reasons to stop pretending we're immortal.

The first reason is the most obvious. We all will die. Hopefully, not today, or this year, or even this decade. But ultimately, we are sure that we will all die.

By pretending that our lives last forever, that there will always be time tomorrow, we put off things until it's too late.

The day to love others is today.
The day to embrace them is today.
The day to tell them how much they matter to us is today.

And also the day to change the world is today.

Then there is another, more practical reason to talk about death and accept it as part of life: it is that even whilst we deny it, a part of our subconscious mind still knows of course that we will die one day. And that part, deep inside our psyche, will agitate in the background, trying to raise our awareness, so we don't live obliviously.

That part will seep into our consciousness as a feeling of unease, or anxiety, sometimes even feeling like guilt, or panic attacks. Everything will be sort of OK, yet those symptoms will make it hard for us to enjoy our life.

This is what Existential Therapy is about. At the time, it seemed like the most depressing modality I learned about - "we're all alone and then we die". But actually, in a weird way, it is the most hopeful.

Because it teaches us that it is up to us how we live, that there are no outside boundaries, no judge other than ourself. It is taking personal responsibility to its logical conclusion.

It's about living because we are going to die. It means loving because we are alone.

Attachment theory and how it impacts on our relationships

Attachment theory is a whole field of research on how the way you were loved as an infant and little child impacts on the relationships you form later in life (and on a lot of other things).

I'd like to summarise it this way (it's a bit more complex than this, but this is the bit that counts):

If you were securely attached in your primary relationship (typically baby to mother), i.e. if you could depend on your (emotional and other) needs being met in a consistent manner, you are likely to grow up feeling safe, trusting that your relationships will last, that your partners will stick around, that you are loved.

If your attachment was not a secure one, if your parent was "running hot and cold" (sometimes all over you, sometimes neglecting you), if you were not loved in a consistent manner, or if you were "abandoned" (that can run from completely losing your parents' attention after a new baby is born, to gross neglect), you are more likely to grow up feeling insecure in your relationships, not trusting that they are safe.

The problem is that few of us will have experienced a perfectly secure attachment. So most of us will display one of the following "symptoms": clinging to our partner as if our life depended on them on one end of the spectrum, to sabotaging our relationships so we won't be abandoned by doing the abandoning ourselves, all the way to never actually becoming invested in relationships (building a wall) in order to stay "safe" at the other end of the spectrum.

Those dynamics are illustrated and explained perfectly by Alain de Botton in "The Course of Love" - a novel with subtext I can thoroughly recommend.

So what can we do, flawed beings that most of us are?

Well, awareness is a great thing.  Once we become aware of our patterns, once we realise that we are reacting to something from our past triggered by our present, we can choose to act differently.

At the beginning it's very hard. It's about starting to see how our reaction is not justified by what is happening here and now, but rather an echo of our childhood. It's about becoming aware that just because we have experienced abandonment in the past does not mean that our relationships today, which involve different people, will follow the same path.

It is about making ourself vulnerable, by saying our hurt, owning it, rather than blindly kicking around us in pain and blaming our partner.

It is about accepting that even though we were imperfectly looked after at some stage, it does not mean we were not loveable enough; but rather accepting that our parents were humans too, prone to tiredness, stress, and anger.

In a weird/funny/poignant way, this is what therapy is also about. It is about creating a secure attachment with the therapist, being able to trust that he or she will be there, regularly, consistently, listening, metaphorically holding you whilst you sit with the pain of finding out where all those feelings stem from, and helping you accept the past in order to write your own future.

For me as a therapist it is the most sacred aspect of my work. It is not about being a trusted advisor, a sounding board, "the expert" (beware of any therapist telling you they're the expert of your life); it is about offering a true relationship, that you can completely count on, for as long as you need it.

How to go from binge-drinking to "controlled drinking"

The festive season is upon us, and just as the ordinary Friday or Saturday nights see many of us drinking more than we know is healthy, Christmas and its lot of office parties and uncomfortable family gatherings tends to bring out the binge-drinker even in the tamest of us.

What is binge-drinking? It is drinking alcohol in order to get drunk, with a hang-over the next day in the best case scenario, a few hours missing due to black-out or waking up next to a stranger in the worst...

Binge-drinking is not to be confused with alcoholism. There is usually no compulsion to drink every day, but rather an inability to stop where the sober version of you knows is your limit.

So how can you move, from systematically getting trashed back to enjoying yourself?
Here are a few tips:

• Set yourself a limit when you go to a party or a function, and count your drinks
• Start with water or a soft drink if you're thirsty - only move to alcohol when your thirst is quenched
• Make every second drink a glass of water. Not only does that halve your alcohol intake, but you avoid the nasty dehydration headache the next day
• Switch to low-alcohol beer or wine and avoid spirits 

To allow your liver to regenerate (yes, it is the only organ that can heal itself, but only if you give it a break), have an alcohol-free day, ideally two in a row, each week.

Aim for 2-3 low-alcohol days per week - what that means depends on your drinking capacity. For me it might mean one standard drink, for others three. This is a particularly good exercise to reconnect to pleasurable drinking as opposed to drinking to get drunk.

The good news is that by lowering your overall intake your tolerance to alcohol will actually decrease over time - you'll need less for the same effect, and your body will thank you (and your wallet too).

And the piece de resistance, as always, is mindfulness: 

• bring back the focus on the pleasure of drinking, the smell, the taste, the colour, as well as the company you're in, rather than absent-mindedly "throwing them back": "festive drinking" as opposed to bingeing.

It's about finding ways to enjoy the "silly season" without needing to get drunk to do so.

Should you find that despite trying to control your intake you still struggle with binge-drinking on a regular basis, there may be some deeper stuff going on - maybe some anxiety you're trying to cover up, or a learnt behaviour on how alcohol is used in your family to deal (or avoid dealing) with emotions, or a fear of social situations.

Please reach out if you would like some help with that.

The liberating effect of "not giving a fuck"

Have you ever wondered what it would be like not to care quite that much about other people's opinions of you? If, when making decisions, you didn't feel like you had to take into account what aunty Frida might think, or your boss, or your neighbour from across the street?

Today I would like to talk about how effective "not giving a fuck" is for improving your quality of life. Of course it works best if you suffer from "people-pleasing syndrome" in the first place.

Just imagine:

• Basing the decision of which house to buy only on what you need and want, and not on keeping up with the Joneses, meeting your mother-in-law's expectations or  impressing your new girlfriend.
• Buying your car based on practical rather than status considerations.
• Choosing your work on what gives you satisfaction, what makes you happy, rather than on an income which is then spent solely to console you of your work day-to-day.
• Getting dressed the way you like, without pandering to the diktats of a fashion industry only interested in keeping their jobs.
• And possibly the most important one: imagine choosing your life partner, not on whether your parents will approve, or whether your friends will be impressed, but on their intrinsic human qualities.

Imagine now making the little decisions in life about what you want, rather than whether anyone else approves... Welcome to "not giving a fuck"!

Life suddenly becomes comparatively simple: no more labyrinth of social norms with matching pitfalls to navigate, no more letting someone's raised eyebrow change the way you feel about yourself.

But of course, the path to not giving a fuck is not an easy one - all your life, starting in your childhood, you have been taught to conform, meet your parents' expectations, "do as you are told".

It takes balls to go against our consumerist society.

It takes balls to say no when everyone expects you to say yes.

Don't get me wrong, what I am advocating is not some sort of egoistic nirvana of self-indulgence, but rather to stick to your guns even when your opinion or appearance goes against what's "normal".

I am suggesting that once you have worked out what you really believe in, what you really want, you go for it, and don't give a fuck about other people's judgement. 

I bet you will find it liberating.

The importance of being who you truly are

I used to have a career in executive search ("headhunting"), and I was often asked for interview tips by candidates and friends: "what do I need to say or do to make sure I land the job?".

My answer usually surprised them: don't try and fit the job by pretending to be someone you're not, because if you do land the job, it will be bloody hard work to not just do the job but also keep up the illusion...

Yes, we all need a job, more or less desperately, but for most of us, what we really want is work which suits our abilities and personality. So why pretend to be someone we're not?

In an ideal world, you show off your differences, and you are liked for them and get the job. Or if they don't like your differences you don't get the job and are better off for it.

The same goes for couples: if you pretend you love football, when really you couldn't care less, you either disappoint your partner when you reveal the truth, or you'll spend many boring hours watching football games...

If you only show your meek and mild side in order to seduce your partner, what will happen when you show the tiger in you?

If you need to pretend to be someone you are not in order to please your partner, ask yourself: are you really the right person for them? Are they the right person for you?

Be yourself, you're good at it!

And if being yourself doesn't get you what you want or what you need, therapy could help you find ways to change into a better - not different! - version of yourself... or just to learn how not to give a f*ck!

How Love is all about making the tough choices

We are sold this lie that love is all "beers and Skittles", cloud 9 or heaven, when in reality love is about making the tough choices.

When your baby is first born, you think choice is about the cutest outfit or gazing adoringly into their eyes. Yet the reality is that you must choose between breast or bottle feeding them, letting them cry or picking them up all the time, giving them a dummy so they settle or not so they don’t cry when they lose it… the list is endless.

When your child gets into toddler years it’s not about letting them decide between broccoli and chocolate or between wearing a tutu or a jacket when it’s cold - you will have to make that choice for them.

When they first start school it’s not about letting them choose whether to buy ice-cream or lunch from the canteen – you have to decide that for them.

And when they are teenagers, you have to choose for them whether to drink alcohol underage is a bad idea – because they will think it’s a good idea.

And once they are adults, you will be faced with the toughest choice of all: whether to let them take their responsibilities (and face the consequences of their actions) or to continue mothering or fathering them to the point where they never grow up…

So it is really about making children functional elements of society, protecting them - even from themselves, and yet allowing them to flourish without clipping (too much of) their wings.

It is the same in adult relationships.

We can choose the easy way, enabling* the ones we love to stay in their addictions, their dysfunctions, by giving them what they want even though we can see it harms them, or we can face the tough choice, of ceasing to be a part of it.

And this goes into the wider society - what do we permit? Is the role of the politicians to give us what we want (endless access to boozing, gambling, sex) or what we need (roads, hospitals, safety)?

Love, real love, is about helping those we love to get what they need, even at the expense of what they want. It’s about supporting them in their struggle, not just in the good times.

To truly love is to accept to sometimes be unpopular rather than people-pleasing. 

And that, in my eyes, is the toughest choice of all.

*Enabling: making someone’s life easier thus allowing them to continue with an unhealthy behaviour, for example offering an addict a roof over their head and food on the table, thus de facto allowing them to spend all their money on drugs or alcohol. See also co-dependency.

The green-eyed monster: is jealousy just another OCD?

I would like to talk about the "green-eyed monster" today: jealousy.
It is not an easy subject - it is not an easy emotion.

Jealousy is subtly distinct from envy.
Envy is "I'd like to have what you have".
Jealousy is "I don't want you to have what you have, it should be mine".

When does envy become jealousy? Usually when we think we are being deprived of something that should rightfully be ours.

In my work, I see people who struggle to overcome jealousy, even as they see how it is damaging their relationships. How is it damaging? Mostly because it comes with a side-serve of wanting to control someone else's life to an extreme degree.

In some ways the control that comes with jealousy makes it just another obsessive-compulsive disorder: in order to control our anxieties, we choose behaviours which give us the impression/illusion of keeping us safe. You can break down an OCD into several steps:

First comes the anxiety:
I'm scared of deadly diseases.
I don't want my father to die.
I'm scared my wife will leave me.

Then comes the mistaken belief (a form of superstition if you want):
If only I wash and disinfect my hands every single time I touch something, I won't catch anything.
If only I manage to walk to work without stepping on any cracks in the pavement, he will beat the cancer.
If only I can monitor everything my wife does, and prevent her from meeting any men whatsoever, she won't leave me.

This belief is reinforced every time that nothing bad happens, as we ascribe that "victory", that "phew, I'm still safe", to our obsessive behaviour.

But as always there is also a price to pay:
My hands are all raw and my skin is peeling off from being washed 250 times a day.
It takes me twice as long to get to work, I've been late a few times now, and people look at me in strange ways.
My wife really struggles with being controlled every minute of the day, and starts resenting me.

How can you stop the OCD? The answer is surprisingly easy, but includes a leap of faith (over the mistaken belief): cold turkey.

When you start not washing your hands all the time, and notice after a few days that you still haven't caught the bubonic plague.
When your father continues improving, even though you did step on cracks on your way to work.
When your wife hasn't left you, even though you have stopped checking her phone for messages from "other men".

If anything, in the case of jealousy, it is about becoming aware of the anxiety, and expressing it to your partner, making yourself vulnerable in the process rather than trying to build a wall around them.

The odds are, they will feel closer to you and have less reasons to leave you than when you were trying to control their every move.

Letting go might just be the only answer to anxiety that actually works...

Why do we keep pushing buttons even when we know they hurt the other?

We are all very good at pushing buttons during arguments, often even if - or precisely because - we know that we are not helping the debate, but rather hurting the other person.

It seems like such a non-constructive way of interacting, yet time and time again we fall into the trap of reacting through lashing out.

Have you ever wondered why this is so well entrenched in our habits? Why the cool, thoughtful, loving partner that we think we are suddenly snarls and bites?

I came across the answer by pure luck (well, not quite, it was at a professional development event after all) and it burned itself into my mind:

"I will make you feel what I feel so that you'll do something about it."

Concretely, what does it mean? Let me give you some examples:

* You feel really angry, because of something that has happened at work, (and because it brought up some feelings of powerlessness that relate to your childhood, but that bit will not show in your awareness, just be there in your subconsciousness) and you come home and the first thing your partner doesn't do "right" sets you off completely, until he bristles with anger too, for being attacked for no good reason.

* You feel anxious, things are not going very well, so you'll press buttons with your partner (maybe raising subjects that are touchy for him/her) until they are feeling anxious too.

*You feel hurt, by life and your partner, so you'll "bite" until they feel hurt too.

The underlying hope in all those examples is that if your partner feels the same way as you do right now, maybe he/she will do something to "fix" it!

It is - like most of the unhelpful things we do - a very human reaction. But unfortunately, instead of bringing you closer when you need/want support, that type of behaviour actually drives a wedge between you.

So what can you do to change it?

As always, change starts with awareness. Next time you are pushing buttons, notice it. Try and figure out what you are doing, whether it makes sense to attack the other, or whether you are just reacting to the (overwhelming) feelings inside you.

The next step is the easiest, and the hardest.

Speak up about how you are feeling inside. Instead of biting their head off, show them where you hurt. By making yourself vulnerable, by accepting your emotions, and not blaming your partner for them, it is much more likely that they will try and take care of you than if you make them feel like crap as well.

It takes time to change from reaction to awareness. It takes efforts to practise other ways of being.

My work as a therapist is to help clients figure out how they would rather be in their life, and how they can act differently to make that change happen.

How Australia is leading the world in gambling addiction - my luncheon with Gamblers Anonymous

In my highly exciting life that mainly revolves around people and cats, I sometimes get to do something a bit different - last week, that was lunch with the people from Gamblers Anonymous, or GA for short.

This lunch was put on for professionals, to give them an overview of what GA is all about. I am sharing this here because some of the facts about gambling in Australia simply horrified me.

Australia has 0.2% of the world population but 20% (twenty percent!!!!!) of the world's poker machines. They multiplied when the state governments discovered they were a great way to fill their coffers, as Rev. Tim Costello so eloquently put to us at the lunch; so we now have a state-sanctioned and state-taxed addiction.

The amount of money that people in Australia lose to gambling is simply staggering (on some poker machines you can "feed in" - read lose - $56,000 in less than 6 hours). For those of you who cannot see the lure of "the pokies", imagine machines devised with music pictures and all the modern interactive bells and whistles to get you addicted (and yes, psychologists have worked for the manufacturers of poker-machines, to help make them even more addictive). Of course gambling can take many shapes, betting on sports (this is how young blokes first get hooked), the horses, casinos, cards, online gaming - you name it, and someone else than the punter is raking in the money and the state governments take a percentage of it.

How does it start? Well, we had a lovely young lady, who of course shall remain anonymous, share her story with us: some incredible abuse and hardship in her childhood, leaving her isolated and in constant, intense emotional pain. When she sat in front of a poker machine for the first time, with the music and the pull of maybe winning enough to change her life, the loud voices constantly battling it out in her brain became quiet for once.

I won't take you to the whole cycle of addiction, suffice to say this academic overachiever ended up facing fraud charges in court, as she started stealing from her employer to finance her addiction. The weirdest part was that she didn't realise that is was an addiction, until the cop who interrogated asked her, surprisingly gently, whether she might have a gambling problem.

He pointed her towards GA, there was a meeting going on around the corner that same day, and this is where her story really starts, because what she found at that first meeting of GA, was a whole community, welcoming her like no-one had ever done before. She found support, practical help, but most of all, she found friends. When before she relied on gambling to deaden her unbearable emotions, suddenly she experienced human kindness.

I have previously written about how research seems to be showing that human connection might be the antidote to addiction. Her story was exactly about that.

We heard some more stories that day, all showing another facet of the addiction, and more facets of what GA stands for. The fact that GA isn't accepting donations or subsidies (from anyone) tells you a lot about their integrity - they will do what is best for their members, being beholden to no-one else.

Whenever I read about the latest (bad) news, I sometimes feel hopeless.
That lunch with the people from GA has given me back my faith in humanity - we may be capable of the worst, but we also are capable of the best.

Tolerance versus judgement

This blog is my personal soap box, so today I will share my thoughts about tolerance versus judgement, using a topical subject: the "burkini" ban debate.

For those of you living under a rock and only reading my blog, the burkini is a swimsuit covering the whole body and the hair, mainly worn by Muslim women trying to stay within their religious clothing norms yet wanting to enjoy a swim, and a very va-va-voom cooking show star who shall remain nameless, who may have wanted to swim without showing off the consequences of all the yummy food she cooks and eats.

I must admit that inside me, the arguments of both sides were fighting it out: should someone's fear force other people  to undress to fit in with the environment? where do we draw the line? and by extension what do I think about the whole burka debate?

First disclaimer: my mother is muslim, though not practicing (I'm protestant for those who want to know). She only wears the minimum enforceable head-covering (i.e. a scarf, preferably Hermès lol) when travelling in muslim countries, and dresses like you and me when in Europe. She tells me that the one advantage of being dressed according to the local customs when travelling is that it gives her an enhanced feeling of security. She has never been indecently approached even when on her own on public transport. For me, having lived in Paris where being chatted up is the best case scenario, and felt up the worst, that sounds not like too bad a deal, except it's bloody hot and sunny in Iran in summer.

My thoughts on the burka are that if a woman freely chooses to wear it, she should be allowed to. Freely though means no pressure whatsoever has been applied on her to wear it, not by her family, not by the society she lives in. If that freedom is not present, I think the burka is just another instrument of oppression of women.

Now, to the burkini. We don't expect nuns to wear bikinis or one-pieces to the beach, and yet we don't seem bothered by them not "looking like everyone else". So clearly, this debate is not just about fitting in. What this debate is really about, is the visible presence of muslims.

I understand that in the light of the terrorist attacks in France in particular, the temptation for knee-jerk reactions is quite high. I also understand that French people are scared of potential suicide terrorists, so that any clothing that could hide a bomb is suspect. Yet the burkini can hardly hide anything - try smuggling a bomb under a wetsuit and you'll quickly understand the difficulty.

So what we are really left with, is the question of how to react to people who are different from us.
And even that question is two-pronged: because what we feel, and what offers the best outcome, are not always overlapping.

In the burkini ban debate, clearly what most people feel like is "if only they looked like us, they would become like us" and I think that is a fallacy.
Forcing people to look like something they aren't cannot possibly the best possible outcome.
Separating them into "you're different because your beliefs are different, so you must be a threat" cannot possibly be the best outcome.

Let us not forget that some 4.7 million muslims live in France, of which I would guess 4.699 million are not a threat to anyone, are getting on with their neighbours, and generally contributing to French society like any other minority there. Oh I know, someone will dispute that number, and explain to me that only 4.4 million (or whatever) of them are actually good citizens. It still leaves an overwhelming majority of decent people, who have done nothing to merit judgment or intolerance.

What the burkini ban will do, what this picture did, is divide people into "us and them". It will make it easier for extremists to recruit because it shows our occidental society to be intolerant.

If my neighbour is different, does that mean he is "not as good" as me? My answer is: value has nothing to do with sameness. Some time ago I wrote a blogpost on how our judgement reveals more about us doing the judging than about the person we judge, and I stand by it: if I judge my neighbour according to my own personal standards, it just shows the narrowness of my mind, and has nothing to do with his value.

The way out of the very difficult, complicated situation that the world is in, cannot possibly be an arms-race, where we just try to "outgun" those who threaten our way of life.

If all of us, normal, decent people were to reach out, to the other, to the different, if we engaged the conversation, were generous, like the muslims I personally know are, wouldn't we stand a better chance to win each other's hearts?

Psychotherapy and language

Psychotherapy being "the talking cure", it seems appropriate for me to ponder about language.

A bit more than half of my clients come to me because I speak their mother tongue (German or French). Why is that language communality so important to them, that for some, they prefer therapy over Skype with me, over trying to find a different therapist "in the flesh"?

For one, it is about feeling at ease in whatever language they do therapy in.
But more importantly, it seems to be about what language structured their brain in their childhood.

You learn to express who you are, and your feelings, at a very early age, in a certain language.

Part of the work we do in session is to look back to find the moments where things may have "gone wrong" and where certain behavioural adaptations have occurred to deal with those problems, to then examine if they are still adapted to the present (they mostly aren't).

To feel at ease with your therapist takes a bit of effort - having to overcome a language barrier can make it that little bit harder.

Yet I have had clients whose mother tongue was obscure enough for them to choose me despite that, and we use English as our common language. It is not per se an impossibility, but it requires both from the therapist and the client an additional layer of effort that may be too much for some.

I enjoy my work in whatever language I use. English has become the one I favour, just because I have been using it every day for the last 20 years. Yet both German and French are still so deeply ingrained in me (and I still regularly read books in both) that even if I sometimes feel it's harder to express myself, I never struggle to understand my clients.

Funnily enough, all the therapy work I have done on myself has never been in my mother tongue. Only rarely do I bump against the difficulty of trying to explain an expression to my therapist that just doesn't have an equivalent in English, and so fails to conjure up the same picture to him that it does to me.

So maybe speaking the same language is just about making therapy that little bit easier.

Maybe in the end, it is not so much about which language we use, but about the willingness to truly hear the other.

How to make the most difficult decisions in your life

Quite often my clients come to see me because they are faced with really important, really difficult decisions; often it's about whether to change their country, their partner, or their job.

Most of the time, the decisions they are faced with are so difficult because all the options have good and bad sides. They all have a pay-off but also a price to pay.

Tempting as it may be for me to just give them my opinion when they ask me "so what should I do?", my role is rather to tease out what they really want, deep down. I help them by digging up the underlying motivations, both helpful and unhelpful ones. Some come from their unconscious "programming", and some are conscious choices they want to make.

So we look together at their needs and wants, and see if some are more important for them, or more urgent, and also how the different options will play out in the short, medium and long term.

In the end though, in most cases, there isn't just a good choice and a bad choice; so whatever their choice is, it will be "right" - though only as long as one important condition is satisfied, and this is at once the easiest to understand and the most difficult to apply:

You can decide whichever way, but then you have put 100% of your intention, energy and work behind that decision. Concretely, that means:

- If you decide to stay, stop looking at the other options, and invest all in what you have decided to stick with.
- If you decide to leave, start building your new life, don't look back at the old one wondering what it would have held for you.

If you can satisfy that condition, whatever you choose will most likely be the "right" one for you. 

How "family systems theory" can help us change the people around us.

The main mantra in psychotherapy is that you can only change yourself, not others.
So why do I now say that it is possible to change the people around us?
Bear with me, it's all going to make sense in a minute.

When a client comes to see me and tells me how unhappy they are, and could I please change their wife/husband for them, I have to let them down gently: I am not in the business of casting spells, I can only work with the person who is actually in the room with me, not with the one at home...

So how does family systems theory help us change the ones at home?

A family is a system like any other. There are inputs - the acts and words of all the people in the system, there is a "system" that mixes them up, interprets them etc. according to their own underlying and unwritten rules that differ for all families, and there is an output - the stuff that happens in the family.

Now like any system, if you want to change the output, you simply need to change the input.
Concretely, in your family system, what does that mean?

It means that every member of the family has the power to change things by changing their personal input. What does that look like?

Well, if you usually nag and don't get results, it might mean to stop nagging.
Or if you do everything for everyone, and get frustrated that they don't pick up the slack, it might mean doing less.
Or if you usually take the same person's side in every argument, to stop doing that.

And because the family is a system like any other, once you have changed the input, the system will give you an outcome that is different to the one you've had so far.

A bit like this: if your system were an adding machine, and you changed the numbers you were adding, the result would become a different one.

Basically, the other people in your family system will have to adapt to the "new you", and that means they'll have to change. Now, I cannot guarantee that your outcome is going to be exactly the one you're hoping for - every system complex, but there are certain rules that generally apply, which will help you work towards the outcome you want.

And sometimes, the change in input might be that you remove yourself altogether from the system.

This is how psychotherapy makes a difference. By working on yourself, by changing yourself, you are changing your input in your family system, and you will get a different outcome.

Worth trying?