That’s the whole post.
Black Lives Matter
This blog has been paused for a long while. I’m very sorry about that!
I think it is important that we stand firm in the face of aggression, brutality, and injustice. Stand firm and say ‘no’. There can be no compromise about whether all people ought to be treated fairly, to have food and water and shelter, to be able to voice their needs. I find this regime’s brutal response to the events set in motion by yet another senseless and avoidable death to be repellent and disgusting. If you want to know why anxiety and depression exists, it’s because our government doesn’t hesitate to spend money and resources on brutality but it is stingy in responding to, for example, a pandemic illness.
If you are reading this, remember that you have value, you have a place in this world (dismal though it may seem sometimes), and that this period in history is an aberration. America is and can be better than what we have seen recently.
History will not be kind to the men and women who perpetrate unilateral brutality in response to a cry of outrage at injustice.
Little Helpers
I’m undertaking some Eye Movement Desensitization and Reorientation training. It occurs to me that I’ve had plenty of clients for whom trauma is a (perhaps the) underlying driver of problems – but neither they nor I recognize what’s happening before it’s too late. Better, maybe, to assume that trauma is there under the surface so as to tread somewhat lightly, if bravely. In retrospect I can recall a handful of clients for whom even building a safe and trusting relationship was traumatic, and even discussing trauma in a roundabout fashion was re-traumatizing and stressful beyond their ability to handle at the time.
Methods of handling bad feelings are long-lasting and hard-won, and to my mind genuinely useful. Useful at the time of trauma and useful short-term ways of handling the bad connected feelings! But the reason why people in this position come to therapy looking for help is that those ways, those Little Helpers, are not always helpful and can actually get in the way of positive life experiences. It’s awful that just creeping up close to the things that make our Little Helpers do their jobs (jobs they’ve always done!) can make them feel threatened! Especially if the message we’re sending out is that they are fired, that they are no longer good, no longer useful, no longer wanted!
“Hey, Little Noah! It’s time to give up your control of the factory and hit the road!”
Is it any wonder that defenses are triggered? If you thought you were being fired from your job, wouldn’t you get a little anxious about it?
There is an interesting thing about trauma, I have found, is that old ways of handling trauma (for example dissociating/escaping) are legitimately so hard wired that they are resistant to change… They want to stay there, a part of us that has helped us, and they don’t want to go.
Haunted by our helpers! We don’t need to get rid of these things, these little helpful people inside us, we just need to help them be the adults we are, now. They try to make us revert into children and do the things that have always “worked” when in reality these ways of handling bad feelings don’t really work anymore.
Don’t leave, Little Helper, just let me vote on it before we skip out of reality together!!
The Anxiety Machine
If you have paused to think for a moment lately, you may feel things in the U.S. have gotten, uh, weird. To put it mildly. I hear it from clients a great deal, lately. What exactly is the cure for anxiety? Is it, after all, booze, women, and movies? Could we say that if equality, justice, and fairness for all is not forthcoming, then we will spend our money on shorter-term solutions?
I want you, Dear Reader, I want you to know that you live in a machine – a big machine with lots of doodads and gizmos – to make you feel anxious. It has always been the business of governments to supply the most important people in the population with the supplies and comforts they need to live anxiety-free lives. You see, until relatively recently in human history, people lived at some distance from each other and had the skills, generally, to fend for themselves unless it was against (for example) marauding invaders or disease, or famine. Without a certain amount of unmet needs, we wouldn’t need a government to fill in the gaps. Security. Bounty. Justice. Those kinds of things. Our modern age features the technology to potentially provide almost every person on Earth with food, clean water, shelter, and resistance to diseases. I’m not saying we live in a Star Trek era, obviously, but agricultural output ought to suffice to keep people fed, at least. Advances in medicine are starting to chip away at disease, too.
Why are we so anxious in the U.S.? Is it from bandits? For one thing, we drink too much coffee and caffeine, and ingest too much sugar, I think. Another perspective is that without anxiety, nobody would do anything. I think that most of the leaders of the U.S. feel this way at the moment. We have been trained by our culture only to respond to anxiety: “That guy/gal/person over there has nicer (INSERT SOMETHING HERE) than me? Well, I ought to go buy a new (THING) myself and show him up!” So, you go to work, you save your pennies, and you get a new TV. Or a new car. Or a new smartphone. Whatever it is, it was anxiety of some type that prompted you to do it. You may not recognize it just yet, but once you see it for what it is, you’ll know! Our country, our culture, our media, are parts of a vast machine to cause you to feel like you’re missing out on something! I think that Facebook and other social media have gotten particularly bad at this, and TV and most magazines are trying to catch up. I think the recent remarks by a career politician Mr. Chuck Grassley of Iowa (a man who was once a farmer but clearly has forgotten what it means to work for a living and need relief from unremitting anxiety except to keep his campaign coffers full) suggest that people respond well to the model that the U.S. government has imposed on us. We all want relief from anxiety and the President and various branches of government are not doing a particularly good job of reducing it, if statistics on the matter are to be trusted.
What can you do about it? Here are my basic-level pointers:
- get a good night’s sleep
- refrain from consumption of social media
- refrain from consumption of broadcast media, generally
- have sound information about what is going on, with an eye at (2) and (3), above
- eat as well as you can, but refrain from over-eating and eating junk (treat yourself occasionally but not over-much)
- get sufficient exercise
- be around people you like, and who like you and let you know it
- do work that is meaningful to you, or at least does not demean you
- take part in something that provides you with long-term meaning, togetherness, and clarity, like activism or religion
- recognize that long-term happiness does not come from the acquisition of material goods (but maybe that financial wealth represents security which we all aim after)
I recognize that many of these may be viewed by some as difficult, and I submit that this is partly the problem why anxiety is so high! More later, I guess.
Any questions, concerns, refutations, criticisms, whatever, let me know in the comments, if you wish.
A funny reductio ad absurdum take on Grassley’s remarks:
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/booze-women-movies_us_5a25ca7ae4b086e4e503d75c
A somewhat-less-funny take on it:
Slogging Through the Holidays
Hey Everybody:
On paper, at least, the Western Judaeo-Christian Holidays are a comfort. Generosity, hope, salvation and renewal. On the secular end, we get baked goods, togetherness, warmth, good food, and an excuse to spend time with loved ones.
Why then, do the holidays stress so many people out?
The reason why is that we are programmed, or maybe (since I believe in evolution and natural selection) we have grown as a species, to take comfort in small family groups including our mate, parents, and children. This includes a small tribal group of people between 20-50 with whom we can easily manage connections and relationships. Beyond that, it gets a little bit hard to keep things straight. There’s nothing in biology to suggest we ought to devote a terrific amount of time and resources to lavishing gifts upon loved ones in the holidays, but I guess when it’s cold outside and we need to huddle up, sharing food and meaningful tokens brings us closer together in an emotional sense.
But, as many of my clients point out to me at this time of year, our culture and traditions tell us that we need to spend money to find our loved ones JUST THE RIGHT GIFT, and I even have clients regularly tell me that they over-spend and end up in debt until July or August so that loved ones will feel good for just one day (probably one morning!) until the gifts gradually settle into the pile of things that ONCE-BUT-NO-LONGER-GAVE-US-PLEASURE. I think this is somewhat worse for parents of children who feel the need to respond to marketing bombardment of their children and get this season’s new toys (I’m looking at you here, Star Wars!)
One way to undo these stressful conditions is to not celebrate Christmas, or Hanukkah! Another is to refrain from having children! Hahaha! If I’ve lost your attention, just now, then I will tell you that when my marriage was new and we were without children, I felt a bit of curmudgeonry that I found very, very stress-relieving. Although I sometimes got presents in my mid-to-late 20’s and 30’s, I felt no strong urge to find Just The Right Thing for anyone, including my wife. I was freed to find things that I thought people would like but if I couldn’t, then a card would suffice. Or not. Yes, I was, and remain, averse to high levels of Christmas-Obligation stress. Lately (I’m a bit of a Scrooge, I know) I focus mostly on my daughter, with a present for my wife optional, and I rarely even send out cards, anymore. Not because I don’t value Christmas, or Hanukkah, but because all those years I spent without the urge broke that lobe in my brain, I think. When I give a gift, now, it’s not because I need to do it (I get resentful when I NEED to do anything…) but rather because I encountered a thing that lit me up like a Christmas light and I thought OH SOANSO WOULD LIKE THAT. But then, I am lucky enough these days to wander around the world and the internet and bump into things like that all the time, without some culturally imposed urge to do it to allay the gloom and darkness at 4:30! April is as good as August or November to be generous, if you are able to do it.
Where was I? Well, I need to formulate this a little better, but a trick is to understand that you love people, and they love you, without the spending of money. Someone who only loves you when you prove your love with a trinket needs, let me offer it, a little counseling themselves. Of course, it is nice to get things. But the first hurdle, in my opinion, is to unhook yourself from the notion that you deserve something because the Earth’s traveled around the sun once more… If you can do it, then maybe others could, too, and then (as we’re supposed to) the giving of gifts becomes the icing on the cake and not the cake itself.
Meantime, stay warm and cozy, and give love freely to those close to you and in your tribe
Yours,
Noah
On being Invalidated
I think that the matter of validation and invalidation is at the root of what I do. In short, I think that when people are INvalidated enough, they start to break down and then they might come to a therapist for help if they are able. What, you might be asking, do I mean by being INvalidated?
If someone validates you, you feel warm and relaxed inside. Whatever it is you told them, they understand, and they signal they understand. They accept you for who you are and what you’re going through. They meet your need in that moment. This could be your mother, father, or caregiver if you (for example) have a poopy diaper. You go “WAAAAA!” and they effectively communicate “You know what, I have the equipment and resources to handle this issue and take care of it, because you do not. As a family, we can get through this.” Luckily for the human race, most parents effectively are able to handle a baby’s emotional needs at this stage and we almost always validate our kids when they have, for example, poopy diapers or need feeding. There are special cases when that is not true – hang on to your hats and we’ll get back to those at a later date.
The inverse of this situation is that sometimes the people in our lives are not able to accept what’s going on with us, usually because strong emotions, messy problems, or poopy diapers for example, are not okay with that person. Somebody in your life might take your poopy diaper, or your sadness, or your anger, or your bloody knee and signal to you “This is not something I want to deal with right now, or maybe ever.” When this happens, especially when someone you love or is important to you does it, most people feel crummy. I conclude, from my personal and professional experience, that people who feel validated all the time by the important people in their lives rarely find counseling and mental health treatment necessary. There are edge cases I’ve encountered where this isn’t true… but this is rare for me. Existential distress looks like this: HEY EVERYTHING IS GREAT BUT I’M STILL SAD. People don’t realize that they can actually invalidate themselves! Being invalidated feels, emotionally, like sitting in a poopy diaper.
That’s it. That’s maybe the root of all the problems I deal with every work day. It gets wildly more complicated than that, of course, and usually pretty quickly. What it really comes down to is, if someone validates you, you want to hang around and be near them more often. If not, then you want to get away. If they happen to invalidate you and they are nobody to you, like say a cat-caller, internet irritant, a coworker you might easily avoid, or someone on a bus who wears a Nazi shirt or something, well: usually distressing but not a long-term problem. You just sort out a way to get away from them.
But if someone in your life is invalidating you, and they are there with you all the time, and you can’t get away because that’s how strong your ties are? Well, nobody can keep that sort of relationship up for very long.
The face of a serial invalidator: inflicting invalidations can be like a drug!
I generally help clients recognize when they are validating others, or not, and to see clearly when they are being invalidated either directly, indirectly, or accidentally. And when they see these patterns in their lives, I work to help them build skills like assertiveness and changing their expectations so that they don’t just experience less distress but also cause less distress in others by invalidating them also in a back and forth cycle of mutual distress.
If you have questions, feel free to contact me on the blog, at noah@micatherapy.com, or hit me up at my contact information if you want to try a brief consultation.
The Keepers: Managing the Impact of Evil
I think I saw in my Feedly stream recently that owing to a Netflix documentary, a long-dormant murder case had been shaken awake in the interests of Justice. Somehow, I had also heard that it was a fairly local (to me) story, and that the victim was a charismatic nun. I turned it on last night as I prepared to wind down – a mistake, in retrospect.
There is not too much of import to say in a clinical sense. I awoke this morning on edge, very early despite my very late sleep onset, with a fever blister incoming. All signs of heightened stress. I brought it on myself. I made a choice to take in the details of a terrible string of events, each and every one an awful breach of trust and the common good. Misplaced faith, depravity, abuse of the worst sort. With Netflix and other streaming services these kinds of “bad” emotional torrents are easy to bring upon oneself and the short term problems that are attached are maybe more difficult to manage than we understand. The last time it happened was when Mrs. Stevens and I watched the first season “American Horror Story”. I didn’t realize the toll it would take on me, emotionally, but I realized about half-way through the season that I was irritable, slept poorly, and was feeling worn down. You may say “Well, your psychic defenses ought to be a little firmer, Mr. Stevens!”
I work in Maryland and the effects of the abuses described in the show, suffice it to say, are likely something that I deal with on a day to day basis. A great number of clients from the Baltimore, Columbia, Montgomery, Prince Georges, St. Mary, Washington counties. Maryland is not a big state in the way that my home state is. The impact of abuse of any kind in childhood is felt for a long time, and the odds of sexual abuse and assault occurring to a woman are not just sobering, but terrifying. As a father I find that dwelling on it makes me very uneasy. Anxious. The reason why the events described in The Keepers can occur is because we will not, as a culture, look the problem in the eye, and we are afraid to talk about them. Terror, torture, abuse, fear. They do not make for a safe discussion.
I’m a little bit rambling. I am tired. The clients I see, some of them, are feeling the impacts of events that happened 40, 50, 100 years ago. Set in motion by unhealthy, maybe even evil people. Predators.
This isn’t a commercial, in fact, I urge you not to watch The Keepers if you’re depressed, anxious, or prone to picking up turmoil easily. I have worked with men and women who have committed murder, rapists, assaults and torture, and I have even talked with some people that I have felt sure, in that moment, were the epitome of evil and madness. I’ve also worked with their victims and seen the results of having one’s physical, emotional, and spiritual self destroyed by systematic abuse. I don’t relish that part of the job, the discussion of these things, but I do sometimes take relief from the shedding light and sunshine on those things, and occasionally helping people move past those sorts of events.
It gives me pause to think about the spreading of a few men’s (primarily men, yes) hideous influence and how the damage done can impact people they will never meet or know. The Evil That Men Do Lives After Them. I’ll withhold my judgement on the show itself until after I watch the rest, should I choose to watch the rest. Maybe after a few weeks’ consideration and introspection. I get enough of this despair in the day-to-day life I lead. Maybe a good question to ask myself is, why would I choose to be “entertained” that way?
If you or someone you know is the victim of sexual, physical, emotional, or any other kind of abuse, help them if you can. Stand by them. Alert someone if you cannot help them.
If you don’t know what to do to help, you can call and talk to someone at 1.888.PREVENT.
On Anxiety
Why do Americans experience so much uneasiness?
The National Institute of Mental Health reports one in five adults in the U.S. could qualify for an anxiety disorder diagnosis. About 1 in 5 qualify as ‘severe’ cases. About 40 percent of those who qualified for the disorder in 2005 received treatment.
The prevalence of anxiety disorders may have changed since this NIMH research. I am sure it is greater now than it was then. If you live in the U.S., you can expect to deal with anxiety sooner or later. Also, you are almost certain to have a family member or acquaintance who is. There are some worrying statistics about depression and ‘Non-Specific Psychological Distress’ on the NIMH website. I will leave those aside since we have enough to contend with, already.
What is it about life in the U.S. that causes vague feelings of fear and inadequacy?
For one thing, U.S. culture is partly driven by anxiety. The media bombard us with the message that we need to buy things to be better. We’ll feel better if we have a nice car, or the right phone apps, or a swell house, and we’ll be more attractive if we own certain clothes, jewelry, appliances. A litany of messages telling us we are not quite good enough. If we eat the right food, we’ll feel better – later I will prove to you that this one is true. I can explain in a couple of minutes how one specific factor of our diet in the U.S. contributes to high levels of anxiety.
There’s a pretty interesting documentary that I plug in my practice sometimes, available on YouTube: The Century of the Self. It’s about Edward Bernay’s work in the founding of modern marketing and the field of Public Relations. He was the nephew of Sigmund Freud, the spiritual father of psychology and counseling. Freud’s theories suggested that people were a bundle of drives that needed management for them to operate in the world. If people attain ‘correct’, ‘normative’ management of the drives then they are ‘healthy’. Bernays described systems to manipulate peoples’ drives to make them want things they didn’t really want. To connect their self-images to tangible goods. We’ve all been sold some shady messages that make us feel bad if we don’t buy things. It’s a rotten application of Freud’s work. Most of my work life is about undoing the work of Bernays and his disciples. You can find some of Bernay’s writings at archive.org, and one of my favorites (to hate!) is Propaganda, which you can also access here.
I’d be lying if I said I don’t resent marketing, commercials, and being told what to buy. Don’t get me wrong – I like progress but I’m not sure that what we get by searching for a faster, slicker, prettier object is progress. I note that part of this post was written on my iPhone 6 and finished on my mostly-obsolete laptop. I wouldn’t have bought those first couple of iPhones if it weren’t for clever PR and marketing firms alerting me to the awesome-ness of the next one compared to the one I have now!
The real problem is that we have learned through training to be unhappy, and to even be unhappy with the notion of contentment and satisfaction. Anxiety and restlessness is now our natural state! I’ll address later how this has occurred and some steps to take to protect yourself.
(This is the first in a series of articles about basic mental health hygiene and solutions for common mental health concerns that I encounter in my practice)
Hello, World!
>OPEN MAILBOX
>LOOK INSIDE
> HELLO WORLD!
Hi – I’m Noah! You’ve landed on my personal therapy/counseling blog: the one that I associate with my counseling practice. I’m a freelance mental health therapist, associated with MICA Therapy in Frederick and Rockville, Maryland.
I use Client-Centered therapy methods, primarily, to help all kinds of people – adults, teens, and kids – with anxiety, depression, and non-adaptive ways of coping with stresses of everyday life.
I hope to use this blog to reach out to potential clients, make a small change in the world-wide trend in anxiety and depression, and set forth some of my personal and professional views about what perpetuates the negative trends that I encounter in my work.
If you are experiencing anxiety, depression, addiction, family conflict, or other troubles, or if someone you love is experiencing them, please feel free to reach out to me through here, or find me at MICA’s website, or on my Psychology Today profile (click the little widget below).
Remember – wellness will come to you if you’re able to be patient and open to it. I hope you are safe and able to think clearly until such time as you are ready. As the blog becomes more complex, I will include some of my most-often-addressed topics in sessions, for example Sleep Hygiene, general somatic health issues, caffeine overuse, relational problems and assertiveness, and Transactional Analysis. Until that time, thanks for reading this and I look forward to our mutual beneficial interactions.
Noah M. Stevens, LCPC 