{"id":41,"date":"2013-01-22T01:20:41","date_gmt":"2013-01-22T01:20:41","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/?p=41"},"modified":"2013-01-22T01:20:41","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T01:20:41","slug":"why-get-in-touch-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/why-get-in-touch-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “get in touch” – 3"},"content":{"rendered":"

In recent entries I wrote about Alice<\/a>, Jack<\/a>, and Fred <\/a>as I tried to answer the question “why get in touch?”\u00a0 The subject warrants limitless discussion, because it is related to resistance<\/a>.\u00a0 And as we know from other blog entries and the main website<\/a>, resistance is at the heart of psychotherapy, our symptoms, and even our personalities.\u00a0 It is ultimately how you get over anxiety, depression, obsession, and all the other symptoms.<\/p>\n

But just how does one \u201cget in touch\u201d?\u00a0 How do you do that?<\/p>\n

First, you have to notice that you’re not doing it.\u00a0 Many people think they are, but aren\u2019t. \u00a0One patient said to me \u201cI can\u2019t leave Evan because I\u2019d be same dissatisfied grump with any man\u201d, but when I asked how she knew this she revealed that she\u2019d been with this same man since college (11 years earlier) \u2013 that she\u2019d had no other relationships or even dates all those years and thus couldn\u2019t possibly know how she\u2019d be with another man!\u00a0 How could this smart, Ivy League college graduate jump to such a grossly unwarranted conclusion?\u00a0 How could she not notice that she had absolutely no data on which to base such a statement?<\/p>\n

Worse, the more important the subject, the more people skitter away from actually answering the question “and what happened to you then? how did that feel?”\u00a0 Jim was a very bright, articulate filmmaker on the verge of moving into the big time when he came to see me.\u00a0 His work with actors involved getting them to relax their defenses, their intellectual processes, their inhibitions, so that they could give convincing and spontaneous performances; he certainly understood intellectualizing, thinking your way out of your feelings.\u00a0 But in our interactions, he did it all the time.\u00a0 He could not answer such simple questions as “so when you got up that morning and knew there would be text messages from that woman you no longer wanted to see, how did you feel?\u00a0 What happened to you?”\u00a0 In response, he would say things like:\u00a0 \u201cthere’s no reason for her to keep texting me” (not what I asked), \u201cit made no sense but she sent messages every morning” (not what I asked), I can’t believe she wrote again” (not\u2026), or at best \u201cit was annoying\u201d.\u00a0 The latter may appear to you to be a response, however it is very superficial.\u00a0 It was only when I asked him to simply remember the moment and tell me how his body<\/span> felt that Jim was able to say he felt “dread” and even “terror in my gut”.<\/p>\n

Again, why is this important?\u00a0 Not because we shrinks believe you should “get in touch with your feelings”, but because it\u2019s the cure!\u00a0 At the end of our session, Jim felt more relaxed, focused, clear, and optimistic; he felt freer to concentrate on his work and other projects in his life, less anxious about everything he had to face that day, and less preoccupied with the woman.\u00a0 Moreover, as he described the \u201cterror\u201d, he found himself remembering similar moments of terror when he was much younger \u2013 moments in which such terror would be completely justified, unlike his extreme reaction to the pestering of a soon to be ex-girlfriend.\u00a0 And our continued exploration of both the terror he felt in the present \u2013 which was always an overreaction \u2013 and in the past resulted in a steady and rapid decrease of the anxiety that brought him into treatment.<\/p>\n

Jim’s problems with answering that annoying therapist question “and how did you feel?” are very common.\u00a0 People resist it in different ways.\u00a0 Some avoid it by becoming intellectual, as Jim did.\u00a0 Some do it by becoming hostile \u2013 you can see a good demonstration of that from the Tommy Lee Jones character in the recent movie “Hope Springs”, which has some realistic scenes of marital counseling.<\/p>\n

Others do it by becoming indecisive or “confused”; they may begin restating, qualifying, and otherwise backpedaling on what they say.\u00a0 (One teenaged patient\u00a0described this kind of resistance as \u201chairsplitting the irrelevant\u201d.) Jessica was particularly expert at this.\u00a0 She came to see me complaining of virtual paralysis in her life dating back 12 years to her college days.\u00a0 She was a bright, articulate, energetic woman who was clearly interested in continuing her studies in physical therapy or veterinary work, but she could not make a decision about career, domicile, her boyfriend, anything.\u00a0\u00a0 As we spoke, it initially seemed there was no reason why she should be so immobilized.\u00a0 But as she talked more personally in our first session, her speech disintegrated.\u00a0 \u00a0She’d start to say something about her boyfriend, for example, and halfway through the sentence change topics, change her opinion of what she was describing in him, laugh off whatever she started to say, and then dismiss the whole subject as \u201csilly\u201d.\u00a0 She described episodes of great tearfulness which would lead her friends to suggest that she consult a therapist or physician, that she consider medication, or that she in some way attend to the problem.\u00a0 At that point in the discussions, Jessica said, she always expressed surprise and immediately dismissed her previous bad mood.\u00a0 Similarly, in our sessions, as soon as she became at all interested in the topic \u2013 her boyfriend, her family, her feelings about an internship during college, anything that mattered to her \u2013 she would first clog the discussion as described above and then quickly dismiss it all as \u201ctrivial\u201d.<\/p>\n

Jim and Jessica, like so many others, are not really aware that they are avoiding.\u00a0 Moreover, friends and others often go along with this kind of resistance,<\/a> may even encourage it.\u00a0 Picture being in a bar with a friend who talks this way.\u00a0 It keeps the conversation cheerful, entertaining, and flowing.\u00a0 Furthermore, it’s comforting when someone begins talking about something painful and then finds a quick way out, a dismissal, a bromide.\u00a0 Our tendency is to agree, to nod “yeah, I go back and forth about my boyfriend too”, and order the next round.\u00a0 But this is precisely how people get lost.\u00a0 Yes, distraction and changing the subject have their place in life, but if they worked I wouldn’t have a job.<\/p>\n

So how do you get un-lost?\u00a0 How do you get in touch?\u00a0 Start by realizing \u2013 if you\u2019re a thinker type \u2013 that all that thought may be the opposite<\/span> of being in touch.\u00a0 Simon was a very intelligent computer programmer, games designer, athlete, and recent Ivy League graduate.\u00a0 He was socially adept, had some close friends, dated with ease, and gracefully handled some difficult colleagues and superiors even though he was so new to the job world.\u00a0 But in private he struggled with obsessive thinking, considerable anxiety, even panic; these sometimes interfered with his sleep.\u00a0 As with Jim, Simon made a lot of progress simply by focusing on my question “and what happened to you next”, that is “what did you feel, in your body”.\u00a0 Like Jim, he only answered those questions with a lot of guidance; otherwise, in a very slippery way his answers always drifted quickly back to what he was thinking<\/span>.\u00a0 But with help he did start answering my questions and in the process he realized that his endlessly racing thoughts \u2013 the worry, the \u201cwhat if\u201ds, etc. that occurred one day on an outing with two friends \u2013 was triggered by the simpler anxiety over \u201cwhat will this person think of me\u201d and \u201cI\u2019ll have no friends, I\u2019ll be alone\u201d.<\/p>\n

Simon had such trouble seeing \u2013 i.e. feeling \u2013 this simple anxiety in part because in our culture we are taught not to notice such perceptions, such feelings, especially if we are men.\u00a0 Simon could not see the hand in front of his face \u2013 that all of his anxiety during the outing described above was so simple \u2013 because he simply could not believe that he would be prey to such “stupid worries”.\u00a0 (And they are<\/span> stupid, because in fact the people involved are long-standing good friends, and from his description not at all the type to be judgmental or dismissive of him.)\u00a0 But it is only by becoming aware of such anxieties that Simon could really see how silly they were.\u00a0 Once he did, he was much more relaxed \u2013 both during the session and subsequently with his friends.\u00a0 And that, once again, is why psychologists are always asking you what you feel and trying to help you “get in touch”.<\/p>\n

Simon’s case illustrates an important first step in starting to notice what happens to you:\u00a0 Drop all the preconceptions.\u00a0 You can’t notice what happens to you if you have already decided what is or is not acceptable or sensible to feel.\u00a0 By any casual observation of Simon, he is the last person we \u2013 or he \u2013 would imagine could be so fragile in such a safe social encounter.\u00a0 He was very independent on the surface, making career and college decisions on his own, traveling alone to foreign countries where he does not speak the language, etc.\u00a0 But as I have said elsewhere in these pages, you cannot argue with data.\u00a0 And the data are that once he stopped racing his thoughts and words, once he simply answered my question about what he experienced as he stood with his friends in the market, he remembered feeling a strong and clear anxiety that he was not being \u201centertaining enough\u201d to keep their friendship and would be left alone.\u00a0 It may sound silly to him or to us, but that\u2019s what he felt.<\/p>\n

One good way to break away from any preconceptions that are hampering your awareness is to take note of things that happen at the edge of your awareness, things that happen to you when you are not really thinking about anything.\u00a0 A former supervisor of mine calls these “marginal experiences”.\u00a0\u00a0 If you are in Starbucks and find yourself oddly furious or timid or anything else, that’s a good time to stop and see what happened.\u00a0 It is very important not to make the mistake of asking yourself “why do I feel this way?”\u00a0 That question is for me to answer in our sessions.\u00a0 If you ask it, you are already looking for a sensible, logical answer, and you may therefore blind yourself to what actually happened to you.\u00a0 Instead ask yourself “when did this feeling start?”, “did I feel this way 2 minutes ago?\u00a0 5 minutes ago?\u00a0 30 seconds ago?”\u00a0 You may realize that the feeling started \u2013 for no clear reason \u2013 when you saw a shelf of coffee mugs for sale.\u00a0 Try to suspend any concern with explaining how coffee mugs might make you feel whatever you’re feeling.\u00a0 Don\u2019t be like Simon who couldn\u2019t notice what was happening to him because \u201cthat\u2019s stupid\u201d.\u00a0 Instead try to just notice or remember what the mugs brought to mind.\u00a0 Try to notice what you felt in your body, as much as what may have passed through your mind.\u00a0 You never know what might emerge.\u00a0 Maybe the mugs reminded you of the furniture you have yet to decide on, of the decorating you\u2019ve not done that people who are better than you surely did and what a loser you are to be indecisive about wallpaper\u2026.\u00a0 Maybe the mugs reminded you of a similarly well-appointed hutch in your boss\u2019 office and you resent being an underling and why doesn\u2019t anyone appreciate your own taste and it must be because you don\u2019t have any and you\u2019ll never get a promotion and you\u2019ll be stuck in the job forever and die miserable and who\u2019d want to marry such a loser\u2026. Maybe the mugs remind you of spilling soda in school and the teacher who humiliated you over it and you never got even and boy! it would be nice to punch her face in now\u2026.\u00a0 Believe it or not, I haven\u2019t invented these scenarios (although I\u2019ve altered them slightly for this blog to protect patient confidentiality).<\/p>\n

Another good thing to pay attention to is anything that either sticks in your mind for no clear reason or that stirs up a lot of feeling.\u00a0 When a scene sticks oddly in our memories, it is because there is unprocessed feeling fueling the memory.\u00a0 One patient remembered his father\u2019s hat flying off during a road trip when he was about 4; everyone laughed, a seemingly trivial moment.\u00a0 When he focused on it and let himself notice what feelings, memories, thoughts it stirred, he began to see how much he yearned for such rare moments of family happiness, and he then understood why he was badgering his wife so constantly and unreasonably to create some impossibly perfect family for their children, why he was so agitated if things were spontaneous in their home, and why he was also becoming similarly fussy and unreasonable at work (and he stopped). \u00a0So see if you can similarly let yourself muse on the memory \u2013 without trying to figure it out, understand its significance, or otherwise diagnose yourself.\u00a0 Answers may emerge without talking to a therapist.<\/p>\n

In contrast with memories that persist for no clear reason, there are feelings that emerge for no clear reason.\u00a0 Gerry was a very independent, aggressive, masculine fellow who ran his own business, was married, had a very active social and sex life, who came to see me because he was increasingly uncertain about his marriage and because he had skin rashes that his physician said were psychological in cause.\u00a0 He described a physically abusive father, a childhood that was alternately dreary and dangerous, a history of bar fights and other such aggressiveness, but he denied any connections among all this.\u00a0 He did, however, express an interest in the fact that Brahms always made him cry.\u00a0 He did not mind discussing this, did not resist it as he did discussions of more obviously personal matters.\u00a0 As he talked about it, as he remembered the music and his tearfulness, a whole other side of him emerged.\u00a0 And again the reason this matters is that as Gerry became more tolerant and aware of his \u201cmushy side\u201d (his term), his symptoms and uncertainties diminished.\u00a0 Music, smells, sounds can often trigger such initially perplexing reactions.\u00a0 I know someone who used to choke up when she heard the opening music to the film version of “Little Shop of Horrors”.\u00a0 Eventually she came to understand such moments as episodes of “good tears”, her term for moments in which she felt finally able to enjoy something that was deeply hers in a way that music can be for some people \u2013 in contrast with her rather rigid, stifling, and by her own account \u201cdull\u201d life the rest of the time.\u00a0 And again why does this matter?\u00a0 Because in making contact with those \u201cgood tears\u201d, she grew stronger, more decisive, less inhibited, and ultimately made some changes in her life that left her much happier and more productive.<\/p>\n

Of course, there are those of us who cry with minimal stimulation.\u00a0 Part of the getting in touch process involves realizing when you’re tears are somewhat skin deep and when they are emanating from more substantial concerns.\u00a0 That is a tricky process and usually cannot be done without the help of a therapist.\u00a0 There is a similar distinction to be made between defensive irritation or rage, and the much more revealing and important experience of anger, betrayal, outrage.\u00a0 Rage \u2013 for example road rage \u2013 tends to be superficial, yet intense.\u00a0 It is usually a defense against feeling helpless, uncertain, or otherwise shaky.\u00a0 But then \u2013 and here’s why psychotherapy can be endlessly fascinating to someone like me \u2013 underneath that defensive reaction, even as the underlying shakiness emerges, may lurk the more substantial anger.\u00a0 Archeology of the mind, Freud called it.<\/p>\n

Exploring these layers can become part of your whole life, part of what keeps you growing, keeps you interested.\u00a0 Careers, marriages, hobbies may all have a shelf life.\u00a0 What keeps them alive is our ever changing relationship to them.\u00a0 Anything can become stale if you do not continue the process of rediscovering your experience of them; anyone in a successful marriage of more than 20 years will tell you that.\u00a0 What kept Bruce Lee fascinated with martial arts is something he articulated in an interview late in his life.\u00a0 He said “I can do something flashy and impressive that will make you say \u2018wow\u2019, but the real challenge is to do something honest<\/span>.\u201d<\/p>\n

But again, start small.\u00a0 To know what you\u2019re feeling, to be \u201cin touch\u201d, to be \u201chonest\u201d, has to start with the smallest experiences, like what really happened to Jim as he turned to his cell phone expecting a text from his demanding girlfriend.\u00a0 And as we saw in the cases of Jim and Simon, above, you can\u2019t know what you feel if you\u2019ve already decided what feelings make sense, which are acceptable.\u00a0 Just notice<\/span> what happens to you, second by second, without assuming you already know.<\/p>\n

One final note.\u00a0 People often can\u2019t do this alone.\u00a0 Some people\u2019s anxieties, tensions, inhibitions are too great or are too embedded in their way of functioning.\u00a0 (As Peter Schaffer put it in the play Equus<\/em> – as spoken by a psychiatrist, actually – \u201call reined up in old language and old assumptions, straining to jump onto a whole new track of being I only suspect is there.\u00a0 I can’t see it because my educated average head is being held at the wrong angle.”)\u00a0 Such people need the help of a guide, a therapist.\u00a0 Also, some with particularly intense anxiety may need medication.\u00a0 Such people struggle with racing thoughts, obsessing, worrying, of an intensity that one patient described to me as being a \u201cconstant tornado inside, so you can\u2019t stop and notice anything\u201d.\u00a0 In such a state you can\u2019t do it on your own, and don\u2019t be ashamed or worried if you need medication to relax you enough to start the process; doesn\u2019t mean you\u2019ll be on it forever.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In recent entries I wrote about Alice, Jack, and Fred as I tried to answer the question “why get in touch?”\u00a0 The subject warrants limitless discussion, because it is related to resistance.\u00a0 And as we know from other blog entries … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=41"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":44,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/41\/revisions\/44"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=41"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=41"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.aboutpsychotherapy.com\/aboutpsych-blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=41"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}