Calm your system down - anxiety and panic - resources

Vagus nerve engagement

3 ways to beat the brains negativity

The Body's "Betrayal" - bringing it all back home

What kinds or aspects of sexuality get shunted to the margins and delegitimised in popular discourse, thus driving them underground where they fester? For example some victims/survivors/experiencers of incest, rape or other forms of sexual abuse are subtly encouraged to publicly own their pain, trauma, shock, ongoing resultant dysfunctionality and maladaptions, but are not so subtly discouraged (via social learning, the feedback we get from others) from publicly owning their body's pleasure response to the incident, They are thus left to wrestle on their own - or perhaps in therapy - with their own guilt about, bewilderment with, and possible rage at, let us call it, the body's betrayal. Fear driven approaches based on an imaginary future - slippery slope arguments - lead to unnuanced approaches which do not reflect or acknowledge complex realities. And this in turn promotes fragmented rather than integrated beings.

The importance of note - taking

A client of mine recently asked to see the notes that I had been keeping of our therapy sessions, and because the Freedom of information act does guarantee the client's rights to access these notes, I (somewhat reluctantly) handed them over. The client had the following questuions re the notes.

a) Who is Lola and why did I need to call her?
b) What did 3 apples, butter, sugar and self raising flour have to do with her relationship problems?
c) Vet. Was I thinking of consulting a vet re her case?
d) Why did I scrawl "Change oil and water". Was this some kind of abstruse therapeutic metaphor?
e)Cortisone cream. She couldn't recall ever having uttered those words in a session.
f) Why had I written my signature 30 times on one page, alongside little drawings of planes and cars and stickmen?

I explained that I like to free associate when listening to clients, and that those items were indeed a record of
the precious ($200 a session) work we had been doing together.

Parenting Styles and Politics

Once I was on a plane – a domestic flight I believe – perhaps between Joburg and Cape Town. For some reason the plane was delayed. A toddler who sat next to her young mother became more and more distressed and began (or continued, she may have already boarded the plane crying) to sob and shriek very loudly...even ear piercingly. The shrieks and wailing continued as the mother tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her. Other passengers stared, and a succession of cabin crew offered advice. A dummy was tried, food, the mother held the child tightly and rocked her, but the shrieks just grew louder and louder. The mother, sensing the agitation and hostility of other passengers, and her own helplessness, seemed to me worthy of tremendous compassion.

My natural impulse was to empathise with mother and child, to give them some space, to see if there was anything that could be done to reduce their mutual distress. But not all the passengers, disturbed by the uncontained and persistent shrieking, saw it that way. “Giver her a warm klap” offered one. “She needs a good hiding....I’ll sort her out” said another. These comments evoked my own issues, and in my own timid way I semi-audibly mumbled “can’t you see she’s inconsolable, she needs help not threats.” In my psychologised mind the child was shrieking for all of us, and the disgruntled passengers were responding with however they as shrieking uncontained frightened or uncomfortable children had been dealt with: heard, soothed, contained or beaten into silence.

The real difference in politics – as in everything else – is not between left and right or fundamentalists vs secularists but between those who are conscious about their own process and projections and those who are unconscious about them.
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Imagine if there were mandatory ante-natal courses where young parents, instead of been taught all the technical stuff about breastfeeding and latching and nappy changing (not that those are not important) were taught the basics of surviving post natal depression, and how they could advantage their child by facilitating secure attachment, ie, a course training new parents to be effective "interactive psychobiological regulators" through physical contact (touch, feeding and cuddles), eye contact, and vocal tone (comforing sounds and lullabies), play, stimulation (arousal) and rest and disengagement, all in an intuitive rythm and dance between mother and child, and father and child. Yes a lot of input up front, and costly, but a stitch in time saves nine...and (as Mr Indivar Bilenko points out) lives.

 

What one cup of coffee can do

Is there a third way between the mindless conformism of western consumerism with its loneliness, absence of human contact, pseudo freedoms and illusion of choice, or the undifferentiated ego mass of fundamentalisms, which offers community and connection, but which ruthlessly and cruelly punishes diversity and "deviance"??

Please give me the connectedness, role allocation, and opportunities to be of service of faith communities, but without the coercion, inflexibility and need for an out group "other". Is this seeking the impossible?

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It seems to me that the term "old testament" was coined by a breakaway religion (Christianity) to protect itself - "the anxiety of influence" from the internal conflict of simultaneously drawing from, and yet delegitimising, the parent religion (Judaism)

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How to join without colluding, how to remain apart without being indifferent? Every therapist - like every human - must balance competing extremes to hit the sweet spot
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How does Murray Bowen's Family Systems theory, with its notion of the (usually incremental) intergenerational transmission of anxiety, and levels of differentiation (high differentiation = high functioning, i.e. adaptive rather than maladaptive behaviours) explain sudden zigzags in family history and fortunes??

Royalty begets royalty, but not necessarily greatness. By royalty I mean in any domain - from politics and governance, to physics, entrepreneurship or physical prowress. Why are the children of the Rolling Stones not all top musical acts? Why have Donny Gordon's children not all created entrepreneurial empires of their own? And conversely, how does a Napoleon or Rumi or Hillel or Kabir emerge from a non-descript "ordinary" family, and shine briefly like a self-powered sun?
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When Ghandiji of blessed memory said "if you follow an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth you end up with a world which is eyeless and toothless" he clearly had never been exposed to the oral law (the Talmud, which explains and expands upon the written law (the Torah). The rabbis of the Talmud unambiguously explain that this biblical verse refers to monetary compensation for damages, exactly because of Ghandi's objection...but they said it 1800 years before him.
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Who would I be without my story, without the religion of me?
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A Love Letter

Dear Immanuel

I will not with hold my love from you any more

Love and respect
Immanuel
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My next poetry collection, G-d willing, will either be called

A Way with Words

or

Skipping in the House of G-d

or

something else. 

(It may just be a collection of titles with no poems.)

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It seems that nothing - including cruelty and kindness - occur in isolation; everything is the fruit of some earlier process...that is why I sometimes have my doubts about campaigns like the White Ribbon Campaign AGAINST domestic violence against women ( but what is the campaign FOR?) because it focusses on symptoms rather than causes....Karl Marx may have got it wrong about what fundamentally motivates human beings and mobilises them, but I think he got it right (and if my understanding is incorrect please set me straight, I don't want to misrepresent his thought) that morality which does not impact on our modes of production and consumption is so abstract as to have no reality. Start now by de-commodifying your relationships...meet whoever you meet not because of their value to you in some imaginary future, but just because you both exist now...nothing to gain and nothing to loose...just sharing the vast sea of being

Fee Structure For Counsellors and Therapists

In keeping with the trend towards the commodification of everything, and as a service to both counsellors and their clients, we have created an itemized tariff structure which makes it very easy for both parties to know exactly where they sit.

Basic services

Passive listening - $ 5.00
Active Listening - $15.00
Collusion, flattery, and lying - $20.00
Unconditional positive regard without empathy - $50.00
Unconditional positive regard with empathy - $70.00

depression - - $100.00
anxiety and depression - $150.00
anxiety with depression and suicidal ideation - $200.00

Ambivalence - $50.00 or $70.00

Transference
Positive transference - $20
Negative tranbsference - $200.00

Conter transference - 10% discount

Reflection - youre wondering what the rates are?

Psychoses
visual hallucinations - ^&@#(*&%*
auditory hallucinations - 200 rupees

insomnia - night sessions available, special rates

projection - this will be discussed somewhere where the illuminati cannot track us

angry outburstswithout spittle - $60.00
with spittle - $90.00
catharsis - $150.00
catharsis & allowed to assume foetal
position on floor - $300.00 (includes blanket)

Interpretations

Adlerian, Jungian or Freudian - $20/interpretaion

Kleinian - add 10$/per interpretation

(10% rebate on invalid interpretations)

Seating arrangements

Economy chair without arm rests - $20.00/hour
Comfortable wing back chair - $35.00/hour
empty chair - the price will be negotiated with the chair itself
Throne (for narcissists) - $70.00/hour

Those with low self esteem may sit on the floor for free


Optional Accessories

Tissues - 5c per tissue
Lavender scented tissues - 10c per tissue

Truthtelling - priceless

Psychology, symptomatic and systemic dysfunction

Often people seek psychological help when

a) The status quo changes, as with a death, divorce, end of life-stage, move, retrenchment or job loss, an affair or the discoverty of an affair and so forth

b) when a coping style is no longer adequate, or indeed has in itself become a problem

c) at moments of crisis - which obviously also includes the previous two categories - but could also include when the cost of an addiction has grown to great to ignore, or have been ordered into therapy, or a particular behavioural problem.

While some of these can only be dealt with when they arise and crystallise, in other instances it seems the therapist's assigned role is a token one, just as much philanthropy in Australia and much of so called "western civilization" , where problems are dealt with symptomatically rather than systemmically. We fund cancer research rather than tackling lifestyle and consumer habits which drive the production of carcinogenic fuels, foods and cleaning agents. We run anti gambolling programs rather limiting the activities of casinos. We provide no channels to ecstacy and bliss other than chemicals, no outlets for agression other than sport and hunting, no way of dealing with sexuality other than commodifying or repressing it. We educate around type II diabetes while gladly accepting massive sponsorships from the companies who help create it. We decry racism and predjudice while soaking up the reactive media which constantly recreate them/us bifurcations and fear based consciousness. We try to save biodiversity while spoending billions on, and being relentlessly brainwashed by, advertising that sells us things that damage us and our environment, and that we can well do without.

The psychologist-counsellor becomes a token solution, a pawn, a chamber maid who cleans up the mess while the source of the mess is left unchallenged and unattended to. Like Dr River's in Pat Barkers regeneration triology who patches up Siegfried Sassoon so that he is well enough again to go back and die on the Western Front, we work to get our clients well enough to go back into the insanity of daily life, where a thin veneer of civilty hides the "quiet desperation" of most ordinary people.
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the assumption and expectation that incest and adult or elder sibling sexual(ised) interactions with a younger child must have deterministic outcomes in itself may set up years of “unnecessary” struggle. Ditto with the terms “abuse”, “bullying” etc which all come with their accompanying story. There are many kinds of interactions in many different circumstances, and not all of them have to be framed as trauma. The child may have had an interaction – or several -  with an adult that was fleeting and unclassifiable; which sat in them as something neither good or bad, but upon contact and sharing with other adults will take on a whole raft of frames, and suddenly graft any outrage, hurt, shame, or anger in them onto those events. Suddenly any pleasure they may have felt will become guilt and complicity which needs to be beaten away with “it is never the child’s fault”. The subtle cues to adopt certain stances in exchange for subtle and not so subtle rewards – sympathy, belonging to a victims club, power over the perpertrator, self righteousness, avoidance of all the other subsequent challenges that have arisen in their lives…all of these set to work clouding whatever happened with a swirling mass of their own and other’s affect.