:smack: Sorry about that coding!
I had a strange coincidence happen today. My car got tea-bagged – sort of.
When I walked back to my car after making a purchase from a local Office Depot, I found two used teabags on the pavement right where I would step into the car. I didn’t see them when I got out of the car.
Boy, was my car red!
It is my belief that while Freud himself has been widely discredited by any serious psychologists, many of his ideas about the role of the unconscious–though they have no scientific validity–have persevered. This shows up in a most powerful way in the practice of psychodynamic therapists, who have derived their practice from Freud’s psychoanalytic theory. I take it as a kind of cognitive dissonance – a universal panning of Freud but an inability to understand that a lot of common methods are influenced by his work. Freud was right in that the subconscious does exist–but that’s about all he got right. We have a much greater understanding of what it’s for – and it doesn’t have much to do with unconscious desires, repressed memories, or any of that other bullshit. That’s about the extent of my knowledge on Freud.
You are correct, I did not succeed in backing up my initial claim that only 1 in 4 therapists use ESTs. I am satisfied that the information I did provide indicates the initial claim was not way out of left field–and I have found, and cited plenty of evidence that does show that some of the most widely used methods of therapy have not been proven to be effective. (Note: that’s not to say they aren’t effective, – just that they haven’t been proven to be so.) I think anything less than “a very small minority of therapists” doing non-ESTs is reprehensible and insulting to the field of psychology. 
Yes, my fault for not wording it correctly the first time. I think if therapists truly believed that using ESTs was better than their own method X, they wouldn’t do it. The way it was initially worded seemed to indicate that I was implying there was some kind of malicious intent or deliberate deceit. I don’t think that at all. I think it’s due to a phenomenon called belief perseverance.
Yes, I agree completely with you. Some self-help books can be very helpful. My ire is directed at those who hide behind the guise of “experts” in their field and yet consistently provide claims that are not empirically tested. I feel that persons who write these books and claim to be experts are misleading and can cause further harm to those in need of help. I also feel it is in the best interest of the client to make them aware of whether or not the book they are reading has any scientific validity.
Thanks. I’m new both to the Doper board AND the scientific method, and frankly I’ve never encountered any board that requires such rigorous evidence for stated claims. I find that thrilling. I’ve learned so much just in my quest to back up the claims. Re: not being available online, I apologize for that – one of the best resources for this information is my university library electronic resource thingy, but it kind of requires a password to access. I am more than willing to e-mail anybody the 39-paged PDF file on depression treatment, though. It’s pretty interesting.
This is sadly the truth. I know some very compassionate, well intentioned therapists who don’t use ESTs. Their argument is that the therapeutic alliance is the most important thing. There has been research on this matter, and the therapeutic alliance is indeed quite important – I am in no way suggesting that methodology should not take into account who the client is as a human being. I don’t advocate treating humans like robots. I just advocate using methods that have been proven to work – which includes, but is not limited to, therapeutic alliance.
You are talking to a person who claims no expertise in this field – I am an undergraduate Spanish major, and a future Ph.D. candidate (god I hope, anyways) for a Social Welfare degree in the mental health field. My perspective is predominantly as a person who spent six years self-educating, investigating, researching, and reading, trying to be the best little client I could be–yet still experiencing markedly severe symptoms despite the work. When I say “work,” I mean I took an entire year off of school in order to focus on becoming a healthy, functioning individual. I have just recently learned the paucity of evidence supporting the therapy I have worked at for six years. I feel betrayed, and angry–these are six years I cannot get back. Fortunately my sense of injustice only fuels my own commitment to finding and thoroughly researching the best methods, and consistently testing myself rather than relying on my own perceptions of how my case studies have gone. I don’t see how anyone who has been put in my position could do otherwise.
Really? Even though their methods are not empirically supported, they are still a thriving group, or associations of groups (Jungians, Freudians, etc). The APA has a division of psychoanalysis.
Some of my training, which I more or less politely ignored, was in psychoanalytic techniques. The Rorschak is still used. I’ll be happy when it is no longer used, but that day is far off still.
If nothing else occurs in this thread, please know that my main point is that your thinking that “an ass-whipping is completely diproportionate with the level of harm” is only true for you. What I cannot seem to wrap my head around is this: you are a therapist. Surely, surely, you have come across folks who have “seemingly” disproportionate responses to XYZ stressors. There are some in this thread, alone.
But–and you know all about this “but”–you cannot speak for someone else, you cannot judge someone else. If a client came to you, utterly destroyed that this had happened to her sister–just exactly how would you handle that? Tell her that her response is “disproportionate?” People feel intense emotions; they can feel scared by those emotions. But does a therapist say, “that is too big an emotion for this event”? WTH?
I sincerely hope NOT. What happened to empathy? Where is it here? We have a therapist essentially chastising us for our lack of “meh” about this event (yes, I know you say you think its reprehensible. But then you come back with your wife wouldn’t seem to mind it much and that we are all over-reacting. And the bit about the “where’s the harm” stuff–I don’t think you think it’s reprehensible. Your statements say one thing, but your tone and reactions to people’s disgust say another, IMO.
And to digress a bit further, seeing as how there are so many sick, sick things that people do to others, this can seem like very small beer. To a point. It is NOT very small beer. Or shouldn’t be.)
I am not a therapist–indeed, there are some very odd people in the business (no, not a cheap jibe at the ones in this thread-I once had a grad student therapist in college who filed her nails while I cried about my sister going blind. Many, many therapists SUCK, but that’s another thread.)
Any way, we seem to be talking about two different things here. 1. the shock and disgust that most here have felt re the treatment of this person. and 2. the best way for people to “get over” trauma.
I agree that no one thing SHOULD define your life. But here we get hung up on definitions. Define “define”. If a woman marries the love of her life and he dies suddenly and horribly, and she never marries again–is she allowing that trauma to “define” her life? Maybe yes and maybe no. We can’t say for sure, since we don’t know her actions day to day, we don’t know if she is depressed (still) or if she is having a full, productive life on her terms and from her perspective.
We don’t know what this teabagging had done or not done to this woman. What I think we (the hysterical, outraged ones-you know, the ones who must need therapy*) are saying is that 1. this shouldn’t happen to anyone, anywhere at anytime, unless by consenting adults; and 2. this thread was started to express our outrage at such behavior and events.
Along the way we’ve been told it’s funny, boys will be boys, to get over it, to not let it define us, and that there is a great deal of chicanery in therapy (Pope is Catholic! Film at 11.)
*yep-that wasn’t actually expressed. But the judgemental stance of Hentor and olives is truly getting on my nerves. You are therapists or soon-to-be’s–and you’re in here judging people about this? What the hell is that?
In essence: no one has the right to tell anyone what their experiences mean to them. Period. If the person feels or thinks that their responses to events are no longer comfortable for them–they tend to seek therapy. That’s just one avenue to therapy; I am not about to list them all-indeed, I don’t know them all. I doubt anyone knows all the motivations to start therapy.
I do know that I look askance at anyone who tells me what my responses or feelings should be in any given situation. If someone feels that Mr Lipton should be thrown in jail for 20 years–that’s a FEELING. It is not “diproportionate”. It’s a feeling. Now, if said poster tried to get a grassroots movement going to enact legislation to do just that, then we might need to confront him regarding his feelings.
Another example: if it takes me 10 years to get over my sister’s death (different sister), so be it. That is neither too long or too short for me. It is not for anyone to say. That said, I realize there are people who get “stuck” in anger, grief wherever. But mocking them on a message board is non-productive. To me, they sound like they haven’t either found the right therapist or they are truy not ready for therapy–or both. Sadly, I think it is most commonly both.
olives -kudos to you for all your hard work. I can imagine (in a small way-having had smaller betrayals of trust in therapy myself) what it must have been like to find all that out after so long. But I would say to you that perhaps those 6 years have NOT been wasted. You are using that (bad) experience to inform your future choices-and that has to be counted as a good thing. But then I hold that no experience in life is truly wasted, but that’s another thread.
Re the therapy must have scientific validity…this scares me a bit. Science likes to quantify and monitor and validate. People aren’t turnip seeds or atoms. Psychology is very much a social science and we still don’t have a great handle on the brain vs the mind (ie what is neurological vs what is psychological).
Psychology has to deal with the truth that one woman can get teabagged and walk away whole and another cannot. IOW, it’s not great at the validating, and results can be impossible to quantify.
I have no idea what EST is (to me it’s a kind of therapy that was considered schlocky in the 1970s-it’s still around?). I just have to say this: surely when one is seeking therapy, one looks for licensure? All I needed from my therapist (and this is NOT true of everyone) was a safe place to vent, drag shit out into the light of day and talk about it. She became a trusted confidant, a cheerleader of sorts, a reality check and a sitting duck for alot of crap. I admire her greatly-she was truly a lifeline for me a few years back. But to get to her, I did see my share of nutty people-the marriage counselor who thought we were such a cute couple, we should stay together; the asshole in college who so demoralized me by completely dismissing a genuine and intense grief; the pastor who told me to give it all to the Lord.
I hope this clarifies things. It took me an hour (!).
Surely. In fact, disproportionate responses generally are evident among those struggling with issues that bring them into therapy. Disproportionate responses lead relatively quickly to impairments in trying to live one’s life and achieve one’s goals.
No. I’ve already said twice that the first order of business is to empathize with the emotional response. Please try to understand that before going off on another rant about my insufficiencies as a therapist. But people generally don’t come in for therapy to get consolation for where they are at - they generally are seeking to change.
Put yourself in the position of a therapist for Architect Chore, who has come to you to discuss the difficulties he has experienced in social interactions. During the course of exploring what those look like for him, he explains to you this very incident, highlighting all of the awful things that the girl in the story did to deserve the behavior that happened later on. Now, your first reaction, and mine, is that those horrible things did not cause him or his friends any real harm, and weren’t all that bad, so they don’t really justify, in our minds, the later behavior. Sure, you could blow up at him and tell him how wrong his feelings on the matter are and how they have no bearing on the later behavior, but your goal isn’t to take out your feelings and past traumas on him. Your goal is to try to help him change. What might you do?
Think about the concept of being “dissed” among young men today. I don’t understand the level of harm that they seem to feel merits violent reprisal and even on occasion death. I would wonder if they could describe the nature of the harm that they have suffered and draw any sort of reasonable line from that to outcomes of violence, including murder.
If you can’t trust what I’m writing, I’m not sure what I can do in this context. But I guess I’ll forge ahead and try. I’ve said that it’s reprehensible, and I’ve said that I would not hang out with someone who would do this. These things are true. I did not say I felt “meh,” I said that on a spectrum of outrage, I was more towards the “eh” side than the “string him up for rape” side of things. Please try to understand a spectrum rather than either/or. Can you do that?
I also didn’t say “Where’s the harm?” I asked people to describe for me what the harm is. I can imagine someone finding out about it later would suffer the harm of feeling violated (i.e. a shaken sense of the ability to fall asleep safely, particularly in some settings and a diminished sense that other people treat one another decently) and disgusted. I said that I couldn’t think of what the harm would be if that person never found out about the incident. How could your sense of safety or your level of disgust be influenced by something you don’t even know happened?
HOWEVER, I later agreed with the potential damage to her reputation if others talked about it and the idea that she and you and I are all damaged in some measure as a society by these types of events. Do you understand that I recognize these levels of harm?
But how can you treat all types of behavior the same? I can’t fathom that. I have to be able to recognize that bumping into someone on the street is different than intentionally hitting them, which is different than raping them, which is different than smashing their head with a sledgehammer. Beers do come in different sizes, and if we can’t recognize that, we make very poor decisions about what to do with them.
If not a cheap jibe, I wonder what the purpose of this paragraph is?
Not really, in my opinion. Yes, I bring up how an individual should move forward, but it also serves to help understand what having a dramatically overblown sense of the traumatic event might do both to the individual, and to us here discussing the matter. I took it as very illustrative that, despite some here calling for serious jail time or an ass-whipping or saying that his life should be ruined, very little could be described about the harm that this person suffered that was on par with such responses.
I see that my part of the discussion did very little to help those of us who regard this issue so dramatically to think clearly about the matter, and seems to have instead given most of you license to call me a sociopath who should be kept away from people’s daughters and a poor therapist. This despite the fact that I’ve essentially agreed with you about what should be the proper response to the guy in this vignette. I specifically asked you for your opinion on the fact that you and I largely agree on the matter, yet my beliefs are “insane,” “irrational” and “psychopathic.”
To be honest, I find it somewhat difficult to deal with the level of vitriol being directed towards me for this discussion. I feel that I’ve tried to discuss the matter fairly rationally, and that appears to me to have been a mistake. Despite saying that I think the behavior was disgusting, I continually am told that I think the behavior was okay. Despite saying that I am outraged, if relatively mildly, I am told that I am not outraged. Despite saying that my initial therapy work with someone would be to help them feel safe and validate their feelings, I’m told that I would dismiss their feelings and tell them how to feel. Despite agreeing in essence with you on every issue except whether there was necessarily a sexual element of the behavior, I get a screed from you about just how bad I am and how I don’t think what happened was bad or harmful and how I don’t honestly feel as I said I feel.
Frankly, eleanorigby, I think all I can do at this point is to invite you to join the ranks of those who no longer speak to me. I can’t think of how I can make my position any clearer, and my efforts to have you think about your side of things seem only to incense you further. I do feel that you and other folks here are dealing with something or someone other than me or this specific incident. I am sorry for that, and I’m very sorry for interrupting your outrage mob. I wish you well in dealing with whatever it is you are dealing with.
This is a really good point. If I try to justify any and all behavior in response to the teabagging incident, then I’m left trying to justify any and all behavior, including teabagging, in response to the girl’s “misbehavior” (for lack of a better term).
If we argue that kicking his ass is in proportion, then he can argue that teabagging is in proportion, etc.
If she had woken up during the act, I think her trauma could have been huge, especially since in hindsight we can say exactly what he did, and what he didn’t do, while during the act we would not know what the bounds of his behavior would be. I think, for me, I’m empathizing with that waking up girl, not asleep girl, if that makes sense.
What is with the umbrage? I think you’ve missed my point(s). Thoughts on your post:
Ok, I’ll concede that you do think the behavior is reprehensible. But do you see that in your wanting to --I dunno–intellectualize this occurrence and look at it objectively can be and was offensive to some here? From my POV, there wasn’t enough empathy expressed-you seemed to move too quickly into analyse mode. That does that help explain things? I don’t think you’re a bad person or wrong to feel the way you do, I resented being told that I was overreacting and unable to think clearly about this issue.
For the record, I was not one of those who was saying string the guy up for rape or lock him up and throw away the key. I think you’re conflating my posts with those of others. I understand very well the spectrum. To me, your asking of your wife her rxn etc was muddying the waters and seemed to say that you were more “meh” than you had originally posted.
Point taken re the “where’s the harm” and I apologize. I did leave out a salient part (not maliciously).
I overlooked (and you were right to point out) the guy in this scenario as a potential client. That is illuminating, if somewhat iimplausible. Can you see this guy initiating therapy voluntarily, ever? Me, either-but life is full of surprises, so there is always hope. I would have a very hard time empathizing with such a person.
But that is NOT my point. I completely AGREE with you that there are things that are very small beer, indeed. My point is that it is up to the individual to decide what is small beer and what is not small beer–to them. Obviously, we as a society also decide what is and isn’t small beer (and not always for the good of all or even of one, but that is another thread). But in this thread, for our purposes, I was referring to an individual’s response to a life event such as being teabagged. If a client thinks that teabagging was akin to rape, IMO, the feelings said teabagging engendered in her/him need to be explored, and yes, a reality check needs to be given, once trust has been established etc. No?
It wasn’t a cheap jibe at all. My comment re the manicuring therapist was directed at olives --I wanted her to know that she is not the only one to suffer from “therapy”. Surely you will agree that there are crappy therapists out there?
I’m sorry you don’t think I can talk to you anymore. I took exception to your tone in some of your posts in this thread. I am finding your position re maybe I shouldnt’ talk to you anymore somewhat ironic, in that I find it disproportionate to the matter at hand. 
Bottom line (for me):
I thought too many people were going off the rails in terms of their responses to the circumstances, and I assumed that I was not talking to the victim of this incident. I also felt some need to defend some other posters here who were beginning to be singled out as subhuman for their lack of appropriate levels of outrage. I think I overlooked how strongly many people wouldn’t be able to distinguish themselves from the victim in this incident. Nevertheless, one should not eschew intellect in favor of blood lust. Whether you felt such or not was independent of my getting involved in the thread.
I was specifically asked to bring my wife into the picture so that I could imagine her being tea-bagged! Not only is this a bullshit ploy, like asking Michael Dukakis to imagine his wife being raped and murdered, but when I actually brought her opinions in to the picture, and it didn’t jibe with those in full-blown outrage, her opinion was dismissed, it was suggested that I made up her opinion, and now I’m taken to task for bringing her into the picture! :rolleyes:
You either? Why do you presume my response? How much you lack empathy and perspective! I have in fact had guys come in to work on such issues. There’s no switch in people who do bad things which prevents them from necessarily feeling bad or wanting to change! It’s less common, sure, but hardly impossible.
Then I think you still aren’t clear on this matter. Why in heaven’s name would you want to continue to speak with someone who may be a sociopath, whose beliefs are insane and irrational, and who you yourself don’t trust to be honest in what he writes? Some guy who’s a bad therapist who would just tell someone how they should feel and would have no regard for the feelings that someone brings into therapy?
I’ve not once disagreed with any of this, except that for point 3, I couldn’t come up with what those harms might be until I asked others. I’m confident however, that you will post AGAIN to tell me that I shouldn’t tell others how they should feel, or some other person will be along to tell me that I don’t think what happened is bad.
By God, if there’s one thing that will not stand on this message board, it’s objectivity and intellectualism!
:rolleyes:
Hentor --sweetie. I never called you a sociopath or anything close to that. Where did I say I didn’t trust what you write(?) I said (essentially) that you seemed to say that you found this behavior awful, but that your tone didn’t support that. You said that I had mistaken that tone and I agreed that I could have.
Where have I said that we should eschew intellect in favor of blood lust? IMO, we were talking about feelings; were you talking about actions?
Who are you arguing with here? I am notdropzone or any of the others who screamed for blood. My point was that you (or anyone) cannot say what this experience means to anyone else, not even dropzone.
OK, so you wouldn’t mind having Lipton teabag guy as a client. Why would I argue with that? It’s your practice, and I hope that such people as Lipton guy DO enter therapy.
I think you’re right in that you mistook how many here so closely identified with the victim. I agree with jsgoddess --most of us could put ourselves in that chair, awaking suddenly to that. It’s an intense visual and a scarey one. I cannot speak for the others, but for me, I needed more “time” spent on the feeling and less on the “let’s look at this as bits on a chess board and remove all humanity from it” (not saying that isn’t one valid approach to this, just saying it jarred me. I also don’t think that approach was welcome in this thread).
I think it was a good thread. I learned something; I think others did too. I am sorry you think my discussion with you was (well, what exactly?). It’s easy to misunderstand people here. I don’t understand why you don’t “get” #3, but I refuse to rehash this whole thing. So, perhaps we agree to stop talking about this? Certainly we are not communicating.
Miller : thank you for pointing this out. Rather than the SDMB being a message board to learn, be entertained, and be a part of a community, it is a place to take drive by jibes at others. Duly noted.
It was welcome to me.
I didn’t say you called me a sociopath, insane and irrational. Others have, and I have specifically asked you (since you and I agree on the matter) twice to state your opinion on that judgment, which you have avoided doing twice.
I took that from this:
But nobody here has actually said that they’ve been tea-bagged. They’ve talked about much worse things than what actually happened in this event, and in my opinion they are responding to those worse things, and suggesting that this guy should be treated like those who actually victimized other people worse. A number of people suggested that this guy would have done worse, if only… That isn’t rational, and it really isn’t healthy to not be able to distinguish between yourself and a hypothetical other. One should empathize, but one should also be able to see where the two events differ dramatically.
Two things: What good do you think the time spent on the feeling did for you? Do you think an unchecked groupthink about how this event was pretty much like rape is a helpful thing? Secondly, I didn’t see the sign that said what should and shouldn’t be said in this thread. Okay I lied - thirdly, I’ll probably step in whenever I see a pile on developing by people who just aren’t thinking rationally. Mob mentality sucks. Granted, I wasn’t at risk of bodily injury, and I’m no hero or anything.
Sigh… I agree we aren’t communicating, because I said that I agree with #3! I just qualified it to say that I couldn’t at first think of actual harm experienced by someone who had no knowledge of such an event until two other people suggested possible harms.
I rather liked his point.
Woah woah woah woah! Why you you grouping us together like this when I have never, not once, passed any judgment on the woman this happened to? I have never not once, agreed with Hentor that no harm has been done–I have not one time mentioned this woman other than to say that I believe the act was despicable, clearly sexual, and should be prosecuted. Stop thinking I agree with everything he says just because I happen to like him. I have repeatedly responded to this accusation already.
My anger is NOT directed toward this woman, or those crazy dorks who pretend they are 3 years olds online–I know as much as anyone how desperate a suffering person can be to find a solution to that suffering – no, my anger is directed at the mental health professionals, the psychology professors, whoever and whatever it is that perpetuates these clearly unsubstantiated myths about what decent therapy should be. I’m talking about the dumbasses who perpetuated False Memory Syndrome, “hypnotism” and yes, I currently have a beef to pick with psychodynamic therapy (the most common kind) because the science just isn’t there to back it up. I’m talking about whoever thought it was a good idea to train Hentor in psychoanalysis. I am not standing here blaming the victim for anything that happened to her. I am blaming the Mental Health Industry for being a shitty scientist.
I realize it was a lot of reading to do on your part, but I really would encourage you to look at the things I have actually said vs. what Hentor actually said. I already addressed this very same statement once before. To save you the time:
To put it another way – I don’t know why you keep drawing the conclusion that I’m deciding what people’s experiences mean to them, when my rants have been devoted toward treatment. I don’t know why, if I suddenly declared that I was going to decide what my own experiences meant to my life, you would think I would not want that very same thing for every single person who exists?
Let me give you a hypothetical scenario. Say a woman is sexually abused as a child. She lives her life normally for a while as an adult, and then later in life begins to present symptoms of anxiety and depression. She goes to a psychodynamic therapist, who inquires about her history – at which point she mentions she has an abuse history. Driven by her strong belief in the motives of the unconscious, the therapist urges her to talk about it more. The person says she really doesn’t think it’s that big of a deal. Ahhh, the therapist says, you are in denial. This is clearly the root of your suffering in the present. The therapist tells her that people who have been sexually abused often feel guity, like it was their fault. They may feel they were robbed of their innocence. The patient begins to wonder – maybe I never dealt with the abuse as thoroughly as I should have. She goes to a support group. Ten women are standing in a circle talking about how their sexual abuse experiences devastated their lives. The therapist is encouraging them all to “try and remember everything you can.” Soon all the woman can do is focus on the abuse, and try to remember more. The pressure is ever greater on her to remember greater and more traumatic experiences of abuse. Pretty soon she “remembers” shit that actually never happened. The more she focuses on her abuse experience (both the real and imagined part), the more she loses her grip on life. She loses her job. Her therapist says, “That’s okay–it’s part of the process.” Meanwhile the depression and anxiety, which were stemming from complete other factors, never gets addressed.
Why? Because the therapist was NOT trusting the patient to know what the problem was. The therapist was acting out of his/her completely unproven, unscientific ideology. I am not saying sexual abuse can not devastate a person’s life – I am saying that sexual abuse does not NECESSARILY have to devastate a person’s life–it depends on many, many factors and each person is an individual. That therapist decided what that woman’s experiences meant to her life for her. And you might not want to believe it, but that kind of shit goes on ALL THE TIME.
Do you understand now? If I were defining what other people’s experiences meant to them, I would be contradicting my major point – which is that many therapists cause harm by encouraging their clients to subscribe to their own, scientifically unsubstantiated treatment ideology. That girl didn’t need help with her sexual abuse until her therapist told her she did. (I would level the same attack against therapists who dismiss or ignore any claim of abuse brought into therapy–irresponsibility works both ways.)
EDIT: Oh, I apologize-- you already summed up my opinion for me:
I am not doubting that this was an incredibly painful experience for you, and it makes perfect sense that you would feel I am attacking people who struggle to get “over” trauma. If I were doing that, it would make me a hypocrite. I’m not even close to “over” my childhood and I’ve been free for almost seven years. As I have stated before, grieving is a necessary and natural response to trauma. The pain never just vanishes. I’m not and was never implying that. What truly makes things problematic is when a person ruminates over past harm to such a point that they become unable to function–I believe this is what Hentor is trying to express when he says people tend to overblow their experiences–if after ten years, you were unable to bathe, dress yourself, or leave the house because of the death of your sister, I think it would be time to re-examine your treatment and ask some serious questions about whether another kind of therapy might be more appropriate. Hentor would be irresponsible at that point not to nudge you in the direction of learning how to take care of yourself and focus on daily tasks.
To say this does not in any way contradict this crucial fact: Only you decide how your sister’s death impacted you. Only you decide how long you grieve. Not me, not a Hentor, not a therapist. So you see, we are in perfect agreement. 
ESTs aren’t a particular kind of therapy – it stands for “Empirically Supported Treatment.” Essentially all I mean by “ESTs” are treatments for which there have been enough scientific studies to indicate that they are successful at treating patients. If a therapist uses a particular technique and believes that it works based on his or her own personal experience, it doesn’t count as an EST. For an EST to be an EST there must be hard science to back it up – controlled scientific studies, comparisons of that therapy to other kinds of therapy, that sort of thing. There are more than a few ESTs. The most popular that come to mind are Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Interpersonal Therapy. Antidepressant medication is also considered an EST.
This statement scares me a bit. Social Psychology employs scientific methods to study the behavior of large groups of people. Psychology employs scientific methods to find out what’s going on at an individual level. Both are sciences. There is still a great deal to be learned about the brain and its workings, but I want to be clear: you can’t be depressed unless something is happening with your brain chemistry. That’s not to say external events cannot have a direct impact on that brain chemistry–but depression isn’t as external as some people would like to think it is. Scientists currently are arguing about WHAT happens with brain chemistry in cases of psychological ailment, but nobody doubts that something is going on. I think there is a popular misunderstanding that psychological disorders can be either “emotional” or “chemical.” They are, by definition, always both. Sometimes chemical imbalances can happen naturally and sometimes they are triggered by trauma***, but in both cases we are talking about something theoretically quantifiable. The problem is we don’t yet have the knowledge to do precise measuring. I certainly hope you don’t suggest giving up on psychology as a science.
***Trauma is actually a really good example of this. There is an actual structure in the brain (as I’m sure you know) that stores memory. Research on traumatic memory has actually revealed that, for people who have PTSD, traumatic memory is encoded chemically in a different way than regular, “narrative memory.” So it wouldn’t be accurate to say, “I don’t have a neurochemical problem–I just had a bad childhood.” Both are true.
The non-medication treatment aspect of psychotherapy, as I understand it, is directed at finding ways in which external factors (teaching someone how to direct their thoughts or meditate, for example) directly impact brain chemistry. This SHOULD ALWAYS be a science. If people who aren’t scientists want to practice therapy, they are perfectly welcome to – though they have no business calling themselves doctors or psychologists.
Believe it or not, research is more or less on your side here. From what I understand from looking at this chart (from the aforementioned 39-paged PDF file), people presenting mild-to-moderate difficulties tend to be helped by just about any kind of therapy. Typically, the more severe the problem, the more crucial ESTs become.
When I went into therapy, I wasn’t there “to vent.” I came there with a severe case of complex-PTSD, major depressive disorder and generalized anxiety. Throughout the next three years I went into hospital, had to withdraw from school on two separate occasions due to my inability to leave the house, and would spend days on end without bathing or getting out of bed. To put it bluntly, I was not able to function–half the time I couldn’t even drag my ass to therapy. After three years and 14 medications, I had spent hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars “processing” my trauma and learning that it “wasn’t my fault” but I still couldn’t get my ass to class.
The only thing that really seemed to make any difference was dropping class for a full year and spending that time working on life skills like getting out of bed, bathing, and holding down a part-time job. For an entire year I did not have anything to do with memories of the past–I just stayed focused on the present and tackling symptoms when they came up and interfered with the present. The more I got “into” my present life, the less important my past became–and this is my theory on why Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is so effective–it’s something you can do instead of sitting around thinking all day. The idea that you can sit around and think about something, and figure out reasons for why you do things, and that revelation will alter your behavior and make you feel better – it’s a completely unsubstantiated lie, and I fell for it because I trusted the people who were charged to take care of me.***
***The story at least has a happy ending. I returned to school last semester after over a year off, nailed my classes with straight-As, and will graduate in about three months–not to mention I’m currently holding down a volunteer position and a research job on top of this. Going back to college was the HARDEST THING I have ever done–and I say that as someone who finished high school as a financially independent emancipated minor. I cannot describe the misery of those first few weeks of class–my completely out of control anxiety that I was doomed to failure from the get-go. But I committed to doing this stuff no matter how uncomfortable it made me. I bore the anxiety attacks and the depression in the interest of my own future. Am I "over’ my past? Am I “over” depression? Hell no. I still have anxiety attacks and I still grieve–though less often than ever before. But at least I’m living my life now. I truly believe that the more engaged you become with life, the less impact trauma will have as you go along… and that belief is backed up by research.
No, you are absolutely correct. I met and married my husband during this time, after all. If we hadn’t had so much struggle in the beginning, who’s to say we wouldn’t be as strong as we are now? And if these experiences have made me even more committed to making a real difference in the lives of others, then I certainly cannot call them wasted. I think true leadership has to be a combination of empathy, perseverance, and reason. I feel like my life has gifted me that.
:rolleyes:
Jesus H. Christ, even from the people who like me!!!
This board appears not to be able to grasp subtle positions.
I apologize, Hentor, I was responding based on someone else’s argument, not what you actually said. No offense, I just didn’t want people to think i was a sociopath.
Thanks, olivesmarch4th. It really is quite unfair, because my score on the Psychopathy Checklist was only 22.
By the way, I don’t know how old you are, but you might run into some confusion in talking about EST without being clear about your meaning. In the 70’s there was an “est” that was the antithesis of empirically supported treatments.
I’m 23. And no, I didn’t know about “est.” Bleargh. Maybe I should use a different term. 
My goodness, olives, you sure have come a long way for someone who is only twenty-three! I think that we are pretty much in agreement on things now and I understand where you are coming from.
That “one brilliant psychiatrist” that I spoke of also focuses on the present. I do take medications for depression and anxiety and the combination of all of it together has turned me completely around.
At the same time, I think that Eleanor’s hour spent on her post was time well spent. This time I’m going to point out only something that I disagree with though:
Actually, it’s not. It’s a thought. I think Mr. Lipton should serve six months in jail for his sexual assault on an unconscious female. My thinking is based on emotions of indignation and anger. If that happened to me and I learned about it, I would also probably feel the emotions of sadness, humiliation and shame.
You said “his” feelings, but if we are talking about the female victim, I think that might be a healthy way of dealing with her anger rather than letting it fester.
I know that this question was directed to someone else. I spent at least forty years with a lot of misdirected negativity and anger – actuallly rage. But because it was misdirected, it never let up. When I was finally able to feel the real anger in the marrow of my bones and direct it toward the person who has continued to deserve it, I began to own myself and the rage went away. It took a few weeks or maybe a few months. But compared to what I used to be, I am generally peaceful and easy-going.
As for the “spectrum of outrage”: I can see that an outraged person might want to hang someone for some reason. But for the life of me, I can’t imagine anyone who is outraged ever saying, “Eh.” To me, that is on the spectrum of indifferent to concerned – close to the indifferent end. The word “Eh” seems to go with a shrug of the shoulders and an open-handed gesture.
The words “relatively mildly” and “outrage” just don’t go together. And you had already said “eh.” What picture are we supposed to have in our minds?
The only time in literature and cinema that I can remember someone being slightly outraged was in the film Four Seasons by Alan Alda. Even then, it was done as a joke because he stayed calm the whole time that he was talking about being outraged. His wife had to show him what being outraged looked like.
“A dramatically overblown sense of the traumatic event” comes powerfully close to declaring yourself the Deciderer. It was a woman who is having these feelings. You certainly have the right idea when you want to work with her about how she comes to think of this situation and what she thinks about herself as a result. That is certain to have a positive effect. But your are too damned cocky about how she is overblowing it Your language just reeks with “not getting it.” How about maybe you, as the therapist, are undervaluing the traumatic effect that such a diminishing effect can have on a woman simply because we have trouble describing it to you?
And I do like you, Hentor. I just disagree with you about the right to feelings. They are neither right nor wrong. They just are. You can’t validate and say they are overblown at the same time!
As for Jung and Freud, I will bow to your knowledge in your own field. (Jung was mentioned in the conversation too, but I can’t remember the source or even if it was authoritative.) So I withdraw my comment about Freudian therapists being a laughingstock for now.
I am aware that younger generations feel more comfortable with some amount of familiarity with their opposite gender friends’ body parts. I came from an age in which your greatest humiliation was if someone saw your panties when you were wearing a circle skirt on the dance floor. And we were locked into our all female dorms eight or nine o’clock at night. I don’t criticize the younger rascals for having a different perspective as long as it’s consentual. I shouldn’t be criticized for having a different perspective because of my generation’s standards either. We hippies were very…
Oh, wait! Woodstock is on TV! Far out!
I never goddamn said I would feel “eh.” I said towards it rather than towards “string em up.” Perhaps I should have not adopted the phrasing or words being used. Perhaps I should have said, on a scale from 0 to 100, I feel an anger [or other Zoe approved emotional descriptor] of about 25 or 35 on this matter. Is that easier to grasp?
And look who’s talking about being the decider of feelings? Right after telling me that relatively mild outrage can’t exist?
It comes powerfully close to me stating my opinion on the matter, which seems a questionable proposition around here. As for it being a woman having these feelings, I ask, “What woman?” In the example we are given, the woman has no feelings about the matter because she does not know about it. The only feelings in the specific instance are being imposed from others, which seems to be a no-no only if it goes against the group here.
(Gee, thanks, I wish you could help me to avoid being so pompous and cocky as I am in the future)
Again, we can’t know how she feels. We can only know how you and eleanorigby and others think she should feel. And I can tell you this: prescribing “trauma” status for her is a sure fire way to make sure she feels it. I on the other hand, would let her tell me what she thinks and how she feels of the matter. If she feels she is scarred for life and thinks she should kill herself, would you then allow me to consider that, in the back of my mind, as dramatically overblown? How about if she thinks she will always be at risk to be attacked and should never leave the house again? Would it be wrong to flag that one as overblown?
Once more with feeling: the only people imposing feelings on this unknown person are folks such as yourself. I wouldn’t know how she feels until I ask her. And then I would accept that that is how she feels about it. And then I would seek to discover if that is going to get in the way of her goals and functioning, pretty much by asking questions about such things. And if you can’t do those things, you cannot help someone who has experienced a traumatic event. You simply have to recognize that someone honestly feels the way they do about something while also being aware (for yourself) when there is a mismatch between the nature of the experience and the resultant emotions and cognitions.
There seems to be a sense that I would simply blunder in and say, “Nope, shouldn’t feel that way. Now have a sticker and a lolly.” What can I say? If you think that’s possible, join the queue to the right.
I do think you are on the periphery of part of this matter that olivesmarch4th sort of alluded to: her virtue. Her virtue has been tarnished, and cannot be recovered. That is part of the generational gap that we are not talking about here, and that is part of the bullshit imposed by others on people in such circumstances. That is part of the justification for 10 years in jail or ruining the evil bastard’s life.
If, of course, I might express my opinion on the matter.
Look, I don’t know if this will be helpful or will be a bad idea. Maybe I just feel a little need to elaborate or defend myself from something.
I’ve worked with women who have been raped, children who’ve been sexually abused, kids who have been beaten, a young woman who falsely claimed sexual abuse, a woman who had been forced into sex with the threat that her child would be killed if she did not, a woman who had a gun pointed in her face as part of a robbery, a guy who was knocked down with a butt end of a shotgun to the face during a robbery, kids who have run from gang shootings, a child who was in an explosion, kids who have seen others get stabbed, the remaining members of a family that survived a plane crash, someone who saw a family member crushed by a falling pole, a guy who falsely claimed to have been in Viet Nam…
People tell me they’ve found working with me to be rewarding because I listen. They tell me I take time with them when others don’t. At this point, I pretty much have a hard time not crying along with people as they describe what they’ve been through. I’ve had some incredible successes, one devastating failure, and a lot of in-between resolutions. And all this when trauma work has not been my main thing.
The one thing that’s true of all of the people I’ve worked with is that their reaction to their experiences has been different and often surprising. I could never presume to know how people are going to respond. I’ve said before on this board that everyone’s ruler is different, and can only exist based on their own experiences. Would this person who was tea-bagged in her sleep feel the same level of distress about it as the woman who had lost her husband and other child in a small plane crash? I don’t know. Perhaps in each of their experiences, that was their maximum distress. I do know that I would have failed if I tried to apply someone else’s ruler to another person.
But I also know that I would have been doing them a disservice to let them sit with a feeling and with a clear overestimate of the impact of their experience on their lives. I wouldn’t presume to know how the person in the circumstance we had been describing would feel, but neither should anyone else.