You Can't Have a Tug of War if You Put Down the Rope

(attacks) - (negative responses) = stupid and cheerful

I am becoming increasingly involved in on-line discussions about the myriad topics I address in my blog. I recently posted my blog about money and happiness on a "professional" discussion group to get opinions from others. I did get a number of thoughtful responses and some interesting pointers to follow up on. Then the next morning I found this in my inbox:

What a stupid question. With respect, you cannot seriously expect any therapist to agree with the proposition that increased income correlates with increased happiness...

 

Wow, what a nice way to start the day. I was ticked off at her tone and did what humans tend to do when attacked, I wanted to attack back. Then I calmed myself with a little square breathing and remembered that I should never write anything negative down (at least when it will be seen by anyone else).

So I wrote this reply:

Thanks for the "respectful" reply Sue [not her real name].

I did not suggest therapists were the target audience of my post. Read the first sentence. It is in response to a post on an unsigned career blog I recently read.

And I do not think this is an uncommon belief, that is why I wrote about it. I would venture to say that many of your clients are under the impression that a little more money would set them free. I know that here in one of the world's commerce capitols, almost all of mine do.

How did I do? That was after several heated attempts to remove the anger I felt. I would give myself a SIX on a scale of one to ten. I could have been a lot better. The main issue is the passive aggressive way I used the word respectful. But I was still angry and she had the gall to write "with respect," when there was absolutely no respect in her post...

So a few minutes later I asked her to join my network of friends:

Dear Sue,

I appreciate your thoughtful response to my blog post. I'd like to have you in my network of associates.

Happy November,

David Ezell

Much better, no? I'd give that a solid EIGHT, perhaps a NINE.

Dear readers, arguments and fights only erupt when we choose to play. We can control our response. As you can see, it is hard, but we can do it. Just breathe, use your brain and put down the rope.

Vicarious Trauma at Fort Hood?

(talk of trauma) + (talk of trauma) + (talk of trauma) = vicarious trauma

In the media's scramble to understand the "whys" behind the Fort Hood tragedy, a great deal of discussion is being paid to the fact that the apparent shooter was a Muslim. While I am unsure of how, if in any way, his faith played a role in what happened, my thoughts go in a different direction. I wonder about the vicarious trauma that he must have faced counseling at the largest military installation in the U. S.

While more people are aware of how trauma effects humans than ever before, most don't understand the communicable consequences of this kind of trauma. Vicarious trauma is, per the Headington Institute, "the negative changes that happen to humanitarian workers over time as they witness other people’s suffering and need." While there are a variety of benefits to providing therapy this can be one of the darker aspects of the work of helping others.

Sitting and listening to patients day in and day out, especially in the pressure cooker environment of a major military base, full of veterans from two wars, has to be overwhelming. Combine that with how under staffed and under budgeted the military is with regard to mental health services and the fact that most men are loathe to talk about their feelings due to the stigma--wow! I am feeling overwhelmed thinking about the challenges men and women in military mental health must face.

Just two weeks ago Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates said that many military personnel fear a stigma if they seek help for psychological injuries. He openly criticized a government and military bureaucracy that is “frustrating, adversarial and unnecessarily complex." When the top man is that candid about the problem, it must be quite profound.

There are a variety of ways that vicarious trauma can be avoided and I want to know if any of those systems were in place, and how efficiently they were implemented, at Fort Hood. According to an excellent article from The Journal of Counseling & Development (email me for a pdf if you are interested) by Trippany, White and Wilcoxon, there are a variety of way that trauma of this sort can be kept at a minimum. Among the recommendations are keeping caseloads at a manageable level and providing therapy for therapists via peer supervision.

As this conversation continues, it will be interesting to see how those systems worked, and to what degree they did not, at Fort Hood.

Headington Institute

Gates comments on stigma

On the Outside Looking In

(no win situations) = trouble

The Maine decision has come and gone and voters have decided that not everyone in their fair state is equal. As has happened thirty times before, a targeted minority, homosexuals men and women, has been denied their civil rights by a state's electorate.

My whole life people have told me how bad the gay lifestyle is. Growing up I had it explained to me that because homos won't not settle down and have kids, they can "never understand being an adult." Since gays won't act like adults, the logic went, they are doomed to a life of loneliness and misery.

Happily as I grew into adulthood a different scenario came onto the scene--the gay marriage movement. "Wow," I thought, "this will be an opportunity for gay people to be what most people said could not be--real adults, with responsibilities to a spouse, children and a mortgage."

How foolish I was. For the same people who complained about queers tricking all night and not settling down WOULD NOT ALLOW HOMOS THE SIMPLE ABILITY TO DO SO. The had created a room with no windows and no doors. Queers were damned for not being "adult" and damned for wanting to be one.

No win situations can create anger, depression anxiety and a variety of other emotions as well. I wonder what the end result of denying a minority of tax-paying adults the right to marry will create in the long run?

Children Aren't Stupid--Are They?

(families) + (anxiety) = anxious children

I am surprised/shocked/stunned on a regular basis by parents who don't think their children are not aware of problems in their family.

"Oh he's just a baby" or "She's only four, she can't know" are common statements from parents and completely wrong. Children do not lose IQ points after birth; to the contrary, their ability to understand the world grows each day. From their brith infants are sponges that absorb, and retain, the intellectual and emotional information that surrounds them. As they used to say in the early days of IBM, "bad data in equals bad data out." If your child absorbs "bad data" from unhappy parents and other care takers, the results will most likely be far from ideal.

Parenting is very hard and the human desire to rationalize is strong. That said, families have to be aware that stress in caretakers is transmitted to the infants, toddlers and children within the family.

Read here to see more on prenatal anxiety. And work on managing your stress and keeping great relations with your family...you, and your children, will benefit.