Navigating Conversational Currents

I’ve been thinking a lot about managing difficult conversations recently because of some intense family work I’ve been doing and thought I’d write out my ideas to help me understand them. Please feel free to comment and ask for clarification to help me further my thinking.

The gist of what I think heavily borrows from three books but with a trauma twist:   Difficult Conversations, Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work; and Hold Me Tight.

So the bulk of what I seem to be doing in therapy nowadays when it comes to conversations is to help people attune to the multiple streams of discourse that are occurring simultaneously in any and all conversations. The most superficial stream is the actual topic and the words spoken. This current is the visible surface of every conversation. Under that is the current of feelings that are still visible from above but still sometimes requires the intentional light of attention to discover. Under that lies a deeper current about beliefs, particularly about the world and one’s values in the world. Here lie beliefs about how the world should work, how others should behave and how others should treat each other. The deepest and most difficult to find current of conversation is about beliefs about the self. What is this conversation implying about who I am as a person and my value as a person? Is this conversation making me look stupid, wrong, mean or smart, right, or otherwise virtuous?

  Problems arise when the deeper currents are becoming agitated but the actual topic of conversation doesn’t move to focus on the underlying currents. Conversations about politics or religion are clear examples of when beliefs about the world become primary, but they are generally avoided because they agitate the currents of self-value, whether a person is fundamentally good and moral. Between parents and children, some conversations seem to be about mundane problems or challenges (like getting homework done or setting a curfew), but they suddenly and unexpectedly blow up because the conversation triggers feelings of “I’m a horrible parent” or “They’re treating me like a child and I am not a baby!” The tricky thing to do is to know when certain currents are taking primacy in a conversation and then being able to have conversations from that current.

When trauma is somehow in the picture (either trauma in the child, parent, or both), the waters become even choppier. Trauma has a tendency of hijacking any conversation, especially when there is strife, stress, or intensity. Trauma tends to escalate feelings very quickly too because one’s self-protective alarm response is easily triggered and rapidly mobilizes a fight or flight response. Trauma also gets deeply embedded in the currents of belief: the world is not safe, you are dangerous or scary, I can’t trust anyone, I don’t deserve love, or I deserve to be hurt.  

In these situations, it’s even more important for people to watch for how trauma is distorting or impacting the current of conversation. And, when the conversation starts to feel heated, confusing, or frustrating, then I strongly believe that people need to take a pause to figure out what is happening at all currents of the conversation. Sometimes, this can be very hard to figure out, and people may not feel safe enough to share the deeper currents. That’s why a sensitive therapist can help people articulate the currents and do so in a safe way.

It’s still very hard, though; trust me.

On Patrick Stewart's video about domestic violence and trauma

Sir Patrick Stewart talks about how he grew up witnessing his father act violently towards his mother. Then, as an adult he learned that his father's violence stemmed from the PTSD his father experienced as a veteran of WWI. It seems to me that the traumas that nations experience seep into the individual lives of its citizens, its families, for generations. I think it is so important to realize that trauma is our adversary, not other human beings. This realization is one of the most difficult, but important ones to make for anyone who has been hurt by another ...and perhaps even more important for anyone who hurts others. 

The best part of the clip for me occurs when everyone is focused on applauding Sir Stewart, but he himself stays wonderfully attentive and connected to the woman who asked the question. As a clinician who works with so many people touched by trauma, I can tell you that that caring, mindful awareness of others in the present moment is the hallmark of having healed and turned trauma into growth. For anyone who hasn't attained that growth, set course for that solar system and ...Engage! 

Bryan Stevenson's TED Talk on Injustice

This talk will certainly keep my batteries going in our work for justice-involved youth.

My Favorite Quote: we are always more than the worst thing we've ever done.

What's your favorite?

David Foster Wallace's Commencement Speech

Here is a great video illustrating excerpts from DFW's commencement speech at Kenyon College in 2005. I post it here because I fully agree with it. 

To entice those who won't watch it without some sense of what to expect, I'll tritely summarize (but I really think you should just watch it and read the full speech). The speech addresses the same issues Wallace was writing about in his unfinished novel, The Pale King. It starts with the notion that we all live life in the default mode of our own egocentric perspective. This, however, leads to a life of banality and meaninglessness, which we try to fill through worship of something--anything--whether spiritual, material or superficial. The only freedom from this banality comes from arresting the default egocentricity through radical awareness of the moment, which leads one to become aware of the experience of others. The best quote from the speech is: 

The really important kind of freedom involves attention and awareness and discipline, and being able truly to care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over in myriad petty, unsexy ways every day.

Such a loss that he left us so early. I wish I understood why the shackling weight of his own depression became no longer bearable.

The full commencement speech has also been made into a brief book called This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life. The entire speech is also available for free on the web.

Tips and Cautions for Recovering from the Boston Marathon Bombing

I was recently a guest expert on trauma for Arise News, an international news channel for New York, London, and Johannesburg. I was asked to provide tips on how the nation can recover from this recent tragedy during the Boston Marathon.

Below is an elaboration of my thoughts from this appearance.

The nature of our stress response

On a more cognitive level, our belief in the world may be challenged or shaken. I overhear people saying, "What is this world coming to?" r "We're going to hell in a hand basket!" On the most basic level, we all need to feel that the world is generally more safe than dangerous and that people are more helpful than hurtful. Without this assumption, our capacity to love and grow becomes significantly hampered, and we become more vulnerable to mental illnesses like depression, anxiety, PTSD, and even anger. Any traumatic event challenges these fundamental assumptions we need to make about the world. It is our job to remember that the world is generally a safe place, particularly for those of us fortunate enough to live in these great United States. Like I said on the news program, this tragedy was but one moment in our lives. We are supposed to respond with horror and grief. But, when that moment passes, we have to allow it to pass and realize that there have been and will be millions of moments when nothing bad happens and in fact "pockets of beauty" quoting Nietzsche emerge.

Right now, we are all mostly responding like we should. We are all a little more hyper-vigilant, ore alert, more jittery and tense. Our sleep may be disrupted and we may feel less hungry or queasy. This is our body's natural way of keeping us protected from perceived threat. We need to thank our bodies for keeping us alert for danger, but when the danger has passed, we need to help our body expend that energy (through physical exercise, crying, relaxation practices, etc) and remind our bodies that we are safe again.

A word of caution: be careful of "othering"

One other thing that our stress response does when it is on high alert, is that it looks to identify the source of threat. It needs to find the enemy. Simultaneously, this state of alarm narrows our thinking, making us think in simplified, black-and-white erms. In another parallel process, we feel horrified by exposure to evil and want to move ourselves as far away from that as possible. We all hold within us a mix of good and evil parts. But, when something extremely evil happens, we want to simplify the world, distance ourselves from such evil, and compensate by thinking of ourselves as more good. This is what I think of when I hear interviews of people who knew this young men and can't make sense of these evil acts and the good kids they used to know.

These processes leaves us highly vulnerable for wanting to find a singular source of danger and label that danger as purely evil. In this moment, particularly when commingled with grief, which leaves us wanting retaliation as a safer, less vulnerable and helpless, state of being, we are at great risk of planting seeds of hatred, discrimination, racism, and oppression. We want to say that all Chechen or all Muslims are bad people because it makes us feel safer to just assume so and leave it at that or know who to blame and hurt for what has happened.

The key to protecting ourselves from such an outcome is to stand naked in our inability to comprehend how such evil acts exists, allow these events to wash through us in waves of fear, anger, despair, and grief, then allow them to pass, realizing that the moment is temporary and soon enough new moments will arise free from this one.

How Therapy Works (Sometimes)

(Originally posted on drjacobham.com)

herapy is such an interesting, magical thing and there are so many ways that it can help and for such a variety of issues. It's honestly hard to describe what makes it work, and I think most therapists would struggle to summarize an answer. I’ll give my favorite answer to how therapy works, recognizing that it’s definitely not the only answer.

Therapy helps people heal interpersonal wounds and build trust and love with other people and more importantly with themselves

Most people who seek therapy struggle in their relationships with others and this struggle often reveals struggles in people’s relationships to themselves, which in turn is often reciprocally due to earlier problems in their relationships to primary caretakers. It’s as if all relationships at every interpersonal and intrapsychic level are literally fractal--that is, they echo each other at different scales of experience. Even a person’s relationship to their therapist echoes this core, fractal pattern of relating. I personally enjoy working in this way and pay careful attention to my experience in the room with another person and the moment-to-moment nuances in our interactions. I trust that what happens in the moment is a fractal of the core issue, so exploring and healing the moment will heal relationships that expand out into the real world and pierce inwards towards one’s relationship to the imagined “Others” in one’s heart and to one’s relationship to oneself.

I find that this careful, attentive listening works really well when working to heal all types of family relationships too. This approach seems to help people get out of the rut of having the same fights over and over again. Most family fights happen because people are too afraid to speak from the true place of vulnerability and hurt. Instead, they lash out and attack back when they feel they’ve been attacked. People also have a hard time acknowledging and listening to each other, desperate to make sure their own voices don’t become diminished or drowned. At other times, ghosts of relationships past, self-hate and self-criticism haunt us and distort everything we hear into the messages we most fear hearing. For instance, we hear “I wish you wouldn’t do that” as “I think you’re stupid and disgusting.” Or, more commonly, we hear  “I’m tired of fighting with you” as “I hate you and I’m leaving you,” which scares the heck out of all of us!

If my approach doesn’t fit with you, that’s okay. I think the fractal nature of  experience means that many kinds of therapy can heal because the healing has a ripple effect across the levels of experience. For example, a cognitive therapist might focus on uncovering and challenging destructive core beliefs about oneself or others; a behaviorist might focus on coaching specific ways to change one’s behaviors in real relationships outside the therapy room; or a psychoanalyst might explore childhood history and/or its impact on the here and now of the therapeutic relationship.

So, the most important thing to consider when finding a therapist is not what type of therapy they practice, but how they make you feel when you talk to them. All consumers of therapy know this implicitly and act on this knowing by either showing up every week or missing appointments and avoiding therapy (I wish that more of clients would express their dissatisfaction with verbal feedback, instead, so therapists can learn and become better therapists).

There is such an incredible amount of hurt that flows like a deluge across the world. It crashes through us one interaction at a time as we are hurt and then hurt the next in return. The only way to stem the tide is to actively and defiantly say “I will no longer allow this hurt to pass through me and poison me.” Then, this commitment needs to be made again and again, because the tide of hurt is big and deep. It wells around us and springs from us. But, someday, the momentum can change, such that being light becomes a little more easy, less work. I promise. Be patient. In fact, that patience is one of the first and most important acts of love and light that stems the tide.