Way to Go, Godot! on David Godot

A Symbolic Therapeutic Gardening Group for Adolescents

Fri, 09 Jan 2015 00:00:00 +0000

This morning I led a gardening therapy group for my 25 residential teenagers. I introduced the group by teaching them how to work with the plants, by way of some Ericksonian metaphors:

When a baby is born, no one knows what it’s going to turn into. It’s just this bald, screaming, helpless little thing… it could grow up to be anything. And nobody can make it become anything in particular — an artist, or a scientist, or an engineer. You just have to give it the right amount of care, so you can enjoy learning what it is going to become over time. When you plant a flower bulb, you might not have any idea what sort of flower you’ll get, what color or shape or size. You have to wait, and make sure it gets the right amount of water and sunlight so that it will become whatever its true inner self is supposed to become.Now sometimes a flower plant starts out growing in one sort of container, like this [held up a planter], but after a while it tends to outgrow that tiny plastic shell. So it’s necessary to transplant it to more suitable ground. And when you’re going to do that you have to be gentle in extracting the plant from its planter. You have to squeeze the sides gently to loosen up the root system, and then gently pull it out just slowly enough that the whole foundation of the thing will not be too disturbed. You can see how smoothly and easily it becomes ready to find its new home.But notice that the roots have taken on the shape of their planter; they’re all bound up together. So you want to just gently pull them apart a little bit so that when it gets a little fresh soil it’ll begin to naturally and automatically reach out to find new sources of nourishment and stability. To really become established in the ground and ready to grow up into whatever its true nature may happen to be.Now I could just stand this little plant up here and leave it [set the plant down on the ground], but it wouldn’t do very well because it needs care and support and connection. So when you’re placing it in the ground, make sure that you’ve dug out enough room for it to sit really comfortably in place. And then push enough soil in around the roots to make it nice and snug. Not too firm, but just firm enough that it will be held up securely while it works on settling its new roots into the ground on its own.

Positive and Negative Aspects of Shame

Mon, 12 Aug 2013 00:00:00 +0000

Shame is one of those emotions that a lot of people label “negative,” and talk about simply wanting to banish or let go of. I will argue that all emotions are useful, and only take on a positive or negative connotation in the way you’ve learned to relate to them.

What are emotions?

An emotion is an experience that puts a person in motion. It comes up in response to a situation that calls for action, and gives an intuitive sense for what type of action to take — a motive. The label given to an emotion is literally just a name for the feelings and thoughts associated with the action tendency which comes up in the body under particular circumstances.

Re-Branding Psychotherapy: Why Therapists Have Got It All Wrong & What We Can Do About It

Sun, 23 Aug 2009 00:00:00 +0000

The field of psychology is suffering a crisis of identity which is devaluing its services and damaging its practitioners. The problem, in my opinion, is the paradigm of mental health versus mental illness. “Mental illness” is a terribly stigmatizing descriptor, and “mental health” is not a sufficiently attractive construct to warrant the average person subjecting themselves to the stigma of association with the mentally ill.

Who Are The Mentally Ill?

My discussions with contemporary psychologists lead me to believe that most therapists use terms like mental health and mental illness in an attempt to normalize their patients’ experiences. They conceive of mental illness as a spectrum parallel to that of medical illness, and assume that their patients feel the same way. And, for patients who are cultivating a dependency upon the mental healthcare system, this is the case.

Hermann Rorschach & The Amazing Technicolor Inkblot

Mon, 19 May 2008 00:00:00 +0000

On a psychodiagnostic residency, where your job is just to understand people, one of the tools you use is the famous Rorschach Inkblot Test. In this test, the patient is shown a standard series of pictures created by squirting ink onto a page and then folding the page over. They are then asked to describe what they see in the blots. The answers contain all the keys to the patient’s perception. You may not see, at first, how an explanation of this technique can be of any practical value to you unless you are training to be a psychologist, but if you’ll read on I can promise you there is a payoff for us wayward seekers of personal growth.

We Live in Memories and Dreams

Fri, 11 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

In my recent article on hypnosis, I mentioned that we don’t live in the present moment. We live in memories and dreams. This is an idea that will not be unfamiliar to those with a mystic bent, but the rest of you may suspect that there is some craziness going on here. In fact, there is! But it is a craziness that is supported by a tremendous amount of neurological and psychological research.

8 Facts About Hypnosis

Wed, 09 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

Hypnosis is a sort of spooky and misunderstood phenomenon. Most of what people generally know about hypnosis comes from movies and stage performers, not real clinical hypnotists.

You may not even realize that clinical hypnosis is a very well-established and scientifically validated medical practice. It’s used by psychotherapists, physicians, nurses, dentists, and anesthesiologists to produce a profound sense of serenity in patients who might otherwise be really freaking out.

As it turns out, hypnosis is an incredibly versatile and powerful psychological technique, so it would be in your best interests to know a little bit about it and to be open to the idea. With that in mind, I’ll dispel some of the major myths about hypnosis and tell you some far-out realities about it as well:

Knowing Your Tells: Body Language and Unconscious Communication

Mon, 31 Mar 2008 00:00:00 +0000

People communicate with each other constantly, and in ways we hardly ever even realize. You heard that right: even a truly prolific writer is unlikely to ever match in written words the sheer volume of information that is constantly transmitted to the people around them, in the form of body language, expressions, small gestures, barely detectable fluctuations in muscle tone, in vocal cadence. Beyond these measurable types of physical communication, there’s another level of communication buried under and between the language itself. It occurs just as automatically as body language and just as pervasively. And, like body language, we usually don’t even realize we’re doing it.

Hypno-Oncology: Hypnosis in the Treatment of Cancer

Wed, 26 Dec 2007 00:00:00 +0000

Abstract

Clinical hypnotherapy has been soundly established as an effective treatment for the symptoms associated with cancer and its related therapies, including chronic and acute pain, nausea and vomiting, fatigue, insomnia, anxiety, and mood disturbances. Its use produces strong tendencies toward improvement of patients’ quality of life and of treatment cost. As the etiology and progression of various forms of cancer become better understood, the potential of hypnotherapy for increasing survival rates by improving medication response and even slowing or reversing the progression of the disease increases. Given the lack of risks to patients and the wide potential for benefit, additional research and clinical experimentation into this area are encouraged, and recommendations for this type of hypno-oncological exploration are discussed.

Jonestown and The Social Psychology of Accepted Truth

Mon, 04 Jul 2005 00:00:00 +0000

Everybody “knows” what happened in Jonestown, Guyana in 1978. At the behest of their charismatic leader, all the members of the Peoples Temple religious cult—the residents of Jonestown—“lined up in a pavilion in front of a vat containing a mixture of Kool-Aid and cyanide” and “drank willingly of the deadly solution” (Aronson, Wilson, & Akert, 2005, pp.4-5). That citation is taken from a popular Social Psychology textbook, and is a resounding demonstration of the phenomenon that this paper will attempt to explore: you see, the authors of that textbook feel so secure in their knowledge of the events surrounding the deaths in Jonestown that they feel no need to provide a reference for it. It is entered into the student consciousness as common knowledge. The fact that the popularly-accepted truth that Aronson, et al are parroting in this example is plainly false is almost beside the point, although this paper will provide a brief examination of some of the evidence which contradicts that accepted truth. The problem is much broader than the debunking of a single myth, and demands that some very important and difficult questions receive systematic evaluation: how is it that entire populations “know” things that contradict all available evidence, and what can be done to mediate this effect?