Author: lsblmft

Asking Permission

One of the most irksome things I’ve heard people say in conversation lately is this little quip: “After all, it’s easier to ask forgiveness than permission.”

What this says to me is that most people are so convinced of the entrenchment of power in their various workplaces, families and organizations that they would rather move ahead on their own initiative, knowing they will have to repent and grovel for a moment or two when confronted instead of go through the rigamarole and nonsense of trying to get something done the expected or defined way.

I love initiative. I really (REALLY) hate power plays. But just doing something, knowing you will have to apologize later for it, smacks of manipulation to me. It’s much more honest to try to accomplish things by the accepted process, get stopped in one’s tracks, and then decide to act anyway, knowing the consequences, than to act anyway without announcing your intention.

Those whose behavior constantly calls for (planned) apologies are as much to blame for sucky organizational systems as those who hold their power and won’t bend or think outside their boxes. You’re in the dance together when you play these games. You’re just in different corners of the same dance floor.

Does Handwriting Matter Anymore?

As someone who collects and uses fountain pens every day, I really value the importance of handwriting and what it does for and with our daily lives. According to this study, even with all the digital tools we now have, no one is about to stop writing by hand any time soon.

Will handwriting survive in the digital era? Learn the provocative results of a new study | The Hot Word | Hot & Trending Words Daily Blog at Dictionary.com

Post Rapture: Why We’re Still Here

           Did you find yourself just a little distracted Saturday night, May 21st around 6:00pm? If you were, you weren’t alone. It was hard to ignore the latest, confident predictions by fundamentalist Christian preacher and Family Radio Network owner Harold Camping about the end of the world. Never mind that he had predicted the same “rapture” of the few faithful, the destruction of the world and the suffering of millions left behind before. And had been wrong, of course.
His predictions, sent around the world via radio, newspaper articles, billboards, internet posts and video links gave him a platform of influence like never before. People persuaded of his insight are said to have sold homes, cashed in pensions, quit jobs and left incredulous families behind to publically warn their neighbors, just like Old Testament prophets of old. The date came and went. But Camping didn’t miss a beat, saying he hadn’t had all the data he needed, the real day for the rapture, he now says, is this October 21st.
Camping isn’t the only source declaring dates of doom recently. Others are focused on the end of a major cycle for the Mayan calendar in 2012, convinced that the ancient civilization had some special insight into space and time. NASA, that great brain trust of space exploration, measurement and science, has been talking about an increase in solar flares next year, and has thousands of people sending in on-line questions, wondering what might happen to everything from communication satellites to the magnetic poles of the earth.
While all the anxiety about the end of the world is as old as developed human cultures, the current anticipation reminds me of several different waves of religious people waiting for the end. I think of some early Christians who sold their belongings and waited on the hills of Rome, believing Jesus literally would return “soon.” A wave of hysteria flew around Europe at the turn of the first millennia, thousands filling cathedrals in fear as the year 999 turned into 1,000 AD. And in the periods of religious revivals from 1800 into the early 20th century known as the 2nd and 3rd Great Awakenings, ignorant, charismatic preachers had hundreds and thousands expecting the rapture at multiple turns of the calendar.
All this religious energy around the judgment of God, the return of Christ, and the mention of a special “rapture” of the faithful in the New Testament is centered in three primary religious perspectives, not shared by most American Christians.
1.     The Bible as Code. In this perspective, only specially gifted preachers can figure out the messages of the Bible. Instead of the Bible as a library of ancient documents written to a culture and people that takes some education, care and patience to understand, the Bible is treated like a codebook for an elite few.
2.     Human beings as Good or Bad. Instead of seeing individual human beings as both good and bad, capable of great imagination as well as petty selfishness, this perspective puts people in one of two camps: in/good; or out/bad.
3.     God as Angry Judge. It takes a certain theology to believe that God has given up on the world, that God is no longer actively holding the world together, and interested in humanity’s future. This theology believes it knows the mind of God, and that God is finished with the world and not only is finished, but is ready to act in violent judgment.
The next time you hear someone telling you they know exactly what the end of days will look like, have compassion on them. They operate with some pretty extreme beliefs about the God and world, convictions that makes living their lives pretty hard. Chances are, that fact alone makes them anxious for God to put an end to everything they know and have them begin anew in paradise. For them, it seems like the only real way out. And that is a sad way to live, don’t you think?

Being Blog • Complicated Grief: How to Lessen Pain that Persists

As I have tried to help people, both as a pastor and now as a therapist, move through their experience of grief, I have not had a good model for what is known as complicated grief. Complex or complicated grief lasts longer than most people mourn a loss, and is so intense it blocks every other life experience of drive, desire and pleasure.

Researchers at UCLA have made brain scans of complex grief that look and behave like trauma would. Treating complex grief with a model of exposure therapy has shown a great deal of promise for people.

At last, a map for this territory!

Being Blog • Complicated Grief: How to Lessen Pain that Persists

Major Mental Illness (MMI) and the Family

For all the research that has been done in the last twenty years attempting to understand the brain, the organ at the top of our spine retains its essential mystery. We know more now than ever how the brain works, how it has developed over the centuries to do the miraculous things it does, and what is happening to it when it gets injured. Doctors, parents, coaches and professional athletes are more alert to the dangers of brain concussion. Neurologists study to become adept at repairing the brain with surgery, cellular transplant, or electrical stimulus. Every one of us has a stake in the health of our minds.
But no one has now, or may ever, understand what to do when a brain loses its essential emotion balance. Major mental illnesses (MMI) like bipolar disorder, major depression, schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorders, and severe personality disorders are currently treated with hospitalization, a variety of medicines, and several kinds of therapies including group, art, music, physical, occupational and individual, couple and family therapy. All of this effort does help a person suffering acute episodes create some safety from self-harm and violence to others. But we currently have no cure for the worse of brain diseases and dysfunction. Those afflicted with the most severe mental illness bear this burden without much hope of recovering their former, pre-illness selves. It’s a terrible, life-changing diagnosis.
Many of those who suffer also try to help themselves with illegal drugs and alcohol. It’s estimated that nearly half of those with MMI also may be drug addicted. It’s quite easy to see that a chronic emotional disorder, topped with occasional medications from a hospital stay, plus a chemical dependency, legal or otherwise, is a simple recipe for chaos. And that’s exactly what can happen. These are the majority of those we call the Homeless: adults whose illness and addiction make any kind of stable life impossible. Whose schools, work places, doctors, community programs, churches, friends and family in an uncoordinated effort tried to help but ran out of options, money, beds, time or energy.
If you have a family member with chronic mental illness, it certainly has affected your life as well. If you are like most of us human beings, the early months or years were a mix of denial, sorrow, anger, and accommodation as you tried to learn how to manage life with someone who couldn’t stay in the lanes of the average emotional highway. You may have had more than your share of blinding rage at promises broken and soaring optimism as your parent or sibling found a new doctor, a new medicine, a new religion, a new apartment. And then the up and down cycles of recovery and illness, of stabilization and hospitalization, continued. It feels insane. And in fact, it is. It’s easy to see how many people give up on the most mentally sick.
In the grand scheme of life, it’s to your emotional and spiritual benefit not to lose touch with your family member who struggles to stay mentally balanced. You may be their only connection to a person who remembers them when they were well, who has the same family features, who reminds them of their place in the human family. You may be the only person they know with a shared childhood memory. As exhausting as it can be to stay in their lives, I urge you to try.
To keep your own life in balance, to have good relationships, keep your job, and sleep well at night, you will need a simple but unyielding strategy when it comes to dealing with your loved one. Here’re my suggestions:
1.     Education: Get informed about your loved one’s diagnosis. Have a basic understanding of the medications they are on. Attend family meetings held by hospital or other care providers. Learn about the long-term physical and mental outlook of the disorder. Speak to an attorney if financial support, inheritance, property, arrest or civil commitment issues arise.
2.    Support: Seek out the understanding, company and expertise of others who struggle with mental illness in the family. Support groups such as NAMI (National Alliance on Mental Illness) and those run by your county or local hospitals or churches are excellent places to find on-going information, support and referrals to local mental health resources. It’s here where you can grieve the person your loved one may never become, and figure out to live with the person as they are.
3.     Clear personal boundaries: You will need to figure out how to care about your family member while leading your own life. Your job, your marriage and your children will all suffer if you can’t say no to requests you can’t fill, to demands on your time that can’t be met, to assumptions about money you can’t meet. You may need professional help (i.e., a good therapist) to help you manage, grieve, and maintain your limits, especially if you are connected to your family member in any helpful way.
MMI is a devastating brain dysfunction that can destroy every good relationship in its wake. One day, we may have more than a bucket load of powerful drugs to help manage and even heal diseases like schizophrenia. But until then, if you have MMI in your family, do everything you can to manage its effects and continue to lead the life you want. You’ll need help to do it; it’s a long journey.   
           
           

Missed Deadline

Chalk it up to personal development; I missed a writing deadline and I haven’t fainted dead away.

For a writer, a deadline is a looming, ever-present line in the sand. The Thing Which Must Be Met.

All through college, seminary and grad school, I have made my writing deadlines. With more or less aplomb. For twenty years I had weekly sermon deadlines. And those deadlines were deadly, let me tell you. There is absolutely no getting around a Sunday morning pulpit. Nothing quite so serious, at least for me. I have written a spiritual reflections column every dozen weeks or so for a local paper since 1997. That’s over 100 columns of over 500 words each. I have pushed my editor a time or two, but never failed to make my deadline.

And I write as a volunteer for an online psychotherapy directory, GoodTherapy.org. I’m one of their Family Therapy topic experts. I have had this monthly gig for about a year and a half. It’s here, in my volunteer world of therapy expert, that I missed my deadline last week.

Fortunately, no one called, emailed or texted me to rattle my cage. I’m a volunteer, after all. No money changes hands, no federal forms get filed on this job. Yet I have met my self-imposed deadline time after time, until sometime last week. I just didn’t have the 700 words about family life and therapy to offer.

Very simply, my own therapy life and family demands didn’t give me room to think about my column. And I didn’t force myself to create something I wouldn’t have liked a day or so later. So the Family Therapy section of the large website awaits something new from me, soon. I will get to it, as soon as I can settle on my subject and create enough time in the day to do it justice.

Perhaps that will be the topic of my next submission; how family commitments often must come first before the stuff we would like to do, have promised to do, should do. I’ll think on it. It has potential.

Boy brain, girl brain: How the sexes act differently – image 2 – life – 08 March 2011 – New Scientist

Male and female brains really are different – but not in ways you may think.

Boy brain, girl brain: How the sexes act differently – image 2 – life – 08 March 2011 – New Scientist

Empathy First

I recently had a conversation with a mentor, in which I was the subject. Sharing as I was, I was surprised to find myself feeling increasingly confused and annoyed. I kept talking, and continued to listen to the detailed feedback, but I felt increasingly alone, misunderstood and distressed. Why?

Because the first thing I needed, and expected, I think, was some empathy. It wasn’t therapy, but it was still very personal conversation. I expected more support and companionable sensitivity. Emotional affinity. That wasn’t what I experienced.

So I was reminded – in a very personal way – that the very first thing that I must bring to the therapy or supervision conversation, the first thing I offer to the one who sits, vulnerable, across from me in my office, is compassion. Understanding.

Empathy first. It’s the necessary start of healing.