Month: June 2021

Great Books Volume 5: Contemporary and Wildly Useful Books Written by People I Know

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Great Books Vol 5: Contemporary and Wildly Useful Books Written by People I Know (at least on Twitter!)

Transcend by Scott Barry Kaufman – This book is for everyone! It’s deeply humanistic and optimistic and transformational. If you thought you knew anything about Maslow’s “hierarchy of needs,” you should FOR SURE read this! It’ll both blow your mind and give you a great new metaphor for understanding human needs and actualization. Also, SBK is just this very cool, super authentic, and genuinely KIND human person. Oh, and he has the best podcast ever, too – The Psychology Podcast.

Show Your Anxiety Who’s Boss by Joel Minden – This is my favorite CBT book for clients. It’s easy to read, and the take-home message is simple and easy to remember (even though Joel knows I always roll my eyes at acronyms that are made to be cute, it turns out they are memorable!). One of my favorite things is how comprehensive it feels without turning into a long list of cognitive distortions. And I just really like the term “anxious fictions!” 

The Habit of a Happy Life: 30 Days to a Positive Addiction by Jeff Zeig. Jeff has written a lot of books, and I like all of them that I’ve read (because the way he thinks, especially about therapy, is just brilliant), but they’re not all for a very broad audience. This one, however, would be very useful for many clinicians and clients alike. If you ever read Positive Addiction by William Glasser, I’d say this is like an update version – same great concept, newer research, and I like Jeff’s writing better than Glasser’s, too! 

The Suicidal Thoughts Workbook by Kathryn Gordon – Is it weird to get really excited about a book on so heavy a topic? NO! Not for therapists, it’s not! Haven’t you lamented how few good resources there are for clients around suicide? This workbook is incredibly compassionate and thorough, gentle and practical. There’s no shying away from any difficult topics, and everything is handled with confidence in and grace for the reader. This is an indispensable resource for therapists, and I have no doubt it will be life-saving for clients. 

Brains Explained by Micah & Alie Caldwell (and sort of by their cats). Look, I know I’m an intense nerd and so you won’t like all the books I like. But if you’re one of the HUGE number of therapists who is both really interested in neuro/brain stuff but sometimes also intimidated by neuro/brain stuff, you’re going to SWOON for this book! There’s definitely enough in there that’s genuinely relevant to clinical practice to make it worth the buy on its own – but be prepared to accidentally get swept up in all the rest of it, too. It’s just so…. accessible and hilarious! And the chapters are almost bite-sized. They’re like…dessert-sized. What more could you want? (Oh, they have a fun YouTube channel, too!)

ZigZag by Michael Apter – Michael is one of my most treasured mentors. If you’ve read any of the Reversal Theory blog posts, you have also benefitted from his brilliance! He’s also written several books, but this one is the newest introduction to RT and it’s really accessible. So many more people (including your clients and yourself!) will find this book somewhere between interestingly useful and life-changing, so give it a try! 

Updated! Come As You Are by Emily Nagoski CAYA is my all time favorite book about sex!! Although it’s geared toward women, I almost always have men in relationships read it, too, especially if they’re in relationships with women. Emily is an incredible writer – she has a wild gift of taking really good, dense research and turning it into something both understandable and meaningful for the lay reader. Make sure you get the newest (revised & updated) version that was published in 2021, mostly because she says she likes it better. 

Also, CAYA has a workbook! (In fact, two cool things about the workbook. One is that I am one of the people who helped review it for initial edits, which was super fun! The second is that I’m pretty sure my husband is the reason the book exists – when we first read CAYA in 2013, before Emily was crazy famous and busy, he just emailed her to ask if she had any of the exercises in PDF, so we didn’t have to mark up the actual book and we could have 2 of each of them. So, she made them into PDFs and emailed them. Then, she put them on her website. Then, this book became a thing!)

And, yes, I’m a Nagoski superfan, so Burnout: Unlocking the Secret to the Stress Cycle (by Emily & Amelia Nagoski) makes this list, too. Incredibly useful, especially for that subset of adult female clients who grew up learning that they had to always play support roles, even unto exhaustion (and maybe developed resentment, anxiety, or low self esteem as a result). Goes along nicely with the podcast The Feminist Survival Project 2020. Just a note – both the book and the podcast lean pretty heavily liberal, but as long as I have warned my conservative clients about that, it’s been ok. 

Oh, and SURPRISE! I wrote a book, too! 😉 But you can’t have it until August! 

 

 

Comment below: What are your favorite therapy-oriented books these days? 

Crazy, Stupid, or Awful?!

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Crazy, Stupid, or Awful?!

The foundation of couples’ work is often training them to listen. And of course, listening is actually incredibly difficult and relatively complex. For example, it involves all those difficult skills like self-soothing, holding difficult emotions, making space for the other person, accurate empathy, maximizing the use of working memory, tolerance for ambiguity, etc. And that seems overwhelming even here on this therapy blog, and it’s certainly overwhelming in session. But here’s an idea I sometimes put out in session when things start spiraling: 

You aren’t crazy, stupid, or awful and you probably didn’t marry someone who is crazy, stupid, or awful. So, there might be a misunderstanding in here somewhere. Let’s find it, shall we? 

Clients are more than likely to agree with the idea that they themselves are not crazy, stupid, or awful (and it’s nice to  validate them first, before going on to “defend” their partner). They also usually aren’t willing to say in therapy that their partner is one of those things. They at least don’t want to be married to (or in a relationship with) someone who is crazy, stupid, or awful.

This pause on our end often lets them pause on their end and create a little bit of space to hear their partner’s content differently. Yay! 

Occasionally, they will say their partner is crazy, stupid, or awful. Ok, no problem – now we know we’re in a contempt-place (in the Gottman way), and we can change gears to a process-rather-than-content level. 

 

Comment below: How do get couples to pause and refocus in session? Also, “QuotesFromSession” is a new tag – do you have any go-to session quotes that you often find useful? 

 

 

 

Preposterous Quote – Courage

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There are two levels on which I want to address this preposterous quote. 

(1) I dislike, in general, inaccurate measurements. Specifically, in therapy, I dislike the idea that our own limits are not knowable. I believe that’s part of what is fundamentally useful about therapy – building accurate self knowledge and self awareness!

Look, I don’t want clients to live in a constant state of not-fulfilling-their-potential because they underestimate themselves. I don’t want them to reduce themselves to chronic-victimhood because they aren’t encouraged. I don’t want them to choose avoidance as a proxy for safety, when they could choose skills and strength instead. I don’t want them to suffer from the “untimely deadness of a too narrow existence” (Gendlin, 1973).  

I also don’t want clients to be shamed or feel shame because they actually do have limits. I want us all to know and honor the limits of our bodies, our strength, our coping. That’s when we know to access additional resources! That’s how we keep ourselves functioning for tomorrow’s challenges! 

When you’re drowning, yes…. you do usually have more oxygen available than you’re afraid you have. And use it all, please! You do usually have another half hour in you to work on that project that’s due, even though you’re really tired.  You probably do have a little more self control left over to speak kindly to your partner even though you’re stressed out from your work day. You probably do have more strength than you are afraid you have, more than you initially believe you’re capable of.

Let’s learn our REAL limits, so we can grow at our true edges. 

(2) I don’t mind the definitions of courage than rely on fear (“It’s not brave if you’re not scared”), but I really prefer the deeply existential understanding of courage – that you willingly act without knowing the outcome. And we never really know the outcome! We pretend we know the outcome, we relax into that lie sometimes, but we don’t ever really know how anything is going to turn out – our action or our inaction. That makes pretty much everything you do “courageous,” if you’re doing it willingly and acting in “good faith” (i.e., with knowledge of your own personal responsibility in living). 

 

 

Comment below: As always… your thoughts? Your definition of courage? 

Behaviorism for Parents 3

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Behaviorism for Parents – Moving Up (Lesson 3)

(If you haven’t read the first two installments, find them here and here.) 

You don’t want to reward your kid for every little thing forever.

(1) First, how much does that behavior become intrinsically (or naturally) rewarding, meaning it will maintain itself over time after awhile? For example, exercise might be this way. We have to reward ourselves in the beginning to make it a habit, but once we start feeling better exercise is easier and more pleasant and our bodies feel good, so we don’t have to reward it anymore. Speaking more kindly results in nicer, easier relationships; sometimes even keeping one’s room clean ends up feeling good. If your kid starts doing a behavior with no reminders and no complaining, you can try just reducing the amount or frequency of the reward over time.

(2) You may be able to improve behavior through shaping, as described in the last post.

(3) You may want to use chaining. It’s similar to shaping, but chaining means stringing several desired behaviors together. You probably already did this at least once during potty training, because that’s a multi-behavior process (where each behavior was probably also shaped). When you first started potty training, you probably did all the work – getting to the bathroom, disrobing, setting the kid on the toilet, wiping or helping them wipe (wiping effectively is definitely one of those behaviors that needed shaping!), redressing, flushing, and washing hands. All your kid did was sit there and sometimes pee or poop. And at that time, they probably got praise or the potty song or an m&m, right? But eventually, you didn’t reward them just for peeing, they also had to flush. Then pee, flush, and pull pants up and down. All the way to being able to the whole chained process! (And, depending on how old your kids are, you probably don’t even give them m&m’s anymore -haha!)

(4) You may want to use a token economy. A token economy is especially helpful (and more convenient) when kids get older and so rewards are a little more substantial or when they can handle a little delay in their reward. (Remember, really little kids can’t make the connection even with a few minutes’ delay (this is why you brought the m&ms to the bathroom with you!), but older kids’ and teens can wait till the end of the day, week, or even more.

A token economy means that you use something symbolic (a “token”) to keep track of the rewardable behaviors, and then give the reward once they’ve added up. This could be stickers on a chart, or paper tickets that can be turned in, etc. One way to do this is just for any extra helpful chores, behaviors, etc. – for example, when a kid does a task that helps the family that’s not part of their regular responsibilities, they get a sticker. Once they get 20 stickers, they get $20. (This is more convenient than giving $1 each time.)

But if you’re using the token economy to keep track of regular chores, behaviors, responsibilities, you need to make sure that the child is regularly earning between about 60-80% of their available tokens per day. If they are earning 100% every day, it actually reduces their motivation. You can increase the difficulty of the tasks. If they are earning under 60%, they’ll also lose motivation. That means you need to reduce the difficulty of the behaviors to keep them invested in the program.

 

 

Comment below: What other behaviorism techniques might be useful for parents?