Lynn Lott Therapy Talk

Come to Lynn Lott with questions and leave
with answers that enrich your life and
the lives of others

I recently got a request from someone wanting help with her teen who had been diagnosed with oppositional defiance disorder.  Duh!  Let’s see, that’s like diagnosing a one year old with failure to walk perfectly disorder if they’re still falling down when attempting to walk.  Teens by nature are oppositional.  That is their developmental job, to separate themselves from their families to try to figure out who they will become as they grow up.  Like the caterpillar who spins a cocoon to become a butterfly, teens spin an invisible web around them, and if you try to break it to regain control, they get very defiant.  Is your teen the adult he will become?  No!  Like the caterpillar, he needs to go through a metamorphosis to become the adult (butterfly). Is this a disorder?  Not in my mind.  It is a human condition and it is a relationship issue.  Your teen is struggling with his relationship with himself and his friends; he’s also struggling with his relationship with you and the rest of his family; you’re struggling with your relationship with him.  Does this create “disorder”?  Sure, because there’s so much change going on.  But that doesn’t make it a “disease”.   

So what’s the solution?  Respect!!!!  Since most of us weren’t raised with a whole lot of respect, Jane Nelsen and I wrote the book Positive Discipline for Teens to help parents figure out what the application of respect might look like with a teenager.  In that book, you learn to respect yourself, your teen, and your situation, and in doing so, you can invite your teen to treat you more respectfully.  The book teaches you how to move out of the pilot’s seat and become a co-pilot, helping your young adult make it through his or her struggles without damage that can’t be repaired to both the child and your relationship. 

I rarely plug one of my books, which is ridiculous if you think about it.  I only write when I’m trying to help folks make their lives easier.  It takes a couple of years from inception to conclusion to put a book together that is truly helpful.  I’m glad I wrote PD for Teens, because when I was parenting my first teen, nothing of the sort was available.  I hate how many mistakes I made, but since mistakes are opportunities to learn and grow, I did a lot of that.  The book is my way of giving back and making things easier for the teens and parents.

It’s a hot topic, right?  Don’t get stressed.  Are you stressed?  How do you feel less stress?  Reduce stress!  Live stress-free, and on and on and on.  Here’s a simple explanation of stress.  Think about it.  If you think life should be one way and it is another way, the space in between those two thoughts is called stress.  Different things stress different people and people handle stress in many different ways.  The trick to reducing stress is to narrow the space between the two lines (see video below).  That involves either changing your expectations or changing your life.  Easier said than done, but possible, and it doesn’t take a pill to do it.  What’s wrong with a pill, you ask?  Maybe nothing, but for many of us, we’d prefer to work on the deeper issues rather than medicate ourselves.  We like to know there are choices, which there are!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2Cfee_JPA&feature=youtube_gdata

 A client came to see me because he was experiencing what he called “a nervous breakdown.”  We talked about what had triggered his panicked feelings and about his unmet expectations of himself and others and how the difference between his beliefs about how life should be and how life was were tearing him apart.  He has always looked at depression as a biological event, but after our work together and his processing it, he’s came to find the power of his internal belief system and noticed the problems his old thinking caused. 

 I asked if I could publish his conclusions in my blog as I think what he came to could help others.  He agreed saying, “You may definitely use it if you think it will be helpful; after all, it’s just a reflection of your great work.”  What a charmer!

 These days it’s too easy to look at problems in life as an illness with a corresponding pill to correct things.  But the insight work this client did with his list of suggestions to himself will serve him well and get his life back.  He’s gone the anti-depressant route for years without ever working on his deeper issues, so nothing really changed.  If he reminds himself of his 4 conclusions and practices them, I expect that he’ll experience lasting change and a richer life.  I hope blog readers can benefit from his work, too.

 “Thanks Lynn.  As you might expect, I’ve been thinking a lot about what you said and what I’ve been going through and trying to make sense of it.  I wanted to share my thinking with you to see if you think I’m on the right track.  I’m a bit desperate to make conclusions/meanings, but don’t want to replace old bad conceptions with new bad ones.  Here’s my current thinking:

 1.  Accept myself for who I am.  I have been feeling like I can’t be successful while still being me, because I am not good enough.  This has led me to push myself beyond my limits to be something I am not and has totally stressed me out.  If I can be aware of this underlying insecurity and calm my inner critic, I think that might be a good direction to start with.

 2.  Establish healthy boundaries.  This seems like the practical implementation of accepting myself, i.e. by asking for what I want/need and saying no to what I am not comfortable with, I can protect myself from unduly stressful situations.  I really see now how I routinely give up my boundaries because I want so badly to be accepted.

 3.  Resist obsessive thinking.  I never really realized it before, but if I look back on my life, I have always obsessed on some external desire as the basis of my happiness: success in sports, drugs, girlfriends, school, nature, and now work.  Just living in the moment and putting one foot in front of the other is really hard for me, but the obsessing has always deprived me of the real joys in life: family, friendships, and simple appreciations.”

 4.  Resist grandiose and catastrophic thinking.  I honestly have felt it is my duty to save the world from itself, and that I could be some kind of pivotal hero (like John Muir or Aldo Leopold).  When reality hits me, I fall flat on my face and feel like a worthless piece of shit.  And, as you noted, make great big meanings out of isolated events (e.g. I failed a test, therefore I will never amount to anything).  I think this more than anything is what I am going through when I feel “depressed”.  Monitoring my thought processes, and stopping myself was a good suggestion.”

Other people blog, but not me. At least that was what I thought, but the temptation is too strong. I want to create a blog that’s as therapeutic as a jacuzzi. After all, I am a therapist, and I spend most of my waking hours helping people feel better and do better. I’ve got a lot to say on the subject, and not all of it agrees with the conventional wisdom. Perhaps very little matches the conventional wisdom, but that will be for you to decide. Everyone has an opinion and obviously I have mine, so it’s time I put it out there for folks who don’t show up in my office or call me on the phone or email with a request for help. I welcome your comments and questions and will do my best to respond, though given how little I know about blogging, I may be the only person who reads this.

Therapy is about having the desire to grow and change and to be open to possibilities. If you have the desire to grow and become aware of what is happening around you and your part in all of it, and if you can accept that what is, is, amazingly, many options present themselves. Options include changing your thoughts, changing your feelings, and/or changing your behavior. They’re all inter-linked, so if you change one, all the rest change, too. All of this can be done without drugs, though modern day thinking would have you believe otherwise. But more on this as we get to know each other better. For now, open yourself to the iconcept that drug-free is a possibility.

My model for therapy is an encouragement and empowerment model instead of a disease model. I believe that when relationships aren’t working (with kids, spouses, friends, family, self) it’s because we’re discouraged, not sick. If that’s true, than we need to look for ways to feel encouraged, and there are lots of those around. One of the ways I encouraged myself was to take a road trip. A lot can be learned doing something out of the ordinary and allowing yourself to follow a dream. If you’d like to read my trip journal, check it out at Road Trip.