Build Your Own Therapist at Home

“This is the advantage: Carrying another’s problems doesn’t weigh as much as your own, so overall the weight decreases both ways. Along the path you may find insight or help with the troubles, but really the importance is simply in the sharing and caring. . .”

Therapists are made out of people. 

A counselor or therapist (I'll use these interchangeably) practices a bunch of things, but a lot of what they practice is not talking.  They also practice how to search, hold and value appropriately.  They combine compassionate challenging with relationship building. They listen and respond according to what the client needs, not what the therapist needs.

But there are barriers to great treatment using only a counselor (and not your community) is the imperative that therapists not create dependency.  We are trained and believe that people should learn to deal with their own problems and be set free to practice out these skills. I believe this completely, but I can't sign off on the belief that people are better off without a therapist.

The built-in artificiality of the relationship with a counselor creates a tough situation since therapists may be a huge part of your personal change.  What do you do when you are in a negative thought loop? What about when you are preparing for a known trigger situation with only a few minutes notice? And don't tell your therapist I said so because lots of them don't believe this: Having a good relationship with your therapist will help, but it won't help when and where you may be able to benefit the most.

How many wings and wheels should your therapist have?

By building a peer-based support system you can get the challenging, emotional understanding and introspection assistance that is a large part of the benefits offered by traditional talk therapy. There are many kinds of therapy out there and not all therapists would sign off on my suggestion that the people around you can help you "therapize" yourself. And I am not really saying that you should get help therapizing yourself. I'm advocating for you to be mindful of how intimately interconnected your success is with the community you build around yourself.

Therapists listen a bit differently than most friends, and we (hopefully) respond differently to what we hear. Part of this difference is based on our treatment goal focus: our process of working on a small set of high-priority problems and guiding conversation and tasks towards these changes. Another, large part of this difference is simply that we are, at that moment, focused on the client's problems and goals, not our own needs.  This also is the same for our responses; they are focused on making sure we have properly heard not only the content but the emotional meaning behind the content.  Then, after we have been assured of understanding the situation, our advice or guidance is based on what we believe will be the best course of action for that person, not what has worked well for us in the past.  This of course is a huge simplification because our fundamental belief about how the world works and how therapy works will always inform our belief about what a person should do to make substantive changes in their own life. 

How to build this within a peer or friend. 

One thing that is important to mention: sharing meaningful content with a friend, even a close friend, has the potential of permanently changing your relationship with that person.  This may be a positive or negative change.  It may create a more meaningful, honest and trusting relationship; or it may just make future conversations and interactions awkward and uncomfortable.  Be thoughtful about what you share with whom; it may make you re-evaluate a friendship or family connection.

Personally I think the rewards are worth the risks in most cases.  You don't have to make all of your friendships super serious and deep, but increasing your emotional support network by even one or two people has the potential of creating a resource that can become very helpful.  

Okay, so now you are on board. Let's do it then.  

Firstly. No one person will be able to provide all the support or peer counsel you will need.  Segment your needs and find people that fit those needs.  Also, some problems, such as grief and loss, are too large to be addressed by only one support. Again, find how and where each of your peers can best help.  

Next. Make sure these relationships are balanced and mutually supportive.  This will probably take some training on one or both sides, but it is important that the sharing and listening is almost equal on both sides, because unlike a professional therapist, your peer will not be paid and also will not have several hundred hours of practicing not being the focus of attention. 

Then. Or maybe before then. Identify which friends or family may make the best peer counel buddies.  I think that partners and close family may be helpful to some degree, but the sweet spot is probably with someone who is not as closely linked to your problems. A cousin, an old friend from your childhood, someone you got to know well at yoga class. They should be close, yet not so invested in your life that they will be biased towards their own position in the situations. 

Next. Make a clear statement about your intent. Mention that you have been working on bettering your life through challenging yourself to be more intentional. Ask them if they are interested in being an activity partner in it. This is not about using someone as support, it's about building a mutually connective and more honestly authentic relationship with someone so you can both benefit from sincere sharing.  

Then. Test them with something safe. Maybe a decision or topic that you have already worked on yourself. Maybe something that you aren't as emotionally connected to.  

Lastly. And this is important. You need to bring their attention back to the idea that this isn't about fixing a problem or finding a solution. It's about walking with someone to help hold their weighty life while they help hold part of yours. This is the advantage: Carrying another's problems doesn't weigh as much as your own, so overall the weight decreases both ways. Along the path you may find insight or help with the troubles, but really the importance is simply in the sharing and caring.  

The Notebook Trigger Journal

A suggestion for stopping triggers and the thought spiral that comes out of them.  

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through CC @ Pixelbay

1. Carry a small pocket notebook and pencil. Fancy or plain is fine but unruled is much better.
2. Name each journal something having to do with the stage of sobriety or change you are going through at this time, maybe "Scared days" or "unsure about everything" or "I've got this," so later you can reference your experiences based on your stage. 
3. Frickin' carry it with you like I said. Like all the time.
4.  It's designed for Triggers but could work for cravings or thoughts as well. 
5. Catch yourself having an event (trigger, craving, thought, dream, emotion, etc.)
6. Write down the date, time, location
7. (optional) Write down the situation and the event (trigger, craving, etc.)  The idea is that if you do this you can look back and see what you were experiencing for sure. If you don't do this then your notebook is virtually meaningless to anyone else who reads it, looks at it or even watches you do the drawings. 
8. Sketch, draw, doodle or scribble as much or as little of the page as you need to help you bring your focus away from the dangerous thought or event.  Use more pages if you have to. It can be a detailed Celtic knot or a mess of loops.  
9. You can add anything else you want to afterwards like how it turned out, who you called, what you did to get through it or how long it lasted, but that's not as important. 

through CC by Ben Brittin

The idea isn't to think or create, it's to draw, literally draw your attention away from the event and into something else.  Those who draw, draw, those who sketch, sketch, and those who filled the margins of their school notebooks with this:

do that. The slight stimulation and attention to the drawing will be a short but very immediate reminder that the thoughts, events, or cravings are only that. They can't get you if you don't respond to them. 

It doesn't have to be the best moleskin or a #6 soft graphite pencil.  Just get something you can draw on and again, make sure you have it with you. 

Is Resilience A Normal Response to Tragedy?

For a long time the standard view of tragedy is that it only takes time for most people to get over it.  The phrase "moving on" or "time to heal" is seen as the proper way to view a situation where someone is affected by personal loss or life-altering physical status.  The loss of a spouse, of a limb, or of a child is something that we just need to go through and heal from like a cut or bruise.  

New information from Arizona State University shows that this perception may not actually apply in the majority of cases.  Up till now we thought of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, Chronic/Prolonged Grief, or life status adjustment disorders to be the result when someone doesn't bounce back as they should. Now there is evidence that the majority of people that face large life changes actually continue to be affected by these tragedies for a lot longer and to be more affected by smaller life changes, such as unemployment.  

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Used under CC license, Pixbay

The research article, appearing in Perspectives in Psychological Science, may not be the end of the conversation, but it does appear to look at the same data that has been used before and draw significantly different conclusions.  In fact it draws these conclusions by not looking for expected results.  Whereas many of the previous studies assumed that there was not a large group that were not resilient and instead looked for why or how they were or were not resilient, this study instead simply looked at how many of the people appear to be continually affected by what happened. 

What this also means is that for the many people who feel that they just aren't good enough to overcome what happened, they are not in the minority.  Losing a job or losing a husband both come with severe consequences for most of the people it happens to. This also means that the benefit of group and individual therapy is increased as it has been shown to reduce the negative impact from these events.  For those of us who are friends or family to someone who returned from deployment, lost a job or maybe has a child in foster care, it is important for us to realize that there is a good chance that time alone will not heal these wounds and that helping them find a way to unstick themselves and create meaning from it is better seen as a natural response to all such events instead of only necessary in a few severe cases. 

Building resilience is possible and it is not like eye color or height.  We can change how effective people are at facing and growing from life changes.  Our brains continue to be malleable throughout our lives, and we have developed a Neuroplasticity Retraining and Enhancement program that can help every single person through life's struggles.

Stop by or call to find out how getting to your preferred cognitive reality can help you break free from the negative habits and non-resilience your brain has learned. 

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