Reader Questions

Posted on by
Reply

Counselorssoapbox.com

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

A slight change in format and procedure here. In the past, I was calling this feature “Morning Questions” but there needed to be a change in my writing schedule if that book in my brain was ever going to get down on paper or electrons. So the main blog post will be going up in the early AM.

I thought about calling this feature short questions or brief answers but sometimes they will be brief and other times not so brief. I settled on the title “Reader Questions.” My goal is to provide useful information and commentary while avoiding filling your inbox with excessive posts. These Reader Question posts will probably be infrequent unless there get to be more questions. Henceforth when a question or comment comes in or someone uses a search term that needs an answer you will see a Readers Question post.

The question why? – In therapy

Posted on by
2

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

The question why in therapy.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Does it help to know why?

More than half the time in most therapy sessions is spent on the question of why? Most of the time the focus of the why question, is not on the client but on some other person in their life. Clients spend a good deal of time asking me why their partner did this or that, why did their parents do something, and so on.

It would be reassuring to know why. Most of us think if we just knew “why” then we could prevent something bad from happening. The great illusion of most relationships is that we can somehow control the behavior of others. Most of the time we can’t control the others in our lives, and except for teaching our children good behavior, controlling others is probably not healthy.

The questions we should be asking are not about others. More helpful questions are the ones we ask about ourselves. What do I really want out of life, what are my values? How much am I willing to invest in reaching my goals? Can I accept this situation? What am I willing to do to change?

Sometimes we focus on others to avoid looking at ourselves. It is easy to upset yourself about things happening in the next apartment, across the street, or across the country.  Looking at what is happening in your own life is more productive. It is also more challenging.

People like to vent about their partner, their boss, or their children. It would be easy to devote a lot of therapy time to talking about others. Conversations between friends often turn to talking about others. We call that practice gossiping. It is easy to do. We may even think that by discussing others, we can gain some insight into the situation, some way to improve our outcomes.

One thing we tell clients in therapy is that it is not productive to talk about people who are not in the room. Taking about your conflicts with your partner may make you feel better, temporarily, but it won’t change the situation. There are two ways to improve this relationship situation, get the other person in the therapy room, or change yourself.

Marriage, Child, and Family Therapist’s work from a “systems” perspective, to change a family situation it helps to get all the people involved in the room. Often the “identified patient” is not the one with the problem. Let’s look at some examples of this situation.

The mother comes in with her teenage child. The child has a severe weight problem. The child has become depressed as a result of being overweight. Despite mom’s best efforts to put this teen on a diet, make them exercise; the teen continues to gain weight. The teen comes to therapy; they don’t want to talk about their weight. What is on their mind is the way their parents have been fighting and every time they go to visit Grandma, she runs mom down the whole visit.

Turns out that because of the marital conflict, every time dad takes this teen out they stop somewhere for something to eat. Dad always says “don’t tell your mother, she is way too hard on you,” which the teen tries to respect.

When the teen visits grandma, she does the same thing, makes excuses for why the teen does not need to lose weight, and rewards the teen with food treats. Grandma does not like her daughter-in-law and gets even with her by being the teens “friend” and sabotaging the mother’s plans for the teen to lose weight.

Working with the teen around weight loss may not be very effective. One approach is to get the whole family together at once and talk about how they are all colluding to use the teen’s weight as a way to try to control or get even with other family members.

Sometimes we can’t get the whole family to therapy. We have to work with the teen on what they really want. If the teen is impacted by this weight issue, we may need to help them to learn how to say no to dad and grandma’s efforts to sabotage their diet. Some teens can’t resist the family dance and are stuck.

Boys escape this family dance by joining the military or running away from home. Girls try to escape by getting pregnant, moving in with a man, or some other way of having to leave the family. Both genders may also use drugs and alcohol to escape intolerable conflicts.

Another situation that results in a lot of talk about a person who is not in the room is the spouse of the alcoholic or addict. They are likely to want to spend a lot of time on how to make their partner stop or on what they did to make them drink and use.

The spouse did nothing to make their partner abuse substances.  A bad relationship may have contributed, but it is not the cause. People drink and use to change the way they feel. Eventually, they lose the ability to cope without the substances. Some people can use and drink a little or even drink a lot and then stop when they want. Other people find that when they try to stop, they can’t. We consider this an example of the disease of addiction.

There is not much the non-using partner can do to stop the other person’s substance abuse.  They have a choice. End the relationship, say that this is more than you signed on for and you are done, or you can accept that the other person is the way they are and go on from there. Spending time talking about the person who is not in the room is not helpful here either.

Do you spend a lot of time asking why others do what they do? How much time have you spent looking at yourself? What do you really want? What can you accept or not accept?

Don’t waste time on the why; work on the “what and how” of the changes you need to make to have a happy future.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Why they don’t finish college.

Posted on by
Reply
School classroom

School.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

The prize does not always go to the fastest, the best, or the brightest.

Recently there has been some pressure on the college system, especially the community colleges, to account for the large number of students who start college but do not finish and of those that do frequently take far longer than the recommended number of years to finish up that degree.

This pressure makes sense when we think of what it takes to run an institution of higher learning. The public resents subsidizing students who want to keep going to school and yet never finish and start working. The objective of the community college among other things is to help people learn skills that will lead to employment so students who just keep on going but never graduate seems like an abuse of the system.

Having been one of those students and then having had the opportunity to return a few decades later to teach some classes, let me try to explain what is going on here.

So let me tell you a story. This is a story about an athletic scholarship but the principle would be the same regardless of the student’s goal. And since you may remember that I am a story-teller at heart forgive me for any inadvertent embellishment.

There was this kid, Jess was his name or so they tell me, that lived up in the mountains. He liked to go out along the trail that led down to the old country store. He liked the hill so much he would find almost any excuse to run down that hill to that store. Jess would run every chance he got just for the pure pleasure of it. Every day people would see Jess running, there goes that fool boy running again they would mutter, and off he would go.

Running up and down those hills was the best thing in Jesse’s life. He did not try to run real fast, no point in that, cause he just like being out there in the woods on the trails. But he was getting stronger and stronger. Real strong runner the people in town would say.

Now down in the valley, there were these bunch of people and a whole parcel of schools. One school, in particular, they had this great big fancy running track. They had some track club run there almost every weekend. This kid’s name of Arnold, Arnold T. Spingate, his dad took him there all the time. Arnold’s dad was a runner and he wanted his son to be one also.

So starting at age 5 Arnold T Spingate, his father signed him up for a running club. By six he was running in competitions most everywhere. And was that boy fast. He won most times he ran. Only one problem Arnold did not like to run, he only did it cause his dad pushed him. The more dad pushed the harder Arnold ran and the harder he ran the more he won. You would have thought that this would make dad proud, but no matter how much Arnold won dad pushed him some more.

Now on the other side of town lived a kid name Lee, you were expecting the poor side weren’t you? Well, they weren’t exactly poor, not poor like Jess up in the mountains but they did not have the money like Arnold’s family. But one thing Lee had, was parents that loved him, and that encouraged him. He also had an elementary school P. E. teacher that told him the way to be something someday was to go to college and the way to do that was to get a scholarship, an athletic scholarship if you could.

So Lee decided in one of the early grades he was gonna win a scholarship to a college. He wasn’t real big, no good at football and not real strong like the wrestlers, but he was passable at running and so day after day, week after week, while all the rest of the school did them team sports Lee just kept on running. He was not for sure the fastest but that did not stop him he just kept running.

So you can see where this is going, can’t you? This big fancy college down at the end of the valley, they had them some leftover athletic scholarships so they set up this race and they invite the runners from anywhere about that want to come to try out. Their plan was to find the best runner and offer them a scholarship to come run track for their school.

Now the week before the big race, last-minute like Jess hears about this race while hanging out at the country store. He gets some teasing bout how he was always running so he decides to give it a shot and signs up for this big race.

Arnold never had a say in it. His dad had the application all filled out and ready to sign before Arnold T. Spingate ever saw it. Arnold does not want to race, getting tired of this. His friends are all going to a party the night before the big race and he wants to go. His dad wants him to race.  So they strike a deal. Arnold can go to the party he just needs to be home by ten P. M. so he can rest up for the race.

Now Lee hears about this big race from his school coach. This is what he has been waiting for. He keeps on training as hard as he can. Lee’s family didn’t have much money so he doesn’t even ask them for help, but Lee does mow a couple of lawns to earn that bus fare to the school where the big race will be.

Well, the day of the race Jess shows up in a pickup driven by his uncle who bright him down from the mountain. Lee rides the bus and gets there just in the nick of time. And Arnold, he shows up in his dad’s fancy new car. Arnold does bring along this great big hangover to keep him company. His dad is of course furious.

Seems Arnold was so used to winning, the way he figured it, he could stay out as late as he wanted and on this occasion, he tried drinking like his buddies. Arnold has won so many races he figures he will win hangover or no.

So who do you like to win this race? The kid whose father has had him running and winning since he could walk? Or the kid who runs day and night all over the hills, who does it for the fun of it. Or that kid who no one thought had any talent, including him but he has stuck with it for all these years working and practicing for this shot.

So if you were thinking at this point that I picked those names, Arnold and Lee and Jess because of some big-name politicians, why you would be wrong. If you were figuring these were their real names, well you’d be wrong about that too.

What I hope you got is that the people who finish college are not the smart ones, they usually get sidetracked and start partying. We know F students drink twice as much as A students. The ones who go because they like to learn, they don’t always finish school either. They get bored with all those required subjects and many times they don’t know how smart they are cause they have never been told they could do anything and so they quit before long. The ones who finish college, why those are the ones that just keep going class after class till they get it done.

Who won the race you ask? How would I know? I never did hear that. You will need to figure that one out for yourself. But keep asking yourself how many others never got to race. Cause if college is only for the winners how do we know who should get the chance to race?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Has our diet of self-esteem spoiled?

Posted on by
1

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Low Self-esteem

Low Self-esteem.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Is self-esteem making us sick?

We have reached the point, in much of this world, where everyone needs to be above average. What this means for us and for our future is yet to be determined. But it is possible that this constantly forced diet of having more self-esteem is starting to make us all sick.

First, we need to figure out what above average means. Average used to be a mathematical concept, take scores, add them up and divide by the number of people. We also had mathematic concepts for the most common score and the score in the middle.

I have never heard any individual referred to as being a “modal” or “median” person. But lots of people get referred to as “average” and this is customarily used in a derogatory manner as if being average was somehow to be less than acceptable.

There are some huge consequences of this “everyone needs to be above average” theorem.

First, we need to lower the standards until at least half of us can get above that score. So it has become common practice for some years now that everyone in a class needs to get an A. Anyone who did not get an A is now considered a failure. That requirement for perfection has resulted in a culture of giving out lots of A’s. Everyone gets an A now.

Now when I was in school a perfect GPA was a 4.0. If anyone was getting a grade better than that, they never told us. Yes, some really smart kids when over to the college for a few classes the last year in High school but they might get a B or even a C in that college class and we will all very impressed that they were taking college classes.

Today I hear that kids are taking AP classes in high school. This has been going on for a while now. So the good colleges now will not look at a student with a 4.0 GPA which used to be a perfect score. Now you need a 4.2 or 4.3 to get considered.

The result, more kids get A’s but the “average” kid can’t read or write and they get their education from watching television.

We are in fact distorting things so that reality is no longer real. Everyone is above average and anyone who is not perfect is a failure. Life has become a virtual adventure. Homes include virtual pets and virtual parents.

Thank god for prisons. Because the prisons are our great housing project for people who are not above average. Many prison inmates are in fact illiterate. So we are close to making being below average a qualification for being a permanent member of the incarcerated class.

Now if you are above average always, even if they have had to lower the bar so you can always be above it, you might come to think of yourself as better than average, superior, even entitled. We used to call this narcissistic. We have stopped thinking of people who feel superior as narcissistic and we now evaluate them as either “average” or a political candidate. Those who have refined narcissism to a science get to lose other people’s money on Wall Street.

Now if you are above average, and everyone is above average and to be below average means you are a worthless failure, what do you do when you fail to be above average at something.

Why you get angry, very, very angry. You blame the test, the teacher and the whole school system. And if no one agrees with us that being less than average is not fair then we could sue or get violent.

This whole need to be better than others to be OK is at the root of a lot of this world’s problem. My religion needs to be more correct than yours otherwise I may be wrong and less right than you and that would mean that I am defective somehow. So if you do not believe like I do I need to kill you to make me more religiously correct. See how this whole need to always be better than others and more correct can be a rabbit hole down which society may disappear to never be seen again.

Mr. Ellis liked to remind us, I kind of miss that guy these days, that the problem was not low self-esteem. The problem is this whole notion of rating ourselves as if our whole life were some sort of televised bowl game and we needed to die with the highest score.

Rather than this whole truckload of self-esteem and how we need to be better than everyone else, we need to be talking about how to be more accepting, of ourselves and those who are different from us in so many ways.

Higher levels of compassion are desperately needed and the place that most needs an increase in compassion is right in our own homes. Start by having more compassion for yourself and those around you and then when you have some excesses of compassion spread that around. Unlike self-esteem where you dare not give it away or you will run out, compassion has a much better flow rate. You can spread compassion around and it seems to go on forever.

Want a healthier world? Switch from a high self-esteem diet to a high compassion diet.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Drinking a little alcohol can make PTSD worse

Posted on by
1

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Nightmare

Nightmares maintain depression and PTSD.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay

The Alcohol and PTSD connection.

Alcohol has some strong effects on people with PTSD and those effects turn out to not be what we expected.

Recently I came across a couple of studies about the interaction of alcohol and PTSD. There may be more studies about this and I will keep looking. But here are some things we think we know.

The way in which memories are stored will depend on the level of alcohol in the bloodstream when the traumatic event occurs. Alcohol consumption is related to trauma; more than one study has indicated that people who perpetrate violence are more likely to be intoxicated.

I know that this does not mean that drinking makes you violent. Millions of people have a drink every day and do not go out and perpetrate violence. But among those who do get violent, a great many are under the influence of drugs or alcohol. It is easy to see that when someone is drunk they have reduced control of their behavior and having lowered inhibitions they are more likely to engage in violent behavior.

What we also find is that victims of violence are frequently under the influence of drugs and alcohol. Being intoxicated reduces your self-protective behavior and you are more likely to put yourself in a dangerous situation, more likely to look like an easy target to someone with a violent intent and intoxicated people are more likely to “not take it anymore” and engage in argumentative and assertive behavior.

So why would drinking by someone who had been the victim of a violent trauma make the PTSD symptoms worse?

A small amount of alcohol in someone’s system may increase PTSD symptoms rather than anesthetize them for several reasons. Maintaining control of thoughts and emotions especially the intrusive memories from PTSD requires sustained effort. Alcohol reduces the ability to ward off those emotions.

Bisby, in his study, found that intrusive memories in PTSD were most likely to be suppressed at the extremes of blood alcohol content. So with no alcohol in the bloodstream, the memories could be shut off by the person’s effort. As the level rose they were less able to control those intrusive, memories until the blood alcohol levels reached the legally drunk point. While this study stopped with a blood-alcohol level of .08, the definition of legally drunk, it is likely that the memories would have continued to decline as the person became progressively more intoxicated (Bisby et al. 2009.)

Now, this study did find that memory for facts, the verbal memory portion, was impaired and the more alcohol in the bloodstream the less accurately the person remembered precisely what had happened.

What they did remember more of when under the influence was the emotional feelings associated with the traumatic experience.

Additionally, I suspect that some of this increased recall of trauma with a low-level of alcohol in the bloodstream is the result of state-dependent learning. The presence of alcohol in the bloodstream opened up the memories that had been stored away and sealed off when sober.

Further, this study concluded that people with small amounts of alcohol were more likely to develop PTSD as a result of a traumatic event. As I mentioned in a previous post the presence of alcohol in the bloodstream increases the storing of the emotions of the event while surprising the factual memories.

Having alcohol in the system during stressful events may not calm your nerves and improve your coping skills. It is more likely to reduce the ability to cope and increase the risk of developing a PTSD response to being the victim of trauma.

So for any number of reasons, consuming a small amount of alcohol is not a good idea for someone who has experienced a trauma. A small amount will increase traumatic memories and it will take highly intoxicating levels of alcohol to shut those memories off.

The result is that people with PTSD who drink any alcohol are at high risk to develop a severe case of alcoholism.

This is one more case where the use of chemicals to avoid pain can, in fact, result in increased pain when the chemicals drop below intoxicating levels.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Happy Holliday Thoughts

Posted on by
Reply
Fall scene

Happy Holidays

Wishing you a most happy holidays

It is a new day dawning –

Time to look for a happier future

Maybe the time of year or maybe the time of man –

To paraphrase a couple of songs from Woodstock

Let’s try to get it right this time

This might be our last chance

More to come

More of what is not working – curing gun violence and the NRA

Posted on by
1

Why don’t violent people get mental health treatment?
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

America does not seem to learn.

The common prescription for anything wrong in our society is to do more of whatever has not been working. Gun violence is the most recent social problem to receive this prescription.

We have of course tried this prescription before, almost universally to ill effect. No one likes to admit they are wrong and we as a society can’t seem to face the idea that our present approaches to societal problems are not working and is not likely to work. We have been down this path before to bad effect, but there are those in our society who think the prescription for gun violence is more guns.

For the record gun violence is not the only violence that has become epidemic in our society. School shootings make the news – for a while, this week we all thinking about them. Next week we will be on to concern about some other threat for which we will want out leaders to pour on more of what has not worked.

Here are some examples of problems that we have tried to solve by pouring on more of what did not work and then back to the issue of gun violence.

War on drugs.

We have been fighting the war on drugs for longer than the war in the Middle East. We still don’t have an exit strategy for the war on drugs. In this war, we have suffered a lot of casualties and taken a lot of prisoners. Our prisons are over-full and we are now letting people out just to reduce the overcrowding.

With all that expenditure on the war on drugs, we should have drug free cities by now. Is your town drug-free? Mine sure isn’t. Have you noticed that the drug “game” includes lots of violence? Usually gun violence? Most news reports of drug busts include a recitation of the number of guns seized. Has our current policy toward drugs increased or decreased the violence on our streets?

Recently we have attempted to reduce illegal immigration by building a fence along our southern border. This reminds me of the magician who points in one direction while picking your pocket with the other hand. Never mind that there are significant numbers of illegal immigrants arriving every day by plane and ship on both our coasts. Some have pointed to the increased southern border activity as the reason for a reduction in illegal immigration. Never mind we needed to have a serious recession to eliminate the jobs that were drawing people to this country.

Next, I expect to hear we need more recessions to reduce illegal immigration. Sound far-fetched? Well doesn’t this sound just like the plan to reduce school shootings by putting armed guards on school campuses?

Schools are not the most dangerous place for children.

Their own home is more dangerous! Let’s look at the numbers. So just how many children have been dying in school shootings?

I found a list of school and mass shootings on the internet and did a quick addition of the deaths on the list. Even if my math is off a little, here is what I found. (Please see “Information Please Database” from Pierson Education.) From 1996 to 2012 about 200 people have died in school or mass shootings in the United States. The rest of the world, on this list, had just over 180 deaths. This is over an approximate 17 year period. Possible some were missed on this list, but the point is that the U. S. has more mass shooting deaths than those in all the other countries of the world combined!

So how dangerous is sending your child to school? Not that even one shooting death of a child is acceptable but where else might children be shot? On our streets? In their own home?

Every year in America about 750 children are killed by their biological parent who then kills themselves. This is not a step-parent, but the biological parent who usually kills their intimate partner then kills their children and finaly kills themselves.

Following the NRA’s logic, we should need to place an armed guard in every home in America with two biological parents. The danger from parents with guns is roughly 70 times greater than from strangers shooting a child in a school. So it is not strangers or schools that are hazardous to our children. It is us, all of us, and our attitude that more of what does not work will fix that problem.

One thing that struck me while reading this list is that in the early years there were lots of one-person shootings. Recently all over the world, but especially in the United States, the number killed in each shooting has risen.  But then so have the number of children killed by their parents in the home. We are becoming desensitized to violence.

Consider how many of these shootings in the home and in the school had two common elements. Guns that hold a lot of bullets allow for mass killings. The person who did the killing died during the event usually by killing themselves.

People who are suicidal, who have lost hope may think that resorting to violence is the solution and if they are going to kill themselves they just may decide to take their partner, their children, their schoolmates, or their fellow workers with them.

The best solution for mass killings seems to me to be reducing the lethality of weapons, fewer bullets per gun. Our strategy also needs to include identifying those who have lost hope.

More counseling for the lonely, depressed, and isolated might reduce the need to counsel victims of killings. Still, I doubt we will do much of this.

Doing more of what doesn’t work is just the American way.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Body remembers what the mind forgets

Posted on by
5

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

The body remembers what the mind forgets.
Photo courtesy of pixabay.

We don’t have just one memory system.

Seems that memory is a lot more complicated than we used to think. Like computers with different operating systems, our brain has a lot of different ways in which memory is saved, processed, and recalled. This may explain some of the problems we have with sudden unexplained reactions to things that we didn’t know would affect us that way.

People with a history of trauma may respond in extremely strong ways to seemingly minor things. This is not an “over-reaction” but this unusually strong reaction to a small cue in the environment may be connected to the way they have stored that memory.

Let me try to explain this one and see if I can get this memory stuff right.

One way we remember things is by creating a story about the events. This is called the “verbally accessible memory system (VAM.)” These memories can be saved accurately when we are paying full attention to what is going on. This is the kind of memory that is most useful for the student sitting in class listening to the teacher and taking notes.

The second form of memory is called Situational Accessible Memory and is largely a compilation of the sensory data that is stored in a second redundant memory system. So this memory system will be recording how the person felt during that lecture. Was it boring, did their back hurt? If the lecture was boring they may store the bodily sensations they experienced while in class. If the lecture used humor and stories the student may remember laughing and enjoining the class.

These memories are not stored in one system or the other but in both. Which system holds the most detailed and important memories depends on a whole lot of what was going on at the time things happened.

Many people will tell us that their first memory in life was a picture of something they saw often combined with other sensory data such as smells, tastes, or tactile experiences. As we get older we develop more of a vocabulary and are able to record more of the verbal story elements. We come to know that the brown thing was a cookie and those dots were chocolate chips and that smell was mother baking. The sensory data is transformed into the story of mom’s Christmas chocolate chip cookies.

Sometimes, times in later life, when emotional events happen or we experience a trauma, the body shuts off or restricts that verbal channel, and as a result that emotional event is stored as a highly emotional sensory memory.

Levels of various chemicals in the bloodstream and in the brain, which is largely filled with blood, determine the way in which these memory systems interact. Hang with me here because some of this may explain why we remember or don’t remember aspects of trauma.

Our human brains also include some primitive structures and processes. One system governs those basic survival skills we share with other animals. So the lizard’s reaction to stress and ours is a lot alike.

The lizard sees your hand coming, he tries to hide by freezing and not moving. Maybe if he does not move you won’t see him. This protective mechanism functions automatically just like your heart that keeps beating all night even though you are asleep. So regardless of what you plan, there is likely to be a hesitation when an emotionally charged event occurs. During that hesitation, we, just like the lizard, tend to freeze. Police officers and combat troops need to be overtrained to respond in order to reduce that hesitation.

Next, as the hand continues the reach for the lizard, he will suddenly spurt as fast as he can go to get away. This behavior we call flee. During that flee process all resources will be focused on escape. So during this process, verbal memory will stop or reduce recording. People who have experienced trauma might describe this as “blind fear.” So while they are running they may not remember where they went, what they leaped over, or what sound was coming over the radio, still, some other sensory data may be stored at a magnified volume.

Lastly, the poor lizard in our story, cornered with no way out, will turn and flare out to try to make themselves as large as possible. They prepare to fight, even knowing they may die, but they are going to get their licks in and hope when they bite you, you will drop them in pain. Humans sometimes report that when they got far into fear or anger they began to attack even though there was little hope of winning the fight. This is sometimes described as a “red out” meaning the anger got so strong that most other verbal memory processes and rational thought shut off.

In higher mammals, there is one other stress response here that has a bearing for humans. The puppy when under attack may roll over on its back, exposing its stomach or neck and in effect giving up. They are saying to the attacker go ahead do what you want I give up. We might call this behavior “placating.” In a human that rolling over and playing helpless or dead is often accompanied by some form of dissociation. This could be a momentary blank spot in the memory recording or a longer dissociation.

So during all these automatic behaviors, the verbal memory system will be turned down and the sensory memory system will be turned up.

This result of shifting memory systems may explain why a seemingly unrelated sensory trigger can set off an episode of fear and stress. The victim of a previous assault may see a yellow car and suddenly be overcome by fear. Last time an assailant chased them they ran full speed until they ran into a yellow car, seeing that same color car causes the sensory memory to spring back to work and recall the full trauma, stress hormones, and all.

Hope that explains some of the potential relapse triggers for emotional conditions that may be present in the sensory memory even if not available consciously in the verbal memory system. My apologies to any memory researchers out there if I have gotten any of this theory incorrectly.

So have any of you ever experienced a sudden emotional response that came out of nowhere?

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Waiting for the Ah Ha moment

Posted on by
5

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Insight.

Insight.
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Those sudden moments of insight.

Have you had one of those times when suddenly it occurred to you that the way you had been doing things just wasn’t working? Where do those sudden insightful moments come from and why can’t I seem to get these things until I have done it wrong at least a thousand times?

There was that time when I went to register for classes. The first one on my list was trigonometry. It had come highly recommended by my school counselor. Suddenly it occurred to me that the last three times I had signed up for trig I had ended up dropping it. Then out of nowhere came the thought – maybe trig just wasn’t my thing, maybe I should consider another major?

Have you had those experiences? More than once after making a comment to someone I thought why did you say that?  Why can’t I stop saying stupid things in front of other people?

I believe I have solved that problem. Instead of saying stupid things to people one at a time, I write my thoughts here on the blog, for all to see. That way I can get the embarrassment over with all at once.

Wouldn’t it be nice if we could all find a way to get those mistakes of life over with and move on to be right more of the time?

In therapy, those Ah-Ha moments are the exact point when we or our clients make the greatest progress.

I am sitting with a teen talking about how unreasonable their parents are. Then I ask them about themselves. Any friends? Do you have a girlfriend or boyfriend? Think you will have kids someday? You think you will let your child go to that kind of party?

Out of nowhere that teen who was telling me, they are angry their parent does not trust them and won’t ever let them do the things their friend’s parents allow other kids to do, those kids are telling me they would never let their kids go to that kind of party cause they know what goes on there.

One thing that clients often say to me is “I hadn’t thought of it that way.” I find that one of the healthiest things I can do is reexamine things I thought I knew and see if there is another way to think about things.

That is one of the benefits of having friends, lots of friends. Now some friends are just people we work with or do a specific activity with. But we each have or should have those really close friends that we can talk with about anything. It is in those talks that suddenly we may have that flash of insight and realize that we have just never thought about it that way.

Professional helpers like counselors and therapists are specially trained that if they are going to be able to help someone it is all about the relationship. We, humans, have a hard time listening to people we don’t like or respect. But in that one trusting relationship, we can sometimes hear something that results in that Ah-Ha moment.
Ever asked yourself “What was I thinking?” Careful here – you may be about to have one of those Ah-Ha moments.

We get wrapped up in our own thinking. When it is rattling around in my mind it seems like such a good idea. Let me tell someone else and see their reaction and suddenly that brilliant idea does not sound so brilliant.

Hearing our behavior described by another, some of us are surprised at how others experience them. They describe this experience as being like “hearing about someone else.” That other point of view is so valuable in learning.

Some of you may have noticed that a few of those “What was I thinking” ideas slip by and get into these posts.” That is one of the prices we bloggers pay for trying to write a lot of posts and get them up quickly. Occasionally one of my friends assumes the role of editor and emails me about an error so I can correct it quickly. Other times it just gets by.

Now shouldn’t we all just be more careful and not make mistakes? I don’t think so. The only way you don’t make mistakes is to do nothing and that, come to think of it, would be an even grander error.

So what we all have to do as part of this human existence is to try new things and see what works and what doesn’t.  Do more of the good things and less of the things that do not work. Recognize that you, like everyone else, will have some of those Ah-Ha moments. Rather than beating yourself up and criticizing you, learn from those mistakes.

Be able to laugh at your mistakes. When you can look at something you did in the past and tell yourself that was “silly” which tells me that your way of looking at things is changing.

We all need more Ah-Ha moments in our lives and we need to forgive ourselves for the mistakes we are required to make to create those moments.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel

Making friends by calling them names.

Posted on by
4

By David Joel Miller, MS, Licensed Therapist & Licensed Counselor.

Friendship

Friendship
Photo courtesy of Pixabay.com

Does criticizing people get them to like you?

There seems to be a widely held belief that the way to get people to like and respect you is to criticize them and tell them what they are doing wrong.

Intuitively most people understand that if upon meeting someone for the first time, you began to upbraid them, called them names, and told them how worthless they are, this would not be likely to lead to having a large number of friends. We know this but we often do it anyway.

You would expect that each of us would be striving to treat ourselves well and yet we frequently call ourselves names that we would never, ever, dare call a friend.

Ever call yourself “stupid’ or “dumb?” Think for a moment about saying that to a friend. Not once, when they made an unusually poor choice, but consistently day after day. We wouldn’t do that to a friend, but most of us, most of the time, repeatedly call ourselves names.

The danger of calling yourself names is that you will start believing what you tell yourself.

Pictures of cute little puppies and little children inspire us to want to help. They can inspire us to kindness. It is easy to be kind to others. Most of us are afraid to be kind to ourselves.

Why is compassion reserved for other, unrelated people?

Somewhere we got the idea that it was acceptable to be kind to others but if we were to be nice or kind to ourselves then we would spoil ourselves and thereafter be worthless. So year after year we continue to beat ourselves up for one thing after another.

People, who truly spoil themselves, in a bad way, are not those who are kind and compassionate to themselves. The worst sort of spoilage occurs when we tell ourselves we are no good, worthless, or useless and then use that self-description as an excuse for behaving badly.

If you tell yourself you are a slob and then stop trying to clean up your living space because after all you are a slob and no one should expect a slob to clean. If you say you are stupid and then use that belief as an excuse to never attempt anything, expecting your family or society to take care of you. You are using your self-criticism to excuse poor behavior.

Some people tell themselves they are addicts, and what do you expect from an addict? Why of course I relapsed and used drugs again, I am an addict. But if you begin to tell yourself that I USED to be an addict, look at the possibilities that opens up.

One form of therapy is called “narrative therapy.” The way I understand this is that we tell ourselves and others stories, not untrue stories, just stories, and then as we tell them more and more we begin to believe our own fiction. So if you tell yourself you are dumb or worthless you become less and less able to accomplish anything.

People who say “I am an angry person,” stay angry and convince themselves they can’t change. If we can get them to start saying I USED to be an angry person, but I am changing, then amazingly they change.

Do you believe that the only way to get anybody to do things is to beat them? We find that this is a poor way to motivate either ourselves or others. Yet many people continue to beat themselves up, verbally, day after day.

One thing we tell parents as part of the basic parenting class is to catch their children doing something right. Small amounts of praise, judiciously used are great motivators. If the only way your children get your attention is to misbehave, they will misbehave for attention.

The parent who does nothing but criticizes their child finds that the child may give up. Consider the child who wants badly to please their parent; they study very hard for a big test. When the results come out the child has achieved a score of 99 out of 100 possible points.

What does this parent say? Why did you miss that one? You knew that! The result is that the child stops trying, convinced that no matter how hard they tried they will never be good enough.

Years later we find that person and many others still trying to motivate themselves by telling themselves that how they are is not good enough.

The risk here is that rather than motivate yourself to try harder, you will convince yourself that you are a failure and stop trying.

Ultimately you may become the person you say you are.

Staying connected with David Joel Miller

Seven David Joel Miller Books are available now!

My newest book is now available. It was my opportunity to try on a new genre. I’ve been working on this book for several years, but now seem like the right time to publish it.

Story Bureau.

Story Bureau is a thrilling Dystopian Post-Apocalyptic adventure in the Surviving the Apocalypse series.

Baldwin struggles to survive life in a post-apocalyptic world where the government controls everything.

As society collapses and his family gets plunged into poverty, Baldwin takes a job in the capital city, working for a government agency called the Story Bureau. He discovers the Story Bureau is not a benign news outlet but a sinister government plot to manipulate society.

Bumps on the Road of Life. Whether you struggle with anxiety, depression, low motivation, or addiction, you can recover. Bumps on the Road of Life is the story of how people get off track and how to get your life out of the ditch.

Dark Family Secrets: Doris wants to get her life back, but small-town prejudice could shatter her dreams.

Casino Robbery Arthur Mitchell escapes the trauma of watching his girlfriend die. But the killers know he’s a witness and want him dead.

Planned Accidents  The second Arthur Mitchell and Plutus mystery.

Letters from the Dead: The third in the Arthur Mitchell mystery series.

What would you do if you found a letter to a detective describing a crime and you knew the writer and detective were dead, and you could be next?

Sasquatch. Three things about us, you should know. One, we have seen the past. Two, we’re trapped there. Three, I don’t know if we’ll ever get back to our own time.

For these and my upcoming books; please visit my Author Page – David Joel Miller

Want the latest blog posts as they publish? Subscribe to this blog.

For videos, see: Counselorssoapbox YouTube Video Channel