Ted The Witch DoctorIn dealing with your significant other and you want to figure out if this is the right match for you, ask yourself how you feel about yourself when you are with them. If you feel good about yourself when you are with them that’s great. If you don’t, watch out.
It’s amazing how creative we are. We all recreate our childhood. The people in our current lives resemble the significant others in our childhood. We operate in the same way: our goals, the way we pursue them, our emotional response to the world, the way we deal with others are all so similar to our childhood outlook and experience. Ask a client whether he is experiencing a similar feeling or reacting to someone in a way that reminds them of their childhood and more often than not you will get a positive response. We are so creative in reproducing our childhood experiences.
I think that the following is the way Alfred Adler explained neurosis: A horse is loping towards a hedge. It comes to the hedge but is afraid to jump it because it thinks the hedge is too high or its legs are too short. Instead of jumping the hedge it veers off to the side and lands in a swamp. It struggles to get out but keeps getting in deeper so it calls for its therapist. The therapist comes and says to the horse that the way to deal with its problem is to figure out how to get out of the swamp. But the therapist is mistaken. The problem is not the symptoms the swamp represents. The problem is that the horse was afraid to jump the hedge. Developing the courage to jump the hedge is what the horse’s therapist has to enable the horse to do. Confronting the issues in one’s life gets rid of the symptoms.
When someone attacks you in an argument don’t defend yourself against the charge. Instead ask the person why they are behaving the way they are. Keep the focus on them.
If you are a pleaser you try to make the other person like you. Instead train yourself to see if you like the other person or not.
Many people think of pride as a sin. I have always agreed with Abraham Maslow that, on the contrary, pride is a valuable quality to engender in oneself. We are all special human beings. Each one of us is unique.
What is anger? When life is going the way you want then you go with the flow. When life is not going the way you want it to then you stand in opposition to the flow. You may experience that opposition by being angry, annoyed, enraged, unhappy, disappointed, depressed, etc. You don’t like what is going on. The problem is not your reaction to the flow. It is important for you to deal with what’s going on in your life.
Do not be critical of your behavior as a child. For example, if you were angry and confrontive, don’t look at it in a negative light. It served you well in helping you survive a difficult childhood.
When I see a client one of the first goals is to find out how they feel about themselves. That is determined (I use the word advisedly) at a young age (3-5). If the parent was able to communicate acceptance and approval (because the parent was self-accepting) then the child feels accepted. If the parent doesn’t approve and accept the child then the child feels flawed inside and will try to gain acceptance in different ways. The child may try to achieve, be good, be a class clown to gain approval, be sickly (especially if there is a history of sickliness in the family), or may fade into the woodwork until able to leave the family. That client needs to be self-accepting and to deal with the old sadness and anger at not not having been accepted.
If the client was accepted but was not disciplined (a parent has to give both: love and discipline), then a different approach is needed to deal with the lack of boundaries, impulsiveness and shallow level of emotions that are sometimes exhibited.
There are a number of ways to help someone change and develop a different self-image and approach life differently. We will discuss them in future teachings.
Giving assignments to clients is a valuable tool because it speeds up the process of change. There are two kinds of assignments. A particular form of behavior is increased tenfold so that it ends up being rejected. My teacher would assign someone who puts everyone ahead of themselves to stand in front of the escalator at busy Water Tower and say to everyone: “Go ahead of me” until they can’t stand doing it anymore. The other kind of assignment provides a new experience to replace the unhelpful behavior. A group assignment for a pleaser would be to say something critical to each group member and the therapist and then to others outside the group.