inflicting beliefs?

in ragamuffin's most recent blog entry, there is talk about the writer, steve, inflicting beliefs on someone, concerning his post on "top 10 reasons why men shouldn't be ordained".

what interests me - what does it mean to "inflict" a belief on someone? it conjures up an image of capture and wounding. i'm thinking of the windows of the scientology church into which i used to be able to see clearely from my office window in toronto, many years ago. i could see two or three people literally ganging up on a person, physically cornering that person and talking to/at them (i was told later on that that is a somewhat typical practice).

that is what i call inflicting beliefs. if indeed it is possible to inflict a belief on anyone.

if you don't do that, what is the mechanism of inflicting? how easy is it to inflict a belief? a belief, after all, is something that is personally held. by definition, it's not necessarily something that anyone else shares.

a belief is

"an acceptance that an idea is true" (according to here)

okay, so if it's an acceptance - how can i inflict my acceptance on someone else? i mean, how does that work? i can try to force someone to also accept it (= ram it down their throats, literally - what comes to mind is one of the episodes of startrek TNG) but how can i make them accept my acceptance? at best, i can try to make them believe that i truly believe something.

trying to inflict a belief on someone seems a bit like trying to make someone else sense their sensations or think their thoughts. that's just not possible. what i sense and think is, in its essence, not communicable to anyone. we can talk about these sensations and thoughts, we can describe them, but we cannot transmit them.

what do you think?

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

biting the dog

i was digging around some old files and found this, a short story i wrote which came out of a journal entry which was turned into a poem and then another poem and then this ...

i'll tell you that process another time. it's quite interesting, i think. for now, i got it in my head that i want to ask you - the people who read this blog - what you think this story might be about. how it continues, how it ends. nit quite sure why i'm intrigued by that quesion but here we go ...

the other day, some friends and i went to see naomi. we sat by the fireplace. it was evening. the atmosphere was warm and quiet but we all knew that in the back of our heads there was a thought, a question mark: some years ago, naomi had bitten a dog. we never found out what exactly had happened, only that naomi had been in a strange state of mind that time, and we were wondering if she had gotten over it. this managed to give our gathering a bit of an unreal air. i suspect that some of us wondered if they could ever do something like that. could we all of a sudden turn mad? is it something that could happen in a flash? tomorrow? so we sat there, with all those thoughts in our heads, talking little, enjoying the setting sun and the light breeze that came through an open window.

i for my part had been in a dark state that time. i had felt old, dark and cold but somehow also pregnant with the seed of new things to come. totally broke, i couldn't bring myself to make money. once in a while i would admonish myself to pull myself up by the bootstraps but it wouldn't work. it was an uncomfortable situation, but not catastrophic.

so anyway, we were all sitting around in naomi's living room, pondering our thoughts. and then abruptly, naomi started to talk.

"you know, three years ago, or actually, it's almost four now - it was - my life was over. my life was over. i was over. done. finished. i realized that back then, he had trapped me. totally. i was this beautiful, light, colourful butterfly and he came and slammed his net over me."

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

guided visualizations

here are some working, good quality links to online audio guided meditations

http://www.beliefnet.com/index/index_207.html

http://www.drweil.com/u/Page/Audio/

http://csd.mcmaster.ca/natural_high/cd.htm

http://www.soundstrue.com/

http://www.briandavidphillips.com/

9/11 - four and a half years later

i just came across an article i tucked away for future use a few years ago. it was written a few days after 9/11 – september 17, 2001, to be precise.

in it, one of my favourite authors, psychologist mihaly csikszentmihalyi talks about happiness and harmony post 9/11. csikszentmihalyi specializes in studying creativity, happiness, fulfillment and satisfaction. his bestseller flow talks about the state that is experienced in moments of creativity or concentrated work, when you just feel in the groove.

here are two quotes:

"We are focusing on retribution and not understanding, and that worries me. If we focus on where hatred comes from and how to make it go away, we wouldn't be talking about retribution only. I hope this will end in the fact that the wonderful sense of togetherness America has shown will include other countries in the world. The best outcome is not only global policing but also global responsibility. Unless we find this type of balance, we are going to always have people who want to destroy us."

"What we had before -- in the sense that people felt like, basically, nothing could go wrong -- was not normal. It was really unusual. In human history, we have never been in a position for long where we could feel secure. The plagues that used to devastate the world would often come one or two a generation and decimate the population. Despite that, people were able to create new, important advances. We will need to be creative and make progress in spite of the fact that we now know life is fragile -- in spite of the fact that we now know civilization is fragile. That is a much more mature way of living than expecting that everything will be fine."

what does that sound like today? to what degree has america included other countries? has there been a focus on where hatred comes from and how to make it go away? do we have a new awareness of the fragility of life and civilization?

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

pema chodron on laziness

a few words about laziness by canadian buddhist monk pema chodron:

Looking into Laziness

Rather than feeling discouraged by laziness, we could get to know laziness profoundly. This very moment of laziness becomes our personal teacher.

Traditionally, laziness is taught as one of the obstacles to awakening. There are different kinds of laziness. First, there’s the laziness of comfort orientation, we just try to stay comfortable and cozy. Then there’s the laziness of loss of heart, a kind of deep discouragement, a feeling of giving up on ourselves, of hopelessness. There’s also the laziness of couldn’t care less. That’s when we harden into resignation and bitterness and just close down.

Comfort Orientation

Comfort orientation comes in a variety of forms. Sogyal Rinpoche writes that in the East, for example, laziness often manifests as flopping down in the sun with one’s cronies, drinking tea, and letting the days pass by. In the West, he observes, laziness frequently manifests as speed. People rush from one thing to another, from the gym to the office to the bar to the mountains to the meditation class to the kitchen sink, the backyard, the club. We rush around seeking, seeking, seeking comfort and ease.

Whether we flop or rush, and wherever on the globe we happen to be, the comfort-orientation brand of laziness is characterized by a profound ignoring. We look for oblivion: a life that doesn’t hurt, a refuge from difficulty or self-doubt or edginess. We want a break from being ourselves, a break from the life that happens to be ours. So through laziness we look for spaciousness and relief; but finding what we seek is like drinking salt water, because our thirst for comfort and ease is never satisfied.

Loss of Heart

The laziness of loss of heart is characterized by vulnerability, woundedness, and not knowing what to do. We tried just being ourselves and we didn’t measure up. The way we are is not okay. We chased after pleasure and found no lasting happiness. We took time off, went on vacation, learned to meditate, studied spiritual teachings, or spent years dedicated to certain political or philosophical views. We helped the poor or saved the trees or drank or took drugs, and we found no satisfaction. We tried and we failed. We came to a painful, hopeless place. We don’t even want to move. We feel we could gladly sleep for a thousand years. Our life feels meaningless. Loss of heart is so painful that we become paralyzed.

Couldn’t Care Less

Couldn’t care less is harder, more icy, fatalistic. This particular flavor of laziness has an edge of cynicism and bitterness. We feel that we just don’t give a damn anymore. We feel lazy and mean at the same time. We feel mean toward this disappointing and lousy world, and toward this person and that person. Mostly we feel mean toward ourselves. We made a mistake. We’re not exactly sure what this mistake was, but we got it all wrong; and now, to hell with it! We try to forget in any way we can. We stop doing much. We feel as if we can’t do much anyway, and frankly, we don’t care.

if you want to go on and find out what pema thinks could be done about this, go to the shambala web site and read the rest of the article.

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

phew! our brains don't think coca-cola is our friend

Brain Scanning Technology Reveals How We Process Brands And Products

In a groundbreaking new study, researchers from the University of Michigan and Harvard University use cutting edge brain scanning technology to explore how different regions of the brain are activated when we think about certain qualities of brands and products. The study, forthcoming in the Journal of Consumer Research, is the first to use fMRI to assess consumer perceptions and has important implications for the use of metaphorical human-like traits in branding.

"[fMRI] allows one to gauge, for the first time, the degree to which the underlying thought processes are similar," write the researchers. Subjects were given 450 adjectives such as "reliable," "sophisticated," and "cheerful," and scanned while indicating whether each word was applicable to themselves and someone else. The sample group was also scanned while making similar judgments about brands they know and use.

The researchers discovered that even when the consumers were judging products on unmistakably human terms, they still used the part of the brain associated with inanimate objects. "Although we may use similar vocabularies to describe people and products, we can't say that the same concepts are involved," explain the researchers. "Companies building brand images and icons should be wary of taking the legitimately useful metaphor of brand personality too literally, since it's now apparent that consumers themselves do not."

... thus writes suzanne wu. if find this piece of research somewhat comforting. apparently, there is a sliver of hope that we are not that easily roped in by advertising ...

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

celebrating our relationships

at our fireside chat at sacred space yesterday, we had bobby o’neal as a guest. bobby has a fascinating story. he is a professional forester, a real guys’ guy – and he’s come up with a relationship game. it’s called syncrohearts – check out his web site. it was great to hear about the process of dreaming up the game (literally – it came to him during mediation), “coming out” with it (can you imagine, here he is with his logger buddies and he says, “hey guys, i’ve designed a relationship game!”) and then building the business.

what i like about the game is that while it is primarily about romantic relationships, it can also be about any kind of relationship. it only takes 45 minutes, 1 hour to play, and it can be played on different levels. you can do it in a really lighthearted way, or you can use it as an opportunity to really delve deeply into your relationship. bobby also sees these relationships in a broader context – it’s not just about two people but also, in a subtle way, about how our personal relationships influence the world around us. this is beautifully hinted at in the graphics for the game, which feature doves of peace and an image of the globe – mother earth. i realize only now how fitting this is because bobby is also deeply concerned with having a good relationship with his natural environment.

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

focusing

through the practice of focusing, we get in touch directly with our “felt sense” – the body's awareness of all the situations and processes that go on in our lives. it is about notcing inwardly, in the body, all of how it feels.

for instance, i’m thinking of the tingling in the soles of the feet that can accompany a fear of heights. the need to move around that often comes with being excited is another example, or a feeling of heaviness around the shoulders when there is just too much tiredness. this “inner body langage” happens all the time – it’s just that we rarely listen to it.

when we sense the whole way that some situation feels, in a fresh way, not in our usual way of thinking but just as it feels right here, right now, we can get valuable insights; and not just that, we can feel easily moved – motivated – to approach difficult situations in a new, better way.

focusing is something that was brought to the public's awareness by eugene gendlin, who found in his research on the effectiveness of psychotherapy that those people who automatically focused in such a way tended to get more out of therapy than those who did not. buddhists such as pema chodron or david rome also talk about focusing.

here, from the focusing web site, is a short instruction on how to do focusing:


Focusing: Short Form
by Eugene Gendlin, Ph.D.

1. Clear a space
How are you? What’s between you and feeling fine?Don’t answer; let what comes in your body do the answering.Don’t go into anything.Greet each concern that comes. Put each aside for a while, next to you.Except for that, are you fine?

2. Felt Sense
Pick one problem to focus on.Don’t go into the problem. What do you sense in your body when you sense the whole of that problem?Sense all of that, the sense of the whole thing, the murky discomfort or the unclear body-sense of it.

3. Get a handle
What is the quality of the felt sense?What one word, phrase, or image comes out of this felt sense?What quality-word would fit it best?

4. Resonate
Go back and forth between word (or image) and the felt sense. Is that right?If they match, have the sensation of matching several times.If the felt sense changes, follow it with your attention.When you get a perfect match, the words (images) being just right for this feeling, let yourself feel that for a minute.

5. Ask
"What is it, about the whole problem, that makes me so _________? When stuck, ask questions:What is the worst of this feeling?What’s really so bad about this?What does it need?What should happen?Don’t answer; wait for the feeling to stir and give you an answer.What would it feel like if it was all OK?Let the body answerWhat is in the way of that?

6. Receive
Welcome what came. Be glad it spoke.It is only one step on this problem, not the last.Now that you know where it is, you can leave it and come back to it later.Protect it from critical voices that interrupt.Does your body want another round of focusing, or is this a good stopping place?

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

achieving weight loss

as you know, one of the things that i assist people with is dealing with overeating, undereating and related food issues.

often we really cling to the food - giving up that chocolate bar in the afternoon or the bag of chips while watching TV just seems too, too much. food has become such a good friend, and we tend to cling to that friend even more when we're stressed out or otherwise ill at ease. of course that makes losing weight and eating in a more healthy really difficult.

what can be helpful here is to put some time aside - it doesn't take much, even 10 minutes will do - and write down when we eat in such a way, what we feel, exactly what we do, and how we can substitute unhealthy eating behaviours with more helpful, healthy behaviours.

you know those troubleshooting lists they have in equipment manuals? ("if your printer spits ink, don't panic, turn the power off, and replace the ink cartridge"). it's a little like that. we can write our own troubleshooting manual.

here's an example:

when:
my son is out playing hockey and my husband works late

what i feel:
lonely, bored

what i do:
make stacks of peanut butter jelly sandwiches and eat them in front of the TV

what i can do instead:
go into the bedroom, light a candle, turn on some nice music, and sit on the bed and solve crossword puzzles

if overeating is a problem for you - the people at chicago personal trainers, who have a very extensive web site chock full with health tips, have a checklist you can download for this purpose.

good luck!

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

time & tantra

my friend danielle has recently become quite fascinated by the year 2012, the time at which the mayan calendar ends – and some claim it’s the end of time. i tend to be skeptical of such claims but on the other hand want to remain open-minded. so as usual, i looked around on the internet to see what i can find. the most interesting article was by steven taylor, aka gyrus. here is an excerpt, slightly edited and hyperlinked:


Time & Tantra

Is end-of-time thinking a gender issue? It's not really discussed, is it? I'd be interested to find out about any exceptions, but as far as I can see, all the cultures and religions that are big on apocalyptics are pretty patriarchal.

The idea of a point at the end of history, or the universe is the flip-side of everything exploding out from a singularity at the beginning. The Omega Point and the Big Bang are like bookends at either end of the flow of time. They can also be seen as Vast Ejaculations (now there's an album title). The Big Bang isn't really that far from Egyptian creation myths where gods bring things forth by beating off. And the Timewave [envisioned by Terrence McKenna of Year 2012 fame] is breakneck rush towards a crescendo of connectedness and barrier-dissolution — a Cosmic Climax.

This all sounds great, but I also wonder: where's the female orgasm? What about continuous waves of full-body, non-linear ecstasy, with no focal point and no singular 'explosion'? Such experiences of wave-orgasm are the focus of most sexual mysticism, for both sexes. There's no Point to this ecstasy, but it ain't 'pointless'! Would the concepts of the Omega Point, the Apocalypse, Judgement Day, Timewave Zero, etc. even exist if this experience was more common than the "sneeze in the genitals", as Alan Watts has called the average male orgasm?

Are we yearning for a quick and catastrophic explosion to relieve the tension — the tension of information overload, the tension of tightly measured time, the tension of too much undigested history? Dare we step back for a moment amidst this frantic rush towards the Climax, and question the assumptions behind linear, masculine end-of-time thinking? As Mogg Morgan says,

If you feel yourself approaching the point of 'no return', maybe ask your partner to pause, and make any adjustments necessary to prevent ejaculation or climax . . . . As the urge for ejaculation or release subsides, you may feel the warm sexual glow spreading throughout your whole pelvic region, opening out other energy centres sometimes called chakras. A strange thing happens: you become like an erotic landscape, a sea of sensation. Try to regard the time you have spent in this 'build up' to ejaculation as part of the orgasm. Viewed this way, perhaps you can see that an orgasm, for both men and women, is actually a lot more intense than those few moments of ejaculation or climax.

The aim of mysticism isn't always the total inhibition of coming — it's more to do with intensifying the orgasmic trance through diffusing the 'explosion' of coming throughout the body, and relaxing more fully into every nuance of psycho-physical sensation that arises. A key part of it is perhaps one of the great tenets in many mystic practices — avoiding Lust of Result, a.k.a. attachment, goal-oriented consciousness, striving, or 'pushing the river'. Paradox time again. Orgasmic trance is more intense if you don't try to intensify it, or even try to reach orgasm at all. This is the heart of Taoist philosophy: wu wei, 'not pushing'.

[…] Would the shamans who gave birth to Taoism have put a Full Stop or an Exclamation Mark at the end of their universe, and carefully knitted it into the structure of their sacred symbol system? How about a Comma, maybe — or a Question Mark?

This isn't to say I think that there definitely is not a stupendous hyperdimensional object hovering 14 [now 6] years ahead of us, inexorably drawing all matter and consciousness into its pulsating heart of light.

I jokingly told a friend that I had 'Cancelled the Apocalypse'. He told McKenna this when he met him, and the reply was, "That's a bit presumptuous!" And that it is. Well, I haven't really cancelled it. I've merely tried to stop pushing the river.

Let It Flow...

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

how judgment affects memory

from medicalnewstoday:


Viewing a person as dishonest or immoral can distort memory, a Cornell study suggests. So much so, that when we attempt to recall that person's behavior, it seems to be worse than it really was.

"In other words, our study shows that morally blaming a person can distort memory for the severity of his or her crime or misbehavior," said David Pizarro, assistant professor of psychology at Cornell.

Pizarro and three colleagues gave 283 college students a story about a man who walked out on a restaurant bill, including what the man ate and drank and the amount of his bill. Half the participants read that the man walked out on the bill because he "was a jerk who liked to steal," and half read that the man left without paying because he received an emergency phone call.

"One week later the people who were told he was a jerk remembered a higher bill -- from 10 to 25 percent more than the bill actually was. Those who were told he had an emergency phone call remembered a slightly lower-than-actual bill," said Pizarro, the first author of a study to be published in a forthcoming issue of the journal Memory and Cognition. His co-authors include University of California (UC)-Irvine's Elizabeth Loftus, whose groundbreaking work put memory distortion on the map in the late 1980s when she showed that subjects viewing a film clip of a car accident estimated the speed of the cars differently depending on whether such words as hit, collided or mashed were used in the question.

Previous studies have found that leading questions can influence memory of an incident, and that thinking that someone is good (or bad) in one area tends to influence judgments about them in other areas.

"But this is the first study that we know of that looked at how blame might affect memory regarding objective facts, which you usually think of as less susceptible to distortion," Pizarro said. "It suggests that negative evaluations are capable of exerting a distorting effect on memory as well."

The findings have particular implications for eyewitness testimonies, Pizarro noted. "Spontaneous evaluations made by an eyewitness about a defendant may influence their memories about the event in question -- memories that often serve as the very data that judges and juries use as input into their judgments of guilt."

In addition, eyewitnesses who hear information about the moral character of a defendant, "even long after the events have occurred," may misremember the events in question, such as the severity of the crime, putting perpetrators at greater risk.

pooh, heinlein and douglas adams

for today’s entertainment, here’s a bunch of quotes to muse on, taking from aoiko.net, a rather strange web site

pooh, who felt more and more that he was somewhere else, got up slowly and began to look for himself.
taken from 'the house at pooh corner (p.107)'

'hallo, rabbit,' he said, 'is that you?'
'let's pretend it isn't,' said rabbit, 'and see what happens.'
taken from 'winnie-the-pooh (p102)'

history teaches us that men and nations behave wisely once they have exhausted all other alternatives.
abba eban, representative of israel in the '40s and 50s, minister from the 60s on

you can't change people with your fists; i've learnt that... they see something strange, something they don't understand, and they get afraid... you show them the beauty of that strange thing, and they are no longer afraid because it has become part of them.
bruce lee

i really didn't foresee the internet. but then, neither did the computer industry. not that that tells us very much of course - the computer industry didn't even foresee that the century was going to end.
douglas adams

never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.
(this is hanlon's razor - nobody knows who hanlon is, but some guess that it's a corruption of 'heinlein', particularly as there is a similar sentiment in one of his stories... see here.

i used to think i was serving humanity... then i discovered that humanity does not want to be served; on the contrary it resents any attempt to serve it. so now i do what pleases jubal harshaw.
heinlein – jubal harshaw in ‘stranger in a strange land'

always listen to experts. they'll tell you what can't be done, and why. then do it.
heinlein, taken from 'time enough for love', said by the character 'lazarus long'

i fart in your general direction... your mother was a hamster, and your father smells of elderberries.
monty python, taken from 'monty python and the holy grail', said by some frenchman in a castle to the obnoxious english knights

william roper: "so now you'd give the devil benefit of law!"
thomas more: "yes. what would you do? cut a great road through the law to get after the devil?"
william roper: "i'd cut down every law in england to do that."
thomas more: "oh? and when the last law was down, and the devil turned round on you - where would you hide...the laws all being flat?"
robert bolt, taken from 'a man for all seasons'

"slave is an ephebian word. in om we have no word for slave," said vorbis.
"so i understand," said the tyrant. "i imagine that fish have no word for water."
terry parchett, from 'small gods (p125)'

i want to be free, but my chains are broken.
taken from 'zen grafitti'

wilson is going round the country stirring up apathy.
willie whitelaw

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

tom fox: peace, love and respect vs. dehumanization

here is what tom fox, the slain christian peacemaker, said just before he was abducted:

I have read that the word in the Greek Bible that is translated as "love" is the word "agape." Again, I have read that this word is best expressed as a profound respect for all human beings simply for the fact that they are all God's children. I would state that idea in a somewhat different way, as "never thinking or doing anything that would dehumanize one of my fellow human beings."

As I survey the landscape here in Iraq, dehumanization seems to be the operative means of relating to each other. U.S. forces in their quest to hunt down and kill "terrorists" are, as a result of this dehumanizing word, not only killing "terrorists," but also killing innocent Iraqis: men, women and children in the various towns and villages.

It seems as if the first step down the road to violence is taken when I dehumanize a person. That violence might stay within my thoughts or find its way into the outer world and become expressed verbally, psychologically, structurally or physically. As soon as I rob a fellow human being of his or her humanity by sticking a dehumanizing label on them, I begin the process that can have, as an end result, torture, injury and death.

"Why are we here?" We are here to root out all aspects of dehumanization that exist within us. We are here to stand with those being dehumanized by oppressors and stand firm against that dehumanization. We are here to stop people, including ourselves, from dehumanizing any of God's children, no matter how much they dehumanize their own souls.

thank you, hugo, for pointing to this entry in your blog.

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

more happiness

remember yesterday? i wrote the post inspired by little emily, the toddler who really seems to know what having fun in life is all about. well, on the heels of this comes an email from my friend ken, the happiness guy. he’s got his own blog now!

here are a two samples:

ClutterMind: The Unexamined Scourge
There is a blight on the land and in our minds. A relentless, eternally patient and everpresent interloper that saps the concentration of many. Most of us have experienced its symptoms: confusion; inability to focus; forgotten goals; the chaos of cluttered thinking. This master of mayhem I call ClutterMind.

more here …

The road to happiness
Happiness and I were so unacquainted in my younger years that I firmly believed its portrayal in movies, books, articles, etc. was false, just a fairy tale tease.

more here …

ken also sent me a link to this web site that has tons of articles on happiness, some quite good, some a little on the kooky side. i liked this one on happiness on the web.

Why do you have a website? Is it your dream to share your ideas with the world? Do you feel you have a product or service that can help society run more smoothly? Do you feel lonely and feel that the Internet is finally a place to connect with others? Do you just want to express yourself to the world and if no one checks it out its O.K, because it has helped you to know yourself better? Each and every website on the Internet is a human being attempting to move forward on their life’s path

more here …


isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

claiming what's ours

the other day i was wondering whether some of the difficulties we experience stem from the fact that we don’t understand what our share of the world is. our share of love, food, comfort, adventure, security, knowledge – all these things we all want (hunger / lust for?) this came from observing emily, a delightful little 11-month-old girl who i have the pleasure of seeing once a week. the second she is loose in a room she sets about exploring it, with this huge grin on her face. she claims her space with glee and vigour. when something goes wrong, she starts crying, looks for her mom, and mom comes and picks her up and soothes her. also, when she goes too far, she quite willingly accepts being moved somewhere where it’s safer and more comfortably for all around. she is totally in the moment, knows what she wants, goes for it, and accepts natural limits.

i don’t know about you, but this is – unfortunately – not how i would describe myself. at worst, i am in the past or future, don’t know what i want, don’t go for what i have a hunch i might want, and don’t know, see or accept natural limits. and at best, i have moments like this delightful little girl.

what is my share of the world? what would it mean to have/own it? where/what is "my world", anyway? geographically, my world is, say, the southern stretch of british columbia, the circle that goes from the kootenays to vancouver, victoria, tofino, pemberton, kamloops and back to the kootenays. looking at the square kilometres available, the overall population figures and the population density in this corner of the world, i figure that my share of the land is about .112 square kilometres. i know that sounds silly. but since i am confused about what my share of the world is, it’s helpful – for me at least – to have some kind of picture. .112 square kilometres is what i can potentially claim as my range, my territory.

that also means, of course, that i am responsible for it. but it’s interesting how i have to say that right away. i would feel terribly uncomfortable about "claiming" something without immediately talking about my responsibility for it. i am an adult, after all, i have responsibilities!
it may just be that this is the problem. perhaps if as a child i am not allowed to range freely, or if on the other hand nobody shows me my natural boundaries, i get confused. then i have to somehow come up with a way of making sense of this wide space around me all by myself. my way of doing this was to claim responsibility as soon as i possibly could. i used to be very proud that people would call me "wise beyond my years!". what it means was that i found i had to become an adult "before my years".

other people deal with that in other ways. greed and hoarding can be another way out of the confusion. this, in turn, can take various shapes. it can be naturally assuming that everything is up for grabs, it can mean an overdeveloped sense of entitlement, it can mean a life filled with jealousy and envy (because someone else "got there first"), etc.

be that as it may, here we stand – all of us who did not develop a healthy sense of what’s ours to claim – and what do we do now? how do we learn to claim what’s ours: our truth, our share of love, our share of wealth, our share of sorrow?

i don’t know what the answer is. (i guess that’s partly because i think there is rarely the answer to anything). one way of looking at it could be to make it more concrete, as i did a little earlier. another way that occurs to me is what is done in many forms of buddhism: to learn that ultimately, there are no boundaries. that "mine" is an illusion because "i" do not exist, at least not in the way i think. we are all one, we are not separate.

great ideas, isabella, but they’re very abstract. i can’t go out and claim a piece of british columbia for myself today, and it’s unlikely that i’ll wake up enlightened tomorrow morning, secure in the knowledge that we are all one.

so what do i do in the meantime?

at least i can state my confusion. because that’s clear – this is my confusion. i can claim that.

and i’m not really saying this tongue in cheek. because this is what i can truly do: i can leave the cave of my fearful confusion and show my muddled thoughts to the world. at least i’m not in the cave anymore. at least i’m venturing out, like my little friend emily.

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

more on emotional intelligence: alexi - what???

a very nicely written article by victoria counsellor michelle morand, director of the CEDRIC centre, which specializes in eating disorders and related concerns, on the connection between eating disorders and the inability/difficulty to express emotions:

A study was conducted by psychologists about 5 years ago that looked at childhood experiences of trauma, (physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional and verbal abuse, and neglect), and the later development of disordered eating behaviours. What they were looking at was to uncover what the mediating factors were that lead someone with childhood trauma experience to later develop an eating disorder. And what they discovered was that it was a condition called Alexithymia that came hand in hand with depression, and the two supported the development of disordered eating on any level.

Alexithymia is characterized by:
(a) difficulty in identifying and describing feelings in self or other, (b) difficulty in distinguishing between feelings and the bodily sensations associated with emotional arousal, (c) restricted imaginative processes (few positive dreams or fantasies - can have frequent intrusive ideation*), and (d) thinking that is concrete and reality based.
[Hendryx, Haviland, & Shaw, 1991; Taylor, Bagby, Ryan, & Parker, 1990]

In other words, Alexithymia makes it really hard for us to know what we are feeling, or even if we are having a feeling. It makes it difficult for us to tell whether the sensation we think we're having is physical or emotional. It makes it difficult for us to dream or imagine positive, fun things. And we get stuck in very concrete "logical" thinking, which can make us rigid, most often with ourselves.

The good news is that you can learn to distinguish what you're feeling, and move through that feeling very quickly. Even better news is that in order to be able to let go of what you're feeling, you don't even have to know where the feeling came from.

Since you've very likely been distanced from awareness of your feelings since childhood, you may feel some resistance to connecting with them again. You may believe that there will be a great big back log of feelings that will sweep in and overpower you if you were to open the door. That's just your drill sergeant, (otherwise known as your ego), trying to maintain the status quo. He knows that if you begin to connect with your authentic feelings in the moment, and learn how to effectively release them, you're going to become more powerful and competent at taking care of yourself than he's ever been.

Now, again, if you've lived your life disconnected from your feelings for the most part, you are very likely wondering what the value of being connected to them would be - in fact your drill sgt. may be saying something like: feelings make you weak; other people won't respect you if you let your feelings show; I'm just a cry baby if I can't control my feelings; etc. Check in with yourself for a moment and ask yourself where in the past may you have either heard those very words spoken or witnessed significant people in your life modeling the behaviour of stuffing and discounting or denying their feelings?

The experience of Alexithymia is what leads us to discount and deny our life experience now. Have you ever had the experience of suddenly feeling totally overwhelmed? You are certain you're overreacting, and in addition to feeling emotional, you're judging and berating yourself for feeling emotional? You're certain there is nothing going on in your life to justify you reacting so strongly in that moment. Does that experience sound familiar? I assure you that if you were sitting in my office, recounting a recent experience like that, we would be able to put our finger on the underlying trigger(s) within moments - and it wouldn't be me spoon feeding or forcing those thoughts on you - you would be able to list for me quite clearly all the things that are going on in your life right now, issues with work, home, relationship with others, food and body image would of course be right up there on the list, issues with money, and others, would all appear from within you, and be highlighted for you to see up on my fabulous white board. At which point you would look at me and say, wow, I guess I do have a lot going on, no wonder why I feel so overwhelmed right now.

for the rest of this interesting article, go here.

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

emotional intelligence vs. emotional literacy

we’re always delighted when we find like-minded people, aren’t we? how do we find them? how do we know we’ve found them? well, for me, one way it can happen is when i come across someone who has a neat idea, or who happens to know something i was looking for – and then the more i find out about that person, the more connections i notice.

this is what happened to me when i came across claude steiner. i was playing in my head with the idea of games – the life games that i play, the games other people play. this was prompted by dealing with my tendency to “play small” at times. i wondered whether eric berne, the man who invented transactional analysis and wrote the bestseller “games people play” had anything to say about it. leafing through the old book (i have a dog-eared old copy of the original 1967 paperback edition) i could not immediately find anything, so i went on the web and encountered claude steiner. i loved how he talked about strokes – “units of recognition”, was pleased that he is connected to radical psychology (something that interests me, to no great surprise of anyone who knows me), thought like he looks like a really nice guy – but what i liked the most, and where i truly felt a connection, was how he talked about emotional literacy versus emotional intelligence. here are a few excerpts:


The fact that the emotions matter and that emotional competence is as important as intelligence to help people do well is an idea whose time has come. It has initiated a culture-wide "paradigm shift" readying people to confront the long neglected emotional realm.

It is important to realize, however, that emotional acumen can be organized around a variety of purposes, some not neccesarily humane.

One extraordinarily successful version of emotional intelligence is the skill that is displayed by animators of feature films like The Little Mermaid [where] we see conveyed the most subtle, moving nuances in a wide gamut of emotions with a few lines on a two dimensional surface. The effectiveness of these emotional triggers is far more reliable and cheaper than any flesh and blood actor can provide.

If what we want is to be able to influence people to buy or vote, we can again use information already available to sophisticated ad agencies which are quite successful in using people’s emotions to accomplish their client’s goals.

Finally, if what we want is to intimidate and terrorize people into compliance there is intelligence that has been used from time immemorial and constantly updated by torturers around the world (the Inquisition, the Nazis, the CIA, the School the Americas, etc) who achieve their purpose by emotional means.

On the personal level we can use our emotional skills to develop self control or to soothe and isolate ourselves emotionally or we can control others by creating guilt, fear or depression. These skills can be seen as a form of emotional "intelligence" as well. I see signs that many who agree that emotional intelligence is an important capacity have lost sight of what we really want; those emotional skills that improve people’s lives; not just one person’s or group but all people’s. The only emotional abilities that improve people’s lives in that long term, humane manner are the love centered skills.

The idea that love holds a central place in people’s emotional lives is not a foregone conclusion. The classic book The Emotional Brain; The Mysterious Underpinnings of Emotional Life by Joseph LeDoux fails to mention love even once in its index while fear is mentioned more than seventy five times. Daniel Goleman’s Emotional Intelligence has twenty index entries related to anger, and only three index entries on love in Chapter One, and none in the rest of the book. Even as everyone, deep in their heart, realizes the importance of love, it is an emotion seldom discussed in detail by experts in the field.

more here ...

isabella mori
counselling in vancouver
moritherapy
www.moritherapy.com

the therapist as a person - pt 3

this is a continuation from the entry of february 27, about the inner lives of therapists, and some of their motivations and personal styles:


What follows are four short vignettes of roles therapists might take on as a result of these (usually unexamined) personal and social influences. These vignettes I have compiled from a rather arbitrarily assembled body of literature, where some instances of the influence of the personal were either discussed by various writers or which I have observed in therapists (including myself during four years of counselling and group facilitation). All vignettes have eight components: The name of the role; a few brief examples of the therapist's interventions typical for that role; some personal reasons why the therapist might choose these interventions; the type of client these interventions might be useful for; the dangers inherent in the role; theories that endorse or condemn such interventions; and, finally, the types of environments these roles and interventions might fit into.

Following each vignette will be a brief discussion of some of the elements of the role and interventions discussed. A caveat: because of their brevity, the vignettes are almost caricatures - it goes without saying that the "real-life" therapist will feel and behave in a much more complex way, that she does not always take on that role, and that more likely than not, she will play more than one role with a particular client, even within a particular session. Also, my discussion is informed mostly by North American psychotherapy; some of the points I make, especially about social context, may not entirely apply to therapists outside this geographical area.

The Good Parent

What she does: Is supportive of client at all costs; often colludes with client against uncovering neuroses; does not confront

Why she does it: Has a need to "kiss and make it better", perhaps because her parents did not do that for her; shies away from looking at her own neuroses; is afraid of confrontation

Useful for: Clients who are unable to trust other therapists

Dangers: May turn against client if "rejected"; her shadow is unchecked

Model: The Ideal Mother

Theories: Explicitly scorned by Singer (a psychoanalyst), Kopp (a Jungian), Corey (eclectic); conceivably more likely to happen among Rogerians and some feminist therapists

Examples of environmental fit: Where preservation of status quo is important; some church-affiliated institutions; some women's centers

While the above-mentioned theories explicitly scorn this type, the Good Parent is a very common trap for therapists of any stripe - after all, the desire to help, to ease suffering, is the stated goal of the majority of those entering the helping professions. Also, the warmth and caring which are typical of the Good Parent are seen by many as indispensable qualities in therapists. It is a very short step from the desire help and feelings of warmth and caring to becoming overly solicitous and somewhat possessive, especially when driven by the needs described above.

The Good Parent is also a societal ideal - it is a mother-ideal: all-giving and all-forgiving, nurturing, supporting. Therefore, while therapeutic theories generally slight the Good Parent, there is not much opposition against her from other parts of society. But if the Good Parent is like the Jungian Great Mother archetype, it also incorporates its dangers: for example, the solicitousness can become suffocating (perhaps when well-meaning advice is not taken). The Good Parent may also have a tendency never to refuse to take on a client, no matter how difficult - only to end up "getting rid of patients unwittingly ... by unacknowledgedly evil ploys aimed ostensibly at helping the patient". Indeed, Singer calls the "urge to appear angelic ... one of the most dangerous compulsions".


stay tuned for the next vignette, about "the irreproachable professional".


isabella mori
couunselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

women, therapy and blogging

a few interesting thoughts on women and blogging:

Writing, as a form of therapy, is as old as ink itself. Universally understood as a transformative process, the simple act of putting pen to page can effectively jump start personal growth and healing.

Over the years I’ve had more than a handful of sessions on a therapist’s couch sorting through the baggage I’ve built, bought, borrowed and inherited in my 48 years. Without exception, each qualified practitioner proposed the following recommendation: start and keep a daily journal.

Seems much angst and worry can be worked through with pen and paper. Yet for reasons that can only be explained as part of ‘my personal charm,’ my journal keeping would start and lapse in record time. Nevertheless, I knew the writing process to be powerful despite my inability to be consistent. Once, after managing to hold my journaling nose to the grindstone for 13 weeks, I leapt tall buildings made of artist block and landed on the other side, with renewed energy and fabulous paid work.

And yet, despite my success, I quickly discontinued putting my thoughts on paper.

Miraculously, last spring, my lifelong writing inertia evaporated with the click of a computer button. As easy as one, two, three, I started my own on-line journal, more commonly known as a blog.

more here ...

fractals, chaos and psychotherapy

fractals, like the one here, and one of its associated disciplines, chaos theory, have long fascinated me. according to wikipedia

Fractals can be most simply defined as images that can be divided into parts, each of which is similar to the original object. Fractals are said to possess infinite detail.

fractals in an of themselves are a thing of beauty. i also think that, like poetry, they can illustrate the vast complexity, dynamics and beauty of the human experience.

anytime we engage in repetitions or experience patterns in our lives, we can see it as an example of a fractal. for example, writing is something that i have engaged in all my life, starting from my first attempt to write a mystery novel at age 11. if my life was an abstract painting, and writing was a particular shape, you could see this shape, or something similar to this shape, repeated over and over in my life.

other life patterns that are widely known are being attracted to men who are like our fathers, switching addictions (e.g. from alcoholic to workaholic) , any kind of habits - from brushing our teeth in the morning to sitting on a specific chair at the dinner table, not being able/willing to engage in certain emotions (e.g. not grieving), etc.

when we look at the fractal above, all the shapes and "sub-shapes" in various shades of mauve, we can see how they change and shift, for example, from a hexagon to a triangle to a trapeze - always similar (e.g. the hexagon isn't suddenly followed by a totally different shape, say, a bubble) but always different.

however, while there are definitely patterns, these patterns are not preordained and are highly sensitive to being influenced by even small changes, or the introduction of a a new item, however small. for example, the colours above are obviously very different - there's green, there's mauve.

just like in fractals, our life patterns can shift and change, and we can introduce new patterns. for example, a person who is workaholic can channel that pattern into something that serves her and/or the people around her (e.g., go from being a 14-hour-a-day lawyer to shifting some of her drive to provide legal help for people on welfare). that's a bit like the dark mauve pattern above turning into a lighter mauve pattern.

or a new "colour" could suddenly appear in a person's life - a new person, a new job, a special experience. this could give this person's life a new twist, and perhaps one for the better.

that's where i see the connection between fractals (or chaos theory) and psychotherapy. my job is to help people stay true to themselves while changing the colours and shapes of their lives to a pattern that works better for them.

if you're interested in reading a bit more about this, here are a few links

- a seaman and boater talks about the changing patterns of water and life
- a great book by john briggs and david peat, seven life lessons of chaos - spiritual wisdom from the science of change
- and, if you like it academic, a great book on chaos and psychology by michael buetz

btw, i designed the fractal above with xaos, a great little free piece of fractal software.

isabella mori
moritherapy
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com

breast cancer

for the third year now, my friend haedy, a cancer survivor and now again living with breast cancer, is going to walk 60 km during august's the weekend to end breast cancer. finally, i'm going to join her and our close friend danielle, and we'll walk together.

i'm excited and frightened and nervous and giddy. excited because the walk is such a high! frightened because of all the loss people have to stare in the face in preparation and during the walk. nervous because i don't know if i can walk that much, and i don't know if i can raise the $2,000 i need to raise in order to participate. giddy because it's already such a ball!

so i'll be posting all kinds of stuff about this in the next little while. for today, here are a few links to sites that talk about the emotional side of living with breast cancer:

Coping with Cancer: 10 Steps Towards Emotional Well-Being

A list of books on the emotional aspects of breast cancer

The American Psychological Association's "Breast cancer: How your mind can help your body"

Atlantic Breast Cancer Net: Living in the moment & Emotional health

Climbing mountains in the fight against breast cancer

Couples communication: When the wife has breast cancer

Contrary to psychologists' expectations, breast cancer survivors don't experience an extended emotional crisis after their treatment regimens end (Research)

please also visit our web site dedicated to the cancer walk!


isabella mori
moritherapy
counselling in vancouver
www.moritherapy.com