Blame is the game that blinds me from the understanding the true cause of all my emotional distress. When I am blaming I am unaware that my anger, fear, shame and guilt is actually being caused by the part of me I call "the inner critical voice" or affectionately as my inner jackal. As long as I keep the big bony finger of blame pointed in your direction, I can remain unaware of the fact that it is what I am telling myself about your behavior that is stimulating my painful reactions. This lack of awareness of the true cause of my distress also keeps me powerless to do much about it. And even though I may make great efforts to souse this distressing fire inside me by ensnaring you into taking responsibility for it, the fire still burns. It is as though there were a mirror reflecting a fire and I continued to pour bucket after bucket of water on the mirror expecting the fire to be put out.

Another way of looking at blame is to notice that it is a tragic expression of an unmet need. When I call you "selfish." I am expressing disappointment about wanting you to give more consideration to my needs. When I call you "stupid," I may be expressing frustration about wanting you to have already been aware of certain information. When I call you a "jerk," I may be scared and wanting more space between my car bumper and yours. So I might say that blame is an ineffective request for empathy, to my pain and for consideration of my unmet wants. The tragic part is that the form I have chosen to express my request makes it difficult for you to give to me without harming the relationship. This is not only true of requests I make of you, but also those I make of myself. Here’s an example.

This morning I tried to motivate myself to get out of bed early and write this chapter by telling myself that I was lazy and self-sabotaging if I did not. Well, that was such an unpleasant nagging voice to hear so early that I rolled over and went back to sleep.

So what can be done about this habit of making requests of ourselves and others in the form of blame? Just as blame is a protective move based on fear and ignorance, compassion is a corrective countermove based on courage and understanding. Whenever I find myself blaming myself or others, I want to take some time to turn my attention to that part of my body that feels the blame. Sometimes it is my stomach, and I know it is anger; sometimes it is my heart area and I know it is hurt; or if it is my upper chest it is fear. It feels relieving just to acknowledge it, feel into it and imagine what it wants in order to feel better. Now I am ready to try what Dr. Marshall Rosenberg, a clinical psychologist, calls "Giraffe Speak." Now I am ready to take responsibility for what I am wanting, and for what I am feeling. I am willing now to "stick out my long neck" and reveal my true feeling of the moment and ask for exactly what I want. Now instead of calling you inconsiderate, I might say "I feel lonely and want you to come over." Instead of calling myself lazy, I might tell me, "I am feeling scared and want you to finish this article before the deadline." Giraffe Speak is not a technique to manipulate, but a way of increasing your chances of inspiring compassion and cooperation from yourself and others.

The reason blame is so rampant is that it looks like it works. A mother tells her grown son that he is ungrateful because he does not phone often enough. So the son starts calling weekly. Did the mother get what she wanted? Maybe on the surface, but not without harming the relationship. Yes, the son is calling, but only because he feels too guilty, ashamed, or scared not to. And the deeper longing the mother has for connection with her son will continue to be unmet. How painful for her to hear her son’s flat monotone voice call "Hi Mom, here’s your weekly call."

Another popular feature of blame is its usefulness in extracting sweet revenge on our hated ones. Aside from my private practice I work with gang kids and their families in Southeast San Diego. I have noticed that few things seem to delight the kids more than to catch one of the counselors breaking the rules and then to point their own big bony finger at them for it. When you ask the kids why this brings them such joy they say, "cause now they can know how I feel all the time when they yell at me for stuff." Again I can see how this blaming and trying to get revenge is a poorly coded S.O.S. for understanding and empathy.

In a sense blaming is hereditary. Just as you inherit your native language from your parents, whether it be English, French or Spanish, so too do you inherit the cultural patterning of using blame to coercively get your needs met. It is also contagious and addictive.

This reminds me of a story Dr. Rosenberg told about his work with a certain murderer in the Swedish prison system. The murderer told him that the only thing that got him out of bed in the morning was the joy of fantasizing about the revenge he was going to take on the person that had turned him in, once his nine years were up. Dr. Rosenberg, being a gambling man said, "I will bet you that if you give me one hour of your time, I can convince you that there is something you want even more than revenge." The prisoner, having plenty of time on his hands, agreed.

Dr. Rosenberg began, "So it sounds like you’re completely enraged with this man that turned you in, and would like him to know just how you feel about him."

"Yes, I’d like to break the squealer’s neck," replied the prisoner, "And to think he used to be my best friend."

The doctor: "And besides anger is there also a sense of deep pain and confusion about how your best friend could do this?"

The prisoner: "Yea, I would have never turned him in, he was my best friend."

The doctor: "Is part of the pain you’re feeling about the loss of this friendship?"

After an hour of this deepening dialogue, the prisoner began to cry as he became aware that his desire for revenge was a cover for a deeper need to have his feelings about the situation understood. This prisoner went on to convince many other prisoners to take workshops with Dr. Rosenberg, who now goes back to Sweden every year to work with them.

Self-blame is the same game. It is an attempt to get some relief, through revenge, on ourselves. And again this self-blame is a poorly coded S.O.S. for help in the form of self-understanding, empathy and compassion. I have tried to affirm the self-critical voices away, only to create more polarization.

The Voice: "How could you be so stupid?"

Me: "I am a perfectly intelligent person."

Voice: "How could anyone like you?"

Me: "I am a perfectly lovable person" etc.

But this is like ignoring a crying child. And inside of us the crying either gets louder or takes another form in an attempt to get heard. Sometimes it takes the form of self-sabotage, relationship or work addictions, spiritual addictions or depression.

So what I am wanting to always remember is to keep clear my intentions to compassionately connect with any blame I hear whether inside or outside of me. Unless, of course, I am feeling overwhelmed, and that is when I want to remember to reach out to someone in my community for understanding. And if I happen to ask you for some understanding, please remember not to try to solve my pain with New Age Chicken Soup, like, "Well I am sure it is all part of the Universe’s perfect plan for your life" or "You’ll probably need to increase your calcium intake," or "with the Common Variety Chicken Soup, like "things could be worse," and "No pain, no gain."

Words are Windows or they’re Walls by Ruth Bebemeyer

I feel so sentenced by your words, I feel so judged and sent away.

Before I go I’ve got to know, is that what you meant to say.

Before I rise to my defense, Before I speak in hurt or fear,

Before I build that wall of words, tell me did I really hear?

"Words are windows or they’re walls

They sentence us or set us free.

When I speak and when I hear

Let the love light shine through me."

There are things I need to say, things that mean so much to me.

If my words don’t make me clear, will you help me to be free.

If I seemed to put you down, if you felt I didn’t care.

Try to listen through my words to the feelings that we share.

"Words are windows or they’re walls

They sentence us or set us free.

When I speak and when I hear

Let the love light shine through me."

"There is luxury in self blame. When we blame ourselves we feel no one else has the right to" Oscar Wilde.

* * *

Psychological judgements and diagnoses often trigger hopelessness because they are static. By static I mean words that label what we "are" as in "You are a paranoid" or "You are immature." These kinds of labels offer no room for change, development or growth, but by virtue of their static nature perpetuate the status quo. So instead of even thinking that someone is a paranoid, I prefer to think "I am sad about how often this person has fear come up." Or instead of thinking that someone is immature, I would prefer to think "This person is growing more slowly than I would like" or "They are at a certain level of developmental."

Everything could be said in terms of my reality instead of your abnormality. Instead of saying you are a commitment phobic, I could say I am frustrated with how long it is taking you to make certain agreements.

* * *

The impulse to attack, comes from the fear of being attacked.

The impulse to blame comes from the fear of being blamed.

* * *

I want to command respect not demand respect.

When I am judging, I am trying to hold someone else responsible for what I am feeling.

Withdrawing love from a child usually inspires self-recrimination in that child. This is why most of us, myself included are so harsh on ourselves. What is really needed is continued presence and acceptance by the parent so that security can be felt. From the anxiety free mental state of security, the child can turn their attention toward the feelings of others. Based on this sense of empathic connectedness the child is more likely to take into account other people’s feelings. If the child does something like hit someone and the parental response is to yell at the child, that parent is interfering with the child’s moral development. The yelling parent will trigger fear in the child which shuts down the child’s emotional body, including their sense of empathy for the person they are hitting. Even if the child "learns not to hit" others, their motivation for not hitting others is based on a fear of punishment, which is a much lower level of moral development than compassion for others. And besides frequently what is learned is just "Don’t hit little brother when Mom or Dad are watching". Nothing bad happens when Mom and Dad are not watching so it must be OK to do so then. Parental presence to the child supports the child in turning their attention toward how other people feel. This is the beginning of empathy for other people, which developmentally is the most mature form of morality. This helps the child evolve beyond self-absorbed stage of trying to avoid punishment or gain rewards. It supports the child in developing a holistic, ecological relationship with his social environment.

Self Recrimination slows down discrimination

As one ruminates on what one should have done or what one is (lazy, stupid, needy, etc.) for having done some action, no thought goes in to noticing the choices one made that created the undesirable outcome. Our mind is all absorbed with the fear, shame and guilt that self judgmental thinking creates. No thought goes into what choices could have been made to create a different outcome. No thought goes into understanding what made the person make the those undesirable choices in the first place. No thought goes into how to gather the resources and skills to make different choices, take different actions and therefore create different outcomes. We are thinking we "should have known better" instead of thinking about how we could "know better in the future".

We have been taught to withdraw our own self-acceptance when we do something that creates an undesirable outcome. This withdrawal of self-acceptance undermines the secure base from which we might critically, or maybe I should say uncritically, examine our choice and thinking processes. To put it crudely we have been taught to think in a way that keeps us stupid (i.e. from learning as quickly as we might). Perhaps even more tragically it contributes to a sense of harshness and self-doubt. This self- recriminating thinking contributes to a lessening of self caring and self-respect. This thinking we should have known better is a good way to prevent us from knowing better in the future. Most precious of all relationships and experiences, self-respect, is lost in a labyrinth of self recriminating self analysis.

"There are no victims."

There has never been a perpetrator that did not first see themselves as a victim.

Feeling victimized is the precursor to perpetration.

There certainly are people who have been raped, beaten, stolen from, etc. but that person still has a choice about whether they think of themselves as a victim. It is only by thinking of oneself as a victim that certain dynamics are set in motion. Of course it is extremely difficult when one has been physically injured for example not to look at the event through our victim culture's glasses. When we have grown up in a society where everyone completely agrees that the earth is flat, all laws and ideas of justice are based on that assumption. It is practically impossible to hold a "world as round" perspective.

It requires to leave the safe shores of our societies and our loved one's world view and venture into the uncharted waters of our own examined experience. We must go beyond the comforting sympathy of those who would collude with us in our powerlessness and our choicelessness.

I once had a workshop participant say to me in a provocative tone of voice, "What choices would you have if someone was torturing you baby daughter right in front of you." "I would have the choice to have compassion for my daughter and her torturer and for the pain in my own heart watching." I answered.

"No," says the same woman, "You would have no choice but to be enraged and wounded by what was happening." "No," I said "I would have a choice, and I agree that from your world view you would have no choice. But remember Jesus' words hanging from the cross, ‘Forgive them father for they know not what they do.’"

* * *

Here is a comeback for when you are hearing blame and want to be playful - Sorry, I don't pick up the blame channel.

* * *

When I call someone a victim, it is my victim speaking.

* * *

If I let you accidentally oppress me, use me, take advantage of me etc. I need to apologize to you as a way of reclaiming my power. I want you to know I regret developing the resentment that always comes when I abandon speaking up for myself and allow anyone to get their needs met at my expense.

* * *

There is no need to blame or harm another, that is a strategy to get relief from our feelings of powerlessness and hurt.

* * *

Under a section entitled "Putting Aside the Blame," in the book Difficult Conversations (page 68), Stone, Patton and Heen of the Harvard Negotiation Project Group writes "When you learn of your wife’s infidelity, you want to say, ‘You are responsible for ruining our marriage! How could you do something so stupid and hurtful?!’ Here, you are focusing on blame as a proxy for your feelings. Speaking more directly about your strong feelings –‘I feel devastated by what you did.’" (This is a direct quote from the book.) How sad that even here we are coached by the brightest the U.S. has to offer, to not take any responsibility for one's own reactions but to hold the other responsible. "I feel devastated by what you did," suggests that it is what the other person did that directly caused the reaction, and therefore implying that the there is no space in between cause and effect. And of course believing that you have no control over your reaction to someone else’s behavior leaves you feeling powerless. As Rollo May points out in his book Power and Innocence, powerless is the precursor to violence as demonstrated by the riots in Watts in the sixty’s. The feeling of powerlessness also makes it easier to deny any choice about how one expresses the pain or anger that was triggered by the other. After all the other person caused you to be overwhelmed and devastated which caused you to go out of control. The feeling of powerlessness also frequently leads to the strategy of trying to control the stimulus. And when you can’t control the stimulus, this can trigger an overwhelming sense of inadequacy which can lead to trying to destroy the stimulus. Maybe this is why domestic violence is a leading cause of death among women.

They do not, unless I think they do and thereby let them. So instead of saying or even

thinking "I am devastated that you had sex with another man/woman" I would rather say

"When I found out that you had sex with another man/woman, I felt deeply sad, angry,

with a great loss of trust because I need openness, communication, and to be trusted with

the full truth. Would you be willing to explore with my what made you make this choice

and what made you choose not to tell me?" By think and speaking this way I empower

myself with the understanding that I have a choice about how I respond and that my pain is

not caused by the other but by my unmet needs. And I have choices about how and where

to get my needs met.

Remember Dr. Hannibal "the cannibal" Lector, the truly psycho-therapist in the movie classic The Silence of the Lambs? Jodie Foster interviews him in prison and asks him why he had killed and eaten several of his psychotherapy clients. To which he responded "I did them a favor, they were going nowhere in their therapy." From the safety of the other side of prison bars, the Oscar winning Foster challenges him, "Turn your highly developed power of perception toward yourself doctor, if you’re not too scared of what you will find." Unfortunately for we therapists and our loved ones, our defense system is also the socially medically accepted standard for diagnosing others. This makes it very difficult for us to notice when we are stuck in our stuff, (i.e. projecting blame and denying our own responsibility) or for anybody to call us on it. The American Medical Association, the American Psychiatric Association and several others all agree that not only does our shit not stink it is also scientifically correct. We have no way to let go of our shit and so we become spiritually and psychologically constipate.

Some therapist friends of mine love to complain to me how most of their clients are stuck in a cycle of constantly complaining, kind of a "complaining constipation". When their clients do it they call it "playing victim". When they are complaining to me about their clients, they call it "healthy venting". They talk about how helpless, frustrated and irritated they are when their clients refuse to assume their power. Hmmm… "Do you ever feel victimized by your client’s victim-hood?" I ask. This rarely goes over well, but some dissociated angry part of myself enjoys their discomfort with my inquisition.

I suspect my therapist friends feel helpless when their clients are expressing their helplessness and fear of change. And because they are dissociated (of course they would call this a healthy objective, professional or Zen detachment) from their own feelings of helplessness, they become irritated whenever their clients start "playing victim".

Now isn’t that a Political Correction Paradox (PCP?)? It’s Politically Correct to tell your client to "vent" their feelings, even negative ones, but it is therapeutically taboo to "dump" any of your feelings on the client. This is part of the therapist’s taboo against expressing any feelings for fear of being diagnosed as engaging in transference. As a therapist you are only allowed to model the needless, wantless, patient, people-pleasing perfect parent. (I am reminded of a line from a song I sing which says ‘To give is domination if I can’t also receive’) The client then tries and tries to emulate his saint-like, all giving, never receiving therapist, only to fail to measure up again and again.

I have clients who’ve told me that they have tried to talk to their therapist about this dynamic and they run into the classic double blind block.

They ask their therapist something like, "I’m a little confused and worried about something. I show you a lot of my vulnerability and feelings but I don’t remember you ever showing me any of yours. Does that concern you at all about the level of honesty in our relationship?" Depending on the school the therapist went to here is what sometimes comes back.

The Humanistic Nondirective

"So you’re confused and worried that you show me your vulnerability and feelings but you don’t remember me showing any of mine," comes back the maddening, parrot phrasing echo from the actively listening therapist. He sits there with such a warm, understanding face, fatherly angora button-up sweater and empathetic eyes that you’d feel really guilty if you smacked him.

Or.

The Classic Freudian

"It is typical during this phase of therapy that the analazee wants a more intimate relationship with their analyst. The Oedipal overtones are apparent in your languaging. Notice you said that ‘you show me yours and you want me to show you mine,’ says the scared analyst as his mind wanders to whether he has paid his sexual malpractice insurance or not.

Or.

The Gestalt Approach

"That’s a great thing to work on today. Here now imagine I’m sitting in this empty chair and I’m expressing my feelings and vulnerability to you. Feel into it. What would it look like, sound like. Don’t be afraid to let it lash out, remember it’s good to let bad feelings out." encourages the intern who has recently decided to call himself Fritz and wear a string pearls, as a tribute to the master. Then you end up verbally abusing yourself through the role of your own therapist and paying him to watch, a sort of voyeur’s fee

I am a little reluctant to acknowledge that much of my knowledge about this comes from my own experience. My family was so overwhelmed with emotional distress that in order to save the sinking ship I became "the little counselor". This required me to put away any feelings of overwhelm and helplessness I had, and calmly attend to the needs of others. I was groomed and stroked into becoming a consoler of others. I think many of us counselors were created this way. I would like us all to be careful to own our feelings of helplessness and get our dependency needs met somewhere. If we don’t get our need to depend and lean on someone met somewhere, we will cajole our clients into becoming overly dependent on us. I recognize that this does not follow logically at first glance but let me explain.

I have noticed for myself that when I am not giving myself time to recharge, have deep meaningful conversations with peers, long walks etc., I begin to need my clients to need me. They become a sort of salt water and the more I only drink the salt water the thirstier I become. Their expressing how much they need me distracts me from the inner emptiness that sets in when I neglect connecting with myself. You can’t give empathy from empty and if you try you will become a ‘they’re pissed’.

In an attempt to recharge myself and receive emotional support I used to attend CODAHP (Codependants Anonymous for the Helping Professions) groups. One day I listened to what seemed like a very angry therapist talk for 20 minutes about how drained she was due to her empathizing with her clients all day. After the group I went up to her to try to get a reality check. Because for me anytime I am able to make the connection and empathize with another human being, client or otherwise, I am recharged with energy not drained.

I asked her what she meant by ‘empathizing with her clients’. She said "you know, listening to the same old sob story and then trying like hell to get them off the pity pot." I then understood why she was drained. She wasn’t empathizing, she was tolerating her clients and then trying to coerce them to do what she thought they "should". I also understood why she was angry. She was caught in the never ending ‘Yes, but Game’. As soon as you let someone put you in the role of telling them what they should do, they can start playing the "Yes, - But Game" with you.

You know the game;

Someone says "I have been lonely a lot lately."

You, the sincerely-wanting-to-help-friend says "Couldn’t you start attending that singles group at your church.""

The someone "Yes, but they always turn the air conditioning up so high in the meeting rooms."

Tenacious you "Well you could wear a sweater or something couldn’t you?"

Them "Yes, but everything I have to wear is so dorky looking."

By now the hook is set and you know there is no way out of this conversation, or for some they’re pissed's the session, without hating the person.

You, hating to give up after investing so much, "Well you could buy something new."

Them, now confident in their every countermove, "Yes, but you know how I hate to clothes shop."

At least the ‘they’re pissed’ gets to say "That will be $95" at the end of the dialogue to at least exact a little revenge.

Another danger comes when a client has sunk into a funk. Some therapists try to get their clients out and become "they’re pissed’s" when the client continues to think in a way that the therapist fears supports that funk. These therapists get mad and in a very calm medical science voice explain to their clients that they are "in denial", "being resistant" or "playing victim". Have you ever heard of anyone being told that they are playing victim and suddenly they find their power and start taking responsibility for their lives? Have you ever heard any person tell another that they are "in denial" and then suddenly that person gets a far away ‘aha’ look in their eye says "Ah yes now I see, it’s really hurting little Bobby to be robbing his piggy bank on a weekly basis. I need to give up alcohol, smoking, gambling, wife beating and overeating and dedicate my life to the selfless service of others."

The therapist doesn’t even have to tell his client that he or she is "in denial" or "being resistant". All the therapist needs to do is think in such terms and he will begin to convey the message through his/her "they’re pissed’" eyes. He/she will begin to have a certain detached, scientific, examining-a-bug-under-a microscope attitude, which protects the therapist from feeling his own helplessness or sense of inadequacy. And God forbid if the client should comment on the message being sent. A friend of mine made the mistake of coming out and asking her therapist if he was feeling angry, to which the therapist replied "So you feel that I am angry." And then he sat back in his white laboratory coat silence and stared with his "their pissed" eyes to see what his guinea pig client would do with that one.

And what a wonderfully safe business is psychotherapy. What other business do you know of where if the customer does not benefit or is unhappy you get to blame the customer. That’s ingenious! It would be like a car mechanic having a customer complain that his car still doesn’t work. And then the mechanic convinces the customer that it is because he has a driving problem. Maybe he has one of the autoimmune diseases like driver’s resistance, or ADD (auto driving disorder) etc.

To insure avoiding an authentic encounter with your client it is important to understand the basic principles involved in preventing contact. It’s actually simple. You just stay in your rational thinking head and away from places where you might actually connect with your client. Definitely stay far away from expressing anything that might be construed as a feeling or anything from your heart area. (It is similar to the ethical guidelines therapists are given, i.e. you are discouraged from going places like parties or intimate gatherings if you suspect a client might be there. This way you insure that you never actually meet your client.)

Another tip is to remember it is important to always think in terms of what the client "is" or what mental state he/she "is in". For example my client is a "Food addict" or he/she is in a state of depression. I never want to feel or say "I am scared about how large you are becoming". I never want to notice or express that "I am frustrated with how often you shoot down exciting ideas before even trying them." This way you will stay safely cloistered away in the ivy covered tower of your role as therapist. The only thing more astonishing than how inappropriate the mental health community thinks a therapist crying or sharing one’s own feelings in therapy is, is how healing it can be for the client.

I am reminded of what Martin Buber, the great mystic told the father of Humanistic psychotherapy Carl Rogers. He basically told Carl, you can’t do therapy as a therapist. And my belief is that if you try to, you will soon become a Their pissed. I believe he was saying that as long as you are playing therapist, thinking that you have more right to change your client than he has to change you, and that you know more than he/she, you will be avoiding a more eye to eye, I and Thou encounter. It is only in the meeting, the blending of the psychic chemistries of two people does the alchemy of transformation occur. Jung referred to it as the exchange of psychic material. Rollo May, the great psychotherapist and author once said to me "You know the best therapists are the ones who have been wounded and are passionately working on their own healing process."

Dr. Laura Slesinger is a great example of a they’re-pissed who never leaves her role or shows signs of humanness. She gets totally flustered about 10 times per show and accuses the caller of "playing stupid" or "playing victim ". Her cure all advice is "Get a life!!!" said with anger and conviction. This of course immediately enlightens and empowers all her thousands of callers who are starting to raise the planetary consciousness and lead the world into the new millennium. With all this sarcasm you might think I was jealous of Dr. Laura. Well, maybe a little jealous of the number of people she is able to reach with her message, but not of her day to day experience. I am confident that anyone who so frequently thinks in those kinds of judgmental terms toward others, is even harsher on themselves. Some evidence of that was a TV show about her where some of the people who help produce her radio show described her as a ‘perfectionist’, which can be a polite euphemism for someone with a lot of self hate and judgement.

I just wish all of us therapist would own our self hate and judgement instead of projecting it onto our clients through the sneaky, socially sanctioned ways that we do. For example if the client says something that triggers anger for the therapist the client is being aggressively provocative. If the therapist says something that triggers anger for client, the client is being defensive. If the client says something that the therapist doesn’t understand the client is being vague, incoherent and making loose associations. If the therapist says something that the client doesn’t understand, the client is being resistant to therapy.

Some new age therapists teach their clients how to be their own "spin doctors".

In other words how to turn negatives into positives. When the client thinks gosh, "I’m depressed"; they are taught by therapists to "reframe that" into "all things work together for the universal good". It’s too bad you can’t sue for ‘Metaphysical Malpractice’. To me this is like seeing the red warning lights on your car dash and training yourself to imagine that it’s really a Christmas tree light. Mechanics call these "idiot lights", partly because they are an ultimately simple indication that your car needs something you neglected to give it, like oil, and because if you can’t figure out what the light means you’ll soon be walking. One new age therapist friend of mine was having his peace disturbed by the red light that appeared on his dashboard and located a Band-Aid in his glovebox, and covered the pesky distraction without even having to stop his car. How clever!

A client of mine, Georgia age seventy five, was the recipient of a similar form of cleverness from her former therapist. Georgia shared with the therapist the problems she was having with her husband. In no time at all the therapist had solved her problem by explaining that her husband is "manic depressive". Georgia explained to me that at the moment she heard this a great feeling of hopelessness and powerlessness come over her being. After all he "is" manic depressive, leaving her nothing she could do about it. Now that she had a label for him she no longer lays awake at night wondering what was wrong with him. Instead she is kept awake with feelings of anger and despair at not seeing any way to work with her situation. Plus she feels guilty if she expresses any of her frustration or disappointment to him, because after all "he’s sick". I think offering the diagnosis, especially without strategies to cope with the underlying issues, is more than unhelpful. Psychological judgements often trigger hopelessness and powerlessness because they are static. For more understanding of how the phenomena of labeling people with mental illnesses got invented by Freud and others for political reasons read The Myth of Mental Illness by Thomas S. Szasz, M.D.)

The sad part is that Georgia’s therapist is giving the best information she has from her field. After all what a shame not to use information that cost her tens of thousands of dollars to get from the university. Georgia told me she felt great relief after I showed her some other ways to think about her husband and their relationship.

What I showed her helped her clarify ways she could negotiate powerfully for her needs in the relationship instead of always trying to prevent him from getting upset. I gave her tools for rocking the boat without drowning anyone. I explained that using these tools would likely challenge her husband’s way of thinking that was contributing to his alternating feelings of depression and mania.

One therapist friend of mine says she has learned to offer validation to whatever newage, politically correct judgements her clients express toward their spouses or friends. This way the client always feel like at least her therapist is her friend and on her side. (Yea, as long as the mental health insurance keeps paying.) For example one of her clients heard about the term ‘commitment phobic’ from a talk show and felt relieved to have a new way to describe her boyfriend. After hearing about a couple of the boyfriend’s behaviors, the therapist concurred with the diagnosis. Although client and therapist were cozy and confident in the mutual collaborative judgement, I am doubtful this helped the client gain any insight about what part she might be playing in the relationship, or what she might do to help her boyfriend with his fear.

Client – "Hey Doc, I can’t sleep at night."

Therapist – You’re an insomniac.

Client - "Great now that I know what I am I can sleep at night."

Therapist - "That will be $185 please."

The whole concept of mental illness was invented in the mid nineteenth century. Freud was beginning to discover that there was a lot of incest going that explained much of the hysterical behavior of many women, particularly among family members of the Royal Academy of medicine. He started to expose it but then the academy freaked out and started threatening to kick him out. He basically recanted and said that the hysterical behavior of these women is caused by this ‘mental illness’ called conversion hysteria, which became the prototype for the whole class of diseases that basically launched the mental health field. This definition of certain behaviors as a mental illness was something new. Up until that time an illness meant a bodily disorder. So the invention of the myth of mental illness is first of all a misnomer, because the mind does not get ill, but certainly the brain does get all sorts of diseases, tumors etc.

Here is what Thomas Szazs M.D. says about it: "In modern medicine new diseases were discovered, in modern psychiatry they were invented. Persons who complained of pains and paralyses but were apparently physically intact in their bodies – that is, were healthy, by the old standards – were now declared to be suffering from a ‘functional illness.’ Mentally sick persons did not ‘will’ their pathological behavior and were therefore considered ‘not responsible’ for it." What is funny is that even people who are discovered to be deliberately pretending to be ill, i.e. faking it, malingering, have been declared by modern psychiatry to also be suffering from a mental illness, thereby absolving them of any responsibility for their choices. Just as Marx explained all human behavior as being caused by economic conditions in the society, Freud and most modern behaviorist have reduced human beings to puppets of family historical causes or so-called genetic-psychological circumstances. Szasz takes exception to this because of the powerful effect self-fulfilling prophetic diagnosis have on people. He wishes instead as I do to empower people. "I wish only to maximize the scope of voluntaristic explanations – in other words, to reintroduce freedom, choice, and responsibility into the conceptual framework and vocabulary of psychiatry.".

Therapist that give their clients labels for themselves or others, are providing them with a sort of lifejacket that may in the short run prevent them from drowning in shame and confusion. However just as lifejackets prevent you from going underneath the surface of the water, psychological labels contribute to the client staying on the surface of their consciousness, in their heads, never diving deeper into the feelings and issues deeper in their bodies.

A friend told me that recently she was about to attend a dance party with new friends. As she started looking for something to wear for the party she noticed a strong urge to go to the kitchen and grab the box of Oreo’s out of the cupboard stashed behind the bag of brown rice. She started thinking about the label her therapist had recently given her - Eating Disorder. She started thinking about how it was caused by her father’s alcoholism, which allowed her to shift some of the shame and guilt onto him through blame. Although the blame felt better than the shame she was still left with angry feelings and an urge to stuff the anger down with food.

It was only much later that she was able to come out of her head and out of the righteous, therapeutically supported blame and anger and back into her body. It took the help of a friend who knew it would not be helpful to collude (from the word collusion – as in co-illusion) with her labels for herself or her father, but gave her high octane empathy instead.

As she came back into her body she noticed that she was sad about not getting a certain acceptance and attention from her father. She also became aware that she had been triggered by the thought finding something to wear for the party. Gradually she identified that she had started to feel fear about picking the clothes that would win her the attention and acceptance from these new friends. She had unconsciously covered over this fear with a compulsive thought about eating Oreo’s.

Her attempt to understand her compulsive urge was not helped by what her therapist had offered her to think, i.e. that she had an ‘eating disorder’. In fact it contributed to her confusion by keeping her up in her head. When she finally got back down into her body and emotions she became aware that she was scared about getting acceptance and needed comfort and support. Becoming conscious of her basic need this way allowed her to see more options and feel more at choice. She could still choose the Oreo’s or she could find the comfort through self empathy, or reassurance/hugs/empathy from others.

I have a client who tells me that her previous therapist pounded it into her that the people in the past who had hit her and called her names were "Perpetrators", and therefore deserved her righteous rage. "Jane" was once a member of a group therapy session I was leading, where another member, "Mary", was acknowledging that as a child she had yelled "bad" names at some younger kids in the neighborhood. Mary had spent her whole life riddled with guilt trying to make up for what she had done. Now in the group she was mourning deeply and expressing her very painful regrets about the effect of her behavior on these younger children. I and others were empathetic to her grieving process and this absolutely infuriated Jane. Although she didn’t say anything at the time, except with her eyes, she later told me in an individual therapy session that she didn’t want any perpetrators in the group and that if I didn’t kick Mary out of the group she would leave because she didn’t feel safe. What Jane didn’t understand was that she was doing the same thing she was upset with Mary about doing; name-calling. She didn’t consider that calling someone a "perpetrator" is name calling of a most vociferous variety.

Instead of explaining to her that she was "projecting" (which many a proper and profession therapist would have done), which would have been an expression of my own anxiety that she develop insight, I empathized with what got triggered in her when the group was empathizing with Mary. I empathized with the rage she felt that a "perpetrator" would be receiving empathetic attention. I listened to the jealousy and hurt she felt about desperately needing that kind of attention herself. I listened to the sorrow she felt that much of her life had been eaten up by righteous rage which ravaged most of her relationships. I remembered to give her empathy before education.

Is a therapist’s license a license to judge with socially sanctioned labels. Is it OK because you’ve been trained in the scientific use of these labels and you are a professional. Sex Addict = Someone whose sexual values differ from the therapist. For the conservative fundamentalist religious therapist it is anyone who masturbates, is gay, has premarital sex, has sex with more than one person, uses any sexual aids, has Aids, has sex other than in the supine position, has sex with the lights on, or anyone who laughs at the following joke:

Do you know why Santa is so Jolly? Because he knows where all the bad girls live.

Dr. Marshall Rosenberg who is himself a clinical psychologist, tells this joke at many of his trainings. Marshall says "Growing up in Detroit I learned a rather crude, unsophisticated dialect of jackal language (meaning a language based on judgements of others). For example when if someone cut me off in traffic I might stick my head out the window and scream ‘You idiot!’……..on a good day. But now that I have my Ph.D. and a license to do psychotherapy on people, I am much more refined. Now I would say ‘You pseudoneurotic schizophrenic with borderline tendencies!’". And with that Marshall would break out his guitar and with his creaky, crackley old voice would sing:

The Sink or Shrink blues by Marshall Rosenberg

I went to a shrink in a clinic near me.

He said I was a case of total pathology.

I said, "Shrink, I knew that before I came in.

I need someone to care not this analyzin".

He asked me if I had any strange habits.

I said, "A few, but I’m always willing to learn some more."

So he gave me some pills and said to take some each day.

I said, "Shrink, pills won’t take my blues away.

My blues come from people like you

Who know what I am, but not what I’ve been through."

You see folks, he was one of those old fashioned doctors.

He still thought you needed a prescription to get drugs.

Well that shrink saw what he was trained to see.

He just never got around to seeing me.

So I left that shrink; I wasn’t impressed.

Now there’s two who flew that cuckoo’s nest.

And of course it’s a simple truth that drugs are the answer to every problem. I learned that years ago from research I did in the seventies. Financial problems? Shoot up some heroine…swoosh they’re gone. Depression? Drop some acid and suddenly life is enormously exciting again. Attention Deficit Disorder? Take a couple of Quaaludes and although your attention span still sucks, you could care less.

________________________________________________________________________

"Dead man walking"

Here are some snippets of conversations between myself and one of my cool analytical Prozac clients.

Client: "Oh it is all very interesting. When ever I would start to feel my grief rise up in my throat, I remember thinking ‘I need to be stronger for my family’. That gave me the strength to push the feelings back down, and I can see now how that led to my depression."

Me- "Are you feeling sad right now at the loss of the last three years of this depression."

Client- "Oh no, I feel fine now. I used to get upset at it occasionally before I got on Prozac, now its all just interesting."

Me- Yuk, I say to myself. I have this creepy feeling like I am talking to one of the Jim Jones zombies. I feel completely flat talking with this ATM machine like person.

Pharmaceutical companies give us a way out of taking responsibility for ourselves, our own needs and for our children.

One client’s lament:

Jean- There was a real person behind my last counselor. Too bad I never got to know her.

There is a difference between empathizing and psychologizing. Make sure that any therapist you might chose to work with knows that difference. Nice therapists psychologize, real therapist empathize and give vulnerable honesty.

Five warning signs that you are with a nice therapist –

1. (In Los Angeles) You complain to your therapist that your depressed because you think you are ugly and he/she says "Have you considered cosmetic surgery?".
2. He/she never interrupts you even if you are an energizer bunny Babylonian.
3. They smile broadly as they tell you your boyfriend fits the profile of a sociopathic stalker.
4. When you tell them that your own dog bit you, your truck broke down and your girlfriend left, they ask "Why are you creating this in your life?" in the kindest, sweetest New Age tone. Then when your rage comes up in response you really feel like a madman in comparison to this gentle helpful enlightened soul.
5. You say that your boyfriend sometimes forgets to knock before entering your room, and he/she suggest a restraining order.

If you yourself are a therapist and want to see if you fit into my diagnosis of "they’re pissed" consider the following:

You might be a ‘they’re pissed’ if;

1. You want to take more than one of your clients out into the gorge behind warehouse and drive a stake into his/her knees and leave them there.
2. You consume more Prozac than your whole clientele put together.

3) If you wake up in the middle of the night, more than once a week screaming, "I’m not your father!"

4. Diagnosing your clients gives you a rush of superiority while still allowing you to believe you are being compassionate.

* * *

I love being a therapist. It is by far the best psychological defense mechanism I’ve found. (I think Anna Freud said something along the same lines.) If someone tells me I am full of myself, I simply point out the obvious insecurity they feel around people with high self esteem. If they then say to me "Aren’t you being a little judgmental there?", I laugh at them heartily and point out how blind they are to the enormity of their hypocrisy not to notice that calling me judgmental is a judgement.

* * *

Some people use a bridge to get from one place to another, sort of like using a boat to get across a river. Other people turn their boats into houseboats and make a lifestyle of living on the river deNile. They are Recoverians studying Woundology hoping one day to find their Woundmate.

* * *

What if + yes, but = They’re pissed.

* * *

Client: "What if my boyfriend says my legs are chunky?"

Therapist: "That’s clearly abusive and you deserve better than that now don’t you? You should cut your losses and move on."

Client: "Yes, but I love him and besides he’s paying for the therapy?"

Therapist: "Well that is a slightly different case. If he’s paying for this therapy then he obviously cares for you and you should try to develop more self esteem so his comments don’t hurt you so."

* * *

William Whyte in his Organization Man warned us that modern man’s enemies may turn out to be a "mild-looking group of therapists, who…would be doing what they did to help you." He was referring to the tendency to use social sciences in support of the social ethic of our historical period; thus the process of helping people may actually make them conformist and tend toward the destruction of individuality." * * *

Albert Einstein had all the symptoms of a profound, severe case of Attention Deficit Disorder. He didn’t speak until he was four and didn’t read until he was seven. Thank God they didn’t have such an advanced diagnosis back then. Maybe if they had had Ritalin back then nothing would be relative today. (i.e. we would have no theory of relativity.)

* * *

So many ‘they’re pisseds’ say (and with great frustration) that their clients are playing victim. Aren’t they playing victim of their client’s victimology?

* * *

I once hear Jean Houston, prolific author, say "diagnosis are the character assassination of psychiatrists."

* * *

Do you have any therapist friends you might want to have a little fun with? Ask them this; Do you hug your clients? Watch as all the trust drains out of their aura. Why? Because they are imagining that you are one of the secret spies for the Board of Behavioral Examiners. (The Examiners are the people who publicly humiliate therapist through the media if a therapist does anything outside their value system.) If they answer yes, ask them; For how long? This is usually enough to mobilize all their therapist-subject-changing skills. Or if they are a "Nice" therapist they will feel compelled to answer but they will start to speak very softly now in hopes that the hidden microphone in your pocket won’t pick up their voice clearly enough to be used as evidence in their trial.

No wonder we therapist are so paranoid. Every person is a potential informant and every client a potential malpractice suit. I once had a client who disclosed to me that she had been molested by her father. It turns out that her father was the president of the "False Memory Association". And of course she had to share with her father that she had told me because in their good Catholic family everything is shared. Within a week I began to receive calls from people saying they were on the disciplinary board of my licensing agency threatening to have my license revoked or worse.

* * *

I used to work at a juvenile offender half way house. The residents were all boys who had been in kiddie prison for everything from murder, rape, armed robber to tagging and were now reentering society through the House of Hope. The most ‘respected’ counselor carried a huge Smith and Wesson forty five caliber pistol. It was a small family owned operation and some of the counselors had been working there for twenty years. It was these veteran counselors I found so amazing and amusing. In the many months I was there I must have seen a thousand incidents of the boys escalating to the point of throwing their schoolbooks, punching the walls and/or each other. Invariably the intervention of choice was always the same, always producing the same result. These models of experience and counseling wisdom would scream "Calm down, cool out, take a chill pill" which of course most of them were already on. And the result of this intervention is perfectly consistent. The boys always escalate, yelling louder, punching harder and finding more dangerous things to throw. And is this really that hard to predict. If you look at your own experience doesn’t it tell you that whenever you have been highly upset and some only nicely tells you to ‘shut up’, or calm down, don’t you always get madder. Of course you do. But for twenty years these counselors have been hoping for a miracle. (Maybe that’s why they call it the House of Hope.) They have been hoping and praying (they were very religious) that one day one of the boys would turn around and say "Thanks you caring counselor, your intervention has allowed me to feel heard so that I can now calm down and center myself." It would take great faith and hope to continue to do the same thing for twenty years, always get the opposite of what you want and still expect a miracle. But such is the power of faith. Of course these counselors never caught on and in the privacy of the break room their true they’re pissed colors would come out. They would talk in tones of great contempt and disgust about how this one is really stupid because he doesn’t know how to listen and how that one is a slow learner because he won’t learn from his mistakes. And I understand that this was their way of trying to get empathy for the anger and powerlessness they felt at trying to have some influence with the boys. But because their main modes of interpreting their experience was in terms of ‘right and wrong’, they could not support each other in bringing any relief to their anger. Nor did they analyze the data in a way that allowed them to learn from their experience. Their primary patterns of interaction between the therapists were collusion (co-illusion), collision, agreeing with each other, or argue with, think they were right or wrong. They either cooperate in supporting the illusion of their client’s wrongness (By saying things to each other like "Yea that boy really is a slow learner. Or the therapists with the bigger degrees would say "Yes this boy is the clearest case of ADD I have seen.

* * *

My ODC clients – They compulsively call themselves compulsive. They are caught in the helplessness and dependency of disease thinking. Yes the theory of addiction is addictive.

So many label themselves by thinking, "I am depressed", I have "OCD" or "ADD" in an attempt to understand self and reduce anxiety. However this thinking can also contribute to a sort of self imposed stuckness like the person who "comes to accept himself" as a procrastinator.

* * *

People talking about and around their pain instead of expressing the pain is frustrating in the same way that beautiful women talking about bikinis would be. (I know, I know some of you are thinking I am being an objectifying male chauvinist pig.)

* * *

A client of mine we will call Jane started learning about Nonviolent Communication(sm) and telling her truth. She continued to attend a group therapy meeting with her former therapist after beginning treatment with me, but after a while she started to become the lightning rod for the therapists stuff. One day during one of the group therapy sessions Jane said "I am feeling irritated and sort of scared when I notice how often different people are giving advice and offering labels like codependent, anxiety disorder and stuff. I wonder if any one objects to us just talking about our own experience and reactions." After the group the therapist asked Jane to come in for a private appointment. Jane came in for the appointment and the therapist said "I have one question for you. What is this need you have to control the group really about?" The therapist was projecting her need to control on her poor client while probably thinking that she was doing it "for the client’s own good".

* * *

Traditional preachers need to convince people they are sinners in order to stay in business. Traditional therapists need to convince people of their diagnosis of mental illness for the same reason.

* * *

I feel so helpless when you won't take your power back.