Learning to act right (38)… The line at the Fertility Control Clinic

Torrey Orton
March 1, 2014

Reaching points of no return. This is one of them.

 

Tariq has always had a fine feel for the line and a finely tuned capacity for drawing it. It comes upon him in a flash he often doesn’t quite notice himself. We close to him see it arrive before it is in his conscious awareness carried in a change of expression and posture which takes all feeling from his face and settles a calm readiness in his body. I know it is a human look of cold anger because I can mimic it to others not present and see the fear flash on their faces. It comes when certain lifelong value lines are crossed – for Tariq, ones to do with religion, family, identity and others.

 

He has to defend himself both from going over his own line (breaking his own rules) and allowing others to come across it to him (allowing others to break his rules). This, as it sounds, poses perilous problems of balance, since a perception of another’s approach or of his own need to enforce the line can provide a mutually supported but unintended energy to breech it, one way or the other, or both ways at once.

 

This conflict is clear at the Clinic for all of us present who are engaged in defending our respective sides of the line of protest. As the pressure to defend the line increases the likelihood of a transgression increases, too. Tariq bears this pressure more than the Friends* because he’s always there as security guard.

 

For example, the other day one of us was running interference for patients being subjected to the usual “offer of help” from two of the HOGPI’s** most intrusive providers, T and W. These women uniformly disregard the known council rules for street proselytising in Melbourne City Council domains: you may offer a pamphlet, a talk, a hello but you must stop when the other signals (verbally and/or gesturally) their refusal of interest. T and W’s refusal to stop offering their help is the key point of enragement for us. We are powerless to stop them. We can only intervene physically by stepping between patients and T and W once patients signal no interest in their offer. This is the point, at times, where our frustrated, powerless anger flairs verbally like this: “They said no, T.” loud enough to be heard 20 meters away, and definitely by patients 2 meters away.

 

We have spontaneously erupting feelings of offence at patient treatment. These lines are drawn in a deep and broad rush of blood to our extremities, but mostly expressed in our voices - “They said no, T.” Trouble is, this can scare the patients more than it inhibits T and W. Others of the HOGPI persuasion wilt in the face of “they said no”, signalling their retreat by withdrawing to their designated side of the line on the footpath and not participating in direct patient harassment.

 

On occasions, as this one, the Friends energy aggravates patient fear/anger and attracts expressions of those feelings in threatening forms, which we’re inclined to treat as rejection of our offer!! And so, unknowingly, it is. Arriving patients have enough to concern them without reading breastplates advertising our label (Friends of the FCC). Even calm passers-by have trouble with that. Fortunately these events occur in 30 seconds, each being a new beginning as the patients arrive. There are few repeat participants in the street drama, except us and the HOGPIs.  The vocal and physical intervention moments are so hard to describe my effort leaves too much to the imagination, but it is just to feed imagination that I’m writing!! Its difficulty reflects the difficulty of our efforts on the line at the Clinic.

 

* Friends of the Fertility Control Clinic – volunteers seeking to reduce harassment of arriving patients.

** Helpers of God’s Precious Infants

Learning to act right (33)… Engaging HoGPI strategy with anger

Torrey Orton

Feb. 25, 2013

Anger into energy…

A major change of direction is often upon us before we know it’s happened. We find ourselves facing into the wind instead of back to it…So it seems to be with me and the HoGPIs at the Fertility Control Centre (FCC). I adopted a treat-them-as-they-treat-patients attitude 8 months ago. I explicitly disregarded them and did not speak to those I had spoken to before, restricting my speech only to moments of their ‘bad behaviour’ – their daily-repeated breaching of the Melbourne City Council public harassment regulations. That’s the amount of time they gave to each passing patient.

When I wrote of my anger struggles 8 months ago (http://diarybyamadman.blogspot.com.au/2012/04/learning-to-act-right-26-my-rage-and.html

I was at the start of my attempt to influence HoGPIs with disregard. They, the errant HoGPIs, carried on as before, harassing with indifference and impunity.  My anger continued, somewhat reduced by attending to not being angry – the CBT solution. This internal strategy worked a few hours of each week’s time on the line at the FCC, only to be overwhelmed by the more outrageous examples of harassment. These moments still spark a perilously vertical rise in my pulse and pressure at the sight of an already crying woman and her bewildered male companion being set upon by the harpies of heaven.

Two of my FCC Friends – Marty and Charles – took a more assertive approach to the HoGPIs over this period, stepping up more pre-emptively to their actual harassing. Need for an intervention was relatively predictable because the most persistent harassers were 4-6 women, usually present on any given morning in ones and twos. Patients arrive in discrete pairs with lots of time between one and another. I could not do this so pre-emptively as they. Proximity to the offenses pushed me outside my self-control range in a flash.

Anger in retreat

My anger started to recede three months ago when I heard the outcome of the HoGPIs efforts to have a security guard charged with assaulting one of their number. They were unsuccessful. My anger receded further over the intervening months since as I formulated an approach to data gathering which offers a prospect of shutting the HoGPIs down to some extent and a way to be (more) effective protecting patients.

In some trial rounds of data gathering with voice-over video (where I comment on what a HoGPI is doing, her name, the time of day and date) of specific HoGPI transgressions has produced two results: an immediate HoGPI shame reflex and withdrawal from the behaviour, and a secondary threat of possible legal action. There was only one patient query about the videoing, which was easily answered.

Engage or disengage?

But it is not so simple: engage or disengage. Feelings come in different intensities. My anger varies with circumstances, which I still do not understand well or engage effectively. For example, one of the interesting things about the HoGPIs is their aversion to personal accountability for their public actions at the FCC. Aversion appears in self-veiling in different ways. The religious wear trench coats; the laity are trenchantly nameless. Neither provide their names easily, or ever so far. Two examples here - http://diarybyamadman.blogspot.com.au/2013/01/learning-to-act-right-32-unveilings.html

They do not provide their associations – professional, social, familial, avocational – easily, or at all, if asked. And, yet, they see themselves fit to attack others (under the veil of “helping” or “counselling”) about one of the most individual challenges in life…the continuation of it...or not. Their aversion is intrinsic to their single-issue strategy. Anything more personal is always a threat to the consistency and firmness of a single objective – removing abortion rights period. I’m reliably told by some among them that keeping it pure is part of the playbook for many HoGPIs.

Seeking their names, affiliations and vocations is not easy. They are hiding and my approach is a threat and their hiding is a threat to me and patients.  Upshot: an angry request from me. Effect: even more likely withholding by them. And so on. Personalising our relationship is one pathway, maybe, to breaking through the single issue veil. It’s hard to see 3D persons as iconic figures of evil. The generic example of this is the incapacity of those close to serious misbehaviour to actually see it or predict it – the family which stays together, blames together.  Anger’s not a helpful starting point. On the other hand, it provides energy for action in pursuit of what I see as patient justice. A difficult mix to get right.

The sinner-prospect identity, TBC

There is another dynamic at play in the FCC front yard. It goes something like this, I think: HoGPIs see patients through the anti-abortion lens only, so every patient who appears is identified as a prospective sinner to be saved. Their identity for the HoGPIs is sinner-prospect TBC (to be confirmed, by their response to the HoGPI offer of counselling or help). No other aspect of the individual is relevant. Keeping irrelevant the factors which could personalise the patients out of the sinner-prospect identity is central to sustaining the HoGPIs own identity as perfectly justified in any efforts the make – that is, harassments in particular. HoGPIs perform this fantasy maintenance trick by only presenting to the patients what they perceive – the sinner-prospect – with no question about the actual circumstances which bring patients to the FCC. Patients feel this perspective.

 It also helps sustain the idea that patients cannot be any more distressed than their identity as potential sinners already makes them. Normal psychology of stress doesn’t even get into view. Maybe when I get a better grip on my stressors, I’ll get better at increasing the HoGPIs’. Tracking my actions and their effects on me and HoGPIs will come next.

Stay tuned.

Learner   therapist (30)……Disrespect without intent, but effect

Torrey Orton

Feb 20, 2012

 

I’ve got a problem. Under certain circumstances, I spontaneously dismiss, even deride, others’ discussion contributions. It’s either “Uh huh” or “Oh yeah” with a self-satisfied, I coulda told ya that, tone. This behaviour has only come clearly into my view in the last 6-12 months, though having a foggy presence in my repertoire for some 10 years at least. I suspect it’s more like my whole life, the easiest evidence for which is that I’ve always had a tendency, confirmed by disinterested others, to be a wise guy, or occasional smart-ass.

 

I am trying to stamp it out. To do so requires that I follow my advice to my patients: be aware of the triggers, interrupt the behaviours and eventually pre-empt them in the most likely to trigger circumstances. Easy, no? Dismissive me seems to arise either from irritation at others’ failure to see what’s obvious to me or from my own pleasure in seeing an obvious which I wasn’t aware was coming in the conversational path I was on. I think these two sources are interwoven, and perhaps a third source is irritation with myself that I didn’t see the obvious - a brand of intellectual perfectionism…just enough to keep my eye on the rolling ball of life and only get fixated on its irregular movements.

 

I work in the obvious because truths come to me wholly formed out of an opaque inner process which is seldom wrong, once it produces. Intuitions seem and feel obvious once produced. Any pretenders to the title of an intuition must pass this internal comfort or fit rating to be the real thing. If an idea doesn’t feel right it can’t be right for me. This is not to exclude counter-intuitive ideas, which are often among the most revealing just because they do not immediately ‘fit’. So, to a certain extent my dismissiveness is rooted in exasperation at the difference in my mental style from theirs and /or my occasional failure to match my own requirements / expectations of my performance.

 

I should get a grip on this because I have a patient who thinks he’s mentally quicker than I am, and anyway feels he is because he can roughly see where the logic of my thoughts are going…what he can’t see is their emotional roots, which is why he’s still in the chair. But his slight disdain for my lack of pace has become a development point for both of us. He is experienced by others at his work as arrogant, distant, etc. and he doesn’t want to make that impression any more than I want to in my work…but I do, as does he.

 

So what? Well, “Oh yeah” is often heard as disrespectful by others, unless it’s a self-inflicted, resigned self-recognition, as one patient mumbled in reconnecting with a pattern of resilient dysfunction he’s trying to reduce. What position do I take on this ethico/politically? Ken Wilber proposes the following schema for working with differing levels of consciousness/ awareness/ knowledge:

1 -      that all truth is partial, approximate, ( “In this Theory of Everything, I have one major rule: Everybody is right. … everybody … has some important pieces of the truth, and all those pieces need to be honoured.”)

2 -      that there is a developmental sequence in human history, which we all go through, and that movement along it is likely to be very uneven for individuals and groups / societies

3 -       that there is a developmental pathway for engaging people in transformative activities, lubricated by respect

A Theory of Everything, Ken Wilber, Shambala 2000

“lubricated with respect” is a nice idea, that is, a good one finely poised, in my view.

Respect as proposed by Wilber includes respecting everything about us in principle, but most especially when we have a shortcoming from the perspective of domains of understanding we are largely inexperienced operating in and through. This includes the ‘heights’ of our own reflective overview of ourselves. It means that to respect others I must also respect myself in my less developed, more immature, faulty states and stages! With this approach in view and embraced, what can I do to mend my disrespectful way? Here are some starters:

Warn others about my propensity for “Oh yeah...” moments, and their likely sources if they are in my / our awareness.

Invite others to point out when they are getting the “Oh yeah…” treatment from me.

Continue investigation of the forms of ‘oh yeah’, the associated circumstances of their emergence and their inner and outer effects.

Be really careful to test for differences of consciousness/awareness/knowledge in different discussion settings.

And….??

There’s some way to go with this!!

Learner therapist (25)…… Congruence, integrity and self-defence in the anger position

Learner therapist (25)…… Congruence, integrity and self-defence in the anger position
Torrey Orton
Nov. 14, 2012

The "anger position" and congruence, integrity and self defence

One of the things that my patients struggle with is their anger. Not the anger which they know but that which they do not. They had the anger drilled out of them by their abusers early in their abused lives. They learned to hide it so as not to attract additional abuse – the abuse beyond the everyday abuse which they survived by dissimulation, pre-emption or collusion with their abusers, abetted often by abuser partners' collusion with the abusers. Failing these tactics, they caught occasional reminders of how much worse things could be than they already were.

One of these patients remarked she did not want to be in the "anger position". The disparaging of anger's reputation among the human emotion suite is systemic well beyond childhood of course. Women are often sharply aware of male aversion to their anger. Tears often get to do double duty as media for sadness and anger. If these fail, there's the backup position of self-denigration for being angry – one patient sharply calls herself "a bitch" for directly voicing her anger to others, especially other women. Then, she doubles down on it by saying "I don't want to be that person in the anger position."

Denizens of white collar work-places often report the unspoken rules of many offices mandate feeling-free interactions while the value espousals warrant 'transparency", "openness" and "honesty" – all states whose fulfilment require perceived authenticity. That is, the values have to feel real in action, not just mouthed, parroted, etc. But real = emotional in this case. And if the truth or honesty is an important honest truthfulness, then appropriate feelings are required for its expression (as were required for its perception in the first place). The plea to 'be rational' and similar encomia to feeling-free thought are among the most resilient fooleries we are beset by in our public lives, especially from various cultural and social heights.

Another patient recently explored her rage at a deeply manipulative move by her clearly incompetent boss. The rage went two ways at once: towards him for his professional chicanery and toward herself for being powerless in his face (and consequently shamed and guilty before imagined friends who she might discuss the situation with but couldn't). This bifurcation of attention reflects a lifetime's self-doubt and high achievement for her, with the doubt dominating the inner battle and achievement the outer one. All up, a lot of conflict expressed in various anxieties.

So what for patient anger?

Why does it matter? Just as satisfaction registers a pleasure with a successful action, anger registers the invasiveness of another's attack or disapproval of one's own mistake(s). The abused carry many signs of injury. One of the less obvious is injured feeling receptors and expressors. Their emotional range is confined, as was their action range, by the abuse. The distance between the ends of a feeling spectrum like irritation - anger - fury - rage are driven closer together; it's harder to express any degrees of difference. One public figure who looks and sounds like this is Malcolm Fraser. Similarly, Julia Gillard does a too good job of reducing her speech to flat, ponderous, sleep-inducing noise. They share facial immobility. Were they abused? If not, then the disease of self-restraint is much more deeply spread among the competent than I imagined.

Three steps to effective anger: becoming congruent (knowing what you feel), acknowledging integrity (deciding from what you feel) and acting in self-defence (acting from what you feel). They can be learned, usually building on some pre-existing residuals of natural capability created while preparing for engaging an established threat.

Congruence – the ground of awareness in the fizz of anger, when inside and outside are aligned

The only way to avoid congruence when repressing anger (or even irritation) is to be numb to the feeling…in which case, though, the fact of numbness will be broadcast by incongruous non-verbals like stiff faces, rigid speech delivery, and clumsy movements. This will be on display for those who want to see. We may be congruent in this way without knowing it and others assist our ignorance by not pointing out explicitly what they can see, often to their advantage in the sense of saving them from an imagined conflict they want to avoid. And around and around it goes until an explosion point is reached inevitably but unpredictably in the experience of those involved. By that time the anger is way over the top…and undirected to an appropriate or workable subject between the parties. Such explosions are the stuff of everyday couples breakdowns, tit-for-tat accusations of bullying at work and the public micro-rages we are increasingly exposed to. Emotional congruence may occur most compellingly when long gathered anger bursts on the unsuspecting and minimally deserving heads of its sources, or maybe just lookalike passers-by that trigger the gathering emotional storm. Brilliant, flaring and frightening for all because almost out of control.

How does this oh so common scenario come to play out? The persistent disapproval of any form of anger yields an effective self-restraint which fakes self-control until the actual perceived offenses pile high and wide enough to threaten suffocation. But it attracts real rage in return, it creates it, authorises it, validates it and those involved are cast into a who's to blame game that is irresolvable because the sources incite more rage. "This is what we usually do." Congruence is a starting place for engaging real issues, but not a restful one.

Integrity – is the place of truth in oneself when the real self can be used…
 

… to decide the realities we want to engage (if we can choose to do so). That real self, the reliable background to our everyday life, is the home of basic values, notably justice and fairness, and virtues like persistence and courage, which seem to be alive across all kinds of cultures, even the most spiritual, communal or familial included. These values are understood to apply equally to self and others, though their application may, unsurprisingly, lean towards self and own group. They provide a sense of direction for action and a mixture of confidence and compulsion to take action. For example,

…instead of falling into despair, Shawna got mad at what she felt was a betrayal. 'Mad' was not ideal, but it was better than depressed and full of self blame! Indeed, her anger actually seemed to lift her depression and allowed her some energy to decide what to do about taking care of herself…

 

PSYCHOTHERAPY IN AUSTRALIA
• VOL 18 NO 4 • AUGUST 2012 pg. 19

For more information visit www.margaretwehrenberg.com.

And, so to ….

Self-defence – the steps which stop and eventually pre-empt previously enraging threats

Self-defence may need to be either forward (assertion-aggression) or backwards (explanation, delivered assertively). So, what to do in everyday pre-rage circumstances? Start with the real anger only when timely, etc. Otherwise, acknowledge and defer the anger to a later time, place and content in order to take care of present business which is not directly implicated in the anger and loss of which would undermine most foundational conditions for engaging the anger usefully (for instance, by ending an employment relationship or intimate one prematurely).

Practising anger – some steps and tools for patients, and others

To get better at expressing anger requires practice as does your golf, singing, dancing, writing… through persistent small steps as in any skill building.
1) Start expressing anger by punching a pillow, boxercise, hitting a tree trunk with a stick, speaking somewhat louder than you normally do and increasing the volume slowly up to yelling or screaming. A good walk in the woods or on a perhaps windy beach will provide venues for this step.
2) Continue exploring it through martial arts, boxing, any gross motor sport – preferably within a meditative framework! Notice how hard it is to embody your anger without falling into freezing or wild Flight or fierce Fight (losing control).
3) Cultivate control of body mind and heart by choosing one physical discipline for long term development. Physical is critical because cultivating a capacity for appropriate expression of anger is an engagement with the freeze/fight/flight response system, all three of whose terms are physical. The FFF system readies the body for action. Those of us with repressed feelings may not even notice them coming into play because our bodies are out of tune for them. The body is our instrument of feelings in two senses: for perceiving them and expressing them. An untuned instrument will never play well.
4) Start employing anger. Build skilled competence by strategic intervention planning and execution along the lines of basic graduated skill development programs of any kind: a sequence of motivation (identifying the defence need), observation (of competent actors), approximation (visualisation of proposed actions, etc.), initiating (trialling the actions), debriefing (did well, do different, etc.), replanning, re-initiating, debriefing…..Some of the relevant communication technologies to be mastered are available in previous "Learner therapist" posts in this blog.
Finally, it should be apparent that what's proposed in this post is applicable to everyday life, not just catastrophic circumstances. Act well – congruently, integrally and self-defensively, remembering that the best defence is a good offense.

Learning to act right (30)… I did do something, really!!

Learning to act right (30)… I did do something, really!!
Torrey Orton
Sept. 4, 2012

The nuts are cracking…

Two weeks ago I wrote: "I did see something, really."


Four days ago the following happened on the same stage: The police were called again for an act of mine deemed assaultive by another of the regular Saturday HoGPIs*. I was reported to have badmouthed one of the priests on duty at the clinic by calling him a paedophile. The policeman (one of another bunch of two) said I did not have to comment on the allegation and I was not being cautioned. So I said nothing.


At the time of my notional assault not one of the non-religious HoGPIs had objected to what I was saying, nor said they did not want my commentary on their work, and nor did the supposedly offended priest. That is, they did not establish the condition for a harassment allegation. Nor had they two weeks previously. The priest in question, one of the trench-coat-masked pair who show up regularly, refused to pursue the matter when the investigating officer asked him what had happened. Perhaps he was surprised it had anything to do with him because the complaint had been made on his behalf it seemed.


For the record, what I had said was that the priests present were accountable organisationally for the church's paedophilia problem and maybe they should be doing something about that since they couldn't guarantee the safety of the children being born now. I've been saying this in roughly this form for months now. And, I say it to the assembled HoGPI multitude of the day, not just the priest(s). They gather under the umbrella of the church's dogma so they can live with its results as a whole.


All the evidence is that they do not like that connection to the whole of the Church's sexuality struggles. One priest (the other of the trench- coated pair) has actively dissociated himself from the struggle by claiming accusations of paedophilia are a matter for the police. Victims should contact the police, he said on another day to the security guard who was pursuing a line of thought like mine above. The same priest subsequently saluted my contributions to their work one morning with "Sieg Heil", a perspective on me I'd not imagined before. Guess it goes with "devil", "Satan" and "murderer" that are typically cast on me by HoGPIs.


The parishioner protestors (the larger part of the HoGPIs) are often even more incensed than the priest to be compromised in their absolute virtue by its undeniable roots in the priestly corruptions (don't forget gay priests and married priests for two other reality assaults on the Papal Bull).


One side effect, I noticed afterwards, has been a reduction in my normal response to authority figures – a feeling of generic guilt which produces a tendency to offer information that's not been asked for and generally to behave collusively. This day I felt less shaky. The slight bit I did feel dissipated in a half hour or so. I take this to be a result of my professional development program in conflict management – our counter protest. It followed a session in which I had made various remarks on the HoGPIs activities (which were not subject to police complaint, but were of similar character to the paedophile accountability ones above) in a coherent way, with low anger and little disturbed thinking on my part (usually the main product of high anger).


Perhaps I'm getting closer to cracking the nuts by being less cracked myself?




*HoGPIs – Helpers of God's Precious Infants - Google for details



 

Learning to act right (23)… tipping points – anger and action

Learning to act right (23)… tipping points – anger and action
Torrey Orton
Nov.16, 2011


A moment in the FCC defence frontline…


I lost it…my temper that is! About 8:30 last Wednesday morning I looked down the footpath towards the city just in time to see a couple coming along, the woman crying uncontrollably; her partner just behind her and a protestor ( "Purple Shirt" as she was called in TheAGE four days later) looking the woman in the face, seeing her crying and gesturing her away, and continuing to follow her towards the clinic gate with the standard "Save your little baby; you'll be a good mother" mantra beating on her back. As she almost always does to every patient. A perfect example of harassment of a visibly vulnerable patient.


The keyword is harassment – a perception of being persistently, repeatedly, verbally and visually attacked by another. I harassed back, stepping up to her (all 191cm/105kg to her pudgy 155cm) and pointing out as I came from 3 metres away "that is harassment; she was crying all the way and you saw her and continued anyway…" I can't remember how it ended but the whole sequence from go to no was 15 seconds. I became aware that I had been sucked in by her offense…enraged briefly, close to physical assault… and almost as the awareness arrived I was turning back from the protestor to see her colleague approaching…


In talking to the protest leader, David Forster, seconds after the event (which had drawn him towards me as if he were going to defend the harasser from me) I pointed out that she had harassed the patient and knew it, knew that the patient was already crying, had said no and been followed up by her partner in doing so. He started to run the Helpers of God's Precious Infants party line on the evil things done behind the clinic walls (which justifies their offer of "help" over any other consideration) until I interrupted with these facts. David accepts that this is harassment, knowing as he does that another male protestor has clearly drawn back from patients who arrive in tears. I also wondered to him: "Isn't harassing the weak unchristian?" to which he nodded assent with the scrunched look of a logically forced agreement.


Charles thought the elapsed time between my seeing the harassment and taking action was a couple of minutes…I thought a few seconds. Charles and the guard, Edward, had seen the same scene unfold, the guard more fully because he had noticed them coming before they got to the protestor…that the woman waited for her husband to catch up and was already crying, he having been completing a mobile call. TheAGE columnist Suzy Freeman-Greene's version appears here. It was built out of her own perceptions, and some of our three, gathered at the moment described.


I am surprised to re-learn (assuming I ever did really learn this) how unreliable my perception of live events can be, how open to multiple interpretations; how filled with material lacunae such that a report of the event would be more holes than whole. My contribution sprang from my interpretation of harassment, amplified by my lifetime revulsion at any bullying, but especially of the weak. I was perhaps able to pull back from my spring by a borderline awareness that I was about to bully the bully ("Purple Shirt") and so earn a placeholder status in my own ethical bestiary.


How easy it is for my reason to fly off in a rage where my righteousness rules the moment to moment equation of time seeking justification in worthy action. I'm speaking only of myself in this accusation. If it fits, feel free to join it.

Back to the Anger (3) – where does a homeless anger go to rest??

Back to the Anger (3) – where does a homeless anger go to rest??
Torrey Orton
August 26, 2011


A year ago just about now I was worrying my engagement with my anger. It's better engaged now than then. One part of that story is yet to be written tales of searching over the last two months for ways to interrupt Catholic anti-abortionists' harassment of patients at the foundational abortion provider in Melbourne. There are a lot of angry people on that stage and I am not trying to add to them, but the atmosphere is penetrating. My just being there reportedly reduces the harassment, while the anger just perks along in the undergrowth.


There's a short, nicely written, psychological treatment of anger here. It makes sense in every respect except the one I'm concerned about now – namely, that there are times and places when there is nothing we can do about the sources of our anger; when our anger's natural home is inaccessible, and so irremediable. We psychs can't tell us what to do in that case, other than "cognitive restructuring", relaxation, meditation, acceptance and such; that is, suck it in. The article mentioned above tells us that to do so may be unsustainable, if the threatening forces continue. But this is the fate of many people these days (though perhaps no more so than throughout human history).


…a homeless anger
Here's one of these people, a long term friend and colleague who has not found a job in more than a year, and not for lack of trying. He's basically too old (late 50's) for the real job market. The imaginary one would suit him fine, but it doesn't hire or pay. He's basically too competent for younger managers and bureaucrats to stand. He's not a natural to anger; too little so in my view, but then there's taste, sensitivity, temperament….and he is angry now. Deeply, richly, almost unbearably. And like many other placid folks, he doesn't like to talk about his anger.


Systemically forced indifference
But, he's seriously tired of being interviewed by recruiters 30-40 years his junior who often don't know the tasks they are recruiting for, can't speak openly/transparently/honestly (choose your forward moving spin) about which type of process they are involved in (e.g. making up apparent candidate numbers for already filled positions advertised by legal or political requirement, etc.), and are seem more concerned with meeting their performance target numbers than people.


He's not surprised by this because he knows the recruiting trade and its demands on practitioners, but as a present object of the trade its shortcomings are a repeated caustic abrasion of his self-respect. And, yes, he's complained, suggested, proposed – all manner of efforts to improve their "customer service". It seems impervious to improvement. The players (recruiters) themselves are mostly powerless to influence the market dynamics driving them and their organisations, though one calls him for advice about system improvement options.


Unsystematic but persistent failure
But, he's seriously tired, also, of being the second cab off the job candidate rank he usually heads at first glance. There's a river's worth of D words for the effect: depressing and degrading and demeaning and degenerating and….. thankyou but no-thankyou calls from the less able or incompetent are teeth-grindingly outrageous.


And the government funded, not-for-profit, intermediaries facilitating his attempts in exchange for the dole are but another cog. Same coat of pretence to perform cut from the same material of personal and organisational incompetence. This is the arena of long term unemployment. My friend is still a vital statistic in the rate reported to us almost daily in proof of how well Australia is doing compared to our Anglo relatives. And, he knows that he is not statistically unusual: older = unemployable by dint of no 'economic' need for his services. Being a statistical mean is neither reassuring nor redeeming; it just provides a middle of the road place to be run over by fate.


Exposure of what to who?

Exposure therapy is the "evidence-based" treatment of choice to reduce fear of bad personal fates of many kinds. Exposure is a standard treatment for traumatic events which assault the self with recurrent images (recalls) and effects (anxiety symptoms). It is reliably effective. But it is less reliable if there is no visible cause (someone declaring you unsuitable for employment by right of disability, for instance, or being disabled in an objectively ascertainable way – loss of limbs, brain function, etc.; age cannot be mentioned of course, so it's not addressable). With such losses a start can be made on a life which embraces the loss as the from-this-point-forth condition of one's humanity. That is exposure to oneself. But/and, who would he "expose" himself to so that the fear of his daily deepening fate would be reduced?


Lacking an identifiable source of an apparent but unacknowledged disability (being over some age barrier beyond which is housed 'old') the threat cannot be reduced and the anger continues to be reinforced daily. So, too, with no job today, yesterday and likely tomorrow, day after day. This brings him close to existential despair – the expectation that there is no hope. For some this may produce resignation, for others outrage. Death is the imagined outcome of both, differing only in who is imagined dying: oneself or the nameless, faceless others. He said that it is "a struggle to believe" that continued efforts to job seek can make a difference, the moments of believing just fending off the pull of depressions expression of expected and unavoidable failure.


This is not a mental health disorder, it's a biopsychosocial one!! In other words it's down to the individual but the individual is not responsible for it, except to deal with it. A year ago I proposed here that,

"Disregard makes investment in emotions unrewarding to their owners, but it doesn't reduce their energising sources. Often it intensifies them, or the owners' perception of them, which does just as well for outrage production."

I was wrong in the long term. For some, at some times, under some personal conditions the weight of others' disregard generates one's own self-disregard in return. Unfortunately this is not terribly instructive to the others whose regard is needed. They do not feel the absence of ones regard for them or oneself. It doesn't show up in normal metrics of governance and well-being. Living nothingness. No home.


So this is his fate so far – to be refused a place to deploy his existing capabilities, through no fault of his own, by nameless two-faced forces speaking from one mouth 'you should work to be whole' and out of the other 'consume to be complete'. No home.

Learner therapist (4) a breath of life?

Learner therapist (4) a breath of life?
Torrey Orton
April 7, 2011


In my search for patients' agency, and the author within who drives them (if other things don't get there first), I'm increasingly noticing little signals of activity. This is a matter of small sounds and slight expressions. These may grow into loud sounds and gross expressions as modelled for us all with indelible memorability by Homer Simpson.* Among the hardest things to say for the injured are words of self-approval or words disapproval of family sources of their injuries. I suspect such words are what are coming into hearing/view through the little breaths below.


I offer these signals as enticement to others to share their bits in the hope that we can develop a taxonomy of little expressions to join the forces of little steps. The point here, as there, is to enhance patients' awareness of ways in which and times at which they are taking small steps towards their emerging selves. It is our responsibility to provide such help, since they are often blind to their own agency and ignorant of the myriad forms it can take.


Small breaths…

For instance, "phuuh" is a sound I cannot spell. Yet it reaches me these days like a declaration of dry despair, usually arising out of the flatlands of a psycho-spiritual plateau, often mid-session midway through a therapy engagement. It is a quiet, almost inaudible expression barely strong enough to be heard, more seen than heard in the slightly pursed lips of a patient. Or myself, too, I'm noticing these days. The sound occurs often in synch with a slight movement of the head away from the line of eye to eye engagement, the kind of movement which also signals an emerging insight or feeling.

Apathetic Irritated

Further along this spectrum lies a dry spitting sound - "pffft" - which ejects a thought or feeling mildly but certainly. It often has a comment hidden in it. The speaker seems not to quite embrace it, but the thought is out enough that it cannot be restrained. The "pffft" is more about getting the fact that they have a thought out than making that thought visible.

Disturbed

Another grade along is the wet, spat ejection….a slight swear.

Annoyed

"Doh" or "doah" – derisive mimicry of dopey other(s), which, depending on the tone of speaking, may be cuttingly abrasive (an aggression) or just a twitch of the rhetorical tail (a slight gotcha).

Angered

"pfauuugh" is towards the other end of the exhalatory spectrum, a clear rush of derisive disapproval, amazement that another does not share one's own insight, sensitivity, …..or one missed it oneself!!

Enraged

These can all be applied recursively – directed at oneself as well as others. I'm not sure of my classification of expressions by feeling levels, but there's something systemic about them in the anger spectrum. Kassinove and Tafrate's "Anger Thermometer" has 10 grades of anger marked by ten vocabulary steps. These are more distinctions than I know how to use, but some psychs feel comfortable enough to publish them so facility with the distinctions may be useful.



*By the way, 50 years ago when in boarding school, an expression indistinguishable from Homer's "doh" was a popular reproach to another teenage dope's intellectual or behavioural vacuity of the moment. No one escaped the title! How did it transit all those decades?? Is this just another item in the records of the eternal return?? If the latter, then 'doh' arises from a deep cultural meme or, as the neuropsychs might have it, hard-wiring.