Learning to act right (36)… When we need someone to do it for us!!

Torrey Orton

July 28, 2013

“He’ll have the bubbly red, too”

 

The other day I was out for a lunch bite with Mike. When he’s lunching at the University Café he takes a glass of bubbly red with it. I seldom drink midday, midweek unless on the road as in the Brasserie du Commerce in Besancon two months ago. This time, however, I was free after lunch so I started contemplating a glass myself and got hung up between a house shiraz and the aforesaid bubbly red, which I did not know other than by the repute his use of it lent. The waiter was standing there and I was uhming and awing.

 

My decision was all that stood between us and lunch starting its trip from the kitchen and I couldn’t make it. I was stuck in the roundabout of indeterminable differences between the options, pedalling and still.

 

“He’ll have the bubbly red, too”…

 

… Mike said and I settled in relief, as did the waiter. A classic of the situation where any decision is OK, if someone would just make one. I so much needed help at the moment that I didn’t know it until he provided it decisively. Either would be good for me if I could make the move. Thanks to Mike I was moved. It was an ethically vacuous event, but clear in its agency. I submitted to the push of his action, and needed to do so if the rest of the event was to unfold.

 

It occurred to me at the time that this was also a major purpose of close relationships – to share the decision load of life as much as the consequential work. And sharing is sometimes to pick up the bundle unasked…which requires a slightly daring arrogation of rights to oneself in the interest of preserving the participation of the other in the shared load!!!

 

There are two things in joint decision making (which seldom means both coming to the same conclusion simultaneously). It must be right in content and in process: we have to come to decisions in acceptable ways - consultatively, considerately, flexibly…and, we have to make the right decision for the task in question. The process is more important than the product since specific decisions can often be changed modified, adapted (usually do if they are substantive ones) and that requires effective consultation. These are mostly engineering problems, problems of having right tools and flexible application rules. The decision, however, is pure art - intuitive, scatty, quick – in need of a spark and failing the internal one, an outer will do fine. Someone has to move, and a hand is sometimes required.

 

Let’s run that by again in story form

 

Two months ago now I had been stuck in a decision muddle for weeks about taking a week to go to the US for a family reunion, or not to. I really was stuck in thinking which was dangling in the branches of multiple considerations of sentiment and logistics until I visited a now dead friend, Barry, who was clearly on the way to dying in his own mind at the time. I stopped by the palliative care place he had recently been consigned to and shared my small concern. “Do it”, he said almost before I got my considerations shaped up for him. His own brother, long separated, somewhat estranged, had just been down from another state to see him and they had talked for the first time in years. He was clear about the relationship priorities of late life. I could feel my mind slip over a cog as he spoke and walked out with uncluttered resolve to go (which I will be doing in two weeks).

 

 

Learner therapist (7) …Listening for talent

Learner therapist (7) …Listening for talent
Torrey Orton
April 29, 2011

This is only a taster for a longer trip. Hopefully there's enough indications of the trip purpose and process to warm others up for a later journey.

Not everyone speaks well. They have to struggle for words or thoughts. Things just seem to come to others. Here's one words don't come to in his first session:

By 40 minutes into it I didn't think that we had anything to work on. He was a litany of falteringly expressed sadness, aimlessness and hopelessness, presented almost as if they were a state, not a need. There was nothing for me to hold – that was his state, until I heard his language. I was listening for the strength (agency) which brought him into therapy. For someone claiming no discernible talent his presentation was peppered lightly with very particular vocabulary – not at all that of the truck driver he claimed truly to be. I had noted the words as he rambled around his self-described misfit history, but not noticed them for the talent they exposed. I confirmed my notice by pointing out that he had such language and he both recoiled at the idea he had anything and brightened up with the notice in one move. It wasn't clear to me that he had verbal talent. He had capability, and so maybe talent not just training.

It has turned out that he has quite a verbal talent. Everyone has some talent, some quite a lot and some quite a few – the Renaissancers among us. They often, especially those showing up for therapy, do not know or trust their talent. It may have been a cause, or collateral effect, of the injuries which brought them to therapy. Sometimes they show up as a loss of talent, as here:

At a social event I met a lifelong male painter, now 63, who was visibly flat and poured it out smoothly. He had lost his painting muse or mojo or animus and so was wandering around for the first time in his life with nothing to do. For a talented person whose gift was clear and commanded what to do, every day was given by the gift. He literally had lost his way, his inner light which showed him the path. That light had shown brightly since early primary school when a teacher recognised it by saying, "You should be a painter."Now he was lightless for the first time. I saw him again a few weeks later and he was still befuddled by his self-abandonment (it must have been himself, he thought; no one else stole his light from him).all that of the truck driver he claimed to be.h ng to grab for me until I heard his language. For someone presenbting tent ho

Whether he was a good painter or not is irrelevant to the matter of his talent. That 'good' is for discussion another time under the heading of competences or capabilities. The world is full of possible painters, fishers, writers, fixers, fighters, builders…. Few are great, but many are satisfied if they know and live their talent(s). There's room for many levels of the many talents.


Finding ones talent(s) can be a grounding experience, providing for the first time in our lives a source of truth which is reliably ours. It is no guarantee that a way will be made for our talents to enter the world, but knowing that they come from within is heartening and self-defining. Basic life standards are self-sourced and the associated motivation is self-validating. Just exercising the talent(s) creates further motivation.


There may be many ways to bring the talent into the world, allowing exploration and exercise of it even under conditions of low potential success – where a person's existing life commitments to partners, children, parents, siblings prohibit a fulltime engagement with the emerging talent. Equally restricting may be the low wattage of the talent – visible, palpable but not powerful to be a life on its own, yet still providing inner based illumination. We all have a complete suite of the talents necessary for life, just differently arrayed and enabled. The array and enabling are congenital; their growth and enactment are circumstantial (the domain of nurture and effort).


What the range of talents is can be taken from one or another of the emerging systems of well-being, all of which depend on defining the domains, directions and intensities of action which create well-being. Getting the items and their mixes right is essential, since well-being is specific. I like the "Elements of well-being" because they were created by the authors in an effort to provide a new approach to treatment of sex offenders, a notoriously difficult group.

Elements of well-being (basic human needs) *From: The Treatment of Sex Offenders: Risk Management and Good Lives. Tony Ward, University of Melbourne, Claire A Stewart, Deakin University 1) Life (including healthy living and functioning) 2) Knowledge 3) Excellence in play and work (including mastery experiences) 4) Excellence in agency (i.e., autonomy and self-directedness) 5) Inner peace (i.e., freedom from emotional turmoil and stress) 6) Friendship (including intimate, romantic and family relationships) 7) Community 8) Spirituality (in the broad sense of finding meaning & purpose in life) 9) Happiness 10) Creativity

And, by the way, if you want to think about what the generic therapeutic task is from a biopsychosocial (cultural) viewpoint – this is it: a multidimensional well-being one. Elaborating that perspective is a task for another day. Well-being constructs like that above are starters. They are also the basis for work on things like vocation (below), since the kinds of vocations there are must reflect the needs we strive to fulfil through work.


This set of archetypal vocations was built with Hamid Homayouni 5 years ago in the birthing phase of a 'what do you want to be when you grow up?' company which never grew up. However, many patients have found the constructs helpful for their efforts to build a picture of their vocational potential. The archetypes are described in ordinary language and everyday behaviours.

• Helper

Are you…compassionate, attentive to others' needs, a 'fixer'?

Do you like to…offer help, give suggestions, 'fix' things for others?

Are you good at… listening to others, putting your own thoughts in their terms, seeing how others really are, suggesting options for action…?

• Builder

Are you… physical, careful, 'results oriented', a 'tool man' (or woman)?

Do you like to…complete a piece of work, have something to show for your efforts?

Are you good at…making things with your hands, planning steps of development, using tools?

• Protector

Are you…cautious, attuned to possible dangers / threats, physically and emotionally robust, action-oriented?

Do you like to…be in dangerous situations, test your strength against others, use weapons, wear uniforms?

Are you good at…containing conflicts, dealing with anger, checking threats, using your body as an instrument?

• Entertainer /artist

Are you…flamboyant, emotional, and imaginative?

Do you like to…tell stories, draw pictures, make videos?

Are you good at…performing, working under public pressure, taking on different roles and styles?

• Maintainer

Are you…orderly, systematic, obsessive about detail?

Do you like to…keep things in order, clean things, know how things work, take them apart to see how they tick?

Are you good at…keeping things running, making repairs, figuring out what's wrong with things?

• Believer / visionary

Are you…'off in the clouds' at times, certain where you stand, looking for the answers to the final questions?

Do you like to… wonder about 'the meaning of life, engage others in questions of meaning?

Are you good at…seeing the larger picture, talking about 'the meaning of life'…?

• Thinker / investigator

Are you…introverted, abstract, logical, pattern seeking, 'deep', insightful?

Do you like to… get things clear, understand rather than act, find your way through confusion and unclarity, put the truth first …?

Are you good at…seeing patterns in things, making systematic pictures of things, making sense of puzzles / dilemmas ….?

• Creator / entrepreneur

Are you…a starter, sensitive to new things, early adopter of technologies / ideas?

Do you like to…be the first to do things, be recognised for innovation?

Are you good at…expressing, creating visual / musical works, starting up from nothing?

• Coordinator / leader
  

Are you…someone who steps forward first, takes the lead in social / political things?

Do you like to…negotiate shared tasks and resources, talk to people about what they want / need?

Are you good at…keeping a group together around shared tasks?

 

Learner therapist (3) What’s a person…

Learner therapist (3) What's a person…
Torrey Orton
March 27, 2011

… an agent, with potential authority?

What are we trying to help patients 'fix' or to repair in themselves? For me it is essentially their agency, their ability to act or to influence their worlds. Psychic injuries, like physical ones, inhibit our power, render us weak where we could, or used to be, strong. The help we need is to restart our motivation (value) and improve our action competence(s) (behavioural repertoires). Notice I've slid from patients to 'us'. We are them, but they are usually not us, when in the room. For what follows, we are them, too.


This is a vignette to hang a theory of agency on. The theoretical connections are made through numbers in parentheses – eg (6) – which refer to examples of agency in the first paragraph after the vignette.


D


One day alcoholic D, about 40, walked in with his whole self on show. His hands were fairly damp for the first time in a while. He asked for tissues to dry them (6) as he noted the fact in passing. It was the first time in 16 months work that he had been fully present, though not for lack of trying. That he could be present was always on display (7) in his ambivalence about being here. He could talk about that easily, and did so every session (1). "I really don't have anything to say today" he would announce on arrival, while always being almost unclothed his defences were so slight.


He has a lot to defend – a lifetime's actual and threatened violence from a still living alcoholic father. One thing in particular: the fiercely vivid memory of repeatedly over his primary years having to lie silently in bed in feigned sleep to avoid his just-home-from-the- pub father's attention, consciously effacing himself by containing his terror from the senses of his terrorist. He has the finest detectors of non-verbal expressions I have ever met, attached to a capacity (2) to precisely test those perceptions.


...a glass of whiskey


But that day he arrived in such ambivalence that he had skolled a glass of whiskey from a local provider on the way over. His conflicted feelings (anger and hope, riding on the energy of interest) had bounced him back and forth in the bus on the way here, just as they do every day for him. But in the room they were visibly so as he shifted in the chair, giving and withdrawing eye-to-eye contact like a chimp in a cage. What he had to say this day, after briefly having nothing as usual, is that he was here with his fears blazing and his hopes leading (8). This is the motivation that brought him into the room.


We stepped from his present into its origins through the gateway of D's defences, a set of behaviours which mark his coming to the end of bearable exposure of his pain. These gestures all happening together – breathing out, shaping up to fight or fly (in the shoulders), scrunching up his face – lead to a visible / audible stop signal (4) from D, if I haven't already got their implication. When I use his name, D, it always elicits this expressive set, as if I called out from the end of his bed to waken him into the expected paternal violence. It is this set of behaviours which expressed his being in that life space while in the room and how he controlled his exposure to it.


Control the terrorist father within…


We worked on that space to reduce its terror. I explained that this was a normal approach for engaging traumas of many kinds. Through it he could learn the threat was no longer present in its embodied way, and that he could control the feelings. As we finished a few minutes exposure, he queried, "You've done this before haven't you?"(5) And, he was ready to consider starting (3) the reconciliation trip through which he might get final control over the terrorist father in him. We had approached it 6 months ago but it had seemed way over his horizon then. Now it's in view; feels possible and desirable (1).


When I'm working with D, I have an implicit model of a person in the near background of my approach. I listen and look for certain indicators of how he is. (1) Can he say what they want, (2) interrupt to clarify a meaning, (3) propose a direction for discussion (at the beginning or in the middle of a session), (4) request changes of time or place for sessions, (5) offer feedback on how it's going for him, (6) notice what his body tells him about how he is, (7) how he presents overall, or (8) have an inner sense of truth or direction which tells him what's right and not (often expressed as feeling unfairly done by), etc.…? These are access points to his growth potential, present motivation(s) and levels of need(s). They apply to everyone.


…anyone can grow


When I first had the idea of presenting my underlying therapy assumption it seemed easy because it is so obvious to me, revisited daily in my conduct of therapy. The foundations extend back to my past as a teacher, trainer, coach where my assumption always was, and remains in every new encounter in therapy, that anyone can grow if they are compos mentis.


This is not a value statement. It's one about our nature (to which our nurture may or may not add!). The value aspect arises in making the choice to apply this assumption to everyone I encounter, professionally or personally. This is our professional responsibility.


I have worked with this assumption in the US, France, China, Singapore and Australia. You probably have your own version of favourite indicators and there's probably a thousand books proposing various right or correct answers to 'What is a person?' For me, my version allows me to approach EVERY patient from the same foundation – that they all have an identifiable set of needs, core functions and basic necessities for effective living in their world(s). I find the details of their needs, functions and basic necessities arguable, but a lack of them is the boundary between human and android. At another time a full underlying theory of a person may be usefully added to my entry assumption.