Scott E. Spradlin's Blog, page 2
February 29, 2020
Be a Better Parent than Your Parents
"We are all born with the capacity for love and care, and many of us have had to learn to adapt to a life with suboptimal attachment. It's never too late to reflect on what may have gone on in our own lives and then begin the repair process in our self-understanding to allow that care for ourselves to emerge."
~Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne, 'The Power of Showing Up'
Our health and integration, our dis-ease and disintegration, stems from our relationships. Identity is relational. I love therefore I am! This last phrase I discovered in the spiritual literature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. However we look at ourselves as a species, as human beings, there is no getting around the fundamental, essential, reality that we are relational beings. Our wellness is founded upon responsive, warm and safe parenting, while our dis-eases, stem from disrupted relationships, wonky attachment styles and invalidating environments.
As noted in an earlier entry, DBT understands Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), as a function of biological emotional vulnerability transacting with an invalidating environment. The invalidating environment is dismissive of children's emotional experiences, or in some cases the environment turns against the child, punishing them for not only experiencing emotions but also for expressing emotions. In these poor conditions, children initiate instinctive bids for connection which are either "neutralized," as one of my clients once described his experience, or punished. With the chronic repetition of either response, children learn that they are fundamentally unsafe. They have no one to thoroughly trust. Their very neurobiology is affected by these social experiences. Perhaps you were one of these children. Punished for expressing emotions. Or your emotional bids for connection were neutralized as your attachment figures had the habit of turning away from you, ignoring your bids, or showing disinterest. Emotionally vulnerable or not, these experiences are invalidating, and you are more likely to experience chronic emotional flooding, amygdala hijacking of the brain, compared with folks who are blessed with strong and consistent attachments and emotion coaching.
Here you are, in adulthood. You're a parent. You are conscientious and desire to do other than what was done to you. Even if you notice yourself invalidating your kids, or behaving excessively angry or engaging in behavior that you know to strike terror into them, take heart. Your desire to do otherwise will serve you well. And the good news is, you can build on your insight and desire by learning mindfulness and emotion regulation skills.
Where to Start?
Start with paying attention. Simply notice what you are feeling this very moment. Do you notice anxiety? Boredom? Mild curiosity? You're invited to simply begin with observing your emotion, factually, without exaggeration and without minimizing. Labeling your emotions is one facet of successful emotion regulation. Matching the word to your experience is a form of self-validation, one small step toward the life practice of taking yourself seriously, and learning to trust the wisdom of your emotions. Intentional breathing brings you home to the present moment, to come home to the space of you, within your body. Inhaling gently through the nose letting your abdomen expand, then exhaling through the lips, be where you are for a few more short moments. Intentional breathing helps you, too, to downregulate during stressful situations by increasing oxygen flow through your body and you feel grounded and calm. And this practice gets your upstairs brain (neocortex/thinking/planning/imagining) talking with your downstairs brain (amygdala/breathing/fight/flight/freeze) allowing for neural integration (See Daniel Siegel, mindsight) and allowing for access to your wise mind.
When you find yourself becoming more skillful at noticing and labeling your emotions and becoming more familiar with your intentional breathing, you will find that you are better equipped to be present for your children when you see and feel their emotions. You can be present to their stress, fear or sadness without distancing from them, and without blaming them. You can be available to validate their emotions and to turn toward their bids to connect with you. These are the opportunities for you to connect with your kids, to cultivate a healthy attachment as you model care and comfort. As you inhabit yourself, your kids will come to inhabit your presence as a shelter where they know they are safe.
Compassion and Repair
As you learn more about mindfulness and emotion regulation, you can reflect on your life experiences. Consider the likelihood that your attachment figures, mom and dad, or other adults in your early childhood had inherited invalidation, distress, and confusion and passed this legacy to you. Generations of neural wiring and modeling are difficult to change, but they can be changed, and with a view of understanding that all behaviors are caused, you, me, us, all of us we can perhaps have at least a modicum of compassion for our forebearers. The insights that can emerge from these considerations can aid you refurbishing your self-understanding, see yourself in a new light. When you feel angry or irritated while parenting, you don't have to let yourself become drawn into a vortex of self-loathing which changes nothing. Rather, you can note your distress, and say to yourself: "Of course I'm irritated. That's what I do. After twenty (or thirty or forty, etc.) years of practice, I'm an expert at being irritated in these situations." All the while breathing, recollecting yourself within your mind and body, loosening your attachment to your old way of doing and being.
Remember breath will help you regulate the body that you live in, and that's where all the action lives. Mind and body are a unity, so you can change your emotions by first accepting and listing them to yourself, as noted above, and by doing otherwise in the moment of distress. You can practice opposite-action as we call it in DBT. Mindfully, intentionally turning your mind and body in a direction that alters the present distress, widening the space between stimuli and response, and thereby widening your options for responding to whatever the situation may be. Whether you're facing a sea of legos strewn about the house, or the potential of forks-in-toasters, or robust sibling rivalry, or the simple whining of a hungry infant, you can allow your emotions while choosing the wise course of action, collecting moments of response and safety. Through this process, if you're anything like me, or like my clients, you will not only begin to make more sense to yourself, and not only will your children feel safe with you, you will also notice that you are less miserable, reducing your own emotional suffering.
In closing here, I offer this: "History is not destiny. By making sense of your own story, you can be the kind of parent you want to be--regardless of how you were parented." Daniel Siegel and Tina P. Bryson, The Power of Showing Up, 2020, p. 28.
~Daniel Siegel and Tina Payne, 'The Power of Showing Up'
Our health and integration, our dis-ease and disintegration, stems from our relationships. Identity is relational. I love therefore I am! This last phrase I discovered in the spiritual literature of the Eastern Orthodox Christian Church. However we look at ourselves as a species, as human beings, there is no getting around the fundamental, essential, reality that we are relational beings. Our wellness is founded upon responsive, warm and safe parenting, while our dis-eases, stem from disrupted relationships, wonky attachment styles and invalidating environments.
As noted in an earlier entry, DBT understands Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), as a function of biological emotional vulnerability transacting with an invalidating environment. The invalidating environment is dismissive of children's emotional experiences, or in some cases the environment turns against the child, punishing them for not only experiencing emotions but also for expressing emotions. In these poor conditions, children initiate instinctive bids for connection which are either "neutralized," as one of my clients once described his experience, or punished. With the chronic repetition of either response, children learn that they are fundamentally unsafe. They have no one to thoroughly trust. Their very neurobiology is affected by these social experiences. Perhaps you were one of these children. Punished for expressing emotions. Or your emotional bids for connection were neutralized as your attachment figures had the habit of turning away from you, ignoring your bids, or showing disinterest. Emotionally vulnerable or not, these experiences are invalidating, and you are more likely to experience chronic emotional flooding, amygdala hijacking of the brain, compared with folks who are blessed with strong and consistent attachments and emotion coaching.
Here you are, in adulthood. You're a parent. You are conscientious and desire to do other than what was done to you. Even if you notice yourself invalidating your kids, or behaving excessively angry or engaging in behavior that you know to strike terror into them, take heart. Your desire to do otherwise will serve you well. And the good news is, you can build on your insight and desire by learning mindfulness and emotion regulation skills.
Where to Start?
Start with paying attention. Simply notice what you are feeling this very moment. Do you notice anxiety? Boredom? Mild curiosity? You're invited to simply begin with observing your emotion, factually, without exaggeration and without minimizing. Labeling your emotions is one facet of successful emotion regulation. Matching the word to your experience is a form of self-validation, one small step toward the life practice of taking yourself seriously, and learning to trust the wisdom of your emotions. Intentional breathing brings you home to the present moment, to come home to the space of you, within your body. Inhaling gently through the nose letting your abdomen expand, then exhaling through the lips, be where you are for a few more short moments. Intentional breathing helps you, too, to downregulate during stressful situations by increasing oxygen flow through your body and you feel grounded and calm. And this practice gets your upstairs brain (neocortex/thinking/planning/imagining) talking with your downstairs brain (amygdala/breathing/fight/flight/freeze) allowing for neural integration (See Daniel Siegel, mindsight) and allowing for access to your wise mind.
When you find yourself becoming more skillful at noticing and labeling your emotions and becoming more familiar with your intentional breathing, you will find that you are better equipped to be present for your children when you see and feel their emotions. You can be present to their stress, fear or sadness without distancing from them, and without blaming them. You can be available to validate their emotions and to turn toward their bids to connect with you. These are the opportunities for you to connect with your kids, to cultivate a healthy attachment as you model care and comfort. As you inhabit yourself, your kids will come to inhabit your presence as a shelter where they know they are safe.
Compassion and Repair
As you learn more about mindfulness and emotion regulation, you can reflect on your life experiences. Consider the likelihood that your attachment figures, mom and dad, or other adults in your early childhood had inherited invalidation, distress, and confusion and passed this legacy to you. Generations of neural wiring and modeling are difficult to change, but they can be changed, and with a view of understanding that all behaviors are caused, you, me, us, all of us we can perhaps have at least a modicum of compassion for our forebearers. The insights that can emerge from these considerations can aid you refurbishing your self-understanding, see yourself in a new light. When you feel angry or irritated while parenting, you don't have to let yourself become drawn into a vortex of self-loathing which changes nothing. Rather, you can note your distress, and say to yourself: "Of course I'm irritated. That's what I do. After twenty (or thirty or forty, etc.) years of practice, I'm an expert at being irritated in these situations." All the while breathing, recollecting yourself within your mind and body, loosening your attachment to your old way of doing and being.
Remember breath will help you regulate the body that you live in, and that's where all the action lives. Mind and body are a unity, so you can change your emotions by first accepting and listing them to yourself, as noted above, and by doing otherwise in the moment of distress. You can practice opposite-action as we call it in DBT. Mindfully, intentionally turning your mind and body in a direction that alters the present distress, widening the space between stimuli and response, and thereby widening your options for responding to whatever the situation may be. Whether you're facing a sea of legos strewn about the house, or the potential of forks-in-toasters, or robust sibling rivalry, or the simple whining of a hungry infant, you can allow your emotions while choosing the wise course of action, collecting moments of response and safety. Through this process, if you're anything like me, or like my clients, you will not only begin to make more sense to yourself, and not only will your children feel safe with you, you will also notice that you are less miserable, reducing your own emotional suffering.
In closing here, I offer this: "History is not destiny. By making sense of your own story, you can be the kind of parent you want to be--regardless of how you were parented." Daniel Siegel and Tina P. Bryson, The Power of Showing Up, 2020, p. 28.
February 17, 2020
Attention: The Way to Love
A Spraddraft
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." -Simone Weil
I began learning and training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in the late 90s, at what was once known as the Portland DBT Program, and now is the Portland DBT Institute. This was an especially auspicious time for me as a baby therapist fresh from graduate school who was just encountering patients who were in the throes of excruciating emotional suffering. Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), others bearing the invisible scars of trauma, and others bearing quite visible scars indelibly etched into their flesh, acts of distraction, soothing, even countering bouts of dissociation, as I would come to learn.
From my initiation into DBT practice and to this very day, I learned and am learning, the power of presence, and the absence of presence in relationships. With mindfulness, I discovered how pervasively my mind was distracted for most of my life, how fractured my thoughts had been over the course of my life. It would take another ten plus years, a divorce and a personal crisis or two for me to deepen my appreciation for mindfulness and intentional living as radically important practices. My education, training and my own existential need provoked a more serious desire and devotion for cultivating mindfulness in my daily personal life, and this naturally tracked with my practice of mindfulness within my clinical practice where I encounter so many human beings in need of the full presence of another person, and where I teach mindfulness as the core of the DBT skills array, journeying with others engaged in building a life worth living.
The fruits of my increased practice of mindfulness include decreased reactivity toward clients and self, increased compassion for my clients and my self, increased psychological flexibility when it comes to responsiveness and problem-solving. And the benefits of mindfulness for the clients are truly manifold and myriad. They find new spaces for hearing their emotions without rejecting them, as they were taught by their invalidating environments. They experience a newfound trust in their emotions, which are giving them vital information needed not only for basic survival but for how they are doing with social connection and safety, where they stand in reference to others. With their new listening skills, DBT clients come to befriend their emotions, understanding better how these former "enemies" actually work in their service by motivating effective action in daily life. Even in areas of work and school, romance and family. Feeling less reactive, DBT clients discover new space, a broader internal expanse, rather than an abyss, within their Wise Mind in which they experience broader awareness of a widening array of actions. They learn that they do have wisdom and they know how to live a wise life especially when they are paying attention. And perhaps more importantly, the invalidation in their early years, which sabotaged their ability to self-regulate, leaving them adrift in a sea of untamed emotions, DBT clients begin to experience increased internal coherence emerging from mindful self-validation.
As of this writing, we find ourselves in an age illumined by Interpersonal Neurobiology (thank you, Dan Siegel, et. al.) in which we have a deeper understanding of how social events and transactions affect human physiology, and vice-versa. We know more about the bio of the biosocial theory in DBT that helps professionals frame their clients' emotional suffering in a meaningful and compassionate fashion, which inculcates the DBT practitioner against the infections of reactive and clinically empty judgments.
Concerning the therapy relationship, presence invites safety. A mindful therapist recollected fully within the counseling venue demonstrates care and generosity in seeing the client as they are, free of preconceived notions or biases. Even where these notions remain their numbers are greatly reduced, decluttering the encounter between therapist and client. Presence invites connection with those who have been starved by invalidation. Presence turns one human being fully toward the other, like calling to like, presence then invites its counterpart. Presence invites rich existential encounters, where the other experiences being seen, heard and most importantly felt (as expressed by Daniel Siegel). I dare say presence invites existential authentication by the way of whole-person validation, Within these wise and tender spaces DBT clients experience themselves as real, they learn that their therapists take them seriously even if they are occasionally misunderstood. Because where human beings are present to one another, there is a willingness to learn the dance and language of each person sitting together, allowing for the natural emergence of the nuanced dance and language that can only occur there and only between-these-two. Rare and pure generosity become a given, a rich dialectic indeed. And what a struggle and honor to a participant.
#dbt #mindfulness #wisemindwiselife #interpersonalneurobiology #relationships #validation
"Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity." -Simone Weil
I began learning and training in Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) in the late 90s, at what was once known as the Portland DBT Program, and now is the Portland DBT Institute. This was an especially auspicious time for me as a baby therapist fresh from graduate school who was just encountering patients who were in the throes of excruciating emotional suffering. Those diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD), others bearing the invisible scars of trauma, and others bearing quite visible scars indelibly etched into their flesh, acts of distraction, soothing, even countering bouts of dissociation, as I would come to learn.
From my initiation into DBT practice and to this very day, I learned and am learning, the power of presence, and the absence of presence in relationships. With mindfulness, I discovered how pervasively my mind was distracted for most of my life, how fractured my thoughts had been over the course of my life. It would take another ten plus years, a divorce and a personal crisis or two for me to deepen my appreciation for mindfulness and intentional living as radically important practices. My education, training and my own existential need provoked a more serious desire and devotion for cultivating mindfulness in my daily personal life, and this naturally tracked with my practice of mindfulness within my clinical practice where I encounter so many human beings in need of the full presence of another person, and where I teach mindfulness as the core of the DBT skills array, journeying with others engaged in building a life worth living.
The fruits of my increased practice of mindfulness include decreased reactivity toward clients and self, increased compassion for my clients and my self, increased psychological flexibility when it comes to responsiveness and problem-solving. And the benefits of mindfulness for the clients are truly manifold and myriad. They find new spaces for hearing their emotions without rejecting them, as they were taught by their invalidating environments. They experience a newfound trust in their emotions, which are giving them vital information needed not only for basic survival but for how they are doing with social connection and safety, where they stand in reference to others. With their new listening skills, DBT clients come to befriend their emotions, understanding better how these former "enemies" actually work in their service by motivating effective action in daily life. Even in areas of work and school, romance and family. Feeling less reactive, DBT clients discover new space, a broader internal expanse, rather than an abyss, within their Wise Mind in which they experience broader awareness of a widening array of actions. They learn that they do have wisdom and they know how to live a wise life especially when they are paying attention. And perhaps more importantly, the invalidation in their early years, which sabotaged their ability to self-regulate, leaving them adrift in a sea of untamed emotions, DBT clients begin to experience increased internal coherence emerging from mindful self-validation.
As of this writing, we find ourselves in an age illumined by Interpersonal Neurobiology (thank you, Dan Siegel, et. al.) in which we have a deeper understanding of how social events and transactions affect human physiology, and vice-versa. We know more about the bio of the biosocial theory in DBT that helps professionals frame their clients' emotional suffering in a meaningful and compassionate fashion, which inculcates the DBT practitioner against the infections of reactive and clinically empty judgments.
Concerning the therapy relationship, presence invites safety. A mindful therapist recollected fully within the counseling venue demonstrates care and generosity in seeing the client as they are, free of preconceived notions or biases. Even where these notions remain their numbers are greatly reduced, decluttering the encounter between therapist and client. Presence invites connection with those who have been starved by invalidation. Presence turns one human being fully toward the other, like calling to like, presence then invites its counterpart. Presence invites rich existential encounters, where the other experiences being seen, heard and most importantly felt (as expressed by Daniel Siegel). I dare say presence invites existential authentication by the way of whole-person validation, Within these wise and tender spaces DBT clients experience themselves as real, they learn that their therapists take them seriously even if they are occasionally misunderstood. Because where human beings are present to one another, there is a willingness to learn the dance and language of each person sitting together, allowing for the natural emergence of the nuanced dance and language that can only occur there and only between-these-two. Rare and pure generosity become a given, a rich dialectic indeed. And what a struggle and honor to a participant.
#dbt #mindfulness #wisemindwiselife #interpersonalneurobiology #relationships #validation
The Wisdom of Validating Our Kids
Happy New Year to all of you reading this! Welcome back to a LONG overdue entry from Wise Mind, Wise Life. I hope that you are healthy, joyful and blessed wherever you find yourselves at the moment. And I hope that all of life’s beautiful enchantments are opening to you as you enter into 2020, a #yearofclarity.
As a DBT practitioner, much of the work that I undertake with my clients is in excavating their histories within a social context. Specifically, we excavate their origin stories, their embedded and embodied experiences of coming into conscious existence in relationship to their attachment figures. These are usually parents but may also include close adult figures who were primary caregivers, such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents. What we find with those coming in for DBT is that they typically have emerged from DBT calls an invalidating environment which turned away from, and in some cases has turned against, the emotional needs and expressions of my clients from birth onward.
These invalidating environments exert potent and negative influences on children. Invalidating environments fail to teach children important emotional vocabulary which can be helpful for kids to learn how to identify their emotions, labeling them with words, which is one of many elements of effectively regulating emotions. These environments also fail to teach kids skills for self-soothing and distraction which are related to a failure to teach kids realistic problem-solving skills. Kids are left to figure things out for themselves, and “just know” what to do. Under harsher conditions, kids' emotional expressions and bids to connect with the others in their lives are countered with verbal insults, impossible comparisons or outright physical abuse.
All of this leaves these invalidated kids vulnerable to alternative problem-solving efforts such as self-harm, substance abuse or even suicidal behaviors. These are the kids who grow up with little or no impulse control and are likely to make myriad easy choices that lead to a hard life. On a deeper internal level, there can emerge a profound fear of real or imagined abandonment. A classic diagnostic criterion of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This fear becomes a filter through which BPD persons, and I suspect others, experience their relationships across the arc of their lives and become manifest in desperate efforts to keep important relationships that often destroy relationships rather than preserve them. These invalidated kids experience internal incoherence, poor self-organization to lead an effective life and often have a thin sense of self. For many, this is emotional hell.
In another series of origin stories, there are children whose attachment figures show up (as in the new Dan Siegel title: The Power of Showing Up). These parents and caregivers are responsive to the emotional experiences and bids of their kids, helping their kids feel safe and helping them make sense of their emotional experiences. These emotion coaches, as John Gottman calls them, validate their kids’ emotions and their bids to connect with the wider family and social world. These kids become robust, resilient and confident. They have been given strong interpersonal connections which in turn shape their inner personal (Siegel & Bryson, 2020), their very sense of identity. In the DBT dialectical framework, we learn that identity is relational (Linehan, 1993). That is, we know who we are through relationships. We only know ourselves as persons in relation to persons. And we learn what kind of person we are by the quality of connection and care we have with our attachment figures.
To all of us parents out there, let’s ask: How am I showing up for my kids? And assuming, as I do, that parents all want to be good parents (no one wants to suck), let’s widen the sphere of contemplation by also asking the following questions, whether we have infants or teens:
1. Am I a safe person for my children?
2. Am I responsive to my kids' bid for care and connection?
3. Am I generous with my attention and turning-toward my kids?
4. Am I teaching my kids emotional vocabulary?
5. Am I modeling how to engage in self-soothing and distraction?
6. Am I equipped to engage in co-regulation?
7. Am I equipped to regulate my own emotions with self-soothing, distractions, mindfulness, and psychological flexibility?
Let’s explore these questions together and in earnest in the coming posts on the wisdom of validation and emotion coaching. Not to the end of producing superhumans, but to the end that we may cultivate the humanity of our children, that they may become internally coherent, confident, secure and loving humans capable of success and recovery from their inevitable failures, knowing that they have their own internal resources as well as us: the most precious of all resources.
Engage, Enchant, Elevate,
Scott Spradlin
Wise Mind, Wise Life
#wisemindwiselife #dbt #mindfulness #wichita #wisemind #validation #parenting #recovery #mentalhealth #mindsight
As a DBT practitioner, much of the work that I undertake with my clients is in excavating their histories within a social context. Specifically, we excavate their origin stories, their embedded and embodied experiences of coming into conscious existence in relationship to their attachment figures. These are usually parents but may also include close adult figures who were primary caregivers, such as aunts, uncles, and grandparents. What we find with those coming in for DBT is that they typically have emerged from DBT calls an invalidating environment which turned away from, and in some cases has turned against, the emotional needs and expressions of my clients from birth onward.
These invalidating environments exert potent and negative influences on children. Invalidating environments fail to teach children important emotional vocabulary which can be helpful for kids to learn how to identify their emotions, labeling them with words, which is one of many elements of effectively regulating emotions. These environments also fail to teach kids skills for self-soothing and distraction which are related to a failure to teach kids realistic problem-solving skills. Kids are left to figure things out for themselves, and “just know” what to do. Under harsher conditions, kids' emotional expressions and bids to connect with the others in their lives are countered with verbal insults, impossible comparisons or outright physical abuse.
All of this leaves these invalidated kids vulnerable to alternative problem-solving efforts such as self-harm, substance abuse or even suicidal behaviors. These are the kids who grow up with little or no impulse control and are likely to make myriad easy choices that lead to a hard life. On a deeper internal level, there can emerge a profound fear of real or imagined abandonment. A classic diagnostic criterion of Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD). This fear becomes a filter through which BPD persons, and I suspect others, experience their relationships across the arc of their lives and become manifest in desperate efforts to keep important relationships that often destroy relationships rather than preserve them. These invalidated kids experience internal incoherence, poor self-organization to lead an effective life and often have a thin sense of self. For many, this is emotional hell.
In another series of origin stories, there are children whose attachment figures show up (as in the new Dan Siegel title: The Power of Showing Up). These parents and caregivers are responsive to the emotional experiences and bids of their kids, helping their kids feel safe and helping them make sense of their emotional experiences. These emotion coaches, as John Gottman calls them, validate their kids’ emotions and their bids to connect with the wider family and social world. These kids become robust, resilient and confident. They have been given strong interpersonal connections which in turn shape their inner personal (Siegel & Bryson, 2020), their very sense of identity. In the DBT dialectical framework, we learn that identity is relational (Linehan, 1993). That is, we know who we are through relationships. We only know ourselves as persons in relation to persons. And we learn what kind of person we are by the quality of connection and care we have with our attachment figures.
To all of us parents out there, let’s ask: How am I showing up for my kids? And assuming, as I do, that parents all want to be good parents (no one wants to suck), let’s widen the sphere of contemplation by also asking the following questions, whether we have infants or teens:
1. Am I a safe person for my children?
2. Am I responsive to my kids' bid for care and connection?
3. Am I generous with my attention and turning-toward my kids?
4. Am I teaching my kids emotional vocabulary?
5. Am I modeling how to engage in self-soothing and distraction?
6. Am I equipped to engage in co-regulation?
7. Am I equipped to regulate my own emotions with self-soothing, distractions, mindfulness, and psychological flexibility?
Let’s explore these questions together and in earnest in the coming posts on the wisdom of validation and emotion coaching. Not to the end of producing superhumans, but to the end that we may cultivate the humanity of our children, that they may become internally coherent, confident, secure and loving humans capable of success and recovery from their inevitable failures, knowing that they have their own internal resources as well as us: the most precious of all resources.
Engage, Enchant, Elevate,
Scott Spradlin
Wise Mind, Wise Life
#wisemindwiselife #dbt #mindfulness #wichita #wisemind #validation #parenting #recovery #mentalhealth #mindsight
February 24, 2017
Sprad-Ramble: My Work at a Methadone Clinic
I have a day job. I work as a counselor at a methadone clinic in Wichita. Where I have the stress, honor and joy of working among human beings who are struggling to overcome addictions to opiates, our legal drugs, as well as heroin, and a few other things.
I’ve been doing this work for just over one year now, and while I actually tried to quit the job on at least four occasions in my early days (no need to go into details here), I’ve come to love my work there. I love the work because I work with a team of extremely dedicated, hardworking and highly qualified professionals with whom I share the shifting dances of waltz and mosh pit in the warp and woof of life at the clinic. I also love the work because of the patients, the beautiful souls who range from those fighting for their lives from the streets to the blue collar worker and even those whom most of us consider, at least by appearances, high functioning and button down. All of them with their unique respective arrays of sufferings and struggles. I have to say, too, that I love my work because on the fact that my team embraces me for my skills and my quirks. The patients, too, have embraced me for the same skills and quirks, and they have by a large measure embraced my offerings of mindfulness-based treatment and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), showing, in many cases, tremendous improvements in their abilities to better regulate their awareness, emotions and recovery. That is to say a little more poetically, they’re becoming better at letting go of emotional suffering. Even if just incrementally.
There are a great number of struggles underway, many of a magnitude that I never would have imagined, in spite of my own life experiences and in spite of my clinical training and experiences over the last twenty years working mostly with chronically suicidal persons, those who self-harm and sundry addictions. My work at the clinic has provided me with an increase in my own mindfulness practices and my devotional life in the Orthodox Church. This work has provided me with encounter upon encounter with hurting souls who grant me, if that’s a fair way of putting it, access to their lives, to their journeys and battles, and this in turn has kindled my love and hope for all of us. This work has deepened my appreciation for myself, for them, for you; a deepened humility where I have been afforded the opportunity to get over myself in ways that are much needed in my own therapy that we call life.
There are quite a few folks out there in the world who think that methadone is nothing more than a replacement addiction that stands in for prescription meds and heroin addiction. I even had an encounter, not too long ago, with an area professional who wasn’t shy about sharing his views about methadone and psychotropics as impediments to effective counseling in a substance abuse treatment setting. In his setting, to be more specific. While he was sharing his views in my earshot, he wasn’t aware of my work at a methadone clinic, and he was speaking freely and audibly to a group of common friends and acquaintances. So he spoke without concern of censoring himself due to my incidental presence. My paraphrase of his remarks go something like this, and this is a paraphrase: “You can’t do effective treatment any more. So many clients are doped out on methadone and psychotropics nowadays that they can’t process counseling. They’re nodding out and it just gets in the way of good treatment. There’s nothing good about methadone.” Remember, this is my paraphrase, but it gets to his negative view of methadone in particular as something deleterious.
Our common friends wheeled toward me and one asked, “Scott, don’t you work at a methadone clinic?” At this point, our encounter was born. I was on the spot. Of course I acknowledged that yes I do indeed work at a methadone clinic. His face shone with obvious disappointment. At that moment, which I like to think of now as the remarkable time of kairos, the opportune time, I, in trepidation, offered this, also a paraphrase, this time of myself: “Actually, methadone is saving lives. And I gotta tell ‘ya, our patients are engaging in counseling, learning mindfulness, emotion regulation and how to deal with their cravings for their old drugs of choice, and their old habits of being, on the whole.” I did hedge a bit with honesty and told him, “We don’t have 100% success rate with all of our patients in any given treatment episode, but that’s no different than substance abuse treatment in general, where you’re working with alcoholism, methamphetamines and say, K2/spice (synthetic pot), and relapse is grist for the mill in the struggle and recovery of many addicts. And I’ve seen all of that. On the whole, I’m proud of our patients and the work we’re doing at our clinic.”
His response to me was this, and this is not a paraphrase: “You’re part of the problem.”
This left me reeling. And I was struck with the truth that to be a methadone patient is to bear the stigma of being classified as an addict, and then doubled-strapped with another stigma. That of being a methadone patient, which is looked down upon by other addicts in recovery and even addictions counselors. I was pushed into a closer identification with my patients when I encountered this professional. I had a clarifying moment in which I could finally understand why most of my patients don’t want anyone to know that they’re participating in becoming well through methadone assisted treatment. And many are becoming well.
I don’t want to idealize methadone. There is the fact that methadone can be/is addictive itself, although it works to block the brain’s opiate receptors preventing both cravings for opiates and the ability to get high on opiates. It provides a biologic edge that helps many in their journey toward sobriety. There are patients who want methadone treatment for pain management, where injury from work accidents, illness or surgery form the etiology of their dependence on medically well-intended prescribed opiates. There can be a great fear among patients who don’t know how to otherwise relate to their addictions, or their physical pain, which is not only real, but often extraordinarily intense. And still, there are the stories I hear from patients who tell me that thanks to methadone they no longer steal from their loved ones to make a score. They stopped exchanging their integrity for drugs. Some of them are completing college degrees so that they can pursue vocations and meaningful work. Many of them are more present as spouses and/or as parents to their children.
There are two points I want to make in closing this little Sprad-ramble. First, methadone is intended to be a transitional medication, assisting the opiate dependent persons to better manage cravings as they move toward a drug-free life, including a methadone-free life. Especially where sound and effective counseling services are offered, to help patients learn skills in relating more healthfully to their physical pain, emotions and thoughts, which has the potential of changing the psychological edifice that supports addictive behaviors and identity. Second, those of us who are not drug or substance dependent experience and live out daily, exactly the same processes and problems that drug addicts face. Many of us are caught in a web of addiction to negative and catastrophic thinking. Or wallowing in misery. Compulsive shopping, pornography or internet usage. Some of us are captured by a slavish need to be approved by others, or we hold onto an entirely hostile view of others. Some of us are workaholics or try to prove ourselves through relentless multitasking. Perhaps we have to “keep up with the Joneses,” to prove our value or superiority. Maybe it’s chronic judgmentalness of others and self. Nationalism, racism and sexism come to mind. Changing any behavior that in anyway controls us, and diminishes us or our relationship to friends and family, is ridiculously difficult. We are all subject to our habits of thought and behavior in some way or another, which we all need to take time to attend to, to wonder over, and to find space to step away from to find meaningful change.
I have no clever way to end this entry. I want to say something like this, to my friends and family who have authentic intentions to love and to be generous human beings. Keep your minds open. When you have trouble understanding the addict, ask yourself this question: “What am I leaving out?” I gently challenge you to ask yourself what is it that you don’t know about a person’s history. What is the abuse or neglect a person has suffered? What are the circumstances under which the person I’m judging came into their way of being? Even if there was no abuse or neglect, how did this other person become acquainted with a medication or a drug that grabbed their brain and body in such a way that they became a slave to it? The word addict literally means to be enslaved (from the Latin). Ask yourself how are you like the drug addict? What are you addicted to? Food? Shopping? Sex? Reputation? What separates you from others or diminishes your power to apprehend love, beauty or wonder?
I hope that such questions will assist you to expand your capacity for compassion for the addict, and for yourself. To see that there is little to no difference between the drug addict and the compulsions that confront all us.
Thank you, readers, for indulging this Sprad-ramble. In closing I think it’s best to leave you with this excerpt from the work of Gerald G. May:
“A certain asceticism of mind, a gentle intellectual restraint, is needed to appreciate the important things in life. To be open to the truth of love, we must relinquish our frozen comprehensions and begin instead to appreciate. To comprehend is to grasp; to appreciate is to value. Appreciation is gentle seeing, soft acknowledgement, reverent perception. Appreciation can be a pleasant valuing: being awed by a night sky, touched by a symphony, or moved by a caress without needing to understand why. It can also be painful: feeling someone’s suffering, being shocked by loss or disaster without comprehending the reason. Appreciation itself is a kind of love; it is our direct human responsiveness, valuing what we cannot grasp. Love, the life of our heart, is not what we think. It is always ready to surprise us, to take us beyond our understandings into a reality that is both insecure and wonderful.”
~ Gerald G. May, The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need
I’ve been doing this work for just over one year now, and while I actually tried to quit the job on at least four occasions in my early days (no need to go into details here), I’ve come to love my work there. I love the work because I work with a team of extremely dedicated, hardworking and highly qualified professionals with whom I share the shifting dances of waltz and mosh pit in the warp and woof of life at the clinic. I also love the work because of the patients, the beautiful souls who range from those fighting for their lives from the streets to the blue collar worker and even those whom most of us consider, at least by appearances, high functioning and button down. All of them with their unique respective arrays of sufferings and struggles. I have to say, too, that I love my work because on the fact that my team embraces me for my skills and my quirks. The patients, too, have embraced me for the same skills and quirks, and they have by a large measure embraced my offerings of mindfulness-based treatment and Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT), showing, in many cases, tremendous improvements in their abilities to better regulate their awareness, emotions and recovery. That is to say a little more poetically, they’re becoming better at letting go of emotional suffering. Even if just incrementally.
There are a great number of struggles underway, many of a magnitude that I never would have imagined, in spite of my own life experiences and in spite of my clinical training and experiences over the last twenty years working mostly with chronically suicidal persons, those who self-harm and sundry addictions. My work at the clinic has provided me with an increase in my own mindfulness practices and my devotional life in the Orthodox Church. This work has provided me with encounter upon encounter with hurting souls who grant me, if that’s a fair way of putting it, access to their lives, to their journeys and battles, and this in turn has kindled my love and hope for all of us. This work has deepened my appreciation for myself, for them, for you; a deepened humility where I have been afforded the opportunity to get over myself in ways that are much needed in my own therapy that we call life.
There are quite a few folks out there in the world who think that methadone is nothing more than a replacement addiction that stands in for prescription meds and heroin addiction. I even had an encounter, not too long ago, with an area professional who wasn’t shy about sharing his views about methadone and psychotropics as impediments to effective counseling in a substance abuse treatment setting. In his setting, to be more specific. While he was sharing his views in my earshot, he wasn’t aware of my work at a methadone clinic, and he was speaking freely and audibly to a group of common friends and acquaintances. So he spoke without concern of censoring himself due to my incidental presence. My paraphrase of his remarks go something like this, and this is a paraphrase: “You can’t do effective treatment any more. So many clients are doped out on methadone and psychotropics nowadays that they can’t process counseling. They’re nodding out and it just gets in the way of good treatment. There’s nothing good about methadone.” Remember, this is my paraphrase, but it gets to his negative view of methadone in particular as something deleterious.
Our common friends wheeled toward me and one asked, “Scott, don’t you work at a methadone clinic?” At this point, our encounter was born. I was on the spot. Of course I acknowledged that yes I do indeed work at a methadone clinic. His face shone with obvious disappointment. At that moment, which I like to think of now as the remarkable time of kairos, the opportune time, I, in trepidation, offered this, also a paraphrase, this time of myself: “Actually, methadone is saving lives. And I gotta tell ‘ya, our patients are engaging in counseling, learning mindfulness, emotion regulation and how to deal with their cravings for their old drugs of choice, and their old habits of being, on the whole.” I did hedge a bit with honesty and told him, “We don’t have 100% success rate with all of our patients in any given treatment episode, but that’s no different than substance abuse treatment in general, where you’re working with alcoholism, methamphetamines and say, K2/spice (synthetic pot), and relapse is grist for the mill in the struggle and recovery of many addicts. And I’ve seen all of that. On the whole, I’m proud of our patients and the work we’re doing at our clinic.”
His response to me was this, and this is not a paraphrase: “You’re part of the problem.”
This left me reeling. And I was struck with the truth that to be a methadone patient is to bear the stigma of being classified as an addict, and then doubled-strapped with another stigma. That of being a methadone patient, which is looked down upon by other addicts in recovery and even addictions counselors. I was pushed into a closer identification with my patients when I encountered this professional. I had a clarifying moment in which I could finally understand why most of my patients don’t want anyone to know that they’re participating in becoming well through methadone assisted treatment. And many are becoming well.
I don’t want to idealize methadone. There is the fact that methadone can be/is addictive itself, although it works to block the brain’s opiate receptors preventing both cravings for opiates and the ability to get high on opiates. It provides a biologic edge that helps many in their journey toward sobriety. There are patients who want methadone treatment for pain management, where injury from work accidents, illness or surgery form the etiology of their dependence on medically well-intended prescribed opiates. There can be a great fear among patients who don’t know how to otherwise relate to their addictions, or their physical pain, which is not only real, but often extraordinarily intense. And still, there are the stories I hear from patients who tell me that thanks to methadone they no longer steal from their loved ones to make a score. They stopped exchanging their integrity for drugs. Some of them are completing college degrees so that they can pursue vocations and meaningful work. Many of them are more present as spouses and/or as parents to their children.
There are two points I want to make in closing this little Sprad-ramble. First, methadone is intended to be a transitional medication, assisting the opiate dependent persons to better manage cravings as they move toward a drug-free life, including a methadone-free life. Especially where sound and effective counseling services are offered, to help patients learn skills in relating more healthfully to their physical pain, emotions and thoughts, which has the potential of changing the psychological edifice that supports addictive behaviors and identity. Second, those of us who are not drug or substance dependent experience and live out daily, exactly the same processes and problems that drug addicts face. Many of us are caught in a web of addiction to negative and catastrophic thinking. Or wallowing in misery. Compulsive shopping, pornography or internet usage. Some of us are captured by a slavish need to be approved by others, or we hold onto an entirely hostile view of others. Some of us are workaholics or try to prove ourselves through relentless multitasking. Perhaps we have to “keep up with the Joneses,” to prove our value or superiority. Maybe it’s chronic judgmentalness of others and self. Nationalism, racism and sexism come to mind. Changing any behavior that in anyway controls us, and diminishes us or our relationship to friends and family, is ridiculously difficult. We are all subject to our habits of thought and behavior in some way or another, which we all need to take time to attend to, to wonder over, and to find space to step away from to find meaningful change.
I have no clever way to end this entry. I want to say something like this, to my friends and family who have authentic intentions to love and to be generous human beings. Keep your minds open. When you have trouble understanding the addict, ask yourself this question: “What am I leaving out?” I gently challenge you to ask yourself what is it that you don’t know about a person’s history. What is the abuse or neglect a person has suffered? What are the circumstances under which the person I’m judging came into their way of being? Even if there was no abuse or neglect, how did this other person become acquainted with a medication or a drug that grabbed their brain and body in such a way that they became a slave to it? The word addict literally means to be enslaved (from the Latin). Ask yourself how are you like the drug addict? What are you addicted to? Food? Shopping? Sex? Reputation? What separates you from others or diminishes your power to apprehend love, beauty or wonder?
I hope that such questions will assist you to expand your capacity for compassion for the addict, and for yourself. To see that there is little to no difference between the drug addict and the compulsions that confront all us.
Thank you, readers, for indulging this Sprad-ramble. In closing I think it’s best to leave you with this excerpt from the work of Gerald G. May:
“A certain asceticism of mind, a gentle intellectual restraint, is needed to appreciate the important things in life. To be open to the truth of love, we must relinquish our frozen comprehensions and begin instead to appreciate. To comprehend is to grasp; to appreciate is to value. Appreciation is gentle seeing, soft acknowledgement, reverent perception. Appreciation can be a pleasant valuing: being awed by a night sky, touched by a symphony, or moved by a caress without needing to understand why. It can also be painful: feeling someone’s suffering, being shocked by loss or disaster without comprehending the reason. Appreciation itself is a kind of love; it is our direct human responsiveness, valuing what we cannot grasp. Love, the life of our heart, is not what we think. It is always ready to surprise us, to take us beyond our understandings into a reality that is both insecure and wonderful.”
~ Gerald G. May, The Awakened Heart: Opening Yourself to the Love You Need
June 23, 2014
Mindfulness for Mental Health Professionals (Excerpt)
Dear Reader,
Following a series of personal challenges I'm making a concerted effort to return to more regular blogging activity. I want to feature content from the work-in-progress that was started two years ago. The idea was to update on progress on the book DBT for Mental Health Professionals. I will endeavor to make general entries as well as provide content from the drafts of the emerging book.
I welcome the feedback, of course, and I hope that what I have to offer will be edifying to the reader, to you.
~+~ Scott
Mindfulness is a broad term that refers to any practice of non-reactive participation, intentional cultivation of awareness and paying attention to the moment as well as bringing oneself into each moment as fully as possible. It is a simple yet many-layered and elegant thing to talk about. It is easy to talk about, difficult to practice, but worthy of the effort. More so, mindfulness is the patient and gentle cultivation of awareness to your thoughts, your emotions and your bodily sensations as they happen. Mindfulness is the practice that helps you to know what you are thinking as you think, and a knowing what you feel while you feel. It’s not a retrospect, a backward looking, but an immediate here-ness.
Within this wide swath of mindfulness is attentiveness, prayer, meditation, concentration, recollection, being present within the moment. There are many specialized forms of mindfulness that have emerged from various spiritual and philosophical traditions, and while these multiple traditions may diverge on their metaphysical foundations and ends,
they converge on the common agreement that we are subject to conditioning and attachments which become sources of misery and suffering for us. These traditions also agree that a foe to human health is inattentiveness which has many names: distraction, dissipation, scattering, and what we might even call dis-attention, as does John Kabat-Zinn (2005). Related to this
inattentiveness are the cognitive phenomena of mis-perception and mis-attribution, that oft lead to mis-takes (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). Those helpers who are trained in the Cognitive-behavioral
Therapy (CBT) tradition are versed in the principles gathered from the ancient Greeks: it is not so much actual events that are the cause of our misery or disturbances, but the view that we take of these events (Aurelius ). Therapists and counselors, even those who practice CBT, are subject to being caught up in misperceptions, are we not, and their own habits of thought in which thoughts multiply from the first misapprehension, and become complicated rather than remain simple. Within these complicated thoughts you are often presented with your habits of comparison, taut hope (read attachment) and expectation that your clients will receive you and your therapeutic wisdom, putting it all to practice and move quickly along the path of healing.
When your taut hope and expectations are thwarted you may feel frustration, exasperation and even despair over your effectiveness as a helper or your clients’ willingness to change.
These are the testing points of reality that reveal to you your deeply held assumptions and philosophies about self, others, relatedness, shoulds, and so on. The value of mindfulness to mental health practitioners lies in its utility for cultivating keen attention to your own experiences and reactions to your client, in the moment of your meeting, sharpening your receptivity to your clients’ paraverbal and verbal communication, taking in key emotional
information you may miss if you have fallen into the fog of perfunctory engagement. As much as it will yield for you an enhanced reception of your client as you meet them, it can also yield your presence to your client, communicating to them true care and concern with your concentrated being.
In DBT mindfulness forms the core skill around which all the others (distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness) are gathered and integrated. Citing John
Kabat-Zinn (2003), McKay, Wood and Brantley (2007), these authors and practioners identify mindfulness as a form of non-judgmental paying attention on purpose, in the present moment (p. 63). Should you cultivate your own mindfulness practices, beyond any simple engagement for the skills training groups you may lead, you will find yourself becoming more attentive, more present and flexible in your practice with your clients. Beyond a mere gimmick, or something you “do in case of an emergency,” and beyond a form of relaxation, mindfulness is a practice that while honed through concentrated and intentional practices such as meditation or prayer, or short practices in simply sitting and observing your breath, it is a way and stance of life. In your sitting practices, breathing, meditations, concentrations intended to increase your presence and attention to all moments. From meeting a client to shaving stubble and from enjoying ice cream to managing stress, mindfulness is more than simply a response technique. It is a living practice, diligent attentiveness and awareness cultivated in each and every moment as it comes and goes. It is even attention to inattention, returning you to attention. This nonjudgmental and purposeful attentiveness is also related to the cultivation of wisdom, that well-lived, big-picture kind of knowledge that lends itself to living in a fairly patient and measured fashion that nurtures human well-being.
Following a series of personal challenges I'm making a concerted effort to return to more regular blogging activity. I want to feature content from the work-in-progress that was started two years ago. The idea was to update on progress on the book DBT for Mental Health Professionals. I will endeavor to make general entries as well as provide content from the drafts of the emerging book.
I welcome the feedback, of course, and I hope that what I have to offer will be edifying to the reader, to you.
~+~ Scott
Mindfulness is a broad term that refers to any practice of non-reactive participation, intentional cultivation of awareness and paying attention to the moment as well as bringing oneself into each moment as fully as possible. It is a simple yet many-layered and elegant thing to talk about. It is easy to talk about, difficult to practice, but worthy of the effort. More so, mindfulness is the patient and gentle cultivation of awareness to your thoughts, your emotions and your bodily sensations as they happen. Mindfulness is the practice that helps you to know what you are thinking as you think, and a knowing what you feel while you feel. It’s not a retrospect, a backward looking, but an immediate here-ness.
Within this wide swath of mindfulness is attentiveness, prayer, meditation, concentration, recollection, being present within the moment. There are many specialized forms of mindfulness that have emerged from various spiritual and philosophical traditions, and while these multiple traditions may diverge on their metaphysical foundations and ends,
they converge on the common agreement that we are subject to conditioning and attachments which become sources of misery and suffering for us. These traditions also agree that a foe to human health is inattentiveness which has many names: distraction, dissipation, scattering, and what we might even call dis-attention, as does John Kabat-Zinn (2005). Related to this
inattentiveness are the cognitive phenomena of mis-perception and mis-attribution, that oft lead to mis-takes (Kabat-Zinn, 2005). Those helpers who are trained in the Cognitive-behavioral
Therapy (CBT) tradition are versed in the principles gathered from the ancient Greeks: it is not so much actual events that are the cause of our misery or disturbances, but the view that we take of these events (Aurelius ). Therapists and counselors, even those who practice CBT, are subject to being caught up in misperceptions, are we not, and their own habits of thought in which thoughts multiply from the first misapprehension, and become complicated rather than remain simple. Within these complicated thoughts you are often presented with your habits of comparison, taut hope (read attachment) and expectation that your clients will receive you and your therapeutic wisdom, putting it all to practice and move quickly along the path of healing.
When your taut hope and expectations are thwarted you may feel frustration, exasperation and even despair over your effectiveness as a helper or your clients’ willingness to change.
These are the testing points of reality that reveal to you your deeply held assumptions and philosophies about self, others, relatedness, shoulds, and so on. The value of mindfulness to mental health practitioners lies in its utility for cultivating keen attention to your own experiences and reactions to your client, in the moment of your meeting, sharpening your receptivity to your clients’ paraverbal and verbal communication, taking in key emotional
information you may miss if you have fallen into the fog of perfunctory engagement. As much as it will yield for you an enhanced reception of your client as you meet them, it can also yield your presence to your client, communicating to them true care and concern with your concentrated being.
In DBT mindfulness forms the core skill around which all the others (distress tolerance, emotion regulation, and interpersonal effectiveness) are gathered and integrated. Citing John
Kabat-Zinn (2003), McKay, Wood and Brantley (2007), these authors and practioners identify mindfulness as a form of non-judgmental paying attention on purpose, in the present moment (p. 63). Should you cultivate your own mindfulness practices, beyond any simple engagement for the skills training groups you may lead, you will find yourself becoming more attentive, more present and flexible in your practice with your clients. Beyond a mere gimmick, or something you “do in case of an emergency,” and beyond a form of relaxation, mindfulness is a practice that while honed through concentrated and intentional practices such as meditation or prayer, or short practices in simply sitting and observing your breath, it is a way and stance of life. In your sitting practices, breathing, meditations, concentrations intended to increase your presence and attention to all moments. From meeting a client to shaving stubble and from enjoying ice cream to managing stress, mindfulness is more than simply a response technique. It is a living practice, diligent attentiveness and awareness cultivated in each and every moment as it comes and goes. It is even attention to inattention, returning you to attention. This nonjudgmental and purposeful attentiveness is also related to the cultivation of wisdom, that well-lived, big-picture kind of knowledge that lends itself to living in a fairly patient and measured fashion that nurtures human well-being.
September 16, 2013
Cool Clouds and a Tiny Chunk of Mindfulness...
Spending some time today enjoying the soothing presence of rain clouds, here in Wichita, while working on reviews and edits of the current project. A brief excerpt from
DBT for Mental Health Professionals
: Mindfulness is more than simply a response technique. It is a living practice, diligent attentiveness and awareness cultivated in each and every moment as it comes and goes. It is even attention to inattention, returning you to attention. This nonjudgmental and purposeful attentiveness is also related to the cultivation of wisdom, that well-lived, big-picture kind of knowledge that lends itself to living in a fairly patient and measured fashion that nurtures human well-being.
July 19, 2013
Presence and Compassion Notes...
Notes from current drafts on presence and compassion in psychotherapy:
Bringing yourself home to self, to this very moment where you abide, establish yourself. Establish yourself for your own being and for moving out toward and with the other sharing this moment, the clinical hour. And now you can be present with your client, the other, the soul who brings to you disclosures; Disclosures of the mundane and ridiculous; disclosures of the tragic and profound. All of these disclosures matter, all of these disclosures, whatever their pitch, cadence or color constitute a life revealed to with you within the limits of mystery.
Bringing yourself home to self, to this very moment where you abide, establish yourself. Establish yourself for your own being and for moving out toward and with the other sharing this moment, the clinical hour. And now you can be present with your client, the other, the soul who brings to you disclosures; Disclosures of the mundane and ridiculous; disclosures of the tragic and profound. All of these disclosures matter, all of these disclosures, whatever their pitch, cadence or color constitute a life revealed to with you within the limits of mystery.
July 7, 2013
Validation--DBT for Mental Health Professionals
From DBT for Mental Health Professionals
Validation is more than a mere technique. It is necessary part of connecting with your spouse, friends, family and co-workers. It is a manner of listening, mindfully with an expanding wholeness. A mindful listening, a whole-hearing includes the hearing of words and tones and rates of speech. It is the seeing of postures and gestures and the looking of the eyes upon the face of the other who speaks to you with their face, who speaks from their gaze.
Validation is more than a mere technique. It is necessary part of connecting with your spouse, friends, family and co-workers. It is a manner of listening, mindfully with an expanding wholeness. A mindful listening, a whole-hearing includes the hearing of words and tones and rates of speech. It is the seeing of postures and gestures and the looking of the eyes upon the face of the other who speaks to you with their face, who speaks from their gaze.
June 28, 2013
Mindfulness as Home-Bringing (Excerpts)
Mindfulness is the recollection of oneself, a home-bringing, if you will. A home-bringing that we exercise in returning to ourselves, coming back to our senses, proper and fully. As much and as often as we become dissipated over the course of a day, we are able to come back home to ourselves just as often with mindfulness...
Mindfulness is the remembering of self before and within all that you are related to and with. It is attention to wisdom and wonder. Mindfulness is the loving attention that frees itself from the tenacious and clinging judgments that interfere with your now-ness, your being-in-the-moment. Mindfulness grants awareness of these judgments, these attachments which are the cause of your misery, noting them for what they are so that you may gently jettison them in favor of simpler more direct experience of your life.
Mindfulness as home-bringing practice, then, takes us home, that is into dwelling.
Mindfulness is the remembering of self before and within all that you are related to and with. It is attention to wisdom and wonder. Mindfulness is the loving attention that frees itself from the tenacious and clinging judgments that interfere with your now-ness, your being-in-the-moment. Mindfulness grants awareness of these judgments, these attachments which are the cause of your misery, noting them for what they are so that you may gently jettison them in favor of simpler more direct experience of your life.
Mindfulness as home-bringing practice, then, takes us home, that is into dwelling.
June 25, 2013
Hello Goodreads!
I want to say hello to all of you out there, with a special greetings to those of you who have read "Don't Let Your Emotions Run Your Life." Thank you for reading! I'm glad for the good reviews especially as your reviews express a personal usefulness. That the book has been a tool for learning and change for you gratifies me.
I will be exploring related ideas from the first book in this blog format here. I am currently working on a couple of new projects, which I hope will see the light of day, and which I invite you to follow.
In the words of my colleague Alice Rose, Be mindful out there.
~Scott
I will be exploring related ideas from the first book in this blog format here. I am currently working on a couple of new projects, which I hope will see the light of day, and which I invite you to follow.
In the words of my colleague Alice Rose, Be mindful out there.
~Scott
