Tale of One Little Pig -- Doing Stupid Over and Over Because it's Familiar

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He brings wisdom and insight to Wings Like Eagles that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

Tale of One Little Pig

This is The Tale of The One Little Pig.  Actually he is one of the original Three Littles.  This is an addendum tale to follow up on the first little pig after his harrowing escape from the first Big Bad Wolf.  (I hate to be the one to break it to you but there is a limitless supply of Big Bad Wolves, Wicked Witches, and Evil Step-Mothers in fairy tale land.)  Thus, little pigs are forever destined to be coveted by drooling, fanged, windbags.

The One Little Pig, let's call him Harry (or her Henrietta for that matter), is the fellow who built his hut from straw.  Straw is cheap, it's easy to work with, it's light in weight, and readily available; not an altogether bad idea except in a world where Big Bad Wolves cruise in search of accessible pork chops.  It  is, however, a quick fix to the need for shelter and circumvents all the tedious, backbreaking effort required to build with brick.  Was Harry lazy? Maybe.  Maybe he was simply naive.  Or perhaps something more insidious was in play.

What you haven't been told about is Harry's ongoing issues around wolves, straw huts, and security.  Like me, you probably just assumed that Straw Piggy (Harry) and Stick Piggy holed up with Brick Piggy until they could follow suit and construct similar wolf-resistant domiciles.  Not true for Harry! While grateful for escape from Big Bad's dinner table, Harry quickly moved out of the secure safety of the cozy brick house and went off to procure another load of hay.  Hard to believe, I know, but true nevertheless.  The other sibs tried to point out the obvious risk involved, but Harry was not to be dissuaded from his course; it was as if he were driven by some unseen "destiny" (he called it).  Finally the others just had to give in  and let him go.

You see, Harry is suffering from a little psychological phenomenon we call "repetition compulsion,"  also called recapitulation, or re-enactment.  This amounts to what looks to outsiders like "doing stupid" in deliberate succession. 

(You know, like an abusive alcoholic parent just wasn't enough; how about a raging or irresponsible boyfriend or girlfriend and then a spouse or two to boot?)  It seems crazy, like Harry making himself wolf bait for a second time, but maybe there are some things we don't understand about Harry's earlier experiences.

Maybe that Papa Pig was not such a great father and living in danger feels normal, even desirable, to Harry.  What if this little pig does not believe he deserves safety and security?  Whatever it is, for reasons outside of awareness, we, like Harry, may be mysteriously drawn to return and recreate scenarios of abuse and neglect.  Perhaps it is because we believe deep down that we deserve this treatment or it is just so familiar we don't see it for what it is.  Often it is an unconscious bid to rework the hurtful past hoping to succeed this time in saving the dysfunctional or abusive parent or finally securing their love by succeeding with their current "stand-in" emotional double that we unconsciously chose for this very purpose.  We reenact the past. Dangerous stuff when you don't know it is at work in you. 

This is where therapy is often helpful in teasing these unconscious dynamics out into the daylight where you can begin to  challenge them, heal from the past, and make conscious relationship decisions that are healthy.  It can change your life.  You do not have live like Harry.  You have a choice and there is a path to freedom. It won't be easy or painless, but hey, being perpetual wolf bait is worse, don't you think?

Copyright 2011 John D. Deyo, M.A., MFT

It's Always About Balance

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He brings wisdom and insight to Wings Like Eagles that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

Most problems are created by imbalance.  Wow, I know that sounds simplistic, but think about it.  Too much of something or too little of something, overfunction or underfunction, underkill or overkill.  In one direction or the other a problem is likely to develop. 

This principle applies to brain chemistry, body chemistry, relationship dynamics, behaviors, habits and, well, even the very functions of the universe that enable life on this blue planet.  Yet we have often tried to live as though we are exempt from, above, or outside of the reach of the principle of balance, overindulging or under-supplying ourselves.  And then we get in trouble. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we came with a set of gauges that would alert us to imbalance?  Actually, we do. These “gauges” include our bodies—our five senses, our feelings, and our relationships.  It is important to learn to pay attention to these indicators of imbalance or we will end up with—you guessed it—problems.  If you ignore that red “oil” light on your dashboard long enough you will end up with a dead vehicle.  If you ignore that strange new lump on your body long enough you may end up with a dead you.  If you ignore your relationship problems long enough you may end up with an unhappy marriage or no marriage at all.

Don’t take false comfort from your old pal Denial.  He will tell you that the symptom you are experiencing is not so bad, not so big, not important, your imagination, your partner’s problem, or that there is no problem at all!  (Even in this, it is important to practice balance.  To catastrophize every small thing can be paralyzing and is a distortion on the “too much” side of imbalance.) 

I think that “reading our gauges” is a tricky skill to learn and practice.  Receiving good parenting should have taught us such skills throughout our childhoods, but for many of us—probably most of us—this didn’t really happen.  In fact, if we grew up in a dysfunctional family system we may have become adaptively skillful at ignoring signals from our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. It was just too painful to stay present and feel.  It is as though many of the important sensory wires have been cut—or we severed them ourselves—and there just isn’t any signal getting through any more. 

Part of the work of recovery is reconnecting these vital input lines; lines that can alert us to damaging imbalances, unhealthy relationships, and with our need to employ wisdom and self-care.  It is a process and will definitely include some pain. You know, like when your foot has fallen asleep and then goes into that crazy needles and pins phase as your nerves hook your leg back up to your brain. 

We need pain!  A great example is leprosy.  Huh?  Yes, the truly dangerous thing about leprosy is that lepers lose sensation in their extremities, thus no pain sensation, thus no signals alerting them to the fact that they have injured themselves, thus infection.  We may have adaptively blocked our ability to feel pain in order to survive, but staying disconnected with it will inevitably send us—unawares—toward some form of hurtful imbalance. 

The good news is that in coming back into balanced contact with our bodies, emotions, and spirits also reconnects us to our joy and pleasure.  You see, we can’t dampen and tune out parts of our feelings without dampening all our overall emotional experiences—including the pleasant ones.  We become generally numb.  This can lead to seeking more intensity and, well, you probably already know the kind of problems that can lead to.  

We are wired to experience a full range of feelings—in balance.  To lose touch with them or trade most of them in for one or two (like anger or lust) is a sad state of imbalance indeed.   Don’t settle for an imbalanced, chaotic, or numbed out existence.  It will definitely take some work and endurance on your part to heal and make your way back to the land of the truly alive but don’t you think it could be worth it? 

There are many of us on the other side of recovery who respond with a hearty “Amen!”

A Crisis of Listening

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He brings wisdom and insight to Wings Like Eagles that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

The most recent tragedy in in Newtown, Connecticut and subsequent national discussions have set me pondering not only about the unthinkable act itself, but about the responses it has evoked in our nation.  

It seems clear to me that an event like this makes us feel so powerless, so out of control, that our immediate reaction is to rise up with a great flurry of sometimes-colliding ideas and resolve that we can and must DO something.  We must be able to stop this from ever happening again.  We believe that if we can just take the right steps we CAN control it and eradicate such tragedies: Monitor the mentally ill, create tougher gun control laws and enforce them, arm teachers, post armed sharpshooters in every school, install bulletproof glass and safe rooms in every school, build giant electromagnets to suck all the guns out of every home in every city (okay, I made that one up).  We are Americans, for crying out loud.  We know how to solve problems, right?! 

Maybe all this convulsing to DO something NOW springs from our deep discomfort with the fact that life—especially evil and mortality—are often quite outside our ability to control in the way we perhaps delude ourselves into thinking we can, especially here in the U.S.  I mean, can’t Clint Eastwood just ride coolly into town and get rid of the bad guys? Fix the problem?  The answer is no.  

That is not in any way to imply that we should not try to do all we can to insure safety—especially of our children—whenever and however possible. We should.  At some level, though, we are going to have to accept that there is no way to guarantee something of this nature will never happen again.  Sorry, but once taboos are broken they are nearly impossible to restore.  Mass, senseless shootings are now a ready option for the sick mind to consider, plan, and carry out. 

I too would like to find a “solution” to the awful quandary presented us by such tragedies.  I have no grand scheme to resolve it.  I am just not that smart, though I wish I were.  All I can do is offer my own little corner of perspective as a mental health professional.  

First of all, it is impossible for even highly skilled and experienced mental health professionals to predict dangerous behaviors with 100% accuracy.  Even if they could that would not account for individuals who are not in or seeking treatment for their problems. Secondly, not everyone who does these things is “crazy;” sick—probably; really, really angry—likely, but not necessarily insane in the forensic psychology use of that term.  Beside this, many individuals who have diagnosed/diagnosable mental disorders do not and will not pose a resultant threat to anyone.  Do you want to be on the “Crazies List” because you have had depression?  Me neither.

That said, I do have one suggestion for us as a society:  We desperately need to learn to be better listeners.  Most of us aren’t very good at it, even if we think we are.  Good listening is a skill and an art. It is rarely naturally intuitive for us to listen well.  We are much more interested in being heard.  

What most of us who are therapists offer our clients—if nothing else—is something we all long for: to be really heard, seen, and valued.  It always starts with and centers on listening.  I mean real listening, deep listening.  Not just hearing words, not distracted quasi-attention, not judging, and not using what the other says as a springboard for you to defend yourself or tell your tale or make your point.  It is not an easy or natural skill to learn and employ but boy, do we need to cultivate more of it (but not too much or I will be out of a job).  

When was the last time you felt deeply heard, seen and valued in a conversation? I will bet it has been a while.  

I can’t help but wonder if some of those who have resorted to violence might have been screaming for someone to really hear and see and value them.  I know from my experience with clients dealing with anger control problems is that one powerful trigger for anger is often the helpless feeling of not feeling heard or understood.  They just fly into a rage to get someone to hear what they really mean/feel/want. It is, of course, very infantile but effective in its own dysfunctional way. (Think of the power of a raging, screaming baby to make great big adults jump into action to figure out what Junior wants or needs). 

  

It is interesting that one of the primary feelings evoked in us over these incidents is that terrible feeling of helplessness.  Maybe such perpetrators have succeeded in making us feel what they felt, even if they were doing so unconsciously.  Might, just might, there have been a possibility that they would have changed course if someone took the time to “get them,” if someone had been listening—really listening?  Perhaps not, but I say it is worth the effort to become better listeners.  If nothing else, what if by listening someone hears and responds to a dangerous and primal scream that is ready to explode in a violent expression of helpless rage?  Maybe there will be a different ending next time.  

An Interview With Our Staff Counselor Regarding the Sandy Hook Elementary Newtown, Connecticut Tragedy

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He brings wisdom and insight to Wings Like Eagles that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

By:  Kristi Tisor Ambriz

I had Dr. Oz on this afternoon while I worked at my computer, and my 8 year-old son was in the room.  

During the commercial break a news promo came on with images of Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy in Newtown, CT, and my son was transfixed.  It was one of those slow motion moments when I couldn't get to him quickly enough, distracting him as well as I could while I escorted him out of the room.  

He saw.  Nothing graphic, but he saw that something horrible had happened at a school.

He asked me about it, and I simply told him that a "bad guy," hurt some kids at a school far, far away.  He went on to a different room, and played.

I frantically texted John Deyo, LMTF.

The following is our text conversation:

KTA:     I wanted to spare Lee from knowing what had happened, since he's so little.  When he asked me, I simply told him that a "bad guy," hurt some kids at a school.  

JD:     Well, you know they will find out sooner or later. 

KTA:     What do we do, John?  How do we help our kids?

JD:     In no particular order, consider the following guidelines:

• Manage your own feelings about it. If you are falling apart your kids will follow suit. 
• Kids will need to talk about it. Talk to them in simple, age appropriate terms. 
• They need reassurance (not guarantees) that they are safe and that these kinds of things are very unusual (like one grain of sugar in a whole bag or sugar, or some such comparison.) 
• They might express feelings thru drawing, or maybe making a card for other kids at that school.
• Limit exposure to news coverage of all kinds!  
• Maintain regular routines and don't be afraid to distract them--without denying their fears or sadness.
• Finally, and this goes without saying, keep praying. Hope that helps.

KTA:     It really does, thank you.

Limiting Lee to news coverage is exactly what I had in mind, and yes, I should have anticipated that there would have been a news promo, or even a news update that could break in at any time.  Actually, when a Breaking News report happens, they do break in with a lot of music and fanfare--time to get little ones away.  But, the news promo surprised me, and it was sudden and without warning.

I asked John if I could share our text conversation with our readers.  With this in mind, he texted me a little bit later with yet another nugget of wisdom to add and share:
JD:     An afterthought, but important. Have older kids limit their interchanges about the tragedy with younger siblings. Seek professional help if your kids develop anxiety, depression, nightmares or other somatic symptoms in the days that follow.

If you need an outlet, or place to share your feelings about this horrific massacre, please feel free to Message us on our Wings Like Eagles Crisis Recovery Facebook page.

For our California readers, John Deyo offers counseling in San Dimas.  You can contact his office through his Website found here.

Hopes, Expectations and Fantasies

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He brings wisdom and insight to Wings Like Eagles that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

 

“Don’t get your hopes up.”  I’ve heard it, I’ve said it.  More than twice.  But really, is this what we want to do, and invite others to do? To live with low hope levels? 

Well, I guess it lessens the force of the inevitable blows of disappointment that are intrinsic to human experience.  Even Mick Jagger and Keith Richards figured out that “You Can’t Always Get What You Want” and they are b’jillionaires, right?   I, for one, do not care to live with carefully stunted Banzai-treeish hopes.  Yet I hate disappointment as much as anyone else. 

Maybe what we have here is a semantic problem.  You know, the wrong word for the job.  What if what we really need to learn to manage and contain are not our hopes, but our expectations?

We are not always aware of our expectations, but we have them nonetheless.  Have you ever had the experience of really getting jazzed up about some special event like a vacation, only to have the reality prove to be a big letdown?  Conversely, have you ever attended an event with very low desire only to be taken by surprise by a really good time?  This happens because of the expectation gap between what we anticipate and what we get.  We have all experienced it, right?

Expectations differ from hopes in that they are less pliable and easily solidify into demands.  When hopes are unmet we experience disappointment, sadness, maybe depression.  When expectations or demands are unmet it is more like the shattering of glass, often scattering shards of anger in every direction.  If those shards pierce our soul and are left untreated they can fester and solidify into infected wounds of resentment and disillusion.  Such wounds are toxic to our spirits.  And they are nearly always toxic to our relationships.  

Let me clarify here that all expectations are not wrong; indeed some are very appropriate and necessary.  If you have an agreement that your kids are to rinse their dishes and put them in the dishwasher after using them then you should expect them to comply!  If they fail to meet this expectation they should be appropriately penalized—like, no more food for you! (juuuust kidding.) 

But some expectations—especially the ones that are unspoken or are outside of our own awareness—blur into what we sometimes refer to in psychology as fantasy.  Okay, expect your kids to take care of their dishes as asked.  Make them comply.  That is reasonable.  If, however, you expect them to love doing so with a joyful attitude, inquiring what else they might do to ease your heavy load…get real.  That is your fantasy.

My mother had a rich fantasy life in that way, especially at Christmas.  Her internal picture of what Christmas should look like relationally, emotionally, and spiritually was the stuff Christmas movies of the day were made of.  She went to great lengths to create her fantasy in a full color dreamscape.  In the weeks leading up to the big day we—her real-life dysfunctional family—usually messed the picture up somehow and mom would end up flying into a fit of hysterical disappointment and anger.  She spewed.  My dad, my brother and I each donned our Yule tide crash helmets and hunkered down until it was over.  It was ugly and created for me and my brother a kind of love/hate relationship with holidays.

Mom never really got over this tendency toward idealizing things and people only to be dropped hard, kicking and screaming, onto the floor of reality.  I remember one year just after Christmas as adults when my brother and I accompanied our mother to an appointment she had with her attorney.  When she got us into the waiting room where she knew we would have to “play nice” she shredded us because our family Christmas celebration was not spiritual enough; we didn’t sing, we didn’t pray, we didn’t read the Christmas story.  It was ALL wrong!  It—we—did not match her expectation and she just could not let it go.  Dang, we had forgotten to wear our Yule tide crash helmets! 

Christmas, in its deeper meaning of redemption, is all about Hope.  Good stuff.  In families and in our own little heads, though, it is also laced with oft unrealistic expectations.  Some of those expectations have been cleverly planted by billions of dollars spent in advertising campaigns and many come from our past experiences.  The problem is that real life seldom lives up to the screenplay in our heads.  You know, the one where the loving family—immediate and extended—embrace by the fireplace singing Christmas carols, drinking hot chocolate and exchanging diamonds and iPads while puffy snowflakes gently fall outside the picture window that frames the most dazzling Christmas tree ever; that screenplay?  Real life is just so much messier than that.  But it is perhaps richer than that, too. 

Perhaps you are even now identifying some of the holiday expectations or fantasies that have left you let down year after year.  What if we were to soften some of those crisp expectations that set us up for disappointment?  Let’s go ahead and hope…for joy and peace in the holiday, for improved family relationships.  But let’s not neglect to look for it in small and sometimes private and personal ways, in unexpected places, from unexpected sources.  Let’s look for it in giving, too.  I believe that these kinds of small blessings are often true Christmas presents for us even in the midst of trying circumstances and loss.  

My Mind is a Rat

John Deyo is a Licensed Marriage and Family Therapist in San Dimas, California.  He is a regular contributor to Wings Like Eagles, bringing wisdom and insight that has been gained through his professional work, as well as personal experience.

John has a heart for helping people find themselves through their pain, and he works hard to see Life restored to an individual, couple, or family who come to him from a place of hopelessness and despair.

John writes a blog called Metaphoria that is linked to his professional Website.

For more information on John's private practice, and to see other Metaphoria blog entries,click here.

No, not as in a "dirty rat," or a sewer rat, or a rug-rat.  I am thinking of a lab rat--specifically a maze rat.  You know, those tame white rats that scientists put in a maze to see how quickly they can find the cheese before and after receiving a lobotomy or, say, after playing Angry Birds for three hours.  The first time through the maze the clever, adaptable rodent quickly negotiates his course to the reward.  The next time, after the exposure to the variable, the poor little fella zips around all willy-nilly, exhausting himself, unable to get either his bearings or the Gouda.

Anyway, the point is not really about rats or cheese, is it?  Of course it’s not.  I remember some years ago going to "Mike's Maze" with some friends in Rockford Illinois.  It was a big converted retail store that someone (apparently Mike) bought and filled with a huge maze created using plastic tarp walls suspended from lightweight cables.  To beat the maze you had to bumble your way through the undulating plastic labyrinth, collecting tokens from a set number of stations throughout the course, finally making your way out.  It was surprisingly challenging and frustrating--really kind of freaky especially for the anxious and claustrophobic.  I kept ending up at the same dead ends and token stations I had already visited.  I was immersed in the halls of polyethylene for a long time before capturing all the tokens and finding the exit.  (If you really got panicky or claustrophobic you could duck under the 3/4 length suspended tarp walls and make your way to the edge and freedom.)   Some mazers eventually panicked or gave up and headed for the edge and sanity.

Sometimes we find ourselves in life situations or unavoidable transitions that can make us feel like a befuddled and increasingly agitated rat in a maze.  I am not talking so much about chronic busyness, hectic schedules, or the normal frustrations of life.  What I am referring to is a broader, escalating sense of being trapped or lost somewhere in our life course, a feeling that begins to rise toward and sometimes beyond the threshold of panic.  We need to know which direction to go, to find the way out, to arrive at a conclusion and find some kind of solution that seems to deliberately and deftly elude us; it is up to us.  We begin to run--to scramble--first this direction, then that direction; dead end...backtrack...another dead end...first dead end again.  Time is running out, panic swells.

And all this is taking place in your mind; racing thoughts that begin to whirl in an obsessive blurr that greets you in the morning and climbs into bed with you at night.  You feel desperate and responsible to find and implement the solution but you are becoming more exhausted and less clear-headed.  Hope slips away as misery rises.  

I have been in this place--and I am not referring to Mike's Maze.  I have felt like a very hungry, weary, and increasingly desperate rat lost in an impossible maze, unable to find the cheese or the exit.  Exhausted.  Maybe this is where you are today.

So, is there a solution to the problem you are facing? Is there a path to freedom?  No, (well, that's comforting) and...yes.  What I mean is, there is not always a linear, cause and effect type solution to certain problems.  You can't un-get laid off or request a do-over for deciding to go ahead and have the affair.  Traumatic events can't be undone either and we can't go back and be born into a more nurturing family.  We have to live with some problems.  That's the "no" part. (I'll get to the "yes" part.)

Often, what we are experiencing in the maze is coming to grips with our grandiose illusions about control.  The older we get the more we realize that what we can actually control is only a percentage at best, and not a large one at that.  If you believe that you can (and should) control your way into everything you want and out of everything you don't want, you are deluding yourself.  You are also setting yourself up to become a self-recriminating maze-runner when faced with trouble you can't manipulate away. 

The "yes" part--the good news--is that we do not have to remain trapped in the crazy maze of obsessive rumination and breathless panic.  We can learn to find peace in the midst of life's unsolvables.  But this usually involves the dread injunction "let go."

It seems almost paradoxical to many of us that the First Step in Alcoholics Anonymous famous Twelve-Step recovery program is an admission that we are not in control: "We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable." The "First Tenet" for controllers has always been: "I must remain in control at all times and at all costs--and if I lose control it is because I am not trying hard enough."

Besides releasing our sweaty grip on the controls, escaping maze-induced panic will usually require faith and trust in something bigger than ourselves (no, not the IRS).  AA's second step is: We "Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity." Ouch!  A blow to our very Western ideal of self-sufficiency, yes.  And here we'd been led to believe the tenet "I am the master of my fate and can do all things by myself if I learn how to be strong and perfect the art of using things and people to my advantage."

Finding relief from the panic of the maze sometimes comes as a clear solution to a solvable problem and it's great when that happens.  Sometimes, though, it's about learning to find peace despite imperfect and painful circumstances.  

While this is usually a process, we do not have to be doomed to run until we drop, exhausted, like some poor lab rat chasing cheese and escape.