Monthly Archives: February 2015

Sometimes a Great Notion

Posted on February 24, 2015 | Comments Off on Sometimes a Great Notion

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So today it is still cold and grey and so am I. What keeps us going and alive?

I just read an article about the many faces we have inside us. The author wrote about how many religions have saints or saint like beings who really represent the different aspects we all have. A few years ago I heard a sermon at our church from a visiting archbishop. He spoke about exorcism in the Old and New Testament. In those times demons were ways of explaining problematic changes in behavior. He then began to talk about the modern demons of addictions and mental health issues.   When I thought about it I could see the relationship.

Sometimes our demons seem overwhelming and totally unexplainable. The thought of even trying to change is too difficult to even consider. Other days it’s not that big a deal. When I am busy and active I don’t feel so “stuck”. When I have large chunks of time with no real plan to do anything, my own demons surface. William Buckley’s quote again comes to mind about industry being the enemy of melancholy. However what kind of industry? I have a friend with multiple hobbies. If he gets bored with one activity, he tries another. I don’t think I have the ability to do that. If I start something I need to finish it.

My life was divided into these neat fifty-minute segments. I would see people for 45-50 minutes, do a progress note, and prepare for my next patient. When the kids were young and in school, I could come home and get involved in their activities as much as possible. Now that is gone. I still think about work and wonder if I left too soon. The thing is I left on my own terms. I wasn’t walked out like one of my colleagues was. I think I could still be an effective therapist, I’m just not sure I want to do it again. The first time I had a pager I couldn’t even sleep for fear of missing it going off. Sometimes I still reach for it and feel undressed when it’s not there. I don’t want to have that responsibility right now.

My one brother-in-law has been retired for seven years. He is four years older than I am. When he first retired he was very active. He would play sports, go bike riding and try many activities. He talked about one of his friends who said you could tell a guy had hit the wall of retirement when he was still in his pajamas at three in the afternoon. He said that would never happen to him until one day it did. This became more pronounced as my sister’s illness progressed. His life became very focused around her. She has been gone now for four years. He has children scattered across the country, but still seems lost. One of the things people don’t talk much about in retirement is losing people. Death is a lot more present in my life than it used to be, and you know maybe that is a good thing. Little Feat had a song with the line “And You Know That You’re Over the Hill When Your Mind Makes a Promise That Your Body Can’t Fill”. I can complain about my aches and pains and etc.,but I just have to be grateful that I can still do something and don’t spend all day in my pajamas. If I do maybe I need to think about Hugh Hefner. He is 88 and his wife is 28. I bet he doesn’t have many boring days.

Hey, I think I’ve found a magic cure. I just have to start chasing my wife. It still seems to work!!!

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Posted in Meandering

Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

Posted on February 17, 2015 | Comments Off on Now is the Winter of Our Discontent

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I’m still trying to get this retirement thing down. We had two of my wife’s relatives over for breakfast this weekend. The husband is in his early 80s and has been retired for many years. The wife is in her mid to late 70s. They travel a lot, go to the gym, go to church, and maintain regular contact with their children and grandchildren. Basically they do what we have been doing. So I wonder is this retirement? I don’t know if I am ready to say that yet.

I still get excited about new ideas and I still get urges to be a therapist. It comes and it goes, but my patient load right now is often concentrated on my own family and that is NOT a good thing. Some of the guys I know can talk about their old jobs and the way they were treated by their bosses, or how their companies were taken over by larger corporations. They still have interest in the business of what they did. My job was people, so it’s not quite the same thing.

The winter may be also contributing to this. It is grey and cold and snow covered. Good day to stay inside and read. Sometimes that is OK and sometimes not so much. I recently heard that an old friend began stocking at Target “just to keep busy”. Another colleague of mine told me she didn’t retire, she just resigned from one job and is now in a very limited practice near her home. She has four grandchildren and is very involved in a number of other activities. She still gets bored and often works until she almost collapses. This chapter of my life-the working full time, being on call etc, is over, but the book is not done. I am still trying to write the next section. I remember I once had the husband of a patient tell me that you don’t retire from something, you retire to something. I do think that is good advice, but it is a difficult question to answer. Is just keeping busy enough ?

I want more than that, but not so much as to work full time or again begin to assume responsibility for a caseload. I guess I just have to keep searching.

I was touched by David Carr’s death. He seemed like a good guy. He was an excellent writer and he had been in recovery for many years. His book “Night of the Gun” details his first recovery. He relapsed after 14 years, drank for couple of years, and then got back into sobriety. An interesting man who was very passionate about his profession. I think the idea of passion is what I am missing. Victor Frankl used to ask his patients “What stops you from Suicide?” as an opening to his interviews. For me it’s not that so much as “What else is there?”

When I was working I would see a real difference between Women’s Therapy Groups and Men’s Therapy groups. No matter what they were there for, women would always talk about their relationships (or lack there of) as contributing to their problems. Men would talk about their jobs in the same way. Now I know that is a generalization and may be related to the demographic I was working with. Yet something of that still rings with me. Maybe I need to therapize myself, or maybe I just need spring. I guess I will see what April brings

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Posted in Meandering

Laid Out Like a Grid

Posted on February 11, 2015 | 1 comment

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When I was 10-11 y/o my family was going to Chicago for the day. We were going “downtown” to see a movie at the State Lake Theater. This was a very big deal back then. After the movie was over, we walked around and I was overwhelmed at the size of the buildings and the mass of people. I remember asking my Dad how he knew where to go so we wouldn’t get lost. He told me Chicago was a very easy city to get around in “Because it’s laid out like a Grid”. Since then I believe hundreds of people have told me the same thing. “You can’t get lost here because Chicago is laid out like a Grid!”

Well by God that has never helped me! I always get lost in Chicago (and most other cities too). I think I have a very peculiar type of learning disability related to directions. Once when I got my drivers license I picked up my sister at her high school. We had to run an errand for the family and it took almost four hours to get home. Another time the hospital sent me to a conference in Minnesota. I got off the plane, rented a car, and drove for almost six hours to get to a location that was 45 minutes from the airport. I always remember Blanche Dubois line about depending on the kindness of strangers because of asking for directions. Sometimes conflicting instructions would make it worse and I ended up going in circles. I do eventually get where I’m supposed to. I just don’t do it the way you are supposed to. Wandering around has led to many strange encounters. In Minnesota I ended up stopping at a church picnic to get directions. The people there were wonderful and helped me get on the right track. In Ireland a convenience store helped get me back to the hotel. It just takes a little longer

My family laughs about this now. My wife thinks it is genetic and tells me that the reason my grandparents didn’t emigrate until 1902 was because they got lost trying to find America. My sister has some of the same difficulty so maybe there is something to this. GPS has been a mixed godsend. My wife always wants me to take one and use it if I go someplace new or someplace complicated. I have even ended up swearing at the GPS. I hate the words “Recalculating” or “Make a U-Turn”. It seems even machines know how to frustrate me on this. The shortest distance between two places is a straight line just doesn’t seem to work with me.

I think that is why I had patience with people who were struggling with their own problems and decisions. With alcohol and drug users the “Just Say No” plan seems very logical. Marital problems, domestic abuse, anxiety attacks should all be able to be fixed quickly. However people don’t work that way. Addicts basically stop when they are ready and not one minute before. Everybody has their own speed. Sometimes the solutions people have to problems seem to cause more difficulty than their original situation. I had many people who had affairs basically to get out of their marriage. After the divorce the affair stopped, the abandoned lover would often end up in my office in their own crisis.

Sometimes it seems like there are people who go from crisis to crisis. They get one problem solved and almost immediately find another. The Grateful Dead has a song with a line like “I may be going to hell in a bucket, babe. But at least I’m enjoying the ride”. This can be very frustrating for anyone trying to help, until you step back and let them find their own way thru the maze. I know early on I would want to solve everyone’s problems. I thought if they would just listen to me everything would be fine. I soon learned that was not a good idea. I would often end up being blamed and just another problem in their lives. I was the GPS being sworn at. So instead I would just end up trying to support them in their struggles and complimenting any small gain. I would gently confront any backsliding and continue to urge them on towards whatever goal they had. Defining the goal is important because otherwise people can just wander. If you stop drinking and become sober, now what? If you get divorced and are still unhappy, now what ? Often relapse would happen because the answer to that wasn’t available. If there is a genuine positive for stopping, changing, deciding, then the journey doesn’t seem that long. Helping people find it is what I was supposed to do. I just had to learn that there is no grid that fits everyone

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Posted in Family Story

Every Person Tells a Story Dont They

Posted on February 5, 2015 | Comments Off on Every Person Tells a Story Dont They

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The thing is I’m not good with names. At least once a day I’ll try to tell someone something about a person in the news or TV and I’ll blank out. I’ll say “you know the one with ‘What’s His Name in it’ ”. My wife will have the same blank look on her face and we may go on for 10 or 15 minutes having this mysterious conversation that only we can understand. I’ve talked to other people our age and they have the same experience. I have even been in conversations with a group of us where we all are lost for the specific identity of individuals/movies/books etc. We all sound like we’re talking in code until someone comes up with the right answer and we all nod appreciatively.

I can remember the plot and major content. It’s just the names that escape me.

I know that when I was working I would have difficulty with names, but as soon as I saw the person, or read some of my notes, the whole case would come back to me.

I have always liked fiction over non-fiction. The “story” would grab me and I would be immersed in another world—no matter how strange or different from my own. When people came to see me, I would have them tell me their story. I would ask questions as to why they came and what they wanted. I would fill in the blanks by doing a fairly structured interview. I was literally opening a book on their lives. To this day I may not remember patient’s names, but if I see them I can remember their stories. I think the ability to listen, really listen, is a skill that can be learned by any therapist. It’s important to be patient and just let people talk. Sometimes that’s all they need.

I once saw an elderly WW2 veteran who kept getting in trouble with the police and his neighbors. He would appear threatening and the police would be called. After a number of these occurrences he was arrested. He was “sentenced” to come and see me. After a few sessions it became apparent that all he wanted was to be listened to. His wife was in early stages of dementia and he had no real family support. He just wanted to talk. He would come in and talk and talk. He reminded me of the old time radio host Paul Harvey. I didn’t really say much back to him except for him to not threaten his neighbors or he would have more serious consequences. He would always leave the sessions telling the staff and me how much he liked our time together. He just needed someone to listen to his stories.

Some stories that people told were very common and some were over the top. There was a heroin addicted dominatrix with an autistic son. There was a 62 y/o Vietnam veteran who suddenly was overcome with memories of the war. There were parents who didn’t know what to do with their 14 y/o daughter who was telling them what to with their lives. Wives who didn’t like the way their husbands dressed because it embarrassed them and on and on.

Maybe in our lives now we really don’t have enough people who really will listen. I know we can email and text and twitter, but maybe we still need someone who is there to talk to.

It’s not just being there, it really is listening. I know sometimes I fade out with my wife. She can be talking and I’m really not hearing her. I know many of my friends have laughed and said the same things happen in their marriages. However when it really is important we can be there for each other. I think a lot of people who go to see therapists don’t have that. They can have the appearance of good friends, good relationships, but no one that can really be “there” when they need to talk. We all have stories that need to be told. It’s the finding someone to listen that’s the hard part.

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Posted in Stories