Say the Odd Thought

They say some things are better left unsaid. If you're in church, court or a board meeting, this is probably true. But not in the therapy session. It's all fair game here, no matter how odd it may seem.

This is one of the best ways therapy is different from other types of relationships. Censoring your words is not necessary - in fact, I'd recommend you don't.

Sometimes these odd thoughts give us great information. You're talking about a co-worker and suddenly your sister's face pops into your head. Whenever you think of your hometown you get a lump in your throat. You just had a fantasy about yelling at your therapist. Whenever someone mentions the ocean chills run down your spine. You've been zoned out for the past couple minutes and didn't hear a word the therapist said. In the rest of the world, these thoughts, feelings and impulses would be kept quiet. But in therapy, fair game.

These odd thoughts can help us understand deeper parts of you - parts of your self few people see. If I had to summarize the function of therapy to one single element, it would be deeper understanding of ones self. Not just the stuff on the surface, the deeper material too. Some odd thoughts have deep meaning, even deeper than you might be aware of. Kind of like dreams.

You've heard of the concept of the "Freudian Slip"? That's when the deeper thought sneaks out past our censors and into our speech. Like telling a love interest you like their sex, when you meant to say socks. This odd thought thing is similar, only you're discussing all the slips you thought about but managed not to say.

It's a little risky sharing these thoughts you normally keep to yourself. But soon you'll see how helpful it is. Give it a shot.

Transference

You were bitten by a dog as a kid, and dogs still frighten you. The lady working at the deli reminds you of your third grade teacher. The guy next to you on the plane looks like your college buddy Stan, so you start telling him the kind of obscene jokes Stan would love. But he's not amused.

This tendency to relate and equate past relationships with current ones is normal. In order to make sense of new information we look to a related template already on file and examine similarities and differences. For example, based on your experience with your wise, gentle and physically limited grandmother, you would tend to treat all elderly women in a manner similar to her initially. You might see one at the corner, and with arm extended and a big smile you offer to help her across the street, only to find she's neither physically limited nor gentle. Whoops.

Part of the work of therapy is exploring this very issue. We all transfer our templates from prior relationships onto new ones - and from the first phone call you begin transference with your therapist. The structure of therapy encourages it.

Therapists typically maintain a stance of objective neutrality. This means they usually don't share a whole lot of information about their personal lives or their privately held thoughts, feelings or judgments about the material you bring up. This varies from therapist to therapist, of course, and different psychological theories do this to a greater or lesser degree. But generally speaking, the therapist is a blank canvas. They do this because what you transfer onto them says something very important about you.

John (a fake client) has been in therapy three months and comes into his session looking agitated and suspicious. I ask him how he is and he answers with "oh, wouldn't you like to know?!" It turns out John was laid off from his job, and he's assuming I will be angry with him. He entered the session preparing himself for the lecture I would give him about his failure to accept responsibility. By further exploring this, we find that he experienced his dad as critical and unempathic, and assumed I would respond the same way. In fact, I felt sadness and compassion when I heard his news, and I shared this with him. By pointing out this inaccurate assumption, John was able to understand why he tends to withdraw whenever he gets bad news: he expects other people to criticize him like his father used to, even though this has rarely proven true. He transferred his father's response onto me.

It seems we start with a limited number of templates at our disposal, the most powerful ones coming from our early caregivers. We tend to assume most new people will respond in ways similar to these original templates, even when there is evidence to the contrary. Some of the most important work in therapy is examining these old molds to see how they've shaped our relationships and our development. Challenging, difficult growth comes when we try to develop new templates.

Not all dogs bite. Not every old woman wants our help. Not everyone responds like John's dad. Therapy and the therapeutic relationship is one of the best places to check our assumptions. We might be playing according to rules that no longer apply.

How to Forgive

After years of discussing hurt and forgiveness, some things have come into focus. There are four elements necessary for healthy forgiveness:

1. Express the Emotion - Whatever the crime/injustice/violation/slight, the forgiver needs to fully express how it made him feel. Anger, sadness and fear are common responses. By the way, it is ideal if the victim is able to express her emotions to her perpetrator, but not essential.

2. Rebuild Security - In order to forgive, the forgiver needs to feel a reasonable amount of assurance that the violation won't recur. Let's say you step on my toe. In order for me to rebuild security, I'm going to need some verbal commitment from you that you'll try not to step on my toe again, or I need to decide to keep my feet away from yours, etc. Some mechanism needs to be in place to let me know I'm safe again.

3. Understand - The forgiver needs to develop some framework to understand why the violation happened in the first place. Why was my toe stepped on? We're on a crowded train? You're a clumsy dancer? You hate me? Oh, you're drunk, I understand. The brain will search for this reason and can't stop (or forgive) until it has one.

4. Let Go - This is making a conscious decision to drop the grudge and resentment. It's the hardest step for most people. Holding a grudge is a powerful thing - you can get someone to suck up to you for years by lording his misbehavior over him. Letting go means stepping down from the nobility of victimhood, becoming an equal again, and promising not to point back to her infraction every time you're losing an argument. Letting go is not forgetting - most of us can't choose what we remember. It's choosing to return to a place of equal power.

Research shows forgiveness greatly benefits the physical health of the forgiver. Seems that holding a grudge is bad for you.

Feelings 101

It's typical for therapists to ask about feelings. It's also typical for clients to dislike being asked. The truth is, many problems can't be resolved with a shift in thoughts and behaviors alone. Most of the time in order to grow we have to work through feelings.

While it's hip to talk about feelings in our Oprah society, we're not all good at it. A common trick is share a thought masquerading as a feeling. Starting a sentence with "I feel...." doesn't mean you're experiencing or communicating your feelings. I see people do this all the time. Take this couple:

Spouse 1: "I feel that you broke the garbage disposal."

Spouse 2: "I feel like you didn't look at it closely because you don't care."

Spouse 1: "Well, I'm just telling you how I feel."

Not feelings. In fact, any time "I feel..." is followed by "that" or "you" or "like", we're not talking about emotions. Most of the time, those are thoughts, beliefs, or judgements. No, you don't feel that NASA should pursue a mission to Mars. You believe it. It's your opinion. It's a thought, not a feeling.

Feelings can be broken down to some combination or degree of sad, mad, glad or afraid (some experts might also throw in shock, love and/or envy). That's it. Degrees of sad might range from bummed out to devastated, while anger might range from annoyed to enraged. Sometimes feelings combine, creating frustration (sad + mad), bittersweet (sad + glad), etc.

And what makes these feelings, rather than thoughts? Feelings can be felt, actually physically experienced. It might take a little practice, but a simple way to get in touch with real feelings is to become aware of the physical sensations you have in your body. When people experience emotion, their body tends to feel a certain way, unique for everyone. When people are sad they may feel a weight in the chest and shoulders. People feeling angry might report an expansive, explosive sensation in their chest and arms. Fear tends to be a weight in the stomach. Joy is often a light, energized feeling throughout the body. But again, it can be different for anybody.