www.therapyhelp.com and www.poweroftwomarriage.com

Depression produces feelings of powerlessness and helplessness. Depressed feelings are triggered by a situation in which a person gives up on getting something of felt importance.

The following visualization, illustrated on the audiotape Depression: A Disorder of Power, can powerfully combat depressed moods. Designed for therapists to use with patients, the visualization may also be used as a self-help technique.

The depressed person closes his/her eyes, and the therapist asks the following questions, leading the depressed person through six re-empowering steps. To use the technique as self-help, ask a friend to read you the questions aloud. Alternatively, open your eyes to read each question, and then close them again to observe the images that come up on your visual screen.

• Identify the conflict. “If you were going to be mad at someone, or at something, not yourself, notice what image comes up of who you could be mad at.”
• Fill in the details. “In that scene, what do you see him (her) doing? How do you respond? What do you want? What do you feel, and think?”
• Check relative sizes. “Who appears bigger, you or the other? By a little, or by a lot.” Note: if there are no size discrepancies, you are not dealing with depression, or have not yet identified the depressogenic situation.
• Alter the sizes, increasing the patient’s sense of power. “Picture yourself suddenly growing very tall, like Alice in Wonderland, shooting way up tall.”
• Broaden the database.“From this new height, from this perspective, what can you see now that you may not have noticed before when you were small?”
• Find new solutions. “Knowing what you now know, from this bigger size, what are some new ways you might handle the problem to be more effective in getting what you want?”

Note: This protocol can reestablish normal power, eliminate the negative thinking of depression, and reestablish a sense of positive humor and well-being. For well-being to be sustained, however, the pattern of depressogenic interactions needs to be changed. For this reason, when depressogenic conflicts occur with a spouse, both partners need to be included in the therapy process so that both make the changes necessary for cooperative, rather than dominant-submissive, interacting.

Just wondering what you mean

On energy therapies

From a therapist’s perspective.  the Victorian era illustrates what happens when natural appetites are surpressed or unfulfilled.  The more suppression, the more obsession.  The more sex was seen as an unseemly activity, to be taken care of with minimum of attention, the more sexual expression in prostitution and masturbation became widespread.

In addition, as the movie highlights, sexual release which was deemed unimportant for women led to a lively new outlet.  Women who were in any way nervous, outspoken, depressed, anxious or in any way less than emotionally comfortable were hypothesized to have fallen victim to hysteria.  The treatment of choice for this illness: repeated sessions with a phsician for manual clitoral stimulation to orgasm.

While to our modern sensibilities, this solution to natural sexual urges strikes us as funny, and for the women themselves the frequent sexual experiences with their doctor may well have been fun. Yet the situation of women that created this odd solution was serious.  Denial of the reality of women’s sexual experience was a part of a larger denial of women’s presence in the essentially narcissistic culture of the men-only world they lived in.  Women had few legal or property rights, were treated more like fancily-dressed servents than as full human beings, and were expected, like children, to be more seen than heard.

The culture, encouraged by the popular books of the time, bought into conventional wisdom that for women sex was “at best revolting and at worst rather painful.”  The author of this quote from a 1984 book of sexual advice, Ruth Smythers, wrote her book Sex Tips for Husbands and Wives to help young fiances, about to face “the terrible experience of sex” for the first time.  Her main message to women was to “give it little, give it seldom and above all, give it grudgingly.”

As a psychologist rather than a cultural historian, I can’t help but speculate what personal experiences could have primed Ms. Smythers to offer such sad advice.  My clinical hunch is that Ms. Smythers’ perspective is that of a woman who, as a young girl, suffered sexual abuse at the hands of elders in her household.

This speculation is based on corroboration from the cases treated by the father of modern psychological understandings, Sigmund Freud.  The “hysterical” women that Dr. Freud treated in his medical practice lay on his couch to undergo his “talking cure.”  As they recalled painful buried memories from their childhood, the women fairly consistently reported experiences of molestation by fathers, uncles, or elder brothers, which seemed to have fostered development of “neurotic” emotions and also sexual inhibitions in them as adults.

Molestation of children leaves lifelong scars.  Often the impact is either aversion to sex, or hyper-focus on sex as a means of experiencing connection.  When the molestation is of boy children, the impact can be lifelong anger, sense of humiliation, and urge for revenge against figures of power.

This brings us to a contemporary concern as this weekend America will commemorate 10 years post the terrorism incidents in New York and Washington, DC of 9/11 in 2001.

High rates of childhood sexual abuse occur in the Islamic world, which, like Victorian England, tends to suppress both sex and women.  Sharia law expects women to take a submissive role.  In more traditional Islamic countries, women are expected not only to stay home, as was the custom in England, but when they go outside to imprison and hide themselves in black robes with all but their eyes visible to the world.

At this time of recalling 9/11, it is worth noting sexual frustration and sexual molestation have been pinpointed as sources of willingness of Islamic young men to become terrorist martyrs.  Young men in traditional Islamic cultures have no options for sexual release.  Dr. Tawfik Hamid, author of the books The Roots of Jihad and Inside Jihad, is himself a former member of a terrorist group in Egypt in which he was an associate of Zawahiri who is now the number one man in Al Quaeda.  Dr. Hamid explains why the extreme sexual frustration of young men in the Islamic world makes them easy prey for terrorism recruiters who promise that blowing themselves up (also a sexual release image) as suicide bombers will give them perpetual access in the afterlife to 62 virgins.

“Our sexual desires were dramatically stimulated from reading Islamic books.  The following Hdith and Quranic verses illustrate how reading these Islamic books increased our sexual curiosity:

(78:33)  Young women with pubertal breasts are waiting for them in paradise.

(55:72) Ladies with beautiful, big, and lustrous eyes are waiting for them (Muslims) inside the tents (in paradise)…

Since Marriage was not a realistic option (because of economic and social constraints) it was virtuallly impossible for us to have sexual relationships.  Even masturbation is considered a sin and was not allowed by many Islamic scholars… such a major sin that the person wil go to hell forever….  The sexual desires cultivated by the religion itself combined with no real expectation of achieving any sexual satisfaction in the near future crated extreme feelings of frustration and anxiety among us….We saw many people reaching the age of 40 without ever being with a woman because of their inability to afford the cost of marriage.

The over-stimulated sexual desires of young Muslims … and the hopelessness in soon having a marital relationship due to financial pressures, and dreams of beautiful women waiting in paradise engender frustration, anxiety and anger– all of these are contributing factors which encourage young Muslims to join radical Islamic groups where they then become steeped in terroirst Islamic beliefs such as encouragement “to commit suicidal attachs on infidels, and thus go immediately to paradise as martyrs and enjoy the beautiful ladies there, especially the 72 virgins.”   (pp. 54-56, The Roots of Jihad).

In addition, killing themselves in this manner that is so honored in the Islamic world may appeal because it enables young men to overcome the shame and humiliation they experienced from having been molested sexually as children.

“You have to fight to feel good.”  In my twenties, when I was living in New York with a group of post-college friends, Bob was a tall handsome young man in our cadre who took this slogan about protests as his raison d’etre.  Bob was sure that investing your time and energy in a cause invigorated your life.

The current Occupy Wall Street protests reminded me recently of Bob’s words, which, four decades later, I still vividly recall. I still wonder, as I did then, what kind of fight does make us feel good.  Can protests leave us feeling impotent? Can fighting even wreck a life?

I am sure that it is good for our own well-being and also for the well-being of our world to fight for something, to be moving forward and upward, heading for a goal.

The Occupy Wall Street protests intrigue me in this regard.  For me, though, their protests feel impotent rather than strong.  Why?  I think it’s because they mostly seem to be fighting against.  Their statement of goals is against greed and corporations.  Clarification of what one is fighting for by contrast feels to me far more potent.

My own current battle that I fight for is the institution of marriage.  As a therapist I fight against dissention and divorce by helping couples to build positive and loving relationships.  On a societal level I fight to protect and upgrade the institution of marriage by writing blog posts, articles, books, audios, and videos, and a website with games that teach the skills people need for marriage success.

I’ve learned from my work that couples can benefit from taking a good look at their fighting. Are they fighting against, or for?  Do they complain and criticize, which are signs of fighting against, or do they talk collaboratively to explore their concerns and create new options?  Are they fighting against each other, or for solutions to their difficulties?

Protests have their place.  Standing up against something can feel good.  Righteous anger is invigorating. Yet both in politics and in personal relationships, protests that are against risk becoming impotent expressions of rage, “signifying nothing” and leading downhill to demoralization and divisiveness.

By contrast, fighting for specific goals generates productive problem-solving.  Clear objectives give a “fight” potency and well-being.  Working to accomplish goals not only feels good; it also does good.  Making specific things better—that’s the kind of battle that leads to change.

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For the longer version of this article, please see my blog post on psychologytoday.com.

For a fun video on couples who talk together and solve their differences in impotent versus potent ways, see http://www.youtube.com/user/PowerofTwoMarriage#p/u/14/1vQ5T_a8sgM.

“From Thin-Skinned to Win-Win“–a title suggested by Kent Powell, my web marketing friend–explains that the first level of intervention is behavioral.  Marriage is a high-skilled activity.  A first task of a therapist is to coach clients in behvarioral skills of collaboartive communication, cooperative conflict resolution, emotional self-regulation (ability to stay calm versus to pop off in anger in sensitive situations), and dissemination of positive energy via appreciation, affection, and good humor.

This coaching in new skills is enough for many couples to let go of their less effective old habits and launch instead a lifelong positive relationship.  That’s why the website based on my book The Power of Two, PowerOfTwoMarriage.com, is so helpful for many couples.  For these marriage partners, coaching on the website gives them the boost they need to live relatively happily ever after without needing the help of a marriage therapist.

Skills coaching alone however, while it may be a helpful first alternative, does not suffice for couples who also need the second and third levels of therapist interventions.

If one or both spouses grew up in a family that was seriously dysfunctional, or, as is increasingly frequent, in a single parent family, their platform of marriage readiness may need significant additional shoring up.  These couples need to look at their own families of origin to understand how they got to where they are today.  They also  need to look at how each of their individual sensitivities and skill glitches have a tendency to hook their partner’s sensitivities and skill glitches so that they can identify and then modify their negative interactions circles.  Or maybe a better term is negative spirals, as all too often the circles of interlocking sensititivities lead to escalating emotions and increasingly hurtful interactions.

Sometimes these emotional escalations come from sources that couples have difficulty consciously identifying.  This is where the third level of therapy interventions becomes vital, the level of identifying and clearing subconscious “landmines,”  that is, the thoughts, feelings and situations that trigger especially intense negative emotional reactions.  

For further details, please check out my new blog post at on psychologytoday.com.

Freud wrote about jokes, saying that they really do tend to rest on subconscious truths.  “I was just kidding!”  seldom is fully true.

Fortunately, there are principles about how to communicate with your spouse (male or female) that can help you to stay in the safe-talking zone.  Honesty may be the best policy, but honesty plus tact will keep your home a happier haven.

For more thoughts on tactful communication, plus a practice worksheet, check out the PowerOfTwoMarriage blog at http://blog.poweroftwomarriage.com/2011/08/things-you-dont-say-to-your-wife/.  Best of all, scroll down the blog post there to brighten your day with a delightfully funny music video on Things Not To Say To Your Wife.

1.  Specificity: “I’m sorry about my ______.”  That is, specify exactly what you did that you see now was mistaken.

2.  Non-intentionality: “I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

3.  Clarification:  What was your miss – the mistake, misperception, misunderstanding, miscommunication, mishap, etc?  “I can see now that I mis_______ that _______.”

4.  Restitution:  Figure out what you need to do to fix the harm created by your mistaken action.

5.  Learning: What will you do differently next time to prevent a similar mishap from occurring again?  “In the future I will _____________when___________ .”

These five ingredients may be accomplished with just a few sentences.

However for more serious grievances, each ingredient may need to be added slowly, one by one, with discussion of each facet.

For the most serious grievances such as, for instance, marital infidelities, dishonesty of any type, alcoholic misbehavior, or abusive words or action, each ingredient may need to be reiterated and dsicussed at length multiple times over.

Step five, looking back to learn in order to prevent future repeat episodes, is a particularly vital ingredient for an apology to be genuine and the healing to transpire.

In addition, tincture of time plus repeated evidence of the new alternative behaviors also help to accomplish full healing, both of the guilt felt by the person who made the mistake(s) and of the suffering of the one who was wronged.

In Arena A the therapist identifies and guides resolution of the issues over which couples have been experiencing tensions.  Tensions can be manifest in squabbles, fights, or reluctance to address specific issues for fear that talking would lead to arguments.

In Arena B the therapist serves as coach, teaching the couples skills for collaborative partnership.  These skills include

• talking cooperatively,
• resolving conflicts in a win-win manner,
• managing emotions so they are able to stay in the calm zone, and
• giving forth loving positivity via fun times together, smiles, hugs, and agreement, appreciation, gratitude and affection in their speech with words like “Yes!” or “I agree that…”

In Arena C the therapist heals each individual’s tendencies to experience negative emotions such as anger, anxiety, and depression, and also pathological behavior patterns such as compulsive lying or addictions.  Treatment here can include visualizations for releasing depression and anxiety, anger management, family of origin exploration, changes in interaction patterns between the spouses, medication, and other psychological intervention techniques.

In each arena, the therapist takes a different role.  In Arena A the therapist serves as a mediator.  In Arena B the therapist dons a coaching cap.  In Arena C the therapist becomes a healer.

In sum, the skill set that a therapist needs for effective conflict resolution treatment requires expertise in all three of these realms—mediation, marriage education, and emotional healing.

Susan Heitler, Ph.D., www.therapyhelp.com and www.poweroftwomarriage.com

 Jon and Julia came to therapy for help toning down their continual bickering.  Now they rarely bicker and enjoy instead a warm and loving partnership.  What does a conflict resolution therapist do that turns a couple like this from conflict to cooperation?

My therapy colleague Matthew LeBauer has terminology that I like a lot for explaining the three levels of intervention that conflict resolution treatment typically includes.

Level I: How To.  As early as in their first session I guided Jon and Julia through to an effective discussion of an issue over which they had locked horns.  Jon wanted to bring the family on a lengthy car trip for summer vacation.  Julia wanted to go to a beach and stay put. 

Learning as they went, I explained to the feuding spouses the basics of collaborative conflict resolution, shepherding their skills as we proceeded. By the end of the session Jon and Julia had experienced the pleasure of cooperative dialogue, plus the delight of having ended up with a truly win-win solution. 

Their decision to rent a fun fancy car, which was Jon’s main concern, and use it for occasional day trips from the beach house they would rent and where Julia would be able to enjoy the calm of being based in one main and beautiful spot, satisfied both of their underlying concerns.  In subsequent sessions, with the therapist’s help, Jon and Julia came to similarly mutually satisfying solutions on many issues that had been contentious.

Having seen that win-win really does work, Jon and Julia were eager to learn the skills that would enable the couple to solve similar conflicts collaboratively on their own.  In addition to augmenting and practicing new skills in their therapy sessions, they committed to learning from the Power of Two program.  At that time the program involved weekend workshops.  Now it’s on the internet at poweroftwomarriage.com. 

Level II How Come. 

Having seen that their old ways of interacting were filled with needless irritability and anger, Jon and Julia both found it helpful to look at some of the sources of their bickering.  Insight about the origins of difficulties makes it easier to pull up old bad habits from their roots.

Partly their bickering stemmed from never having seen and heard too little of the language of collaboration as they were growing up.  If their parents had modeled cooperative problem-solving they might have grown up speaking that language instead of the language of bickering that had prevailed in both of their families.

Partly also Jon’s training as a lawyer had strengthened his tendency to say “But…” and poke holes in Julia’s every attempt to express her concerns. 

Julia by contrast had gradually become depressed in the relationship.  Jon’s ability to trump whatever she said with his perspective had gradually worn her down to having little confidence in her own views.  She experienced a sense of having lost the “self” she used to have.  Now her identity had become mainly just to be a counterweight to Jon.  Whatever he said, she now would negate.  Speaking up for what she herself felt and thought scarcely happened any more.  Her comments had become mostly limited to why she was against what her husband wanted. Depression was both a cause and effective of her perpetual negativity.

Level III:  Tracking Down and Neutralizing the Sources of Negative Energy

Honing in on and easing the deeper emotional well-springs of distress completes the therapy process.  

Deeper, as once described very nicely by psychologist John Norcross, refers to subconscious feelings, concerns, or other phenomena that occurred historically earlier in ones life, and/or that are deeper in terms of less accessible to conscious awareness.

How does a conflict resolution therapist address these deeper issues?

Conflict resolution therapists identify the specific deeper underlying concerns that tend to resurface again and again in their client’s lives by listening closely to clients’ descriptions of moments that triggered upset feelings.  Situations, thoughts or feelings that trigger these “core concerns,” Lester Luborsky’s term for inflammatory thoughts that frequently bring up strong negative feelings.  For instance, whether the conflict involved where to go for vacation, how to help their daughter with her homework, or whether to renovate their kitchen, the same repeated deeper underlying concerns such as wanting to be heard or appreciated or free of blame would again and again lock Jon and Julia into angry escalations.   While deeper concerns tend to be universal preferences that virtually everyone prefers, Jon and Julia’s hyper-intense emotional reactions evoked hostility instead of a positive response from their loved one.

One frequently-evoked deeper core concern for Jim involved resentment at feeling negatively judged by his wife.  He hated to feel unjustly accused, stemming from having been the recipient of unjust accusations in his youth.  For Julia, feeling unheard or that whatever she said was being dismissed raised upsurges of hurt and angry responses stemming from her up-bringing in a large and chaotic family.

Conflict resolution therapists access these deeper concerns with a range of techniques.  They may use visualization techniques, utilizing, for instance, what I refer to in my book From Conflict to Resolution as a “depth dive.” They may use bioenergetic techniques such as Nelson Bradley’s Emotion Code or EFT.  Or they may choose to use other alternative options.   

Once the triggering earlier episode has been identified and the negative emotions released vis a vis this point of origin, the neutralized emotional reaction then needs to be brought up to present time.  That can be accomplished by distinguishing the ways in which the present differs from the past, by using energetic neutralizing techniques such as a magnet or EFT tapping, or by other procedures for removing toxic emotional residues.   

In sum, successful exploration of deeper core concerns begins with identification of the triggering thoughts or situations that are occuring in present-day life.   Second, the origination point of the reactions in a moment of sudden or intense emotions earlier in life needs pinpointing.  Lastly, these triggers then can be neutralized, that is, emptied of negative emotional reactivity.  The result should be that thoughts and situations that feel similar to traumatic moments in a person’s past then will no longer evoke negative energy such as irritation, anger, or distrust, in the present or future. 

Having completed all three levels of treatment, Jon and Julia now enjoy a calm, fun-loving and collaborative relationship.  Jon doesn’t need to even use his anger management techniques because angry feelings no longer rise beyond an occasional whisper within him.  Julie feels appreciated and taken seriously, so she too enjoys a steady pattern of warm and loving feelings toward Jon.

Mission accomplished.

That’s because most marriages end because of insufficient partnership communication skills–skills that can be learned.

Communication skills include keeping your emotional cool, talking tactfully, listening to genuinely understand your partner’s concerns, and sprinkling your dialogue with a steady flow of appreciation, agreement, humor and other positive vibes.

These communication skill sets will almost get you to a vastly improved relationship.  One more skill though is essential: shared problem-solving, also often called conflict resolution.

All couples have differences.  Skills for finding win-win solutions to your differences are a vital addition to keeping couples in love-mode.

The good news is that if you follow the three steps and guideline details below, success may be surprisingly easy, provided you consistenly utilize all the while the communication skills listed above.

Begin by recognizing each time you feel a tug of war begin.  If each of you is pulling for your preferred solution to a problem, switch immediately from arguing in favor or against particular plans of action to exploring your underlying concerns.

Once the two of you have succeeded in generating a full list of all of your underlying concerns, with the concerns of both of you all listed on one list, generating win-win solutions can become creative and fun.

No need to argue!  Just use the Worksheet below to guide you to a resolution that will please you both.  In addition, if you think you might need more help to upgrade your collaborative communication and conflict resolution skills, check out PowerOfTwoMarriage.com.

The Win-Win Waltz Worksheet

by Susan Heitler, Ph.D., founder PowerOfTwoMarriage.com

STEP 1: EXPRESS INITIAL IDEAS

A’s Initial solution proposal:________________________________________________________________________________________________

B’s Initial solution proposal: _________________________________________________________________________________

STEP 2: EXPLORE UNDERLYING CONCERNS

• _______________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________
• _______________________________________________________

Note: Be sure to list all the concerns of both participants on one list, indicating that any concern of one of you immediately becomes a shared concern of both of you.

STEP 3: CREATE a WIN-WIN SOLUTION, responsive to all the concerns

• Start by identifying the most strongly felt concerns, building the plan initially around the most strongly felt concerns.
• Add enhancements until all the concerns are responded to.
• Suggest only what you yourself might be willing to do.
• Express appreciation of what the other offers
• Add additional concerns that each proposed solution may raise, and create solution options responsive to these concerns as well.
• Aim to build a solution set, a comprehensive solution

Potential win-win ideas:_________________________________________________________________________

Circle back one more time: have all the concerns been responded to in the plan of action?  Add further details to the plan as needed.

In sum, WIN-WIN means that the plan of action has elements responsive to all of the concerns of both of you. While neither of you may have “gotten your way” with regard to you initial solution ideas, both of you will have succeeded in getting what you wanted!

Copyright@ Susan Heitler. Ph.D.  For more information see www.therapyhelp.com or www.po2.com.