Me and my epiphany

I had an epiphany today which I suppose is a good thing to have on the last day of the decade.

On my facebook I have been having a recent discussion with Ljiljana who I met in Serbia earlier this year. In recent times I have been getting some translations of my articles from English to Serbian and then placing them on my Serbian Translations Blog

In our FB discussions of these translations I stated to her how it felt odd to see my writing presented in another language. It is not unpleasant or anything it just feels a bit strange.

This got me thinking as I found it hard to articulate what the odd or strange reaction was. I couldn’t really understand what it was and what it meant to me.

Then I had my epiphany!!

Epiphany

It came to me, at least in part, what the odd feeling was. The word that suddenly popped into my mind was - “disjointed”. It was like I felt disjointed from the writing or there was a lack of connection to it when I saw it in a language that I could not understand.

This surprised me somewhat as I had been quite unaware of it. I suppose that as I usually saw my writing in English I never realised that I also had a psychological connection to what I wrote. It was not until I experienced the ‘oddness’ a number of times in a close succession when setting up and posting on my Serbian Translations Blog that I realised something was awry.

It’s like I expect to meet with

myself but it just doesn’t happen.

It seems that when I write stuff part of me psychologically goes into it and when I read it later on I feel a connection to that part of me that originally went into it. However when I see it later in another language that I cannot comprehend, I cannot make the connection to the part of me that originally went into it. I feel disjointed from it.

I love epiphanies!!

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Self harm as self punishment

One of the eight reasons why some people self harm is because of a self hatred or as a form of self punishment. As a result of childhood experiences some people end up with a self hatred or with a sense of self loathing. This may be because they were told precisely that. They were told they were useless, worthless, not wanted, hated and loathed by the parent figures.

In other circumstances the child may have been physically and sexually abused. When this happens sometimes the child has faulty thinking and believes the reason why they were abused is because there is something wrong with them. It was because of their inherent badness that the parents physically abused them. The child thinks that it is their fault and thus a sense of self loathing and hatred can evolve in their perception of self.

If a person has a basic sense of self hatred that does not mean they are going to be suicidal. A person will be suicidal if they have made the suicide decision and thus see suicide as a viable solution to their problems. There are plenty of people who have a basic self dislike who do not see suicide as such a solution.

Those who do have a very low self perception will self harm in some form but maybe not in the usual sense of the word. That is they will not self harm by cutting, burning or stabbing self but will self harm by the lifestyle they live. For instance a woman may prostitute herself at least partially because she hates herself. This could be seen as a type of self harm in terms of the life style she lives.

Any person who has a sense of self loathing will somehow live a life style where they treat self very badly either physically and/or psychologically. For instance the drug addict type of drug user can be taking drugs in such a way that it amounts to physical self harm. Such as with intravenous drug use where they share dirty needles with high risk others and so that their veins eventually become essentially mutilated.

Most drug addicts also hate themselves for being an addict. They know society views a junkie as being at the lowest level of society. They are seen at least by some as the useless crap at the bottom of the pile and often view themselves in a similar light. This can amount to psychological self harm. Thus the drug addict may hate self and that is expressed by self harming physically and psychologically.

Despite this there are a group of self harmers such as ‘cutters’ who harm self as an expression of their self hatred and self loathing. They cut self as an expression of these thoughts and feelings about self. Some self harmers will talk of bloodletting as a way to getting rid of some of their badness. As the blood flows out they see their inherent badness also flowing out.

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The great road toll lie

I can’t take it any more. The bullshit that I and all others have had to endure over the festive season. The great road toll lie perpetuated over and over and drummed into us relentlessly through the press and huge government safety campaigns.

Here are the statistics from the Australian bureau of statistics of the underlying causes of death in 2004 for the state that I live in

Cancer 3409

Testicular cancer 218

Endocrine metabolic diseases 474

Diabetes 346

Mental illness 239

Nervous system diseases 486

Heart disease 3704

Lung disease 894

Digestive system disease 406

Road accidents 201

It is one of those unfortunate situations where the press and the politicians both want the same thing. As a result they never question each others motives for lying to the public about the road toll. They both want the dangers of road deaths greatly exaggerated. It is to both their advantages to have the public believe that road fatalities are a significant threat to us. They aren’t. Road accidents amount to one thousandth of one percent of the states population each year.

More men die of testicular cancer than the entire road toll for both men and women. Thus testicular cancer is more of a threat to us but you just never hear the press and politicians talk about it.

Cancer and heart disease are a far more serious threat to us than car accidents and you hear about them much, much less often. Why?

Dangerous curves

Reporting the road toll obviously sells for the press. It makes them money. If it didn’t they certainly wouldn’t report it at least as much as they do. Over the festive season it is reported relentlessly. It also works for the politicians. If they can get in the public eye talking about the road toll and say things like zero tolerance and mandatory sentencing they know they are on a winner which they are as they know the public believe the great road toll lie.

Then there is the police commissioner who is forever huffing and puffing about the road toll. He actively and knowingly misleads the public about the dangers to it. Remember - one thousandth of one percent. Why? Because it is he and his department that are the main recipients of all that public money wasted on the road toll when it could be spent on far more serious threats in the community. In this years festive season an extra 5000 police man hours are being funded for policing the roads we are told. How much does that amount to in wages?

So the police, politicians and press never publicly question each other as to why they are misleading the public and unfortunately it is the public who suffer by having vast quantities of public money unwisely spent. I can’t recall ever hearing a politician state this view presented here or ever recall hearing this argument being presented in the press.

Every time you see one of those huge booze buses crawling with truck loads of police think of one thousandth of one percent and all those who are dying from cancer, heart disease and so forth as all that public money is wasted on a far less dangerous threat to us.

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Family systems and illness

Family systems theory as described by Haley (1980) provides further insight into how people can display suicidal behaviour and not necessarily have made the suicide decision. In any relationship with two or more people there is a ‘system’ that develops between them. When the two (or more) personalities meet, over time they work out how to be in the relationship for them. For example one party will take over some roles and the other party will take over other roles.

This can be described in terms of ego states. In a relationship between mother and son the mother may take over the Parent and Adult ego states in the relationship and the son may respond primarily from Rebellious Child ego state. Over time they will work this out often with both parties not even being aware of it. In a family of five members each one will also work out their various roles and positions in the family.

All families develop a system that works for them

Some family systems operate such that one party needs to be ill. If the daughter of the family is ill then all the other family members know what to do in terms of their roles and responsibilities. Examples of types of illness that can originate from a dysfunctional family system can be self harming, drug use, depression and panic attacks eating disorders and suicidal behaviour.

In such circumstances if the daughter is making suicidal statements, gestures or attempts then that is how that family functions. For instance mother and father may start to co-operate and unite against the common cause of the daughters suicidal ‘illness’. It allows them to focus on the daughter and thus they can put to the side their own marital problems.

If the daughter stops making suicidal gestures then mother and father are again confronted with their own relationship so there can be subtle pressure on the daughter to remain suicidal. Having worked in drug rehabilitation this is not an uncommon scenario when one hears the drug user refer to himself as the black sheep of the family.

In such situations when working with the suicidal daughter one can encounter resistance from other family members because if the daughter changes (ie stops being suicidal) then the whole family system has to change. Every person has to alter to some extent and systems will resist change as they strive to achieve homeostasis. Some only have to alter slightly and those who have considerable psychological investment in the daughter being suicidal may be quite resistant to the change.

Treatment of such suicidal people is thus complicated as it involves the person restructuring their relationship with the other family members and that maybe difficult especially if the child is living at home and cannot move out. This also provides an extra avenue of investigation when making a suicide risk assessment.

As is common in the field of psychology often the different approaches whether they may be psychodynamic, organic or systems all tend to take the stance of one size fits all. In this instance all suicidal people are a result of a dysfunctional family system. It is indeed unfortunate how the alternative theories do this as with the human psyche, rarely one size fits all. From my experience of working with the suicidal sometimes the family system is very important and at other times it is only a minor influence. However in assessing and understanding the suicidal person it is very wise to make an assessment of how the suicidal thoughts and behaviour fit for the family system that the person currently lives in.

It is also possible for the individual to have made the suicide decision in childhood and be in a family system where they take the sick role of being suicidal. If that is the case then the risk level of a suicide attempt would certainly increase.

In systems theory every system is naturally homeostatic and will seek to balance itself. Thus it will also avoid or resist change as the balance is disrupted and it is not homeostatic.

So if family member number two changes then that forces all other members to change in some way as well. That change can be anything such as becoming depressed, stop being bulimic, start taking drugs, winning the lottery to becoming assertive. If you change then the system becomes unbalanced and all others have to change so that they system can become homeostatic again.

If you are feeling depressed or anxious that means all those in your ‘family system’, or your inner circle of closest people, are in some way contributing to your depression or anxiety. Indeed if you are feeling happy and joyous they are also contributing to that as well. In systems theory there is no such thing as an ill person, instead it is the system that is ill. If your partner is suffering depression then you are contributing to that in some way as part of the system.

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Sameness in relationships **

In relationships of any depth there is a natural tendency for both parties over time to become more the same. They will tend to become more like one another.

When any two people spend time together they will tend to model and introject each other. This is inevitable and indiscriminate and can not be avoided. Humans will instinctively do it whether they are aware of it or not.

This process is easily explained in transactional analysis

This shows how the wife models or introjects her husband’s personality into her own Parent ego state and of course he does the same with her over time. As mentioned before this process can not be avoided and will happen instinctively.

The copying relates to the behaviour, thoughts, attitudes and feelings of the other. All these parts of the others personality become our own after time. However husbands and wives do not end up as clones of each other and they do remain different over time. Of course the Parent ego state is but just one aspect of the personality and we all also have an Adult and Child ego state and these can be quite different between the two partners. However there is a tendency to sameness in the way described and this does not have to be an equal process.

Modeling can even occur between animal and human

People will tend to model more on those who are of more perceived potency and emotional importance. Thus the introjection between the married couple may be at different degrees. That is, one does more introjection than the other and generally speaking it is the more dominant party in the relationship who will be introjected more than the other way around.

This has been studied in some depth before and is presented in the DSM-IV by the American Psychiatric Association (1994) who discuss the Folie a Deux or a shared delusional disorder. In this case two people who are in a close relationship over time develop the same delusional belief system. There tends to be one dominant party and the more submissive party takes on the delusion of the other. This means that should the relationship end the more submissive party will tend to drop the delusion over time even though the submissive party probably has a tendency to have the same delusional beliefs.

Of course they don’t have to be delusional beliefs but can be beliefs or views about anything including religious views, political views, attitudes to neighbours, relatives, friends and so forth.

It should be noted that even after the introjection has taken place there are other potent psychological processes at work that further develop the sameness in a couple. The most obvious example of this is the phenomena of group think. In this situation when two or more people get together there is internal pressure in the group towards uniformity which leads the group to come up with same consensus that maybe false or not.

Group think can result in:

Illusion of invulnerability that can encourage excessive optimism and risk taking

Unquestioned belief in the group’s morality and goals which can result in the group members ignoring the consequences of their actions

Self censorship of deviations in the group’s beliefs and goals

Suppression of dissent by more powerful members in the group

Feelings of anonymity

Discount self responsibility

As two people talk and discover that they tend to have the same attitude or opinion about something this can give them a false sense of security as is described above. “If others think the same as I do then that makes my views more correct or right” is the reasoning behind group think. Thus if a husband and wife have introjected similar views from the other about something, group think can play a part in further fostering the sameness.

Most often this does not matter all that much if they are political views, religious views or dislike for their next door neighbours. However if the views will tend to incite racial hostility or religious persecution then there is a much more serious problem.

This can also involve similar views about suicide. That is, views like suicide is an OK solution to a problem, everyone has the right to choose and so forth. If they have introjected these from each other and then have a sense of group think, in extreme cases one can end up with the suicide pact. Both parties agree to suicide at the same time.

Even if there is no suicide pact it will make suicide a more easy choice for one of the parties in the relationship for the reasons just mentioned. Thus in working with the suicidal it is instructive to make an assessment of the relationships that the suicidal individual is involved at that time to see if any of these psychological processes are at work.

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Check in therapy

Had a good check in this week. A guy in his late 20s whom I saw for about 2 or 3 years. Once a week regular as clockwork. When I first saw him he was in bad shape heading for a major depression if not being there already. Now he does not even take anti depressants. It’s always good when you get to see one who has done very well. And besides that I liked him at a personal level as well. We definitely had a good connection.

He developed quite a strong transference with me and I was very much a father figure for him. When he finished he went travelling for about 18 months and as I always do I asked him to send me some postcards. Some clients do and some don’t but I have a board in my office where I pin up the postcards that I do receive and I always point it out to clients who are about to go away.

Anywise he got back and I get a phone call from him and he makes an appointment to see me. I like these kind of appointments as I get to hear what has happened in his life. Some times as a therapist I can get to know some one very well and can even play an important part in their life at the time and then most stop seeing you and you never get to hear what happened in their lives or hear how they turned out. Occasionally I will get a letter or these days an email out of the blue from a past client giving me an update on their life which is always nice.

So he turns up at the appointment and I am waiting to hear what his current difficulty is and as it turns out there isn’t one. It was just a check in to see that I am still there, and still the same, and still like him, all of which is true.

Most people who do a check in will make up some sort of dodgy excuse problem to come and see me. They are having trouble sleeping or they had an argument with some one or they had a series of vivid dreams. When the real reason is to do a check in. Well he didn’t even have the excuse problem which was kind of nice.

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Tiger and the lies we tell

How can one go by without saying a few words about Tiger. Firstly what about all the jokes currently doing the rounds about Tiger and his wayward putter!

However he does present an interesting phenomena due to the length of time of his infidelity. There are different types of affairs. There can be the one off where the man and the woman get drunk at the office christmas party and have a quickie in the photocopying room. The next day they rue their actions and it is never repeated again.

Then there is the affair that persists over a long period of time that has to include ongoing and persistent deception to the marital partner. But the thing about Tiger is how his affairs went over such a long period of time and because of who he is, that is his fame.

He would have known that sooner or later that he would get caught and what would happen. Which is what has precisely happened. It will be highly publicised and the effect that would have on his business.

Will she ever get her 15 minutes?

He would have known for a long time that at least some of the women were financially motivated or at least motivated to get thier 15 minutes of fame, which at last count 13 of them have done. But he still persisted over a long period of time knowing what was eventually going to happen.

That is the interesting part. How can one psychologically do that. I used to see that a lot in the prison. Talking with the guys and reading about thier crimes sometimes you could see that it was inevitable that they would get caught eventually. Whether they were embezzeling money or selling drugs or lighting fires in such a fashion that it was very likely they would get caught.

How could they do that over an extended period of time when they know what is the inevitable outcome. Most people when they realize what they have done and the likeihood they will get caugt will stop and try and cover their tracks. But there are some who don’t and Tiger is one of them.

It could be just massive denial and they some how rationalize to self that they wont get caught. Maybe Tiger lied to himself that he could just pay everyone off and he would thus never get caught. There are others who are just so much in the here and now that the future is just kind of ignored. This is not uncommon in the criminal mind and is quite a childlike appraoch to life. Children are very here and now focussed and the future simply does not register all that much in thier conscious. It is less likely that Tiger is like this because such adults with such a child like approach usually end up in disarry quite quickly. They would not do all the training that Tiger obviously has done over the many years.

Sometimes they want to get caught as they can not see any other solution to their predicament. This can happen with affairs and you get the affair which is a unsophisticed way of saying I am very unhappy in this marriage and I want out. Or I at least want it to change significantly. It is possible Tiger did this as he was unhappy in marriage and thus set himself up to eventually get caught.

Anyway if I was providing counsel to Tiger I would say, “Tell all your minders and advisers to get fucked and go and enjoy life”.

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The copy cat suicide

The phenomena of copy cat suicide has been documented for some time. It is noted that there can be clusters of other suicide attempts after a suicide by those known to the deceased directly or even through the internet. It can also happen when a suicide for some reason gets a lot of publicity or a particularly high profile person suicides. This can lead to a spike in suicides and attempts by people who knew of the deceased through the publicity but was not know them personally.

It should also be noted that the copy cat effect could apply when some one is just talking about and demonstrating suicidal behaviour not only when a suicide is completed. For instance if one has a peer or relative who makes suicide attempts, talks about their suicidal thoughts and plans, displays suicide notes, displays stock piled medication, a tube for gassing self in a car or a rope for hanging self and so forth then there can be a copy cat effect.

Why would a person copy another individual who has suicided. It would seem that there are three possible psychological phenomena at work with copy cat suicides. It seems reasonable to conclude and the research would agree that the more emotional importance the suicidal person has to the individual the more likely the occurrence of a copy cat attempt. The most obvious one being a parent, a close loved one or with teenagers a close friend, member of his gang or community.

Look at how the man and boy are standing

Modelling. The term copy cat means precisely that, copying. People copy each other’s behaviour, thoughts and feelings especially of those who are important. Humans model on each other and in transactional analysis terms the modelled behaviour is placed in the Parent ego state as a tape. If the two other aspects of the personality, that is the Child and Adult ego states are consistent with suicidal behaviour then modelling suicidal behaviour could result in a copy cat suicide attempt being undertaken.

Parent ego state tapes

Permissions. In order to behave a certain way people sometimes seek permission from others to do so. This often happens in counselling. The client has decided on a course of action but feels unsure about it and thus seeks out a counsellor to get permission to do it. That may be to leave a marriage, change jobs, confront mother and so forth. If someone else says its OK to do it then the person feels more confident and secure in taking the course of action.

This of course can also apply for suicidal behaviour. If one has a parent or close friend who is talking about suicide, displaying methods of suicide, attempting suicide or even completes a suicide attempt this can be permission giving. By watching another person act in a certain way can be taken as a permission by the individual to behave in the same way. Again, if the rest of the personality is prone to suicidal behaviour then such permissions can lead to suicide attempts by the person.

This permission giving aspect of copy cat suicide attempts can lead to angst amongst parents of teenagers who listen to rock music that have lyrics about suicide. The parents see the rock stars as possibly giving permission to the teenagers to behave in suicidal ways. If the rock star is idolised by the teenager then the permission giving can be quite strong indeed. However rock music lyrics have never made anyone suicidal but it could play some sort of role in permission giving as is described here. If the rest of the personality is not consistent with suicidal acts then it is not going to happen.

Normalising behaviour. If a teenager is in a peer group where others are getting tattoos then the actual act of getting a tattoo become normalised. It is no longer seen as an abnormal act in the eyes of the teenager and thus he is more likely to get a tattoo of his own. If a teenager listens to a peer talk about and plan a suicide then that makes the behaviour more normal. If one sees mother complete a suicide that makes the behaviour more normal for the child.

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The act of dying

This also illustrates another point that one hears mentioned from time to time by suicidal individuals. Some people are just too scared or simply can not ever imagine themselves going through with the actual act of killing self. They do not see it as a thing they could ever do whilst at the same time having quite strong self destructive urges.

However the self destructive urges will continue to demand to be expressed regardless, so one has to find another way of expressing them. One way is to have an 'accident' or alternatively to have someone else kill you which is sometimes colloquially referred to as 'death by cop'. This phenomena has been discussed many times in forensic and police journals (see Jenet and Segal (1985)). That is, one behaves in a way such that the police will kill you. Some murders in domestic violence could also be this kind of suicidal act.

There is a insightful article By K. van Wormer and C, Odiah (1999). These writers describe a phenomenon called “Suicide-murder” (not the usual “murder-suicide”), because in this instance suicide is not viewed as a consequence of murder but as its cause. They cite research evidence based on case studies done in prisons with males who committed murders in states where the death penalty existed for such crimes.

They suggest that in some instances part of the motivation to commit the crime was so the state will kill them by execution. They were motivated at least in part by suicidal urges but felt they could never actually go through with the suicidal act so they behaved in such a way that the state would kill them. Many of the men presented in the case studies were clearly suicidal and some demonstrated they had clearly plotted their deaths long before arriving on death row.

In addition they discuss what they term voluntary executions. In the United States there were two hundred and twenty three executions between 1976 and 1993. Twenty nine of those were consensual or at the inmates request. In another study they report sixteen examples of men on death row who volunteered for the death penalty, usually by refusing to fight appeals of their cases. Indeed another two of individuals who had requested an execution were subsequently found innocent and released!

Each of these men chose death as a solution to their problems. They did not die by their own hand but chose to die by having the state kill them. Clearly these cases involved a conscious decision to die that persisted over a significant length of time and was carried out. This is a strong indicator that these men had made the suicidal decision early in their lives and it remained in their psyche until circumstances they created resulted in them enacting that solution to solve their problems.

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