Kronic and social engineering

Having been involved in drug counselling for over 20 years it is interesting to see current developments in the drug known in Australia as Kronic. This is a synthetic cannabis or synthetic marijuana. This marijuana is not grown on trees but produced in laboratories.

As of June 17th, 2011 the government of Western Australia has made this synthetic marijuana illegal. The first state in Australia to do so. It will be interesting to see what impact this new legislation has on marijuana production and use in this state. Those in the organised crime industry may be now rubbing their hands together in glee and dollar signs showing up in their eyeballs.



As of June 17th the production of synthetic marijuana moves from legitimate businesses into organised crime in Western Australia. How much organised crime take it on remains to be seen. If one counsels drug users in rehab one inevitably also counsels some drug dealers and producers. One hears all sorts of things about the business of drug production and distribution.

For those producing marijuana naturally by growing it, the big problem they have is that it takes a fair bit of space for the plants to grow but more so it takes a long time for the plant to become productive. Often 6 to 12 months for a fully mature marijuana plant. Synthetically produced marijuana takes one day to produce and can be made in a small kitchen of a house.



One would assume that this will make it very appealing for those involved in the organised production of illegal synthetic marijuana. It will be interesting to see in the next 5 to 10 years how much synthetic marijuana replaces naturally grown marijuana in Western Australia. One would hope that our law makers are not just handing a new multi million dollar drug to organised crime. We will have to wait and see the implications of this new legislation.

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Larissa - anger case study and results

I appreciate your posts on anger because it’s a huge problem issue for me. I’m not really sure how to answer these questions because my parents left when I was young (around two). They came to visit sometimes so I had parents, but they were more like guests and not really like parents. I think my parent ego state is based on my father’s parents (grandparents). So if there's anything I've said here that would help me deal with anger better, I'd love to hear it.

My Parent ego state and anger

When my grandfather was angry he would (Hit, withdraw and sulk, shout, swear, give a lecture, get sarcastic, eat, fight, get depressed and so on)

Say - nothing

Do – slam the door on the way out and leave for awhile

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

Do – threaten to send me away, threaten to send my brothers away, threaten to hurt me, blame me for ruining her life

My Child ego state decisions about anger

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Feel – she hated me more than usual

When I saw grandmother or grandfather angry I would

Say - nothing

Do - hide

Feel - scared

What did your grandmother and grandfather say about expressing anger. (OK, not OK, good, bad, time & place, men & women, etc) I learned very young that it was not acceptable for me to be angry or even look angry in front of them…ever. I don't remember them ever saying anything about it.

As a teenager did you get rebellious and angry? If so how did you express it and how did the parent figures respond? As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things. Sometimes I ran away. I stayed away as much as possible. Sometimes my grandmother found my stash and she flushed it (or hell, maybe she really kept it for herself) and she'd tell me I was trash like my mother and a nutcase like my mother's father. Fortunately, I had a couple of really good teachers in high school who motivated me to stay out of trouble and encouraged me to escape home by finding work rather than laying drunk in the alleys. They saved my life.

Summation of early decisions = Anger is forbidden.

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Results

This case study is a good example of how a person can acquire contradictory script messages about anger and its expression. As we can see Larissa made a Child ego state decision:

“Don’t feel anger”

or at least

Don’t express your anger”

This is held in the Child ego state. At the same time she would have introjected her grandmother’s anger expression into her Parent ego state. This is shown with the statements like:

When my grandMother was angry she would:

Say – curse, call me bad names, scream, rant

and

When I was angry grandmother would

Say – I was ungrateful, call me names, scream at me

Do – whip me, blame me, hurt me

Thus she has a strong model which shows that it is OK to feel angry and to express that anger in a forthright and demonstrative way. Thus Larissa has a contradiction in her personality in this way.

It is probably safe to say that the early decisions are more influential in the personality than the models, however at the same time the modelling of behaviour is recognised as a significant factor in personality development.

Logically there are 4 possibilities
1. Decision made with consistent modelling
2. Decision made with contradictory modelling
3. Decision made with no modelling
4. No decision made but with modelling of behaviour

Larrisa is possibility number 2 and this could lead to some outright
contradictory behaviour with anger at times. Or what is more likely is that the decision behaviour will by overt with the modelled behaviour being expressed in a more convert way. Indeed this may be the case with Larissa (however this is based on very minimal information)

She says:
As a teenager, I hated everything about living. I did a lot of drugs and drank. I was not good to myself and did dangerous things.


This could indicate that the permission to express anger has resulted in her expressing anger at herself. Which resulted in some self destructive behaviour. In relationships with others there maybe a suppression of the anger as the decision demands.

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Anger in my personality

Anger work - How anger is structured in my personality


My Parent ego state and anger

When my father was angry he would (Hit, withdraw and sulk, shout, swear, give a lecture, get sarcastic, eat, fight, get depressed and so on)

Say -

Do -


When my Mother was angry she would:

Say -

Do -




My Child ego state decisions about anger

When I was angry mother (father) would

Say -

Do -

Feel -

When I saw mother (father) angry I would

Say -

Do -

Feel -


What did your mother and father say about expressing anger. (OK, not OK, good, bad, time & place, men & women, etc)



As a teenager did you get rebellious and angry? If so how did you express it and how did the parent figures respond?

Summation of early decisions =



Graffiti

Anger in the personality

Two ways of incorporating personality factors about anger

Injunctions - early decisions by the child (Child ego state)
Parent communicates to the child in some form that it is not OK to feel and/or express anger. As the young child has no Adult or Parent ego state it accepts the message in its Little Professor ego state, (The Adult in the Child ego state (A1)). 1. The child hears the parental directive in its A1
2. The youngster also listens to its own feelings (provided by the C1) as a reaction to the directive .
3. The young child makes its early decision based on these two bits of information and stores that decision in the P1.



Modelling based Don’t be angry injunction (Parent ego state)
As the child grows it begins to store modelling in its Parent ego state in a very rudimentary form. These can never be fully expressed in a grown up way until the Parent ego state gains maturation in the teenage years. The young girl will model on mother and if mother has a strong aversion to expressing or feeling anger the daughter will model that and incorporate it into her own Parent ego state.



The more the Child ego state decisions are consistent with the Parent ego state modelling the stronger the influence in the personality. At times they will be consistent and at other times they can be direct opposites. Consider this example. Johnny gets angry and hits his sister on the head with a piece of wood. On seeing this mother approaches Johnny angrily. With a raised angry voice she smacks Johnny on the back side and tells him not to hit his sister.

Johnny thinks in his A1 ego state. I was angry, that made mother very frightening to me and I got hit so I decide, “Don’t feel angry”. (Child ego state)

At the same time Johnny models on mother’s anger and her expression of that anger by hitting. (Parent ego state)

Thus the Child decisions about anger and the Parent modelling about anger are contradictory.



Problems with feeling and expressing anger

Starting with the most serious psychopathology moving to the least.

1. Don’t be sane. This person does not even acknowledge that a event has occurred that one could feel about. One may have been put down or say ridiculed and the individual does not even recognise that the event has occurred. The Adult ego state is so dysfunctional the facts of the situation are not recognised or comprehended.

2. Don’t feel. This person recognises that an event has occurred but does not feel anything in response to it. Person gets their wallet stolen but has no feelings about it.

3. Don’t feel X, feel Y. Person acknowledges the event, has a feeling in response to the event but it is not the appropriate feeling. Instead of feeling angry at being unjustly criticised the person feels scared or embarrassed. Women will often feel scared instead of angry and men will often feel anger instead of scared.

4. Don’t express your feelings. This person acknowledges an event has occurred, feels the appropriate feeling about it, but does not express the feeling.

5. Feel X, but express Y. This person acknowledges an event has occurred, feels the appropriate feeling about it, expresses the feeling but it is the inappropriate feeling. The woman who feels angry and then cries, the man who feels sad but shows anger

(Ref: Treatment of character)

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Anger work in psychotherapy

Preliminary notes

It is necessary to use anger work in a context in counselling. In some areas such as the bodywork approaches this is not done and anger work can be used just as an exercise in itself. It must be relevant to the contract at hand and have a clear role in assisting the client to achieve that contract.

For example a client could say, “I want to shout at my father because of the way he treated me the other day”. In order for a therapist to go along with such a contract he needs to be aware of what happened between the two people as the anger work could be just a part in the game. What is the client’s script messages about anger and its expression. The client may be chronically angry and to go ahead and do the anger work would be contraindicated.

Anger work is a regressive technique. That is it encourages the client to ‘regress’ into the Child ego state and out of the Adult and Parent ego states. This has obvious uses for the individual who is stuck in his Parent and Adult and excludes the Child ego state, which many people are who attend psychotherapy. On the other hand there are people who are too much in their Child ego state and exclude the Parent and Adult, clearly one would need to be careful in doing such anger work with these individuals. For example the chronically angry person, and the hysteric personality type.



Anger work also destabilises the personality. This is one of its great therapeutic advantages. A client’s script becomes set and solid over time after many, many rehearsals and reinforcements day after day. Anger work can be used to shake it up and loosen the concrete holding it together. Once loosened one can then restructure the script into another form that allows the individual to live a more emotionally liberated life. That is, less script bound and more autonomous.

The down side of this destabilisation is that what if the client is already destabilised such as can be the case with schizophrenia, dependent personality, borderline personality and the obsessive/compulsive personality. One would need to be cautious using anger work in such situations.

Another difficulty with anger work is that anger always has the potential to turn into physical violence. So if the client is impulsive and has a tendency to be explosive then one needs to be very careful with anger work particularly if the client is bigger than you.


These women need to do some anger work, for sure!


In all my years of counselling I have never had a client express their anger in a way which hurt me or any of my property. One can use “Stop” techniques if necessary. Another advantage of this is with the client who comes from a physically violent back ground. By doing anger work they get first hand experience that there can be anger without physical violence.

Anger expression can be self validating. If one feels they have been wronged, then the act of saying so , especially to the face of the other party says to the individual - “I am worthwhile”. So to say such things with the expression of anger can assist with the self esteem.

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Goals of therapy - practical

Kahless says:

Well I look at where I am at the moment. I am in my early 40s. I exist in a state of not happy and not unhappy thanks to the medication propping me up. I am thankful to the anti depressants that I am not in that low point of nothingness that I felt earlier this year.
I don't know what I want not what I don't want. You suggest a don't get my needs met injunction, but I don't even know what my needs are. I am by most people's standards, successful. I don't have to worry about money and I have a successful career and am in stable relationship with a partner who cares deeply for me.
But I am not happy. I do not know what will make me happy.

--------------------------

Her comment raises three interesting points for me.
I will address the first one here and do the other two at a later time.


I saw a piece of research once that outlined the best predictors of the outcome of psychotherapy. Or the importance of things in psychotherapy. It isolated three aspects of it
1. the techniques employed
2. the relationship between client and therapist
3. the practicalities of one’s life at the time

The results were something like
1 = 20%
2 = 40%
3 = 40%



However you can’t quote me on this because I can’t find it so these may not be fully accurate. I recall looking at it and being a bit surprised about the practicalities of life being that influential, but after some consideration it does make sense. This includes things like having a decent income, having relationships in life that are reasonable, living circumstances are OK such as having a home that is reasonable, diet that is OK, having a social life and so forth.

The more one has of these the better the prognosis when the client enters therapy. This is a bit sobering because it is easy for therapists to get lost in their fancy therapies and fancy techniques and so forth. It notes that therapists should initially at least focus on such practicalities in the treatment plan. This may seem a bit basic, and it is, but it is most important at least at times.



Many years ago I recall working in drug rehab with this guy who had a long term heroin problem. He was a nice guy and we established quite a good working relationship over some time. I recall we used to laugh a lot together. At one point he came into quite some money. Of course I did not ask how he came across the dollars, I just noted that he did.

Since our first meeting I had noted that his top front teeth were not too good, being quite discoloured and somewhat decayed. He had never mentioned them as a problem. I was the one who brought it into therapy. I suggested that he use some of the money to have his teeth repaired, whitened and so forth. He responded that he did not care what his teeth were like and he was unconvinced by my suggestion. I persisted with the suggestion through a couple of sessions and he finally did seek out the appropriate dental work, had it done and it did look decidedly better. Whilst I did think it was a good idea, one reason I suggested the dental work in the first place was because if he did not spend the money on his teeth it is highly likely that it would go on drugs.

However the surprising thing was the therapeutic results that it caused. He said that after it was done he felt so much better about himself. He reported that when ever he looked into the mirror he saw a reflection of himself that he liked. He had not not even aware of how this had effected him for so long. That he had disliked the image of himself every time he looked at it almost everyday.



I have never forgotten that. I could have spent my time doing fancy relationship building and fancy techniques to assist him to express his anger at his mother and so forth, when one of the things which turned out to be significant in the therapy was getting his teeth fixed. Something that simple. One of the simple practicalities of life turned out to be a significant factor in his recovery.

And my point is?

When Kahless says:
“I don't have to worry about money and I have a successful career and am in stable relationship with a partner who cares deeply for me.”

I know this is a good prognostic sign should she ever decide to take up therapy with a male therapist

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Di - Transactional Analysis Sentence Completion Test results

1. My favorite story or fairytale as a child was The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
2. I like when people are happy
3. My mother always told me to smile
4. I always try to do the right thing
5. Most men are childish.
6. What bothers me more than anything is being alone.
7. If I could, I would lose weight.
8. When I was a child, I wanted people to listen to me.
9. My father always told me to work hard.
10. I think I have a right to feel anything.
11. If I get angry enough, I lose my temper.
12. I shouldn’t get upset.
13. Love wonderful
14. I can’t lose weight
15. I get depressed when I feel helpless
16 A mature adult is a person who does the right thing.
17. One of my most important rules is DON’T lose my temper
18 My parents always told me what to do
19. I failed to grow up
20 My biggest fear in life is someone close to my dieing
21 Someday I will be happy
22. The child in me is lost
23 Sometimes I think “if only I had a different family”
24 People like myself work hard.
25. I need others
26 Winners are people who get what they want
27 Marriage is forever
28 Death is inevitable
29 My role in my family was to be quiet
30 One thing I try to hide from others is my unhappiness
31 My dreams are usually about scary things
32 Most women are beautiful
33 I feel really guilty when I say no
34 When things get tough I run
35 When I was a child, my parents never were happy with me
36 Sex is great
37 When someone disagrees with me I argue
38 If I were an animal I would be a fish
39 The last thing I want to do is quit
40 What I really learned in school is how to get along with people
41 I want my children to be happy
42 God is everywhere
43 A part of me wants to run away
44 Why can’t people do what they say
45 The story of my life would be called Getting Closer

---------------------------

Di I have written these as I would write in my clinical notes if you were a client. Thus I have made no attempt to make them sound nice. If they feel too brutal or you just don’t want this stated here let me know and I will delete it.



16 A mature adult is a person who does the right thing.
3. My mother always told me to smile
4. I always try to do the right thing
29 My role in my family was to be quiet
30 One thing I try to hide from others is my unhappiness


Results - Possibly quite a high CC. Need to access FC probably through RC. If CC response is at a pathological level investigate possibility of some significant trauma in childhood. Therapist would need to avoid the CC response in the transference neurosis. Develop RC in the relational with the therapist.



11. If I get angry enough, I lose my temper.
12. I shouldn’t get upset.
17. One of my most important rules is DON’T lose my temper
37 When someone disagrees with me I argue

Ambivalence about anger. Has internalised message of “Don’t feel anger” but reports anger behaviour. Need to investigate what is ‘temper’ is and what does ‘argue’ mean. Could be significant misperceptions about the demonstration of anger.
Need for anger work



7. If I could, I would lose weight.
14. I can’t lose weight
15. I get depressed when I feel helpless
18 My parents always told me what to do



Sense of loss of control in the personality. With such a reduced level of the Adult ego state as exectutive in the personality could indicate significant maladjustment. With food being used as one of the vehicles to sense the loss of control could indicate oral stage fixation and pre verbal issues. If at a pathological level investigate the possibility of others imposing their will onto to her in a severe way. Again anger work could assist with this so as to gain as sense of control of the world and in relationships. Make sure to identify times when client senses a loss of control in the relationship with the therapist




22. The child in me is lost

Examine how much this is a part of the life script




34 When things get tough I run
43 A part of me wants to run away
39 The last thing I want to do is quit

Flight is the basic response increasing the possibility of prolonged abuse in childhood. Develop fight response possibly with anger work
No run contract in therapy

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