buddhism

Can’t We All Just Game Along?

July 16, 2018 by langloimsw Leave a Comment

I had a powerful reminder about the prosocial nature of video games this week, and it was nowhere near a console screen. I was on my way home and ran into a Dunkin’ Donuts, in a town I’d never been to before and was unfamiliar with. I ended up waiting in a rather lengthy line and was a bit grumpy. I happened to be wearing a T-Shirt which said this:

I hadn’t worn it for ages, and had forgotten in fact I was wearing it until the cashier called out to me, “I love your shirt.” Cue the endorphins.

“Thank you,” I said, and smiled (which thanks to state bound learning probably cued my body to produce even more endorphins.) Waiting in the line seemed much more pleasant by this point. I ordered my coffee and sandwich and while waiting for them received another compliment from a customer walking by.

The third person to compliment me was a man in his 40s, scruffy and in jeans and t-shirt. “I love that game,” he said. “I haven’t played it in a while though.”

By now I was in a mood that allowed me to initiate conversations, so I asked “What are you playing nowadays.”

He proceeded to tell me that his 14 year-old daughter had gotten him into Fortnite. She had enjoyed it initially for the crafting, he said, because she really enjoyed Minecraft; but now that they were playing together she was enjoying the combat as well. His face lit up as he recounted how much fun they were having together. I told him about a study that had been done by Brigham Young that indicated increased levels of protective factors against depression. He smiled at that, and we both went on our way.

We spend so much time debating the neurological impact of playing video games that we often lose sight of another dimension; that of talking about playing video games. Talking about arts and culture is a powerful social adhesive. It identifies commonalities, allows for compliments and increased levels of engagement with others, allows us to recall exciting moments and share them. All of these activities in turn facilitate attachment, and increase a sense of well-being on the neurological level. That was the best line I’ve waited in a ages!

We need to find a way to get that message to Salty Sally the Social Worker and Morose Martin the Mental Health Counselor, whose eyes grow dull at the mention of gaming when their patients bring it up. “How much time are you playing Candy Crush?” they say, in uninviting tones, and eye such T-shirts as a clear sign of video game addiction. The next patient, who comes in with a T-Shirt of Monet’s “Water Lilies,” will get a compliment on it and no such screening for an Impressionist Art Addiction. In fact, the WHO didn’t include Art Disorder this go round at all, unless you include the art form of the video game.

In this current political climate, where we are so polarized, I wonder how many bridges (Minecraft or other) might be built if we paused to ask strangers in line if they play any games? I imagine Republicans, Democrats and Independents alike play something.

If Teams Valor, Instinct, and Mystic can all get along together raiding in Pokemon Go, perhaps we can too..

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Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, candy crush, children, education, gamers, games, gaming, minecraft, play, pokemon, psychodynamic, psychotherapy, stress, technology, therapy, video games

Better Living Through Minecraft

April 22, 2015 by langloimsw 2 Comments

Last month I had the opportunity to talk at SXSW 2015 about how the video game Minecraft has a lot to teach us about mindfulness. Video games often get a bad rap with mental health folks, but I try to change that thinking by pointing out that playing video games can actually be a form of concentration meditation, albeit one that does not jibe with many people’s traditional concepts of such (focus on your breathing, focus on the candle, focus on..erm, Mario?) If you want to hear more, the Audio is here:

https://soundcloud.com/michael-langlois-6/better-living-through-minecraft-audio-version

If you want to see the visuals from the Prezi, feel free to do so here:

If you enjoy it, please feel free to share, and if you want me to come talk to you and your colleagues drop me a note.

Find this post interesting? I can speak in person too: Check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: activism, adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, children, digital literacy, education, game theory, gamers, games, gaming, mindfulness, minecraft, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social media, sxsw, technology, therapy, video games, Web 2.0

The Lava Expert

January 2, 2015 by langloimsw 2 Comments

“Sometimes it is the people no one imagines anything of who do the things that no one can imagine.” –The Imitation Game

Shortly before I fell into the lava I began a conversation with an eleven year old girl, we’ll call her Sal. This was a while back, on a Minecraft server I play on from time to time. My name when I play Minecraft has the word “therapist” in it, and Sal had noticed this.

“Hey, are you really a therapist?” Sal asked via our server text chat.

“Yes I am.” I typed back. I had been mining obsidian and using a river to cool the lava so I could chip away at it with my diamond pickaxe. In the time it took to type my reply, I managed to fall into the river and get washed into the lava. I watched myself go up in flames, and with me most of my loot. There is always a chance though, when one falls into lava this way, that some of one’s loot can be thrown clear. So upon respawning I quickly made my way back to the scene of my demise as we continued our conversation.

“Oops, burned up,” Sal said, as the server had announced just that when I fell in the lava. “Are you the kind of therapist that talks to kids about their problems?”

“Kids and adults both, yes.”

“My mother wants me to see a therapist,” Sal said.

“Why?” asked another one of the kids on the server.

“She says I have problems with friends,” Sal said. By this point I had returned to the lava pool. There was no loot that had survived.

“Sal,” I said. “Everyone needs help with their problems from time to time. That’s why there are 7 billion people on the planet, to help each other out.”

For some reason that made quite an impact with the other players. “Wow, you must be an expert!!” one typed. I’m not sure how he’d come to that conclusion.

“I’m certainly not an expert on lava,” I replied, and fortunately the conversation went back to the business of mining after some sympathetic emoticons.

I have no problem talking with kids about therapy, or being a psychotherapist. If I did, I certainly wouldn’t have the word in my userid. And it wasn’t even that I was “off duty.” I’ve had many conversations in chats over the years and heard a range of problems. In part I was a little protective of Sal’s right to privacy, although experience has again shown me that kids are often less hung up on therapy than adults, and in many ways are often more trusting of psychotherapy than adults are. Mostly the reason I wanted us all to get back to playing was that I had caught myself sounding “educational.”

* * * * *

In play if there is any such thing as an expert it is certainly not the therapist, or adults in general. Virginia Axline, knew this. In her book Play Therapy she writes, “Non-directive therapy is based upon the assumption that the individual has within himself… the ability to solve his own problems satisfactorily.” (Axline, 1947) My trainees are often as surprised to find that I am friend to both psychodynamic and solution-focused theories as I am to find that they have been taught the two have irreconcilable differences.

As I see it, my job is often to be a unique experience in the lives of patients. “It is a unique experience,” Axline writes, “for a child to find adult suggestions, mandates, rebukes, restraints, criticisms, disapprovals, support, intrusions gone.” (Axline, 1947) And by the time people come to us as adolescents or adults, those suggestions, mandates, rebukes, restraints, criticisms, disapprovals, etc. have become internalized. By adulthood, many of us feel as if we lack expertise in anything, except perhaps screwing our lives up.

Education has increasingly played a hand in this. We do not teach so that our students learn to think independently and feel resourcefully. Instead we teach them to think like someone else. Critical thinking and exploration become supplanted by the sense that education has to give us something tangible in a materialistic sense: A good grade; a profitable job; published ideas or maybe if we really drink the Koolaid admiration from other academics.

One thing that is so enjoyable about Minecraft for many is its’ open sandbox environment. There is an endgame you can play if you want, but there are also myriad variations of play you can do instead. Sal and millions of other children and adults can range freely through such open and creative spaces without “experts.” Education certainly can happen there, but often in a lightly curated if not autodidactive way. People have created versions of Westeros, Middle-Earth, Panem or their own creations. There are PvP versions where conflict and combat, stealth and griefing hold sway; fantasy realms where people can role-play. It is a topsy-turvy world where children can have the most wisdom, and we adult experts can trip and fall into lava.

* * * * *

In a world obsessed with measuring outcomes, psychotherapy can have a rough time of it. If Sal ever goes to therapy, she will have to be labeled as ill somehow if her mother wants insurance to help pay for it. Notes will have to be written, treatment plans planned, goals and objectives filed away so bean-counters can determine that Sal should get 14 beans-worth of help. It’s hard for me to get too angry at the bean-counters though, over the past 25 years I’ve met a few of them and they don’t seem too happy either.

Education fares little better, with things like the Common Core which tells us what should be taught; standardized testing which masquerades as achievement; and trigger warnings which are supposed to warn students of upsetting content as if they somehow were entitled to get through the mind-altering experience of learning without ever being upset.

It takes bravery to stand up to this. To let the individual chart their own course, make their own mistakes, draw on their own core. For the therapist and educator it takes bravery to get out of the way, to radically reflect the developing self. I do believe that each one of us needs help throughout our lives; but that help needs to be asked for lest we run the risk of telling others what to do and implying they aren’t up to the task of living their own lives.

* * * * *

Many therapists, social workers, and teachers I have met chose to become members of those professions at least in part as an expression of admiration for their own therapists, social workers and teachers. They had no interest in falling into the lava ever again, so they started focusing on helping other people out. It’s a thankless job if you are going to go through it secretly hoping to be thanked. I’m not sure I’ve ever had someone I work with refer to me as an “expert” unless they were being facetious about some blunder I’d just made. And I’ve made many. As an apotheosis, being a psychotherapist or academic is rather anticlimactic, not because the work is devoid of meaning or value, but rather because if we truly place such people on a divine pedestal it needs a steady stream of troubled people to hold it steady.

Perhaps an alternative for therapists, social workers, educators and our ilk is to think of ourselves as “lava experts.” We have some acquaintance with falling into pits, being consumed by intense feelings, losing all our, erm, loot. These are human experiences. This is not a secret to anyone, and I doubt most people would put their trust in someone who knows nothing of failure, obsession, overwhelm or grief.

What’s more is we’ve fallen into lava, often the same pit again and again! We know something of the repetition compulsion. We have let our yearning for whatever we think we need lead us to risky or self-defeating behaviors. We can talk to people about their problems, because we are people who have problems ourselves. We’ve been burned. Minecraft miners know mining deep is risky: We know what we’re doing even up to that moment our bones ignite.

Rather than being an expert on a pedestal, accept that you will tumble into fire, again and again, looking outside of yourself for what is precious. Straight A’s, that book you published, six or seven figures–There’s a little Gollum in all of us. It’s what makes us forget mindfulness, build empires, win arguments or wars. No one was ever oppressed by play, only the lack of imagination that comes from the absence of it.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: activism, addiction, adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, children, digital literacy, education, game theory, gamers, games, gaming, HMOs, managed care, mindfulness, minecraft, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social justice, social media, technology, therapy, video games, virginia axline, Web 2.0

Works, Life and Marshmallows: Iterative Design

February 13, 2014 by langloimsw 2 Comments

They say the journey of a thousand miles begins with a single marshmallow. Ok, I say that, and more specifically I am talking about your life, job or relationship rather than a journey. I am coming back to my practice from a brief sabbatical, and have been noticing that while many things are going to stay the same, a few are changing as well. I’ll get back to the marshmallow in a minute.

One thing I learned on my sabbatical is that I definitely want to continue my therapy practice. As I said to some friends on Facebook this week, “You know, I’m kind of grateful that I get to challenge the self-hatred of others for a living.” As a clinical social worker and psychotherapist I get paid to do that. One thing I also decided on my leave was to withdraw from the last managed care insurance panel I was on. It made no sense to continue to decrease the time I could be seeing people due to paperwork and bureaucratic hassles, and it made no financial sense to have a waiting list of people who are willing to pay my full fee and also deserve treatment just so I could work at half my rate. I have always built pro bono or sliding scale slots into my practice because I have a commitment to serving a diverse population, so why was I doing that and letting an insurance company slide the remaining hours of my week?

Part of the answer to this and most “why-have-I-been-doing-this-this-way-when-it-doesn’t-work-in-my-favor?” questions is fear. Most of us are afraid of change. Whether we are staying in an abusive relationship, having difficulty getting sober, flunking out of college or missing days at work, most of us have moments when we see what we are doing to ourselves and ask the above question. And then we often resume whatever the pattern is, leaving an interesting question unanswered and instead turning it into self-recrimination, which is really just evasion. Another part of the answer is that we often act is if we only get one shot at answering the question of life satisfaction. Here comes the marshmallow.

Invented by Peter Skillman of Palm, Inc. and popularized by Tom Wujec of Autodesk, the Marshmallow Challenge may be familiar to some of you: “It involves the task of constructing the highest possible free-standing structure with a marshmallow on top. The structure must be completed within 18-minutes using only 20 sticks of spaghetti, one yard of tape, and one yard of string.” (per Wikipedia) You can call it an exercise, or play, but in either event the creators of the challenge have observed something very interesting about how different groups tend to approach it. Children tend to make a first structure, stick the marshmallow on top, and then repeat the process over and over, refining it as they go. Adults tend to engage in group discussions, arguments, power plays and plans to produce one structure built once to which the marshmallow is added. In other words they tend to approach it derivatively rather than iteratively.

Iterative design is a method of creating a thing or addressing a problem by making a prototype (first attempt,) testing it, analyzing the prototype, and then refining it. Rinse and repeat. Iterative design isn’t good for everything: As parents know, often there is not time in the world for everything to get done in 18 minutes or before the school bus gets here. But a life built on derivative design alone is destined for stagnation and rigidity.

Derivative design, as the name suggests, takes something from a pre-existing something-else, whether it be a rule, materials, social construction or interpretation of the something-else. When you psychoanalyze a patient’s dream and interpret it as a manifestation of their Oedipus Complex, you are deriving your interpretation and their dream from the something-else of Freud, who in turn derived his Oedipal Conflict theory from the something-else of Greek mythology. Derivative design can save time and effort in many important ways, by collapsing cultural memes and thinking and transmitting them forward through time from Sophocles to your office. But as feminist thinkers and cultural critics have shown us, we might have arrived at a different “complex” if Audre Lord et al had been in on the prototyping of it.

Derivative thinking left unchecked can get you in a rut. One of my most recent examples of this comes from The Little Prince, where he encounters the drunkard:
“- Why are you drinking? – the little prince asked.
– In order to forget – replied the drunkard.
– To forget what? – enquired the little prince, who was already feeling sorry for him.
– To forget that I am ashamed – the drunkard confessed, hanging his head.
– Ashamed of what? – asked the little prince who wanted to help him.
– Ashamed of drinking! – concluded the drunkard, withdrawing into total silence.
And the little prince went away, puzzled.
‘Grown-ups really are very, very odd’, he said to himself as he continued his journey.”

Everything derives from the previous thing, but in the end it sometimes gets us nowhere.

We all get in these difficult spirals. A good therapist or supervisor can point them out to us and then encourage us to become iterative in our design:

So what are you going to do this time?
How did that work out?
So what are you going to do differently?

Therapists starting their private practices also come to see me, often stuck in derivative thinking:

-I need my NPI number.
-Ok, why?
-To get on Medicare.
-Ok, because?
-So I can get on insurance panels.
-Ok, why?
-So I can get patients who will pay me so I can rent an office so I can have an address to register for my NPI.

If you are one of my consultees reading this rest assured I am NOT talking about you in particular: I have had this conversation a hundred times with people. We get indoctrinated into the world of managed care and get, well, managed. In this case, I usually recommend the consultee start by imagining what kind of office space they want. Answers have varied and included: Sunny, exposed beams, plants, yellow paint, toys, music system, waiting room with receptionist, friendly colleagues in suite, accessible to public transportation, elevator, warm colors, cool colors, and all sorts of other iterations.

Once you have a mental prototype you can either build or design your office, or find and rent it. Again I tell folks to walk around the areas they want to work in, find buildings that look interesting to them, then walk inside and ask to speak with someone about seeing a unit. Testing involves going to see several spaces. Then they can analyze the results: Does the space look like it would become what they imagine it to be furnished? Are there things about their ideal that need to be discarded? Do they now realize that they could be even more wild in their expectations?

This is just one example of the ways that iterative design can open up possibilities. But be warned, iterative design can be daunting for many of us raised in our current education system. We have been trained to create one product presented in final form with the expectation that we will be graded on that product alone. Everything becomes about that one paper or exam, which is often more about regurgitation rather than innovation.

I have colleagues who take my breath away with the number of projects and ideas they are consistently throwing out there to see what happens: It takes guts to do that. I myself often am afraid that the Project Police are going to pop out and say, “What happened to your idea of a Minecraft group? Shame on you for proposing it and not completing that project! You are not allowed any more ideas until you show us you can carry that one out.”

Sound ridiculous? Of course it is, but does it sound familiar to you as well? If it does, go out and buy yourself some spaghetti, tape and marshmallows: The quality of your job, relationship and life may depend on it.

Interested in setting up a consult for your practice? I have some openings come March. Like this post? I can speak in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: addiction, behavior change, buddhism, building your business, children, education, gamers, games, gaming, marshmallows, mindfulness, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, ROI, social justice, technology, therapy, video games, Web 2.0

No Matter How You Feel, You Still Failed

January 14, 2014 by langloimsw 4 Comments

Psychotherapists are often people who prefer to deal with feelings in their workings with people. Feelings are important, and being empathically attuned to how patients are feeling is equally important. We are taught to explore the patient’s feelings, imagine ourselves into their lived experience, and validate that experience.

This is often where we become disconnected from other professionals we collaborate with, such as educators. Be it Pre-K or graduate school, educators are charged with working with students to learn and grow as a whole person. It’s not that they aren’t concerned with feelings, they just can’t get hung up on them to the exclusion of everything else.

To be fair, psychotherapy has a long history of taking a broader view on the individual as well. A famous psychoanalyst, Winnicott, once responded to a patient of his who was expressing feelings of hopelessness by saying something to the effect of “sometimes when I am sitting with you I feel hopeless too, but I’m not going to let that get in the way of continuing to work with you.”

But often in the past decade or two, feelings have held sway over everything. Students don’t complete their assignments because they felt overwhelmed and still expect to pass the course. Adults feel emotionally exhausted and miss work or are late to it. Children feel angry at the injustice of chores and don’t do them but still want their allowance.

A criticism I often hear toward video games is that they encourage people to believe that they can always just reset, do over and have another shot. But implicit in this criticism is the fact of something I feel video games actually do better than many of us sometimes: They acknowledge the reality of failure.

When we play video games, we are failing 80% of the time. Failing in the sense of Merriam Webster’s definitions including:

to not succeed : to end without success
to not do (something that you should do or are expected to do)
to fall short <failed in his duty>
to be or become absent or inadequate
to be unsuccessful

In video games the reality of this is driven home to us by a screenshot:

You can feel any way you’d like about it, angry, sad, annoyed, blase, frustrated with a touch of determination. But no matter how you feel you still failed.

In life outside games, many of us have a hard time accepting the reality principle when it comes to failing at something. We think we can talk, think, or feel our way out of failing to meet expectations. My own predilection is that of a thinker, which is probably why I became a psychodynamic psychotherapist and educator. I often waste a lot of time trying to think (or argue) myself into a new reality, which just boils down to not accepting the reality principle. I notice the same with patients, colleagues and students, who miss deadlines, avoid work, come late to class and then try their best to think or feel their way out of it.

The first class each semester I tell my students, who are studying to be social workers and psychotherapists, that the most frequent complaint I get as an instructor is “I feel put on the spot by him.” I assure them that this is a valid feeling and actually reflects the reality that I will put each and every one of them on the spot. I will ask them tough questions, I will point out that they are coming late to class, I will disagree with ideas that seem erroneous to me. Because if they think it is ok to be late or avoid thinking through a problem or confrontation in class, how in the world will they ever be a decent psychotherapist or social worker? If the single mother you are working with wants to know how to apply for WIC, and you say you feel put on the spot by her question, that is a valid feeling AND you are useless to her. If your therapist was 15 minutes late every week I hope you’d fire him. And when you are conducting a family session and someone discloses abuse it is unprofessional to say “I’m feeling overwhelmed and sad right now, can you ask somebody else to go next?”

These sort of disconnects doesn’t happen overnight. It comes from years of being enabled by well-intentioned parents and yes, mental health providers who focus on feelings to the exclusion of cognition and behavior, and worse, try to ensure that their children grow to adulthood feeling a constant sense of success. When I hear self psychology-oriented folks talk it is almost always about mirroring and idealizing, and never about optimal frustration. And I suspect that this is because we have become so focused on feelings and success that we are preventing people from experiencing optimal frustration at all.

The novelist John Hersey has said “Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.” We commence to learn because reality has shown us that we lack knowledge or understanding. That’s the good news. We’ve woken up! In this light I regard video games as one of the most consistent learning tools available to us. When that fail happens and that screen goes up you can try to persuade it to cut you some slack, flatter or bully it, weep pleadingly for it to change to a win, but no matter how you feel, you still failed. And because that reality is so starkly there, and because the XBox or PS3/4 doesn’t get engaged in your drama, that feeling will eventually dissipate and you will either try again, or give up.

Because that is in a lot of ways the conflict we’re trying to avoid isn’t it? We want to avoid looking reality square in the face and taking responsibility for what comes next. We want to keep the feelings flowing, the drama going, and we are willing to take entire groups of people and systems with us. If we are lucky they put their feet down, but more often then not they want to avoid conflict too, and the problem just continues.

So here’s a confession: I have failed at things. I have ended a task without success. I have not done things I was expected to do. I have fallen short, been inadequate and been unsuccessful at stuff. And nobody took away my birthday. I’m still around doing other things, often iterations of the previous failures, quite successfully.

If you are a parent or educator please take a lesson from video games. Start saying “Game Over” to those in your care sometimes. If they can try again great. If they want to read up on some strategy guides or videos to learn how to do it better, awesome. But please stop capitulating to their desire to escape reality on the illusory lifeboats of emotional expression, rationalization or verbal arguments. As Mrs. Smeal says in “Benny and Joon,” “when a boat runs ashore, the sea has spoken.” Reality testing is probably the most important ego function you can help someone develop, please don’t avoid opportunities to do so.

Nobody likes to experience failure, I know it feels awful. But to move through it to new realizations can be very liberating, and in time become more easily bearable. And I truly believe that success without past failures feels pretty hollow. When I play through a video game from start to finish without a fail I don’t feel like a winner. I feel cheated.

Like this post? I can speak in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: addiction, adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, building your business, children, digital literacy, education, ego psychology, failure, Freud, gamers, games, gaming, Kohut, mindfulness, minecraft, optimal frustration, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, reality testing, ROI, self psychology, social justice, social work, stress, technology, therapy, video games

The Changing Landscape of Social Work

November 17, 2013 by langloimsw Leave a Comment

Recently I had the great opportunity to be a scholar-in-residence at The University at Buffalo’s School of Social Work. For three days I met with students, faculty and staff to speak about emerging technologies ranging from Twitter to video games. During one morning, Dean Nancy Smyth and I sat down for a series of informal discussions around various topics, and the University was kind enough to let me share these videos with you. If you want to learn more about how I can come to your institution to do the same thing, please contact me.

How to Use Social Media and Technology to Develop a Personal Learning Network:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zb74jYN0k5Y&feature=share&list=UUQG8usDJjq8OjMgtNDQC6fg

If I Don’t Use Social Media and Technology in Social Work Practice What Am I Missing?

Social Work is Changing: Integrating Social Media and Technology Into Social Work Practice

http://youtu.be/FQWUMTxXVus

Like this post? I can speak in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, building your business, digital literacy, education, facebook, gamers, marketing, mental health parity, minecraft, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social justice, social media, technology, therapy, twitter, video games, Web 2.0

Saving Ideas

July 9, 2013 by langloimsw 2 Comments

Sometime, over 40,000 years ago, someone decided to put images of human hands on the cave pictured above. It turned out to be a good idea. This painting has given scientists information on life in the Upper Paleolithic, raised questions about the capacity of Neandrathal man to create art, and sparked debate about which species in the homo genus created it. Other later cave paintings depict other ideas: Bulls, horses, rhinoceros, people.

I wasn’t there in the Paleotlithic but I doubt that the images we are seeing in caves were the first ones ever drawn. I imagine that drawing images in sand and other less permanent media happened. I suspect that the only reason we have cave paintings is because at some point somebody decided they wanted to be able to save their idea, to keep it longer or perhaps forever.

Every day, 7 billion of us have untold numbers of ideas. So what makes a person decide that an idea is worth saving? What makes us pause and make a note in our Evernote App or Moleskine journal? What inspires us to make a video of our idea on YouTube or write a book? We can’t always be sure that an idea is a “good” one or even what the criteria for a good idea is. It usually comes down to belief.

In the past several centuries, the ability to save ideas was relegated to the few who were deemed skillful or divinely inspired. Books were written in monasteries, then disseminated by printing presses, and as ideas became easier to save, more people saved them. But, and this is very important, saving an idea doesn’t make it a good idea, just a saved one. Somewhere along the line we began to get the notion that only a few select people were capable of having a good idea, because only a few select people were capable of saving them. Even in the 21st century, many mental health professionals and educators cling to the notion that peer-reviewed work published in journals is the apex of quality. If it is written, if it was saved by a select few it must be a good idea. If you have any doubt of what I’m talking about just Google “DSM V.”

With each leap in human technology comes the power to save more ideas and then spread them. People who talk about things going viral often forget that an idea has to be saved first, and that in essence something going viral is really a form of society saving an idea. If anything, technology has improved the democratization of education and ideas.

This makes many of us who grew up in an earlier era nervous and frustrated. We call the younger generation self-absorbed rather than democratizing. We grumble, “what makes you think you should blog about your day, take photos of your food, post links to cute kitten videos?” We may even take smug self-satisfaction that we aren’t contributing to the static. I think that’s a bad idea, although it clearly has been saved from earlier times.

40,000 years from now, our ideas may take on meanings we never anticipated, like cave drawings. Why were kittens so important to them? In the long view I think we remember that people have to believe they have an good idea before they take the leap of faith to save it. The citizens of the future may debate who saved kitten videos and why, but it will be taken as given that they must have been important to many of us.

What if everyone had the confidence to believe that they had an idea worth saving? What if everyone had the willingness to believe that it just might be possible that their idea was brilliant? Each semester I ask the students in my class to raise their hand if they think they can get an A- or higher in the class, and most do. Then I ask them to raise their hand if they think they can come up with in an idea in this class that could change the world. I’ve never had more than 3 hands go up. That’s sad.

This is why I admire the millennials and older groups who take advantage of social media and put their ideas out there. I doubt that they are all good ideas, but I celebrate the implicit faith it takes to save them. Anyone, absolutely anyone at all, can have a good idea. It may not get recognized or appreciated, but now more than ever it can get saved. Saving an idea is an act of agency. It is a political act. Saving an idea is choosing to become just a bit more visible. On the most basic level saving an idea is a celebration and affirmation of the self. Think about that, and dare to jot down, draw, record or otherwise save one of your ideas today. I just did and it feels great. Then maybe you can even share it with someone else.

What makes a person decide an idea is worth saving?

You do.

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Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: activism, adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, building your business, cave paintings, children, digital literacy, education, facebook, gamers, gaming, ideas, LGBT, marketing, mindfulness, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, saving, self-promotion, social justice, social media, technology, twitter, video games, Web 2.0

10 Nonviolent Video Games

June 17, 2013 by langloimsw 4 Comments

Sometimes mental health providers, parents and educators get so caught up in the debate about video games and violence that we imagine all video games have violent content. They don’t.

So when I am feeling proactive (like now) I point out that there are dozens of nonviolent video games. In this case, I’ll give you a rundown of some of my favorites available on smartphones and/or tablets. You may ask, “Mike, how do you find all of these games?” I find them for free in several places, and you can too! One place in the real world is a certain coffee chain we all know and love which often has App of the Day cards to try for free. Another good source of freebies is App Gratis. App Gratis has 1-2 daily deals on free apps for iPhone, iPad, and Android. The app itself is free, so download it as soon as you are ready to go bargain hunting.

Without further ado, here are some games I’m enjoying lately:

1. Puzzlejuice

Ok, so the tag line is violent: Puzzlejuice is billed as a game “that will punch your brain in the face.” But there’s no punching or violence beyond that blurb. Puzzlejuice combines the spatial skills of Tetris with the wordplay of Scrabble. You rotate blocks to line up 3 or more blocks of one color, which turns them into letters. Spell words with the letters by dragging your finger across them and the blocks disappear. Sound simple? Please come back and comment on this post once you’ve tried it, heh.

2. Circadia

Circadia is all about timing and pace. The graphics are simple enough, where you try to tap expanding rings in order to time their intersection with a dot and other rings. But this game is all about impulse control, patience and learning from your mistakes. Different colors and musical tones indicate different speeds of ring expansion, and once you are through the tutorial you find yourself timing 3 or more rings, dots that move, and increasingly complicated sequences.

3. Denki Blocks!

This is a perennial favorite of mine. Move blocks with the swipe of your finger to connect all of the same color, avoiding obstacles that will get you stuck. Add to that timer challenges, special shapes and bonus mystery rounds and you have a simple, playful puzzle game that will challenge you for hours.

4. Ticket To Ride

Based on the German-style board/card game, you can now play TTR on your smartphone or tablet. TTR combines strategy, planning and blocking other players as they race to build train routes connecting different cities in the US, Europe or “Legendary Asia.” Play against the computer or online with other players, and if you’re feeling social, the built in chat feature allows you to chat with other players between turns.

5. Hundreds

Who would have thought a black and white (ok, and gray and red) game could be so beautiful and elegant? The website explains the basic premise of the game, but just dive right into the tutorial like I did and see what it’s like to learn a game from within it. Did I mention how beautiful it is? 🙂 Minimalists take note..

6. Tilt World

Playful, but with a strong ecological message, this offering from game designer and thought leader Nicole Lazzaro makes use of the smartphone or tablet’s accelerometer to make Flip the tadpole help fight the Blight that has affected Shady Glen by eating carbon and planting seeds. The game is tied to a real world impact: For each milestone of player points in the world, more trees get planted in Madagascar. More than 10,000 trees have been planted to date, and players can see a real-world impact calculator here.

7. Carcassonne

Based on the classic tile game, Carcassonne is a game of building medieval towns, castles and monasteries. Build your cities, place your Meeples, and try to get the most points by the end of the game. Best part, you can share points with other players, so the game is about strategic alliances as well as blocking another player’s move. Play by yourself or on networked multiplayer. Note to therapists: The basic game can usually be played in the 10 minutes between sessions, just sayin’..

8. Osmos

If you like your games with ambience and an organic dreamlike quality, try this one out. In Osmos you play a single cell Mote who jets around and absorbs smaller motes to become the biggest cell on the block. But be careful, because the jet propelling you is made by expelling your own matter, so the farther you go the smaller you get! This game emphasizes patience and planning over speedy acquisition. Accompanied by some great electronic music.

9. Flower Chain

I disagree with the developer Joybean describing this as “a beautiful game for girls,” and exhort you to play this game regardless of gender! Tap on one of the small floating buds to cause a flower to burst open, touch a nearby bud and start a chain reaction. Easy when the early levels only require you to hit 2-3 flowers, but when you have to get a chain reaction of 50, choose where and when you tap carefully!

10. Nintai 2

The Japanese term “nintaii” means “patience, perseverance, or endurance,” and you’ll need it to get through all 100 levels of this puzzle. Flip a rectangular block through a 3-D platform landscape to get to the end of the maze. Each level is accompanied by trippy music and seemingly random titles like “Joy,” “Bravery,” and “Wealth.” This game has a high “Huh?” factor, but is a compelling experience and best of all, non-violent.

Versions of these games range from free to $9.99 for most smartphones and tablets, and nothing is shot or slashed, not even watermelon (sorry, Fruit Ninja.) Many of these games emphasize one or more social and cognitive skills, from cooperation to word-building to problem solving and impulse control. But don’t let that discourage you–have fun!

Have a favorite non-violent game? Let us know below!

Like this post? I can speak in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: activism, adolescents, android, behavior change, buddhism, children, digital literacy, gamers, games, gaming, ipad, iphone, nonviolent games, pacifism, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychotherapy, smartphone, social justice, social media, technology, therapy, video games

Want To Help Stop Youth Cyberbullying? Let Your Kids Raid More.

May 23, 2013 by langloimsw 7 Comments

The above title is misleading. In fact it is as misleading as the term cyberbullying, which is an umbrella term used from experiences which range drastically. “Cyberbullying” has been used to describe the humiliation of LGBT youth via video; the racial hatred of Sikhs on Reddit, the systematic harassment and suicide of a teenage girl by a neighboring peer’s mother; a hoax wherein a Facebooker pretended to be a woman’s missing (for 31 years); and the bad Yelp reviews of a restauranteur in AZ.

Wait, huh?

My point, exactly: All of the things described above are different in scope, intentionality, form of media used, duration, and impact. We need to keep this complicated. This is not to take away from the horrific acts that people have perpetuated with social media, or excuse them. Rather I think we need to help kids and their parents find more nuanced ways to make sense of the way newer technologies are impacting us.

Social media amplifies ideas, feelings, and conflicts. It often dysregulates family systems. Growing up, many family members didn’t need to learn the level of digital literacy that today’s world requires. Parents may be tempted to put their children in a lengthy or permanent internet lockdown. I hear the threats, or read them, all the time: No screens. You’re unplugged. She’s grounded from Facebook.

Please don’t do that.

I’ve worked with a number of young adults who have had the experiences of being on the receiving end of hatred, stalking, harassment and intrusion delivered via the internet. And thank goodness that their parents didn’t unplug them as kids. Because they stayed online they got to:

learn how to ignore haters
see/hear others stand up for them in a social media setting
come to the defense of a peer themselves
increase their ability to meet verbal aggression with cognition
make the hundreds of microdecisions about whether to “fight this battle”
seek out support from other peers
form strong online communities and followings that helped them cope with and marginalize the aggressors

More and more, online technologies are becoming a prevalent form of communication, and to take away access is to remove the hearing and voice of youth. To do this is disempowerment, not protection.

I’ve said before that parents need to take an engaged approach with kids in order to be there to help kids understand and process the conflicts that are communicated through and amplified by social media. But this time I want to go further, and suggest that one way to help kids achieve digital literacy in terms of social skills is to let them play more multiplayer video games.

Many of you probably saw that coming, but for those of you who didn’t, let me explain. 21st century video games are themselves a powerful form of social media. Multiplayer games allow individuals to band together as guilds, raids, platoons and other groups to achieve higher endgame goals. Collaboration is built into them as part of the fun and as necessary to meet the challenges.

There are exceptions to this, but it has been my experience that people don’t begin systematic personal attacks on each other when they are in the middle of downing Onyxia. They are too busy joining forces to win. I am convinced that much hatred we see in the developed world is there in large part because of boredom and apathy. Games provide an alternative form of engagement to hatin’

Look, I’m not saying that people playing games never say sexist things, swear, or utter homophobic comments. But I can say that I have heard more people, adults and children, stand up to hatred in World of Warcraft than I ever have in the 2 decades I worked in public school settings. I’ve seen racism confronted numerous times in guild chat, seen rules for civility created and enforced over and over, always citing a variation of the same reason: “We’re all here to have fun, so please keep the climate conducive to that.”

Video games provide powerful interactive arenas for diverse groups of people to collaborate or compete strategically. They capture our interest with a different sort of drama than the sort that we see our youth struggle with in other settings. In fact, for many individuals video games provide a welcome respite from the drama that occurs in those other settings.

Social media does indeed amplify nastiness, harassment and hatred. It also amplifies kindness, hope, generosity and cooperation. If we don’t lean into social media with our kids, they’ll never know how to use it to amplify goodness in the world. Worse yet, if we cut them off from connecting with the world online we’ll deprive them of the necessary opportunities to recognize and choose between good and evil.

Like this post? I can speak in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info. And, for only $4.99 you can buy my book. You can also Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, children, cyberbullying, digital literacy, education, facebook, game theory, gamers, games, gaming, LGBT, mindfulness, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social justice, social media, technology, therapy, twitter, video games, Web 2.0, World of Warcraft

Nice Everything You Have There: Mindful Minecraft

March 13, 2013 by langloimsw 4 Comments

Did you know that Minecraft has a lot to teach us about how we pay attention to, get distracted from, and cope with things? Embedded in the design and the lore of the game are nuggets of philosophy, neuroscience, and psychology. From work/life balance to physical and mental health to the meaning of life Minecraft has something to teach us.

That’s why I decided to present on mindfulness and Minecraft this year at SXSW. If you were there, thanks for coming, but if you weren’t fret not, for David Smith of Austin, TX was kind enough to videotape the event on his iPhone. David, thanks for your stamina! The video is broken into 5 parts, and I’ll include the prezi for you to play with as well:

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Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, avatar, behavior change, buddhism, children, creeper, digital literacy, education, game theory, gamers, games, gaming, mindfulness, minecraft, Minecraft Pocket Edition, play, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social justice, social media, stress, sxsw, technology, therapy, video games, Web 2.0, Xbox

On The Importance Of Feeling Useless

November 7, 2012 by langloimsw 1 Comment

Recently I was being trounced in a game of Call Of Duty 3: Modern Warfare 3. Not only was I having a difficult time understanding the lingo and mechanics of the game, the controls for this first person shooter were bewildering to me. I found myself staring down at the controller more than at the screen. Why couldn’t I remember what the A button did? Over the course of the week, I was also informed that Halo 4, Assassin’s Creed, and Paper Mario: Sticker Star are also here or on the horizon.

I wasn’t sure when I was going to find the time to try all of these. I was already behind. Skyrim had new DLC, Minecraft had different updates for both PC and the XBox 360 versions, and the Secret World and Guild Wars 2 had both been preempted by the latest World of Warcraft : Mists of Pandaria expansion. And what about Salem? I had gotten a beta key for that, didn’t that make me obligated to try a little more? And I won’t even go into the iPad and iPhone games, but Baldur’s Gate was just 3 weeks away…

I write all this because I have found that readers and colleagues often assume that because gaming is an area of clinical practice and focus of mine, that I am up on all of the latest games. If you have been imagining that I always know what every MMO gamer is talking about, or can jive with adolescents about the finer points of COD: MW3 (Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3) and how it differs from Max Payne, you are in for a rude awakening.

I can relate to every therapist who has sat with a patient and said no repeatedly to “Do you know about” questions involving video games. I can relate to every colleague with thumbs of lead who plays with (against) their patients on XBox. I too struggle against the countertransference urge to display my “hipness.” And boy am I tempted sometimes to throw up my hands and say I am so over the latest thing.

But I don’t throw up my hands because I recognize that it is a defense against feeling useless. Who wants to feel slow, clumsy, behind the times? Feeling useless coincides with feeling powerless, devoid of meaning or hope, and isolation. For me, that feeling of uselessness is touching the water’s bottom: It’s where I kick off. Uselessness is almost always the feeling that precedes determination for me and the moment when I am closest to getting going again. Here are just a few reasons why feeling useless can be important:

1. Feeling useless reminds me of how my patients often feel. Regardless of age, gender or walk of life, I have sat with people who experience feelings of utter uselessness. Most kids feel useless in school at one point or another. Adults tend to embrace amnesia when it comes to remembering how dumb education can make you feel before you feel smart. They have forgotten what it was like to be called last for the kickball team, or draw and erase and draw until your paper ripped. And the population of Baby Boomers can feel useless as they sense the impatiences of their younger colleagues in the workplace: You talk too slow, drive too slow, and why don’t you just retire? Meanwhile, younger adults send out resume after resume and spend more hours in sweatpants as they feel that they and their education are both useless. Parents send their children off to college and experience the empty nest, or send them off to war and experience a more terrifying version of uselessness. We need to remember how it feels to be useless if we are going to stay empathically attuned to our patients.

2. To recognize that you are feeling useless is to begin to wake up. At least it can be, because the sense of being useless is completely irrational. There is nobody, not one person on the planet who has nothing to give of themselves. There is no such thing as a useless person, it is a cognitive distortion. And the minute we recognize that distortion we can begin to use our observing ego to ask ourselves “who is this who is telling me I am useless?” Whoever it is, the media, a parent, an old tape running in our head, or all of the above, it is just wrong. And that’s ok, because we’ve been wrong before, and now that we know it we can begin to gently guide our thinking back to a more rational place. If this sounds like meditation, that’s probably because it is.

3. To feel useless is only a feeling. Sure feelings are important, and a powerful part of human experience. But they are only one part of human experience. Thinking and behavior are two other parts. We can use feeling useless to motivate ourselves. We can use it as a barometer for our overall mental health. We can also use it as a defense to stay stuck, or to attempt to elicit pity from others. There are all sorts of ways we can use a feeling, and they aren’t all necessarily, well, useful. Or we can just sit still for a bit, because being just a feeling, feeling useless will float by and be replaced by another feeling, and another and another…

So if you are a therapist, and you notice yourself feeling useless, you are one step closer to coming to your senses. You can become more mindful of how unpleasant the feeling is, and mindful of how your patient may feel when they experience it. You can remember it is only a feeling, and become curious about it and why it is coming up. And you can consciously decide how to use it or cope with it, rather than unconsciously act out in response to it.

To return to my video game example, here’s how I used it. I noticed the feeling and said to myself, “That’s how my patients experience themselves sometimes.” From there I went on to think, “That’s how the therapists I consult with about technology experience themselves sometimes.” Interesting information, and it helped me pause a moment more. And when I sat with it more it occurred to me that there was some symbolic content that had come up in a session recently that I’d overlooked. And then it occurred to me to write this blog, and as I wrote the first paragraph I remembered how video games are a form of social media, and how my friend Susan Giurleo often reminds me that we don’t need to be on every single platform of it to be technically savvy. From that stream of consciousness, and more importantly, from my feeling of uselessness, came this post. And I have no doubt that at least a few of my colleagues will find it useful, which totally debunks the useless Mike theory.

What about you? What has elicited a feeling of uselessness for you lately? What is that feeling about, and what are you going to do with it?

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Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, Assassin's Creed, behavior change, buddhism, call of duty, children, education, gamers, games, gaming, Halo, mindfulness, minecraft, Pandaria, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social media, technology, video games, World of Warcraft

When Wallflowers Attack

July 13, 2012 by langloimsw 10 Comments

Back in graduate school, my group therapy professor once said to me, “early risk-takers are often scapegoated by the group.” This comment came on the heels of yours truly taking a risk in the group, a group of psychotherapists in training. I learned two things in that group class on that day. The first was that early risk-takers are often scapegoated. The second was that we therapists can be just as cruel with our comments as anyone else.

This is something that many of my supervisees encounter when they start to put themselves out there, especially on the interwebs. They are stunned when the blog post they write elicits comments that are sometimes shocking in their nastiness. They are confused as to why this happens, and what to do about it. If you are beginning to use social media to build your psychotherapy practice, write newsletters, prepare a public speaking campaign or just write a blog, this post is for you.

The internet has made it easier to be both impulsive and anonymous, and emboldened some people to hurl invectives. I call these people the wallflowers. These are the people in any given group who are afraid to take risks or stand out, and resent those who are brave enough to do so. They are quietly resentful, and more often than not envious of people who are not quiet. I’m not talking about introverts here, but rather a particular group who stand on the sidelines seething.

These are the people who send you a nasty email at 2:00 AM criticizing your post for a spelling error, or the folks who text really ugly comments to you after you post something on a listserv they don’t like. They’re the people who make personal attacks on your workshop evaluation in the guise of constructive criticism, or bait you in discussion groups by deliberately misconstruing your words. Yes, I’m not making this stuff up, all of these things and worse have come at me by email, Twitter, Facebook, blog comment, and text message. The majority of the time it will be behind the scenes of whatever arena you’re in, so that you can see it and the larger group can’t. Consciously or unconsciously, wallflowers are counting on you not passing these barbs on to the larger group. Nobody likes a tattletale.

So what do you do about them?

First, take a second and calm down, and note that the intensity of your response is probably an indicator that this is out of the ordinary. Next, try to find a trusted friend or family member that you feel comfortable sharing it with, and ask them what they make of it. Supervisors are often really helpful here. Often they will react more strongly then you did, which gives you another clue its a wallflower attack. Your inclination may be to try to learn something from the comment. I’m going to say something that may go against the therapist grain here–Dismiss the comment and the wallflower. Don’t bother trying to make this into a growth opportunity, there are plenty of other growth opportunities out there for you. Don’t give this your energy.

In my experience this is very hard to do, because therapist wallflowers have a lot of skills to hook you. They bring their therapeutic arsenal and try to come at you as a therapist, by analyzing or interpreting you. Don’t fall for it. Just because you both speak the same language doesn’t mean you have to have a conversation with them. Therapy is a specialized and voluntary form of conversation, and anyone who tries to inflict this on you unasked is using their Jedi therapy powers for ill.

This is your reminder.

This is the price you will have to pay for being an innovator and a risk taker. Early risk takers are often scapegoated. You didn’t do anything wrong, you were just putting yourself out there. And every time you do that, you will run the risk of a wallflower attack. Don’t overprocess it, move on. And definitely don’t let it stop you. Remind yourself that the reason they had anything to attack you about is because you’re doing something they wish they could, creating. Anyone can ping off a blog post, or fire off a Tweet in reaction, but it will only be a reaction, not a standalone.

Remind yourself that your ideas are precious. I’m not trying to sound New Agey here. What I mean is that the fact that you had something to put out there is not to be taken for granted or underestimated. You could have not had the inspiration for that workshop or podcast, but you had it. All over the world there are people who have not given awareness to ideas, throughout history millions of good ideas have never been expressed or seen the light of day. Not you. You did it! And if you stop taking risks the wallflowers win, and the prize is one less idea in the world. Yippee.

I know this can be hard to do, trust me. And the technology we have today has made it even easier for wallflowers to attack. It’s sort of like that sense of invincibility drivers get when they are encased in the protection of their cars. Shake it off. Share it with someone you trust for perspective. Dismiss it. Stay focused. You can take time to smell the roses, but don’t get distracted by the wallflowers.

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Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: buddhism, building your business, facebook, mindfulness, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, self-promotion, social media, twitter, Web 2.0

Technology and Time Management: Some Simple Tips

June 2, 2012 by langloimsw Leave a Comment

Sometimes people get the impression from my presentations, book, or this blog that I think that there is no such thing as too much use of video games, social media & technology, so let me set the record straight. I do think that there is such a thing as problem usage. One of the first questions I get when I speak to therapists, educators or parents usually is, “how much time spent playing video games, texting, or using Facebook is too much?” The concern is real and understandable, but the problem is the way the question is framed.

Other than sleep, and maybe meditation, I can’t think of any activity that is good to do for 8 hours straight on a regular basis. Nothing, not gaming, sitting on an airplane, playing hopscotch, calisthenics, drinking alcohol or water, studying, or mowing the lawn, will be without adverse effects if you do it constantly for 8 hours straight. What makes most things problematic is not the quantity of time, but the quality of your life as a result of the usage. If you were to play hopscotch for any length of time such that it lost you your job, ruined your school performance, jeopardized your relationships with loved ones, or made you feel more negatively about yourself, those qualitative concerns are what would make it problematic. That said, another qualitative factor in determining whether using technology has become problematic for you can be its impact on your time management skills.

I strongly suspect that people have had time management challenges for as long as there have been sundials. And we do know from history that each introduction of a new technology is followed by an exponential increase in its use, which in turn creates feelings of overwhelm. And these feelings of being overwhelmed are what necessarily precede our developing the mental, physical and technological skills to manage the new use. The earliest known book indexes showed up about 150 years after the printing press, and were preceded by 50 years of increasing overwhelm as Europe’s book collection grew from approximately 30,000 to over 20 million. (And no doubt, even as knowledge and the arts grew so rapidly, there were members of the population who had little interest in learning to read, and would have criticized time wasted reading that could have been put to better use, like tilling the fields or baking bread.)

So here we are again, with a proliferation of technology and the demonization, confusion, and yes, real problems that come with it. Two years ago the average amount of time adults in the U.S. spent online was 13 hours excluding email, and with the advent of the iPad it has undoubtedly increased from there. Fortunately, people are starting to talk about ways to reflect on the way we use technology, such as Howard Rheingold in his new book, Net Smart. Which is important, because we’ve passed the point where using technology is optional, at least if you want to live and work in the U.S. So here are a few tips I thought I’d pass on that I and people I work with have found helpful in learning to how to manage your time and tech use:

First, figure out what thing is the most time suck for you, because it varies. For some people it is going on Facebook, for others it’s gaming. Personally, I don’t think I spend more than 30 minutes a week on Facebook, because it isn’t my “thing.” On the other hand, I need to do something about the 2,500 unread emails in my box.
Next, drill down into that technology and figure out what particular elements are taking up the most time. Saying “I spend hours on Facebook or Google+” is pretty meaningless, because these platforms have such varied functionality. Are you on FB chatting? Reading updates? Playing Farmville? Take a few minutes to reflect on what you do and how much time it tends to consume.
Consider Chunking. Remember how I said my email was my biggest time suck? When I really feel overwhelmed, I begin setting aside a couple of 30 minute blocks to read carefully and respond thoughtfully to emails.
If you’re a therapist, I suggest you take a lesson from your voicemail, and begin using an auto-responder. They are pretty universally available through either your webmail settings or your software. I do think we have a responsibility to our patients to let them know that their message has been received, and told that if this is an emergency they should not wait for a reply, but go to the ER or call 911.
Peter Bregman, a blogger for the Harvard Business Review, makes the excellent suggestion of having two lists for your day. The first one lists the things you need to pay attention to that day. The second one is lists the things you need NOT to pay attention to. Many of us have a really hard time making priorities. We think that everything needs to be attended to, and sure, if you put something on the NOT list, you will miss out on something. It doesn’t feel good or easy to set priorities, because that is the nature of prioritizing.
To the above lists, I suggest that you apply my own (non-patented) Postit Rule. Quite simply, the Postit Rule is that any list needs to fit legibly on a regular sized Postit, or be shortened. If I cannot print the items on my list legibly on one side of a postit, then more things need to go on the “NOT attending to” list. Experience has proven that if I don’t do this I won’t get everything done anyway, because even though “dither and complain about how busy I am” never shows up on either list, it somehow seems to consume a lot of time.
For gamers who are having a hard time logging off, I suggest a PostIt that is taped up to the edge of your monitor saying something like “Just win? Maybe now’s a good time to log off.”
For gamers who are interested in doing some self-reflection, I suggest you do this experiment: Keep a pad and pen near the place you’re playing. Tell yourself (and others if you’re grouped) that you are going to log off the next fail, not as a rage quit, but as an exercise. Then, when you lose, log off and spend 10-15 minutes writing down the thoughts, feelings, and impressions that come up immediately after a fail. Does it feel infuriating to lose? Urgent? Funny? A relief? What thoughts do you catch running through your mind? After you’ve reflected a minute, put it away, but take it out and reread it an hour later and a day later. What do you think of it now?

You may have noticed that the above strategies don’t depend for the most part on advanced technology, but rather putting tangible reminders in your field of vision during the day.

That said, there are several apps and sites that may help you get a handle on your time as well:

If you surf a lot, consider using a news aggregator. One Howard Rheingold recommends is NetVibes, which is very customizeable. I find it a little too overwhelming, and I surf mostly on my iPad rather than a desktop, so I use the App Flipboard. It has a nice intuitive interface and allows me to read and share material very easily from within it. Or you can try Google’s Feedburner or FeedDemon.
If you haven’t tried Evernote yet, especially on the latest iPhone, you are missing out on another good time-saver for non-confidential sorts of info. Evernote stores your notes, lists, pictures, and webpages so you can access them on any computer. It makes what you save searchable, and best of all IMHO in the latest iPhone you can dictate notes. If you’re a student or work with students, I recommend StudyBlue as well.

These are just some of the things out there that can help you achieve more mindfulness and organization. Because in my opinion the hours counting and addiction labeling is dodging the real issue, how to increase our own mental abilities to become self-reflective and intentional in our use of technology. Notice what you are attending to, increase the space between thinking and doing, and I’ll bet you find yourself a better gamer, blogger, worker, student, or other user of technology.

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book. I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: addiction, adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, digital literacy, education, evernote, facebook, feedburner, Google+, mindfulness, psychology, psychotherapy, social media, technology, time management, video games, Web 2.0

Optimism

April 21, 2012 by langloimsw 11 Comments

This week I had the opportunity to meet with a group of college students who are on academic probation. There were supposed to be over 20 in the class, and 10 showed up, 5 late. One of the the things I was struck by initially was how subdued they were, and I suppose I can’t blame them. The class they are in, on how to succeed in school, meets twice a week in different locations at the college, half the time in a basement computer lab even though they won’t be using the computers. If they don’t pass this class they are out of the school altogether. There was something discouraging about the whole setup.

When I asked them how many of them played video games, they all did. Most of them had played their favorite game as recently as this past week. And when I went through the room and asked each what they liked playing, I was taken by how for a moment their face would brighten and they’d smile, even make eye contact. Probably the most memorable moment for me came after I shared with them the statistic that 80% of the time we play a video game we are failing at it, and asked them to think with me about why we can tolerate failure so much in video games yet have so little tolerance of failure in other parts of our lives such as school. What was different with a video game?

One student, I’ll call him John, raised his hand and said, “I might win.”

What a sad commentary on what education can do to students who don’t fit a certain mold. Somewhere along the line, John and thousands like him have lost a sense of optimism, a sense that they even have a chance to win at life. And yet, throughout the one and a half hours I was with these students, every one of them participated, had really interesting comments, argued and engaged with me. The last holdout was a guy in the back row. I asked him what he had learned so far today about video games and our discussion.

He sunk a little into his seat, and said, “I’m drawing a blank.”

“Let’s take a minute,” I said, “and let’s assume optimism. Because you can add something to this discussion. I know you can. What have you learned in here today?”

Long pause.

And then he said, “self confidence.”

I should add, and did say to the class then, that we hadn’t even brought up that key concept to academic success yet. If he hadn’t have added it, we might not have ever gotten it into our discussion. Each of them had unique ideas, worthwhile ideas, not all of which we agreed with, but ideas nonetheless.

It takes optimism to risk answering a question in class, start a business, go to therapy, or play a video game. Without optimism we won’t risk trying and failing, and without trying and failing there can be no innovation.

Take a second and think about the world around us. Is it perfect in every way, or would you like some things to change? If you think it is perfect we’re done here.

But if you think that the world can be a better place, for people and all sentient beings, then you’re thinking something needs to change. Maybe you think racism needs to change. Maybe you think poverty and starvation needs to change. Maybe you need to be a better parent or partner, or learn more about something in school. Maybe you want a better job, or want to create a work of art. Maybe you want to better understand what it all means and how to fit in? Maybe you want your daughter to have a better life with more respect, maybe you want your son to have a better future. Maybe you want a war, all war, to stop.

Nothing gets better without change, and risk of failure. But to risk failure we need to think we can win. To fail and try again we need to think we could win this time. Optimism improves resilience and changes our body, according to dozens of studies done by Seligman and other positive psychologists. And optimism can create a more conducive learning environment.

Optimism, in my opinion is not simple delusion, or a brain defect, as some would say. Yes, we might fail, but let’s not let that get in the way of making an effort. Yes there is a lot of suffering and injustice in the world. We’d better get busy.

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book. I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, behavior change, buddhism, building your business, children, education, failure, gamers, gaming, hope, optimism, positive psychology, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, resilience, seligman, social justice, stress, video games

Protect Your Online Privacy: Start Blogging!

February 9, 2012 by langloimsw 8 Comments

Many therapists have lamented about the lack of privacy the internet has created. More to the point in my view, the internet has taken away the veil of secrecy psychotherapy has frequently sought refuge behind. It used to be that the anonymity of large urban areas, or the possibility of a commute to the suburbs insulated therapists from their patients after the analytic hour came to a close. I friend of mine once went for years before discovering that Therapist A, who had referred him to Therapist B when treatment was stymied, was actually married to Therapist B. They did not share last names, but my friend in a moment of high curiosity and low impulse control drove over to Therapist A’s home address and discovered Therapist B’s name there as well. He terminated therapy thereafter.

For myself, I learned that privacy is to a large extent illusory, not from the internet, but from my first job. I worked in a community mental health center on a 13 mile long by 7 mile wide island which was 2 1/2 hours by boat from the mainland. You get used to a diminished sort of privacy on an island. I couldn’t avoid my patients if I wanted to, unless I wanted to avoid the library, most restaraunts, coffeeshops, the beach, or the one movie theater we had in the winter. Nor could I find privacy in limiting the type of work I did there. The Community Mental Health Center was the only one on the island. We were responsible for, and I did, school counseling, Psychiatric hospitalizations (which involved flying with often psychotic people in a Cesna six-seater airplane,) outpatient therapy, Alcohol counseling and DUI classes, drug testing, and court-ordered counseling for domestic violence perpetrators. I can still remember how when a colleague and I went out to dinner at a local pub one night one-third of the people at the bar left. It wasn’t just my privacy that was affected here.

You have a choice in situations like that. You can hide out in your house with a cat and television (which I did at first) or you can start living your life in the community and negotiate boundary crossings on a case by case basis (which I settled upon as my strategy.) I learned to cultivate a sense of never-too-uptight-never-too-relaxed when I was in public. It became second nature in many ways.

When I moved to Cambridge, MA, it felt very anonymous by comparison. But as many practitioners in “The most opinionated zipcode in the US” will tell you, Cambridge is really a village in many ways. I still ran into people, and by this time, technology was becoming more of a factor.

As Thomas Friedman has observed, “The World Is Flat” in the 21st century. Globalization and technology have removed many of the barriers to, and some would say protections from, knowing each other. Our patients can Google us, Yelp hangs up a business page of us whether we like it or not, and are often only one Facebook friend away from connecting with us.

Even if you want to make the poor business decision of staying off the internet in terms of a website, eventually your contributions to the Democratic Party, your address, and notes about you in your alumni magazine are still going to find their way out to the world. We’re all on an island today.

So what can you do? Well, my advice is to start blogging. I know sounds counterintuitive, but it makes sense on a number of levels:

1. Buddhism tells us to move into the places that scare you. We exert so much energy trying to avoid things, find a spot where we can stay safe and stop the awkward and uncomfortable learning process. And yet we ask our patients to do the exact opposite so often: to look underneath those rocks, descend into the depths of the psyche, face their fears. Our obsessive quest for privacy is perhaps not that different.

2. Make the internet work for you. One of the best ways to protect your privacy is to generate a lot of content that you consciously know is public-facing. Google “Mike Langlois, LICSW” for example. Go ahead, I’ll wait. What came up probably is pages of my website, professional picture, Youtube videos, and blog posts. Dig a little deeper and you’ll see me commenting on a few blogs. This is the practice of radical transparency. All of that content was written with all of you in mind, my patients, colleagues, friends, family members, potential coaching clients, high school classmates, potential employers, my future children and grandchildren and the FBI. The way Google and other search engines work, the more content I put out there that is public, the further back any unintentional pieces about me will be. By embracing that the world is flat I have learned to cultivate a style that I can negotiate in my work life while still feeling authentic. And it is great advertising, or fair warning, if you are considering working with me.

3. Radical transparency protects your patient’s privacy as well. Whether we like it or not, therapists are finding themselves on review sites like Yelp. Yes, anyone can post a review, and no, Yelp will not taking it down if you ask. More importantly, your patients might not understand the ramifications for their privacy or PHI if they post a review. Keeley Kolmes has great resources on this, and you are welcome to use my version of her version as well. Take a look:

Notice that half of my allotted space is not advertising, but a direct message to any potential commenters. Rather than hide out and try to get Yelp to take my name down, I have used it as a platform to market my business, model what I feel is ethical professional standards, and provide some information to patients in the spirit of informed consent. Do I want to get bad reviews? Of course not, who does? But that is not an excuse to hide my head in the cybersand.

4. Last, but not least, get over your bad self. Sometimes listening to our colleagues you would get the feeling that they are dealing with the paparazzi, not the public. Sure patients and others may be curious about your life, but really most people in the blogosphere just aren’t that interested. On a good day, my blog gets 200 views, on an amazing day last August I got 689 views. There are 7 billion people on the planet. Feel free to correct my math here but according to my calculations that means on a busy day 0.000009842857142857142% of the people on the planet are checking out my most visible presence on the internet.

Am I saying you should blog for the sake of blogging? No. I am saying that there is a Copernican revolution going on in the 21st century, and therapists need to join it. Rather than avoiding technology and the internet we need to start understanding it and harnessing it. You can be googled whether you like it or not. Yelp doesn’t care about contaminating your transference.

Being professional is about how we rise to the occasion of Web 2.0, not deciding to skip out on the party.

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book. I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: behavior change, blogging, buddhism, building your business, HIPAA, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, social media, Web 2.0

The Uses of Disenchantment

January 12, 2012 by langloimsw 6 Comments

Magic fulfills the wish that we could have powers to be beyond who we sadly suspect we are. As children, magic explains the inexplicable nature of external forces (i.e. parents, teachers, death) and internal ones (unconscious drives, nameless attachments, inconsolable sorrows and consuming rages.)

Anyone who plays WoW, Elder Scrolls, or Dungeons & Dragons, knows that enchanted weapons and armor are valuable items to be gotten. They raise our stats, make us stronger, more intelligent agile, or resistant to harm. They fulfill the wish that we could be more than we are.

That being the case, the profession of Enchanting is a very valuable one to master. To do so is to be able to craft our own items for use or to sell. And to master the skill requires not only enchanting practice, but also the act of disenchantment.

Disenchantment is the breaking down of an enchanted item into its component reagents. In Skyrim this consists of taking the enchanted item and destroying it, which allows you to discover the enchantment. So, for example, if you come across an Iron Battleaxe of Scorching, you have a choice. You can enjoy your new battleaxe which will add fire damage to the physical damage you do using it. Or you can disenchant it, and learn how to imbue any weapon with the ability to do fire damage.

In World of Warcraft disenchanting items is necessary to provide you with the reagents, or raw materials, to do other enchantments. Learning the enchantment is done separately, by training or reading a recipe, but disenchantment is still necessary to break down enchanted items into components you can use for other enchantments. Enchantment operates in the domain of creation and destruction, attachment and loss. I can remember feeling many the hesitation as I was about to take an Epic staff I’d used for months and dissolve into Abyss Crystals. Even though I knew that I was going to get a new weapon with a strong enchantment out of it, disenchantment required sacrafice.

Many patients labor under the illusion that the purpose of therapy is to make you feel good. I have always maintained that that is not true. Therapy is not about making you feel good, but rather about learning how to not to feel good. It’s about learning how to experience and tolerate those unpleasant feelings in a different way than we’ve learned to previously. People abuse substances, food, sex, and yes, occasionally video games because they cannot tolerate feelings that don’t feel “good.” Who wants to feel inconsolable sorrow, thwarted passion, grief, terror, or hopelessness?

And so people come to us wanting symptom reduction, not character building; relief, not the raising of unmentionable wishes and fears to consciousness. At first, we often provide those other things to be sure. A compassionate ear to listen, a calming influence, a holding environment. But in the end, therapists are alchemists and enchanters: Nothing new can be created by our patients without something being destroyed. Something must be given up to create something else.

Consider this: Neurosis is like an enchanted armor that we can no longer use. Maybe we have outgrown it. Maybe it never really fit well but it was the best compromise we could come up with. Maybe it buffed up our strength stats when we really needed more intelligence to play our class effectively. For whatever reason, it is no longer helping us, in fact it has created distress.

Symptom reduction alone won’t solve this problem. It may alleviate our distress for the moment, relieve pain enough to create the “space” between feeling and behavior so that we can begin to do the longer-term work.

That’s where disenchantment comes in. We need to take the item, the neurotic conflict, and break it down into the components that create it. What is the wish and the worry? What causes the guilt? Just what are we so afraid of that we can’t look at it directly?

This doesn’t always have to be painful, and therapists shouldn’t use this as a justification for brutality. But to think that the process of therapy is not going to be uncomfortable and difficult; is not going to take some time and hard work is pretty much delusional. If our enchantments could have gotten us any farther we wouldn’t have given them up. Most addicts and alcoholics would have used longer if they could have. If they could have enjoyed one more binge, party or high, they would have.

Insurance companies love to focus on symptom reduction, and a narrow view of what evidence-based treatment really is. Symptoms are problems to be solved, rather than signposts pointing towards underlying issues. And although this is short-sighted, it is understandable: 10 sessions costs a lot less than weekly sessions. And yet, the most recent research I’ve read indicates that psychodynamic therapy is as effective as CBT and other therapies, and in fact more effective in sustaining longterm change.

Bruno Bettelheim, a psychoanalytic thinker, is perhaps best known for his book The Uses of Enchantment. In it he discusses how the themes of fairy tales often symbolize the real emotional and psychological struggles that children go through. Through the projections of stories, children are able to work through their fears in remote and tolerable ways. In a similar way, Klein speaks of the paranoid-schizoid position where the parent is split into good and bad objects, the fairy godmothers and evil witches of fairy tales.

Disenchantment, from a Kleinian lens, leads to the depressive position. It is where we hopefully get to, despite the depressing name, that point when we realize that people are not either all-good, or all-bad, but both good and bad, nurturing and depriving, gratifying and frustrating. In other words, human. The world seems less magical in some ways, and that is experienced as a loss. Sounds depressing, eh? So what is gained?

There is a practice in Tibetan Buddhism called tonglen. In this form of meditation, you begin by touching the tender spot of whatever is sorrowing or distressing to you. Say you’ve lost your loved one. Allow yourself to feel that grief for a moment, really feel it. What an awful wrenching feeling that is. You may reflect that nobody should have to feel what you’re feeling right now. And yet, all over the world, there are those who have felt that, may be feeling it even as you are right now. So you breathe in, and imagine breathing in all of that grief as if for that moment you could take it into your heart so that nobody else would have to feel it. And then you imagine yourself breathing out comfort and security and everything that is the opposite of grief and suffering to the world and to all those in it who need it. You reverse the cycle of trying to avoid pain and grasp pleasure, and in doing so generate compassion.

That is the use of disenchantment; breaking down our fantasies that we can avoid pain and transmuting it into compassion for others. Imagine if you were to really accept that everyone is human and fallible and mortal. If you were able to walk around tomorrow and remain conscious that everyone you meet is dying, would you treat them in the same way as you did today?

Interested in working with me online or in person? Check out the Gamer Therapy and Work With Me Pages!

And if you want to learn more about gaming and psychotherapy, you can always buy my book…

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: addiction, bettelheim, buddhism, children, disenchantment, enchantment, gamers, gaming, klein, managed care, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, Skyrim, therapy, tonglen, World of Warcraft

Not All Failure Is Epic

December 4, 2011 by langloimsw 5 Comments

In gaming there is a concept known as the “Epic Fail.” Roughly translated this means, a failure so colossal, so unbelievable in its nature, that it will go down in history as epic. Epic failure can be extremely frustrating in the moment, but is almost always funny in retrospect.

Recently I was playing Dark Souls, and I was trying to down two bosses known as the Belltower Gargoyles. Just as you get one down to half health, the other, who likes to breathe fire on you, shows up. Oy. I kept getting killed, which sent me back to a save point, running back up the belltower, and trying again. What kept me going up there was that each time I was surviving a few seconds longer, and each time I was getting the gargoyle’s health down a little more. At one point I started to consistently kill the first gargoyle before the second one finished me off. Finally, through an unbelievable feat of mashing all the buttons, luck, and strategy, I beat them both.

The failure that kept happening was not what I would call Epic Failure. It was certainly what Jane McGonigal et al call fun failure though. It was failure with just enough progress mixed in that I’d say, “Oooh, you’re going to get it,” to the gargoyles and try again. And again. Fun failures in video games are designed to work that way. The game can’t be so hard that the person gives up, but can’t be so easy that you don’t feel challenged. Because if you don’t feel challenged then there is little or no sense of accomplishment.

Heinz Kohut, one of my favorite psychoanalytic thinkers, would probably have a lot to say about video games if he were alive today. Kohut knew that failure was a part of life and human development. In fact, he thought that therapy was full of failure. He talked about empathic failure, when the therapist fails to respond empathically to the patient in some way. Maybe we don’t pay attention enough to a story, or don’t remember something, or start 5 minutes late. These are all parts of the therapist being human, and therefore being unable to stay absolutely in empathic attunement with the patient. This kind of failure is inevitable.

Kohut goes on to say that it is not necessary to deliberately make mistakes and empathically fail our patients, because we are going to do so naturally in the course of our work with them. In fact, to deliberately fail our patients is rather sadistic. But usually we aren’t being sadistic when we forget something, or run late a few minutes, even though the patient may experience it that way.

So first a note to therapists here. In the course of your work with patients you are going to fail a lot. But not all failures are epic. That is not to say that your patients won’t experience it that way. That vacation you’re going on may be an epic failure on your part, as far as they are concerned. Does that mean you cancel your flight plans? Of course not. Our job is initially to help the patient by understanding by empathy the epic nature of our failure from their point of view. We try to imagine ourselves into that moment they are having.

But that doesn’t mean that we stay there. We need to maintain some perspective, have some sense of fun failure, to keep doing our work. By that I don’t mean have fun at our patient’s expense, but rather be able to be lighthearted enough in our introspection to say “Oops, I missed that one,” or “there I go again.” If we can do that we are able to then refocus on the patient. If we instead get sucked into the idea that this is an Epic Fail we will lose all perspective, and actually start focussing on ourselves rather than the patient.

Do you ever say to yourself, “I’m such a bad therapist?” I don’t. Of course, I also don’t say, “I’m such a perfect therapist” either. I do frequently think, “I was not at my best today,” or, “oooh, how come I keep missing that with patients!” This helps me keep perspective so that I can get back in the game as soon as possible.

Whether you are a therapist, a gamer or someone else who is still breathing, chances are that you are failing sometimes. In fact, this time of year with all its’ hype and expectations about being joyful and loving families can make you feel even more like a failure. Some examples of Epic Fail statements that we think consciously or unconsciously include:

I’m a terrible parent.
I’m a terrible daughter/son.
I’m a terrible sex partner.
I’m a terrible worker.
I’m a terrible cook.
I’m a terrible student.

and the list could go on.

If any of those sounds like you, take a moment to reflect. Is this really an Epic Fail? Or are you distorting things? Chances are you are not a perfect parent, child, worker, sex partner, student or anything else. But if you really identify this as an Epic Fail, chances are you are solidifying a form of self-identity rather than accurately appraising yourself.

Why would we do that? Well, one reason is that we learned those messages of Epic Failure as a child. You probably still remember a few failures that can make your stomach churn if you think of them. But as often, I think we grasp on to solid identities, even negative ones, so we can stop working on ourselves. I’m just X, I’m the kind of person who can’t Y, Nobody ever thinks Z about me: These all kill our curiousity about ourselves and help us stay stuck.

Mindfulness is about fun failure. It is about being able to look at ourselves and reflect on ourselves without going to extremes. Mindfulness is about being able to be curious rather than judgmental, having roominess in our minds and souls rather than rigidity. This perspective leads to “Ooooh, I’m going to get that boss down this time.” The other leads to hopelessness.

So try to remember this as the days are getting shorter and tensions may be rising: Not all Failure is Epic. And if we can be right-sized about our failures we can learn from them. We can take an interest in our thoughts, feelings and behaviors rather than judge ourselves. If we catch ourselves saying “what kind of monster I must be to hate Aunt Myrtle,” we can perhaps think, “oops, there I go again. Isn’t it odd/interesting that I feel hatred towards Aunt Myrtle, what’s THAT about?”

Eighty-five percent of the time gamers are failing. And yes some of those are Epic, but the gamer attitude is to view those Epic Failures as moments of camaraderie and learning. In life outside the game, do you treat the Epic Fail that way? Do you seek out others and try to learn from the experience, or do you isolate? There is always some observing ego in the game Epic Fail that is often lacking in our non-game life. And in some ways that is understandable, you can’t always reset in life outside video games.

But consider this: Where there is life there is hope. If this was a true Epic Fail in your life you can still learn from it in time. Failures are inevitable, but with time and perspective they can be instructive as well. In the end I’d say that whether you think you’ve had an Epic Failure or not what matters most is how you move on from it. Who knows, maybe the only real Epic Fail is the one where you give up..

Note: No real Aunt Myrtles were hated in the writing of this post.

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book. I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: behavior change, buddhism, dark souls, education, Kohut, narcissism, private practice, psychoanalysis, psychodynamic, psychology, psychotherapy, video games, World of Warcraft

Radical Transparency

October 9, 2011 by langloimsw 4 Comments

By now you may have read the story of the student in Manchester, NH who was arrested in his school cafeteria by a police officer who lifted him out of his seat, and forced him into a prone position on a table. Another student captured the video, and you can see it and the story here. Although the police handling of the situation was clearly disturbing, even more disturbing are the voices of the teachers caught trying to get the student recording to stop, and then attempted to take the phone away from him. By his report they did make him delete a couple of pictures, but the video went undiscovered until it went viral.

It’s time we get real about transparency in the professional world. My prediction is that the school administration will address this situation by trying to either enforce a no-cell phone policy or create a policy that prohibits the use of electronics on school grounds to record such incidents. I hope they don’t, and use this as an opportunity to open some conversations between school staff, parents, students, and officers. But I will be pleasantly surprised if that happens.

Professionals who work with people “in their care,” be it therapy, education or something else, often cite privacy concerns when it comes to transparency. I’m convinced that the reality is often that they want to protect their privacy as much as if not more than that of their patients. What happens behind closed doors is secret.

Remember that phrase “you’re only as sick as your secrets?”

Other professionals want to commute to work so they have a “private life.” They are outraged with the amount of information available about them online, information that their patients, students, anyone, can access about them. When I do public speaking about technology and therapy and education, I often find that privacy concerns boil down to this sort of fear and outrage. Sure, HIPAA is brought up, but that is usually in the context of another fear, getting sued.

I practice and encourage my colleagues to practice what I call “radical transparency.” I define Radical Transparency as engaging with technology as if it is always in the Public sphere visible to anyone. To be clear, this does not mean either never using technology to communicate about one’s personal or professional life. Nor does it mean telling everyone everything all the time. Rather, radical transparency means that before you “utter” anything via technology, and before any choices you make with technology, you consider what would happen if it one day comes to light.

I’m not saying you have to like radical transparency, I’m just saying that it is time we get clear with our relationship to technology and others with it. And I’m not saying I am perfect with it, but I try to comport myself with authenticity. If you search online you will (hopefully) not find my public posts or comments cutting or snide. If you somehow got hold of my emails over the past few years, what would emerge is an acerbic, funny, tart guy who is prone to arrogance and does not suffer fools gladly. You’d find a good deal of kindness and wisdom as well, but certainly you’d find frustration, self-righteousness and negativity. In short, you’d glimpse my human condition. But there you have it, I am prepared to accept the revelation of any warts that may come along.

Radical transparency, I am suggesting, is not just about what you “put out there” on the internet. It is not about gussying yourself up so you are acceptable to everyone.

Radical Transparency is about getting clear, clear with yourself.

I have found two spiritual traditions especially helpful with this idea. The first is Buddhism, which talks about nonattachment and going to the places that scare you. But in this post I want to focus more on the second tradition which has influenced me, and I think may have some good insights into technology and our place in the world. That second tradition is Quakerism.

What I have learned from Quakers and my own connection to the Society of Friends, is the importance of gaining clearness, and discernment. One quote that sums up what I am saying is from an article written by M.L. Morrison in the book Spirituality, religion and peace education. In it she says:

“Key to a Quaker philosophy of education is the belief that each individual has the capacity for discerning the truth. The truth does not solely come from the teacher or mentor… The process of getting clear about a particular discernment implies testing it out in a community of fellow seekers. In this way individuals are accountable to the communities in which they live and learn and the community can support the strength and leadings of its members.” (Italics mine)

What if we started seeing the world, online and off as that sort of community? Get clear with who you are and what you’re about. Be authentic. And after you have achieved a certain amount of clarity have a discerning attitude about what you put out there about yourself, and above all behave as we feel we ought. Am I saying that we all need to adopt Buddhism or Quakerism? Of course not. But we need to start focussing first on who we are in the world, not who shouldn’t be videotaping us.

Technology is not going away folks. And adolescents are rightly exploring and testing the limits of it, because they will be using it to maintain, more accurately repair, the world we have given them. September 11th taught these kids that media can be used to bear witness to terrorism and injustice in real-time. And since then, Youtube has proliferated with videos of the atrocities professionals have perpetrated. I have seen a juvenile collapse walking around a courtyard of lockup, only to be kicked and ignored by the warden when he was in need of medical attention. I have seen a college student tasered in a library. We have seen an Iranian woman shot to death and die before our eyes.

And these images change us, and they go viral. This is what globalization is, this is our whole planet struggling to get clear. And there are lots of people, those in power, who want the status quo. Keep the doors shut so people have to “go through the proper channels.” But technology is trending towards dialogue and democracy. You just can’t get away with being cruel unobserved and often unchallenged. Make fun of a teen who may have Asperger’s and he’ll post a rebuttal on Youtube.

These are the same people as the teachers who try to take away the student’s cellphone, or the administrators that forced Matt Gomez to shut down his class Facebook page. All the parents had signed off on it, but concerns about privacy were still cited. And that again, I believe is often a professional rhetoric for “controlling access to information.”

I have worked on the inside of several school districts, and in all of them I saw stellar educators, people who were always taking risks and getting creative. And I saw lots of lazy, verbally abusive educators there as well. The way our education, and our mental health, systems are set up there are a lot of disempowered angry people working with even more disempowered angry people. And many are in the middle, trying to just keep their head low and not make waves. I know, because I have been all of these at one point or another.

This is not going to be as easy from now on. If you swear at a student, someone’s going to record it on their phone and have it posted on Youtube before you can blink. If you gripe about a patient on your Facebook page they’ll find it and call you on it. And those of you who are trying to just keep out of it all, we’ll see you too. And more importantly, you’ll see you, and when the kid you ignored being bullied because you didn’t want to deal with it that day kills himself, you’ll have to live with the guilt that thousands of people he never knew reach out to assure those like him that it gets better, while you, the person who saw him every day or week just sat there and did nothing.

Talking about patients online, getting rough with a student, shooting a woman–Yes, these are all very different events. But they all connect around the idea of an ethics of radical transparency. Or as Rainer Maria Rilke put it in “Archaic Torso of Apollo:”
for here there is no place
that does not see you. You must change your life.

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book. I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, buddhism, education, ethics, HIPAA, mindfulness, online therapy, psychology, quakerism, social justice, social media, Web 2.0

Fun & Failure

September 24, 2011 by langloimsw 4 Comments

Early in the summer I had the opportunity to give a workshop at the University of Buffalo. The evening before I gave it I had the opportunity to sit down and have dinner with Nancy Smyth, the Dean of the School for Social Work. Although we’d never met before in person, the time sped by with good conversation and laughter. Fortunately I had finished my prep for the workshop, because I was quick to crash that night.

The next day I spoke in front of a group of clinicians, caseworkers, and administrators. The age ranged from 20s to 60s, and the discussion was so lively that the day sped by, and before I knew it, I was being ushered out of the classroom and into the car to the airport. The workshop participants did not agree with each other (or me) on all points, but everyone said that they were walking away with me having changed their thinking about technology, video games, social media and healthcare.

Sometimes I take for granted how much fun my work is. There is enough diversity in who I work with to keep me invigorated most days, and the balance of a portfolio career really suits me. Being my own boss suits me as well, and this year I mixed it up a little. I dropped one class I was teaching and took this semester off so I could focus on writing and promoting my new book.

Promoting Reset is not something I enjoy doing. Although I coach and blog about the importance of self-promotion and what hold us back from doing it, that doesn’t mean that I enjoy doing it all the time. But one thing I have been learning is that writing the book was the eas(ier) part. I need to keep getting the word out about it, and sometimes I feel like I am overtaxing the patience of my Twitter followers, Google+ circles and Facebookies. Some of these people are in multiple groups, and I can imagine that they get irritated with another post about the book. “Enough already!” I imagine them saying.

Speaking up is not easy, and many of us actually have a much easier time speaking up for others than for ourselves. We speak up for our clients, our kids at school, our pets when they depend on us for care. It’s ironic that we get so good at striking blows for freedom, blogging against oppression, picketing, and political advocacy; and yet we cringe at the idea of promoting ourselves. Perhaps that is because the former makes us feel righteous, and the latter makes us feel guilty. I definitely enjoy advocating for technology and the people who use it with my colleagues, but I wonder if I would have promoted my book at Buffalo if it had been published then.

I’d better get used to it, because now there are more speaking engagements coming up, and having an eBook means I can’t just lug a pile of them to the the hotel and have them sit on a table. I need to be speaking up about Reset, because no one else will. And one thing I have also learned to do at talks is to let people in them know I enjoy speaking engagements and am available to do more. And each time I have done that, I have gotten a lead. Hopefully out of all of you reading this I’ll get hired to do another few.

This is such a contrast to my clinical work, where I am required to be more quiet, reflective, and other-focussed. I am not alone in this, psychotherapy tends to require us to listen more and talk less much of the time. It is also a safe place to “hide out” if we aren’t careful.

One of the most unfortunate lessons our current educational system teaches us is that we should hurry up and find out what we are good at, what comes easily for us, and then stick with that. In school settings, not-knowing is considered a bad thing rather than the predecessor to curiosity. By college we have learned to speed through any unpleasant “requirements,” and major in something that interests us. The problem with this is that by then we have learned to take an active disinterest in things that we struggle with. So we arrive in adulthood having learned to play to our strengths, and avoid the rest. And whereas children are fairly powerless to avoid what they struggle with in school, adults can often construct a life that cocoons them from learning unfamiliar things.

Therapists in particular, have pushed themselves through grad school and internships, licensing tests and boards, and by the time we get licensed to do private practice we feel entitled to close the office door on outside influences. Several times when I have been hired as a coach or consultant, I still find my clients reluctant to “come clean” about things they aren’t good at. Some haven’t billed insurers for months because they don’t know how to do the paperwork, or a claim has been denied and they are letting the appeal sit on their desk. Websites lie around half developed, brochures printed up but not mailed, and all of this is nothing compared to the disarray and avoidance of work/life balance. Office hours are whenever the patient can make it, their specialty is “anxiety and depression,” and they are running themselves ragged. And all the time, they suspect that they are really frauds awaiting discovery, and why? Because they learned that you aren’t supposed to admit you are confused or don’t know something, let alone ask for help.

Fortunately I play video games.

As Jesper Juul points out in Fear of Failing? The Many Meanings of Difficulty in Video Games failure is more than just about not winning. It forces gamers to readjust their perceptions. In fact, players prefer games where they feel responsible for failing. What’s more failure adds content to the game. Think about what a powerful paradigm shift that is. Failure adds content that wouldn’t be there. What might happen if we were able to see failure in our lives as adding content?

Actually, therapists often have a lead in understanding this. We know that empathic failures are often inevitable, and that when we successfully navigate them with our patients the relationship deepens. The failure adds content.

So think about your life, your practice, your business or your relationship. And look straight at where you are failing in it. I know, it’s tough, but try it for 5 minutes, and then ask yourself, “what content is this failure adding to it?”

This is much easier to do in hindsight, which is why we need to try to practice it in the now. Because if we don’t avoid seeing the failures, we can readjust our perceptions and progress farther. Maybe just a small progression, but anyone who works with kids knows the importance of proximal goals.

To go back to the Buffalo speaking engagement, this began as a failure and the setting of a proximal goal. The failure was this: I wasn’t getting enough paid speaking engagements. How did that add content to my life? Well, it added the mission, should I choose to accept it, of getting more paid speaking engagements. So I set the proximal goal of starting to let people know I was looking for them. One night on Twitter Nancy said something complimentary about a blog post, and I quipped that she’d better hire me as a speaker before my rates went up. A few months later I was invited to speak. And in addition I deepened a connection, met some really cool students, and saw Niagara Falls for the first time in my life: How’s that for added content?

So much is possible for you, your business and your life. None of what I have described above was achieved because I have some special gene. It took what Pema Chodron calls going to “the places that scare you.” We are all failures at something–come out of the closet! Over 6 billion people around you are failing and trying and failing and trying again every day. Those that aren’t are hiding inside an ever more rigid and constricted life. That doesn’t have to be you, and it sure as hell isn’t going to be me.

Oh, and I hope you buy my book, and I’m available for speaking engagements, so call me. 😉

Like this post? There’s more where that came from, for only $2.99 you can buy my book.

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: buddhism, building your business, failure, gamers, marketing, private practice, self-promotion, Web 2.0

Fear Is Where You Start From

May 9, 2011 by langloimsw 14 Comments

Recently I was having dinner with some colleagues, who were discussing the state of mental health and managed care. When these conversations start I sometimes begin to sit back, because I anticipate the worst. I expect that there will be some insurance bashing, and then discussion of how their salaries have shrunk, and how unfair the current system is, maybe a smattering of how better things used to be for our profession and concluding with uncertainty about how much longer they can stay in business. I expected this conversation to go the same way, and was preparing to decide whether to try to advocate for another, more empowering perspective.

I was pleasantly surprised.

The conversation did indeed start with the understandable concerns of therapists trying to grapple with the seismic shifts in our careers and businesses. But then one of them began to talk about how he was planning to change the way he did business. Others expressed curiosity about the things he was trying, and I finally offered a couple of ideas. When they found out that I provide consultation on building & maintaining your therapy practice, they were 100% enthusiastic and eager to hear some positive perspectives. They were able to hear my opinions of some tough truths, that we had bought into the managed care model because we were reluctant to market our businesses and have difficult conversations with patients about payment. No one was defensive at all, one even invited me to come talk with a local group of colleagues. At one point they made a joke about my “secrets” for success, and I told them I am not one of those people who holds back secrets to hook people into working with me, and that they could find a lot of free info on my site.

“I was kidding about having a secret,” one told me. “You don’t have a secret, what you have is a strategy.”

The Buddhist teacher Pema Chodron writes in her book of the same title, about going to “The Places That Scare You.” The goal of the Tibetan Buddhist practice of tonglen, or taking and sending, is to reverse the normal cycle of human existence. Rather than seeking out things we desire and avoiding suffering, the meditation practice of tonglen asks us to imagine inhaling and taking in the suffering for all sentient beings and exhaling happiness to send it to all sentient beings. Whether you believe in the mystical qualities of this, the principle is a useful one in that it teaches us to break the instinctual habit of trying to holding on to the things we like and get rid of the things we don’t. A version of this is going to the places that scare you, rather than running away from them.

The clinicians I have mentioned above are well on their way to maintaining and vastly improving their private practices, and its got nothing to do with me. They have realized that fear is real, and that it often is mistaken for the end of the line. They get that it is the opposite.

Fear is the place you start from.

People who deny that things are changing are in my opinion in for a rude awakening. They deny the way our profession is being challenged, the importance of emerging new technologies, and the evolving practice of psychotherapy. They deny the things that would evoke fear in them. This is not unique to therapists of course. Ironically, we often work trying to help patients see the devastating impact on their lives of repressing anxiety-provoking truths. Then we turn around and do the same things to ourselves, hoping that this change in economics or technology is “more of the same.” Folks in this group are in pre-contemplation of fear, they haven’t even gotten that far.

Then there are clinicians who have gotten that things are really changing, and they are terrified! They are paralyzed and miserable, commiserating with others and talking about the way things were in the past and how much better they were then. They see the point of fear and they think of it as the period on a life’s sentence of struggling. This is the end of our careers, we can’t learn to use technology, therapy is a dying art form. They give up, and go out of business in a lingering dwindling sort of way.

Fear is not the endpoint. Fear is where you begin. Fear is where you get going and hire a coach, research and write up a business plan, take a workshop on business development, marketing or integrating new technologies. Fear is the start of renovating your practice. Yes there is a lot of suffering in the world, let’s get going and reduce it.

Epic Therapists know all about fear. They aren’t fearless, there’s a lot to be worried about. Many businesses fail, money needs to be spent to make money later, there are long hours ahead and no structure but the one they give themselves. There is a lot they don’t know, a lot they’ve never learned to do to run a business, known expenses and surprises. But Epic is running toward that dragon, knowing this could be an epic failure, being afraid… and then doing it anyway.

Epic Therapists have learned the concept of “nevertheless.” I am scared that my business will fail, nevertheless I am starting it. I am afraid that I’ll rent an office full-time and not be able to find patients, nevertheless I am going to rent one. I am afraid I’ll sound inauthentic or greedy if I talk about my business to a colleague, nevertheless I am going to talk about my business. I am afraid no one will want to pay my fee, nevertheless I am going to set a firm “bottom line” fee for myself. I am afraid that I won’t be able to keep up with the changes in healthcare or technology, nevertheless I am going to make a strategy.

My last post about having a secret headquarters was fun to make, and it was also serious. We need to have a time and a place for strategizing. We can absolutely have fun doing it, but this is serious business. There really are things to fear in healthcare, building a private practice and starting a business. We need to think carefully and plan, and then we need to begin.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: behavior change, buddhism, building your business, epic therapist, fear, insurance, managed care, marketing, pema chodron, private practice, psychotherapy, self-promotion, social media, Web 2.0

Do Your Dailies

March 28, 2011 by langloimsw 10 Comments

UVN4UFFHFPND

Epic Therapists do their dailies. And if you’re not a therapist, but a gamer or someone else who wants to have a better life, this post may be useful to you also.

At a recent workshop, I began by showing a slide with our “Epic Agenda.” And the first question I got from a therapist was a great one, one that staggered me:

“What does Epic mean?”

Gamers among you may be chuckling now, but try to answer that question, and try to remember back to a time when you didn’t know the difference between green and purple gear. Back then you didn’t know what Epic meant either. So let me offer us a working definition of Epic:

Epic means “the most super amazing over the top of all time.” An Epic Win would be the most super amazing over the top win of all time. An Epic Fail would be the most super amazing over the top fail of all time. Epic is big, Epic is superlative, the most super dooper in history.

We don’t talk about ourselves in epic language much. We tend to think of it as arrogant, unrealistic, and asking to be taken down a peg. The idea of being Epic anything makes us self-conscious, with a lower-case s. And yet, I think it is time we change that.

All over the world you people are being Epic. Right now in Japan, every one of those people is Epic. The people surviving a disaster of multiple phases and historic proportions are Epic. I doubt that any of my readers would argue that. Every person helping those survivors is Epic. Even as we speak the people of Japan are pulling off what will be seen in years to come as one of the biggest Epic Wins in their history. (By the way, if you want to support their Epic Win, go to the Red Cross and take 5 mins to donate. There’s also a great definition of psychosocial support there for you therapist types.)

But you don’t have to be at the epicenter of a disaster to be Epic. Gamers know that there are several ways to get that Epic gear. Sure, one of the ways to do that is to down that boss on heroic mode. But there is another way to get that gear and become Epic: Do your dailies.

Dailies, in WoW, are daily quests that you do to gain XP, gold, or points towards buying Epic gear. And it takes a long time to earn those points. But each day, the game server resets, and you get to run these daily quests again. One of the first things an experienced gamer will tell a “noob” who wants to get better gear is, “Do your dailies.”

Back to you therapists: Epic therapists do their dailies. The most successful therapists I know show up for those mundane tasks every day. They return phone calls every day, respond to emails every day, step back to consider the state of their practice every day. Epic therapists read about their craft regularly. Epic therapists learn about what their patients are talking about regularly. Epic therapists reach out and connect with their colleagues regularly, and Epic therapists take risks to make their business visible regularly.

Last Friday I met a dozen Epic therapists who came to my workshop. They spent time and money to learn about online gaming and gamers. I can’t tell you how moved I was to see these colleagues spend 3.5 hours with me learning how to better understand gamers. They were willing to step beyond the model of addiction and see gaming as a culture they needed to become more competent with. They decided not to dismiss video games as trivial or uninteresting and as a result will be able to meet their patients “where they’re at” more than ever. Less than 50 therapists across the world have ever spent 3.5 hours on a workshop to understand gaming, so these folks are truly Epic!

Am I suggesting you all enroll in my workshop to become Epic? Hardly. But I am suggesting that you do your dailies and when you’re feeling down about your practice, keep doing them. I have noticed that the people who tend to be naysayers in our profession tend to be people who don’t want to take risks or invest extra time on a daily basis. They are hoping for a quick fix or solution, one book or secret that will tell them how to succeed. I think there are a lot of books out there that may help, but I think the secret to becoming an Epic Therapist may just be to do your dailies.

And if you’re one of my gamer readers, this applies to you too. You can be Epic out of the game as well as in it. That same stamina it takes to do your Baradin Hold dailies can be applied to your life outside of Azeroth. Getting up a half hour earlier so that you can get to work without feeling anxious is doing your dailies. Doing every bit of your homework is doing your dailies. Listening to your parents and doing your chores are doing your dailies. Telling your partner that you love them is doing your dailies. Spending an hour in meditation, in therapy or at an AA meeting are examples of doing your dailies. Sometimes these dailies will seem easy and quick. Sometimes they will seem a grind. No matter.

Do your dailies.

UVN4UFFHFPND

Filed Under: Gamer Therapy Tagged With: adolescents, buddhism, building your business, dailies, gamers, mindfulness, private practice, psychotherapy, video games, World of Warcraft

Don’t Be Afraid to Evolve

November 16, 2010 by langloimsw 4 Comments

image courtesy of Pharyngula at scienceblogs.com

I was toying with a new browser today, Rockmelt. It looks like it is going to be an important development in social media, in that it will begin to merge web browsing with social networking. Rockmelt integrates all of your accounts in one place, and allows you to surf while being able to see what your networks are up to. It also allows you to streamline how you post. Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, blogs, it will make Web 2.0 even MORE interactive.

It scares me.

Not for the reasons you may think. I think that it will make managing your online presence easier, and also require you to be more thoughtful about how you organize yourself. But it isn’t the thinning of these boundaries that I am talking about. What scared me when I downloaded RockMelt was that it’s newness overwhelmed me. New graphics, new concept in user interface, I spent 10 minutes on before I had to switch it off.

I tell you this because I want you to know that I get how difficult change can be. We talk that talk with our patients, but it is interesting how soon that concept goes out the window when we are dealing with technology. We read folks like Pema Chodron about our desire to always find a refuge from change, yet we hesitate to apply that wisdom towards our relationship with technology. We try to get solid, say things like, “I’m too old to learn,” or “I’ve found something that works for me, you can’t learn everything.” We create these extremes that we use to justify not budging an inch.

It’s a good thing that when we were in the primordial ooze we didn’t have that option so much. We couldn’t rationalize, “I am too fishy to be an amphibian,” some of us just jumped. Later we didn’t say, “I can climb trees and gather fruit, who needs tools, you can’t learn everything;” some of us looked around. At least that’s how I imagine it, there probably were some Luddites even then.

Don’t be afraid to evolve, or at least if you’re like me, don’t let that fear immobilize you. If you start to feel too solid, too old or too dumb, move through it. If you start to feel too comfortable, pepper that comfort with a little curiosity.

Rockmelt makes me uneasy, but it makes me feel excited too, because when it starts getting widespread I think people are going to be amazed. And when I figure out how to unlock its potential I am pretty sure I’ll be amazed. And when my one of you consults with me about building a more cutting edge Web 2.0 practice, I want to know what I am talking about. So it’s “lean into the fear and discomfort” for me!

What are you being too solid about in your private practice? What will you lean into this week?

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: buddhism, change, private practice, rockmelt, Web 2.0

The Truth? You Can Handle The Truth.

October 16, 2010 by langloimsw 11 Comments

photo courtesy of informedvote.ca

One of my favorite quotes from Pema Chodron is when she explains the first Noble Truth of Buddhism: “Existence is Suffering.” In her book When Things Fall Apart she writes:

The first noble truth of the Buddha is that when we feel
suffering, it doesn’t mean that something is wrong. What
a relief. Finally someone told the truth. Suffering is part of
life, and we don’t have to feel it’s happening because we
personally made the wrong move.

Patients often come to me to hoping therapy will make them feel good. I tell them that that is not what psychotherapy is for. Psychotherapy is not aimed at making you feel good: Psychotherapy helps you learn how to not feel good, at least the way I practice it. Because the truth is out, there is suffering in the world, and in our lives. Can we learn how to not feel good? How to sit with what feelings arise without eating, starving, cutting, drinking, smoking, sexing our way out of it? Although I didn’t coin the phrase “Don’t just do something, sit there,” my patients often hear it for the first time in our work together.

When I consult with therapists on how to build their practice, or how to use technology, you’d be surprised how much shame, anger and sadness can come up for them. A lot of times they have been avoiding looking at how they do the business part of their work, as if it were completely divorced from their fears of failure, grandiose defenses, and ethical quandries. It takes courage to get to the tender spot that is hurting their business. We have to weave our way past the following bugbears:

“I don’t do this for the money, I do it for the patients.”

“I don’t care if what I tell the insurance company I’m charging is what I’m actually charging, insurance companies are evil.”

“Whatever I have to do to play the game is fine, as long as I can do good work with my patients.”

“I don’t want to know how this billing, marketing, business stuff works, my practice is doing just fine.”

“I don’t know anything about Skype, and I don’t really care.”

One of the great things about working with therapists, though, is that sooner rather than later they hear the defensiveness in their words, and we settle down to not feel good together so we can clear away the shame cluttering their practice. Generally what I find is that their shame comes down to this, see if this internal monologue sounds familiar:

“I have suffered long and hard to get where I am today. I have worked long hours for free, spent money I didn’t have, to get an education that is often undervalued in the world. Even before that, I was always helping people in my life, even when they were supposed to be taking care of me. I waited for someone to notice that I was trying so hard, and finally I gave up. I’m going to have to take care of myself, no one else will. But even though I’ve built my life and work up around that structure, part of me waits with fear for someone to take my work and livelihood away from me. Sooner or later they are going to figure out that I have been faking this adult thing, this independent therapist thing, and then it will be all over, and I won’t have even that.”

If any of this sounds familiar to you, if it is what lies underneath the fears and the avoidance that are gumming up your practice, please read on.

Things were difficult for you, and you didn’t do anything personally wrong to bring this upon yourself. Things will be difficult again, and that won’t be because somebody discovers and punishes you. Suffering is part of life, and we need to pay attention to it, but not personalize it. The clearer you get with this the more clearly you’ll be able to look at your work and business. And the more you do this, the more you’ll face your fears and start to practice in an integrated way, and make money.

On the other hand, if you insist on living your life and practicing your work in accordance with the narrative of fear and entitlement above, all bets are off. Paradoxical perhaps, but maybe you have already noticed how we can manifest irrational fears into real life. Because these fears are the ones that have you stuttering on the phone to UBH during peer reviews, or getting nervous whenever a patient or their insurance company has a billing question. These feelings of anger and entitlement are what make you envious of your colleagues when they try something new in their practice, or promote a book, or launch an online practice. Leave these fears unchecked and your practice will get more rigid, the walls of your office more close, and even if you never get caught for some of the business practices you do you’ll tire yourself out justifying yourself.

I love it when colleagues come to work with me and trust me to tell them the way I see it. I love it when we get honest and the fear starts to go away. I love the relief and the organization that comes in its place. I see priorities shift, new models of working open up, and people rediscover why they like being a therapist. And I see them make more money with less guilt.

You may not agree with everything I write here, and you may not see psychotherapy or business practices the same way I do. No one, least of all me, thinks you should. But my blog is much like working with me in person, I promise I’ll call it as I see it. I think anything less is a waste of your time and money and disrespectful to you. And I won’t collude with you in your disrespecting yourself.

Filed Under: Business Tagged With: buddhism, insurance, managed care, pema chodron, private practice, psychotherapy, shame

Can’t We All Just Game Along?

The Uses of Disenchantment

Not All Failure Is Epic

Fun & Failure

Do Your Dailies

Don’t Be Afraid to Evolve

The Truth? You Can Handle The Truth.

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