Learn More About Rethinking Video Games & Addiction Here!

 

In the midst of several projects, including the upcoming 2013 SXSW presentation, but wanted to give you a post in the meantime.  Here is the presentation on rethinking gaming addiction I did there last year.

[gigya ]

This can give you an idea of:

  1. The power of Prezi, even in its’ most stripped down version
  2. The visuals that accompanied the presentation you can listen to if you go here
  3. What my approach to technology and psychology is
  4. What my style is as a public speaker

Enjoy, and I will be posting again with bigger news soon!

Like this post?  I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info?  And, for only $2.99 you can buy my book.  You can also  Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

 

4 Tips For Dealing With Video Game Violence For Parents

See-no-evil-Hear-no-evil-Speak-no-evil-Star-Wars-Stormtroopers3

 

Whenever there is an upsurge in moral panic around violence in the media, the focus becomes more polarizing than pragmatic.  Despite the overwhelming research (such as these articles) that shows weak if any links between video games and violence, media pundits whip up mental health providers and the parents they work with into a frenzy.  Feelings such as a passionate urge to protect children and adolescents are often to intense to be suspended to look at data.  In the midst of all this, moderate and practical ways to address the graphic content of some video games are overlooked in favor of heated philosophical debates.  So for those of you who are parents and/or work with them, here are a few tips and links on how to handle violence in video games:

1. Set console parental controls.  You can set your game consoles to only play games of a certain rating.  If you haven’t done so and are complaining about violence in video games, take some action here.  Here are the how-tos:

XBox Parental Controls

Playstation Parental Controls (Video from CNET

Wii Parental Controls

These are password-protected, and will allow you to set the ratings limits, which brings us to:

2. Know your ratings.  Although I have mixed feelings about the Entertainment Software Rating Board, it’s what we’ve got.  But the ESRB is only as useful if you familiarize yourself with it.  This means not only looking at what each rating means, but using the other resources they have, including mobile tools, setting controls, family discussion guides and other tips for safety.  The message here is that there is more to understanding and moderating access to your child’s gameplay than a rating system, including discussion of in-game content.

3. Make use of graphical content filters.  Many parents, educators and therapists don’t know that a growing number of games have options that can be set to filter out violent graphics, profanity, and alter the experience of game content to a more family-friendly level.  If your child wants a video game, have searching online to see if the game has a GCF be part of the process.  Not only will you be teaching them about consumer choice, but digital literacy as well.  Here are some popular games that have GCFs:

Call of Duty Black Ops 2

Gears of War 3

World of Warcraft

4. MOST IMPORTANT TIP: Parenting has no “settings.”  Parents and educators often want some expert to rely on–don’t try to “park it” that way.  Most games can be rented before you buy them from services like GameFly so you can test drive them.  That’s right, I’m suggesting you play the games yourself so you can make a personally informed decision.  At the very least you should be watching your child play them some of the time, not to be nosy, but because part of your role as a parent is to take an interest in their world.  If you can spend 2 hours going to their Little League game, you can spend an hour watching (if not playing) Borderlands 2.

If you’re an educator or therapist, you’re not off the hook either.  🙂 If you are going to offer opinions on video games and their content, make sure you are playing them.  Chances are you don’t say things like “reading Dickens is dangerous for young minds” if you have never read any of his work.  If you did, you’d probably be out at a book burning rather than reading this blog.  By the same token, don’t presume to opine about video games if you have done nothing to educate yourselves about them.  And please note that asking children about them is a place to start, but by no means sufficient for educating yourself.  If you are a play therapist, please start including 21st century play materials like video games in your repertoire.  And be sure to provide parents with the resources they need to help them make sense of this stuff, such as the resources this post gives you.

Look anyone can have an opinion on video games and violence, but we need practical processes to help people be informed consumers.  This is one parenting issue that has practical, doable options, and is rated “O” for “Ongoing…”

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Epic Every Day: What Video Games and the Millenials Can Teach Us If We Let Them

millenials_splash

The term millennial refers to the generation following mine, Generation X, who were born between the early 80s and 2001.  There certainly may be some differences in the millennial cohort in terms of race and social class, but in my experience working in both urban and suburban settings, technology use is not one of them.  In fact, technology has probably exacerbated some of the traits millennials are known and often criticized for.  Social media has made expression more democratic and amplified, and millennials cite self-expression as extremely important.  Growing up with the internet has also placed them in the same social and informational spheres as their parents more than previous generations, making them more civic-minded than rebellious, and having different, some would say overly dependent, attachments to their parents.

Common complaints about millennials include that they are entitled, tethered to their parents, unable to tolerate longterm goals, averse to sustained effort and require a constant stream of praise for the most minimal pieces of work.  The other side of this coin is worth noting, too:  Higher sense of self-expression has led to millennials’ higher acceptance of diversity in others; they are more comfortable with switching jobs or organizations they work with and working outside the box in general.  Yes, they may also have a higher tendency to blame external rather than internal things for their problems, but having come to self-awareness post-9/11, can we really blame them?

In my work, I often encounter children, adolescents and young adults who are failing in school for a variety of reasons.  These “millennials” avoid attending, and often the blame is placed on excessive video game use.  They are seen to be escaping from reality, and although I can understand this perspective, it also puzzles me in some ways.  Video games would in many ways seem to me to be going from the frying pan into the fire:  They are rife with failure; in fact the statistic Jane McGonigal gives us is that people are failing 85% of the time in playing video games.  MMOs often require even more collaboration, sharing and critical thinking between individuals than classrooms in any given 30 minute period.

Millennials are often criticized as post-academic workers as well, for having less job loyalty, a need for constant feedback, and expecting that feedback to be praise.  In more affluent school districts I often heard their parents described as helicopter parents, who would email school minutes after receiving the report card to begin to debate the grades and exert pressure on educators to change them.  This has led to such grade inflation in my experience that my graduate school students are hurt and insulted when they get a B+ on a paper, sometimes to the point of tears.  I can’t remember a class I had in college where I wasn’t listening to a lecture, millennials are constantly asking for more small group work.  I’ve even had a call on occasion from a parent about their child’s performance.  Did I mention that I taught in graduate school?

From the above criticisms you’d think I was down on millennials, and you’d be dead wrong.  Because I think for the most part the millennials are happy, tolerant, and more likely to help others voluntarily than other generations, and the Pew Research on them bears this out.  And I think that a major reason for this is that they play video games.

The video games of today and the past decade have morphed from Pong and Space Invaders to Halo and World of Warcraft.  They have set up myriad game worlds where survival and thriving requires critical thinking, social collaboration, and lots of trial and error for mastery.  These games have also been played by over 90% of the millennial population, and I would suggest that the result is that millennials have been conditioned to be more collaborative, expect feedback to be quick and positive, and be more connected to others through technology.

Then we send them to school,  and it is frustrating for a majority of them, a majority of teachers, and a majority of parents.  Rather than encourage them to be “lifelong learners,” education as it is currently structured aims to produce a very narrow form of educated person, one that Sir Ken Robinson describes in his TED talk as an “academic professor.”  In addition, we all start to become impatient with millennials to adopt our own often individualistic notions of what adulthood is.  They need to stand on their own two feet, work without constant reassurance, and memorize things that they could just as easily Google.  All to get into the right college, and all to get a good job.

We criticize the millennials’ work ethic for many of the same reasons:  They won’t take individual responsibility for projects, they have trouble working independently, and they expect an award merely for being present.  They need to take things more seriously and get their nose to the grindstone, no one has time to hold their hand anymore.  These are all complaints I have heard levied against adolescents and young adults in my work, and the implicit message is that it is time to grow up.

One of the greatest things we can learn from millennials is something that I think they learned from video games, and that is how to destigmatize, and even enjoy, failure.  The epitome of this for me is the Heron’ The Greatest Spelling Bee Fail/Epic Win of All Time—which was posted on YouTube originally by the millennial who flubbed it.  This ability to have a sense of observing ego and humor about oneself is something many of us in psychotherapy work with our patients for years to achieve, and yet as a generation millennials seem to have grasped it more easily.

Part of my work with gamers is often to explore this paradox:  Why is it fun or okay to fail in video games so much, and so intolerable in work or school?  Sure, part of it is that play is a magic circle according to Huizinga, which is marked apart from real life.  But games impact the same brain, the same emotions that exists inside and out of that circle.  And if that is the case, there must be some transferable skills.  We work on how to destigmatize failure

Innovation requires lots of trial and error, and lots of failures.  As educator Lucas Gillispie said at a recent education conference in Second Life, it makes little sense to penalize so harshly when students get 69%.  Rather than see it as having acquired more than half the knowledge assessed, we make it a source of embarrassment and usually require they repeat the entire exercise, class, or grade.  Millennials have grown up with a split view of failure.  On the one hand, video games have helped them understand that failure can be fun, even if you’re failing 85% of the time.  On the other, they are put in educational environments where the A is everything, and the goal of learning is to get high marks rather than enjoy the creativity and critical thinking.   In fact, A’s are so limiting!  Why not focus on a high score which can always be improved upon in school?  If the best you can do is an A, then you have to resort to accumulating the most A’s possible, which is less intrinsically rewarding and dynamic.

Many detractors will say that millennials need to get with the existing program, that what I am suggesting is dumbing down a curriculum, or that I am being too Pollyanna and that some jobs just aren’t capable of being fun.  But for over a decade companies like IBM have found success modeling work environments on MMOs, and schools which institute dance classes notice higher math scores. And the solution to our economic and occupational troubles may not be the return of a “work ethic” or more job, but the creation of new types of schools and jobs, work we can’t even imagine yet because it hasn’t been innovated or invented.  Can you imagine some 14th century youth telling his farmer dad, “I don’t want to work on the farm.  I’d like to create and use something that applies pressure and ink to paper to make reading and writing something we can all do.”

It probably isn’t a coincidence that the word “epic” has become ubiquitous over the past several years, with so many millennials and others playing video games like World of Warcraft.  And it has come under fire by many of my colleagues, who maintain that in a culture where everything is Epic, nothing truly is.  I’m not saying that everything is Epic, but I am saying that there can be some Epic every day.  It’s what they call teachable moments, flow, success, even the Epic fail that we can laugh off with colleagues before redoubling our efforts to nail it next time.  What we’re really learning here is how to tolerate frustration.

Millennials know that “epic” is a superlative, they’re not devaluing the currency of that word.  If anything, I think that this is a sign that Buddhist thinking is becoming more integrated into the 21st century:  It is Epic that we are here alive in this moment, that we want and fear so much, and the struggles that ensure from those things. There are a lot of levels left to unlock and problems to be vanquished in the world, and we need to cultivate optimism and positive psychology at school and in the workplace, not stomp on it.

Millennials often have that sense that there can be some Epic every day.  Video games offer worlds where there can be some Epic every day, too.  Let’s start noticing it.

Like this post?  I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info?  And, for only $2.99 you can buy my book.  You can also  Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

What It Means To Make A Referral

referral cartoon

To speak with a relative stranger about the most intimate details of one’s life is an incredibly daunting prospect for many psychotherapy patients.  No matter how guarded a patient may be, she or he is daring to be incredibly vulnerable as well.  Often the only thing that can make this beginning possible is an appropriate therapy referral.  And yet never before has it been so easy for us to make a horrible or thoughtless referral to these brave souls.

It was hard enough when managed care began to shape the behavior of therapists to focus on insurance as being the number one or only criteria to make a referral.  But now technology has made it even worse.  Readers of this blog know that I am a great fan of technology in general and social networking in particular, so it may come as a surprise to hear me say this; an explanation is in order.

Recently I began to get emails from various therapists with the subject heading “Are you accepting new referrals?” or “Referral for you.”  In the past I have found those questions a nice compliment.  But these emails were actually invitations to join something called Referral Key, a small business referral network.  The message went like this:

If you’re taking on new clients, I’d like to include you in my private referral network to send you business leads.

Please accept my invitation below. Thanks!

Here’s the problem, none of the people who sent me these emails knew me in a professional capacity as far as I can tell.  We had never shared a patient, attended a fellowship together, worked at the same agency or supervised trainees at the same place.  The only qualification these people would know I had if I accepted their invite was that I wanted more business.

That’s not how you make a good referral.

Look, referring a patient to someone is risky enough when you do know the therapist or the patient.  Risky because we have never experienced what it is like to sit with the colleague as a patient.  But at least we have some other information to go on.  The nature of therapy requires that we be as thoughtful about referrals as possible.

In my experience with trainees and consulting to therapists I have come across a lot of marketing information on how to get referrals, but not a lot of clinical info on how to make them.  So here are my suggestions on when and how to make a good referral.  Keep in mind that these tips are a combination of my experience, opinions and pet peeves.  Between emails, listservs, social networks, etc., I see a lot of different ways therapists do it.

1. Don’t treat a referral as a consolation prize.  If you get a call from a patient who says they were referred to you by their insurance, and you are not accepting new patients, don’t feel pressured to offer them another name.  Ideally, if you have time to offer them an initial consult you may get enough information to make a suitable referral.  If they can come in, you can discuss their presenting problems, therapist preferences in terms of gender, experience, etc.  If you offer free phone consultations (which I discourage in general,) you can speak with them over the phone at enough length to get a sense of the patient’s needs.  For a thoughtful referral, my experience is that this takes 30-45 minutes.  looking online and saying, “Jane Doe appears to be in your network and I’ve heard good things about her” may be sufficient to assuage your conscience but is not sufficient to be a solid referral.  Jane may be a whiz at adult ADHD, but if the patient was referred to you for your expertise in PSTD you may have no idea whether Jane has interest or expertise in both.

2. Avoid referring to therapists who “do it all.”  I never refer to a therapist who treats ages 3-80 for issues ranging the breadth of the DSM-V.  The USDA deals with chunks of meat on a conveyor belt, we don’t.

3. Disclose the extent or limitation of your knowledge of the referral to the patient.  If you trained with the person and think highly of them from the way they discussed their work, say that.  If they are someone who responded to a listserv request you made and you know nothing about them or their work, say that.  Patients trust us to give them expert opinions, and if your expertise is limited the burden of disclosing that is on you.

4. When soliciting a referral, keep it brief and salient.  Don’t pepper the listserv or discussion boards with identifying information or your subjective impressions.  Age, presenting problem and therapist preferences (gender, takes X insurance, CBT) are enough.  So often I see referrals for someone seeking a therapist for a patient who is “a lovely, very insightful young man who would be a delight to work with.”  This is more of a sales pitch than salient data.  None of your colleagues are probably hoping to work with horrid, clueless people who are a misery to work with, now are they?  Nor do we really need to know that the referral is for the daughter of a good friend of yours.  If this is a referral that will involve collaboration (such as one member of a couple you are seeing) by all means offer to share more information if the referral works out.  But in the meantime, just the facts.

5. When possible, get feedback and use it to inform your future referrals.  If you referred to a colleague to treat one of your individual patients for couples therapy, ask them how it is going or went.  Please take this information seriously and do not dismiss it as transference.  It may be transference, but remember your alliance is with the patient and erring on the side of caution.  In my time I have had folks give me feedback that the people I referred to didn’t listen, feel asleep during a session, took their spouse’s side, smelled of alcohol, and a myriad of other concerning statements.  Do I know for a fact that any of these stories were true? No.  Do I plan on risking referring a patient to one of those people again, absolutely not.  If the person you refer to is difficult to reach or collaborate with, bear that in mind for future referrals.

6. Talk to your colleagues.  Ask them whether they are taking referrals, or what kind of patients they see.  Ask them what their expertise is if you are unsure.  Send them an email with brief and salient information asking if this sounds like someone they’d enjoy working with.  And absolutely send them a note if you give their name as a possible referral.

7. If you don’t have or want to take the time to make a solid referral, then don’t make one at all.  Too often our colleagues try to come up with a name rather than say, “I’m sorry I can’t help you.”  Our graduate programs rarely train us to say that.  But better you say that than misunderstand what a referral truly is.  A referral is a thoughtful recommendation to a patient for a clinical treatment of serious concerns.  If you don’t have time to give it sustained thought, understand the concerns or help needed, don’t give a referral.

Above all, please keep in mind that social networks are great for many things, and referring patients is not one of them.  If the only thing you know about a therapist and their work is that they are in your “network,” what kind of qualification is that?  Don’t confuse networking, marketing, or chatting with referring someone to therapy.  If you were looking for a therapist and someone said, “I got an email the other day from someone saying they are taking on new patients,” would that be sufficient for you to make an appointment?  Just because I’m in your Contacts or LinkedIn group doesn’t mean I am any good at therapy in general or for a patient in particular.  I could be a complete wingnut.

Do you really want to take that chance with someone’s mental health care?

Like this post?  I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info?  And, for only $2.99 you can buy my book.  You can also  Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Happy New Year!

brave_-_h_2012.jpg_rgb

 

As we start the New Year I wanted to share a quote I think applies to you:

“Talent hits a target no one else can hit; Genius hits a target no one else can see.”

— Arthur Schopenhauer

Going into the New Year, entertain the possibility that you are a genius.  Whether you are a gamer playing first-person shooters, a therapist trying to build your private practice, an educator trying to reach students, or someone trying to live a good life, ask yourself:  What are the targets you can see that other people can’t?

Don’t expect praise, people will think you are crazy for shooting into thin air.  You may be bullied, insulted or ignored, but remember you are not alone.  Find that person or group who believes in you even though they can’t see your target.  Those are true people of faith in your life.

Does this mean you’ll be coasting?  Nope.  It takes practice allowing yourself to look for things invisible to most.  It takes constant effort to hone your talent.

If you play Minecraft, think of 2013 as your new sandbox.  2013 is loaded with things you’ve not discovered yet.  Any rock could conceal diamonds or ore.  You will encounter creepers when you least expect them, lose things and have setbacks.  But you can opt for multiplayer, and build in community.  All of the materials are there for you.  You may think you are starting with nothing, but you always have the tools to build tools.

If you keep at it you can change the world.

Whether you are a regular visitor or a loyal follower of this blog, thank you.  In case you missed them, below are the 5 most popular posts from this year:

 

Dopey About Dopamine: Video Games, Drugs, & Addiction

Epic Mickey and Frittering

Gamer Therapy

How to Get Taken Seriously as a Mental Health Professional

Skyrim, Stealing & Sadism

 

Like this post?  I can rant in person too, check out the Press Kit for Public Speaking info?  And, for only $2.99 you can buy my book.  You can also  Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

Angry Birds, Advent, & the 12 Links of Christmas

You may be familiar with Angry Birds, one of the most popular smartphone games in the world. But did you know that they have a holiday season edition? They cover several world holidays, but by far my favorite is the Christmas version, which comes out early each December.

The reason I like it so much is that it is basically an Advent calendar. For those of you who aren’t familiar with them, advent calendars are holiday calendars used to help celebrate the anticipation of Christmas. There are usually 24 little doors or windows in the calendar, and each night you open one of the doors as you get closer to the 25th. Behind the door may be a picture, small piece of chocolate, part of a story, or something else.

Angry Birds Seasons allows you to play one game level per day leading up until Christmas. Whether you whiz through it or play for 2 hours, the next day’s level is locked until midnight. You’ll see a countdown page if you try to move forward, but that’s it.

Many spiritual traditions emphasize the celebration of small patient acts. Hanukkah uses the nightly lighting of the menorah and exchange of small gifts for 8 nights. Diwali has 6 nights of celebration in its festival of lights, and there are many more. And now we have the more secular tradition of Angry Birds.

I want to celebrate with you the idea of waiting and enjoying small things. I think we can enjoy anticipation, see the value in the smallest of gifts. And that those gifts can be as powerful as they are small.

So whatever your particular holiday tradition is, or isn’t, I hope you’ll accept this gift from me to you. I call them the Twelve Links of Christmas, but you can call them whatever you want. They’re hyperlinks (sorry Zelda fans) to 12 different activities and ideas. Some of them are video games you can try, others are gift ideas, some are videos of change. All of them engage you in some activity involving social justice.

Don’t open them all at once! Each day from now until the 25th, click on one link and try it out.

The Twelve Links

1. Darfur is Dying: Refugee Game for Change Play this game to learn more about the genocide in the Darfur region. One of my students played the game for 45 minutes before realizing that she had now spent more time learning about Darfur in one sitting than the totality of her life before.
2. Eli Pariser TED Talk: Beware online “filter bubbles” In this TED Talk, Eli Pariser helps us see how we are in danger of having our experiences and information filtered by emerging technologies, and warns us of the potential consequence of such searches mediating and filtering our understanding of the world.
3. True Colors It’s been two years since this performance was belted out by the LA Gay Men’s Chorus, but it is as moving as ever. Sung to the world, but also to every LGBT youth feeling isolated and hopeless, this resounding cry of comfort and encouragement is perhaps best summed up in the powerful vocals at 3:50: “So don’t be afraid..”
4. Foldit: Science Game for Health Learn about and play the game that contributed to HIV research in 10 days of gaming in ways that computer models had been trying to do for years. Foldit uses a video game to fold proteins, which aids in the search for cures of health issues such as Cancer and AIDS. Within minutes, anyone can begin playing the game and help!
5. Tropes Vs. Women #3: The Smurfette Principal This is one video from Anita Sarkeesian’s series, which offers a feminist perspective on the limited and limiting ways women are portrayed in popular culture. Anita’s more recent exploration of sexism and these tropes in video games sparked a hateful backlash from some, and may just have ushered in a new era of discussion and self-critique as gamers and game developers supported Sarkeesian and have begun working to make the days of such hate numbered.
6. Papo and Yo If you still have any doubt that video games can be both art and social commentary, this powerful trailer may convince you otherwise. This PS3 game offers a powerful exploration of childhood abuse, ethnicity, poverty and the power of the imagination to solve the puzzle trauma inflicts on the oppressed.
7. Ken Robinson Says Schools Kill Creativity Check out this TED talk, not just for its commentary on education in general, but as a meditation on how we could rethink learning disabilities, autism, and other differences in the human learning process.
8. Ethos and Seniors Flash Mob for Elder Abuse Awareness Day This year, senior citizens in my very own Massachusetts dropped into the local supermarket for a flash mob to raise awareness on elder abuse. Their choice of song was apt, and even a bit chilling. Check out the video and see if you can notice how many stereotypes of elders it helps debunk.
9. Heifer.org : Rethinking Gift-giving A perennial favorite of mine, the mission of Heifer is simple: “To work with communities to end hunger and poverty and care for the Earth.” This website will show you the way you can change the world this holiday season by giving a gift of sustainable food and agriculture to indigenous peoples all over the world. Much nicer than another soap on a rope.
10. I Am: Trans People Speak A brave and bold use of social media, this project is affiliated with the Massachusetts Transgender Political Coalition in partnership with the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation. It seeks to raise awareness about diversity within transgender communities, as well as empower individuals to create positive change in the media representations of trans people.
11. Food Force 2 Look, you’re on Facebook anyway, why not spend some time learning a bit about sustainability, community organizing and world hunger? This game, sponsored by the United Nations World Food Program, seeks to raise both awareness and money to solve real world food shortages. Since it is a video game on a social media platform, perhaps you can invite your friends to play too!
12. Give An Hour: Psychotherapists Supporting Veterans Got a spare 50 hours? Of course not. Okay, how about 10 minutes to check this video out. In it my colleague Barbara Van Dahlen discusses how she founded Give An Hour, an organization that connects returning veterans with psychotherapists who have volunteered to donate an hour a week of free therapy. After you listen to some of the soldier’s stories, you may find yourself inspired to make room for that hour a week in your practice. I have since 2006, and I recommend it highly.

If you’ve checked out the link before, maybe there is someone important to you you could send it to? Maybe you haven’t shared it with your child? Maybe someone else who you know will be alone for the holidays, or someone you’ve been meaning to reconnect with and can’t quite figure out how to do it?

I hope you find these links as rewarding and enriching as I have. Please accept them as my thank you for reading the blog this year. Please take them as an invitation to change the world. Because that is what social justice is, isn’t it?

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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. Subscribe to the Epic Newsletter!

‘Tis The Season For Power Ups

This time of year is for many of us a time of stress and reflection.  The days get shorter and much of the time it seems as if we are wandering around in darkness waiting for things to change.  We may be pursued by haunting images of past relationships and mistakes we have made.  We may feel like we are doing things over and over the same way expecting different results.  We may become painfully aware of our repetition compulsion even as we charge around trying to get something to fill us up.  We may dread the end and fear death.

You all know I’m talking about Pac-Man, right?

No, seriously, by now everyone on the planet, gamer or not, must know that Pac-Man is not just a fun video game but a compelling spiritual meditation.  First off, Pac-Man is walking a labyrinth over and over, focusing on his path, how mindful is that?  And then there are the ghosts, don’t even get me started on them.  They pursue him constantly, like the specter of death or the ruminating thought that can’t be shaken.  They are constantly somewhere on the board with him, yet Pac-Man is essentially alone in the world.

This would all be pretty depressing if it weren’t for the power-ups.  Traditionally there are four of them, in the form of larger blinking white dots in the corners of the maze.  You probably recall the drill:  Pac-Man runs away from the ghosts until he finally eats one of those power-ups.  And then everything changes.  The ghosts turn blue and run away from him, and he can eat them for more points.  Yep, turns out Pac-Man applies good old Buddhist principles to the whole situation:  He faces his fears, and moves toward them.  As Pema Chodron would say, Pac-Man goes to the places that scare him and leans into the sharp points.

Ok, so back to you and your life, or your business or your family or your health, whatever situation or ghostly thoughts are running around the maze in your head.  Let’s do some Pac-meditation on them:

1. Who’s chasing you?  Take a moment to stop rushing around and ask yourself what are you worrying about?  Are you legitimately busy or being hectic?  Remind yourself that in this present moment, the people, places or things you may be avoiding are probably not really there in front of you. If you aren’t physically moving, then remind yourself of that with a breath or two. If you feel like you are moving and you really aren’t, gently remind your mind of that.  And if you are moving, try moving like you are walking a labyrinth not running around a maze: purposefully, single mindedly.  Mindfulness is the difference between a maze and a labyrinth.

2. Don’t let the bouncing fruit distract you.  This time of year especially it is easy to get thrown off course because you can become fixated on one goal: The perfect gift, the perfect holiday dinner, the New Year’s resolution to change X,Y, or Z.  Much of it is hype or a collective hysteria.  Look again, there isn’t one special dazzling fruit (or pretzel) that you have to have to win.  Nope, it’s just ordinary time, the present moment stretching out before you like a string of yummy pellets.  Enjoy those quiet unassuming moments where everything is calm and sufficient.

3. Know your ghosts.  Take a few minutes now to get to know your four ghosts.  This doesn’t need to be all psychoanalytic.  Just try to list off 1-4 things that are most pressing to worry about.  The ghosts often have less scary identities than you may suspect:

Those are the traditional names, but now let’s have you take your ghosts and put your names on them.  For example they could be:

Try to limit the ghosts to four–Remember, this isn’t Space Invaders.  What are the most pressing urgent concerns?  The goal is to get them down and begin to do what Michael White referred to as “externalizing the problem.”

Now you’re ready for…

4. Identify your power-ups.  What are those things that help you feel more powerful, more effective?  Some people identify a song that powers them up to go to the gym.  A favorite quote can be your power-up.  In my office I have one of those Staples Easy Buttons which some people find useful.  My own personal power-up is an Iced Venti Americano at Starbucks.  Sometimes power-ups are specific to the particular ghost you are dealing with, sometimes one power-up works for many different ones.  This is not a new concept, people have been using talismans for years.  Object relations folks would probably call power-ups “transitional objects.”

Last, but not least:

5. Use your power-ups.  This is not as easy as it sounds.  People often forget they have power-ups even after they have identified them.  You need to make sure your power-up is ready at hand.  If yours is an Easy button, you need to keep it at your workspace in plain view.  If it is fresh orange juice you need to make sure there is some in the fridge.  If it is a song it needs to be downloaded on all your gadgets.  If prayer or meditation is your power-up put the cushion on the floor in front of your bedroom doorway.  Enlist your partner or family members to remind you that you have these power-ups.  Then use them no matter how silly it feels, no matter how hopeless you feel.  Just. Use. Them.

This isn’t the only time of year you can use power-ups, but it is definitely a good time to start.  Not because it is the holiday season, but because it is the present.  Right now you are awake, so you can reflect and take action.  The only person stopping you from logging off and figuring out your ghosts and power-ups is you: Game on!

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On The Importance Of Feeling Useless

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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Taking An Interest

 

This week I was at the dentist, and the appointment probably took twice as long as it was supposed to.  This was because as I was waiting in the dentist chair, I was playing Denki Blocks on my iPhone when the assstant came in.  She found the game interesting, and confessed to me that she didn’t know how to download games on her new iPhone.  And as I was explaining how to do that, the dentist came in and he talked about how his children weren’t allowed to play games on the iPhone because they discouraged socializing.  So then of course I explained that there was research that suggested very differently.  He listened quietly and I said, “maybe I shouldn’t be arguing with someone who is about to put a drill in my mouth.”

“No, no,” he said.  “It’s just that I’m thinking about what you said, and I haven’t thought about it that way before.”  All three of us had an ongoing conversation between all the stages of filling a cavitiy, about smartphones, digital literacy, gaming.  And at the end of it I noted how clearly this is a topic for our times if all of us can be talking and listening intently about it for such a long period of time.

In college, one of my creative writing teachers once said, “What interests you is interesting.”  I think there is a lot of truth in this in general, and specifically when it comes to psychotherapy and running a business.  I feel extremely fortunate to be in a portfolio career that allows me to pursue my interests and take an interest in the psyche and society.  Not everybody has an easy or clear path to this in our society.  Some self-help gurus make it sound like all you need is a burning interest to become the happy and successful, which is absolutely not true.  There are millions of talented people out there that start off with less privilege and opportunity, and more stressors due to race, gender, poverty, or living in an ableist culture.  But what I do think my professor was on to was the idea that often what interests you can be a strong motivator to yourself and exciting to others.

A supervisee and I recently were discussing the possible meanings and messages that could be conveyed in leaving a voicemail for a patient.  After discussing this for 30 minutes, I interjected by saying, “Can I just take a step back and point out what a weird profession we’re in that we can spend so much time talking about this?”  We both laughed at this, and it was true, but the time had gone by so fast because we were mutually interested in the subject.

Enthusiasm, in its original meaning, was taken from the Greek enthousiasmos, which came from enthousiazein, to be possessed from within by a spirit or god.  That sense of a powerful force from within that can fill one with energy and ideas and lose track of time is at work in all of the stories above.  It is not the only ingredient to having a successful business, but I believe it is an essential one.  We need to be able to geek out about what we do, to go on at length about it.  Hopefully we can do so in an engaging way, but we need to be able to lose a bit of self-consciousness to be able to focus properly on our patients, our work, and our business.

Frequently I consult with therapists who come to me because they want to grow their practice.  A few of them say that, but what they really mean is that they want to make more money and work less.  That is not in itself a bad thing, but for some it is an attempt at compromise.  For they have grown tired or disinterested in what they are doing.  They feel trapped in their work, not interested in it.  They are afraid that they are too old to change, or don’t have anything else they can do.  Some dream about a time they’ll retire and write a novel.  But for now they are consigned to sit silently and voicelessly in their office.  They grow bored and resentful of their patients, who if they are lucky, escape.  This vicious cycle can go on for years.

The same holds for supervision.  I have heard from a lot of supervisees about supervisions where it’s all about the paperwork, or the liability, or the billable hours.  I’ve heard supervisors lament how they don’t have time to focus on talking about the dynamics of therapies, as if that was “extra” stuff!  My experience is that these comments are voiced midway or at the end of a progression towards burnout.  First the supervisor feels overwhelmed by the “musts” of paperwork and filing 51As, and then the supervision shifts to only being about those.  Next, the supervision gets defined as merely being about that, so that the supervisee sees the supervisor rushing down the hall or on the phone, pausing to ask, “Anything we need to talk about?”  If there is no crisis the student feels pressured and becomes trained to say no, there isn’t.  And now that supervision is only about crises and paperwork, it becomes something everyone wants to avoid because it is boring, lifeless.  There is no enthusiasm.

I would suggest this is ultimately a setup for malpractice.  Supervisees trust supervisors who seem interested in them.  Over and over I have heard that supervisees have a hard time connecting or trusting supervisors who are “just business,” or cheerleaders.  Yes, supervisees don’t want a supervisor who lets them talk for an hour and then says, “sounds like you handled that well.”  This bears saying, because sometimes we unconsciously or consciously try to substitute affirmation for engagement and interest.  If you’re a supervisor, don’t do it, because your supervisees can smell it a mile away.  If you’re vacant, they know it.  If you are filled with the spirit of interest, they know that as well.

I’ve had colleagues tell me how clever I am to have found the niche I have, which drives me crazy frankly.  I didn’t choose to focus on technology, gaming and social media in therapy because I saw a vacuum.  I was just lucky that there was one.  I chose these areas of specialty because I am a total geek about them.  I could play or talk about video games for hours.  I can’t talk about Twitter or Google+ without getting animated.  I see their influence everywhere, read vociferously about them on my “free” time.  I wrote a book about it which I charge $2.99 for.  When asked to teach a class on clinical practice I declined, and said, “No, but I’ll write a syllabus and teach a class for social work and technology.”  Any of you who have taught at the graduate level know that teaching from a pre-existing syllabus is easier and less time-consuming than writing and proposing a pilot course.  But I was enthusiastic about the topic, which fueled my work ethic.  And this has set up a virtuous cycle, where I get more recommendations for reading or TED Talks than I can handle, and referrals to work with those patients.

I’d be lying if I said I didn’t hope someday to become famous or rich, but it is more likely that I will make a decent living and have a modest reputation.  Because as I said there are thousands, no millions of people out there who have talents and interests to share with the world.  I’m just grateful I got lucky enough to be one of the ones who got the chance to do it.

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The New Achievement Gap

 

Last night while watching the political debate, I was struck by how Mitt Romney tried to reassure the nation that his Medicare plan would not affect current retirees.  This is not an anti-Romney, or even political post, because I have heard other politicians, both Democratic and Republican, often use this reassurance when pitching a policy.  This won’t effect you, they say, only future generations.

Only future generations?  Is it possible that people really care that little about people outside our own little 80-year life span bubble?

Actually this post is going to be about education, how proud I am of my students, and how worried I am about the social work and mental health professions.

This year, Boston College made a step into the future of social work when they allowed me to propose and teach the first graduate social work class on Social Work Practice and Technology.  It was a leap of faith for the faculty and administration, and one not lost on me.  A few weeks into the class I bumped into a colleague who sat on the committee to approve the course.  She asked how the class is going, and when I updated her she said, “honestly, when we were reading your syllabus we didn’t understand half of what you were talking about, but I said ‘let Langlois teach it, if anyone can do it he can.'”

Very flattering, but more importantly an example of a social work program taking a leap of faith into educating 21st century social workers.  Are you paying attention, Deans of other social work schools?

But although I am proud of BC and myself for this, I’m even more proud of the students and how they are doing in our class!  They’re starting blogs and commenting on each others, researching and test driving smartphone Apps for possible clinical benefit, and venturing into a class which will be conducted today in World of Warcraft.  In our discussions they are raising thoughtful comments and challenging my technophilia as much as their technophobia.

At the same time, I am being reminded of the mistake older clinicians often make when we assume that all “young people” know how to use technology.  This is an impossibly blanket and uniform statement to make about the diverse group of social work students today.  Many grad students have avoided smartphones, dislike Twitter, and think of blogging as solo and literary rather than multimedia and interactive.  But the speed at which they are learning and innovating is impressive!

So here is the new Achievement Gap, or Achievement Gaps as I see them:

1. The Gap between current students and continuing education.

This class was filled up on its first run, which contrasts sharply with workshops I often try to do with colleagues for professional development. Too many older clinicians are thinking they can still “opt out” of learning about things like social media, video games, and internet technologies.  They’re the Romneys of the social work world, reassuring themselves that technology changes will not effect their business or the quality of the work they do.  And perhaps just as bad, they are leaving it to the younger generation to learn on their own.

This achievement gap is troubling for many reasons, which brings me to:

2. The Gap between knowing how to use technology technically and how to use it clinically and ethically.

Even if we were to overlook the ageism in the assumption that “young folks know all about the new technologies,” it simply is not true.  Young people, and technology itself, are too diverse for that.  Not all grad students have had the same access to technology, the same aptitude or interest, or time to keep up with the proliferation of new technologies.  And even if they did, there is a vast difference between knowing how to use Twitter mechanically and how (or if) to use it as a clinician.

For learning how to be a clinician our students have always looked to our faculty and supervisors for direction.  From what I have heard over the past several years, the response students get to technology-related questions is usually dismissal or fear.  This is reflected in our profession’s consistent focus on technology as an ethical issue rather than as a modality for treatment.  Technology workshops pay lip service to how technology can provide us with new and exciting innovations, but then skip over how to actually do that and focus on the ethical concerns.  Our profession has bought into the moral panic around the internet by making it into solely an ethical topic almost all the time.

In the search of graduate school curricula, I found only one course on the graduate level that addressed technology, perhaps not surprisingly at UT Austin.  The focus however was much more on IT for informatics and case management than clincial social work.

According to the Council for Social Work Education‘s latest report, there are over 213 MSW programs in the US.  Of those reporting information, the indication is that 85,290 full-time and 26,129 part-time social work students are enrolled currently.  That’s 111,419 students.  Of these students, 20 will graduate this year with advanced clinical training on utilizing online technologies and social media.

That’s an Achievement Gap.  That’s scary.

Look, no one is saying that grad schools and agencies, faculty and supervisors, are in an easy position.  We are being called on to teach future professionals knowledge that we often don’t have a sufficient grasp on ourselves.  But that’s a call to action, not a call to resigning that knowledge to be the responsibility of some future generation, or worse the students who pay us thousands of dollars to prepare them for social work in the 21st Century.  This is an epic fail, and one I hope graduate schools remedy quickly.

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