"If it feels good, do it." Really?

Remember the bit of advice from the 1960s -- if it feels good, do it?

Well, we might know a teenager who just got pregnant because sex “felt good” but who will have to deal with the consequences of tending to an actual needy and noisy infant.

Or an alcoholic or drug addict who said that first drink or drug felt good but now the eighth drink and ninth drug spiraled to compulsive and out of control behavior.

Or — maybe you have a story like this, one that you just can't explain, no matter how much you try to wrap your brain around it.

The truth is:

We need to value both feelings AND thoughts. One is not more important than the other.

The truth is:

Logic is important and good. It is a gift.

But experience is necessary. It is a gift.

The understanding of the complexity of our brains is the main reason that I have been attracted to experiential psychotherapy and immense value of experience in our lives and how it fits with logic and intellect. It is the reason that talk therapy, as valuable as it is, has its limits.

A (very) short lesson in brain science:

We have a complicated brain with a number of parts that have specific jobs. And our brain has two hemispheres, the right brain and the left brain.

The left brain is the logical side of the self. Logic examines general forms that arguments may take, which forms are valid, and which are fallacies. It is one kind of critical thinking. It is the part of the brain that puts words together, allowing me to speak and you to listen and make sense of what I am saying.

The right brain is focused on emotions, intuition and sensory experience. Your right brain loves colors and textures and pink, purple and red – with sparkles and fringe, even if it doesn’t match! Your right brain loves the picture on this blog page more than the words. This side of the brain is the storehouse of feelings, and feelings are not logical, they just are. And if you think that you can explain your feelings through logic, then you might be rationalizing and denying – or just making stuff up!

The logic and intuition of our brains is meant to swing back and forth so that we are able to constantly switch between these two valuable ways of being in the world.

Here’s another interesting tidbit:

We also know that experiences change our brain. In trauma studies, for instance, scientists have actually been able to monitor how there are cellular changes within the brain when the person experiences a trauma such as abuse, combat or another horrifying event.

However, there’s other good news:

People who are survivors of trauma can heal when their brains change. This means that extremely painful or scary experiences can change the brain for the worse and that positive experiences can change the brain for the better. This is called healing.

Common sense says the brain isn't always useful

Logic doesn't always make sense. I know this. I am by profession a psychotherapist, coach, and educator and most people who seek my  help and advice arrive when logic doesn't work.

Typically, when we speak of problem, it is suggested that we think and talk about the problem and apply logic to solve it. When people are struggling with a dilemma, decision or problem, the conventional suggestion involves thinking -- using common sense to figure out the problem:

Think before you speak.

Think it through.

Think out of the box.

Now, thinking is a good thing. We can remember times when we have used our brains. We made lists of pros and cons about a certain decision and followed a plan of action that sounded really good in our heads.

There was just one problem – when the logical solution was applied to real life, it didn’t work very well.

We have an idea about how wonderful it would be to go on this vacation or have that romatic partner or purchase this great new outfit. That’s the logical mind speaking. We can have lots of reasons to back up the rightness of our desires.

In my own life, I’ve had the opportunity to  relearn this concept many times, and I am sure that you  have as well. Remember that wish that you really, really wanted to come true. Maybe it was that perfect job that turned out to be a nightmare bcause you were't prepared for the 12-hour days? Or that gorgeous big house that seemed like a really great real estate investment until the bottom fell out of the ecomony and you strugged to pay your mortgage?

That brings us to another old piece of advice:

Be careful what you pray for.

It seems that many times when we get what we’ve been wanting, the experience we receive is quite different. A loyalty to logic presumes that we have control over our world. It further presumes that we can predict everything that will happen:

Such as: 2 + 2 = 4.

However, life is not logical. For instance:

How is it that a woman  who claims to be a loving and caring mother buys heroin with her son, teaches him how to use the heroin and uses the drug with him?

How is it that a man says he wants to be healthy but eats a double cheese pizza every day followed with a chaser of three doughnuts?

How is it that a woman is terribly abused but does not leave her spouse – even when financial help and refuge is offered?

When we ponder these questions, we see that there are limits to logic, just like there are limits to our control over the word. For some people, the logic of the solution – follow me on this – lays in other kinds of advice:

Follow your heart.

Listen to your gut.

Go with the flow.

But this advice is bare of real content and direction during the decision-making process, especially one that will have repercussions for a long time to come.

What does it mean to follow your heart? And how do we separate what we “want” from what is really “right” for us – if there is anything that is really right for us?

Walking between the brain and the heart is truly a spiritual challenge that call us to examine our inner yearnings. In the next blog post, we'll examine this idea of logic more closely.

Lois Wilson's story tells the story of Al-Anon

Did you catch the recent tele-movie about Lois Wilson, the co-founder of Al-Anon?

It's a brilliant telling of the story of how families are affected by alcoholism and a reminder that you don't have to drink to suffer from alcoholism.

The recent tele-movie is "When Love Is Not Enough," is based on the newly reissued biography by William G. Borchert. It reveals the trials and triumph for co-founder of Al-Anon, whose alcoholic husband, Bill Wilson, was a co-founder of Alcoholics Anonymous. It is the moving story about how the couple rose from a life of despair to institute one of the twentieth century's most important social movements, and how Lois created a legacy of hope for millions of families devastated by addiction through her uncommon love and unshakable faith.

A college-educated young woman from an affluent family, Lois married Bill in 1918, after his return from duty at the end of World War I. While Lois worked as an occupational therapist, Bill struggled to find his niche. Lois strongly believed that Bill was destined for greatness, and despite noticing an increase in his drinking habits, she showered him with love and support. By 1927, Bill was a lucrative securities analyst on Wall Street and the couple was living a luxurious lifestyle.

Despite Lois' countless efforts to control his drinking, Bill's addiction to alcohol spiraled out of control until his job, their lifestyle and dreams were gone. In 1935, after years of unsuccessfully struggling to cover for Bill and manage his disease, Lois saw him take control of his alcoholism. However, his sobriety was not the result of Lois' help but through the support of a fellow recovering alcoholic, Dr. Bob Smith.

As Bill and Bob attained sobriety and started Alcoholics Anonymous, Lois began to question the value she had in her own marriage. After devoting 17 years to healing her sick husband, Lois felt isolated and resentful that he was sober without her help. Lois eventually discovered that she was not alone. She slowly engaged the wives of the men in Bill's program and came to realize that while Bill was addicted to alcohol, she was addicted to him - and that the family and friends of alcoholics are, in some ways, as sick as their loved ones. Lois gained the necessary understanding needed to repair her fractured relationship and to help millions of others do the same. She co-founded Al-Anon in 1951.

Read many stories here about how Al-Anon is still very much helpful to distressed family members in the 21st century.

Here's a dramatic clip from the tele-movie:

Drippy nose? Irritating behavior? Consider food allergies.

Are you or your child restless? Nose drippy? Or is there some other irritating health or behavior problem?

What did you eat, drink or touch? I've been receiving calls about food and other allergies and how they may affect behavior -- a problem that medications just won't help. Some medical doctors think food allergies are a bunch of hooey and won't order a blood test for the potential problem.

Dr. Doris Rapp is dedicated to sharing important information about harmful environmental factors that can affect how children and adults feel, think and act in our high-tech, high-stress, high-profit world. The "progress at any cost" mentality is rapidly overwhelming our bodies as we attempt to cope with our increasingly polluted environment.

In her breakthrough best-selling book "Is This Your Child?" Dr. Rapp identifies the major symptoms of potentially unrecognized allergies in children and adults, suggesting possible sensitivities to dust, mold, pollen, foods or chemicals. Allergies are much more than high fever, asthma and itchy skin. It is possible to identify allergies by simply looking at someone. At times it is surprisingly easy to find and eliminate the cause.

The typical clues of allergies and environmental illness can include any combination of the following: rubbing nose upwards -- to wipe drippy nose -- eye wrinkles, dark eye circles, sudden aggression, scarlet earlobes, a spacey look, extreme activity changes, wiggly legs, red cheeks and a mottled tongue.

 

Here's a well-viewed video with Dr. Doris Rapp, who is talking about children's allergies to food and environment. The show aired in 1989 on television's popular Phil Donahue Show:

To spank or not to spank?

Every so often, a parent asks me about the wisdom of spanking a child.

Now, I'm not a fan of spanking. Spanking teaches kids that it's all right for big people to hit little people -- or anyone else -- and that a sign of "bigness" is that they get to hit people too. It also teaches that hitting and hurting are legitimate repsonses to anger and that punishment, rather than teaching ways to maintain good behavior, is the focus.

Time has published a good essay about spanking in the current Time magazine in an article titled, The Long-Term Effects of Spanking, which reports on a researchers at Tulane University provide the strongest evidence yet that children's short-term response to spanking may make them act out more in the long run. Of the nearly 2,500 youngsters in the study, those who were spanked more frequently at age 3 were much more likely to be aggressive by age 5.

It's better to practice alternative ways of guidance -- the key word rather than punishment -- with time-out periods, redirection and other positively oriented responses. Now, hitting is easy. Changing behaviors to parent effectively takes time, motivation and intention. If a parent finds that anger and other emotions prevent the learning and use of these activites, then it may be important to address issues relating to the self.