Author Archives: shrinkrapped

Suicide by Gun

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Means Matter logo

Once again, America is transfixed by a mass shooting. No doubt the list of massacres will grow to encompass other shattered towns and families, evoking fear and horror every time.

Yet almost two-thirds of gun deaths do not make national headlines. These are the more than 21,000 people–many of them teenagers— who every year kill themselves with a gun.

As someone who has worked in the field of suicide prevention for decades, I know that the best way to prevent these tragedies is to restrict access to guns. Current research contradicts the commonly held but false belief that suicidal individuals will just find some other way to kill themselves. In fact, self-destructive feelings are often impulsive and fleeting, dissipating as the crisis passes. Ninety percent of those who survive an attempt never go on to die by suicide. But when guns are involved, the crisis can quickly escalate, precluding safe resolution. Fast and deadly equals no second chances.

According to the Harvard School of Public Health, those states with the highest rate of gun ownership also have the highest rates of suicide. Access to lethal means is a far greater risk factor than mental illness. Although some promote the fallacy that a gun in the home makes you safer, the opposite is true. The risk of suicide is two to five times greater for all household members in gun-owning homes. In one study, 82 percent of children 17 and under who shot themselves to death used a gun belonging to a family member. Homes without guns have the lowest suicide rates, but even in homes where firearms are present, risk decreases if they’re properly stored—unloaded and under lock and key.

When it comes to preventing suicide, means matter. We always ask why people kill themselves. But we’re better off focusing on how so many people die.

It’s the guns. If we really want to save lives, restricting easy access to such lethal means is our best approach.

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The statistics cited here are from these sources, which provide a wealth of additional information:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/10/health/blocking-the-paths-to-suicide.html

http://www.hsph.harvard.edu/means-matter/

http://actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/sites/actionallianceforsuicideprevention.org/files/Reducing%20a%20Suicidal%20Persons%20Access%20to%20Lethal.pdf

 

 

 

 

Out of the (Gratitude) Closet

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Gratitude closet

I love my colleague Tina for many things, but especially because she drinks her coffee from a mug that announces, “I Don’t Do Perky.” False Positive is the title of an article I wrote for psychotherapists about the downside of positive thinking. And a humorous essay of mine begins, “This gratitude craze bugs the shit out of me.”

So it may come as a surprise that I’ve recently begun keeping a gratitude journal.

Call me a hypocrite. I prefer to think of it as similar to the time I went from being a person who doesn’t much like dogs to owning one. I could really relate to canine-indifferent friends who couldn’t express an enthusiasm they did not feel for such lovable behaviors as tail-wagging and that (not so, to them) endearing doggy lean-in.

Likewise, I understand why someone who is suffering can feel even worse when asked to embrace positive emotions. It’s not that I’m a depressive ingrate by nature (at least not most of the time). But I’m wary of efforts to sanitize thought and speech. Too often, expressions of negativity are met with rebuke instead of empathy, and I’ve seen the damage this causes, personally and professionally.  I thus try to champion all those nasty feelings we feel pressure to squelch: anger, sorrow, bitterness, envy, vengeance. Superimposed gratitude is like a thin coat of whitewash that seals in the toxins.

And yet, stubborn resistance is equally problematic.

So during a hard time this summer, I relinquished my protestations and started a gratitude journal, figuring that it couldn’t hurt.

It’s nothing fancy, just an old 5×7” Reporter’s Notebook covered with my daughter’s grade-school scribbles . Every night I write the date and “I am grateful for/that . . . “ Then I list 3-5 things. I try not to repeat myself (though our latest addiction, the TV series Nashville, has made it into several days, and there’s a sprinkling of entries that say “RAIN! RAIN! RAIN!”).

Here are some of the things I’ve jotted down recently:

(And although this isn’t a current event, I’m grateful to my daughters, whose persistent dog lobbying brought Button into our lives for 15 years.)

Button

Two weeks into my gratitude journal, one of the things I wrote was “Feeling way less depressed.” Though the ritual of giving thanks surely helped, there were other things at play as well: I’d resumed weekly therapy after cutting back; the post-cancer scans that always make me nervous were clear; I finally followed through on my intention to volunteer; my weight finally started heading in the right direction; things started to go better for the Democrats; the summer drought of movies yielded to a fresh crop of Oscar worthies; our actual drought yielded (a little) to rain and the promise of more to come.

There is always more to come.  Assuming El Nino delivers on its promise, I look forward to jotting down my gratitude for SUN! SUN! SUN!

That’s how it goes, the chiaroscuro of darkness and light that makes up life’s full spectrum.

I’m grateful for it all.

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Ever felt (or promoted) the prohibition on negative feelings? How’d it go? What are you grateful for?

Beanie Baby

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Beanie BabyOh, how sad!” I inwardly gasped, brought up short on my daily walk.

There at my feet was a bit of dirty orange plush. It looked like it had been run over by a truck. One leg was missing entirely; white fluff spilled out from what was left of an arm: A beanie baby bear, lying face down on the asphalt.

Briefly, my empathy flitted to the forlorn child, the parents desperate to soothe, placate, substitute, bribe—anything to stop the wailing. I remembered the sleepless nights of misplaced lovies, the routes retraced until we found Sock Monkey or Pink Doggy, or whoever else had escaped unnoticed from my daughters’ clutches.

Mostly, though, I was horrified by how far this particular orange bear had fallen from its original pristine condition. Back in the late 1990s, Beanie Babies were not supposed to be the victims of botched surgeries performed by aspiring veterinarians, or sacrificed in the service of sibling torment. They were not supposed to lie on the ground getting dirty. In many families, they were not even supposed to be played with at all!

It didn’t start out this way. When Beanie Babies first appeared, they were just cute plush toys that cost five bucks. I didn’t care what my daughters did with theirs, as long as I didn’t break my neck tripping over them on the stairs.

Then things went a little crazy.

Thanks to a clever marketing strategy of “retiring” beloved characters, scarcity drove up demand. People willing to pay anything spent hours tracking down the elusive creatures, convinced their value would skyrocket. One man made national news when he bought $100,000 worth of Beanie Babies, gambling that their ever-increasing value would put his kids through college.

Suddenly, Beanie Babies became not a child’s favorite cuddle buddy, but investments. To protect their assets, people bought heart-shaped plastic covers to place over the manufacturer’s label (the very same label that in saner times would have been removed as a choking hazard). Truly zealous collectors entombed each Beanie Baby in a special acrylic box. Kids could forget about playing with their Beanies, since they couldn’t be trusted to keep them in mint condition.

Skepticism and a reputation as a tightwad inoculated me (and thus my kids) from all but the mildest case of Beanie Baby fever. Still, we occasionally were part of the grapevine of kids and mothers alerting one another to a rare Beanie sighting at some far-flung store. I confess to rushing out and paying $13.00 for a floppy-eared bunny rumored to be worth more because its tag had a misprint. During the Princess Di craze, when all the shelves were stripped bare of royal purple bears, my girls and I were overjoyed when the clerk dug out an overlooked one from the storeroom. (I was even more overjoyed when she didn’t jack up the price beyond the $20 retail “value.”)

Eventually, the bubble burst and my daughters grew up. Now there is a giant box of gently used Beanie Babies stowed high on a closet shelf. They’re awaiting future grandchildren, not a market rebound. Sadly, the Beanies were useless for college tuition, possibly because the unprotected but still-affixed labels showed a little too much wear and tear.

Not as much wear and tear, however, as the bedraggled orange bear I’d stumbled across on my recent walk. As I looked down at the heap of soiled plush at my feet, I thought of The Velveteen Rabbit, whose shabbiness was an emblem of how well-loved he was.

I imagined again the bereft child whose beloved orange friend had gone missing.

Then I pondered further on the time when kids were deprived of the chance to love someone to decrepitude because we encased their Beanies in plastic and put them out of reach.

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Were you or your kids afflicted with Beanie Baby Fever?.Memories from that time?

Talking Cure

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Conversation

Sherry Turkle, a sociologist and psychologist who studies the impact of technology on relationships, wrote recently about the need for face-to-face conversation in a world increasingly dominated by texting and smartphones. It is through this “talking cure” that we build empathy, intimacy, and self-reflection, coming to know ourselves and others deeply.

Turkle wasn’t talking about Freud, but she was describing the mainstay of psychotherapy.

Soon after Turkle’s essay appeared, new research questioning the efficacy of talk therapy in treating depression made headlines. That same day, I listened to a podcast about Dr. James O’Connell, who has been providing healthcare to Boston’s homeless population since 1985.

O’Connell’s approach is more art than science.  He described having to unlearn the techniques and arrogance he’d perfected as an ER doctor when he took a job at a homeless shelter. The nurses, unimpressed with his skills, advised him to keep quiet about his medical expertise. They instructed O’Connell to spend his first two months doing nothing but soaking the feet of those living on the street.

“Don’t judge, these people have been through hell,” the nurses told him. “You will not gain anyone’s trust without being present.”

O’Connell spoke of the profound isolation and loneliness as well as the tremendous courage and resourcefulness of the men and women he came to know in his decades on the street. He believes the adversity they experienced would have broken him. This knowledge is fundamental to engaging in such hard work:

“We’re all broken in our own way,” O’Connell says. “It’s a connection with that brokenness that actually keeps us going.”

O’Connell’s words took me back to what inspired me to become a therapist: volunteering at a crisis hotline.

I had never before encountered the level of adversity our callers faced—poverty, abuse, addiction, chronic mental illness. Like O’Connell, I was awed by the courage and dignity of those whose lives were unimaginably precarious. The work was hard, but I loved it—the listening, the immediacy of the connection, feeling that my presence made a difference. Nothing much changed in anyone’s life, mine or theirs. Yet everything changed because we mattered to one another.

This is the essence of therapy. Our work is a modest endeavor–a conversation, a space of undivided, unhurried attention and exploration. The talking cure depends on humility and presence. These are the ineffable, unmeasurable things that matter—on the streets, in conversation, and in psychotherapy.

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 How do you preserve conversation in a technology-obsessed world? What is the essence of presence for you?

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(Originally published in Impulse, the electronic newsletter of the Northern California Society for Psychoanalytic Psychology)

The Pull to Be Positive

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happy and sad face“Fake it till you make it.”

I thought of this adage when I took a friend who had never been backpacking into the wilderness years ago. We encountered a stream crossing that involved balancing on a log high above the roiling waters below.  I was terrified, but I never let on. My confidence was key in helping my friend safely across. It also helped me become as light-hearted as I had pretended to be.

Three years ago a cancer diagnosis thrust me again into the territory of needing to go on despite my fear. I wanted to lead everyone who cared about and depended on me, especially my children, through the treacherous waters without raising undue alarm that I’d go under, taking them with me. My darkest feelings were confined to my journal, my therapist, my husband, and a couple of trusted friends. For public consumption, I presented a sunnier side, writing breezy blog posts about wigs and Chinese medicine, stressing my gratitude and good fortune. It wasn’t a stretch: I was tolerating chemotherapy well, and felt truly lucky about early detection, great health insurance, an excellent prognosis, and lots of support.

The plaudits poured in.

“You’re so strong!” I was told all the time. “You’ll be fine because of your positive attitude.”

The implication that it would be my fault if things didn’t turn out fine always brought me up short. But being strong for others helped me be strong. Inspiring others kept their and my own spirits from flagging. I loved and needed the admiration.

I also hated it. For what if my spirits sagged? If I expressed too much doubt and fear, would I be letting down my fan base?

More important, would people desert me?

No one means to withdraw, but it happens: the involuntary recoil, the averted gaze, not knowing what to say, so saying nothing. I couldn’t bear the burden of people’s fear and helplessness. I couldn’t bear my own. So I tried not to add to it. Besides, who doesn’t want to flee the quicksand of negativity? Emphasizing the positive truth, even if it wasn’t the whole truth, was an act of self-preservation.

Only much later, long after treatment had ended and I knew I was fine, could I fully let in the darker side. It reminded me of the time years ago when I tripped and fell carrying my newborn daughter, asleep in her car seat. The seat, with Ally in it, landed hard on the concrete walkway. Fortunately, it remained upright, my baby safe and unperturbed.

“Oh, thank God,” I’d silently gasped, brushing myself off, scooping up Ally in her car seat, and continuing on, barely registering the close call.

It was only later that I could allow in the terror, all the What ifs? Ally is 24 now, and I am still overcome with dread whenever I think back to that moment.

Cancer is never over in a moment. Even when it’s gone, the possibility of its return menaces. Of course I celebrated leaving treatment behind. Yet the more chemotherapy’s protective shield of poison withdrew from my body and faded into the past, the more vulnerable I felt.

As previously disavowed feelings of fear and sadness bubbled up to the surface recently, I happened to tune into a TED Radio Hour about fighting cancer. A hospital chaplain who herself had gone through the ordeal stressed that only well after treatment has ended can survivors even begin to process their cancer experience.

Finally! Someone willing to challenge the platitudes about looking forward, not backward, the claptrap about cancer’s gifts. I listened eagerly as the chaplain described meeting with a woman a year after the latter had been declared cancer-free.

Revealing the suffering and fear she’d repressed during treatment, the woman remarks, “I felt like I was crucified on the cross.”

I waited expectantly for the chaplain to enlighten the TED audience about the isolation of cancer; the need to express what it’s really like; how crucial it is to listen to what’s hard to hear.  Instead, the chaplain recounts what she said to the woman:

“Get down off your cross.”

My worst fears were confirmed: Fake it till you make it, or you may find yourself having to make your way alone.

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What’s your experience with the pull to be positive? Upsides and downsides? What’s your best (or worst) “Fake it till you make it” story?

Martian Plateau

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Source: www.latino-review.com
Source: 123rf.com

The Martian continues in the great astronaut film tradition of reminding us that although we live in a broken world, duct tape can repair just about anything. Even better, as far as fixing human nature is concerned, the movie provides an antidote to racism, sexism, despair, global violence, and science denialism by celebrating human ingenuity, diversity, teamwork, and international cooperation. And, of course,  science. This nerd’s delight is winning plaudits for its scientific accuracy.

The Martian is accurate on another count as well: how incredibly difficult it is to lose weight! As a lifetime member of Weight Watchers, I know it’s a scientific fact that the body will not relinquish one ounce no matter how much you exercise and how little you eat.

An uninformed person might think, for example, that a guy who has to stretch 60 days of NASA rations to last four years might quickly drop a few pounds, even if said rations are calorie-dense (or “high in points” as we Weight Watchers say) and supplemented by a bumper crop of potatoes. Weight loss might occur even faster if the guy is laboring to set up a Martian greenhouse, hydration system, night-soil composting facility, and solar panels. Even without a lot of gravitational pull, such physical exertion burns a lot of calories, particularly when wearing a heavy space suit.

Yet Matt Damon, who looks pretty hefty at the beginning of the film, looks exactly the same several dozen food-restricted sols later. Talk about plateaus!

I blame the potatoes. Sure, they save Matt Damon’s life and are listed as a Weight Watcher’s Power Food when eaten plain (or with Vicodin powder as a zero-point flavor enhancement). But you have to be careful with potatoes. I, for example, just spent a weekend hiking in the mountains. I also spent a whole bunch of points on a half batch of delicious French fries. Despite vigorous exercise, I gained three pounds.

We weak-willed earthlings usually throw in the towel at this point. But Matt Damon is a man of science and discipline for whom throwing in the towel is never an option. Also, even if he wanted, understandably, to indulge in a little stress-eating by binging on yummy carbohydrates, he can’t: all his potatoes are nuked into oblivion by a sudden deep freeze.  So it’s back to extreme-portion-controlled MREs.

Still, Matt’s weight stubbornly refuses to budge. At Weight Watchers, we have a saying for this: “It’s in the bank!” This promise of earned weight loss yet to be realized keeps hope alive despite the unfairness of the laws of physics. Just refrain from self-sabotage and remember: Your weight loss is in the bank, and those pounds will eventually roll right off!

And lo! That’s exactly what happens in The Martian! Matt Damon goes from endlessly looking cute but downright plump to a screen shot labeled “Seven Months Later,” in which a gaunt body double emerges naked save for a long scruffy beard and wild hair. Apparently, facial hair is also in the bank, as we have seen nary a trace of stubble in the considerable time we spend with Matt before seven months suddenly pass. Then, in another tribute to reality, Matt is back to his full-figured self soon after the camera turns away from his anorexic body double.

I love The Martian  for illuminating the reality and perils of yo-yo dieting. It also shows that confidence, competence, and good cheer have nothing to do with weight. For which we Weight Watchers are grateful.

We are also grateful for the incredible hope the movie conveys. Sure, a post-racial, post-sexist, science-loving era of international cooperation to solve big problems is nice. But here’s the real hope: When all else fails with your weight-loss mission, and you just can’t break that plateau, head to Mars. You’ll find that no matter what your lying (or depressingly truth-telling) scale says on Earth, you’ll cut that number by about two-thirds on the Red Planet.

If you don’t believe me, just check out this science-based handy conversion calculator.

And whatever you do, stay away from Jupiter.

 

Pure Gold

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Mono Lake and White Mountains
Lundy Canyon
Parker Lake
Green Creek Trail
Parker Lake Trail
Green Creek
Green Creek Trail
Fern Lake
Fern Lake

I’ve been playing hooky from my blog lately, and here’s one of the reasons why: a fall foliage and hiking trip to the eastern Sierra. We stayed in Lee Vining and dined out at the overrated Mobil Gas Station every night. Best dessert: sharing a pint of dark chocolate chip Haagen Dazs gelato. Yum.

The landscape was blanched of color by drought and a season headed into dormancy. This subdued palette of tans and grays that hung from a sapphire sky made the brilliant yellow of the aspens even more striking. Double yum.

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Favorite fall foliage outings?

Emissions Fraud

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climate change gopheads-1125x635

The news that Volkswagen intentionally faked emissions testing for years has sparked international outrage and demands for accountability.

But there is an even bigger fraud under way, one with far graver consequences than 11 million diesel cars spewing emissions well above their advertised levels. It’s the false notion that climate change is unrelated to manmade greenhouse gases. This deception is not hidden in a software design. It’s openly proclaimed by power brokers like Oklahoma’s Senator Inhofe, who calls global warming a hoax, and Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, who has declared war on the EPA’s attempts to curtail coal-fired-plant emissions. Too many other politicians also fall in line with the vested interests of big donors like the Koch brothers and major oil corporations. Only a few of the Republican presidential contenders even admit that manmade emissions contribute to climate change. Besides denial, their favored response to the biggest challenge facing our planet is to duck the issue altogether.

Meanwhile, more than 97 percent of climate scientists agree that human activities are driving climate change. Only in America is such well-established science routinely open to debate.  Residents and leaders of most other countries may disagree on what to do about the threat, but at least they acknowledge it exists.

Rising sea levels, more intense storms and droughts, the spread of tropical diseases, famine, and global unrest may escalate beyond control if we don’t act quickly.

Unlike the Volkswagon deception, climate fraud is obvious to all who bother to look. If we reward the deniers with our silence or our votes, we help perpetrate the fraud.

Fortunately, awareness of the danger is finally taking hold in the consciousness of most Americans, if not the leaders of the Republican Party. Let’s harness the outrage and demand for accountability VW so richly deserves, and apply it equally to those who fiddle while our planet burns.

 

 

Up in the Air

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hot air balloonsLike many recent college graduates, I spent the summer of 1977 moping in my parents’ basement.  My college roommate, Sharon, was doing the same, 3,000 miles away in Berkeley. We had no jobs and no prospects, so we spent a lot of time on the phone.

“Why don’t you come out to California?” Sharon proposed one day.

Since it was the first idea all summer that made me smile, I thought, “Why not?”

A couple of weeks later, I waved goodbye to my stunned parents, then boarded a Greyhound bus that would take me across the country.

First, though, it would take me to St. Louis, where two college friends had just started medical school at Washington University.

It was great to see them. It was even greater taking a shower and sleeping in a bed—my last taste of such comforts until I’d arrive days later in Berkeley.

Before my friends put me on the bus the next morning for the second half of my westward adventure, we wandered through Forest Park. There people swarmed among hot air balloons, most just flat or half-filled expanses of brightly colored nylon on the lawn. A few were fully inflated into majestic orbs poised for flight.

We watched as the balloonists adjusted ropes and burners, then took off to land wherever the wind (combined with skill and a little luck) would blow them. It was the Great Forest Park Balloon Race, founded just four short years earlier—the same September we had entered college.

This weekend marks the 43rd anniversary of the Great Forest Park Balloon Race. Which means I’m marking my 39th anniversary of coming to California. I had no idea back then how long I’d stay, or what I’d do, or how I’d survive.

But when Sharon picked me up dirty and exhausted late at night from the Greyhound bus station, she drove twisting, up and up, through the Berkeley hills, stopping finally at the Lawrence Hall of Science.

“Look!” she said.

There stretched out before us was the fathomless black of the bay, the twinkling lights of Berkeley and Oakland below, San Francisco a shimmering faraway specter, the night sky shot through with billions of  stars.

I had arrived home.

Decades later, my husband and I sometimes say, “We should take a hot air balloon ride over Napa Valley someday.”

We haven’t yet, and I suspect we never will. We’re too cheap, and besides, I’m really not all that adventurous. It still amazes me that I ventured away from home and onto that Greyhound bus so long ago.

But I’m glad I did, glad I let myself land wherever the winds blew me.

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Have you ever been adrift and let the winds blow you wherever they take you? Where have you landed? 

 

 

 

Remembering 9/11

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Candle in the darkI wrote this post on the tenth anniversary of 9/11, and offer it again today in commemoration

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As usual, I went to yoga Sunday morning, the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks. Mostly I go for the effect on my muscles, not my spirit. But on this solemn day my yoga teacher lit a candle in remembrance, and invited us to practice Tonglen, breathing in all that is troublesome in the world, acknowledging it, then transforming it into compassion and peace on the exhale. After a few minutes, the class continued with its typical focus on backs, necks, and hips, or, as one member put it, “the usual overall soreness.”

At the end of the class, after the stretching and the Namaste, another member shared what happened to her Turkish and Egyptian friends ten years ago. They owned a restaurant in Manhattan, which they managed to keep open after the towers fell despite the chaos and lack of customers. Late at night three white men came in. They trashed the place. One of the owner’s friends managed to slip away and call the police. Soon the men who had destroyed the restaurant were apprehended and brought back to be identified before they could be charged.

“Yes, those are the men,” the owners told the police, who were eager to throw the book at them.

But the owners refused to press charges.

“This is a difficult day,” they said. “We understand their grief and rage. Let them go.”

Incredulous, the police did so reluctantly.

A few hours later, the three men came back with some of their friends, pressing upon the owners fistfuls of cash for the damage. The men helped clean up as best they could, and continued to come for the next several weeks until things were put right again.

Sometimes forgiveness is the most effective kind of justice. It is much more likely than hatred or revenge to spawn atonement. This is the lesson so often lost in our decade of fear and grief and war. But it is one worth remembering as we light a candle; breathe in trouble and sorrow; breathe out compassion and peace; and seek to ease the overall soreness of the world.