What are Adult Children of Alcoholics/Addiction Traits?

The term “adult children of addiction” is probably the most useful and relevant concept in psychology that isn’t very well known outside of clinical circles. It not only signifies a person raised by one or more addicts, but the cluster of personality traits and social roles that continuously hamper their ability to be happy and successful. This topic is something that comes up again and again in session with clients from almost every conceivable background, yet it’s rare that someone outside of the recovery world has heard the term and knows what it means. I’d like to spend some time writing about ACA traits and why they’re so relevant.

The term was originally popularized as “Adult Children of Alcoholic” traits, but over time it has been expanded to include adult children of addiction and even dysfunctional families. It came about when clinicians who treated alcoholics and addicts began to realize that often times their difficulties with emotional regulation, communication, boundaries, and authenticity came from their upbringing as children of alcoholics or addicts themselves, and that inhabiting such a position in a family makes one more prone to addictive behavior. In fact, from my work I see a huge overlap between ACA traits and what clinicians would term codependency. I tend to conceptualize ACA traits as a form of codependency fostered by being the child of an addict or a highly dysfunctional family.

The seminal work on the subject is the book Adult Children of Alcoholics by Janet Geringer Woititz. In it, the author elucidates what it means to be an adult child of alcoholics or addicts and gives examples of ACA traits as well as the means to overcome them when they become an impediment to one’s life. Readers curious about the subject may be interested in The Laundry List and the ACA Bill of Rights. Since this field of treatment began with support groups based on The 12 Step Model, there are some similarities with Alcoholics Anonymous, and the many free support groups for ACA’s will likely draw from many of the same approaches. However, one does not need to necessarily adhere to a 12 Step philosophy or attend support groups to treat ACA issues in therapy, although these steps will be helpful for many people.

As the name implies, ACA traits are not simply impairments that an individual suffered in their childhood, but untreated issues that impair one’s functioning as a healthy adult. If one is conditioned to be hypersensitive to a parent’s volatile, unpredictable, and possibly even abusive nature, then one doesn’t tend to develop a healthy sense of one’s own needs. Adult children of addiction tend to live in relation to others rather than in touch with themselves, and this can create a host of problems. An adult child of addiction has the uncanny ability to consistently fall for addicts or extremely self-centered partners. From my experience as a clinician, most if not all adult children of addiction I’ve seen have struggled greatly with even conceiving what it means to love themselves. Self-love and self-compassion are foreign concepts for a child who is used to taking care of their parents emotionally, a perversion of the natural order of things.

If my description of Adult Children of Addiction traits sounds dour, it’s probably because I’m focusing on describing what the traits are rather than how they’re treated. ACA traits are learned behaviors, and by definition can be unlearned. This may be a revolutionary statement for the individual who feels caught in an endless cycle of exploitation, dissatisfaction, alienation and abuse. Because they are so ingrained, and thus largely unconscious, individual psychotherapy can be a wonderful tool for unearthing and challenging these ways of thinking and behaving. If one or both of your parents was an addict of any sort, or if you come from a dysfunctional family, it can be massively helpful to address this in therapy. A good therapist is able to not only show you the ways in which you’ve been lied to and conditioned, but model healthier ways of communicating and acting that lead to a much less stressful and more fulfilling life if you’re willing to work on them. I hope this article was informative for any readers interested in the subject, and I welcome questions about it both outside and within therapy sessions.

What is Internal Family Systems? How Talking to Yourself can be Therapeutic

One of the theoretical orientations I’ve found most useful in my approach to therapy has been that of Internal Family Systems, and since I get the impression that not many people outside the therapist-world are familiar with it, I figured I’d write a little bit about it in this post. IFS is an approach pioneered by Richard K. Schwartz and takes the perspective that human beings are not just individual personalities, but that we are all comprised of many sub-personalities or “parts” with their own attitudes, beliefs, and “jobs” as well as their own relationships to each other part. Essentially, Internal Family Systems takes the perspective that every human being in the world has “multiple personalities.”

So what does this look like in practice? If you’ve ever been in a situation where a part of you wanted to one thing and another part of you wanted to do the opposite, your experience can be described in IFS terms. Perhaps you notice a trend of reckless behavior in certain situations that keeps popping up in your life. An IFS therapist would approach this by asking you to explore, visualize, and begin a dialogue with this part of yourself. To continue the example, maybe you imagine this part as looking like a teenage punk-rocker with a disdain for authority and a thrill-seeking attitude. Once you start to think about your life situations in terms of a part of you engaging in this behavior rather than simply you making decisions that are very out of character, it might start to make a lot more sense to you. Furthermore, once you start listening to and “speaking” with this part, you may discover things about its motivation and actions that were completely hidden to you before. This process represents some of the power that taking an Internal Family Systems perspective or using “parts language” can lend to a therapeutic encounter.

Internal Family Systems says that all of our sub-personalities or “parts” fall into three major categories: Managers (also sometimes called Protectors), Firefighters, and Exiles. Each category represents a certain pattern of behavior and “job” within your own psychic “family.” Therefore, a therapist using an IFS perspective may use techniques usually reserved for family sessions with the parts of one individual client. Just as a child in a family may be scapegoated, or a parent may be over-controlling, various parts of who you are may be stuck in dysfunctional patterns and relationships to one another. Validating their identity and giving them space in session can lead to resolution of conflicts in much the same way that letting each member of a family talk can do so in family therapy.

MANAGERS

A diagram classifying the various “parts” of the personality in relation to one’s Self according to IFS.

The most common classification of “parts” and the parts that come up most often are referred to as “Managers.” In IFS, managers are the parts of one’s personality that step in in order to help you avoid pain, endure hardship, or deal with emotions that you may find difficult. Managers may do this in healthy or unhealthy ways. For example, maybe you notice that when you feel envy that it makes you very uncomfortable and you tend to exercise more often in a desire to change your body image. This action would be the domain of a manager whose job it is to help you “handle” feelings of envy. This manager may look like a fitness instructor or a coach , and it may see its job as helping you channel your energy into a behavior that it sees as productive or helpful. However, if in this scenario you are using exercise as a way to mask dissatisfaction with other aspects of your life or even to express self-hatred, then your manager is likely not doing you any favors. It is important in the IFS approach to understand that, since each “part” is truly a part of you, that it ultimately has good intentions, despite how warped or destructive their actions may be. So this manager, if allowed to have a conversation with you, may try and explain that it is doing what it does for your own good. But if you find its actions to be destructive, in addressing this manager you have the power to tell it that it’s not helping as much as it thinks it is and to request that it do its job differently in order to be more effective. After such a conversation, or a series of conversations, with this part, you may start to experience it as more forgiving rather than pushy, or more encouraging rather than critical, and your relationship to exercise may become more about pursuing physical health than eliminating the “bad” aspects of your body. Perhaps the most characteristic theme of a manger part is that it seeks control.

FIREFIGHTERS

Firefighters are similar to managers, but more extreme. Their purpose is also to protect you from emotions that are believed to be “negative” or “difficult,” but they go to great lengths to do so. Firefighters are often born of trauma, and as such tend to be more reactive than thoughtful, and very sensitive to real or imagined “triggers” for their behavior. Whereas a manager may feel the need to put on a brave face or engage in a coping activity to deal with a certain situation, a firefighter will go straight to a destructive or self-harming coping behavior, such as substance abuse or eating disorder behaviors. Firefighters are also associated with a thrill seeking mentality and are motivated by immediate gratification or punishment.

EXILES

Exiles are the most sensitive and secretive parts of the human personality in Internal Family Systems. These are parts of the psyche that come into being due to trauma or abuse and usually appear as young children or small, vulnerable creatures in the mind’s eye. Exiles are frozen in time, and as their name implies, they are cast out, ignored or shunned by all the other parts. This is because exiles represent the pain and fear of the trauma or abuse, and may take on the shame and guilt around this. Exiles and other parts may believe that exiles somehow deserved or merited the pain that they feel, and because of their strong association with pain and trauma, these parts are often seen as repulsive, unattractive, or “weak.” Unless one confronts this situation and seeks to form a healthy relationship with one’s exiled parts, they may be forever hidden away, causing problems in obscure but powerful trends in one’s day-to-day life.

THE SELF

Beyond all of the aforementioned “parts” of the human personality, there also exists The Self. The Self is the part of you that is separate from any other identified parts, and it occupies a lofty place in the IFS worldview. If a human is able to “unblend” or recognize their distinction from their managers, firefighters and exiles, they will start to experience their true and authentic underlying personality. The Self is seen as a vast source of energy, wisdom, and motivation, but is often obscured by people who let their parts have an inordinate amount of control in their lives. If an individual is in the throes of active addiction, for example, IFS would say that they are “blended” with a firefighter that is basically running their life due to its being given far too much control. When a part is active to this degree, an individual starts to believe that they are that part of themselves, even to the point of expressing skepticism that they could be anything different. However, if such an individual were to do the internal work of speaking with their firefighter and enacting healthy boundaries with it, they would start to realize that they don’t have to react to difficult emotional states by using. Once the firefighter steps down from a place of power, it is possible to give that power to The Self, where it belongs.

Internal Family Systems is a profound and complex way of not only seeing therapy but seeing humanity, and as such there is much more to it than what I can convey here. However, I hope that this overview provides some education and gets people interested in seeing human nature in terms of “parts.” It is often revolutionary when an individual realizes that not only are they not their parts, but that they can talk to their parts and ask them to do their jobs differently. One of the most fascinating elements to IFS work to me is that once a person begins to form a healthy relationship to a part of themselves, that part will change. Parts that start out looking monstrous or disgusting become beautiful and even trusted allies. Just as a healthy family needs direct communication and boundary-setting to function properly, so does the psyche in Internal Family Systems.

What is Projection?

In some recent posts, I’ve gone in depth about my thoughts on the forms of mass projection that our society engages in, so I felt it would be useful to set aside some time to write about what psychological projection is and how it manifests. “Projection” is one of the most common psychological terms used by laypeople, and for good reason; it’s also a very frequent psychological phenomenon. However, projection may not always be what you think it is. In this article I will explain how the term is sometimes misunderstood and how it could be interpreted to apply to a vast range of complex and profound psychological functions.

Sigmund Freud and Carl Jung

To start, it’s important to acknowledge that “projection” has had different definitions almost from the get-go depending on the practitioner you ask. Although Sigmund Freud may not have been the first person to use the term “projection” in the psychological sense, he was the most influential and earliest thinker to coin the phrase and put it to good use. To Freud, projection is a process by which an individual who does not want to acknowledge something repellant about themselves acts as if another person is embodying that behavior. This is apparent in the unfaithful spouse who is chronically vigilant to their own partner’s activities, the arguing person who yells at you that YOU are the one that’s angry, and many prejudicial beliefs about “others” that likely apply more to the labeling group than the labeled. It’s important to understand that Freud’s view of projection goes back to his perception of the nature of the unconscious mind. Freud said that the unconscious mind is a powerful force in the human psyche, but that it was solely used as a repository for unwanted feelings and urges, mostly sexual. To Freud, the unconscious mind is just a storehouse for ugly things that people don’t want to face about themselves and the world, and because of this understanding, Freudian projection is solely about trying to foist off that unwanted content onto others. However, Carl Jung, a long-time student of Freud’s, eventually broke with him over their disagreement about how the unconscious mind worked. To Jung, repressed emotions and unwanted urges do make up some of the unconscious mind, but he didn’t believe that was all there was to it. To Jung, the unconscious mind is a force much more powerful and far-reaching than the conscious; one that holds resonant universal images that can provide inspiration and vision as well as possession and torment. And since Jung sees the unconscious mind this way, his definition of psychological projection is of course different. To Jung, when an individual acts as if a part of their inner psyche is embodied in a source outside of themselves, it is not always because of their own repressed tendencies. It can also be a way of communing with powers locked within the human mind that are not amenable to reason or logic. Jung often spoke of projection in terms of mythology, art, and religion. To Jung, projection is the process by which we get fairy tales, sacred literature, and every significant piece of art ever made. If there were nothing present in the unconscious mind to be made visible by projection, he might argue, we wouldn’t have art, literature, or even dreams.

So what is the more everyday, applicable significance of psychological projection? What does it have to do with day to day life? Both Freud and Jung would argue that it is active in most, if not all, of our intimate and formal interactions with other human beings. It isn’t possible for us to completely and fully know another person, so our minds have to fill in the gaps to create working models for what other people are “like.” And the content we use to fill in those gaps comes from the unconscious mind.

Painting by Csontváry Kosztka Tivadar

For all his genius and for all his ideological contributions to the world, Freud still defined falling in love as a narcissistic ego projection. He asks: "Isn't what we mean by 'falling in love' a kind of sickness and craziness, an illusion, a blindness to what the loved person is really like?" Not only is this possibly the least romantic intepretation of love, it’s also neurotically color-blind as a description of the emotional process that fuels the deepest acts of care and compassionate in human history. And yet on another level, I don’t disagree with Freud. I think he’s essentially right that falling in love is a process of reciprocal projection. But he only conveys the act of projection as something aberrant, delusional, and avoidant rather than the more robust Jungian interpretation - that projection is a process by which the individual human being forms a relationship with their unconscious minds; that projection is the vast majority of what we mean by the terms “religion” and “spirituality.” While Freud would reduce spirituality to a neurosis, I have to say I side with Jung on viewing it as a more complex and not innately dysfunctional phenomenon.

I remember having a perception when I first entered graduate school that transference (the projection of feelings onto the therapist by the client) and counter-transference (the projection of feelings by the therapist onto the client) were major disruptions to the therapeutic process and things to be avoided as much as possible. I’ve since come to a deeper understanding of the role of projection in human society. Not only are transference and counter-transference not hindrances to therapy, they may describe essentially what therapy is. Our ability to project onto others is the same process as “getting to know” someone. It’s important to be aware of what we project on others, as not being conscious of this process can lead us down some very destructive paths, but it isn’t “bad” in and of itself to project. In fact, it can be seen as a beautiful testament to the human mind that we are able to see near-divine virtue and beauty in others, because this in turn proves that there is virtue and beauty within ourselves.

The Anima and The Case for Feelings

“For within living structures defined by profit, by linear power, by institutional dehumanization, our feelings were not meant to survive. Kept around as unavoidable adjuncts or pleasant pastimes, feelings were expected to kneel to thought as women were expected to kneel to men.”

Audre Lorde, The Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House

If I can be allowed the stereotype of one gender-based generalization from my experience as a therapist, it’s this: men think feelings are stupid. There’s not a more nuanced way of saying it; there are millions of adult men out there who firmly believe that emotion is the enemy of reason, and that the two cannot co-exist peacefully. And although I encounter these beliefs mostly in male-identifying clients, there are also quite a few women who have told me that they’re afraid of becoming too “emotional” during an argument for fear of being dismissed as somehow intellectually compromised or immature. I think that a lot of what we believe about emotions and reason comes from how our society views and treats men and women. And following that logic, I believe that the “cure” for this kind of skewed and fragmented approach to life lies in eradicating the societal biases we hold about sex and gender.

The Virgin Mary is a common symbol of the Anima in the public consciousness - Artist Unknown

When I talk about sex and gender and how societal norms affect the psychology of the average human being, I am going to make reference to the Jungian concepts of the Anima and Animus. Essentially, Carl Jung theorized that the Anima is the “dormant” or unconscious feminine aspect of the person who identifies as male, and that the Animus is the unconscious male aspect of those who identify as female. The gist is that if an individual is societally conditioned to act within the boundaries of their gender role (as tough, cold, unfeeling, insensitive, boisterous, and aggressive) then they are repressing all the parts of themselves that act contrary to those rules (the parts that are sensitive, nurturing, kind, emotionally expressive and peaceful). Strangely enough, when the anima appears in the dreams, visions, or projected fantasies of the man’s conscious mind, she is intuited to be his missing half, and takes on a savior-like quality in her potential to nurture and “complete” the man’s conscious life. This is where our patriarchal and heteronormative society gets story elements and archetypes like the Muses or the more recent “manic pixie dream girl.” Similarly, many women are told in implicit and explicit ways that they need the “strength” and “leadership” of a man in order to be complete. The other side always has access to what we ourselves so sorely lack.

To clarify, there is a good argument that Jung’s conception of the Anima and Animus is either invalid or at least less valid than it was seen to be in the past due to the emergence of gender theory. Jung was a man of his time and likely never questioned the underpinnings of what his society presented as male and female. He also likely had little experience working with transgender or non-binary issues in any meaningful or productive way. That being said, I believe that these ideas still have value in our society if not taken too rigidly. The existence of a “feminine” and “masculine” archetype does not mean that gender must be binary or that non-conforming gender identities are invalid. I see the Anima and the Animus as culturally influenced images linked to but not inherently bound by biological sex, and in speaking to a society that is steeped in binary gender values, it can be useful to use language that addresses the sometimes confining realities it imposes on its members. Psychological realities are myriad, and are not the same as materialist or scientific realities. I believe there is room for the Anima and Animus in the world as well as additional archetypes representing gender identifications that the West has not consciously or responsibly dealt with in its history.

So regardless of whether the Anima and Animus must be tied to biological sex or identified gender, we do see stunted and distorted versions of the Anima in our male-dominated society. Due to the lack of awareness and acceptance (largely by men) of characteristics of humanity deemed “feminine,” the public consciousness of the height of femininity becomes tired to some very problematic ideas. An example of this is the aforementioned “manic pixie dream girl,” an identified trope in romance movies an TV shows in which the lead male’s love interest is portrayed as aggressively quirky and emotionally unstable. This trope has been criticized by feminist sources for its portrayal of women as one-sided, emotionally turbulent, and objects of romantic desire rather than fully human beings. Many heterosexual men often expect women to act in accordance with their view of what a woman “should” act like dictated by society. This not only leads to sexist oppression but discord within the man himself who cannot see the fullness of his own “feminine” side. So in addressing the inner turmoil, we may go a long way toward eliminating the outward prejudice.

The face of the goddess Diana - fragmentary artifact found in Bath, England.

Our society has been so steeped in traditionally masculine mores to the extent that it may be said to be out of balance. Nationalism, authoritarianism, hostile international foreign policy, high rates of incarceration, and a society often hostile to those it may deem as “weak” are all symptoms of characteristics we often label as masculine. In order to treat this, America has to forge a new relationship with its Anima. This is already changing in growing representation of women in places of power and the disappearance of discriminatory legislation, but the struggle is far from over. I hope that growing acceptance of psychotherapy as a healthy practice leads to a wider realization in this country that emotional vulnerability can be the source of great wisdom and strength.

Corruptive Knowledge: American Conservatism, Q Anon, The Shadow, and The Necronomicon.

A few thoughts recently occurred to me that I wanted to follow through. I’m highly concerned at the state of our nation, and the clinician in me keeps trying to conceptualize diagnosis and treatment of the destructive ideologies that have served to empower such disturbing levels of hate and ignorance in our country. In analyzing the unique perspective of American political conservatism, I’d like to focus on the theme of “corruptive knowledge.” In this post I’ll be talking about the American conservative mindset at length. When I use the term “conservative,” I am referring primarily to those that espouse socially conservative opinions but I’m aware that social and economic conservatism in this country have merged into a single ideology and cannot be easily separated.

The following argument rests on what may perhaps sound like a radical proposition: that the conservative mindset is akin to a kind of willful ignorance. This does not mean that conservatives are unintelligent or lack capacity for insight, but that they are engaging in an at least semi-conscious attitude of denial toward realities that may make them uncomfortable. I understand that many will see this as a biased or partisan position; however, I believe that America needs to come to a reckoning concerning certain uncomfortable truths about its ideologies and I can support this position rationally. The plain, objective, verifiable and scientific truth is that we know that the “War on Drugs” was a failure (gauging by the rise of drug use and addiction) that COVID-19 is a real and deadly threat, that conscious life does not begin at conception, that climate change is a very real danger to the entire human race, and that Donald Trump lost the most recent election. The above are facts, not opinions, and it behooves us as responsible citizens to stop treating them like ideological preferences. And while these are only a handful of political stances, they are heavily represented in The Republican Party and may constitute tenants of belief for conservatives. As disinformation and authoritarianism threaten the existence of an American democracy, it is becoming clearer and clearer that we cannot afford to mince words about political truths that threaten the livelihood and safety of all American citizens.

 The conservative mindset prioritizes feelings of comfort and ethical superiority above facts or logic. Politics in this country have ceased to be addressed on a rational basis; emotions and beliefs are now much more central now. At this point, we have all witnessed firsthand that rational arguments and scientifically verified facts do not make a dent in delusional political beliefs. When a conservative person is presented with evidence that contradicts their beliefs, their immediate and unconscious reaction is to resist it as an attack on their very person. Considering evidence in an unbiased manner is not part of how they interact with the world so a reasoned and rational approach based on presenting evidence is fruitless. In their book Asymmetric Politics: Ideological Republicans and Group Interest, professors of political science Matt Grossman and David A. Hopkins come to the conclusion that “Consumers of conservative news media and think-tank reports are exposed to a steady flow of content that further promotes that perspective.” Recently, this process is ramping up even further in the exodus of faithful viewers of Fox News to fringe outlets such as One America News Network and Newsmax due to Fox’s failure to support the baseless accusation that the recent presidential election was rigged in favor of Joe Biden.

As what I am proposing falls under the category of what Jung would call a mass projection of The Shadow, I’d like to focus on how conservatives view liberals; their perceived enemies or “opposites.” The conservative view of the individual liberal or progressive is marked by conflicting concepts; that they have access to much more education and knowledge than the average conservative but that they live in a bubble and are out of touch with the realities of modern America. I believe this to be a case of projection based on insecurity and fear. If an individual grows up with a conservative mindset, they are by definition viewing the world in much simpler terms and have blinded themselves to much of the complexity and subjectivity of political realities. I propose that conservatives are not conscious of this, but that their unconscious minds (perhaps even a “conservative collective unconscious”) are very threatened by the reality that other people know more than they do in the political sphere. The fear and anxiety generated by this unconscious process leads to the stigmatization of knowledge itself. What might be conceived of as a “loss” or case for inferiority becomes something like a Pyrrhic victory, a deep validation of not only lack of knowledge, but anti-intellectualism. Whereas lower-income, less privileged, or more sheltered conservatives may not have access to or may outright reject access to higher education, more financially successful and even highly educated conservatives have chosen to enter into a belief system often at odds with the world around them; one that selectively filters the realities they are exposed to. This filtration system (what one Vox reporter cleverly refers to as “tribal epistemology”) manifests itself at lower and higher levels of wealth and privilege, where people may build entire communities that revolve around promotion of a more comfortable worldview over the messier and dirtier reality. The small town conservative with limited access to diverse ideas and stories is just as stunted as the wealthy suburbanite who only associates with people of their socio-economic status. I want to stress here that while I’m speaking of conservatism, this kind of ideological filtering is not limited to political affiliation. Indeed, one can argue that at least some of the criticism of liberals or progressives as sheltered and out of touch is valid and in need of addressing. However, much of it is also a process of conservative individuals unconsciously attributing their retreat from reality to their perceived enemies.

Marjorie Taylor Greene, an elected member of Congress who has repeatedly voiced support for Q Anon.

I write about this process of projection because I believe it’s becoming a larger and larger problem in our society. As our nation faces more stressors and tragedies, this projection becomes more and more amplified, resulting in a higher frequency of violent behavior. The more mild “liberals are overly educated and out of touch” message has now become in many instances “The Democratic Party is part of a Satanic cabal of pedophiles that secretly controls the world” as the Q Anon movement alleges. And as a reminder to the reader of the measure of Q Anon’s very substantial political influence, a third of Republicans rate its claims as “mostly true,” its online groups now endorse millions of members worldwide, and multiple elected members of congress have promoted its belief system. Despite how tragic this set of delusions is, we can see in its amplification a more transparent process of fear and insecurity among American conservatives. What are in reality uncomfortable but ultimately acceptance truths about race, immigration, science, legislation, fascism, democracy and The American Dream become more and more sensationalized as dark, destructive, and inherently corruptive knowledge. The semi-conscious perception is that if a conservative were to authentically approach these concepts without the ideological shield of their biases, they themselves would be fully corrupted or destroyed. It sounds dramatic, but this explanation accounts for the far-flung nature of right-wing conspiracy theory and its growing power as well as the highly troubling covert and overt themes of “White replacement” in conservative and right-wing circles. Such a dramatization is also a familiar process for any mental health practitioner; a marker of an irrationally distorted belief system that over-emphasizes potential threat and causes higher than necessary levels of distress. When further “threatened” by reality, conservatives are demonstrating that they will only cling tighter to their ideals to the extent of merging their personality and very identity with them. So let’s address this theme of dark, destructive, or corruptive knowledge through exploration of the images that it projects on the face of our cultural consciousness.

H.P. Lovecraft was a horror fiction writer in the 1920s who, although not widely recognized in his day, has since become one of the most influential fiction writers of the modern world. Not only through his secondary influence on highly regarded authors such as Stephen King, Alan Moore, and Clive Barker, but now more directly through overt pop-culture nods and several loose TV and film adaptations. The crux of Lovecraft’s stories is that there exists a parallel reality to ours in which “Great Old Ones” dwell; beings described as horrific, alien, and god-like, but not essentially evil. The philosophy of Lovecraft’s fiction is that human beings live in a kind of blessed ignorance of this shadow-reality, and that exposure to it, even simply viewing one of the Great Old Ones or their progeny, will drive a human being insane. His protagonists almost categorically end up driven mad or dead by the end of his stories. Now lets contrast Lovecraft’s fictional world with his real-life worldview. Lovecraft was a self-described “antiquarian,” which entailed not only a love of older things but a high degree of racism, xenophobia, nationalism, and ethnocentrism. Even by the standards of 1920s America, Lovecraft was right-wing. He often used themes of racial “miscegenation” in his stories by highlighting the horror of humanity interbreeding with monstrous or alien races, and he overtly denigrated African-Americans and Jews. Lovecraft even endorsed an admiration for Hitler as he rose to power, although he didn’t live to see the outbreak of The Second World War. Lovecraft’s complicated legacy is now being addressed in HBO’s Lovecraft Country, in which cosmic horror is battled from the perspective of pre-Civil Rights Era African-American characters.

A creative depiction of The Necronomicon - artist unknown

One of Lovecraft’s literary inventions was that of The Necronomicon, a fictional book that contains occult knowledge of such bizarre and world-shaking import as to drive any human reader insane. In a sense, The Necronomicon encapsulates the most pervasive theme of his work, that of corruptive knowledge as a threat to sanity and even human existence. Although The Necronomicon is maybe the most blatant example of this, it harkens back to a tradition of deep distrust toward new knowledge, a book being the ultimate symbol of knowledge and education. In a sense this theme can even be traced back to the story of Pandora’s Box or Eve offering Adam the forbidden fruit, although for the purposes of this article I’m going to focus on the symbol of the book and its significance in myth or cultural consciousness. And honestly I can’t recall ever having read a story that included a book filled with good magic, yet the trope of a grimoire or book of spells that threatens to corrupt the reader suffuses both fiction and folklore.

Lisa Zunshine’s Why We Read Fiction: Theory of Mind and the Novel states that fiction allows us to “try on different mental states” and “pushes to its tentative limits our mind-reading capacity.” Lovecraft obviously shows a phobia of this, and despite his self-identifying as a “bibliophile” (a term he coined) one suspects that he may have also struggled with bibliophobia. I’d argue that we can attribute mind-expanding qualities to any form of literature, fiction or non-, as education by definition seeks to expand one’s perspective. I imagine that, being a reader, Lovecraft must have continuously brushed up against the possibility of trying on the perspectives of people very different than he was, and that he may have needed to semi-consciously “guard” himself from losing his very elitist worldview. He was living on the edge, in a sense, of what he considered acceptable, and the vitriol of his prejudices may have been the energy that kept him from going over to “the dark side.” In Lovecraft’s fiction and especially in the symbol of The Necronomicon, I believe the conservative mindset is showing its hand in an imaginative and potent process of psychological projection. Lovecraft’s attribution to his Great Old Ones of a highly threatening strangeness that is not necessarily evil shows his unconscious grasp of the situation. I believe that on an unconscious level he knew that he was intentionally engaging in a process of willful ignorance to avoid discomfort or loss of ego-strength. Despite the conscious threat he saw in it, on some level he knew that contact with “strange” knowledge gained from cultures and backgrounds foreign to him would drastically expand his worldview. This is essentially the psychological reaction of the conservative mind. This is why conservatives tend to look on universities, intellectuals, and bookish types with suspicion, condescension and derision. They are afraid of leaving the intellectual nests and caves to which they’ve become accustomed, only sensing the true “power” of outside knowledge as a manifestation of something destructive. Another profoundly influential writer and staunch social conservative C.S. Lewis expresses this in his quote that “the love of knowledge is a kind of madness.”

Thus, I believe that modern conspiracy theories share in the same process of stigmatizing and avoiding “corruptive knowledge” that is so visible in Lovecraft’s fiction. In an odd sense it seeks to inoculate the mind against more complex truths in its process of “red-pilling.” This term refers to the film The Matrix and is indicative of the experience of “waking up” to a higher reality proposed by a conspiracy theory after having been deluded or sedated for most of one’s life. It’s extremely telling that belief in a world controlled by an evil cabal of Satanic pedophiles is more acceptable to adherents of this belief system than a world where no single group, good or evil, is really “in charge” (although of course some individuals and groups exercise a disproportionate level of political influence). I see “red-pilling” as a process that apes and supplants the necessity of true and unbiased reckoning with reality. It pretends to confront corruptive knowledge while ultimately hiding from it, more akin to hiding a pill in one’s cheek than swallowing it. True acceptance of reality is hidden in this message in the form of the corruption that has proportedly taken hold of our system of government; something so unspeakably evil that one recoils to even consider the perspective of a child-eating devil-worshipper. This adds a further layer of threat to the Q Anon belief system in its dehumanizing its perceived enemies, which paves the way for justifications of violence against them. As soon as one accepts a worldview that includes corruptive knowledge, one is firmly and innately on the side of Good against the forces of Evil. This process may be conceptualized as a form of Shadow-projection in Jungian terms and can be characterized as both defensive and offensive in nature.

I understand that the message I’m crafting here is very stark, but I believe that the extreme nature of our political environment calls for us to be blunt about political realities. This is by nature not a message crafted to provide comfort to anyone, but to more accurately diagnose a mass dysfunction in the American psyche. I believe that a psychological approach to such societal issues can yield new perspectives and ways of understanding it in the public consciousness, which gives us a leg up when it comes to treating the problem.

So what does treatment for this problem look like? It’s difficult not to be reductive when speaking about it, but in order to de-stigmatize knowledge the foreign has to be made more familiar. Or, in other words, the unconscious has to be made conscious. Rigid ideas of black and white or good and evil have to be dropped and the “evil” has to be transformed into “good.” This is a process that Jung would call “individuation,” the highest work that a human mind can strive to and the goal of Jungian approaches to psychotherapy. Ironically enough, I believe the symptom is again aping the cure in Q Anon culture’s thematic refrain of “dark to light.” Instead of representing a true transformation, this phrase is obviously interpreted to mean a complete erasure of the “dark” in order to be replaced with “light.” The belief that unconscious and disturbing psychic contents (representative of our own human flaws) can be somehow purged, destroyed, or done away with is a fallacy, and a human being can waste mental energy on this quest ad infinitum. The point is that until America embraces rather than seeks to eliminate its problems, it will be chasing its own tail. Or worse, it will be engaging in an unwitting process of self-harm. And I believe that self-aware citizens are responsible for watching and understanding this process and helping where we can to address and counter beliefs of “corruptive knowledge.”Because if we don’t, this set of delusions poses a threat to not only our existence, but the existence of a functioning American society.

Burnout and How to Deal With It

Burnout is one of those subjects that isn’t really given much societal discourse. Many are unaware of it, and many that are aware of it may relegate it to a category of pop-psychology buzzwords or touchy-feely “wellness” terms. I want to try to explain why this is a mistake and what the costs are of ignoring burnout.

Burnout, sometimes sharing an overlapping definition with the term “secondary trauma,” is the state of being so emotionally and psychologically drained or distressed that one is unable to continue one’s previous level of functioning. Usually this is defined in regard to job performance, as that is often the most noticeable sign that a person has seriously over-extended themselves or neglected self-care. Although I do take issue with confining the definition to job performance, that is also the easiest and most common way to talk about this problem. Externally, burnout looks like a decrease in ability to function, but it’s important to talk about what burnout feels like as well. I will sometimes ask clients to identify minor and major “red flags” that signal oncoming burnout. The most common among these are: muscle tension, stress headaches, lethargy, sleep disturbance, emotional sensitivity, and irritability. However, everyone has their own unique physical, mental, and emotional red flags, and I believe that coming up with a list of your own can ultimately help you to know yourself and protect yourself more fully.

With some of my clients I’ve found it useful to conceptualize an “Emotional fuel gauge.” I find that we are often not as conscious as we need to be about how much of our emotional energy we’re spending and how low our reserves may be. It can be helpful to conceptualize your energy or even draw it as a fuel gauge, with a portion near “full” colored green, a portion yellow, and the portion nearer to “low” red. It’s also important to note that everybody’s red, green and yellow areas are different, and it can help you get in tune with your emotional state by depicting this. For example, maybe one person can operate well even when about half of their energy is depleted, while another individual may find that they need to be at “full” to really do what they need to do and feel emotionally stable.

I understand that it’s not always an attractive subject for many people to think about, especially individuals who have internalized a message that their productivity determines their innate worth as human beings, but prioritizing some time and work to understand your limits in regard to work, caretaking, and being fully present can potentially save you a lot of stress and disruption down the road. And once you know that your energy is starting to dip, it’s your responsibility to find ways to care for yourself. Self-care may be expressed through hobbies, art, relaxation exercises, play, physical exercise, vacations, or just allowing yourself to sit on the couch and watch TV or read for a few hours. Many people find being out in nature to be recharging, and for others simply taking a bath or a nap may help. I’ve met far too many people who think of taking time for themselves as a somehow frivolous or wasteful endeavor, and you may have some beliefs that make it hard for you to engage in self-care. If so, it’s deeply necessary to remind yourself that you are a human being with limitations just like any other human being, and that you too are deserving of care. Oftentimes when we don’t know how to care for ourselves, we can look to other sources to care for us, and this can lead to a host of interpersonal problems like codependency.

If you find yourself relating to the feeling of burnout, or you know yourself to be someone averse to taking breaks or cutting yourself slack, therapy can be an immensely useful method to change these patterns of thought and behavior. If you’re willing to risk the vulnerability of talking about it in session, you may very well see real change in your life and get the rest and care you really deserve. But it’s up to you to reach out and deal with the problem head-on. The alternative may be burnout.

The Weird World of Teletherapy: How It's Changed My Practice

Before the pandemic, I had a pretty low opinion of conducting therapy by phone or video. I thought that it would take away from the rapport-building value of physical presence in session, that it would be a frustrating and inefficient way of working on intimate life issues in a forced and artificial environment. In fact, I probably would never have tried teletherapy had the Covid pandemic not forced my hand. And overall, I’m happily surprised with the experience. It’s opened doors for me to be able to treat clients who live in other cities or small towns, it’s taken some of the stress off on my end due to the convenience of the approach, and it’s forced me to get creative in some of interventions I use in session. And while teletherapy isn’t as much of a compromise as I feared, it’s also not without its drawbacks. I’ve noticed that for some clients it leads to less commitment and respect for the therapeutic space. I’ve had clients begin their session from the bathroom of a friend’s house, the inside of their (parked) car, and even outside of a mechanic while they were having their car worked on. I’ve had to set boundaries around such therapeutic spaces in ways that I’d ever considered before, but on the other hand I’m also given the opportunity to meet clients where they are rather than strictly on formal terms. I’d like to give an overview of the ways I’ve adapted to being a teletherapist, and I hope that it will be useful for both professionals and people considering starting the process for themselves.

Making Space

I’ve been much more conscious of my personal space since I started working through Zoom. Since there’s no need to have a physical office at the moment, I’ve conducted sessions from my home, often on my living room couch; the same place I relax, watch TV, read, and in safer times entertained guests. I believe that being a professional therapist means having very strong boundaries and building mindfulness of one’s personal and professional lives, and I think I do a good job of this. I’ve noticed that I can last longer in more high-stress work environments than some colleagues and that I’m able to take a break before I reach a point of burnout. I try my best to be aware that I’m not “taking anything home with me” from my work, but what does that mean when you work from home?

In all honesty, I’m surprised that it doesn’t seem like more of a conflict than it is. I truly haven’t felt unnecessarily drained or found it difficult to distinguish my personal from professional life. I’ve experimented with having sessions in an office area in my home, but I haven’t noticed any real difference in what it feels like. All that being said, I may be a unique case. I can imagine that for some therapists that seeing clients virtually in their own home would feel overwhelming and maybe even inappropriate, and it’s up to each clinician to be responsible for how they handle these boundaries. And even though I don’t feel drained from this overlap right now, I’m also frequently checking in with my own emotional state and gauging what feels acceptable and comfortable.

A player-built house in Minecraft

Creativity

One outcome I didn’t foresee is how teletherapy has allowed for more creativity in my interventions in session. A portion of the work that I’ve done since lockdown has been with adolescents, and in working with younger clients I find that it’s more important to have more directed activities to engage in to keep their attention and strengthen the therapeutic relationship. When I met younger clients in person, we would often color, play board games, cards, or word association games while chatting. And while some of these types of interactions are still technically possible, I have definitely had to adapt. One of the most effective means that I’ve done this is by taking advantage of screen sharing. I’ve collected various well-known pieces of art and shared images of them with clients in session, eliciting their feedback. I’ve found it to be a really good way to start a conversation, especially if the piece of art is evocative of a certain emotion or relatable situation. Additionally, clients are able to draw over these pieces of art on their side and add things to them, which introduces an element of further interaction.

Perhaps the most ambitious and unorthodox thing that I’ve started since beginning teletherapy has been using Minecraft as a therapeutic tool. For those unfamiliar with it, it’s a highly popular video and computer game in which one can create and alter a virtual world essentially comprised of various types of blocks. I’ve found that this approach has a high level of appeal for adolescents due to their likely familiarity and affection for the game. In order to prepare for a Minecraft therapy session, I ask the client to share their screen with me and start the game in creative mode. This allows them all the necessary tools to create and alter a 3-D landscape. From there, I’ve found that many prompts used in sand tray therapy therapy are just as applicable to Minecraft. This approach is fascinating not only because it allows for unrestrained and enthusiastic creativity, but it allows therapist and client to virtually inhabit the constructed space. This can lead to some very insightful discussions and cognitive reframes.

The Illusion of Distance

All in all, teletherapy has given me a much better perspective on how interconnected our world has become. It’s one thing to speak to a loved one on Facetime or communicate with a stranger on the internet through text, but developing a therapeutic rapport with individuals I may never meet in person has been a memorable experience. I’ve learned that, despite its drawbacks, therapists have the ability to connect with and intimately help virtually anyone with access to a smartphone or computer with a camera. I wonder to what extent Covid will permanently change the landscape of therapy, and if this might look something like the new norm. I’m happy to discover that I personally wouldn’t mind having a few long-distance clients on my caseload.

Save the Inner Children: What Q Anon Tells Us about Collective Dysfunction.

A recent “Save the Children” Q Anon rally - Stephanie Keith / Reuters

I’m returning to the subject of conspiracy theory for this post, and more specifically Q Anon. I admit that some of my impetus to write about Q Anon is morbid fascination, but a substantial portion of it is grounded in what I see as the vitally important act of monitoring a highly destructive set of fascist myths that is gaining political power around the globe, and is more recently masking itself by co-opting the phrase “Save the Children.” I also believe that taking a psychological perspective when treating what is essentially mass delusion can tell us a great deal about what is dysfunctional in our society, and maybe even in ourselves.

Q Anon is, in essence, a conspiracy theory that arose from internet message board 4chan that claims Donald Trump is waging a secret war against a cabal of Satanic blood-drinking pedophiles in The Democratic Party. It’s a story as bizarre as it is antiquated, and can be traced back to “Pizzagate,” The Satanic Panic of the Eighties, and even further to the medieval “blood libel.” Despite its bizarre belief system becoming more ornate and all-encompassing over the years (including now elements of time travel and alien contact) it has seen a disturbing rise of adherents, not just in America but around the globe. Recent rallies co-opting a message of “Save the Children” have taken place in London and Berlin as well as Los Angeles, and the movement is now supported by multiple individuals likely to soon become members of congress. The crux of what has made Q Anon so appealing to so many people lies in its stance of protecting the most vulnerable people in our society - children - from the most powerful people in our society - politicians and the wealthy (almost categorically cast as liberals in this right-wing drama). Disguised as a child advocacy movement, it can bring in a much wider range of adherents who may initially be unaware of the ideology attached to its “Save the Children” demonstrations.

A woman offers a child to The Devil in goat form in Goya’s The Witches’ Sabbath

I see this movement’s focus on child welfare and abuse as especially interesting, and I think there’s a good case to be made that it’s key to understanding why so many people seem so ready to believe such bizarre and unfounded claims. There is of course no evidence that “Q,” the movement’s anonymous leader, is actually a government insider as he claims to be, there are no records of children claiming to have been abused by the alleged cabal, and there is no scientific evidence that consuming the blood of children can produce a high like a drug or make one appear perpetually young (another central claim of the movement). So, what is it about these stories that allow them to fly under the radar of rational scrutiny and exploit what appears to be a huge blind spot in human consciousness? What is the unconscious power of this narrative that it holds such allure for such large groups of people? It is patently obvious that the appeal isn’t rational; although lack of critical thinking skills likely plays into Q Anon delusions, I don’t see it as likely that their draw is logical. Rather, I believe there is something symbolically significant in the claim of mass child abuse. I’ll preface this by saying that of course child abuse does occur en masse and is very often covered up or ignored, but in this article I’m focusing on the story element of children being abused by a secret Satanic government cabal as alleged by Q Anon. An example of how the movement embellishes this narrative is the recent addition of “mole children” to its mythology. A few months ago, Q Anon adherents began to spread the claim that there are networks of underground tunnels containing masses of abused children, some having been experimented on genetically. This belief has led to the arrest of an Illinois woman who traveled to New York City with a trunk full of knives claiming that she was acting on orders from Donald Trump.

Approaching Storm by Railway, Jeffrey Smart

If we are to believe that Q Anon is what Jung would call an unconscious “irruption” resulting in mass delusion or moral panic, then we can view its symbology as psychologically significant. As such, I believe the more outlandish elements of the mythology to be the most telling of the mental state of those that adhere to it. I want to focus specifically on the “mole children” element as a potent symbol of collective trauma, and its connection to the Internal Family Systems concept of an “exile.”

Internal Family Systems is a unique therapeutic approach pioneered by Richard Schwartz in his book of the same name.

Internal Family Systems is a therapeutic modality that takes the perspective that we are all made up of sub-personalities or “parts,” and that these parts of ourselves have different jobs. Some parts of ourselves are “protectors” whose job it is to shelter other parts that they perceive as vulnerable. This can be done in healthy and unhealthy ways. However, there is another classification of sub-personalities deemed “exiles” that I’d like to focus on in this post. An exile is a part of ourselves that we have deemed repulsive, weak, pathetic, or generally disagreeable, and have dissociated from our conscious persona. Exiles are born in trauma, particularly childhood trauma, and very often take the form of weak and vulnerable children. In a therapeutic or artistic setting, exiles are often seen as children who are locked away somewhere like a basement, cave, attic, or even underground. I believe that the “mole children” element of the Q Anon belief system shows itself to be a projection of many traumatized individuals’ exiled parts. Projection is of course the most common psychological defense mechanism, and enables an individual or group to imagine the elements of themselves of which they aren’t conscious are being embodied in an outside source. Believing that others are demonic feels much less threatening than facing one’s inner demons, and believing that children are abused in secret underground facilities by the thousands is easier for many to believe than the idea that they themselves may have suffered abuse. The hellish underworld the mythology places these abused children in is a symbol of dissociation. I think that this unconscious attraction to an irrational belief system is due to its articulation of a hidden and deeply powerful battle in the human heart. The seed of an ideology finds fertile ground when a person believes that it can tell them something of which they are not already conscious. This creates a mysterious and even sometimes religious or spiritual allure.

Exiles can often be conceptualized as a repressed version of an “inner child,” and when such a spontaneous, joyful, fun-loving and sensitive element of the human psyche is locked away, its absence is sorely felt in the conscious life of the individual. It becomes even more telling when we take into account the Q Anon mythology that such vulnerable children may be eaten - bodily consumed - and thus taken away forever. This is the unconscious fear of the individual who has been traumatized; that they have irrevocably lost their inner child to shadowy and corrupt forces. I believe this explains some of the fervor behind such a push to “save the children” among members of the movement.

To clarify, when I speak of childhood trauma I am not proposing that all adherents to Q Anon have suffered sexual or physical abuse as children - although it is statistically likely that some have. Various forms of abuse are downplayed or normalized in childhood, leading to under-reporting, and this especially holds true in the case of emotional abuse, which I imagine most Americans would struggle to even define. When a society neglects education and mental healthcare, then a higher rate of abuse will occur among its families. However, I wonder if there might not be a form of mass trauma at work here on a societal level; trauma that may have began as uniquely American, but at this point has affected most of The Western World. My theory is that Western culture conditions its citizens with a certain set of messages or beliefs that denigrate and harm any healthy concept of self-worth. We can find such messages in the narrative of The American Dream, the Puritan work ethic, and “bootstrap” economics. We are brought up to believe that anyone can achieve any degree of success in this country if they are only willing to work hard at it. The corollary of this is that if you aren’t successful, then there must be something wrong with you. You aren’t working hard enough, or your work isn’t good enough. This leads us to identify our own value as human beings with the perceived quality of what we can produce for others. This commoditization of merit can be hideously destructive because behind it is a simple message: when you take away what a human being can produce, that human being is essentially worthless. There is no room for the innate dignity or worth of humankind in this message, and it is especially corrosive to the wellbeing of a child, who naturally does not produce labor for the benefit of society and shouldn’t have to. I suspect that this factors into the arduous difficulty that many of my clients show when trying to practice self-love.

Damage done from such societal messages may run counter to what many people think of when they hear the word “trauma,” and some may find it hyperbolic to label it as such. However, beliefs about one’s self-worth are so innate to who we are and so elemental in any form of psychological stability that I can’t think of anything more traumatic than believing oneself to be worthless. In working with trauma in session I often find that, although abuse and traumatic memories themselves do a huge amount of damage, they are not as pernicious or destructive as the beliefs that spring from traumatic experiences; namely that one’s own life doesn’t have worth or value. When we conceptualize a child being conditioned with these messages, it becomes more understandable how the child may deaden themselves to the emotional sensitivity of such a “truth” and “mature” too quickly in order to be seen as a productive member of society. Thus the child grows into an underdeveloped adult without ever fully having experienced childhood. The inner child, the exile, is locked away, deep in the unconscious mind - and here we see the image of “mole children” living underground in slave-like conditions, being abused and killed in large numbers without America’s conscious awareness of such an act. The outward mythology mirrors the inner turmoil.

I touched on this American, and perhaps more broadly Western, perception of conditional self-worth in a previous post, but I believe it to be an important and vastly under-studied phenomenon. Of course income inequality, political corruption, and heightened consciousness of systems of oppression all play a part in societal trauma, but these external forces alone may not induce a state of trauma without a corresponding system of beliefs that make individuals more vulnerable. In other words, there are many Americans who may lose their job but have the psychological resilience to not let it put them in a dejected and defeatist mindset. But if an American who believes that they have no inherent worth apart from their job is laid off, it is much more likely that they will experience this loss as traumatic. If this is behind even a fraction of what is causing thousands of people around the globe to impose their delusional and violent fantasies onto their system of government, then we cannot afford to ignore it any longer. When we see such large numbers of people eschew reason entirely, who represent a threat to the safety of their neighbors and the stability of world governments, it becomes necessary to assess and treat the illness that is causing such symptoms. I know through my work that it’s possible to reverse the damage that messages of conditional self-worth wreak on an individual level, now it’s just a matter of doing it on a societal level. America, and the rest of The Western World, has to look itself in the mirror and reassess its values before we fully regress to a psychic dark age. If we can show the emotional fortitude to examine and change our beliefs as individuals, it must be possible to do it as a nation.

The Anti-Spirituality of Toxic Positivity: Why Everything Isn’t Going to be Okay

I recently came across a new term for something I’ve seen in session again and again but didn’t have the words to really identify: Toxic positivity. Toxic positivity is the act of being so hyper-focused on the bright side that you can’t see anything else. It’s denial disguised as optimism. People who engage in toxic positivity ignore the dark side of life and of themselves, which, as I explained in my post on The Shadow, leads to a host of problems.

Older generations may blame social media for inciting a culture of toxic positivity due to its ability to create and exhibit a shallow narrative of a perfectly happy life, but I suspect we all also know people of an older generation who have clung to an impossibly sunny view of the world for decades. Despite being a new term, this isn’t a new phenomenon.

Renee Magritte, Polar Light

Toxic positivity relies on a worldview that is oddly religious in tone. To believe that “everything is going to be okay” or “everything happens for a reason,” one has to trust that some Higher Power is arranging or has arranged the world ideally, or at least in a manner deigned to please the believer. Whether or not the individual engaging in toxic positivity is literally religious or not is beside the point; by engaging in this mindset they are putting stock in a near-supernatural power in an unhealthy way. And as such, we can see toxic positivity as the antithesis of true and healthy spirituality. While true spirituality rests on a trust in a connection to something greater than ourselves, toxic positivity pretends that difficult and destructive acts are acceptable and excusable. It insidiously uses the language of acceptance while avoiding any kind of uncomfortable reckoning with the darkness of the world.

No religion has a monopoly on toxic positivity. It can be applied to any existing belief system or lack thereof. However, toxic positivity cannot coexist with a healthy spirituality. If one has a belief that everything in the world is fine as it is, then the great work of humanity ceases. There’s simply nothing worthwhile for us to do if we can’t improve the situation or help ease the suffering of others. If someone comes to believe that a universal law like karma, divine judgment, or the afterlife will even the moral odds for humanity sometime in the future, they may begin to use this as justification for a great many transgressions and injustices in the here and now. “Kill them all and let God sort them out” isn’t just a kitschy action movie line; it was derived from a saying of Arnaud Amaury, a medieval abbot who was instrumental in the genocide of a religious group in Southern France during The Albigensian Crusade. The kind of false acceptance that toxic positivity engenders rationalizes and excuses destructive acts rather than trying to accept them for what they are.

Julian of Norwich

But what of true faith in the goodness of the world? What of the blissfully half-closed eyes of a Buddha? What of the equanimity of Julian of Norwich’s statement that “all shall be well, all shall be well, and all manner of things shall be well”?

This is a different sort of outlook than toxic positivity, one based on the transformative power of love. Love being, itself, the most intense form of acceptance. Toxic positivity doesn’t come from a place of love because it seeks to avoid acceptance of the world around us as it is. True love doesn’t airbrush the blemishes away, but embraces the person despite them. This is obviously not as simple of a process as it seems. What does it mean to apply the transformative power of love to hideous acts of violence, racism, ignorance, and abuse? Maybe rather than forcing oneself to believe in the “divine plan” of the abuse, we look to the divinity dwelling in those that suffer. It’s a difficult thing to express and something of a tightrope to walk at times, but it is possible to practice a radical acceptance of the dark parts of life while still believing in an underlying and ultimate goodness. This kind of acceptance of underlying goodness reflects a deep truth of which toxic positivity is only a pale imitation.

One of the simplest and most useful pieces of advice they give you in grad school is to never tell a client “it’s going to be okay.” It’s not always going to be okay, and the job of a therapist isn’t to provide unconditional comfort, but to encourage unconditional acceptance. Now more than ever given our political climate, it is imperative that we learn to recognize, discuss, and work with some very ugly truths; both personal and societal. Only by getting our hands dirty and dealing with the stark realities of abuse and oppression can we reach a place of true and unbiased happiness. Once we engage authentically in this process, we experience the mysterious reality that, underneath it all, there is something good.

How to Love Yourself

Closed Eyes, Odilon Redon

In the work that I do, I am continually confronted with a huge and untreated issue endemic to our society; the inability to practice self-love. Not only is it rare to encounter a client who practices true self-love, it’s rare to find people who even have a language to conceptualize it. When I talk about loving oneself, the people that I treat often react with complete confusion, unable to really understand what I mean. I believe this is because our society is largely uninterested in teaching us how to love ourselves in favor of the productivity that may come from conditional self-love.

Narcissus, who froze transfixed by his own reflection in water, is the ultimate symbol of conditional self-love, and his namesake, narcissism.

Painting by John William Waterhouse

America tends to tell its citizens that it’s wrong, selfish, or even perverse to practice love for oneself. We are trained to fear being seen as “better” than other people or selfish, and as a result of this fear we retreat into taking up far less space than we need to. In place of true self-acceptance, we are encouraged to practice conditional self-love. Conditional self-love is something of a contradiction in terms, because it isn’t truly a form of love. It’s the belief or attitude that “if I achieve or produce X, then I will be worthy of love.” Rather than the emphasis being placed on who we are as human beings, it’s placed on what we can do or provide for others. To clarify, it’s not a bad thing to achieve one’s goals or be able to provide for others, but if your self-worth hinges on your success or failure in these endeavors, you create a moving target. This means that the prospect of accepting yourself as you are and truly loving yourself permanently stays in an imaginary future. Even if you achieve one of your goals or provide what you imagine you have to provide, the feeling of satisfaction doesn’t last for very long, and after it’s gone the goal has been pushed forward. Sure, I told myself I’d be good if I made $40,000 a year, but why am I not making $50,000? Or $100,00? I told myself everything would be worth it if I could marry this potential partner, but what if there’s a better option out there? If you expect yourself to perform at a ten on a scale of ten, then ten becomes your new average. And who wants to be average? What if you could do fifteen out of ten? Wouldn’t that prove even more how good you are? When we obsess with superficial aspects of who we are, like our appearance or wealth or performance, we begin to suspect that they somehow define or gauge our value as human beings. And because these elements are both superficial and subject to powers beyond our control, they will change. And when they do, our sense of self-worth fluctuates with them. We spend all our energy trying to inflate these superficial traits to a size where they’ll finally be big enough that we won’t ever feel worthless, yet the more we inflate them, the more worthless we feel.

Oddly enough, some of the people I treat don’t even see the reason why they should try and cultivate love for themselves. They may see self-love as a frivolous or “useless” practice. But the reason to practice it is simple; if you don’t love yourself, then there’s no reason to get better. If you didn’t care about your wellbeing in some way, you wouldn’t be in therapy. It’s just a matter of honoring that.

So, how do you go about loving yourself in a healthy way? The work can be done on many fronts, but it has to include some concept of healthy boundaries. If you can’t define who you are and what you want, then you can’t possibly accept yourself. If you find yourself swallowing your objections or silencing yourself when something someone does makes you uncomfortable, then you aren’t honoring your own wellbeing. Furthermore, if you can’t define what you want, need, and what you will and will not stand for, you effectively have no permanent boundaries. And without boundaries, we can’t even define who we are, let alone love it.

It is just as important to understand our limits, as well. This may sound pessimistic or self-deprecating to some people, but let’s look at the alternative. If someone doesn’t acknowledge that their abilities as a human being have concrete limits, then they begin to assume responsibility for things that human beings can’t possibly control. Someone without a clear understanding of their limits may feel responsible for the emotions of others, the needs of people around them, and the outcomes of their endeavors. Having the understanding to be able to surrender what you can’t control is a practice that can help us stop holding ourselves to impossible standards.

Mother, Joan Sorolla

Although it’s sometimes difficult to define, there are a few more methods that can help encourage self-love. Noticing the way we talk to ourselves and making an effort to encourage positive and compassionate self-talk is one such method. If an individual has trouble comprehending what this sounds like, I often ask them to imagine a child. Would you tell a child the same messages you tell yourself? It’s usually shocking for a person to even imagine themselves using pain or threats of worthlessness to motivate a child, while at the same time realizing they apply these methods to themselves. Keeping photographs of yourself as a child in a prominently displayed place can be a good reminder of your own intrinsic worth as a human being. When we think of the unconditional love of a parent for their child, we can see the stark contrast between it and the deprecating, and sometimes even hateful, way we relate to ourselves.

In my practice, I’ve seen messages like these produce real and lasting change. Self love is a skill, just like any other, and the more you practice it the better you’ll get at it. If you are someone who can relate to a state of conditional self-love or even self-hate, I hope you will consider engaging in therapy. As hard as it is to believe, it is something that can change.

Girls with Flowers on Their Heads - Gap Chul Lee

What is The Shadow?

Odilon Redon aka Bertrand-Jean Redon (French, 1840-1916, b. Bordeaux, France) - And Bound Him a Thousand Years

In my last blog post about societal mass delusion I made reference to Jung’s concept of The Shadow, so I thought that it would be useful to write a fuller explanation of what it is and how it shows up in therapy.

Carl Jung was a contemporary and associate of Sigmund Freud who eventually branched out to pioneer an approach that represented his own very unique vision of the human psyche. One of the foundational beliefs of Jung’s approach to psychotherapy was the belief in archetypes; resonant images that occur in the unconscious mind and show up in dreams, visions, art, and religious symbolism. Jung theorized that these archetypes were not only very powerful forces that shape the individual mind, but universal in nature - that being, they exist in the unconscious mind of every human being on the planet. As evidence, Jung pointed to similarities in the myths of cultures separated by vast amounts of time and space as well as the apparently “mythical” content he saw reflected in the dreams and visions of his patients.

There are an innumerable amount of archetypes in existence, but one of the most prominent and influential archetypes is that of The Shadow. Jung described The Shadow as an entity comprised of the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to accept, or in a sense the “opposite” of our personality. What does this look like in practice? When you read about an evangelist preacher caught smoking meth with a homosexual sex worker, The Shadow is showing its power. When the neighbor of a serial killer claims that he was just a normal and friendly guy, this is also due to The Shadow. While individually The Shadow may represent our craven, selfish, or taboo impulses, collectively it is seem in images of the demonic or in the face of The Other. An apt picture of this, and one written about by Jung, is the image of The Soviet Union in the collective American psyche during The Cold War. I also believe The Shadow to be in effect in racist and xenophobic beliefs, with the dominant group usually projecting their own undesirable traits onto the minority group ; an example of this being the racist myth that Black people are lazy when White people were literally enslaving them so they wouldn’t have to do manual labor themselves.

Marcin Cienski (Polish, b. 1976), You Won’t, 2012. Oil on canvas, 18 x 24 cm.

From the above description, one may get the impression that The Shadow is a corrosive and destructive impulse, purely to be avoided. And by its very nature the “dark side” induces a repulsion in us, an almost knee-jerk drive to disown it and cast it out. That, however, is not Jung’s approach. As hideous and evil as it may look, the power of The Shadow lies primarily in one thing: it’s secretly a part of us. As any physical form will cast a shadow when exposed to light, our personalities, if truly substantial, will cast their own shadows. And despite our dearest wishes, it’s not actually possible to divorce oneself from one’s shadow. The path to wholeness, and the prescription for psychic healing, is in embracing The Shadow. Jung said "One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious." Not only does ignoring The Shadow impede our growth, it actually aids in giving it more and more destructive power. If a human being is able to truly face their repressed sexual or aggressive or transgressive urges, then they hold the power to calm their inner and outer strife, and even make friend with The Shadow.

The wrathful form of the Tibetan deity Vajrapani.

Tibetan Buddhism has a tradition of working with “the demonic divine” in this way through its use of “wrathful” deities as objects of meditative focus. A celibate monastic tradition within a deeply pacifist ideology, Tibetan Buddhism utilizes images of violent and monstrous beings, often in sexual union, as a means to assist us in attaining enlightenment within our lifetime. In Tsultrim Allione’s book “Feeding Your Demons” she illustrates the Tibetan practice of chöd, which involves visualizing the dissolution of one’s own body to become food for one’s inner demons, and then witnessing them transform. This shows a highly sophisticated approach to The Shadow for such an ancient tradition, and often mirrors the transformative process of therapy, especially in Jungian and Internal Family Systems approaches. I often see the most powerful element in therapy as the client’s encounter with the Shadow and the formation of a healthy relationship with it. This runs contrary to what many people think therapy is - that it’s a process in which you bring in your problems and then a therapist helps you fix them - and it can be jarring at times when people begin the process of therapy expecting something like that. The more challenging work, however, is to understand and make peace with your “problems,” which are, despite their destructiveness, actually attempts by repressed parts of the human mind to heal itself. This is a difficult thing for people to understand and accept, but as Jung said, “neurosis is really an attempt at self-cure.” Substance abuse, for example, is a very real and highly destructive problem, but comes out of an urge to fill a void or protect oneself from trauma through numbing one’s emotions. When an individual in recovery is ready to face this, they have the potential for incredible insight and growth. Thus, the addict who can say that they are thankful for their addiction has the best chance at a healthy recovery. Similarly, the individual who can talk openly about their depression has a much better chance at decreasing their symptoms than someone who chooses to ignore it. As scary as it can be, making friends with our demons can turn them into powerful allies. It only takes the courage to look them in the face and listen.

Thoughts on Societal Paranoia and Mass Diagnosis

Photo of a Q Anon rally from CNET.com.

As an American therapist, it’s hard for me not to try and diagnose en masse. I become so familiar with individual problems that I start to see them playing out in society at large, and the sociological implications of this fascinate me. For example, as individual human beings have trauma, can we conceptualize a society to have collective trauma? Would war, inequality, corruption, and oppression be symptoms of this? More specifically, could the paranoia that we see fueling American politics be a symptom of some collective dysfunction? It becomes more and more difficult to avoid feeling a responsibility to address it the more I see how paranoid delusion affects political discourse in this country and how it has to a large extent gone “mainstream.” I, like many other Americans, am horrified and morbidly fascinated that our discourse has made a place at the table for extremely racist, xenophobic, homophobic, and transphobic vitriol as well as the surreal accoutrements of such belief systems. I’m referring primarily to the influence of the Q Anon conspiracy movement both in America and across the world, but I’m also thinking about 9/11 “truther” movements, Flat Earthers, and a host of anti-Semitic myths in various degrees of disguise.

    In Richard Hofstedter’s classic essay, “The Paranoid Style in American Politics,” he identifies a strain of thought that has only become more and more relevant in defining political discourse in America. Though written in 1964, its discussion of how feelings of dispossession lead to conspiratorial thought are oddly prescient. Despite oftentimes being privileged members of a first-world nation that lead comfortable lives, individuals who craft and adhere to stories like these are possessed by a notion that they are being attacked, eradicated, or undermined; usually by a shadowy cabal operating in secret. This can manifest in the overtly racist myth of “White replacement” or the more socially acceptable fear that foreign elements will somehow compromise the integrity of American culture.

Hofstadter also speaks of how paranoia leads people to “emulate the enemy” even when the enemy is imagined, echoing Freud’s classic defense mechanism of identification with the aggressor as well as Jung’s concept of The Shadow. Hofstadter says “It is hard to resist the conclusion that this enemy is on many counts the projection of the self; both the ideal and the unacceptable aspects of the self are attributed to him.” So if one is insecure about one’s education or influence in society, then “The Other” is seen as a group of highly educated and highly powerful people. Oddly, the more energy one puts into opposing such an enemy, the more one begins to resemble them. This becomes especially dangerous when the belief systems allege that the rich and powerful are hurting children (as in the case of Q Anon). Suddenly, the stakes are so high that violence may be easily justified in the face of such an enemy. And here we see a mass of new irrational beliefs interacting with one of the oldest irrational beliefs of humanity: that “it’s okay to hurt people if they’re hurting people.” 

This is all to say that such paranoid delusions have demonstrably done a lot of harm in America and have the capacity to do far more. One doesn’t have to be a student of history to recognize the role of conspiracy theories in the authoritarian propaganda of totalitarian states. And this capacity to do harm qualifies paranoid delusions as clinically significant. But the question becomes: what does it mean to talk about a society with a mental illness rather than an individual?

Art by Aleksandra Waliszewska

I believe that anyone conversant with the paranoid strains of thought in American culture right now has to come to a very odd conclusion. That being; groups of human beings are capable of holding on to very bizarre delusions while not meeting clinical criteria for individual disorders. In other words, we’ve come to a point where we have to admit that not every person who believes the Earth is flat or that the world is run by Satanic pedophiles who consume blood in order to stay young meets clinical criteria for a delusional disorder. This is a strange admission to make, given the bizarre content of the delusions we see gripping the American psyche. And this is where the more amorphous and less often studied concept of mass delusion comes in. The world of psychology has addressed this clinically to some extent with the “shared delusional disorder” or folie a deux of the DSM5, but this phenomenon is usually only applied to small groups. If there is a systemic and informed approach to even conceptualize, let alone treat, mass disorder like this, then I haven’t heard of it. And when I think about mass delusion on a societal level, this lack of a form of treatment is the biggest problem. I can barely describe what diagnosis would look like, and I have no idea what treatment would look like. In my own biased opinion, if everyone went to therapy individually then the world would be a better place, but I’m not sure that individual treatment is the best course of action for such a collective problem. What does therapy look like for an entire culture? For a society, For a nation? I have no idea. And although it’s scary to admit it, it may also be an indication that both therapists and American citizens are responsible for supplying some form of help for the illness that we see in our country. I try to have faith that we can develop something soon.

The Wisdom of Desperation

This is what it takes. You've exhausted all of your options. You've run out of plans and backup plans. You've burned every bridge. There's nothing left to do but ask for help. It's a bleak place to inhabit, and our society has made “desperation” into a dirty word, but is it really a failure? We're told from birth that our value hinges on our utility to society; that we're only “worth it” if we can be productive, attractive, and self-sufficient. But when you've come to the realization that no matter how smart or “strong” you are that it's still not possible for you to control the elements of your life, it's hard not to see this as a failure.

    The fact is, you've been lied to. You've been told that it's up to you to handle your own affairs, to not express things that could upset those around you, and to suffer in silence. You've been told that it is possible to control the world around you, but only if you work hard at it. This is a lie. It's a lie that we as Americans are slow to wake up to, and it's a lie that has caused untold damage to untold human beings. What you may see as failure is really just you getting sick of pretending to believe this lie. Desperation is the point at which the delusion of self-control ends and the reality of self-acceptance begins.

    Oftentimes this kind of narrative plays itself out with substance abuse or addiction, but it's just as relevant to mental health struggles or even dysfunctional relationships. You think you're running out of motivation to go on but you've only just realized that you're trying to win a rigged game. This is where help comes in. I see people when they hit this rock bottom, and I often see the most desperate cases go on to make the most improvement in their lives. Why? Because desperation is fuel for truly and radically changing your life. Desperation is the crack in your armor that lets the light in. It's the moment at which you stop trying to fake things or control your emotions or please others or tell yourself that everything's okay. It's the moment where the real work can happen. It's my privilege as a therapist to be able to help you undertake that work, and it's a job that I find continuously fascinating and fulfilling. If you think you've reached this point of desperation, try asking for help. It could be the beginning of something wonderful.