William Glasser, in his Choice Theory, says this –
I disagree with the usual psychiatric thinking that you can learn from past misery. When you focus on the past, all you are doing is revisiting the misery. One trip through the misery is more than enough for most people. The more you stay in the past, the more you avoid facing the present unhappy relationships that are always the problem.
I’m with him on that – “One trip through the misery is more than enough for most people” – what a great quote! Whilst telling the story of the past can be important part of making sense of an experience and of understanding something of another person’s life, the solutions to the present suffering or distress don’t lie in revisiting. It’s not enough to just “get it out”. What matters is what you are choosing to DO today. How are you coping with life NOW as you are living it. That’s an empowering point of view because you can’t change the past, but you sure can change something about what you are doing today. Glasser believes that “present unhappy relationships that are always the problem”. Well, I’m always wary when I see that word “always”! It’s unlikely that there is a single cause, or type of cause, for all problems. He says –
What I will teach him is that he is not satisfied with a present relationship, the problem that always brings people to counselling. His past could have contributed to the problem, but even though most current psychotherapies initially focus on it, the past is never the problem.
I do think he’s onto something here, even if he’s pushing things a bit with his “always” and “never”. There are, of course, a number of psychological approaches which focus on the present as opposed to spending hours digging through the past but not all so explicitly attempt to uncover the present unsatisfying relationship as the thing to focus on. The following three quotes make this very clear –
There is no need to probe at length for the problem. It is always an unsatisfying present relationship.
Since the problem is always in the present, there is no need to make a long intensive investigation of the client’s past. Tell him the truth: The past is over; He cannot change what he or anyone else did. All he can do now is, with my help, build a more effective present.
In traditional counselling, a lot of time is spent both enquiring into and listening to the clients complain about their symptoms [which makes it harder to get to the real problem]……..what the client is choosing to do now.
I remember the first time I realised I was on the wrong path when counselling a patient with postnatal depression who had been sexually abused as a child. On one of the one hour sessions she said to me “Look, I really do appreciate you taking all this time to listen to me, but every time I spend an hour talking to you about the past abuse I feel worse. I think I need a break from this. I think I need to live now.” Well, that woman taught me an important lesson about counselling – that it wasn’t enough to just let someone talk about the past, and that the present is where we live now so we all need better tools to live now, not better tools to remember the last miseries. I also realised at that point that different people had different needs and there was no one model of counselling which would fit everyone.
As I’ve learned from patients and learned from further reading and training, I’ve discovered I’ve a great affinity for focusing on what’s in life NOW and what coping strategies we’re using NOW. But I haven’t had the thought before that the problem ALWAYS lies in a current unsatisfying relationship. Maybe that’s worth exploring a bit more, but, what has made sense for me so far is that there are different areas of focus (and therefore different priorities) for different people. Sure, for many people, the most significant area is relationships, emotions and feelings. But for others the most significant area is something physical, practical, maybe work-oriented. And for yet others, the focus is on something spiritual, their disconnectedness to whatever is greater than themselves, or their search for meaning.
What do you think? Do these theories ring true for you?
Essentially, human emotions are not accessible to reason and we are generally never so called “Rational” in our behavior. However I guess that is really a part of being human..
I think for some, the past affect their present more. Me, for example. I’m near what some might call a breakthrough. I’ve got a lot unresolved that will (now) never be resolved (and I don’t think even before Mother’s death it would ever be resolved, but I could maybe have been heard once and gotten closure) that I am having to deal with. I have to work not to let the past affect my perceptions today, I guess you could say some are more “haunted” than others.
I don’t agree that the past is not responsible for much of the present — we all are woven like tapestry from our decisions — but I do agree talking about it forever is not the answer either. EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) and NLP (Neuro-Linguistics Programming) don’t require much time to create “release” from past issues. EMDR is used the next day in rape cases and was used in New Orleans after the Katrina Hurricane hit to help people cope with the trauma. NLP works on deeper issues. Here’s my attempt at explaining how NLP works: A trauma affects the brain in such a way as to alter the usual filing process for the event, which usually happens during REM sleep. Instead, the mind creates its own ongoing “computer program” to cope. For example: A kid is never able to show anger in his family, and several incidences of trying to show anger are brutally beaten back with a verbal barrage of “Shut up and don’t talk back.” The young child handles the situation the best he can by creating a mindset or “computer program” in his mind that says, “Getting people angry makes me feel horrible and afraid, so I will become a people pleaser, no matter what.” This underlying drive to act as a people pleaser out of fear becomes a way of life, and it often becomes hidden behind other problems and issues, such as self worth, trust, and anger. NLP helps the mind transform the computer program into something positive and releases the person from the problem. This has worked for me on major issues in sessions of less than 60 minutes. I don’t have to revisit a past incident, necessarily, I just need to find the computer program and re-write it with NLP techniques. I have worked with a Master Practitioner of NLP and would not recommend just finding anyone to do the work with you.
@Glasser says exactly that – feelings are not under conscious control but he situates feelings as only one component of “total behaviour” which really makes sense to me. Total behaviour consists of acting, thinking, feeling and physiological changes in the body. Only the first two are accessible to conscious direct influence and therefore to choices. But because the other two components are intimately bound up within the first two, both feelings and physiological changes can occur in response to different choices about acts and thoughts.
@kat: @spaceage – the past undoubtedly is where we come from. It “influences” the present in an aetiological way – it’s the origin, or the starting point of the journeys which have led us to NOW. So, whilst it is true that to understand someone, it’s useful to hear the whole story (and remember all stories contain the past, the present and the future), the past cannot be changed or influenced. All we can do to change our experience of the present is to change something about our present – not our past. Glasser’s point (which I don’t 100% share) is that the problem is ALWAYS a current relationship. That’s something I’ll consider but it’s not my experience so far that suffering is always about relationships.
@spaceage – thanks for sharing your experience of a technique which you’ve found useful and thanks for writing about it the way you do. I like the way you tell of your own experience without pushing it as a the solution for everyone else. That’s my experience of Medicine – there is no one size fits all.
Louise Hay, author of You Can Heal Your Life, has some philosophies about healing, two of which are: “The point of power is in the present,” and “It’s only a thought, and a though can be changed.” Both speak to the NOW, as you say, so in this, I agree that this moment is where where change begins.
I was taught how to meditate by a counselor. We used a biofeedback method. I can, via meditation slow my heart rate, and of course breathing rate. I’ve had times, during a panic attack coming on, where I’ve made myself breath slower, and sat back and begun the meditation to get my heart to stop pounding too. So, you can to some extent conciously control body functions.