Sometimes, do you feel confused or lost?
When not knowing which direction you should go,
Such as deciding which major,
Which job,
Which partner
Or where to live?
Sometimes, do you feel frustrated and disappointed about the people around you?
Because
It seems nobody understands you
Or available to pay full attention to your concerns? Continue reading
A friend has been job hunting for the last five years since he was laid off as an IT engineer. This friend frequently prayed and contemplated on when the job search will end. He is not the only one in this economic recession, according to CBC news, the unemployment rate increased to 7.4% in September. Thousands and millions of people have been affected by this recession. So when is the end? Or rather, is there an end? And how do we make sense and prepare for this uncomfortable journey?
This phenomenon reminds me of the journey of Exodus. It was a journey of liberation; however God did not directly lead Israel into the Promised Land but into the wilderness and it took Israel 40 years to wonder around. Every day the hardships of landscape, with no food or water, and encounters with new enemies threatened their faith in God.
Have you ever wondered, why does it take forty years and why not four years, or fourteen years? What is the necessity for Israel taking so long to reach the Promised Land? We may find the answer in the Bible, it says: the length of time the Israelite people lived in Egypt was 430 years (Exodus 12:40).
Intimacy and Personality Type
At Tuesday’s meeting, one of the counsellors brought up this question: if intimacy enhances a couple’s relationship, then how about the relationship with ourselves- the intra-intimacy? And will this type of intra-intimacy help us to build our inter-intimate (couple’s) relationship? This is an interesting question, which leads me to think about what is the definition of intimacy and what is the intra -intimacyship with ourselves?
One of the senior counsellors defined intimacy as: ‘within a relationship, a person’s openness and honesty comes from four perspectives: the mind, heart, body and soul with his/her spouse. The openness and honesty are the keys in couple’s relationship.’ I think this rule can also be applied to intra-intimacy as well. Are we being honest and open mind with our feelings, thoughts, and behaviors? Or do we even know how we feel, think or behave?
In her book “Revolution Come from Within”, Gloria Steinem disclosed that after she wrote the first two hundred pages of the book, she asked a friend who happened to be a family therapist to review it. Her friend commented: “Gloria, you have a self-esteem problem, you forgot to put yourself in.” Gloria Steinem had self-esteem issues!!! ??? Gloria Steinem, a pioneer advocate of the women’s rights movement during the 60’s and 70’s, and also had been named one of the ten most confident women in the United States by “ The Keri Report” . Isn’t it an ironic comment? It seems success does not lead to healthy self–esteem.
What is your experience about your job hunting? Do you feel stressed, do you feel overwhelmed, and does it shatter your sense of security and make you feel helpless, vulnerable in an uncertain world? All of those symptoms are indicators of emotional or psychological trauma. For some people, the job hunting process is a traumatizing experience, isn’t it? Especially during the season of recession, the news from every channel is, either no jobs, or not qualified, or over qualified, or not enough experience, or simply no reply. Facing those negative responses again and again can drag down your self-esteem, confidence, and values. After a few months of the same replies, anyone could sink into depression.
So how do we take care of ourselves? How do we survive this traumatizing experience and continuously rejuvenate the positive energy is a request for a desirable outcome? Here are some practical tips that may help you relieve the pressure:
1. A Desirable Goal: The Treasure Hunt
When the goal is desirable, it becomes an efficient motivator, the key is to make it meaningful. A story about three stone cutters well illustrates this point: the first one regards his job as boring, since it only involves cutting the stone into the same shape again and again. The second one regards his job as a means of taking care of his family; he is proud of what he can achieve. And the third one regards his job as contributing to the history, the stone he cuts will make the building and the building will last for thousands of years. Job hunting is a repetitive action, make sense of what you are doing; brain storm some ideas to make it meaningful or fun can motivate you to do it again and again with love and interest, not with fear or loathing. Maybe you can regard it as a treasure hunt.
A Zen practitioner asks his Zen Master: why do I have to meditate? What is the purpose of meditation? How can sitting meditations, quietly without any movement, thinking of nothing, only breathing in and out, lead me out of suffering and becoming wise? It does not make sense to me.
The Zen Master responds to the peaceful practitioner: Go sit, then you will find out.
So the practitioner starts to sit with all kinds of questions in mind. Although initially the student does not understand meditation, he trusts his teacher who has trained for over 40 years, and who is compassionate toward everyone. The student believes that his teacher will do no harm to him, and is giving the advice for the best interest of the practitioner.
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In 2011, Amy Chua, a Yale University professor published “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother”, a memoir that describes her parenting journey. Her claim that her Chinese parenting is superior to Western ways stirred up disputes in Mainland China, America, Australia, England and Canada. Many news channel such as TODAY, Channel4News, ABCNews, CNN, 60 Mintues and The Agenda with Steve Paikin all discussed Amy Chua’s parenting approach. She pointed out that childhood is not merely for the experience of happiness, it is a process of training to prepare for the future marketing demands. After the book was published, the reactions from the audiences were mixed. However, most of the response from Americans were negative, they regarded Amy Chua’s parenting style is overly rigid, lacking respect for children’s human rights and neglecting children’s emotional needs.
While when I finished Amy Chua’s “Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother” for the first time, I was furious. My initial reaction was this is typical emotional abuse, isn’t it? Her rigid approach violates basic human rights: in a democratic society everyone, including children, has the right to express their opinions; parents should be considering child’s nature, capacity when assigning appropriate tasks. However, Amy Chua’s demanding that her daughter spend three hours practicing her piano per day, no play dates, no sleep over, and A grades in all subjects, these extremely rigid rules certainly categorizes her approach as an autocratic parenting style: THE DICTATOR. According to Michael Popkin’s definition, the dictator exerts absolute control, all powerful in dictating the lives of her children. There is little or no room for children to question, challenge or disagree.
However, my furious feelings towards her subsided gradually after I read her book for the second and third time. Since, being a Chinese mother myself, deep down on many perspectives, my thoughts are in line with Amy Chua’s approach, such as prioritizing the learning, valuing discipline, following routine, respect for the elderly etc. In order to further understand Amy Chua’s parenting approach, and the traditional Chinese way of child rearing, I would like find out what the core values are behind all of those actions. Since her approach does represent the parenting style for the majority of people of Chinese descent.
Often when client’s presenting issue is of abusive relationships, one of the possible reasons is they lack of the skill of being assertive. So sharing the information about self-identity, boundary issues, and teaching the skill of being assertiveness become an inseparable part of counselling.
However, the topic of being assertiveness has to be handled sensitively for clients who come from different cultural backgrounds, such as Chinese. Chinese value the virtues of tolerance, harmony, and of sacrificing their own needs for the sake of other parties, and also give up their desires. So the teaching of being assertive, speak up for yourself, declare your own need may sound like the opposite, going against all of their old doctrines.
When the Chinese client comes in for counselling, they may feel depressed because of the abusive situation. While, within their mentality, most of the times they still want to believe that what they have done is worthwhile, has value and meaning. They believe people will respect them by their acts of sacrifice, tolerance, and their resilience. So when a counselor introduces the concept of assertiveness, standing up and speaking for their feelings, thoughts, ideas; it could cause tremendous stress to client, which may lead to a certain level of confusion and the client may reject the suggestion.
Spring is the season of Easter, remembering the death and resurrection of Jesus. It is also the time of Lent, many people choose this special time to be baptized. When Jesus was baptized by John, a dove landed on his shoulder; it states in Matthew 2: 16: the spirit of God descending like a dove and alighting on him. This description leads me to think, if we regard the dove as spirituality, then how do we prepare ourselves to invite the Spiritual Dove to land on our shoulder?
In a practical way, in order for dove to land, the atmosphere needs to be calm, and safe. If we apply this tangible rule to understand the intangible rule of attracting the Spiritual Dove, it may indicate that we need to be calm, still, feel safe and make ourselves ready to invite the dove to land.
Then the next question is, how do we make ourselves ready? We may have more conveniences such as transportation and communication than our parent’s generation because of our aggressive and rapidly progressing technologies. But these conveniences also have the counter products which is the requests of multitasks and multi-roles.
In Canada, a birthday party is a huge issue for a child who is between the ages of five and ten. Since she came to Canada three years ago, one of the excitements that my daughter is anticipating every year is her birthday party. Over the last three years, Vive has received more than 20 birthday party invitations from her friends and she did not miss a single one.
Now, her 10th birthday is approaching. She has been excited, thinking about how to plan and prepare. After attending numerous parties, she has developed sufficient knowledge and skills in planning, designing and running her own. I, who used to take full responsibility and be in charge, have gradually moved to a secondary position, to be her assistant. Planning an event like a birthday party isn’t easy; there are seven steps: first, list the people you like to invite, write, design the card and send out the card. Second, figure out the location of the party. Third, brain storming what kind of activities, programs, games to implement. Fourth, what kind of food will be provided? Fifth, how many assistants you can find to help you out, and who is doing what. Sixth, planning and shopping for the gift bags. Seventh, keep the budget in mind, and carry out the show.
Three years ago, the concept of a birthday party was new for us who had come from China. Back home there is no such thing as a birthday party for a child. Chinese hold birthday parties for the elders who are over the age of 60. However, in order to encourage her to make friends and mingle with other kids of her age, I have supported and encouraged my daughter to participate. At the same time, I have had to learn how to organize and run a party with her.
When my client, a 10-year-old boy came into my office the other day, he shuffled around the room, pushing and poking at random objects. He made it clear that he was not interested in talking and he seemed frustrated in my questions to him. Knowing that he had been getting into trouble at school for angry outbursts at his teacher and other students, it was my impression that he was storing strong emotions in regards to his parents’ impending divorce and custody situation. When he sat at the art table and began to cut paper with scissors, I asked him whether he would like to sit on the floor with me and rip large pieces of paper. He sat beside me and timidly began to rip, each time looking at me for assurance. With a nod, I indicated to him that it was all right and with earnest he began to rip the paper.
What started as a small invitation for the boy to express his anger became a huge breakthrough for him and for our therapeutic relationship. He ripped with enthusiasm and sometimes aggression and I ripped the paper along side of him. We then created a piece of art, sticking the pieces of paper together to form collages and images.
Creating art not only gave the boy a vehicle to express his strong emotions, but it also provided a metaphorical container to hold them. At school, his feelings erupted and affected those around him since his teacher and peers were targets of his unfocused anger. However, the art created boundaries in which he could safely release his emotions and he did not have to worry about harming anyone including him or me.
The art as a container, in which he poured his strongest feelings, also provided a means in which I could relate to him. Had he showed me his rage by wildly punching or putting us in danger, then my role would be more to limit him than to relate to him. But by ripping the paper with him, I could share in the experience of his anger and give him an opportunity to release the feelings he had pent up inside. Using art as a container to create boundaries does not constrain expression of emotions but rather provides freedom to release them since a sense of safety has been established. And once the feelings have been released and processed, clients can create some distance from them so that they can continue to move forward with their healing.
Nalini Iype, MC:AT, CCC is an art therapist and counsellor in private practice in Toronto. For more information visit www.ArtTherapySolutions.com or email her at [email protected]