Category Archives: smart phones

Set-Ups, Near Occasions & Solution-Focused Brief Therapy

Haven’t we all had times we felt set up for failure?

Near occasions. Think of them as set-ups. Human beings are spectacularly good at setting ourselves up, for good choices and for the not-so-good, too.

We Catholics refer to near-occasions of sin – the people, places, things and behaviors that we might see as “set ups” for us to make poor choices. There’s nothing inherently “bad” about gathering at a bar and grill with friends, but if you are trying hard to maintain your recovery as an alcoholic, it is a “near occasion.” It’s a set-up to make good choices even tougher. Likewise, the trip to the mall to “just walk around” when you’re trying to work your way out of debt. Why set yourself up for failure?

In the same way, there are what may be called “near occasions of Grace,” the people, places, things and behaviors that increase our odds of making good choices. The friends who are uplifting and don’t gossip; the entertainment that doesn’t feed envy or anger; the activities that make the rest of the day better. We “set up” the likelihood of good choices, too.

Solution Focused Brief Therapy (SFBT) similarly looks at people, places, things and behaviors. You may be thinking, well, duh, what sort of therapy does NOT focus on solutions? Different forms of therapy have different emphases in terms of finding solutions. For example, psychodynamic therapy emphasizes developing insight that leads to new choices; behavior modification focuses on step-by-step actions to guide the client towards reaching goals. In SFBT, there is a particular emphasis on the clues (factors that set up outcomes) in people’s lives and using these clues and the client’s strengths to develop solutions. In many ways, it is looking for near occasions of the goals the client has for therapy. When has the goal in question already happened, or part of it happened?  What was going on then? What was happening right before that? What were you doing? What were others doing? As a team, we investigate the near occasions of success so the client can use the clues to develop solutions that make sense for that client’s life.

Just as a quick example, let’s consider the person who realizes that getting the morning off on the right foot tends to lead to a better day, all-around. We look at examples of those “better days.” What did happen in the morning? What happened the day before that might have contributed to that morning? There are usually plenty of clues and examples of times when the person has been successful in doing things that either led to a “better day” or set the stage to some degree.  Some clues might be eating a reasonably healthy dinner, getting to bed “on time” and not using the phone or other screened device, getting up on time and getting out of bed right away instead of starting the phone-scroll. The person identifies the factors and then we look at how to increase the incidence or likelihood of those recurring. Breaking it down further, let’s take the dilemma of the phone next to the bed and its appeal as a way to deal with insomnia, or its interference with just getting out of bed on time. “I can’t leave it in the kitchen. It’s my alarm clock,” people will assert. Yes, I understand- and I understand that I bought a little travel alarm clock – a couple of AA batteries that have thus far worked for years – that wakes me reliably every morning whether there’s a power outage or not, and I do not have my phone over there, flashing lights and buzzing every time an artist friend posts a painting. It seems many other artists are night owls. The solution, if what is wanted is actually a reliable alarm clock function, can be had for less than fifteen dollars.  If the phone is off in another room, you’ll have to get out of bed to get to it. And by then you will probably have done something besides scroll – brushed your teeth or started the coffee or fed the dog. You will be vertical, approximately on time, and therefore have “set up” a more likely success story about getting into your day “on time.” The phone by the bed is a “near occasion” of extra time awake during the night, more time in bed, and then being rushed, grumpy and unprepared for the day. Nothing is inherently bad about the phone – but it might be part of a “set up.”

We all have “near occasions” – of sin, grace, good choices, bad choices. The negative ones have less power when we know what they are, and the good ones can exert their power when we focus on them.

Riding the Rapids

We recently spent a few days hiking up mountains, camping and white-water rafting in Wyoming and Montana, because isn’t that what people who are afraid of heights (me) and can’t swim (yeah, me, again) do for fun? And it was fun. It’s good to push out of the comfort zone.

Most parents and the other adults who care for and work with children are quite serious about helping them get out of their supposed comfort zones and into a healthier lifestyle. Recently, I was speaking to a group of adults about the topic, “Raising Mentally Healthy Children.” We spent our time focused on what we can do.

One problem that arises in these conversations – whether in a group, one-on-one, or with a family, is that making time for change seems impossible. The days are packed, and nothing on the schedule seems negotiable. Yet, in reality, what’s not negotiable is what humans need to be healthy and thriving.

What most kids need, and what we need, too, is more appropriately divvied-up time. For example, children and teens benefit from a solid two hours or more of physical activity every day. They need time outdoors, in nature, for their immune systems, Vitamin D, circadian rhythms and even their eyesight development. The near-and-far variation in focus that being outdoors elicits promotes healthy eyesight in young children; kids are supposed to go from crouching down to study a beetle to peering across the field to see if that’s a hawk in the tree and then taking off running to make sure. Optimally, they’re outside for at least two or so hours every day – more on weekends.

Kids need enough sleep – probably 9 or 10 hours a night, with an absence of screens. Recent research links high levels of artificial light at night (ALAN) with increased rates of cancer due to disruption of the circadian rhythm. An immediate risk with insufficient sleep is the attention system. Sleep-deprived people are irritable, inattentive, forgetful, disorganized and generally not fun to be around. Sleep-deprived drivers test as impaired, much like those with alcohol and/or drugs in their system. Think about inexperienced and sleep-deprived teenagers driving to and from school and work, often in the dark.

Kids, and we adults, need unstructured time. Most of the adults present had a creative hobby or two, and we all agreed that it takes time to shift gears into that hobby. It’s hard to walk in the door after work and immediately pick up a paintbrush, or guitar, or journal, or woodworking tools, and be in flow. The segue into creativity requires a sort of almost boring downtime – something many adults and children avoid compulsively through electronics. 

I can’t tell people what sacrifices have to be made for their family to have a healthier life. It varies from family to family, and it is never easy. It might be simple or quite complex, but it is never easy. However – after the white-water part, when you aren’t on nature’s roller coaster, there are always some smooth, easy times ahead. Thank you to all the parents who go for it – who strive to be sure their children to have the range of experiences they need to grow up resilient, curious and confident.

Hard Changes

Most of us have some changes to make. And most changes are not so easy. That’s why people postpone them, or poke at the edges, or just pretend the problem will go away by itself. Sometimes people convince themselves there isn’t even a problem, really; that it just depends how you look at it. Maybe so. But maybe there’s something that needs changing.

Let’s say you have a teenage child, or a child approaching the teens. S/he is cranky, sullen, uncooperative with chores, sulks during family meals and resists being on time for school and other appointments. S/he wants to spend time alone, in the bedroom, with electronics. The child is depressed and/or anxious and/or obsessive and/or perpetually angry. You know the situation will change, one way or the other. Everything changes. If you do nothing, you are gambling that your child will continue down this road and somehow, at 18 or 19 or 20, wake up, shake themselves off like a wet Golden Retriever and come out of their bedroom, smile and say, “Wow! How could I have been so wrong?!”

Yeah, I doubt it, too.

If you have this situation and need to take it on, it can be hard to know where to start. Here’s a suggestion: if the situation is not a crisis, then the most practical first step may be to start with yourself.

You will have to change. Perhaps you have to start the change process by being sure that all the adults in the house are on the same page in your expectations. Perhaps you need to get yourself on the right path.

You go first. You get enough fresh air, and time in nature, and sleep, and healthy nutrition, and balanced physical activity. You strive to do interesting and challenging things in what little free time you have. You will, quite naturally and incidentally, spend less passive screen time. You’ll be leading from strength rather than being a target for adolescents’ favorite criticism: that we adults are hypocrites. You’ll be in a much better stance to steer positive changes for your tween or teen.  

It’s Just an Experiment

You know how it is. You want to make a change. Something needs to change. Maybe the kitchen needs organizing, or you need to sleep better, or be less stressed…whatever it may be. You want to get it “right.” And that’s where the freeze happens. “Right.  It has to be right.”

But what if there’s no way to know what is right for you without experimenting?

For all the chatter the past few years about science, and following science, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what science is. Science is more of a verb that a noun. It has more in common with, Hey, let’s try THIS and see what happens, than with learning a few things and deciding that’s it – that’s all there is to know.  You can see the difference in real time when SpaceX runs another experiment with the super heavy and the personnel there are excited about how much they’re learning and thus able to improve, while some people in the press call it a “failure.”  No, “failure” would be not doing or, having done, failing to study and learn. That’s failure.

At an individual level, let’s say you decide to take guitar lessons. You have no idea how to do anything with a guitar, but it’s been a long-time dream. Unless you are younger than five, you surely wouldn’t pick up the guitar, strum at it, and wonder why you didn’t sound like Carlos or Angus or Eric or Brian or whomever. You would have to spend many hours, experiment after experiment, building and reinforcing the new neural connections and fine motor skills that lead to the ability to play guitar. You would not call the outcome after the first, or tenth, or thirtieth, lesson a “failure,” properly, unless you gave up in impatient disgust and stuck the guitar in the closet, where it will peek at you through the clothes hanging in front of it and reproach your surrender until you sigh and try again or give the guitar away.

If you are looking at making a change, and feeling stuck, reframe what you are doing as experimenting.  Move the coffee mugs to that cabinet, over there, closer to the coffee maker, and see how you like it.  Buy a battery-operated alarm clock and leave your phone in the kitchen overnight for a few weeks and see what happens. Try turning screens off during meals, or leaving the audio off in the car, for a month or so.

Start the experiment, and then pay attention. That’s a critical part of an experiment. What happens in the absence of the old behavior? What seems better? What’s harder? What is your theory on why it’s better or worse? Can you build another little experiment – not a long-term commitment – on this one? It’s an experiment, for goodness’ sake, not a marriage.  That is science, and that is a way to get unstuck, make changes and work around any lurking perfectionism.

Not another horrible day

A different day, another awful situation. 

A child, or teen, or young adult has been struggling with emotional turmoil and is tumbling into danger. They confide in a friend, or maybe a few friends.

They may have “met” someone in an online chat and now this person is their “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” and they are planning to run way to meet this person.

Perhaps the young person has been “sexting” with someone they know personally, or “met” online, and now are being threatened with “sextortion,” that the images of them will be spread around, unless they meet some demand. This has recently led to many teen and young adult suicides.

Perhaps the young person shares that they are a victim of abuse.

Or, perhaps they stumbled upon, or were led to, the terrible misinformation that hurting oneself is a useful way to cope with painful feelings. The young person proceeds to experiment with self-harm, and posts online about it.

So-called friends hear the plan, listen to the horrible stories, or see the images of scratches, cuts or burns, and fail to turn to an adult for guidance.

Every parent I’ve ever spoken to is under the impression that their child would, of course, come to them if a friend were in grave danger. And sometimes that is true, but an awful lot of the time – in almost any of these kinds of incidents I’ve ever encountered in clinical practice or consulted on, as it happens – that was not the case. The case was, almost every time, that other young people knew about the plan to run away, or the abuse, or the self-harm, and did not seek the guidance of an adult.

Sometimes these “friends” have an unflagging alliance, suddenly, to keeping promises (unlike the promises they have made to you, dear parent, about everything from cleaning their room to homework being done well to treating your automobile with respect). Sometimes they believe they are better equipped to help than an adult would be, although they cannot arrest an abuser, drive someone to the emergency room or help them connect with a mental health professional for counseling, and their capacity to manage extreme distress is probably not much better than the troubled friend’s skills. Sometimes they dread social disapproval for breaking the rule that you keep adults out of it, whether the “it” is someone self-harming, or sharing that they are a victim of abuse, or are planning to run away from home to meet up with the “boyfriend” they “met” online.

I urge you to have frequent, open conversations about these topics with your young people. Make them age appropriate; be calm and encouraging. If you are too stressed out, you may be misread as “angry.” Remember that adolescents go through a stage where their brain interprets almost every non-happy facial expression as “angry.” If that happens, the conversation will probably be a complete failure.

Be calm, be matter-of-fact, and be sincere. Ask questions, too:

How do the people you know handle things like a friend telling them this kind of stuff?

If this was your friend, what would you do?

If it were (fill in the blank for some close friend or family member), what would you want their friends to do in this type of situation?

Why do you think people are reluctant to ask adults for help with this?

What would make an adult seem safe to go to with this problem?

Don’t lecture; have the conversation. It may be a conversation that occurs for a few minutes at a time over an extended period. That’s okay; sometimes a few sentence and letting it simmer is what’s necessary.  

You may, without knowing it, be setting the groundwork to save a life.

Why didn’t you call me?

The Mystery of the Missing Phone Call

If you leave voicemail and I do not call you back, odds are it is because the voicemail did not come through, or, as sometimes happens due to cell phones, it was impossible to understand.  During 2024, there was a week in the autumn in which my cell phone record clearly shows no phone calls and yet later, several people complained about having called and receiving no call back. Their number popped up showing they’d called during the week in question, but the cell phone call logs of that week showed no such call. These things happen; it is regrettable and out of your, and my, control. If there is no call in a day or so during the business week, please call again! 

If you email me and ask me to call you, I will email back and invite you to call me. Sometimes people find this annoying or avoidant. I have two reasons for this.

First, I cannot be sure that whomever is emailing (or texting) is the person in question. That is why we therapists have requests about not sending confidential information by text or email.  Believe it or not, several times in my over quarter-century in practice, people have left voicemail or email with a name and number that was not their own. They had decided that “Alex” was in need of a therapist. In their imagination, leaving unsuspecting me a message to call “Alex” was a way to have “Alex” unexpectedly encounter a real, live therapist and jump at the chance to make an appointment. This is not how it ends up, believe me. On occasion, people have called and directly requested that I call some family member or friend, and I decline. I appreciate the honesty in the latter case, but it is still inappropriate.

Secondly, I cannot be sure that I will be calling when it is safe and private.

Thanks for calling!