The Whiteboard Project
*TL/DR (too long, didn’t read) version of what’s below: what I hope this Substack will be about*
It has always seemed to me that much of the trouble humans experience is due to fuzzy relationships with ourselves, or little at all. That trait diminishes being healthy, happy and connected to other people and creatures.
Gandhi characterized it this way: “The fact that we have everyone claiming a right to conscience without going through any discipline whatsoever, is the reason we have so much trouble in our world.” We do not notice that we make inferences (the claims he refers to) about the world and that we engage no filter, critical thinking, or other checks and balances for determining the truth or value of those inferences/claims. It is largely by way of these tendencies that humans make life less cool for themselves and others.
Similarly, Carl Jung offered that “All neurosis is a substitute for legitimate suffering.” Maybe a way to think of this is that all “neurosis” (what I prefer to think of as unhealthy behavior) is a substitute for humans not knowing how to “suffer legitimately” meaning we don’t know how to gracefully have our experience, and deal with/process/transform/metabolize/change our difficult feelings in a healthy way. Some therapists refer to this as “processing,” sometimes “dealing with one’s issues”, but I prefer the term “grieving.” Grieving deserves a better definition it seems to me, the one I use is “going from any version of feeling what most people call ‘bad’, to feeling less so, insofar as it is possible.” I think we don’t only grieve/process sorrows, but shame, fear, anger, pain, etc.
A simpler way of saying it: between what happens outside of our heads/hearts and the time that we recognize our response, there has been “software” or tendencies running that shape our sense of the world and our situations. These are tendencies that we do not usually notice or understand, yet these drive decisions about the world and what to do with it. Further, when we do have tough feelings about things, we don’t know how to change (grieve) them in a meaningful way, when and if that is possible. While mental health practitioners should have a method for grieving, they are rarely able to articulate it and why they might think it helpful.
For many years, it has been suggested by friends and colleagues and clients that I make more of what I think about the world available to more people, and do so in ways that can be “lived with” for longer than my outpatient therapy sessions last. A kind of reference, maybe. Because we (humans) are in the immediate trouble it seems to me that we are in, I’m hoping to be more helpful to more people more quickly, prompting a Substack.
In the interest of some context, I grew up in Los Angeles. To be charitable, I grew up in an emotionally clumsy environment. A small number of friends and I got into recovery from drugs and alcohol when we were 16. This was a novelty in 1984, and so we were borrowed from some local human service agencies to do community education, set up support groups, and even do “interventions.”
Some of us got involved in other treatment methods to recover from other problems too (grief and loss, abuse, “codependency,” and more) via means like therapy, “spiritual” traditions, and other support groups. Out of high school I got into the Licensed Psychiatric Technician program at a local college. Between that and my recovery, someone took a risk on letting me work at an adolescent dual diagnosis program at a local psychiatric hospital where I got to attend and run groups, participate in treatment planning, and more.
I completed the Psych Tech program and got licensed in 1988, later finished a Master’s degree and terminating licensure as a Marriage and Family Therapist as well as other certifications while I continued to work in both direct care and management positions at different facilities. I’ve been lucky enough to do most everything – inpatient, outpatient, residential, day treatment/partial hospitalization, program creation, children, adolescents, and adults.
This is my 40th year of working in mental health in some capacity, usually more than full time. Now I am only doing private practice, teaching, consulting, and providing clinical supervision. There have been other interests – I have worked as an MMA and self-defense coach (which I am still doing), as well as been an engineer and co-producer for what I refer to as my favorite “working” band, Ohm (the jazz/rock fusion band from LA, not the electronica one from Europe).
Writing, community education, teaching, and more continue. The writing has been hard for reasons I won’t bore you with (I hope), but has in part led me to endeavor summarizing the methods I employ as a therapist (and also as a martial arts coach) down to a whiteboard in my office. That whiteboard has been the source of much of what I have been writing about. The events of the last few months and years have exacerbated a sense of urgency for me, prompting working and posting here.
What I hope to do is to not only address much of that in summary form for people to think about, but to also address issues that seem to be arising with clients, friends, and culture in our daily lives. Hence, the Substack version of my Whiteboard Project. I will leave a pic of it here, likely more than once, and while it might be a useful reference after I go through some items, just looking at it in its original form might not make too much sense. It seems clumsy to exclude it.
My effort will be to create a reference for clients, colleagues, friends, and more as a way of being helpful in improving a relationship with ourselves and others. It is by no means a substitute for therapy for a bunch of reasons I may or may not address as the weeks and months go on, but I hope to flesh out the ideas enough that they won’t just be interesting for consideration, but for use. A great deal of material is an intersection of fundamentals I observe in almost every form of therapy or worldview.
As with everything, I hope it will be theoretical, practical, and empirical. There will be content about specific problems like grief and loss, depression, anxiety, addiction, codependency, abuse, abandonment, relationships and intimacy. Much will be about methods employed in therapy, communication, epistemology, critical thinking, dealing or working with feelings, grief work, mindfulness, boundaries, performance improvement, resources, and more.
There will be posts about the Whiteboard, questions and observations that arise with friends, clients, and colleagues, missives about cultural and social issues. I’ll post at least once a week (on average, and likely more), both short and long form (arbitrary quantities to be sure. . . is this post long, short?), long-form posts at first to be the paid content.
This effort comes on the coattails of deep sorrow about how we treat ourselves, one another, and other creatures. We all seem to want better for all of us, and one of the considerations we’ll address is that if we largely want that and agree on what that might look like, why are we unable to manage it? There are many acknowledgements to be made here, and I am sure they will be as we go along. For now, in addition to the people and things that inspired the thinking here, I want to send deep appreciation for the intimates, colleagues, and clients that have gone so far in their encouragement of me doing this. I hope I can honor you all, as well as the material.
