Every month, a professional body I'm registered with sends out a magazine. Every month, it goes straight to the recycling bin. This month, as is often the case, the cover highlighted an article within, which appeared to be promoting a particular lifestyle choice. In what is published, and in what they most often choose to highlight, I detect a degree of ideological bias.
When we train as therapists, we attend personal therapy ourselves. One reason for this is to have the experience of being a client. Another reason might be to identify any biases or prejudices we hold, so that we are able to minimise their impact on our work with clients. One value I hold particularly strongly as a therapist is that it is not our job to tell clients how to live their lives. Our job is often to help the client live a life that is more in line with their values. We might examine those values with the client, and question whether holding those values is helpful to them. Ideally, we step away from telling a client that the way they live is right or wrong.
When I saw the headline on the cover of the magazine, the anger started to build. It really didn't sit right with me that a professional body for therapists was implying that a particular lifestyle choice was to be promoted. However, as I've done a lot of training on anger recently, I looked at the irrational beliefs that were fuelling the anger. Those beliefs were:
- They absolutely MUST NOT do this.
- They are BAD PEOPLE for doing this.
Looking at those beliefs now, they are quite disturbing to me. Not only to they fuel anger, as my recent training on anger tells me - they are suggestive of authoritarian tendencies. As Carl Jung once said, if we see something we find unacceptable in others, we would profit from asking what it tells us about ourselves. I'm paraphrasing, of course, but the point stands. In the darker recesses of my personality are authoritarian tendencies. These are not something that is apparent in my work with clients, but are certainly present in the circumstances where I have felt anger.
Being aware of the things we don't like about ourselves is the start. The people who most concern me are those who are not aware of, or outright deny, their shortcomings. If I were to tell you, for example, I have always acted out of kindness, you would probably tell me that this is impossible - no one ALWAYS acts out of kindness. You might also say that my inability to recognise my capacity for cruelty (which we all have) worried you.
How then, can we reverse engineer those irrational, worryingly authoritarian beliefs? What could replace those beliefs? According to my recent training, identifying the initial feeling that was amplified to anger by irrational thoughts is the key. So, how would I label that initial feeling, before it got out of control and morphed into anger? An organisation that represents therapists aligned itself with values I believe are contrary to the spirit of what therapy aims to achieve. I was disappointed in them. If we remove the irrational MUST NOT and BAD PEOPLE thoughts, then one way we could reframe our beliefs about the situation is:
- They did something I didn't like.
- I feel disappointed.
The thoughts don't have to go beyond this. Notice that it is the behaviour that I didn't like, rather than the irrational belief that the behaviour makes the person inherently bad. Also, the irrational belief that they absolutely must meet the conditions that I impose on myself as a therapist has gone. In its place is a simple acknowledgement that I felt disappointed.
The one I love arguably noticed all of this before I did. When I was driving her to the airport, she noticed that I reacted with anger to what I saw as the inconsiderate behaviour of other drivers. She pointed out the futility of shouting and cursing at drivers who were unable to hear me. She said that, as she was the one in the car with me, my anger was only being felt by her, and it scared her.
She is not a counsellor but, after listening to what made me angry about the other drivers' behaviour, she suggested an alternative way of dealing with it. She gave me an expression in her native language which translates simply as:
"Look! Naughty!"
Before I even started the recent training on anger, the one I love was already one step ahead. I don't know if she was aware of it, but she was giving a lesson on how to reframe anger as disappointment.
Right now, I'm disappointed with myself. Without noticing, I had been having thoughts that were irrationally authoritarian. Thankfully, I have the opportunity to do better from this point forward. Awareness of the problem is the first step. Rather than blaming and shaming myself over this, it feels better to use what the the one I love suggested:
"Look! Naughty!"
It's an acknowledgement that, while there are things that could be improved, I am not wholly bad. None of us are perfect, but we can always aim to be better. I read the highlighted article, and other parts of the magazine - it is now in the recycling bin.
