Jonathan Damiani, LMFT

Here, Dr. Jung captures the heart and purpose of the type of psychotherapy many of us practice here at La Vie Counseling Center where I work. Jung believed it was a difficult and painful thing to look deep into our own souls in order to bring to the surface of our consciousness all the pain, fear, and sadness that we might find down there. So we develop techniques to avoid this process. We try to think positively. We avoid negative thought and drama. We push outward instea...d of inward. To Jung, this is counterproductive. Real wholeness comes when we sit with the pain in the depths of our soul and bring it to consciousness. It involves reaching deep within, plunging our face below the surface of the water of our consciousness, and naming what we see down there. If we are fearless in this practice, we can begin to put words to our pain as we integrate it with the other, more tolerable aspects of life. It is this integrated life that is most whole and most fulfilling. And again, we don’t get to this place by imagining figures of light. We get there by pushing into the darkness to make friends with it. As a therapist, this also mirrors my goals for treatment. I want to sit with you and help you explore the scary depths of the soul, as I metaphorically hold your hand and help you find courage. I do this because I believe an integrated and whole life is more fulfilling than a happy life. (Note: The quote in the image is an amalgamation of two separate quotes by Dr. Jung from two different articles)

May is Mental Health Awareness month, and as a bonus, May 6 is Sigmung Freud’s birthday! In honor of both of these, I wanted to share this interesting article on some of Freud’s most enduring contributions to the science of psychology. https://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/7225976

"Hey Mr. Therapist. Can you give me some tools?" When I was a teenager, I had a snowmobile - a 1971 Ski-Doo, to be exact. It was a lovely and fickle machine. It seemed to take great joy in breaking down as soon as I got as far away from home as I wanted to go. I was always working on this thing, trying to get it to run properly and consistently. But alas, the mechanical problems were too deep and complex for me to fix on my own. To get the snowmobile started, I would often u...se a product called Starting Fluid. This fluid was a highly flammable liquid that you could spray directly into the carburetor to get the engine to fire quickly. And this stuff worked so well! One spray in the carburetor, one pull of the pull cord, and the snowmobile would fire up like a champ! The problem is that once the starting fluid burned off, the engine would go back to its normal poor functioning. The starting fluid didn’t fix the deeper problem with the snowmobile engine. It just helped it seem like it was functioning properly for a few seconds. You probably see where I’m going here. A lot of us seek out therapy because we feel like there’s something wrong with the way we’re functioning. It could be anxiety or depression. Perhaps we’re having a hard time regulating our anger. And we want relief from what we are feeling! Sometimes, it seems like what we most need is a kind of psychological starting fluid. Some tool to jump start our psyche so that we can trick our brains into working normally again. Although I completely empathize with the desire to find some kind of tool to help me get back to normal functioning, I think there’s also an inherent problem with course of action. Just like my snowmobile, the tricks don’t last. They may help us ward off a painful bout of symptoms, but they aren’t able to address the deeper issues. Good therapy is holistic in nature. It may provide you with a few tools to prompt emotional health, but the main purpose of a working therapeutic relationship will always be the deeper and unconscious processes that are producing the symptoms. Just like starting fluid is an important tool to help get an old snowmobile started, it is not something that is designed to be sustainable. It has a limited and important purpose, but ultimately, with the help of a trained mechanic, the goal is to get the snowmobile functioning normally so that the starting fluid trick isn’t necessary. The same is true with our psyche. Tools will help relieve symptomology while we take the time to explore our unconscious world and understand why the symptoms exist in the first place. And then, through the miracle of psychotherapy, we can grow to the point that we don’t need tools. At least that’s the hope!

Mirroring In a perfect world, parents act as mirrors for their children. It’s an important part of self development! When a parent mirrors a child, the child sees herself reflected in the parent and begins to better understand who she is in the world. But what does mirroring look like? In early stages of development, it’s fairly straightforward. A good parent mirrors his child’s expressions, coos, laughter; looking to where she points, asking questions like What do you see,... and so on. It’s an instinctual thing we all do with babies. Mirroring looks a little different as the child develops. Parents may begin to mirror a child’s hopes and dreams, letting them work through thoughts and develop beliefs, helping them get a sense of who they are in the world. A teenage daughter may dream of being an engineer, and a good mirroring parent will encourage this dream, cultivate it, and ask good questions to help the child consider what this dream means. Ultimately, it’s less important if this particular dream is achievable or if the child even sticks with it. What’s important in that moment is that a good parent allows his child to develop a stronger sense of herself and how she can achieve what she wants. However, sometimes parental mirroring breaks down. This is especially true for parents who never received good mirroring in their own childhood. These parents may begin to look to their own children as mirrors of themselves. In other words, if a mother never got the chance to develop her sense of self in the mirror of her own mother, she may begin to look for ways her child mirrors her - as a way to gain a sense of self from her child. The proper order of things gets flipped upside down. A breakdown in mirroring often goes unnoticed, especially when the child learns to mirror the parent as the parent searches for a sense of self. However, if the child does not mirror the parent well, the child is seen as the problem, and the parents may encourage the child to conform or cut the child off from the family system. As you can see, this is problematic! The child is not given the chance to develop a sense of herself because she becomes preoccupied with mirroring her parent - or she becomes disenfranchised by the family cut off. The good news is that it is never too late to correct a lack of childhood mirroring. Parents can learn to mirror their children as they look to other sources (like psychotherapy) to develop a better sense of themselves. Adults can learn to mourn the loss of the mirroring they so needed in childhood and begin to develop their own sense of self. It’s never too late!

I hear a lot of people using the term bipolar these days. It’s one of the many terms that therapists and psychologists use to better understand the way some people’s brains work. Sometimes, it’s a helpful term. But I think that it’s misused a lot more than we realize. The way I usually hear people use the term is something along these lines: I just don’t know how to act around him! Sometimes he seems fine and easy going, and then bam! He gets angry and lashes out. He’s so... bipolar! Don’t get me wrong - I think the confusion over the term makes sense. Bipolar. Up and down. Hot and cold. Happy and sad (or mad). It makes sense that a lot of people use the term to explain why their friends, family members, or spouses seem to be so moody or irritable. But moodiness or irritability and bipolar disorder are not the same thing. Bipolar disorder is a cycling between relatively long periods of mania and equally long periods of severe depression. Someone who is in a manic phase of bipolar disorder may stay up late at night, have endless amounts of energy, make poor decisions, and go on long, spontaneous trips. Then suddenly, and usually without warning, they become depressed, spending a lot of time in bed, not feeling motivated, missing work, and so on. Bipolar disorder is a serious condition that requires some fairly intense forms of help - help that most often includes medication. The moodiness or irritability that some people confuse with bipolar disorder could be any number of things. Stress, anxiety, mild depression, marital conflict, or just the normal rhythms of life. If you do find that you or someone you love is coming across as being "moody," I encourage you to make an appointment to see a therapist. Most likely what you’re seeing is a result of something else - some kind of stress, anxiety, trauma, or pain that’s probably difficult to talk about. Find a therapist you trust, and talk to him or her about it!

The longer I work as a therapist, the more I learn that people aren't always sure what happens in therapy. Do you just "vent to your therapist?" Does the therapist tell you what to do with your life? Does the therapist give you "tools" to help manage anxiety or depression? At times, the answer might be "yes" to all of these things - but these things are not the primary purpose of therapy (at least the kind of therapy that I practice). A therapist might give you some breathing... exercises to help manage anxiety. She may give you space to vent some frustration or pain that you're feeling. She may even give you some general advice or help you look at an experience in a different way. But again, the ultimate goal of therapy is to help the patient experience, understand, and make peace with authentic emotional experiences, both past and present. A skillful therapist will sit with you in your pain and help you bring uncomfortable emotions to the surface so that you can experience the true depth and breadth of those emotions. Attached is a quote from a difficult and challenging little book called "The Drama of the Gifted Child." I like the way the author, Alice Miller, lays out the goal of psychotherapy to help us "experience our legitimate emotions." Please, share your thoughts.

This is one of my favorite pictures in the world. And to think I took it with my phone! It's a picture of Big Tujunga Canyon on a beautiful summer afternoon in Southern California. I love the way the sun hits the mountains, the lush vegetation along Big Tujunga Creek, the dry mountainside and hearty desert plants, the faint trail that promises a better view if you just follow it a little bit... What does this picture say to you?