Against the Wind

Old Guy with a Fly Rod

     I look out my window and see trees blowing with the wind. In the house, I cannot feel the wind. Past experience with windy days gives me this understanding. I am a beginning fly fisherman. I decide to practice fly casting to understand the challenge of casting in the wind. When I move from my comfortable chair in my air-conditioned house to the driveway for my practice, the environment changes. I feel the warm day and the wind’s effect. A feeling I did not have a moment ago. I try a few casts with the breeze. The line flows out just as I want it to do. I turn and cast into the breeze. When I do not bring the rod tip down, adjust it to the situation, the line falls in a clump ten feet away from my target. I learn how to adjust to environmental changes (the wind) by experiencing it. 
     Again, a simple story explains patterns. I have a goal to learn fly casting. The cast is a known process that requires learning and practice. As long as my rod hangs on the wall, I am brilliant at it - in my mind. Only when I make a decision to enter the environment with the thing in my hand, adjust to the situation, do I find, a specific solution. 
     Using the EFDRE model, we can explain any story. Event – I see the wind outside from my chair. Feeling- I want to learn fly casting in the wind. The feeling is sufficient to capture my attention and want, to move me. Decision – I will practice in the driveway with the wind. Responsibility – I get out of my chair get my rod, string it up, and cast, first, with the wind then against it. Elimination – I return to my chair after learning what adjustments I have to make to be successful. The feeling is gone. I learned what I wanted to learn about casting in the wind. I solved a problem and began learning a new skill which will demand further practice. The thought comes “I could go fishing down at the dam”. The urge takes my attention momentarily. Then, I let it go, not enough arousal to get into the car with the gear. I am still in my chair writing this blog. 
     The pattern I am learning is how to cast a fly in the wind, an extension of my new pattern for fly casting. I will go and practice again when I finish writing. Remember any pattern you choose to learn, healthy or unhealthy, follows the same process. Then you practice to establish the muscle memory, adjustment to shifting environments, and find relationship support and boundaries that ensures repeated success.

 

Two Days of ACTing (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy)

     I spent two days in an ACT workshop. For anyone who does not know what ACT (called act) is, it is Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. It operates by stitching together behavior therapy into softer mindful interventions. It has several merits and appears helpful. The people in the audience seemed impressed. I was bored. 
     Because the trainer was a behaviorist at heart, when he talked about the operant conditioning and aversive reinforcement, he glowed. When he talked about the mindful processes, he became esoteric and vague. The combination worked because he was, in a small way, willing to deal with the whole person, not just the behavior. Throughout the workshop, he appeared defensive and cautious waiting for an attack from a generally supportive group. 
     On an early slide, he offered a definition from the founder Stephen Hayes that states “…ACT brings direct contingencies and indirect verbal processes to bear on the experiential establishment of greater psychological flexibility primarily through acceptance, defusion, establishment of a transcendent sense of self, contact with the present moment, values, and building larger and larger patterns of committed action linked to those values.” To make it simpler, ACT is about making people more psychologically flexible, meaning they can handle a broader range of events that happen in their lives successfully. The interest I had in the process was the idea that even with all the psychobabble, the bottom line is flexible “patterns of committed action”. 
To my thinking, the speaker, though entertaining, never made the connection of why these two divergent topics had to be together. He never took the final step in the journey and recognized that he was talking about patterns the whole time. Behaviorist deal in patterns of reinforcement and extrapolate their mouse data to humans in sophisticated patterns of explanation. If in the end, the client buys off on their behavioral interpretation, change happens. As in most therapies, the therapist and the client are the most important ingredients of therapy, not the technique. The problematic issue is that to perform behavioral reinforcement on people the therapist needs client permission and participation. Thus, the mindful process is a way to achieve permission to apply behavior therapies to people. The depth of change depends, not only on the behavioral technique, but on the strength of the therapeutic relationship. 
     Dr. Haye’s appears to be a different animal. He describes therapy from a healthy model and proposes using the DSM as a guide rather than a bible. His approach is close to patterns, offering a person the ability to become healthy through a positive psychotherapy. I like it. But it could be simpler. What if, the person became aware of their individual pattern (the way they lived daily that was unhealthy) and with the therapist, they developed options that offered a choice about the change they want. They problem solve the outcome into what they choose in their life, and with the support of the therapist, they practice the change until it becomes the life they desire. Wouldn’t that increase psychological flexibility? The product is the same, a healthier life. The process is much simpler than ACT. 

PATTERN THOUGHT: YES OR NO?

     I talk in the workshops about decisions being power, but what does it mean? On the surface it seems obvious that the person who makes a decision has the power to make it happen. This is not always the situation. Suppose you live in an apartment and decide you want a house. You do not have the money to buy a house. You may have credit problems. You may need a job. You can wish for a house but your decision is not actionable. The house is in the future, not now. If you merely continue to wish for the house, you have not decided to have one. Instead, you have let the bank or non-employment make the decision. Many people do not have the ability to tolerate the stress of waiting for what they want, while they work to get it. They cannot delay gratification. Our society seems to frown on waiting to get something you want. As such, people sometimes claim they cannot make decisions because others won’t let them.
     In 1989, Bruce McIntosh coined the term “spoiled child syndrome”. It describes a child like this: His affluent parents could not understand why Aaron could not get to school on time. He had a car and lived only four miles from his high school, but he was tardy almost daily. The parents felt they knew what to do. They bought him a house directly across from the school property so that he could walk to school. The first week he did better. Then, the tardiness began again. When they checked, Adam was selling parking spaces to his friends on the front lawn, which was ruined, and he had regular parties that damaged the property even during school hours. The parents learned these facts when the school complained about his behavior. All his parents wanted was for him to graduate with his class, but his failing grades and absenteeism reduced his chances. Who was making the decisions?
     Of course, it was Aaron. The person, who makes the decision, has the power. They set the goals and control the situation. If you want something in life, suffer the stress, and decide to have it. Set a goal for the future beginning now. Today is the only time you get to make a decision. Make it today and start to organize your behavior, as if the decision is made. If you want a house, what are all the problems you face to get it? Take each one and problem solve it to a decision. As you move toward the goal more problems arise, take each one and solve it. When you learn to make decisions in your life, you become successful. In reality decisions are either yes or no. Either you want the house or you do not. Either you choose drugs or you do not. Either you treat the people you love with support or you do not. There is no maybe in decision making.