Counseling – Page 10 – One Life Only Counseling Services

Are you a walking diagnosis?

by Nathan Chua

In my more than a decade’s work, one of the most common questions I get from people inquiring about mental health services is, “Can you give me a diagnosis?” These come in many forms. Some call already with a prior diagnosis from another practitioner, “I had been diagnosed as a borderline personality, is there anything different about the way you treat people like me?” Even as I had training from that very same school of thought, I had always had my reservations about the practice of diagnosing. I had been diagnosed once, and I know how it feels and I know that it really wasn’t helpful. It is as if knowing what people have can make them somehow more aware of their tendencies and therefore allow them to be more cognizant of their actions.

Does knowing one’s diagnosis really help? Let’s take a look at what a diagnosis really comes up to, by taking this to an absurd level of analogy. If one were diagnosed to be bipolar, would they go around eating in restaurants and meeting people and saying, “Hi, I am Nathan. I am a bipolar disordered person!” Would they introduce themselves in every situation the same way? Like would that be how you would tell someone about yourself in a group class? From this, we can notice that we all act differently depending on the situations that we are in. We act differently when we are at work and when we are at home. We act differently when we are stressed and when we are relaxed.

Based on my experience, I have seen how this happens to people who had been dealt with a veritable life sentence of being attached to a label. At times, even worse, pinned with an inaccurate one at that.

As human beings we have evolved into a group of cells and individuals that thrive and survive through cooperation. One of the scariest parts of being human is to become isolated from a group. Being creatures who survive in communities, we have yearnings to belong. In the wild, the isolated human’s fate is most probably becoming a dead human sooner than later.

Belonging is important to us. There was even a famous study in the past that showed how much humans require nurturing and caring. Babies cannot survive just being fed through a bottle. They need touching and the physical and mental stimulation that comes from a caregiver.

However in the age of social media and the rest of the modern accoutrements we enjoy, the mind has hijacked this inner yearning to belong. Our problem-solving minds are excellent in categorizing people. The way to this felt sense of belonging has turned into being special instead of being one with others who share the same doubts, fears, and inner perturbations. You and I can see this in how special people want to project themselves in their social media accounts. The way to belong is to become special! Do you notice the oxymoron here?

The other way the mind hijacks this yearning to belong is the complete opposite of the abovementioned example. Our thoughts turn us into especially vulnerable individuals that need special attention. I have bipolar disorder so you better be extra kind and loving around me.

Like traits, all these diagnoses serve more to put us in boxes of categories. Experts have seen how countries that had adapted this system of classification (or what we call our DSM, Diagnostic and Statistical Manual for Mental Disorder) get worse results. What we used to think were just the shy nerdy types in school have now turned into walking diagnoses that need special attention and worse, medication. We had forgotten an era when that shy, quiet girl in class can turn into the next world class stage performer.

So let’s get back to how I started this blog post. What do I say when asked about whether or not I can give a diagnosis? I just tell them that I don’t.

Listen to this blogpost on Spotify! Click here!

Getting Hooked by Angry Thoughts!

by Nathan Chua

If you are old enough to watch the daily news or get regular updates online through social media platforms, you would be familiar with the all too common sights of road rage or someone who had just lost his or her temper and did something that was captured on a phone camera. We have seen how people do things that they would never have even dreamt about in reaction to their angry thoughts and feelings. How many times have we seen previously law-abiding citizens commit heinous acts and then later on regret what they had done when it was too late. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), the term used to describe this process of fusing with thoughts is “getting hooked.” Fusing with thoughts means our thoughts dictate what we do.

Yes, I should have seen it coming! It was in late September this year that I realized I had to re-register to vote. For those who are not from the Philippines, the background is about being automatically delisted as a voter if one has missed voting in two consecutive elections. I had thought all along that I had just missed one midterm election, but only to realize accidentally when I came upon a Facebook post that assessed my eligibility as a voter in late September, that I had missed voting in a small town (barangay) election that was held one year before the midterm elections. Of course, that induced some panic in me when I recalled online videos showing the horribly long queues of people lining up in the midst of a pandemic to register before the deadline set by the end of September! As I attempted to find ways to register where there were shorter lines and found out how tough it was to navigate the government website to print out the necessary forms, I realized that this will take a herculean effort. Sacrificing a day of productive work just to register as a voter was not exactly what I had envisioned for what is supposedly a democratic country where the right to vote is protected, facilitated, or made as easy as possible.

To cut the story short, I finally ended up having to deal with getting requirements to register all over again. And true enough, I felt the process was disproportionately tedious for the simple act of voting. Upon completing my documents I set out to register only to be told rather nonchalantly that my documents were unacceptable! You can just imagine how frustrating that could be after you had braved the long lines and a pandemic just to register.

I eventually got into a heated argument with the two people in charge of checking my documents. It took me about five minutes to realize that I had gotten hooked by my angry thoughts! Upon noticing what I had been doing, I quickly apologized for my behavior. It was not the person I wanted to be in that moment, and not the way I wanted to handle the situation. As you can see you are not alone in struggling with your anger. Even counselors like me can get hooked!

Here are other examples of getting hooked by our thoughts:

Have you ever had an experience when you were having a dinner conversation with someone important only to realize that you missed half the conversation?
Have you ever played with your child and all of a sudden noticed that your toddler is just about to fall off the crib?
Or drove all the way to work and didn’t know how you got there or which route you took?
Have you ever come home after someone tried to steal your bag during your walk? Once you arrive to your family, you would probably be talking about this experience with them for hours and even days. The experience can get you off your normal routines at home.

All of these involve something grabbing your attention and our minds start giving us reasons for not playing with our kids or hugging our partner. In other words, your world stops in those moments. You become less of the kind, loving, and caring person you used to be.

In my case, with all the bureaucratic requirements I had to go through, I was hooked by the thought that the government is bad. Hence, I felt physically tense the minute I went into the registration site. I failed to notice this and went about the business of registering not ready for any possible frustration that might come my way.

In hindsight, I was already hooked even before the challenging situation happened! It’s hard to recognize a hook until we notice that biting the hook has brought us in a different direction! This process of unhooking from our thoughts is based on what Dr. Steven Hayes explains as looking at our thoughts rather than looking from our thoughts. The original name for ACT was comprehensive distancing, which means distancing from the thoughts that our minds give us, so our thoughts don’t dictate what we do.

The first step in being able to distance ourselves from our thoughts is to be more noticing.

On that afternoon at the voter registration facility, I got hooked! I noticed only about five minutes into my ranting and quickly made amends to my ways. Some damage had already been done though and my thoughts began to run wild with shaming accusations that I am just not a good enough person, much less a counselor.

Well, here’s what ACT has to say about that too. We will get hooked no matter how hard we try to be more noticing, for we are only human. What doesn’t change though is that little voice in our heads that reminds us of what we want to be about in each and every moment. Realize that and ask ourselves after getting hooked, “Has anything that was important to us changed?” Perhaps not. Every time we fall into not noticing, we can always get up again and do our best in moving towards the person we want to be and the life we want to live.

Listen to this blogpost on Spotify! Click here!

The Surefire Way to Save Your Relationship!

by Nathan Chua

More often than not, couples come to counseling explaining their respective sides of the mess that has become of their relationship. Each of them has turned into a lawyer for their respective cases to prosecute and defend. For the trained eye though, they are engaging in a pattern of attack and defend. They’ve come to therapy to find an advocate or the ultimate authority in the person of the counselor. It is the therapist or counselor who will make the final determination of who is right and who is wrong. In some cases, they see the therapist as the final arbiter who can determine the fate of their relationship.

For those who are hoping to find some ways of resolving their differences, they face the dilemma of still loving and caring for their partner, but at the same time, can’t wrap their heads around why they end up fighting like mortal enemies over some trivial matters. It’s like their partner turns into something else other than the person they fell in love with. This while each shows glimpses of that lovable side in more sober moments.

Couples find themselves dealing with two dilemmas. These twin dilemmas are what I described in the first paragraph of this blogpost. The dilemma about who’s right and who’s wrong (i.e. who should back down and submit to the authority of the counselor), and the dilemma of whether the relationship is worth saving or not.

Fortunately, there is a surefire way to save your relationship. I believe that no matter what you end up doing as a couple, a successful handling of your dilemma means that you retain a relationship with your partner regardless of whether it remains together or not. With this silver bullet to all relationships, a couple may end up having a better way of handling their conflicts, or discover that they might be better off as separate individuals who can still learn to be friends after.

The best way to find out what the ultimate fate of the relationship will be, is to change the only thing that each partner has the most control over: Themselves! In other words, if you change yourself for the better, you are more likely to enjoy a couple of possible results. You either end up having a better relationship because your partner notices your positive changes, or you realize that no matter how much you change, your partner doesn’t.

Let’s take the first possible result. If your partner senses the positive changes you have made, there is a greater likelihood that they will change too. For example, when, after years of trying, you decide not to badger your partner about how messy the room is. Your partner may notice that sudden but welcome change. Having felt relieved of the constant reminders, your partner may in turn show you their appreciation by, well, cleaning up the room!

Changing yourself can also solve the dilemma of whether you should stay in the relationship or otherwise. If you have done your part to make changes in yourself and see a lack of response in your partner, then maybe it’s time to come to the realization that you no longer share the same ideas about who or what is important to both of your lives at this moment. By getting yourself out of the attack and defend pattern, you will know that your partner’s unresponsiveness is not rooted in the way you handle conflict, but a difference in your life directions.

To end this post, just remember that when all things seem hopeless, you still have yourself to count on for change.

“Be the change you want to see in the world,” Mahatma Gandhi.

Listen to this post on Spotify! Click here!

Why People Relapse

by Nathan Chua

Seeing a client again after a while evokes mixed feelings for me. Part of me says, I am happy to meet an old friend again and someone with whom I had deep, important, and meaningful conversations. But another part of me tells me that I might have not done the best job that was possible within the means that I knew. The pendulum swings to the negative even more, if I hear a loved one of a former client inform me of a relapse. What is wrong with my approach? Why do people (myself included) relapse?

I have two things that can explain this. One is, it is quite normal for us to have relapses. In fact, before 2019, I often tell my clients that they are welcome to come back on an as-needed basis rather than our usual weekly or bi-weekly meetings. Now that they have improved in handling their difficult emotions, I fully expect them to have relapses every now and then. I am relieved though that even as some clients do come back for the sporadic follow-up sessions, they do manage to rekindle some of what they had learned from our previous work more quickly than they would otherwise.

The second reason I believe relapses happen, is the focus on symptom-alleviation in the approaches that I had available to me. In 2019, I learned about Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT. Since then I have begun to understand that not all of these relapses are to be counted off as expected realities.

Helping clients manage their symptoms has its weak points because recovery is based largely on their level of distress. In this case, the client’s attention is focused on whether the depression, anxiety, etc, are still around or not! It’s like regularly watching your back to see if the symptoms have gone or are kept to a minimum.

The reality though is life can often hand us challenges that can go beyond what we believe is our capacity to manage these symptoms. The randomness of life can give us something that can overwhelm our capacities to suppress these painful feelings. Running away or keeping these feelings underwater like a giant beach ball has its limits.

I love the way Dr. Russ Harris uses the metaphor of the two donkeys to illustrate this. Let’s say we have two options to make two donkeys move in a certain direction. One donkey was made to move with the experience and the threat of being hit by a stick, while the other was prodded by a carrot in front of it. Which donkey do we think will last longer? I presume most of us would say that it would be the second donkey with the carrot. Secondly, which donkey do we think would be happier as it moves in the direction we want? It’s quite a natural choice for us to say that it will still be the second one.

I used to call myself eclectic in my approach simply because I had to use different techniques and frameworks to address different problems. However, there is one underlying presumption in these approaches that I had adopted for the first 10 years of my work, that counseling was all about alleviating symptoms or suffering, so people can go on living their “normal” lives.

Under these approaches though, clients would tend to measure their progress by the absence or suppression of their symptoms. For example, if my depression or anxiety is kept to a minimum tolerable level, only then can I move on with the tasks of living. The end result becomes achieving a life absent those overwhelming feelings again. Clients end up thinking that feeling good is what makes them “normal.” This is what in behavioral terms is called living life under aversive control. It is just like the donkey that is motivated by the avoidance of the stick.

In ACT, an alternative way of motivating people to live the kind of lives they want for themselves. I learned what it means to be the donkey motivated by the carrot ahead of it. Wouldn’t life be so much more fun if we had the carrot that we follow until the very last breath we take? In behavioral terms, this is life lived under appetitive control. It is not looking behind our shoulders every now and then, and reminding ourselves that we have BPD or OCD or MDD, etc. that is just waiting for us with open mouths to swallow us again.

This is about looking at ourselves as a whole human being and not just parts of ourselves. We are whole. We are not broken. These painful experiences, emotions, thoughts, and physical sensations are part of our makeup as human beings. We are not machines to be taken apart and having to remove parts of ourselves that we think are causing the depression, the anxiety, or the obsessive thoughts, or whatnot.

Being human means we chase after our carrots in life with the pain that comes along in that chase. That’s when we know that we exist with a purpose. Maybe with this in mind, a relapse only signals a need for a refresher on what is important to my clients, and not just being reminded of the ways to run away from pain. What a difference ACT in 2019 made to my practice!

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Are some emotions toxic?

by Nathan Chua

How was your day? Toxic! How often have you and I heard this from a partner, friend, co-worker, or even ourselves? It may be unsaid, but in our subconscious, that normally means we had a day with really “bad” emotions. The mantra seems to be, we have to be feeling good at least most of our day to make it a day worth our while. The toxic day becomes nothing more than one that’s wasted, forgotten, and thrown into the garbage bin, a part of the many insignificant moments of our personal history.

This is often thrown around in media and online circles as positive thinking. The undisclosed rule here is, we need to have positive feelings in order to move forward with whatever it is we want to do with our relationships, careers, etc. We flip it around and we come up with the opposite rule, negative feelings equals a negative life or a life that is spent dwelling in negative thoughts. Simply stated, negative feelings mean you can’t do much that’s productive. These unwanted feelings cause us to do bad stuff or become unproductive.

Much of this comes from what we learn as kids from our parents. The ultimate babysitter rule is don’t be angry cause anger causes you to act badly towards your siblings. What’s so bad about learning that, you might ask? One way to answer this is with a question. Why do you think there are some men out there who believe that anger causes them to lose control of their actions? It’s because these men were trained to think that the emotion of anger is the invisible thing that causes them to become violent. But nobody ever got into trouble with anger. It is what we do with our anger that does that.

Another problem that this rule about avoiding negative feelings can create, is that we can believe that we should remain positive even in situations that would normally cause us to feel sad or anxious. This way we become insensitive to context. We pretty much saw this in certain events when the Covid 19 pandemic struck. Some people remained optimistic that the virus was going to just go away and threw caution to the wind. Positive thinking in this context works rather poorly in saving lives.

Emotions are there to give us messages that there may be something here that is important to us. In what ways, you may ask.

Here are some ways our negative emotions can be helpful to our well-being:

When our kid crosses the street: Without the fear that our child could get badly hurt in a car accident, we would not grab the child out of danger when they attempt to put one foot out on the street. The so-called “negative” emotion can be just the thing to keep us breathing.
When we visit the grieving: Without sadness, we will not be able to be present with the people who had suffered a loss. I mean, wouldn’t you think the grieving would feel more comforted when they know that they are not alone in their sadness, guilt, fear, and whatnot?
When we date: Without having a clear sense of our feelings while we are on a date, we could end up with multiple relationships that are abusive. For instance, if you do not sense that this person makes you feel unimportant because they only want to talk about themselves, then you might be in for a rude awakening some day. You miss an opportunity to say no to your date and find another one who may make you have a sense that your evening, your ideas, and your feelings matter as much to them as they do to you.
When we want to discover who we want to be: The most difficult feelings we have usually tell us about what truly matters to us. If we care about friendships, then we would naturally feel anxiety when we are in a situation where friendships can be made. If we care about being accepted, then the possibility of rejection is something that would mortify us. Behind the anxiety and the fear of rejection we often miss the idea that being sociable and being accepting matter to us dearly. If they didn’t matter, they wouldn’t hurt! Are being sociable and accepting qualities we would want to run away from? If we do (primarily because we don’t want the pain that comes with these qualities of being), we lose chances of discovering who we want to be. And time can go by really fast without us noticing that we have been so busy pursuing relief from the pain but not really being the sociable and accepting person we want to be.

As you see, we have feelings for good reasons. That’s just how we were built in order for us to survive and succeed in cooperative groups; for we did evolve successfully in groups. We are not the solitary type of species.

Furthermore, not wanting to feel bad means we can’t be happy either! How does this happen? Think about that trip you made to Boracay. If you are the type who does not want to feel disappointed, then you would not want to feel too bad when your vacation ends. We end up living a flat life with very little adventure since full-on enjoyment reminds us of full-on disappointment. To paraphrase a renowned psychologist, your mind is like your hand, it cannot choose what it can feel. Your hand will feel both the rough and the smooth surfaces. We can’t tell our hands to only feel the good stuff.

On a final note, I want you to notice the difference between making a presentation with the goal of getting it over and done with, and how you’d feel if you made the presentation regardless of how hard it was emotionally, simply because it was important for you to do it for an audience that you cared about. The former will probably be more about a sense of relief, while the latter would most likely give you an experience of accomplishment and satisfaction. Now, which side would you like to be on?

Remember, both situations have anxiety in common. One though wants to run away from it, while the other knows anxiety is just part of the deal of pursuing meaningful ends. Neither of them want anxiety, but one of them accepts it for a cause greater than what they feel. So the question you would want to ask yourself is, “Would you be willing to have something you don’t like, to gain something that you do want?” In other words, would you prefer living a life pursuing relief or a life pursuing satisfaction, meaning, and purpose, because as I often like to remind you, my audience, we all have One Life Only!

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Why some good advice may be bad for your relationship

by Nathan Chua

These words of wisdom can range from the general to the specific. How often have you and I heard some talk show hosts and even some clergy, tell us what to do in our relationships, only to find out that these seem to backfire or only give short term results but eventually fail us when we most need them in our most distressing moments.

Here are some examples that hopefully covers the general and the specific advice:

Love your spouse.
Do something to satisfy your partner’s love language everyday.
Don’t let the sun go down on your anger.
Don’t be stingy with your apologies. Apologize as soon as you can whenever conflict ensues.

If these types of advice did work for the majority of us, then we would see a lot less marital discords and separations in our midst. Last I heard, the “divorce” rate in our country doesn’t veer away much from the averages in more economically-developed countries. Last I heard also, the divorce rates among therapists are even higher than the average in a developed country like the United States.

For example, let’s use the advice that one should immediately seek reconciliation with a partner to avoid drifting apart. One way to do that is to make an apology as soon as the conflict starts. This could end up with the couple not just fighting about what they fought about, but also fighting about how the apology was done! Double whammy! And then the couple goes off on a tangent with even more issues about the past or future worries about how the relationship will unfold.

Context Matters:

The types of advice we hear from talk shows and read about online are well-meant. I mean who could argue that you should make an apology or that you should address your partner’s love language. The reason this doesn’t qualify as the silver bullet for change in your relationship, is that we are all different based on our own histories, and also that not all situations are the same.

Going back to the earlier mentioned example, a highly conflict-avoidant partner may use quick apologies to appease situations. The offended party though has a history of ranting and in his or her view, being hit immediately by an apology doesn’t offer a chance to release some of that inner tension or start any kind of meaningful talk.

So for instance, they fight about one not being responsible enough to take out the garbage, Partner A is angry because this has become a constant irritant between them while Partner B uses his quick apology once again to keep the peace. A now becomes more annoyed because this was not the first time B has used his apology to avert a discussion. For A, this does not allow for them to have a constructive conversation or a moment when they are both open to arriving at a compromise. And there they go! A gets into a fit that B does this, and B retorts that A should be more receptive to his or her apologies. So the fight goes from a simple household chore, to their differences in the way they handle conflict. Sound familiar?

As you can see from this example, no advice however sensical they may sound, will be done in a vacuum. In other words, the solution becomes the problem so that the original problem remains while they fight about the solution that didn’t work because one did not live up to the expectation that the solution is supposed to provide!

So next time be mindful of the advice that you hear in popular media and psychology. Understand that your partner and you are unique and your situations, likewise. Try other ways to address these situations that have remained a concern for you for many months or years. Be aware of these situations as you see them coming. Look back and see how the situation unfolded, and understand why your relationship is vulnerable to such conflicts. In other words, be mindful of the context before you apply the advice.

Finally, remember that you love this person for so many reasons that make your life so much more meaningful. One of your vows you made rings a bit like the idea that you accept this person for who he or she is. As Christensen, Jacobson, and Doss have written, “Approach change in the context of acceptance [for] change is the brother of acceptance, but it is the younger brother.”

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Get to know the difference in our approach to counseling…in 30 minutes!

I am quite sure that many of you think that all of the counseling practices being offered in the Philippines are just the same. Pretty much about common sense advice to deal with your difficulties in the secret life you and I have in our minds. You probably hear a lot of these in talk shows and see them online in your Google searches.

I must admit that from 2009 up to 2019, my practice varied only slightly from what was and is still widely available in the Philippines, that of a syndromal and symptom-reduction approach to therapy.

Since 2019 though, I have come across an approach that I believe jumps out as the most scientifically sound that I have ever experienced applying in my own life, as well as those that I have helped in the past two years or so!

In my zeal and excitement to share this with you, I am now offering a 30-minute session that is packed with enough information for you to see how this relatively new approach in the field of counseling and psychology works so well, and why it is now the most researched method in the world for the last 20 years!

What you will be shown is what Dr. Kevin Polk calls the Psychological Flexibility Point of View, which can neatly sum up this approach to therapy in just 30 minutes!

Feel free to reach out to us and book yourself a quick 30-minute appointment that we are confident will change your life’s direction! Yes, that’s all we ask! Thirty minutes and you are free to decide if you wish to continue your work with us or not.

You can be an individual, a couple, or a family. Just take 30 minutes of your time and see if this is something that will explain best why you and I struggle within our mental worlds!

Call or message me now at 0917 886 LIFE (5433)! I’d be more than excited to share my newfound knowledge with you, so you can start your journey towards creating that best version of you that you’ve always wanted!

What is One Life Only Counseling about?

Hi everybody! We have recently updated our definition of what One Life Counseling is all about. In our zeal and dedication to provide you with the best possible results in your quest to change your lives for the better, we began our new journey towards a process-based approach to our work. This applies to all our clients including couples and families.

We will never be satisfied unless we find the best possible and most effective approaches that empower you and help direct you to a path of growth and personal satisfaction in living the kind of life you have long wanted for yourself and your loved ones!

We have put the updates in italics.

Here’s what you can expect from One Life Only Counseling:

You can be assured that your information with be kept completely confidential.

You will be respected regardless of your religion, gender preference, ethnicity, economic status, and even your personal lifestyle and values.

Your counselor will not impose his or her values and beliefs on you.

We use brief, scientific, and evidence-based approaches to address your concerns. These approaches are known to produce the best results that require only a handful to about a dozen sessions for you to experience life-changing results, as against years of seeing a therapist which can, at its worst, foster dependency.

Since 2019, we have adopted new therapy approaches that do not categorize people into sets of symptoms. They are process-based approaches to therapy that are now gaining appreciation from thousands of experts in the field who have found the current symptom-reduction, syndromal approaches less than adequate in addressing the human condition. The process-based approach has been found to be effective in many areas of concern ranging from common mental health concerns like depression and anxiety to even work and sports performance.

Since 2019, we have been very excited to offer this type of a radically different approach to therapy that is not just about relieving symptoms, but rather helping people towards creating lives imbued with meaning and purpose.

This is content is the subject of our first podcast in our One Life Only Counseling Spotify Channel! If you wish to hear this on Spotify, click here!

What happens when we biomedicalize mental health?

by Nathan Chua

If we were trained to look at the ads we see everywhere from our mobile devices to the busy highways we go through in our regular commute, we can pretty much sum up what they’re selling us in one word. Would you like to venture a guess? That new car, that shimmering bottle of beer (that in reality is rather bitter and awful-tasting), that outfit, or even that loan that you have to pay off in a matter of a month to 20 years, are invariably supposed to make us feel good! So what in one word are they selling us? Happiness!

Having this in mind, the helping-people business has not been above the culture of the times. It is understandable that for about a century now, the field of psychology has devolved into an endeavor of classifying us into a set of symptoms or syndromes. The goal then becomes removing or lessening the four out of seven or the five out of nine signs that you are, for example, a borderline personality. This is what experts have called symptom-reduction therapies. Let’s remove your anxiety and depression so you can start moving on with your life, at least to the level of “normality.” To borrow from one of the pioneers of Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, it’s sort of like looking at how a fountain works by trying to figure out the different colors and patterns, and seeing how these can be explained.

Unfortunately, such endeavors have only left places where people have been almost literally drugged out of existence. It turns out that removing these “negative” emotions has a costly side effect: not feeling at all! There has been no science to determine that there is a germ or microbe or gene that causes mental problems. The drugs only serve to numb us–something that dead people can do better than we who are alive.

Too much anxiety? Well, here’s a drug to keep you relaxed. Too much depression, well here’s something to perk you up. It can go so bad as to make those who take these medications dependent on them. As another expert has said, it’s become so prevalent that in their country, the chemicals that are used in these antidepressants are now found in their water. Moreover, there are now drugs to treat the very side effects that such medications can create. And with trained eyes, you can sum up what these drugs are selling in one and the same word again–Happiness! The objective is to remove those feelings and thoughts first before you can start living a worthwhile life.

Fortunately, the group of people that Dr. Steven Hayes has assembled, have come up with something called process-based therapy. Dr. Kirk Strosahl who likened the way symptom reduction therapies work to explaining or addressing the phenomenon of a water fountain by the numerous colors and patterns that it makes, explains it this way: That if we were engineers studying how this fountain works, we will see that underneath it, is a simple combination of processes that a few tubes combine to do, to make it look intricate.

I have seen it in the people I have met in my work, where they come in with glassy eyes, looking enervated and lifeless. It breaks my heart to see this. In my work, I would love to see the exact opposite happening to my clients. I would love to see them bubbling with energy and enthusiasm for what life has to offer.

The culture nowadays provides for an environment where people (and that includes me) are unintentionally tricked into believing that life is about feeling good. The meaningful life has become about having the right kind of car, job, or even partner. Got this or that and you and I will be happy all the time. Well, first of all, that goal is impossible. Secondly, some of the most meaningful parts of life revolve around something we did that was hard and anxiety-causing.

I often use the following vignette to give my clients a new perspective towards life and what it is that we come to therapy for:

“If you look back at a graduation ceremony of a child, or a wedding, or any of these momentous occasions, don’t you at some point want to shed a tear? Why? Is it because raising a child and putting them through school was always happy and joyful? Is culminating a long-term relationship during a wedding all just about having fun? Or was it more like, you went through a lot of hardship and trials and somehow made it through together? The most meaningful and purposeful moments were hard, full of ups and downs, and of unpredictable and anxiety-causing moments! The tears would mean you somehow pulled through and made it! You did the hard thing, the brave thing! That’s why you come to me for counseling. Not just to be happy but always pursuing that which gives you purpose and meaning, until you breathe your last! And that’s how that wiser part of you says you were meant to live.”

Goals of Counseling: What is it all about anyway?

by Nathan Chua

I remember a person who shared with me that she had been with her therapist for several years. She felt it helped her in terms of managing her anxieties and anger issues. She went on to share that she needed her weekly sessions to get some relief from all the emotional struggles that go on during the week. This type of counseling is called supportive counseling which certainly has its place in the field. In my graduate studies, I can certainly attest to the fact that I used to do this type of work in dealing with my test cases to begin my training in listening or counseling skills. With this person who shared her experience though, the weekly sessions have become a psychological crutch, just like taking a break from her cares for at least an hour a week. *

Counseling work is more than just being supportive. The goal is more about having clients learn, as experientially as possible, skills that can be brought to their everyday lives. The counseling room becomes the lab where these skills are introduced and tested.

I don’t really mean to be simplistic here but I thought the title can help us focus on knowing what goes on inside the work I do and its ultimate goals. If we come up with something that would make it simpler and more understandable, then we would have done a better job in assisting people in appreciating what all these working sessions are for.

If you wish to change the way things are in your relationship with your partner, then you need to try different things. In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy linggo, we call that expanding behavioral repertoire. It is also referred to as flexibility skills. If you start a conversation with your spouse with a criticism or a “You” statement every time, you are more than likely to get defensiveness in return. And so on and on you go with the circular arguments that often lead you to ultimately just avoid each other or get into a massive shouting match.

Unfortunately, we are the creatures who think that we can do the same things over and over again and come up with the results we want, even if the evidence clearly shows the contrary. We like to follow rules and rule-following becomes the dominant reinforcer of our behaviors, and not the actual contingencies that show up. We can see this if we break down the process of how people get hooked to the slot machine or some form of gambling addiction. Although it is true that there is a one in a billion chance that you might hit pay dirt, the addicted person is not aware of the consequences happening as they continue this obsessive behavior.

Taken in these terms, we in this helping profession are after you getting out of your comfort zones. Comfort zones are places where we want to end up that give us the short term feel-good moments. Being able to analyze your spouse and find out what’s wrong with them, can give you that sense of accomplishment that you know something they don’t. Getting that high in front of a slot machine when you win a small pot can be intensely rewarding at the moment. However, the long term consequences eventually show up. You no longer become the spouse you want to be. The more you criticize your partner, the more they snap back. Slowly eating away at the relationship you once thought will go smoothly through the years. The more you gamble, the more you end up piling up debts and spending countless hours unable to do anything else that could have otherwise been spent more productively and meaningfully.

I’d like to borrow a phrase from a book to help you, my readers, understand how counseling works. The work is about being comfortable with the uncomfortable. Maybe it’s time you tried another approach to your spouse, even if it feels embarrassing or extremely “so not you.” Maybe you need to sit with those urges to gamble and find out what really is behind the pull towards the addiction so that you can find alternatives to spend all that energy on. To paraphrase a well-known ACT therapist, Kirk Strosahl, maybe there’s something more important here than what you feel.

If you are like the person I discussed in the first paragraph of this post, then be wary. That’s because the counseling work is making you feel comfortable! If you start to do things that are uncomfortable with the help of your counselor, then you might be on the road to being comfortable with being uncomfortable. That’s also when you know that your work with your counselor is worth all that time and energy. Maybe you’re on to trying something different that moves you towards what I regularly use in my discussions with my clients: being the person you want to be, and living the life you want to live.

*The example here is an amalgam of different cases that do not refer to any person in reality.