The Unspeakable in Therapy. Frontiers Friday #172 ⭕️ (Part III)

Therapy is not for everyone, metaverse, atonement and, beef.

Thanks for reading Frontiers of Psychotherapist Development (FPD) and our weekly newsletter, Frontiers Friday (FF). If you are new here, learn about me, the About Page and our “Grand Plan” overview post.

These posts are meant to be what Lewis Hyde describes as a “Gift.” What this “Gift” concept means is that

1. Nothing is expected out of you.

2. I hope you receive it.

3. I hope this animates and transforms you.

4. I hope you spread the love to others.

Here’s FF172, Part III on the topic of The Unspeakable in Therapy.

In case you’ve missed the previous, here it is:

The Unspeakable in Therapy. Frontiers Friday #170 ⭕️ (Part I)

The Unspeakable in Therapy. Frontiers Friday #171 ⭕️ (Part II)

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1. 👨🏻‍💻 Web-Read: Not Everyone Needs Therapy
   Therapy is not for everyone, at least in the traditional sense.

   
   I don’t think this is hard to fathom. Even though asparagus is good for you, doesn’t mean you’d like it.

   
   This point hit home when I used to work with youths who were in residential/foster care. Instead of getting the youths to come to our office for sessions, we went out to meet them at their homes, skateparks, basketball courts, etc. Some called it “therapy by stealth.” I saw it more of offering connection and guidance amidst the madness that many of these kids lived in.
   
   Beyond the “therapy culture,” what we need within our communities is to help people be part of a place, being with people, and a sense of purpose. This can be achieved by so many other means besides formal counselling and psychotherapy (e.g., art, music, sports, seeking guidance, spiritual practices, men’s shed).

   
   

2. 🔎 Research: Comparing counseling outcome for college students Metaverse and in- person approaches
   This recent study from South Korea surprised me. I sent a copy of this research to my colleague in Singapore and I said, “I actually feel uneasy that youths prefer being in metaverse than in person.”
   
   Key Grafs:

   • More than half of the university students preferred to engage in metaverse counselling than in-person counselling.

   • The metaverse counseling group exhibited a higher level of working alliances than the in-person counseling group.

   • Outcomes between in-person and meta verse counselling group: NO difference.

   • 3 out of 28 dropped out during the counselling sessions. A total of 32 participants chose metaverse counselling, and none dropped out.

   

   Technical mechanism process of the metaverse counselling program, MetaForest.

   In case you are wondering, what is metaverse? it’s a vast immersive 3D simulation that allows users to use avatars to interact with others on the web. See the video below.

   
   

3. 📽 Watch: Beef

   This Netflix 10-part mini series starring comedian Ali Wong and Steven Yeun is worth the watch.

   Themes in this dark comedy: resentment, rage, and forgiveness. But what’s interesting is watching how the plot unveils some of the “unspokens” in each of the characters.
   Ali Wong, says in one of the scenes,

   “I don’t want anyone to see who I really am.”

   
   Now imagine if you saw the protagonists in your clinical practice…

   

   While searching for this image, I found that Psychology Today did an article on this.

4. 🎧 Listen: Beyond Forgiveness: Atonement
   I first heard this podcast with Phil Cousineau in 2012.¹ It’s telling that I still remember this episode after more than a decade.
   There seems to be quite an emphasis on self-compassion focused modalities these days. Less is said about the old-fashioned word atonement, that is, to make “at one,” to make amends.
   (The topic of Forgiveness is in the pipe for future Frontiers Friday series).
   
   Key Grafs:

   • When we attempt to say we're sorry and we seek forgiveness, well what happens is very often the world doesn't believe us, we don't believe ourselves, but there's this missing key. Atonement says you need to sacrifice something. You need to prove with an actual act, a human act, that you can put things right again.

   • Cousineau tells the story of 2 psychologists who worked with war veterans when traditional therapy didn’t help them:

     They deal with veterans often from Vietnam who have been in therapy, they have said they were sorry, they've even been forgiven let's say by some of the Vietnamese and yet, Dave, they still aren't healed.
     
     What is going on there? When we attempt to say we're sorry and we seek forgiveness, what happens is very often the world doesn't believe us, we don't believe ourselves, but there's this missing key.

     
     Atonement says you need to sacrifice something, you need to prove with an actual act, a human act, that you can put things right again and so what the soldiers are encouraged to do, in this one example of Ed and Kate taking their soldiers back to Vietnam, is they need now to prove their sorrow, their remorse.
     What do they do? They build an orphanage, they buy water buffalo for some local farmers in Vietnam, because they remember, I know two examples of this, they used to use water buffalo for target practice. How do you ever say you're sorry when you killed a water buffalo and you can destroy an entire tribe’s way of life or a village's way of life for a short time, so you back and you make amends. And that what atonement is.

     
     You try to make amends. You make something up, you offer a gesture, to try to make things right again. To bring things back into accord, to set things right again.

   
   

5. ⏸️ Words Worth Contemplating:
   “Dividedness is a personal pathology…The divided life, at bottom, is not a failure of ethics. It is a failure of human wholeness.”
   ~ Parker Palmer, A Hidden Wholeness (pp.6-7).

Reflection

How do we listen to someone into speech?

Can we make haste slowly, so that we can attend to the inner-life, from the “will say,” to the “won’t say,” and “can’t say”?

Notice Board:

1. A Fire-Side Chat with Scott Miller and Daryl Chow:
   Scott and I are doing a free, “no expectations, no agenda zoom” monthly meeting. Just an opportunity to explore deliberate practice, feedback-informed treatment, and professional development together with other like-minded professionals.
   Cost: Free
   When: 8am Central Time on the last Tuesday of every month.  First meeting to be held on February 27^th, 2024.
   Space is limited.
   Registration is required.
    

2. Thanks to the Australian Psychological Society, College of Clinical Psychology for hosting me for a virtual training this week. Hat tip to Daniel Brown for the coordination, and to the people who turned on the camera so that I could see you.
   

3. Extended: Last Weekend to save $140 for the Deep Learner course.
   More details inside.

   

Daryl Chow Ph.D. is the author of The First Kiss, co-author of Better Results, The Write to Recovery, Creating Impact, and the latest book The Field Guide to Better Results.

1. Shrinkrap Radio by David Van Nuys was one of the first podcast I paid attention to. If David ever reads this, I wanna say big thanks to you for the body of interviews that you’ve conducted over the years.