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In my practice as a psychologist in West Hartford, CT, I work with many kinds of people. Everybody is different. Working with couples especially brings into contrast individuals and the dynamics that ensue therefrom. Beyond the differences that mark the variety that personality types can take lie the question: What is it about a person in their infinite uniqueness makes them successful or not. Personality plays a role in determining success because we are social creatures. Without a strong sense of self, personality is weakened in deference to the needs and concerns of others. But a strong personality likewise can compromise success to the extent that it fails to empathize and act in a responsible way to the needs and concerns of others. When this imbalance between self and other is pronounced as manifest in one’s personality, problems can ensue in relationships and in life. Game Theory In Social Science A simple metaphor may be used to explain how difficulties associated with our personalities can impede endeavors to reach our goals in life or in relationships. The zero-sum game is taken from game theory in social science to identify a situation in which an encounter between two entities must result in one party benefiting at the expense of the other. There cannot be two winners. One must win and the other must lose.  Zero Sum Game - Explained A person whose problems in life associated with one’s personality may be understood in this way, as following a zero-sum game. Conversely, a successful person is able to use the uniqueness of their personality, whether it be introverted, energetic, cautious, methodical, or impulsive, in such a way that benefits oneself with respect for the needs and concerns of others. For example, a dependent personality defers their needs and concerns to others and sacrifices their freedom and unique identity in order to belong or to be taken care of. A narcissistic personality, on the other hand, is self-centered, compulsively competitive, and either repulsed by or at least insensitive to the needs and concerns of others. A schizoid personality, by contrast, eschews all opportunities to develop meaningful relationships in order to avoid the parasitic dimensions dysfunctional relationships can take. The zero-sum game is a useful metaphor by which you may judge your actions in any given situation or in any given relationship. If you are inclined to think of others at your own expense start thinking about how acting in self-interest fosters not only self-esteem but generosity of spirit and thus may benefit others thereby. On the other hand, if you tend to be more self-centered begin thinking about how being thoughtful toward others enhances thoughtfulness and generosity that is paid in return. And if you tend to avoid relationships altogether remind yourself of the opportunities you are missing for the sake of avoiding relationships altogether. Awareness of how the zero-sum game may explain patterns in your life that are self-defeating and repetitive in nature. This can empower you to achieve your goals and improve your relationships. If you are interested in pursuing counseling for personal growth, click here to request an appointment, or call (860) 236-2131. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D.
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We live in a stressful world. Whether it’s the demands of our jobs and careers, a difficult boss, neighbor, or relative, the responsibilities of parenthood and raising a family, caring for aging parents, loneliness, the loss of a loved one, or health issues. Life is hard. Even when we succeed in meeting these challenges, these stresses take a toll on our minds, our bodies, and our behavior. While we may be diligent about dealing with these stresses directly, many of us overlook keeping our minds and spirit healthy, and so we remain stressed and eventually these stresses catch up with us in one way or another. It is important to pay attention to our minds, bodies, and spirits so that we may take care of ourselves allowing to function more efficiently and live life with greater enjoyment, less encumbered by life’s many challenges and difficulties. This is why many people today are turning to meditative practices and yoga classes which incorporate meditation.  Autogenic training is a form of meditation I use in my practice to help patients relax and deal with life’s stresses better. It is taught in a series of graduated visualization exercises which can be recorded and subsequently rehearsed at home as a daily practice. Research studies have shown its benefits in terms of reducing stress, treating insomnia and health issues such as hypertension, alleviating chronic pain, improving focus and attention, and enhancing performance in sports activities.
The beauty of autogenic training is that over time, with daily practice, one becomes more skilled and proficient at inducing a state of calmness instantaneously. It is a conditioning exercise. In other words, as with any new skill we attempt to learn, at first it is difficult but over time one’s ability to focus and benefit from practice in terms of the relaxation response increases steadily. Many of my patients thus have found the rewards of incorporating meditative practice into their daily lives. If you are interested in pursuing counseling for personal growth, click here to request an appointment, or call (860) 236-2131. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D. Certain elements of our personality formed during childhood develop a life of their own. Their original purpose might have served to please a parent, for example, and later in adult life evolve into qualities whose motives and purpose change even though the behavior remains the same. Bryan was raised by a strict father in a family of three boys. No matter how hard he tried, he never felt what he did to please his father was good enough. Fast forward many years later: Bryan is a very devoted young husband and father. Despite his due diligence, however, he often feels he isn’t doing enough and whenever his wife criticizes him, even when it is justified, he takes it personally. In therapy, Bryan learned that even though the behaviors to please his father he learned as a child had created a lot of anxiety and self-doubt, they served him well as an adult as a diligent and devoted father and husband. They had gained functional autonomy inasmuch as what once served to gain approval and secure feelings of self-worth had evolved in function to being a husband supporting a family.  Thereby the purpose of Bryan’s devoted behavior, to serve others, in this case his family, had become autonomous from its origins in childhood to obtain a sense of security and self-worth for himself. This evolution in function from its original purpose reflects Bryan’s development as a person, from childhood insecurity to responsible adult.
Gaining insight about this evolution in function from eagerness to please toward that of fostering a secure and healthy family enabled Bryan to realize how his reactions to his wife’s constructive criticism were influenced by his relationship with his father and thus less about his wife’s perceptions of him as a father and husband. This realization on Bryan’s part gave him greater confidence in himself as well as an appreciation for all he did for his family. His greater self-worth enabled him to put criticisms in more proper perspective so that they no longer created the anxiety and self-doubt they once did. If you are interested in pursuing counseling for personal growth, click here to request an appointment, or call (860) 236-2131. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D.  When we think about power we might think about furthering ourselves in our careers, amassing wealth, or exerting greater influence in our communities. We are taught that willpower, with a dose of good fortune, is necessary to achieve our goals. Some of us shrink from the challenge to reach for our dreams. Others who are able to do so might question whether the price one has paid for success was worth its rewards.
HOW WE COPE When faced with the challenges that success demands or when disappointment ensues, a challenge of a different sort confronts us, who are we and how do we judge ourselves. Our relationship with ourselves becomes a crucial element in determining what we will do next, our expectations, and our reaction to the outcome that arises from our decisions to meet these challenges. When we have a poor relationship with ourselves, certain kinds of problems arise that inevitably prevent us from succeeding and reaching our dreams. BLAMING OURSELVES When we suffer from feelings of inadequacy, every slight, disappointment, and confrontation with our own limitations magnifies what we find deficient or lacking in ourselves. We inevitably compare ourselves to others we deem as superior in some way or to some abstract standard we expect ourselves to live up to crushed and disheartened by the unreasonableness of these expectations. An underlying sense of entitlement may contribute to these feelings that can inevitably lead to depressed mood or toxic envy and resentment. BLAMING, CONTROLLING OR MANIPULATING OTHERS When we harbor a sense of entitlement we want what we can’t have and resent others who have what we want. Looking at things this way allows us to justify using any means possible to exploit or manipulate others to gain an advantage or affirm our entitlement. Living with a sense of entitlement compromises our regard for the concerns of others and thus risks damaging our relationships. DRIVING OURSELVES HARDER If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again. This is an old adage whose wisdom is as often as not delimited by the futility of applying it to those situations where failure to recognize our limitations renders success impossible, worse, leading us down a path of discouragement and exhaustion. In other cases, we can become a victim of our successes unless we take stock of who we are and our purpose in life. Without doing so we may find ourselves living a hollow life without the joy and contentment we had expected success would bring us. AVOIDANCE Procrastination, magical thinking, that is hoping that everything will just take care of itself, or rationalizing away reasons for not pursuing our goals prevent us from taking the risks necessary to reach our goals. This is not to be confused with letting go of unnecessary expectations of ourselves that otherwise can be liberating. When relinquishing expectations makes us feel happier we are not rationalizing. ADDICTIONS If we avoid dealing with problems we never give ourselves the opportunity to reach our goal much less to learn from these experiences. Addictions sabotage opportunities to confront our problems. They are like a short circuit in an electrical system; the path of least resistance shuts down the operation altogether preventing the flow of energy to reach its intended destination. WHAT DO WE DO INSTEAD? Spirituality, as I define it, represents our relationships with loved ones, one’s self, one’s heritage, the future, the Earth, all living creatures, life itself. It is what takes us beyond our individual selves, our narcissistic investments, and the toxic envy and resentment that delimit our personal growth. Instead it promotes the path toward self-fulfillment as opposed to an aggrandizement of self that is solely invested in a combination of natural endowment and sheer determination which fails because we must inevitably come to terms with reality, events about which we have little or no control, and our own limitations. If we fail to recognize our helplessness to change these aspects, what the philosopher, Heidegger called “thrownness” in life, we will ultimately fail to come to terms with what is necessary for us to ultimately achieve success, that is letting go of unrealistic self-expectations, a sense of entitlement to have whatever we wish for when we want it, a freeing sense of peace that enables us to open to the possibilities to pursue our goals with a sense of joy rather than grim determination, to allow others to be themselves and thereby improving our relationships. This process of “letting go” is not resignation or a surrendering of our dreams as it might seem but instead a spiritual awakening to the fact that we live in a world that stands apart from our will and yet that which we are very much a part. By accepting ourselves as imperfect creatures and the world we live in as the same in its imperfections we open ourselves to experiencing more love toward ourselves and compassion and empathy toward others. We are thereby empowered to pursue our dreams with a greater sense of joy and purpose. If you are interested in pursuing counseling for personal growth, click here to request an appointment, or call (860) 236-2131. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D.  A generation or so ago or so a popular song entitled, "Don't Worry, Be Happy," made the top of the charts. Consistent with its title, the song had a very upbeat tempo designed to inspire its listeners that life is too precious to dwell on worrying. There is empirical research that has demonstrated that to a degree, at least, there are benefits to looking at life through rose-colored glasses.
A few years ago I participated regularly in a philosophical discussion group along with other members of the community at large, not a group of academicians, who like me were eager for more stimulating conversation than your usual, elevator-variety small talk. One week, the chosen topic of discussion focused on the emotion, anger, and whether this emotion can have value or be regarded as beneficial. The discussion perhaps ironically became heated as some participants shared painful personal experiences they had had as the recipients of this emotion's destructive effects in order to make their case albeit passionately that anger is necessarily a harmful thing. Some in the group opined that anger does not deserve the same status as other emotions because it necessarily is a derivative of a more fundamental emotion which is fear. In other words, if you are angry in reality you are afraid and, therefore, when we express the emotion or talk about anger what we should really be expressing or talking about is fear. The other day, engaged in conversation with an acquaintance, the topic of shame was brought up in passing. My acquaintance who seems to be of pleasant demeanor generally, gracious and inclined to find the positive in people when possible, interjected that she could not see any use for this emotion except for its harmful effects on people. What these three anecdotes have in common are that they each deal with a different emotion generally regarded as "negative" or perhaps more accurately defined as unpleasant or noxious. As a clinician, I deal with these kinds of emotions on a nearly daily basis helping people suffering from a range of "negative" emotions in their lives. For this reason at least, I am forced to think about them, such as what functions these emotions might have for human beings, do they have a purpose, and if so how? Can negative emotions have different purposes, more than one purpose at a time, should I as a therapist help my patient to be alleviated of their suffering or would it be wiser to help them face and find their way through it on their own and thus see the benefit their suffering might serve. Can the experience and expression of negative emotions be of value to human relations, to society? Or should we relegate all or some of these unpleasant emotions to the same category a famous health scientist assigned to mosquitoes when discussing the scourge of the recent Zika virus epidemic when he opined that this is one species of the animal kingdom he just couldn't imagine as serving any good purpose to humanity. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D.  Emotionally Focused Therapy at the University of Saint Joseph Department of Human Development and Family Studies - Externship
Dr. Robert Hamm will be attending from May 16 through 19, 2016 Based on the research pioneered by Drs. Sue Johnson and Les Greenberg, Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT) helps up to 75% of couples move from “distress to recovery.” EFT is founded on the theory that marital distress arises out of attachment injuries in early life that may be repaired by identifying problematic patterns of interaction, restoring the emotional bond, and promoting healing within each partner. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D.  When we think of spiritual development we ordinarily think of how we connect to others, expanding ourselves beyond our own personal needs and concerns, finding meaning in life, or establishing a life guided by moral or ethical principles. These are admirable qualities, something most of us aspire to become; however, it is sometimes misunderstood that these spiritual objectives are achieved at a sacrifice to what serves the self. This particular conceptualization of spirituality harkens back to its influences from religion, mysticism, and in Western civilization in particular whereby the belief that what serves our personal needs is somehow tantamount to being selfish, greedy. What serves self-interest is mutually exclusive of our moral imperatives and concern for the welfare of others. It is essential that spirituality's true meaning is embedded in altruism but to the extent that there exists an implicit assumption that it can only be achieved at the expense of what serves ourselves at a personal level ultimately inhibits self-esteem and our development into a spiritual dimension. How is this so?
Our Christian heritage in Western civilization was influenced by the philosophy of Plato which extolled reason above a life guided by emotions and our physical senses. It is where the term "platonic love" comes from. By the dawn of the advent of Christianity, circa 4th century A.D., many centuries since the time of classical Greece, though Plato continued to wield an influence on philosophers of that time, reason had been replaced by spirit. The concerns of the world had shifted, reflecting the relative loss of prosperity of the times. During a period in time rife with political and economic oppression, people in the 4th century longed for deliverance. An answer was found in a religion that promised salvation and deliverance from the suffering and oppression of this world. The rewards of abiding by Christianity's spiritual tenets, namely compassion as morality and an investment in eternal salvation, were offered at a price, a renunciation of investment in earthly existence. Prosperity and pleasure were assigned to sin. Once considered essential dimensions of goodness in the moral philosophy of Plato's successor, Aristotle, prosperity and pleasure had been reassigned by Christianity to the status of life's forfeitures to an investment in eternal salvation and as anathema to living a life of compassion. Due in part to the political and inspirational influences by the theologian, St. Augustine, at a critical period of its inception, Modern Christianity and the basic tenets by which it is known today were adopted in opposition to a key rival philosophical system, Gnosticism, which endorsed by contrast the basic idea that the self is inherently good, not sinful, but existence itself is evil. This dialectic between self and world inherent to radical Christianity and Gnosticism poses the fundamental challenge in self-actualization. What is our relationship with and how do we grow within the world in which we live? It follows, moreover, that how we view ourselves in relation to others and the world we live in determines character and our personality styles. This is so because our personalities authentically express ourselves and our identities. The dialectic inherent to radical Christianity and Gnosticism which pits the self against existence and the world we live in particularly lies at the heart of a critical aspect of experience distinguishable from that in healthy personality development. Negotiating this existential challenge successfully, on the other hand, is a necessary condition for developing a spiritual dimension, a natural by-product of character development. June is an artist who has been riddled by self-doubt for many years, rendering her unable to create for long periods of time, paralyzed by a deep-seated sense that she doesn't have sufficient talent to produce a piece of work worthy of public appreciation. She engages instead in an addiction to eating and withdraws from family and friends most of the time. Her attitude toward life and other people in particular is rife with bitterness and cynicism. Her low self-esteem and self-destructive lifestyle impair her ability to feel compassion toward others as she is inclined instead to project an attitude of contempt toward, or its opposite, paranoia and alienation, from other people. The characterization that (People) "seem wicked" and "no one remembers your name" from a popular song from the 60's aptly describes June's ego state. The world she lives in appears hostile to her; fate is cruel. The good fortunes of others are looked at with disdain and resentment and only serve to worsen her self-hatred and sense of wretchedness. To enter into June's world of consciousness would reveal to us a focus onto the world around her that is depriving, unfair, inimical to her dreams, mute to her suffering. The schema she holds with which to view herself in relation to the world in which she lives is one of alienation. What serves the world is opposed to self-interest and the world in which she lives is both deaf to her concerns and persecutory in nature. On the other hand, when she looks at herself, she is either abject or disdainful, wretched or grandiose, in other words either worse than or better than, but in any case, apart from and essentially opposed to her world. The psychoanalysts might explain June's problems as stemming from a persecutory complex with symptoms of alienation and paranoia. They would explain that this is happening because of June's defenses of projection, rationalization, denial, etc. While these explanations are valid and insightful, they are also one-sided. I would agree that many people, such as June, cope through psychological defenses that distort the world and as such are not able to see the lenses with which they distort the world much less accept the notion that it is they and not the world they live in that is disturbed. However, there is much truth in what June sees in the troubled world she lives in; there is much suffering, injustice, greed, etc., in the world to find. It is rather a matter of focus, which does one "choose" to focus on, viz., good or evil, joy and love or suffering and selfishness. Because of June's poor relationship with herself, she unconsciously sees the world through a lens that reflects this poor relationship, a world that is broken, alien, untrustworthy. She either does not like herself or she feels better than or misunderstood, in any case, alienated, "strange," hostile. The boundaries from whence these disturbing perceptions originate are unclear. At times she feels herself as disdainful, hostile, grandiose, at other times she feels inferior, dejected, and persecuted. June is spiritually sick. Assuming that she is not suffering from a more predominantly biochemical condition such as bipolar disorder which could accentuate these kinds of dichotomous experiences, conventional psychiatry might regard June's problems as stemming from a personality disorder, a disorder in which the self is implicated as the source of problems. But it is not merely June, the person within which the self resides, who is suffering and broken. The world she lives in is troubled as well, both world as it is in an objective, "real" sense and as she views it; more importantly, it is her relationship with her world that is broken because her troubled relationship with herself is projected into the world such that she regards it in its most unseemly way, as sick and cold rather than filled with possibilities for joy and love. Traditional psychiatry with its origins and identity embedded in medicine conceptualizes and treats problems as situated within the individual but this limitation of its scope fails to encompass an essential understanding about how it is June's relationship with herself and the world in which she lives that is broken. It is her spiritual self that is wounded and suffering. Why is this distinction I am making between conventional and spiritual explanations for psychological problems, such as June's, important here? There are several reasons. In the first place, many people such as June are not able to see their defenses as defenses; they just accept their worldview as reflecting the world as it is. In psychology, we call this phenomenal world as "ego syntonic." In other words, one's self and its world are perceived as consistent with how one's psychological defenses distort them. This problem endemic to personality disorders makes therapy often daunting if not impossible. Inasmuch as defenses serve to protect the self however dysfunctional they may be, life's problems are regarded under these circumstances by the patient as originating from the world out there rather than from within. In other words, other people are the problem not the self. By broadening an understanding of psychological problems from a spiritual framework instead the ego syntonic viewpoint is validated to some degree. Yes, there are problems that do originate from the world or it could be argued even that all problems do at least to some degree originate outside the self. In so granting the validity of this perspective on the part of the patient without discarding altogether the psychological perspective we create conditions in the therapeutic relationship that give less reason for defenses to be erected and thus for authentic self-examination to proceed. There are other reasons. The therapist's perceptions and ideas are fallible. He or she is human and not immune from what is called countertransference reactions, i.e., his or her feelings elicited by the patient that are personal and thus to some degree distorted accordingly. Broadening our conceptualization of psychological problems as inclusive of what lies outside the self grants a measure of validity to the patient's experience when transference reactions occur. This diminution of the therapist's experiential authority can in some in some instances be, therefore, self-empowering to the patient. It can also strengthen the therapeutic bond as well as diminish the possibility that psychological harm to a patient can occur as a consequence of a therapist's unresolved issues imposed unwittingly or otherwise through a kind of "gaslighting" phenomenon taking place within the therapeutic relationship. Moreover, adopting a spiritual perspective in treating problems of personality directs our attention as therapists to the responsibilities we as therapists have to become more cognizant about, and it would be hoped to take action to ameliorate, the problems in the world we live in that contribute to the psychological conditions we treat in our offices everyday. Finally, adopting a spiritual perspective takes us back to our roots in philosophy, where psychology began. This movement would not be regressive insofar as it broadens our conceptualization of psychological problems as both biological and interpersonal, as influenced by our cultural myths and societal standards for better and worse, and insofar as it inspires us to evolve toward a spiritually healthier place along the evolutionary trajectory we as a species follow. Spirituality is about relationships. It is about how we connect. To our ourselves, our friends and family, our communities and our culture, our heritage and our futures, our fellow creatures of the earth, our planet, and the beyond. To render it a central dimension of our lives makes us better people; it inspires us to evolve beyond the trivial and the quotidian, our petty concerns, our selfish grievances and irritations, or what can be at times our ravenous egos. It takes us from the realm of the individual self to the collective. It inspires us to become responsible with a feeling that is generated from the heart. It compels us to lurch forward to a place that is greater than, that is transcendent from the ego. But it begins with our relationship to our self. When I speak of the self what I mean is a self that is ensembled as a healthy internalization of the relationships between self and other. A healthy self thus contains the seeds of spirituality. The seeds may be sown and germinated at any time in life and that is the good news. But it begins with the self. A healthy self is defined as having the capacity to adapt and evolve with experience, to seek to understand and live according to the intricate and infinite interconnectedness of existence, to seek with compassion a cooperative, symbiotic relationship with the world in which we live. This is not the same as a naive, gullible, pollyannish attitude toward others or a weak and enabling, ultimately masochistic self. To the contrary, spiritual development gives us resilience in the face of loss, personal failure, and betrayal, and hope and possibility instead of rigid foreclosure in the face of the unfathomable, the unforeseen, and the unfamiliar. A spiritual self saves us from discouragement and the loneliness and isolation of alienation. It also corrects us and keeps us on course from the perilous trajectory of self-aggrandizement and greed, a condition of inflation of the ego, when either a wealth of power or self-confidence are bestowed upon us, an affliction that religion has traditionally served to remedy as the philosopher, Nietzsche, has all too ruefully observed. But ultimately, spirituality begins with compassion toward ourselves. This means accepting ourselves and existence itself, surrendering to the limitations thereof. The end result, paradoxically, is not resignation or complacency but a lightening of the self from unneeded baggage, the falsity and pretenses we have bought into that ultimately weigh us down, the pact with the devil we signed onto long ago. Unpacking frees us to release ourselves into the world organically instead of relentlessly driving the urgent demand to overpower the self we fear we are, a reckoning with the groundedness of existence and deliverance from a come-hell-or-highwater, take-no-prisoners mission to quench the ego. June will not be able to overcome her creative stasis until she comes to these realizations, to accept herself as she is, a place within herself from which she can feel free once again, an unburdening of emotional baggage so to speak, the self-doubt that has prevented her from creating again. Instead of trying in vain to wrest it resentfully from the world, a futile endeavor, or from a depleted self too weary to generate inspiration, she must discover from within the self-esteem that grows from her capacity to love herself in this unconditional way. When June gets to a place in her personal evolution where she has given up the demand to be better than everyone else, to prove to herself and the world that she is superior and supremely gifted she will with a sense of joy and compassion for herself begin to create from the font of inspiration rather than relentless willpower. Being good to herself will become her mantra, to live a balanced life that nurtures her health and well being, balancing time for herself with time for others, where generosity is generated from the heart rather than grudgingly apportioned from fear of depletion, and with an eagerness to impart and share the joy she experiences in life with others. Being good to herself, founded on a renewed appreciation of her gifts and potentials from which she can grow in a spiritual dimension can only occur within the context of the realization of her limitations without defenses to camouflage or distort them. These defenses may be lifted only when she establishes an accepting relative limitations, the necessary condition for self-esteem to mature toward a spiritual awakening. Posted by Robert Hamm, Ph.D. |
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