Sing a paean to Singapore and, well, Hallelujah to Hong Kong

This is to express my quiet appreciation and louder bemusement to the people of Singapore and Hong Kong who have been clicking on this blog two hundred to four hundred-plus times each day for a while now. (Google Blogger provides stats per country.) I don’t know what it’s about as, per usual, no one ever – and I mean evvverrrr, sends me comments about my articles. The mass click appears to happen during my bedtime, which is awake time in Singapore and Hong Kong. My guess, which is wishful thinking, is that these are Psychology classes (with brilliant professors) that have grasped the iconoclastic and food-for-thought nature of many of my pieces. Congratulations! You are right. I have been applying acid to scar tissue and nutrients to sick Cognitive Therapy bodies for ten years. I’m glad someone out there is appreciating my contribution. However, a client to whom I mentioned the mystery suggested that “classes” may be right, but thought they might be for ESL (English as a Second Language) students. In that case, the articles would be held as examples of purple prose poison which students would be taught to avoid.

If my hypothesis is right, I would welcome Singaporean and Hong Kongese comments, critiques and questions addressing specific posts or general ideas described. I appreciate bright students who are willing to face heresy and consider its value.

"This is what I believe!"

A 43-year-old client says that he has found a way to “defuse” conflicts with his wife. He’ll say: “I see what you’re trying to do. I’m just going to step away.” His ten-year-old daughter is distracted when he is trying to teach her math that she didn’t grasp in school. He believes there should be “consequences for her being disengaged.”

A 54-year-old client states that he accommodates his mother’s self-centeredness because he wants to be “a good son.” He can’t bring himself to criticize or get angry with his torturously mentally abusive father because “he’s not here to defend himself.”

A 35-year-old man asserts that his parents had “a very good divorce” when he was five years old.

I described my socially-incorrect ideas about “forgiveness” to a 58-year-old client. He said that “there’s nothing to forgive” because his father’s domestic violence and alcoholism didn’t affect him.

A 21-year-old Asperger’s client says “I hate myself.”

Let’s pour some acid on these clients’ custom-made beliefs.

The 43-year-old believes he has “defused” incipiently volatile conflicts with his wife by accusing her of being sly and manipulative and walking out of the room (Gottman’s famous “stonewalling”). He’s actually made the conflicts worse. He believes his daughter should be punished for not being able to focus on her math and on him. She may have ADHD, may be depressed because of her parents’ continual sniping, may be turned off by her father’s disciplinary “three strikes” mentality. Punishing a child for being hurt or injured is destructive.

This client's beliefs are just threadbare clothing over feelings of revenge for a childhood which he perpetuates by remaining in thrall to a pathological, authoritarian father. Beliefs are adamant, until they crumble into the greater hurt that formed them.

The 54-year-old believes that he must be his mother’s doormat, her eternal accommodator to be a good son. Does it make him a good son not to have any self-care, to back himself away forever? He has adopted some strangely-derived justice not to criticize a father who isn’t alive to “defend himself.” What can that mean? Do we not condemn Hitler because he can’t argue back? Do I not criticize Trump the sociopath because he’s not in the room with me?

He believes he is a good son. What he means is: He is a good little boy.

The 35-year-old man believes his parents had a “very good divorce.” Can he feel what that divorce did to him at age five, how “very good” it was?

The 58-year-old has nothing to forgive as he has banished his real childhood with a violent and drunk father. Hovering above that, he may believe anything he wants.

The 21-year-old “hates” himself because it’s less painful to grow the callus of self-hate – more an idea than a feeling – than to feel the pain of being an unloved child.

I don't know if other therapists believe their clients’ theories of life. I’d advise them not to. A good rule of thumb is: “The feeling is the fact, the thought is the escape.” People will often cling desperately, time immemorial to a belief which could be some airy-fairy, cockamamie conjunction of words their humiliated inner child came up with. What they don’t want to do is feel. Feel the radical truth that defined their childhood. To go there would be to burn away the bland mantra in black, boiling tar. But the mantra is a straitjacket and the tar can be poured out. That’s when therapy happens.