Author: Sovann

Licensed professional counselor and health coach in Portland, OR Pre-marital and couples counseling. Individual counseling for anxiety, depression, insomnia, sleep disorders, sexual addiction, porn addiction, career, transitions, grief, burnout, personal growth.

How going to bible college or seminary can make your porn problem worse.


  

The Bible tells the story of Abram, being chosen by God, to set off on journey to a far country. 

The season before starting college or seminary can be similar: an exhilarating time with a sense of clarity about God’s calling and purpose for your life, a start of a new chapter, a new adventure. 

It can be a time of growing faith and a strong sense of God’s presence and purpose for your life. 

It can also be a time of hidden danger. 

Like Abram dealing with pharoah, lying about his wife Sarah to save his skin in Genesis 12 , along the way to where God wants you to be, there can be unexpected challenges at key moments, that can threaten To compromise your character, destroy your integrity and inflame any hidden shadows or addiction in your life.  Particularly porn. 

For about the past 11 years I’ve been meeting with seminary and bible college students about porn.  Tragically, it’s something that threatens to derail their dreams and goals of serving God in ministry before they’ve even really had a chance to start.  

Starting at a new college or seminary may include moving to a new town, a new living situation, new roommates. 

It may involve a new job, new relationships, social groups. 

There will probably be new shiny, attractive people for you to flirt with or connect with/stalk on social media.

New churches to try, small groups or ministries to be involved with and serve with.   

Putting your best foot forward or even the desire for a fresh start, a clean break from the past, can make you vulnerable to putting on a mask again (or maybe you’ve never taken the one your wearing off) but now there’s more at stake in your new role as someone who is devoting the next few years of your life to being essentially a “professional” christian. 

There can be this assumption that because you’re a youth pastor intern or a counseling student counseling people about porn, that you are doing fine in this area.  Being in leadership, or being a “bible college student” or a “seminary student”, can be a trap.

There’s more at stake when you’re not just one of the guys in youth group who’s struggled with porn.  What happens when you’re the youth pastor who people are now looking up to as the example of sexual purity?

It may have been something that you’ve worked hard to overcome, something you been authentic and honest about back home.  The temptation with new relationships is Why go through all that again? What if these new people aren’t as gracious and understanding as my friends and family back home? What if my past is a deal breaker with the cute girl I’m just starting to know in class? 

In seminary and bible college, there’s regularly scheduled come-to-Jesus moments, aka chapels, that also can be life-changing and grow your faith. Your professor may even start classes with prayer. 

There’s also the danger of becoming complacent, taking it for granted, or even becoming numb to these opportunities to worship and meet with God.  

There will be new teachers and leaders to look up to, new books to read, new subjects to learn and explore which is exciting and what you’re paying lots of money for. 

But you may find yourself studying and reading (very likely) much more than you have in your life and feel like your head is going to explode. 

You may struggle with feeling stretched, challenged, maybe even overwhelmedacademically  for the first time. Feeling incompetent or doubting whether you’ll be able to handle the workload might be a shock.

You may even have to drop a class, or fail, the first time.

You might start a new student ministry, which may be awesome.  
But sometimes, it’s not. 
Sometimes, you may end up with a poor fit for your skills and strengths, who you are. 
You may not click, for different reasons, with your supervisor or mentor. 

New rhythms, a new room and bed, new gym or CrossFit box. 
You have to find new self-care spots and times. 

Depending on how you deal with change, if you struggle with social anxiety or introversion, this may or may not go smoothly. 

You may even lose some sleep in the transition. 

Your sense of self, your confidence, can be shaken.

For these reasons, and more, even as your committing your life to learn more about God and serve Him with your life you can become more vulnerable to a problem with porn (or other addiction) either getting worse or resurfacing.

Addendum: Even if it’s a problem you’ve had victory in, sometimes a problem that been dormant can flare up again because often porn can be “managed” with rigid boundaries, filters, computers in public places, accountability, busyness – a host of strategies and outward restrictions – back home.  But if the root causes of the addiction aren’t addressed, without those usual safeguards in place, the beast of porn easily can be unleashed and come back just as strong, once the lid is taken off. 

So, here’s a few suggestions. 

Be mindful and prayerful. Be honest and stay honest about what is really going on in your heart and mind.

If you’re moving away from your usual support and accountability in this area try to connect as soon as you get a bit settled with a supportive community. Find safe people. Don’t give up if it’s hard at first. 

Don’t spend too much time church hopping or trying to find just the right church, try to get plugged in sooner rather than later. 
Finding a community will help you from feeling isolated. 

Pay attention to your relationship with Jesus.  You can spend hours studying and reading about God, about theology and Jesus and at the same time become very distant and disconnected from Jesus.   

Be mindful of self-care, your mood and stress.  Working and going to school, financial pressures, academic workload, full ministry calendar, social events, just being a college kid (aka taco runs at 2am), hours on the computer, can quickly add up to depletion and survival mode which make you vulnerable to rationalizing, minimizing, justifying and compartmentalizing acting out.   

If porn becomes worse, or has never been something you’ve addressed in your life, it might be helpful to start counseling or recovery group to work on it.   Many schools offer student counseling services that can help.

In the end, Abraham isn’t remembered most for his dishonesty with pharoah about Sarah, he’s known for being a man who walked by faith, whose faith was credited to him as righteousness, a man who ultimately God has used to bless the nations. 

If you struggle with porn, this can be true for you too.

I hope this post hasn’t been discouraging or intimidating but has encouraged you if you are starting bible college or seminary soon (or if you work with students) to be wary of this potential pitfall.

And I hope you’ll see God’s plans and purpose for you clearly as you start the school year. 


You loved me once

  

Every few months, three or four times a year,
when driving to or from the counseling office
while thinking or praying for clients,
I write a poem
here’s a recent one
It helps me let go of the outcomes
while still holding on to hope for them
especially when things get really hard
I hope it might encourage you if this is something you’re struggling with
even if you are single and not in a relationship right now.

on being discontent with brokenness

  

A man walking through a desert happens upon an oasis,

He doesn’t take a moment to reflect on why he is thirsty.
He doesn’t ask if he should drink the water, if it’s his right or if it’s okay.
He doesn’t berate and beat themselves up for their need for water.
He doesn’t analyze the choices that left him desolate and wandering in the desert.
He doesn’t criticize himself for being dirty or not having a proper cup to drink with.
He desperately and joyously dives in and drinks deeply.
He’s saved!
And only after he’s drunk until he can’t drink anymore does he take a breath, slump down and think.
He doesn’t think of regrets and feel guilty about his situation. Or how dirty he’s made the water by jumping in.
He simply feels exhilaration and gratitude or fortune at finding the water and being alive.

(At least, that’s what happens in the movies.)

§§§

One thing I’ve noticed recently reading two books: Breathing Underwater: Spirtuality and the 12 Steps by Richard Rohr and The Emotionally Healthy Leader by Pete Scazzero is that often when I come across “an oasis” of grace and truth, something that could feed my dry and thirsty soul with compassion and healing, my first reaction isn’t gratitude or joy.  
My first reaction is frustration and impatience.
I read these books and it reminds me of how far I still have to grow and heal and learn and it brings back feelings of weakness or inadequacy.

It doesn’t feel good to feel weak.  To feel undone.

And I know I’m not the only one who feels this way.  While beginning counseling and recovery is often accompanied by a feeling of huge relief and peace, the truth is, it also brings up feelings of weakness, brokenness, exposure and grief.

And sadness. Sadness at what has happened and a profound sadness that life, and this world, is still not the way it should be.

A good portion of these feelings stem from this belief that I’ve heard clients or others who have done some counseling, recovery or healing of their past voice, the belief and expectation that

I should be beyond this.
I’ve already gone through this.

I already know all this.
I’ve worked so hard, why do I still struggle with this?

This reminded me just how much shame and dysfunction distort truth.
How they isolate or seek to disconnect us from others.
From needing and transparency with others.
From acknowledging our feelings and legitimate needs.
From receiving the gifts of love, acceptance and grace from God and others.

It’s okay to be desperate for water, you can die from not drinking water.  But needing love and acceptance?  You have to earn that.  You can’t die from that.

Or can we?

I think we can and so many slowly do.

It’s so hard to give up the paradigm that so much of life and live and freedom is given, not something entirely dependent on how hard we work or how smart we are.
It’s humbling to acknowledge that recovery is a lifetime endeavor, that healing is a process.
If we didn’t have to be interdependent on God and others we wouldn’t have to worry about good things being taken away from us.  Our happiness and peace would entirely be up to us, our responsibility, under our control and dependent on our hard work.
No mystery, no waiting, no insecurity, no vulnerability, no anxiety to experience.

Of course, we may not believe that logically or say it outloud. But essentially, that’s what we act like is true.

Like the son in Luke 15 coming back home with a good sales presentation on a working arrangement that might make it palatable for his father to accept him back on the property, we just can’t receive forgiveness. Or forgive ourselves.
We want redemption and healing on our terms, on our timetable.

§§§

There is a story in the Bible of the nation of Israel who spent years in the desert.  God provided them food, manna, daily.  The couldn’t store extra, it would rot.  They could only gather and use what was needed for each day.

It’s hard to go through a desert season, a time of wandering.  We want more.  We want to rush through the promised land, to abundance and overflowing. It’s easy to lose sight of how miraculous it is to simply having your needs met daily.

§§§

I’m heading to the beach soon with my family.  It’s another place where sand and water meet. And the beach is pretty simple.

It’s family.  It’s sand.  It’s the ocean. And books to read.
It’s fresh air, unhurried walks and sunsets.
It’s sleeping in, free time, time spent without an agenda.

And one of the great things about the beach is, it doesn’t have to be new.

It’s a going back.
A reminder of God’s beauty, His grace, care and provision.

It’s the same way with a book like The Emotionally Healthy Leader.
Or a sermon.
Or a song.
Or a talk with a friend.
Or your spouse.
It doesn’t have to be innovative, the next best thing.
It may not be exciting but to a frantic thirsty soul, it’s essential.
It’s life-giving.
It’s a familiar story that can still be so hard to believe.

Sometimes, the way forward, is back. 

Helping people find their Why

I wrote a post recently how asking Why can be unhelpful. It isn’t always a bad thing though.

Life is pretty busy these days but when I have free time I like to train and coach mixed martial arts. I used to coach a noon Brazilian Jiu Jitsu class here in town regularly. One thing that’s really rewarding about coaching people how to do a spinning armbar or how to throw a proper jab is you break down the technique into it components, demonstrate the technique, tell them how and where to place their feet and hands and hips and after some repetition and drilling they get start to get the hang of it. By the end of the hour class they are noticeably better than when they started. As a coach, it’s a lot of fun to see and experience an instant improvement in their ability in just an hour or two of training. When you track the improvements over a few weeks or months, it’s even more empowering to see the growth, fitness and confidence. 

Usually the gains in marriage counseling come a little slower. 

 In couples counseling we often debrief a recent conflict/conversation and break it down step by step, making adjustments. Sometimes there’s a quick improvement or just like with jiu jitsu a little adjustment or tweak can produce a big change. However, the norm is that it takes a little practice, in session and at home (where the true test occurs) for things to improve.  Emotional and relational bad habits can be really hard to rewire and retrain compared to muscle memory.

It’s in those moments when the questions flare up. 

Will this work? Is this worth it? Will I ever get the hang of this? Why is this so hard? 

But just like coaching jiu jitsu or boxing there’s something even more rewarding in counseling than teaching and coaching how to do something different or giving advice on what to work on.  The conversations I occasionally get to have at the gym about Why are special, the ones that move beyond where to grip and pull and pivot, to why, why do you train? why do you want to learn how to grapple or kickbox? Why do you do mixed martial arts instead of Zumba or yoga? 

And in counseling, moving beyond the nuts and bolts of active listening and conflict resolution and parenting situations or what to say and how to say it to exploring or rediscovering the Why of marriage and communication, the Why of going to counseling and talking about what’s going on inside is something actively encourage. 

Answering the Why goes a long way to seeing you through the learning curve, whether it’s learning how to throw a switch kick or use I-statements or listen non-defensively. 

What I’ve noticed is that when couples get back in touch with the Why of what they are doing (or not doing), when parents remember the Why of what they want to accomplish with their children, a lot of the details work themselves out or take a big step in the right direction.

What is counseling like anyway? On silence and reflection

  

Photo credit: Sam Illic

Most of the people that come to see me for counseling (or call me for health coaching on the phone) wonder “What’s counseling like anyway?  What am I supposed to do? Just start talking?”

I’m going to write about what a typical session with me might look like. But this is about an aspect of counseling that many counselors, regardless of the theoretical approach to counseling, use.

There’s this technique counselors use called “reflection”.
On the surface it seems pretty simple, after listening for a bit (sometimes not very long) your counselor has a turn and responds with what they’ve heard or repeats back the words you’ve said.
Sometimes it’s annoying, just hearing your words parroted back to you. “Uhhh, yes, I just said that.”
But sometimes reflections in the hands of a counselor go beyond what what you’ve said to what’s been unsaid and to the meaning beneath the surface. 
And that my friend, is pretty awesome.

What does it feel like to be listened to in this way?
This can strike you in a least two ways.

Sometimes a reflection in counseling is like the mirrored surface of the pond that you find on an early morning walk when you’ve gotten up before everyone. 
In the stillness, as the fog lifts off pond, the peace and closeness of God is so safe and real, your desire to hold onto that moment overrides the kid in you that wants to skip a rock across it. 
And life and hope seem as beautiful and close as the sky meeting the water.

Sometimes a reflection in counseling is like the reflection of a bathroom mirror at 3am.
When your upward glance this time goes beyond the painted on smile and meets the pain and regret in your eyes.
When the harsh fluorescent light hides nothing, seeing yourself like this brings a moment of clarity of seeing where life and your decisions has brought you. 

The reflection confronts you with the question of do you want this? 
How long will you run and hide?
The pain and how far God seems as ugly as the walls and floor that surrounds you and you are faced with the decision to give into the despair and go back to the numbness or reawaken, come to your senses. And go back home.

We need those moments of peace, or pain, to see where we truly are.
To begin to change.

And one of the worst things we can do as counselors or clients is to miss what needs to seen and heard and known in those moments. 
To interrupt those moments, by being uncomfortable with the silence or trying to rush through.

Reflection and silence: tools, not just for counselors, that enable us to experience both grace and truth.

How’s the practice of silence in your life these days?

When was the last time that you were able to be still and really reflect?

What rose to the surface?

Or what would, if you made the time or space for it?

When’s the right time to deal with porn?

I’ll deal with it when
…I’m dating.
…we’re engaged.
…we’re married.
…it hurts her.
…I get caught.
…we have kids.
… I have a girl.
… the kids are old enough to know.
… my son starts struggling too.

I’d deal with it if
…she leaves me.
…it affects my work, my ministry.
…it gets as bad as *that* dude.
…it wasn’t so hard.
…it hadn’t been a problem for so many years.
…it wasn’t so embarrassing.
…I wasn’t so broken.
…I wasn’t alone.
…God would help me.
…there was a God.

I’ll deal with it when life – these lies – becomes unmanageable.

Are you stuck? Why asking “Why?” doesn’t always help

image

When talking with your spouse “Why?” or “Why? did you…” is a four-letter word, especially if you add “…in the world…”

Bill Cosby once joked that “Why?” isn’t very helpful with kids because it is usually met with a whiny pathetic “I dunnooooooooo!” 

Have you ever noticed that when you ask your kids something starting with “Why don’t you…?” You don’t usually get the answer you were hoping for?

Clearly, “Why?” doesn’t usually work because a) there’s no good answer b) the question was really a complaint in (partial) disguise and c) it usually results in defensiveness and/or temporary brain-damage/amnesia in the other.

Another arena where “Why?” isn’t usually recommended is counseling. 

When we go though pain though, it’s natural to ask why.

Even Jesus did. The Psalms are full of Why’s. Asking “Why” is a natural response to difficult things in life. We ask Why to make sense and meaning of our negative experiences.

Thing is, there’s a few ways that asking Why isn’t helpful; a few reasons it can even be detrimental to growth and peace. 

One expectation that people have when they first come to counseling is figuring out why they do things. Thing is we can’t always know or figure out the reasons why.  And, one of my counseling professors taught me, insight doesn’t guarantee change.  

In fact, asking Why? can keep you from changing, if you aren’t careful.  
Some folks ask Why? but they really don’t want to know the answer.

The problem is many people ask why as a way of staying perpetually confused.

They may not realize that this is what they doing but they ask and avoid answering the question.
Not answering your unknowns about the past is a great way of avoiding the unknowns of the future. 
(Asking What if? And leaving that unanswered also creates and perpetuates anxiety)
Another reason Why? can be misused is often Why? is way of complaining wihout the risk of admitting how you feel and what you want.
We do this with our kids, “Why can’t you remember to clean up the bathroom?”  
We also do this with God.  “Why does this keep happening to me?”
Here’s another example of what this sounds like: “Why do I always [fill in addictive behavior of choice]?  Is it because I was abused?  Because my parents neglected me?  Because I need medication? Because I really don’t want to change? Is it because I really  don’t trust God?”   
This line of questioning can go on and on, with no resolution, for years.  Asking the next question and piling on the next right on top of the other, allows the person who is asking “Why” to never face down the truth, to dig down to the answers.  It’s a form of self-sabotage because it makes facing the truth, the past, seem so overwhelming.  
The benefits of not answering our unanswered Why’s is we don’t need to take responsibility.
We don’t need to take responsibility for what we don’t understand, what we don’t know.
Asking Why? is a way of staying stuck, feeling helpless and out of control.  We can wait.  Wait for the answers to come. Instead of taking steps to control what we can control and act on what we do know is true.
It also is a great defense mechanism.  If we are constantly questioning ourselves it pre-emptively prevents people from questioning us.  From critiquing us.  It’s the self-deception of seemingly being really self-aware and introspective while not facing the hard truths, deep down.
Asking Why? also gives a lot of power to our circumstances, to our past and to what has happened to us.
We end up feeling like a victim.
So, those are a few reasons…why…I think one of key aspects of counseling is helping people face their Whys.  Helping people answered their unanswered questions, as best they can.  
If you struggle with anxiety and questioning yourself and your past, I hope I haven’t come across as too harsh.  I do actually want to help.
When a series of Why’s? come up, I’ll often say, “I don’t know.  What do you think?  Let’s explore that some more and figure it out.”  Often, folks know the reasons Why, it’s what to do about it next that’s the hard part.
And even if we can’t figure out the “Why”, life still needs to happen.
“If you did know ‘why’ what would that mean? “
“Assuming that’s true, it seems like a good hunch, if that’s the reason ‘why’, what do you do do know with that?”
“In the meantime, until you figure it out, what’s the next best step?”
Here are some ways you can ask a why question without actually using the Why word. Some ways to explore, go deeper to, more self-awareness and understanding about what you’ve been through and what makes you tick.  
I hope these questions will help you if you struggle with being stuck with unanswered why’s.

Some alternatives to WHY

“What was/is going on?”

“What is happening/happens? when you…”

“How is pattern continuing? What fuels it?”

“What did you do? What didn’t you do?”

“Where did this happen?”

“When did you start believing that [core belief or coginitive distortion]?”

“Where did you start doing that [behavior]?”

“Who taught you that [behavior/coping]? Who modeled that in your life?”

“How did you get here? To this place?”

“What if?”

“What did they do/say?” “How did you respond?” (vs. “They made me…[feeling or behavior]”)

“What did that look like? What did you feel? What did you experience?”

“When that happended – What did that mean to you? What did you start telling yourself? About God,others, family, yourself?”

“What was your role?”

add: “What would you do if you knew “Why? How would knowing why? help you.” 

Here’s a few questions to bring all this digging and exploration of the past back into the present, the here-and-now:

How does this affect you?

What are you experiencing?

What will you do with this? What do you want/need?

Who will you share this with?

What are you feeling?

How can you reframe this?

What is the alternative?

What/How can you change/control?

What are the obstacles?

Those are just a few ways to explore, gain insight, get more concrete without asking why – they help support self-efficacy and can help you get unstuck, reframe and think about change.

I’ll end with one I learned from Dr. Earl Wilson

“What did you tell yourself to give yourself permission to act out?”

That one may make you squirm a bit and feel like saying something like “I dunnoooo!”

but if you’re willing to answer that or some of the others above, you’ll be well on your way to making any adjustments or changes you want to make.

One miraculous thing about marriage

Looking back at this week’s video blog on marriage

It struck me that no blog post can adequately convey or capture

What a miracle marriage is

What an unfathomable mystery it is

That marriage is both the place where

We die to ourselves

And at the same time

Come alive, find and grow into our best selves.

It reveals our worst but brings out our best.

Two flawed individuals coming together into one unified beautiful whole? 

We can take for granted how much grace and love that requires. 

First video blog, a message for newlyweds

Here’s a video blog (in three parts) for newlyweds on some areas to watch for as you start married life.  I’ve included a written summary below (not a transcription).

It was fun to make this but hard to organize.

I might make this a blog series to say more in depth about each area.

“You get what you create and you get what you allow.” – Henry Cloud

Here are a few areas that are worth paying attention to early on in marriage, being aware of them and dealing with them proactively can help you create the marriage and family you’ve dreamed about and prevent unhealthy and destructive behaviors, attitudes and patterns from damaging your marriage. Marriage can be the absolute greatest thing, it can also be the hardest, scariest, stressful thing.  Getting off to a good start can be extremely helpful.

Talking about, exploring and working on these areas will help you flesh out what your marriage will look and sound like on the surface and on a deeper level, help you define what it will be at its core, its heart.

1) Practical matters.  Deciding and sorting out what your marriage and home will look like.  Where will everything go? Where will you live?  Who will pay the bills?  Who will take out the trash?  There are dozens or hundreds of little, mundane, everyday choices to sort out.  This is also related to the issue of…

2) Time.

How will you spend your time?  Together and alone.  How will you balance it?  This is something to work through day-to-day, week-to-week.  Pulling back, there is also the question of what will the rhythm of your year look?  How will you spend the holidays?  How will you balance work and leisure and vacations?  And an even bigger picture question, what will you give your lives to?  How will you invest your life, in terms of work and career?  That touches on the bigger question of…

3) Meaning.

What will all this mean?  What will getting married mean to you? Individually and as a couple?  Often, little issues become big issues because there are underlying issues as stake in conflict and in the process of sorting things out at the start of marriage.  Tim Keller in the book The Meaning of Marriage describes a dynamic that a lot of couples face today: a deep disillusionment about marriage, on one hand, and a deep hope or expectation about marriage at the same time.  We can bring a lot of unspoken, deep rooted fears, hurts and hopes to marriage and a few weeks of pre-marital counseling often just touches the surface of them.  Having doubts, second thoughts, anxiety about marriage can be really For Christians, marriage is a symbol of the relationship of Christ and the church; what will that look like for us?

4) Identity.

Who am I now as a married person?  What will be different now?  What will our marriage be?  Even couples that have been together for years can be shaken by the new realities and identity of being married. Where do I end? and where do we begin?  What issues are mine? What issues are ours?  What does the role of being your husband, or wife look like?  Who will I be to you? Will it be what we saw modeled and defined by our parents or will we create something different?

5) Communication and conflict resolution.

Listening well, expressing empathy, giving honest feedback.  Make it a habit to give honest feedback, even if it’s hard and risks conflict.  The pain of feedback early on is much less than the pain of going along and being less than honest and the whole truth coming out later.  Develop language or a ritual of apology, making amends, forgiving and reconciling.  Learn how to support each other during stress and struggle vs. fixing them.  Learn how to ask for help and what you want.  Be assertive and don’t just give in and comply in order to collaborate and create agreements and solutions that work for both of you.

6) Sex. 

Sexual intimacy ideally is a natural expression of the emotional and spiritual intimacy you experience.  It is also something that develops and grows.  Address early on (get help if necessary) struggles, in order to get off to a good start.  Whether you wait for marriage to be sexually intimate or have been prior to marriage, the transition in to marriage and all the changes mentioned above can make this area difficult.  It can be hard to talk about, something that ought to help you feel closer becoming something that pushes you apart. Hurt, rejection, “failure”, anxiety, tension, avoidance, frustration, impatience, feeling used can all quickly enter in to derail this vital area of marital happiness and satisfaction.

7) Stress.

Related to #5.  As a couple, it will help to communicate about health and unhealthy ways to cope and manage stress (and busyness).  Stress often impairs or kills empathy.  Be vigilant at deal with it and other gremlins, like unfair fighting, selfishness, dishonesty.  One of the couples I worked with said it well in describing their struggles: “We had lost our ability to console each other.” Protect that, it’s one of the best things about being married, having someone who can console and support and be there for you.  If not, the person who you turned to for support and comfort can easily become the one who causes hurt and stress.

What do you think?  Is there another area that you would add for newly married couples to pay attention to?

 

Smart People Anxiety

  One of the great things about working and living in Portlandia is the people.

I’ve found Portland is kind of a mecca for some of my favorite types of people: creatives and artists.

I enjoy meeting with folks who are insightful, thoughtful, compassionate, those who sometimes are slow to speak outside the counseling office because they want their words to be well-considered. Often they are introverted but not all. Many are grad school students at the seminary, involved in leadership or ministry. They care deeply about people, often very empathetic and authentic. They inspire me because they see things beyond the surface. Their everyday walking around, thoughts are art. I’d love to read their memoirs or journals. They fascinate me.

The downside though is often creatives and artists because of the way they see the world and the depths to which they think and process things can really struggle with anxiety and depression.

They have high highs and low lows. They quickly can go from “Everything is awesome to everything has gone to hell”. (They’d describe this much better)

They get paralyzed by their introspection

Overwhelmed by the intensity or the changes of their emotions

They can feel isolated and misunderstood.

And frustrated at feeling out of control.

If you add, for many of my clients and grad students, being devote in their faith; they can be vulnerable to another layer of anxiety around believing they are not doing enough for God or for others.

For example, they may feel overwhelmed at the enormity of a social justice issue, at how big the problem is or how much work and changes needs to be done in that area. And they can have a hard time turn off or turning down how concerned or troubled they are about the issue.

When I see this, one thing I tell them is they are suffering from what I call “Smart people anxiety”.

It’s not the simple, garden-variety anxiety or depression – it’s complicated!

Strong thinkers are strong feelers.

There’s levels and layers to their anxiety!

Their anxiety doesn’t just get triggered and then follow one railroad track to a catastrophic ending.

Their anxiety branches off in multiple and elaborate permutations that quickly can overwhelm them.

It becomes a huge suffocating mess to untangle.

Because of how creative and thoughtful and imaginative they are.

Another phrase I use as way of talking and exploring this other than “smart people anxiety” is “Inception level anxiety” or “Inceptionesque anxiety”.

Inception being the movie directed by Christopher Nolan and starring Leonardo DiCarprio.

Inception is about a team of people that get hired to create dreams and implant new realities and memories into their targets. A young member of their team played by Ellen Paige has a talent for creating very realistic elaborate dreams. The more realistic the dream world and images she creates, the greater the chances at their deception, their inception, will work.

In the movie, with a challenging target, they attempt to plant a dream, within a dream, within a dream. The problem is the deeper they go the harder it is to distinguish the dreams from reality.

For artists and creative, I think this is a part of what makes their anxiety or depression harder to untangle and treat. They can quickly build elaborate constructs, metaphors, inner worlds and word pictures for what they are going through. We all do this when we go through struggles and experiences, we try to make meaning, to make sense of things. Creatives can overdo this. They can attach so much meaning and attach so many different things to their stressors and triggers; they don’t just catastrophize, they globalize. What might be, what it might mean, quickly becomes reality.

Thing is, it often isn’t completely true, or true at all. Because it might mean something doesn’t mean that is the best or truest interpretation to hold. Just because it feels, or seems real, doesn’t mean it is.

Here’s a few things that the team from Inception did that might help you if you struggle with this type of anxiety:

  • They set limits. When one of their team went down into the psyche, into the dream state, of their target they set alarms to pull them out of the dream. This prevents them from getting trapped in the dream and disconnected from reality forever. If you struggle with rumination and worry you can set limits too. You can literally set an alarm, a time limit, just like the Inception team to remind you to get out of your head and go do something else. You set limits by having a designated space to worry. You can journal. The thoughts can seem a while lot smaller on a page, and you can literally close the book on them when you write them down. Journalling also slows you’re racing thoughts down because we usually can’t write as fast our thoughts. You can also set limits by having boundaries on the types of conten, and how negative it is, that you allow as input or what you create and dwell on. For example, what types of music, media, news, people – and how much and how long – you expose yourself to.
  • They had a totem. Each member of the team had a something to hold, something with someone weight, that they could “carry” with them down into the dream to root them to reality and help them distinguish what was real and what was a dream. DiCaprio’s character had a top that he kept in his pocket and held onto. For folks struggling with the anxiety of quitting tobacco, they often use a totem of their own, a “worry stone” to help them focus on the present and work through a period of craving. For folks with this type of anxiety, focusing on what’s present, being mindful, focusing on things external to them instead of their thoughts (diaphragmatic breathing and exercise help), focusing on their core beliefs, what’s most important, what they know to be true, instead of thinking too far ahead or focusing on their ruminations and visualizations can be very helpful. These are a few ways of grounding themselves and reconnecting with reality.
  • They didn’t do the work alone. DiCaprio’s character, because of his past, lost objectivity. He started to struggle with what was real. It made him vulnerable to making selfish, poor choices that comprised the team’s mission. His past was haunting him. He needed the others on his team, especially Paige, to keep him on track.

If you’re a creative or introvert, struggling with how powerful your anxiety or depression can be, I hope this post will encourage you to use your powers of insight and imagination “for good”.
Watch here on the blog for more posts on anxiety and depression.

In the meantime, what do you think? If you’ve seen the movie, anything you’d add?

And, most importantly, anything you’ll do with this?