Tag: Resolutions

The December Door Knob

After a year of talking, planning, debating, and ruminating, I recently decided to make a big professional move, leaving a full time job to focus more on my private practice and the professional world of Lauren Schiffer Therapy. I gave my notice on a Friday and met a close friend for brunch on Sunday. We had a lot of catching up to do. She had been sick for a few weeks, so we hadn’t been able to see each other, I had been too busy at work to write anything close to a thoughtful e-mail, she had a recent dating fiasco to share and we had plans and details of a mutual friend’s upcoming wedding to discuss. As we were waiting for the check, I told her about my resignation. She was extremely happy and excited for me, but was also a bit shocked and teased, “Next time, when someone asks you what’s new, you lead with that.” She was right. This news was big, exciting, important, but for some reason it took me all of brunch to get to it.

In psychotherapy this is casually referred to as a “doorknob,” a very important statement, fact, or topic that a client brings up right at the end of the session, often literally when their hand is on the doorknob.  The therapy session is almost over, and there isn’t enough time to sufficiently address the topic. There are many practical and theoretical explanations for the doorknob statement. Sometimes the client is embarrassed by the topic and has been trying to relax, get comfortable or gain enough courage to address the issue. Other times the client knows an issue will be important information in their treatment, but might not be ready to dig too deeply, so brings it up at the end. This can be an enormous relief, “Phew, I got that off my chest,” without being too overwhelming. Whether conscious or unconscious, it can even be a way to test the therapist’s reactions and boundaries. “If I think she’s judging me, at least the session is over and I can get out of there.” “Will she extend the session longer than normal if something big comes up with only five minutes left?” “Will she remember this for next time, even if I say it at the very end?” 

This can be exasperating, funny or even scary for the therapist, depending on the statement. While each response needs to be tailored to the client and their needs, when there are no safety issues, I often let my client know that I think it is an important topic, thank them for brining it up, mention that we don’t have enough time to discuss it today, and explain that since it is so important, we should start with it next time. Then I make sure to start with it next time. If this becomes a pattern with a client, I will point this out, see if we can explore why important things don’t come up until the end, and find ways to address it.

In addition to my private practice, I also work at the health and counseling center of a large university. In a college setting the doorknob not only happens at the end of a session, but also to the end of the semester, the December Doorknob. For most of the school, the last few weeks in December are a ghost town. Students hand in final projects, sit for exams and then get the heck out of there. It’s a time for faculty and staff to finish grades, reflect, plan for next semester and maybe clean off their desks, if so inclined. But right until the last day, my colleagues in the  counseling center are humming along, business as usual. We even have intake appointments the week after final exams are over, with students coming to share all the difficulties they’ve been having this semester on the day, or even morning before they head home for a three week break.

The most memorable December Doorknob this year was a client who came in for an intake appointment hours before she would be leaving for home for winter break, and three weeks before she would be leaving for a semester abroad. I could not help but feel frustrated, wondering why she waited until the last minute, wondering what she expected me to do for her in a one-shot appointment. After some reflection, I had to admit that a great deal of my exasperation came from my own sense of helplessness. Knowing that our work together would not continue, and the entire therapeutic relationship would consist of only 45 minutes, I didn’t feel there was anyway I could help her solve her problem, or make any changes. But it was the client herself that helped me remember how therapeutic even getting through the door can be explaining, “I promised myself I would come in and tell someone about this before the end of the semester and  I wanted to keep that promise.” In that moment a December Doorknob takes on a different symbolic meaning, it becomes a fulfilled promise, the start of change, opening a new door.

As the year draws to an end, what are your doorknobs? What it that thing you keep meaning to do? What do you need to say? What is the promise you made to yourself? Instead of waiting for the new year to make resolutions, to put off making changes until the calendar changes, put your hand on the doorknob and turn.

“Being An Adult”- Part Two

As I mentioned in part one of this post, I believe a big part of being an adult means doing things you don’t want to do. That means sucking it up and finding the motivation you need to get things done.

A good old dictionary.com search for “motivation” comes up with “to provide with a motive; incite; impel.” Digging deeper, the word motive  is defined as “something that causes a person to act in a certain way, do a certain thing.” The origin is linked to medieval Latin for “serving to move,” which is the part of the definition I find most helpful, providing the visual concept. People who are motivated appear to be in motion, convey a general sense of movement. They set goals, meet them, and do it all over again the next day. Sometimes the motivation is internal sometimes external, but often not related to a positive feeling. Fear, anxiety, the collection agency, the approval of others, and vanity all get some people to do things that are not intrinsically fun.

How do you become one of those people? What does one do about those day to day motivation struggles like flossing, finishing thank you notes after your wedding, or calling your grandma more often, like you promised? The basics are nothing new or mind blowing: set small and  measurable goals, track your progress, have someone or something to which you hold yourself accountable, reward yourself when you meet a goal. BLAH BLAH BLAH. We’ve all heard it all before and it sounds like a great plan, and we’ll get around to, but maybe later, because So You Think You Can Dance  is on right now, and we had a long day at work and besides, we’re grown ups and we want to do what we want to do, when we want to do it. So there. However, if your looking for a gentle nudge, coaching or a little forcing, there’s always the internet.

Most of the time people make resolutions or set goals related to losing weight or getting in shape. If that’s your goal, there are a gazillion women’s magazines, websites, and companies out there where you can log on, set goals, chart progress and feel alternately good and bad about yourself depending on the day. I decided not to research weight loss specific on-line tools for this post because I’d rather not fall down that rabbit hole on a Monday in the middle of the summer, nor do I want to drag you down there with me either. Instead, I decided to set a goal for myself unrelated body image and be the guinea pig. My goal was to “actively blog” and since that’s too vague, I quantified it as writing one new post a week. SPOILER ALERT!!!! It’s Monday night and my last post went up last Sunday, so you can guess how I did so far, but I’m not giving up that quickly on my dreams. Better late than never. Here’s what I found:

stickK (stickk.com)
After years of unsuccessful attempts, an econ professor at Yale decided to really get serious about his health and loosing weight, so he decided he would pay a friend $500 a week every time he failed to get closer to his goal. The contract continued when he met his goal, focusing on maintaining a healthy weight.  It worked for him because loosing 500 bucks a week was pretty painful, as it would be for most of us. He then decided to take this idea public and created an “online commitment store,” stickK. At stickK you sign up, set a goal, decide how much money you will loose, and pick a referee who checks up on you. You can donate your money to charity, which will randomly donate to a list of charities stickK supports. To make loosing even more painful, you can donate to an anti-charity, one’s who’s mission you don’t support, like the NRA or Planned Parenthood, depending on your politics. You also have the option of giving money directly to a “friend or foe.” I went with the no money down option and was reminded by a pop-up that putting money on it DOUBLES (their caps, not mine) my success. Basically it was a nice way of saying, “Are you really that serious about meeting this goal if you’re not willing to throw down the cash?” Touche. While I did not meet my once a week goal, I did get an email from stickK this morning, telling me to fill out my first “report” which will go to my referee. My referee then tells stickK how I did. I lied on the report and said that I met my goal, with the hopes that I would finish this post before my husband (my designated referee) checks my blog to verify. So although a day late on my goal and with a new lying habit, the report card and time crunch pulled me off of facebook and back to editing this post.

HassleMe (hassleme.co.uk)
The most humorous of all the sites I explored is HassleMe. The site’s tag line says it all, “Because sometimes in life you just need to be nagged.” You simply write in your “hassle, ” give them your e-mail and tell them approximately how often you would like to get a nagging e-mail related to your goal. The idea is that the site will be unpredictable with the timing of the e-mails so that you are annoyingly surprised. It is very easy to sign up and  beautifully simple. You can also put in your husband’s, teenager’s or roommate’s e-mail address and nag someone else about getting something done. I once had a client who put a sticky note on her husband’s mirror, reminding him to tell her that she is beautiful. This would be the digital equivalent. The website is also really entertaining, as it lets you read other people’s hassles (anonymously of course), which can be hilarious. I loved this feature, but it was basically anti-motivation, giving me yet another internet procrastination destination.

What fascinates me about stickK and HassleMe is that they go against basic behavioral treatment theory. The first and only thing I remember from the one day I studied behavioral therapy in social work school, is that rewards work better than punishments. Both sites actually operate against that theory, getting you to act to avoid punishment. StickK uses negative punishment, taking something you like (money) away from you, while HassleMe goes with positive punishment, giving you something painful or annoying (spam) until you change. Not sure how the sites are tracking their “success rates” but they could be challenging years of behavioral treatment theory.

Mint.com
Because financial savvy is both sexy and trendy, I wanted to be sure to include a site that helps with money management. Purchased by Intuit, the company that makes Quicken, around 2009 (proving the best way to beat your competition is to buy them), Mint.com gives you a web-based, free, money management system. You can’t see what Mint does until you log on, which means you must give them your bank account and credit card information right off the bat. Since my e-mail account was hacked the same day I started researching the post, there was no way I was doing this. However, a good friend who loves the site and was comfortable enough to let me see all of her financial information, walked me through a webinar, showing me her account.  If you take the leap of faith and let them have access to all your accounts, Mint tracks, categorizes and charts your spending for you. It will group expenses into categories like food, clothing, entertainment, and pet care.  You can also use it to help you set goals, like saving $200 a month, and it will track your efforts with a bar graph as the month progresses. Green, yellow, and red indicators tell you how close you are to going over budget on each category, and provide a nice visual. Because Mint is free it is ad supported, and the ads are cleverly disguised as financial “advice.” If you click on a link that says, “Learn more about controlling your credit card interest rates,” you will get an ad for a new credit card. Once you know that “advice” really means “advertisement” you can avoid them completely. There is no messing around on Mint; no underestimating how much you spend on cocktails last Friday and no denying that you bought a pair of Spanx off of Amazon your lunch hour. Like Santa it knows if you’ve been bad or good, down to the penny, and in pie chart form.

Hope that gets you started down the path of healthy life changes. Now put down that Ho-Ho and get back to the library.