Pat Myers

I have been struggling for the past few months to retain my optimism. It seems that everything in my life was beginning to be burdensome and impossible with few very limited opportunities for hope. Knowing that a large part of my pessimism is a family legacy, I’ve been working for most of my adult life to overcome it. I’ve had good success until recently. I know all the reasons why I ended up in such a hopeless place (some of which I’ve written about in previous blogs) but knowing the reasons doesn’t fix the feelings. This morning after euthanizing our second dog in the past several months I think I hit a new low.

After sobbing my way through a few had to do chores I decided to take a walk. I filled my pockets with tissue and with tears streaming, walked. As I started to the small lake near my home, my thoughts were centered on the pointlessness of life. The existential part of my brain explored all the angst and why questions that can’t ever completely be answered. In Ecclesiastes Solomon wrote about life as chasing after wind. What is the point of any of this? It is only on days like today when death or tragedy are unavoidable, when I am unsuccessful in dodging these thoughts and so I seriously look this question in the eye. Circumstances have been forcing this question to the surface more frequently. As a Christian I first go to my faith for answers.

Sometimes the answers are clear and direct and quickly secured. Lately, the answers have been increasingly elusive which I’m certain is part of my current struggle. Each week I visit my mother in an assisted living facility and wonder about growing old. My mother is not dealing well with the accumulating losses of aging. Hearing her litany of pain each week has only added to my own pessimism. One of my older neighbors is selling his home and moving with his frail wife into their son’s home. With tears he told me that while he was thankful they had a home to go to he never thought their lives would come to this.

This week as I watched my sweet dog struggle with health issues that we could not fix, I couldn’t help but ask “What is the point?” As I angrily asked God this question this morning, my first sight at the lake was a mother duck shepherding her three almost grown ducklings. We have watched these ducklings grow from the time they hatched. Few survive but these have. Then a small flock of geese announced their presence and glided across the water to land. In the morning sunshine it was a beautiful sight. I next heard the familiar tweeting of a hummingbird and noticed that it was hovering from tree to tree just slightly ahead of me, almost as if it was escorting me. This guidance continued for almost half of my mile walk. As it flew off I began to follow a pair of gold finches who flitted from bush to bush ahead of me. This lead to my favorite spot around the lake at a friend’s back yard.

My friend has multiple bird feeders and attracts flocks of finches, and hummingbirds, ducks and geese. I lost count of the numbers of birds in the continuous flashes of gold. As I walked up the path she was waiting with her arms open to give me a hug and let me cry. All of these pieces of experience served to work like a prism focused on my hopelessness diffusing it into millions of fragments. Manageable fragments. Life goes on. That is the truth. My choice is to respond from a place of hopelessness or from one of hope. This place of hopelessness is why people come to counseling. Whatever the issue, our solutions haven’t worked and hope in ourselves, in others, in God or life is lost.

Counseling works because it instills hope. As Safran and Muran (2000) wrote “…at a fundamental level the patient’s ability to trust, hope, and have faith in the therapist’s ability to help always plays a central role in the change process” (p.13). One of my former clients wrote a letter to me where she stated that her healing came when she looked in my eyes and saw that I believed she had worth. Because I treated her with dignity and respect, she believed she was deserving of dignity and respect. Because I had hope in her she could have hope in herself. This process is repeated countless times each day in counseling offices across the globe. Whether the hope comes from the gift of human connection or from an answer to a problem, or for all the other countless reasons that therapy works, hope is resurrected.

People straighten their shoulders, lift their heads, take a deep breath and try again. Life goes on because people can be resilient and can believe minute by minute that life will improve. This reminds me of a quote from my childhood hero Robert F. Kennedy: “Each time a man stands for an ideal, or acts to improve the lot of others, or strikes out against injustice, he sends a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring, those ripples build a current which can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression and resistance.”

Safran, J. & Muran, J. (2000). Negotiating the therapeutic alliance: A relational treatment guide. New York: The Guilford Press.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

We are now on day 51 of the BP Oil Spill. Each day I have watched the news accounts and felt increasing hopelessness and despair. The recently released pictures of the sea birds drowned in oil, helpless and sinking were images I have not been able to shed. My dreams have been filled with images of the gushing oil that is inescapable and pollutes everything. I live in Oregon, thousands of miles from this devastation. What must it be like for those who live there, for those who must once again be brave and strong and resilient? For those who can see, smell, and touch this disaster? I can only imagine the heartbreak of the loss of human life, the damage to financial security, and family stability, and seeing the environmental damage to land and wildlife that are loved.

An article in the morning newspaper referenced concerns for the community mental health of those dealing with this current crisis on the heels of Hurricane Katrina. We know as counselors that natural disasters can lead to mental health issues for survivors and first responders. A 1993 study following the Exxon Valdez spill found that approximately 10% of the community experienced mental health consequences as serious as the environmental consequences. So when I hear the dire predictions that it may be well into August before this spill is stopped and perhaps decades before the environmental damage is repaired (if ever) I wonder what is happening to the people?

Priscilla Dass-Brailsford wrote an article (After the Storm: Recognition, Recovery, and Reconstruction) following Hurricane Katrina detailing her volunteer experiences as a mental health counselor providing support to survivors. As I work through my own response to this current nightmare two passages stood out to me as important to remember. First, “All disaster survivors must learn how to manage a shattered world, to mourn unraveled relationships, and to cope with having witnessed death and destruction. Such coping decreases confusion and increases resilience by ultimately creating, physical, emotional and spiritual balance” (p.26). This is a well known therapeutic process. Any of us working with survivors know that it takes time to reconstruct our schema of the world and once reconstructed this schema is never quite as innocent as it was before. AS counselors, we can respond to this need on positive and proactive ways.

The second quote that struck me seemed incongruous to disaster and crisis. “Disasters allow the inherent good in people to emerge…” (p. 27). As I’ve listened to commentators railing against BP, against off-shore drilling, rampant greed, oil addiction, and the callous disregard of the earth, I had forgotten this part. People are stepping up to do what they can in both small and large ways to deal with this disaster. From volunteers cleaning beaches to churches praying for their local fishermen to professional football players showing up to bring a smile, there is good in the midst of this horrible situation.

I don’t believe it is enough to just relax and rest on the thought that inherent good is emerging. It has to emerge in me as an individual and in us as a profession. The New Orleans Saints are raffling a super bowl ring hoping to raise a million dollars towards oil spill relief. What ideas do you; the readers of this blog, have to respond to this current disaster in ways that provides support and give hope?

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

My mother is having surgery this week. Mom worked hard after falling and breaking her leg last fall and as a result, was able to return to living semi-independently. However, something was not quite right. She complained of feeling woozy all the time and started to show noticeable signs of cognitive decline. The family, along with her doctors, initially concluded this was probably normal decline associated with aging. Few of us will reach 85 without having physical and/or cognitive problems of some sort. Right? We should expect declines as we age. We’re told it’s normal and expected. Then one day she reached a tipping point as she had increased difficulty speaking, choosing her words, and tracking the conversation.

The neurosurgeon on call in the emergency room that Sunday afternoon diagnosed her condition as NPH, a condition that primarily affects those over the age of 55. NPH is the accumulation of cerebrospinal fluid that causes the brain’s ventricles to enlarge. The primary symptoms of NPH are urinary incontinence, difficulty walking or gait disturbance, and progressive mental impairment and dementia. While the first word of NPH is normal, this is anything but a normal aging condition. As I reviewed the information all I could focus on was the fact that the NPH symptoms defined what all my life-span text books term normal aging declines. I asked colleagues who work with older adults what they knew about NPH and received only blank stares in reply. I have wondered how many older people, told either that their experience was normal or that they had dementia, actually had NPH and could have been helped by both an accurate diagnosis and appropriate treatment.

The National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke website states “Because these symptoms are similar to those of other disorders such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, and Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, the disorder is often misdiagnosed. Many cases go unrecognized and are never properly treated”. How many older people studied over the decades, defined as normal older adults, were actually experiencing NHP? How many of these cases were redefined as normal aging? Screening questions include feeling as if the feet are stuck to the floor, experience of balance issues, sudden falls, poor attention, sudden urge to urinate or urinary incontinence. Medical screening involves brain scans (MRI and/or CT scan), while treatment includes the placement of a shunt to drain the excess cerebrospinal fluid. The post-surgical prognosis varies with the individual, but without treatment the prognosis is sure cognitive and physical decline.

I encourage all who read this entry and have family members, friends, or clients over 55 to become familiar with NPH. I have learned from this experience never again to conclude that any declines seen in older adults are normal. Rather than passively accepting these declines as ‘normal’ I will push for appropriate screening. I will never be able to see the phrase “normal aging declines’ in the same way again. Hopefully, as more become aware of NPH and our knowledge about our fearfully and wonderfully made bodies improves, we will be able to newly define normal aging. For additional important information on NPH please see: www.ninds.nih.gov/disorders/hydrocephalus/detail_hydrocephalus.htm

Pat Myers

I love the optimism of the humanistic theories. I like to believe that given the option we will choose the high road and therefore do the right thing when the opportunity is at hand. I have always found it hard to continue to believe this in the face of cold hard reality. All I need do is scan the news headlines to challenge it. The news is filled with the grim dismal facts from suicide bombings, war and violence, and sexual abuse and slavery of children, just to name a few items on the endless list. So how can I continue to believe that there is a positive potential in the face of all the evidence to the contrary?

The following example portrays a potential of what Maslow and Rogers might have had in mind as they formulated the idea of self-actualization. On Saturday, I, along with millions of others, watched the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Prior to the game one of the players was given an award for being a decent human being. This young man stayed in school for four years, worked hard academically, but even more importantly he served his community selflessly. This game was his chance to shine.

All eyes were looking on court for this moment. In the second half of the game this star player fell to the floor writhing in pain. The team’s trainers immediately jumped into action, kneeling beside him. While the player continued to cry in agony, the coach flew onto the floor and knelt beside him, almost on top of him. With his face an inch or so from the player’s, and looking directly into the player’s eyes, the coach tenderly held this young man’s head and stroked his face as he spoke quietly to him. It was simply a remarkable and tender exchange. This private and personal moment was so beautiful that I found myself crying. I had the sense that I was witness to the real meaning of the tournament’s classic ‘one shining moment’ scenario and it had nothing to do with the game.

This was the potential human good played out in real time. The result was immediate as the player visibly began to calm down. Over the next few minutes as this tough no nonsense coach filtered out the thousands of rapid fans, the meaning of this important game, and looked into the tear-filled eyes of a young man in pain and in fear, he rose to the heights of self-actualization . This coach, a man of mixed reputation, who could be seen striding the sidelines cursing both his players and the referees, who apparently is disliked by many in the sports world (according to columns on the internet), displayed an act of nurturing and gentleness that I think defines the term. In that moment he did the right thing. He rose to the occasion. The integrity of that moment cannot be adequately conveyed. I’m sure you can view online to get the full import.

It has caused me to take a fresh look at the self-actualization concept and to wonder if Maslow was right about few ever making it to this level. Perhaps self-actualization is a brief opportunity rather than a separate destination. Perhaps it is these moments, some visible to many and some known only to a few, which truly define self-actualization. I know I was witness to it on Saturday. I wonder how many more times I have seen it and not defined it as such because it wasn’t lasting. It was temporary as in the momentary sacrifice of giving someone else a hand and not counting the cost. It was amazing in the selflessness and response to another’s need. This moment on Saturday was an example I can draw on to move beyond the headlines to see another reality in my students, my clients, my colleagues, my friends and myself. We can all aspire to moments of greatness such as these and more of us than Maslow imagined have arrived, even if only for one shining moment.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

At the ACA conference last weekend I spent Saturday and Sunday completing career consults with fellow counselors and Masters students who are currently looking for work. Most were very optimistic about their future and all the possibilities. It was truly enjoyable to have the opportunity to meet people from across the country with different ideas, hopes and dreams for their future. I received numerous heartfelt thanks at the end of these sessions. I went into that experience with a quote from Mark Savickas as a foundation: “Career counseling that envisions work as a quest for self and a place to nourish one’s spirit helps clients to learn to use work as a context for self-development.” I was there to help in the self-development process. This was the good part of counseling and was energizing and very positive. Until it wasn’t.

One amazing highly qualified woman, who had done everything one is supposed to do professionally, was completely demoralized that her years of education and experience meant absolutely nothing in the face of looming budget cuts. These budget cuts had nothing to do with the quality of her work or the community need for her program. It was simple economics. As her eyes filled with tears and her voice quavered she asked what she could do. She felt hopeless. Self-development? Spirit nourishment? There was nothing I could honestly do or say outside of the “Don’t take it personally because it isn’t you it’s the economy” statements in response. While those statements are true, it certainly does feel personal when you are the one losing your job. While it may be the economic bottom line, there is still a price paid on a very personal level. It does feel quite personal when you’re the one packing your office essentials in the cardboard box and picking up your last paycheck. It is quite personal when you don’t have the money to pay your mortgage. It is quite personal when you can’t go to the doctor because you don’t have the co-pay or perhaps no longer even have the insurance coverage. It is quite personal when you apply for job after job and can’t get the interview to even let your voice be heard. It is quite personal when you don’t have the extra money for a simple cup of coffee.

In a recent article on The Atlantic Online, Don Peck writes about the current recession stating “If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults- and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue collar white men- and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.” We know from previous research that physical health deteriorates during unemployment. This result is from both the high stress experienced during periods of unemployment and the decreased financial resources to seek medical help. A study following unemployed men in the 1970’s and 1980’s found that regardless of age, “all men were left with an elevated risk of dying in each year following their episode of unemployment, for the rest of their lives”. These statements are stunning to me in terms of the longevity of the impact. Unemployment is personal and it is painful. I would like to be able to close this entry positively and report that we found her a perfect job. Sadly, that didn’t happen. I know she left our appointment with more ideas than she came in with. The sad look on her face told me that she still felt hopeless. I guess I’ll take my own advice and not take it personally.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

A simple headline in the Sunday newspaper caught my eye this morning. The headline states: “Girls may learn math anxiety from teachers”. Having struggled with math anxiety for most of my life and having seen many other women with similar struggles, I decided to dig a bit deeper into this study. Out of my frustration in high school math class I can remember foolishly thinking “I’ll never use this in my real life!” This is a contemporary problem as many girls see math as irrelevant to everyday problem solving. This current research was funded by the National Science foundation and completed by researchers from the University of Chicago. The researchers assessed the level of math anxiety in first and second grade teachers and looked at the relationship of math achievement and gender stereotypes. Ah gender stereotypes!

Being in my mid-fifties now, I can remember my junior high Home Economics teacher telling my all-girl class that most of us wouldn’t need much math beyond calculating the size of a roast needed for our husband’s work dinner parties. We wouldn’t be scientists or NASA mathematicians. We might need to know how to budget our husband’s salary but that wouldn’t demand the higher level math courses. It was fine if we didn’t do well or didn’t like our math classes. We also knew that girls who were smart in math were not liked by boys. We were told by mothers, teachers, books and movies that it was more important for us to know other feminine topics such as cooking and how to apply make-up and to leave the math to the boys. Of course this was just as the rise of feminism was beginning to rattle these limiting ideas and roles.

On the one hand we received liberal doses of the old stereotypes and on the other we were told we could have anything that men did. Women have put many cracks in the glass ceiling through the past several decades but this struggle with math doesn’t seem to be one of those yet. This current research does much to explain that math anxiety is the gift that keeps on giving generation after generation. This is not because girls and women are incapable but because we are passing on our own anxiety even as we teach the basic skills.

This study looked at 17 female teachers (90% of elementary school teachers are female). At the beginning of the school year the student’s math anxiety was unrelated to how the teacher felt about math. It was found that the more anxious the teacher was about math the lower the scores for the girls while boy’s scores were unaffected. In further testing, girls who accepted the idea that boys were naturally better at math continued to see declining math scores. This causes me to look at the reality that just as I passed on other characteristics to my daughter, I may have passed on my math anxiety to her as well.

As a teacher I have been open about my math anxiety hoping to inform my female students that they are not alone with that anxiety and that they can still be successful in spite of it. This study gives me pause that my sharing may have contributed more to increasing the problem not diminishing it. Role modeling appears to be a mixed blessing in this instance. One of the important conclusions from this study is the math anxiety can be decreased through increasing math requirements for elementary school teachers. I prefer to rephrase this conclusion to: the better the math training, the higher the female teacher’s math self-efficacy. Higher math self-efficacy in female math teachers leads to higher math scores and higher math self-efficacy for the girls. Self-efficacy in math (as in most areas of life!) has lasting benefits.

Perhaps a broader application for all of us who are in positions to influence the next generation of girls and young women is to take these conclusions very seriously and polish up our math skills and our attitudes about our math abilities. Instead of confessing to our math anxiety and accepting it, we need to work to overcome it. We want both girls and boys to achieve their full academic potential and we can achieve this by demonstrating how useful and empowering math knowledge can be.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

I was watching Rachel Maddow’s show the other night as she interviewed Tracy Kidder. Kidder has written several books including a moving one about Haiti called “Mountains beyond Mountains” that details the work of Paul Farmer and the organization Partners in Health (www.pih.org). Kidder also wrote a New York Times Op-Ed piece this week called “Country without a Net”. Please check out this information if you’re interested in learning more about Haiti. As Kidder talked with Rachel Maddow about a country that he clearly loves, he became more and more passionate about the ongoing needs of this cruelly destitute and misunderstood country.

I thought I’d use my blog entry as an opportunity to discuss the concept of social justice in light of the efforts of this one organization and its guiding principles as it works to serve the people of Haiti. This entry is, in part, a reaction to the hateful and unbelievably cruel comments of a radio talk show host who this week encouraged people to withhold giving. I do not even want to dignify this person by mentioning his name. The bigger reason for writing this entry is tied to my beliefs that most people do care, and will respond with gracious generosity when the need arises and the information is available. I believe there are very few people who could see the images of this disaster and not be moved to compassion.

PIH’s fight to provide quality health care should ring familiar to those of us who are paying attention to the current struggle in Congress regarding health reform. Partners in Health believe that health is a fundamental human right. In this endeavor the organization has developed a model of community based care. Their work is based on five principles: 1) Access to primary health care is the critical foundational piece to treat specific diseases, 2) Free health care and education for the poor so that all have access to quality health care, 3) Community Partnerships that involve community members at all levels from assessment to evaluation, 4) Addressing basic social and economic needs because fighting disease means fighting poverty, and 5) Serving the poor through the public sector is the most effective method to insure sustained access. PIH’s website states: “Service is the defining feature of PIH’s work, our trademark. Since our inception, it has served as a philosophy, an emblem, and a guide. We serve our patients, their communities, and the cause of equitable access to health care and other basic human rights”.

The values and principles of this organization fit the counseling profession’s definition of social justice. Samuel Gladding writes that major elements of a social justice approach includes helping clients identify and challenge the environmental limits to their success. The country of Haiti has and is facing monumental environmental limits. It’s now up to us whether they have any opportunity to challenge and overcome these limits.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.

Pat Myers

I’ve had a wonderful break with my family. We’ve eaten too much, watched lots of movies, and kept up our tradition of holiday jigsaw puzzles. On television and in the local newspaper a different kind of puzzle has been emerging: the year end reviews. These include lists of the most popular men and women, the year’s top news stories, the best and worst celebrities, and of course, the best ways to lose that weight gained over the holidays. By completing these reviews we somehow can try to make sense of where we’ve been this past year and perhaps figure out where the new year will take us. It is difficult not to give in and to get a bit nostalgic in trying to put the personal pieces of the year end puzzle together.

My experiences in 2009 were like those of many people: life was somewhat difficult. I say somewhat because I know there are those whose life circumstances make my life look like a fairy tale. Self pity cannot last long when reading about Darfur, or about the almost 300,000 homeless children in California, or about the soldiers killed today in Afghanistan. It is hard to maintain a singular selfish focus when my dear friend tells me her sister’s cancer has spread, or the work associate who thought she was cancer free, finds a new cancer has taken root and that she will again need the wig stashed in the back of the closet.

This comparison doesn’t deny my pain but instead puts it into a perspective. In January of 2009 my father died. This Christmas has been my first without him. PZ Myers (no relation) posts a touching column this week about his father’s death that rings true with me. He writes: “One of the lies we always tell ourselves is that the pain will go away with time, that we’ll get over it, that time heals all wounds, and it’s not true. Every loss is forever raw, and we can feel it all again with just a thought or a reminder, like a Christmas phone call to the family. The older you get, the more of these moments of grief you accumulate, and they never leave you”. Myers also states that while it is true that grief persists and even accumulates, joy and happiness also persist and accumulate. This leads me to Viktor Frankl’s words “When we are no longer able to change a situation – we are challenged to change ourselves”. This is a needed reminder that I can, and will experience pain and loss, and I can, and will also experience happiness and joy and, most importantly, I have the power to choose my response to both circumstances.

Gerda Weissmann Klein, a Holocaust survivor and amazing woman, puts it this way: “When you go to your home, look not at what is missing, but what is there.” So I continue my year end pondering realizing the pieces of the puzzle that I have forgotten to include are two of the most powerful. The first is how I will choose to respond as I face whatever 2010 has in store and the second is to take joy and be thankful now for everything with which I have been so richly blessed. I think I’m ready for the new year now.

Patricia Myers is a counselor, an associate professor of counselor education, and doctoral student.