Tag Archives: time distortion

Cognitive Pearl #096 Time & Mother Earth

Don't Look At The Jug

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In my previous post, I introduced two ways to help reorient clients to the present moment. Here’s one more:

3. Strengthening their executive functions. Our minds are complex chaotic systems within systems. Yet, somehow our minds sustain us physically, emotionally, and so forth. This is all due to the blessing of our executive functions. You can read more about them here. Anxiety, depression, psychosis, as well as psychosis and many other states (including bereavement) levy a heavy price on these functions. Here are some of the things that I do with my clients to strengthen them, 

Get them writing. Shopping lists, budgets, schedules, reminders, sudoko games, and journaling help organize frenzied minds. Whether it’s with paper and pencil or using an app on a phone, the physical act of writing grounds and organizes. Grounding reduces cognitive stress so they can more easily focus on the challenges and opportunities of the moment. 

Get them physical. Anxiety, depression, psychosis, you name it, are states that remind me of a scene in the movie 2001: A Space Odyssey when one of the astronauts has been severed from the tether that connects him with the space ship. We see him horribly and helplessly floating away. My clients always relate to that image. My answer is to get them reconnected with Earth. They do this through bathing, cooking, cleaning, walking, peeling potatoes, dancing in their living rooms, or tossing a ball from hand to hand. Anything that gets them out of their ‘lost in space’ mind set and back to Earth will help them reorient to the now. 

Use Prostheses. Without getting into the spiritual and psychological downsides of smart phones, tablets, and all the rest, technology can really help our clients. Calendar apps, To Do List, apps, Journaling apps, and even Cognitive Therapy apps (here’s a good one). And let’s not forget how the convenience of music, lectures, and guided imagery meditation in the palm of the hand. This technology is no different than the prosthetic arms and legs and eyes that we use to the limited live again. And living brings people back to the now. 

To be continued!

Shabbat Shalom!

Cognitive Pearl #095 The Moment & It’s Loving Embrace

Jerusalem cats tale

 

 

 

 

 

In my previous post, I suggested that a function of the sensation of the passage of time is part of our pattern recognition abilities. The sensation of time provides a background standard to organize the contents of our lives. We categorize, prioritize, plan, and respond based on the sensed temporal immediacy.

In our work, ‘sensed’ or ‘felt’ time has great relevance. The anxious, overwhelmed client not only experiences a swarm of threats; all of those threats are bearing down on him NOW. For the anxious there is no reprieve of ‘later’. As one of my clients described it, ‘I’ve gotta do everything right the hell now!!’

Similarly, the depressed client, especially when in a dysphoric mood state, is immobilized by regrets anchored in the temporal space of NOW. While clients may describe events in the past tense, their affect and cognition are temporally centered in the present and in the future. A client described his misery as watching ‘reruns of past failures scheduled for the next hundred years’.

In order to feel better our clients must do things that give them pleasure and mastery. Because of its enormous influence on their abilities to plan and do things, our clients’ temporal orientation is vitally important. The good news is that temporal reorientation in the vast majority of circumstances is accomplished easily. Here’s some of the ways which I’ve noticed and which I’ve developed further:

1. The imposition of temporal order through activity scheduling. The mere establishing of appointments has a reorienting effect. Cognitive therapists have long used activity scheduling to extend our efforts to bring the client back to the unpolluted now.

2. Helping the client establish a renewed sense of time through dialogue. The client centered psychotherapies in general, and cognitive therapy in particular, have always advocated ushering the client into the moment. We do this with dysfunctional thought records and with all of the homework assignments that we prescribe.

Most importantly it is our reassuring insistence which compels both client and therapist into the present. Instead of preoccupation in the past, we focus on present symptoms and ways to feel better now. While I acknowledge that past experiences and future risks are part of our work, I often explain to my clients that the best way to heal their lives and help them blossom, is to be rooted in the loving embrace of the present moment. From that secure position they can go back or forward in time and process anew the traumas of the past and fears of the future. 

To be continued!

Cognitive Pearl #093 Time Distortion & Misery

We rise by lifting others

Like you, I spend my life in the company of people complaining of great difficulties with anxiety and despair. Certainly, each has their own individual story. In fact beyond the commonality of the piercing, acute intensity of their misery they have nothing in common.

Except for one this one weird thing:

They all feel out of sync with the passage of time.

My anxious clients feel as though they are forever behind; ‘it’s too late!’ they complain as they contemplate impending catastrophes. My depressed clients, anchored with concrete to injuries and indignities of the past, relate to time as a loop, sweeping them around and around through more of the same old same old.

The anxious and depressed are not the only ones who struggle with time. The last quarter century spent in the company of addicts has taught me how they too feel upended by time. Urges feel like they will last forever like some incredibly prolonged tooth extraction. Or sometimes their addiction will generate a glowing time cocoon in which they feel as though all is well, as though it will last forever. And then those suffering from psychoses have their own difficulties with time: they are often out of sync with the flow of time, having great difficulty calculating how long tasks take or coordinating appointments with others.

What all of this means to me as a cognitive therapist is, like dysfunctional thinking patterns, diet and health, and social and family background, I must also consider the relationship with time as part of my work with clients. In the coming post, I’ll discuss why our relationship with time is so important. I’ll also share some of the ways that I’ve tried (not always successfully) to alter my clients’ relationship with time.

For the interested, two Biblical passages stand out in reflecting the connection between time distortion in human suffering. The first, a heart rendering verse in Deuteronomy 28:67:

In the morning you shall say, Would it were evening! and in the evening you shall say, Would it were morning! for the fear of your heart with which you shall fear, and for the sight of your eyes which you shall see.

The second, Genesis 8:22 tells us how the cessation of the seasonal passage of time was part of the destruction of the world in the time of Noah:

While the earth remains, seed time and harvest, and cold and heat, and summer and winter, and day and night shall not cease.