Power of Thought

I place a lot of emphasis in my treatment approach in helping the client understand their thinking patterns. As you can see from the model, the application of this emphasis is the concept “thinking errors.” I will return to this in a future blog. To do so, I need to first discuss the power of thought. I use three books as resources for the background on how powerful our thoughts are. If you want to read more, please read Slowing Down to the Speed of Life by Carlson and Bailey, Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (yeah, that’s his name, he’s Czech), and Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking by Malcom Gladwell.

For the sake of the conversation, I need to reduce and simplify the implication of their theories. To fully understand the material, I recommend additional discussion and review of the material. In essence, all awareness and knowledge are based on perceptions and through the analysis of these perceptions we arrive at a thought that guides are feelings, choices and behaviors. This is a bit different from how many people think. Often, we hold that feelings come first. Yet, consider the following scenarios.

1) You parked your car on the street. As you return from the store, you find that your car is gone. The awareness is that your car is missing. The feelings are derived from that conclusions based on various thoughts. Depending on additional thoughts, your feelings might be different, so consider the following.

a. You’ve been reading the news paper about how many cars have been stolen in the neighborhood. The thought that percolates to your awareness is that “My car is stolen” and you’ll probably have feelings associated with that thought, such as feeling violated and/or angry.

b. As an alternative, you notice a “No parking sign” during high traffic/rush hours. And you happened to park your car just before that time began, and returned to find you car gone. The thought might be “My car has been towed.” Notice, however, your feelings are different based on the thought. You might feel angry, or embarrassed, or shame because I should have known better.

c. Consider a third possibility such that you come out of the store talking on your cell phone. As you get to where you parked the car, you realize it is gone. As you think “My car is gone” with the complementing thoughts, you notice that 6 cars up is your car. Because you were distracted, you went to the wrong car. The corresponding feelings might be embarrassment, relief, and/or humor as you realize how much you overacted.

2) These three examples help explain how thoughts shape your feelings and subsequent behaviors. Gladwell highlights how much of our thought is actually automatic and can occur in the “Blink” of an eye (hence the title of his book). Sometimes our thoughts and reactions are so automatic that we simply don’t realize how many different thoughts we had in a particular moment. Not true, you say? Think about how many complicated tasks, thoughts, and attention to stimuli occurs while you are driving a car. Yet, you never truly “think” about driving a car. You simply “drive.”

The application in treating sexual compulsivity is to help clients realize how ritualized the acting out process is for many people. Too many times I hear from a client “I don’t know how this happened.” My response “I believe you, and the process of therapy is to help slow down the thoughts.” In the next blog I will highlight the concept of thinking errors. The concept is a direct application of the power of thought to the acting out cycle.

Professional Changes beginning Jan 08

Dear Friends and Colleagues,

January 2008 has arrived with a flurry of activity. I’m writing to catch you all “up-to-speed” regarding changes in my professional life.

I moved my private practice from a solo-practice in Uptown in Minneapolis to a group practice near Loring Park in Minneapolis. The new practice is a combination of the Sexual Health Institute and Human Interfaces. My goal is to use the synergy from the relationship with the two groups to grow the Sexual Health Institute. As of this date, we have two psychiatrists and four psychologists committed to providing quality mental health, psychiatric and sexual health services. This change reflects a significant change since I started my private practice over 10 years ago. And, as I expand my practice, I’ve decided to place an added emphasis on education and sexuality. To reach this goal, I’ve added two components to my work.

The first area is a new blog I started to help individuals who struggle with Sexual Compulsivity. The blog is located at: http://sexualhealthinstitute.blogspot.com. Please feel free to share this link with others. My goal is to steadily build a collect of resources that might be helpful to others. So far there are about 10 posts covering a range of issues that I would consider are an “intro” to sexual compulsivity.

The second area expressing my commitment to education is through public speaking. Too many people simply don’t know anything about sexual compulsivity and sexual health issues. In 2007, for example, I had my “22 seconds of fame” when I was interviewed by Tom Lyden of Channel 9 News regarding the matter of Sen. Craig and sexual compulsivity. In addition, I presented at a mental health agency providing professional enrichment and a few churches providing adult education.

In addition to moving my practice, I added additional staff. Please welcome Dr. Shannon Garritty, Psy D., LP. She is starting her practice at 1-2 days a week. As her case load grows, she will be adding hours. Her specialties include spirituality, wellness, anxiety, depression, sexuality, coping with life changes and couples therapy. Dr. Garrity is also a provider for Blue Cross and Blue Shield.

As a result of the changes and growth in my private practice, I decided to leave Alpha Services effective February 1. It’s hard to believe that three years passed so quickly. It is a difficult choice because I greatly admire the staff and community of Alpha. I also acknowledge many of the clients who created significant positive changes in their life. For current clients and probation officers, I’m working on transferring these clients to the new therapist.

Finally, I will continue teaching one course each quarter in the Walden School of Psychology program. I am also supervising graduate students in their thesis projects.

Please check out the updated website reflecting new contact information, a map to the new office, links to the blog, and information about Shannon and myself. The website is: www.sexualhealthinstitute.org.

My new work contact info:

Weston M Edwards, PhD, LP
1409 Willow St, Suite 109
Minneapolis, MN 55403
tel: 612.872.1500
fax: 612.872.2205
mobile: 612.987.4482
web: sexualhealthinstitute.org
email: Weston@westonmedwards.com

Exercise 4: Life timeline.

The goal of this exercise is to translate the material from the sex history into a visual format to help understand how your sexual behaviors have occurred across time. Complete the following exercise attempting to be as thorough as possible. You might need to devise a code to fit everything into the timeline. (It might also be helpful to tape a few pieces of paper together to make a larger piece.) Across the left hand edge of the page, draw a vertical line. The vertical line should be numbered –5 to +5. At the center of the vertical line, draw a horizontal line going the length of the page. The horizontal line reflects your age across time. Take the responses to the sex history questions and list the events along the horizontal line roughly reflecting your age at the time of the event. In addition to the behaviors identified in your sexual history, plot the following life events on the time line.

1) Meeting a best friend.

2) Having a crush.

3) Age when you hit puberty.

4) Your first time of masturbation.

5) Age when you can first remember being attracted to another person

6) Your first kiss/ first date

7) Age of your first orgasm.

8) Age when you first had sex (however you define that)

a. With a girl

b. With a guy

9) Age when you had your first relationship

10) Age at relationship changes (new relationship, divorce, break-up, marriage)

11) Age at life changes (move, new job, sobriety, first child, illness, death of a loved one).

12) Any other relevant critical incidents in your life. A critical incident is any event, “large” or “small” that has meaning in your life. An example might be when you self-identified as “gay.”

13) With additional color pens or pencils, track other relevant behaviors. This might include tracking spending behaviors, drug or alcohol behaviors, gambling, etc. A later assignment will ask you to reflect on other behaviors that correlate to your sexual behavior.

14) Next, with additional color pens or pencils track additional life events such as depression/mood, stress, marital satisfaction, job satisfaction, or other important events in your life. Below is a simplified example to illustrate how to complete a timeline.

By charting these events, it may be possible to discover simple and/or complex patterns to an individual’s sexual behavior. In the example below, I graphed mood, anxiety, job satisfaction and sexual satisfaction. Reviewing the chart, there appears to be a relationship between mood and frequency of sexual functioning. While it is possible to see a relationship, it is not possible to determine cause and effect. In this case, the mood may lead to sexual acting out; alternatively, sexual acting might be an attempt to feel better; another alternative is that the person feels depressed because of the sexual acting out. Because of the graph, we get a sense of the relationship. Therapy is a process of exploring and understanding the relationship.