Not So Complicated

I channeled Mary Poppins: resplendent with unwavering decisiveness and spit-spot, lickety-split efficiency, two of us turned the spare-bedroom/storage-room into comfy guest quarters in less than 45 minutes. Easy-peasy…

…because it was not MY spare bedroom. No emotional investment, no weariness at once again facing the task at hand, it was, actually, fun. Change is refreshingly simple when it doesn’t cost you a thing.

When it costs something, change seems complicated and hard, even impossible.

Almost everyone I know has argued, in vain, with newspaper articles, the radio or television newscasts. As if briefly overcome with psychoses, they shout at the television and argue with the radio in their car. (Me, too). Whatever their position – progressive or conservative, libertarian or statist – they are frustrated and amazed, over and over, at officials’ protestations of how hard it is to make change happen.

Everyone has ideas on how to make change happen. Some are terrifying; others are naïve. Many, however, have the ring of common sense, and it makes one wonder, why are these officials, whether elected or snugly sinecured, acting as if everything is so complicated?

There are many different government programs aimed at moving people from one place to another. Why many? Who knows? Could it be simplified? Yes, and probably elegantly. Everyone on Medicare, for whatever reason, use service A; everyone who meets whatever clearly established criteria (such as Medicaid) for need, use service B. Give every participant a chipped card to use, require photo ID (or put it on the card) to be sure the cards don’t turn into underground currency like food stamps sometimes do, and then the details entered into the program (A or B) for that individual will determine: medical taxi, van assistance, reduced or free bus fare? A bright STEM high school senior could write the bulk of the program in a day or so. If you immediately imagined the most complicated possible situations just to pick a fight with me: sure, those exist. If someone needs a wheelchair-accessible van, then that goes into the electronic info on their card; if they merely need a cab for doctor appointments, that’s on the card. As circumstances change, someone in a remote office can input the update. When Mr. X no longer needs a wheelchair van to get to his appointments, his account can (spit-spot, lickety-split) be adjusted to provide for the appropriate transportation benefit. Plus, with GPS it won’t be hard to figure out if the beneficiary had the cab drop them at Dr. K’s or at K-Mart: auditing for abuse becomes simple. Ta-da: not easy, but simple.

If the object was to make sure poor people had good quality healthcare, one might wonder, why not simply work with what we have? One, we have a public health department system and two, we have a VA system to serve as a model for comprehensive (albeit labyrinthine) healthcare. What makes it so complicated to appropriately expand the one, based on what we know from the other? Doctors are leaving, or not going into, private practice and instead signing on as employees in the private sector, so a nice government job with benefits and a pension seems like a tempting offer for many D.O.s, MDs, ARNPs, RNs, dentists, and other healthcare providers angling to be someone’s employee. Yes, we’d need more buildings and more staff, and probably some specialty services would be outsourced (the VA knows all about that, too). Who uses them? How about anyone who meets criteria for transportation assistance, as above? They already have the ID card; add that info. Outsourcing so little of it will lead to much less fraud, the latter a cause of handwringing for the same politicians who resist change.

Oh, I know. I can’t possibly understand. It’s far more complicated than that. Well, no, it’s not. It’s not going to be easy, but that is not the same as complicated. From out here, it is very clear that sometimes what is explained as “complicated” really means “not easy.” These are different things.

A marathon is not complicated. It is a matter of stepping forward and repeating that action for 26.2 miles. I know; I ran 79 of them. They were not easy. They were simple and hard. So are lots of things. It is just easier to see “simple and hard” from the outside than from the inside.

“Complicated” is a euphemism for something along the lines of, “Well, we don’t want to change anything; some people will be unhappy, and maybe we’ll lose some votes, so somehow we must give the appearance of changing things without actually changing anything.” The best we seem to get sometimes is the legislative version of buying storage containers during the January sales. It’s the same pile of junk, but it’s temporarily neat. If the object is to pretend to change, then, yes, everything we shout at the newspaper and radio about is quite complicated. I have no idea how to run AND not run at the same time, so how could a bunch of bureaucrats figure out how to simplify programs while simultaneously avoiding any changes?

Our ambivalent relationship with change makes it simple, and enjoyable, to help other people organize their stuff. The books were not MY books, the stuff was not MY stuff. People who have enough money and stuff hire people to come in and bully them into getting rid of stuff. The theory is that someone else, who is not emotionally invested, will be able to confront me. I can imagine the process:

Professional organizer: “Now, Lori, how many CS Lewis books do you really need?”

Me: “I dunno. How many ARE there? Ought I leave room for more?”

It goes downhill from there.

The analogy ought to fail because the people we elect should not be emotionally attached to ineffective programs. They behave like people suffering the deep heartache that leads to hoarding behavior, but I suspect the attachment is less suffering and more sinister: each entanglement serves a gratifying purpose or two.

Imagine members of Congress clinging, weeping, to the thousands of pages of regulations that describe the several programs to provide fuel (or rather, money for fuel) to poor people in winter. Why would they fret about merging these into one, clear, program? Where is the burning enthusiasm to ensure that the funds to help people stay warm are used prudently and effectively? I don’t want to read about one person collecting fuel benefits from multiple funds and using some of it for frills, while someone else freezes to death. I want everyone to be warm and cozy. If there were one program, would people find a way to abuse it? Surely; but simplicity reduces the camouflage.

I suspect we will all be shouting at the news for a long time. Meanwhile, I have to go pretend to be someone else so that I can impose some order on my stuff: a process that will be simple and hard.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

As a friend fades away

Clancy has dementia.

Clancy is a 15-year-old cat, who has been my near-constant companion since he was about 8 weeks old and nearly dead. Our daughter found him while at work; he was lying under a dumpster. Since my beloved cat Chili had died only two months before, she brought this mostly-dead kitten home for me. The rescue process included a transfusion, some medication for a life-threatening flea infestation, a few weeks of hand-feeding and two weeks of my sleeping on the floor so the half-dead kitty could sleep on my chest, feeling the heartbeat and warmth of fellow mammal while he regained some strength. Clancy thrived and enjoyed robust good health.

Clancy met me at the door, tail wagging (yes, he IS a cat) every day. He followed me from room to room; he stood up on his hind legs and patted my hip when I was cooking, looking for a handout. He “helped” me read, do crosswords and yoga. He had a share of every serving of chicken, turkey and fish that I ate for dinner.

Now he has dementia. He lives in a cat-apartment in one room of the house, customized for his comfort with arthritis-friendly ramps to window perches, places to hide, soft places to sleep, quiet music and a chair, where I sit with him every day. He still likes to stretch out on the Sunday crossword puzzle, and he obligingly “helps” with my yoga a few mornings a week.

Sometimes he does not seem to know who I am; he cowers and hides. Other times he is suddenly aggressive. Sometimes he is his old, affectionate, playful self…and then an hour later, I return to find that he has dragged every loose piece of bedding into the litter box.

We have decided that as long as he seems to have a decent quality of life, we will keep on accommodating Clancy. However, we have made the difficult decision to forego any major medical interventions beyond his usual annual checkups and vaccinations. No heroics. How do you know if an animal companion has a good quality of life? When we watch a movie or sit reading and he curls up in my lap, as he has for all these years, it seems so. The next morning, when he hides when I come in with his Chunky Turkey in Gravy and ice water, it is less clear.

If Clancy and I are very, very fortunate, he will slip away from this world in his sleep one night, curled up in the kitty bed he has had for many years, without too much fear or pain.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

Plan B

I am very, very hopeful that, when I leave the office this evening and get into my Ford Fiesta, it will start when I first turn the key and that all four tires will be inflated. It gets regular maintenance and I expect it to start. My plans, including the amount of time I schedule for various commutes, revolve around the expectation (Plan A, as it were) that the little car will be ready to roll.

Sometimes, she is NOT ready to roll. She might have a flat tire, or a dead battery (Florida heat is rough on batteries). So, just in case of various emergencies, I have a jack, spare tire, some tools, a can of tire-inflator, a quart of oil, some water, jumper cables, a fire extinguisher, an owner’s manual and my AAA card. I also have a Bible and Rosaries for other sorts of emergencies. I would vastly prefer not to resort to any of these Plan B’s alone in a parking lot at night, but every so often I have been happy to have them readily available.

On a much more critical scale, military and police personnel have to have plan B at the ready in case of a worst-case scenario. Let’s say you are a special operator and you and your comrades are supposed to slip in silently, extract an American hostage or two, and slip out with the same seamless, silent efficiency. That would be Plan A: no one on your side gets hurt and maybe not even too many of the enemy. If enemies have to be hurt, they cooperate by succumbing very, very quietly. Plan B, entailing air support and extra personnel and a whole lot of messiness, is far from optimal. Plan A is effective if nothing goes wrong. If anything goes wrong, then you need Plan Bs. Plan Bs have a higher likelihood of success in the case of an uh-oh situation than Plan A, but are far less desirable.

Most of us don’t have to worry about extracting hostages or inflicting deserved mayhem on an enemy. We have to muddle through, discerning our purpose and doing our best to live rightly. Do we, who don’t have any expectation of being caught in a gunfight, need a Plan B? It’s become quite popular, especially in the business school world, to assert that a Plan B is an excuse to let Plan A fail.

I would argue that Plan B is part of the backbone of successful planning. Consider, for example:

You have promised your small children that, if everyone cleans up their bedroom by 9 AM Saturday, you will all go to the zoo! Yay! You had better have a Plan B already presented to them, too, in case of rain (as in, if it rains, we will postpone the zoo and have lots of fun doing “X” at home). You do not have control over whether or not it rains on your zoo day, but you have control over creating alternatives that account for circumstances beyond your control. Would you rather have Plan A – a sunny, fun day at the zoo? Absolutely; but if it’s wet, cold and dreary, kids who are able to be disappointed but know that all is not lost are easier to deal with than children who are whining because “you promised we could go to the zoo,” and claim they care not that it is raining and all the animals will be hiding inside, out of the weather. You promised.

There are thousands of possible examples: the college application that is Plan B if the desired, and worked-for, scholarship at your Plan A school doesn’t materialize; the back-up work plan if it takes longer to get a job in your field than you’d expected; the gift you will get for your child if the most popular toy that holiday season is out of stock. Would you rather get a full scholarship to an Ivy League school, a great job that starts exactly two weeks after graduation and be able to score Tickle Me Elmo, the latest Transformer AND the talking pony? Yup, yup and giddy-yup…but those are not all within your control.

The business school model against Plan A, very interestingly researched by Doctors Shin and Milkman, focuses on short-term goals with brief time periods. One test, for example, was that some participants were asked to consider a Plan B if they failed at the brief task while doing the brief task. If you have 10 minutes to unscramble sentences, and the reward for success is a free snack and some are warned up front that, hey, you might want to think about where else on campus you can score some free food in case this doesn’t work out for you, those participants might be a bit distracted from the task at hand. You have given them two tasks. That doesn’t mean they were not motivated for Plan A (the free snack) but rather they had to do two tasks at once: the task for the free snack and figure out where to get free food if the buzzer went off before they finished the first task. This is one of several experiments in their research. Other business writers have emphasized the belief that asking people on a project to have a plan B is like giving them permission to fail at plan A.

This is an interesting perspective and very narrow in its focus. There are risks in over-generalizing the findings of any particular piece of research, something Doctors Shin and Milkman know. Unfortunately, readers who see a non-academic’s cheerful, “Hey, if you develop a plan B you plan to fail,” misstated summary of Doctors’ Shin and Milkman’s work might leap to the conclusion that Plan B means Bad Plan. That is not what the researchers concluded.

I would propose that there are a few common reasons for a bias against adequately thinking through a Plan B when preparing to execute Plan A. These are by no means comprehensive –

“I have done everything that success requires and so I am entitled to success.” Ah, the entitlement myth, in which a benign and biased-towards-you universe bestows what you have earned even though there is far less of whatever you want available than there are hard-working and deserving candidates. Hundreds of people might apply for that scholarship, and all of them have great GPAs, hours of non-mandated community service and glowing endorsements from their local Mother Teresa. Yet the committee (and its computer program) can only give the scholarship to one applicant. Scholarship, job, internship…failing to achieve that one, ideal Plan A doesn’t mean you personally failed. It means that you didn’t get Plan A, probably for many reasons outside of your control.
“I am terrified of not meeting the expectations of those close to me (parents, often) and so most pour everything into Plan A. Anything less than absolute success means I have failed them – and myself.” This speaks to the narcissistic parent (“I am a perfect parent and you, my ought-to-be-perfect child, are the Exhibit A in proof of my perfection”) projecting the need for boundless success and admiration onto the child. Spouses can do this to one another, and children might fall victim to Pygmalion coaches or teachers.
“If I have a Plan B, it will surreptitiously make me turn into a lazy slug who will fail to put in the effort required for Plan A.” This is the, I can’t trust my own strength of character theorem, and one can only say in response to this, “Know thyself.” However, lack of a Plan B is not going to singlehandedly turn an unmotivated sloth into a laser-focused, goal-oriented powerhouse. If you know you need to work on your intrinsic motivation strength, now would be a good time to start.
“Plan A is my heart’s desire and I cannot bear to consider life without it…so I will just not consider the fact that Plan B might be necessary.” This is idealistic and romantic, and if you are not a good-hearted male under age 21, you probably need to accept a teaspoon of reality. If you are a good-hearted male under age 21, I will cut you some slack. That is the healthy age range for passionate idealism with a dose of immortality myth. The rest of us have to deal with the reality that life changes constantly. Your robust good health, your vision and hearing, the career you love, your neighborhood…will all change. If there is not a Plan B, you will have the alternative of crushing despair on top of the burden of grief, time after time after time.

I began this essay, spurred by a friend’s report of an adult daughter who, failing to get the job she’d applied for after college, is moving back home without any particular plan. Apparently, there was no Plan B. This led to curiosity about the “Plan B” issue in general, and discovering Shin and Milkman’s research. Not long after I began this essay, the book Option B, by Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant was released. I am looking forward to reading Option B and have no idea of its contents other than it was born within the heartbreak of unexpected grief and the part of the grieving process that requires that we shift to an alternative vision of our future.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

Practical Psychology

My second book, 31 Ways/31 Days: Practical Psychology for the Frazzled Faithful, has just been published and is available via Amazon and other retailers, in both softcover and eBook. In it, I present information from the field of psychology as clear, simple action items for normal, busy people who want to make positive changes.

I love to turn psychological research into something a non-therapist can use, right now, to make relationships and life better.

Sometimes, research sounds ridiculous by the time it hits your news feed. Gleaning the nuggets that can change your life – today – is challenging. Consider, for example, that a cluttered environment contributes to parental stress to the point where it interferes with consistent parenting styles. Of course work, chores and piles of stuff to do covering every flat surface are stressful…but who knew that the clutter added enough stress to interfere with parenting? It’s easier to reduce stress by cutting a little clutter than figuring out what other source of stress to eliminate (hmmm…change jobs? quit working? send the kids to boarding school in Antarctica?) Implementing a manageable, meaningful change makes psychology, with its seemingly arcane tidbits of scientific research, useful to you. It’s not magic or a complete overhaul, but it’s a step in the right direction.

Another useful application of psychological research: even looking at pictures of nature helps reduce stress for everyone, and can improve cognitive skills in people with dementia. Whether it’s you at work, or your beloved elderly family member at home, some photos of nature to fill the eyes from time to time can help. It’s not going to make a miserable job a happy job, or reverse dementia, but it can ease the burden a bit.

If psychology doesn’t make life better and improve our understanding and relationships, it’s not very practical…and if it’s not practical, what good is it?

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

The Big Screen

Therapists spend a lot of time in various trainings, and sometimes the speakers enthusiastically exhort us to try techniques for ourselves. This was one such day. “I can’t do this mindfulness thing,” my colleague said in an aside to me, “I can’t keep my mind empty.”

Unlike assertiveness, this was one area where I have something possibly useful to offer.

The point of mindfulness in mental health is not to be empty-minded. It’s to select, moment by moment, what will (versus what will not) be the center of our attention.

Imagine a giant movie screen. That’s your conscious awareness, overflowing with all sorts of activity. The thoughts that inspire strong negative emotions are, necessarily, quite compelling. We were designed that way. Otherwise, a lion would have devoured our ancestors, who failed to notice the threat as they contemplated a butterfly. This would have led to us, their progeny, not being here to discuss mindfulness or anything else.

Just so, we are prone to direct our attention to whatever thoughts pop up with negative emotions attached: fear, anxiety, anger, sorrow. They feel more urgent than happy thoughts, the way a lion feels more urgent than a butterfly.

Mindfulness practices simply coach us (over and over and over again) in the gentle practice of noticing the negatively charged thought, acknowledging it, and redirecting our attention to our preferred focus.

If you were watching a huge movie screen, for example, you might be tempted to watch the Antarctic explorer dangling in grave danger over a precipice…or, if that were too intense, you could redirect your gaze to the penguins frolicking in another corner of the screen. It’s your choice. It might have to be made over and over and over, but with practice people are able to do it relatively smoothly, having distracting or upsetting thoughts pop up at undesired times and merely refocusing on the matter at hand. If you are like most people, you are adept at doing this at least sometimes. You have merely to strengthen this skill, and learn to generalize it.

Of course, there is so much more to mindfulness than this: it is a science as well as an art, and grounded in psychology and other health sciences in more than two decades of research that includes brain imaging and not just subjective and scientifically flimsy self-reports. For a lot of people, though, it sounds impossible, implausible and suspiciously more like religion than science.

The best place to seek more information would be to look up the sizable work and research of Dr. Jon Kabat-Zinn, and from there the many practical applications and helpful resources.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

“Speak up! (Easier said than done)”

“The same thing happens again and again,” complained my friend. “I can’t get a word in edgewise at meetings and when I try, I just get talked over – like I’m not even there.” We commiserated about being talked over in meetings, and I offered all the usual well-intentioned platitudes about being assertive. The conversation nagged at me. How many clients, students, colleagues and friends have I urged to “be more assertive,” as if speaking up were ineluctably both a) easy and b) unfailingly effective. Obviously, neither is the case; I ought to know.

Some relevant personal disclosures: I am radically introverted. I detest unnecessary conflict. Many experiences have shown me the wisdom of saying very little when I feel attacked and while this is, at times, incredibly useful, at other times it just makes things worse. The “worse” that results from speaking up tends to come right away: schoolyard bullies, for example, delight in prey that “fight back,” like cats playing with still-living mice. The “worse” that grows from silence usually comes later, which makes it hard to know when to retreat into silence and wait it out, and when it is worth taking something to the mats.

Some months ago, at a meeting with colleagues, I attempted several times (in vain) to make a point about a problem in the plans for a mutual project. The particulars aren’t relevant here; what matters is that I was trying to point out that if A, B, C are to be combined into D, and the current volume of A, B and C are 2D…well, we need to plan for 2D and not just D. The person in charge of the meeting plowed cheerfully over my objections. Alas, I continued to have concerns about the arithmetic and this was treated as some sort of mutiny and personal betrayal (it wasn’t). No explanation that it was merely a math problem was helpful. I spoke up, I tried again to speak up, and it was, clearly, not effective. Despite efforts to move forward as if all were fine, the relationship appears to be irretrievably damaged. (We did turn out to need 2D – and I did not reference the disagreement; it seemed inappropriate.)

A few months later, my unassertiveness floundered in the personal realm. Details are not necessary; suffice it to say that one person (call this person ‘Bob’) misrepresented a conversation to another (call this person ‘Sam’). Sam approached me with great distress as if I were somehow behind a plan that would involve many people descending upon Sam’s home (there was no plan and had there been, I would have been against it). Fortunately, there was at least some history here of the same type of thing happening in the past with Bob…Bob known to be of the temperament to leap to unexamined conclusions.

A few weeks later, my reluctance to engage in repeated attempts at being assertive ending up costing me two friendships. Back to word problems we go. Friend A said something interpreted to mean something entirely different than A intended by friends B and C. I was (as is regrettably often the case) lost in thought and didn’t hear precisely how the point was (mis)made, or mistaken. B and C elected not to confront A at the time. I, having heard A make this particular point very clearly many times, knew it was not meant as interpreted. When B and C were angry, I felt blindsided. It smacked of the recent colleague problem and social near miss. It is a poor excuse, but it seemed as if, after one attempt, it was useless to be more “assertive.” I felt, as it was with my colleague, that there was apparently no making things clear. I gave up – I dropped my end of the rope – have lost friends B and C, have a strained relationship with a valued colleague, and must face the fact I am the common denominator.

I don’t believe I am the only one at fault. Dismissing legitimate concerns, running off with rumors, closing off explanations: there are plenty of missteps to go around…but there, in the middle of it, am I, retreating into watchful silence when speech seems futile. Determining what is and is not futile obviously takes wisdom, which I lack.

I will still encourage clients to be assertive when it is the appropriate thing to do…we’ll just have to explore whether, and when, it is the appropriate choice.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

When Media Lies Hurt: The Destructive Impact of Sloppy Journalism on Real People

(Originally published in USA Today Magazine, July 2016. A few updates were made for reposting to this blog)

It’s safe to say that most people have long since given up on the idea of unquestioning trust for the media. Walter Cronkite died in 2009. Despite vague mistrust, people are vulnerable to the effect that repeatedly hearing things has. Hearing something over and over engrains it in our brains, even if it’s not true. The repeated lie tends to rise to the top when a related topic comes up. This is one reason so many people believe that, for example, violent crime is up all over the country (it’s not) or that we know for sure exactly what schizophrenia is, or what it’s caused by (we don’t).

As a psychotherapist, I see the pain that sloppy journalism creates for real people on a regular basis. I don’t mean transient worry; I mean the possibility of a lifetime of unnecessary anguish inflicted upon people who believe that the information hurled at them by media must be based in truth.

Three examples will suffice to illustrate; you can no doubt generate plenty of examples of your own.

Media Misrepresentation: People considering suicide always give clues about their intention, and thus friends and family have an opportunity to see it coming and intervene.

According to A. Dadoly in the Harvard Health Newsletter (2011), professional estimates are that 30-80% of suicides are impulsive acts, with little or no planning beyond the immediacy of the moment. That means family members could usually not have read the signs, and could not possibly have intervened. Yet, most people believe, because they’ve been told repeatedly, that warning signs are just about always there and thus are tormented with guilt and self-reproach for failing to see something that was, tragically, probably not there.

Media Misrepresentation: Depression is a medical illness that is a lifelong condition. You’ll be on medication forever because there is something wrong with your brain.

The truth is, depression, or “major depressive disorder,” as it is currently labeled, is a construct. It is diagnosed off a checklist of symptoms. Meet enough of the symptoms for a two-week period of time and, bingo, you can be diagnosed, whether that sadness, poor sleep, lack of energy, poor concentration, etc., is due to grief because someone you love has died, or to some other life circumstance…or, perhaps, something medical. Some research indicates that most cases of depression will improve within 7 weeks whether you do anything to treat it or not. Plenty of evidence shows that lifestyle changes such as proper sleep, diet and exercise, plus social supports and a bit of emotional support via therapy, will create improvement in less time and leave you more resilient the next time life throws you a challenge (which, of course, it will). You can find a wealth of scientific research as well as specific steps to apply that research to real life in Stephen Ilardi, MD, Ph.D.’s wonderful 2009 book, The Depression Cure. There’s plenty of other research out there, of course, but for busy readers, Dr. Ilardi has done a masterful job of tying together many researchers’ work and working out a useful process.

Yet millions of people have been sold the lie that their symptoms are evidence of a brain disorder that requires lifelong medication. The medications change the brain, cause all sorts of unpleasant side effects, such as weight gain, loss of sexual interest and/or function, and general apathy towards others, and often cause terrible withdrawal symptoms. They also carry a risk for impulsive acts of self-harm, including suicide, and violence against others. Almost every adolescent and young adult mass killer in the US in the past couple of decades, with the exception of avowed Islamist terrorists, has been on one or more psychiatric drugs, including many antidepressants.

Do these medications help some people? Apparently so, according to them and their doctors. That does not, however, prove that everyone who is sad for more than two weeks has an incurable but manageable brain disease and is “mentally ill.”

Media Misrepresentation: Your gay son or daughter is going to burn in hell just because he/she is LGBT.

This lie is a criticism of many religions, and recently has been part of the background of a television show called “The Real O’Neals.” One part of the plot involves a gay young man whose supposedly Catholic mother is consumed with despair because “her religion teaches her that her son is going to burn in hell because he is gay.” That’s a paraphrase from interviews I’ve read with a star of the show. I have seen many families suffer under this belief. Parents are alienated from their children; children believe that their parents are condemning them; parents and children alike reject their faith. I will address this from my Catholic perspective; you can do the homework on your faith.

The Catholic Church has an international apostolate (a fancy term for an approved special ministry) called Courage, focused entirely on providing spiritual, emotional and social support for LGBT Catholics. Its intention is not to “make them straight,” but to help them live Catholic lives with the orientation they experience. The official Catechism of the Catholic Church isn’t exactly politically correct: like the psychiatrists of just one generation ago, it considers homosexual behavior disordered – but you could say Catholicism (and all orthodox Christianity) says about the same about any sexual activity outside of marriage.

However, the Catechism of the Catholic Church also says: (paragraph 2358):

The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible…They must be accepted with respect, compassion and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God’s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross the difficulties they may encounter… (that “uniting to the sacrifice of the Lord’s Cross, is of course, what all Catholics do when, faced with challenges, we talk about “offering it up” – this is not a unique imposition upon GLBT persons).

Paragraph 2359 ends with, “They can and should gradually and resolutely approach Christian perfection.” Hmmm. No ineluctable path to hell and damnation there.

One can, however, imagine the pain of a parent who imagines their child is immediately rejected by God. One wishes they were bold enough to seek right guidance.

Our Responsibility

It’s easy, of course, to blame the media. Journalists go to college and seem to take pride in getting the “real story,” or whatever they imagine they’re doing. So why don’t they do their homework? Why present the easy, available tale? Psychologically, they appear to indulge in confirmation bias: the tendency to seek out and focus on things that verify what they already “know.” We consumers of media need to check the facts.

Bad information creates pain and suffering. Don’t assume what you read is the whole truth. Do your research, and turn to people who might have access to information you don’t have. Someone’s peace of mind may be at stake.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMFT, NCC

drloriputerbaugh

Psychotherapist, Author, Teacher

Not So Complicated

As a friend fades away

Plan B

Practical Psychology

The Big Screen

“Speak up! (Easier said than done)”

When Media Lies Hurt: The Destructive Impact of Sloppy Journalism on Real People