More on sense of security: Mastering a task

Task mastery

One of my textbooks cites a study on hysicians and their initial assessment of their patients - The young and unexperienced physicians did it "by the book", using their textbook theories. The more experienced physicians started out by just getting a feel for the patient, working by intuition, then switching to theoretical knowledge and deduction, and back to intuition and so forth. When asked to describe what they're actually doing, experienced practicers of all kinds have trouble putting words to it - It's like second nature to them now.

When you know something so well it's automatic, so well you don't have to think about it, that's when you perform best. Actually, asking an expert to describe what hir is doing while hir is doing it, will reduce hir performance significantly. It's a flow state.

So, paradoxal in a way, those who have mastered the conventions, the theory and the structure of how to perform a task, are those who have the easiest time deviating from convention and structure - To improvise and be creative. When your skills are so ingrained you don't have to spend cognitive resources on them, the task in itself is routine, you can use your resources to experiment and improv.

But there is also a sense of security in this: When you know you can do this task, when you feel you have it under control, that's when you dare leave your foundation. You stop using your resources to protect against failure, and start using them to reach beyond, reach something higher and novel.

Imagine an acrobat balancing on a chair. He has practiced falling in the right way, so doesn't have to fear hurting himself. He's practiced balancing on a chair until he's mastered it, so he doesn't even have to concentrate to do it. Now, he can get creative, juggling and balancing the chair at the same time, making little jumps with the chair, balancing another chair on the tip of his nose...

Sense of security

What is interesting is that developing a skill follows the same path as finding a sense of security in a life issue. Let's compare the model for mental health...

(Maybe "Borders" and "Process depth" should be replaced with "External" and "Internal")

With a model for mastering a task:

Panic: Confronted with a task where you don't even know in or out, you probably feel lost and anxious, panicked and out of control. You are occupied with defending against catastrophy.

Control: A task where you know the basics, there is a sense of control. You know what to expect and what to do. You are occupied with working with the tools you've been given.

Creativity: When working a task which you know by heart, you transcend the simple know-how. You do not need to fix your attention and problem-solving to handling the tools at hand, you fix your attention to a vision of creativity, and use these tools to reach it. You are occupied with creating beyond the borders.

So, just as a Bowlby described how a child needs a foundation of security to be brave, to build a secure base with hir parents before sie dares to explore around said base...

Just as Maslow describes how you need to find a basic sense of security in the domains of life to start realizing your higher creative potential...

So too need you build your  foundation of theory and knowledge before you can leave it, venturing into creativity. Hell, I've read huge improv books on how to be more spontaneous!

Does mastery underlie mental health?

Let's go back to the model of mental health. What makes me excited here, is that we may take what we know about skill and mastery, and view life's issues as nothing more than tasks to be mastered and worked out correctly. 

- The one who haven't been given the tools and the confidence to handle a life issue doesn't even feel in control of the situation. Sie is occupied with defending oneself against the threat of catastrophy (real or imagined), and these defenses take the shape of symptoms of mental illness. (Abnormal)

- The one who knows how sie should act in response to a given situation can handle hirself well, feels safe and in control. Sie knows socially accepted ways of resolving these life issues. (Normality)

- The one who feels mastery of the life issue, who feels secure in it, can go beyond it, explore it, handle these life issues in any way sie wishes, choosing the most optimal answers for hirself. (Health)

Hmm, I should really check out the Control-Mastery theory.

Trust is the basic currency of life

Today, I wish to tell you that:
- Trust is the basic currency of life.
- As such, it can be invested, or bet if you will.
- A balance between trust and distrust must be managed
- In finding this balance, we construct working models of how to live our lives
- But perhaps evolution has put a greater emphasis on distrust than is optimal for the modern human

So yeah, I believe that having a sense of security, or trust towards oneself, is the one basic measurement of both our mental health and our ability.

Which is, you know, kind of a given, since a sense of security is just that: It’s an emotional assessment of the given situation, a belief that things are under control and won’t end in disaster. (See my post Man will survive)

But it runs both ways: We can have a sense of security in ourselves because we are well equipped to deal with the current situation, but we can also become better equipped to deal with the current situation by finding a sense of security in ourselves.

I would say that this sense of security, is the one single biggest psychological issue for the modern human. Trust in that I am capable of handling myself, trust that I am a valuable person, trust that I am accepted and loved by my peers. This is sort of an expanding on the concepts I introduced in A model of mental health.

We are today living in an individualistic society without authorities and traditions which can tell us what profession to pursue, what life to live, how to judge our worth as a humans, which was the case in the old collectivistic societies of tradition, family and religion. Suddenly, we need to make these calls ourselves.

There is plethora of psychological and layman-psychological terms for these issues: Self-efficacy, self-worth, self-esteem, locus of control, self-image, attachment style, insecurity-security.

In fact, everything that is good in humanity requires trust.

• Generosity towards others requires a trust in that these people will not exploit us.
• To dream and to work towards that dream requires that we trust in our visions, that we do not fear failure and disappointment.
• When we create and express ourselves, we show others our innermost being, and we need to believe that this is something valuable that other people will respect.
• Listening to and caring for other people requires a belief that their inner darkness won't hurt us.
• Love, to open up to another person, requires trust.

By the same token, many things in humanity which are not so great, are a form of distrust or defense, a way to close yourself up and keep others away.

To be mean-spirited, aggressive, distant, anxious, afraid, delusional, psychotic or borderline are different ways to be defensive, to keep people or thoughts away which could otherwise hurt our selves.


Domains of security
From an evolutionary perspective, it makes sense that this balance of trust-distrust and security-insecurity is so central. For an organism to maximize it's chance of forwarding it's genes to offspring, it should be ambitious in order to gain advantages when the situation allows it, and cautious in order to survive when the situation requires it.

Attachment theory is a great example of this evolutionary readiness for adaptation. Bowlby proposed that we have in our brains basically three pre-wired models of approaching other people; Secure, clingy or avoidant. (Generalizing, of course.) Which model we choose depend on how we are treated by our parents, and this is to adaption to the environment we grow up in. For instance, if we are born in a place where food and protection is scarce, and our parents doesn't always have time available to tend to our needs, it makes sense to be clingy to maximize one's chance of survival. If a child is given a sense of security or trust, sie instead learns that the world is not such a bad place, and that sie should be ambitious, open and trusting, because that will be the adaptive stance to maximize one's chances for survival, development and procreation.

As I touched in my post A model of mental health, one can see Abraham Maslow's model of needs in much the same way.

Attachment theory only accounts for the intimacy need, how secure we feel in that other people care for us and love us. In the same way, Maslow proposes that you can have a sense of security or insecurity in any need.

If, for instance, my need for esteem isn’t satisfied properly by those around me, I understand that I need to work hard to feel esteem, and that it cannot be taken for granted. This becomes an internal working model for how I view and handle the world, what strategies I use to maximize security, love and satisfaction.

With a sense of insecurity in esteem, I become worried and preoccupied with securing esteem, even when I’ve found friends who accept me and who I am - Our internal working models doesn’t change easily.

I believe that confidence and status is a sort of security (or trust in oneself) as well, but I'll save that for another post.

Trust, or don’t?
Everyone must walk a balance between trust and distrust, between openness and defense.

When we use trust, we are capable of the greatest feats, but we are also at our most vulnerability - Vulnerability towards disappointment and deceit.

If trust and sense of security is the basic currency of life, you can certainly invest it. You can invest trust in other people, and you can invest energy and belief in your dreams. If you have invested wisely, then the results are glorious. You realize your dreams, or grow close to someone you've opened up to. If you invest in something that fails, it’s our most terrible moments of disapointment or betrayal.

So we certainly need a certain amount of distrust and skepticism, but I also believe that since no-one has to fend for their survival in our modern and peaceful nations, we are pre-wired for more distrust than we need to be. Prisoners dilemma. It pays to be distrusting because other people are distrusting/cold/protective of their own interests. At the same time, by tradition, we put way too much trust in an unsustainable lifestyle, the one big threat against humanity today.

Man will survive

 Remember the song I posted? After the first verse, Martin Gore sings just that, man will survive. And pauses. The sentence seems to hang in the air on it's own, complete in it's message, before it is concluded with the harshest conditions

The fact is, those words do stand on their own. They convey an idea I've heard before, in the classes of psychology - The belief that I will survive this. And not only in the prosaic way of living on, but this concept also encompasses not losing hold of yourself, becoming lost - My ego will remain intact.

The storms of life will be difficult, and sometimes you have to risk breaking your heart... but you can still have this sense of security, have faith in that you won't be overpowered, disintegrated. The storm might end in heartaches, but not in uncontrollable catastrophe.

This is important when growing up.

- A child with a sense of security uses hir parents both as a secure port to find solace in and a safe base to explore the world from. When the storms come, mother and father will come to you, hold you, and put you together again.

- My lecturer describes the difficult development tasks (life issues, we might call them!) and how a difficult task (like separation from our parents, for instance) that we manage to master works like a vaccination, strenghtening us the next time something like it turns up (when breaking up with our loved one or losing a relative) – But a much too difficult task leaves us bewildered and feeling overpowered, frightened of it and certain that we cannot handle it the next time it turns up.

- Also, let's look back at Antonevsky's model Sense of Coherence. Antonovsky said that everyone meet stress in their life, but it is whether you find life manageable, understandeable and meaningful that decides whether you handle it successfully. Belief would have man survive.

- In the same way, when going through therapy you will call the storm to you, go into the dark and difficult places of yourself. You must have faith in that this won't destroy you - Grawe describes hope in the therapy and trust in the therapist as the most important components of successfully therapy.

My next post will be on hope.

Writing this, I'm at Kulturhamnen once more.
A woman is reading her poems to us. She is visibly nervous, restless, her swedish grammar falls short at times, but her words ring true to us. Before reading the third poem she tells us ”This one, I haven't practiced at all”

But she goes through with it, with heartfelt applause. Goes into the storm.

Man will survive.

A model of mental health

During these last few weeks I've been working on a model for understanding mental health and therapy. It is a way for me to make sense of, to make a map of what I'm learning in classes and what I'm exploring in my own therapy. This is my personal understanding of mental health, but I'm hopeful that it will be helpful in understanding and helping others, and curious of which clients and which diagnosises it models well.

I - Life issues
As we grow up, struggle through life, we must all find our own answers to the big questions – Things like....

Who am I?
Is the world a safe, good place?
How do I protect my self from those who would do me harm?
Do I deserve love?
How will I convey my own love?
What sources do I draw from to strengthen my self-esteem, what makes me feel good about myself?
How will I handle a neurological handicap I was born with or a brain injury I sustained mid-life?

Life demands answers to these questions. Our answers become models for handling everyday life, they shape who we are, what we think, what we feel. Without these models, life would be impossibly extorting.

There are some patterns that keep re-emerging as answers to these questions, for instance:

- People neglected by their parents as children become insecure of their self-worth, typically beccoming withdrawn or clingy and love-hungry.
- People denied their individuality and integrity and self-worth (and with the right biological sensitivity) can protect themself by displacing their guilt and shame into an accusing voice or delusions of other people controling them, becoming schizophrenic.
- People who are wrought by difficult loss (by a parent, for instance) and lack of love in their early years may come to the conclusion that it is actually they who doesn't deserve love. This is to retain the feeling they are in control of their life and protect themselves from the very frightening insight that they have to rely on people that deep down doesn't give a shit either way.

Questions resolved in a healthy fashion doesn't follow common patterns of development in the same way, perhaps because mental health is characterised by self-realisation, individuality, to become your own person – That is, to defy patterns and go your own way.
Or maybe just because there is far more research on mental illness than mental health.

Whereas some life questions are resolved in a way that leave the person vulnerable and frail in that domain, others are resolved successfully, and will be a source of strength and confidence for the person, following hir through life. Though typical models keep reappering in the care of mental health, each person, both ”normal” or ”abnormal” must be understood as made up of a unique disposition of life models.

You can understand these "life issues" as a mix of existentialism (It's up to everyone to find answers in life) and cognitive-behaviour therapy. (People live by automatic models, programs so to speak, of behaviour.)


II - Normality
Let us revisit Lucien A Buck's model of normality, placing different answers and strategies to life issues on his continuum of mental health.



Buck describes the abnormal position as a defensive one, protecting oneself from regressing, losing what one has. The schizophrenic person fears sie might disintegrated any moment, and keeps a paranoid wall against all other people. The bipolar (or manic-depressive) person goes into manic states to defend hirself from the soulcrushing darkness of depression. It's all or nothing, either you surrender to unbearable anxiety or you wall yourself off to survive. Abnormality is characterized by this all-or-nothing stance, it is rigid and without flexibility.

To have achieved normality in a life issue is to have accepted the answers provided by society as good. There is safety in this, community and efficiency, but normality is not without it's own problems: There is still a stiffness in letting a norm define you, not daring to explore your own answers. There is stress and ulcers in societies' norms, and it is difficult to change when you are dependent on other people's ready-made answers. And we all change with age, thus the age crisis.

Whereas abnormality and normality is defined by rigidity and stiffness, health is characterised by a form of softness – When you trust yourself this much, you can allow yourself to change according to situation, without losing track of who you essentially are. You can be playful, adaptive, open-minded. You can also be thoughtful and genuine - You know yourself well enough for that. You have explored yourself and found the right answers for your questions, whether they are part of norm or not.

Buck encourage us to take caution when exercising mental care, not to squish a person into a normality that sie doesn't fit into, and would feel alienated by. We should rather give security to abnormal issues and take care of and develop the healthy ones.

The model is actually a continuum and should be drawn as a line, but I like the thought of someone standing in the circle of normality/health/abnormality at a given moment.


III - Security
The difference between these positions can be explained with the words "sense of security".

At the greatest level of abnormality, security is none. Your life issue is at constant threat of regressing, desintegrating, collapsing, so you protect yourself against others fiercely.

Going from abnormality to normality is characterised by establishing outer control: Limits, borders, structure in your life that provides predictability and manageability, even protection from yourself.

At normality, the borders and norms have been internalised - They are a part of you now. Your self is secure enough to let other people near without exaggerated fear of being hurt. There is still a sense of insecurity though – There are still parts of you unknown to you, since you have just accepted the answer rather than exploring the question fully.

Going from normality to health is characterised by process depth: Exploring, understanding and taking control of your inner processes.

At health, security is greatest. Imagine you have built a very sturdy house – You then have the safety to leave it, to explore. You also feel safe going into your dark places, the parts of yourself you don't normally think of, confident you can handle any anxiety it wakes up. The house will hold together.

There are parallells to different psychological theories on security here:

Attachement theory describes how the children with a well founded sense of security are the bravest in their exploring. Safe in the knowledge that you can always return to your parents and they will provide safety, they will go explore the world, not needing to conform to other people for validation and approval. They already have an internal approval firmly placed in their hearts.

Humanist Abraham Maslow has an interesting idea of how humanity have a series of human needs (physical safety, social, self-realization etc), and just like the child can establish a sense of security in their parents, people can establish a sense of security in these different needs. For instance, if I have a sense of security in my social needs, I do not need constant confirmation from my friends that they still like me.

Maslow has also written on the subject of the self-actualizing person, the healthy person so to speak, who seeks to explore and express hirself, actualize hir inner potential, to grow. Just like in Buck's model, Maslow characterizes this person as someone who is genuine, who follows hir own way, not in a forced way but in a curious and open-minded way. Self-actualization is not a goal that can be reached, but rather a process, to be in movement, to be open-minded and fluid.

I associate this model to learning theories as well, but that's for another post.


IV - Therapy
All therapy must somehow first establish a sense of security. This is called therapeutic alliance, a sense of trust and hope between the client and the therapist. When the client feels safe in the therapeutic room, sie can let hir models of thought out into the light and examine them. Sie can, not necessarily consciously, test the therapist with them - If I expose you to what I was exposed to, will you react like I did, or is there another way you can show me? In this way, people's model are changed.


                                               Acceptance, empathy, genuinity ->   
                                                                     New mental models ->

Now, the big question is, does security lead to healthy models, or does healthy models lead to a sense of security? Like so often in psychology, you can work in either direction:

Humanistic therapy creates an atmosphere of acceptance, empathy and genuinity, building on the sense of security. Provide the sense of security and carefully prod the client towards processing depth, and sie will spontaneously explore hirself. Having written it down, I can see that this model implies that in humans there is a natural movement towards health, growing and development as long as safety, security and acceptance is supplied, and this is a foundation of humanistic psychology.

Cognitive-behaviour therapy works the other way around, first you assess the clients mental models and provide more healthy alternatives, and with this competence the client will gain a sense of security.


V - Soft-Hard
"Defensive" is a word which has made it's way into everyday english, but it is originally from psychodynamic theory. According to psychodynamic theory, defenses are something we must have to protect ourselves from anxiety, but when defenses are too strong, too primitive or too inflexible they may become a problem.

This points to how different people will handle issues differently: In a way I inhereted my fathers sense of guilt when he raised me, but whereas he keeps this guilt away by intellectualization, I have instead become sensitive and vulnerable to other people's disapproval and sensible to their own insecurities.

Strong defenses also illustrates the rigidity of abnormality: In the hard circle of abnormality, you can either let the problems and anxieties of life issue manifest themselves freely, or you handle it with strong defenses - throw it away completely, deny it, unable to confront it. All or nothing.

The softness and adaptivity of the healthy individual remind me of the ideals of taoism: Do not force yourself onto nature. Be fluid, like water, and you cannot hurt yourself. Be accepting, humble, genuine and happy in the way of the ever-curious and innocent child.

Coincidentally, it also reminds me of impro theatre.

One of my difficult life issues has been romantic love. I've never actually achieved a romantic relationship, which has been the source of great stress - I felt that I had to have it, I had to reach normality, and through reaching this normality I would reach a sense of self-worth. I've had problems with expectations building up - Love encounters became confrontations with the only possible outcomes a) high expectations fulfilled or b) nothing at all. As you can tell, there was a great deal of stiffness involved.

With a greater sense of security, with the safety to explore these feelings, process them deeper and understand them better, with a chance to experiment without the have-to's, love can become something playful and lustful. Something healthy. I can stay in the moment, fluid, enjoying the present rather than building up to some wishful future state.

I don't actually have to have a single relationship if it doesn't feel right - The one important thing is that I find my way to that bright and gentle circle of health.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3phAqQeMMcc&feature=related

Life issues

Buck is, of course, not the only psychologist to explore life issues and what they mean to us. I'd like to take a look at some other psychological ideas, based on the concept that people have to find answers to their issues in life, building their own identity and strategies to handle the world in the process.

A very strong proponent in people's lives is to find answers, to be able to predict and understand their life - Even more so than having a pleasant life. A life you cannot understand is a very frightening thing indeed... Furthermore, we need our assumptions and models to get us through everyday life, not to be completely overloaded by every decision.

Let's have a look at Erikson's stages first:

Erikson's stages of psychosocial development (link)
Erik H. Erikson lists a series of life stages, each in which a growing person has to find an answer to an issue in life: Can I trust? Can I act? Can I love? What is trust to me? What is my relationship to my industriousness? In what way will I convey my love?

Here are some examples of Erikson's stages:

Trust vs Mistrust (0-1 years old) Will my parents take care of me when I need it? Are people basically good and trustworthy or unpredictable?

Initiative vs Guilt (4-6 years old) Suddenly I'm old enough to do things with a purpose. Does my actions give me pride or guilt?

Identity vs Role confusion (13-19 years old) Who Am I? This is the big one, the crux of development, where the previous stages are evaluated and an personal identity is formed.

Intimacy vs Isolation (20-34 years old) How will I handle intimacy, friends, loved ones? What does friendship and love mean to me?

Ego integrity vs Despair (65 years old and onwards) Can I make sense of the life I've lived? Looking back at it all, does it make me wise and fulfilled, or bitter and regretful?

As we grow a little older and and a little wiser, the outcome of these stages provides answers to what life is and how we handle it. We learn life as we live it, as we grow up, so to speak.

Freudian psychodynamics
A paragon for Eriksons model is present already in Freudian psychodynamics; The oral, anal, phallic and genital phases, where the child encounters and must try to master gratification and separation, control, etc.

Attachment theory
Attachment theory is based on the idea that we adapt to how our parents treat us. During our first years, we learn models for how the world and the people around us works, and how we should handle this. Is the world a safe place? Is it a loving place? Can I trust? (Eriksons first psychosocial stage)

A child which believes it is loved and safe will grow up with a sense of security, and dares to explore the world, to open up to it - Another child might keep itself closed up not to get hurt, a third child might have strong ambivalent feelings to the world, reaching out, desperate for love but at the same time rejecting other people, fearing to be rejected itself. These models follow us through our life, shaping our view of the world.

Existentialism
Existentialism stresses how we must find our own answers about ourselves and the world in this modern time - The priests, kings and traditions doesn't give us the holy, unquestionable answers anymore. Existentialism stresses the questions which are common to all humanity, though: Life and death, love, identity... They are a part of our existence, and so everyone must face them at some point.

I have previously mentioned how humanistic psychotherapy, inspired by existentialism, uses the client's own words rather than theoretical psychological terms. Every client must decide hirself what hir questions are, what life issues are important, unresolved, and how to understand them. These subjects are called themes. I guess you could define them as "stuff the client feels like talking about again and again" ;-)

Cognitive-behaviour therapy
In cognitive behaviour therapy, an emphasis is placed on (not necessarily conscious) assumptions of the world, answers to how the world works, and from these we form behaviours to handle the world. I believe that when people see me for who I am, they will reject me, and thus I act out whenever we start talking about me, anything to change the subject... for instance.

So the answers to our life issues, or life questions, become models for how to live our lives, which we enact every day.

...

Oh hey, my mother just called. We talked about how hard it is to change the answers you find out in childhood, the models your parents give you. It can be done though, by re-learning from persons that become close to you, or through therapy.