By Mike McMahan, LPC
 
Kudos to Selena Gomez for being so open about facing her mental health struggles. Every person who takes this step knocks one more brick out of the stigmatizing wall that surrounds mental and behavioral health. In this article from Vogue, she recalls feeling "depressed" and "anxious" as well as experiencing "panic attacks."
 
There’s quite a bit to explore in her remarks from the Vogue piece. She discusses the struggles she had with touring, something that many of us can probably understand and NOT understand simultaneously. On one hand, so many people dream of being a rich and successful performer. On the other, no matter our life situation, face challenges and problems. From reading years of rock star memoirs and biographies, it seems these problems may be magnified when the pressures of fame are rolled into the mix with their mix of temptations. Clients frequently struggle with this dilemma: “I have a problem, but it’s not as bad as children that are starving.” This may or may not be true, but we can only deal with the things in our own life and from our own perspective.
 
Gomez talks about efforts to slow her life down and create boundaries between herself and the world of fame, as well as seeing a therapist five days a week. “DBT has completely changed my life. I wish more people would talk about therapy. We girls, we’re taught to be almost too resilient, to be strong and sexy and cool and laid-back, the girl who’s down. We also need to feel allowed to fall apart.”
 
DBT is an acronym for Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. I spoke with therapist Karen Nowacek, LPC, who works with clients at San Antonio’s Eating Recovery Center and is a DBT practitioner and advocate to get her thoughts on Selena Gomez’s words, though she has obviously not worked with Gomez personally.
 
“It sounds like Selena Gomez is living into one of the basic assumptions of DBT—the assumption that everyone is doing the best they can and in the next moment can make changes to do better,” Nowacek said. “When you start from that premise, it really helps to us to build empathy for those that have invalidated and hurt us in the past.”
 
Many psychotherapists use Cognitive Behavioral Therapy. If you’ve been to therapy, odds are good that this is the approach your therapist used (though it’s not the one I use personally, which I’ve talked about previously). 
 
“DBT is an emotion regulation therapy,” Nowacek explained. “It offers real life skills (such as minding the consequences and checking the facts) to help regulate our strong emotions that can make life difficult to handle. Most of the maladaptive coping we do is just our struggling to feel better.”
 
“DBT is a mindfulness based therapy—teaching us a practice which helps to focus on present moment awareness while noticing our thoughts, emotions and physical sensations,” she added. “It is in the non-judgmental noticing that we can let go of those thoughts, emotions and feelings that are so difficult. This therapy has been truly life changing for many.”
 
Unfortunately, this approach is not as widely practiced, so it can be challenging to find a clinician with this orientation. However, they are out there and websites like Psychology Today make it easier than ever to find a therapist and discover their approach before calling.
 
If you are experiencing any of the symptoms that Selena Gomez discussed, please talk a mental health professional in your area.
 
 
Mike McMahan, LPC, is a psychotherapist based in San Antonio, Tx.
 
If you liked what you read here, please consider following Therapy Goes POP on Facebook!  

By Mike McMahan, LPC
 
Well, I can’t say I’m the world’s biggest Queen fan, but there is no denying their talent and long-lasting influence and popularity. The Freddy Mercury biopic is still MIA, but they are getting their own version of Monopoly. And as a guy who loves rock music and Monopoly (and wrote about the great Free Parking controversy), I’m pretty enthusiastic about this. Now somebody get on a Rush or Phish game.
 
BUT, I digress. We’re talking about Queen Monopoly here. You’ve probably seen this sort of thing before, as re-themed board games are sort of a cottage industry. I owned a Lord Of The Rings Risk for a while, and it was pretty darn cool. Same for Star Wars Monopoly. You know the score: all the game elements are there with the requisite nods. You know there will be a “Bohemian Rhapsody” reference in there; the only question is what will it be.
 
So what if your life was made into Monopoly? Some stuff would be obvious. Your job would keep you going around the board for that measly $200. (Hopefully the salary is upped for the Queen game, geez; inflation, people.) And maybe some key locations would on there too. The street you live on, maybe the street you grew up on. Some places you like to hang out, too. And then, maybe in the high rent area, some places you really enjoy visiting but get to do infrequently. For me, it would be some of my favorite places: Carlsbad Caverns, Stubb’s Backyard Amphitheater or maybe Hollywood Studios at Disneyworld. But what about the cards?
 
In real Monopoly, they are Community Chest and Chance. Community Chest is one thing. As a therapist, I believe in the power of social support systems and “chipping in,” so I can get behind Community Chest. But Chance? In my Monopoly game, I think I’d have to ditch Chance and go with something a little more purposeful and oriented towards strength-building. I’m not saying that random things don’t happen in life; of course they do. I’m just saying why spend time worrying about it when you can spend your time concentrating on the things you can control and ways to solve problems that are in your grasp. I’m saying you have a card deck of strengths, so use it.
 
Think about the ways that you have successfully coped with or solved problems in the past. For me, one way would be humor. I love some sarcasm and a good joke, and this perspective helps me get through tough times. As I stated above and many times previously, listening to music is a great coping skill. Before Spotify, I would reward an achievement with a purchase of a new album. I’m also open to reading articles to learn skills and perspectives and able to think of things rationally.
 
What about you? What things have you done in the past to solve problems that you might overlook until you draw the card? Maybe you’re a very caring person, which is great. But it’s more than that. You have to be able to apply your skill. Humor is fine, but it’s all in how you use it. As far as being a compassionate person, maybe you recharge your batteries by helping others. Maybe this means you have a large network of people who love and care for you and who you can turn to during a crisis. You have your strengths if you’ve gotten far enough in life to be reading this.
 
Life isn’t Monopoly! There’s no Free Parking in life (real life that is—The Game Of Life is for another post). The only question is what strength cards you will play and whether you’ve thought enough about your successes to identify those strengths.
 
 
Mike McMahan, LPC, is a psychotherapist based in San Antonio, Tx.
 
If you like what you read here, consider following Therapy Goes POP on Facebook!

By Mike McMahan, LPC
 
On Sunday night, CBS’s 60 Minutes featured an introduction to Julia, a new character on the long-running Sesame Street series. But Julia is unlike any other character ever introduced on the show, as she has a diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder.
 
The report itself is interesting and worth a read or watch as it contains a brief look at how Sesame Street has demonstrably achieved its goal of educating kids. But my favorite moment comes from puppeteer Stacy Gordon, who is herself the mother of a child with an autism diagnosis: “It means that our kids are important enough to be seen in society,” she says. And she adds that she values “Having Julia on the show and seeing all of the characters treat her with compassion…“
 
This is, indeed, an important aspect. While children certainly don’t learn everything from TV and entertainment (or shouldn’t anyway), it is undeniable that what they see in media influences their perceptions of the world. And, according to the CDC, they are going to be seeing a lot of children with autism, as the prevalence of the diagnosis is on the rise. Whether this is due to the disorder being diagnosed more frequently or actually occurring more often is currently a subject of debate.
 
It will be interesting to see how Sesame Street develops this character, as the producers recognize that autism is a very individualized disorder, with very few children exhibiting all of the behaviors associated with the diagnosis. This fact likely plays into the diagnosis rate. In fact, the specificity of the diagnosis will likely change in the future, as many researchers believe that autism is likely a family of disorders. Given that the number of cases is increasing, a lot of money will be spent on this matter so mental health professionals and families effected by autism will likely know more in the future.
 
How Sesame Street will (or won’t) help kids and families remains to be seen. However, it is undeniable that this move will create a sense of possibility for families with autism. Caring for a child with autism can be incredibly challenging, and Sesame Street is allowing families everywhere to dream and imagine that their children can be better understood by others, and thus, have a better shot at finding their place as contributing members of our complex world.
 
 
Mike McMahan, LPC, is a psychotherapist based in San Antonio, Tx.
 
Like what you see here? Follow Therapy Goes POP on Facebook!

By Mike McMahan, LPC
 
Let’s face it, a lot of rock guitar playing (and ESPECIALLY metal) is about effects. As this video posted on Metal Injection makes painfully clear, without some distortion, your riffs are pretty much gonna suck. Safe to say there would be no arenas full of people rocking out if all these riffs were played clean (although “Raining Blood” still sounds pretty darn sinister—that’s Slayer for ya).
 
I had an immediate reaction to this video as a therapist, which is that this immediately applies in two seemingly unrelated areas a lot of us wrestle with; so let’s free associate, shall we? While cutting out distortion ruins a lot of rock, it’s damn good for effective communication. Let’s look at a couple of examples.
 
The first is that a lot of what people are trying to tell us gets lost in a lot of bluster, or distortion. So many of us are overwhelmed by so much information all day, it’s hard to process it. People talking to us at work, at home and blasting us full of information, especially on social media. But how much of this is real and how much of it is, well, distorted? We live in an era of fakery more than ever. People can construct their own simple riff and then pile a lot of distortion on top of it. It used to be Keeping Up With The Joneses; not it’s keeping up with the Joneses’ Facebook. And much of what people post is a narrative about their life that is misleading at best and untrue at worst.
 
But you don’t have to listen. There’s always just stepping back. But you can also work the idea of narrative to your own advantage your own effect, if you will. We often make the mistake of thinking we are the only one with problems, when that is simply untrue. We’re just hearing our own unfiltered riffs and they’re sucking. Ask yourself, are people really hearing this? Or are they too busy wrapped up in their own problems and lives to even notice what you’re saying, let alone cut through the clutter. Most people’s lives are turbocharged in the way they present them. There’s nothing to keep up with because it’s distortion and underneath, they have the same simple wants, dreams, fears that you and I do.
 
The other thing this video made me think of is communicating in a relationship. When we fight with our significant other, there’s a LOT of distortion: shouting, emotion, etc. So what is the simple riff underneath all that noise? This is one reason that many marriage and family therapists recommend that when you are trying to help your partner understand where you’re coming from use what’s called an “I need” statement. “I need your support.” “I need you to help me take care of the kids at bedtime.” “I need you to respect that I need to work late.” Cutting out the distortion helps get the point across and may make the talk more effective. An “I need” is much different that “you never support me!” “You never take care of the kids at bedtime!” It’s much more direct and you might have a better chance of getting through to your partner without all that noise.
 
But metal, yeah. It is horrible without the distortion. So don’t change that.
 
 
Mike McMahan, LPC, is a psychotherapist based in San Antonio, Tx.

Like what you see here? Follow Therapy Goes POP on Facebook!