Posts
Elizabeth Zelvin
This mystery writer has a secret identity. Am I Wonder Woman? Nope. Outrageous Older Woman? Got the T shirt, but that’s not it either. In the world of mental health professionals, I’m known as LZcybershrink. That’s the monicker by which I do counseling and therapy online with clients all over the world on my eponymous website, LZcybershrink.com. I’ve got that T shirt too. On the back, it says, “Shrink online…grow online.”
I started doing this work eight years ago, after fifteen years as a clinical social worker, psychotherapist, and director of alcoholism treatment programs in New York. New York City is a therapy-rich town. Walk out the door and spit, and you’ll hit six therapists. So there’s a lot of competition for clients who sound a lot like Woody Allen. Since I went online, I’ve treated folks who would never have walked into a therapist’s office in their communities: the stutterer, the 400-pound compulsive overeater, the farmer’s wife whose husband is drinking again, the flasher, the rape survivor, the gay guy and lesbian in the military. I’m the only shrink in Manhattan who’s had a client in crisis because her pregnant horse got cancer. I’ve helped a lot of people by doing exactly what I do as a mystery writer: sit down at the computer and let those fingers fly.
Online therapy is a brand new field. It attracts a lot of skepticism, especially from the older generation who grew up without the Internet. How can you connect with people if you can’t make eye contact and hear their voices? How can clients express themselves and convey authentic emotions through the written word? I hope every writer and avid reader can answer that second question. Did Shakespeare convey authentic emotion in King Lear? I think so. My two professions have a lot in common. Both use the medium of the written word expressively. Both are all about connecting with other human beings on an emotional level. And both are careers about which everyone says, “Don’t quit your day job.” ;)
So what do we substitute for visual and aural cues? For one thing, the smileys, emoticons, and acronyms that already form the common currency of Internet communication. As I explain to clinicians for whom I provide online training in online practice skills, these can be more nuanced than you’d think. As an office-based traditional therapist, I would never have winked at a client. But I can use a winkie to soften a hard truth when I think a client needs “tough love” or to add affectionate irony to what I say. The client can get mad at me safely by adding LOL to a critical or even hostile comment. That simple ;) or LOL can mean, “You said it’s okay to get angry, and I’m taking the risk of expressing my anger to you. But that doesn’t mean I’m about to quit therapy.” And see how I used the winkie in the line about “Don’t quit your day job” (above)? In that instance, it means, “Hey, I’m kidding—and not kidding.”
Beyond word choice and Internet shorthand, I’ve found I can connect with clients over time by developing shared vocabulary and an intuitive grasp of how each one uses text and pauses to convey resentment, sadness, humor, sarcasm, and a host of other subtleties. In other words, what mental health professionals call the therapeutic relationship springs to life in a chat room just as it does in a therapist’s office. As for clients who work with me by email, some folks naturally dig deeper in narrative, in reaching within and taking time to tell their story than they do out loud in the moment—as every writer knows.
Personally, I have an additional advantage. As all who’ve met me know, I’ve demonstrated face to face at Malice, the Edgars, MWA and SinC chapter meetings, and my recent book tour, and online on mystery venues including the MWA and Sisters in Crime lists, DorothyL, CrimeSpace, and Murder Must Advertise, that I was born to schmooze. My, um, intense and lively personality comes through whether I’m there in person or keyboarding my way through cyberspace. And please note that well-placed “um.” What was I telling you about the statement it modified? That’s a pop quiz: you can participate by posting your answer as a comment. My husband likes to tell people that every time he passes through the room, I’m smiling at the computer. Not really. I’m smiling at whomever I’m talking with in text.
Showing posts with label online therapy. Show all posts
Showing posts with label online therapy. Show all posts
Thursday, September 4, 2008
Thursday, February 7, 2008
How being a shrink is like writing a mystery
Elizabeth Zelvin
I’m at a stage in life when about half my friends are reaching retirement age—specifically, those who have been doing the same thing, such as teaching or working for the government, for thirty years or more. Having managed to reinvent myself several times over the course of my adult life, I’m farther from retirement than ever. And that’s okay.
Each new manifestation of who I am and what I do has in some way built on the choices that I’ve made in the past. Without going into all the ideologies and isms I’ve traveled through, or the lifestyle choices and personal roles, I can say that the overall movement has been from writer to therapist to writer. Along the way, I got sidetracked into various publishing jobs in the mistaken belief that they would help me be a writer. (Okay, they did make me a demon editor, which helps.) Similarly, I’ve performed various functions as a social worker and administrator that did not exactly add up to being a therapist. But the heart of what I’ve wanted to do has remained the same.
Writer SJ Rozan talks about the mystery (or crime fiction in general) as one of the great ur-stories in our culture. It is a story of righting wrongs and seeing justice done, and that is why we want to hear it over and over, says Rozan. If publishers and film and movie makers won’t give us good stories, we (the reading public, the media consumer) will take bad stories, so great is our hunger to see things made better, villains caught, safety restored, unfairness exposed and punished, and everything put back in place. We’d like law and order in real life, but too often we’re offered only a tarnished simulacrum. So we’ll take it however we can get it: in the stories we tell and hear.
Therapy is also about righting wrongs. It can’t enforce the law or get wrongdoers, in most cases, to acknowledge and correct their faults. Therapy doesn’t work that way. But to those hurt by the acts and deficiencies of others, it can provide corrective experiences. Those who’ve been rejected and abandoned can experience unconditional love. Those who have repeatedly chosen abusive partners can learn to select and sustain healthy relationships. Those who have internalized harsh parental criticism can come to accept and nurture themselves. It may not sound like an exact analogy for investigating, discovering whodunit, and putting the culprit in the slammer. But in a way, it’s close.
I’ve found that what I do as a therapist—listening—is a lot like what I do (fate and the publishing industry willing) as a writer—being heard. EM Forster’s famous tag, “Only connect,” sums it up for me. In both roles, I am seeking the human connection. I am trying to make contact with another human being, whether it is the client who pours out his or her soul without knowing much about me beyond my capacity for empathy and compassion, or the reader to whom I pour out my own soul and the fruits of my imagination without knowing any more of him or her than their willingness to open my book.
Being a therapist, like being a writer—and a reader—is a way of opening the door to a secret garden. One of the greatest rewards in both is the closeup view I get of other people’s lives. Both legitimate my elephant’s-child curiosity about others’ innermost feelings, passions, and motivations. When I write fiction, I even get to make the other people up, so that I can explore all the possibilities my imagination can reach. At the same time, I make myself vulnerable to every reader who sees my work. That is both scary and exciting. Back in my poetry days, in a poem called “Secrets of the Therapeutic Relationship,” I wrote:
between therapist and client
more tender intimacies are shared
than if we two lay touching on a bed
The same is true of writers and their readers.
I’m at a stage in life when about half my friends are reaching retirement age—specifically, those who have been doing the same thing, such as teaching or working for the government, for thirty years or more. Having managed to reinvent myself several times over the course of my adult life, I’m farther from retirement than ever. And that’s okay.
Each new manifestation of who I am and what I do has in some way built on the choices that I’ve made in the past. Without going into all the ideologies and isms I’ve traveled through, or the lifestyle choices and personal roles, I can say that the overall movement has been from writer to therapist to writer. Along the way, I got sidetracked into various publishing jobs in the mistaken belief that they would help me be a writer. (Okay, they did make me a demon editor, which helps.) Similarly, I’ve performed various functions as a social worker and administrator that did not exactly add up to being a therapist. But the heart of what I’ve wanted to do has remained the same.
Writer SJ Rozan talks about the mystery (or crime fiction in general) as one of the great ur-stories in our culture. It is a story of righting wrongs and seeing justice done, and that is why we want to hear it over and over, says Rozan. If publishers and film and movie makers won’t give us good stories, we (the reading public, the media consumer) will take bad stories, so great is our hunger to see things made better, villains caught, safety restored, unfairness exposed and punished, and everything put back in place. We’d like law and order in real life, but too often we’re offered only a tarnished simulacrum. So we’ll take it however we can get it: in the stories we tell and hear.
Therapy is also about righting wrongs. It can’t enforce the law or get wrongdoers, in most cases, to acknowledge and correct their faults. Therapy doesn’t work that way. But to those hurt by the acts and deficiencies of others, it can provide corrective experiences. Those who’ve been rejected and abandoned can experience unconditional love. Those who have repeatedly chosen abusive partners can learn to select and sustain healthy relationships. Those who have internalized harsh parental criticism can come to accept and nurture themselves. It may not sound like an exact analogy for investigating, discovering whodunit, and putting the culprit in the slammer. But in a way, it’s close.
I’ve found that what I do as a therapist—listening—is a lot like what I do (fate and the publishing industry willing) as a writer—being heard. EM Forster’s famous tag, “Only connect,” sums it up for me. In both roles, I am seeking the human connection. I am trying to make contact with another human being, whether it is the client who pours out his or her soul without knowing much about me beyond my capacity for empathy and compassion, or the reader to whom I pour out my own soul and the fruits of my imagination without knowing any more of him or her than their willingness to open my book.
Being a therapist, like being a writer—and a reader—is a way of opening the door to a secret garden. One of the greatest rewards in both is the closeup view I get of other people’s lives. Both legitimate my elephant’s-child curiosity about others’ innermost feelings, passions, and motivations. When I write fiction, I even get to make the other people up, so that I can explore all the possibilities my imagination can reach. At the same time, I make myself vulnerable to every reader who sees my work. That is both scary and exciting. Back in my poetry days, in a poem called “Secrets of the Therapeutic Relationship,” I wrote:
between therapist and client
more tender intimacies are shared
than if we two lay touching on a bed
The same is true of writers and their readers.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Addicted
Sandra Parshall
My name is Sandy, and I am an addict.
I don’t have the slightest desire to drink or shoot up or snort cocaine or throw away money at a casino. But don’t ask me to live without the internet.
I didn’t realize the depth of my dependency until my last computer began its agonizing limp toward the recycling bin.
Motherboard. It sounds so benign, doesn’t it? Comforting, trust-inspiring – until you discover that your computer has the Joan Crawford version.
My computer was “only” two years old – any geek would say it was old as dirt, but to me it still had the blush of youth – when it suddenly began losing its memory. One day it informed me that I had no keyboard attached. I assumed the keyboard was at fault. After all, the thing had enough cat hair buildup to stop any electronic device in its tracks. Three keyboards (serial and USB) later, the computer was still reluctant to acknowledge that one was attached, and it had also started rejecting my trackball and randomly crashing applications. A long telephone conference with a nice young man named Gary, who for some reason spoke with an Indian accent, ruled out all possible problems except the very worst: the motherboard was dying.
I ordered a new computer and frantically began saving files to an external disk during the old computer’s rare functional moments. I couldn’t write, and even worse, I couldn’t get on the internet. Withdrawal set in. I cast covetous glances in the direction of my husband’s computer. I needed my e-mail. I needed DorothyL and the Guppies. I needed my panda groups.
Writers still talk about the loneliness of the writing life -- the wordsmith sitting in solitude day after day, cut off from the world, living in his or her head. But such laments don’t ring true when they appear on chat lists with hundreds, even thousands of members. Company is as close as a click away. Online companions are so numerous, so talkative, so much fun that no writer should have trouble coming up with ways to avoid actually writing.
In addition to being a boon to lonely, procrastinating authors, the internet is an agoraphobic’s dream. You can order anything from books to pizza to cat litter online without ever having to leave the house. You can even get your head examined online, as my blog sister Elizabeth Zelvin, an online therapist, can tell you.
Shy people can become social butterflies, experiencing the intimacy of friendship without having to put up with the friends’ physical presence. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, and they don’t know you’re shy either. If you do meet your online friends in the flesh, you’ll be instantly comfortable because you already know them so well. And, of course, you can rush home afterward, go online and exchange dozens of e-mails about how wonderful it was to see each other f2f.
On a broader scale, the internet allows writers to spread the word about their books in a way that could not have been imagined 30 or even 20 years ago. The author who doesn’t have a web site is an oddity these days. Genre writers are all over the web, popping up on an ever-growing number of chat lists to talk to readers and other authors.
It’s fashionable to moan about the death of “real” letter-writing as e-mail takes over, but you’ll get no complaints from me. I’ve heard from many readers who might never have bothered to send fan letters if they’d had to write them on stationery, stick them in envelopes, and drop them in a mailbox. I’m a long way from bestseller status, but I don’t believe I would have achieved even a modest degree of success and fame without the internet. And I can go online and find cops and FBI agents and experts of every stripe to answer my research questions. What’s not to love about the internet?
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking – there’s plenty not to love. Spam, ads on web sites, articles brimming with factual errors, idiots who start rabid flame wars in otherwise peaceful discussion groups (including – I kid you not – one group I’m in that’s devoted to giant pandas). But that’s life, the bad with the good.
The first online community I belonged to was Compuserve, back in the days when it was a members-only subscription service with an amazing 400 forums covering every subject imaginable. I was a sysop (unpaid staff member) on the writing forums, and that was where I first “met” real authors, including Diana Gabaldon and Jack Olsen, who didn’t mind talking with and advising the lowly unpublished. I still have friends I made on dear old Cserve. In time, AOL bought Compuserve and set about reducing it to a shadow of its grandest form, but by then I had a connection to the wondrous worldwide web, and I’ve never looked back. The internet has literally altered my existence, in only positive ways. So naturally, the first thing I did when I set up my new computer was connect it to our DSL and go online for a net fix.
My friends in the Guppies have been waxing nostalgic lately about the days of typewriters and carbon paper, but I haven’t heard anybody say they want to turn back the clock.
How about you? You’re reading this, so you must make a habit of going online. How has the internet made a difference in your life? Has it all been positive, or have you had some nasty www experiences?
My name is Sandy, and I am an addict.
I don’t have the slightest desire to drink or shoot up or snort cocaine or throw away money at a casino. But don’t ask me to live without the internet.
I didn’t realize the depth of my dependency until my last computer began its agonizing limp toward the recycling bin.
Motherboard. It sounds so benign, doesn’t it? Comforting, trust-inspiring – until you discover that your computer has the Joan Crawford version.
My computer was “only” two years old – any geek would say it was old as dirt, but to me it still had the blush of youth – when it suddenly began losing its memory. One day it informed me that I had no keyboard attached. I assumed the keyboard was at fault. After all, the thing had enough cat hair buildup to stop any electronic device in its tracks. Three keyboards (serial and USB) later, the computer was still reluctant to acknowledge that one was attached, and it had also started rejecting my trackball and randomly crashing applications. A long telephone conference with a nice young man named Gary, who for some reason spoke with an Indian accent, ruled out all possible problems except the very worst: the motherboard was dying.
I ordered a new computer and frantically began saving files to an external disk during the old computer’s rare functional moments. I couldn’t write, and even worse, I couldn’t get on the internet. Withdrawal set in. I cast covetous glances in the direction of my husband’s computer. I needed my e-mail. I needed DorothyL and the Guppies. I needed my panda groups.
Writers still talk about the loneliness of the writing life -- the wordsmith sitting in solitude day after day, cut off from the world, living in his or her head. But such laments don’t ring true when they appear on chat lists with hundreds, even thousands of members. Company is as close as a click away. Online companions are so numerous, so talkative, so much fun that no writer should have trouble coming up with ways to avoid actually writing.
In addition to being a boon to lonely, procrastinating authors, the internet is an agoraphobic’s dream. You can order anything from books to pizza to cat litter online without ever having to leave the house. You can even get your head examined online, as my blog sister Elizabeth Zelvin, an online therapist, can tell you.
Shy people can become social butterflies, experiencing the intimacy of friendship without having to put up with the friends’ physical presence. On the internet, nobody knows you’re a dog, and they don’t know you’re shy either. If you do meet your online friends in the flesh, you’ll be instantly comfortable because you already know them so well. And, of course, you can rush home afterward, go online and exchange dozens of e-mails about how wonderful it was to see each other f2f.
On a broader scale, the internet allows writers to spread the word about their books in a way that could not have been imagined 30 or even 20 years ago. The author who doesn’t have a web site is an oddity these days. Genre writers are all over the web, popping up on an ever-growing number of chat lists to talk to readers and other authors.
It’s fashionable to moan about the death of “real” letter-writing as e-mail takes over, but you’ll get no complaints from me. I’ve heard from many readers who might never have bothered to send fan letters if they’d had to write them on stationery, stick them in envelopes, and drop them in a mailbox. I’m a long way from bestseller status, but I don’t believe I would have achieved even a modest degree of success and fame without the internet. And I can go online and find cops and FBI agents and experts of every stripe to answer my research questions. What’s not to love about the internet?
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking – there’s plenty not to love. Spam, ads on web sites, articles brimming with factual errors, idiots who start rabid flame wars in otherwise peaceful discussion groups (including – I kid you not – one group I’m in that’s devoted to giant pandas). But that’s life, the bad with the good.
The first online community I belonged to was Compuserve, back in the days when it was a members-only subscription service with an amazing 400 forums covering every subject imaginable. I was a sysop (unpaid staff member) on the writing forums, and that was where I first “met” real authors, including Diana Gabaldon and Jack Olsen, who didn’t mind talking with and advising the lowly unpublished. I still have friends I made on dear old Cserve. In time, AOL bought Compuserve and set about reducing it to a shadow of its grandest form, but by then I had a connection to the wondrous worldwide web, and I’ve never looked back. The internet has literally altered my existence, in only positive ways. So naturally, the first thing I did when I set up my new computer was connect it to our DSL and go online for a net fix.
My friends in the Guppies have been waxing nostalgic lately about the days of typewriters and carbon paper, but I haven’t heard anybody say they want to turn back the clock.
How about you? You’re reading this, so you must make a habit of going online. How has the internet made a difference in your life? Has it all been positive, or have you had some nasty www experiences?
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