This experiment is designed mainly to be used in romantic partnerships and family relationships.

This involves identifying or becoming aware of what others complain about, get frustrated or upset with you about, or get down on you for.

For example:

• Are you typically or always late?
• Do you rarely clean up the papers on your desk?
• Do you rarely or almost never make the bed?
• Are you the one who overspends?
• Do you rarely think about the doctor’s or dentist appointments and schedule them for the kids?
• Do you usually cook or rarely cook?
• Are you the one who almost never does or folds the laundry?
• Do you typically initiate or press for sex?
• Do you usually avoid sex?
• Do you usually point out what’s wrong in the situation?
• Or are you the eternal optimist, making the case for how things are okay or are going to be okay?

For the next week, try this experiment. Do something that’s “not like you.” Blow the other person’s or others’ stereotypes and expectations about you by doing something “out of character.” [Nothing mean or dangerous, just new and unlike your usual patterns. Pleasantly surprise the people in your life who know you best.]

I think you’ll be surprised at the results.

Bill O’Hanlon December 2011

Date/Time: Monday, February 13th 7:00pm – 8:30pm

Location: Jefferson Street Counseling and Consulting

Description: Free workshop presented by Susan Reuling Furness, LCPC, LMFT

When a marriage ends, you experience a smorgasbord of emotion: hurt, sadness, anger, discouragement, disenchantment, and disorientation. For some it feels like going crazy. Join us to learn healthy ways to manage these (and other) predictable emotions. Gather hope as you begin moving on.

Are you happy?

Perhaps yes. Perhaps no. The answer to such a question is never so simple.

Think about different parts of your life. Maybe you are happy at work but not satisfied with your marriage. Or perhaps you are happy with your spouse, but most unhappy with your inlaws. If I ask, “Are you happy,” and you answer with a resounding “no”, I suspect you may overlook delightful parts of your life.

I might ask a few more questions. Is happiness what you want most in life? What is happiness anyway? How does it differ from contentment or satisfaction?

Existential philosophers tell us we need to find meaning in our lives. Does happiness come if we lead meaningful lives?       What creates a meaningful life?

These are the existential questions . . . the same questions deep thinkers, philosophers, psychologists, religious leaders, (and teenagers) have posed forever. We have not found answers to these quintessential questions because there are no right answers. The answers are personal and idiosyncratic – they differ for every single person.

We need to talk specifics. Here’s an experiment to try with a friend, your counselor, or in a journal: “If we video-tape your happy life, what will we see?” Hopefully you begin to put words to how you want to live your life – some current realities and some of your dreams.  Maybe you see yourself changing careers – training as a police officer or studying gourmet cooking. On the other hand, you may find meaning in raising your children, fostering homeless pets, or simply being a good neighbor. Maybe you want to serve your country in the National Guard or as a precinct chairperson. Whatever your answer, you are offering clues to your meaningful life. Again, I stress the point: there is no formula for meaning or happiness or contentment. The only certainty is this: The person who sees no meaning in their life always feels discontented.

Viktor Frankl, an Austrian psychologist, endured mental and physical torture as a prisoner at Auschwitz during World War II. He observes that people are drawn toward personal growth – learning new things, improving and simply “doing better.” (If you know someone who is not, that person is profoundly discouraged.) Because we are programmed to grow psychologically as well as physically, people often question if there is more in life? More to do . . . more to learn? In other words, we ask what Peggy Lee sang about in 1969, “Is That All There Is?” In response to this question, Frankl stresses that meaning can be found in every moment of living. Even in suffering as extreme as a concentration camp, even in death we can find meaning.

Through his own horrendous experiences, Frankl came to understand that regardless of what is happening, we always have the right to decide how we will react. Although no one would ever suggest that being imprisoned by the enemy is a happy situation, nor that keeping one’s attitude was easy, Frankl insists we are free to choose . . . free to find meaning . . . be it bitter, resigned, hopeful, or something else.

Years after the War, I heard Viktor Frankl speak to an appreciative crowd in Anaheim, Ca. His key point was this: If we are chasing happiness, we may drive it away. Happiness and contentment come through the backdoor when we stop worrying about being happy and seek a meaningful life instead. Contentment happens when make something meaningful out of whatever is happening . . . when we are true to ourselves, when are kind to others, when we go after our own dreams, and when we make the most out of whatever we are given.

(The latest printing of Viktor Frankl’s book Man’s Search for Meaning (2006) is available through Amazon.com and bookstores.)

Take the case of our therapy partner in EAP (Equine Assisted Psychotherapy). She is an eight month old miniature horse, but comes fully equipped with all the intution and reflective insight to be a perfect mirror in the arena. Already in the arena she has been described as “bratty,” “sweet,” “patient,” “petulant,” “ornary,” “curious,” “caring,” “connecting,” “loving,” “standoffish,” “shy,” “funny,” and “uncaring.” In other words, she has been a powerful reflection of what the two-legged folks project or perceive in this horse and in people and reality.

Other EAP Notes

(As reported by Lynn Thomas in EAGALA in Practice Magazine, Vol. 4 No. 1)

Much of the difference in understanding as to how horses can actually help people put their finger on how they are feeling is related to the fact that horses do not respond to people in the same way that people do. Horses are said to be much more intuitive to human defense mechanisms, and are not easily bluffed. Where another person may not recognize the projection of a troubled other, the horse will indeed have a response that is reflective of the very emotion from which the person is trying to defend….

For example… A person who projects his anger onto the horse, proclaiming that the horse is actually the angry one, will not necessarily produce an angry horse. Rather, the horse will respond to the person’s hidden anger by attempting to bring it to the surface. This can be done in several ways. The horse may “haze” the client, circling around him in progressively smaller circles in an attempt to dominate space. The horse may also repeatedly move into the person’s space, nuding him/her out of the way.

By using his/her body, the horse essentially places the person in a position where anger would be a healthy response. This is all done to draw the anger to the surface, out of the unconscious, thereby making the person “readable” to the horse, and a viable herd member. In order to understand this, it is important to remember that herd animals relate predominantly through physiological responses, and [these] unconscious drives, emotions, and motives have physiological traces.

For horses, hidden emotions are like hidden physiological responses, making communication, and the establishment of the horses’s safety, through a congruent and connected herd, impossible. So in order to preserve his/her own safety then, the horse must make the person, his/her current herd member, more congruent, through evoking [the person’s] hidden unconscious material. For while people can operate with closeted emotion, horses cannot, and, therefore, identifying any emotion that is covert and responding to it is an automatic process for the horse.




We are blessed with the neurological wiring to experience feelings that will guide us to make healthy choices in life’s circumstances. Pia Mellody, author of Facing Codependence, identifies very specific benefits or gifts that result when we attend to our feelings and use them to forge our lives. Too often we avoid or stuff feelings and end up feeling paralyzed on our life journeys.

The problem for most folks struggling with depression or anxiety is that the ability to tolerate a wide range of feelings has become limited, in part because adult caregivers in their lives did not model or perhaps even know how to handle their own feelings. Such parents did not know how to encourage and support their children to feel and to learn the language of feelings. Ultimately they limited their children’s ability to experience the richness of life. So, Step 1 is to simply notice and acknowledge feelings, basically notice the physical sensations.

Acceptance, Step 2, is to remember that all feelings have purpose and to accept that feelings are just a part of life. Acceptance does mean withholding judgment and not dismissing them as good or bad—it simply means to take an attitude of curiosity about why these feelings are occurring at this time.

Acceptance then makes room for Step 3: Act. We are empowered to choose how we want to act on our feelings through acceptance of them. The choice may be anything from doing something to doing nothing. Consider the feeling anger, a feeling that leaves many squeamish. However, anger can be on a continuum from mild irritation to rage. If we can acknowledge anger and the sensations we experience in our bodies, if we can accept that it’s OK to feel anger, then we can act on the reasons for feeling anger that curiosity reveals.

Mellody identifies energy, strength and assertiveness as the gifts of anger. Whether we choose to state our anger and our wants or we re-evaluate the thinking behind our anger and let it go or we simply explore it further, we are acting on our feelings. Only through acknowledgement and acceptance of our feelings can we be intentional about acting on our own behalf.

When we ignore our feelings, they burrow into our being, like worms into our computers. They don’t go away but cause undue stress that complicates our health, relationships and lives. Not only is it OK to feel our feelings, it’s the healthy, proactive thing to do. AAA takes practice and patience with ourselves, but it works!

Jolene Starr, M.D. Trained in traditional psychiatric medicine, Dr. Starr also appreciates the value of herbs, supplements, and energy medicine techniques in treatment. Prior to opening her private practice at Foothills Psychiatry, she work at the Boise VA Medical Center with veterans and soldiers returning from Afghanistan and the Iraq war.
Start Time: 07:00pm
Date: 2011-10-06

Benjamin Seymour, BRI-II began working with addicted clients in 199 at Michael’s House in Palm Springs California. Upon moving to Idaho in 2005, he co-founded Intervention 180, a company providing intervention services all over North America. Benjamin has been featured within the national media and does regular speaking within the national addiction conference unit. He is now focused on bringing quality addiction care to the Treasure Valley. In 2009 Benjamin founded Ashwood Recovery in Meridian Idaho and continues to help families in crisis as a result of addiction.
Start Time: 07:00pm
Date: 2011-10-13