HAPPY NEW YEAR 2023?
by Terrence Shulman
I don’t know about you, but I’m ready to put 2022 to bed. While it’s been another good year for business– I’ve been a social worker/addictions therapist since 1997 and have been in private practice since 2004–it’s also been another hard year for me personally and-from my perspective–for most other, the U.S.A, and the world.
I’m feeling less raw than I felt a year ago, but I’m still grieving the deaths of my 82-year old mother and 92- year old grandfather who both died in December 2021 and my 17-year old Shih-tzu dog-buddy Bam Bam who went to doggie heaven just 10 months ago in March. My 20-year marriage will come to an end this year as we move closer towards amicably separating early this spring.
And, again, my 2nd-ranked Michigan Wolverines–I’m an alumnus twice over–lost their second national title semi-final in a row: last year in the Orange Bowl vs. the 3rd-ranked Georgia Bulldogs and this year in the Fiesta Bowl against the 3rd-ranked Texas Christian University Horned Frogs!
The global economy is still reeling from inflation and supply shortages and transportation issues and the Russian invasion/war in Ukraine is in its tenth brutal month. Covid is still in the air–though less deadly (I finally caught it about a month ago, then gave it to my wife, but we both survived). And the “Republicans” (if one can even call them that anymore) are about to take control of the House of Representatives and demonstrate what “real witch hunts” look and sound like.
But, all-in-all, things could always be worse, right?
The midterm elections this both parties admitted past November went smoothly with little to no violence and most losers from defeat–with a few notable exceptions on the right. Voter turnout was robust and the ballot. President Biden has helped restore some normalcy to daily life and influence in American politics seems to be waning as he faces a myriad of current democracy definitely was on former President Trump’s and future legal troubles.
Despite a variety of uncertainties looming in our individual and collective lives, let’s hope that we can each our part to make our local and global communities a more safe, sane, and prosperous environment for our children.
There should always be points of light to appreciate in our own lives and in the world even if we must struggle to find them. Here’s my list at the start of this new year 2023:
- I’m still relatively healthy of body, mind and spirit.
- I still feel a passion for my work and I hope to work at least another 8 years until the end of 2030 when I turn 65. I feel there’s slow but steadily growing acceptance and understanding of compulsive stealing, spending and hoarding and the need for more treatment options for these disorders.
- My 92-year old stepfather is still relatively healthy.
- My 20-year marriage had many bright times and I’ve learned a lot about myself and relationships.
- My wife and I remain amicable.
- My recovery seems to be solid.
- I have a nice home and a working car and good neighbors.
- I have a large circle of good friends and relatives.
- My two younger brothers are both moving forward in their lives personally and professionally.
- My 21-year old nephew is in his junior year in a state college where he’s majoring in film studies.
- A good portion of the country and world has been vaccinated and/or are taking other precautions to
limit the impact of Covid. - A good portion of the country and the world is committed to the truth and democratic principles and is working tirelessly to see that truth, human rights, and democracy prevail.
- A good portion of the country and the world is committed to making necessary changes to slow
climate change and its impacts. - A good portion of the country and the world is committed to expanding equality for people of all backgrounds.
- A good portion of the country and the world is committed to increasing income equality and making
the wealthy pay their fare share of taxes. - A good portion of the country and the world recognize the importance of religious freedom and tolerance.
- A good portion of this country’s youth and the world’s youth show signs of appreciating diversity in all its forms and transforming capitalism so that it has a conscience and works for more and more of us.
- There is growing awareness-in part through the Internet–that we are all globally connected and what happens in other countries affects us all in some way.
- Scientific, technological, and medical advancements for the good of all are increasing at light-speed.
- 20. It’s a new year and we can all pray, intend, recommit, and act to be the change we hope to see in the world.
Amen.
Happy New Year Everyone 2023!
A SEMI-SCIENTIFIC ANALYSIS
OF MY BRIEF THERAPY TREATMENT
OVER THE LAST 18 YEARS FOR ABOUT ONE THOUSAND CLIENTS
by Terrence Shulman
Throughout this past November 2022, I spent a fair amount of hours going through my alphabetized Word doc file of approximately one thousand former and/or current clients. I drafted a short email which was part holiday season greeting and part “how the heck have you been doing” since we last worked together or last had contact? And I hit “send” to each one of this diverse group of clients who entrusted me with their care. Nearly a month after having sent these emails, I’m still getting trickles of responses.
I officially started my own private counseling practice in September 2004-about a year after I published my first book Something for Nothing: Shoplifting Addiction and Recovery-and around the same time my appearance on The Oprah Winfrey Show aired. I had done many other TV interviews prior to Oprah in 2004 but rarely, if ever, got any counseling clients from these. Fortunately, Oprah was different: within two weeks of the airing of the segment on shoplifting addiction, I receive a flurry of emails and phone calls and had secured about ten paying clients-just enough for me to let go of my 7-year counseling job at a local alcohol and drug treatment clinic.
The rest, as they say, is history. I’ve been using a 90-day/10-session brief therapy model ever since and have averaged one or two new clients per week with about a 95% program completion rate. I’ve also kept in touch with a fair number of former clients through my two private email support groups as well as with the roughly 15-20% of my clients who engage in supplemental or ongoing therapy beyond my brief therapy program’s typical three-to-four month time frame.
I roughly estimate the following client demographic and other stats as follows:
80% of my clients identify as women
20% of my clients identify as men (the lower percentage of men is due to men seeking treatment less)
The rough mean average age of a client is around 50
Roughly 50% of my clients primarily have problems with shoplifting
Roughly 35% of my clients primarily have problems with overshopping/overspending
Roughly 10% of my clients primarily have problems with hoarding disorder
Roughly 5% of my clients primarily have problems with employee theft
Note: roughly half my clients have had some issues at some point with more than one disorder I treat
So, I sent out roughly one thousand emails during November 2022. Regrettably, about a quarter of my emails (about 250) bounced back.
Fortunately, I’ve heard back from about the same number of former clients (about 250) with all but two of those clients reporting that they are doing pretty well in their “recoveries” even if/when they reported some sad or difficult losses or challenges.
I’ve yet to hear back from roughly half of my remaining former clients (about 500).
From what I’ve researched, a roughly 25% response rate is pretty damed good! And given that the great majority of those who responded reported they were doing well, I find this very validating that my brief, specialized, comprehensive program which includes reading/discussing my book(s) and video(s) and participating on and discussing my private email support group(s), seems to have worked for most clients.
I hope, by the time I retire in the next 8-10 years or so, that “The 100th Monkey” effect occurs: a critical mass tips the balance so that compulsive stealing, spending and hoarding is more widely recognized, understood, well-treated, well-accepted, and that we have more books, support groups, and therapists and programs that are specifically geared to each and all these disorders.
Here’s to 2023 and more individual and collective progress and evolution!
THE POWER OF BRIEF MENTAL HEALTH THERAPIES
Research shows that targeted, time-limited programs
offer significant benefits for people struggling with anxiety and other problems.
by Jenny Taitz Wall Street Journal October 1, 2022
Last year, a survey by the American Psychological Association found that demand for psychotherapy had increased dramatically since the start of the Covid pandemic, with 68% of therapists reporting that their wait lists had grown and more than 40% saying that they were unable to keep up with demand. But help doesn’t have to mean long years of traditional psychotherapy. Research has shown that even brief interventions-targeted, time-limited programs to improve thinking and behavior at critical moments-can have significant benefits.
These interventions, which can be as brief as 30 minutes of online training, aren’t a substitute for psychotherapy. But given the increased rates of anxiety, depression, stress, substance abuse and suicidality among American adults and adolescents, they can be powerful ways to prevent challenges from escalating.
After a single meeting, people reported that their feelings of hopelessness and anxiety improved significantly.
A study published on the online preprint library PsyArXiv in July by Jenna Sung, a doctoral student in psychology at Stony Brook University, and colleagues found that even one tele-health session with a counselor can be beneficial for people on psychotherapy wait lists. In the sessions, 65 participants were asked to think about their most important goal, steps they could take to achieve it and potential obstacles they might have to overcome. After a single meeting, people reported that their feelings of hopelessness and anxiety improved significantly.
Brief interventions can also mitigate the risk of suicide, explains David Jobes, a psychologist at Catholic University who developed the Collaborative Assessment and Management of Suicidality (CAMS) program, an evidence-based clinical intervention to help people avoid getting stuck in suicidal thoughts. Over six to eight sessions, the therapist helps the patient identify the struggles that are prompting suicidal feelings and generate a coping plan.
Dr. Jobes led a study published in the journal Psychiatry in 2017 involving 148 U.S. Army personnel who had reported suicidal thoughts. They were divided into two groups, with one receiving CAMS and the other treatment as usual. The study found that CAMS participants were “significantly less likely” to have suicidal thoughts after three months. “People are really good at getting better if you give them the right tools,” Dr. Jobes said.
Chronic pain is another problem that has been shown to respond well to brief interventions. A study published in the journal JAMA Open Network in 2021, led by Beth Darnall, director of the Pain Relief Innovations Lab at Stanford University, showed that for people with chronic lower back pain, a single two- hour session teaching pain self-management skills was as effective as eight weeks of conventional cognitive behavioral therapy. Dr. Darnall’s “empowered relief” program teaches people to notice distressing thoughts and emotions, then practice accepting their symptoms rather than catastrophizing them. Three months later, participants reported significantly improved management of their pain and sleep disturbances. Brief interventions are especially promising as a way to help children and adolescents.
Brief interventions are especially promising as a way to help children and adolescents. A report published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in March found that the Covid pandemic accelerated a rise in mental health problems among teens, with 37% reporting that they experienced poor mental health during 2021.
In the early months of the pandemic in 2020. Jessica Schleider a psychologist and assistant professor at Stony Brook University, and colleagues launched Project YES!, offering free, half-hour online interventions for adolescents experiencing symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety.
In addition to learning skills to boost resilience, participants answered questions about their own experiences and were asked to write down their takeaways to share with other young people. In a study published in the journal Nature in 2021, Dr. Schleider looked at more than 2,400 teens who participated, finding that the interventions helped to reduce depression and disordered eating, with the benefits persisting after three months.
Dr. Schleider, a former grade-school teacher, points out that “kids, in particular, don’t really have options to choose when or where or how they get support.” Brief, easily accessible interventions can help lead to long-term improvements in mental health: “Long-term change is a series of tiny changes, and every tiny change matters,” she says.
Another former grade-school teacher, psychologist David Yeager of the University of Texas, Austin, and his collaborators developed a 30-minute online training session for first-year college students. Participants also listened to stories from older students, who emphasized that college can feel challenging at first but gets better over time. Then the first-years were asked to write letters of their own offering hope to future students.
“You can get people to internalize big, powerful ideas in a short amount of time by inviting them to process information and share it with others,” Dr. Yeager says. In a study published in the journal Nature in 2021 involving more than 4,000 students, he and his colleagues discovered that online training correlated with fewer mental health symptoms, even during Covid lockdowns.
Research spearheaded by Jeremy Jamieson of the University of Rochester found that a brief training session on “stress reappraisal” can also help students cope with anxiety. In a study involving 339 community college students published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology in July, those who were taught to think of anxiety symptoms like increased heart rate and sweaty palms as normal responses to stress performed better on academic exams. Dr. Jamieson explains that his interventions aim to serve as a scaffold preventing stress from escalating into depression.
Dozens of studies also highlight the potential for single-session interventions to reduce problematic drinking. A study led by Felicia Chi, a senior research analyst at Kaiser Permanente, published in the journal Drug and Alcohol Dependence in 2022, looked at a sample of more than 300,000 adults and found that a brief intervention reduced the average number of days participants engaged in heavy drinking by 26%.
Geoffrey Cohen, a professor at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Education and the author of “Belonging,” a new book about brief interventions to improve social inclusion, describes them as crafting opportunities for people to perform to their full potential, which is far more effective than trying to convince them of something.
“It’s almost like entering a party where you don’t know anyone, but the host greets you warmly, easing your nerves so you feel more able to socialize,” Dr. Cohen says. The growing body of evidence for success with brief interventions shows that mental health and psychological treatment shouldn’t be thought of in all-or- nothing terms.
Dr. Taitz is a clinical psychologist and an assistant clinical professor in psychiatry at the University of California, Los Angeles. She is the author of a forthcoming book on stress and the books “How to Be Single and Happy” and “End Emotional Eating.”
HAVE A SAFE MONTH & NEW YEAR, AND REMEMBER: LIFE IS WHAT WE MAKE OF IT!