Archive for the ‘Police Therapy Tactics’ Category

Police Psychology:  How to Create Focus

 

Losing focus3

Creating focus is important both for police psychology, and for anyone who wants to increase efficiency and productivity.

In police psychology losing focus can be a life or death situation for a police officer.  Focus is thus extremely important for police psychology and dealing with police stress. Ever since you started school, all those many years ago, you probably heard the words, “pay-attention!” “you need to focus more!” “stop getting distracted!” These statements, along with many others just like them, have probably become internal voices as you grew up. No longer is your teacher snapping at you to pay attention, nor are your parents telling you to do your homework. Now you are responsible for telling yourself to keep working. Everyone experiences moments of intense focus (even if that focus is directed on the TV screen during a sports game, or on the pages of a book when you’re at an exciting part of a novel) and moments where distractions seem to be everywhere. In fact, everyone’s brains are different, and some people will have an easier time focusing than others.

Types of Distracters

Where to find focus is difficult for many people because they keep getting sidetracked by small things. Some people are all set to power-through and complete a major task, but then they keep getting distracted by smaller jobs they need to complete, like answering emails or eating lunch. Other people have a problem weeding out noise, and they get distracted by things as innocent as a phone ringing across the hall, or a dog barking outside, or even the typing of the individual in the next desk. The worst is when you can’t get something done until you get something else done, and then to get that done you have to get something else done, etc. People have a hard time finding focus because they have other, competing things on their minds, like their marriage, the welfare of their kids, a death in the family, or their pet dog. Others have trouble focusing because of interruptions from external sources, like they keep getting phone calls from their spouse or friends.

 Sometimes people just procrastinate their real work, and go to some other task they have to do instead (like taking a lunch break, or updating your social media, or watching YouTube videos. There are many reasons people have trouble focusing, and yet if you give into these distractions, you are preventing movement, allowing yourself to become inactive and unproductive and that will cause you grief later on.

3 Steps for Creating Focus

procrastination2Here are three steps for helping you create focus in order to increase work productivity and efficiency.

  1.  Determine your barriers. The first step to creating focus is figuring out what is preventing you from focusing. Remember, there is not necessarily a unitary cause for things. You may have multiple barriers, or you may have one barrier that changes depending on the task. Also, they will be different for every person. My clients in police psychology will have completely different distractors than stay-at-home parents. In order to create focus, you first need to spend some time considering what things are your personal biggest distractors.
  2.  Reduce the barrier. Once you figure out what distracts you, you need to reduce the distracters, or reduce your exposure to the distracters. There is no one way to reduce the barriers, but some suggestions include: make sure your work environment is distraction free—put your phone away, make sure your desk is clean, go to a quiet room, etc. It also helps to set up a reward system for when you complete a certain amount of work. If you tell yourself that you just need to finish three more pages and then you can take a break, you are less likely to get distracted during your working time. I used to lock myself in my house with 4 days’ worth of food, put the clocks away, block out the windows and shut off the phone when I was writing a book. When I was hungry I ate, when sleepy I slept. Another thing you can do to reduce your barriers is to set up a schedule for yourself. In this schedule include everything that needs to get done, and everything you want to get done, and don’t forget to leave yourself break times as your reward. Cross off each item as you finish it so that you can see your progress. The technique you use to reduce your barriers will really depend on the individual barrier you have. So, for instance, if you get distracted by calls from your family, communicate with your spouse and children that when you are at work, you cannot answer your phone. If you get distracted by music or other noises in the office, consider wearing earplugs or headphones that block out the noise.
  3.  Set a Reward/Punishment System. There is old research in psychology that says people can be rewarded for a lower frequency activity by a higher frequency activity. Now what exactly does that mean? Simple. If there is something you want to do, make it contingent on completing something you don’t necessarily want to do. This is called the Premack Principle named after David Premack who experimented with Capuchin monkeys who found if animals went “ape“ over something, they would do less desirable behaviors to engage in the desired behavior. By the same token, you can punish yourself with a lesser desirable behavior like working on the retaining wall or cleaning the extremely moldy Tupperware when you have been distracted. It is essentially the theory of relativity applied to “monkey business,” so to speak. Enough of the puns, reward yourself with something you really want to do, punish yourself with something you really hate and that will create focus. People often say if I do “XYZ” I can go on a vacation, and those people get focus. Make your activity a means to an end that you desire.

If you follow these steps, you will be on your way to finding focus in both your life and your work. If you have any other tips, or would like to share your own story, please comment below!

 

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Canned Soup Has Labels, People Shouldn’t

 

rumpelstiltskin

In police psychology, among other areas, naming things and putting a label on it, has come at a huge detriment to society.

Assessment is the goal of some parts of police psychology, but certainly not if you are working with the police officer on fixing their problems. When my brother was younger, he was known as a rambunctious child, the class clown, always running around, crazy with very high energy. People would have said he was “minimally brain damaged,” because at the time that is what they later called “minimal brain dysfunction.” A little later he would have been called “hyperactive,” then “emotionally disturbed.” If he was born now however he would be called “attention deficit disorder with hyperactivity” (he’s over 60). No longer was he just a noisy and fun-loving child—now he was something more: an individual with a syndrome that had to be treated. And of course, since he has the proper label, you know a lot about the cause of the problem, right? No way.

Rumpelstiltskin Effect

This is what I call the Rumpelstiltskin effect, a name I adapted from the Grimm’s fairytale character. In the story, this man is a pathological liar, and lies that his daughter can spin gold, like her blonde hair, from straw. Well, the king catches hold of the lie, and puts the girl in a room and says spin gold from straw or I will cut your head off (not quite the nose job she wanted). He agreed to marry her if she could in fact spin gold from straw. Well, the girl looked at the options, to become the queen or walk around headless, and decided she would rather become the queen. She paced and fretted and downright cried until this imp appeared and said he would spin gold from straw if she agreed to give him her first born child. Well she did, and they did and she got pregnant as the new queen. When it was time to collect on the bargain, however, the now-queen did not want to give up her child. Rumpelstiltskin agreed that if she could guess his name within three days, she could keep her child. On the final day, the desperate queen rides around outside looking for the imp to beg mercy, and she overhears Rumpelstiltskin singing his name. With this information in hand, she names the creature and gets to keep her child. The imp goes away forever and she and the king live happily ever after. Because naming the imp made everything better! Just like in life, if I name the problem the other questions in life get answered.

 The problem is there are a lot of derivatives that come along with putting a name to something. There is a tendency among many people today to believe there is a singular cause of a business problem, psychological problem or a medical problem that has a name. When something becomes a syndrome the universal thing is to look toward someone’s diet, or bad market projections or a vitamin deficiency or an over-bearing mother. It is just plain human nature and we miss the proverbial forest for the trees because the symptom is the problem and the cause is really minor in fixing it. When someone is labeled with a certain diagnoses, it is very hard to lose it and what comes with it.

 

I’ve Been Labeled and I Can’t Get Out

A famous study by Rosenhan in the seventies proved this very point. In his article “On Being Sane in Insane Places,” he demonstrated that pseudo-patients (individuals who were perfectly healthy, with no signs of mental illness whatsoever) who checked themselves into mental institutions claiming they had schizophrenia were quickly pigeonholed into having many other problems, but they showed no symptoms. To illustrate, during the long hours when they were in the institution, there was often nothing for them to do so they often gathered outside the meal hall a half hour before the doors would open. Nurses and doctors who noticed this (very normal) behavior quickly labeled these individuals as having “oral inquisitory syndrome” or “an oral fixation” when it should have been “bored-out-of-their-wits” syndrome. Additionally, these pseudo-patients had been instructed to record what it was like in the mental institutions for the purposes of the experiment. Because of this, they constantly took notes throughout the day. The nurses and doctors labeled this “writing behavior” calling it from paranoia to obsessive-compulsion and recorded it in the patients’ charts. It is interesting to see how the behavior of these perfectly healthy and sane individuals was seen in a new way, just because they had been given the label “schizophrenic” when they checked themselves into the institution. None of the staff saw any of the 118 pseudo-patients as imposters, although mental patients in the hospital identified 35 of them as researchers checking up on the staff. By the way, it took the average pseudo-patient 19 days to be released with a high of 52 days, all because of a label put on them at admission!

 The point is there is very rarely one single cause of a problem. It is much more typical that there are multiple causes for any behavior, business fluctuation or medical symptom. Each individual is different with different experiences. Hyperactivity does not have to be due to a mental illness—it can just as easily (and more likely) be due to consumption of lead, or too much sugar, or genetics. In fact, most likely it is due to a combination of a couple of these causes! We need to move away from the assumption that giving a name to something means we understand it, or that we have diagnosed it completely. We need to move away from the idea that creating a name for something that is happening gives us any more than a name, and could hurt us considerably. And my brother is retired now after two wonderful fully grown kids and a long healthy career. And he had no labels.

 

procrastination23 Steps to Help You Avoid the Rumpelstiltskin Effect

  1.  Avoid egocentricism. When people think they are the center of the world, they tend to believe that anyone who behaves in a way counter to their own is wrong, or deficient. This can lead people to naming others and incorrectly diagnosing their behavior. If you are a very composed person, when you see someone who can’t sit still, it is easy to prescribe a defect in the other person. You need to accept that there is always more to the story than you know, and just because they look or behave differently, does not mean they have a problem. Avoid spreading rumors or gossip about someone just because they don’t neatly fit into your definition of normal. Perhaps our columnists and news people should hear this.
  2.  Evaluate externally. Along the lines of avoiding egocentricism, you need to look at your own behavior objectively. If you are having an off day because of random circumstances, and you snap at everyone at work, or avoid eye-contact and don’t greet anyone, think about how that will look to other people. It is very possible they are evaluating your behavior and naming you as suffering from some mental illness, or syndrome or creating a problem employee. In fact, you are just having a bad day because you overslept and didn’t have time for breakfast, or there was no hot water when you tried to shower this morning, or you had a flat tire on the way to work. It is so easy to excuse our own behavior as being due to external causes, but we need to use that same mindset when we look at other people—perhaps their behavior, too, is not due to something internal, but to external circumstances. Cut down the judging and just evaluate the behavior for what is there now.      
  3.  Value the person not the Label. Even if someone’s behavior is given a name, you need to understand that they are still human and have feelings just like you do. If you value this person, then you should accept them for who they are, regardless of artificial names that can be places upon them. At the same time, if you feel other people are evaluating you, ignore their judgments—don’t let the pinball effect trap you in its claws. Leave Rumpelstiltskin to the Fairy Tales of the Brothers Grimm and make our world your happily ever after.

 

 Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Get Your Butt Moving

 

Police psychology: inertia

Much like with trains, inertia is required in order to increase efficiency in your life, particularly with police psychology.

You don’t normally think of Isaac Newton or Galileo Galilei when you think about police psychology, but that is a mistake. These two weird-looking men while daydreaming under that apple tree or looking up at the stars came up with a theory that explains much of police psychology and much of life.

Inertia is the idea that objects will resist any change in their motion. In other words, an object at motion will stay in motion, going in that same direction at the same speed unless a force is applied. Further, an object at rest will stay at rest unless acted upon by a great enough force.

People have a tendency to think of trains when contemplating inertia. I don’t know why, but let’s go with it. Picture a large train, chugging down the tracks, hooting cheerfully when it gets to the platform stations (you don’t need to be picturing a cheerful train like Thomas—any hunk of metal with wheels will do). Trains, like any moving object, operate due to the laws of inertia and it takes a lot of friction to slow them down and stop them. There is a lot of power as it moves faster and faster and you won’t want to get in the way. That power is inertia, and we can all understand that. We didn’t need two bearded old guys named Newtie and Gally to tell us that.

 Inertia Can be the Enemy Also

But when the train is at rest, it gains inertia also. The longer it is at rest, the harder it is to get moving. Yes, read this carefully because it will explain a lot. A train sitting for two days is harder to get moving than a train sitting one day. Trains sitting for months will be much harder to get moving. This is not so obvious, and why Newton and Galileo have been around for five or six centuries. Trains can begin to rust. Rust can settle in the mechanism, corrupting the engine, corroding the wheels, and consuming the body of the train, until it is left as an empty shell of its former self. Or perhaps the metal become less likely to go into motions for other reasons. Whatever the reason, negative inertia builds up and makes the train want to sit. It also can create a friction that totally stops a train even once it does start to try to get into motion again.

 Psychological Inertia: Be the Train

People live life according to these same principles. For example, when people are moving, when they are motivated, very little can stop them. They are productive. They are driven. They have a plan and a goal. Picture any moment in your own life when you felt this way. Chances are you felt really good about yourself, knowing how productive and accomplished you’ve been that day. This is the concept of inertia. You are in motion. You are moving in a certain direction, at a certain pace, you will tend to keep up that momentum.

But there is the danger of non-movement, and it is a very real danger for people too. When you are not moving, when you are sitting on the couch with a butt print already engraved on the cushions, with a bowl of chips in your lap, guzzling down beer…you’ve reached a point where you are beginning to rust. Or, perhaps you are worrying about some drama around the office instead of being productive. You’re building negative inertia. This inactivity, this lack of drive, this motionlessness is corroding your body and your mind, until you will be left with a hollow person, a mere shadow of your former self. This can be extremely dangerous, and it is hard to fix once you have gotten there. The lesson we can learn from inertia is to make sure we are moving

Change builds inertia. Movement builds inertia. Productivity builds inertia. It feeds itself and keep you moving. The trick is to start small, to do something—anything—that gets you to move forward in life. Once you start, inertia will take over and propel you in that goal-oriented direction.

procrastination2Three SIMPLE STEPS to Get Movement

Here are three steps for helping you get movement started:

 Start Motion in any Form. When I handle a client, whether it be a couple looking at numerous problems in their relationship, or a business person looking at some insurmountable task, sometimes I ask them just to create motion on the first day, even if it isn’t moving toward the goal. “I need you to be in the same room, even if you don’t talk for an hour a day. Just don’t sleep and don’t argue.” “I need you to get your desk cleaned off to prepare for the fight ahead.” Don’t approach the problem, just start movement. Get started. Overcome entropy. Remember a train in motion will have a much easier time with movement than a train sitting still.

 Stop Friction. Friction can stop movement before it starts going. If problems creep up while changing your relationship, deal with them later once motion is started. If issues at work are causing drama, let people know keeping motion is most important. Be careful of not starting someone emotionally pinballing when you are doing this.       Tell them you will simply put it first on a list to deal with once motion is started.  If at all possible you must keep motion going once you’ve started. There are tons of inertia breakers that are just not that important. You may slow the train at some point, but never stop motion.

 Build in Inertia Stimulators to Keep Movement. If you are not excited about the goal you have set, it will be very hard to stick with it. In order to create excitement, it helps to talk to others about it, read about it, create a routine to remind yourself daily of what success will look like for your specific goal. It can be a healthier, hotter body, or a better GPA in school, or positive attention from your boss leading to a potential raise or promotion. The more excitement you can engender into the task, the easier it will be to start doing it.

Use these tips to help you start the movement because once you started, the momentum will take over and completing future tasks will be even easier.

If you have any other tips, or if you want to share your own story, comment below! I would love to hear from you.

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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Toxic Games

pinball

While the game pinball may be fun, emotional pinball can seriously impact your self-esteem.

From police psychology to basic chemistry:  If we wanted to make a very good cleaner, we would mix two decent cleaners and the combination would make something great. Doesn’t take a genius to understand, does it? So go home and mix ammonia and bleach and see what you get (actually don’t ever do this). You end up getting a chlorine gas that can cause you to lose consciousness, literally burn your insides out, or possibly just kill you. In fact, it was actually used in WWII for chemical warfare. This is called an interaction effect –the combination of two things take the shape of a separate event all to itself. And by the way, chlorine gas doesn’t feel good.

 

The Pinball  Effect

Now take two wonderful people, and mix them together and you will get a wonderful couple, right? Or take a job and a highly qualified person and magic happens. Well, not always. Sometimes you get a chemical warfare agent. A sort of mustard gas. And that doesn’t mean someone is undeserving or stupid. It doesn’t mean that someone is inadequate, it doesn’t mean that someone is bad, or wrong, or… (insert any negative word that you’ve ever told yourself). It means simply you are not right in that situation. Yet, we will work to blame someone, or point to some inadequacies in the other person, or do something that makes someone else or ourselves feel awful. This is human nature. When someone is particularly attuned to other people’s opinion, I call it “emotional pinball.” Just bouncing around from bumper to bumper lighting people up. Don’t pinball off others. Everyone’s definition of excellence will be different, and to some, your performance may be amazing, and to others it may fall short. But none of that should matter as long as you do your best, as long as you put in your effort.

 

How to deal with criticism and praise without the Pinball Effect

mental ward

Don’t let other people’s judgement change the way you see yourself.

There’s a stress management tip I use in my speeches and in therapy that I want to share with you. Close your eyes and picture in your mind sitting in class. Your teacher goes up to the front of the class and announces, “Wow, everyone’s paper was fantastic—oh, except for you (insert your name here). That was the worst paper I’ve ever read.” On a scale of –10 to +10, with “0” being neutral, how did your opinion of yourself change after hearing your teacher say that about you? Or after hearing your boss say your work was the worst he’s seen. Now, how about a different scenario: “These papers were the worst I’ve ever seen—except for (insert your name again—wow, I should have told you to bring a pen). That was the best paper I’ve ever read.” On that same scale, rate your change in opinion of yourself after this statement. What about walking down the street and hearing people catcall at you? (That often gets an age and gender dependent reaction). Or, having a stranger call you a jerk? (New Yorkers need not answer this) The point is your answer should be “0” for all of these. Your opinion of yourself should not change, positively or negatively, just because someone else has judged you or your work. You need to make an evaluation of your own effort, instead of “pinballing” off the evaluations of others. Feel good about your effort, or set yourself to work harder next time. Don’t pinball!

Self esteem was a construct created in the 1890’s which started as a simple evaluation of the goals and achievement. If you achieved goals you had a good self-esteem, if you didn’t you would have a negative self-esteem. William James gave it a name and others kept it alive. It is rotten meat. It is a dated computer. It is an old dusty moth-eaten hat in the attic. Time to throw it away. Escape the dungeon of self-esteem.

 

Social Media: The problem and the solution

This is especially significant with the advent of the internet and media. So often do we see people post pictures, videos, or statuses on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and they get so many negative comments. Don’t get bummed out by them; don’t let your opinion of yourself change just because someone else judged you and found you wanting. Don’t tear down the picture or the video, or cry in your room, or blame the world for being against you. Ignore the gossip and harsh criticisms of other people. Sometimes you can be the best one out there, but if you’re not right for the part, you won’t be the right person. Accept that you can’t be everyone’s hero. And that can’t change how you feel about yourself, can’t change the voices in your head to negativistic, because as long as you know you’ve given it your all, that is all the judgment you need.

So let’s vanquish the concept of self-esteem and say simply, I did the best I can or I have to work harder next time or focus more next time. Let’s not worry about ourselves all the time. And mostly, let’s stop pinballing off of others’ opinions, and see our efforts as the most important goal of all.

Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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The Myth of Emotional Opposites

 

Arrow

People tend to see emotions in terms of their opposites…but does this mindset negatively effect your mental health?

In therapy, while working in police psychology, I have learned that very negative people tend to suffer from “Shit City Syndrome,” meaning that their cynicism and view of life cause them to see all the bad parts of a situation.  Then they complain that they aren’t enjoying life.  Realize that your evaluations of the world cause you to create your world while you are evaluating it.  Essentially, if you see yourself in “shit city” you will live in “shit city” and lead a miserable existence.  It is sort of a turn on the self-fulfilling prophecy which is basically the evaluation of the self creates the self as you interact with the world.

To overcome this syndrome I use the Myth of Emotional Opposites.  I use this in my speeches, as well as, in my therapy.

I first ask the person what is the opposite of “pain,” and invariably get the word “pleasure.”  I ask then the opposite of “love,” and get the answer “hate.”  Finally, I ask for the opposite of “happy,” and get “sad” as the answer.  This is the setup, as I have gotten the same answers in a room full of mental health professionals, just like I’ve gotten the answer in a room full of everyday people.

I then have the person visualize that they have a compound fracture of the leg.  They fell over the doorway and broke their leg badly.  The bone is sticking out.  I ask them if they are in pain and they invariably reply yes.  Then, I tell them at the same time as they are writhing in pain waiting for the ambulance to come, their friend comes over and says, “remember last week when we were at that seminar with the fat guy (me) and we bought a lottery ticket.  Well, I just found out we won 134 million dollars.”  I then ask “Now, are you still in pain?”

I get stumbling when I ask this second question.  They can’t make sense of it.  Pain and pleasure are opposites; they can’t exist together.  Are you in pain or pleasure?  On the continuum line, pain and pleasure are on the opposite ends, so which is it?  You’re definitely in pain; you have a compound fracture.  And, if you are not in pleasure after winning 67 million dollars you’re a little weird.  I mean, you can’t be in love and hate someone at the same time, or can you?  You can’t be happy and sad at the same time, can you?

The Myth Revealed

Then I make my point, pain and pleasure are not opposites.  The opposite of an emotion or a feeling is not another emotion; it is the lack of an emotion.  The opposite of pain is no feeling.  The opposite of pleasure is no feeling.  The opposite of love is indifference; the opposite of hate is no feeling.  And this simple concept can lift you out of Shit City.

You see, the natural tendency for people is if there is a negative feeling, they don’t allow positive feelings to exist, or they reduce the positive feeling so much it has no value.  Emotional Shit City!  But our life has many different facets and we can be unhappy about say the relationship in our life and be happy about the amount of money we earn.  Or we can be sad for a loss in our life, but still enjoy the joys of an errant rose or a nice email card.  Our need is to focus on the parts of life that are going well, and allow time and other healing methods to happen in the bad areas.

Remove Stress with this Powerful Technique

Opposites

Find the good things in your life, and focus on them, instead of letting the bad overwhelm you.

Now it may sound a long way to go to teach a concept most people know that is common sense.  But remember, people don’t live with common sense.  In fact, common sense is not common at all.  They lose commons sense in emotion.  This technique has had a profound impact on people going through a grief process, people having problems with a teenager, people who have lost a love in their life, or even people after a critical incident.  It lessens the load and gives them permission to have some fun without feeling guilty because they have one bad thing in their life.  It is a powerful technique and can stop a person from feeling overwhelmed and consumed with something that happened to them. Implementing such a technique can help put the happiness and simplicity back in your life. 

Good luck with it if you choose to try it.

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Gary S. Aumiller, Ph.D. ABPP

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