Midlands Psychological Associates

As I continue to move onward in my early 70’s I realize more and more how much I don’t know or don’t understand. It seems the natural humbling experience of growing older. Beliefs and assurances now come rarely, and sometimes not at all. Life was so much easier when I was 20 and convinced of this or that. And being an extravert by nature, I felt inclined to share these beliefs and assurances with abandon. I am reminded of a statement in Desiderata that it is necessary in maturity to “gracefully relinquish the things of youth.” Life was so much easier when things were clear for me, and so it is that am finding it necessary to think, and sometimes say, “I don’t know.”

With many people I am greatly dismayed at the tragedy and terror of ISIS, like beheadings, random shootings, and generally creating chaos in various parts of the world. My primary response to each of these tragic incidents is to feel sad, although I must admit that I sometimes fall into Trump-esque thinking of bombing the s…out of them. For the most part I agree with President Obama who a year or so ago admitted that the Administration did “not know what to do” with ISIS. Sadly, his simple-minded, simple-solutioned, and antagonistic political opponents took umbrage that someone as powerful as the President would have the audacity to say “I don’t know.” Now, nearly two years into this horror we still don’t know. And this “don’t know” comes on the heels of not knowing what to do about the new kamikaze-like suicide bombers. What is the thinking of a mother who gracefully straps a bomb on her 13-year old daughter and sends her into a room of Jews to kill herself? Certainly, this Palestinian mother would “know” why she did what seems like a heinous crime, but would her “knowing” satisfy my American mind? I doubt so. Similarly, I “don’t know” how ISIS, and similar Muslim terrorist groups, believes that Sharia law should be imposed. All I can say is that these folks have an easy answer to a complicated dilemma.

I think, and I admit immediately to thinking, not knowing, that part of the origin of the simplistic thinking involved with ISIS et al. is poverty, and the related phenomenon of envy and anger at those who seem to have coming from people who seem to have not. Many underprivileged groups who suffer some kind of poverty have similarly simplistic conclusions about how the world should operate. But not all people in poverty come up with reasons for sending 13-year olds out to blow themselves up. So poverty is clearly not the whole answer to the problem. We might even suggest that the millennia-old rivalry between the sons of Abraham (Isaac and Ishmael) is the “answer,” but this theological origin doesn’t seem to address the whole answer. Or is it the rare but real statements in the Koran calling for violence in name of religion? Perhaps. Or is it because the United States spends billions of aid to Israel and bare millions to the Palestinians. Again, perhaps. So we can only say with certainty that “we don’t know” what to do about the ISIS-based crisis.

There are other “I don’t know’s” in the world at large. Should we raise taxes or lower them? Should we outlaw all guns, regulate all guns, do more thorough background checks on gun-owners, or continue with the current spate of occasional shootings? Should we have universal healthcare, continue with increasing Obamacare, or abandon the effort all together? Should we drill oil more in the arctic or leave it alone? Should be establish former relations with Cuba, North Korea, and Iran? Or should be just bomb them too? We don’t know.

I have been speaking about “honest I don’t know’s, but there are, by the way dishonest I don’t knows. Those of who raise children or have raised children know that our children are inclined to “not know” when they have committed some minor offense. And teenagers are even worse. When you ask your teen where she is going, who she is going to be with, what she will be doing, and when she will be home, how often go you get the answer, “I don’t know.” I actually believe that most of these don’t know’s are genuine, if not always entirely true. But it is not just our kids and teens who have phony I don’t know’s. We are often called to dishonestly answer a question that someone poses that makes us feel awkward like, “Do I look fat in this dress?” or “How much did your drink last night?”

This reminds me of a question a friend of mine asked me not long ago. This was one of the few friends that I have who has very little psychological knowledge, much less interest in the subject. He just wanted to know something that seemed to him to be hard to understand: Why aren’t people honest? I found myself musing a bit and then answering in jest, “I don’t know but if people were honest, I wouldn’t be in business.” I think my jest was largely a statement of truth. “Why did I have that affair/?” a man recently asked me. And my wife often hears the concomitant, “Why do I stay with a man who has serial affairs?” I don’t know seems to be the first best answer. But then the work begins. The work of finding the answer to these questions. I have some ideas of why “John” had an affair but I know him for only one hour and I may need many more hours to help him uncover the reasons for his affair. I know this, and I told him so: there are two simple extreme answers: (1) almost everyone has affairs; it is no big deal. Get over it, and (2) there is dome deep-seated character flaw in you that needs to be rooted out. While there is some truth in both of these statements, neither is very true. It will take work to find the whole truth, the hard truth.

I think that we need to start with “I don’t know” and then work hard to know…although we will never completely know. If we work for answers, the answers we come up with will satisfy us and help on our paths of life. What I “knew” as a 20-something no longer serves me as a 70-something but it was good for me to know, even if my knowing was simplistic. It helped me come to honest I don’t know’s, and then to proceed to know something deeper and something greater.

There is a very common phenomenon among the children that I see in my office. I call it the “4-8-12” phenomenon although I also call it the “5-7-9” phenomenon and other variations depending on how old the child is. However, these number can be multiplied in many ways as I will explain.

I have been a child psychologist for almost 50 years and continue to see a number of children in my office. It intrigues me that I can still enjoy sitting on the floor with a child, like I did yesterday, as we played marbles on the floor. I thoroughly enjoyed playing marbles with Jacob, as did Jacob himself. I often wonder what it is like for such a child, like Jacob, to go home and engage in video gaming and sibling arguments after we have had such a lovely cooperative/competitive game of marbles.

Most of the children that I see have some kind of “behavioral problem.” In Jacob’s case he has periodic “meltdowns”, usually when he doesn’t get his way, which can be yelling and screaming or throwing and breaking things. I never see these things in my office, but I do see a child who is “immature” in many ways, his immaturity showing in great difficult with losing, but more importantly, great difficulty in now getting what he wants. Jacob is eight; hence the “8” in the 4-8-12 phenomenon. Importantly, and in a way…”unfortunately,” Jacob is very bright. His IQ puts him on a par with someone who is about 11 or 12. He has good abstract reasoning, which is the heart of intelligence. He can figure things out. He likes math a lot and does well in it. He is less interested in some aspects of language arts, especially writing. Because his abstract reasoning is so high, his intellectual ability is about that of a 12-year old; hence the “12” in the “4-8-12” phenomenon. What about the “4” element in this 4-8-12 phenomenon

Jacob’s penmanship is pretty sloppy, quite a bit worse than we would even expect from an eight-year old. But the real problem is not how he writes; it is how he explodes, although sometimes he “explodes” when he can’t seem to write as fast as he thinks. His explosions might be described as coming from an inability to adjust to conflict, particularly the conflict between what he wants and what someone else wants. Jacob’s inability to deal with loss and conflict suggest that his “emotional/social age” is about four; hence the “4” in the “4-8-12” phenomenon. As you can imagine, these age numbers could be 5-7-9, 10-15-20, or any other combination. The key is that the kid is “smarter” than people his age, hence talks like people older than he is, and hence learns to debate and eventually argue like someone older than his age. What I find with these 4-8-12 kids (or 5-7-9, etc.) is that their parents have talked to them at a level above their physical age from the time they began to talk. So when the kid was two, he was talking like a four-year old, and when he was four, he was talking like an eight-year old, and so on. This doesn’t seem so bad on the surface because it seems that if a parent can “reason” with a child, all would be better. Talking and reasoning is much better than saying something like, “…because I said so” and certainly better than punishment. Right? Wrong.

The problem with 4-8-12 kids is that they have not matured emotionally, and have not matured socially. Jacob, like many other bright eight-year olds, walks like an eight-year old, talks like a 12-year old, and feels like a four-year old. When he doesn’t get what he wants, he feels absolutely awful. Likewise, when he loses a game, he feels completely awful. This awfulness is a four-year old phenomenon, not an eight-year old phenomenon, and certainly not a 12-year old phenomenon. You can’t argue with a four-year old. You certainly can’t debate with a four-year old.

By the way, an argument is a debate plus emotion. I often suggest that when people discuss things, they separate emotion from facts and begin with emotion. You can’t do both at the same time. So when a parent is arguing with a four-year old, whatever the chronological age of the child, that parent is engaging an activity that is not reasonable for any child, much less a four-year old child. “Starting with emotion” means allowing emotional expressions without much restraint. If a child of four is also four intellectually, that child will express extreme emotions. She will say things like, “I hate you,” “I want to kill you,” “Nobody loves me,” or even, “I want to die.” Some kids rage without words. Other kids swear in whatever language they have learned. So expressing emotion is good, but it is not the same as dealing with facts. So I ask parents to separate the emotion and fact and allow for the emotion first. Most of the time this functionally means, “I don’t get what I want and I hate the world.” This emotion. It is not fact.

So the 4-8-12 kid is in a difficult place. He has the body of someone eight, the mind (more accurately the brain) of a 12-year old, but he has the emotional development of a four-year old, and hence the social development of a four-year old. Emotional development means that one knows one’s feelings and adequately expresses one’s feelings. Furthermore, by the time a child is eight, the child should have added the ability to contain these feelings, i.e. not insist on expressing his feelings all the time. A lack of social development means that the eight-year old Jacob sees the world of people the way a four-year old sees the world, namely, a world of people who serve him…or don’t serve him. So the world for this four-year old is wonderful or awful depending on how much he gets of what he wants.

The real world of a four-year old (or perhaps as young as three and as old as five normally), is one in which the child gets very little of what she wants. She got most of what she wanted when she was 0-3, but pretty soon she wanted more and more and seemed to get less and less. She got “less” because she wanted more. So these 3-5 years are fraught with a great deal of frustration, disappointment, and anger. These are crucial years for a child to get the idea in her head that she doesn’t get most of what she wants. This is a lesson that many people seem never to learn, but it is a very important part of getting through the 3-5 years when I want more and more and get less and less of what I want. Actually, I get more of what I want, but because I want so much more, the percentage of getting what I want decreases from about 75% at age two to about 10% at age four. Raise a child right, i.e. with lots of limitations and “no’s”, and children who are five or six come into the school years prepared to share, lose, and face limits. The 4-8-12 child has not learned that lesson.

So what is there to do with the 4-8-12 child? The answer is quite simple…but also difficult. The answer is what I tell parents of these kids: “limit, limit, and limit;” I also recommend “100 no’s for every yes.” This is what we should be doing with four-year olds: limiting and no-ing. Few parents seem to know how to do this. Reasoning is fine…for a 12-year old, and to some degree for an 8-year old, but not for a 4-year old. The four-year old needs primarily to learn that she doesn’t get most of what she wants. And that is very hard on her. But it also builds character, something that is lacking in many children and many adults. So if you have a 4-8-12 child in your home, or any other such combination, I suggest you love the child completely, value the child for her intellectual ability, and treat the child the way you would treat any four-year old: limiting.

Limiting, by the way, is not punishing. In fact, the more you limit, the less you will have to punish. Furthermore, punishment is usually too late because it comes after some kind of fruitless argument or outrageous behavior, and never really helps. Neither does reward help. Many parents tell me the same thing: it seems that neither rewards nor punishment seem to help with Johnny. Of course not. Johnny is four years old emotionally, not eight, and certainly not 12 where rewards and punishment might be better motivators. But not for four-year olds. Children of an emotional age of four need limitation, not rewards for “good” behavior or punishment for “bad” behavior. They simply need to learn that they don’t get most of what they want. There is no explaining to a four-year old why he can’t have everything he wants, nor should there be explaining. Explaining is for a 12-year old, or to some degree an 8-year old.

The limiting I am suggesting should be done sans words…except “no.” No explanations and no justifications. And no punishments. A four-year old child shouldn’t be punished for raging. Perhaps if the raging turns into physical damage, then there might be some further limitation…but still no words. This is very hard to do. After explaining this process to parents with their beginning to understand the concept of limitations, it is interesting that these same parents go right into “talking” to their child as they leave my office, instructing the child to “not touch” or something. I advise against all of this instruction. Just limitation.

This limitation usually means some kind of physicality. I do not mean spanking or hitting. I am not completely opposed to the rare swat, but it should be rare…very rare. In place of hitting, and in place of talking, I suggest holding the child, moving the child, taking the child by the hand, and picking up the child. Unfortunately, this is a lot easier to do with a chronologically four-year old than an eight-year old, much less a 12-year old who is acting like a four-year old. It takes some real practice to be “physical” with a child and not be punitive. What parents find when they stop talking, threatening, arguing, and yelling, is that they need to be more physical. What is even more interesting is that children respond favorably to physical limitation. When a child is limited, he feels safe. Thus, if you are even carrying Jennifer to her room while she is screaming and crying, she feels that she is safe in your arms. It doesn’t matter that she says she hates you. What matters is that she doesn’t get her way.

Limitation (not punishment) needs to be immediate, severe, and short. This means “grounding” for a year doesn’t work. It doesn’t even work for a week or a day. It is too punitive, and it is too long. “Severe” means that it restrains the child from doing anything that she wants. There is no mediating and discussing. She just doesn’t get to watch TV, be with the puppy, or sit at the dinner table. She is in her room. And you might have to stay in her room (without talking) for a while, or you might have to hold her for a while. “Immediate” means right now. Not at the second infraction; at the first infraction. No threatening; no saying, “One more time and…” none of that. Immediate, severe, and short. As short as possible. Perhaps just a few minutes, and rarely longer than 15 minutes. There is no scaling the limitation to the level of the crime. Big infractions don’t need to have big limitations.

Ron Johnson

There is a relatively new body of thinking and research in psychology that examines the phenomenon of intuition. Intuition is commonly expressed as “gut feeling”. Previously, gut-feelings and the like have been seen with some derision because the thinking was that decisions were made with some combination of thinking and feeling. Now, it seems there is a “third force” in the decision-making process that includes both thinking and feeling but adds a dimension between them called intuition. The data, as well as the thinking, on this matter, are not yet clear, but it seems that there is, indeed, this thing that most people call gut-level feeling (or more rarely, gut-level thinking) that does not fit exactly into the thinking or the feeling realm.

So what does all this about intuition have to do with the title of this blog, “10-2-1”? I need to backup a bit before we go forward with this “10-2-1” model. This model came out from several sources: Carl Jung’s ground breaking understanding of the two elements of decision making: thinking and feeling; some recent literature about the whole business of intuition; our combined 90 years of experience conducting psychotherapy; and our own intuition. More accurately, the 10-2-1 model is Deb’s idea. So we give acknowledgement to Jung, other theorists and researchers, and to the many hours of helping peole do the right thing.

“Doing the right thing” is what this 10-2-1 model is all about. We want to do the right thing, and as therapists we want to help our patients do the right thing. In fact we are daily asked by the people we see in our offices what they should do in some particular circumstance: Should I get married? Should I stay married? Should I speak to my boss about my dissatisfaction at work? Should I change jobs? Should I have another child? Should I go back to social drinking after three years of complete sobriety? And sometimes the questions we field are even more serious: Should I tell my spouse about the affair I had 10 years ago? Should I admit to my agnosticism even though I am a pastor? Should I admit to my homosexuality to my fellow church goers? Should I continue to live?

It is the questions of life that we need to find answers for. But these questions are difficult to answer because these questions have no easy answer. As I write these words the world and world leaders are trying to decide how to deal with extremist jihadists. There is no easy answer on how to deal with the likes of Boko Haram and ISIL. How do you deal with people who rape, pillage, steal, and murder with impunity? But for most of us the questions we ask are not so world-shaking and world-changing. They are just questions we need to answer so we can get through the day, the week, the year, or life.

Now let us return to my first words about feelings, thinking, and intuition because we think the way to answer important questions is to utilize all three of these elements. I won’t belabor the discussion about what “feelings” are beyond saying that feelings are extremely important, central to life and loving, and the groundwork of the decision-making process. Feelings include outright emotions like joy, sorry, sadness, and fear. I can be sad or joyful depending on whether I have something I love or lose something I love. I can be fearful or angry when I am under some kind of perceived threat. These basic feelings and their combinations (like excitement, which is a combination of fear and joy) always come with a visceral experience, like smiling, frowning, crying, or an agitation in your stomach.

But “feelings” are not always exactly emotional or physical. I can have a feeling that is more like a thought, a fantasy, a picture in my mind, or a brief idea. When I think of some of the time we recently had with our granddaughter at our home, I certainly have some emotion, but I also have pictures of what she did, and of what we might do the next time she pays us a visit.

Feelings can also be intuition (gut-level feeling), but let us defer that part of understanding for just a minute.

We believe that feelings are the basis of decision-making process. Feelings are the “10” part of the 10-2-1 decision-making process. Feelings are the “10” part of this process because we need to feel a lot about something before we think and before we act. We need to feel 10 times and think two times so we can act once with some kind of certainty that our decision is the right one.

The feeling part of this 10-2-1 process is first and foremost, and it is where most people go wrong. People are inclined to make one of two mistakes: (1) they choose to act out of their feelings, or (2) they ignore their feelings and act strictly out of thinking. I have fallen into both categories of mistakes, but I am inclined towards the latter one more often because of my thinking-based personality. My mistakes in decisions have been out of my failure to feel enough about things before I thought about them. Thus, I have done what seemed to be the right thing because I thought it through. But I hadn’t felt it through, and so my feelings weren’t a part of the process, and as a result my decision was not fully grounded and ultimately wrong. Peole who are more feeling-based in personality tend to act out of feelings without allowing those feelings to lead to good thinking.

Here is the key to the feeling part of this 10-2-1 process: you need to feel until you no longer have feelings about the decision. Once this happens, you can think clearly, and eventually act clearly…and rightly. This must sound very odd: “feel until you no longer have feelings.” But that is exactly what we are proposing. We are not suggesting that you no longer want something, see something, or feel something. Rather, we are suggesting that your feelings settle down and become a part of you. Whether you are joyful, sad, afraid, angry, or experiencing some combinations of these feelings, you need to feel them fully and completely. When you have felt these feelings enough, they will no longer be the central ingredient of deciding on something.

When you have felt and finished feeling, then you can think. You can think more clearly without the intrusion of emotions, pictures, or fantasies. When you have finished feeling, you can honestly look at a situation and more adequately decide what to do. If you finish feeling angry, for instance, you can decide to do something out of clear thinking instead of out revenge, punishment, or retribution. If you have been afraid of something, you can move in a certain direction without paranoia or undue hesitation. If you have been very joyful about something, you can decide what to do instead of just feeling happy about something and jumping right in. Several years ago Deb and I bought what amounted to “swamp land” in northern Wisconsin on a whim because the piece of property seemed fun. We thought better of it within the day and were able to renege on our purchase, and later on found our wonderful cabin “up north” that we have truly enjoyed for 10 years.

I originally told patients that they could come to decisions with the process I called, “feel, feel, feel, think, act.” I thought this was a valuable way of valuing and experiencing feelings and then thinking and acting once these feelings had properly been felt and finished. Deb reinvented this process by suggesting that the feeling part needed to be much longer than feeling three times, and the thinking part a bit longer than thinking once. Feelings need to be given a wide berth, so “feel, feel, feel” wasn’t enough. More often we need to feel a lot more than a few seconds, a few minutes, or even a few days. But the key is the same: feel until you no longer have a predominance of feelings. Then you can think. Then you can get to the place where you can rationally evaluate a decision and make the right decision.

When you can think clearly and rationally, you get to a go/no-go place. This is a place where you decision is clear. The decision might be 90% in one direction and 10% in another direction, or it might be 51% vs 49%, but it is still clear. And sometimes you conclude that it is best to make no decision for a while. You might simply need to wait, but this waiting is no longer feeling, fretting, worrying, and fragmenting. It a time where you allow your mind to muse over the decision.

Then you act. This is the “1” part of the 10-2-1 process. You have felt it through and finished you feelings on the matter. You have considered options and come to a rational and right decision. You have moved in a certain direction and done what you hope will be the right thing. You have acted with the best of feeling and the best of thinking; the best of emotion and the best of justice.

And you might still make the wrong decision. Not all well felt-through and thought-through decisions are ultimately right. But if you decision is wrong, you can admit to your error, make corrections, make amends and be farther ahead of doing the right thing the next time.