Experiential Practice: An Extension of Stutz's Tools
/INTRODUCTION
With the rise of the Netflix documentary Stutz, directed by and featuring Jonah Hill, more people than ever are likely to take an interest in therapy. Stutz stars Phil Stutz, a renowned psychotherapist in LA. The film invites viewers to reimagine their ideas about therapists and of the therapeutic process.
Stutz works with clients directly and sometimes confrontationally; his action-oriented, playful stance is compelling to watch. Both Stutz and Hill are confident that the tools presented in the documentary will work, if practiced with fidelity.
In discussing this documentary with many of my own clients, I have noticed some common threads of appreciation. The tools presented in the film (and in Stutz and Michels’ book The Tools) are appealingly concrete and depicted through drawings that the therapist uses and presents to clients as take-aways from his sessions. These reminders are meant to cue specific visualization exercises that can be performed while one sits in stillness with eyes closed. On a process level, clients seem to benefit from the knowledge that they have tools in a toolkit (index cards in hand) to deal with psychological issues that might arise in their lives. I personally appreciate this approach and Stutz’s process of writing the tools down on cards for his clients. In fact, I have begun to sometimes write and hand out reminder cards of my own when poignant insights or interventions arise in sessions .
Most of Stutz’s tools are grounded in more contemporary models of therapy that evolved out of the psychoanalytic school that Stutz was initially trained in; Narrative Therapy, Experiential Therapy, ACT, and Internal Family Systems strands, amongst other models, can all be found throughout Stutz’s work. While Stutz’s drawings on index cards present as concrete examples, each of the tools is inherently a visualization process that the client must utilize internally in a time of need. He has named and branded these tools based on his lived practice.
Stutz makes it clear that he wants clients to experience, first-hand, shifts in mood and perspective from the use of his tools. In my experience, sometimes clients need more than a visualization to stretch, feel change and ultimately make substantive progress.
What I have presented here should be considered extended practice and practical application for each of the tools laid out in Stutz and Michels’ book and for those presented in the documentary, Stutz. For each, I will explain succinctly what the tool is, what it is trying to accomplish, and then offer some experiential interventions that one can use to actually feel the intended effect of the tool.
My hope is that you might experience an internal shift that signals the possibility of further progress and sustainable management of various types of psychological distress.
Reversal of Desire
What it is: This tool is used to combat avoidance behaviors. Stutz has clients visualize “Pain” as a looming black cloud. Next, clients harness the desire to move out of their “Comfort Zone” and through the cloud of “Pain”. Once through the dark cloud, they find themselves in the land of “Endless Possibilities”.
The goal: The goal is to develop Approach Habits when in the face of challenges or perceived pain. By creating a new experience of approach with pain, you can set yourself free from the problematic avoidance of things that are seen as hard or painful in your life.
How to experience it:
Cold Shower - At the end of your regular nice warm shower, decide to turn the water as cold as you can get it. Notice your resistance to actually turning the handle or skipping this exercise altogether. Turn the handle immediately and count out 30 seconds to yourself. Notice the desire to exit the cold water immediately; do not act on this desire. Watch your experience of the cold change with your acceptance of it. Breathe deeply and watch yourself stay under the shower. After 30 seconds, turn the water off and dry off. Pay attention to how you feel immediately after and in the minutes that follow.
Alarm Clock Day Primer - Use your alarm clock ringing as a cue to notice your own initial avoidance to get out of bed first thing in the morning. Maybe you want to hit the snooze button or turn it off altogether; Get out of bed anyway. Notice that you acknowledged your feeling (I don’t want to get out of bed) but you did not listen to it. Take note of how it feels to have acted based on discipline and not in response to an avoidance impulse.
Age in Burpees - Every day, commit to doing your “age in burpees” at one time as fast as possible. This means that if you are 20 years old, you commit to doing 20 burpees once a day as quickly as possible. If you are over 50, commit to 90 burpees minus your age. So if you’re 70, that would be 20 burpees as well. Notice that each day when you remember you have committed to doing your age in burpees, you become aware of some avoidance. As soon as this happens, drop down and start doing your burpees immediately. Pay attention to how you feel immediately and in the minutes that follow.
Active Love
What it is: Stutz walks clients through a visualization where they imagine an accumulating “warm liquid light that is infinitely loving” surrounding themselves. Next they imagine projecting this love into a person with whom they are angry. The alternative to this is to be trapped in what Stutz calls “The Maze” which happens as a cost of doggedly pursuing fairness. Trapped in the maze, we cease to move forward in our own lives.
The goal: Choosing an outflow of love over being trapped in the maze ultimately feels empowering. Stutz argues that the “quest for fairness puts your whole life on hold” and keeps you trapped in the maze, unable to move on. Ultimately, Active Love gives you the freedom to move past the injustice or slight you perceive and get on with your life feeling empowered.
How to experience it:
Ask for Feedback from Your Rival - Choose someone in your life with whom you currently feel competitive. This could be a co-worker, a friend from the gym, maybe a neighbor, or any other person who occupies a significant part of your brain. The next time you run into this person, genuinely ask them for feedback about work, exercise, a new landscaping project or anything related to the context through which you know this person. Express genuine gratitude after creating space for this person to be helpful to you. Notice how it feels to choose to humble yourself to this person afterwards.
Pay Your Rival a Genuine Compliment - Choose someone in your life with whom you currently feel competitive. This could be a co-worker, a friend from the gym, maybe a neighbor, or any other person who occupies a significant part of your brain. The next time you run into this person, genuinely pay them a compliment about their work, their exercise routine/progress, a new landscaping project you’ve noticed or anything related to the context through which you know them. Notice any shifts you feel in the competition between you and your rival.
Reframe a Slight as Meaningful/Important - The next time you perceive an injustice in your life, notice how you focus on the person/people or system that you feel slighted you. Create a 3 column chart on a sheet of paper. In the first column, write down the name of the person, system or institution that slighted you. In the second column, write down what they did. In the third column, write down the personal fear or insecurity that the slight tapped on inside of you. Finally, underneath the chart, write down the sentence: “I can choose to see this slight as a meaningful and important opportunity to work on ____________ .” Fill in the blank with whatever you wrote down in column three. Notice how you feel having reframed this slight as something meaningful and important to your own work.
Write a Trilogy Letter to the Person - Write a letter to a person with whom you need closure. Organize this letter into three parts related to your relationship: Regrets, Resentments, and Appreciations. Be detailed and specific writing the letter. As you write, assume that no one will ever read it. Speak directly to the person in the letter. When you are finished, consider the proper way to honor this. Would it be helpful to read it out loud? Might you share it with a trusted support person in your life? Should you ceremoniously burn it? Perhaps you decide to send it to the person after all. No matter what, notice how you feel writing the letter and how you feel upon its completion.
Say out-loud, “I choose love” - Any time you are overwhelmed with frustration, say aloud “I choose love”. Hear yourself choosing something opposite of what you feel. Use your negative energy, bother or annoyance to say “I choose love”. If you can’t manage to say this phrase, instead, take a deep breath. Try to exhale for twice as long as your inhale. Either way, you will be interrupting a cycle of reactivity, and potentially intervene before doing something you later regret.
Inner Authority
What it is: Stutz uses the term “Shadow” to refer to the insecure, exiled, part often hidden inside of us. It’s likely modeled after some former version of ourselves, often more vulnerable and child-like, at our most insecure time. I speculate that for many of us this time is around middle school. Integration with, and repression of, our Shadow leads us to freeze at vital moments in our lives. Stutz emphasizes that “[Inner Authority is] not an authority that comes from the approval of anyone outside of you; it’s the authority you can get only when you’re speaking from your inner self.”
The goal: Inner Authority helps us uncouple from our Shadow so that we can perform when needed. To do this, Stutz has clients visualize the Shadow in order to separate from it and bring it out of hiding. Once we can see the Shadow from a distance, we are no longer coupled with it. Instead, the goal is to bond with the Shadow. No longer in hiding, the Shadow is less likely to interfere and stand in the way of our Inner Authority to express ourselves in situations where previously we might have frozen.
How to experience it:
Disclose your insecurity or fear immediately- This extended tool is ideal for public speaking situations. The next time you have to present or speak in front of a group of people, start by acknowledging your nervousness in a quick and jocular manner. You might say something like, “wow, there are a lot of you out there; I hope I get this right!” or “oh man, I’m a little nervous today!” By initially naming your anxiety or nervousness, you are eliminating a level of suffering you would have previously experienced; now you are free to be nervous. You no longer have to pretend like this situation is casual and easy for you, and you can move on to say whatever you need to say, without the fear that people might see through to your Shadow or insecure self. In this way, you are taking ownership of the situation. Paradoxically, you are also less likely to present as nervous, now that you are no longer afraid of being found out.
Find an old picture of your Shadow - This is a concrete way to visualize your Shadow. By associating your Shadow with a particular picture, you can be sure that you have externalized it. You might remember that in the documentary, Jonah Hill creates a life-sized cardboard cut-out of his Shadow to do just this very thing on screen. On the back of the picture you select, write down 3-5 things that you appreciate about this former version of yourself. You may also write down how that version was meaningful and important to the person you have become today.
Diagram your “Parts of Self”- Parts work is associated with the Internal Family Systems (IFS) model of therapy. This model was developed based on the common experience of feeling that there are different parts we are composed of; consider times you’ve heard someone, or yourself, say “part of me wants to _________ , but another part wants to _________ .” IFS distinguishes between three different categories of parts: “Fire Fighters” “Managers” and “Exiles”. If we are unaware, these parts can interact with each other in harmful ways. By utilizing a diagram of a two dimensional house with a basement, you can start to write out and label all of your parts.
The Exiles (versions of your Shadow or what collectively makes up your Shadow) are locked in the basement. Draw stick figures and name the exiles in the basement. Exiled parts may be named after insecurities, specific traumas or patterns of trauma from our past experiences.
The Managers are in the house above the basement and they have the key to the basement door. Managers are the parts that we occupy most of the time throughout the day. Father, employee, husband, and coach could all be examples of Manager parts. The idea is that when the Exiles are not acknowledged, and instead trapped in the basement for too long, they eventually set fire to the house. That’s when the Fire Fighters get called in.
Draw and label your Fire Fighter parts outside of the house. The Fire Fighters are often associated with unhealthy coping mechanisms/behaviors that people utilize to put out the fires caused by repressed Exiles. Some examples of Fire Fighters might be “The Drinker” “the Cutter” and “the Abuser” (parts associated with behaviors we identify as maladaptive coping mechanisms).
The goal of IFS is to better equip the Managers who have the key to the basement to let out the Exiles from time to time, so they never need to set fire to the house. Therapy is a place where we give Exiles some space and air time. The other two extended tools listed in this section also acknowledge and give space to exiled parts.
Once the diagram of the house is complete, you can see that the house represents your Mind. By actually identifying and naming all of our parts of self, we are occupying our true “Self” (note the capital “S”). From this vantage point, the Self, we can begin to manage all of our parts in more healthy ways, such that the Fire Fighters can retire, since the house is no longer being set on fire by Exiles.
Grateful Flow
What it is: Stutz describes the Grateful Flow as a tool that connects us to a higher force (what he calls, “the Source”) by way of manifesting specific grateful thoughts about our lives. It is used to break through the “Black Cloud,” described as a cloud of negative energy that “screens out everything positive and creates a sense of impending doom.” This could emerge and surround us anytime we obsessively ruminate about things like natural disasters, sickness, mistakes or anything outside of our control; these things are generally not likely to come true, although because we tend to focus our attention on them and allow them to dictate whether or not we take action in our lives, we ultimately prove them more true and make them more compelling.
The goal: The goal of the Grateful Flow is to bathe in the Source and experience the feeling that our lives are truly special and being given to us as a gift from the universe. By focusing on all that we’ve been given, we are able to break through the Black Cloud of negativity and recognize that life is an important gift and opportunity worth cherishing. This allows us to unite with the Source and experience a softening or opening, a sense of the “power of infinite giving.”
How to experience it:
Call or text someone important to you and express gratitude - Think of someone you know and value. This should be a person with whom you have a meaningful relationship. Perhaps you have not caught up with this person recently or if you have, most of your interactions have been perfunctory or transactional in nature. Call or text this person immediately and express a specific gratitude for them. After sending the text–or even better, making the call–notice how you feel. Really take a few moments to sit with the feeling of having expressed your gratitude for this person directly. If you are struggling with this, briefly imagine that this is the last time you will speak with this person. This should make it easier for you to figure out what to say.
Start a Gratitude List and contribute to it daily - In a print journal or on your phone, start a list or note labeled “Gratitudes”. At the end of each day, take some time to reflect on specific events from that day and select one specific thing that occurred during that day for which you are grateful. Try to be as specific as possible with what you write down, noting every detail about the event. Whenever you notice that you are stuck in the “Black Cloud” pull out your Gratitude List and read over it carefully.
Utilize a “Last Time” cue to feel grateful for things easily taken for granted - The next time you are saying goodbye to someone you love, imagine it is the last time you will see this person. When you hug goodbye and/or look this person in the eyes, imagine this is the last time you will hug or make eye contact. Use this moment as a cue, but engage in this negative visualization internally, to yourself, for just a few moments. Notice how much more present for the interaction you are, having done this. Notice the feeling of gratitude for this person in this moment that washes over you. You can use this same tool the next time you are eating a favorite meal or engaging in one of your favorite activities. Pretend it is the last time you will ever do these things. There is no need to stay in this “Last Time” place, however entering it briefly will allow you to access instant presence of attention and increased gratitude for the experience. Another way to apply this is to imagine during a difficult time that you are at the end of your life and you have this one moment to re-live again. No matter how unpleasant the current experience is, notice the internal shift when you apply this tool.
Jeopardy
What it is: Stutz describes Jeopardy as a tool that “generates the spark of willpower that [we need] to get through [our] darkest moments of demoralization.” Effectively, Jeopardy is a tool that gets us to use other tools and “act right now.” Jeopardy compels us “based on the risk of losing [our] future” so that we can stay aware of what is at stake and make peace with the need to constantly utilize tools that help us continue to move forward in our lives.
The goal: The goal of Jeopardy is to create a sense of urgency by taking a “deathbed perspective.” This involves visualizing one’s self on his or her deathbed, having lost certain opportunities. This visualization compels us to take immediate action in our best interest in the present moment. This sense of urgency is created by feeling the “jeopardy of losing something important: a job, a relationship, physical safety” in the future. Jeopardy “triggers a burst of energy you can’t get any other way” which can then be leveraged into will-power and ultimately, present-moment action.
How to experience it:
Distinguish between your Resume Values and Eulogy Values - Most people, especially in the first quarter of life, calibrate their attention and action in service of their Resume Values. This category of values is focused around improving one’s resume. Resume values include things like working hard in school and performing well academically, majoring in certain fields, and achieving certain GPA’s, test scores, and awards or recognitions that can be leveraged into greater opportunities later in life. In short, they look good on a resume. By contrast, Eulogy Values are the traits or characteristics for which you’d like to be remembered after you die. These tend to be more like: being of service, being self-disciplined, being kind, and being honest. In general, when we distinguish between our Resume Values and Eulogy Values, we are bringing awareness to the things that will ultimately matter to us. We take this zoomed out perspective in order to gain clarity around what matters most and to help us take action today in service of core, eulogy, values.
After distinguishing between these values, we come to see how much more important something like true friendship or connecting with others is compared to achieving certain milestones in the gym or classroom. This can help us stay focused on actions that really matter.
2. Write your own Eulogy - Writing your own Eulogy is another way to clarify your Eulogy Values. By sitting down to actually write out the things that you hope people will say about you at your funeral, you can start to illuminate certain themes or values that you should prioritize moving forward.
3. Keep a death countdown timer on your phone - There are several apps available that will estimate a death date for you based on certain health and behavioral metrics that you choose to provide. These countdown timers can be used as a good check-in to remind you that life is finite and to tap into a sense of Jeopardy in a moment when you feel stuck.
4. Set a countdown timer on your phone - Use a 10-second count-down timer to compel you into action. As the seconds tick down from 10 and then eventually hit one, commit to getting started on whatever thing you are currently putting off. A simple countdown timer can help you achieve a sense of Jeopardy for small chores that you’re putting off or even for things like sending an email or tending to some other necessary task you’ve been procrastinating. If you don’t want to use an actual timer on your phone (which has the added bonus of removing the phone as an object of distraction from the task at hand) you can try counting down out loud or silently in your head. Notice whether or not that helps you achieve a sense of Jeopardy in the moment.
5. Consider your own death, daily - Set a timer for 60 seconds each day and consider your own death. You might imagine your slow or fast decline. In Buddhism, death meditations can even entail visualizing the decaying and rotting of your own physical body. You might consider the ways in which our body will age over time. Imagine the moment before you die, surrounded by loved ones. What are the things you will hope to have accomplished when this moment arrives? If this feels like too much, spend the 60 seconds just imagining that you will one day die in more abstract terms. This can still be helpful in calling forth a sense of Jeopardy in the moment.
Faith in Higher Forces
What it is: A spiritual stance that involves putting faith and trust in something greater than oneself. Stutz calls this greater thing, “The Source.” The Source is not described as a specific religion or faith practice, rather it is conceptualized as a unifying energy that connects everything. This external energy source can cut through the suffering that humans experience internally.
The goal: The goal is less about believing in a specific religion or faith and more about surrendering one’s hard-wired egoic inclination that his or her internal thoughts are true and constitute reality. The Ego is the part of ourselves that clings to our thoughts as if they were true, believing that we have some separate and superior insight. This ultimately creates suffering because so many of our thoughts arise from a place of insecurity, inadequacy and fear. Instead of solely paying attention to, or acting in service of, our thoughts–which only reinforces the idea that they are true–we can always act in service of some greater, external force or guide. We can always surrender to the idea that truth exists outside of ourselves and outside of our Ego’s ability to name it. Over time, this will weaken the hold of the egoic mind, and we will find more contentment in being connected with The Source and looking to it for truth.
How to experience it:
Spend time in Nature - Superior scope of vision is one biological feature that has helped humans survive and thrive across time. As up-right beings who can see far and wide, we can cultivate a sense of safety, because this advantage means we are able to detect predators early and avoid attack. We extend the capabilities of our vision when we stand along shorelines looking out on the ocean or when we climb to the top of any elevated land. Conversely, phones, screens, and walls limit our scope of vision, put us into a vulnerable “prey” posture, and subconsciously increase the feeling of being in danger. In a very biological way, going outside and expanding one’s visual field leads to a greater sense of safety and security. It puts our bodies posturally into a stance of confidence and self-assuredness. It provides the opportunity for external stimuli to captivate our attention, protecting us from ruminating and going inward with our attention. Compare the person hunched over his/her phone screen to the person standing triumphantly atop a mountain. Fresh air and natural landscapes, and even an experience as common as noticing a slight wind blowing on your face, remind us that we all share the common experience of being alive, on this planet, at this time. One look up at the stars or out across an ocean has the ability to make us feel relatively small, and this has the added benefit of putting our egos in check. If paying attention to and acting on one’s thoughts as if they are truth cultivates ego, climbing a mountain and considering our own insignificance in the face of majestic and timeless natural beauty surely helps to diminish it. So, take a walk outside every day to get out of your head. If you do it in the morning, you’ll benefit from early light exposure and prime yourself for the day to spend more of your attention externally.
Work the 12-Steps -The first step of any 12-step program begins with the phrase “We admitted we were powerless...” Those who resist the 12 steps will often cite the belief in a higher power as the road block. This “higher power,” often presumed to be the Christian God by 12-Step skeptics and resistors, unfortunately distracts from the initial directive in the steps: Again, “we admitted we were powerless...” In this initial phrase, we can clearly see the most important prerequisite for all the work to come: Surrender. Surrender is the opposite of ego. Initiates into the program must be willing to show up humbly admitting that their “best efforts” are what helped them arrive at this particular moment in time, and thus, they will need to surrender to something greater than themselves to move forward and heal or to even just to expect a different and better outcome. Even if a person does not identify with having a chemical or behavioral dependence, as David Foster Wallace puts it, “we all worship something.” This thing that you worship will be the death of you to some extent. Doing the work to surrender and engage in step-work with a trusted sponsor is one way to counter-act the ego and ensure that you are not blindly worshiping something that is contributing to your own demise. Write down the thing or things that you worship on a sheet of paper. Then, find an appropriate meeting nearby, show-up regularly to that community, and eventually get a sponsor to guide you through step-work.
Start a religious or spiritual practice - For many people, faith-based practices provide an antidote to the egoic inclination that we are arbiters of, or have access to, truth. By putting faith into a belief system outside of oneself, and engaging in a community that shares this belief system, one is constantly reminded that his or her mind is incapable of knowing everything. While religion will not be for everyone, it is and has been a reliable way for many people to find more internal peace when they encounter fearful thoughts. Praying is the name used for external anchoring in religious practice. One need not practice a religion to do this, however; for others, meditation is a great option. Try out several religious communities nearby and see if any of them feel helpful to you.
Meditate - The natural breath is an external anchor for our attention that is always available. Whenever we find ourselves ruminating or giving our thoughts too much attention, we can turn our attention to our breath to connect with a stimulus that is more real than anything the mind could ever conjure. This is meditation in action. Meditation can be easily over-complicated, but in short, it starts with noticing and it ends with noticing. The act of noticing oneself on a thought spiral or wrapped up in the monkey mind loop creates the space necessary to anchor one’s attention elsewhere as a healthier alternative. Think of meditation as the formal act of strengthening the “noticing muscle”. With a strong noticing muscle, we can catch ourselves becoming egoically involved and come back to external reality. All stress is related to thoughts and our real world has never been safer. By moving our attention to the breath when we notice over-attachment to our thoughts, we can re-connect with this actual safety. This noticing works well to undermine the ego. Try to pay close, uninterrupted, attention to 2-3 inhales and exhales in a row. Even this is incredibly challenging.
What you think about yourself is NOT all that matters - We have all been told at some point that “what other people think about you does not matter.” Instead, we’re told to cultivate an internal sense of wholeness or being “enough”. Unfortunately, looking inward to find our own sense of validation or worthiness is fraught with problems and can set us up for years of frustration and disappointment. We all walk around with at least lower-case “t” traumas from childhood, if not upper-case “T” Trauma. These experiences create insecurities at best, and “pain bodies”-as Eckhart Tolle refers to them-at worst through which our sense of self and position in life are constantly being filtered and narrated. Because of this, in some ways our default wiring is to see ourselves at our “worst”, from the vantage point of ages where we felt most insecure–take a look back at that picture from middle school! Suffice it to say, it’s not a completely accurate vantage point at all. Couple this with the fact that we’ve spent way too much time thinking about and scrutinizing ourselves, and going inward quickly becomes a dangerous place from which it’s unrealistic to expect an entirely positive self-image to emerge. Instead, it might be important to consider the feedback you get from the world externally as well. Maybe you don’t think you are a funny person; the reality is, if those around you are often laughing at your commentary, you may actually be quite funny. You might think you’re ugly; the reality is, if other people find you attractive, maybe you don’t look so bad after all. Our egos make us think that we solely get to decide these things. In reality, we might feel much better if we listened to what the world is telling us about ourselves: My partner is the better judge of how good of a partner I am. My daughter will be the better judge of how good of a dad I am. The growth chart lets me know that I am relatively tall. Listening more closely to the feedback you get from the world may be a way to get a more clear sense of how you actually are. The fact is, if we existed in a void, in isolation, we would know hardly anything about ourselves. We need interactions to get information. To ignore this information, and instead only listen to our internal dialogue about ourselves, is to live egoically. True, sometimes the feedback from the external world might feel uncomfortable or harsh. If you’re receiving it from multiple people/places, maybe it is worth considering. If it’s only coming from one person and seems to be way out of left field, it’s probably good to put that in context and perspective with the other things you’ve heard about yourself in that arena. Carefully considering feedback from the external world is not about taking every single bit of feedback as absolute truth; instead, it’s about considering, in its entirety, what the world is trying to tell you about yourself. Ultimately this is the way to access a more clear, fuller, understanding of oneself. Start a note in your phone or a list in a journal and record external feedback that comes your way for the next week straight. Do not add your own commentary or edit. Instead, only write down what you hear or see, exactly as you receive it. What patterns or trends do you notice?
Grow a relationship with another human and/or start a family - This won’t be the choice that everyone makes, and getting out of one’s head shouldn’t be the main imperative to do this, however falling in love and having a child are both surefire ways to think about yourself much much less.
