Boiling Frogs
"Mirror, Mirror"
by Kara Powell and Kendall Payne
Youth Specialties
I know a therapist who has a folder in her office that she keeps pictures in. The pictures range from humans to nature to animals to colors, mostly pulled out of modern magazines. When her younger, less talkative clients, come to their session, she brings out the folder. She asks them to choose a picture of the day and a picture of the week. After they've made their selections she'll say something along the lines of, "hmmmmm, that's an interesting choice. (While nodding her head and furrowing her brow) Now tell me, why did you pick that one?" And withthat, therapy has begun.
By listening and considering carefully their picture choices, she opens them up to talk about their feelings before they even realize they're doing it. Conversation is easier when you can talk about someone's feelings towards "something" instead of talking their feelings about themselves.
One day a client left a Teen People magazine in her office. The therapist, in her mid-fifties, was not an avid Teen People reader, and decided to throw it in the trash. Then she remembered her picture folder, sat down and began to flip through the pages looking for pictures. After looking at every single page in the entire magazine, (cover to cover!), she closed it without pulling a single picture.
There was nothing even remotely appropriate to put in her file. Every shot of a woman was borderline pornographic. Either the women had cleavage hanging out of their blouse, a skirt so short you couldn't {Or shouldn't} wear it in public, or pants so tight and pulled so low you could almost see pubic hair.
Every shot of a man and woman together was sexual, either in suggestion or actuality. She was shocked. For the first time in a long time she was faced with the realities that young people are faced with every day. She remarked to me, "There is so much pressure on young girls to be sexy!" I looked back at her, momentarily stunned silent at this incredible grasp of the obvious and brilliantly replied,"no-duh!"
Next she asked me a strange question (that's what they're licensed to do. Ask strange questions with apparently no obvious meaning and arrive at an obscure conclusion that makes you cry most ofthe time!)
She asked, "Do you know what a frog would do if put it into a pot of boiling water?"
"Ummm.. Jump out?" I said with a stupid, antagonizing smile on my face.
"Exactly! (She was not deterred from making her point by my inability to be serious) because it's hot and it will kill him if he stays in it. Having been just dropped into the pot he recognizes it's potential to cook him!"
"Its like his natural instinct." I added.
"Yes," she said. "But if you took that same frog, even with all his natural instinct, and put him in a pot of cold water on a stove top that was slowly heating up, he wouldn't realize the temperature was rising, and therefore would never jump out. Even when it starts to boil!"
"Bummer." I said sounding like Keanu Reeves in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." I'll admit, it was not my finest or most poetic conversation ever.
As I thought about this sad little analogy of the boiled frog, I realized what she was trying to get me to see. Most times I'll get out of a situation immediately when I feel uncomfortable immediately.
The situations that slowly heat up are the ones that burn us!
This therapist did not grow up watching Britney Spears strip tease on MTV in the morning over a bowl of CHEERIOS before heading out to school. She didn't have friends who wore their jeans so low on purpose so that guys could see their g-string underwear. She didn't have school shootings. She didn't have a 50% (or whatever it is) divorce rate. She didn't know the meaning of anorexia or bulimia. She didn't have porn websites at the touch of a button. {How about sitcoms that normalize porn..."Friends" did exactly that. I don't have much good to say about TV. The news is slanted; the shows are "racy"; the language is vile; the violence is gruesome....no nothing good about TV anymore.} And so she, like the first frog, looks through the Teen People magazine and says to herself, "Ouch! This is hot! Get out or you're gonna die!"
Our generation is like the second frog. We've been in the water as long as we can remember. It's getting hotter and we can't tell. We were born in this pot, and maybe that gives new meaning to the words of Jesus when He says, "I assure you that unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God." (John 3:3)
Maybe He sees that we are immersed in a culture that is set up to destroy our self-esteem, bent on keeping us from living out God's purpose for our lives, turning our attention from committing our lives to God and living out His love to keeping up superficial appearances and envying what others have.
If we stay in this heating water it will eventually, ever so slowly and without warning kill us spiritually. Jesus offers us a new life.
I never thought I could learn so much from a therapist and a frog!
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by Kara Powell and Kendall Payne
Youth Specialties
I know a therapist who has a folder in her office that she keeps pictures in. The pictures range from humans to nature to animals to colors, mostly pulled out of modern magazines. When her younger, less talkative clients, come to their session, she brings out the folder. She asks them to choose a picture of the day and a picture of the week. After they've made their selections she'll say something along the lines of, "hmmmmm, that's an interesting choice. (While nodding her head and furrowing her brow) Now tell me, why did you pick that one?" And withthat, therapy has begun.
By listening and considering carefully their picture choices, she opens them up to talk about their feelings before they even realize they're doing it. Conversation is easier when you can talk about someone's feelings towards "something" instead of talking their feelings about themselves.
One day a client left a Teen People magazine in her office. The therapist, in her mid-fifties, was not an avid Teen People reader, and decided to throw it in the trash. Then she remembered her picture folder, sat down and began to flip through the pages looking for pictures. After looking at every single page in the entire magazine, (cover to cover!), she closed it without pulling a single picture.
There was nothing even remotely appropriate to put in her file. Every shot of a woman was borderline pornographic. Either the women had cleavage hanging out of their blouse, a skirt so short you couldn't {Or shouldn't} wear it in public, or pants so tight and pulled so low you could almost see pubic hair.
Every shot of a man and woman together was sexual, either in suggestion or actuality. She was shocked. For the first time in a long time she was faced with the realities that young people are faced with every day. She remarked to me, "There is so much pressure on young girls to be sexy!" I looked back at her, momentarily stunned silent at this incredible grasp of the obvious and brilliantly replied,"no-duh!"
Next she asked me a strange question (that's what they're licensed to do. Ask strange questions with apparently no obvious meaning and arrive at an obscure conclusion that makes you cry most ofthe time!)
She asked, "Do you know what a frog would do if put it into a pot of boiling water?"
"Ummm.. Jump out?" I said with a stupid, antagonizing smile on my face.
"Exactly! (She was not deterred from making her point by my inability to be serious) because it's hot and it will kill him if he stays in it. Having been just dropped into the pot he recognizes it's potential to cook him!"
"Its like his natural instinct." I added.
"Yes," she said. "But if you took that same frog, even with all his natural instinct, and put him in a pot of cold water on a stove top that was slowly heating up, he wouldn't realize the temperature was rising, and therefore would never jump out. Even when it starts to boil!"
"Bummer." I said sounding like Keanu Reeves in "Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure." I'll admit, it was not my finest or most poetic conversation ever.
As I thought about this sad little analogy of the boiled frog, I realized what she was trying to get me to see. Most times I'll get out of a situation immediately when I feel uncomfortable immediately.
The situations that slowly heat up are the ones that burn us!
This therapist did not grow up watching Britney Spears strip tease on MTV in the morning over a bowl of CHEERIOS before heading out to school. She didn't have friends who wore their jeans so low on purpose so that guys could see their g-string underwear. She didn't have school shootings. She didn't have a 50% (or whatever it is) divorce rate. She didn't know the meaning of anorexia or bulimia. She didn't have porn websites at the touch of a button. {How about sitcoms that normalize porn..."Friends" did exactly that. I don't have much good to say about TV. The news is slanted; the shows are "racy"; the language is vile; the violence is gruesome....no nothing good about TV anymore.} And so she, like the first frog, looks through the Teen People magazine and says to herself, "Ouch! This is hot! Get out or you're gonna die!"
Our generation is like the second frog. We've been in the water as long as we can remember. It's getting hotter and we can't tell. We were born in this pot, and maybe that gives new meaning to the words of Jesus when He says, "I assure you that unless you are born again, you can never see the Kingdom of God." (John 3:3)
Maybe He sees that we are immersed in a culture that is set up to destroy our self-esteem, bent on keeping us from living out God's purpose for our lives, turning our attention from committing our lives to God and living out His love to keeping up superficial appearances and envying what others have.
If we stay in this heating water it will eventually, ever so slowly and without warning kill us spiritually. Jesus offers us a new life.
I never thought I could learn so much from a therapist and a frog!
Top of Page
posted by conservative~by~nature | 8:42 AM
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