The Iceberg Model Pt 1

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Mark Laaser

Coping can apply to just about everything. Anything you do to avoid your feelings or mask your feelings, or try to elevate your mood out of those feelings. So, for example, you know, certain substances that we can ingest do tend to give us a temporary sense of relief from a feeling we don't like having alcohol and so forth. Some of the other drugs that people ingest, there are behaviors that because of the neurochemistry associated with them, they can also lift us out of those feelings.

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Mark Laaser

So many of us learn, you know, a vast array of both substances and behaviors that we use to manage emotions early on.

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Randy Evert

Welcome to the Faithful and True podcast. I'm Randy Every Year co-host, and today we'd like to present for you a legacy presentation featuring doctor Mark laser. As Mark talks about the Iceberg model, part one Developing Deeper Conversations. Here's doctor Mark laser and the Faithful and True podcast.

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Mark Laaser

Randy, today, I think we're going to embark on a two part series about the iceberg model. We call it that, and the iceberg model is about how we help people have deeper levels of conversation with each other, certainly as spouses and also with friends. And there's a number of different aspects to this model and levels of the model.

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Mark Laaser

And I'd like to go over all of those in the next two shows.

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Randy Evert

Well, it's a great idea, Mark, and it's a very powerful, model taken from a friend of yours and Debbie's who unfortunately is no longer with us, but that's for Virginia satire.

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Mark Laaser

Virginia satire was one of the greatest, therapist, counselors, writers about systems, family systems of the 20th century. And yes, she died in the late 1980s, but before that, she was all over the world teaching about families and dynamics and relationships and various ways of helping people get more true to themselves and also be able to talk more safely with each other.

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Mark Laaser

So part of the history of this is that when Debbie and I first entered counseling, the, woman that we were hooked up with, Marine Graves, who was still counseling down in Omaha, Nebraska, was a personal disciple of Virginia settlers. And she started using this model with us, although she she didn't really tell us she was using it in terms of she didn't outline it.

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Mark Laaser

She didn't teach it to us. She just started using it. And so we became impressed that maybe we should get to know more about it. And eventually Maureen invited us to a training like she does for this, a tier institute. And, we did get more familiar with it. It it does provide really one of the foundations of the work that we do with couples today.

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Mark Laaser

And it is part of our book that we wrote together called The Seven Desires of the heart.

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Randy Evert

Well, in this particular iceberg model is also featured in all of our intensive three day workshops.

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Mark Laaser

That is right. Particularly the couples workshop. We really go over this model in terms of all of its various levels.

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Randy Evert

Well, let's just jump in with both feet, and you can start to tell our listeners what the iceberg model is all about.

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Mark Laaser

Well, let me ask you this. First of all, Randy, do you think this is on our website someplace, or could it be on our website so that people could visualize it?

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Randy Evert

It certainly could be put up on our website. Sure.

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Mark Laaser

So look for that.

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Randy Evert

Under resources.

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Mark Laaser

Under resources.

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Randy Evert

I will label it the iceberg model. And if you go to Faithful and true.com and click on resources later this afternoon, it will be there.

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Mark Laaser

All right. By way of introduction, if you visualize an iceberg, even if you don't have the drawing right in front of you, most people can visualize in iceberg. And there have been some rather famous pictures of icebergs on the internet from time to time. We all know that an iceberg. The bulk of it is below the water. The stuff you see above the water line is really considered only to be about 10% of an iceberg.

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Mark Laaser

In fact, you know, we all know the story of the Titanic and the Titanic. The bridge originally thought they were going to miss the iceberg, but the bottom of the ship had an out cropping of the iceberg, and we know the results of that. But nevertheless, it's true that 90% of an iceberg is below the waterline. So the image is powerful because it it points to the fact that oftentimes what we see above the surface of things is, in fact, what's the word we use, superficial or surface.

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Mark Laaser

We sometimes use that word. We find that a lot of people get in trouble talking to each other, because they're only talking about observable phenomenon, behaviors and so forth. And people do tend to get locked into arguments about what they can see or what they observe. That's usually some kind of behavior. One of Virginia's most famous sayings was, the problem is never the problem.

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Mark Laaser

The problem is deeper inside the soul of people in terms of what they really long for and desire. She also said that the average couple gets locked, sometimes for months and years, into arguing about behaviors. You know, that's something that you can see and talk about, describe and defend. Whereas true healing happens at the deeper level of a person's soul or the deeper level of a person's heart.

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Mark Laaser

I think one of our most frequently asked questions around here, by individuals and by the couples we work with, is, how do we get to deeper levels of intimacy or conversation with each other? And how do we get to talking about, deeper levels of our soul so that we can have safer conversations? And that's partly what this model is all about.

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Randy Evert

Well, I think human nature is what leads all of us to first identify those above the surface issues. And yet, as you've so eloquently described here, it is the all of the below, the surface characteristics that really hold the key to unlocking, you know, what the problem is.

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Mark Laaser

So, let's just start. And in this first show today, we'll talk about the first several levels of the iceberg. And then next time we'll talk about the rest so that we can get it all in. I think it would take way too long to get through all levels. I know that when we teach this out there in the world, it takes Debbie and I least an hour or more to kind of describe these various levels.

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Mark Laaser

So for those of you visualizing it, looking at it on a page or, you know, maybe you're on the website and can see it, just imagine that right below the waterline there's a word called coping. And coping basically suggests that all of us, somewhere in our life, have learned how to cope with emotions that we don't like, having feelings that we don't like having.

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Mark Laaser

In fact, feelings is the next level down. We'll get to that in a minute. But let's say you're sad or angry or anxious or stressed or depressed or frightened. Whatever feeling you have that you don't like having, it's uncomfortable. We believe that all of us from childhood on have learned various ways that we cope with those feelings. Some of them were modeled to us by our parents, and some of us just learned these coping behaviors on our own.

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Mark Laaser

Coping can apply to just about everything, anything you do to avoid your feelings or mask your feelings, or try to elevate your mood out of those feelings. So, for example, you know, certain substances that we can ingest do tend to give us a temporary sense of relief from a feeling we don't like having alcohol and so forth. Some of the other drugs that people ingest, there are behaviors that because of the neurochemistry associated with them, they can also lift us out of those feelings.

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Mark Laaser

So many of us learn, you know, a vast array of both substances and behaviors that we use to manage emotions early on. Coffee, for example, is one of mine that, you know, I've used ever since I was in college, you know, to to deal with the stress of academics. I think, nicotine was another one that I, that I was modeled in my home because my father smoked early on and I just found myself early in my 20s, that smoking a pipe gave me a kind of a sense of relief from some stress in my life, which nicotine does have the ability to do.

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Mark Laaser

That's kind of an inherent natural relaxant, takes your kind of stress levels down to smoke, nicotine. Those are just two examples. Some of us just space out. We like to avoid stuff, so we watch way too much TV or we get way too involved in work. Now, work can be interesting in that it can help us avoid feelings, but also sometimes the adrenaline of work and the stress and the deadlines that can also be mood elevating.

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Mark Laaser

Adrenaline has a major antidepressant effect. Gambling produces adrenaline, so the adrenaline is like an antidepressant that the excitement of gambling lifts us out of whatever we're feeling. There are hundreds and hundreds of behaviors and, you know, hundreds and hundreds of various substances. I have a client right now, for example, that has been talking to me about cough gels, that there was a period in his life when he was addicted to cough gels, something you can evidently by over-the-counter, but it has some kind of a perceived buzz to it.

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Mark Laaser

I think that some of it is actually a placebo like effect in his head. But nevertheless, for him, when he gets an emotion that he doesn't like having, at least historically, one of the things he would do was pop one of these cough gels. So, like, we, you know, usually do we just encourage the listeners to think about this for themselves.

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Mark Laaser

And I think that one of the possibilities the listening audience could do right now is just pause the recording. And, if you're talking to your spouse or you're talking to other people in a group or you're talking to yourself and journaling something, just make a list. Since you were a kid of some of the substances or behaviors that you've used to cope with a feeling that you do not like having.

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Mark Laaser

Well, we talked so far in this show about coping, and so we're moving down the iceberg. If you visualize the iceberg, remember we talked about behaviors that show up above the water line that can be observed. We're talking about the fact that coping behaviors. Substances are behaviors that we're doing to get rid of or avoid a feeling we don't like having.

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Mark Laaser

That's what shows up above the waterline, because even if we're drinking, the substance is what we're using the coping. But the drinking behavior can be observed. And that's oftentimes what people get into arguments about. The next level down is feelings. And, you know, most of our audience would be familiar with the fact that given the where a counseling center, we're going to talk here a lot about feelings.

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Mark Laaser

And we have people practice that all the time at our groups. We have them check in with how they're feeling. And we have lists of feelings that we oftentimes provide them with in our counseling center in our room where we do our groups, we have a chart that I think you actually came up with in design that has lists of probably 100 feeling words on it.

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Mark Laaser

And every night or every afternoon when we do a group here, you have to go around the circle and say what you're feeling that day, meaning that, you know, people have these feelings inside them all the time, but they do need to practice talking about them or saying them out loud.

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Randy Evert

And the chart comes in handy because it's pretty common practice that, a guy, as he's starting to check in with the group, can't really grasp the exact accurate word that kind of summarizes how he's feeling that day.

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Mark Laaser

That's right. And it's amazing to me all the stories about growing up, how we're talked out of our feelings. In other words, we're shamed for having them. Maybe it's in a Christian way. I, I know I talk about this for myself all the time that if I had a feeling, my dad particularly was going to preach a sermon about why I didn't need to feel that way because God was in control.

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Mark Laaser

By the way, everything he said was really true. I believe it today. The problem was he wasn't listening, and he didn't. He wasn't encouraging me to have my own feelings. So I think, however you got talked out of your feelings, you know, there's a lot of people who have that experience. Feelings weren't being modeled to you, you know, in your family, people weren't talking about it.

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Mark Laaser

Whatever the case, most of us, you know, little kids have their feelings. I mean, they're pretty blatantly out there when you're, you know, one, two, three years old. And somehow we just learn and get acculturated that it's not okay to have them.

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Randy Evert

Well, you were saying to me earlier that you had an interesting experience last night with one of the guys that was sitting right next to you. What do you tell the listeners what happened there?

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Mark Laaser

Well, you know, I'm old, so I, you know, I sometimes get bugged with the guys that have these, sophisticated smartphones and they're getting bigger and bigger. And, I've learned already that, you know, a lot of the guys take notes at in group so they can remind themselves of what we've talked about on their cell phone.

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Mark Laaser

But there are times when guys are looking at their cell phones, you know, manipulating their cell phones. It bugs me. I think they're being disrespectful. So this guy sitting next. So it did create a feeling in me, a feeling of impatience and perhaps some anger. So I did turn to him and said, you know what? What are you doing on that phone?

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Mark Laaser

And so he he showed me the phone. And what he had done is he had taken a photo of the feelings chart on the wall so that he could have it with him at all times, and even throughout any given day, as he was trying to practice his feelings, like even with his wife, he could bring up the picture and check the list and see what he was feeling.

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Mark Laaser

So hard to be mad.

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Randy Evert

At him. It is hard to be mad at him because it's like, catching the the student that's been doing extra homework, extra credit or something, you know? Right. One interesting thing about that feelings chart that I noticed before is you will not find the word fine on the list.

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Mark Laaser

Yes, fine. There are certain words that inspire the southern speak in me. I don't know why it is, but I think I have a voice of my grandmother who was from the South, who would say I'm fine. And so fine is not a feeling. It's usually a word that we use to avoid feelings. You know, if you're asking me how I'm feeling and I just say I'm fine.

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Mark Laaser

That means I want to move on.

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Randy Evert

It's a transitional word.

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Mark Laaser

Yeah.

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Randy Evert

Let's talk about.

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Mark Laaser

Something else.

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Randy Evert

Let's get off this subject and move on.

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Mark Laaser

Yeah, let's be honest. If you know we see each other in church and you come up to me a coffee hour and say, how are you doing? Probably don't want to get engaged in a conversation about honest and deep feeling. So if I say I'm fine, I'm okay, I'm good. That's okay in that situation. But in accountability groups, if we're trying to have intimacy with friends or with a spouse, we better darn well practice how to get more honest about our feelings.

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Randy Evert

Well, in front of that group of guys who have, over time, gotten to know each other pretty pretty. On a pretty deep level, though, a word like fine is not going to be well received by your group.

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Mark Laaser

No, it's not going to. It's not going to float. It's not going to fly. Right. So we're going to challenge them to look at the list and see what they're really feeling. Let me just remind the listeners because we're we're building this. The model is descending lower into the depths of a person's soul. So we know we can spend all of our time talking about coping behaviors, which really gets us nowhere.

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Mark Laaser

The next step down into our soul is to be able to talk honestly about where what we're feeling. There's also a level on the iceberg model of Virginia satire talked about where she said feelings create feelings also. So the level there is listed as feelings about feelings, I think, the one that's the most familiar to me is that I occasionally struggle with anxiety.

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Mark Laaser

And often times it is the case that when I'm anxious, I get anxious, that I'm anxious. And if I don't talk about that anxiety in intimate relationships, it will build upon itself and snowball.

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Randy Evert

Well, and that would be a very dangerous thing to experience, because that can get to be overwhelming.

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Mark Laaser

Overwhelming, and can lead to panic attacks if it if it really snowballs. So, you know, anxiety about anxiety, FDR we're watching the PBS series about the Roosevelts right now, FDR said in his 1932 inaugural address. The only thing we have to fear is fear itself. So we sometimes get frightened when we're frightened. We get we get sad sometimes.

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Mark Laaser

And I think we get angry that we're sad. And we, we get angry at someone that we think caused us to be sad. If some events in life seem unfair, we can even be angry with God. But we dare not talk about that feeling because that's been labeled somewhere in our life as being pretty sacrilegious. It's really a fairly common experience to have a lot of feelings about feelings, but we're talked out of our feelings in general.

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Mark Laaser

So, yeah, a lot of the people when they first come here are just really shut down with this.

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Randy Evert

Well, it's a complicated subject because I have seen someone who is struggling with anxiety, where it manifests itself into physical sickness.

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Mark Laaser

That can be the case.

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Randy Evert

Yeah. You know, you just you I think my mom used to use the term, you know, worried sick.

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Mark Laaser

Worried sick. I'm I'm worried sick over you. Yeah. And that is true that, you know, there's a lot of times that we use physical metaphors to describe a feeling. I'm uptight. Well, that describes muscle tightness, which created by fear and anxiety. So, our body will sometimes be the way that we know we're having a feeling. And there again, we need to practice what the real feeling is.

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Mark Laaser

And I think one of the, the even psychosomatic principles here is that if you don't get good at talking about your feelings, your body will start expressing them for you.

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Randy Evert

So as we look at this iceberg model, and we started by seeing the surface issue of behaviors above the water, then just below the water, we hit coping. And from coping it goes down to feelings. And from feelings are the feelings about feelings. Let's wrap up today's program with one more concept from Virginia City's iceberg model by having you explain about perceptions.

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Mark Laaser

Yeah, this is really in the center of the iceberg model, and it's very key, to the whole system or the whole idea here. And basically one of the principles here to introduce this is that. So oftentimes how we respond to the world and respond to each other is based on our perceptions. Now perceptions are based on beliefs and ideas.

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Mark Laaser

And and we sometimes say core beliefs about ourselves that we we hold and we carry. So you may be trying to tell me something, Randy. You may even be trying to give me somewhat of an affirmation about something. But if I grew up in one of my core beliefs about myself is I can never do anything right. You can tell me till you're blue in the face that I've done something.

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Mark Laaser

Well, but there's a part of me that just doesn't believe it. My perception is my core belief is that I've never done anything right. There are four core beliefs that we talk about all the time around here pertaining to sexual addiction. And the first one is, I'm a bad and worthless person. I've experienced things in my life that have convinced me of the fact that, you know, I'm just not any good.

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Mark Laaser

The second one is, If you knew me, you'd hate me and leave me. No one loves me as I am. That's number two. Number three. No one takes care of my needs but me. And number four is one of the ways I've learned to cope with all of this in my life is through sexual activity or thought.

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Mark Laaser

And therefore, sex has become my most important need. A tip off that people are talking about perceptions sometimes, strangely enough, is when they use the word I feel, and then it's followed by like, I feel like. And they're not going to describe a feeling, they're going to describe a thought or a perception about themselves or about somebody else, or about the world.

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Mark Laaser

Often we're missing each other because we're trying to honestly communicate, but the other person has a different set of perceptions than we do. And this this level is incredibly important to get Ahold of. Understand? Do therapy about journal, about try to figure out for yourself. And the reason it's so important is because perceptions are oftentimes simply not true.

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Mark Laaser

Now in our next show, we're going to get to the the the lowest level of the iceberg, which is about truth. And we'll never get to real truth, God's truth, if we cannot at least accept the fact that some of us have perceptions about ourselves in the world that are just inaccurate.

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Randy Evert

Give our listeners a challenge as we wrap up today's show, and then we will. We'll come back with next week's show and finish the iceberg model.

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Mark Laaser

Well, here's a thought for the listeners to have conversations with themselves, and I would journal about it or with each other. Just talk about it. Think of a story from your childhood or your growing up years. A story of something that happened in your family. A certain activity between your father and you, your mother and you, your family as it sat around the dinner table, talked about politics or whatever.

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Mark Laaser

Tell a story to yourself or to someone about some part of your history where you learned an idea. You learned a belief. You learned some kind of core concept. Maybe you learned something about yourself because you were getting abused all the time directly. Tell a story to somebody about an experience in your life that gave you a perception of the world or yourself.

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Mark Laaser

And I think one of the ways to unpack these and to get at what is really true, is to start sharing some of this stuff.

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Randy Evert

Thank you for joining us today for the Faithful and True podcast. This has been a legacy presentation of the iceberg model developing deeper conversations. Part one. In the meantime, we hope you'll visit our website and.com where you'll find many resources available to you, as well as online registration information and online registration for our three day intensive workshops. In the meantime, we hope that this day will be day with many blessings and with great fishing.