What Rhymes With Therapy?: Poetic Pathways to Hope and Healing in Troubled Times

By Dr. Jerry Bockoven

It is easy to get lost. One minute you're hiking along a beautiful trail enjoying the wonders of nature, and the next thing you know, you have made a wrong turn and don't know where you are. You look around for signs that will reorient you, but no such signs appear. It is then that your mind starts to panic, and more than anything else in the world, you long to be home again.

The outer world is only one place we can get lost. The ever-growing number of problems we are currently facing as a culture can put so much stress on us that we begin to lose the way that leads to emotional health and well-being. Some get lost in depression and anxiety, where they are trapped in an emotional torture chamber. Some wander into the dark forest of anger, where they fight an unwinnable battle against the rest of the world. Others get lost in the past as they grieve unthinkable losses and struggle to free themselves from the clutches of past traumas. Still others lose their way in their relationships as those once cherished connections start to sour and grow bitter.

What Rhymes with Therapy is a road map for those times when we get lost and cannot find our way home. Using the unique language of poetry, What Rhymes with Therapy describes the way emotional and relational problems work and how they can be successfully addressed. Each poem is like a therapy session that offers insights and directions designed to make you strong and resilient in a time when the world's problems push to erode and weaken. So if you are feeling the burden of being unable to find your way to the health and well-being you want and need, consider these poetic pathways as guides that lead back to the safety, peace, and health of home.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Fulton Books, Inc.
• Release date: Feb 27, 2024
• ISBN: 9798889822424

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title

Copyright

Introduction

Guided Tours

Chapter 1: On Second Thought: The Power of Rethinking

The Storyteller

Limericks to Rethink By

Wrestling Bears

Chapter 2: Anxiety

My Should-er's Run Amok

The Pusher

A Magic Wand

The Chocolate Factory

Murray's Lists

Dueling Spiders

Chapter 3: Depression

The Rider on My Bus

You Know Me Not

The Family Rules

The One in Charge

Guessing Game

Chapter 4: Anger

That Guy

Damned Squirrels

Saving Stamps

Let It Blow

Chapter 5: Relationships

Relationship Math

Rocks and Socks

The Silent Treatment

Chapter 6: Grief

The River

The Teacher

Chapter 7: Trauma Recovery

The Cave

Avoiding Ghosts

Special Session

Road Maps

A Baker's Dozen of Stress Management Haikus

What a Difference

Stars in the Sky

Turtle-Necking

Lemons

Peace

Enemies

Tightfisted

The Price Tag

Running

Feedback

Teachers

Unexpected Corners

Not-So-Pretty Please

The Visitors

My Father's Coat

FUBAR

The Serenity Path

Notes

About the Author

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What Rhymes With Therapy?

Poetic Pathways to Hope and Healing in Troubled Times

Dr. Jerry Bockoven

Copyright © 2024 Dr. Jerry Bockoven

All rights reserved

First Edition

Fulton Books

Meadville, PA

Published by Fulton Books 2024

ISBN 979-8-88982-241-7 (paperback)

ISBN 979-8-88982-243-1 (hardcover)

ISBN 979-8-88982-242-4 (digital)

Printed in the United States of America

To my children Mike and Katie. Two of the most beautiful poems I have ever known.

Introduction

Pathways

It seems that the world that surrounds me today

Is filling with problems that don't go away,

And as the world fills with this terrible mess,

I'm filling with ever more negative stress.

There's COVID and climate and corporate greed.

There's outrageous prices for things that we need.

There's misinformation that's meant to deceive,

So much that it's hard to know who to believe.

There's ongoing battles 'tween Magas and Dems,

And unending fights between us's and thems,

Where one side says something, the other side shuns

On racism, gender, abortion and guns.

There's war in Ukraine thanks to Putin and friends

And some who say this is how everything ends.

While others say robots we program today

Will soon start to program us all to obey.

If that's not enough to be stressed all the time,

There's China, the border, there's drugs, and there's crime.

There's those who claim wokeness and those that oppose.

There's gridlock among the elected we chose.

Attempting to manage the stress and the blues,

I turn to my life, and I turn off the news,

But wouldn't you know it, I find when I do

There's stress, and there's problems existing there too.

The place where I'm working wants more for less pay.

My in-laws come visit and won't go away.

My partner complains that I'm not up to par,

And now, once again, something's wrong with my car.

My kids go to school, where I worry a lot

They'll get education without getting shot.

This morning I tried to take positive views

To find that the cat had thrown up in my shoes.

Surrounded by problems, I can't catch a break.

They frazzle my nerves, and they keep me awake.

At times it gets to me, I have to admit

And then stress has me, 'stead of me having it.

If you are like me in these challenging times,

Read on for within there are rhythms and rhymes

That shows the way through and some ways we can cope

And most of all show there are pathways to hope.

Troubled Times and Teeter-Totters

A wealthy supervillain once offered a billion-dollar prize to the winner of a diabolical contest. Hoping to use the winners' insights for their nefarious future schemes, the villain solicited descriptions of an environment that would silently and slowly erode the mental and emotional health of those within it. After reviewing thousands of submissions, the villain awarded the money to a precocious high school student. What set the student apart from the crowd was that, rather than a written description, they submitted a video recording…of the daily news.¹

As the whimsical story of the villain's contest suggests, the current environment that surrounds us all is froth with stress that makes it even more difficult to find ways to achieve and maintain our mental and emotional health. The fumes of this ambient stress enter our emotional nostrils from the relentless rhythm of crisis after crisis that appears in the daily news as well as from the challenges we face in our daily lives.

Stress is a message from our minds that the demands in our lives (e.g., to achieve goals, to remain safe, to manage threats, to protect the people and things we value, to foster meaningful relationships, etc.) number more than the resources we possess to meet them. It is meant to be a temporary warning light that tells us to either decrease demands or increase resources so that there is a balance in our lives. When we do not heed the warning or, as is more often the case, when we are unable to find ways to adjust the demand-resource ratio, things start to get ugly. That's when stress hangs around too long and turns into toxic stress. In this sense, stress is like going over to your relative's house. It's a nice place to visit, but you wouldn't want to live there.

Stress has been around since Adam and Eve were dating. It is built into the way we engage with the world. The problem is that despite the remarkable scientific and technological advances we have made as a species, toxic stress is currently at epidemic levels. It is the emotional COVID of our era. While scientists have speculated about the causes of this increase in toxic stress, it doesn't take a PhD to see why it is so prevalent.

Remember when you were young enough to enjoy playing on a teeter-totter? In my neighborhood, two kids having fun on a teeter-totter was an invitation for a particular gang of playground punks to assert their dominance. They would push one of the kids off the teeter-totter, and then two or three of them would sit on that side and hold the other kid hostage in the air. If you see the punks on one side of the teeter-totter as demands and the unfortunate airborne hostage on the other side as resources, you get a pretty good metaphorical picture of what toxic stress looks like.

It is telling to look at even a partial list of present-day demands that pile on one side of the teeter-totter and keep us hanging in the air feeling chronically outraged, scared, or both. There are natural disasters, political polarization, threats of war, economic struggles, crime, violence, killer epidemics, vitriolic opponents spewing venom at each other, diminishing trust in our leaders and our sources of information, and the ever-increasing pace and glut of societal change that makes life more complex than ever. These demands are joined by the relentless responsibilities at home that press us to figure out how to manage the difficulties of our daily lives. If you were to make your own list of the things that keep you up at night, you wouldn't…well…get much sleep.

On the other side of the teeter-totter sit the resources that we have available to deal with these heavy demands in ways that protect our well-being, our emotional health, and the safety and security of our loved ones. We can fight the good fight and try to balance the teeter-totter for a while, but eventually, we get exhausted and are no longer able to keep up the effort. It is then that our resources are no match for the demand punks that have crowded onto the other side. Toxic stress is when we are at the mercy of those punks and are stuck in the air and going nowhere.

The effects of toxic stress on our mental and emotional states are powerful and insidious. It targets our vulnerabilities by pushing us over thresholds that we normally would be able to avoid. If we are prone to negativity, toxic stress pushes us into depression. If we tend toward apprehension, toxic stress forces us into the realm of anxiety disorders. If we are passionate about injustices, toxic stress transports us to the side of the road where we are screaming at some stranger who cut us off in traffic. If we struggle to keep it together due to past traumas, toxic stress supersizes these vulnerabilities into life-deadening symptoms. If we face challenges in our relationships, toxic stress sees to it that anger and resentment intensify and start to erode the bonds of goodwill that keep us happily connected to those we love. If we struggle to find meaning in our lives, toxic stress can even push that void to the place where we no longer wish to be alive. Toxic stress is a champion sumo wrestler that pushes us outside the circle of mental and emotional well-being into out-of-bounds places where we struggle and barely know ourselves.

Even a cursory look at the research reveals the power of the chronic atmospheric stress around us to push us over the line.

The prevalence of anxiety and depressive disorders in the US is increasing at significant rates.²

Two-thirds of psychologists reported seeing an increase in the severity of symptoms among their patients in 2022. Nearly half (46 percent) said that they have been unable to meet the demand for treatment, and 72 percent have longer waiting lists than before the pandemic.³

When asked whether they believe America is experiencing a mental health crisis, 90 percent of those questioned answered yes.⁴

The rates of attempted and completed suicides in the US are increasing for all age groups.⁵

Between 2002 and 2018, the suicide rate among persons aged ten to twenty-four increased by a whopping 57.4 percent.⁶

The number of souls that toxic stress has bullied over thresholds into the measurable categories of mental and emotional problems is grim and growing. The suffering this bully causes that does not get measured in surveys and statistics is even more alarming. I suspect that if you have read this far, you know how persistent stress can wear us down and make everything harder. You may even know from personal experience how toxic stress pushes us into dark and difficult places that challenge our resilience and ability to find well-being in our lives. The question is, what can we do to deal with the crisis of toxic stress and its consequences?

When any crisis emerges into our collective awareness, we have a go-to, automatic routine (warning…cynic alert). First, the media floods with experts who argue over the cause of the crisis in lockstep with the ideology of the political party with which they are affiliated. After enough experts disagree and public concern does not die out as the news cycle comes and goes, politicians get involved and form committees and subcommittees to look into the problem. Then the debates begin about who is on what committee, and the rules committee members must follow, which lasts for several months. Eventually, old rivalries are renewed, promised favors are called in, and new backroom deals are made until a policy change is proposed. This change is then altered, added to, and arbitrated until it's unrecognizable. If it survives against the odds, it is passed and becomes the way things go…for a while. Eventually, the balance of power changes and new hearings are held, which starts the process all over again. In the meantime, we are all waiting for real solutions. Waiting…waiting…waiting…

Cynicism aside, when it comes to the crisis of toxic stress, the hope for help from someone outside of ourselves is a suckers bet. It is up to us to find pathways out of the dark forest and sinkholes that toxic stress snookers us into.

Reality being what it is, there are many aspects of toxic stress that are beyond our control. It is unlikely that we will be able to make the world stop putting demands on us. We do, however, have the power to control our reactions to the world and the toxic stress that swirls around in its atmosphere. Finding and claiming this power is the path to resilience that can protect us from the ravages of toxic stress and create the possibility of living healthy and meaningful lives in these troubled times. This book is intended to be a map that points the way to those pathways where that inner power is waiting to be found.

Another self-help book?

Self-help books are as plentiful as ticks in Texas. Some are low in quality, making empty promises of a life filled with rainbows and riches as well as complete freedom from difficult emotions even though they are built into the human DNA. Others are written by legitimate experts who take great pains to ensure that their advice is based on scientific evidence that has been validated in well-controlled studies and real-life experience. These books have helped millions to find better lives and discover ways to cope with a host of challenging problems. With so many good self-help books out there, a case could be made that the world does not really need another one.

What if, however, there was a dashingly handsome psychologist with thirty-plus years of experience doing therapy with people who struggled with a myriad of mental and emotional issues? And what if this dedicated helper of humanity was sold on the idea that saying things in different ways had the potential to reach a wider number of people who could hear the message in language that spoke to them in ways others had not? And what if that thoughtful therapist was given to writing in poetic rhythm and rhyme in ways that made solid mental health guidance accessible and even enjoyable? If only such a poetic person would write a self-help book in a time when toxic stress was wreaking havoc on the well-being of millions. That might justify another self-help book in the ocean of options that are currently available. Don't you think?

False bravado aside, the book you are reading is born from my experience as a psychologist who deeply desires to be helpful. It also stems from an enduring fascination with what has been called doggerel or light verse by kindhearted poetry critics and bad poetry for those less willing to have the art form contaminated by writers who need to rhyme all the time.

The case for bad poetry

When I was in college, I wanted to be a poet more than anything else in the world. I read such greats as Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot, E. E. Cummings, and Maya Angelou and was dumbstruck by the beauty of their writing and the depth of their thinking. I marveled at how they and others were able to use language to create a dreamlike atmosphere where deeper truths bypassed my left brain understanding and emerged into pure experience through emotion and intuition. What an amazing gift to be able to use words to accomplish such a miracle. If only I could claim that gift for my own.

Truth be told, being the brooding and brilliant poet I aspired to become was an identity I hoped would compensate for the lack of personality and social skills that hindered my other great aspiration, i.e., to get college coeds to notice me. This was not a particularly transcendent goal, I admit, but hormone-driven motivation is motivation nevertheless. Armed with this less-than-ethereal drive, I enrolled in Mr. Bales's poetry class and began my journey toward literary greatness and an increase in the number of acceptances I received for Saturday night dates.

The first assignment in the class was to write a poem about a nightingale. A bird found in Europe and Africa, the nightingale song has been called one of the most beautiful sounds in nature. That being the case, it has inspired generations of poets who have attempted to capture its magic. Mr. Bales was hoping that we fledgling poets would be able to get caught up in the flow of inspiration that nightingales had given to others in the past. He also hoped that, from that flow, we might generate a poem that would touch the reader with the experience of the nightingale's wonder.

What Mr. Bales was hoping for was something like this…

The Nightingale Song

The night surrounds my being and penetrates my soul,

adding weight to the already heavy burdens of the day,

slowly smothering the possibility of goodness and meaning,

until they desperately gasp for air, finding less until there is none.

Somewhere outside my window,

I hear the wing flaps of a passerine angel,

who lights upon a nearby branch,

like an opera star who takes the stage,

ready to perform the magic of her craft.

And magic she delivers.

Hypnotizing the midnight darkness with her song,

until, in obedience to the beauty of her trills,

it begins to lessen, to lift, to lighten,

until within I feel again the rhythmic breathing

of hope.

What Mr. Bales got from me was something like this…

Are You Lost?

I was feeling low and blue

Thinking what on earth to do,

About the many problems of the day.

And as the sun was setting,

More depressed I started getting,

'Til everything that's good just went away.

Thinking how my life was hard,

I just stared out at my yard,

Sitting by my window, sad as I could be.

Then I heard the sound of wings

And I noticed, of all things

A little bird had landed in a tree.

I thought it was a lark

But because it was so dark,

I couldn't tell if I was right or wrong.

Looking closer at her tail,

I guessed she was a nightingale

And all doubt was lifted when she sang her song.

There was something in that sound

That was moving and profound

And it seemed to open up a little space,

Where I could feel for certain

That despite how I was hurtin'

There's beauty even in the darkest place.

That bird threw me a rope,

Giving me a little hope,

And I'm grateful, but she must have done some roaming.

'Cause nightingales, they say,

Don't live in the USA.

So what was this one doing in Wyoming?

Ever the supportive and positive teacher, Mr. Bales was faced with the quandary of explaining to me how I had missed the mark by a wide margin without crushing my youthful poetic spirit. His tactful but accurate comment about my nightingale poem has embedded itself into my memory and has served as a guide in my poetic journey since that time. He called me into his office (never a good sign) and said, Jerry, you write bad poetry extremely well.

He went on to explain how what I had written was more akin to doggerel than high poetry and that I might dig deeper into my soul to produce something better. I nodded my head politely, thanked him for his feedback, and left his office with my tail between my legs.

Feeling simultaneously chastised and complemented, I went directly to the library to look up the word doggerel (this was in the dark ages before cell phones). I found out that doggerel was a verse that was characterized as having a monotonous rhythm, easy rhyme, and cheap and trivial meaning, often used for burlesque or comic effects. Merriam-Webster noted that doggerel was marked by triviality or inferiority. I even found sources that offered synonyms for doggerel, such as baloney, gibberish, prattle, twaddle, garbage, nonsense, and rubbish. Not quite the brooding and brilliant poet identity I was hoping for.

Despite the clear sense that doggerel was a lowbrow form of expression, there was something about it that really appealed to me. Reading high poetry was sometimes a transcendent experience, but more often than I would like to admit, it left me wondering what the hell the writer was talking about rather than inspired and enlightened. On the other hand, I found doggerel easy to understand, accessible, clever, exceedingly enjoyable, and even insightful. I soon discovered Ogden Nash and Shel Silverstein, who were masters at combining wit and wisdom with rhyme and rhythm and did so unashamedly despite the critic's obsessions about the technical flaws of their poems. Dr. Seuss was also a favorite, although as an English major, I had to read his works in hiding for fear of judgment from my fellow brooding and brilliant classmates. All those years of hiding Playboys as a young teenager were useful in this regard. These writers became my literary heroes with their ability to charm, entertain, challenge, and even enlighten through the medium of burlesque themes and easy rhymes. When I read such lines as, Beneath this slab, John Brown is stowed. He watched the ads and not the road,⁷ I was immediately charmed and hopelessly hooked. My love affair with doggerel and light verse had begun despite Mr. Bales's warning that I was in a relationship that was beneath me.

It was clear that doggerel and I were fast friends, but it was also clear that it was not the vehicle that would take me where I wanted to go. In terms of my social goals, poets get kissed, but doggerelists get bupkissed. In the academic realm, good poems got high marks while doggerel got returned with mediocre grades and phrases written in Mr. Bales's handwriting that said things like nice try and see me. Keeping my eyes on the prize, I suppressed my infatuation with clever rhymes and burlesque effects and focused on trying to become a real poet.

Mr. Bales was an outstanding teacher. He was patient, kind, talented, and wholly dedicated to his students and their growth as would-be poets. He challenged me to read good poetry (which I could and did), to allow myself to let the poem touch my experience (which I could and did…sometimes), to extract the principles and techniques of being a good poet (which I could and did), and to use what I had extracted to produce good or at least adequate poems (which I could not and did not). Despite my carnal motivations and best efforts, my poetry was at best maudlin and clumsy and at worst unintelligible. It was like trying to make a savory soup from muddy water and mouthwash. The raw materials were just not there.

I got a passing pity grade in the class, primarily because I tried so hard. The things I took from the class, however, were more enduring and valuable. I learned to appreciate those word wizards that had the talent to produce powerful pieces of wisdom with a poetic voice. I learned that I was not one of them. I learned that attracting dating partners was more a matter of developing confidence and authenticity rather than adopting a false identity. Finally, I learned that I loved doggerel. God help me. I loved doggerel.

I have used my ability to produce light verse (or as Mr. Bales called it, to write bad poetry extremely well) over the course of my career as a minister, professor, and psychologist. I noticed that peppering sermons, lectures, and even therapy sessions with a clever piece of doggerel had the power to punch up the proceedings and appeal to listeners in a way that mere prose did not. Eventually, I began to realize that doggerel had a way of saying things that put the listener at ease and opened their ears. Rhythm and rhyme seemed to lower defenses and allow ideas to get through when they might have otherwise been resisted or dismissed. It was a way to say things that were accessible and even enjoyable, which, despite its less-than-high-art nature, is a valuable tool to communicate ideas.

I later learned that doggerel and other rhyming poems had received a vote of confidence from the world of psychological research. There were numerous studies that described how rhymes had special powers that could be uniquely useful in enhancing human communication. Imagine two groups of college students in separate rooms. Both groups are given a piece of paper with a statement on it and instructed to read and rate the statement in terms of how much they think it is true. Group one looks at the statement, and it reads, Misfortunes unite foes. Group two, however, looks at their paper, and it reads, Woes unite foes. Both statements essentially say the same thing (i.e., shared adversity can influence enemies to bond), but the way the statements are worded is different. One rhymes, and the other does not. The question researchers wanted to explore was whether words that rhyme are more accepted as true and believable than words that do not.

Before I tell you the results of the study, consider your reaction to the following statement pairs. Which one of the pair are you inclined to rate as more believable and accurate?

1a. People who spend a lot of money will turn you down if you ask them for a loan.

1b. Great spenders are bad lenders.

2a. When people get drunk, they reveal deep dark secrets about themselves that they would never talk about when they are sober.

2b. What sobriety conceals; alcohol reveals.

3a. Life is mostly a struggle.

3b. Life is mostly strife.

4a. You will be healthier if you eat fruit every day.

4b. An apple a day keeps the doctor away.

5a. People with similar characteristics and beliefs tend to affiliate with each other more than with people who are different from them.

5b. Birds of a feather flock together.

Did you notice a tendency to scrutinize the non-rhyming statements more than the rhyming ones and accept the rhyming ones more than the non-rhyming ones? That's what the students in the study did. Rhyming aphorisms like woes unite foes were rated as more believable than non-rhyming ones like misfortunes unite foes. The results of this and other studies like it point to the idea that we have a tendency to perceive rhyming statements as more truthful than those that do not rhyme.

Named the rhyme as reason effect, the discovery of this human tendency was first found by psychologists Matthew McGlone and Jessica Tofighbakhsh in 1999.⁸ Statistically, they found that participants in their studies were 22 percent more likely to perceive rhyming statements as accurate than those that did not rhyme. Other such studies have confirmed their original findings. For example, Filkukova and Klempe looked at ad campaigns and found that ads that rhymed were perceived to be more likable, trustworthy, persuasive, original, and easier to remember.⁹ It is an old advertising maxim that sex sells, but it appears that rhymes might be a less sordid alternative.

Taking these studies as a whole, researchers have theorized that since rhymes are aesthetically pleasing, we overlook the content they describe and assume that because they sound good, they must be true. Additionally, we trust and rely on information that is easier to recall. Since people are twice as likely to remember rhyming statements than non-rhyming statements,¹⁰ we are more likely to trust the messages they carry.

Here is one more pair of statements for you to rate in terms of which of the pair is most believable.

1a. If a leather glove with an accused murderer's DNA on it was found at the scene of the crime and, upon trying it on in front of a jury, it appears to be too small to fit the alleged perpetrator's hand, then it proves they are innocent.

1b. If it doesn't fit, you must acquit.

Those of you who were glued to your TV sets in 1995 when NFL star O. J. Simpson was on trial for the murder of his ex-wife, Nicole Brown, and her friend, Ron Goldman, will recognize these statements. A leather glove found at the scene of the crime contained DNA evidence from Brown, Simpson, and Goldman. To deal with this damning piece of evidence, Simpson's defense attorney, Johnny Cochran, had Simpson try the glove on in front of the jury. When Simpson struggled to get the glove on because it appeared to be too small, Cochran uttered the now infamous phrase, If it doesn't fit, you must acquit. The jury returned a verdict of not guilty. Could it be that Cochrane knew about the rhyme-as-reason effect and used it on the jury to bolster his defense argument? We may never know, but two facts are sure…Cochran used a clever rhyme, and O. J. got no prison time.

Good poetry written by talented poets is a wondrous and unique vehicle that can transmit truth and beauty to the recipient. Part of its charm is that it makes the reader open up and reach to ascertain the meaning it contains. If the distance between the poet's intent and the impact on the reader is too wide, however, it ends up as a frustrating collection of words on a page. On the other hand, the charm of doggerel, light verse, poems that rhyme, or, as Mr. Bales put it, bad poetry, is that it packages its message in ways that are (according to the research on rhyming) pleasurable, trustworthy, accessible, persuasive, and easy to remember. Its potential