Psychologist for Young Professionals
March 2nd, 2010
Empathy
Empathy saved my life. Those who know me, both professionally and personally, would say that I am a good person, a happy person, a kind person. Some have even been so bold as to confront my endearing outlook on the world and the people in it, claiming denial, naivete, even stubborn optimism. I assure you my happiness and acceptance of my world and the people in it came not from those qualities, but from their stark opposites: brave awareness, experiential learning, and flexibility of belief in the face of rejecting optimism. Early in my career, empathy provided me with quite a challenge. I was in the “wet clay” stage of developing my therapeutic style, and had become enamored with Carl Rogers (feel free to google) and his “person-centered therapy”. On the surface, its primary application appeared to be simply restating in the therapist’s own words what the client had said to them, as a means of conveying an active understanding of the client’s struggles. Indeed, many regard Rogers’s work as an empathic technique, at best. But as I read deeper in to his theory it became clear that the technique was functionally useless if the therapist didn’t actually believe the shoes in which they were attempting to walk. Reading Rogers, I concluded that the therapist, under his theory, would actually have to reach an understanding so deep, that the therapist could genuinely say to him/herself, “Yep, if it were me, I’d do the same thing.” OK, so I could get behind feeling depressed if I had my clients problems. And I could agree that I would feel anxious if I grew up with my client’s anxiety provoking parents. So far, so good. Then I hit a road block. I began working with gang-affiliated teenagers in an inner-city hospital. I was tasked with running an anger management group for them, and a coinciding parenting group for their parents. This certainly taxed my genuine empathy skills. How could I say “Yep, I would do that” when we are talking about selling drugs, mugging people, “initiations”, prostitution and the like. And don’t get me started on their parents! Neglect, abuse, absent fathers, treating their children like furniture, not people. Their actions were even more vicious because the children for the most part were defenseless. Certainly, in the battle between judgement and empathy, judgement had the upper hand. And Rogers alone, wasn’t cutting it. I couldn’t help but judge, then get angry. I mean...HOW DARE THEY! The very thing with which I was tasked to help these kids to do, I couldn’t do myself. Not willing to let it get the better of me (after all, I was a kind, good person, wasn’t I?), I had to figure out what I hoped was the missing piece to this; something deeper, that would fundamentally change my perspective about people. I would not find it in a psychology book. My saving grace? His Holiness the 14th Dalai Lama, Tenzin Gyatso (again, google away). Never before was it so succinctly put to me that the problem was not them, it was me. By reading his outlook on Buddhism, and the world at large, I found out unequivocally, that the problem in my judgement of others, was that I maintained judgement of myself. Indeed that was the case. There was plenty for which I had not forgiven myself. I held the belief that I mustn’t. I must maintain a scolding vigil, lest these misgivings reappear. I began to understand that self-judgement was a slippery slope. Like most people, my subconscious superego theorized that if I can do that then what else was I capable of. This sent subliminal shock waves of fear through me, and in the face of these gang kids, and there single moms and grandmoms, it led to my judgement of them. Judgement has a purpose: to separate you from them. You would never do that, would you? You them could never be , could you? His Holiness convinced me in one simple idea: We all come from the same place. If I am to believe this, then I have to concede that, if I am a “good person,” so are they. And if that is true, then their immoralities are a consequence of their environment, molding them from the beginning, when they were still raw, beholden, and permeable to everything and anyone around them. It was the parent’s group that clinched it. Listening to their immoral choices made it all the more easier to accept that their kids (you know, the muggers, rapers, dealers) couldn’t have stood a chance against the powerful learning of their early years. I know I couldn’t.... Wait... I know that if I was in that house, then I would probably have ended up like them! I did it! I found my genuine empathy! I truly believe it. It is within me to be a mugger, or a rapist, and it is by fortune alone, that my environment taught me differently. Even now in recollection, I can still feel the cascade of relief and freedom I felt the day I made that miraculous self-discovery. And it plotted my course from then until now. Today, I keep a running tally. Everyone new I meet, professionally or personally, I put them to the unknowing test. I challenge them to prove to me that my theory still holds true. If I ask enough questions, if I was non-judgmentally curious enough, could I still say, “Yep...I'd do the same thing.” The score so far? 100% yes. And you must imagine I’ve seen a LOT of people, and heard a LOT of stories by now. So yes, challenge away. I am a good person, a happy person, a kind person, yet. But I didn’t get there by shying away from reality. I got there from bravely launching myself into the lives of others, unafraid of what I might find in their closets and under their rocks. I dive head first, under the assumption that people start good, and then life happens. Even those that hurt me. I hope the same for you. I hope you blow out the candle in your own punitive vigil. Forgive yourself, and then get curious. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
February 13th, 2010
Forgiveness:
Forgiveness is one of those words that not to many people think about until they have too. Its a word that our parents try to teach us about, our religions try to teach us about, our cultures try to teach us about. Yet so many of us have a hard time forgiving others, and a worse time forgiving ourselves. I’d like to challenge you readers to consider forgiveness again, hopefully in a way that makes sense and is useful.
I see forgiveness differently than most people, so let me describe what I mean when I reference forgiveness. To me, forgiveness is a consequence of the offender’s actions. It is not something you do, per say. You don’t “try to forgive” someone, the same way you don’t “try to believe” the sky is orange. Its a belief; a consequence of witnessing evidence.
I’m sure many of you have said “I can forgive, but I can’t forget.” This is a phrase I disagree with. Most people I ask about this phrase say it means that they can continue the relationship, but they cannot trust the person the same way they did before the offense. In my book that’s not “forgiving, but not forgetting”, thats actually “forgetting, but not forgiving”. Forgiving, to me, is a belief of trust, where the only effort given by the forgiver is perhaps an openness to allow the offender to try to rebuild trust. It is really up to the offender to do the bulk of the work if they would like my forgiveness.
To that end, here are some steps that are necessary for me to forgive someone else, which I would tell them clearly and directly. I would encourage you to begin offering your forgiveness the same way:
- The offender must show you their responsibility and fault in hurting you. Ex: “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have gotten drunk and acted angry in front of our friends. That was wrong of me.”
- The offender must demonstrate his or her awareness of the effects of the act. Ex: “I must have embarrassed you and ruined your night.”
- The offender must demonstrate a plan to make sure the offense never happens again. Ex: “I’m going to try to limit myself when we are around company and work on my anger.”
- The offender must demonstrate consistent positive effort toward their new goal. Ex: “I‘ve acted nicely and in control in front of your friends all year, and I’m starting to forgive myself so I’m not that angry anymore!” (Ok, That last bit about forgiving him/herself may be asking too much, but it would be nice.)
Most people might naturally get to steps one and two. But few have the guts to ask for steps three and four. When all of these conditions are met, I have no problem restoring my trust in this relationship and forgiving my friend. In fact, that friendship, if repaired, will be stronger for it. It may seem strict up front, but I’m not asking for anything more than what you may want, but are too afraid to ask for.
In the more typical scenario of forgiveness, the friend says “I’m sorry,” and you might say “Its alright.” You and your friend may move on, but you have not really forgiven him/her except to say that you will give him/her another shot. However, what you are really doing by NOT getting into steps three or four is giving you friend just enough rope to hang him/herself.
Do you think s/he will remember the offense the next time a similar situation arises? Unlikely. Even if s/he does remember, do you think s/he has prepared, on her own, to prevent the offense from happening again? More unlikely. Maybe this would happen for a really egregious mishap, where you had a knock down, drag out fight about it. Maybe then it would be burned into memory. But what about the smaller stuff? The stuff that is just below the “blow-up” threshold, but still very hurtful? Chances are they will do it again because you did not stress the importance of coming up with a plan and seeing that plan through. That mistrust accumulates, and the friend may never know your growing resentment over time. This is the wedge that will separate you from your friend, family member, or loved one. This is where grudges come from.
If you really want this relationship, it is up to you to set the rules, and help plot the course for them leading to forgiveness. I will warn you now: Many will not be able to accept these hard-earned forgivenesses. You will likely lose friends over this because people can often have their own issues and get defensive. So I expect there will be a natural trimming of your social tree because of this. Yet the ones that stick around, that respect where you are coming from, those are keepers. I’d take ten of those over fifty “untested” friendships any day. In fact, that is much the case in my life, and the lives I’ve helped similarly over the years. And we are all more socially fulfilled for it. So follow the four steps listed above and finally get the strong relationships you deserve!
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November 6, 2009
Motivation, and Lack There Of.
Probably the most common ailment of the working well is motivational problems. Everything from keeping up at the gym to getting chores done to dieting to completing therapy homework brings up the excuse that one just cannot bring themselves to do it. Their first answer to this obstacle is punitive name-calling: I'm just LAZY. After hearing this word so often you must understand that I now cringe at it. The word is disgusting and wholly ineffectual.
Nevertheless it is a useful marker to the system of motivation that plagues my client. You see, when we call ourselves names like that what we are actually trying to do is disgust ourselves into action. We have all done it at some point. "I'm so lazy!," "I'm so fat!," "I'm so stupid!," "I'm so disgusting!". I refer to this as "negative motivation". This is when you try to motivate yourself to avoid a negative outcome instead of to achieve a positive outcome.
There are two troubling assumptions running under the surface of negative motivation: 1) the assumption that you are not inherently acceptable until you attain your goals and 2) that you are nearing a threshold of “bad” that must be avoided.
Take as an example,struggles with body image. You may think 1) your body is not acceptable as is and will be acceptable at some future level of fitness and 2) your pants are getting so tight that you now HAVE to go to the gym (whereas last week they were not as tight and so you did not go).
These two undercurrents are why the gym is packed January 1st and empty by February 1st. Resolutions and a healthy dose of holiday-induced self disgust inspire many to enter into a personal contract with themselves to work out and eat right. But they usually fail at maintaining the new lifestyle. The gym's mass exodus is caused by, believe it or not, initial self improvement. As soon as those honeymoon pounds slide off and your pants feel less tight, a rush of relief floods in and the negative motivation that brought you to the gym recedes. It went from a self-loathing panic, to a tolerable self-disgust. And so when work gets hectic, or when there is a good football game on gym night, there's nothing to propel you to keep up with with your regimen.
Well motivated people use positive motivation instead. They believe in themselves at the start. They believe they are perfectly acceptable given the constraints of there life. Most importantly, they believe in their ability to put effort in today, without immediate gratification, for the future benefit of success. These people were taught early that they can do anything and were pushed on through extreme hardship to feel the incredible fulfillment of a hard fought success. In short, they had unyielding support to do what they did not believe they could.
If you did not have this feeling, this support, then THAT is the reason why you are "lazy". It's not that you are inherently worse than others, but that you were not taught well enough that there is more to you than you ever thought. No one learns that on their own. So the answer is not to push yourself, yet again, on a desperate mission to become acceptable. The answer is to surround yourself with new-found support. People who know you better than yourself, who accept you as is and can remind you that you deserve better.
Ever wonder why we can't remember things before three or four years old? One theory is that we need words to label out memories; to label our experiences. Otherwise we don't have a proverbial hook to hang the hat on. What we take in doesn't stick without the language to hold it. As we get better with talking, we get better with making sense of the world, and we get more and more detailed with our memories. As grown adults, we learn the language of our environment, and in turn, that language shapes the meaning that we make of what we see. So much does our language inform how we see the world, and ourselves, that I often pay close attention to not only what a client is saying in session, but also how they are saying it.
The good news for me is that the mind-language
connection is a two way street. While we may use a language that can make
our world seem bitter, angry, and hopeless, changes to our language can wiggle
its way deep inside our minds and force positive changes to how we think.
How many of these words have you
yelled in anger: “Never!”, “Always!”, “Every time!”, “Have to!” These are
absolute words. People use absolutes all the time as a way to
simplify what they are thinking. After all, keeping track of millions of
exceptions can seem like a daunting idea. Instead of saying “this
old car starts only sometimes when its cold,” we tend to say “this car NEVER
starts when it’s cold.” While this may seem like a benign use of a
common word, there is in fact a hidden message of hopelessness that comes
across. As if things can never change. But the truth is
that if you spend some money on fixing that tired old starter, then its quite
likely that the car will usually start in the
cold. And that’s just it, the TRUTH.
You see, absolutes are actually not
real. They are illusions for the sake of simplicity but at the
expense of our sanity. There is no such thing as “never”, or “always”, or
“every time,” except to say that there is always and
exception. You think that light switch “always” turns on the
light? What if I asked you to think of three ways in which it will
not. Of course you can think of them (e.g. a short circuit, broken
light bulb, crazy electrician broke in and rewired things just to mess with
you). So when we use an absolute we actually perceive an irrationally
hopeless realty. Stressful indeed.
By excising these absolutes from your dialect, you have to account for exceptions. Those I have counseled in doing so typically find that they inevitably come up with creative exceptions that they can then make more common. One woman used to say “I never have enough money to save.” When she began to say “I usually do not have money to save, except that one summer…” she ended up remembering that she had a roommate that summer, and found a way to sublet her apartment to have more monthly savings.
One particular absolute deserves
special attention: “Have to”. By far, this phrase is the most anger
provoking, stress inducing, panic triggering nonsense in the English
language. It gets everyone’s back up. You have to finish
this article…See? Makes you want to flip me the bird,
right? Yet we use this on our friends, family, and ourselves
constantly. “I have to go to the gym.” “You have to be
home by 7.” “Do you have to always put too much salt on everything!” Fact
is, you don’t have to. There is nothing you have to
do. You do not have to go to the army if you are drafted (plenty of
expatriates can attest). You do not have to eat your vegetables (plenty of 6
year olds can attest). You do not even have to breath if you don’t want
to.
When we use “have to” on others, we assert a forcing authority that is simply not real. When we use it on ourselves, we create shame. It is as if we create an internalized parent figure to intimidate us into doing something that our child-selves does not want to do. The problem is, most of the time, because this self-parent isn’t real, the child wins. “I have to go to the gym” is actually an internal conflict that more clearly reads, “I have to go to the gym. But I’m tired (usually in a whiny voice). Well you have to anyway. No I don’t!” And then you don’t go and likely feel ashamed of your lack of motivation. This needless shame will not get you to the gym any faster. It will, however make you angry at yourself. If you had just admitted that you “want” to go to the gym, but you also “want” to watch Netflix, then you can find ways to get some of both. In psych terms this is called “collapsing the conflict.” “Have to” is another irrational absolute that if rid from your language will make you a much less stressed, and more motivated individual.
So before you go to bed tonight, put
a note on your alarm that reads “no more absolutes” and then tell your friends
and co-workers to call you on it when they hear one. In a short
time, you will break the habit of your language and in doing so lighten your
emotional burden a few quality notches.
It
will be OK: dealing with economical distress.
My practice involves seeing roughly forty
distressed souls a week. Of them, 4 informed me recently that they were
laid off (ten percent, that is). The other ninety percent put economic distress
on the top of their weekly dance card. Some are trying to sell a house
that isn't selling. Some are looking for promotions in a dry well.
Everyone (except the recently unemployed) is feeling the vice tighten at work
through increased hours and responsibilities due to a job market into which
bosses know employees won't dare venture. The ripples of relationship strain
and fizzling passions are growing dangers, even if they've become shelved
topics in the therapy room. They will continue to swell and pain my clients
like an unattended infection as we triage and deal with the crisis at
hand.
But if I could pile all my
clients in an auditorium somewhere and tell them a collective message of
soothing it would have to be: "It will all be OK!...so long as you can
adapt." You see, the source of the problem that most young
professionals are panicking about is that this generation is quite frankly too
high on Maslow's hierarchy. If anyone forgot high school psychology class,
Maslow devised a pyramidal theory of needs/fears that exist in the human
psyche. In a useful, but gross oversimplification of Maslow's theory: we
need, fear losing, and eventually take for granted, basic building blocks of
existence. From low to high we need 1) to exist (survival), 2) to exist
to some one (connection), and 3) to exist to for a reason (purpose).
Disaster movies play
puppetry with these fears in order to sell copious summer tickets. Remember
Cloverfield? A promising young professional had his sights set on
Maslow’s third triumph: Purpose. But he was doing so by
letting go of his true love. He, of course, gets swatted down to the
bottom of the Maslow’s hierarchy (because of a vicious 30 story monster).
He had taken survival and connection for granted, and paid the
price. Once he masters survival, he realizes the importance of connection
and immediately (and somewhat literally) climbs back up Maslow's pyramid on
a mission to rescue his love.
Or take Castaway, where Tom
Hanks savors the responsibility of being big dog for his company, taking for
granted the love he leaves on the airstrip. He is then plunged, again
literally, back to basic survival. Once mastered, but still alone, he
satiates Maslow’s next most important need...connection through “
In each of these cases the
main characters were forced into a different set of life rules. From
"pursue a dream" to "rescue my love". From
"conquer the world" to "start a fire". These movies
send moral lessons to focus on what is really important. In these
troubling economic times I would urge everyone to follow a similar
adaptation. It will be ok so long as you adapt now rather than
later. It will be ok so long as you don't leave your love on the
airstrip. It will be ok so long as you shoot for a hug before a dream.
Please don't read these
suggestions to mean let your passions fizzle. I'm the last person to
suggest that, after all, I believe it is our generation's birthright. I'm
merely prescribing that you sure up the rung you are pouncing from, before you
pounce. Enjoy and revel in your survival, its far more fragile than you
realize. Hug longer, kiss more deeply, visit your grandmother, babysit your
neighbor’s kid, buy your friend a drink. Lavish yourself with the
connections around you. These