I got the title (and the idea) of a “Mental health break” post from one of my favorite bloggers, Andrew Sullivan. Most of the time his blog is pretty serious and intense–these days he’s covering the crisis in Iran–so every once in a while he has fun and posts a funny ad, video, or story. It won’t surprise anyone who knows me that my mental health break today is a photo of our second (well, third) dog, Hoku’ala. I’m not a skilled photographer, so I was astonished when I saw this. It’s one of those once-in-a-puppyhood photographs! Click on the photo for a larger view. Enjoy, and happy Friday!

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I think there are two roles a lot of people expect therapists to play. One of them is judge, the other is referee. Sometimes I smile when I think of myself wearing a judge’s robe, or worse, a referee’s striped shirt. Here’s why neither uniform works for me as your therapist:

First, the judge. Your life is filled with judgments. You chose a partner because you judged that person to be a good match for you. You chose a career, or a house. You chose to try to conceive a child. Or you chose not to. And there are thousands of tinier judgments: that person looks drunk, you tell yourself. That bus seat looks dirty. And of course you make a judgment when you come in for counseling: this therapist is the one I think can help me.

I certainly hope that most of your judgments are sound (particularly that last one!). When you come to counseling, we can talk about them. You might know already that you made some pretty bad judgments, or you even know that your general pattern of judgment is flawed–maybe you automatically judge everyone to be untrustworthy, and that prevents you from getting close to anyone. Or you have a hard time with moderation, balance, and self-care. So you come to counseling, and if you’re like a lot of people, you approach the therapist as a judge–and a better judge than you, to boot. You ask me for advice. You check out decisions with me to see what I think. It sounds right. It sounds like what counseling is all about.

But it’s not. Counseling is about you becoming a better judge, not you submitting to my judgments. My cultural background might be different from yours. Or my gender. Or my attitudes, my assumptions, my worldview. If I’m wearing the judge’s robe in our work together, you don’t take command of your own life by focusing on and developing your own good judgment.

And as for referee, well that’s a uniform therapists are often invited to wear when doing couples therapy. The two of you come in, sit down, and start the same fight you have in your living room. And my job is to be your referee, your diplomat, your Voice of Reason. But here we have the same problem: if I’m your referee, then who stands tall in your own living room? And what if I make a bad call? Or what if you don’t like my call, but your partner does? What will become of our therapeutic relationship?

It’s better if I help both of you be your own referee–not necessarily of the fight you’re having, but the referee of your own internal struggles and issues. If you are your own referee, you are making your own calls about your own behavior. Am I being fair? you ask yourself. Am I being honest? Am I blaming my partner for a problem I have?

So…what is my uniform, then? I don’t have a colorful, neat little uniform that signifies what I do, but I will say this: my job is to help you be your own judge, your own referee, and get better and better at it, so that you will have the happiness, satisfaction, and contentment you long for in your life, and in your relationships.

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I posted this in my couples blog because lately it’s been couples in my practice who have needed to work on this a lot, but it’s a universal concept, well worth cross-posting. Enjoy, and happy differentiation!

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Last Friday I went to PLU to talk to a classroom of therapist trainees about ethics, practice-building, getting licensed, and anything else they wanted to talk about. One of them asked about self-care. “How do you take care of yourself when you’re stressed out?” she asked.

Short answer: nonsense and silliness. I noticed years ago that one consequence of my work is a craving most evenings for comedy shows, or frolicking with the dogs, or having my funniest friends over for dinner. There can be plenty of positive energy and laughter in my counseling sessions–believe me, it can really help!–but there is a level of intensity in my work that requires a lot of evening decompression. Go ahead and watch “The Wire” if you want. I’m going to watch this.

As I was talking to the students, I kept thinking of Willy Wonka, that great pop-culture example of a healthy (and, yeah, weird) person who stays emotionally healthy by opening himself up to the silly child within. In one scene, he softly sings a line that I’ve never forgotten: “A little nonsense now and then / is relished by the wisest men.”

I hope you can forgive the gendered language and open yourself up to healthy nonsense, to Willy Wonka silliness, in your life.

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Sorry for the slow trickle of posts lately. Lots of personal stuff has been going on, and as a therapist I feel a natural (and appropriate!) tension about reporting personal stuff on my blog. For most bloggers, personal stuff is the whole point of their blog. But for a therapist, it’s different. When I’m working with people, I have to be careful about what I disclose about myself, mostly because it’s all too easy for therapists to make the therapy hour about them. And even if they’re not going that far, it just muddies the waters to talk too much about the therapist and his personal life.

But today I’ll resolve the tension in favor of personal disclosure, because the personal “stuff that’s been going on” is a fun, exciting thing. A new puppy has arrived in the house. If there’s a topic about me that I’m willing to talk about, it’s my puppy dogs. If you’ve been following my blog, you’ve met both Stella and Hoshi. Say hello to Hoku’ala, an eight-week-old Shiba Inu. The vet cleared him yesterday for a lifetime of health, assuming we protect him, and Stella accepts him (she’s not there yet). It’s going fine, but I’m looking forward to sleeping for more than two hours at a time. It’s always a wild ride!

Oh, and Hoku’ala is a Hawai’ian boy name that means “rising star.” (Stella = Latin for star; Hoshi = Japanese for star; this time, in the wake of Hoshi’s untimely departure from the house, we needed the star to be rising.)

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If you’re a client of mine, you’ll recognize this metaphor. You’ll recall that I’ve used it at least once in our work together. It’s the metaphor of falling off a cliff. Here’s how it works: imagine your life being lived on a large plateau. As you roam the plateau, you encounter green countryside, rivers, patches of desert, rocky wilderness, lush groves of trees. Your life is rich and complex. And on one side of the plateau is a large cliff.

And sometimes you fall off that cliff.

What’s your cliff? Is it a difficulty you have controlling your temper? Or is it the opposite–a difficulty expressing anger? Is it a tendency to give up your life for the sake of others? Or a habit of self-centered behavior? Do you have trouble being authentic and truthful with the people you love? Or are you too blunt and crass for your own good?

Sometimes the cliff people go over is alcohol, or overeating, or anxious worrying. It’s the thing you struggle with that keeps coming back to haunt you, keeps throwing you. I don’t have a hard and fast belief about this, but I tend to think that people usually have only one cliff–or maybe two–in their lives.

I like this metaphor because it allows you to de-personalize your struggle. You have an anger problem? Okay, but if you look at it as your “cliff,” you can make a separation between yourself and your problem, so you can avoid an unhelpful cycle of frustration, defensiveness, and guilt. You can gain insight about your “cliff” and actually do something about it.

What’s the cliff you tend to go over?

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Back in October I posted about a technique that helps you say what you need to say in your relationships, and ask for what you want and need from your partner, friend, or family member. If you feel like you get locked in old patterns of conflict and frustration, this might be a good way for you to improve your approach. Just take it step by step, and be flexible when you run into trouble!

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