It’s common for people to say they’re going to therapy to “get an objective perspective,” or “have someone objective look at this and tell us what we should do.” So I suppose it’s unfortunate that therapists—all 100% of them, including me—are human beings. Human beings can’t be objective.

They can’t be objective because, well, they’re subjects, not objects.

Imagine the most objective-appearing human you know of, or have heard of…someone like a scientific researcher, or an accountant wearing a green-shade hat. I spoke to an accountant just this past week who joked, “In my line of work, creativity is discouraged!” You may think that these sensible folks are objective. But they’re not.

They all have distinct temperaments, inclinations, preferences, points of view, and social locations (‘social location’ includes things like sex, cultural background, ethnic background, personal experiences, the generation in which one was born, sexual orientation, birth order, and so on). An accountant is not supposed to be creative, and yet isn’t she creative, in lots of ways? She develops relationships of trust with her clients, runs a complicated business, searches for (hopefully legal) ways to help her clients save on taxes… She is not an android.

And therapists? Well we’re even more subjective than that. We can’t decide if our field is a science or an art (and I personally wonder if science vs. art is even a valid dichotomy), and as much as we might want to give you an “objective” perspective, we can’t just turn off our cultural background, ethnic background, and all the rest. We are not objective. So…what good are we? Great question.

As a subjective therapist with my own biases, preferences, experiences, and social location, I can offer you this:

1. I continually work to be conscious of my subjective perspective. If I react to your story in a certain way because (just to take one example) I grew up in the Midwest, I’ve been trained to notice that reaction, to be conscious of it, and to work with it. Maybe my reaction is benign, maybe not. Maybe it helps me understand you—maybe you’re from the Midwest too!—or maybe it doesn’t. My consciousness about my subjectivity allows me to work with it, to play with it, and even to change it.

2. Because I have my own social location, I am better able to respect and honor yours. I’m not “Commander Data,” so I can deeply respect your own biases, preferences, etc. You’re human; I’m human. If you say something that is radically different than something I would say, I don’t have to be reactive or resistant to it. And if you’re a couple, I can respect all three subjective realities that exist in the room—mine, and the two of yours.

3. My subjective perspective is subjective, but it is also potentially more useful to you than the subjective perspectives of your friends, colleagues, partner, family members, and acquaintances. I’m not an objective robot, but my subjective reality has been shaped by 13 years of work as a therapist, my own work as a therapy client, and years of training and education. So…I’m biased, but in a way that can potentially help you.

4. I try to cultivate humility about all of these things. Because I know I’m not objective, I tread carefully when I sense that my way of seeing things is fundamentally different than another person’s. Or if I don’t tread carefully—if I screw up and get reactive and unconscious—I am able to challenge myself and remember that I am just one human among many. I know how to get over myself.

I encourage you to hire a therapist to get…well, to get a subjective perspective!

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(I can’t get Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” out of my head.) What good news! New York became the sixth state to legalize marriage for all persons, no matter their sex. Like California, New York is a major state, a center of USA culture, a very visible place. I expect now that I may live to see marriage rights be given to everyone in all but a very few states.

I can find no better take on this than the reflections of Andrew Sullivan, one of the earliest (if not the earliest) advocates for marriage rights. This is, as he says, a “BFD.” States granting full marriage equality are simply getting out of the way and allowing any two people to choose their relationship, to choose their kin. It is a triumph of freedom. The legislators who voted for it are patriots.

But my main reaction is more personal. I am married—at least in the eyes of God and our families and friends. We were “married” (damn those quotation marks!) in 2003. We became “registered domestic partners” (really, can’t we just say spouses?) in 2007. If Washington becomes the next state to get out of the way of its free citizens, will my partner and I get married? I don’t know. I’ll have to discuss it with him. But my first answer—just speaking for myself—is no, with an asterisk. No, we won’t be getting married, because we’re already married. We had a delightful liturgy of blessing followed by a splendid bash at Salty’s overlooking the skyline as it dazzled in the evening sun. Why would we do that again?

But here’s the asterisk: again, speaking only for myself, I would find it odd not to get a marriage license if it were available. And that’s a cause for celebration, no question. But the whole thing would have to be done with the clear acknowledgement that we are celebrating Washington state’s transformation, not our own. We’d be raising our glasses to a guest who arrived quite late to the party, offering them a warm welcome and discreetly not mentioning their rudeness.

So yes, New York has a lot to be proud of today. Most of its citizens have been ready for this for quite a long time now, and it’s great that their state caught up with them. So hand the state of New York a glass of champagne, suppress the desire to say “Took you long enough!” and propose a toast to the Empire State.

As Frank’s song goes, If marriage equality can make it here, it can make it anywhere!

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In the summer of 1998, with some trepidation—but probably not enough, given the challenges that lay ahead!—I saw my first client as a therapist. I was working in the behavioral health division of Good Samaritan in Puyallup. As you can see below, I looked somewhat younger.

In the early days, I did lots of child and family therapy. I worked with kids diagnosed with ADHD, did home visits for kids with serious behavioral problems, and for many years had a caseload of folks on Medicaid in agency settings where I did school-based therapy. Then I moved to Group Health in 2004 to work mostly with adult individuals on depression, anxiety, and other issues. I still saw several kids and families during my time there. But I couldn’t shake the itch I felt to try my own hand as a small-business owner. I wanted to run the whole operation, and design a way of being a psychotherapist that better expressed who I am and what I want to do. And I wanted to shift my emphasis to relationships—working with both individuals and couples on how their relationships are shaping who they are, how they can change, and what might be getting in their way.

So in the fall of 2007 I took the plunge and opened this practice. That same month, after I had left Group Health, invested an unsettling amount of money in my new business, and moved into my new office, I came down with appendicitis and was grounded for a month! I remember going to my therapist (I believe I’m better at what I do when I regularly sit in the client’s chair myself) and she laughed and laughed (in a really good way). “Appendicitis!” she said. “The universe wants to know if you’re really serious about this, if you really want this!”

Well, I did, and I do. I’m closing in on four years now as a private practitioner, and it’s been going well. I’ve got plans for some updates and changes to how I do things, so stay tuned for some new items on my website and more convenient ways to schedule and keep your appointments. But the ship is sailing along!

Thanks to all of my clients who have entrusted me to join them in some of the hardest work of their lives. You teach me a lot, and I hope I am returning the favor!

Finally, a snapshot of my ID badge from Good Sam (click photo to enlarge). Now be nice!

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Happy spring, everyone! And for those of you who are still well aware that it’s unseasonably cold in Seattle, and windy today, and look, the clouds are back after a sunny morning, so blurg… well, I have a suggestion: how about painting a bright accent wall in your favorite room?

I know, it’s silly. I’m a therapist, right? I’m supposed to help you gain insight about your late-winter blues and help you take concrete steps toward happiness. Okay…I’m happy to do that. But I also think that sometimes a small project like the one I did yesterday is just the kind of thing we need to see the world differently.

I had been looking at my office with a critical eye for several weeks, and I knew that rearranging the furniture was going to happen—I usually turn everything around every year or so, just to give myself a new physical perspective, a new way to occupy a room where I spend so much time. But this time, it just wasn’t enough. I realized that I had never done anything about the industrial white walls of my office, other than hang a few pretty pictures. I needed some paint therapy.

This was my first time, so it didn’t go entirely as planned, but it was less difficult than I had imagined. I polled a few clients as we were walking out of the office at the end of their sessions: so, take a quick look at that wall. What color should it be? The suggestions were all over the map: “dining-room red,” “gold/yellow/earthy,” “lush meadow green,” “sky blue.” Red seemed too dark and angry for a therapy office, and yellow seemed too, I don’t know, chipper, I guess. And blue seemed too cold. So green it was, and I settled on “Herbal Green,” as you can see below. The office feels so much better—more color, of course, but also more energy, more liveliness. I’m really ready for the warm green months of the year!

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I posted earlier today about a few hunches I might have when I sense that the energy in a counseling session feels ‘flat.’ They’re hunches that do come to me often enough, but I need to add that they are not the only ones.

Therapy is a tremendously complicated activity. It’s not an exaggeration to compare therapy sessions (and therapist/client relationships) to snowflakes: truly, no two are alike. If you and I are working together and the energy feels ‘flat,’ I may sense that it’s because you’re upset with someone…and that someone could possibly be me! Or I may sense that you simply have a feeling that is too deep for words right now, and you just need a little bit of silence. In that case, the energy really wasn’t flat. It just seemed flat. Or…I may wonder whether you just received some bad news, or are distracted by a worry or issue that has come out of the blue for you.

That’s why it’s inevitable that at some point in the hour I’ll bring up what I think I’m noticing, and what my hunch might be about what’s going on, and simply check it out with you.

I mention all of this because this blog can sometimes give the impression that the issues we work on are simple, and the path we follow in a particular session is straightforward. This is a ‘necessary evil’ of the blog format—to address important topics in a short form, I sometimes need to make potentially misleading generalizations. I want to assure you that when we actually work together, I’ll approach your issues with the expectation that you and I, in our work together, will be engaging in an activity—and a relationship—that is utterly unique.

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Lately I’ve been thinking about my own fluctuating enjoyment levels in counseling sessions, both the ones I do as a therapist and the ones I do as a client. (I see a therapist twice a month, in part because I believe I always have something to do in the self-improvement department, and in part because I think it’s unethical for therapists to ply their trade without doing their own personal work.) And I’ve been wondering, when am I really enjoying my work? And when am I feeling flat?

I enjoy it the most when the clients (whether it’s you or me) are really delving into the reason they came in the first place. They’re wrestling with their issues. I enjoy it the least when we sit down and the energy feels low, or diffused. “Hit me!” I’ve recently been saying to start off our sessions. I’ve been saying this opening line a little playfully, and intentionally: I want to remind the client that they’re supposed to get their money’s worth from their hour with me, so let’s go!

“Well…I don’t know,” the client might say. “I’m not sure I have anything to talk about.” And when I hear that, I’ve noticed that I feel a couple of quick hunches (and don’t worry, I check them out before acting on them!). First, I wonder if the client in fact has so many issues that she is having trouble identifying any one thing that would really be a good way to start working with them, so she just shorts out. I wonder this not because I think we’re all hopeless neurotics, but because most of the people I know and work with are leading very complicated lives. There’s always something going on. But if we’re tired and strung out, it’s hard to get started with all of it.

My second hunch is that the client might be viewing counseling as something he receives, something that happens to him, something that I begin and lead with my magical blend of interventions and insights. And, you know, I can come up with a number of good interventions, and I can be quite insightful! But I also believe that the client really needs to fuel the fire first. We need to start with “where it hurts” for you today, or, if you don’t feel any immediate emotional pain, let’s just talk about what’s on your mind.

Which brings me to a third hunch that occurs to me when the energy is flat in the therapy room. I wonder if the client is trying to come up with some kind of ‘therapy-ready’ problem, a problem that has neat corners and a powerful emotional center…a good story that they think the therapist really wants to hear. I say this because, true confessions, this is sometimes how I feel when I go to my therapist and the thing I want to talk about seems silly, but it’s really upsetting me. Something like, “I think my partner is mad at me because I went behind him and refolded the bath towels, and I think he feels insulted.” (Yes, I have had this feeling!*) I’m afraid the therapist will say, “Um…duh…why don’t you just call him up and check it out?” And then I’ll say, “Cause I’m scared I’m right!!” It sounds so…dumb. But I’ve noticed that when I start with something like this—something that feels silly, or small, but is nonetheless really nagging on my mind—my skillful therapist quickly connects it to a deeper issue we’ve been working on, and we’re off: the session has successfully begun!

So if you’re finding yourself in front of a therapist and you don’t know what to say, what to focus on, what to do, just spit out whatever has been on your mind today. We’ll both take it from there. Just…hit me!

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*In my defense, there really is only one good way to fold bath towels.

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Long ago in college (half my lifetime ago!?!) one of my philosophy professors told the class that one of his colleagues in the philosophy department used to be (horrors) a psychology professor. “But then he decided he needed to get serious,” said our not-very-modest philosophy prof. “He decided he really needed to explore the deeper questions behind what today we call ‘psychology.’” His disrespect for the field of psychology was palpable. He almost used air-quotes when he said the word. And…I remember enjoying this, to be honest. (I was a fairly obnoxious little kid at the time, I confess.)

And now, all these years later, I find myself following the same path as my old professor’s colleague. I’m taking a graduate course in medieval history, and I’m finding myself exploring some of the deeper questions behind what I do for a living. And here’s something I’ve recently been thinking about: most of the time, when we’re working on improving our relationships, we fail to think about formal causality.

Huh?

Formal causality (as you can see in the link above) is a term from the philosophical tradition begun by Aristotle and continued in the Middle Ages by Thomas Aquinas, and others. Simply put, it means this: some of the strongest influences on us, and on our relationships, are formative influences. For example, a parent leads by example, provides a consistent routine for her child, engages positively with her child every day, and in many and various ways demonstrates to the child what it means to be human, and that the child is deeply loved. And she does all of these things because, on a deep level—a level that is often beyond her immediate conscious awareness—she wants to do this. She wants to form her child in this way. Forming her child in this way may even be a fundamental dimension of her own identity. And so, day by day, year by year, her child is formed into an adult…into an adult of a certain quality. If Mom is conscious of this deeper level, you’ll see it expressed in her journal, or in the baby books that asked her to write down her deepest wishes for her child.

And here’s how it works in romantic/partnered/marriage relationships. If I want to have a happy long-term relationship with someone, it helps to do little things, little everyday things, that when added together form a relationship. Turn toward your partner. Apologize. Learn a new way to clear the air. Practice non-defensive listening. These are all good things, and they’re good examples of the kind of things I offer when I client says, “I need tools for my relationship!” But formal causality takes us to a deeper level, the level that gives rise to all of these tools, all of these little behaviors.

If I want—on a deep level—to have a happy long-term relationship, that means I’ll be taking the long view…or it means that I see relationships not as something I passively receive, but as something I actively participate in, a long-term developmental process…a long-term process of formation. In other words, I know in my gut that there will be times when I won’t feel love for my partner, times when I will make big mistakes in the relationship, times when one or both of us will be unskillful…and that not only should I not simply try to anxiously avoid these times, but I should embrace them as opportunities for developing the relationship, and improving myself. If my deepest intentions, assumptions, and beliefs are oriented toward a happy, long-term relationship, then they will—over the course of time—form that same relationship.

And so, finally (this is overly long, I know!), here’s what all this means for our counseling together. Often enough we’ll work on tools, techniques, and methods that help a relationship repair itself and improve. But I’ll also be asking formal-causality questions such as, what do you believe ‘marriage‘ is? And, given what you think ‘marriage’ is, have you ever really been married?? Or, what have you always hoped for when you dreamt about being with someone? Or, what do you think two people in a normal relationship are going to have to deal with as they live together? And a follow-up to that one: What’s normal??

Our exploration of these deeper questions will likely reveal a lot of information for you, and light a pathway toward change in your life, and in your relationship.

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Sometimes I think people come to counseling in one of two ways: either to ask “What should I do??” questions, or “What’s it all mean?” questions. In the normal course of a session, we’ll handle both kinds of questions. But I want to let you know that I prefer the “What’s it all mean?” questions. I sometimes call them “campfire questions,” because they’re the kind of questions you’d ask yourself when hanging out around a campfire late at night. It’s dark, the fire is bright and hot and crackling, and people start reflecting. They start to muse about their lives.

I prefer these questions because they make you more active, more in control of your whole process, whether it’s a process of recovery, discovery, growth, or all of the above. “What should I do about my partner?” is a fair question. But a better one is, “What does it mean that my partner’s behavior gets the best of me?”

“How should I handle my partner’s drinking problem?” is a fair question. But a better one is, “What relationship do I have with alcohol, and what will I do for myself—on behalf of myself—when my partner is drinking…and why is it that I will do these things for myself? Why do I want what I want?”

I’m happy to troubleshoot some of your “what should I do?” questions, particularly if you’re in a critical situation. But if possible I’d like to steer you toward the campfire. Come sit by me. Let’s look at the fire, take in a few moments of silence, and start asking ourselves the deeper questions. What does it mean? Why do I do that? Where do I want to go from here?

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Happy December 24! (I’m not assuming you celebrate Christmas.) I fear I may be disappointing you all by doing a “greatest hits” post—I never like it when sitcoms do it!—but my office is closed today and I can’t do another extended original post just now. (I’m back next week.) Also, not to toot my own horn, but I have some pretty good posts from previous holiday seasons. So…here goes—

Here’s my primer on New Year’s resolutions. Bottom line: I like them, and they should be about what you want, not what you should be doing.

Here are my reflections on a familiar Christmas story that reminds us to stop future-tripping (and past-tripping) and live squarely in the here and now.

Feeling down? Here’s a quick take on the complicated emotions most people have during the holidays.

Be well, be safe, and be filled with community and peace during this season!

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I’ve been a therapist since 1998, so that’s a dozen years now. And over the years I’ve learned far more than I did in graduate school. You know how it is: you go to school, study the field that interests you, think you’ve got it all down, and then find out that there’s a ton more to learn when you go into the world and ply your trade.

One of the things I had to learn by experience is something that other therapists knew from the beginning: it helps to just sit down and talk. The reason this lesson was hard for me to learn is that I have a personality that assumes I need to come to the table with lots of ideas, techniques, skills, and methods. If you’re a couple going through a hard time, then I need to meet you with my quiver full of suggestions about better communication, self-development, emotional maturity, and so on. Isn’t that what you’re paying for?

Yes…and no. You’re also paying for the opportunity to talk out loud—in the presence of an intelligent and supportive person—about your problems. And in the talking, you begin to find your way to a few answers, a few solutions. I’ve seen hundreds of clients in thousands of therapy sessions, and I can’t count how many times it was helpful for people simply to talk it out. “I just needed to vent, I guess,” I’ll hear my clients say. “No,” I respond, “it’s not just venting. You’re working out a solution to all of this, just by talking it out.”

I smile when I encounter clients who have a personality like my own and are just as surprised as I am that the most helpful thing they received in our work together was a place to simply give voice to their concerns. “My partner just drives me crazy!!” They might say. And then we do 45 minutes on how crazy their partner is. I could jump in with a suggestion that my client use “I Statements”—you know, “it’s not that my partner is crazy, it’s that my partner does what she does, and my response to her behavior is crazy…”—but often enough I don’t have to over-function in that way. When my clients are “venting,” they typically know what they’re doing. They know they’re supposed to focus on their own “stuff.” But it’s helpful to just let it all out. Soon enough, after stating out loud the thoughts and feelings that have been stewing inside them, they feel a sense of relief…and they begin to function in healthier ways.

If you come to see me for counseling, you might be encouraged to know that I take seriously my role as a professional who is supposed to offer you great insights, effective techniques, and useful perspectives. But you also might be comforted to know that when we get together to talk, a lot of the solution is in the talking.

So…what’s on your mind?

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