Every once in a while I notice themes cropping up in my work with several clients. Lately one of those themes has been the ordinary and lovable absurdity of human beings. So often we suffer and struggle because we fail to laugh at ourselves, and miss out on the opportunity to look at ourselves with a humorous awareness of our own absurdity.

One of my favorite films is the wicked (in all the good ways) Dogma, a film that spoofs the Catholic church and organized religion in general. In one scene, a human is talking to an angel, and she’s commenting on how ridiculous the angel’s concerns are. The angel (played by Alan Rickman) responds, “There’s nothing funnier than the ridiculous faces you people make mid-coitus.” It’s one of my favorite comments on human sexuality, and supports my belief that if you can laugh (kindly) at your sexual self, you will be much more likely to enjoy great sex.

Most of my clients come to counseling with problems that are dead serious. It’s a big mistake to just minimize those problems and laugh them away. At the same time, it’s also healthy to be aware of your own silliness, your own fallibility, your own absurdity. To illustrate, I’ll present a photo of a creature (in my care) who has no problem looking ridiculous!

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I recently read a great article that talks about the psychological idea that a single human being’s mind is made up of multiple ’selves,’ and that one of these selves–the Self with a capital S, if you want to say it that way–is the Person herself, the executive, the one who stands within the person’s core essence. This Self is reflective, thoughtful, and insightful about her life experiences. This is the Self that eats right and exercises, gets her work done before playing, and pays attention to the relationships and activities of her life that are the most nourishing and life-giving for her. Except during the times when one of the lesser selves is running things.

Her Self may be in charge, let’s say, when she eats right all day. But when she comes home, feeling exhausted and frazzled, one of her lesser selves reaches for snack food, or too much wine. Then, in the morning, her Self is back in charge, and feeling frustrated. “Why did I overeat last night?!” she wonders with exasperation. Except she didn’t overeat…or at least She didn’t. It was one of her lesser selves that took over.

The article I linked to above talks about ways people can use ’self-binding’ techniques to gain control over the lesser selves. There are several examples that probably sound familiar to you: using a buddy system when you go out so that you don’t binge-drink; identifying triggers of unwanted behavior and making a plan to respond to them; or creative ideas like giving your lesser self false information so that she can’t betray you later on (such as setting your clocks ahead ten minutes so that your chronically-late lesser self can’t make You late).

But here’s my favorite. I like it so much that I’m going to give it a try. Our friend above–the one who overeats in the evening–would go here and set up a contract with herself to eat right and reach a weight-loss goal. And here’s the best part: she would commit to giving money to a charity she despises if she fails to meet her goal. If she doesn’t lose a pound a week, she gives $20 to the NRA.

I wonder if it seems odd for a nice, kind therapist like me to endorse this! It seems negative, and maybe weird. And maybe it is. But I think it’s also quite creative and insightful: her best Self would never, ever give money to the loathsome NRA. Not even her lesser selves would do that. But her lesser selves betray her best interests in all kinds of other ways, and this is a way to say to them, “Your needs and wishes are not my needs and wishes. You do not live how I want to live. And I’m willing to put money where my mouth is.” It’s a powerful way to take command of one’s life, particularly if you approach it creatively, with positive energy and a thoughtful attitude.

So…I’m going to try it! I’ve set a personal goal (I’ll tell you the specific goal soon: I want to get underway and get some results first) and committed myself to send $20 to the NRA (really, that makes me shudder) if I fail to meet the goal. I’ll keep you posted!

Oh–and here’s a link to a website that talks about this in a different–and much more nuanced–way. This approach–Internal Family Systems therapy, by Richard Schwartz–has helped a great many people. Dr. Schwartz is trained (like me) in systems therapy, and I’d be happy to talk with you about his approach.

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I like to joke about what I call ‘Therapyland,’ the world of self-help, self-care, and self-confrontation that I live and work in. Therapyland–like all cultures–has a language: ‘differentiation‘ is a good example of a Therapyland word that most normal, non-Therapyland people don’t use.

Here’s another one: ‘integrity.’ This is a word that is used by normal people–not just counselors like me. And it usually means what you think it means: to have integrity is to be honorable, trustworthy, reliable, a generally good and honest person. But in Therapyland, I think there’s a second shade of meaning to this word.

In my work with clients, I talk about ‘integrity’ as holding yourself together, or to say it metaphorically, having all your ducks in a row. If you have low integrity, you might be a very honest person–a trustworthy person–but you’re making big mistakes in your relationship, or you’re falling under the weight of an addiction, or you’re having a horrible time working through your grief years after losing someone, or you’re still deeply resentful about a wound or insult you suffered long ago… In all of these examples, the problem is an integration/integrity problem: you haven’t integrated something into your life, or into your self.

For example, I will never “get over” my mother’s death thirteen years ago, if “getting over it” means being totally fine with it and unaware or unconcerned about that loss. But I have integrated it: I am not preoccupied with it to the point where I can’t function, or even (God rest her!) preoccupied with it at all. Sometimes I’m reminded of it and get emotional, but that’s normal–even wonderful. But I’m able to walk on this planet and interact with other human beings without that wound staying open, and bleeding. In this dimension of my life, I have integrity.

Sometimes having ‘low integrity’ is appropriate. When my mother died, I had plenty of ‘low integrity’ in the following weeks and months. That’s supposed to happen. Sometimes we’re supposed to fall apart. But at some point the developmental task we face is to integrate that upsetting event–or that challenging relationship behavior, or that problem we have with substance use–into our life. We’re supposed to get that duck in line with all the others.

How are you working on ‘integrity’ these days?

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Sometimes I wonder if I drive my clients crazy. I wonder this because I keep pushing them on one point in particular: that the suffering they’re experiencing has to do with a task or challenge of their own—that it is their problem, not their partner’s, or child’s, or co-workers.

This doesn’t always go over well.

For one thing, their partner, child, or co-worker presents some pretty bad behavior. And I don’t deny this. “Yes, he was acting childish,” I might say. “No, she wasn’t being reasonable.” “Yes, that’s inappropriate for someone to say in the workplace.” But then I ask this question: “How is your reaction to what they did problematic?” Maybe you’re getting caught up in the other person’s neuroses because you haven’t yet learned how to cultivate healthy detachment in your relationships. Or maybe you’re reacting to their anger, or their anxiety, in ways that you did when you were much younger…and you’re still struggling to learn how to get some healthy perspective. Or maybe they’re saying or doing something that touches a nerve in you, reminds you of your own neurotic stuff. (You don’t have neurotic stuff? Wow! Cause I do, and everyone I know does!)

I run the risk of sounding like a broken record because, to be honest, I’ve always found it valuable in my own personal work to focus on how my problem is my own, despite the crazy shit going on in the other person (to borrow a technical term).

So if you choose to work with me, I will challenge you in this way. But I can also tell you this: if you confront your problem as your problem, you will be pleasantly surprised by how much better you feel. You really will be a better person.

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In my work with many clients, we deal with the concept of acceptance. I’ve never been a big fan of that word. It sounds weak, passive, tentative. There are all kinds of things I don’t want to accept. I don’t want to accept that, say, Haiti will always be a nation marked by tragedy. I don’t want to accept that half the marriages end in divorce. I don’t want to accept that gay couples (and gay singles) will have to live as second-class citizens just because a small percentage of the population hasn’t figured out how to be open and affirming.

But acceptance is often useful, and sometimes essential. If I lost my leg in an accident, I would have to go through the difficult process of acceptance to make sense of my loss and move forward with my life. If I got dumped or suffered some other kind of painful relationship loss, I would have to accept what happened so that I wouldn’t be imprisoned by my own resentment and anger.

To illustrate this, I will use a silly example. (Why? Oh, I don’t know, maybe because it’s Friday, and I haven’t blogged about my dogs in a while.) Our younger dog, Hoku’ala, turned nine months old this week. In three months, he’ll be a yearling who presents far fewer behavioral challenges. In about fifteen months, he’ll truly be a full-grown adult dog. But right now, he’s a chew-chew train. He ripped holes in three pieces of our living room furniture, which have now been moved to a back bedroom. We’re sitting on IKEA furniture that looks like it belongs in a college dorm room, and hoping that by summer we’ll be able to return our living room to its normal condition.

When I first noticed the damage, I had to do some self-soothing (to use a Therapyland term). It won’t be cheap to fix this! Of course we didn’t punish Hoku, because it wasn’t his fault. He’s a dog. He behaves according to his nature. It was our fault for leaving him unsupervised with our furniture. But I felt frustrated. And I worried: my partner isn’t any more of a fan of expensive furniture damage than I am. I imagined that there would be a lot more anger and difficulty when he got home.

But I was wrong. “It’ll be fine,” my partner said. As we moved the furniture out of harm’s way, we talked about how we’ll eventually take it in for repairs, and when we might be able to put the main floor back together again. I was surprised: I thought I would be the calm one!

Like I said, this is a silly example. But it’s a good illustration of the power of acceptance. If you’re upset or frustrated about the consequences of a decision you made, or the outcome of a relationship you cultivated in your life, it helps to take a deep breath and remember that you made a lot of choices in your life that carried some amount of risk, and sometimes things don’t go as planned. Sometimes the furniture gets chewed up, or your feelings get hurt, or a painful lesson is learned. It doesn’t mean you made the wrong choice. (Honest, I love Hoku and don’t regret his membership in our family for one minute!) It just means that life is messy, and sometimes painful, and doing the work of acceptance is just a part of the adventure.

Stella (left) and the Chew-Chew Train.

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Are you in a relationship with someone—at home or at work—where you feel like you have to walk on eggshells? You’re afraid that if you speak the truth, he’ll blow up. You’re afraid that if you tell her she’s wrong about something, she’ll explode. You feel like you’re walking on eggshells.

If you and I are working on this together, chances are I’ll talk with you about experimenting with breaking those shells. It’s not always wise to say or do things that lead to another person blowing up, but then, it’s not always wise to tiptoe through your life out of fear that another person is going to lose it if you act like your real self.

Interpersonal explosions can be painful and destructive. Sometimes discretion really is the best option, particularly if you don’t know someone too well, or if you’re new to a situation (particularly a job) and you need to get your bearings before you start acting decisively. But other times, it’s best to challenge yourself a little bit…particularly if the person you’re afraid of is your longtime spouse! And the best way to do it is to look at it as a growth opportunity—not for the other person, but for you.

Here’s what I mean. The other person may or may not learn how to control and effectively use her anger. He may or may not learn how to be more responsive and less reactive to the thoughts and behaviors of others. She may or may not learn how to be a truly powerful adult—and the adults who are truly powerful are the ones who know how to work with their rage and make sense of it. But if the other person is not willing to learn, not interested (or perhaps not able) to develop his or her emotional maturity, you can get better at handling this kind of person. The learning for you is not learning how to change or reform the other person, but rather to break the eggshells, allow the other person to do whatever he does, and manage your own anxiety—and your own behaviors—in the process.

Having said all that, I need to add that your safety is important. I’m not recommending that you “break the eggshells” with a person who has been violent with you or others, or a person with whom you don’t feel safe. But if it’s just a situation where the other person’s anger is highly uncomfortable for you, then it can be a chance for you to build your skills at working with angry people without avoiding them or tiptoeing around them.

Remember: the person over whom you have the most control—and the person most likely to learn and grow in this situation—is you. Think about breaking those shells. Imagine how satisfying it would be for you to be more skillful at this!

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I often work with people who regret the choices they’ve made. They ruminate about the “road not taken,” the gifts and benefits they might have received if only they had chosen a different path of life. Here’s a simple technique to work through this dilemma.

Imagine that you live in one universe among many, and that there are multiple versions of you existing in other parallel universes. (This sounds like sci-fi, but bear with me!) In this universe, you have chosen (let’s say) to live in Seattle, to pursue a career in one particular field, and to rebuff the advances of several people who wanted to have romantic relationships with you. And…you feel resentful and sad. You wonder what your life would have been like if you had stayed back east, or if you had pursued a very different career, or if you had decided to commit to someone from your past. You wonder if you would be happier if you had taken a different road in your life.

Now, imagine this: someone who looks and sounds like you–someone who really is you–has made different choices in a parallel universe. And you know what? S/he really is happy. The choices really work for him (or her). And yet—and yet—it’s not that simple. Can you imagine that a person in a parallel universe who bears your name and looks and sounds like you might be happy, but also have a few regrets? Here’s what I mean:

Over the past fifteen years, if I had chosen differently, I would be living in Minneapolis, I would most likely be single, and I might even be an adoptive parent of a young child. But my choices have brought me to Seattle, and into a long-term relationship, and into a life and lifestyle that most likely won’t lead to the adoption of children. Should I feel regret? Have I chosen the wrong path? I don’t think so. When I reflect on the “Stephen” who lives in my imaginary parallel universe—the one who stayed in the Midwest and adopted a child—I can see how he might have problems, and worries, and difficulties that don’t trouble me in my own circumstances. I can see that whatever choices I might have made in my life, I would have brought upon myself some combination of pain and joy, suffering and satisfaction.

Bottom line: if you feel regret, angst, or even despair about the current circumstances of your life, it might help to reflect on the probability that no matter what choice you make, that choice will lead to good things, and also a few serious challenges. There is no path of life that can guarantee your contentment and happiness. And—there is no path of life that does not offer you a glimpse of wisdom, insight, and beauty.

So…jump in!

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You’ve heard the made-for-TV therapy question a thousand times, right? Here it is: “How does that make you feel?” This is not a question I ask in my counseling sessions. First of all, it’s such a cliche that I could hardly pull it off with a straight face. But more than that, the wording is troubling—it suggests that a person’s feelings can be directly caused by another person or an upsetting event. This is somewhat true, but not completely true. If I insult you, you might feel hurt or angry, and mostly that’s because I insulted you. But it’s also because you are interpreting my behavior in a certain way, and telling yourself little stories about me, about you, and about our relationship.

Anyway, back to the original point of this post! And the point is, even though I don’t ask, “How does that make you feel?” and even though your feelings are not the only thing we focus on in our work together, getting in touch with your deep feelings can really help. You may have some amount of awareness of how you’re feeling about an upsetting event, but upon reflection you might be surprised at the depth and complexity of your feelings. And if you become aware of this deeper layer of feelings, the feelings will then become more available to you for insight, growth, and change.

So here’s a quick primer on feelings. If you’re feeling uneasy, or irritated, or out of sorts, take some time to sit down with yourself and listen to your deeper layer of feelings. One way to do this is to take a look at this list of feeling words, print it out, and circle the ones that ring true for you. Notice that the feelings are grouped in a way that’s similar to my favorite grouping: mad, sad, glad, and afraid. You know it’s a feeling word when it hits you on a gut level. “I feel you’re not respecting me” is not a feeling. “I’m pissed!” is a feeling.

As you go through the list, you might be surprised at how many feelings you have, and how intense some of them are! The value of this exercise is to look within for sources of reflection. If you’re surprised by your feelings—you didn’t know you were that scared, for example—you can then reflect on them and discern where you might want to go next.

Following that example—you feel scared—you could think about ways to face your fear, or ways to express your fear to someone close to you who only has seen your anger until now. They think you’re pissed at them, but the truth is you’re scared. You’re scared they might break up with you, or you’re scared they might not! Or you’re scared they might be injured or hurt, and you use anger to shield yourself from that future pain by creating an emotional distance.

If this sounds like Pop-psych 101, that’s okay. None of this is particularly new or unusual. But most of us have gotten very skilled at hiding our own deepest feelings from ourselves. I for one am very good at the acting-mad-but-actually-scared routine. But sometimes these simple practices get us started on deeper reflection and the complicated process of recovery and growth.

So … how do you feel??

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For a long time I worked primarily as a child-and-family therapist, mostly in South King County, but also in Puyallup and Tacoma. These days I’m primarily a couples therapist, though I also work with individuals (and love to do so!). I made the switch for a few reasons, and one of them was that I am not a parent. This hasn’t been a game-changing problem for me, because I know a lot of children (I have, let’s see, twenty-one nieces and nephews!), I have been a child myself, and I certainly have a lot of personal grounding as a member of a family. (Two families!) But I felt some genuine tension about being a child/family therapist and not being a parent. I felt that there were times when my resonance with parents wasn’t all it could be. Since I’m a member of a couple (ten years and counting), my resonance with couples is deep and broad.

Having said all that, I’ve experienced “resonance” (I’m using air quotes because I don’t know exactly what I mean when I use that word) in a deep, broad way recently with a couple of new parents, friends of mine who adopted a baby last week. Here’s their website.

Basically, I’m just thrilled. This is the first time I’ve had such an up-close view of an adopted-baby experience, and I’m surprised at my strong feelings about it. My friends have had a long journey in their quest to become parents, and just recently suffered a significant setback (the baby they thought was theirs turned out not to be), and now I receive photos of the new baby and just stare at them, taking in every detail.

I love my nieces and nephews, and since, oh, 1989, I’ve held them, received pictures of them, hung out with them, and (even though I live across the country) tried to savor their delightful lives as much as I can. And yet, this time, there’s an added whattayacallit, a mysterious something that’s going in inside me. Maybe it’s that the process was so different–and challenging in such different ways–that captures my imagination. Maybe it’s my unique friendship with these people (especially mom). Whatever it is, this is a fun ride.

I invite you to take a moment to reflect on new life in your life. Sometimes it’s surprising–it catches you off guard with a wave of delight you never expected. Other times it’s just sweet, or deeply satisfying, or quietly pleasant. But how is new life emerging for you? Especially this time of year, when our natural surroundings are darkening and dying?

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I’ve posted before on clutter, and just ran across another great take on it. There’s plenty of clutter in my house, and I know—I don’t just believe it, I know—that it has an effect on my overall sense of well-being. So before I tackle the next pile of stuff, I thought I’d pass this along to you. Enjoy, and happy downsizing!

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