Dear Mr. President,
Great to talk with you today. Thanks for the invitation to what promises to be a great state dinner. See you there.
Take care,
–Stephen

If I’m doing a long back-and-forth email string, at some point I’ll ditch the “take care” and just respond more casually:

Barack,
No, I’m right-handed, so it doesn’t matter where they seat me. But next to you or Michelle would of course be great. Tell Malia I love the shoes!
–S

But these days I’ve been ditching “take care” entirely, replacing it with (drum roll) “Only good things.” I got it from our favorite dog trainer, a skilled professional who uses completely non-violent methods in her training programs. I’ve assumed all these years that she uses that signature line because it fits best with her general philosophy of life. It certainly fits with her work training dogs: no punishment, no nastiness, only treats for good behaviors and an understanding that dogs learn best when the training is positive and thoroughly non-violent.

But I had another reason for switching my signature line. I recently attended a workshop on conflict resolution, and the workshop leader mentioned that telling people to “take care” is actually problematic. Taking care of oneself seems like a perfectly good thing, right? Except sometimes the healthier choice is to take a calculated risk, or make yourself intentionally vulnerable. I know from years of working with people on relationships that self-protection is never enough to ensure a healthy union. If I’m 100% safe, I’m probably only 0-50% intimate with my spouse or partner. Relationships are about both risk and safety.

So I suppose I could sign emails, “Take care—and take risks!” But that’s clunky, and corny. And as a therapist I don’t need any help being clunky and corny. So I decided our dog trainer has it right: I wish you only good things. I don’t wish you badness, malice, or suffering. You may suffer if you take the healthy risks I wish you would take, but that’s different: that is the suffering of growth, so in a backwards way it too is a good thing.

Some of you may think all of this is silly. It’s an email signature line, what’s the big deal? Well…it’s not necessarily a huge deal. But it is one of those everyday things that can gradually have a significant influence over you, day by day. Now that I sign emails “only good things,” I’m reminding myself daily that a well-lived life isn’t only about safety, and there are good things to be had when we do something brave, or move outside of our comfort zone…when we stop just “taking care.”

Only good things,

Stephen

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Think about all the things you do regularly whether you want to or not: pay the electric bill, service the car, go to work, drive your mom to the doctor, and on into infinity. These are things you do because, well, because you do them. They have to get done. But if you’re like a lot of people, your relationship is not required. Everything about it is voluntary, and, therefore, open to being blown off. And then you wind up in my office! Here’s a primer on date nights, a Date Night 101:

1. Pick one night, the same night every week. (Yeah, I can already hear you saying, “We can’t! His rotation changes by the week and I’m a bartender so I never know when I’m going to be scheduled, and it’s always at night!” Even if one regular night is impossible, there’s got to be some block of time each week—3am to 7am on Sundays??—that will work for you both.)

2. During that special time, nobody gets in your way. If you have kids, you pay for a sitter and get out of the house. Maybe it’s okay for you to share date night with friends, but wait a bit before doing that. Get into the rhythm as a couple first.

3. Repeat 52 times. Then evaluate. How’s it going? What’s different about your relationship, about you, about how you feel about each other? Anything need to change, or be adjusted? Some of my clients come to counseling and then go on their date night. I recommend this. It makes the whole thing even more intentional.

Whatever you plan, set it in stone. It’s the Law. That way, your relationship is not completely vulnerable to the tyranny of your schedules, whims, emotions, and issues. At least this one block of time each week is immune from all of that.

Note to singles: this works for those of us currently not in relationships. No matter what your relationship status is, if you set aside one block of time each week just for yourself, what do you imagine might change in your life? Have you ever really done this? (I know it’s hard for me!) I’d hazard a guess that your blood pressure would be lower, you’d feel healthier, and you’d feel a lot less frazzled and crazy. And you could kick it off with a nice individual therapy session!

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You can take the MBTI assessment online by yourself and come in for a 1.5-hour session with me to interpret it, or you could come in as a couple for a 2-hour session. (For couples, both of you would take the online assessment separately.) I’m also available to work with larger groups such as your work team. The online assessment will generate a detailed report personalized for you, based on your answers to 144 short questions about your personality preferences.

MBTI focuses on two basic human activities: the way we take in information (and the kind of information we tend to trust), and the way we make decisions. The first activity—taking in information—is about whether 1) you prefer to pay attention to the many here-and-now details and facts that you get from your five senses, or 2) whether you like to see broad patterns and tend to trust your ideas and hunches.

The second activity—the way we make decisions—is about whether 1) you prefer to make decisions using logic and a critical, principled method; or 2) you prefer to make decisions by listening to your values and your concerns about the impact of the decision on the people involved.

MBTI also helps you decide whether you put most of your energy out into the external world (extraversion) or whether you prefer to direct most of your energy inward, cultivating a rich inner life (introversion). Finally, MBTI helps you decide whether your attitude toward the external world is marked by a desire to be organized with lots of closure and certainty or a desire to be open-ended with lots of room for discussion and uncertainty.

All of this is intended to be useful in practical ways. You can use MBTI to understand how you behave in conflict, how you communicate with others, how you manage change, how your preferences affect your marriage/partnership, and more.

Again, you can take the assessment by yourself and come in for a 1.5-hour session with me to interpret it, or you could come in as a couple for a 2-hour session. I’m also available to work with larger groups such as your work team. Think about it, and stay tuned for more information about this useful tool.

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I’m doing some light blogging during a week of training for certification as a MBTI practitioner, and I’ll have a lot more to say (and do) when this is over and I can actually use the instrument with clients. But for those who are interested in personality type and how it operates in their lives and relationships, I’ll share a few of the things I’m learning along the way.

Have you ever heard someone say, “Oh, he’s a P off the scale, so no wonder he’s so disorganized!” or “Yeah, well she’s a huge J, so of course she has to control everything!” Comments like that are problematic for two reasons.

I knew the first reason before I took this training: one’s preference for a certain attitude (perceiving vs. judging, or extraversion vs. introversion) or function (sensing vs. intuition, or thinking vs. feeling) does not explain why someone might be disorganized or controlling. There are lots of organized P’s and flexible J’s walking around in the world!

But there’s another problem with using type in this way: according to type theory, if you prefer J, you prefer J. You can’t have an “off-the-scale” J preference. If you take the instrument (and note that it’s an instrument, not a test!) and it reveals a “slight” preference for “J”, that only means that the consistency of your “J” responses on the instrument was in the “slight” range. You have just as much of a preference for “J” as someone whose responses were fully consistent with a preference for “J,” which is the “very clear” range. In fact, if your reported type indicated a “slight” preference for “J,” you’re more like a “very clear” “J” than a “slight” “P”! It’s not about the amount or level of “J” you “have” in your personality. It’s about the clarity of your preference in the reported type, that is, the type that was reported back to you after you took the instrument.

Having said all that, you may get your instrument back and think, no, I really don’t think I prefer “J.” I think I am a perceiving type, and the instrument was not accurate. That’s just fine! You get to decide what your preferences are and verify your “best-fit” type. But if you conclude that you have a preference for one opposite over another—as in the above example, “J” over “P,” then it doesn’t matter how clear your preference appeared on the instrument: you are, through and through, someone who prefers a “judging” attitude.

More soon, for those who are still reading this!

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But often people assume that it’s a bad thing to expect “too much” from your partner. But the research (and Gottman is a thorough, painstaking researcher!) disagrees. “I don’t know,” you might be thinking. “I’m probably too impatient, to idealistic. I should just be more accepting.” That sounds…kind, I suppose. You’re lowering your expectations because you don’t want to be “high maintenance,” or intolerant of another person’s flaws. To a certain extent, that kind of humility can serve you well. There’s certainly a place in any happy relationship for tolerance, discretion, and patience!

But… don’t take that too far. Don’t sell yourself short. And here’s a metaphor I came up with to explain what I mean. Whenever I go to San Francisco I try to make it to the Top of the Mark on Nob Hill for a cocktail. It’s the swanky bar on the top of the Mark Hopkins Hotel. (Usually I can afford only one cocktail!) The views are breathtaking, the room is light and elegant—it’s a fun San Francisco experience. And it’s my metaphor. Here’s my question: in your relationship, are you at the Top of the Mark? Or are you settling for the sleepy little bar on the main floor with no views?*

A ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship looks something like this (for me, I should say—your own definition might be different!): in my vision of a ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship, you’re with someone who builds trust with you over time, and you’re doing the same thing. You’re with someone who cares about your dreams. You’re with someone who delights you, attracts you, even ravishes you. You’re with someone who sometimes inspires ecstatic love that feels almost dizzying. You’re also with someone who’s a great friend, an ordinary partner, a comfortable old shoe. You can be ‘family’ with this person. The two of you are cultivating something beautiful, and something serene. You laugh a lot. You laugh at yourselves a lot.

And here’s the snag, the thing you and I could work on in counseling: to have a ‘Top of the Mark’ relationship, you have to be okay with your right to want one. You have to be okay with the idea that it is not unreasonable to expect this. And to do that, you have to see yourself as ‘Top of the Mark’ material. This can be hard because you may not have thought of yourself in such a healthy way, or you may have learned that when you have high standards, the number of people interested in dating you dramatically drops. And you may have failed to see that the biggest reason for that drop was probably that non-Top people sensed you were too good for them and pulled out of the race! But if you’re ‘Top of the Mark’ material, then being on your own is preferable to being with someone who doesn’t meet you at the highest level.

So… do you want to go to the Top? If you do, there are no guarantees that you’ll find a lot of people up there. Lots of people are settling for less, both in their relationships and in what they expect from themselves. And having high standards can be scary: it forces your partner to step up (or step out), and it requires you yourself to be a high-quality partner!

But it is one hell of a view.

—–
To be honest I don’t know if there’s actually a little bar on the main floor of the Mark Hopkins. I’m just taking a little metaphorical license here…

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Not long ago, as a client got up to leave at the end of the session, I said, “You know, this is the work of your life.” I’ve actually said this to several clients. People often go to counseling because they have a specific problem—their relationship is in trouble; they feel depressed; they have problems with anxiety; they don’t know what to do about their parents, or their kids. But I say that the deeper reason they come to counseling is to do the work of their lives.

Your relationship is in trouble? It’s a good bet that one reason for that is a missing piece in your own development: you’re still having trouble telling the truth when the truth hurts; or you’re still afraid to ask for what you really want because you think the other person will reject you; or you’re replicating patterns of interaction you learned from your first family, patterns that can sometimes be useful but often enough get you into trouble. For example, maybe you deal with conflict or stress by “shutting down,” and when you do that, your partner gets upset and pulls you into a fight. This is the work of your life. It’s something that, if you worked on it, could be a major step forward for you, something you remember at the end of your life as something new and significant and courageous that you finally learned how to do. “I learned how to stand up for myself,” you might say later on. That’s the work of your life.

So when you think about coming to counseling, by all means think about the immediate problem that’s upsetting you. We need to attend to that. But allow yourself to reflect a little more deeply. What is the Work of your life?

It’s an excellent birthday question!

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It goes like this: let your friend be your friend. Let your spouse be your spouse. Let your mother be your mother.

And here’s what it means: we often get into trouble when our expectations of another person don’t line up with their role in our lives. It’s not wrong to have high expectations–in fact, John Gottman says that couples are happier when they have high standards for their relationship and for one another. This isn’t about high vs. low expectations. It’s about lining up expectations with the people in your life.

For example, you may have a friend who, like any good friend, has been there during your rough times. That’s what friends are for, as the pop song says. But are you expecting more from your friend than she can reasonably offer in her role? Are you expecting her to be your therapist, or your parent, or your rescuer? It’s one thing for you to expect her to be supportive, and quite another for you to expect her to be your savior.

And roles shift over time. Your mother needs to have a different relationship with you once you’re an adult and she’s an older adult. “Let your mother be your mother” means something quite different now than it did when you were a kid. It’s no longer appropriate for you to expect her to be perfect (something that’s only natural for small children to want in their parents), or “there for you” in quite the same way. Your roles are shifting, and though it’s fine to expect your mother to be a helpful person in your life, your roles are actually trading places–which means her expectations of you to “be there” will eventually overtake your expectations of her.

Sometimes it helps to realize that the conflict we’re having with someone, or the heartbreak we may feel when someone doesn’t meet our expectations, is happening because we’re just not letting our friend be our friend, our sister be our sister, our co-worker be our co-worker…

Again, it’s a simple concept. But simple concepts often elude us!

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And this was my goal: to 1) not use charm to get what I want; and 2) tell the truth. It sounds immodest, but I can be very charming! I have a natural friendliness, and a desire to be liked by others. I’m an extravert, and I enjoy the company of other people. If you’re my friend, or my client, or my sibling, I will rely on my natural humor and smiles and generally buoyant personality to connect with you. It’s not fake. I truly am a nice, sweet guy! But there are times when that sweetness can get in the way of my personal growth. Specifically, there are times when I might use a joke to diffuse healthy tension, or rely on my own personal warmth to avoid an important confrontation that I need to have with someone who is important to me.

So…for this training, I followed a few basic rules. If I didn’t think a joke was funny, I wouldn’t laugh at it. Even if I thought it was funny, but also thought that all the laughter was getting in the way of the intensity I needed to learn something new, I would not only resist laughing, but I wouldn’t even smile. I did nothing untruthful: I was not negative or hostile in a fake or artificial way. I just peeled back the warmer side of my personality so that I could be more direct—and more intense!—with my group members.

Well. This certainly got a reaction. The content of our group process is confidential, but I think it’s okay to say that I was not a very popular participant in the group. It was interesting to see how my usual good humor and sweet personality really softens the experience I have with people, and how, when I strip that away, I put myself in hot water. This was difficult, but I really, really wanted to learn from this! A growing edge for me is ‘speaking truth to power,’ to borrow a common phrase. It can be hard to confront both myself and others with the painful truth of my honest reaction, my challenging opinion, my hard-to-hear concern.

For example, when I felt the group was getting off track, I would say something like, “I feel frustrated, because right now my experience of the group is that we are avoiding our task and just taking care of each other. I wish we could get back to the real reason why we’re here.” That was hard for me to say! I felt a ton of social pressure to just go along, be sweet, suppress my frustration.

Why did I do this? Well, one good reason is that I expect that my clients will tolerate pain for growth, so I can’t dodge that same pain myself. I need to practice what I preach. And, as odd as it sounds, I felt true pleasure in stretching like this. On the final day, after our group processes were finished, I relaxed and let my fellow participants see my full personality. I joked and smiled again, and thanked them for working with me on my goals. But I felt a lovely feeling of satisfaction that I had really taken this training seriously, and pushed myself to make the most of this laboratory learning.

Now that it’s over, I’m glad it’s over! But I move forward with more insight about how I can continue to stretch myself, to challenge myself, in my truthful interactions with others.

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But it’s not therapy. The leader took great pains to point that out to us. For one thing, in the group work we’re doing, we avoid “why” questions: “Why do you think you fidget when someone is frowning and looking away from you?” is an example of a “why” question. In this lab, you notice your fidgeting and experiment with some new behavior, such as confronting yourself and the other person with your discomfort, or your irritation, or your anxiety about the fact that they frowned and looked away from you. “I feel anxious,” you say, “because I saw you frown and look away, and I thought it meant you were angry.” This is new behavior: rather than fidgeting, you’re being in the room in a more active way.

But wait. Why isn’t that therapy? Well, the trainers tell us, it’s more ‘here-and-now’ than therapy. It’s not an exploration of your past, or a search for deep insight. It’s a raw, immediate, high-intensity way to learn and grow in a here-and-now situation that forces you to look at your right-this-second feelings and behaviors, and do something different with them.

But wait. Why isn’t that therapy? As I drove home last evening, I thought that it actually sounds a lot like therapy to me. There are many parallels. Nobody in the room is my therapist, and even though I am a therapist myself, nobody in the room is my client. But there we were, doing many of the things I invite clients to do. We were noticing our current, in-the-room-right-now “stuff,” and with that consciousness taking steps to change and grow in our interpersonal awareness and skills.

My clients do that all the time in therapy sessions!

I think one of the fears participants have is that they’re going to be analyzed by a beard-scratching Viennese biologist, the typical Freudian therapist stereotype, and maybe their training colleagues are going to find out something embarrassing about them. And maybe one of the fears of the trainers is that they will be seen as leading a “touchy-feely” or “caring-and-sharing” event rather than a robust laboratory for human awareness and development. So when everyone says, “This is not therapy,” maybe—just maybe, and I haven’t asked them—they’re saying, “This is not [insert negative belief about therapy here].”

Well, it’s not therapy. But it can be therapeutic, and therapy can look a lot like a human-interaction lab. And in my book, that’s not a bad thing. In the end, we’re all working on our own development, our own self-improvement, our own next step as human beings.

So I hope, today, we can relax a little more. Sigmund is not in the corner, scratching his beard. (But if he were, he might have something interesting to say!)

UPDATE: I should also say that the trainers are absolutely right to say it’s not therapy, because they need to remind participants that they are not engaging in a therapeutic contract and should not expect a certain therapeutic outcome. It is a training, not a group-therapy format, and participants need to understand that fully, right from the start. It’s just that in our effort to tell ourselves how different this is from therapy, I started noticing all the similarities!

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One more. *sigh*

Okay, just one more. *SIGH*

Now can I try to put a positive spin on this?

It’s been a really rough winter in Seattle. And I know that sounds whiny, particularly if you’re one of my relatives from Minnesota. Seattle Whiner: “It barely made it above 40 for like, what, six months in a row?!” Minnesota Whiner: “Ha! 40 what? Degrees? You actually had degrees above zero??!”

But it has been rough. It’s been cold, and cloudy, and rainy. We have sun breaks (like today!), but they are short-lived. It’s May 11, and the rhododendrons are barely budding. I’m not an expert, but I think they’d be almost over—or at least in full flower—by now. (Minnesotans are once again snorting and rolling their eyes…) I can now say it’s been the hardest winter, weather-wise, since I moved here in 1997.

And then there’s today. To illustrate what happened to me today, I give you my Facebook post from this morning’s coffee time (click on the image if it appears too small):

But I want to do more on sunny mornings like this than just sing a great song and appreciate the break. (Though that’s a good thing to do. I recommend it.) I want to figure out what all this weather has done to me, or with me, over the past few months. I want to do some meaning-making, people!

And here’s what I’ve come up with: Seattle’s crappy weather has gotten me in touch with the restlessness and uncertainty I’m feeling in several areas of my life. It’s gotten me thinking about, oh, everything: what I’m eating, how (and whether) I’m exercising, what’s going on with my money, how my marriage is going, how my practice is doing, what my friendships and other relationships are bringing up for me, what I envision for 2012 and beyond…and so on. (Maybe it sounds a little self-focused, but did I mention the weather’s been cruddy in Seattle?!)

In short, the weather has made it almost impossible for me to be complacent. In a typical year, the sun pops out plenty of times, especially after the grueling month of February. And so I sing a bar of “Sesame Street” and go about my day. But this year, when I’m not joining my fellow Seattleites in sun dances, I’m forced to confront the fact that life isn’t always a song about muppets. Sometimes you have to take stock, look at things critically, ask the crucial “wonderment” questions of your life. Questions like… I wonder what kind of retirement funds I want tucked away by 2015. I wonder whether my daily work is really lighting my fire, and if so, whether I’m celebrating that enough…and if not, why that might be. I wonder…

But for now, I’m taking in the blue sky, so these questions can wait for the next gray and gloomy weather front.

It should be along in a few minutes.

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