I’ve been a therapist long enough (ten years this summer) to remember the days when people didn’t use email regularly, let alone text messaging. These days (I know, I sound so old saying “These days”!) people tell me that they’re having intimate conversations about serious problems…on email. Or they’re getting confronted by their partners about relationship issues…in text messages.

I guess I feel like being blunt today: I think this is a bad trend. Call me a dinosaur, but I think email and texting should be used for the following things: 1) business; and 2) fun. Everything else should be live and in person. Why? Because (and this is just my opinion, but hey, it’s my blog!) when you’re dealing with serious issues or emotional problems, it’s almost impossible to express yourself well in email or by texting your partner. An additional reason is that your words will be put in print, and you won’t know who will see them or what interpretations they’ll make when they read your words. Finally, my third reason is that it’s all too easy to duck when you’re communicating this way. It’s hard to look someone in the eye and tell them something they don’t want to hear. It’s hard to sit with someone in person and hold yourself accountable for your actions. It’s hard. But it’s also the right thing to do.

One last note about this. So far I’ve been advising you not to do this yourself, but it works the other way too. If your partner is texting you about serious stuff, I encourage you to assert your preference for a face-to-face conversation. Think about responding to emails with phone calls or other more direct contacts whenever the email contains negative or emotionally “hot” content. And when you reach the other person, say, “I want to talk about this with you, but I want to do it in person.” You’re worth it, and so is your relationship.

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In the film “Primary Colors,” Kathy Bates plays Libby, a character who finds out some dark (and disappointing) truths about her friends, a married couple based on Bill and Hillary Clinton. One of the many memorable lines in the film is Libby’s comment about couples and cheating: “It’s never the one who cheats who goes to hell,” she said. “It’s the one he cheated on.”

I think of this line sometimes when I’m working with people who just found out that their partner has had an affair. Sometimes the affair brings out the worst in a person: rage, despair, more rage, and a deep desire for revenge. But more often it’s a lot more complicated than that. There’s usually a lot of anger, but there’s also (in no particular order) self-doubt, sadness, confusion, shock, more sadness, and anger at one’s self for “being so clueless” or “not reading the signs.” How do you sort it all out?

First, take a breath. Just take a moment and get back in touch with the most simple things–the most simple gifts–in your life, like your breath, your heart, your health, your own basic self. Your partner did this, yes. But you still have yourself. Try to “return to the center” or practice a form of spiritual centering that works for you. (And repeat when necessary!)

Then, try to see your partner’s behavior as just that: your partner’s behavior. It’s not about your attractiveness (or lack thereof). It’s not about mistakes you made, or things you did, even if your partner says it is–or even if you think so yourself! “You drove me away!” your partner might say. But that’s not true. Your partner freely chose to have the affair. If you “drove your partner away,” that only means your partner gave you the power to do so.

As you continue to work through your pain, think about following a step-by-step process of acceptance and healing. I often recommend the book, “How Can I Forgive You?” by Janis Abrahms Spring (see the link below). This book offers more than one way to recover from an affair, whether or not you stay together as a couple, and whether or not your partner wants to cooperate with your recovery.

It can be easy for you, if your partner had an affair, to “go to hell”–by which I mean you create your own hellish existence as you struggle with your confusion, outrage, and hurt feelings. Take time to soothe yourself and work on your own “stuff” during this difficult time. Eventually you may find that the affair is a way for you to learn about yourself and do the hard but rewarding work of self-development.

“He cheated, not me. What’s wrong with me?” Nothing. Nothing at all. And you won’t always feel this upset. I can’t promise you’ll still be a couple when all of this is over, but I can promise that there is a lot you can learn–about yourself–during this difficult time.

Here’s the link to the Abrahms Spring book:

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Anyone who’s been in a romantic or committed relationship (those aren’t mutually exclusive adjectives! It’s just that some people say “romantic,” and some say “committed”)–anyone who’s been in a relationship of this kind can tell you that when they have relationship problems, it’s all too easy to see how the other person’s issues are causing the problem. “He’s so needy!” they’ll say. “I love him, but why does he seem to need me so much?!” Or, “He’s got commitment issues. His parents had a terrible marriage, and he’s afraid he’ll have the same problems.” Or, “God! Why do we have to do everything together? Can’t she find friends of her own sometimes?!”

When I hear these things in my work–or in my personal life (I’m only human after all!)–I sometimes think of Byron Katie, an author of several books on personal growth and development. I’m not an expert with her method, but I’m familiar with it and know that it’s a way for you–not your partner, not your family members, but you–to end your own suffering. She encourages people to express what frustrates them about other people, and then to “turn it around,” to turn it back on themselves. It’s not them, she’s saying. It’s you! I’m not going to show you her work–her own website is best for that–but here’s my own take on some of the situations I mentioned above:

You’re saying: “He’s so needy! I love him, but why does he seem to need me so much?”
Look at it differently: How are you the one who’s needy? If he’s needy to the point of driving you crazy, why haven’t you confronted him yet? Are you afraid he’ll fall to pieces? And if he does (because he might!), are you afraid you won’t be able to handle that yourself? Do you need him to need you? Or is it something else…do you (when it comes right down to it) feel more comfortable with things as they are, rather than telling your partner what you truly want and need for yourself? It probably won’t be pretty, but is your partner’s “neediness” really a sign for you that there’s something you haven’t done, something you haven’t said, for your own sake? Look at it this way: how is your partner’s “neediness” really just a tap on your own shoulder, reminding you that there’s something you need to work out for yourself, or do for yourself?

You’re saying: “He’s got commitment issues. His parents had a terrible marriage, and he’s afraid he’ll have the same problems.”
Look at it differently: OK, maybe you’re right. Maybe he told you exactly that! He’s a commitment-shy guy. But what does that mean for you? Do you have commitment issues? Is it possible that you’re waiting around for him to make a commitment because you yourself have some doubts, or feel a little ambivalent yourself? It’s not bad or wrong if you feel that way, but you might want to get in touch with that. What are you waiting for? It’s nice of you to give him time to come to you, time to work out his stuff and decide whether he wants to keep investing in a relationship with you. But there are no hard and fast rules about how long you must wait. “But no!” you might say. “If I don’t wait, if I break it off because he is so afraid of commitment, what if he hooks up with someone else ten minutes later?! I will have made a big mistake!” But is that really true? What are some other ways to look at it? Instead of worrying about rules and expectations, or what’s right and what’s wrong, ask yourself what you really want.

You’re saying: God! Why do we have to do everything together? Can’t she find friends of her own sometimes?!”
Look at it differently: How are you contributing to this problem? Are you afraid to tell her what you really think about your social life together? Are you afraid to tell her, “I love you, but I’d like to have some time alone, and also some time each week for just me and my friends.” Are you afraid that that sounds mean, or that she’ll freak out when you say it? Again, she might! You might be starting a fight if you do it. But even if that’s the case, are you afraid you can’t handle her reaction? If you are, then that’s something about you that you can think about. It’s something you can work on. It might be the next step in your own personal development. Think about using your relationship to strengthen yourself. It takes strength to lovingly confront another person, to tell them you feel frustrated, to ask them to work with you to change the way you two live your lives together. And it also builds strength to do this. It’s like weight-lifting. You’re building your relationship muscles by challenging yourself to confront your partner with your own feelings and thoughts, telling her exactly what it is that you want, for yourself.

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I just posted on the idea that it’s important to take charge of your own life, to set and follow your own agenda, particularly when you’re trying to overcome bad habits or behaviors that diminish you or lower the quality of your own life. It’s easy (I think) for someone to respond by saying, “Well, that’s easier said than done. And what if I just need a little help sometimes?”

This is a good question, and it reminds me of a story told by Scott Miller, a well-known therapist, trainer, and author. He was working with several other therapists who were treating a client with a serious alcohol problem. Miller was hired to consult with the therapists about the case, and at one point he met with the client while the therapists watched from behind a one-way mirror.

The client told Miller that he (the client) felt like he should stop drinking for his mother’s sake. He knew that his mother was upset about his drinking problem, and he felt he could stop if he kept in mind what his mother thought was best. In Miller’s telling of the story, the therapists behind the mirror started getting restless. They didn’t like the idea that this client wasn’t changing for his own sake. The client was challenging their assumption that you can only change for the better when the change is something you want, for yourself. (After all, it says that in most of the self-help books, right?!)

But Miller saw it differently. He saw that for this man, change happens when he listens to the advice of others, particularly important people, and no one was more important to him than his mother. After Miller understood and supported this man’s view of his own problem, it was easier for the client to stay sober, attend A.A. meetings, and rebuild his life.

But doesn’t that fly in the face of what I said about taking charge of your own life? Well…not necessarily. Sure, you could see it as a problem. You could say that this man–like my client who felt he needed an external authority to control his behavior–this man felt he needed his mother to overcome his alcohol problem. You could see that as a weakness, a problem he needs to fix with therapy. You could say he’s letting the locus of control be outside of himself. He’s not in charge of his own life.

Or you could look at it this way: at this point in his life, this man cared about his mother’s happiness more than he cared about drinking alcohol. And yes, his mother’s happiness was closely tied to his own. Are they in an enmeshed relationship?? Oh, maybe. But the bottom line for this client was that he stopped drinking, and he maintained a close and positive relationship with his mother. He met his goals.

So I think we should look at this with a little bit of flexibility. I suppose the best-case scenario for my client–at least the best-case scenario according to me!–is that he take full command of his problem, that he not rely on a computer lockout or someone else’s login or some other technical trick to stop himself from doing what he doesn’t want to do. But at the same time, if my client is solving the problem in a way that works for him, and he’s also continuing to gain insight about himself, improve his life, and gain strength as a self-defining, self-confident human being, then what’s the harm in getting some help? What’s the harm in having the locus of control lie a little bit outside of you?

Commenter Jill’s story raises one possible harm: that if you let someone else control your problem, that might not be fair to the other person. It’s a good point! In the case of Scott Miller’s client, it wasn’t an issue. In other cases, it might be. So that’s why I encourage people to keep the locus of control within them whenever they can–with the understanding that there are times and situations when it’s okay (and maybe even preferable) to get a little help from a friend.

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(Note: I have permission to tell this story! )

A little while ago, I was talking to a client, and he told me he attempted to change his computer settings so that it was harder for him to access porn on the Internet. He was concerned that if he didn’t find a way to control his behavior–a simple, effective method, and one that was outside of his own control–he might continue to be enslaved by the siren song of Internet porn.

But he ran into a problem. His computer sent him error messages when he tried to restrict his own Web access. It turns out that the computer wouldn’t let him restrict himself because he was an administrator. He was too high on the hierarchy of his own PC to set limits for himself that were out of his own control.

My client smiled, and laughed at himself. His own computer was telling him (more or less), “Hey! You! What are you trying to do?! Make me your parent? That won’t work! If you secretly want to look at porn, but you also don’t want to, then you’ll have to control yourself. You’ll have to take charge of the situation. Sorry!”

We talked about this in our session. We talked about the concept of “locus of control.” That’s a phrase straight out of Therapy Land, a phrase that doesn’t mean much to ordinary people who speak ordinary English! But the idea is this: if I’m upset about some problem in my life, and the locus of control is outside of me, far away from me, that means I’m basically powerless. I can’t improve my situation because I’m not taking control of my own circumstances, thoughts, and feelings. If I’m not in charge, then you–or someone else, or some bigger situation I’m caught up in–you or someone else will take control of me.

But if the locus of control is within me–if it’s really me who’s in charge, well, that’s different. I’m being the administrator in my own life. I’m aware of how hard this is–how hard it is to say no to the things I could do that would diminish me, or behaviors that don’t come from my best self. I keep practicing restraint and discretion. I keep working on holding the locus of control within myself. I keep breathing, meditating. My goal is to take charge of my own agenda. My goal is to state clearly where I want to go from here. My goal is to be the administrator in my own life.

Hard? Yes. It’s even harder than you might have imagined when you first started working on your relationship problems. But worth it? Yes. It’s worth it to stay in your closest relationships–stay engaged, stay open and available–while challenging yourself to stand up for what you really, truly want in your life.

Remember: whether you want to or not, whether you feel ready or not, you’re in charge!

(And you’ll do just fine!)

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I posted on this late last year, but it keeps coming up in my work with clients, so I think it’s worth posting again. How do you really clear the air in your relationships? How do you talk to others in a healthy way, particularly when tempers are short?

This technique was developed by Gaelen Billingsley, another great therapist in Seattle. (I suppose someone might say it will hurt my business if I recommend someone else who does what I do, but hey, that’s how good she is!). It’s a method in which you state clearly three basic things:

1. Your feelings. Keep them simple, and take full ownership of them. I feel mad. I feel upset. I feel scared. I feel nervous. I feel frustrated. If you’re saying, “I feel like you don’t respect me,” that’s not a feeling. It’s a thought, a judgment, an assumption. Usually the word “like” is a clue that you’re expressing a thought, not a feeling.

2. Your thoughts. Again, take full ownership. “I think you don’t respect me because you said something I thought was insulting.” Did you notice that statement contains two thoughts? You think he doesn’t respect you, and you think so because he said something you thought was insulting. It helps to sort out your thoughts from your feelings because otherwise, how can the other person really respond to your problem? If you’re lost in your feelings and convinced the other person harmed you, you’re not in a position to listen to the other person’s perspective, let alone reconcile.

3. State clearly your request. “I just want you to hear me out. That’s all.” Or, “I want to know what you were really thinking about me when you said that.” “I would like us to talk this out. Can you help me?”

Finally, think about this: the other person may not honor your request. She might not want to talk. He might not want to tell you what he was really thinking. That’s disappointing, but it’s the other person’s right to respond in whatever way they choose. Thank them anyway for giving you time to state clearly your feelings and thoughts. And keep practicing this technique. It’s not a once-in-a-lifetime thing to do. It’s a new way of relating.

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I wanted to say one more thing about the “drama triangle.” Sometimes, when people are setting healthy boundaries in their relationships, or when they’re being told to do that, they assume it means they need to be cold or aloof. And often enough they’re accused of being cold and aloof. But that’s not the case, or at least it doesn’t have to be. Even though you may seem to be more distant, and even though you’re practicing new behaviors in which you and the other person are not taking care of each other in the old, overinvolved way, you may still be deeply in love with the other person, or have other strong feelings of care and concern.

It’s not about becoming an android. It’s not about forcing yourself not to care. You still care, and you may have many deep feelings for those around you who are still caught up in the drama triangle. I like to think of it this way: my actions look more balanced and stable, but my heart is still burning with love. I’m tending to my boundaries, and even though people might accuse me of being aloof, I know that healthy boundaries are the best way to truly show love and care to another person.

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You’ve seen it before: someone you know is being a “drama queen.” You might be told that you yourself are being melodramatic, and often enough the feedback isn’t very polite: “Save the drama for your mama!” So here’s a quick introduction to the “drama triangle,” a concept from Transactional Analysis.

Here’s how it works: if you are being a so-called “drama queen,” you are playing one of three roles. You’re either the victim, the persecutor, or the rescuer. The thing is, if you are playing one of these roles, soon enough you’ll end up playing one of the other two. A victim might over-identify with his victim status and end up persecuting those who are trying to help him. You’ve seen this before. Someone has been hurt or wronged, and instead of healing and moving forward with life, she acts out in her relationships and can’t seem to stop hurting others with her unresolved anger.

If you find yourself in the role of rescuer, you’re not off the hook. In the drama triangle, rescuers aren’t the wonderful, altruistic saviors they might appear to be. They have mixed motives. Their rescuing behaviors are to some extent self-serving. In their effort to help the victim, they could start playing the persecutor role by overprotecting and hovering over the victim, or attacking the original persecutor in acts of revenge. Overprotecting a victim prevents the victim from recovering from the injury and letting go of the victim role, so if you’re the rescuer, you’re now harming the victim by getting in the way of his recovery. And teaming up with the victim to get revenge on the persecutor…well, it’s easy to see how you yourself can become the person you say you hate.

The drama triangle helps us see how one person’s dramatic behavior is actually part of a larger system. Sometimes I say it this way: “everybody is bringing the crazy!” Even if only one person has serious emotional or behavioral problems, family and friends around that person can get caught up in the crisis. It’s helpful to see it this way because it gives us a bird’s-eye view of what’s going on, and that means we can come up with more possible solutions. Let’s say you see yourself as the only sane person in your family. (And who knows? Maybe you are!) Well, if that’s true, then begin noticing how you get caught in the triangle, and experiment with your own behaviors. If you’re the rescuer, for example, you can practice stepping back from the victim and allowing him to cope with his problems as an adult. You can still be loving and nurturing with the victim, but start setting up some healthy boundaries. Even if you’re not thanked for it (and you won’t be–people in the drama triangle don’t like it when you stop playing along), you are blazing a trail away from the triangle, and others might choose to follow you.

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I often work with people who are facing really hard decisions. There’s the common “Should I stay or should I go?” decision — do I want to stay in this relationship? Or the workplace version: “Should I stay in this job?” Sometimes people have agonizing choices to make, choices that pit one important part of their life up against another. For example: “Should I stay where I am now and be closer to family, or follow my dream to a distant city?”

In grad school, one of my professors counseled me to tell clients to flip a coin. Seriously! The idea was that when the coin landed, how you reacted to the result would tell you a lot about what you really want. You called heads and it landed tails … so, how do you feel? Often times, people realize (silly as this sounds) that they really wanted the coin to land the other way. It’s not such a bad idea.

But here’s another way to approach life’s hardest decisions. Ask yourself this question: What does your best self want to do? It’s not hard to hear the siren song of your lesser self (or lesser selves). If I stay close to family, your lesser self might tell you, I won’t rock the boat. Families like that! I’ll be rewarded! (Though I might feel a little miserable…) Or if I chase a dream — maybe not a real dream, or a true-desire dream…maybe an escapist dream — I won’t have to face the hard realities of my current relationships and problems. (Fun! Yet … what do I do when the fun wears off?) Or your lesser self might tell you, if I stay in this troubled — and maybe abusive — relationship, at least I’ll have the security of everything in my life staying stable. Or your lesser self might say, don’t worry about working on this relationship. Look! There’s someone new!

Your task is to learn how to listen to your best self, the part of you that is usually found in moments of quiet and serious reflection, or sober and bracing self-confrontation. The hard truth is that your best self doesn’t always have “good news” for you, if by “good news” you mean a comfortable or pleasant path out of your dilemma.

When you’re facing a tough decision, take time to tune in to your self. Take time to ask the question, “What does my best self want to do?

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I’m happy to say that my sister Elizabeth reads my blog. She read my recent post about being fully present at work and in relationships, and had this to say:

“Hey, I really liked your blog about differentiation. Coincidentally, I’ve actually been working on this all week! I am constantly thinking of a hundred things, none of which include the task or thing I am doing at the present moment. For instance, I went to the store three times to buy garbage bags and forgot to buy them every single time. So, I am trying to live in the moment and concentrate only on the task at hand instead of the five tasks I am going to do after I finish the task at hand. I’ve only been ‘practicing’ for a week, but already notice a relaxation difference, and a difference especially with Natalie. I would be playing with her before and run off to start the dishwasher or change the laundry or check my email. She would get frustrated and start saying ‘Momma’ 1,000 times. I would get frustrated and be annoyed that she was so ‘needy.’ This week, I sat down and played with her and focused only on what she wanted to do. Read books? Sure! Play with a puzzle? Sure! Use me as a jungle gym? Absolutely! We had such a great time, and when I said, ‘Can we go downstairs and you watch Dora while I fold laundry?’ she said, ‘Yeah, momma!’ I got an entire load of laundry done and the afternoon was enjoyable and relaxed. Not one crying or sad moment all day! So thanks for the reinforcement on this!”

Well, it’s always my pleasure to help out my little sister! And I’m glad she put this into practice in such a great way. “Differentiation” is about being more fully present in your life. Turns out it makes life lots of fun, too.

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