Excuse #3: Or maybe he had forgotten it in his locker.
This one happened at our house. We pushed him on it. Why did he have a whole rolodex of excuses? We wondered out loud why he generally did his assigned homework and yet did not get this done. We reminded him that the expectation of him being a student is to fulfill the requests of the teacher. We didn’t let him get away with it. Eventually he gave us this reason:
Reason: He simply didn’t see the value in having his parents sign it.
We could hardly believe that—we wondered if he was ashamed of his grade. We racked our brains why this child didn’t complete this task. (Although he is a great kid and almost always honest, by this time he had just given us three excuses that didn’t hold water.)
Then we gave him some motivation to get the job done: We told him then until he had completed this responsibility, he would have to wash all the supper dishes all by himself every day until he located the test, got it signed and returned it to the teacher.
The excuses disappeared.
This boy who hates dishwashing more than anything in life had the test signed and returned within 24 hours. The grade was fine.
Funny what a little dishwashing motivation can do to inspire a young man to get something done. His reasons were really just excuses.
Excuses are often like that, aren’t they?
If you’re anything like me, it’s not always easy to tell the difference between an excuse and a reason.
I’ve come to learn that discerning between a reason and excuses is most difficult when I’m the one who is doing the talking.
I often need to take to think and soul search to know if my rationale is valid or a rationalization that doesn’t really measure up.
The best way for me to know if my statements hold water is to talk it through with someone. Maybe one of these next chapters can be part of the conversation.
7 T
herapy is for sissies
If you believe situation comedies, a therapy session is a time when the therapist endlessly inquires, “And how does that make you feel?”
Then clients have endless permission to indulge themselves in self-pity as they sob about all the terrible things that have happened to them. (All this therapy happens while a client lies on a chaise of some sort, as they lean on one end, lying on their back with their feet stretched out on the far side.) The stereotype seems to imply that those who attend therapy are helpless victims and all therapy will reinforce this helplessness.
For the record, I have a personal policy to never ask a client, “And how does that make you feel?” (Though, for the record, we have a chaise in one of our offices. To my knowledge, a client has never stretched out on it, sit com style.)
Modern culture would have us believe that spineless folks go to be indulged by therapists: “There, there. You poor, poor dear”.
It bears exploring: Is therapy for sissies?
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Our North American culture places a high value on people solving their own problems, creating their own destiny, and doing it on their own every step of the way.
We would prefer to think we are always in control of our own choices and that we only do what we consciously decide to do. We believe if we decide to do or utter something, or to not do or express something, that if we have our act together, we will just live in line with our choices. We will just do what we recognize is best.
Really?
Do you always do what you decide? Do your decisions always come from a reasoned, rational place that considers what is in your best interests and the best interests of the loved ones around you?
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Join me in thinking about a few questions:
Do you ever eat more than you should, or eat foods you regret later on? In other words, do you ever emotionally eat?
Are you in relationships that aren’t functioning effectively, and yet, you say nothing?
Do you ever:
gamble more than you intend
drink more than you’ve decided
spend more than you’ve budgeted for, or
spend hours longer on social media than you’ve planned?
Do you unintentionally numb yourself in ways that prevent you from engaging fully in your own life?
Do you ever decide about how you will handle a difficult situation with your boss, or your child, or your mother—and then don’t follow through with it? Oh, you can make some excuses about why it didn’t work—but you don’t end up having the conversation that you think needs having.
Do you ever:
Decide not to apply for the promotion, or not to ask her out on a date, so you can avoid the disappointment if it doesn’t work out?
Act so goofy when you want to ask your spouse about the out-of-control budget he doesn’t take you seriously?
Speak so quietly he can’t possibly hear you?
Find yourself too busy to figure out how to get to the party?
Not try too hard on the mixed softball team you play on—so you don’t risk as much when it doesn’t turn out as you’d hoped?
Did you ever say something in a stronger, meaner manner than how you intended? Did you ever get mean and say nasty things to someone you care about? Did you ever crush someone with words or fists and regret it?
Now—what kind of courage would it require to acknowledge to a therapist the ugly, candid truth about one of these questions?
Can a sissy own up to eating or spending too much? Can a weakling acknowledge that they didn’t go all out in pursuit of their goals? Can a wuss speak out loud that they watch themselves behaving in the relationship in ways that sabotage the very love that they seek?
In a word, no.
Speaking out vulnerably is courageous.
Evidently, North American culture has never born witness to a counseling session in my office. There is nothing wimpy about coming in and saying, “I have a problem with _____ and because of this, I find myself creating problems for myself and others. I want to deal with it.”
That is vulnerable for sure.
It’s definitely not something a sissy would say.
It’s brave and bold.
It’s tackling an issue head on.
Since when do “tackling an issue head on” and “sissy” belong in the same sentence?
Answer: They don’t.
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Therapy is hard and risky work. It is not for the faint of heart.
Counseling works with people to go to utter things out loud that haven’t seen the light of day for years—or maybe ever.
Saying the painful realities out loud makes them real.
Staying away from therapy and letting your fearsome realities remain unspoken allows them to exist in some twilight zone. That twilight zone allows you to move forward in life as if they don’t exist, even as the foundations of what is important to you erodes by passive neglect.
Let me give you a few examples that can only be defined as courageous, of what brings people to therapy:
Acknowledging responsibility for your role in your marriage as it slowly deteriorates.
It is infinitely easier to blame your spouse for causing all the problems than to speak your heartbreak to a therapist. To wonder aloud where it went wrong, and if there is any action you may have taken part in the patterns that had you get off track—that is not the easy way out.
It is far easier to become absorbed in your career or your kids so you are too busy to feel the pain of the distance of your relationship. Being preoccupied is a great way to pretend nothing’s wrong—even as the foundation of your marriage continues to erode.
Expressing discomfort about troublesome relationships you have with your child, or maybe your parent.
Starting that conversation with a therapist means you can’t fake that the discomfort doesn’t exist anymore. And when you acknowledge it to be true, the ball starts rolling and we don’t know what it looks like when it reaches bottom.
It may me
an that eventually, you may even talk about it with your mother, or with your son.
If starting that ball rolling isn’t courage, then what is?
Being real about how fears that have developed from the ghosts of traumas past continue to pull the strings in your life.
Facing the effects of past trauma is terrifying. I have sat with many clients who have disclosed the pain of sexual violation; the loss of a parent, a career of public protection; or been a veteran of war, or a social worker who feels like she is still on the front lines of a war. Folks who have seen and felt things that can’t be unseen and unfelt.
If you are a survivor of trauma, you understand how a life is spent avoiding the nightmares, the anxiety, certain intersections, locations, positions, songs, times of day. You dodge anything that might trigger the body into forgetting that the memory is only a memory. Trust me, when these folks walk into a therapy room, wanting to address the chokehold the trauma has on their lives, their photo is beside the word “courage” in my dictionary.
“Sissy” and “going to therapy” don’t belong in the same sentence.
Going beneath the anger to acknowledge the fear, or be real about the loss, or to feel the hurt.
It’s not courageous to be angry when your girlfriend breaks up with you, or you don’t get into that course, your wife gets a cancer diagnosis, or your doctor says your body will never be able to have children. It’s natural, but it’s not courageous. It’s just normal.
It’s tempting to stay mad. It’s easier to stay mad.
Being mad is a strategy to stay away from the feelings that are inevitably underneath the anger. These emotions have us feel fragile—and everything in us (and I include myself in “us”) wants to run away from the feelings. Underneath the anger of not getting into the course is the unspoken fear of, “What will I do if I don’t do this? And if I’m not good enough to get into that course, am I not good enough, period?” Underneath the anger towards cancer is the fear of single parenting, and the potential unspeakable and unfathomable grief of losing a spouse. Underneath the anger is often a feeling of deep inadequacy.
Getting angry is normal.
Staying angry is easy.
Digging underneath the anger in a curious and honest way is courageously vulnerable. Delving underneath the anger allows a person to deal with the fears, the potential grief, the guilt, the injustice, the fatigue, the resentment, or whatever is underneath.
Acknowledging the use of old patterns that worked well when you were younger, but now pull you out of your authenticity.
I talked with a friend the other day who spent years in a bad marriage. Her husband travelled a lot on business—and it worked in her favour that he was gone more than he was at home. When he was at home, she would grit her teeth, and wait it out. She would endure his time at home until he would leave again.
The marriage ended, and after a time, she fell in love. She remarried and now delights that her now-husband comes home at the end of every workday. He has two sons who live with them half time. As she and his sons are working out their relationship, there are inevitable rough spots. It is normal that as two families combine to also become one family, there are some tensions.
She recently found herself steeling herself for the few days these children are at their house until they return to be with their mother.
When she noticed the “steeling herself”, she caught herself. She was behaving towards them now the way she used to respond to her husband back then. She was taken aback when she noticed it. Transposing the reality of a bad marriage onto a new relationship with stepchildren would not be helpful. Confronting that feeling and admitting was brave and insightful, I think.
It’s likely that she and these children can negotiate a friendly, if not fantastic relationship, but only if she can pull herself out of that pattern that she almost inevitably finds herself returning to. There’s a part of her that knows these children are not her ex-husband in a bad marriage, even as another part automatically treats these children like part time frustrating family member she must endure. She wants them to be full-time children of her heart—and that will only happen if she can break the pattern. And she can only break the pattern if she works through it.
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You have to know that if you show up in my therapy office we see you as a person who is strong and courageous because you are willing to look at the hardest parts of your life.
Folks who choose to go to counseling are wise investors.
Clients come to therapy willing to do hard things because they believe that the healing inside themselves and in their relationships will be a payoff that is well worth it.
Quite simply, therapy is hard and risky work.
8 T
herapy is intimidating
When I went to grad school for my counseling degree, it was expected that as part of the process I would do my own personal work in therapy. To counselor-in-training was expected to see her own counselor.
This was for two reasons:
If therapists are going to work with clients on a client’s stuff, they need to know what’s it’s like to work through their own stuff. It’s only fair that therapists feel a pounding heart thump in their chest as they wait for the first session, uncertain of how the session will go, right? Therapists need to understand what it is like to be a client. Clients deserve the compassion and understanding of a therapist who truly gets it. And I believe therapists, taking part as clients, need to experience a session when the therapist doesn’t understand them or is insensitive to themselves as the client. When their therapist doesn’t quite get it, is judgemental or is pushing hard unrealistically—therapists have to know what that feels like as a client. Therapists need to experience therapy from the perspective of a client to better understand what their clients are experiencing.
Therapists are flawed human beings. Don’t you want them to have worked on their stuff before they help you with yours? That’s no surprise, because none of us is perfect. No therapist will have “arrived” at complete personal enlightenment, but don’t you want them on their own journey towards wholeness? Every therapist will have unique perspectives because of who they are and their own personal life experiences. I also believe that one factor that makes for a good therapist is recognizing their own humanity, in its authentic imperfectness. As therapists, we have a professional and personal obligation to deal with our stuff. Counselors need to become aware of their biases and blind spots to reduce the likelihood that we will impose them on our clients. We need to deal with our own trauma and our own vulnerability so we don’t ask our clients to do something we don’t know how to do ourselves. And we need to have worked through that which scares us as humans—because some of our clients and some issues that arise in therapy can be hard to hear. Counselors need to know how to deal with their own internal world so it won’t stop them as they take the client through therapy. Good therapists know what triggers their own issues, and that awareness helps us prevent our stuff interfering with your stuff as you come in to talk about it.
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I found myself making all sorts of excuses when it was the time in my counseling education to do the research to find a therapist who sees therapists and make the call to make the appointment. I told myself I would call after breakfast, or after doing that school reading for my next class, or after I put the kids down for their nap. Before I knew it, business hours had passed and I wouldn’t be able to call until the next day. There was always a reason to postpone the call. This went on for a week or more.
You know why I didn’t really call. I realized it, too, but it was hard to admit at the moment:
I was scared.
Plain and simple, the idea of going to a therapist was frightening. I’m a person who invests fully in my plans and decisions, and so I had no plans to go through the motions with a therapist. I wouldn’t pretend to do therapy—I was going to be all in. That idea of doing therapy—exposing myself fully to a therapis
t—then, was terrifying
To go to therapy was to open myself up to someone who was, before I started therapy, a total stranger. This total-stranger-therapist had permission, because of his role, to respond however he liked. The normal constraints of most conversations where we instinctively know and operate out of the belief that personal stuff is none of your business wouldn’t exist.
We know in conventional conversations that people won’t ask pointed questions that will make the conversation awkward. Social courtesy won’t push for further explanation that which was intentionally left unsaid. A therapist doesn’t have those limitations.
It’s the job of therapists to go to those unsaid places, because that’s often where the pain is, and therefore, where the healing is.
The therapist would expect me to expose my problems. It makes sense that we would spend most of the time on the trouble spots of my thinking and feeling. It was to be expected that important experiences that were painful would come up.
I would be walking into the room expecting the therapist to scrutinize things I hadn’t explored yet; help me process pain that I had thus far avoided; and open up to being exposed to blind spots that might embarrass me.
What I expected the therapist to do was also precisely what freaked me out.
I didn’t want to admit that I feared being a therapy client. But I did. I was already seeing clients as a therapist, and I had normalized their anxiety—but was having a hard time overcoming my own.
Hell No to Hmmm, Maybe Page 6
