No one should have to peek into their own deep darkness alone. We peek together with you. Peeking may not be fun. No barrel of laughs here. But it will be tolerable—maybe just barely tolerable. But definitely tolerable.
Peeking isn’t pleasant, but it is infinitely more desirable than smashing the container. Peeking into the scary container with a therapist is a similar to entering a bright room when you’ve been in the dark for days. Your clamp your hands over your eyes. You squint from behind the hands that have two fingers open just a crack. It’s so bright it hurts. It isn’t easy. You stop squinting and close your eyes until the pain passes.
You pull back when it’s hard and regroup. Then you find you can open your eyes a teeny bit more than before, for a minute longer than before. Over time, your eyes adjust. What used to be intolerable, now becomes tolerable. It doesn’t hook you or hijack you in the way it used to. When it still comes up in a surprising way and you feel triggered, you have tools to deal with it.
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Do you remember Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz?[3] She is desperate to get home to Kansas. She approaches the Wizard—a terrifying head on a throne, with huge plumes of smoke and periodic burst of huge fire popping out and with a big terrifying booming voice. She is shaking in fear until Toto, her dog, runs behind the curtain and finds a tiny man speaking into a microphone, earnestly pulling and pushing levers. He creates the special effects to present as frightening—because he himself is anxious and frightened. When Dorothy scolds him for going to such great lengths to misrepresent himself in such a terrifying way, she exclaims: “You’re a very bad man.” It’s clear to the viewer that the man makes himself to be much scarier and meaner and bigger and more significant that he is in real life. He operates out of a knowing that that others will not value him as he is. He charmingly discloses, “I’m a very good man, just a very bad wizard.”
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It’s feels vulnerable to become exposed and often those rooms that hold the dark secrets find it to their advantage to become terrifying. Being so intimidating keeps you out of their secrets which are tender and wounded, and fearful of greater hurt. It’s a therapist’s task to walk with you towards those locked rooms and to approach them carefully and cautiously.
The wounded part of you in the darkened, locked room is more frightened of you than you of it. A therapist holds space with you to gently open that room and is a companion on the way. A therapist creates the safety for both you and for the woundedness locked away, quavering in the dark, convinced that exposing itself will lead to certain judgement and further hurt.
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Dorothy walked into the wizard’s room with friends. That’s an important detail about the story. It was her trusty sidekick, Toto that found the unique angle of the wizard, revealing that he was all smoke and mirrors. Dorothy would not have been able to confront the wizard on her own. She wouldn’t have discovered the truth of the wizard on her own. She couldn’t have had the experience end well without the courage, support and creativity of her companions.
We all need support, and we aren’t meant to go to deepest hidden places inside of ourselves without another to go with us. It’s too intimidating to open up long locked up doors into the hidden darkness without another person ready to face the results with you. But even more importantly, going in with another transforms the experience.
Toto pulls back the curtain. Tinman points out the exposed man. Dorothy’s experience of approaching the wizard becomes possible because of her allies. She doesn’t go alone. They actively involve themselves to help her in the process.
Exploring those dark and hidden inner spaces that are terrifying can shift to become something surprisingly possible. The experience is altered when you have a compassionate, courageous therapist accompanying this expedition.
Often what is behind those locked doors is a wounded, terrified part that is lonely and longs for understanding and compassion. When that part is approached gently and respectfully with a therapist, it drops the smoke and fire, and looks to see if a relationship can might be built. It’s fragile and hesitant and it may feel such relief at being allowed out from behind the door. That part may weep the tears of relief and sadness of one that has long waited to be heard and valued. It may express some irritation that it has been long ignored. Wouldn’t it be weird if it didn’t?
But most of all, the part that was locked away and now released will be relieved to be seen and known.
I’m not asking you to believe me. I’m asking you to find this out for yourself.
15
Therapy is selfish
Navel gazing.
When people are critical of others who gaze at themselves and talk at length about themselves, they use the term navel gazing. Some folks that come to therapy come in reluctantly and secretly, knowing that if their friends and family knew, they would be considered navel gazers.
It’s a derisive term that is condescending. The implication is a navel gazer is looking at themselves at the expense of others. A navel gazer, metaphorically, is someone fascinated by the lint they find in their belly button.
Nobody wants to be a navel gazer by that definition!
When the chips are down and you and yours aren’t doing well:
Your spouse has left and you are frantically trying to parent confused and struggling children on your own
A close family member has died and you’re all struggling
A child is experimenting with drugs and is not doing well and you exhausted and frantic
A close friend is playing with death with an eating disorder and her inner turmoil is front and center (and your hidden agony and terror watching this unfold grows by the day)
You are having flashbacks from childhood abuse as you go about the regular day-to-day work of being a good spouse, productive employee and caring friend
It can feel like a luxury to go for counseling yourself.
When you’re the person who is always making sure everybody else is fed and watered, cared for and feeling loved, it can seem like an unnecessary extravagance to go to a therapist and talk about yourself. When you’re struggling because someone you care about is struggling even worse, you seek to focus on the loved one. Getting care because you hurt for another, while the other is swirling around the toilet bowl can feel like total navel gazing.
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I love to watch cooking shows. Cooking competitions are my favorites. One of the prominent features that I have noticed about chefs is that when they move into a kitchen, they bring their own knives. They carry their knives in a little rolled up satchel. At the onset of the episode, there are often clips of these chefs sharpening their knives (in slow motion, for effect, of course) or carefully gazing at the sharp blade to inspect its quality. They then pull their knives out to cut the vegetables or meat with clean, even and quick cuts.
My husband, Jim, is a carpenter. He builds beautiful things with wood. In the summer, he builds decks and fences. Every morning, he and his crew will arrive at the yard where they are building and set up the table saw, set up the air compressor, plug in the air nailer, and put their drills in their tool belts. Every evening, he and his crew wrap up the cords, and put away their tools for the night. They don’t want them to be exposed to the elements or to get stolen. Carpentry tools are essential to Jim’s craft.
No tools, no carpentry.
Lousy tools, mediocre carpentry. As simple as that.
Good tools are important, and craftspeople understand that.
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Guess what the primary tool is for you in your relationships?
You.
Yes, you.
I believe that when the going gets rough, and everybody, including you, is struggling, it’s not selfish to do your work, ground yourself, and get your head on straight. It’s the opposite of selfish. It’s brilliant. The smart and caring thing to do is to take proper care of you so you are strong, capable and on your game when all around you is falling apart.
Years ago, as a new single parent, I recall firsthand that there was no time to do anything for myself. By the time I did my job, drove kids around, cleaned house, made meals, did laundry, dealt with the nightmares of children and the upset as they adjusted to going back and forth from one house to another, the day was gone. No time at all. No budget for therapy either since the expenses had increased while the household revenue tanked.
But how is anyone supposed to parent well when grieving the death of a marriage?
When:
you wake early.
your heart pounds every time your former spouse’s number is on call display
you have big feelings and judge yourself for those feelings and that becomes a runaway train
you are figuring out how to live without your partner’s support for the first time in many years
— how can anyone provide good care to children?
When, as a parent you spin endlessly about a thousand unknowns, how can you calm and soothe your anxious children?
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As you seek to be the best mother you can be, the best boss, the best employee, the best friend or spouse or uncle or dad, the way to do it is by recognizing that what you offer to those relationships is you. If you are anxious, depressed, caught up in nasty cycles, or so angry you can’t see straight, you offer a version of yourself that isn’t fully present. You are highly reactive. You are stressed.
However, if you:
have a perspective on what is happening and on how it is affecting you
become aware of your own blind spots
are resourcing yourself
then you are in a better position to be compassionate and empathic to those around you.
You will have improved ability to make better choices when asked to do things that may sound helpful, but in reality, are destructive in the situation. You will have a place to be sad, mad, or stressed to enable you to enter a situation and handle the conversations of others that are sad, mad or stressed.
It’s important, if you are a caregiver supporting people around you in a time of crisis, to get help for yourself. Often friends, family, and support of social resources will be enough. But sometimes you will recognize that you are not being the best you that you can be in the middle of trying to parent your children, support your elderly parents, or work on a big project at work. You’re drowning under the pressures of the current situation, or the past is threatening to swamp you as you deal with the present.
If you’re so depressed you can hardly get up in the morning and you are so preoccupied with the sadness in your inner world that there is little interaction with your children or your friends, then they don’t get the you they need.
If you’re so anxious that you can’t sit down and enjoy a leisurely conversation with your spouse, then your spouse gets robbed of time with you that you would want to give. If you’re so stressed that you can’t sleep, and you’re exhausted, and you cancel your plans with friends the next day, everybody loses out on enjoying you.
It’s at those times when care for the caregiver is actually a selfless act.
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As you sharpen your own emotional knives, oil the moving parts of your thoughts and tweak and adjust the tool of you in counseling, you will optimize your ability to positively impact those around you.
When a chef sharpens his knives, and Jim spends an hour cleaning up his tools and getting them ready for the next day, they aren’t wasting time. They are investing in being able to do a quality job.
When you choose to go to counseling in the middle of a busy and stressful life and people are depending on you, you’re not being selfish. You’re investing in the most important tool you’ve got to make a difference in the lives of those you care about—you.
By seeking extra support, you aren’t taking away from giving to others. You are adding to your ability to give to others.
By doing your work with a therapist, you are modelling to your family, your friends or your work team that it is a good thing to take care of yourself. You are letting them have the experience of witnessing someone who does good self-care.
What could be a greater lesson for those you care about to learn from you than to learn how to take care of oneself?
16
I’m strong enough to do it on my own
I have long lived in a house full of males growing from fine young boys into better young men. Lots of testosterone. These guys frequently see who is getting taller and stronger and who was taller and stronger at a certain age. They recount their sporting exploits—the stories I hear them share and share again are ones of dominance and victory. They talk about the last-minute basket that they swished, or the way they blocked the other’s shot at the buzzer. Not so much now, but they used to wrestle a lot, trying to show the other he was the stronger one. They tell me stories of jumping off the garage roof into the pool or using the garage roof as the beginning of their sledding run. The loved recounting stories of their bravery and courage riding their bikes over rough terrain.
My boys love the stories of athletes who have overcome adversity to show tremendous strength in spirit and body. Clearly, the people—all boys except for me—in my house admire strength and I don’t think that’s unique to my household.
Don’t we all like to be known as capable and strong? There are phrases that, when tossed casually our way, fill a person with shame:
Why don’t you pull yourself up by your own bootstraps?
Build a bridge and get over it
Suck it up buttercup
Don’t be such a princess
Pansy
Wimp
Wuss
Strength is a quality long admired in our Western world. Strength as measured by an individual’s fortitude in persevering in challenges of all kinds. The concept that “It is me against the world” is a huge challenge for an individual to conquer what lies ahead of them. We prize individual strength in our culture beyond almost anything else. Physical, emotional, psychological strength—all of it.
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In our culture, it’s bad for everybody, but even a greater sting for men to receive even hints of perceived weakness. Men are supposed to be strong and brave—and never let’em see you sweat. There is an unwritten, unspoken expectation that strong men won’t seek therapy. There is an implicit understanding that says a strong guy is expected to push through the pain of:
A still-born child,
A failed thesis
A broken engagement
Crippling anxiety
Trauma brought on by seeing a friend blown up on an Afghani road by an IED
In a world where expressing and exploring emotions is weakness, going to counseling can only be interpreted as a form of emotional and psychological collapse. Starting therapy in a culture that values individual achievement at all costs, is a defeatist act, that says, “I’m not strong enough”.
Men who have always prided themselves on their own strength get boxed into a place where asking for help isn’t possible. People who have done remarkable things in their lives, who have been heroic and helpful, find themselves in a position of an emotional struggle with little or no option. They dare not let others into their own pain to tarnish their image of being strong. The cultural script says that real men don’t go to therapy. (And strong women may not find it such a good idea either if they want to keep up with the boys.)
This cultural narrative is unspoken but runs very deep. There is concern about prospects of future career opportunities lost if clients would ever have to disclose attendance at therapy. Men are often sheepish when they show up for a first appointment. They have only come after a long period of their spouse’s encouragement and are hesitant to be seen as a failure if they attend counseling.
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Let me say two things about strength and then I will unpack each one of them:
Brute strength is not helpful in many situations. Often qualities other than streng
th are more valuable.
There are different ways of understanding and viewing strength.
The first idea: strength, either physically or emotionally, isn’t always helpful. How well does brute strength work to:
Force a thread through the eye of a needle?
To make a child stop crying by ordering them to cheer up?
Defuse a bomb by smashing it?
Fix a computer by kicking it?
Remove a brain tumor by carving a hole in a person’s brain and just cutting it out?
Raw strength is helpful:
In opening a pickle jar
Hammering nails into wood
Lifting a car that has a person under it
—and a host of other situations.
There are, however, many situations where strength gets you nowhere. Circumstances where using strength is counterproductive and will break, rupture, destroy and just plain not work. Surgeons, architects, chefs, artists, accountants, information technology engineers and so many other professions rely on artful technique and careful finesse to get the job done. There may be moments requiring strength, but even very physical jobs still require decision making, planning, strategy, attention to detail, analysis and so on. Strength a very important component of success in a lot of tasks—but only one of many very important factors.
Hell No to Hmmm, Maybe Page 12
