Therapy as an objective sketch

realbeauty

I found this video on my Facebook timeline. As part of their “real beauty” campaign, Dove brought in a sketch artist to draw pictures of women based solely on their self-described features (the artist never saw the women). He then asked a stranger who’d met the women in the lobby to describe these same women to him. He then did a second sketch. The results are life changing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iswiKQbtwXQ&feature=share

This morning as I was reflecting up on this video I realized that there’s not a better way to describe the process of therapy. For all of us, we have an image, a sketch, of ourselves in our head. This image reflects both the physical and emotional makeup that we understand about ourselves. We live our lives operating out of this image, as if it were undoubtedly and unequivocally true. The problem is that our self-perception is often short circuited by shadows from the past. Because a name someone called us as a kid, or how someone took advantage of us in a perverse way all work to shape our perceived value and worth.

In a culture that is so highly motivated by appearance, we spend a lot of time and money fixing out outward selves to bring about love and respect from others. The belief many of us hold is that if we show what’s truly on the inside, we’ll be unloved and unwanted.

Therapy is the process of helping to integrate our self-perception and the perception of others. It’s an often difficult process because our self-perception is so well established that it takes time and trust to break down the walls. Therapy provides an objective sketch that contradicts the self-imposed ideals about who one is, how one looks, and what value they have. The results are life changing.

5 Virtues of Marriage

Looking back over the past year is one of my favorite traditions. I get to remember the ups and downs, the growth that occurred, and see what themes continually show up. This is the first year that I’ve applied this to my professional life, probably because it’s the first full year I’ve had as a private practician (previously having split my time in a non-profit agency). In looking back over the past year, I’ve seen an emphasis on 5 different virtues about marriage.


1. Choosing marriage is choosing to give up control of your life.
I cannot emphasize this virtue any stronger: Marriage will cost you your life. If you value your own authority, singleness, or ego more than that of others, do not get married. Choosing marriage will require you to give up control of your life. You will make decisions that will affect at least two people (more later when you have kids), and this is a very difficult change from that of a single life. It might be the best gift ever given to a single person, and it’s the costliest.In a very real way, marriage is much like salvation. In accepting God’s plan and will for your life, you are setting aside your own to be submissive his his plan. This means that you’re an active participant in his plan, but your life is not about your happiness. Marriage is about giving up of ones life for the sake of the other, which translates to a giving up of control.

Greater love has no one than this, that someone lay down his life for another” (John 15:13).

“You complete me,” might be one of the most famous lines in the movie Jerry Maguire, and it might be the most misleading. Marriage will offer you the unique and unparalleled opportunity to grow. Marriage will not fill you, rather it  will make you more aware of your emptiness and need for God, and only God. Unfortunately there is no real way that Hollywood can show more than an infatuated love. So we don’t get a real picture as to what mature, longstanding love looks like. Instead we get a glimpse of the joy and warm fuzzy love that we all want to have. There’s nothing wrong with this, but it’s not a lasting version of love.

2. Couples that protect pain from happening are preventing intimacy (connections) from developing.
Its no secret that people don’t like pain. It’s also no secret that being in a close relationship is an inevitable date with pain. The challenge is viewing pain as though it is a gift, not the plague. Pain is not fun, but neither is numbness. I don’t know about you, but when I leave the dentist after getting a shot of Novocain, I cannot wait for it to wear off. The feeling of not controlling half of my face is miserable (not to mention the inability to know when I’m drooling). We were not made to be numb, we were made to feel.

The poet Mary Oliver penned this line, and it speaks well to the realities couples face: “I was once given a box full of darkness, it took me many years to realize that this too was a gift.” Pain shapes our lives either in our acceptance of it or our refusal to experience it. Creating a space for pain to be a welcomed guest in your marriage will serve you well. This is the task of every marriage: To create and develop a philosophy of dealing with pain. You will raise the next generation of people based on how you and your spouse engage each other in times of pain.

3. Marriage is a muscle: Use it or lose it.
Marriage takes work, and will not naturally grow on it’s own. It takes consistent time and energy much like your muscles. If you were to sit all day every day for a year, you would notice a significant amount of atrophy in your body. Your inability to function after that year of sitting would likely take you a more painful and greater amount of recovery to return to your previous abilities (if ever at all). Once you have lost muscle mass, it is very difficult to get it back.

Your months and years of dating and courtship are very much like a daily trip to the gym. You’re exercising the muscles of the relationship that cause it to grow. When you get married, continue your visits to the gym (literally and metaphorically). Read books together, attend marriage workshops, go on dates, spend intentional time together, take trips. Do all of these things regularly and your marriage will not atrophy.

4. One plus one equals three: Becoming one, requires two.
One of the more nuanced challenges of marriage is to become one together, but remain distinctly individual in the process. It will take both husband and wife bringing 100% each to the marriage to make the relationship work. This is not a 50-50% proposition, it’s a 100-100% arrangement. Only bringing 50% of yourself to the table means you’re not being fully you in the relationship.

When a husband or wife begin to lose their individuality, marriage problems will soon follow. Being an individual is not the same as being single, rather it’s being an individual who maintains their autonomy while being 100% committed to the growth and health of the other person for the sake of the marriage. M. Scott Peck in his bestselling book, The Road Less Travelled, said that Love is to tend to the spiritual and emotional growth in another person. This is the goal of marriage, to tend to and care for the spiritual and emotional health in our spouse. We have the best chance of doing this when we are operating out of our fully unique and individual lives.

5. Marriage is Redemptive.
I know no other way to describe marriage more simply than it’s capacity to enact redemption in life. This comes in unimaginable ways as past wounds, hurts, fears, and resentments are all confronted with the woman of our dreams. Surrendering ones life to another is hard, yes, but it is also glorious. I believe this is the hope that beckons us to get married in the first place. We might not know this is what we are signing up for, but the spirit in us all moves us towards a need for being saved from ourselves. Marriage offers us just that: An opportunity to be saved from ourselves.

(This article was originally published at StartMarriageRight.com)

Truth and Truthfulness

Truthfulness is a principal that most would agree is a valuable and worthwhile virtue. Most courses of therapy challenge the client to engage in his/her true self and live out of that core in a truthful way. But the conversation takes a dramatic turn when truthfulness is pitted up against the truth. A lot of religions will espouse that the truth is the way to live, regardless of what ones individual truthfulness is or is not.

More often than not, what I’ve noticed is truth comes at the expense of being truthful. This is the stance of losing sight of what’s inside because the external is more robust and valuable. The pursuit of the truth (and this applies to issues beyond theology or spirituality) can lend itself to an biased way of living that places more emphasis on the external than the internal.

For some, when the external truth is more important (by their own doing, I might add), they begin to feel lost, flustered, and confused. Ultimately this leads to looking for external validation and rightness, which results in a constant state of deficit or need. There’s not enough external validation in the entire world to satisfy these needs. The internal truth, being truthful, is what needs focus and attention. This doesn’t mean that external truths don’t have merit or are at all times subordinate to internal wishes and desires, in fact it’s quite the opposite. It takes a lot of maturity, courage, and honesty to live life in exploring oneself — to be truthful.

A man considering marriage might say he doesn’t feel old enough to get married, even though he’s 28 years old. The truth, that adulthood comes sometime around the age of 18-21, is seen as more true (acceptable) than one being truthful about feeling inadequate about getting married. Saying it’s ridiculous to feel inadequate about getting married is not a truthful comment.

Being one who values truthfulness and truth means allowing for both the internal and external worlds to co-exist, letting neither become more important or more valuable than the other. Growth is enlarging the capacity for tension to exist — in this case, the internal and external truths that often conflict with one another.

Back to the Future

(…originally published at StartMarriageRight.com)

Growing up, one of my favorite video games was Zelda. In addition to the combat and puzzles, my favorite part was discovering and conquering unknown levels. As the player, you’d know how much of a particular level you’d discovered based on the map in the lower right corner. However, in beginning each new level, the map resets to black. As you progressed in the new level, it would only illuminate where you’d previously been. The main component missing on the map: Where you were going.

Unknown territory, enemies, and lands all waiting in darkness to be discovered. As in real life, the map is a very crucial part of the game. Without it, the player/character would be doomed to revisit the same board or level over and over again. Our life map looks very similar to that of Zelda: Portions are illuminated because we’ve previously visited, and portions are darkened awaiting our visit. Unfortunately, many rarely visit the darkened portions of maps because of fear.

The known or the unknown? A common phrase that holds people back from getting more out of life is “fear of the unknown.” People are afraid of what might happen in the future if they pursue a public speaking job, start a blog, confront a friend or loved one, ask a girl on a date, or any number of risky vulnerabilities. For some the “fear of the unknown” is what to do with success, and for others it’s what to do with failure. These questions about the future are only powerful because this “fear of the unknown” is quite the opposite: It’s the fear of the known.

I’m afraid of spiders because of what I’ve seen—what I know. What they can do to someone doesn’t bring comforting thoughts or feelings to myself (perhaps watching the movie arachnophobia as a kid didn’t help matters). If I’d never been exposed to the harm of a black widow, brown recluse or other poisonous spiders, I probably wouldn’t be afraid. But I have been exposed to these potential dangers and thus I carry a warranted known fear of spiders.

Ultimately, it’s impossible to fear the unknown. We are afraid of what we know—those things we have previously uncovered or discovered. In playing Zelda, you have a sense what’s located in the undiscovered portions of the map only because you’ve been to previously undiscovered places. But you never know what was there until you’ve experienced it yourself.

As humans, we’re born with fear. Fear is that feeling that alerts your senses to potential danger or potential vulnerabilities. We react out of our fears to keep ourselves safe. It’s our human survival instinct, and is often referred to as Fight, Flight, or Freeze. We do any of these three in reaction to danger, to a fear. My fear of spiders is based on different literature I’ve read, movies I’ve watched, and being personally bitten many times by these minuscule beasts.

Though my encounter with spiders is a tangible example, the far more devastating and dangerous fears are what we do with our dreams and desires. Fear elicits feelings of being out of control, and we humans do not do out of control well. These feelings cause our fears to blind us to what’s present today by diverting our attention into the future; to what we can control. If pursuing one’s dream feels scary or out of control, the easiest way to gain control is to come up with an excuse as to why we cannot. The statement of “fearing the unknown” is an excuse. It’s an easy pass out of the tension of facing reality today.

In college my friends and I would go mountain biking in the Ozark Mountains. It was an exhilarating way to spend an afternoon away from studying and the hard life of a college student. Upon cresting a hill, we’d stop at the top and choose a direction downwards. As we surveyed the impending descent, working up the courage to propel our bodies off the ledge, one or all would say, “no falls, no balls.” And with that, we’d push off and fly down the hill. Sometimes flying down the hill turned into crashing down the hill. After a crash, there’d always be an increase of fear at the next hill.

Conquering fear requires facing it head-on. There is no way to get around it. Shortcuts will only intensify and prolong what you are trying to avoid. The way to conquer supposed “fear of the unknown”, is to face the fears that you do know. Face the fears that are presenting themselves today, and take them one step at a time. Look back to where you’ve been, and you’ll find reasons and stories that illuminate the fears of the future. In a sense, by taking a look where you’ve been, you’ll get to go back to the future.

 

Love Your Faults

Deficiencies, blemishes, and faults are what make us lovable, yet we’re constantly told by ads and media that blemishes need to be covered up, eradicated, and hidden. The reality is the bumps, oddities, and faults in each of us is why we’re able to form bonds and relationships.

Think of it in terms of painting or wood finishing. Before paint can adhere to a surface, the surface needs to be roughed up. WIthout the grooves and crevasses created by the sand paper, the paint would fall off the surface. It’s why painting a finished piece of glass can be easily scraped off. Glass is smooth, finished, and lacking dimensional depth.

Relationally, this is an odd paradox. Most of us strive to be without the need for others, yet cannot last very long on our own outside of relationships. The difficulty is that some of the rough spots and patches in our lives that make us lovable are very tender, swollen, and in lots of pain. You can love me all you want, but don’t touch too long or hard on these spots or I’m going to react accordingly.

So why are we afraid to be deficient? Because perfectionism, performance, and having it together are celebrated as tenants of successful people. Rarely will you see a rock star, public figure, pastor, or other famous person exposing their bumps and bruises authentically. It’s just not what we naturally do as humans. Yet all great stories are great because they contain rocky sections, failures, or deaths.

The great “success stories” aren’t great because of the end, but because of the process and journey taken. If you want to love and be loved, you’ll have to get cozy with your faults, and others’. If you’re perfect, you don’t need me and I don’t have anything for you. Blemishes don’t work well to sell magazines, but they show us that we people are indeed human. When people can see that you’re human just like they are, friendships are born.

Excuses, The Human Condition, and Truth

“You shall know the truth and the truth shall make you odd.” ― Flannery O’ Connor 

On my way in to the office this morning, I heard a report from the Sandusky sex-abuse trail that a psychologist has deemed Jerry Sandusky as having a personality disorder. I believe they are referring to the “Histrionic Personality Disorder” which they seemingly suggest is the reason he has such a high need to be appreciated (admired?) which caused his “inappropriate actions.”

Personality disorders are real, there is no disputing that fact. What I find offensive is the notion that having a disorder like this is the real culprit behind these egregious and evil acts of violence towards countless young boys. This excuse is an abusive use of non-scientific theory intended to lessen the consequences of Sandusky’s actions. There is so much grey area in the realm of personality disorders that if the need to be appreciated is the evidence for such a disorder, then every one of us should be sent to a hospital.

I don’t know if he is guilty or not. I don’t know what happened in the showers, in the bedrooms, or in the car with those boys. But I do know that now is not the time for Sandusky to pull out his personality disorder as the “get out of jail free” card it seems to be intended for. Evidently the defense believes if you have a personality disorder, you’re not accountable for abusing young boys. This is offensive to me, and I hope to you.

The human condition is broken. We all do stupid, inappropriate, and sometimes harmful actions towards ourselves and others. Sandusky is no different in his condition. He’s just like you and me. He’s a wounded man who let the pain of his condition and life dictate his actions towards others. However, if we’re willing to put down our swords and stones, we can learn something from him.

If you leave your wounds alone, they will resurface and wound others. Hurt people, hurt people.

It’s our responsibility to consider what stories we have lived and experienced as a way to keep ourselves from reenacting our stories with other people.

If you mess up, own it. Take responsibility for your actions. It’s not “if” you’ll screw up, it’s “when.” There is too much energy spent hiding the truth and skirting responsibility. Truth is a powerful motivator. If we tell the truth, judgement from ourselves and others is not too far away. Relationships might be lost, financial ruin could happen, and reputations might be tarnished. These are the risks of telling the truth.

What’s to be gained? Being known, trust in others, healing of our deep and dark wounds, and forgiveness of ourselves and others. When we hide what we have done and left undone, we prevent others from being able to give grace, mercy, and kindness. Yes, we risk being chastised and hurt, but if that’s the best those around you have to offer, perhaps those relationships aren’t the best.

It’s a simple formula that we will all spend the rest of our lives trying to cheat the system:

Know the truth.

Tell the truth.

Trust in the process.

 

 

Parenting As A Vehicle

Hordes of books dominate the shelves of bookstores, teaching you the love languages of kids, brain rules for kids, and how kids raise parents. There are classes, techniques, and even some really stringent cult-like ideas that all hope to help parents master the art of parenting.

I enjoy referring to parenting in football defensive references. If a family has two kids, it’s “man coverage,” with 3 kids they are in zone coverage, and with four or more, the all important (and most anxiety producing for a football fan) Prevent defense. It’s clever, I know. 

The truth is, no metaphor, book, technique, or principal can help to prepare someone to be a parent. And yet, we all need help to shepherd us along the way.

It’s really hard work, and mostly exhausting to deal with free-willed little people who refuse to be your robot. 

Go to bed.
Unload your dishes.
Be nice to your sister.
Pick up your clothes.
Turn off the lights. 
(The prevailing message: don’t be a kid)

If you’re a parent, you get it. Most of the time parents are directing, pointing, teaching, yelling, and ending the day praying the kids turn out ok. It’s the ultimate journey of faith, trust, and powerlessness. 

Parenting is the vehicle that gets our kids onto or nearby the launching pad for their lives. Each kid has their own unique launching pad. Sometimes parents don’t see that different kids have different needs, which produce different lifestyles, goals, and vision for their lives. If we take all our kids to the same destination, the same launching pad, only one is going to pleased. 

This vehicle is the container that provides safe travel while the journey is still in the confines of childhood. Slowly, methodically, and gradually the kids will begin to branch out and become curious about their world. More often than not, a kids curiosity will trigger a parents fear of losing control. This fear, left undressed or unexplored, leads straight to the command center of the kids’ launching pad. 

As a fearful parent, I want to be in the command center. I want to be in the control room that has the correct flight plan, path, and coordinates for my kids rocket. I want to know what is going to happen, where they are going, and that they will be ok. In reality, I just want to be ok. My kids are an extension of me (they’re still in the early journey of curiosity), and if they hurt, so do I. 

It’s easy for parents to be in the mindset of putting the kids in an auto-piloted vehicle, and retire to the control room where they can push the buttons, speak commands, and remain aloof from the reality of the kids who are in the vehicle. This is the safest form of parenting, but it’s not really parenting. It’s more like a warden, a boss, or an autocrat. 

James Masterson, therapist and author, says that the role of the therapist is to be the guardian of the true, real self. Not surprisingly, this is a lot like the role of a parent. Our role is to guard our kids from buying into the lie that posturing, faking it, or performing is what works. It’s our job to show our kids that money doesn’t buy happiness, nor does money solve the real challenges of life. 

The ultimate challenge of parenting is to cultivate a relationship, the vehicle, that allows for safe return from misplaced curiosity, foolish choices, or damaging actions. 




Seeing the Real You

I do my thing and you do your thing.
I am not in this world to live up to your expectations,
And you are not in this world to live up to mine.
You are you, and I am I,
and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.
If not, it can’t be helped.

~Fritz Perls

 

It’s human nature to care what others think of us, but this nature can get us into trouble. If you care what others think, more than you think you ought to, then it’s a good chance you don’t know you. When we come to know ourselves, we come realize that we have flaws, dings, dents, and a beauty that is only possible because of those human things. Joseph Campbell says that we don’t love others because they are perfect, we love others because they are deeply flawed. Without flaws, there is nothing to love (See Good Will Hunting).

We care what others think because it’s easy. It’s easy to ask someone else to define you. To judge you. To tell you who or what you are (and in most cases, they will tell you what you are, not who you are). We want easy, because hard is painful. Hard is just that, hard. And not many of us like hard.

So, the warning flag that you’re not engaged with your soul, your true self, is that you care what others think. If that flag is flying, recognize it. Take it down, and find out who you are. Carry and write in a journal. Read a book. Sit outside in nature, and meditate on what you see. Consider what excites you, what scares you, and what you want out of life. What do you dream?

You’ll get down to some gritty and hard places if you stop wondering about others and turn inward. That journey will be a lot longer and harder than what people think. But frankly, people don’t think about you nearly as much as you’d like. And the ones that really care about you, those are the ones who don’t just think about you, they do something about it. Because at the end of the day, it’s all about what you see in yourself.

 

Some thoughts to end the week

Answering the why questions in life will rarely be satisfying. The awareness you’ll gain will be invaluable if you choose to use it.

We humans judge actions, not intent.

Hiding will prevent relationships from developing intimacy. You cannot have intimacy and hide at the same time.

“Don’t put your trust in walls, ‘Cause walls will only crush you when they fall.” 

I can’t change the way you feel, nor can you change the way I feel. We can work together to learn where and how we feel what we do, and then learn to walk with care and love around those soft and tender spots in life. You cannot carry all of my pain, so don’t try and make life pain free for me or you. It doesn’t work.

Ending well is really difficult, takes time, and allows  for new growth. Quitting is accepting the easy road that is full of regret, self-pity, and will not bring fullness. You’ve got to fight hard for the things you want, and don’t want.

Don’t wait for permission from others to be vulnerable and take a risk; it will never happen. Taking a risk is risky regardless of who approves of it or not. Think of it this way, base jumping isn’t easier because you got a high five.

Babies fall 10,000 times before they learn to walk. Falling hurts, but not being able to walk hurts worse.

The phrase “be a man” needs to be replaced with “tell the truth.” Learning to tell the truth is a process, and judging a process kills progress. Telling the truth is risky. Most of us don’t do it very well. We hint, dance, assume, manipulate, hover, and do all sorts of so many things that take incredible amounts of energy. More energy to hint and dance around a subject than just saying what’s true.

Learning how to be mature is a lifelong journey. It’s a process. It doesn’t happen when you graduate high-school. Have sex. Have a baby. Or when you get a job. Maturity happens when you admit to not knowing, and commit to the process of learning. Not knowing oneself is the deepest of sadness, but not pursuing the knowledge of oneself is the greatest crime against the self. You cannot know what you do not pursue. You cannot know what you do not care about. You cannot know what you do not love.

Conservative, safe, and highly controlled living is not the way we were created to live. This is a difficult reality in the South. It’s hard to not fake it here.

Christianity is a religion. Much like Buddhism, Mormanism, and Footballism. Being a follower of Christ is not religious. There’s a difference.

Refusing to address your dysfunctional behavior and relationships (and your family’s dysfunction) will create incredibly difficulties tomorrow. It will also have a stronger affect on others than you think it will. And on more people than you think.

Happyness (I prefer to spell it with a y) is found in being known by others, God, and ourselves. Want to be happy and fulfilled? Spend some time getting to know you. You’re smarter, brighter, wiser, and more interesting than you know. Don’t live without knowing who’s alive in there.

Being Honest with our Kids

A few weeks ago my friend Laurie, who has 4 kids under 6 years old, messaged me with question about using the word disappointed in response to a kids action. “Is it okay to tell your child that you’re disappointed in them?” It’s a question that I’ve considered quite a bit since she asked. On one hand I want my kids to know that what they do and say in life will have an impact on others, myself included, but on the other hand I don’t want them to have to interpret my choice of words to determine how displeased I am with them. Disappointed is a word that I hear quite a bit and even comes from my mouth at times. Since my friend asked me this question, I’ve struggled to understand what the word really means.

Does the feeling of disappointment mean that you’re sad or angry? Ashamed or frustrated? Hurt or resentful? Or perhaps it means annoyed, irritated, or some other somewhat vague expression? These are just some of the words that come to mind when I consider what disappointed might mean. It might be different for you, but I think the response of a parent is the same regardless of the meaning of the word.

As parents, it’s our responsibility to help our kids name and express things about themselves that might be otherwise difficult to access. For example. When one of my kids gets angry at their sister or brother, they often express that anger in very passive aggressive ways. They’ll growl, slyly bump into the other as they walk past, take the object of contention (this morning it was a blue plate), or roll their eyes. All these actions do nothing in terms of naming the emotion that they feel. The other person probably has a good idea that things aren’t well, but it’s guesswork.

Those few examples of passive-aggressive behavior is why I think it’s important for parents to express their own sense of emotional responses towards their kids in a way that is as specific as possible. Telling a child (and by child, I mean someone under 12) that you’re disappointed in their behavior might be truthful to what you’re experiencing, but I don’t think it’s completely honest to what you’re feeling. Try to name the emotion in terms of where the disappointment is coming from — try to identify the core emotion of Hurt, Sad, Anger, Shame, Fear, or Lonely. More often than not, your disappointment comes from wanting/desiring something more for your child and them choosing not to pursue that same desire. Most often disappointment is veiled anger, sadness, and hurt.

One caveat to this is that as kids mature and become more capable to understanding more complexities of life, the use of words like disappointment, annoyed, frustrated, or irritated might be appropriate fodder for conversations. But even then, I’d encourage the exploration and expression of core emotions to support and explain why those are being felt.