How To Fail
We may come to a place where we are so averse to failure that we avoid it at all cost …which maybe sounds like the path of success, but what tends to happen along that path is not the success we want. What if, in order to succeed, rather than avoiding failure, what we need, is to become good at failure.
Do you know the story about the farmer who went out to plant seed in his field?
As he was scattering seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and produced a hundred times more than what was planted.”
Do you see that most seed fails. But if you look outside, it certainly does not appear so. What if this story is saying, “most of what we try doesn’t work” ….but what does work, really works. Most of our attempts fail but if we are persistent and generous enough with our attempts, a few of those attempts will be abundantly successful.
Do you see that this is already true in your life. When you were little, you fell over and over again. Learning to walk was failure upon failure …until it was a success. Playtime was so much about repeating what didn’t work …until it did work. You and I grew so much when we offered generous allowance for failure.
We might come to believe, “Failure is embarrassing and shameful; failure means that we’re inferior; failure means we’ll never get it; failure means the door is closed; or maybe we can’t afford to fail?” But avoiding failure will be our most disappointing failure.
If we must succeed, it will be necessary to learn to fail generously.
We must not be above failure. We are born of failure.
How to Get into Trouble
Transcript:
One of the areas of my work is talking to couples who are planning to marry. Most people getting married don't expect things will change after the wedding, especially if they've been together for a long time, or if they've already spent some time living together. But people who are married will tell you that something unexpected happens in marriage.
What's interesting, is that where marriage is the most challenging, it can also be the most rewarding. Marriage experts who hold marriage in such high regard also speak very candidly about the trouble of marriage. Family therapist Salvador Minuchin says: every marriage is a mistake some people just cope with their mistakes better than others.
Couples psychologist David Schnarr says: no one is ready for marriage, marriage makes you ready for marriage.
Marriage therapist team and married couple John and Julia Gottman write: we teach couples that they'll never solve most of their problems, and it's a myth that if you solve your problems you'll automatically be happy.
Now, these are not cynical voices. These are voices who revere the sacred institute of marriage. These are voices who have incredible experience to help married couples with what they may experience as life's single greatest challenge, and also single greatest reward.
Pre-marriage counseling helps you to get an early start on the challenge and the reward.
Dating is hard
I have recommended this book often to clients struggling to understand their relationship and partner. Attachment science sheds new light on common relational conceptions.
Available at Amazon.ca and Chapters/Indigo
Why does he/she move away from me when I am upset?!
He/she just needs to calm down!
I have never felt more alone than in this relationship!
Maybe he/she isn't the one.
He/she doesn’t seem to care.
I think the problem is that he/she is crazy. Maybe it’s that he/she is depressed.
Our relationship somehow just got boring.
Our sensitivities to our partners are often about “attachment styles”. In this book, take an attachment style questionnaire. Learn about yourself, your partner, and common attachments reactions and relational patterns. Learn how to be there for your partner and to build your relationship around a more compassionate understanding of each other.
It’s available on Kindle, Audiobook, and Paperback!
Or, come into the clinic and we’ll lend you our copy.
Who Needs Therapy?
For too many years, I thought therapy was for other people. I could think my way out of problems.
The thinking solution only half works. And your partner will be the first to notice when the other half is missing. They did not just choose a thoughtful and practical partner. They chose one with whom an emotional bond could form. This part often retreats when couples get closer (ie. move in, get married, share a family…). It seems easier to manage a relationship without the messiness of the emotional half. But this retreating half never goes away. It is always a part of you. It is there but it is neglected. It hurts. This is who needs therapy.
Watch the video below entitle “How to Beat the Bully" and consider this: Sometimes we bully a part of ourselves.. One half dominates the other. We may decide that emotions are weak and cannot be trusted while thoughts are strong and reliable. The experience of therapy will help you to discover, your neglected half was a strong trustworthy partner all along.
This Attitude Hurts Your Relationship
Sometimes relationships get too polite and generous.
“What do you want to eat?“
“Whatever you’d like honey.”
”What show do you want to watch?”
“I doesn’t matter to me. You choose.“
“Where do you want to go out?”
“Whatever you want, dear.”
At first, this is considerate, but notice what happens when you keep this up for too long. When one person is continually deferring to the other, it is now conflict avoidance. You’ll know that you’ve reached this point when your partner is no longer happy with your generous answers. Now your conflict avoidance has create a new conflict, and this conflict is one that waits to be resolved at your end.
At some point, if you continue to defer your desire (ie. what you want), your partner will experience your lack of desire and it will hurt. They will sense that something is missing (ie. your desire for them), but it may be difficult for them to see what is missing behind your polite gestures. A part of them, will remember something missing from the beginning of the relationship -a feeling of desirability. That when was when you knew what you wanted and you went after it. It was your favourite food, a fascinating show, an adventure to go on …it was them.
Watch the video below on deferring dynamics and see that “a happy wife” is NOT the recipe for a happy life.
Relax! This Will Hurt!
When my chiropractor tells me to relax, I brace myself for pain. It’s about to hurt, but I will be thankful after the adjustment when the pain I came in with is released.
She counts down, “relax in 3, 2 ,1…” but before “1” is fully formed into word, the adjustment has already happened. She tricked me again! She knows that when it hurts, it is almost impossible to relax.
It’s the same with emotional pain. When it hurts, we tense up. Just like on the chiropractor’s table, a protective reflex kicks in to keep it from hurting more. But this reflex is the very tension that holds on to the pain both when it is physical and when it is emotional.
It is difficult to relax when it hurts.
Psychotherapy gives us the ability to relax with emotional pain so that we can hear its complaint, adjust appropriately, and release the pain.
How to Negotiate with Terrorists and Kids
Why are kids so unreasonable?! It is because they are also emotional. And so are you and I! This is a wonderful reality, until it seems that emotions have achieved a hostile takeover. A crucial exercise in our human experience is to balance our practical and emotional parts of self.
One of the crucial roles of a parent is that of emotional guide. And what makes the task such a challenge is that at the beginning of parenting we are not fully equipped for the task. We are still in the process of emotional formation …now under the stress of parenting!
Get it on Amazon.ca or Chapters/Indigo
Perhaps rather than blaming parenting for stress, we should credit parenting for the completion of our own emotional formation. Yes, we take on stress for a child’s emotional growth, but it is just as true that the same stress catalyzes our own growth.
If you are looking for elaboration on this perspective, I recommend Dr. Shefali Tsabary’s The Conscious Parent (Transforming Ourselves and Empowering our Children).
Perhaps you’ll find that these priorities are also the very ones that you feel are under personal threat when your child is upset …and now you are upset.
Transcript:
Chris Voss, former lead international hostage negotiator for the FBI explained: the terrorist demand - the money, the helicopter, the window for escape - the demand is not the highest order demand. The highest order objective is control. After that, it's an emotional validation a feeling that they're respected and understood and somewhere below that sits the demand.
Now, this is important to keep in mind when it comes to parenting children and adolescents. Not so that we can strategize to outwit with them, but so that we can discharge some of the upsetting energy that's hidden behind the demand. For children and adolescents the demand is not always as high a priority as it may appear. It doesn't seem like that because all we hear is the demand:
“I want to stay up later.”
“I want more screen time.”
“I want something else to to eat.”
But at the top of the list for every growing and healthy individual is a need to establish a sense of personal control, or autonomy. They're growing into an increased level of responsibility. And when this ability to choose feels threatened, it can send anyone into a panic.
Second on the list for a demanding child or adolescent is emotional validation:
Are my feelings valid? Is it normal to feel this way inside? Is it normal for me to feel upset when I'm not getting what I want or when it may seem that my power to choose is under threat? And if it's not normal, or if my experience feels under question, then I begin to wonder if I'm normal, or if I'm okay, or if I'm valid.
And this can be really terrifying
Now, validating emotion is not a permissive resignation. It's not saying that it's okay to scream at someone else, or lock yourself in your room, or to treat others without respect. But it's normalizing this overwhelmingly upset inner emotional experience. It's saying:
What you're feeling inside makes sense. It's normal. It's so frustrating to not get what you want. I feel upset inside when I don't get what I want and I don't expect I'll ever grow out of that.
Now as far as the demand goes, I have four boys from elementary age to college age. It's tough being a parent, and it's so important to be able to deliver a no when we have to. But if we can offer an unqualified yes to the top two concerns, a sense of personal control, or autonomy, or emotional validation, feeling respected and understood, then you have the difference between a conversation with someone who's terrified and struggling for emotional survival, and someone who simply has an exhaustively demanding enthusiasm for life.
Both are demanding, but one is ready to negotiate
Over-Functioning Guilt and Learning to be Self-ish
An over-functioning experience of guilt is often hidden. Guilt hides on the other side of people-pleasing, over-responsibility, over functioning in relationships, over giving… It can be so well hidden that a person doesn’t even recognize that guilt is involved in making many of their day-to-day decisions. Issues come up when exhaustion sets in. It is eventually physically and emotionally exhausting to continually put others first and to deny priority to your own personal needs. The unfairness of relationships leads to feelings of obligation, resentment, and eventually anger. Anger is the body’s protest to unmet needs. Have you ever been “hangry” (ie. hungry-angry) before?
Now, with an undertone of anger, it is unpleasant to be around the very responsible, super giving, high functioning, people-pleaser. And now this bitter expereince is more for the person with an over-functioning experience of guilt to feel guilty about.
It’s time to attend to unanswered personal needs and to learn how to be self-ish. Want to develop a healthy relationship with guilt?
Looking for a therapist “near me”
I am learning about Google searches these days as I plan out advertising strategies for my work. Over and above all other keyword combinations is the general search for a therapist, psychotherapist, or counsellor “near me”. Depending on where you live, and Google’s mood, you may or may not find me. But finding me is not necessarily what you need. Several times a month, clients find me, only to realize they are looking for someone else.
I suspect, for too many, the exhausting search halts the process before it has a chance to begin.
Let me help you to refine your search with 3 TIPS to finding the BEST therapist for you. Also consider, with the advent of online therapy, you may not even need to find a therapist “near you”.
Focus on your particular concerns
Add some keywords to your search in order to find a therapist who specializes with your concern (eg. depression, anxiety, stress, relationship trouble, communication, marriage, identity issues, infidelity and affairs, parenting, grief, guilt, trauma, couples or individual therapy…)Determine what service is required
Some benefits providers require “psychological supervision”. This service tends to cost more in order to pay the supervising psychologist’s fee. Some benefits providers require therapists to be “Registered Psychotherapists”. Some leaves-of-absence require certain treatments (eg. CBT treatment is often required/preferred for treatment of depression).
These first two steps will narrow down your search to a specialist with more training and experience related to your concerns.Shop around
Therapists are well aware that research points to “the therapeutic relationship” (ie. a good fit) as the single greatest determining factor to successful outcomes in therapy. That is why many therapists offer a free 15-30 minute consultation. Therapists want to be successful in their work, and so finding a suitable fit is in their best interest too. Consider reaching out to at least 3 therapists. Find someone you can relax with. Find someone relatable. You will not regret this investment in the process.
Bonus Shortcut
Call a clinic: Some clinics employ a team of therapists representing a variety of experience, training, and specializaiton. Intake staff are trained to match your concerns with an experienced specialist. They can also help to guide you through questions about benefits coverage. Some clinics offer the option to meet with several therapists.
Good luck on your search!
Be sure to reach out if you would like to meet. You can book a free online consultation following the link below.
How to Have Conflict with your Partner
Transcript:
Some of my clients tell me that they never fight with their partner. Which sounds incredible, but a lot of times what this means is that the relationship at some point stop growing closer. If two people are getting closer there is always conflict, but if you can manage it well and come up with constructive solutions when you fight through conflict then you get a deeper experience of closeness.
Maybe you need more conflict in your relationship and that's where I can help.
I help individuals and couples to to put contentious differences forward and and to hold them in a constructive tension until a sensitive resolution arises. Now conflict can be an intimidating and scary experience and so it's no wonder that we avoid it. We've all had experiences where conflict has gone badly and we definitely don't want more of that. It hurt more than helped or maybe didn't help at all.
The conflict is absolutely essential in the bonding process it's in these moments when we hurt and we see our partner hurt that we we also develop we grow in our sensitivity to each other it's where the emotional bonding takes place and couples feel closer than they ever were before maintaining a healthy measure of conflict in relationships is what couples need in order to build a closer relationship one of my couple's clients reflected therapy “made it worse”. It brought out all sorts of conflict
It made it worse.
Until it was so much better.
Virus d-STRESS: How to PROJECT Yourself
Transcript:
I hope you're doing well out there through this viral crisis, and with all the prevention measures that are in place. And if you are sick on top of feeling awful, this must be very scary. I wish you well, and I hope for your recovery.
In a situation like this it's interesting to see how we react to distress. Our evolutionary genetics kick in, and we find our primal tendencies are working to get us through the crisis. So what is your destress tendency? Is it distress or is it de-stress? Here's what I mean:
Distress is like an emergency alarm. Do you signal an urgency for everyone to acknowledge the severity of the crisis? Does the expression on your face reflect the very real distress of our present reality? This is an important stress reaction, because if the house is on fire, the alarm needs to go off, everyone in the house needs to know that there's distress.
On the other hand do you de-stress?
Are you sensitive to panic that might spoil a thoughtful response? Do you destress, moving into your head, amidst the panic, and call others back to their destressed logical senses? This is also an important stress reaction, because if the house is on fire we're going to have to be able to follow a thoughtful plan so that everyone can get out.
These stress reactions are both important survival projections. We need to get them out there. We need to hear the distressing alarm, and we need to de-stress and stay calm. But over the difference instead of listening to each other, and hearing each other, and responding affirmingly to each other. Under stress, we might instead argue over the difference, and invalidate each other; One side yelling: if you don't care we're all in trouble, the other side yelling back: stop panicking and calm down. I think the tug of war has its place, sometimes. We need one more than the other, depending on the situation, but in every situation survival favors the consideration of both. We need both.
We need each other. We need to hear the distressing alarm, and we need to de-stress and stay calm. So what if this is what we projected forward in crisis? We need each other. Not: my way or your way, but we need each other. I think we'd see the difference when it comes to getting us through this matter and any and every matter as partners, and parents, and co-workers, and friends, and neighbors, everything.
So let's start here: during this distressing crisis consider this projective measure: we need each other. I think we'll find out this was the best way for us to project ourselves and protect ourselves.
Why Your Partner Needs Therapy, But You Don't.
Transcript:
When a couple's relationship is going well, differences are affirmed and celebrated. one partner brings an excitement; the other brings a calm. One brings a closeness for intimate bonding; the other creates space for renewing desire. Partners move back and forth with each other in a dance, and find a way to make differences work for the relationship.
But under stress those same differences end up splitting and taking sides in each partner. Now, excitement feels like a neediness to the other and calm feels like a an indifference or a disregard. Closeness feels like a suffocating pressure, and and space feels like an abandonment.
This isn't a problem with one of the partners but a split involving both. One is anxious and outwardly upset; the other is anxious but inwardly overwhelmed. One is angry and shouting; the other is expressionless and quiet. One seems to overreact; the other seems to under react. One expresses their emotion trying to bring back a connection or a closeness; the other disconnects from emotion trying to bring back a calm or peacefulness.
Now, on the surface it appears that one partner is upset and out of control, and the other is calm and in control. But both partners are anxious. One experiences it outwardly and the other experiences it inwardly. And the the more one partner goes up in emotion, the more the second partner goes down in emotion. The more the first person partner gets angry and shouts and criticizes, the more the second person withdraws is quiet and shuts down. And the more the second partner shuts down the more it feels like a rejection to the first partner and the more upset they become. The more upset they become, the more overwhelming it is to the to the second partner, and the more they withdraw.
Each partner is reacting to the other, and things escalate. Now here's the thing: If only one partner shows up for therapy it tends to be the one who's angry and shouting, the one who seems to overreact, the one who expresses their emotion outwardly, the one who appears to be out of control, and anxious.
But the other partners inner anxiety may be causing just as much stress to the relationship. Because it's inward it's hard to see this difference.
May be why it appears that your partner needs therapy but you don't
All too often, it seems that it's just one partner that's responsible for stress in the relationship. But in dynamics like this, therapy serves the relationship best when both partners show up for the work.
Years ago i showed up to couples therapy thinking that i was mostly there to support my anxious partner. I was more surprised than she was to find out why there was so much stress in our relationship.
My therapist needs a therapist... and that's no lie!
Transcript:
It's getting to the end of February and the days are much brighter again. Every year at around this time i also welcome back a brightness to my emotion. I don't notice it so much on the other end of the season as I'm lulled into a somber winter sleep.
It's so gradual that on on most days I don't realize how difficult the winter has been, and how much i miss being more happy. Dr. Elvin Semrad taught the the sources of human suffering are the lies we tell ourselves, and he insisted: people never heal without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.
Now he's not saying that that people suffer because they go about life with a deliberate dishonesty, but he's saying that hardship and trouble can lull us into a numbness. And to not feeling emotional pain that's still there, and into ignoring trouble we know has happened to us.
Now, numbing and ignoring, may be what got us through a very hard season, and that's good. Sometimes that's the only way through. But if we keep numbing, and if we keep ignoring what hurts, parts of ourselves are held back. And this is where the lie is.
A denial of our fullest self. We're not able to fully show up emotionally. We're not able to fully show up in our relationships. And we suffer. The trouble is it's hard to feel what we've adapted to not feeling, and to know what we've spent so long forgetting.
It's like a winter has gradually come over us and it's hard to remember. Well it's winter, what we were like in the summer. May not even feel like a winter suffering until in retrospect we've had the renewing experience of a summer again.
This emotional deception or or lie as Semrad insists is something I experience just as much as anyone else. And for me sitting down with a therapist has been so helpful in allowing me to fully reconnect with myself; to feel what I feel, and to know what I know.
To see what healing can come to hurt so that it can finally be left behind. Every season surprises me with a lie and a suffering that's waiting for retirement. And so i look forward to seeing my therapist this season and I look forward to fully reconnecting with myself.
And I hope you do, too.
You had me at “hell no”!
Transcript:
(Scene from Jerry Maguire)
Jerry:
“I love you. You complete me. And if I just had...”
Dorothy:
“Shut up. Just shut up.....You had me at hello. You had me at hello.”
I think this scene captures well our aspirations for romantic love. Someone to love us and complete us, someone to make us whole.
But is this picture of love reality?
The psychoanalyst Lacan challenges this notion of love offering. Love is giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it. At first this sounds horribly pessimistic and even cynical, but I think there's something for us romantics to aspire to here.
He's saying that we all show up to relationships with holes, with flaws, with pieces that are missing. He calls it a “lack”. We tend to not even know about these holes until someone else is allowed to get up close and personal.
Our unsuspecting lover.
They thought we were going to be the perfect partner and we were just as surprised as they were to find something repulsive.
What's possible now in this relationship when this flaw can't be hidden again, it can't be fixed, it can't be ignored, and the possibility of love suggested by Lacan, our partner, rather than despising us because of this flaw, might stick around and stay with us in our disappointment. They might comfort us in our distress over this newfound flaw and we might also comfort them in their distress. In an extraordinary irony our flaw becomes the very sight of endearment. The very sight of secure love, and over time comforting love gives way to a secure bond.
Love is giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.
Your partner will eventually bring you face to face with what's missing and it will be upsetting for both of you. They won't complete you and you won't complete them, but instead you might bring each other a deeply securing comfort.
It's not a perfect relationship, but it might be much better than that.
Two Demands that Ruin Relationships
“It’s calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion”
THE NEED FOR “CLOSE” CAN SOUND LIKE:
“Don’t you walk away from me!”
“I feel alone in this relationship.”
“All he/she does is shutdown.”
“It feels like I don’t even matter to him/her anymore.”
THEE NEED FOR “CALM” CAN SOUND LIKE:
“Will you just calm down!”
“I just don’t know what to do when he/she is so angry.”
“All he/she does is criticize me.”
“No matter what I do, I never get it right for him/her.”
Maybe we’re just not compatible.
There’s another possibility …what if my demand is fuelling my partners anger and aversion? And what if instead of asserting my demand, I understood and waited on my partner’s vulnerable need? What if instead of explaining and defending my justified response, it was safe simply to hurt? And what if, at my most vulnerable, I knew that I was safe and at home?
VULNERABILITY CAN SOUND LIKE:
“When I shut down,
it must seem like I don’t care about you
and that you don’t matter.
You must feel very alone when I walk away.
It must feel like I’m rejecting you.
That must really hurt.
Tell me more.
I really do care”.
“When I’m upset,
it must seem like I am always making it your fault.
You must feel beat up by my criticism.
It must be overwhelming for you
when nothing you do or say will calm me down.
You must feel like an idiot around me.
That must be really exhausting.
Take your time.
I miss you.”
There emerges a new possibility in the ease of demands and in the persistence of safety and vulnerability. Here the goal is not the dismissal of pain but the it’s welcome …and comfort. And in a relationship where comfort is the priority, calm and close are seldom far behind.
“Shame on You!”
Why must you wear the shame?
What do I hope to accomplish with the shame on you?
Why must anyone wear the shame?
Where did the shame come from in the first place?
Who is wearing it now?
“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”
When I declare “shame on you”, I am trying to escape “shame on me”. Shame is a proverbial hot potato of intolerable soul eating emotion so unbearable that it is unwittingly passed on to anyone within immediate range.
In my reassignment of this dreadful burden, I cannot send it away. Nor can I change the “undesirable” quality in you, mirroring undesirability in myself, and rousing a smoldering internal anguish. This banishment will only deny your rescuing comfort and bury this dangerous grievance more inaccessibly within myself. The projected punishment of “shame on you” represents a more critical occupation of “shame on me” crying out to you for desperate relief.
But what if instead of sending you away with my burden of shame on you, I confided to you the shame on me.
“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy”
Hell is Other People
“Hell is other people”
We assume that Sartre means that everyone else is awful. We should set our expectations low and keep our distance. But for Sartre, hell is established by none other than our very self, captive to and captivated by the objectifying impulse of others. Hell is other people insomuch as we inhabit judgment.
And Sartre warns, there is “no exit”. We are subject to judgment.
We will try to escape. And yet, in our determination to rid ourselves of the problematic other, we only find ourselves an accomplice to the very hell we contest.
“I can’t live with or without you”
Will this hell be our end? Or might this fiery domain of judgement bare forth new potentials. Mercy? Forgiveness? Understanding? … those prospects which conceive meaning and worth in the very places of suffering, and which finally bring us into contact with a most dreadful but nonetheless beloved “other” …our inmost self.
Hell is other people … but it is also salvation … and you are worth the journey.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”