Have you ever been in a conversation with someone where you are stating your views about something important to you and you'd really like the other person to stop being all polite or passive or something and just tell you what they really think?  Then, you could finally buckle down and have a real conversation.  You could really know each other and stop all the smoke and mirrors.

Or maybe you've been on the other end of that conversation. All you want is to have a pleasant interaction where both of you share a bit about what's going on with you and find out what you might have in common in the messy process of bumbling through life.  But the other person always wants to debate things. Either you're not really sure what you think about the topic and you don't want to look stupid, or you know perfectly well what you think, but you're not a vigorous debater and would rather not be told you're wrong just because you're not loud. Either way, you'd rather just leave the topic alone and go back to what you have in common.

Chances are that you more often identify with one side of this conversation, though you've felt the frustrations of both sides from time to time. I certainly have. I think the hardest part of these different conversational goals and styles are the assumptions about the other person that get attached to these frustrations. 

Debaters who thrive on animated exchange of contrasting ideas can feel like the people in their lives who minimize disagreement and mostly focus on commonalities are hiding from them.  The debater is thinking: Why won't that other person just say what they think?  Am I that scary to be with?  Don't they care enough about me to take the risk of being real with me here?  Is the truth behind their politeness so hideous they think I can't handle it?  Where are they?  I keep reaching out to engage and coming back empty and alone in this.  How can I respect them if they won't stand up for what they think?

Meanwhile, folks who thrive on commonality and just being together, rather than engaging around disagreements, can feel attacked by debaters. The commonality lover is thinking: Why can't that person just accept me as I am? Can't they trust that I'm a reasonable, valid thinker even if I'm not always proclaiming my opinions? It's so stressful to not only have to figure out what I think and feel on the spot, but then to have to come up with all the reasons why I do and articulate it in a convincing way. If they cared about me, they would cut me some slack and acknowledge what is sensible and valuable about what I do contribute, rather than challenging me all the time as if they think they know everything and I'm some intellectual infant.  Why are they always insisting I do things their way?

What makes me so sad about my own relationships and those I observe is that in many cases both people really do want to connect with each other in a way that feels good to both of them.  The differences in their understanding of how to do so, though, lead to assumptions that the other person is more interested in controlling the interaction by asserting their agenda than in connecting in a meaningful way.  While sometimes that assumption is actually true, often it is simply an ongoing misunderstanding.

The Known vs. the Liked

I heard a talk awhile back that shed some light on this process for me.  The speaker was saying that all of us have a deep desire to fully known and to be fully loved (or at least liked).  Along the way, we find that it is very difficult and rare for both of these desires to be met at the same time.  Usually, we have to choose one over the other. 

Those of us who have some early success at being liked or at keeping the peace by figuring out what parts of ourselves to hide in which situations tend to gradually develop relational patterns in which we sacrifice being known in order to be liked.  We avoid contentious topics that are likely to bring up conflict. We may enjoy collaborative activities more than competitive ones, or stick to activities where the competition doesn't get personal.  In conversation, we're more likely to share related stories from our lives or say things like, "I agree" or "Wow, that's cool" or "Way to go" rather than asking challenging questions or presenting experiences that run counter to what another has shared.  What we most want from interactions is the overall feeling that we've got something in common and both of us are okay with each other just as we are today.

Those of us who tried everything we could to be liked or to keep the peace early on, only to fail repeatedly, may choose being known over being liked.  If others won't like us whether we act like who we are or whether we try to be someone else, we might as well be known for who we are.  So we're more likely to let others know straight up what we think and feel, inviting debate and engagement, rather than expecting commonality and smooth interactions.  We're more likely to state an opinion strongly just to try it out to see how others react.  After all, we can certainly change what we think if it proves wrong. Since we're trying to let others know us better according to what we're thinking now, not trying to secure their approval, an opinion change is no big deal. Competition feels perfectly fine to us.  And our conversation is more likely to feature counter-examples, strongly stated facts, or phases like, "Actually, it's more like..." or "I disagree..." or "But what about..." What we want most in interactions is to feel like we fully stated what currently feels interesting or valid to us and, though solid engagement with another's differing views, further honed our understanding about what we think and feel.

As you can imagine, when two "Liked" people get together, they tend to have fairly satisfying exchanges, as do two "Known" people. But frustrations are sure to follow when Liked people interact with Known people, or, as often happens, marry each other.

AND: The Conjunction that Really Satisfies

What do we do about those people we love so dearly who are always frustrating our attempts to relate with them in a satisfying way?  Probably a good place to start is to use the descriptions above to figure out what the other person is most likely to want from most interactions.  Do they want to feel like you both were real about where you are coming from, whether or not you agree, or do they want to feel like you had a peaceful time together in which conflict did not make you fear that you have nothing in common?  You'll probably want to think through what you typically want from your interactions as well. 

Maybe the hardest part about moving toward a more satisfying relationship would be initiating a conversation with the other person in which you describe what you often want from your time together and give them the chance to say what they most often want as well.  This may take several conversations because many of us don't really know what we want off the top of our heads.  We may have to think about it for awhile.

If a few conversations about the ways in which you interact shape things up in short order, that's great!  If not, you might want to try out the following discussion steps with a topic you often disagree on.  This "Listen to Learn" exercise from Heitler and Hirsh's Win-Win Waltz Video can help both Known and Liked people to get more of what they want:

Person A: States an opinion about something.
Example: I love the snow. I hope it keeps snowing until May!

Person B: First states something about what Person A has said that B can agree with.  Then, using "and" rather than "but," Person B adds their own differing opinion.
Example: Yeah, snow makes the world look so fresh and clean AND I am so tired of fighting the morning snow storm traffic.

Person A: First states something about Person B's differing opinion that A can agree with. Then, using "and" rather than "but," A adds their next differing opinion.
Example: Some drivers really do slow things down AND I like having more time to decompress and listen to the radio when my commute is longer. I feel like I have a little more "me" time before I have to return home to all the kids' needs.

Person B: First states something about what Person A has said that B can agree with and uses "and" to add a new differing opinion.
Example: It must feel nice to know you don't have to do anything but pay attention to the road for a little while AND when I have to drive in traffic, I feel like I have less energy for the kids because I am so frustrated when I get home.

The conversation can continue in this same pattern as long as you like, with the goal of having a discussion where Liked people get to hear that their friend can understand and accept parts of who they are and that there is a foundation of commonality and agreement there.  Known people get to say what they really think, while providing the extra safety Liked people need to be able to come out from their shell and say what they really think and feel, rather than hiding for fear of having something vulnerable about them feel disliked and unaccepted.

While relational exercises-like new physical exercises-are usually clunky and awkward at first, practicing with them can begin new relational patterns that help people with different relational goals and styles to finally feel like the other person gets them and cares for them.  The fact that another person with a different way of interacting in the world is willing to try something annoying, awkward, and new just because the relationship matters to them goes a long way.  As both people see each other's effort over time, that helps to erode the negative assumptions that were built up through previous experiences of relational frustration.  It becomes possible to trust that the other really does care for us, despite the very different approaches we have to relationship.

If you or someone you know would like help increasing relational satisfaction, free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the heading.

Recently, I have found the thought that I have both strengths and non-strengths by design and that I should major in my strengths to be rather freeing. Sounds like a pretty obvious revelation, huh? But it speaks to an old, wounded place in me: that feeling that I'm weird, that I just don't fit in, that not fitting in is a bad thing, and that I should get busy fixing it or at least doing a better job of faking it if I possibly can. Anyone else have that place in there, deep down?

This week, though, I've been dwelling on the idea that my design may be right on, while it's the "fitting in" place that is off. I suspect that I was made to derive joy and excel in certain things and not others. Period. Because I don't get to control the world, sometimes I'll have to do things I'm not great at and don't particularly like. I'll have to work with others who don't much appreciate my innate design. But that doesn't mean I've been made badly. It just means that to the extent that I can, I should tap into places that match my strengths and pour most of my energy into people who need what I've got to offer because this is what I do best. As Frederick Buechner says, my "vocation is where [my] greatest bliss encounters the world's deepest need."

I like the screening criteria this gives me. When someone asks me to do something, or I consider adding another career or activity on the side, I can check in to see if it taps into my deepest passions and my super skills, not my wimpy ones. Then I can decide whether it's a place I can hit the ground running-yee haw!-or if it's just a schedule filler I'm tempted to throw in for the illusion of importance that comes from busyness. It can be so freeing to say "no" with the confidence that comes from knowing that although I might want to do X to please someone, or I feel like I should be good at X, Y is what I was made to do, not X!

The Pressure to Be Who We're Not

It's kind of hard, though, to just be who I am and not who I'm not. I remember hearing all those messages growing up like "do what you love and the money will follow" or "follow your bliss" or "everyone has something unique to contribute." Looking around at the world, though, it sure felt like some things I could love would make more money than others. Some kinds of "bliss" got a lot more attention and understanding at parties or dates. Some "uniquenesses" felt a lot more acceptable to parents or coworkers.

As we explore who we are during various life transitions and then decide what to do now, the pressure from others and ourselves to "discover" that we are made to do something particularly auspicious, tangible, praiseworthy, money making-or even the family's favorite vocation-can be pretty intense. Sometimes it's so intense that it obscures what our personality, strengths, and passions actually are, even to us! It might be years, decades, or most of our lifetime before we have the courage to take a long, gentle, realistic look at ourselves, and then at the mold that was held up for us to fit into, and finally declare, "You know, that's really not me. I might feel like that's who I should be, but darn it, that's just not who I am!"

The Cost of Being What We Do

As long as we neglect to pop the hood on our identity, take a look inside, and accept what we find there for better or worse, we can't do what we actually are. So instead, we end up trying to be what we do. Because so much of what we do does not really fit who we are, we need more compensation. We need at least enough money or praise to make up for the fact that we spend our best waking hours on things that hate or just pretend to like, though they bring us so little real joy.

We also tend to need excessive amounts of other pleasurable things to make up for that hollow feeling that we are not meeting our potential: more food or alcohol than we need, extreme exercise, intense relationships, a packed schedule, tons of sex, super successful kids, "better than thou" stances toward others, exotic vacations, the latest gadgets, video game marathons...pick your favorite over-compensation strategy. Lack of identity-based satisfaction in what we do sets us up for a binge-and-purge cycle of long hours of drudgery followed by increasingly destructive addictions that compensate for the misery, while making us feel out of control.

When We Do What We Are

Figuring out who we actually are is hard in the short run. Not only does it take effort and time to examine our personality, passions, and skills through assessment tools or intentional conversations with those who know us well, it also takes courage to face up to what we find. Both the strengths and non-strengths we discover can be frightening. If we find ourselves particularly skilled, that may raise fears of arrogance or pressure to perform exceptionally well. If we find that we are not strong in areas that our family or culture values, that means that to live out who we are, we will have to say some pretty significant "no's" along the way.   

But oh! the freedom of knowing our vocational DNA, our design! Of knowing it is fundamentally good and that if it doesn't feel good some place or with some people, it's the place or the people who are off, not our design. I mean, sure, as I psychotherapist I'm in the business of helping people correct their personal "off" places. But it's always to help them to become more of who they were really designed to be, not less! It's to help them discover and accept what is there, mourn the loss of who they are not, and rejoice in what is delightful about who they actually are.

What's Under Your Hood?

I ran across versions of this exercise in two separate books this week.* I like it because it cuts beneath questions like "What are you good at?" or "What do you want to be?" which are so laden with social pressure to answer in certain ways. Our joys can provide some really good clues as to what we are designed to do best.

Thinking through your life, list 10 events, activities, or projects that have brought you the greatest joy.

1. For each of the 10, list at least 5 specific things about them that made the experience joyful for you. For example, if you liked making a 5-course meal, maybe what you liked was: 1) The challenge of researching recipes, 2) The organization of scheduling the preparation, 3) Having a tangible result of your efforts, 4) Being able to work with your hands, 5) Feeling like the eaters felt truly cared for, 6) Being praised for your work.
2. Looking over your 50+ specific components (10 x 5), note any themes that appear in several or most of your joyful 10. Do creativity, problem solving, physical activity, teamwork, meeting others' basic needs, or other things appear throughout?
3. From these identified themes, which feel most "core" to you? Do you like to problem solve no matter what, but sometimes you do that in cooking, other times in management, and other times in your marriage so that the common element for all three enjoyable events is problem solving? Do you like to create beautiful things no matter what, but sometimes for homeless people, sometimes for holidays, and sometimes for your wardrobe?
4. Once you've identified which elements of your joys feel most "core" to you, take a look at your life: your job, relationships, hobbies, etc. Which of these tap into your core joys or your more peripheral joys? Which joys are missing in your current schedule? Do the places you spend the most time and the people with whom you interact most frequently tap into these joys?
5. Focus on one area that you would like to better align with the way you were designed-a job, a relationship, a hobby, etc. What is one thing that you could do in that area to increase the joy you derive from it? 

I had a lot of fun and learned a lot by trying out this exercise this week. I hope you do, too!

If you or someone you know would like some help in discerning your vocation, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

*See Courage and Calling: Embracing Your God-Given Potential (1999) by Gordon T. Smith, and Performance Addition: The Dangerous New Syndrome and How to Stop It from Ruining Your Life (2004) by Arthur P. Ciaramicoli.

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the heading.

 

Ever seen that bumper sticker that says: Don't believe everything you think? Or that quote: Don't take yourself too seriously; no one else does? I've been thinking about these quotes recently in light of some things I'm learning about the brain. On one hand, I'm amazed at the brain's ability to synthesize information and come up with assessments of situations that keep us alive and help us grow. As I work with hurting people and continue to mine the depths of my own thinking, though, I'm becoming more and more aware of ways in which our own minds fail to tell us the truth.

It seems like most people can critically evaluate messages that come from others. After all, we live in a world of advertising with fine-print at the bottom, Ponzi schemes, email spam that promises fortunes if we'll only hand over our bank info, and a growing line of significant others who hurt us or go back on their promises. In the school of hard knocks, we've learned how to ask penetrating questions about what we hear from other people and then to fall back on our own judgment for a final assessment about what we think is going on in a situation or inside of us. 

Often, though, we do not ask the same penetrating questions of our own judgment that we ask of others'. We assume our thinking is solid and accurate because it feels that way to us. We are used to it, so it feels normal, which feels right. We often miss the fact that whatever thought patterns get repeated in our brains will eventually feel normal. That includes repeated inaccuracies in the ways we think about the world and ourselves.

How our brains lie to us

Repeated errors in the ways we think come from a variety of places. Genetically, some of us have areas of over- or under-activity in the brain that consistently fit a "lens" over our perception of experiences. These lenses incline us to view whatever we encounter in a particular, limited way. Abnormal activity in certain brain sectors produces an anxious lens where everything we encounter feels like a threat to avoid; or a muted lens, where nothing feels engaging or worth the effort; or an aggressive lens, where everything needs to be fought; or a depressive lens, where everything we encounter proves that we are worthless and that hope for change is foolish.*

Even if our brains start out genetically normal, past repeated or traumatic experiences can create thought pattern tendencies related to certain experiences. When we encounter a future experience that in any way reminds us of past ones, we're much more likely to think about the new experience as we did in the past, even if the situation is not exactly the same. With a thought pattern tendency in place, it's much harder to consider other possibilities or alternative points of view that would be valid in the present circumstance.

For example, say we once dated a musician with "brilliant prospects" and no day job. After she borrowed money from us and didn't pay for the umpteenth time, the following brain pattern solidified: musician = financial instability = feeling used = pain = never again. Then we meet another musician who happens to have good business sense. Despite the difference in her personality and savings account, it will be much harder for us to give her a chance because simply the word "musician" triggers the thought that ends in "pain" and "never again." 

If we totally rely on our own thinking in this case, we'll never be able to give another musician a chance. Ourthought/feeling about musicians is not telling us the whole truth that some musicians, like some accountants, or grocers, etc. are bad with money and take advantage of people and some are good with money and take care of people. Our thinking here feels like absolute truth because it has been painfully ingrained, but it is not the whole truth. It is partly a lie. 

What happens when we don't question our own lies

While bypassing the musicians in the dating pool might not be a big deal, other lies people tell themselves are a hugedeal. Here are some I have heard people tell themselves, just in the past few months:

• My situation is absolutely hopeless; there is nothing I can do.
• Anything bad that I do is part of who I am because I am a bad person; anything good I do doesn't count because it is just what anyone else would do.
• I am not the type of person who other people could value; I'm the type they use.
• The way I feel right now is the way I will always feel.
• If I share my real self with others, they will take advantage of me.
• I have to be upbeat all the time or I won't have any friends.
• Since I don't earn as much money as my friends do, I am worthless.

Looking into another's thought patterns from the outside, it's not hard to see that these are half-truths, half-lies. Some situations are totally hopeless, but usually there is something that can be done, even if it's just a shift in perspective. If the bad things people do "count" as being part of their character, the good things should also count. Some people aren't trustworthy with others' real feelings, but other people are. Some people need their friends to be upbeat all the time; others want the whole range of emotions. Some people evaluate others on the amount of money they make, but not everyone; worth comes from a wide range of sources.

But can you imagine how difficult it would be to see the world from an accurate, balanced perspective if these lies are what the mind focuses on 24/7 without questioning? Can you imagine what behaviors might follow from leaving these lies unquestioned? If they were absolutely true, as we often believe our thoughts to be, it would make sense to stop trying to make things better; to isolate or commit suicide to rid the world of such a "bad" or "worthless" or "terminally sad" person; to never be real with or get support from others; to never demand that significant others treat us with respect. Horrible consequences can follow from taking ourselves too seriously and genuinely believing whatever we think because it feels normal and therefore right!

Freeing ourselves from our thoughts

Since we can't really trust ourselves or others, does that mean we're destined for ruin? Hardly. It just means we need to apply to ourselves the same degree of questioning and consideration of other sources that we do to others. If other people say they have a great deal for us, or that they think we are awful (if they happen to be our 15-year-old), we consider other sources. We ask around to see what other deals are out there. We consult with our spouses or friends to ask, "Am I really awful?" We do the work to get a more accurate, balanced picture. 

The trick with ourselves, though, is deciding to believe the other sources, knowing that what feels normal to us about the deepest, most hidden parts of ourselves will not necessarily be the absolute truth. Sometimes others see us better than we see ourselves because of our biased genetic and experiential "lenses." Here's a way to start:

1. List the beliefs you have about yourself or the circumstances in your life that feel shameful, troublesome, or that make you feel stuck.
2. Among the list, note any that are extreme (implying all, never, ever, always, only, etc.) or that predict the future in ways you cannot absolutely prove. 
3. For these extreme or future-predicting thoughts, write down what is probably a more balanced perspective that could be verified by other sources. For example, a more balanced perspective on "I have always been a bad person" would be "Sometimes I do things that I don't approve of." For a future-predicting belief like "I will never be a good student," a balanced, provable perspective would be "Right now, I feel unable to get the grades I'd like."
4. Show the people in your life who know you best and are most trustworthy all or part of your list. Ask them what they believe to be true about you in each of these areas. How would they argue with the beliefs you have about yourself and circumstances?
5. Whenever you notice your shameful or troublesome thoughts going through your mind, effortfully and consistently remind yourself what a balanced, accurate perspective would be and what other trusted people believe about you in these areas.
6. Doggedly keep doing this for a long time until it feels natural. Patterns that took years to create will take a long time to change. It takes consistent practice-usually 40 days or more-for something new to start feeling normal.
7. Begin to enjoy the freedom that comes from not believing everything you think!

If you or someone you know would like some help in changing destructive thought patterns, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

Thanks for reading! 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

*See Change Your Brain, Change Your Life: The Breakthrough Program for Conquering Anxiety, Depression, Obsessiveness, Anger, and Impulsiveness (1999) by Daniel Amen.

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com. 

 

Since ‘tis the season for sending out cards with quotes on the front that really capture the holiday spirit, I nominate the following quote for this season's card.  I think it really nails it.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair...*

I suppose it may be a bit cynical to attribute to the holidays what Dickens said of the French Revolution.  But isn't this closer to our experience than something that captures only one side of the season's sentiment:  Happy Holidays or Bah Humbug?

After all, it's the season where we look around with deep gratitude at our friends and family, or kinda wish they would go away.  It's the season where we give graciously out of the bounty we've received and wonder if we can satisfy that coworker we don't like with something under $10.  It's the season where couples sip eggnog in front of the fire and singles get to be the 3^rd wheel, the 5^th, the 7^th, sitting at the end of the table as a reminder that once again, they're not coupled.  It's a magnifying glass season.  Whatever happiness or sadness, joy or loss that has been lurking in the background comes into HD clarity, paving the way for celebration, despair, or resolutions for change on the other side.

Holidays: The Extreme Sport
           
How do we handle such confusion?  There are lots of ways, many of them extreme.  We might go all out, putting out 40 boxes of decorations and buying presents for every person whose name we know.  Or we boycott the whole thing, avoiding parties, turning off the phone ringer, vacationing to places where no one knows we're exhausted or miserable.  We drink too much.  We stay so busy with work or helping others that there's no down time to feel hurt or disappointment.  We write extended holiday letters informing the people in our lives about just how happy and perfect we are, carefully editing out the ugly breaks and failures that occurred along the way.

But like trite holiday cards, extreme coping strategies don't honor the full truth that this season is a mix of good and bad, just like so many other seasons of life.  And whatever side of the emotional spectrum we've been avoiding-joy or heartache-keeps knocking at our door, asking us to let in whatever we are forbidding ourselves or numbing during this time.

So in answer to the mixed-up-edness of this season, this year I'm selling two Holiday Mind Games to help us through, one fold for the good stuff and one for the bad. 

Expanding Our Joy Tolerance

Brain researchers have found that our brains dedicate increasingly greater energy and space (numbers of neurons and strength of neural connections) to whatever emotions we spend the most time on.  Whatever feelings we focus on tend to grow and get more and more of our time and attention.  That's why it's not a good idea to repeat or vent anger over and over-it just keeps getting bigger!  On the positive side, this brain trick can give us a certain amount of power to increase our ability to feel good.  By intentionally dwelling on whatever good does occur in our lives this season, even if this is our hardest holiday season yet, we can expand our current capacity to take in joy and stay in joy longer than we could if we simply let the sadness or frustration have all of our attention.

This season, by dedicating some time each day to listing those things that we are grateful for or that brought us joy that day, we can increase our attention to any good things that do come along and expand our ability to feel good more often.  Plus, anyone can do it!  See:

• I'm grateful that I'm still breathing.  
• I'm glad I have one fewer day in prison.  
• I am glad my son who is overseas this holiday at least sent me a card.  
• The sunrise was beautiful this morning.  
• It only took me 5 minutes to find a parking place at the insane mall.  
• At least Aunt Maude only burned the potatoes this year, not the stuffing as well.  

Shifting our attention daily to whatever is good, even in a hard situation, or to the sheer abundance of good in a great situation trains our minds to step back from negative thought ruts and make room for the good in the mix. 

"Depression, I'll Be with You in a Minute!"

Now before you accuse me of going all "Pollyanna" on you with the Glad Game, let me also tell you about the Containment Game.  This one's for sadness, anger, disappointment, loneliness, dread-all the yucky stuff. 

Basically, these emotions are here for a reason.  Their job is to tell us that something's not right.  And until we stop and let them have their say, they're gonna keep stalking us till we do.  If we keep busy or numb, always shutting them up, we are adding the fear of feeling the emotion to the intensity of the emotion itself.  Fear is like Miracle Grow.  It makes other negative emotions grow larger.  So to get the emotions back down to their actual size, we need to appease them by really hearing the message they are sending, while not letting them take over the whole season and cut us off from any joy that comes our way.

We can do this by scheduling a limited time to really feel any emotions we've been dodging.  Maybe 15 minutes once a day, one hour every other day, two hours once a week, or whatever works.  During that time, we might journal about the feeling, lock ourselves in the bathroom and scream about it, call someone to talk about it, buy some cheap-o plates and drop them while thinking about it-whatever!  How we choose to enter the feeling is not as important as the choice to really feel it. 

Choosing to feel what we've been avoiding, but for a limited amount of time, lets us know that we can be in the feeling we've been avoiding and it won't suck us into The Eternal Vortex of Misery.  Going in for awhile and then out again over and over gradually decreases our fear of the feeling so that it does not get to stalk us all of the time and take over all of our holiday experiences.  It's like we're telling the part of our brain whose job it is to let us know we need to mourn or scream: "I hear that you're hurting and I will be mad and sad with you tomorrow from 9-9:30.  But right now, I'm focusing on this good experience and the people I am with right now.  It's okay. You can wait."  

Disciplining our minds to express emotion and to contain it, or to attend to good things that we normally miss in our hurt or frustration is not easy!  But neither are the holidays!  These "mind games" are like time we spend doing pull ups in the gym so that when we fall out of the raft, we can pull ourselves back in and not drown.  Even though setting aside time for these things is downright annoying, it can be the difference between an awful holiday season and an okay one, or an okay one and a great one. 

If you or someone you know would like some help navigating the holidays or the new year, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

*Opening lines of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities (1859).

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the heading.

I'm in a funny place right now. The questions I'm asking life are changing again. For quite a few years, I was asking exploratory questions about who I am, what I want to do, who I want to be with, how I want to be in the world. When I found some answers for that season of life, my questions turned into active preparation questions about how I could do and be what I wanted. I remember that being an odd season. I was excited to narrow my options down to some things I could really sink my teeth into. But there was also loss. I had to grieve any number of things that I would not be doing, that would not be part of my story.

Now I find myself in another odd transition. I've shifted from the intensity of preparation to the smoother pace of implementation and maintenance of the goals that have mattered most to me. I'm finally doing it! I am so grateful to be doing work that I love and engaging in loving relationships that I've worked so hard for. But there's a part of me that misses the intensity of preparing for something, as opposed to just doing it. I miss the unique kind of meaning and adventure that comes from focused striving for a goal.

Looking around, I see other people dealing with this kind of feeling by making "bucket lists" of things they want to do before they kick the bucket, or at least before their next life transition: run a marathon, publish a book, see the Taj Mahal, get the kitchen remodeled, etc. But since I've only recently stopped preparing for major life goals, I'm still a bit tired of all the activity those kinds of goals require. I'm craving meaning, really, not more busyness or distraction. I want a different kind of adventure, of digging deeper not adding more.

The Extraordinary Underneath

Ever seen Planet Earth or Discovery Channel specials on deserts or caves? Isn't it amazing how during the day the desert can look absolutely barren and lifeless, but at night all kinds of little adaptive creatures emerge, magically finding water and shelter in places we'd never dream of looking? Or how about the caves? They're usually not all that amazing on the surface. Even the biggest ones get dark so quickly that you'd never know how deep they go or what extravagant formations and creatures they are hiding unless you get a bunch of equipment (and permits!) and take some serious time exploring their depths.

I am coming to believe that believe normal, ordinary life is a lot like caves and deserts. And I'd wager that people who face life threatening circumstances or a major loss would largely agree with me. You've probably seen these kinds of people in movies like The Doctor with William Hurt, Regarding Henry with Harrison Ford, or Last Holiday with Queen Latifah. Like many of us, these folks who face major loss start out as "tourists" of life, taking a superficial walk through life's scenery, assuming they've "been there done that," and quickly moving on to the next task, the next diversion. When they run out of "travel money or energy, they grow board and dissatisfied with where they've gotten stuck.

Then, along comes the threat that everything they've taken for granted could all go away. All the sudden they are asking deeper, different kinds of questions: With limited time or energy, what people and activities are really the most important to me? How do I want to change the way I treat those I love with the time I have left? What truths or apologies have I not passed on to those I love? What kind of legacy do I want to leave at my work? What beautiful things about every day will I miss? What kind of spiritual realities might I be encountering soon and how do I square up with those? These kinds of perspective questions turn casual sight seers into spelunkers who go deeper to find the richness right under their feet in circumstances they had assumed to be boring or short on meaning before.

Mining Meaning from the Here and Now

Because I am not up for adding a bunch of new activities or experiences right now, I'm wondering if I might find that sense of deep meaning that I crave by asking depth questions about my present circumstances. It seems like many people dodge these kinds of questions until they face a crisis or major transition like a bum knee, a cruddy economy, a demanding 2 year old, a 50^th birthday, relocation to assisted living, a terminal disease, etc. But I'm wondering if I could mine for meaning right where I'm at by asking these questions now, before I face something huge.

If, like me, you feel like there should be a deeper meaning to your life, or you're wondering about interesting possibilities in your current circumstances that you haven't explored, I wonder if you'd join me in choosing a life area that feels stagnant and trying out some of the questions below on that area.  And by "trying out," I do mean trying out.  In my experience, some of the deepest questions and sources of meaning seem trite on paper, but are powerful when lived!

Work

·         If my current job were my dream job, how would I approach it differently?

·         Is there one task in my current job that I could "own" and be personally proud of, even if no one else notices?

·         Are there any coworker tasks I could help out with in ways that might establish more grateful and meaningful connections with people at work?

·         Are there parts of my work that connect to my deepest values or the ways I want the world to be? Could I shift to engaging in more of these tasks?

·         What's one thing I could do to take my "tried and true" skills to the next level?

Activities

·         If I found out I had 4 months to live, which activities would I drop right away? If they are not all that meaningful to me, what is keeping me from dropping them now?

·         What activities have I wanted to do, but haven't because I've been too afraid or too busy? Is there a way I could move closer to beginning them, even if I can't start right now?

Relationships

·         If I found out I was going to die next Saturday, who would I want to call and what would I want to tell them? What part of that could I say now?

·         What kinds of interactions have blocked connection in my significant relationships for some time now? What would happen if I directly pointed out that pattern to those I love and asked them to work on it with me?

·         What kinds of things do I most love doing with those I love? How could I adjust my life to include more of these times together?

Spirituality

·         What questions about the meaning of life, God, or the world do I keep putting off because they feel too painful or overwhelming? What would it look like to intentionally dive into one of these questions?

·         What spiritual practice or activity have I been doing so long and so "religiously" that it no longer feels genuine or worthwhile? What is the purpose of that activity? What different or creative ways have others found of achieving that same purpose that I'd like to try?

·         Who in my life can I have meaningful interactions with about my spirituality? Where might I find others who could share this with me? How might I intentionally pursue deeper spiritual discussions and companionship with others?

·         What "clutter" activities in my life can I clear away to have time to explore spiritual questions and connections?

 

If you or someone you know would like some help finding meaning in current circumstances, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

What have you been trying to change for just about ever? Nail biting? Binge drinking? Gossiping? Skin picking? Downing a liter of Dr. Pepper a day? Staying up too late? Whatever those habits are, minor annoyances or debilitating addictions, there are reasons we haven't been able to change them. 

Using the following six questions to take a closer look at what keeps us from change can help in at least two ways. We might finally discover what's been in the way of our change so we can do something effective about it. Or, exploring what all would be involved in the change can help us to decide whether it's really worth the effort. If not, we can stop nagging ourselves about it and get on to other things. Either way, it's better than being stuck wanting change and not being able to get there.

 1. What's wrong with my habit? 

I'm the first to admit it. Change is difficult and uncomfortable even when it's positive and good! So if we're going to touch it even with a 10 ft. pole, there's got to be some pretty darned good reasons to do so. Often, people don't change because they've considered the reasons for change and not found them all that compelling. The change might make life a bit better, but not enough to make it worth the pain of changing! 

Other times, there are lots of compelling reasons to change, but we just haven't taken the time to notice them all and add up what they would mean for us. In this case, the trick might be to make a list of the effects that our unwanted habit has on our lives and the lives of those we care about, both currently and in the future. We might need to ask those who are important to us how our habit affects them. Only then will we have enough information about the effects of the change to decide whether it's worth all the bother. 

2. What do I really care about? 

Now, say we have a list of the negative effects of our habit on ourselves and others a mile long.  But none of the effects really tap into something we care about. In that case, the change might just not be worth it for us. Sure, the experts say that marijuana causes lung cancer, paranoia, decrease in brain function, birth defects, yada, yada, yada. But if what we care most about right now is getting a small break from painful circumstances by feeling something different, let's face it, none of the medical reasons to quit smoking pot are going to feel that compelling. 

So if we're feeling like we really do want to change, but just can't get the uumph to do it, we might need to find a way to tie the reasons to change to something we really care about. For example, I recently changed my bad habit of not drinking enough water. For years I'd been told about the benefits of drinking water and I simply ignored all the expert advice. But when I started feeling tired a lot of the time, that cut into my ability to be productive and present with people who are important to me-two things I care about very much. Suddenly, I was motivated to drink water because it tapped into things that mattered to me. So the key here is to find ways to link the change to something that really matters to us right now, or to something in the future that we can still care about right now. 

3. How do I stay motivated? 

So we've inventoried the effects of our habit on us and others and we've tied them to things that really matter to us. Right now, we feel really motivated to change. It feels worth the effort. But those of us who have failed to change in the past have probably noticed that this feeling of being motivated that sets us on the road to change can be pretty short lived. Meanwhile, changing habits is a long process! Yes, I've known some people who somehow find sustained internal motivation to make huge, long-term changes on their own. But most of us need some help! We need 1) other people who care about us to 2) know about the change we are trying to make and then 3) hold some of our motivation for us. Then, when our personal well of motivation runs dry, they can encourage us and remind us about why we want to change, handing some of our motivation back to us when we run out. 

So who could we tell about the change we are making? Friends? Family? A counselor? A support or AA group? A spiritual director? What specific things could we ask them to do to support our change process? Regular encouraging check-ins? Being there for us to call when we are about to return to our habit? Doing activities with us that help us avoid our unwanted habits? The more supporters we've got and the more specifically we can ask for help with our change, the better our chances of sustaining the motivation we need to stick with it. 

4. How does my habit work? 

Once we've got motivation and support, we need to develop a really clear understanding of how our unwanted habit works. Behavior researchers talk about the fact that we don't continue to do a behavior unless there is some reward to it, no matter how weird or subtle the reward might be. So to stop a habit, we need to figure out how it has been rewarding us so that we can find other ways to get an equivalent reward. 

We might start by looking at the last 3-5 times we engaged in our habit. What was the situation? What were we feeling when we decided to do the habit? How did we feel while we were doing it? How about after it was over? What were the pleasant, rewarding things we experienced along the way? What locations, situations, feelings, or people remind us of our habit and make us want to experience the rewards that it brings? Talking with supporters can be a great way to increase understanding of how our habits work. They may be able to see things we don't because we are so used to our habits that it is hard to see them clearly. 

5. What can I do instead? 

After researching our habit, learning what it does for us, and identifying the situations that set us up to repeat it, we're now equipped to find alternative ways of receiving the rewards that we used to get from our habits. If smoking used to give us a break when we were about to engage in a difficult work task, maybe now we can let ourselves take non-smoking breaks whenever we have a craving. If gossiping makes us feel important because we always have something to share, maybe we can still share good news about others while also subscribing to current events resources that give us interesting, but less damaging things to share. If cutting lets us feel sufficiently punished to buy us a little relief from the fear that someone else will punish us in ways we can't control, maybe snapping our wrists with a rubber band, holding an ice cube, or running up a steep hill could do the same kind of thing without the scars and guilt. 

In addition to alternative rewards, we'll also need ways to avoid those situations that make it almost impossible not to return to our habit. Skin pickers might use the night light in the bathroom rather than the overhead light so it's harder to see the blemishes they'd be tempted to scratch or squeeze. Cola addicts might avoid the carbonated drink aisle at the store or only shop after drinking 32oz of something healthy, but flavorful. The more ways we have of re-routing ourselves from situations that would return us to our habit, the better chance we'll have of forming new habits that solidify our changes. Then, we can keep using our support systems to help us keep going with these alternatives until they become second nature to us and the old habit is mostly a thing of the past. 

6. How do I recover from failure? 

Now even those of us who've done it all-we're super motivated, have great support, have a clear understanding of how our habits work, and have a long and vetted list of alternative rewards and habits-can still sometimes fall into old habits. We run into our drug dealer at the DMV, of all places, on a day when we haven't slept, we've lost our job, and just discovered that the basement's flooded. We're feeling like a failure already and suddenly we find ourselves wanting to fail if only to prove how valid our "I'm a failure" feeling is. That day, after months or years of success, the drugs get the better of us. 

The key here is to remind ourselves even before a failure happens that failure is a key part of the change process, specifically, the quality assurance part. Failure provides us valuable information about the weak spots in our change plan that we can use to create new areas of strength. From the drug example above, we could learn that we need an alternative habit for times when we want to feel destructive, but don't actually want to destroy everything that's important to us: maybe playing a video game we are horrible at, buying some cheap plates to smash, or eating food that tastes awful. Failure simply says, "Here's an area in need of a new alternative or a stronger reward." 

The important thing is to see failure as part of the change process, not the end of it. If we believe that it's the end, we are likely to make it so, throwing all our progress out the window and abandoning ourselves and our loved ones to our nasty habit. When we see failure as information that informs the overall change process, then it's not so difficult to return to the change questions, reminding ourselves of the negative effects of our habit and what we really care about so that we can jump start ourselves back onto the road to change. Staying engaged with the change, not arriving at "perfection," is the key to long term transformation. 

If you've been trying to change for awhile and are having a hard time, chances are that you need to explore one or more of these six questions a bit more fully. Please know that you are not alone in this. Wrestling with these aspects of change is a big part of being human! If you or someone you know would like some help navigating through these change questions, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com. 

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com. 

Have you ever noticed that when you are in the process of pursuing a goal-whether it's retirement, a career transition, buying your dream house, or even watching your home team win the Superbowl-you imagine that, on average, you will be happier once you have reached your goal? Right after you reach your goal, of course you're happy! You did it! But not too long after, you notice amidst the day to day grind that your happiness, on average, has not increased quite as much as you expected. Has that ever happened to you?

Recently, I was listening to Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert present some of his research findings about happiness.* He pointed out that when we imagine how our life will be after we reach a goal, our imagination is a bit too efficient. It only focuses on the particular aspect of life that we expect to change, not on all the other parts of life that will stay the same or even become more difficult after that goal has been reached. While we're scrimping by each month to pay off the credit card, we imagine the relief we'll experience once we've paid it off-the movies we will watch, the restaurants we will go to, the golf we will play. We're not imagining that, regardless of whether our debt is paid down, we'll still be getting up too early to go to a job that we're not totally excited about, the neighbor kid will still be blasting hip hop music at 2 AM, etc. 

Since we forget to include all the annoyances of real life in our goal achievement fantasies, when we arrive in post goal achievement land, we don't simply experience an increase in happiness as expected, we also face several losses: 

1)      The disappointment that improvement in one area of life didn't solve all the other areas;

2)      The end of the happiness that came from our pre-goal expectation that we would be consistently happier once we achieved our goal, since positive expectation about the future adds to present happiness and now that's done;

3)      The reminder that no matter what goals we attain, we can't quite get our circumstances to admit us into that place of sustained peace and permanently increased joy that we suspect must exist, though we can never quite make it there. 

Who knew that attaining a major life goal could be so disappointing!? 

Three Mind Shifts for Increasing Post-Goal and Post-Event Happiness 

Since I know you are savvy folks, I bet you're already thinking ahead to at least one fix for this problem, right? Stopping to... 

1)      Imagine the Details 

When we imagine how post-goal life will be, we need to take the time to fill in some of the nitty-gritty details so that our expectation more closely matches the reality. We can do this for any positive expectation we have about the future or an event that we're anticipating, whether it's holidays, vacations, retirement, marriage, the new Batman movie, etc. If reality turns out to be better than expected, with a lesser concentration of the ever-present annoyances of life, we'll be happily surprised. If not, the expectation hangover following the excitement of the event won't be quite so painful-after all, some of it was expected! 

For example, say we're excited about shuffling the moody teen off to college and having some time to do all those things we've been putting off for 18 years. Once we realize we've got an expectation about what that time will be like, that would be our clue to ask ourselves what logistics and frustrations will still remain or even increase once Johnny is well into freshman year. Will completing those put-off projects stress us out? What will it be like to talk to our spouse now, without the logistics, consequences, and driving schedules we talked about when Johnny was home? Will we have to do some relationship maintenance that we've put off in favor of caring for the kids? How will it feel to not be needed quite so often? What friends will we have time to reconnect with? Will we need to make new ones? 

Realizing we have an expectation about the future and then taking time to flesh out more of the details around it gives us a better idea about what to expect so we're not taken by surprise by things that don't change or that get worse once our goal is completed. 

2)      Always have a goal 

Maintaining and working toward a variety of short and long-term goals contributes to present happiness, sometimes even more than goal completion. The process of working towards something makes us feels meaningful and valuable. Our imaginations are entertained by the possibilities that could come from the positive changes we are making, giving us some temporary distraction relief from current difficult circumstances. Even if we imagine in the details and ongoing annoyances to keep our expectations reasonable, we still get to hope for a positive future. Goals keep us active, which gives us more endorphins: the non-prescription antidepressant. 

Retirement researchers talk about how people who, years in advance of retirement, begin setting goals for what they will do in retirement find themselves happier and more fulfilled once they retire than those who just figure out what to do after they have retired. Already having goals in the midst of that major transition helps to protect people against the loss of meaning and connection that often emerge as soon as the excitement of not having to go to work wears off. 

People who continually set and work toward short and long-term goals know how to milk positive future expectation for all the happiness it's worth. 

3)      Arrive Either Now or Never 

Many of us live with the conscious or unconscious belief that if we can only work hard enough or be lucky enough to attain the perfect combination of career achievement, relational need meeting, personal maturity, financial contentment, spiritual growth, meaningful life contribution, and __you fill in the blank__, that we could finally "arrive" at a state of permanently elevated contentment, peace, and joy. According to this logic, if we haven't "arrived" yet, it's simply because we have a deficit in one or more of the key areas of contentment and we need to work harder to overcome it. If we achieve a goal in one of these areas and still don't feel that we have "arrived," we're missing something and need to find out what it is. 

The problem is that as we get older, if we've been lucky enough to achieve at least some of our goals, then we've a growing list of things we've tried that haven't made us "arrive." We've had some good times along the way, but it's never stuck. It's always been temporary. If we're very wealthy or very famous (a curse I have not had to face) we may start running low on options for things to try that would finally push us over the tipping point to the land of permanent "arrival." At some point, we may begin to suspect that "arriving" just isn't going to happen for us. And what would that mean? Have we missed the boat? Wasted our lives? Been failures? Been part of the "unlucky" group? None of these are very happiness-enhancing conclusions. 

But what if there is no such thing as permanent "arrival"? What if, as C.S. Lewis says, in The Problem of Pain, life "refreshes us on the journey with some pleasant inns, but will not encourage us to mistake them for home"? If we stopped expecting goal attainment to do something permanent to us, we'd be less disappointed when that didn't happen. But more importantly, freed from our imprisonment to expectations of what the future should do for us, we'd be more free to notice the temporary joy and contentment that come our way on a day to day basis. 

If we changed our beliefs about arrival and decided either 1) that our feelings will never allow us to remain in an elevated state-that the feeling of arrival will never permanently remain-or 2) that we have arrived in life simply by being born and our time to be in "permanent arrival" is now, both of those belief changes would free us to pay closer attention to the temporary feelings of joy and contentment that occur in the present moment, without that happiness being stolen by the fact that we know we won't always feel that way. If we don't expect permanent joy before we die, we may be freer to experience temporary joy. 

Now I'll be the first to admit that juggling these three mind shifts is not easy. It's a challenge to have positive goals and expectations for the future, but keep them within the range of what is possible amidst the annoyances of life so we're not guaranteeing disappointment. It's hard to enjoy the present without not trying to force that joy to be permanent. It takes skill to look forward to future changes while knowing they won't change everything. But I think these ways of looking at the future fit reality. So I think they're worth it. They open us up to experience more real, present joy and realistic hope, without the repeated crashes of imagining fantasy states of being that this plane of reality just can't sustain. 

If you or others you know repeatedly struggle with the disappointment of failed expectations, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

*Listen to Daniel Gilbert's lecture online at http://www.aifestival.org/audio-video-library.php?menu=3&title=552&action=full_info 

Thanks for reading!

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Ever gone out of your way to do something special for somebody-spent a ton of time on a gift, cleaned the house extensively, went to thirteen stores to find the brand you know they like-and have them totally not notice? You want to tell them all that you did, but you'd feel like a schmuck having to spell it out for them, certainly not the thoughtful, selfless person you had hoped they would have thought you were.

Ever felt like if people really loved you, they would be able to figure out what you want and just do it? You could ask them, of course, but that would feel like a little death inside, the end of a dream that someone could really get you and love you the way you've longed for.

Ever surprised someone with something you really thought they'd like, only to have them tell you soon afterwards that what they really wanted was something else? You tried to show them you knew them well and instead, they're giving you the cocked-head look, going, "Don't you know me at all?"

The Rules of the Game

If you've had at least a few experiences along these lines, chances are that you're drawn to relational gambling, particularly the game of High Stakes Mind Reading. The rules to this two-player game are pretty simple. You and another person in at least semi-intimate relationship unconsciously agree to compete against chance to guess what the other one wants and needs. If you guess correctly what the other person needs without being told, you win "Approval" chips and your partner wins "Must Really Be Loved" chips.

If at least one of you gathers enough points for guessing correctly, as a couple, you WIN BIG, achieving "Rescuing Hero" and "Intuitively Known and Loved" status. There's nothing like it! But if either of you have to ask the other what he or she wants or tell them what you want, you lose points. Eventually, you risk dropping to "Failure to Perform as Expected" and "Hopelessly Alone and Misunderstood" status.

Now the odds are about 50-50, going down during times of life transition like the arrival of kids or mid-life crises and up a bit when you've known someone for forty years or more. Of course, there are ways of approaching relationship that have much more winning odds. For example, playing the win-win un-game of "Directly Asking for What You Want and Need" would guarantee that both of you would get what you want and need much more often with much less conflict.

The Recipe for Addiction

So then why is this Mind Reading game so addicting? There's a few reasons, actually. For starters, it reminds us of infancy. Infancy was the one period of our lives where we were incapable of stating exactly what we needed, but the needs we felt were so few in number that mom or mom equivalent could do a pretty job of guessing what they were and taking care of them effectively. In that state, if our needs weren't getting met, we just needed to be louder and more annoying and-presto!-our needs got met. That state of passively having our needs and wants met is so pleasant that there's not much in this world that can make us feel as deeply known and loved as a situation that feels like a repeat of that infant state where someone just "knows" us and meets our needs without our having to ask.

Plus, having someone guess our needs protects us from one of our greatest fears: the fear that deep down, those closest to us don't really love us because we are fundamentally unlovable. If we don't have to specifically ask the people we love most for what we need, we won't ever be flatly refused in a way that would make us feel like we aren't actually loved at all. For many of us, this fear of being refused and therefore unloved is so significant that we'd rather have our needs go unmet than discover that the other person could know about our needs and then refuse to meet them. Just hoping that the other will magically read our minds feels a lot safer.

Thirdly, when we are the guesser and we guess correctly, the other person's enthusiastic response can make us feel so powerful, wise, and loving that for a moment, we feel heroic and superhuman. It's a great feeling. Besides, because we anticipated the person's need and decided to do it before they asked, we didn't actually have to do the hard work of hearing about a need that we didn't really want to do and then doing it anyway because we are committed to and love the other person. Seeing a need, deciding of our own free will to meet it, and then getting praised for it is so much more fun than the grunt work of lovingly responding to a request we're not fond of.

When Guessing Doesn't Pay

When it works, Mind Reading is so rewarding that it is no wonder we are drawn to it. And really, the only reason to quit would be that, as with any kind of gambling, sooner or later it doesn't pay. Adult needs are a lot more complicated than infant needs. Our loved ones aren't going to guess our needs correctly a lot of the time because they didn't grow up in exactly the same environment that we did. That means if we're scared to ask for what we need, our needs are going to go unmet for longer and longer periods.

Over time, we'll likely start fussing and throwing tantrums rather than stating our needs because, hey, that's how it worked with mom! Why shouldn't significant others respond in the same way? Meanwhile, our loved ones are doing the same to us and we are living together in passive-aggressive tantrum city.

Mind Readers Anonymous: A Five-Step Need-Meeting Program

For those of us who are tired of Mind Reading that promises heroism and delivers tantrums, what would it look like to play a lower-stakes, better odds game with a lot more payoff? It would probably start with the five-step program of Mind Readers Anonymous:

Step One: Admit that there is just no way we can read our loved ones' minds all the time, but that we love them enough to do our best to rise to the occasion if they will only state their needs and wants to us obviously and often.

Step Two: Admit that the fact that another person cannot figure out what we are thinking does not mean that they don't love us. It just means that they are not our mom and our needs have gotten more complicated since infancy. If, over time, they continue to do what they can to meet the needs we tell them about (with reasonable tolerance for fluctuations in moods, seasons of life, etc.) that means they love us. Period. None of this ESP stuff.

Step Three: Get more familiar with what it is that you and your partner really need and want. You might start by each making a specific, measurable list of the things you need on a daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly basis to feel loved in your relationship, plus a list of surprises you'd like your partner to do for you sporadically so it feels like they love you "spontaneously" and can "read your mind." Share your lists with your loved ones as loving requests for closer relationship, not angry, change-now-or-else demands. (For a step-by-step instructions on this, as well as more extensive explanation of what it requires to make this shift, see Getting the Love You Want by Harville Hendrix, 2008, 20th Anniversary Edition).

Step Four: Agree to do what you can to meet the needs your loved ones shared, with sporadic surprises exactly as they asked you. Over time, this reinforces direct requests and assures you that you are indeed loved and that your needs will not be ignored.

Step Five: As you and your loved ones transition into this new way of loving and receiving love, resist the temptation return to Mind Reading "heroics" or to prod your partner back into guessing your needs by throwing passive tantrums instead of restating your needs to them. Trying to be direct about your needs while also Mind Reading will exhaust you! Instead, keep telling yourself and your loved ones that love works best when the those who have a need take responsibility for making it clearly known and those hearing the request do their best to meet the need or to assure loved ones that they are loved, even if their stated need cannot be met in that moment in the way that they would like.

I recognize that this is hard, hard work. It requires A LOT of change. But, boy is it worth it! And if you can swing it, it's not like gambling. It REALLY pays off. If you or others you know encounter difficulty making these changes, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

I've lived most of my life actively avoiding waste.  There's a voice in my head that repeats like a broken record: life is short; resources are limited; so many people need help; there is so much to be done; there's no time to waste!  Instead of the popular bumper sticker, "If you're not outraged, you're not paying attention," the bumper sticker on my forehead would read, "If you're not busy, you're not paying attention."  Actually, that's not true. I think it would be closer to, "If you're not busy, you're not worthwhile. You're wasting your life. You're not making the most of what you've been given during the brief time you've got."  It would be a long bumper sticker.

 

Based on my personal bumper sticker, I think I may have bought into the theory of busyness that existential philosophers talk about: that time and resource efficiency is one way our unconscious mind combats the fear of death.  If, during our lifetime, we can accomplish as much as most people would do in two or three, we have a bit more control.  We're not quite so powerless against our impending doom.  Plus, if anyone questions how we are spending our life, we can point to our day planners in defense: "See! I never wasted a moment!  Surely, I have proven my worth!"

 

Now, those of you who aren't efficiency addicts will just have to trust me on this and follow along for a bit.  Those of you who are crazy enough to have pursued efficiency to the extent that I have will know from experience that this approach to proving your worth works...for a while.  But it's like a drug.  If you are super efficient, you feel worthwhile, but then it raises the bar of what should be possible for you to accomplish during the day. The more efficient you are, the higher the bar gets set.  And when you don't meet your ever-higher standard, the guilt of the waste has its way with you.

 

The Flawed World View of the Waste-less Life

 

Maybe it's that I'm getting older and I don't have the energy to super-produce all the time.  Maybe it's the fact that caffeine has betrayed me, losing its once-magical effects so that it makes me feel sick, rather than alert.  Maybe it's that I have friends and family who seem to love me whether I am efficient or not; in fact, I think they prefer non-efficient Jen.  But I'm starting to think that the world view that's under most of my efficiency is just wrong. 

 

Our world is so good at telling us that we are worth more the more we do, the better we look, the smarter we are, the more friends we have, etc.  So when we're not busy working, we should at least be doing more to improve our worth by being prettier, handsomer, more interesting, more intelligent, more popular-name your favorite worth-gathering strategy.  But what if we just "came" worthwhile?  What if, in many ways, the most worthwhile thing that we could do was to just to "be"?  Is that just too good to be true?   

 

The other day, I saw the bumper sticker: "If you're not in AWE, you're not paying attention." What a radically different approach to life that would be!  What if one of our main "jobs" during our time on earth was to be in awe: of creation, of people, of ourselves, of change, of time-all of it? Sure, we could work to earn a living and feed our kids, do an activity or two along the way, but to live out our worth, rather than trying to prove it, we'd need to set serious time aside to be in awe.

 

Experiments in Waste

 

Now, to be totally honest with you, this writing sounds pretty foofy to me so far, pretty "pie in the sky."  Efficiency's not all it's cracked up to be, but it's worked pretty well for me, all things considered.  I'm not quite ready to chuck it. Besides, the social activist/moralist/responsibility-supporter in me is shouting that if we told everyone to drop their productivity and actively waste time being in awe, the lazy good-for-nothings would take it to heart and do even less than they already are.  The responsible, upstanding citizens wouldn't hold up their end either.  Basically, the world would just collapse and nothing important, meaningful, or life-saving would get done ever again. 

 

But I've also been doing experiments with intentional time wasting, doing my darnedest to waste about an hour a day (man, does that feel LONG to me!) just living out the awe and gratitude of being by doing things that are not at all productive.  Frivolous things.  Kid-like things.  Shopping for things I don't need.  Wandering through art galleries.  Walking really slowly. Not exercising. Not reading to advance my career.  Not producing...anything.  And so far, what I have discovered is that I feel more deeply worthwhile than ever before.  I have more energy to be kind to people.  I am less afraid because I know that my need to be feel worthwhile as a person, not a cog in an efficient machine, will be met most every day.  It's easier to treat others as ends in themselves, not means to get my needs met.  I like God more.  I like my family and friends more.  It's really, really weird!

 

I'm starting to wonder if intentionally wasted time is essential to allowing us to learn our worth.  If we are always producing and achieving, how would we ever know whether our worth would remain if we stopped?  Until we stop...and find that we are still loved.  Setting aside time to treat ourselves like royalty who, for the moment, have nothing to do but pursue leisure, makes us feel like royalty, and then we can respond to others out of that richness, rather than our hectic, ever-growing energy deficits.

 

I'm also learning that there's a difference between filling our down time with distractions that numb our pain and dedicating time to experience awe, gratitude, and our deep worth.  It's not so much the activity as the purpose behind it.  Spending time with friends to avoid the solitude that reminds us of our loneliness is numbing distraction, while spending time with a friend who feeds our soul, rather than churning out another progress report, is time dedicated to feeling our worth. Drinking alcohol to forget that we feel anxious about our job/spouse/kids/body/schedule etc. is a distraction; savoring the flavor of a great wine to celebrate that we are alive and can feel pleasure helps us delight in our worth and enriches us.  Many of us have "diversions" but we are starving for time wasted in awe!

 

An Invitation to Awe

 

If you have, like me, been feeling weary for a long time...  If, when you think about stopping and resting, you feel fear and guilt rather than relief and delight... If people seem like distractions to you, impeding your essential tasks... If you don't have any hobbies that aren't focused on some sort of self-improvement or getting ahead...then I invite you to join me in some experiments with scheduling time to waste in awe, maybe half an hour a day, maybe 3 hours on a weekend.  During this time, see if you can do whatever you are drawn to do that is not at all productive and that helps you experience awe in and gratitude for yourself and the world around you.  Watch out for defaulting to the things you typically use to numb pain to just get you through.  Instead, see if you can find things that actively bring you joy.  See if you can try it as regularly as you can for a month, since I'm pretty sure it takes about that long to have an effect.  I'd love to hear what you discover.  It sure is changing my life!

 

This is not as easy as it sounds.  Trust me, I know!  So if you or someone you know encounters difficulty with these experiments, feel free to call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

 

To read past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com/Helpful_Resources.html.

 

Thanks for reading!

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
 
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

 

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

 

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com. To unsubscribe, simply reply to this email with "unsubscribe" in the heading.

 

I confess. Recently, I've been a little scared most of the time. Some days I can hardly feel it, but often it's there, lurking in the background. It makes me want to avoid returning phone calls even to people I really like, avoid marketing a business I deeply believe in and am excited about, avoid to-do list items that require any self-stretching, and avoid the deep stillness of good rest that calls me to feel my fear instead of hiding from it.

I suppose this wouldn't seem so weird if I were in a war zone, avoiding bullets left and right. But circumstantially, I'm in a really good season of life right now. It's just that I'm transitioning from some good, familiar things to better, unfamiliar things in several areas of life. And I don't like change, even good change. It's unfamiliar and it makes me feel out of control. I really like the illusion of control and when I can't maintain it, I feel ongoing low-level fear.

I've been wondering recently what would happen if I listened to my fear and avoided everything that made me nervous. I'd leave the job I love to do something predictable that required no marketing. I'd leave my closest relationships because those require a ton of risk. I'd sell my house and car because one never knows when they could break down and be very expensive. I'd never travel or adventure outdoors because that's how everyone gets Swine Flu and torn ACLs. And I'd stay constantly busy with menial work or idiotic Facebook quizzes so that I would never have to encounter the feelings that arise when I start to rest and relax. Talk about a life to be afraid of-I'd be a walking dead woman!

What's the Point of Fear?

Let's admit it. Fear is great for keeping us away from burning buildings and psycho killers. But if we let it sing solo in our lives, without the chorus of inner voices like logic, drive, and longing and the outer voices of wise people who can speak into our lives, we'll soon be singing the Zombie Jamboree. Really, all fear should be allowed to do is to tell us to stop our headlong rush toward something unfamiliar and think about whether it is beneficial. Once we've thought about it and decided that, all things considered, it's good to go forward, fear needs to be put in its place, not allowed to run the show.

But that's easier said than done, isn't it? In previous newsletters, I've talked about the fact that we've got three brains. Of the three, the Reptilian Brain-the one that houses the functions that we share with reptiles-only knows four things: fight, flight, freeze, or feeling fine. No doubt you noticed that three out of the four are responses to fear. The Reptilian Brain is such a specialist in fear that it is allowed to directly control our body's fear responses without asking the permission of the delayed, deliberating logical mind. This lets us be poised to fight, flee, or freeze at any moment.

The problem is that when our Reptilian Brains are pumping adrenaline into our bodies and tensing our muscles for the fight, it's almost impossible to get our New-Cortex, our logical thinking brain, to stop having anxious thoughts. All we want to do when the Reptilian Brain is screaming "be afraid" is to attack, escape, or tensely do absolutely nothing to make the threat go away. So our logical thinking brain comes up with all kinds of thoughts related to attacking, escaping, or freezing to reflect the state of our bodies because it's weird to think calm thoughts while the body is ready to rumble. The logical brain's anxious thoughts, responding to the body, then confirm to the Reptilian Brain that we are in fact in danger. This is because, dummy that it is, the Reptilian Brain can't tell the difference between actually being in danger and just thinking about it. So it stays activated and keeps pumping adrenaline, even when nothing is actually threatening our lives, so we just can't relax. It's a vicious cycle.

Chilling Out Fear: The Quick Fix

To shut up this residual, non-helpful fear, we need to use our logical minds to force our bodies to be calm. This is the trick to getting our Reptilian brains to move from "engage" to "at ease, soldier." There are lots of ways to do this, but perhaps the quickest (and least obvious in a public setting) is to make ourselves sit in a comfortable, relaxed position and then gradually inhale and exhale more and more slowly and steadily until we're breathing in on a count of 7 and breathing out on a count of 7. When we make ourselves breathe this slowly at least several times in a row, our Reptilian Brain thinks, "Dude, it's almost like I'm sleeping. Guess I can chill." Then our logical thinking brain can get the break it needs to change its churning thoughts. It becomes possible for us to choose to listen to voices other than fear.

I know, this sounds silly and weird. But folks who practice it once a day and as needed during particularly anxious seasons report amazing results. It takes living with fear down from paralyzing to tolerable until the brain can finally navigate through the anxious season of change and learn that the new, changed environment is not life-threatening.

Now let me reiterate. I'm not saying that we should short circuit all of fears' messages and that our first response to nervousness should be to practice slow breathing to make it go away. First, we need to listen to fear's message. Is it telling us that the realtor is giving us a bad deal or that being a homeowner is simply a new, unfamiliar role? Is our fear of commitment telling us that our dates belong in a psych ward or that real love always involves risk? Is our fear of quitting a boring job telling us that it's not good to be out of work with $100k in credit card debt, or that we'll need more assurance that others will support us as we try something new?

Once we've brought in the other voices of logic, our desires, and our intimate community, we can figure out what the fear message is. Then, if fighting, fleeing, or freezing is not the appropriate response, we can practice intentional breathing and relaxation to chill out the fear until the dust settles and our Reptilian Brain returns to "at ease" long-term.

If you or someone you know would like some help working through lingering fear, call me at 303-931-4284 for a free 20-minute consultation or email info@jenniferdiebel.com.

Thanks for reading!

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC
Psychotherapist
303-931-4284
info@jenniferdiebel.com
www.jenniferdiebel.com
3393 Iris Avenue, Suite 104
Boulder, CO 80301

Jennifer Diebel, MA, NCC is a psychotherapist who works with adolescents, adults, couples, and families in her private practice in Boulder, Colorado. For more information about her areas of expertise, background, and methods, as well as additional helpful resources and past newsletters, go to www.jenniferdiebel.com.

Please Try This at Home is a monthly newsletter containing tips for increasing the joy in your life, as well as information about counseling discounts and helpful local seminars and resources. To request a future newsletter topic, include a friend on the subscription list, ask a question, or offer feedback, email Jennifer at info@jenniferdiebel.com.