DON'T BE GOOD

“The great way is not difficult for those who hold no preferences.”

                                                                        - Sengstan, Hsin Hsin MIng

Most of us want to get away from our darkness.  We want to see it “out there,” not in ourselves.  When we are in fear of seeing our own dark side we can get very clear about seeing it in the “other.” We see the terrorist, the ugly politician, the murderer, the wall street crook, the pornographer, the fill in the blank.  We see them and say they are, well, bad.   We aren’t them - we are good.

But being good is often a set up for acting badly.  Why is that?  Why does the politically sainted Ronald Regan end up ignoring AIDS, selling arms to Iran (during an arms embargo) to fund the contras, build up the biggest nuclear arms cache in history, and kick the mentally ill into the streets—creating a homeless epidemic that endures to this day? How did good church goers end up burning women in Salem as witches?  How do priests in the business of teaching us how to be good end up as child molesters?  How does the richest nation in the world, the U.S., end up imprisoning more people per capita than any society on earth—2,300,000 and counting? How do slave owners view African Americans as “animals” and end up behaving worse than animals themselves?  How do we start wars like Vietnam and Iraq that end up being widely recognized as military blunders?  When Robert McNamara, one of the architects of Vietnam, was asked about how he viewed things after the war ended, he said Vietnam was, “…probably a mistake.” 

How do all these things occur? Simply speaking, people are trying to be “good.”  When we see the darkness of humanity only in others we tend to start persecuting those others.  People get separated into good and bad categories.  The other is of course the “bad” one.

Good old Freud was the first one to see this and coin the term projection.   Freud said we humans defend ourselves against our own unconscious dark impulses.   We do this by denying that the dark impulses exist in ourselves and attribute them to others.   Projection incorporates blame shifting. I project what I can’t stand in myself onto you.  “You’re the problem, not me . . . I’m good.” At their core all prejudices, genocides, and abuses of power have projection of disowned dark impulses on others.  Projection helps the person projecting justify their heinous actions.  They feel protected psychologically.  They can defend against the guilt of destroying others by seeing the other as less than - holding the abuser’s guilt projection.

Carl Jung, the swiss psychologist, was said to smile at his own darkness. That is, he got the joke—that all of humanity’s darkness lives as potentials in all of us, including himself.  While it’s true that most of us will never kill or rape, it’s also true that we have collectively agreed to enter into unjust wars that we knew would create those exact situations.  Jung was able to see his dark side and make friends with it so that it was not acted out on others.  He then helped others make the same journey.  Until we are able to befriend the darkest impulses of humanity within ourselves we will continue to project it onto others and persecute them either individually or collectively. 

In a sense hate projects while love extends.  Hate has to have a good and bad person.  It splits humanity into categories.  Maybe we can give up trying to be good and attempt instead to be fully human—capable of the all the beauty and ugliness we see in the world, and leaning into the beauty.  Until we stop projecting we can’t truly start loving. 

Mandela, Gandhi, Francis of Assisi, Amma, the Dalai Lama, MLK, and Mother Theresa are examples of self actualized human beings who were able to extend the love they discovered by owning their own darkness (and of course their own light).  They gave up splitting and projecting their sense of good and bad.  They stopped making those outside of themselves complete others.  They may agree that some people need to be restrained, but not made “bad”.  They saw themselves in the other and crossed over into full self-actualization through forgiveness and compassion.  With this they were able to take a stand, assert themselves, and keep extending love regardless of the horrible circumstances they encountered.

Below Alan Watts comments on his encounter with Carl Jung and seeing the psychologist, “…smile at his darkness.”  :

DON'T KILL YOURSELF

It’s the 10th leading cause of death in the U.S.  Each year approximately 44,193 Americans kill themselves.  For each of these 25 more try to commit suicide but fail.  Spaulding Grey, Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Robin Williams, Ernest Hemingway, Cheyenne Brando, Alexander McQueen, Sylvia Plath, Don Cornelius, Whitney Huston, and a whole host of others who seemingly “had it all”— did themselves in. 

Certain groups of people are at higher risk for suicide than others.  They are: 

·       American Indians and Alaska Natives

·       People bereaved by suicide

·       People in justice and child welfare settings

·       People who intentionally hurt themselves (non-suicidal self-injury)

·       People who have previously attempted suicide

·       People with medical conditions

·       People with mental and/or substance use disorders

·       People who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender

·       Members of the military and veterans

·       Men in midlife and older men

Why do people resort to the ultimate act of giving up?  There are a number of identified reasons. They are:

MENTAL ILLNESS: 

Major depression is the leading cause of suicide.  90% of people who kill themselves suffer from this crippling mood disorder.

Anxiety:  When anxiety makes it hard to hold down jobs, maintain friendships, or finish school, anxiety can lead to suicide.

Bipolar Disorder:  The fluctuations from mania to depression can make it hard for people to maintain relationships and a balanced life, leading them to make the fatal decision.

Schizophrenia:  Some people suffering from this mental illness can have command, internal voices telling them to kill themselves. 

BULLYING:  By now it is widely documented that, especially in the age of the Internet, bullying can lead to young people tragically ending their own lives.  Those in the LGBT community are especially at risk for bullying. 

DRUG ADDICTION / SUBSTANCE ABUSE:  Whether it’s the resulting depression, or the tendency to overdose, drug abuse has become pandemic in the culture with opioid and heroin addiction leading the charge toward suicide attempts and / or accidents.

UNEMPLOYMENT / FINANCIAL INSECURITY:  I recently saw Bernie Sanders speak in Los Angeles.  He noted that currently the top 1/10th of one percent of the U.S. population now has more wealth than the bottom 90 percent of people in America.  As a result, in rural, impoverished areas only one business is doing well, funeral homes.  There are so many more suicides each year due to economic insecurity morticians are having a hard time keeping up.

SOCIAL ISOLATION / LONELIENESS:  Becoming isolated can lead a person into depression and begin considering suicide.  We are social creatures and our mental health is largely based on being communal with others. 

RELATIONSHIP ISSUES:  People are so in need of relationships they may stay in abusive partnerships, join gangs, or sink into out of control depression when losing a life mate.  Any of these can lead to the terrible choice of ending one’s own life.

GENETICS: Those with a history of suicide in their families have proven to be at higher risk.   You may be wired for the family depression and be more likely to see suicide as an option (just like it was for dad, etc.)

PRESCRIPTION DRUGS:  Ever seen those TV ads that say, “Caution, taking this drug may increase suicidal tendencies” (?)  Whenever taking a prescribed drug (including anti-depressants) be sure to monitor your mood issues associated with it. 

CRYING OUT FOR HELP:  Some people are simply trying to alert others to their need for help.  They typically choose methods they don’t think will end their lives.  This person might swallow a bottle of Tylenol and wake up in the hospital with a severely damaged liver, but otherwise alive. 

THEY MADE A “MISTAKE”: Oxygen deprivation is sometimes used recklessly to enhance sexual excitement—leading to death.

People choose suicide when they feel trapped, hopeless, helpless to change their circumstances, lost in an addiction, isolated, or otherwise out of control. 

To prevent these tragic ends, we need to seek help at the first signs of suicidal ideation.  If you are considering suicide it is virtually always a good idea to consult a doctor and get on medication while also beginning psychotherapy.  If you are at high risk and living alone, a “suicide watch” can be established with a trusted therapist.  Professionals,friends, and family members can be in constant contact through crisis periods. 

Drug and alcohol counseling as well as a twelve-step program could be in order. 

Suicide hotlines (800-854-7771, 211, or 800-273-8255 (TALK )) can be used to de-escalate a situation. If you are at risk it is essential to ask for help and stay out of isolation.  

If someone is threatening suicide, acknowledge the danger and show concern.  LISTEN.  The threat becomes most real when the person has three active elements:  a means or weapon to kill themselves, a plan to kill themselves, and a scheduled time.  This person should be hospitalized until these elements are eliminated.  Most hospitals have a PET (psychiatric evaluation team) that can be sent to a person’s home who is at risk for self-harm.  Also, 911, or the police can intervene. 

Most people who try to kill themselves regret the decision.  Virtually all people who jumped from The Golden Gate Bridge and survived to tell the tale reported that they regretted the decision the moment their feet left the platform.

There are ways to get help, find connection, discover meaning, come to hope, change your problems, and realize the love you give and receive from others. I’ve dealt with many people contemplating suicide. Thankfully they’ve all concluded that it is not the answer.  If its something you have ever thought of just know that its very common to think about it, that you can get help, and that there are people to listen.  We need your gifts.  You might one day be the answer to helping someone else standing on the fatal precipice. 

Below Kevin Briggs talks about his experience as a police officer intervening in suicides on the Golden Gate Bridge:

ARE YOU IN A TRANCE?

Transference is another one of those terms coined by Sigmund Freud that panned out to be true.  It can be defined as the redirection of feelings and desires unconsciously retained from childhood and directed toward a new person in adult life.  Basically what that means is that we go into a trance.  We see something that isn’t there.   We “transfer” our past childhood onto our present adult life.  If violence happened when my parents got angry, I may avoid it at all costs in my adult life.  I may become a “nice guy” who “never gets angry.”  I’m caught in transference. I assume those in my adult life will act “just like” my parents did in my childhood. I internalize anger, avoid confrontation, go passive, sink into depression, become kind of a doormat. 

Another way this transference could get acted out is if I become violent when I’m angry.  I could could see danger where there is none and assume that this is powerful, just like my dad was when he expressed anger.  In that both of these examples are neurotic, I can be sure there is some unresolved issue or transference going on.  I’m in a trance.

Transferences can occur in a vast multitude of ways.  If I grew up poor and felt less than others I may stay poor to be included in the family, or believe that I’m bad at making money “just like my parents.”  I may believe that others will reject me if I make money since my parents believed, "money is the root of all evil."    Alternatively I may assume others will never accept me if I don't make money.  I may become a workaholic and become rich trying to prove my worth.  Howard Hughes, Steve Jobs, and other “great successes” were plagued by deep insecurity.

If a a boy grows up shamed about sexuality  he might transfer that to others in his adult life and assume they will shame him about sex.  He could grow up to be a religious zealot who rails against promiscuity and takes a vow of celibacy. He may try to prove to others that he’s sexually pure by judging others and spouting religious texts.  As a further consequence of his unresolved transference issue he may start secretly seeing prostitutes on the weekends. 

So with Transferences with “transfer” our childhood onto the world we see as adults.  We enter into a kind of trance.  We might transfer "I’m not good enough" to other adults and cut off chances for advances. We could also kill ourselves working andrbecome a billionaire trying to prove that we are good enough.  We might transfer that we are a sinner and work as a criminal or a guilty social worker. If our father cheated on our mother we might transfer that any partner we have is going to cheat on us and endlessly interrogate our lovers’ behaviors. 

The odd thing about these transferences or trances we live is that they do tend to end up becoming our life experiences.   The partner who is interrogated gets so worn out they do cheat on us.  The belief in being less than does leave us in a life of poverty.  The not good enough issue does leave us feeling depressed no matter how much money we make.  The abandonment or trust issue that we push people away with does leave us isolated, driving us to drink or smoke or shoot up—leaving us even more alone.  The judgment on others sexuality ends up becoming our own sexual perversion.

None of our childhoods were perfect.  We all have transferences.  Transferences either get worked out or acted out.   If they are acted out we end up dismayed. “How did I let this happen?  Its like I went into a trance.”  Some people who are in the trance of pursuing money as a life goal to compensate for past trauma find out it doesn’t work in mid life crisis periods.  “How did my life become so meaningless?” 

So how do we work transferences out? In therapy we transfer our neurosis onto the therapeutic relationship.  We might learn to tell the therapist when we are angry with him instead of repressing it or throwing the vase (hopefully!).  We might admit our hopelessness and insecurity and find acceptance from the therapist, opening the door for self-acceptance.  “If he can accept me with all these terrible issues maybe I’m ok.” We might have to risk failure in therapeutic goals and come back to find that we haven’t died, and that the therapist is ok with our failing and encourages we fail all we need to on our way to learning.  We might risk shining in our efforts and find out they we are supported in our strengths, not diminished.  We might learn that we are unconditionally accepted for who we are and even loved by the therapist without having to do anything. 

Once transferences are worked out the trance is broken. We become more alive. We find a new life free from the past.  We may regress into a transference / trance, but now we know the way out.  We can go forward, feeling good about ourselves while we achieve goals.  We are no longer holding ourselves back or trying to compensate for the past.   

Below The School of Life takes a look at the trances we live:  

STUCK IN THE DRAMA TRIANGLE?

Many of us don’t do conflict well.  For some conflict becomes downright dramatic.  Karpman’s Drama Triangle is a social model of dysfunctional human conflict coined by Stephen Karpman M.D..  The Drama Triangle depicts three primary roles we occupy when caught in a neurotic, circular form of conflict.  They are: the Victim, the Persecutor, and the Rescuer.

The thinking of each role fuels the others.  The Victim’s thinking is one of hopelessness, helplessness, powerlessness, oppression, and shame. They say or think things like, “Poor me”, “Everyone betrays me.”  “I always end up on the short end of the stick.”  “Why does this always happen to me?”  “No one can help me.”  “Why does he always do this to me?”, etc.  A Victim blames the Persecutors in their lives for their problems (while at the same time unconsciously seeking them out). It is the boss, the spouse, the mother in law, the neighbor, etc., that are causing all the Victim’s problems.  They shirk taking responsibility for ongoing patterns of thinking and behaving that leave them feeling and acting like they are Victimized by life.

Every Victim needs a Persecutor.  A Persecutor takes the consistent stance that, “Its all your fault.”  The Persecutor is oppressive, authoritative, rigid, thinks of themselves as superior, controls, blames, and is critical.  They can be verbally and even physically abusive.  They unconsciously seek out Victims to Persecute.  The Persecutor believes themselves to be powerful and beyond reproach. 

Who’s gonna help these two?  The Rescuer comes riding in on a white horse.   Rescuers think they are innocently, and even heroically helping the Victim—but end up enabling them to stay Victims.  The Rescuer needs the Victim to stay a Victim so they can get accolades for Rescuing.  They might keep paying the Victim’s bills instead of challenging them to get a job.  The Rescuer might bail the Victim out of jail repeatedly instead of letting them experience the consequences of their destructive behaviors.   The Rescuer feels noble, important, better than the poor Victim who would die without them.  The Rescuer also gets to feel justified in avoiding their own problems because they are so concerned about the Victim.

It’s interesting to note that, while we adapt habitual, regular roles within the Drama Triangle, we also switch roles inside of it.  For example, a Rescuer might switch to a Persecutor if the Victim is not appreciative. “After all I’ve done for you, you think you can talk to me like that?  You are cut off! Don’t ever talk to me again!”  A Persecutor might move in the Victim position, “Ok, I screamed at you again, but you don’t’ know what a nag you are. I didn’t have a choice.”  A Victim may suddenly become a Persecutor to the Rescuer.  “You didn’t pay my rent? How can you do that to me?  You know my family doesn’t give me anything and you have the money!”   

The Drama Triangle has some fundamental dynamics of manipulation that are unconsciously kept in motion by the players:

1. Players keep responsibility out in space with manipulation; never taking ownership, always blaming.
2. There is a lack of internal conflict within the individual players. Their agenda becomes about creating conflict with others.
3. The players lack empathy.  They are self-absorbed in their role.
4. Patterns of the triangle prevent any real problem solving because the drama becomes the goal.
5. Maintaining bad boundaries is essential to the identity of the players in the Drama Triangle.
6. The Drama Triangle provides identity and fills emptiness. People can jump around in all three roles to keep the Drama dynamics in play.

So how do we break out of these patterns of relating?  While this blog is too brief to go into all the ways the codependent cycle of the Drama Triangle can heal, there are basic ways to break out of each role.

 The Victim can learn to take responsibility and stop looking for others to Rescue them.  They must learn to deal with their own problems, seeking support to address their problems, but not looking to get rescued.  They can learn about the pay offs they get from playing Victim and become willing to give them up.  They may need to do trauma recovery work that keeps their thinking and behavior locked in “learned helplessness.”  (see the You Are Not Helpless post)  The Victim needs to learn boundary setting with Persecutors to avoid being abused and boundaries with Rescuers to stop being rescued. 

A Persecutor can do anger management work. They need to work out unconscious shame that is avoided by going into anger and control.  A Persecutor can benefit from learning how to be vulnerable, negotiate others needs with theirs, and see others as fully human—not objects to meet their needs.  They must replace the benefit of control over others with the benefit of true intimacy with others.  A Persecutor can learn the difference between a rigid emotional “wall” and a boundary. 

A Rescuer’s work is to focus on themselves.  They need to give up Rescuing as a way of feeling important or needed. They may need to heal a deep sense of inadequacy that is compensated for with Rescuing.  They can learn to tolerate guilt that arises from not Rescuing.  Al-Anon is a program the Rescuer can join if they are Rescuing an addict.  A Rescuer may need to learn “tough love.”  That is, they may need to redefine their understanding of love that means letting others grow up, become adults, suffer consequences, and take responsibility for themselves. A Rescuer can learn to redirect their focus to their own career, relationships, money, self-care, etc.

There are many ways the Drama Triangle can be acted out.  Jeff Gazley explains one possibility below:

YOU CAN BE MORE THAN LESS MISERABLE

There’s an acronym for the word “fine” that is thrown around a lot in mental health circles.  I heard this acronym loud and clear at a wedding I attended.  At the wedding I encountered a friend I hadn’t seen in years.  She had wanted to marry the groom and had even once proposed to him.  After his refusal they remained friends and she had come to the wedding as a guest.  She had a painful, frozen smile on her face.  When I asked her how she was doing she said, “Fine, I’m fine.  We’re all fine, just fine.” I heard that unmistakable acronym in her reply, “I’m fine”—“F****d up, Insecure, Neurotic, and Emotional”.

We have a lot invested in our society in the presentation of looking “fine” to others.   We want to be seen as ok, even if we are miserable inside.  Buddha let the cat out of the bag a long time ago with his one liner, “Life is suffering.”  (until you wake up).   Scott Peck revitalized this slogan in his one liner, “Life is difficult.” (but it stops being difficult when you fully accept this truth). 

Maybe its time to go beyond being “fine."  Let’s talk about happiness.  Happiness, as it turns out, takes work.  It’s hardly a given for most of us.  We spend a lot of time buying the lie that happiness lies in the common recipe of seeking pleasure and avoiding pain.  With food, alcohol, TV, computers, drugs, sex, vacations, lying on beaches, margaritas, infotainment, money, football games, Facebook, Instagram, and countless other distractions—many people are on an endless loop of fruitless activities that focus on short term highs— but never achieving happiness. On this loop we usually wind up telling others that we’re, well,  “fine.”

Positive Psychology is a theory that was developed to study happiness.  The originators wanted to break out of the disease model favored by most psychological theories.  The authors of Positive Psychology felt that the disease models of mental health treatment that were focused on what was “wrong with us” ended up falling short.   Its not that the disease models were completely off, it was just that the end results of treatment were hardly stellar.  More often than not the treatment coming from these theories just helped people be “a little less miserable.” We might do ten years of psychoanalysis and end up feeling a little more “fine.”  Positive Psychology examined what actually makes people happy by studying vast cross sections of people across the world.

After years of research the result of the exhaustive study came in . . . money buys happiness.  (just kidding)   The thing most people associate to this day with happiness, having more money, was shown to have little effect on happiness after a basic level of survival and freedom were achieved.  While poor people did show a greater level of unhappiness than middle class or wealthy people, the study found that once people didn’t have to worry about money, making more of it didn’t increase happiness levels at all.  As one wealthy man I knew said, “Money doesn’t buy happiness, but it helps.” 

In fact researchers found a phenomenon they coined “the hedonic treadmill”.  The hedonic treadmill is the discovery that when people base their happiness on money they will always reach a frustrated saturation point with the amount of money they have and the amount of material goods they own.  They will then believe that having more money is the answer—thus they are on a never-ending treadmill leading nowhere.  Even lottery winners were found to have an initial spike in happiness that only lasted for roughly three months.  They then reset to their normal emotional state before the big win.

Positive Psychology researchers found some fundamental aspects to what accounted for human happiness and coined the word PERMA to describe their findings.  PERMA is broken down into these categories:

P:  Positive Emotion.  We need positive emotion to feel good.  We are not talking here about bodily pleasure associated with sleeping, eating, drinking, etc.  Positive emotion is generated in creativity, being intellectually challenged and standing up to it, remembering pleasant experiences, playing in the snow, etc. Positive Emotions are the basic building blocks of happiness. 

E:   Engagement.  This is being completely absorbed in an activity. That is, entering a state of flow or bliss where we lose time.  We are composing, gardening, wood working, working on a computer program we find fascinating, serving others, we are “in the zone” playing sports, etc.

R:  Relationships.  We are social animals.  We need deep, close, loving relationships to achieve happiness.  This is more than just having people around us.  We can be alone in a crowd.  We must have people who we know and who know us on a deep level.  People we can trust, be intimate with, share, and count on. 

M:  Meaning.  We need to be part of something larger than ourselves.  Positive Psychology is not so much about what make individuals happy  (this is more akin to the kind of thinking that leads to attempts at finding happiness through material wealth).  Meaning is about relationships and finding happiness in contribution to society.  From a Positive Psychology viewpoint happiness is social. How is my life serving the greater good?

A:  Accomplishment.  Human beings seek competence, achievement and mastery as a way of experiencing well-being and happiness.  Even small goals like reading for half an hour a day can improve self-esteem.  Larger goal accomplishments are obviously also important—getting that job, writing the book, setting up a garden, having a child, etc. 

Using PERMA can give you direction in cultivating happiness on a daily basis.   We do this by focusing on combining the basic building blocks:  positive emotions as a result of engaging activity, nurturing intimate relationships, meaningful goals that serve society, and achieving accomplishments. 

Below Martin Seligman gives his TED talk on Positive Psychology:                                                                     

MOVIE THERAPY

Movies can help us work through shame.  Shame is a deep thing.   When we internalize rejection, abuse, or neglect, we end up with toxic, shame based beliefs. Shame can bind us in deep seeded negative beliefs about our worth, sexuality, money, career, value in relationships, and just about anything else we deal with in life.  Shame is at the root of most addictions, clinical depressions and anxiety disorders. 

Toxic shame leads us to have a “shame based identity”.  This identity doesn't say that what we did was bad, it says that we "are bad."  It can be so painful that we develop defenses or a “false self” to cope with it.  All addicts are shame based—using their addiction to medicate self-hatred and hide from being vulnerable to others.  Many passive people have shame-based identities.  They hide from the world, secretly thinking of themselves as “losers.”  The people who crashed the economy in 2008 were shame based—knowingly sacrificing the health of the economy from a greedy, shame based identity that abuses money to make up for feeling small or less than. 

So what’s all this have to do with movies?  Movie Therapy is simply the act or using movies to alleviate shame, normalize our pain, know we are not alone, break through defenses, cry, laugh, help process, and create psychological distance between who I am and the pain I’m experiencing. 

Laughter can create this distance and enhance our sense of well being. Laughter decreases stress and has even been proven to enhance the immune system.  When we don’t take life too seriously we can lighten up enough to have the clarity we need for right decision making.  Shame walks hand in hand with over personalizing and heavy self-judgment.  Laughter can release us from these heavy “shame binds.”  Recommendations:  Office Space, Yes Man, Swingers, Annie Hall, The Birdcage, Monty Python and The Holy Grail, What About Bob, Analyze This, Trick.

Many people, especially men, carry shame around crying.  They see crying as weak, or being out of control.  Crying is often the healthiest thing we can do to process and release pain.  I’ve had many people tell me the only place they cry is at the movies. Researchers have found two important neurotransmitters in tears that release emotional stress (leucine-enkephaline, and prolactin—which is released form the pituitary).  Who doesn’t feel better after a good cry?  Recommendations:  The Color Purple, Bridges of Madison County, Rudy, Terms of Endearment, Finding Neverland.

Normalizing pain is central to working through shame.  Feeling alone in our pain compounds it on every level.  Almost all movies we relate to help us normalize our struggles. In the wonderful movie, Ordinary People, the title says it all. The film tells the story of a pretty on the outside, suburban family, struggling tragically with their pain behind closed doors.  The film helped people from all walks of life see their family dramas as more “Ordinary”, easing the associated shame that kept them in hiding.

Hopelessness and helplessness are two key factors in clinical depression.  Overcoming obstacles and gaining hope is a theme of many movies.  In identifying with characters that are hopeless, and watching them overcome their struggles, a viewer can gain optimism for their ability to work through life challenges.  Recommendations:   Castaway, Apollo 13, Chocolat, Rocky, Invincible, Miracle, The Shawshank Redemption, Billy Elliot, Philomena, Harold and Maude, Wild. 

To be fair, many films do more harm than good and should likely be avoided for mental health reasons. The Exorcist had audience members throwing up, feeling paranoid, and experiencing nightmares as a result of watching the satanic flick.  Movie are also not a mental health panacea.  They don't cure us. They are often wildly over valued for their capacity for change and for their importance in an entertainment addicted society.  Still, they can be a useful psychological tool when related to in a conscious way. 

In their best sense, movies are the myths of today.  They are our version of the mythological stories told around tribal fires.  They help us relate to each other, and give us something to reference in our communication.  “It was like in that movie...”  Some films describe the struggles we all face on “The Hero’s Journey”, as depicted by Joseph Campbell. (see the You Are A Hero, and, You Are in Star Wars blogs). 

In depth psychology films are a tool to open up communication between a person’s unconscious and conscious minds.  This  happens when a viewer watches a movie character struggling with the disowned, repressed “shadow material” of the viewer.  For instance, a depressed single parent who denies the rage they feel about the demands of raising a child on their own might address the anger more directly after viewing The Goodbye Girl, Paper Moon, or Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore.

What movies have helped you break out of isolation, open up communication, feel less alone, and given you hope?  In this Bridesmaids scene Annie learns that self-pity is the road to hell, that courage is the way out, and that she has a friend.  Enjoy:

THE SOUND OF MUSIC

The idea that music heals can sound like a nicety reserved for flowery Hallmark cards and sugary sweet holidays.  Mozart, The Beatles, Dylan, Beethoven, Miles Davis, Florence Welch, Tupac, Maria Callas, Ray Charles, Bassnectar, Stevie Wonder, and Alanis Morrisette might have a different idea about the healing power of music— so do music therapists.

Formal music therapy began with a few generous souls looking to help veterans. After World Wars I and II musicians began going into veteran hospitals to play for soldiers suffering from the mental and physical ravages of war.  The patients' marked improvement physically and mentally lead hospitals to start requesting musicians to come in regularly.  However, it was soon understood that musicians needed formal training for interacting with the vets.  In 1944 the first music therapy degree program was started at Michigan State University (my alma mater!)

Music therapy has come a long way.  A certified music therapist now assesses emotional well-being, physical health, social functioning, communication abilities, and cognitive skills through musical responses.  The therapist will design music sessions for individuals and groups based on client needs. The therapist uses music improvisation, receptive music listening, song writing, lyric discussion, music and imagery, music performance, and learning through music. While traditional therapy uses talk to achieve therapeutic goals, a music therapist utilizes music to achieve therapeutic goals—not musical goals. 

Consider all the ways the brain has to work to translate music:  it must register melody, rhythm, words, harmony, tempo, timbre, dynamics, and form. Further, the brain is involved in memory, emotion, participation type (active or passive), and familiarity.   The brain is processing all of these things at once.

As a result, music can be used to aid a patient’s recovery in multiple ways.  A stroke victim might be taught to use rhythmic auditory stimulation to help them walk.  The patient follows a beat, which their brain will then entrain and teach their feet to follow—that is, walk properly.  Music is also used to facilitate communication with autistic children.  The lyrics of songs can be utilized to help psychiatric patients understand coping skills.  Music therapy is used for stress reduction via music making such as in drumming, singing, etc.  Stress is also relieved with passive listening.

Music can ease loneliness— letting us know that others suffer the same pain we do. It can serve as a form of motivation, an expression of repressed anger, a way to form social bonds, and help us experience love.  Music can be used to alleviate depression, soothe anxiety, and, for some, access the spiritual dimension of life. 

The soulfulness of rhythm and blues started in church with gospel music. Gospel was a way for the African American community to come together, heal from the oppression of racism, and express their love of God.

In the inner city rap music serves as a platform to speak out against the oppressive forces of poverty. While much of the music has been criticized as violent, misogynistic, and homophobic, rap has also served to join communities, uplift people, and give individuals a passionate career. 

By now the 60’s music of Woodstock has long been understood as a way the Vietnam War was protested and people came together to heal.

Kirtan music is played to express spiritual ideals. It is often performed in a call and response form with the audience to elicit states of deep meditation, joining, and ecstasy. 

Drumming circles are used to ground people and release anxiety.  They were commonly utilized by tribes to counter the tension of the full moon.  A full moon not only pulls on the tides of the oceans, it  pulls on the water in our bodies—triggering glands and emotions, bringing out the “werewolf” in people. Police forces have long put more cops on the beat during the full moon.

I’ve heard many people repeat the phrase, “Music saved my life.” How do you access music to balance emotions and heal your life?

Below a high priestess musician, Florence Welch, of Florence & The Machine, tends to a patient in the first video and leads a crowd in a rain dance in the second.  She tells them both  that its ok to let go of pain, rejoice, and proclaim, The Dog Days Are Over. I dare you not to be healed, just a little:    

PUPPY LOVE

They’ve been called angels who’ve come down to Earth to help us, best friends, seeing eyes, family members—even a reason to live. For those who have pets the love and companionship they supply is something few can deny.  

Interacting with, petting, and caring for animals has been shown to release oxytocin in the bloodstream, the feel good hormone.  Pets have been said to absorb and disperse negativity in a person's environment.  Can anyone argue that they haven’t felt better after hugging their dog or cat?  A friend who got a dog right after a terrible break up said, “Its weird.  I’m trying to be sad about losing the relationship but this dog is so happy I can’t feel sorry for myself.” 

Animals are being used more often as agents of emotional and psychological healing.  It’s not just that they can be good at cuddling— they are good at helping us heal our minds.  Today a “support animal” is common.  Animals are registered to go with those suffering from trauma into public spaces to provide an “attachment object”—a being we are attached to that provides a sense of safety and security. 

By now most of us have seen the plethora of Youtube videos made by military personnel who bonded with a dog in war torn areas. The relationship with the dogs help soldiers cope with the horrors of war. Many of these bonds are so strong that soldiers find ways to bring their dogs back to the states.  Dogs are also being used to treat military veterans for PTSD, panic attacks, depression, and loneliness after wars.  As one troubled solider said after getting a therapy dog, "I wouldn't be here without my dog."  

Dogs and cats are the obviously the most popular candidates, but many animals can provide this sense of well-being to their owners.  One friend I have says that reptiles are his passion.  “I forget all my problems when I’m with them.”  He has snakes, lizards and other reptiles in his home.   He goes out to the desert regularly to find his scaly friends under rocks and in hidden nooks.

I even had a roommate who fawned over his pet goldfish, “Pat.”  (Try to stay with me here).  Pat would come to the side of the tank and stare at my roommate when he got home.  It was, well, a little weird.  The day Pat died I was taken aback.  I thought my roommate had always sort of faked his loving attachment to the tiny fish as a kind of joke.  It wasn’t.  He was visibly shaken by the loss. 

In twelve step recovery the recommendation for healing relationship issues is to first get a plant.  If the plant doesn’t die the addict can get a pet.  If they can handle having a pet, they can then consider dating. 

Equine Assisted Psychotherapy is a form of therapy utilizing horses.  “Therapeutic Riding” is used to mentally and physically stimulate disabled persons and help them improve their lives through increased balance and coordination, raising self-confidence, and a greater feeling of freedom and independence.  

Using dogs in clinical settings has been shown to reduce stress, increase rapport, help clients  become more cognizant of emotional reactions, and support resiliency in individual and group sessions. Counselors who specialize in working with children or individuals with disabilities find that dogs can be used in building rapport, working on specific goals, physical skills, and social interactions.  People who feel ostracized due to sexual preferences, religious or ethnic prejudices, etc., often find dogs to be a form of love, attention, and acceptance that is not widely available to them.

The elderly are often subject to isolation, depression, anxiety, and loss of purpose in our culture.  Dogs and cats brought into nursing homes have been shown to lower blood pressure, alleviate depression and anxiety, increase socialization, and give elderly people a sense of meaning in caring for the animals.  Kittens in need of care have been brought into the Catalina Springs Memory Care facility for elderly people with dementia. Caring for the kittens has helped patients improve their memory, uplift their mood, and give them a sense of purpose.  One man, who rarely interacted or left his room, now feeds and cares for the kittens.  He then puts one under each arm and says, "Its time for a walk."  

Pets are also used in hospitals by trained personnel to combat fatigue, isolation, and depression.  Hospitals are now allowing a patient’s pet from home to visit as a way of increasing their morale. 

Author Eckhart Tolle says that when a pet looks at you it is not thinking.  It is completely accepting. This acceptance allows you to access the deepest part of you—which is a place of love and joy normally covered over by the negative thinking of the mind. 

Some people  have closer relationships with their pets than with other humans.  I’ve heard people say that when their dog died they grieved more than when some family members had passed away.  The “queen of mean,” Leona Helmsley, famously left her beloved dog “Trouble” twelve million dollars.  Apparently the dog provided a form of love Miss Helmsley could only get from the four-legged friend. 

How is your animal love these days?  If you don’t want to own pets, there are ways to foster animals looking for a home, volunteer with pets, and make animals a part of your mental / emotional well being.

I recently saw a bumper sticker for a pet rescue center.  The sticker was of a paw.  On the paw it said, "Who Rescues Who?"

Below, some military personnel get a helping paw:  

THE TRIBAL ANTI-DEPRESSION RECIPE

Depression has become pandemic in the modern industrial age. We often experience the competition, income disparity, fast food laden, sedentary, screen addicted, and isolated lifestyle of our “advanced culture” as a real drag.  This lifestyle has put our brains into a “runaway stress response.”  Our brains can easily get over activated into a flight or attack response in every day life.  This stress can actually change the brain physically and make it prone to depression. 

Even with the incredible plethora of anti-depressant drugs, depression in the U.S. has escalated three hundred percent over recent years.  It is the leading mood disorder people seek treatment for and is the driver of over a million suicides each year.

Let’s pause for a second.  We are talking here about clinical depression; that is, chronic depression that leads to ongoing feelings of hopelessness, helplessness, and even suicidal ideation or behaviors.  We are not talking about the healthy aspect of depression—the kind that is part of grieving a death, or a depression that is experienced at the end of a significant relationship, depression over political moves that throw millions into financial or health care insecurity, or depression that many felt at the beginning of the Iraq war.  Depression around these kinds of things can be thought of as a sign of mental health, not mental illness.  Depression can be a way of letting go, or of feeling the pain of others. 

Some call neurotic, clinical depression a “disease of civilization.”  Recent research has found that many indigenous tribal cultures have almost non-existent depression.  Though they deal with many difficult life circumstances, they don’t suffer from this crippling mood disorder.  What’s up with that?

Researchers at the University of Kansas determined six major lifestyle differences from tribal people and those of us living in the modern world.  They termed this study TLC, or Therapeutic Life Change. 

Here they are:

Exercise: Tribes don’t exercise.  They live.  Their daily activities provide all the movement their body requires.  We are so sedentary in our modern lives we need to “exercise.”  Getting up and moving is something we have to think about and will ourselves to do— its not built into our lifestyle.  Even thirty minutes of brisk walking three times a week can make a change in brain chemistry where depression is concerned.  Exercise is medicine for your brain— increasing dopamine and serotonin, mental alertness, and circulation. 

Diet:  The brain is made up mostly of fats.  The fats in tribal diet include a balanced amount of Omega 3 and Omega 6 fats with a 1 to 1 ratio. Most of our fats in modern life are Omega 6 fats which are inflammatory to the brain.  An inflamed brain is a depressed brain. Often our modern diets are at a 17 to 1 ratio of Omega 6’s to Omega 3 fatty acids.  Cutting down on Omega 6’s and taking Omega 3 supplements can be a step toward balancing brain chemistry, decreasing inflammation, and improving your mood.

Social Connection:  Per the previous post (see The Roseto Lesson), connecting to others in real time is essential to mental health.  Modern culture can be extremely isolating with people living alone, spending an inordinate amount of time in the “steel coffin” commuting to work, looking at screens, etc.  Tribes live in continual community, connection, and intimacy with one another.  I once talked to a depressed woman who lived in an extraordinarily beautiful home.  She said, “When I moved away from my friends to this house I learned that you can be in the most beautiful place in the world and it means nothing without your friends.” 

Sunlight:  Seasonal depression is now well documented.  When the sun goes away more people get depressed.  Your brain needs sun exposure.  Tribal members spend most of their time outdoors.  We don’t.  With modern housing and office buildings we can spend a huge amount of time indoors.  Normal indoor light does not provide the brain’s need for light exposure.  Regular, daily sun exposure for 30 minutes has been shown to have a significant impact on elevating mood.  For those in cloudy climates a light box (available on Amazon) with a 10,000-lux light rating can be used as a substitute.

Sleep Hygiene:  When you are living outdoors as a tribe member your brain knows when the sun goes down and its time for bed.  Deep REM sleep is essential for your mood. With the advent of modern lighting and electronics, the modern brain does not know when the sun has gone down and its time to start excreting melatonin to prepare for sleep. To remedy this, turn down overhead lighting an hour before bed, get electronics out of the bedroom and shut down an hour before bed, keep the bed only for sleep and sex so your brain associates it with relaxation, and stay away from working night shifts.  Also, try to go to bed at the same time and get up at the same time each day. 

Anti-rumination skills:  Tribe members have little time to ruminate on negative thoughts.  There are things to do, plants to harvest, hunts to go on, water to bring, people to constantly interact with.  In modern society we are often left to alone to ruminate for hours on negative thoughts that spiral out of control.  Interrupting rumination is crucial to avoiding depression.  Writing in a diary can be a basic skill in moving past negative thoughts.  Tapping, Self-Compassion, and Inner child work can also be ways of breaking rumination (see previous posts: Tap Out Your Depression, Have Compassion for Yourself, and You Have a Child).  Shared activity, exercise, or “engaging solo activity” like art and music can be effective ways of breaking rumination.  If nothing else, change your scenery.  Getting into nature can easily break negative thinking. There is actually bacteria present in nature that when inhaled improves the brain’s ability to produce dopamine. 

For more on Therapeutic Lifestyle Change, visit

http://tlc.ku.edu

And check out this TED talk on TLC :

THE ROSETO LESSON: YOU BELONG

Life is a team sport.  We need to belong.  We’re hardwired to be creatures of community.  In modern society isolation is one of the leading causes of mental illness—especially depression and anxiety.  Whether its relationship issues, addictions, depression, anxiety, or any other challenge, most people I treat come to me with some version of the same complaint—“I’m lonely.”  How did we get so isolated in a country of 319 million and counting?  There are a lot of factors. 

As noted in the last post, our culture is big on “rugged individualism” and the idea that we get respect by “going it alone,” “clawing to the top,” “being our own person,” etc.  This sets us up for a lot of fear of each other.  Others are often seen more as competition than as fellow travellers we can rely on in good times and bad times.  

Today, the most famous community group, the family, is often lacking in its ability to offer the kind of deep love, connection, and support members need.  Too often, the family can be just plain toxic. 

Group therapy is a powerful form of reparative therapy.  The group acts as a “family of choice.”  The group replicates the family dynamic to the unconscious, offering an opportunity to repeat the family experience in a healthy, reparative way.  Members learn that they are fully accepted for who they are.  They are supported, encouraged, and loved into a new way of being that starts with a sense of deep acceptance of themselves and connectedness to the other group members.  Members get from the group what their own family was unable to provide.  This can be crucial in their ability to form the kind of life they want.  Without acceptance from a group, many of us feel extreme stress and are even emotionally disabled by an experience of ongoing, self-imposed isolation.

I sometimes get a call from people who have left group therapy asking,  “Can I come back to group?”  Why?  Because good groups can be hard to find. We need the connection groups offer. Community is rarely right out the front door anymore. We have to go looking for it.

The Internet has created more opportunity for connection and more opportunity for isolation.  You can find many places to connect with others on the web.  You can also get into a deluded state of believing that Facebook, Instagram, dating apps, porn, etc., are meeting your social / intimacy needs. They do not.  We need face-to-face communication, intimacy, and love from others to meet the psyche’s needs for human connection.  We need this contact with others who are truly able to communicate, to see us, and to be there for us.

Psychology has come to rely on groups for many healing modalities— the most famous being the twelve-step community of which millions attend every day.  There are incest survivors groups, Al- Anon groups, debtors groups, couples groups, etc. One of the biggest websites to come along in years is Meet Up (meetup.com), offering social groups of all kinds.  It might be said that healing mental illness has as much to do with healing the space between our ears as it does with healing the space between each other. 

Roseto Pennsylvania is an unusual community that was settled in 1912 by Italian immigrants.  The entire community was what author Malcolm Gladwell called Outliers (outside the range of normality).  Roseto was studied by Dr. Stephen Wolf and a sociologist by the name of Bruhn in the 1950’s when they were told almost no one in the town was treated for heart disease in an era when the illness was at epidemic proportions.  After an exhaustive study of nearly the entire population and their ancestors, the researchers were astonished.   There was a complete absence of heart conditions for men under 55. In addition, they found a fifty percent lower rate of heart attacks for men over 65 from the general population.  There were no addictions, no ulcers, practically non-existent crime, no one was on welfare, no suicide, and no peptic ulcers.

Wolf and Bruhn were confounded.  None of the prevailing wisdom on diet and exercise was at play here. The Rosetans cooked with lard, they smoked heavily, drank regularly, and many had obesity.  The study concluded there was nothing special about the air, water, land, genetics, or exercise routines of the people.  Wolf and Bruhn found that the remarkable health of the Roesetans was attributed to how the people lived together:  They built close houses, extended families lived together, they went to mass together, competed in wine making, had deep respect for elders, visited each other on the streets, were egalitarian in their treatment of each other, and knew about each other’s families.  The health and happiness of the community was linked to the benefits of people talking to each other on the streets and living in community.  

From Outliers:   "I remember going to Roseto for the first time, and you'd see three generational family meals, all the bakeries, the people walking up and down the street, sitting on their porches talking to each other, the blouse mills where the women worked during the day, while the men worked in the slate quarries," Bruhn said. "It was magical." 

The study convinced medical professionals to look beyond the habits of what individuals did in isolation and into how they related to friends, family, and community as a determiner of health and overall well being.

What groups do you belong to?  Do you feel lonely, isolated, or disconnected from others?  Maybe its time to stop medicating, surfing the Internet, or trying to figure it out on your own.  It could be time to step outside, find your group, and join the team.   

Check out, The Roseto Effect:

THE "F" WORD

“The most important decision we make is whether we believe we live in a friendly or hostile universe.”      

- Albert Einstein

Forgiveness is a dirty word for some of us.  It brings up a lot of messy, conflicting feelings.  Yet forgiveness is essential to mental health—and to access our Authentic self.  Without forgiveness we can live almost entirely in what is commonly called the Victim or Shadow self.   How to get to forgiveness consistently is a personal journey some people never fully take. 

When we are traumatized, abused, abandoned, betrayed, or otherwise hurt, forgiveness is a hard thing to stomach.  Right off the bat most of us are probably not ready to forgive.  That’s honest; we don’t want to push the river here.  We are not trying to “throw pink paint” on our harm and pretty it up, fake it, or pretend it wasn’t that bad.  We probably need to talk about our hurt, pain, and sadness to someone who can validate us by saying, “That was terrible.  I can understand why you would feel hurt, angry, sad, etc.  Tell me more.” We may need to cry, beat the ground, and scream before we are ready for the “F” word.  

The main reason to forgive is to help yourself.   We forgive because we want to unhook ourselves from the past, to let go of pain, and to approach the present with an open heart.  Without forgiveness we can live in eternal resentment, bitterness, and defensiveness.  In fact, we can live our entire lives in a kind of haze of resentment, seeing everything and everyone through the distorted lens of past betrayals. 

For instance, one relationship many people have a hard time forgiving is with their parents.  Parents are usually ill equipped to raise kids.  There is no manual, few if any classes, and it’s about the hardest thing anyone can do.  Parents are gonna make mistakes—usually some big ones.  In Creating Love, author John Bradshaw says, “All families are dysfunctional.”  We aren’t supposed to come from perfect parents or perfect families because they don’t exist.  Psychology professionals long ago agreed that parents need to be “good enough” to succeed as parents, not flawless.  They need to provide a consistent level of safety, security, and love.  They need to give proper nutrition, shelter, and medical attention.  Still, they are gonna make mistakes.

Bradshaw also says that until we deal with the pain of the mistakes our parents made, we will approach each relationship “carrying them on our backs.”  He says others are not only going to have a relationship with us, but with the mother and father we are still carrying around due to our unresolved resentments.  That is, you will see another person as your mother, or as your father.  Until you have forgiven your parents you won’t see anyone completely clearly. 

Forgiving parents can take time.  We need our painful stories to be heard and validated.  We need to feel understood and empathized with.  We then need to remember that our parents had childhoods too.  This can be particularly hard to recognize in that we only experience them as adults.  We may want to find out about our parent’s childhood, understand what they are still carrying, and develop compassion for their suffering.  In this way forgiveness can begin to open up, help us release the past, see our parents as human, and see the person in front of us without the fog of our past hurts. 

I was once walking down the street with a friend in his seventies.  He had many repeated relationship problems and had been in therapy most of his adult life.  Out of the blue he said, “You know, my therapist and I dug into another thing my mother did that messed me up.  Isn’t it amazing how deep this stuff is?”  A little stunned I said, “Don’t you think its time to forgive her? You’re not gonna live forever you know.”  He didn’t like my answer. 

Author Caroline Myss goes a step further.   Myss says that with every negative situation that we carry unresolved anger or resentment about, we send a “unit of energy” to that situation and “keep it alive.”  Myss says it is like a strand of energy extending from your current energy system back into past disturbances.    By the time we reach forty we can have a huge investment of our life “energy strands” feeding our unresolved traumas from the past.  We experience this as:  bitterness, resentment, trust issues, depression, irrational fear, free-floating anxiety, hopelessness, etc.   Myss believes that the stress of keeping past issues alive can become so depleting we can even get sick from it. She advocates that forgiveness is the main recipe for releasing these “strands of energy” locked in the past. 

Its important to note that forgiveness doesn't lower our IQ.  It doesn't mean we invite a perpetrator back into our life.  We don't give more money to the guy who stole from us.  We have forgiveness with boundaries.  Marianne Williamson, author of A Return To Love, tells about how her agent stole all the royalties to the bestselling book.  She says her attitude was, "I forgive you.  I'll see you in court."  

So what is it about forgiveness that is so unappealing? Usually it is about the way our internal Victim defines forgiveness.  Remember the Victim sub personality is invested in keeping us Victims.  It feeds on stories of victimization. The Victim is like a dog with a story bone, continually gnawing at it, trying to get more juice.  “You don’t understand, my dad was never there for me.”  “You would know why I’m so angry if you had my mother.”  “You don’t know how hard my childhood was.”  “I come from a lot of trauma.” 

Forgiveness is very threatening to this Victim sub personality.  It spells death to the Victim. The Victim will tell us things like, “They don’t deserve forgiveness.”  “You are letting them off the hook!”  “You are condoning bad behavior.”  “You’re being a doormat if you forgive them, inviting them to abuse you again.”  “You need to keep hating them to stay safe.” 

This Victim mentality we keep feeding with resentments is hyper-vigilant.  It over personalizes small conflicts.  It convinces us to be excessively reactive, judges others harshly, and stays walled off.  It is paranoid. Forgiveness unravels the inner Victim, releases the past, and allows us to live in the fully empowered present.  

We can't forgive others from a place of superiority.  This might be thought of as "forgiveness to destroy" or demean another.  "You're so creepy.  I'm so much more advanced than you. I forgive you for being so messed up."  This will only backfire as an inability to experience the true gifts of forgiveness and stay locked in the Victim.  We need to forgive from a place of equanimity and compassion--recognizing the other's humanity and struggles as similar to our own.  A fellow traveler making mistakes on a difficult path. 

The one we usually have the hardest time forgiving is ourselves.  When we make mistakes this Victim sub personality can be ruthless—condemning our cowardice, irresponsibility, or lack of effort.  In this way, it is feeding on our mistakes to keep itself alive. It will tell us if we live in enough guilt and fear we will not make the same mistakes.  Actually, the opposite is true.  This guilt can get so blinding that it creates confusion that leads to more mistakes.  The Victim does not let us see the irrational thinking behind this self-sabotaging cycle. It is actually getting what it wants, more Victim food.  It will continually condemn us as a way of strengthening itself.

Forgiving ourselves needs to be intentional.  For some it can be done with inner child work (See the You Have a Child post) or Self Compassion (See the Have Compassion for Yourself post). Forgiveness is a daily activity, not a one and done.  You may have situations, people, or mistakes to forgive most days.  The Victim can also double back and try and convince us to pick up old resentments long forgiven.  For some people forgiveness is also a spiritual practice— asking their higher power to help them forgive something they find unforgivable.  

Big players in our lives are obviously needing forgiveness (parents, lovers, close friends, ourselves) but we often need to be careful about building up small resentments:  traffic incidents, political figures, neighbors, etc.   We are always leaning toward forgiveness or resentment when conflict occurs.  The more we lean into resentment the more we lean into bitterness, angst, and isolation.  The more we lean into forgiveness the more we experience peace, understanding, and love. 

Remember, we have two aspects to our thinking vying for food, the Victim and the Authentic self.  Which do you really want to feed?  Do you want to live in a friendly or hostile universe?

Enjoy the video below on The Gift of Forgiveness: 

THE WAR OF ART

“The marine corps teaches you how to be miserable. This is invaluable for an artist. Marines love to be miserable. Marines derive a perverse satisfaction in having colder chow, crappier equipment, and higher casualty rates than any outfit of dogfaces, swabjockies, or flyboys, all of whom they despise. Why? Because those candyasses don't know how to be miserable.

The artist committing himself to his calling has to be miserable. The artist committing himself to his calling has volunteered for hell, whether he knows it or not, he will be dining for the duration on a diet of isolation, rejection, self-doubt, despair, ridicule, contempt, and humiliation. The artist must be like that marine: he has to know how to be miserable. He has to love being miserable. He has to take pride in being more miserable than any soldier, or swabbie, or desk jockey, because this is war, baby, and war is hell.”

-       Steven Pressfield , The War of Art

 

Pressfield is both referring to the classic artist dilemma, and to everyone in the world in this quote.  We all have what might be considered our “art” or mission work that we are responsible for.  We have something to do besides pay the bills.  We might be an actor, writer, painter— but our art could also be gardening, being an entrepreneur, doctor, or computer geek.  Our art or mission work is that thing we do that Joseph Campbell called “following your bliss.”   In Positive Psychology Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi called this “flow.” Flow or bliss is that activity that once engaged in brings us meaning. We lose track of time. We are, “in the flow of life”.  We feel good. 

Sounds great right? Not so fast.  That “art” that creates flow or bliss also usually comes with what Pressfield calls “resistance.”   In fact, the greater the bliss our art holds for us, the more resistance is often at play.  Resistance is that voice in our head that keeps us from doing our art. The voice that neurotically tells us we’ll never be successful at our art, that it will suck, that it’s too much trouble, just give up.  But here’s the thing, when we don’t do our art because of that neurotic voice, we become even more neurotic—depressed, anxious, and searching for “meaning.”  This lack of meaning or mission can get so dark that we sink into depression, addictions, aimlessness, fear, and even start lacking the will to live.  Resistance is not a minor hindrance, it is a life killer according to Pressfield.

When we resist our art we are usually watching TV, surfing the Internet, over eating, over drinking, entertaining ourselves, getting massages, vacationing, or just plain wasting time.  Its not that these things don’t have their place, its that they kill our spirits slowly by occupying the time our art needs.  We end up complacent, envying others who focus on their “art”, justifying our avoidance, and generally complaining about life. 

When Pressfield talks about thinking like a marine, he’s referring to the mental toughness it takes to break through resistance, do what we love, and not be defeated by “resistance.” 

This mental toughness can take different forms.  My friend Alan started his acting career sleeping in the back of theatres.  A writer I know works four hours every morning in a local hotel café.  My entrepreneur father said weekends “got in the way” of his work. Edison tried a thousand times before the light bulb was born. 

How do you work through resistance?  The first remedy Pressfield promotes is simply recognizing that this thing called resistance is actively engaged in blocking your efforts to create art every time you go to do it.  Resistance is a thing in the universe, like water or grass or sexuality.   You will have to engage resistance each day and not turn away from it.  We are not trying to make it disappear, figure a way around it, or take a pill.  We are, like the marine, up for the challenge to be miserable until we succeed.  Resistance will give way if we engage it. It is an imposter, pretending to be a monster wizard but ending up being a little old man behind the curtain.  Once it is overcome flow and bliss have a chance and our mission is under way.

Pressfield recommends routine, structure, and self-discipline. He says we need a “lunch pail and hard hat” attitude toward our art.  It can’t be something we do when we “feel like it”, when the “muse strikes", or when the “stars align.”  This he says is an amateur’s approach to their art.  We have to treat it like a job.  We don’t get up and decide every day if we’ll show up at the office.  We can’t decide each day whether we’ll do our art either. 

When I work with people I always pay attention to whether they have this “art” or “mission work” in their life.  If they don’t have it, we find it. While I support working through their resistance and doing their art, it is ultimately their art, their war, and their life.  No one, including me, can force anyone to do their art.  What is the art that feeds your flow and bliss? What are you here to give the world?  How are you doing with your resistance?  Are you in the trenches or have you gone AWOL? 

Below Pressfield talks with Joe Polish on The Genius Network podcast:

You Gotta Jump & Your Big But

Once there lived a village of creatures along the bottom of a great crystal river. The current of the river swept silently over them all - young and old, rich and poor, good and evil, the current going its own way, knowing only its own crystal self.

Each creature in its own manner clung tightly to the twigs and rocks at the river bottom, for clinging was their way of life, and resisting the current was what each had learned from birth.

But one creature said at last, 'I am tired of clinging. Though I cannot see it with my eyes, I trust that the current knows where it is going. I shall let go, and let it take me where it will. Clinging, I shall die of boredom.'

The other creatures laughed and said, 'Fool! Let go, and that current you worship will throw you tumbled and smashed across the rocks, and you shall die quicker than boredom!'

But the one heeded them not, and taking a breath did let go, and at once was tumbled and smashed by the current across the rocks.

Yet in time, as the creature refused to cling again, the current lifted him free from the bottom, and he was bruised and hurt no more.

And the creatures downstream, to whom he was a stranger, cried, 'See a miracle! A creature like ourselves, yet he flies! See the Messiah, come to save us all!'

And the one carried in the current said, 'I am no more Messiah than you. The river delights to lift us free, if only we dare let go. Our true work is this voyage, this adventure.'

But they cried the more, 'Saviour!' all the while clinging to the rocks, and when they looked again he was gone, and they were left alone making legends of a Saviour.

                   - Richard Bach, from "Illusions"

Most of us have a lot of big buts in our life about why we cling to the known.  “But what if I lose the money?”  “But what if she says no?”  “But what if I get hurt?”  “But what if it doesn’t work out?” “But what if I fail?”  In guarding our Big But story, we cling to the known, living what often amounts to a quiet life of desperation—clinging to the known— stagnated, fearful, and “safe”.  

There’s an understanding in psychology that when people come into therapy they always come because they want change.  They then fight the change they came to get help for. They cling to the known.  We are all in a sense addicts.  We cling to our over eating, our passivity, our rage, our laziness, our alcohol, even our depression and anxiety.   Why we cling to these things can be deeply unconscious.  My over eating I cling to is creating fat that protects me from being sexually abused again. My laziness protects me from risking, failing, and proving to myself that I really am no good.  The stories around my anxiety keep me from leaving the house and being hurt by others.  My depression keeps me dependent on others to take care of me -- making me feel cared for.  What will I do without my food, my laziness, my depression, my anxiety?  I will have to change, risk, let go of the past and venture into the unknown.  For many of us the risk of doing work that would let go of our past feels too scary.  We cling to the painful known instead of risking the pain associated with the unknown.  As Carl Jung said, “All neurosis is a result of the lack of legitimate suffering.”  We would often rather suffer the pain of addiction, which is neurotic, circular, and life threatening than risk  the life giving pain of doing our recovery work.

We can even cling to the safe, painful way of living while seeing others who have risked the pain of change as “gifted”, from a “privileged family”, exceptionally good looking, a “sports god”, a musical “genius”, or otherwise “special”.  These stories give us excuses to stay clinging to the known.  Since these people are so innately “special” we don’t have to risk the pain of going for our own greatness.  When the actual stories of these “special” people’s lives comes to light what is discovered time and again is some natural talent (which we all have for something in life) but then tremendous work ethic and risk taking that excels them above the fray.  Magic Johnson got up before school to practice basketball and then went back at it until late into the night after his last class.  Einstein worked out the theory of relativity while working as a patent clerk and continued to work until his dying day.  Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and used to sleep under his desk while building Microsoft.  Marianne Williamson began her Course In Miracles lectures in her apartment.  Millions of addicts have left their addictions behind by risking the work of recovery.  John Bradshaw came to his career as a best selling author in the field of psychology when after being hospitalized again for alcoholism, he stood before his doctors and uttered the prophetic words,  “I’ll do anything to get better.”

Do you have Big Buts running your life?  What are you ready to let go?  What stories, habits, addictions, excuses have run their course so thoroughly that you are willing say, “I’ll do anything to change.”  

As Elizabeth Gilbert, author of Eat Pray Love is quoted, “I’ve never seen any life transformation that didn’t begin with the person in question finally getting tired of their own bullshit.”

Below Steve Harvey explains it all for you. 

You Gotta Jump!  

YOKE YOURSELF

Yoga is everywhere these days.  When yoga came to the west it became more of a health fad than what it was developed for—a consciousness raising practice.  The word yoga means yoke. The practice of yoga was developed to “yoke” you to your higher consciousness.

To feel good we have to move our bodies. The sedentary lifestyle many of us experience will easily lead to depression, lethargy, and anxiety.  I always screen people for how much they exercise / move if they are depressed or anxious.  The cure could include yoga (or any other exercise).  Today there is a multitude of yoga disciplines to choose from: Hatha, Bikram, Kundalini, Kriya, Iyengar, Ashtanga, Kirpalu, Anusara, and Jivamukti. 

Yoga was designed to balance the chakras, raise the kundalini, and elevate our consciousness.  The seven chakras in the body are energy systems that correspond to differing levels of consciousness.  The chakras run along the spine and up through the top of the skull.  The kundalini is an energy that sits like a “coiled serpent” at the base of the spine.  For most of us this energy rarely raises past the first three chakras.  The goal of yoga is to raise it, and keep it raised, through all seven.  Saints and great humanitarian leaders are people who demonstrate consciousness from a place of fully balanced chakras and awakened, raised kundalini energy (Mandela, Mother Theresa, MLK, Paramahansa Yogananda, Christ, Buddha, religious figures of all kinds).  When this occurs the emotional and psychological systems are said to be in full alignment, balance, and capacity.  We also feel good. 

The first chakra or “root” chakra is at the base of the spine.  It corresponds to survival instincts and being grounded in life.  If the root chakra is out of balance we may have ongoing fear surrounding basic survival needs with money and food. We could develop addictions, phobias, obsessions, or just feeling ungrounded.   The root chakra has the color red. Eating root vegetables can aid in balancing this chakra.  Other healing foods are: apples, beets, cayenne peppers, tobacco, meat, eggs.  Also, just stomp your bare feet on the ground.  (indigenous tribes did a lot of stomping during full moons, which can be very un-grounding)

The second chakra is behind the navel area and is related to the sexual instincts, creativity, and the emotions.  This chakra tends to be out of balance in the west due to the rampant use of pornography, casual sexuality, and lack of creativity in the work place.  Imbalances result in emotional problems, compulsivity, dependency issues, creative blocks, and sexual guilt.  When the second chakra is balanced the results are pleasure, abundance, sense of well-being, and creative fulfillment.  The color is orange. Healing foods include oranges, carrots, melon and nuts. 

The third chakra is at the solar plexus and is related to self-worth, power, ability to achieve, sensitivity, and ambition.  When balanced this chakra harnesses our personal power, direction, and authority in life.  Blockages can result in frustration, anger, lack of direction, extreme anxiety, sense of victimization, sugar addictions, insomnia, and excessive fear.  Color is yellow.  Healing foods: corn, yellow lentils, yellow curry, whole grains, and chamomile or peppermint tea. 

Let’s pause here.  From a yogic perspective, the world is locked in the unbalanced, lower three, animalistic chakras.  The main concerns are survival, sex, and power (survival of the fittest in the animal kingdom).  For instance, on a planet with plenty for everyone millions are left without basic survival needs while others hoard millions and billions of dollars beyond what they could possibly need.  Sex is often seen more as a way to medicate anxiety, express anger, or as something to be bought.  Power is regularly exercised to keep most of society in a slave like condition.  Until these three are balanced in our lives it is rare if ever that we move into the fourth charkra— the first fully human center of the conscious human being from a yogic perspective.  

The fourth chakra is at the level of the heart, center of the chest.  The color is green.  It is the place of love, compassion, harmony, and peace.  Blockages result in inhumanity, lack of compassion, depression, reckless aggression, being detached, distrustful, hopeless.  When people say, “I feel so good in nature”, “I love you”, or “I love playing volleyball”, they usually mean their heart chakra is wide open.  Healing foods: leafy green vegetables, green tea.  Mother Theresa was famous for expressing this chakra for all of humanity. 

The fifth chakra is the throat chakra.  Balanced it is experienced as clear communication of feelings and truth to self and others, synthesis of ideas.  Unbalanced it can be experienced as problems communicating needs, attention deficit, isolation, dishonesty.  For balancing try: Tree fruits – apples, peaches, plums, etc., singing, and chanting can help clear the throat chakra.  Color is blue.

The sixth chakra is located at the center of the forehead.  This is the place of knowing, intuition, decision making, and wisdom.  Blockages result in lack of foresight, depression, mental rigidity, nightmares, and hallucinations. Color is indigo.  Healing foods:  chocolate, grapes, blueberries.

The seventh chakra is located at the top of the head.  It is concerned with understanding, bliss, and acceptance.  It is the “crown” chakra” connecting us to life mission, personal destiny, and spiritual reality.  Blockages result in feelings of isolation, disconnection from life, confusion, and depression.   Balancing “foods”:  clean air, sunshine. 

When we practice yoga we aid in aligning, balancing,  and awakening all seven chakras. We are then well positioned for deep meditation.  Yoga has captured an enormous following in the U.S.  You can practice at your local yoga center, gym, or follow it on line.    It is important that yoga is not a cure all.  Many people still need to seek help for addictions, relationship issues, etc. to fully take advantage of yoga’s benefits. 

Below Guru Singh teaches Kundalini Yoga in L.A.

LOVE IS THE DRUG

Psychoanalysis has taken some hard knocks over the years as a kind of mental masturbation.  The knocks aren’t all fair— and they’re not all without merit. At my office we have a few  cartoons about analysis in the staff room.  One is of a patient on the couch and an analyst sitting behind him—both are texting.  Another is of a man drowning and calling out to his dog on the riverbank, “Lassie, get help!”  Lassie is seen in the next frame lying on an analyst’s couch.  

I’ve done analysis. The main problem was the intermittent, unreliable experience of love in the therapy.  It was very “analytical”, intellectually heady, full of brilliant insights, heavy confrontation—and even fear.  The thing it lacked was its capacity to construct a safe, consistently loving process that could elicit a capacity for real change.  It was not without benefit.  I still use some tools from it.  It was just, well—circular. Patients of analysis often complain that,  “I figured out a lot of stuff, but nothing changed.”

Conversely I’ve worked with therapists who were brimming with love.  They held me in a safe space allowing me to look at and take responsibility for my “shadow” material—the icky stuff we all hold in unconscious places (yes, those are technical terms).  This holding capacity of the therapist was a central factor that facilitated my ability to take the responsibility I needed to make real change.   

The problem with some kinds of therapy is that they lack this container of love—the main force for healing.  Love in therapy can take many forms.  It can be the love in group therapy that members feel for each other, the love a patient learns to feel for their “inner child,” the compassion a patient learns in self-compassion exercises.  It can be the love felt between the patient and therapist that gives the patient the love they missed in early, crucial developmental stages.  It can be the love and acceptance a patient feels when they are at their most cynical, bitter, angry, victimized place.  It can be when someone is confronted with a firm, loving attitude of a therapist who can say, "That's enough.  You've been talking for three sessions about the problem with him.  I know you're stronger than this.  What do you want to do about it?"  

Carl Rodgers coined the theory of humanistic / client-centered therapy. The clinician is trained to hold the patient in a constant state of unconditional positive regard.  In this way the client, who may have extremely neurotic patterns from a history of rejection or abuse, learns to internalize the unconditional positive regard from the therapist and establish the same positive regard (read loving relationship) with themselves. 

There’s a strange paradox in schools of psychology. While love is obviously the primary healing force in all our lives, the word love is not explicitly used in many universities.  In fact, it was never a “subject matter” for any course in my degree program.  Its as if schools feel they won’t be taken seriously if they sound too “touchy feely” in their course materials. 

In my experience the main thing clients need to experience in therapy is love and forgiveness for whatever guilt they may be holding onto.  This is not a sugary, pink paint kind of love. It is a specific, powerful, and even fierce energy that breaks through long standing neurotic patterns.  

As much as love in therapy is about affirming a person's worth and the value of saying yes to their lives,  love can also about teaching someone the value of the word, "No." "No, I won't be abused anymore." "No, I'm not going to stay in this life sucking job."  "No, I'm not going to keep using heroin.  I'll do whatever it takes to stop."  "No, I won't keep blaming my parents for my life."  

Here is a list of common problems people have issues with in therapy and their possible treatment: 

You’re depressed. (i.e.  You’re constantly critical or angry with yourself).  Approach for change: Learn to accept and love all of your feelings—especially anger, learn self-compassion, and how to take better self-care.  Break isolation and open to intimacy with others. 

You’re in an addiction.  (i.e. You’re self-soothing with drugs, gambling, food, alcohol, or sex because you feel so bad about yourself).  Approach to change:  Learn to self-soothe and safely experience uncomfortable feelings.  Learn to rely on others to help love you where you are unable to love yourself.  This may take a group effort like twelve steps where you find others with the same issue who will love and accept you as you are. If in keeping with your beliefs, establish a loving “higher power” to rely on in. 

You’re in a toxic relationship.  Approach for change: Learn to lovingly re-parent your “inner child” and learn to communicate / mirror thoughts, feelings, and needs, hold boundaries.  If need be, learn to say no to continuing.  

You’re ridden with anxiety.  Approach for change:  Learn to lovingly accept unresolved trauma in your unconscious.  This could be done with Emotional Freedom Technique.  In this technique the first statement you would focus on is, “Even though I’m full of anxiety I deeply love and accept myself.”   

You hate you’re job and want to change.  Approach for change: Challenge self –limiting career beliefs, learn self-compassion for creative desires, recover buried passions, pursue career you love with goals that bring about change.   (Joseph Campbell’s recipe was, Follow Your Bliss).  Also, keep accountable in session to a therapist who supports and cares for your steps to change. 

The late Leo Buscaglia was a rare scholar in the study of Love at USC (his course was called Love 1A).  His lectures became so popular PBS picked him up for a special.

Check him out: 

GETTING PUNCHED IN THE FACE

“Everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face.”

-       Mike Tyson

I’m a boxer.  I had a plan one day on how I was going to take on the biggest guy in the gym.  I’d out maneuver him.  “Speed beats strength,” as they say in boxing.  I’d show him a few moves, tire him out, then come in for the kill.  My plan lasted about 2 minutes before he hit me so hard my future children felt it.  An hour later I was at the hospital hooked up to an EKG machine.  What happened?  I had a plan. 

A more difficult punch came when my mother was diagnosed with cancer and died at age 64.  What happened?  My family had all planned on her living into her 80’s or 90’s.  Life happened. 

Everyone gets punched from time to time in the midst of their life plans.  You come in to work to find a pink slip on your desk.  A man comes home to his wife packing to leave him.  A woman looks in the mirror at fifty and wonders where her life went.  A friend dies in a car accident.  

Some punches are more famous:  Bernie Madoff gets thrown in jail after decades of running a “successful” ponzi scheme.   Nelson Mandela gets put in jail for 27 years in the midst of leading his people against Apartheid.  Stephen Hawking gets diagnosed with MS in college. Victor Frankel gets incarcerated in a concentration camp.  FDR contracts polio and becomes paralyzed.  Harriet Tubman is born into slavery.  Abraham Lincoln suffers acute bouts of depression and the civil war.  Muhammad Ali gets his boxing license taken away for opposing the Vietnam War.  (he said it was his “greatest fight”) and later suffers Parkinson’s disease.  Brad and Angie get divorced mid Hollywood fairy tail—again.  After overcoming Jim Crow Laws and childhood poverty to become a prominent author and activist, Alice Walker gets dealt another blow when her daughter leaves their relationship.

Author Eckhart Tolle says that many people of faith lose their way when tragedy strikes.  He says their internal belief is, “That wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I had a deal with the universe, or with God.  Nothing bad was supposed to happen.” 

But what if we are supposed to get punched in the face by life on occasion. While few of us will be called on to face the challenges of Mandela, Tubman, or Frankel, all of us will be knocked off our feet from time to time.

Mandela, Tubman, FDR, and Frankel became archetypal figures—people we can all follow, because of their ability to get punched that hard by life and find their way through.  When asked how he coped with the years in prison Mandela said, “I wasn’t coping.  I was preparing to lead.”  When Frankel was in a concentration camp his great break through came when he realized the Nazi’s could only control his body, but not his mind.  He had full rein over whether he saw himself as a victim or as a hero.  He chose hero.  When Harriet Tubman made it to freedom she turned around and went back for others. FDR hid his handicap to go to be one of the most storied presidents in history. 

Many of us are not so fortunate.  Phillip Seymour Hoffman becomes a successful actor but dies of a heroin overdose.  Whitney Houston suffers a similar demise.  Nixon resigns in disgrace.  The Golden Gate Bridge is famous both for its beauty and its popularity as a place to commit suicide. Life can hit hard.

The tendency for many of us when faced with difficulty is to get triggered into a victim story—sometimes referred to as a  “Why me?” story.  The story tends to have its roots in comparison to others.  In A.A. they say we, “Compare and despair.” Why did I marry an alcoholic and not Tom?  Why did she get left a fortune and not me? How did my wife end up in jail?  Why did this happen to me and not the other guy?   

What happens when you get “punched in the face”?  Do you build a “why me?” story, or are you able to find your way through?  Are you able to admit your pain to others or do you hide in shame and secrecy?  Are you able to ask for the help needed? The point being that if we give up or give in to the punches we take, then we suffer the real tragedy:  an overdose, a life of quiet desperation, an untreated addiction, ongoing depression, isolation, extreme poverty, even suicide.  

That fact that life is difficult is not news.  I have grown a little suspicious of friends who always tell me they are doing “great”.  One friend who consistently touted his happy life was found to be an untreated alcoholic, another cheating on his spouse, a third suffering a debilitating depression in a toxic marriage, a gym buddy was secretly bulimic.  When we hide the bruises we are taking from life’s punches they can become untreated cancers in our psyche and in our lives. 

Maybe we can normalize our challenges, even expect them.  Maybe we can be taken less by surprise that we get punched.  Can we learn to ask for help?  Can we show others they are not alone in their struggles? 

Western culture has a decidedly hyper independent mentality.  We haven’t quite given up on the “rugged individualism” thing that has lead us into a deep psychological hole of isolation and mental illness. We are ranked third in the world for depression and 8th in the world for recreational and prescription drug abuse.  

You can get whatever help you need.  Be willing to look at the punches you are taking or have taken clearly.  Know that you are bigger than them.  You can get the help is available to meet the challenge. You are not gonna get knocked out.

Below Rocky Explains It All For You:  

A WOMAN IS MARCHING YOUR WAY

Patriarchy has had a long run on planet Earth.  The results are in and the verdict seems to be a pretty dismal one—environmental degradation, hoarding of resources, out of control competition, sexual violence, and warfare as decision making between nations.   

To be fair to my fellow men, we’ve also created great works of art, engineering, and modern technological advances.  Many men are becoming better parents, lovers, and nurturers.  Still, we seem to be at a breaking point with the diehard values of patriarchy and the arrangement of having one sex controlling world events.   Even now only one in five members of the U.S. congress is female.  

It could be argued that we are in dire need of the female influence to balance the shadow side of patriarchy.  That is, we need more receptivity, nurturing, and inclusivity.

Last weekend I attended the Woman’s March in L.A.  I knew it was going to be big, but I didn’t have any idea that it would be hundreds of thousands—and millions across the world.  The march celebrated women’s power, their need for respect, and a repudiation of what is largely regarded as a resurgence of a misogynistic political policy.

Marianne Williamson, author, political activist, and lecturer has repeatedly said that women could change the world if across the globe they stood up, marched, and said, “Not in my house.” (the “house” being planet earth)   “Not in my house will children starve.”  “Not in my house will people be homeless.”  “Not in my house will people go without their basic needs met.” “Not in my house will the environment be trashed.” 

Williamson says it has become too easy for women to blame the patriarchy of men for all our problems.  She asserts that the problem is as much men’s patriarchal dominance as it is women’s willingness to sit down and take it.  Well, for anyone who was at the march, it was obvious that women are standing up. 

Let’s talk about how this affects romantic relationships.  The patriarchal influence on the history of relationships across the world is that the male holds the purse strings, makes the decisions, and dictates the terms of the relationship. The woman may have a say, but there is usually an implicit understanding that he will determine the direction and outcome of major life events.  Even in LGBT relationships this dynamic is often true.  The partner who has more “yang,” or male energy, is often put in charge of the relationship decision making. 

I once spoke to an Imago Couples Therapist who treated a couple living in this old model of patriarchy.  When the therapist asked the man to mirror the woman (i.e. that he repeat back to her what he heard her say) he grew increasingly agitated, got up, and said, “I’m not mirroring her!” and abruptly left the session.  The woman had a few choices:  a choice to fall back into passivity, to insist they continue therapy to be together, to find other kinds of help, or to leave.  The decision is hers but for many women the time for choosing passivity is over.  

To be clear, psychological equality between men and women is not about men going “all soft.”  It is about men retaining their authentic masculine while making room for women to have equal power.

A basic goal of Imago Couples Therapy is to break out of the patriarchal model and have egalitarian relationships, where power is shared and both people are held in equal esteem.

Oprah Winfrey showed up at my church a few months ago with her partner Steadman Graham.  Winfrey says that if it wasn’t for doing Imago Couples Therapy, they wouldn’t still be together.   It was interesting to see his grace in what must be an everyday occurrence of allowing his partner the spotlight.  He seemed at ease in his masculinity and dignity.  They looked like equals. 

Oprah says all arguments are about couples asking three questions: Did you hear me?  Did you see me? Did what I say mean anything to you? 

In this week’s video she goes over a long history of dealing with patriarchy, raising consciousness, and coming to a place of empowerment and peace.

Take a look: 

BE A FOOL

The Fool archetype is an important part of our psyche that when embodied in a positive sense is both playful and wise.  When we access the Fool it can cut through the denseness of our critical minds.   

In Shakespearean plays The Fool in the kingdom is often portrayed as the only one that can tell The King the truth without getting his head cut off. That is, his light-hearted foolishness helps him access deep wisdom and disarm The King’s tyranny.

The positive Fool urges us to enjoy the process of life with freedom, humor, and joy. The Fool invites us all out to play—showing us how to turn our work, our relationships, and our boring tasks into fun. The goal of The Fool, perhaps the wisest goal of all—is just to enjoy life as it is, with all its paradoxes and dilemmas.

I was once at a men’s retreat and we were all given an envelope with an archetype to embody for the weekend.  It was exciting.  Would I be The King?  Maybe The Warrior? Probably I’d be The Sage.  Then again I could be The Lover—but probably I'd be The Sage. I am a therapist after all. When I unfolded my paper and found the word FOOL written on it my heart sank. Then I laughed.  This is just what The Fool is about, taking us off of our pedestals and finding the ground.  Breaking our seriousness or loftiness and knowing we are not better or worse than anyone.  I had a wonderful weekend embodying the trickster at different workshops—giving myself permission to be a Fool. 

In a negative or Shadow sense The Fool can be prone to laziness, gluttony, lack of self-control, lack of dignity, or inability to focus. This is where play becomes toxic.  Instead of finishing your dissertation you’re at another party getting high.  You need to submit that resume but you’re eating ice cream in front of the television comedy.  This is where “fun” becomes life sucking.  In the worst sense it could look like addictions—overindulging in alcohol, sex, food, or drugs, while life slips away.   This is not being the wise Fool, it is being  foolish.   This kind of Shadow Fool needs more of the Warrior energy to be harnessed so as to refocus yourself.  It may be time to stay home and finish the writing.  It could be time to enter a recovery program. The Shadow Fool can look harmless on the surface but be destroying our dreams quietly in the background. 

During the turmoil of the Bush administration Jon Stewart, host of The Daily Show, became one of our great Fools.  His wisdom and humor helped guide people through an oppressive economy and the tragedy of a new war.  Stewart later went on to interview Barak Obama multiple times in a modern day enactment of The Fool talking to The King. 

Charlie Chaplin was a famous Fool who satired the difficulties people faced in poverty with his character,  The Little Tramp.  He also skewered Adolf Hitler in his classic movie, The Great Dictator.  While for some this may seem extreme, the point of The Fool is to be able to help us look at the most dire aspects of life—and deal with them without being disabled by their enormity.  As comics like to say, "Comedy is tragedy plus time."

Other famous Fools include Richard Pryor, Ellen, Jim Carrey, Chris Rock, Robin Williams, Wanda Sykes, Stephen Colbert, Monty Python, and Whoopi Goldberg. Fools are not just humorous.  They bring wisdom to their humor that cuts through our pain and enlightens society. 

Where could you stand a little more Fool in your life?  Is there a project you are “staking your life on” that you can laugh about?  Is there a child you are resisting being really playful with? Do you have a guilty past mistake you can now joke about? If you have ever attended a twelve step recovery meeting you might think you walked into a stand up comedy show.  Addicts love to laugh at their tragic pasts.  Is Disney Land still on your to do list? Can your cubicle use a few cartoons or playful toys?  I know a well-published writer whose office is full of miniature toys and figurines.  Its fun just to walk into his work place.

Below one of our great fools, Jim Carrey, performs in a wise fool movie - Yes Man. 

Take a look:

YOU HAVE A CHILD

John Bradshaw became a pioneer in psychology after battling a long career as an out of control alcoholic.  Through his work in therapy and the twelve step program he learned the language of healing and rose to prominence in his ability to help others. Bradshaw eventually broke new ground in the mental health field when he coined the term, “inner child.”   He became a leading figure in family systems theory and addiction recovery.  His insight, humor, and intelligence lead to a PBS series and multiple books—the best known entitled, Homecoming, Reclaiming and Healing Your Inner Child.

The “inner child” refers to the part of our psyche that retains all of our childhood memories, fears, traumas, and successes.  The inner child then develops core beliefs about itself through these experiences and carries those core beliefs into our adult life.  

The “inner parent” is the part of the psyche that is internalized from how our parents raised us.  This becomes how we talk to ourselves  (i.e. how we parent our inner child).   Bradshaw asserts that most of us need to learn to “re-parent our inner child” to heal the unfinished business of childhood.

For instance, if you were repeatedly shamed with a comment such as, “What’s wrong with you?”, when you made mistakes as a child, you may then repeat that narrative as an adult in the way you talk to your “inner child.”  If you risk starting a business and it fails, your “inner parent” may say something like: “See, I knew this was bad idea. How stupid to think this could work.  What’s wrong with you?”  

Your “inner child” is then shamed again and the core beliefs about being bad or not good enough are reinforced. Recycling this inner story can easily lead to profound depression, anxiety, and even addictions.  In the above example you could also conclude that you should never try another business.  This is what happens when we live in what Bradshaw refers to as our “toxic shame” or “the shame that binds you.”  Toxic shame says, “I am bad.  I am a failure.  I’ll never be good enough.  What’s wrong with me?” 

Healthy shame in Bradshaw’s teaching is the kind of shame we have when we hurt others, take advantage of them, or act recklessly.  Healthy shame says things like, “I feel bad about how I treated him.  I need to apologize. I should change my behavior.  I need to make an amends.” 

Healthy shame informs how to handle a situation when I make a mistake.  Toxic shame tells me that who I am is wrong when I make a mistake .

So, “parenting your inner child” is essentially paying attention to how you talk to yourself. While most of us are aware we have an ongoing inner dialogue commenting on our experiences, hopes, regrets, and judgments, few people pay real attention to how critical and even abusive they can be to their “inner child”—a part of them that remains vulnerable, sensitive, and in need of encouragement. 

Is it possible you could start a business, have it fail, and respond internally with, “It’s ok, most first time businesses fail.  What you’re feeling is normal.  What did you learn?  I can try again.  I’m sure I’ll do better next time.  I’m proud of myself for trying.”  This would be an example of an internal “nurturing parent.” This kind of re-parenting helps to support and heal the “inner child.” We can encourage ourselves to keep going, strive for our dreams, and remain in a place of feeling accepted and loved.

If we come from difficult backgrounds it can be exceedingly difficult to retrain ourselves to be nurturing to the “inner child.”  Many of us need outside help to achieve this change. Bradshaw says that we sometimes need to find a “family of choice.”  That is, we need people who can help us heal, a kind of second try at the family system:  a support group that we have chosen to join, a therapist than can nurture us, a recovery group that addresses our particular issues such as codependence, drug addiction, adult children of alcoholics, etc.  This “family of choice” can help to do the re-parenting for us until we are able to do it for ourselves.

Below John Bradshaw talks on the “Inner Child.”  See the full series on YouTube.  Check it out:

DON'T GO IN THERE ALONE

“My mind is a dangerous neighborhood.  I try not to go in there alone.”

                                                                                        —Anne Lamott. 

Miss Lamott likely got this saying from the people of alcoholics anonymous, but it applies to everyone.  We all have a shadowy, “dangerous neighborhood” in our heads from time to time.  For some of us the neighborhood can be dangerous on a daily basis. Trying to deal with the mind alone can be like attempting to tame a rattlesnake—we’re probably gonna get bit up really bad and find out we’re terrible rattlesnake tamers.

Whether it’s a therapist, a life coach, a support group, a sponsor, or any other trusted guide, many of us need a supportive witness to the darkness of our minds to help us move into a healthier, self-aware place.

The unexamined mind can have all kinds of neurotic blind spots that it can’t see without this kind of help. As Einstein said, "No problem can be solved from the same level of consciousness that created it."   In A.A. the similar slogan is, "Your best thinking got you here. Take direction."  

In psychology programs therapists are required to be in therapy as part of their training.  No one enters the field of psychotherapy under any pretenses that they don’t have to do their own work.   

One diagnoses in psychology is the Narcissistic Personality Disorder.  This is the person who is really going it alone, believing they have it all figured out.  They are reckless in their lives, sometimes outwardly successful at achieving goals, and imminently destructive to others.  These people project their “shadow” onto others. 

The shadow is the part of ourselves we hide, repress, or deny.  The Narcissist looks on the world and proclaims, “They” are the addict, the lazy one, the menace, the tyrant—not me.  “They” need to get help, be punished, be locked up, be avoided, be vilified.  Narcissists are people who feel they are beyond the need for help. (a certain politician comes to mind—actually many of them do).  

The world is full of narcissism.  We need only turn on the daily news to see what happens when people try to go it alone—not so good. 

Its not that everyone has to do therapy.  No one has to do anything.  It’s just that without some deep examination and significant humility about our limitations, we spend a lot of time in the bad neighborhood— and often expose others to it through projecting our disowned shadows on them.

We all go unconscious.  We all have shadows to work out.  We are all prone to depression, anxiety, addictions, anger, and irrational fears.

Mother Theresa’s famous quote, “I can see the Hitler in myself”, speaks of a woman with true courage to see her own shadow, do deep transformational work, and show us the way into compassion for ourselves and the world. 

Below Debbie Ford explores the unexamined shadow and its effect on our lives in the movie, The Shadow Effect. 

Take a look: