Life is Short

Here I am, on the eve of one of the most contentious and monumental presidential elections in history, writing a blog post about what's important. This is something that my work as a therapist always tries to keep in focus...what are our values? How do they drive our decision making and behavior? Are we doing what brings us joy? If not, why not? Sometimes we have the power to make changes that allow us to live a life more aligned with what's important to us, and sometimes things feel wildly out of control (like, say, this presidential election?!). This blog post does a beautiful job at articulating the need we most likely all have in eliminating "bullshit" from our lives...

“If you ask yourself what you spend your time on that’s bullshit, you probably already know the answer. Unnecessary meetings, pointless disputes, bureaucracy, posturing, dealing with other people’s mistakes, traffic jams, addictive but unrewarding pastimes. There are two ways this kind of thing gets into your life: it’s either forced on you or it tricks you. To some extent you have to put up with the bullshit forced on you by circumstances. You need to make money, and making money consists mostly of errands. But while some amount of bullshit is inevitably forced on you, the bullshit that sneaks into your life by tricking you is no one’s fault but your own. And yet the bullshit you choose may be harder to eliminate than the bullshit that’s forced on you. Things that lure you into wasting your time on them have to be really good at tricking you. ”

— Paul Graham

But it's not only about eliminating bullshit, but also trying to nurture what is meaningful to us. For some people this comes naturally and easily and for others this is a process that needs to be learned through experience and, often, mistakes. Some values are instilled in us from our family and others we choose for ourselves, but all values are in place to guide our behavior. They're helpful short cuts for us to make decisions whether or not we're even aware of their influence. As Paul Graham says in his blog, "One heuristic for distinguishing stuff that matters is to ask yourself whether you'll care about it in the future. Fake stuff that matters usually has a sharp peak of seeming to matter. That's how it tricks you. The area under the curve is small, but its shape jabs into your consciousness like a pin. The things that matter aren't necessarily the ones people would call 'important.' Having coffee with a friend matters. You won't feel later like that was a waste of time." 

Eliminating bullshit and fostering what's truly important to us is and should be a life long task and one that takes tremendous attention. But you can start by asking yourself this: "What matters to me most?" 

The Capacity To Be Alone

The first time I ever really thought about how important it is to not only tolerate being alone (which, is to say tolerate yourself) but also enjoy it was after reading this famous article by DW Winnicott. I was immediately drawn to the idea (and to Winnicott's theories!) and rather quickly decided that to develop and nurture the tolerance to be alone is to cultivate a stable and secure source of wellbeing. 

So what exactly is the capacity to be alone? Winnicott originally coined the term when referring to the development of individuality that starts with the infant’s ability to be alone in the presence of the mother. It is the child’s ability to move from the sense of the mother’s compassionate, comforting and loving presence, to his/her ability to hold on to her presence, even when alone. This internalized sense of the comforting mother develops into the psychological capacity to regulate anxiety, self-soothe, and experience a true authentic self. In essence, this is the capacity to be alone.

To have not at all, or even poorly, developed this capacity could have potentially detrimental effects on our relationship to ourselves and to others. The following Osho quote speaks to this: 

“The capacity to be alone is the capacity to love. It may look paradoxical to you, but it’s not. It is an existential truth: only those people who are capable of being alone are capable of love, of sharing, of going into the deepest core of another person—without possessing the other, without becoming dependent on the other, without reducing the other to a thing, and without becoming addicted to the other. They allow the other absolute freedom, because they know that if the other leaves, they will be as happy as they are now. Their happiness cannot be taken by the other, because it is not given by the other.
”

— Osho

True intimacy (which many, if not most, adults struggle with) starts with a comfort in your own sense of self.  If you like yourself and feel comfortable, you will be able to relate in a real and genuine way with another person. True intimacy is possible when you have the “capacity to be alone” because it implies choice. You may want to be with someone but you don’t have to be with someone because you fear that being alone leaves you without stability or value. If you are truly OK with being alone, you don't have to cling to someone to avoid abandonment or avoid someone for fear of rejection. 

So it's worth considering: Are you OK with being alone? And, in this day and age of hyperconnectivity, are we ever truly alone? I think, for now, I'll leave that for a different post about the effects of social media on our sense of selves. Stay tuned! 

Acceptance.

Acceptance, true acceptance, is something many of us struggle to achieve. It doesn't help that we are constantly barraged with messages reinforcing that we should not  accept so many things...don't like the television show? Change the channel. Don't like your body? Go on a diet or get a cosmetic procedure. Don't like your boss? Quit your job! Don't get me wrong...sometimes change is just the thing we need and it can keep us nimble and flexible and, ironically, better able to accept challenges (after all, the only constant in life is change, right??).

However, the problem comes when, because we grow so used to changing the things we don't like (e.g., avoiding the real problem), we feel deeply and perpetually unsatisfied with what we ultimately cannot change. In human psychology the definition of acceptance is "a person's assent to the reality of a situation, recognizing a process or condition (often a negative or uncomfortable situation) without attempting to change it or protest it." Great! Sign me up! How do I accept negative and uncomfortable situations? Well, like most things, acceptance starts with practice and takes time to develop, but the following strategies can help you get a good start:

1) Adopt a "Yes, But" Attitude

This is actually something that comes up for so many of my clients while discussing acceptance. So often people say, "But I came to therapy to change!" and they find the mere suggestion to consider acceptance frustrating. Therapy is absolutely about change, but it is just as much about identifying and growing more comfortable with our limitations. By adopting a "yes, but"  (e.g. "Yes I am unhappy at work, but I just started this job a month ago and perhaps I should give it some more time) attitude, we can both accept where we currently are while also allowing for the possibility of change.

2) Talk About It

The better we understand our discomforts, anxieties and fears, the easier it is to accept them. Talking about these things normalizes them, and helps us feel more comfortable with them. 

3) Ask Questions & Create Meaning 

Some good questions to start with might be, "Why do I want to change this so badly?" "What is the worst case scenario if I have to deal with this for the rest of my life?" "Do I want to change this for me or for someone else?" "What do I imagine my life will be like if this changes? What will it be like if stays the same?" These questions can help you understand what lies underneath your urge to change, but they can also help you to identify a new meaning of yourself and the things you're uncomfortable with. 

4) Practice Self Care

Acceptance is hard. Getting caught up in a cycle of self abuse because we're not doing enough, changing fast enough or achieving goals successfully enough is far too easy. Be gentle on yourself when starting this practice and you may find that acceptance may even be easier than change! 

Want to feel better? Practice gratitude.

This is easier said than done, I know. It's hard to imagine feeling at your absolute worst and also finding someway to be grateful...but, trust me, it works and there is plenty of research to prove it! Among one of the best known researchers on the effects of gratitude is Dr. Martin Seligman, Director of the University of Pennsylvania Positive Psychology Center and Zellerbach Family Professor in the Penn Department of Psychology. Dr. Seligman is the founder of positive psychology which, unlike traditional psychology's goal of relieving human suffering, aims to actually improve the human condition. So what about gratitude? Well, as it turns out, practicing gratitude on a regular basis is one such way to improve the human condition. In his book, Flourish: A Visionary New Understanding of Happiness and Well-being, Seligman offers a simple practice called the "Gratitude Visit" that promises to enhance your well-being and lower your depression (to see the exercise click here). Another exercise from Dr. Seligman, and one that I often encourage my clients to try to implement in their lives on a regular basis, is the "What-Went-Well-Exercise." The first part of the exercise involves identifying what went well that day, a practice Dr. Seligman says most of us have difficulty doing:

"We think too much about what goes wrong and not enough about what goes right in our lives. Of course, sometimes it makes sense to analyze bad events so that we can learn from them and avoid them in the future. However, people tend to spend more time thinking about what is bad in life than is helpful. Worse, this focus on negative events sets us up for anxiety and depression. One way to keep this from happening is to get better at thinking about and savoring what went well."

Once you've identified something that's gone well (and even the tiniest of things counts!) the second part of the practice is, in my opinion, the most powerful. In the second part of the practice, you answer why that thing went well, which helps you see that you do, indeed, have agency in what happens to you and that you can make good things happen! This alone is a powerful antidote to depression. 

These exercises seem simple, but they are rooted in decades of rigorous research and highlight some of modern psychology's most important findings. So, if you have 5 minutes to spare at the end of the night (and we ALL can find 5 minutes) try incorporating a gratitude practice into your routine and increase your well being! 

Anxiety: Therapy Works

It is widely accepted that many of humanity's best and brightest minds also suffered with debilitating mental struggles from bipolar disorder to anxiety...Vincent Van Gogh, Abraham Lincoln,  Franklin D. Roosevelt, Virginia Woolf, Buzz Aldrin, Ludwig Von Beethoven...the list goes on. In this article, Charles Darwin's struggle with anxiety and the many failed attempts at treatment are discussed...including an attempt in 1865 by a certain Dr. John Chapman that involved having Darwin spend several hours each day encased in ice. Not surprisingly this treatment, and all of the other treatments he received, failed.  The one and only thing reported to have helped, was when Darwin stopped working and walked or rode in the Scottish Highlands or North Wales he found his health would be "restored." Unfortunately for Darwin, mental health treatment and the connection between physical and emotional health was little understood and rarely addressed. Had Darwin been alive today, he undoubtedly would have received a very different kind of treatment (therapy!) and very likely would have found some relief. There is plenty of rigorous research that demonstrates that therapy, particularly a form of psychotherapy known as "cognitive-behavioral therapy" (CBT) can be highly effective in treating anxiety disorders. It's clear that many people suffer from anxiety, including some of the most famous and influential people in history. If you suffer from anxiety, you may want to bypass packing your spine with ice for several hours a day and go for a walk or, better yet...find a therapist! 

Chronic Stress: It's the small stuff that gets you!

When talking about stress with patients, I often use an image a supervisor of mine taught me when I was in training. My supervisor described us all as rocks and described the daily, small-but-stressful events we all experience as tiny drops of acid on the rock. One drop of acid will do nothing to the rock but, over time, the persistent drops on the same place on that rock with eventually cause it to crack. So what can you? Stress is unavoidable, right? Right. Which is why stress and, according to this article from NPR, SMALL stressors in particular need to be dealt with before they literally kill you. In keeping with the rock and acid metaphor this means, if we can't avoid the acid,  then we need to move our rock around so it doesn't hit in precisely the same spot each time. I find that many people often don't know how to talk about stress and do not have any understanding of the best ways to deal with it. Obviously, therapy is a great way to get a deeper understanding of your own personal stress and coping mechanisms, but the article offers some very simple and effective solutions as well such as exercise, breathing, meditation and laying off the alcohol! 

Fixed vs. Growth: How to fine-tune the internal monologue that scores every aspect of our lives.

You are what you eat, right? Wrong. You are what you THINK! “If you imagine less, less will be what you undoubtedly deserve,” Debbie Millman counseled in one of the best commencement speeches ever given, urging: “Do what you love, and don’t stop until you get what you love. Work as hard as you can, imagine immensities…”

This might seem a little too simple and straightforward to be meaningful, however, in her new work Stanford Psychologist Carol Dweck proves otherwise. Dr. Dweck has looked at the power of our beliefs, both conscious and unconscious, and how changing even the simplest of them can have profound impact on nearly every aspect of our lives. One of the most basic beliefs we carry about ourselves, Dweck found in her research, has to do with how we view and inhabit what we consider to be our personality, which can be a mindset either "fixed" or "growth" oriented. A “fixed mindset” assumes that our character, intelligence, and creative ability are static givens which we can’t change in any meaningful way. A “growth mindset,” on the other hand, thrives on challenge and sees failure not as evidence of unintelligence but as a heartening springboard for growth and for stretching our existing abilities. From these two mindsets, which form very early on, comes much of who we are. Read this excellent article at brainpickings.org to learn more about why having a "growth mindset" is more beneficial and can help you become the person you want to be, and accomplish the things you value.