Less is More Sometimes (More or less anyway)

Often when we are struggling with relationships, with career issues, mood issues, we start to think that more would be better.   And sometimes it is.  We can sometimes have more.  And in fact in therapy having more is often a goal or a theme to explore.  But more of what is really the question.  Because we can't always have more of everything.  Some things, if we have more of them,  create more problems, more issues, more pain, more conflict.  Other things, though, we can have more of.  And these are most often the things that we should really be striving for.  Like more serenity, more inner peace, more humility, more satisfaction with our sense of self, our relationships, our jobs, our environment.

A friend of mine recently told me that her 12 step sponsor told her that her life seems to sometimes be a combination of Peter Pan and Eeyore.  Part "I don't want to grow up" and part "Poor me."  I asked her if she was offended by this observation.  And surprisingly she said not.  She told me that she thought her sponsor had a point.  That she has often approached life this way, wishing that she did not have to take care of herself, do her part in her relationships, consider other people's needs, points of view and  foibles.  And that she often does lapse into self pity, thinking that everyone else has it better, comparing her insides to other people's outsides (often with a lot of help from Facebook). 

We talked a lot about how those parts of her are not the only facts, not the only parts of her.  She is also funny and kind, generous and a great listener.  She is quite a good photographer and talented graphic artist.  Sometimes we and others can tend to focus only our (and other's) pathologies and not also account for the rest of our parts. 

Still, my friend felt helped by her sponsor's honesty and candid comments.  She felt that by accepting all the parts of her self, she could begin in real earnestness to have more.  Not necessarily more spouses, or lovers or hobbies, jobs or money- though we do sometimes need to assess whether a change in relationship or job or living environment may be the way to go-   but more peace, more insight, more joy, more attention to her spirit, and more ease and more relief.   And because less is more sometimes: less self pity, less self attack, less reliance on others for too many of her emotional needs.

And somehow we got to thinking that it's first things first sometimes.  It may be better to have a better internal life first rather than attempting to change our boss, spouse, kids.  When we have more inside, it's much easier to figure out if, when  and how we need to have more outside.

The Heart of the Matter

A friend of mine had a root canal last week.  She was in a good bit of pain, but the procedure went smoothly and now she is feeling much better.  We got to talking though, about how much she wished emotional pain could be like a tooth ache.  We could feel it hurting and then get numb and have the source of the pain pulled out by the roots.  Emotional surgery. And then afterwards, we get to feel much better pretty much right away. 

The ache becoming a distant memory.

But it doesn't seem to work that way with feelings.  At least not all the time, and not the heavy ones. And after we talked it up a bit, we thought maybe we would be short changing ourselves anyway if it were possible to just dig out the hurt and move on.  We would miss out on all the information the pain gives us about what we need, what's important to us and what it means to be mindful in our own hearts and minds and bodies.  And all the info we get about our ability to survive and thrive and grow.

I'm not saying we should stay in the pain all the time, certainly we need relief, but since we can't do a root canal on our emotions, we can give ourselves a chance to get to the heart of the matter.  It  is not always possible to know exactly what we are feeling, what hurts, when we are in a painful moment, or a crisis.  Sometimes we have to take a step back, pull apart the different pieces, examine them and figure out what feelings make up the bad feelings.  From there we can see what our part in things is, how to move forward, how to deal well and in ways that leave us feeling resilient and steady, instead of off kilter and frustrated.

I used to be able to use the image of a typewriter, but it only works if you remember using one and what would happen if you pressed down on all the keys together.  So if you do, it's this: They would jam, and then in order to start working again, you'd have to pull each key back one at a time.  So this is how I think of emotional pain sometimes, like a jam.  And we have take the time to pull each key, each feeling out and take a look, and then we can get to the heart of the matter and get moving again.

Why Me?

I know I've touched on this before.... but I think it's worth repeating. 

One of the most amazing and simple options (though definitely not easy) we have - especially when we are hurting, angry, frustrated, hopeless - is to ask questions.  To get interested and curious.

Questions are a good relationship tool, as well as a good trick for helping us to understand ourselves better.

Often, we ask all the right questions, but we ask them without really stopping to ask them for real.
For example, "Why me?"  "What's wrong with you?"  "What's the matter with me?"  "Why doesn't s/he pay better attention to me?"  "Why did this happen to me?"  "Why does this keep happening to me?"  "What do you want from me?"  "Why can't you just do what I need you to do?"

I could go on and on with examples.  But the point is this. Usually when we ask these questions of our partners or of ourselves, we ask with a tone of fury or attack.  Self attack or attack of our partners.  The same is true when others ask it of us.  And tone usually reflects lots of hot feelings that are important and need to get aired and sorted out. 

But it's sad in a way, because when we ask them with an attack tone, things get can get much worse. And when we stop there, and just ask the questions as if they are only expressions of our pain, we miss out on the best and most promising part.  These questions, when asked with gentleness, sincerity and openness and a willingness to really understand our underlying fears and motivations and defenses and needs, and those of our partners, lead to much better everything.  Better communication, better love, better grace all around.

Just the pause and the right kind of tone and question can give our partner and our own self a feeling of being heard, validated, listened to, joined, loved.  We don't have to agree; we just have to be willing to be curious before being explaining or arguing.  We have to be willing to pause long enough for the muck to get sorted through and more layers revealed. 

It's hard when we feel wronged or deprived.  And we don't really do it so naturally.  We have to practice.  To help ourselves to want to be open and curious about different levels of understanding our psyches and our partner's psyches.  To not be tied always to our worst beliefs about them or about ourselves.  But if we don't allow for a new way of approaching things, where else is there to go?

Building or Breaking

"It seems like you are offering me everything yet giving me nothing."  ~  anonymous....


But when I heard this sentiment, it resonated with me because it is the emotional experience of many of the men and women I work with who are in relationships that feel unsatisfying, difficult or frustrating.  It reflects the  sensation that comes along with feeling minimized, compartmentalized, or unappreciated.  And disconnected emotionally.

Many people experience this feeling in many of their relationships.  Others, only in their primary one.  Men will often tell me that they feel that their wife is capable of tuning into their partnership needs - for a well run home, good feelings, support, sex, food, companionship - but that they don't feel she shows up really, that she gets caught up in her own feelings and needs and does not deliver for him.  That while she takes care of the kids or the house in some ways, she does not really give him the idea that he is successful, useful and appreciated and that she wants to partner with him.

Women say the same thing, but in a different way.  That they believe their husbands could call more, talk more, pitch in more, care more, love more, pay attention better but that they don't really step up.  Somehow they think they are showing up by earning money (and they are), or pitching in now and then, or what seems like now and then only.  But it does feel like enough, and that they are focused more on their own needs for an uninterrupted work life, some guy time, or down time, not on her need for emotional connection.

The pain picks up when the focus becomes what we don't get, what we don't have and when the feelings of being unappreciated, over burdened and misunderstood get maximized and the feelings of what we do have, what we do get become minimized.

We can most always benefit by studying how our own histories in our own earlier lives have shaped our emotional receptors, and we can most always benefit from tuning into the idea that when we get further and further into the feeling of being offered everything but being given nothing that we can begin to break our relationships and our partner instead of building them.

When the feelings get too big, too hot, too painful, it's hard to refocus on how to build.  We forget that it's even possible.  That there are positives, and that most likely we do get, and sometimes more that we think we do, more than we feel it.  And that it is possible to have and feel more and better if we take a good serious look at how react to what we feel, and what we believe and why.

Is This the New Definition of Marriage?

Last May a favorite Aunt of mine passed away, just after her 60th wedding anniversary.  I had the opportunity to spend some time with her before she died.  I asked her what she thought the secret was to such a long and resilient marriage.   Of course many have answered this question in many different ways, (and for some New Year's comic relief, check this out).  But my Auntie told me that if she had to narrow it down to one or two things, it would be that she and her husband were never mean to each other even when they felt like being mean to each other, and that when they had a big disagreement (which they often did) they would get into the car and drive to the parking lot of the local library and talk until they came to some compromise.

It can't (and most often is not) be that simple.  I have been asking around a bit lately to learn what people believe is the new or current (if there is one) definition of what marriage is (not what it should be, or what you'd like it to be, though that certainly counts) but what does it seem to be these days.

One answer I got was this:  "Marriage today in America is two people who reside together without much or any sex, very little emotional connection and a lot of unexpressed or badly expressed frustrations and disappointments, who go through the motions because some part of them does not want to be totally alone, leave the kids, have to rework the finances or the living arrangements and cannot really fathom how something different would come to be.  At least after awhile that's what it becomes."

How sad is that, I was thinking.  And yet I know it to be true for a lot of folks, in varying degrees.  But I would like to think that we have not accepted that definition as a given.  I would like to think, and I do, that we can have something different, something enduring and meaningful and connective.  True and satisfying love and partnership.

We do not have to accept the above definition of what of marriage is.  And while I think that many folks have, perhaps, unrealistic expectations of marriage at times, I think we can have better inner lives, better marriages and some real syncranicity between the two.  We do have to keep tending to our emotional health, because if we don't, then we may very well be defining our inner lives poorly as well.

I'm not necessarily a New Year's Resolution kind of person, but it is a time for reflection and perhaps redefinition of our selves and I think, yet another opportunity to expand our choices and move forward.

Weary Travelers (more Hope Forward)

"When the frustration (pain) of doing nothing is worse than the frustration (pain) of doing something....that's when we are willing and readyto take a new step." ~ anonymous

So the year is winding down and I am thinking about all the pain and suffering that goes on in the world, and all the emotional pain and suffering that many folks live with in their own internal world,  and inside their homes.

I am thinking about how we get lulled into getting along however we can, just to get through a day and how we don't often believe that anything will really help or make a difference.  That we may as well suffer alone.  Why bother.

I am thinking too about President Obama's address to the community of Newtown on Sunday and how he noted the complexities of violence followed by that those complexities "can’t be an excuse for inaction.  Surely, we can do better than this." 

and then this: "Why are we here? What gives our life meaning? What gives our acts purpose? We know our time on this Earth is fleeting. We know that we will each have our share of pleasure and pain; that even after we chase after some earthly goal, whether it’s wealth or power or fame, or just simple comfort, we will, in some fashion, fall short of what we had hoped. We know that no matter how good our intentions, we will all stumble sometimes, in some way. We will make mistakes, we will experience hardships. And even when we’re trying to do the right thing, we know that much of our time will be spent groping through the darkness, so often unable to discern God’s heavenly plans."


It seems then, that even in the face of seemingly uncontrollable, unimaginable circumstances, that we still have to make our human effort.  There are choices, options and pathways and the only real failure is the failure to try.

So I am taking a leap here and saying that we can get so understandably caught up in the routine of daily life and we can get so caught up in the routine of our own circumstances that we forget that perhaps there really are things we can do, steps we can take, to change things. Both in our internal worlds, our homes and our larger communities.  That the smallest of steps is still a step.  That any and every step counts. That any effort in any of our worlds will most likely benefit all of our worlds.  That we do not have to see our way clear to a result in order to begin.

If we get stuck in the pain of hopelessness, even though hope can seem painful as well (lest we be disappointed and sent back into despair again), we will never have, at the very least, the knowledge that we were willing to try.

Self Centered Fear

"If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got."

Not a new one, but one worth repeating I think.  And maybe not always...life can be surprising sometimes. But I have been thinking again a bit about how our feelings, especially fear, get in the way of  trying a new approach or working better with a difficult person or responding differently in order to help things get better in a difficult relationship.

This theme comes up a lot in the therapy room of course.  And when we can take a gentle and deeper look at what we are doing and why (what we are really afraid of) new ideas often come to light.

The term "self-centered" often has negative connotations, in this case, it's meant to just to be descriptive.  Meaning this:  underneath anger, hurt and frustration is often the fear that we will not get what we need, or that we are in emotional or physical danger, that somehow our "self" needs protecting.  And it does.  So in order to protect ourselves we repeat certain reactions or ways of speaking, communicating or functioning that have protected us in the past, that are familiar, safe seeming and workable for us. 

It's not always apparent, either, at first glance what some of those things are even.  But when we take a closer look at our "self-centered" fears we often can see that there are other ways of protecting ourselves that bring us good results in our relationships.  And we can then understand that others are often operating out of fear as well.  When we can get to this, we often get farther than we ever imagined possible.