Category: identity

Five Ways Your Brain Is Tricking You Into Being Miserable

Published on by Scott Williams3 Comments

from cracked.com:

 

Brain scanning technology is quickly approachi...

 

Your brain contains more than 100 billion neurons that flawlessly work together to create consciousness and thought. It is an astonishing marvel of evolution and adaptation, and it is also a huge dick.

 

What do we mean by that? Well, everyone wants to be happy, but the biggest obstacle to that is the mushy thing inside your skull that you think with. Evolution has left your brain with all sorts of mechanisms that are heavily biased toward misery. We can’t guarantee that reading this article will help, for your brain is as crafty as it is sadistic. But at least you’ll understand it better.

 

#5. Your Brain Latches onto the Bad Stuff by Design

 

At some point in the last year you’ve spoken to a woman with supermodel looks who would not stop talking about how horrible it was that she had gained half a pound or had a faint pimple on her forehead. You realized that this was a person who somehow could look at her fashion-magazine face in the mirror and only see the pimple. It’s so annoying — why can’t she just focus on the positive?

 

But of course, we all do it to varying degrees — you might pass 5,000 cars on your morning commute, and 4,999 of them might be perfect, polite drivers. But then you pass that one guy in the SUV who literally stuck his buttocks out of his side window and took a flying shit on your hood. When you get to work, are you going to talk about the 4,999 good drivers or the flying hood shitter? You’re going to focus on the negative, because your brain is hardwired to devote more attention to the misery in life.

 

Researchers have found this in a laboratory setting: They can show participants pictures of angry and happy faces, and the participants will identify the angry faces much faster than the happy ones. How much faster, you ask? So fast, we answer, that the participants had no conscious recollection of ever seeing the faces. That’s right — your brain already identified the shit parts of your day before you even knew it. You have a sixth sense for misery.

 

And that was a great ability to have back when evolution was deciding which of us would reproduce and which would get eaten — we needed a brain tuned to spot threats. Giggling at the butterflies instead of running from the tiger puts you in the express lane through the tiger’s intestinal tract. We focus on the negative because it’s the negative stuff that gets us killed — there was no evolutionary advantage to stopping to smell the roses. But this has left us with a brain that not only devotes our attention to the bad stuff, but also makes us remember it a lot better. Think about the implications in your everyday life — you can wind up walking away from a pretty good job or relationship because you only remember the bad times.

 

If there’s a good side to it, the effect does seem to reverse as we get older, when nostalgia starts to set in and we focus more on the good memories. Unfortunately, for many of us the only effect of that seems to be that we can’t stop talking about how freaking great things were back in our day.

 

#4. Killing Negative Thoughts Only Makes Them Stronger

 

All right, you think, if negative thoughts are so powerful and make us so miserable, we’ll just force ourselves to stop focusing on them. After all, we’re conscious animals; we have control over our own brains. Now that we’re aware of the problem, we just won’t do it — we’ll look in the mirror and force ourselves to not think about the pimple.

 

Sure. First, let’s try a really simple brain exercise:

 

Imagine a white bear humping another bear. Try to get a really clear picture of them in your mind. All right, now stop thinking of the humping bears. Use all of your powers of concentration to eliminate all traces of them from your mind. You shouldn’t be seeing the white bears at all now, or their frantic thrusting, even when we repeat the words “humping white bears.”

 

Did it work? Hell, no! In fact, the more you tried to not think about bear sex, the more you thought about it. This, unfortunately, is the same thing that happens when you try to force yourself to not think about the pimple in the mirror: Suppressing negative thoughts actually makes them stronger. You read that right. Negative thoughts are like the Sand People: If you chase them away, they’ll come back in greater numbers.

 

It’s actually insane when you think about it — we’re constantly trying to banish bad thoughts from our mind, but the human brain simply doesn’t have a mechanism for doing it. After all, the only way to know for sure that you are not thinking about horny white bears is by monitoring your thoughts and “scanning” them for any traces of them. So the process basically goes like this:

 

“Am I thinking about humping white bears?”

 

“Well, I wasn’t, but now I am …”

 

Psychologists call these ironic thought processes. They are the reason why you only want the stuff that you can’t have, why trying to suppress laughter only makes you laugh more, why you fail at stuff when somebody is watching, and so on. Telling yourself not to be afraid of failure puts failure right at the center of your thoughts. It’s the difference between overweight people who are always counting calories and rail-thin people who have to be reminded to eat at meal time because otherwise they just “forget to eat.” The overweight dieters are constantly failing because staying under the calorie count requires them to do the one thing they should be avoiding: thinking about food.

 

This is the cruel irony of people who are chronic worriers. Brain scans show that people who are constantly worrying about every little thing have much more active brains than other people … but the extra energy is wasted. When worriers try to complete a task they worried about, they end up doing worse than non-worriers doing the same task. So much of their brain power is being used to try to foresee all the bad outcomes that they almost guarantee that one of those bad outcomes will occur.

 

Meanwhile, people who aren’t concerned about what will happen can dedicate all their concentration to solving whatever problem is in front of them, meaning their chances of success are higher. That’s right — you could say that some people succeed purely because they’re too dumb to know why they should fail.

 

#3. Grief Is Addictive

 

Think about how much of our entertainment is based around negative emotions. Why do we like scary movies? Or sad songs? Why do we watch movies about disasters or obsessively follow morbid news stories about sensational murder trials? If something horrible happens to us, why do we find ourselves constantly thinking and talking about it?

 

If you were trying to come up with some kind of logical explanation, you could maybe say that it’s because focusing on terrible things reminds us of how good we have it. But the science says that we actually take pleasure in the negative emotion itself. We willingly dive back into misery again and again for the same reason we willingly board a roller coaster or go bungee jumping: We get a rush from it. That is, the pleasure/reward centers of your brain light up and release dopamine. And you can get addicted to whatever causes your brain to release dopamine, whether it’s chocolate or fistfights.

 

And just as with any addiction, there are some people who can handle it better than others — we all respond differently. And what researchers are finding is that some people get addicted to grief.

 

They think this may be why some people can just pick up and move on after a trauma, while others never do. They just keep reliving it, refreshing that feeling over and over. Because of the jacked-up way your brain is wired, even the most horrible thing that’s ever happened to you gave you a rush. Don’t get us wrong — that chronically grieving person you know isn’t enjoying it, any more than the junkie “enjoys” being an addict. They just get trapped in a feedback loop because they’re subconsciously afraid to let go of the one strong emotion that makes them feel alive.

 

And when it comes time to try to break us out of that cycle, something else comes into play, which is the fact that …

 

#2. You’d Rather Be Unhappy Than Uncertain

 

To all the teenagers reading this: You are lovely people. Thank you for reading Cracked. But holy frijoles, you do some completely idiotic things. Don’t worry — it’s completely normal. Thanks to evolution, the teenage brain is all about taking risks, like attacking a woolly mammoth with flimsy spears and having lots of sex with multiple partners, all for the continuation of the species.

 

For that decade of life, young people don’t have a “NO” switch in their brains, and while it meant that a lot of them fell off cliffs while chasing the woolly mammoths, overall it has been beneficial to the species. In fact, you could argue that the people who are successful later in life are the ones who never gave up their lust for taking stupid risks.

 

But for the most part, as you get older, your brain wants you to stop taking those risks. You already did all your kid-having, now you need to settle down and stay alive so you can raise those children. Forget mammoth hunting; you’re picking berries. You are less likely to quit your job and start a garage band at 50 than you were at 17, and that’s a good thing.

 

The problem is that most people grow so scared of risk that they are more likely to stay in situations that make them miserable than take a chance at happiness. Sure, you only drew a three of hearts out of the deck of life, but if you ask for a new card, you might wind up with a deuce. You stick with the misery you know.

 

And even worse, it actually gets to the point where a change that works out for the better can be scary because it’s better. In other words, even if you take the risk and the risk pays off, if you’re not used to happiness, then it just feels weird, or phony. Studies have found that taking depressed, self-critical people and trying to make them think positively about themselves just confuses the shit out of them. Make them stand in front of a mirror and shout compliments at themselves and they just think it’s weird and pointless. “What is this? Are you making fun of me? This is stupid.” It actually takes a whole different type of therapy for those people, because they see warmth and happiness and can only think, “What the hell is this shit?”

 

Some of you think that’s absolutely bizarre, and some of you know that as your everyday life. Ask yourself: When you’re sitting in a bar or coffee shop and there’s a group of friends next to you just laughing and having the time of their lives, how do you react? Do you find yourself annoyed by that? Do you hate them just a little? There you go.

 

#1. Being Happy Takes Effort

 

Imagine a happy person in your mind. Maybe you’re picturing a kid diving into a swimming pool, or an athlete hoisting a trophy, or Richard Branson parasailing with a naked supermodel on his back.

 

Now imagine a depressed person. You picture him sitting on the sofa in the dark, maybe drinking alone, staring at infomercials at three in the morning. Maybe he just never got out of bed.

 

The primary difference there is that the former person is actually doing something. It’s ridiculous to imagine the roles reversed — there aren’t any sad ballads about people snowboarding.

 

So despite how much cocaine Sigmund Freud did, it appears he was right when he said that unhappiness was the default position of our brains — meaning that happiness takes effort. As one study put it, having the right genes and being surrounded by the right people are a part of the equation, but the rest is doing things that make you feel good.

 

And if reading this made you roll your eyes and say, “Well, duh,” then you have to stop and realize how many people never do this. How many people do you know who say their ideal vacation would be to just kick back and do nothing at all? All of the “doing” in their lives comes at the job or at school — all the stuff that they’re forced to do by other people. So they think that relaxing means doing nothing at all, rather than doing the stuff they like.

 

They fall into the trap of thinking that happiness is simply the absence of doing unpleasant tasks instead of actively doing pleasant ones … and the human brain just doesn’t work that way. And this isn’t going to get any better as time goes on; among seniors, their satisfaction with life didn’t correlate with the state of their health or anything else — it was based on whether or not they had friends and hobbies.

 

Of course, it’s never harder to go out and make friends or start a new hobby than when you’re in the throes of depression, and at that point, all of the above cycles that keep you in that valley start coming into play. Hey, when we said your brain was a dick, we weren’t kidding.

 

You Have Herpes

Published on by Scott Williams12 Comments

Reality can be cruel. Sometime ago I was handed the inglorious task of telling a beautiful young woman that she had herpes. She was sure it was a bladder infection, but ultimately the science didn’t lie. There is a stigma that comes with something that is sexually transmitted, especially if you have a partner that does not have an STI.

The thing is, you can deny the reality all you wish, it will not change the facts. It’s like being pregnant, there is no “sort of”. Such it is with life. There are certain realities that come screaming your way no matter if you are willing or not, ready or not, believe it or not. Immanuel Kant believed that there were essentially two different worlds – the noumenal and the phenomenal. The phenomenal world is the world as we perceive it. The noumenal world is the world as it really is. They are rarely the same thing. For those of us raised on The Matrix it is the difference between the blue and the red pill. The real world is seldom as we perceive it.

We put on our sunglasses and filter everything to fit our view on the world. We have been raised to believe certain things, use certain coping mechanisms, employ certain cognitive interpretations and distortions. There is something in all of us that wants to believe we are the exception to the rule. Other people cheat on their partner and get caught but I am too smart, too slick, the exception. I can cheat on my taxes and get away with it. I can cut corners, take shortcuts, skim relationally, and do whatever the hell I want because, although other people get caught, I am not going to be held accountable. Sometimes we are even right.

Sometimes we can get away with enough that it actually reaffirms our excuses and entrenches this belief in our psyche. I see this often in counseling. People want to have their cake and eat it too. On a regular basis an individual will seek me out in order to get permission to do something cheap or immoral, or just a bad idea. They are looking for a professional to condone their desires. Often they leave disappointed.

Although it is not my job to judge others, I do recognize a bad idea when I see one. And I see many. Day after day people walk through my life and describe how they are trying to take a shortcut, convinced that they will not be held accountable. After doing this job for years I am often tempted to stop them mid-sentence and tell them how things are going to turn out in six months or a year. To quote Agent Smith from The Matrix, “That is the sound of inevitability.” 

I am guilty of occasionally telling my clients who are vulnerable, in recovery, or in the midst of crisis, “If it feels good, don’t do it”. If you are still with me at this point you undoubtedly understand what I am trying to teach them. Of course it is good to do good things. The problem is, however, that many things that are instantly gratifying are in fact horrible options. Snorting cocaine is instantly gratifying, so is cheating on my wife. The surge of chemicals in my brain overwhelms me with yummy goodness. It seems like a good idea at the time. That’s my phenomenal world talking, and it’s lying to me. Wisdom rarely whispers to easiest route to success.

Real growth has little to do with taking shortcuts. You can get your black belt in martial arts online if you mail ten dollars to some spurious Do Jang but that doesn’t mean you know how to fight. There are no shortcuts to a real black belt, or a real degree, or actual wisdom… or healing. One of the screensavers that pops up on my computer at the office says, “I’m not telling you it’s going to be easy, I’m telling you it’s going to be worth it.” That’s reality. – If it seems to good to be true, it is. – If anyone tells you that you can be whole in eight sessions of anything, they’re wrong. – You can’t change anyone else, just yourself. – Guilt/feeling bad is not the same as doing anything – No one else is to blame for your life – Trauma doesn’t usually just go away – Prayer doesn’t fix everything.

Sometimes you have to get off your ass and do something – No one cares as much about your problems as you do – The real world is boring, make friends with that – Everyone is as screwed up as you are… trust me on that … and to repeat – If you aren’t enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it (Cool Runnings)

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Living with An Emotionally Closed-off Spouse

Published on by Scott Williams6 Comments

The Unloved

I’m not just the counselor, I’m also a client.

I have been told that I have come a long way in the past years. I have difficulty writing that, it feels arrogant to a good Canadian. The truth is, I had a long way to come. There was a time in my life when I was a mess, even though I was still pretending to be an authority on life. I have been needy. Very, very needy. There was one point in my life when I had such an enormous hole in my heart I was quite sick emotionally. I made decisions and did things that were based on poor reasoning and a brokenness that shocks me when I look back.

There are many reasons why we develop dysfunctional coping mechanisms. Some of us are in abusive relationships and have a sick sense of guilt that has been beaten into us emotionally and perhaps physically. We know we should leave, people tell us all the time, but we just cannot seem to pull the trigger. After all, he has many good qualities we remind ourselves. You have a profound and deeply entrenched belief that you are not worthy of a healthy relationship. He or she has told you a hundred times that you are unlovable  unworthy, and you believe them, at least on an emotional level. It taints everything about you.

Perhaps you were physically or sexually or emotionally abused as a child. You find that you have a hard time enjoying normal sexual contact or perhaps you tend to be drawn to poor choices when dating or committing. Maybe you have a hard time with impulsivity or finishing projects. Many who were abused as children are control freaks, have an aggressive startle instinct, or consider themselves more discerning or intuitive than others around them. No one has ever told you that everything I have just listed, and many more weird quirks besides, are often associated with trauma. It can affect your entire life.

Back to my neediness. I fell in love with an emotionally unavailable person who was everything I was not – chill, mature, mysterious, a good listener. I had no idea how that decision would profoundly affect my life. Living with someone who never told me she loved me, ever, who did not need me (I am a caretaker by nature), who was not interested in sexually intimacy or emotional connection, fundamentally changed who I was as a person. I became needy. I found myself experiencing emotional starvation and as a result would act out or say or do things to attract attention. I became sarcastic, judgmental, provocative. I can look back and psychoanalyze myself, see where I went wrong, and learn. I could not do that when I was young, madly in love, and emotionally less self-aware.

Many of you know what I am talking about. Women who are attracted to the bad boy or the strong and silent type, who love men who are quiet or passive-aggressive really know what I mean. Looking to someone else to complete us, even at the best of times, is a dead-end street with  guaranteed disappointment at the best of times. Living with or loving someone who is emotionally unavailable can destroy your self-esteem, your dignity, and your sense of worth if you let it. There is a constant feeling that you can never measure up, that your lover is disappointed in you no matter what you do. You try harder and harder and harder until one day you are disturbed and frustrated beyond your capacity to cope.

We cannot change the past, we can only learn from it. I have learned that we cannot always trust ourselves when it comes to romance. We tend to be attracted to people who we believe complete us. Apparently opposites attract. This can be a very flawed arrangement if we tend to fall for someone who does not share their emotions or is unable or unwilling to emotionally invest in a relationship.

It is never to late to become self-aware.

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The Real World

Published on by Scott Williams7 Comments

caboHome from the Pacific Ocean. The real world.

Sitting on the beach at Puerto Vallarta with my dad, watching the waves come in and out, fighting off local vendors and splashing in the waves, it’s easy to imagine life could always be like this. Those days in the sun are easy to embrace. Why can’t they last forever?

The real world is far less memorable. I don’t take two hundred pictures of my normal Monday to Friday. Weeks, even months, can come and pass without nothing of great significance happening. Get up, get dressed, go to work, come home, cook and clean, talk and watch tv, chores, hygiene, bed. Over and over and over again.

The real world is boring. I have mentioned before that one of the hidden issues with addiction recovery is that the real world is mundane. Addicts are used to spending most of their waking hours fantasizing about highs, planning and financing their addictions, getting and imbibing, coming down, burning out; not a boring day. Stopping drinking or drugs or whatever is only a small part of your battle. Dealing with a life-view and lifestyle is far more complicated and difficult. Learning to settle with what you have, where you are, and what you are doing is not natural. Television and movies tell us all the time that life should be a series of orgasms and car chases.

People who have little experience with drugs or addiction often ask me why people get high. The reason is, drugs are awesome. At first. People get high and drunk because it’s really fun. For a while. If there were no negative ramifications to chemicals many people would get high all the time. The temptations to escape from a boring reality is extremely tempting. When you are inebriated you don’t have to worry about the day-to-day hassles and problems that never seem to go away. And therein, lies the rub.

They don’t go away. Ask anyone who has come back to work after vacation. Nothing has resolved itself, there is usually no break. Often, after a day or two back in the real world it is almost hard to imagine you were ever on that beach in Cabo. Problems and pressures are a part of life and trying to escape from your persistent reality only prolongs the issues. Procrastination has no healthy payoff.

We love to pretend. Pretend we are not getting older, pretend that our relationship will magically fix itself, pretend that we will reach our goals in spite of doing nothing. We pretend that our addictions are not hurting us, our anger issues are no so bad, the way we treat our partner is not abusive. We pretend that we don’t need counseling or that our childhood trauma, if we ignore it long enough, will stop affecting our lives. We pretend that we are happy. We pretend that we are not afraid of death. We pretend that we can continue to ignore our problems, skim through life without passion, buy useless crap and consume, consume, consume and this will bring us lasting contentment and joy.

I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe you can wave your magic wand and everything will be fine. I no longer believe that all you need is faith and your problems will cease to be your problems. The real world is messy. It will ask of us more than we want to give and take from us more than we want to let go. In counseling we often talk about cognitive distortions, those distorted ways of thinking that help us cope with a dysfunctional world. Unfortunately those same coping mechanisms keep us from moving forward. It is only when we embrace the chaos, wade through the quagmire, and refuse to become numb that we find wholeness. Getting healthy takes guts, and bandaids.

Welcome back to the real world.

 

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What Matters

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

20130410_112906As many of you may know I have just returned from a vacation, albeit a working vacation, with my father. Sitting on the beach in Mexico, snorkeling, hanging out at the pier in San Francisco, these are lasting memories. I am not much of a cruiser but will look fondly back on the ten days I spent on the Grand Princess, eating good food and swimming in its many pools. And Happy Hour.

It’s interesting, however, that the best memories I have of the trip are not the places and the activities, it’s the people. Spending time with my dad, hanging out and laughing, talking about family and memories, these are memories I will cherish even more than the beach at Cabo. I also spent a significant amount of time with two new friends, Darrin and Michael, whom I have come to care about deeply, in spite of the fact that they are Americans…

Life is about connections. In the past years I have lost some people dear to me and it is tempting to guard my heart, to keep people at a distance, and to minimize the potential heartache should things not work out. Anyone who has been hurt by others knows what I mean. Loving people is dangerous and painful.

I was a single parent for several years and when Annette came along she made me very nervous. I was afraid to be honest with her, afraid to let down my guard, because I knew that she could, if I let her, brush away my emotional defenses and take over my heart. I had spent a great deal of time not caring about other people and was convinced that I would be better-off never engaging in romantic love again. Loving her would be dangerous, and hurtful. What if she left me? What if she got to know who I really was and rejected me? What if I couldn’t make her happy? What if she wasn’t really a redhead?

After the sunburn has faded and the memories begin to wain, what stays with us are the people who have touched our lives and made it better for their being there. What made this trip memorable was the moments with my dad, being kissed goodbye at the airport, and laughing and talking about life with Darrin and Michael. At the end of the day, that’s what matters.

A friend is someone who gives you total freedom to be yourself.  Jim Morrison

The Path To Unconditional Self-Acceptance

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

on vacation, enjoy:

The famous French expression, “Tout comprendre, c’est tout excuser” (literally, “to understand all is to pardon all”) is a dictum that we ought to apply at least as much to ourselves as to others. For the more we can grasp just why in the past we were compelled to act in a particular way, the more likely we’ll be able both to excuse ourselves for this behavior and avoid repeating it in the future.

Becoming more self-accepting necessitates that we begin to appreciate that, ultimately, we’re not really to blame for anything–whether it’s our looks, intelligence, or any of our more questionable behaviors. Our actions have all been compelled by some combination of background and biology. Going forward, we certainly can–and in most cases, should–take responsibility for ways we’ve hurt or mistreated others. But if we’re to productively work on becoming more self-accepting, we must do so with compassion and forgiveness in our hearts. We need to realize that, given our internal programming up to that point, we could hardly have behaved differently.

Why is it so hard to love oneself?

To take ourselves off the hook and gradually evolve to a state of unconditional self-acceptance, it’s crucial that we adopt an attitude of “self-pardon” for our transgressions (whether actual or perceived). In the end, we may even come to realize that there’s nothing to forgive. For regardless of what we may have concluded earlier, we were, in a sense,always innocent–doing the best we could, given (1) what was innate (or hard-wired) in us, (2) how compelling our needs (and feelings) were at the time, and (3) what, back then, we believed about ourselves.

That which, finally, determines most problematic behavior is linked to common psychological defenses. And it almost borders on the cruel for us to blame ourselves–or hold ourselves in contempt–for acting in ways that at the time we thought we had to in order to protect ourselves from anxiety, shame, or emotional distress generally.

As a kind of P.S. to the above, self-acceptance also involves our willingness to recognize and make peace with parts of the self that till now may have been denied, shunned, or repudiated. I’m referring here to our illicit or anti-social impulses–our shadow self, which may have spooked or sabotaged us in the past. Still, it represents an essential part of our nature and must be functionally integrated if we are to become whole. As long as we refuse to accept–or in some way accommodate–split-off segments of self, full and unconditional self-acceptance will remain forever out of reach.When we’re able to sympathetically understand the origin of these darker, recessive fragments in us, any self-evaluation rooted in them begins to feel not only uncharitable but unjust as well. The fact is that virtually everybody harbors forbidden (and quite possibly, outrageous) impulses and fantasies–whether they entail brutally injuring someone we find obnoxious, exercising unbridled power over others, or (indeed!) running naked in the streets. And when we’re able to recognize this, we’re also well on the way to accepting ourselves without conditions. Appreciating that, however bizarre or egregious, most of our “evilimaginings,” are probably little more than fantasized compensations for indignities, hurts, or deprivations we experienced in the past, we can now reconceive our “aberrations” as, well, rather normal.

Further, even as we come to accept our shadow side we can still maintain voluntary control over how these parts of us are expressed–that is, in ways that can ensure safety both to ourselves and others. For as long as we’ve been able to re-connect to our deepest, truest self, we’ll be coming from a place of love and caring. As such, it really isn’t in us to do anything that would violate our natural tendencies toward compassion and identification with all humanity. Owning and integrating our various facets is a transcendent experience. And when we–or really, our egos–no longer feel separate from others, any sinister motive to do them harm literally disappears.

Self-Acceptance vs. Self-Improvement

It should be apparent at this point that self-acceptance has nothing to do with self-improvement as such. For it really isn’t about “fixing” anything in ourselves.With self-acceptance we’re just–non-judgmentally–affirmingwho we are, with whatever strengths–and weaknesses–we possess in the moment.

The problem with any focus on self-improvement is that such an orientation inevitably makes self-acceptance conditional. After all, we can’t ever feel totally secure or good enough so long as our self-regard depends on constantly bettering ourselves. Self-acceptance is here-and-now oriented–not future oriented, as in: “I’ll be okay when . . .” or “As soon as I accomplish . . . I’ll be okay.” Self-acceptance is about alreadybeing okay, with no qualifications–period. It’s not that we ignore or deny our faults or frailties, just that we view them as irrelevant to our basic acceptability.

Finally, it’s we–and we alone–that set the standards for our self-acceptance. And once we decide to stop grading ourselves, or “keeping score with” ourselves, we can adopt an attitude of non-evaluative forgiveness. In fact, once we refrain from our lifelong habit of assessing, and reassessing, ourselves–striving rather to compassionatelyunderstand our past behaviors–we’ll find that there’s really nothing to forgive (remember, “Tout comprendre. . .” ). Certainly, we can vow to do better in the future, but we can nonetheless accept ourselves precisely as we are today, regardless of our shortcomings.

And here I can’t emphasize enough that it’s possible to accept and love ourselves and still be committed to a lifetime of personal growth. Accepting ourselves as we are today doesn’t mean we’ll be without themotivation to make changes or improvements that will make us more effective, or that will enrich our (and likely others’) lives. It’s simply that this self-acceptance is in no way tied to such alterations. We don’t have to actually do anything to secure our self-acceptance: we have only to change the way we look at ourselves. So changing our behaviors becomes solely a matter of personal preference–not a prerequisite for greater self-regard.

It’s really about coming from a radically different place. If self-acceptance is to be “earned,” a result of working hard on ourselves, then it’s conditional–always at risk. The ongoing “job” of accepting ourselves can never be completed. Even scoring an A+ in whatever endeavor we’re using to rate ourselves can offer us only temporary respite from our strivings. For the message we’re giving ourselves is that we’re only as worthwhile as our latest achievement. We can never finally “arrive” at a position of self-acceptance because we’ve inadvertently defined our quest for such acceptance as everlasting.

In holding ourselves to such perfectionistic standards, however, we may inadvertently be validating how our own conditionally-loving parents dealt with us. But we’re certainly not validating ourselves–or treating ourselves with the kindness and consideration our parents failed adequately to provide for us.

 

To conclude, only when we’re able to give ourselves unqualified approval–by developing greater self-compassion and focusing much more on our positives than negatives–can we at last forgive ourselves for our faults, as well as relinquish our need for others’ approval. No doubt we’ve made mistakes. But then, so has everybody else. And in any case our identity is hardly equal to our mistakes (for such a linkage would represent a bad case of “mistaken identity”!)Finally, there’s no reason we can’t decide right now to transform our fundamental sense of who we are. And we may need to remind ourselves that our various weaknesses are part of what makes us human. If all our faults and failings were suddenly to disappear, my pet theory is that we’d instantly turn into white light and disappear from the face of this planet. So in the pursuit of unconditional self-acceptance, we might even want to take a certain pride in our imperfections. After all, were we beyond criticism in the first place, we’d never have the opportunity to rise to this uniquely human challenge.

from Psychology Today

Cruising The Pacific With My Dad

Published on by Scott Williams10 Comments

grand_princess_tony_rive_2_470x352I’m on vacation with my dad this next week or two. He’s led an amazing life and we are spending time, between pina coladas and trips to the mainland, working on his memoirs. He’s big into cruises and so we are spending time in the sun together.

As I write this it is still Thursday and the trip is still in the future. I am unsure how it will all shake out but I am fairly certain it will be an enjoyable time with my dad, laughing and talking and reliving a lifetime of memories. This in itself will probably turn into part of the story, part of the adventure.

For me, life has always been about stories. I do a great deal of public speaking and no one tends to remember the amazing insights I have trolled the internet and my library. Tell a good story, however, and people remember it forever. When I have occasion to listen to other speakers, or go to church, I am constantly surprised by how few good stories I hear. For some reason orators have a tendency to believe that I am there to glean information. While this may be true in principle, it is the stories I remember. Perhaps this is one of the reasons people tend to go to church less than they once did, the world has become about sound bytes and tweets and updates and the religious community is still convinced that forty-five minute monologues are sacred and unchangeable. And let’s be honest, most sermonizers I know are only moderately interesting or talented to begin with. There are not many Churchills, or Martin Luther Kings, or Campolos out there.

My father, however, has a lifetime of good stories. Stories too amusing or insightful to let die. In spite of appearing caucasian now, he was actually born a “poor black child”, literally. His mother had a kidney infection and he came out of the womb black as night. He grew up as an orphan, his father died soon after his birth, falling from a skyscraper a few days before he took a different job. His mother died when he was eleven and he wasn’t allowed to see her in the hospital for the six months before she passed because of some asinine policy. A nurse managed to sneak him in on one occasion only.

My dad quit high school to join the air force. After telling an officer to politely “go to hell” he was assured that he would never be promoted beyond corporal. He retired at the highest rank available, in charge of the ground forces at his european base, then the last man to turn out the lights when his last base closed. In the meantime he received the military equivalent of the Order Of Canada for a myriad of reasons. He did alright for an orphan high school drop-out. He is a hero to his grandchildren and pretty tops in my books as well.

I wonder, sometimes, what kind of legacy I will leave when I shuffle off this mortal plain. I hope they will be able to say of me, “at least he tried”.

Band-aids

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

band aid heart 2This morning I was watching TV when a commercial for the new Proactive Dark Spot Remover showed up. Apparently if you pay the money and use this product it will remove the “appearance” of blemishes and restore your complexion to “perfect skin”. Quite a promise… or is it.

Notice what they are not saying. They are not saying that they will improve your complexion or skin at all, only give the appearance of change. The cosmetics industry, a word that means “to make order out of chaos”, has made millions, even billions, hiding the world from the truth. No wonder many women talk of “putting their face on” in the morning or before a date.

This past week The Chive and various other online rags ran a pictorial called “The Face Of Porn: Porn Stars Before And After Makeup.” To say the pictures were revealing is an understatement. Most of the most famous goddesses are less than perfect without artificial enhancement, to say the least. Some were downright homely, not even attractive. It is a reminder of the power of fantasy, of Photoshop, and of an extreme makeover. Cosmetics sell an illusion, an illusion of beauty, of perfection. Makeup is made to cover, it’s a band-aid that does nothing for us except hide our blemishes and present a false face… literally.

Many of us treat our problems the same way. We have spent years trying to cover up our faults and our past. I often tell people when they come for counseling that they may not really want to dig that deeply into their issues. I have an irritating habit of making people very uncomfortable, of asking them to think about things they have spent years trying to bury. Counseling, when it works, is a very painful and humiliating experience. It is much easier to just throw some Proactive on the problem, apply some makeup to our ugliness and give the impression, even to ourselves, that we have taken care of the problem. This is one of the reasons I rarely do groups on Anger Management. I have this annoying habit of treating anger as a symptom, not a base problem. I keep asking clients and patients ‘why’ they are angry and tend to gloss over anger management techniques.

There is an old maxim in psychology that change usually happens much slower than we imagine and the results are less pronounced than we would like to believe. Transforming oneself from a broken, hurting, violated victim of abuse and trauma into a whole person takes years, not months. The twelve sessions that your counselor signs you up for may be an excellent start but will probably not even begin to address a complex life full of dysfunctional coping mechanisms.

Band-aids are far easier and if you play your cards right, you can even find them with pictures of Spiderman on them.

How Much Greener The Grass Is With Those Rose Tinted Glasses…

Published on by Scott WilliamsLeave a comment

therapy takes many forms…

The Wrong Direction by Passenger

When I was a kid, the things I did, were hidden under the grid
Young and naive, I never believed that love could be so well hid
With regret, I’m willing to bet, you say the older you get
It gets harder to forgive and harder to forget

It gets under your shirt like a dagger or work
The first cut is the deepest, but the rest will flippin’ hurt
You build your heart of plastic, get cynical and sarcastic
And end up in the corner on your own

‘Cause I love to feel love but can’t stand the rejection
I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection
I thought I was close, but under further inspection
It seems I’ve been running in the wrong direction

So what’s the point in getting your hopes up
When all you’re ever getting is choked up
When you’re coked up,
And can’t remember the reason why you broke up
You call her in the morning
When you’re coming down and falling
Like an old man on the side of the road

‘Cause when you’re apart you don’t want to mingle
When you’re together you want to be single
Ever the chase to taste the kiss of bliss
That made your heart tingle
How much greener the grass is
With those rose tinted glasses
But the butterflies, they flutter by
And leave us on our asses

‘Cause I love to feel love but I can’t stand the rejection
I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection
I thought I was close, but under further inspection
It seems I’ve been running in the wrong direction

There’s fish in the sea for me to make a selection
I’d jump in if it wasn’t for my ear infection
‘Cause all I want to do is try to make a connection
But it seems I’ve been running in the wrong direction

Oh, oh I love to feel love but I can’t stand the rejection
I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection
I thought I was close, but under further inspection
It seems I’ve been running in the wrong direction

I love to feel love but I can’t stand the rejection
I hide behind my jokes as a form of protection
And I thought I was close, but under further inspection
It seems I’ve been running in the wrong direction

Seems like I’m running in the wrong direction

Why Women Are Leaving

Published on by Scott Williams10 Comments

Divorce Cakes a_009

Philosopher William James (1842-1910), said, “The deepest craving of human nature is the need to be appreciated.”

Monique Honaman, Author, HuffPost Blogger

There is an overwhelming number of women who feel unappreciated by their husbands. I often hear the following refrain: “I just want to feel appreciated. For years I have been the cook, the cleaner, the chauffeur… I don’t feel like we are a partnership… I’ve asked, demanded and pleaded that we go to counseling… I can’t do this anymore. I don’t want to live the second half of my life feeling like this. I’m done.”

I’m sure this is nothing new. I am sure my mother felt unappreciated by my dad at times during their marriage. I think that’s probably natural in the cycle of marriage and relationships. Life gets busy. We forget to thank those closest to us.

But times are changing. I have spoken with more women than I can count over the past couple of years who aren’t just complaining about feeling unappreciated by their husbands. Instead, they are doing something about it.

These women, most of whom are in their mid-40’s, have decided they want out of their marriages. Sure, they are scared for what this means for them. Sure, they are nervous about the new unknowns divorce will bring. Sure, they recognize the impact this will have on their lives. For most of the women I spoke with, leaving their husbands means having to secure full-time employment for the first time in years. It mean moving out of the big brick colonial in the suburbs and moving into something more affordable. It means being alone. And you know what each and every woman I spoke with said? “I am absolutely OK with this.” I heard, “I’m OK being alone and starting over on my own… I feel as if I have been alone for years anyway. I don’t need my big house or my fancy car. I don’t mind having to work. I just know that I don’t want to spend the next half of my life living this way. Why should I?”

Wow! To give it all up and start over at 45? It’s surprising, particularly because to the outside world, these women appear to have it all. Their husbands aren’t “bad” people. We aren’t talking about men who are abusive or alcoholics. We aren’t talking about men who are dragging the family into bankruptcy. We aren’t talking about men who have lived a double life full of affairs.

What these women are expressing is a deep personal sadness at feeling disconnected and unappreciated by their husbands. They tell me they have fought for years to feel more connected and appreciated. This isn’t a whim, they assure me. They have thought long and hard about their decision to get divorced. They aren’t simply giving up. They have tried and fought a long battle. But the thing they each have in common is that they have reached their breaking point. They say, “I’m tired of not feeling appreciated, not feeling like I am part of a partnership. I feel like I am the roommate, the bill payer, the cook, the cleaner, the chauffeur… but not someone who is valued and appreciated. I’m tired of asking to be appreciated — begging to be valued — pleading to feel I as if I am important and not constantly playing second-fiddle to everything else going on in his life. I’m done.”

Divorce has become commonplace. Many women thrive after divorce. They live independent, happy lives. Any taboo or stigma that may have existed during my mother’s generation doesn’t exist any more. I think this gives many women the courage to say, “I can do this.” And, they are.

What do we do about this? Many husbands are left with their jaws hanging open in disbelief when their wives file for divorce. “Why didn’t we talk about this? Why didn’t we go to counseling? Why didn’t you tell me you were feeling this way?” The wives smile sadly and say, “We have, we did, I have… and it’s too late now… I’m done.”

I don’t like these conversations. I believe in the institution of marriage. I don’t like to see people quit. What can we do? I know the following advice is oversimplifying the issue — I really do — but it’s a start:

Men, please take the time to appreciate your wife regularly. Thank her for what she does for you and your family. Validate her. Cover her with words of affirmation. Wrap your appreciation of her deep within her heart. This is a marathon, not a sprint. The women I spoke with are not giving up because they weren’t thanked for emptying the dishwasher once. It’s the net result of decades of feeling taken for granted. When I suggest that perhaps having an open dialogue with their husbands alerting them to just how serious this really is and perhaps giving a final chance to make some changes, they tell me it would be too little, too late. “I’m done,” they say.

Clearly, women, this isn’t a one-way street. Appreciation goes both ways. Are you checking to see just how much appreciation you are showing to your husband as well? Do you thank him for all he does, or do you take him for granted? Really think about it. Perhaps you perceive that you are being more appreciative than you really are. What would he say?

I’m not saying that showing more appreciation will lower the divorce rate in our country, but I do believe that showing more appreciation will improve marital relationships. After all, it’s like basketball superstar Kareem Abdul-Jabbar once said, “If not shown appreciation, it gets to you.” And it seems that “it gets to you” is leading more and more towards, “I’m done.”

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The Cost Of Criticism

Published on by Scott Williams14 Comments

tumblr_mei9y4IsYJ1r90iovMost of us are acutely aware of the effect of criticism. I ask people all the time, “If ten people tell you that you are beautiful and one person tells you that you are ugly, which do you remember?” We all know the answer.

Why is that? Is it because, on some level, we are more apt to believe a criticism than we are a compliment? Does that criticism subconsciously confirm something about ourselves that we already know? Does it simply reinforce our negative self-image?

There is also another side to that coin. I don’t know about you but I was raised by a culture that strongly asserted that self-promotion was vanity. Being ‘humble’ meant never complimenting ourselves. People who bragged were assumed to be arrogant. Then one day I stepped into a Christian church and heard the saying, “God gets all the glory”. I learned that anything good about myself was God, anything bad is me. Once again I learned that I suck, that in and of myself I had little to brag about… not that I was allowed to anyway.

I have written before about the legacy my grandmother gave me. She was a firm believer in the axiom, “children should be seen and not heard”. I cannot remember one compliment from her mouth given to anyone, especially me. Then I grew up and had a relationship with someone who used contempt and disappointment as a means of control and discipline. You probably know people like this.

It is no real surprise when people come to counseling and admit to me that they struggle with self-esteem issues. Poor self-image is such a common mental health issue that I don’t know if I know anyone who doesn’t struggle with it. We are a culture plagued by emotional pain, largely as a result of criticism, contempt, and condemnation.

Enough with the criticism already. Most of us struggle everyday with feeling like we are losers, that we don’t measure up and we never will. I really don’t need you to point out my faults, I am intimately familiar with them. We know we have failed. We are cognizant of our glaring ugliness.

Many people feel that they are trying to help when they are critical. After all, how will you ever learn if I don’t help you? Granted, there are times when I have appreciated the cutting honesty of a friend, but this is only effective when I trust that person and believe they have my best interests at heart. Tearing people a new one simply because you are righteously indignant usually only scars and forces that person into a defensive posture. Real friends love you in spite of how you are, not because of who you are. Real friends love you enough to shut up.

They say you can get more flies with honey than with vinegar. You can also get more flies with shit than with honey. It’s a great deal more helpful to love someone back to health than it is to shoot the wounded.

It’s time for a love revolution.

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The Five Worst Things People Do When Trying To Help

Published on by Scott Williams12 Comments

from cracked.com, the source of most of my wisdom…

In general, humans kind of suck at helping each other. Most of the people reading this would find it about a hundred times easier to diagnose and fix a computer problem than to help a friend in crisis (if only you could just wipe people and reinstall their OS without the cops freaking out about it). I know, because every time I write an article like this, I’m buried in messages that begin with “I’m really worried about a friend …”

Well, here’s something I’m an expert in: screwing up in the face of difficult problems. So while I can’t give you expert advice on how to help your friend/sibling/boyfriend through the disaster that is their personal life, I can give you some great tips on what not to do, because I’ve been on the other end of this shit a lot. In fact, you can help me with my “I don’t have a gold-plated house” problem right now by buying my new book for a dollar. I think you’ll be better at this than 90 percent of the people on Earth if you can just avoid …

#5. Making It All About You (Instead of Just Listening)

The single worst response to a cry for help that I’ve ever seen (and I see it constantly) is the “one-up.” Everybody knows this jackoff. It’s the person who listens to your story before blowing it off because he’s been through worse, in many cases interrupting to do so. “You think that’s bad? Wait until you hear what happened to me today!” Fuck you with a thousand dicks. There is nothing more infuriating to a person who’s ass deep in a personal crisis than someone who just erases the whole thing with a single sentence. Doing that is the same as telling their friend, “Your problems don’t mean jack shit. I couldn’t care less about how you feel. You are only here as my personal dumping ground for my own problems. Here I go.”

That person has fallen into an extremely common trap: forgetting that everyone handles stress and problems differently. “Your dog has a broken leg, and you feel bad? My dog died four weeks ago. You don’t see me crying about it.” “Awww, you only got a B on your test, and it ruined your 4.0 GPA? Poor baby — I’ve been fighting for a high D all year. But do you hear me complaining?”

It’s for that exact reason that it is physically impossible for me to feel sympathy for the rich. It’s how we treat strangers. They aren’t people; they’re chunks of meat floating around, far outside the boundaries of our Monkeysphere. We cannot let ourselves do this with friends. Knowing how you react to your own problems does not have any bearing whatsoever on the way your friends feel about their own, and it is so goddamn vital that we keep that in mind when speaking to them about things that they consider important. Even if it seems as insignificant as a popcorn fart to you.

In these situations, listening is the most basic thing you can do to show your support. It’s perfectly fine to have exchanges — you don’t have to sit there in total silence while they spill their guts about how sad Justin Bieber’s new pants made them. That would be, quite frankly, unsettling. But for many of us, it’s just a natural reflex to jump in with our own related stories when a friend is telling theirs.

We think what we’re saying is “See, we’re all in the same boat!” but all they’re hearing is “Sorry, I can’t hear you over the sound of my own, much more enthralling life.”

#4. Giving Meaningless Advice Just to Be Saying Something

Most people who give it really are just trying to help (although some get off on the sense of power and moral superiority that comes with hearing themselves say something wise). Unfortunately, it’s extremely easy to interject some flowery piece of philosophy into a situation that in no way benefits from it, just because it seems like the sort of thing you should say. “I know you miss your boyfriend, but just remember, if you really love someone, let him go. If you were truly meant to be tog-” Oh, go fuck yourself.

So try this: Stop and ask yourself, “Do I actually have any idea what I’m fucking talking about? Or am I just quoting something I heard a wise character say in a movie?” That doesn’t mean that (for instance) someone who’s never drank can’t be an immense help to a struggling alcoholic, but there has to be some sort of connection or experience behind the advice for it to have any weight. Maybe your dad drank. Maybe you’ve had friends in the exact same position, showing the same patterns of behavior. Maybe you’ve been doing a blind research project on them for 10 years, attempting to turn them into alcoholics for science purposes.

Yes, I know my car has an engine problem, because it won’t start. But since I know exactly nothing about fixing a car, I can’t walk up to a stumped mechanic and say, “I saw this show once where a guy’s car wouldn’t start, and when they opened the hood, they found a severed head in there. Did you find a severed head in there?” I’ll sound like I’m talking out of my ass, because I am. Not only will you not be taken seriously at that point, but there’s a good chance that the person you’re trying to help will take offense at the fact that you just pretended to understand a problem that is obviously beyond you.

That’s the precise moment where you go from “concerned friend trying to help out” to “annoying douchebag who’s just getting in the way.” You become a hurdle. Now, don’t let that idea prevent you from stepping in if you have some honest words of wisdom to pass along. Even if you’re saying something they already know, sometimes we need reminders. For instance, it’s hard to remember in the throes of depression that your actions are affecting more people than just you. That the longer you go without treatment, the more your friends, family, and kids suffer right along with you. That reminder could be the simple nudge that triggers a recovery. You’ll know you’ve made the right choice of words by the rainbow that instantly shoots out of their asshole.

But when you really examine the advice that you’re about to whip out like a homeless guy’s dick, you’re going to find occasional times where you’re just talking for the sake of talking. Because repeating those old sayings feels like help, doesn’t it? But that’s the problem — you’re not worried about your friend; you’re worried about patting yourself on the back for being awesome.

#3. Forcing Your Help on Them (or Giving the Wrong Kind of Help)

Are you sure your friend even wants help? That seems like a weird question — someone is struggling, so obviously they want help, right? Unlike what most movies present, if someone doesn’t want your help, it’s not because they’re just too darned feisty and full of pride to accept it. I remember plenty of times growing up where the only things left in the fridge were half a pitcher of Kool-Aid, a jar of mustard, and stink. But I promise you that in those situations, asking for help wasn’t so much about pride as it was about depression and feeling like a total failure.

No, it doesn’t mean that pride is completely removed as a factor. We’re human, and humans are prideful animals. I’ve been meaning to get a penis reduction for years now, but my pride won’t allow me to accept the countless invitations from limping, bow-legged women to pay for the procedure. And yes, for my mother, there was a certain level of pride at work when she refused to ask for help with groceries. But lording over all of that was a black hole, sucking up every last ounce of hope and motivation to get up and get that shit fixed.

means to fix it with money) is to fill their fridge. Their problem was that they had no food. Now they have food. Problem solved. But as someone who’s been there can tell you, that can actually make the situation worse.

The depression worsens because they had to take “charity” from you in order to feed their kids or themselves. In turn, their stress levels shoot through the roof while they lie in bed under two tons of embarrassment and guilt. Instead of using that time to improve their financial situation by getting a better job (or in my family’s case, any job at all), they’re walking through life, turning down even the idea of prostitution because life has already dicked them into exhaustion.

But change the phrasing and the terms of the offer, and you’ll be shocked at how much difference it makes in their lives. “Hey, I’ve got some stuff I could really use some help with. Mostly lawn work and painting flames down the side of my private jet. Why don’t you let me hire you? I get the help I desperately need, and you get some extra cash — everybody wins.” Now they’re not taking charity, they’re helping you out in an employment sense. Even more importantly, they’re not taking a solution from someone else — they’re actively solving their own problems while helping you with your rich asshole problems in return.

I understand that the scenario I laid out was a specific circumstance, but the point is that if you walk into their lives like you’re a prince on a white stallion, throwing out magical cures for the helpless, you’re going to make them feel like they are helpless, and the ensuing emotional shitstorm is going to adversely affect the way they handle the actual core of their problem.

#2. Declaring Their Problem Solved, Then Walking Away

It’s in our nature to want quick fixes. The best charities are the ones where you can just easily hand over a few dollars and then go about the rest of your day, knowing it’s going to be used by honest, upstanding people. Don’t ever think that’s a bad thing. The fact that you’re helping out a good cause at all is super fucking admirable, and I respect the hell out of people who do it.

But it’s also easy to get tricked into that frame of mind when helping out a friend because we want their problems to be like a movie: Here’s the part where they’re struggling, then here’s the part where they get rescued and everything is fine again. Roll credits! But in virtually every case where a person needs help, the problem cannot be boiled down to a simple one-shot cause like “addiction” or “a bad relationship.” Most of those problems are caused by a deeper, darker undercurrent, something that bubbles up from time to time, manifesting itself in different ways. It’s frustrating to see the same mistakes and bad habits bite them in the ass again and again. You start to feel like they’re your patient instead of your friend.

But that’s how real life is different. In a movie, once a person goes through rehab, her drug problem is over. When a person starts laughing and joking, his depression is cured. In reality, people can and do suffer from this shit their entire lives. Even if we’re not talking about actual illnesses (in which case, your first advice should always be “see a fucking professional instead of my dumb ass”), the destructive habits all of us have are the result of decades of repetition and reinforcement. That shit doesn’t change overnight, no matter what background music you play over your homemade montage.

If you want to continue being their friend, then that means you still have to be there for them. That means checking in even when they’re in one of those stretches where they’re not fun to be around. It doesn’t even have to be a big deal — a call, an email, stopping by on your way home from work. Just knowing that someone out there gives a shit is more help than you’ll ever realize (if you’re lucky). I’ve lost count of how many messages I’ve gotten from readers saying that nobody cares about them or their problems. As a friend, 10 minutes of your time could easily change all of that. If you don’t believe me, try it.

#1. Not Knowing When to Back Off

This is the single hardest part of being a friend, and by far the hardest to know when to implement. Let me give you an example:

One of my family members was, like me, an addict. But also a career criminal to boot. He spent a massive amount of his life in prison for … um … “borrowing” other people’s things to support his … um … “huge drug problem.” Our family reached out to him many times, offering places to stay, jobs, money, food, and anything we could reasonably sacrifice on our end. But his cycle of uncountable crises continued for most of his life. He’d clean up and do great for a year or two, then fall back into a self-destructive pattern that would land him in prison once again. Here’s the crazy part: At no point (when he was clean) did he ever consciously look around at us and say to himself, “I think I’ll fuck over this person for personal gain.”

But each time that cycle started back up, all of our help was flushed down the shitter. His problems were out of his control … but more importantly for us, they were out of our control. There came a point where we had to finally grit our teeth and say, “We’ve helped as much as we can, and his disasters are now affecting our own families. Helping him at this point is just perpetuating a cycle that we cannot end.” Then we all stripped naked and ran through a field, screaming, “FREEDOM!”

Did it make us bad people? To some, it would seem that way. Our kids certainly didn’t think so when the danger of break-ins and the volatile atmosphere disappeared.

Regardless, I cannot stress enough how dangerous this point can be — because if you decide to pull out at the wrong time, you could be fucking your friend out of what could potentially be life-changing input. That … didn’t sound clean, did it? If you wait too long, you’re letting their problems spread to you and your family like a case of emotional crabs. I understand that the Internet seems to universally hate Dr. Phil, but one of the wisest pieces of relationship advice I’ve ever heard came from him:

“Ask yourself, ‘What is it costing me to be in this relationship?’ If the answer is your dreams, identity, or dignity, the cost is too high.”

In that quote, his ridiculous child-molester mustache was talking about bad romantic relationships, but it applies just as easily to friendships. You can only sacrifice so much of yourself on their behalf before you finally have to step back and say, “Enough. I’ve done all I can. It’s time for them to deal with this on their own, regardless of the consequences.” Good-hearted people will have such a hard time coming to that decision. They’ll feel guilt, shame, anger — basically all the stages of grief. But in extreme cases, you have to eventually put your own sanity and health at the top of the Good Deeds queue. Otherwise, your friend could be in a dramatically worse situation in which they never change their behavior for the better, and instead grow a dependency on you to dig them out of the quickshit pit. There is no help in that. It only sustains their problems, perpetually, until one of you gives up.

Or, worse, ends up on a massive ratings factory of a reality show. People seem to be making a pretty good living out of being a fuckup these days. Whatever, you see what I’m getting at: There’s a point where you’re not helping, but you still want to be the hero, and in the process of trying to be the hero, you’re hurting everyone else. So print this out and hang it on your wall somewhere: Sometimes being a nice person is all about knowing when to be an asshole.

I Work Out, I Eat Right, I Do Yoga… So Why Am I Still Depressed?

Published on by Scott Williams11 Comments

Have you ever had an emotional or mental breakdown? I have. At the time I was doing martial arts several times a week, was involved in a spiritual community, was learning and growing, but none of that seemed to matter.

So what happened?

Clinicians often refer to a nervous breakdown as technically an “adjustment disorder“. Your external work gets kicked in the spleen so hard that no amount of yoga or protein shakes or Mona Vie bars can hope to compete. Your inside world is depressed, or anxious, or panicked, or all of the above. Often psychosis shows up with tequila shots for the party. Your world crumbles and you simply can no longer cope. Sound like anyone you know?

People who have never been in a severe depression or have had a breakdown cannot hope to understand why people often consider suicide. To the outsider, suicide is a coward’s way out, or a selfish act, or just plain crazy. True enough on one level – crazy does certainly show up. It is hard to understand from a distance, but when things get that bad one is not thinking in their rational mind. Obsession has become a way of life. They call it a “breakdown” for a reason.

imagesMost of us do not realize that we have several gauges of health. Until someone told me I believed that if I was working out, eating right, and learning and growing, I would be fine when things went sideways. I did not realize, and did not pay attention to, my emotional gauge.

Working out, eating broccoli, and going to a church does not necessarily mean that you are not emotionally bankrupt. Those things may help to keep you healthy, but put a group of emotional succubus’ in your life and things start to go wrong.

When you pause to think about it, there is usually three kinds of people in your life. There are those who, after you have spent time with, you feel better for having been together. Then there are those who do not affect you one way or the other.

Did I mention there were three groups? You know the last group. When they call a piece of you dies inside. Being with them sucks the life out of you. They are never happy, or always complaining, or your mother. People like this drain your emotional gauge. Add a relational breakdown, or a child who is unruly, a job that is stressful, and someone who is disappointed in you and you can begin to lose hope. Add to this the crazy schedule we all try to maintain with little or no time for reflection or self-care and you have a recipe for a meltdown.

Don’t even get me started on those of you who also have small children.

Taking care of your emotional stuff is the best thing you can do for yourself besides taking a week on a beach somewhere without a cell phone or your children. Paying attention to your emotional gauge will help you in ways you could never imagine. A healthy person with a healthy heart is the best defence against hurt, stress, and pain.

Pay attention to yourself. You’re worth it.

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You Don’t Measure Up

Published on by Scott Williams9 Comments

English: A man handcuffed to the handle of a l...

Hyper-responsibility.

Carrying the weight of the world on your shoulders. Feeling the need to make sure everyone does what they should. The need to manage not just myself, but everyone around me.

If I don’t do it, it won’t get done.

If you want something done right, do it yourself.

It’s chronic…spoken or unspoken it’s there. I know because I have been a control freak and I am tired of living that way.

I am tired of the pressure to judge, fix, correct, straighten out, spank, corral, frighten, pressure, guilt, condemn, and look down on others. I know nobody says they do that but I have and I see it all the time.

I’m weary of feeling like I have to save the world and that for others to stay saved depends on me and my ability to be good enough. This constant feeling that everyone is teetering on the edge of total rejection and that one slip up from you and their eternal soul’s blood is on your hands is too much.

My God! That’s a massive weight to bear…who can handle such pressure?
Face it – you don’t measure up…. Get over it!
You don’t measure up.
You don’t measure up.
Admit it…. And be free!

 

Dreams

Published on by Scott Williams19 Comments

The work goes on, the cause endures, the hope still lives and the Dreams shall never die.
~Edward Kennedy

As the Cooper brothers sang, “Dreams never die, just the dreamer”. Growing up, most of us had huge dreams and unrealistic expectations. We dreamed of being rock stars and rich tycoons. The world lay before us, our oyster as the cliché goes, and anything was possible.

Then reality kicked us between the legs and throat-punched some of our dreams.

If you’re anything like me, and I know I am, then you have realized that life has not always turned out the way you thought it would. I had no idea that I would be living and doing the things I am now. It’s not a bad life, it’s just a different one.

Time has a way of healing hurts, or so the cognitive distortion goes. It also has a way of killing dreams and shoving reality in your face. That storybook romance you signed up for has turned out, after a number of mind-numbing years, to be a series of boring and hurtful years with someone who does not understand you and never will. By now, if you are close to forty, you have a storehouse of trauma to deal with, or not deal with. The older you get the harder it is to be an optimist. We become realists about life, or pessimists, if we are honest enough to admit it. If you have ever found yourself almost yelling at a wedding, “Don’t do it!”, then I’m talking to you.

I have developed a theory which I call the “37 year itch”. This theory propounds that somewhere around the age of 37-45 women (and obviously some men) who are married or in a long-term relationship wake up one morning and look at the aging, snoring, drooling person beside them and realize that they do not want to spend the rest of their life waking up to this schmuck. The children are in school now, their career has been stunted, and the thought of forty more years with Mr. Entertainment is too much. You would be shocked at the number of marriages that end when the players are in their late thirties and early forties. A majority of these break-ups are initiated by the woman (in a heterosexual relationship… and obviously in a lesbian relationship…).

Dreams never die – if only it were so. Some of us become afraid to dream any more. Dreams can remind us of our failures, of opportunities lost, of hopes deferred.

It’s not too late to dream again. Your mature dreams may not involve superpowers or thirty-day orgasms, but they can still be amazing. Every time I hear of a fifty year old going back to university or a grandfather dating again I believe in dreams. Every time a woman has the guts to try again, or a person believes they can be whole again, I believe in dreams. Here’s to everyone who didn’t have the brains to stop while you were behind, who started something wonderful, who faced down their fears and rebuilt their world. Here’s to those of you who are too stupid to quit. It is a powerful thing when someone dares to hope.

Here’s to hope.

the-shawshank-redemption-1994-bluray-720p-x264-wiki19875022-11-05I love this quote from Shawshank Redemption. Red, the narrator, is finally released from prison after a lifetime of incarceration and decides to get on with living, ” I find I’m so excited, I can barely sit still or hold a thought in my head. I think it’s the excitement only a free man can feel, a free man at the start of a long journey whose conclusion is uncertain. I hope I can make it across the border. I hope to see my friend, and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope.”

May you be free.

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Obsession

Published on by Scott Williams8 Comments

Split face photoMy wife is planning a trip to somewhere warm and she is doing it wrong. As a guy I would go online, find the very first place that was on the ocean and book it. It wouldn’t matter if it had air-conditioning or bedrooms or anything so trivial. As long as it had wi-fi (which I wouldn’t use) and I could hear the waves I wouldn’t obsess about the options and would worry about the other details when I got there. Last time I was in Hawaii I got in a taxi on the Big Island and told the driver, “find me a rental car that a local would get”. He took me to a Rent-A-Wreck where I paid nineteen dollars a day. Hertz wanted fifty-five. The next day we asked around until we found out there was a Wal-Mart in town. Supply problems solved. I’m a fairly “live and let live” kind of dude and investigating options isn’t part of my DNA. I am all about decision-making, don’t confuse me with details or facts. I like to fire the weapon, not waste all day aiming. I suck at board meetings. After about forty-five minutes I am ready to kill something. I do not ordinarily obsess about details.

For people struggling with mental health issues, however, obsession is a very real temptation. In counseling we talk a lot about cognitive distortions, about how easy it is to catastrophize when anxious or upset. It is also tempting to employ something called emotional reasoning – using our heart, not our head, to make decisions and formulate opinions regardless of the objective facts. Then there is black and white thinking, and “should” statements, and making mountains out of mole hills and seeing the negative in every situation. You can see where I am going with this. There is something in all of us that, when we are stressed or hurting or in trauma or struggling with anxiety or depression, likes to obsess about possibilities and worst-case scenarios.

Obsession.

Obsession is an emotionally bankrupting practice. Letting your mind “go there” is rarely healthy or productive. For some reason we have this impression that we shouldn’t deny our feelings and we should let ourselves experience all that frustration and fear and negative thinking. Sadly, many people believe that if they don’t catastophize the hell out of their problems they are somehow being untrue to their emotions and inauthentic. Nothing could be further from the truth. Practicing healthy mindfulness and being true to oneself has little or nothing to do with obsessing yourself sick. Emotional regulation is an extremely important, though often overlooked, part of maturity and growth. It is my contention that my journey to maturity and wisdom is nothing less than learning to control my thought-life. As James Allen says in his classic As A Man Thinketh, “Self-control is strength. Right thought is mastery. Calmness is power.” The Bible, another good source of wisdom, says it this way, “Be transformed by the renewing of your mind”. That is good counseling advice, whether you are religious or not. Obsession is sickness.

Learning to reign in our thoughts, as hard as that seems, is a learnable skill and not impossible. A good counselor will help you take control of your cognitive distortions and learn to process your thoughts in a healthy and hopeful manner.

It isn’t easy, but it is incredibly worth it.

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The Criticism of Celebrity Rehab

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

Celebrity Rehab with Dr. DrewAre we still so naive that we assume television is actually like real life? Do people still believe shows like Celebrity Rehab, Intervention and Extreme Makeover, Home Edition have anything to do with reality? Is there really a Rembrandt hidden in that abandoned storage locker? Unfortunately the recent suicide of Celebrity Rehab star Mindy McCready has served to illustrate the problem with glib culture and our fascination with star-studded solutions to important issues.

The sad part of the story, that few seem to be talking about, is the unbelievable fact that some of the pseudo washed up stars undoubtedly believed that by going to a reality show to deal with chronic addiction issues they would receive quality help with their problems. Apparently they have been living in Glitterland for so long they think that it is possible to be authentic with cameras rolling and an audience. Imagine the shock on the faces of the winners of Extreme Makeover when they find out their taxes have gone up ten-fold and they can’t afford to pay the utilities on their new million dollar mansion. Reality’s a bitch. Cracked.com has an excellent expose on the reality behind the reality shows here.

Going to rehab, or treatment, or whatever you wish to label it, is a daunting enough thought without a television audience critiquing and criticizing. The work necessary to deal with and overcome a serious addiction takes years, not twelve episodes. Believing that a televised intervention or an hour with Dr. Drew will make any substantive difference is ridiculous. In the real world there is not a limo to take you to a treatment center after the family reduces you to tears and shows you the golden path to success. I have been involved with dozens, even hundreds, of family meetings with addicts and things simply do not go the way they do on television. There is much more yelling and far less contrition. Even if you could get a commitment for treatment there is often a six-week to two-month waiting list to get in. Even Detox can take a few weeks. Welcome to the real world. Adding in the cameras and the lights and the looming audience is a sure-fire recipe for disaster. How can anyone hope to heal with the cameras running? This does not even take into account the skewed life experiences of media celebrities who have little or no experience with real life and are ill-equipped to handle even the most mundane hardships.

Mindy McCready (album)

So why are we surprised then that five people, at last count, have died following a stint on Celebrity Rehab? Mindy McCready serves as a sad reminder that many of us are tempted to take short cuts and are not realistic about the true cost of dealing with our mental health. Real therapy is gut-wrenching and should not be on display for the general audience. I feel bad for Mindy and others who have been sold a lie, dressed up as a photo-op. Wholeness comes from confronting our demons, usually one at a time, and wrestling them into submission. There are no shortcuts to wholeness.

Maybe it was Dr. Drew himself who gave us the last, best word on the subject – “Mental health issues can be life threatening and need to be treated with the same intensity and resources as any other dangerous potentially life threatening medical condition. Treatment is effective. If someone you know is suffering please be sure he or she gets help and maintains treatment.”

Poser

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

“I hate how I don’t feel real enough unless people are watching.”   Chuck Palahniuk

I am a poser. A Scottish poser. It was with some distress, then, that I realized some time ago that my humble little red-headed wife was related to the lesser kings of Scotland, the clan Douglas, the Black Douglas, the flower of chivalry, the Earl of Montrose, several prominent Jacobites, the earls of the Isles and Moray, and Archibald the Grim. My relatives were probably crouching with their mangy faces in the mud as her snooty relatives rode by on the way to the Battle of Bannockburn. One of her forbearers invented logarithms. My relatives probably didn’t go to school. William Douglas (Jamie’s lesser known brother) was the only earl to harass the English and the first to recognize William Wallace‘s worth. He was the driving force behind the early days of the Scottish Revolution and the Douglas boys were considered two of the greatest knights in Christendom, recognized thus by the papacy itself.. My relatives ate alot of beets.

It’s interesting how we so desire to ‘be someone’. Annette seems to take it all in stride. I would be ordering kilts, writing articles and booking vacations. Many of us are often tempted to name drop, to associate with people of influence, to trace our lineages back to find out if we are illegitimate heirs to the throne. One of the things I find amusing when I talk to my friends who believe in reincarnation is that nearly every one of them was once an indian princess or cupbearer to Genghis Khan. Nobody ever admits that in a past life they were accountants or a parsnip. There is something romantic, something proud and wonderful, in believing that we are significant in a culture that has come to nearly worship fame, regardless if it is for any good reason. If you don’t believe me watch Here Comes Honey Boo Boo, or any show with gypsies on TLC. Or anything on TLC. But seriously, don’t watch TLC.

We line up to catch a glimpse of Paris Hilton or Princess Whatever Her Name Is; we pose with our friends about who and what we know. We posture in order to gain face or credibility. It’s a vicious cycle. Annette hasn’t done that at all. It’s sorely tempting to want to be somebody, even by association. It’s too bad that we have this drive to impress, this childish need to be recognized and adored. I know I do.

Once a long time ago I enjoyed a certain level of notoriety. I miss that. Perhaps this is because we have difficulty being complete in ourselves. Perhaps we feel that if others notice us than that makes us special. We have been led to believe that we need something outside of ourself to validate us. We know we are important if other people tell us we are.

Got blood?It’s a trap, a hamster cage that never stops, can never be complete. Living your life to impress other people is a sure-fire way to end up insecure and ultimately neurotic. Even living your life to please others is a lose/lose proposition. Some of you know who you are. You call yourself a “people-pleaser”. As I ask my patients, “How is that working out for you so far?” Unfortunately there are people in our lives who are emotional and relational vampires. You can never do enough, or give enough, or love enough to fill that hole in their heart. Finding your self-esteem by pleasing and impressing others, no matter who they are, is dysfunctional. It certainly feels right – you are giving, kind, gracious, self-sacrificing. The problem is, you are also unrealistic and undoubtedly very unhealthy.

There is nothing wrong with seeking to help and care and love and give. There is something very wrong with deriving my sense of identity that way.

“It is easier to live through someone else than to complete yourself.  The freedom to lead and plan your own life is frightening if you have never faced it before.  It is frightening when a woman finally realizes that there is no answer to the question ‘who am I’ except the voice inside herself.” 
―    Betty Friedan

What Are You Chasing?

Published on by Scott Williams4 Comments

Dog sunny Day AfternoonFred Craddock tells the story…

A man walks into the living room of a friend’s house and sees a large greyhound dog wrestling on the floor with his friend’s children. His friend had a habit of rescuing the greyhounds from the race tracks because they make great pets.

The dog and children were having a great time rolling around and playing on the floor with each other. The man looked down at that greyhound dog and said, “Dog, how come you’re not racing anymore?” And the dog said, “I’m certainly young enough to race.” The man responded, “So you’re young enough to race. Is it because you weren’t winning anymore?” The dog said, “Oh no. I was winning every race. I won every race up until the day I stopped racing.”

“Well then why aren’t you racing anymore dog?”

The dog replied, “Because one day I realized, that rabbit I was chasing wasn’t real.”

I’m sitting in my front room, taking some personal time, checking out the recommendation of a friend – watching “The Big C“. I try to find shows I can share with my wife, our tastes are very different. It’s the story of a woman who finds out she has cancer, terminal cancer, but can’t seem to tell anyone except her crotchety old neighbour. She realizes that she has spent her life playing it safe, chasing after middle-class furniture and watered-down dreams. It is a reminder of how easy it is to forget what is important, to settle for what is predictable.

Tony Campolo likes to talk a about a study in which fifty people who were in their late nineties were asked the question: “If you could live your life over again, what would you do differently?” Looking back on their life they concluded that, if they had a chance to live their lives over again, they would have spent more time reflecting, taken more risks, and done more things that would live on after they died.

No one mentioned they would have attended more meetings, spent more time doing taxes or had more arguments about paint samples. Few of us, if pressed, would admit that we grew up hoping that some day we could waste our lives on things that didn’t matter.