John was a friend of the family, and he was kind enough to be on speed dial when I was out of my league in the fix-it department. I requested him to take a gander at the leak.
He looked at the leak for several moments. I could see him tracking the pipe from where it leaked to see where it came from, and where it was going. He went upstairs and fiddled for a bit underneath the kitchen sink. He even went outside to see where the hose emerged out of the exterior wall of the house. Then he went back down to the basement to gaze at the pipe some more.
John is not a plumber either, but he eventually told me he had narrowed down the problem. He turned a tap in the ceiling I didn’t even know existed, and, after a few minutes, the leak stopped.
He told me he would be back the next day with a part from the store and fix the problem. In the meantime, I shouldn’t use my sink.
John puttered the next day for about a half hour with a piece of plumbing he brought with him. He turned the tap back on.
No leak.
Fixed.
John had to find the source of the problem. Not so we could stand there and point fingers and blame at the problem. John had to find the source of the problem because once he knew exactly what the problem was, he knew which piece needed replacement and repair.
John spent considerably more time finding the exact problem than he did fixing the problem. Once he knew the exact origin of the problem, the fix was actually the simple part.
That’s no different from going to the doctor. If you say you have a pain in your belly, the doctor doesn’t just write out a script for pain killers. He is likely to poke around in there and order some tests. Appendicitis? Bowel obstruction? Cancer? Constipation? Maybe bad gas? And is that gas from lactose intolerance, or too many beans or something else?
It makes sense to identify if the appendix or the small bowel or the liver or the kidneys are to blame for the pain. Finding the source of the pain is not the end point: “Ah, it’s esophageal reflux!! I’m done. Job finished”. Rather, finding the source points towards the action plan. The specific remedy becomes obvious once there is a clear understanding of diagnosis.
Therapy works to find the deep roots of why a person does something they wish they didn’t. Say, for example, a person comes to counseling wondering why she yells at her children so much. She doesn’t like how angry she gets at them and worries about the damage she is inflicting on her children. Parenting well is the most important thing in her life, and she’s terrified that her verbal aggression will harm her children.
Therapy explores where that yelling comes from. We find that it comes from her deep desire to be the best mother ever. At a deep level, she told herself the story: “When my children misbehave, they are only doing this because I have messed up as a mother. Their naughty behaviour is proof that I am a bad mother.” And so, out of this complex part she is not aware of, she needs to yell at them to tell herself it is her children’s fault and not hers.
This mother yells at her children to prove she is not a bad mother.
Think about this. Yes, it didn’t make much sense to the client either.
From there, we could further explore her insecurities of being a mother. Turns out that this had to do with her own experience of being parented by her mother, who was an alcoholic. Her mom parented multiple children on her own, without the resources required to be present and available. How does the next generation parent effectively when she has never had seen modelling of how to deal appropriately with the frustrations of misbehaving children?
Yes, we tracked the issues back to her mother—not to blame the mother, but to target the healing. By focusing in the appropriate place, this client can take responsibility for her behaviour. She began to explore the messages she is tells herself in ways that will create space for different behaviors.
***
Several months ago, I heard a lovely woman in her early 20s tell her story of struggle to a large gathering. She had a severe eating disorder and had reached the point where life didn’t feel worth the struggle. Her self-described rock bottom moment found her in a hospital room after a desperate attempt to end the pain, with a profound and deep knowing that, “Nobody loves me. Nobody cares about me.”
From there she began a slow road to recovery, where she realized her own value. Over time, she formed better and healthier relationships with herself, her family and a Power bigger than herself.
What made listening to this experience so fascinating to me is this: I knew of her parents. They are relatives of good friends of mine. Wonderful people. Caring people. I know that these parents are people that love their children and would move heaven and earth to help their children.
I have no doubt of these 3 things:
She felt utterly alone and unloved in her world—and those very painful feelings led her to despair and to do things that were desperate.
Her parents always deeply and profoundly loved her and would have been doing their best to make her know that.
There was a serious disconnect in how they felt about her and how she thought they felt about her.
As a counselor, I am listening for people’s perceptions and experiences of how they have been hurt. I am aware that sometimes there has been actual and horrific abuse, real hurts, tangible neglect. I am also aware that children remember the significant events the best they can, but through the filters of a child. The vivid way these stories are encoded into their brain absolutely affected them. There is no way to know if it happened exactly like they remembered it.
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A friend of a friend purchased the home I had lived in when I was a very young child! She invited me over to see it as an adult. I remember going into the house where I spent my preschool years. It shocked me how much smaller the rooms had become in the decades since I was a toddler! The rooms were laid out as I remembered them, but the stairs were narrower, the living room was undersized, and the kitchen was tiny. I remembered that home as a big old house in which there was ample room to run around. Was I wrong?
It’s not important for a counselor to know if it happened exactly the way it was described because they are not judge or jury. A therapist’s sole goal is to help a person grow and heal. If the client remembers something in a certain way that causes pain, that’s what we have to work with. The pain is real—and so healing it is important. We are getting to the root cause of the pain which creates the problem. The pain matters because of how the person might have been affected by what they remember happened. The treatment focus is on healing the pain—not on the blame.
It would be unethical for a therapist to say, “Yes, this is all your mother’s fault” and then send you away with the job done.
The therapist is far more likely to say, “Now that you appreciate where that behaviour/feeling/thought comes from, we have the ability to identify how to move forward. You no longer will be hijacked by it operating on your behalf. We will use this information to help you figure out how to move forward so that your thoughts, feelings, and actions are more in alignment with who you really are.”
With conscious awareness becomes mindful responsibility.
The responsibility becomes yours. The responsibility is not your mother’s (or father, or grandmother, or older brother, or schoolyard bully or whoever else has caused you pain) once you explore and understand what is happening in your life. Far from blaming your mother, therapy puts the responsibility for your life squarely in your lap.
And isn’t taking responsibility what you really want?
10
It ain’t my problem
Carter, my youngest son runs hot.
Ever since he was an infant, he has hates to overheat. Other babies were swaddled in receiving blankets under crocheted blankets, after they were dressed in undershirts and a sleeper.
My kid? He had on a diaper and a thin sleeper.
Other moms looked at me wondering if I cared about this child. After all—I dressed myself in about three layers holding a ne
ar naked baby. I run cold generally and am always looking for an extra sweater or a pair of warm slippers.
But I knew my boy—and he was comfortable when the rest of us were freezing. If I wanted a happy baby, I never put long sleeves on him. And the day I tried a turtleneck shirt was a day I immediately learned how not to dress my child! (Even though he was so darn cute in it!)
I loved the adorable overalls and he found them too hot. I loved some long-sleeved shirts which he automatically vetoed. (Doubly vetoed if they had a tag inside the neck.)
I didn’t want the fights about clothing. As he grew older and became school aged, I established a rule: I decided he wore long pants to school when it was five degrees or more below freezing temperature. If it was less than five degrees below freezing, he could decide.
Practically, what it meant was that he wore shorts until the sidewalk puddles were solid.
Shorts made him happy, even when there was a thin layer of ice over the puddles, because he wasn’t hot. The worst thing in life, at least for him to tell it, is for him to be too hot.
We have continued to deal with the implications of this as he has grown up. He’s a competitive volleyball player, and I often picked him up from practice in high school.
I would be cold from being in and out of the car in winter. Often, I ran errands on my way to pick him up. I was in and out of the car repeatedly, letting all the cold air in. Cold feet in and out on cold concrete. Gloves had to come off as I’m loading and unloading, locking and unlocking. I never seemed to really warm up in the car before I was back out in the cold walking across icy parking lots. While I waited inside the gym for practice’s end and for my son to change clothes, any heat in the car that had been created quickly dissipated in the evening’s chill.
And then he and I would get into the car. Me, who is firmly chilly for some time. Cold hands, frozen feet. And Carter—who has just spent 2 hours jumping, running, going through assigned drills and generally being very physical. He’s roasting. The underside of his hair is damp, his face is flushed, and he’s warm—really warm—uncomfortably so, really. He actually has steam coming off him when we get in the car.
Picture the two of us in the same vehicle, inches away from the other. I’m driving, I’ve been in the vehicle, and I’ve already adjusted the air temperature on the drive over—fairly warm with a moderate rate of the fan. The heat has got the potential to get me comfortable, and maybe thaw my toes—with time.
We haven’t got time. Carter feels the car’s moderate heat amping up his own already steaming body. So—as we talk about the gym and the errands, saying nothing, he opens his window a few inches. The fresh, cold air washes over his glowing brow, beginning to cool him.
This cold air blasts not just the over-heated him, but also the under-heated me.
It gets colder—we’re still talking about the latest antics of the athletes during the drills and enjoying the day. My hand naturally, without conscious thought, closes in on the dial to notch up the heat to further warm the air.
What happens? You guessed it—his window opens further—just a few more inches. And I turn up the level of the fan.
We are still having a friendly banter about our lives, but within minutes, with no discussion on the topic, there has been a silent, elaborate temperature dance.
The result is that the car is blasting hot air at gale force while simultaneously being wind whipped with frigid air through the passenger side window which is now wide open.
Sort of hilarious once we noticed—but not comfortable for either of us.
Each one was compensating for the adjustments of the other, with the internal weather conditions getting gradually more and more extreme—and while each of us was adjusting to improve conditions. Let’s just say, well—our efforts were individually and collectively unsuccessful.
We were both working to fix the situation—but were locked into a pattern that was actually making it worse for both of us.
Counterbalancing another’s actions by equal and opposite reactions is a solution of sorts. However, it is an awkward and difficult-to-sustain strategy. Rather like two people standing precariously in a canoe. One leans one way, the other leans in the opposite direction and the other responds—until both are barely hanging on. The canoe stays balanced—but at a huge price:
Parents—when A is so lenient to the child, B feels the need to be stricter, and so A becomes more lenient to compensate. B reacts with further rigidity—and so on, and so on.
Partners—A feels the other is passive and so yells at other with a bit of an edge to “poke” B to respond. B can sense the escalation, and doesn’t like where this is going, so takes a deep breath, and further retreats to avoid a blowout. Spouse A notices the withdrawal and so feels even more responsible for making something happen, and so goes after B with a stronger reaction. Spouse B senses further escalation and so—well, you know the drill by now.
At work—A notices B is very laid back. A develops lists and hard timelines and schedules meetings to help the team get on top of things. Employee B is annoyed by how “Type A” that Worker A is and blows off all the lists and timelines and meetings. This further demonstrates to A just how very irresponsible B is, and so A puts more details into the lists, and the timelines get more rigid.
◆◆◆
In the middle of this silent crazy dance Carter and I were having, we suddenly looked at each other and laughed.
I made the first move—and told him I’d turn the heat down, if he would roll up the window.
I knew it would not be as warm as I wanted it, and I think Carter knew it would not be as cold as he wanted it. But we both knew that if we tolerated something somewhere in the middle, we’d both enjoy the ride a lot more than these swirling waves of hot and freezing gales that had been blowing simultaneously around the vehicle. It may not have been my perfect temperature, but I had a satisfaction in knowing that some of my discomfort contributed to his ability to tolerate the ride better.
◆◆◆
So—whose fault is the lousy temperature in the car? And really, who gets to decide what temperature is the wrong one in this car? Believe me, I had days of picking Carter up, when I knew that this ungrateful kid should put up with the heat because he should be grateful he had a mom that was willing to pick him up! (Yes, I am not always empathic and understanding when I am cold. I become a lean, mean, blaming machine, like anybody else!)
And if you asked him, I was being completely unreasonable to heat the car to volcanic levels, especially considering “Prickly Heat Syndrome”, a diagnosis he and a friend gave themselves. They throw this term around like it is a prized obscure potentially-fatal diagnosis from Mayo Clinic that I need to respect and treat.
◆◆◆
So often problems lie within the relationship dynamic.
The problem exists in the patterns between the people more often than inside of the people themselves.
For example, a husband wants sex more often and hints at the same to his wife. The next day, he goes to embrace her warmly, she pulls away. She wants intercourse less often—the kids, the job, the house—she’s exhausted. She avoids the hug to avoid giving him something that could slide into a sexual encounter. It’s intended as a kindness—she will sacrifice being hugged so as not to lead him on unfairly. She loves the hugs but wants it to be merely a hug that night, not foreplay, so she spurns all contact. But he feels the distance and feels rejected. That hurts, especially when it happens again.
Now he is angry that she is avoiding him and confronts her to tell her he needs sex more often. (He wants to be close to her but he can’t tell her softly and openly how much he misses this closeness because that’s too hard when he’s so hurt. It's difficult to feel lonely and feel so vulnerable that you can’t admit it.)
You can imagine, with little difficulty, her response to his demand to be close. She feels pressured to have sex. She further pulls away and now can’t even imagine wanting a hug. Now she doesn’t sit
on the same couch as he does in the evening. She goes to bed before him to avoid intimacy.
Eventually they don’t even end their day with the casual conversation that used to draw them together.
A couple’s therapist will help you understand the patterns you are locked into that create withdrawal and pursuit that results in discomfort for you both.
A wife who feels ignored and neglected as her husband works too many hours complains to him about how he isn’t an attentive husband. He doesn’t know what she wants, and so it’s easier for him to stay late and work on the project. His boss is excited about and pleased with how it’s going and regularly affirms his work ethic and good progress, and that feels great.
A husband feels like his wife is micro-managing his life in a way that feels restrictive and mistrustful. He is resentful and begins to hide his phone so she can’t see it. And sometimes will come home an hour later without telling her why because he wants a bit of his own space. She increases the intensity of her supervisory activities which further increases his desperate desire to not have her know everything. Therapy will reveal that years ago he had some inappropriate kisses with a female colleague. We will also discover the wife has recently come to know a new female has begun in his department. She is fearful—and she remembers now that she watched her mother over-function when her parents were fighting as a solution. It was her mother’s way to cope
A wife is drinking more and more, at first on weekends, and then even during the week. The husband feels the effects of her paying more attention to alcohol than the relationship, and he starts to cajole her to drink less. He buys her flowers and makes dinner when she doesn’t—he doesn’t complain because he watched his father leave his mother after many loud arguments. The husband dilutes the alcohol and often pours her the drinks so he can ensure there isn’t much in the glass. He tries harder and harder to be the husband that she might need him to be to stop drinking. Her consumption continues to increase.
Hell No to Hmmm, Maybe Page 8