Hell No to Hmmm, Maybe

by Carolyn Klassen

  Do you see how the problem is the pattern—the way spouses connect with each other? A couples’ therapist looks at the dynamics of what is happening in the couple relationship.

  Couples come to me with issues about budgeting, or sex, or even who takes out the garbage. Almost always we can see that the connection between the two people is damaged by the patterns they are locked into.

  As we understand the pattern, then remove/heal the underlying reasons that create the pattern, new patterns emerge, the connection is regained—and the couple returns to therapy having addressed who takes out the garbage without any help.

  Please note: This is not about blaming the victim. (Classic example: “I wouldn’t have hit you if you hadn’t burnt the roast”). Abuse doesn’t rise as a natural response to the pattern—it’s not “your fault” when your partner abuses you. However, even in abusive situations, without realizing it, we teach people how to treat us. (Relationships earlier in our lives often teach us how we should be treated.)

  We all take part in creating dynamics in the relationship, which gives permission for uncomfortable or painful situations to occur. It is not your responsibility to get him/her to stop abusing you. However, a therapist wants to work with you to help you find your own ability to effect change. A therapist explores how much you believe in yourself. A therapist explores how the relationship has affected you, making it harder for you to remove yourself from an unhealthy relationship.

  Sometimes it is possible to establish a healthier relationship. Sometimes, changing the dynamics so you aren’t being hurt/abused means the relationship will not continue.

  A family therapist will explore the dynamic between parent and child, or sister and brother. You and the therapist will seek to understand the patterns and tensions, the ways in which actions are working to achieve a purpose other than what’s immediately apparent.

  The family therapist sees a family rather like a small mobile of critters that hangs from the ceiling over a bassinet. When the bear gets yanked over here, the rabbit swings over there, and the pig jiggles over there.

  The family therapist sees this one mobile of critters as one arm hanging from a larger mobile that is comprised of several mobiles…classroom, grandparents, soccer team, workplace. That mobile is, in turn, hanging from another arm of an even larger mobile: school, extended family, community club. And that mobile is an arm of a still larger mobile—cultural norms and political climate.

  A child acts out at school with bullying and cheating on tests. The parents bring the child in, and as we work with the family, we come to understand that the child notices that when the school calls home, the parents work together to solve the problems with the child at school. This collaboration is a welcome relief for the child who is terrified by his parent’s constant fights. The child’s behaviour at school improves as the therapist helps the parents resolve their issues.

  A newly married couple, each with their own biological school-aged children who live in the home with them, come to therapy because his children are acting out at home. He works extensive hours, leaving her to parent his children with very little relationship having developed. When he is home, he is tired, and she still does the bulk of the parenting. He hangs back from parenting. His children don’t feel as connected to him and resent her. This all happens in a world when men do the travelling and women do the parenting—even when it makes more sense for the father to take the lead parenting his own biological children in a new step-family situation.

  The long and short of it is this: It simply makes little sense to say, “There is no point in going to counseling because it is someone else’s fault”. Their behaviour may be a huge problem for you and others. However, as someone who is swinging from the same mobile, you can benefit from exploring your actions and reactions.

  Wouldn’t it be helpful for you to know how your actions affect the system, and where your actions and reactions come from?

  Wouldn’t you want to look at your role in the pattern that has developed?

  Wouldn’t you want to understand better how doing your own work might impact on a painful situation involving someone else in your life?

  A good therapist won’t turn around and blame you. A therapist will help work with you to understand how you may perpetuate painful patterns in painful relationships that aren’t working for you.

  A couples therapist or a family therapist may work with the system—the dyad of the two of you—or with your family to do that work together with all of you.

  ◆◆◆

  Therapy isn’t a court of law. It’s a place of healing.

  In the end, in counseling, it’s generally irrelevant whose fault it is. What is important is getting yourself (and perhaps others too) in a better place in your life.

  11

  I should be able to fix this myself

  If you have children, do you remember that stage when every other word that came out of their mouths was, “Me! I do it myself!”? They want to tie their shoelaces on their own, cut their meat, go up the stairs without the handrail or your hand. It is a painstakingly difficult phase when, as a parent, you either endure the toddler’s attempt to do it on his/her own, or bring on the meltdown by doing it for them—or both. When a child struggles to tie their laces when their fingers just can’t move as precisely as their brains tell them, they fail.

  We understand the toddler’s desire to have independence. We love learning to do something on our own. We love mastery, that hard-won victorious sense of having developed proficiency after struggling to learn something. That feeling of, “Myself!” doesn’t go away when you become an adult.

  I recently learned Sudoku, a number puzzle with 9 squares of 9 squares, each needing the digits of 1-9 arranged in the square. No digit is repeated in a row up and down, left to right, or within the square of 9. I’ve observed my dad playing Sudoku for years, and I was never interested. Not long ago, on vacation, I was sitting in an airplane puzzling over this Sudoku thing in my son Jay’s book as I was passing the time enroute to our family vacation destination. My adolescent son laughed at my ineptness, took the book from me, and in a flash, had over half the puzzle done, explaining as he went. I stared with fascination how he had strategies and techniques to do this puzzle while I stared blankly at the page.

  I hate it when someone can do something well that I can’t do at all, when I know I have the capability to learn. Jay knew something I didn’t.

  Game on!!

  I’ve spent the last 6 weeks doing Sudoku puzzles here and there. I’ve moved to progressively harder puzzles to further develop my abilities to solve these problems.

  I understand that my Sudoku solving skills are relatively useless in the rest of the world. This is a skill that serves little point other than to prove to myself that I have developed it.

  But I take some pride in the satisfaction of being able to struggle my way through a puzzle with some knowledge and expertise. It is a far cry from my blank stare less than two months ago.

  Don’t we all love to solve problems, and to solve them independently, on our own? Most of us love the pleasure of having attacked the problem, generated strategies, and then implemented a solution. When something finally works for me, there is a little party in my brain.

  Somehow, somewhere, though, we have acquired the idea that a problem is best solved on our own. That the victory of accomplishment means more if we solve problems on our own. That the satisfaction is sweeter if we did it without help.

  How did we get there?

  ◆◆◆

  I watched a story on the news a couple of years ago and discovered Allison, the turtle. I dug a little deeper and viewed a YouTube video about Allison and her impediment[2]. Allison only had one flipper. A shark attack had left her with three stumps.

  When a turtle has one flipper, there is only one option, really. Picture it—a turtle flapping one flipper, again and again.

  Circles, circles, and more circles.

  The guy
, Jeff George, at the turtle refuge at South Padre Island was clear:

  turtles with three flippers can get released back in the wild,

  turtle with two flippers can probably make it in the turtle sanctuary

  But,

  turtles with one flipper—not much hope.

  Turtles with one flipper are generally euthanized.

  They tried prostheses with Allison—but there wasn’t enough residual stump for them to work.

  She is a one flipper turtle. No options.

  One of the young interns remembered something though. An intern—just a kid, really—you know, the sort of person who no one might think to listen to.

  The intern recalled his days as a kid—rowing with one paddle in an inner tube. Think about it, use your imagination. A kid, rowing with the paddle in an inner tube over and over equals circles, only circles.

  Just like a one-flippered turtle.

  But put a kid in a canoe, and rowing with a single paddle is doable.

  The difference lies in the canoe’s length. The vehicle acts as a rudder, giving direction to the momentum created by the paddle.

  This intern thought outside the box, with a fresh perspective from those who just have always used prosthesis with turtles missing limbs.

  The intern worked with a wet suit that had a rudder. The staff played with the positioning and size, and one day-VOILA!!

  Allison has become a coordinated turtle. She can go where she wants in the tank. She feeds herself. Allison decides when to dive and when to surface, and then does it, on her own.

  She still only has one flipper.

  But—it took someone with a fresh perspective to help Allison with some different possibilities. The interview I heard talked about how the handlers continue to marvel at how Allison has “perked up”, how she revels in her mobility. She is a new turtle with her rudder. The single fin isn’t so much a problem anymore.

  This story reminded me of some moments I have had with clients, when a comment or question I ask helps them understand the issue through fresh ideas.

  Therapists aren’t so brilliant as to identify exactly what everybody should do all the time. They study their craft and strive towards excellence, but they can’t tell the future, read your mind, or know what should be done in every situation.

  Nobody goes to therapy to hear someone who has all the answers.

  That’s disrespectful to clients who spend all day every day living their lives, having the challenging relationships, or experiencing the depression, or struggling not to give in to drinking the alcohol threatening to destroy their lives. I believe that clients have a wisdom about their own lives. They live every moment of every day with the problems and issues that bring them to therapy. If a simple response was that obvious, would they even need to come to therapy?

  If it was as simple as someone saying, “Don’t do A, choose B, and then your life will be a much easier”, wouldn’t everybody know to just choose B? Of course!

  Clients are looking for support, not easy answers.

  Easy answers, when they exist (and sometimes they do!) are acted upon immediately by people without ever becoming clients. You don’t need therapy for that.

  But we can all get stuck in thinking about complicated situations in a rigid way. A therapist concentrates carefully, asking questions and hearing things from a different perspective. It can open up dialogue and fresh options in a way that still trusts the client to solve the problems.

  The fresh perspective the client gains leaves them in a better position to move forward in positive directions in their lives.

  When that happens, clients practically bound out of a session with fresh energy, ready to tackle life. It’s fun to watch—kind of like it is fun to watch Allison.

  ◆◆◆

  Several years ago, I was presented with a project. It was a huge venture that was intimidating in scope, but also had huge opportunities. The possibilities were enormous and the outcome had a chance of being awesome. However, it would take me in new directions, and ask a lot of me. There were legitimate concerns about the logistics. All in all, it was a risky project—that someone was working hard to talk me into.

  I spent weeks going back and forth on how to proceed. Should I, or shouldn’t I? I was wrestling with joining the project, with my question to myself, over and over, “Can I do it?” and, “Could I pull it off?”

  I grappled with its do-ability. I contemplated whether I could do it. And I wasn’t sure. I was hesitant.

  Then a colleague, chatting with me one afternoon, asked me: “What if you asked, ‘Do I want to do this project?’ rather than, 'Can I do this project?’

  The lights flashed on!

  The instant I asked myself the question, “Do I want to do this project?”, everything shifted. I knew I didn’t want to do it. Despite the cajoling and convincing of others, my heart wasn’t in it. I didn’t believe enough in the project, didn’t think it was a good use of my time, and the outcomes were far more important to others than myself.

  It took someone outside of the situation, someone with greater distance from the project than me, to notice that there was another way of approaching the decision. Another person had a wisdom I could not have had, to ask a different question. I was too close and too involved, to recognize an alternate approach. She gave me an invaluable perspective that changed the course.

  Once I knew I didn’t want to do the project, regardless of if I could do it, it was obvious I would decline the opportunity.

  The one question by a colleague changed an agonizing decision into a simple one.

  ◆◆◆

  How is a person supposed to know what they know and don’t know? How can anyone know what they don’t know? And yet why do we expect ourselves to know what we don’t know? Everyone has blind spots. Spots that we can’t see for ourselves.

  By definition, we can’t see our own blind spots. How could we?

  Inviting someone into an area of your life where you seldom, if ever, let someone in, can allow someone to notice the blind spots.

  A therapist will often interrupt a client in the telling of their story. You know how people have a certain, specific script? It might be the story of how her husband left her or the story of how the cancer got diagnosed and treatment began. They’ve told the story a dozen times. Maybe a hundred times. As the story is recounted repeatedly, the story takes on a personality of its own. It is told in a certain way—which gives us fixed way of seeing the characters in the story, and the outcome of the story.

  In counseling, the therapist will ask questions or notice parts of the story that are often neglected, or under-told, or even missed altogether. The fresh questions change the way a person tells the story to him/herself.

  I had a client who came to therapy after not having attended for a couple of years. He had been to see me a few times and then said he had to stop coming because life was too overwhelming. Life had dealt him a bad hand. His wife had a long serious illness. This client’s business was struggling to survive. He had also taken on a major debt of a summer house that now hung like a noose around his neck. His world collapsed when his business had a fire and water damage destroyed all his business documents. He was dealing with insurance and trying to manage a business that barely surviving with no documentation. He was swamped and had put therapy on the back burner. And now, after the chaos and its demands on his time had subsided, he returned.

  He told me that the last session we had before he didn’t return for 2 years had been profound for him. This client shared his vivid recollection of a conversation from our last meeting all those many months ago. He said that as he was telling me his story of one bad and exhausting thing happening after another, I had asked him: “Wow, how is it you can even get out of bed every morning?!”

  He recounted how, in that moment, he couldn’t recall how he answered the question, but the question stuck with him. And he realized that as unanswerable the question was, given the situation, I could onl
y ask it because, in fact, he had gotten out of bed that morning. The question was one of compassion for how tough his life was, and one of admiration and curiosity about how he prevailed against such difficulty. This gentleman told me that that question stayed with him every day as an encouragement of sorts. It reminded him that, as difficult as it was, he had made it through another day.

  Knowing that question could even be asked of him during such a difficult time gave him hope that sustained him during a very difficult season of his life.

  ◆◆◆

  I work a lot with couples, and couples often find the support of a therapist valuable in having them see new perspectives.

  Picture this: A newlywed couple comes to see me because he is not initiating sex with her. She wonders if she is unattractive, if she is somehow pushing him away without realizing it. She longs to be close and intimate with her husband in every way. She is confused why she is being rejected. Part of couple therapy explores his feelings towards her. He loves her deeply. She is unlike any woman he has ever been with—kinder and gentler. He admires her goodness and her loveliness. He sees her as so pure and wonderful and has her on such a pedestal he doesn’t feel he can approach her. Through our conversation, he is able to tell her (and himself) that he doesn’t feel worthy of intimacy with her because she is so remarkable. She is dumbfounded that he would perceive her that way. Therapy progresses once we are able to determine this.