There was good reason for this car to believe someone was trying to steal it. I chuckled when I connected my hairbrush pummeling and the car believing it was being stolen. Now it became obvious.
A week later, my son called me stating that he was turning the key in the ignition and nothing was happening. As a new driver, he didn’t know what to do and he did what all boys do when their car doesn’t start—he called his momma! I told him to take a deep breath and gave him instructions. I asked him to turn the key all the way one way and hold for 10 seconds, then all the way the other way for 10 seconds and repeat 3 times. I told him not to ask questions but to just do it. Then I told him to start the engine and call me back.
He didn’t respond much, but even over the phone, I could tell he thought I was crazy. He called me back two minutes later. It’s rare that a momma can impress her adolescent son but I pulled it off on this one! He was astonished at my ability to give him such unusual and yet entirely effective instruction to get the car started when it wasn’t working.
I enjoyed the adoration for a few minutes and then told him the truth.
We fixed the problem of the tumblers in the ignition by whacking it so hard that the car comes to think it’s stolen.
We fixed one problem, but our strategy to fix it created another.
Our hair brush banging worked—but only partially. Now the car wouldn’t start for a reason that we created when all we were trying to do was start the car.
Ironic, huh?
◆◆◆
I was at a friend’s house a week later, and I was telling my buddy, Dave, about my Cavalier’s starting issue. I was at the door getting ready to leave as I was relating my story. I often use my hands to talk and this time was no exception. I had my keys in my hand as I was telling the story. My hand started mimicking the motion that the Automobile Association fellow used when he turned the key back and forth in the car door.
Dave looked at me as I was telling the story and he interrupted me at this point and asked me, “Carolyn, do you put your car key in the ignition with all those other keys attached to it?”
“Hmmm—yes, doesn't everybody keep their keys together and start the car with their key?” I answered.
“Carolyn,” he said gently, “You have a lot of keys on your key chain. A lot of keys. And it’s heavy. When you put your car key in the ignition, it can’t go in straight and neutral, where it needs to go. There’s so much weight on the key chain. It pulls the car key down when you put it in the ignition, so it goes in at an angle. That could mess with the tumblers inside the ignition.”
“Oh,” I whispered. I was speechless.
That made sense.
The next day, I bought a second carabiner so that the car, house, and bike lock key were on one loop, and all the work keys were on a second loop. I snapped them together. From then on, to start the car, I would unhook the much smaller, lighter set of keys and insert the car key into the ignition to start the key.
The effective, long lasting, solution that actually addressed the problem of starting my car was far different from the one I had used and felt had worked.
◆◆◆
So often, when people come to counseling, it is because they want to stop a certain behavior. It’s the equivalent of not wanting to keep banging on the steering column with a hairbrush. For example, a person may want to:
stop procrastinating with college course work
stop letting their boss walk all over them
be more open to intimacy with their partner
be more comfortable with their in-laws
curb spending on foolish purchases
be gentler with their children
The dilemma is that the problem behavior is actually, at a deep level, working for them.
The dysfunctional behavior is needed. People need to do those painful, hurtful behaviors more than they don’t need to do them.
Often people are not aware of how the “problem behavior” is actually, at a deep level working for them. This behavior needs to exist because it addresses an issue in their life. Let me give you some examples:
Procrastinating at school work is possibly a way for a college student to tell one’s parents. “I don’t like this program and I don’t want to be here,” may be too difficult to speak directly to her parents who clearly expect her to graduate from college. Her behavior states her reluctance.
Letting the boss walk all over him is one way he can avoid conflict. Given the meaning he assigns to conflict, he avoids it at all costs. He is passive in situations, even when people take advantage.
A person is struggling with anxiety. He drinks several gin and tonics each evening to quiet the inner cacophony. This is successful in calming him, even as it silences his conversations with family. It distances the problems—but it distances everything good in his life as well.
Just as I was unaware that I was fixing one problem and creating another, clients aren’t aware that what they are doing to help themselves in one area creates another issue. They have one undesired behavior that addresses a need or desire they are not possibly aware of. This isn’t manipulation. This is being alive.
I believe that each person is doing the best they can. When a client comes in desperate to change, I believe there is a part of them that earnestly desires change. I also believe that there is another part of themselves that they are not aware of, that needs that behavior.
When an adolescent looks around and perceives that the world doesn’t value them as they are, an eating disorder is a very helpful strategy to:
Get thinner. In a world that values thinness as a sign of virtue and beauty, losing weight fast is one strategy to increase their value to the world.
Punish themselves for being unlovable. It's distressing to feel devalued, and when a teen perceives him or herself as lacking value and therefore, struggling, it makes sense to make oneself pay for being so worthless.
Rally support and care for themselves. As others see an adolescent lose weight or witness signs of an eating disorder, the need for help becomes obvious.
Shake up the family. When a child has an eating disorder, parents notice. And care. Parents who are preoccupied with too much work or too much arguing, or worried about money or the child’s grades now become focused on the child. This focus on the child’s eating can help other members of the family refocus away from something destructive or
Any number of other reasons it makes more sense to have an eating disorder than not have it.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that anybody wakes up one morning and says to him or herself: “Gee, I have a problem here, and I think an eating disorder is a good way to solve it.”
Nobody does this on purpose. This is not a conscious process. That’s why therapy is so necessary to sort the issues out and untangle the confusing knots of pain. And sorting it out is essential because each person is unique. The factors beyond the person’s awareness that make the painful behavior understandable will be unique to each client.
I could lighten the weight of the key chain that had my car key on it to allow it to work better once I understood that was a problem.
Similarly, once a client understands the hidden dynamic that perpetuates the “problem behavior”, that dynamic can be addressed:
The recurring nightmare of a survivor of sexual abuse stops once she realizes that the bad dreams are her body’s way of telling her that the abuse mattered. She creates a piece of art that speaks of the pain and struggle of the abuse and the innocence of the child she was when it occurred. She hangs it in her house as a reminder of the abuse that occurred. The nightmares subside.
The anxiety that expresses itself by incessant tidying and needing an immaculate house is discovered to be related to his chaotic childhood. He recalls how his mother said to him, “You will always be as messed up as this house is”. He does some work around the power of his mother’s words, but now he can make different choices. Much to his wife’s relief, he begins to
successfully practice leaving an item or two lying around for a day or so.
A mother realizes that she screams at her toddler because she needs the toddler’s behavior to be of a certain high quality to prove her value as a mother. She realizes that she is also very hard on herself as she parents this child. She says out loud to the child the same things she says internally to herself. If she is going to be mean to herself that way, her child deserves the same. Further, this child needs to get ready for when she does this to herself as she gets older. Therapy focuses on how hard she is on herself. She learns to speak with gentleness to herself. As she does so, she yells less at her toddler.
Therapy is a great idea for you if you are doing something you don’t like doing but feel powerless to stop it. If you work to change your behavior, but find yourself slipping back, it may be helpful to explore how this behavior is helpful for you at a level you can’t yet understand.
20
When stop gaps stop working
Years ago, when I took a shower, I got immense satisfaction that immediately after I turned the water off, the tub was empty and glistening. It was a hard-earned beauty. I realize that, normally, a shiny tub is not something in which most people take immense pride. But I have reason to be proud. I have long hair. (Fair warning: these next couple of paragraphs may not be for the squeamish). When I wash my hair, inevitably, individual strands are shed, and make their way towards the drain. Some time ago, the water was increasingly slow to drain. Recognizing the hair issue, I unscrewed the top plug and with tweezers, I pulled this disgusting blob of hairy yuck up and threw it away.
It drained a little better—for a short while. And then it would happen again.
I deliberately clean out from just under the plug regularly. I would unscrew the plug and use tweezers to pull out ugly blob of hair yuck.
Rinse and repeat.
Regular maintenance and effort—I thought that would cure the problem.
I thought wrong.
It’s an unfortunate thing, really, when the tub doesn’t drain quickly. When the water sits in the tub for a while, soap scum and other gross stuff builds up around the tub. (I told you this part wasn’t for the faint of heart). I didn’t have the time or energy to give the tub a full scrub every time after anybody in the household showered. I took to keeping the shower curtain closed to hide the ugly effect during the week.
I had to do something. Hiding seemed a reasonable option, as scrubbing it daily in the morning before work just wasn’t feasible.
Oh, yeah, that hides it. But doesn’t fix it. The problem began to get rather ridiculous, and I realized that my under the plug maintenance was important, but no longer effective. The problem lay deeper.
I brought out the big guns. I found a long, barbed, flexible plastic stick at the hardware store that reaches way down the pipe and then pulled it back. The barbs grabbed the gunk, fish hook style, and pulled out a long disgusting mess of yuck out of the drain. I did this several times until this stick came back up clean, digging far below the surface of the tub.
I was thorough, because I wanted this tub to drain properly.
Going way beyond to a depth I hadn’t gone before with this flexible plastic thingy was bringing up stuff I didn’t have access to before but that needed to be removed.
It worked.
The whole thing drained like a charm. Now I could leave the shower curtain open during the day. The water drained fast and left the tub shiny clean. It felt great. The whole area got a good airing, and the bathroom felt bigger.
I wasn’t hiding anything anymore.
◆◆◆
Remembering how I admired the draining qualities of my tub, I paused to think about clients who come in, confused with why something has bothered them so much. They are distressed by something upsetting, but even in the midst of it, it seems out of proportion to what is happening.
You know how when you are stressed, you have your easy go-to strategies?
You have a colleague who irritates you. Well, she irritates everybody, but somehow, these annoyances affect you more than others. You get so angry. So, you come home and pick up a large bag of your favorite potato chips to inhale instead of supper.
Your wife told an embarrassing story about you, again, at the last party you went to last evening. You felt so humiliated. You had an extra 3 or 4 (or was it 7?) drinks to drown your humiliation.
Your son’s grades continue to drop, and he leaves the house without telling you where he is going. Money goes missing from your wallet. He grunts responses when you ask him questions. No pleasant conversation at all. So, you watch the shopping channel and order something that promises it will revolutionize your life. That lady on the screen promises that this vegetable chopper will fix all your problems. You want to believe her! You order something that will make your life feel better.
Your husband complains about how much money you spend on the shopping channel. You yell back that if he was around to help with your son’s troubled behavior instead of going out with his buddies, you might not need to spend so much. Your blaming and deflection get him to back off. It works. You don’t need to actually discuss the money—or your excessive shopping—because the chopper didn’t actually revolutionize your life.
What do you do to make yourself feel better in short term? How do you numb or distract?
My strategies? I like bacon cheddar potato chips. Or solitaire.
Both make it feel better. For an hour.
And that’s something. Sometimes, feeling better for an hour is super helpful. (Unfortunately, these backfire, because the amount of potato chips required to make me feel better has me feel gross after. To consume only 5 or 10 just won’t do.)
Even solitaire isn’t innocent. Rearranging cards for a few hours to distract myself from my pain is actually numbing. It feels different if I sit down to enjoy a single game before I go do something else.
However, sometimes, those stop-gap measures work rather like just using tweezers at the top of the drain. There is relief but only very temporary.
◆◆◆
With the facilitation of a skilled counselor, a client can explore the issues. A person can dig deeper and find some lasting shifts that allow for lasting relief.
A therapist can help a person transform and heal those wounded parts and release the power that they have over a person. A person has the innate ability to do this but having someone join for the journey provides adds understanding and insight. This allows for fundamental shifts in ways of relating to the problem or issue:
The co-worker is still annoying, but now your irritation is fleeting, as it is with your other colleagues. The anger just doesn’t get under your skin to the extent it has previously.
You explore and remove the troubling barriers that stopped you from having hard conversations with your wife. Now you can tell your wife you don’t like it when she tells that story about you. She expresses surprise that it bothers you and reassures you she won’t do it again.
You develop an understanding of yourself and a courage to have some difficult conversations with your son. He is angry, but your persistence has you understand pressures he is under with his friends. You’re still working it out with him, but you and he both understand that changes are expected. It’s not easy, but there is a direction. You are moving forward.
Your husband and you stop throwing around accusations about your spending or his time with his buddies. The two of you start having genuine conversations that build trust and connection. You start working together on schedules and budgets as you reconnect.
Therapist are like the tool from the hardware store that can reach deeper into the soul than the tweezers. Rather than stop-gap strategies to temporarily feel better, counseling creates lasting change by going deeper.
How effectively is the water flowing in the drain of your life? Want some help with flushing it clear by going underneath to create lasting change? Maybe some therapy to get to actually address the issue at a mea
ningful level?
21
Desiring more than mediocre
Many folks are bumping along through life and managing—but just OK. They are making it and getting to the end of the day without disaster. A couple is running the household well together, getting the bills paid, and the kids raised. A person gets laid off from a job, finds employment in another city, uproots and moves, and starts the new job and plugs into it, putting one foot ahead of the other.
Many people are managing just OK.
For the women and men who begin counseling, just OK just isn’t good enough.
A couple comes to see a therapist and says, “We aren’t in danger of divorce. Neither of us is going anywhere. But somehow, we aren’t as close as we used to be. We want something more.”
A middle-aged man says: “I can keep going to work, coming home, playing with the kids, doing some chores, and going to bed. Then, I’ll do it all over again the next day. But I’m going through the motions. I make my face smile and look interested. I really feel dead inside and have for a long time. My wife doesn’t know I’m here.”
A woman at the cusp of retirement says, “I’ve been working towards this moment all my life. Freedom. Lots of time and a bit of money to have the freedom to do my own thing. But I’m clueless. I don’t know what my own thing is because I’ve spent decades doing what my family needs me to do. It’s not that I can’t do it. I just don’t know how to do it so it’s meaningful and rich.”
Hell No to Hmmm, Maybe Page 15