Get Out of Your Own Way

by Mark Goulston

  Sometimes vows are made unthinkingly, simply because it feels good to make them. It enables us to pat ourselves on the back for our good intentions—or to make others feel better by assuring them that things will be different in the future and they won’t be hurt, let down or offended again. In those cases, it is no surprise that the vow has all the staying power of a campaign promise. But more often than not our vows are sincerely made. We mean what we say. We want the future to be different. We have every intention of changing. The problem is, we leave things to chance, assuming that our good intentions are enough to get the ball rolling and that we can improvise from there.

  “Hell is paved with good intentions.”

  —ENGLISH PROVERB

  If you really want things to be different in the future, you have to know how to change. You need a plan. Otherwise, the future is likely to repeat the past—or be even worse. You might set change in motion, but, lacking the tools to follow through, end up biting off more than you can chew. Like nature as a whole, human nature abhors a vacuum. When faced with unfamiliar circumstances, you might feel unprepared and try to fill the vacuum with tried and true behavior that might not serve your new purpose. As a result, you can end up not only ashamed and disappointed but in real trouble.

  I’ve seen it happen, for example, to hard-working men who are facing retirement. “I can’t wait,” they say, and reel off all the trips they’ll take and the hobbies they’ll indulge. But they fail to plan their finances properly and end up with only broken dreams to show for a lifetime of work. Others plan for the money but not the time. Asked what exactly they intend to do when they retire, they reply, “I’ll worry about that when it happens. I’m looking forward to doing whatever the hell I want.” Then the day comes, and they don’t know what to do with themselves. They end up feeling useless and making everyone around them miserable. As the wife of one such man put it, “He wasn’t well rounded when he was young and flexible, so how can he be now that he’s old and rigid?”

  I’ve also seen it happen to single women in their late thirties who hear the ticking of their biological clocks. They want to have a child so badly that they grab the first available opportunity, whether or not they’ve found a suitable partner. When asked how they will provide for the baby, how they hope to manage work and child care or afford a larger apartment, they appear certain that maternal love is strong enough to overcome any obstacle. A similar illusion affects lovers. Whether they’re young Romeos and Juliets or middle-aged romantics who just know it’s going to be different this time around, they follow their hearts without letting their heads consider the challenges of building a life with another person. Love conquers a lot, but it doesn’t conquer all.

  “He that waits upon fortune is never sure of a dinner.”

  —BENJAMIN FRANKLIN

  Leaving too much to chance has dire consequences when what’s at stake is a change of destructive behavior. Take, for example, a man who promises to stop battering his wife. Chastened, contrite, and possibly having been punished by the law, he might truly mean it. But without a plan—a commitment to therapy, an effort to resolve the causes of his discontent, a blueprint for responding nonviolently to conflict—he is likely to revert to his old impulses when his buttons are pushed.

  Similarly, people who vow to give up smoking, drugs, alcohol or other destructive habits are doomed to fall off the wagon if they leave things to chance. It’s not enough to declare, “I’ll never overeat again,” or “That’s the last bet I’ll ever make.” Without a plan to deal with the impulse when it returns, you don’t have much of a chance. People who go on crash diets, for example, lose a lot of weight quickly, but they seldom have a plan for keeping it off; hence, they end up fatter than ever. That is precisely why a program such as Alcoholics Anonymous works. It’s a plan; it offers a way to stop and a way to enforce the follow-through.

  “Chance is a word void of sense; nothing can exist without a cause.”

  —VOLTAIRE

  In Field of Dreams the main character, played by Kevin Costner, heard a voice that said, “If you build it, he will come.” He made a plan and stuck to it, and his deepest dreams came true. Wanting things to be different without a strategy for making them different will keep them the same. But if you plan it you can build it, and if you build it, it will come.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  An ounce of planning is worth a pound of luck.

  TAKING ACTION

  Start with the end in mind. Picture how you want things to be, clearly and specifically. Ask yourself what, when and where and form an image of that future in your mind’s eye.

  Now ask how. Figure out exactly what you’ll have to do to get there.

  If appropriate, break down your goal into segments. What specific steps must you take to reach each objective?

  Double-check to make sure the plan is doable.

  Figure out what kind of help you’ll need. Will you need experts? Money? Support or sacrifice from your family?

  Find a way to monitor your progress. Unless you periodically follow up, you might not follow through. One way to do this is to make your plan public; state your intentions to people you trust and ask them to hold you accountable.

  If you have an impulse to scrap the plan, resolve not to give in unless you have a plan for changing plans.

  Letting Fear Run Your Life

  “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself.”

  —FRANKLIN DELANO ROOSEVELT

  “You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You are able to say to yourself, ‘I lived through this horror. I can take the next thing that comes along.’ ”

  —ELEANOR ROOSEVELT

  Stan was a 52-year-old mechanical engineer at an aerospace company who drove forty miles to work each day. Then he had a car accident. After a short recuperation he was fine physically, but he remained injured mentally. He was terrified of driving. To preserve his job he braved it out as a car pool passenger, but rode white-knuckled all the way. The only driving he did was to drive other people crazy.

  Ruth was a 43-year-old high school principal and mother of three. When she discovered that her husband Ted was having an affair, she went into a tailspin. Despite Ted’s elaborate displays of remorse and his sincere efforts to work through the marital problems that contributed to his infidelity, Ruth could not overcome the paralyzing dread she felt whenever he was out of her sight. It got so bad that her own life came to a standstill.

  What do Stan and Ruth have in common? They were both trauma victims who were terrified to the point of incapacity by the fear of a recurrence.

  “Nothing in life is to be feared. It is only to be understood.”

  —MARIE CURIE

  Traumas tend to hit with a one-two punch. The first blow shatters our innocence and sense of safety. The second is not a trauma at all, but the fear that whatever happened will happen again. A wall of terror goes up where trust once stood. With our essential vulnerability exposed, we feel that if the second shoe were to fall we would be irreversibly damaged and perhaps not even survive. This deep apprehension can lead to withdrawal. If it’s exceptionally strong it can even turn into a phobia, the ultimate form of avoidance.

  Tragically, the fear of a second trauma can be more devastating than the trauma itself. Ruth’s anticipatory dread was so strong that if her husband, a surgeon, was too tired to make love she would assume he’d been with a mistress. She was so terrified of other women that she insisted that Ted stay away from social functions. She even examined his patient records to see what kind of women he’d been treating. After a while, Ruth’s paranoia was a bigger threat to the marriage than Ted’s affair.

  The tendency to expect a second shoe to fall has its roots in early childhood. When a child has a trauma, such as diving into a pool and hitting bottom or falling off a bike, he or she feels unprotected. If the parents make too big a deal of the incident, the molehill becomes a mountain in
the child’s eyes: “Anything that upsets Mom and Dad that much must be truly awful, so I’d better not try it again.” Conversely, if the parents treat the trauma too lightly, the child not only feels injured but alone. Psychologically, the aloneness can be more frightening than the injury. In either case, the net effect is to avoid picking oneself up and trying again. The emotional memory gets buried in the psyche. When, as adults, a fresh trauma retriggers the feeling, they protect themselves by constructing a psychological moat around themselves or becoming obsessed by the fear of a recurrence.

  “To conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”

  —BERTRAND RUSSELL

  Smart parents, on the other hand, comfort their traumatized kids, then encourage them to try again before the fear becomes debilitating. When the children do dive into the pool or get back on the bike without getting hurt, they learn that they are resilient. They also learn that if they stand up to fear and take action, the second shoe does not have to fall.

  That is precisely what adults should do when they are traumatized. Only by getting on with life and taking positive action can we overcome the fear. In Stan’s case, I convinced him to start driving again, first on small streets, then working his way up to avenues and boulevards before venturing onto the freeway. For Ruth the solution was to act as if she trusted her husband. She forced herself to wish him a good trip when he left town on business and to attend gatherings without clinging to him whenever another woman was in sight. Once Ted proved himself trustworthy, Ruth was able to trust him for real and get on with her life.

  When you are wounded by the vicissitudes of life, it is normal to be scared. It is normal to be knocked off balance. It is normal to want to shrink into a protective shell. But the sooner you resume living, the less likely you are to become a casualty. Action speaks louder than fear.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  Feeling afraid does not mean you are in danger.

  TAKING ACTION

  Realize that just because you feel vulnerable does not mean you’re fragile. Admit that you feel afraid and resolve not to let the fear dominate your life.

  Accept the fact that certain events cannot be predicted or prevented.

  Realize that apprehension and avoidance can be more damaging than whatever you’re afraid of.

  Return to your normal routine as soon as possible. If you can’t do it all at once, take small, incremental steps to normalcy.

  If needed, enlist the aid of a trusted person who will encourage you to do more than you think you can.

  Notice that each action you take reduces your fear. It is like a series of inoculations.

  Focus on your resilience. Remember that you survived the trauma and realize that you will survive the next one as well.

  Not Moving on After a Loss

  “Grief is the agony of an instant; the indulgence of grief the blunder of a life.”

  —BENJAMIN DISRAELI

  Marie had suffered the worst loss a person can endure: the death of a child. Always a cataclysmic event, this one was especially devastating because Marie’s grown daughter had been brutally murdered by a man whose advances she had rejected, and there was a chance the killer would go free. In addition, Marie had recently lost her mother and her own breast to cancer. She saw no reason to go on living.

  Hoping to buy time, I got her to promise that she would not commit suicide before the killer was brought to justice. But other than coming to her therapy sessions, she did little except stare at her garden and her photographs of her daughter. Her husband and I urged her to get on with her life. “I can’t go on until I get over this,” she said.

  “It’s just the opposite,” I replied. “Unless you go on with your life, you won’t get over it.” I explained that only by pushing herself into activities and building new memories would she be able to dilute the impact of the excruciating thoughts that hounded her day and night.

  It is certainly appropriate to grieve, and there is no reason to pretend the grieving has ended just because a customary mourning period has passed. But if at some point you do not pick yourself up and get involved with life again, you can become a prisoner of the past, trapped in the hypnotic trance of ongoing grief. If that happens, the year in which you suffered your loss could turn out to be not only the worst year of your life but, in effect, the beginning of the end.

  “The past is but the beginning of a beginning, and all that is and has been is but the twilight of the dawn.”

  —H.G. WELLS

  People who suffer a great loss hesitate to go on for a number of reasons. They might have been so dependent on their loved one for their identity that they feel unable to function adequately alone. Or, they might feel comforted by having people feel sympathetic toward them. What they don’t realize is that people will ultimately lose sympathy and start to avoid them. Another reason people cling to grief is to idealize the departed, thereby assuaging their guilt for any negative feelings they might still harbor. Then there is the belief that moving on would dishonor the deceased. But in all my years of working with dying patients I have never heard one say to a loved one, “Grieve for me forever” or “Please don’t remarry.” On the contrary, they invariably say things like, “Don’t waste time mourning. Go on with your life. I want you to be happy.” Finally, many mourners think there is no way life can be the same now, so why bother? But the goal is not to replace what cannot be replaced, or duplicate what cannot be duplicated, but simply to create opportunities for new memories.

  One of the most difficult things to do—and one of the most important—is to create new memories in the very area of your life in which the loss was experienced. People who lose a spouse, for example, tend to get more involved in their work or spend more time with friends and children. While that is certainly better than isolation, it is not as constructive as dating. After an appropriate time of mourning, becoming intimate with another man or woman hastens the healing by building new memories in the area of the loss.

  “The only cure for grief is action.”

  —GEORGE HENRY LEWES

  Of course, the parallel does not have to be exact, and in some cases it can’t be. A middle-aged woman such as Marie, for example, could not bear another child. However, she could direct her energy into an approximate area. Her daughter had represented, in part, someone to care for and help, someone who needed her. She felt a huge emptiness where her need to nurture had once flourished. So, at my urging, she did volunteer work at a hospital and joined a support group for parents of murdered children. Eventually, she took under her wing a distraught young woman whose husband had recently been killed. Extending herself to others in this way infused new energy into Marie. She became more assertive with officials prosecuting her daughter’s killer, and participated in groups lobbying for victims’ rights. Now, three years later, she has meaningful memories of life after her most devastating trauma.

  When you suffer a severe loss, you have to accept the fact that life will never be the same. If you cannot let go of your loss, start building new memories and perhaps, in time, the loss will let go of you.

  USABLE INSIGHT:

  Leave the loss behind by building new memories.

  TAKING ACTION

  Gradually compartmentalize your grief. If you’ve lost a loved one and turned your house into a mausoleum, turn it back into a home for the living. Create a room, if you must, with momentos of the deceased, or confine it to an album of pictures.

  Do the same process internally, by allowing less and less time per day to dwell on the past.

  Start to build new memories to dilute the intensity of the painful ones. Become involved in new projects, jobs and people.

  Instead of mere time-fillers, try to select meaningful activities that enhance your feeling of esteem and make you feel proud. For example, devote time to helping those less fortunate than you.

  Join a support group. Only fellow sufferers can say “I know how you feel” convincingly and ease the sense of aloneness.


  Not Getting Out When the Getting Is Good

  “I have spent my days stringing and unstringing my instrument while the song I came to sing remains unsung.”

  —RABINDRANATH TAGORE

  A surprising number of patients come to me not when they’re in a bad situation but after they get themselves out of one. They might have finally walked out of an unhappy or abusive marriage, quit a frustrating dead-end job, or stopped pouring time and energy into a losing venture. They should feel liberated and relieved. Instead, they are filled with confusion and regret. What do they regret? That they wasted so much time being miserable when they could have escaped sooner. Why are they confused? Because they can’t figure out what took them so long to snap out of it.

  There are any number of reasons people stay in bad situations too long. For one thing, staying put means not having to risk change; enduring familiar difficulties often seems more attractive than facing the unknown. What if they quit that frustrating job and don’t find a better one, or leave a bad marriage and end up alone? It also absolves them of the responsibility of having to make a painful decision. “I can’t bear the thought of hurting the person I love,” many unhappy spouses have told me. The prospect of feeling guilty for breaking a vow and abandoning a partner is often enough to keep them hanging on.

  They find ways to convince themselves it’s wiser to stay. They tell themselves things will surely get better, that life is tough and it’s foolish to think it will be any different if they change their circumstances. They resign themselves to the notion that they couldn’t find a better spouse, job, house or whatever anyway, so they might as well try to be content with what they have.