Hiatus

I know it's obvious, but I thought I'd acknowledge that this column is on hiatus. I'm tired of my own voice, but don't worry, I'll be re-enamored someday soon and start up again. In the meantime, remember that nothing is permanent, so enjoy the here and now as much as you can.

Home

Apologies for my recent absence. I've been preoccupied. I've started a great new job working with military families, and I'm moving from Seattle to beautiful Whidbey Island in just a few weeks.

I've always thought I'd be happier as a country girl, rather than the city girl I've been all my life. I guess I'm gonna find out!

Not surprisingly, I've been contemplating the idea of home.

In everyday use, the word usually refers to a place, the place we came from, or more often, the place we currently keep our stuff.

I have a little anxiety meter within me that is always aware how far I am from where I keep my stuff. The further I am from home, the higher my underlying anxiety. It's barely noticable, but it's there, and with all the training in hyper-self-awareness I've done, well, I'm aware of it. (That whole hyper-self-aware thing is not always all it's cracked up to be.)

Normally, that's how it operates: further from home = higher anxiety... but sometimes, I notice something different.

For example, there was this one time, about 10 years ago. I was on an airplane with my boyfriend, a guy I was pretty devoted to. I noticed that my distance-from-home-anxiety-meter was quiet. Its absence was noticeable, and I realized that I felt at home when I was with my boyfriend. Aw. Warm fuzzies. (But he turned out to be a jerk.)

So, I wondered, is home really a person for me, rather than a place?

When I was a kid, I thought home was my parents' house, but now that I think about it, that house was the main place where my mom felt relaxed. I think home was actually Mom, and she seemed most herself at the house, so voila. By association, the house became home.

At other times in my younger days, when I was between boyfriends or apartments or jobs, I had that no-home feeling. Not exactly lost, but also not anchored. It's a vaguely yucky feeling, like that anxiety meter is buzzing loudly with no sign of letting up, and I think it probably contributed to my choosing into lousy relationships once or twice.

A year ago, I moved from Southern California to Seattle, and I brought my kitty Rose with me. There was this one time, during the drive from L.A. to Seattle, at a pit stop somewhere in Northern California, that I realized my home was in the car. I'd attached it to Rose, at that point. I had a very visceral feeling that I was moving my home, and that it wasn't a place. That was kind of cool. She was a good cat.

A few months ago, Rose passed away. I've been living alone, without pets, for the first time ever.

And my distance-from-home-anxiety-meter has started fading. I don't feel it much anymore. Even when I drive a couple hours away for a business trip, or to see a friend who lives that far away, it's not happening.

I'm liking it. It's a relief. I'm hoping this means that at long last, rather than centering my sense of home on another being, it's here, inside my skin. That would be cool.

It makes me hesitant to get another pet, or to let a new man into my life. Sooner or later, I'm sure that hesitation will pass (it always does), but in the meantime, I mean to enjoy being my own home for a while.

Containment

I had many opportunities over the holidays to hang out in public places and peoplewatch. People are so watchable. So unique and so alike, and there are so many different habits/cultures/beliefs/behaviors to observe.

Containment became a theme in my observations. Some people can contain themselves and some can't. Some aren't aware that containing themselves is an option, while others aren't aware that it's optional. This is one of those areas where our family culture is usually the guiding (or controlling) influence.

For clarity, when I say containment, I'm speaking of the ability to separate what's going on inside you from what you express outwardly. Harmony between these two things is often called authenticity and seen as good/healthy/virtuous, but there's a 3rd element -- the issue of appropriateness -- that needs to be factored in. If it's not appropriate (or helpful) to be authentic in a given context, then it isn't healthy, either.

I imagine my mind as a theater. There are thoughts/feelings/beliefs/assertions/etc. that are appropriate for the main stage, and there are those that belong behind the scenes -- not so much for secrecy but out of respect for my audience. The drama queen part of me exists, and while I try to love and accept her and endure her tantrums with grace, I do my very best to keep her off stage so as to not inflict her on those around me.

This kind of containment used to feel wrong to me. It used to feel like I was having to hide something about myself so that others would like me, which felt wrong and at which I rebelled, laying out all my flaws for all to see. The "I dare you to reject me" approach.

Thankfully, I've had teachers and therapists who have shown me that containing myself is not the same thing as abandoning or dishonoring myself. In fact, it's quite the opposite. I'm so much more than my inner drama queen or myriad flaws, so presenting those too much isn't fair to the rest of me. Balance is indicated, and balance requires containment.

Family cultures usually dictate our personal containment standard. Some families don't teach it; their members walk around saying everything that's in their mind and expecting everyone else to accommodate them. Other families overteach it; their members walk around never saying what's on their mind and accommodating everyone else, even when it's unfair to them.

Most of us are somewhere in between, and many of us (thanks to proper socialization) are able to contain ourselves around strangers & acquaintances but less able around friends & family.

Standing in line at a retailer on Christmas Eve is a fascinating study in containment. You can see the varying degrees of containment pretty clearly.

If the wait is longer than someone thinks it ought to be, and she comes from a family that doesn't contain, well, you've seen her: head tilted in disdain, sighing every 30 seconds, looking around & trying to make eye contact with someone else who's irritated, maybe creeping into the space bubble of the person in front of her, saying things under her breath and then, if emboldened by agreement, saying things louder.

I've been her, plenty of times. And it's easy to spot from the outside. It's easy for me to watch and think, "Please, you're a grown up, contain yourself." It's easy to see that her anxiety is optional. It's easy to see that relaxing and waiting patiently takes less energy than huffing & puffing.

It's easy for me to analyze her behavior and feel she's doing something wrong. But she isn't. She's coping the best way she knows how. It's not pleasant for her, or for the others around her, but it isn't wrong. Nobody's personal standard of containment is right, although in these situations, I often wish mine were.

And that just makes me normal. I get to have preferences. As long as I can contain them.

Love and Loyalty

Love and loyalty get mixed up a lot, and in this age of renaissance men and women becoming more self-aware and making more conscious choice for themselves, I think teasing them out can be very helpful.

Loyalty is a "faithful adherence" to something -- originally a sovereign, leader, government, cause or something like that. A faithful adherence... there's a little ring of sacredness in it. Faith is sureness that's a bit blind.

In the old days, before people articulated and chose their own values, they'd identify an authority figure (or one was identified for them) and trust them to choose the right values. They'd follow a leader. We don't really do that anymore. We're all too well-informed and we have press and pundits who help us decide what we agree and disagree with, so there's no real need to faithfully follow leaders anymore. Not like that.

But we still get, deep in our cells, that loyalty is a good quality, and we want to be seen that way. That's normal.

Sadly, the concept of loyalty has been co-opted by corporate HR departments and other less-than-sacred entities to leverage guilt on the average, normal person. That's a tough one.

Meanwhile (and here's where loyalty bites us in the butt), we grew up with parents and a family who have ideas and values of their own, and we learned well what they are. We didn't choose them, necessarily, but most of us adopted them automatically. It's how we were raised, it's part of who we are, and all that. We love our family, and so we are loyal.

In this context, in the family, is where loyalty and love get entwined. When they learn your values are straying from the family's, mothers and fathers have this ancient, primal way of giving you a look that says, "Don't you love us anymore?"

It's torment. Of course we love them, but love doesn't mean loyalty to their values. But holding onto that truth takes a helluva lot of strength when a parent doesn't understand.

Some families are better than others at allowing their members to think independently.

Some families want to be good at it, but when the moment arrives, they are lost. They don't know what to say. They know what not to say, and so they don't say anything, which is not supportive of independent thought, but it isn't quite as bad as direct manipulation and guilt. Most of the time.

And some families are still caught in the medieval belief that love equals loyalty, and the members either compromise their own integrity to belong or they tear themselves away.

No matter which family you're from, and no matter how well you've individuated, here are some values & ideas that love-for-family can turn into blind loyalties if we don't articulate and consider them. As you read, ask yourself: Do you relate to them? Are they alive inside you somewhere? Do you want them having influence over your thoughts & behaviors?

Money: How much is OK to have? What does it mean about you if you want more? Is there someone in the family who you're not supposed to out-earn? What does money symbolize in your family (love, power, success, evil, life unlived, future security, any or all of these)?

Health: What level of health & vitality is "normal"? What priorities "should" you set above your health & vitality (hard work, others' needs, pursuing comfort)? What do you expect your life span to be? What does it mean about you if you take better care of your body than others in the family?

Ambition: What expectations for your life (or lack thereof) are "normal"? Are you meant to thrive? Is risk OK? What happens if/when you fail? Is it CATASTOPHIC-DISASTROUS-DEVASTATING, or just a stepping stone? Are you allowed to be afraid of risk? Are you expected to be afraid of risk?

New Years isn't a particularly better or worse time to make "resolutions" (that is, set intentions for positive change), but hey, it's upon us, and if you'd like to set an intention to shift one or more of these, seize the season!

I'm taking next week off, so Happy 2010, everyone! May it be a good one for you and for the many lives you touch in large ways and small.

The Self-Disclosure Conundrum

Self-disclosure, that is, sharing personal information, is a big topic in the therapy world.

Some schools of thought (the more traditional ones) hold that self-disclosure is counterproductive in therapy. The therapist is meant to be a blank slate, or at least ambiguous enough, so that the client's projections and assumptions are brought to the fore. Processing and healing projections and assumptions are very useful therapy goals.

However, the problem comes when the projections and assumptions can't be processed and healed because the client doesn't trust the therapist enough to be that vulnerable, largely because the therapist is such a blank slate.

Other schools of thought (more progressive ones) believe that a strict resistance to self-disclose on the part of the therapist heightens the power differential in therapy, which is considered counterproductive.

The power differential exists because a therapist has credentials, and they give input about you and your life, and it's their space, and you're paying them, so whether subtle and overt, the therapist has a position of power in the room.

Some therapists cultivate and use this, to great effect. They clearly make themselves the expert in the room, and that's exactly what some clients want. A close friend of mine uses this approach, and it works great both for her and her clients. She teaches them stuff. They like that.

It makes me tetchy.

I'm oriented differently. I value the lived experiences of both me and my client over the expert knowledge I was given in training. I believe that the client already knows what they need to know to heal themselves and have a great life, but their knowledge has been discounted, devalued, marginalized. I want them to tap into their wisdom and trust themselves. I feel that just teaching them would reinforce the idea that what they know isn't enough.

Am I perfect about it? No way. Plenty of times I find myself lecturing clients or giving input of an expert sort. I feel it happens in moments of unclarity or weakness. Many of my clients don't seem to mind or notice, but I do, and I try to do better.

And, that said, there are times when someone is just missing a piece of useful information. Occasionally.

And besides, I write this column. Writing a column is pretty expert-ish behavior, though my core intention remains to validate the slings and arrows of proper socialization by offering insight and support for your normalcy. In other words, to remind you that you're not crazy, which doesn't take expert knowledge.

As far as self-disclosure, I'm not particularly resistant to it. I find it comes up very little in the room. Most clients aren't that interested. Some are but don't ask questions because they think they "aren't supposed to."

The guiding star to answering any self-disclosure question is whether sharing the information is actually good for the client's process. If so, OK. Otherwise, it would just make the conversation momentarily about me, shifting the dynamic, detracting from their work and possibly damaging the sense of safety in the room.

It's a balancing act. Sharing enough (or just being willing to) to build respect and trust, but not so much that it diminishes the potential of the work.

In this column, I've avoided doing much self-disclosure, because whatever I write here is available to past, present and future clients. It isn't situation- or client-specific, so my guiding star isn't helpful. I can't control the information. I can't discern whether it's helpful or not. So I've held back a lot, and I'm starting to worry that when I write things like...

Insecurity is, in essence, feeling inadequate, partly due to laziness and immaturity.

...like I did last week, it sounds judgmental and pompous. I really don't mean it that way. In fact, I can say that almost without exception, anytime I get snarky in this column, it's because I'm describing an issue that I struggle with myself.

Yes, of course I've got insecurities. And they're stupid (mine, not yours). And I have a tough time having compassion for those parts of myself that are lazy and immature in those moments.

What I know from being a therapist is that everything we do makes sense and is geared toward something positive. If we self-sabotage, for instance, it's because some part of us is scared, and has very good reason to be, but for whatever reason we pressure ourselves unreasonably to ignore our fear. Or, it may be that in the past we had good reason to be scared, but those days are gone and that part of us hasn't caught up yet. In any case, there's a good reason. It makes sense.

It's easy to apply this understanding to my clients, and it's harder to apply it to myself. Sometimes I can, sometimes I can't. There's no finish line with some of this stuff. That's OK with me. I'd rather be human, flawed and even bumbling sometimes, than a perfect blank slate.

So there's a little self-disclosure for you, and perhaps there will be more to come.

Insecurity vs. Self-Consciousness

One of the perils of being normal in our culture is insecurity. It's a neurosis so common as to be nearly universal. And, it's a crock. Most of the time, it's a distortion of reality. An illusion. A fiction we make up and then decide to get stressed about.

Insecurity is, in essence, feeling inadequate. Adequacy and inadequacy (at the personal level) are both very subjective, with extremely few cues actually grounded in reality, so they leave lots of room for interpretation and doubt.

For instance, people often feel insecure about their level of beauty or attractiveness.

First off, there is no standard. Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, truly, seriously, and attractiveness is what any particular individual finds attractive, which covers a wide spectrum of blessed human uniqueness. There is no standard, no yardstick out there in the world we're expected to live up to.

But this makes us a little nuts. We're fond of our yardsticks, so we look to the world, to the people around us and to our glowing screens to try to extrapolate one. The yardstick we create is skewed, always, because it's a fallacy. Its existence is unnecessary and useless.

Nonetheless, there it is, and so we assess our level of beauty/attractiveness and hold it up to the imagined yardstick and we perceive that we fall short. We always fall short. Voila. Insecurity.

And then we make arbitrary meaning out of the whole process, like we'll never have what we want or can't possibly achieve our goals - some absurd conclusions that suggest we should pull back and stop living so fully or enthusiastically. Bah.

Here's the ultimate absurdity: you can't feel insecure about something you don't actually have. In this example, one of the last steps is: "we assess our level of beauty/attractiveness." We have a level! We have beauty/attractiveness. Feeling insecure about it is the absurd part.

You can't feel insecure about something you don't actually have.

If you feel insecure about your looks, you have looks.

If you feel insecure about your skills, you have skills.

If you feel insecure about your relationship/marriage, you obviously have one, and in this moment, you're doubting the reality of its existence. How crazy is that.

Insecurity is not grounded in reality.

What is grounded in reality is self-consciousness.

Self-consciousness is more rational, involving an assessment of what's real. Say you have a scar or other physical blemish. You don't feel insecure about it. You can't, because it's real, and insecurity is based on unreality.

Rather than insecure, you feel self-conscious about it.

From there, it's a choice between humility and shame.

Humility keeps us grounded without bringing us down, and it's the gateway to dignity. These are incredibly healthy and supportive qualities to cultivate within ourselves. Your scar may not be conducive to a career as a skin care model, but it's part of who you are and it gives you character and uniqueness. It doesn't mean much else, and when you can center yourself in the humility/dignity option, you get that.

Shame isn't so healthy; it's a deep-seated belief that we are unlovable, and that's just not true. This is the option where your scar means your life is limited and that you can't find or create success/joy/love/whatever.

Shame is not insecurity.

Insecurity is, in essence, feeling inadequate, partly due to laziness and immaturity. It's the avoidance of truth in favor of a fiction that's generally socially acceptable and that gets you off the hook for growing as a person and taking dominion over your life. You can just cut it out. I know there are reasons people don't - fear, mostly - but I recommend it highly. Life is better, post-insecurity. Really.

Shame, on the other hand, is real. A little shame is fine, and in fact is needed for humility, but beyond that, it really holds us back and makes life harder and less fun. Sometimes you can heal it by reality checking yourself, but it's more likely you need some support & guidance through the process. Friends, family and therapists are all good for it.

It's hard to ask for help, but if you choose carefully who you ask, and are willing to accept the help when it's given... in the end, it'll be well worth it. A great gift to yourself.

The Inevitable Existential Post

They say there are two types of people: those who make it a practice of categorizing people into two types, and those who don't.

(I love that joke.)

I have a habit of categorizing people according to where they fall on spectrums. It's a variation on the two-types habit, a variation that allows for mixtures or shades of grey. For instance, this week, existentialism is on my mind.

On one end of the existential spectrum are people who don't seem at all aware or bothered by the big, why-am-I-here kinds of questions, people who go about their lives, rolling with punches, carving out comfort zones and generally living from one arbitrary goal to another (whether it's getting married, buying a house, having kids, or just buying a new iPod), not taking any of it too seriously or thinking about it too deeply.

On the other end of the spectrum are the tortured souls who have a hard time functioning in society (keeping appointments, maintaining jobs, paying bills) (hello, artists) because these big, unanswered questions about what-life-is-for are too distracting and preoccupying, and painful.

In between, in varying degrees, I believe, are most of the rest of us.

For some, that looks like being good girls & boys, saving our money, working hard, planning vacations... all the while, hearing a mildly troubling background music that suggests that maybe we should be doing something else, or being someone else. That maybe we're meant for more. Or different.

Our beloved entertainment hammers this theme regularly, the idea that we're not living the life we were destined to live. Our stories show us the hero's journey all the time -- listening to a deeper calling, moving in that direction despite the protests of those around us, and finally, victory, arrival at our dream.

Our Act 1-2-3 narrative structure, a formula that's pretty much woven into our beings by this point, follows such an arc and urges us toward it. Many of us have come to believe that if we're not surfing the arc on the hero's journey, we're not living our lives.

Here's the good news: we can't be all things. We can't live all lives, all journeys, all arcs. We each get one life in one body to live one day at a time. And life doesn't always follow an Act 1-2-3 arc.

So while it's natural to wonder, and it's healthy to ask ourselves occasionally whether we're feeling fulfilled by our choices, it isn't necessary to worry too much about it.

In the meantime, on a smaller scale, it can be helpful to think about your values and see whether there are ways you've strayed from them.

For instance, many of us do our best to resist the machine of consumerism, remembering that we don't actually need the toys, we only want the toys, and we can live without them and do so, quite well, most of the time. Around this time of year, though, the machine can be extra persuasive, and we can get caught up and lose anchor in what's really important to us.

Take a moment to remember your values, what's really important to you, the loyalties you have that help you sleep in peace when day is done. Hopefully that'll help put everything else in perspective.