The Real Health Care Crisis

Health care reform is the political topic of the year, and thank the gods, but here's the thing. It's hard to stay clear and focused on a political movement to fix a broken system when, on an everyday basis, most of us are in hardcore denial that we need the system in the first place.

In our culture, it's normal to be in denial that we're human. We've set up our lives so that we're reminded of the fact as little as possible.

For example, bathroom activities are about taking care of the animal of our bodies, and in our culture, these are private, secret, even shameful. Privacy is one thing, but we overdo it. Think about how a lot of kids react to anyone seeing them naked or knowing they're going potty: distress and shame. The message they're getting is that it isn't OK to be human.

And in the process of taking care of our bodies, we consider certain unnatural adjustments normal, such as eliminating body hair, wearing makeup, coiffing hair, whitening teeth... We wear deodorant so as to not smell like an organic creature, and we wear cologne and perfume so as to smell like something else entirely.

Some of us, with the blessing of society, even wage war on our bodies with harsh, unforgiving diet and exercise regimens, failing to listen to our bodies' signals that we're overdoing it. Injury is a common result -- it's one of the body's ways to make us stop hurting ourselves.

Then there's sex. For many people, sex is strictly compartmentalized from the rest of their lives. They don't allow themselves to express any sexuality outside the bedroom, and some even disapprove of sex in general. Seriously. That's like disapproving of eating or breathing. (Religion sure doesn't help.)

I could go on and on.

If you don't relate to this, if you feel absolutely no twinge of shame at acknowledging to strangers details about your body's size, shape or function, and your sexuality is an integral and appropriate part of your everyday identity, congratulations. You're either incredibly healthy and whole, having overcome the pervasive pressures of society and accepted yourself fully, or you weren't properly socialized and have poor or nonexistent boundaries. Either way, you're not normal.

The rest of us were programmed with shame about our humanness in order to control and minimize our animal behavior.

I am not arguing for a decrease in hygiene standards here, or arguing against healthy self-improvement. I'm just calling out all the ways we save ourselves on a daily basis from the reality of our physical state. We are organic creatures in soft, vulnerable bodies.

And because we like to avoid this particular truth as much as possible, the capitalist organizations in charge of taking care of us when we're sick have been allowed to grow and mutate and infest our economy relatively unchecked. Because if we're not sick, we prefer not to think about it.

Actually, allowed is the wrong word. We (as a culture) have required that they do this. We've made ourselves unavailable to conversations about how best to care for our health. We've refused to listen to their facts about what will happen if we keep smoking or eating fast food. We've demanded pills to fix us, and we haven't really wanted to know what's in the pills, how they're developed or what the costs are to us, society or the planet. We've abdicated responsibility for our well-being for decades and expected them to save us without protest when our bodies fail.

We've felt entitled to health and wellness without sacrifice or effort, because we are in daily denial of our physical humanness.

Luckily, this is changing. The current administration has made it a mission to break through our denial and help us face reality at the political and economic levels.

It remains our task, individually and as families or other supportive groups, to challenge our own denial and make some choices about how it's working for us. Are we OK with validating each other's denial? Are we OK with validating each other's sense of betrayal and victimhood when our bodies fail? Or are we open to new ways of supporting and accepting each other in real health and wellness?

This is the continuum, and we all fall somewhere between the two extremes. Movement seems to be generally in the positive direction. Let's keep it up.

Here's an idea that may help. When you look at how you take care of yourself -- how you eat, how you exercise, what feels "good enough" in these areas -- ask yourself, where did you learn this? Who modeled this behavior, and who taught you these habits?

Then ask yourself if keeping up these habits is an expression of loyalty to that person. It often is. Breaking out of bad habits often requires permission to stop demonstrating loyalty in that way.

So... does/would your mother want you to continue unhealthy habits, just because she didn't know any better at the time? Would you want your kids to do so? To keep eating ingredient X, for example, because you taught them to, even if, by the time they're grown, ingredient X is know to be a poison?

I hope that helps. Here's to health, vitality, energy and joy for humans of all shapes, sizes, ages and abilities!

Meet Your Aspects

There's a truth about consciousness that makes most people uncomfortable: that is, that we aren't just one personality.

A lot of people believe that to admit they've got disagreeing "voices" in their heads, arguing about the best course of action, or what entree to order, or whether this neat new shirt is overpriced... this seems "crazy."

But the thing is, we all have multiple personalities. I talked about it a bit here in the context of inner children, self-abandonment and dignity. Today, I'm feeling inspired to write more deeply on the concept of competing intentions.

First, these "voices"... they aren't voices. They're aspects - normal parts of human consciousness. When people talk about the hallucination of "hearing voices", generally that means that it's uncertain whether the voices are internal or external. If there's any confusion about that, well, that could be a sign of psychological decompensation. But most people know it's just inside their head.

Inside your head voices are normal. Unsure of whether the voices are inside your head... that's concerning.

Most aspects are the aforementioned parts of us that get fragmented during challenging experiences, mostly in our formative years.

There are also some aspects that come from being human. Factory loaded, if you will.

For example, the aspect that feels violent rage but is suppressed during the normal socialization process. It's still in us. For most people, it's deeply buried and any stirrings there tend to confuse us and make us feel scared or ashamed. For others, those who haven't suppressed it sufficiently, they tend to lash out sooner or later and land in prison. Or anger management.

Another of these aspects is our primal alpha urges, the non-verbal part of us that launches us into fierce competition, sometimes when we'd rather it didn't.

See if this sounds familiar: there's a job or role, somewhat important, that's being proffered in your direction, but you aren't interested. Then someone else wants the job, and you suddenly don't want them to have it. Suddenly you're interested. But you're not. Wait, what?

Or, you're in a social situation, a party or bar, and some member of the opposite sex is there but not interesting to you. Not on your radar. Suddenly, one of your peers starts pursuing this person and you suddenly need to get in the game. This person is suddenly taking over you radar and you're inexplicably on missile lock.

These particular aspects can really throw a wrench in things when they conflict with what our normal, polite, socialized minds want. Voila! Competing intentions. A milder form of cognitive dissonance.

We find ourselves doing things that we wouldn't normally, contradicting ourselves or behaving passive aggressively. We don't understand what's going on with us, or why we can't seem to get over something, or get going on something. It's confusing. It's discombobulating. It hurts our self-esteem.

If you don't relate to this, if you don't get indecisive and confused and behave like some alien force has taken over your body, that's a good thing. You're lucky. You're also not normal.

As for the rest of us... we need to develop the skills of aspect herding. Come into acceptance that different parts of us are going to want different things occasionally, and cultivate mediation skills. Learn to identify and articulate what the competing desires are, and then make executive decisions. Implement inner diplomacy - soothe the parts that lost out, and offer them some compensation.

Find the ways that work for you. Sometimes it's talking out loud to your aspects, and letting them use your voice to talk back. Or, try writing. If they won't speak through your usual writing or keyboard, try putting the pen in your non-dominant hand. Empty chairs can help; talk to your aspects in the empty chair and then go sit there and let them respond.

Again, whatever works for you to open up the peace talks. One thing that won't work so well - pretending the competing intentions don't exist. That, I think you already know.

The Noble Nobel

President Obama has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, and no one seems to know what to say about it.

Non-supporters and skeptics are in a pickle, because they're uncomfortable. They can justly say that he hasn't really done that much yet to deserve it, but they are also painfully aware that it's bad form to say so. I mean, he's the democratically elected representative of the American people, and so the American people share credit for the award for electing him, and that means the non-supporter or skeptic in question shares credit for the award (even if they didn't vote for him, because they participate in the democratic experiment, and even if they didn't vote, because they enjoy life in a democratic society)... and it's just bad manners to grumble about a supremely prestigious award that you have a share in.

Devoted supporters, too, are in a pickle, because they're uncomfortable. They love the man and believe that his net effect on this planet will be richly deserving of this award, and that irrefutable evidence to that fact is forthcoming. But it's not here yet. And while they're thrilled, they're also a little puzzled. But saying so also feels like bad manners.

Both groups' discomfort is based on an underlying idea that deserving the Nobel Peace Prize has to do with earning it through the doing of things. There's a league of people working on every continent who have done things, peaceful things, peace-promoting things, that would justify such a prize. We'd all feel better if we had something tangible to point to, something sparkling of President Obama's, some line on his resume, that provides that real-world evidence of his deservedness. (Yeah, I know, it's not a real word.)

But doing is not the end-all be-all. The new age gurus, the spiritual masters, heck, even we therapists have been trying to get it through everyone's heads for a long time. You don't earn your worthiness through doing. You don't earn love or acceptance, by doing. You aren't a human doing. You're a human being. Being is enough. Being gets you the goods. Being is all you have to do to be worthy of love and acceptance.

Doing is handy. By doing, we create our lives, set things up the way we want them, exercise our intrinsic need to influence and change our surroundings. Doing is fun and fulfilling. Doing tests us and refines us and gives us opportunities to face natural consequences and learn. Doing lets us demonstrate our being, our integrity, our trustworthiness. Doing also lets us demonstrate our lack of integrity or untrustworthiness. (Yeah, I know, it's not a real word.)

So, we've all become pretty accustomed to looking at what someone does to tell us who they are. And in the case of a Nobel Peace Prize, we expect the doing to be grand, magnificent, selfless, wise, and sustained over a long period of time in order to clearly differentiate it from the grand, magnificent, selfless, wise stuff that happens every day, all around us, in short bursts.

That's the rule we made up, and the Nobel Prize committee just thumbed their noses at it. I'm OK with that. In my humble opinion, President Obama has already had a profoundly calming influence on the world's emotional climate, and that's good enough for me. But apart from that generally irrelevant opinion, I'm in favor of things that get us to question our assumptions, habits, or unconscious, unspoken deals.

Question the rules. Question the way you think it's supposed to be. Question your comfort zone. If after an honest, uncomfortable stretch into questioning you end up where you started, good for you. You'll be there legitimately. Plant your flag and celebrate your certainty. Until you've done that, though, don't be too self-righteous. You're more likely to be stuck in the matrix than really exercising freedom of thought.

Nothing Out There

I'm excited about an art print I just bought. It's beautiful, eerie and emotionally satisfying to me on many levels. Here's a look:

The caption says, "there's nothing out there. i do not hear what you hear."

It's enough to be enraptured by it -- it doesn't really need explanation or deconstruction, but I'd like to share my thoughts as a metaphor for therapy.

The scene suggests an assertion that someone hears something outside.

Instead of being told that there's nothing to be afraid of and to just go to sleep, the person who heard the assertion, the listener, honored the assertion. How many times as a child were we dismissed? Now... sometimes, perhaps even oftentimes, we were lying. We hadn't really heard anything, but we wanted mom or dad's attention for a while longer. Still... once in a while, we were earnest, and at those times, it hurt to be dismissed. So that's the first beauty of this piece: being heard.

Then, the listener checked it out. Went outside. Listened, under the starry sky. They didn't say they would and then either pretend to, or do so in gesture only. They did what they said they were going to do. That's the second beauty of this piece: congruence.

Then, they respond honestly. "I do not hear what you hear." This sentence tells the truth without diminishing the original assertion. It doesn't say, "You didn't hear." It says, "You heard, but I don't."

It's also truthful and respectful. It doesn't say, doubtfully, "I don't know, I don't hear anything," in that slightly condescending way that we habitually use. It doesn't say, "Well, maybe I hear it, but it's just the wind in the trees." It doesn't presume anything. It also doesn't sugar-coat the truth. "I do not hear what you hear." It tells the straight truth. It doesn't diminish the person's own experience, that they don't hear it. This is the third beauty: respect.

The final beauty is that it's comforting. On a dark night, "There's nothing out there," especially told with such congruence and respect, is credible. It's believable. It's calming. It's permission to sleep soundly, feeling heard, loved and safe.

This is only my take on the piece, and I'm sure it says way more about me than about what the artist felt or intended. To some, perhaps it speaks of fright and isolation. But that's the great thing about art. It can be many different things at once. Paradoxical. And, not.

Also, for me, it feels very similar to the therapeutic process. Therapy is a place where people can talk about the metaphorical things-that-go-bump-in-the-night, in their lives or in their own heads, and rather than being dismissed, the therapist will check it out, listen and reflect what they experience to be true without diminishing the client's experience.

At least, this is how I hope people experience therapy.