Life & Therapy

It has been quite some time since I’ve written, but I want to say that this blog is not dead!  I’ve taken a bit of a hiatus, because I gave birth to my first child recently, and things like this blog are hard to keep up with.  I hope to post a thing or two, perhaps sporadically, sometime soonish, though.  One thing that is on my mind these days is just how easily we can derail ourselves with fear when we aren’t in control of a situation.  It is easy to fill in the blanks of the unknown with disaster scenarios that rarely come to pass.  When this happens, our feelings are probably pointing us to a situation that is just not ours to control, rather than imminent disaster.  Time to slow down and attend to the feelings, rather than follow them to the crazy place they’d like us to go!

In relationships, not all silence is the Silent Treatment.  Sometimes, one partner needs more time and space to think than the other partner does.  This is perfectly fine; however, if you are left wondering what your partner’s silence means, then something very important has not been communicated.  You should not have to ask the question, “Am I getting the silent treatment, or is my partner cooling off?”  If you are asking this question, then it is time to work out a new way for you and your partner to communicate.  

It is perfectly legitimate for one partner to need some quiet time to “cool off” after a heated discussion or argument.  While it can be frustrating if you are the type of person who wants to hash things out until there is some sense of resolution, your partner may be the type of person who needs time to absorb the content of your discussions. Neither of you are wrong in your desires, but some accommodation is needed from both of you.  As hard as it may feel, the person who needs time and space to think still needs to use their words to state their need for a cooling-off period, rather than just withdrawing and expecting to be understood.  The person who wants to hash it all out in one sitting needs to sit on their hands a bit while their partner thinks.

Let’s say that you just brought up some issues with your partner that were hard for you to share, but also hard for him or her to hear.  The conversation gets heated, and your partner is feeling tempted to clam up and withdraw.  Rather than clamming up, your partner might state, “I feel like clamming up right now, and that means that I need some uninterrupted quiet time to think about this.”  The two of you can then decide a time to check in about this.  If your partner isn’t fully ready at your agreed time, then you both can arrange for another check-in.  These check-in times are important, so that you aren’t left dangling on the hook, wondering when your partner plans to break the silence, and your partner isn’t wondering when this time will be interrupted.  It is also important that the matter get discussed once your partner has taken the time to think: dropping it altogether is not okay.

If you are the one who is waiting for your partner to think about things, you are very likely to be feeling some anxiety.  This is because you are not in control of what is happening, and you can’t influence what your partner is thinking about.  You may be having some trust issues- wondering if your partner is blowing you off rather than thinking about things.  You may have some abandonment issues because in the past, silence from a partner, or parent, or sibling meant something terrible.  All of this anxiety gives you plenty to attend to in yourself.  Notice when your attention goes away from your own feelings and into the attempted mind-reading of your partner.  Bring your attention back to yourself, over and over again, because only you can attend to the fears and issues you are having in this time.   

There are all sorts of motives for and styles of the silent treatment, but they all boil down to one commonality: people give the silent treatment because it gives them control over the person they are treating with silence.  If you ever got the silent treatment as a child, you can probably remember just how frustrated you got.  I can remember getting the silent treatment from my older siblings.  I’d get increasingly frustrated, trying hopelessly to get them to break the silence.  This only made them more determined to keep silent.  I was giving them exactly what they wanted- the loss of control over my frustrated energy.  I imagine that it made them feel powerful with very little effort.  All they had to do was sit quietly and watch me squirm and get heated, and lose more and more control of myself.  

The silent treatment is about control.  It only works if the person being given the silent treatment relinquishes control to the one being silent.  The more you try to get your partner to break their silence, the more you are allowing yourself to be controlled by him or her, and the less likely it is that they will talk.  After all, you are giving them exactly what they want, and you are exposing all of your vulnerability while they expose none of theirs.

As difficult as it may be, it is important not to engage in this dynamic. Give yourself the attention that you are tempted to give to your partner.  Let your partner know that you are not willing to try to read his or her mind, but would be glad to talk about whatever the issue is that caused the silent treatment to begin with.  The ball is no longer in your court, and it is up to your partner to pick it up.  Take your attention away from this passive-aggressive dynamic, and focus on your own feelings and needs.  

More posts on the Silent Treatment:

Dealing with the Silent Treatment

More on the Silent Treatment 

The Silent Treatment vs The Cooling-Off Period 

More posts that may be of interest:

Wanting the Person who Hurt You to Hurt as Much as You Do

Mind-Reading, Guessing Games, and Communication Breakdowns in Relationships 

Many TV shows and movies are about revenge. In the general plot of most crime shows, the wrongdoer is not only captured, but the detectives interviewing them make sure to let this person know just what a scumbag he or she is for what they did.  Often, there is also some tasteless joke (if the scumbag is a man) about how this person will get raped in prison.  In romantic movies, there is something similar.  Usually, the main character (usually a woman) is treated poorly by some awful lover, and spends time healing from the experience. Eventually, this main character becomes strong and independent (often opening a shoe or clothing boutique that, puzzlingly, is instantly successful).  At some point, the wrongdoing jerk-of-a-lover comes crawling back, only to be rejected and humiliated, because our heroine has moved on.  The satisfaction inherent in these movies comes from seeing a wrongdoer getting punished.  Even more satisfying is when that wrongdoer realizes what an awful person they have been, and suffers for it.

These shows have so much appeal because in real life, you do not often get this sort of satisfaction when someone has wronged you.  Perhaps you grew up in an abusive or neglectful environment.  Maybe you were the victim of a crime, or lost a loved one to a drunken driver, or even a murderer.  Sometimes, it may be as seemingly small as someone cutting you off in traffic.  It seems unfair that you suffered so much at the hands of people who are oblivious to the suffering that they caused you.  You may even have a fantasy about seeing them go through the same sort of pain that they inflicted upon you.  While this urge is understandable, it is impossible to get another person to feel what you feel.  In a small way, you may get some vicarious sense of fulfillment by watching a show where the wrongdoer actually feels the pain of their crime.

If you put your energy and focus into seeking revenge, trying to get the wrongdoer to really understand and feel the pain they caused you, you are unlikely to find the satisfaction that you think that it will give you.  You are also giving this person more attention and power than you are giving yourself.  Maybe you think that you would finally feel at peace with your loss, and could move on in life.  Now you are giving a whole lot of power to an unreliable person, allowing them to dictate whether you can be at peace, whether you can move on and truly live your life.  

If someone were to run over your foot, would it make your foot heal any faster if that same person got their foot run over, too?  You still need to attend to your crushed foot. In an ideal world, your foot would get the attention and healing it needs, AND the driver who ran it over would apologize and make amends.  Sometimes this happens. But if you spend your energy trying to get that person to suffer as much as you are suffering, to feel the same pain you felt, you are more likely to end up with two people who have festering, unattended injuries, and still no closure whatsoever.

Today begins another New Year.  I have mentioned before that I am not a fan of New Year’s resolutions.  They are often hard to commit to, because they are made at an arbitrary, externally given time.  It is much easier to make changes when we have reached our own understanding of why such changes are desirable to us.  It is not so easy to make a change just because the calendar says that it is a new year.  Change truly needs to come from within to be effective.

The turning of the calendar page provides us with a different sort of opportunity, one that is more about our growth, our own evolution in life.  Every year, some sort of growth happens in our lives, but we often are so focused on what hasn’t happened yet, that we forget to look back at the areas in which we’ve grown.  New Year’s is a great time to pause and take a good look at how we’ve changed in the past year.  What do you know now that you didn’t know a year ago?  What challenges have you conquered in the last year?  Are there any fears that you have faced that now seem like not such a big deal?  If so, then it is a big deal that you now find these things to be not such a big deal! What is in your life now that wasn’t there a year ago?  Take time to acknowledge your growth in the last year.  It is helpful to write these things down. 

Before you switch from looking back on the past year to looking forward to the upcoming year, take some time to appreciate just exactly where you are now.  What about your life is just right the way it is?  What would you miss if it were taken from you?  What do you appreciate in your life this very moment?  Are there things about yourself that you enjoy?  If you find it difficult to come up with something, start with the simple things that we all take for granted, the things we miss when we are injured or sick, such as lungs that breathe clearly, legs that carry you around, a head that does not hurt, eyes that can see, ears that hear whatever music that turns you on, or teeth that chew your food painlessly.  

As you switch toward looking forward to the New Year, rather than creating the to-do list of resolutions, think of things you would like to see more of in your life.  It could be as simple as picking something you started to learn last year, and want to learn even more.  What do you look forward to in the coming year?  Imagine looking back on the changes in your life a year from now, and write down what those changes might be.  For fun, write a letter to your future self for next year, describing life as it is now, and what your curiosities, fears, excitements about this year might be. Fold that letter up, and don’t open it until next New Year’s. If today, you do find yourself ready for some changes, write what they are, and come up with a plan to get help in making those changes.  However it is you decide to celebrate, ponder, or  just recover- I wish you a Happy New Year!

Thanksgiving is just around the corner.  Giving thanks tends to conjure up images of the good things in life: abundance, love, health, wealth, and so on.  I recently have been thinking of times in my life that were very difficult or painful, but in the end shaped me and gave me something rich.  I am grateful for these times, because they brought me into a much deeper experience of life.

Many of the heartbreaks in my life came from having my illusions shattered.  Every illusion I had was somewhat of a carrot on a stick, dragging me on a path away from myself.  These illusions mostly took on the form of a lover, somebody that I made more important to me than myself.  Getting dumped by any of these lovers caused a lot of pain, of course, but after the dust cleared and the pain subsided, there was just a little bit more of me to hold onto.  Eventually, there were no illusions left, and no one to surrender my power to.  Now, I stand next to my husband and know that we are equally powerful and wonderful.  Thanks to our past heartbreaks, we both have strong selves to hold onto, and can cherish each other without clinging.

My mistakes in life are all very important lessons that I am grateful for.  When I was just fresh out of college, I had no clue about how to manage money.  I made huge mistakes and leapt into an impressive financial quagmire that only I could take credit for.  That made more of an impression on me than any money-management class could have.  Without the financial car wreck, and the subsequent lessons learned in how to fix it, I doubt I would understand the importance of managing money well.  I also would not appreciate my own efforts in that department.  Ironically, a humiliating mistake taught me skills that are now a source of pride for me, and for that, I am grateful.

So, on Thanksgiving as you express gratitude for the good things in life, you also might add the mistakes and heartbreaks to your list.  Who would you be without them?

Originally, I was going to title this post, “You Can’t Be True to Yourself without Disappointing Someone.”  Then I thought about something that I tell people when they worry that making a tough personal choice will hurt or disappoint someone: “You are not disappointing that person, their expectations of you are disappointing them.” This is an important distinction.  Our personal choices are ones that we make in order to be true to ourselves.  There will always be somebody who has an expectation of what those choices should be.  There is no way to cater to everyone’s idea of who we should be and what we should do.  Sometimes, we have to make choices that don’t live up to those expectations.

Perhaps you have been dating someone for a while.  That person has decided that you are “The One,” but you have never really been sure that this relationship is one you want to commit that deeply to.  There may be real problems in the relationship that your lover is ignoring, due to this overriding illusion that you are theirs for life, the answer to their problems.  You can see just how much pain this person will be in when you break up with them, so it is very difficult to do so.  Still, you have a deep and insistent feeling that staying would be harmful to you in the long run.  

You might think that you are about to make a choice that will damage this person somehow. In reality, your lover’s expectation of you as “The One” is the weapon that is already causing the pain for both of you.  If it isn’t based on the truth, then catering to it will only cause more damage.  In the short run, it will be difficult to speak your truth. In the long run, that same truth will set you free from trying to fit into something false. The truth will also set your lover free from clinging to something that isn’t really there. 

“If you don’t already know, I’m not going to tell you.”  In some relationships, this is a classic response to the question, “Is something wrong?”  One person unwittingly offends the other.  Instead of speaking up, the offended person withdraws, often into the silent treatment, expects the offender to read his or her mind, and becomes angry if asked to actually say what the problem is.  Either the offended party doles out more silent treatment, or snaps at their partner for not already knowing what the problem is.

This behavior reminds me of trying to talk to a friend’s child who hadn’t quite learned how to talk yet.  This boy knew exactly what he was saying, and expected me to understand it in the way he was saying it.  I am sure his parents have figured out his particular code of grunts and gestures, but I certainly have not.  As I tried to understand what he wanted from me, he became more and more frustrated that I wasn’t understanding him, and he started to gesture and grunt more wildly and angrily. Unfortunately for him, there was no way for me to decode his meaning, and no interpreters were nearby.  Also, there was no way for him to find a way to make his meaning clear to me, so he did not get what he wanted, whatever that may have been.

Just like this child, the offended partner feels that they have been perfectly clear about what has offended them, and feels the same frustration as the child does, in not being understood.  Maybe previous partners knew how to decode this secret language, just as the child’s parents have learned to do.  Maybe the silent treatment worked on others, evoking a certain desired response.  Whatever the reason, this person needs to learn how to use their words to explain just what the problem is, no matter how frustrating or vulnerable this feels.  

Both partners can change this dynamic.  If you are more likely to say, “If you don’t know, I am not going to tell you,” then you can learn to pause and explain what has hurt you.  If you are more likely to be the recipient of this demand for mind-reading, you do not need to scramble to do the mind-reading.  You can say something along the lines of, “I know that you feel that I should understand what you are going through, and I would like to, but unless you tell me, I can’t do anything to make it right.”  These ingrained habits are hard to change, but it is worth the time and trouble.  After all, as a couple you are in a partnership with each other rather than in a war against each other.   

My husband’s parents once told me the story of how he learned to ride a bike. Apparently, he hadn’t quite figured out how to brake, and the concept scared him.  His solution was to ride full-speed into a group of trash cans.  For some reason, this was a less scary way to stop than braking- probably because he could see the trash cans, whereas braking was a bit mysterious and new.  Some of this was motivated by a fear of falling: crashing into the trash cans isn’t much better than falling, but at least he was controlling the situation.

We might “crash into trash cans” ourselves, out of our own fear of falling.  It could be that we have a bad habit that we want to break such as compulsive spending, or attracting to people who are bad for us.  Maybe we have some initial success in breaking this pattern, but then we get scared.  How can we possibly keep this good behavior up? Surely, we are going to disappoint ourselves!  The tension can feel like too much sometimes, so we might nip it in the bud and just go on a spending spree, handing that credit card over while trying to ignore the receipt totals. Maybe we call that person that we’ve been trying to stay away from, telling ourselves that we just don’t care what happens.  In the moment, we feel relief from the pressure of trying not to fall, but in the long run there are bruises and feelings of helplessness to contend with.

It can be hard to believe that we can learn to brake without falling.  It takes a good amount of practice, trial and error, and even some falling.  It helps to have someone who can help and support us when we are trying to break an old pattern, whether it is a friend, a partner, or a therapist.  Some people get a lot of help from joining a group that focuses on breaking from the habit they might be trying to break free from.  

No matter what approach we choose, a good thing to do is to listen to ourselves when the doubt creeps in.  What is familiar about this voice that says that there is no way we can keep it up?  We don’t have to believe that voice- it is only one part of the whole picture.  We can also tune into our capable self, and hear what it has to say.  Instead of saying, “I know that I am going to fail at this, so I might as well go out in style,”  we can say, “I am afraid that I am going to fail at this, and that hurts.”  Now there is something to attend to in the moment, a real feeling.  If we attend to that feeling and let it be what it is, it will eventually pass, and when it does, we can refocus our energy to the task at hand.  Eventually, those trash cans will not be a desirable stopping place.

Right now is a very charged and tense time in our country.  The election is drawing rapidly near, and it seems that the country is again split in half.  The candidates are calling each other names, and we are being inundated with negative ads.  Tensions are running high between people who hold opposing political views.  Rational and respectful discussion often goes out the window during election season. The reason for this is that both sides just want to win.     

Sometimes, we treat conflict in relationships as if we are running for political office. Wanting to win is fine if you are running for president- it is the point, actually.  But there is no prize for “winning” a relationship argument.  Trying to win ends up hurting the relationship.  All relationships involve a bit of conflict, because all relationships involve two people from different realities trying to live, love, work together.  As soon as one or both partners assign “right” or “wrong” to the differences between each other, then conflict becomes about winning.  

A first step in the direction of healthy conflict resolution is to remove the desire to win the argument, and ask yourself, “What is my intention here?”  Maybe you want your partner to know that your feelings were hurt by something she did.  Let’s say she made plans with friends when she knew you had planned a special evening together.  If you say, ”You are so inconsiderate and selfish.  You never think of me,” this will quickly become a battle between the two of you, each trying to win the argument over whether or not your partner is selfish and inconsiderate.  No matter who “wins” this battle, your hurt feelings never actually get expressed or addressed.  

Instead of taking the character assassination approach, you might say something like, “I thought that we’d agreed to have a special evening, and I was looking forward to it. When you made plans with your friends instead, I felt hurt and rejected and felt as if I’m not very important to you.”  There’s nothing to argue with here- you had feelings, and now you’ve made them known.  It’s not as if your partner can say, “No, you didn’t feel hurt and rejected.”  Nor are you saying, “I’m not important to you.”  You are saying that you  felt a certain way when your partner did what she did.  From here, if you can both agree to speak from how each of you feels, rather than try to convince the other to feel a certain way, you’ve got the potential for a satisfying relationship discussion