Life & Therapy

One day, I was washing a window, which is an activity I don’t much care for.  I was in a big hurry to be done with it.  Suddenly, the window fell onto my thumb and I was stuck. For a moment, I went straight into denial, took the cloth from my trapped hand and continued to scrub with my free hand.  In my mind, I was hoping that the issue would resolve itself if I ignored it.  Obviously, it did not, and I eventually had to open the window and face the pain that was in my future.  Also, I had to accept that I wasn’t going to be done with the window washing as quickly as I’d hoped.

There are times when we are trucking along in life and then meet an obstacle which threatens to hamper our momentum.  We may wish to ignore the obstacle, but the fact remains that it is standing there in front of us.  Perhaps we meet someone new, and we jump into a relationship with that person.  It seems to be headed in a good direction, so we get attached.  Then, we come across a conflict, and we just want to ignore it because it was going so smoothly until now.  Usually, we want to ignore the conflict because we are afraid this means that the relationship will end, or isn’t what it seemed to be in the first place.

If we ignore the obstacle that is demanding our attention, it won’t go away.  We are going to have to deal with it at some point.  Even the best relationships involve conflict, and a good approach is to deal with it as soon as possible.  If I had left my thumb in the window for too long, I wouldn’t have been able to do much but clean the same area in front of me, and my injury would have gotten worse as the blood flow to my thumb was cut off.  If a conflict arises in a relationship and gets ignored, you are guaranteed that it will become more complicated as time goes by.  The sooner you address it, the sooner you can resume trucking. 

The other day, I walked past a garden alongside a building.  There was a beautiful, single yellow iris blooming against the wall, but barely visible because there was a giant bush in front of it.  This seemed tragic to me.  Here, this gorgeous flower is baring itself to the world, but hardly anyone will see it.  It probably gets very little sun or water, so it won’t spread and grow as well as it could if it were in the right place.  I felt tempted to dig it up and take it home with me, so that I could plant it in a spot where it might thrive.  At the same time, I am aware that this plant may not have enough of an established root system to survive such a sudden move.  If I were to kidnap a plant, I would need to make sure of this sort of thing first.

There are times in life when we are like this yellow iris.  Maybe we were born into a family that didn’t recognize or value our strengths, so we learned to squeeze ourselves into roles that gives us very little room to grow and thrive.  Perhaps we are in a relationship that isn’t giving us the space to fully be ourselves, and so we don’t express much of our truth. We might be stuck in a job that does not reward our talents, and slowly we numb ourselves just to get through the days.    

If we look inside ourselves and learn just what it is that we need in order to thrive, we will start to recognize the areas in our lives that feel constricting.  When we do this, it may be tempting to uproot ourselves immediately- quit the job or dump the partner. If we do this in a knee-jerk way, without building our own internal resources, we may end up floundering rather than thriving.  Rather than just uprooting ourselves when we are uncomfortable, we can strengthen our relationship with ourselves first.  By feeding our internal needs first, we strengthen our root system, so that we can survive a transplant. This way, we will become strong, with more of ourselves to hold on to when it is time to make the move to an environment where we can thrive.

The other day, our dog Maude was walking around with a rawhide clenched in her teeth.  She walked over to her water bowl, and clearly wanted a drink, but was unwilling to drop the rawhide to get the drink.  She was holding on to it out of fear of losing it; a fear that comes from the days when we had two dogs.  Our other dog, Liver, was a bully and a bit of a hog, and she died fairly recently.  Maude hasn’t fully adjusted to the reality that no one will ever beat her up over a rawhide again. When I gently took it from her mouth, she immediately ran to her water bowl and eagerly drank up the water.  If I hadn’t intervened, eventually the price of her thirst would have outweighed the fear of losing her rawhide to a resurrected Liver, and she would have opted to take the risk, so that she could drink.  

Often, we hold on to old patterns that protected us in the past from something or someone scary, long after the fact.  These old patterns or behaviors may now hold us back from what we want, but we hang on to them so that we feel safe.  At some point, the price we pay to hold on to safety becomes higher than the price of facing our fears.  Perhaps we learned to be stoic because we got hurt in the past, and we gripped our feelings inside a clenched heart.  If we want to have connection with another person, eventually we need to unclench our hearts and let some difficult feelings out.  It may be scary, and it shouldn’t be rushed, but when we do so, we can drink in the love of another.

I recently switched my composting to a tumbler, from an open pile.  The old open pile is mostly decayed, and pretty tall.  In the fall, we couldn’t keep up with the volume of potatoes we’d gotten from our farm share, so some of them got tossed and left for dead. Or so we thought.  Recently, I noticed that there is a large potato patch growing in the old pile.  I’ve decided to let these potatoes grow, and see what sort of harvest will appear later this summer.  These plants certainly will get quite a nutrient-rich diet in their very tall bed of organic matter.

The abandoned potatoes are like some of the “mistakes” we make in life, that we may judge as wastes of time and energy.  Some of our most fertile lessons come from making mistakes.  We all have an internal composter, whether we know it or not. When we do something that we wish we hadn’t, there is no point in trying to go back in time to rewrite our history. Spending too much time in remorse and self-recrimination is not productive, either- it is similar to hoping that compost will decay in a landfill. Instead, we can acknowledge and understand our mistake, then allow that understanding to break down the shame we might have.  When we allow the mistake to “decompose” in ourselves, wisdom will grow from the decay. 

Near my neighborhood, I often used to see a man pushing an ice cream cart with the word “Zacatecas” painted on the side.  I just assumed that “Zacatecas” is Spanish for “ice cream.”  One day, I was having ice cream with a friend and his father.  His father only speaks Spanish, so I excitedly pointed at my ice cream and exclaimed, “Zacatecas!!!!”  He looked perplexed, and asked my friend something:  ”My dad wants to know if you are asking him where he is from in Mexico.”  This, of course, puzzled me until I learned that, rather than meaning “ice cream,” Zacatecas is a town.  Imagine someone eating with you who speaks no English.  Suddenly, she points excitedly at an item of food and shouts, “Portland!”  I felt rather silly, realizing this is what I had just done.  Luckily, my friend and his father both were very sweet about it, and we all had a good laugh together.

Sometimes, we may be mistaken in our understanding of another’s reality, whether due to a language barrier, a cultural difference, or just a difference in personalities.  In my opinion, every relationship is a coming together of different cultures, even if you are from the same place.  If we have good intentions, then making blunders can be a way to learn about others.  Sometimes, we can be so worried about looking stupid, that we say or do nothing.  This may make us feel safe in an unfamiliar situation, but we won’t learn anything by doing this.  If we can give ourselves permission to make our well-intentioned blunders, and if we also give others permission to do the same, we can broaden our understanding of the things we are unfamiliar with.  And maybe get some good laughs out of it all. 

When I was in high school, all the bad-ass boys drove Mustangs.  My brother called them “bellybutton cars” because, like bellybuttons, everyone seemed to have one.  Of course, looking back, only certain heavy metal fans with mullets really had them at the time, but that’s not the point.  My real point is to describe a phenomenon that is just about as common as your bellybutton: judgments.  We all have judgments of one thing or another, even if we don’t want to admit to being “judgmental.”

A lot of judgment comes from fear.  Maybe we are frustrated by the person in front of us who is taking such a long time to pay for their coffee.  We get angry at this person, and make up some story about them- maybe we decide this person is stupid, or has some political bent that we hate, or is richer than us- piling judgments on top of judgments.  In reality, this person isn’t doing anything to us, and we know nothing about him or her,  but maybe we are afraid to get to work too late, and feeling as if we aren’t in control of the situation.  We may get so focused on our judgment of this person that we ignore the real issue: we are afraid of something.  

We can shine awareness on our judgments rather than trying not to have them.  We can notice ourselves judging someone and making up stories about them, and then ask ourselves how we are truly feeling in the moment.  Now we are giving ourselves much more attention than we were giving the person we were judging.  With this attention, we can actually give ourselves what we need in the moment, rather than allow our imaginations to carry us away from ourselves.

Fred Flintstone would always give Wilma a bowling ball on her birthday.  Every single year, she’d get something that would make a better birthday gift for Fred.  He never really figured out what she wanted, and repeatedly gave her what he would like to have for himself.

In relationships, we all can be a bit like Fred, even with the best intentions.  I learned about this myself when I was first dating my husband.  When I am upset, I generally like to be held.  When he is upset, he needs space.  So, when we were first together, if either of us was upset, we’d try comfort one another by giving what we would normally wish to have for ourselves.  Here I’d be crying, and he would be across the room, not offering touch.  Or, there he’d be upset, and I would get in his personal space, which would make him flinch.  We were both being Fred Flintstone with his bowling ball for Wilma.  We finally figured it out through communication: “When I am upset, I would like it if you could….”  We both learned to do the opposite of what we would want for ourselves when the other was upset.  I learned to sit tight, and offer support from the other end of the couch, he learned to come closer.  It didn’t feel natural at first, but now it does. 

Often in relationships, we are hoping our partner will just psychically figure out what we need, and give it to us.  When this doesn’t occur, we might get angry, or make up stories about our partner’s shortcomings.  It may not seem very romantic at first, but we actually have to teach our partners how to love us, how to give us what we need.  The romantic part comes when we follow through on each others’ requests. 

There is a story called “The Golden Windows” by Laura E. Richards.  I read it as a child, and it made an impression.  Every day, a boy sees a house in the distance with shining windows made of gold and diamonds.  One day, he decides to find the house, and wanders until he does.  When he gets there, the house only has normal windows, but the girl who lives there says that there is another house with golden windows.  She points it out, and he discovers that, from this perspective, his house has windows that are made of gold and diamonds.  He is filled with happiness, and runs back home.

 It is often easier to see others’ golden windows, and then assume that we have none of our own.  We may feel jealous of people who have some characteristic that we find appealing, and we can focus on how much better than us that person seems.  It is sometimes difficult to imagine that we also have admirable, enviable traits, but of course, we do.  If we find ourselves sinking into feelings of inferiority when we see another person shine, we can try something different.  This person isn’t shining instead of us, but is shining as well as us, only from a different vantage point.   

When I was in college, I loved jogging.  I was like Forrest Gump; running and running and running.  It got to where people recognized me, and asked if they could run with me, and most of the time, I said yes.  Now, I was not a fast runner, but I could run very long distances.  I started to notice that people had different approaches to running with me that spoke volumes about their approach to relationships in general.  

There were two general camps of boys that would run with me.  One extreme included the ones who didn’t want to be outdone by a girl, and would spend the runs trying to run much faster than me, trying to outdo me.  If I worked hard enough, I could run at their pace long enough for the truth to come out- these were people who couldn’t do long distance running, at all.  The others were the ones who were seeing this as a more social outing, and would match -but not try to beat- my pace. With the competitive boys, the runs were exhausting and never lasted long, and neither did the friendships. Trying to keep up with someone who makes everything a competition is no fun!  With the non-competitive ones, the runs could go on for a long time, and so did the friendships.  It was incredibly refreshing to have my pace respected for what it was.

Sometimes, we meet people who feel threatened by our talents, and who try to outdo us, or make us look bad, so that they feel better about themselves.  We might notice this because we are constantly tense around them, or feeling as if we need to perform for them in order to be in relationship.  These people are like the competitive boys I ran with- no fun.  There are other people who accept us as we are, and who enjoy our talents. We can be ourselves with these people, and things unfold at our pace, rather than one that feels too hard or too fast.  Friendships with people who aren’t competing with us or trying to put us down, are friendships that can last a long time. 

If you have been involved with someone or something for a long time, there are words and actions that become habitual, due to their frequency.  We may end up losing some of the meaning behind our words and actions.  So, saying “I love you” to a partner can become something we say when we may actually mean something else.  It can be a good exercise to stop for a moment when we are about to say, “I love you,” and ask ourselves what we are really feeling in the moment.  When we do this, all sorts of nuances arise.  

Sometimes, “I love you” means “I want you to tell me you love me.”  It can mean that we want reassurance because we are feeling insecure, or that we find our partner to be so adorable in this very moment, we can barely handle it.  We may be really saying something like, “I know we just had this argument, but I want you to know that it doesn’t change my love for you, and I want to know that you still love me too.”  Or maybe it means, “I can see that you are scared right now, and I want to protect you and keep you safe.”  Sadly, it can also mean, “I am so mad at you right now, but I am so afraid to show you my anger.  Maybe if I tell you I love you, that will make it all go away.”   

So, for an interesting research project on yourself, take notice of the automatic things you say and do.  Pause for a moment, and ask yourself what it is you are feeling and wanting when you are saying or doing these things.  Then, express that feeling or desire rather than saying or doing the habitual.  Your experience may just become a little more rich and textured.