Life & Therapy

When I was 24, I had knee surgery that landed me with a few weeks on crutches.  I was in a good amount of pain, so I was taking Vicodin as one does in these situations. One day, I was hobbling home on my crutches when a voice called out to me from the front porch of a house.  I looked over to see a man about my age, who asked me very nicely what had happened to my leg.  Thinking that he was genuinely interested, I told him about my surgery.  His next question was whether I had been prescribed Vicodin, so I said yes.  Well, then he asked me if I could give my painkillers to him, as his girlfriend had a tooth abscess and that they didn’t have money to go to the dentist.  Right on cue, out from the house popped his girlfriend who demonstrated what he’d just told me by pulling her mouth open and stretching her cheek out, as if I could see her abscess from where I stood on the street.  

For a moment, I tuned into their needs more than my own, as if my own need for pain relief didn’t exist.  I wanted to take away this woman’s pain.  I overlooked the fact that the pills would only mask the pain of an infection that needed to be fixed.  I also overlooked the fact that they were asking me to commit a felony.  Instead, I felt guilt for having something they wanted- something I could barely afford myself at the time. This inner struggle lasted a short while, and was then replaced with a sense of shock: this perfect stranger pretended to be interested in my painful situation, when in reality he was only interested in getting me to relieve his girlfriend’s pain.

There are many people in the world who are injured enough to believe that their pain is your problem.  If you are a compassionate and caring sort, it may be tempting to ignore your own needs and tune into that person’s pain.  It isn’t compassionate to allow someone else to deplete you, nor is it compassionate to help someone ignore their own pain.  In this example of the abscess, if I’d given this couple my pills, the girlfriend’s infection would continue to grow in the absence of pain.  Taking her pain away would be a very bad thing, because then she’d feel that she’d fixed her mouth that would continue to fester and rot.  She’d keep having to find people to give her more painkillers whenever she ran out of them.    

There are many ways that people try get you to “numb the abscess” for them while they continue to ignore it.  One example is the friend who is in an unhealthy relationship, who complains to you at length about it, feels relief after dumping on you, then goes back to his partner and does nothing to change things.  You keep listening to him, soothing him, encouraging him to stand up for himself.  You feel drained after every conversation, and nothing changes. You may even notice that he doesn’t seem to have any time or interest in your problems.  You are so fully drawn into wanting to relieve your friend’s pain that you don’t realize that he’s using you for your painkilling abilities while the problem keeps getting worse.  It may feel selfish at first to not automatically give what is asked of you, but over time, you will see that you are being generous when you refuse to let others use you as a means to numb their pain.   

Lately, I’ve become a bit obsessed with reducing energy use in our house.  It started with the refrigerator, and me finding out that it uses three times the amount of energy a standard new one does.  Then, I discovered that a good chunk of energy was wasted by having our TV and its accompanying recording devices on standby 24 hours a day.  Then there is the dryer and its amazing energy suck; living in arid Colorado, we can line-dry clothing pretty easily.  The list goes on.  There are many ways to save energy in a house, some involving no investment at all, such as turning off the power strip that the TV and friends are plugged into.  Others involve more of an investment, such as buying a more efficient refrigerator, or taking the time to hang the wash.

Emotionally, we have similar energy-wasters that we are often not aware of.  Many of them live in our automatic thoughts that go on all day without our notice- like the TV draining energy while on standby.  We may be thinking negative thoughts all day, and not noticing their impact on us.  We end the day drained and unhappy, but might have no idea why.  If we tune into our thoughts, we can also notice how we unconsciously tense up when we think certain things.  While driving, we might be unaware of our constant litany of how horrible all the other drivers are.  Tuning in to our body, perhaps we find that our neck muscles are really tight, or maybe it is our stomach that is taking the brunt of our thoughts.  Becoming aware of our thought patterns and our corresponding body reactions can be a low-investment way to save our emotional energy.

There are also high-investment ways for us to recover our emotional energy, which might involve some planning and time.  Perhaps we are working at a company that pays well, but makes us unhappy.  What good is the extra money when its source is sucking us dry?  Changing this part of our lives is more along the lines of putting out a wad of cash for a new refrigerator.  We may not readily have the funds, so we may need to save up.  We may not readily know what sort of job would make us happier, so we may have to spend some time researching and learning new skills.  We may even have to take a pay cut when we find the work that makes us happy, but the return will show in our newly gained emotional energy.

You can do your own emotional energy audit any time.  Notice how many relationships you are in that feel unsatisfying and depleting.  Who are the people in your life that make you feel worse about yourself when you are with them?  Notice the thought patterns that you have throughout your day- how many negative thoughts about yourself or others do you have during the day?  Notice how much tension you hold in your body.  Where do you hold this tension- your jaw, your stomach, your neck? Notice how often you swallow your feelings- this takes up possibly the most energy of all. Once you do your emotional energy audit, you can make a plan for how to reduce the waste, and you can regain that which belongs to you.

Dogs have many different reactions to fear- some cower, some attack.  For years, we had the kind of dog that reacted to her fear by attacking- and she had a bottomless well of fear and anxiety.  Liver  was a muscular, hyper Dalmatian who came into the world with faulty wiring in her nervous system- constantly tense and anxious and overstimulated.  She also was a dog that really wanted to be good.   We never went out in public without having her leashed and muzzled, just to keep the world safe from her fear and anxiety.  She did learn to overcome some of her fears with training, which we did extensively.

When we first started to train Liver, we took her out of her comfort zone by letting our dog trainer take the leash.  She would constantly check in with us by nudging our legs with her muzzle- we called this “muzzle-bonking.”  We would pet her and say “It’s okay,” and she learned to trust the trainer more.  We noticed that muzzle-bonking happened in any new situation- it seemed to be her way of asking us, “Is this safe? Are we okay?”  This was a very good sign in her training, because she found an alternative to going into attack mode when in an unfamiliar situation.  Checking in with her humans made her calmer.  She learned that the humans would keep her safe, so that she no longer had to try to hold the whole confusing world together with her vigilance.

Sometimes, we react to our own anxiety just as automatically as a scared animal.  We may cower, or lash out, or bark like crazy when we get frightened.  Imagine that this part of ourselves is like an untrained, scared animal just reacting out of fear.  Now, imagine that we also have a calm and centered human inside of ourselves that knows how to handle the situation.  If we can pause before letting fear take us over, we can find our inner calm human, then we can muzzle-bonk this human, checking in to see how to handle the situation.  If this is too difficult to do on your own, therapy can be a very helpful way to learn how to muzzle-bonk.  If your therapist can be calm in the midst of your anxiety, you will learn what that feels and looks like, and soon, you will learn how to do it for yourself.

When I was in college, I rode around on a ten-speed that may as well have been a one-speed.  I’d had this bike for years, and never learned how to change gears on it, so whatever gear it had been in when I got it, that was the gear I’d bike around on.  One day, two roommates and I decided to go on a nice big bike ride.  Because they were both boys, I wanted to prove that I was just as tough as them (I had issues), so I was keeping up- until we met a gigantic hill.  The one gear I’d committed to for so long?  It was not the hill-climbing gear.  So, I was huffing and puffing up this hill, and my friend asked, “Can’t you just shift to an easier gear?”  Too embarrassed to admit I didn’t know how, I snapped, “I can’t change my gears, they’re broken!” and I continued to labor, until finally I had to walk my bike up the hill. Eventually, I learned how to shift gears, and I still laugh at just how attached I was to preserving a know-it-all image of myself.  I was so attached, that I was willing to climb an insanely steep hill in the hardest gear, rather than reveal my lack of knowledge.

It can be a vulnerable thing to ask for help and to reveal our weaknesses, blind spots, and ignorance.  Sometimes, we are so afraid of doing so that we might go to great lengths to avoid it.  Saving face gets expensive, and really, what does it do for us?  What did I gain from biking, then walking up this hill?  I ended the ride sore and I still did not know how to change my gears.  If I’d admitted that I didn’t know this, I would have learned how to ride my bicycle the in the way it was meant to be ridden, at the price of two minutes of embarrassment.  The power gained in learning, despite the embarrassment, always outweighs the false sense of power that might come from saving face- and takes us much further on our ride.