A Thing or Two

Just a cou­ple of things. I’m expect­ing to pub­lish 2 books this year, and one of them is at the final review stage. I’ve even got an excel­lent cover ready to go. I think I’ll post about that when things are a bit fur­ther along, but stay tuned!

Dar and I stopped for din­ner at our favourite Jerk Chicken restau­rant the other day, and it’s sand­wiched between a sex shop and a mas­sage par­lour. In a nice neigh­bour­hood, btw, as this is Canada, after all.

Any­way, after din­ner, I was just about to back out of the park­ing space, and I noticed a sign in the mas­sage place’s window:

Noth­ing like a good shia­tus on a cold night

I didn’t rush right in, need­less to say. I’m not even sure where my shia­tus is. (And yes, I do know what it’s sup­posed to say…)

Warmly, Wayne

Many moons ago, I wrote a list of 12 Prin­ci­ples that were the basis of my under­stand­ing, both of my life and of my coun­selling prac­tice. I’ve been think­ing about pulling them together into a small book that I could give to new clients.

I’ve decided that I’d, at least for now, tackle each of the top­ics here, in the blog. We’ll see how it goes.

5. The use­ful­ness or valid­ity of an action is always deter­mined by the result. If it ain’t work­ing, doing more of it isn’t going to work either. If you’re ham­mer­ing on some issue and no one else is inter­ested, maybe you need to let the thing go. If you’re ignor­ing some­thing and hop­ing it will go away, and it isn’t, maybe you have to deal with it. If you find your­self say­ing, “It always turns out like that,†maybe you need to try another approach.

I’ve writ­ten count­less posts and arti­cles (and men­tioned this last week) about what I call the “Util­ity Test.†What I mean is, the only deter­mi­na­tion of the value of an action (or a thought, for that mat­ter) is, “Does it work?â€

In other words, does what I am think­ing or doing
get me the results I say I want?

This test seems per­fectly log­i­cal, until you apply it to one of your sacred cow beliefs or actions. Then, things get inter­est­ing. Let me tell you a cou­ple of sto­ries.

I sub­scribe to sev­eral Flickr feeds, and one per­son issued a photo titled “I’d rather be dead than con­form.†What’s inter­est­ing about her is how often she expresses this sen­ti­ment. It seems to arise from her dis­like of either neg­a­tive assess­ments of, or sex­ual com­ments about, some of her pho­tos, notably the nude ones. She starts by tough­ing it out and argu­ing ‘artis­tic free­dom,’ and then ends up angry, sad, or bitchy.

And, her pho­tos are great.

So, it begs the ques­tion, “What does she want?†Obvi­ously, she wants an ideal world where all she receives are com­ple­ments on her excel­lent pho­tos, no sleaze­ball remarks, and no one, no one, ques­tion­ing her motives or intent. She wants this, really badly. But the cos­mos is kind, and always pro­vides what we fear, just to help us learn. So, quite reg­u­larly, she upsets her­self that peo­ple are not fol­low­ing her “rules.â€

It seems to me that she has two real choices:

1) get over offend­ing her­self when peo­ple com­ment or crit­i­cize, or

2) stop post­ing nude pho­tos of herself.

Her option of choice, demand­ing that oth­ers leave her alone, is mag­i­cal, wish­ful thinking.

To say it again, the only thing that mat­ters is the result.

Clients are typ­i­cally stuck in one-note think­ing and act­ing. Often the cho­sen thought path and action can be traced back to childhood—either some­thing the per­son learned from a par­ent, and/or a behav­iour the client cre­ated in response to a stres­sor. In either case, a thought/response comes from the mind of a child. Or a teen. And we know how smart kids and teens are.

Now, admit­tedly, some of that stuff might have actu­ally worked.
In childhood.

I remem­ber one client—and her dad was also a client. She men­tioned how well “guilt­ing him†worked—he was often over­seas, and when he got home, she bat­ted her baby blues, and whined.

He then gave her stuff, and also let her off the hook for all of the “Just wait until your father gets home!†threats mom delivered.

At 35, she could still make this work with dad—bat, bat, bat, and out would come the cheque­book. With the men in her life, not so much. They’d ini­tially give in, only to dis­cover that what she wanted from them was end­less sup­port, encour­age­ment, and a gold plated pass to do what­ever she wanted. So, they’d leave after a few months. She blamed it all on her dad.

I always focus on the result. I do not get into a debate about why some­thing isn’t working.

In the above illus­tra­tions, I trust you can see that the rea­son their behav­iour was get­ting them lousy results doesn’t mat­ter. In both cases, the clients wanted oth­ers to change (to sup­port them, no mat­ter what,) and were dev­as­tated that they couldn’t get oth­ers to coöperate.

I refuse to move off of one of my favourite mantras:

Things that do not work… wait for it… do not work.

We teach a sim­ple idea. Try another behav­iour. And another, and another, until your results approx­i­mate what you say you want.

Remem­ber: a fram­ing goal is essen­tial. So, in the photographer’s case, the only sen­si­ble goal is: “I will post my pho­tos and learn from the crit­i­cisms of the pho­tos, while delet­ing and ignor­ing the brain-dead com­ments.†In the case of the client, it’s, “I will ask for what I want with­out manip­u­la­tion, and with­out expec­ta­tion that oth­ers will always go along with me.†Or some­thing similar.

If you’re ham­mer­ing on some issue and no one else is inter­ested, maybe you need to let the thing go.

I remem­ber one woman who ended her mar­riage because her hus­band refused to admit that always wip­ing up water stains from a stain­less steel sink was essen­tial for har­mony and world peace. No, really. He for­got to wipe out the sink, and she came to ther­apy, and ended the mar­riage. Exam­ples like this abound.

Clients pro­vide lists of how they see the world fail­ing them, and end­lessly go on and on about their take on things.

The way out is to learn to dia­logue with oth­ers, and, with curios­ity, to get to know more about the other person’s per­spec­tive.

We’re big fans of curiosity.

If you’re ignor­ing some­thing and hop­ing it will go away, and it isn’t, maybe you have to deal with it.

Many peo­ple are deeply in denial. I bring up a topic, and they laugh and change the sub­ject, or won’t dis­cuss it at all. We do Body­work, and some feel­ing or emo­tion comes up, and they stuff it back down. Clients get feed­back that some­thing they are doing is annoy­ing, or not work­ing, or inef­fec­tive, and they refuse to exam­ine it.

Ignor­ing prob­lems and dilem­mas, typ­i­cally by pro­vid­ing end­less plau­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tions, is a huge issue.

I’ve had my share of clients who have ignored odd behav­iours and phys­i­cal symp­toms, and have even­tu­ally made them­selves sick. It might be back pain, or heart dis­ease, or can­cer. My sense is that the repressed infor­ma­tion wants “outâ€â€”wants to be taken seri­ously, and the only way the body has to express itself is through phys­i­cal symp­toms. If you won’t pay atten­tion to a twinge, per­haps a charley-horse will get the mes­sage across.

The point of doing ther­apy is to be bru­tally hon­est about what you are ignor­ing, what you are doing, and what is not work­ing. The only way past what isn’t work­ing is shin­ing a light on the belief/action pat­tern, with­out flinch­ing, turn­ing away, or repress­ing any of it.

If you find your­self say­ing, “It always turns out like that,†maybe you need to try another approach.

And we repeat, “It always turns out that way,†because you set in motion the same thing. The com­mon denom­i­na­tor of all of your issues with all of those peo­ple is… you!

Many peo­ple try chang­ing part­ners, jobs, sit­u­a­tions, and get the same thing. They actu­ally think that if they change often enough, they’ll finally find their “soul mate,†which is short­hand for,

“Some moron who will put up with my crap.â€

End­lessly search­ing for the per­fect some­one who will com­pen­sate for the things about you that you are ignor­ing, or the things that aren’t work­ing, is a great way to waste your life.

We pro­pose relent­less self-examination and self know­ing, cou­pled with a will­ing­ness to be end­lessly flex­i­ble with your thoughts, beliefs, and actions.