relationships

Why Did She Leave Me?

Ron Johnson Development, Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness

My wife left me…again. Yesterday. Bummer? Not exactly. She has a tendency to leave me every now and then. She loves to go to “her canyons” in UT and hike. Sometimes she has dragged me along or allowed me to travel and hike with her. Once she left me and went to Portugal to hike. She called me up and said, “I am so glad you’re not with me.” After a pause she then said, “I miss you terribly. I wish you were here.” I use this as an illustration of the centrality of paradox, and particularly of paradoxical feelings. See? She was certainly glad that I wasn’t with her, mostly so she could go at her own pace, do her own thing, and be alone. As an introvert she really enjoys her time alone. She particularly enjoys the two days of the week that she doesn’t see me except for early AM and late PM when I go to our Madison office. She is usually seeing clients on those days, but also enjoys puttering around in her garden or green house…again without my intrusion.

This time when she has left me, her destination is not so clear. When she left yesterday morning, she said that she “thought” that she would go to St. Croix, WI, about 4 hours away at the beginning of the Ice Age Trail that goes 1000 miles across Wisconsin. I doubt that she will walk/hike 1000 miles, because she would have to walk back another 1000 miles to get her car. I expect that she will walk or hike for a while and then God knows what she might do. Go north? Go west…maybe to the canyons? Decide to come home? I’m sure she’ll be OK with whatever she does because she is a person who trusts her feelings. Note that her “feelings” are not just an emotional experience but a deeper personal experience that we call “spiritual”. When I tell people about our tendency to “trust our feelings” and “just go west” or something, most people are envious, while others are appalled that we don’t have a plan. Planners are people we call “high boundary” people, who like boundaries, rules, and plans. Low boundary people like spontaneity and freedom. Both are good ways of life. The difficulty comes when a high boundary person is trying to plan what s/he might do with a low boundary person, who would really rather “just go.”

Enough about Deb and me. This blog is about several men I have known who have been “left” in one way or another. You might resonate with one or them.

The woman seeking a divorce after a long marriage

Jane left Jim after 34 years of marriage. She struggled with leaving him for at least two years that I know of (she saw Deb for s while she was trying to figure out what to do about being largely unhappy in her marriage. Jane did what many women do (and perhaps some men as well…but that’s another story): she stayed married far longer than she should have stayed married. In Jane’s case there were several factors, all of which amounted to what other people would think if she got a divorce from Jim. There was the “Christian” disapproval of divorce. (Actually, this was evangelical Christian disapproval. Many mainline Christian churches, as well as Christian denominations have a place for divorce, find it valuable and godly, but not so with many evangelicals despite the fact that there are nearly the same number of evangelicals who get divorced as there are non-evangelicals.) Many evangelicals seek to justify a divorce on so-called biblical grounds, namely a singular statement Jesus seemed to have made that divorce is justified in circumstances of adultery. I knew one woman who got a divorce justifying it on these “grounds” because her husband had been using pornography. She asked a “Baptist” (read, conservative, evangelical) pastor if pornography was, indeed “adultery” and was glad to see that she could divorce “justifiably.” In Jane’s case, she did not seek this artificial reason for divorcing Jim. She is quite introverted by nature and introverts have a distinct tendency to keep most or all of their feelings to themselves.

I think the more important thing about the situation with Jane is that she has never really been happy with her marriage to Jim. They shared a house, raised children, both worked professionally, and went to church faithfully. But from what I learned from Jane, albeit with intuition and conjecture, is that she should have married Jim. Or if she married him, she should have been honest with herself and with Jim that she had made a mistake marrying him. It is possible that 34 years ago the marriage could have ended quickly and found way to survive and thrive. But Jane stayed married, and I think she was never happy with him. Indeed, the two of them are quite different in personality but there seem to have been some deeper issues that Jane was not able to see. Sadly, now her perspective is that the marriage was wrong because Jim did this or that, didn’t do this or that. Indeed, Jim has made some significant mistakes in life as well as with Jane, but these divorce-related, attorney-aggravated attacks on Jim are a rouse. I think…and must say that I “think” Jane has never liked Jim and could never bright herself to admit to it. In a nutshell, Jane has not been honest with Jim about this, and probably has not been honest with herself. The theme of some women (and again, possibly many men, I suppose) not knowing how they feel (unhappy), or unable to express it, or unwilling to act on it.

The woman who “couldn’t do it anymore” and left

Mary and Matt were in a second marriage for both, each have suffered in previous marriages and each having children. They had been married for 15 years when Deb and I began to see them. From what I understand, Mary almost immediately talked about how Mike did this or that, or didn’t do this or that. But Deb is no therapist who allows any client to complain for long, so after the first sessions of complaints, she set the stage for Mary, namely to talk about herself, mature in her self-understanding and emotional awareness, and then to do something. Mike came to see me with the notorious “female hand in the back” syndrome, meaning, “You need to see the therapist.” Indeed, Mike was figuratively pushed into my office but we made a bit of progress, particularly on his tendency towards expressing anger easily, an almost universal phenomenon with the men that I see. I say that men have “A” problems, namely anger, avoidance, addiction, and accommodation. They usually don’t know how to express their deeper feelings, much hear feelings from anyone else. Mike cane for a while, and then Deb insisted that Mary and Mike come to see me together. I did my best, but I couldn’t get Mary beyond doing what so many people do, talk about the other person. I hear something like, “I’ll tell you how I feel. Mike….”
Wait a minute; I thought you were going to tell me how YOU felt, but all you did was talk about Mike and his alleged problems. I didn’t make much progress because it was quite obvious that Mary’s position was that Mike should somehow “change” in some unknown way. It seemed like she was saying, “I married you the way you are; now change.” After a particularly difficult session where Mary came after me with a vengeance because I was attempting to give Mike some hope in the marriage. I talked to Deb about the incident and said to Deb that I was either going to make a direct challenge to Mary or quit marital therapy altogether. Deb pleaded with me to do neither, and then she saw Mary the next day. Deb reminded Mary that therapy was not about the other person but about oneself, and furthermore Deb insisted that Mary “do something.” But Mary said that she didn’t know what to do. Neither did Deb.

That night Mary met Mike at the doorway and said, “I can’t do this anymore” and the proceeded to leave the house and go to their cabin for the night, perhaps permanently. Mary soon called Deb frantically two or three times, sobbing and overwhelmed that she had “fucked up” and didn’t know what to do .A few hours later Mary texted Mike without his response, and then again and again, and then called him. Mike apparently did not think he could talk to Mary expecting that it would be more of the same, namely he was “the problem.” But such was not the case. Somehow, in what we consider to be a “spiritual engagement,” she had found a way to see Mike for who he was, and then saw that she not only loved him, but also liked him. She came home after a sobbing-filled phone call, they talked for hours, and came to see me the next day.

I don’t really know what happened with Mary but her “doing something” turned out to be the right thing, namely doing something. Sometimes you have to move forward so that you can do a 180 and move backward or perhaps to the right or left.

The woman who left the perfect man

I’ve been seeing a 30-something man who has been very successful in business. He is honest, hard—working, expressive although introverted by nature, and generally kind to the people in his life. He has, unfortunately, not been very successful with women including the most recent female relationship, which lasted about nine months. Previously, he has had relationships that lasted a couple of years but never has been able to sustain anything with a woman long enough to establish a real bond and eventually a commitment to a life together. It appears that he has suffered from a phenomenon that I will next discuss, but more importantly, he is a good “catch” for any woman because of the ingredients just noted, like independent success in work, honesty, commitment, and genuine kindness. Guys like this often fail to sustain long-term relationships because they are so attractive to women, often women who are impressed with the guy’s physical appearance, vocational status, or general kindness. Who would leave such a man? This is the question Jack asked me when he came to see me because he was just at the end of this 9-month long relationship with Sidney that she ended, but for reasons that were not clear to him. She spoke of his being great in all areas but then said that “she was not ready to commit” and “needed to find herself.”

What happened to Jack has happened to many men who are good in many ways and “look good” to women. Women are initially attracted to the stability that such men offer, but eventually find the man “not good enough,” probably not exciting enough. Men like Jack are self-made, confident, and usually pretty successful in work but may not be all that some women want. They tend to attract women who they try to “fix”. This “fixing” comes after a few months in the relationship with the woman starts to be true to herself and displays the “deep hole” that I will describe next. I think that Jack couldn’t fix Sidney. More importantly, because of many women’s tendency to overly emotionalize, Jack was less emotional himself. More importantly, Jack is not emotionally mature himself, which means knowing what you feel, valuing what you feel, communicating what you feel, and governing what you feel. This, of course, leads to the man being able to hear and adjust to a woman’s feelings. Jack was good at listening but his tendency to fix Sidney didn’t work. It never does.

The women caused the man to leave

Many men become involved with women who have a “deep hole” in their soul. My previous blog was about deep hole people, whether male or female. Such people tend to be very attractive, often very sexually active, often outgoing, fun-loving, and very engaging. They are, in a nutshell, the bombshell woman that many men are attracted to…unfortunately. I don’t know how they develop this bombshell manner, but I suspect they have learned to “be attractive” to men, whether consciously or unconsciously. So they “get” men, but then they began to display the deep hole phenomenon that starts to deteriorate the relationship with the man. Like Jack, men usually try to “fix” these women, but there can be no successful fixing of the deep hole. It needs to be healed. Deep hole people, whether male or female, tend to be in relationships quickly but not successfully, sometimes going from person to person, often being promiscuous, and usually having some kind of addiction, whether behavioral or chemical. I’ve recently seen two such men and one gay man who was “left” by the deep hole man he was with for a few months.

In one case, the man was somewhat sophisticated in psychological matters and concluded that the proper diagnosis for his former partner was a “personality disorder.” That was probably right, but I don’t like the diagnosis as it speaks of what is wrong with someone rather than what is right, much what can be done about it. The other “left” man simply gave up on his deep hole woman after trying to fix her for years. Both of these men were exhausted, one still exhausted from the end of his relationship a year after it ended. What happened is that these men got so drained by the deep hole women in their lives, that they finally got a grip and ended the relationship. In both cases the woman protested loudly that she loved the guy in her life and promised to be “better,” but it was too late. They had drained the life out of the guy who was trying to fill the empty hole. The gay guy had a similarly deep hole person whom he left because he couldn’t tolerate his lover’s promiscuity anymore. He was driven to leave his lover just as the deep hole women had driven the guys to leave them.

The woman who left because the man couldn’t

Now I get personal. This is me. I am not alone in this category partly because many men really want to leave the women in their lives but can’t seem to do it. I was married for the wrong reason: I wanted to have sex, and at that stage of my life, I couldn’t have sex while unmarried. Perhaps, more importantly, I couldn’t deal with the sadness and hurt my wife displayed when I suggested that we break up…even “for a while.” I caved. My wife was a lovely woman, but I was the one who propped her up in many ways, encouraged her, and helped her make a life. Eventually, I got tired of all the work and began to drift away. I drifted into another woman’s arms, also a good woman, but perhaps also a woman with needs that I couldn’t manage. However wrong it was for me to have an affair, it was the only way I could see of getting out of a marriage to a “good woman,” but someone who was not good for me. You understand, hopefully, that I delete much of the rest of the story for reasons of propriety and privacy of all concerned. So my wife left me because I didn’t leave her. I most certainly shouldn’t have married her, and most certainly should have trusted my feelings in the very first year of our 14-year marriage when I suspected that I shouldn’t have married her. I didn’t trust those feelings and paid an enormous price, the price exacted by the scorned woman. I won’t give the details, but this is now 40 years in the past and no longer are important to me. There are many men who somehow get into a relationship or marriage on shaky grounds, stay in it too long, and end up being left by the women that they don’t really want to be with in the first place. You can’t blame the woman here.

 

My encouragement to men is always to trust their feelings, however murky these feelings are. This is the core of the work I do with men and it is the core of work Deb does with women. It is hard work, but it is valuable work. Many marriages wouldn’t happen, would end quickly, or would be healed with good therapy if the man could be honest with his feelings. We can’t blame the women for our lack of courage, wisdom, and emotional maturity. It’s not up to the woman to do something. And when it happens, it is up to the man to see what he has not seen, not been willing to see, or otherwise ignores. The men that I see in the “left man” syndrome need to look at themselves, not the woman. It’s not her fault.

The Challenges of Honesty, Openness, and Truth

Ron Johnson communication, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Personality, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

I am no philosopher, but like all people, I delve into the medium and art of philosophy unavoidably as we all do. I am certain that philosophes could be bemused by my meanderings in their territory with my minimal training and understanding of such things. I am often bemused by people meandering into the realm of psychology, like the current days when seemingly everyone has at least one psychological diagnosis. So, granting my philosophical superiors much greater understanding of things philosophical, I will indulge myself by attempting to blend the philosophical concept of “truth” and its cognates with things that I do understand, namely the different characteristics of personality.

This blog has been brewing for several weeks in my mind but just the morning I received a request from a patient of mine that required me to delve into the matter of honesty. In this man’s case, he asked that I render some advice as to how he should handle a complex situation in his life that centered on a forthcoming funeral for his father. I did my best to help him migrate these murky waters but not without a good deal of thought and feeling. This matter of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty is no easy matter. I did my best with my patient, and I will do my best with this blog but admittedly I am not particularly skilled in the philosophical matters. It does occur to me that the very words, philosophy, derives from the Greek, namely philos, which means “love” and Sophia, which means wisdom; hence the love of wisdom. (Note that Philadelphia derives from philos and adelphos, which means brother; hence “the city of brotherly love). So, when we delve into philosophical matters, such as truth, we are seeking to “love wisdom,” perhaps thinking the wise thing or doing the wise thing,

In this blog I will dare to fuse the concepts of personality and philosophy with the grave danger of being simplistic or artificial. If you have followed me over these recent years, you have heard me speak of personality type and personality temperament among other elements of making what I call a “friendly diagnosis.” It is in this context that I wish to share with you some things about the whole business of truth and its cognates, openness and honesty. I originally thought of entitling this blog something like “different kinds of lying,” but then I listened to my own way of thinking about life and psychology and decided it would be better to look at how people of different personality stipes might face the matter of truth et al. Among the ways of understanding differences in personality, I often make use of the terms “personality type” and “temperament,”

And occasionally differences in personal development, cultural background, and differences in the various aspects of intelligence. Instead of examining all of these elements of human existence, I choose to focus on a couple of areas of personality, and examine how we could examine truth, or the lack thereof, within these boundaries, possibly leaving other ways of examination for a later exploration. Before I dare to dive into how differences of personality affect one’s approach to truth, we must consider the whole concept of truth itself.

Truth and consequences

Obviously, I borrow this title from the parlor game and the TV show that existed before most of you were born. I intend to render (perhaps my simplistic) distinctions between the terms honesty, truth, and openness because while they are second cousins these three terms represent somewhat different elements of the idea of being honest. My minimal understanding of these terms is as follows:

  • Truth: something that is accurate or an accurate representation of something. Hence there are “truthful words that represent a feeling, a thought, or an action.
  • Honesty: speaking the truth as one knows it. Perhaps also keeping silent so as to avoid agreeing with a statement made by another person that is felt/thought to be untrue. There is also the element of “being honest with yourself”…or not.
  • Openness: the expression, or perhaps a personality tendency, to express one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions

As a result, we have the complex situations where:

  • A person could be honest not actually be speaking the truth because s/he did not know the whole truth. It is even possible for someone to be speaking the truth as s/he sees it but it is not actually the truth. Children do this all the time and are false accused of “lying” when they actually “saw the ghost in the room.”
  • A person who could be open in some expression but not necessarily be honest. I may openly espouse something that I don’t actually believe. This might be as the simple nod of the head when you hear something that you don’t agree with so as to avoid hurting your friend’s feelings.
  • A person can speak the truth but not being open about certain matters that relate to the truth s/he is speaking. This is something like speaking some of the truth but not all of it. It is this element that I want to tackle next.

Different kinds of truth in personality characteristics

Here I choose to examine three elements (of the available four) that are the result of the Jungian concept of psychological type or as Myers-Briggs calls it, personality type. Here I note examples of how people engage the world of truth and its cognates differently.

Differences in perception: how we see the world

  • I see the world objectively. Hence I see things as they are, not as they should be or the way I would like them to be. I tend to make statements rather than asking questions. I tend to be honest with what I see, but because I don’t see all that can be, I do not see the whole picture, namely something that could happen, or perhaps even should happen. This roughly falls into the category of being “honest but not necessarily speaking the truth.” Such people tend to get lost in the real world, perhaps the practical world but often miss the rest of life that is not real and objective. I can “lie” to other people without realizing that I am “lying” because I didn’t see all there was to see. Kierkegaard said of these people, “everything is real but nothing is meaningful.”
  • I see the world subjectively. Hence, I see what could be, might be, or should be, but not necessarily what actually is. I tend to be honest about looking for things, and often ideas and tend to ask questions. I can be quite satisfied to ask questions without having complete answers. I want to speak the truth and often do so but I to be “dishonest” by getting lost is ideas, possibilities and questions. I tend to “lie to myself” in the constant finding new ideas and having new questions but not really doing anything real. Kierkegaard said of these people, “all things are possible but nothing is real.”
  • I evaluate the world objectively: Descartes said, “I think, therefore I am.” If I evaluate objectively, I think objectively, feel objectively, and act objectively. What you see is what you get. I reason with logic and have a sense of the ultimate fairness in making a decision that is based on reason. I do the “right” thing…regardless of how anyone “feels” and even regardless of how I feel. I can get caught in being truthful to logic but not truthful to my feelings, much less anyone else’s feelings.
  • I evaluate the world subjective. Descartes could have said, “I feel, therefore I am,” although many contemporary psychological writers have suggested that could be a way of looking at decisions. If I evaluate subjectively, I “feel,” whatever that means (read our book, please), and attend to my feelings and other people’s feelings. “Truth” is thus highly related to feelings and to relationships and cannot be explored, felt, or expressed apart from these elements. Thus, I can speak “truth” that is related mostly to how I feel or someone else feels, which may actually be truthful in the objective sense of the terms
  • I am energized by being with people: I talk in order to be listened to and to be talked to. I tend to be “open” with my thoughts and/or feelings and expect other people to do the same. This openness, however, is not always exactly “true” because I can embellish, enlarge, or elaborate with colorful metaphors seeking to “communicate” what I feel or think. This amounts to being open but not entirely honest. I also can fall into not being honest with myself for the sake of communicating with someone. I tend to “lie” objectively, say something that is not factually true.
  • I am energized by being alone or with one special person. I tend to keep my feelings entirely to myself and most of my thoughts to myself. I am honest with myself but not necessarily honest with people around me perhaps thinking, “It’s none of their business what I think or feel unless I want them to know.” I tend to lie subjectively, i.e. not saying something that is true.

Examples of “lying” by good people

You might enjoy reading my blog, “Why Good Men Lie,” which examines the tendency of men to lie to women. In the same blog I suggest that while men lie to their spouses, unfortunately, women tend to lie to themselves, also unfortunately.

I am reminded of an experience I had 30 years ago with a group of men who regularly attended a men’s group that I led. One night one fellow named Bill said to the group that he believed that some of the men didn’t like him, and proceeded to ask whether this was true. Each man responded to the question, and I remember one man saying to this man that he “flat out didn’t like him,” while another man said, “Sure, Bill, I like you.” I inquired with the second man privately why he said that he liked Bill given that I had heard that he most certainly didn’t like him at all. His response: “he is not important to me so I didn’t feel compelled to tell him the truth.” Some weeks later, Bill was speaking about some subject what seemed to go on without profit and one after another men left the group, seemingly bored or disinterested. This left one man yet in the room with Bill, the man who said that he “flat out didn’t like” him. Such a mix of truth and consequences, truth, honesty, and openness.

I have seen many courageous statements of truth despite the consequences:

  • The man who speaks his mind and as a result is not allowed to graduate from a seminary because that “truth” didn’t seem to fit with the “truth” the seminary held
  • The woman, in the company of his former husband, when the two of them were discussing the challenges of their son. She said that the reason that the two of them had been divorced was that she had been “unfaithful” and possibly caused their son harm because of it
  • The child (actually, many children) who said, “I hate you” to his parents. He didn’t know it at the time but he had the permission to say such things because he lived in a loving home.
  • A few politicians who are courageous enough to challenge the party line and take the consequences. Liz Cheney comes to mind as does John McCain.

I have seen many more examples of the lack of truth spoken…or not spoken:

  • The several women who spring the “D” word on their husbands having evidently lived with someone they didn’t like for years…or decades
  • The several men who have been unfaithful to their spouses, sometimes with their common friends or relatives
  • The teenager who has simply not found the social maturity to be honest about whether he did, indeed, brush his teeth or take a shower

 

These are my current thoughts. But I must leave you with this, abridging the statement, “beauty is in the eyes of the beholder.” Perhaps truth is also in the eyes of the beholder. But I am also cognizant of Shakespeare’s statement, “When first we practice to deceive, oh what a tangled web we weave.” I am brought back to the patient I mentioned at the beginning who is trying to find a way to be wise, kind, loving, and honest with his family, girlfriend, and himself. He has a very tangled web that has been constructed by many people including himself.

Crazy is Contagious

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, political, relationships, Self-Awareness

I heard the statement, “crazy is contagious” from a colleague of mine when I told him about an experience I had recently had with a patient. It got me thinking. “Crazy” is not by any means a part of my vocabulary, nor are other typical terms when we think of the challenges that people have like, “issues,” “problems,” and even “diagnoses.” If you have followed me in my blogging, you have noticed that I do the very best I can to avoid diagnosing someone and finding the diagnosis of much benefit. People use the terms depressed, nervous, bipolar disorder, ADHD, and PTSD way too easily and very often without much knowledge of these conditions. There are, for instance very few people, who suffer from a true bipolar disorder, perhaps one in 1000, maybe less. Bipolar disorder, by the way, is a delusional disorder when someone truly experiences such a severe depression as to truly not want to live for one more day, and that followed by times when the person feels like s/he could fly off a building successfully with arms as wings. I was bemused by a person reported that her husband was “very bipolar.” She actually meant that he swung from happy to sad. But this is not bipolar disorder. Nor is being sad depression, being worried anxiety, being distracted ADHD, or having bad memories PTSD. PTSD and the like are all real disorders, but they are not as common as people think. Enough of my grandstanding on the theme that psychiatric terms are used excessively. Let me get to the point.

The point is this: some kind of “crazy” is contagious. This means that if you around a person who feels delusional, speaks her delusions with firm conviction, and is fully convinced of these delusions, you will absorb some of the “crazy” thinking. This happened to me the other day with a patient who, indeed, espoused a series of delusional-like statements. This was a young man, a man of good integrity as well as high intelligence, but someone who has been suffering from some time with a significant amount of anxiety. I have written about anxiety before noting that it is clearly the most difficult phenomenon to overcome because it is caused by the brain (not the mind, mind you) believes that there is lethal danger just around the corner and keeps you in a state of perpetual hypervigilance in preparation for the danger that the brain believes to exist. I will not restate what I have previously written about this mind-brain interaction except to say that you mind knows everything but your brain knows only safety and pleasure, or lack thereof. You brain doesn’t know that when you are “worried” about passing an exam tomorrow that this is, actually tomorrow, because the brain (not the mind) does not have a sense of time. For the brain everything is in the present. So when your mind thinks about the danger of failing an exam, you brain goes into action to protect you. Unfortunately, you brain does not distinguish some future danger from a present danger. Furthermore, you brain does not distinguish serious danger from minor danger. Hence, anxiety is very difficult to conquer. It is only conquered by sadness. But that is another discussion unless you want to read our books. So, let me tell you about how I “caught” the delusion I heard the other day.

Delusions

I must alter the words and circumstances to protect my patient’s identify but the phenomenon is the same: delusion spoken. Jack (I’ll call him Jack) suggested there was a conspiracy operating in Washington having to do with a certain political figure. He expressed how he had concluded that there was some immediate danger to him, to his family, and to America at large due to this individual and his colleagues. At first, he told me that an important senator had been “kidnapped” and another one “arrested” for unknown offenses and by unknown individuals. He told me more and more about what he was quite certain was about to happen in America and advised me that I should prepare myself for some kind of political, cultural, or military storm that was about to happen. When I first heard about the “arrest” of a senator, I was quite distressed because I had not heard about it, but then as Jack continued his story and beliefs in what I should call a conspiracy theory, I became increasingly concerned that I was listening to a person who was either truly delusional or “feeling” delusional for some reason. Jack finalized his statements of concern with a suggestion that there was a true danger of the water in Madison being contaminated with some kind of mind-altering drug. I was advised to keep from drinking tap water.

Now, I know that the water is not contaminated in Madison and I most certainly know that there is no conspiracy to take over the world, but after listening to this long story of conspiracy, I was affected emotionally, and then I was affected cognitively. I actually thought that maybe…just maybe…the water had somehow been contaminated. I knew better, but I found myself actually thinking this “crazy” notion. Why would I do that? I know better. Part of the reason I actually considered that there might be some truth in these stories was because I value Jack, namely his intelligence and his integrity. This is an important factor when you consider what you hear, from whom you hear it, and the content of what you hear. But this is not enough. You have to attend to how you feel because “crazy is contagious.”

Crazy is contagious

There are a lot of things that are contagious. These days, of course, we are all thinking of how Covid is contagious. We hear this all the time with suggestions of social distancing, masking, and all the rest. Then we also hear that social distancing and masking is not enough from some people and that it is harmful from other people. It is hard to know what to believe, but what most people do is trust their feelings: wear a mask, don’t wear a mask, social distance or don’t social distance, have parties or don’t have parties. Watching out for a viral contagion is difficult but you can find your way and do your best. Not so with emotional contagion and intellectual contagion.

Conspiratorial ideas, whether truly delusional or not, create a strong emotion. Witness the recent events in the Capital where people truly believed that it was possible to storm the Capital building and somehow change the course of democracy as it has operated for 250 years. These were not crazy people. They were, in my estimation, “true believers,” namely people who believe so heartily in President Trump, that they could take his words, his suggestion, and then broaden it into action. It is debatable whether Trump really wanted the crows to invade the Capital as it happened, something like the French revolution when outraged Frenchmen stormed to gates of the aristocracy. I doubt that these people were delusional although it is possible that some of them might have been. What happened, at least in my mind, was that there was a crowd effect, largely driven by powerful emotion and belief. The same crowd effect occurred during some Black Lives Matter marches when a few people, obviously overcome with emotion, did physical damage to property, and in some circumstances damage to people. Crazy, if we call it that, is contagious because it is profoundly emotional, which then filters into one’s cognition to justify the emotionally-based delusion. There is actually a formal diagnosis, rarely used, but quite real, called “shared psychotic experience.” I have encountered it only a couple times in my career.

It is not only “crazy” that is contagious. All things are contagious. Specifically, both depression and anxiety are contagious. This means that if you are around someone who suffers from depression or anxiety, you will most certainly feel the symptoms of these disorders. We therapists need to be quite aware of the contagion effect as we deal with people who might, indeed, be profoundly depressed or anxious. But this awareness is not limited to therapists. I suggest you be aware of the people around you who are, for instance, depressed, anxious, moody, or even delusional because too much exposure to such things will rub off on you.

Interestingly, you can also “catch” good feeling, like hope, faith, trust, love, and joy. Note how you feel when you are around someone who has one or more of these feelings in their nature or their presentation. Sadly, there are not many people who feel these things with our current deluge of politically motivated statements from all quarters. It behooves us to find people who feel good about life if we are to feel good about life. This can be a challenge especially if you are in some difficult situation, or your family or friend is in some difficult situation, because you would normally want to talk about the situation. Indeed, you need to talk but not with joining in with delusional, depressing, or anxiety-driven conversation, nor with conversation with false hope and simple answers. It is no small task.

Avoid the crazy

You can deal with delusional thoughts by noting how you feel emotionally. You will feel afraid. If you are around depression, you will feel depressed, and when you’re around anxiety, you will feel anxious. Not so bad to feel these things for a few moments, maybe minutes, but not more. Note when you start to absorb the “crazy” and quickly find a way out of the conversation. This may not always be easy. I needed to stay with my patient for a half hour as he talked to me about his delusions. I am not even sure that he really believes these conspiracy theories. Perhaps, he just absorbed them from a good friend. It doesn’t matter where he came to believe such things, nor does it matter how deeply he believes them. It doesn’t even matter whether some of what he says is actually true. What matters is that crazy incites crazy. Likewise, depression incites depression, anxiety incites anxiety, anger incites anger, and so on. You don’t need someone else’s crazy. You have enough of your own. You need to keep your distance.

Keeping you distance means trusting your feelings, namely when you begin to feel things that are not good for you, like anger or fear. If you are with someone and hearing their stories but begin to feel such things, you need to first be aware of your feelings, realize that you have “caught” someone else’s feeling, and then get away as soon as you can. This might take some socially delicate maneuver, but you need not feel what someone else feels if it is bad for you.

Feeling what someone else feels, whether joyful or sad, is not always a bad thing. It can be very good to feel sad with someone who has had a loss or feel truly joyful with someone when they tell you about their success in life. My concern is not to keep your social distance from any and all emotion but to be aware of the emotion that people bring to you because all emotion is contagious. Emotion is wonderful, and there are rare times when it is valuable to be afraid and to be angry. Rare times. There are more times when it is valuable to be joyful or sad because these emotions have to do with love, not defense