Everybody loves magic. I always admire someone who is skilled at doing magic, whether someone who is professional on a stage like a colleague of mine (Dr. Dan Feaster), or someone who is just good at some card trick. I always enjoy doing some kind of simple magic with young kids where I make a penny “disappear” and then “reappear” on the kid’s ear, but I’m not really good at any kind of magic and leave it mostly to professionals and folks who are just good at some kind of parlor trick.
A few years back I wrote a blog entitled, “The Magic of Psychotherapy” in which I suggested that people look at psychotherapy as being some kind of magic, namely (1) a magical diagnosis, (2) a magical treatment, and (3) a magical cure. There is no magic to psychotherapy, whether in a so-called diagnosis, treatment, or cure. Rather, therapy is a delicate operation that is conducted by two people trying to make sense of what is working and what is not working in life and finding ways to make life work. It is hard work for both the therapist and the patient, not work that most therapists know how to do, and not the kind of work that patients really want to do. Yet, somehow, many therapist and many patients find ways to do good work and find ways to make life creative, productive, and ultimately meaningful.
Believing in magic
There is another kind of magic that I hear from many of the people in my office. This kind of magic involves an individual’s belief that something will fall from the sky and cure all that ails them. I have heard the following:
- A very successful clergy person who is over 75 years old made some kind but unwise choices in his personal life, namely spending too much money pleasing his wife leaving them now in serious debt with no visible way out. Because of their moral/ethical stance they are unwilling to file for bankruptcy. Mack’s magic is that “someone, something, or God Himself” will somehow drop $200K into his bank account.
- A man of good character, self-made, successful, kind, honest, formerly professional and now retired has been unsuccessful in establishing, maturing, and enhancing any female relationship. His magic is that there will magically be someone who will knock on his door or respond to his internet postings.
- Many people with some kind of anxiety-based life have a magical desire about their lifelong struggle with anxiety. They think that if they just do everything right, everyone will like them, they will never make a mistake and never be criticized.
- A very outgoing and friendly man who has also been quite successful in life was divorced by his wife recently, something that he didn’t see coming and was not prepared for. Two of his three adult children have essentially abandoned him together with only a tangential relationship with his third child. He “prays for his wife” specifically that she will “come back to the Lord” despite the fact that she apparently never has loved him, does not like him, and has sought no contact with him during and now after the divorce. Prayer is not based on what we think someone else should do, nor what God should do for that person
- Several people who are addicted to something, whether it is chemical like alcohol and drugs or behavioral like video game-playing and gambling, look for some magic to get out of their addiction. A real addiction originates in some kind of pleasure, then becomes a largely pleasurable habit and then mutates into an escape. So, eventually and addiction is where the brain demands that you can “feel better” if you only return to the addictive substance or behavior. It is magical to think the addiction will just go away on its own.
- Another man of good character and someone who has always been a good and faithful worker unfortunately acquired multiple sclerosis some years ago and has lived for the recent years in residential care because now he has no use of his appendages and is slowly losing his ability to speak. Unfortunately, this assault of the M.S. kept him from continuing to work. He had taken out a second mortgage on his house to do some repairs while he was still working and had a standard amount of credit card debt, but when he was no longer able to work, his wife was not stuck with an immune am fount of debt that she had no way of paying. Jack said that he “just needed someone to give him $100K” and everything would be OK. He died not long ago never having seen this magic.
- A young man who made a rather silly insignificant choice in college that was judged to be plagiarism. It took him several years to finally finish his degree. He really wants “to do something for other people” but can’t seem to maintain a job. He wants his employer to fund his failure to work diligently.
- Many people who have sought “disability” status because they think they have PTSD, ADHD, bipolar disorder or some other psychiatric disorder even though they are quite bright and capable.
- A gay man who wants to “get married and have children” and then perhaps have some gay sex on the side. He can’t seem to find a woman who plugs into this magic. Many other gay men who want to be something other than gay
- Another very bright person who is very ideational and imaginative but has never really succeeded in life despite his master’s degree and previous success in his profession. I have known him for many years and watched him go from job to job, usually within his chosen profession, which by the way, for which he is quite ill-suited. He goes from dream to dream, from idea to idea, for “aha” to “aha” but never really does what it would take to find a way in life that is meaningful.
All of these people tend to be intelligent and many of them are people of good character and often of deep spiritual commitment and engagement. Yet they retain the idea, or should we call it a “feeling” that something magical will come into their lives to make life better for them. These are not bad people, not unintelligent people, and not people with insufficient character. But they have all fallen into believing in magic of some sort. Along the way, each of them has become quite depressed and occasionally despairing of life in some way. Most of them say what I often hear from men: “I don’t want to live” even though they don’t want to die and are not suicidal. They just don’t want to live in the lives they have because, aside from a magical intervention, they can’t see their way out.
So what can they do, or what can I do as therapist to help these folks give up magical thinking and find some meaningful way to face the reality of life and the necessity of appropriate decisions?
Overcoming magical thinking
…is very very hard. When people get into magical thinking, it is much easier to believe in magic than face the reality of life. So what is “the reality of life”? Hurt, doing something, hard work, time, mistakes, failures, others’ criticism, and imperfection. Successful living outside of magic is facing all of these things courageously, finding some understanding of these elements of life, and ultimately finding true joy, success, and happiness sin life.
Facing Hurt
There have been many people, many of them quite intelligent and philosophical significant, who have said that life IS pain. Buddha suggested something like this although there is much more to Buddhism than this idea of pain. Contemporary statements about like, “Life sucks and then you die.” I think this is a very unfortunate way of looking at life. Indeed, there are people for whom life is painful all the time and some of these people never find much joy in life, but for most people life is not purely and primarily painful.
Hurt, emotional hurt, is an extremity important element in life that needs to be faced. It is so important that I have come to think that successful life starts with the experience of hurt, the understanding of hurt, the careful expression of hurt, finding ways of overcoming hurt, and ultimately becoming used to hurt in hits many guises. Hurt (emotional hurt) is always love-based. This means that I am hurt because I have lost something. I encourage you to read previous blogs on hurt and/or our book, I Want to Tell You How I Feel. The heart of emotional maturity, social maturity, and general life maturity is based on understanding and resolving hurt in life.
It is much easier to believe in magic, like I will never be hurt again, hurt will just go away, I will never hurt anyone, or God forbid, I just have to live with being hurt until I die.
Facing the need to do something and hard work that goes along with it
Doing something is easy for some people, like me, and difficult for other people who tend to be more ideational. There are dangers for doers, like me, and idea people. I tend to jump right in and do something and usually make a lot of mistakes along the way. People who are more ideational than productive very often fail to do enough to find what they need to do in life. While there is some magical thinking with us doers, there tends to be a lot more with people who are idea people. I think I am speaking mostly to people for whom doing comes hard when I suggest that you have to do something. A few of the men I described above are doers who have done a lot but not thought through what they were doing.
Doing something is not just doing anything. Doing something needs some thought behind it, which suits the idea people for whom magical thinking is so easy. Doing something for idea people is hard because they tend to be more exacting and quality oriented people than us doers. They want to do it right the first time and often get lost in thinking of what they might do, considering all the options, and trying to make the doing something that is perfect the first time. Nothing is perfect the first time. Furthermore, nothing is perfect. Period.
The hard work of doing includes mistakes, failures, and criticisms, which we will discuss briefly, but more importantly, it means doing a lot of what you don’t want to do in order so that you can do what you do want. This means a kind of discipline. I have had to discipline myself to do much more running and working out, as well as eating much better, since my heart attack. And, I never like it. I discipline myself to do these things because I want the product: being alive.
Facing mistakes, failures, and others’ criticisms
This, I think is the reason most people fall into magical thinking and believing in what is magical: they mistakenly think that if they do something, it will be right the first time. If they wait until the right moment, something magical will happen so life will unfold wonderfully. If they have all their ducks in a row, they will do it perfectly. None of this is true. Rather, if you find a way out of magical thinking, you WILL make mistakes, you will have failures, and you will most certainly have other people’s criticisms of you.
I think it is the facing of mistakes that is most devastating to a successful life in all its arenas, namely vocationally, interpersonally, intimately, and personally. People who believe in magic are often plagued by their former mistakes and hence the fear of more mistakes. Additionally, there are many people who have a feeling that something is deeply flawed in them, that they are somehow plagued by a dark spirit or something, and hence are unable to reach forward, do something, and find meaning in life. These amount to old wounds, usually originating in early childhood and perhaps stretching into adolescence, only to be aggravated by things that happened afterward.
Magic people may also be people who have actually not made enough mistakes in life. Perhaps they came from a perfectionistic family where they couldn’t make mistakes, or a family where they were criticized all the time, or a family where they were indulged so much that they never faced the mistakes that are so necessary in life.
Mistakes are essential in order to do something significant and meaningful. They may be mistakes of marriage or failing to marry the right person, mistakes of schooling that brought you to a profession that does not suit you, mistakes of spending too much and getting in too much debt. You might read my blog on Regrets where I identify some of the mistakes I have made in life, and hence regrets that I have. As a doer I have made more mistakes than most people.
While old mistakes, old history of an inadequate childhood, or the unreasonable fear of future mistakes, much of our fears of mistakes and avoidance of mistakes are related to what we imagine other people might say negatively about us. It is easier to be magical thinking that I will never be criticized than face the absolute necessity of criticism if I actually do something.
Facing imperfection
This is the hardest battle for people who believe in magic. Nothing is perfect. No action is perfect. No person is perfect. This is easy for me to say but to face imperfection, especially for magical thinkers, is extremely painful, which brings us back to the centrality of pain. Magical thinking is essentially believing that I can live a life without pain if something magical happens. Maybe this one hundred thou drops out of the sky, or that perfect woman will knock on my door, or I will find the perfect profession and job. None of these things is real. Rather, there might just be a really good woman…who is imperfect, or a perfect profession/job…that is imperfect, or a slow painful decision regarding money…that is imperfect. Perfectionism is quality thinking that has gone crazy. Magical thinkers think…magically…that something is perfect…if they can only find it. They will never find it, but they can find success and happiness in life if they dare face pain, mistakes, criticism, and imperfection