I love to hear from my clients the statement, “That makes sense.” When I hear that, I realize that whatever I said to them made sense to them, and just possibly I was being of some help to them. Usually, “that makes sense” comes along with an ah-ha, a relief, even a joy. I have come to believe that the person I was speaking to already knew what I said. Maybe, he hadn’t used the same words I used, but when he heard my statement that “made sense” to him, he felt affirmed, understood, and good about himself. Today, I’d like to discuss this “making sense” of things. When someone can’t make sense of something in their lives, it is generally because of something is good about them and right with them, not something that is wrong with them.

What makes sense for me

The very first book I read in psychology, The Psychology of Jesus, had a chapter heading of “Everything Makes Sense.” This chapter laid out what has been the foundation of my understanding of psychology over the past 60 years: everything makes sense. People choose to come to us because they have some difficulty in their lives.  Our principal work with people is to help them make sense of what is happening in their lives, i.e. what they feel, what they think, and what they do. Making sense of difficulties isn’t just figuring out something, or having an explanation. More often these difficulties have to do with something that was lost in life, which then led them into one or more ways of coping with this loss. An important part of making sense is seeing the actual cause of their challenges. We often find that something, usually a feeling, has been lost or blocked. We don’t work primarily to replace what was lost or unblock their feelings. Rather, we try heartily to help them understand the whole picture: where it started, what originally happened, and then how they coped with the loss by blocking their feelings. Making sense is often a form of acceptance: acceptance of what happened, acceptance of what they did to cope, and acceptance of who they are now.   If they can understand themselves, they will be better able to accept themselves, including what they have done to cope with loss or hurt.  Our work is heavily oriented towards helping our clients make sense of their feelings, thoughts, and actions. Almost always, this assistance in making sense is about seeing what is right about a person more than seeing or explaining what is wrong. 

Making sense of things by seeing what is wrong with you

My formal entry into the study of psychology began in graduate school, where I studied psychopathology, taking classes on “abnormal psychology” and “mental illness.” My entry into clinical psychology began working for an expert psychiatrist, Dr. Rassekh, who helped me make sense of people’s seemingly “abnormal” behavior with mental health diagnoses of depression, psychotic disorders, and personality disorders. These disorders all came with formal mental health diagnoses identified in the Diagnostic Psychiatric Manual (DSM) together with symptoms of each of these disorders. I began my practice with the belief that I could understand and effectively treat people by identifying what was wrong with them according to these various diagnoses. I was appreciative of Dr. Rassekh’s instruction and skill of diagnosing patients who came into our office. I remain appreciative of Dr. Rassekh’s helping me to understand mental illness diagnoses, which was my original way of understanding people who came for my help. I became increasingly dissatisfied with “understanding” people by seeing their mental illness and what was wrong with them. Diagnosing people with depression, schizophrenia, and the like  “made sense” because certain symptoms are consistent with certain mental illness categories. I could see that Dr. Rassekh’s primary way of treating people was pharmacological, which seemed to dampen patients’ symptoms. But understanding people by seeing what was wrong with them didn’t really help me understand how to help them with the self-esteem problems, their loneliness, their addictions, and their difficult relationships

Many people find comfort, or seek comfort, in finding an appropriate diagnosis for what they find unpleasant with their behavior, feelings, or thoughts. Likewise, many people look to understand people in their lives by finding an appropriate mental illness diagnosis. Most of the people who seek a neuropsychological evaluation in my office have some knowledge of mental health disorders and say something like, “what is wrong with me is that I have some kind of mental health disorder.” Prominent among these diagnoses are Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD), Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), Learning Disability (LD), as well as Major Depressive Disorder (MDD), among others. The idea these people have is this: “If I have one of these disorders, I can find an appropriate treatment plan,” recover from this disorder, and lead a more profitable life. Unfortunately, such is not the case for most people. While these diagnoses like ADHD and MDD are real, and some people do, indeed, have the disorders associated with these diagnoses, the diagnosis is not a magic bullet. The identification of a mental illness diagnosis does not really help people understand themselves and accept themselves, much less make necessary adjustments to their lives. Furthermore, there is no exact diagnosis for any of these disorders, the symptoms presented often fall under more than one of these diagnoses, and most importantly, there is no exact and perfect treatment for most people who have such disorders. If a person is depressed, she or he might have symptoms of ADHD, ASD, LD, and MDD. The real question is not so much which of these disorders is the best fit, but who is the person, what has happened in their lives, and how can they make life better. If we don’t help people make sense of their lives by finding a mental health disorder, what do we do in place of diagnoses? We find what is right about them.

Making sense of things by seeing what is right with you

While my formal entry into psychology training was in graduate school, and then augmented by a psychiatrist, my personal entry into psychology came several years before, in a setting that was oriented towards what I felt, what I thought, what I did, and ultimately who I was as a person. I first learned about feelings in a “sensitivity training group” in the 1960’s, which helped me understand that feelings are the basis of thinking and ultimately of what one says or does. In these group settings I learned nothing about psychopathology but what I felt and thought, what I did, and what effect my feelings, thoughts, and behavior had on the people around me. This was a kind of “back door” into the field of psychology, not the typical route of studying psychology in undergraduate days and then going forward into graduate work. But I am glad for this back door approach because it set me on a path to a very different way of understanding and “making sense” of what I think, feel, and do, which has continually helped me understand other people and make sense of that they think, feel, and do.

A group of psychologists at the end of the last century began to talk of “positive psychology,” or “looking for what is right” about people. Interestingly, I had coined the term “friendly diagnosis in about 1980 after finding ways of looking at what is right with people. While I had always had a propensity to look positively at people in my practice, I got a real push into this perspective with the use of psychological tests that examined personality from a positive light. I was heavily influenced by my initial experience with “sensitivity training,” which led me to enter a lifelong self-examining. This was augmented by mentors and therapists in my life including Dr. Morris Tiktin, who led a sensitivity training group, Dr. Vernon Grounds in seminary, master Therapist Dick Olney, other people who knew much more than I did about psychology and real life, and a good deal of advanced training and personal study. Over the years we have developed tests that cover personality type, temperament, self-esteem, social maturity, emotional maturity, intelligences, and social background. Most often when we explain these “test results” to our clients we hear that refreshing phrase “That makes sense.” For example, we refer to people as “high boundary” or “low boundary,” which are ways of engaging the world first by planning and executing, or first by experiencing life. The low boundary and high boundary concept is our way of making sense of how people engage time and space. Low boundary people engage more in the flow of what comes their way, and also provides a feeling of safety,  while high boundary people engage more in the planning of what they will do, which provides a very different sense of safety. Other tools such as the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI), together with its founders and trainers, has been very helpful as have other tests and ways of examining people’s personalities and ways of engaging the world. From this initial assessment of people’s strengths of personality and functioning we move forward in therapy to help people make sense of what has not made sense to them. In this way, we hope to make sense of difficult feelings, thoughts, or behavior that may have erupted out of some more normal and natural part of the individual. It can, for instance, make sense to a person that s/he is introverted, and hence a person who values quality, perception, and privacy instead of shy, insecure, autistic, or depressed. We wrote about some of these aspects in our What’s Your Temperament.

Another important way of making sense of the difficulties people have in life has to do with feelings. We wrote I Want to Tell You How I Feel and The Positive Power of Sadness with the perspective of understanding feelings, which erupt physically, emotionally, cognitively, and behaviorally. A key factor in this way of understanding people is to see that the feeling of hurt, which, if left unresolved, is central in all difficulties. I recently had a 50-something man come into my office stating that he “had lost two marriages, several jobs, and some friends” due to his tendency to get angry so quickly and be verbally violent with people. As I examined him, it became obvious that he was really suffering from a half-century of life’s hurt, and had found that anger had assuaged his hurt to some degree as well as a variety of addictions. This explanation of hurt being the drive behind anger made sense to him. So much, in fact, that he cried saying that he never wanted to be an angry man. He also reported  that he could not remember ever using the word “hurt” in his life. That he was hurt before he got angry made sense. His undue anger had never made sense to him. I hear similar reports all the time from the men I see in my office. Now, the real work will be to find the origins of his hurt rather than trying to fix his anger with some misplaced “anger management,” much less finding a personality disorder under his anger.

We hope you can make sense of things in your life that are difficult, and just as importantly, make sense of your loved ones words and action despite how it sounds or seems.

Making sense of things in your life

1. Consider an action that you frequently engage that might be called “defensive”. For example, …. You finish someone else’s sentence.
   1. You might immediately realize that you interrupted your friend as she was speaking. You might even judge your interruption as “rude” or “selfish.” Identifying your interruption as rude, which is a negative way of making sense of an act
   1. If you start with this negative way of making sense, it is likely that you will fall into a feeling of shame or humiliation, which will then incline you to talk too much trying to cover up the interruption, or on the other hand, say nothing at all, hoping that you can assuage any offense your friend might have taken
   1. Now, consider what it is about you that tends to interrupt people that might somehow be positive. This might be a challenge. Your interruption might be:
      1. You are excited about what your friend said
      1. You agree with what she said
      1. You want to add something to what she said
      1. You simply like a give-and-take way of talking and listening
   1. If you find a way of looking at yourself as possessing some positive characteristic, you will actually see that your interruption was joy-based and love-based. This means that you enjoyed your friend’s comment and loved her in that joy
   1. If you are able to avoid thinking of yourself in negative terms, like rude or selfish, you might be able to move forward with this joy-based and love-based action of yours and find a more positive way of dealing with your interruption:
      1. You might render a simple apology like, “Sorry, Angela, I got so excited about what you were saying that I jumped right in. Please go on about what you were saying. I found it exciting.
      1. Remain silent, but not with shame or avoidance, but rather giving Angela a bit of time to recoup and get back to what she was saying.
      1. If you have your phone or a piece of paper, you might write down you thoughts with a simple apology like, “Angela, that was so interesting that I don’t want to forget it,” knowing that you had a comment that you are withholding until your friend is finished speaking.

• Examine something that you tend to do that might be real fun for you but perhaps has some negative consequences:
  • You tend to use common-use swear words a lot
  • You tend to pick you teeth, nose, or skin in public
  • You forget people’s names
  • You tend to be a soft talker or a loud talker, either of which can bring offense
  • You are chronically late for appointments
• If you have any of these typical things that people do, it is likely that you will feel some kind of shame, avoid people in some way, or even make a joke about your behavior
• See if you can make sense of your faux pas in positive terms
  • You grew up with a lot of swearing, or just learned the freedom of swearing. Swear words have no exact meaning; swearing is essentially putting emphasis on something. Maybe you’re trying to be emphatic
  • You have a habit of this picking thing, maybe because of acne you had as a teen, or because you are inclined to itches of any kind
  • You just might love people by hugging them or giving them gifts but are not inclined to remember names
  • Soft talking or loud talking tends to be a genetic inclination. Note how your family members speak
  • You are a “low boundary” person, namely a person who finds joy and safety in spontaneity and freedom rather than planning and executing
• Now, with a more positive approach to what you say or do that could be odd or offensive, you might be able to govern what you say or do that seems natural and kind to you, but may not be received as kind to someone else.
• Consider what philosophers for centuries, and psychologists for decades have suggested: know yourself, value yourself, and improve yourself. We hold strong to the belief that when you know yourself first, you can then learn to know others well.  When you make sense of things in a positive way, others will begin to make sense of things positively. This is maturing: emotionally, cognitively, socially, and spiritually.