A few years ago Deb wanted to take a trip on her own where she could hike and explore, which is one of her true passions. She went to Portugal and hiked a long trail along the coast of the country. After she had been there a few days, she called me up and said the following: “I am so glad that you’re not here” and then quickly said, “I wish you were here.” Knowing Deb and understanding the importance of such paradoxical statements, I was not chagrinned although many people have been somewhat bothered when I tell them the story of her call from Portugal. Let’s talk about paradoxes.
A math teacher once told me that there are two interesting things about math and science: (1) “Everything interesting happens at the boundaries,” he said, and (2) “To really understand math and science, you have to grasp the centrality of paradox.” How true he was. I won’t indulge myself with how paradoxes and boundaries are significant in math and science except to note that there is much that we don’t understand because so many things seem to paradoxical in the known universe. I have found boundaries and paradoxes to be central ingredients of life, and hence of psychotherapy, e.g.:
Feeling sad and joyful seemingly at the same moment
Loving someone but not liking that person very much
Doing the right thing even though it looks like the wrong thing
The sorrow and joy that come from tragedy
Feeling good about finding out what is wrong even though you didn’t want it to be wrong
Feeling sad and joyful at the same time
This is a “love problem” as we frequently say to our clients. In fact, where there is joy, there is always sorrow, and when there is sorrow, there is always joy. This paradox happens in the past, present, and the future.
In the present: you enjoy having your early morning cup of C, but then feel sad when it is gone or you spill it. This is the way of life.
In the past you really enjoyed playing football but sad at the memory of when you broke your leg. This is nostalgia.
In the future you expect something good to happen, to live with someone, or to have your idea work out, but however good these things might be, they will end and you will feel sad. This is the essence of hope.
There are many experiences that people have where they feel joy and sorrow at the same time:
Frank lost his wife recently but finds it pleasant that he doesn’t have to pick up after her and clean up after her. Joy and sorrow.
Jim lost his job but is glad that this terrible job is over. Joy and sorrow.
Nancy is a doer and really enjoys being busy and productive but is sad when a project is over or she doesn’t have another one right at hand.
Matt enjoys the freedom he has had being alone but is often lonely, and then sad.
Philip thought he would really enjoy a cruise trip but found it only somewhat satisfying. Joy and sorrow.
How can you face the paradoxes of life?
Admit to your feelings. If you have read any of our blogs, you have already heard this call: admit to what is there, particularly how you feel. You will feel some combination of:
o Hurt
o Disappointment
o Sadness
Then note the quick transformation of these basic feelings hurt and disappointment and the natural emotion of sadness quickly transfer into something else:
o Anger
o Fear
o Avoidance
o Addiction
o Undue activity
Tell someone how you feel, ideally a person who doesn’t give you advice or “get over it” or “just do something.” Such a person could be a good friend, family member, or a therapist-like person.
Admit to yourself the paradox that you face:
o Love your husband but don’t like him
o Love your house but not the work it takes to manage it
o Love being alive and fear dying
o Love to be in shape but don’t want to work out and eat right
o Tell someone this paradox (has to be the right person)
Consider that there might be drastic action, like divorce, moving to a new house, quitting your job. Most of the time you won’t have to do such things. Just give these thoughts some room
If you are really in an intolerable situation, whatever it is, find a way out of it.
o Leave your wife or job or house
o Find a way to live the life you have left on this earth
o Go to the country you have wanted to see all of your life
If drastic action is needed (it usually isn’t), note your feelings
o Admit to the paradox
o Admit to the feeling of disappointment. Life at this point in your life is just not what you expected
o Admit to the sadness
o Allow your sadness to run its course. Sadness always ends
o Work diligently to prevent anger, avoidance, addiction and fruitless activity
Do something that you really don’t want to do
o Work out
o Fix the garage
o Clean up after your dog
Then sit back and realize you did something you really didn’t want to do and appreciate your small effort.
Take a break from doing what you didn’t want to do and indulge yourself in video game laying or eating a donut.
Take a bit of stock of the other paradoxes in your life. Maybe read a snippet or so from the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius.
When you face the paradoxes of life, you will grow up. And likely, you will be of some good service to the people around you who are probably also facing paradoxes.
appreciation
Surviving or Thriving
Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.
People who are surviving
- People with physical limitations
- Blindness
- Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
- Physical disabilities
- People with household difficulties
- Financial limitations or challenges’
- Deteriorating living quarters
- No living quarters
- People who interpersonal difficulties
- One partner is seriously physically limited
- One partner wants out of the relationship
- One partner is unfaithful
- One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
- Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
- Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
- Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
- And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving
People who are surviving long term personal and interpersonal challenges
- Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
- Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
- Peter is not happy with people. He doesn’t know how to admit that he is smarter than most people.
- Both Marge and Peter are lonely
- Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
- Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
- Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because Mom is more like #1
- Martha loves, or thinks she loves Sam, but Sam is quite neglectful of her. She has tried everything to accommodate to him and to change him without success
- Anthony just went through radiation treatment for prostate cancer but his PSA numbers are even worse than before treatment.
- Anthony’s wife is surviving his illness and imminent death by worrying about how she will make it alone given their current financial disaster
The ways people survive these difficulties
In a nutshell, they avoid them. This means that ignore the feelings associated with their lives. What happens then? They turn to anger, avoidance, addiction, or some kind of fruitless activity.
- Philip on the cruise boat holes himself up in his cabin coming out only to eat when he is desperately hungry
- Alex spends 85% of his day playing video games
- Francis takes Tylenol every two hours
- Craig does his best to ignore the mess his dogs makes and covers the smell with incense
- Frank talk about doing something on the house that pleases his wife but never actually does anything
- Anthony’s wife goes silent for the most part, occasionally throwing barbs at her husband for not managing their finances well
- Anthony indulges in a good deal of self-hate, which seems to be a way he can atone for his mistakes.
- Some people start projects and abandon them because they are tired or bored. This leads to a lot of clutter in their lives, like property, relationships, and projects half-done.
- Many people go to doctors and hospitals to have yet another blood test or CT scan to find the magic bullet
What has gone wrong with these people, many of who are intelligent and kind, and been productive in life?
In a nutshell, they haven’t grown up. But what does that mean? Almost all of the people I have noted above (all of whom have had their presented situations altered for privacy) have had pretty good lives and then got stuck somehow. They got stuck because they stop growing, which means that never learned to adapt, adjust, compromise, and find a way to adequately meet the new challenges of life. They might have had good marriages and jobs to start with. They might have successfully raised children. They might have even made a great deal of money along the way. But somehow, they never were able to move from one element of life to the next, from one need to the next need, from one job to another, from one house to another, or maybe even from one spouse to another or to being alone. They didn’t adapt to the changes that occurred in their lives thinking that the old things should still work.
Secondly, they didn’t learn how to feel, particularly the feeling of disappointment and hurt that comes in life, usually every day, allow themselves to feel sad for a season, and then take stock of what lies in front of them.
Thirdly, because they haven’t grown up and haven’t found a way to deal with disappointment, they have fallen into the avoidance, anger, avoidance, or fruitless activity that used to work but no longer works.
Fourthly and most importantly, they haven’t found ways face the paradoxes of life. They want the old things to work rather than finding new ways to succeed in life. They haven’t found ways to love you wife but not like some things about her, like your job for the most part but not like the 20% that you don’t like, love the house and hate the housework.
So, what can be done to do more thriving and less surviving?
- Admit to your feelings. If you have read any of our blogs, you have already heard this call: admit to what is there, particularly how you feel. You will feel some combination of:
- Hurt
- Disappointment
- Sadness
- Then note the quick transformation of these basic feelings hurt and disappointment and the natural emotion of sadness quickly transfer into something else:
- Anger
- Fear
- Avoidance
- Addiction
- Undue activity
- Tell someone how you feel, ideally a person who doesn’t give you advice or “get over it” or “just do something.” Such a person could be a good friend, family member, or a therapist-like person.
- Consider that there might be drastic action, like divorce, moving to a new house, quitting your job. Most of the time you won’t have to do such things. Just give these thoughts some room
- If you are really in an intolerable situation, whatever it is, find a way out of it.
- Leave your wife or job or house
- Find a way to live the life you have left on this earth
- Go to the country you have wanted to see all of your life
- If drastic action is needed (it usually isn’t), note your feelings
- Admit to the feeling of disappointment. Life at this point in your life is just not what you expected
- Admit to the sadness
- Allow your sadness to run its course. Sadness always ends
- Work diligently to prevent anger, avoidance, addiction and fruitless activity
- Do something that you really don’t want to do
- Work out
- Fix the garage
- Clean up after your dog
- Dare to look for a job even though you don’t want to work at “some stupid job.”
- Then sit back and realize you did something you really didn’t want to do and appreciate your small effort.
- Take a break from doing what you didn’t want to do and indulge yourself in video game laying or eating a donut.
- Take a bit of stock of the other paradoxes in your life. Maybe read a snippet or so from the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius.
- You will find that much of your life, perhaps most of your life, is pretty good for the most part and enjoyable. Allow yourself a few moments to appreciate and enjoy.
- Then, and only then will you be able to slowly move beyond surviving to thriving. Thriving takes time and a lot of work. It is not about money, property, or even relationships. It is about seeing what is, accepting what you can, changing what you can, and trusting yourself.
- You will notice that you will begin to have a very positive effect on the world around you: people, places, things, and ideas
The Centrality of Disappointment
One of the most important terms to use daily is “disappointment.” Think about it: how many times during a single day are you actually disappointed. If you’re careful to note your feelings and thoughts, you will notice that disappointment is an experience that occurs several times a day. I want to discuss what disappointment is, how to handle it, when to express it, and how to use it profitably on a daily basis. Simply stated, if you can observe, feel, and selectively express your disappointment, you will ultimately reduce anger and fear substantially, you will improve your relationships, and you will find life much more enjoyable. How weird does that sound? Feel more disappointment and feel better about life? Yes.
What is disappointment?
Disappointment is, quite simply, the feeling of sadness that occurs when you have lost something. We might also add that there is often a feeling of hurt that almost always accompanies the feeling sadness. In fact, these three terms are largely equivalent, but I think the term “disappointment” is the most palatable and understandable of the three. I often help people to feel disappointment in their daily lives and hence forestall anger, fear, and agitation. Deb and I have seen the centrality of the feeling of sadness in life for decades and published our first book, The Positive Power of Sadness: Good Grief, and on this experience as well as good portions of our second book, I Want to Tell You How I Feel.
Disappointment (and sadness and hurt) come when I lose something, usually something that I did not expect to lose. Most of our daily disappointments are of simple, often trivial, matters:
- I spill my cup of coffee
- I take wrong turn on the highway
- I forgot to drink enough water in the day
- I didn’t get a call from my daughter
- My friend was late to our pizza date
- My computer took forever to boot up in the morning
- I pressed the wrong key on my computer and ended up with a note from Ethiopia
- I bit into an apple and realized I just bit into a worm hole
There are more significant disappointments that often occur frequently, of not usually daily:
- I lost a game of golf on an important tournament
- My book didn’t get published as I expected it would
- I lost my job
- My spouse left me for another person
- A good friend or relative died
- I had a heart attack
While the simple and profound disappointments are both essentially sad and often hurtful, the degree of sadness and hurt is obviously greater. In our Good Grief book we wrote a lot about “little sads,” which are spilling my coffee and such, as perhaps the most important ways to learn of the centrality of sadness and find good ways to cope with these disappointments. If I can learn that I have many disappointments in a normal day, I will be better equipped to deal with the larger losses and consequent disappointments that will most certainly occur in my life.
Why do I have so many disappointments?
Because you love a lot. Love a lot? What does that mean? We talk about people have various “love problems,” which means that they love a lot of things and are disappointed a lot. Let me explain. Let’s review the small disappointments, the “small sads” as we call them, and see how each one of them has a love factor imbedded in it:
- I spill my cup of coffee: I love to have a good cuppa and a clean floor.
- I take wrong turn on the highway: I love to drive on the right road.
- I forgot to drink enough water in the day: I love to engage in healthy endeavors.
- I didn’t get a call from my daughter: I love hearing from my daughter.
- My friend was late to our pizza date: I love having people be on time.
- My computer took forever to boot up in the morning: I love jumping right into my computer work.
- I pressed the wrong key on my computer and ended up with a note from Ethiopia: I love to be efficient on my computer.
- I bit into an apple and realized I just bit into a worm hole: I love good apples.
Now, you might not normally use the term “love” for all of these activities, but I think it is actually the best word. You could use “value” or “what’s important to me” but these terms are equivalent to love, albeit we have different amount of love for all of them.
You can see how the more significant losses are also love-based, like losing a love one, losing a job, or losing your health. If you can conceive that every time you are disappointed, you have a “love problem,” you will begin to see how central love is in your life. You might prefer the term “value” to love but I think it is better to use the term “love” because it brings us closer to how we can handle these regular and unavoidable disappointments that come from some kind of loss.
How exactly do we process disappointments?
Simply stated, by being sad. This is simple but immensely hard, perhaps especially for us Americans who are generally not particularly good at feeling sad. One of the greatest things about America is the pioneering spirit that has made this country so great and successful. This pioneering spirit drives us to move forward, to get through, to forge ahead, and to not stop when we have found some kind of impediment in our way. I read Lewis and Clark’s journal of their trek west from St. Louis to the Portland, OR area and back again. They forged through and opened up the west for America. We might notice, however, that this opening up of the west for “Americans” also set the stage for the displacement of Native Americans, a thought that deserves some attention in our discussion with our tendency to move forward when we meet some challenge or disappointment,
The process of disappointment is simple but hard, meaning that the process is a clear road but the road is a tough one. What makes the road tough is the emotion of sadness that is always at the heart of disappointment. Simply stated, it is hard to be sad, at least it is hard for most people, certainly most Americans, and generally harder for men than for women. The beauty of feeling naturally disappointed, and eventually sad, is that sadness ends. Thus, disappointment ends. We tend to interrupt the process of sadness by some other means, usually with anger, fear, resentment, cognition, or action. In other words, instead of simply feeling sad, we tend to run away from it into anger or fear, action, or thought. I just had a session with a man who has lost his job, talked about having lost his marriage some years ago, and how is afraid of continuing in a female relationship. All of this has to do with the fact that he hasn’t felt disappointed and eventually sad, felt the sadness through, and then being able to think clearly and take clear action. The process of (natural) disappointment is all about love:
- I love something
- I am assaulted (I may “assault” myself by doing some untoward)
- I lose something
- I feel disappointed
- I feel sad
- I continue to feel sad until I no longer feel sad
- I now can think clearly with the impediment of fear, anger, or fear
- I feel some hope of resolution or adjustment if that is necessary
- I take action
- I review my action…which may be good or less than good
- I adjust my action of necessary.
Notice that the core of this whole array is the emotion of sadness caused by being disappointed. It is not anger, it is not anxiety, it is not resentment, it is not getting even, it is not avoidance, and it is not denial. So what is it? It is the realization that when I am disappointed, I am helpless, at least for the moment. I cannot change the past (with anger) and I cannot change the future (with retribution). I cannot change the present. Rather, I need to simply (but with difficulty) feel sad and let sadness run its course. What does “run its course” mean? It means finishing sadness.
How do I “finish” feeling sad?
We say this about sadness: “Find it, feel it, feel it, feel it…, finish it.” This means that I have to notice the disappointments that I have every day. I have to admit that I feel disappointment. Then I have to simply be sad about the loss that I suffered, which might actually be something that I caused. Then I have to bear the burden of feeling sad and seeing that whatever I lost, I can never have back again. I might have something as good or even better, but I can’t retrieve what I lost. I can’t go back in time and take the right road. I can’t unspill my coffee. I can’t bring my friend back to life. I have to be sad, sad, sad…until I no longer am sad.
But how can I ever get over being sad about losing my child, like Deb and I did when we lost our dear daughter, Krissie, three years ago? When I think about Krissie these days, I often feel nostalgic: nostalgic about the good and the not so good; about what I did right and what I did wrong. And as I do this, my love for Krissie rises in my heart and I feel tearful. These are tears of love and mostly joyful tears and perhaps a few sadness tears. But largely, my sadness of Krissie dying is largely gone these days. But, of course, Deb and I did a good deal of grieving, crying, and sharing our grief in order to no longer be sad about this tragic loss. If I can get through the sadness of losing a child, you can get through the sadness of spilling your coffee or hitting yourself with the hammer by accident…without being angry. Just feel the disappointment and ultimately the sadness, and it will finish.
An important aspect of finishing sadness is that you now become a better person. You are a better person because you realize that you are a person of love. You have loved and lost, and now you know that you will love and lose again…and again…and again. You will get better and better at the loving-and-losing process. You will be a more loving person…because you are now a person who knows how to love and lose, so you will actually be better at loving. You will not hang on to things, people, property, and ideas when they have been lost. You will remember what you have lost, remember the love you had…and have…for what you lost.
So, Love much, Lose much, Love again, and Love better.