communication

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

Intention and Production

Ron Johnson communication, Personality, political, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

It is important to produce. It is equally important to intend to produce. But these two ways of engaging the world are profoundly different, a difference we might call spiritual. I conceive of these elements of psychological life on a spectrum with purpose in the center of the spectrum, something like this:

Intention…………..……….……Purpose…………………………..Production

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This might seem unduly abstract and theoretical, but all ow me to suggest how this paradigm might be helpful in understanding how you engage the world, and perhaps better understand how other people engage the world. In fact, unless you are one of the rare people who reside somewhere in the middle, you are probably largely on one side of this spectrum. Furthermore, you probably have some trouble with people who are on the other side of the spectrum. Roughly, people who favor intention need to have a direction to where they go compared to people who favor production who just go. Both “intenders” and “producers” have a purpose in what they are doing and where they are going, but their perspectives of how to get to this purpose are quite different.

Deb and I are on different sides of this spectrum, Deb being distinctly on the intention side whereas I am distinctly on the productive side of the spectrum. We share many elements of psychology and agree on most things that have to do with thinking and feeling, but where we differ is in the third element of life: how we go about engaging life with a purpose. I am sure this is yet too abstract for many of you, perhaps especially people who tend to be “producers.” Furthermore, even the terminology that I am using is less than distinct and less easily useful. Deb has brought this matter of “intention” to me recently as we look into this year and the days or years that we might have yet to live. We have found ourselves frequently musing, often talking, sometimes reading, and sometimes writing about what the future might bring. Talk about intension has intensified with Deb recently as she has made some changes in her work schedule and work place. Let me first discuss the nature of the American world in specific and the world at large in general in regards to the intention-production phenomenon. Then I will suggest ways in which you might understand how you go about life, and hopefully do a bit better engaging the other people in your life who might share your perspective or have a different perspective.

America is primarily productive

This is an important place to start because the very basic flavor of America is and has always been production, much more than intention, this despite the fact that the founders of the United States were actually people of intention. A careful look at the Constitution, but much more so, the Declaration of Independence, will show you that it was the intention of the founders to establish a democratic republic much more than their having an idea of how that intention would work out in producing a democratic republic. Washington, Jefferson, Adams (both of them), Hamilton, and Franklin were certainly intenders more than producers. Many later Presidents, particularly Jackson, Theodore Roosevelt, and Grant were more producers. In between we find Lincoln, who most certainly was an intender but eventually became perhaps the most important producer President we have ever had. I will leave this thought for your reading and musing and turn to the functional nature of America as it unfolded.

Despite the fact that the founders were largely intenders, almost to the person, the country was young, incredibly capable of expansion with resources beyond comprehension, became a country dominated by production and all that goes with it. I will not belabor the point, but the very fabric of America is doing, producing, and having things.  It is not why we do, produce and have. It is not much about how we might effectively use such things. Look at what is said from most of our political leaders, and you will hear of doing, producing and having. You will not hear of intention except by inference. It seems to me that our current President is thoroughly a producer, not an intender. We will discuss the challenges that Trump has and other people like him have later.

Compare America to any other developed country in the world, particularly China and Japan in the East and most of Europe in the West. We could also look at native cultures in the Americas, Africa, and Asia, but we must delay that discussion. It is likely that the relative youth of America and the relative longer life of China, Japan, and Europe might be part of the reason America is so production oriented compared to the philosophies of China, Japan, and Europe to say nothing of the philosophies of the Middle East (Christianity, Islam, and Judaism).

So, if you’re more of a producer, like I am, life has probably been easier for you in America than your spouse, friend, daughter, or father who might be intenders. In my own family my brother was very significantly an intender, as was my mother while my father was almost completely a producer with my sister somewhere in between. My brother struggled heartily in this family dominated by my father’s production-orientation, and truly never recovered from the debates he had with our father, nor did he succeed in the world of work that is heavily production-based. It was much easier for me. I just did things. Bill considered doing things. This made life more challenging for Bill than it was for me, but we producers also have our challenges

The challenges of intention and production

Part of the challenge of understanding this intention-production paradigm is in the very words that we use. Words, at least normally used words, tend to fall into the producing side of the spectrum of paradigm of purpose. In fact, a case could be made for suggesting that words themselves are more inclined to value production over intention. This is one of the challenges that intenders have when they engage the (American) world: there isn’t a (normal English) vocabulary for intenders Consider what you might hear from someone you talk to someone:

  • What’s happening?
  • What’s going on in your life?
  • What are you doing?
  • What’s new in your life?
  • How has the problem being solved?

The operative words here are how and what. These are not particularly words of intention. They are words of doing or producing. You would rarely hear from your friend questions that are more of intention, like:

  • What have you been thinking lately?
  • What have you been feeling lately?
  • What have you been musing about lately?
  • What is your intention for the day?
  • Much less:
    • What is your intention for life?
    • What is your purpose in life?
    • What is important to you?
    • Why did you do this or that?

People just don’t talk this way for the most part. Note the difference between the “what” questions for intenders compared to the “what” questions for the producers. What questions for intenders are those of thought or feeling, not so much of actual doing.

Challenges are not so basic for producers living in America, but there are challenges nevertheless. Their challenges have to do with the result of being tired of all the things they do, doing something in a hurry to just get it done, doing something so perfectly that it never seems to get done, and other difficulties that come with a person who is always doing. The value system here is ultimately the same for intenders and producers, namely purpose, but the ways of getting there are substantially different. When I go about a purpose, like writing this blog, I “just start” with no particular intention other than to write something that might be of value to one or two people who might read this blog. I don’t sit back and see how I might go about writing, consider it more, write a bit, muse about it, correct it, and then perhaps set it aside until my passion builds to go back to writing. I just write. You might see the occasional unfortunate results of my “just writing,” namely in the spelling errors that I so often make. People who write from an intentional persuasion often think ten times more than they write, and many fine writers never finish anything because they get lost in the intention but fail to produce. I have a cousin who has been writing a screenplay for 10 or 15 years, and he seems quite satisfied with this way of going about writing, but his sister, much the producers of the family, can’t see the value of his intending to write the screenplay of the century. I think that it doesn’t matter to him whether he will every finish the screenplay because his intention is to write it, not to produce it.

I will leave you to consider that President Trump is very much the doer/producer. You simply don’t hear anything about intention. It bemuses me to read commentators trying to understand what his intention is in what he says or does. I would suggest that he has no intention. He just does things. Much different is President Obama who was clearly much more the intender than the doer. Admitting to the extreme nature of the following, I might say that Obama had great intention but didn’t really do much. Trump has done all kinds of things, most of them wrong. Choose your poison. I think, but I’m not sure, that Biden might be somewhere in between.

So, roughly, the challenge of the intenders of the world is to actually do something, produce something, create something, whereas the challenge for producers is to stand back and see what might be the intention of what they want to do and then move slowly towards accomplishing it. Doing is good, but not good enough; you need to do something of value, perhaps lasting value. Dreaming is good but also not good enough; you need to do something that might also have lasting value. Good luck intending and producing.

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

Ron Johnson appreciation, communication, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem, Spiritual

“I’m sorry:” a very important statement. Very, very important. Most people should be able to express these words at least once a day, and possibly several times a day. But what does “I’m sorry” mean, or more accurately what can it mean? For some reason “I’m sorry” has fallen into disuse in America, and perhaps it was never part of our character the way it seems to be in most every other culture. There are many aspects of “I’m sorry” that I would like to tackle in this humble piece, but let’s start with different kinds of “I’m Sorry.”

Different Kinds of “I’m Sorry”

I have continued to put “I’m sorry” in quotation marks because “I’m sorry” does not entirely equate with apology, nor should it. There are at least the following meanings of the expression “I’m sorry:”

  • Apology. When I apologize for something, this is a personal acknowledgement that I have failed in some action, although this apology could also be for some inaction on my part, namely something I have said, something I have done, something I have failed to say, or something I have failed to do.
  • Shared grief. This is an occurrence where I express this statement to someone with whom I share the grief that the person is experiencing. I may have caused this grief or the grief may have come from another source.
  • Disingenuous statement. This occurs when someone says “I’m sorry” with an important caveat…BUT. Hence, this is the frequently occurring, “I’m sorry but…,” then to be filled with some kind of justification or disregard.

Apologies

It is an extremely important element in human-to-human interaction, to be able to apologize when one has erred in what s/he did or said (or as noted, when one has erred in failing to say or do something). For example, it is important to say “I’m sorry” when you might have:

  • Stepped in front of someone in line, probably by accident
  • Failed to remember an occasion that was important to the other person, while it might not have been important to you. Likewise, you might be late for a dinner engagement even though you are not a person known for being prompt.
  • Making a statement that was offensive to someone, perhaps by using a swear word that is common to you and to your community but not common to your friend.
  • Bumping into the car in front of you.
  • Raising your voice in a discussion that led to an argument rather than a debate
  • Failing to express yourself when you had an important opinion that might have served the community but caused you to be disliked by someone
  • Disregarding someone’s preferred way of table manners because you didn’t think that such things were important.

Most of the time I have offended, hurt, or harmed someone, I have done this unintentionally.

I didn’t mean to do it

Of course, you didn’t mean to do it. You offended someone in some way, such as the ways I have noted above unintentionally, which is a very important fact. Once you get this concept in your mind, namely that you didn’t mean to hurt someone, you will have achieved the first and most important element in being able to apologize.

I often note that the Hebrew Scriptures’ book of Leviticus is comprised of about 450 “rules” of life. Notably, every one of these rules has to do with “sin,” but more importantly for our purposes, every one of these rules begins with, “If you sin by…. (fill in the blank) unintentionally, you must make amends for this sin by….” For instance, if you sin by sleeping with your neighbor’s wife, you must make amends in some way….  The essence of this matter of sin and the result is twofold: you have caused some harm to someone, and you need to make amends for this harm in some way. Most importantly, however, these “sins” (we do not have time to unpack this interesting biblical word) are all unintentional…with the exception of one “sin”: intentional sin. For all these 400-some sins, Leviticus (Actually God speaking in Leviticus) suggests that there are ways for atonement or reparation. I believe all of these “sins” are ones what involve offense brought to another person in some way. But there is one “sin” that is quite different: “If anyone sins intentionally…,” the situation is quite different. Such a person is to be thrown out of the community. Now, while I might not quite understand or even agree with throwing someone out of the community, whatever community that might be, it is interesting to me that all but one of these 400-some sins are unintentional. I believe this is the case for most things we do that offend, hurt, or harm other people: we unintentionally bring harm to someone. Sadly, I can recall scores, if not hundreds, of times when I have brought offense to people over my nearly 77 years of life. You might read my blog of a few years ago on my regrets for some examples of my errors in life, which are many.

The times when people intentionally hurt one another are almost always in reaction to having been hurt. I wrote a blog entitled, “Hurt People Hurt People,” borrowing the title for a book published 30 years ago. When someone intentionally says or does something to hurt or harm the other person, these are times when one has been hurt her/himself and has had a kneejerk reaction to “hurt back,” usually not knowing that the original person who inflicted hurt on you did not hurt you intentionally. So I won’t waste much time with this intentional kind of hurt, which should result in an apology with the words, “I’m sorry.” When we hurt someone who has hurt us, this is a reaction of anger coming from having been hurt, much of our (unintentionally) hurting someone comes from fear. These are tough situations that we all find ourselves in our human relationships. It behooves us to realize that when we hurt someone intentionally, it is almost always in reaction to having been hurt. Much more frequently, however, we have hurt someone out of naiveté or ignorance.

Hurt inflicted out of naiveté or ignorance

The mistakes of our youth should largely be classified as those of naiveté (or ignorance), feeling, “I just didn’t know that if I said a certain thing, I would hurt or offend someone.” Growing up should include maturity in understanding the effect of what I say or do. Extraverts like me can look at the things we said that were hurtful that we shouldn’t have said, whereas introverts more likely will see things that they should have said that could have been helpful. Doers like me will see things that we shouldn’t have done, whereas dreamers will see things that they should have done. I shouldn’t have got married (the first time). Several people I know would say that they should have got married. These failures of youth are understandable and forgivable but some such mistakes have lifelong results. I know a lot more people who shouldn’t have got married than I do people who should have got married.

It’s not only young people who say or do things that hurt someone else. We do that all the time. Deb and I devoted an entire chapter in our recent book to the central concept of hurt. If we really knew how often we hurt people, we would all be a lot more careful if what we say or do, but then we wouldn’t be human if we watched everything that carefully. As noted above, introverts tend to watch so carefully what they say, that their errors are usually in not saying what they feel. This whole matter of our hurting one another frequently and being hurt just as frequently is not to be taken too lightly. We just need to be able to see that we have unintentionally hurt someone and be ready to say so. This does not mean we go around being apologetic all the time, but rather being able to simply see what something that was said or done (or failed to be said or failed to be done) out of naiveté needs to be seen, understood, and apologized for. But it is hard to do so.

Why is it hard to apologize?                                                                     

I didn’t mean to do it. This is the whole matter of hurt being unintentional for the most part. I often say to patients, “Of course, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and you need to apologize.” Not many men take kindly to this advice.

She shouldn’t be hurt by what I said. Again, you didn’t mean to hurt her, but you did, and the most important emotional element is not what you said, meant to say, or thought you said, but what she felt.

I feel ashamed of having hurt someone. This is the largest part of the difficulty in apologizing and it exists in every person I have ever met. The shame level that exists in most people in tragic, and it comes out when we are “caught” in some way, very often caught in having hurt someone. I don’t have time to deal with the shame element more here, but you might look up the blog on shame and guilt.

I am afraid. The essence of shame is being afraid, namely being afraid of being wrong or being criticized. Unfortunately, there is a terrible fear in most people of being wrong, of making mistakes, or being criticized. True maturity, especially emotional maturity, is displayed with someone being unafraid of mistakes or criticism. I don’t know anyone who has reached this level of emotional maturity…including myself.

The other person doesn’t deal well with it. While some people graciously accept an apology, there is an odd phenomenon that occurs with the offended party when the offender offers an apology: they then say all the other things that the offender has done. So, if you apologize to someone, be prepared for an onslaught of criticism of all your other mistakes in life.

You said or did the right thing. This is real important. There are times when you actually say or do the right thing, but this right thing still hurts your friend. This phenomenon is clear with children whom we chastise, limit, or punish but then feel sad because we know that our child is suffering. This having done or said the right thing that hurts someone is not limited to children. Good leaders, whether professional, familial, or professional, need to challenge, hence criticize from time to time. It behooves a good leader to know that however true the challenge is, the person hearing the challenge will be hurt. And if you’re a leader, you need to say “I’m sorry” to them. This brings me to the second kind of “I’m sorry:” shared grief.

“I’m sorry” as an expression of shared grief

This may be the most important of all “I’m sorry” statements, but it is the hardest to grasp, especially in some circumstances. It is sometimes easy to share grief, sometimes difficult, and sometimes very paradoxical. If done honorably, honestly, and clearly, it can be one of the most profound interpersonal experiences that we can have.

Sometimes easy: in a previous blog I related the several experiences of having someone share the grief that Deb and I experienced after the death of our daughter. Some of these experiences were simple, like the Starbuck’s barista hearing from Deb of our loss immediately coming the counter and giving a Deb a hug…along with a free espresso, or the many simple expressions of grief that people have shared with me over the past 15 months, sometimes after these 15 months have passed because I hadn’t had the chance of seeing someone for that period of time. Other expressions of shared grief have been quite profound like the woman we met by chance at the headwaters of the Mississippi in northern Minnesota, the woman we met by chance at the top of the learning tower of Pisa in Italy, or the woman we met by chance not far from our up north cabin on a hike that Krissie, her kids, and we used to take. In all of these circumstances, when we made a simple comment about our loss, these previously unknown women cried, hugged us, and said those precious words, “I’m so sorry.” I hope you have experienced this kind of shared grief, whether on the giving or the receiving side. It is easy to give and it is easy to receive…but not always.

Sometimes difficult.

It is often difficult for people to share grief because they simply do not know what to say. Some people say too much while others say nothing. Our “up north” neighbor heard of our loss while we happened to pass each other on the lake we share. This woman must have said, “I don’t know what to say” a dozen times within minutes of hearing of our loss. Interestingly, she shared how she had lost a young child 40 years previously. Another person whom I know quite well is yet unable to say much of anything because he also lost a son, not six months before Krissie died. His grief is so great that he has a hard time even mentioning our daughter by name, much less the name of his son. It was difficult for a new patient I saw just a few months ago, and he said nothing when I made reference to “loss” in the context of my hearing of his losses in life. Later, he told me that he “didn’t know what to say” because he didn’t want to sound disingenuous. He later said, quite simply, that he has never been particularly good at expressing any emotion aside from anger, a plague that many men suffer. The difficulty that people have with saying “I’m sorry,” whether for someone’s loss like our recent loss, or because they have causes some hurt, is often due to a combination of not having emotional words at their disposal, but more often due to their own lack of personal emotional groundedness. Personal groundedness is hallmarked primarily by knowing how you feel, expressing these feelings when appropriate to do so, and frequently knowing the feelings but wisely keeping the feelings to oneself out of propriety. Simply put, one can express shared grief if one knows and values what he/she feels. If this is the case, one can share the love of shared grief without hesitation. Sadly, many people do not have this personal security.

Sharing grief that is paradoxical

This is one of the most important times that we can share grief but it is rarely experienced because of its very paradoxical nature and because it takes an immense amount of personal security. Sharing grief with someone who has suffered some kind of loss is easy if you can easily find some kind of human connectedness, but it very difficult to share grief with someone who has suffered a loss that you think is a good thing. It is hard to share the grief that I child has when you discipline him or her. I just talked to the parents of a child for whom I did a psychological evaluation. One of my suggestions was to replace the shame-inducing rhetorical questions, like “what’s wrong with you” with statements of being disappointed. One of these parents then said, but our child gets so hurt and sad when you say that you are disappointed. Better that you and your child feel “disappointed,” which is tantamount to feeling sad, then you’re being angry and your child feeling ashamed.

Hard as it is to share grief with a child that is necessary, it is ten times harder to share grief with an adult who has suffered some kind of loss that you think is good for him or her. This is hard to explain so allow me to give you an example. Just yesterday I heard from a good friend of mine with whom I share just three years of life, namely those of being in the same fraternity house in college. I didn’t see Jack for more than 40 years until he somehow found me on LinkedIn about 10 years ago, leading to occasional get-togethers and a rare time playing golf. It was easy to reconnect with Jack because we share much the same faith (while not exactly) and are both outgoing and expressive. It was hard for Jack to hear that I intended to vote for Hillary four years ago and even harder for him to hear that I intended to vote for Biden this year. Jack is part of the 70 some percent of evangelical Christians who vote for Republicans regardless of anything else aside from their political persuasion. Jack and I have had some forthright, but challenging email connections over the past few months due to the huge emotionality in the country over the recent election. His most recent email expressed his dismay over Trump’s loss. I found it a challenge, but also honest for me to tell him that I was “sorry” for his loss and shared his grief. I must admit I had some consternation over saying “I’m sorry” to Jack because I was so relieved that Trump did not get reelected, but I acknowledged my own joy at this defeat privately to myself while also feeling a genuine love for Jack and feeling compelled to share his grief. When I told Deb what I had written to Jack, she was a bit concerned how that might seem that I was sad that Biden won, which I most certainly was not. I suggested that this was an example of paradoxical sharing of grief. I could feel joyful that Biden won on the one hand, while on the other feel great sorrow with my good friend for his having to put up a forthcoming Biden presidency.

I do not always act or speak so generously, but why would I not do so? Only if I was unable to free myself from my own self-interest and be more interested in my friend. Consider this most difficult situation, this paradoxical situation, where you are glad that something happened, but feel a shared sorrow for someone who feels quite distressed about the same event. This can seem ingenuous, but it is not. There is, however, a truly ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

Ingenuous “I’m sorry.”

The key identifying words to ingenuous apologies are “Well” and “but.” Let me explain. An ingenuous expression of “I’m sorry” begins with one word soon to be followed by the other, e.g., “Well, I’m sorry, but….” Do you know what I mean? This is the expression that many people, you included, I included, have said when we are not sorry at all. Rather, we use “I’m sorry” meaning quite the opposite. Had I been ingenuous with Jack, I could have said, “Well, Jack, I’m sorry but Trump is an idiot.” I have said such things, but happily many years ago, and now I am ashamed for that must egregious indiscretion and lack of love. I won’t now to choose to spend much time with ingenuous expressions except to note that they also originate from one’s lack of genuine self-esteem and certainly a lack of an ability to reach beyond one’s own feelings to understand the other person. With my experience with Jack, I can reach into my recovering Republican nature and see much good in conservative politics, but more importantly, my love for Jack is more important than my feeling of joy with Biden’s victory.

I leave you with the suggestion that you consider saying “I’m sorry” in the more positive ways and feel the joy that comes from honest apologies and shared griefs. By the way, you don’t actually have to say these exact words, I’m sorry. You might prefer “my bad,” which is all the more contemporary, the mea culpa that is classic, or other cognates of the feelings that occur when someone is hurt, mistaken, or criticized,