Discovery

Wanting It Both Ways

Ron Johnson Discovery, Feelings, grief, mindfulness, morality, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

I recently had a therapeutic hour with a patient who “wants to have it both ways.” I know exactly how he feels because I have had the same desires, as have many people who privilege me by coming to my office for my presence and counsel. Let me explain what “wanting it both ways” means. It means that you want two things, both valuable, that are incompatible. Like, I would like to have a million dollars and I don’t want to do what it might take to make a million dollars. I don’t exactly know what it would take for me to make a million dollars, but I suspect that if I did what millionaires do, I might be able to do it. I have a patient whom I recently saw together with his wife. During the conversation, which included finances, the man said that they had lost a million dollars during the recent economic turndown and stock market decline. A million dollar loss, I thought; what does that mean about what this man is worth? My conclusion, if my figuring is correct, is that the stock market is down about 25% and so losing a million dollars that suggests that this man (and his wife) used to be worth 4 million. Interestingly, this man reported to me that he often worked 80 and 90 hours a week to build his independent business. He evidently did this for many years and now a man of about 60, he is hoping for an early retirement and bask in the sunshine. So, here we have guy who’s worked his ass off for like 30 years and made his millions. What has been the cost? Why do you think I’m seeing his wife and him in my office? Is it not obvious? He has worked and worked but he has not put anything like 90 hours a week into his relationship with his wife and kids (now grown). He hasn’t put 9 hours into a relationship with his wife. Now, what he has done is quite remarkable, if we singularly see that he has made millions of dollars by his blood, sweat, and tears. But the cost has been the marriage. I am now working with people who are not only substantially different in personality. He is an ESTJ and caretaker/analyst temperament; she is ENFP and lover/player temperament for those of you familiar with such things. These differences have never been noticed, much less appreciated with the result that they have been unhappy together for years if not decades. The more remarkable thing about this scenario is that this hard-working, intelligent and honest man seems to think that the millions he has made should offset the lack of any kind of depth relationship with his wife. He wants it both ways: work all the time and make his millions, and then expect that his wife would honor, respect, and “appreciate” him, as he has often said. Not going to happen. He can’t have it both ways. He can’t have his millions, wrought by his hard work, and have a meaningful relationship with his wife. He really doesn’t get it…yet. We’re still working on it. By the way, his wife, as noticed by her personality type and temperament, also wants it both ways: she wants the millions but also wants a relationship. This man and wife collectively “have it both ways,” but one of them has the millions while the other has the desire for an intimate relationship.

“Wanting it both ways” covers a multitude of sin, meaning multitude of situations where people seem to think that they can have two things that are incapable. We have recently taken the responsibility of caring for our 14-year old grandson due to a complex set of circumstances, agreeing to this arrangement for a period of a few months, or less if it work out well. My grandson is bright, loving and kind, but he has no interest in doing any kind of work, no real passion, no direction, nor any purpose in life. He is effectively 7 years old emotionally and socially, meaning that he wants to play all the time like typical 7-year olds want to do. Nothing wrong with wanting to play all the time, but by the time you’re 14, you would think that you would have some understanding that life is a combination of work and play, that those two elements are intrinsically related, and come to grips with the fact that you have to work to play. Unfortunately, he has not learned this fact, so he tolerates work of any kind, always looking to race through it and get back to playing. There are many other children that are in this situation, almost always due to indulgent parents who didn’t provide the balance of loving and limiting. I wrote a blog (and a book) that I entitled “The 4-8-12 Child” that describes many children. My grandson got too much loving and not enough limiting, or perhaps more accurately, not a balance of the two. He wants it both ways: play all the time and have the privileges that only work can provide, like money, success, and a spirit of pride in work.

The wanting it both ways phenomenon comes in many forms, not only in adults and children as illustrated, but with one’s own life. Another man that I see is also very bright with a deep sense of intuition, particularly about other people. It may be his most important gift.  Recently, I had a conversation with him in which we talked about how he is able to “know” something about other people. He would like the privilege of telling people what he “knows” about them. He would also like to have the security that he will not hurt the other person, much less be rebuffed by the other person. Additionally and importantly, if he “knows” something about someone and says what he knows, he might actually discover that he sees only part of the picture of the other person. So his intuitive knowledge, while accurate, may be one of several matters that are relevant to the other person. This might be like someone telling me that I did not  put together colors in my attire for the day, and then telling me that the colors were out of sync without knowing that I am color blind and do not see colors the way most people see them. Now, it could be that I could profit from my friend’s analysis of my color scheme for the day, but it would be equally possible that I would be offended, perhaps depending on what else was going on in my day. So this individual who would like to be able to “know” something about other people, speak his intuitive knowledge, and be confident that his speaking will be well received, is not possible. He can have it one way or the other. In other words, he can speak his intuitive knowledge and take the consequences, which are unknown. Or he can keep his knowledge to himself and take the consequences. The consequences, by the way are, on the one hand, the distinct potential of hurting or harming the other person, or on the other hand, failing to say something to this person that might be life enhancing or even lifesaving. He would like it both ways. Nothing so out of the ordinary to want “your cake and eat it too,” but you can’t have both.

I would like to be able to be face-to-face with everyone during this time of medical caution during the Covid crisis. I really don’t want to do mostly conference calls with patients although I have already done three this week. I do them because it is required of some people to do them, whether out of state, out of city, or simply by individual choice. So, I can’t have it both ways, i.e. see patients face-to-face and occasionally shake hands or hug some of them, and take the chance of acquiring, or God forbid, spreading some kind of disease. I have to decide how I shall meet this current crisis.

I am not the only person who has to decide how to acknowledge that we can’t have it both ways despite the desire to do so. We all have to make this kind of decision every day: speak or don’t speak, hug or don’t hug, laugh or don’t laugh, swear or don’t swear, tell the truth or tell a while lie out of respect for the other person, and many more such difficult decisions. I think, however, it is not a “decision” so much as it is a discovery of what we should do in situations when we want it both ways. To discover is to listen to one’s inner spirit, not so much one’s thoughts, not one’s emotions, not one’s normal way of going about life. Inner spirit is never wrong, but it is deathly hard to see, feel, trust, and act upon. Then, when I have trusted my inner spirit and discovered which way I should turn in a certain situation, I will then be sad. Why will I be sad? Because I will have lost one opportunity for the sake of the other. If I force a hug on someone who might not like it, it might be good for him or bad for him, but if I think it is necessary to hug him, I will need to take the consequences of my action. The only way I can discover whether I should hug him or not is to find, trust, and follow my inner spirit.

If we can’t have it “both ways,” what can we have? We can discover which of two (or perhaps three or four) ways to go: speak or not speak, move or not move, hug or not hug, swear or not swear. What are we trying to discover? We are trying to discover what it right to do. How do we know what is right? By find, following, and trusting our inner spirit, a spirit that is never wrong. While the spirit is never wrong, the words, lack of words, action, or lack of action, might be wrong in some way. So, if I have discovered what is right, I must conclude that it is right for all concerned. Einstein said that the universe is “friendly” and God is not chaotic, or as Desiderata says it, “whether or not it is clear to you, the world is unfolding as it should.” The “right” may be hard on you or good for you, hard on the other person or good for him, or maybe a mix of all of these. Finding the right means pushing away any and all concern about what you think and feel, as well as any concern about what other people might want and feel to find the “right” thing to do. You can learn from your thoughts and your feelings, but then put them aside and do the right thing.

You will not succeed in this endeavor. By this I mean that you will do your best to find the right thing to do, and then sadly, realize that you didn’t trust your spirit enough, listen intently enough, said poorly constructed words, or taken action that was not entirely thought through. But you will have done your best: speak or not speak, acted or not acted. And whatever discovery you made for words or action, you will most assuredly be sad. You will be sad because you can’t have it both ways, whatever these two ways might have been. Deb and I have written about the centrality of sadness in life and have proposed that of the four basic emotions (joy, sadness, fear, and anger), sadness is the most important because it is based most squarely on love and the loss of love. We eventually lose everything that we love, whether property, person, or idea. An important part of maturity is coming to grips with this essential nature of human existence. The more you become familiar with taking action (or not), speaking (or not) and taking the natural consequences of these words and actions, the more frequently you will be sad, and most importantly, the shorter this sadness will be.

So, go forth into the realm of uncertainty. Do as Luther suggested when asked how one could find God’s will: “study thoroughly, pray fervently, ask wise people, and then sin boldly.” “Sin boldly” means going forth into the unknown, but with confidence that you have done your best to trust your inner spirit where God most certainly resides.

Feelings XI: Paradoxical Feelings

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

We have been studying “feelings” for some time now, and this is our latest edition. Readers may peruse the previous 10 contributions to the topic. Deb and I are furiously working on a book incorporating all what we have written about and more, but the publication of that work will be sometimes in the future, hopefully near future. We I want to discuss with you today is what we call “paradoxical feelings,” namely feelings that seem to contradict one another. Importantly, the seeming contradictory appearance of feelings has mostly to do with words.

Words aren’t feelings

This is a very important concept that is at the heart of many successful times of communication and even more times of unsuccessful times of communication. To say that words are not feelings is to say several things, not the least of which is neurological, but also relational, and even spiritual. A very brief neurological review regarding this matter is to note that the left side of the brain (actually the cerebellum, the left front part of the brain) is the “housing” of language. We know this because if someone has a stroke, that person often cannot speak well or cannot speak at all. Such a person, interestingly, however, has a sense of self, has a sense of what s/he wants to say, but is unable to put these thoughts and feelings into words. Thoughts and feelings actually reside largely in the right hemisphere of the brain (the right cerebellum). So when I speak something, whether thought or feeling, those thoughts and feelings originate neurologically in the right hemisphere of the brain and then are processed into the left hemisphere of the brain in the form of words. Understand, this brief explanation is roughly true, and true neuropsychologists would be aghast at my simplifying this complicated neurological process. This simple understanding, however, leads us to the statement, “words are not feelings” because feelings (and most thoughts) are not naturally words.

Words are one way of expressing feelings but words are not the feelings. If I could get this across to people, they would reduce their disagreements, arguments, and divorces by 90% because it is the communication of feelings in words, or rather the lack of communication in words that causes all three of these unfortunate experiences. Words express feelings approximately, but the words themselves are not feelings, only one way of communicating feelings. Not only is it true that words are not feelings, they are not the only way feelings are communicated.

Other ways of communicating feelings

The other ways of communicating feelings include emotion, music, art, work, play, physical expressions, and even silence. Many of these means of feeling expression are valuable and often it is better to communicate feelings through means other than words. Poets and composers of music work diligently to communicate feelings, sometimes very successfully although they would admit that the feeling that someone has when reading their poetry or listening to their music may not be the feeling the composer had in the composition. Feelings can be communicated by a facial expression or in some kind of work or play that often communicates one’s feelings better than words. A couple of days ago a man told me that the absolute best moments in his life were when he won a stack car race. I can’t quite imagine the feeling he had because race care driving certainly is not among my passions, but it has been one of his for many years, and when he told me about this feeling, he also noted that he hadn’t race car driven for more than a decade. I know of several “bikers,” especially those who drive Harley’s, who say that the wind in their hair, the meeting and greeting another biker, and the hobnobbing that they do at biker rallies communicates their feelings better than anything else. I have heard people express their feelings over this past week or so in the love of a sports team, the affirmation of one’s transsexual nature, sexual contact, art, music, video games, and silence. I aver that many people communicate their feelings well but not necessarily in words, and yet it is in the realm of words that people struggle to communicate feelings more than any other modality.

The paradox of paradoxical feeling expressions

Expressions of feelings are often paradoxical, seemingly inconsistent, and sometimes downright contradictory. Over the past few days I have heard the following paradoxical expressions of feelings:

  • From a man whose wife has left him for another man:
    • “I really want Joan home under almost any circumstance
    • “I can’t imagine having Joan home. I don’t think I would allow it.”
  • From a man who is in the midst of a possible life change:
    • I have to leave San Francisco. The place is bad for me
    • I can’t imagine leaving San Francisco
  • From a teenager:
    • I hate my mother more than anyone else in the world
    • My mother is the most important person in the world to me
  • From a man in his early 30’s:
    • I can’t stay with my partner (because it is essentially without sex)
    • I can’t imagine leaving partner (I can live without sex)
  • From a gay man:
    • I can’t leave my wife. She is the most important person in my life
    • I can’t see spending the rest of my life pretending to be straight
  • From a man in his mid-40’s:
    • I can’t live with my wife anymore, and I know that my staying is not good for my kids.
    • It is absolutely impossible for me to leave (largely because of the kids)
  • From a lifelong Democrat:
    • I can’t think of any possibility of voting Republican for the rest of my life
    • I truly believe that I will vote for this one Republican
  • From a mother:
    • I can’t stand my child
    • I can’t live without my child
  • From a sports fan:
    • I have given up on my favorite team
    • I will never give up on my favorite team

These seemingly contradictory statements came from intelligent people, often from people who are quite emotionally mature and spiritually mature. Why would people make such statements, sometimes in quick succession? Wouldn’t they think that one of these statements is true while the other is false? Many people get caught in this dilemma and end up quite confused and frustrated. I try to help them understand that words are not feelings, that feelings often represent the deepest part of who we are, but that it is necessary to muddle through the murky waters of feelings with approximate, even contradictory statements until these deep feelings can be trusted.

Feel, Think, and Act

Feeling, thinking and acting are the three ingredients of psychological functioning. We have to feel something, need to think about things, and need to do things. Thinking about things lends itself well to words, and doing something is also the result of talking and musing about what might be done, but feelings do not lend themselves very well to words. When I “feel something,” I feel this first physically and then emotionally, but the initial sense of feeling has nothing to with words. It has to do with a sense of something, the right about something, the wrong about something, the beauty about something, the ugliness about something, and may other ways of getting to the understanding that feelings, however important and central in human existence, are not words. So when I put my feelings into words, not only do they pass first through my physical experience, but also my emotional experience before they get to my left brain when I construct words to express these feelings.

Some years ago Deb came up with the 10-2-1 program of doing the right thing. What she meant by this is that to do the right thing, you need to think clearly about what you should do, often choosing between two different possibilities. However, in order to think clearly, you need to have felt through the matter ten times. So, the program is: feel about ten times, think twice, and then act once. It is the “feeling” part of this that is hardest because feelings do not lend themselves to exact words. The task is to allow the feelings to be expressed in approximate words that is hardest. What we tell our patients is this: Feel, feel, feel, and finish feeling your feelings so you can think clearly and ultimately act appropriately. But how do you do this? You allow for the expression of paradoxical feelings.

Allowing for paradoxical feelings

This is quite simple: give yourself a wide berth in expressing your feelings knowing that whenever you express feelings in words, the words are approximate at best, that the words are imprecise, and the words are but a vague expression of the murky waters of feelings. This means, quite simply, that you need to say something one day and quite different thing the next day. And sometimes it isn’t days separating these statements; it might be minutes or seconds. If for instance, I find myself something like, “I can’t stand where I live” at one time and “I love where I live” at another, allow these statements to be feeling statements, not factual statements. Both of these statements are true to some degree and false to some degree. If you allow yourself the freedom to say both of these imprecise statements, you will eventually finish your feelings and be able to think clearly. The danger is jumping from “I hate where I live” to moving, or “I love where I live” to staying. You can get to the truth of where you should live if you simply allow these feelings to come out in imprecise words knowing that the words are but a poor reflection of your inner feeling. This is no easy task because people either want to race right through their emotion and make a rational decision, or stay with their emotion and make an emotional decision. What you need to do is make a feeling statement, or statements until it makes sense to you what you should do. Of course, you want it both ways.

Wanting it both ways

The essence of feeling-based statements is the fact that you want it both ways. If you are in a quandary about moving, for instance, you want the joys of staying and you want the joys of leaving. Likewise, you want to get out of the difficulty of staying while at the same time you want to avoid the difficulty of moving. Moving or staying can only be a rational and right decision after you have rambled through the difficulty of feeling through the whole matter of moving. You will be sad if your stay because, perhaps, because you will miss out of what you might have in a new place. You will be sad if you leave because you will miss out on what you have had in your present location. You will be sad on either account. Likely, you will note the fear associated with staying or leaving first before you can allow yourself to feel the sadness of both of these actions. So when you ramble through these paradoxical statements that erupt from your inner feelings, give yourself the freedom to feel the implicit sadness of any decision you have to make. In fact, Deb and I don’t think it is really a decision so much as it is a discovery.  You can discover the right thing to do when you have given lots of room for your inner feelings to be expressed, albeit imprecisely and paradoxically.

 

 

 

Difficult, Meaningless, Necessary

Ron Johnson Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, mindfulness, morality

There are some things in life that are enjoyable and some that are not. Ideally, we have a majority of things in our lives that are enjoyable and then a few that are not so enjoyable. I want to share some ideas and experience in the whole business of “doing what you don’t want to do but seems necessary.”

Really necessary?

Not all things that seem necessary are really necessary. This is the real tough question that we need to face when confronted with the seeming necessity of doing something. And this question is not easy to answer. Let me give you an example. I just made a call to an agent of a company that we do some small business with. Luckily, I got voicemail so I didn’t have to talk to “Laura,” whoever she is. She’s probably a nice person doing her job somewhere in New York or South Dakota. Maybe she works at home and just calls customers. I didn’t really want to talk to Laura, but it seemed a gesture that might take me a minute or two to do, so I made the call. The “please call Laura” note was on my desk for 4 or 5 days. Another document on my desk is a form that I have been asked to fill out for a research study I’ve been in at the University of Wisconsin for 10 or 15 years. I am still staring at this document that I have been asked to fill out. They even promise me for it; I can’t remember how much, maybe $25 or $50. I don’t want to do this but it seems that I “should.” Since I’ve avoided filling out this document for a couple of weeks, I’ll probably get around to doing it today unless something more important comes across my desk. I also made a call to a test distributer this morning that I had been postponing for a week or so, and go my desk is almost clean from stuff I don’t want to do. And I have what insurance companies call a “preauthorization” form so we can get paid for the psychological testing that we do all the time. It’s a chore, but I can usually get it accomplished in about 5 minutes and then give it to Cheri to kindly put it on the Internet to the insurance company.

These trivial tasks are not particularly important but do take some emotional energy, whether avoiding or doing, because they are things that I don’t want to do, things that don’t really give me much pleasure, aside from having them off my desk. But larger questions and seeming important things are harder to decide about. Deb and I have a supporting wall in our house that seems to need some repair, probably serious repair. I have looked at this bulging wall in the basement for years and haven’t decided what to do, or if to do anything about it. The decision about doing something about the collapsing wall is much more serious, much more costly, and much more something that I don’t want to do. (I would hire it out, not do it myself.) It is notable that there is a certain amount of emotional energy that goes into the thinking, feeling, and wondering about such projects.

Emotional energy

This is quite important, namely that “things that I don’t want to do but seem to things that I should do” take a bit of a toll on me, as they certainly do on you. The question is always first, “Should or Should not,” but then the questions “When and How?” come up pretty quickly. While waiting and wondering, it is impossible to put such things entirely out of you mind, so there is a tendency to think too much, worry too much, and probably avoid too much. Such decisions, namely the “should/should not/when/if/how” questions are not easily made. There is always a cost, not only a financial cost, like with the basement wall, but also the emotional cost, and the rational cost. So, should I fix the basement wall for maybe $10,000 or give that amount to the Salvation Army folks who are ministering to people in Indonesia? Too often people end up thinking too much while trying to push their mixed feelings away.

Dealing with the emotional element of such questions is of utmost importance, but this is no easy task because it means, without a doubt, that you will have some loss. You will lose something and gain something. You will buy something and have less money, or you will not buy something and do without the something that you want. So there is no way out of feeling sad when you face such decisions. Deb and I have written extensively about this in our book noting that sadness is an essential element in life. And it is certainly an essential element in decision-making, especially when it comes to large and important decisions.

The four questions of decision-making

We have worked with this “four question format of decision-making” for some time and have found it valuable. The four questions are:

  • Is it necessary to be done?
  • Can I do it?
  • Do I want to do it?
  • Should I do it?

Answering these questions is not as easy as it might seem. Furthermore, it is of utmost importance that you ask the third question, “Do I want to do it?” because most people skip right over this question having answered “yes” to question 2, “Can I do it?” mistakenly thinking that if they are capable of doing something, they should do it. When someone is capable of doing something, sometimes s/he wants to do it, sometimes not. Finally, when you get to the fourth question, “Should I do it?” the answer could be “yes” or “no” but the answer needs to be whether you really think that you should do it or not. This is complicated because sometimes the “something” shouldn’t actually be done, at least by you, and sometimes the “something” should be done by you. Here is where you have to be very honest. Just because you don’t want to do it doesn’t mean that you shouldn’t do it; just because you want to do it, doesn’t mean that you should do it. But know this: when you actually decide to do it or not do it, you will feel both joy and sorrow: joy for having done it and sorrow for having done it; or joy for having not done it and sorrow for having not it. You have to accept both of these feelings. You might profit from the 80/20 rule.

The 80/20 rule

We use the “80/20” rule in such things, i.e. life should be about 80% about things that we enjoy and about 20% things that we don’t enjoy but seem necessary. But we also know that the lives of many people don’t reach the 80% enjoyable, and sometimes barely reach the level of 20% enjoyable. We meet such people every day in our work and often in our other contacts in life, whether friends, family, or brief encounters we have.

This is a whole lot harder than it seems to do. You can assess how you are doing in your life of doing and not doing by seeing how much of your life you enjoy. Hopefully, you enjoy most of your life, like 80% of it, because you are doing most of what you want. It might be helpful to consider the “spectrum of like/dislike” that we often use.

The Like/Dislike Spectrum

Consider the following spectrum of what you like and dislike from strongly like to strongly dislike with several stops in between:

Strong positive                                    Neutral                                    Strong negative

______________________________________________________________________________

Necessary //Good (for me) //Important //Like// Dislike //Unimportant //Bad (for me)// Harmful

Consider something, someone, some place, some idea, or some project in your life and see if you can place that thing, person, place, idea, or project on this line somewhere. You may have, for instance, an acquaintance who is not particularly important in your life but you like him, or you may have someone who had a place in your life that you really like and hence is “good for you.” Now consider a project that seemingly needs to be done and place it on this spectrum, say, on the “negative” side of “don’t like” very much. Once you place the project on this line, you will see that it is a bit easier to decide whether to do it or not do it. Just because you really like a project doesn’t mean you should do it, and just because you really don’t want to do it, doesn’t mean that you should not do it. Just note how you feel, which is the operative word. Once you see how you feel, you can respect your feelings and then proceed with deciding whether to do the project, like it or not, do it or not. You have been honest to your feelings first, then have taken action (yes or no).

Difficult, necessary, meaningless

Perhaps the most meaningless tasks I have to do are the insurance preauthorizations, namely filling out an inane form that describes in objective forms what I am doing with a patient in subjective terms. How can I quantify that I care for him and see my caring as important? How can I quantify the profit that may come to a child with whom I just play marbles (because neither of her parents ever plays with her), perhaps giving this girl a sense of joy and connection? You may have some meaningless things to do in your life that are necessary for you to do, just like it think it is necessary for me to see little Sarah. It’s a small price to pay.

On the other hand there are many meaningless things that are “bad for me” or “intolerable” after the system of like/dislike noted above. Then, no matter what the cost, no matter what the loss, no matter what anyone thinks of me, I shouldn’t do them. Know that there is some danger of “pushing” the “don’t like” way out to the harmful on the spectrum just because you don’t like it.

The task is to differentiate the truly necessary and valuable in a world that seems to require some much meaningless activity. So, by the way, I have successfully avoided completing the University form in favor of doing this blog.