relationships

Are All Men Selfish?

Ron Johnson appreciation, Children, communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

What an outrageous question, right? This is just as outrageous as my previous blog about “women never admit that they’re wrong.” This equally outrageous statement about men is not made in jest because men are frequently accused of being selfish, particularly by the women in their lives. I think there is something very important in this question because there is a certain truth to the statement that all men are selfish, or at least look selfish. We will examine several things in this blog, not the least of which are related to my last blog about women seemingly having a difficult time admitting that they’re wrong. Let’s examine what “selfish” means, especially as it compares to narcissism. We will look at the positive aspect of selfishness, the negative aspect of it, and the very opposite of selfishness, selflessness, which can be good and not so good. Then let’s look at how men operate, at least for the most part, that makes them look selfish and act selfish.

What is selfishness?

This is an unfortunate word that has creeped into the English vocabulary over the recent decades, perhaps centuries. On the surface selfish means one is oriented towards oneself. So, at least at this level, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with being selfish if it means that he (or she; but let’s stay with “he” for now) is aware of himself and looks at the world as a person who is independent from everyone else. John Donne said, “Every man is an island to himself” 400 years ago, but Donne’s intent was to deal with the isolation that so many people feel. So, we could say that there is at least some value in being selfish while there is a danger. This will be the main point I wish to convey in this essay. In other words, you need to know who you are in order to do anything in the world.

This “knowing who you are” ideally coms early in life, starting about age two but blossoming during the years 2-5 or 6. These toddler and early childhood years when ideally the person has received the security, nurturance, and comfort one needs during the first year or two of life, and is now ready to engage in the social world. The heart of “self” as we discuss it in psychology is having a sense of security that can only come from a secure environment. So, if the infant has received these basic three elements (security, nurturance, and comfort), s/he will be able to then bridge safely and confidently into the world. And this is very important because the rest of the world will not provide these three basic elements. The individual needs to find a way to find his or her (now let’s just go with “his”) way in life by his own wits. This is the positive aspect of “selfishness,” i.e. knowing who you are and going through the rigors of the toddler/early childhood years when you still think that you should have everything you want. You don’t know that at age, say, four, your wants have accelerated 100-fold while your needs have stayed the same: security, nurturance, and comfort. During infancy your wants were quite simple as they were essentially needs, i.e. food and safety. So the positive essence of selfishness is having sense of self, where I provide most of my security, nurturance, and comfort. I look out to not fall off a cliff or run in front of a car, I feed myself, and I take care of myself for the most part. I should not need the same amount of comfort as a 4-year old that I needed as a one-year old. But what happens when I don’t get my infantile needs met? I remain “self-less.”

The two aspects of selflessness

Unfortunately, many people do not adequately receive these three basic elements in infancy and are not prepared to engage the world that does not care for them as their parents did…or should have done. When this happens, the individual (we’re talking mostly about men, so let’s use the masculine pronoun from here on) does not have the groundwork to enter the years 2-6 where he needs to find himself, be himself, and exert himself in order to make it in the world. If the person does not get a foundation in infancy, particularly of safety, nurturance, and comfort, he will not be ready for the journey that begins in these early childhood years and never ends. Such a person will then be seeking these basic infantile needs from other people, or perhaps by some kind of addictive substance or behavior to give him a sense of self. Chemical addictions give the man an artificial sense of self as he finds a chemical way to feel safe and productive. Behavioral addictions do the same thing because they give the man a sense of purpose: gamble (and hopefully make a million dollars) or work all the time, and hence give the man a sense of safety, eat excessively (and serve the need for nurturance), or engage in some form of sexual addiction (and give the man a sense of comfort). All of these addictions are attempts to find a sense of self because the man didn’t have an adequate sense of self when he was four.

The other aspect of selflessness is what we normally think of with the term: a tendency to take care of others and serve the world. People who do, indeed, focus their lives on service can be people who have a good sense of self, so good, in fact that they forget about themselves in their charitable work. People who are truly generous are people who have a good sense of self, so good that they are able to spend hours or dollars without needing or seeking any kind of reward beyond the satisfaction and pleasure of taking care of people or the world in some way. My first therapist and life’s mentor, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was such a person. He had a very solid sense of self, so solid that he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone and could spend 18 hours a day caring for people like me and other students and faculty in the seminary where he was president and professor.

These are two distinct kinds of selflessness but they can seem to appear together, which actually never happens. Many people who are apparently quite generous and positively selfless are seeking approval and attention. They have not found the intrinsic value of giving and the satisfaction of improving the world in some way. Many good men work too much and give too much because they are unable to say “no” to the needs of the world, often the seeming needs of people in their lives. True positive selflessness is demonstrated by the man who “let his nay be nay and his aye be aye.” In other words, the man who can say no just as easily as he can say yes. Many men struggle with this.

Selfishness and narcissism

Deb and I wrote a chapter in a book a few years back where we unpacked the word narcissism. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, this term has been used to a fault and without a real understanding of what the word narcissism means and what narcissism comes from. In our paper we proposed that there is a natural narcissism and an extensive of natural narcissism into adult life. On the surface narcissism seems to suggest that the individual is selfish, i.e. cares only about himself and thinks only about his own needs and wants. There is some truth to this with people who we might dare to call narcissistic, but there is great danger in using this word without knowing what natural narcissism is.

Natural narcissism, or childhood narcissism is what we have been discussing in the 2-6 year old time of life where I have the opportunity to develop a sense of self so that I can effectively engage the world. So, the 4-year old is “narcissistic” because he is looking to get his needs and wants met (even though he doesn’t really distinguish wants and needs). Then he meets some kind of resistance or limitation, puts up a fuss, and finds a way to get around the limitation, or hopefully adjust to the limits of life. This finding and fighting limits during these early childhood years is where most people fail in personal development. They either continue to fight so much that the world around them (usually parents) give into him, go their own way and trust no one, or they give up trying and find ways to accommodate to what everyone wants of them. Ideally, the boy finds a way to accept some limits and challenge others in such a way that he learns that he can have want he needs but not necessarily what he wants. What generates out of this crucial time of life is that the individual develops a sense of self from which he can engage the world successfully. When the boy has been indulged with getting too much of what he wants, he will continue to retain the natural narcissism of childhood into adulthood. If he has not been given enough freedom and encouragement together with appropriate limitations, he will also retain a narcissistic view of life but hold onto the belief that he needs to find the right place, people, and parental substitutes to give him what he wants. These are two different forms of narcissism in adult life, one “selfish” (I get what I want by demand), and one “selfless” (I’ll never get what I want so I have to depend on others to give it to me).

The bottom line is that adult narcissism is not selfishness so much as it is a lack of self, namely a self that knows that he can get what he needs, mostly by his own hands, but he can’t get most of what he wants because we all, quite simply, want more than we can have. These are the two holes that so many people fall into: I have a right to get what I want all the time or I have to find people to give me what I want. Most men tend to fall into the former group. Most women tend to fall into the second group. Both forms of narcissism are dead ends in life. But before we end this diatribe on selfishness, let’s look at another aspect of men’s apparent selfishness that has more to do with their independent nature…to a fault.

Independence to a fault

There is an interesting passage in Genesis, chapter 3 where God speaks to the metaphorical characters Adam and Eve after they have discovered the difference between good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit from one tree. God said that the man would “work by the sweat of his brow,” in other words working hard. God said to the woman that she “would look to the man.” We dealt a bit with the “looking to the man” with women in our last blog. Notably, in this same chapter God said that he kept them from eating from the Tree of Life. We might conjecture that had Adam and Eve been more obedient to the limits (of childhood?), that they would have matured into Life more successfully. Regardless as to whether you believe this story as fact or myth, or disbelieve its value altogether, it does provide an interesting view of what a male needs to do in life: work. Carol Gilligan in a marvelous piece of psychological literature suggested that women are more naturally “communal” while men are more naturally “agenic.” This means that men might be more inclined to do their own thing while women being more inclined to do something with someone else, often with the man. Some biblical theologians have suggested that in Genesis 1, where Adam and Eve are created together, both worked side by side and both were communal, but in Chapter 3 these dimensions of humankind were separated. Let’s leave the Bible and go into how men actually operate with this work thing.

I propose that it is more natural for men to be independent and women to be more communal. Note that I do not suggest that women are the opposite of independent, i.e. dependent, but rather that they are more communal. We discussed the value and angers of communality in the previous blog, namely women tending to tell men what to do in an attempt to find communality. But the men’s side of the phenomenon here is their tendency to be independent to a fault, i.e. do what they want without regard for the other people in their lives, especially the women in their lives. Let me give you some examples.

Jack is an independent guy. He, like most of the men who come to my office, came with the figurative “female handprint in his back,” namely because his wife thought that he had some kind of problem. I talked about Jack’s wife in my last blog, but here I want to talk about Jack. He has been a successful tradesman and businessman for many years and has been in various businesses over time largely because he works hard and he works smart. Unfortunately for Julia, his wife, she has not always been a part of his business decisions and directions. He has, simply stated, gone on his merry way doing what he has thought is the right thing to do. And he has done quite well as he has looked at the business landscape. The difficulty with Jack, as he relates to Junie, is not his work or his decisions, but he going on with it on his own. Nothing wrong with doing things that seem right to you, but if you’re in a marriage where your wife wants to be a part of your life, you might want to converse with her about what you’re planning to do. This just doesn’t occur to Jack. Hence, his wife sees him as “selfish,” or worse yet narcissistic. There is a lot of truth her allegation but I have to be very careful with dealing with Jack’s independence because he has taken care of himself all of his life and has never really trusted anyone.

Sam is quite like Jack, i.e. independent to a fault. A physician, he has also chosen many directions in life, some having to do with his profession, some having to do with his philosophical and theological orientation to the world. He has spent thousands of dollars, much of it unwisely, investing in one thing or another but hasn’t consulted with his wife about these decisions. She sees him as selfish and narcissistic. Like Jack, he does not have a good sense of self and has, indeed, been independent because he needed to be that way to survive the shaming father in his life. Unfortunately, now he has also suffered the shaming of his wife who doesn’t know any way of dealing with the fact that he doesn’t consult her on his decisions.

Jack and Sam are representations of many men who have this biblical directive, “work by the sweat of your brow” without knowing that they are doing it. It just doesn’t occur to men who are exceedingly independent that there is a danger of going it alone. There is nothing wrong with independence, just as there is nothing wrong with communality, but there are dangers in both.

Dealing with men’s selfishness

  • Point one: value your orientation to life as an independent entity. You are good at doing your own thing and good at taking responsibility for your successes and failure
  • Realize that independence to a fault is selfishness, built on a lack of a clear sense of self. If you re in this category, you must find a way to get a better foundation of your self that is not only what you do and not only doing something on your own.
  • Admit to your significant other, or if you don’t have one, to a trusted friend, what you think, what you feel, and how you look at what you do in life. You will find that you don’t so much need advice as communality, i.e. a feeling of togetherness.
  • If you’re a person, say, a woman in this independent man’s life, tell him how you feel. Don’t tell how you feel about him. Tell him you miss him, enjoy his company, and enjoy hearing about what he does and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t know that he needs you, that he needs someone in life. Be careful to avoid telling him what he should do. Instead, tell him that you love him and want to be more a part of his thinking, feeling, and doing.  By the way, you got together with him in the first place because you liked his independence.

References

Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice.

Johnson and Brock, I want to tell you how I feel

Johnson, blog: “Why Good Men Lie”

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong?

Ron Johnson communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, love, marital, men's issues, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

Do Women Ever Admit That They’re Wrong? What an outrageous question, it must seem. I would never have thought of asking such a question, which of course, is not a question, but rather a rhetorical question suggesting that women don’t ever admit that they’re wrong. This rhetorical question came to me from the even more outrageous statement underneath it when he frankly said, “I don’t think women ever admit that they’re wrong. It made me think, and the more I think, I have come to believe that there is some important truth in this statement, however outrageous it sounds. Let me discuss a number of things that might relate the thinking that many (certainly not all) women don’t seem to admit to ever being wrong. I want to start with a short essay on the whole concept of being “wrong.” I will discuss some cases that I have had over my years, some very recently, some many years ago where I encountered women who couldn’t seem to see, much less admit that they had done or said things wrong. Then I want to consider possible causes of this phenomenon, how men contribute or perhaps even cause this phenomenon, how women indeed know that they are wrong but fail to communicate that fact, and finally what men and women might be able to do in order to deal with this phenomenon.

What does “wrong” mean?

There are at several ways of understanding the simple word “wrong”:

  • Saying or doing something that you determine is wrong
  • Saying or doing something that someone else says is wrong
  • Doing the right thing despite there being a law against it (like Gandhi challenging British rule in India and MLJ challenging white rule in the South)
  • Doing something that is right one day and wrong the next or vice versa
  • Doing something that is wrong even though you didn’t know it was wrong
  • Doing something wrong because you don’t know how to do it right
  • And probably lots of other kinds of “wrong”

Examples

Most of my practice is devoted and dedicated to men, namely performing psychological evaluations with men, helping men understand and communicate themselves, and generally helping men be better men, fathers, husbands, workers, and friends. A modest amount of my work is with couples, some of whom I have seen off and on for years, some of whom I saw just once or twice, and some of whom I have more recently seen. Positions, ages, and other identifications of these people have been changed but I have endeavored to keep the essence true to the people as well as this outrageous consideration that women can’t admit that they’re wrong.

Jim is a pastor, which his wife, Patty, has been largely pastor’s wife with all the duties that that role requires, mother, housewife, and grandmother. These folks, both people of immaculate character, originally came to see me some 25 years ago, worked with Deb and me collectively and individually for a few years and then didn’t return until a couple of years ago. I won’t describe the marital challenges that were presented but theirs was not the terrible phenomenon of yelling and screaming that sadly so often typifies unhappy marriages. They had, however, not found a way to actually understand each other and deal with much that was truly in need of repair, both individually and then collectively. Importantly, Jim suffered a modest amount of sexual abuse as a child even though he came from a pretty good hard working farm family (the abuser was a coach and relative of the family). Patty came from a very repressive family where emotions were almost never spoken and her mother was probably schizophrenic as well as frequently threatening suicide. When Jim told Patty that he loved her during their later dating years, she said that she didn’t “understand why” he would say something, then saying that she had never heard such a statement from anyone. There has been much that we have discussed during our recent hours together but perhaps the most common talk has been that while this pastor has been in very significant pastoral and administrative positions, he has failed to keep Patty informed as to their consistently declining financial status to the point that they would file bankruptcy aside from his ethical/moral reaction against that action. He continued to feel terribly ashamed of what he has done over these years, much of which has been to afford Patty way too much liberty in spending, both on herself, traveling to be with her adult children, and giving to her children and grandchildren. So, as a result, much of our conversation has had to deal with Jim’s feeling bad about his lack of financial scrutiny and Patty’s disappointment in him. I once asked her if she felt any responsibility of the excessive expenditures, many of which came at her hands. Her response: “I left all the financial matters to Jim,” which meant that she took no responsibility for their financial dilemma. We might call this a bit of old school mother/housewife view of money, but it turned out to be more than that the more I questioned Patty. We might call this kind of “wrong” one where the person (Patty) didn’t actually know that it was irresponsible of her to spend money that they really didn’t have. Hearing Patty’s taking no responsibility knowing how much money they had in the bank, I asked her if she could tell me of any time where she had been wrong. To my immense surprise, she said that she couldn’t think of such a time. I heard, “Of course, I know that I am a sinner,” but this was soon qualified when I asked her if she could actually think of a “sin” that she had committed. She couldn’t think of one. This still amazes me, but I know that Patty worked diligently and successfully not only keeping all her feelings to herself but being carefully guarded on “not doing anything wrong” when she was growing up so as not to disturb her mother.

This might seem like an extreme case, but it is not. I have often found that women can admit to “not being imperfect and making mistakes” on the one hand but not being able to admit to anything specific that they said or do that was untoward.

Jan and Sam came to me recently, but more accurately, Jan came to me voluntarily and Sam came to me with the proverbial female hand in his back as he entered my office. Jan’s complaint was that Sam simply did a lot of things without her knowledge, much less approval. She noted that he made a “major change in profession” that affected the family finances (positively, have you) but he hadn’t informed her of the change. Sam, like many men is exceedingly independent having grown up in a family where he was ignored and rejected by his stepfather, so he learned to do things on his own, quite successfully for the most part. Jan grew up in a family where “everything was perfect and the family was always first.” These differences having been said, what ensued (and is yet ensuing) is Jan’s singular interest in Sam’s “problems” while admitting that she “is not a perfect person, I know.” When I do an intake assessment on a couple, I meet first with the couple, and then individually with each partner, the latter meetings devoted to their individual social histories. But in this case, Jan evidently informed my secretary that “one hour simply won’t be enough” even though I usually can accomplish what I need to learn about one’s social background in an hour. When I met with Sam, we hardly needed the whole hour but I learned of his history, not nearly so much, however, about any kind of problem in the family, but how he coped with it. When I met with Jan, I couldn’t keep her on the topic of her life because she spent the entire hour talking about what was wrong with Sam, and because I needed a second hour regarding her own history, I had a hard time getting anything substantial because of her desire to tell me more things that were wrong about Sam including her concerted belief that he suffered greatly as a child and had “issues” because of the suffering. When I met with the two of them together to give an interpretation of my findings and the psychological test results, it was functionally impossible for Jan to admit to any kind of error, even the tendency she has of seeing only what was wrong with Sam. Again, I was amazed that she, a very intelligent professional person, couldn’t see that she might be a bit “wrong” in being overly critical.

I see another professional couple, the woman a physician and the man a successful salesman. Simply stated, I have had to work diligently to get the woman to see that she has any significant part in the breakdown of the marriage. Granted, the man, like so many men, has a tendency to get angry at a drop of the hat, but much of his anger is his wife’s relentless telling him what to do, what is wrong with him, and otherwise criticizing him. When I was recently with them, I couldn’t get by her saying, “I am only telling the truth. Why can’t he hear it? Why is he so “defensive?” Why is he “defensive,” I thought? Because you are criticizing him all the time. Interestingly, the woman admits that she has “an anxiety disorder,” but is unwilling for me to tackle the origin of that anxiety even though the origin is her obviously seriously dysfunctional family. She comes from a family where, like Jan with whom I just spoke, where she couldn’t say anything of how she felt, whereas the man comes from an alcoholic, angry family where he learned to drink and be angry from his father.

Enough about what is “wrong” with women not admitting that they’re ever wrong. What about the men in their lives?

The men who contribute to women’s inability to admit that they’re wrong

Most of this has to do with the fact that we men have not been raised in a social environment where we talked about feelings, particularly feelings that were hurt, disappointment, discouragement, and sadness. These words, and the important concept underneath these words, were simply not part of the male environment in which we were raised. The typical male environment is one of some kind of competition, often academic or athletic and sometimes social. It is very hard to be raised as an introverted boy because boys are supposed to be extraverted. It is hard for a boy to be in school where the 3 R’s are all hard for him. It is hard for a boy to be raised where he’s got the 3 R’s but not the athletic interest, much less the ability to play sports. And importantly, it is very common for the emotions of joy and anger to dominate a boy’s emotional environment, thus abandoning the emotions of fear and sadness. Girls grow up with fear and sadness all the time especially in middle school (junior high) and are not good at being angry. This social environment leads to men being openly angry with everyone potentially and women taking a more circuitous route of channeling anger into criticism, not unlike the drama and gossip they learned about in middle school.

So we have a kind of unconscious conspiracy among men and women with the whole business of feelings and the subcategory of emotions: men get angry and feel joy; women get sad and feel fear. Granted, this is a blanket statement, but more true than false. And when men really find sadness, they become profoundly depressed leading to the fact that men are six times more likely to suicide than women despite the fact that women are 10 times more likely to threaten suicide. And when men find fear, they are quite overwhelmed with it. When women find anger, they turn it into vitriol neglecting their own part in whatever the discussion was.

My work with men, which as I said is my primary work, is almost always about helping them know the breath of their feelings, like hurt and disappointment, and then the underlying emotion that is always sadness. I have heard many men say, “I’ve never told anyone this before, but….” And if I am really helpful with men, I help them conquer anger…entirely helping them understand that anger is always secondary behind hurt, disappointment, and sadness. And all of these feelings are based on something that one loves…and has lost. So, the task in helping women get over their seeming inability to admit to being wrong lies primarily with men getting over being angry all the time and admitting that they have a “love problem,” as I say, namely having lost something that he has loved but also having skipped the sadness that should always result from any loss.

My singular suggestion to women about being wrong is this: You might be “right” with what you see but wrong in saying it, which can then tend you to see primarily what is wrong with him more than what might be wrong with you.

Love IV: I See You

Ron Johnson emotional maturity, Feelings, love, marital, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Deb and I have many statements that occasionally comprise elements of our many conversations, some of which I noted in a previous blog called Racks and Cutters. Thinking and writing about love these days reminded me of a statement that we heard in a movie that has stuck with us. The movie is Avatar and the statement is “I see you.” The natives of the planet sometimes greeted each other with what amounts to a “hello” or “how are you” with a deeper statement: “I see you,” which meant that they “saw” (= understood, valued, and loved) the other person. Deb and I frequently “see” each other in this way, and I invite you to consider doing the same with the people you love. Perhaps you will “see” them better. So, how does one see people better, and how can I make myself seen better? And what does seeing have to do with loving? Perhaps this “seeing” thing is another undefinable thing, like feelings, time, and love. It seems so important in my trade, but even more important in daily life, especially around people who are important to us. “Seeing” is based on how you feel, what you see, how you react to what you see, what you do, and what you say. However, seeing someone also is dependent on whether that person is “seeable.” We will first discuss what you see and then discuss the being seen part of this process.

Seeing

What you feel

Again, I dare refer you to our little book, I Want to Tell You How I Feel, where we suggested the heart of saying how you feel is to know that there is a “something” inside of you that you want to say or otherwise express. Likewise, in this business of seeing other people, the element of knowing how you feel is the first and most important ingredient of “seeing” someone. Deb and I often tell budding therapists that the most important thing that they have to do is know how they feel when they are with a patient. But what does it mean to “feel”?

When we wrote the feelings book, we spent a good deal of time thinking and eventually writing about what this feeling thing actually means. Briefly stated, feelings erupt first in the unconscious elements of physical sensations and emotions, and then move into the conscious elements of cognition. To know what you feel, note these four elements: physical, emotional, cognitive, and active (or verbal). You will note that you always have these four elements of feelings but likely you gravitate towards one of them, say cognition or emotion. When you feel “something,” this something is not wrong, but it may not be clear to you why you feel it. I often feel quite emotionally moved, often to tears, when I hear someone tell me about themselves in my office. This is because I “see” the individual in front of me, something that we will shortly discuss.

What you see

When you understand how you feel, the next item in “seeing” is really believing what you see with the other person. You may see one of the four elements of feeling: physical, emotional, cognitive, or active. You may see what the person does. You may “see” what the person says. You may “see” something that doesn’t fit into physical/emotional/cognitive/active: you may have a “sense” or an intuition about the other person. If you are interested in the whole matter of relationships, which are always founded on some kind of love, you may see something that you really love, whether it is your friends’ actions, words, or otherwise. This kind of intuitional seeing is perhaps the most important of all because ideally your intuition does not depend on what you see physically, think logically, or feel emotionally.

Intuitional seeing be quite brilliant. It tends to come at what we must call a “spiritual” level. People often say something like, “I just feel…” or “I just know…” when they see something in someone by intuition. I must advise you that there are two very important matters when you have an intuition of someone, one beautiful and valuable, one dangerous. If your intuitional seeing is truly spiritual, i.e. godly and true, it is not wrong. The words that you come up with in this kind of seeing may be wrong. Everything we ever say that is primarily emotional is wrong in the sense of an imperfect reflection of inner feeling. But be careful with this kind of seeing because you will have an inclination to think too much or feel emotional too much. If thinking and feeling are fused into an intuition, you cannot trust the intuition. Thinking and feeling are part of you and your inner self, not a part of the other person. It is very hard to focus on true seeing rather than seeing through your own lens, like emotion, cognition, or some other judgment. This is not to say that you shouldn’t have emotion and thought but rather a recognition that when you see someone, it is not about you at all. It is not about what you feel emotionally or think cognitively. It is about the other person.

What you do with what you see

This is very delicate because if you really see something in another person, something deeply spiritual has happened: you have seen the person’s soul. When you see someone’s soul, you see God, or perhaps a part of God or a reflection of God. You are in the holy of holies that is spoken of in the Hebrew Scriptures. This is a very sacred place and you need to see it as godly and sacred. It is also a very private place, not one that you enter without great respect and caution. Hopefully, you see that this kind of seeing is deeply spiritual and very real but not something that we very often do for many reasons, not the least of which is that most people do not allow themselves to be seen. So, if you really see your friend, hold your breath, hold your thoughts, hold your feelings, and just observe this wonder. It will be wonderful.

Wonderful as it is to see someone, this is not generally a time to say anything. Rather, it is a time to feel something. I use the term “feeling” in its four components (physical, emotional, cognitive, and active), so depending on your own tendency to experience and express your own feelings, you will “feel” one of these four things. Keep your feelings to yourself. This is not a recommendation to repress your feelings but rather to value them and govern them so you can keep your focus on “seeing” your friend.

If you trust your intuition and keep your own feelings at bay, you have the opportunity to see the person…if that person is “see-able” (we’ll get there in a minute). Now comes the remarkable thing about seeing someone: You will love the person you see. No doubt about it: if you see someone, really see the person, you will be compelled to love the person. I won’t attempt to define this basic human need/experience of love because it is simply to profound to be defined. Love can be felt, and it can be carefully expressed. But love has to first be felt before you can decide if and when you say something about it. If you see someone and come to have this godly experience of loving the person, this experience is good in and of itself. You don’t have to say it; you don’t have to do anything. You just need to feel it. People tend to do this kind of seeing and loving with infants and animals although people with what we call naturalistic intelligence can also do this kind of seeing and loving with nature. Other people have love for property, ideas, or activity. But our focus is not so much on non-personal elements of love but rather the love that comes naturally and unavoidably when you see someone. Grasp it. Name it. Feel it. If it is good for you to see and love, it is good for your friend to be seen and loved.

When you see and ultimately love your friend, you are being something like a therapist to that person. The English word “therapist” comes from the Greek word, therapeuo, which means healing. Good therapy is healing, and the best of therapy comes from seeing…and the natural addition of loving the person you see. This happens to me all the time, in fact so often that I feel truly privileged to see and love the people I see. Sometimes, granted, I get lost in my thoughts or emotions, but when I’m at my best I see and love without trying to do so. The best therapists have found ways to encourage a spirit of openness to being seen. Unfortunately, many therapists don’t know how to understand and value this seeing, much less manage it. This leads us to our next discussion: how can we be “seen”?

Being seen

I want to be seen

There is a real oddity about this whole business of being “seen” because it seems that sometimes we want to be seen and other times we don’t want to be seen. Let me try to make some sense of this conundrum because it really does make sense. Furthermore, there are people who want to be seen by everyone and there are people who want to be seen by only a few people. We call the former “external” people, otherwise known as extraverts, and we call the latter “internal” people, otherwise known as introverts. Furthermore, there are times when I want to be seen and there are times that I don’t want to be seen. And there are things about me that I want to keep private and others that I want to be public. Setting aside these differences in psychological type for a moment, I will assert that everyone wants to be seen, but at the same time don’t want to be seen. Finally, there is the further paradox of wanting to be seen but not wanting to be open enough to be able to be seen. This is what I see with most of the people I see. This is wanting it both ways, something that often plagues us as humans, like I want to have a job I like but I want to make a lot of money that doesn’t come with doing what I like. Or, I want to be safe at all times but I want the things that come from stepping out of my safety zone. Let’s examine this paradox.

I am afraid of being seen

A book written not long ago was entitled, Why Am I Afraid to Tell You Who I Am (J. Power, 1969), but there have been many more books and articles written about why people are afraid to be open. In a nutshell, I am afraid to be seen because I have been hurt in the past when I was seen and I don’t want to be hurt again. Sometimes, people can remember why they are afraid to be open and some cannot, but more importantly, most people have been hurt many times over many years when they have been open, so it is natural that they would be reticent about being open again. I won’t elaborate on this experience of how people have been hurt in the past because it lies beyond the scope of our current discussion aside from stating that resistance to being open is always related to unfinished hurts. I must also defer you to previous writings about what the term “unfinished hurts” means.

So, if I am reticent to be open, how can I be seen, how can I be loved, and how can I be healed? I can’t be. I can’t be loved, really loved, healingly loved without being seen This is why people with so-called mental health problems (a term I almost never use because of its negative implications) rarely overcome these problems: they can’t be open, so they can’t be loved, so they can’t be healed. Good therapy makes an attempt to engage this process of seeing-come-loving-come healing. Good parenting, good friendships, good partnerships, and good marriages do the same. But even in the best of therapists’ offices, it is difficult for people to be open because they have just been too hurt over too many years and to go there is frightening. Just as often as people actively resist being open, they don’t actually know how to be open.

I don’t know how to allow someone to see me

Why is it that people don’t know how to be open? Basically and simply because they have been hurt too much when they have been open. The hurt that people have experienced has been in the form of criticism and judgment. They had times when they have been open but the person with whom they were open was not capable of loving them. More importantly, the other person didn’t really see them, much less love them. The other person saw something that they didn’t understand or didn’t like. But they didn’t actually see the person: they only saw something that was a reflection of that person, like what they wore, what they said, or what they did. Most failure to develop a spirit of openness comes from a myriad of times of having been open only to have been criticized and judged. You see, when someone criticizes you or judges you, they are not seeing you; they see something about you, like what you said or did, but they didn’t see your soul. In some cases, people have never been seen, which is the tragedy that often leads to what used to be called a character disorder, now called a personality disorder. These people are not truly disordered; rather, they are not developed. They have not developed because they have not been loved, and they have not been loved because they have not been seen. Whether in a therapist’s office, the living room with a family member, or in a park with a friend, they need to be seen. It is very hard for people to be open when they have long ago forgotten what it was like to be seen and loved, if that ever even happened. They have to learn to be open. And it will be painful.

Learning to be open

This is intrinsically difficult for most people, difficult for many reasons, not the least of which is the aforementioned personal history of having been criticized or judged, or worse yet never haven seen. What happens in these circumstances is that the brain takes over and protects you from further hurt and harm. By the way, the brain does not distinguish hurt and harm; it is all the same to the brain and it is to be avoided, quite naturally if you think about it. Furthermore, the brain does not know time, so everything that is potentially hurtful or harmful is felt by the brain to be in the present. This is the cause of all anxiety, which is fear of future hurt, while anger is the feeling of past hurt. But the brain does not distinguish past and future from the present. It is all in the present. So the fear of openness is a brain function that has to be challenged by the mind, and it is not easy to do. This brain/mind duality is the cause of your “being of two minds,” “feeling one thing and thinking another,” “thinking in two directions” and many more paradoxes of mind/brain functioning. Learning to be open is a challenge because your brain is protecting you from hurt/harm thinking that the danger is in the present. The brain has logged the hurt that you experienced when you were open and damaged as a result.

Learning to be open needs to come in stages. You have to learn when to be open (not when you’re drinking or at 2 o’clock in the morning), where to be open (not in the grocery store), what to say, if anything, when you’re open, and with whom to be open. Importantly, most people are intrinsically dangerous to you when you are open because most people simply don’t trust what they see, much the love that seeing might engender. Rather, they get overwhelmed with their own thoughts and feelings and possibly their own hurts. So, when I suggest you need to be open to be seen and loved, I offer this suggestion with great caution because you shouldn’t do it with most people at most times and in most places. Know your audience and you will be seen.

If you are going to try to be open, you might need to instruct the person in front of you how to see, how to keep criticism and suggestion out of the picture and just see. Try this once or twice and you will likely fail, or the listener might fail. Then try again, maybe with the same person, maybe with a different person, maybe in a different place. You need practice. What you will find is that you will be hurt many times, but then you will also be seen and love at other times. It is worth the risk. Then there is the possibility that you and your friend can see each other, know each other, and ultimately love each other…better. Remember the previous blog: Not Loved Right. Perhaps you can be loved right for the first time in a long time.

Being open with each other

This is the ideal, especially in intimate relationships and it can be done. For instance in my current and recent past I have seen many couples who do not see one another because each of the partners does not allow themselves to be open for fear of being hurt, which is itself based on some earlier life event that was very damaging. Then over time, each of these people hurt each other more leading them to come to my office for “marriage counseling.” They don’t need marriage counseling. They need therapy, they need to be healed, and most importantly, they need each other to heal each other. For example:

  • Couple A. She is a very successful professional person who lived with a very angry father. As a result she comes to anger too quickly skipping the hurt that always underlies anger. The man came from a very abusive and restrictive family with a stepparent who was clearly abusive. This led to him being afraid of being open and being hurt more.
  • Couple B. He is a very devote pastor who came from a sexually abusive family with all that goes with it, namely sexual dysfunction. She came from a family much like the previous man’s family where she could do no right and learned to be so careful with what she said or did that she essentially never says what she feels…again, for fear of being hurt again.
  • Couple C. She is very extraverted and outspoken having been raised in a largely good family but one in which he was given the permission to speak his thoughts and feelings, so much so that she has a tendency of expressing herself with little understanding, much less any regard for the impact of his speech. He is much more introverted and came into the family without much privilege to say how he feels. Unfortunately, he saw that his potential wife was a stable and fun person but most probably did not really love him. Rather she saw her as a good partner. Over time they both hurt each other, so much so that the man is divorcing his “good” wife with a great amount of hostility
  • Couple D. Both parties came into the marriage with wounds from their previous marriages and saw the goodness of each other but not the wounds. Unfortunately, these wounds not only failed to heal, the people in the marriage hurt each other for years without meaning to do so and with little awareness of how what they said or did was hurtful, adding flames to the fire of hurt from their previous marriages.

These are but a few examples (identifying information adjusted) of how people fail to be open and thus fail to be seen and eventually loved. In my work with all of these couples I am attempting to help them be open with each other so they can be seen, loved, and healed. I can’t do it myself.

I leave you with the admonition previously stated that you need to be loved as we all do. To be loved you need to be seen. To be seen, you need to be open. To be open, you will be vulnerable to hurt and love with about a 50-50 chance for either. It is worth the bet. You are older now, and even if you were terribly wounded as a child, as an adolescent, or in your previous relationship, you can weather the storm of hurt better. Moreover, you just might be loved…and healed