Spiritual

Surviving or Thriving

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, love, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving long term personal and interpersonal challenges

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with people. He doesn’t know how to admit that he is smarter than most people.
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because Mom is more like #1
  • Martha loves, or thinks she loves Sam, but Sam is quite neglectful of her. She has tried everything to accommodate to him and to change him without success
  • Anthony just went through radiation treatment for prostate cancer but his PSA numbers are even worse than before treatment.
  • Anthony’s wife is surviving his illness and imminent death by worrying about how she will make it alone given their current financial disaster

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. This means that ignore the feelings associated with their lives. What happens then? They turn to anger, avoidance, addiction, or some kind of fruitless activity.

  • Philip on the cruise boat holes himself up in his cabin coming out only to eat when he is desperately hungry
  • Alex spends 85% of his day playing video games
  • Francis takes Tylenol every two hours
  • Craig does his best to ignore the mess his dogs makes and covers the smell with incense
  • Frank talk about doing something on the house that pleases his wife but never actually does anything
  • Anthony’s wife goes silent for the most part, occasionally throwing barbs at her husband for not managing their finances well
  • Anthony indulges in a good deal of self-hate, which seems to be a way he can atone for his mistakes.
  • Some people start projects and abandon them because they are tired or bored. This leads to a lot of clutter in their lives, like property, relationships, and projects half-done.
  • Many people go to doctors and hospitals to have yet another blood test or CT scan to find the magic bullet

What has gone wrong with these people, many of who are intelligent and kind, and been productive in life?

In a nutshell, they haven’t grown up. But what does that mean? Almost all of the people I have noted above (all of whom have had their presented situations altered for privacy) have had pretty good lives and then got stuck somehow. They got stuck because they stop growing, which means that never learned to adapt, adjust, compromise, and find a way to adequately meet the new challenges of life. They might have had good marriages and jobs to start with. They might have successfully raised children. They might have even made a great deal of money along the way. But somehow, they never were able to move from one element of life to the next, from one need to the next need, from one job to another, from one house to another, or maybe even from one spouse to another or to being alone. They didn’t adapt to the changes that occurred in their lives thinking that the old things should still work.

Secondly, they didn’t learn how to feel, particularly the feeling of disappointment and hurt that comes in life, usually every day, allow themselves to feel sad for a season, and then take stock of what lies in front of them.

Thirdly, because they haven’t grown up and haven’t found a way to deal with disappointment, they have fallen into the avoidance, anger, avoidance, or fruitless activity that used to work but no longer works.

Fourthly and most importantly, they haven’t found ways face the paradoxes of life. They want the old things to work rather than finding new ways to succeed in life. They haven’t found ways to love you wife but not like some things about her, like your job for the most part but not like the 20% that you don’t like, love the house and hate the housework.

So, what can be done to do more thriving and less surviving?

  • Admit to your feelings. If you have read any of our blogs, you have already heard this call: admit to what is there, particularly how you feel. You will feel some combination of:
    • Hurt
    • Disappointment
    • Sadness
  • Then note the quick transformation of these basic feelings hurt and disappointment and the natural emotion of sadness quickly transfer into something else:
    • Anger
    • Fear
    • Avoidance
    • Addiction
    • Undue activity
  • Tell someone how you feel, ideally a person who doesn’t give you advice or “get over it” or “just do something.” Such a person could be a good friend, family member, or a therapist-like person.
  • Consider that there might be drastic action, like divorce, moving to a new house, quitting your job. Most of the time you won’t have to do such things. Just give these thoughts some room
  • If you are really in an intolerable situation, whatever it is, find a way out of it.
    • Leave your wife or job or house
    • Find a way to live the life you have left on this earth
    • Go to the country you have wanted to see all of your life
  • If drastic action is needed (it usually isn’t), note your feelings
    • Admit to the feeling of disappointment. Life at this point in your life is just not what you expected
    • Admit to the sadness
    • Allow your sadness to run its course. Sadness always ends
    • Work diligently to prevent anger, avoidance, addiction and fruitless activity
  • Do something that you really don’t want to do
    • Work out
    • Fix the garage
    • Clean up after your dog
    • Dare to look for a job even though you don’t want to work at “some stupid job.”
  • Then sit back and realize you did something you really didn’t want to do and appreciate your small effort.
  • Take a break from doing what you didn’t want to do and indulge yourself in video game laying or eating a donut.
  • Take a bit of stock of the other paradoxes in your life. Maybe read a snippet or so from the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius.
  • You will find that much of your life, perhaps most of your life, is pretty good for the most part and enjoyable. Allow yourself a few moments to appreciate and enjoy.
  • Then, and only then will you be able to slowly move beyond surviving to thriving. Thriving takes time and a lot of work. It is not about money, property, or even relationships. It is about seeing what is, accepting what you can, changing what you can, and trusting yourself.
  • You will notice that you will begin to have a very positive effect on the world around you: people, places, things, and ideas

 

 

You’re Killing Me

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, grief, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Have you ever said, “You’re killing me,” to anyone? Or perhaps some cognate of this expression like, “I’m dying here” or “I can’t live through this.” Or perhaps, you just thought such things and never actually said them to anyone. These kinds of statements can be frivolous, like being with someone who is severely besting you on the tennis court or in your sales department. It could even be a statement you might make with a project that you need to complete, whether at the office or a book you’re writing. As I say that, I am immediately reminded of the hard work Deb and I recently put in on the finishing touches, review, and revision of our latest book. My interest in the “you’re killing me” or its cognates like, “She’s killing him” or “She’s dying under his attention” or less damaging, “He’s killing her with kindness.’ The interest I have in this blog is to address the very real fact that people are, indeed, killing one another but not with kindness, meanness, guns, or pills but with being a severe emotional drain on them. Let me explain.

Kinds of “killing”

  • Caring for a physically impaired person
  • Caring for a mentally impaired person
  • Being in an intimate relationship with someone who is toxic
  • Being in a work setting that is toxic for you
  • Being in an environment that is toxic for you
  • Being toxic to yourself

In all of these circumstances there is never any conscious malicious attempt to “kill” someone. Yet there is a subtle effect that someone, someone, or you yourself has on you. Very importantly, there is rarely an actual intent to do harm to someone by the “killer.” They are not trying to kill someone or even bring them harm. Sometimes, like the “killing with kindness” is meant to do the very opposite. In most cases the “killer” is trying to survive in some way without actually meaning to do the “victim” any damage. These cases are like the proverbial person who can’t swim but drags someone down the water in an attempt to stay alive. The lack of intention to bring harm is central to the case I wish to bring here together with some possible understanding and remedies for such things. I would like you to be alive.

Examples of people being “killed” by the people in their lives:

  • A pastor who has been working diligently, perhaps too diligently, to serve people in his congregation found himself emotionally spent but kept up his work only to recently be in a meeting where the congregation identified the “administration” (which means he) needed to be changed. In simple terms the congregation (by a very slim majority) of voting people (not all of whom had been in church for years) voted against him. In this case he was assaulted by several people whom he had diligently tried to serve over the years he was at this church. When I saw him recently, he admitted that he felt like so many people feel: he didn’t want to live. Not that he wanted to die or that he was suicidal but he felt like he was dying or would rather not live because his profession and his livelihood had been taken away from him. His antagonist people in church are “killing” him.
  • Another pastor (yes, I see such people frequently) has cancer and the “numbers” are not good. He and his wife have been married more than 50 years and have served many churches, raised children, and have done well in their denomination. Due to what we might call too much kindness, this pastor was unable to deny his wife anything over these 50 years and ended up now well into retirement with an excessive amount of debt. The debt load has been hard to bear over the recent years, and importantly, his wife didn’t really that their purchases and traveling were on credit cards, now towering over them. I think some of his cancer has actually been exacerbated and to some degree caused as the result of his being overwhelmed by the debt. Perhaps more importantly, however, he has suffered under the nearly constant, but subtle attack from his wife of leaving them in such a state instead of enjoying being fun-loving grandparents. Most markedly, when I recently saw them together, the wife was far more worried about being “straddled with debt when her husband dies” than actually concerned about his health. I think she has been “killing” him for years, only now being quite obvious.
  • My brother died nearly 25 years ago at age 59 from cancer, but it is my belief that the people in his life “killed” him, albeit without their intention or his knowledge. Bill cared for our aging, mother who suffered from debilitating Alzheimer’s disease for perhaps five years. There is a good bit of research on the care of severely impaired people, whether the impairment is physical, mental, or otherwise. Caregivers actually die sooner than they should die, or at the very least suffer physical and mental diseases as a result of caring for their loved ones. So, my mother “killed” Bill, at least to some degree, certainly without any intention to do so. Caring for a person suffering from dementia is like caring for a two-year old with a 70-year old body. It’s a chore. Additionally, my brother suffered for being with a mentally disturbed individual in his life whom we might say put a “drain” on him, perhaps “draining” him of his ability to sustain life. Indeed, he died specifically from liver cancer but it is my belief that the disease was exacerbated or perhaps caused by the mental strain of caring for people whom he loved but who were impaired.
  • I see many people in my practice who are caring for impaired people, and all of them suffer. The woman who graciously adopted a young man who had been abandoned by his parents in India only to discover that this 13-year old had a mind of a 4-year old, and was found to have sexually molested several other children. He is “killing” his mother.
  • I know of a child who was so outrageous and demanding that he was partly due to the early demise of his mother who died at 45, possibly due to the strain of trying to love and limit this child who was so demanding of her. Of course, he has no idea of the damage that he caused his mother nor would I say such a thing to him, but I am convinced that this young man, possibly in conjunction with his equally impaired sister, caused the demise of their mother.
  • I have not spoken of the sad fact that there are some truly dangerous people in the world, like abusive husbands and wives, fathers or mothers, and the like. Certainly, there are these people.
  • I have felt that someone was “killing me” a couple times in my recent life. One was a time when the two closest members of my family behaved in a way that I felt quite rejected. I didn’t feel “suicidal” but there was a kind of “I could die and that might be not so bad.” These feelings lasted for about an hour as I took a long walk. The feelings past but the memory remains as an important time in my life. I told my wife about the experience. She said that she had had a similar experience not so long ago. We are not immune to such feelings but have a way of processing them.
  • Many men have said “I don’t want to live,” sometimes with my assistance for them to admit to these feelings. These people don’t want to die and they are certainly not suicidal. They just feel quite overwhelmed in life for some reason.

Examples of situations that “kill” people

  • I know of several men who are in jobs that they hate, some of these men making a great deal of money. It seems odd to me that a person stay in a job that he hates “for the money” or allegedly doing it “for the family.” Sadly, I know of several men who have stayed with such jobs and ultimately lost their physical health, mental health, property, or marriages because these jobs were killing them.
  • Other situations that are non-personal include projects people do, perhaps on houses, cars, money, weather, or some event in the world far away.
    • I felt quite distressed during a time when we were in the midst of a kitchen remodeling project somewhat due to delays from the tradesmen, somewhat because it wasn’t my desire to do the project, and perhaps form some other unknown projects.
    • People often feel that they are “being killed” by unforeseen weather, not necessarily a tornado but just some kind of extension of undue heat or cold
    • People often feel “killed” by their lack of money, perhaps enough to just pay the bills of life and limb.
  • People often feel that they are dying because of some physical/medical condition and perhaps treatment. I understand the “chemo” treatment for cancer seems worse than the cancer. I just talked to someone with a variety of things going on with his body, any of which could be life-taking. Interestingly, people can be quite at peace at what might seem to be the end of their lives compared to some kind of debilitating disorder or disability.
  • There several verses in the Bible of God “killing” people, usually “enemies” like in the Hebrew Scriptures, but even more dramatic statements that are unique to the New Testament. It seems that the writer of these verses felt God killing him.

How to handle “you’re killing me” feelings

  • Know that these feelings are quite normal
  • Know that the word “killing” and its cognates is an attempt by the person to present a metaphor, strong as it might be, to him/herself or to someone else. We try to give people a “wide berth” as we often say, when they seek to say some “feeling.” “You’re killing me” is such a statement
  • Be careful to whom you say such things. If you feeling like you “don’t want to live,” be even more careful to whom you say such a thing. The listener has to know this is a feeling, not a fact, not a plan.
  • Do find someone who can hear such things. This would be someone who could hear the feeling and not conclude the fact that the feeling words seemed to suggest.
  • In the rare case where you are in some real danger, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, find a way out whatever the case

 

The Paradoxes of Life

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

A math teacher once told me that there are two interesting things about math and science: (1) “Everything interesting happens at the boundaries,” he said, and (2) “To really understand math and science, you have to grasp the centrality of paradox.” How true he was. The whole idea of boundaries is quite central in math, and for that matter central to a lot of things in the universe, including psychology, of course. As far as we know, the universe has no boundaries although that apparent fact is in great dispute as we explore the universe. The boundary issue in math has much to do with infinity, which obviously has a lot to do with the lack of boundaries. I won’t indulge myself in this matter any further because once I barely got through Calculus 3 and differential equations when I was in college, I was not capable of understand the essentially abstract nature of higher math. I understand the centrality of paradoxes in math a bit better, albeit not much because I am not an abstract person by nature. Let me just leave it with the fact that lot of important stuff in math has to do with how two things that appear to be opposite are actually both true but you can’t quite put them together. Psychology, meaning clinical psychology, especially the understanding of personhood and relationships, has a lot of paradoxes.

What is a paradox?

First, a personal note. I shouldn’t tell you this but Deb and I have used the term paradox in many ways, e.g. jokingly referring to us as a “pair o’docs.” Get it? Pair of doctors.  And we use various forms of paradox in our computer work. Enough of that

The etymology of the word paradox is from early Greek composed of the words para- that means alongside of or in front of and the word doxa that originally means opinion, judgment, or thought. Thus, paradoxical originally meant two thoughts that were inconsistent with each other. However, as the word evolved, particularly in English, it came to mean to thoughts, experiences, or feelings that were seemingly inconsistent with one another.

Paradoxes can be related to feelings, thoughts, behavior, or words. In other words I can have disparate feelings, thoughts, actions, or words where both sides seem to be true. In other words, I may have two feelings, both that seem to be true but they are very disparate feelings. Additionally, there can be a paradox between what I feel and think, what I feel or do, and the other 10 combinations among feelings, thoughts, actions and words. The hardest paradoxes to face and understand in life are those that are within you, like wanting to go somewhere for the day and wanting to just stay home and hang out. Paradoxes can also occur between people, people who are largely in agreement but occasionally find real differences. I mostly want to comment on paradoxical feelings in this blog.

Some personal examples

A few years ago Deb wanted to take a trip on her own where she could hike and explore, which is one of her true passions. She went to Portugal and hiked a long trail along the coast of the country. After she had been there a few days, she called me up and said the following: “I am so glad that you’re not here” and then quickly said, “I wish you were here.” Knowing Deb and understanding the importance of such paradoxical statements, I was not chagrinned although many people have been somewhat bothered when I tell them the story of her call from Portugal. Can you see that Deb felt both of these feelings: she was glad to be alone and she missed me and wished I was there?

Today, I would like to stay in front of my computer and write but I would like to go outside on today’s sunny day, and I want to get out of town and do some duties. I can’t do all these things and so I must settle on doing the right thing. But what is the “right” thing? I have to feel through these paradoxical feelings to do the right thing.

Harder paradoxes to face are in matters of love, liking, communicating, and otherwise relating to other people. There are some people for whom I have strong feelings, like loving and not loving, trusting and not trusting, believing and not believing. Family members can be very difficult and the difficulty often has to do with paradoxical feelings for someone. Note the liking/loving blog I did some time ago, i.e. loving someone but not liking that person.

More personal matters are things that happen. Deb (and I) have just about finished a major remodel of the kitchen. I didn’t really want to do the remodel but it was very important for Deb to do it so I acquiesced on the project because it seemed the right things to do. It has been a chore, not so much the physical work or financial cost but the personal, and ultimately the interpersonal cost. Now as the program is reaching a conclusion I find disparate feelings: I appreciate the new kitchen, largely because it fits Deb so well. And, I “don’t like” the whole kitchen because of the strain it put on me over these past six months.

You can see that while there are verbal, factual, cognitive, and behavioral paradoxes, the larger element is in the realm of feelings.

Paradoxes with feelings

Jack loves his wife but says that “the marriage has been over for a long time,” so he thinks they should get a divorce. Yet, Jack doesn’t want to get a divorce. He wants his family and his wife even though the marriage has been hard on them for almost the entirety of their 30 some years together.

Brad is gay and a pastor of a church where “you can’t be gay.” Furthermore, he wants “a family” even though he has never been attracted to women in any erotic way. We could say that he “wants it both ways” that I discussed in a previous blog but this situation is more than wanting it both ways. He is plagued by feelings that pull him apart

Sam is quite honest, but he finds himself frequently being dishonest with his wife. Indeed, he is afraid of her disapproval, a malady that seems to plague all men with the women in their lives. It seems conflictual that he is a man of good character but falls into being dishonest with his wife all the time, usually on small trivial matters.

Peter feels quite comfortable in his home but very often feels quite uncomfortable in his home. He can’t seem to accept that these feelings are both true, not just of different times but more importantly, of significantly different feelings. He can sit on his favorite chair and feel quite at home one day, and the very next day feel oddly in the wrong place.

Max trusts no one but he falls into trusting people all the time and wishes he didn’t trust them. He can’t seem to make sense of these two disparate feelings. He grew up needing to trust no one because no one was trustworthy, but then as now, he found himself trusting people and getting disappointed all the time.

Mel wants to be with his girlfriend and really enjoys his time with her, granted after a good bit of time and an equally good bit of therapy that helped him clarify his love for her. Yet he finds a bug in his bonnet every now and then and needs to “get away from LouAnn,” sometimes for hours, sometimes for weeks. She has a hard time with this paradox. She wants him to say that “he wants to be with me or doesn’t want to be with me.” He has both feelings.

Understanding and utilizing paradoxical feelings

  1. Feelings are never wrong

I have written about this several times over the years. I use the term “feelings” to be roughly equivalent to how my soul/spirit feels. Feelings, at least in my understanding and use of the term, is quite akin to intuition. “I just feel something” or “I just know something” or maybe “I have a gut feeling.” While feelings are never wrong, the words I try to find to express these feelings are always wrong, or more accurately, approximate. We as human beings need to accept the fact that I can never communicate my feelings with words to anyone at any time, not even to myself. This is where so many people go wrong: they say something that related vaguely to their feeling and the words do not communicate. Worse yet, they malcommunicated, meaning that they communicate something that is the opposite of what I feel.

  1. Allow yourself to say words to yourself that approximate these paradoxical feelings, like:
    1. I love my wife and I don’t love my wife
    2. I want to stay home and I want to go out
    3. I want to eat and I don’t want to eat
    4. I am a good person and I am not a good person
    5. I should do this or that and I shouldn’t do this or that
    6. I want to live and I don’t want to live

If you allow yourself to have both of these feelings and dare to use some words—just to yourself, you will find a certain comfort, but you will also be inclined to force one side of the spectrum or the other. Work hard to accept paradoxical feelings

  1. Tell someone your paradoxical feelings.

Be very careful to whom you share paradoxical feelings. You don’t need advice; you certainly don’t need criticism; you just need someone to hear you out. Such people are hard to find. You might have to advise your listener that you just need to say a “few things that feel crazy” to help your organize your paradoxical feelings

  1. Watch the conjunction of these paradoxical feelings.

You might need to say something or do something but you need to allow for the paradoxical feelings to be there for a while before there can be a natural conjunction. Some people jump too quickly into action while others delay action forever. If you allow for these paradoxical feelings to both be there, you will come to a discovery of what you should say or do, if anything. Sometimes you actually do need to day or do anything. You just needed to feel these things and come to a sense of peace about the feelings.

  1. Remember this procedure for future reference.

This means keep track of how you found your way through a certain part of life, very often a very important part of life, by allowing paradoxical feelings to be there. So, when you have other paradoxical feelings, you will be better at having both knowing that both are true in some way.

  1. Allow for some other paradoxes in life, like:
    1. You feel one thing but think another
    2. You act in a certain way but don’t like your action
    3. You say something that is not entirely true but somehow seems to be the right thing to say.
    4. You say one thing one day and another the next day

Enjoy the paradoxes of life. They can be revealing, instructive, and healing.