Sunrise or sunset?

Sometimes this happens subtly, like with depression that creeps in over days or months. The kind of knockdown that slowly chips away at your happiness, mostly unnoticed by you, until one day you realize you are on the ground and don’t know how you got there.

But sometimes being knocked to the ground happens so swiftly that you can’t even remember your life when you were standing up.  Breakups, job loss, death, and other traumas can change your life instantly.

So, can you restore yourself to the faded glory of the life you knew, even after it has been cracked from substance abuse, or death, or unemployment, or a breakup, or an illness?  And if so, how do you make a comeback?

A lot of us see promise in fresh starts, clean slates, resolutions and willpower.  But I’ve been learning over the years that to make real progress, there need not be a new beginning.  Especially in the early months, when just existing in your new world feels like it must be some sort of accomplishment.  In order to evolve from where you are now, you have to bring with you where you’ve been.

Really, it’s not that bad to bring the past with you.  Who among us wouldn’t be just a bit lonely without memories of who they were in college, or their first relationship, or starting out at a new job — even though these events and incarnations of ourselves might be [gratefully] in the past?

I believe that closure, and leaving the past behind, is a myth that puts pressure on the comeback and deceives us and others.  More about that another time.  Let’s begin with some strategies that work if you are feeling ready for your own comeback.

• Little comforts might seem like no match for your recovery, but do them anyway.  You cannot be too nice to yourself.  A cookie, a movie, a handful of flowers — they will not resurrect your life.  But over time, habits of self-soothing work.
• Process your feelings with safe people.  Safe people are those who can handle your feelings, understand they are in the context of your life’s lowest moment, and simply be with you without impulse to change, argue, or take offense.  If you haven’t found these gems of people in your personal life, find a therapist, or at the very least, a community [online?] who shares your experience.
• Take care of the core things.  Eat well, exercise, sleep, etc..  If you come to my office for help with something, I want to be sure you’re addressing the basic checklist on your own.  What is the point of making a comeback from a divorce if you end up with a dependency on alcohol?  Try to be sure the bucket you are filling up isn’t being punched out with holes on the other side.
• Surround yourself with a support team who knows that just because you are occasionally back to work/tennis/laughing doesn’t mean that sadness is far away.  It takes a support team with immense capacity to abide with you during your dark time.  It takes even more capacity to be with you on the way back.
• Don’t be afraid of the sadness that remains.  It is part of your comeback, another layer to who you are, and has given you humility and capacity.  Let feelings be with you when they arrive.  They will ebb and flow.  Pushing away feelings like grief and anger will only result in them turning on you (in the form of depression, anxiety, sleep issues, etc.)

A true comeback exists — we do them throughout our lives — but they are never as clean as the before and after photos make them seem.  Above all, have faith — things will appear insurmountable.  The goal is to embrace life’s good and bad and envelop mistakes and losses as part of the new version of yourself. I wish you luck on this road to the next installment of who you are.

I teach my clients that this same control we have over our own solutions also applies to our relationships with others.  Over the course of therapy we see ourselves transforming into people of skills and strengths because we have been focusing on how we treat ourselves.  It is also true that our family, friends, and coworkers learn how to treat us by what we teach them.

[The ONLY exception to this is behavior one exhibits following the experience of an extreme trauma.  We must allow that those who are suffering will deviate from their usual selves and hope that with proper help they will return to their typical abilities and capacities.]

Every day our actions are setting an example of how we want to be treated.  We are always communicating our desires with others, even when we are not saying something directly.  When we arrive late to a coffee date with a friend, or when we agree to accept an assignment at work that belongs to someone else who is “too busy”: these are messages we send out into the world about what is acceptable to us and what is not.

Our friend learns that being on time when meeting may not be important, and possibly that we do not value her time, either; our supervisor takes a perhaps unconscious but careful note that we are OK with accepting more work that isn’t ours.

he can't talk, but he's telling you something

Perhaps neither of these assumptions that the friend or supervisor has made is wrong – in this case, you would be doing an excellent job of obeying the golden rule.  However, what I see in working with clients is that people want their work life to be less stressful, their friends and family to be more supportive, and for themselves to have more power over their own happiness.  We cannot ignore the messages we send that are compliant with behavior we don’t want to perpetuate.

Luckily, the antidote to these issues is simple from a solution-focused mindset.  You can look to your life to see where you have healthy and well-respected boundaries.  You wouldn’t dream of being late to your son’s piano lesson?  Your employees always show up to Monday meeting on time?  You and your partner fight fairly and listen to each other?  Each of these areas shows that you have good boundaries and respect.

Some clients feel uncomfortable at first about teaching others how to treat them better.  It must begin with understanding that we deserve better treatment ourselves.  This is not an easy concept to grasp if you have been struggling with depression, addiction, or guilt.   Practice asking yourself a few questions:

• What is difficult for me about making this request or giving this person feedback?  Imagine yourself saying to someone, “Hey, I notice when we meet up I always am waiting for 15 minutes.  Should I allow more time in the future?  Or do I rush you when making plans?”
• How will my life change when I am able to consistently implement this new boundary or request?  Imagine your life when you and your partner agree that you will no longer argue in the car and instead will wait to find a place to talk and listen with no distractions.
• What will I do when the person responds with surprise to my new request? Perhaps you’ve decided to tell your boss that you will no longer be taking work projects home on the weekends. Can you respond with other ways that you are going above and beyond as an exceptional employee?  Practice sitting with the feeling of knowing that someone else is initially ruffled by your new boundary. They will adjust to it, or you will come up with a suitable compromise.

When you are able to understand the messages you have been sending to others about what behavior is acceptable around you, you are then in control to change the situation.  Acknowledging our own role in others’ poor treatment of us is the most difficult step.  Remember to stay consistent; persistence when making behavior change works!

What isn’t often recognized is the importance of our daily interactions with those we don’t count as part of our support system.  Recently a story from the totally amazing Greater Good Science Center described this positive effect as a result of moms who put kids in daycare.  The brief pleasantries while picking up and dropping off eventually constitute an important interpersonal connection.

Similarly, exchanging short conversations with the check out clerk, the parking attendant, and the mailman are all ways that we can increase our social capital.

Think of social capital like a bank account; it is the collective value of all social relationships.  When it’s full, you are buoyed by comfort of connection.  You are not going to call on your spin class instructor when having a bad day, but knowing that a familiar face is waiting is a reminder to your psyche that you are not alone.

The key I like to focus on is NOT how big your network is.  This is not about quantity of Facebook friends.  Social capital is more about developing a disposition to develop and maintain these connections.  Therefore, we can use opportunities to practice this often.  Did you bank any social capital today?

In order to release yourself from the burden of solving others’ problems (especially when you’re not being paid to do so!), you must understand the art of deflection. Deflecting means being able to listen to another’s plight and his or her attempt to pull you in, empathizing with it, and then putting it back on the speaker to see what they do next.

Deflecting is very simple and involves a few key phrases:

“Wow, that is a bummer.”
“Oh, that’s too bad – what a pain!”
“I would feel the same way.”

These are sympathetic statements that are offered in a sincere and genuine manner. Often just by repeating these statements in different forms, the listener is able to let the speaker vent and express feelings without being distracted by solutions offered up by the listener. Usually (especially with kids!) this is all the speaker wants: a sympathetic ear.

What happens too often though, is the listener makes the mistake of trying to “help” the speaker with advice, a “similar” story of his own (which is almost always perceived as 0ne-upping and not helpful) and the listener ends up with his advice being rejected. For a full explanation of this phenomenon, please reread my story about “Your New Golden Rule: Never Drag a Cat”, which discusses listeners who spend a lot of time in this inefficient mode.

If you cannot maintain patience to listen any longer and must turn the conversation “productive”, the trick to not getting drawn in (especially with a chronic complainer) is to add one more phrase after the sympathetic statement.

“What do you think you are going to do?”

Again, you are turning the speaker’s problem back onto the speaker. In the extremely rare case where the speaker actually actively solicits your advice (be sure this actually happens) even then you can think for a moment and ask the speaker:

• What have you tried?
• What do you think would work next?
• What worked the last time you were in a similar situation?

It is always amazing to me how many clients have the answers to their own problems – and these solutions are far more creative and effective than anything anyone else could come up with.

Children especially are very creative thinkers, and develop coping and self-soothing skills when allowed to brainstorm their own solutions with your guidance. They do NOT need answers to all their problems; usually children just want a venting session (“I hate math! I’m never going to school again!”) These kinds of statements always sound alarming but when offered a sympathetic ear, the conversation usually end abruptly with a change of subject and an amnesia-like quality of moving on from the problem.

For more information on this technique, check out the cheesy but effective book, “I Don’t Have to Make Everything All Better” by Gary and Joy Lundeberg.

the beautiful lotus usually grows out of muck

When discussing perceived “flaws” in counseling, my clients are often surprised to discover that the very things the dislike about themselves can be reframed as beneficial in some way. Therefore, coming to my office gives a client a chance to see himself from a new perspective. This doesn’t mean they always agree with my viewpoint, but as I’ve mentioned in previous posts, being able to see yourself in a compassionate manner is always the first step towards behavior change.

When seeking out solutions to problems, it is always worth at least noting that most problems have some benefits to them as well. In therapy we call these secondary gains.

Here are some upsides to common complaints brought to individual counseling:

• The Upside of Anger: A client might feel worried that their anger is uncontrollable, but the positive side to feeling anger is just that – the client is actually feeling something and can therefore DO something productive with that anger. Anger can relieve stress and prevent runaway anxiety. Anger gives a therapist a lot of opportunity to help a client.
• The Upside of Loneliness: A client struggling with loneliness has already advanced past many of us who fill our days trying to prevent this feeling; they are experiencing something we fear most. A lonely client seeking companionship has already been figuring out how to structure his day, soothe his quietest moments, and engage in solo activities. Plus, a client who has learned how to live through loneliness can be well prepared to be an independent and self-sufficient partner. A lonely client gives the therapist a chance to help them build his life around his most permanent relationship: the one with himself.
• The Upside of Anxiety: An anxious client wants to soothe the physical feelings that accompany anxiety. What the client doesn’t realize is that the flip side to his anxiety is the concerted effort his brain is making to soothe him. The client is tuned into life and cares about something; otherwise, anxiety would not be present. Therefore, we can reframe anxiety as a normal response to something that has just gotten blown out of proportion. Anxiety is an extreme measure of self-care.
• The Upside of Depression: Clients who have worst-case scenario thoughts about their lives are usually very good at predicting and overcoming potential obstacles. This can turn anxiety and brooding into action, which is empowering. A depressed client always has positive aspects to his life that he has been downplaying or not tapping into. This is one reason why depression is so difficult to tackle without professional help; there are immense blind spots with regards to positive qualities that a therapist can help the client see and use.

Solution-Focused therapy, in my opinion, is better than any other therapy when it comes to helping a client reframe their problems and see opportunity and choice.

Lucky people seem to generate their own good fortune, but it’s not all due to hard or conscientious work. For example, one quality of lucky people is a tendency towards extraversion; they are more likely to have something good happen to them because they encounter more people and tend to be more open to new ideas. Extraversion also tends to go hand-in-hand with less anxiety, anger, and depression.

That idea seems simple enough: the more you put yourself out there, the more likely you are to increase your chances of a fortuitous situation. But two other qualities common in lucky people are being flexible and allowing yourself to stray off-task. Why? Flexible people respond with less rigidity to a situation, which provides more opportunities for solutions and lucky outcomes. Similarly, being overly conscientious can result in missing the point – “losing the forest through the trees,” so to speak. A stubborn focus on a task does not allow us to see hidden opportunities or to catch lucky breaks.

So what is the connection between lucky people and Solution Focused counseling? A solution focused therapist helps the client look for what is going well in life, as well as what is not. The therapist is interested in helping a client apply his own strengths to a situation using flexibility, cognitive re-framing (looking at a problem from a different point of view), and taking the focus off the problem exclusively. Sound familiar? This is the way lucky people approach their lives.

Because Solution Focused therapy isn’t problem-oriented, a client spends much more time examining alternative ideas to nagging issues. This again requires flexibility, for it is not easy to see good fortune or hopeful outcomes in the same area one has failed again and again.

A Solution-Focused therapist is also helping the client become confident in his own strengths and abilities, which gives the client more incentive to say “yes” to a potentially lucky situation. Saying Yes and learning to not live feeling trapped by fear of regret or guilt expands a client’s choices. As we learned above, expanded choices increase luck.

Being guided by a Solution-Focused therapist and experiencing luck does not mean that there will not be obstacles along the way. Again, the solution-focused mindset teaches the client resiliency. Because I believe that a client’s strengths – including those untapped – are greater than his shortcomings, I can help a client rebound from failure. Resiliency is much easier to implement when you believe that more good fortune is just around the corner.

There are 4 steps to a real apology. Practice:

1. State what you did wrong. “I am so sorry I didn’t call you sooner when I knew I would be late.”
2. Accept responsibility. “I should have taken the time to let you know my plans had changed. Because I didn’t, you ended up waiting for 30 minutes, and that is my fault.”
3. Offer an explanation. ** This is NOT your opportunity to make an excuse. Don’t ruin your apology with excuses! You can revisit the other person’s part in the problem at a later time. ** “I got so caught up in my conference call that I didn’t even think to step away.”
4. Show remorse. “So I feel terrible about what happened and want to be sure you know that.”

Here are some things I can tell you about people who make an apology:

• The first person to make an apology almost always comes out as a winner. The bigger and more humble, the better.
• With apologies among a couple, usually one person offers up apologies more readily than the other. This is OK. It is just as important that the receiver recognizes and accepts the apology.
• Separate your apology from your desire to improve the situation for the next time. I know it usually takes two to make something go wrong, but you can create a new, snafu-proof system in a later conversation. Let your apology stand on its own.
• After your apology has been accepted, suggest to the person that “Sometime let’s talk about how we can keep this from happening again. Maybe this weekend we can look at our schedules or figure out a system that works better.”

If you have a partner or a friend who apologies easily, count yourself lucky – accept his or her apology and suggest a later date to review how you can improve the situation, especially if it involves chronic apologies.

In 2009, I set out to find a talented clinician to work with me. I wanted someone who would bring complementary skills and understand the priorities in my practice. I was looking for someone who could:

• Be a down-to-earth person who directly answers clients’ questions, laughs, and gives practical, positive things to think about in session
• Genuinely like my clients and be looking for their strengths while guiding them through their problems
• Be a nerd; that is, attend conferences and stay up-to-date on the newest research in psychology so that we can always give our clients the best and most relevant information possible

Maybe it wouldn’t surprise you to know that a good therapist is hard to find and a good therapist to team up with is even harder. However, I have found an excellent sidekick in Karen Flynn.

Karen specializes in treating couples using the most effective form of couples therapy I believe that we have to date, the Gottman method. What this means to you, to the potential client, is that these therapists are renowned for their work with improving marital stability and divorce prediction, and teach practical skills while restoring relationships.

(I’ve mentioned John Gottman and his research institute before; this is the man featured in Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and author of Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work, Why Marriages Succeed or Fail, and 10 Lessons to Transform Your Marriage).

You don’t have to see Karen for couples therapy, of course. She sees individuals, too. Here are two reasons for now why you might consider calling Karen:

Maybe you are intrigued by the kind of work I do, but since you know me, you wouldn’t be comfortable being my client. Yes, Karen works in my office (as well as a Solano Avenue location) but maintains the privacy of all her clients.

You are interested in the best couples counseling and want to come in right now. I have very few openings in my practice at the moment, especially in the evenings. Karen works first thing in the morning, Thursday evenings and Saturday mornings.

Read more about Karen here.

In addition to teaching clients new skills, sharing important research on their goals and behaviors, and of course providing a listening ear, I think one of the most healing aspects to counseling is the fact that I am not part of the client’s negative view of himself and his failed attempts. Instead, I am an advocate for the strengths related to who they already are.

The trouble with most problems is that we’ve tried to fix them on our own using a critical mindset which results in a repetitive pattern of defeat. Here are some examples:

• A compulsive eater resolves after a binge to do better tomorrow, but not until beating herself up over what she ate today and how she looks and feels. She tells herself, “No more disgusting behavior. You’re fat and need to get it together.”
• A depressed student feels isolated and pessimistic about who he is and his future. He sees other students appear to be social, happy, and successful. He tells himself he cannot turn his situation around until he can feel competent around others. Each urge to join the rest of the world is met by his critic who tells him he’s not good enough to do that yet.
• A mom worries that her son isn’t keeping up with his peers in school or will not make his desired soccer team. Her son otherwise seems well-adjusted, but she tries to support him and prevent him from any disappointment by scheduling sports lessons, extra play dates, and lots of pep talks. The more the mom does, the less she feels he cares and the fewer results she sees.

The problem with our internal critic is that it is usually misguided. We all need a conscience. We need an internal system of regulation to make sure we go to work on time, finish projects and take care of each other and our selves. However, people who are stuck in a problem mindset have been ruminating. This is the tendency to over think problems, and it is at the core of depression and anxiety.
Have you found yourself ruminating on something that bothers you? Of course. But this kind of excessive pursuit of the perfect solution or our “ideal self” leads to dejection. When we are too hard on others, or ourselves it distracts from possible solutions to our problems. We miss what is right in front of our own eyes.

Do This Instead:

• Cultivate self-compassion. If you can’t do it, ask a therapist, friend, or family member for help. Note: this does NOT mean letting yourself “off the hook” for your goals. But in order to achieve any goal, you have to get out of the destructive cycle of self-criticism and dedication to a rigid regimen.
• Remind yourself that humans are malleable. We are the skills that we choose to cultivate. If you are seeking a positive goal by cultivating self-critical skills, you are missing the point.
• Practice gratitude. There are huge amounts of data that show counting your blessings even once a week result in better physical health and more positive relationships. Teach your kids to write in a gratitude journal once a week. Define gratitude simply as “wonder at things that are given to you.”

In therapy, I treat individual anger by helping to “clean up” the emotions surrounding it. We first deal with the “meta emotion” – essentially the feeling about the feeling. How do you feel about being angry?

When feeling anger, people also often feel:

• stressed out or confused
• mad at themselves, guilty
• embarrassed

As with most negative emotions, a little of it is not a problem, especially if you are using anger productively.

How can you do that?

1. Anger is first felt physically. If you have issues controlling your anger, pay attention to your body and notice how it “buzzes” to attention and becomes angry before your mind does.
2. Once you notice the physical symptoms, you learn to train your body to calm down so that rational thought can proceed. The research shows marked cognitive decline when you pulse rises above 100 due to agitation. So remind yourself that you can’t think properly until you calm yourself down.
3. Train yourself to be calm by focusing on your breath, or using a mantra to talk yourself down. A reassuring sentence like “I will be understood” or “I am in control of myself” can help, but make it personal to you.
4. Seek support from those close to you for help monitoring anger. Ask them to tell you when they perceive you to be angry, and help you communicate your feelings so that you can be understood without escalating tension.
5. Work to understand some of your trigger feelings about anger, and learn how to manage those. Some people might always make you angry. Can you develop a different belief about them to avoid inflaming your anger? Can you avoid activities that escalate your anger (perhaps golf or traffic?) until you understand yourself better?

If someone has told you that they think you have a problem with anger, do yourself a favor and get help. Anger leads to physical health problems and is very treatable.