Perhaps the greatest clich\u00e9 about psychotherapy is the bald bearded bespectacled listener with his notepad asking “and how does this make you feel?”\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard the world respond “Why does it matter?\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 Why dwell on your feelings?\u00a0 Why focus on the bad things?”\u00a0 Fair questions.<\/p>\n
Certainly there are times to move, when stopping to notice what’s happening to you could be detrimental.\u00a0 In the recent film “Beasts of the Southern Wild” a schoolteacher in a desperately poor area counsels her charges not to waste time whining “like a pussy”.\u00a0 Perhaps that\u2019s true when survival is fragile.\u00a0 People who went through combat or emergency situations have said that the farthest thing from their minds at the time was what was actually happening around and inside them.\u00a0 Rather they focused almost entirely on the next necessary step or on those they wanted to save.\u00a0 My father grew up poor, Jewish in an anti-Semitic society, with no welfare, unemployment benefits, or other safety net.\u00a0 His parents and grandmother died when he was young, some other relatives rejected him because of various family politics and prejudices, so he was on his own in ways my generation usually wasn\u2019t.\u00a0 He and his cohort survived, thrived, fought World War II, built the suburbs, and gave us our in some ways much safer life.<\/p>\n
But even my father eventually went to a therapist.\u00a0 And once there he too was asked that incessant question:\u00a0 \u201cand how did that make you feel?”\u00a0 The case below illustrates why.<\/p>\n
Alice is 61, divorced a year ago, and dating a successful divorced man with two somewhat difficult children.\u00a0 The younger is in the throes of adolescence, still reacting to the separation, moody, sometimes engaging and other times maddeningly remote; she is leaving for college very soon.\u00a0 The boy is 20 years old and suffers from more serious problems.\u00a0 He is socially very awkward, has withdrawn totally from both parents for a year at a time, and has only recently resumed a relationship with his father.\u00a0 This summer Alice helped with Fourth of July celebrations for her boyfriend, his children, and their respective partners, contributing heroically at times, occasionally sulking about feeling marginalized.\u00a0 The boyfriend becomes a bit frantic over his limited contact with his children, and sometimes \u2013 quite reasonably to my ears \u2013 puts plans with Alice on hold as he waits to hear from his children; he has told her on occasion that he wants to be alone with them on certain weekends.<\/p>\n
A year ago, Alice would have \u2013 and did with other men she was dating \u2013 sulked, “snipped and snapped”, and seethed over such perceived slights for weeks.\u00a0 She would struggle with very limited success to distract herself, during our sessions would explain to me that she \u201cof course\u201d understood her boyfriends\u2019 agendas and it was \u201cof course\u201d fair and \u201cI don\u2019t mean to complain\u201d,\u2026, but it all rang hollow.\u00a0 She never really believed any of it, and outside our sessions her tension, preoccupation, unhappiness, and persistent sniping were proof that she was trapped by patterns she could not identify and break.\u00a0 As I explain in more detail in the website \u2013 see the \u201cWhy Go<\/a>\u201d page \u2013 she was \u201clost or stuck\u201d.<\/p>\n Now, however, Alice is much more aware of what goes on inside her.\u00a0 Rather than get stuck in the dead-end of resentment and road rage \u2013 feelings she could never discharge \u2013 she has learned that a very painful feeling of being \u201cleft out\u201d is what gets triggered by even minor frustrations; it is this experience she is trying to undo with all the seething, complaining (then trying not to complain, as described in the last paragraph), ruminating.\u00a0 When she hits in session upon that experience of being left out, she is often suddenly reminded of some event from her childhood where the pain was similar \u2013 but the cause more severe.<\/p>\n And the result is almost magic.\u00a0 Although it took time, now her boyfriend\u2019s behavior has faded in importance, she is calmer, she sees his own limits as he struggles to deal with his children, she is more forgiving of both him and herself, her sulking passes more quickly into genuine grieving which itself does not last as long, she no longer badgers her boyfriend to understand her needs precisely when he is in the throes of his own anxieties \u2013 a very self-destructive habit \u2013 and she even laughs at the “bottomless pit of narcissism” to which she can sometimes sink.<\/p>\n Then she asks herself, much more calmly and with a far greater range of options, what she would like to do next.\u00a0 Her choices include that she may complain articulately \u2013 in a way that might actually make her boyfriend more sensitive; she can set limits, in hopes of changing the tone of their interactions; she has already begun to attend more to other ways of addressing her own neediness as opposed to waiting for validation and reassurance from others; she might decide upon reflection that it is futile to try and reach this particular man and thus might end the relationship because it is so unsatisfying to her; she might decide to stick it out and see if he is more attentive after his children go back to school.<\/p>\n Most important, regardless of what she decides to do about her boyfriend, she can cease shouting at the universe to change.\u00a0 Alice’s old habit was to sulk, resent, badger, and “snip”, and no matter what she told herself in calmer moments, she couldn\u2019t really stop once she felt slighted.\u00a0 The result of such behavior is of course to destroy the relationships she was trying to create.<\/p>\n So that is why we are always asking patients in some way what they really feel.\u00a0 Notice, however, that \u201cwhat are you feeling?\u201d must go beyond the immediate, obvious answer \u2013 \u201cfrustrated\u201d or \u201cstressed\u201d or \u201cpissed off\u201d, or even \u201csad\u201d.\u00a0 How we get to those more central and productive feelings is far beyond what we can cover here but I discuss it in the website<\/a> and I will try to also provide examples in future blog postings.\u00a0 The point of this entry is to illustrate that when you are not aware of what\u2019s really going on with you, it controls you and you see few or no choices.\u00a0 By contrast, when you are<\/span> aware \u2013 again beyond the superficial \u2013 the world opens up; you can choose from a much wider range of responses, you feel better, and you end up living better.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Perhaps the greatest clich\u00e9 about psychotherapy is the bald bearded bespectacled listener with his notepad asking “and how does this make you feel?”\u00a0 I\u2019ve heard the world respond “Why does it matter?\u00a0 Who cares?\u00a0 Why dwell on your feelings?\u00a0 Why … Continue reading