There is a particular kind of lie we tell that I\u2019d like to try and explain today; it pops up more frequently than you might think and it can seriously stall psychotherapy, and life.<\/p>\n
Jonathan is very successful realtor who came to see me because of chronic depression, substance abuse, and self-loathing.\u00a0 He despaired because he had been in treatment for many years and felt stalled.\u00a0 He felt crippled by shyness, social anxiety, and loneliness (although he was very adept at handling all the social requirements of selling real estate).\u00a0 He was very polite, sweet, and superficially responsive to treatment, but again seemed to despair of ever moving forward, ever feeling better.<\/p>\n
One day a source of his ongoing problems revealed itself the most trivial of complaints.\u00a0 He was describing his \u201cdepression\u201d and listed his symptoms.\u00a0 Among them was a lack of motivation to do his laundry and food shopping, something many of us suffer, depressed or not.\u00a0 I sensed something in his tone and suggested he seemed to be having a tantrum.<\/p>\n
He was surprised, but tried on the idea and realized that in fact he was.\u00a0 His problem has a very simple solution here in New York City, but he couldn\u2019t see it because in fact he didn\u2019t want to solve it; he wanted to complain.\u00a0 Otherwise, he would have come up with the solution that I did: \u00a0Fresh Direct.\u00a0 As I said, he was a very successful businessman and certainly could afford it.<\/p>\n
Jonathan didn\u2019t think of this solution because just underneath his words was something quite different.\u00a0 \u00a0He was shouting \u201cno\u201d to his symptoms, to his priorities and feelings \u2013 the fact that he would rather not go shopping \u2013 to everything.\u00a0 By the end of our session he realized that in fact he was in the same state as a small child who is told it\u2019s time for bed and begins tantruming because he simply doesn\u2019t want that to be true.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s not talked about much for some reason, but Jonathan illustrates here something that is quite common in life and in psychotherapy.<\/p>\n
Hank’s girlfriend \u00a0struggled with, from all descriptions, borderline personality problems. \u00a0She was stuck and had been for decades, and Hank could not see why because she seemed so insightful. \u00a0 \u201cShe gets so upset with herself” he would tell\u00a0me, “admits that she gets irrational and messes up our relationship, and\u00a0she\u2019s even started therapy, but it just keeps happening; same arguments, same nuttiness.\u201d\u00a0 The answer was that his girlfriend\u2019s protestations of having fouled up another moment in their relationship were in fact tantrums.\u00a0 Like Jonathan, on the surface she wanted to work on herself; underneath was a different reality.\u00a0 Out loud she said \u2013 and probably meant it in the moment \u2013 \u201cI\u2019m sorry I acted up, I don\u2019t know why I get so crazy\u201d; underneath she was shouting \u201cI can\u2019t do anything right, everything stinks, I quit, leave me alone\u201d.<\/p>\n
This is a child\u2019s tantrum.\u00a0 Children do not tantrum and then address their problems.\u00a0 They scream at the universe in undifferentiated rage, demanding that it be different.\u00a0 This is what Hank\u2019s girlfriend was doing, and it\u2019s what Jonathan was doing.<\/p>\n
Jennifer was an attorney I saw for several years.\u00a0 On the surface she functioned quite well.\u00a0 Like Jonathan she struggled with a great deal of self-loathing, self-doubt, and despair, despite being quite the powerhouse at her job.\u00a0 During our sessions she was frequently breezy in her dismissal of almost anything we talked about.\u00a0 She might mention a problem but then would quickly laugh it off.\u00a0 On the other hand, when I got her to stay with any topic for more than a few minutes, she would often weep rather persistently, sometimes intensely.\u00a0 What was striking about her tears was the equal persistence with which she wiped them away.\u00a0 I used to worry that she would scrape away a layer of skin with all of the wiping she did.<\/p>\n
Gradually she, too, made a breakthrough in treatment when she realized that the wiping away of her tears was not just a physical behavior but a manifestation of her dismissal of \u2013 wiping away of \u2013 herself.\u00a0 That persistent wiping of her tears was part of her more general style of wiping away her pain, of saying \u201cno\u201d to symptoms, her problems, in fact to herself and her life.\u00a0 Jennifer came from a markedly neglectful family \u2013 they breezily dismissed her when she was a child and she continued as an adult doing it to herself, unconsciously.<\/p>\n
Underneath Jennifer’s\u00a0dismissal lay the tantrum. \u00a0She\u00a0was\u00a0disgusted with\u00a0herself for needing anything from her boyfriend or boss or long ago from her\u00a0feckless and neglectful parents; she raged at others (not out loud)\u00a0for failing to provide for those needs she tried to deny; and all of this was pushed out of consciousness, in part by that breezy dismissal. \u00a0If you sat with her in session you might\u00a0be able to sense all these dynamics,\u00a0but it took a long time for Jennifer to see;\u00a0because of these layers of lies, the surface of which was the dismissal of everything as trivial or “stupid” she dismissed any exploration of what she was doing in session, and in her life.<\/p>\n
So at the same time she was trying to laugh off her feelings and complaints of being hurt by anyone, she would weep persistently, yet again at the same time would vigorously wipe away the tears and fall\u00a0silent; our conversations would often stop dead once the tears came and she\u2019d even look vacantly away from me at such times, as if her mind were miles away.\u00a0 Then when she did talk it was again to change the subject, crack a joke, or otherwise trivialize what had just happened to her.\u00a0 Meanwhile\u00a0of course\u00a0her therapy stalled.<\/p>\n
(You may recognize in Jennifer’s breezy dismissals\u00a0another frequent lie about which I’ve written before. \u00a0You can find it\u00a0in the book<\/a>\u00a0I recently published, early on in the free sample they give you on Amazon. \u00a0Look for the cases\u00a0of Bully and Sandra, although many others later in the book (in the parts you’ll have to buy as they come after the free sample portion) also illustrate it.)<\/p>\n James, too, was stalled in his treatment and often thought of quitting.\u00a0 When he found himself enjoying Central Park one day during a break from work he immediately turned this pleasure into self-loathing.\u00a0 A voice in his head shouted at him \u201cyou should have moved to Manhattan all those years ago, you shouldn\u2019t be living where you are, you shouldn\u2019t be working where you are, you never do anything right\u201d and so on and on.\u00a0 This was genuinely painful to him, but he only got past it when he realized that there was another voice underneath this one.\u00a0 That voice, as he was able to learn from my confronting him a bit \u2013 well more than a bit \u2013 was saying \u201cI can\u2019t do anything right so I quit; everything stinks; I\u2019m gonna get drunk\u201d, which he often did.\u00a0 He had to realize that this voice was present as well as the first one, that he was in the process screaming \u201cno\u201d at himself and at his problems, and thus that his constant self-flagellation was itself a stall.\u00a0 Then his therapy moved again.<\/p>\n I\u2019ve described often in these entries, in the book<\/a>, and in the website<\/a>\u00a0how this realization \u2013 the exposing of the lie \u2013 starts the healing, the change.\u00a0 Suddenly James sat up with some energy and direction, his natural intelligence finally able to mobilize; over the next weeks he began to make decisions and to look at his life more calmly and realistically.\u00a0 Similarly, when Jonathan realized he was tantrumming \u2013 saying \u201cno!\u201d to everything and everyone \u2013 then his natural brains kicked in and he decided not to bother grocery shopping but to have Fresh Direct do the work for him.<\/p>\n James was earlier in the process than Jonathan and no easy solution was available to the obsessive self-loathing and tantrumming that happened in the park.\u00a0 Instead, he began to remember where that voice came from, how persistent it had always been, and how uselessly destructive.\u00a0 He found himself remembering his family shaming him as a young teen for going to movies alone; finally he began to notice, \u201chow arbitrary and unwarranted a judgment they made and I accepted! I had friends and a social life, so why can\u2019t I go alone if I want?\u00a0 What\u2019s wrong with that?\u201d\u00a0 He remembered how angry and hurt he\u2019d been because of being made to feel like some kind of lowly reject for such a silly reason.\u00a0 Of course it was this feeling that resurfaced that day in Central Park, as it did so often for him, but this time he caught it.\u00a0 He caught the lie he was listening to, and gradually started saying \u201cno\u201d to it<\/span> instead of to himself.\u00a0\u00a0 (Less consumed with self-loathing, with tantrumming on top of the self-loathing, and simply with tension, James\u2019 love life unsurprisingly also improved shortly after these sessions.)<\/p>\n When each of these people was able to see that they were lying to themselves with this \u201cno\u201d, that on the surface they may have been thinking \u201cI want to get better, I want to get better\u201d but just beneath were screaming \u201cno! I hate you all!\u201d, that\u2019s when they began to move.\u00a0 When Jonathan saw that he was tantruming, it was he who came up with the idea ordering groceries.\u00a0 When Jennifer saw that she was constantly turning away from the very problems she consulted me about, that\u2019s when she began to actually discuss what hurts instead of going silent or complaining that the pain was pointless, irrational, \u201cstupid\u201d; that was when she began to make changes in her life, to handle her boyfriend and boss better instead of stewing in immobility waiting for them to change, to structure her time more realistically for herself.\u00a0 And when James stopped stomping around and berating himself, that was when he began to actually consider what his real interests were, what he really wanted, what he needed, and whether he had in fact made a mistake in any of his life choices in the past.\u00a0 And it was soon after this he cut back drastically on his alcohol consumption, began to address seriously his career path, and started setting limits with his very intrusive and negative siblings.<\/p>\n This tantrum \u2013 this \u201cno\u201d \u2013 is a lie because the person does not acknowledge they’re doing it.\u00a0 When the lie\u00a0is exposed, then the healing can begin.\u00a0 Until then, the tantrummer seems to be making efforts to help himself but is really doing quite the opposite.<\/p>\n You can\u2019t move forward until you catch where you\u2019re lying to yourself. \u00a0And it’s only then that, like Jennifer and James, you can catch the lies you’ve been told and swallowed whole.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" There is a particular kind of lie we tell that I\u2019d like to try and explain today; it pops up more frequently than you might think and it can seriously stall psychotherapy, and life. Jonathan is very successful realtor who … Continue reading