Gathering Data

As we keep hearing, we live in an age of information overload. We try to keep up, but it is mostly sound bites and distillations of abridged versions of secondhand reports of some kind of really really serious scientific research somewhere. We quote the report and the findings as well as we can remember it from the magazine or newspaper that distilled it for us. We want to be up to date and we want to absorb what is important.

The problem is, as we know, “findings” are a lot more complicated than that. Studies are reported, retracted, altered, and abridged. Even very solid research is difficult to replicate over time, and findings we thought were solid turn out to be questionable. We turn to the experts to tell us what to think about complex issues.

It is important to get expert opinion, but it is also important to respect our own values, views, and common sense. Taking care of ourselves and the people we care about is our own responsibility and the data we gather to inform those caregiving choices cannot provide the ultimate answers. We still need to sift through it, think about it, and come to our own conclusions.

It has often been the case in the past that the most widely accepted views turn out to be wrong-headed. We have to be open not only to the accepted views, but to the dissenting voices. Should we take vitamin E? At first it was yes. Then it was no. Then it was maybe.

When we think about human behavior the situation becomes even more complex. Understanding and interrupting self destructive behaviors such as addictions, alcoholism,  and eating disorders are evolving practices and require careful, thoughtful consideration. The more subtle forms of unhappiness can be even more elusive targets of investigation.

When an expert gives an opinion, it is his or her responsibility to report on what he or she knows from education, ongoing study, and experience in the field. When that expert expresses an unalterable certainty, however, it may be necessary to step back and think it over. We cannot abdicate our responsibility for our decisions however much someone else wants to take over and however much we want to be relieved of the responsibility for our choices.

The Inner No

Saying no is an interesting sort of movement. It is a change of direction, a change of attention, or a change of mind. Saying no is interrupting the familiar flow, leaving a comfort zone, risking a disconnection. Sometimes we think of no as a negative, or a problem. As if every different opinion is evidence of a conflict. We have a problem with no. We like yes better.

Saying yes continues us in the direction we are going. It endorses the current reality and promotes the familiar. The yeses are consolidating and the noes are catalysing. We need them both.

Often we have to say no to people who want more from us than we are willing to give. No to directions in our lives that are not helpful or healthy. No to our children when they are wanting things that are bad for them. No to our work when it tries to take over our lives. We have to be ready to say no to the outside world when it makes demands or intrusions that are unhealthy for us.

As our development expands, we become aware of the many voices we have inside of ourselves as well. The wishes, fears, motivations, and interpretations that are generated nonstop. The understanding of ourselves in the world that we have come to by a combination of learning and discovery. We become aware that there is an inner chorus of different voices and understandings. We see that we can be at times kind and at times thoughtless. At times clever and at times vague. At times perceptive and at times disconnected.

Some of what our minds generates matches what we really believe and what is really good for us and some of it doesn’t. We arrive at a place where we recognize inner experience that we know is distorted or creating unnecessary pain for us and we can say no to believing in that reality.

An example will help. Suppose I have been friends with someone for many years. She is overall a good friend, although she has her off moments. (Of course I am ignoring the fact that I have my off moments, too.) We agree to meet for lunch. She forgets. My mind, in the face of that loss, begins to make a lot of noise: “She is so selfish. She probably got a better offer. She is always dropping the ball…” And so on. This is my mind trying to deal with the loss. But it has some counterproductive directions. There is a me in me who knows that. This other self–perhaps we can call it the grown-up–begins to generate other thoughts: “She is generally reliable. She is well intentioned. Anyone can make a mistake. Actually, I, myself, have been known to make mistakes…” And so on. This is the earned, chosen part of my mind saying no to the automatic, habitual part of my mind. It is me saying no to me: An inner no.

When we feel solid and we have worked toward maturity, we develop the capacity to generate an inner no. We choose what parts of our inner interpretation of reality we are going to listen to and believe–and live by. And we have compassion and acceptance for the other internal views and other voices that get generated based on our experiences and our fears. It is a wonderful feat of caring for ourselves, and it frees us to enjoy our time on this planet.

Therapy Increases Brain Synapses

Because of the tremendous leap in brain research and technologies that facilitate brain research, we are finding out more and more about how our brains operate. One of the findings is that learning actually increases the synapses in the brain. The synapses are the spaces between brain cells that are close to each other. Synapses are the spaces across which brain cells communicate by chemical or electrical means to create a circuit of information. When we say that more synapses are created, or that the existing synapses become more effective, what we mean is that our brain cells have more and better ways of communicating with each other. And so more information can be sent down more different kinds of channels, which then leads to new and different ways of processing that information–knowing things and creating ways of thinking about things. We can continue learning throughout our lives, stimulating our existing synapses, creating new ones, and maintaining the flexibility of our brain’s capacities.

Because psychotherapy is like learning and because psychotherapy offers us new ways of understanding ourselves in our worlds, it is another avenue of growth and development for our brains and therefore our minds. We challenge our own assumptions, struggle with our familiar patterns of relating, and see the world in new ways. The discomfort is due to the departure from the familiar, and it is just this fact of leaving our comfort zone that forces our brains and our minds to create new pathways of processing and understanding our experience.

In other words, just because it is uncomfortable, does not mean it is bad for you. There is a world of difference between constructive discomfort, like moderate exercise, and destructive discomfort, like overdoing a workout. It is that sweet spot in the middle that leads to the most helpful change, and we come to it by a sort of improv. Sometimes we do a little too much exploring and growing , and then we need a rest, and sometimes we do too little, and then we begin to feel stagnant. Overall, though, it’s nice to know our efforts are having real effects.

We Are Growing

Really, over a lifetime, people continue to learn and grow. We understand this now. We used to think people’s brains developed until adulthood and then just stayed the same. We know better now. We are growing throughout our lives. We are learning new things, creating new brain pathways and new brain cells.

Sometimes we may feel that we would like everything to be settled and under control, but life does not work that way. We would like to predict the future, but the future is not yet formed. We will make choices and out of those choices, the future will evolve. Each choice we make alters everything that comes after it.

It can be a little scary floating around in the world with no certainty. We are responsible for our lives, but not entirely in control of them. Things happen. We have to adjust. There are limits on our choices. We have to accept them. We can get frustrated, disappointed, despairing. We can feel helpless or, worse, worthless.

What we can control, what we are in charge of, is our minds. We are in charge of what directions we choose to follow in developing ourselves and our views of the world. We may feel strong emotions, but we choose whether to take them as a serious reflection of a real world or whether we understand them as products of our minds which have a function.

Despair is an attempt by our minds to avoid disappointment: if you do not hope for anything, if you give up wanting a better future, you will not be disappointed. Disappointment is an attempt by our minds to respect our own desires: if you experience something that is less that you wanted, you can tell yourself you should not have wanted that or you can tell yourself it was okay to want that, and it’s terrible you didn’t get it. That’s disappointment. Rage is our way of saying we matter in the world: We are angry because we are not seen and respected.

All of the experiences of reality that are interpreted by our minds have a basis in our past experiences and our efforts to take care of ourselves in an uncertain world. But just as your mind is trying to take care of you, you can take care of your mind. You can recognize the sound basis in history for your unique reactions to the world, while at the same time deciding whether to accept them as reality. Each choice creates your future experience. The more you go down one path, the stronger that path becomes and the easier it is to follow. So if you feel despairing and you accept that view of the world, increasingly it becomes a stronger inner voice, and it becomes easier to choose.

We are not in direct contact with the real world. All of our experience is mediated through our unique sensory processes and our unique histories. There is a lot of room for interpretation. Our minds absorb this continual stream of information and experience and decide what each thing means, what to do about it, and how to feel about it. There are good reasons for our personal points of view, but they can be reflectively considered and changed or discarded if they are no longer helpful or accurate. We are continually learning, growing, and re-interpreting our worlds.

Psychological Inquiry

While there is a view of psychotherapy that applies a medical model (dysfunction and repair), there is also a view that sees psychotherapy as a type of psychological inquiry. The idea is that asking questions of ourselves and coming to a deeper understanding of our own psychological dynamic and our view of the world will lead to a better quality of life.

Coming to know oneself deeply is a common human aspiration, and there are many avenues by which we pursue this goal. Most of the time, people think of psychotherapy as a way to deal with unwanted feelings, dysfunctional behavior patterns, and relationship problems. And those challenging aspects of life are very well addressed in a psychotherapy relationship. Often what happens, though, is that we discover parts of ourselves, our world views, and our ways of being in the world and with other people that are subtly and invisibly contributing to our problems.

This is where the two views of psychotherapy come together. Yes we are fixing something that is not the way we want it. At the same time, part of how we do that, and how we make sure we don’t create similar problems later, is by discovering who we are at a deeper level. By discovering our own complex internal meaning structures, we can make free choices about what we want to stick with and what we want to let go of.

Fundamentally, psychotherapy is about growth, but the activity is inquiry: asking questions of ourselves, trying to know what is really happening inside of us, and freeing ourselves from unwanted and unseen obstacles to our being the people we are freely choosing to be. Building happens, positive thinking happens, pain relief happens. But these are consequences of something more subtle and deeper. We are trying to uncover our own inner motivations and to learn to accept and regulate them.

Your Mind is an Ally

Even when our minds are making decisions and choices that seem destructive or counter to our own best interests, they are trying to take care of us and maintain an inner stability. Our minds absorb an enormous amount of input in the form of sensory perceptions. These are then organized and interpreted with the goal of providing a reasonable picture of reality and a prediction of what is going to happen next. Based on that prediction, we make choices in an effort to regulate our bodies and our experience, and in order to strengthen our capacities to function and succeed in our lives.

Our minds are doing what they think is best for us: trying to ensure our future safety and happiness. Of course they can only do what they have learned to do; they can only understand reality in the ways they have been taught to understand reality; and they can only generate choices based on how they have learned to deal with reality. Sometimes we exercise good judgement, mature self-regulation, and optimal caregiving and self-caregiving.

And then, sometimes our perceptions are accurate, but our interpretations of them are off kilter. Sometimes our interpretations are accurate but our understanding of what they mean is not accurate. And sometimes the ways we have learned to strategize and cope with what we understand is either limited or unskillful. Then we inadvertently create trouble for ourselves, or we fail to achieve the levels of happiness and competence that are possible. We might not even know what we are missing.

Our minds are our allies. They are trying to take care of us. And we take care of our  minds by learning, relating with other people, reflecting on our own inner process, and trying out different ways of being. We are always learning, always developing, and always in flux. When we can see that, and keep it in mind, we can correct our distortions, heal our wounds, and build our competencies.

Complexity

Most of the time, our brains like to understand things by analogy—comparing them to something we already know—and by reducing them to seven steps or 3 factors or some kind of manageable number of things to think about. The problem with this method of knowing is that it causes us to think we understand when the situation is much more complex.

For example, media stories, and even some real human beings, like to view psychological distress from a “medical model” perspective: “If something’s broke, fix it.” While this tends to work moderately well in physiological terms, the mind is a much more complex entity than the body. Viewing life problems as “just like a broken leg,” or even, “just like diabetes”(which by the way is an incredibly complex syndrome), gives us the impression that we can look at psychotherapy just like medical treatment.

While this view arises partly from the structure of reimbursement through insurance payment, it gives rise to some serious problems and misunderstandings. First of all, a person has to accept that they are “broken” in order to deserve psychological therapy. Second, it implies that psychological distress is caused by one thing, which, if alleviated, will eliminate the distress. And third, interventions become mechanistic and disembodied to the point that we need “evidence” and “accountability” to make sure no one is getting away with anything.

In fact, most of the time, when someone comes into my office, they do identify a problem. A woman might say, “I’m trying to figure out whether to divorce my husband.” In her mind, she has identified a concrete question, and she just wants to figure out the answer. Most of the time, the initial question is rather easily answered. But with some thoughtful attention, what unfolds is a much more complex situation. What are her assumptions about marriage and about what her husband should be doing? What are his assumptions? Is she comfortable with the deep intimacy marriage entails? Is he?

After the initial question is answered, it becomes a matter of whether that person would like to pursue a deeper connection with him or herself and construct a more optimal life, one that will resonate with his or her deepest ideals. For most people, one answer is enough. It is difficult, time consuming, and costly to insist on doing the best you can do, in any arena. In the extremely complex universe of one’s own inner world, we cannot rely on external measures, other people’s opinions, or theoretical structures. Finally we have to trust our own evaluation of whether a deep relationship with a committed and caring person can help us discover new territory, claim it as our own, and inhabit it with joy. How is that for an analogy?

Partial Agency

So. Previously I wrote about our responsibility in our lives and how difficult it is to accept that responsibility. We make choices based on our best guesses, the information we can gather, and our own ideals. We are responsible for making the most careful decisions we can. We are agents in charge of our lives.

At the same time, there is much that happens that is outside of our control. Circumstances change; outside events interfere; we can only ever achieve an incomplete understanding of the bases of our choices. In other words, we cannot be completely responsible for outcomes. We can be responsible for how we deal with our lives, for how we make our choices, and for how much effort we put into any direction. But, ultimately, we cannot insure we will have the outcomes we want.

Part of maturing as a person is being able to continue to put our greatest effort in the directions that are most important to us, even while we realize everything may not come out the way we want it to. We learn to recognize what we can control, what parts of our lives are regulated by our own agency, and what we have to accept as outside our control.

Fundamentally, we have to be consonant with what we believe to be the best choices in the moment while recognizing we cannot be sure of the outcomes of our efforts. This balance between responsibility and acceptance is one of the ongoing refinements we make as we become grown-ups in the world.

Responsibility is Hard to Bear

It is difficult to sit still and accept responsibility for anything really, but the fact is, we are responsible for our thoughts, our feelings and our behaviors. Much of psychotherapy is an attempt to get people to stop blaming themselves, criticizing themselves, and being enraged with themselves. We try to help people feel “I’m okay, you’re okay.” And that is important. Many people have learned to direct an avalanche of negative responses toward themselves internally. These responses are not accurate, and they are not helpful.

Sometimes we can overcorrect, however. We have to distinguish between responsibility as a causal agent and responsibility as a repair agent first of all. Even though our internal world is largely learned early in life, and therefore we did not cause the internal pain we experience, as adults, we are charged with making the most of the life and circumstances we have been given. We are responsible for forming our lives, making choices, and healing what we can heal within ourselves. It is not fair, but it is reality.

And, further, we are responsible for choosing which parts of what our minds generate we are going to accept, amplify, focus on, and act on. We have a smorgasbord of inner experience and we choose what part of that experience we believe to be true and act on. We need not prevent negative thoughts and experience. We need only be observant about thoughts and feelings as manufactured responses to external and internal experience. What we choose to believe and live within is the reality that defines us.

For example, if I think that every person is basically selfish and isolated, that reality will affect how I interact with other people, and I will reinforce that belief with evidence from my life. If I believe everyone is basically kind and good, that reality will form my experience. At some point, I am going to have to develop a way of understanding my life that is as accurate as possible while contributing to growth and development for me. It is not helpful to be naively optimistic without an awareness of the complex reality of the world. At the same time, if I am overly fearful and protective, I will limit my own growth.

We are responsible. We are in the world, in the community, and in the families we are in. We have an impact. We choose directions for our inner self. Even not choosing becomes a choice by default. We cannot opt out of having a place in the world. We are afraid of hurting other people, causing damage. We are afraid of not measuring up, not performing, not excelling, not delivering. We don’t want to be judged and found inadequate. The thing is, we didn’t cause all these problems, but we are responsible for living with integrity, owning our full selves and our impacts, and making choices, however difficult and uncertain they may be.

The Sound of Agitation

In the movie “Immortal Beloved,” about the life of Beethoven, the composer is describing a piece of his music. He is talking about a young man going to see his love, and being hampered by the weather. He says, “That music is the sound of his agitation.” It is a wonderful moment in the movie. What he is talking about is wanting something and encountering an obstacle and feeling agitation at being delayed. The agitation amplifies the motivation.

In the same way, living beings have an inborn motivation toward growth. They are hard-wired to seek the best possible expression of their potential. Flowers want to bloom, fish want to swim, people want to be the best person that they can be. The motivation is given. But sometimes living beings run into obstacles. In the case of flowers, concrete. In the case of fish, predators. And in the case of people, internal limitations based on how they have learned to view the world and themselves.

The obstacles create frustration: Agitation. And that agitation can be the energy that informs a greater effort or it can be the brick wall that prevents further growth. The thing is, the flower breaks through the concrete. The fish swims faster. And lots of times the person ducks, avoids the obstacles, tries to go the other way, gets self-destructive. But fundamentally, that motivation to be the real me tends to keep coming up and keep insisting on expressing itself. Often we do not even know why we are agitated. We are just uncomfortable, unhappy or undirected. We thrash around, trying one thing and another. We look for easy answers, quick fixes, facile tricks. We want someone to rescue us, to tell us what to do, what to believe in. It helps a little. We learn a few things.

Ultimately we begin to get acquainted with ourselves. Not the selves we are supposed to be but the selves we really are. We notice what is working and what is not working. What fits us as we are and what doesn’t fit. We lurch and halt and argue and complain the whole way. It’s too hard. It’s not making any difference. It’s stupid. But we can’t stop trying to be happier. Not just a good mood happy, but a deep happy, like we belong in the world. It’s the agitation. It won’t allow us to stop.