I tried

Someone wanted to meet with me for counseling.

They wanted to use insurance.

I called the number that appears on the back of their insurance card, to determine their benefits that relate to meeting with me for counseling services.  I found myself going around and around with the automated morass of the phone tree, and then was prompted to enter my FAX number, after which I was emailed an electronic FAX, which contained – in a not-so-obvious spot on the page, and in a not so obvious font size – a secret code to punch in, to connect me to an actual live representative, who I thought would have the answer to my questions, but whose department did not actually have the information I needed, so the representative had to transfer me to another department, for which she also provided a different “direct” phone line, after which I was promptly put on hold, and after which I waited, and after which I waited longer, until eventually, after 20 minutes, a recording came on to announce to me that there was too much call volume to take my call.

So, I wrote to the person and expressed grief that the managed care system which they are wishing to use is unfortunately not functionally in alignment with my current administrative practices.

I referred them to seek other counselors who might have sufficient resources such as hired clerical staff to attend to these sorts of matters.

This is a predicament for everyone involved.

This experience points to interesting concerns, like how we wish or chose to spend our time (whether on administrative tasks, or on face-to-face counseling, or on other things such as gardening or cooking or chess), mortality (the context of the finitude of our time here on earth), limits (what we’re ok with or not), and the existential sense of choice.

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Marriage means different things to different people

Here are some voices.

Look them over and see if they resonate with you:

• Susan Pease Gadoua (author of The New “I Do”) – When we think of marriages we think of certain models.  Like the societal structure that prescribes how property is inherited; or a co-housing model; or a co-parenting arrangement; or a faith sort of program that says you stay together no matter what. Instead, consider thinking outside the box; co-create your own meaningful arrangement based on whatever works for you both.
• Rita Rudner (comedian) –  When I meet a guy, the first question I ask myself is: “Is this the man I want my children to spend their weekends with?”

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Reminds me of four things.

One of them is a lovely poem called A History of Everything, Including You, by Jenny Hollowell. Taking a cue from the poem, maybe we should just blame “some caveman’s emotionally-unavailable parents.”

A second one is Tony Robbins who demands that if we’re gonna blame, we have to blame consciously. Which means we have to blame not only for the bad, but for the good as well. For example, for the ways in which we grew as a result of whatever stuff we suffered through.

The third is something Hara Estroff-Marano coaches her readers to do, in a column from August 2020 in PsychologyToday. She writes, “Here’s the catch, though. Once you get to adulthood, you’re in charge of yourself. You can finish the job your parents botched and learn how to make friends.”

And finally there’s the quote from John Muir, the environmentalist, who wrote, “When we try to pick out anything by itself, we find it hitched to everything else in the Universe.”

When you see the interconnectedness of everything, even our sense of identity becomes blurred. And blame becomes moot.

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What does it mean that relationships take work?

People say it over and over as if it’s a truism, like something your mother would say.  But earlier this year I did a workshop where the presenter (Kate McNulty) talked about dating and sexuality for people said by some to be “on the spectrum.”  She questioned it outright.  She was also concerned about how that admonition can be daunting for someone who just wants to have some companionship.

I forget the book, but in the beginning was a description of an experience the narrator had when he encountered a young hippie hetero couple.   Either he picked them up hitchhiking, or maybe he was the one who was hitchhiking, it doesn’t matter.  What struck him was how lighthearted they both were about the journey of life.  I forget how but somehow this got tied into Eastern spiritual perspective and practice.

I know that some couples trigger the heck out of each other and have a heck of a time trying to converse.   But personally, I don’t think relationships have to be hard.  Why can’t people just enjoy each other?

If there is work to be done, what exactly is the work to be done?

Is the work really like some sort of meditation practice?  The practice of bringing (or dragging) yourself from the past to the present?  The practice of seeing your partner in the present instead of seeing all the past crappy ways you have been wronged by your partner?  Stepping out of a trance.  Is the work the effort it takes to practice self-control?  To listen with the intention to understand and counter the reflex to respond, explain, defend?  Is it the effort to keep your mouth shut when that is the best thing to do?  Is the work some practice of calming yourself down?  Getting a grip?  Breathing slower until you can get your voice back?  Does the work consist of shuffling your thoughts around in different and more realistic or positive ways?  Does the work consist of finding words to fit your experience that might be helpful to share?  And being careful in how you put those words out there?

My sense that relationships don’t have to be such hard work comes from models of relationship from John Welwood as well as from Jett Psaris and Marlena S. Lyons, the authors of the book Undefended Love. 

I asked someone I see in counseling what it could possibly mean – the idea that relationships take work – and the person said that it means working on self – which means:  When taking things too personally, to take a step back, and examine it – because probably it’s not about you.  Again, it’s like a meditation – shifting your focus away from the other person to yourself.

My understanding of Tibetan Buddhism (from what I learned sitting in classes by Steven Goodman) is that the work is like an ongoing practice to develop certain muscles.  And it’s all for the sake of Compassion Practice.  So first, there’s a muscle of awareness of what’s going on.  Then there’s a muscle that remembers that you forgot what you were supposed to be focusing on.  There’s a muscle that brings your attention back.  There’s a muscle for staying with the matter at hand.  And then there’s the practice of wishing for the cessation of suffering.

So maybe the work is catching yourself when you have left your center, bringing yourself back to yourself, and coming back to the world.

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The Shrinking of America: Myths of Psychological Change, by Bernie Zilbergeld, Ph.D.  Little, Brown & Company, Boston, 1983.

And this one, written by a British chap, which overlaps and echoes many of the points in Bernie’s book:

Therapy Culture:  Cultivating Vulnerability in an Uncertain Age, by Frank Furedi, Routlage, New York, 2004.

I love when someone challenges things we have taken for granted.  Assumptions and presuppositions of which we may not even be aware.  The things we hold dear and even base our lives on.  Like therapy and what it’s about.  What if we took it as a given fact that people are not likely to change much at all?  Then what?  We all intuitively sense that a person who has been depressed all his life is not likely to switch into someone happy go lucky, right?  Maybe.  And anything is possible.  But maybe there’s something to be said about temperament.  That includes mood.  And anxiety.  And what about behaviors in general?  And how those carry into relationships?  What about all that unlimited personal growth that we thought was promised to us?  And the expectations, the idea of having “fulfilling” relationships, with open communication, harmonious parenting, and satisfying sex lives?  Where do you think all that came from?  Therapists.  So what happens now to our hopes?  What if everything in life was no longer turned into some psychological experience, some syndrome, some diagnosis, some problem to fix or treat?  But was just a part of life.  From what I read, that’s how it used to be in the good old days.  A challenge, a difficulty for sure.  But something people lived with and worked with.  Maybe life already is good?  Maybe it actually could be good if people stopped trying to make it better?  Maybe you don’t need to change?  Maybe there’s another path, of coming to terms without the pall of resignation.  And maybe if people stopped going to therapy, perhaps they would then have the time and energy to actually enjoy life and each other?

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And more.  Some are loosing siblings too.

A friend of mine in the field said that feeling numb is a feeling.  A legit feeling.

And that it’s an expression of grief.

I guess so.  In a way.

More and more I come across people who lost their parent(s).  Someone they loved.  And yet they didn’t feel anything.  Didn’t cry.

It’s curious to them too.  But it feels right and normal to them.

It took me a while to figure out what I myself was feeling when my Mom died.

Of course some feelings and thoughts were loud and clear.

But one feeling was the feeling I had as a result of not having the feelings I thought I was going to have, or thought I should have had.

But I want you to know that the common wisdom is that whatever it is, it’s all normal.

It’s all human.

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Change is hard, right?

Long before they died, my parents pointed me to the holy offerings of William Safire.

Safire wrote a Sunday column, On Language, which started appearing in The New York Times Magazine starting in 1979 and which ran for many years.

He had a pet peeve about the way some nouns were being used as verbs.

See: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/11/22/magazine/on-language-impacting-status.html

Yes, I know, language is a living evolution.

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I think of it as pointing out something, calling attention to something.

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