Author: drglenndoyle

Somewhere along the way, someone convinced a lot of us that it’s not okay to mourn.

To be, you know, sad when we experience loss. To take time to feel that loss. Figure out what that loss means. Figure out how our lives might need to change after that loss.

To feel angry that we have to figure any of that out at all. To experience confusion and resentment about the fact that we even live in a world where we HAVE to figure out what to do when loss hits us.

It’s a drag. As much of a drag as loss itself is, it’s a drag that so many people feel weird about mourning losses when they occur. And they occur a lot more often than many of us think.

Actually, I suppose I should be fair: most of us have been taught that to mourn in SOME settings is okay. Like, most of us acknowledge that when someone close to us dies, that’s a loss that’s okay to mourn. The death of a pet, okay, that usually gets a pass. In our culture, the concept of “mourning” physical, bodily death is generally accepted.

If only that were the only kinds of significant losses we humans experience.

The way we humans work is, we look for patterns and get into grooves. We form beliefs about how the world works (in cognitive psychotherapy, these beliefs are called “schemas”), and we use these patterns and grooves and beliefs to navigate the world around us. It saves us from having to wake up every morning and learn all over again what the world is all about, what human beings are all about, what we’re supposed to be doing, how we’re supposed to be living.

When these grooves and patterns and beliefs get interrupted, however, we experience loss. Physical, bodily death is one way those grooves and patterns and beliefs can get interrupted, yes, but there are literally hundreds of other ways they can get shattered. As John Lennon once sang, life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.

Getting fired, or otherwise forced into a career change, is a loss.

Something happening to someone close to you in such a way that both yours and their life patterns are significantly interrupted, is a loss.

Loss can even come about as a result of positive change in life— getting promoted, moving into a new residence, having a breakthrough in psychotherapy. The common denominator of “loss” isn’t that it’s always a bad thing. The common denominator is that it requires an adjustment in how we think, believe, and behave in the world. It interrupts the grooves, patterns, and beliefs that we’ve formed in order to live effectively. And most adjustments come with discomfort.

That’s why we need to mourn. Even the little losses.

We kind of live in a “suck it up” culture. As I noted above, it’s generally acknowledged by others that the physical death of someone close to us should throw us for a loop, and most people will give us some leeway to not have our shit together for awhile afterward. For awhile, anyway.

(Though it’s my observation that many people have some pretty concrete ideas about how long people are “entitled” to mourn even after a physical death. But we’ll tackle that in another blog post.)

But when it comes to other, smaller losses, especially losses that are perceived to be (or, maybe actually are) our fault? Many people in our culture are far less tolerant of the kind of mourning that is appropriate or allowable after those losses.

Why?

Eh, there are a lot of reasons, and they’re varied. But, as a therapist, I can tell you that most of them boil down to: we generally don’t like thinking about loss in our culture.

We don’t like acknowledging it. We certainly don’t like acknowledging the necessity of mourning anything short of physical death— that might open us up to feeling things we don’t want to feel.

Things like vulnerability. Things like anger. Things like sadness. Things like confusion.

No, we don’t like to feel those things at all. So we solve that problem by treating loss and mourning with a suck it up sensibility. An attitude that, look, everyone experiences loss, and who do you think you are to need some time and space and, God forbid, some compassion to come to terms with your own losses, ESPECIALLY if your loss doesn’t EVEN involve a death?!?

Who do you think you are, indeed.

I’ll tell you who you should think you are. You should think you’re a human being, who was built with a certain set of emotional needs. Among those needs happen to be the need to mourn loses when they occur.

That’s right: I said mourning losses is a human need, not an indulgence or luxury.

We need to mourn losses, big and small, when they occur. Anyone who tells ya different doesn’t care about how effectively you’re coping with your loss (or even how effectively you’re living your life); they care about protecting themselves from uncomfortable feelings.

Mourning losses doesn’t have to consume your entire life. It doesn’t have to be a dramatic, emotional breakdown. A lot of the time, you don’t even need to cry to mourn a loss.

What you do need to do is treat yourself with empathy.

To acknowledge a loss has occurred, and that means your life needs to change.

To acknowledge that change is uncomfortable, that we were attached to our old grooves and patterns and beliefs.

To commit to giving yourself the time, space, and compassion you need to process what this loss— whether big or small, private or public— means for your life.

Giving yourself permission to mourn a loss is essential to your self-esteem. When we respect someone, we acknowledge their right to feel what they feel, and give them space to do what they need to do to get their needs met.

It’s hard to respect yourself if you’re not treating your own emotional needs with respect.

You have my permission to honor and mourn your losses.

(But, you don’t need it.)

Last week, one of the commenters on my Facebook page opined that, while she more or less dug where I was coming from, man, she didn’t see why I needed to use so much ffffffrigging profanity in my blog posts. She said it made me come off as, well, angry. And why should I be angry?

I mean, first of all, certainly, my long-term patients can tell you: profanity isn’t necessarily an indication of, like, anger on my part. I’m just a fan of the colorful metaphors profanity makes possible. See, I got into psychology because of Tony Robbins, and one of Tony’s main shticks is how we have to somehow interrupt all these negative patterns we’ve gotten ourselves into. I’ve found that dropping a good F-bomb every now and then in therapy is an effective way to do that, because, well, you just don’t fucking expect your therapist to drop the F-bomb.

(Unless your therapist is Albert Ellis, and he’s, well, fucking dead. So.)

I will say, though, that commenter who opined that I sounded angry to her? Wasn’t entirely wrong.

The truth is, I am angry.

Some might say the more applicable term is “passionate,” I suppose. But, you know what? I think “angry” is actually more apt.

You bet I’m angry.

I’m angry because, in my career as a therapist, I’ve met people who have been brainwashed into thinking they are somehow not enough, just on their own, without, say,  losing ten pounds. Or making more money. Or being more successful with potential romantic partners.

I’ve met people who have been betrayed, abandoned, and belittled by the people who should have supported them most.

I’ve met people who have been convinced that because they feel hopeless, there is in fact no hope for them.

I’ve met people who have become convinced that life is literally not worth living because they’ve not lived up to some arbitrary standard someone else has taught them is important.

I’ve met people who honestly believe their past is more important than their future.

I’ve met people who have come to believe that God has “given up on them” because they’ve somehow failed to live a perfect life.

I’ve met people who have been bullied into imagining their responsibilities to abusive relationship partners are more important than their responsibilities to their self-respect, self-safety, and self-esteem.

I’ve met people who have not only bought into, but been sold the idea that they’re too broken to be anything but a professional patient. And I’ve met therapists who have actively enabled this delusion, whether through incompetence, arrogance, indifference, or greed.

I’ve met people who have come to believe that because they’ve been betrayed in relationships before, they can never trust anyone enough to be in a relationship again.

I’ve met people who have come to believe that they’re too old to do something meaningful with their lives. Or too tired. Or too unintelligent. Or too untalented.

All of which is to say, in my career as a therapist, I’ve met literally hundreds of people who have come to feel imprisoned in their own heads, in their own souls. And the thing that makes me angriest about it? The people and institutions who should have taught them that they don’t need to exist in those prisons have utterly failed them. People have been left feeling alone, unwanted, unloved, unvalued– and they think it’s their own fault.

In therapy, we spend hours, days, weeks, and sometimes months and years undoing the damage done when people have spent years developing false beliefs about their inferiority. These are people who are smart; people who are warm; people who are kind; people who are creative; people who are generous. These are people who were created to make a difference in the world– and instead they’ve become convinced that they’re powerless, useless, purposeless.

Yes. This makes me angry.

Sorry, not sorry.

 

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I’m a liar.

So are you, probably.

I mean, don’t feel too bad about it, or anything. We’re human. It’s kinda what we do. How we’re wired.

I’m not even really talking about lying to other people, though we humans do that a lot, if we’re gonna be completely honest (ha!). But the lies we tell other people usually don’t hold a candle to the consistent, profound, and pernicious lies we tell ourselves.

Why do we lie to ourselves? Why would we lie to ourselves?

Usually, for the same reasons we lie to other people: because the truth is often difficult.

Truth can hurt.

Truth can have jagged edges that resist our attempts to smooth them over. We get afraid of those jagged edges. Afraid they’ll cut us. Afraid they’ll cut people we care about.

Maybe we get afraid that the jagged edges truth sometimes has will slice open our career. Or gouge a potential romantic interest. Or rip open garbage bag full of denial that we’ve been careful not to puncture, because if we smelled the pungent truth within, we’d have no choice but to take out the trash.

I mean, what can I say? Sometimes we’re not ready to take out the trash.

Or we don’t feel ready, anyway. Sometimes that garbage bag of denial feels too heavy, too squishy, too gross to mess with. We’d prefer to just keep the jagged edges of truth away from it, so we can let it go on fermenting and not have to worry about how overfull it’s getting.

I’m a psychologist. And I can tell you, with absolute certainty, that almost everybody I’ve ever worked with is in therapy because, on some level, they are either unwilling or unable to accept something that is either true, or something that they’re deathly afraid is true. They know or suspect  that the truth might very well have jagged edges, and they can’t wrap their brains around what to do when those edges threaten to wound them.

At the same time, though, they’ve realized that their only other option is to continue lying to themselves– and if they’re in my office, they’ve usually also realized that the price of lying has simply become too damn high.

I’ll let you in on a secret we psychologists, going waaaaaaay back to Sigmund Freud, have always known: the cost of lying is always too damn high.

And when it comes to lying to ourselves, especially to protect ourselves from the imagined consequences of truth? No one ever stops at little lies.

No self-deception goes unnoticed by our self-esteem. You just can’t respect someone who you know bullshits you on the regular.

How, then, do we stop lying to ourselves? How do we even come to grips with everything we might be lying to ourselves about– out of fear, out of habit, out of idealism, out of ego?

Ironically, it usually takes the help of another person to quit lying to ourselves. A therapist, an AA sponsor, a doctor, a lover, a friend.

(A real friend, not the fake kind. But that’s a subject for another blog.)

If you read the first two sentences of this blog and indignantly declared, “HE DOESN’T KNOW ME! I’M NO LIAR!”, I invite you to wait until you’re by yourself, find a mirror, and look at yourself for a loooooong few minutes. Then say that– “I’m not a liar”– to your reflection, out loud.

Do it five times.

Do it slowly.

Make real eye contact with yourself. If you really believe you don’t lie to yourself, come face to fucking face with yourself and affirm that.

If you could do it, God bless ya. You’re someone who doesn’t have a whole lot in common with me or, really, anybody else reading this blog. Feel free to be on your way, I’ve got nuthin’ for ya.
If you couldn’t do it– good job. You’ve taken a step toward being fucking honest with yourself. 

And as the saying goes, journeys begin with first steps.

Today’s lesson: nobody cares about your regrets.

Maybe you feel you’ve wasted too much time in your life. Not lived up to your potential. Squandered your potential talents. Frittered away your opportunities to leave your mark on the world.

One of my favorite characters in one of my favorite movies is often quoted as saying, “We’ve all been raised on television to believe that one day we’d all be millionaires and movie gods and rock stars…but we won’t.”

Maybe you feel Tyler Durden is talking about you right there.

Do you have regrets? Thoughts that keep you up at night, to the tune of, “I could’ve been…”, “I could’ve done…”, “If only I’d…”? Fantasies of a different life, the life that might have happened had you just, you know, gotten your shit together, gotten off your ass, stayed the course, buckled down, found your focus? Do you have your late-night list of “By now, I could be/do/have (fill in the blank)”s?

Guess what? No one cares.

Except you, I mean. Of course you care.

No? You’re going to argue with me on this one?

You’re going to say that you’re beyond all that, that even if you have those thoughts in the middle of the night, you’re a grown up, you’ve moved past it, life is what it is, you’re not haunted by all those minutes having tick, tick, ticked by, all those opportunities that’ve slipped through your fingers? That somewhere, in the back of your mind, you’re not haunted by those third grade fantasies of being an astronaut, a world champion, president of the United States, king of the world?

Well, maybe you’ve moved past those third grade fantasies, I’ll give you that. But you’re haunted, all right. Almost no one, myself included, is immune to the kinds of thoughts I’m talking about here.

“I’ve wasted so much time, it’d look pathetic if I started now.”

“I could’ve done that when I was younger, but now I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

“You can’t date at my age, it’s either happened for you by now or it hasn’t.”

Go ahead. Deny it in the front of your brain, if you must. But you know somewhere right now your stomach is tightening into just a little bit of a knot. You know that somewhere you can start to feel just that little twitch, right at the corner of your eye, that is the first indication that a tear might be trying to form.

Let me tell you something– again–  about those regrets: no one cares.

To quote one of my favorite television characters, “The universe is indifferent.”

(I assure you, Don Draper was absolutely talking about you when he said that.)

There is no one, at least no one who matters,  patrolling your current-day behavior to make sure you’re not “pathetic.” There is no one who matters tsk-tsking you for trying to do something that might usually be attempted by someone younger than you.

Oh, sure, there might be people out there judging you. But they’re not judging you because they care. They’re judging you because that’s what a certain type of person does. Believe me when I say that their activity of judging you is but a drop in a huge, heavy bucket of judgment they lug around with them all day long. They may judge you, but they don’t devote any more thought to you than a traffic camera does to the dozens and dozens and dozens of cars that zoom by it every day. They don’t give a shit.

More to the point, they don’t have to live with the ongoing consequences of your refusal to act. They don’t have to stay up at night as you think those thoughts. They’re not stakeholders in your life and happiness.

That’s all on you.

Your regrets simply don’t matter. If we had a time machine, they might. But, barring Doc Brown appearing in a DeLorean (and if he does so appear, I preemptively offer my sincerest apologies), they simply don’t matter.

All they can do is keep you from doing something potentially good now. Here, in this moment. You know, this moment? The only moment in which you have any kind of ability to affect anything?

The past doesn’t give a shit. Time doesn’t give a shit. The universe doesn’t give a shit. Your abusers don’t give a shit. Your exes don’t give a shit.

You henceforth have my permission to stop pretending that they do.

C’mon. Take a deep breath. You remember how.

Now. Let’s go start the rest of your life. Right. Fucking. Now.

That’s it for today, kids. See you on Tuesday.

 

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You have power. You, right now, reading this. You have allllll kinds of power. You’re a goddamn Power Ranger. 

I know, I know. It doesn’t feel that way. At least, a lot of the time, it doesn’t. It’s true, though.

Mind you, you don’t have unlimited power. You probably don’t have all the power you’d prefer to have, I’m guessing. You might not have the kind of power that you’d prefer to have. You may not even be aware of what, exactly, it means for you to have power.

But make no mistake: you are powerful.

What is power, in the context I’m using the word here? Simply put: power is the ability to make something happen, or prevent things from happening. The ability to move, or to cease motion.

Pretty broad, I know. But think about it: when you think of the kinds of power you want, when you think of the circumstances you’d like to create for your life, when you think of the things you’d like to bring into or eject from your life, what do all of those fantasies and wishes and preferences have in common? They all involve putting you in the driver’s seat. They involve you being more powerful, somehow, than you are right now.

Or, should I say, more powerful than you FEEL right now.

See, the thing is, we get brainwashed. Our culture isn’t great at helping us become more aware of our power. Of our ability to make things happen, or keep things from happening. Our culture is full of people who would prefer that you forget you are powerful, just as you are. They know that empowered people, don’t feel the compulsive need to reach outside of themselves for fulfillment, and, well, that fucks up the agendas of politicians and advertisers and activists who would strongly prefer you feel as if you need whatever they’re selling in order to feel powerful.

Empowered people sometimes make choices that politicians and advertisers and activists don’t like– so they’d prefer you remain ignorant of your basic, inherent, irrevocable power.

The culture doesn’t want you ruminating on, exploring, accepting, your power. The culture wants you focused on your limitations.

Oh, yeah. You have limitations, too. Did I forget to mention that? Limitations are kind of important to discuss, too– because it’s only by accepting our limitations that we can effectively claim our power.

I’ll repeat that. It’s only by accepting our limitations that we can effectively claim our power.

Here’s what happens, kids. The aforementioned culture– politicians, advertisers, activists, whomever– has created a world in which you feel less than. You’re not inherently pretty enough. You’re not inherently strong enough. You’re not inherently smart enough. You need this product; this service; this license; this degree, in order to be adequate. They weave this Illusion of Inadequacy by getting you to focus on your limitations– and it works, because everybody knows we have limitations. It’s a natural, easily observed fact.

You’re limited. You’re limited because you’re not, probably, the smartest person you meet every day. You’re not the strongest person, the fittest person, the most attractive person. These are real limitations. They’re not made up. The culture didn’t invent these limitations of yours. They’re real.

What the culture has done, however, has created an environment in which you’ve been conditioned to believe that your limitations are the most important thing about you and your life. So much so that no matter how smart you are, how fit, how attractive, how strong, you’re being constantly assaulted with opportunities to get smarter (!), fitter (!), stronger (!), hotter (!). Don’t believe me? Ask the smartest, fittest, strongest person you know if they’re somehow excepted from the cultural pressure to get better via some external product. Nope.

You know what you can’t do if you’re fixated on what’s imperfect about you, your limitations? You can’t focus on your strengths. The more neural wattage you spend focused on the limitations, the less firepower there is to develop and nurture the power you do have. It’s a nifty trick the culture plays on us, really– the more powerful we are, the harder they try to talk us out of acknowledging and exercising that power.

But you know what you have the power to do, among other things? Accept your limitations, without fixating on them, like the culture wants you to do. If you matter-of-factly accept that you’re not whatever you’re not, suddenly the Illusion of Inadequacy is shattered– the culture doesn’t have that power over you any more.

Neat, huh?

And then you can start to have some fun. Because getting in touch with how powerful you really are, by making a conscious, committed, realistic decision to accept your limitations? Is, among other things, hella fun.

Choose your focus. F them for trying to make your limitations feel more important than your power.

 

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Do you really want to solve your problems? Like, really, really?

Some people don’t.

Oh, we all say we do. We have problems, most of which boil down to “I don’t like the way I feel.” And, as I covered in my last blog post, problems beg for solutions– ideally solutons that actually solve the problems, and which don’t create more, bigger problems.

We don’t want to be that person who acknowledges they have problems, then does nothing to fix them. I mean, what would other people think? They’d think we’re lazy, or maybe we just like to complain. Maybe they’ll think we just want attention. No, we can’t be seen by other people as one of “those” people. If we’re going to acknowledge we have problems, we have to at least make a show of trying to solve those problems. Right?

I mean, I guess.

The fact of the matter is, there are multiple reasons why some people– man people, actually– don’t take steps to solve their problems. And it’s usually not because they enjoy the “attention” they supposedly get from having problems.

Usually, they’re afraid.

After all– what happens if they make an active attempt to solve their problem, and it doesn’t work? People might think they’re terrible problem solvers. People might think they’re failures. Maybe they themselves will think they’re failures.

What happens if I make an active attempt to solve my problem, and I discover that the problem is even bigger or more deeply rooted than I thought it was? Woof. That’s a scary prospect. By not even trying to solve my problem, I spare myself that terrifying possibility, at least.

What happens if I try to solve my problem, and it becomes apparent that I don’t have the first clue how to go about solving it, because I don’t have the right information or tools to do it? That’d be embarrassing and disheartening. Best to save myself that trouble.

What happens if I try to solve my problem, and…I actually solve it? Shit, then I might be in real trouble. I might have to face other problems in my life that this problem was distracting me from. DO YOU KNOW HOW MANY PROBLEMS THERE ARE IN MY LIFE THAT I DON’T HAVE TO THINK ABOUT AS LONG AS I HAVE THIS PROBLEM ON MY PLATE?!

See, we don’t have to be lazy, stupid, or crazy to avoid actively trying to solve our problems. We can just be garden-variety afraid of trying. Problems, almost by definition, are intimidating. To not only acknowledge, but actively confront the problems that keep us from the life we’d prefer to be living? That takes courage, man. And, unfortunately, courage really isn’t a character trait that our culture is particularly good at cultivating. A lot of us, including me at times, are straight up cowards in the face of our problems.

It may not be our fault. We’ve frequently been taught to be and rewarded for being cowards. There are many people in the world who profit off of our cowardice. People who prefer that we not solve our problems– because people with problems are easier to control, easier to seduce, easier to sell things to, easier to bully.

The fact is, we usually have, or can develop, the psychological tools we need to solve our problems.

Learning what to do is often the easy part.

Developing the courage to solve our problems, knowing that we might fail in the attempt, have to take multiple stabs at solving them, might have to cope with feelings of embarrassment, frustration, confusion, or shame, as we do so?

That’s the real work of therapy.

 

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Life is about problems and solutions. Don’t overcomplicate it.

Life gives us problems to solve. Sometimes our problem to be solved is, we don’t like the way we feel, and we have to figure out a way to either cope with not liking the way we feel, or figuring out a way to change it.

Sometimes the problem life gives us to solve is, we don’t like what’s happening in our relationships. Thus we need to figure out a way to live with what we don’t like in our relationships; or we need to figure out a way to change our relationships. (Often, relationship problems are a little more complicated to solve, because by definition they involve the thoughts, feelings, and actions of someone in addition to ourselves).

You get the idea. All of our activities in life can be productively framed as a series of problems, that are begging for solutions. It’s our job to generate solutions; or evaluate solutions others have generated for us; and then act upon those solutions. (Of note: even the choice to not act upon any potential solution, represents a solution: you’ve chosen, by your inactivity, to solve the problem by pretending it doesn’t exist. Good luck with that.)

The big problem in life isn’t that we have problems. The big problem in life occurs when we choose “solutions” to our problems, big and little, that either a) don’t really solve the problem, and/or b) create more and bigger problems than the original problem.

For example, sometimes, when people are faced with the problem of not liking how they’re feeling at a particular moment, they choose to try to change the way they feel by, say, shopping. Or, maybe, eating. Or, maybe, using substances. All of which, in the short term, probably will solve the problem of “I don’t like how I feel right now.”

However, it’s often the case that those “solutions” don’t actually solve the problems lurking beneath the surface of the problem “I don’t like how I feel right now.” That is, it’s pretty rare when not liking how we’re feeling is an issue of not having enough stuff; or not having had enough to eat; or not having put substances into our body recently enough. (Of course, there is a subset of times when those actually ARE the root problems behind not liking how we’re feeling; and, if that’s the case, we should absolutely solve those problems by shopping, eating, or ingesting substances.)

In addition to not really solving our manifest problems, those “solutions” often create bigger, less manageable problems, especially if we engage in them repeatedly, despite the fact that they only solve our “I don’t like how I feel” problem in the very short term. We can go broke; we can gain weight and develop diabetes; we can develop addictions. All of which are more problematic than not liking the way we’re feeling in a particular moment.

This may all seem self-evident, of course. But if you think so, ask yourself: when I’m faced with a problem, do I take care to choose solutions that 1) actually address the problem, and 2) don’t create bigger, less manageable problems in the end?

Taking just a few minutes and framing our life goals as problems that are begging for solutions– true solutions– can revolutionize the way we approach our problems. And asking some very common sense questions about the potential “solutions” available to us can help us avoid a ridiculous amount of pain and tumult down the road.

Problems are meant to be solved. It’s your job to make sure you really try to solve them, instead of taking the quick and easy path of momentary, half-assed pseudo-solutions.

 

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Feelings are a source of information for us when it comes to making decisions and living our lives. A source. As in, one source of information, not “the only” or “the definitive” source of information.

Today’s lesson in personal growth is, let’s not pretend that our feelings are more reliable or informative than they actually are.

Feelings evolved in human beings to help guide our behavior. They represent our nervous system’s gut-level response of “this thing that is happening or might happen is a thing that might threaten our survival,” or “this thing that is happening or might happen is a thing that might aid our survival.” Feelings like contentment or excitement mean that our nervous system has decided “Hey, this thing is awesome, how about more of this thing?!” Feelings like anxiety or apprehension mean that our nervous system has decided, “Uh, I think this thing might, you know, kill us. How about less of this thing?”

Our nervous systems use multiple sources of information to make these gut-level decisions. To a certain extent, they use our own past experiences of what has led to pain and pleasure to decide of a thing is “for us” or “against us.” But they also use things like media representations, half-remembered stories and images from movies and books, and cultural ideas of “good” and “bad” to decide whether a thing is awesome or not.

That is, our feelings don’t always know what they’re talking about. They’re kind of this amalgam of true stuff, made up stuff, half-remembered stuff, and imagined stuff.

Which makes it odd that we so often consider our feelings infallible guides to whether something will enhance our lives or damage our lives.

Don’t get me wrong– our feelings are important sources of information for us. For that matter, healthy self-esteem requires us to pay attention to our feelings and honor what they’re telling us. If you ignore your feelings, eventually you’ll end up losing self-respect, because, well, you can’t ignore someone and respect them at the same time, including yourself. For that matter, it’s not like our feelings are always, or even often, wrong. They may be, they may not be.

The point is, our feelings are just like any other source of information: imperfect. And make no mistake, our feelings are just as susceptible to manipulation based on half-truths and emotionally persuasive chicanery (underused word, that) as any other source of information.

Because you feel there is danger, doesn’t mean there is. Because you feel you can’t change, doesn’t mean you can’t. Because you feel unloveable, doesn’t mean you are. Because you feel hopeless, doesn’t mean there is no hope.

Feelings are like any other source of information: they can be used well to enhance our experience, or they can be over relied upon or under relied upon. And there are plenty of people out there who know how manipulable our feelings are, and who have no qualms about bending our feelings to suit their own purposes.

Feelings are no more or less than what they are. Use them for what they’re good for, but don’t get suckered into imagining they can’t be wrong.

 

Every day, we’re called upon to make lots and lots of decisions. Big decisions, little decisions. Important decisions, dumb decisions. When you think about it, making choices is really what consumes the vast majority of our mental energy every day (and, upon consideration, quite a bit of our physical energy as well, actually).

Today’s lesson is about choices. Because in the end, we only have control over a subset of our own choices– and it’s how we make those choices, those decisions, that will determine the ultimate quality of our lives.

A lot of people expend an awful lot of energy detailing for us how limited our choices are, limited by forces beyond our control. And they’re right. There are absolutely forces bigger than all of us at work that limit our options, in ways that vary from very practical to very profound.

For example, I’m very aware that I’m an educated,  middle aged white guy with a few bucks in my pocket. I’d never be so arrogant or blind to my own cultural privilege as to suggest that everyone as the same options or opportunities that I have, or have had, in this culture. I’m not saying the playing field is socially, culturally, or economically level. It’s not.

That said, I’m not a believer in directing anything other than the bare minimum of focus or energy toward forces I cannot control. Why? Because my resources, as a human being, are finite–I don’t have the time or energy to blow on mourning the unfairness of the world. I have a fucking life to design, here.

Making distinctions between what is and isn’t worth your effort to impact is key. People who can make those distinctions and act accordingly stand a much greater chance of shaping their world to their liking. People who can’t make or act on those distinctions stand a very good chance of feeling frustrated, angry, and helpless on a daily basis.

Check this out: a lot of the time, we like to pretend that we’re somehow not responsible for certain key decisions we make every day. A basic example of this is the decision of what we expose our attention, our conscious focus to, during the course of a day. It’s very easy for many people to say, “Look, I simply don’t have control over a lot of what I’m exposed to every day. My social media feeds make choices about what I’m exposed to; my daily news sources make choices about what I’m exposed to; advertisers make decisions about what I’m exposed to. I have to engage with the world every day, and thus I don’t have a choice about what goes into my mental ‘inbox!’”

And, sure enough: we can make the decision to let our social media feeds, news sources, and advertisers, among others, choose what goes into the our mental inbox. We’re free to make that choice.

However, we’re not free to avoid the consequence of that choice. Namely, if you let other people choose what goes into your mental inbox, you’re necessarily letting them choose the raw materials you have to work with when it comes to shaping your vision of the world. You know, deciding what is possible, deciding what is important, deciding what is worth expending your time and energy toward today.

Make no mistake: no matter what other forces are operating in your world, your time and energy are the two resources you, and only you, are totally responsible for.

It may be difficult to avoid altogether the barrage of potential influencers– social media, news sources, advertisers, whomever– coming at us every day. But that makes it even more essential that we take complete responsibility for carving out opportunities every single day to actively choose what goes into our mental inbox. To expose ourselves to influencers of our own choosing– influencers that align with our priorities, our visions, our dreams.

You can choose to let someone else direct your attention today. But know when you choose that, you’re also choosing a specific consequence– your resources, from your intelligence, to your skillset, to your physical strength, are all then placed at someone else’s disposal, not yours. You’re free to make choices, in other words– but you’re not free to avoid the consequences of your choices.

Maybe live according to your vision, not theirs.

Today’s lesson in hack, hack, hacking your way to psychological growth? Just use the tools you have handy. Even if those tools are imperfect, inelegant, not what you’d prefer to have handy– just use ’em. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel, seriously. 

In these experiences we call “life” and “growth” it’s kind of amazing how picky we can sometimes be about what we’ll consider “legitimate” tools to get us through.

Recently, for example, there’s been reams and reams and REAMS written about the tool of Mindfulness to get us through tough times. You know, where we kind of take a step back, take a deep breath, and deeply accept everything as it is, without demanding it be other-than-what-it-is. Starting with good ol’ Dialectical Behavior Therapy, Mindfulness has made its way into pretty much every corner of the personal development universe. Everybody loves Mindfulness. Slapping “Mindfulness” on the cover of a self-help book is pretty much a guaranteed way to sell a few extra copies.

And is Mindfulness a useful tool? Sure. Most everybody can agree that Mindfulness is a fundamentally healthy habit for human beings to get into. Legitimate tool.

But what if you don’t happen to have that tool in your toolbox, yet?

There are lots of reasons why you might not have the tool of Mindfulness handy. Maybe you have ADHD, and the idea of getting pseudo-meditative is kind of an amusing abstraction to your going-going-gone attention span. Maybe you’re working through an anxiety disorder, and you’re not quite yet at the skill level where you can quiet your mind to Mindfully accept Stuff As It Is. Maybe you’re working through a trauma disorder and your brain has been wired, for the time being, to be SUPER MINDFUL OF EVERY SINGLE LITTLE STIMULI IN YOUR ENVIRONMENT AHHHHH.

Mindfulness, in other words, might be a healthy, elegant tool of psychological growth– but maybe it’s just not in your toolbox at the present moment. Much like a lot of other healthy, elegant tools of growth, such as patience, reality-testing, and perspective-taking, to name a just a few. It’d be great if we always had those elegant tools of emotional management handy, but there are times when, for whatever reason, we don’t. 

Sometimes, instead, the tools we have handy come with awkward, sometimes kinda threatening, names, like “anger.” Or “jealousy.” Or “fear.”

WHAT IS THIS CRAZY TALK, DR. DOYLE? DID YOU JUST REFER TO UGLY EMOTIONS SUCH AS ANGER, JEALOUSY, OR FEAR AS “TOOLS?” 

Yes, yes I did.

EXPLAIN YOURSELF, SIR!

Here’s the skinny on emotions, guys: much like the American Psychological Association, they’re meant to be tools. The very reason we have emotions in the first place, both positive and negative, is because somewhere along the way they had survival value.

The fact that blunt, ugly-feeing, uncomfortable emotions like anger, jealousy, and fear are still with us is evidence that they serve some adaptive purpose. They don’t feel good, but in the hunt for survival? They are our friends.

Fear, for example, doesn’t have to be just this set of experiences that paralyzes you and makes you kinda queasy and jumpy. Fear is actually a tool that keeps us from, you know, stepping out into a busy street and meeting a Frogger-like fate. Organisms that do not have or use the tool of fear don’t last very long in the wild. Fear, as it turns out, is a blunt, uncomfortable tool– but a pretty goddamn important one.

Jealousy’s another feeling that gets a bad rap. Yeah, it’s not a fun emotion to experience and can poison a relationship if it becomes the main emotional fuel of said relationship. But jealousy can also be a useful reminder of what we value in a relationship, and how much we value it. Jealousy often speaks in a distorted, shrill voice inside our heads– but it often points us to emotional truths that we might otherwise ignore.

And anger? Let me tell ya something about anger. Anger evolved so that when cave-people had their territory and cave-mates threatened, they’d be able to access the energy to fight back. Yup, anger is an emotion with which many of us have a complicated relationship– but getting angry about a Situation That Should Not Be is often the first step to changing or getting out of that situation.

Look, I get it. A lot of the time, we wish the tools available to us in our emotional toolboxes were more comfortable or soothing, like Mindfulness. But I’m here to tell you, in this thing called “life,” we have no choice but to start where we are, with the tools we have. And if those tools happen to be imperfect, blunt, or uncomfortable? What we can do is learn to use them for the purposes they do serve, instead of waiting for a “better” coping skill to magically evolve while we wait it out.

Don’t let the perfect be the enemy of the good. No one’s handing out medals for Most Elegant Coping Tool. Just use the tool that is handy, dude.