Use Your Damn Skills

You need to work with the different parts of yourself every day. 

No exceptions. 

No days off. 

There will never be a day where you don’t need to pay attention to what the various parts of yourself are saying and needing. 

There is never a day when what the various parts of you are trying to communicate to you, isn’t important. 

Yet for some reason there is a significant subset of people who absolutely hate listening to themselves. 

They hate paying attention to what the parts of themselves are saying and needing. 

They hate making time to pay attention to, let alone actively communicate with, the parts of themselves. 

As a result, the various parts of themselves feel neglected and disrespected…and before long, neglected, irritated parts of you WILL find ways to make themselves seen and heard by you. 

They WILL evoke anxiety to make themselves heard. 

They WILL evoke depression in order to get you to slow down and look inward. 

They WILL seize control of your dreams and turn them into nightmares. 

Some people don’t want to listen to or communicate with the various parts of themselves because they think it’s a hassle. They’re annoyed they have to do it. They think that “normal” people shouldn’t have to explicitly sit down and make time to have actual conversations with themselves, so why should they? 

Remember: we ALL have “parts.” 

For some people, like those diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, those parts can seem to take on a life of their own— but it’s important for DID patients to understand that what they’re experiencing is just an amplification of something that happens to EVERYONE. 

(The reason it happens is because early developmental trauma makes it more difficult for peoples’ personalities to “gel” and integrate as they’re growing up, due to lack of psychoemotional support and bonding— i.e., trauma makes the personality more prone to “splinter” in the first place.) 

EVERYONE has parts of themselves that experience, want, and need different things. 

EVERYONE has to figure out how to communicate with, listen to, and relate constructively to the parts of themselves. 

EVERYONE will pay the price if they ignore, neglect, or abuse parts of themselves. 

It’s not an abnormal thing to have to sit down and figure out how to manage your relationship with the various parts of you. 

If you neglect the part of you that needs more stimulation, you’re going to pay the price in depression. 

If you neglect the part of you that needs more connection, you’re going to pay the price in loneliness. 

If you neglect the part of you that needs more security, you’re going to pay the price in anxiety. 

If you neglect the various parts of yourself altogether, you’re gong to pay the price in intrusive thoughts and feelings, and impulsive behavioral urges that seem to “come out of nowhere.” 

The good news is, relating to yourself really isn’t that hard. 

It’s frustrating and embarrassing…only because of the thoughts that you throw at it. 

It’s kind of like taking medication or getting a cast. Maybe we don’t WANT to do it, because we figure to acquiesce to medical treatment means we’re not “tough.” 

But is it the smart thing to do? If you want to function, it is. 

Is it a necessary thing to do? If you want to heal, it is. 

We truly, truly, need to get over our reluctance to create time for self-communication, self-nurturing, and self-care 

Our need for these things doesn’t make us weak. 

It means we are human beings that have certain needs that go beyond hunger, thirst, and rest. 

Your psychoemotional needs will only wait so long on the back burner. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter and never miss a blog or social media post!

Our lives are, and always will be, imperfect. 

They are constantly under construction. 

We are constantly building who we are and what we want to experience. 

We are constantly constructing a life that conforms to our values and visions. 

But we have to come to terms with the fact that the building will never be complete. 

We’re never going to get to a place where no renovations are needed. 

We’ll never get to that place where we’ve figured everything out, got everything down, where we’re just doing all the right stuff and none of the self-defeating stuff. 

That place of perfection doesn’t exist. 

And it’s a good thing, too: because if that place of perfection existed, we’d lose all opportunities to course correct. 

It’s in course correcting that we learn. 

It’s in fixing mistakes and missteps that we figure out who we are and what we need. 

It’s in striving for new goals and heights that we get clear about the kind of life we want to build from here. 

Thank GOODNESS our lives will always be imperfect. 

Can you imagine how unsatisfying a perfect life would be? 

If we just built the life we imagined years ago— when you were a different person, with different experiences, different needs, different goals, and maybe even different values— and that was it? 

See, a lot of us get it in our heads that we want to figure things out, make the progress, get the life— you know, get the romantic partner, get the skillset, get the job, get the bank balance, whatever— and then sit back and enjoy it. 

We figure that we’ve been through enough pain, enough trauma, in our lives, that all we want to do is figure stuff out and then rest. 

We figure that we’ve spent more than enough time being dissatisfied, that all we really want to do is achieve that moment of satisfaction, and make it last. 

The thing is, in constructing that life— in moving toward that vision— we discover new things that we’re interested in. 

We add to and refine our vision of “the good life.” 

We learn about new potential goals. 

We meet other people who show us things that we never even thought about. 

We change as people along the journey…and, as a result, our initial vision of what “the good life” might have entailed, no longer fits. At least not perfectly. 

That’s what happens in the real world. 

As you get better, as you recover, as you build the life you’d prefer to live, as you refine your tools and skills, you change. 

Along the way we realize that we are on a journey— but it’s not a journey toward one, single, defined destination. 

The point isn’t even to GET to that destination. Not exactly. 

The point is to get really good at journeying. 

The point is to learn how to draw satisfaction from the journeying. 

And we can. 

We can draw SO MUCH satisfaction from this journey we’re all on. 

Not just satisfaction, either. We can draw SO MUCH passion, and joy, and humor, and drama, and, yes, pain and heartache, too, from this journey. 

So you’ve realized you’ll never hit that place of perfection, of fully realized therapeutic and spiritual wholeness? 

Good. 

That’s the first step to figuring out how to REALLY win in this project called life. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

Our choices in life are usually limited. 

That’s a fact. There’s no point in denying it. 

That doesn’t mean we don’t HAVE choices, however. 

We almost always DO have choices— particularly in what we focus on, how we interpret events, and how we choose to respond. 

But we do need to acknowledge, realistically, that our choices are not infinite. They’re not unlimited. They’re often not ideal. 

For some reason, lots of people get up in their heads about what having limited choices means out there in the real world. 

They get it in their heads that because they don’t have an ideal selection of choices available, that means they are utterly devoid of any choices in a situation. 

Or perhaps they get it in their heads that, since circumstances limit their ability to choose in the moment, that they are utterly powerless in a situation— that they shouldn’t even TRY to exercise their ability to choose, given the limited options available to them. 

It’s a bummer that our choices are often limited, no doubt. 

It’s a drag that our choices are often not ideal. 

It would be preferable, at all times, to be able to choose from an infinite number of ideal options. 

But even if we don’t live in that world— and I assure you, we do not— that doesn’t mean we should just give up and let others make our choices for us. 

And believe me: if we fail to exercise our ability to choose, others WILL happily choose for us. 

In fact, there are lots of individuals and organizations who are standing by, actively waiting, practically salivating at the notion of making our choices for us. 

So sometimes our choices are limited, and our options aren’t great. 

We need to accept this reality (remembering that ACCEPTING something is definitely not the same thing as LIKING it), suck it up, and get to choosing anyway. 

We cannot construct a life we value, a life worth living, a life that conforms to our values and nudges us toward our goals, if we don’t accept our responsibility to make choices…even when we don’t like the options. 

Very often, however, you’ll see people try to cop out of making choices because they don’t like the options. 

They’ll cite many reasons for why they’re opting out of choosing— most of which come down to some variation of, “it doesn’t matter.” 

They’ll make the argument that their options are SO limited, SO not-ideal, that even if they DO exercise their ability to choose, the ultimate outcome won’t be affected…so why bother? 

It’s a convenient cop out when we’re looking for an excuse to not choose. 

I won’t try to tell you that every choice you make is going to ultimately or overwhelmingly matter in how a situation turns out. That’s manifestly not true. 

I will tell you, however, that it matters a great deal to your emotional health and self-esteem to choose when you have the opportunity. 

Your brain is not dumb. It knows when you’re living on auto-pilot. It can tell when you’re not actively attempting to nudge toward your goals and live your values. 

And while those objectives may not necessarily matter in the immediate external situation— they may not directly affect the outcome of the situation you find yourself in— they do have a tremendous affect on how you feel. 

They impact your level of motivation. 

They impact your level of life satisfaction. 

it’s important not to cop out of our ability and responsibility to make choices not just because we can affect the world around us…but because it will definitely affect the world within us. 

Choosing to not choose is a very reliable way to deepen depression. 

Choosing not to choose is a very reliable way to heighten anxiety. 

Choosing not to choose is a very reliable way to get good at choosing-not-to-choose— that is, it can become a pattern that gets deeper and harder to break out of every time it happens. 

I hear you. It sucks when our choices aren’t great. I wish our choices were always infinite and awesome. 

But even when they’re not, we need to step up. 

For our own mental health and integrity, if nothing else. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

It’s a mistake to try to oversimplify complex behavior issues— either in ourselves, or in others.

You’re going to see an awful lot of posts on social media these days about why people think violent behavior happens. 

Many of these posts are going to try to refine their hypotheses about why violent behavior happens down to one, or a few, basic ideas— and these attempts are going to be, at the very least, incomplete. 

The fact is, you really can’t boil all the potential causal factors down to a few talking points that are readable in a blog post. The human mechanism is just too complex. 

On top of that, generalizing between people and situations is problematic, because we only have part of each person’s story— and that part we have, we only have through the filter of media reports. 

We don’t have enough information to comprehensively say why some people act out violently with guns. We can perhaps get our brains around some facets of the issue— but to try to throughly understand the question is beyond us, with the information we have. 

When I wrote earlier today about the fact that I believe the saturation of gun violence in popular entertainment is a contributing factor to gun violence that happens in the real world, I was not trying to comprehensively address the root causes of this problem. I was drawing attention to one factor that I believe doesn’t get enough attention— largely because entertainment featuring gun violence is extremely popular and profitable. 

But, as my commenters correctly pointed out, the problem of gun violence is multifaceted, and has layers that range from the cultural, to the personal, to the social, to even the moral to the spiritual. 

While I was not trying to oversimplify, or even simplify the issue, the point was well-taken: behavior is complex, and attempts to “boil it down” are often problematic. 

Such attempts can give us a false sense that we know what’s going on, and what needs to be done. 

This applies not only to the behavior of people who do terrible, violent things out there in the world…but our own behavior, as well. 

We need to remember that we are not simple, straightforward machines. 

Our own behavior has many causes and influences. 

If and when we think we have our own behavior “figured out,” we need to take that as a signal to back up and remember that we’re maybe— probably— missing something. 

The reason why it’s so important to remember that we are complex mechanisms that are acted upon by a lots and lots of influences is because trying to “boil down” our behavior to one or a few basic tenets can lead to frustration and despair when we try to actually do change self-defeating behavior. 

We get frustrated, because we THOUGHT we had our behavior figured out…but applying a straightforward solution to what SEEMED like a straightforward equation isn’t working, much to our chagrin. 

This can lead us to get hopeless and cynical when it comes to trying to change our behavior. 

When you get frustrated in trying to design a behavior plan for yourself, remember that it’s not the case that trying to change your own behavior is hopeless— it’s just that behavior is complex. 

Most of the time, it takes a few attempts to try to design a behavior plan that works. 

There’s a lot of trial and error involved. 

As much as we humans would like to draw perfectly straight, simplistic lines between cause and effect when it comes to motivation and behavior…it usually doesn’t work like that. 

The good news is: over time, with patience and persistence, we usually CAN gather enough data to establish some useful patterns. 

Over time, with patience and persistence, we usually CAN design behavioral solutions that nudge us meaningfully toward our goals and values. 

We just need to keep in mind that we’re not simple, straightforward creatures…and to expect ourselves to be is a recipe for frustration. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

 

This isn’t a political blog. 

I do not have the requisite expertise in government policy to intelligently or usefully opine about what the government can or should do to decrease the odds of things like what happened these last few days, happening in the future. 

Many people think that guns are too readily accessible. Many people think that government has a role to play in making guns less accessible. 

Many other people have strong feelings about the inadvisability of the government disarming civilians to prevent behavior that the vast, vast majority of people who own or have access to guns do not perpetuate. 

I’m sure if many of you look at your social media news feeds right now, you see many people who have very strong opinions on the question. 

I just don’t have the knowledge to speak to these issues, and I do not desire to contribute to the Internet culture of emotional “hot takes.” 

I think these are serious, literal life-and-death issues, and they deserve more thoughtful and informed discussion than I can offer. 

I am, however, a psychologist— which means I have education, training, and experience with human behavior. 

And that is why I can offer the following observation: I cannot believe that, in the discussions that invariably flow from such grotesque events, that so few people seem interested in examining popular culture’s love affair with gun violence, as a powerful contributing factor to these things. 

It has been very well established in the field of psychology that behavioral modeling is a powerful determinant of behavior— especially violent behavior. 

Researchers have been able to demonstrate, with precision and consistency, that both children and adults who are exposed to violent behavioral models are overwhelmingly more likely to exhibit violent behavior themselves. 

We are very, very likely to do as we see done— especially what we see done by role models we consider powerful and who have things we want. 

If one takes even a casual glimpse at popular entertainment in western culture, especially movies— what does one see, over and over and over again? 

The firing of guns. 

Gun violence is so pervasive in movies, especially (but not even exclusively) action movies, that we don’t even give it a second thought. 

In movies, guns are easily accessible, and usually fired without serious on-screen consequences— except that they confer power and autonomy on the characters who are firing them. 

In movies, firing a gun gets you out of a jam. 

In movies, firing a gun threatens your enemies. 

In movies, firing a gun makes a sequence “exciting.” 

In movies, it is rare that characters who are inexperienced with firearms mishandle them to their own detriment— one of the reasons why everyone thinks they can fire a gun is because they’ve seen countless (literally, countless) movie and TV characters do it, essentially every single day they’ve watched TV or seen a movie. 

Whether or not we even LIKE action movies all that much, we ALL have literally thousands upon thousands of images seared into our brains of characters firing guns, usually accompanied by emotion-escalating musical cues. 

What do you think that— all of that— does to the brain of someone who had difficulty with moral decision making, behavioral inhibition, and reality testing? 

As I said a the beginning of this blog: this isn’t about politics. I don’t know what the government should or shouldn’t do about the availability of firearms in the United States. 

But I believe I can confidently opine, as a psychologist, that if we’re serious about really decreasing the chances of this happening again, we need to reevaluate how gun violence is depicted in popular entertainment. 

I have a feeling we won’t do that, though. 

Because movies with gun violence make an awful lot of money. 

And guess who buys tickets to those movies? 

That’s right. We do. 

We create the demand for popular entertainment that saturates our brains with problem-solving, heart-pumping gun violence. 

We are part of the problem. 

We’re not the whole problem— but we do own part of it. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

Sometimes, your gut instinct is wrong. 

I know, I know— many of us have been told, in meme after meme after meme, to “always” trust our gut instinct. 

We’ve been told that “our gut instinct never lies.” 

I wish that was true. 

But, as it turns out, our gut instinct is as susceptible to manipulation, distortion, and trauma as our rational brains are. 

I understand why so many people, especially as they enter recovery, are so hell bent on embracing and validating their gut instincts. 

For many people, it’s a process of reclamation. Many people, especially when they’ve been abused over the course of time, have been gaslit into believing that their gut instincts are always wrong. Understanding that this isn’t the case— that sometimes their gut accurately understands things that their brains aren’t quite ready to accept— can be an empowering experience for them. 

Other people have had the experience of relying on their rational brains too much and ignoring their gut instincts— only realizing too late that their brains can introduce doubt and confusion in situations where gut level decisiveness might be more useful. 

So, I get it. There are definitely good reasons to embrace our gut instinct, and to pay it its due. 

The problem is when people come to OVER-rely on their gut instinct. 

The problem is when people come to think that their gut instinct is “never wrong.” 

The problem is when people lose sight of the fact that their gut instinct is not supposed to be the ONLY tool they rely on for decision-making. 

Our gut instinct is supposed to be A tool to help us evaluate the world. Not THE ONLY tool. 

It’s important for us to remember what happens to our bodies and brains when we’ve been traumatized over the course of time. 

Trauma has a way of shaping our worldview. 

Especially trauma that occurs over time, and in the context of close relationships. 

We come to see the world through a kind of post traumatic lens…and that lens isn’t just limited to our rational brains or decision-making. 

Trauma messes with our gut, too. 

Trauma specifically has a way of mangling what psychologists call our “schemas”— our interlocking systems of belief about the world, ourselves, and the future. 

Our schemas inform everything we think, feel, and do. They’re like the basic structure of the reality we perceive and act on in our heads. 

When trauma has damaged our schemas— i.e., when it has convinced us that we’re no good, that the world is always dangerous, that other people are never to be trusted, that the future holds nothing for us— that damage isn’t just limited to what we consciously think. 

That damage also extends to our unconscious beliefs and attitudes— those things that inform our “gut instinct.” 

When you have a gut feeling about something or someone, it is informed by your schemas…and if you’ve been traumatized or abused, your schemas are likely at least somewhat distorted. 

Understand: none of this is to say that we should never trust or believe our gut instincts. 

To the contrary, our gut instincts often have valuable information for us. 

But that information needs to be understood and acted upon in conjunction with input from other sources— such as our rational, thinking brains, our senses, and reality-testing from other people whom we trust. 

Our guts are not designed to be the only way we make decisions. 

That’s how we get impulsive, emotionally-driven decisions. 

Respect your gut. Listen to your gut. Value your gut. 

But also respect and value its role in your overall collection of decision-making tools. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

We can’t leave the past behind by focusing on it. 

I know, I know. It’s tempting. 

We WANT to revisit our past, for a variety of reasons. 

Sometimes our brains even MAKE us revisit the past against our will, in flashbacks, dreams, or intrusive memories. 

The ways we try to revisit the past are almost endless. We think about it. We reread old texts and emails. We physically go to places we once lived or worked. We contact people who were once in our lives. 

We replay old interactions with people in our heads, again and again and again…as if we can somehow alter the sequence of events. 

We cannot alter the sequence of events that actually played out. 

We can never have a better or a different past. 

Accepting this is essential to building a life that we actually value and enjoy living in the present and future…and it’s also incredibly difficult. 

Revisiting the past can be similar to an addiction or a compulsion. 

We find ourselves drawn to it like an addict is drawn to their substance or behavior of choice. 

We find our brains running that pattern, and we may not even consciously know why. 

You’re not crazy if you do this. 

Almost everybody does this. 

And it almost always leads to pain. 

How can we let the past go? 

We need to start by reminding ourselves, again and again and again— as many times as it takes— that focusing on the past is never going to change it. 

When we find ourselves drawn down that path, either voluntarily or involuntarily, we have to be prepared with a new, different pattern of focus to switch to. 

We need to practice switching to that new pattern of focus BEFORE we have to in the heat of the moment. 

We need to get good at shifting our focus— developing the skills of flexibility and perseverance in switching our focus. 

I know, I know. That’s not an appealing answer. I, too, wish there was a way that we could revisit the past and “process” all of its traumatic overtones, such that we simply can’t feel it anymore. 

I, too, wish we could just forget it and be done with it. 

But we cannot. 

It doesn’t matter HOW we revisit the past in our minds. 

It doesn’t matter WHY we revisit the past. 

It doesn’t matter how determined or confident we feel in approaching the past. 

Immersing ourselves in the past is simply never going to be a strategy for moving on. 

Revisiting the past reinforces it. it strengthens old feelings, old associations, old meanings. 

When we revisit the past, we train ourselves to revisit the past. 

Train yourself to shift your focus to the future. 

To your goals and values now. 

To what makes you tick now. 

Resist the temptation to try to “fix” the past by revisiting it, in your head or otherwise. 

You can no more “fix” the past by revisiting it than an alcoholic can “fix” their addiction by hanging out in a liquor store. 

When in doubt: focus forward. 

Also when not in doubt. 

 

Subscribe to the Doc’s free weekly email newsletter and never miss a blog or social media post!

You coped— you SURVIVED— as best you knew how. 

At any given time in your life, you did the best you could with the resources you had. 

You only had the tools you had. 

You only had the energy you had. 

You only had the modeling you had. 

You did what you had to do to survive— to get through whatever you had to get through, to end up exactly where you are, reading these words. 

There’s no shame in surviving. 

Many people look back on whatever they had to do to survive, and they feel shame. 

They hold themselves to standards of decision-making and behavior that would only be reasonable if they’d had access to greater or other resources than they did. 

How many times have we looked back, with the benefit of hindsight, and bitterly told ourselves what we “should” have said or done? 

Hindsight is 20/20, because in utilizing it we have the resources of time and perspective that we didn’t have then. 

We can all formulate a perfect plan in hindsight because we have maturity and tools we didn’t have in that moment. 

It’s unfair to drag ourselves for not using tools we didn’t have. 

There is a subset of people out there who will make you feel like the main problem in your life is that you have been wrong more than you have been right.

They’ll try to make you feel that your poor decision making or weak moral character might be the problem. 

In short, they’ll try to blame YOU for your life not working. 

Don’t get me wrong: our lives are definitely shaped by the quality of decisions we make.

But we’re only capable of making as good decisions as we can in any given moment. 

Put another way: you probably make better life decisions now than when you were a teenager. 

Why? It’s not because you were necessarily a terrible or incompetent person as a teenager. It’s because adult you has tools that teenage you lacked. 

Don’t beat yourself up for lacking resources at certain points in your life. It’s not your fault. 

We can’t help that we didn’t have certain tools and skills at certain points in our lives. 

We can’t go back and hand ourselves those tools and skills, as much as we’d like to. 

All we can do from this point, is what we can do: make sure we use the tools and skills we have NOW, to create a life from here on out. 

Some of the things you had to do to survive may have been a bummer. 

You can be legitimately and emphatically sad about the ways you had to get your needs met. 

Many of us should have had better guidance, better mentoring, better coaching, and better parenting growing up…but we didn’t. 

Many of us should have been loved more. But we weren’t. 

None of it is our fault. 

And we truly need to be careful and vigilant about not blaming ourselves. 

Self-blame doesn’t solve the problem. 

Self-blame doesn’t ease the pain. 

And self-blame isn’t reality. 

Ease up on yourself. 

Forgive yourself. 

When you feel yourself getting sucked into the vortex of blaming yourself for what you had to do to survive in the past, remember: past you is not the enemy. 

Eyes front, with compassion. 

And do the next right thing. 

You want to really ruin your life? Just screw it up beyond recognition or repair? 

Then neglect the importance and necessity of having a “Plan B.”

Lacking a fallback plan is also a surefire recipe for inconveniencing and even harming other people, who will have to clean up your mess if and when your “Plan A” doesn’t work out. 

I am sick to DEATH of personal growth teachers who tell you to “rip up Plan B.” 

Just yesterday I read on one such “teacher’s” page whole paragraphs about how if you have the temerity to have a backup plan, it simply communicates to the universe that you don’t have sufficient faith in your primary plan. 

His argument was that any energy you devote to a backup plan siphons focus away from your primary plan, thus lessening that plan’s chances of success. 

He concluded by exhorting his audience to go ALL IN on “Plan A,” and to leave fallback planning for those losers who don’t believe in the power of their dreams. 

Are you kidding me? 

Look, I’m all in favor of chasing after your “Plan A” with purpose and passion. I believe we can accomplish things that astonish even ourselves when we buckle down and focus our creative energies on goals we care about. 

The thing is, there are dozens of ways “Plan A” can go wrong that have nothing to do with our focus or passion. 

When you leave yourself with no exit strategy, you’re very arrogantly assuming that there are no variables in the world that impact your results other than your own will and skill. 

I assure you: there are such variables. 

Many such variables. 

Having an exit strategy— a “Plan B”— is not to declare that you lack confidence or faith in your abilities, or that you doubt the efficacy of your plan. 

What constructing a good “Plan B” actually means is that you are realistic and responsible. 

As John Lennon put it, “life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” 

Something that I very often talk with my patients and clients about is, how do we pick ourselves up and dust ourselves off when something doesn’t go as planned? 

When you get hit with a shot you didn’t see coming? 

When an accident happens? 

When a variable pops up that you didn’t even know was a thing, let alone a thing that could derail your “Plan A?” 

Very often people are tempted to think that when “Plan A” goes awry, they’re just screwed— they won’t achieve their goal, and the only reasonable response is to curl up and surrender. 

That’s not really the case…UNLESS you’ve arrogantly decided to not construct a realistic, responsible “Plan B.” 

By neglecting “Plan B,” you’re basically setting other people up to clean up your mess. 

Medical insurance is an example of a responsible “Plan B.” Nobody expects to get sick or injured. Nobody wants it. Nobody asks for it. “Plan A” is to remain healthy and functional. But we know that in the real world, illness and accidents happen. We need to have a reasonable “Plan B” for when— not “if”— they do. 

Car insurance is an example of a responsible “Plan B.” Nobody expects to get into a car accident. Nobody wants it. Nobody asks for it. “Plan A” is to stay on your side of the road and trust others to stay on their side of the road. But we know that in the real world, car accidents happen. Roads get icy. Judgement gets impaired. We need to have a reasonable “Plan B’ for when— not “if”— those things happen. 

Vaccinations are a “Plan B.” “Plan A” is to just avoid communicable disease. But we know in the real world…

Locks on our doors are a “Plan B.” “Plan A” is to just trust others to not invade our personal space or take our stuff. But we know in the real world…

I could go on…but you get my point. 

Neglecting “Plan B” is an immature, arrogant, stupid thing to do.

Devise a “Plan B.” Make it sound, responsible, and realistic. Tuck it in your back pocket, and be clear about how to access it if and when you need to. 

Then return your attention to “Plan A,” and work like hell to make it happen. 

By far, what creates the most stress for most of the people with whom I work is the perception that they are not in control of their lives. 

They feel that what they think is determined for them by their past. 

The what they feel is determined by what has happened to them and how other people treat them. 

That how they spend their time in the course of the day is determined by other people, from bosses to family members. 

Often times they even feel that the way their physical body feels is out of their control— that the very cells of their bodies are at the mercy of chronic illness and injury. 

Research has firmly established the connection between the feeling that our lives are out of control on the one hand, and anxiety and depression on the other hand. It’s a phenomenon called “learned helplessness”…and it can really cripple people emotionally once it sets in. 

A subset of people get into self-help and personal development because they want to feel more in control of their lives. A popular self-help mantra is “take your power back!” 

The thing is, “taking your power back” isn’t quite as easy or straightforward as some self-help gurus might like you to believe. 

Don’t get me wrong: I do believe that we can be far more in control of our life experience than we think. A lot of the feelings of our lives being out of control are actually the result of us not being clear about our goals and values, and not having or using the right tools and skills to manage our time and our energy. 

But it’s also ABSOLUTELY the case that certain domains of our live are at least partially, and sometimes wholly, out of our control. 

Good therapy— and, by extension, good self-help or personal development— isn’t just about teaching you to “take your power back.” 

It’s also about acquiring and using the skills and tools necessary to deal with it when “taking our power back” isn’t necessarily an option. 

Most people in the real world really do need to sacrifice at least some of their time and energy working jobs for paychecks. 

Most people in the real world really do need to deal with the fact that, as they age, their bodies don’t physically respond like they used to. 

Most people in the real world absolutely have to deal, sooner or later, with the fact that they will lose people, pets, and situations that they truly love…and those losses will be out of their control. 

No amount of personal empowerment is going to give you complete control over your life. 

I assure you: there are absolutely things that you cannot control, no matter how empowered, confident, healthy, or focused you are. 

Which is EXACTLY why it’s so important to get realistic about that subset of things you CAN control. 

Things like belief systems. 

Attitude. 

Willingness to wait. 

Willingness to learn. 

Willingness to be imperfect when you’re first learning a skill. 

Willingness to seek out tools. 

Willingness to consider failure a learning experience, and try again. 

Emotional self-care— as exemplified by being kind and respectful to yourself. 

There are more domains we CAN control, but you might have noticed about those I’ve already listed that they tend to take place INSIDE your head. 

That’s where we really DO have control. 

We can condition our thoughts. 

We can learn to observe our patterns of thinking and believing without judgment— and get curious about them. 

We can learn to keep track of the thoughts and beliefs that work for us or against us…and we can commit to reinforcing those patterns of thought and belief that make us stronger, kinder, and more confident and competent. 

THOSE are the things we can control. They require no metaphysical backflips, no understanding of quantum physics…and certainly no thousand-dollar workshops with a self-help guru. 

Get real about what you can and can’t control. 

It’s one of the kindest things you can do for yourself.