Use Your Damn Skills

I cannot cure your addiction. 

No one else can cure your addiction. 

You cannot cure anyone else’s addiction. 

Whether we’re talking addictions to substances, to behaviors, to ideas, or to people, there is a stubborn myth that we can cure someone else’s addiction by simply “loving them enough.” That by sheer force of our commitment to a person, we can change their patterns and needs profoundly enough to “snap them out of it.” 

Likewise, many people hang on to the myth that somehow somebody will come along to cure their addiction for them. People think that if they get just the right therapist, or just the right guru, or just the right lover, or just the right dietician, that they’ll finally have the impetus they need to do the work of recovery. 

That’s not how it works. 

(If it were how it works, I’d absolutely get in the business of “saving” people from their addictions, because I’m betting it’d be pretty lucrative.) 

Don’t get me wrong: people can help us along the way. 

Words matter. Influences matter. Ideas matter. Philosophies and therapeutic approaches and spiritual paths matter. 

But in the end, it’s on us. 

One of the things I like about the Christian spiritual tradition (stay with me here, this isn’t a religious comment, this is about psychology) is that in several of the Gospels, when Jesus heals people, he takes care to remind them that he, actually, isn’t the one who healed them. Over and over and over again, he tells the people he heals that it is their own faith that has healed them. 

Similarly, it’s not Alcoholics Anonymous that gets people sober, or cognitive behavioral therapy by itself that yanks people out of depression. It is peoples’ willingness to actively understand and USE the tools offered by AA and CBT that does the trick. 

I have a pretty good track record as a therapist for helping people like their lives and achieve their goals better. But it’s not about me: it’s about them. 

It’s about you. 

There are PLENTY of people who see my posts and who read my blogs, but who don’t get “better.” 

The difference between them and the people who read my material and who DO experience some benefit has nothing to do with the material itself. I’m the same Dr. Doyle day in and day out on this blog and on my Facebook page. 

The difference is whether and how someone is willing and able to think about and USE what they’re reading. 

The good news is: we don’t need to wait for someone else to save or cure us. 

We don’t have to wait for the perfect therapeutic approach to be developed and researched. 

We don’t have to wait until we read just the right book or stumble upon just the right guru. 

We don’t have to restrict ourselves to the teachings of just the right therapist. 

All of those things might help, and believe me, I know what a godsend it is to stumble upon just the right tools at the right time to help us get where we’re going. 

But the fact that, in the end, our recovery is 100% dependent upon us is excellent news, in my view. 

It means we don’t have to wait. 

It means we don’t have to trust in someone else’s commitment or faith. 

It means we can start right here, right now. 

It means we can keep going even when certain people or approaches disappoint us. 

Thank goodness I can’t cure your addiction. 

Thank goodness it’s all on us. 

 

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

Why do we avoid reality? 

It’s not because we’re weak, or invested in self-deception, or delusional. Though sometimes we are all of those things. 

Mostly we avoid reality because it can be painful, and we’ve been very effectively sold a myth that tells us that we can avoid the pain of reality if we refuse to acknowledge it. 

It’s not a totally crazy idea, in fairness. 

It’s absolutely the case that our cognitive and emotional reality is largely constructed by our patterns of focus. For example, steadfastly refusing to dwell on certain thoughts can drastically reduce their ability to upset us. This is the basic skill that cognitive therapy teaches: picking and choosing our thoughts in order to be more effective in life. 

However, as we learn to take greater control of our patterns of thinking and focus, it’s important to make a distinction between picking and choosing which thoughts to emphasize and deemphasize on the one hand, versus slipping into denying and disowning of reality on the other hand. 

Being intelligent about our focus means learning to critically evaluate our thought patterns for distortions and patterns that simply don’t serve us. Research into the thought patterns of people who suffer from chronic depression, anxiety, and trauma disorders suggests that emotional misery is often triggered and perpetuated by thought patterns that are unrealistic, self-downing, overgeneralized, and needlessly pessimistic. 

That said: learning to control our focus via cognitive therapy is always in the service of reality testing. That is, it’s only helpful to the extent to which it takes us closer to the reality of the world. 

Some people like to “control their focus” in such a way that takes them away from the reality of the world. 

That’s where we run into trouble.

Emotional relief that depends upon the denial of reality is only a short-term fix— and not much of one, at that. 

Life can be painful in ways that are completely un-distorted by our thoughts. 

Everyone experiences loss, failure, disappointment, and unfairness. 

These experiences may be painful, and the pain they cause us is NOT caused by our distorted or disempowering patterns of focus…they cause us pain because they’re fundamentally painful experiences. 

When we’re confronted by pain that is NOT the result of our maladaptive thinking, trying to bend over backwards to avoid that pain by reusing to acknowledge it almost always ends up causing a great deal more pain. 

Refusing to acknowledge reality seriously grates on our self-esteem. It’s virtually impossible to like and respect someone when they chronically live in a state of denial— even if that someone is us. 

Refusing to acknowledge reality robs us of opportunities to develop and practice healthy coping mechanisms. How can we ever expect to develop resilience and perspective if we never have the opportunity to practice or use those qualities? 

Refusing to acknowledge reality denies us realistic opportunities to solve problems. After all, how can we solve problems we refuse to admit even exist? 

It’s not the case that we should never use this tool of focus control that cognitive therapy teaches us to diminish the impact of painful situations. Of course we should adjust our focus in order to make it more likely that we can life an effective life, and part of living an effective life involves controlling the balance of pleasure and pain in our lives such that we’re able to function well. 

But it is the case that we need to constantly be on guard against using this powerful tool of focus control to avoid reality completely. 

Managing reality is not the same as avoiding reality. 

Managing pain is not the same as avoiding pain. 

Learning that difference isn’t always easy— but it’s an essential part of healing. 

 

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

Who and what are influencing you? 

Who and what do you not only allow, but actively enable to influence you? 

It’s true that there are entire industries devoted to influencing us. I often use the Dr. Glenn Doyle page to remind my readers that we are constantly under siege from advertisers, politicians, religious leaders, and others who wish to make us feel certain things, usually because they want us to do certain things. Buy products, vote for a candidate, attend or financially support their church, what have you. 

It’s also true that, in addition to those who are actively seeking to influence us, we allow and enable certain sources to get into our heads. 

We all make choices about what to read. 

We all make choices about what to listen to. 

We all make choices about what to watch. 

Very often, these choices are driven by our desire to be entertained, soothed, and distracted. And there’s nothing wrong with being entertained, soothed, or distracted. A lot of undeniably great art results from humankind’s desire to be entertained, soothed, and distracted. 

But in mainly seeking diversion from our entertainment, we sometimes forget that what we put in front of our faces, what we allow into our ears and eyes and heads every day, can also exert powerful philosophical, ideological, psychological, and maybe even spiritual influences. 

We don’t have to be actively listening to the lyrics of a song to get those lyrics stuck in our heads. 

We don’t have to be actively buying into the values systems of characters in movies for those values to lodge in our brains. 

We don’t have to be actively looking for role models to allow the behavior of characters in our entertainment to influence how we think, feel, and behave. 

We are shaped, inevitably, by what we pump into our brains over and over and over again. 

How much of that shaping are we conscious of? 

How much of that shaping do we take conscious charge of? 

One of my favorite diversions is the TV show that used to be on NBC, “The Office.” It’s a comedy that follows the average workdays of an office full of office supply salespeople and their assorted support staff. 

Anybody who is a fan of “The Office” can tell you, it’s a show that is easy to watch in long binges. It goes down easy. The characters are generally agreeable, easy to identify with, and the stories are usually lighthearted and fun. “The Office” is on Netflix, making it even easier now to watch episode after episode after episode. 

The thing about “The Office,” though, is that most of the characters on that show exist in a state of numbness, frustration, or boredom. It’s played for laughs, and the characters’ pettiness and oscillations between narcissism and low self-esteem are usually presented in such a way that no one gets hurt— I mean, it’s just a SHOW. 

But when I watch episode after episode after episode of “The Office” because it goes down easy…does my brain really register that it’s “just a show?” 

Two episodes of “The Office,” which are easy to swallow because they’re the TV equivalent of sugar coated, means one hour of putting people in front of your face who have kind of given up, people who have kind of settled for a life that they’re often manifestly unhappy with, people who are defined by their (comedically exaggerated) frustration and boredom. 

And trust me: almost nobody only watches two episodes of “The Office” at a time.

Understand, I love “The Office.” Which is why it was a bummer to realize that devoting hours to it, even in the background, means pumping a lot of influence into my brain that, in the end, may not serve me well in the motivation and focus departments. 

Influence matters. 

What are you letting into your brain, every day? 

What are you taking time to PUT in your brain, every day? 

Good influences aren’t going to worm their way into your brain by accident. Or, at the very least, we can’t COUNT on them getting into our brains by accident. 

Create time to put things in your brain that are useful to you. Decide what those things might be— self-help reading, reading your faith’s holy Scriptures, reading Pinterest or Tumblr pages of people and organizations that inspire you, listening to motivational stuff, perusing the YouTube channels of people and institutions that align with your values— and pencil into your day specific time periods when you’re going to expose yourself to them. 

Remember that ten minutes a day of exposing yourself to something means, at the end of the week, having devoted over an HOUR of focus to that thing. 

Also remember that even if you do devote an HOUR a week to an influence…there are 168 hours in every week. 

How many of those hours are working for you…and how many might be working against you? 

 

Subscribe to the free weekly Dr. Glenn Doyle email newsletter, and never miss a blog or social media post!

Who do you think you’re competing with? 

Your age group peers? Your coworkers? Your academic cohort? 

Are you competing with your parents’ vision of who you were “supposed” to grow up and be? 

Are you competing with your own arbitrary ideas of what you “should” have accomplished by whatever age you are? 

One of my drawbacks as a therapist is, I have limited patience for self-defeating competitions that people invent and perpetuate in their heads. 

We humans are really, really good at imagining competition. 

We’re constantly competing against what we imagine to be other peoples’ judgments of us— like it matters. 

We’re constantly competing against what we imagine we “should” have accomplished— like it matters. 

We’re constantly competing against what we imagine a “good” or “productive” version of us “should” have done with their imaginary lives— like it matters. 

Don’t get me wrong— other people might well be judging us. Our parents might well have a very concrete idea of what we “should” do with our lives. And the culture very often does have norms and assumptions about what people “should” have accomplished by arbitrary ages. It’s not that we make those fairy tales up out of whole cloth. 

But the fact is, wherever these fairy tales come from…they’re still fairy tales. 

And to try to live your life according to the standards set in fairy tales is a lousy idea. 

That doesn’t stop us, however, from clinging to these fairy tales in our heads and judging ourselves harshly based on them. 

What are we afraid of if we acknowledge that many of the standards we use to mercilessly judge whether our lives are on track or not are really just fairy tales we’ve conjured in our minds? 

Why are we so often afraid to admit that these arbitrary standards truly don’t matter? 

Sometimes we’re afraid that if we gave up the fairy tales by which we’ve been arbitrarily, harshly judging ourselves and competing against…that we’d suddenly lose all of our drive to improve ourselves or perform well. 

Yes, our imagined competitions and standards may be arbitrary, this logic goes, but don’t we need at least SOMETHING to motivate us to achieve and improve? 

At the risk of ruining yet another fairy tale for you, allow me to assure you: if you’re just striving to achieve and improve your life because you’re in an imagined competition with someone or something, that source of motivation is eventually going to leave you bitterly unfulfilled. 

Why? 

Because if the competition is imaginary it doesn’t matter if you win. 

For example, you may well outperform your parents’ expectations of you. Which might feel good for a minute. 

But what about the next minute? 

You may well outperform the culture’s expectations of you. Which might feel great for a minute. 

But what about the next minute? 

You may well outperform your age group, coworkers, academic cohort, whoever you imagine you’re competing against, and it might all feel great for a minute. 

But what then? Are you interested in conjuring up yet another imaginary adversary to compete against? 

Winning imaginary competitions doesn’t matter. And as a source of motivation, these imaginary competitions are extremely limited. 

So you hit your milestone you wanted to hit before age whatever. Congratulations. How long do you think that high will last? 

Don’t get me wrong: imaginary competitions can be excellent for short-term motivation and inspiration. I myself love checking in on the page of one of my competitors in the self-help industry, just to gauge the success and usefulness of my product compared to his. There’s nothing wrong with using imaginary competitions to motivate you in the short term. 

But I’m under no delusion that “winning” that competition, in the long term, is a particularly meaningful goal. 

What IS a particularly meaningful goal, to me, is the impact my work might have on the people who might use it. 

That’s not imaginary. That’s real. 

Keep it as real as you can. 

Don’t invest too heavily in imagined competitions. 

And don’t let imaginary competitions get you down— because in the end they truly don’t matter. 

 

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

Your brain frequently looks for the easy way out when it’s anxious. 

Lots of things can cause anxiety— and they’re very often based in the concept of uncertainty. 

Your brain gets anxious when it’s uncertain what’s happening next. 

Your brain gets anxious when it’s uncertain what things mean. 

Your brain gets anxious when it’s uncertain what someone else is thinking. 

Your brain gets anxious when it’s uncertain what the right decision is. 

When things are uncertain and your brain gets anxious, your brain often tries to solve the problem of anxiety by simply opting out— by going down the “flight” path of the “fight or flight” response tree. 

These are the times when you find your brain suddenly making excuses for why it’s okay, or even imperative, to remove yourself from a situation. 

For example, if you find yourself talking with someone to whom you’re attracted, and your brain suddenly realizes there’s a great amount of uncertainty involved here— uncertainty about what this person wants to hear from you, uncertainty about whether this person is as attracted to you as you are to them, uncertainty about whether they’re out of your league and about to break your heart— you might find your brain suddenly making excuses for why you need to end that conversation, right now. 

Or, say you even NOTICE you’re attracted to someone, but your brain realizes IN ADVANCE all the uncertainty that MIGHT exist if you were to go up and talk to them— you might find your brain suddenly listening all the reasons why you shouldn’t even risk going up and talking to them. 

The anxious brain is very, very good at avoidance and attempted escape. 

Even when physical escape is impossible, the anxious brain tends to invent its own escape routes through the psychological defense of dissociation. 

The thing is: uncertainty is not as threatening as your anxious brain thinks it is. 

Yes, it’s true, that there are things out there that can hurt and traumatize us. I won’t even try to make the argument that it’s unlikely that those things will happen to us— I’ve met and worked with too many survivors of trauma to be naive about the supposed “improbability” of bad things happening. 

But it’s also true that we have absolutely no control over many of those things out there that can hurt us. 

No matter how anxious we get, no matter how frantically we attempt to avoid them— bad things can still happen to us. 

Even if we somehow perfectly predicted all of the bad things we could possibly imagine happening to us, based on the bad things that HAVE happened to us (or that social media incessantly warns us MIGHT happen to us)…there are bad things that might happen to us that we would have absolutely no idea exist, let alone how to prepare for. 

Anxious avoidance, in other words, is a terrible, terrible Plan A when it comes to keeping ourselves safe. 

Anxious avoidance, in fact, usually results in more anxiety, more avoidance, and, ultimately, the depression and exhaustion that inevitably comes with isolation and frantic attempts to flee. 

When we find ourselves driven, day after day after day, by our anxious brains’ attempts to avoid uncertainty, it’s important to be realistic about what we have to do. 

It doesn’t help to yell at our brains to be more realistic. 

It doesn’t help to be mad at ourselves for being so anxious. 

It doesn’t help to get frustrated with our brains for their attempts to keep us safe through avoidance. 

What does help is to be patient, compassionate, and understanding with our anxious brains…while at the same time gently reminding them that avoidance doesn’t actually DECREASE the level of uncertainty that exists in the world. 

In fact, avoidance makes us LESS able to live in and cope with an uncertain world. 

Think of your anxious brain like a scared child. You wouldn’t angrily scream at a scared child, “DON’T BE SCARED, DAMMIT!” 

No, you wouldn’t. Because if you did, that scared child would quickly learn to avoid YOU as well. 

Are you doing this to your anxious brain? 

If so, cut it out. Your brain is avoiding enough stuff. 

Instead, work on developing a sense of CERTAINTY within yourself— certainty that, no matter what happens OUTSIDE of you, your INTERNAL response to anxiety will be compassionate, grown up, and reality-based. 

Certainty that the world might be uncertain…but that you have skills that you can, and will, use in the place of avoidance. 

Use your damn skills. 

 

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

So many people get so frustrated because they seem to know what to do, but they resist doing it. 

“If only I did what I know,” they often say. “If only I APPLIED the things I already know. Why don’t I do the things I know?” 

Centuries of Freudian-influenced psychoanalytic perspectives have encouraged us to look for deep-seated, unconscious conflicts that drive our self-defeating behavior. We’ve been taught that if we’re not doing something we know we “should” be doing, it’s probably because we have some sort of unconscious “block” that we need to resolve in order to get back on track. 

Sometimes that’s true. There are definitely times when there is something unspoken and/or barely conscious that is impeding our ability to do what we know. 

More often, however, it’s my experience that the obstacles in our way are far more straightforward. 

It’s usually the case that we don’t do the things we think we “should” do because we figure it’ll be a bummer on some level. We think it’ll be a drag. We think it’ll be painful, inconvenient, a hassle. 

There are many ways in which we humans can be complex creatures, but the analysis of behavior is often pretty straightforward: if we think doing something is going to be more of a drag than not doing it…well, it’s really hard to get us to do that thing. 

Our brains reject inviting pain into our lives. 

To some people, this doesn’t make a lot of sense, insofar as we’re frequently aware that NOT making certain changes invites certain situations that are ALREADY painful to stick around. An example of this that frequently crops up is smoking: yes, quitting smoking may be a painful hassle, but isn’t it the case that NOT quitting invites longer-term, far more overwhelming pain to exist in our lives? 

Sure. But the prospect of health problems occasioned by smoking is, for most people, kind of a distant, kind of hypothetical pain. The pain occasioned by quitting, by contrast, means very immediate, very real, pain. 

Our brains aren’t good at looking past the immediate and certain to the distant and hypothetical. 

This also explains why we’re often so inconsistent with following through with our goals. 

Most of the stuff we need to do to achieve our goals requires sacrifice on levels that tend to be pretty immediate. An example of this is, for many people to improve their physical condition and lose excess body fat, it’s often necessary for them to change their eating patterns and eat less of certain foods they tend to really enjoy, less often. 

Doing without these foods is an immediate, visceral bummer. We FEEL that pain every day, when we want a snack; or when the people around us are having tasty treats; or when we see advertisements and social media posts that make us salivate for our favorite treats. Doing without a thing we really want is often a serious bummer— especially when we’ve gotten used to having it as often as we’re inclined. 

It’s totally true that NOT changing our dietary habits can, for many people, lead to bigger picture pain— the health and lifestyle challenges involved in caring around excess body weight over the course of years, blood sugar dysregulation and diabetes, increased health risks across the boar— but, again, those challenges for most people tend to be distant and hypothetical. 

The PLEASURE they’re forsaking is not distant and hypothetical. They’ve EXPERIENCED that pleasure. Doing without their favorite treats is a PAIN they also experience, right here, right now. 

It really is all about that pleasure and pain axis in the here-and-now. The American psychologist B.F. Skinner called this conundrum the “balance of consequences.” 

When it comes to pushing through this pleasure/pain barrier and doing the things you “should” do, you basically have two options: 

One: reorient your focus so that the PAIN occasioned by NOT changing your behavior becomes very real, very visceral. Make it less hypothetical, less abstract. Read and watch and expose yourself to things that thrust the PAIN of NOT changing right in your face. 

Make it real. Make it painful. Make it visceral. 

Or, two: develop skills to push you through the bummer, pain, and hassle of making the change in the short term, until your body and brain become used to the new behavior. 

This is how I managed my own addiction to certain foods, as well as my relationship to exercise. I knew it was going to be a bummer to give up my favorite treats, and I knew it was going to be an even bigger bummer to commit to a lifestyle that involved a lot of getting up early and moving, often when I didn’t feel like it. 

In order to manage these realities, however, I developed the skills of self-talk, distraction, visualization, and other techniques of focus management. Eventually, my body and brain got used to my new lifestyle— and I even learned to love the “exercise” part of the equation. 

All of which is to say: you probably don’t have massive unconscious conflicts when it comes to not doing the things you “should” do or you “know” how to do. 

It’s probably the case that your brain just hasn’t wrapped itself around the how’s and why’s of foregoing immediate pleasure in the service of avoiding long-term pain. 

Yet. 

 

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

I will never understand therapists, life coaches, or other personal development guides who get locked into one modality, one small collection of techniques, and then try to convince everyone that THEIR program is the ONLY program that works. 

You see this very often in the personal development field. Prospective gurus, guides, and mentors getting on social media, and claiming that THEY have figured out exactly what works for YOU…even if they haven’t met you. 

What’s even more hilarious— or disturbing, depending on your point of view— is the fact that these myopic “experts” often seek to sell their programs by mocking and belittling the programs offered by their competitors. They often do this by claiming that their program is the program backed by “science.”

(One such “expert” with whom I am acquainted loves to use words like “science” and “psychology” to sell his ideas…but then he turns around and mocks the value of traditional education. Which begs the question, of course, of where he thinks most “scientific” and “psychological” research takes place, if academic settings aren’t all they’re cracked up to be. But I digress.)

“Scientific” minds do not mock alternative points of view. 

“Science,” as a way of knowing, is all about remaining open to data— ESPECIALLY data that contradicts our preexisting point of view. 

I can tell you as a stone cold certain FACT that there is NOT a one-size-fits-all approach to personal development that works for everybody. 

In fact, I can tell you that there isn’t even an approach that works for MOST people. 

Most everybody, in my experience, needs a specific combination of tools, techniques, philosophies, and supports in order to live their best lives. 

It’s up to you, and to the life development professionals you work with and follow, to determine the particular blend of things that will allow YOU to get to the next level. 

I think it’s telling that, often, when myopic gurus, guides, or mentors are confronted with evidence that their pet approach didn’t have quite the impact they’d promoted or intended, their go-to tactic is to figure out how you did it “wrong”…rather than figuring out if or how their program may have been a poor fit for your needs. 

Some people, for example, respond well to a “tough love” approach. They respond when a therapist, guide, or mentor “calls them on their shit,” doesn’t let them make excuses, and is very vocal and even somewhat confrontational when they appear to be backsliding on their program. 

Other people, by contrast, get triggered when a therapist tries to take a “tough love” approach. No matter how good the therapist’s intentions, being confrontational and blunt with these patients pushes buttons usually “installed” in the course of traumatic upbringing and relationships, and the client isn’t going to make much progress because they’re busy trying to not have an anxiety attack withe every meeting. 

The fact that people respond differentially to a “tough love” approach doesn’t say anything of importance about the approach itself. Nor does it tell us anything about the inherent virtue or value of the people who respond to it (though proponents of “tough love” do seem to be more inclined to try shaming people into “benefiting” from the approach than is sometimes necessary, in my observation). 

It just means that people are different, and respond to different things. 

It wold be more convenient for some gurus if everybody responded to the same thing in the same way. It would negate the need for them to learn about the many types of personalities out there, each of whom have unique pressure points and motivational buttons. 

But, sadly, approaching the personal development field with an appreciation for this type of complexity messes up their ability to sell seminars. So, you know. 

My own field, clinical psychology, is not immune to this kind of myopia. 

Clinical psychologists such as myself are often trained to work int he context of once weekly, fifty to sixty minute psychotherapy sessions— a model that is reinforced by insurance companies’ structures for payment. The fact that some patients may need more or different types of interventions than the once weekly fifty-minute session is something that my field has been slow to address…because psychology, too, would prefer that the world adapt to its preferences, not the other way around. 

The fact is, you’re probably going to be MOST helped by a somewhat eclectic combination of things. 

The right therapist, guru, mentor, or guide for YOU will support you in finding out what COMBINATION of things will work for you. 

They won’t be precious or territorial about what is and isn’t on the table. 

They won’t pretend that theirs is the only program backed by “science.” 

And, more than anything: the right helper for you will be driven by RESULTS, not preexisting philosophy. 

 

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

Most days, all day, we are encouraged to not quite say what we mean. 

We’re told to tone it down. 

We’re told to be nice. 

We’re told to keep certain things to ourselves. 

We’re told to avoid saying what we really mean and what we really think, because it may upset or offend somebody else. 

The world is often in the business of bullying us into not being ourselves.

There absolutely is an extent to which it is the intelligent, kind choice to be mindful of the circumstances we’re in before choosing to express ourselves in certain ways. There is a subset of people who seem to think it is a virtue to be “blunt” in their communications. It’s my experience that most people who go around bragging about how “blunt” they are are most often looking for an excuse to be unkind, and/or not have to put the work into being aware of and sensitive to the people around them. 

We DON’T have to express every thought that occurs to us in the most “blunt” way possible. That is neither intelligent, nor necessary, nor kind. I would never tell anybody to impulsively just say whatever comes into their head. 

That said: if we cave, day after day after day, to others’ preference that we not say what we mean…it becomes really, really hard to build and maintain healthy self-esteem. 

Being honest in what what we express and communicate is something that most of us need in order to build and maintain a healthy sense of self. 

Sometimes the people around us— especially in the relatively less inhibited world of social media in which many of us live most of our days— will have reactions to us being ourselves. 

I’m not talking about the normal reactions people have when somebody chooses to be obnoxious or unkind in their communications. If you go around being hurtful just because you’ve decided it’s a virtue to be “blunt,” you’re going to alienate a lot of people…and you should. 

Unkind behavior invites unkind responses. That’s not about someone else’s “thin skin;” that’s about  something we psychologists call “natural consequences.” 

Rather, I’m talking about the fact that there are a lot of people who are only willing to accept and reinforce us if we’re their version of what a “good person” is. 

We’ve all seen examples of this on social media. We live in a culture in which it has become increasingly important to people that they be surrounded by, exposed to, and immersed in viewpoints that basically resonate with their own, especially politically. 

This happens with conservatives; this happens with liberals; this happens with Christians; this happens with atheists. Now more than ever, people have a very low tolerance for the company or feedback of people with whose worldview they disagree. 

This has the result of pressuring people, sometimes intensely, to be something-other-than-themselves in order to be accepted (or even tolerated) by other people. 

This pressure keeps up, day after day, hour after hour. It has the eventual effect of making it hard, eventually, to remember who we really are, because we’re basically spending much of our time calculating what we can’t and can’t say in order to avoid being ridiculed and rejected by the people around us. 

In the kind of judgmental, zero tolerance world in which we live (again, especially on social media), saying what we mean can have what seem like disastrous social consequences. 

The problem being, NOT saying what we mean, stifling our true selves, again and again and again, can have truly disastrous consequences when it comes to our self-esteem, our inherent sense of value and worth, our basic sense of self. 

There is a difference between being diplomatic and kind on the one hand, and stifling our basic natures and values for the sake of social acceptance on the other. 

You probably don’t have the means or the opportunity to suddenly be a “hero” and go around saying exactly what you mean. The social pressure cooker in which most of us live makes being too honest, too often, a significant social liability. That’s real. You’re not imagining that. To want to avoid the social consequences of bing too honest, too often, is perfectly reasonable. 

But you can take small steps. 

You can refuse to go along with the crowd in small ways. 

You can remind yourself who you are and what you believe…and that your identity and beliefs are fundamentally okay, no matter what “they” may think. 

To the extent that you do not wish ill will on others; to the extent that you’re not actively seeking to destroy, damage, or steal others lives, liberty, or property; to the extent that you’re not seeking to coercively impose your will upon those who would choose otherwise…your belief system is fundamentally okay, no matter what it is. 

To the extent that you’re not seeking to harm someone else or take their stuff, you’re a fundamentally “good” person. 

Remember that. 

Remind yourself of that. 

Feed yourself the kind of thoughts that will make it easier and easier to resist the enormous social pressure most of us face to shut up and conform. 

One day at a time. 

 

Subscribe to Dr. Doyle’s free weekly email newsletter and never miss a blog or social media post!

Remember:  we’re constantly filtering reality through our own lenses of belief and expectation. 

In cognitive behavioral therapy, we call the various beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the future through which we filter all of our incoming information “schemas.” 

We have schemas about a lot of things. 

We have schemas— that is, beliefs— about ourselves: whether we’re a good person or bad person; whether we’re lazy or industrious; whether we’re honest or dishonest. 

We have schemas— beliefs— about other people and the world: whether people can be trusted or not; whether the world is for us or against us; whether engaging with the world is worth the hassle or not. 

We have schemas— beliefs— about the future: whether our current projects and efforts will pay off; whether there’s light at the end of this tunnel; what kind of things are probably going to happen next. 

The reason why we evolved to have schemas is pretty simple: if we didn’t have some way of filtering all the information coming at our brains every moment we’re awake, we’d get overwhelmed, completely overloaded. Our brains have to have SOME organized idea of what is worth paying attention to, and what isn’t. 

The way schemas work is, once we develop a schema about something or a set of things, our brains then mostly pay attention to incoming information that is consistent with those schema. And, conversely, our brains tend to filter out incoming information that isn’t consistent with our preconceived beliefs. 

Handy, right? 

You betcha…provided we remember that our brains are doing this filtering, all day, every day. 

That is, provided that we understand and accept that we are constantly getting a heavily filtered version of reality that is molded to what we already more or less believe. 

A lot of the time, this process works pretty well. Our brains are usually pretty smart about what to filter out and what to direct our attention toward. If we had to take on the task of constantly, critically evaluating every scrap of incoming information coming at our faces, every minute of every day…we wouldn’t be able to function. 

Our brains therefore do us the favor of figuring out, broadly, what kind of information is useful and adaptive for us in our everyday functioning, and our brains bias our attention toward this kind of information. 

But as well as this system works, we need to remember that it is a system that is fallible. 

We need to remember that there are times when our schemas are distorted. Skewed.

There are times when our perceptive “lenses” are cracked. 

Sometimes this happens as a result of trauma. We have something really bad happen to us, or a series of really bad things happen to us, and as a result, we develop beliefs about ourselves, the world, and the future that aren’t broadly true…but they FEEL true, because of the trauma we’ve experienced. 

Thus, when we try to filter realty through trauma-damaged schema, we end up with some wonky results— we pay attention to incoming information that tells us we’re defective; that the world is an unpredictable, hostile place; and that the future has little, if anything, to offer us. 

Distorted schemas— cracked lenses— focus us on incoming information in distorted ways. 

Consequently, when we try to make decisions based on the skewed information our brains have let in through the “cracked lens” of a distorted schema, we end up making decisions that don’t serve us well. Which, of course, then has the effect of reinforcing the distorted beliefs that contributed to the problem in the first place. 

It becomes a vicious, vicious cycle. 

What can we do about any of this? 

We can keep in mind— especially in therapy— that our schemas are just webs woven of beliefs. We can remember that our beliefs may or may not be accurate…that our lenses may be cracked because of things we’ve been through. 

We can remember that our reality is filtered— and while that filtering may sometimes serve us, there are going to be times when it DOESN’T serve us well. 

We can either periodically or regularly examine our schemas about ourselves, the world, and the future, to determine whether or how we’re perceiving the world through a cracked lens. 

We can remember that because something FEELS true, that doesn’t necessarily MAKE it true. 

Our brains are truly magnificent machines. They’re the most sophisticated supercomputers the planet has ever seen. 

It’s too bad no one provided an owner’s manual. 

 

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

I have some potentially upsetting news.

All of those self-help gurus and law of attraction teachers are wrong.

You can’t have “literally anything you want,” no matter how hard you envision it. 

(I know. Bummer, right?)

I’m not even necessarily saying they’re out to defraud you (although I suspect some of them are).

After all, “you can have anything you want, just by leveraging the power of your MIND!” is a seductive sales pitch. We all have minds; we all use our imagination on the regular; wouldn’t it be sweet if all we had to do to have LITERALLY ANYTHING WE WANTED was to do an effortful version of the daydreaming we tend to do anyway? 

Alas…it doesn’t work like that. 

Some might call me a pessimist for saying this. I once had a commenter angrily demand why I wasn’t “open to possibility” when I wrote something like this on my page in the past. 

The thing is…you’ll never find a bigger believer in “possibility” than me. That’s why I do what I do. 

I may not believe that we can have ANYTHING WE WANT in our lives simply by imagining it really, really hard…but I believe we can create lives that look and feel an awful lot more LIKE the lives we imagine than most of us realize. 

I think we can create lives that look cooler than the lives we have now. 

I think we can create lives that feel better than the lives we have now. 

I believe we can construct lives that have a lot of the stuff in them that we might imagine in that fantasy life. 

But it’s going to take a lot more than imagination (even though visualization is an extremely effective tool). 

Creating the life we want involves a lot of focused attention. 

It involves a lot of goal-setting. A lot of planning.

Creating the live we want involves a lot of doing things we’d rather not do, at times we’d rather not do them. It involves a lot of work that isn’t particularly interesting, stimulating, or fun. 

Why? Because big goals— the goals you’re chasing when you think about “creating your dream life” are comprised of steppingstone goals. And steppingstone goals are comprised of even smaller component goals that must be attended to day to day, every day.

And a lot of those daily goals do not bear much resemblance to the big, life-defining goals you’re so hot to achieve. 

Put another way: in order to create some (not even all!) of the overarching goals you think of as your “dream life”…you’re going to have to live your day to day life in a way that may not interest or stimulate you, often for long stretches. 

It can suck. 

Concrete examples of this are everywhere. 

People want to be their “ideal weight” and have their “ideal body,” because they’re imagining what life will be like if they looked and felt a certain way. The thing is, to build a body that looks and feels that way, they have to endure things like workouts and diet plans that don’t, in the moment, feel particularly good…and they have to do it day, after day, after day. 

People want their “ideal career,” usually because they desire a certain income level and lifestyle. The thing is, in order to build that career and income, they have to endure things like sacrifice and risk that don’t, in the moment, feel particularly sexy…and they have to do it day, after day, after day. 

Now, visualization WILL help, with all of this. Visualization is a robustly research-supported technique that will reshape your brain, if you use it consistently and well. 

But visualization is not enough. 

There simply are no shortcuts to creating the lives we want to create. Not shortcuts like the ones certain self-help gurus want to sell you, anyway. 

Make no mistake: my message ultimately is one of hope. I’m not a pessimist (if I were a pessimist about human potential, I truly wouldn’t be in the psychology or personal development fields). 

We CAN create better lives. 

But it’s gonna cost us. 

 

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