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Building Joy

little red boat in a cove

My therapist moved to Florida and the last bit of advice she gave me was to play more and seek out joy. The way I’m thinking about this advice, I should also be a touch less hardworking. One of the quality-of-life measures I instituted in 2019 was to have a slow start each day. I take my time in the morning, have coffee, eat something, take a shower, and only then look at my emails and to-do list. This is one of the ways I try to make time for myself, be more present, and rush less.

I’m anti resolution, but I am in favor of choosing what to bring into my life. So my 2020 wish is for joyfulness and playfulness. I’m still thinking about how to institute this (yes, I want a structured process for my unscheduled joy). I have a few ideas in no particular order. Spontaneity: I want to be more whimsical with my free time. Creativity: I want to write, draw, make, carve, decorate, or put something shiny on at least weekly. Newness: I want to try new things, go outside my comfort zone and enjoy being terrible at new things. Nature: I want to go outside more, ideally among trees, mountains, or near the sea. Art: I want to go see live performances, and exhibits at museums and galleries–I want to be inspired by the work of others. Movement (self explanatory). Community: continue to build my multiple communities. I will also continue doing the things that currently bring me joy: reading fiction, seeing friends, eating new foods.

What do you want to bring into your life in 2020? How can you think of it in terms of calling in joy instead of disapproving of your life of yore?

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Healing our Quiet Parts–with Friends! Or friendly faces

Yesterday I held my first Healing our Quiet Parts: An Antiracist IFS Workshop for White Allies. The workshop uses Internal Family Systems (IFS) and is influenced by values from a 6-month course in Somatic Abolitionism founded by Resmaa Menakem.

From IFS, I know that we all have a lot of parts helping manage all the situations we find ourselves in. That many parts try to keep us from feeling ashamed or guilty or lonely. These are likely protecting younger, more traumatized parts that experienced a lot of emotional pain. Thankfully these younger parts can be healed using IFS protocols. And the protective parts can relax if they learn our current age and witness our current life skills and surroundings (friends, lovers, family, job, home).

Using IFS to explore our parts and their impact on our bodies helps disrupts the tendency of white folk to tell stories or center their intention over their impact. From Somatic Abolitionism I learned that we must focus on ongoing community/group work, that healing is best done together, much as dreaming of a just world should be done together.

IFS helps identify the underlying younger parts that need healing and explore the complexity of the system: all the worries and fears that interfere with our ability to move forward, to be true allies and advocates in antiracist work. Healing younger part gives us the flexibility to approach the work from a more centered, creative, and calm place over time.

It was my first time delivering a workshop in nearly 10 years, so I invited four friends to my test workshop. It reminded me that healing work is best done with friends, or like-minded folk who sufficiently trust each other to have honest, vulnerable conversations about their experiences. There were silences throughout, but they were silences of growth and reflection, and the seeds of change.

Since I wanted to create an opportunity for change, I wanted to reassure all parts that the goal of the work was a compassionate listening ear. So we did a lot of work around the gifts/wisdom of the parts, whether those parts are excited to do antiracist work, or nervous about increasing the vulnerability and visibility of a person when they speak up. I learned that there may be true terror tied to speaking up, which may be a legacy burden white bodies carry (and probably many others).

I look forward to learning more as I continue this work. I approach this work not as an expert but as a collaborator and co-learner. I am doing this in part to increase community ties for myself and others.

As I had suspected there is a lot to be done! This is the first in a planned series of three workshops. First we get to know some of our protectors and exiles, then in the second workshop we work with our young parts that need healing for the whole system to further relax and engage, and in the third workshop we will work with the legacies of centuries of racism. At least that’s the current rough plan.

If you are interested in bringing a few friends to a four-hour exploration of the parts that get in your way when you want to be an antiracist, please contact me. Thanks for reading.

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Post Vaccination: Finding a New Balance

During the COVID pandemic, some of us experienced what it feels like to go slow, to be well rested, to take ample time for things. This was a revelation for some.

As people become vaccinated and restart their in-person social lives, there is the pleasure and fun of being socially active once again.

(I have been referring to this period as “Freshman Year of College” for many of us.)

This time is alluring, the desire to connect is deep, however, I urge you to hold your boundaries. Do not lose the learning of the past 15 months.

If you need significant downtime to feel your best, don’t abandon your needs now. As a Highly Sensitive Person, in my case this has meant being careful about alternating days of socializing with days of rest. I am a better, more engaged friend when the socializing is deliberate, chosen, and balanced with necessary periods of rest.

Just a gentle reminder that we are rediscovering our capacity for fun, and that we need to balance the urgency of the moment with our need for rest. We are relearning all the skills we used to possess.

Be joyful out there. And get your sleep!

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From Scarcity to Clarity

Shining blue tree in hedge The advantage of being a therapist is that, whatever the debate of the day may be, I approach that debate twenty four times, with twenty four clients, each with their unique perspectives, on top of whatever conversations I may have with my friends and family. National conversations become emotional Rubix cubes—each facet spinning and recombining into a new picture. I’ve observed my clients’ journeys through the pandemic, the political crises, and the anti-racist movement. One of my clients recently said about the year, “I’ve moved from scarcity to clarity.” I’m paraphrasing here. But this struck me as exactly right. I asked for permission to borrow the words.

To some degree, we’ve moved from shock to resignation—from anxiety to depression, as the pandemic wears on. But there is another phenomena underneath the losses, moments of reflection about priorities, clarity around values. In my life this takes place in three ways:

First, I’ve noticed all I’ve missed. Having grieved the losses, I can now see them as signposts of love. Everything I miss is something I value. I mostly miss my friends, gathering with them, laughing with them. I miss eating inside restaurants, the quiet clatter of silverware and plates, and the polite tones of wait staff. Perusing a menu anticipating my delight. I miss art: visiting art, and taking art home with me in my heart. I have tried to stay in touch with friends, switching from videocalls to regular phone calls as we grew tired of the overstimulation of screens. The company of my friends through it all, in any form, has been a balm to my heart and confirmation of life’s value.

The mirror image of my losses is what I’ve tried to nurture. What’s left of my agency during this time of constraints. What I have chosen to focus on is another shining light clarifying my values, the absolute essential aspects of life that I will not surrender, no matter the circumstances. Light, air, language, narratives, companionship, reflection, poetry, spirituality, photography. I still try to sit for a few minutes in the January sun, holding my coffee mug on my back steps. These moments of reflection center my heart, and connect me with the broader world. I am so grateful for the stories that have engaged us during this time and brought some wonder to our house: The Mandalorian, Ted Lasso, Discovery, The Expanse, Rick and Morty. The mordant humor of the Twitterverse in times of calamity. I recommitted to my writing, and made space for both fiction writing (for joy) and nonfiction writing (for clarity). I took walks through my neighborhood and documented my neighbors’ attempts at seasonal cheer. Their wreaths and sculptures, their hanging signs and lights, all brought me joy. Made me feel in community.

Finally, thinking like a poet, thinking like a scientist. Life feels very small sometimes during the pandemic. A universe consisting of my couple and the clients I care for. However, I have found my grounding in looking at very small changes. Observing my world like the poet I was as a child and youth. This comes sometimes in the company of plants, and in reading Robin Wall Kimmerer’s “Braiding Sweetgrass.” I listen to the OnBeing podcast, so grateful for the grace of the conversations, the beauty and wonder each guest brought to my day. I started looking at NASA’s APOD stream (Astronomy Picture of the Day) once again—pictures of the universe, the wide lens on the experience of being. It’s good to be reminded of the breadth and scale of the universe and my tiny joyful place in it. These are my touch stones–think small, very small, eat the cookie, look at the moss, and think big, very big, think about eternity and impossible grandeur of the known universe, and consider the ancient light of the stars, and the distant light of the sun making my plants bloom.

I hope these words bring some comfort.

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It’s Not You. It’s the Pandemic

Just hopping on to say that I’ve been noticing a recurring phenomenon among my clients in the last two weeks: small personal setbacks feel overwhelming. I’m here to say, it’s not you. It’s the pandemic. I’m using the word pandemic as a shorthand for the multiple co-occurring crises that dominate the news: COVID 19, real time climate change, economic struggles, a vigorous social justice movement, and an exhausting election cycle. Not only have we hit the six month mark of constant crisis and are now suffering from total burnout from this sustained state of hyper vigilance, but, additionally, any personal setback feels like one weight too many on our backs.

We’re so steeped in multiple national crises that we forget how demanding the whole effort is on our nervous systems.

If we were seeing and hugging our friends regularly, any new bit of bad news would not be as devastating. We wouldn’t be feeling quite as untethered by work stress or by family problems.

It’s not you. It’s the pandemic.

The pandemic is draining us of some of our plentiful resilience. At this point, we are all somewhat under-resourced. We need a nap, a hug, a snack, some time with friendly faces, some time away from our pandemic roommates.

The low grade depression and anxiety that is sweeping the country is taking its slow, unrelenting toll.

We must maintain our lives as best we can:

Get some rest. Get out of the house and go for a walk in Fall sunshine. Call a friend (don’t video call, just call). Nourish our souls. Nourish our sense of purpose. Develop new skill sets, find some growth. Continue to celebrate the changing of the seasons and the fun holidays, like Halloween, however possible. Stay safe, stay healthy, wear a mask, wash your hands, and try to embody the values that matter most to you.

Our resilience will return, but it’s okay if this week we feel quite vulnerable and a bit precarious. Take a break. Forgive yourself for needing compassion. We all need kindness and rest.

It’s not you. It’s the pandemic.

Hang in there. It’s going to be (more or less) okay.

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Another Wave of COVID Grief Five Months In

Door open on mossy path
Door open on mossy path

In the last few weeks, my clients have started grieving COVID anew. Here in Philadelphia, we’re in a modified Green Phase, so we can eat outdoors at tables that stand six feet or more apart. In the city, we can theoretically do small outdoor gatherings of less than 50 people, but honestly, I’m not going anywhere near 50 people. Nor are my clients. We’re still pretty much in shut down mode. We shop for food every couple of weeks and that’s about it. We always wear masks outside the house, except inside our car. My clients report similar phenomena.

For my clients, acknowledging the pain and disappointment of the continuing precautions hurts. Whatever timelines we privately prepared for in March– this progress is slower and more ambiguous. In many ways, the reopening feels more painful and more complex than the closing, because everyone is navigating the new, looser rules with differing priorities, and differing assessments of acceptable risks. Now there is social stigma. We manage the emotional friction between those that continue to wear masks, per CDC guidelines, and those that don’t.

We grieve the understanding that this “Green Phase,” which feels far from normal, is the new “normal.” We’re still not seeing our friends and family with easy hearts. The calculus of who is at risk when we buy groceries endures. We’re still not engaging in the pleasures of travel and outings. Our innocence is stripped away. Seeing crowds on television shows brings out two feelings in me, “Oh my god, you lucky foods, you have no idea what’s coming. Your joy is such privilege” and “Dear lord that’s a superspreader event!” I feel like all my parts have battened down to endure this period of deprivation, of lack of community, of lack of human engagement. So now I ask, and I ask you to ask yourselves: Where is our joy?

Where can I find a sense that life is still a place of excitement and amazement? How do I connect with inner spaciousness? My connection to art and beauty, where has it gone?

It’s so easy to get swept up in my sense of duty and obligation, and to focus on the tasks, to focus on the work, instead of the human needs that have been shunted aside. So here are some considerations, as we hold another wave of grief and loss and the summer winds down:

Now that all plans are provisory, we still need to make plans to add lightness to our weeks. To comfort ourselves. What plans, what joys can we look forward to? My current plan in hatching is going to a drive-in cinema. My other plan in hatching is an evening run to the beach. What will your plan in hatching be?

I’ve switched from video calls (exhausting) to voice calls (intriguing) for keeping up with my friends. This also provides a nostalgia bonus–reminding me of hours wrapped along our long kitchen phone cord as a teenager. Community remains critical to our ability to feel engaged in our own lives and to reduce the isolation that comes with all the sacrifices we make during the COVID 19 pandemic. However you reinforce your sense of belonging, keep it up!

The most important change I’ve made is to check in with myself and consider my needs beyond my obligations. When I wake up in the morning, I ask myself, “What do I want to do for joy?” I then give myself an hour to write, or do whatever it is purely for my joy, my fun, my sense of an expansive self. My work self is critical but secondary.

Since I cannot go on vacation, I can save for vacation, and make a list of places to visit when I get the opportunity once again.

I’m no longer springing for gourmet take-out once a week, but I can enjoy mid-priced restaurants.

I’m eating more local produce and, in doing so, experiencing the seasons. I’m stocking my kitchen with the right tools for my frequent cooking efforts, and this improved kitchen environment lightens the load. My new cleaver can cut through anything, unapologetically.

My scope is shrinking, but in my better moments I like to think I am living more like a poet. Tuned into each moment, slow and aware, and full of gratitude.

I am in the process of completing Level 1 IFS Training and that has helped me reframe my experiences, to look at every moment through multiple eyes, multiple parts, and to realize no one part holds all the wisdom, life’s meaning lies in multiplicity. This means I am never all in despair and never all in hope. I lie in a grounded balance.

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Why Should I Feel My Feelings?

People are prickly about their feelings. Understandably. We have so many of them all the time, and so few of them are allowed out in polite society. Often it’s not just “a feeling,” it’s what I lovingly refer to as “a bucket of feelings” all piled on top of each other–challenging to tease out where they’re all coming from and why.

There’s a lot of reasons why clients show up to therapy having great difficulty either identifying what they are feeling, having very little language with which to discuss their inner experience, or frequently, being possessed of great powerful feelings and the paradoxical inability to show them on their faces or in their body language.

The work of therapy is in part the work of putting our minds, bodies, and hearts back together, in relationship with each other, so we can feel whole. So, why, besides being a good therapy client, should you feel your feelings?

Feelings are our early alarm system–feelings appear in our body long before our minds recognize the situation and what it is doing to us. We feel injustice through anger, concern for ourselves and others through worry, uncertainty about safety through fear, connection through love, grief through sadness, and we feel these things very rapidly in our bodies though often we have been socialized to ignore all the signs, the sweat, the heaviness, the beating heart. Our feelings connect our bodies, our minds, and our hearts–they are the connecting highway.

The point of feeling feelings isn’t to act on feeling, but to understand the source, how our feelings illuminate our needs and our hopes and longings. Once we know our longings, we start to know ourselves, and once we know ourselves, we can make choices that allow us to change our lives in the direction of our dreams.

So, that’s why I’m going to ask you how you feel, if we ever meet, and I’m going to ask you to do body scans, so you can learn over time where your feelings show up in your body, so when your body shakes you, you hear and listen.

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Trusting After Disappointment and Heartbreak

Many of my clients have been excruciatingly hurt, disappointed by, or taken advantage of by friends or partners. Understandably, they do not want to be vulnerable again and endure the possibility of pain and loss yet another time.

In my analysis, there are two major factors to consider when exploring how to rebuild trust towards other human beings. First, who are the people you have been inviting into your life–Are they healthy enough to participate in a sustained friendship or relationship? Second, how can you practice trust in a way that doesn’t overwhelm or scare you?

The people. When you struggle with aspects of your mental health you might tend to look for others who are as scarred, vulnerable, and sensitive as you are. It’s a type of being in the world that you recognize, and the connections and conversations can be fascinating. Those who suffer (for example with depression and anxiety) tend to be very thoughtful about the human condition and are able to engage in nuanced existential discussions. You may also enjoy engaging in reflections about life’s challenges. Like attracts like, and if you’ve struggled with connecting with others in the past, you might feel a rush of relief when you meet someone who can share what’s on their heart and all their suffering. Great friendships can be forged this way. However, you may sometimes be setting yourself up for some disappointment as well. It can be complex maintaining a long-term friendship between two people who suffer from periodic crises. Expectations might not be met, calls might not be returned, your best friend might suddenly disappear as they face their own challenges.

When I suggest that clients widen their casual friendship circles to include new people, perhaps those with less suffering in their lives, clients often reflect that people whom they perceive as having good mental health are boring. I then encourage them to try casually befriending a boring person as an experiment. You might never be best friends with that person, but that boring person might be more reliable and available. There may be less exciting intensity, less shared territory to reflect upon, but they might have more room in their lives for the sustained pursuit of hobbies, or other interests. I realize focusing on bringing a “boring” person into your life might sound counterintuitive, but I believe we can all learn from each other, from witnessing other styles of attaching and relating and trying to grow our skill sets and widen our group of friends.

How do you start building the trust that’s the basis for a friendship or romantic relationship? I suggest small trust experiments. Use your judgment as to who you would like to try to trust a little more, then once a day (or once a week), share 10% more truth than you would otherwise be willing to say. Don’t take big risks, but see how your truth experiment is received, if your truth is respected, cared for gently and reciprocated thoughtfully, or at least neutrally, then graduate on to slightly more truth in another experiment when you feel ready.

Other interesting articles about trust:

How To Trust (Especially When You’ve Been Hurt)

How To Trust Again: Learning To Let Someone In Despite Past Hurt

Learning to trust in a new relationship

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Getting Closer to Living the Life of Your Dreams

Red Tug Boat in Marlborough Sound, New Zealand

It’s not unusual for clients to have dreams and hopes, and to have questions about whether they would truly be better off if they made a big change. There’s three exercises I encourage my clients to go through to assess their fantasies and evaluate whether they should make a big change. One of the messages I hope you can get from these strategies is that taking

First exercise: Flesh out your fantasy. It’s important to let your imagination run and fully detail what you hope your life would be like after you make a particular change. Once you’ve written down the specifics of how your life would be different… assess whether you can bring these changes into your life right now, without a giant disruption. This exercise can be useful in helping point out that you can do more to make you more joyful fairly easily.

Second exercise: Time chart. Sit down and map out how you would ideally spend a week’s worth of time. How much would you devote to family, how much to friends, how much to sleep, work, hobbies, etc.? Then track your time for a week. How are you actually spending your time? Can you make any adjustments to bring you closer in line to your ideal? This simple exercise can help you identify the differences between your values and your lived life.

Third exercise: Decisional Balance. The decisional balance worksheet is a slightly more sophisticated version of a pro/con list. It helps clarify ambivalence, and it can be useful to do several of these over time to see if you are trending any particular direction with a decision you find difficult to make. First you write down the pros and cons of making a change on the left hand side of a piece of paper. Then you write down the pros and cons of not making a change on the right hand side of a piece of paper (link to a model in the bold, underline title). Then you weigh each item you wrote down (you pick your scale, 1-5, 1-10, 1-100) to understand the value of each benefit or loss to you. Then you can add up your points and see how much you are trending towards or away from the change. Doing this exercise several times will help you identify trends of changes in how you value different pieces of the puzzle. (The decisional balance approach is associated with Motivational Interviewing techniques that first arose around treating substance use, but it’s useful for lots of different types of decisions.)

I hope you find these ideas helpful. Please feel free to comment, as I look forward to your feedback.

 

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How to Pick a Therapist

An acquaintance recently described a multi-year therapy relationship that she hadn’t enjoyed because she felt judged by her therapist. While therapists are supposed to provide empathy, a set of professional skills, questions that lead to reflection, and a kind support system on your life’s journey, judgment shouldn’t be in the room. I’m not going to claim that sessions are a totally judgment free zone, since therapists are people too, but (at least in my opinion) clients should experience thoughtful kindness 99% of the time.

If you consistently feel judged by your therapist, that person is probably not the right therapist for you.

So how do you go about picking a therapist? 

First, start by looking on Psychology Today (or another directory site) for a therapist in your area code who treats your concern. (Psychology Today is the yellow book of therapists, it has most everybody. There are other competing websites, and they have their own listings.) You’ll notice that many therapists do not take insurance, and you will need to use your out of network benefits if you have insurance, or pay out of pocket (depending on what fee you can afford). You might also want to google specific terms just to see what comes up.

Second, I recommend you contact at least five different therapists. (If the therapists have websites, take a look and see if you like their style and approach.) It’s likely that three of the therapists you reach out to will get back to you. Two will have openings at a time that works with your schedule and hopefully will have a fee that works with your budget.

Third, meet at least two therapists in person. There are a variety of treatment approaches and personal styles, and you will probably have a preference. Decide who is the right therapist for you.

Also, every therapist works better with certain people than others, and mismatches can be a little idiosyncratic. In my case, I’m not great at working with people who have long thoughtful pauses in their speech, though I hope I might get better at working with that population in the future.

If you do not have insurance, and are limited in your financial means, you have a few options. Remember that the major advantage of seeing someone in private practice and paying out of pocket is that they are a more stable provider: they are usually fully licensed and will not change employers. Paying out of pocket if you chose not to use your insurance will also give you more privacy: Just you and your therapist will know your diagnosis and no information about your treatment will be shared with your insurance.

Medicaid and No Insurance:
Medicaid is accepted at community mental health centers, and many centers take people with no insurance. This is a partial list. Community mental health includes: JFK Behavioral, NHS, NET, and COMHAR among others. To find out what Community Behavioral Health (CBH) centers are near you and accepting new clients, you can call the CBH member services number: 888-545-2600, open 24 hours a day.

Lower Sliding Scale Psychotherapy:
If you’re looking for a lower sliding scale psychotherapy than most private practitioners provide, you might consider contacting these providers: Therapy Center of Philadelphia, Council for Relationships, and Philadelphia Psychoanalytic Center. As this list is incomplete and could change, do your own research! (Also, feel free to contact me with updates.)

I’d be happy to hear any thoughts you might have on how you picked your therapist and why.

Disclaimer: This is intended as a set of suggestions. I trust in your ability to consider your needs and find the best solution for you.