Radical Awe Is The Reset Button

In my last post, I wrote about the times when I have experienced the feeling that everything I knew about life was wrong.  All too often, our lives challenge us to see life beyond our limited current story about our selves, our relationships, our work and the nature of reality.  This can be an extraordinarily frightening and confusing experience.  We can spend an inordinate amount of time feeling stuck, running around the hamster wheel that consists of our story about the world. 

We are hot-wired to shrink our attention to the thing that causes us irritation and pain.  I could be walking down a beautiful beach in Hawaii on a warm, comfortable sunny day.  A gorgeous woman in a bikini could be giving me a “come hither” look, and I’ll miss the entire scene and opportunity if my attention is stuck worrying about a single piece of gravel in my shoe.  Likewise, we are biologically hot-wired to pay attention to the perception of “lack” in our lives.  This can have great survival value if we are worried about famine or shelter.  However, we perceive lack as relative to our situation.  So, someone who lives in a  $90,000 home might find himself celebrating when he moves into a $250,000 home.  However, the same fellow might feel impoverished if he spends his time socializing with friends who live in $3million dollar homes. 

Our pain, fear, worry, and depression tend to lock our awareness into rigid narratives about the world and ourselves.  One of the toughest skills to acquire is the ability to expand our current awareness away from our current states of pain and lack to see the world in a larger, more complex fashion. 

I know of no better or effective way to break out of these restrictive tales we tell ourselves than experiencing radical awe.  States of extreme awe or wonder shake apart our limited notions and reshape our sense of the world and ourselves.

My clients often ask me, “So where do I find these states of radical awe?”  Obviously, we can’t just go out and decide that we are going to schedule an experience of wonder.  However, we can pursue activities that have a better chance of producing these experiences than others.  Hiking and camping in nature, star-gazing, attending a birth, reading a religious or scientific work that has the potential to revolutionize your thinking.  Meditation, contemplation and prayer, certain works of art, music, literature and even having great sex can produce states of radical awe. 

Feeling stuck?  Press the reset button.  Seek out radical awe and wonderment.

What Is Your Relationship To The Universe?

I know this sounds like an odd question. But, it’s one that I often ask at the beginning of therapy with a new client. Before I get into why I ask this question, let me share with you my own bias and experience. Simply stated, the world is always bigger, more complicated, and surprising than my story about it. When I was 19, I woke up one day only to realize everything I knew about life was wrong. It was a frightening experience. But, I was resilient and survived. When I was 27 years old, again, I realized that everything I knew about life was wrong. Since I experienced something like this before, I knew that I had survived.  While the experience was difficult,  the process of regaining my emotional equilibrium was less frightening. Again, the same thing happened when I was 38. But having experienced this twice before, I began to become intrigued. Now, I’m in my sixties, and I’ve come to realize that if every seven years or so I don’t come to a point in my thinking where everything I know is wrong, I’m probably not paying attention.

Psychological theorists and researchers believe, as I do, that there are a number of dimensions of human development that are possible. Both psychoanalysts and behaviorists talk about human development along the lines of emotional, cognitive, personality, sexual, social and even emotional maturation. But, there are also theorists like William James, Jung, Assagioli, Meisner, and Kohlberg who examined the spiritual and moral development of humans. And so, I routinely ask my clients “What is your relationship to the universe? Are you an atheist? Agnostic? Spiritual person? Do you believe in a particular religion? When I ask this question, I find it’s essential to clarify what the client actually believes, not what their family or clergy required them to believe. By understanding my client’s answer to these questions, more often than not, we can quickly get to a better understanding of the client’s core beliefs about their world, their values, their emotional, moral, ethical and spiritual strengths. This often comes as a relief to my clients because they don’t feel like they have to hide the core of their beliefs from me.

Many of my clients are curious about my own spiritual beliefs, often wondering if I am there to influence them into any particular direction. For the last 45 years, Judaism has been my personal path. However, since the world presents us with a story that is always bigger, crazier and more unexpected than I can ever conceive; as a psychotherapist, it’s my job to challenge my clients to become more authentically who they are and to challenge their stories about the world that are too small to fit the realities they live in. So, if someone walks into my office and they are not a better atheist, agnostic, eclectically spiritual person, Christian, Buddhist, (you name it) when they leave, I haven’t done my job as a therapist.

I Want To Have Your Baby…

One hundred years ago, marriage was simply a foregone conclusion. An unmarried person was treated with suspicion. After the advent of effective birth control, human reproduction became unlinked from the act of creating life. It is no accident that the Playboy Ethic and Feminism sprang up at roughly the same time. Men could “play without paying” and women “could have it all – motherhood and career”. Since then, American and Western European men and women found themselves needing to re-invent the wheel when it came to defining their roles in marriage.

Just a few years ago, a friend of mine, who is an academic at a local liberal arts college, taught a course on the History of Science Fiction Movies. In one film, the hero and heroine have escaped the clutches of some monster. The danger has temporarily passed and during a moment of passion, the heroine professes her deep love and commitment to her man by saying something like: “I knew from the first that I loved you. You’re the only one I ever wanted. I love you darling. I want to have your baby!” This line was met with gales of laughter. Her students could not fathom the link between romantic love, sex, commitment and having children.

I have seen similar erosion of understanding this link in my private practice over the years. A number of my younger clients describe sex in much the way Joe Kennedy described sex to his sons (allow me to paraphrase): “Sex is an itch. You can always find someone to scratch it.” This is a bit different than previous generations where serial monogamy existed that implied an ongoing emotional bond or commitment. As a result, recent generations of young men and women, will partner up in a form of serial monogamy that has become “a friendship with benefits”. In a way, this “friendship with benefits” has become an attempt to do away with the pretense that an emotional bond exists and tries to keep each partner’s expectations of the relationship more in line with the temporary nature of the partnership. However, rather than being a “marriage with training wheels”, the older generations model of serial monogamy, this arrangement only seems to increase the suspicions of young men and women regarding the impermanence of relationships and marriage. At the end of it all, each generation after the sexual revolution has become more sophisticated about sexual technique and more clueless about the emotional needs of the opposite sex.

One has to ask that with all this sexual sophistication, why didn’t free-love,
open marriage and the other forms of sexual experimentation of the 60’s and 70’s last? The answer is simple. Unfortunately, most of us are simply not biologically hard-wired to live in a serially monogamous relationship. I’m talking science here and not Puritanism. There’s this little neurotransmitter called oxytocin that gets transmitted during intimate encounters. Oxytocin gives us the experience of feeling bonded to an individual. It doesn’t take many sexual encounters with the same person for the exchange of oxytocin to occur and sufficiently build up to create the feeling of emotional bonding. And so, when we talk about personal chemistry occurring, we’re not kidding. As a matter of fact, there are three circuits in the brain that seem to govern the feeling of love: one governs lust (we all knew that), one governs the feeling of romance (this is the feeling that no one else other than my partner will do) and one governs bonding, that feeling of comfortableness and oneness with another person.

So, how does this get played out with the serial monogamist? Typically a single person, usually male, comes into my office and says: “I have this problem with my girlfriend. I love her; but I’m not in love with her. Do you know what I mean?” I usually stop the person there and say: “Let’s see if I understand this. When someone tells me this, they usually have a story that goes something like this: I was lonely. I met this woman/man. I wasn’t all that attracted to them at first. They weren’t bad to look at, but I wasn’t all that attracted to them in the beginning. I was lonely, and frankly I was celibate for too long. And so, we just kind of fell in bed together. I didn’t think it was going to last for more than a week or two. But, one thing led to another and we have been together for about six months. I tried to break it off after about the third week. But, I couldn’t. When I tried to break it off, I discovered that I had a lot more feelings for this person than I expected. We get along ok in bed and we seem to have this strong emotional bond. But, the romance just isn’t there. It’s at this point that I explain that I’m not psychic and explain how Oxytocin operates. If we take Oxytocin into account, we now understand that 2 out of the 3 neurotransmitter circuits for love are firing whole heartedly in this client, but the third circuit, the romantic circuit, is weak. I believe this explains the reason why the client feels they love, but are not in love with the individual. Fortunately, there are ways to kick-start the romance in a relationship where a deep bond exists. However, my point here is that if you want to avoid bonding without romantic love, there is no such thing as casual sex.

Reproductive choice is a woman’s personal decision. And, the pleasure one takes in sex should be free of guilt. However, the decision to make love, by either a man or woman is inevitably made with the very real possibility of creating or expanding a family as a consequence. As reliable as birth control may be, there are still plenty of parents who, liberated from the constraints of bourgeois guilt and shame, accidentally gave birth to a child.

Let me put it another way. If you are a heterosexual of child-producing age, the words sex, making love, intercourse and all the cruder variations of naming this act are euphemisms for the ecstatically pleasurable process a man and woman engages in to create a new life. Let’s try a thought experiment here. It seems to me that if you wanted to rid yourself of ambivalent and commitment phobic partners from your life, all you would need to do is to eliminate these euphemisms from your vocabulary. For instance, the phrase: “How would you like to come up to my place tonight and mess around a bit?” would have to be rephrased to: “How would you like to come up to my place tonight and create a new life?” That would be enough to strike more terror into a commitment phobe than 10 science fiction movies. Ambivalent candidates would quickly get winnowed out, leaving you with the heartiest candidates and liars.

I understand that for the great majority of my clients and myself included, sex before marriage is pretty much a foregone conclusion. However, I do believe in personal awareness and individual responsibility. Let’s understand what the whole of lust, romance and commitment is all about. Why should saying: “I want to have your baby” to a lover sound like science fiction?


Bibliography

Fisher, Helen (1992). The Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage and Why We Stray. Random House, NY.

Advice to The Newlywed: You Can Be Right Or You Can Be Happy

When my friends got married, I loved throwing bachelor parties. Many of my friends were in the mental health profession. And many of these therapists did couples and family therapy. Inevitably, someone would ask: “What advice do you have for the bride and groom?” One of the best pieces of advice that I heard was simply this: “You can be right or you can be happy.”

When I counsel couples, we inevitably get into a discussion of what is right and wrong. Usually, at least one partner is concerned about being right in an argument. Without fail, one or both spouses will turn to me to be the arbiter of what is right and wrong in their relationship, confident that I will rule in their favor. As a family therapist, I almost always disengage from such a role. One reason is that discussions about being right get bogged down in a circular argument over what is right instead of discussing what works or what will make the couple happy.

This problem goes back to the first couple. Why was it that Adam and Eve were punished so severely for eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil? One would think that understanding the difference between good and evil would be a good thing. Doesn’t our Creator want us to do good and avoid evil? So what is the problem with eating from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil?

The difficulty is that we interpret what is good and evil from the immediate perspective of what feels good or feels bad to us. For instance, let’s look at the story of the Zen farmer:

A farmer who has achieved his Zen enlightenment discovers a horse that has wandered onto his fields. His neighbor comes by, sees the horse and says: “Oh, you are so lucky. What a wonderful horse.” The Zen farmer replies: “Could be good, could be bad. I don’t know.” Soon afterward, the Zen farmer’s son tries to tame the horse, falls and breaks his leg. The neighbor visits and says: “I just heard about your son. I’m very sorry to hear about his bad luck.” The Zen farmer says: “Could be good, could be bad. I don’t know.” His neighbor walks away confused. A week later, war breaks out. The army comes through and conscripts all the able bodied young men. The Zen farmer’s son is rejected by the army because he has a broken leg. The Zen farmer’s neighbor comes by and says: “Oh, you are so lucky, you’re son doesn’t have to go to the army and fight.” The Zen farmer says: “Could be good, could be bad, I don’t know.”

The problem with eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil is that we are seduced into believing the limited perspective of our circumstances. Eating of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil intoxicates us with the narcissistic belief that we understand what is ultimately right or wrong.

Now, this is not to say that good and evil do not exist. My own estimation of good and evil is usually processed through my current physiological and emotional state. I see and hear and experience what feels good to me today. I won’t necessarily see good in what feels bad today, but might be good far into the future. So, that means that I have to rely on something outside of myself to wake me up when it doesn’t feel good to do good or avoid evil. And, I have to accept that I might not know what is coming in the future or that I don’t have all the facts to be able to judge the present.

The addiction to being right keeps individuals locked into their addictions and locked into the circular causality of their relationships. This addiction is more seductive and pernicious than the most powerful narcotics. The potential of the pure pleasure of being right whispers the promise that we can finally be vindicated and promotes the fantasy that we can be victorious over those who have hurt us. All too often I have seen alcoholics and drug addicts cling to their “Right to Drink” despite the damage it does to their health and relationships. Just as often, I see individuals (and I fall prey to this myself) seduced by the possibility of being right instead of the desire to make themselves and their partner happy. As a result, winning the argument of being right ultimately turns into the worst sort of losing.

I sometimes wonder why we have never seen a “Self-Righteousness Anonymous.” The answer is simple. We are still too busy eating from the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil to attend the meetings.

I-Statements

I-Statements are probably the best known, most effective and least properly used technique for improving communication, resolving conflict, and setting boundaries. They usually are composed of 3 parts:

1) When you _____, (Report a concrete observation of the other person’s behavior.)
2) I feel_________. (Report on how the other person’s behavior makes you feel.)
3) In the future, please_________. (Make a request.)

Dos

• Do report the other person’s behavior concretely, without characterization or judgment.
• Do report how you feel accurately and without judgment.
• Do make a specific request that is realistic, time-bound, concrete and doable

Don’ts

• Don’t exaggerate, use sarcasm, irony, innuendo, name calling, punishment, or blame.
• Don’t exaggerate or minimize how you feel.
• Don’t turn the I-Statement into a You Statement. (I feel that you…)
• Don’t substitute an evaluation for an emotion. Tell the other person if you are happy, glad, sad, irritated, angry, nervous, afraid, or hurt. Avoid: “I feel like…” or “I feel that…”
• Don’t leave out the request.
• Don’t make unreasonable, impossible or unclear requests.
  

Put This Tool to Work

At first, you might find that using this tool seems difficult, unnatural or fake. As with any tool, it takes time and effort before you get the hang of using it. Practice. Consciously make an effort to use I-Statements in low-risk situations at least 3-5 times a day until you do it naturally, without effort and without having to think about it.
Use I-Statements where they are needed. If you use them at work, be sure that you also use them at home or anywhere else they are needed.

Pre-Wedding Freak-out II: Parents

As I mentioned in a previous post, family and friends will tend to act-out just prior or even during a wedding. It’s important to remember that a wedding doesn’t join two individuals in marriage; it joins two families and two sets of friends too. Let’s examine this in a bit more detail by looking at the issues that parents often have around weddings.

Parental Jealousy

We like to think of ourselves as rational human beings. However, if I am honest with myself, occasionally I am far from rational. Sometimes this is a good thing. The strong loving bond between a parent and child is not rational. That relationship transcends rationality. If we placed parenthood on a balance ledger, and weighed the advantages and disadvantages of having children, it would logically appear that kids simply aren’t worth the trouble. Yet, despite the hassle and problems of being a parent, given the choice again, I would make the same decision to be a parent without a moment’s hesitation.

This evolutionary bond is powerful. This is why when we go walking in the woods, the rule of thumb is never walk between a large animal and it’s young. Even an unintentional invasion of this sacred space can provoke an attack if the animal believes their babies are in danger.

Now, I know this is not rational, but even through both my daughters are years away from dating, I’ve already started bulking up at the gym in order to make an impression on my eldest daughter’s first date! I went down to the local scrap yard three years ago to pick out a two foot length of lead pipe so that when my daughter’s young suitor comes to call, I can stand in the front doorway before he comes and ask (holding the lead pipe in my right hand and bouncing it on my left palm): “Where are you going? Who are you going with? When will you be back? Do you have any personal references? What is you parent’s phone number?” I have a dark irrational secret that I won’t admit to anyone, often not even to myself – I’m already jealous of my daughter’s potential suitors.

Remember, I love my two daughters. I have invested my life, career, fortune, time, emotions and even physical stamina in these two kids. I would give my own life for them. Inevitably, my children will grow up and probably want to get married. For 20 or more years they will have been a source of love, pride and joy. After twenty years of this, do you think I want some young, inexperienced little snot to come and take my daughters away from me. Why wouldn’t I be jealous? This is why we have that hackneyed aphorism: “Don’t worry, you’re not losing a daughter, you’re gaining a son.” Without a doubt, when this time comes, someone will say this to me. This is the moment when I and any other decent self-respecting parent will buck-up, put on a stiff upper-lip, smile and say: “Yes, I know. Don’t they look wonderful together?” The reason I will smile and agree is simple. Marriage is part of the natural order of life. My job as a parent is to launch my daughter into adulthood. Releasing my daughter at the appropriate time is part of that job.

Will I try to hide my jealousy? Yes, because I owe that to my daughters. It’s part of being a good parent. I hope that when my daughters catch a glimpse of my struggle to let go they will observe my stiff upper lip and know that my struggle with jealousy is just an indication of how strong that bond between us is.


Parental Loss

As I mentioned in my previous post, the marriage of a child inevitably produces a loss for the parent. It’s not that the parent doesn’t also perceive the benefits of the marriage like more free personal time, more expendable money, and more attention from their own spouse. However, the parent will inevitably have to mourn the own loss of their parental role in the married child’s life.

Narcissists

Some of us have a large narcissistic streak in us. You probably know the type. This is the person walks into the room and all the attention instantly turns to them. People who are narcissistic will resent being somewhere the attention is not on them. Weddings can be a hard place for a narcissistic parent as they can unconsciously be jealous of giving up being the center of attention for their kids.

Coping with Pre-Ceremony Parental Freak-outs

1. Don’t get confused by your parent’s jealousy and loss. They are struggling to be rational about the situation. If they have been responsible adults in the past, they will step-up to the challenge. Instead of confronting them directly, simply assume your role as the bride or groom and allow them the dignity of dealing with their irrational feelings in private. If they have a history of not acting responsibly, expect that they will act-out their feelings in the ways they have in the past and make allowances for this in your wedding plans.
2. Remember, you are marrying two sets of families, not just two individuals. Weddings are as much for the family of the couple as it is for the bride and groom. Give your parents well defined roles in the creation and execution of your wedding. This will give them important signals about their place in your new life as well as in your Wedding party.
3. If you have a narcissistic parent, early in the creation of the wedding, give that parent a specific and well-defined place in the event where they know they will be the center of attention. Make sure that you have contingency plans for how to get them off center stage in a decorous fashion if you think they will hog the attention.
4. Delegate two special friends for each parent to act as “go-fer” and emotional support a week before the wedding and the day of the ceremony. Preferably, at least one friend should be someone who is emotionally close to your parents. Their role is to help your parents with the final tasks of the wedding and give them emotional support so that you don’t get sucked into taking care of your parent’s needs when the demands on your time will be maxed out.
   
   Finally, keep it all in perspective. As my mother used to say, “God gives you family, but friends you can choose.” Once the ceremony is over, you and your spouse can go home, close the door, and get on with your new life.
   

Preventing Pre-Wedding Family Freak-Out

The thought of a wedding usually brings pictures of joyous couples exchanging vows, mothers joyously weeping into lace handkerchiefs and the couple happily exiting in a shower of rice. However, before the first invitation gets printed, I have seen many brides in my office sobbing hysterically, feeling torn apart by the demands of opposing mothers, fiancés, siblings and friends. Both large questions like: Is a priest or minister going to marry us? Who should we invite? Who gets left out? And seemingly small details like the texture of your table place card paper stock can trigger emotional reactions from family and friends that seem totally out of proportion to the task of organizing a wedding. Organizing a major event like a wedding ceremony is hard enough. Having your mother and mother-in-law both in hysterics while you are trying to make a decision can seem unbearable.

Amber, a 25 year old, came into my office complaining that both her mother and mother-in-law broke into an argument around the color of the limo that would drive them away from the ceremony. “This is stupid! It’s not the wedding I want. It’s not the wedding my mother wants. It’s not the wedding anyone wants! I don’t understand why getting married has to be so hard. It’s just a big party!” This is where most brides go wrong in their thinking. Amber is not joining two people in marriage; she is joining two families and two sets of friends. We are talking about a major change in the lives of not just the couple getting married, but their family and friends. There is no getting around it. A marriage is a major milestone in life. Major life transitions, whether they are joyful or not, produces change and change produces stress.


Expect Conflict and Deal with It

The best way to cope with pre-wedding family “freak-out” is to anticipate that weddings provide the crucible for two families to work out their differences. Knowing that there is a higher risk for conflict before a wedding can help you think things through and anticipate problems. Don’t think that you are going to prevent or avoid conflict. This stage of development in your family is all about learning how to work together. As difficult as conflict may be, it’s the appropriate resolution of conflict that will set an important precedence and style for working together in the future. Trying to avoid conflict will only postpone the inevitable confrontation until later.


Establish Your Territory as a Couple

Your marriage ceremony is a statement to your family, friends and community announcing the creation of the family that you and your spouse are building. The creation of your wedding allows you a first chance to establish your own territory as a couple. Don’t try to please everyone. This is an impossible task. Part of establishing your new identity as a married couple is being able to clearly say what you want. This also means saying no to what other members of your family and friends want.

Handling your wedding ceremony sets some important precedents regarding how you and your fiancé will handle conflict with both families. Each of your relatives will be looking to you for an indication of how you will handle conflict. They may not ask, but they will be observing you. Then, they will adjust their usual ways that they cope with conflict to your behavior. Work as a team with your fiancé. He or she may not have the same relationship or emotional baggage with your relatives as you do. Your partner may be able to communicate with a difficult relative in an effective and caring manner because they don’t have the same history with them as you do.


Styles of Conflict

The best way to think about this is to list all of the players from both families and think about how each of them handled stress and conflict in the past. Some people will sit and stew about a slight forever. Others may hold onto resentment and allow their irritation to build until some minor problem becomes “the last straw” and throw a fit about everything all at once. Some individuals may appropriately express their irritation in real time. While past behavior is not always a good predictor for future behavior, you might get some important clues about how to deal with potential “freak-outs”.


Establish Clear Roles, Tasks, and Authority

Once you and your fiancé and ask yourself what kind of wedding you both really want, you can communicate your desires to your family and friends. Clearly designate each family’s roles and authority. Figure out who in your family has the skills and strengths to be able to carry out your wishes. Remember, some people have the desire to help, but no follow-through. Others have the desire, but no skills. Take a clear-eyed look at each individual. Aunt Zelda might fancy herself a gourmet; but if you can’t stand her cooking, don’t take her with you to choose a caterer. Aunt Zelda probably has other strengths that you do appreciate. For instance, she might also have impeccable taste in clothes.

Let’s say Aunt Zelda is the sensitive type who would take offense to not “helping” choose a caterer. Find a different job for her to do that would still allow her to make a contribution to your wedding. You might say something like: “I know that you love to cook, but we need you for something that’s really important to me. Could you help me select my gown?”


Keep Your Perspective Loving and Respectful

While marriage is the most natural and wonderful of all human activities, the families of the bride and groom really do feel a sense of losing a son, daughter, brother or sister. Mom may comfort herself with the cliché: “You’re not losing a son, you’re gaining a daughter”. But the sense of loss is very real. Each family member’s life is going to change in some significant and subtle ways. The easiest and way to help your family members make this important transition is to let them know that you want to make that transition with them together. Let them know that they have a part in your new future. After all, there is life after a wedding.