Giving up the Blame Game

Blaming others for your circumstances never works. It makes you more of a victim. It puts you into a passive, helpless mind frame. It's not a mentally healthy neighborhood to hang out in. It's negative, and it keeps you stuck and powerless to improve things.

You can hear people blaming all around you. Like these statements:

"I'm all stressed out because of my boss."

"My teenagers drive me crazy."

"My marriage is bad because my (wife, husband) does (x, y, z)."

"I've always had bad self-esteem because of my childhood."

"I can't control my anger because people upset me."

"My health is bad because of my genetics."

"I can't save any money because of my kids."

The truth is that there are givens for all of us----your partner, your genetics, your personality, your earning power, but there is another huge untapped influence for most of us also. That powerful influence is our thoughts and our behavior choices.

Diabetes might run in your family, but you can get great information on how to lower your risk with diet and exercise and work on that plan every day.

You might get hot-headed with anger, and come from a family of bad anger role-models, but you personally get to choose learning some better skills, and using them. To do less than this is to choose the easy way out and stay in your comfort zone of unskilled behavior.

Mentally healthy people take some authority over their own thoughts. They realize that negative thoughts breed more negative thoughts and behaviors. What we think about truly expands to fill the space available inside us. Weeding out your own negative, maladaptive thoughts is each person's responsibility. A good therapist can teach you how to scale back those distorted negative thoughts in a couple sessions. Everyone needs to "take out their own trash," meaning manage their own thoughts.

How do I know that this is possible? I have had the privilege of working in counseling with individuals who have overcome incredible odds, including abusive parents, poverty, multiple significant losses, and the betrayal of others, and yet adjust their thinking to have their experiences make them softer, gentler, and more full of loving kindness for themselves and others. They go onto full and emotionally rich lives after amazing hardship, and it deepens their appreciation for the goodness and light in life.

To move past blaming others puts you in a better position to take back your own power over your own life, both your present and your future. When we abdicate responsibility for our own thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, we are stuck in a bad neighborhood called helplessness.

When we take responsibility for our thoughts, feelings, and actions, and our part in making any situation or relationship better, that's when better things can happen in our present and future. Owning our own feelings, thoughts, and behaviors is a hallmark of emotional maturity.
When stressed, the mature person exercises more and sorts out their negative thoughts and feelings that keep them churned up. The mature person realizes that part of not being stressed out is showing humor and flexibility, and doing good self-care. Dealing with your own stress, rather than taking it out on others, is essentially a choice.

You can choose to make blame unnecessary in your life, because as you take responsibility for where you are now in your life, and where you want to go, blame becomes irrelevant. What really matters as time passes is enjoying moments with those you love and doing things you are passionate about. Both of those things are so much more fun than blaming.

Trouble with the Curve (Movie Review)

The newly released movie, "Trouble with the Curve," stars Amy Adams, Justin Timberlake, and Clint Eastwood, and it's well worth seeing. Essentially, it's a baseball movie, about an old scout for the Atlanta Braves (Eastwood). He's got some serious issues with his declining health as he nears retirement age. He's being pushed out of his job by all the generation X scouts who use computers to find prospects. Eastwood identifies prospects the old-fashioned way, by sight and even by sound.

The aging baseball scout is widowed, and has a distant and conflicted relationship with his only daughter (Adams).While Eastwood's character is a bit too curmudgeon-like for my taste, it's still a heart-warming story about estranged family relationships, differences in perspective, and the capacity of the human heart to heal relationships, even late in the game.

Amy Adams is genuine, and shows depth of character as an attorney trying to make partner in a male-dominated law firm. Her adult life has been, in large part, a reaction to her childhood wounds. She's been through a great deal of loss, including the early death of her mother, and an absent father. She's admirable in her willingness to dig deep and recognize how she has kept herself guarded and emotionally unavailable as an adult because she holds on to the legacy about loss and abandonment she experienced as a child.

Justin Timberlake is delightful and just the right touch of funny and challenging to both the leads. He is another scout trying to transition his career after blowing out his arm as a pitcher in the majors.

"Trouble with the Curve" works on several levels. It's a touching film about the love of baseball and the human element in the game. It's also a great metaphor for looking at how we each deal with the unexpected curve balls we are thrown in life. In this movie, the curve balls are losses in career and family, aging, disappointment, health changes, and unexpected chances at loving someone again. In life, we all get thrown curve balls. Many things happen to each of us that we never expected, some of them good, and some of them heartbreaking.

"Trouble with the Curve" is a good reminder that choosing to be flexible, resilient, and have your heart made gentler and softer by the unexpected is an excellent choice. You can learn to adapt to life's curve balls, rather than let them take you out of the game. Curve balls, it turns out, are both a part of baseball and a part of life. Adapting well and keeping your heart vulnerable and your defenses down gives you the best chance at batting 300 in life.

Your Own True North

At times, I see a theme in the life coaching and counseling work that I am doing, running across several individuals I am working with. In the past several weeks, I have been guiding different people in the similar theme of  not betraying themselves.

Often we consider not letting others down, but rarely do we consider not letting ourselves down. In relationships, at work, and in our lives in general, we need to be our best, most authentic self. You can feel the tension and resentment that builds up inside you if you are not being honest with yourself and the others who are important to you. Notice what your body feels when you are around different people. Are you at ease, or tense?

We need to say the truth about what we need and want. We need to be brave enough emotionally to stand up to people who want to belittle us, or for whom you need to act smaller than you are in order to fit into their perception of us. We need to not be codependent with those who would marginalize us, or beat us up emotionally with our past choices. We are allowed to change and grow, and expect that the people close to us give us the grace to do so.

Every person has a basic right to say how they want to be treated. Philosopher and writer Martin Buber wrote about the "I and Thou" relationship, where we treat the intimate other with respect, compassion, and tenderness. We also have a right to ask to have that respectful relationship reciprocated to us. That is how we should strive to treat not only our partner, but also our children, our parents, our co-workers and friends.

What happens if you betray yourself in a relationship, perhaps out of fear of losing that person? You are giving away some of your own personal power to them. You are letting your need for the relationship, or your insecurities from the past, or about this relationship, run the show. You shouldn't have to betray your true north, or your sense of being at peace with yourself, in order to maintain the homeostasis in any relationship. That's a bad deal, and over time, that bargain will eat away at your sense of self. Perhaps it will also eat away at your spirit like acid rain.

This is the only life we know for sure that you get. Treat it with reverence. Make sure that you are reflecting from time to time about whether you are being honest and appearing as yourself in each of the relationships in your life. Nobody needs to give you permission. You can give it to yourself.

It is never too late to reset your life course for your own true north. I admire people who decide in middle age or beyond to retrain for fulfilling work, or recognize they are tired of ignoring their own feelings, or getting stepped on by their family, partner, or friends. You must be your own best friend and advocate for your life being lived fully.

What direction do you need to steer in order to be more fully congruent and your authentic self in all the parts of your life? This week is a perfectly good week to take a step or two in the direction of your own true north. A baby step will work just fine, and will strengthen your ability and resolve to keep on going. Ask for the support of those closest to you.

Are You a Clean Communicator?

When I watch the Monty Python skit "The Argument Clinic," it always crystalizes for me why some people are much easier to communicate with than others. Like the person behind the desk at the argument clinic, sometimes it’s just too frustrating to be understood. What if each person took responsibility for being a clean communicator? Couldn't we make life easier, make communicating more satisfying, and end some drama that happens with dirty communication? I think so.

Think about who you want to speak with when you are frustrated, upset, sad or churned up inside. What qualities do you look for in someone you can open up to? Most people prefer people who listen well, ask questions to deepen their understanding, are non-judgmental, emotionally available, not distracted, direct, honest, not lecturing, and who care and listen from the heart.

Clean communication is clear and direct. If you have a concern or a grievance with someone, you have the courage to talk with them directly, not passive aggressively complain about them to a third party.

Being a clean communicator means you don't use sarcasm, or try to operate like you are "one up." You operate from a base of mutual respect and value the other person.

Clean communicators manage their own stress level. They exercise, meditate, pray, and do their own self-care. They don't make you the verbal punching bag for every speed bump in their daily life.

Clean communicators mean what they say, and say what they mean. Therapists call this congruency.
You keep your commitments, and are impeccable with your word.

Skilled communicators deliver whole communications, as in "when you did x (their behavior), I felt y (your feeling), and next time I would like z (their behavior)."

Good communicators can set boundaries with others. They can say "no." They try not to do things just out of obligation or guilt.

When clean communicators are unhappy with the way an important relationship is going, they don't start an emotional or sexual affair with someone else. They set up a time to honestly talk with their partner directly about their concerns, and see whether they can each take some responsibility for getting things back on track.

Clean communicators avoid saying "always" and "never." They choose "I-statements," rather than blaming "you-statements."

It's dirty communication to label other people, judge them, and blame them. (This is not your job!)

Dirty communication drags out the past in every disagreement and can't let go of it and move on.

Threats are the favorite ammunition of dirty communicators. They threaten to leave, to divorce, to break up with you. This dirty communication style is called being an emotional bully.

Dirty communicators attack and denigrate the other person in any disagreement. They refuse to accept that the other person may have their own perspective, and that that's often okay and healthy. We therapists call this differentiation, and it means you accept the differences between your view of the world and someone else's. Dirty communicators can't do it.

Clean communicators keep their non-verbal cues warm. This includes facial expression, tone of voice, and body language. Dirty communicators do non-verbal leakage that is cold, judgmental, and tight. Warm non-verbal cues make you want to open up. Cold ones make you want to shut down.

My theory is that everyone can look emotionally pretty healthy alone, but it is in close relationships that our insecurities and fears pop out. It gets harder to assert yourself about personal things, and with those that you care most about. The stakes are so much higher than when you assert yourself with a stranger.

For a nice review on these concepts of healthy and clean communication skills, check out the classic book Couple Skills by McKay, Fanning, and Paleg (New Harbinger Publications, 2006).

The good news on communicating cleanly and effectively is that it's entirely learnable. It's our choice every day to choose dirty communication that hurts our relationships and makes people feel they have paid a visit to the argument clinic, or healthy, clean, and open communication.

The Woman in the Mirror

There are aspects of growing up a woman in our society or of raising healthy daughters that are extremely difficult. A particular challenge is helping yourself, or your daughter, to have high self-esteem and feel comfortable and at ease with your/her own body. There are so many expectations for women to be thin, beautiful, and eternally youthful; meet the needs of children, partner, and parents; work, maintain the home front, and be fun while doing it. Most women are at war with their physical self for most of their lives, with a constant negative soundtrack playing in their heads that they are not enough. We compare ourselves to other women, to women who are air-brushed, and to runway models with eating disorder behaviors.

This week, I really enjoyed reading psychologist Cynthia Bulik's new book, The Woman in the Mirror: How to Stop Confusing What You Look Like With Who You Are (Walker and Company, 2012). Bulik is a Distinguished Professor in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of North Carolina School of Medicine, a Professor of Nutrition at the UNC's School of Public Health, and the Director of the UNC Eating Disorders Program.

This is a book I would recommend to all women, and to parents of girls. If we are going to help the next generation of women navigate these destructive forces, we need to be educated about what we role-model, and what we say to our daughters. It's powerful. Men count here, too.

What I especially liked about this book was the easy, approachable style of writing. I also appreciated that the author took a life span view of women, from infancy to grade school, middle school, high school, college, marriage, working, menopause, and the issues of aging. At each stage, Bulik illuminates the unique body image pressures and self-esteem hits common to women. Middle school is a particular time of great challenge for most girls in both the body image and self-esteem areas. The transition years beginning and ending college can be vulnerable times for women, as can the period in which they are engaged and planning a wedding, and adjusting to their new body after each pregnancy. Adjusting to menopause can be a time of vulnerability for women, too.

It's also really tough in our society to age. Older men get defined as charming or distinguished, while older women can feel invisible, ignored, and unappreciated. There is increasing media and marketing pressure on women not to show age, and to use cosmetic surgery to help retain a youthful appearance long after they are not youthful. Remember when grandma could just be grandma? She didn't have to do yoga and Pilates and own a business. Mine had wrinkles, baked cinnamon rolls, and was beloved by all. I can't remember her begrudging the aging process.

Throughout the book, Bulik offers worksheets that you can download from her website to help you identify the negative thoughts that may be running overtime in your head about your body. She has a worksheet on tracking how often you hear other people comment about people's weight, etc. It's so common that we can be oblivious to the negative messages that besiege us as women, from others and the internalized ones we beat ourselves up with.

She also suggests we track the number of times we say "I'm sorry" as women. Stop being the emotional shock absorber at home and at work. Be careful about all that apologizing for things you had nothing to do with. Men really do not do this. We need to do a better job of speaking up, advocating for ourselves in relationships and at work, and being direct about what we like and want. We need to stop the war on our own confidence and self-esteem.

While we want to be healthy, active, and vital, it's a problem to confuse our body image with the broader construct of who we are, our self-image. They are different and distinct. I highly recommend this book to women, the men who love them, and parents of girls. It's time for us to all do better at not devaluing ourselves, other women, or our daughters by confusing the woman in the mirror for the real woman of substance inside each of us.