I Love Saunas

It's striking to me to experience a repeated set of behaviors on a regular basis, virtually every time I go to use the sauna at our local Community Center in Santa Fe. I love saunas, and have been using them with some regularity for, oh, a good 35 years. I like to sweat, and I especially like the dry heat of a good sauna. I used to, if the opportunity was there, follow the sauna with a cold plunge of some kind. I don't do this now so much. Now I mostly jump into a warm-hot shower and rinse off.

The sauna at the Genoveva Chavez Community Center is pretty large as saunas go, maybe 12 feet by 5 feet, and maybe 7 feet high, with a long bench along one of the 12 foot walls, and a couple of additional benches, at two heights, along the rear 5 foot wall. When possible, I use the highest bench along the rear wall. That's where it's the hottest. But when necessary, I'll use the long bench along the 12 foot wall, and hopefully be able to sit right next to the electric heater.

Here's what happens routinely in the sauna: someone will comment on how "it's not very hot in here today", and then someone else will offer as how it's a good idea to throw some water onto the top of the electric heater so as to create some hot steam. If they happen to have a water bottle with them, they will indeed proceed to do just this, perhaps with a cursory inquiry about whether anyone would mind (with no real intention of letting that stop them, I always feel, unless there were to be a particularly strenuous objection, I suppose).

So this routine has been going on for literally years there at the Center, and what happens periodically is that the heater breaks down - it's not the kind of heater that is designed for water to be thrown into it, or onto it, as some types of electric heaters are, and so the electric elements short out - and then the sauna is closed for a period of some weeks usually, while whatever steps need to be taken are taken to repair/replace the heater elements, and everyone is thereby deprived of the use of the sauna during this period. The management puts up signs prohibiting the use of water on the heater, which go routinely ignored, and has even, finally, covered the thermostat inside the sauna with a wooden plate, since one practice among users is to throw cold water onto the thermostat, thereby cooling it down, which presumably then tells the heater to gear up into a hotter zone. It's all very bizarre, and the cycle repeats itself on into the eternal, or so it seems.

All of this is very much like what people do much of the time within themselves, which leads to one form or another of distress and unhappiness. That is, people behave based on mistaken, inaccurate, and even completely contradictory sets of assumptions, expectations and understandings, expecting a certain set of outcomes which are unrealistic, yet continuing to do the same mistaken things to attempt to bend reality to their mistaken ideas, rather than troubling to learn the ways of reality as it applies in the circumstances, and adapting expectations and behaviors accordingly.

If you don't understand the functioning of a dry sauna, and expect it to behave as if it were a steam room, and if you don't allow enough time for the dry sauna to function as it is meant to do, and if you are expecting it to do its magic on you in the 5 minutes you can spare, for example, then you will inevitably and forever be a disappointed sauna user, and you will wander off into the wilderness of your erroneous ideas never knowing what the actual problem is. All the while the sauna will be working just as it should, and you will continue to believe that it is faulty. You will continue to blame the apple for not being an orange, rather than enjoying the sweet (or sour) taste of the luscious apple in front of you. Sounds simple doesn't it? Yet how difficult it apparently is to adjust one's dearly held beliefs and expectations to accommodate reality.










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The Real Work

Cultivating an ability to tolerate distress (Marsha Linehan's notion of "distress tolerance") in the form of uncomfortable, difficult, painful, frightening feelings;
developing a capacity for "sitting with" these kinds of experiences without necessarily doing anything about them (like trying to "get rid of" them; or even change them, for example);
learning to see the problem as this compulsive need/desire to "do" something about distress/discomfort, and NOT as the mere fact or reality of the presence of these experiences. These kinds of feelings and thoughts are by now part of the conditioned package of who you are. They aren't ever going to simply go away. Oh, too bad you say? Not really, I say.

Again, the real problem is in expecting and believing that you can somehow, magically as it turns out, make them disappear. THEN you'll be ok. This is simply a misdirected effort and a mistaken set of beliefs in action. The real work is about how to relate with these experiences, how to work with them creatively and constructively, so that more deliberate and conscious choices may be implemented, rather than remaining victim to what are automatic responses.

Oh yes, patience is required. And a much more accepting and compassionate relationship with yourself. But I can't do that, you say? Well, that's where the work lies. You'll have to learn, and practice, and make mistakes and get better at it over time. Most assuredly, it can be done.









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The Real Client In Couples Work

Today I saw a google ad when I did a search for "couples counseling", that told readers to BEWARE of couples therapy, and not to get involved with it before reading the "guide" to be found on the linked website. I decided to click on the ad and have a look. A "former marriage counselor" talks about the shocking truth regarding marriage therapy, which is that there is, according to him, a 75% failure rate when working with these "experts", and that, no better than the un-helped national averages, a full 50% of couples seeking therapy will end up divorced.

Why is this so? Because, we are told - and this is the "real" core issue in couples therapy, not, as is usually believed, problems with communication - most therapists have had no (not even a single course) training in marriage counseling, and they are in fact trained to treat individuals, and so when working with couples they fail to have as their client, the marriage/or the relationship, and instead have two individuals as clients, thus leading to inaccurate understanding, and to ineffective (at best; damaging at worst) treatment.

While I'm not too fond of the semi-hysterical presentation of this person's ad, I have to acknowledge that he has an extremely valid point to make: in working with couples, it is, in my experience, and in my opinion, of critical importance to be sure to emphasize that the success of the relationship will depend on the ability of each of the people involved to conceptualize the relationship as the focus of their attentions and of their efforts, and not exclusively, or even so much, their individual agendas. Another way to put this is that, if the relationship is to succeed and to flourish, both parties will need to be able to transcend their exclusively personal agendas, preferences, needs, wants, and priorities, and to deliberately decide to make the relationship the top priority.

Of course this can get tricky. There has to be some degree of balance in terms of personal needs also. Asking someone just to give up their personal needs in favor of the needs of the relationship is to over simplify the complex dynamics of good relationships, and to devalue to an extreme the needs of the individual. We're not looking to make martyrs here, but to find ways to grow into a deeper understanding of the realities of successful long term relationships.









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Who's Who Anyway?

By which I mean, who is it that we are really relating with and reacting to in our intimate or "significant other" relationships? Who is it that is triggering our reactions? Is it the person in front of us, the one with whom we are interacting, or is it really our parent or other early childhood caregiver. You know, the one who has had such a profound and lasting effect on us; the one who has shaped our thoughts and needs and feelings and expectations and unconscious goings on regarding close interactions with a very close "other"?

And the answer is...........................
Number Two!

It would be a very serious mistake to believe that you escape your conditioning, or that you haven't been conditioned by your early experiences, for better or for worse, or that you somehow, miraculously, and alone in all the world, function according to simple, known, or chosen beliefs and values and decisions. In order to be able to approach doing this would require years of self reflection, insight, wrestling with habits and established patterns of behavior, and not a little bit of good luck and grace. In other words, it don't come naturally (or automatically).

Given this then, learning to recognize our reactive patterns, and to make desirable changes in these areas, and to separate our "automatic" responses to old relationships from what's going on in the here and now, and from who is happening in the here and now, becomes essential to relationship and to personal health. Just insight alone won't do it. Oh yes, I'm a modern, liberated, self sufficient so and so. I know all of this. I wouldn't dream of holding my husband/wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/partner/lover to those old, outdated gender roles, etc. Why is it then, that when I don't get things the way I expect them, I get so frustrated, or angry, or condescending, or judgemental, or afraid, or shut down, or hurt, or feel so out of control?

Because I am reacting based on probably unconscious and well established patterns of thought, feeling and behavior, and not on what I have begun to integrate in the way of self understanding, emotional and spiritual healing, and real choice.










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Shame

   
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Shame is a paralyzing force. In fact, it's so difficult, so painful for most people that it gets buried very deeply within the psyche so as not to be experienced in any conscious way. Then of course, it works its diminishing magic more subtly, more insidiously, out of view, but no less active and damaging for that. This seems to happen automatically, as a necessary strategy for survival and for some level of "acceptable" functioning in the world and in relationships.

Too bad. Yet at the same time there is the possibility of growing into a conscious approach to this horrible sense of oneself, and when this can happen, and when this self identity can be approached and worked with therapeutically and compassionately, the shifts in one's experience of oneself, the grace with which one can begin to relate with oneself can be astounding and wonderful.

If you are feeling stuck in therapy - or in your life for that matter - or if you are finding yourself repeating patterns that you thought you'd "worked with", or that you can't seem to get a grip on, or that are destructive or damaging or...........
it's possible that a more focused exploration of shame in your being could open things up for you in ways that will be very beneficial.

The Intersection Of Spiritual And Psychological Health

Carrying on from last post about forgiveness, we begin to see how the principles of spiritual development and psychological health intersect. It is understood that we are not talking about religion in any organized sense, or about any rigid set of beliefs about this or that. Isn't it telling that on any given street of significant size there might be several different churches, synagogues or temples, each offering the real "truth" as only its teachings can provide, each believing that it has the "right" way, probably the only right way to that truth, and each sure of its special place at God's side. Of course this assessment can be carried around the world, with each country and each religion claiming that oh so special place in the scheme of right things for itself.

This is not what we're interested in here. We are instead interested in the core spiritual principles and teachings of many of the world's wisdom traditions. These, not surprisingly, tend to be very similar, if not exactly the same. I'm willing to conclude that these principles and teachings are rooted in an understanding of the human condition and the human psyche, so that when we are instructed to practice, for example, forgiveness, it is not simply in order to meet an arbitrary and perhaps nice, if naive "be good" agenda - or to be controlled by the power of the State for its own nefarious purposes, as in religion as the opiate of the people - but because it is understood that this experience is central to the deepest levels of health, or wholeness, or healing that the human psyche can achieve.

"I'll give you everything I got for a little peace of mind" sang Mr. Lennon. I recently read through most of a biography of Marlon Brando - I couldn't finish the whole thing. It was, frankly, too painful and a history of too much self-indulgence to be altogether tolerable. One of the themes running through the book was Mr. Brando's endless search for some peace of mind, a quest which he did not succeed in (despite, incidentally, decades of psychoanalysis). At one point he is quoted as saying to a fellow actor that he - this other actor - could never portray a certain kind of experience because he, the other actor, had never hated the way he, Mr. Brando, hated. The sense of this hatred is palpable throughout the book, and I don't think it's any accident that Mr. Brando failed to achieve peace of mind in its presence. The two are indeed mutually exclusive, as we have been instructed over and over again.

If psychotherapy is to be able to help clients achieve some experience of relaxation, of peace of mind, of happiness, then it seems all too obvious that certain principles and practices which have been discovered to lend themselves to the attainment of these experiences will need to be, at some point in the process, employed.





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A Little On Forgiveness

So let's talk about forgiveness, or more precisely, self forgiveness. If the thesis that you are punishing yourself is accurate, then in place of a punitive relationship with yourself, a relationship of forgiveness, tolerance, compassion and acceptance of your humanity becomes the antidote, and the key to your liberation from the heavy psychological hand of this internal prison guard/enforcer.

You understand of course that we are entering the realm of spirituality, but not only spirituality. This is also the realm of psychological health, happiness, freedom and well being. It may not be just as simple as "love is all you need", or it might be just that simple, as long as we distinguish between the principle and its implementation. The simplistic notion that one needs to just "let go" has to be abandoned, and in its place the realistic practice of actively cultivating an integrated, felt experience of self love will be undertaken.

How to do this? You can use whatever methods work for you: visualization, self soothing, self hugging, self talk, self parenting, singing to yourself, etc. Welcoming the inner part of you who has transgressed. Practicing an understanding and supportive relationship with that part of you.
Treating yourself gently rather than harshly. Engaging a new belief that says that you will be a better person for offering yourself forgiveness than for imposing punishment.

Oh yes. There is the element of time. While "just let go" is supposed to happen instantly, the reality is that forgiveness develops over time and with effort and intention.






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