Taking Small Steps

Sometimes the smallest of steps in a particular direction can begin, or further, movement toward a desirable outcome. Example: a client has for decades been struggling with feelings of shame, embarrassment, anger, fear, and self doubt, based on early traumatic experiences with his parents. His primary coping strategy through all of this time has been humor, or attempted minimization of the impact of these experiences. He says that he's "aware" of his real feelings, but hasn't been able to, or doesn't know how, to do his life differently. He continues, for the most part, to be sufficiently paralyzed by his feelings that his life - including his primary relationship - remains largely suffocating and unhappy, despite his "insights".

What do you think is a primary therapeutic theme here? What is this man not doing that needs to be done? What might you be doing similarly in your own life?

In spite of having some awareness of his real feelings, he continues to use very old "survival" strategies decades after the events in question. These strategies have in fact done their job - they enabled him to survive virtually impossible circumstances. Their job was done, though, decades ago, and their continued use serves to keep him trapped in a loop of feelings and behaviors that were no longer useful, or needed, 30 years ago. If he continues to use these same strategies, he'll continue to get the same results. Something has to change.

I ask him to find a way, or more than one way, to somehow give three dimensional form to his real feelings. I ask him to find ways to begin to honor and to respect not only his real feelings, but the real experiences he lived through. In effect, I ask him to begin to work with what is really going on for him, rather than to continue to "deflect" (his word) from this with his humor and minimization. Not until he can respect and accept his actual experience can he respect and accept himself. "How do I do this?" he asks.

Sometimes the smallest of steps in a particular direction can begin, or further, movement toward a desirable outcome. Begin right where you are. Pay attention to what you're actually feeling, be it shame, anger, grief, confusion, or anything else, and do something to acknowledge and honor that feeling. Draw it. Sing it. Write it. Speak it. Praise it. Thank it. Don't, of course, act it out in destructive ways. Whatever will allow you to begin to accept it rather than run from it. There's no one way. Each of us is capable of inventing ways that will work for us. And, importantly, have the right support for your taking these steps, even if they seem small.