Being "Different" In A Cookie Cutter World

Without making too much of it, I think it's fair to say that, for the most part, people find it difficult to be different from the "the norm". There's always a great deal of pressure, from without and also from within, to fit in, to be one of the guys (or gals), to conform. If it turns out that you are unlike the "norm" in any significant way, this can create a considerable degree of tension, distress, uncertainty, self loathing and self doubt. When this happens, it is of crucial importance that you find people who can support and celebrate your differences, or simply somehow give you permission to be who you are.

Learning to accept oneself is a difficult enough challenge under the best of conditions. Throw in being a bit "odd", or unusual, or just a little "out of the box", and this developmental task can take on seemingly impossible proportions. I'd like to encourage all of you "differents" out there to take hope. Instead of waiting for the world to catch up to you, and berating yourself in the meanwhile, try on the idea that the rest of the world will not be likely to catch up, and that you can move forward blazing new paths without that happening.

I'm not recommending being isolated in your difference - although some of this may be inevitable because of rejection and misunderstanding. I urge you instead to cultivate the appreciation and support of those who can see you for who you are. Having the right kind of reflection of yourself from these people will help you to soar, or simply to feel at home in your own skin.



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Not An Option: Make Time To Go Inside

I suppose it might be more important for those who think of themselves as introverts, but then again it might not be. It might be just as important for just about everyone. What's "it"? Some version of time alone. Down time. Personal space. Reflection. Meditation time. Retreat. A break from the demands of every day. Time to go inward and connect in depth with one's spiritual core. Re-creation, independent of "what you do" and "who you think you are" in the world. The necessity of renewal from within.

It's a cliche, but I'll say it anyway: oh, how easy it is to lose track of oneself amidst the demands of daily life. By "oneself" I mean of course one's essence, one's beingness as distinct from one's doingness. The Source. God. Self. The One. And, how essential it becomes then to allow the times and the places to tune back in. This ought to be something one does every day, but I'm realistic enough to admit that most people don't; and even when people do some form of meditation or other "centering" practice, it is still of importance to allow special times for more intensive, focused, extended bathing in the Pool.

How are busy people, or poor people, or distracted people, or neurotic people supposed to be able to do this? I won 't pretend to know. I'll only say that, to employ another cliche, where there's a will there is indeed a way. So it really is, in my opinion, a matter of will, and not so much a matter of particular circumstances. Virtually any circumstances, short, I suppose, of the most extreme, can be worked with effectively.

Do yourself a favor: make the time to retreat back into Yourself. Make your spiritual practices more of a priority. You'll be glad you did.



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Gradual Steps, Practice, And "Small" Successes

Working with the pressures we put on ourselves to "perform", to be what we "should" be, to do things the way they're "supposed" to be done, even when trying to do these things creates enormous personal and interpersonal distress, presents some challenges. One of the most considerable of these challenges has to do with recognizing the larger cultural context within which pressures like these arise. In other words, this sort of distress isn't just "something wrong with me". It is also, and in a sense primarily, "something wrong with our culture", which then becomes one's personal story as well.

"If I could just muster enough self discipline to _________________", fill in your own blanks:
work a job, go to school, manage a household, shop, clean, study, socialize, pay bills, excel, take care of the kids, exercise, eat right, be sensitive to everyone else's needs................................

And when I fall short of these ridiculously and unrealistically high expectations, I manage quite well to feel terrible about myself. I'm not strong enough. I'm weak. I'm not smart enough. I'm not creative enough. I'm just basically no good. I'm certain many of you can relate easily with these feelings, and the mental messages that go along with them.

Here's an alternative strategy, which on the face of it might seem simplistic, or obvious: practice relating with yourself more kindly; more gently; more forgivingly; more realistically. I know, easier said than done. Of course. That's why I said "practice". Like the development of any skill, relationship skills - including the relationship with ourselves - require practice and cultivation. Some consistency, rather than a great, forceful push of intensity. Think in the long term: gradual, slow development over time.

I know this goes against virtually everything the larger culture presents to us. I know this is opposite to the "quick fix" mentality and set of expectations we're "supposed to" live by (even while great lip service is paid to the other, more "virtuous", more "wise", and indeed more realistic values of gradual progress). I recognize the contradictions, and I hope you will too, because recognizing them will play an important role in your being able to learn how to care for yourself in opposition to them, and to their representative voices in your head.

If you can't have your optimal set of circumstances, for whatever reasons, allow yourself to utilize smaller aspects of the things, people, and conditions that do in fact work for your benefit. Example: you'd really love to be living in a more natural, nature based environment, but currently this isn't possible because your needs - things that you've freely chosen, let's say - require you to be in the city, or in town. Not only that, but your current financial circumstances require you to live in a low-income part of town, which among other things, means that it isn't necessarily very safe, so you're afraid to go out and walk in your neighborhood.

OK. What can you do that might actually be helpful, healing, nurturing for yourself, within these constraints? Instead of concluding that there's nothing that you can do, how about implementing the above "smaller aspects" strategy? Can you create, inside your space, an environment that is composed of natural elements? Can you drive to a part of town, or even a ways out of town, to an area where you can feel safe walking in Nature? Can you have people whom you feel some closeness with into your space? In other words, try not to get caught in an "all or nothing" condition, where you become paralized by the sense of seeing only what you don't have, and nothing of what you might be able to have that would help.



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No Couples Counseling Yet

There are times, and situations, which warrant a "no couples counseling" approach to working with couples. Perhaps the most serious of these is when there is active, ongoing, and serious domestic violence between the individuals. The potential for danger is thought to increase if the couple is to be seen together, because things will be said in sessions that are likely to later be used as "ammunition" by one or both parties, thus fueling the violence.

Under these circumstances, it is advisable to engage both parties in individual therapy, not with the same therapist. Both parties need help, guidance, support, and facilitation in education and self examination. Without this, there is little hope of things in the relationship getting better. It may even be advisable for the couple to separate for a time. Of course, this idea may be vehemently resisted by one or both parties, for a variety of reasons.

When there has been violence in a relationship over an extended period of time, the psychological and emotional dynamics between the parties are deeply dysfunctional, self destructive, controlling, confused, and, of course, dangerous. The unfortunate reality is that these relationships not infrequently end in death for one or another, or sometimes for both people. Over time, the violence tends to clearly escalate without meaningful intervention. It simply is not the case that things will "get better" on their own.

If you know people for whom this situation exists, or if this is true in your relationship, please find a way to look for and ask for the help you, or they, need.



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Careful! There's A Baby In That Bath Water!

Having had some negative experience with health care, it becomes increasingly important to be able to experience care that is genuinely supportive and beneficial. Otherwise there is the very real danger that you as a client in therapy might be inclined to "throw out the baby with the bath water". In this situation that might mean closing yourself to information or strategies that could be helpful to you, because you associate them - perhaps mistakenly - with your previous unfortunate, or even damaging experience.

An example: a client has had unsupportive medical experiences regarding his very real disabling health condition. He may have been told, or it may have been implied that this condition was "all in his head", and that there was nothing "really" wrong with him. As a result of this treatment, and perhaps other previous experiences, he concludes that anything associated with the conventional medical establishment is worthless, and cannot possibly be of benefit to him. Instead, he spends years exploring and working with "alternative" practitioners, to try to get some relief from his debilitating health distress. This in fact IS beneficial, both medically and spiritually, the client feels supported and validated, and does indeed gain some measure of relief.

This same client now finds himself in need of psychotherapy, and through a set of circumstances not altogether of his choosing, finds a therapist who uses an eclectic approach, incorporating some fairly orthodox, mainstream treatment models with other, more cutting edge ones. While the more "alternative" models are appealing to this client, he has, even before meeting with the therapist, decided that certain methods, because they are "mainstream", cannot be useful to him. This is unfortunate, because some of these more conventional methods are actually very powerfully therapeutic, and can in fact be presented and implemented in ways that are comfortable, supportive and effective.

After a few sessions of therapy, when a good therapeutic relationship has been established, the therapist is able to skillfully explore all of this with the client, and the c lient is able to begin to recognize his bias, and that it may in fact be more hurtful to him than helpful in his therapy.

In general, it is the case that a black and white approach to just about anything, while in some ways understandable, will prove to be more harmful than helpful.



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A Little On Power In Therapy

It's not all that unusual for clients, especially clients who've had previous experience with therapy, or with health care in general, to come into therapy with well developed biases against what they believe to be "ineffective" or simply "wrong" approaches to therapy. At least "wrong" insofar as their benefit is concerned. This is usually the result of bad health care experiences, even traumatic ones, in which the client may have been ignored, disbelieved, bullied, or in some other way not given the full respect they need and expect.

Imagine how you might feel if you were to be treated with condescension, with skepticism, with arrogance, or with any other form of disrespect, when you are in a particularly vulnerable condition, and when you are actively seeking help. Not only will such an experience be harmful to you, but it will also tend to sour you to methods and practices which can, when done well, be of significant benefit to you.

This is where the nature of the therapeutic relationship between client and therapist is of paramount importance. Regardless of how well your therapist may understand theories and techniques, the healing potential of any of these are likely to be lost if the relationship between the two of you is insensitive, or aggressive, or in any way expresses its inherent power differential unskillfully. In short, no one wants to be treated badly.

Just a couple of days ago I happen to see Mr. Bush on TV at one of his farewell press conferences, in which he was asking, rhetorically, if it isn't "pathetic" to hear or witness someone expressing "self pity". It's safe to say that, whatever else Mr. Bush may be good or bad at, he would most certainly not make a good therapist with an attitude like this. If a client in therapy were to be related to with this kind of insensitivity, aggression and arrogance, we can rest assured that the experience would be a damaging one.



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Informal Mindfulness Practice

One of the very popular "techniques" in psychotherapy today is "mindfulness". There's the very well known and evidence based successes of MBSR, or Mindfulness Based Stress Reduction, founded and elaborated by John Kabat-Zinn; there's the "teflon mind" mindfulness of DBT, or Dialectical Behavior Therapy, developed and researched by Marsha Linehan; and there are numerous other strategies and offshoots utilizing the fundamentally Buddhist practice of mindfulness, or "bare attention".

Typically when we think of these practices, we think of sitting meditation, or formally structured periods of practice, the benefits or insights related to which can then be carried into everyday life situations. There is another approach however, which doesn't get as much press, so to speak, and that is the practice of mindfulness IN everyday situations, without, necessarily, the added participation in formal meditation periods.

Consider: a successful senior executive, now in a subordinate role as a member of a task force to which she is very well suited, and for which she is supremely qualified. Since she is not the "leader" of this task force, she finds herself observing situations which, in her former roles, she would readily have addressed and guided, but in which she now "holds back", thinking her thoughts, making her judgements, feeling the sensations of frustration and impatience, but "doing" nothing. She is "forced" to observe all of this, while not, at least at times, directly acting on any of it. This is the practice of bare attention, or mindfulness.

It is a struggle for her, because she is accustomed to being in charge, and to taking the proverbial bull by its horns in order to wrestle the "problem" into a "solution". Now, she has to "sit with" situations which every fibre of her body/mind wants to "tackle". An interesting dilemma, and a wonderful opportunity in support of her Buddhist practice.

Finding a balance between form and formlessness is an essential Buddhist dilemma, as well as, in one way or another, a meaningful therapeutic challenge.



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