It Wouldn't Be This Hard If I Was With The Right Person

By Lissa Carter, LCMHCS

My client had ‘come in hot’ (her words).  She put her tea down forcefully on the table and leaned forward, her eyes expressive. 

“Want to know why I’m late today? I was sitting out there in the car, in an argument, again, and to be honest I don’t even know what we were arguing about. If I were with the right person, it wouldn’t be like this—fights, misunderstandings, shutdowns, all the time. It shouldn’t be like this, right?  Two fights before noon? It just really, really shouldn’t be this hard.”

 I hesitated a moment and she started laughing. We’d been working together a long time, and she could read me pretty well.  “What are you about to say?” she asked.  “I’m not going to like it, am I?”

 “Yeah, I think you’re not going to like it,”  I said. “But I back what I am about to say with the full weight of my education and the confidence of years of counseling experience.”

“All right,” she said, sighing.  “Sock it to me.”

I leaned forward.

“It depends.”

When I was training as a counselor, I was pretty sure my professors had a manual of how to correctly practice therapy that they were purposefully withholding because they thought the Socratic method would be a more effective teaching tool than just handing us the answers outright. 

 Now I find myself in the position of being the one who can’t for the life of me give a clear yes or no answer.  The world of counseling, it turns out, is rife with maddening ambiguity.  Because humans are complex.  And the only thing more complex than a human is two humans trying to relate to each other.

“You’re right,” she said, settling back into the couch and crossing her arms. “I don’t like it.  What a cop out.”

“Honestly, I would feel the same way if I were sitting where you are.  But will you give a moment to redeem myself?”

As I said, this client knows me pretty well, and she knows all my tricks.  She reached into the drawer where I keep my fidgets and pulled out my sand timer, which she dramatically flipped on the table between us.

“You have two minutes,” she said, and resumed her crossed-arm position.

Gauntlet accepted.  I now present to you my two-minute condensed complexity-of-relationships spiel, as elicited by my wonderful, saucy, take-no-prisoners client.

Here goes.

Imagine that you could design the perfect little hermit house for yourself.  It has everything you need to be wonderfully comfortable—your favorite books, games, foods, your favorite landscape surrounding you, access to all of the activities that bring you alive.  You have everything you could possibly need or want.

Imagine yourself, now, after ten years of that life. I imagine you are pretty content.  I imagine you have lived a relatively conflict-free life in which you could do all of the things (go to bed when you want, get up when you want, eat when and what you want, flow with your own rhythms and timing) that get logjammed when you have to navigate other people.

Now ask yourself:  am I basically the same person I was ten years ago?  Or have I grown?

When I do this little thought experiment, I have to admit to myself—dedicated introvert that I am—that I would not have grown much.  I would have read A LOT and might be more knowledgeable on certain (predictable) topics.  But I wouldn’t have grown.  I would have been too comfortable to necessitate much growing. So—maybe—not all conflict is bad.

IMPORTANT CLARIFICATION: I am not in any way arguing that people who live alone aren’t constantly growing and changing. It’s not the alone part that causes the lack of growth.  This thought experiment is about dwelling in a state of comfort and content, everything just as you like it, without any challenge.  I have friends who live alone and are some of the most evolved people I know, because they’ve designed their lives to challenge them regularly. 

Let me add as well that I am not arguing against the joys of long periods of contentment and calm!  These are vital.  As with everything else in counseling, it’s that maddening, maddening middle ground that we are going for.  Enough safety and comfort to be well-cared for and rested, enough challenge to be activated and growing.

For example, we could do this the other way—if you are in a high-conflict relationship, you might imagine ten years alone and ten years with the person you are currently with—which version of you do you like better, ten years later? 

 The point I am trying to make is not that alone is bad and relationship is good.  It’s that you can’t judge the ‘good’ness of a relationship by how easy it is. Not all conflict is bad. And all relationships, inevitably, contain conflict.

Most humans, when offered the chance to opt out of growth, will take that option every time.  Change is hard and dangerous and we prefer homeostasis. So we tend, when left to our own devices, not to change. Even when we cognitively believe that we really value feedback, flexibility, and change--we’re up against our organismic design. Our default wiring is to prefer ease to challenge in most scenarios. But this doesn’t always lead to the best outcomes.

 Enter:  THE HUMAN RELATIONSHIP.

 

(To be fully transparent, the little sand timer had run out by now, but I was on a roll and my client kindly allowed me to continue speaking.)

Humans generate friction and drag on other humans.  They like different music than you do and they put the wrong amount of spice in their food and they get up at categorically the worst time of day and they seem to deliberately misunderstand what you mean and they eat the last egg and put the empty egg carton back into the fridge.

And, as we balance our inner world with their inner worlds, as we learn to navigate our differences and our frictions by interacting with others, we will be challenged and changed. And it will often feel awful, because we would prefer the ease of homeostasis.

 Now here’s the “it depends” part.

If, in the friction and drag of your relationship (and please be aware that I am not talking about the glorious, luminous limerence phase in which your brain chemistry medicates you to not notice the drag, and which does eventually abate no matter how right your person is) the misunderstandings and terrible fights*** don’t FEEL good but over time seem to be trending you upward into a kinder, more resourceful, more intelligent communicator who is finding ways of getting closer and closer to your own values—then this relationship is the generative kind of hard.  You might still want to take the occasional well-deserved month in your hermitage, and you might benefit by some couples counseling or communication training to lessen the wear-and-tear of your fights, but overall, the pain of your arguments is not evidence that you are with the wrong person.

If, in the friction and drag of your relationship, the misunderstandings and terrible fights*** are making you feel less and less resourceful as a person, or eroding your (or your partner’s) confidence, or you are drifting farther away from your values and don’t like the person you are turning into—this conflict is damaging. Take a really thoughtful look at the way you are showing up in your relationship and the way your partner is showing up, think about what needs to change, and get the support you need to do it. Whether you end the relationship or choose to stay and make supported shifts in the way you interact, something does need to change.

***I’m talking about misunderstandings, here, not physical or psychological violence.  If you are experiencing either, please get support—here’s a list of resources to explore. If you are having trouble discerning whether what is happening in your relationship is physical or psychological abuse, please talk to someone—one of the dynamics of abuse is that it messes with our ability to think clearly. Here’s a post on how to find a counselor.

Notice that there is not an option three in which the relationship is not hard.

Conflict in relationship is inevitable. I can say this with relative confidence because I have lived alone in the woods for long stretches of time and had difficulty getting along with myself. Additionally, I have a partner who has been scientifically rated by objective bystanders to be the most understanding human on the planet, and I’ve found ways to quarrel and suffer even so.

If you find that there is no conflict in your relationship, I would hazard to guess that one of four things is happening.

1) You may be collapsing your reality to avoid conflict with your partner, which is not healthy for you.

2) Your partner may be collapsing their reality to avoid conflict with you, which is not healthy for them.

3) You may be in a position where you and your partner are not communicating much or in depth, in which case you are paying for low conflict with low intimacy.

4) You are the enlightened being we are waiting for. Please stop reading this blog and run for office immediately.

So –respectfully—

There is no right person with whom a truly intimate relationship will not be difficult.

But it’s important that relationship is difficult in the right ways.

“Okay,” said my client.  “I think I get it. I’ll give you the ‘it depends’ this time but you are running up against your monthly limit of therapyspeak.”

 “Fair.”

 “But are you saying I should just accept all this constant fighting?”

 “Not at all.  I’m saying don’t be too quick to decide you’re with the wrong person just because there’s conflict. It’s still entirely possible you’re with the wrong person. But you’re using the wrong criterion.”

“So how do I know if we should stay together?”

“You’re the only one who can make that call. But, if you’re game, bring me two lists next week: things you love about your partner and your relationship, and things that are completely not working. And write up one of your arguments so I can see what it’s like. We’ll go from there.”

“And what’s YOUR homework?”

 Which is how this blog post came to be.

 Thank you to my client for the willingness to share this story.  Details have been changed to protect privacy. (But that thing with the sandtimer absolutely happened. Well played.)

If you like to learn through stories, you might appreciate the depth storytelling events I’m offering this year. The next one is April 30th, 2024, and you can attend online (from anywhere in the world) or in person ( in Western NC). Details below.

Music, poetry, conversation, community, and story

Am I Crazy?

By Lissa Carter, LCMHCS

He sat very quiet and still on the couch, as far from me as his body could go.  His face was drawn.  In a whisper he said “it’s going to sound so crazy what I am about to say. And it might be hard to hear.”

 And then he proceeded to say something so human, so relatable, that I could not keep my head from nodding along.  When, after a few moments of silence, his eyes rose and clocked me nodding, his face registered shock.

“You understand what I’m talking about?” he asked.

“As a counselor and as a human:  yes. Extremely relatable,” I responded. His shock melted slowly into laughter.  

Why do we do this to ourselves?  Why do we believe that our behavior, our feelings, our thoughts, hold us apart and unwanted from the greater river of humanity?  Why do we so unerringly believe that everyone --except for, specifically, us --was given the manual for life?

Most of us have learned, through trial and error, that trying to control others does not end well. We’ve learned, through relational pain, to attune and connect to those we love, even when we don’t understand why they are behaving the way they are.

(And sometimes we forget, and try to control, and remember why it doesn’t work, and start again.  Yes, I’m looking at you, Self.)

Yet relatively few of us seem to turn that knowing back on ourselves.  Rather than attune inside, rather than treat ourselves with love and curiosity when we are struggling or unsure, we berate, discipline, and control ourselves. And, slowly, that inner relationship deteriorates until we think of ourselves as little more than a set of actions and products. 

 Over time, if there is no space between who we are –our innate value as a human being—and the outcomes of our actions and products, something even more dire occurs.  Because if I AM my actions and products, then any criticism, any feedback at all, about those actions or their products is intolerable.  Because it feels like criticism of my selfhood. So I must defend against feedback in any way possible, must resolutely avoid either feedback itself or any truth it may contain.  Which, then, in a terrible spiral, begins to deteriorate my relationship with others.

But what if we were to reverse that spiral?

 What if my response to the feedback of someone I love is –once I’ve fed it through my psychological boundary to ensure the feedback is accurate and coming from a trustworthy source—to take in the parts that are true and helpful?

This builds the trust between me and the person I love.  Now, through the feeling of attunement with this person, I remember my innate goodness.  Rather than punishing myself for having “gotten something wrong”, I can feel compassion for the way in which I continue to try, and for the aspects of myself that were perhaps misunderstood in this encounter. 

From here, I begin slowly to build a space between who I am and the roles I play, the actions I perform, the results I get.  And I can take refuge in that space when others offer me constructive feedback—refuge enough that I can hear the impact my presence has on others, and allow it to inform and grow me, without feeling personally attacked.

Of course it’s never that graceful, continuous, or easy, but there is such a direct connection between the way we treat ourselves and the way we treat others that no matter which side you start with—the way you talk to yourself or the way you take in the feedback of others—transformation will flow in this circle, self to other, other to self.

And this might—eventually—call me crazy—be the way we stop waging war. On ourselves, on other people, species, countries.

After my client and I had processed a little, I asked him if I could share an impression with him.  He consented, and I told him “when I hear you say to me that I might think you are crazy, my impression is that’s not about me.  My impression is that somewhere inside, you are saying to yourself ‘this is crazy. I’m crazy.”  He nodded.  “So—if that’s true—what happens next?”

 “What do you mean?”

 “When you hear yourself saying ‘I’m crazy’—what happens next?”

 “I feel sad, I guess.  Or I tell myself something to do—go to the gym usually, something a normal sane person would do.”

 “So there’s no response?”

 “I don’t get it.”

 “When you said to me—I might think you are crazy—I responded.  I said ‘that’s very relatable actually.’”

 “I see what you mean.  Yeah, no, there’s no response.  Or the response is “okay, crazy, go the gym and act normal!”

 “What if we shoehorn in something between the “I’m crazy” and “go to the gym like a sane person.”  What if we put in there something like what I said—a response.  Something like “it’s frightening to feel crazy—is there anything you need?” or “I bet a lot of people go through this, is there someone you’d like to talk to?” Something that expresses care and connection.”

 “I mean I could, but I don’t think it would help.”

 “It might not.  But I am noticing that when you came in here, you were sitting way over there and your face looked scared.  And now your voice is more relaxed and you’re leaning in and coming up with ideas and conversation.  And that happened because there was some connection around this thing that was making you feel crazy. I’m just saying that can be available inside when it’s not available from other people.”

 “Interesting.” 

If I protect myself no matter what the world throws at me, I’m safe but I’m an island.  If I go unprotected out into the world, I can be utterly devastated by what I hear from others.  Self-attunement is a little bubble of safety within which we can take refuge, that allows us to be both protected and connected at the same time. It’s a little bit of sanity each of us can create within ourselves. To protect the world from our crazy, and to protect ourselves from the crazy of the world.

Deep gratitude to my client who gave me permission to share their story—details have been changed to protect their privacy. And thank you to brilliant behavior analyst Shannon Fee for sharpening my thinking on this topic.

 One way I build the skill of self-attunement with my clients is through storytelling.

 This works in two ways:  one, understanding an emotion or psychological dynamic is far easier when amplified through characters in a story than when dissected minutely in your life.  Bigger things = easier to see.

 Two, getting a little distance through metaphor always helps clarify what we are working with because we don’t get defensive about metaphors or characters in a story. And hearing that a character in a story that has been handed down for hundreds of years is acting exactly the way that you just did?  That’s incredibly normalizing.

 If any of this intrigues you, you might be interested in a storytelling project I’m engaged in this year to give back to the community and to the causes that are close to my heart. The next story I’ll be telling is about boundaries and self-attunement—all the things I’ve been writing about here.  It’s called Boinn and the River of Inspiration and you can learn how to join in here.

Defeated by ever larger things

By Lissa Carter, LCMHC

A century ago, poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote: "The purpose of life is to be defeated by greater and greater things."

THANK YOU, RILKE! What a profoundly helpful reframe for the cultural message we so often receive, the message that the purpose of life is to constantly improve, to be ever more productive, to become better and better versions of ourselves, to gain ever more success and develop an ever increasing quantity and quality of skills.

I feel exhausted even writing these words down, and yet I know these messages play their way across my own mind thousands of times per day. And they certainly play across the minds of my clients—-sometimes, therapy even gets enlisted as one of the self-improvement projects on the to-do list!

But if—as Rilke suggests— the meaning in these impermanent, flawed, frustrating lives of ours is not to constantly improve, not to heap success upon success—but, instead, to dare the defeat, to allow the transcendent beauty and awful tragedy of life to utterly overwhelm us—then, perhaps, therapy can be less about self-improvement and more about meaning-making.

“Wait just one ever-loving minute!” I hear you cry, “Isn’t the whole point of therapy to STOP feeling so utterly overwhelmed? To become more functional?”

Certainly, we don’t want to walk around overwhelmed all the time. And yet, if our “answer” to the pain of life is to constrict ourselves, to narrow the comfort zone until our lives are bound by only certain successes, that narrowness does not limit only our defeats. Our sense of joy is diminished, our playfulness, meaning itself is narrowed. We can’t pick and choose what grows smaller when we restrict our lives to include only successes and comfortable feelings. Everything shrinks.

So, as I often tell my clients: the goal here isn’t to feel better. It’s to FEEL better. To allow oneself to expand, to feel more, to dare the realms of human experience that are less comfortable, less sure. Because when we expand the circle to include those realms, the circle widens all the way around and our joy—our sense of meaning and purpose—increases too.

And if we look at the way the brain works to retain information, there’s more data to back up Rilke’s assertion. Try as we might, we can’t subtract information from the brain. There are around two large “pruning” events in the brain that happen in a human lifetime, and we are not in charge of what makes the cut. Other than these events, if we want to modify information our brain holds, we can’t simply subtract the things we no longer believe. We have to add. We have to grow ever larger.

Much as I might wish I could, I can’t subtract the core belief, forged in early childhood, “I am a misfit, I do not belong.” But over the years I can add to this belief: “And there are people who love me.” “And there are places I feel at home.” “And there are contributions that I can make.” Over time, although the primary and painful belief does not go away, the many additions we make modify it so profoundly that it not longer impacts us in the same way.

When we are completely honest with ourselves, much of this “self-improvement” we are engaged in is actually avoidance of some kind. I don’t want to feel judged as unintelligent, so I listen to psychology podcasts instead of music. I hate the feeling of anxiety, so I go for a run to try and escape it. I’m not moving toward the person I want to become—I am running from the feelings I am afraid of. Yet if I try to subtract the belief “I am a misfit, I do not belong” by avoiding the arenas of life that trigger this uncomfortable thought or feeling, life won’t get better. It will just get smaller.

At any given moment we have a choice: to move toward the person we want to be, or to move away from discomfort. When we choose to move away from discomfort, it’s so often because we don’t want to be defeated. We don’t want to risk the pain of rejection or imperfection in the pursuit of our dreams.

But if the goal is not perfection, or even success—if the goal is to be defeated today by something that is incrementally larger than the thing that defeated you yesterday—doesn’t that make it a little bit easier to turn toward the person you long to become?

One final thought on this—often my clients speak of the work they do in therapy as “self-discipline”. The discipline to practice their values, the discipline to choose relationality over fear, the discipline to keep their commitments. When this happens, I like to draw their attention to the etymology of the word discipline—-it shares a root with “disciple”.

What are you a disciple of? What matters enough to you that you put yourself in discipleship to that quality, no matter how uncomfortable it might get?

As for me, I want to be in discipleship to compassion, to generosity, to kindness, to equity. Often these qualities lead me into uncomfortable conversations and thorny dilemmas. And yet—they are beautifully large things to be defeated by.

Thank you to the client who inspired this post by saying “these ideas need to be on the internet!” You know who you are <3

Want to dip a toe into Expressive Arts? Join Julie King Murphy for the Midday Makers series…an opportunity to dedicate your lunch break to creative exploration!


As always, please feel free to comment below or reach out directly to innerlightasheville@gmail.com.