A Thoughtful Look at Life

"The strength is our people" is a well used line...but at Bergen and Associates it's not just something we say, but something we have the privilege of experiencing.

I get to go to work everyday, knowing I work with fantastic people:

• They are fun, we love to laugh together. They are supportive...to me and of each other. Hugs, pats on the back, and warm words of encouragement are frequently exchanged.
  
• They are great in taking responsibility for their errors, willing to work out misunderstandings, and comfortable asking questions to ensure we are all "on the same page".
  
• They care deeply about their work, about being professional, about delivering great therapy to our clients, and have a profound amount of integrity as they carefully navigate with clients through their journeys.
  

Do you get the idea that I love working where I do, with the people I do? Yup. Absolutely.

So...today was a continuation of that delight. Rebecca Bergmann, who had been with us for two years recently moved on to full time employment elsewhere. We loved her, and it was hard to see her go...but we understood that this was the right move for her.

And so we started asking around for someone who would be good with us and for us...and today, Del started.
She started work today with Melanie, "learning the ropes"...there are a million little details to learn...and she took careful notes, asked great questions.

Already it is evident that she is going to be one more fabulous member of the team. Her quiet cooperative friendliness is going to be super appreciated around our neck of the woods.

She'll be working one day per week, allowing Melanie to be able to take her parents to doctor's appointments, and hang out at her favorite restaurant for breakfast with her hubby as she likes to do once in a while in the middle of the week.

It'll take a bit for Del to get the hang of all that is involved with answering phones, welcoming clients, and getting the daily tasks done...so I ask, in advance, for your patience as she takes a few extra moments to answer your questions when you call.

Welcome Del...we hope that you enjoy your time with us, and that we are good for you...we'd like to be a blessing in your life, even as we all work together to improve the lives of the people who come to see us!

I generally dislike spring clean up...ok...that's more polite that I really feel about it...I hate spring clean up. I hate it almost worse than fall clean up...mainly because I put it off so long last fall, that it didn't get done properly, and so there were more leaves and stuff left behind than should. We do pile some leaves on the flowerbed in some notion that it keeps the bulbs protected and nested for the winter

... but that does leave a pile of flaky leaves on top, and soggy, mogey leaves on underneath to pile up and haul away.

Spring came early this year, and so there was a Saturday recently that was sunny and warm...and we got in there before the bugs go too bad. (The bugs are part of why I dislike getting in there). Lots of old dried dead plants from last year, with extra stuff mixed in...

yuck.

But we went at'er.


And then there they were...the little green reasons that make the whole spring clean up way-more-than-worth-it.

Ah...


Who woulda thunk that underneath that crappy pile of stuff that needed to be pulled, raked, cut, and thrown away were these little gems just waiting to be uncovered and enjoyed?

While I had been walking by the "yuck" for a couple of weeks, dreading the removal, these little guys had been silently growing underneath, benefiting from the blanket until they would be exposed to the warm sunshine.

Suddenly, a chore I had been dreading, became one of delight, as I carefully exposed these little gems..I had to grab the camera to capture something that had suddenly gone from a dreaded afternoon to a highlight of the season.

Seems to me I have had experiences in my life, looking at the crappy circumstances in my life, thinking it was just gross.

Gross.

And then, after a time, gems of growth and newness emerged underneath the ugliness of the circumstances. Cocooned in the misery of life, the wonder of life emerged through the kindness of a stranger, the emergence of a till-now-hidden strength in myself, a redemption of sorts in a relationship, a realization that wouldn't have been possible without first having experienced the crap of life.

Redemption can catch us by surprise, and by delight.

It's something that never ceases to take my breath away.  That's one of the greatest privileges of being a therapist is to have a front row seat to this every day I go to work.

Would you be interested in an intervention that reduced anxiety by 48% in a meta-analysis, and with low dose gave relief to 30% on those with depression , and with an increased dose, that effect increased to 47%? That treatment is available to pretty much all of us...and there are further significant benefits from this incredibly effective intervention.

Nope...not some snake oil cure-all...but genuine research replicated and repeated in standardized well respected studies.

Gonna sign off now...I gotta go for a walk!

Love this powerful example of how, when two get together, they are greater than the sum of their parts...and how each celebrate the magic of the chemistry, and choose to powerfully build the other up...and all who watch benefit from seeing this magic.

Forgiveness is an oft misunderstood concept…and tho simple in its steps, is far from easy to do. Forgiveness is a posture in oneself towards another who has wronged you that moves past the pain of the wrong, to open oneself up to larger possibilities…it focuses on the fullness of life, rather than the wrong of another.

Forgiveness is NOT:

...saying the wrong doesn’t matter. Forgiving doesn’t mean rationalizing or condoning abuse. Forgiving somebody who has injured you in any way does not mean that the injury is irrelevant.

Forgiveness is rather saying, “The injury that you created in me is something I will not continue to hold on an emotional account against you.“

...agreeing with the other that the wrong really wasn’t a big deal. Unfortunately, it is human nature to minimize how we hurt others…we expect others to understand that because our general intent isn’t to set out to hurt another, that when it does occur, it will be seen as a temporary slip or oversight that can more or less be disregarded…and when we are forgiven, that can feel like an affirmation that it was, in fact, not significant.

Au contraire.

Even if the other should choose to see it that way, forgiveness is not implying it didn’t hurt, or that the hurt isn’t a problem. Forgiveness is the cancelling of a very real debt.

...setting oneself up to be hurt again. Now…I’m all over extending grace to others when they have wronged me…when they recognize what they have done, have insight into its consequences, and let me know they intend to do better. In short, when someone has wronged me, but they generally have my trust, the “wrong” is a blip, and after forgiveness has been extended, life goes on…and to continue to build up a wall of protection around myself hurts both of us.

Often forgiveness is part of the process to restore the relationship.

But when I forgive someone who has hurt me, and they demonstrate that they don’t get how they have hurt me, and there is every indication that the pattern of hurt could likely continue, I will make choices that decrease or eliminate their ability to hurt me.

• A friend who has continually told others something I have told her confidence…I may forgive her, in that I’m not carrying a burden of resentment…but I would choose not to confide in her further.
  
• A parent who has been abusive and continues to be disrespectful and hurtful…the adult child may forgive to free them both from the prison of simmering anger, but that doesn’t mean they need to become new best friends.
  
• A person may choose to forgive an abusive spouse for the nasty words, secret behavior and deception in a marriage in order to free herself to move forward freely and happily in life, but may choose to limit contact with him to email only, and limited to parenting issues in ensuing years.
  

You get the picture…forgiveness is aknowleding the hurt and the pain in its fullness, and then using mindfulness, kindness and compassion to let go of the anger and hurt.

And then you carefully negotiate a course of action that will be maximally lifegiving that uses the wisdom you’ve been given.

Forgiveness doesn’t mean foolishness.

It doesn’t mean leaving your brain at the door.

Forgiveness and relationship restoration can be related, and often are, But not nearly always. 

Wisdom determines the best sort of connection (or any at all) after forgiveness has been extended…but it is significant how the forgiveness can change the connection.:

It's one thing to forgive something that's happened, that's over and done. But what if the person who hurt you in the past keeps hurting you over and over, in the present? He interrupts before I get the last words out. "It's not happening now, this second," he says in an offhand way. "So try again."

I take a breath, unclench my jaw, and pose a different question: "How can you keep yourself safe with a difficult person?" In response, Luskin smiles—the first genuine smile I've seen from him all day. "That's the right question," he says, beaming. "That gets rid of the blame and the enemy." And keeps the focus where it belongs, on me. "You can probably answer that question yourself," he says.

My answer, I tell him, is to keep my distance from my mother, talking to her maybe once or twice a year. He nods encouragingly. "Now, can you do that with an open heart?" he asks.

I sit back in my chair and consider—deeply, seriously, honestly—what that would mean: No more bitching about my mother. No more whining to friends for sympathy. No more self-pity. Thinking of my mother with as much compassion as I can muster, but not necessarily getting any closer to her. Accepting our relationship as it is rather than wishing it were different.

Oprah.com
How to Forgive Others--Health Benefits of Forgiveness

 

Ever take a poorly trained labrador retriever for a walk? It’s tricky. and chaotic. and a little crazy…maybe even feeling a little dangerous. As a matter of fact…who’d you be kidding…it would be the dog taking YOU for a walk.

The dog would decide how fast you’d go, when you’d stop, and how far off the path to get pulled. And so how does this matter? Well…

I’ve been thinking about forgiveness a bunch lately…wondering how it fits in life…it started with some emails that I received, continued when my car got dinged, and then continued as it seemed to pop up in my reading, listening on the radio, and so on…

Forgiveness is often used in a religious sense, something that spiritual people are “supposed” to do because it’s the right thing to do.

Psychology is starting to grasp and hold onto the concept of forgiveness…saying forgiveness decreases anxiety, increases optimism and overall health. Psychology is saying that choosing not to work towards forgiving a person is a little like taking an untrained Labrador retriever for a walk…and thinking that you’re in control.

"Forgiving enabled me to realize I could create my own path," she says. "I wasn't just plopped down on this cruddy path I had to walk the rest of my life. I was in control."

"The decision to forgive touches you to your very core, to who you are as a human being," he says. "It involves your sense of self-esteem, your personal worth, the worth of the person who's hurt you, and your relationship with that person and the larger world."

Once you forgive someone for something very painful, "you never experience life the same way again," she says. "You're more flexible, less black-and-white in your expectations of how life or other people will be. If there's one thing that characterizes people who have experienced forgiveness, it's that kind of larger perspective: I can't predict what life will hand me, but I'm going to respond to it in this way."

According to Luskin, an academic who is a forgiveness guru, forgiveness is simple, but not easy.

Definitely not easy.

Hard even.

Sometimes brutally difficult.

Forgiveness takes time. Forgiveness is choosing to release the bitterness, and allow space for your life to focus on life-giving stuff in your life. Luskin outlines 9 steps to forgive for good. 

Forgiveness is like cancelling a debt. A debt that is real, that may be huge, that is owed you. Forgiveness acknowledges that the debt cannot be paid (generally you can’t “unring the bell” when someone has cheated you, slandered you, lied about you, done you harm), and so the pursuit to collect or punish for the debt is deliberately stopped. The debt is forgiven, cancelled. The debt mattered, but resenting a debt, and holding it up as a debt that is outstanding—that exists and should be repaid--only stirs up bitterness and resentment in you…the bitterness and resentment rarely serves any useful purpose towards collecting…and then the only one suffering is you.

This is tough stuff…forgiveness is not for the faint of heart or the namby-pamby. Forgiveness is a marathon, not a sprint…the deliberate choice to stay in a spirit of forgiveness is something that is a matter of the will, anticipating that over time, the heart will follow. Forgiveness involves deliberate processing of the pain, the injustice, and an opening of the heart in another direction away from the pain.

Forgiveness requires courage and fortitude. Forgiveness is a vote to move past “survive” to “thrive”, to look forward rather than back, to make a life for oneself rather than remain in a posture of blame. It empowers the forgiver, and releases them to be all of who they are, without getting pulled on a leash by a force that yanks, entangles and takes you off your path.

Consider letting go of the leash and choosing your own path.

Next post:  What forgiveness is not

Sabrina Friesen, a therapist with us at Bergen and Associates, sent me a link this week to a blog entry that I found pretty cool...it said, in part:

That's when my body started talking to me.

You've got to trust me.

When I am hungry I will tell you.
You'll hear it in chambered echos, grumbles and moans. DON'T FEED ME, until you hear my call.

When I am lonely I will tell you.
A lump will well up in your throat, like you've swallowed cotton and tears will form in your eyes.
DON'T FEED ME, try making a connection with the fine collection of friends you love.

When I am anxious I will tell you.
Your heart will beat fast, your breath will struggle to leave the lungs, and you might feel full of fire.
DON'T FEED ME, instead sit down and fight for those breaths, let the oxygen pour into you--clearing the veins and vessels, close your eyes, identify the fear that is squeezing you.

Gawrsh...speaks pretty plainly, but plaintively about listening to one's body...and responding appropriately.

It's not so obvious, though, is it?

I know I don't think so.

Sometimes it hurts a lot even when it isn’t a big deal…because even when it doesn’t look like a big deal, it’s a big deal.

Confusing? Yep.

Let me explain it with a story… so, last week, a junior tribe member got an unexpected lower limb fashion accessory late in the evening: It’s broken.

It hurt.

A. Lot.

He tried to be pretty tough about it, but it clearly hurt. Felt a lot better once it was in the cast though.

So…when we walked out of the hospital late at night/very early in the morning…he was better off than he had been a few hours earlier.

But as he eased himself into the car, he tapped the top of his cast on the edge of the car door opening…and he squelched a yell and emitted only a strained squeak of an “ouch” through gritted teeth…and he turned white and stopped for a moment as the pain slowly subsided. Very. Slowly. Subsided.

Then I drove home. The streets were deserted and so it was mostly smooth sailing…except he mentioned that the bumps in the road were painful.

The day before when we were in the car, we were on the same roads in the same vehicle. He didn’t complain about the bumps then...he wouldn't have even noticed the bumps when he was broken-bone-less.

But he found the brushups, gentle nudges and taps profoundly painful when there was an underlying injury.

When he complained about the bumps as I was driving, I felt compassion for him because he was so clearly hurting…and the cast on his ankle was a dead give-away that there was a reason for the pain.

But how would I have felt about his complaints over my driving over the rough road if I wasn’t aware of his recent fracture?

If I couldn’t have seen and known about the underlying injury, I likely would have found him

• over-sensitive,
  
• over reactive
  
• being a “drama king”
  
• blaming me in a mean senseless way for nothing
  

 and I would have quite possibly gotten:

• defensive
  
• blaming
  
• ridiculing
  
• angry
  

How often doesn’t one partner or one friend “over react” to a statement, a look, a gesture or a touch in a way that seems out of context or “over the top”?

None of us come to a relationship without having been hurt before. Some will have had a parent be violently angry, some will have had a partner cheat on them, some will have been dumped/abandoned/rejected, some will have been manipulated.

Even if you know you are well intentioned…it is quite possible that there is an emotional “broken bone” that you merely tap with an innocent action or line--which your partner may or (often) may not be consciously aware of. Your action or words elicits a powerful reaction…and a powerful reaction is often returned, because there is a failure to recognize that the wrenching pain that is expressed is about an emotional wound that may not be overtly casted, but nonetheless, is injured…and when bumped, it hurts all over again.

The next time someone you care about appears to “overreact” to something from you…take a deep breath and try compassionately to appreciate that you may have tapped on something deep and hidden.

What just happened really, genuinely, authentically hurt.

A. Lot.

The opposite of talking isn't listening.

The opposite of talking is waiting.

Life isn’t fair.

No big surprise…but somehow when life shows us how unfair it is…it’s still something to wrap one’s head around it.

This is my bumper’s new look:
It happened last week…I ran errands, stopped here and there, spent some time in various places…and at the last stop of the night, when I walked up to get in the car…the bumper had a huge hole in it.

Don’t know when it happened, but I do know a few things:

1. I was not in the vehicle when it was hit
2. It was not moving when it was hit
   
3. Someone else hit it when I wasn’t around
   
4. Whoever hit it did not leave their name or address
   

So…I called MPI and in addition to having to pay the deductible for damage for an accident I had nothing to do with, I have to go to MPI to get it looked at, and then make an appointment to get the bumper replaced, and then get it fixed, and manage for the day without my vehicle while it’s getting repaired.

Now, I recognize that none of these things are big deals…but it’s a hassle and an inconvenience. I have enough to do without taking care of messes I didn’t create.

It seems so unnecessary.

I wish the person responsible would pay the deductible.

I wish someone would say sorry to me.

It’s not fair.

I might be tempted to have a little pity party for myself, but the life I have doesn’t lend itself well to raging at the injustice of a parking lot hit and run:

• I have heard stories regularly for the last 2 months of student Occupational Therapists working at Siloam Mission…many homeless people are in that state because of injustice in their families, in “the system” that make it insurmountably difficult to emerge from that situation
  
• I recently was in a third world country watching skinny horses pull rickety carts past equally skinny goats and oxen. The people, while friendly, avoided talking about themselves and their lives…and when I would ask about them directly about their lives, their eye contact became poor, and they gave vague responses about difficult economic times.
  
• I work with people who tell me stories, or hint at stories of injustice, marginalization, minimization, inequities, intolerance, and abuse that scream pain. Some stories I’ve heard, some are silently witnessed as unspeakably awful.
  

 On their behalf, I feel anger and betrayal and frustration at how very very unfair life has been for them…and I haven’t experienced their story firsthand, as they have had to experience.

Injustice can sow seeds of bitterness and resentment.

It’s hard when life isn’t fair…and another person has created a situation of injustice. Bitterness can so easily take over…despite how really it so much hurts the person experiencing it.
I saw a brief movie clip the other day, in which Nicole Kidman, as a character in The Interpreter said:

Everyone who loses somebody wants revenge on someone, on God if they can't find anyone else. But in Africa, in Matobo, the Ku believe that the only way to end grief is to save a life. If someone is murdered, a year of mourning ends with a ritual that we call the Drowning Man Trial. There's an all-night party beside a river. At dawn, the killer is put in a boat. He's taken out on the water and he's dropped. He's bound so that he can't swim. The family of the dead then has to make a choice. They can let him drown or they can swim out and save him. The Ku believe that if the family lets the killer drown, they'll have justice but spend the rest of their lives in mourning. But if they save him, if they admit that life isn't always just... that very act can take away their sorrow.
...vengeance is a lazy form of grief

I find myself thinking about this the last few days…mulling over the situation, and pondering about injustice, and bitterness, and grief, and unfairness.

No easy answers, and counsellors certainly can’t take away what “is”. I am regular listener to painful stories of injustice. There isn’t a way to correct injustice in session, but there is a chance to witness it, give it a voice, and mull over how much power it will have over a person’s life…but no easy answers.

None.