How to Perceive Others

SEEING is perceiving with the eyes. True seeing brackets preconceived notions and biases so things are seen as they really are. Like drawing shadows and contours instead of “eyes” “nose” and “mouth.”

HEARING is perceiving with the ears. True hearing listens to both the words and the prosody. It plumbs for quivers of hurt underneath the blaring of anger. 

KNOWING is perceiving with the mind. True knowing engages the heart and the mind. It wraps understanding with compassion and like-minded humanity. 

Once truth is revealed, BEARING is the greatest gift that can be given. It requires sitting in another person’s hurt and agony, feeling without becoming overwhelmed or moving to fix or solve.  

Ode to A Depressed Person

I know someone who always feels like ending her life. I told her that I admired the way she lived, which is a ridiculous thing to say. Why would anyone admire someone who is always at baseline suicidal? I tried to unpack what I meant by it and this is what came out:

You, who bears this unrelenting weight of depression,
wake every morning and ask, "Why not today
finally Rest?" 

I know for you
life drags on
despite your protestations,

but I believe that you
more than anyone else has
this remarkable opportunity
, or maybe undesired obligation,
to choose life
every
moment.

See, for you, life
is not a given, 
like the certainty of sunrise.

Every morning, you must choose,
stay or go? 
Every morning, you ask yourself, why stay?
How do I make
today
at least bearable
and possibly worthwhile? 

Then,
to see you be kind and generous and loving,
I am left concluding,
that love alone fulfills life's purpose. 

And, I am reminded that for me love is the source from
which all worthwhile things must spring
(I worry so much about how much hate drives our politics these days)

Then, I feel
reaffirmed, revitalized,
and grateful, for you, who bears this weight, 
reminding me to love and
act in all ways from love.

Testament to the courage of trauma work

Everyday I'm grateful for the chance to share my patients' journeys to overcoming so much and claiming their lives as their own, free from history and fear. This time the work has been put down on paper in the form of a memoir that documents one person's entire history of abuse and recovery. He was so afraid and ashamed to share it, yet it was one of the most powerful acts of healing he could have ever experienced, and it has touched the life of others in a way that he could never have imagined. Talk about turning tragedy into triumph. 

The last part of the book includes scenes from our sessions together, which is always hard, like listening to and disliking your voice when you hear it played back. But, I take a step back from this self-consciousness and stand in amazement and pride at what we accomplished in the journey of our work together. 

I feel it would be too self-promotional to tell everyone to go out and buy the book (like saying, "Look how great I am," which I'm clearly not), so suffice it to say that I think it could be an inspirational read for anyone who has lost hope or doesn't believe that things can ever get better.

I also have to qualify with a trigger warning: the first few chapters go into detail about childhood abuse and can be hard to get through. It was for me at least. 

Grandson of a Ghost: A Suicide's Secret Aftermath

By Scott Depalma

Buy on Amazon

Today's Touching Family Moment

Today a man,
who just months ago
was unsure
whether he wanted family therapy
(at least with me)
then only wanted to work on problem solving,
then only wanted to intellectualize,

finally cried
about missing his father,
grieved the imminent loss of his favorite uncle,
and shared how he suffers
a desperate longing
to connect
with his teen-age son
(who can't make sessions
because of other commitments).

And his wife and daughter
leaned into his pain
with tears in their eyes,
not talking,
not problem solving,
only conveying
love
and gratitude.

And I too honestly
felt moved
like listening to Adele
or singing Karaoke :-) 

And I reassured the father
that this new man
will draw his son
inexorably
like love
is wont to do.

Being a Good Listener, the Key to Being a Good Therapist

Wow, I just watched a video by The School of Life that captures 80% of what I have taken so long to learn in my journey to become what I feel is a good therapist: a good listener. I've never heard anyone else articulate the essential ingredients of good listening so concisely and so in line with the things I've had to learn on my own through hundreds of hours of practice. I'm embedding the video at the bottom.

Here is a summary of the key points: 

1. Encourage people to elaborate their point, instead of responding with your own story, because most people don't know quite what they are trying to say and need to talk it out to pinpoint it; and keep the speaker's history in mind as you listen to new information and connect it all, so they make new insights and feel deeply heard. 
2. Urge clarification about why someone feels a certain way to help them understand their own life themes and values and definitely don't move to reassurance and advice giving too quickly.
3. Don't moralize and judge; instead, respond with small sounds of sympathy and reassurance. Realize that we are all weak and vulnerable in some way. Warm to vulnerability, instead of rejecting it.
4. Separate disagreement with hostility. Invite or at least allow for disagreement in the relationship to show that people don't always have to agree to remain in relationship with each other. (This one isn't as often used as a therapist but sometimes it does happen). 

In my thinking, I've been summarizing good listening as Compassionate Curiosity, a nonjudgmental empathic desire to keep learning more and more about a person that can only happen through explicit intention, bracketing of judgement and willingness to identify the hidden virtues and values behind embarrassing and shameful emotions that block true exploration. So very similar! 

Wonderment Post Trauma II

So, my trauma-recovered patient continues "wondering" around NYC, snapping pictures of its beauty. This particular scene is quite metaphoric. That red emergency rescue ladder is a remnant of a winter just passed, where a fissured frozen pond portends drowning and death.  But, this day welcomes the first warm weekend of Spring. And for the first time in his life, he allows himself to soak in its life-renewing promise, holding hands with his expectant wife. His dog deeply wise in her playfulness frolicks ahead. ...We should drape the ladder with garlands of new Spring buds.