Magical Psychological Power #1: AND Helps You Get Unstuck

You are a complex human being with a complex psyche and you get to have more than one feeling at a time.  For instance, you can feel love AND frustration at the same time.  Like most people, you probably tend to use the word “but” instead.  Take the sentence “I am so frustrated, but I love him.”   Let’s say he makes a habit of embarrassing you in public and you’ve set a boundary around the behavior, but he continues the behavior.  You continue to get embarrassed, which leads to your frustration.  You have nowhere to go if you keep using the sentence “I am so frustrated, but I love him.”

The use of the word “but” psychologically negates the first half of the sentence.  What is implied is that yes, you are frustrated, but you are powerless to do anything because you love him.  Basically. you are telling yourself to get over your issue and that isn’t going to go well.   You won’t be solving your problem and the issue isn’t handled, which will lead to a build up of resentment in the relationship.

Now let’s insert AND instead. ” I am frustrated AND I love him.”  Yes!  Both parts are the sentence are true and exist simultaneously.  He’s doing something irritating and embarrassing AND you love this guy.  Notice how much more freeing this is.  Now you can continue to work on the boundary about the embarrassing you in public thing and love him too.  Hooray!  It doesn’t mean that it won’t be challenging (AND is good, but not that good), and now you can begin to solve your problem and move forward together instead of shutting yourself down.

Magical Psychological Power #2: AND is an Antidote to Complaining

I had a previous relationship with someone cruel, verbally abusive, manipulative  and conniving.  I used to complain about it with others while I was in it.  I would find others to say “Oh my God!” or “How horrible that he did that to you!!” Some of this was fine and I got support in a difficult time.  However, some of the complaining just prolonged the misery.  Now let’s add the magic word:  I had a previous relationship with someone cruel, verbally abusive, manipulative and conniving AND I kept staying in that relationship.  The reason AND works is not to make myself feel bad, but to actually look at MY part in the relationship – I continued to take the cruelty and verbal abuse.  He couldn’t continue the negative behaviors without my permission.  If I am just complaining, I am not moving in the direction of a solution, but continuing to stay in the problem.

AND gives you that same gift because it gives you a place to start.  You might be used to complaining about others for their bad behavior and that habit creates a lack of insight.  It reminds me of that saying about when you point a finger at someone else that there are three fingers pointing back at you.  I’m not saying that the other person is totally off the hook or what is happening is okay.  What I am saying is that it is your responsibility to look at how you might be contributing to the problem and how you allow bad behaviors to continue.

Magical Psychological Power #3: AND Helps You Know and Accept Yourself Fully

It does this by allowing you to own all aspects of yourself, even when they conflict with each other.  Remember, your psyche is vast and complex.  Taking ownership and accepting all of your feelings – possibly even celebrating them – can lead you to so much freedom and happiness.

Someone can be or feel generous AND selfish, kind AND mean, strong AND weak, helpless AND empowered, serious AND silly, shy AND outspoken, fearful AND determined,  satisfied AND unsatisfied – you get the idea.  The possbilities of paradox, dichotomies and contradictions are endless.  Owning them can help you have compassion for yourself because if you have a moment when you are not perfect or if you’re thoughtless or you’ve gotten it wrong, you can remember that you are so much more than that and all you have to do is reach for your new favorite word.

Actually that’s not true.  You can become less of who you are instead.  You can continue to diminish yourself.  You can continue in your mess, your misery, your drama, your addiction, and/or your unhealthy and damaging relationships. And the most dreadful part is – it will only get worse.  Like a terminal illness, it will progress and become more miserable and toxic if not treated.  You could just stay how you are and leave it to your children to do the work.  And, by the way, if you are not living fully, you are teaching your children not to live fully.  Remember, they do what you do, not what you say.  They will grow to live their own version of your and/or the other parent’s toxicity.  If you don’t break the cycle of dysfunction, it will be your ultimate legacy to your kids.  (That’s why you have to do the work because your parents did not do theirs).  This is not to make you feel guilty, it’s meant to give you that extra push to commit to do the work and to understand the choice that you are making by not doing the work.

Or you can get to work and become conscious.  Live the life you were meant to live.  Live your calling.  Live with actual love (you know the kind I mean – patient, kind, adoring, playful, fun, trusting etc.)  Live with integrity.  Experience joie de vivre – maybe for the very first time since you were an infant.  As they say, you can get bitter or you can get better.   It’s your choice.

You really can do this.  It is not some pie in the sky ideal.  If you do your personal growth work, you will become stronger, more aware, feel freer, feel whole and experience healthy relationships and true happiness.

Personal growth work can happen with or without counseling.  The benefit of counseling, however, is that you get to have the healing even faster and you you won’t have to do your work alone.  Plus, the counseling relationship in and of itself is a healing force in which you will experience what its like to be treated with kindness and respect without judgment with a genuine, authentic person.  And believe it or not, it can be fun.  And besides, how much luck are you having going it alone?  (Are you counting the unrealized promises of your self-help book collection?)

I know what I’m talking about because I have walked the road and work with amazing women who are walking the road.  Join us.

1.  We don’t know what it means to communicate effectively.

2.  We don’t know how.

3.  We don’t actually want to communicate fully.

1.  We don’t know what it means to communicate effectively.

In psychological research, we use the term “operationalize,” which means, what specifically are we doing that will cause a change?  In other words, what can be measured.  For example, let’s say a researcher has a theory that reading fitness magazines “tend to provoke depression and anxiety” (This is actually true, by the way, according to a recent study by Ann Wertz Garvin PhD – quote in “O” Magazine, October 2008).  You can’t really measure someone’s depression or anxiety, but you can measure answers on a depression assessment or measure someone’s heart rate.

So to communicate effectively, we need to know what we mean, specifically when we say we want to communicate.   You must break it down to a specific behavior change to operationalize “effective communication.”  In a nutshell, effective communication other that expressing oneself and having another person receive that expression as close to your intention as possible.  So you get to choose what you would like to express.  (I’ll explore the part about the other person to whom you are expressing in another section.)

Here are a few ways of operationalizing your communication that might be helpful to begin to communicate effectively:

• Only expressing what is true for me
• Only expressing what is really going on with me and how I’m feeling
• Decrease or stop yelling
• Decrease or stop sarcasm (an especially tough one to give up!!)
• Expressing using Non-Violent Communication (more on that later)
• Meaning what I say
• Telling those I care about how much I appreciate them
• Telling those I care about things that need to change and why
• Decrease the silent treatment
• Increase Responsibility
• Increase Optimism

Then you can add – once a day, 5 times a day, all day, every time or some other time frame that makes sense to you (i.e. no sarcasm for a whole day). You could also end each of the above with a specific person (i.e. no sarcasm to my children)

Now you have a plan.  Get specific.  Practice.  Any of the above suggestions are hallmarks of good communications skills.  Notice the word SKILLS.  I hope that is a relief to you because they are skills, you can certainly learn them and add them to your repertoire.

Try one of the above skills, name your time frame and/or your person and try it on for a week.  Keep a log of your progress.  You’ll be amazed at the improvements and healing in your relationships.

2.  We don’t know how.

For all of us, at some point we were told or we learned that it was not okay to truly express ourselves.  Notice how unselfconscious little children are.  Babies don’t think, you know, my mother is sleeping, so I should probably wait until she wakes up to communicate that I am hungry.   But then things change.  A dear friend of mine is a school counselor and she sees the difference between the unabashed kindergartners, first and second graders and the reserved 4th and 5th graders.  We learn to shut ourselves down, to hide what’s really going on from our parents, teachers, other children and relatives and then society at large.  We are taught what’s appropriate and what’s not in our own little universe.

Unfortunately, some of us get very wounded in the process and lose our voice out of necessity and sometimes in order to survive.  We even lose that voice to ourselves.  As children, we were victims and it was not our fault, but once we become adults it’s time to reclaim that voice of what’s true for us and it is our responsibility and blaming the past or others, I’ve found, is not helpful.

Notice, I use the word “lose.”  That is because your voice cannot be destroyed.  If you are still here, so is that inner voice.   You know what is true for you, what you really like, what you believe and what you want.  That voice is there.

So, once you begin to get in touch with it, how do you use it with others?  The best way when you are first starting is through what is called Non-Violent Communication which was developed by Marshall Rosenburg, PhD.  Below is a chart from his website, www.nonviolentcommunication.com that shows the 4 step process of beginning you use your voice in a way that is effective and non-threatening to others.  When expressing your truth, you use the left column and when you are listening to another, you can use the column on the right.  It takes work, however, because we aren’t used to speaking this way.  You cannot go wrong or fail when you use non-violent communication for expressing yourself.

3.  We don’t actually want to communicate fully.

The idea of communicating fully and expressing ourselves sounds great, but to really communicate fully takes a tremendous amount of courage.  Imagine if you would only speak the truth from this point forward.  No white lies, no hedging, and no lying by omission.  The thought for those new to personal growth work is terrifying.  I imagine your life would be radically different one year from now and I would put good money on the bet that your life would be much happier and you would feel much freer.

The truth is, we only want to communicate fully when it is in our best interest.  We still want to look good, still want to be liked, still want what we want when we want it and truth telling might put an end to that.  And then there is the fear of “if people really knew how I felt, then they would not like me” or being afraid that people will leave you if they knew the truth about you or the real you.  You may also fear that you actually know what you need to say or do, but are too afraid of the consequences and of the unknown.

Unfortunately, we may have been not communicating for so long that we may feel that we have lost the ability to know what our truth is or even what we really want.  If this is the case, you may find that a trained counselor can help you find your truth.   The thing is, we never lose ourselves.  Our truth is in there.   Eleanor Roosevelt said “You must do the thing you cannot do”.   If you want to be free and happy, communicating fully is a thing you must do.

We tend to think of forgiveness as a spiritual concept, but it is absolutely a psychological one as well.  Consider the following definition:  Forgiveness is “not condoning, excusing or forgetting what happened,” rather it is the decrease or elimination of “resentment or anger toward an offender,”  which is replaced  by “more positive feelings, thoughts, and behaviors” (Knutson, Enright and Garbers, 2008).  Isn’t that the point of psychotherapy and counseling, to be happier?

I’m not suggesting that this is easy work.  I actually believe this is an advanced adult skill.  It takes commitment, willingness, action, intention and energy.  It’s also important to note that if you have been abused or traumatized in any way and you are having an adverse reaction to the idea of forgiving, that means that it’s time for you to work on your healing first and foremost!

To be clear, the forgiveness I’m speaking of does NOT mean that:

• You allow someone who is abusive to continue that behavior.
• You have to continue to be in relationship with the offender.
• You think that what happened was okay with you (abuse is NEVER okay).
• You must tell the person that you have forgiven them.
• You forgive because that’s the “right thing to do.”
• You only forgive others, but not yourself.
• You have to forgive without help.
• You have to forgive before you’re ready.

The practice of forgiveness is actually an act of self-interest and not about another person.  It frees you because harboring resentments is like that saying about taking poison and expecting the other person to suffer.  Resentments steal your joy.  We can have joy or we can have resentments.  We can’t have both.  That is why practicing forgiveness of ourselves and others is crucial and how forgiveness relates to counseling.

Reference:  Journal of Counseling and Development, 2008:  Validating the Developmental Pathway of Forgiveness by Jeanette Knutson, Robert Enright, and Benjamin Garbers.