Looking Underneath

There are many reasons why people seek counseling. One of the most common is that they are unhappy in their lives. They know something doesn’t feel right, and they long for a time, place, and feeling of something better. They can’t really describe this place but they know they want it.

These clients I’m describing are all successful. They’ve built something with their lives; careers, relationships, families. They are rooted in what they do and their responsibilities. They may be proud of their accomplishments too. Yet sometimes they say they feel like a fraud because of a hollow place inside.

I know, having changed careers to become a therapist, I’ve gone through my own challenges trying to find that better, more peaceful place that many of my clients seek. I know it’s hard to look underneath everything you have constructed and you know to be true and have lived for the last 20, 30, or 40 years.

But unhappiness is a terrific motivator. When people are unhappy in their lives they will do what they do best, look for a way out of the unhappiness. Often this search leads to counseling and that path leads to understanding the self.

What does the person want out of life? What makes the person happy? What would the person like to change? These are simple questions. Yet the answers are sometimes very hard to know, because most people are too busy with their lives to really look.

So look now at your life. Are you in a place that feels right? Are you content? Notice I’m not asking if you are happy. I know that this feeling is fleeting. It’s great to be happy. Finding what makes you happy is what I am interested in and that journey takes practice. It starts with you saying yes to you.

If you live in a place where you say to yourself “I should” before everything you do, I’ll bet you feel tired and overworked. If your way of being consists of saying “no” a lot it’s possible you experience anxiety and stress. In both these cases “self care” is probably on the back burner. Self care; I talk about this a lot. You may be saying to yourself “I don’t have time to be selfish.”

Sometimes we don’t know how to honor ourselves with self care. We may be experts at helping others, and we may be accustomed to putting our needs last. By the time we get around to taking care of ourselves we are exhausted, and we might even get mad.

I like to help people learn to attend to their needs, wants and desires. That doesn’t mean you have to ignore everything you already do in your life. It just means you make you a priority to you. You learn how to take care of yourself in a way that feels good to you. This is where you grow, like developing a new muscle. And you know that unhappiness I talked about earlier? When people find a way to take care of themselves they feel less unhappiness.

Feeling content, grounded and peaceful, I haven’t met a person yet who doesn’t long for it.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Join my mailing list at www.lindanusbaum.com

Saying What Needs to be Said

It happens to all of us.
We hold on to our thoughts and don’t say them because we are afraid of hurting the other person’s feelings. We
stuff them down inside and just stay silent. We may grouse about them later with someone else, but most of the time
we don’t ever say what we intended to the person who we wanted to say it to.

If this sounds like you, you are not alone. This is one of the most common themes I come across while helping people in counseling. Most people are aware they do this, and they are not sure how to change it because it’s something they have always done…put their feelings away and take care of the other person first.

This isn’t a bad way to be, unless you are the person who isn’t saying what needs to be said and you are not getting what you need out of life. Then there might be some resentment building up because others are not realizing you haven’t had your say. When you find yourself in this condition for a long time you may be getting angry at the people who don’t seem to understand you. Then we have some work to do, and you can do it in three steps.

The first step in changing this dynamic is to REALIZE that you are not saying things when you feel them. I know there’s a real fear of something or you would already be speaking your mind. We will get to that later. The first step is to just become aware that you hold in your thoughts and feelings inside yourself and stay silent.

Once you can understand that you do this often we can move on. But to really get this you need to be in a situation where you don’t speak your mind and can then actually say to someone, “Wow, I thought… and I didn’t say anything.”

Once you can actually utter what it is that you aren’t doing, then we can look at what’s holding you back from doing it. It’s likely there is a fear about something. I believe it’s something from long ago in your past. You might have grown up being told that you don’t share your thoughts and feelings; maybe you had people in your life that yelled at you if you spoke your mind, or it could be that you were not taught to speak up about your needs and wants. What ever the reason, you probably got good training and now you are an expert at not speaking what you feel and think.

As an adult you might now worry how other people will react to you if you speak out. The second step is to gain an understanding of what you believe will happen if you do speak your mind. Will people leave? Will people hit? Will people yell? Think about what you are worried about. Try and imagine the worst reaction someone would make and then consider if you can handle it. If the answer is yes we move on to step three.

Next time you feel and think something, instead of stuffing it you are going to take a risk, try a new behavior and just SAY IT! You will survive the person’s reaction because you have already considered it.

That’s how we get rid of fear and make changes.

No one said it would be easy. I know it’s hard because you haven’t done it before. I also know it’s worth it. You will feel heard, perhaps for the first time, and that’s a new feeling you can’t afford not to experience.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Join Linda’s mailing list at www.lindanusbaum.com

Are You Angry at Your Mate?

A lot of couples I work with are angry at their partner. Sometimes this anger has been building for a long time. When the couple finally gets into therapy they are so ready to explode and sometimes they just unleash on each other.

When this happens while I watch the fight I already know a couple of things. The first is that both are in a lot of pain. The second is that neither is getting their needs met and the louder and longer the argument, the greater the chance each person is feeling isolated in the relationship. When couples spend their time in a back and forth disagreeing state, that tells me they are spending less time in a state of togetherness.

The irony is that couples who live with this difficulty are desperate for closeness with each other, yet the arguing between them prevents exactly what they both want.

Feeling Small

Feeling small. It’s a condition everyone experiences now and then. It can occur out of nowhere. Maybe you are in a conversation and someone talks about something you don’t know anything about. You might feel small. Or what about times when someone forgets to include you in something you wanted to be a part of. You might feel small here too. Feeling small, it happens. It happens to all of us.

I think what we’re really feeling though is disconnected from others, disconnected from someone, something or an event. I think it’s a feeling we get when we are alone and we don’t want to be. I also think it’s very, very common. We all feel this “small” feeling at times.

So what do you do about it? The first thing to do is recognize that it happens and then discover what happens to you. Get familiar with the feelings inside yourself and start to put words around it. Maybe it feels like isolation, maybe it feels lonely, perhaps it is sadness, and whatever it is, begin to label it. What you will be doing is learning about yourself, and your inner world. These are essential steps to describing what is going on inside yourself.

So why is it important to understand and label what’s happening inside? First it helps us identify what’s happening with us, so we just don’t feel so terrible. Second, when we understand what’s going on inside us we can explain it to others.

So why would you want to describe feelings of loneliness and sadness to anyone, because all these feelings get evoked because you are alone. You feel disconnected from other people. If you talk about the feelings, no matter what they are, you will be connecting, which is really what the soul is missing.

I know it’s hard to let people know when you feel these feelings. These are the kinds of feelings most of us were taught to keep hidden from others. Many of us were taught to just show happy feelings and hide the hard ones; discomfort, anger, frustration, fear, worry, sadness, guilt, shame. Few people are taught that these feelings are O.K. to reveal. Few people feel comfortable saying things like, “I feel angry at you right now,” or “I am full of sadness,” and “I feel guilty about that.” These are not things that come naturally, but when we can reveal them to others we get rid of the “small” feeling.

When we know what’s happening inside us, when we can identify our feelings, we can then learn how to express them to others. Usually when we are at this stage we are not yelling, we are calmly explaining what is going on with us. When others hear what’s happening inside us almost every time they will want to come closer. A person’s natural instinct is to move toward another when they are describing something vulnerable. That is what makes us human, our ability to move toward and help others.

So when you experience those times where you just feel left out or “small”, try and remember to turn toward another. It will lead you toward the connectedness we all crave.

When It Feels Like It Will Never Work

Sometimes in a relationship a fight may bring out such deep feelings of being torn apart there might be an accompanying fear that the union is broken.

Sometimes the fights are so painful that it feels useless to even think about trying to work things out.

Isn’t this evidence that the relationship just doesn’t work? How much more proof do we need to know that we can not get along and we are making each other miserable.

Of course you would think this. Of course you would feel as if your relationship was on the rocks. Who wouldn’t? What crystal ball do you have to tell you things could be different?

As a couples counselor I am familiar with people believing that their partnership is in shambles. I have heard from all types of couples about the terrible things that sit between them, and I have been a witness to some pretty difficult times in a therapy session.

I know it feels terrible to be involved in something that just feels wrong. I know it weighs heavy on both people when they get mixed up in it.

I also know that every time there is big emotion, it’s a sign that people are becoming vulnerable and dropping deeper into what could become a rich connection with each other.

The emotion tells us of pain. Pain in a relationship is usually present when one or both people are desperate for something. They are seeking something from the other. It could be understanding, closeness, connection, tenderness, intimacy, love.

It’s usually something from deep inside the soul that desires this. And it’s probably been a deep longing for awhile. Unfortunately all attempts to fill the desires and longings have fallen flat. The partner hasn’t delivered. The partner isn’t available. He/she doesn’t understand, connect, have time for, need, want, and desire me.

This is the message the person receives when their attempts at connecting fall short. If we receive the message that our mate can’t fill our deepest longings, we might get pretty angry, and we might even get really mad at them.

So of course there will be big arguments. Of course there will be people raising their voices and saying things that they might not say in other circumstances. That’s what we as humans do when we have a lot of energy stored up inside us. We have to let it out, and we do, at our partners, especially when things are not going well.

So do fights mean the relationship is on the brink? No, it just means there is stuff to work on. It means there is an opportunity to understand what each person needs. It means there’s hope; hope that when we understand each other we can give our partner what they want. And that’s what everyone is looking for, to be understood by their mate, to be listened to when they need an ear, to be treated tender because the world is a lot better knowing we’re loved.

Don’t let a big fight tell you something else, that if we loved each other you wouldn’t do this to each other. This would be true in a fairy tale, not in real life. Fighting doesn’t mean you are wrong for each other. Fighting means you are desperate for understanding.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com

Why it’s So Hard to Let Go of Resentment

Even when couples want to improve their relationship, if resentment has built up between them it will stand in the way. Both know it’s there, no one knows what to do about it. So what can you do? One way is to seek counseling learn how to
get rid of it.

Unfortunately the resentment is not a thing to be destroyed; it has become a part of the person who is holding on to it. It’s with them when they wake in the morning and think of their mate. It’s there when they talk to their friends. It’s present in a conversation with their partner. It’s always there, like a thick fog that surrounds everything.

So when couples ask me what they can do to get rid of it I know the next thing I have to do is start explaining. Explaining how resentment forms and what it takes to soften and fade. Couples don’t want to hear me talk about this. What they really want is for me to just give them tools to help them get rid of it, like buying a shovel when you have to dig up something. Some couples implore me to give them the secret. But I know there isn’t one.

Most people who hold on to resentment believe that the other person has to do something to make the relationship better. I know this isn’t the magic bullet either. Releasing resentment in a relationship takes both people: the person who acted in a way that caused the hurt, and the person who is hurting. Both have to be involved and willing to work through the resentment.

The first phase is all about becoming aware of one’s part. It’s not about blaming the other. Each person must begin an internal dialogue with him or herself to understand what part of the action or event belongs to them. It there are two people each has a role. One may feel that the action was done to them and that may be true, but where was the silent partner? Was he or she unavailable and distant? Getting in touch with your part is crucial, and it’s the first step in your healing and the relationship’s health.

It can be a pivotal moment in the relationship when each person understands themselves as an individual with unique needs and desires, different then their partners. The more you notice yourself, and that you are different than your mate, the better equipped you will be to resolve difficult issues between the two of you. Understanding what you are feeling, and not confusing it with what he or she did to you will go a long way toward repair.

Once you know about your part and can identify your feelings you can ask your partner to hear you. Not fix or change your feelings, but just listen to what is going on inside you. If someone is holding back some pain from an incident that happened a year or more ago there is still a wound that needs attention. One way of attending to that pain is to ask the offender to listen to what it feels like to carry around the hurt.

If the goal of the couple is to move through and past the pain, each will have to be involved. The one who does the listening will have to find a way to just hear the partner’s words. The listener tries to understand the speaker. The listener offers a safe place for the speaker to unfold and be heard.

The listener does not try and change the speaker’s words or defend an action. The listener has the chance to understand why the speaker is holding on to the pain. The listener has the opportunity to feel what the partner has been feeling. Sometimes when couples reach this state it’s possible for true repair. Through empathy, feeling another’s pain, awareness can grow.

Perhaps the listener hears something new and wants to make amends. This also leads to healing.

Because the pain is usually so deep, the process for moving through and beyond resentment must also been deep. It’s hard to reveal one’s painful truth to another, but if a couple is ready to go this route, the benefits can be amazing.

Send your comments to linda@lindanusbaum.com

Learn more about Linda at www.lindanusbaum.com