The Key to Changing the World, and Saving a Life

What most creates a human with a good heart, is one who has learned they matter. This is a child who is consistently seen, both figuratively and literally, with adequate eye contact, by an adult who mirrors him. This is a child who is consistently heard, by an attachment figure who listens and recognizes what the child feels, not dismissing it. These experiences are the embodiment of empathy, and the child internalizes the empathy, which makes him naturally empathize with others – knowing others matter as well. 

This is the basis for human rights and democracy: a society of humans who inherently know they matter, and demand to be treated as such. It all stems from the heart, which intuitively knows right from wrong, because it’s experienced both, and feels the difference. 

Practically, there is a parenting movement toward validating children’s feelings, which is beautiful and good. However, one thing that I find to be missing is children need to also learn their parents’ feelings matter. They need to learn that everyone has feelings and all feelings matter. Most children have never learned that their feelings matter – only their parents, or the reverse: only their feelings matter, not their parents’. 

For example, if my child is angry because I’m not giving the cookie they’ve come to expect, and she is throwing a tantrum, I will lead by validating her anger. I will say, “I don’t blame you for being angry with me. You want the cookie, and it feels unfair that I’m not giving it to you. But I am going to need you to use your words, and not scream or kick, b/c tantrums make mommy angry.” 

Today, when I get into a disagreement with my daughter, I have to say, it’s a beautiful, albeit painful, thing. We listen to each other, express our feelings, and validate each others’. We aren’t afraid to express our anger, and we are incredibly honest, and it changes how we view ourselves for the better. She helps me see blind spots in myself – not by shaming me in rage, but by her authenticity. And vice-versa. We grow from it. And our dynamic changes for the better. It’s always relieving, as we don’t hold back, but we don’t belittle or disparage; we speak what is true in a respectful, honest way. It’s not easy, and it can take some time to hear each other clearly and arrive at a mutual understanding, but our objective is to resolve the issue at hand, versus to “win” an argument, so we always do. Sometimes we ultimately don’t agree, but we can respect our differing points of view. In a particularly heated discussion, one of us might say, “I want to hear what you’re saying, but the tone I’m hearing is making it hard for me to listen.” 

As much as it hurts to hear her honest feedback, I’m grateful, b/c she’s often right about something I don’t see in myself. Her feedback isn’t given to hurt me, but to help me do better. I need to always remind myself of the Maya Angelou quote, “Do the best you can until you know better. Then when you know better, do better.” I believe when parents start to really listen to their children, it will usher in the age to come, known in Hebrew as Tikkun Olam. 

It’s taken me a lifetime, but I now also do this with my clients. I welcome them to push back if they disagree with me, and I’m able to listen, see where they’re coming from, and allow my viewpoint to be influenced and changed. It might be changed entirely, or maybe not, in which I will respond, “I hear what you’re saying, and I see why you believe that. Let me share with you what is still holding me back from fully agreeing with you, and tell me what you think.” I might ultimately conclude with, “I absolutely respect where you’re coming from, and I will support you as your therapist, and we can agree to disagree on this issue.” Sometimes I will say, “I respect your decision, and I won’t push you on this, but I would love to understand more, if you’re open to sharing.”

The ultimate goal for me isn’t to persuade, but to understand. Understanding is a key that unlocks the door leading forward. It allows us to learn what obstacles still remain, and what’s necessary to remove them. People are like deep caverns, and just when you think you’re at the bottom, if you shine the light around, you’ll find a portal to an even deeper one. Don’t ever think you’ve arrived, because there is no end. If understanding is key, genuine inquiry is how we enter, through never taking things at face value, and desiring to know more. In a nutshell: we learn to ask good questions. 

These are the skills of diplomacy that prevent wars. 

They also prevent suicide. Let me give you a personal example: 

When I was very depressed, about 10 years ago, one of the pillars keeping me afloat was a friend named Liz. She was the best friend I had in Oakland at that time, and was the only person who demonstrated support for some of the shaming experiences I’d gone through as an emerging therapist. There were things about Liz I decided to overlook in our friendship, such as how even though she was a psychologist, she would pathologize people for very normal human struggles. 

This ended up biting me in the ass, because when I needed Liz’s support the most, she pathologized me, and essentially ended our friendship. This happened at a very awkward time, as we were driving together to a weekend Christian conference out of town. When she announced at the conference she’d be leaving early and I needed to get another ride home, I knew the friendship was over, but refused to allow myself to feel angry at Liz for abandoning me at my lowest, so my level of depression immediately worsened. Looking back, I see that depression is a result of dissociated anger, but at the time, all I knew was that I wanted to die. 

At the conference, they invited people to come forward if they needed prayer, so I did. I told the woman who offered to pray for me the truth: that I wanted to die. Her eyes opened wide, and she told me she needed to hand me off to her supervisor, Linda, who she assured me, would know what to do. I followed the woman around the building for 10 minutes, until I was handed over to Linda. Linda proceeded to ask me what was going on, and I repeated to her what I’d told the first woman: I wanted to die. She then told me she needed to find Lorie, who definitely would know what to do in my case, and so I once again found myself walking around the building, handed off to another person. This proceeded to repeat 2 more times, until the last woman took me to a basement room, and simply prayed a lengthy, passionate prayer over me that I can not remember for the life of me. 

This entire experience lasted about 45 minutes, yet not one single person stopped to ask me WHY I was wanting to die, or how long I’d felt this way. No questions were asked at all. Yet if there’d been an inquiry, what they’d learn is that I’d only felt this way for one hour – exactly from the time Liz had ended the friendship. This not only would’ve enlightened them, but me as well, as my brain was far too befuddled by depression to see the obvious. But not one of those 5 women gave me that opportunity. 

It’d be easy to judge these women, but the truth is, most therapists I’ve gone to are no different. All they hear is “suicidal ideation” and they freak out – not understanding that humans are suicidal for very precise reasons, usually because they’re dissociating from anger at other humans. 

When a client tells me they’re depressed, suicidal, anxious, or having a somatic symptom, such as insomnia or GI issues, I always start with asking when it started. I will slow down and probe for what relational dynamics entailed for them around that time, and we will find the rationale, although sometimes it takes a lot of unpacking. Sooner or later we’ll get to the triggering event. 

The triggering event is always relational, and causes us to unconsciously re-experience something from our childhood. It usually involves a type of rejection, like my experience of Liz. Abandonment by a best friend is painful for anyone at any time, but it’s especially poignant when we have never processed our early childhood experience of abandonment by a parent, which is additionally activated. The level of shame this creates is exponential, and shame is a one-way ticket to mental illness, often causing us to act in ways where we betray ourselves. Shame creates an internal fissure within us, where we no longer trust ourselves, our feelings, or our intuition. Shame creates self-contempt, suicidal ideation, chaos and dysfunction in every area of our lives. 

It took me years to overcome my shame from Liz’s rejection, but two years ago, on a solitary hike in Lake Tahoe, I allowed my brain to reflect upon our entire relationship, including everything I knew of her. This gave me perspective I never had before, allowing me to see clearly how her habit of pathologizing people was a defense mechanism to displace her own insecurity to those around her. I was able to finally see how her rejection of me was a her-problem, not a me-problem, and the last bit of shame was dislodged from that time period. 

The purpose of therapy is to create a safe environment to piece together the truth about ourselves and our history. I liken it to chiropractic work, where things are brought into alignment: alignment with truth. As we review relationships and events in our lives, we gain a new perspective – by giving back shame that was never ours, and feeling our anger, which serves as an invisible forcefield, protecting us from the lies of toxic people. 

The best therapy entails three dimensions of integration. First, we integrate our feelings from the right hemisphere of the brain, with words and logic in the left hemisphere. Next, we integrate our brain, where our rational, adult self lives, with our body, where our inner child abides. Third, we integrate past with present, by making vital associations between events from our childhood with those that echo them in the present. What most propels integration is feeling our feelings, including bodily sensations, and trusting them to communicate truth. The result of integration is release of shame, a new perspective, and an increased ability to trust ourselves. 

This is why so many other types of therapies don’t work: they confine understanding only to the brain, not the body – or to the present, disregarding the past. This might give us intellectual insight, but our body continues to be haunted by shame and anger, manifesting in the form of ADD, OCD, anxiety, depression, or any variety of somatic illness. Humans are not only deep caverns, but complex creatures who do not respond to simple interventions. 

To heal, there is no bypassing the process of understanding. Humans need to be understood, which entails deep listening and reflection. The role of a good therapist is akin not to a modern medical doctor, but to a home-birth midwife. The midwife trusts a woman’s body to know how to birth a baby, and her role is to facilitate this by creating a safe environment, without unnecessary interventions, by following the lead of the mother. Healing, like birth, is the natural human trajectory, given the right conditions. No one can do it for us, but they can do it with us. Healing is a gift we give ourselves that restores our dignity, as we reclaim our life by bringing it into alignment with truth. 

Let’s do the best we can until we know better. Then when we know better, let’s do better.