Bradyesque

I’m a firm believer in caring for yourself, so you can better care for others, not one at the expense of the other. So, it was an easy, yes, for me to decide. And though the traffic line was long and it took about 2hrs total, it only looked like a really long line of truly caring and patient people to me.

#TW #Depression Generally, there’s the hostile expression of depression that emerges within a lifetime of trauma. It looks like receiving a compliment but deeming it meaningless because it was given to comfort, so it isn’t genuine, it isn’t loving, and can’t ever be believed, but it’s what one deserves. It’s being angry at any expression of kindness because it won’t last, because this present feeling of hurt is the only emotion; validating it hurts more, and not validating i...t hurts even worse. It’s projecting the best onto others only to be cruel about oneself, but hating the existence of others even more. It’s that undifferentiated darkness where suicidal thoughts brush up against homicidal thoughts, and the question of which came first distracts from the reality of both being present in the dark. It’s that voiceless yell of loneliness and hating being touched simultaneously. And given that soo much of the world is in upheaval right now, with political volatility, economic uncertainty, a pandemic still taking lives, and the subsequent immobility of daily living, it makes sense that there’s an increase in hostility in many interactions and even in the softest of personalities. Those already hostile and depressed; simply more undifferentiated darkness. What worries me, then, as a clinician and citizen simultaneously, is the same; that when depression starts to lift with a little bit of light, and hope returns, it’s likely for the darkest thoughts and impulses to emerge, but frighteningly, they can now be acted upon as folks become unfrozen. And as far as unsolicited validation goes: I believe we are all bearing witness to this. #Psychoanalytic #Therapy #Counseling TL;DR: it’s getting worse because it’s getting better, which makes it truly scary

Though it is perhaps the most basic psychotherapeutic intervention too often portrayed in the media, and ridiculed for being unsophisticated, it is also perhaps the most unerring: How does that make you feel? It’s almost too exact, requiring a light touch, but it is necessary. And in truth, it has rarely elicited a direct answer in all my years on the other couch (and now on the other side of the screen). Far too many people are lost in another person’s feelings, wanting s...omeone else to want something, drowning in other’s expectations or idealized notions of how to act, or have cast themselves away as an afterthought in their own life that they aren’t present in their own narrative and cannot answer the question; all these cause problems along the way but isn’t the primary problem. The question then, as I see it, redirects the focus back to the problem at hand, which is that a person isn’t at the center of their own experience. This is all my roundabout way of defending the intervention, not because it deftly provides an answer or a quick remedy for emotional pain, but because it is frequently the right question to spend some more time with. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice #Psychoanalytic

Kindness isn’t only caring about another person and their feelings; it is about doing that while also honoring your own feelings, and being a person too. Being unkind, therefore, isn’t only about having no regard for another or treating them as less than, but unkindness is also about treating yourself as less-than when caring for someone else. As I see it, kindness is that gentle touch of saying, you matter, no more and no less, than I matter, and this moment truly matters for us both. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice #Relationships

It feels like an opportune time to reiterate, that it really is okay to not want, and also not accept, a counteroffer. I’ve seen too many people try to force themselves to be happy with a counteroffer and become crushed under the compounded weight of dozens, if not hundreds, if not thousands of obligatory counteroffers. Concurrently, too many people also operate in survival mode and feel that they can’t say no to any counteroffer because it’s all they might get; a sliver of s...omething close to what they want, which allegedly is better than nothing. It rarely is better. Accepting counteroffers time and again is altogether harder when the external world won’t allow soo much of what we would want, but it matters even more these days to have those wants, and express and legitimize them as such. So, whether it’s taking a stand and knowing that what you want is a romantic relationship and not a performative gesture of friendship, wanting a too loud family dinner at a crowded table and not some digital hang out, or wanting a warm hug of a trusted love one and getting a gif instead, its perfectly valid to not accept an option B, and want what you want. And it's also perfectly valid to feel and express the sorrow of not getting what you want. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice #Therapy

There’s a part of childhood development, and developmental psychology, that I truly love: the controlling ages of 4-6. It’s where a child can meet a milestone, can solve a problem or do a task one way, but then can’t exactly hold that milestone: a change of posture, a different order, standing in a different place, every or any slight change, and the deep and pure frustration comes up when things don’t only work one way. Where parents don’t see how something can be so difficu...lt for a child that could already do a thing, a child can’t see why it is somehow difficult now; both can learn patience, and both can trust each other in the process. Or both can leave patience behind and simply want to be in control and not have a problem, or that having any problem is the problem. This is that beautiful start of when, in parenting, a parent can begin to raise an adult, or forever try to control a child. #UnsolicitedAdvice #Psychology #Parenting

It does, but doesn’t, baffle me when a person believes they have expressed their wants, yet they did not. For some, an idea about a possibility is as far as they can go, or a defense of a feeling without naming the want, is how it is presented; the want itself is vaguely buried somewhere else. It baffles me that a person doesn’t recognize within themselves that they haven’t actually stated a want, but it doesn’t surprise me at all that a person would hope that their wants are met without them, both, being seen. And as I broken-record my people: if you can’t directly state it in 10 words or less, no more than two handfuls, then it can’t be held. Otherwise, the want is buried in asides, digressions, nuances, and anticipatory counter arguments. #UnsolicitedAdvice #Psychology

When a loved one expresses a feeling, it will most likely, if always, be messy. Polite expressions of hurt, erudite statements of frustration, graceful acknowledgements of anger... are rarely gonna happen. Feelings can be messy and arguing for a right way for a person to express their feelings to be understood, means that the person feeling something must put their feelings second to the one listening to those feelings. And in that moment, the other person isn't listening to ...another's feelings, but is instead controlling another's feelings. The opportunity to relate, then, is lost. It's small, but it goes such a long way simply listening to another's feelings and letting them be messy. I can probably write an endless stream of posts about all the ways people don't listen to each other... so more to come. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice #NotListening

Many times a third party, either a counselor, referee, or moderator, is needed in a conversation between two people, especially when one party is committed to only having their voice heard. That silencing voice that only speaks to dominate, cannot acknowledge the legitimacy or what is right in another, that takes every opportunity to interject and insult... cannot truly hear the person they are talking to and therefore cannot have a conversation in any sense of the word. The ...other person in that supposed conversation can’t stop the other from needling, from domineering, or from any other manipulative behavior that is happening, so it is up to the third party to acknowledge this reality and hopefully structure an opportunity for the silencing voice to listen to the other and also to listen to themselves. Painfully, even with a third party, some people are only committed to being right and are incapable of having a discussion, a lively debate, or any kind of conversation with any kind of self-awareness. It is therefore the responsibility of the third party to offer some solace to the unheard person, to the one only ever talked over. Because... someone else in the room was listening and that reality needs to be acknowledged. #UnsolicitedAdvice #Psychology

As I’ve repeated maybe a dozen times this week: feelings aren’t problems; problems are problems. Far too many people see feelings as the problem and subsequently want to solve or fix the feelings, rather than accurately identify what the problem is; this is the source of too many destructive decisions. Whether it’s fixing the feeling of burnout with alcohol, fixing the feeling of fear with buying a gun, fixing the feeling of anger by swallowing an argument, fixing the feeling of powerlessness by being oppositional and defiant solving feelings simply causes more problems. This is not to say that feelings are unimportant. They are. Feelings can direct us towards what may be a problem, but feelings aren’t the problem. #UnsolicitedAdvice #Psychology

For those frustrated with others for refusing to wear a mask, and refusing under the guise of, not going to be responsible for others, and not going to live in fear, there’s a staggering amount of denial at work, and denial can’t be argued out or reasoned with. They somehow can’t see all the ways that they are living in fear by not wearing a mask, and they can’t acknowledge how they are responsible for others (e.g. parenting as a whole is nothing but being responsible for a...nother) in many large and small ways; they simply can’t see themselves at a deeper relational level with others. They cannot see that they are capable of caring on someone else’s terms, while they simultaneously cannot see how destructive they can be in not caring for others. And they may never. So, for all your frustration, please know that if someone can only be caring on their own terms and can’t be caring on another’s terms, they aren’t caring. Period. Try to not be in denial about that. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice

#TW Throughout my practice, I often encounter an aversion from those who've experienced trauma identifying as a, survivor. From a clinically cold lens I disagree; from a subjective lens I agree for perhaps an uncommon interpretation. This is to say, that in my book, the opposite of identifying as a survivor isn’t someone who has not experienced trauma, but rather, it is identifying as someone that hasn’t survived trauma. That’s how I hear: I’m not a survivor. That that person from before didn’t survive, or perhaps didn’t want to survive, that trauma. So whether someone identifies as a survivor of trauma, or someone doesn’t identify as a trauma survivor, both feelings, either way, are valid and to be believed. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice

Some redirects that I’ve overused this week that may help you all to be a bit more relational... Don’t ask for what’s possible; ask for what you want. Don’t use a problem to end a relationship; use it as an opportunity to solve it together. Don’t only share feelings that you know are good; share the feelings that you feel. ... Don’t make another’s feelings matter more; allow your feelings and others’ feelings to matter. Don’t overfocus on not doing the wrong thing; err on what feels right for you. Don’t give the right answer; give your answer. Don’t assume people and relationships will always be there; feel the fragility of the moment and the implicit mortality of others, and savor it all a little more. #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice

#TW As a clinician, there’s a ton of cognitive interventions and tools that work wonderfully in certain contexts, but are disastrous in others. By disastrous I mean re-traumatizing. For example, trying to equip someone with the tool of embracing powerlessness as an effective coping mechanism for anxiety, is to deny the importance and necessity of feeling powerful; this is disastrous and especially painful for people that have experienced racial trauma where teaching this tool... simply deepens the message that they are supposed to be powerless. Attempting to help someone to give up the illusion of safety and certainty, is to deny the essential need for just that from people that barely survived physical, sexual, or racial trauma. To try and equip someone with generic listening tools can be more than insulting but also incredibly damaging to any group of people who’ve been historically marginalized, because it denies how much they’ve endured listening to others, and it deepens the feeling that their pain and trauma is only ever secondary to others. Which is my buildup to say: for Black lives to matter, it isn’t enough to acknowledge racial trauma, but for clinicians and non-clinicians alike to not re-traumatize in an attempt to help. #BlackLivesMatter #Psychology

#TW For people that have had great interactions with the police, interactions where the police were helpful in what might be the most traumatic day in their life, it can be altogether harder to have compassion with those that have been traumatized by police action or police inaction. It is really hard to step out of the oversimplified feeling of police as always safe, always helpful, always good, when that is one’s reality your reality, especially if they helped you survive ...trauma. With that, like any trigger response, critiques about what made someone feel the most safe and secure, provokes its own trauma response; it takes away the foundation of safety, and that safety can be felt. A defensiveness, a shutting down, a not listening to other’s complete opposite experience is expected. For some, the thought of the police reaches into the deepest parts of feeling of safety and security for oneself, and with that depth it makes it all the more difficult to empathize with another’s experience of trauma and the role of police as an agent of their trauma. That’s why I see conversations around police brutality breaking down; because of soo much trauma in all directions. I also can’t repeat this loud enough: the two sides are not equal, cannot be equal, and there is never equivalent trauma. Which is to say: those wanting the police to be more accountable and less brutal, are right. That desire for abolishment, for an end to the legacies and present experiences of trauma at the hands of police action and inaction, is right. Wanting future trauma to stop is right. Is justice. This doesn’t deny that at a time the police were helpful at a personal level for what may be the hardest day of your life. It can feel that way though. #BlackLivesMatter #Psychology #UnsolicitedAdvice

A dear friend wrote this amazing article for GoodHousekeeping and I can’t not share it widely. Beyond happy and proud of you, Benice! https://www.goodhousekeeping.com//black-female-profession/