Collective Heartbreak - Is Happy Real?

photo by author

Clients occasionally arrive equipped for the journey – with appropriate gear for the long trek – aware that they are not going to get to the pinnacle or goal in a day. However, some sit on the couch with doe-eyes feeling as though they have been traveling on the rocky trail forever without an end in sight. They’ve run out of supplies. They may hope that I have a technique, a pill – something that will just make the pain go away.

In moments like those I wish I were a magician. A few weeks ago, I threw down my notebook and exclaimed: “Being a counselor sucks sometimes!” (I think my client and I were both a little surprised, but she knew I did it because I felt for her. I wanted more than anything to diminish her pain.) The only consolation I can offer clients is that things usually get better if they want it, stick with it and work at it. Change can be scary even when it is positive.

Some days a client might cover 10 miles on the trail and the next day it may start snowing and she may only travel a mile before setting up camp, but inevitably, she will arrive at her destination... or a destination. So we can’t always see the ground we’ve covered or how we’ve changed, but a year out or two we look back and feel like a different person.

People are occasionally suspicious of happiness, assuming that the happy person is faking it or just born

You Be the Judge

"Sunset Orchid" by Alixandra Mullins

My favorite high school teacher, Mr. Tom Barton, once said: “You are prejudiced if you are prejudiced of prejudice.” I recall thinking: of course it’s not right to be prejudiced, and if we don’t have any sense of judgment we’d all be lost. Still, I trusted him, and so I never forgot much of what he taught me. Last week at a network meeting, as I judged a stranger for his judgment, I finally understood what the good Teach was talking about. As this man went on and on becoming more superior by the second I felt my ire rising. Had my filters been down I probably would have started hacking like my cat when he has a hairball caught in his throat or I may have poked myself in the eye repeatedly. But since neither were socially appropriate I did some self talk.

I felt behind what the other person was expressing. I took my perspective to the bigger picture. Fueling his judgment was the longing to connect, an illusion of separation from the other, and a deep sadness related to being misunderstood. These are universal feelings we all wrestle with at one time or another. As I stepped back my mind, my heart stepped forward and I relaxed. I was able to hear his frustration, and the judgment didn’t seem as important.

Even though the Buddha is often mistakenly credited with this quote, it actually appears in a

Embracing Conscience and Eschewing Nasty

Fritz Perls

   It’s surprising how many people do not distinguish an inner critic from
   their spirit voice or soul aspect. I remember asking a client to participate in
   Fritz Perls’ “empty chair exercise.” This is a Gestalt technique in which
   the client engages with an aspect of themselves, an emotion or another
   imagined person. The client takes turns to play both herself and the other
   aspect. In this case I asked my client to engage with her inner critic,
   playing the critic first. She sat up straight in the chair positioned across
   from the couch where she had been sitting and chided: “You are going
   nowhere! You’re a loser, and you’re wasting your time.” After the critic
   lambasted her for a while, I asked her to move back to the couch and
   respond to the nasty critic. I was floored when she said, “You’re right.”
   Before I could interject in her defense, she continued: “But I’m making a huge effort to makes strides and I’ve come a long way.” Engaging in this manner helps clients to hear just how hard it is to rise above an inner voice that is pulling the rug at every step. They begin to feel how they are walking around as their own worst enemies.

It’s pretty tough to hear the voice of the spirit or soul self with another part of the self firing condemning insults. How harshly we judge ourselves sometimes is in direct correlation to how egregiously we judge others. Referring to a friend of hers, a client said to me: “Come on. You have to admit anyone who treats a goat like a pet is ridiculous. It's a farm animal. It's meant to be milked, not pampered.” As I glanced at the goat hairs poking from my jacket hanging on the back of a chair, I purred: “Tell me about what that means to you.” Clients sometimes defend the inner critic, assuring me that without that voice they would get nothing done. They would become lazy, good for nothings. They would repeat their mistakes and never rise to their potential.

I’m not recommending giving up our consciences for Lent, becoming hussies and addicted to gambling.

Kissing The Bull

My client hesitated at the door before leaving. “So, this is feeling stuff is supposed to make me feel better?” she asked.

I put a hand on her shoulder and sighed. “Yes. It will.”

Image: CarleMuseum.org

The trials of meeting our inner monsters: I couldn’t bear to tell her that it would be like riding a rank bull and getting thrown a few times. Or staying on only to have your face meet the bull's head, termed "kissing the bull." I wanted to tell her it would hurt like Hell, but it would be worth it. Down the road her heart would expand, and she would feel more keenly connected to the whole human race. She would forgive more quickly, love more deeply and experience radiant joy. (Disclaimer: I don't know if this is true for bull riders.)

Counseling is an art with diverging theories and myriad techniques. (If only people knew!) And, good news, it works! (At least, most of the time). A lot of what goes on cannot be measured. The aspects that can be measured are occasionally not what make counseling effective, but numbers please the funders and universities.

A universal understanding in the field is that after developing a trusting bond, we ask a client to acknowledge and feel his/her feelings, which ultimately helps the client process them. By feeling and processing, emotions shift and release hold of us. But if someone is accustomed to thinking their way through life, they will be in for a rough ride initially. Often clients assume that in counseling we are going to spread out their life on a table, like puzzle pieces, hold our chins and analyze it. When they are asked to be vulnerable and stay with their heart, it is not easy. And, if I ask my clients to stay with their hearts, I have to do it too. I have to walk the ego’s fire, trusting that my spirit will overrule.

Part of the trouble is, in terms of feelings, we are a constipated culture. We’ll do almost anything to talk ourselves out of them. Here’s what I know about feelings: If you ignore them, they will show up at

Too close for comfort. Too sick to love.

Dedicated to Newton and Sandy Hook

A tragedy like that which occurred on Friday 12/14/12 in Connecticut where 20 children and 7 adults died rivets a nation in its tracks. No one is left untouched or unscathed. Our hearts are broken as we scan the children's photos. We are left to wonder: "Why?!" I grew up spending every other Christmas with Uncle Steve and Aunt Helen (and brood) in Sandy Hook, CT. Before contemplating what happened from a mostly Jungian perspective, I will share that the only postcard on my refrigerator on 9/11/2001 was a picture of the Towers with a blurred seagull in the foreground. I was moving to a new home and had removed everything else from the refrigerator door. My sister had been visiting New York and inside the Towers the week before the living nightmare. I was affected by Colorado incidents as well. When I was living in Florida and anticipating a move to Colorado, my favorite neighborhood was Ken Caryl. Had there been a single home for sale in there, our kids would have attended Columbine. And JonBenet Ramsey was my oldest daughter's age and when we arrived in Boulder, Bella made friends who had known the dear child. Finally Liz was at the midnight Batman premier in Boulder while only 45 minutes away in Aurora people were being murdered at the same event. Too close for comfort.


Ironically I begin my Christmas letter (that I wrote weeks ago) saying that this holiday I am sensing a festive spirit and connectedness – a reaching out – combined with an Angst, a feeling that at any minute everything could come crashing down. And, for some this week, it did. Here’s what I think: We all know that joy will not be found in a perfume, in a new car, a raise, a vacation, a ring, your partner or new shoes. But, on the other hand, how do we connect more deeply with everyone around us? Do we see the cashier at Safeway as sacred? Do we see the person who just cut us off as sacred? (Okay, okay, I use that one repeatedly, because that is a particular challenge for me having grown up in LA where driving is a constant race to win).

Reverend Carlton Pearson

It’s our exclusionary society that is destroying us (and I know I'm judging judgement so I will work on that). It’s why I chose not to join any formally organized college groups and why I left organized religion. Just by its very nature a group with specific rules requires there to be outsiders and insiders. There’s a feeling of “us” vs. “them.” It is tribal thinking and other than Reverend Carlton Pearson (featured this week on This American Life) most groups choose individuals exactly like themselves to be in the group. Reverend Pearson lost his congregation because he realized it's HUMANS who create Hell. He advocates a "doctrine of inclusion." On the same token, I don’t judge people who choose to be a part of a club or church, because they are deriving community and support and often coming together to do a lot of good. What I’m proposing is that there might be no rules to love and loving. If a religious individual comes to my door with the intent to convert me, their judgment is implied. If I can't join a group because I'm white (haha), there is judgment. If a religious person comes to my door asking what kind of support do I need and they are offering it without intent to convert, than that is the love and connection that will save.

How can we love our neighbors, the strangers with whom we engage, our family members more fully? I don’t know the answer, but I do know that these horrific acts are not only serious mental illness manifest (and the mentally ill do not receive enough funding since the Reagan administration) but also an expression of the darkest part of each of us. It is a reflection of the way we turn our head and look the other way; of the way we attach strings and withhold love. We exclude, we lie, we think it’s someone else’s problem. They are the sick ones. Not me. 

When I was mentally ill (at least I have the illusion I am well now ;), I was too absorbed in my inability to crawl out of a hole to look around me, to care what was going on, to help others. There are so many who need our help, but we must begin at home. Killers will always find weapons (although we could make them far less available!), but by healing the projection of our hidden darkness – by looking within and taking responsibility for any anger, any pettiness, any place we are too sick to love – we will be a part of a world that is changing for the better.