Why Therapy

by Gretta Keene from her forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Being Human,  with illustrations by Bill Murray

People come to therapy because they are unhappy, because they are dissatisfied, because they are confused.  They find that their life is not what they thought it would be, or should be, or could be. They are disappointed and uncomfortable--maybe to the point of pain. It’s a brave thing to do, to try to find the reason for our unhappiness, because people are afraid to change.  In trying to change we might discover that there are no easy answers, there is no magic pill. What affects us, what males us happy or sad, hopeful or frustrated — is not external, but within ourselves. And changing ourselves is hard. 

We humans tend to ignore problems and make do by sticking to what we know and to what we think others want. We muscle through without admitting that our methods for navigating our voyage through life are not effective. We kick the boat or do something to distract us from the problem, rather than look for the true cause of our troubles. What we don’t realize is that there is a hole in our boat that needs to be found and fixed, and sometimes the boat is leaking so badly we are in danger of drowning. We all need a little help sometimes.

All humans have their own unique, inner landscapes that no one else can ever completely know. As we communicate in relationships, we turn a camera on our interior world and send snapshots to those we love, hoping they will understand our inner landscape. This effort results in a greater understanding of our own complex and ever-changing network of thoughts, emotions, and filters of perception. Actions become more conscious, not just habitual reactions. The impact of our past on our present is changed by that endeavor. 

My husband Bill is my best friend, fellow ardent kayaker, and partner in our psychotherapy practice. On our journey together we try to discover better ways to navigate life’s challenges and savor the joy. As therapists, we provide tools and a safe place to explore what our clients have experienced in past and present, their outer and inner adventures. The effort to understand is key.  

Together and separately, Bill and I have explored many ways of exploring human existence. Personality, gender, genetics and experience formed our basic strategies. Wise teachers and their methods have influenced our paths. Hard work on our own lives and relationships has shaped our ideas and honed our techniques. Each client adds to our knowledge and expands our compassion. 

The process of healing and changing is unique for each person. In our practice we act as guides, encouraging our clients to go towards what is unknown, painful or frightening – because that is also where joy and satisfaction are found. As we accompany them on their emotional expeditions, we add our observations and share useful life skills. The first step in any journey takes courage. To join courage with compassion creates the confidence for us to be curious, and this new awareness increases our ability to successfully paddle through life’s challenges. When we more effectively communicate our thoughts and feelings, and as we work to understand what others communicate, we strengthen our human connections. Through the process of psychotherapy new ways of being are practiced and internalized. People change.

ILLUSTRATION BY BILL MURRAY, PHD

Something Important

by Gretta Keene from her forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Being Human,  with illustrations by Bill Murray

The argument starts and the panic, anger or sudden urge to switch the dial becomes unbearable. Humans tend to respond with the hard-wired, prehistoric responses to fight, flee or freeze. Bill and I noticed that clients used the word “triggered” to refer to those moments where there is a shift to an emotional danger zone. We wanted a term that did not conjure an image of the person fighting, fleeing or freezing with a gun in hand. We understood that the emotional response we wanted to discuss was much more complicated and could take many forms. We chose the word “activation” to describe this reaction common to all humans. 

Activation represents the combination of thoughts, emotions and physical sensations of a heightened, reactive state. The part of our brain formed back when we were primitive critters crawling out of the swamp is activated and transmits an urgent message: “Attention and reaction is needed – NOW!” Physical sensations are a good clue that someone is activated. There can be a tightening of shoulder muscles, tightness in the chest, or a clenching of jaw or fists. Others feel a shift in the stomach — either nausea, churning or tightness. Heads hurt or eyes squint. Some people get jittery, jiggling legs or fingers. Some get hot and red in the face — or cold, like a block of ice. Some get loud, some get silent, some get belligerent, and some get seductive. All are activated. The activated person believes Something Important (and in some way dangerous or uncomfortable) has either happened or is about to happen. 

First there is the “action.” This can be something said or done or something significant not said or not done.  It can also be an event that is happening or an environment where something might happen. Then there is an interpretation of that action.  Interpretation is the true meat of the matter, the stuff that creates the story and fashions the memory. The interpretation of an action—the meaning—is what requires understanding. 

An activating interpretation often involves a judgment of ourselves and the other humans involved. We label the participants as bad or good, right or wrong, smart or stupid, aggressive or abandoning. The context and history of the action is important. The activated person experiences the activating event as “evidence” that “just goes to show” that the activated person is correct in his or her interpretation of what the action (or non-action) “means” about themselves, life, other people or one person in particular. Big, threatening, traumatic events or chronic judgments tend to produce what Bill and I call Sticky Beliefs (because they stick like super glue and seem all encompassing and “truer than true”). The words “always” and “never” are clues that a person is activated.

ILLUSTRATION BY BILL MURRAY

A Sticky Belief is an often unrecognized, persistent belief propelling and supporting the interpretation leading to activation. Placing a high value on mutual understanding leads us to utilize the conflicts—whether our own or those our clients describe-- to create greater awareness. We can be curious. “Oh-oh. Humans feeling upset! What is happening here?” We can pause and choose patience, curiosity and compassion. Or we can react with defensive interpretations that are sure to escalate the mounting conflagration. 

It takes effort to do something different from the habitual, defensive response. There is wisdom to the old adage: “It’s the thought that counts.” Activation is a call to understand the thought, the interpretation, the Something Important stimulating a response. Without a commitment to understanding our own inner workings and refusing to even consider what might be going on in the other person (other than what the “evidence” proves in the court of our minds), humans tend to reinforce defensive walls, call on bigger emotional Bodyguards, fuel self-righteous positions and collect more stories of self-pity and self-blame. 

With compassion and greater understanding of the interpretations, the personal movies of all involved, we can negotiate differences and institute more useful behaviors. 

In Our Own Movie

by Gretta Keene from her forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Being Human,  with illustrations by Bill Murray

Neuroscientists have discovered that how humans make sense of  “what happened” actually alters brain function. The story we believe and tell about an experience has more weight than the actual trauma. That is one reason why similar experiences will affect people differently. 

We react and remember according to how we interpret a situation. Our experiences with abandonment and attachment, security and fear, pleasure and trauma, love and anger contribute to how we decide—moment-by-moment—our course of action. Each individual has his or her own unique pre-history. Beliefs and behaviors useful to parents and ancestors in their particular times and circumstances are handed down through the generations. Yet their progeny may find those interpretations and reactions no longer useful. 

When we work with couples or individuals, one of the first things we establish is an acknowledgment that we are all, at all times, in different “movies.” Even at moments of extreme closeness – making love, kayaking down a beautiful river, or sharing a spiritual experience – we are each having our own unique set of thoughts, feelings, interpretations of the moment, and we are creating differing memories of “what happened.” The bittersweet truth is that no matter how hard humans try to communicate their inner reality--through words or art or touch or any other means--we can’t “walk a mile in their shoes.” It is hard enough to be aware of what makes us tick, let alone truly know what it is like to be someone else. We will never really know what it is like to be in someone else’s movie.

ILLUSTRATION BY BILL MURRAY, PHD

However, we can learn to understand our own inner movies as well as change the script. Curiosity about the filmmaking going on in our heads is an essential part of mindfulness-based therapy. The movie we replay of “what happened” at our third-grade backyard carnival birthday party is different from the movies made by our mother, father, little sister and each of the guests. But we tend to assume we were all in the same movie. 

Meditation is a practice we use to strengthen our muscles of awareness. When we communicate what we know about our movie without demanding that ours is the only possible script, we invite dialogue and connection. We tell clients (and remind ourselves) that it is useful to communicate the details of our current movie way more than we think should be necessary. To ourselves, our movies seem so vivid and real, and we are amazed to find that other people’s movies of the same event can be so confoundedly different!

Bill and I act as detectives or anthropologists — not assuming knowledge, but gathering clues and data. We encourage our clients to do the same. We follow the threads of present beliefs and behaviors back to influential family legends and personalities as well as unprocessed traumas. We look for connections between present difficulties and old, out-of-date, distorted, unhelpful maps and methods for navigating life. In session, we sometimes draw diagrams of family histories to identify internalized patterns of perception. A family that values conflict avoidance would likely create scripts where only the safely mundane is discussed. Uncomfortable feelings and certain events remain secret and unspoken because a new script would be required for any expanded conversations. 

Humans evolved not only through mutation and natural selection, but also through mind-to-mind and heart-to-heart connections with other humans. Body language and actions convey much that is vital for human-to-human bonds, but words are our main medium. We have to work hard to communicate, and others have to work hard to understand the communication. When we learn to consider other possible meanings for certain events or patterns in relationships, we are able to change the entrenched beliefs about our life, other people and ourselves. This change impacts how we perceive and react to future events. New insights into the past give us greater insights into the present and offer alternative, more useful responses to common activating situations. When we change the movie of the past, we change the movie of the future.

Double Rainbow

by Gretta Keene from her forthcoming book, A Practical Guide to Being Human,  with illustrations by Bill Murray

That morning, land was far away and the water, deep. Wind was whipping up peaks as ominous dark swallowed pale sky. Thunder rumbled. Guiding my slim, spring-green kayak into the four-foot waves of Lake Champlain reminded me of days as a young teen diving into hurricane surf. Scary? Yes, but doable. I was brave. Bill was up ahead in his red kayak. His curly, white mane streamed out from under his floppy hat. We had spent the night camping on an island. Other campers had warned us of the approaching storm and told tales of the treacherous lake. But we had stayed, and now we had to get back. We had no choice. We couldn’t be late for my elder daughter’s engagement party. Better to face an actual storm rather than an emotional one.

The week before, I dubbed my gleaming, newly purchased kayak, “Greenie.” Humans turn objects into symbols by naming them and connecting them to an idea or an object that had symbolic weight in the past. “Greenie” was a subtle reference to “Bluebird,” my childhood bike, vehicle to freedom and adventure. Kayaking was a recent passion, a symbolic “yes!” to feeling strong and capable, choosing to seize life rather than retreat into the limitations of sickness and old age. Bill and I are not ancient humans but since the amount of years we can possibly live is less than the years that are behind us, we are not exactly “middle-aged” humans. We are experienced humans. That day, we were not experienced kayakers.

As a therapist I often use the metaphor of “heading into the waves” as a way to encourage my clients to go towards what is painful and consider other interpretations and responses rather than react with one of The Big Three, deeply embedded defenses: Fight, Flight or Freeze. I know how to touch the tender, terrifying places, how to dive into the high waves of hurt and trauma. I understand the healing that happens when those emotional waves are faced. Unfortunately, confronting high waves was the opposite of what I needed to do. Where we were headed on Lake Champlain was in the same direction the waves were headed, which meant I had to maneuver the seventy-pound piece of Kevlar so that the waves would first hit the side and then come from behind, surprising me with every lift. Every fiber in my being told me, “Not safe!”

“You have to turn!” Bill yelled.

“I can’t!” I wailed. In the grip of fear I chose “flight,” avoiding what I didn’t want to face, and “freeze,” beginning to numb and shut down. All the paddling techniques I had learned in lessons seemed vanished from my brain. I was in what Bill and I refer to as an “activated state.”

My mind became flooded with images of all the terrible things that would happen if I turned my boat. I imagined waves whacking the back of my kayak, dumping me into the churning, deep, cold water. The headlines would read, “Grandma Capsizes in Kayak and Drowns!” The subhead would reveal, “Husband watches, unable to save her.” I envisioned Bill calling the kids, family and friends to tell them the tragic news. How awful to cause such a mess. My daughters would never forgive me.

“It was her own fault!” others would cluck. “Gretta was never athletic. Just like her crippled mother. She should have stuck with crocheting.” Images of my failure in childhood sports played like a cheesy TV-movie montage. My identity was still attached to the gawky girl who couldn’t catch or hit the ball, who no one wanted on their team.  “How could I be so stupid as to think I could kayak in a big lake?”  My body further stiffened in response to my inner, damning judgment.

Fear had pushed the alarm and activated my unhelpful beliefs about my athletic inadequacy. My defenses, those loyal, hyper-vigilant Bodyguards, seemed to shout in my brain. “Stay with what you know!” they yelled. “Keep the waves in front! Then you’ll be in control, safe.” A sneakier Bodyguard whispered, “Be helpless. Then you’ll get saved. Someone else will take care of you.”

Bill, suddenly much farther away, called again: “Gretta! There is nowhere to land in that direction! You have to turn!”

Greenie and I lifted and slapped against the water, lifted and slapped, lifted and slapped. A gust of wind had yanked my hat off my head. The hat strings tugged at my throat. My face and hair were wet from the spray. I resisted the urge to cry. Where was the fast forward button that would instantly change the scene to safe and cozy, Bill and me cuddled in front of a toasty fire?

The only way to that future moment is from the present moment.

The only one who could get me there was me. I struggled to remember what I knew when I wasn’t brainwashed by judgment and fear. I didn’t need to let old Bodyguards run the show. I could choose a more effective reaction. I could choose to –

 “Breathe!”

I’d been holding my breath, grabbing quick shallow gulps of air. I took three slow, deep abdominal breaths and with a long exhale I imagined myself releasing the fear. I came back into my body, out of the stories of past and future. I would trust Greenie and myself, stroke-by-stroke, to make it home. Concentrating on the physical sensations of the paddle in my hands, thighs pressed against the sides and feet pushing on the pegs, I was fully in the present, in the now. My muscle memory returned and my stroke miraculously improved. Using my emotional and physical core, I shifted our direction, turning alongside the waves. Water sloshed over the spray skirt, but we stayed upright. Paddling with renewed determination, I pointed Greenie in the direction of the distant landing. The waves rose from behind. The urge to tense was strong, but focusing on my breath helped me relax into a different kind of control.

“When going with the waves,” my teacher had said, “find the rhythm and put the paddle into the crest of the wave as it emerges from beneath the kayak.” I turned off the scary movies in my head and got attuned to the lifting swells. As I regained access to al of my senses, I found the connection I needed between water, boat and body. My eyes no longer needed to identify each rising, threatening wave. Instead, I could use my sight to determine where to more correctly place my paddle and hold steady to the point on the horizon where Greenie and I would eventually land.

That evening, on the porch overlooking the lake, we saw a hue-drenched double rainbow. Bill took my hand as we stared at the magical arc of colors. “That was the most fun I ever had kayaking,” he said, turning towards me, excitement glinting in gray-green eyes. I hesitated, looking up at his dear, enthusiastic, expectant face.

It matters how we tell the story. What to say? Already the moment was part of my past. No longer in the present, the series of thoughts, feelings and actions were already coalescing into anecdote. Could I avoid judging what happened as “the worst” or “the greatest?” Could I have compassion for myself and how I reacted, not add more evidence to the belief that I was “helpless and incompetent”? What could I learn by being curious about my inner experience? In my mind, the tale ends with an image of the double rainbow, the ancient symbol of renewed hope after a storm. I kissed him and we gazed out towards the horizon.

Our adventure on that stormy lake taught me that I have a choice in how I meet life’s events—especially the ones that threaten to swamp my metaphorical boat. Looking back, I could recognize that attachments to old, shame-ridden identities, whether self-imposed or laid upon my self-image by the judgment of others, were interfering with what in this case was a life-saving moment. Whether life’s challenges are physical or emotional, we can unburden ourselves of toxic, unhelpful self-beliefs and use what is brave and strong within us. What part will we choose to play in the movie in our mind?  The hero, the villain or the victim?

Everybody's in Their Own Movie

We’d been camping for a week,

up through the Smoky Mountains, into Pennsylvania and New York. It was all about improvising and making do—finding a site, pitching the tent, gathering wood, finding water, cooking on a fire. I love that stuff!

Next we were headed into Canada. We’d cross the St. Lawrence and head east to the Maritimes, camping in places we’d never been before. But rain was in the forecast. Torrential rain. We broke camp as the drops began to fall, and we improvised: Gretta searched on her phone for a hotel in Montreal while I steered a course through the deluge and into a foreign land.

Can’t you just hear the soundtrack? Energetic, purposeful music with a steady pulse. A jarring chord as brake lights flash in the gloom ahead. A fanfare when the hotel room is booked! And the fade-out as we tumble into the hotel room, exhausted but victorious.

All that remains for hunter-gatherer me is to scout the location of our next meal, improvising with what’s at hand. In this case, the hotel’s compilation of recommended local restaurants. And here we go: five-star, nearby, Indian food. We both like Indian food a lot. Score!

I say, “We could get Indian food!”

Gretta looks at me like I’m insane and says, “Are you kidding?” (Cue dissonant arpeggios.)

Rewind. In the car, as Gretta looks at cute hotels in the romantic quarters of Montreal, she mentally changes out of her grubby camping clothes and into the dress she packed “just in case.”

She recalls the only other time she’d been to Montreal, the “poor man’s Paris.” She was a kid, over the moon with the prospect of going to a fancy French restaurant, then saddled with babysitting her younger brothers while her parents dined in style. Not this time!

You can imagine the soundtrack to Gretta’s movie. The windshield wipers move to an up-tempo melody full of romance and excitement—a fantasy on the road to fulfillment. The orchestra swells as a sign appears: Bienvenue à Montréal!

In the hotel room there’s still music in the air as Gretta searches her phone for just the right French restaurant, until Bill says, “We could get Indian food!”

Then the music stops and our movies collide. “Are you kidding?” seems like the only reasonable response.

We had a fight. We went to our familiar corners—the ones connected to our Sticky Beliefs about ourselves and each other—and we came out swinging.

“My suggestions are never considered!” I said.

“I’m never allowed to disagree!” she replied.

“You’re being sarcastic and critical!” I countered.

“Why are you being so sensitive?” she demanded. Back and forth it went until we remembered one of our tools—taking a Pause. Gretta took a shower, and I lay on the bed.

We’ve made a commitment to use a Pause not to rehearse the story of our Sticky Beliefs, the evidence that proves the other guilty of the crimes we’ve charged them with. Instead, we use the Pause to discover clues about why we got so upset.

One helpful approach, we’ve learned after much research, is to think in terms of, “What was my movie?” That metaphor captures so well the physical, emotional and psychological bubble in which we live our lives.

For not only do we cast ourselves as a main character, we assign roles to others as well. When they play their roles according to our script, things go smoothly. But when they stray, acting and speaking out of turn, we can become upset, disappointed, angry, scared, hurt.

After the Pause, we talked about our movies. Gretta could understand how the force of her reaction would feel shocking to me, given what I was imagining. And I could understand how my suggestion was jarringly out of sync with the picture in her mind. In this case the decision of where to eat felt clear.

We went to the French restaurant, where Gretta could finally enjoy what she had missed out on so long ago, and I could improvise to secure a vital need that would leave us both taken care of.

Next time you find yourself squaring off for that Same Old Fight, take a pause and ask yourself, What’s my movie?

7 Steps for Using a Pause to End a Fight

In these Facebook Live videos we walk you through seven practical steps that can transform a fight into a deeper connection and greater understanding of yourself and each other.

Download the accompanying eWorkbook here.

Have You Ever Contemplated Murder?

We love mysteries.

It’s partly why we love our work. We get to spend our days being detectives, investigating lives—our clients’ and our own.

A decade ago Bill and I worked together in a completely different capacity and wrote a 400-page murder mystery titled, Glass Falls. The action takes place in a small town that, we were shocked to learn, bore a striking resemblance to the town in the first two mystery novels of the Canadian author, Louise Penny.

Her third book was yet to be written and she was not the superstar then that she is today. We wrote to Louise and she answered—the same day! We struck up a correspondence, and she eventually read our first 50 pages and gave us notes. She was very warm and kindly encouraging.

Louise writes novels that explore what makes people do what they do, including murder. Our interests too! We work with people who (like us) acknowledge they may contemplate murder but resist the urge. In other words, humans.

Life happened and Glass Falls remains in an unfinished third draft. We decided to turn our focus to actions that were more closely related to our work as psychotherapists. Gretta wrote A Practical Guide to Being Human: Map and Navigate Your Life Journey, and Bill worked on composing music, drawing illustrations and making animations that could communicate our ideas. All are coming to fruition as we move more into the electronic ether-world of social media posts, webinars and online courses.  

---

People come to therapy for many reasons. Something needs to change. Conflict with other humans is a major source of unhappiness. Relationships are not what we want them to be. We get frustrated, disappointed, confused, sad, scared—and angry. We have done a lot of “research” on anger and its many manifestations and offer useful concepts and tools to turn destructive fights into constructive conflicts.

We all have had the intense sensation we call anger. Some people are wired to get that reaction more often and with more intensity than others; some have had frightening and frustrating experiences, igniting a trauma response that joins with the anger, increasing its force; for some it is the normal means of communication in a family or culture, where they learn anger as a habit; and some cultivate anger because it feels both pleasurable and powerful.

There is the initial, internal physical sensation, and there is the resulting behavior. Both get called anger. We use the term activation to refer to the initial sensation, and then separately describe the various behaviors emerging out of that sensation. Loud, verbal, physically expressed anger is often easier to identify than the silent seethe or the numbing shut-down of thoughts and feelings.

When the outward reactions to an internal experience of anger are immediate and unconscious, we say that a Bodyguard has stepped in—an internal protector, formed at an earlier stage of life, whose job it is to ensure our survival. Anger can also move us to conscious, considered, deliberate action—the motivation to make the world a better place, or to murder.

Those who react with words and actions that reflect the inner, violent sensations create both hurt and fear in others. They often have the belief that they are only being true to themselves and that there is no other alternative. How another person experiences his or her behavior is irrelevant. There is no responsibility for the behavior. 

Humans can learn to suppress the expression of their inner rage so they do less harm to others. But bottled-up anger can turn inward and do a different kind of damage. The silent seethe and other methods to shut down and numb out are short-term solutions that also have long-term effects.

We suggest viewing anger as an alarm, telling us that Something Important has happened or is happening and we need to investigate in order to determine how to act. Rather than sending in the Bodyguards with their SWAT team tactics—or a hit man—we recommend sending in the Detectives.

Vive Gamache!

You can buy Louise Penny's latest mystery, Glass Houses, here.
And if you're new to her Three Pines/Gamache series, start with Still Life, here.

Befriending Poor Pitiful Pearl

I hear the familiar whine—“Oh no! She’s here!”

Poor Pitiful Pearl is that pesky, tag-along girl who wanted to sit next to you at lunch and claimed to be your BFF, but you wanted to be with anyone but her. I have known her all my life.

My skin crawls with shame as she pushes into the conversation and gives her usual speech about how everything is hard, bad, and wrong.

Over the years she has perfected the role of the victim, knowing just what to say to elicit sympathy and when to add, as if by accident, the details of her life that provide a protective shield of pity. When given a challenging task, she claims the handicap advantage. As a result, she was allowed the extra assignment time, began the race a few steps ahead and was granted forgiveness for mistakes and tardiness.

Pity was her secret weapon, disguised by friendly smiles and ingratiating offers to be helpful. When faced with challenge or possible peril, Poor Pearl would spring into position, the subservient dog, cowering belly-up, pleading, “Don’t hurt me! I’m Poor Pitiful Pearl, weak and damaged and unable to fight.” The bullies would unclench their fists, spit in disgust and walk away.

Her pleas held the power of authenticity because they weren’t complete bulls**t. She grounded her sob stories in real experiences of traumatic events and chronic hardships. She had suffered. Life for her was challenging and hurtful, with deprivation, grief and pain.

Why do I feel such shame in her presence? Because—I am Poor Pitiful Pearl. She is one of my faithful internal bodyguards, a habitual and well-honed defense. She rushes in and defends me and I have relied on her. She’s helped me survive many difficult times, and now I understand why she exists.

She and other members of her faithful tribe have served my family for generations.

I first identified her decades ago, during the work of deep, life-changing therapy. I began to recognize the difference between validating and processing traumatic experiences and identifying as a victim.

One was empowering and the other self-defeating. One was useful. One was not.

I was raped. I am not a rape victim.

I also began to understand how my background and experiences impact how I navigate life. My family used certain beliefs and coping skills to process their difficulties. I was fed the anecdotes of my parents’ suffering as if they were beloved fairytales, memorized nursery rhymes, or familiar songs I should know all the words to.

“Baa baa, black sheep.”

We were those sheep who didn’t quite fit into any culture. Outsiders with stories befitting Dickens’ tales. I never had the benefit of an easy fit. If I couldn’t be “normal,” then I would use what I had.

Teachers often separated me from peers by identifying me as “very smart.” Poor Pearl was a feeble attempt to balance out the scale and achieve the desired level of normalcy and acceptance.

“Yes. I may have certain advantages, but see what I’ve had to overcome? Don’t hate me or judge me or ostracize me for not being like you! I am like you! I’ve suffered too!”

My abilities marked me as different, so I hid them under a cloak of rags. I know why Superman chose the stumbling, fumbling Clark Kent as the best disguise. It kept him safe from constant challenge, attack, and responsibility.

And responsibility was something I was avoiding. If I had ability, why wasn’t I more productive? Why wasn’t I a greater success? What was my excuse for not being fabulous?

Poor Pitiful Pearl was birthed as a protector, helping me to steer through the realm of judgment. I would abdicate control and let her guide my ship. She would keep me safe from the stinging blows.

As a therapist, I help clients identify the bodyguards that act in the ways that are outdated and no longer appropriate. Their usual response is to deny and hide, or hate and kill the defender that is now unneeded. Instead, I recommend befriending the stalwart bodyguards who are trying to keep us safe. We give them names, try to understand their origins and have dialogues about the nature of their duties. We give them compassion and thank them for all they have done, even if the results were opposite from what we wanted to achieve. They meant well. Hating them means we hate ourselves.

I gently send Pearl away. I am a bit ashamed when she emerges, but am able to accept her, give her a hug, and say, “I appreciate your efforts and desire to help me. But I’ve got this.”

I wish I could convince her to retire and move to Florida, but she remains my close and faithful defender.

I have several bodyguards, but Poor Pitiful Pearl was easy to identify and name. I began to use her as an example in sessions with clients to illustrate what is meant by internal bodyguards. I vaguely remembered that there was a doll with that name, and did some research and found she was created by author and cartoonist William Steig. She was first made into a doll in 1958. I showed the photos to my daughters who had heard me talk of Pearl.

One Christmas, my daughter was particularly excited for me to open my gift. There she was! Poor Pitiful Pearl with her ragged patched dress, tattered scarf covering her head and that soulful, sad smile (picture above). I hugged her close and gave her a kiss. “Hi, Pearl.” She now sits in my office keeping an eye on the proceedings.

Pearl is not as active as she used to be, yet she still emerges from time to time. When she does, I cringe at first, but then I give her a knowing smile and a hug. Her presence helps me realize I must be scared or insecure to have roused Pearl from her slumber.

“Shhhh,” I say. “It’s okay. Now I’m strong enough to handle this a different way.”

Finally, I have befriended and accepted her. And love her.

---

by Gretta Keene. From Elephant Journal. Published with permission.

I Love You, Mom. But Sometimes, I Hate You.

I love my mom. I hate my mom.

I am writing in the present tense—even though my mother died September 13, 2001, in the chaos of a terrified New York City. To die in the midst of the dramatic news story that changed our world was fitting for a news junkie like my mom.

Mothers inhabit the present tense of our consciousness no matter how long they have been gone from our earthly existence. We strive to achieve a simple narrative about who they were to us, to others and to themselves. It is easier to post the pretty picture with the affectionate memory rather than attempt the more complete and complex portrait that could be told in so many ways.

“You kids were the best thing I ever did!” she exclaimed on many occasions. And she meant it. She’d thank me for the opportunity to babysit my two daughters after recounting moment-by-moment their every amazing actions and quotable words.

She kept what she called “The Anecdote Book.” In it she wrote the notable stories of all our childhoods. It was her writer’s journal. For that was what she longed to be—a writer. She certainly was a reader.

I’d come home from school and she’d often still be in her nightgown, the ashtray overflowing with cigarette butts and the newspaper or the book she was reading on the couch beside her. Sometimes she was at her typewriter furiously clicking away at a searing letter she would mail to the New York Times. She held herself responsible for directing the moral compass and political trajectory of our nation.

On her deathbed, I offered to read to her some of the flood of unfolding news. She waved me away. “They are on their own from now on! I’m out of here.”

Determined, to “be gone,” she refused to be put on a respirator or have the dialysis and feeding tube needed to keep her alive.

“I’ve had enough,” she told the doctor, her crooked finger pointing like a pistol to her head. Her thumb clicked the imagined hammer of the gun. My daughter and I sat on either side of her hospital bed holding her bony, bruised, and leopard-spot freckled hands.

Holding my mother’s hand while sitting on a chair beside her hospital bed was something I had done many times for over a dozen years. It was the only time we ever held hands, the only moments where I could feel the flow of love through a physical connection.

She was an awkward, uncomfortable hugger. Her hands usually held a cigarette, coffee cup, or book. Her fingers, nicotine stained, were long and inclined to point, violently striking the air as loud, and accusing words spat from her mouth.

Other times her steely grip dug into my arm as she steadied her crippled legs, advancing alongside me with her limping gait. There were also the slaps that made my nose bleed and the time she tried to break my arm. Her hands could be dangerous. 

I understood why she did the things she did, acted with such ferocious rage. After she died, I found her suicide book with her big lettered scrawl on the cover: “FOR GRETTA’S EYES ONLY!!!!” It was her “other” journal, the journal where she wrote the scariest, angriest, creepy-crawler-under-the-rock thoughts. She knew I’d understand. She wanted me to understand.

For in so many ways, I was my mother’s best friend, her confidant, her protector, her rival, her extension, and the inheritor of her love of words. I was supposed to save her, be the mother she lost when she was 13. But I couldn’t, no matter how I tried. I never filled her bottomless pit of hungry longing. So I became a therapist to use with others the skills I’d honed since childhood. Perhaps with clients I’d have more success.

“You’re a quitter—just like the rest of them!” she cursed, wagging her finger, furious that I was going to temporarily abandon my focus on writing to return to school and begin my training. She wanted the vicarious pleasure of having at least one of us become “an author.” I wanted that too. But like her story, sometimes life has different ideas than what we imagine and dream.

For nearly 20 years I either saw her that day or spoke to her at night.

“Hey you,” she’d say as she answered the phone. My last act before sleep was that call. We’d talk and often laugh, a deep, can’t breathe, kind of laugh about the absurdity of life. In those exchanges of dark wit and wicked wisdom, we rode the full blast of our connection and our love.

Decades before, after a disastrous trip where her fear and powerlessness reached a fever pitch of blame and rage, I leapt out of her car determined never to see her ever again. She hobbled after me, chasing me across the desert landscape as an Arizona sunset began to unfurl. I stopped, weeping, as she caught up and we stood, silently watching the glorious sky with its greens, purples, reds, oranges and many blues.

She touched my arm. “You know,” she said. “Our love is like Niagara Falls. That strong. Can’t stop it.”

She was right.

I feel the ache of missing her. I also understand the relief I felt when she was gone and her suffering over. Both are true. She hated me. She loved me.

There is so much I want to tell her about my life after she died. If only I could pick up the phone and hear,
“Hey you.”
“I wrote a story about you,” I’d say.
“Read it to me.”

She would want to hear. She was like that. We could share our darkest, most painful revelations, even if those thoughts and feelings were about each other. “I love you, mom. But sometimes, I hate you.” 

“I know.”

She understood. She understands. Always present in my heart.

---

by Gretta Keene. From Elephant Journal. Published with permission.

Doing, Being and Nothingness

Recently, Bill and I set out on a wide, wild northern Adirondack lake devoid of vacation homes, water skis and other marks of civilization. We hoped the dense night fog would lift with morning sun’s arrival. With faith and a dash of foolhardiness, we paddled into a pearly white with no horizon. Beyond the bright green tip of my kayak there was only nothingness; no water, land or sky. Our doing consisted of checking the compass affixed to the bow and commenting on shadowy, possible landmarks as they emerged in the gray mist of dawn. Loons drifted into view then disappeared. Birds chirped in trees we could not see. We had an idea of where we wanted to go but were uncertain of when or if it would appear.

How difficult to trust in the inevitable arrival of an unseen goal. We prefer markers measuring how far we have gone and how much farther we need to go to reach any longed for achievement. And what about those amorphous, loosely defined ambitions? Stitched-together images become our dreams and set us out on journeys into the unknown. Visualized scenarios of a promised landscape yielding treasures or experience keep us paddling, keep us doing.

Most tasks, ambitious or mundane, are conceived as a means to an end and, no matter how elaborate or overblown, are tied to some basics of survival. We might not need the castle when a house would do, and expensive jewelry does not directly keep us safe from harm, yet we experience the pursuit of pleasure and power as basic human needs. What we believe we need directs our doing and what we do defines us, gives form and meaning to a life, provides material for first the resume and then the obituary.  

The “What do you want to be when you grow up?” of childhood mutates into the “And what do you do?” at every initial meeting of adults. We learn that identity is essential. Some identity we pursue and some attaches, unbidden, like barnacles covering our soul. We both rely on and rail against that carapace, that branding mask. In the struggle over definition, pride and shame vie for dominance.

We learn to perform for the reward of praise or to avoid the threat of disapproval. “Smile!” we are told when the camera appears, and we obey or bear the consequences. That perpetual and omnipresent outer camera collecting data about our behavior spews out verdicts of pride or shame according to the presiding culture of our environment.

“What have you been doing?” The adult asks the child.

“Nothing,” says the child, keeping the moment sacred, secret, out of judgment’s view, uncertain if the doing in question would spin the dial to Shame or Pride Identity according to adult criteria.

There was a time and place when summer days could unfold in idle, unobserved activity with no aim other than arriving for the evening meal. No one was planning, watching, evaluating and posting evidence of my activities. I meandered through the season doing nothing of note or significance. Even in my days at 4-H camp I was allowed to wander outside the realm of scheduled games and competitions. I hung out in the ceramics studio with the wizened witch who befriended me or sat by the stream, catching frogs and salamanders or building dams. I could do nothing and no one noticed or cared.

What a contrast to my life today. We maintain busy schedules laden with things we are doing, things we should be doing and things we try not to think about as we stay the course and aim towards our elaborate dreams. We cannot avoid the outer camera flash of others’ interpretations and assertions of our identity. Our work as psychotherapists and artists requires observable connection to other humans and evaluation is necessary to succeed.

Acknowledging that we cannot escape evaluation, I am more centered in myself if I can remember to visit that field that Rumi describes, beyond “right doing and wrong doing.” I can sometimes go there in meditation and meet the nothingness between focus on my breath or awareness of those chattering monkey thoughts. In the flow of intense concentration I leave behind the inner critic, with her camera and pad of notes, collecting evidence to judge my doing.

There have been crisis times in my life when the scaffolding of the then current identity was ripped away and I felt naked, exposed, in the free fall of uncertainty. In those moments when all is in flux, fluid and amorphous, we can briefly touch the warm glow of what remains when all seems lost. We realize that the inner camera, recording such things as satisfaction, curiosity, connection and contentment, is separate from the outer camera, recording for the inevitable show-and-tell that will solidify the interpretation of those experiences.

Lao Tzu wrote, “The way to do is to be.” Can we tolerate for a moment the nothingness of being and doing without evaluation of our accomplishments? The fog of our undefined reality will soon lift and reveal the landscape and the familiar markers of our particular world. It is useful to remember: Lost in fog, we still exist.