Therapy – Lotus & Phoenix

Are We Doing It wrong?

June 11, 2024 Elizabeth

One of the most common issues that people bring to the healing/growing process is, “What am I doing wrong? How have others managed to make good/stable/happy lives, but my life is kind of a mess?” Often we have a sense that if we could do something better or differently, or if we could just be a better or different person, then our lives would not be so hard or messy.

It turns out that it isn’t you. Despite what it might seem like from casual conversation or social media, things are kind of a mess for most people. Your mess and stress and problems are not because you are doing something wrong or something is wrong with you, but it is because we live in a world that isn’t set up for peace, well-being, connection, joy, or physical and emotional health. A significant part of the process of healing, growing, or making progress toward what you are longing for is learning, at a deep level, nothing is wrong with you and you aren’t somehow uniquely bad at doing life.

How do we do this?

The first thing to know is that there are multiple paths to the sort of life you are longing for. There is no one right way to do this. You might try something, it won’t work, and need to readjust and explore another path. It is a process of learn-as-you-go.

The second thing to know is that there are no easy answers. If someone tells you, “If only you do [this thing], then things will get better,” be skeptical. The process of healing, growing, and figuring out life is complex and has a lot of layers. You cannot meditate, work out, work hard, or pray enough to get the life you are longing for.

Third, you can’t do this on your own. We are wired for connection to other people. We know that even in the womb and in our earliest weeks, months, and years of life, our brain and sense of self forms based on our relationship with our caregivers. (See Attachment in Psychotherapy for some great summaries of this research). Our relationships in childhood and adulthood shape who we are and how we feel. We need healthy, strong, trusting, and caring relationships in order to make progress toward healing. This can be with friends, family, members of a religious community, neighbors, as well as with your therapist or a support group. Finding these people can be hard, but it is possible over time.

Fourth, the journey toward feeling that something is not fundamentally wrong with you, or that you are not somehow uniquely bad at doing life, is an iterative process. That is, we make some progress, then things are hard again. We improve in one area, we are struggling more in an other. There is no end to the path of making this world and our lives closer to what we are longing for. Just because it is still hard and you’re not all better, doesn’t mean you’re doing it wrong. Healing and growth are not linear processes.

Finally, try being curious and gentle with your challenges. If being hard on yourself worked, we would be all better by now. Rather than telling yourself that you aren’t doing enough, or good enough, try to take a step back and be curious. Think of your most loving caregiver, teacher, or relative and imagine how they might respond to someone struggling, and see if you can imagine what it would be like to approach yourself with the same level of compassion, care, and support.

I know most people try hard
to do good and find out too late
they should have tried softer.
― Andrea Gibson, You Better Be Lightening

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If you found this article helpful, we encourage you to share it with others who might also benefit.

If you would like to dig into some of these issues deeper with Dr. Elizabeth Gish, author and lead psychotherapist for Lotus & Phoenix Psychotherapy, you can reach out via LotusPhoenixPsychotherapy@gmail.com. She provides in-person and remote therapy to clients across the United States and world except where prohibited by law.

Please note that this website is for informational purposes only. Nothing on this website is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have about a medical or mental health condition. The use of the information provided on this site is at your own risk.

Healing, Recovery, Trauma

Book Review – The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond Yourself

April 6, 2024June 11, 2024 Elizabeth

The book offers rather dramatic promises: that it “will transform your relationship with yourself and the world around you,” and “with perfect clarity,” it will open “the door to a life lived in the freedom of your innermost being.” Not only did this book fail to deliver on its overstated promises, as a psychotherapist, I found the teachings in the book to be potentially harmful.

The main refrain of the book is the author telling the reader that if you just see things differently, learn to let go, and recognize the reality of things, you’ll be much happier. He explicitly states that you can never have any problems again, ever, if you just try hard enough and do the right things (as outlined in this book). He suggests,

Don’t allow events to leave impressions inside of you. If you find yourself thinking about them later on, just let go.

According to the author, if you do this enough, you will reach a state of peace and flow, and “once you reach this state, you will never have to worry about anything ever again.”

It is true that there are probably a few helpful ideas within this book, if you decontextualize them from overall argument. Yes, it is true that it is possible to change how we understand things. Yes, it is possible to develop new patterns of thinking. Yes, it is possible to rearrange what is important to us. But this is not a matter of just deciding to do these things, and, for many, such shifts are incredibly difficult, and incremental over a lifetime.

Yet, rather than provide some possibilities of how we might make shifts in our thought patterns or priorities, the author repeatedly makes sweeping statements about dramatic changes that people should make, minimizing the effort, support, resources, and time that this takes most people.

Further, the author does not acknowledge any of the last several decades of research on the ways that childhood trauma and neglect profoundly shape our capacity for self-love, healthy relationships, or psychological well-being, or how people do or should handle loss or grief or trauma. The brain simply is not capable of preventing “events” in our life or history from “leaving lasting impressions inside” of us as the author suggests we should do. This is, in fact, a central part of what it means to be human: to have a memory, to experience life and be shaped by it.

Likewise, the author belies a complete misunderstanding of addiction and how it works neurologically, medically, and socially. He notes, “The way you stop smoking is to stop putting cigarettes in your mouth. All the other techniques are just ways that you think will help. But the bottom line is, all you have to do is stop putting cigarettes in your mouth. If you do this, it’s guaranteed that you will stop smoking.” This is not only simplistic and naive, but for those who struggle with addiction, it is harmful because it implies that addressing addiction is simple, clear, and a matter of will. It risks increasing the sense of shame and failure for those who struggle to recover from addition, which then makes recovery all the more challenging.

At its best, this book is the equivalent of your well-meaning uncle who tells you over Thanksgiving dinner, when he founds out that you are struggling with profound depression after husband left you, that if you would just cheer up and realize things are not as bad as they seem and appreciate the good in your life then you will feel better. Yet, there is a reason that your uncle does not publish books of his well-meaning advice. It is because it hurts when someone offers simple solutions to your complex problems and implies that you could recover if you were only willing to do the right things. This is, at once, insulting and counterproductive.

The answer this author presents to the parent whose child has died of cancer is that this is only a problem because they see it as a problem – that it is a problem that they have created in their mind.

This author tells the person who is suffering from PTSD after being sexually assaulted that they should “just let go.”

Why has this book sold so many copies? Because we desperately want to believe that the complex problems of existence have simple solutions. We want to believe that we can do it on our own: just don’t put a cigarette in your mouth. Just don’t think about the thing in your past that upsets you. Just decide to be happy. Singer himself has clearly been drawn in by the siren song of individual effort and simplistic explanations for the chaos of our world. But, if it were so simple, we would not need to pay Singer $14.95 for his repetitive promises of salvation via better thinking and individual effort.

My overall concerns with the book can be summed up in this lovely little piece of wisdom from p. 92: “It is actually possible to never have another problem for the rest of your life.” It demonstrates that this author’s take is, “If you just see things differently [as I am explaining them to you] things will be fine.”

Such a claim ultimately has profoundly concerning consequences for people who are struggling with depression, grief, loss, or trauma because the implication is that if you are still hurting or miserable, it is because YOU are not looking at things right or doing the right things. For people who are struggling with PTSD, severe mental illness, grief, loss, racism or sexism, terminal illness, war and displacement, hunger and poverty, the loss of a child, or an out of order death, just to name a few issues, this is not only helpful, but it doubles down on blaming those who are suffering. You could stop this if you would do the right things and try hard enough.

This is an irresponsible book. There are ways to suggest that people might learn to see things differently, that they might change thought patterns, habits, or perspectives in ways that are helpful or beneficial. There are rich spiritual and intellectual traditions that emphasize the importance of non-attachment and how we can shift our mindsets. But this book goes far beyond this, suggesting that you need not ever have another worry again and that this is just a matter of effort and mindset. Those who try this and inevitably fail are thus left to conclude that something is indeed wrong with them that they cannot do the clear and simple things outlined in this book that are so matter of fact and, according to the author, so readily available to everyone.

Let us continue to remind each other that the path to healing will not be simple. It need not be something you do alone. It will not be easy or clear or the same for everyone. Anyone who tells you different is selling something.

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If you found this article helpful, we encourage you to share it with others who might also benefit.

Addiction, Divorce, Infidelity, Marriage, Relationships

When You Can’t Get Them to Change

January 5, 2024April 26, 2024 Elizabeth

Often, when a couple comes to therapy, one partner says something like: “I love my partner, I want to stay with them, but they won’t change in the ways I need/want them to.” By the time couples are in therapy, this is not usually about about one or two small things. This is about bigger issues that are fundamental to a functioning relationship. In order to figure out how to address our hope or desire that our partner changes, there are a few questions we should ask about the situation.

1. Does your partner want to change? If the answer to this question is, “No,” none of the other questions are going to be very helpful. It is very hard to change even when we want to change. So, if you want your partner to change and they have repeatedly said that they do not want to change, particularly if they have said this over a long period of time, there is no amount of therapy or effort on your part that can fix this. If your partner does not want to change, the issue is really about deciding if you can or should live with the way things are. Even though it is very frustrating, and movies and fairytales might lead us to believe otherwise, people cannot sustainably change meaningful things about themselves if they do not want to.

2. Is your partner capable of change? Sometimes, we can be overly hopeful, imagining that with enough hard work and love, people can achieve anything. Maybe they occasionally make a little bit of progress, which gives us hope. But there are actually some things people cannot sustainably improve, even if they want to. Too often, we are taught that we should always believe in others no matter what, that true love and commitment should be unconditional, and we especially want to do this with people we love. But if you are struggling with an important issue between you and your partner, it is essential to consider if you are asking something beyond what your partner is capable of. For most of us, hoping for a miracle is not a good long-term strategy to make a relationship work. It is not fair – to us or to our partner – if we are hoping for a change that isn’t possible for them.

3. Is your partner committed to the work? When we want to change and we are capable of change, we still have to be committed to the work that that change will take. This is often time-consuming and stressful, and can be expensive if we need therapy, medical treatment, or to go into rehab. As you and your partner consider the changes you are hoping for, keep in mind that most meaningful change will take hard work over a long period of time. Just like we have to work hard if we want to become skilled at an instrument or a sport, we also have to work hard if we want to address our relationship and mental health issues.

4. Does your partner have the resources needed to change? Resources are not just financial, but also involve time and energy. When people are dealing with deep issues, for instance, those related to trauma, addiction, mental health challenges, infidelity, or abuse, they typically need skilled professional help in order to improve. This will take time and energy and there are often financial costs, even when we have health insurance. Your partner needs to have access to the time, financial resources, and energy needed to bring about sustainable change.

5. Are you committed to the work? Addressing relationship problems is never going to be quick or easy. Even if there is one partner that needs to do a lot of the changing, both partners are going to have to find a way to work together in empathetic, patient, and collaborative ways. You might be saying, “But it is mostly THEIR issue. They are the one that [fill in the blank – cheated, doesn’t listen, is addicted, is mean, is never home, is depressed, etc.].” This is an understandable feeling. But, practically, it just won’t work to say: “You messed it up. You fix it.” If you want to get your needs met by your partner and for them to change so that you can find a way to stay together, you’ll have to be part of the solution.

6. How long can you wait? Often, by the time there is a major problem in a relationship, it isn’t new. Additionally, as adults, whatever our issues are, we have been dealing with them for a long time. Even if someone wants to change, can change, has the resources to change, and is committed to the work, change is not usually fast. There are going to be starts and stops, mistakes, and difficult times. Healing is not a linear process. Sometimes, it might be a year or two before we have a good sense of how things are going and how likely it is for things to improve. One thing to consider as you seek change in your relationship is how long you are willing to wait for the change you seek. How much progress is enough and what are the important benchmarks along the way to know enough progress is being made fast enough?

All relationships are going to have challenges and problems. Some things we can live with, some things are just part of being human. But, healthy adult love is not unconditional or unlimited. Both partners need to be able to work together to address challenges, and very often one partner needs to address major issues in order for the relationship to be mutually healthy and fulfilling. This is possible! But, because of cultural and popular stories about “true love” and “relationship miracles,” too often we think that love, hope, and a little effort and patience are all we need to make a relationship work. Usually, it requires more than this.

If you want to dig deeper into how we can improve our romantic relationships and marriages, Terrence Real, Esther Perel, and John Gottman all have great books about relationships with helpful, realistic, and practical advice grounded in years of psychotherapeutic practice and rigorous studies. You can read more about these books on our resources page.

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If you found this article helpful, we encourage you to share it with others who might also benefit.

If you would like to dig into some of these issues deeper with Dr. Elizabeth Gish, author and lead psychotherapist for Lotus & Phoenix Psychotherapy, you can reach out via YouAreTheRising@gmail.com. She provides in-person and remote therapy to clients across the United States and world except where prohibited by law.