How To Fail
We may come to a place where we are so averse to failure that we avoid it at all cost …which maybe sounds like the path of success, but what tends to happen along that path is not the success we want. What if, in order to succeed, rather than avoiding failure, what we need, is to become good at failure.
Do you know the story about the farmer who went out to plant seed in his field?
As he was scattering seed, some fell along the path; it was trampled on, and the birds ate it up. Some seed fell on rocky ground, and when it came up, the plants withered because they had no moisture. Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up with it and choked the plants. Still other seed fell on good soil. It came up and produced a hundred times more than what was planted.”
Do you see that most seed fails. But if you look outside, it certainly does not appear so. What if this story is saying, “most of what we try doesn’t work” ….but what does work, really works. Most of our attempts fail but if we are persistent and generous enough with our attempts, a few of those attempts will be abundantly successful.
Do you see that this is already true in your life. When you were little, you fell over and over again. Learning to walk was failure upon failure …until it was a success. Playtime was so much about repeating what didn’t work …until it did work. You and I grew so much when we offered generous allowance for failure.
We might come to believe, “Failure is embarrassing and shameful; failure means that we’re inferior; failure means we’ll never get it; failure means the door is closed; or maybe we can’t afford to fail?” But avoiding failure will be our most disappointing failure.
If we must succeed, it will be necessary to learn to fail generously.
We must not be above failure. We are born of failure.
Who Needs Therapy?
For too many years, I thought therapy was for other people. I could think my way out of problems.
The thinking solution only half works. And your partner will be the first to notice when the other half is missing. They did not just choose a thoughtful and practical partner. They chose one with whom an emotional bond could form. This part often retreats when couples get closer (ie. move in, get married, share a family…). It seems easier to manage a relationship without the messiness of the emotional half. But this retreating half never goes away. It is always a part of you. It is there but it is neglected. It hurts. This is who needs therapy.
Watch the video below entitle “How to Beat the Bully" and consider this: Sometimes we bully a part of ourselves.. One half dominates the other. We may decide that emotions are weak and cannot be trusted while thoughts are strong and reliable. The experience of therapy will help you to discover, your neglected half was a strong trustworthy partner all along.
Relax! This Will Hurt!
When my chiropractor tells me to relax, I brace myself for pain. It’s about to hurt, but I will be thankful after the adjustment when the pain I came in with is released.
She counts down, “relax in 3, 2 ,1…” but before “1” is fully formed into word, the adjustment has already happened. She tricked me again! She knows that when it hurts, it is almost impossible to relax.
It’s the same with emotional pain. When it hurts, we tense up. Just like on the chiropractor’s table, a protective reflex kicks in to keep it from hurting more. But this reflex is the very tension that holds on to the pain both when it is physical and when it is emotional.
It is difficult to relax when it hurts.
Psychotherapy gives us the ability to relax with emotional pain so that we can hear its complaint, adjust appropriately, and release the pain.
Why Your Partner Needs Therapy, But You Don't.
Transcript:
When a couple's relationship is going well, differences are affirmed and celebrated. one partner brings an excitement; the other brings a calm. One brings a closeness for intimate bonding; the other creates space for renewing desire. Partners move back and forth with each other in a dance, and find a way to make differences work for the relationship.
But under stress those same differences end up splitting and taking sides in each partner. Now, excitement feels like a neediness to the other and calm feels like a an indifference or a disregard. Closeness feels like a suffocating pressure, and and space feels like an abandonment.
This isn't a problem with one of the partners but a split involving both. One is anxious and outwardly upset; the other is anxious but inwardly overwhelmed. One is angry and shouting; the other is expressionless and quiet. One seems to overreact; the other seems to under react. One expresses their emotion trying to bring back a connection or a closeness; the other disconnects from emotion trying to bring back a calm or peacefulness.
Now, on the surface it appears that one partner is upset and out of control, and the other is calm and in control. But both partners are anxious. One experiences it outwardly and the other experiences it inwardly. And the the more one partner goes up in emotion, the more the second partner goes down in emotion. The more the first person partner gets angry and shouts and criticizes, the more the second person withdraws is quiet and shuts down. And the more the second partner shuts down the more it feels like a rejection to the first partner and the more upset they become. The more upset they become, the more overwhelming it is to the to the second partner, and the more they withdraw.
Each partner is reacting to the other, and things escalate. Now here's the thing: If only one partner shows up for therapy it tends to be the one who's angry and shouting, the one who seems to overreact, the one who expresses their emotion outwardly, the one who appears to be out of control, and anxious.
But the other partners inner anxiety may be causing just as much stress to the relationship. Because it's inward it's hard to see this difference.
May be why it appears that your partner needs therapy but you don't
All too often, it seems that it's just one partner that's responsible for stress in the relationship. But in dynamics like this, therapy serves the relationship best when both partners show up for the work.
Years ago i showed up to couples therapy thinking that i was mostly there to support my anxious partner. I was more surprised than she was to find out why there was so much stress in our relationship.
My therapist needs a therapist... and that's no lie!
Transcript:
It's getting to the end of February and the days are much brighter again. Every year at around this time i also welcome back a brightness to my emotion. I don't notice it so much on the other end of the season as I'm lulled into a somber winter sleep.
It's so gradual that on on most days I don't realize how difficult the winter has been, and how much i miss being more happy. Dr. Elvin Semrad taught the the sources of human suffering are the lies we tell ourselves, and he insisted: people never heal without knowing what they know and feeling what they feel.
Now he's not saying that that people suffer because they go about life with a deliberate dishonesty, but he's saying that hardship and trouble can lull us into a numbness. And to not feeling emotional pain that's still there, and into ignoring trouble we know has happened to us.
Now, numbing and ignoring, may be what got us through a very hard season, and that's good. Sometimes that's the only way through. But if we keep numbing, and if we keep ignoring what hurts, parts of ourselves are held back. And this is where the lie is.
A denial of our fullest self. We're not able to fully show up emotionally. We're not able to fully show up in our relationships. And we suffer. The trouble is it's hard to feel what we've adapted to not feeling, and to know what we've spent so long forgetting.
It's like a winter has gradually come over us and it's hard to remember. Well it's winter, what we were like in the summer. May not even feel like a winter suffering until in retrospect we've had the renewing experience of a summer again.
This emotional deception or or lie as Semrad insists is something I experience just as much as anyone else. And for me sitting down with a therapist has been so helpful in allowing me to fully reconnect with myself; to feel what I feel, and to know what I know.
To see what healing can come to hurt so that it can finally be left behind. Every season surprises me with a lie and a suffering that's waiting for retirement. And so i look forward to seeing my therapist this season and I look forward to fully reconnecting with myself.
And I hope you do, too.
You had me at “hell no”!
Transcript:
(Scene from Jerry Maguire)
Jerry:
“I love you. You complete me. And if I just had...”
Dorothy:
“Shut up. Just shut up.....You had me at hello. You had me at hello.”
I think this scene captures well our aspirations for romantic love. Someone to love us and complete us, someone to make us whole.
But is this picture of love reality?
The psychoanalyst Lacan challenges this notion of love offering. Love is giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it. At first this sounds horribly pessimistic and even cynical, but I think there's something for us romantics to aspire to here.
He's saying that we all show up to relationships with holes, with flaws, with pieces that are missing. He calls it a “lack”. We tend to not even know about these holes until someone else is allowed to get up close and personal.
Our unsuspecting lover.
They thought we were going to be the perfect partner and we were just as surprised as they were to find something repulsive.
What's possible now in this relationship when this flaw can't be hidden again, it can't be fixed, it can't be ignored, and the possibility of love suggested by Lacan, our partner, rather than despising us because of this flaw, might stick around and stay with us in our disappointment. They might comfort us in our distress over this newfound flaw and we might also comfort them in their distress. In an extraordinary irony our flaw becomes the very sight of endearment. The very sight of secure love, and over time comforting love gives way to a secure bond.
Love is giving what you don't have to someone who doesn't want it.
Your partner will eventually bring you face to face with what's missing and it will be upsetting for both of you. They won't complete you and you won't complete them, but instead you might bring each other a deeply securing comfort.
It's not a perfect relationship, but it might be much better than that.
Two Demands that Ruin Relationships
“It’s calm under the waves in the blue of my oblivion”
THE NEED FOR “CLOSE” CAN SOUND LIKE:
“Don’t you walk away from me!”
“I feel alone in this relationship.”
“All he/she does is shutdown.”
“It feels like I don’t even matter to him/her anymore.”
THEE NEED FOR “CALM” CAN SOUND LIKE:
“Will you just calm down!”
“I just don’t know what to do when he/she is so angry.”
“All he/she does is criticize me.”
“No matter what I do, I never get it right for him/her.”
Maybe we’re just not compatible.
There’s another possibility …what if my demand is fuelling my partners anger and aversion? And what if instead of asserting my demand, I understood and waited on my partner’s vulnerable need? What if instead of explaining and defending my justified response, it was safe simply to hurt? And what if, at my most vulnerable, I knew that I was safe and at home?
VULNERABILITY CAN SOUND LIKE:
“When I shut down,
it must seem like I don’t care about you
and that you don’t matter.
You must feel very alone when I walk away.
It must feel like I’m rejecting you.
That must really hurt.
Tell me more.
I really do care”.
“When I’m upset,
it must seem like I am always making it your fault.
You must feel beat up by my criticism.
It must be overwhelming for you
when nothing you do or say will calm me down.
You must feel like an idiot around me.
That must be really exhausting.
Take your time.
I miss you.”
There emerges a new possibility in the ease of demands and in the persistence of safety and vulnerability. Here the goal is not the dismissal of pain but the it’s welcome …and comfort. And in a relationship where comfort is the priority, calm and close are seldom far behind.
“Shame on You!”
Why must you wear the shame?
What do I hope to accomplish with the shame on you?
Why must anyone wear the shame?
Where did the shame come from in the first place?
Who is wearing it now?
“Shame is a soul eating emotion.”
When I declare “shame on you”, I am trying to escape “shame on me”. Shame is a proverbial hot potato of intolerable soul eating emotion so unbearable that it is unwittingly passed on to anyone within immediate range.
In my reassignment of this dreadful burden, I cannot send it away. Nor can I change the “undesirable” quality in you, mirroring undesirability in myself, and rousing a smoldering internal anguish. This banishment will only deny your rescuing comfort and bury this dangerous grievance more inaccessibly within myself. The projected punishment of “shame on you” represents a more critical occupation of “shame on me” crying out to you for desperate relief.
But what if instead of sending you away with my burden of shame on you, I confided to you the shame on me.
“Shame cannot survive being spoken. It cannot survive empathy”
Hell is Other People
“Hell is other people”
We assume that Sartre means that everyone else is awful. We should set our expectations low and keep our distance. But for Sartre, hell is established by none other than our very self, captive to and captivated by the objectifying impulse of others. Hell is other people insomuch as we inhabit judgment.
And Sartre warns, there is “no exit”. We are subject to judgment.
We will try to escape. And yet, in our determination to rid ourselves of the problematic other, we only find ourselves an accomplice to the very hell we contest.
“I can’t live with or without you”
Will this hell be our end? Or might this fiery domain of judgement bare forth new potentials. Mercy? Forgiveness? Understanding? … those prospects which conceive meaning and worth in the very places of suffering, and which finally bring us into contact with a most dreadful but nonetheless beloved “other” …our inmost self.
Hell is other people … but it is also salvation … and you are worth the journey.
“If you’re going through hell, keep going.”
You Complete Me
“You complete me.”
We have this desire …to be complete. And what a wonder it might be to find this in another. We romance our partners with the promise of wholeness.
Why then does there linger an emptiness? My partner lacks the resource to fill my need. What now?
Now …love. You gave yourself to fill their lack.
Now give your partner your emptiness, your insufficiency, your imperfection …your lack.
Though it is refused, your gift is not denied. You are also held in their troublesome want. They did not complete you. They lacked the resource to fill your need …and their own. You have not found wholeness, but another through which you might have courage to confront your own lack.
In time, may you celebrate, “We are incomplete”.
“Love is giving something you don’t have to someone who doesn’t want it.”
Breathe
Hold your breath.
Wait.
Wait some more.
Give it another moment.
Do you feel the tension... in your lungs? Now in your chest? In your shoulders? Eventually in your arms, in your legs, in your head, and in your whole body. The pressure is building.
Wait.
What happened?
You gave in. You’re breathing. All at once…. gasping! You’re overcome by this physiological reflex… because you’re alive. Your breath is a vital sign.
And so are your tears. You might hold them back. You might refuse them for a moment, a season… persistently.
Your tears returned… inconveniently… uncontrollably….by surprise… in a burst of feeling... unwelcomed.
This is not a sign of breakdown. This is a vital sign.
“All I do know is as we age, the weight of our unsorted baggage becomes heavier. With each passing year, the price of our refusal to do that sorting rises higher and higher. Long ago, the defenses I built to withstand the stress of my childhood, to save what I had of myself, outlived their usefulness, and I’ve become an abuser of their once lifesaving powers.
I relied on them wrongly to isolate myself, seal my alienation, cut me off from life, control others, and contain my emotions to a damaging degree. Now the bill collector is knocking, and his payment will be in tears.”
How to Fail
“Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody wants to die ”
We want…
the success without the failure,
the joy without the sadness,
the security without the risk,
the patience without the frustration,
the intimacy without the antagonism,
the pleasure without the disappointment.
And there appears no shortage of expert advice to encourage us along a path to obtain all of these. But eventually, in this frenetic pursuit of success, we forget how to live…
with failure,
with sadness,
with risk,
with frustration,
with antagonism,
with disappointment.
We hope success will mean averting all of these, but our skillful escape distances us from the very matters of life which contract hope. A “successful” life costs more than we realize. The cost is indeed more than any earnest vitality can afford.
Sooner or later we hope there is more to life than “success”. Sooner or later, we return to the problematic and yet crucial growth edge of life with a newfound affinity for failure, sadness, risk, frustration, antagonism, and disappointment. We intuit a confidence that these will achieve for us a reward that far outweighs their trouble. In consenting to our personal trouble, our hope renews. We’re ready to be complete …even when it means learning how to fail.
“Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.”