The People’s Therapist is of course strictly non-partisan. It is hardly my place to take sides in political matters, and I am loathe to betray a hint of bias in these pages.
However.
How could anyone NOT admire our magnificent President, Barack Obama, as he faced down those ignorant Republican hacks in Baltimore last week?
The most striking feature of the President’s performance, beyond his clarity of purpose, intellectual stamina and firm grasp of the issues, was his perfect calm under pressure. There’s a reason they call him “O-calma.”
The Republicans hurled their snide partisan attacks, distorting the facts in their own inimitable way.
Obama stood at the podium, holding his ground, even smiling, and reached out in friendship and cooperation. His face expressed perfect equanimity. When a brief lull came in the Republican attack machine, he explained why it wasn’t about politics – it was about action.
He was masterful. It reminded me of the Buddha.
I’m serious. Here’s why.
When Siddhartha Gautama, the historical Buddha, renounced wealth and privilege and left his father’s palace to wander as a monk, one of the first disciplines he sought in his path to enlightenment was meditation.
Following the meditation practices of his time, the Buddha embraced three refusals.
First, the refusal to move. He learned to sit perfectly still.
Second, the refusal to breathe. He mastered slowing his breaths until they were barely detectable.
Third, the refusal to think. He cleared his mind of all extraneous distraction so he could sit in perfect peace.
These refusals were designed to promote calm – to permit an inner space to exist, where he could be strong within himself.
Like a mighty tree – the wind blows, the storms howl, the seasons change. But you are stillness, firmly rooted in the earth.
A self-barrier, an invisible boundary, protects you from attack, granting you the space to contemplate all paths and decide on your direction ahead.
Young children have no self barrier – they spill their emotion in all directions and confuse other’s emotions with their own. But an adult can learn to contain his feelings, and to insulate himself from the attacks of others. He can find a place of serenity within.
I have no doubt that Obama felt anger at the Republicans’ hypocrisy. Perhaps he also felt fearful of the immense challenges ahead in his administration.
But, like the Buddha, his self-barrier remained intact. Within, he located a place of calm. The clamor and tumult outside only strengthened his resolve to walk the Middle Path – the path of moderation.
There is a useful lesson in the President’s grace and his dignity.
Let’s save the planet from environmental dangers.
Let’s treat immigrants with the respect and gratitude they deserve.
Let’s provide every American with decent healthcare.
Let’s give LGBT people equality, which is all they ask.
Let’s work to establish understanding, and peace among nations.
This isn’t politics – it is an expression of our best selves as humankind.
We can follow the path of the Buddha, and remain strong within ourselves. We can refuse to be drawn into fear or anger.
In so doing, we can make the world a better place.
That word, “co-dependent,” gets batted around a lot. I have patients who confidently alert me to the fact that one of their friend’s is “co-dependent” because she’s too needy and can’t leave her boyfriend alone. Or because he seems to need a relationship in order to feel good about himself. Or because she keeps breaking up and getting back together. Or because he argues a lot with his partner.
One of my patients would go to singles bars and end up going home with whoever walked up to her. She couldn’t say no – she felt obliged not to hurt his feelings. She ended up dating some of these guys for months, going through the motions for his sake, unable to face rejecting anyone. She eventually decided to avoid dating altogether, staying home by herself – anything to avoid getting sucked into co-dependence again.
The recent arrest of the actor, Charlie Sheen, on domestic violence charges will make for a very brief, very important post.
How does psychotherapy actually work?
In essence, the thinking you is forced to process material from the feeling you.
Patients often arrive at my office complaining of feeling “stuck.”
Dear and Brad and Angie and Madge:
The testing child is also distrustful. If his own birth parents disowned him, why should he trust you? So he tests you. If you claim to love him just as much as your birth children, then how will you react when he smashes a toy, or refuses to obey you? He wants to know if your love is real – if it is the truly unconditional love he needs so badly. He may attempt to drive you away in the process of testing your love. There could be some tough times ahead as you struggle to enforce boundaries in a way that communicates love and safety.
Rage is helpless anger.
A patient told me she couldn’t get over a guy she’d been seeing.
Adult love is very different from child love. It begins with loving yourself.
3. You respect him. The best relationships contain a note of mutual awe. You think your partner is pretty darned terrific – and he returns the compliment.
How can you choose a therapist who’s right for you?
conversation about what Reik was thinking and feeling.
5. He shouldn’t just be the President of Hair Club for Men – he should also be a client.
Freud was a bit of a kook, too. His office was filled with weird little statues and doo-dads from various primitive cultures. He loved that stuff.
In this sense, they’re not so terribly different from other musicians and artists, poets and comedians over the years who have intentionally challenged the “acceptable” in order to show us truths about ourselves – people like Jeff Koons, John Cage, Sam Kinison or Allen Ginsberg.
Just for the heck of it, I’ll close with a musical selection by one of my favorite non-conformists: Frank Zappa.
The other day a patient posed a simple, but troubling question: “What am I supposed to do with all this anger?”
There’s an interesting documentary, from 2006, called “Forgiving Dr. Mengele.” It’s about Eva Mozes Kor, a woman who, as a child, was tortured by Josef Mengele, a Nazi doctor at Auschwitz, during hideous experiments he performed on prisoners.
We don’t often own this truth. But pay attention when you hear that something bad happened to someone you don’t like. You’ll catch the corners of your mouth pulling up. You are smiling – a primitive simian indicator of pleasure. Unconscious sadism is a powerful force. Smashing things is fun. Violent movies are fun, too. Most of us are angry most of the time, about something. Anger co-exists with other emotions, and it doesn’t have to have a logical explanation – it just is, and it gratifies you.
Groucho Marx once said he would never join a club that would have him as a member.
This week a patient complained he wasn’t sleeping well. He said he was feeling like a hypochondriac – obsessively worrying about his health. He’s young, and perfectly well, but suddenly every little ache and pain was bubonic plague.
Consider what truly scares you. It isn’t just scary monsters. It’s scary monsters jumping out of nowhere and saying “boo!” What scares you most isn’t what you’re expecting – it’s what you aren’t expecting.
Pretend for a moment that you have been captured by terrorists. They shackle you up in their torture chamber, where you are confronted by their fiendish leader.
Two famous pilgrimages:
One of my patients came to me last week looking like he’d just been through a war.
The clip at the bottom of this post is a performance of an excerpt from the Art of the Fugue, by Johann Sebastian Bach.
Dr. King would have turned 81 this week – an excellent opportunity to discuss ageism, an insidious form of discrimination.
The People's Therapist 