It is remarkable how often I listen to clients worrying themselves sick over people who don’t even seem to like them.
The other day a woman complained she didn’t know how to handle a guy who’d treated her like something under his shoe. He didn’t call, didn’t pay attention to her life or any of the issues she was facing at work or with her family. He pretty much just talked, and cared, about himself.
But she couldn’t seem to get over him.
He called again, wanted to get together.
“Should I see him?” She asked me.
The answer was obvious. Every time she’d given in – and it had happened plenty – the same pattern played out. He was considerate and nice for a week or two, then went back to the same old routine of ignoring her needs and focusing entirely on himself.
I told her she needed greater wisdom than I could summon. She needed to listen to Barry Manilow.
You probably have some sort of opinion regarding the creative output of Barry Manilow – which is to say you probably either love his music or you hate it.
If you love it – really, really love it – then you’re a “fanilow,” a Barry Manilow super-fan.
A friend of mine visited Las Vegas last year with his two elderly aunts, and – mostly to humor them – went to see Barry Manilow play at one of the big resort hotels. He posted his response up on Facebook: “I’m a fanilow!”
He was wowed – like plenty of people who actually go to see this hard-working, talented performer who gives everything he’s got on stage.
Barry loves his fanilows. He thanks them, he signs their programs, he tells them again and again that he owes them everything, that they’re the reason he can keep on performing and doing what he loves. They love him – and he loves them right back.
On the other hand, I read an interview a few years back where the reporter got a bit snarky with Barry, hinting that his music was widely dismissed as camp, mere sugary trash. I don’t remember Barry’s precise words, but he said something like this: “I take my work very seriously, and if you aren’t going to treat it with respect, I’ll end this interview right now.”
He had a point, and he made it. Barry Manilow does what he loves, and there are many people who celebrate him for it. He doesn’t need the haters.
You can learn from Barry Manilow.
There are foods no rational human would knowingly ingest: the stuff listed on 
Sarah is the political equivalent of marshmallow fluff, chocolate fudge, mac & cheese and cookie dough in a deep fryer.
Millions of Americans without healthcare? Sarah would shrink government while lowering costs, cutting taxes and creating jobs. It’s THAT SIMPLE!!
Who cares!
Does washing down a bag of Doritos with a two liter bottle of Mountain Dew and a super-size bag of peanut butter M&M’s make sense? Does it have to make sense?
She brings you…you. Not like that weirdo Obama, who’s…well…umm…he looks “different” – you know what I mean?
Albert Einstein was puzzled by the mystery of his own fame. He was forever pondering with friends and associates why he – a physicist whose work was a mystery to most non-scientists – should have become the recipient of full-blown Hollywood-style celebrity. For whatever reason, Einstein chose not to discuss this issue with the father of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud, either when they met in person in 1927, or in their later correspondence. As one of Einstein’s biographers, Denis Brian, put it:
Why? Because that’s what most people assume they want, until they stop and think, and maybe come up with an answer that’s a little more meaningful.
Money, in psychotherapy terms, is a surrogate for security in love. A patient once told me if he won the lottery he would build a brick house that needed no maintenance and would stand for five hundred years, then he’d create a fund to guarantee that the taxes and every other possible expense would be paid for in perpetuity. He’d have a place, a safe place, forever, that no one could ever take away. He could finally feel safe and breathe free.
As a child, you can gauge your parents’ investment in you – their love – by whether they are paying attention. You learn to do everything you can to keep their eyes on you as much as possible – like a kid at the playground, calling to his mother, making sure she watches each and every trick he performs on the jungle gym. Attention is like food for a young child.
There’s evolutionary history behind our desire to be rich and famous. It traces back to the fact that humans, with their gigantic brains, take a long time to reach maturity. An orangutan reaches adolescence at about age four. He’s in contact with his mother’s skin almost without break for much of that time, then soon becomes independent. A human doesn’t reach adolescence until thirteen. He requires more than a decade of childcare – too many years to rely solely on the care of parents. The human child senses instinctively that his life might depend upon summoning care and attention from others.
The problem with chasing wealth and fame is that it’s a child’s mission, not an adult’s. At some point you must step out of childhood – that long, helpless period of your life – and move onto the independence of maturity. Instead of needing reassurance that you are loved, you can achieve independence by learning to love yourself. That big step into adulthood is an affirmation that you deserve love, and deserve to receive it from those you call friends or partners.
It’s interesting that one of the most famous photos of Albert Einstein features him sticking his tongue out. You’ve probably seen it a million times on postcards or posters on dorm room walls. It seems to speak volumes about Einstein’s naturalness and lack of pretension – his being in touch with his child. Perhaps that’s true. It was photos like that – and his crazy hairdo – that helped make Einstein an icon of approachable, lovable brilliance.
The original, un-cropped version of the photo gives a slightly different impression from the familiar cropped version. The original includes the people around Einstein, who are trying to hurry a sick man home through a crowd of reporters. Perhaps, when he stuck out his tongue, Einstein the adult was simply annoyed and exasperated at a mob harassing an aging, unwell physicist whose work none of them could even understand.
A therapist colleague recently agreed with me that the funniest things we’d ever heard were told to us by our clients. Summer break (and the week of the bar exam) seems like an appropriate time for a laugh. So…without further ado…here are some of my clients’ funniest utterances from the past few years:
“My friends have a party game – match the most unlikely Asian surname to a Western given name. My personal favorite is ‘Tyrone Ramachandran.'”
A lot of people thought Ludwig van Beethoven was an unpleasant person.
A young woman I worked with last week told me three thoughts that kept playing in her head like a tape:
I asked if she could formulate counter-voices to answer those tapes.
It begins with sitting down with yourself – just as you would with anyone else – and deciding you’re someone worth having as a friend.
Obviously, we can’t all become Lady Gaga. She’s a talented musician, dancer and performer, and most of us are not.
But you can learn to believe in yourself, and nurture and support the talents and aptitudes you have.
Towards the end of a session a while back, one of my patients, who was African-American, laughed out loud, like he was sharing a personal joke.
I take pride in showing off my bits of cultural competence. I enjoyed greeting a Chinese patient from Hong Kong the other day with “Please come in!” in Cantonese. Last month I shared a laugh with a Dominican patient when we realized we both have little half-Dominican nieces who call us “Tio.”
I wrote a column a few weeks back on Prince William and Kate Middleton.
That’s because the British royal family are treated like children. And you want to be treated like a child, too.
William and Kate exist in a similar world. They can’t go swimming without a paparazzo recording each stroke through a telephoto lens.
You never basked in one ten-thousandth the attention – or the adoration – to which William and Kate are subjected on a daily basis.
Your anger is expressed as an aggressive sense of entitlement. You are entitled to photos of them swimming. You are entitled to juicy bits of gossip about their personal lives. Fair’s fair – isn’t it?
No harm in fantasizing about being the royals – the most pampered children of all – so long as it doesn’t become an obsession that occupies your every waking moment. (For most of us that isn’t an issue – it’s just a hobby.)
Watching the most recent Oscars ceremony was a healthy reminder of the most fundamental instinct in human nature – the desire to please.
Perhaps it was her putting it so bluntly – telling the audience that they liked her – that made them flinch, and change their minds, and switch to making fun of her.
My patient sounded bewildered.
You’ve probably heard of “Pavlov’s dogs.”
My patient was developing an observing ego. He kept having “deja vu” moments. He’d been down this path before, and he knew it.
Sarah Palin’s nickname in high school was “Sarah Barracuda.”
Sarah represents insecurity in love. Somewhere along the way, early on, she decided there wasn’t any love out there for her. So she had no love to spare for anyone else.
The other day, I was listening to a patient explain to me why he was ugly and no one could possibly find him attractive.
Different eras have held widely varying ideas about what is beautiful. Even now, Americans are only beginning to open their eyes to the beauty of different ethnicities whose images were almost entirely absent from the popular media for centuries.
My patient went on to succeed in his career, against the odds. Despite his parents’ disinterest, he worked hard in school and rose to an impressive position in the business world. But he still felt ugly – nothing special. His physical appearance became a container for all the feelings his parents put in him about himself.
So were you ugly when you were 7?
She never said anything like that.
Children need a lot of attention. When they don’t get it, they’ll often act out – misbehave – in a desperate attempt to be paid attention to, even if the result is negative attention.
We can only hope a father figure – perhaps President Obama could fill in for Judge Zoll? – will arrive to give Brown the attention he needs. Maybe he should be forced to write a 1500-word essay on how his siblings would feel watching him destroy a chance at decent, affordable healthcare for millions of Americans.
Prince William, for his part, might choose to marry someone like Princess Diana, or he might not. His mother may well have been a lovely, giving person and the perfect model for a mate.
The couple sitting in my office were clearly in no mood for social niceties. It was strictly down to business with these two.
The news has been full of reports of Heidi Montag-Pratt and her claim to have undergone 10 separate plastic surgery procedures in one day. That includes rhinoplasty (a nose job), breast augmentation, lip collagen injections, chin reduction, and god only knows what else.
I can’t complain.
Studies have been done of resilient children – kids who have faced down tough times and survived intact. They share one key finding: These kids locate surrogates – replacements – for what is otherwise missing in their lives.
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.
The People's Therapist 