Tidbits of relationship wisdom from Instagram posts; Make use of triggering; What jury duty sparked for me about how welcoming and inviting our justice and treatment services are, or are not.

Welcome to the September edition.

In SAVVY, the importance of your personal work to allow you to be fully present with clients, friends and loved ones. It is through our relationships that we discover our wounds.

In SKILLS, commit to conflict resolution and embrace triggering as a mirror that reflects what needs healing and acceptance. It is a skill that is the path to empowerment.

In SOUL, how my summons to appear for jury duty sparked thoughts on how to make justice and treatment services more welcoming, customer-friendly and less intimidating.

Years ago a colleague accused me (correctly) of being an “intellectual scavenger,” meaning that when I see a relevant and useful quote or concept, I “consume” it and use it with little concern about where it came from. With social media so full of good and bad tidbits, there are even more quotes and concepts to pick over.

That’s what inspired this month’s Tips and Topics... quotes and concepts that popped up on my Instagram feed that I scavenged and now present to you. I have referenced them just as I received them so you can follow the original source.

Tip 1

Do the personal work on your childhood history and any woundings so you can be fully present for the people you serve. This also applies to personal relationships.

The wisdom in this graphic applies whether working as a counselor or therapist, or relating this to your personal relationships. One of the reasons therapists are advised to do the work on their own childhood history and personal woundings is that you can only be fully present in an objective and centered way with your clients if you are not triggered by anything that comes up in a session.

In personal relationships, the same concept applies. The depth of vulnerable intimate relating is dependent on how comfortable you are with yourself and how healed you are in your own woundings and trauma (if any). If there are emotional blocks or unresolved conflicts that are still too tender to face, those will limit how “deep” you can journey together with friends and loved ones.

If you are a therapist or counselor, do you notice that certain clients are easier to work with than others?

• Do you experience "transference" when a client "redirects their feelings about one person onto someone else"?

• Do you find you yourself caught up in the countertransference "when a clinician lets their own feelings shape the way they interact with or react to their clients in therapy"? 

In your personal relationships, do you find yourself running up against the same old conflicts?

• The names and faces may change yet you find yourself still people-pleasing or feeling controlled or being accused of being controlling?

• Do you end one relationship only to find yourself facing a familiar interpersonal dynamic with a brand-new person?

You could blame the clients or the other persons in your life. Or this may be an opportunity to meet and get to know yourself better, more deeply.

Tip 2

Through the ups and downs of relationships, embrace the opportunity for contrast and clarity on who you are, how you want to be and to heal any woundings you discover.

When conflicts and uncomfortable feelings arise in any relationship whether personal or professional, welcome those and reframe them as an opportunity to discover more about yourself and the other. You can’t heal what you don’t know needs healing.

You may question whether you have any wounds needing healing... no deep traumas and a pretty “normal” life. Gabor Maté’s book The Myth of Normal: Trauma, Illness, & Healing in a Toxic Culture (2022) is worth a read.

“Maté has come to recognize the prevailing understanding of ‘normal’ as false, neglecting the roles that trauma and stress, and the pressures of modern-day living, exert on our bodies and our minds at the expense of good health. For all our expertise and technological sophistication, Western medicine often fails to treat the whole person, ignoring how today’s culture stresses the body, burdens the immune system, and undermines emotional balance.”

SKILLS

Tip 1

Commit to conflict resolution in organizational conflict and personal relationships.

It is not unusual when couples are fighting that each withdraws into their own protective shell and feud in silence. While a timeout to take a break, re-group and calm down is necessary, an effective relationship is committed to conflict resolution.

This applies not just in a love relationship but also in conflicts with friends, colleagues, administration and all team members. Too few organizations and even fewer love relationships have a formal conflict resolution policy and procedure.

As early as 2004, I was writing about conflict resolution and in the February 2007 edition of Tips and Topics, I offered a Conflict Resolution Policy and Procedure.

I often wonder when I hear a couple say something like “In all our 40 years together, we have not had one fight or argument.” Either that is a huge exaggeration or someone is suppressing their own individuality in order to “keep the peace.

As the graphic says: “Fall in love with someone who comes back to talk to you after a fight... love is above pride.”

Tip 2

Use triggering as a welcome mirror to reflect on what within you needs healing and acceptance. This is the path to empowerment.

One of the greatest skills in any relationship is to resist the impulse to flee, ghost and right off the other person when triggered by something they said or did "to you."

It is so empowering when you can see triggering as a mirror to allow you to reflect on why you were triggered, what you can discover about yourself, and how to move a victim role into a one of self-esteem and self-efficacy.

I remember when I was a young resident in psychiatry learning how to do psychotherapy. I worked for a number of weeks with an attractive married woman who was suffering from depression. In one memorable session she told me she loved me. I rushed to my supervisor declaring that we had to change therapists given what she had told me.

My supervisor helped me see how I was probably the first person in years who had listened attentively to her, empathized with her worries and offered acceptance and positive regard. She may have experienced that as being in love with me, but more pertinently, I needed to examine what that expression of love triggered in me.

It was my need for love and reassurance that I was a good person, a good therapist and owning my feelings of attraction to her that I needed to reflect on. The mirror that she offered in my triggering meant that we didn’t need to change therapists. I needed to get a grip on my own needs for healing and acceptance so that I could effectively help her distinguish between “love” and her feelings for acceptance and self esteem.

SOUL

When I meet new people and they find out that I am a psychiatrist, there is the usual nervous laugh about how I must have been “psychoanalyzing” them as we talked. My quick reply is “I’m off duty, so no problem.” All this makes for some easy ice-breaker conversation at a party.

But I do empathize, because when I meet someone who I find out is a judge, I get a similar spooked feeling. Even though I have no arrest warrants out for me, it’s funny how certain positions of authority can spark a tinge of foreboding.

Well this week, I have been summoned for Jury Duty. Not only will I be before a judge and attorneys, I might even be on the jury. I know it is my citizen duty, but a pending three-week trial is not a welcome addition to my calendar. As the hundreds of my fellow citizens assembled in the Jury Services room, I was watching the staff orient us all to the policies and procedures of our court-ordered service.

The staff were professional, but you could tell that they had done this a hundred times and person-centered, warm, welcoming services were not their priority. It got me thinking about the team members in healthcare and behavioral health services.

Patients and clients often enter emergency rooms, admission and counseling offices in distress and feeling intimidated. Healthcare workers have faced crises and pain thousands of times and it is easy to become routine, rote and even bored with the admission procedures and paperwork.

• Can you feel what it is like to show up for admission to treatment that may have been court-ordered, feeling distressed and fearful about the whole process?

• What it it like to stand in front of a judge and everyone on the court team worried about incarceration and punishment?

• How does it feel when white-coated physicians and nurses stride into your cubicle?

I’m just showing up for jury duty and the aura of court rooms, judges and law enforcement feels foreboding. Patients and clients often feel the same way at healthcare and treatment services.

Could we all take a moment to walk in the shoes and feelings of the people we serve and make the routine procedures a little more warm and welcoming? (Please ignore this if you have already created a customer-friendly, inviting atmosphere).

UNTIL NEXT TIME

Thanks for joining us this month. See you in late October.

David