How to Be You

This was going to be a Snapshots post, but I couldn't find a snapshot of identity.  This one goes around the world to get to where I want us to be.  And for the record, only applies if and when it applies.  In other words, as with every other intervention, it may not work for you and isn't intended to work for everyone.

I'm finally beginning to see why the "ultra-Orthodox" (Yids/Jewish observant), tend to shy away from therapy.  It isn't the stigma so much as a certain confidence, a can-do spirit, belief that the power of change resides in the individual.  Not all that different, philosophically, than any school of individual therapy.

Without examining history, religious codes (no disrespect here, some of the best scientists are/were quite obsessive about code) do not always account for extenuating circumstances. Ask your local rabbi/clergy-person if yours apply.

Let's move on.

We just finished rounds one and two of the Jewish High Holiday season, and are in the middle of the relief holiday, Succot.  What this means is that is that if your therapist is Jewish, she didn't return your calls religiously and left apologetic voice mail about getting back to you in a couple of days.

You know the drill.  "If this is an emergency, dial 911 or go to the nearest emergency room."

Most think that this means we're partying, having huge dinners and drinking lots of wine and shots of whiskey (Canadian whiskey, we're Jews, with although some do prefer Scotch; vodka, if Russian).  But in fact, the New Year implies judgement of the world, according to this tradition, judgement of the universe, of you and of me. New Years kicks off the holiday season with pause.

In this system of belief, any losses, any gains, for that matter, that any one of us will incur from now until the next Jewish New Year's Day, are determined on Rosh HaShana, New Year's Day.  That's what we think, anyway, and it is a good system, because it gives us a fresh start.  Each Rosh HaShana (a two-day affair, considered one long day), observant Jews go over their errors and ask forgiveness from friends and family. It is assumed that we hurt them in some way over the past year.  And we ask forgiveness from the Old Mighty, too, for being scofflaws, ignoring the rules that don't seem to make much sense sometimes, even those that do.

The serious self-examination begins toward the end of the summer, a personal inventory familiar to addicts and alcoholics who work 12-Step programs.  Jews stay up very late and pray at midnight, or get up really early in the morning.  It's that time of year  She* is listening.  Might as well talk it out.

This tends to wear people out, and you might notice, if you know about these things, that your Orthodox friends and physicians are a little cranky and tired this time of year. All the prayer and self-criticism wear a person down. Then, at the end of that long New Year's day, it all shakes out, whether or not we get to live another year, even whether or not there will be a 9-11, something catastrophic.  Perhaps who will become the next President.  The decree is written in pencil.

Ten days later, on another holiday all is engraved in pen, hopefully for the better.  On Yom Kippur, the Day of Judgement, there's a huge push to confess our wrong-doing while fasting, to apologize for the many arrogant, selfish, callous, careless, base, deliberate or accidental, no matter, unbecoming things we did or inspired others to do over the previous year.  It is the date people dread, not unlike an on-the-job performance evaluation, the one that goes in the permanent record.  We know the standards are high, but bank on the character traits of our Supervisor to see us through, primarily mercy.  Those who have been working their program are not afraid, even feel excited, joyous.  Those who haven't are scared.

I imagine all of the religions have something quite similar, some seasonal way of changing life around,  and use ritual to accomplish the job.

Our ritual is a little harsh, the whole staying up late, getting up early thing.  On Yom Kippur, to be more like that divinity, there is a 25 hour fast, no food, no drink.  Jews wear white, shy away from leather, which is nice, actually.  The truly pious are on their feet most of the day.  You wouldn't sit in the presence of a flesh and blood king.  This time of year you can practically touch an ephemeral king. Heck, we're practically kissing.  Talk about mixed emotions.

In this process, if a person has managed to figure out what to change, how to be a better person, it is a happy day.  An entry in the Good Book is assumed after the fast, a fast that atones for everything, it is hoped, although it helps to repent, pray, and give charity.

Bear with me.  What has this to do with therapy?

Because in fact, to truly keep a promise for change is nearly impossible, which is probably why we repeat the process year after year.  The hope is that we'll work on ourselves over time, over the years.  Two steps forward, one step back.

Now.  The therapeutic intervention, one that compares, is inspired by religious fanaticism.  If it is good enough for the rabbi, it is good enough for us.  Can't hurt to at least read about it.  Nobody needs to fast in this intervention to develop more self-esteem, more self-respect. And none of us have to be like the rabbi in the story below, although it couldn't hurt.

We will need a bit of self-discipline, however.

THE STORY

A great Rabbi scrupulously examined his ways before every meal.  He didn't eat breakfast without reviewing the hours between breakfast and last night's dinner, how he had messed up, forgot to do something good, unintentionally did something bad.  Then he didn't eat lunch without reviewing the hours between breakfast and lunch in the same fashion.  He didn't eat dinner without first reviewing the hours between lunch and dinner.

You would say, Well, he had a great job!  He had so much time on his hands!  Discretionary time!  He had lunch!  And he's paid to do things like this, perfect himself.

I would answer that this is true, but we make our time, much of it.  Certainly the few minutes before every bite aren't clocked.  Most of us have a day off, too, some kind of weekend, and many of us work from home.  We don't want to do this, is the better answer.  It isn't something any one of us wants to do, waste time really examining our behavior.

And it is denial, let's call it as it is, that gets us into the most trouble.

THE VARIATION

A variation on our rabbi's method gives the nod to meditation and mindfulness which improve clarity, and also require discipline.

We'll take a look at one problem area, low self-esteem, which isn't a behavior but can change with alternative behaviors.

Low self-esteem leads to anxiety which leads to avoidance or indecisiveness, which reinforce low self-esteem.  Simply doing things is hard when you have low self-esteem.


THE INTERVENTION

Those who suffer this problem have trouble making a move without looking to other people for cues, seeing what they're doing.  When friends are wearing yellow, they will go with yellow.  If they know they are going to see a particular movie, they ask their friends what is good and will see it, even if they hate the genre.

Once called other directed-ness, now Looking Glass Theory, whatever you want to call it, the thrust is that when a person is this anxious over decisions, a fluid identity is at the core of the problem. Fluidity doesn't work when it comes to self and decisions.  A cohesive identity is a building block for self-esteem.

Needing instruction (the old Onion's joke about Oprah readers waiting for instruction), implies less self-esteem, less self-confidence.  Less self.  Not always true, obviously, but that joke works on the kernal of truth, as all do.

Developing a more stable identity, the obvious goal, requires some work.  Our intervention, therefore, does, too.  Yet it is fairly easy to remember.

1. You write down everything about yourself: values, habits, who you think you are, how you appear to others, especially.

2.  On a second page, examine the list and determine if what you wrote about yourself resembles the real you at all.  The real you, you see, is the person that you want to be.

3.  On a third page, write down those ideals, the values, habits, and personality traits that you want.  It is much harder, of course, to work on not being depressed, or not being angry.  Here emotions have to be defined in behavioral terms.  A therapist might need to be called in.

If you do this daily, refer to each list, concentrate on the person that you want to be, at least once a day, it has an impact.  It saves time in therapy.  Just knowing where we want to go is half the battle.  Therapy can help with the rest of the war.

Why It Won't Always Work, and Why It Isn't For Everyone

It is universal, even with narcissists, to think we are just not good enough as is.  It is how we are made.

And victims of child abuse and neglect are going to have more trouble accepting, loving themselves.  They can be obsessed, like the rabbi, with self-improvement, when they are often the most wonderful people in the world.

Their change is to see themselves as they are, as is, as good people, and loving themselves

Not so simple, usually requires a different morning, lunchtime and evening ritual.  Affirmations help here.  Calendars, little books.  You find them in the store.  Maybe not The Onion, so much.

therapydoc

(If you prefer Him, go for it, we merely assume on this blog that being made second, females are an improved lot).

The you in how are you

Someone asked me to elaborate on how one goes about developing self. I'm loathe to do a self-help, how-to post since there are so many ways to answer this and any other question and the ways vary depending upon age and at least a dozen other variables. But I'm thinking that one possible approach to the problem is derech ha'gav.

Oh, you're sick of Hebrew/Yiddish expressions? But they're more poetic and more to the point, and you know it's true.

So derech ha'gav (Hebrew) means the way to the left . Or it can mean in an unusual way or an alternative path to get to where you want to go. Sometimes it's the long way.

How DOES one go about developing self, TherapyDoc?

Well, derech ha'gav, let's discuss (a) people asking How are you? and (b) people answering Fine.

Let's skip (a) and go directly to (b) Fine. It's quicker. Plus, this being an easy class (everyone gets an "A") we can postpone How to ask Invasive Questions and Asking Socially Appropriate Questions and Knowing What questions to Ask When, of Whom, and about What, until next semester.

(By the way, should I be giving mid-terms? I had that recurring dream last night about forgetting to attend a history class senior year, undergrad, and getting an incomplete or a failure and wondering if indeed I had graduated.)

But back to you.

FINE is not a good answer. Even though it's the popular answer, it's not a good answer.

Say you're at an event, maybe a religious reception, or a wedding, a holiday party. We just knocked off Thanksgiving and more cool holidays are coming right up! No, I can't wait either. And someone comes up to you and says, How are you?

I think that most* people automatically say, Fine.

It would be nice to hear, however, something more along the following lines, something with a few more words tagged on, words that hit on the dimensions of self. No one really wants to hear a pathetic, FINE. What we're dying for is . . .

Well, emotionally, I'm up and down, you know, all over the map, I'm feeling insane half the time.

And financially things are a wreck, we're barely making ends meet, and who
knows how Little Joey's going to go to college.

Health-wise I'm struggling, but it seems the rest of the family is in a good place, so okay, at least that's good, on the other hand, ya' never know when the other shoe is gonna' drop, do you?

Spiritually I'm totally disconnected and hate myself for not even trying, let alone caring, on the other hand, I still go through the motions, so maybe I'm not such a worm after all.

Relationship-wise there's nothing. Nothing is going on. I have no time for
my friends. Forget old friends to whom I haven't spoken in years. Maybe 20 years.

The stress at work is eating away at me. I'm just not hitting the mark. I come home and can barely talk at the end of the day. Laundry's not happening. I eat potato chips.

But my pottery class, my creativity is going well, even though I broke something that I'd been working on for three months, for sure it's a gam zu*. And even though that broke, my banana cake was a hit on Thanksgiving, and I think I've finally got the knack of wild rice.

I hit the ball too hard and now I have tennis elbow, and there's no way I can exercise, and since it was my only sport, I now get zilch recreation and since that was the only thing that made me happy I'm pretty grouchy all the time and am gaining weight, of course.

Thank G-d. By you?

Okay, so it's an old joke, but all of those things are self-defining. When someone asks, HOW ARE YOU they're saying, not demanding, but subtly suggesting, TALK ABOUT YOU.

Crazy as it sounds, we often think How are you is a direct question about our happiness. But it isn't, and our answers shouldn't be limited to some sort of declaration of emotional health. Some relationships, it's true, are founded on these intimacies. We talk about our troubles with certain people, bask in issues. Some people like to talk about their feelings.

But not everyone does, and its a diss to the human condition to think that all we are is the way we feel. Emotion is just an interpretation of our body sensations, that's all. Sure, it can be overwhelming and they feel like they take over and can. Sometimes we're conscious of nothing but our sadness, anxiety, guilt, resentment, anger, umbrage. We feel diagnosable, and we might very well be.

But you have to keep that in it's place, too, the idea that I am my disorder. I alluded to this in the post on Borderline Disorder. We're usually more ordered than not.

Managing and staying conscious of the rest of one's identity and focusing upon others is the job when in an emotionally tight spot.

And no question, for some of us, being in a social situation means being in an emotionally tight spot.

So. When you're mingling and talking to people next month at holiday parties, or even at work, tasting the cookies and fruit cakes, snacking on celery and dip, consider embellishing your answers. My guess is that you've got a lot more self than you think.

And when in doubt you can always skip to another social skill and say, Pass the guac (the cookies, the lasagne), would you please? It's really good, don't you think? What do you think is in there? I taste oregano, or is that cilantro? And there's a hint of peppermint in that chocolate chip cookie, for sure try that.

Everyone loves to talk food. Talking about what we like to eat, cook, taste, prepare, or carry out is another dimension of self, lest we forget. Like we could.

copyright 2007, therapydoc

* No, I have no research to support this contention.
* gam zu (rhymes with Tom Zoo) means this, too, and refers to this, too, is good, and deserves an entire post which no promises I really will write one day. My patients hear this from me often, gam zu, and most don't graduate therapy until they start saying it back.

Being Great and the Self in Self-esteem

A gadol ha'dor, meaning a great man in his generation and a brilliant scholar, caught in a slow elevator was asked to divulge what he considered his greatest defect. He didn't have to think very hard. "Gaivah," he said. "I have to work on this every single day, all of the time."

It is possible that I am translating it incorrectly, but I'm pretty sure that the Hebrew word indicates conceit, which means too much certainty, too much self. It means not enough acknowledgment of others or sensitivity to the depth, length and breadth of the unknown.

A truly conceited person is sure of himself, and in those moments of conscious surety there's pride, too, even a little awe, self-love. And it shows.

And then it passes, probably. For someone like the gadol ha'dor, the feeling passes with a twinge of shame, when he's conscious, aware of his feeling. Our rabbi is clear. "I have to work on this every single day, all of the time."

I'm sure you've heard the expression about someone, He's high on himself or full of himself. That seems to be a measure of self-esteem. It's dysfunctional self-esteem, of course, even if it's full or high. A person like this might think that he's great, but even if others are quick to acknowledge his greatness in something, they don't think he's great. His egocentricity might come at the expense of attention or sensitivity to others.

So being great isn't about self-esteem, it's not about the process of valuing yourself or comparing yourself to others vis-a-vis traits and skills. It's about who you are.

There is a school of self psychology. In my day they were called Kohutians, which always made me think of Martians, but I liked it and still push a modified version on patients. Kohutians would have people, usually children, draw pictures of themselves.

If they drew no arms or hands, for example, then that would indicate that they lacked the sense of power or autonomy needed to do things. Perhaps others did everything for them. So add those appendages, please. Become whole.

Ultimately the idea of self-psychology (to me) is that if you develop more of you, then there will be more of you to like. I would take it a step farther and say that yes, if you like you, too (have self-esteem), then you'll be a cheerier individual and others will like you more, as long as you don't like yourself too much.

Take a look at a continuum of self . I have no idea what the Kohutians would think of it. Feel free to Google this topic and find better continuums.
I think that people we think of as GREAT have plenty of self. They're certainly not all self, however. They're not narcissistic. We don't think of narcissistic people as great. In narcissism, everything, everything, everything is about that person. It grandfathers in conceit.

Great people, on the other hand, have long biographies about how they interact with and care for others. Their biographies, by definition, are written by other people. Great people are not into autobiography.

Great people, indeed, make interesting subjects for biography because their self-esteem sometimes waivers and their decision making isn't always perfect. They're not always sure of themselves. And we like that. We want psychological depth in our historical fiction. Chaotic family life, irrational decision-making-- that's the stuff of humanity. We want to shout at the hero, No, no, no! Don't marry her! or Don't buy that stock! Run, don't miss that plane!

Like our heroes, when we make mistakes our self-esteem tends to plummet for awhile, which can be a good thing. It builds character. It gives us something to work on. See, even the rabbi needed something to work on.

So just because a person does great things, and qualifies for greatness, does not mean that he or she has an inexhaustible supply of self-esteem.

Let's look at TherapyDoc's Continuum of Self-esteem. If there is a similar one in a book somewhere, you'll have to trust me, I didn't steal it. This one comes from my personal ever-evolving tool-box of poorly drawn continuum.So what does it mean? Shtickel means just a little, and rhymes with pickle, for starts.

If we compare the two graphs, I think you'll see that there might very well be an association between having a fair amount or even plenty of self-esteem and having a large dollop of self.

Self-esteem surely depends upon all kinds of variables, and self might be the greatest one.

A hypothesis for your doctoral thesis could be:

The more self, meaning the better defined the person, the greater the number of skills, the greater number of socially desirable characteristics (like a propensity to do good deeds), the more sensitivity to others, the more knowledge and experience, the more prepared one is to wage combat against the forces of evil (the greater the Jedi), the more that one can identify and say, That's Good, That's a Good Piece of Me, the more self-esteem.

You operationalize it.* Divide it into several hypotheses, for starts.

I'm thinking that having self empowers. Having self enables one to manipulate his or her environment and thereby confront, perhaps even change some of the eco-systemic variables that contribute to low-self-esteem.

Self is the ultimate force of empowerment. People who have it are better able to help themselves. And they wear hats. (just seeing if you're awake)

You'll want to quantify self-esteem, of course. Lucky for all of us there are many instruments on line that you can download. They really measure social confidence and assertiveness. When you score low on these variables it's assumed that your self-esteem needs tweaking.

It seems to me that the psych pundits (they're all pretty good) hardly ever say self. They refer to self-esteem. To have that you have to love yourself. See the good in you. Far be it from me to argue.

But that's really hard to do, build self-esteem, because it depends upon so many things. Life's full of hard knocks, and our perceptions of the words and actions of others, our emotional reactivity, our aptitudes and attitudes about lacking aptitudes, such things are colored by those hard knocks, not to mention that most undeniably confounding variable of all, genetics.

Genetics surely plays into this, but let's not go there now. Let's stick with the socio-environmental stuff we understand. It is said, however, that evolution is all about adaptive change, so perhaps we humans are not doomed, genetics or not, assuming we keep watching Oprah and reading blogs.

Anyway, people who have self-esteem probably heard messages from others growing up such as: You've got unlimited potential!

People who don't have self-esteem may have heard the opposite: You are nothing! You're a loser!

Then there's the case of no parental involvement, hearing nothing at all. It's no mystery that low self-esteem is associated with child abuse and neglect. One's experience past and present, one's hopes and dreams, blanketed by the the fear of an unpredictable, unfathomable future, all impact self-esteem.

Go change that self-esteem. Do it in Ten Days! (a workbook promise)

The task is so huge that I'm pretty sure I've hardly used the two words together in a post before. Well maybe once or twice in those confidence/social skill posts, where I tell you to be like Nike,

Just Do It.

I'm not kidding, though. The subject of self-esteem overwhelms me. Which is why we'll do it in two posts. I'm going to let another blogger help us out, and I'll add and subtract when I revisit this one day soon (no promises).

But Beyond Blue wrote a lovely post about self-esteem that theoretically should raise hers. Doing things well, like putting out a good post on the Internet helps people feel good about themselves. Why else are we blogging, anyway?

For today let's just say that self and self-esteem are sisters. They play in the same sandbox.

And I'd like to think that the rabbi, the gadol hador, the leader of his generation was a gadol (a great man) not because he played with sand, but because he learned from the wisdom of the sages who said, many, many, many years ago,

If I am not for myself, who am I? And if I am only for myself, then what am I?

copyright 2007, therapydoc

*operationalize means find a way to measure concepts