Tag: Session one-liners

Don’t Feed the Beast

Sometimes a client and I come up with an expression or phrase in session that we then refer to for the rest of our time together. It becomes part of our therapeutic language, a memento of our work together. If it is something I think will be helpful to other clients, I’ll repeat it, but in my mind it will always be connected to the client and session where it was created.

This happened recently with a client who is dealing with a very difficult break-up that has left her feeling not only devastated, but lonely, unwanted and totally undesirable. While in this state, she agreed to join a friend for drinks with a guy who expressed interest in my client’s friend. The friend wasn’t sure how she felt about the guy, so she wanted back up. That’s right, my client knowingly agreed to be the third wheel, at a time when the last thing she wanted or needed to see was to see a budding romance up close. When I asked her why she agreed to this, she wasn’t sure, but she knew before even going that it would make her feel bad. We decided to name this behavior “Feeding the Beast.”

Feeding the Beast is doing things that support or reinforce your self-deprecating thoughts. It’s a set-up, with no way for you to get out of the situation without feeling worse. It’s acting against your best interests, creating a situation that everyone else can see is a bad idea. Although it’s the last thing you would ever want, you wind up deepening your pain. Feeding the Beast is:

-Spending an hour on your ex’s facebook page, combing through her photos of her vacation in Tuscany with her new boyfriend who happens to be a Brazilian underwear model

-Weighing yourself when you are feeling badly about how much you ate at yesterday’s office potluck

-Working as a bartender when you are trying to stay sober

-Attending every baby shower you get invited to while you are struggling with infertility

-Taking your mom to an all-you-can-eat buffet for Mother’s Day brunch when you are struggling with bulimia

Sometimes the Beast is hungry, it needs to be fed, and it feels like we are helpless to resist. Depression is like wearing dirty glasses, it makes it hard for us to believe we deserve to feel any differently. Having an eating disorder can feel like living with a demon, tricking you into weighing yourself fifteen times a day, feeding the obsession and shame. Don’t misunderstand me; eating disorders, infertility, and depression are real problems, brought on by various medical, neurological, psychological, environmental, and social causes. We don’t ask to feel this badly and we didn’t bring them on ourselves. However we sure can make things a hell of a lot worse for ourselves. If at all possible Don’t Feed the Beast.

“A Big Part of Being an Adult is Doing Things You Don’t Want to Do.” – Part One

Sometimes a session has a hilarious one-liner, from either you or your client. After disclosing my age (this is not a post about self-disclosure, but yes, I am usually pretty comfortable telling a client how old I am if they ask), I had a client say, “Wow, you’re aging well.” Thanks…I guess… Sometimes the gem comes from my mouth and, while there is nothing but best intentions behind the statement, there are times when it could have come out better. Once, when a client was expressing frustration and a great deal of self-deprecating comments regarding her lack of progress recovering from a trauma, I told her that she was a glacier. The intent was to remind her that the healing process can be slow, yet still moving along even if the progress isn’t obvious. Needless to say, it wasn’t a moment for the highlight reel.

Recently a client was struggling to find motivation for studying, explaining that each morning she set a goal to review her work, catch up on reading or do problem sets when she gets home from class. However she usually ended up taking a nap, watching episodes of Glee or getting lost on facebook. Since there was always a list of things she preferred doing over studying, she usually didn’t get to it. While she was passing her classes, studying the night before exams and keeping up with deadlines, she was concerned that this behavior was going to come back and haunt her, that she would eventually fail a class or not pass her qualifying exams. She was convinced that to change her behavior, be motivated to study daily, she needed to really enjoy it. In her mind her classmates were all much more excited about a night in the lab than she was. She had this image of other students skipping off to the library in a fit of joy, and she believed that because she did not masochistically love the heavy workload, she was never going to be able to change her behavior.  I felt this reasoning was getting her stuck. Who wouldn’t rather relax? Yet many people manage to find motivation to study or write a paper even if they would prefer to be doing something else. I mentioned that I thought her image of her peers was inaccurate and then, in my own frustration, blurted out, “A big part of being an adult is doing things you don’t want to do.”

This wasn’t a fresh statement, but actually one I’ve said quite a few times in my work with college students.  It originated during an argument with a roommate years ago. I can’t remember what the conflict was about, probably household chores, but at peak frustration she said, “I want to do what I want to do, when I want to do it.” The simplicity of this statement, mixed with the convoluted language, provided comic relief that diffused our argument, but not until I came out with what would become my classic buzz-kill statement. I still use it in sessions because I believe it’s true. Adult life is filled with doing things you don’t want to do.

But did my roommate have a point? Isn’t that what’s great about being a grown-up, the trade-off for 9 to 5 (9 to ?!? is more accurate for most people I know), bills and crow’s feet? As adults we can consume beverages, products and media that we didn’t have access to as a child, we can eat ice cream for dinner every night, and we can refuse to clean the bathroom for months if we choose. We can do these things, although most of us don’t. Instead we grocery shop, listen to our boss, visit in-laws and meet obligations with or without a real desire to do so. We are motivated by something besides pleasure. Where is the balance? What is it about each of us that makes this balance so personal and how do we find it? Would tipping in one direction or the other make us happier?