MUSINGS

I’ve been thinking a lot lately about how to get people to change. We’re all familiar with the experience of watching someone we care about in the throes of a destructive habit or pattern. Seeing this can make us feel exasperated or angry, but usually underneath this anger is fear because it’s scary to see the people we love hurting themselves or not living up to their full potential. The natural tendency that most of us have in response to this fear is to tell the person that they have to stop this behavior because it’s hurting them, taking a toll on their health, relationships, or productivity.
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But this is exactly the wrong way to bring about change in someone because they already know. They know better than anyone else how this habit is hurting them and have probably been locked in an ongoing battle between the part of them that feels guilty and ashamed about the destructive behavior and the part of them that feels stubborn and defiant. If you take on the voice of the part pushing for change, the person will feel attacked, and will naturally revert to the role of the defensive, non-compliant part.
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A much more effective way to inspire change in someone is to get curious about the problematic behavior. Ask questions, rather than giving advice, ultimatums, or information. What are they getting out of the behavior? What are the fears that come with stopping? Have they ever thought about making a change? If so, what makes it hard? Such questions will help the person tap into their own source of motivation. Foisting our own agenda upon them will only cause them to harden and shut down. Getting curious will also help us to understand the person better, leading to more empathy and less exasperation and judgment.
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This same process works internally. If you're trying to change a habit in yourself, ask the disparaging, shame-inducing voice to take a step back, and give yourself space to explore the roots of the behavior, what you’re getting out of it, and what makes it hard to change.

The desire to be agreeable and well-liked is a theme I’ve seen come up repeatedly with both myself and my clients over the years. Evolutionarily, this makes a lot of sense since we’re descended from people whose very survival relied on membership in the tribe. But while this fierce need to be accepted might have been adaptive for our early ancestors, in 2019, the desire to be liked at any cost doesn’t seem to be serving us anymore. 

Time and time again, I hear people talk about molding themselves into what they think others want them to be. We bend our boundaries, suppress our needs, and turn ourselves into chameleons trying to please and cater to those around us, all because we are terrified of not being liked. 

There a few big problems with this shape-shifting act: 

1. We’re not actually that good at reading people’s minds—we may think we know how others want us to be, but more likely than not, we’re missing the mark. You can never be sure that you’re coming off the way someone wants you to, but you can be sure that you'll exhaust yourself with mental gymnastics and pull yourself out of the present moment since you’re in your head, trying to solve the puzzle of how to act. 

2. This people-pleasing tendency often has the opposite of its intended impact—the irony is that it’s easy to tell when someone is saying and doing what they think others want, and this behavior is actually kind of unsettling. It usually leaves person on the receiving end feeling uneasy because they can sense that the agreeable person isn’t really being themselves or speaking their mind. Ultimately, this type of behavior deprives those you’re interacting with of really getting to know you and nobody wins. 

3. Being liked by everyone is an impossible goal. Each day, we interact with so many people, all with different personalities and preferences. Trying to please everyone is like chasing some phantom carrot at the end of a stick, and it’ll only leave you feeling drained in social situations. If one person finds you to be magnetic or delightful, someone else in the room will find you to be abrasive or underwhelming.

This people-pleasing behavior sends the implicit and toxic message to yourself that “others' needs and comfort matter more than my own”. And if you try to change who you are to suit one person, you’ll be depriving someone else who would’ve loved the real you of knowing that person. If you're wondering how to even discern who the “real” you is—I’ve found it useful to pay attention to how I am when I'm alone or with the people that I’m the most comfortable with.

Accepting the fact that not everyone is going to like us is scary, yes, but it’s also incredibly liberating. The sooner we stop putting energy into figuring out how others want us to be, the sooner we can channel that energy, instead, into being present and connecting with the people and things that make us feel like the best versions of ourselves. And while not everyone will like it, most people will pick up on someone who is unapologetically themselves, and will respect it at the very least. 

I’m very familiar with this urge to be liked and noticed it coming up a lot in my early work with clients. My natural inclination is to approach my work with a direct and open style. I say what I’m noticing about my client and disclose information about what I’m thinking and feeling in the moment more than some therapists might. Some people love this style, while I’m sure that others find it disarming. Accepting this has allowed me to discover my unique voice and style as a therapist. I trust that the people for whom I’m a good match will find me, and the people for whom I’m not will find a therapist that better suits their needs and personality. And why would I want it any other way? 

Because the therapeutic relationship is safe and structured, it's a great space to practice being your true self, asserting your needs and boundaries. And experimenting with new ways of showing up in relationship in therapy makes it easier to then take these new behaviors into your outside life. 

The shift from being palatable to being real is scary, but I truly believe that it leads to deeper and more satisfying relationships both with ourselves and others. 

Most of us are living a kind of double life—through one channel runs the inner stream of thoughts and emotions going on inside, and through another run the outward expressions we share with others. The concealment of this inward stream happens for many reasons. We’re taught that it’s not socially acceptable to share certain things, or we’ve been conditioned to censor ourselves to uphold a certain image. While I agree that some things are best kept inside, I think this inner/outer split has been taken too far, leading to feelings of fragmentation and anxiety. We’re uncomfortable in our own skin because there’s an incongruence between what’s going on inside and what’s being portrayed outwardly.
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The process of playing with transparency has become one of the most transformative practices in my life. I describe it with a simple phrase—“name it to tame it”. At first, it seemed radical, but generally, naming my inner experience would lead to a dissipation, or taming, of the anxiety I was feeling. I also found that being more transparent usually led to a greater sense of connection and comfort with the person I was opening up to. In general, I’ve found that vulnerability begets vulnerability and notice that my own openness seems to give permission for others to follow suit.
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What would it be like to share that you’re feeling nervous on a first date? Or to tell your friend that you’re worried they’re judging you? Or to truthfully say you’re feeling low when someone asks how you’re doing? I’ve found that these acts of disclosure tend to feel liberating and be well-received.
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Name it to tame reduces tension by creating more consistency between your inner and outer experiences and affords the opportunity to check out the stories that our minds so expertly spin. Maybe your friend’s clipped response was just a result of her own rough day, but you’ll never know if you don’t check out your story.
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Being transparent has saved me from spiraling down a rabbit hole of worry on more than one occasion. Unveiling your inner world may seem scary, but I would challenge you to play with it. You may find that it actually helps you to feel more comfortable in your own skin.

The idea of “presence” has become a buzzword in modern day speak, and though we toss it around easily in conversation, I suspect that most of us rarely take the time to articulate what “being present” actually means.
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As someone with a very active mind, I notice that I spend a lot of time lost in thought--ruminating about the past, reflecting on an interaction or experience I had, anticipating the future, spinning fantasies. The mind has a special ability to launch into times and places other than right here and now. This capacity for imagining makes the mind a unique and brilliant tool and is responsible for much of the innovation carried out by humans, but it is also fundamentally at odds with the experience of being present.
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To me, being present means experiencing the moment that you’re currently living by placing your attention on the environmental information coming in through your five senses.
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Staying with your physical experience—what are you hearing? seeing? feeling in your body?—is a powerful way to stay rooted in the present moment. Because unlike your mind, your body and your five senses are always anchored in the here and now. They can’t jump into the past or future the way your mind so readily does. Making a point of periodically scanning through my sensory experience has helped me to come back from the vortex of my mind into the current moment I’m living in.
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So why should you care about being present? My personal answer to this question is this—the past and the future don’t actually exist. The past is only a memory and the future is a collection of expectations that may very well never come to fruition. When you think about the concept of “your life”, you probably think about all the experiences you’ve had and the ones you anticipate or hope to have, but because those things are only a figment of your imagination, your entire life is actually just the moment that you’re currently experiencing.
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Trying to think your goals into being is a lost cause, you have to live them. Your future is created by a series of present moments that you live one after the next, so living fully in those moments is the best way to attain the future that you want.

Do you know what your values are? It may seem obvious, but many people find that they're harder to define than expected. The Values Sort is an exercise that helps people hone in on their core values and one that I’ve led many clients, friends, and family through. It involves starting with a deck of 100 cards, each with a value written on it, and narrowing them down to your top seven. Once a person has chosen their seven, I ask them to arrange the words in a way that makes sense and to talk me through why they’ve chosen these values and what each one means to them.
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I’ve seen different initial reactions to the exercise—some believe they already know their values, others feel daunted and doubt that they’ll be able to complete the task. In both cases, people are often surprised by their experience—those who felt clear on their values choose some they didn’t expect to make it into their top seven, and those who felt intimidated find they didn’t consciously realize they knew their values until they went through the deck. Most people reflect after that it's helpful to solidify values by delineating them in a clear and visual way. Many people remark that it’s thought-provoking to articulate what each word means and to reflect on if/how they are embodying these values in their lives.
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There are many ways to use the Values Sort. It can be a tool for illuminating what’s important to someone when they feel lost or paralyzed by a difficult decision, for showing someone that they actually do have an inner compass when their sense of self feels muddled or tenuous, or for couples who find that they have a better understanding of their partner and what matters to them after going through the exercise. Regardless of the specific use, I find that those involved in the exercise tend to leave the experience feeling a deeper sense of clarity, understanding, and connection.
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As we enter the new year, take some time to reflect on your values and how they show up in your life. It’s easy to default into autopilot, and defining your values is a helpful way to bring intention and conviction to your decisions, interactions, and the overall way that you move through the world.

Why are we so afraid to set boundaries and ask for what we need? Repeatedly, I hear clients and friends express fear about communicating their needs because they worry it’ll make someone angry or disappointed. I’ve seen people miss out on entire experiences or relationships to avoid setting a boundary. Clearly, we have serious hold-ups in this department. I think we need to shift the narrative that setting boundaries will cause a rift in relationship. What if we could frame expressing our needs as a favor, rather than a disservice? I know that I would much rather have someone communicate their boundaries to me than have to guess what they are.
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We can get so caught up with people-pleasing and preserving relationships that we sacrifice our relationship with ourselves over and over again. In the end, this just makes everyone miserable. We may think that withholding our needs makes us more agreeable or easy to be in relationship with but, more often than not, this type of suppression only leads to resentment. And really, how can you blame someone for violating your boundaries if you never communicated them in the first place? The irony is that our nervous systems are masterful at detecting tension, so withholding needs usually leads to more conflict in relationship than sharing them.
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 One of my favorite expressions is, “a closed mouth doesn’t get fed.” Whether it’s asking for a promotion at work, more affection from your partner, or more cleanliness from your roommates, when making a request, you might not always get the response you want, but you’ll certainly never get your needs met if you don’t ask. And in doing so, you may be giving someone else space to communicate their own needs in the future and modeling how to do this in a way that helps, rather than harms, relationship.

Through personal experience and my work with clients, I’ve seen how our bodies and nervous systems are highly sensitive and spongelike. Every day, hour, and minute, our bodies take in hundreds of stimuli from the environment, the majority of which are never registered by the conscious mind. Reacting to this cascade of stimuli, many of us experience a rollercoaster of mental, emotional, and physical states each day. We might experience a sudden wave of agitation, anxiety, fatigue, anger, or uneasiness, and because the conscious mind is often several steps behind the body, these ever-shifting states can be exasperating—they seem to come out of nowhere.
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The slight squeeze of anxiety or discomfort that we often experience leads to a feeling of “graspiness”—“I want something, but I don’t know what”. We grasp at some external object in the hopes that it will shift the state that we’re in and help us escape from uncomfortable feelings. We all have our favorite things to grasp at when we feel an inner squeeze—food, alcohol, exercise, tv, social media, cigarettes, sleep, the list goes on…The act of grasping can become so habitual that it happens on autopilot. Our thumb has found its way to the Instagram app or our hand to the refrigerator door before our conscious mind has time to decide if this is really what it wants or needs.
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Lately, I’ve been playing with bringing awareness to what it is that I grasp at and trying to create a small pause before the action. Even a ten second pause allows me to get more familiar with the uncomfortable feeling that I’m trying to avoid. It’s interesting to ask, “What’s so bad about this feeling that I’m grasping at something to make it go away? Can I tolerate it for another 20 seconds before I grasp?” Even if you end up going through with the habitual action, try taking a small pause first. At least then you’ve made a conscious choice to do so rather than acting out of sheer habit. Get curious about your states of discomfort that drive you to grasp. You might realize that you can tolerate them more than you think.