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Introduction

Many years ago, I had a mood shift that last­ed for 5 hours. It was one in a long series of depres­sive episodes, some­thing that began when I was in Col­lege. The longest was 5 months.

I decid­ed way back then to use myself as a Guinea-pig and see if I could both analyse and shift the inter­nal process I was engag­ing in. I’m not a fan of drugs, so I had a lot invest­ed in com­ing up with a way of man­ag­ing these episodes using focused attention.

Giv­en this book­let, I came up with a strat­e­gy for “man­ag­ing the voic­es in my head,” aka The Watcher.

We all talk to our­selves, all the time, and part of that inter­nal dia­logue seems hell­bent on cre­at­ing mis­ery. We lis­ten to our sto­ries, make our­selves mis­er­able, and then make our­selves more mis­er­able that we are miserable!

The Watch­er is a head game designed to help you to see how you talk to your­self. The Watch­er is a way out of this self-defeat­ing loop.

FIRST, THOUGH, A DISCLAIMER. I AM NOT, FOR A MOMENT, SUGGESTING THAT YOU SELF-DIAGNOSE AND SELF-TREAT DEPRESSION. INDEED, AS YOU EXPLORE LEARNING MORE ABOUT YOURSELF, YOUR MOODS, EMOTIONS AND SELF-TALK, A PROFESSIONAL COUNSELLOR OR THERAPIST IS THE BEST IDEA GOING. PART OF THE PROCESS OF SELF-EXPLORATION — THE ESSENTIAL INGREDIENT, IN MY VIEW, IS THE PRESENCE OF AND INTERACTION WITH AN OBSERVER OR WITNESS WHO CAN HELP GUIDE THE PROCESS. THIS BOOKLET IS INTENDED AS A GUIDELINE AND AS AN ALTERNATIVE APPROACH TO LIFE AND TO THE EMOTIONS. HOW YOU CHOOSE TO USE THIS INFORMATION IS SOLELY YOUR RESPONSIBILITY.

So, let me tell you about my first and only major depres­sion. It began in the late sum­mer of 1978. I had just been let go from a job-one I dis­liked but which was pay­ing my way, and I decid­ed to take a few days off to think and to do some pho­tog­ra­phy. Dur­ing Col­lege, I’d been a com­mer­cial pho­tog­ra­ph­er-adver­tis­ing, most­ly-and I’d opened a pho­to stu­dio for a year or so when I first moved to Canada.

I decid­ed to go off to Algo­nquin Park in the near north of Ontario, back­pack into the park and take a pile of pictures.

I went in May. There was, back then, a lot of snow in Algo­nquin in May. Being from some­what sun­nier climes, I had­n’t antic­i­pat­ed that. I was­n’t pre­pared, clothes wise, equip­ment wise or emo­tion­al­ly, for 5 days in the snow. I did it any­way. (As those of you who know me start laugh­ing and say, “Of course he did!”)

I froze my butt off, took lousy pic­tures and sat at my fire each night, chain smok­ing my pipe (1978, remem­ber) while qui­et­ly and thor­ough­ly tak­ing myself apart. I man­aged to do such a thor­ough job of self-hate that by the end of the 5 days, my spir­it had fled and I was in the dumper. I got home, processed the rolls of film, con­firmed my pre­mo­ni­tion that the pic­tures would suck, and prompt­ly sat down in my green leather reclin­ing chair, vow­ing to stay there until I died.

Each day I would leave my bed and go to my chair. I’d drink Pep­si, watch tv and stare out the win­dow. My wife (ex-wife since the ear­ly 80’s) would hand me food and I would eat. I sur­vived some­how, but the days were end­less, bleak, and black.

I climbed out of the chair and the depres­sion in Sep­tem­ber when I start­ed attend­ing a sem­i­nary in Toron­to. That expe­ri­ence led to my get­ting my Mas­ters in Coun­selling in ’83, and estab­lish­ing The Phoenix Cen­tre for Cre­ative Liv­ing.

Since 1978, I have had sev­er­al episodes of depres­sive feel­ings, none last­ing longer than a day or two, most mea­sured in hours. I’ve nev­er tak­en drugs for any of this, and I believe that my path out of this loop was in my explo­ration of my inter­nal the­atre. I have become increas­ing­ly con­vinced that wis­dom comes as we under­stand and have com­pas­sion for this inner realm.

Many clients came to me hop­ing that I could some­how take away their pain. They want to stop hurt­ing-to stop hurt­ing them­selves-to be hap­py. They assumed every­one else on the plan­et was hap­py, and that they were doing some­thing wrong. They blamed their par­ents, their part­ner, their kids-and most of all they blamed themselves.

They told me how dif­fi­cult, if not impos­si­ble, it was to change. They told me that they’d tried, real­ly tried, to change.

They were def­i­nite­ly not pleased when I said that they could not change-that all they could do was to make oth­er choic­es-they could learn to expand their repertoire.

Wait a minute! What do you mean I can’t change!
What a use­less booklet!

Well, hang on a minute.

Keep read­ing. What I’m say­ing will become increas­ing­ly clear as the pages go by. For now, how­ev­er, here’s a hint: Who we are at our cores is hard wired in. For exam­ple, my depres­sive nature, as well as my infa­mous tem­per, was, is and always will be a part of me.

It used to be that I thought I sim­ply got depressed (sort of like one catch­es a cold-it hap­pened to me.)
Back before 1982, when my super­vi­sor gave me an assignment-choose!-I’d have told you there was absolute­ly noth­ing I could do to con­trol my tem­per and my tongue.

Thanks to imple­ment­ing her sug­ges­tion, I learned sev­er­al things:
1. my tem­per and my moods are as much a part of me as my beau­ti­ful, deep blue eyes.
2. What I choose to do with my moods and my tem­per depends on the breadth of my belief sys­tem and my will­ing­ness to chal­lenge my self-per­cep­tion.
3. And emphat­i­cal­ly, choos­ing dif­fer­ent­ly is about the amount of self-dis­ci­pline I am will­ing to exert.

Because, even in the year 2016, with decades of prac­tice, it is eas­i­er for me to get depressed than to have the self-dis­ci­pline to fol­low the process of work­ing through the depression.

Or the anger. Or the self-doubts. Or the self-criticism.
Or whatever game I choose to play out.

So, that’s a bit of the back sto­ry to this book­let. Now, let’s have a look at how all of this is set into motion, and look at alter­na­tives. Relax and come along for the ride.

Introduction

A cou­ple was in my office the oth­er day… young folk, togeth­er two years, and the pas­sion, sex­u­al play and fun had escaped from their mar­riage. The woman said: “He lied to me. When we start­ed dat­ing, he hugged me and kissed me and want­ed sex all the time. Now, he nev­er tells me he loves me, won’t hug or kiss me, and most of the time he’s not inter­est­ed in sex.”

I asked her how she felt. She indi­cat­ed that she felt angry, think­ing she was cheat­ed and unloved. She told me that her response to these feel­ings was to refuse sex when he did get around to ask­ing, an inter­est­ing form of pun­ish­ment quaint­ly known as “Cut­ting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.”

I then asked the man for his ver­sion of all of this. He replied: “I grew up in a home where you didn’t touch or tell peo­ple you love them. I come home every night. I bring her my pay cheques. I don’t gam­ble or fool around. That should be enough for her to know that I love her. I don’t mind if she hugs me or kiss­es me, but I for­get to do it to her. I’d real­ly rather watch the Blue Jays.”

I asked him about her rec­ol­lec­tions about their ear­ly dat­ing days. “She’s right,” he replied. “I did do all of those things in the begin­ning. I want­ed her to like me. Once I got her, I fig­ured I could go back to being who I real­ly am.”

Hope­less, right? I think not. But quite typ­i­cal, real­ly. Many of our expec­ta­tions of whom our part­ners should be come from two strange areas: 1) they come from how the per­son behaved dur­ing the first sev­er­al months of the rela­tion­ship, and 2) they come from our fan­tasies of how we imag­ine our part­ner should behave.

Strange ideas one and two deny two truths: 
1) Peo­ple are who they real­ly are, and
2) every­thing in life, includ­ing peo­ple, change.

What we fan­ta­size to be true often isn’t. What is real is what is real today.

We can’t go back to the begin­ning of your rela­tion­ship and try to find a way to con­vince you to be hon­est with your part­ner. I wish we could. If every­one had the courage to state, loud­ly and clear­ly, who they are and what they know of their true nature, a lot of con­fu­sion and anger could be avoid­ed lat­er on.

As I work with cou­ples, I’m struck by how dif­fer­ent­ly the two peo­ple per­ceive the world. There are rea­sons for this discrepancy:

• The pro­found dif­fer­ences in world view that are unique to one’s gender.

• The under­stand­ing that peo­ple are the total of their expe­ri­ences, and no two peo­ple have had the same experiences.

• The impact that results from the kind of par­ent­ing each per­son received.

Expe­ri­ences, upbring­ing and gen­der all impact to make peo­ple who they are at the core of their being.

Introduction

It’s time to look more deeply at estab­lish­ing a high­ly func­tion­al rela­tion­ship, which I call the com­pas­sion­ate, respon­si­ble rela­tion­ship. Now, the first and most obvi­ous ques­tion is, “com­pas­sion­ate for whom?” and “respon­si­ble for what?”

The answers:

Com­pas­sion: For your­self. For your part­ner. On aver­age, in bal­ance. With­out compromise.

Respon­si­ble: For your­self. For your behav­iour and for meet­ing your needs. With­out manip­u­la­tion. With­out compromise.

That should effec­tive­ly elim­i­nate 90% of all rela­tion­ships out there. Those rela­tion­ships are based upon win­ning, being declared right, or “teach­ing my spouse” all the things she or he is too stu­pid to fig­ure out for him/herself.

As you’ve like­ly noticed, I am an advo­cate for being a respon­si­ble adult. As such, I am respon­si­ble, total­ly, for what I feel, what I do, how I act and how I choose to relate. As a respon­si­ble adult,

I am not genet­i­cal­ly pre­dis­posed to be a jerk, although that may be how my par­ents behaved toward each other.

I am not the vic­tim of oth­ers, who I judge are out to get me, despite the fact that some peo­ple may not like me or have used their influ­ence to attempt to hurt me.

I am not the wise and all-know­ing per­son who, by force of will, per­suades oth­ers of the error of their ways, using sar­casm, “log­ic” or nat­ter­ing to change their minds.

As a respon­si­ble adult, I have the choice, always, to deep­en my rela­tion­ship, or to alien­ate myself from my part­ner. And all of this, no mat­ter what my part­ner is doing.

Now, if it appears, on the sur­face, like a respon­si­ble, com­pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ship is an impos­si­bil­i­ty, let me assure you that it is not. Nor, on the oth­er hand, is it easy.

Easy is falling into the same old bad habits you’ve always fall­en into.

Easy is blam­ing, rolling around in the mud, using guilt as a weapon.

Easy are all of the manip­u­la­tive behav­iours we dis­cussed in the ” Rela­tion­ships” booklet.

Inter­est­ing­ly, were you to put this book­let aside and sim­ply make use of what you’ve learned in the first two book­lets, you would have a suc­cess­ful rela­tion­ship. I call this “Lev­el One change.”

You would be able to iden­ti­fy the pat­terns of behav­iour that get you and keep you stuck.

You would be speak­ing in “I” language.

You would be iden­ti­fy­ing what you need and ask­ing for it.

You would be learn­ing to dis­cuss issues through to con­clu­sion rather than sim­ply fight­ing to win.

The next lev­el of rela­tion­ships (“Lev­el Two change”) is “where the action is.” At the lev­el of a respon­si­ble, com­pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ship, we enter into a bond with anoth­er per­son, and that bond is designed, as Scott Peck once put it, to allow each per­son to active­ly par­tic­i­pate in the Spir­i­tu­al growth of anoth­er person.

I unpack Peck­’s lan­guage to mean that, in my rela­tion­ship with Dar, we have in each oth­er a wit­ness for what we are learn­ing about our­selves. This “wit­ness­ing” is a par­tic­i­pa­tion, through dia­logue, in the depth work (soul work) each of us is under­tak­ing. Our lov­ing for each oth­er is some­how mys­te­ri­ous­ly tied up in our will­ing­ness to enter into the depths of our­selves, and then to reveal what we find to each oth­er – both the mun­dane and the sig­nif­i­cant. And this wit­ness­ing involves a com­mit­ment to com­ment on Dar’s process, and vice versa.

For exam­ple, I used to have a doom and gloom sce­nario that would play in my head, con­cern­ing mon­ey. As in, we don’t have enough, I’m not work­ing hard enough (despite 10 hour days 7 days a week … ) I should stop coun­selling and get a “real” job, etc., etc., etc. At the heart of this sce­nario is my deep belief that worth is mea­sured in work – that if I nev­er stop, I must be valu­able. It is only in the last two months that I have cho­sen to dis­man­tle this belief, slow down and begin to notice who I am at this stage in my walk. Need­less to say, I have shared my inte­ri­or the­ater with Dar for some years now.

I sus­pect that Dar has lis­tened to my fears and doom and gloom sce­nar­ios once per month for 16 years. I hold this up as a shin­ing exam­ple of her patience, as she wait­ed for me to work my way through this self-cre­at­ed dilem­ma. (Please note, by the bye, that my lan­guage in describ­ing the above was “I” lan­guage; I’m emphat­i­cal­ly not blam­ing Dar for my inter­nal dra­ma. Dar lis­tens, nods sym­pa­thet­i­cal­ly, encour­ages me to tell her more, and after five min­utes, I wind down and get over myself.) Because of our dis­ci­plined process, we have been able to lis­ten to each oth­er over the years, offer sup­port and encour­age­ment for con­tin­ued explo­ration – and we’ve reaped the ben­e­fits when we’ve reached clar­i­ty regard­ing our issues.

Con­trast that with the case study that begins the next chap­ter. Hap­py read­ing, and if you like this book­let, tell a friend!

This book­let fol­lows hot on the heels of “Build­ing Deep and Last­ing Rela­tion­ships,” a source book(let) for the foun­da­tions of pow­er­ful rela­tion­ships. In keep­ing with Star Wars, Episode 1, this book­let is sort of a pre­quel. The next vol­ume will pick up where Rela­tion­ships left off and will describe com­pas­sion­ate rela­tion­ships.

“The List of 50” is a code I use for a project I sug­gest to clients. Often, fol­low­ing a mar­riage break-up or a rela­tion­ship end­ing, my clients will make two assumptions:

1. “I’ll nev­er meet any­one, ever again,” and
2. “If I do meet some­one, I’m doomed to repeat the mis­takes I made the last time.”

Against that back­ground I devel­oped the con­cept of The List of 50.

You’ll remem­ber from “Rela­tion­ships” that I talked a bit about sex­u­al attrac­tion being the “thing” that gets most rela­tion­ships going. Equal­ly apply­ing to both men and women, there is an ini­tial meet­ing of the hor­mones. With­out that ini­tial attrac­tion, it is the rare cou­ple indeed that gets togeth­er. (If you haven’t read our free book­let, “Build­ing Deep and Last­ing Rela­tion­ships,” you should down­load it from our web site.)

Most rela­tion­ships begin, then, as obser­va­tion lead­ing to hor­mones lead­ing to dat­ing. Ini­tial­ly, there is lit­tle thought about the char­ac­ter, focus, direc­tion and life pur­pose of our “intend­ed.” Indeed, if we con­sid­er who the per­son “is” at all, it is at the lev­el of think­ing that any “per­son­al­i­ty quirks” that turn up can be fixed by ask­ing the per­son to change. To recap, it’s almost as if we’re say­ing to our­selves: “Wow, she’s cute. I real­ly like her. I think I’ll ask her out. If there are oth­er things about her I don’t like, she’ll change because she’ll love me” And thus the dance begins.

In the ear­ly dat­ing stage, we are on best behav­iour. We read the oth­er care­ful­ly, for signs, for hints, as to what they want. We attempt to become that kind of per­son, to pro­vide for their needs, even if it flies in the face of whom we actu­al­ly are. After six months, the veneer begins to wear off. We start act­ing more nor­mal; so does our part­ner. At this point, there is a rush of dis­ap­point­ment. A sense of being lied to. But anoth­er dumb lit­tle voice kicks in and says, “Oh well, I’ve got six months invest­ed in this rela­tion­ship, and I may nev­er get anoth­er chance, so I’m going to stick around any­way, and just try hard­er to change him.”

From that point on, until they wise up and cut it out, there will be a bat­tle, by one or both per­sons, to change the oth­er per­son, to get the oth­er per­son to behave, to force the oth­er per­son to be some­one they are not. As this bat­tle is a no-win sit­u­a­tion, most rela­tion­ships con­tin­ue, for­ev­er, to be a bat­tle. Or, the par­ties give up and become apa­thet­ic. Or, the part­ners split.

I spend a lot of time with cou­ples who have fol­lowed pret­ty much this course, and end up in my office, not at the first hint of trou­ble, but years into the rela­tion­ship, look­ing for a way to stop fight­ing. It is pos­si­ble to help such cou­ples to learn to respect each oth­er as per­sons, and to teach them the tech­niques and rea­sons for excel­lent com­mu­ni­ca­tion (as we dis­cussed in “Rela­tion­ships,”) but the under­ly­ing edge, for most of these cou­ples, is this: “This is not the per­son I should be in rela­tion­ship with. I love her, but I don’t par­tic­u­lar­ly like her. I’m doing this to stop the fight­ing, make the best of the sit­u­a­tion and gain some ener­gy to get on with the rest of my life.” This is a worth­while and achiev­able goal.

(Actu­al­ly, I sus­pect that more than “mak­ing the best of the sit­u­a­tion” is pos­si­ble, and I’ll dis­cuss that in the third vol­ume of this series of book­lets. I’m pro­ject­ing mid Octo­ber 1999 for release.)

How­ev­er, I could­n’t help but think that there had to be a way to do all of this dif­fer­ent­ly, espe­cial­ly if I was deal­ing with a per­son pri­or to form­ing a rela­tion­ship, or from the place between rela­tion­ships. I rea­soned that hor­mones will always be with us and will act as a deter­mi­nant for the kind of peo­ple to whom we are attract­ed. But what, I won­dered, would hap­pen if peo­ple were inten­tion­al about think­ing about whom to be in rela­tion­ship with? What if they decid­ed, in advance, about the com­mu­ni­ca­tion style they want­ed to have, the life focus and direc­tion their part­ner would work from?

Let me stick in a caveat here: I’m NOT propos­ing try­ing to find clones of our­selves. You know, the New Age “Oh God, I’ve found my soul mate” bit. “He thinks like me, with both love tofu, he com­pletes my sen­tences … yada, yada, yada.” This is about find­ing the kind of per­son I would choose to be in chal­leng­ing, growth­ful dia­logue with for the rest of my life.

I decid­ed to write this book­let for those of you who are “still look­ing.” What came to me, way back when, was: we get into weird rela­tion­ships is because we don’t know, have nev­er thought about, what char­ac­ter­is­tics we are look­ing for in a part­ner. We thus meet the peo­ple we even­tu­al­ly part­ner with total­ly by chance. I devel­oped The List of 50 to coun­ter­act our reluc­tance to think about rela­tion­ships. After years of work­ing with this tech­nique, both per­son­al­ly and with my clients, I have seen impres­sive results. I now share this con­cept with you.

In the next chap­ter, I want to tell you my per­son­al expe­ri­ence with this idea. From there, we’ll move to oth­er exam­ples, and final­ly the meat of cre­at­ing the list — and what you do with it. Last­ly, we’ll talk about an extra ben­e­fit of the list — using the list also gets you the friends you’re seeking.

Let’s get to it.