Getting over Yourself

Getting over Yourself — the focus has to be on you — how you live, how you choose. Once you see your patterns, you can simply stop, breathe, and move down another path.

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A decade or so ago, I was working on The. Best. Relationship. Ever. In fits and starts.

I’d write a bit, then real­ize I had writ­ten a rel­e­vant arti­cle that might have been… bet­ter. So, I’d search for the arti­cle, find some­thing else, and down the rab­bit hole I’d go.

Then a client would raise an issue and I’d want to add it to the book… but… maybe I’d writ­ten some­thing about that… on paper, and where was that box with all the articles?

I was over­whelm­ing and frus­trat­ing myself by cre­at­ing an out-of-con­trol book. So, I stopped writ­ing, and took a step back. I refo­cussed my atten­tion to a cou­ple of top­ics, and redesigned the entire project, top to bottom.

Stop what doesn’t work, do what does.

I’m not sug­gest­ing that what I write in these blog posts are some kind of Uni­ver­sal Truth. What I write about is sim­ply how I see things. My cri­te­ri­on for a “belief sys­tem” is pret­ty sim­ple and straightforward.

“Is what you are doing working for you?”

For exam­ple, I have a set of beliefs about how ele­gant relat­ing might be done, and there­fore write about things like Com­mu­ni­ca­tion, Vul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, etc. as ways to accom­plish this. 

If you go to the website’s blog page to the search box at the top, and type in Com­mu­ni­ca­tion or what­ev­er, you’ll get a list of blog articles.

Let’s stick to relating for a bit, shall we?

Let’s say that what you want is this: a full, rich, mean­ing­ful and inti­mate rela­tion­ship. This is what Icall Ele­gant, Inti­mate Relating.

I’m using the adverb “relat­ing” because it’s an action — none of us can bring a rela­tion­ship into a coun­selling office. 

All we can bring in is two peo­ple, and what each is doing (anoth­er action word.) 

Let’s assume this is the kind of rela­tion­ship you want, and you have nev­er been in one. This cre­ates an issue: a diver­gence between what you say you want, and what you are actu­al­ly living.

Living a meaningful and rich life; relating with elegance… requires doing things differently from what you’ve done before. 

 A client had headaches — as she was leav­ing a pri­or ses­sion, I said, “The next time you have a headache, call 2 days ahead and come in for an appoint­ment.” We laughed. 

Well, she actu­al­ly
did it!

She was feel­ing the very first twinges of tight­ness (well ahead of get­ting a headache) and called for a session. 

One of the things we talked about was how she looks after herself. 

Com­ing in ear­ly was a great exam­ple of being good to herself. 

Nev­er one to receive com­ple­ments well, she imme­di­ate­ly popped up into her head, (where she spent a lot of time, either mak­ing her­self angry or sad), and talked about hav­ing had a “busy week,” and a “stress­ful event.” 

My Zen per­sona kicked in. 

“Days and events are not busy or stress­ful.” That’s you, mak­ing them so.”

She knew this.

I said, “Have a breath, drop out of your head, and see what your body wants.” 

She replied, “Sad, wet eyes.” Me: “Let go.” She breathed, then cried. She fin­ished, and smiled. “I feel much more grounded.”

We then had a con­ver­sa­tion around “stop­ping this game.” 

Here’s the thing. Who we are and how we react emo­tion­al­ly is hard-wired in. The way we react to “life” is set in stone. How­ev­er, as she demon­strat­ed, in the midst of feel­ing tight and (angry, sad, depressed, out of sorts, alone) all that it takes is…

Stopping… Breathing… Feeling… Expressing… Choosing

Her state of ground­ed­ness came by shift­ing out of the famil­iar pat­tern (the thing that isn’t work­ing) to what she wants (ele­gance and groundedness.)

Life is a classroom, or a laboratory, and this “system” is perfect.

What appears right in front of us — peo­ple, sit­u­a­tions, deci­sions, dra­mas, IS the les­son. We dai­ly receive all the teach­ings we could ever use in 10 lifetimes. 

In each case, we have the choice of a knee-jerk reac­tion, or the “oth­er” path: Stop­ping… Breath­ing… Feel­ing… Express­ing… Choosing

That we do not eas­i­ly take advan­tage of these choic­es is not “the fault” of the sys­tem. We fail at observ­ing, remem­ber­ing, and enact­ing some­thing different.

We’re being lazy when we blame the system when we do not choose a more elegant path.

Here, again, is what happens: 

I need to sort some­thing out, only ini­tial­ly I don’t know what. All I know is that “some­thing isn’t right.”
My body is uncom­fort­able, and I find myself up in my head, telling mis­ery-mak­ing sto­ries.
If I just do that, I’ll remain stuck. I
f I use my dis­com­fort as a cue, then I can shift: by: Stop­ping… Breath­ing… Feel­ing… Express­ing… Choos­ing.

Here’s an exam­ple, which is also in my book, Get­ting EXACTLY the Rela­tion­ship You Want:

I mar­ried my 2nd ex, (let’s call her “Sue,”) in 1975. While in Uni­ver­si­ty, we dat­ed and lived togeth­er for 3 years prior. 

I remem­ber won­der­ing, a lot, why I was choos­ing to mar­ry her. 

As I look back on it,
my rea­sons, at age 24, were,

1. I liked her body, and
2. I had 3 years invest­ed in the relationship.

There were many things about her that I didn’t like, but being a guy, I thought I could “fix her.”

The thing is, there was noth­ing wrong with Sue. The prob­lem (and this is what I had­n’t learned to notice) was that I thought that Sue should change to make me happy.

This was my “repeating pattern.”

I was unhap­py, and rather than look to me as the source for my unhap­pi­ness, I’d blame Sue and expect her to change. For the 8 years of our mar­riage, I tried every­thing to get her to change, so I did­n’t have to. 

In 1982, dur­ing my ther­a­pist train­ing, I’d be talk­ing with my super­vi­sor, and seem­ing­ly out of the blue, she’d say, “Why are you mar­ried to Sue?” I’d reply, every time, “Because I love her!” and won­der why she was asking.

Now, remember: I was feeling sad and alone in the relationship, yet was not letting myself see the repeating pattern. I was too busy blaming my dissatisfaction on Sue.

Anoth­er year passed, (I’m a slow learn­er) and I kept lis­ten­ing to friends and my super­vi­sor, and sud­den­ly (irony… noth­ing sud­den about it!,) right in the mid­dle of a con­ver­sa­tion with Sue, there was a “scales before my eyes fell off” moment. 

Which, of course I could have ignored or denied.

Instead, as I stood there, I went through the Stop­ping… Breath­ing… Feel­ing… Express­ing… Choos­ing cycle.

In the clarity of self-responsibility, I realized I didn’t want to be in the marriage, and so I ended it.

Not because of Sue, but because I chose to deal with me — with who I was then, and how I want­ed to be. (This is why it’s called self-responsibility.)

Not long after, I chose, with Dar­bel­la, to cre­ate some­thing fresh and new. I decid­ed to ded­i­cate myself to the end­less choos­ing of Ele­gant, Inti­mate Relating.

Here’s the “classroom” part

Start­ing in 1982, I began to notice an increas­ing num­ber of events, books and peo­ple, all talk­ing about the val­ue of being in a deep, mean­ing­ful and inti­mate relationship. 

More and more exam­ples, because I would­n’t own my need to stop blam­ing and become self-respon­si­ble. I’d find a book or a course, and say, “Boy, is this ever going to be valu­able for my clients.” 

Con­tin­u­al evi­dence of what I could have, if I made dif­fer­ent choic­es. I was walk­ing around in total denial regard­ing my behav­iour with Sue. I was telling myself anoth­er sto­ry — the blame / fix the oth­er per­son story.

So, the number of opportunities to see myself started increasing. (Like my client’s headaches…)

I began deep­en­ing my work on my self — and I began to notice what was right in front of me. I soon was trip­ping over expe­ri­ences that called my rela­tion­ship into question. 

Final­ly, I reached the “make it or break it point, and had enough intel­li­gence to stop defend­ing my stupidity.

At that point, I consciously shifted my understanding, my focus, and my behaviours. I continue to do this, 40+ years later.

We break through by focussing on what we can do some­thing about — our thoughts and behaviours.

My “job,” through this blog, and through my books, is to encour­age you to accept total respon­si­bil­i­ty for the choic­es you are mak­ing. You have the bound­less oppor­tu­ni­ty to stop mak­ing excus­es — to open your eyes, and to make bet­ter choices.

Just let your eyes open. Accept what is right in front of you. The “classroom of your life” is providing you with feedback, both in your interactions with others, and through your body.

The peo­ple we meet are, as I see it, the peo­ple we are “sup­posed to meet.” Same with every­thing we engage with. Rather than ignor­ing or argu­ing with the “mes­sage” of the per­son, place or thing, I might more sim­ply ask myself, “What does this have to say to me?” If you are stuck, and you know it, then begin lis­ten­ing to every­thing, and espe­cial­ly your body, very carefully.

Talk to a therapist you trust.

Ded­i­cate your­self to lis­ten­ing to each of your “lessons,” as opposed to get­ting hit over the head with a big one, every year or so.

What’s right in front of you, that you refuse to accept? What les­son, what body expe­ri­ence, do you keep get­ting, again and again, and why are you resist­ing deal­ing with it?

And why is it, week after week, that these arti­cles seem to be writ­ten just for you? Coin­ci­dence? I think not.

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