EVERYBODY HAS SOMETHING

One of the most consistent pieces of truth that I’ve come to understand in the course of over three decades of working with people as a therapist and Life Coach is this: Everybody has something that they struggle with, have struggled with, or will struggle with.

Some of us come into the world with a tendency toward depression; others with a tendency toward anxiety; others with a tendency toward obsessions or compulsions, others with a kind of thin skin that lets in a sometimes harsh world too deeply.

We are very complex beings, all of us. Some of us have learned to master our struggles, even to the point of tremendous grace and joy; others are still working on it, with good days and not so good days.

But the image of some kind of perfect, untroubled, constantly joyful and serene and bold and perfect life is an image from Hollywood; we are much more complex and magnificent than that.

Don’t confuse what I’m saying with some kind of defeatist resignation to the suffering of life. That is absolutely not my point.

My point is that if you are struggling with something; if you sometimes get depressed, or anxious, or obsessive, or scared, or confused, or distracted, or lazy, or feel overwhelmed… there is nothing unusual about you. These are all well within the normal range of human functioning, and they represent challenges to master, not failures to feel ashamed of.

The issues are not the issue. How you deal with them is.

One popular way that people have been dealing with them lately is through drugs. Kids are being put on psychoactive medication at very young ages, because they feel sad, or anxious, or can’t sit still for seven hours straight at school. Most of these medications were tested on adults for short term use. Many of them are now given to children for long term use.

I won’t go into the details of psychopharmacology. That is not my expertise. But I will recommend to you a book that was recommended to me by Martin Seligman – not some kind of militant, anti-medication activist, but perhaps the most respected psychologist in the field today.

The book is Anatomy of an Epidemic, by Robert Whittaker. It is an eye opening book at what these medications actually do long term.

What I will talk about is how putting kids on medication for emotions they have not yet mastered can inhibit a very natural human process that we’ve been going through since the dawn of time: While we are growing up, part of our job is to master our emotions.

That means that if we tend to get sad easily, or anxious, or if we have obsessions or compulsions, or sensitivity, or impulsiveness, or difficulty focusing, our job is not to make it "go away;" our job is to learn what we need to do to cope with those feelings or impulses. Our job is to pay attention to what helps us and what makes us feel worse. Our job is to master our internal emotional and psychological experience.

In the past, there wasn’t much professional understanding of these things. But at least two of America’s founders paid attention to them, personally, in very different ways.

George Washington, if he were being talked about from a psychological perspective today, would be said to have "anger issues." He could have quite a temper. But it wasn’t something that most people saw. Why is that? Read his Rules for Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation, and you’ll find out. He worked hard and mastered his temper, and his other emotions.

If a science fiction writer were to cast Washington for a part in Star Trek, he would be a Vulcan. Vulcans, according to the story, attain supreme control of their emotions, not because they don’t have emotions, but because their emotions were too intense and out of control to allow them free rein.

Washington was not a victim of his emotional challenge; he used it to master himself to the point that his strength of will and character has become an archetype of determination, dignity and self-control. Washington literally made himself who he became.

Benjamin Franklin also took a conscious approach to self-mastery. In his Autobiography, he mapped out a strategy to practice and achieve several areas of virtue. This did not somehow make him perfectly virtuous;  what this practice did was to help him consciously become more virtuous, and in the process a stronger, better man.

What we see with these two giants of human history are small insights into what were certainly much more complex challenges. We only see a glimpse of what they decided to share with us. One of the great honors and benefits of having worked with people as a therapist and a life coach for so long is that I have been witness to hundreds and hundreds of individual examples of such struggle… and such mastery.

The first step is always self-acceptance. Accepting what is true right now, even though we don’t want it to be true in the future, allows us to have enough distance from whatever our particular issues are that we can begin to find ways to master them.

Self acceptance allows us to come to view our troubling emotions, or impulses, or thoughts, as we would wild animals like raccoons meandering through our backyard. We don’t have to be afraid of them; we don’t have to chase them away frantically. We also don’t have to feed them.

Just watch whatever it is you are struggling with; accept that it exists, and that you have some work to do in order to master it.

Then the work begins, noticing what helps, and what doesn’t. Getting support if you need it, giving yourself a break when you’re tired, and accepting the challenge as a normal part of human existence.

We all have something that we work to master in ourselves. Some of us are faced with deeper challenges, and that may take more work, more support, and a more deliberate allotment of time and energy to wrestle with them. For some of us the challenges are less difficult, or somewhere along the way we found support or tools or mentorship that have helped us to deal well with them.

Fortunately today there are much clearer and more effective strategies for learning such mastery (which is what I spend my time learning and teaching these strategies – custom tailoring them as a Life Coach, and teaching them in a more general form through my writing and presentations).

If you feel that you’re struggling with emotions, or thoughts, or challenges that you’ve yet to master, don’t despair, or berate yourself, or resign yourself to suffering. Accept that what’s true is true, and know that whatever you’re struggling with has been struggled with by literally millions of other people.

You’re not broken… you’re just human. And there may be work yet to do.

Today begins a new venture for me. I begin authoring a weekly column for the Oxford Club called "Spiritual Wealth." My friend Alex Green has been writing this column for several years, and has asked me to step in and take over for him. I’ll still be writing "The Virtue of Happiness" for TTP of course, though perhaps a little less often; but starting today you can also go to www.spiritualwealth.com and you can find more of my writing and advice there. Please take a look, and let others know as well!