DR. FEIT
In 2006 I graduated from Idaho State University with a Masters in Counseling Psychology. When I started my studies there I quickly became acquainted with the Dean of the Counseling Department, Dr. Feit, He resembled how I had always pictured Santa Clause. He was full of wisdom and compassion and at times it seemed like he was looking right through me.
I learned a lot about myself from this man, but he also taught me a lot about people in general, about why we do what we do, and what hold us back. I remember a day I asked him an important question. To me there seemed to me to be some commonality in all our experiences, all our struggles and pains. So I asked Dr. Feit the question that had been on my mind, “Isn’t there a pattern or common thread to everyone’s experience?” I remember very clearly his answer and it has shaped my work with clients ever since. He said, “It’s been my experience that one way or another nearly everyone is dealing with what I call feeling fat, dumb or ugly.”
Another way of expressing this idea is most everyone, to some degree, is fighting feelings of being helpless, hopeless and worthless. There is in many of us an inner conflict between our desire to be enough and our fear of not being enough. Some do a good job of managing it and rarely, if ever, suffer from the effects. Others are consumed by their perceived shortcomings and it dominates their thoughts and actions bringing with it unnecessary pain and suffering.
When this internal battle wages unchecked, it begins to spill out in how we treat others. How we treat others is often a reflection of how we feel about, and treat, ourselves. Over time this battle, this fear, will turn our hearts to war continually. Warring against ourselves and against others in our lives. In reality they are afraid they are helpless, hopeless and worthless, they are afraid they are “Fat, Dumb and Ugly.”
The first step in your journey of personal peace and growth, is to explore and quiet this internal battle. The goal of this article is to assist you in starting the journey of moving from a heart at war, to a heart at peace by helping you become aware of it. Only then will you be in a place where you can fill that heart with all the positive things in this world. Only then will you really have enough space to share yourself with others in a meaningful and fulfilling way. This authentic sharing of yourself is the most powerful tool you have in building a meaningful life.
DAVE
“No, my son, do not aspire for wealth and labor not only to be rich. Strive instead for happiness, to be loved and to love, and most important to acquire peace of mind and serenity.” ~Og Mandino
I want to share with you another story.
When I was a counselor a man named Dave was referred to my office by Intermountain Hospital, a mental health hospital working with patients affected by mental and emotional stress or chemical dependency. Dave was in his late fifties and had been just released from the hospital after having been treated due to an attempted suicide. I felt the weight of the situation as I began to gather his information and listened to his story. Dave had truly wanted to die, and had made a sincere attempt at ending his life. Often attempts at suicide are efforts to call out for help, but this was not the case with this man in my office that day. Dave didn’t feel he had anything to live for, in fact he felt he was a failure and was a burden to his wife and family.
As we sat and talked I began to wonder how he had developed this belief about himself. Dave had been a young professional rodeo rider; he had served his country in Vietnam and came back a hero, earning many metals for his bravery. He was a man’s man, hard working and dedicated. He had become an accountant by trade and therefore spent much of his day at a desk going over spreadsheets and reports. However, due to a back injury he had suffered a couple years prior, he had been experiencing debilitating pain, no doubt complicated by years of rough living as a youth. Doctors had tried everything Dave would let them try and had resorted to prescribing strong pain medications. Yet for Dave the medication made it difficult for him to think clearly, and the pain made it impossible to sit at a desk, both of which were interfering with his ability to do his job. He had been in and out of employment, which brought added stress to the family finances and ultimately to him being admitted to Intermountain, and now sitting across from me.
Dave expressed how he felt worthless, and I could literally feel the contempt he had for himself as he spoke. His wife and daughter relied on him to provide and he had failed them, and he made it clear to me he deserved to die, he needed to die.
When I’m working with a client, I always try to figure out this person feels loved, how they interpret their value, what they see as the goal. Its clear Dave felt he had lost his value simply because he couldn’t provide. In his mind he was no longer useful. I asked myself, where could he have learned once you’ve lost your usefulness you need to be destroyed? I knew Dave grew up on a farm and that is the mentality of a farmer who raises animals for slaughter. On the farm once the animals have matured or are no longer useful they are put down. If indeed that’s Dave’s belief, perhaps I could remind him that he isn’t an animal and his value is far greater.
The next week, I was meeting with Dave again in my office and he happened to mention he had worked on his Uncle’s farm when he was growing up. Out of curiosity I asked, “Oh really, what did you do on the farm?” Dave’s answer got my attention, “What kept us most busy is we provided the farmers in the area a service, they would bring their animals to us and we would slaughter them for a fee.” As I processed this with Dave, I began to see that indeed this experience as a child had helped to inform him of his own purpose and worth. The goal in his mind was simply to do the job he had to do, his definition of “useful.” If that was no longer possible, then he was worthless, in the way, and needed to be put down. As I reminded him he wasn’t one of those animals and his value was far greater to his wife and child, he burst into tears somehow knowing it was true, but desperately needing the reminder.
The remainder of my time with Dave over the following weeks was spent helping him answer the question, “Why do I matter?” He had a task in front of him of rediscovering his value and how that could bless everyone around him.
FEAR AVOIDING BEHAVIORS
Dave turned his fear into anger and then directed it at destroying himself. The problem here isn’t the fear itself, but rather Dave’s way of avoiding the fear. You see fear is a very uncomfortable feeling, and we will always try to minimize its effects on us. Our problems occur when we don’t face our fears but instead try to compensate for them in some way, or avoid them in hopes they will go away. I might even make the claim that all our problematic behaviors are a result of trying to avoid our fear of helpless, hopeless, and worthless in one way or another. There are many strategies people use to avoid fear.
Several years ago when I was riding my Harley across the deserts of Oregon and I was contemplating this idea. On my bike I came up with what I call “Fear Avoiding Behaviors”
I want to share them with you briefly just to demonstrate the many ways we avoid our fear. We won’t spend much time discussing each of them, but perhaps you might see yourself in some of them.
- The Imposter – Fear Disguised
- The Inner Critic – Fear Turned Inward
- The Bully – Fear Announced
- The Dictator – Fear Acted Out
- The Addict – Fear Replaced
- The Victim – Fear Deflected
- The Blind Man – Fear Denied
- The Loner – Fear Ignored
- The Comedian – Fear Minimized
- The Intellectual – Fear Intellectualized
- The Procrastinator – Fear Delayed
I believe their could be many more fear avoiding behaviors, but the point here is avoiding fear isn’t the way to peace, the only way is to face it and deal with it directly.
WHEN ARE YOU ENOUGH?
Another persona of fear are those that don’t necessarily avoid their fear but assume that what they are afraid of is true, that they aren’t currently enough and their solution is to simply try harder to be more, to be enough. I call this group “The Achievers”
The problem with this way of thinking is we see our self worth as a bar we somehow must reach. “If only I could ______________ then I’d be enough.” Again this doesn’t address the underlying problem, and as a result, as we approach the bar we set, it just moves higher. Because regardless of what we do, we still feel inadequate or worthless. In actuality, most of us don’t even know when we would consider ourselves enough. It’s an ambiguous goal, which can never really be obtained. At what point would you ever step across that line where you would say, “OK now I’m good.” It will never happen.
ACCEPT YOUR BROKENNESS
So what is the solution? I’m my mind there is only one solution and that rests in how we perceive ourselves.
Let me see if I can somehow summarize what we’ve discussed so far to setup this solution.
All of us want to be accepted, its part of our DNA. We are social creatures and are created for connection. At the very heart of that, is the fear we are broken, worthless, that we aren’t enough, that we will be rejected and alone.
We can’t change our DNA, we can’t change our need to be loved, so the only thing we can change is our definition of enough.
The fact is we are all broken in one way or another, the problem is we assume because we are broken we have not value. That’s the mistake Dave, made and it’s the same mistake many of us make too.
Here is the idea that will help you make an important shift in your thinking today. A shift that will help you start a new life. “Being broken doesn’t make you worthless, it makes you worthy.”
I had another client, an older woman who had suffered abuse in her teens. I’ll call her Sara. For 50 years she carried around the burned of her brokenness. She felt worthless and that reflected in her relationships, her economic situation and her emotional wellbeing. For several weeks I sat across from her as she shared the details of her trauma, as she had done with many counselors in the past. It was like she was reliving it over and over again. Despite her struggles, she was one of the most loving and compassionate people I had ever met.
When I felt, I had her trust I began to ask her questions. “Sara, as I’ve gotten to know you, I have to tell you, you are one of the most loving people I have ever met. What do you attribute that to? She thought for awhile and then said, “I suppose its because I understand and empathize with others pain.” I then asked, “why do you think that is?” She replied, “Because I’ve experienced so much pain myself.”
I then turned to her and said, “Lets imagine I could magically remove the trauma from your youth, all your memories of that trauma, and all its effects. I would do that for you. However, with the removal of that from your life, you would also lose all that you have become because of that experience. You might lose some of your empathy, your concern for others and your remarkable ability to love. Would you want me to change your past?
She thought about this even longer and then said, “I would not allow you to change a single thing.”
In that moment Sara realized she wasn’t worthless, she was worthy. Her pain, her brokenness, is what was special about her. It’s what connected her to the human condition, and to all of us who are also broken. It fueled her love and compassion.
We may admire what we perceive as perfect in others, but we aren’t drawn to it like we are the imperfections of those we meet. Somehow the human weaknesses of others give us permission to be broken ourselves.
The problem is our definition of enough, we are already enough, and it’s our very brokenness that makes it so.
Just as a last thought I want to share with you a quote from Rumi a 13th century Persian poet.
“Your defects are the ways that glory gets manifested. Whoever sees clearly what is diseased in himself begins to gallop on the way. There is nothing worse than thinking you are well enough.” ~Rumi
