Inhabiting Solitude

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By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

“All I want to do is eat chocolate cake and sleep.”

“I accidentally tried to hug my neighbor whose brother just died, and she shrank back like I was a cobra.”

“Some guy told me to stop petting his cat.”

These are weird times.

My therapist friends and I have all been messaging each other about the transition to telehealth in response to the pandemic.  We miss the immediacy and vibrancy of in-person sessions. Between audio glitches and freezing screens, we miss the ease that being in the same room as our clients provided. Like all of us, we are doing our best, figuring it out as we go along.

None of us know how long this situation will last. We don’t know how bad it will get. We don’t know if all of our loved ones will survive. We don’t know if the supply chain will be interrupted. We don’t know the long-term effect on the economy.

Humans like to quantify. We want to know what to expect and how to prepare. To feel safe, we want know what’s coming and how to endure or enjoy it.

And that is precisely what we don’t get to know right now. In the absence of certainty, many of us default to following the news as closely as we can. In this new landscape of invisible enemies, virologists and epidemiologists are the leaders. Doctors and nurses the front-line soldiers.

We must take this pandemic seriously enough to radically change our behavior for the foreseeable future. No more get togethers. No more movie theatres, or restaurants or nights out on the town. No more school. Every surface that someone touched is a possible transmission spot.

On the other hand, we still need to walk the dog, cook meals, vacuum, fold laundry. Focusing on small, doable tasks brings a sense of normalcy, of continuity to our lives.  We need to balance taking appropriate personal responsibility for protecting others along with continuing to have a full life that includes love, learning, exercise, joy, mindfulness, flavor, progress, and creativity.

As we drill down deep in to our time at home, with family if we are lucky enough to have them in the same household (and you’re right, it doesn’t always feel like luck) I wish for you an opening into realms you haven’t visited since childhood. I wish for you thinking time, staring into space time, imagining time. Dream time is slow and mysterious and a rich source of creative inspiration.

On the other end of this situation, we can emerge rested and connected to our deepest selves, ready to engage with one another from a place of deep gratitude.

Viral Fears

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Here in Seattle we have the unfortunate claim of being the epicenter of the US outbreak of the Novel Corona virus. Diagnostic criteria are still being refined, and confirmed cases increase daily. Most public gatherings have been cancelled, some schools have closed, and travel is being put on hold. This flu seems to be most dangerous for our elderly and immunocompromised, so it is unlike the influenza epidemic of 1918 which was especially lethal for young adults and children. It does however seem quite contagious.

For the majority of us, even if we get it and must quarantine ourselves, the most likely negative consequence is loss of income/education and a certain degree of cabin fever. These are inconvenient but luxurious concerns compared to death.

A good citizen is one who cares for the group as a whole. Even though we may be below age seventy and free of underlying health issues, we are each responsible for doing our part to care for the tribe that is the public. It is likely that a good number of us will need to quarantine to slow the progress of this virus.

Here are some measures that can be taken to reduce transmission:

1. Wash all of your clothes each time you wear them. It appears that the virus can live on fabric for up to a week. The dryer is a germ-killing machine.
2. Clean “high touch” areas such as door knobs, light switches, faucets and handles daily. At work don’t open doors or turn on/off faucets with your bare hands.
3. Wipe your phone screen and computer keyboard daily.
4. Wash your hands like an OCD person: hot water, twenty seconds of lathering, plus a paper towel equals clean.
5. At home, switch out your kitchen and bathroom hand-towels every day. Or switch to paper towels for the duration.
6. Try not to touch your face. This is hard! With every itch, I’m going through tissues like a fiend.

In preparation for your mental health needs, under self-quarantine:

• Put together a list of projects for yourself and your kids in the categories of household, yard and bedroom tasks as well as creative/intellectual projects so you can still experience purpose and progress in your life.  
• Pull out those books you’ve been meaning to read.
• While you’re still healthy and mobile, get the ingredients to tackle cooking something new and challenging. An hour of prep is nothing for someone with two weeks of 24 hours to fill.
• Maintain a normal sleep/wake schedule. Late nights watching Netflix plus isolation are a recipe for depression.

No matter what happens:

1. The amygdala and limbic systems are the portions of the brain responsible for recognizing potential danger. The news is a constant amygdala stimulation event. The prefrontal cortex can calm the hindbrain down with conscious and soothing self-talk. Use your prefrontal cortex.

We will get through this.

New Year New You

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I’m trying to do this thing that I’m really lousy at. It stimulates all of my defenses: fatigue, defeat, distraction, avoidance. I’m trying to create a new web site, and to do it myself because that’s a thing now…normal non-tech people can write articles and use a template to create their very own website.

Thirteen years ago, I hired my best friend’s husband and he did a great job putting my website together.  But every time I raised my fees or wanted to add info about a group or list my latest presentation, I had to go through him. Then he went and got a full-time job (so rude!) on top of being a part time musician (selfish!) so I didn’t want to ask him to find the one free hour in his week to work for me.

I like thinking and writing. Unfortunately thinking and writing are abstract and real-world change requires decisiveness on the material plane. Paint colors aside (I’m really good at choosing paint colors) I fairly suck at the million-and-one decisions required to do complex projects. My partner recently built me the sweetest little writing studio in the world. In addition to building it, he also took on the design so that I didn’t have to decide layout or siding material or the slope of the roof. Those kinds of choices overwhelm me. And so it is with designing my own website. As I look over my articles from thirteen years ago, I realize my thinking has changed so I need to update them. I need to choose a new domain name. I need to decide if this picture should be centered on this zone, while losing this other zone. On and on the decisions roll.

I’ve decided that this year my theme will be boldness. I will be trying new things, scary things, things that help me grow and become more competent and to feel more alive. I will take risks and adventure forward because here I am in the middle of my life and I want to expand my possibilities, rather than retract into stale routine.

My hope for you, dear reader is that for this new, untouched year of your one precious life, you make a commitment to pick one under-developed area to grow and nurture. You’re not the same as me so your area of construction will probably be different. Maybe you’ve got boldness on tap and could use more empathy.  Maybe you work constantly and could slow down. Maybe you check your phone obsessively and could commit to putting it away when you are with others. Whatever you chose, I wish you success and joy in the pursuit.  Meanwhile, I’ll be working on my new website.

The Diva and the Doormat

by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

We find balance between the extremes Two common extremes have to do with how we relate to other people. On the one side, you have your divas. These are the folks who require an outsized amount of time and consideration to engage with the larger world. They are always running late. They need to curl their hair, paint their nails, and have the temperature just so. There was a rock band in the 80’s that shall remain nameless (only because I can’t remember) that had written into their performance contract that the stage be kept at a perfect 70 degrees for all their outdoor venues. They traveled with a thermometer.  They refused to play if the temperate was off by two degrees. These guys were major divas. Ironically, divas put themselves under massive pressure to look good and perform perfectly under all circumstances, and because no one can look good or perform perfectly in all circumstances, they try to control the circumstances which means controlling everyone around them. Family members, employees, neighbors and community members are all reduced to delivery tools in the diva’s insatiable quest for comfort.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have the doormats. They apologize preemptively. They don’t ask for what they want. They back down immediately when challenged. They practically invite domination. These folks accept mistreatment because they have disconnected from their own self-protective anger in order to protect their connection with others. They don’t believe themselves to be worth sticking up for.  Doormats are the parents who beg their near-adult children to clean up after themselves. The women who stay with mean or unreliable men. The men who stay with cruel and demeaning women. Doormats behave in passive aggressive ways because they still get mad about mistreatment, and they still punish mistreatment, but they don’t have the relational power or the emotional skill to have direct conversations about their needs.

Many people flip between diva and doormat behavior, depending on their perception of the importance of the other person. If you want to see a bunch of doormats, watch the behavior of people around a famous person. They ogle, they fawn, they do everything except act like they might have their own important ideas. If you want to see a diva, watch modern hip-hop videos. They show off money, (doormat) girls, weapons, all the symbols of social importance and dominance.

If you want to be as emotionally healthy as possible, avoid these extremes. Also avoid people who exhibit these extremes.

Good Stuff

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

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Lately I’ve been chewing on the balance between care of self and service to others.  I believe we all exist in a web of connection. Consider the underground fungus: it transmits nutrients to tree roots, which keeps the trees alive and in return protects the fungus from drying out.  If the fungus gives away too much of its nutrients it dies, and if it gives away too little, it struggles to live.

As humans, we hold this tension of self versus other constantly: Do we check in on our elderly neighbor or take those few extra minutes to savor some time alone?

Too much service to others creates depletion, resentment and fatigue.  Co-dependents are not happy people. They give and give, and exhaust themselves and wind up indignant and angry that their needs are never someone else’s top priority.

On the other hand, folks who only care for themselves, who spend their time and energy in sole pursuit of their own betterment suffer from isolation and meaninglessness. Without sustained and reciprocal connection to others, our existence lacks purpose.

I want to live in the intersection, to promote and protect my own well-being without apology while actively supporting the well-being of others. There’s a way to do this, but it takes a spirit of experimentation and willingness to make mistakes and plenty of time to get it right and then have the balance go and shift on you so that what worked at one point no longer works. No matter, its what we’re here for. Share your good stuff. Just make sure you keep some of it for yourself.

Relationship Repair

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I once called a client a “walking vagina.”  For real. This was years ago.  I’d like to think I’m more delicate with my Sword of Sarcasm these days; but the truth is I’m not always able to tell the difference between useful humor which cuts through defenses and damaging humor which just hurts feelings.

I know I’m a weirdo and my humor can be fully wrong. I rely on the quality of the relationship, the trust my clients feel towards me that they can come back and tell me if something I say lands in a way that hurts rather than helps or clarifies. This requires trust and courage on the part of my client and humility and non-defensiveness on my part. And it’s helluva good practice for IRL—because people (including this therapist) are imperfect and language is an abstract, approximate tool for building reality.

The backstory of my inappropriate comment was this: my young adult client was being texted in the middle of the night by a guy who was only interested in no-strings-attached sex, while she had a huge crush and yearned for a relationship with this same fellow. This happened enough times that she knew what was going on, but still found it irresistible when he booty-called her. I was trying to engage her self-protective anger to increase her ability to resist him. So, I told her he was treating her like a vagina delivery service. This worked! She stopped responding to him. Yay! But I also hurt her feelings. Boo!

When I hear about how many supposedly terrible therapists there are out there, I wonder what the hell is wrong with my profession?! Then I wonder: what if there are just these unfortunate moments when the therapist is trying to say something useful in a unique, therefore noticeable way but they get it wrong?  And if the client feels hurt but they don’t go back and have a conversation, then the comment becomes this toxic thing that erodes trust. And that doesn’t even include the (abundant!) times when the therapist is trying to summarize what is happening and they just don’t get it.

In real life, like in therapy, we are constantly trying to understand one another, communicate needs, make meaning, provide care, and feel received. If you have conflict in your life or in your therapy, try this: call upon your courage and talk to that person.  It might not work. They might lack humility or willingness to hear your perspective. They might deny responsibility for hurting you, and when that happens it really sucks. And it might work: you might feel better understood or better understand where they were coming from. But no matter how they respond, you will be operating from a place of courage and willingness to process your pain, rather than withdraw from connection.

Trusting Teens

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By Tanya Ruckstuhl

My kids are seventeen now, and share their own car. Each milestone towards their independence feels like a celebration and loss both. Parenting teenagers is categorically different than parenting younger children. For one thing, they have strongly held opinions and great oratory skills. Teenagers are natural born litigators, able to argue a point to (my) exhaustion.

When they were young, my primary job as a parent was exposure: to provide safe and stimulating experiences so that they would experience the world as a large, varied and mostly safe place. All our trips to the parks, aquarium, zoo, swimming and even the grocery store were fun ways to build that understanding.

Now that they are older, my job has shifted from creating their experiences to supporting their choices. It’s mostly my job now to affirm their competence, to offer my opinion but to always convey the message “I trust your judgement.” When we are trusted, we feel and are more competent and make better choices.

One of my sons has taken on a heavy load of volunteering and working on top of a demanding academic schedule. He loves his volunteer work and loves the money he makes at work. He doesn’t want to give any of it up. Now his boss is asking him to work both weekend days. I feel protective of his free time and don’t want him to.  We discussed why he should limit his working hours and how to respectfully set a boundary. At the end of the conversation, he rehearsed what he would tell his boss and I complimented him on his word choice. It was different than mine. It was better. More succinct. The whole conversation was one of those lovely opportunities where I could still exert some appropriate protection by sharing my ideas and he could then handle the situation on his own entirely.

If you have teenagers in your home, be sure to tell them that you trust their judgement. It’s so important to their emerging independence to feel and to be seen as competent.

 

Of Plants and People

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By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

As the Equinox draws near, signs of spring are everywhere. Crocuses poke their fragile heads up from the ground, fat buds of future flowers weigh down the tips of rhododendrons and camellias in the garden. The snowfall and rain made the earth heavy and wet. I’ve been swapping around roses and hydrangeas, responding to new light patterns after the weight of the snow broke off tree branches that created shade.  The hydrangeas need filtered, indirect light and the roses prefer strong, baking sun.

People are like plants in the garden; different people need different things. Some people thrive best with low levels of stimulation. For these folks, a trip to the market on a Sunday afternoon constitutes all the weekend excitement they need. Others are more stimulation seeking and need social, physical and intellectual pursuits during down time.

The hydrangea is a picky beauty. She needs a lot of water and ample shade. But she’s also a prolific bloomer and one of the only flowers that doesn’t need dead-heading. Worth it! Roses, meanwhile are just as needy. While you don’t have to water them nearly as frequently, they need fertilizer, protection from leaf mold, aphids, deep watering, and plenty of sunlight. You will stab and slice yourself if you keep roses because no matter how careful you are, thorns are sneaky. But a rose in full bloom is the one of the greatest delights. Well, after puppies. And our own children.

In this time of transition, think about your needs. No matter how resilient or tough you are, if you are not taking care of yourself, you will not be able to express your full potential. Like my hydrangeas and roses, you might need a new environment or some other small or large change to be at your best. The cool thing about being human is we have both brains AND mobility. Plants, alas do not. You must cultivate your environment (relationship, home, job, friends, education, activities) to meet your needs. I wish you great success in the garden of your life!

How to Change the World

by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

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A sense of personal agency—that powerful feeling of having the ability to make your life mostly the way you want it—is a historically unprecedented capacity for women and a luxury that largely belongs mainly to the privileged (Caucasian cis-gender) citizens of the western world.

Context acknowledged, most of my readers are those genetically and geographically and gender-identifying (ha! Try saying that five times in a row, fast!) fortunate Americans, so you have massive capacity for personal agency, but may not quite know it.

What does personal agency have to do with mental health?  Only everything! If you feel you can point yourself in the direction you want to go—make a new friend, finish your degree, negotiate a raise, adopt fifteen stray cats,—then you can figure out a strategy to get there—strike up a conversation with your neighbor, research university programs designed for working adults, make a list of job accomplishments and ask for a meeting with your boss, invest in an industrial sized bag of kitty litter.

Without personal agency, life is just happening to us. We are at the mercy of the economy, the whims of our boss, the vicissitudes of life.  Like children awaiting dinner and hoping for pasta, we have wants but are passive, and passivity equals powerless.

Girls in particular are raised to deny their needs. In order to be ladylike and nurturing, we are taught to take care of everyone else first and then (only if there is time) to attend to ourselves. Boys meanwhile, are taught to “shake it off” when they are physically injured and shamed “don’t be a baby” when they are emotional. Girls are raised to accommodate everyone except themselves, and boys are raised to dominate everyone including themselves.  It’s crappy social programming resulting in massive, unresolved pain and the compulsive need to escape it.

This creates a society of men and women who are completely estranged from their authentic selves, from the internal voice that knows our deepest needs and wants, and therefore has no power to fulfill them.  This estrangement and the resulting feelings of emptiness creates enormous resentment and insatiability.

It’s why we have major obesity epidemic in our country: because unmet needs show up in crooked ways and calories are comforting when you work twelve hours a day or stuff your pain down because your life fits like a too-small pair of shoes. Its why pot shops are becoming as common as coffee shops here in the Seattle landscape: because if you are hurting and don’t know how to make the pain stop, you just want to distract yourself from the pain. It’s why so many people can’t hang out alone without a television on in the background or a phone screen in their hand. Distraction is easier than taking responsibility for changing your life, but folks: Taking responsibility is a LOT more powerful, interesting and liberating.

The only way out of this mess is taking time to get to know yourself. There are a million ways to go about it: meditation, journaling, time alone in nature, reflection time over coffee, any creative practice, building things, moving slowly in silence, stillness. You need just three ingredients: curiosity, solitude and quiet. Curiosity is like an opening into the possible, it’s a deeply spiritual state. And we can’t enter into a state of curiosity about ourselves in the midst of other people or distractions of any form.

As we move through autumn, with its slower pace and gorgeous foliage, I wish for you dear reader, protected time to get in touch with yourself so that you can find out what you need deep down, below the incessant and noisy surface wants. Try saying “no” to a few demands on your calendar, and reinvest that time into yourself. Take a candle-lit bath. Go for a slow walk in a beautiful setting.

I wish you great patience with your wants and needs, and faith in your own secret strength and power.  I wish you to exercise your personal agency to make your life a beautiful, sturdy, comfortable fit.

 

The Genius of Anger

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

When I was a kid I loved magnifying glasses. They seemed like a magical portal to a secret world: like Alice in Wonderland drinking the elixir which made her shrink and grow, magnifying glasses changed everything. Ants went from simple black specks to armored warriors.  Grass became a complex, mysterious world of sharp edges and shadows. Sunlight went from general brightness to burning laser. I yearned to someday own an old fashioned, wooden handled magnifying glass.

I’ve come to think of anger as a type of magnifying glass. If that sounds random (and it probably does) bear with me. Anger offers—demands–we pay attention to our core values. We get angry when we believe that something or someone is threatening our core values. Anger magnifies our emotion to get us to pay attention to and protect our values.

Now there are folks out there who get mad at everything and everyone: the weatherman for predicting rain, the government for collecting taxes, the neighbor for taking too long to pull in their trashcans. To these folks I’d say get therapy (but not me, I don’t enjoy your kind). They also are responding to a perceived threat to their value system but like a rescue dog who bites when frightened, they lack the emotional wellbeing to tell when they should and should not feel safe.

I’m addressing this blog to the vast majority of us who are not constantly (and tediously!) angry, but who struggle with recognizing anger as a useful tool in navigating relationships.  Typically, we feel angry when we feel duped, taken advantage of, disrespected, or mistreated in some way. Likewise, we feel angry when these things happen to someone we care about. Anger holds in its flaming heart the certain knowledge that we are WORTH something, that we are precious and worth protecting. Healthy anger is the safeguard of self-esteem.

Seen through this lens, anger is a useful reaction to a threat to the safety of connection between people. Anger is fuel propelling us with courage to stand up for ourselves, to set boundaries, to name the thing that we cannot and should not ignore. Anger is a wicked cool sword that cuts through the bullshit of pandering and placating to show us our own raw truths.

Skillful communication of anger protects relationships by protecting boundaries. If I don’t allow myself to be mistreated, I can stay safely connected. If I let myself be mistreated I either have to give up my safety or I have to sever the relationship. Anger is the opposite of apathy, and apathy is the opposite of love. Anger and love are inextricably wound into all of the relationships we treasure because every deep, long term connection involves imperfect people. All of us make mistakes, have blind spots and character flaws, lack complete understanding and inevitably fail one another at different times.

So if you want love in your life, be prepared to sometimes be pissed off. Be prepared to piss off the ones you love. Allow the experience to slow you down, just like a magnifying glass in the hands of a curious kid. Anger springs from your deepest values and offers lessons about areas of yourself that you need to refine: your expectations, your boundaries, your capacity to hang in there and stay respectful. It teaches you how to meet the world without being a doormat. Anger gives insight into your own code of fairness. When you or the ones you love are angry, don’t run away, but rather magnify the moment. Be prepared to listen and to speak your truth.

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