Meaning & Purpose

Many of my clients have struggled with deep questions of meaning and purpose. Do you have room in your life to ask what it all means? Or why you are here? Do others give you a real chance to voice these questions? Does the world respond to your desire for a deep purpose in life? Does the culture somehow tell you it’s not okay to ask these questions? Do you feel isolated? Despairing? Confused?

These questions can hit you at any stage of life. Midlife definitely is one. We look back on what we’ve accomplished and not accomplished, our work, family, and relationships, and turn to the future. We may feel uncertain, as well as excited at the potential for transformation.

As we move past midlife into retirement years, profound changes that happen in relationships, work, and sometimes health can bring feelings of loss and crisis. Friends and loved ones begin to pass on, things that once seemed important don’t anymore, and life can undergo a radical reorientation.

The late teen and college years often bring up questions of meaning and purpose. How will we find our place in the world, and what will our lives mean? This time of life sometimes brings serious crisis. Our hopes for a good life and a better world can feel shaky.

The mid-20s to the early-30s can bring a quarter-life crisis. It’s a time of launching into the world, leaving the nests of home, family, and college. First jobs can be fun and stimulating, and also can be exhausting and difficult. Is this really what my life is going to be? we may ask. Deep relationships might be hard to come by, or hard to sustain.

Questioning life’s meaning and purpose is a difficult process. It benefits from a trusting relationship with a therapist who gets it—someone who doesn’t dismiss your concerns or try to fix them in five easy steps. Someone who listens and responds from a deep place.

If you’re looking for a therapist who will truly work with you on these concerns, I may be a good match for you. I will follow the threads of your questions and help the answers come in an organic process. You can learn to let the questions live in you and bring you alive in ways you couldn’t have predicted.

Divorce

Therapy and Divorce

Divorce can act as a rite of passage—an initiation into a new life.

By describing divorce in this way, I am not saying that it is a good or a bad event. But it does happen, and it happens frequently, and finding meaning and perspective during the process of divorce is crucial to healing and transformation.

Many of my clients have felt stuck in a marriage or committed, long-term relationship. On one end of the spectrum, partners may grow in different directions and struggle with feeling limited by the relationship. Other marriages face more damaging patterns. In these relationships, partners unconsciously hurt each other. Often these damaging patterns stem from early life relationships with parents and get replayed with the partner.

Couples therapy can clarify what’s been wrong and lead to renewed connection. Sometimes this renewed connection allows for a relationship that works well for both partners. Other times it becomes clear that the couple will separate.

If either or both partners have felt stuck and miserable for a long time, separating can release a great burst of energy that was bound up in the difficulties of maintaining an unhappy state together.

Whether splitting up brings this release or not, it still hurts. The life the couple dreamed of having together comes to a stop. Profound feelings of loss and grief can last for some time, and when one or both partners didn’t really want the divorce, these feelings can go on even longer and cause more suffering.

Some individuals will find themselves plunged into a depression during or after divorce. The question then becomes whether this dark time is barren of new life, or instead can become a kind of pregnant darkness that initiates the person into a fuller experience of his or her life. This is one area where therapy is especially helpful—to help midwife the client’s newly emerging life and provide support during a hard time.

After a divorce, my clients report a whole range of feelings, all of which are important to feel and work through in therapy. Feelings of grief, uncertainty, excitement, fear, loneliness, new potential, anxiety around finances, and many other feelings are part of the mix.

Questions of self-identity and the future often come up. Who am I apart from this other person and my relationship with them? Will I find another partner? Do I even want a relationship? Will I replay my own old patterns? How will I parent my kids (if there are children from the marriage)?

Divorce is a rite of passage that often comes during the midlife years from about age 35 through age 60. For so many, these years are a time of deep changes in many areas of life—relationships, parenting, health, and career. Clients find themselves turning inward, searching for answers, exploring complex feelings, redefining self-identity, and wondering about the future. This is an excellent time to find a therapist who can help you navigate these waters and embrace the new life that is waiting for you.

Jung’s Memories Dreams Reflections 6

Portland Therapy lighthouse

“Years ago I once drew up statistics on the results of my treatments. I no longer recall the figures exactly; but, on a conservative estimate, a third of my cases were really cured, a third considerably improved, and a third not essentially influenced. But it is precisely the unimproved cases which are hardest to judge, because many things are not realized and understood by the patients until years afterwards, and only then can they take effect. How often former patients have written to me: ‘I did not realize what it was really all about until ten years after I had been with you.” -C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 165.

Jung’s words here don’t sit well with the ego’s desire to be in control of outcomes from our psychological work. It’s a reasonable desire, though things tend to unfold in ways beyond our control, or even our capacity to understand. So much about our individuating remains a mystery. What a relief, really! Feel the release of not having to take all of the responsibility! Interesting too that Jung imagines seeds being sown during therapy that only years later sprout above ground. I’ve noticed this in my own therapy experiences as well as with clients at times. Try telling that to a mental health insurance company! Think of your personal development as an adventure that is unpredicable and exciting. Let your symptoms lead you to answers that you have an inkling of already but haven’t fully embraced.

Jung’s Memories Dreams Reflections 5

 

Mt. Hood

“Therapy is different in every case. When a doctor tells me that he adheres strictly to this or that method, I have my doubts about his therapeutic effect. So much is said in the literature about the resistance of the patient that it would almost seem as if the doctor were trying to put something over on him, whereas the cure ought to grow naturally out of the patient himself.” C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, pp. 152-3.

Is there a method in this madness? We might well ask that question about psychotherapy. After all, we’re trying to get down to the deep forces in a person’s psyche and create lasting shifts and hopefully stimulate a cure that, like Jung says, grows out of the individual personality. This process may not be quite so neat and clean as some therapies out there that basically follow a manual, a treatment plan devised somewhere by some researcher and applied to you the individual because your symptoms match a certain category like depression or anxiety. Yet personally I find that the changes that come out of Jung’s “natural cure” are more trustworthy. They tend to stick, in other words. I like what Jung is offering here–that depth psychotherapy involves the whole person in a very individual process of coming into being. He certainly lived this process of individuation out in his own life.

Jung’s Memories Dreams Reflections 4

“In many cases in psychiatry, the patient who comes to us has a story that is not told, and which as a rule no one knows of. To my mind, therapy only really begins after the investigation of that wholly personal story…. In therapy the problem is always the whole person, never the symptom alone. We must ask questions which challenge the whole personality.” C.G. Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, p. 138.

How often is the actual story of the patient ignored by “mental health providers” today? Jung makes this claim that therapy only begins with the personal story after relating an unusual case from early in his days as a psychiatrist for inpatients. He tells of a woman patient admitted with depressive symptoms. She gets diagnosed schizophrenic and is given a poor prognosis. Jung decides to develop a relationship with her and see if he can elicit her story. Turns out she has a terrible secret that lived in her and began destroying her psychologically. Once they get to what is tormenting her, she recovers and leaves the hospital.

We are each a complex amalgam of factors, from genetic predisposition to emotion to spirituality and everything in between. Therapy has to let in all the factors, and the whole person, who is greater than the sum of those factors.

Exploring Depth Psychotherapy

pathway to the psyche

Here’s a start to a few blog entries exploring important aspects of psychotherapy as practiced by depth psychologists of various stripes.
Let’s assume a basic working definition of depth psychotherapy. Let’s assume that it’s a form of therapy that goes out of its way to include the unconscious psyche in treatment. By unconscious psyche we mean at minimum certain dynamic patterns that are always at play beneath the surface of our awareness. Let’s assume that engaging the psyche stimulates growth and movement and often helps to ease problematic symptoms of emotional suffering.

So how does a therapist go about engaging the psyche? Truth is, there are lots of ways. There are lots of schools of thought in the history of depth psychotherapy, each with its own opinion about how this should be done. Today, as neuro-mania (the reduction of all psychological experience to brain phenomena) reveals its limits both as theory and treatment in psychiatry, renewed interest in the depths of the psyche is creating excitement as psychology begins to re-balance its lopsided though important focus on brain and behavior.

The best place to start exploring is the therapeutic relationship. Someone comes to therapy, usually in a state of suffering and concern. Something in the suffering–the symptoms–expresses the individual’s difficulty. I’ve found that it’s rare that people will seek out and commit to psychotherapy when they are feeling okay. Maybe they begin in a state of crisis and difficulty, and then begin to feel better, and continue therapy for the sake of further personal development, but it usually takes a painful difficulty, or symptoms, or a loss, or an illness, or a life crisis to bring a person into my office to begin an adventure of self-discovery and renewal.

The relationship of therapist and client therefore includes this aspect of seeking help, wanting relief and healing. At the same time, it’s odd to say yet definitely true that most people are ambivalent about the very same changes they long for. I can say this based on my experience both as a therapist and as a client! There’s something scary about change, apparently. Sometimes this is called resistance. Forces for change are mobilized, but so are forces against change. This is normal, and a good therapist makes room for ambivalence and facilitates change at the pace the client is okay with.

One fundamental gain in psychotherapy is the experience that the client has of being seen and understood. Having a hard time brings isolation, and most of us tend to hide the less fun aspects of our lives. Who wants to hear that? we say to ourselves. Or we try to share what’s going on, but it’s too much for our friends and families to handle, or seems to be. That’s why a depth psychologist will try and provide the kind of safe container that welcomes all of the client’s conscious and unconscious parts into the mix.

One final note for now: I’ve noticed over the years that many people in my office feel a deep longing that is almost unspeakable. Something is missing. It’s hard to say exactly what, but there is a felt sense of lack, and a heartache. I’m not saying therapy necessarily is the answer to this longing, but it can be surprisingly effective is accessing the longing and can even change the way a person gets to bring it into the world outside. Deep desire can lead to interesting transformations that ripple outward through a life. Transformation can happen from the inside – out. Inside the therapy office to outside in the world. Inside the inner self to outside in outer behaviors.

I will save this inner – outer dynamic for another post.

 

What Can’t be Spoken

I’ve had a little hiatus from writing here on this blog of mine. The holidays, travel, fun, stress, the usual suspects. And a certain hesitancy to pick up the virtual pen and write again. Even the word “blog” irritated me just now as I wrote that first sentence. Blog … what sort of word is that? Blog, bog, log, boggy feelings, being weighted down, a mere cog in the wheel … the associations that come to mind are not particularly pleasant. It sounds like something that gets stuck in one’s gut and needs medical intervention to remove it. “Thank God, I went into the surgecenter and got that blog removed yesterday. I feel so relieved!”

Can you feel my resistance and irritation? What can really be said, I wonder, in the end? What use are words? These are dangerous thoughts for a therapist who practices “the talking cure.” My funk will pass, I know, and likely I will write my way through it and into a space where the words mean something again. They will communicate thoughts and feelings, and I won’t feel so bloggy.

In the meantime, I will report that I have recently been perusing the websites of many local artists here in Portland, Oregon, exploring the art realm here and looking at many images of sculpture, painting, drawing, and photography. I have also been watching a few documentaries on great masters, including Pablo Picasso, Michelangelo, and Louise Bourgeois. Among the many motivations, conscious and unconscious, leading me to these explorations stands a feeling that sometimes the important things cannot be spoken. They must be formed into images.

In his book, The Art of Sculpture, Herbert Read identifies the work of sculpting as the artist’s formation into image of an emotive state that exists within. Whether this is a comprehensive definition that holds true for all sculpture in all times and all places I don’t know, and don’t frankly care. For my purposes it works well. Reading this led me to take up hammer and chisel myself this past week and begin shaping a large block of aerated concrete–into what form, I don’t yet know. But something is moving now; that much is clear. There is an intelligence and an emotional reality embedded in the material, and it’s my job to notice what it wants, and to help it come into being.

Already I feel less bloggy. Something like this process I am describing often happens in therapy. Things get stuck. Words don’t come, or when they do, they don’t say what we want to say. Then an image comes, in a dream, a waking fantasy, or a piece of artistic work, and the flow of communication of thoughts and feelings comes back, and with this flow words once again mean something, and even prove indispensable.

Midlife Crisis (and Transformation) in Portland?

What might a so-called midlife crisis really look like? And does it really happen here? In Portland, aren’t we (I’m generalizing to make a point) pretty well put-together? We’re conscious about the environment, intentional about what we eat, invested in local communities, authentic in relationships, and so on….

It’s not good or bad to have these ideas about being conscious and well-put together, but it’s important not to take them as literal truths. Part of the danger of such literalism is that something important could get overlooked: that there come times in life where our self-image falls apart–a little or a lot–and may even need to fall apart for us to transform. Midlife is a period where this sometimes happens, leading to a renewal of life and self.

The so-called midlife crisis is often seen in psychology as happening as early as 35 years old, and often later, at some point in the 40s or 50s. The psychologist Carl Jung contributed a lot to the psychology of midlife. Jung’s view feels a little old in some ways, but still holds deep insight if we adjust for cultural changes that have occurred since his time. Jung argued that the first part of adulthood usually focuses on adapting to life in society. We get educations, find work, build a career, have relationships, become parents, and thus establish a well put-together place in the world.

It’s usually once we have been through a lot of this stuff of life’s first half that we may reach a critical moment. It certainly doesn’t happen to everybody, but something may come along to upset the structures that we have so carefully built and tended in the first half of life. The outward cause of the upset could be a death, an illness, a divorce, the loss of a job, a new relationship, an inner malaise, a depression, trauma, or any number of events on the outside or inside of life that threaten to shake up the known structures of life and self.

A lot of strong feelings can come through during this time. It’s not necessarily all bad or all good feelings that come, but an intensity of feelings and a variety too. The Jungian analyst Murray Stein and others have written about midlife crisis as a kind of second adolescence. If you will remember the tumultuous feelings and developments of your first adolescence, you might get some flavor for the second adolescence of midlife. Like the teen years, midlife can be a major transition into a new phase: what Jung called the “second half of life.”

And like the teen years, midlife can feel unsettling. We can feel confused and uncertain of the future. It’s often a rich and satisfying time as well as a challenging one. We may begin to realize that the old structures of our life could use some readjusting. We may begin to enjoy living in ways we forgot we knew. A feeling of renewal can come, and a feeling of increasing freedom to be ourselves.

The midlife crisis and transformation doesn’t tend to happen without struggle. There’s a reason people in one form of midlife crisis or another end up in therapy. In Jung’s view, therapy can facilitate a long-term process of change. The uprooted feelings of midlife can lead into a new feeling of rootedness, deeper in our real selves than we had imagined possible. Then life can proceed out of a new source of vitality and development.

I ran across this poem by Pablo Neruda today, and I think its language evokes some of the feelings and potential of the so-called midlife crisis and transformation.

Lost In The Forest
by poet Pablo Neruda (1904-1973)

Lost in the forest, I broke off a dark twig
and lifted its whisper to my thirsty lips:
maybe it was the voice of the rain crying,
a cracked bell, or a torn heart.

Something from far off it seemed
deep and secret to me, hidden by the earth,
a shout muffled by huge autumns,
by the moist half-open darkness of the leaves.

Wakening from the dreaming forest there, the hazel-sprig
sang under my tongue, its drifting fragrance
climbed up through my conscious mind

as if suddenly the roots I had left behind
cried out to me, the land I had lost with my childhood—
and I stopped, wounded by the wandering scent.

Counseling & Therapy & Psychotherapy

I think it must be confusing for anyone new to the world of counseling and therapy and psychotherapy to make sense of these three terms. In Portland, Oregon where I practice, or anywhere in the U.S., the questions are basically the same. What is counseling? What is therapy or psychotherapy? Are they different? To understand these terms is not quite so hard as it seems.

When you decide to “get into therapy” or “find a counselor,” typically you’re looking for someone to talk with, often for an hour a week, on a regular basis and for a period of time ranging from a few months to a few years. This can vary, but I’m giving you an idea of what’s typical. So, if you’re looking to work with a therapist or counselor for awhile, what do you need to know about the various terms you will encounter?

There are at least two ways to look at the terms: one is based in common sense, and a basic understanding of language; the other is based in the way various state and other official groups regulate the profession of psychotherapy, and in how these groups decide to use and regulate the various terms.

I’ll focus on the common sense version. This is according to me and is not an official view, though I think it’s pretty accurate.

Counseling and Counselor are common terms. To me they convey a more practical approach–helping to guide a client into strengths and away from negative ways of living. Some counselors seem to emphasize guidance and advice. But that’s not always the case, and often counseling is the same essential process as therapy or psychotherapy.

Therapy and Therapist are common terms as well. Sometimes they’re applied to fields like physical therapy which have nothing to do with psychological and emotional health. But in the context of working with psychological issues, they are general terms that refer to any practitioner who works therapeutically with individuals, couples, families, or groups.

Psychotherapy and Psychotherapist just make things more specific. When you’re working with a human being on psychological issues, you’re working with the “psyche” of that person. Psyche comes from an ancient Greek word meaning soul–the living reality of a human being. Psychotherapy is a therapy for the living human being. The word therapy itself comes from a Greek word meaning to care for, attend to, or heal some condition that ails the patient.

The terms your own therapist likes to use will depend largely on personal preference.

The state and the associations that regulate the various licenses that therapists hold have their own preferred ways of using the terms counselor, or therapist, or psychotherapist. I won’t get into these details here, and I can’t speak for any official groups. The important thing to know is that if you’re seeking counseling… or therapy… or psychotherapy (use the term that you prefer!) for something that ails you, just make sure you do a little research and inquire about your potential therapist’s background and qualifications. See if that person feels like a good fit for you, and then begin and see where the process of therapy takes you.

How to Choose a Therapist

Now that I’ve entitled this blog entry, “How to Choose a Therapist,” I should tell you that no one, including me, can really tell you the right way to choose a therapist. Just like therapeutic work itself, choosing a therapist is both an art and a science. You will need to use your intuition–calling on your deepest instincts as best you are able. You will also need to use some basic knowledge–keeping in mind the essentials to good therapy.

The bottom line is that you should respect your intuition about who is a good fit for you. But it’s also important to know the basics about what to look for, what to expect, what to want, and what not to want.

On the intuitive side of the decision, consider these thoughts:

Different therapists have different styles of working with clients. There is no one right style, but there may be ways of doing therapy that work especially well for you. It’s important to find someone who is a good enough match for you, your temperament, and your particular needs. The therapist should feel to you like an intuitive “good enough fit,” after you’ve had at least one introductory session, and perhaps a few sessions. A good fit does not necessarily mean easy and fun all the time, especially since therapy by its nature ends up dealing with a client’s difficulties. Working through difficulties can be challenging–another reason to find the right therapist.

Coming to therapy involves focusing a special kind of attention on your life and your self. Most people report not having many places (if any) where this kind of attention feels possible. The attention involves a certain kind of care towards, and tending of psychological processes. Some therapists will feel to you like a more natural fit for the job of attending you through these processes. And whatever the initial problem or symptom you brought to therapy, the more complex reality that you’re bringing to therapy is you and your way of being in the world. Things are rarely cut and dry, because we are all quite complex human beings with lots going on at any one time. That’s why therapy (in my view) is as much or more an art than it is a science.

Now for the basic knowledge side of the decision.

First, look for someone with at least these qualifications: a legitimate graduate degree in the field of psychology, counseling, social work, psychiatry, etc. You should also look for someone who is active in the field, who seeks consultation with senior colleagues, who follows the basic ethics of being a therapist, and who has undergone a significant therapy process as a client, as part of training to do this work. This last qualification has a strong basis in the history of modern psychotherapy. Personal therapy has been an important part of training therapists for over a century. Your therapist should also have a personal philosophy and approach to doing therapy and be able to talk to you about it in ways that make sense to you.

In terms of how your therapist should relate to you and the work you are doing together, it is important for a therapist to maintain a real, respectful, and authentic human connection with you, at the same time as maintaining a professional boundary, competence in the field, and commitment to keeping open, curious, careful attention on you, your emotional life, your relationships, dreams, struggles, symptoms, and development as an individual.

When you get to the point of wanting to make some calls, you can explore your options in various ways. You can ask for names of therapists from friends (though you may not want to share a therapist with your best friend or partner), or doctors, or other healing professionals. You can browse the web and read what various therapists have to say on their websites. Sometimes a client finds the right fit quickly. Other times it is good to meet two or more therapists for an initial consultation and then choose one to return to and see for a few sessions. Some therapists charge for a first consultation and some do not. You can ask, and you can also ask what the fee would be for ongoing sessions. Some take insurance, and some do not. Some will reduce the fee if there is a real financial need for a lower fee, and some will not.

These thoughts are not meant to be a complete guide to choosing a therapist, but I hope that they give some readers a good start.