At the core of being stuck for most people is some kind of fear. Being stuck in fear can simply be the result of being afraid of change, which is a kind of fear of the unknown, fear of things being different than they are now. Many of us have made some kind of unconscious decision (meaning we might not even know we’ve made the decision, but it is in the back of our minds anyway) that being stuck in our lives, no matter how bad it might feel sometimes, is not as bad as what we think might happen if we try to bring about real change. For others, a traumatic event, like the death of a family member or friend, or a bitter end to a previous relationship, makes them wary of taking risks of that kind again (getting close to someone who might die or leave them).

Yet, we do not want to live in fear. We do not want fear to control us, to limit our lives, our choices, the way we feel about ourselves, our relationships and our situations. This alone is a good reason to be able to address our inner life. As hard as this is to admit sometimes, fear is a driving force behind so much of our experiences in life and the decisions we make. The more we know about the sources and the impact of our fears, the more we can avoid allowing those fears to control us.

Our “inner life” has a great variety and depth to it. It evolves as we age and learn and build new memories and skills. Fear is always there, though. Fear of change itself is a common element to clients who are stuck in a bad place in their lives. If we are not willing to address our fear, then it is not likely to go away, or diminish. If we are willing to address our fears, we can break them down, question them, see them from different perspectives, and often realize that we have far less to fear than we thought we did. I see this all the time in my own life and when I am doing therapy with clients. Fear of conflict, of change, of abandonment, of failure, of disapproval, of loneliness, of death are all legitimate fears at some point. Unfortunately, these legitimate fears often take on a kind of life of their own when they are allowed to grow within us, unchecked by a willingness to question these fears, to put them in their place, to overcome them by taking action for our benefit in spite of them.

Think of the times you yourself have stayed in a bad situation far longer than you should have, but you didn’t realize this until after you left that situation. Maybe it was a job, or relationship, or housing arrangement. You stayed, despite your dissatisfaction, based on fears that making the decision for change would make things worse—and those fears felt so powerful at the time you didn’t think you could do anything about it. Eventually, you felt you had little choice and took the necessary risk of bringing about change because you simply couldn’t tolerate things staying the same. Maybe an alternative presented itself that was just too good to pass up, and you jumped at it. Either way, you finally made the decision to act despite your fears telling you not to do so. Looking back, you could see that much of your fear was unwarranted, irrational, or just blown out of proportion to likely outcomes. You see then that you wasted time worrying so much and being stuck so long in a bad situation.

Fear can be a good thing, though. Fear can wisely slow us down when we need to think carefully about what might otherwise be impulsive decisions. The problem, then, is not the fear. It is our reaction to the fear—we give it far more power or meaning than it needs to have, even when it is a fear that has wisdom behind it. When we are in a bad job, where the pay isn’t what it should be or could be, our boss is at times mean and unpredictable, we are not appreciated, it is going nowhere, we need fear of unemployment to check our hand during an argument, to avoid announcing “I quit” and the immediate feeling of satisfaction that will surely come with it, only to find an hour later that we have no way to pay our bills, and not a lot of extra money to stretch things out until we find something better. So, yes we should fear unemployment. But we should not stay in a job in which our self-respect is shredded because we don’t want to tackle the fear of not finding a better job. We should look at the fear, listen to what it tells us, and then take action to address the bad situation while taking into account what we’ve learned from the fear. Don’t quit on the spot. Remember the berating boss when you get home to motivate you to fire up the computer, build that resume, and pound the pavement (email) sending out job applications, so when you do announce “I quit” the next time you feel berated, you have already found another job and your fear of quitting is sensibly gone.

Likewise, it makes sense to fear loneliness and grief when thinking about ending a relationship. The momentary and seemingly insurmountable issue that makes us think we should “end this” might seem relatively trivial in a week or two when cooler heads prevail and we are able to think about the deep love we have for this person, and how much they have meant to us over the many years we have with them. Fear of losing the person we love doesn’t need to mean putting up with years of fighting over the same issues, though. We can listen to the fear, while also demanding the respect, attention, the voice we deserve to have in any relationship. We can ask for our needs to be met, while trying to avoid the end of relationship with someone we don’t want to lose. We can listen to our fear, use what it tells us, to take action. The alternative is a nagging paralysis that stretches on because we don’t want to pay attention to deep-seated fears that we don’t want to address head on.

Although fear can be a useful tool to remind us to think long and hard about big decisions with big consequences, we should not allow that fear to keep us in a relationship or job in which we are treated badly with little hope of change. It’s a balance. Until we are ready to really examine whether the fear we feel is warranted and appropriate, we are likely to avoid taking action, or if we do, we are likely to take action we will later regret. We need to understand our fear, listen to it, not run from it, to make the best decisions both in the short and the long term. We cannot do this unless we are comfortable addressing our inner lives, including what might be our most difficult feelings of fear.

In this blog I have so far tried to show, using fear as an example, that understanding, exploring, identifying and then listening to our feelings will help us make better decisions (in addition to allowing us to be less uncomfortable with ourselves). I didn’t need to use fear, although it adds punch because it is usually the most difficult of all feelings to face head on. I could still `      have used any number of other difficult feelings to demonstrate the same thoughts. Feelings of inadequacy work as well as fear. A corporate director who spends 60 plus hours at work and works on the weekends at home might miss most of his children’s upbringing, not because he loves his job, but because he cannot bear the imagined or real disapproval of his parents, wife, older brother, or children if he doesn’t “make the grade” (however “the grade” gets defined in his mind).

Shame is another example of a feeling people often take great pains to avoid, which keeps them from making good decisions for themselves. A woman refuses to reach out to her family for financial support because she feels ashamed that she has been laid off and is a single mother, despite knowing her parents have plenty of money and would be more than willing to help. She doesn’t want to look at the primary source of her shame, which is a series of poor decisions in her life over the past several years, including becoming involved with the father of her children despite his drinking habit, dropping out of college, cutting ties with her family. So, her shame compels her to continue to make poor decisions, forcing she and her children to struggle without adequate resources to make real change for the better. If she were willing to look at her shame, see it for what it is, and also for what it is not (all about her), she would see that some of this shame is based on her mother’s scorn over the years, and giving her father’s ideas of who she “should be” more value than it deserves. If she could value the shame she feels based on her poor decisions, but reject the shame she feels due to her parents opinions, she might be able to get the help she needs, go back to school, get a better career and then need no more dependence on an alcoholic boyfriend, or a parent whose scorn no longer has the meaning it once had.

Flexibility is not possible in our lives unless we are willing to look right at our feelings, all of them, the good and bad, the easy and the difficult, and consider with each the likelihood that they are telling something valuable, but they are not telling us the whole picture. Flexibility requires that we realize that we always have many feelings all at the same time, and each of those feelings gives a different piece of the complete puzzle. If we can pay attention to them all, we can decide which ones should influence us the most, and make decisions consistent with what we know about the kind of person we are, and the kind of life we want to have. And then we can have that life because we’ve made decisions based on our deep and real feelings, not just on what we happen to be able to face. This is flexibility. This is the benefit of mental health, which is so much more than merely removing signs of mental illness. Attaining flexibility has no fixed point.  It is a process, a life-long process, in which we increase as the years go by our capacity to see the feelings that are there and act on them by our increasingly conscious choice.

In the next blog on the topic of flexibility, I will show how we can use our understanding and comfort with our inner lives to change patterns of interactions with others, so our feelings give us insight into the momentary decisions we make again and again that form these patterns. If this blog was about the “big decisions” in our lives, the next blog is about how flexibility which is the result of self-awareness will aid us in making all those “little decisions” we make over and over every day.

Copyright, 2012, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

What would it be like to have many more choices about how to respond to people in your life–your husband, wife, daughter, boss, the grocery store cashier? What if you could predict how you will feel in different situations and have a good idea of how you want deal with those feelings ahead of time? Wouldn’t you be less likely to regret impulse decisions later, more likely to feel better about your ability to deal with those kinds of situations the next time? This is you. This is who you are right now, but with the added ingredient of flexibility in your everyday life. Flexibility is not just about bending to the needs of others. I am talking about flexibility based on choices you make, not choices others want to make for you. I am talking about choices you already have the ability to make, once you give yourself permission to try new approaches and start learning more about what feels best for you.

Therapy is about change—about wanting someone else to help us come up with ideas about how to get unstuck. We come to therapy to learn new ways of handling issues, relationships, situations and our moods and feelings. Flexibility is what we seek. We get into ruts and habits that keep us doing the same stuff over and over again until we feel stuck enough to do something about it. Flexibility gives us the way out, new ways of seeing things, different ways of dealing with ourselves and others. With some trial and error, flexibility gives us the chance to explore what works best for us to have what we want.

This series of blogs about flexibility is a culmination of thoughts I’ve had over the past year about an issue I think about every day I go to work. What is “mental health?” Back in 2010, I wrote two blogs on this subject. In the blog “What is Mental Health Part I,” I encouraged clients looking for a therapist to ask that therapist, “how do you define mental health?” I suggested then that many therapists might be great at defining “mental Illness,” but haven’t given much thought to what constitutes “mental health.” I also said that getting rid of the signs and symptoms of mental illness is only part of becoming mentally healthy.

In the second blog, “What is Mental Health Part II” I wrote, “mental health is a state in which a person is able and willing to address every aspect of their inner life, regardless of whether they experience difficult feelings, including fear, while addressing those aspects of their inner life.” This answer felt mostly right, but incomplete. It leaves several implied questions. How does it benefit us to be able to “address every aspect of our inner life?” If that is an ultimate goal of doing therapy in some sense, why does it matter, how will it change things for us? I ask myself these questions all the time. I’ll try to give answers I’ve been considering lately.

I can think of three possible reasons why it is better to be able to address all aspects of your inner life. First, addressing your inner life as much as possible will help you remove over time many of your most difficult feelings by giving you the chance to understand and then actually resolve previously unresolved emotional issues. You will feel better being you, living your life, being with your feelings. This is actually a significant part of the initial stage of making change in therapy. Second, addressing your inner life will help you stop doing things you might have been doing to avoid difficult feelings, like drinking, drugs, gambling, creating instability and distraction, becoming overly focused on the needs of others, of work, of things outside yourself. Third, by listening to your feelings, both those that feel good and those that do not, you can learn from them, and in doing so, will have the capacity to make decisions that are more likely to feel good to you after you’ve made them. You can think before you act, rather than acting, then realizing you’ve said or done something you regret. This process, including some trial and error, becomes part of the final stage of making change in therapy.  Once clients can see for themselves their capacity to do this in their lives without further assistance, they are ready to be done in therapy.

This is flexibility. People who exercise flexibility, who can react to difficult situations in many different possible ways, whichever seems to suit their needs the most, are more likely to make better decisions for themselves. Over time, it shows up in many ways, most notably, it shows up in how good they feel about themselves and their lives. Flexibility is a strong sign of increased “mental health” because it requires that we pay attention to our inner lives to achieve and exercise it. Flexibility is also one of the greatest benefits of “mental health” as I define it because it creates enormous capacity for meaningful change.

In Flexibility is the hallmark of mental health: Part II, I will explain how increased self-awareness about your feelings will allow you to use flexibility to make better choices about the “big decisions” in your life.

Copyright, 2012, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

For those of you who do not celebrate Christmas, either because it is not consistent with your culture or belief system, or because you for other reasons simply choose not to participate in this holiday, please bear with me. I actually believe Christmas can be a time for giving and connection and feeling good about fellow humans. The more cheesy me also likes the bright lights on houses at a dark time of year, shiny ornaments, and the surprises lurking under colorful and cheerful wrapping paper. I remember as a child that, no matter what might be happening in my life (insert references to physical abuse, poverty, alcoholism, police, chaos, etc.), really cool stuff sometimes happened at Christmas.  My great aunt Delores used her 100-year old foot-powered sewing machine to make us stuffed animals with used clothes that looked unrecognizable as anything other than the very sweet gifts of an elderly woman who cared. Or the St. Vincent De Paul society bringing to us new and shiny gifts we would never have seen without its help.  So, even now, Christmas brings me smiles, fond memories and hope each year, as I look back on and forward to the possibility of good things happening in otherwise dark days. This year, the Holiday Season brought something of a miracle to me and my family.  It’s a great story, with all the right (and true) ingredients: a small, helpless furry little puppy, a bitter cold night with snow and wind, wolves, foxes, cars rushing by, danger, new friends, an outpouring of support, lost hope and sadness, and in the end, something that seemed impossible but true.

Julian in my office in November 2011

I have a puppy named Julian.  Julian is a red long-haired, miniature Dachshund.  He was born on July 12, 2011.  So, he is about 5 months old.  As far as dogs go, even puppies for that matter, Julian is about as helpless as they come, or so we thought.

Enter the cabin. A few weeks ago, we bought ourselves a place in the woods up near the North Shore of Lake Superior. It’s nothing extravagant, but it is a special place for us; small, old, a fixer-upper, no lake, no river, a solid little log cabin on a small piece of land near hiking and cross-country ski trails.  On a cold and windy Friday night in early December, I took Julian to our “new” cabin for the first time. When we arrived, I let him out of his kennel to relieve himself after a long drive (with only one stop) from the Cities.  He did so with great satisfaction, and then looked around for a bit at his new surroundings.  I picked him up and brought him inside.  All seemed okay at first, so I set him down so he could familiarize himself with his home-away-from-home.  Something spooked him.  I am still not sure what it was.  Maybe the smell of a dog that lived there before we bought it, a desire to be at home, with his friends, my other two dogs (Collies: Sophie and Caesar). I had too much to bring with me to bring the collies this time, which was probably a mistake. Whatever it was, it sent him tearing out of the cabin, out the door, under the car, where he looked out, barking at me and the cabin.  I left him there for a moment to haul in some sleeping bags.  Big mistake.  When I went back out 30 seconds later, he wasn’t there.  Looking under the car, no Julian. Gone.

It was nearly dark. I put on my headlamp, which is bright, but couldn’t find a trace of him anywhere near the cabin.  There was no snow (yet) so no footprints to follow.  I walked around the yard for a long time, laying out bits of dog treats, hoping he’d come back.  He did not.  A few hours later, coming back from a walk pretty far down the main road in front of the cabin, a car pulled in.  A woman hopped out of her car, asked if I had been on the road looking for a lost dog.  I said “yes.”  She asked if it was a little red dog.  I said “yes,” hoping she had him in the car.  She saw my tears of relief, told me she did not have him, but had seen him, about a mile further up the road. She told me she’d stopped and tried to coax him to come to her, but he had run off into the woods. Without being asked, she offered to take me to where she’d seen him.  I jumped in and off we went.  Sharon and I introduced ourselves, and she took me to where she’d seen him.  It was snowing a little now, and the wind had picked up.  It was also getting colder, dropping to about 12 degrees.  I was sick to my stomach with worry for him.  I could see his little footprints in the snow, so I knew he couldn’t be far.  I called to him, offered him his favorite treats, but he did not come out from wherever he may have been.  Either he was too far off now to hear me, or he was spooked and no longer cared to be around anyone.

After nearly half an hour, with Sharon driving behind me as I walked up and down the road, Sharon said she really needed to get home, and offered to drive me back to my cabin.  I drove back in my car up and down the road for several more hours, with my wife helping to look after she arrived later in the evening.  We were out for 6 hours, calling to him continuously, and had lost all signs of him (due to the snow and the wind), several times thinking we spotted his tracks on the side of the road giving rise to hope, only realizing later they were too large or were not even dog tracks at all, dashing the hope we had begun to feel.  Bitterly cold, with numb fingers, hoarse throats, and lots of tears, we resigned ourselves to having to go home to the cabin for the night, knowing this likely meant we might never see him our little Julian again. We were wretched with the thought of him being all alone, scared, hungry, in the dark, and freezing. The temperature was now 8 degrees. The last person who’d seen Julian saw him running very fast, in the opposite direction of our cabin, and the only thing in front of him was the Boundary Waters Canoe Area Wilderness, and thousands and thousands of miles of forest and frozen lakes.

The next morning, after a night of fitful sleep and nightmares about what might be happening to our little baby dog at that moment, we drearily got back out onto the road, hoping we could find him, and not as road kill or the remains of a predator.  While looking up and down that road, a young couple driving by, Travis and Molly, stopped to tell us they’d seen our dog the previous evening, even further up the road than we’d been looking, further than we had believed he could travel on his short legs so fast and so far. Without being asked, they said they’d spend some time that day driving back and forth up and down the road to help us find him. We drove up the road to where they’d seen him.  No tracks in the fresh snow.

We stopped at a nearby house, where a car sat outside the door, signs of life in this increasingly sparsely populated wilderness. Mark answered the door. When we told him about Julian being lost the night before, he kindly warned us to keep our expectations low for his survival, especially because he had heard a pack of wolves come through last night, howling as they moved through the area Julian had last been seen.  Without being asked, Mark offered to spend his day off with his dogs to track Julian and find him.

On and off all day that long Saturday we looked. We called the local radio station, and they agreed to put out an announcement that there was lost a little baby puppy in the winter woods.  We called the Sheriff’s office—they offered to keep an eye out for him and call us if anyone saw him. We called the local animal rescue, and a woman named Gay told us she’d put the word out. Gay called back a few hours later, telling us she and three other volunteers had been out looking for Julian but hadn’t seen any sign of him. Later that night, with no sign of Julian, our hopes all but gone, Karen called us. She was a volunteer with the local animal rescue and a friend of Gay. She told me she intended to make an announcement to the Church congregation the next morning at Sunday Services, and would ask for volunteers to search for our puppy.

As a last-ditch effort, on Saturday night, after the sun went down and the forest returned to an ominous darkness, we threw treats and bologna scraps onto the road, hoping to create a trail for him to find his way back to us. No such luck.  Late into the night, we called to Julian.  No response.  No footprints. Silence, except for the howling wind through the trees.  Hope had fallen to a new low with the setting sun. At one point, we glimpsed what we thought might be our little buddy off in the snow.  A flash of red fur and the gleam of little eyes peeked just barely above the hill leading down into a ditch.  I slammed the breaks, put the car into reverse and revved back down the road about 40 feet.  The tuft of fur was gone, and then it reappeared.  It was not Julian.  It was cute, and furry, and dangerous… for Julian.  It was a red fox, eating something, walking nonchalantly past us, through the glare of our headlights, still chomping, across the road and down into the ditch on the other side.  This was our sign to return to the cabin and wait out another night of bad dreams about our puppy freezing or being attacked by that red fox or his cousin the grey wolf.

Prior to the weekend, we had planned to leave Sunday morning.  With Julian missing, we could not tear ourselves away from the place, so we stayed well into the afternoon, still with some glimmer of hope for the impossible: that Julian would miraculously survive the bitter cold, the wolves, the fox, and all other manner of danger to a small puppy who’d never been more than a few yards from the feet of his family, that not only surviving, he would be found by some unknown volunteer, or a neighbor spotting him under their porch, or that he would be seen running down the road, hungry enough to come to the call of a stranger, despite his fears.  The weather had turned for the better.  It was a bright, clear Sunday morning, with temperatures rising into the 30’s. Unseasonably warm.  It had not been as cold the night before, staying above 20.  If Julian had survived Friday nights low temperature, maybe he survived last night.

I woke up Sunday morning with the dream that I had heard his demanding and assertive high-pitched yelping off in the distance. Fully awake, I knew it could only have been a dream.  Putting some dishes away, I realized I’d woken our daughter, sleeping on the futon in the living room.  I apologized. She said she was already awake, having dreamed she heard Julian barking. I just about ran to the door, threw it open and called and called to Julian, a tiny glimmer of hope having come back to me after my dark mood the night before.

There had been no sign of Julian now for nearly 48 hours. Until now, I hadn’t told anyone other than the townspeople and my mother that we had lost Julian.  I had been waiting, not wanting to cause unnecessary concern, in case we found him.  It was time.  We had given up. The chances of his still being alive were clearly slim to none at this point.  So, I texted a few friends, including those who had encouraged me to buy a mini-dachshund.  Of course they cried, like I did. Without being asked, they offered to drive all the way from the cities to help search. When I told them there was no point, that he was already gone, they agreed that was almost certainly true.

Sunday afternoon, we decided to take one last walk around the property where our cabin sits.  This was not intended to even be a search for Julian. We merely wanted to take a last look at the property we would be returning to on other weekends, in winter and summer, for many years to come.  We had given up all hope of finding Julian, and only prayed that, if he were still alive, which at this point seemed all but impossible, he might approach a house, looking for scraps of food, and we would get a call later in the week.

A few hundred feet from the cabin, on the edge of a little cedar wood, our daughter heard a clinking of metal, she looked over, and saw him, saw his orange sweater, his red fur, his wild eyes, he was running, not toward us, but away from her, terrified, she said.  Our daughter cried out, “it’s him!  It’s Julian!  It’s him, he’s back! It’s Julian!”  Running to catch up to her, my wife found him in a little bush, hiding from us. She slowly sank to the ground on her knees, afraid to frighten him further.  “Is it really him?” I yelled, bringing up the rear.  My wife said “yes,” in a hushed tone.  “Don’t scare him.  Try to get behind him in case he runs.”  So I did.  She sat there with him in the bush for nearly five minutes, gently calling to him. She took of her hat, gloves, and jacket so she would be smaller and more familiar to him. Eventually, the wild animal left his eyes, he seemed then to finally recognize her, and step by step slowly crawled out from under the bush toward her, until he was close enough to grab him, and when she did, she cried, “I have him, I have him, it is him.”  We all burst into tears of joy and relief.  He was thinner, scared out of his wits, disoriented, very thirsty, but okay, no scars, no bleeding, no bite marks, no frostbite.  Julian was back with us, whole, and healthy.

Less than a half an hour after we found Julian, and before she had time to even listen to the voicemail I’d left telling her we’d found him, Gay from animal rescue pulled into our driveway, so we got to tell her and show her in person that we’d been the recipient of a gift, a miracle, really of a puppy that could not have survived two days of winter by himself in the vast wilderness, and yet he did, here he was, a miracle.  When I called my friends in the cities back, they cried again (we cried together).  Without being asked, they had sent out a prayer chain message, and within 15 minutes 0ver 100 people were praying for Julian’s safe return.  Karen told me over the phone that,  when the pastor had made an announcement to the congregation at church that morning, there was both silence and audible gasps of concern, and that many people had told her they’d be on the lookout for him.

I want to be able to tell you I never gave up hope. That is not true though.  I had given up hope.  Late on Saturday night, I went out one last time to look for him.  I went by myself.  I had lost him, and felt a guilt for it that seemed to punch me in the stomach every couple of minutes.  I needed some time on the road to accept that I would never see him  again.  I drove for a couple of hours, looking up and down roads he could not possibly have reached, some of them 10 miles from the cabin. I wasn’t ready to come back, though, until I had given up all hope. And I did.  I sat in the driveway outside the cabin to finish my crying, walking in with dry, but puffy eyes, to a dark house, where everyone was already in bed.

This is a story of a miracle.  By nearly every rational and reasonable calculation, there is simply no way Julian could have avoided the wolves, the fox, the cold, the wind, the snow, the miles of wilderness between where he had run and our cabin. There is no chance that he could have found his way back after venturing so far in unfamiliar territory, a little (6 pounds) puppy with the survival skills of a pampered city lapdog.  It seems now almost as if he had been planted there, right there, where we would see him, when we weren’t even looking anymore, having given up the search, ready to leave, to go home without him, to admit a final defeat.

Julian at the dog park on December 17, 2011

This is also a story of generosity and kindness, of so many people, so many strangers, who took our concern for Julian as their own concern, who offered me a ride in their car late at night, without a moment’s hesitation, who offered again and again without being asked to spend their precious time and energy to look for a dog they’d never met, for people (us) they’d never met, who gasped in church when they imagined what it might be like for a little tiny puppy to be off in the woods all by himself scared out of his wits, lost, hungry, cold.

Finally, this is a story of survival, and fortitude, and love.  I have no idea how Julian found his way home. Was it the prayers, or God, or instinct?  All three?  I do not know.  What I do know is that, somehow, he did find his way back, all on his own, and I choose to believe he somehow could feel our love, and our loss at the thought of not seeing him again.  Like a warm glow on a cold winter night, maybe in his heart there lies a beacon, telling him how to find his way back to those who love him so much, and who felt so much pain when he went away.

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

Anxiety is no different. Anxiety tells us there is something we need to control in order to be safe, satisfied, or to obtain something important in our lives, without which, we think we will not be okay in some way. Anxiety can be highly useful and informative, motivating us to take action where necessary and can also become downright crippling, or at least a major source of unnecessary interference in our lives, preventing us from sleeping, focusing on immediate needs, and even leading to physiological problems like serious muscle tension, headaches, chest pain, etc.  The anxiety a student feels before a test can both be a powerful motivator to study and be prepared for the test, but taken too far, can lead a student to freeze during the test, or avoid studying for it all.  This blog will discuss what can be done when anxiety becomes a problem because we think we have to know something to solve a problem, but the thing we think we need to know might not be possible to know and we might not actually need to know it after all.

Racing or “obsessive” thoughts are often the result of trying to make sense of things that cannot make sense.  We ask, “how can this be?” when we feel someone has betrayed us.  When someone wants to end a relationship that we do not want to end, we try to figure out how it is possible that they are not interested when we were so interested.  We will likely never actually know for sure.  It isn’t possible for us to get into their heads. We can listen to what they have to say, if they are willing to tell us, and then decide to take it at face value, or not, and then leave it. When we cannot just leave it at that, our minds go around and around and around, why, why, why, like circling a thing we simply cannot reach.  This is a form of intense anxiety that clients often feel in their lives that brings them to therapy.  Once we have identified that this is part of the problem, I often suggest: “focus on what you know, rather than focusing on what you do not know or cannot know.” It often turns out that they do already know all they need to know to move on. They just don’t know that!

I hope this suggestion doesn’t lead you to believe I think this kind of anxiety is easy to deal with or that I think it actually solves the entire problem with a simple sentence.  The anxiety leading to these kinds of racing thoughts can be the result of literally years of pain, anguish, mistrust, insecurity, etc.  I recognize this fact and yet still suggest focusing on what you know, rather than what you don’t know, as a starting point to containing and accepting the very real possibility that much of what a given client might want to figure out about a certain event or situation, especially one dealing with other people, cannot be figured out, no matter how hard or how often they think about it.  I suggest they put the need to know aside for the moment, to focus instead on what they do know, and then decide whether what they do know is in fact enough.  It often is.  And when it is not, there is usually some underlying thing driving them to think about what they do not know, and we need to also identify this for what it is, and deal with it.

Consider the following examples of this kind of anxiety. A woman in a relationship wonders if her partner is thinking of leaving. Her partner assures her countless times he does not intend to leave.  The anxiety about leaving persists. She goes over the “evidence” again and again—little things said about dissatisfaction about their lives, irritability, how he has been spending his time, or their money, who he have been talking to lately, his criticisms about her.  Every time they have an argument, she wonders if this is when he will tell her he is leaving, has found someone else, or is just fed up with her.

Here’s another example. A man is highly anxious about losing his job.  He fears an imminent layoff.  This fear has been present for nearly two years. He is stricken several times a week with thinking his boss is unhappy with him and will announce any day that he is being replaced.  He watches as his boss walks by his office without saying “good morning.” Recently, his boss and another manager invited a co-employee to go out to get a bite to eat for lunch, but they did not invite him. He was recently omitted from a training event that others were asked to attend.

And another example. A young woman just out of college had a decent job, but lost it in the recession. She has found temporary work since, but hasn’t found another “good” job. She panics during interviews, has trouble sleeping several times a week, feels dread nearly every time she pulls up to her computer to do job searches or print out another resume and cover letter.

In each of these examples, the person suffering from anxiety had some reasons to believe the thing making them anxious might actually happen. And it if did happen, they would have a serious problem (losing someone they love or financial distress or a failed career path). The common problem among these examples is that the person is trying to predict an outcome that cannot possibly be predicted, no matter how long, how many times, how hard they try to predict it.  They are each trying to know something they cannot possibly know.  Can anyone ever be absolutely sure their partner is completely faithful and is never ever going to leave them?  We can certainly believe this very strongly, but can we ever know it for a certainty?  Same thing with employment. We cannot ever know for sure when or if our employer is going to let us go, no matter how many times they assure us we are doing a good job and our job is safe.  Every state in the United States has laws allowing employers to terminate employment relationships “at will” (translation: any time for any reason not otherwise prohibited).  When we interview for a job, unless we have the inside track (a previous connection), we cannot know whether we will be hired.  So, what can these clients all do to relieve themselves of at least a significant portion of their anxiety, an anxiety which is not helpful at all?  Focus on what they know, or can know, about their current situation, rather than focusing on what they do not know.

The woman thinking her partner plans to leave can seek validation in ways that are not accusatory or destructive. She can consider how her partner has demonstrated commitment in ways that are more than just words.  He works his tail off to make enough money so they can avoid putting the kids in daycare.  He rarely goes out without her, and when he does, he is good about telling her where he is going, and with whom.  His finances are transparent.  He has offered to show her his phone records if she wants to see the bill. And if she needs more demonstration, she can ask for it in ways that are reasonable, not accusatory. The employee worried about being fired can recall that he just received a promotion.  His “numbers” are good (he works a lot of hours and gets a lot done).  His performance evaluations have been generally very positive.  Although the economy is sluggish, his employer is doing well, making money.  The woman who fears never getting a good job can focus on how many second interviews she’s gotten. She graduated from school with honors. She has a very high recommendation from her previous employer, whose company went bankrupt, so she can easily explain her current employment situation.

The first step in this process is to take a look at some basic “facts” in whatever situation is causing us problematic anxiety.  This is usually fairly quick, and not too difficult. It can be done (and redone) in a few sessions or less.  A harder change in focus is trying to figure out why each person had become so focused on something they cannot know. What drives that anxiety internally?  Is there something that predates the situation within that person that led them to become so anxious. Did the woman worried about her partner leaving suffer from insecurities, low self-worth, or bad relationship patterns before she was in the current relationship?  Or is there something about the relationship that needs to be addressed to make it better, more secure, some unresolved conflict or interactional pattern and she hasn’t been able to identify what that is or how to address it with her partner?  Is the man worried about being laid off too focused on the importance of his job?  Is he overcompensating for feelings of inadequacy in other areas of his life, putting all his eggs in one basket, his job?  Is the college graduation suffering from a related fear that she will never get the approval of her parents if she can’t find a job as easily as her older brother did who is now doing great in his career?

Whatever the answers might be to these more internal questions, each person can work out the anxiety by first identifying what they can know, what they do know right now, what they can change, what they can “figure out,” so they don’t get trapped into a never-ending circle of trying to figure out what they will never figure out.  In this way, they can become unstuck, make changes that need to be made, use the anxiety as useful information telling them that they need to change something, while recognizing they will never be able to know or change things beyond their scope of knowledge or control.  Once clients learn how to do this in one sphere of their lives, they are often able to find ways to do this in many other areas as well.

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

The general theme of this year’s holiday blog is actually two-fold: (1) stay frosty and (2) stay flexible.  “Stay frosty” is an attempt at a catchy reference to the Holiday season; so in that sense is a little tongue-in-cheek.  It is not meant to encourage you to stay aloof, distant, detached, or alone (as in “stay cold”). “Stay frosty” is a military term that I remember first hearing in the second movie of the Aliens series of movies.  It basically means, “be on the lookout” for unfriendly situations.  Simply put, it means “be aware.”  I am using it to describe the importance of being aware of your own mental and emotional status as you spend your holidays, and be aware of the mental and emotional status of others.  The Holidays are a time of often heightened expectations by family members from other family members.  You might be expected to act in certain ways you during the Holidays that are only true at that time of year (e.g. more involved, more committed to events, or even just interacting with people you do not see at any other time (old uncle Charlie) etc.).  This can cause confusion or resentment within families because the rules have suddenly changed or have reverted to rules you haven’t had to live by for years in your now mostly separate life.  Staying frosty about your own feelings about these changed rules and about others changed expectations will help you make decisions about how to respond to these changes in ways that will accomplish what you need or want from the event without later regretting it.

As to the part about flexibility, I have lately shared with a number of clients this aphorism: “flexibility is the hallmark of mental health.”  I had this thought when recently writing a series of blogs on how to resolve conflict.  This thought is also consistent with a number of blogs I’ve written over the past two years about choosing your feelings (e.g. “Choose your guilt” and “Choose your anger”). The idea is that the more flexible you are with how you respond emotionally in your life and in your relationships the more you will be likely to get what you need and want for yourself from others in a way that is constructive to your relationships. I plan to write an entire separate blog on this topic in the near future, but thought it fit nicely into this holiday message, so am giving it a brief explanation now.

If you can stay frosty and also stay flexible, you will be prepared to deal with whatever comes up for you and with your family during the holidays. Imagine for a second you are playing tennis.  You are waiting on your side of the court for the person on the other side of the court to serve the ball. You are moving your racket back and forth, your knees are loose, slightly bent, maybe you are tipping back and forth from one foot to the other, all the while your gaze is intent on the person on the other side of the net.  You are loose, flexible, ready to bounce this way or that, backward or forward, and you are also watching carefully, aware of both your own position and their position.  Okay, now step back from that analogy and think of yourself walking into your family’s home, or your family coming to your home.  Are you loose, flexible, and aware?  You needn’t be quite so intent or intensely vigilant as the guy playing tennis, but the analogy can be useful to demonstrate both awareness and flexibility at the same time, looking inward at yourself and outward at others, aware of the needs of both.

Last year’s blog about the holidays emphasized a central theme of seeking what you need. This year, my emphasis is more on how you respond to others, while remaining very aware of your own internal emotions and needs.  In fact, in order to be able to be flexible in your emotional and behavioral responses to others, you really need to have a pretty good amount of self-awareness.  The two go together quite nicely. By staying aware of your own emotional state, you will be in a much better position to know when it is important to express needs and how to do so in a way that is both satisfying to you, without unnecessary conflict with others (e.g. taking a stand on something, or letting it go, depending on whether it is really very important to you at that time).

So, stay aware, stay frosty, yet remain flexible, so you can enjoy your holiday time, and really all of your time, in ways you define for yourself, while staying close with others.

Happy Holidays.

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

Imagine if you could have a disagreement with a family member and know in advance that no matter what caused the disagreement, you could count on a process for resolving the conflict that felt safe—it was fair and kind to everyone, made sure everyone felt understood, appreciated, and respected. If this were the case, there would be far fewer cases in which people felt the necessity to resort to shouting, name-calling, crying, walking out, negative assumptions, and all the other examples of how conflicts can become really difficult to endure and resolve. If conflict could be resolved in a way that felt safe and respectful to everyone involved, the outcome of the conflict (whose needs get met and how) would also be far less important. In other words, removing the unpredictability of the process of conflict would remove a significant part of the reason we are afraid of it, and deal with it so badly when it comes up. It’s not that the outcome is not important. It is. It’s just that the process leads to so many other problems that get in the way of getting to an outcome. Now we will get to the point of figuring out how to have conflict in a way that feels safe and which will make it easier and more likely to lead to a resolution of the immediate and underlying issues.

In order to “have the conflict” that you think may be coming (what outcome you want by having the conflict), it’s a really good idea to think about what you do not want to have in the conflict process. Think about the underlying issues and needs of this particular conflict and how those may have played themselves out in conflicts with this person or others in the past when you’ve tried to deal with it. What came up for you? What were your expectations? What kinds of feelings did you have while processing it? In other words, what are your likely responses in dealing with these kinds of issues (e.g. money, time, connection, intimacy, family history, roles, etc.). Are there ways you can prepare yourself to avoid becoming overly angry, irritated, hurt, annoyed, bothered by whatever the other person’s response might be? Then, think about the other person. How are they likely to respond? Are there things you can do to minimize likely negative responses, knowing they might come up? Are there ways of saying what you need that are less likely to make the other person defensive, hostile, or just closed to what you might want to tell them you need? Just keep in mind that there are three things you and everyone else mostly fears in conflict: the other person’s reaction to your expression of a need, losing control over the outcome, and your own emotional reaction to whatever they might say or do in response to your needs. If you can at least try to account for all of these before going into a potentially conflictual situation, you will be like the driver approaching a four-way stop, having thought about the rules before you enter the intersection with others.

In the first part of this discussion on conflict, I stated conflict happens “when two or more people (or businesses, groups or nations) believe there aren’t enough resources to meet everyone’s needs in a given situation leading to disagreement about how to divide those resources to meet their respective needs.” So, the components of conflict are: (1) your needs; (2) the other person’s needs (real or perceived); (3) a belief by one or both of you that both needs cannot be fully met; and (4) disagreement about how to fully meet both needs (or whose needs should be met).

In order to resolve conflict, then, it seems necessary first to identify these components, starting with your own needs. How important are those needs? Why are they important? What would it take from the other person to get those needs met?

The next step is to try to identify the other person’s need. The best way to do this, of course, is to ask them to tell you. You’d be surprised at how often clients don’t think of this as a good strategy because entrenched patterns of conflict that go badly have made them reluctant to ask. If the other person is able to identify their needs, you are both in a good position to determine whether there is room to move on either of your needs. You can then also decide why there is disagreement about meeting your respective needs. Does one of you feel like you cannot get your needs if the other person’s needs get met? Is there a question about whose needs are more important or which should be met first? Is there some underlying issue that isn’t specific to this particular conflict that one or both of you are hanging onto that is the real basis for the disagreement? This really amounts to trying to figure out why one or both of you believe that there are not sufficient resources to meet both of your needs (resources can include, time, money, attention, emotional availability, or anything else that is necessary to make a decision about how to meet either or both of your needs).

Couples I work with in therapy often find it helpful to ask themselves first whether they have stated their needs in a helpful way right at the beginning of a conflict, and if they are not sure, ask the other person, “have I explained myself to you in a way that makes sense” (use whatever kind of language works for you, as long as it is about you, not them). This provides the other person an opportunity to check with you before they might say why they have some kind of a problem meeting or supporting your need. If they give you an answer which indicates that there is disagreement about meeting your need, and therefore there is a conflict about it, you can be more sure that it is not about how you stated your need. Or if the way a need is stated is the real basis for the conflict, and they’ve identified it, you can re-state your need to see if that resolves the conflict all by itself.

Here’s an example from my own life. Recently, my wife asked if we could buy a magazine rack. She didn’t specify an amount she wanted to spend. I didn’t see the need for a magazine rack, but also didn’t much care either way. I wanted to know what she thought it would cost because we were a little tight on money at the time and we had just agreed not to spend money on anything unnecessary for a while. I asked how much she was planning to spend. She told me. The amount was reasonable to me. It seemed important enough to her. So, I said “sure.” This is a simple example, but shows how something that began to look like conflict was resolved because her desire to have a magazine rack (her need), didn’t interfere much with my desire to avoid spending money (the resource) on something I didn’t care about (my need). I didn’t know this at first. So I asked. My simple question gave her the opportunity to restate her need with the clarity I needed to determine whether I was willing to agree with meeting her need. We had conflict. For a moment. And it was resolved easily because both of us were open to thinking about the other person’s “need” during the conflict.

If you account for your own reactions in the past and likely reactions in the future during conflict, and you consider these reactions along with what you think is a likely response from the other person, you can prepare yourself for almost any conflict with expectations that will allow you to adjust your reactions during the conflict in a way that will avoid escalating into hostility, defensiveness, and behaviors that you will later regret. This can be true, no matter what the other person’s response might be. In an extreme example, I often provide therapy to people wishing to leave actual or potentially violent relationships by helping them create a safety plan for how to communicate to their partner their intent to leave, including hiring a lawyer, going to a family member’s house, or a safety shelter with the kids, if kids are involved. This way, the impact of the other person’s reaction can be anticipated and reduced or eliminated. This can also prevent my own client from doing something that would escalate the conflict toward violence. Less extreme examples of anticipating escalated conflict by accounting for your own as well as the other person’s reaction occur every day in our lives.

Looking back over this discussion on conflict, the key ingredients to successful conflict resolution boil down to becoming aware of your own and the other person’s immediate needs, any underlying issues that might be triggered by those needs, and likely reactions by you and the other person in the conflict based on past conflict history. If you know these things before you attempt to solve the conflict, you can be ready to change your expectations of the process and the outcome, regardless of how the other person responds. Of course, conflict by definition includes at least you and someone else, over whom you may have little or no control. If you and the other person want to be able to resolve conflict more successfully, and you are both willing to use the kinds of tools and ideas offered in this discussion on conflict, you will both become better at keeping the process safe and the outcome less unpredictable. The more you do this, the less likely conflict will escalate. Each time you can resolve conflict without feeling like it is out of control or pointless or just plain scary, you will each no longer need to engage in destructive conflict avoidance because you will be able to affirm your own capacity to handle conflict safely and resolve it effectively.

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

If I am right here about all the trouble that can come from conflict, it makes sense for people to avoid conflict wherever possible. Okay, I can get behind that. We should avoid conflict whenever we can meet our needs just as well without conflict. That’s not usually the problem though. There are not that many people that actually want to have conflict in their lives (and I didn’t say there are none). Most people do a good job avoiding conflict when it isn’t necessary. The problem is that most people do avoid conflict when they should not avoid it, with all kinds of pretty bad consequences, including actually increasing the level of hostility during the conflicts they can’t somehow manage to avoid.

There are two basic fear we have when we confront conflict:

1)    we will not get what we think we need, which will make us feel bad somehow; and

2) the other person will respond to our need in a way that affect us and the relationship we have with that person.

In both cases, there is almost always more at stake then the actual immediate need we are trying to meet in the potentially conflictual situation. We also have the need to have our needs respected and understood and to have stability, reliability and connectedness in our relationships. The more important the relationship, the more desperately we want to have our needs respected and the more fear we have that conflict will disrupt the stability and connectedness we feel with the other person. This is part of why we get into arguments and sometimes say things to our partner or other family members that we cannot imagine saying to someone at work (especially our boss, even though we might have felt like it). It’s not only because at home we can’t get fired (because we can); it’s because the relationships we have with those at home carry much more powerful underlying emotional consequences for us if they lose their stability and connectedness due to conflict.

Think about finances. If you ever deal with any kind of finances at work, it’s probably fairly hard to imagine it causing the kind of conflict it might cause at home. Suppose you need to spend company money on something you know will help you do your job better (e.g. a new laptop). Your boss hears your argument, maybe even pretends or actually does try to get it into a new budget, but then comes back and says no, it’s not possible right now. You might feel irritated, like it’s a pattern with that company, or that your boss is kind of lame. Not that big of a deal, right? Now you are at home, same issue. You want a new laptop to get a bunch of creative stuff done, books, web stuff, home business, whatever it is, pretend it is important. You go to your spouse, partner, parent, whomever decides such things with you. They say no. They say there are other things we need to spend money on—a new garage door opener, a clothes dryer, food, etc. Not unreasonable perhaps, but at some level, no is no, and it doesn’t feel very good. There is a good chance that, in addition to accepting the answer, there are other feelings that go with it like a much more deeply seated sense of betrayal, dismissiveness, or resentment. Not necessarily, but likely. Again, this is because we are not only concerned about getting what we need in the moment (the laptop) but because at home we have other longer-term needs we don’t have at work which have little to do with the immediate need we are seeking (wanting to be loved, to be a priority, to be appreciated in a deeper way, more uniquely important, etc.).

When we seek to have our needs met, especially in an emotionally intimate relationship like with a family member or partner, we are always increasing our vulnerability, no matter how confident we might be in the other person’s response, so we can tend to become defensive, even when it seems from the outside there isn’t any reason to be defensive.

The most extreme level of defensiveness might be not asking at all. I’ll use a kind of funny kinetic analogy to demonstrate. If you hold your hand out in front of you to another person, they can slap it down. Even if you don’t think they will, even if slapping it down seems almost unthinkable, while your hand is out in front of you, it can be slapped down. That is a kind of vulnerability. One way to avoid that kind of vulnerability is to keep your hands to your side, or better yet, clasp them behind your back. This is where the analogy looks like serious conflict avoidance.

I’ve been describing conflict in overly simplistic ways to get started toward a basic understanding of why we avoid conflict. I’ve tried to explain that there are actually many layers of needs we might have going on when we enter into conflict. Those layers of needs include what we are saying we need right now, but also include what we need but are not saying we need. So far, I’ve only given the example of saying “I need (something)” and they say “yes,” “no,” or “I don’t care….” We know better though. We know that real conflict almost never ends there. Because after they say anything other than yes (which is actually pretty often it turns out), we have something else to say, like “why not,” or “too bad,” or “okay” (but we might say “okay” with a tone they know means this isn’t over yet). And then they say something and we say something, and so on and on and on. And even worse, no matter what happens after all of that, much of the time after things settle down, there’s still the conflict that there was, which means it never got resolved, is simmering, and is just waiting for the next time it comes up.

Once again, we have all kinds of reasons to avoid conflict: so many things can go wrong, and it doesn’t seem to ever end! This is precisely what people do then, they do their level best to avoid conflict at all costs, either in all cases, or with some people, or with some issues, because they have decided either consciously or unconsciously that there is no point in engaging in the conflict—no good will come of it. Sometimes they are probably right. Mostly, though, they are wrong, and worse, their fear of engaging in necessary conflicts will only continue the conflict indefinitely and allow the conflict to cause all kinds of problems it would not have caused if it had been addressed earlier.

Let’s put it this way, conflict avoidance is often a myth, especially in family or intimate relationships. It is an illusion. There is no such thing as conflict avoidance. There is only conflict postponement or conflict reduction. When we avoid necessary conflict, it doesn’t actually go away, it just goes underground, it simmers, it waits, only to flair up again, usually with much more energy than it had the last time. Part of this is in the nature of conflict itself and part of it is in the nature of what we do to avoid conflict.

One of the most common methods of conflict avoidance is passive aggressiveness. Passive aggressive behavior includes any and all things people do to somehow urgently communicate a need without actually expressing it directly. Think of the different things we do to each other to get a point across without saying a single word, things like rolling our eyes, glaring, crossing our arms, the silent treatment, rolling over in bed with a bit of “extra gusto” when our partner reaches over for us, the overly enthusiastic assurance that everything is “fine.” These and many other nonverbal cues are ways we tell each other, “there’s a conflict here, whether you want to see it or not, and it isn’t going away until you recognize and meet my needs.” Seems silly and funny when you look at it from a distance, but it stinks to have to deal with it up close regardless of which side of it you are on, and especially if it happens often. It can actually destroy what might otherwise be a fairly healthy relationship.

Passive aggressive behavior is an attempt to state a need likely to cause a conflict without having to take the responsibility for having the need, stating the need, or causing the conflict. We are in essence telling someone, “you should do this thing, and you should do it without needing me to tell you to do it (you should be able to guess what I want from you), and if you don’t there will be a problem.” The benefit of it this approach is not just that it avoids conflict; it avoids the disappointment or pain we might feel if the answer is no. I actually think even these two reasons do not adequately explain the frequency of passive aggressive behavior or the lengths people will go to preserve their posture in it (how long people can keep up the silent treatment). Passive aggressive behavior allows us to demand some kind of need, while avoiding having to face the possibility that what we are asking for might actually not be okay. If we didn’t ask, then we don’t have to take responsibility for that need. See what I mean? Still conflict there, but it’s just not getting worked out.

Conflict avoidance results in resentments, destructive patterns of interaction that become even more engrained. If conflict avoidance goes on too long and in too many ways, it can destroy the fabric of a relationship by destroying trust in the ability to get our needs met while also meeting the needs of others. When we become resigned to not being able to resolve even the most basic conflicts, we seek those needs elsewhere, and the importance of the relationship diminishes in serious ways. This is often the status when couples come to me for therapy, in a last-ditch attempt to save the relationship.

The way to avoid these patterns is to stop trying to avoid conflict when conflict is necessary to resolve issues that won’t be resolved any other way. A client once asked me if their marriage therapy should be measured by seeing if there is less fighting. I said I didn’t think so. The measurement should be whether their arguments were actually helping them solve problems. Conflicts need to be able to be resolved, before couples in any situation can believe the relationship can be saved. Then they can actually stop fearing conflicts in the ways they have in the past.

With so much at stake when conflict goes bad, it makes sense that we avoid conflict whenever we can. It doesn’t make sense to avoid conflict when avoidance actually makes things worse, or when our needs are really important and avoiding conflict keeps us stuck in a place that is unacceptable. If a person needs to have space in their lives to try something new and important (go back to school, switch jobs, have a free night each week to hang out with friends), but they don’t ask their partner for this, they may avoid conflict in the short term, but they may also be inviting damage to their own sense of self-worth and inviting resentment against their partner for their inability to have what the space they need to grow (even though their partner doesn’t know what’s wrong because they didn’t ask).

With so much at stake in figuring how to have conflict which is both necessary and can achieve resolution satisfactory for everyone involved, it is important to think about what it would take to feel good about having conflict when it is necessary. That leaves us with the next blog, where we will pick apart how to have conflict without the need for hostility. And no matter what kind of hostility might be involved in a conflict (short of physical or verbal abuse), how to have conflict that actually achieves the result of resolving underlying issues that leaves everyone feeling heard, important, and safe.

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

I define conflict much more broadly than most people. When people tell me about conflict happening in their lives, they are referring to what I consider a subset of conflict, which I will call “hostile conflict.”  Not all conflict is hostile.  In fact, most conflict does not involve any kind of hostility. When we think of conflict as always leading to hostility, its no surprise that we do whatever we can to avoid conflict, even if that means being stuck in patterns and situations that are really pretty awful because we cannot resolve the continuing conflict we are avoiding.  If we can re-orient the way we see conflict, as involving issues that can be addressed, often without hostility or the risk of not knowing what to do with highly emotional reactions, the brick wall that prevents us from dealing with conflict can go away.

Here’s my definition of conflict:

“Conflict exists when two or more people (or businesses, groups or nations) believe there aren’t enough resources to meet everyone’s needs in a given situation leading to disagreement about how to divide those resources to meet their respective needs.”

I know this definition is fairly general and maybe not very clear. So, I will spend some time giving details about what I mean. There isn’t anything in my definition of conflict that requires the disagreement to be expressed or acknowledged by everyone involved in the conflict. Think about times when someone has been giving you the “cold shoulder” and you do not know why. You ask, and it opens up a discussion about something that has been bugging the other person about wanting something from you and you had no idea.  Conflict still exists, because you and the other person did not agree about your respective needs, even though you didn’t know there was a disagreement about needs until you asked.

I suppose its also worth pointing out that my definition of needs is equally as broad as my definition of conflict.  “Need” can be something as small as who gets to use the bathroom next or as large as which nations helped Osama Bin Laden commit acts of terrorism.  I often find it amazing how family members can have highly aggressive and hostile conflict over needs that start out very insignificant. The reason almost always has very little to do with the immediate issue involved in the conflict and is far more related to failure to resolve past conflicts in a way that leaves both participants feelings satisfied.

Sometimes conflict is really a matter of mistaken interpretation.  The mistake might be one or both people (or groups) thinking they need something the other group needs, when in fact, either they don’t really need it, or the other person or group doesn’t really need it. When I was a business law attorney, this was often the case.  We’d spend tens of thousands of dollars and many months or even years arguing over how to settle a dispute. Then both parties would sit down at a mediation, go through their various points, realize their disagreement was not as large or insurmountable as they both thought and could be resolved without the need for a trial and more time and money.

These mediations were most successful when both parties were in a position to hear something they hadn’t previously considered (often because they were tired of spending precious time and money on the problem).  Let’s call this way of resolving conflict “creative reconsideration” (if you are wondering if I just made that up, I did).  When we are willing to be creative in reconsidering our own needs and how we can also help someone else meet their needs, it is often the case that the conflict wasn’t about “insufficient resources” to meet the needs of both, but about an overly narrow view of those resources and needs.  In one legal case I remember, a business argument over who gets which clients when two people split up the business was solved without a lawsuit when both people realized they had more than enough growth potential to go around by clearly defining boundaries going forward (for instance, by geographical territory and size of clients).  Both new businesses got what they wanted without losing something to the other business.  This was conflict, and it was resolvable without the need for hostility.

That’s easy though—to think of conflict as the result of a simple mistake. But, what about when conflict really is about not having enough resources to meet everyone’s needs?  In therapy, I sometimes use the example of a four-way stop intersection to illustrate that even when conflict is real and unavoidable, there are ways to face it and resolve it, if everyone respects everyone else’s needs as a first step. Whenever there are two or more cars heading in different directions at a four-way stop, this is always instant conflict.  You might be thinking its not conflict because in the vast majority of cases everyone passes through the intersection without the slightest edginess, anxiety, fear, anger, yelling, screaming, etc. (insert here whatever your think of in your mind when someone says “conflict”).  You are right that most of the time there isn’t “hostile conflict,” but that doesn’t mean there isn’t conflict.  Every time you pull up to a four-way stop sign and someone else is either already there or coming to a stop from another direction, both of you must decide who gets to go first. You can’t both go, even though you both want to go first.  You’ll crash if you do. That is conflict!

How then does it get resolved without hostility?  Well, first, it doesn’t always.  I’ve had people flip me off when I went first and they thought they had that right (and sometimes they were right, although flipping me off did seem a little petty).  When we do resolve a four-way stop without hostility, we do it because we are both mindful in the moment that there are preset rules to help resolve the conflict about who goes first.  Who got their first?  Who was fully stopped?  Were there other people in front of that person who already went?  Are there other reasons the other person can’t go (e.g. pedestrians in their way)? Everyone knows these rules (okay, they should know these rules), and if the rules are respected, and there is a general feeling among all involved that the next guy’s right to go first is just is important as mine, then the rules will dictate how to resolve the conflict. The outcome is nearly certain most of the time, and the anxiety or hostility that often comes with conflict is not necessary or helpful in anyway for resolving the conflict.  In other words, “my need” to cross the intersection will (almost always) be noted by the other person according to the rules already in place before we both pulled up to the intersection.

Where conflict really gets messy is when the rules are much less clear, so the other person’s reaction to the conflict is unclear and risky, and the final outcome of the conflict is also much less clear.  In other words, when it isn’t at all clear that we will get what we want, that the other person cares or hears what we want, or that they will play by the same rules (our rules) about how to decide who gets what they want… most.  Conflict is scary and messy when we don’t know the outcome, like a fog with no clear exit.  Conflict avoidance is often mostly about this fear. Conflict avoidance, how we do it, why we do it, what ways it causes problems, and how to solve it, will be the topics of the next blog in this series of blogs on conflict.

Conflict, Part II: Conflict Avoidance (not published yet)

Conflict, Part III: Resolving conflict (not published yet)

Copyright, 2011, Michael Kinzer. Blog entries and other materials available on Jupiter Center’s website are intended to stimulate thoughts and conversations and to supplement therapy work with Jupiter Center clients already in therapy. If you or someone you know suffers from a mental illness, you are strongly encouraged to seek help from a mental health professional. For further information about this blog, or Jupiter Center, contact Michael Kinzer at 612-701-0064 or michael(at)jupitercenter.com.

In the last blog, I boiled down my approach to sobriety this way: “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself, with rigorous honesty, and do this in everything you do in your life, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, every day, no exceptions.”  Notice that this statement about living your life actually says nothing at all about drinking, drugs, gambling, or any other kind of addiction.  In a previous blog on what constitutes “Mental Health,” I suggested it amounted to something like having the ability to address your internal self, no matter how difficult.  Well, that sounds pretty similar to a “fearless and searching” inventory of ourselves.

So, what’s with the “moral” part?  In addiction recovery work, there is a fundamental problem that addicts can often suffer from extraordinary guilt, which can be a primary motivator for continued drinking (to temporarily escape the guilt when we are drunk).  Alleviate the guilt, and you alleviate a big part of the reason to drink. Makes sense.  Makes sense for alcoholics, and anyone else who suffers from guilt, whether they are alcoholics or not.  Think about it this way.  The DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) created by the American Psychiatric Association lists “inappropriate guilt” as one of the leading symptoms of Major Depression.  So, a person who’s guilt is a leading cause of their depression, might do very well to root out where the guilt comes from, by engaging in a “fearless and searching moral inventory of themselves.”  When we do this in therapy, they often find that much of their guilt is “inappropriate” because they are holding themselves responsible for all kinds of stuff even though it wasn’t their doing and they had no control.  Again, even when a depressed client finds they feel legitimate guilt about stuff in their lives, they might be depressed because they don’t know how to let go of the guilt, or what to do about it.  The 8^th and 9^th steps of A.A. are great tools for this situation.  Step 8 is “Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.” Step 9 is “Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.”

When I was in graduate school earning my therapy degree, they taught us a version of this very thing, only they taught it using different language, and taught it as part of what they called “Narrative Therapy.”  Okay, whatever you want to call it, these ideas can give people powerful tools to really determine whether they feel bad for stuff that isn’t their fault or they feel bad for stuff that should make them feel bad but they don’t know what to do about it and are stuck in their lives over it.  I often use these tools to help adults who struggle with issues of guilt over disappointing their parents’ expectations of themselves by suggesting they right a letter about this to their parents and then either read it or discuss it with their parents, or bring it to therapy so we can take a closer look at whether those expectations are really worth trying to meet.  I could cite many other examples of the ways just these two steps, Steps 8 and 9, are helpful to a wide variety of therapy clients, including those who struggle with addiction and those who do not.

When someone struggling with addiction comes to see me for therapy, one of the first things I tell them is: “I am not going to be your ‘sober cop.’” Those of you who are reading this blog who came to see me for addiction issues are probably chuckling to yourselves right now as you remember our first session talking about this.  I say it with all seriousness, though.  I tell them that I want them to do what they need to do to stay sober, whether that means going to an A.A. kind of program or some other program. If they decide to go the A.A. route, I suggest they find at least one group they can attend every week (a “home group”), work the steps as they see fit, and get an A.A. “sponsor” (someone who is in A.A. and can help them figure out how to apply the steps in their lives).  Beyond those suggestions, their recovery from addiction is mostly up to them. I further explain that, in a way, my role as their therapist begins where the steps end, that I can help them increase their self-awareness beyond what they might be able to do using the 12 steps alone.  I see my role in their lives as supporting them in discovering why they drink, use drugs, gamble, and what parts of their lives might still encourage them to do so.  A.A. and other 12 step programs certainly do this to some extent, but many people have issues that they may not want to share with a group of strangers at an A.A. meeting. Or, they may find they need more targeted guidance at understanding the issues that helped to create or sustain their addiction and the consequences of that addiction (e.g. marital conflict).  With these clients, I might use some parts of the 12-step process, as they deem it appropriate for them. I also use many other therapy tools and ideas with these clients as well, just as I would with any other clients.

I want to modify my previous statement about how I try to live my life as a sober person by adding to it part of Step 7 of A.A., which says, “Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.”  The word “Him” is supposed to refer to God, but it is commonly accepted in A.A. that you can replace God with anything you consider your “higher power.”  At times in my own sobriety, when I’ve struggled with my own spirituality, my “higher power” was as simple as the other people in A.A., helping me to figure out what I needed to do to stay sober while they were figuring out their own sobriety issues. Step 7 is important because it encourages us to be “humble.”  The importance of humility is all over A.A., not just in the steps.

I use humility as a potential tool with all my clients. A good example of a client issue where humility is really important is when a client feels responsible for things in their life over which they have little or no control. This can lead to serious anxiety issues, guilt, co-dependency, compulsive behaviors like excessive working hours and addictive behaviors like drinking, drugs gambling, sex addiction, etc. (which is why is it is a vital part of 12-step recovery in A.A. and similar programs).  I even use humility myself as a tool to monitor the amount of responsibility I take on for my clients’ issues.  I want to be responsive and engaged with my clients in helping them find solutions to their problems.  I do not want to make the mistake of thinking I am responsible for solving their problems. That is disrespectful to my client because it falsely assumes they can’t solve their own problems. Lack of humility in my therapy work would also weigh on me and make me think I am more important than I really am.

The point of these blogs on 12-step recovery and therapy has been to clarify for myself and for my clients that, while I have many different approaches that guide my work with a client, depending on what they need, I cannot deny the importance of my own experiences in using the tools of 12-step recovery in my own life.  I do not believe in a one-size-fits-all approach to much of anything having to do with how humans live and what they need.  We are all really different.  I respect that and admire it, especially when I see others find their own way, gathering around them unique resources and strengths to cope with their various issues. There are, though, some universal themes that seem to help clients in their struggles. These include self-awareness, honesty, consistent practicing of what we learn, reaching out to others, and humility.  All of these themes are incorporated in the 12-steps and can benefit just about every one of us.

A few years ago, I was teaching a ten-week “Healthy Relationships” class to some prisoners at a state prison in Faribault. The class was intended to give the prisoners a wide variety of tools to make decisions about primary partner relationships that would support their personal growth away from whatever brought them to prison. One of the prisoners, a guy who was getting out of prison about half-way through the course, asked me to sum up the concepts in the course that day so he could use the core elements in his life after he left. Rather than thinking about all the tools, jargon, acronyms and other information provided in the course materials we were using for the class, I tried to quickly sum up how I used the same kinds of ideas in my own life.  Surprisingly, what came out of my mouth was something like this: “Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of yourself, with rigorous honesty, and do this in everything you do in your life, all the time, twenty-four hours a day, every day, no exceptions.”  I wrote this on the white board at the front of the class.  Some of the prisoners recognized this.  Its core is the fourth step of Alcoholics Anonymous.  The rest is stuff from the main book of Alcoholics Anonymous, simply called “Alcoholics Anonymous.”  In AA, we just call it “the Big Book” (it’s kind of big, and blue).

Here are the 12 steps of Alcoholics Anonymous:

1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol—that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.

I suppose everyone has their own way of using these steps to stay sober. In the AA meetings I’ve attended people often say Step 1, Step 11, or Step 12 are the most important for their sobriety.  That’s fine, for them, but that’s not true for me.  The first step is certainly essential.  No one can get sober until they realize they really need to get sober.  True enough.  That will only take you so far, though, and over the years, I have seen literally hundreds if not thousands of people reach this conclusion, stay sober for a month or two or a year or two, and then fall “off the wagon” of recovery, sometimes repeatedly.  This is part of the reason I wrote an earlier blog, called “Acknowledging the problem is not enough,” which states that recognizing the problem is not the most difficult part of personal growth. The most difficult part is following through on what needs to be done to solve the problem.  This is true for any kind of personal growth struggle, including sobriety. Step 12 is important because it gives people a chance to provide to others what they themselves have received in sobriety. This is actually a pretty beautiful thing.  I am sure that part of my decision to become a therapist is related to this idea. I want to give to others some of the tools and help others have given to me, including the tools of sobriety, but also many other kinds of tools for addressing other mental health issues. Still, it isn’t possible to genuinely share tools with others unless you are pretty solid at using them yourself.

I’ve already said the core of how we can make good decisions is a modified version of Step 4. This step is at the core of my own recovery and how I choose to live my whole life.  In some ways, though, the 12 steps might not be the most important part of what led to my sobriety.  I am, by nature, pretty rebellious. I don’t like to be told by anyone what to do. I will struggle and chafe at anyone who tries to control me.  This has caused me trouble, but has also probably been pretty good for me at times in my life.  AA works for me because it recognizes that a common feature of alcoholics (and drug addicts) is this rebelliousness.  Notice in the steps above the language “God as we understood him.”  The “as we understood him” stuff is really important in AA.  It tells anyone who comes to an AA meeting, “we are not here to tell you what to believe, or who you are, or what you need to do.” In other parts of the “Big Book” it says stuff like “these are but suggested steps” and “use what works for you and leave the rest.”  Beautiful! For a guy like me, always looking for whomever might want to control me, this is just what I needed to be able to make my own decisions about whether to stay sober and what I needed to do for myself to make sobriety work for me.  It also just feels very respectful, very nonjudgmental.

Beyond the 12 Steps of AA, there is another list of 12 items in AA, called the “Twelve Traditions.” They sort of set out the organizational rules of AA. They say things like “every group ought to be self-supporting…” (they read this one at meetings as they pass around the basket looking for donations, which are usually one or two dollars from each person there, if they can afford it).  Most of the Twelve Traditions are in one way or another a reminder that the sole point of AA is to meet in groups to talk about alcoholism to help other alcoholics stay sober, so there is no chance that the primary point will get sidetracked by money or politics or whatever.

There is one particular tradition, though, that goes along with what I was saying before, about not trying to tell me who to be or what I am supposed to do in AA or anywhere else.  The Third Tradition of AA says, “The only requirement for membership in A.A. is the desire to stop drinking.” This, along with the Fourth Step of A.A., led me to believe that I could actually participate in AA without feeling controlled—that it is entirely up to me from day one how to decide I want to stay sober.  I have even sat in AA meetings with someone there who was drunk but wanted to stop drinking. One time when this happened, someone else there told a drunk guy to leave and come back when he was sober. Several people at the meeting, including me, defended his right to be there based on the Third Tradition, which doesn’t say you have to actually stop drinking to be in AA, it just says you have to want to stop drinking.  Nice.

Giving me the choice about how to be sober has been an essential component of my ability to remain sober for nearly 30 years.  Staying sober means that I am not drinking, or using drugs, so in that sense, sobriety is a good thing all by itself.  But there’s more to it.  I have decided that I need to practice the fourth step, with rigorous honesty, in all my affairs, twenty-four hours a day, in order to stay sober.  This is a lucky break for me in a way. It actually forces me to do things in my life that have had an unintended side-effect.  Due to the way I need to stay sober, I have become very comfortable with self-awareness, self-exploration, and continual monitoring of my emotional and inner self as a way of life.  After all these years of sobriety, I wouldn’t know how and wouldn’t want to live my life any other way.

I was at an AA meeting about a year ago when someone there was crying; upset that his first anniversary of sobriety was coming up. Normally, this would be a happy occasion. He had been at this point in his sobriety twice before and relapsed each time. He was afraid he would relapse again.  He wanted to know why some people were able to maintain long sobriety and others did not.  I did not think I had THE answer to that question.  I had AN answer: my own answer for why I have stayed sober this long. For about two years, more or less, I stayed sober so I would not drink or use drugs because drinking and using drugs wreaked havoc on my life.  After about two years though, something changed.  I relapsed.  It scared me.  Not so much scared of what would happen to me if I continued using—scared I would lose the ability to live sober if I continued to drink or use drugs.  I had become accustomed to the benefits of sobriety, including being honest with myself about my character defects, my responsibilities, and also my freedom from unwanted guilt. I was very afraid of losing those “side-effects” of sobriety. After that relapse, I began to think, I don’t stay sober any more to avoid drinking and drugs.  I avoid drinking and drugs so I can stay sober. I told him this at the meeting.  I don’t know if it helped him or not, but listening to his concerns helped me think about my own sobriety in a way I hadn’t ever considered before that night.

In the next parts of this series of blogs on 12-step recovery, I will discuss how I incorporate what I have learned about 12-step recovery in my work as a therapist.  I will also discuss how I think the 12-step recovery process is not enough for many people in recovery to really address their mental health issues, yet some parts of the 12-step process can benefit many people who are not in recovery from addiction of any kind.