From Cyberspying to Defriending: How Facebook Wreaks Relationship Mischief

Read my new blog post on Psychology Today by clicking the link below!

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-novel-perspective/201110/cyberspying-and-defriending-how-facebook-is-finding-its-way-the-th

Navigating Transitions: What We Never Learned in School

Change is the one constant in life. And yet, we are often surprised when it comes. Parents reward us for mastering routines of hygiene and self-discipline. Our educational system grooms us for progressive levels of security, reinforcing the belief that skill mastery yields the predictable comforts of a settled life. As we age, we are measured by our gains, not our losses, our stability, not our vulnerability.

That’s why so many people are devastated when the temple of their familiar world is shaken through unemployment, divorce, disease, death, and similar forces of upheaval.  We believe in change as long as the wheel of fortune spins in our favor. When change defies our expectations with unpleasant results, a lifetime of conditioning can become suspect, unleashing the dark designs of our imaginations.

Throughout the centuries, philosophers, theologians, and psychologists have attempted to illuminate the nature of change, from the ancient hexagrams of the I Ching ( the Chinese Book of Change) to the stages of loss identified in the last century by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, M.D., who describes a non-linear progression through denial, sadness, anger, bargaining, and acceptance. One of my favorite frameworks, however, was written by a little-known English professor whose last name is practically synonymous with change – William Bridges.

In his 1980s groundbreaking book “Transitions,” Bridges maps out the cycle of change into three discrete stages that is at once counter-intuitive and overly simplistic. According to Bridges, every transition begins with an ending and ends with a beginning. In between endings and beginning is a discomfiting neutral zone that most people would rather avoid but is essential for personal growth.

Why begin with the end? Writes Bridges: “Divorces, deaths, job changes, moves, illnesses, and many lesser events disengage us from the contexts in which we have known ourselves. They break up the old cue system that served to reinforce our roles and pattern our behavior.”

Within the rubric of “endings,” he identifies five fundamental tasks one must master in order to successfully move to the next chapter. They are disengagement (separation from the familiar), dismantling (letting of what is no longer needed), disenchantment (discovering that certain things no longer make sense), disidentification (reevaluating one’s identity) and disorientation (a vague sense of losing touch with one’s reality).

Once endings are complete, people progress to an uncomfortable but growth-filled neutral zone which Bridges describes as “an empty in-between time when…everything feels as though it’s up for grabs and you don’t quite know who you are or how you’re supposed to behave.”

Most people would prefer to skip this stage. However, by attempting to leapfrog past the neutral zone, they may miss important insights and gifts, putting them at risk of poor decision-making in the future. Bridges explains that, not unlike the concept of meditation or the Sabbath, “only by returning to the formlessness of primal energy that renewal can take place. We need it just the way an apple tree needs the cold of winter.”

As the neutral zone is discomfiting, beginnings can be anti-climatic. Usually, there are no bells, whistles, or red carpets, just a “faint intimation of something different, a new theme in the music, and a strange fragrance on the breeze.” Although some individuals may feel invigorated by beginnings, often it takes time to become adjusted to a new identity or situation. Even a beginning considered positive by societal standards – like getting married, having a child, or getting promoted – can be extremely stressful as those affected become attuned to an unfamiliar landscape.

Although no one can escape life’s inevitable transitions, people’s coping styles vary depending on a variety of factors from biology to their family of origin. Talking to a trusted friend or mental health professional can be helpful if you or someone you know shows signs of depression and anxiety. Reflecting on Bridges’ framework, however, may help demystify transitions so they don’t seem quite so scary or overwhelming. Liberated from our fears, we can dance courageously with the unknown, mining important life lessons from every little step.

Stay tuned for information on my “Coping with Transitions” workshop at the JCC in Manhattan this winter.

The Difference Between a Monologue and a Dialogue

Once in a while, when a conversation with someone I care about takes an unexpected turn that is not to my liking, I am tempted to stand up and yell “C-U-U-U-U-T!”

“Excuse me,” I imagine myself saying, leaning over the person’s shoulder, megaphone dangling at my hip. “But you are not following the script. Your lines are, ‘Yes, of course, you are right. I agree wholeheartedly. I will do (such and such). Anything to make you happy.’”

“Oh,” they respond, slowly emerging from a daze. And they repeat the lines I have fed them. “Great, that’s more like it,” I reply. “Now say it with feeling.”

Of course, my fantasy conversations are usually just that – fantasies. And they’re not dialogues either; they are monologues…between me and my ego.

Although a monologue is technically defined as a “prolonged talk or discourse by a single speaker,” conversations between two parties who are not really listening to each other are essentially monologues masquerading as dialogues.

Most people spend their time vacillating between monologues and dialogues – the latter being far less frequent. At least, this was the theory postulated by early 20th century existentialist philosopher Martin Buber in his signature work “I – Thou.”  http://buber.de/en/

Buber described the difference between monologues and dialogues as an “I – It” vs. “I – Thou” dynamic. In each case, the “I” represents the self – essentially, the totality of our feelings, values, and perceptions that comprise our personal daily universe.

According to Buber, the essence of existence lies in how we interact with others. The “I – It” relationship is about objectification. We relate to people as “its” every time fear and self-interest interfere with our being able to fully experience the exquisite reality of another human being. At its worst and most obvious, “I-itting” is responsible for all genres of human atrocities – genocide, homicide, domestic violence, racism, and sexism. In modern terms, “I – it” would perhaps best describe the paralysis between Republicans and Democrats, Israelis and Palestinians, gays and fundamentalists.

In our intimate or collegial relationships, however, “I-itting” can be much more insidious. Monologues can easily creep into and potentially corrupt the most innocent of conversations, often unintentionally. This usually occurs when we ignore other people’s boundaries, focus too much on making a good impression, or engage with someone based on our perceptions of how well they can serve our personal needs.

Over time, “itting” can lead to feelings of alienation. Most people turn to psychotherapy either because they feel someone else is “itting” them or because they are “itting” others. Perhaps they’re feeling tuned out by a spouse, engaging in empty sexual relationships, neglecting their children, or living as strangers (“its”) to their authentic selves. Even as a therapist, I must monitor my own tendencies to “it” my clients by imposing my values, judgments, expectations, or need to feel competent.

That’s why authentic dialogue, not dueling monologues, is the healing aspect of the therapeutic relationship – or any relationship for that matter. To experience the full-bodied richness of an encounter with another person without motive or guile is what Buber describes as the “I-Thou” relationship.

The “I-Thou” relationship is about letting go of agendas. It’s about authenticity, mutuality, witnessing, and truth-telling. It respects differences and embraces separate but equally valid realities, which requires the courage to take risks and trust the process.

Of course, letting go of appearances and attachments to outcomes is often easier said than done. “I – Thou” thus requires a fully present “I.” What does that mean? A wise friend of mine has the same birthday wish every year – to have greater intimacy with himself. Without that, he explains, he cannot be intimate with anyone else. Such is the “I – Thou” ideal.

One of the hardest things we can ever do, and the greatest act of love, is to put aside our own agendas and really listen to another person.  That’s why my fantasy monologues are never quite as satisfying as real-life dialogues, when the mutual exchange of feelings and perspectives can deepen, heal, and cement the bonds of friendship, partnerships, and familial relationships.

So while I may be tempted to redirect conversations that make me nervous, I know what I must ultimately do – put down my megaphone, toss out the script, take a deep breath, and say, “yes, I am listening.” And mean it.

Who’s Writing Your Script? You May Be Surprised.

Part One of a Two-Part Series

In the movie Stranger than Fiction, Harold Crick is a robotic IRS agent who begins to question his mundane existence when he hears a mysterious voice narrating his life and foreshadowing his untimely death. When he discovers that he is not the master of his own destiny, but rather a fictional character dreamed up by an eccentric female author, Crick tracks down his creator and convinces her to rewrite the ending of his story.

While both strange and fictional, Crick’s journey speaks to our capacity to question the scripts we’ve been given and reclaim our personal narratives.

Scripts are conditioned responses to recognizable situations. They are the subtle, often unconscious, cues we pick up from society about how we should be living our lives. If we were computers, scripts would be our software.

According to behavioral psychology, we begin to assimilate scripts as young children, when we are most susceptible to messages from parents, siblings, peers, teachers, the media, and other powerful influences in our communities. Although adolescence is a time when children typically begin to question the powers that be, many of us still continue to be influenced throughout our lifetimes by incompatible scripts without questioning whether they make sense, who’s really writing them, and whether or not we’re right for the roles.

When we neglect to examine our scripts carefully, we run the risk of living perfunctory or  fictitious existences that leave us feeling like strangers to our authentic selves. This can manifest in the following two ways:

Playing an Ill-fitting Role (or “Why There are So Many Unhappy Lawyers ”)
Familial expectations and societal values may lead us to choose a career, lifestyle, or partner that is out of sync with our authentic talents and interests.

Poorly Written Scripts (or “When Screenwriters Lack Vision”)
Internalized negative messages – “You’ll never succeed at anything” or “I must do everything perfectly or not at all” – may prevent us from stepping into and mastering roles that highlight our natural abilities.

What do we do if we begin to suspect the authenticity of our scripts? The first step is to observe them. Psychotherapy, writing, meditation, art, and prayer are all paths that help quiet our noisy inner narrators so that we can hear the whisper of  “the still quiet voice” that tells us our truths. Once we  tune into this voice, we can begin to engage in a meaningful dialogue with the scripts that potentially undermine our well-being.

In my Writing from a Novel Perspective workshops, I help students identify self-defeating scripts by writing imaginary dialogues with their antagonists, whether it be a troubling person or situation, a negative script, or an obstacle to success.

Using the literary technique of personification – endowing an inanimate object or abstract notion with human qualities – I ask them to imagine what their antagonist might say in a heart-to-heart conversation about a problematic situation. For example, someone who identified fear as an obstacle to personal progress might initiate a dialogue as follows:

Student: Fear, I know you well. Whenever I’m on the brink of making serious changes in my life, you show up to try to convince me of all the things that could go wrong.

Fear: I’m just trying to protect you. I don’t want you to make a mistake and get hurt.

Student: I appreciate your concern for my well-being, but I need you to cut me some slack so that I can take the steps I need to move. I may make mistakes, but I will learn from them.

Such inner-personal dialogues can be extremely revealing, especially when we give ourselves permission to follow the classic Freudian directive and “say whatever comes to mind.”

And here is the beauty of this process:  once we tune into the voices influencing our lives, we can begin, like the fictional Harold Crick, to engage in a meaningful dialogue with self-defeating scripts and transform them into life-affirming mantras. By reclaiming the power to author our own life stories, we discover  that the most important conversation we’ll ever have is with ourselves.

Part Two:  Step Out of Your Story and Check out the Landscape

Character Development: The Heart of Any Story Worth Living

A friend of mine who’s had a disproportionate number of struggles in her 45 years on earth, bristles whenever I try to comfort her by espousing the virtues of character development. “Great, another f-ing personal growth experience,” she says.

While I completely empathize, I sometimes wonder whether we can ever really know how much character-building is too much. From Friedrich Nietzsche to Carl Jung, to the Vilna Goan, many philosophical and spiritual luminaries have subscribed to the belief that adversity cultivates character, challenging the forces of  inertia so that we may face a fear, strengthen emotional muscle, eradicate self-defeating thoughts, or break an unhealthy relationship pattern.

Personally speaking, character development is why I became a psychotherapist. It is also one of the reasons I go to the movies or pick up a book – I want to witness personal transformation, and be transformed in the process. I want to help the chronically timid woman discover previously untapped reserves of strength and courage. I want to read about the political refugee who finds salvation in friendship and small, meaningful acts of humanity.

Unfortunately, character development doesn’t occur in a vacuum. Life typically presents us with circumstances that bump up against our rougher edges. These circumstances, which we might call conflicts, present us with opportunities to refine these growth edges or run the risk of becoming, well…even edgier.

Of course, no one ever consciously desires conflicts. Most of us will go out of our way to avoid them, the fight-or-flight response being hard-wired into our DNA. However, in the world of novels and film, not ony do we expect conflicts, but also we recognize, consciously or not, that they are an important part of any story worth telling.

As many of us recall from high school English class, conflict is a basic element of a story that results from the interaction between the protagonist (the main character) and the antagonist, typically a person (boss), group of people (government), situation (hurricane) or personal shortcoming (addiction).

Conflicts in novels and films shape the plot and move the story forward, presenting the main character with opportunities to overcome inner obstacles, potentially leading to epiphanies, life lessons, and psychological rebirth.

Just like in novels, the chapters of our lives often present us with opportunities to strengthen areas within ourselves that haven’t been fully developed. In my Writing from a Novel Perspective workshops, I ask participants to explore through writing character traits that might be cultivated through a conflictual encounter with an antagonist in a recent episode of their personal narrative.

I tell participants that “conflict” can be interpreted literally as a person who is giving them grief, or as loosely as ambivalence about making an important decision. Once they have identified their antagonist, I encourage them to imagine how the conflict with their antagonist might help them develop personal strengths in areas where they haven’t historically felt so strong.

For example, a successful executive with a history of being judgemental about the less fortunate may, upon losing his job, find himself developing a greater degree of compassion for himself and for others. Similarly, a newly divorced woman who took a passive role in her relationship with an alcoholic spouse may need to become assertive to move forward in life and secure the welfare of her children.

And here is the beauty of this process:  once we accept that our antagonist has something valuable to teach us, we can begin to mine the gems of of the situation whether or not our story unfolds to our liking. Suddenly responding to conflict with anger and resentment or, alternatively, with  introspection and empowerment, becomes a conscious choice. This new awareness can transform our personal narratives into paeans to the triumph of the human spirit over adversity, reminding us that character development is not only the heart of any story worth reading, but also worth living.

Feeling Stuck? It’s Just a Chapter, Not Your Life Story

Every life is an unfolding story with plot twists and bright spots. When people become depressed, it is usually because they mistake one or more difficult chapters in their lives for the entire plotline, and fail to embrace lessons that can help them move their story forward.

Take the 2006 Blockbuster, “The Pursuit of Happyness.” The true rags-to-riches film chronicles exactly 28 chapters in the life of Chris Gardener, a suddenly single father who battles homelessness and ridiculous odds to earn a coveted entry-level position at a major San Francisco brokerage firm. The genius of this film is that 27 of the chapters, wrapped into gritty little headings like “Locked Out,” “Being Stupid,” and “Riding the Bus,” are about the “Pursuit” part of the equation. Only the last chapter, as the narrator points out, is entitled “Happiness.”

If Mr. Gardener had gotten stuck in one of these chapters, misinterpreting his temporary difficulties as a never-ending story of struggle and victimization, he may have failed to muster the courage and resilience to succeed. Consequently, the film might have been called “Giving Up,” and its message – that the seeds of happiness are often sown with toil – would have been lost.

Of course, it’s so much easier to accept the meaning of difficult chapters and heart-wrenching scenes when it’s happening to someone else, and we’re virtually assured of a positive outcome.

In my workshop series, Writing from a Novel Perspective http://www.novel-perspective.com/Workshops.html, I invite participants to imagine themselves as protagonists of their own life stories with the power to interpret, transform, and reclaim their personal narratives.

One of the first exercises I give the class is to assign a title to the current chapter of their lives and write a brief description. The exercise is helpful in several respects: 1)  it allows participants to reflect on and begin to identify current trends and themes in the lives; 2) it helps them consider these trends within a framework with a defined beginning and ending; and 3) it empowers them to interpret the meaning of their own experiences.

This exercise also speaks to the power of naming and interpretation. There are many ways to tell a story. But how we interpret our stories affects how we feel about our stories, and how we feel about our stories often determines how they unfold.

Perhaps that’s why one of the primary goals of psychotherapy is to help clients name their problems; the idea being that once something is named, it can be examined, claimed, and interpreted. The power of naming is further emphasized in the first acts of the biblical account of Creation, when God divides light and darkness, and names them “day” and “night.” It is perhaps no coincidence that the Hebrew noun for “word,” dvar, shares a root with the verb “to cut.” Thus words sculpt and shape our reality.

And here is the beauty of this process:  once we have identified the chapters and deciphered their meaning, we can begin to weave the fragments of our lives into a meaningful narrative that values the subtle, often unrecognized personal victories that build character – facing a fear, changing an attitude, or kicking a bad habit. Thus, difficult chapters like unemployment and divorce become opportunities for personal transformation. This new awareness can help us write new scripts for old stories while embracing life’s inevitable trials and tribulations as purposeful experiences that won’t last forever.