Category Archives: Psychology

Blessings in Disguise

Posted on July 6, 2014 by Christy Barongan

Remember how my car broke down on the way to my friend’s wedding? Well, it turned out to be more of an inconvenience than an extra day and $1000. Try 2 extra days and $3000.

I tried my best to have a good attitude about it. I made a list of the things I was thankful for. I tried to put a positive spin on everything. It helped some, but it was still annoying.

You know what helped the most? I looked at the service ticket when I got home and it turned out that my rear brakes were 95% worn. I kind of thought they were unresponsive, but I didn’t think it was that bad. I’m actually thankful that my car broke down. I was speeding because I was late for the rehearsal dinner, and if I had to break suddenly, things could have been much worse. Maybe breaking down wasn’t a punishment for having a bad attitude after all. Maybe God was looking out for me.

I often tell clients that the events that they think are terrible at the time may turn out to be blessings in disguise. This is also supported by research on happiness. I mentioned in a previous post how people who become paraplegics from car accidents return to their baseline level of happiness after about a year. Sometimes they are even thankful for the accident, because it moved their lives in a more positive direction.

I guess if you’re really cynical, you could argue that they’re just rationalizing to make themselves feel better. I don’t think this is true, but even if it were, so what? Our beliefs are more compelling than reality, anyway. I’d love to be irrationally grateful.

This holiday weekend has been tough for me. Holidays are the hardest because they are supposed to be filled with family, friends, and food. And in this case, fireworks. I am 0-4. I think about how I’ve spent the 4th of July in the past. Some of the most recent ones were far worse than I could have imagined. Now that I’m single, the best I can hope for is that holidays won’t be as lonely and depressing as I think they will be. This one is about what I expected. (Unless Federer wins tomorrow. Then it will all be worthwhile.)

My tendency is to beat myself up for my single status. I must deserve it because of all the terrible relationship decisions I’ve made. Or maybe I’m just unlucky. Or maybe at some point in the future, I’ll look back and realize that this period of solitude was also a blessing in disguise. I’m not completely convinced of this, but I’m trying to be hopeful.

These are the flowers from the wedding. It has nothing to do with blessings, but I think it’s a cool picture.

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Joy and Pain

Posted on June 26, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I finally saw The Fault in Our Stars the other day. I thought that the movie was true to the book but wasn’t long enough to include all the scenes that I loved. But I guess no one else would be interested in a 10 hour movie.

One of the things they left out was the discussion of whether we need to experience pain in order to know joy. In the book Hazel repeatedly says she doesn’t believe this: “the existence of broccoli in no way affects the taste of chocolate.” I thought that this was such a compelling argument that for awhile I forgot all of the research I’ve read that supports the joy-pain connection.

Hazel worries about how her death will hurt the people who love her. She is afraid that her parents won’t have a life after she dies. She pushes Augustus away because she doesn’t want to be a grenade. But Augustus cannot be dissuaded: “you don’t get to choose if you get hurt in this world, but you do have some say in who hurts you.”

This whole joy and pain thing is actually why I have so much trouble with endings. I look forward to having the summer off but by the 2nd day of summer I start obsessing about how my vacation is running out. I suffer from existential anxiety about death and aging. Even coming to the end of books like this one is difficult because I don’t want to have to say good-bye to characters like Hazel and Augustus.

When I read the book I didn’t fully appreciate Hazel’s obsession with knowing what happens to the characters at the end of “An Imperial Affliction,” which ends in mid-sentence because the narrator dies of cancer. But after watching the movie, I understand. Hazel wants reassurance that life will go on for her parents after she dies.

I’ve always thought that life was kind of cruel in this way. My heart may be broken but the world doesn’t seem to care. Life goes on, despite my pain. It’s kind of insulting, really.

But now I think it’s a good thing. Life isn’t like a book or a movie that begins with joy but ends with pain–and wisdom. Life is more like a series of stories, where we have more joy–and pain–ahead of us. More people to love. More summers to look forward to.  More books to read. So I’m looking forward to the next installment.

I think this doodle looks like lightning bugs.

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Constructive Criticism

Posted on June 19, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I have trouble giving constructive criticism. I prefer the passive-aggressive route: just avoid the person altogether, or put their call on speaker phone and do my blog homework while they’re talking.

I know this doesn’t reflect positively on me as a psychologist. When I have a client who has problems being assertive, I have all kinds of good suggestions. And they usually take my advice. Which is a perfect example of why I often think my clients are more courageous than I am.

Part of the problem is that I can’t stand hurting other people. If it’s a choice between being annoyed by them or hurting their feelings, I choose to be annoyed. Because I can take it. But all those annoyances start to add up after awhile. Like being bitten by 1000 mosquitos. And I’m allergic to mosquitos, too. That’s why I have to keep reminding myself to pick me.

The other obstacle is the whole hyperempath thing, combined with being highly self-critical. When I think of how I would feel if someone were to tell me that I brag about myself a lot, I would be mortified. I’d probably never speak again.

Sometimes the other person is so sensitive that they, too, will obsess about it for the rest of their lives. We can never have a conversation again where the person doesn’t think about it, apologize for it, justify their behavior. It’s painful. It feels just as bad as when they were annoying me, except now I feel guilty, too.

That’s why I prefer to be so attuned to how other people feel that I can sense their annoyance and figure out why without them having to say a word. Which, admittedly, isn’t a great strategy–especially when you’re prone to depression. Because afterwards you have replay every social interaction over and over, trying to figure out where you offended the other person.

I can do it when it involves tennis. Especially when it involves wasting someone else’s time by being late, not showing up, etc. I may not think my time is valuable, but I won’t tolerate someone in my group or on my team who wastes other people’s time. But sometimes I still obsess about how I did it. Maybe if I had said it differently, I wouldn’t have hurt their feelings.

The reality is, sometimes there’s no way you can give negative feedback without hurting the person. And it’s not really my job to make sure that no one ever feels pain. Sometimes pain is necessary. It lets us know that we need to change something. And if something’s bothering me enough to tell them about it, then I am definitely hoping for change.

Sometimes I wish I could be one of those people who are so oblivious that they don’t care that they’re annoying. Someone who can dismiss criticism with some rationalization. Or someone with a really bad memory for negative feedback. But I can’t. I’m me. Empathic, sensitive, guilt-ridden me.

Perhaps I can think of this as yet another opportunity to practice self-acceptance.

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Interventions, Part 2

Posted on June 17, 2014 by Christy Barongan

In the book Stumbling on Happiness, psychologist Daniel Gilbert gives multiple examples of how we are terrible at predicting what will make us happy. I’m sure you’ve heard some of the studies. How people who are paraplegics from car accidents and people who win the lottery both return to their baseline level of happiness after about a year.

I often tell clients the same thing when they’re catastophizing about what will happen in the future. How they’ll be flipping burgers at McDonald’s because they got an F on their chemistry exam. How they will never find love. How they will be depressed for the rest of their lives. We don’t know what the future holds. We know that we don’t know, but we still act like we do.

So how are we supposed to make decisions if we’re so terrible at predicting the future? Gilbert recommends that we ask someone who has made a similar decision and find out how they feel about it. Psychologists say that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior. Still, there are no guarantees. Ultimately important decisions often come down to a leap of faith.

A few weeks ago I shared my anxiety about having to do an intervention. I asked for advice from my psychiatrist, my therapist, and from God. They all said I had to do it. But I couldn’t make myself do it. Because based on the two suggestions above, the forecast looked pretty gloomy. But a promise is a promise.

I’ve been reading Thomas Merton’s “No Man Is an Island,” and he says that God is involved in every aspect of our lives, guiding our every step, trying to move us closer to where we need to be. I wasn’t sure if I believed that, but it was comforting to think that it might be true. That perhaps God was moving me closer to this conversation, even though I felt like I wasn’t getting anywhere.

I decided to blog about it because that always seems to help. One reader said that perhaps the opportunity would naturally present itself. She was right; I got my opportunity. I did my part, expecting that my concerns would be completely dismissed, but they weren’t. My words had an impact. Things are in motion, moving in the direction they’re supposed to go. And I am thankful.

When I pray for courage, I feel like God tells me that if I do my part, He will do his. And while that has always been true, I’m always still afraid to take the next step. Will it happen this time? Was I just lucky before? Will God really be there on the other side?

Sometimes it takes awhile, but I usually take that leap of faith. I may not know what is on the other side, but I know I can’t stay stuck on this side forever.

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Psychological Energy Conservation

Posted on May 30, 2014 by Christy Barongan
Being single has its advantages. I never realized how much energy I was expending on compromising and trying to make things work. It’s lonely at times but much more relaxing. So much so that I think I’m going to give up all of my high maintenance relationships. Maybe it will help me cut down on my crash and burn days.
 
In fact, I’m thinking about promoting a psychological energy conservation campaign modeled after Go Green. Instead of Reduce, Reuse, Recycle, my slogan is Refrain, Reframe, Reevaluate. Since my tag line is less intuitive, let me elaborate.
 
1.  Refrain.  I’m going to do a better job of setting boundaries. Before, if someone asked me to do something, I felt like I had to do it if I was capable of doing so. Whether I wanted to or not was irrelevant. Or whether it was in my best interest to do so. But you know what? I can just say no. No, I’m not available at that time. No, I don’t want to go to that wedding. No, I don’t have room for you on my team.
 
I can also resist the urge to help people when helping them means hurting myself. My rationale in the past has been that I can take it, so it’s OK. I can lose sleep. I can get my heart broken. I can sacrifice my time. But it’s not OK. I always tell clients that you have to put yourself first, because you can’t rely on other people to do so, even if they love you. If its a choice between you and someone else, pick you. So I’m picking me.
 
2.  Reframe.  I waste a lot of time beating myself up for things I can’t control. Like being angry, or anxious, or exhausted. So I’m trying to reframe my feelings in a way that helps me to be more accepting of them.
 
Lately, when my inner critic gives me a hard time for obsessing, I stand up for myself. Of course I’m obsessing! That’s my thing. That’s what I do. Why wouldn’t I be doing it right now? That shuts him up. And it actually helps me to stop obsessing.
 
And I’ve come up with another part to help me be more forgiving of myself for my anger. I think of my anger as a bouncer who is trying to keep people who have hurt me from getting back into the club. Because I’m standing at the door saying, of course you can come in! Make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything? The bouncer gets mad at me when I do this, and who can blame him, really. Someone needs to be strong enough to kick these people out.
 
3.  Reevaluate.  I need to do an energy assessment after I crash and burn, rather than assume it happened because I’m a crazy, weak, bad person. If I choose to blog during lunch instead of take a nap and catch up on sleep, I might be tired later in the week.  Same thing with staying up until 2 a.m. Or choosing to captain 2 teams at the same time. Or playing 5 times a week. I can do it, but I have to be ready to pay the consequences later.
 
I can become more aware of what I need, rather than judge myself for what I think I should need, if I were a normal person. I can allow myself to do what works best for me. I’m the most productive after 7 p.m., so that’s when I’m going to get my chores done. I’d rather work nonstop for 2 hours than leisurely spend the day working. And my favorite time of day is between 11 p.m. and 2 a.m., so I’m going to let myself enjoy those hours, even if it means that I’ll sleep until noon the next day.
 
I’m thinking this campaign could really catch on. Think how much more energy we would all have for the things that are important to us if we used it more wisely. Heck, I might even win the Nobel Prize like Al Gore.
 

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The Inner Infant

Posted on May 8, 2014 by Christy Barongan

So my inner child, Sophie, has a younger sister. She is an infant and doesn’t have a name yet. While my relationship with Sophie is pretty good, I confess, I’m a terrible mother to my infant. But I’m working on it.

It’s easier to enjoy Sophie because she is playful, funny, cute, and full of energy. But like most kids, she can be a brat and gets on my nerves sometimes. And she doesn’t like it when I’m alone. She’s afraid something bad will happen to us. She advocated for my last relationship and was terribly anxious whenever she thought we might break up. It took awhile before I learned how to comfort her and assure her that I can take care of her by myself.

I only became aware of the infant about a year ago–mainly because I was neglecting her so badly it was affecting my health. I wouldn’t feed her when she was hungry. I wouldn’t soothe her when she was upset. I yelled at her when she cried for no reason. If Social Services could have seen how I was treating her, they definitely would have intervened. After awhile I was having so many physical problems that I was forced to attend to her needs. It was starting to affect my tennis.

I’ve had to get to know my infant the same way any parent gets to know their child: by paying close attention. You don’t automatically know which cry is the hungry cry, the poop cry, or the tired cry; you learn from experience. She is usually upset when I wake up on the weekends because I sleep in and throw off her feeding cycle. So if I’m feeling depressed or anxious when I wake up, I get something to eat because she’s probably hungry.

Or she could be crying because that’s what infants do when they wake up–especially after a nap. It’s funny that we just accept that young kids cry when they wake up without understanding why and without being mad at them for it. I wonder at what age we start expecting people to have a good reason to cry.

I guess some people do acknowledge that they’re in a crappy mood when they wake up and turn to things like coffee, cigarettes, and drugs to calm them down. Those are not good ways to comfort a baby, though. And maybe they’re not ideal for us, either, really. But that’s for another blog post.

She also gets upset whenever I’m rushing around, which is essentially all the time. She is very sensitive to transitions: leaving for work in the morning, rushing to a tennis match, rushing to the grocery store. I have no idea why. Maybe my stress upsets her. Or maybe I’m neglecting her when I’m on the run. This is the distress that is the hardest for me to be compassionate about.

So now there’s this mantra I have to say multiple times a day to soothe her: It’s OK. Everything’s going to be OK. You’re fine. Everything’s going to be fine. And when I’m frustrated, I add although I have no idea what you’re anxious about!  It’s a process, accepting that she deserves to be upset and comforted, even when it doesn’t make sense to me.

I know this probably sounds silly to some of you, but it works really well. I use this analogy often with clients as a way to get them to pay closer attention to what they need, to honor their feelings, to have compassion for themselves, and to learn how to take better care of themselves. It can work surprisingly quickly, once you reassure them that having all these parts doesn’t mean they’re crazy.

So if you ever find that you are arguing with yourself, or that you’re frustrated because your thoughts/feelings/actions don’t make any sense, you might want to ask what part of yourself you might be neglecting.

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The Emotional Life of Your Brain

Posted on April 15, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I just finished reading The Emotional Life of Your Brain, and although I started losing interest towards the end, it presents an interesting view of personality that is worth sharing.

Based on brain research, Davidson identifies 6 dimensions of personality:

1)  Resilience (fast or slow to recover from adversity)

2)  Outlook (negative or positive)

3)  Social Intuition (puzzled or intuitive; A.K.A. emotional intelligence)

4)  Self-Awareness (opaque or aware)

5)  Sensitivity to Context (tuned out or tuned in)

6)  Attention (unfocused or focused)

If you are interested in where you fall on each of these dimensions, click on the link above and you will find a short survey. Here were my results, which probably won’t surprise anyone who reads my blog:

1)  Resilience: fast to recover

2)  Outlook: positive

3)  Social Intuition: very intuitive

4)  Self-Awareness: very self-aware

5)  Sensitivity to Context: very tuned in

6)  Attention: focused

As with most personality dimensions, the goal is to move your set point closer to the middle. In practice, however, one end of the spectrum is usually more desirable than the other. Here are the advantages and disadvantages of each extreme:

1)  Resilience: Being too fast to recover may make you less compassionate and seem unfeeling and insensitive to others. Being slow to recover makes it difficult for you to function and you may focus more on your pain than on other people. But usually people try to learn how to be more resilient.

2)  Outlook: A negative outlook puts you at risk for depression and annoys other people. An overly positive outlook makes it difficult for you to learn from your mistakes and postpone immediate gratification. But usually the goal is to develop a more positive outlook.

3)  Intuition: Being too intuitive may make it difficult to function because you’re constantly picking up other people’s negativity. (Hmmm. That sounds familiar). People who are at the puzzled end may have problems in all aspects of their lives in which they have to interact with other people–which is essentially all aspects of life.

4)  Self-Awareness: Being opaque makes you prone to missing signs of illness and make you unable to take care of yourself. Being too self-aware can make you a hypochondriac. But in general, it’s better to be self-aware.

5)  Sensitivity to Context: Being tuned out might make you feel and act in ways that aren’t appropriate to the situation (e.g., anxiety disorders). Being too tuned in can make you prone to losing touch with your true self because you are constantly changing your behavior to fit the social situation. But usually people try to be more tuned in.

6)  Attention: Being too focused annoys people because you don’t pay attention to them when you’re doing something. And you tend to “not see the forest for the trees.” Being unfocused puts you at risk for ADHD. But usually people want to learn how to be more focused.

Guess what the best way is to move toward the resilient, positive, intuitive, self-aware, tuned in, attentive end? Meditation! My favorite meditation guru is Jack Kornfield, and on his webpage he goes through the 5 basic meditations:

1)  Meditation on Compassion

2)  Walking Meditation

3)  Forgiveness Meditation (which I really need to practice)

4)  Sitting Meditation

5)  Lovingkindness Meditation

Jon Kabat-Zinn also teaches meditation for Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR), but you have to pay for his stuff. You could also seek out a therapist who specializes in MBSR.

So there you have it–your cheat sheet for “The Emotional Life of Your Brain.” It took several months for me to get through the book, so feel free to make a donation to the Federer Fund if you found this helpful. Tickets to Grand Slam or ATP Masters 1000 events are also acceptable.

This doodle sort of looks like a brain. And it has 6 different colors–one for each personality dimension.

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A Just World

Posted on March 20, 2014 by Christy Barongan

I am having deja vu. Before last term, we had not had a student death related to a car accident in over 10 years. Yet once again, another student died in a car accident earlier this week. Like the student last term, this student was very involved and visible in the community, was known for helping others, and was on the verge of graduating with a bright future ahead of her.

We tell students that there is no right or wrong way to grieve. But some coping mechanisms are more hurtful than others. For example, it’s harmful when, in order to protect ourselves from the idea that it could happen to us, we blame the other person for their misfortune. She was probably driving too fast. People shouldn’t drink and drive. Stupid people die. 

When I was a graduate student, one of my favorite theories was the Just World Hypothesis. Because we want to believe in a just world, when something bad happens we assume that the person must have done something to deserve it. Bad things happening to good people is just too much to bear.

I often hear just world explanations after a sexual assault. She was making out with him on the dance floor. She went back to his room. She didn’t fight it so she must have wanted it.  

The Just World Hypothesis is closely related to the problems with free will and blame. In order to preserve the belief that we control our destiny, we are willing to take responsibility for things that we don’t actually have control over.  We’re willing to believe, for example, that if only I had done something differently, this tragedy wouldn’t have happened. Even if there’s nothing we could have done.

I can understand the need to believe that if you make the right choices you will be safe from harm. I want to believe this, too. Usually my attempts at control manifest themselves in perfectionism and excessive guilt, however.

I don’t know how much blame a person should be held responsible for. I don’t know how to make sense of all of the suffering in the world. But I know that the more I blame someone, the less compassion I have for them. And when I blame myself, I have less self-compassion, too.

So I try to approach suffering in the same way I try to accept my feelings: it doesn’t have to make sense. I don’t have to know the reason why suffering exists. And I try to have faith that when something bad happens, I will be strong enough to handle it.

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No Good Reason

Posted on March 5, 2014 by Christy Barongan
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Most people who come to therapy for depression berate themselves for not having an excuse for their feelings. Even when they can identify the stressors that led to their depression, they claim that these aren’t good enough reasons to be depressed.

Sometimes people try to make them feel better with the “count your blessings” approach. This usually makes them feel worse, because now they don’t deserve to be depressed since they have so much going for them.

In cognitive-behavior therapy (CBT), therapists challenge irrational beliefs as a way to help clients see that their depression isn’t logical. Sometimes this works. But sometimes they know their depression isn’t logical, and pointing this out makes them feel even more ashamed for not being able to control their feelings.

For clients with the “no good reason” problem, I have found that the most useful strategy is to debunk their myths about feelings. Since you probably believe these myths, too, I thought I would go through my whole therapy spiel.

1. Feelings don’t have to be rational.  That’s why philosophers make such a big deal about distinguishing reason from emotion. Sometimes they coincide, and it feels better when they do. It feels better when we can say I’m sad because I’m sick of winter versus I’m sad and I have no idea why. But we don’t have to know the reason why for our feelings to be valid.

2. There is no right or wrong way to feel. We have a lot of implicit rules for what we should be feeling in a given situation. Take my Ph.D. example in my post on self-worth. I thought I would feel ecstatic after defending my dissertation. Instead I got depressed. Positive events don’t always lead to positive feelings.

3. We can experience positive and negative feelings at once. Researchers say that we can’t do this, but I think they’re wrong for reasons that are too complex to explain here. Here’s an example: people cry at weddings because they are both happy and sad at the same time.

4. Your feelings aren’t your fault. We like to believe that we have more control over our feelings than we actually do because…well, because it makes us feel more in control. But this illusion comes at a cost. Which is why I wrote the posts on blame and free will. You didn’t choose to be depressed, and it’s not your fault that you can’t stop the depression.

5. If you try to make yourself stop feeling, you’ll just make things worse. Because this will involve some level of deception, like denying or suppressing or minimizing your feelings. And at some point, this will blow up in your face when you least expect it. Plus it will make you less empathic when other people tell you how they feel, which will lead to relationship problems.

Although I can write logically about these myths, I still fall prey to them, because feelings aren’t always logical. Knowing isn’t enough to solve the problem; you still have to practice. Which is why I practice mindfulness and self-acceptance. And I encourage you to do the same.

So the next time you catch yourself saying that you have no good reason for your feelings, remind yourself that you don’t need one.


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Free Will

Posted on February 25, 2014 by Christy Barongan

When I was in college, one of my fellow psychology major classmates asked me if learning about psychological theories made me question whether we had free will. It did not. Although his question did make me read through the theories again, just to make sure I understood them correctly. But I was still convinced of my free will.

In my last post I used the example of an alcoholic father to illustrate how difficult it is to sort out blame and responsibility. If alcoholism is genetic, and his parents were alcoholics, and all of his friends drink, what chance does he have of living a sober life? How much of his behavior is in his control?

What if you have someone who is depressed with no family history of depression and no apparent cause, and she can’t get out of bed to make it to class? Is her depression real? Does she deserve to fail? What if she knew she needed help but didn’t seek it? What if she refused to go to therapy or try meds?

I mentioned in my last post that these problems require forgiveness. We have to forgive ourselves for having the disorder. We may have to ask for forgiveness from people whom we have harmed. And we may have to forgive people who have added to our suffering, intentionally and unintentionally.

When I’m depressed, I think everything is my fault. In the midst of an episode, I am angry at myself for not being able to function. I don’t think I have an excuse to be depressed. In those moments, it’s hard to forgive myself for not being able to control everything.

I also mentioned that there is always some part of the problem that we can take responsibility for. It may not be the alcoholic dad’s fault that he is prone to addiction, but he can join AA. He can stay away from friends who pressure him to drink. He can see a therapist.

I believe that knowing our limitations allows us to have more freedom. In my work, clients often try to convince other people that their suffering is real. I tell them that they have limited control over what other people think about their disorder. However, they don’t have to blame themselves. They can take control of what they can control. They can remind themselves that they’re suffering is real.

Some people think that going to therapy is a sign of weakness. In reality, therapy increases your degrees of freedom. And I want to make sure I capitalize on all the freedom I can have.

 

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