Ask the Therapist

Question:

I decided that my string of failures comes from my lack of self-confidence. I was always fearful and timid and I can see now that this brought me just what I used to dread.

But I’m on a new pathway now. I started my own business, I have a new marriage and a I’m keeping to a solid fitness plan. I know that in the past I would have found some way to sabotage this initiative with doom-and-gloom thinking. This time it’s going to be different! My only enemy is my own fear. I’m visualizing success and refusing to consider a bad outcome. I’m not stupid enough to think failure is impossible, but I do know that we tend to create the reality we expect.

Agreed?

Answer:

Not quite.

Of course confidence is good, and we need to visualize where we want to go. But to think the positive visualization itself has much power is naive. Instead, I might coach you to study your enemy. That is, imagine and list all the ways in which this initiative could fall dead. Not enough business? Or so successful that you can’t fit in the full workout…or that you have to grab a burger just this time…and one more time the next week…

This is not a lack of self-assurance; it’s a recognition of reality. It’s not pessimistic thinking; it’s strategic foresight. And it’s not a lack of hope; it’s building the confidence to know you won’t come upon bad surprises ill-prepared.

If you made a mistake with your past “gloom-and-doom” thinking it wasn’t in predicting bad events, it was in dwelling on them passively, over-estimating their power, and thinking you couldn’t cope when they came. And a mistake now would be to think that fear has more power than it does. Or that you have the power to control an emotion. These are the surprise enemies, oddly familiar to us all.

So visualize failure. Welcome your fear. Harness it as caution, make your contingency plans and build your preparedness. Then go forward with the confidence that makes you strong. Tempered with the anxiety that makes you human.

Question:

Our adult son is getting more and more disabled with his depression. Whether he has bipolar, schizophrenia or something else, we’re not sure, but he is so isolated he’ll hardly talk to anyone. His basement room is in shambles and he smells bad. He used to talk about killing himself but now he doesn’t even talk enough to let us know if he’s suicidal. We worry too about our granddaughter who is brave, but should be a little frightened to visit him on weekends. How can we help when he is so withdrawn? This has been a recurrent or cyclic problem by the way, but more intense each time.

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How can I decide whether to take an antidepressant medication?

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I moved to Seattle to renew my life, yet I’ve been as depressed as ever. Shouldn’t I be less vulnerable in a beautiful place like this?

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Can you explain to me why it helps with post-traumatic stress to revisit the upsetting event or scene?

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Question:

I want a therapist who likes me. Therapists I’ve had in the past seem to just seem to want to to want to get me in and get me out. Or, they’d treat me like a child, using pity and patronizing. Another one was young and inexperienced and seemed awed by me which wasn’t helpful, and I imagine others are remote and analytical, too removed.

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Question:

Why wouldn’t I want some intensive, ongoing therapy, which will instill change on a “deeper” level?

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Question:

My husband is never satisfied. He complains about his work, our house and our kids, even though he’ll occasionally admit it’s all fundamentally OK.
I keep trying to tell him he’s depressed and occasionally he’ll kind of acknowledge it, but real soon he’ll go right back to blaming everyone and everything else for his woes.
I’m blue in the face from telling him he’s stuck in a bad pattern. How can I get him to address this?

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Question:

I’m so stressed and irritated. I live with my husband, our kids and his mother. The problem is she is too hard to get along with. She pesters and criticizes me constantly. I try to be polite sometimes I just blow up. I don’t want to upset my husband but I’m afraid some day I’m just going to pack up and move out. How can I keep myself calmer?

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Question:

I take care of my ailing mother, and I’m very willing to do it. One problem though, is that she expects more than I can provide. I know that if I give her all the time she wants from me, her life would be better. On the other hand, mine would be worse, and by a larger proportion -a net loss between the two of us. She cannot recognize this, and her expressions of sadness at the neglect she experiences makes my want to cry. I am plagued by guilt. What can I do?

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