Ninth Elegy

“A well-based self-reliance…is usually the product of slow and unchecked growth from infancy into maturity during which, through interaction with trustworthy and encouraging others, a person learns how to combine trust in others with trust in himself.” John Bowlby, The Making and Breaking of Affectional Bonds

“Oliver cried lustily. If he could have known that he was an orphan , left to the tender mercies of churchwardens and overseers, perhaps he would have cried the louder.” Dickens

In the language of attachment, relational protest behavior occurs when we are separated from our attachment figures. For a child, this is most often a parent or other caregiver, and for adults, it is often our partner or a best friend. Separation anxieties and protest behaviors come in many forms. For myself, I find I feel a little down when my partner and I are separated for long periods. I feel a little uneasy or restless until we are together again. When we are together, I feel calm and settled. This is, for the most part, healthy, normal attachment behavior.

How do we sort out healthy attachment from other kinds of behaviors that are less than ideal? My partner, for instance, because of his particular attachment wound, has organized his personality around being extremely self-reliant, and sometimes has difficult accessing his ability need another, and to miss me. Because of my earlier attachment wounding, this can trigger a sense of loss in me–a feeling of abandonment. Fortunately for both of us, we are pretty aware of what is going on, and he works with his fear of being close, even as I work with my fear of separation. When he is able to be more present with me, admit to me that he has fear, then he brings himself into relational depth with me, and we become closer. When I can access my separation anxiety and fear, and state it clearly to him, I grow more secure and able to manage my own feelings.

There’s a misconception in popular psychology today about “co-dependence,” and “neediness.” According the latest scientific research, we are hard-wired for relationship–our brains are structured for social activity, and spending too much time alone can actually be harmful or damaging. We DO need others, and we can only heal and be whole in a relational context–whether that is through a friend, partner, parent, spiritual organization, or pet, it is necessary to be connected to others. It’s when we are somehow using our connections to avoid growing up or facing our own emotional pain, as a distraction, or as an excuse to indulge in a compulsion, that leads to trouble. We have to carefully sort out the complexities of owning our issues and using the other when we live in mutuality and relatedness. By doing this, we develop a sort of relational autonomy–a way of being deeply with another that helps us stay more deeply with ourselves.

We all have issues, and we all will come up against our issues within our close relationships. Our closest bonds are almost guaranteed to bring up rage and grief and anxiety and fear. When we can begin to see our own issues more clearly–our attachment wounds, our triggers, and the way that we hold our own pain, then we can begin to confront the projections we are placing on our loved ones. The more clearly I can see myself, the more clearly I can see my partner. The more I am aware of and responsible for what I am feeling, the more I am able to consciously bring it into the sphere of relatedness. Who I am, what I feel, is often a connection point in my relationship. It’s not something I just manage by myself off in my own corner. But it is connecting exactly to the degree that I am clear about what is really going on for me. In relationship, we don’t become less feeling, less human, and less dependent. In fact, when we can become clearer in our emotions, we become more of all these things. Co-dependency is a lack of clarity–it is thrusting onto another what I need to see in myself. Or becoming overly involved in another’s version of the world, and not identifying and actively working with my personal issues. Contrary to a lot of popular advice, it’s not about separation, going it alone, or otherwise isolating ourselves. It’s about consciously and wisely engaging with a partner who can interact from a place of awareness and emotional authenticity.

When I hear the word, “detachment,” lonely images are conjured, such as an astronaut in dark space, in umbilical disconnection, floating helplessly out into the suffocating depths. Evoking images of distancing, of impossible self-reliance, and of a state of withdrawn and disconnected contemplation, detachment seems to have little relation to the messy interconnections in which most of us live. I bristle at hearing the word “detachment” as it is bandied about in relation to Buddhist practice. I believe the American co-optation of “detachment” with regard to spirituality is more a reflection of our own lonely view of the self, rather than what Buddhist practice teaches us. The Euro-American vision of the self-made and autonomous individuated self has a lot to do with how this term from Eastern Philosophy has been distorted.

I struggled for a long time with fully committing to Buddhist practice or a teacher, mostly because of this distortion. It wasn’t until I sat and listened to a teacher talk about how Zen is actually a practice of intimacy with all things that I began to understand this misconception. Essentially, and in a very small nutshell, I came to see that what Buddhists are attempting to detach from is craving and suffering—NOT from others, not from their emotions, and not from joy and life and connection. In a sense, by becoming present to everything as it happens, there is more intimacy, more connection and more relatedness.

Attachment, used in the negative sense, happens when we get stuck, or caught in habits over which we feel little control—when we become caught in materialism or negativity, or suffering over pain. Or caught in negative emotional cycles, compulsions or addictions, because of past injury and trauma. Avoiding pain, and shying away from intimacy, actually seems to create more negative attachment (or shenpa, as Pema Chodron refers to it), while healthy, positive attachments create resistance to addiction, compulsion and stress, and an ability to effectively “detach” from unhealthy thoughts and behavior.

Still, the word “attachment” has gotten a bad rap. Attachment is viewed as something to be avoided—as interchangeable with words such as “clingy,” or “needy,” or “dependent.” To be dependent or “co-dependent” elicits a fearful perception of someone parasitically sucking out the life of his or her victims—a vampirical vision of the self subsumed in another’s reality, draining others while being unable to stand alone. We need a clearer and more distinct definition of the word attachment—and a language of healthy attachment dissociated from these other conditions.

So what does healthy attachment look like? In brief, the inner relationship with one’s self and the outer relationship to others looks very much the same. Essentially, it is the ability to connect with our core emotions, and those of others, allowing them to travel through ourselves and others without creating fairy tales and stories about them or believing they shouldn’t be there. Of course, when one can really connect with what is actually happening in the body while emotions flow through, he or she will be able to experience those feelings without acting them out. She/he will be able to find the real source of the emotions and why they are coming up in the present moment. This is a practice of responsibility—of commitment and discernment. A contemplative practice helps with one’s ability to discern emotional states, and for those with longer standing issues, attachment wounds and trauma, the help of a skilled emotion-focused therapist may be necessary. Working with attachment injuries, of course, will require a practitioner who understands adult attachment models of therapy. It is work that requires support and relatedness, and is best not attempted alone.

“Intimate attachments to other human beings are the hub around which a person’s life revolves, not only when he is an infant or a toddler or a schoolchild but throughout his adolescence and his years of maturity as well, and into old age.” John Bowlby

Next to me at the coffee shop where I am sipping and typing, a brand new baby is being held and fussed over and discussed by parents and friends who happen to be here today. I don’t know any of these people, being new here, but I am comforted by their presence as I attempt to write about the theory behind my practice.

Fonagy writes of Interpersonal-Relational Theory: “It is human relating that achieves individuality and renders experience personal, unique, and meaningful.” In direct opposition to former therapeutic frames, this practice is about establishing healthy, nourishing connections–giving relationships primacy in our development as individuals.

I overhear–”does this baby have a name?” directed at the child’s sister. The woman asking, a different one from who was formerly holding the baby, lights up and repeats back to the sister, “Avery?” Avery’s sister climbs into her father’s lap, squirming, squealing, and demanding interaction with her father, who is patient in letting the 3 year old come and go.

I believe attachment and connection are primary healing agents in therapy, relationships, and community. I remember first reading Bowlby, the father of attachment theory as an undergraduate in 1996. Every word was potent medicine. It was the first time I felt I was reading a theory that made sense. Later his words were confirmed for me in studies of relational theory, and most recently in my initial contact with Sue Johnson’s work in Emotionally Focused Couple Therapy.

While the words used to describe attachment seem like “no-brainers,” the cultural resistance is actually still quite strong. Bowlby was treated like a heretic and diminished for his belief that secure connections are the basis of being able to be whole and independent in our lives. Slowly, this thinking is turning around–but there is much work to do yet–and so many broken connections that need to be healed as the result of cultural and psychological damage. The damage created by the “self-made,” autonomous hero pulling himself up by his own bootstraps is one of the most insidious myths industrial culture has created–and it serves best those who are interested in making isolated cogs out of us for the machinery of consumer culture…

The coffee shop owner’s wife now holds the baby. The child’s sister sidles up to her mother and tells her she is ready to go. The mother responds gently, letting her know she is heard and understood. Snow has started to fall outside and people are getting up to leave–and I feel a sense of hopefulness, viewing these caring exchanges. This blog is just the beginning of my attempt to communicate the paradigm shift of relational and attachment theories. Much more to follow…

I see a lot of couples in counseling. This is the most difficult work that I do, especially if there are years of built up resentments and unresolved issues. I also hear that many counselors dislike working with couples because of this–because it is so very hard to sit with this sort of conflict, to find a way in and be present with all of the pain and fear in the room.

It really is remarkable when two people want to work through their problems and are willing to open up and engage in a counseling session. I am in awe of couples who do this work together. It takes such courage and determination. These days it seems so much easier to just walk away–and I’ve been struck by recent articles in magazines about how to make a clean getaway from a “bad” relationship. But unless there is clear abuse, it’s not really easier to avoid the problems in relationship, and what we tend to do is carry all of our baggage right to the next one. We can continue to repeat this process, or at some point, stop, turn toward one another, and learn how to have conflict.

Sometimes it’s too lopsided, and one person is just not motivated enough to do the work of relationship. This is hard on the one who wants to do the work–who is invested and really wants more from life than the meager relational existence they’ve somehow slipped into over the years. The resistant partner will avoid being dragged into counseling, and will easily feel pressured and “ganged-up on.” Too often I’ve discovered that resistant partners are involved in affairs, or addicted to pornography, or are otherwise emotionally “elsewhere.” The tragedy of this is the relational depth they are missing out on. I know that if couples understood what they could find together, how much love and support and intimacy is possible, they would never throw-away their long-term commitments. But if only one person is willing to do the work, there’s nothing I can do but help the person who comes in to work find the most fulfilling life possible. And sometimes people have to leave relationships to find another person who is willing to do the work of relationship with them.

What I teach couples to do is to communicate their emotions from the heart. I help them to disengage from the long and complicated stories they are telling themselves and others, and to engage in the moment by moment arising of sadness, fear, anger, hurt, and even joy. The remarkable thing that happens when couples can really tell one another what is happening, and feel that they are being heard without judgment, is that they inevitably arrive at compassion for one another. Sometimes nothing in the relationship changes–all the couple has done is found a way to hear each other’s feelings, and let the other person know how they are impacted. It is so simple, and yet, so utterly, utterly difficult to put into practice when we are emotionally triggered. We want to defend. We want to present “our side” of the story. We have an urgent need to protect ourselves.

I’ve seen people give up their defenses and hear their partner, and I’ve witnessed the power of this. I’ve also felt it in myself, in my own relationship, when I’ve stopped, regulated my own emotions and have just listened to my partner. It’s difficult for me to describe how impacted I am–how impacted he is. But the main thing that happens is that some natural force of compassion almost always arises. it’s as if it’s a natural state that we have toward one another, and all our defenses are just blocking it. So if this work is about anything, it’s about finding every possible way to get underneath and through our defenses so our natural state of compassionate attention can emerge. And I strongly believe this is done through expression of emotion that leads to the release of old and new painful affects…

I’m driving around in the almost-snow, waiting to go home, giving my partner time with is daughter, time without me there. Driving through syllabled signs–Silent Cedars, Lone Lake, Irish Welding, Trees of Thiburon, I’m a little lost, finding my way through a place that is new to me. I don’t expect to find what I’m looking for anymore, on these drives. I no longer think about finding that particular something that is going to save me, at last, the way I once searched bookstores and streets, shelves and magazines, restaurants and faces with determination and hope. I am aimless and drifting, no destination, no goal, simply the spilling-over of time, kicked out of an early closing coffee shop, enwombed in the warmth of my car.

Part of me exists in an above place–knows how to throw bones to the worlds of academics and the contortionists of language. And part of me is helpless; unable to give on command–in an underneath place where all of the words and explanations are sucked away. What more is there to say, that hasn’t been said? Said better? And today, as thick patterned drops melt on the windshield I think, to be honest, I don’t really feel like trying right now. I’m tired. As I drive down roads not taken before, I think of how someday I won’t be able to do this anymore–to drive and feel the comfort, the warmth of the car’s heater on my feet, a little shell of protection against the elements, against his daughter who hasn’t accepted me yet.

Thinking of myself at twelve years old, riding in the car with my mother, it is Autumn, a few days before the beginning of the school year. We are driving the long way out to the mall to buy school clothes, and it is dark. I never want to arrive–I just want to ride and ride and ride with my mother, who is unusually cheerful, who hums to herself, her thoughts apparently elsewhere. I want to ride and look down at my legs disappearing in the car’s footwell, into the blackness of the cavern at my feet–so dark they are unseen, and in their absence, feeling such strange comfort.

What does Meditation have to do with Counseling?

In a recent study cited in Psychotherapy Networker, it was found that therapists who had meditated for nine-weeks prior to having their clients evaluated had better client-outcomes: “The patients of the meditating therapists scored significantly higher than the control group on almost every measure of global functioning, subjective experience, objective behavior, and symptoms. They were more secure about socializing and exhibited less obsessiveness, anger, anxiety and phobias. They better understood the goals of their own development and of their therapy, and were more optimistic about making progress. They’d developed a wider repertoire of new behaviors as well.”

Sometimes I feel guilty making as much time as I do for contemplative practice, writing, and being. So reading this small validation of something I know to be true from my own experience is gratifying, although not surprising. Somehow it helps to have a study to point to, an article to cite, or some sort of expert to quote. Sometimes it’s hard to just trust my own experience!

This coming June I am taking vows in the lineage of Shunryu Suzuki Roshi, under my teacher Zoketsu Norman Fischer. To take these vows I have to sew this strange little replica of Buddha’s robe–called a rakusu. All of the sewing has to be done by hand, and it’s time-consuming and tedious. The silk thread we are required to use tangles easily, and I am forever untying, unknotting, and unthreading–squinting through reading glasses, and re-threading through a needle’s eye. Because of this, I learn about patience. I learn about accepting my mistakes and imperfections, and I learn that meditation is something much more than just sitting on a cushion and naval gazing. It’s something that I bring into my everyday actions. It is sewing. It is being with another in his or her pain. It is listening–deep, profound listening to the suffering of another human being–so like my work in counseling, and so like my writing practice.

I think about how I am with these processes of untangling. On some days there is impatience, and with this the self-talk grows large and accusing–and almost always, inaccurate. It helps me to experience this with more awareness. I watch my mind with growing fascination as I come to believe less and less in these made-up stories, and more able to practice just coming back to breath, coming back to silence.

In the space of silence, the heart opens and grows. Without this silence, how could I see the grass now glowing in rain’s aftermath? The sun slipping back behind the hill, and evening herons making their way down to the lagoon to feed? A random frog begins, and soon there will be a chorus. The stories of my mind are quiet, and life intrudes.

Great question. After all, what do you have to look forward to in a counseling session? Pain? Delving into old memories, trauma, dredging up disappointments and failures?
Well, not always. The style of counseling I do involves learning how to relate and connect, no matter the subject of discussion. What transpires between us is the tissue of therapy, not the particular content. I work on helping create areas of interpersonal healing that can actually change the neural networks in the brain, as recent research shows (see A General Theory of Love, by Lewis, et. al.). In fact, recent research reveals more and more that it’s the relationship between counselor and client that heals (both parties), more than any given technique.
Trauma, as it turns out, turns into post-traumatic stress disorder precisely when we have to suffer alone. Prisoners of war who were able to stay in touch with their fellow prisoners and talk regularly with them over the years were found to have significantly less PTSD from their internment experiences than those who suffered alone. As Dan Wile writes: “The problem is not trauma, but uncomforted trauma.” I really believe this.
When we learn to connect in a counseling session, we are learning the art of connection. We can then carry this skill out to others in our lives and forge new, sustaining and healing relationships. We can heal our current relationships as well. It’s so important to learn these skills, not just for ourselves, but for all who surround us in our lives. We can create our own “butterfly effect” by the lives we create. That’s why I call myself a “relational practitioner.” In the words of Martin Buber: “All real living is meeting.”
If you are lonely, even if you don’t choose to see a counselor, find a way to connect with others. Volunteer at a home for the elderly. Work with kids. Volunteer for a crisis line. And find a way to help others, as that is one of the most powerful forms of healing. It’s especially difficult when you feel isolated to want to make the effort to get out and connect. So respect that in yourself. Give yourself space and time to flail and fail. And keep trying. Gently, compassionately, find ways to compel yourself to get out and do a little more. Not too much–just enough. If you can respond to yourself in kindness, you will already feel less alone, and more likely want to go out and connect with others.

For "Joe".

16 - In the Middle of Times Square

In the most bitter moments of loneliness, I couldn’t bear to be around people. Being around others made the loneliness worse than solitude, the disconnection from all of those others within view. Robert Johnson’s words hold me in this intolerable space, I couldn’t understand how I could be so lonely in a city surrounded by so many other people. I recalled having once stood in the middle of Times Square in Manhattan and felt that it was one of the loneliest places in the world."

His words embody the Giacometti sculpture, City Square: five attenuated figures of dribbled-metal spread out randomly over a square of bronze, bodies so thin, how could they keep walking, was it toward one another or were they slipping past in endless, vacuous space, a space so open and limitless that it seemed to compress the figures even further together, not alone, but ever so lonely. I still remember the moment that this image was imprinted on my heart, in my mid-twenties, naming my despair, a place of questioning, a visceral illustration making my questions tactile, visible, reverberating with the words of Martin Buber: As in a dream [art] looks for the encounter with man in order that he may undo the spell and embrace the form for a timeless moment.

Everywhere I look loneliness is epidemic, yet isn’t discussed. Every morning I awaken feeling it acutely even with others nearby, as close as the next room or asleep just up the stairs. My being aches when no friends can be found, especially now, with the loss of my father, the loss of his gravity that pulled my mother and brothers and I into the facsimile of family.
Johnson writes: What was to be learned from the fact that I was not lonely when in solitude, but excruciatingly lonely when in a city? Solitude is a joy; relationship is warm and happy; but the proximity of other people without a true relationship produces pure agony.

This painfully slow progress from loneliness to connection: an absent father, an alcoholic family dynamic; and, the fears I have had, especially because of my fear of anger, all piling up in front of the door of connection.

Walking through this small city, there are few places to sit or meet with others. Loitering is discouraged, street kids asked to move along as tourists mindlessly and restlessly go from store to store, endlessly in search of something. Automobiles move so aggressively that it is difficult to be a pedestrian. Lives seem so busy and manic that connection is missed or rushed or not attended to at all. How odd it is to miss or rush through all of the moments of possible connection near me, and then pay money to sit still for an hour in a therapy office. An absurdity of Western Civilization: therapy as a cure for loneliness.

Buber writes: Feelings are what is in here where one lives and recovers from institutions. Here the spectrum of the emotions swings before the interested eye; here one enjoys one’s inclinations and one’s hatred, pleasure and, if it is not too bad, pain. Here one is at home and relaxes in one’s rocking chair. Therapy as rocking chair, as recovery from institutions, as antidotal to loneliness, therapy as a way to find a home in oneself.

Christopher speaks of fully engaging with another’s emotional being and pain: When people learn to experience and express their emotions, they reconnect with themselves, and then naturally begin to open up and find more connection with others. And something else he said, about how the process awakens a natural and often surprising compassion.
And I knew as I listened to him speak, that the context of listening to the anger was every bit as important as the expression: a person acting in their true being, feeling and expressing things they dare not in polite society, but feeling held and seen and attended to, is the very antithesis of loneliness.
Putting these ideas together, I wonder if limbic damage from isolation can be cured through this sort of attentive listening, if over time new pathways are carved in the brain, through the relationship with a therapist. Then what happens when therapy ends? How does a client go out into the world on her own? As a relational practitioner, I keep thinking how important it will be to help people establish healing relationships in their lives, and to help them find a way to maintain those relationships themselves, with practices learned through my encounters with them.
And what do I do with my own loneliness? Sit and write in the mornings, go to Tony’s and write among people, among familiar faces, call a friend, go for walks. But too often in this lonely culture, people just aren’t around to meet my need for companionship. And in those moments, no therapist or friend available, I sit with the pain of loneliness. I feel it. I ache and cry and allow it in. I know that this is not how things are supposed to be, and so I grieve, for myself, and for all of the other lonely people in the world, with whom I have begun to feel intimately connected.giacometti-citysquare-1948

Christopher and I have been giving copies of our manuscript to readers to comment on. Pretty soon we’ll be sending the book to Book Surge so it will be available online for purchase. Here are one reader’s comments on the book:

“This is such a powerful book for me because it explains Christopher’s style of counseling through Laurel’s story. I was able to relate to Laurel’s raw emotions and become even more in touch with mine through her story. I feel less alone as I experienced Laurel’s story and her openness to share her experience….This book is such a powerful testimony to the power of feelings and the importance of having someone who recognizes the deepest parts of you in order for you to find them in yourself and begin to heal. Thank you Laurel for having the courage to tell this story in print so that I can experience someone else’s healing through this process.”