Scaffolding and self construction

Sometimes it’s hard to know what clients want from me. Actually, it’s not hard to know what they want – it’s just sometimes absolutely impossible to give it to them. I think they want a magic wand. They want to feel better so desperately that they want me to be able to sprinkle some pixie dust and help them right now.

It really stinks to know that it’s not possible.

To know that building a life worth living is just that, a building project. It’s hard and slow and you’re going to bang your thumb with the hammer several times before it’s done. I know this because I feel like I’m constantly nursing a bruised and battered self during my own building process.

But it’s still hard to tell clients this when their eyes beg me for the answer. To not want to believe that I have the answer. To not offer advice. I can offer feedback and education about the ways that clients might start to think about feeling better but to actually tell them what they should do? Nope. And that’s hard. Because clients often desperately want to be told what to do.

Don’t we all from time to time?

When I do homework with my kids they sometimes get frustrated and shout “can’t you just tell me the answer??” usually this happens around the third time we’re trying to work through a problem. I want to. I always want to. But, as my daughter reminded me just yesterday when I was tempted to give her a hint as I quized her on the 50 states and their capitals (a test I would certainly fail, by the way), [I] won’t be there when she takes the test.

This is true for clients too. I won’t be there when they have to actually do the thing. More important is to learn how to think in terms of long term goals and ambitions. To think about what you need and want and then to put in place the many smaller goals needed to meet those ambitions. If I’m telling you how to do it, you’ll need someone guiding the way.

I think about it in terms of parenting (not that I feel like my clients’ parent, I don’t), the techniques and structures of parenting apply to the counseling relationship as well. Scaffolding is a parenting concept described by Lev Vygotsky. The idea is that you build up a supporting structure (a scaffold) to the level at which the child (or client’s) development allows them to stand. I think about it in terms of kids at the playground. When they’re tiny babies, moms sit them next to each other and physically move them to interact. When they’re toddlers, they want them over and encourage them verbally. A little older and it’s a suggestion that they go play with that boy with the truck and a suggestion to the boy with the truck that he show his truck to his friend. A little older and it’s a nudge in the direction of the kids playing and an instruction to go find someone to play with. Older still, it’s a walk to the park and a seat on the park bench. Until they’ve outgrown both your company and the park.

As the walls become more secure and the kid is more and more able to stand on their own, the scaffold structure supporting it is removed piece by piece.

So it is with clients. With some, the ones most struggling to care for themselves and to manage their daily lives, the feedback is more specific. “What can you do to exercise each day?” “What would you have to do to take a gym bag to work each day?” With others its more “what would help you in this situation?” Leaving the direction that exercise might be the answer out of the question.

But it’s hard because sometimes I so want to have the answer. To believe that I even know the answer. When the truth is, I’m just a desperate to find the answer as the next person. I’m just out here banging away at the building project that is self esteem the same as a the next person.

Gratitude.

Last night something happened that has prompted me to feel real gratitude for my husband, our relationship, and the support he offers to both me and our children. In our daily lives its easy to overlook all of the things we love and appreciate about our spouses and focus in on the things they do that annoy, bug, or even enrage us on a daily basis (the single socks, cast aside in the solitary glory in every corner of our house – every corner except the laundry basket, that is, pop to the front of my mind). It’s so easy to let the things that drew us to a person slip away in the face of the constant onslaught of responsibility and just LIFE that obscures those bright and shining traits.

Practicing gratitude invites joy into our lives.

Brene Brown

I think what she means by this is that it invites us to revel in our actual lives – to remember the things that drew us in and made us make the choices that we did. Sometimes its hard to put ourselves back into the mindset of the us we were years ago (13 years ago, in my case) to remember why we did the things we did. But when we let ourselves, we can relive those joyful moments and fall in love again with our spouse.

We can feel the love from them that we saw as so self-evident years ago.

I am so grateful for my husband.

I’m grateful for his intelligence and sharp, dry wit. I love how he thinks I’m funny and is able to make me laugh even at the worst of jokes. Gallows humor is real y’all and he’s able to make me reach for it when I’m at my saddest or most frustrated.

I’m grateful for his steady strength. I know steadiness isn’t always considered a glamorous trait, but he’s been so steady and safe that I’m often completely unaware of how free he’s made me and how accepting he is of both me and the people around him. I love that he reacts how I think he will react and I can trust that he will be the person that he is at any time. He is a person who knows himself and doesn’t change with the winds of society or even me – he is who he is and I love that about him.

I’m grateful for who he is as a father and a partner. He does not worry about fairness and acknowledges that it won’t always be fair. As the person who does the lion’s share of the housework, I love that he knows I do that. I’m fully aware that it might not always feel fair when I ask him to contribute more considering how much he does outside the house to support and maintain our family (and experience some guilt about it on a regular basis) but I love that he doesn’t bring it up or EVER identify it as a thing I should consider. Our girls are so lucky to have a father that truly loves to be around them – who is always willing to play endless games of Uno or Clue, but who never lets them win, so that they will know that they’re fascinating and capable no matter who the competitor.

I could go on, but my goal was three things. These are three pretty big ones.

It’s so worth it to think every day about not just the things you are grateful for in your own life, but the things you are grateful for in the people around you. When we practice seeing the things we’re grateful for, we can relive the experience of falling in love with them again and some of the irritation recedes in the face of that happiness and joy.

Parenting therapy

Clients often seem worried that I will judge them for the things they say in session. I have a resting disgruntled face so I have to remain conscious of my expression during session to avoid giving them any inadvertent evidence that this is true. The reality is that I’m very rarely judging, mostly I’m reacting. Part of a normal human relationship – which the counseling relationship is – involves reacting to each other.

In therapy, my reactions are filtered between my automatic responses and what I think will be most helpful to the client. I don’t always get to go with my first response in therapy. With many of my clients, my first response is a desire to hug them because the things they are struggling with are genuinely painful. I also frequently feel worried. I worry about the patterns I’ve seen develop in their actions and reactions and worry about where this current iteration will lead them.

But worry, too, is often not helpful. It implies a desire to control or to supplant my judgment for theirs and that’s not the message I want to send to my clients or even, when I actually think about it, what I think is the appropriate response to my worry. Instead, I’m trying to focus on offering support and presenting my response in a way that asks the client to consider what’s best for them.

Lately I’m trying to apply this therapeutic approach to parenting. One of my daughters recently told me that her friend’s boyfriend called her “ugly”. My daughter was particularly hurt that her friend didn’t challenge the boyfriend, but instead laughed. My instant reaction is anger both with the boyfriend and also towards my daughter’s friend. Underneath the anger is worry, though. Worry that my daughter will internalize this message and a little piece of her self esteem and self belief will be lost. Worry that she’ll react in a way that will give the boyfriend more opportunities to hurt her feelings and the friend more chances to disappoint. Worry that she won’t protect herself and will just feel that teenage drive to swallow her justified hurt. Worry that she’ll be consumed by the hurt.

My first reaction, then, to help and to solve, isn’t useful so I’m trying to keep it to myself. I offered support (I may have called the boyfriend a name, but he wasn’t there so oh well) and asked her what she needed from me. Turns out, she didn’t need anything. She’s already decided how to handle it and the way she’s going about it is reasonable. And, unlike clients, I can give her a hug almost any time. Which is what she really wanted. Along with some validation that her emotional response was accurate and reasonable.

Probably the same thing that most clients need.

Truth and reality

Rather than love, than money, than fame, give me truth.

Thoreau

I’ve always kind of found Thoreau to be self-indulgent and whiny. Never my favorite philosopher, I kind of enjoy to run him down for his adventures in Walden – which was hardly the rough and rustic experience he presented.

That said, I’ve been thinking about him a lot lately – he would have had much to say about our current political environment. I don’t necessarily agree with him that I would trade love for truth – I think sometimes fiction is ok and comfort is something to be valued not rejected out of hand. The quote above makes me think of reality shows from the early days of reality television – the early Real World shows on MTV, which I was only able to watch upon arriving at college where I first gained access to the wonders of cable television (my parents remain, to this day, fully terrestrial channels only). There was always a cast member who would be rude and mean to the housemates, they would say the worst things to everyone and always follow them up with I’ve just got to be me or some similar statement of aggressive authenticity.

Truth can be painful and harsh and unnecessary and doesn’t always need to be faced in our personal relationships. We can be honest without sharing every single thought in our heads. We can be authentic without being brutal. If I don’t like your shoes, I don’t need to lie that I do, but I also don’t need to share that I don’t. Filtering is the key to happy relationships. That said, I think we have a right to expect truth of our government. To expect our leaders to strive for it. To anticipate that our leaders will be willing to face and accommodate uncomfortable realities that we might not be willing to tackle – to help us to understand and accept things that we don’t want to accept. To be curious about the reality of any given situation. To not filter reality to reflect their personal interests.

And yet, we’ve moved into such a terrible place of abject rejection of reality. Of lies for the sake of self advancement, even at the expense of our government. Of course we would come to this place during the first reality show presidency. He’s the typical Real World “villain” keeping it real all over the harmony of the house and people’s ability to live together. Stating his “truth” without curiosity and concern for facts and the opinions of others.

But this isn’t just an American problem – the English have fallen down a rabbit hole of reality rejection with Brexit – their rejection of the truth and unwillingness to accept that consequences follow actions – the very fundamental truth at the heart of all science for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction – have them paralyzed in the face of choices that will necessarily have painful results (stay OR go, frankly).

The reality is that we’ve become very good at convincing ourselves that truth is what we believe as opposed to a thing that should be investigated. Confirmation bias is real in our lives and our political realities. We look only for evidence that our chosen theory is correct. We don’t subject ourselves to critical challenge, to peer review. It feels like an attack when others challenge our beliefs – a thing that is playing out in real time on the news. For all political persuasions.

But there must be truths so self-evident, that we can all hold them (I know I’ve read that somewhere). That the will of the people should be represented. That we are not governed by or for the benefit of the governors. That progress does not come without sacrifice and that sacrifice is, by definition, uncomfortable. When did we start to reject discomfort or challenge? To decide that sharing our version of reality is the most important thing?

I feel like I’ve gone all over the place with this. I think there are truths that we don’t need to share, that make relationships impossible to maintain or sustain. But the fundamental truths, about who we are and what we need, we need to dare to share those and then to accept the reality that others might not be able to meet those needs. At the same time, we need to be able to trust that others will also share with us the truth, to believe that there are FACTS that can be determined and agreed and that those facts will have meaning we can agree on.

Those reality show villains always seemed to me to be ignoring facts and labeling opinion their truth. Surely, we can find a way to return to facts to seek them out and to look them in the face. Too often when we disagree about interpretation of facts we deny the facts themselves. It leaves us off-balancing and reeling when others don’t even acknowledge facts. This is a change – the idea that the facts themselves cannot be ascertained. That opinion supplants inquiry. That our personal truth is the only truth and that it’s more important than actual truth.

I’m just not sure how to accommodate THAT reality.

Loving kindness to myself

I think nearly every day about shame. As a therapist, I see it in so many of my clients – people living with, and consumed by, shame. Often I have clients who are emotional eaters come to see me, completely preoccupied with negative thoughts about themselves and their bodies. They resist and refuse to release the negative self-talk and the “humor” about their weight that they use to deflect attention and support. It’s as if they don’t believe to feel good about themselves until they’ve “fixed” what’s “wrong” – usually by radically changing their diet and losing a significant amount of weight.

People’s shame is a constant companion, an albatross around their next, but it often squeezes tightest when they’re complimented. Those who live with it, feel the need to deflect or deny – to show that they “get it”, that they see how much improvement they need to be worthy. It’s automatic, when people tell them nice things or observe positive traits, there’s a big part of them that wants to hide the work they’ve done or the achievements they’ve made.

I have clients practice loving kindness meditation and I’ve been working on adding it to my own routine in the morning. Thanking my body for what it’s given me (some of the biggies: two beautiful children, feet that can run, reasonably good health) has helped me to see myself as worthy of admiration and helped me to feel like my body deserves my care, attention, time, and prioritization. I’m trying to practice just saying “thank you” when given a compliment and letting myself feel good about where I am, even if I think I have changes to make.

I didn’t realize it until recently, but when I’m given a compliment, I feel seen and observed – VULNERABLE. I know I’m not alone in being uncomfortable with that feeling. However (and thank you Brene Brown and Daring Greatly for helping me get this), the answer isn’t to deflect, hide, or avoid – it’s to lean in. I have to remind myself that letting people see me isn’t the worst thing I can do, the worst thing is to continue to hide, to continue to hoard my shame and to let it continue to poison my relationship with myself and body.

Personal Best & Worst Disney World Attractions

I was listening to a podcast today on my run about the best and worst of Walt Disney World. They were personal favorites of the hosts and it started me thinking about my own personal best and worst list. So much of what I love about the happiest place on earth is determined by the memories that I have of being there. The experiences I had on those attractions. Over time, those memories build up and the attraction and experience become a must-do. So here is my attempt at a personal best and worst of Walt Disney World.

Best

  1. Living With the Land. I can’t help it. I love it. At once soothing and relaxing, but always interesting and thoughtful. The ride itself demands absolutely nothing of its riders. Just float gently through the greenhouses and admire the magnificent hops mickey or the hanging gardens. Do I wish that the end scenes were better? Yes. Absolutely. But I love it for how much fun it is to drag my kids on it every time. There is something magical about how they know that I love it and make a show of “hating it” but always being willing to go on it. I know it will be a ride they will remember as adults as that thing their mom dragged them on.
  2. The Teacups. Again, our family has so much fun on this one. I know it’s not the best attraction in the world, but I just love riding it with my kids and my husband. As they get older the squeeze into a single teacup gets tougher and yet we keep forcing ourselves in all together. We always laugh and always enjoy it.
  3. Peter Pan. This one I love because of the scene where we fly over London. The is a ride that my husband and I always insist on riding together – so often at Disney World we end up one parent, one child. We love to point out where we lived in London when the girls were born and sitting together in that soaring pirate ship it feels like we’re alone in the world. I just love it for that brief moment. Even if it’s only once, I love to have that experience every time we visit.
  4. Flight of Passage. Just wow. It’s so amazing to get to fly. Love it. This is probably the only “new” attraction that makes my personal list (though I really enjoy all of them, they’re just not connected to my memories yet. But Flight of Passage doesn’t need nostalgia and memories, it’s just such a well done and amazing achievement that I couldn’t not have it on the list.
  5. Rockin’ Rollercoaster. This one taught me that I could actually enjoy a rollercoaster. It was the first time I went on one after an ill-fated attempt at Space Mountain when I was little. I was young, maybe 10, it was my first time at Walt Disney World and I remember very little of it, except that we waited almost 2 hours for the ride and I got right up to the point of stepping down into the rocket and COULD NOT DO IT. My parents rode it without me. I made my sad and lonely way to the chicken exit. Alone. There may have been tears. There certainly was some shame. SO, when I visited with my now-husband, then-boyfriend’s family he coaxed me onto the ride. I remember feeling near panic as they lowered the shoulder harness. I tried to keep it together and not hyper-ventilate as Steven Tyler counted us down. And then. I loved it. I wasn’t scared. There wasn’t a slow climb to a big drop. We rode it six times that night. Every time was great. After that, I was able to ride Space Mountain and I’ve developed a trust in Disney World that I didn’t have before – that the rides will be manageable and approachable and I will be fine – safe in Walt’s hands (or the hands of his successors, the Imagineers).

Worst

  1. Test Track. I know. I know. People love this ride. But why though? I like the speed loop part of it, but the rest of it seems like an attempt at a themed overlay that’s largely unsuccessful. The car design process is OK as a time suck during the line, but the way it translates into the ride experience isn’t great and it doesn’t effect the experience of the ride in anyway. I think there’s so much potential in the ride and I think I liked the older incarnation of it better, but my personal opinion is that if I didn’t ever ride Test Track again, that would be ok by me.
  2. Tower of Terror. Again, this is a personal one. As in, my personal nightmare and developing greatest fear is being on an elevator that is falling from the sky. Tower of Terror is that fear come to life and I just don’t have any desire to confront that fear on vacation. My kids love it. My husband would probably call it his favorite ride. For me it’s a hard pass. I rode it once, on a trip when we were dating and I was first meeting the family. My sweet niece (not even my niece then) was, at the time, about 6 years old. She looked at me with her adorable little face and offered to hold my hand if I would ride it. So of course I did. I nearly crushed the bones in that tiny little hand and tried to hide my head behind her. No thanks. Never again.
  3. The Little Mermaid. I love this ride. So why is it on this part of the list? Because I think it could be so much more! The theming outside is gorgeous – the castle all the rock. But the ride itself could be more fun – in particular the “Under the Sea” portion of the ride. Maybe the room needs to be darker? Every time I ride it, I’m glad I did, but I’m also left wishing it was more.

That’s it. There are only three worsts and they’re not even really worsts. I could add some things like Triceratop Sping, which we never ride, or the Pixar shorts, but why? I like that there’s a wide-variety at the parks. Do we go on those rides all the time – or even ever? No. But I love it that they’re there and we might go on them if we walk past and there’s a short wait. I’m almost tempted to go back and cross the Little Mermaid off even as I’m typing this sentence. Because, again, I like the ride – I just wish it was more because I love the music so much.

The thing I love most, though, is the ability to discover something little and new every time. There was a trip where we did the Great PiggyBank Adventure in Innoventions West five times because my kids loved it. I’m sad that it’s gone – though I doubt they would love it as much now that they’re tweens – but it was such a great discovery on a hot and rainy afternoon that trip. We went through it over and over and the kids never got sick of it.

So, what’s your favorite? Or Worst thing at Disney World??

Post traumatic stressful memories

It’s funny the things we hold onto from various experiences. There are things I said in middle school that rise to the surface of my consciousness from time to time and still have the power to make me cringe. Conversations I had that could have gone better. Things I thought I needed that were detrimental to my own sense of self.

I wish the good things could come to the surface more often than these embarrassing and shaming memories.

At the same time, it’s hard to know how true those memories are and how much of them have been shaped by the narrative I’ve built around them – I remember them as embarrassing so the words and actions are subtly shaded toward embarrassing in way that they may not have been in real time.

It’s really interesting to me how the mind filters and revises and then revisits our memories. I talk to my clients all the time about the difference between reliving and remembering our pasts.

Confirmation bias, as the term is typically used in the psychological literature, connotes the seeking or interpreting of evidence in ways that are partial to existing beliefs, expectations, or a hypothesis in hand.

Raymond S. Nickerson

We have a set of biases that we seek out evidence to support. The narratives that we’ve created about ourselves and others and about our relationships become theories about how we absolutely are, about how others definitely will behave, and what we can expect from our relationships. Then, we see evidence that these theories are correct in all of our many day to day interactions.

With relived memories, though, we experience the same physical sensations and the same reactions even in situations that differ widely from the remembered experience. When triggered, our bodies revert to a familiar neurological pathway and follow it to its natural and traumatic conclusion. We are no longer even present in the current moment, we’ve journeyed back in time to react to long gone stimuli.

In a way, though certainly not to the extent that people with significant trauma experience it, we are all suffering from post traumatic stress – the things that we found painful and upsetting come back and are revisited. They shape our perspectives and perceptions and we see current events as proof that how we remember the past is correct.

My goal in therapy, then, is to get clients to remember their traumatic experiences without reliving them. To improve mindfulness to the point where they are aware of their triggers and prompting occasions and are able to prepare themselves to observe their reaction and to stay present in the situation they find themselves in currently.

Vacation planning

I’m getting to that point where I’m starting to jones a bit for a trip to Disney World. We don’t have our next trip planned and it feels weird not to have something working. It’s a pretty expensive hobby.

Planning trips to Disney World is a sort of shared psychosis in my husband’s family that I seem to have caught since joining. Lately my interest has moved more towards the Disney Vacation Club. I like it because it lets me imagine infinite future trips to the World and it seems somehow I’ve been able to talk myself into its practicality because Disney World is the place we always seem to go back to for vacations.

Other family’s go to the lake, of the mountains, we seem to go to Disney World. It feels at once familiar and new each time we go. We eat at many of the same restaurants (the Sana’a bread service and mango margarita are pretty much imperative things to have each time we go – I’ve been thinking about it a lot lately…SO good).

At the same time, I’ve been thinking that maybe it would be better to have a place in Galveston (despite hardly ever going to Galveston anymore). It’s certainly closer. It also allows us to see the water and I’ve dreamed of seeing the water for as long as I can remember. Growing up in Minnesota, there was a lot of lake water to look at. But I’ve always loved to look at the ocean.

So I’ve been thinking about Galveston too.

It seems that when I start having these thoughts its a sign that I’m feeling a little overwhelmed by life or a little bit trapped by a sense of routine. It’s times like these that realtor.com becomes my best friend and worst distraction.

But it’s an escape. It’s a fiction. It’s a reminder that every day life needs a little magic too. That every day life needs some fun. I try to be mindful of these things because it’s so easy to think about putting off joy or dreams in order to get through the reality of right now – to think about how we’ll have them one day when we’re through with our responsibilities.

Sometimes the dream is so real, I can feel the warmed boards of the deck we might have under my bare feet and feel the warm breeze off the gulf on my face. Just like I can taste the frosty, sweet, tang of the mango margarita in my mouth. And it’s enough. For now.

It won’t always be and its a sign that I need to be conscious about choosing fun and being present in the moment. In the reality that my life RIGHT NOW is pretty good. Disney vacation on the horizon or no. Vacation house in Galveston or no.

Besides, it’s not totally true that we don’t have a trip planned – of course.

Life’s value

As I age I have become quite afraid of flying.  It isn’t a fear of death, which has become less and less terrifying as a concept as I grow up, but rather a fear of what I might do as the plane was crashing.  

Would I be the one shoving children out of my way on the way to an exit?

Would I slow everyone down in an emergency because I can’t imagine leaving my purse behind?

Would I pray?

I wonder about these things from time to time – who am I and what would a crisis reveal about me. I’m exceptionally lucky in that I have never had to face a true crisis or a true emergency. As I said, it’s not death I fear (after death you’re dead, after all, and no longer worried about much of anything) it’s the process of dying.

My husband and I have been updating our will in the last couple weeks. With the death of my husband’s brother, whom we had designated as guardian for the girls, we needed to revise and come up with a new plan. In the process, the attorney drafting the new will reminded us that we need to be clear with each other about our extended care directives. I struggle to know how I want to end my life. It’s always seemed so far away and I want to continue to believe that it will be – but after the death of my brother-in-law last year and the death of the father of one of my daughter’s friends, I know that it may not be as far as I would hope.

Hence my fear on planes.

The thought of death is deeply uncomfortable for us as humans. We don’t want to think about it, we want to deny its existence and not look too closely at it. It’s almost as if we feel thinking about it is willing it into existence. That said, it is the knowledge of death’s inevitability that allows us to value our lives properly. It is only with limits that our lives can have meaning – in my opinion. It is only by knowing that at any moment we could not be that we are able fully to be – thanks Shakespeare. The question becomes, then, what do we want to be, what do we want to do, what is important to us at any moment?

I know that this can’t be the focus of our lives – that we could die at any moment. But I think it is important to contemplate our purpose and values from time to time. What is the legacy we want to leave in the world and what are our goals that we’re moving towards at any given moment.

I think being mindful of what is important to us helps to motivate and to create meaning in our daily lives. The sense of tenuousness and fragility adds worth and makes priceless those things that we would take for granted. It brings clarity, I think.

Vulnerability and self-disclosure

I’ve been writing parent questionnaire responses for Number 71’s middle school applications. It’s actually my favorite part of the process – getting to sit down and really think about how to encapsulate a person I love so well in a way that allows others to love her too. It’s a lot like writing a celebrity profile for People Magazine – you want to be glowing and praise-full with just a hint of intriguing foibles. It wouldn’t be good to go full New Yorker on a parent response and introduce all that lovely complication and human frailty – despite those being some of the most interesting and lovable things about her.

When I applied to law school, my personal admissions essay went full New Yorker. I wrote about my relationship with my mother and remember crying hysterically as I typed. I know I let other people read it and nobody talked me out of it, but I think it probably wasn’t the most rational or sane moment of my life. In the end it was fine (thx Georgetown for letting me in), but at the time it maybe went beyond the limits of necessary and useful self disclosure. I’ll never forget my acceptance letter with a hand written note at the end of the form letter thanking me for the “deeply personal essay that really let the admissions committee know [me]”. Yikes.

It makes me wonder about vulnerability and what the limits are that we should observe with others. I’ve always had somewhat porous boundaries. I remember telling a friend of my then-boyfriend (now-husband) about a genetic quirk of mine, that he probably didn’t need to know about, at a party once. In a way, such over-disclosures can sometimes help to keep vulnerability at bay. I often find that the people that seem most keen to over-disclose are actually the most guarded and resistant to true connection. The firehose of self-disclosure actually serves to blast people back and prevent them from seeing anything but what the person sharing wants them to see. Over-disclosure can be a sub-conscious effort to control the message and conversation.

I often encourage my clients to practice a steady pattern of escalating vulnerability with new relationships. Don’t start off with your biggest fears and guilty thoughts, but start small and build as the other person proves reliable and safe.

As an over-discloser, I know that this is a difficult line to walk. I think we tend to think about vulnerability in a black and white way. Same goes with relationships. We tend to think of it as all or nothing. This came up in my DBT skills group last week – we were talking about having different levels of intimacy with different friends. I think it’s an important skill to develop – a sense of what level of vulnerability is appropriate and safe in each relationship. When I was young I tended to wear my heart on my sleeve at all times – ready to be everyone’s best friend. As I’ve aged – as I was discussing yesterday – the desire to pull in has increased. I’m working to identify and modulate those urges because I do think connection beyond immediate family/spouse is SO important.

Still, vulnerability on behalf of someone else is even more fraught. My tendency to over-disclose becomes even more of a wild-card in an application process for one of my children. I love them for their quirks, but definitely want to modulate the disclosure of them when writing parent responses. Again, I return to the People Magazine profile level of quirk being appropriate. That said, you have to introduce some quirk in order to make it clear that you see your children clearly.

As I said, it’s a tough line to draw and walk.