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Common Sense and Psychological Sense

by Nathan Chua

As I learn more in the field, I can understand why some people might have a negative view of psychology. Besides the stigma, there is plenty of material out there that can make any person think, “Do you really need a PhD to know that?” In this article, I’d like to talk about some examples of how this happens and why much of the common sense advice we hear online can at best, be heard but reflected on before implementing.

Here are some examples of very common common sense advice we all may have heard about at some point:

A common sense or logical approach to sadness or depression:

Eliminate negative thoughts! Think positive! This will work only if we eliminate a function of our thinking, which is thinking of the opposite!

You and I can test this for ourselves. Living in a tropical country like the Philippines, note what thoughts come to you when the heat and humidity become unbearable. Your mind will probably remind you of how much more pleasant the weather is in the cooler months of the year. During the cooler months, you would probably remember the impending summer months and how short-lived these more pleasant temperatures are. This is our minds’ propensity to think of opposites. For our minds to not be able to do this, we would have to damage it in some ways. Thinking positive will only remind us of the negative thinking that we were trying to avoid in the first place.

Here’s another reason why it becomes difficult for you and I to simply think positive. In fact, it can even be counterproductive. The command here is, “It is important for you to not think that negative thought.” The paradox of this command is that it makes you monitor your thoughts, specifically, your negative thoughts. So how do you know you’re successful? You’re not thinking of the…oops! In other words, simply using common sense to not think about a negative thought, already reminds you of what you are avoiding in the first place and it has taken such an important place in your mind.

This war between positive and negative thoughts is unending. One thing for certain is life will provide us with challenges, which inevitably produce negative thoughts. This is part of what we mean when we say that depression is not really due to sadness, but it is mostly about the struggle with sadness. Thinking only positive thoughts may sound logical by the process of elimination, but it leaves us in a losing war with our feelings which will only disappear if we are in a state of numbness from medication, or if we were dead..

Common sense advice on sleeping problems:

Be prepared to go to sleep! Keep it as dark as possible, with just the right temperature, and dead silence. What’s more, follow a routine of taking a warm shower or a hot bath and make sure you have comfortable clothes. The fact that you are prepared to go to sleep means you are primed and anxious for a battle with your insomnia. If you are prepared for a battle, it goes without saying that you will be awake!

I remember in the early days of my work as a therapist, I used to give one piece of advice to conquer insomnia, try not to sleep! In other words, come to an acceptance with your insomnia and you will probably be more able to sleep. So common sense advice as mentioned above may only serve more to keep you awake than it is to help you get the rest you want.

Couple advice on apologies or using formulaic sentences:

Be quicker to forgive or apologize to your partner or spouse. That’s a common statement we hear from different experts in the field. When taken as a rule for its own sake, it forgets about the different contexts that couples have. As I have mentioned before in a previous article, context does not just refer to a physical location but also people and our very own thoughts and memories. If applied without sensitivity to context, this can lead to misinterpretations and even more loops in a couple’s arguments. A quick apology can be interpreted as insincere just as a quick word of forgiveness. It’s easy to say words we don’t mean but body language is harder to disguise. This can lead to more vigilance from one of the partners and more frustration on the other. One is seen to be insincere while the other is perceived to be unappreciative, which leads to the point of them giving up on each other.

The kind of psychology I espouse is not difficult because it takes a lot of effort, it is difficult because it is tricky. As you might have experienced yourself, common sense advice can be effortful and offer more opportunities for discouragement and escalation to even bigger problems. To paraphrase a famous psychologist, we are not in therapy to do the logical thing, but the psychological thing. So next time you hear someone give common sense advice, please either think critically or try not to generalize. You may even give it a try if you wish, but also be more noticing of the results. What makes psychological sense may not be what common sense dictates, and that’s the whole point of this blog post.

Why Couple or Marriage Counseling? – What couple or marriage counseling can offer that you cannot find in workshops or self-help materials

by Nathan Chua

There have been a number of times that couples have come to me to seek therapy because it is their last option in an otherwise hopeless relationship. Oftentimes, these couples have tried seeking advice from well-meaning friends and relatives. They often may have also experienced attending group workshops or retreats. Unfortunately, at least for those who have come to my office, they do see changes but they have been mostly short-lived. Don’t get me wrong though, I have no problem having couples go to these events. They can be of some help and for some, may be the best option. In fact, I believe in the wisdom of doing one’s own research and work on becoming a better person. The only thing about these approaches that can sometimes lead to less successful attempts at fixing a relationship, and at times may even cause more harm, is the lack of context.

A Word About Context

Pardon me if “context” may sound a bit jargony for some. Put in another way, context simply means applicability of some of the rules that people learn in retreats and self-help materials. When I say group, I don’t mean group therapy, but those that we often see, where people gather to listen to a speaker and talk about targeted subject matters that come out of the talks. The application of a rule without sensitivity to context can lead to its misapplication and therefore possibly cause more harm than help.

When I use the word context also, I do not just refer to it as a place, time, or situation that a couple finds themselves in. A context in any given situation, can include people and internal mental processes. People as context means your partner or spouse is a context. I am sure you’ve heard some say that they are different people when they are around their co-workers compared to when they are with their family. Your spouse is a context. Internal mental processes are also a context. Each partner in a relationship has their own histories either within or outside the relationship. A wife who had been betrayed in a previous relationship before will likely be more vigilant of being betrayed. If there had been a past betrayal in the current relationship, the betrayed as well as the betraying partner can become sensitive to secretiveness and guilt messages respectively.

Sure, attending weekend retreats, and reading self-help books and online articles can definitely help, but there is this element of context that you and your partner have to consider. Books and group facilitators have no and very little knowledge of your context either individually or as a couple. Here is an example of how a misapplication of learned material can end up not just being of little help, but also cause even worse problems if taken out of context.

Suppose you learn from a weekend couples workshop that couples have to talk about their issues to keep the problems from festering. Yes, this can certainly help couples who are conflict avoidant. Let’s say a partner learns to follow a piece of advice culled from a weekend retreat, which is to apologize as soon as possible to their partner. Devoid of context, this essential rule may feel like sound advice. However, what if from the apologizing partner’s perspective or context, they never had the habit of apologizing. The family of origin of the offending partner had learned that just starting up a conversation is enough to serve as an apology. Given that this rule of immediate apologies is learned by both partners, expectations from the offended partner will naturally rise to a level much higher than before. Well, they did spend quite a bit of time and resources to attend the retreat!

Following a rule devoid of context can be damaging. How? Let’s suppose the apologizing partner does the immediate apology as advised. Having been reminded of this, the offended partner will notice this with greater scrutiny as to how the offending partner would make the apology. Being uncomfortable with the newly prescribed behavior, the apologizing partner on the other hand, tries to make as sincere an apology as possible but falls short of the other partner’s expectations. The offended partner can have thoughts like, my partner is just doing this because that was what was taught. It’s insincere and fake and therefore doesn’t deserve attention or appreciation. The offended partner may then choose to wait a bit longer and see how far this goes before expressing appreciation.

The apologizing partner may then attempt this several times, which from their perspective requires a herculean effort. Having not received any form of appreciation sooner, the offending partner can feel that their efforts are not working to make their relationship move back to better times in the past. They give up on doing it. The offended partner can then notice the short lived quality of the change and have thoughts about how hopeless their partner is, and that change is not likely to come any time soon or become a lasting sign of better things to come.

So to answer the question in the title of this article, couple counseling is indeed not a joke. It is hard work and is fraught with fears of having to share very personal matters to a stranger. But a counselor will have a better grasp of your contexts as a couple and as individuals. Knowing that context and how these rules can apply or not apply to you is critical to avoiding the pattern of distrust that’s shown above. Why not give it a shot?

What can help you become the New You in the New Year?

by Nathan Chua

It’s that time of year again when many of us set out to become better people. We all have this internal yearning to be the best versions of ourselves. I often use the term our existential angst, a concern that we have not been living up to what we hoped to be. What do we want to be? A kinder friend? A more responsible husband? A more fun-loving person? Much of the troubles we feel have much to do with thoughts surrounding the people we strive to be and what our current reality indicates.

But what if this striving can start instead from a very simple skill that we can learn? Maybe the question could be phrased as what is it that we could get better at, rather than what we could be. Nothing is more demoralizing than realizing that even with all the work we try to do in becoming a better person, we fail. Why is this so? For one, our minds are very good at naming things we can or can’t do when faced with different circumstances. It feels like there is an upper limit to what we can or cannot achieve. It could be someone or something that could potentially stand in the way of such goals that keeps us from doing better.

Here’s a very simple tip on what to be better at this coming year in order for you to take some steps towards your most coveted aspirations. It’s so simple you might think it’s silly. Be better at: noticing. That’s it! It’s your first step towards making the change you’ve always seemed unable to reach. It could be hard at first but you and I can get better at it, if we practice.

But you might ask, what is there to notice? What should I notice? Should I start noticing what shirt my workmate is wearing everyday? Of course not. Firstly, notice what you tend to do when something happens and then notice the results of what you do. If what you do doesn’t help your relationship with your spouse then start noticing those that do. If what you do doesn’t give you the hardworking, addiction-free child that you want, then start noticing those that do. Notice what works and doesn’t work for you and your relationships.

Then notice what goes on inside of you when these challenges come along. Notice it just for what they are. Then notice what your mind tells you they are. Are there any judgments against those very feelings that make you and I, very human? And notice also how long these feelings last. Are they there permanently? Or do they come and go as they please?

Then notice what, in those moments, are most important to you. Here is where maybe your list of becoming can come along handy. Whatever our role in life is right now, we want to see ourselves becoming the best we can be in those roles. You and I can be a spouse, partner, friend, sibling, parent, child, and so on. In every situation that presents some kind of challenge to your emotional stability, go back to what you think will be representative of how you would have wanted to handle the situation. Go back to noticing the probable consequences when you do what you do, then notice what it is that goes on inside your thoughts and feelings as you experience these challenges, and finally, notice what is important for you in the moment. Then choose your best or better course of action from there.

And why notice? If you have gone through numerous self-help books or articles lately, I think that’s what the fuss about mindfulness is. Yeah! Simply put, mindfulness is really mostly about noticing! So just start noticing more this new year. And may I go just a step further. Maybe that’s what you go to see a counselor for, to become more noticing or mindful. Try and see for yourself and notice what wonders more noticing can do for you and the people you love. Happy New Year everyone!

Making the Hard Life-Changing Decisions

by Nathan Chua

There are a few crossroads we face in life. Who to commit to in a long term relationship or when is it time to quit one, what course to take in tertiary education, where to live, what school to send kids to. These are all part of what life presents to us. Many of us can get caught up in the rigmarole of decision making. Many clients come to therapy hoping to get an expert opinion on which path to take. It is quite the common sight that clients come to therapy with the idea that they can consult as many therapists as they can, and come up with a logical and sensible decision. That search for a failsafe choice can be a red herring. Many people, and that includes me, can get really stuck for a very long time in indecision.

Clients may find themselves weighing pros and cons with an expert in therapy. Unfortunately, this normally ends up with what is called counterpliance or the client making a decision that goes in the opposite direction of what solution was arrived at with the expert, basically demonstrating what our minds do. You can experiment on this by remembering how many times you have thought about how successful a decision can be. Pretty soon, you will notice your mind reminding you about the other extreme result, which is failure. This is why, although tempting to me, I do my best to avoid dwelling on content when a client comes to me with this kind of dilemma. If I wasn’t conscious, I can get carried away by the back and forth in therapy. I avoid this because it isn’t something that the client is not able to do on their own before they come. So any kind of move in this direction will probably be nothing new for the client.

Fundamentally, our lives can flow into these situations wherein we have to choose one way or another. In a wonderful demonstration of how an ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) therapist would work with someone who is going through some difficult decisions, Dr. Steven Hayes shows how our minds can trick us into thinking that we can make a difficult decision and not be scared. The thought that hard choices should not be scary can creep into this process and paralyze us into not making them to our own detriment.

I often give my clients a perspective towards the past and the future with a question. I would ask them if they are familiar with scenes where people are gathered for one of those momentous occasions in life that are supposed to be filled with joy and anticipation. If these were indeed just full of positive feelings and happy thoughts, then why the heck do we see people crying in these instances? Isn’t that strange? Just to refresh your memory, have you been to a wedding, a graduation, a debut (an 18th birthday party)? More often than not, you and I will see people tearing up with smiles interspersing in their faces. Why is this? My client will often sit with mouth agape, not finding the right word to explain such a phenomenon. I would tell them that the body language is precisely a description of what is going on inside of them. It is a mix of feelings. It is not just purely happiness that is going on internally. There could be sadness, fear, anxiety, and many more. In other words, these are the bitter sweet moments in life. You know, the ones that are eventually etched in our memories as the most meaningful. For in life, the best moments are not the fun moments, although they can be, but they are mostly also those that are hardest.

I can still recall some of the happiest moments I had that I spent with a friend. Although there was nothing but fun and joy at the time, there was still something bitter about it. It had to end. Life is sometimes bitter sweet or has to be, bitter sweet. Otherwise, we could be missing it. Making hard decisions usually forms part of living richly and meaningfully. Being brave is not about having no fear. It is rather doing what matters to us even when there is.

Finding Your Purpose: A Behavioral Perspective

by Nathan Chua

In a recent article about Tim Cook, the current CEO of Apple computers, he had this to say about an old saying:

“There is a saying that if you do what you love, you will never work a day in your life,” Cook said during the speech at the Mercedes-Benz Superdome in New Orleans.

“At Apple, I learned that is a total crock,” Cook said to a laugh from the crowd.*

How many times have many of us stared at the horizon to ask ourselves what our existence is for? There have been many cases in the counseling room wherein people ask me why they have these feelings of emptiness, a lack of purpose or direction in their lives. Believe me, I still ask myself the same questions. I am not exempt from life’s difficult puzzles.

I am quite sure that most of you reading or listening or watching this have browsed through countless articles that try to answer this question of finding purpose. In this space, I would like to share my take on how this might look like, from a behavioral perspective.

Here’s my understanding of the subject at this point in my journey inside the world of contextual behavioral science. We all do things for a reason. When you pick up your toothbrush in the morning, that has a purpose. Deciding to use your time to go to the grocery store whether by foot or by the use of a vehicle is also based on reasons. There are three ways of explaining why we do what we do. We either think of them as activities that we should, must, or can’t do, that we have to do, and that we want to do. Now, let’s break each one of them down.

Musts, Shoulds, Can’ts:

As humans who enjoy being at the top of the food chain, we occupy this spot in part because of our capacity to follow rules without having to experience something first hand. We can just be told about a rule and not have to test it. You can imagine how helpful this ability can be if we go back to ancient times when a rule to follow might be, “Don’t go near a lion because it can be dangerous.” Rules like washing our hands before we eat or avoiding certain places that can pose a danger to our safety are helpful in keeping us safe and alive.

However, this rule following capacity can otherwise be detrimental when applied to threats we sense from the inside. If we yell and scream at our child or partner, sometimes following that rule can work.

We get what we want, like a period of less frustration from someone we live with. The rule here is I shouldn’t be getting to this level of frustration with my child or partner. Or, I can’t stand this feeling any longer, I must do something to stop it. Unfortunately, this can have detrimental long term effects on your relationship with the very people that mean most to you especially when done in a harsh manner.

This can also translate into other consequential decisions in life. Shoulds like you should be pursuing a career in a field only because it is what others say you should do.

A good example of this is, “I must be a doctor because that is what my family wants for me,” which often leads to burnout and poor performance.

The other extreme is to follow a rule that may not be available for us to follow at the moment. An example would be, I must be an artist regardless of the fact that I am currently without any opportunities to be one.

Another form is when we follow rules like I must have a drink when I am stressed; I can’t sleep without a sleeping pill; or I can’t speak before a crowd until I am relaxed.

This type of rule-following can lead to unhelpful and at times unhealthy behaviors where we don’t make advances in what we are capable of achieving within the finite amount of time that we have in our existence.

Have to’s:

These activities fall under what Tim Cook was probably referring to. Although we would like an ideal of working in jobs that give us the most fulfillment, we nonetheless would likely end up with aspects of the work that we don’t necessarily enjoy. This is where some of that idealism has to wear off.

If you are one who insists on being in that dream job, but can’t find any opportunities to land one, maybe it is time to think about the have to’s. In the meantime, and we don’t know how long that meantime will be, you might have to work other jobs and pursue your passions through other avenues. There are people who end up doing what they love on the weekends in a different setting. Anyway what we love to do we can do even without compensation. You’ll never know, you might even find it in whatever current job you have that puts food on the table. In other words, there can be parts of your job that allow you to do what you love to do even if it’s less than your ideal.

Want to’s:

Here is where most of us would like to be. Unfortunately, not even the jobs that fit our passions are purely fun. If you wanted to play a sport for a living, there’s also the hard part of long hours of practice in a very lonely gym. So congratulate yourself if you are able to land a job wherein you are fulfilling your want to’s.

Want to’s can also involve what we do for rest and relaxation. To go back to an earlier example, your musts, like I must drink to remove my stress, can be changed to, I drink when I choose to remove my stress. This is where we see the same form of behavior functioning differently in different contexts.

Here’s a quote from Ray Owen, that I believe is a helpful guide for us to know if ingesting something to relax from heavy stress is helpful or not:

“Remembering, planning, daydreaming, imagining, and so on–matter greatly to me too and I wouldn’t give them up. However, I’d say that they’re good things when they’re chosen,” Ray Owen

You can add having some time off of work or other commitments with a drink or two (or whatever activity it is that you do for recreation) because you choose or want to, and not because you must, is a way to see if you are doing something with your time that is helpful or unhelpful to your sense of purpose. It is probably something that works for you if you choose to do it rather than something you must do in order to achieve something, like relieving stress.

So next time you do something that’s like following a rule, notice the rule first, then notice why you’re doing it and see if it is something you feel like you:

must, should, or can’t do,
or something you have to do,
or something you want to do.

Maybe you will find your place in the sun or what we most of the time call, your purpose for living. Nice rule of thumb, isn’t it?

*Source: IFL Science

Going Inside Your Grieving

by Nathan Chua

If there is one facet of our internal lives that can be quite a puzzle to many, it could be grieving. This is a part of life that can be difficult to understand. It’s one of life’s mysteries. Many faiths have come about in order to explain the reality of our own finitude. In therapy, there are millions out there seeking help for this process that has so often been misunderstood. Frequently, much of the struggles come from how the grieving process is supposed to happen. Here are some examples of the puzzlement in question form: There must be something wrong with me for not “grieving” the loss as much as others I know. Why can’t I get rid of the guilt so easily just as everyone around me has been advising me to do? Of course, there is also that most common difficulty of all, why can’t I seem to get over it as quickly as some of the people I know? Will this pain last forever?

Some of the misconceptions about grieving is that all of us have to go through a series of stages in order to qualify our process as “normal grief.” As with many other areas in life, we tend to compare ourselves with the people we share moments with. As a consequence of this inevitable mental process of comparing, it is understandable that we would feel guilt whether we go through the stages more or less quickly than others. Or if we have reached complete acceptance or not, which is what most construe to be the final stage of grieving.

Another misconception about grieving is that it involves just one feeling, which is what is expected, sadness. Many can question themselves if they don’t feel as much sadness as expected. Grieving involves multiple emotions and not just sadness. Depending on your relationship with the person you had lost, you can feel anything from a longing for the departed one or a sense of relief that the person is no longer there. And of course, everything in between. It is not a sign of being abnormal for you to think that the loss provided some relief from the past abuses that a close member of the family had brought. Feelings are not there for us to command. You and I can’t just will ourselves to feel a certain way. However our problem-solving, comfort-seeking, overeager and logical minds believe that to be true. Our minds are very good tools for eliminating discomfort. But our feelings are not an inconvenience or like mosquitoes that we can just kill off with a slap of our hands. Our feelings tell us that we have lost someone we cared for very deeply, or on the other extreme, someone who might have caused much pain in our life,

Another thing our minds do is comparing. One thing that we fail to do when we focus on comparisons as we rush ourselves out of the process, or when we rant about the what if’s, is what I indicated in the title of this article. In ACT or Acceptance and Commitment Therapy, we frequently help move people to look inside their pain just as we do for our own. Within our pain, there could be a gift that we don’t see. The gift of really loving and caring for another. I often ask my grieving clients to shift their perspective by imagining someone who comes to them with a similar loss and says that the experience is of no consequence to them emotionally. Would you be more or less worried about this person?

And what do I mean about going inside our grief? As I had indicated earlier in this piece, it is learning more about what is behind the pain. This is part of our humanity. The pain is part of what makes us deeply love and care while a person walks among us.

Finally, there is probably something about the departed one that you treasure most. Something that this loved one has taught you through their life, Here’s one exercise you can do. Write down all the wonderful things you experienced and learned from this person, and imagine this person sitting there beside you and you were reading this out loud to them. What do you think this person would feel or say about what you just wrote or read for them? And then ask yourself another important question. Must this be that person’s legacy? If your answer is yes, then what can you do to honor that?

And then look through what you have done in the past weeks, months or days, do these things that you do reflect a sense of honoring the life of this person who meant so much to you? If not, then maybe it’s time to do something else that will. You may end up doing something that involves either getting out of the pain, or carrying your pain with you while you live out a life worthy of your loved one’s legacy.

When is it time to end a relationship or set an ultimatum?

by Nathan Chua

One of the toughest decisions to make in a relationship is when you think enough is enough. I have seen quite a few clients agonizing over what to do with their partners. Is this issue enough of a reason to remove oneself from the situation? Am I doing what I think will be best for us or my family by ending it? Is it just me who is being impatient?

Before I go on though, there are situations where giving up on a relationship may be called for. For one, if you end up in a violent relationship where your life is in danger or your kids’ safety both physically and emotionally are at stake, leaving might be your best option. You might also be in a situation where there is repetitive cheating that is emotionally untenable and also endangers your physical well-being. When I say physical well-being, I am referring to chances of you becoming infected by a sexually transmissible disease. Perhaps there is substance abuse involved that makes it impossible to have a meaningful connection with your partner. Ending a relationship may even be more tenable if your partner is unwilling to seek therapy for violent behavior, cheating, substance abuse or a mental health concern.

Another caveat before you continue with this post or vlog, every couple is unique. You may have a situation where you are torn between giving up on the relationship or making an ultimatum. I recommend that you bring this concern to therapy. Maybe you will see the best option for you with the help of someone who can see your situation from an objective standpoint.

Nonetheless, this is about making a last stand in your relationship. If you believe there is something about it that you want to see a change in, here are a few tips on how to determine if your situation is worthy of an ultimatum:*

You are determined to stick by what you decide when the ultimatum is not met. If you are not able to stick with your ultimatum, it will likely not be taken seriously by your partner.
This is about one issue alone. It does not involve a number of steps or changes that have to happen over time. If your complaint behind your ultimatum is the way he handles household chores, then this may not be a place to make an ultimatum. This is because it involves a habit that will require time and patience to change. These will need moment to moment awareness on the part of your partner. Examples of one issue decisions may involve physical or verbal abuse of you or any member of your family, infidelity, or addictions that have gotten in the way of your relationship.
The change you are after involves a short time frame. This is an elaboration of the previous point. Anything that may require an indeterminate amount of time, is likely not a condition for an ultimatum.
The partner giving the ultimatum is not pressured to decide. It is not a game for the person making the ultimatum. It is rather a difficult and painful process to experience. You are not playing a game of chicken with your partner. This pains you to make. It is not a way for you to gain leverage in your relationship.
The ultimatum will ultimately be for the benefit of the partners involved as well as the people around them. It can start off a change for the betterment of the relationship or for each of the couple. Examples of these would be deciding on getting married or not, having kids, getting therapy to address some of the more pressing concerns that could be a reason for ending the relationship as enumerated earlier.

Remember for as long as you have not left the relationship, you are already making a decision to stay. In the meantime, you are left to your own devices to live out those moments. If there is one great advice I can give you as you contemplate on whether you should leave or make a final stand, it would have to come from Viktor Frankl who wrote:

“Everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.”

Ask yourself, when you look back to these moments when you made a decision to set an ultimatum, would you know that you’ve done what is consistent with your deepest parts? If your answer is a yes, then go for it.

*Source: Reconcilable Differences by Christensen, Doss, and Jacobson

The Two-Step Anger

by Nathan Chua

“Let’s slow down here for a moment.” These are some words you would often hear me say to my clients. It sounds like a weird request. I can almost hear the client mumbling inside, “What does slowing down have anything to do with counseling? I am here to get some kind of resolution to my concerns and I only have just under an hour to talk about it!”

A big part of mindfulness-based therapies like ACT (Acceptance and Commitment Therapy) is developing the capacity to slow things down. If we follow the news, we’d see how fast our minds work and how critical it is to slow down. We might have been witness to some incidents where a cop who has had a spotless record, all of a sudden commits a violent crime that upends a lifetime’s work and dedication. How does this happen? Well, I guess a more apt question to ask is “How quickly does this happen?” It’s a split second between our thoughts and actions. Unfortunately, without the functional understanding of what mindfulness is all about, it is easy to equate our feelings with bad behavior. I use bad behavior here because growing up, we normally get messages like, “Don’t get angry at your sister!” The statement implies that anger is something that inevitably leads to harmful results. In other words, anger predetermines hurtful behaviors. If put this way, it begins to sound a bit silly right? We cannot be exonerated for hurting someone physically simply by saying, “I just couldn’t help it. My feelings took over me.”

The problem with treating anger as if it were a bad emotion is it often ends up with a paradoxical effect of actually making us even more victimized by our own emotions. How many times have you and I heard statements like, “Won’t you do the same thing if you had to deal with such a stupid person?” Our minds love to give us reasons for what we do because without the ability to reason, we would not be able to solve our day-to-day problems. For example, reasoning can tell us that if we stay long enough under the sun in sweltering conditions, it can cause us to suffer a heat stroke. That reasoning ability is useful in that context. Unfortunately, if we use it with our anger, we can draw a conclusion that our anger can cause us to “feel bad” (like being baked under the sun) and consequently make moves to remove the anger from our system by hitting someone or yelling and screaming. Causation is logical and can be helpful for us to know how we can avoid external threats, but when applied to internal threats like emotions and thoughts, it can cause us to do things that do not match our deepest aspirations for ourselves.

So how do we handle our emotions of anger? Doesn’t spewing it out or running away from the contexts that produce our anger make sense? Yes, it does work at times. We can remove ourselves from the company of people who hurt us. But sometimes the very same people who can hurt us, are the same ones we care about deeply. And although we can say that staying away from such people who instigate our anger can be effective, there will always be situations when we meet other people who remind us of the same people we try to avoid. There is that old ACT saying that goes, “Where are you gonna go, where your thoughts don’t go.”

So here’s my tip for dealing with anger, think of it as a two-step process. There is that familiar feeling of anger, and that split second reaction that we do in the face of anger. If we can slow down and notice what just happened to trigger our anger, what we do in the presence of our anger, and the consequences of such, then we have had a mindful moment. Another mindful practice is to just notice the anger for what it is. It is something that we experience, not what we are.

Then we go on to noticing or minding what is important for us in those moments. What do we want to be about in those challenging moments? Are we going to do what our minds tell us will get us out of the angry feelings, or are we going to stay with the anger and still be what we set out to be in those moments? In other words, we as humans are capable of long-term thinking and seeing the bigger picture. If something or someone truly matters to us, then all else can fade into the background. We can stay grounded and be kind to the people that we love, who can also be the very people who can make us feel angry. Mindfulness of values tells us that there’s something more important here than just trying to get rid of the angry feelings we have. Like maybe your most cherished relationship is on the line…and it’s all worth the pain of anger. Pause, slow down, stay with it, and be kind.

Should you ask intimate details about an affair?

by Nathan Chua

One of the most common questions that couples ask on their road to recovery from an affair is whether it is helpful for a hurt partner to inquire about intimate details. This is quite expected and an understandable reaction. However, couples need to be sensitive to the results of such inquiries. It is also not surprising to see the participating partner feel uncomfortable sharing sexual details about the affair.

There are some experts who say that the best advice a therapist can give to a couple is to refrain from going into the sexual or graphic details of the affair. Although this may sound like good advice to many and could probably work for a majority of couples, it has the potential to backfire. The thing that I like about the work of Drs. Andrew Christensen, Brian Doss, and Neil Jacobson, is its focus on functional rather than formal rules of engagement between couples. Formal rules usually involve teaching couples to follow a rule based on what it says alone with less consideration of the unique contexts that surround each couple. It’s like following a rule just because. Functional rules are more sensitive to contexts as well as the consequences that occur when they are adapted by the couple.

A Word About Context:

When I say context, it doesn’t only mean the physical environment of the couple. Context can involve the very thoughts, feelings, and memories that each partner has going into the relationship as well as within the relationship. What mindfulness teaches us about this is that we learn to see things from each other’s context or perspective. This is rather hard to see when couples have narrowed their options to survival strategies like fight, flight, or freeze! That would take a whole set of blog posts to discuss! So let me leave it at that.

In therapy, I allow couples to engage in their conversations about an affair with a difference. That difference is to learn how to do them better. How is this done when it comes to discussing sexual details?

These questions are obviously mostly going to come from the hurt partner. Again I don’t want to give formal rules about this, so please be sensitive to what works in your relationship and what doesn’t. If what you’re doing helps you to move on in the healing or renewing process of your relationship, then go ahead and keep it up. However, formal rules can end up frustrating both parties. The couple makes a turn for the worse when these questions are asked devoid of context from the injured partner. When they turn into demands without reasons or, just because the injured partner is angry and the participating partner must pay, conversations can become fraught with anger. At times they can become rhetorical and sarcastic. Interrogation has become a way to make accusations. And for most of us who have not learned what context sensitivity means, couples can go about doing what they’re doing because sometimes they do end up getting what they want. As human beings, we have a tendency to keep doing what we’re doing even if the success rates go down on our attempts to remove difficult thoughts and feelings. Minor, short term successes can obscure long term consequences. And for couples who have experienced infidelity, the injured partner believes the participating partner is responsible for removing these thoughts and feelings. This is an impossible task for anyone who’s a human being, let alone a partner who is also experiencing difficult emotions like anxiety and fear about possibly losing the relationship, and guilt about having had an affair. The injured partner can get rewarded sporadically when the participating partner grudgingly surrenders to the demands. Unfortunately, such enduring, surrendering, or survival moves by the participating partner more often only last for a short while before the pattern of giving in to keep the peace becomes unbearable. Thus, an explosion of pent up feelings occurs and the couple escalates.

The key here is for the injured partner to be more noticing of the softer emotions inside and able to enunciate them with less criticism and accusations. Focus on asking for information and telling the partner why that is important to know. Usually, the questions involve some kind of insecurity or a wound that informs the participating partner that such questions come from images or memories of past sexual hurts or rejections, if these are out in the open. There could be strong feelings of insecurity about the injured partner’s attractiveness. These types of revelations are more likely to induce compassion rather than defensiveness or withdrawal from the participating partner and allow for a more compassionate response to happen.

So let me get back to what I mentioned earlier in this article. In the counseling room, we are not attempting to help you end your difficult conversations. We are there to help make better conversations, because like it or not, there will be conflicts in your relationship as your contexts change from situation to situation. Learning the skills to make better exchanges in conflict situations can mean that these conflicts lead you to a richer closeness rather than rip you apart.

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What to do after an affair

by Nathan Chua

This is intended to be a first aid kit for those who are going through a difficult discovery of an affair. Please note that this is not a substitute for seeking professional help. Affairs are situations that would likely require trained assistance. Some who have taken such events lightly or have let these incidents slip by, often end up having to deal with it later with loads of pent up emotions that make it even harder to recover from.

I am not sure if I ever had a blog post that enumerates a list of do’s and don’ts when it comes to dealing with cheating in committed relationships, particularly because applying such rules can at times do more harm to an already struggling relationship. Let me emphasize to you, my audience, that I am listing them here not because I want to give you easy answers to your situation. It is exactly that your situations are unique that I want you to take these tips with a grain of salt. I am showing you a list of rules that can generally apply to most cases of betrayal without having the paradoxical effect of the couple ending up fighting about the rules instead of facing the problems affecting the relationship.

Tip 1: Know where responsibility lies

It is often that the hurt partner puts the full blame of the affair on the participating partner. Yes, that is a fact that the affair or the recourse to an affair is the sole responsibility of the participating partner. There is no excuse for an affair even as there are major problems in the relationship. However, the difficulties in the relationship is the responsibility of both the partners. We all have reasons for our behavior but they are not to be considered excuses. Providing excuses can lead to the participating partner to blame the relationship for the affair, and for the hurt partner to justify their past behaviors in the relationship. Reasons are different from excuses or justifications for either partner.

Tip 2: Problem-solve in the immediate aftermath

You and your partner may decide to live separately for the meantime if situations at home become too difficult to handle. This could either be because you have a tendency to escalate or are afraid of how your escalations can affect your children.
You may want to get yourselves checked for possible sexually transmitted diseases.
Couples are free to decide if the relationship is worth keeping but making a decision in an emotionally charged state may not be in their best interest. Delay such decisions until you have returned to calmer emotional states.
Withhold conversations about the affair until you are in therapy. Early on, it may be too much of a stretch for couples to know how to handle the problem without escalating. Remember, what we want is for couples to move forward in their relationship rather than take steps that bring them to even more hurtful conversations. Bring these conversations to the counseling room with your therapist.

Tip 3: What questions to ask and how for the hurt partner

It is understandable that the injured partner will resort to questions fraught with accusations and harsh criticisms towards the participating partner. Focus on what you want to know and tell your partner why that is important to you. Let your partner know that this is part of the process of moving on rather than a way of punishing your partner. There are tendencies for the injured partner to ask rhetorical and often sarcastic questions to their partners. It is advisable that you make factual disclosures and revelations of your underlying softer emotions of fear and anxiety towards the possibility that this could happen again.

This will be all for now. For part two of this post, I will be discussing what the participating partner can say or do that can help in the moving on process. It will also involve how partners can deal with future challenges that can happen if the participating partner is still able to remain in touch with the affair partner. Another common question is, “Is it okay for the hurt partner to confront the affair partner?” See you in the next blog!

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