Tag: Online Video Counseling
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.
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.
Do you have irreconcilable differences with your partner?
by Nathan Chua
Couples often wonder how the person they loved has turned into someone they can’t stand at all. Why can’t he be responsible enough to take care of our finances? Why is she so disorganized and impulsive? He seems to care more about his family than he cares about me. I’m bored in this relationship. My partner doesn’t care about what I feel. She is too quiet and aloof. I don’t feel any closeness anymore.
Of course, there are legitimate reasons for you to consider leaving your partner such as violence and infidelity. But most couples often say that their issues mostly revolve around their differences. Thus comes the term, irreconcilable differences. What I enumerated in the first paragraph can be summed up in this term that we often hear couples declare as their reason for separating. Now don’t get me wrong. I don’t mean that these cannot be legitimate reasons to call it quits. I am in no position to tell you that you should stick to your relationship just because your problems simply fall into this category. And if your partner refuses to seek the help that your relationship could benefit from, then you may have a legitimate reason to find a more meaningful life either without a partner or with someone else.
Herein lies the beauty of Integrative Behavioral Couples Therapy or IBCT. One of the details that I look for in couples as I work with them, are the reasons why they fell in love with each other in the first place! Let’s take the complaints that couples bring to the therapy room that I enumerated in the first paragraph.
Contextual Thinking vs. Essential Thinking:
Complaint #1: He’s not responsible enough. He is disorganized and impulsive.
You may have liked the idea that your partner now was, during your dating days, the helpless person who appreciated it everytime you would come to his rescue. Somehow you found a role that was satisfying in this relationship. It could also mean that your partner’s impulsiveness in certain contexts, can be an endearing quality! Why, he would buy me an expensive gift out of nowhere!
Complaint #2: She seems to care more about her family than us.
I think this is one of those issues that couples complain about quite often. Given our culture of being in a context where family is a Filipino’s greatest resource in hard times, is it any wonder that your partner finds it difficult to split loyalties in the context of your relationship?
Complaint #3: I’m bored in this relationship. My partner doesn’t care about what I feel. She is too quiet and aloof. I don’t feel any closeness anymore.
Maybe when you were looking for a partner, there was an attraction to this person’s aloofness. It made this person mysterious and interesting. She is also quite the opposite of the noisy, agitating people you grew up with as a child. Finally, I can have the peaceful and quiet relationship that I was looking for. At the same time, your aloof partner may have liked the idea that you gave him the emotional element in his life. So goes the saying that opposites attract.
IBCT encourages couples to see that their partner will never be everything to them. No couple is one hundred percent compatible. In fact, the chances of you ending up with someone who is incompatible with you is 100 percent! Let’s face it, your partner who goes at a snail’s pace will go at a snail’s pace in situations when this quality can be disadvantageous to facing life’s inevitable problems as you go through it no longer as individuals but as a couple.
So if you are wondering what I mean by contextual vs. essential thinking, your partner and you behave differently in different contexts! Your partner is not essentially a bad person. (Believe me, I have yet to encounter a client who I felt had inherently harmful intentions!) If you come to therapy with the same intention of saving your relationship, it is more likely that you and your partner are doing your best to show that you care and you want your partner to be happy. Your partner is not essentially defective. They just learned to behave in certain ways in certain situations that at times covers other situations that do call for a different behavior!
That’s what IBCT makes you aware of as aspects of your relationship that are better off accepted and may take a long while or even forever to change. If we can learn to notice and accept these so-called irreconcilable differences, chances are, your partner will notice that. And having the minds that we have, I always go back to what Carl Rogers had said many years ago. Let me paraphrase it to apply not just to yourself but also for your partner and your relationship.
The Quote from Carl Rogers:
“The curious paradox is that when I accept myself, just as I am, then I can change.”
Paraphrase:
“The curious paradox is that when my partner accepts me, just as I am, then I can change.”
How Anxiety Can Limit Your Life Choices
by Nathan Chua
Anxiety is probably one of the most common complaints that people come to therapy for, which makes me wonder why this has not been a subject that I discuss more often. I think a lot of my own anger issues stem from a deeply held anxiety about an assortment of issues in life. I grew up in a home full of unpredictability and the sight of anger and acts of intimidation familiar. It is therefore quite easy for me to feel anxious about any kind of turn of events that don’t go my way. I became very strict with rules that I felt were needed to keep things in check even if much of these were out of my control.
I recently came up with a metaphor that I hope people who suffer from anxiety due to a past traumatic experience, can benefit from. This provides a simple imagery of what goes on in us when we become overly controlled by our anxiety in situations that could mean a lot to us if only we could “overcome” our difficult feelings. Unfortunately, that is most of what we have learned from mainstream psychology for many decades now. We should be able to bring anxiety down to certain levels in order to function and live meaningful and purposeful lives. I will have to leave this discussion for another time.
The subject I wish to talk about is how we can understand what we do when we allow our anxiety to dictate our lives. Sort of a step backwards to see the unworkability of the things we do when we experience anxiety. Let’s say one day a person gets involved in an accident caused by a yellow car. As we have minds that are capable of remembering much more than other animals do, that person’s mind will remind him of the terrors caused by yellow cars in his life. In fact, even the word yellow can bring back all the sordid details of the accident.
Now let’s imagine that this person went for a pleasure trip someday where he enjoyed sightseeing so much that he forgot that there will be no options to get back to his hotel anymore other than riding a yellow cab. Unfortunately, he or she or they would have to walk to the hotel in the middle of the night where there is less certainty that it will be safe. Would the person summon the courage to take a yellow cab then? If safety and enjoying the vacation is important enough, one can be forced to ride the cab and by forced I mean, by the person’s own free will, and how much more workable taking a yellow cab would be.
Now here’s how this story can relate to our own histories of past traumas. In Acceptance and Commitment Therapy or ACT, not being able to realize the different contexts in which real danger should be avoided is at the heart of what is called psychological rigidity or what I prefer to call behavioral rigidity or inflexibility.
One thing that happens if we start following rules that our minds offer us to protect us in situations where there is an actual danger or threat, we begin to lose sight of other options available. We hold on to limited patterns of behaving in dealing with the myriad of situations that happen as we go through different life stages or even daily challenges.
If you are like many of us who have lived with imperfect parents or caretakers, there will be situations that will cause us to feel anxious. But some of these situations can call for our willingness to open up to these difficult feelings in order to enrich our lives. Noticing how our minds overgeneralize with rules is the key to breaking out of the limits our minds make. Opening up to our past histories and noticing them as they are is key to what is possible.
If we stay and see behind our difficult memories, there may be something that we can learn which is important to us. In my case, I hated my own anger because I cared about being kind in the presence of that anger. If you have been bullied or rejected, that hurts because you care about not being bullied or about being accepted. There’s much to learn from what is painful. Don’t run away. Stay and watch how much your pain says about you and the beauty of all that you hold dear and care about. In other words, don’t run away from your own humanity. As it is often said in ACT, open up to your painful thoughts and feelings, and see what gifts lay behind.
Watch this on YouTube!
ACT Matrix for Anger
Interviewed by Jacob Martinez, ACT Matrix Expert and Professional Counselor from Wisconsin!
Not Every Hero Ends Up a Hero
Not Everyone is a Zelensky, Not Everyone Ends Up a Hero
by Nathan Chua
How many times have you and I been discouraged at the results of our hard work? How many times have you and I loved but failed? Have you ever taken care of a stray puppy and ended up seeing that puppy die in just a few months? Have you ever done something that you thought would benefit your organization but end up unappreciated?
Welcome to the club my friend. This is something that you share with countless others who have lived long enough to experience the pain of the human condition. Oftentimes, we get disheartened by the results of our hard work and our standing up for what we believe is important. This could be mostly because we often miss seeing the value behind the goals that we set for ourselves. Goals are guideposts that tell us that we are heading in the direction we want for our lives. Goals are benchmarks we either look forward to or look back on with much pride and sometimes with mixed feelings. Goals are also not a sure thing. They can be elusive or even unachievable in our lifetimes.
Our values on the other hand, are qualities of being that we aspire to be about. It is inexhaustible. It does not have an end point that we either look ahead to or look back on. It can be the fuel that burns the fire for our daily existence that could otherwise be meaningless or pointless.
As we live our values and pursue those goals, not all of us will end up getting the acknowledgement we want. Not all end up on the cover of Time magazine like the president of Ukraine, Volodymyr Zelensky. Even in such challenging places like the Ukraine, many soldiers in the Ukrainian army or even civilians, have bravely stayed to fight for their territorial rights, but unlike their president, many of them will die unknown. At best, their names might be engraved in some memorial one day, but how many of us really take the time to get to know each one of these heroes.
Ask yourself this question, regardless of the results of your small but heroic endeavors, whatever your lot in life, would you still do what it is that you just did? If you were to dedicate most of your adult life to something you want to do, and no one would know, what would you choose to do? Maybe you can relate to these stories:
- A security guard earning what can hardly be called a living wage, returns a bag full of cash to an unsuspecting tourist;
- A homeless person rushing in to save another pinned underneath a burning car;
- A dedicated worker who contributes daily to their organization without much recognition or reward but a measly salary.
So let’s get back to the questions that I started this article with. Read them again and ask yourself, would you have still done it? Would you have still worked hard to help the group of people who toil with you everyday in the office? Would you still have loved that person the way you did? Would you still have taken that stray puppy? Would you still have done that for your company regardless of the results?
If your answer is yes to any of these questions, then welcome to the club again my friend. You are in the company of the nameless soldiers who died in war for the sake of something bigger than themselves. You may not end up a Zelensky or on the headlines of a broadsheet, but you stood for something you wanted to be for that moment.
If you ask me why we do it? Blame it on Darwinian evolution. There is a part of us that has never left us in millions of years of evolution. We are the most social of all primates. We have that gene, that social gene that tells us that we are capable of doing caring things even at the highest of costs, with little reasons for these deeds than just being the creatures that we are. That’s the kind of programming we have, fortunately or unfortunately. We can do really big things, for nothing more than love.
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