Say You're Sorry

What are the rules for "sorry" and why do we have them? Where did we get the idea that feeling badly was adequate recompense for doing wrong? Criminals get lighter sentences if they show "remorse", and the more the better, as if that would repair any damage that they have done. Murderers are more likely to get executed if they don't show remorse. How much "sorry" is enough, and how do we measure it?

If someone has done something to hurt someone or damage their property, why don't they feel an obligation to make it right? Why do we accept apologies instead of demanding change? We get mad when an adult does something wrong and refuses to say he is sorry; we worry about children who do something wrong and apparently feel no remorse. If an adult harms us in some minor way and says something like: "I see that my behavior harmed you, and I'll change it", we would not be satisfied, even though rationally he has responded appropriately. He also must express some kind of remorse or regret, or we will likely feel "disrespected" or worse, that the person is a "bad seed" of some kind, a psychopathic wolf amongst us sheep.

In fact, when someone refuses to express "sorrow" for a rude behavior,we are likely to experience it as a challenge, a personal challenge, It's almost an invitation to a fight, although it's not clear exactly what a fight is expected to accomplish. It may be related to the challenge behavior of primates within a pack, in which a senior member is challenged for his/her position of authority.

But where did we get the idea that we are absolved from personal responsibility by simply saying "I'm sorry?" Feeling guilty or being sorry without changing behavior is a con job.

Freedom and responsibility

I find that most people have a very hazy idea of what is meant by the word "responsibility". I would like to offer a somewhat different perspective and definition.

Responsibility is not the same as blame. "Blaming" is a childlike response to something wrong, and its entire aim is to identify someone or something as the "fall guy(or gal)". The goal of blaming is to assign the task of guilt to someone. Some people assign guilt mostly to others; some assign it to themselves. In any case, once the assignment has been made, the designated "blamee" is expected to feel badly, experience remorse, regret, self-blame, and to display them. Only one person needs to do this, and the group is satisfied to exonerate the others who may have been involved. This display is considered by many to be a "good thing", as if we were all benefited by someone's feeling badly. We even give extra punishment to those convicted of a crime if they don't display adequate self-blame. Why does this gratify us?

Guilt and self-blame have their appropriate place in human development. When we observe them in a child, we are reassured that they are beginning to internalize rules of behavior. This is important because they are able to respond to internal rules, not just external ones. When a child feels badly about something s/he has done, we know the child is accepting our moral values and applying them to self. We know then they belong to our flock. The ones that don't feel badly when they have done wrong scare us, and rightly so. We know such people may develop into psychopaths with no respect for law or the rights of others. When they feel guilty, we feel reassured.

Responsibility, however, is an entirely different animal, and a sense of responsibility can only develop later as the child becomes more intellectually mature. My definition of responsibility is a simple one: I recognize and accept that all the consequences of all my decisions are mine, whether I anticipated them or not. Responsibility is something you have whether you want it or not. It is always 100% and is never divisible. "Accepting responsibility" only means that I consciously recognize that the consequences of my choices are, in fact, part of the choices. It's arbitrary to separate choices from consequences in any case, since everything is connected.

We experience personal freedom when we recognize our power to make choices and accept their consequences as part of the same package. I'm asserting that freedom and responsibility are simply different aspects of the same concept and can't really be distinguished from one another. As a free human I recognize that every moment of my life I am choosing my next step, and that with that choice I accept all the consequences that belong to it. This is the opposite of "living on automatic”. Living on automatic is a way of freedom.

Recognizing your freedom is like opening your eyes and discovering that you are standing in an open plain with no paths to guide you other than your own values. Sometimes people are forced to open their eyes because the paths they were on stopped working for one reason or another. Many times they just want to close their eyes again and go back on automatic because it’s comfortable and predictable. Not everybody wants life to have the excitement of freedom.

Comments are welcome, as always. I do wonder if anyone is out there.....

Growing Up

I've been thinking about the process of growing up a lot. I always thought that I would come to a particular state of adulthood or old age at which point I would somehow be mature, wise, balanced, in a word, a finished product. Now that I'm (coff) of mature years I see that I still struggle with becoming myself, being more honest, less defensive, more direct. I struggle with it on a daily basis, my petty dishonesties, my hiding myself behind a role or a part I choose to play.

Bear with me, if you've read this far, because I think I'm going somewhere with this. Many years ago when I was a young psychotherapist in my own treatment, I read a book named "Effective Psychotherapy" by Helmuth Kaiser. In that book he struggled with the ideas of what made therapy work, and after much thought he decided that therapy (or just simple human maturation) occurs when people "say what they mean and mean what they say". Why is it that this is so bloody hard to do?

Well, I wasn't raised to be honest. I was raised to be a "hero" of accomplishment, a Superman who would make his family proud. That was the way I learned to think of myself. I tested (in my mind) everything I thought or did and every decision I made against that touchstone. I felt like a failure or a disappointment when what I did or what people thought of me didn't fit that measure. Of course, that was much of the time. Did I have freedom? Sure, when I made decisions that fit the role to which I had been assigned. The longer you play a part, the harder it is to remember you are only playing a part. I can't even begin to list the parts I have believed in, but certainly they include: the Overworked Husband, the Dominating Father, the Brilliant Young/Old Therapist, the Arrogant Prick, the Stand-up Comic, the Romantic Lover, the Great Writer, The Angry Young Man, the Rebel Against Authority, the Authority Against Rebels..... the list goes on and on.

My own therapy taught me a lot, but the most important single thing I learned was that it is almost impossible to know when you're telling yourself the truth, but it's a lot easier to know if you're telling the truth when someone is present and listening carefully. I learned to begin to tell truth from fiction slowly. I began to hear when I was bullshitting myself. I gave up old fictions but only to take on a lot of new ones. In retrospect some of the parts I played were really absurd. They were so far from the truth that even thinking about them is somewhat embarrassing. I still can't tell when what I'm thinking about myself is true, but it's a lot easier when I tell someone I trust.

So for me maturation is a long, steady process of peeling off layers of fiction and dramatic parts, struggling to tell uncomfortable truths about myself to those I love, finding those remaining dishonesties and fictions (will I ever bloody get done?) and trying to face them down, admit them and drop them. I try not to invent new fictions too, which is easy. People like to have a box to put you in, and sometimes I find it easier to just get in the box. I try to stay aware that I'm just playing a convenient part, to smooth things over or take less effort. Sometimes I find myself saying outrageous things JUST TO GET OUT OF THE BOX.

It helps to be in a relationship with someone with whom you can be honest about anything. The more you keep yourself to yourself the harder it is for you to find out who you really are. Most people don't even want to know. Have you noticed how much easier it is to be defensive when your role is challenged? As a therapist I've found that people are most self-centered when they're most uncomfortable and defensive. Maybe maturation means just dropping defenses because there is nothing to defend. Peeling off fictions makes me wonder if there is anything at the core, behind all those roles, or if what is there is just very simple, very clear, very direct and totally itself. I believe that is the Buddha nature, but to call it anything is to falsify it and turn it into another role. So we mature (if we mature) toward a greater simplicity and purity of heart. Whatever that is, it has to exist without a name.

Why magic trumps science

I recently read an article written by a man who, espousing rationality and the scientific method, tried to convince a group of people discussing astrology, dowsing and homeopathic medicine that their belief systems had been systematicallly disproved scientifically many times. He was astonished that his offer to provide scientific proof that their beliefs were irrational was turned down contemptuously. They were not interested in "disproof" of something that, according to their own personal experience, was true.

He didn't understand them at all. To him, proof was proof. Once you knew that the rabbit was already inside the magician's hat, there was no magic left in the trick. What he didn't understand was that he was asking them to put aside the evidence of their own senses, however unreliable or easily deceived, and to accept instead words on paper written by someone they didn't know who was attempting to tell them to trust his (her) observations and tests and not their own experience of reality. When someone has been "cured" by homeopathic medicine (i.e. pure water) it is difficult to convince them that their experience isn't valid. Of course it is, to them. You can explain "placebo" effect all you want; the user of the medicine knows he/she was cured. If the medicine was "just water", then something must have happened to make the water "special".

It's hard to disprove something that "works". Personal experience, however unreliable as science, always trumps mathematics and statistical analysis in establishing personal "reality". It probably always will, at least for many people. I think it takes a special turn of mind for an individual to be willing to discount the evidence of their own personal experience and accept instead abstract scientific proof. Most of us enjoy "magic shows", even though we know there really is no "magic". We enjoy being fooled, surprised, shown impossibilities with our own senses. It takes all the fun out of it when we know how the trick worked. We like the world of magic, and apparently many of us aren't willing to accept the reality of any other kind of world. The rest of us know better than to try to walk through walls no matter how many times we see it done in a magic show.

Lies and truth

We all tell lies sometimes. We all value the truth and truthfulness. Why do we lie? What purpose does lying serve?

We lie to keep things predictable, stable and therefore controllable. Telling a lie allows us to be fairly sure we know what is going to happen next. Telling the truth, on the other hand, always leads to less predictable consequences in relationships. ("Lies" include lies of omission, which I define as withholding information that the other person(s) in a relationship has a right and a need to know.)

Example: A person in a relationship in which both parties have agreed to sexual fidelity has a sexual relationship with another person. If the unfaithful party tells the truth, the relationship becomes unpredictable. It might be worse or better, but not in any easily predictable or controllable way. If the person plausibly denies infidelity, the relationship is much more predictable and stable.

People (including authorities and political leaders) tell lies (or withhold information) in order to predict and control the interpersonal outcomes of their current situation. When they tell the truth, the outcome is inherently less predictable and thus less controllable.

Sometimes we prefer to be lied to. We don't always want to have to change. Much of the time we want our world to be predictable, stable, controlled. Sometimes we prefer to ignore the truth because we don't want to face the the consequences of the truth. Lies can keep us more comfortable, at least for the time being. When I was learning to make an emergency landing in a helicopter at night, the instructor said to turn on the floodlights as I approached the ground. I asked "What if I don't like the situation I see?" He replied "Then turn the lights back off".

There are as many reasons for lies as for the truth. Sometimes the lie we tell (or information we omit) is to ourselves. We don't want to tell ourselves the truth at times because we don't know what we'll do next. Our internal map becomes unstable and unpredictable, and we prefer the comfort of the lie. Lying to ourselves keeps us stable and sometimes stability is a good thing. Stability comes at a price; needed changes accumulate and can avalanche on us.

Of course, discomfort is a spur to growth, so it's predictable that maintaining dishonesty about ourselves to ourselves (such as a persona or mask) keeps us from growing emotionally. I have known for many years a man who excuses his unwillingness to change by saying "I'm just broken emotionally". This particular lie increases his stability; one should remember that stability and growth are mutually incompatible. In this last observation lies (sorry) the key to psychotherapy. Telling the truth to ourselves at last (and with the witness of another person, such as the therapist) makes us uncomfortable, emotionally less stable, and spurs us to continue our growth toward emotional maturity. As a psychotherapist, a major part of my job is to detect dishonesty in all its forms and encourage telling the truth. The most influential book I ever read, both for my own therapy and for my development as a therapist, is "Effective Psychotherapy" by Helmuth Kaiser. He states (and I believe) that all that is necessary for therapy to work (and growth to occur) is for one of the people present to say what they mean and mean what they say.

"But shouldn't we always tell the truth?" someone always asks. The simple answer, of course, is "No." In my opinion other values come into play. Kindness counts. Social skills matter; cocktail parties are not confessionals, for example. Good information is important. Sometimes we have to weigh one against another. Not every question demands or even expects an honest answer. If I ask my wife if I'm looking old or fat, I want her to reassure me, not tell me the truth. I also believe that there is always a price for telling lies, and it accumulates over time.

Emotional Blackmail

We all generally know what "emotional blackmail" is, but it's worth thinking about how we do it. I catch myself a dozen times a day pulling it on someone. How I do it is to broadcast a bad feeling, such as anger/irritation until somebody else gets so uncomfortable they do something to make me feel better. Sound familiar?

Babies do this right after they're born, so it obviously comes naturally. Baby gets hungry or and they scream until someone figures out what's the matter and fixes it. We know that magic from birth on, and it's as basic as magic can get. We learn as we get older that sometimes it's quicker and better to fix it ourselves. but when we don't know how to fix it ourselves, or it's something that can't be fixed, we slide back into Baby Communication I.

What it looks like: I get angry at someone because they don't do what I want. Instead of negotiating or discussing the problem, I communicate my anger by voice tone, body language, facial expression and I keep it up until either I get tired of it (it's a lot of work staying mad) or until they are adequately sorry and promise not to do it again. Or I get sad or disappointed or jealous or... I can also discourage certain requests or questions or behaviors by throwing a mini-fit. The hope here is to make it so uncomfortable for the other person that they will be discouraged from doing it again. Much of the interpersonal goal of bad feelings seems to be to make the other party so uncomfortable that they will change and I won't have to.

The problem with this kind of manipulation is that I have to feel pretty badly myself to get any results. The Buddha said that getting angry at someone is like planning to throw a hot burning coal at them. It hurts you worse than it hurts them, and you gotta do it quick. But it's fast and sometimes effective, so it's hard to stop doing it. It means a loss of personal power: I have to turn the power to make me feel better over to you, and I can't feel better until you do something. Every time I pull this I am busy not taking responsibility for how I feel.

Sulking is a different kind of problem It involves emotional blackmail, but requires the sulker to be dishonest or uncommunicative about it. Example: Sulker is mad. Sulkee (the object of the sulk) says something like "What's wrong?" Sulker either says nothing or says "Nothing", knowing that isn't true. It's now up to the Sulkee to figure out the problem AND to solve it. Usually this means the Sulker is gonna feel badly for quite a while.

You know, at my age and having been a shrink for so long, you'd think I'd be more grown up about this stuff. I'm working on it, but sometimes progress seems slow.

Fighting back politically

Recently, again getting fired up about my relative helplessness as a citizen in getting the political hacks we elect to do anything, I wrote the following note as a proposal to send out to everybody I could think of. I sent it to an old friend for comments, which are attached. First my proposed mass email:

As a voting U.S. citizen, I'm tired of being disenfranchised by that antiquated system called "The Electoral College". It served its purpose but now it breaks our time-honored precept of "One man, one vote". Without rehashing all the reasons the Electoral College should be abolished and replaced by a principle of popular vote, I want my elected representatives (that would be you) to take action to change it.

Here's what will happen if you don't take action. Everyone listed on this email will vote AGAINST you at the next election. We intend for this email to be widely circulated, so potentially that can be a lot of votes. You have plenty of time, so if you don't want our active opposition at the next election, do something!

I picked an issue which has languished far too long (Electoral College), but the real message is in the threat. We can threaten politicians with an active campaign of opposition at their next election if they don't listen to their constituents.

Following is part of my friend's response."..However we think your message sounds too punitive at this point....I think a petition type message in which people are asked to sign or give permission to sign on their behalf."

Yeah, that's right, be nice. Our elected representatives, federal and state, really have listened to us in the past. That's how we got ERA passed and anti-polution laws passed and laws prohibiting corporations from doing what they do best, e.g. screw us over. NOT!!! I don't agree. Niceness only works when it's in person. When you're dealing with people at a distance, as all those government pricks do, it's much easier to trash our comments. I no longer have ANY hope of getting things done with niceness. So my above-quoted email still stands. Please, PLEASE feel free to copy it and send it to anyone/everyone you can think of. Elected officials may react out of fear better than out of moral convictions. So whoever it gets sent to, make sure a copy is forwarded to every official for whom you vote. Maybe you should put it in writing, because they ignore email. I don't know... your guess is as good as mine. If you get a REAL response, as opposed to the usual bland yada yada yada, let me know.

Unhappiness vs. depression

Most people, including most shrinks, don't seem to understand the difference. People talk about being depressed when a pet dies or they lose a job. Listen, people. Depression is an illness that takes all the joy out of life, even when things are going well. Depression is a miserable illness that can go on for years, screwing up your sleep and your appetite. Depression should be and can be treated successfully by experts in the treatment of depression. It doesn't ever have to come back.

Unhappiness and sadness and grief are NOT illnesses. They are part of the human condition. They are the price we pay for loving and giving our hearts to someone or something. Unhappiness and sadness result from loss, loss of someone or something important, even the loss of a dream. Unhappiness can result from living our lives in a way that doesn't really fit who we are or where we need to go, like wearing the right shoe on the left foot for a year. Grief is the way in which the mind recovers from loss and is a healing process. Grief is self-limiting, like the healing of a broken bone. Grief has its own schedule, and doesn't care about our plans or activities, but comes and goes as it needs to.

Depression results from a form of thinking and behavior that causes, in susceptible people, severe depression. The form of thinking and behavior are easy to recognize; the form of thinking is self-blame and negative self-judgment. The form of behavior is passivity, helplessness and withdrawal. Most people see these forms as the result of depression, but they ARE NOT. They are the CAUSE of depression, and when they are changed, depression decreases. Depression is not self-limiting, because it is an active process caused by the person, just like the pain caused by hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer won't go away until you stop hitting yourself on the thumb with a hammer.

This is important because we all need to know what should be treated by an expert and what is just a part of life that we have to live with. Some people seem to believe that they have a right to full-time happiness and that if they are not happy, someone should do something to make them happy, like give them a good job or a special pill. If you know the difference between unhappiness and depression, then you know when you should ask for help and when you should simply be with your friends and those that love you.