davehallam's blog

Be a Man!

“C’mon, be a man!” What a load of crap is packed into that statement! I think we can agree that being male is under attack and subject to revision in recent years, but don’t expect me to blame “women’s lib”. I’m convinced, men, that we are the agents of our own destruction (or at least, our own distress). Why would I say that? If there’s any truth to the assertion that we’ve tried to run things around here for thousands of years, then we’re more than a little responsible for the screw-ups as well as the triumphs, wouldn’t you say? So, let’s think a bit about where we went wrong.

Connection Before Correction

Among the most frequent situations to be discussed in my counseling room are parental dilemmas around “how do I get my kids to obey me?” Often the speaker is male and, in two-parent arrangements, seems to be the parent most invested in establishing control, which can also add “relationship conflict” to the list of problems. Regardless of whatever influence gender may have on this thinking, the result is usually a downward spiral of frustration and oppositional behaviour.

Honour What Is Honourable

Frequently, while I am being “caught up” with a client’s life story and the elements which constitute their reason for seeking out counseling, I hear their account of how influential their early caregivers have been. This is not always experienced positively, usually for good reason. What I observe, however, is that despite the obvious reasons for assigning blame, most children (of all ages) hesitate to go so far as to cut off the parents or others who reared them. It seems to me we have a basic need to see those people as having loved us, even if in a limited way, since that would tend to establish that we are worthy of love.

Ordinary People, Ordinary Lives – The Quest for Significance

As a citizen of one of the privileged nations of the world, I can’t help but notice how my society is focused on “hero worship” and the characterization of a few as the “brightest and best” of us. We are social creatures, and one expression of that nature is to enjoy telling stories - mythic tales - to each other, as a way to inspire, entertain, and to vicariously experience transcendence. As with most human strategies, this one has at least one unintended negative consequence: I’m referring to how it is diminishing the significance of an ordinary life, well lived. The fame machine renders ordinary persons invisible.

A Personal Declaration of Independence

As we move through life, we may notice from time to time that we feel somewhat like an imposter – the image we present to the world does not accurately reflect our inner sense of self. Most of us could, upon reflection, recall some example of having to “put on an act” or of choosing to be less authentic in order to please someone or to conceal something within ourselves. Having some capacity to do this is a necessary and prudent social skill, but if this behaviour is a dominant feature of our way of being in the world, we can lose our sense of self and become essentially unknowable to others. Honest self-knowledge enables us to be authentically known by others and therefore capable of the meaningful, healthy, intimate relationships most of us say we want.

It may help to illustrate this point if we cautiously step into the arena of politics to consider the need for self-knowledge and self-definition.

A Worry Strategy

Each of us struggle from time to time with persistent, unwanted thoughts which we sometime label as “worry”. For the sake of this discussion, the use of the term “worry” doesn’t include anxiety which is not attached to any feature of consensual reality (if your best friend would agree that you need to deal with your credit card debt, we’ll consider it “real”)! Our instinct is to reject these thoughts because they intrude into our conscious awareness and interfere with what we think we’re “supposed” to be doing: working, relaxing, sleeping, having sex, making dinner, etc. While we may be determined to say “NO!” to Worry, the discipline of “not thinking about something” seems doomed by definition.

Made any Good Mistakes Lately?

There’s a lot to be said for doing things well, for “getting it right”, but most people have little good to say about their “mistakes”. Of course we all have opinions about experiences – some we like more than others - but mistakes seem to be universally despised, both in ourselves and in others. If we make a mistake we may feel shame, embarrassment, anger, frustration, and fear, among other things. Occasionally, buoyed up with hope, we may detect in ourselves surprise, curiosity, bafflement, humour and renewed determination to succeed next time. What conditions predispose us to the more hopeful responses? Since “mistake” seems to be an outcome-oriented judgment, what difference does being hopeful make to the next outcome? Do mistakes always produce undesirable outcomes? Is one person’s mistake another person’s success? If you have no particular desired outcome, can you still make mistakes? How would you know you had? So many questions…such interesting possibilities!