With or against? Know your story.

Adam Joncich, Ph. D.

Regardless of what side you are on, what is happening between Israel and Hamas is universally disturbing and will continue to represent a frightening and threatening conflict that looms in our world today.  Perhaps subtly striking about the previous sentence is the assumption that you must fall on one side or the other. The purpose of this post is to describe the potential impacts of losing contact with your internal experience, that is, your own story, when in the presence of loud, consistent and presumptive messages that “make you choose.”  

The idea that a person believes either one thing or another, is on one side or another, and generally exists on one end of a two-ended polar continuum is not new.  There are entire philosophies that espouse that people respond naturally to making decisions between two opposite alternatives. In fact, it does not take long to come up with popular opposites that we are inundated with: good or evil, beautiful or ugly, rich or poor, black or white, gay or straight, man or woman, republican or democrat, friend or enemy, us or them name just a few dialectics that keep us from experiencing nuance in our perceptions. 

The world is an increasingly complicated, global and multidimensional place and we all have to find our place in it.  The stories that surround us–in the media, in our families, in our cultures and aligning us with our identities can become so prominent as told by others that  we may come to lose contact with what are our thoughts and feelings–our own story.  Indeed in the throes of the current conflict in Israel and Gaza, the responses I have witnessed people everywhere are not only feelings associated with the horrors of what is happening–fear, anger, sadness.  They are feelings of paralysis and confusion about how to have a nuanced and informed, personal stance–and this represents a disconnection from their story.  Disconnection from your own story exacerbates the very normal fear, anger and sadness, with additional depressed mood, anxiety, and a general self-isolation.

I invite you, one and all, to use therapy to protect yourself.  I invite you to allow yourself presence with how you feel and to insulate yourself from depression and anxiety. Use therapy to help you make space to tell your story, especially through a loud and scary time like the one we are in now.  Use therapy to protect stillness that allows you to sift through the fear, anger, sadness and “sidedness” that is endemic to all of the messaging you receive– to  locate your story, your needs, and the actions you need to take to connect, ground and care for yourself.

Therapy Story: “To others, I am the happy one.”

by Adam Joncich, PhD

“I am the happy one” is what I like to call a dominant story.  I have found that part of the cause of people’s feeling stuck, depressed, high anxiety, and all the symptoms can be associated are the expectations foisted upon us by the roles we end up playing in lives.  Starting even as early as childhood, people embrace the labels that their families often give them: “the happy one,” “the thoughtful one,” “the stubborn one.” These are just a few that end up becoming part of people’s fundamental way of thinking about themselves, and often end up living into their adult relationships.

Living up to family expectations, dominant stories and roles is a delicate balance.  After all, being happy (or thoughtful, or even stubborn) are not only or always negative.  At any given moment, the trick is to check in with yourself and tell the story that is true for you–are you, in this moment, “the happy one?”  Are you even happy?  If this is not the case, then it is vitally important to allow space for that reality to exist, even in the presence of family labels like “I am the happy one.”

This may sound counterintuitive because the message here is to allow yourself to feel your feelings and experience your experiences even when they are negative and don’t fit the dominant stories you tell yourself or you witness others telling of you.  Finding your way through to your actual feelings and the full range of positive, negative, comfortable and uncomfortable experiences that reflect them is hard work, and it is the path to sustained wellness.   Indeed, it is once this authoring of your full story begins to happen consistently, in real time, that I have seen people begin to emerge from depressive episodes and patterns of anxious affect.

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Therapy Story: “By this age, I should have accomplished…”

by Adam Joncich, PhD

From the beginning of pre-school, to the end of college, graduate school or beyond, our society dictates to us what we should be doing, when, how, and compared to whom. This source of these dominant stories are varied and include social, corporate, familial and ethnic/cultural spheres. These stories cause anxiety.  

I have found working with people in talk therapy that the strength of beliefs about what a person “should have accomplished” or how one’s life should look is stronger than ever. New generations of people entering adulthood have their social media feeds presenting curated and often idealized examples of how they should be feeling, what they should be doing, and also how they should present it to others (both online and in person). This can be depressing. 

One emerging truth I have deduced, however, is that the expectations that we all hold ourselves to through various spheres of outside influence are almost uniformly experienced uniquely by each person—so the inside of the home with a white picket fence, a dog, and two kids (one common dominant story many aspire to) are actually lived uniquely by each person. Further, it is vitally important and relieving that a person validates and embraces the path that they are on; not only their unique version of that story and the nuances of their living of it, but also to integrate that dominant societal story with the many other local stories of their life that may not fit perfectly.

In therapy, we hope to help people connect to their own experience, their local stories, and to understand their existence independently as well as in interaction with the many societal, familial, cultural, and personal expectations that provide meaning and richness to their lives.

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Therapy Story: "I feel so behind compared to other people."

by Libby Hartle-Tyrrell, LMSW

It is common that people start therapy with the belief that they are behind in some area of life. It may be career, relationships, or even in understanding fundamental truths about their identity. So many of us believe that we should have accomplished more than we have at this point and judge ourselves based on others whom we perceive to be further along. 

While it is true that the normative benchmarks we’ve agreed upon as a society can be helpful in guiding us through life (and equally true that rejecting them can be important and thrilling), when we tell ourselves that we are “behind,” it not only implies that there is a single “correct” way to do life, it also disavows what we gain from taking a circuitous path or doing things in our own time. When we privilege accomplishing things on a specific timeline, we may devalue experiences that have allowed us to explore who we are, what matters to us, and what we want out of life. All of the things that add meaning and depth to our choices and lead to accomplishments that are relevant to who we are, as opposed to merely fulfilling inherited expectations. 

There’s a legend about Picasso that he tried to sell a sketch on a napkin for one million francs and when the prospective buyer balked at the price saying it only took him 2 minutes to draw, he replied “My dear, it took me a lifetime to be able to draw this sketch.” This story is a helpful reminder that who we are at any given moment is a product of all of the experiences we’ve had up to that point; all of the detours and setbacks, all of the joy rides that have turned into deadends and what they’ve taught us. It reminds us that these experiences are not wasted, are not things that have taken us away from our path, but can be braided into the multiple pathways that make up our greater story. If we take the time to understand and integrate them, which is often the work of therapy, they can help us live more honestly and authentically.

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Therapy Story: “I should be over that by now.”

by Adam Joncich, PhD

In our NYC-paced energy-filled complicated and often lives, we are socialized to “keep pushing forward.” We feel pressure from within and from around ourselves to “not look back” and continue building, growing, and progressing. While this sentiment has value (and is indeed palpable from the moment a person starts pre-school), it also represents a dominant story that can occlude vital parts of our past lived experience that may need continued processing.  

Such an approach becomes relevant in predictable scenarios–for example the loss of a loved one can be more easily experienced as something to move past than something to process. Grieving is difficult indeed. We often make persistent efforts to turn away from difficult emotions involved with processing loss and do so in the name of “being ok,” “putting a brave face on,” or “being strong.”  

Another example is the ending of a romantic relationship–people often put artificial pressure on themselves to “get over” people who have hurt them, or left them confused. In fact “I am so over that” has become a moniker people use to express freedom from thinking about something. Alas, thinking about something, and telling the full story about what has been experienced often provides a better approach to integrating past experience into current functioning.

So when you think to yourself “I should be over that by now,” I would suggest that you consider the fact that it is still on your mind to be an indicator to yourself that it may be time to engage with it, talk it through and tell the story–it will help you in the long run.

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Therapy Story: “Sometimes it feels like I can never relax.”

by Tom Giardini, MHC-LP

Relaxation can assume incredibly different forms for each of us. And while we all crave moments to unwind or take our mind off of other pressing responsibilities, it can be challenging to explicitly define what relaxation looks like, even when those rare pockets of free time emerge in our schedules. And while the prescriptive bubble bath, easy chair, or warm cup of tea may pop into our heads when we have a few hours to spare, they don’t necessarily foster the tranquility and presence that can always rejuvenate us. 

Without definition, relaxation has great potential to become another task on the to-do list - a task lacking a clear duration, location, and function. Taking time to identify feelings and activities that cater to our unique experiences of peace can bring us closer to mindfully, and hopefully enjoyably, recharging our batteries. It can also become easier to make time for your distinct flavor of relaxation when its characteristics are concrete.

Therapy provides a venue to piece together the elements of your story and allow for discoveries about what “kicking back” can look like for you.

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Therapy Story: “I feel so behind compared to other people.”

by Beverly Liang, LMSW

A variant on “I should have done this by now,” this statement reminds me of Theodore Roosevelt’s quote, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” Behind this statement is the concept that specific life stages are tied to specific accomplishments, and that one cannot progress beyond a certain stage unless a task or milestone has been accomplished.

This has been further complicated by the pandemic, as detailed by New York’s recent article “The Pandemic Skip,” on feeling a sense of grief of what could have been and grappling with where we stand in relation to time in the last four years that have passed. Suddenly everyone else seems to have progressed — at hyperspeed– into their new lives, while we might feel adrift, behind, or not sure of where we want to go.

One’s identities can complicate this further when we hold certain expectations that might be tied to culture, religion, and gender. These expectations can further oppress us when we feel we need to conform to the dominant narratives of others, instead of developing our own stories, and discounting our own experiences. 

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Therapy Story: "My problems are not as bad as other people’s problems.”

by Adam Joncich, PhD

I often hear people say things like “I hate this job, but I have to remember, a lot of people don’t have a job,” (so I shouldn’t feel this way) or “There are alot of people that have it alot worse than me, so I should stop complaining.” 

The sentiment “My problems are not as bad as others’” is quite common in my work with people and it is a nefarious one.  In any person’s life, it is important that any experience they have is allowed to be exactly what it is; so if you have a bad day, you are able to say to yourself “this was a tough one” and cope with it accordingly.  On the other side of that coin, it is also important to be able to celebrate and validate the positive things that you are a part of and embrace the constructive and productive elements of your life as well.  It becomes especially vexing, thus, when the things that are felt as negative in your life become a vehicle for invalidating the positive experiences as well as being invalidated because they are negative. 

In therapy, we hope to help people tell their story with wholeness and authenticity–this is done by finding the courage to embrace and witness the whole range of and diversity of your stories and the full range of their emotional experience.

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