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: "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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