“Anger describes the event, rage describes the person.”

Being a mental health therapist often feels like carrying a pair of x-ray glasses around. The tone, pitch, length, quantity, emotion, selection and inflexion of words which people use can often be like opening a journal into their deepest and darkest places. At times it’s a blessing, since you can respond to their struggle without a lot of help from them. Other times it is a burden. There are some people who you do not intend to become so intimate with by their unconscious exposure and vulnerability. While this helps to depersonalize their behaviors, it also begs the question of what to do with this wounded heart they have unknowingly bestowed upon you.

Earlier this week, I heard a song on the radio that I had never heard before. I had an instant connection with it and knew it was going to be part of the soundtrack to this chapter of my life story. I asked my husband to email Harry the DJ, with whom he corresponds regularly through Twitter, and inquire about how we may find the song. Harry offered to send him the song to download. After a couple of days, I asked Michael if he’d gotten the song yet, which he hadn’t, and so I asked him if he would send Harry a reminder email. I went on the assumption that he, like I, can become so busy that we forget things and appreciate a little nudge as a reminder now and then. If nothing more, this is a lesson about assumptions. But, alas, there is more.

The next morning, Michael called me over to the computer and showed me a multitude of angry emails from Harry. It looked as though for a period of 15 minutes Harry sent a new email each time he found some additional angry words to say. It was an unleashing of attacks on Michael for being “unappreciative” and “inconsiderate” (only using the nice words here). He also said that he had been putting together a package for us but now that we pissed him off we weren’t getting anything. We were in shock. We reviewed Michael’s emails to find out what may have triggered this tirade, but Michael’s emails were succinct, benign and friendly. A few minutes later, we turned on our Sirius radio to listen to Harry’s show as we do each morning, and he began the show by disparaging Michael. It went something like this: “There’s this guy I talk to on Twitter, always seemed like a nice guy. I was doing something nice for him, but he became inpatient and manipulative and he intended for his email to hurt me.” We were stunned that he took it to the radio, but mostly horrified that he created an entire story that had no roots in the truth. What he did was expose his weakness, being unappreciated. Michael became the symbol of everyone who may have taken advantage of Harry in the past, disrespected his generosity, and who knows what else? This insight into Harry’s past trauma, which still affects him today, certainly didn’t come without a few knocks, but the transparency of the wound by the quick accessibility of his rage only made us feel compassion for him.

There are some people who behave this way who can never use it to help them identify where their wounds are, and so they continue running in circles and never move forward to a happier, more peaceful existence. I don’t think I can help Harry today, but perhaps you have read something that feels familiar here, and that is Harry’s gift to both of us.

"You can only be chased by the past if you are running from it."

Have you ever heard that the act of running from a dog actually invites it to chase you, whether or not it was initially the dog’s plan to? The fast and spontaneous nature of your feet whisking your body away becomes an invitation to the dog to play, since chasing is what they love to do most. This is a great analogy for past trauma, or rather, understanding how some unpleasant memories continue to find us long after we have chosen to leave them behind. I’d like to say more about this, but let me paint a scenario for you first.

You are at a party and someone in a circle of people you are talking with is on their second glass of wine and has now become more comfortable speaking from their emotional place. They start to talk about a bad break up that began a long and pretty severe period of depression for them. Alert! Your own trauma has been accessed by an intruder! The already fragile door to your trauma flies open with an invitation to come out and play and there in all its glory is that devastating break up you never got over. The fear of it becomes so intense that you don’t wait for an appropriate pause in the person’s story to excuse yourself, but turn and make a bee-line toward the table of appetizers. But I will wager that what you are hungry for most will not be found on a platter of Goat Cheese and Tomato Tart with Crudite.

What would happen if you responded to your fear of the dog by standing still? What would happen if you responded to the fear of your own memory at the party by remaining in place and listening? Your answer to these will likely be dipped in years of fantasy responses, so many times that you can’t really see for sure what the reality is. Ya know, I have always said there is a reason why trauma and drama sound so much alike. I don’t mean to make light of trauma here, or underscore its impact, but its worth looking at a different way if you have not had success up to now.

Try this for a second. The dog walks up to you. You don’t move. He sniffs your leg, then your foot, then looks up at you. He then sits and offers his paw. With apprehension, you extend your hand and a paw lands on it. A new friendship is made. A myth is uncovered. An old demon is dismantled.

How about this one? You stay and listen to the woman’s story of her breakup and put your hand on her arm and offer a gesture of kindness and empathy, telling her it will be OK because you have survived a similar situation. She smiles and accepts your gesture and 2 people’s hearts receive a few more stitches.

To stand still, calmly and patiently, in the center of your fear, with compassion for yourself, is to be willing to have a new response. To be willing to have a new response is to find one. To find one is to unload the burden. To unload the burden is to feel free and accomplished. To feel free and accomplished is to feel good. To feel good is to enjoy your life. To enjoy your life is what you are meant to do! I encourage you to tap into the place your courage is stored and to let the past, the demon, the dog, the story, the trauma find you. To look it in the eye is to strip it of its power. The lesson here is quite ironic, for you will never get as far running as you will standing still.

"You're not the person you used to be and not yet the person you’d like to be, but maybe you’re the person you're meant to be."

As a huge proponant of reaching out for support and assistance in obtaining some of the things we need for our joy, I have to admit I was stopped in my tracks recently when I read something that challenged my thinking, and which now has made a tremendous impact on my way of understanding self-help. Ready? Here goes: When you start a goal with the idea of changing something about yourself, it is a sort of subtle aggression against who you really are.

Now if you are like me, you have already come up with 2 or 3 things that could easily be used to disprove or challenge this theory, but stay with me for a second. You see, the idea behind this, in my view, is that the thing you would like to change about yourself must first be absolutely loved and accepted by you first. Only then can you know if you are changing it because you want to or changing it because you need to. The difference here is important. Its like the chicken and the egg. "Need" suggests that whatever you are improving will be the thing that brings you self love, but its the opposite. Self love will bring you the things you need. Not yet? OK.

Here's another thought to help clarify. If you can't embrace every part of who you are, even the nasty, the angry, the irritable, the moody you, then "improvement" would be trying to throw yourself away and become something better. Suggesting that there is something better than who you are right now in all your humanity is an absolute falsehood. Each of us has something unique over everyone else and if you keep hearing that voice that tells you to change, you better be sure it isn't the same voice that depletes your self-worth and barrages you with negative ideas to keep your self esteem low. Sometimes others remind us how lovable we are, just as we are, and this may help to kick start it, but if we are inclined to draw opposing conclusions then taking a journey toward self-improvement without self-love will be like beginning a marathon without shoes. You will not get very far.

I don't know if I can buy that I am perfect, Lord knows, but I do believe I am perfectly "me", and that no one else could ever try to be. That makes me one of a kind, and one of a kind in most circles is extremely valuable.

If you're still not onboard, go spend a buck on iTunes and download Billy Joel's "Just The Way You Are", and maybe when you look in the mirror today you may appreciate just a little bit more the person who has always been the most worthy of your love; you. Thats no small change.