I’ve noticed a rather disturbing trend these days. Even among psychologists, more and more authors in the blogosphere have begun to dabble in a form of writing that seems more like personal venting than informal professional guidance. It’s unconscionable. But don’t worry; I have some ideas about how to fix it all.
You see, it all comes down to my back problems.
Two weeks ago, while squatting down to position my barbell for bicep curls, I noticed something I hadn’t noticed before: namely, a searing pain shooting up my back. Now I’m no physical therapist—something I like to tell people all the time—but that just didn’t seem right. So I did what any sensible person would do. I went for a three-mile run.
Strangely enough, that didn’t seem to fix the problem.
Flash forward to earlier this week, where I’m sitting in an actual physical therapist’s office, and he’s explaining my problem and how to fix it: “the muscles around here (he gestured all around his own back) have become weakened from overuse and strain—sitting in bad chairs, bending over, looking down, sitting cramped over keyboards—and to compensate you bend here, you bend there (he swivels about, briefly, at the hips), but that’s not comfortable, so now you have to do this (more contortions) and this…” “OK, wait…I said, I almost never walk while swiveling my hips like that.”
But I got the point. So he went on to explain the fix: “You have to learn different moves, then you won’t have to compensate in all these ways that cause the pain. If you get underneath the system, and strengthen your supports, you won’t need to do all those thing that keep causing the injury.”
And then a thought struck me, as clearly and distinctly as a pain shooting up my back.
That’s what gets in the way for everyone.
Learn to Move Freely: Get Underneath Your System
We learn to navigate the world through a series of accommodations: adjusting to our family, our culture, our circle of friends. Each set of experiences shapes us. It tells us who we are, and who we should be. In your own family, you may have seen people fly into abusive rages, and for you, that becomes “anger.” So, not surprisingly, you come to avoid anger at all costs: bending over backwards to please, avoiding confrontation, never asking for anything, which then makes you anxious, stressed, and quietly angry. Your partner or date may notice it when you fly off the handle over something small, for which you eventually offer a shrinking apology, cringing at the thought of how you “lost it.” Now it’s clearer then ever: anger is something to avoid—destructive, dangerous, a threat to your most cherished connections. More compensation. Which leads to more backed up anger. Repeat cycle.
Or maybe it’s sadness you’ve come to fear. You recall your mother collapsing in tears or retreating to bed in the face of any upset, disappearing for days on end. You promise yourself silently, as you recall the loneliness and terror at how your mother seemed to vanish, never to burden anyone with that kind of sadness. So when you feel sad, you swallow it, or withdraw, or just make jokes, cutting yourself off from the support of friends—because the worst thing you could do is burden them—contorting yourself to ward off the sadness at all costs until you, too, are so bent out of shape that you're living the very fear you’ve been trying to keep at bay: you can't get out of bed. Fear confirmed. Sadness is dangerous. Stay away at all costs.
What prevents growth often comes down the way you move emotionally. The feelings aren’t the real danger. It’s the version of sadness or anger or anxiety that you’ve come to know that’s the problem. Once you start to fear an experience— depending on someone, asking for help, feeling sad, getting angry—you create a vulnerability, a twinge, which leads to all kinds of contortions (“defenses”). You get bent out of shape. You’re in chronic pain.
The best fix is to get underneath the whole system and strengthen your supports. I often ask people, can you imagine a version of anger that isn’t about yelling or screaming? Can you imagine an anger that’s about taking care of yourself. Can you imagine a version of sadness that involves mutual caring and support instead of terrifying collapse? Maybe if you can learn a different kind of anger (or sadness or anxiety or need) you won’t have to avoid the feeling at all costs. You won’t need the defenses that cause the problem in the first place. You can move in a different way.
So you see. You can learn a lot from my back.
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Disclaimer: As with an advice column, these suggestions should never take the place of consulting directly and formally with a professional about any of your concerns. If you’re in a great deal of distress, always schedule an appointment with a doctor, health care provider, or mental health professional, to help determine how best to proceed.