advice from a mentor

It's been a very busy month and I have really just been keeping up with my 'tasks' without much time to think, make connections between one thought and another, and then write about it.  Some times are just like that, but I feel like I am moving out of it now.

In the thinking I have been doing, some advice I received recently is popping up frequently as I go about my days...but maybe the advice isn't the right place to start..I'll start here:  in the last blog I wrote about the Marsha Linehan Mindfulness, Willingness and Radical Acceptance workshop I attended.  She began her seminar with a slide, which read something like this:

Avoidance of suffering leads to more suffering.

I am a skeptic of authority, for the most part, so the first thing I thought, was "Do I agree with that?" 

Here is my answer:  mostly I agree with it.  In my experience, if we avoid the internal experience of our own hurts, anger, grief, rejection, loneliness, this can be a decent immediate means of coping, but if we think we've managed to escape without dealing with the feelings we are wrong - they come back later, and sometimes nastier.

So, it's from that point of view that I will share some advice I was given.  A couple weeks ago, I had lunch with a professional mentor of mine.  I shared with him some feelings of discomfort I have and questions about how to do my job as a psychotherapist.  "Therapy" is a big umbrella and people approach it with diverse points of view.  When my point of view bumps up against someone else's point of view, it is uncomfortable.  Just like in 'real' life - when you're talking with somebody about Occupy Wall Street, or how to raise children, or God, or what changes might improve your marriage, or whatever -  and your essential viewpoint differs from someone else, it's uncomfortable.  For me, I never go to a place of digging in my heels on my opinion, it's just not my nature - I go to a place of questions - whose authority do I accept?  should I try to change the other person's opinion?  what does it mean about them that they think X?  what does it mean about me that I think Y?  It feels sticky, irritating, and like something I might like to avoid.

But here is what my mentor said, something I know and that typically I do, but sometimes it's good to get a reminder or even a directive:  When you are uncomfortable with something, lean into it.  (isn't that great, therapist-y advice!)

That means examine it like a discovery, look at all sides, make notes on it, ask it questions.  Feeling and leaning into discomfort doesn't necessary lead to answers (though sometimes it does), but it will lead to a deeper knowing of yourself and others.  Rather than more suffering, it will lead to less.

Sometimes we don't even realize we are avoiding something.  I think the first place to start is to acknowledge what and when we feel uncomfortable with a person we know and love, a person we don't know well but feel we don't like, an event in our past, a thought about the future.  Do I feel uncomfortable when I think of it?  If the answer is yes, it might be worth taking some time to 'lean into it' and see what we find out.