Resilience

“Resilience is knowing that you are the only one that has the power and the responsibility to pick yourself up.”  (Mary Holloway, resilience coach)

 My father was born in 1919, the middle of three boys. His mother died in the winter of 1925 when the three boys were all still young.  After her death, their father moved frequently, usually following some get-rich-quick scheme.  They moved from rental to rental in order not to have to pay the landlord.  When there was nowhere else to stay, the boys slept on park benches. Their teen years coincided with the Great Depression, during which time they had very little. Not only was poverty widespread, so was antisemitism. At 17 my father left home and moved to Dallas to take a job selling shoes.  Shortly thereafter his brothers joined him for the opportunity to earn some money.  During the war, my father flew 25 combat missions over Europe.  His brothers served stateside.

I was reading my uncle’s memoirs and his description of those times. The brothers faced loss and hardship without counseling, without support, and without financial assistance. Given the circumstances of their lives, I was particularly struck by one comment in the memoir.  My uncle said that neither he nor his brothers ever felt sorry for themselves. 

All three of the boys went on to lead productive and successful lives. None of them ever seemed bitter or resentful about the conditions of their growing up. To my knowledge, none of them ever had any serious mental health crises. None of them were users of drugs or alcohol.  My father became a restauranteur and later an antique dealer.  His older brother became a professor of English and later the Dean of Liberal Arts at a local university.  His younger brother became a mechanical engineer, spending most of his career working for the federal government.  By societal standards, they led conventional middle-class lives. Each of the brothers married and remained married.  Each helped raise well-educated and successful children.

I don’t want to over-glorify their accomplishments.  I know my father paid a significant emotional toll as a result of his early losses and hardships.  I know less about the emotional toll that childhood hardships took on my uncles.  By the standards of these times, my father and his brothers would be considered victims of significant trauma and neglect.

I am struck by how different the times were then compared with the times now. What for me is the most poignant aspect of their story is that they never felt like victims. They never acted like victims. I never heard them blame others. I never heard them lament life’s unfairness. I never witnessed my father or his brothers acting as if the world owed them something. They expected to have to work, and they did so. From the crucible of their childhood, they emerged self-reliant, and they emerged resilient. 

I respect and admire what all three were able to achieve. Perhaps it’s a son’s curiosity, perhaps it’s professional curiosity, but I can’t help but wonder. Against all odds, how did they do it?

Role-playing

“All the world’s a stage, And all the men and women merely players.” (from Shakespeare’s As You Like It, Act II, Scene VII)

In our lives we must play many roles.  The roles we play are often particular to the society in which we live, the religion in which we grow, and the families into whom we are born. We play our roles in order to navigate life smoothly and successfully.

At a young age, we are taught the script of the well-behaved child. A few years later we learn the script that directs our role as student.  During these same school years, we learn the complex and nuanced scripts that govern social interactions. Then comes adolescence, when trying out a variety of new roles and new scripts is the norm.

In my lifetime I’ve played many roles. Is it pejorative to label myself an actor and a player of roles? Yet, what are we if we are not enacting a role?

I once played the role of physician.  I went to medical school and studied for the part. I followed a script that defined professionalism, and that codified ethical practices. Furthermore, my script demanded I follow a plethora of regulatory rules and laws.  I didn’t like or agree with all of the rules, but I learned my role, applied my knowledge, and followed the script. Along my professional journey, I had role-models who showed me how the role could and should be played.  As I matured in my role as physician, I tried to be a role-model for others. I played the part to the best of my ability. I was playing a role, but never acting contrary to my beliefs, principles, or good judgment.

When does role-playing cease? As a child, I attended Sunday school where I was taught the rules and scripts of my religion. I was taught the words to the prayers, and I dutifully recited them.  Yet, there is a vast difference between enacting the role of pray-er, and authentic prayer. There is a vast difference between following the scripts and rules of religion, and authentic belief.

Thinking about role-playing has led me back to theologian/philosopher Martin Buber.  Role-playing occurs in the realm of what Buber called the I/it. I/it describes interactions that characterize the preponderance of our day-to-day encounters. We walk into a store.  We are greeted by a friendly clerk.  We exchange some friendly words in response.  We say ‘please’ on cue and ‘thank-you’ on cue and our scripts smooth the interaction. We leave the store, mission completed.  Our pleasant interaction was not about authentic relationship, rather it was functional.

Buber said the alternative to I/it is I/Thou. I/Thou is characterized by full presence when encountering the other, be that other a person or God.  There is no script and no secondary agenda. I/Thou happens in the moment, it is authentic, and it is only about the relationship.

Perhaps I/Thou and role-playing can occur simultaneously.  A teacher, fully present in an encounter with a student, remains a teacher.  A doctor, fully present in an encounter with a patient, remains a doctor. With immersion in authentic prayer, one still remains a pray-er.

I/Thou is authenticity superimposed on the roles we otherwise must play.

 

Spinoza

“Of all the things that are beyond my power, I value nothing more highly than to be allowed the honor of entering into bonds of friendship with people who sincerely love truth.”  (Baruch Spinoza, 1632--1677)

I don’t much talk about him with friends or family. I would just bore them. But here in the obscurity of this blog, I can write about Spinoza, a philosopher who fascinates me.

With the expulsion of Jews from Portugal, Spinoza’s family settled in the comparatively welcoming city of Amsterdam. There they became moderately successful merchants.  Spinoza was raised with a traditional Jewish education.  However, after the death of his father, Spinoza expressed doubts about Jewish teachings and was subsequently excommunicated.  Rather than seek forgiveness or repent, Spinoza turned his back on those who exiled him, and changed his Hebrew first-name ‘Baruch’ to the Latin ‘Benedictus’.  However, Spinoza was never baptized and never converted.  He lived a relatively modest life, unmarried, supporting himself as a lens-grinder, at the same time doing the philosophic work that would place him amongst the greatest of all Western minds.

In historical context, Spinoza lived at a time where many Jews were caught in the mass hysteria surrounding the false messiah Shabtai Zvi.  Spinoza went the opposite route. He wanted to free religion from religious dogma that preyed upon fear and superstition. For Spinoza, contemplation and reason was the pathway to God. Spinoza also believed that contemplation and reason was the pathway to joy, and that the greatest joy comes from the contemplation and understanding of God.

Spinoza’s god, what came to be called the god of the philosophers, is wholly immanent and never transcendent. That is to say, God exists within all of nature, but God does not exist apart from nature.  God has no personal identity, nor does God govern or intervene in a personal manner.  Spinoza’s god is indifferent, neither a dispenser of justice nor mercy.  “He who loves God cannot endeavor that God should love him in return.”

Spinoza was an early modern thinker. He was an advocate for religious tolerance, especially freedom of thought and opinion. He was among the first to question the inerrancy of the bible, speculating that it had been written over time by multiple authors.

Spinoza’s ideas were consistent with later developments in science and psychology, refuting Cartesian dualism, while emphasizing mind/brain unity.  He wrote extensively about the emotions in order to understand and master them through reason, a foreshadowing of modern CBT.  

I am fascinated by Spinoza and yet I find significant shortcomings in his philosophy. He advocates for calm reason, but where in his philosophy is there a place for fervor and passion?  He most values thought and contemplation, but what of action and deed?  He believes that there is a reason for everything, but where in his philosophy is there Mystery?  He believes that every effect must have its preceding cause and is a strict determinist. Yet, what of free will?

For all of my misgivings, Spinoza still has an attractive message regarding how to live . . . put energy into contemplating life, not death, and seek that which brings joy to life.  “The proper study of a wise man is not how to die but how to live.”  And whatever my misgivings, I enjoy glimpses of Spinoza’s biting wit. “Surely human affairs would be far happier if the power in men to be silent were the same as that to speak.”  Funny and true.

A.I.M.

"The greatest revolution of our generation is the discovery that human beings, by changing the inner attitudes of their minds, can change the outer aspects of their lives.” (William James, 1842—1910)

Towards the last years of my practice, I began to conceptualize a theory of psychotherapy, a distillation of what I believed to be the most important components of therapy. AIM was the result, AIM standing for Attitude, Involvement, and Meaning.

ATTITUDE is a word easily tossed around, but a concept little examined. Attitude is the manner in which we face the challenges of the world. It is not a cognition or belief, but it influences our thinking. It is not a behavior, but it gives direction to our behavior. It is not an emotion, but it has an emotional valence, good or bad. Psychotherapist Viktor Frankl called attitude the last of our freedoms, the freedom to choose the attitude with which we face the circumstances of our lives.

Patients enter into therapy with a variety of attitudes. Some enter unwillingly, others eagerly.  Some enter with doubt, others with optimism.  Some come emotionally detached, others fully engaged. Some come close-minded, others open to change. The work of therapy begins with recognition and acknowledgement of one’s attitude, whatever it may be. Then, on the premise that attitude is a choice, patients can consider their options, and determine what attitude best serves their particular goals both in therapy and outside of the therapy.

INVOLVEMENT is participation in important and gratifying activity. It happens with immersion in creativity or spirituality. It happens in interaction with nature or involvement in community. It happens in close friendships and in relationships.

To understand involvement, we can look at what stands in contrast:  detachment, avoidance, escapism, self-absorption. Involvement stands in contrast to otherwise trivial pursuits.

Engagement with life is essential for healing and for health. The talking and the exploration that occurs in context of therapy sessions is valuable, but it is not enough. An important goal for those in therapy is to get involved.

MEANING stands in contrast to nihilistic despair. Viktor Frankl believed that humans are inherently meaning seeking. “Why am I here? For what purpose?”  Life’s difficulties can be better endured if life is lived with identified purpose and meaning. Friedrich Nietzsche famously said that those who have a why can bear almost any how.

To ask, “What is the meaning of life?”, may be unanswerable.  But we can instead ask, “What do I want from life?”  “Who do I want to be?”  “How do I triumph in the face of life’s hardships and challenges?” “What will be my legacy?”

The answers to those questions of Meaning emerge when circling back to Attitude and Involvement.  With the right attitude, and involvement in important and gratifying pursuits, one may subsequently discover that life can be filled with meaning.

A good acronym is easily remembered and seems to confer some degree of credibility and gravitas. There is CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy; DBT, dialectical behavioral therapy; and ACT, acceptance and commitment therapy.  Now there is AIM.  “AIM for your mental health,” or if you prefer, “Ready . . . AIM . . . Bullseye!” I think it has some potential.

Losing Streak

“Life is not a matter of holding good cards, but of playing a poor hand well.”  (Robert Louis Stevenson, 1850-1894)

Warning:  The following contains content suitable only for the mature poker player.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, I have been playing free online poker.  With over 20,000 players on my site, I worked my way up in rank to 62^nd place.  However, over the last 3 months I have lost about 20% of my winnings and have dropped down in the standings.  I need to figure out what’s happening.

The most convenient explanation is bad luck.  I remember quite a few hands where I had a big advantage going into the turn and river, but my opponent got a lucky card, and I lost a big stack of chips.  Blaming my losing streak on bad luck has a certain appeal.  I can rationalize how I’m still a good player, just on a run of bad luck . . . but then I will keep losing.  Alternately, I can succumb to the trap of superstition, seeking out amulets and charms in order to turn my bad luck into good luck . . . and keep losing.

I’ve toyed with a conspiracy-theory explanation.  Maybe the cards are not being dealt in a truly random manor but are in-fact rigged. Again, it's an explanation that protects my self-esteem.  I’m playing good poker.  I’m just the victim of an outside plot to set good players up for bad beats.

The more likely explanation for my recent losing streak is that I am now playing for higher stakes against more experienced and skilled opponents.  To win at poker you don’t have to be a great player, but you need to be better than the competition.

I’m sure that a poker pro, watching me for a few hours, could spot and correct some of the flaws in my game. Unfortunately, what I fear is happening is that skilled opponents are spotting and exploiting those very same flaws. Having no poker pro at my disposal, how do I turn losing back into winning?

I can start by being patient, trying not to win back all of my losses at once.  I will swallow my pride and, for a while, go back to the lower-stakes games.  I will seek answers to some fundamental questions. Did I size my bets properly? Did I keep losses to a minimum on my losing hands?  Did I win the most possible from my winning hands? Did I make foolish calls? Did I make good folds? How might I have better played the cards I was dealt?

With free on-line poker no real money is involved, and yet I put a fair amount of time and energy into thinking about the game I love. Poker is a game of probability, not certainty. It is an intriguing balance of luck and skill.  As in life, any of us, at any time, can get dealt a bad hand.  It’s not hard to play the good hands. But it takes skill and practice to play the poor hands well.

(addendum 3-31-23)  I have recovered my losses and then some.  I am currently in 48th place.