It’s Always About Balance

Most problems are created by imbalance.  Wow, I know that sounds simplistic, but think about it: too much of something, too little of something, overfunction or underfunction, underkill or overkill and in one direction or the other a problem is likely to develop.  This principle applies to brain chemistry, body chemistry, relationship dynamics, behaviors, habits, and, well, even the very functions of the universe that enable life on this lovely blue planet.  Yet we have often tried to live as though we are exempt from, above, or outside of the reach of the principle of balance, overindulging or under-supplying ourselves.  And then we get in trouble. 

Wouldn’t it be nice if we came with a set of gauges that would alert us to imbalance?  Actually, we do.  These “gauges” include our bodies—our five senses, our feelings, and our relationships.  It is important learn to pay attention to these indicators of imbalance or we will end up with—you guessed it—problems.  If you ignore that red “oil” light on your dashboard long enough you will end up with a dead vehicle.  If you ignore that strange new lump on your body long enough you may end up with a dead you.  If you ignore your relationship problems long enough you may end up with an unhappy marriage or no marriage at all.

Don’t take false comfort from your old pal Denial.  He will tell you that that symptom you are experiencing is not so bad, not so big, not important, your imagination, your partner’s problem, or that there is no problem at all!  (Even in this it is important to practice balance.  To catastrophize every small thing can be paralyzing and is a distortion on the “too much” side of imbalance.)  I think that “reading our gauges” is a tricky skill to learn and practice.  Good parenting should have taught us such skills throughout our childhoods, but for many of us—probably most of us—this didn’t really happen.  In fact, if we grew up in a dysfunctional family system we may have become adaptively skillful at ignoring signals from our bodies, minds, emotions, and spirits. It was just too painful to stay present and feel.  It is as though many of the important sensory wires have been cut—or we severed them ourselves—and there just isn’t any signal getting through any more. 

Part of the work of recovery is reconnecting these vital input lines; lines that can alert us to damaging imbalances, unhealthy relationships, and with our need to employ wisdom and self-care.  It is a process and will definitely include some pain. You know, like when your foot has fallen asleep and then goes into that crazy needles and pins phase as your nerves hook your leg back up to your brain.  We need pain!  A great example is leprosy.  Huh?  Yes, the truly dangerous thing about leprosy is that lepers lose sensation in their extremities, thus no pain sensation, thus no signals alerting them to the fact that they have injured themselves, thus infection.  We may have adaptively blocked our ability to feel pain in order to survive, but staying disconnected with it will inevitably send us—unawares—toward some form of hurtful imbalance. 

The good news is that in coming back into balanced contact with our bodies, emotions, and spirits also reconnects us to our joy and pleasure.  You see, we can’t dampen and tune out parts of our feelings without dampening all our overall emotional experiences—including the pleasant ones.  We become generally numb.  This can lead to seeking more intensity and, well, you probably already know the kind of problems that can lead to.  We are wired to experience a full range of feelings—in balance.  To lose touch with them or trade most of them in for one or two (like anger or lust) is a sad state of imbalance indeed.   Don’t settle for an imbalanced, chaotic, or numbed out existence.  It will definitely take some work and endurance on your part to heal and make your way back to the land of the truly alive but don’t you think it could be worth it?  There are many of us on the other side of recovery who respond with a hearty “Amen!”

Copyright 2015 John D. Deyo, M.A., LMFT

The  S P A C E  Between

No, this is not a review of the Dave Matthews Band song.  This is about a different kind of space between; one that many of us misunderstand and tend to avoid.  The term for this not-knowing “space between” is liminal space which literally means “threshold.”  Some have described it metaphorically as standing in the threshold between two rooms; you are not technically in either room.  You haven’t quite left one or entered the other.  It is altered space, twilight, neither fully awake nor fully asleep space.  It is often characterized by uncertainty and—for some of us more than others—the “not knowing” is almost intolerable. 

About ten years ago my wife, my daughter, and I—all lifelong Midwesterners—transplanted to California from Minnesota (you bet) so that I could attend grad school.  It was a big move.  We sold our home, closed a business, and stuffed what belongings we hadn’t sold at our monster garage sale into a 24 foot U-Haul truck, and headed for the LA Basin—without jobs—to begin a new chapter (more like a new book) in our lives.  Somewhere bouncing along in Nebraska in the middle of the night, my beloved and I were struck with the magnitude of what we were doing.  This was liminal space; not planted where we came from, not planted where we were going, just in Nebraska, jostling down the interstate in a noisy truck.  We cried.  We prayed.  We kept driving.

Liminal space is not necessarily good or bad, it is just what is.  It can be useful, though, even life changing if it is accepted and embraced as opportunity.  People often make important life decisions in liminal space such as being on vacation.  On the more difficult end of the continuum, in the painful spaces of disillusionment, suffering, and transition, people sometimes discover their life-callings and give birth to unexpected dreams.  Things are planted and take root here where the hard-packed dirt of safety and complacency is broken up by the painful harrow of unbidden change.  We would never sign up for these experiences but they change us deeply.  We need to be changed.

Crisis and trauma can thrust us into very frightening liminal space.  It may be that a marriage, a job, or life’s dream is crumbling, forcing us to move to a “new” and unfamiliar space.  Stunned, disoriented, in pain, we are propelled into a journey from the familiar to we-know-not-what.  Even when the familiar was miserable, it was at least familiar.  Like refugees forced from our homes by disaster or despot; fleeing, clutching only what could be hurriedly stuffed into a suitcase we set out in search of some kind of safe place to land, sometimes with children in tow. We can also find ourselves in the space between due to a collapse of our familiar way of doing things as when a dysfunctional coping strategy or a cherished defense mechanism stops working for us—goodbye denial.  Sometimes our whole belief system goes up for grabs.

Let me offer a couple of pointers for traversing the space between.  First, in the middle of pain and suffering when we are hurled into transitional space, as unpleasant as it may be, it is extremely important that we allow ourselves to feel our feelings because these emotions are part of our grieving process, the process of letting go of what was.  They are sources of important information we may have been missing.  In fact, checking out, tuning out, and numbing out may contribute to our plunge into crisis.  Stop.  Stay present.  Feel. 

Secondly, we are faced with a deep challenge to choose to make meaning of suffering or risk sinking into bitterness and despair.  I am not talking about yanking ourselves up by the bootstraps or propping ourselves up with pithy little mottos—the stuff of church message boards.  This will be a wrestling match.  An authority on suffering, Auschwitz Concentration Camp survivor Dr. Victor Frankl stresses that the critical factor in surviving such experiences with our humanity intact is the ability to struggle with finding, no, making meaning of our suffering.  In his book Man’s Search for Meaning Frankl writes writes "In some ways suffering ceases to be suffering at the moment it finds a meaning, such as the meaning of a sacrifice." And reflecting on his concentration camp experience he says "We who lived in concentration camps can remember the men who walked through the huts  comforting others, giving away their last piece of bread.  They may have been few in number, but they offer sufficient proof that everything can be taken from a man but one thing: the last of the human freedoms--to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way."  That is powerful stuff.

Paradoxically, while the trip across the space between is usually a solo interior journey, we may find great comfort and strength in knowing we are not alone.  We need the love and support of others to walk through pain that is uniquely our own.  Just so you know, you are not alone. 

Copyright 2014 John D. Deyo, M.A., LMFT