Reid Stell Counseling
Interdependency is Shared Humanity
  • Home
  • Background
    • Credentials
  • Services
    • Individual Counseling
    • Couples Counseling
    • Adolescent Counseling
    • Children's Counseling
    • Family Counseling
  • Methods
  • Support
    • Resources
  • Cost
  • Remote Sessions
  • Blogchive
  • Quotes

Um....

11/4/2015

0 Comments

 
Picture
Our theme tonight was Ambivalence. One of our members has an important decision to make. As is often the case, our theme actually applied to more than one of us—and has applied many times to all of us.

Another member suggested asking an important question in ambivalent times: "What's the worst case scenario if I make this rather than that decision?" If the worst case is that I prevent myself from living while I'm trying to decide between two difficult options, and stay in limbo indefinitely, then that might eventually become unacceptable. But then we're faced with another vexing problem: "How do I know when I've waited too long?"

It was suggested that if we wait long enough, it will be obvious: "Yes, that was definitely too long. I've been stuck between Scylla and Charybdis and haven't been living my life for [fill in your own time limit]. But now I can't get that lost living back. And if I'd decided sooner, I'd never know if I gave up too soon. How can I be sure?"

Of course, we can't be sure. We can only make a reasoned guess. Being sure is having an easy choice, not the kind we're dealing with here. Easy choices leave us feeling 95% good about the choosing. Hard choices can leave us feeling only 51% good. And that feels 49% bad.

Picture
We did what we could do tonight. We held the ambivalence. We didn't judge it, we didn't minimize it, we passed it from person to person and examined what it means to each of us. In the end, we didn't know any more than when we started. But then again, we didn't know less.

​And maybe it's not about knowing. Maybe it's about feeling. Or acting as if we were our wiser selves. Whatever it's about, it seems to come up a lot. The Lovin' Spoonful wrestled with this 51/49 conundrum 50 years ago! Were those simpler times? Maybe, but that famous song was, I think, disguised as a simple either/or proposition about love when it's really tackling the bigger issue: self-trust. And how do you learn to trust yourself when it comes to decisions requiring wisdom and intuition as well as rational judgment? Um, practice?

Here's another song in disguise by these merry minstrels from the mid-60's. It pretends to be about how music can sweep us away, and bond us together, but it might just be about the ethereal magic we create when we make the scary decision to love ourselves.

0 Comments

    Author

    For three years
    I led a therapy group
    for anxiety and depression. These are my
    imperfect recollections
    of those meetings
    with some of the most influential people
    in my life.
    While maintaining confidentiality,
    I processed those
    shared experiences

    and recorded my impressions.
    ​
    ​Disclaimer: This blog does not create a therapeutic relationship ans is non-interactive.

    RS

    Categories

    All

    RSS Feed

    Archives

    February 2016
    November 2015
    May 2015
    March 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    November 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    June 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014

Photos used under Creative Commons from Kansas Poetry (Patrick), The Random Hiccup, HikingArtist.com, Me in ME, HikingArtist.com, AllieKF, Kevin Dinkel, Paulisson Miura, Christopher.Michel, chawkfan91, mikecogh, andyarthur, Paris B-A, Paul Schultz, justine warrington, Griggzz, Paul-Louis Langard, Lee Edwin Coursey, kevin dooley, Lazurite, h.koppdelaney, futureatlas.com, LiebeGaby, qthomasbower, mikecogh, Luiz Gustavo Leme, State Farm, Vikram Vetrivel, LeonArts.at, frankieleon, Mike Licht, NotionsCapital.com, built4love.hain, docoverachiever, "Vicky Dixon", romana klee, Light in Colors, Kristine Paulus, ms.Tea, Keoni Cabral, Andrea Westmoreland, Nicole Compton, cauchisavona, Zuerichs Strassen, sk8geek, bnilsen, simpleinsomnia, blondinrikard, Jo Jakeman, adrian valenzuela, Jean (...), Helga Weber, rolle@bassfire, mikecogh, isawnyu, BryonLippincott, Mara ~earth light~, country_boy_shane, Hernan Piñera, symphony of love, Transformer18, brewbooks, Chill Mimi, Officer Phil