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I’d like to introduce you to a very general process for dealing with psychological problems. As far as I have been able to find out it was first formulated by Dr Fabian Rouke in the 1950’s. It is called the “onion skin model” of the self, it has three layers. This is my interpretation of his model based on my own experience. The big advantage of this process is that you can start with just about anything: you don’t need to have a big issue, you can start with a vague discontent or something unfocussed.

First Layer
The first layer is our everyday self. This is usually positive. We like to ‘put on a happy face’, to look as if we are doing fine and handling all our challenges. Usually this is untrue in some ways. So this is in some ways fake. This part of our selves has a brittle quality.

Second Layer
And we fake it for good reason. We fake it because there is a second layer. This is the part of our self that we believe is unacceptable - certainly to others and usually to ourselves as well. These are the parts of ourself that we don’t want to look at and wish just weren’t there.

Usually we learned that parts of ourself are unacceptable from those around us - usually quite early in our lives. Sometimes our early carers explicitly told us that parts of us were bad, other stuff we picked up by example. If we had to eat our meals whether we liked them or not we probably learned that our sensations are not good - they are to be ignored. If sex was never discussed we likely concluded that our genitals were something to be ashamed of.

Usually what we were told is easier to get a handle on than the models we copied. With what we were told there is something ‘out there’ to fight against. Taking on the models is trickier - it seems like it was all us.

First Step: Moving from the first to the second layer.
Sometimes, in places where we feel accepted, we reveal some of the second layer. Usually we hesitate and wonder if we can trust the other person enough to let them in. We feel like we’re taking a risk. If we feel like the other person is reliable and accepting enough we will let them know at least a little about this second layer of our self (the part we don’t like).

We also deal with this layer by ourselves. By ourselves it is also about acceptance. This can be trickier even than revealing this part of our self to another. We have perhaps spent a good deal of our lives and energy hiding this part. It may even be that hiding some parts of our self is now a habit, we do it automatically. We try to catch our selves hiding and find out how good we are. At this point others - friends or therapists - can be helpful: people who won’t be tricked. The other person’s job is just to point out what we’re doing.

When working with this layer by myself I have it helpful to listen to the part I don’t like. This part of me may have lead to problem behaviour or behaviour that had consequences I didn’t like. But when I listen to this part of my self I find that what the part wants it healthy. The basic need this part has is good: we have developed unhelpful strategies for meeting the need but the need, and our desire for having it met, is entirely legitimate. We may need to learn other ways to have this need met but that is a different matter. Learning ways to express or meet the needs of a good part of us is very different to hiding a part of us that we feel is bad.

Why bother with all this work? And it can be hard work. Because of the third layer.

The third layer
The third layer is the core of who we are, our authentic self. When we are in touch with this part of ourselves our lives have a different quality. It doesn’t mean that our live circumstances change automatically or that we don’t need to learn new things. But we have a sense of being in touch with what is going on and the people around us - and this is profoundly nourishing.

Getting to know the parts of us that have been ignored, disowned or suppressed leads us back to our real self.

Second Step: Moving from the second to the third layer.
There comes a point where we feel like we have ‘faced our stuff’. We feel tired and that we have come to the end of ourselves. And we have, in one sense. It is the end of the second layer of our selves.

The challenge at this point is perhaps to wait or perhaps to explore more deeply. At this point we need to feel the energy that has been bound up in keeping the second layer of our self hidden. If we just feel tired and don’t feel this new energy then we aren’t at the third layer yet. We don’t reject the second layer of the self - we reclaim it. The part of our self that we rejected (for good reason at the time) we now have as part of us again. All that energy that was ignored or suppressed is now part of us again. We will often feel elation and a sense of release when this happens.

When we are in touch with our authentic self we don’t ‘drift around on cloud nine’. We have a sense of being very grounded, while also having a sense of meeting life. For me this has meant the development over the years of what I call an ‘elated-calmness’: a buoyancy and flexibility. For others it will naturally be different, in accord with who they truly are.

Third Step: Takin’ it to the streets
What is often the high of breaking through to the third level doesn’t last. It is the elation of release and relief. While we will be living without the old fighting with ourselves, and this will mean we have much more energy, this is different to the high of the breakthrough.

Being in touch with our authentic self in one sense is just natural but in another sense means learning a whole new way of living. All the defenses and strengths of the second layer were important. They were a way of guarding and caring for our authentic self. Now that we don’t do things in this way automatically we need to develop other ways of relating to ourselves and others.

We may need to learn to listen to our bodies, and this can take time. We may need to know how to greet people politely without being fake (I don’t claim to get this right every time!). We still need to develop skills for our jobs and recreation. We still need to learn how to relate to people we find difficult. The world is still what it was: it doesn’t change magically just because we have. The difference is that we now live without fighting ourselves, and this feels so much better.

I hope this isn’t too vague. I was going to use lots of examples for each part of this process but it is already a long post. And that would have doubled or tripled its length. If you have questions please leave them in the comments. I have found this process incredibly beneficial in my own life, perhaps you will in yours.



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Play Is Strange

A friend of mine is an amateur musical production.

[It is of a Gilbert and Sullivan era musical called “Florodora” - the first British musical to make it big on Broadway.  It is running for the next two weeks.  All those reading this who are near to Erskineville, Sydney, Australia in the next two weeks are expected to attend.]

My friend was telling me about a rehearsal - all the usual logistical and ego problems, when they remarked how strange acting is.  The more I thought about this the more intrigued I became.

Why would people put all this effort into dressing up and playing pretend?  They’re not making any money from it, it doesn’t provide them with food or clothing.  And its done mostly with strangers (this production is pulled together as a project - it’s not an ongoing group).  Why give up time with people who are already good friends and loved ones to get together with strangers and pretend?  For a couple of hours people will pretend that something they know doesn’t exist, never has, and never will, is real.  And people will pay to see them to do this.  It really is puzzling.  What could the attraction to this kind of thing be?

The first answer that occurred to me was entertainment.  And this certainly is true for the audience.  But it doesn’t begin to explain the attraction of acting or the dedication that people have to it.  People go through a lot of stress, for two or three months, to put on a few hours of theatre.  They could all far more easily watch TV.

I think part of the attraction is being part of a group with a common purpose.  To be part of a group like this I certainly find enlivening.  And it gives us something that we have far more control over than many other aspects of our lives.  There are many demands on us which we choose to go along with and that would require a good deal of energy to resist.  Projects like this give us a far higher degree of control than we often experience in our lives.  This can be thrilling.  But that doesn’t explain the attraction of the theatre.  Why not join Habitat for Humanity or do something that requires much less effort and stress?

Some people dedicate their lives to pigment on canvas or graphite on paper.  And it is all quite ‘useless’.

A musical, or dedicating one’s life to an art, is a big commitment.  Play occurs in small ways too.  When at the beach, we make sandcastles. 

I think all this does show us that Jesus was right when he said that, “[Mankind] does not live by bread alone.”  It also shows us that there is a pleasure in doing things - even things that are very hard work.  The idea that we just want to do the minimum to survive or be comfortable is spectacularly wrong.

Maybe we need to look more closely at what play is.  For me it is characterised by attentiveness and not being directed to an external reward.  When we become concerned for the reward then play is at an end.  People may be rewarded for playing but to introduce this to the playing destroys it.  Actors get awards for playing well, not for competing for the Oscar.

Play opens up a space in our lives.  It gives us a break from what is serious and important.  It is paying attention to what is happening, just because we find it interesting.  It has its own kind of seriousness, an attentiveness and focus, that is different to the seriousness of the rest of our lives.  It is a time set aside from scheduling and organising ourselves to achieve goals.  And it is refreshing.  We feel better after our times of ‘just playing’. 

Our schedules and goals can help us live more easily but I think it is play that adds lightness and joy to our lives.

Let me know about the place of play in your life.  Is it one thing you do (like a hobby or craft) or do you just like to muck about with what is around?  And how does play feel to you?  What is the experience of playing like for you?  I’d love to hear about it in the comments.

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I got an email from a loyal reader of my blog.  They asked if I had “ever noticed how much different [my] comments on other people’s blogs are than what [I] write?”  No, I hadn’t.

They said that my posts come from a place “of calm, of knowing”.  That my comments also had this but also “have a distinct edge to them”.  They suggested that I use this talent on my own blog, not just when commenting on others.  That I could do this by,

“maybe setting a weekly post where the precedent is to let your readers pose the questions about a topic (whether you or they provide the subject) and have you provide the answers, or maybe the ‘holes’ in their thinking.  Or maybe more in depth critical reviews of the specific articles you have read and commented on.  Actually offering those critical reviews to those who had the openness to hear them.”

This was a delightful email to recieve (I obtained permission to quote from it).  It went straight to my heart in the nicest and gentlest possible way. 

So please let me know what questions you have or topics you’d like investigated.  I’ll do my best to say something worthwhile in response.  (If I don’t think I have anything worth saying I’ll let you know).  So now, it’s over to you; what questions do you have, what would you like to see me write on?  You are welcome to either leave suggestions in the comments or if you prefer by email (details on my About page).  Looking forward to hearing from you. 

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I can remember that particular tone in my mother’s voice when she told me to clean up my room. Perhaps you can too. And yet she hasn’t said that to me for more than thirty years. Perhaps your parents are even dead. And yet when we remember our parents we often react. Our emotions are affected, perhaps even our actions.

When our parents aren’t around, years after we’ve left home, we still carry our parents around with us - inside our brains. It is these parents we need to divorce. I want to stress this - it is the parents we carry around in our heads that we need to divorce. Our physical parents who exist outside of us are another story - they may even be dead - and so are well beyond us doing anything to them.

So by parents I mean those figures we have in our heads. These may be different (a little or a lot) to the parents who are and were outside us. Here’s an example of what I mean. I am quite comfortable with young children. My mother did and does adore them. I thought my father was quite comfortable around them. It wasn’t ’til my mid-20’s - when he said that he found them intimidating - that I realised this wasn’t true. The father in my head, who was comfortable with children, wasn’t the same as the father outside me. I’m still quite comfortable around children, by the time I realised that my father wasn’t comfortable with children it didn’t matter to me. This is a small example. For those who grew up in places where their life was in danger it will much more difficult to sort out. They will, most likely feel that their life is in danger because it was when they were children, even if it isn’t now (and it there may still be danger now too). So this is what I mean by “parents”.

What do I mean by “divorce”?

I mean being separate from and independant of our parents. Some people speak of the need of ‘killing our parents’ but the violence of this language can lead to the message not being heard. So I prefer to speak of ‘divorce’ than ‘killing’. A divorce has more options too - how much relationship you choose to maintain is up to you. The divorce means that the relationship doesn’t claim you, or define you, any more: you are now your own person. You can choose to listen to your parents when they have wise or useful things to say and ignore them about the stuff they are just weird about. My mother is weird about alcohol. This is not surprising - her brothers came back from WW2 being functional alcoholics. She thinks that if someone has a drink of alcohol they are likely to become alcoholic. This isn’t my experience. Most of the people I know who drink alcohol aren’t alcoholics. And I do on occasion drink alcohol. [Btw the best definition I know of alcoholism is: if it’s costing you more than money it’s a problem.] My father is very different to me on gender issues. He is decidedly of the old school marital roles - fathers are the breadwinners and mothers are housewives. With my adult relationships with women, the money-making and other tasks have been shared, I hope equitably (though this is tricky - if I hate doing one thing is equal time doing it equitable? So the sharing out of tasks has included what we like to do with equal shares of what we both hate to do.). On these issues my parents and I are happily divorced.

How to Get a Divorce from Your Parents
So how can we do this? Being our own person, not automatically following the prescription of our parents, is something most of us probably desire. But how?

In general it means thinking through our own way of life. And, possibly the biggest part of this, is working with the emotions. The reasons we do what our parents tell us is because of the emotions we have. All those things left over from childhood.

Divorcing our parents means becoming our own parent. When we look after the child like part of ourselves - our vulnerabilities, emotions and needs - we are becoming our own parent or divorcing our parents. Very roughly speaking there are two roles for healthy parenting - support and limit setting. Support means nurturing, meeting our needs (physical, emotional, mental, spiritual and social), getting all the things we need for a healthy life. Limit setting means some discernment. We can’t have everything (or at least not at the same time. If we do things one after the other we can achieve a huge amount in as little as five years.). And some things we want to do have negative consequences. Being our own parent means not just indulging our emotions (or thoughts or sensations) but also prioritising, and following through on commitments (to both ourselves and others).

Let’s take an example of looking at one need we have. A primal need: food. Food is a life and dealth issue, so there are lots of strong feelings attached to it. And most of us have feelings about food left over from childhood. (Part of this is often messages about body shape, but that’s another story. [Note to women: most men don’t particularly care about thinness. Note to men: most women aren’t turned on by the body builder physique.]) To divorce our parents means to know what food suits us, what we like and what fits in with our life. These things don’t necessarily fit easily together.

Here’s a little of my story about food. The hardest part for me has been finding what foods suit me (its pretty basic, baked potatoes are my favourite food); I find it much easier to be in touch with what is going on in my head than what is happening in my body. It wasn’t ’til my 20’s, and I was living out of home, that I figured out that eating mostly bread would lead to constipation. At home my mother had always provided a reasonably healthy diet and so I just hadn’t paid much attention to what I ate.

What to do? How could I eat healthily? My main meal was at night, so I went through a phase of having all the food groups for my evening meal. Vegetables, grains and protein in every meal. (At this stage the protein was meat - at the moment I mostly eat vegetarian.) Pretty much back to what my mother had cooked. From here I started trying out different foods. Asian vegetables, cooking in a wok, using sauces and spices, and eating out at different places. (Currently my favourite cuisine is Thai.) I went through a stage of eating lots of chilli and trying out many other tastes too. Gradually I figured out that lighter foods, with enough protein, is what suits my body. Within this I choose the foods that I like (potatoes and so forth) and stuff that doesn’t take too long to prepare. I don’t mind cooking but it’s not a major joy for me, so when I cook normally it is usually quick and easy. With food I now know how to care for myself. I do really enjoy what I eat, I don’t just indulge in the comfort foods of my childhood - vegemite on toast (an Australian delicacy) and lemonade (what is called “lemonade” in Australia is called “7Up” in America), I don’t follow any particular way of eating - though I learned much from Macrobiotics, and I have found a way to cook that fits in with my other commitments. This is what it meant for me to divorce my parents around food. I hope this gives you an idea of what it means to divorce our parents and start looking after our own needs.

Where have you divorced your parents? If you would like to let me know please leave a comment, I look forward to hearning from you.

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Mark Weiss, a GP specialising in mental health, is trying to construct a directory so that he can more easily match clients with healers.

This is free for both therapists and clients.  He is interested in people who are:  Psychotherapists, counselors, yoga instructors, meditation teachers, nutritionists, fitness trainers, community support groups and others providing services which promote emotional well being.

It is called CounselingBook.com.  It is just starting, so have a look - especially if you are a therapist.  I think it could be a very worthwhile initiative.

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Our thoughts can influence our energy level - how good we feel.  To explain what I mean I’d like to tell you a story.

The story is about two friends who will we call Jack and Jill.  Jack started business a business a few months ago.  He’s quite unclear what he is legally required to do or even how to keep the books for his business.  Jill is just about to finish studying a bookkeeping course.  It wasn’t a very good course and so she is still a bit confused about how to set up a set of books for a business.  She thinks that helping Jack set up the books for his business will help Jack and herself too - it will give her some experience with bookkeeping in the real world. 

And so Jill goes over to Jacks place one afternoon.  After saying hello over coffee they get down to the serious business of constructing some accounts for Jacks business.  Things go well for a while but then . . . they hit a snag.  Jill’s course just hasn’t covered the way that Jack needs to keep his books - he sells lots of little items.  Keeping a record of each one would be impossibly time consuming but how else could he keep track of inventory - or find out anything about which items sell best.  This is a major snag: they try and think of ways, the search the net, they look through Jill’s course notes repeatedly.  After three hours they are thoroughly exhausted and fed up.  They can see no way forward, they have been over the same ground five or six times and it is simply no use.  To say they were out of energy would be an understatement.  (Jill’s opinions about her course don’t bear printing on this family-friendly blog don’t bear repeating.)

But then . . . Jill thinks of something to try and, it works!  There is a way.  It’s pretty easy and will do everything Jack needs to know.  They are elated: it is late now, but the rush of energy carries them along for another hour or two.  Finally they finish late at night, content with having got the way to do Jack’s books figured out.

This is a fairly normal kind of story.  Things like this happen every day.  But, in one way, it is very strange.  The elation came from an intellectual insight.  It didn’t come from doing any exercise or eating some food for an energy boost.  It just came because of the realisation that there was a way to solve a problem.  Late night after working a couple of hours more they felt better than when they had worked less but couldn’t see a way to solve a problem. 

This is a simple illustration of the power of our thoughts.  We can go from energy less and miserable to energised and elated in seconds just by realising that we can solve a problem.

It was experiences like this that lead to the founding of positive psychology - the originator of the movement Martin Seligman wrote a book called Learned Optimism.  If we can learn to look on the bright side we will usually feel better. 

Does this mean we ignore the rotten parts of life?  This can lead to crass insensitivity, it’s like saying,  “Sure your friend died a long and painful death, but hey it’s a sunny day!”  I don’t think there are many people who would seriously advocate this.

A friend of mine says that trying to ignore the rotten parts of life is like trying to pull the wool over your own eyes: it just doesn’t work.  When we’re in pain there is no use pretending otherwise.  Pretending our world doesn’t contain awful events is just, well, pretence.  (This doesn’t mean that we need to obsess about them; but to try to ignore them uses up our energy, and we live diminished lives.)

I want to draw attention to how important our attitude to life is.  I don’t want to say that, ‘if we just think the right way, then everything will be fine’.  It seems to me that there is a real world beyond our thoughts.  This is a world of quite wonderful beauty and has some parts that are truly awful; and just trying to think differently won’t make the awful bits go away.  Our thoughts and our attitude to life are powerful but not all-powerful.  Just changing our thoughts won’t change the world.

To become familiar with the power of your thoughts you can try the following experiments.

• Recall experiences you have had like Jack and Jill’s - where a realisation changed how you felt; for better or worse.

• Recall a time when you put a childhood fear of feeling behind you.  How did you do this?  What was the realisation that lead to this happening?

• Close your eyes and recall a time when you were in love with someone.  Recall it as vividly as you can, what it felt like in your body.  Then open your eyes.  It is possible that the world will look slightly different.

If you would to tell me about a time when you learned about the power of your thoughts I’d love to hear it.  Please tell me your story in the comments.  Looking forward to hearing from you.

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What is the self?

A friend of mine went to a talk by a Buddhist monk. His question about self-improvement was: finally, doesn’t it come down to a hostility to the self? That is, self-improvement means judging ourselves as inadequate: that we need to be something other than we are. Doesn’t self-improvement rely on dis-satisfaction? Once we accept ourselves for who we are is self-improvement at an end?

Is ‘the self’ just what I want? My desires and their satisfaction. This idea of the self leads to the self in the sense of egotism - this narrow person going through the world caring only about themselves. There are more altruistic versions of this notion of the self: it feels good to do things for others; our pleasures aren’t just crass they can also be refined and include appreciating the beauty or the natural world and the extraordinary creativity of artists. But the refinement of the pleasure doesn’t alter the greed.

Is my ’self’ just my thoughts? If so, then when I stop thinking there is no self. I am no longer planning or remembering. I’m just being me, here and now, doing what I’m doing. This may be just breathing. Or, “When eating only eating, when sleeping only sleeping.” When I am simply attentive to what is going on, then I have no ’self’ in the sense of the self as thinking. This sense of no-self is more hospitable to others, we are not concerned to fit another into our plans and schedules, we can simply be with them - and it feels great. The next time you make love, do it from this space and enjoy the difference! It is easy to start with sex because the sensations can be strong and so help get our thoughts out of the way. It also occurs when we are fascinated by anything. Even when we are just playing we are in this space of no-self. These can be times of real refreshment - as the popularity of meditation attests.

And yet . . . I do meditation because it is satisfying, it is satisfying to me. My self benefits from this no-self. So, I think we need to re-think what we mean by self. There are layers here. As I peel back the layers I find what may be called “no thing” but it is far more than nothing. What I am doing when I am just me is different to someone else. Getting beyond the pettiness of our egos we don’t arrive at being all the same. We find our individuality - we often find in what way we express ourselves. If there is a universal self which we tap in to then it is expressed differently in each of us. For me this is the beauty of getting beyond our ego.

Once we get beyond our greed and attempts to control life with our thoughts, then here we are doing what we are doing. In this sense the self is our acting-here-and-now, our relationship to this situation (in all its many-dimensioned complexity).


What would improvement mean?

If we are not discontented why would we want to improve? If this is enough, why would we want more?

And yet . . . Even with meditation, we get better at it. It may be a remembering to not strive and just be, but we get better at that too.

The difference between a new born child and someone not captured by their ego is huge. And the adult has some benefits - they can be far more help to others than the new-born. In this sense the mature adult is an improvement on the new-born. It seems to me that life is (at least partly) about growth.

And the distinction between being and doing is somewhat false. We can express our being in our doing. We express ourselves through our words, even the particular walk that each of us have (and in many other ways too). These are not separate to our being.

Even those times of no-self when we are just breathing or just playing can be part of a larger story of improvement. We can meditate for the benefits it brings. We can play in order to find out how something works.

It seems to me that life is not a neutral force but a positive energy with a particluar ‘flavour’. It is a growing into being (and doing) more of who we are.

[For an extraordinary and brilliant investigation of the philosophy of this read Robert M Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and his argument that quality is a dimension of being. In my view this is the best philosophy book ever written.]

So, simply being with life means some kind of ‘improvement’ - being alive means a process of growth. This, in my experience, is certainly a process of getting beyond our petty plans and our greedy ego. It means being able to be more hospitable to others, more clear in our perceptions, understanding more how we use our thoughts to protect our ego. It means a discovery of a deeper ’self’ - in one sense a no-self, but a no-self that is different for all of us - a no-self that is truly individual.

What does this mean for us?

1.  That when we are greedy our lives are less satisfying.

2. That times of ‘just being’ are important.

3. That when we  find our vocation (what we do when we are being just us), this will mean a path of ‘improvement’, getting better at what we do.  It is at this point that the experience of past practitioners becomes valuable.

I realise that this is a big topic on which people will have strong feelings. So comments are welcome (disagreement and different perspectives are especially desirable).

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