F-words...
...you can use anywhere
I’ve broken this up into a few weeks to make it a little more palatable. Here’s part one of three.
Failure/feedback
I’m big on experimentation as a therapeutic intervention. Some clients like it, some struggle with it. I think a lot of the struggles come with the sheer number of failures they experience when trying something new.
We all like to look competent. No matter what stage we are in our learning, we want to feel as though we’re a veteran rather than a rookie. Failure reminds us how far we still have to go. It reminds us that we guessed wrong, acted ineffectively, or just didn’t do what we hoped we would.
I’ve been a big proponent of seeing these moments as merely feedback rather than failure. Failure just seems so personal, shameful, or embarrassing. Something about the word just makes our heads hang low. I’m not sure if this is a cultural stigma thing or what. I just know that word tends to stop more people than it encourages.
So, I’m careful to outline what folx are looking for when they experiment. They’re to look for what they can learn from the experience, not what did or didn’t happen. Feedback, that’s what we get when we’re trying something new. That’s it, that’s all. Just feedback.
We can work with that, because feedback is how we learn. It’s how we develop new insights and create new hypotheses. I’d like to think we’d all be better if we could take that approach to life.
It’s not easy as that failure frame tends to hover. So, I often share the mantra “no failure, only feedback” with those who’ll listen and try.
Faith
You’d think this would be easy to describe, especially for someone who has a theological and psychological background. It’s not.
Is it belief in a certain set of tenets? Is it trust in a dogma or revelation? Is it a set of actions we perform in alignment with those beliefs or values or trusted ideas?
Is faith a confidence in something greater, some “it” beyond us, or even ourselves? Is it an act of courage or steadfast resolve?
I’d probably say our answers to each of these things help describe faith. I’d also say that there’s got to be something more as well.
Faith is used in cultural, religious, and psychological conversations. It’s a verb for some and a noun for most.
When someone tells me they have faith, I want to ask, “what does that mean?” Does that refer to a deity? If so, how do you operationalize your faith? What does your faith compel you to do? How does it make you a better person, better partner, friend, colleague? How does it impact the world around you for the better? How does it change you when you’re doing something wrong?
Otherwise, it’s just words. It’s just convenience and cultural capital. It’s a secret handshake to get into a club.
I guess that puts me firmly in the verb category. Faith is something you do, not something you profess. It’s how we’re guided to make our mark on small worlds we live within.
I used to tell my students I don’t care what you believe, what faith you profess, as long as it’s healthy for you and the people around you. Otherwise, we’re going to have some serious conversations.
So, maybe that’s what faith is to me. It’s relational; it seeks good things for all; it looks for potential rather than pitfalls, connection over separation. Faith is something that helps us simply do the next best thing wherever we are.
Family systems
A way of thinking about the complexity of human relationships. It’s a school of thought, with diverse branches, ideas, philosophies, and treatments.
Like all schools of thought, your mileage may vary. We like to think of these theories as universally applicable rather than contextually significant. Much like reading your horoscope, we can all find something true and something to laugh about.
I appreciate family systems theory for how it describes our interactions and gives words to some of the things we do. However, I appreciate it not as an end, but as a starting point to understand myself and how I might become something better as I flail around trying to do the next best thing.
Feelings
Probably one of the most divisive words in psychology and culture. Feelings are subjective descriptions of the emotions we experience. They are entirely dependent on interpretation and thus differ entirely from person to person.
What we feel in any given moment is dependent on our vocabulary, history, and predictions about an experience. Some feelings are anticipatory, some reactive.
What we don’t often get, as human beings in relationships, is that all feelings are valid (because they are subjective). However, because we want certainty or uniformity or security, we have a habit of invalidating feelings that differ from our own.
I see this in clients who believe they “should” feel a certain way because that’s what others feel or tell them they ought to be feeling. I believe there is some human impulse to universally apply subjective experiences and then measure and compare compliance.
Let me put it to you as succinctly as possible… Stop It.
Stop trying to compare experiences; stop trying to deny how people feel; stop trying to impart your interpretation as the universally accepted one.
In short, if you want to tell someone how to feel, based on how you feel, then eff your feelings.
It’s hard enough to work through our history and interpretations without every Tom, Dick, and Mary telling us how we should or shouldn’t feel. Just shut up and listen. If someone tells you they feel a certain way, be quiet, or ask questions. Get curious, not certain. Find out what it means to them rather than “shoulding” all over their experience.