Talk therapy was upside down.
Rachel was there for the 1st time in pants. Nice pants, but still pants. She had always come, to date, dressed to the nines. Christian Louboutin red bottom pumps, Chanel suit—she was the classic OC therapist. Going into her office was a place that was so put together that one so unput-together, such as Missy, could paradoxically find space. A tidy mess, walking through like Charlie Brown’s “Pig-Pen,” with a cloud of dust floating around her, Missy would descend with her problems and float out with them one hour later.
Today though, Rachel was wearing a distress call—pants! All was not right. They spoke for her.
“What’s wrong?” Missy immediately asked.
It was like opening the hoarder’s closet door. An avalanche of woes fell out. And all of a sudden, Missy didn’t remember why she came to therapy that day. She was taken in by Rachel’s suffering. This many years later, when Missy told me the story, she didn’t remember the list of sorrows except one. Rachel’s 14 y/o cat was dying. She was, in fact, what palliative care practitioners refer to as “actively dying,” the last bit of life before the end, that can be, if not handled well, quite miserable to all, including the caregivers.
Rachel was miserable. She knew her beloved cat was miserable. Missy, a veteran ICU nurse, knew immediately what needed to be done and, by the end of the hour, had arranged for Rachel’s cat to have an at-home hospice provider come that same day and give what was needed. End-of-life is end-of-life. Rachel just could not make the call. She was so broken up with grief. And so, the therapist became the patient.
By the end of that hour, Missy relayed that she remembers feeling so well inside, so blessed, and that she was able to be outside of her “mess.” Helping someone relieved some of Missy’s own life pain.
What happened here illustrates something we see clinically. Here, in our blog narrative, I am going to make a writer’s prerogative and jump way over to the neurobiological framework of things. You’ve heard me talk about it enough to know where I’m going. I am reminded that when we have negative thoughts, one of the best ways of dealing with them is to FIRST (because I’m a psychiatrist and know that all emotions and behaviors come from the brain, and to be responsible with that means to be responsible with brain health) make sure you address the biology. Where do these negative thoughts come from? The brain.
But ALSO, because we are layered creatures, consisting of the biopsychosocial complexity of our human condition, good coping skills never go awry. In this case between Rachel and Missy, the adage that bringing more than you take is its own kind of self-care is true.
That by serving others, we in fact serve ourselves, by improving the myelin pathways on our reward circuitry. That as we love, love, love, here at “FriendToYourself.com,” everything starts and ends with Me! Yes!
In fact, by giving to others, we have less negative thoughts. By serving others, we are somehow able to, as all good CBT demonstrates, lay down some neuronal myelin in a better pathway—a more friendly brain pathway to Me. The idea that everything starts and ends with Me, scrambled together with the idea of serving others brings self-benefit, can feel contradictory, but it is not. Serving others is actually a pathway back to self-regulation.
Taking this one step further, for extra credit, would be to acknowledge that one’s agenda for helping others, in that it is also helping “Me,” is not a flaw of design. Agendas, being what they are in our human condition, and altruism a God-feature, not our own, taking care of Me is not a moral issue. It is just good self-care.
Self-care tip: When you feel those negative thoughts encroaching, help someone else.
Question for the reader: When was the last time helping someone else actually helped you? And how did it help you?