Counselor, Author, and Reflective Eclectic
On this MLK Day, after the recent dissentious election, you may be interested in reading The Fractured Republic: Renewing America’s Social Contract in the Age of Individualism by Yuval Levin. Levin has ideas about how we can come together and mend what’s broken.
Continue reading “The Fractured Republic”
The old lady ahead of you falls. You think she’s too weak to get around without a walker until you trip over the same bad spot in the sidewalk.
You watch Jeopardy and try to come up with the questions for Alex Trebek’s answers. Alex Trebek seems to be smarter than you.Continue reading “Beware of the Fundamental Attribution Error”
As soon as you see how you are responsible for trouble, you are met by two emotions who offer to be your guide: guilt and shame. Which one should you go with? Is there a difference between the two?
It’s easy to confuse guilt with shame. People refer to them interchangeably, like twins who are often mistaken. Along with embarrassment and pride, they both belong to the family of moral emotions. They pop up whenever you do something wrong. But, other than that, they’re very different, and if you discover that shame has been your guide, you should ditch it as soon as possible and go the other way. Continue reading →
Two people go to the bank. One has a good credit score, the other a bad one. One is clearly more creditworthy, or trustworthy, than the other, based on past behavior. One paid his loans on time, the other sometimes defaulted. These two see the same banker and ask her for a loan.
You may think you know the sensible thing for the banker to do. She’s supposed to give the loan to the one with a good credit score and turn down the other with a bad credit score. But, she doesn’t have to do that; she can do what she wants. For instance, she could say the person with a good credit score can get a loan anywhere, so he doesn’t need to get it from her. She could decide to give the one with a bad credit score a break. Having a good credit score does not dictate the banker’s decision. She makes her own decision.Continue reading “Regaining Trust”
Not everything is your fault. In fact, most things are not your fault; you had nothing to do with them. You didn’t ask to be born to these people or at this time or this place, at least so far as we know. You didn’t invent the language you speak. You didn’t have a choice about your genetics, nor your early childhood experiences, nor ninety-nine percent of the experiences you have now. You might have chosen the person you married, but you chose him from a very limited field of possibilities. Unless you adopted and are remarkably prescient, you didn’t choose your children.
You don’t know all the consequences your actions will bring before you set them into motion. If you didn’t have that second cup of coffee and left your house ten minutes earlier, you might have been hit by that truck that barrel-assed through an intersection with no brakes. If you had a third cup and left twenty minutes later, you wouldn’t have been caught in traffic caused by the accident and would have gotten to work on time. There is no such thing as a fully informed choice.
Because of all this, many people say we don’t have free will. They claim everything is completely determined by neurochemicals and the accidents of particularity. Well, maybe they’re right. It could be that you’re entirely blameless. Even if you’re the biggest jerk on the planet, it’s not your fault, it’s your genes’. But, here’s the thing:
You may be blameless, but you’re still responsible.Continue reading “What’s the Difference Between Responsibility and Blame?”
Almost everything I know about shame and guilt, I have learned from making mistakes. Lots and lots of mistakes. Everything else, I learned from my clients. But the way I’ve made any sense of it all has been from the work of June Tangney, professor of psychology at George Mason University; the queen of shame and guilt.
Together with Rhonda Dearing, Tangey wrote two books on the topic, Shame and the Therapy Hour, and Shame and Guilt. She also has a very engaging lecture posted on YouTube, Shame and Guilt: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly.
I got Clueless 101: A Life Manual for for Millennials to review and was thinking of re-gifting it to a millennial as a graduation present. It’s replete with visual aides and jam packed with helpful practical advice on everything from leasing an apartment to charting a life course. What could be a better gift from an uncle than 137 pages of unsolicited advice?
Is re-gifting OK? Come to think of it, which is better, to give something they want or something they need?Continue reading “How to Influence the Clueless”
What does it mean to cross the watershed and identify yourself as both offender and victim? It means that you go through the same process of guilt, acknowledgement of shortcomings, restitution, and reconciliation as the person who hurt you. Continue reading “Your Feelings are Your Feelings”
We’re at a watershed moment on the Road to Reconciliation. It’s a crucial juncture where you go from thinking you’re just a victim to knowing that you’re a perpetrator, at least a partial perpetrator. You can admit you’ve victimized others, including the one who hurt you. It’s the moment you get real. It’s when you roll up your sleeves and take responsibility. It’s what naturally happens after you’ve climbed the mountaintop and gazed at the context of your injury. You know the part you have played and it hasn’t been pretty.
This doesn’t mean that you were not victimized or that you don’t have valid claims for restitution. It doesn’t mean that you weren’t hurt or that someone didn’t act like an ass. It doesn’t mean that you deserve more or an equal proportion of blame; maybe she is still mostly to blame, maybe not. It only means that you understand things better and can do something about them.Continue reading “When You Arrive at a Watershed Moment, Cross It”
Keith Wilson - Counseling