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I know I am not the only one who has had Taylor Swift's new hit song "Anti-Hero" stuck in my head on repeat. The song skillfully touches on themes of negative identity, accountability, and ego. The video is linked below but here is a sample of some of the song's most profound lyrics: I have this thing where I get older but just never wiser Midnights become my afternoons When my depression works the graveyard shift All of the people I’ve ghosted stand there in the room I should not be left to my own devices, they come with prices and vices, I end up in crisis Tale as old as time I wake up screaming from dreaming one day I’ll watch as you’re leaving ‘cause you got tired of my scheming - for the last time It’s me Hi I’m the problem, it’s me At teatime Everybody agrees I’ll stare directly at the sun but never in the mirror It must be exhausting always rooting for the anti-hero Wow, I can't tell you how deeply this resonated with me from a therapist perspective, I have had so many clients enter my office deep in the "anti-hero" role Swift describes above. Much attention is paid to those who are victimized by other's bad behavior, many songs are dedicated to the person who is struggling with the cheating partner, the absent partner, the addict partner, the partner who just can't seem to get their shit together! And we all empathize with this. But rarely do we have someone step up and own that ya, I am aware that I am the problem! This scenario is all too common and overdue for exploration. Before Swift's "Anti-Hero" came out I ran a group for chronically relapsing addicts in treatment on accountability and shame. At some point in the group I would bring up the lyric from The Who's "Behind Blue Eyes:" "No one knows what it's like, for the bad man, for the sad man, behind blue eyes." Similar to Swift's song, this song explores the often hidden challenges of getting to a place in your life and realizing that you have made serious mistakes and can be construed as the villain in other people's stories, which is an extremely isolating experience. Every addict (and many others who find themselves in therapy) faces the horrible realization that not only have you gone through trauma and been hurt by people, but you have probably traumatized and hurt people too in the ways that you dealt with your own hurt and confusion. Feeling guilt is the natural reaction to hurting others. Guilt is adaptive, it's empathetic, it helps us learn from our mistakes and right our wrongs so that we can live more aligned to our values and have better relationships with ourselves and others. Guilt makes us feel bad for what we've done, but shame makes us feel bad for who we are. Shame is paralyzing, it becomes an identity, it is counterproductive and ends up furthering the cycle of the hurtful behavior. Shame is being the anti hero. Shame is being the bad man and the sad man behind blue eyes. Shame is what gets people to a place where blinding themselves looking at the sun (or drinking/drugging/working/hating themselves to death) seems like the easier option than looking in the mirror. Over identifying with your mistakes (shame) makes taking accountability nearly impossible. And as the song says, that is exhausting for everyone, because it essentially makes you the victim for the ways in which you've victimized others. Anyone who has sought accountability and has been shut down knows this experience all too well. This experience is so universal that it is depicted in that catalog of archetypes, the tarot deck, by "The Hanged Man."  The Hanged Man card portrays the universal life experience of human suffering, not just our own suffering, but the ways in which we may inadvertently make others suffer as well. Making mistakes is difficult for our Ego (which constructs identities/masks for us to wear) to bear and we can get "hung up" in this paralyzing place, unable to take further action. It's also an unavoidable part of life. How do we get unstuck? The card gives us a clue, by putting our ego aside, being less selfish, and taking accountability for our fallible nature. This ultimately sets us free and is a crucial growth experience. Over identifying with the "anti-hero" parts of your self might seem like a form of accountability or penance but ultimately it keeps you stuck, which is exhausting for you and everyone else. So how do you get unstuck? Admitting that you are dissatisfied with your reactions and interactions in life is a big step, a giant step(!), and is often the beginning of therapy. I've often thought that therapy resembles the hero's journey, a common device used in literature from The Lord of the Rings to The Hunger Games to Oliver Twist and many more. Being dissatisfied is your call to the adventure of therapy where you meet your mentor, try things and fail, learn new skills, your old ego identities that you have been lugging around die and new preferred identities are reborn, through these changes you are able to have some revelations about your life, atone for your mistakes, receive many of the beautiful gifts life has to offer, and leave therapy changed, grateful for the turmoil that made you begin this journey in the first place.  Final takeaway: if you are resonating with Taylor Swift's "Anti-Hero" a little more than you are comfortable with, I hope you take comfort in knowing that you are not alone, that you are actually taking a big step in gaining self awareness, that therapy is for you too, and that these feelings of discomfort are just the beginning to a greater awareness of self (if you let it be!). By acknowledging ALL of the hero and anti-hero parts of self (hopefully with a trusted guide to help you), you will begin to sing new songs. Your identity as the anti-hero is just a pit stop along the way, a necessary trial you go through along the larger hero's journey we are all on. 
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We live in a fast paced, even frantic world. It is only natural then that people internalize this fast pace and apply it to their goals in therapy. It is common that people want problems that took years or even decades to come to the fore to be solved yesterday. And hey, it is wonderful to be motivated to change! The truth is, that change can happen miraculously quickly with willpower, openness, and elbow grease. But there is also a paradox involved in the change process. The client frantic for problems to miraculously and immediately go away can be like a bull in a china shop. Wanting things to be “all good” right now can make things worse in the process. There’s a toxic feedback loop at play here. The more anxious we get about resolving the things that are making us anxious, well, the more anxieties we have! And then on and on and on… All of these anxious feelings and thoughts pile up and then half-baked “solutions” end up getting tried that wind up making things even worse. How many times have you tried enacting a solution to your problem that became worse than the problem itself? The person anxious to not be alone ends up settling for a partner that closes off real prospects for intimacy. The parent anxious to do a good job ends up being over-zealous in setting limits and alienating their child who inevitably rebels more than they would if left to their own devices. The person anxious to lose weight tries many crash and burn fad diets, losing 10 pounds, but always gaining 15 more back and creating a more estranged relationship with their body in the process. We can see these principles at work at the macro level too. The country anxious to reopen its economy after disaster strikes ends up skipping many crucial steps along the way, thus ensuring the economy it prematurely reopens is operating at a near permanent state of half capacity. (Ring any bells?) In our fast paced, anxiety ridden world there is a real power in going slow. This time, paradox works in our favor. Once we slow down and take a look around we are able to see things more clearly. There is less anxiety clouding our vision and we can make the few small tweaks needed to shift things in our favor. Instead of years of banging our head against the wall with attempted solutions that only create more problems, we can spend weeks or months carefully enacting small, actionable changes that end up creating a snowball effect of real, meaningful paradigm shifts. Those who study the wisdom nature has to teach us, know the wisdom of going slow. As Lao Tzu wisely put it: “Nature does not hurry, yet everything is accomplished.”    Throughout my time as a person who helps other people I have come across many that have felt that there is a huge chasm separating the person they are from the person they want to be. They feel lost, and they don’t even know where to begin, so feel, what is the use in even trying? As a last ditch effort they turn to a supposed “expert” who they hope will tell them what to do and who to be.
Does this resonate with you? This type of hopelessness and despair happens to the best of us and it does not feel good. If you are in this headspace then please, let me turn your attention to the acorn and the oak. Oak trees are majestic, fast growing, long lasting, and resilient. Yet every oak tree that has ever lived has come from a puny little acorn. Inside each of us is an acorn and an oak. We already have all of the ingredients we need to thrive, to grow up strong, tall, and proud, to be the person we want to be and are meant to be. While things might feel helpless, hopeless, and humble now, I hope you can see that that is what an acorn looks like before growing into an oak tree. How does a therapist come into play in this equation? We simply help to shed some light (insight) and add some water to the soil (therapy homework assignments!). Importantly, we encourage you to see yourself for who you are, a person with unique challenges, and with it unique strengths and abilities. But mostly, the acorn does all of the heavy lifting itself once it remembers it is an oak after all. People start doing what they naturally do when they feel empowered-- they grow. When it comes to your personal growth, I have full faith and confidence that you can change, transform, and embody the person that you want to be. Like the acorn and the oak, your answers lie within.  My partner and I have been passing quarantine time by watching Showtime’s dark family comedy, Shameless. This is a great family therapy show and in this case it is for mature audiences only. I admit, I do enjoy playing armchair psychotherapist as I watch the show and identifying the family dysfunction (and healing!) that takes place. One of the main characters, Fiona Gallagher, is a great example of a parentified child. Have you heard of this term before? I’ll explain through the useful example Fiona provides. Fiona’s parents have both been addicted to drugs and alcohol her whole life, in addition, Fiona’s mother is also diagnosed with bipolar disorder. As the eldest sibling in a family of five other children, Fiona has learned to be the responsible one, the caretaker, the glue of the family. Through years of trauma and while still a child herself, she has become the parent, not only to herself, but also to her siblings, and to her parents. She has formed an identity around her role as the de facto head of the household. This role is often a source of extreme stress, but not unimportantly, the parentified child role also provides a much needed source of pride, self worth, and a seemingly secure and central role within the family. This makes the parentified child role a difficult one to give up. As Fiona’s character grows throughout the show she still has to deal with all of the elements that landed her in the parentified child role in the first place. Poverty, low paying jobs and lack of a social safety net; a criminal underbelly that appears to offer a way out; addictive relationships to sex, drugs, alcohol, and even chaos that seem to offer much needed distraction and connection but just end up making things worse. These are all external problems of our society, but they also become jumbled up and integrated into Fiona and her family’s internal worlds as they try to cope. Here’s the rub. People can’t stay in the parentified child role forever, eventually they have to grow up. And without the provision of many healthy scripts as to how to grow up, the parentified child often flounders. We watch as Fiona repeats many of the same mistakes that her parents did that landed her in the parentified role in the first place. We watch her struggle to let go of her siblings as they grow up and move on (sometimes to the detriment of their personal growth as well). In short, we watch Fiona try to create a whole new identity for herself that will serve her better than the parentified child role does, trying to retain what works, and let go of what doesn’t. If I were to sum up Fiona’s (and of course, the many other parentified children out there’s) predicament in a nutshell it would be this: The coping skills that you learned to survive are not the same coping skills that you will need to learn in order to thrive. So, is any of this ringing a bell? Do you think you might be a parentified child (or, to put it in plain English, that you have formed an identity around growing up too soon)? Your situation may very well be different than that of Fiona’s in many respects. It is important to recognize that parentified children can grow up in families of any socioeconomic status and can be any gender or ethnicity. Many people might shy away from identifying as the parentified child because their family situation growing up wasn’t “that bad.” That’s okay too. There is no level of trauma or dysfunction you need to surpass in order to have this role resonate with you. The main question is, does organizing your experience around this concept help you gain insight into where you are now and where you go from here? So, what’s a parentified child to do? Therapy can help get into the nitty gritty of the situation, through a positive, supportive relationship with a therapist, you can start processing your experiences and creating personalized solutions that work for you. But for the sake of making a bullet pointed list, here are some things that might be helpful for the parentified child.
   Let me start this post off with a disclaimer by saying, I know that some people like getting advice and that there are many situations where advice is warranted. I have to admit, I love reading advice columns (and listening to advice podcasts) myself sometimes. And every once in a while you get a little kernel of practical wisdom that genuinely points you in the right direction.
But is there anything worse than bearing your soul, revealing a problem that you are truly struggling with, either to your therapist (especially your therapist), your family, friends, or romantic partner and getting some common sense solution in return? Of course, this advice is mostly always well meaning but let's set the record straight right now. The solution to struggling with your body image is usually not just cutting carbs. The solution to rekindling the passion in your marriage is usually not just going out for a date night. The solution to coping with a chronic illness is usually not just doing yoga. The solution to struggling to find a job is usually not just revising your resume and "sending it around". The solution to loneliness is usually not just joining a social club. The solution to reconnecting with a parent or child is usually not just picking up the phone. The solution to depression is usually not just thinking positive thoughts. The solution to nightmares is usually not just listening to soothing music before bed. The list goes on and on.... Now, I added the disclaimer of usually because I am a believer in never say never. What doesn’t work for most might still work for some, and that is perfectly okay. For some of us, we genuinely never thought of a pretty straightforward solution and once we had that, we’re good. But usually, we know the common sense solutions to our problems. Especially if we are at the point where we think a therapist might be helpful. We have typically tried or thought up these common sense solutions to our problems before and there is something mentally and emotionally blocking us from simply enacting one of these solutions and moving on with our lives. That’s what makes a problem a problem and not just another part of life, the problem doesn’t go away by doing something straightforward and common sense. Life’s everyday challenges can go away with an easy fix. But the problems and patterns that we feel stuck in? These are emotionally charged. They often carry deeply held meanings about ourselves, others, and the world that we have held onto, maybe even from childhood. While some of these meanings we might be able to see are hurting us and we need to let go of, other parts might feel like they are protecting us, or are a part of our identity. It takes work to separate the wheat from the chaff. The other key word in the list above is “just.” Sure, doing yoga, picking up the phone, and going out for more date nights are often really helpful, but they are like the tip of the iceberg. They are the products of our deeper, behind the scenes, inner work to unblock the things that are holding us back from doing what we know is rational and healthy for us. This is no small feat! While advice is helpful, we need more than just advice to move us through the problems that we work through in life. In a nutshell, personal problems are not superficial problems! They require processing, consultation, varying levels of time, courage, inner strength, and checking your work. I have sometimes thought, having the privilege to collaborate with clients as they work through their personal problems is like seeing upper level physics PhD’s work through algorithms, it is important work and it is no joke. And the best thing is you can do it regardless of your level of education and skill (we are all the experts on ourselves after all). While advice talks down to us, telling us what to do, the real work of therapy pushes us inward and upward, towards solutions that change the very nature of our approach to life, often fixing many of our smaller seemingly unconnected problems in the process.  All of us have things we struggle with in life. For some of us, we might have particular areas that seem to always be causing us trouble. Maybe, try as we might, we find ourselves in one bad relationship after another and it feels nearly impossible to break the cycle. Or maybe our relationships are healthy, but in our professional or academic life we find we are always struggling.
When these struggles happen it is only natural that our brain wants to make sense of our experiences and we start to make generalizations about ourselves, and life in general. How many times have you heard someone say some variation of, “It’s just impossible to find a good man/woman/partner in this city/nowadays/because of social media” or “School/work isn’t fair, all the teachers/bosses/coworkers are out to fail me/lay me off anyways.” You might not struggle with these specific examples, but maybe this sounds familiar because you’ve made sense of your life this way recently or in the past? Making these sorts of generalizing complaints seems rather harmless and oftentimes it might just be a way to blow off steam and commiserate. That’s fair. However, in our private moments and with the compounding effect of time and stress these generalizations often go to a darker place and turn inward. “I am unlovable,” “I am destined to be unsuccessful,” “There’s something wrong with me,” or “I just let people walk all over me.” Woah. These types of negative narratives can cause serious damage and hold us back. Like a poison cure that we unknowingly put into our system, our own narratives that we weave to make sense of our struggles can become toxic self fulfilling prophecies. The more we believe in these stories, the weaker they make us, thus playing into a feedback loop where we believe these negative thoughts about ourselves even more! It often happens that we forget that we were the ones who came up with these negative narratives in the first place and the stories become part of “the facts of life.” There’s good news though. Although our thoughts can often go to a black and white place (lovable or unlovable, success or failure, alone forever or happily ever after) our lives are rarely this black and white. In therapy, we not only parse out the stories you’ve been telling yourself, but we also look for the exceptions to the seemingly overwhelming problems these stories try to encapsulate. Let's look at some examples. Say you are struggling with always selling yourself short in your career. You never ask for a raise and always seem to choose the wrong job for yourself. Are there any other areas in your life where you have a discerning eye, don’t take no for an answer, and enter negotiations with confidence? This can be as small as interacting with customer service when making a return! Or maybe you are really struggling with procrastinating on your assignments, saving your work to the last minute to disastrous results. Where in your life are you organized, focused, confident, and motivated? The answer may lie in how you approach your hobbies. There’s usually always a few places in our lives where we break our own rules. These counter examples to our black and white negative stories hold a wealth of wisdom in them. What makes these situations different? How do you feel when you are living and working in the exception? How do you approach these situations differently? What skills are you using when you are in the exception? How do you see yourself then? Can you use some of the same skills and approaches you use during the exception when you are now working through the problem? The important thing to note here is that you don’t have to start from scratch. If you are alive and especially if you are doing something so positive for yourself like coming to therapy or reading a therapy blog post than your problem isn’t happening ALL the time. Together, we can not only identify what your negative narratives are and where they might have originated, we can also look for the solutions to the problems these narratives try to describe. The solutions are often hidden in plain sight, they are right there in what is already working. |
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