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What (Really) is Mindfulness?

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Maybe you have noticed, or is it me, that mindfulness is everywhere these days. Like many currents that flow through the media streams and the popular awareness, it is often used imprecisely and poorly understood. As a result, mindfulness can be dismissed as a fad or even misunderstood as a practice quite opposite from its actual intent. So with the help of mindfulness trainer Jonas Batt LMHC, whom I very liberally quote below, let’s consider mindfulness: what it is, how it is practiced, and what it offers.

Mindfulness is a practice of awareness. At its essence, it involves bringing the body and mind into the same place at the same time in a purposeful, open-hearted, and non-judging way. Mindfulness is not a philosophy or a theory that can be learned from a book; it is the practice of bringing compassionate awareness to the immediate circumstances of our lives, moment-by-moment.

Instead of turning away from our experience and letting our minds wander into the past and future and everywhere in-between, we turn our attention to the present moment’s experience with curiosity, acceptance, and kindness. When we are aware of our experience in the present moment – thoughts, sensations, emotions – we have the opportunity to make choices. We can be increasingly responsive and skillful in our thoughts, words and actions and less unskillfully reactive due to old, unconscious, habitual patterns.

Mindfulness practice can cultivate our own natural capacity for presence and ease. The practice is fostered by simple, repeated disciplines—a variety of gentle and meditative activities, some achieved while sitting or lying and others that engage the body in movement. All of them draw us into an awareness of what is actually happening right now, allowing us to relax the body, find the breath and rest into the present moment. We discover how to turn on our bodies’ natural calming system. We increasingly feel a sense of agency and empowerment in working with our lives.

So the “point” of mindfulness is to get calm, relaxed, peaceful and at ease, right? Actually no, that is not the aim of practice. While very pleasant states of happiness and “ok-ness” are fruits of the practice, mindfulness supports us to meet whatever comes, whether pleasant and joyful or difficult and sorrowful, with resiliency and balance. Since we are human beings with human experience, we will experience ups and downs, joys and sorrows. When we are present and aware in the face of what life offers us, we experience greater wellbeing, no matter the situation.

Jon Kabat-Zinn, a pioneer whose work has helped bring mindfulness into the mainstream, calls mindfulness simply “the art of being fully human.” It does not promise to eliminate life’s difficulties, but works to change our relationship with those difficulties, to give us the gift of our best, most resourceful and empowered selves. It helps us transform habitual patterns of reactivity, resistance and judgment into compassionate self-awareness in the face of all life’s joys and challenges. It is an art well worth the path to mastery.

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

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We live in a time of 7 Habits, 3 steps to Health and Security, 8 Dates, the newest John/Julie Gottmann work; often a way of looking at a prescription or quick template of how to move from one place to another. In the mid 90s I was lucky enough to learn of the work of Stephen Covey, “The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People.” At that time, as a trainer with folks in the criminal justice system, I used the material to assist trainees and executive staff to organize challenges into realizable steps of action to move forward. Later on down the line, many practitioners and systems of learning echoed some of this wisdom. (See Daniel Goleman’s work, where they use the system of RULER: Recognizing, Understanding, Labeling, Expressing, Regulating.) In fact, I would say that one of the stand-out benefits of the 7 Habits model is that it is full of wisdom that is timeless, helpful in many different settings.

A summary of the 7 Habits follows. Habit One: Be Proactive; Habit Two: Begin With the End in Mind; Habit Three: Put First Things First. (These first 3 Habits capture a system of Self-Management.) Habit Four: Think Win-Win; Habit Five: Seek First to Understand, Then Be Understood; Habit Six: Synergize; Habit Seven: Sharpen the Saw. (The last 4 habits had to do with work/challenges in working with/managing others.) At the time of learning this material, and having the opportunity to train with Stephen Covey and others from his organization, I knew I was learning some things that were familiar, some that were timeless, and many things that would continue to serve my ongoing personal and professional development.

Within this work, there are several practical and usable tools, ways of thinking/acting. One such tool is the ‘Emotional Bank Account,’ or EBA. In 7 habit language it is a way of examining ways of being/practicing in our daily lives using the model of a bank account, including deposits and withdrawals. Deposits might include ‘seeking first to understand,’ in contrast to a withdrawal practice where one might unconsciously seek to be the first one to be understood in a disagreement. Deposits: keeping promises, kindnesses being courteous, clarifying expectations, being loyal to an absent party, offering apologies, or being open to feedback. Conversely, withdrawals would be along the lines of breaking promises, un-kindnesses, violating expectations, being disloyal, duplicitous, leading with pride, conceit, arrogance, or rejecting feedback.

I have used this tool personally as I examine my own self-management, deepening awareness of the movement of reactivity to choice (a daily and even moment to moment challenge!) I reset with actions to add to my own system of deposits, carefully managing reactivity that really springs from withdrawals. When I take my eye off the choices that are available, this is often a result of missing some strategies of self-care.

In work with couples, this has been an invaluable tool. When engaging in conversation, each member of the couple can state individual understandings of deposits and withdrawals. Facilitated conversation (seeking first to understand, then be understood) often follows. Sometimes an agreement is made to focus on one area, one concrete place of action that each can give attention to in order to enable the shift from what they don’t want to what they do want–or withdrawals to deposits.

While all this may sound easy or simple, the execution, consistent attention to, or commitment to a new way of being is the daily, lived challenge. This is often the work of therapy: to look at where actions or practices are missing the mark, and having conversations to repair or build something new. I often cite Recovery wisdom of, ‘how does one eat an elephant?’ ‘One piece/chunk at a time.’ Individual shifts, modifications–sprinkled with tons of patience and good humor–begin the sacred and meaningful work, step by step, piece by piece, of ‘creating that which is new.’

A Kid’s Guide to Play Therapy

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(Ok, so this is really a guide for grown-ups. Perhaps this can help you understand and talk with children about child-directed, psychoanalytic play therapy.)

Yes, it’s really true. All you’re asked to do is show up and PLAY. You can show me how to play with me if you want. There are no rules, except that we are safe.

This is really important for us, because I know that you can’t be expected to open up and play if you don’t feel safe. Because you’re a kid, I know that thinking and talking can be hard. We know that play is another good way of expressing yourself, and it can be safe and more fun than talking at your age. Don’t worry – I speak this “play language” too. When we play, you can act things out, explore feelings, and feel understood, and the cool thing is that this is happening in the background while we play. We have lots of great toys.

To me, they each mean something and help me understand what you’re working on in your life. But we can talk about those things when you’re older, when you’re expected to talk. For now, let’s stick to the toys. At the start, it is important that I get to really learn who you are, and where you come from, so that I can know how to be helpful. It is also super-important for you and your family to decide if I might be a good fit for you. I’ll meet with your parents for a long, boring interview and ask them lots of questions about you and the family. When you and I first meet, I’ll explain the rule (about safety) and I’ll try and get to know you a bit. I’ll ask questions about what you like to do for fun, what you like to eat, and other things. I’ll also ask you some funny questions that help me know how you think and feel. Then I’ll show you all of our toys. They’re all organized in bins so we know where to find things; everything will be in it’s right place each time. In the first session, we might even have time to start playing some!

When we play, a lot is going on, but most of it is behind-the-scenes. You’re choosing what we play with and how we play. I join in, and follow your lead. Because I’ve learned about you, the things I say and do in the play are chosen carefully. I’m always thinking about what might be going on, and what might help. Sometimes my play character, for example, will say just the right thing that your character needs to hear and learn words for, such as, “Ugh, I feel so tired of getting beat up. I don’t like feeling this weak and helpless!!!” Or, maybe I say the wrong thing and our characters battle it out. I might then say, “Oh, boy- I really messed up and said the wrong thing and you really let me know it. I’m so sorry.” There is no script, but it does help that I have done an assessment of you at the start.

If you’re wondering why you’d come to a place like this, maybe I can help. Kids ages 3 to teenager come here for lots of reasons. As is usually the case, it seems that you could use some special time in a safe place with a person who understands some things about what would help you feel better and keep doing your job (to grow!). It can be really nice to have this special relationship – different from that with parents or teacher – in an ongoing way. I’m sure you’re working on things, and we can work on these together, with play. We all want to feel better, and to do our job – which is, to GROW. Play therapy can help you do that.

It is also best when I can work with your parents on the side to help them be the best parents for you that they can be. Rest assured – we won’t ever use your time for that. When I meet with them, it also helps me know how things are going for you at home and at school. The more the grown-ups talk, the more you and I can focus on playing. By the way – I’ll let you know when the grown-ups meet.

So, don’t worry – you still have lots of time before you’re able to really talk about the hard things going on in your life, your big feelings, and your developmental drives. Your language right now is PLAY, and I speak it, too.

Dr. Matt Percy is a licensed clinical psychologist at Samaritan Center. He sees children ages 3 and older for play therapy and conducts psychological evaluations. He can be contacted at (206) 527-2266 x347 or mpercy@samaritanps.org.

Love and Imperfection

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One long-ago Christmas, a few weeks after my husband’s death, my children and I sat in the family room of new friends in California.

There were two pianos in the room and we sat, on that dark winter afternoon, listening as our host and his 10-year-old son, Karl, played a duet.  Midway through the piece, Karl stumbled and began to fall behind a bit.  Without pausing, his father called cheerfully over his shoulder, “Karl, keep going! It’s not whether you hit every note right.  It’s whether you can recover.”

We saw Karl lean forward as he concentrated on the music, and he did catch up.  He and his father finished the piece together, smiles on their faces, laughing and accepting the enthusiastic applause of their small audience.

“It’s not whether you hit every note right. It’s whether you can recover.”  Words delivered from a young father to his young son, not carelessly or dismissively but in a spirit of generosity.  Of respect and friendship.  And the words worked.  For the 10-year-old in the moment.  And for me in the months to follow as I struggled with the broken pieces of an imperfect life.

Many years later, when my children were grown and I was learning to be a family therapist, I discovered the books and, later in a training workshop, the gentle and wise person of Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy*, the creator of the theory of Contextual Therapy.

What I appreciated most about Nagy’s vision of individual and family therapy was his understanding of the deep need we all have for fairness and justice in our relationships and, equally important, our need for ways to understand and cope with the injustice and perceived unfairness that is inevitable in family relationships.

I was comforted by his putting greater weight on a person’s good intentions and honorable motives than on the “right” outcome or the expected, hoped-for results.  That seemed to me both generous and practical, given that we are human beings.

And so I carry with me both in my work and my life – which I find often look like the same thing—the words of the young father and the old teacher.

It’s not whether we hit every note right.  It’s more about what we do after we haven’t hit the note right.  It’s not about being perfect or trying to be.  It’s about why we do what we do.  It’s about what we do when we realize we’re not perfect and they’re not and nothing is.  It’s about love and imperfection.

*Ivan Boszormenyi-Nagy was a Hungarian-American psychiatrist and one of the founders of the field of family therapy. Contextual Therapy is based on the ideas of a person’s indebtedness to his or her family of origin, the influence of one’s biological relations, and concepts such as the consequences of ethical and unethical relating. You can read more about his theory of Contextual Therapy in his books, including Invisible Loyalties and Between Give and Take.

The Heart of Listening

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People freely acknowledge that they want to listen better. Listening well, they admit, can be a huge challenge. They have heard the complaints of their partners and friends: You miss my real point! You seek only to fix my problem! You don’t seem to hear or acknowledge my feelings. These are real barriers. But there is another obstacle that derails or overheats many of our conversations: moral certainty.

We experience it in our private lives. And with dispiriting regularity, we hear it in the public arena: one voice with ironclad moral certainty arguing fiercely with an equally strident and equally certain opposing voice. So many important issues that seem deadlocked in hostility; so many people with opposing positions, sometimes espousing hatred and violence.

In a recent radio story, a local man related his efforts to help a few homeless people living in tents near his neighborhood. Passing the encampment on his commute to and from work, he began to meet and speak with some of the unhoused men and women about their day-to-day hardships. A common theme emerged: the lack of bathrooms. With no nearby accommodations, people resorted to squatting in the bushes, a practice that they found unsanitary, unsafe, and undignified.

The man got the idea of supplying materials for a camp toilet: an army surplus tent, toilet paper and sanitizer, cat litter, and a five-gallon bucket with a seat. The idea caught on, and over time he has delivered more than 75 of these toilet kits to encampments in the Seattle region.

What struck me about his account—a tech worker with an idea and a desire to help—was not so much his action as his frame of mind. As he pursued his project, he encountered neighbors and friends who objected to his do-good gestures. “You aren’t really helping; you’re just contributing to the problem,” they complained. They contended that he was actually doing harm by enabling the unsheltered families and individuals to continue in an unstable and unhealthy way of living.

His reply has stayed with me: “This has become my mantra: ‘If you have moral certainty, you aren’t in deep enough.’” He was not insisting that he was clearly right; he was contending that the problem becomes more complex as you get in deeper. Certainty becomes difficult or impossible.

It’s a notion that I have encountered again and again in my life and work as a professional listener. “If you have moral certainty, you aren’t in deep enough.” Being with people in their moral dilemmas, accompanying them as they “get in deeper,” generally means one of two things: in many cases we discover that they are uncomfortable with moral certainties (their own or others’); other times, their discomfort lies in their experience of moral uncertainty—and our conversations often reveal that this unsettled state of mind is actually more faithful to the complexity of the issue than a wished-for moral certainty might be.

Listening well is a challenge in all our lives. The health and growth of our relationships depend on it. Can we recognize and suspend our moral certainties in the interest of listening and relating? Can we go deeper into the complexity of morally difficult problems that face us as persons, families, and communities? Can we let go of certainty as the goal—striving instead for some measure of personal clarity about moral issues that is rooted in a recognition of their complexity? That appears to be one of the critical challenges of this time and place.

With The Rain In Our Face

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In the 10 years that I have worked in the area of mental health, there have been a number of clients whose stories have stayed with me. I find myself thinking of them often. I’d like to share one of those with you.

“Mary” (not her real name) first found her love for prose, poetry and theater when she was in high school. Later, as she was raising her own children, it became part of her life’s work to introduce the children in her community to the performing arts.

At the peak of her career, she suffered a heart attack that threatened to disrupt everything. It left her with memory loss and many other health complications. Her role as an educator and theater performer appeared to be over.

Over the next few years, she took different jobs, just to support herself. Her world started to shrink around her. She found herself spending most of her time in her apartment alone, leaving only for work and medical appointments. Her suffering and pain were compounded by isolation, grief and the loss of her life’s meaning.

During one of our counseling sessions, Mary remembered an experience that helped us find a new way to confront her significant losses.

She recalled leaving her apartment one evening, venturing out for a short walk in the cold Pacific Northwest drizzle. As she had done many times before, she pulled up her rain hood and tucked her head down to avoid the cold sting of the rain. Then, to her own surprise, she did something different. She lifted her head, pulled her hood back, and let the rain fall on her face. In that moment, instead of avoiding what she thought of as unpleasant, she chose to welcome it.

This experience became a metaphor for Mary. In our counseling sessions, we would reflect upon and come back to that metaphor many times. Her illness and her pain did not disappear, but now she had a way to change how she related to the pain. Instead of avoiding and turning away, she could choose to face it like “the cold rain in her face.”

Over time, Mary returned to a number of writing projects that had been put on hold because of her illness. She went on to enroll in an MFA program and has written several short stories about her childhood. She also has found a meaningful connection within a community of writers.

Metaphors are healing gifts that come to us from many places: from scripture, faith traditions, families, culture, recovery communities, and–as in Mary’s case–from our own lived experience. When we find the courage to walk “with the rain in our face” we are able to live life fully, accepting the presence of pain, loss and grief without being overwhelmed by it.

A Restaurant, a Waitress, a Chef and Me

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Several times a year I go away for several days for alone time and solitude in order to refresh and renew my being.  I was reading and reflecting about agape love, that unconditional love that Jesus invites us to embrace, as well as the Spirit of Agape.  As I returned to the mountain village where I was staying for an evening meal, I became intentional about “being love” to anything I encountered and to be in the Spirit of that love.

The voice inside me spoke and guided me away from the restaurants I was considering earlier in the day.  Walking a mile from the heart of this village, in the rain, seemed so absurd.  There, the last hotel and restaurant in town seemed to draw my feet and soul.  When I glanced at the menu, my jaw dropped.  On it were items from the Swabian Alps in Southwest Germany, where my paternal ancestors resided before coming to America.  These dishes are a cultural heritage, yet not seen outside of that region.

I sat alone at a table.  The waitress approached and asked me to please be gentle with her because it was her first night on the job.  I told her we would get through this together.  I asked her before she offered me any water, to please inform the chef that I was taken by the menu selections.  In a matter of moments Chef Joe poked his head out of the kitchen, found my gaze upon him, and lifted up his thumb in gratitude.  An energy and synergy was in the air.  To my surprise, it was not the waitress that brought me my German dinner delight, it was Chef Joe!

The next day I was led back to the same restaurant.  This time I asked the waitress to ask the chef if he would prepare a meal with two of the other Swabian Alp menu offerings onto one plate.  Chef Joe came and asked me if I liked red cabbage.  I replied, “yes.”  Then Chef Joe replied, “I’ll take care of you.”  The level of energy between the chef, the waitress and myself was so noticeable that the hotel manager came to me and asked if I she could take a photo of the meal prepared for me by Chef Joe.  She wanted to get her corporate boss to get approval to add this dish to the menu.

Chef Joe personally brought me my meal of three different Swabian Alp delights.  I then told him what had me so appreciative of these dishes-I had travelled three years ago to the Swabian Alps region to frequent the region of my ancestors.  He then asked me if I wanted to know anything about him.  I  learned that he knew all about this region, that he was trained to be a chef in the Pearl of the Swiss Alps, that he and his team won the Olympic Chef Gold Medal. The connection between us, the waitress, the management was so spirit filled with love for the invisible reality that makes up our very being and nature in this time and space.

What a difference awareness of being agape and in its spirit makes.  Without it I would have simply sat at the table, had a meal, watched the TV, paid the bill and departed — never connecting with anyone.

Mariah’s Story

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Mariah came to Samaritan, lost and out of options. She was homeless and living in her car. Her most recent relationship had imploded. She was using marijuana, trying to soothe her stress. She knew she needed help.

Mariah’s childhood and adolescence was a story of trauma. She was a helpless witness to her severely mentally ill father’s arrests, suicide attempts and hospitalizations. Her mother‘s energy had gone mainly to caring for her husband, leaving very little love and attention for her daughter. The family moved often and Mariah remembers never living in a place long enough to develop real friendships.

Despite these formidable obstacles, Mariah went to college – the first person in her family to do so. After she graduated, she moved to Seattle, taking a job at a community agency that paid less than $15,000 a year. She struggled financially, lived with five roommates, and found herself jumping from relationship to relationship. The stability she longed for eluded her. When she was unable to afford her rent, she began living in her car. She felt her motivation slipping away. She began to lose hope.

Somehow Mariah heard about Samaritan Center and she summoned the courage to call. That one phone call changed her story of loss and trauma to a story of hope and healing. For $15 a session, Mariah met with a therapist who was able to connect deeply with her pain. Together they talked about the trauma Mariah had endured as a child. The therapist helped her navigate healthier ways of being in relationships. She began to believe in herself again.

Mariah has stopped using substances and has some new job prospects. She hopes to find housing soon. Thanks to the relationship she and her therapist developed and the healing that resulted, new doors are opening for Mariah.

Making a Living

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In the movie Up in the Air, George Clooney plays a man whose job consists of firing people. Corporations contract with him to deliver the bad news to their casualties. And he has mastered his art, describing his work to an upstart apprentice in spiritual terms: something akin to ferrying the souls of the newly unemployed to a place where they can begin to face the reality of their situation.

In one termination interview, he brings a desperate man to the discovery that the loss of his job means that he can pursue the culinary career he had long ago sacrificed in the name of safety and dependability. “Your children don’t respect you for paying the bills. What they respect is people who follow their dreams.” This man’s change of heart happens in about three minutes onscreen. Not so realistic, maybe. And yet the essential experience, given enough time, is believable enough.

Losing a job can be devastating, especially in a down economy. A few are laid off one day and find new jobs the next, but others–perhaps you–become unemployed for months and months. You might feel crushed, disconnected. More than your income has collapsed; so too, in some cases, has your identity. The employment crisis of “What am I to do?” becomes a spiritual crisis of “Who am I?” Loss of your job can expose an even greater void.

The loss of your job has meaning for you. That meaning can be influenced by your stage of life, whether it falls in your early, confidence-building years; or it occurs in your productive and often driven middle phase, or it coincides with your mid-life self-assessment; or it lands late in your career, when you are questioning your ability or desire to keep pace with changing circumstances. And in the end, the meaning you discover is, of course, highly individual.

Understanding the meaning of this transition is part necessity and part opportunity. In ordinary circumstances, people tend to count on the requirements of the day to guide them–through the day, the week, from week to week, and so on. But this is different. Without a job, a person might need a compass, a way of understanding what is ultimately important, because the field is so desolate, the usual landmarks gone.

Many a man who has been living to work vows that, next time, he will work to live. Many a woman who has allowed the job to define success realigns her work with her own most deeply held values. “What am I to do?” is both an employment question and a spiritual one. And the compass you consult to guide your response is critical.

Under the pressure of finding work, you might consider it a luxury to spend time clarifying the compass by which you establish your direction in life. Fair enough. It is not a requirement for everyone faced with unemployment. But should you find the loss debilitating or should the workless phase prove protracted through no choice of your own, a deep consideration of your compass, your guiding values and objectives, can be the most healing and productive step you can take.

10 Tips for Parenting Your Adult Children

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When I lived and worked in one of Arizona’s retirement cities and was doing group therapy with older adults, one question that came up in group discussions again and again was: “How can I have a better relationship with my grown children and grandchildren?”

Some people just wanted to know how to get their grandchildren to say “thank you” for birthday gifts. Others were struggling with how to say “no” to their adult children who “were still on the payroll,” expecting money that their parents were not in a position to give. Others were in conflict with adult children who objected to their entering into a second marriage. Others were estranged from their adult children. All of them were trapped in old, painful family patterns.

Now, back in Seattle where I work with adults of all ages, the question remains a compelling one. Some of what I learned in my Arizona experience and in my own family relationships is shared in these “10 Tips for Parenting Your Grown Children.”

  1. Continue to have a life. Keeping your own interests and activities alive is healthy for you and makes you more interesting to others.
  2. Be true to yourself. Pay attention to your feelings, your intuition and your beliefs, using this information to help you make good decisions.
  3. Choose when to talk and when to listen. Improve your sense of timing. Recognize that you can do only your half of the relationship.
  4. Recall your own relationship with your parents and in-laws. Let yourself be guided by what you learned about what worked and what didn’t.
  5. Expect everyone to treat you with respect. All the time. Be respectful of everyone else. All the time.
  6. Understand that you need not address everything. Some things that need to be said may not need to be said by you.
  7. Be willing to do nothing when that appears to be the best option. Often when nothing seems to be happening, something quite important is.
  8. Accept that you are, forever, the parent. At some level, your children are reassured by your willingness to hold on to that role. Gently.
  9. Take responsibility for managing your own feelings. When you’re angry, fearful or despairing, find ways to work through it.
  10. Keep putting kindness and understanding into your relationships. Accept realities, set reasonable limits and choose how you want to behave.