Be What They Don’t Want You to Be

By Concentric Therapist Christian Younginer, LCPC, NCC

“There's no earthly way of knowing

Which direction we are going

There's no knowing where we're rowing

Or which way the river's flowing

Is it raining, is it snowing?

Is a hurricane a-blowing? - uh!

Not a speck of light is showing

So the danger must be growing

Are the fires of Hell a-glowing?

Is the grisly reaper mowing?

Yes! The danger must be growing

For the rowers keep on rowing

And they're certainly not showing

Any signs that they are slowing!”

-Roald Dahl

In only 2 months there have been unconscionable shifts, worries, grief, and desecration. We’re drowning in more news than we could ever hope to process. So the murky mantra of “stay informed” keeps us glued to news and media. Born out of passion, fear, and indignation this mantra is a tricky one. It condenses down to a simple question:

How do I stay informed without spiraling?

Simply put, humans aren’t meant to know the opinions of thousands and thousands of people. It’s too much. Bellowing, personal attacks, and the derision of every person who ever held a thought on a matter exists for my consumption. Feasts of outrage, buffets of righteousness. The news self-selects for such outrage and fires it at us like a firehose. Sadly, this post could’ve been simpler before all this started, but now the firehose contains very real threats to long-held beliefs about how the world worked and the defilement of once unalienable rights.

The grisly Reaper makes headline after headline, sowing calamity and malignance into our already stressful days. He certainly shows no signs of slowing and the yes-men keep on rowing towards what feels like devastation. We could call it alarmist if only the alarms weren’t already screaming. And the comment section’s growing and shows no signs of slowing and the danger must be growing because the reaper keeps on crowing that the line we must be toeing bends backward into what we hoped was history. 

So we put on our waders and stand, chest deep, in the floodwaters of news media, looking to stay abreast of executive orders, bills, and other sins. We believe it's the best that can be done in the face of such powerlessness and helplessness. But what happens when reassurance-seeking isn’t working and it’s 2am and we’re 100 comments deep in a Reddit thread on today’s fresh hell? 

More information isn’t always reassuring. The reason is that news is an idempotent process. That is, further repeated action brings no change. Reading the news over and over brings no new information. Once we’ve learned a piece of information, leave the source and sit with it. Only when new information is released can we then learn something new. 

It is imperative we discern the point at which our information-seeking becomes reassurance-seeking. 

The point between when we’ve learned something, and then we return to another source to hear it put a different way, or a comment section where it’s retold 50 different ways, shellacked in bias, all with the exact same information we already had. It’s called doomscrolling for a reason.

Yes, alternative perspectives and educated deciphering of complex topics are important. Seek them out, but remain watchful for yourself. Look out for those signs you may be seeking reassurance rather than information. 

When you find you’re hitting that point, don’t turn to your phone for reassurance, turn to people. 

Real people. People you can hug, see, cry with, scream with. Skip the comment section. Read Bell Hooks. Write your anger down to keep it from corroding you. Listen to music that gives you power. Read poetry. Write poetry. Protest. Be vulnerable. Scream. Read Bertrand Russell. Love unrelentingly. Learn self-defense, then scream again that you even have to. Read Octavia Butler. Protect the identities of endangered people. Be what they don’t want you to be. 

And when your nervous system feels shot from mere existence, listen to it. Take breaks. Prioritize stillness over productivity. Give yourself permission to produce less. Walk. Find beauty in the natural world. Learn how a grasshopper’s leg works. Savor. Go to therapy. Normalize slowness. Organize a cabinet. Read the Wikipedia page for Bread. Play. Invite friends over for soup. Breath deeply. Rest. Read Tara Brach. Grow plants. 

It is as if the world has grown dark. But it is my hope that we can find our own way through the dark with whatever lights us. If you don’t know what this is, let’s find it through therapy. Perhaps finding your light can brighten another’s world too.

Maybe newspapers had it right. I’m going to try reading the news once per day and leaving it at that. Because there may be no way of knowing which direction we are going, and the grisly Reaper may keep mowing. And I know my privilege is showing, but I need to keep on going - to help those I can. 

Where's My Coconut Radio?

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

When reaching into my therapeutic bag of tools, seldom do 1960’s TV shows come out. But as I sit in the world that is my apartment these days, I found a kinship with those fateful souls marooned on Gilligan’s Island. 

I ran with this idea, not wondering where it would lead, but I had nothing else to do- as is often the case in this shelter-in-place. For those not familiar with the premise of the TV show: a merry group of vacationers, under the impression that they would be taking a 3-hour tour (a three-hour tourrrr), are tossed about in the seas and left stranded on an island, with only the clothes on their backs, their wits, and the several large steamer trunks of clothes packed by an ostentatiously wealthy couple. 

While not anywhere close to being alive in the 1960s, I am well aware that the decade as a whole requires a suspension of disbelief to make sense of it, and Gilligan’s Island is no different. Throughout the series, the Professor constructs various and outlandish gizmos and contraptions with nothing more than coconuts and acceptance by the viewer. And this is the crux of why this show came to me while pacing my apartment. The Professor, the eponymous inventor who was on this tour for some reason, built a coconut radio… A radio, made of coconuts. Not like a transmitter to call for help, just a radio. And it’s this level of acceptance that I think can be therapeutically useful during our new reality in this pandemic. 

A person who makes a coconut radio is not a person who is waiting to be rescued. This invention speaks to these ill-prepared islanders’ acceptance and presentness of their situation. Hell, they never even tried to fix the boat. 

This got me wondering: what is my coconut radio? What is something that can help me accept that I am not in control right now, but find a way to live within the situation handed to me? I am not in control of when this shelter-in-place will be lifted. I am not in control of what the world will look like in 1 month, 6 months, a year after this pandemic. But just in the same way the folks on Gilligan’s Island arrived (surprisingly quickly too) at a place of peace with their circumstances, maybe I can find a way to sit back, make a coconut radio, and find control where I can. 

Planning for the future, for when quarantine and the pandemic are over, keeps me from living inside the quarantine and the pandemic. And if I’m unable to live in it, then I’m nervously ticking off the days, festering in the anxiety of my apartment. So this is my challenge to myself, find my coconut radio. Find something that helps me stay present and accepting of my surroundings, rather than dreaming of a time when I can get off this island.

Remember The Weatherperson?

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

What We Wish Life Were Like

The Curiosity rover landed on Mars August 6th, 2012, the end of a flight that began November 26th, 2011-- 9 months prior. At its traveling speeds, all predetermined by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), scientists had to calculate where an orbiting planet would be 9 months from the moment of launch. In fact, they needed to know where Mars would be years in advance as they began building and programming the rover. They were able to plan for, predict, and pinpoint the location of a planet hurtling through space at 53,600 mph, rotating at 532 mph down to the meter to land a rover on its surface.

This is possible due to the predictability of the celestial bodies. Astronomers from thousands of years ago plotted out eclipses for hundreds of generations into the future, with impressive accuracy. It’s that there just aren’t very many variables in space; bodies in motion stay in motion, unless a force acts on them. And if no force does, they keep on trucking. Thus, their location is predictable. This does not mean that any part of landing a rover on another planet is easy--it’s just possible.

What Life Is Actually Like

Conversely, it is a common occurrence that shuttle launches are cancelled, last minute, tanks fueled, on the pad- due to weather… Earth weather. A shuttle, bound for space, to another planet, is grounded because humans cannot accurately predict the weather more than a couple of days out. And even then it can be a crapshoot. 

The reason for this comes down to something much more akin to living life: variables and information. There are simply too many variables to predict and too much information we’re not able to know. For example, if I knew the direction and velocity of every air particle on Earth, I could give you an accurate weather model. Obviously, this is not possible. So we’re left making educated guesses, working with what we have, and most importantly a social understanding that forecasts are guesses, not gospel. With this understanding comes a grace--sometimes annoyance--but a grace for being wrong. An ‘it’s out of our hands’ amenableness that wonderfully conflicts with the modern American desire for planning, preparation, and predictability. 

What Can We Do?

So often we try to plan for every eventuality, scrutinizing the details, languishing in an anxious mire of a desire for control, only to see our plans crash into a Martian hillside, due to an unforeseen variable. 

Often, the anxious try to view life with such a level of predictability. Hopes that the world will fit into plans and preparations, only to be disappointed when something unaccounted for goes awry. Often times this desire for control flows into our lives as a nagging generalized anxiety, a worry for all things in an effort to be prepared for every outcome. We wish life were as predictable as space travel. As oxymoronic as it sounds, going about our day may be more complicated than rocket science. And we tell ourselves that the stakes are just as high. 

As mentioned in regards to weather, the secret lies in the ability to tolerate the ambiguity of an uncertain system. We can be disappointed with an inaccurate weather report, but continue on to the next day. Yes it can suck when it rains when the news said it wouldn’t, but we don’t hold ourselves responsible for the outcome. In our own lives, we can place an enormous amount of responsibility on ourselves, often for things not in our control. We can assault ourselves with a barrage of ‘should have planned for it’ , ‘should have seen it coming’, or ‘should have done it differently’. All of which are the equivalent of looking at Tuesday’s weather and telling yourself you should’ve known that on Monday. 

Maybe we can have the same grace for the weatherperson, AND with ourselves. If we get it wrong, be disappointed for a bit, be annoyed, but let it go. Tomorrow is another day to try again. If we find ourselves feeling anxious about the ambiguity of life, rather than try to think out the outcomes, what if we gave ourselves permission to feel anxious for a bit? Feeling anxious about the ambiguity of every day is not a failing, but rather an admission to one’s self that we don’t have enough information. And instead of punishing ourselves for trying to know something we can’t, maybe we can have a little grace with ourselves, and remember the weatherperson. 

The Value of Vulnerability

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

Life XXXV by Emily Dickinson

I CAN wade grief,

Whole pools of it,—

I ’m used to that.

But the least push of joy

Breaks up my feet,         5

And I tip—drunken.

Let no pebble smile,

’T was the new liquor,—

That was all!  

Power is only pain,         10

Stranded, through discipline,

Till weights will hang.

Give balm to giants,

And they ’ll wilt, like men.

Give Himmaleh,—         15

They ’ll carry him!

Emily Dickinson’s word choice in the first line sticks with me- she can “wade” grief. She can trudge through the thick, tarry mire of sadness, pain, loss, and sorrow. It really feels like that, doesn’t it? This viscous bog of grief, she’s “used to that”. It’s familiar for her. But joy is foreign. 

Although she can bear the pain of life, let life surprise her with joy and she will stumble, drunkenly. This voices a common human experience: Let something test our resolve, and we will meet that challenge. But let us be vulnerable, and we will dissolve.

It is easier to harden, than to soften. Give comfort and love to giants, and they will “wilt” into ordinary men, but ask them to carry mountains (‘Himmaleh’ is the archaic form of ‘the Himalayas’), and they will offer up themselves.

This brings us to the question of this post: How does a person allow themselves to be vulnerable, without wilting? How do they remain resilient when life gets hard, without hardening themselves?

What is vulnerability?

The insightful Brené Brown defines vulnerability as both “the birthplace of love, belonging, joy, courage, empathy and creativity”, but also as “uncertainty, risk and emotional exposure” (Daring Greatly). So, our options are: recoil at the latter and tell ourselves we don’t need the former OR accept the latter because we accept that we need the former.

There were times in my life where I clung to the idea that ‘ I don’t need others’- to avoid feeling exposed. That idea eventually spoiled, and I was faced with the reality that I DO need others. While I was aware of the fact, I had not yet accepted it. It was not until I accepted that I need others that my journey towards understanding vulnerability began.

Being vulnerable feels like the difference between writing in the 3rd person and 1st person. It is keeping others at a distance, to avoid the pain of feeling exposed- of not being accepted. If you notice, I switched from using “they” and “them” to “I” and “we”. As I wrote, I noticed feeling exposed, but I also noticed feeling satisfied with my self-awareness and honesty. That is, I felt joy in sharing this part of myself so that it might be of help to someone. It is this ‘trade-off’ that I believe Brené Brown is describing. If we can be ok with feeling a little exposed, we can receive wonderful gifts of acceptance, approval, validation, and love.

The Alternative.

In my pursuit of understanding vulnerability, I came to a choice. Would I rather feel uncomfortable or alone? My choice to embrace vulnerability and accept the possible “emotional exposure”, speaks to not only my desire for connection with others, but to the horror of the alternative: feeling alone. Jumping from a burning building does not mean that jumping is not scary, rather the alternative is too horrifying to consider.

Resilience.

What I am suggesting almost seems oxymoronic: Become vulnerable to become stronger. Invulnerability is not a superpower. Unless Superman exists and no one told me. Rather, accepting that we need others is the true superpower. One powerful result of letting ourselves connect is resilience. That is, if we temper ourselves in the furnace of vulnerability, we become stronger than we were. This is possible due to what Brené Brown references as the gifts of vulnerability: love, belonging, joy, courage, and empathy. Having these in our arsenal make us stronger humans, less prone to burnout and emotional distress.

Let us learn to enjoy the intoxicating effects of joy and not let it cause us to stumble. Carry the mountain if asked, because you are strong enough to shoulder it. But also do not wilt at receiving comfort or help. If we accept that we not only need others for support, but also that they have gifts to offer us, we become stronger. More resilient to carry the mountains when we need to and more courageous to be vulnerable when we just can’t carry anything else. It is the courage and strength to say: “ I’m not ok right now. But I will be.”

Asking for Help - Not Waving but Drowning

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

Not Waving but Drowning

By STEVIE SMITH

Nobody heard him, the dead man,   

But still he lay moaning:

I was much further out than you thought   

And not waving but drowning.

Poor chap, he always loved larking

And now he’s dead

It must have been too cold for him his heart gave way,   

They said.

Oh, no no no, it was too cold always   

(Still the dead one lay moaning)   

I was much too far out all my life   

And not waving but drowning.

I believe this poem verbalizes well a common societal pressure. That is, the need to be happy externally, even if drowning internally. As we go through our day, met with multiple “How’s it going?”, we invariably are trained to answer “fine” or “great”, without the slightest thought. The question we’re left with is: how would anyone know I’m drowning, when I always give them a friendly wave?

Asking for help can be deceptively difficult. Frequently I hear from clients that asking for help shows weakness, or is shameful, or too vulnerable. So, we strengthen our resolve, buckle down, and soldier on at the expense of our wellness and happiness. We become run down, exhausted, and deflated. Imagine a balloon trying to remain the same size, while its air slowly leaks. We receive messages from our families of origin, our employers, and consumer culture that tell us to harden. But the harder we get, the more brittle we become. Rather than naming our need for help, we’re now drowning with work, emotions, schedules, and isolation. 

Ultimately, this issue of asking for help comes down to a person’s struggle with taking care of themselves. Wellness, self-care, asking for help, boundary setting, etc all live in the same neighborhood: taking care of the self. A former supervisor of mine offered this metaphor:

You board an airplane, take your seat, and the flight attendant begins the safety protocols speech. They get to the section on the oxygen mask. They say, ‘please secure your own mask before attempting to assist anyone else.”

Why is that? Well, you can’t help anyone if you’re dead. The same concept applies here, albeit with less grim consequences. How can we expect to function, let alone help others, when we run ourselves ragged?

To return to the topic at hand, one way of taking care of the self is asking for help. Seeking therapy is a form of this. I often name the courage it takes for a client to find a therapist. As we know, it’s hard to find help for ourselves- especially for our mental health. As if the unfortunate stigma isn’t enough, busy schedules and work demands can get in the way. If therapy is two steps too far for you, there are smaller ways to open ourselves to the help of others.

We don’t have to instantly open up and adopt this idea. Rather we can take smaller steps that feel safer. For example, if we have created a default answer of “fine” when asked “how are you?” by random people, then that may have filtered into closer relationships. Those relationships where it may feel safer saying “Actually, I’m struggling.” So, what if we remove the automatic ‘fine’ from our vocabulary? Rather, when asked by a close friend or family member, “how are you?”, we take that question for what it is: an out-stretched hand to a drowning person.

 I think it is unfair to view this poem as an indictment of those who misread the author’s anguish. Rather, I believe it is a call to stop waving when we’re drowning. To let those looking out for our safety, save us. Only from this place of moaning, cold death does the author finally feel safe saying she was much too far out all of her life. If only we, the onlookers, knew this we could’ve helped.

 It is ok to feel you’re too far out. It is ok to feel like you’re drowning. There are those who want to help us, but only if we let them. When we don’t ask for help, we deny our friends and family the gift of being able to help someone they love.

The Role of Anxiety in Living an Authentic Life

By Concentric Counselor Christian Younginer, LPC, NCC

To be brief, anxiety can suck. The persistent worry of imagined scenarios can plague the mind and exhaust the body. It can manifest as brief periods of pronounced worry, a baseline worry for all things, and even panic attacks. But I would like to offer a perspective that may be overlooked in coping with anxiety. That is, can my anxiety teach me something?

Specifically, can my anxiety teach me how to live an authentic, meaningful life? This question shapes Existential Therapy. At its broadest, existential therapy is the endeavor of understanding one’s existence in a therapeutic setting. This is done via an honest exploration of one’s freedom, choice, responsibility, meaning, and inevitable death. Existential psychotherapist Irvin Yalom conceptualizes much of anxiety as death-anxiety (Existential Psychotherapy, p.189). That is, persistent anxiety can be explained as an underlying worry about a life without meaning in the face of approaching death. Death is what allows life to have meaning. If there were no end, then for what should we live? The finiteness of life can motivate, intimidate, and terrify. However, it is this anxiety that can be the canary in the mine of our life.

As we work, study, sleep, parent, eat, play, drive, and journey through life, meaning and purpose can slip through the cracks. Anxiety can creep in, seeming to have no definable impetus. Often enough the death of a loved one, or a diagnostic medical scare can bring perspective -- wherein we confront our death. But one does not need to wait for such a moment to ask these questions, such as “Why am I here?”, “What does it mean to exist?”, and “What is my purpose?”.

Anxiety can be that canary that alerts us of an inauthentic life. It warns of the finiteness of life, and the importance of living a life with meaning. This often manifests as a vague sensation of “running out of time”. Without meaning, one can find life pointless or trite. The finiteness of life no longer motivates, it terrifies. But if we listen to what our anxiety is telling us, perhaps we can redirect our lives towards meaning.

How does one do this?

An example from philosophy may be of use. In Frederick Nietzsche’s The Gay Science, Nietzsche offers the reader an aphorism he titles ‘The Heaviest Burden’. He proceeds to ask the reader: if a demon were to order that you must live this life in eternal recurrence, every moment, detail, pain, and triumph- would you thank him or curse him? (The Gay Science, Aphorism #341). So, do I live my life in such a way that were I to re-live this life on repeat, I would praise the demon with gratitude for the opportunity? Or would this prospect bring about the abysmal dread of re-living a meaningless life? It is this precise idea where anxiety comes into play. Am I experiencing the anxiety and dread of a life not worth re-living?

It is this question that can help steer us towards meaning. Do I live in such a way that were I to re-live this life on repeat, would I be in joyful contentment or in abysmal dread? This is a tough question with which to be confronted. However, we can use this question as a beginning: the moment one begins to ask “does my life have meaning?”. Rather than be frozen by the possible dread this question instills, one can frame this as the moment in which a new life begins. As always, Confucius said it best, “ We have two lives, and the second begins when we realize we only have one.”

Determining WHAT is meaningful is a personal journey that can take time to uncover. But knowing thyself was important to Plato for a reason. It is this existential journey of a human confronted with death, through anxiety, uncovering that which gives their life meaning.

To conclude, yes, anxiety does suck. But as we work to cope with it, let us ask -- What is this anxiety trying to teach me?  Anxiety very well may lead us away from the existential dread of an unexamined life, and instead towards finding a meaningful life worthy of repeating.