Showing Up
Lori Gottlieb, Maggie Mulqueen, holiday parties and more...
Good morning,
The other night I attended a holiday party on Chicago’s far northwest side with a group of people whom I’ve known for over a decade. These lovely folks are the first group of parents and students I worked with during my first year teaching in 2009. A few of the kids in attendance I’d known for over 12 years and hadn’t seen for over five; I felt happy and proud to learn about their academic and social successes. I was also thrilled to hear that many of the now young adults who had attended this party year after year are thriving in college.
The party is famous for its variety of international foods and array of musicians. This includes a former administrator with accordion chops, Suzuki-trained kids, and professional classical musicians who, when they play the house piano, mesmerize everyone in attendance. My love for solo classical piano was ignited at this party years ago when I heard someone play Debussy’s “Reflections in the Water” for the first time.
I knew everyone in attendance except for a friend of the host, who happened to be a therapist. She shared about how she now works solely on Zoom, and that prior to that, she worked for many years at two different universities (University of Wisconsin and Northwestern). She joked about how the feedback that she felt compelled to give the kids at either school was an inverse of the other. She said at Madison she told the kids to smoke less pot, but at Northwestern, she told them to smoke once in a while to loosen up. I hadn’t met a new-to-me-person at a party who happened to be a therapist in a while, and I wanted to ask a million more questions, but decided to let her enjoy the holiday spread and conversation and not badger her with my curiosity.
Later that night while reading before bed, I came across a serendipitous passage from a book I’d just borrowed from the library. In her acclaimed memoir, Maybe You Should Talk to Someone, Lori Gottlieb writes:
“Telling someone you’re a psychotherapist often leads to a surprised pause, followed by awkward questions like these: ‘Oh, a therapist! Should I tell you about my childhood?’ Or ‘Can you help me with this problem with my mother-in-law?’ Or ‘ Are you going to psychoanalyze me?’ (The answers, by the way, are ‘Please don’t”; “Possibly”; and “Why would I do that here? If I were a gynecologist, would you ask if I was going to give you a pelvic exam?’”
In one of my favorite books by Steve Chandler, The Prosperous Coach, he makes the same point about when someone at a party meets a coach and demands some coaching on the spot. Chandler advises coaches to do what a chiropractor or a dentist or a mechanic would say: “Schedule an appointment with me.”
Although I’m only a few chapters in, what I love about Gottlieb’s book so far is how she interweaves her experiences as a therapist working with clients as well as her own tribulations and being a therapy patient herself. The way she shares about her own pain and need for help and support (even though she intellectually knows what she needs) is humbling and inspiring. The book begins with her sharing about being broken up abruptly by a man she’d planned to marry. She calls friends for support and recounts how she felt after a call with her friend:
“What I really need [in my distressing moment] is for somebody to sit with me in my pain, but I also know how helpless it feels to watch a friend suffer and do nothing to fix it. Sitting-with-you-in-your-pain is one of the rare experiences that people get in the protected space of a therapy room, but it’s very hard to give or get outside of it–even for [my friend] Jen, who is a therapist.”
I wondered: if a therapist cannot talk themselves out of pain or distress, and if a friend of the said therapist (who’s also a therapist) is limited in their capacity to support their distressed loved one, then how is someone without this kind of schema able to know how to support themselves or someone else in distress in a way that’s helpful and effective?
Last week a simple headline in the Chicago Tribune op-ed page jumped out at me: “Here’s how we can show up for others during a hard time.” Written by a psychologist named Maggie Mulqueen, Ph.D., the article offers practical advice that anyone can utilize in order to support their loved ones who might be experiencing hard times. Dr. Mulqueen acknowledges an array of “heartbreaking events” that can happen personally, publicly, and globally. She notes how when faced with a loved one going through distress, most people find themselves “paralyzed” when it comes to knowing how to lend emotional support, while others “pull away out of a sense of inadequacy.”
Dr. Mulqueen believes that our incapacity to show up by listening or by taking action for people, whether they’re our loved ones or the greater community, can have a lasting negative impact on our personal relationships as well as society at-large. She writes, “In our broken world, we need to enhance our connections, not shrink from them. Developing the skills to support people in pain is an estimable endeavor.”
Upon reading this at first, I became a bit cynical. Now everyone should have skills to support people in ways that’s usually regarded for professionals? That’s a lot of pressure! But as I continued reading, the skills she offers are so simple (and obvious) that an article like this feels more like a friendly nudge, saying “you can/maybe are already doing lots of these things” instead of “here’s something else you learn to do to be a good human.” Her most salient recommendations are:
“The first and most important thing to remember about showing up is that at its core, it is an offer to listen to another person. Showing up can be as much, if not more, about listening as it is about knowing what to say or do. Being present for someone’s pain involves opening your heart and closing your mouth. Too often, people want to smooth over the hurt as a way to reduce their own discomfort.
Initiating contact is the onus of the helper. Whenever I feel unsure of what to do, I say, ‘I don’t know what to say, ’but that is no excuse for doing nothing. So, I am here to listen if you want to talk.’ But not everyone wants to talk, and usually verbal help isn’t all that’s needed. Offering concrete help can be a lifeline at this time, such as getting groceries or providing babysitting.
Showing up for another person involves a commitment. Beyond the initial outpouring of sympathy, people’s pain lasts much longer than our brief attention spans. It’s not just the holidays or anniversaries that can be hard; the odd Tuesday when someone feels alone can be worse.
Leaning into someone else’s hurt is a vulnerable act that is not without risk. For example, showing up can involve sacrifice. It might be something as small as needing to change one’s plans to something more significant such as reprioritizing where one puts their energy for an extended period of time.”
In the wash of personal, professional and familial commitments, it feels overwhelming to think about showing up to someone in my life who might be in distress. This goes deeper for a dear friend whom I might not see on a regular basis or even be in touch with over the phone. While I agree with Dr. Mulqueen how “initiating contact is the onus of the helper,” that only applies if the helper is aware of another’s distress in the first place.
One of my favorite spiritual zingers is, “If I don’t call my friends when things are going well in my life, I’m not going to call them when things are going badly.” The truth in this for me is that if my life is going well, and I’m too busy or self-important to pick up the phone and say hello to someone I love, then when I’m in distress or in a crisis, that muscle will not be exercised and I’ll convince myself that they don’t want to hear from me, that they’re too busy to help, etc.
When a life coaching client starts to experience positive results from our work together (more consistency with daily routines, satisfaction on the other side of a creative or professional leap, improved relations with loved ones), that’s when many times they say to me, “I’ve got this. I don’t need to meet every other week for a while. We can meet in a couple months?” Depending on how long I’ve worked with the client (at least six months), this seems like a good idea to me. But if they’re new to working with a coach, and it’s only been a few sessions, I remind them of our agreement to meet every other week for six months and, more importantly, that the path to progress isn’t always predictable and linear. That the skills and benefits of working with a coach on a consistent basis for a structured period has intangible benefits that will create lasting impact in life situations further down the road. The muscles need to be established and toned and prepared to be utilized for the times when life continues to go well and for the times when it isn’t. As Dr. Mulqueen writes at the end of her op-ed:
“Finally, showing up can also be rewarding. Perhaps the greatest gain from showing up is learning that our capacity for meaningful connection is deep—deep enough to sustain others and, hopefully, ourselves during the dark days that befall us all at some point in life. Rather than retreating behind the veil of not knowing what to say, we should challenge ourselves to show up.”
Who in your life could benefit from you showing up for them? Who could you invite into your life to show up for you? And in what ways would you like to challenge yourself to show up to yourself?
Until next time,
Matt
P.S. I’m adding episodes of my podcast to Spotify and Apple. Please have a listen!
Timely, timeless column today, Matt....happy holidays!