Three Small Words with Big Meaning
Three of the most emotionally charged words I repeatedly hear in my therapy office are normal, balance, and happy.
I tend to hear the word normal in the context of questions posed to me when an individual is ascertaining whether their experience, thought, feeling or behavior represents a deviation from what is considered standard or typical. In my experience, when someone asks me if their behavior is normal, a part of them already believes it is in fact not normal. The underlying question is: “is something wrong with me?” The individual’s shame becomes even more important to respond to than the original question. In addition to addressing shame, understanding whether a behavior is normal involves more than referring to a diagnostic manual and entails understanding how an individual is impacted by the behavior in question. Conversations that begin with the question “is this normal?” never end with a simple yes or no but instead evolve into discussions about deeper human emotions such as shame, worry and fear. It is human nature to seek a sense of belonging and relatedness, therefore experiences that we perceive as abnormal or different can feel threatening to our sense of belonging.
On the surface, balance seems like a beneficial goal to strive for in life. In actuality, the idea that a person’s daily life can fall into an ideal equilibrium can be a set-up for disappointment. The notion that a perfect balance of life’s elements even exists increases the likelihood of people feeling as though they are failing to live life in the most optimal way. Rather than comparing the structure of our lives to this external concept of balance, we can gain more practical insights by looking deeply inward and identifying our values. Values can guide the way we prioritize our time and energy. For example, if a parent identifies their fundamental value as quality time with their family, at times they will likely sacrifice other opportunities for socialization or self-care to live aligned with their core value. Living in accordance with one’s values does not prevent someone from feeling tired or needing of a break. The hope is that the parent in this example ultimately possesses a strong sense of purpose and meaning because the primary structure of their life is aligned with their central value. An individual can feel extremely satisfied and enriched by their own hierarchy of values but that same structure can feel completely out of “balance” to someone else. People tend to feel emotions such as shame, guilt, regret, dissatisfaction, and anxiety in response to living in a way that is not in harmony with their unique, personal values. A helpful therapeutic exercise is to write down your top five values and identify ways in which you are living in synch with those values and ways in which you are not to determine where you can better invest your time, energy, and resources. There is no perfect balance to strive for, instead our values can be our map.
The word happy, like the word balance, seems like something we should all want. However, the never-ending race to find happiness can rob individuals of the very thing they most desire. Our rational minds understand that comparison robs us of true happiness and that climbing the endless ladder of success can lead us to feel like failures. However, our emotional mind can override our rational mind resulting in illogical, maladaptive patterns that prevent us from having positive emotional experiences. We receive messages from our families, friends, and society about what makes people happy, and we internalize those messages. A child who was raised to believe happiness comes from being successful and achieving excellence might become an adult who is waiting for the next job promotion or academic accolade to bring them happiness. Dismay can arise when reaching one rung on the ladder is quickly followed by a preoccupation with achieving the next milestone. Breaking these irrational patterns requires accessing our wise mind, a concept from Dialectical Behavior Therapy. Our wise mind combines our reasonable thought with emotional awareness and allows us to identify the most effective path forward. When we are tuned into wise mind, we are more willing to allow for a multitude of emotions and experiences such as feeling happy with the present moment whilst striving for future oriented goals.
The human mind tends to have difficulty accepting two seemingly opposing thoughts, feelings, and concepts to be true at the same time. Therefore, individuals develop black and white thinking patterns when in fact life is full of dialectics. In dialectical behavior therapy, the concept of dialectics means two conflicting things are simultaneously true. We can reduce our emotional suffering by accepting psychological conflict and making space for it rather than wishing for our experiences to be unilateral. An individual can feel enthusiastic about a job promotion and scared of the increased responsibility and expectation at the same time. A more complicated example would be a young adult who is learning that they can love their parent whilst also feeling sad that their parent did not meet their emotional needs as a child. Allowing opposing feelings to exist at the same time reduces tension both physically and emotionally and in fact is a more accurate representation of what life is truly like. To be happy does not mean the absence of any negative emotional experiences. Being happy is about allowing for a range of emotions and being intentional about what moments deserve the most attention and space in our minds and hearts. There is an abundance of research and literature on the topic of happiness but perhaps not enough attention on the emotion of joy. To feel joy, we must allow for uninhibited access to a feeling of happiness, bliss, or delight. We gain access to joy when we are truly present, not limited by expectations of what an experience should feel like but rather completely absorbed by the moment we are in. Simple and sweet moments in our daily life can produce just as much joy as a significant life event. Joy can be fleeting and that is part of what makes it special.
Normal, balance and happy are not taboo words, however they require a thoughtful examination to prevent giving these concepts a degree of power and influence that is unwarranted and unhelpful. Measuring how normal, balanced, and happy we feel in comparison to what we can see in other people is a very common and maladaptive tendency. We cannot only focus on reducing this habit, we must also put that energy into accumulating joyful experiences, reducing the pressure we place on ourselves to have a perfectly balanced life and embracing the idea that conflicting emotions can co-exist.
