Guts on the Floor

Angst Italia: Pompeii October 13, 2018

I’m on the way to Pompeii. I was dreading two days off, so I decided I could jam in one more road trip.  We were notified (in 3 languages) that we had a 43-minute delay.  I called it found time, though I knew it would throw the rest of my train transfers into the abyss.  I had forty-three minutes to take in the hills of Rome.  I wonder how the homes and buildings hanging from the hills stay there and how they were built.  Forty-three minutes to notice that no one on the coach is huffing and puffing at the delay.  Two screaming children got some looks, but no one seemed rattled.

Since I arrived in Prato almost five weeks ago, I recognized that Italians are more patient than Americans with delays, deadlines, down time, and wait lines. They are patient with working through the language barrier as well.  Most everyone I have dealt with has correctly decoded my point, smile, and mime method of communication.  I  have enjoyed taking a stroll to do my banking, dining, and shopping without stopping for fuel, looking for a parking spot, or getting stuck in traffic.  I doubt that the experience has made me more patient for the long haul, but for today, I was  43-minutes late to see the people of Pompeii, who have been frozen in time since 79 AD, when Mt. Vesuvius erupted. That kind of puts things in perspective.  

As my husband and I stared into a rectangular hole in the ground, our tour guide, Manar, explained that the space was formerly used to hide sacred artifacts so they wouldn’t be stolen.  Because they had been there for such a long time, the space itself was believed to have retained some of the power of the contents, so when they were recovered, the hole became a wishing well.  The only condition was that the wish could not be shared until it came true.  I thought for a long time, and told my husband that I couldn’t think of anything to wish for because being here was my wish.  I’m more than a tourist in Egypt, and Manar is more than a tour guide, though I doubt she knows it.  Throughout the day she dropped tiny bits of wisdom that connected the past to the present, the near to the far, and me to myself.  Gestalt.

Wishes don’t make themselves come true.  Wishers do.  I like to think of unfulfilled wishes as pending.  Here are some thoughts.

• Wishes pending expiration are similar to clothes that have gone out of style but are still in your closet. It’s probably best to just let them go. Humans get sentimental about their investments, whether they are in time, money, hope, or love. I have had a lot of clients who stayed in bad relationships because of the years they had already invested, just wishing for a change.
• Wishes pending refinement require a look at the deeper outcome. If you wish to find a partner, for instance, you have expectations of what having a partner means.  A person who is desperate to  find a partner may be really wishing for a sense of security or self-worth.  Those can be developed without a partner.
• Wishes pending a context are wishes that don’t have a place to come true. I once had a client who longed for a healthy relationship. He asked me to check out his profile for Match.com.  The quality he listed as most desirable in a partner was honesty.  His therapy session that day focused on why he himself had lied about his own age in the profile.  Clearly, he did not have a healthy space within himself for a relationship.
• Wishes pending ownership are either wishes to please others or wishes for others to please you. If you wish to make a lot of money to keep your wife happy, you probably need a new wife.  I met a parent recently who wished for her daughter to become a nurse.  The daughter had a passion and a skill for music.  The mother, the daughter, and the relationship between them was in jeopardy.

All of these pending wishes call back to me another of Manar’s droplets of wisdom.  If you are sincere in your wishes, they will come true.  If you truly wish for something, commit to it. Take ownership, take action, and make a space for your wish to come true.

 

 

 

 

I’ve been in Tuscany for a week now – teaching and touring.  But today I am on the train to Rome.  Everyone in my pod is snoozing.  From time to time I give my husband a little poke to show him an old city hanging from the side of a hill.  Some of the hills are held up by what seem to be mile high walls.  I wonder how they were built.

Even though this is technically a work trip, it has been joyful travelling with 10 students from Beacon College.  We walk everywhere in Prato, and around every corner seems to be a shop tucked into a space the size of my bedroom.  Most are packed with a few designer items – textiles, shoes, bags, and jewelry.  The restaurants are also small spaces.  The food is sumptuous at every place I have eaten.  The tomatoes are red and meaty, the pasta is al dente, and water is fizzy.  In Florence I found a childhood favorite on the menu — tripe.  It’s not for the faint of heart.

The food in Florence wasn’t the only call back to my childhood. I was the nerd of my time, and I spent a lot of time at Pittsburgh’s Carnegie Museum. I did a lot of homework in the room of Greek and Roman artifacts.  Florence, of course, is the real deal, and at every turn there is a church with a story told in the statuary.

Pesa and Venice are on the itinerary, but, I digress….No, I mean I really digress.  This train to Rome is taking us to the plane to Cairo. Tomorrow – the pyramids.   I’m sure I will have a lot to say about that.  Here comes my stop.  Ciao!

 

 

 

I was noticing today how mindfully the grandchildren are being raised. I got a very good sense of the big picture.   Parenting should go beyond managing the moment.  It should prepare  children for the future.  Whether you are raising your own children or refurbishing your ravaged inner child,  childhood lessons matter.

If you had a perfect childhood, you undoubtedly got a lot of useful information about how to live your life.  Your childhood memories are a library of life lessons, but they are only memories.  If your childhood wasn’t so perfect, you may have missed out on some important lessons.  You can’t re-do childhood, but you can always get the lessons you missed, correct any misinformation, and create new memories to better guide you through life.

Building a person is like building a house.  The integrity of the foundation determines the stability of the house.  If a few blocks are missing from the foundation, you can still build, but over time the weakness will show itself in a sagging floor, a whistling window, a crack in the plaster, or a leaking roof.  It isn’t necessary to tear down the whole house to correct the problem.  All it takes is to fortify the foundation and fix the damage.  Of course, if you do nothing, the house may fall down on its own.

I once asked a client if he learned everything he needed to learn from his parents.  He said he didn’t have any idea what he was even supposed to have learned, so I made a list for him.  It quickly became a part of my regular practice to use this list as a guide for clients who were flailing and for parents who were failing.  

Here is the list:

                                          Essential Childhood Lessons

Tolerate frustration                       Solve problems                      Make decisions

Read others                                  Calm yourself                          Grieve losses

Comfort yourself                          Take risks                                 Accept defeat

Set boundaries                             Ask for what you need            Disagree

Identify and express feelings       Accept compliments               Accept criticism

Compromise                                Give support to others            Seek support from others

Think for yourself                        Appreciate yourself                  Enjoy others

Be alone                                       Appreciate beauty                    Say goodbye

Connect with others                    Practice and master tasks         Settle Conflict

Learn from others                         Make amends                          Forgive

If you would like to share how you learned any of the lessons, or how you teach them to your children, please post a reply.  (I’m pretty sure that any one of these items could provide grist for the blog mill).

Nicki

As some of you know, I am getting ready to go to Italy to teach for 5 weeks.  This is an adventure for me.   Until a few years ago, every trip I took involved a presentation I had to give or a conference I was attending. I’m a different kind of traveler. I’ve been happy exploring the inner topography of humans.

Therapists walk a few miles of a client’s journey with them.  I’m pretty sure that if my cumulative client miles were exchanged for vacation miles I could be in another galaxy by now.  I have no regrets, though.  I have seen a lot of the deeper world through the eyes of my clients.  I have been the tour guide for a psychological excursion or two.  Clients got better, and I’m no worse for the wear, probably because the baggage was not mine to carry.

I do have a message to carry, though, and I hope that my story makes you think about your own story.  Charting more of your own inner territory provides a great template for understanding others.  I’m using my trip to Italy to expand my own understanding.

Culture Dysphoria

Even though all of my grandparents came from Italy, I have never really resonated with the Italian culture.  I haven’t rolled a meatball since 1970.  It makes my hands itch.  Loud family gatherings make the rest of me itch. I did attend a Catholic school, and that should count for something toward a cultural connection but, according to my father, I made the nuns cry.  I feel like a Gypsy stuck in an Italian body.

The Cohort Connection

We all have two cultures — the one to which we were rooted the one in which we grow.  I like to teach about the powerful effect of age cohorts.  I believe that my Italian “Meh” Syndrome is a direct result of being an early baby boomer.  I was in college during the human rights movement.  I was a part of all that flew into the face of tradition.

The passion of those times never left me, maybe because there is still so much to accomplish.   I looked forward to a future of inclusivity and acceptance, where gender disparity was a thing of the past. I thought I would be aging in a fair and peaceful world, eating clean food, breathing clean air, and wistfully humming “Imagine.”  It never happened.

Go Deeper

The gloomy themes of disengagement from my ethnicity and disappointment for my age cohort could be seen as a conflict to be resolved, but there is a deeper story.  It is a matter of content and process.  The poles of tradition and activism are content — the “what” of my history. The process is the “how,”  (as in how did I turn out to be so happy).

The Italian culture may not be a fit to what I do, but it certainly fuels how I do it – with passion, purpose, humor, and spice.  My grandfather raised three families.  He kept his job during the Great Depression. He fed the neighborhood with his garden, and did haircuts and shoe repair for any children that needed it.  My grandmother welcomed people who were struggling into her home.  She made sure that all of her progeny registered to vote as soon as they came of age. Had they been Baby Boomers, we would have called them hippies. At the deepest level, I make perfect sense to myself in the cultural realm.

The Message

I believe that most people who go to counseling for this kind of conflict would make perfect sense to themselves if they went a little deeper.  If you are a counselor, you can take them there, but only if you know the path yourself.

Please share your stories and impressions by replying to this post.

Nicki

 

 

 

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August 20,  2018

I’ve spent a lot of time and money on a formal education.  Still, the best tidbits of wisdom have come from my father.  He was a truck driver.  A lot of his advice was about moving forward.  Here are some of his favorites — or more accurately, some of my favorites:

Do something, even if it’s wrong. This little mantra can set you free.   If you are overly concerned about making a mistake,  it’s easy to become stagnant.  Most mistakes can be reversed or corrected.  Instead of trying to avoid making a mistake, think of how you might deal with a lot of different outcomes.  The only mistake that can’t be corrected is losing precious time.  This goes along with…

Make up your mind.  I don’t believe in spending a lot of time on small decisions.  I take an alphabetical approach for low stake decisions — corn over peas, Olive Garden over Ruby Tuesday.  

Take the longer, broader view. I’m pretty sure that my father was being literal about looking as far down the road ahead a I could see.  This is a great strategy for life.  I think about clients who were miserable in their marriage but afraid of getting divorced.    I tell them they are on a rocky bank looking across the river to a grassy bank.  They know they want to be on the grassy bank, but they are afraid of the rickety bridge that must be crossed. The most difficult events in a divorce are making the decision, telling others, going to court, and splitting up the belongings. Focusing on a peaceful outcome in the long view instead of the divorce process can reduce the stress of a divorce considerably.

Alway have an escape route in mind (in case another driver gets crazy.)  To me, escape routes in life mean having plan B.  If your company closes tomorrow, what options would you have?  If  your car breaks down, who will you call for help and how will you get to work tomorrow? Hope for the best, plan for the worst.  Then just live.

All of these tidbits are a call to keep moving forward.  If you are standing still and life is whizzing by, you will be behind.

Progress

I am fortunate to teach at Beacon College, and I’m sure a lot of the inspiration for this blog will come from the rich experiences I have there.   Our president, Dr. George Hagerty, shared this Ted Talk about progress when we got back from summer break, and I thought it gave a much needed perspective about the how bad things aren’t, so I posted it here for you.

I’m making progress, too.  You will now see “Resources” on the menu for this website, and I have started a book list there for you.  I’ll be adding some Nanceisms soon.   –NN

August 17, 2018

Some people are just talkers.  According to my mother, I came out telling the gang in Labor and Delivery a few jokes with my first breath.  I’m pretty sure she was delirious, but it had an impact.  My mother called me a “little talking machine” for my entire childhood. I have lived that lifescript for my entire adulthood. It has served me well, mostly.  (I won’t write about the billion times I have heard crude, inappropriate, nonsensical prattle and didn’t notice soon enough that it was my lips that were moving.)

About Life Scripts:

If you think about it, you are probably living out a life script as well, based upon messages you received as a child.  According to Claude Steiner, author of  “Scripts People Live,” some people live out a counterscript.  So, if you were called lazy, you could become an overachiever – a better outcome, perhaps, but still using those childhood messages as a point of reference. Either way, script or counterscript, how you process messages from your childhood can be the secret of your success or grist for the therapy mill.

Nanceisms

Here is an exchange I have had in many classes.

Student: “Can you please say that again?”

Me: “What was it?”

Student: “It was really good.  I want to use it.”

Me:  “If I can remember it, you are welcome to it.”

Different Student: “I think I got most of it,” (followed by a phrase or two)

Me:  “It sounds like something I would say…”

Over time, my random thoughts and phrases have been chronicled by my students.  When I had a thriving counseling practice, my clients did the same. I was always happy if a client shared the words that that had been helpful.  The client feedback loop informed my work with future clients.  That was rewarding, but there is a different kind of joy I get from knowing that my students have some of my better utterances in safekeeping.

If you have any thoughts about what should be included in that list or in this blog, please post so I can have a  reader feedback loop to treasure.

Nicki

August 12, 2018

A a professor, I meet a lot of people who are in transition, so I expect to share a lot of musings about life unfolding.  Most people don’t like change.  Starting a new class, a new job, a new relationship, or a new neighborhood can make a person feel as though they have lost control.  But, control is just an illusion.  No matter how carefully you plan, anything can happen.  If you are too vigilant about the meticulous execution of your plan, you might miss opportunities that are unfolding all around you.  Shift your vigilance by taking these small steps:

1. Read the local news. It will put you and your efforts in a context. Ask yourself if there is anything you can use for your own personal or professional growth.
2. Keep a running list of people you meet each day and your first impressions.  It will help you to be more discerning, and it will force you to explore if the person you met could be the link to  an opportunity.
3. Know that no matter how much you know, you can’t know everything.  There are things you never learned and things that changed after you learned about them. Your map of life may not reflect the actual terrain.
4. Take a look at my favorite Ted Talk.  It will fatten up your brain.   https://www.ted.com/talks/chimamanda_adichie_the_danger_of_a_single_story

If you are one of my former counseling students who is in the process of starting a private practice, you may like this rewrite of an article I wrote for the Star-Banner several years ago.

I still have my first copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, purchased for ninety five cents in 1961. I was 12.  Scarlett O’Hara was fascinating. She was a great business woman who foresaw the opportunity in the aftermath of the Civil War. She breathed life into a dying hardware store, noticed what people needed, and bought a sawmill declaring, “…the way people are rebuilding – why we could sell the lumber sky high.” All in a few pages, she had the simple sensibility to analyze the market, balance the books, negotiate a loan and do the kind of front line management that supports meeting business goals.  In my business life, I have never learned anything superior to the lessons in those ten pages. 

Lesson #1 Be who you are.  Don’t worry about discrimination, intimidation, invalidation or condemnation.  Just decide what needs to be done and do it. 

Lesson #2 If you are willing and able, you’re close enough.  Most people aren’t ever ready for the important job, but they do them anyway.  While you are waiting real estate prices are going up and the value of the dollar is going down. 

Lesson #3 Disregard your age. If you are young, you may be concerned about not being taken seriously.  Power dressing, assertiveness, and negotiation skills are all learnable.  Once you are involved in the content of what you are doing, your youthfulness will just be a backdrop.  If you think you are too old, re-evaluate your context.  We live many more healthy years than ever before.  If you start and it isn’t for you, you can stop at any point.  If you don’t take a run at it, you’ll have a lot more years for wondering, “What if…”

Lesson #4 Don’t try to be a philanthropist until you are a success. If you tend to be generous, start telling yourself that you can give more later.  In the start up years, avoid the temptation to give a friend a break by creating or adapting a position for them at your own expense.  Don’t give your product or service away.  While sampling is a good advertising strategy, a better business strategy is offering customer incentives. Think in terms of frequent flyer miles, rather than giveaways.   

Lesson #5 Set firm boundaries for yourself.  Your enthusiasm is probably contagious.  Friends and family members may approach you with some compatible product or service.  Often they will expect an immediate reply.  This is the time to build a repertoire of ways to say no.  “I’m going to decline that offer” is clear.  “Not right now” is an invitation to try again later.  “I make it a policy not to…”  makes it harder for the person to personalize your refusal.  “I’ve already decided (on something else)” doesn’t leave much room for further campaigning.

Lesson #6 Focus on the reputation of your business, not your personal popularity.  If you are a natural people pleaser, please people in the form of great customer service, quality products and professional integrity.  You may need to learn to cut non-essential conversations short.  You may have to adjust to putting business activities ahead of lunch, babysitting, and socializing.  People who care about you will understand. 

Lesson #7  Keep your eye on the goal. Scarlett knew she wanted money to rebuild Tara.  That vision drove all of her decisions.  People in the helping professions usually want to help others.  We may get a lot of joy from the work, but joy doesn’t pay the bills.  Pay yourself fairly and enjoy what you have earned.

 

August 11, 2O18

I want to start this blog by acknowledging every courageous therapy patient who  left their guts on my office floor.

Who is this woman? Should I know her?

I’m Nicki Nance, psychotherapist, professor, speaker, consultant.  You might say I am a seasoned professional, but you will never hear me say it.  It conjures up images of being doused in basil and oregano and put aside to marinate. Despite the salty humor and sage advice, I prefer to say I am experienced. I have been a counselor since 1970 and a professor since 1990. I am currently an associate professor at Beacon College. It the only accredited college offering 2 and 4 year degree programs for students with learning disabilities, ADHD, and ASD, and it is exciting to work where I can continue to learn. I no longer have a private practice, but I maintain my counseling credentials and take an occasional case. I have also been teaching graduate counseling classes at Webster University since 2002, and it gives me great pleasure to see some of my former students teaching in the program.

Why this website?

There is nothing much better for me than hearing that my words made in impression. Students have often collected what they call “Nanceisms” –  little bits of information that don’t always fit in the class notes,  but are worthy of a scrawl in the margins.  Sometimes when they read the words back to me, I don’t even remember having said them, but the words always sound like something I might have said.   Some students and clients have asked,  “When are you going to write a book?” Recently, I asked one of those cherished students “Who would read such a book?” Her reply was, “Your former students would.” That gave me pause. My former students have already paid to hear what I have to say. I never imagined they might want more.

So, I am launching this website, committing to a blog, and hoping that it seeds the book, Guts on the Floor

What to expect

For everyone:  Something to think about. Someplace to talk about it if you want to.

For my students past, present, and future:  A place to comment on those Nanceisms, and on gems of wisdom from any source that guides you in your practice or in life.   I am hoping to include some of your comments if a book materializes.

For hungry minds: I’ll also provide links to helpful websites and videos,  and some articles I have written in the past.

The rest, I do not know.  I am a big fan of living life as it unfolds before me, and I want my work here to follow suit.  I hope you will be joining me for the ride.

Nicki