Our counseling practice is not new to personal suffering caused by World Problems. I have counseled clients who are victims of hate crimes and those who were disturbed following elections, those who are refugees and sufferers of great injustice. More recently, people have come for help with insomnia, depression and anxiety as they lie awake thinking of climate change and systemic racism. Sometimes the world is too much to take.
Can therapy help World Problems? I’m obviously a believer in what we do, especially our researched-based methods like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Gottman’s couples approach. I could detail more about why each of those works so well, but here’s the thing: therapy generally addresses problems with our own perspectives — depression, anxiety, phobias, and relationships are all rather straightforward to trained therapists. Current World Problems (though certainly not the first in history or since I’ve been licensed) are what feel more overwhelming, even to me at times, until I remember some important tenets detailed below.
Therapy works because it is an opportunity to develop a relationship with a professional ally who can guide you week by week through the murky overwhelm. As therapists we are trained in human behavior, relationships, and even cultural and racial biases — but when we meet clients, they also train us about what’s important to them, how they arrived at this place in life, where they want to go. We are advocates for who our clients want to be — and this includes steps that address World Problems. As therapists, we commit deeply to a client’s goals.
We need people looking out for us right now.
Based on my experience, here’s how therapy can help us take care of our own perspectives (our Personal Problems) while addressing World Problems:
• Therapy helps your voice get heard. This could look like tools to be more open with friends about depression, a difficult relationship, or a cause you believe in. Therapists create sacred space for this — your feelings, your values and (thanks to regular appointments,) your accountability. We can intervene when you get off track and hold hope when you feel overwhelmed. Therapy helps you find your voice, stay true to what you say, change your mind purposefully, and create small steps towards the change you believe in.
• Therapy acknowledges how small you feel in the universe — and then helps you get busy. For example, following turmoil, I get distraught emails wondering, “What do I do now?” When overwhelmed, it is easy to fall into depressive “all or nothing” thinking — and let Perfect become the enemy of Good Enough. How can a thought chart or joining a family march for Black Lives help overwhelming grief and injustice? It just does, and my years of experience with others prove it. You take one step, and if it feels better, then you take another. We apply research on well-being to help you take these steps.
• Therapy helps you take care your people. A recent interview with Dan Harris and the Dalai Lama talked about how altruism alleviates personal suffering. A simple meditation practice is to breathe in the suffering of others and breathe out compassion for them. We know volunteering helps depression. Weeding or baking bread helps anxiety (<— this is a stretch towards easing World Problems unless you consider how many people were left spinning back in March and needed structure, or at least to say “There once was a pile of weeds or flour and now I have flowers and bread.”) Even better, give the bread away and weed others yards. We need our days during overwhelming times to have meaning.
Taking care of others helps take care of our own perspectives.
This past week I visited a familiar vacation spot that was closed for summer. As we hiked around the quiet camp it reminded me once again that what makes the world turn, especially in times of overwhelm, is our connection to others. It’s the people that make a place special, and it’s our people who can lift us through dark times.
Keep making your voice heard, keep marching and weeding, keep taking care of each other. Your therapist can help with the rest.
P.S. My favorite article on a perspective shift following difficult times is this David Brooks article. Ignore the boring title; he’s since written a book based on this article called The Second Mountain. See you there.
