Monday, June 25, 2012

Bears Will Be Bears


While a bear from the wild may be captured to live in a zoo or such place and a wild bear may be trained to ride a bike in the circus, for the most part, wild bears do what wild bears do.  Several years ago, while trying to emphasize a point about how to deal with some types of difficult people, I began to pick on bears.  I could have easily picked on some other animal, but the bears were an easy target.  I have sometimes heard horrible stories about how a bear somewhere had attacked an innocent hiker.  More frequently we hear stories of how a bear somewhere entered a campground and ate all the campers’ food.  Bears, being bears, do not judge the ethics of their actions.  If you get too close to a mama bear’s cub, she will attack to protect her baby.  If a bear is hungry, it will seek out food and eat whatever is most convenient.  The bear does not judge a camper’s goodness or badness.  The bear does not care how hard it was for the camper to haul the food to the camp site.   The bear is just doing what the bear does.  The first time that a bear eats a camper’s food, the camper may be angry with the bear, but once it has been established that bears are present and that bears will eat your food, one can hardly be angry with the bear if the bear does this again.  This is why campers often have to hang their food in trees or put their food in a boat on a lake away from the camp site.  Bears will do what bears do.  There is nothing that will make the bear change its behavior, so, the camper must change how he manages the camp site and the food.

Like the camper, many of us have people in our lives that do things that hurt or annoy us.  There are people that continually try to rob of the good things in our lives.  Our first instinct is to take these behaviors personally and wonder why we have been singled out.  We may feel anger at the person and may even make attempts to change their terrible ways.  However, if we begin to think of them as bears, we realize that these problematic people are not doing these things “to us” because they do these things to everyone; it is just their nature.  We do not have to take it personally because it is not personal.  The bear is just doing what bears do.  The bear’s behavior is not a judgment on us because the bear is not taking our value into account at all.  Just as campers must find ways to protect their food from the bear’s attacks, we must find ways to alter our ways when we encounter the “bears” in our lives.  There is not one universal way for dealing with “bears”.   Often the way we need to respond is dependent on our situation.  In some cases, doing whatever the equivalent of hanging our food in a tree is sufficient to protect us from the bear’s attack.  However, as some of clients have pointed out, there are times when the bears are so persistent that not camping in those areas at all may be necessary.  One client once heard me talk about the bears and told me that the “bears” in her life had completely ruined “camping” for her altogether.  In this metaphor, we must assume that not “camping” is not an option.  We cannot allow the actions of some bears to ruin our experience in the great outdoors.  We cannot let others rob us of the joy of living.  I know sometimes it feels like we should just avoid every situation where there might be bears, but the reality is that bears are everywhere.  (I saw a news story this week of bears wrestling in a backyard in Florida.  Who knew there were bears in Florida?).  We cannot change the bears, but we sure can change how we relate to them.  The bears in our lives can be crafty and sometimes can trick us into letting our guard down, but when we do, we must look at ourselves and how we were deceived and not at the bear because the deception may be in the “bear’s” nature.  If we are picking on bears, then I would say that we cannot avoid every single animal simply because there are bears in the world.  Not all animals act like the bears.  However, all the animals have their own way of relating.  Some of those animals can be quite docile and affectionate. 

Most of us have some “bears” in our lives.  Some bears live in our own homes with us and some are people at work, school, or church.  Sometimes figuring out the emotional equivalent of “hanging your food in a tree” can be tricky, but it can usually be done.  “Leaving the woods” or never “camping” are rarely the best options.   If you are having difficulty with a “bear” in your life, a good therapist might be helpful.  A good trustworthy friend can often be helpful as well.  Just remember that bears will be bears and you can learn to co-exist with them.  Happy Camping.

Tuesday, June 12, 2012

The Wild God

I first encountered this reading when I was in training 15 years ago.  I have kept a copy ever since.   I shared it this morning with the Executive Peer Circle Group I am a part of this year. 

The Wild God


From The Art of the Psychotherapist  
By
James F.T. Bugental, Ph.D.

They have said that God is dead, and it may be so, But I believe that the God who is dead is the god in the cage, the zoo god.  We thought to contain the zoo god by our definitions, our interpretations, our inventions of “divine laws.”  The god whom we captured and domesticated in our intellectual zoo of exotic concepts, that god has not thrived in captivity, and that god has died.
But the wild god, the god that cannot be captured by our wills or our intellects – the wild god who will not be domesticated – is alive and free as ever.  He moves in the wind.  She sings in the silences of the desert. It nourishes us in the sun.
The wild god is more than the god of evolution; the wild god breathes revolution as well. The zoo god could not take us by surprise; we visited him at our convenience and chiefly as children.  The zoo god could not upset the comfortable routines of our lives, and he seemed - until he died – to require little feeding with anything that mattered.
Not to be so trained is the wild god, who may overturn everything as he comes into our lives.  She may demand all we have as It devours our complacency and requires us to change violently, totally, frighteningly.
[Paul] Tillich called the wild god, “the God above god.”  The wild god is the god of mystery.  And mystery is a world too seldom found in psychological writing or psychotherapeutic discourses.  We deny mystery; we pretend it exists in the minds of children, authors, and mystics.  And we deceive and blind ourselves when we do so. 
The wild god comes upon us in ways we cannot predict and in forms we do not expect.  The wild god may come disguised as a frightened and withdrawn client who awaits release to show a rich, poetic creativity.  The wild god may be the client who baffles us, frustrates us, and forces us to think freshly about aspects of our work which had felt solid and dependable.  The wild god may work through our own restlessness and irritability to forces us to confront long-denied inner conflicts.  The wild god shakes the ground under our feet, obscures the path we follow, and makes us aware we dwell in cages that we have constructed and that we call “reality”…
If we seek the wild god, we must go out into the world, out into the dangers and opportunities, go without a map, without a compass, without enough food, protection, anything.  And as we seek the wild god, we may be captured by him.  For mystery comprehends us; we do not comprehend it. (pp. 272-274)