Investing in yourself

Many years ago, after purchasing a vehicle, one of my co-workers sourly observed, "You'll never get rich buying new cars."

But actually, he was wrong. Years later, when I was starting a consulting practice, getting a new car - at a time when I had no income whatsoever - turned out to be one of the smartest moves I ever made. And perhaps one of the smartest moves YOU could make too. Allow me to explain.

Here's the backstory. In 1996, after a pretty good first year as a consultant, everything came to a very hard stop. All of my projects and clients ground to a halt at nearly the same time, and my income with it. From there, I couldn't get myself arrested. Three months later, adding insult to injury, my wheezy old car with six figures on the odometer needed major repairs.

With my tail between my legs, I went to my local dealer to try and trade for a passable used car while I got back on my feet again. Instead, the salesperson wheeled out one of the most gorgeous vehicles I'd ever seen - a brand-new, full size car with metallic paint, a sunroof, and a premium stereo system. And explained how leasing it for two years would only put a small amount of my assets at risk.

His numbers actually made sense. I could essentially "borrow" this beautiful car for two years for a modest cost, and then turn it back in if I still wasn't successful. I will never forget the feeling of having had no income in three months, no idea when I would ever work again, and driving off the lot in the nicest car I had ever owned.

Here is why it actually made good financial sense. Every time I got behind the wheel of this beautiful car, I FELT like a successful person. And ACTED like a successful person. Which made a real, tangible difference as I started knocking on doors, lining up gigs and clients, and planning my future. Soon I was back in business again, and I proudly paid that car off early and kept it for seven years.

Think about it. If you are trying to make an impression on others - for business or personal reasons - what would give you your best chance of succeeding: feeling hot, sweaty, and dirty, or feeling freshly showered and clean in a nice suit? Either feeling transmits itself to other people, and the same thing is true for the rest of your self-image. And what they perceive, in turn, ultimately governs your success.

I am not suggesting that you start taking stupid risks with your life, or your cash flow. But I do want you to rethink the hair-shirt view that self-denial is a necessity for success. What works for those types frankly wouldn't have worked for me - and I feel strongly that you should do whatever will make YOU most successful.

Nearly two decades later, I still drive around in a nice car, because I firmly believe that how you FEEL and how you ACT are major determinants of success. (My current ride is pictured above.) So whatever it takes to make you feel awesome - and then share that awesomeness with the world - seriously consider it as part of your life plan. Invest in yourself and your self-image, and I believe the rewards will often come back to you many times over.

How to choose the right therapist

The small town in upstate New York where I live has over 100 licensed psychotherapists. We sometimes joke that there is one therapist here for every four people. All joking aside, however, it can be a real challenge to find the right therapist, particularly when your issues need specific expertise. Picking people at random from a list of practitioners can be very frustrating – and worse, it can lead to bad outcomes.

So how do you find the right therapist for you? Here are some thoughts from my end:

1) Start with expertise

Suppose you are dealing with PTSD. Or OCD. Or chronic illness. Or domestic violence. Most therapists can hum a few bars on any of these problems, but in my view, the difference between a specialist and a generalist can be huge. It is no different from trying to see a general practitioner when you really need a dermatologist.

There is a real risk in choosing a therapist at random from a directory: this person might say “yes” and start treating you, when you would have done much better with an expert. How do you find these experts? Drill down into their websites, search online to see what they talk and write about, and ask other health practitioners. Visit my website, for example, and you will discover that my specialties include marital counseling, treating anxiety disorders, and workplace interventions.

Another good test is to look for professional credentials or certification: for example, I am a clinical fellow of the American Association of Marriage and Family Therapy, a graduate of the International OCD Foundation's clinical training program, and the author of several books on workplace communications skills. You can also check websites of support organizations for specific issues, many of whom have therapist directories.

Finally, some issues usually demand the resources of a mental health agency or hospital. When someone is actively suicidal, suffers from severe or persistent mental illness, has behaviors that put others at risk, or needs a level of care that goes beyond a weekly psychotherapy session, private practitioners may lack the resources or expertise to manage these issues. Start with your local, county, or hospital mental health unit in situations like these, and get the help you need.

2) Chemistry matters

I am always delighted when a new client tells me that they are evaluating several therapists before choosing the best one. It tells me that this person is proactive about taking good care of him or herself. I strongly encourage this, and wish it happened more often. I personally do not care at all about whether I "win" or "lose" in these situations, as long as people are getting the right care.

When you don’t connect personally with an auto mechanic, they can still do a good job of fixing your car. Even a doctor with poor bedside manners may have strong clinical skills. But in psychotherapy, wellness pivots around a strong therapeutic alliance between you and the provider. This means you should trust your gut about how you feel personally about the therapist. At a minimum, he or she should make you feel heard, understood, and accepted as you share your issues.

Finally, this is a good litmus test for how secure the therapist is in his or her own practice. Run – don’t walk – from any therapist who gets upset about comparison shopping or tries too hard to “sell” you.

3) Look at the practicalities

Once you find one or more therapists who have the expertise AND the personal chemistry to help you, you can explore the specifics of how this therapist works:

• Does the therapist have evening or weekend hours?
• Does he or she accept your insurance coverage?
• Will the therapist call or see you off-hours in an emergency?
• Can you easily cancel a session when needed?
• Can a family member join you for a session?

Remember, the therapist is just a consultant, and you are the boss. Good luck, and be an educated consumer!

Dragging your teenager to therapy

I have a word for those of you who are concerned about your adolescent’s moods or behavior, and are thinking of insisting that they see a counselor. Two words, actually:

Please don’t.

The reason is simple and self-explanatory: remember what you were like as a teenager when your parents made you do anything? There’s your answer. But in case your own adolescent memories are a bit hazy, let me spell it out for you.

First, it doesn’t work. Good therapy never happens at the point of a gun. Explore one’s feelings and strategizing new behaviors needs the kind of conscious, willing effort that no one can ever be talked into.

Second, it is miserable for your kid. Even when people want and need it, psychotherapy usually ranks pretty low on most people’s lists of fun things to do. Add in the punitive atmosphere of being “sent” to counseling, and it becomes almost impossible for positive change to happen.

Third, it is miserable for the therapist. Ever heard of a “shruggie”? That’s what we call an adolescent client who sits there for the whole hour and responds to every statement with a shrug. Good therapists are usually gentle and kind with shruggies, but in terms of any real benefits taking place, you would be better off bringing a potted plant.

My biggest concern is that when sullen teenagers are dragged to therapy, they learn to associate counseling with resistance, stigma, and parental pressure. Which makes it that much less attractive to them in the future, even if they might want or need the help.

Here is an analogy: when I was growing up, my father always tried to get me to read great literature. Was it effective? You bet. Despite being a prodigious non-fiction author for nearly all my adult life, to this day I neither read nor write a word of fiction.

So what can you do when you are worried about your adolescent?

1. Talk with your kids – and more important, listen to them. Listening without judgment and taking their feelings seriously – even when you might not agree with them – starts building the new adult relationship you are both headed toward, and helps them open up to you when they really need help.

2. Make them a free trial offer. If you think your teen isn’t wild about therapy, but really needs the help, suggest what we therapists often propose: go for three sessions, and then let *them* decide whether it is helping them or not. (And then be sure to pick a great therapist who really “gets” adolescents.)

3. Go to therapy yourself. “But I’m not the problem, my kid is!” Fair enough. But therapy is fundamentally a skill-building process, and if you learn skills for how to deal with your teenagers and bring them home, that may be the most effective way to help them. Besides, you might be surprised to learn how many of your adolescent’s problems are actually a dance with two partners.

4. Know when intervention is needed. Some situations do call for counseling, whether or not your teen is willing. The threat of self-harm, suicide, severe mental illness, or risk to others are good examples of this. A good social service agency or crisisline should be able to guide you in situations like these.

Finally, there is the best reason of all to send your son or daughter to therapy: when they ask for help themselves. When it is their independent decision to get counseling, you can become part of their support team – and in the process, start building an adult partnership for good mental health.

A practical guide to keeping yourself alive

Like everyone, I am shocked and saddened by the death of Robin Williams – someone whom I honestly felt was the most brilliant funnyman of our era. While it was no secret that he suffered from depression and alcoholism for much of his life, I will not try to analyze what led him to make this choice – only pray for him and his surviving family.

But I do want to say something to an equally important person: you. You are still alive and reading this. And if you are feeling desperate, hopeless, or unloved, I would like to chat with you for a minute.

If the thought of suicide has crossed your mind, then more than anything, you are probably feeling overwhelmingly alone. You may be thinking thoughts like these:

-“This pain is never going to end.”

-“I have struggled for so long with (mental illness, substance abuse, disability, or whatever) things will never get better.”

-“I feel so humiliated by something I did – or failed to accomplish – or that happened to me – that I can’t face the judgment of others.”

-“Because I am (unemployed, poor, divorced, retired, flunked out, or whatever) my life has no value.”

-“People would be better off without me.”

I would love to talk you out of these thoughts. And it would be tempting to try, because they often turn out to be untrue in the long run. But I probably can’t. So instead, I would like to try and share a little behavioral science with you. Here are just three simple things I would like you to remember:

1) Realize that you are feeling alone. Which has a simple and proven antidote: DON’T BE ALONE. Don’t try to figure out your thoughts quite yet. Just share them with someone. Perhaps someone who cares about you, or perhaps a crisisline or mental health professional. (Incidentally, calling a crisisline is one of the most effective public health interventions in existence.) Whatever you do, please bring other people in on your situation. This one simple guideline is more likely to keep you alive than any other.

2) You need a safety plan. Willpower is the worst thing you can depend on to do anything, including staying alive. Instead, you need a plan that will always be there for you. Know who you will call, where you will go, and whom you will stay with when life gets overwhelming. And then make a contract with yourself and others that you will always execute that plan.

I recommend making at least one professional part of your plan, whether it is a therapist, a crisisline, the police, or your local hospital. Why? Because of another fact that may surprise you: friends and family are often your worst resources in a mental health crisis. Unless they have been trained, you may get pat answers, pep talks or awkward silences when what you really need is competent help and support. So if possible, make the right professional(s) AND the right loved ones part of your plan.

(P.S. If you are wondering what to say to a loved one who is at risk of suicide, I have written a detailed blog on this, linked here.)

3) Don’t wait until you are in crisis. I often suggest that therapy clients call a crisisline for fun, just to see what the experience is like – and as a former crisisline volunteer, I can tell you that they will welcome the call. Knowing that there are *always* people who will listen and talk with you, 24 hours a day, about anything that bothers you is powerful and strengthening.

Another reason not to wait until you are in crisis is that professionals vary like anyone. (You’ve probably heard the joke about what they call the person who graduates last in medical school: “Doctor.”) If you don’t feel you connect with a therapist, prescriber or care facility, try another one. You deserve to have the very best people on your team when you need them.

I am by no means implying that these three steps might have saved Robin Williams. That would be horribly unfair to him and his surviving family, because we will never know what happened. Instead, I mourn his passing and wish them peace. But for many of you who feel desperate and hopeless right now, these steps will give you a much stronger chance of staying alive: don’t be alone, have a safety plan, and don’t wait until a crisis erupts. Good luck and be well.

The joy of being second best

Do you ever feel like a failure? Then congratulations, you have lots of company! Feelings of failure are like the common cold of psychotherapy nowadays.

So what can you do about these feelings? Here's a trick question I sometimes use:

“Let’s switch places and have you do a little therapy for me. I am almost 60 years old, and have come to realize I will always be a ‘B-list’ author and speaker. No one will ever stop me in airports for an autograph, and I will probably I never keynote the big conferences. So tell me, how should I feel about being doomed to the B-list?”

People usually walk right into my trap. They empathize with how frustrated I must be, or say they understand my plight. Or give me a pep talk about how I could still do better.

My answer? I break into a huge smile and say, “I love being on the B-list! It’s like winning a game show! Getting paid to write books and being flown all over the country to speak is fantastic! Being on the B-list is totally awesome!”

Which leads to my real point. We falsely connect winning with being happy. We feel we must be unsatisfied with our current performance – and therefore emotionally unhappy – to goad ourselves to succeed.

Instead, this makes us emotionally constipated. Being critical and self-judging is never the road to success. Top athletes, for example, generally learn to shake off failure and keep improving. Which means, by corollary, that they always like themselves in the moment. If you really want to be the best – your best – you must like yourself right now, exactly as you are.

So be proud of being second best. Notice I didn't say settle for second best - improving yourself is always awesome. But psychology says that your best hope of winning lies in being present wherever you are - second, third, or whatever - with a smile.

I am actually no slouch as an author and speaker. I’ve had a couple of national bestsellers, make a nice living speaking, and lifetime gross sales of my books recently topped a million dollars. But I got there by being happy and proud of myself at every point of a decades-long journey. I keep getting better because I like myself and love my craft – not because I grimly put my nose to the grindstone harder.

Finally, your self-worth affects your relationships with others. A few years ago I spoke at a conference following a keynote by Dan Thurmon, a rock-star speaker who combines acrobatics, juggling and breathtaking risk to enthrall the audience. I will never be Dan Thurmon. In fact, my back hurts just watching him! But seeing better writers, speakers or therapists in action delights me - which in turn leads to authentic and satisfying relationships with my community of peers.

Dr. David Burns, perhaps the best selling self-help author in history, made this same point nearly a quarter-century ago in his book Feeling Good, in a delightful chapter entitled “Dare to be Average!” He talks about how perfectionism always leads to a brick wall, and being average leads to a magic garden of joy and success. This point is more than just good advice – it is also sound behavioral science.

So embrace the B-list. Go out there and do your very best crappy job at whatever you are doing. And be proud of it. My guess is that you will become happier and more successful than you ever imagined!

Five things therapists get asked by their friends

Many people get asked about their careers. But since I became a psychotherapist later in life, it has been fascinating to see what people ask me about it - especially, say, versus my other careers such as being a software engineer or a writer. Here are some of the things that well-meaning friends and relatives have asked me:

1. Are you analyzing me?

No, I am not analyzing you. I am not that smart.

I realize where this misconception comes from. We are trained to listen and pay attention to people more closely than most professions. And we do assess and treat people based on what we observe. But that doesn't mean we've suddenly gained some kind of X-ray vision about your psyche. So do I make assumptions about you based on, say, how you hold your fork? I wouldn't worry.

2. You work with crazy people all day, right?

First, the vast majority of my clients are extremely normal (and very nice) people who suffer with issues many of us share: anxiety, depression, loss, relationship problems, etcetera. And they have the good judgment to seek out new skills for dealing with them - skills that would benefit everyone. Second, people who suffer from what we call "severe or persistent mental illness" are more likely to be treated in agency or hospital settings versus a private therapist. Many of them are not "crazy" either.

My clients, however, often do work with crazy people all day. Or so they tell me.

3. You must be a “paid friend”

I certainly hope not, because friends are often the worst possible resources for mental health care.

Say, for example, a kid is acting out in school. That family's friends will probably have no lack of input on how to “motivate” this kid, when the real answer may involve doing a psych eval and uncovering a treatable neurological problem. Likewise, if someone has a fear, most friends would recommend mindless bravery (which doesn't work) instead of cognitive-behavioral therapy (which does). I am constantly being reminded that training and expertise really do matter.

4. Do you make people do uncomfortable things?

You've been watching too much reality TV. We never force people to do things they don’t want to. Even the most challenging forms of therapy, such as exposure therapy for fears or OCD, always take place at a rate that *they* choose, with lots of safety and support. In my experience getting well is normally a lot easier than staying ill, and most people emerge from therapy sessions feeling better than when they came in.

5. My last therapist was cold and distant. Or talked too much. Or asked me too many questions. Or whatever. Are you like that?

Our personalities vary like any random group of people. For example, I tend to be humorous and outgoing. Many clients like this, while others are more comfortable with a quiet listener. Some people prefer a counselor who has a step-by-step game plan for getting well (me again), while others prefer someone who can “hold space” for complex feelings. There is no right or wrong when it comes to people's preferences.

Which leads me to perhaps the most important point of all about this profession: we provide a service for people, like painters and barbers and lots of others. We do something that we are highly trained for, that hopefully makes most people feel a lot better. More than anything else I've ever done, serving them has been one of my greatest privileges. So keep asking away, I don't mind at all!