Things We Don’t Say Outloud

He was a new client. A 45-year-old attorney in his first therapy session ever. And you could literally see the fear in his eyes.

When we first started talking, he leaned in and spoke quietly, like we were about to trade government secrets.

Then he opened up and started telling me things he had never told anyone.

That he sometimes fears he married the wrong person. That his family can feel like a burden. That every so often he fantasizes about running away from it all, or telling everyone to go to hell.

That he sneaks drinks in the garage. That if he’d known this is what life would feel like, maybe he would’ve made different choices. That there are times he acts petty, selfish, and manipulates situations to benefit himself, then feels like shit about it afterwards.

And I could tell what he was thinking.

That having these thoughts and feelings meant that he was uniquely fucked up.

And why wouldn’t he feel that way?

After all, we never sit down with other people and say, “Are you thinking, feeling, and doing all of this craziness too?”

No, we are conditioned to show others, “Nothing to see here. Keep it moving.”

When someone asks me how I’m doing, I’m always mildly amazed to hear myself reflexively say “good” in a voice an octave higher than my normal speaking voice.

Sometimes that’s a true statement. Other times it’s not.

But here’s the good news as far as I can tell. We all think, feel and do things that we would give anything for others not to see. Therapists included.

One of the many gifts I receive through my work is perspective. It normalizes my own form of human nuttiness.

I usually walk away from a session with some sense of compassion, excitement for the work the client and I have done, and relief that I’m not the only one.

Because painful personal shit isn’t proof that something is wrong with us.

It is simply proof that we are human, living in the 21st century. That we are being asked to carry so much each day. That we are over-communicated with, yet under-connected. That our world is littered with opportunities to be, as David Foster Wallace once put it, little addicts to something, anything. Just to give us a respite from it all sometimes.

To make matters more complicated, we have these human minds that are so brilliant yet cause us so much trouble.

When you consider that many of us have been taught to soldier on and not open up about any of this, it’s amazing we are doing as well as we are.

And here’s the other bit of good news.

We don’t have to fix any of these thoughts and feelings in order to “not be broken.” We don’t have to figure out where they came from, why they arose, or what they say about us as a person.

We can simply learn how to hold them up to the light and look at them objectively. From there, it’s easier to tell which ones we should obey and which ones are merely unhelpful suggestions.

And a lot of the time, the fastest way to tell the difference is just to get the thought out of our head and into the open.

Say it out loud to a person, a therapist, a friend, a men’s group, whatever. Or write it down. The second it leaves your inner world and lands somewhere else, you can usually see it more clearly for what it is.

Maybe we start to even realize, wait, that’s not even “my” thought. I didn’t choose it at all. My mind just handed it to me the way it hands everybody a thousand other suggestions a day, and maybe I don’t have to feel particularly proud or ashamed of any of them.

Once we realize everyone thinks and feels things they would never admit, it doesn’t fix the “problem” of having a human mind, but it provides one of the first benefits of therapy.

I saw it at the end of that first session. As we finished our walk-and-talk that day and he had finally said everything out loud, I could see in him a relief I have also experienced.

It’s the relief that comes from telling someone those thoughts, feelings, and actions without them recoiling in horror.

It’s the relief inherent in the sense of normalcy.

It’s as though something lifts.

Then we can learn to just notice this stuff, let it sit there for a second, and stop feeling defective because of its presence. 

One Thing to Try

This week, catch one thought that shows up and makes you feel like something’s wrong with you. Don’t argue with it, try to suppress it or blindly obey it.

Say it out loud to someone you trust or yourself. Or just write it down. The point is to get it outside your own head and see what happens to it in the light of day.

Most of the time you’ll notice it loses some of its grip the second it’s not just bouncing around in there alone with you.