Doing the best we can with what we’ve got
No one makes it through life unscathed. Whether we’ve experienced “big T” trauma, such as physical or sexual abuse, or “little T” trauma, such as an unhealthy relationship or financial instability, we all have to find ways to cope with hardship. Sometimes, we can cope just fine–we may have the resources necessary to make sense of and move through challenges. Other times, we find it hard to cope and our attempts to feel better or make sense of what has happened to us leads to ineffective solutions, and ultimately more pain. This might look like self-harming, pursuing toxic relationships, shutting down into depression, relying on substances, or experiencing any number of mental health issues. So, are these issues really “problems,” as we so often think about them? Or are they our attempts to cope and do the best we can with what we’ve got? I tend to believe the latter.
One of my main goals as a counselor is to help clients to better understand themselves–why they do the things they do, think the way they think, feel the way they feel. Is someone overly self-critical because they truly deserve to be put down, or because it protects them from being hurt by others? Does someone drink too much because they lack self-control, or because it helps them forget their trauma? In most cases, I don’t think that we develop “bad” habits simply because we think they are fun–they serve a purpose. Exploring the root causes of our “problems” more often than not reveals an underlying pain that we’re trying to soothe.
As a therapist, my role is to join clients on this journey of looking beneath the surface and identifying these root causes of behaviors, thoughts, and emotions. With greater understanding, we can begin to identify if a given coping strategy is helpful or harmful. From there, we have to develop more helpful strategies to replace the harmful ones. Harmful coping strategies cannot just be banished overnight. We cannot take away an individual’s long standing way of dealing with pain without first helping them to practice and integrate new ways of addressing it.
As Virginia Satir, author and psychotherapist known for her compassionate and strengths-based approach, wrote in her poem I Am Me, a declaration of self-esteem, “However I look and sound, whatever I say and do, and whatever I think and feel at a given moment in time is authentically me. If later some parts of how I looked, sounded, thought and felt turned out to be unfitting, I can discard that which is unfitting, keep the rest, and invent something new for that which I discarded.”
Ultimately, we are all just doing the best we can with what we’ve got. Reframing “problems” as ineffective attempts at coping can release us from shame, increase self-compassion, and allow us to change that which no longer serves us.
References:
Satir, V. (1988). The New Peoplemaking. Science and Behavior Books, Inc.