Time Out For Fish

I have many serious things to write about and that will soon follow. But right now I'm giving myself (and you) a break from the serious to attend to the whimsical.

That I am a serious quilter is no surprise to readers. But I've recently become a whimsical quilter, and I'm finding that to be quite a different and important experience.

Early this month, I attended a lecture and slide/trunk show by artist, Susan Carlson, who specializes in fabric collages. I was so taken by her work that I bought her book and followed her guidelines to make a fabric collage fish. I say "guidelines," because Susan isn't fond of "rules." She breaks all the rules perpetrated by the quilt nazis. She even glues pieces of fabric together. (No stitching? Mon dieu!)

All of my quilting forays to date have been satisfying. But this was satisfying in a new way. As I auditioned little pieces of fabric to represent fin and tail and eye, I heard myself laughing out loud at the results. I've never laughed while quilting before.

Look closely at the fish's mouth. That was my greatest victory. I found a single piece of fabric that had just the right shape to it. On its original cloth (in another life, you might say), it was the pant leg of a man in a tribal scene. One thing you learn from Susan is to look at fabric in a whole new way.

So what's all this have to do with you? Well, a few things. (I make the promise here and now that if this blog ever becomes all about me and offers you nothing, it will be time for me to stop. And I will.)

First, throw out most of the rules. If there are ten rules, it's likely that you really need only one or two of them. Failing to question the prevailing wisdom (the rules) will lead you straight to mediocrity.

Second, put whimsy into your life. Something or someone needs to tickle your funny bone (or fish scales) every day. Laughter is indeed the best medicine for maintaining mental health.

Finally, and most importantly, learn to look at things with fresh eyes. Go find the fish mouth in the pant leg of life.

Copyright starfishdoc 2007

Love is a Verb

Talk is cheap when it comes to loving someone. I've seen way too much evidence that people think saying "I love you" is enough. So I'll skip the lecture and get to the bottom line.

Love is a verb. To love someone means taking every opportunity to demonstrate it through acts that support the statement, "I love you." The words are otherwise hollow.

Salvatore Minuchin, one of the greats of family therapy, opened a conference on couples therapy by asking, "Why is it that we fall in love with someone for all the ways that that person is unique and different from us, and then spend the rest of the relationship trying to make them into carbon copies of ourselves?" The answer: ego. We tend to let our own personal and biased view of the world get in the way of clearly seeing what is meaningful and beneficial to our partner.

Gary Chapman's book, The Five Love Languages, is among my top ten reference books for couples. His thesis goes like this: there are five categories that capture all the ways there are to show love to someone. They are:

• words of affirmation


• quality time together


• gifts


• acts of service


• physical touch

Each person ranks the importance of the five differently. We do our best job of loving someone when we know the rank order that person puts them in and act accordingly. Seems simple, but then there's that tricky little ego. It gets in the way. Instead of acting according to our loved one's preferences, we act from our own. Example.

Bobbie and Steve had been making significant progress in therapy. When I commended them on their efforts, Bobbie said, "Yes, but wait, it's almost Valentine's Day. We have had a huge fight every Valentine's Day for the past ten years."

Here's their story, repeated every year.

Steve: "What would you like for Valentine's Day, Bobbie?" (Notice, his heart is in the right place.)

Bobbie: "I just want you to send me flowers at work." (Her favorite love language looks like gifts, but is really words of affirmation. In her case, public affirmation.)

Steve: "That's not good enough for you. I want to buy you something expensive. And besides, sending flowers wouldn't be a surprise." (One more testimony to the overrated worth of surprises. See Really Big Birthdays.)

So V-day would come, she'd cry when she opened the diamond bracelet, he'd get angry at her lack of appreciation (notice the tricky little ego getting in his way?) and they'd go into yet another month long cold war. (By the way, he's the one who loves the expensive clothes and jewelry.)

After hearing this story and the arguments that ensued in my office, I decided to meet with him alone. If I were Dr. Phil, I would have said, "So, the expensive gifts, how's that workin' for ya?" But I'm not, so I taught him about the love languages, and suggested he try it her way just this once.

Convincing him was harder than herding cats. (Sometimes the power of the ego can be daunting.) But he did in fact send her flowers at work. She was ecstatic. He was proud he could please her. Therapy ended shortly thereafter. (I bet you didn't know that good therapy is about working yourself out of a job.) PS He still sends her flowers every Valentine's Day.

You too can try the love languages approach. Here are the three simple steps.

1. Ask your partner to rank order the list.
2. Start behaving accordingly.
3. Give your ego a swift kick every time it tries to get in the way.

Copyright starfishdoc 2007

SAD, but not for long

"Oh mister sun, sun, mister shiny sun..."

It's been raining for five straight days, thunderstorms in the mix last night and today. When it is cloudy for more than three days in a row, I begin to feel down-- my own personal Seasonal Affective Disorder.

I saw only tiny glimpses of it before moving to Maine. Much as I love it here, winter is much longer and grayer than it was just a couple of states south. To add to the misery, winter is followed by a beige spring that Mainers call "mud season." And if you want to know what mud season is like, a local TV commercial compares it to having a colonoscopy. In short, plenty of dull days, colored with my least favorite crayons in the box.

"Won't you please shine down, oh won't you please shine down, oh won't you please shine down on me........"

The first time, it hit me as a really bad case of the blues. I rounded up the usual suspects looking for a reason. There was nothing I could put my finger on. That's the earmark of SAD: no apparent cause. And despite years of helping others with SAD, I couldn't see it in myself. (It was D who suggested SAD as the explanation for my melancholy. Thank you D.)

"Oh mister sun, sun, mister shiny sun, hiding behind that tree...."

I knew he was right instantly. What to do about it? I could take the advice I've given to clients many times and order a light box, but that would take days. My misery was NOW.

Well, at the same time, I was trying to set up my craft studio. I thought it would do me good to stick to my plans, despite my mood. So armed with my list of hardware needs, I headed to Home Depot. Pushing yourself to accomplish things when you're down helps.

But serendipitously, something else turned out to be the miracle I needed. Among my purchases were two four-foot workshop lights. You know, the fluorescent ones that come encased in the ugly, aluminum-waffle reflectors. I spent the afternoon hanging them from the ceiling. By evening I was working on a little project under the lights. After a couple of hours I noticed that my mood had lifted. I felt back to normal.

"This old gal is a-tellin' you, to sunshine she will ever be true...."

I was really struck by the power of bright lights to bring my mood around. Sure, there are other things that I can recommend to you to lift your mood when you're down, from vitamins to antidepressants. But I must say that the simplest, cheapest, most readily-available and quick-acting remedy I've found are bright fluorescent lights.

So now, when the days are consistently gray, you'll find me spending as much time as possible in my studio under the lights. Oh, yeah, and also singing the "Mister Sun" song Sister Benedicta taught me in third grade.

"So mister sun, sun, mister shiny sun,
Won't you please shine down, oh won't you please shine down, oh won't you please shine down on me!"

Copyright 2007 starfishdoc

Seasoned

Yesterday, D made a comment about the woodpile as we sat having morning coffee on the porch. "Look at how much it has settled since we stacked it last month. It reminds me of how people settle into certain ways as they age."

He met this man long ago when he was working for a chiropractor as a novice massage therapist. The patient had been in a nasty accident. The combined work of the chiropractor and the massage therapist had given him back 90% of his physical functioning, but the man continued to lament, "When will I get back that last 10%?" D asked his boss what could be done for this unsatisfied customer. The doc responded: "The man is almost seventy. He's had a major accident. We've worked some miracles getting him to where he is. He's never going to get back that last 10%."

So it got me to thinking about having realistic expectations. Physical flexibility is a free gift to the young, but as you age you must exercise to maintain it. Even doing your best, you will lose some of it over time. But as physical flexibility wanes, it can be replaced by growing reserves of wisdom: a flexibility of the mind and heart. I say "can be" because if you focus only on your physical self and fail to develop your mental, spiritual and emotional qualities, you will be disappointed by the results.

I do not fret over the settling of the woodpile. I expect it. I won't call my wood guy to say that as a result of the settling, I didn't get my full cord. The wood is aging as it is supposed to.

If we set our expectations and our goals to be in keeping with nature's way, we won't be disappointed. In fact, that old wood will burn with a warm radiant glow come winter.


Copyright 2007 starfishdoc

Whisper Words of Wisdom....

I was reviewing my posts recently and was surprised to find a common theme running through them. It is about letting go and leaving things alone.

It came up in a conversation with a client last week. She's concerned about her daughter who is stuck in an unhealthy relationship. She asked me several times what she could do about her daughter's problem. Mostly, my answer was the same each time: don't do anything. If you do, you will deflect your daughter's attention away from grappling with the situation herself. Instead, she will put all her energy into defending the relationship and arguing with you.

Most of us have grown up in a society where exerting influence over people and events is highly valued. When faced with a problem, we believe we must "do something." So when I tell a client to let something go, the reaction is often: "What? There must be something I can do!"

If you haven't seen the movie, "What about Bob?" you must. Richard Dreyfus plays a self-important shrink who tries to go off on a family vacation. Bill Murray is a clinging, needy patient who follows him to Lake Winnipesaukee. No matter what the doc does to set limits and keep him at a distance, Bob sticks to him like flypaper. I think it illustrates in a most humorous way how our attempts to control others often backfire.

I am not immune to wanting to exert my will over events around me. I once led a weekly therapy group that met in a room with an assortment of comfortable chairs. One of them was a beanbag chair. Each week George would arrive early to secure the beanbag chair for himself. Shortly into each session, he would fall asleep and snore through the rest of the meeting! I thought I could take care of this by locking the beanbag chair in a closet. Wouldn't you know that the next week George showed up with his own beanbag chair in tow?

So I guess the message today is, next time you've got a problem and you're trying to think of what to do about it, ask yourself, "What would happen if I did nothing?" It may be best if you simply go with the flow. Listen to those great philosophers, the Beatles. "There will be an answer, let it be."



Copyright 2007 starfishdoc