Lighten up and see if life doesn’t improve

Part of my professional responsibility involves training mental health professionals.

I enjoy this role and have found that some of the broader elements of the training applies to many other areas of life. Part of what I teach these young counselors involves setting appropriate healthy expectations for themselves.

During the early years of my practice, I burdened my family and myself with feelings of failure if I didn’t achieve positive results with each and every individual I attempted to help. This impossible, irrational and illogical goal resulted from my tendency to view life in a win-lose manner.

If I couldn’t help someone change and improve, then surely I must be either doing something wrong or failing to understand his or her problems sufficiently. I was struggling to be all things to all people.

As my years in practice progressed, I began to search for someone more experienced and further along career-wise to help me decrease the stress I was placing on myself.

Help arrived for me several years later when I was serving on a professional board with a psychologist who had been in practice more than 30 years. He seemed to thrive on his work, telling me he enjoyed his practice more than ever before. His exact words were, “I intend to die in the harness.” (Which he did.)

I asked him the secret of his success, and he told me the following story.

“I view my career as though I am a clock maker. Some bring their clocks to me to be fixed and I can make the needed repairs so the clock is as good as new. They are happy and so am I.

“The second group of individuals brings clocks that I am able to partially repair. I tell them to enjoy their clocks, that I have done my best and that the clock should run for at least a while.

“The last group brings me clocks that are hopelessly beyond repair. They are disappointed, upset and even angry when I tell them I wish I could help them, but unfortunately it is not possible. It is with this group that I must help myself.

“I must remember that I did not break their clocks in the first place and that I can not assume the responsibility for their unhappiness.”

His story greatly assisted me in putting things in the proper perspective. I now realize that during my years of practice, I have helped some people a lot, a lot of people some and a small number of people not at all.

I have learned this is about what a counselor can realistically expect, given the enormity of factors that predispose an individual to seek help and the wide variance of insight and motivations they bring into treatment.

This same principle applies to many areas of our lives when we erroneously perceive and expect more from ourselves than is realistic and healthy.

Check out your own life. Are you your own worst enemy and critic at times? Lighten up and give yourself a break. You may see a dramatic improvement in the quality of your life.

Copyright c 1995 Harold H. LeCrone, Jr., Ph.D.