When Is Enough Enough?

Okay.  So, let’s talk about when enough is enough.  You’ve been married over 30 years and have a spouse who has told you repeatedly that he or she has never been in love with you and is not in love with you now; yet, you stay married and keep asking, “Do you love me?”  When is enough enough?

Your spouse has been unfaithful repeatedly throughout your marriage.  You have forgiven him or her over and over.  You have gone to both pastoral counseling and you have seen an outside marriage counselor.  You finally tell your spouse that one more incidence of infidelity will be the end of your marriage.  Your spouse cheats again.  When is enough enough?

Your teenager has always been a fairly good student; then, suddenly he or she starts to fail classes.  You are contacted by the high school and told that your teenager has racked up 26 absences from school.  You take away all privileges and luxuries, but your teenager continues to act out.  One night, the local police ring your doorbell and have your teenager in tow.  He or she has several charges that land him or her in the juvenile system on probation.  When is enough enough?

You and your spouse no longer talk.  Every conversation turns into an argument.  Both of you feel like you can do nothing right for the other.  There is no more conversation.  There is no more laughter.  There is no more closeness.  There is no more intimacy.  You exist like two strangers who share a house.  Yet, you stay.  When is enough enough?

You are over 30 and still working for hourly pay.  You beat yourself up daily saying, “I should have finished college.”  “I need to go back to school.”  “I would be so much happier if I had a career instead of just a job.”  Yet, you let everyone else’s needs come before yours.  You come up with every excuse in the book as to why you cannot go back to school.  You find time and money to make everything else happen in your life; but you cannot find a way to get back to school.  You stay stuck, moving nowhere, wishing your life was better.  When is enough enough?

I have seen all these scenarios in some form or fashion throughout my counseling career.  It saddens me every time I see someone putting up with crap with which they do not have to deal.  It saddens me to see people with so much potential just give in to life’s pitfalls and choose not to do anything about it.  All these scenarios, like all scenarios in life, come with a choice to be made.  No matter what the situation, we ALWAYS have a choice.  Even if someone is holding a gun to your head, you have a choice to run, scream, cry, wet yourself, or pray; but YOU HAVE A CHOICE.  I wish more people, especially women, would choose to take their power back and make positive choices for their lives; rather than giving their power away and allowing others to determine their destiny.

So, when is enough enough?  When you get sick and tired of being sick and tired.  However, only YOU know when YOU have reached that point.  When you finally reach your breaking point, you will either get busy living your life or continue to watch it wash out to sea like an ebbing tide.

You Have to Be Strong to Be Humble

You have to be strong to be humble.  Sounds almost like an oxymoron.  When I first heard Bishop TD Jakes say the words, they didn't resonate.  However, when I heard them again, upon listening to his series, "A Lesson in Humility," the words hit me like a ton of bricks.  Being a therapist, puts me in a very vulnerable place with people.  When clients have gotten to a point in life where they have reached out for support and counseling, typically, life, a specific situation, or their level of self-knowledge, has become too much to deal with.  The most self-assured people walking amongst us are those that are the most humble.  They have no need to boast and brag.  They have no need to list their degrees or accomplishments.  They go through their daily life, doing the extraordinary or the ordinary, without looking for acknowledgement or validation.  These people have most, if not all, their needs met because they have learned how to meet them for themselves.  They do not rely on or wait on others to provide external validation concerning their self-definition or self-worth.  

On the flipside of that coin are people that hide behind the façade of arrogance or narcissism.  These people are constantly seeking validation for anything and everything they do.  They get angry when they are not acknowledged.  They get offended when their opinions and are not treated as “the end all be all."  At times, whether intentionally or unintentionally, they treat others as though they are stupid.  Overall, these are broken people who would rather walk through the fires of Hell in gasoline draws than to admit they don't like themselves.  

Most people, who know me, know that my life has been a journey full of ups and downs.  I have been to the depths of Hell several times; but have made it back over and over again.  I believe I was called to counseling because I am able to understand the depth and intensity of human pain; and but represent, at the same time, the rise of the Phoenix.  We are all our worst critics.  Unfortunately, there are people who need external validation the way diabetics need insulin.  They are so incredibly broken and empty on the inside that they try desperately to fill their love tank with anything and everything they think will work.  What they find out, unfortunately, is that no matter how much external validation they receive, it is never enough.  External sources will eventually, at one point or another, let you down.  

I challenge all of you who read this blog to fill your own love tanks and stop giving the power to others to determine your self-worth.  I further challenge you to forward this blog to your friends and encourage them to fill their own love tanks as well.  If you are an enabler, I give you permission to let go of the feelings of responsibility that you have been carrying – feeling like it is your job to make someone in your life feel good about him or herself.  As friends, spouses, and significant others, our only responsibility [to other adults in our lives] is to support their belief in themselves – not to create that belief for them.

Random Acts of Kindness

Maya Angelou once said "When someone shows you who they are, believe them."  As I was thinking about some situations throughout my life, I began to realize that I have become somewhat skeptical of people.  Perhaps you have been in a similar situation.

There are people who tell you that they are simply "nice" because “that's who they are.”  Then, later on, you find out that they want something from you.  When I find out that someone has done something for me with a hidden agenda, I am disheartened.  It disappoints me every time because I want to believe that the person is simply being "nice."  Not to say that I haven't found people who are genuinely nice.  Unfortunately, I have met more people who have a hidden agenda.  Even worse than those people, however, are the people in our lives who like us and love us - as long as we are doing what they want us to do, saying what they want us to say, looking like they want us to look, etc.  However, the minute we go against what they feel is important for us, or against what they have deemed is right, they turn on us and strike out like a vicious cobra.

Throughout life, I have fervently searched for the silver lining to every cloud; because, God knows, there have been many clouds in my life.  I guess today, even at 41, I still look for the good in people.  I tend to offer basic human trust in the beginning, assuming that the person will at least treat me with the same respect with which I treat him or her - human to human.  Until I am given a reason not to trust, that basic trust remains and deepens throughout the relationship.  The minute I feel unsafe emotionally, mentally, physically, or spiritually, my alarms, sirens, and flashing lights start to go off.

My question is: Why?  Why do we treat each other the way that we do at times?  Why is it that we cannot simply be nice to one another, and do things for one another, without the expectation of anything in return?

I have met, mostly women, who feel like once a man has taken them out on a date, they must "pay him back" with sex.  Sex is not currency.  It doesn't need to be traded for acts of service or acts of random kindness.  On the same token, we do not have to abide by "an eye for an eye" - whether negative or positive.  If someone does something nice for you, or you do something nice for somebody, why isn't "Thank You" enough?  What has happened to simple random acts of kindness?  

I saw a news story about a group of young adults going around their city, albeit dressed like superheroes or something like that, doing things like putting a nickel in an expired parking meter, picking up a cup someone had dropped and putting it in the trash, opening the door for an elderly woman, and the list goes on. What would life be like, you think, if every person on earth made a conscious decision to do five acts of random kindness every day? Would it change people at their core? Would it change who we are as human beings? Would it change the world that we live in?

“Don’t do unto others what you would not want done to you.”  My challenge to you is to start doing some random acts of kindness, without expecting anything in return, and see how you change.  See how your life changes.  

Who You Are vs. What You Do

In my practice, I've been amazed to learn how many people do not really know who they are. I've come to realize that most of us define who we are by what we do, what we have, the degrees we hold, or other external measures. I can honestly say that I have spent a lifetime building, salvaging, repairing, and rebuilding my sense of self. It is definitely not a revelation that we come to overnight.

The other night, I challenged a group of my students to define who they are. I got a lot of different looks from each of them -- ranging from bewilderment to baffling to fear and confusion to “Heck no! I'm not going to do that.” When looking at, or within, ourselves, we have to take an inventory of the good, the bad, the ugly, and the fantastic. By embracing all parts of who we are, we become whole.  We, then, lose the need for external completion. So, to help my students understand what I was asking of them, I used myself as an example. I showed two separate PowerPoint slides that I use when I'm introducing myself to a new group of students, typically. One is titled “Who I Am” and the other is titled “What I Do.”

Who I am changes fluidly, yet stems from a definite core being. I am a whole, powerful, intelligent, physically unfit, emotionally open, spiritually sound, black female with the gift of discernment, who has been to Hell and back more times than most, yet remains compassionate and believing that:

God is my Lord and Savior and it is crucial to be obedient to his plan for me

All children should have a voice in the world

Sex is not currency

Love does not conquer all

We must accept all parts of ourselves to be whole

“Yesterday is gone, tomorrow is not promised; so, today is all we really have.

What I do:

Mom

Wife

CASA volunteer

College Instructor

Registered Nurse (Atlanta Public Schools, Black Amateur Rodeo Circuit, USAFR Mental Health Nurse)

Doctoral Student

Licensed Professional Counselor in private practice at Perfect Peace Counseling Center with specialty training in Christian Sex Therapy, Distance Counseling, Hypnosis, and Equine Facilitated Psychotherapy. 

You can add daughter, sister, granddaughter, niece, friend, etc. to that list; but none of those define who I am. Who I am enhances my ability to do the things that I do.

In finding yourself, imagine that you were the only person on the planet. Who would you be? Without titles, who would you be? If you weren't a parent, a student, or a spouse, and you simply existed in the world, who would you be? Standing naked in front of your God, who are you? For what do you stand? In what do you believe? Your sense of self determines how you act, what you will and will not tolerate, and what you stand for. When you know who you are you are, you are able to fill your own love tank, enjoy your own company, and soothe yourself. When you know who you are, there is a confident stability on which you stand when facing adversity in life. You can always change things about yourself; but hopefully, you will make those changes because you want to, not because someone else wants to change you. Once you know who you are, you can decide if you like yourself or not. You can decide if you're good enough. You can decide how much you are worth in life. When people meet you and understand who you are, they will either like you or they won't. You cannot change or control other people’s opinions about you. When you know who you are, and believe in yourself, other people's opinions don't seem to matter as much, however.

So I challenge you to open your eyes, open your heart, and open your soul to look at all the different parts of yourself and define, for yourself, who you really are.

Untraining Our Minds

According to the Equine Assisted Growth and Learning Association’s fundamentals, the concept of being "untrained" is about letting go of past assumptions so that new perspectives may be understood. Being untrained presents an exciting, but sometimes challenging, experience.

In thinking about your own life, or life in general, there are many things on which we need to be "untrained."  One of the most prevalent, and surprisingly devastating, concepts that need to be retrained is the belief in fairy tales. There are many couples who are trudging through their marriage, trying to understand why it is not everything they expected it to be. At the same time, there are couples who are simply waiting for the other shoe to drop because their marriage, to them, does represent the fairytale. The reality is that “Prince Charming,” the way he is portrayed in fairy tales such as Cinderella and Snow White, does not really exist. First of all, there is no perfectly handsome, perfectly well-mannered, perfectly well-spoken, and perfectly emotionally stable person in the world. Secondly, your Prince Charming should be defined by your own thoughts, beliefs, desires, needs, and wants concerning your life partner. Lastly, we don't need to be rescued all the time. Having Prince Charming come and sweep you off your feet, put you on a white horse, and riding off into the sunset is not necessarily the most effective way to handle the problems in your life.

In actuality, being swept up and taken away is considered running -- at least from a mental health perspective. So often in life, we give our power away. We give away our power to make decisions. We give away our power when we believe that we are not strong enough to handle the obstacles that life puts in our path. This is not to say that we must face all our problems alone. What would I sound like, as a mental health professional, endorsing that? We should always feel empowered to stand up to any obstacle we face in life; and we should also feel empowered to ask for help when we need it. We do not necessarily embody "strength" when we suffer silently as life beats us to a pulp. In my opinion, it takes much more strength to reach out and admit our brokenness and our need for help than it does to waste away in a frenetic cloud of chaos and emotional destruction.

So as we reach back to teach the young people, what is it that we need to train them up to do? My vote is that we no longer train them to believe that life is a fairytale. Life is definitely an incredibly exciting and suspenseful story. It is not, however, always a story with a happy ending. Life is an ongoing process from our first breath to our last. The story we create in between those two breaths defines who we are, what we stand for, and the legacy that we leave behind.

I would almost rather that my daughter believe in a superhero, like Wonder Woman, than to rest her hopes on finding a Prince Charming to take her away from all life's problems. I would rather my son believe in Black Vulcan than to believe that all he has to do is ride up a woman on his "white horse" and take her off into the sunset. I want my kids to know that not only do they have a personal responsibility to take care of themselves and to not compromise their morals and values; but that, in a committed relationship; they also have a responsibility to their partner. The responsibility that we have for our significant other is not to fix all their problems. The responsibility we have to them is to simply be present, empathetic, genuine, and truthful. Our responsibility, as life partners, friends, and parents, is to be a source of support and refuge, simply put. Sometimes, just giving someone permission to not have to be right, to not have to be strong, to not have to find a solution; but simply to feel and sit with their emotions, is all a person really needs.

So, as I sat in my training class for equine assisted psychotherapy, I was repeatedly challenged to let go of everything I thought I knew and believed to be right, or effective, in psychotherapy; and to train my mind to understand that there are other options, there are other treatments, and there are other ways of doing things that can promote personal growth, even when we least expect it.

What do you need to un-train your mind about? What beliefs or life perspectives might you need to let go of? What stops you from opening your mind to different alternatives and life perspectives? What stops you from challenging your own beliefs -- those beliefs that you've had since you can remember, but perhaps don't even remember why you believe them?

Every day we wake up affords us an opportunity to learn something new. Sometimes, we learn something new about a particular subject or topic; and sometimes, we learn something new about the very person we see in the mirror. It’s in those moments, when we watch our own transformation that our life changes forever. It's in those moments, when we embrace that transformation that we learn to love ourselves even more.

What's Love Got to Do With It?

Love is a term similar to abnormal, meaning that its definition is subjective.  What love is to me may not be what love is to another person.  There seems to be a general consensus, however, that love is hard work.  Again, another subjective concept, "hard work."  What is considered hard work differs between individuals.  Most people would say that mucking a horse stall (cleaning out all the pee and poop) twice a day is "hard work."  Some days I would agree.  On other days, it's not as bad as you think.  It is something that has to be done to take care of the horse.  The animal should not be subjected to less than hygienic conditions; and it is the owner's responsibility to provide the best environment possible for that animal.

So, what about people who are in love - whether married, cohabitating, dating, partnered, whatever - whose responsibility is it to make love work?  Does the responsibility fall on one person?  Is it 50/50, 20/80, 40/60, 90/10?  Does the person who makes more money become responsible for "keeping the love alive?"  Does the stay-at-home-parent become responsible since they are home all day?  And what if one member of the relationship hurts or betrays the other - does it then become his or her responsibility to "fix" things?  What if the two people have different ideas about what love is and what it should look like?  How do you find compromise? And what if one member of the relationship is so damaged that he or she no longer believes in love?  Can it be re-created?  Can it be learned if you start off as "just good friends?"

These are all thoughts and questions that I ponder as I have discussions throughout the day with people trying to figure out what love is all about and if it's all that it's advertised to be.  I guess, like so many things in life, love is what you make it.  If you are unhappy in a love relationship, you can either change your picture of what you think your relationship should look like OR you can change from the person you are with to a different person.  You absolutely cannot change or control anyone other than yourself.  So, you kinda' have to figure it out for yourself - based on your wants, needs, and desires.

Are you getting the love you want, need, and deserve?  Are you staying in an unhappy situation because you are afraid of what people will say?  Are you staying in a situation that you believe in your heart can get better despite all the naysayers around you?  Trust yourself and be honest with yourself and your partner about what you need.  He or she will either fulfill those needs or not.  Once they know what you need, however, their response will tell you bunches.

Being in my 40's

I have decided to start a blog because every time I have a birthday, I try to look back on what I've learned; and I feel like we can all learn from each other.

This past year has been fraught with empowering lessons.  I have learned (or been reminded) that:

1. You can run from God's purpose for you, and your life, for a long time; but eventually, you WILL be obedient to the Spirit - and only then, will the doors open.
2. Sometimes there really is not anymore room on your plate for one more thing.
3. It's okay to say, "No," when you really do not have the time or the desire to do something.
4. Having a real friend as a business partner is definitely the way to go.
5. Although success is even better when you have a life partner with whom to share it, it is not bittersweet to celebrate a solo victory.
6. Be prepared for some payback when you have children; but be prepared for critical stress levels when they reach their teens!
7. Taking care of yourself is NOT being selfish; but, rather, loving and valuing yourself enough to care about your own well-being. 
8. Fear no man because anyone who does not have your best interest at heart, and who is not gentle with your soul, should not have any power in your life. 
9. Women are stronger than we give ourselves credit for, or than we may even want to be, because we have to be.
10. There is nothing better in life than working towards and accomplishing a goal, or achieving a dream, that you set for yourself solely because YOU wanted it.

Those are my thoughts today.  Feel free to share yours!  Take care of you.