Adults are Liars and Other Lessons

            You, a counselor, are seeing a client who is engaging in self-destructive behaviors. She demonstrates interpersonal chaos, impulsive and irrational behavior, cognitive dysregulation, and succeeds in not only harming herself emotionally, but those around her. Her relationships are strained or in conflict, she is not mindful of her actions nor of the influence they have on the people around her.

            As humans, we often encounter people in moments of distress. Life is challenging to say the least, and we being imperfect, flawed, and broken, tend to have lives that reflect this. There isn’t necessarily such a thing as “having your shit together” – it’s an illusion. Life gives us lemons, throws us curveballs, and is sometimes a general shitshow.

            As a child, I used to envy adults. They were so calm and collected and put together. My life existed in a state of pandemonium and disarray where scraped knees and being put in time-out were crises of epic proportions. As a teenager, heartbreak was a common occurrence, and life basically “sucked.” Again, I idolized the picturesque perfection of adulthood.

            Here I am, at the dawn of said adulthood, and I realize… it was a farce. A lie. A Façade.

            Adults, once long-legged creatures of grace and composure more closely resemble fat, fluffy, baby pandas, excited but lazy, rolling over one another and bumping into each other in confusion and blind frenzy, mostly curious as to where the food is.

            Furthermore, adults are constantly in distress. Money and bills and jobs and interviews and dating and student loans and marriage and babies and divorce and taxes and death and mistresses and relationships and confusion and heartbreak and BEDLAM. You adults LIED TO ME. Where was the class where I would learn how to handle everything with composure?

            Back to your client. Her behavioral, emotional, and thinking patterns are creating dissonance in her world, causing misery and distress. Now, our natural reaction not only as a therapist but as an empathetic being is to help our client. Let’s take a step back. Let’s fix it.

            WRONG.

            Here is the true secret to adulthood, and potentially to a happy life. Are you listening?

            We are not here to FIX it. Life itself can be generally lousy sometimes. We hear over and over again that it won’t be easy. We do not FIX our client, we do not FIX our own problems, we do not FIX our lives. We learn skills on how to handle, how to cope, how to reframe, how to regulate. We learn distress tolerance. Core mindfulness. Emotion regulation.

            If your client asked you to fix her life, you would not have the power to do so. Even she lacks that power! But we can learn skills that prepare us for the chaos of life and tackle it with grace… like adults.

            I can’t tell you life will be great or easy. In fact, I can pretty much promise you the opposite. But even in our moments of distress, there is great beauty. With the right tools and mindset, you can tackle just about anything.

And as my wise mother often says, “Happiness is a choice, not a destination.”