8 Lessons From 2012 – Part Two

2012 was a remarkable year for me. Below is a follow-up to Part One – 8 Lessons From 2012.

Life is suffering” – M. Scott Peck (The Road Less Traveled) – March 9, 2012. This is regarded as the first of the four noble truths of the Buddha. For a very long time I did everything I possibly could to avoid or escape the suffering. But given that it is a truth, the suffering will always come.

“Because you are an adult” – Adam McDonald – March 15, 2012. Adam has always treated me with the utmost respect, he asked questions and listened to the answers, he trusted my judgment with clients, training programs and nutritional advice. So when he gave me a stern warning that I should probably get my crap together because I was about to blow it in terms of a promising career in fitness, I thanked him and said “you have always treated me as an adult”. His reply didn’t gel with my identity at the time, so I took some time to figure-out what my next move was and straightened things out.

“You are always in a hurry, slow down” – Ben Schoene – June 2012. On way way out of the gym after a workout and Ben said that to me. I stopped in my tracks, turned to him and walked up to the counter and started chatting. The conversation made me late for the meeting I was going to, but it was the first of many great chats with him. Had he not invited me to slow down, I’m not sure when I would have found-out that he’s a stand-up guy and a great mentor.

You don’t sign-up for your worst day, you just find yourself in it alone, regardless of who is with you” Sara Burton – March 2012. Sara could see that I was suffering and she gave me a copy of her book and told me that. It felt less isolated knowing that she (and everyone else who has been in a position of loss) had gone through more or less the same experience. It didn’t make it easier per-say, but she’s very accomplished and living a full life so I knew things would get better for me soon.

I can depend on myself during crisis situations – March 2012. I happened across a mini crisis at the gym one evening and in-spite of my best efforts to find someone else to take care of it, I ended-up taking the lead role in helping the person. I didn’t enjoy the experience much, but it wasn’t like anything at all – I just reacted appropriately and saw things through to the end.

I can convince myself of almost anything, almost instantly and with complete conviction. Me & Heather Arthur – May 2012. After our first date I was certain she was an incredible person. A few more dates and I was convinced that I will be with her forever. My level of certainty was a little distressing for her, but, at the same time, my conviction did take care of a lot of questions about my intentions. It was a little over the top, but Heather quickly realized that no matter what the future brings, I see myself in her life as her loving partner.

I am persistent, analytical, and have a strong tendency to be very nice to everyone. When these traits don’t help me out, I use humor to lighten-up the situation – LandMark Forum – March 2012. Things happened in my life that caused me to develop these traits or tendencies. As a consequence, they’ll flow out of me without my thoughts or consideration. Even if the situation does not call for them.

Things are just things, regardless of the emotional attachment you may have with something, it’s just stuff” – Heather Arthur – July 2012. Following a conversation she had with one of her friends who was separating from her husband, Heather shared this with me. “You know that big TV upstairs that has the Xbox connected to it? I need to get rid of it because no one uses it anymore. But a few years ago I fought hard to get it, I regarded me leaving the marriage with it as a win.” I had never noticed the TV before because it’s in a cabinet and the doors are always closed, so it was peculiar that it was once a trophy. The lesson Heather was passing along to her friend, and to me, was that you get rid of almost everything you buy one way or the other, so it’s easier to let someone else take it because it will save you the effort of throwing it out later.

8 Lessons From 2012 – Part One

In no particular order and with credit given whenever it can be.

You don’t have a lot of time” – Sean Sullivan. This lesson was given in 2011, almost as soon as I told him that my dad had a brain tumor. Sean lost his father to cancer and he witnessed the rapid decline associated with this disease. I didn’t know exactly what he meant when he said it, but I took his advice and did everything I could to make the best of the time that was remaining. The family ate, talked, and enjoyed each others company and spend little time spend dwelling on what was about to happen. I understand what “you don’t have a lot of time” means now and I understand that it doesn’t just apply to dying relatives, it applies to everything in life.

Life is meaningless and empty so you’re free to create whatever purpose you like” – LandMark Education – March 25, 2012. I find this very empowering because I spontaneously do right by most people. Given this, setting out to make life be about what I want is a lot easier and gratifying than searching for some universal meaning.

So, how is life going to be better than before?” – Heather Arthur – May 4, 2012. It was our first date and Heather was doing what Heather does, rattling things to see if they stand-up to the challenge. My answer, after a lot of squirming, was to say that I didn’t have a plan to make them better, but that I wouldn’t be repeating any of the same mistakes so life was going to be different, and that meant the possibility for better. I had never felt so vulnerable and alive.

Teaching is not like other jobs, teachers have a much bigger impact on the world than almost every other profession” – Des McKinney – December 18, 2012. We had been talking about the rotating teachers strikes in Ontario and I was struggling to understand the teachers position. Once Des laid this one on me I gave-up any notion that they have an unreasonable sense of entitlement. Let’s face it, teachers have shaped every single person I talk to each day and my ability to earn a living is the result of a lot of their intervention. Teachers are kind of important.

Language alters the context which impacts how we view the world – Heather Arthur – May 4, 2012. During our first date, we were talking about the fact that we were both single. I commented that all of my past relationships had failed. Heather gave me the sour face and said “change the context, try saying that you have had great experiences with some amazing people and now you are all growing forward with life.” So I said it and immediately felt my past unfold into something more palatable. I’ve done this with a bunch of other things and have used this technique with some of my clients with similar success.

Thoughts created feelings which create actions, change the thoughts and notice how the feelings and actions change” – Leigh Moore – February 20, 2012. After my dad died I was having some struggles piecing certain things together. Leigh gave me some therapy and focused on one thing that was going to change my state very quickly. She noticed that some of the things I was saying weren’t based on an objective reality and were based on an internal narrative that wasn’t working for me. Her coaching created the possibility that things were not how I thought they were and as soon as I introduced a different possibility I started to feel differently.

How you think you’ll feel about things in the future is different from how you will feel about them – Life – anytime in 2012. I knew my dad was going to die for 6 weeks before he actually passed. But when it happened, how I felt about it wasn’t anything like how I thought I would feel about it. I was sad, but there were moments of gratitude, joy, and nothing at all. The lesson I’m taking out of it is to just accept that things are going to happen and that I am going to feel something when they do, but not to spend much time thinking about what the feelings will be because I’m going to get it wrong.

How you feel right after something happens is not the same as how you will feel in 3 months, but how you feel about it in 3 months is usually how you will feel about it in a year” – Des McKinney January 30, 2012. The day after my dad died I asked Des how he felt. Instead of answering the question I asked he decided to change my life and reveal the answer to a more existential question. Right after something happens or as it happens we’ll feel very strongly about it. That probably won’t last.

This is part one. Last year presented me with some amazing growth opportunities that I dived into.

A Few Questions Worth Knowing The Answer To

A few months ago a friend was relating their experience of their first session with a therapist. While they didn’t have an obvious need to talk to someone, they didn’t have a reason not to and given that the cost of the first few visits was covered through their benefits they figured they should go.

They found the session enjoyable. The therapist was easy to talk to, they created an open environment conducive to full disclosure and they helped guide a lot of self discovery.

There were two questions the therapist asked that stood out to me:

  • What did you go without because there was no suffering in an experience?
  • What was it like to have things go bad around you without warning?

These questions are not very specific – they apply to anyone who has experienced change or trauma – and they are reflective and introspective. There’s a lot of self-awareness waiting for anyone who is willing to spend the time reflecting on these questions.

I believe that human beings need a compelling reason to change otherwise they’ll just stay as they are. Suffering, or at least the avoidance of it, is then a good motivator for change. There are people who are able to parse the lessons out of a benign experience but doing so requires experience, wisdom and / or effort. If a change causes no suffering there’s a good chance less will be gleamed from having had it.

From my experience, being blindsided sucks. In the short term it’s painful and long term it sets in motion thought patterns or ways of thinking that can best be described as superstitious; in that they are based on a single mostly random event and not the gestalt of all your experiences. For example, for a very long time I was overly paranoid about the death of those I cared about. This came from Natalie’s sudden death and not because most of the people I have ever known have died.

The answers to these questions are revealing and worth offline consideration. There are lessons in everything, although we may not be in a state to accept or see them. Easy experiences often leave us closed off to them. These consequences to these lessons can become evident in the weeks, months and years following as behavioral patterns that are not functional.

Almost 6 Months Later

It has been almost 6 months since my father died and I’m having a challenging sort of day. A friend just lost his father and the news kind of took me back. I feel for him and the loss that his family is experiencing now, I have a deep understanding of some of the emotional pain that he may be living through. I kind of feel weird because back then he reached out to me and I didn’t accept or connect with him. Today would have been today regardless of what I did back then, I just wonder how he is doing.

A month after my dad died, I meet a new friend whose father is terminally ill – well, that isn’t a great way to phrase it because he has been given a terminal diagnosis but it’s well down the road – a few years vs. the “get your affairs in order” timeline a lot of people are given. I love talking with her about the entire thing because it helps me remember and feel useful, and significant in a way.

The struggle one has during these times is their own. Some may look at the news her family received and claim that it is no news at all given that all of us will die at some point in the future. The same may look at what my family was told and say that must have been tough on us. But it’s all the same news when you get down to it. Death is a future event, be it 6 weeks or 60 years, there will be a time in the future when it end.

But it’s in the future and there is no amount of thinking that is going to alter the eventuality about it. I have tried for months to think my dad back into existence – not constantly, but there are moments when I realize that I’m still trying to wrap my head around the fact that he is gone and forever is a pretty long time. Even now, as I type this, there’s a piece of me that wonders if maybe it’s all just a big misunderstanding, that he’s lost somewhere, or on an extended vacation.

Weird, I know, but the reality is slow to register some of the time.

I was asked how I dealt with the news that my dad was going to be dead in a few months and feel like I’m in a position to actual answer the question. I let go of the fact that he was going to be dead in a few months when I was around him and I made my time about him, me and the family. When I wasn’t with him, I let out whatever was building and was lucky enough to have someone to hear me. I talked to him about it, my feelings and what was going on and then we only talked about it when I needed to, which wasn’t very often or when he needed to, which was even less often. My dad was accepting of it, he had lived as long as he was going to and he was content with his journey.

There wasn’t an elephant in the room because I let my dad set the tone and he kind of didn’t care that much. He ask that Des and I look after our mom, gave some other advice and then got back to living life – having a few beers, a lot of great food and laughing as much as possible. It’s odd, but up until right there, I wasn’t as aware of the absence of the beer, great food and laughing in my life recently….

So if asked for a couple of pieces of advice on how to handle the news of a terminal diagnosis I say:

How you think you are going to feel will be different from how you feel. My fathers death impacted me in very different ways than Natalie’s death. Natalie’s ended up being a lot more destructive and I should have gotten therapy to help manage it. Their death is coming and you don’t know how it will impact you so don’t try to think your way through it. The grief process is will written into our DNA and will look after itself when the time comes.

Anticipatory grief is likely, but not necessary. I say this because EVERYTHING breaks down. The confirmation of this doesn’t alter the reality, it just heightens ones awareness of it. Take it as an opportunity to get out there and have a little fun with life, yourself, your family and your planet.

In the end, when the process has worked its way through, I’ll have the wisdom to be very useful about this topic. Right now, as I move forward I remain grateful for having had a great life with my father and for having those last 6 weeks together. I file them away under “how to live each moment to the fullest”.

Cannot Make Poor Choices

Des was asking me about Heather a few days ago and I mentioned that there are moments when I feel a little scared about things. I used the word insecure and he took the opportunity to ask me about it and give his opinion about what insecurity is.

“People are insecure when they believe they can make a wrong decision.”

It was a great and timely comment.

I’m enjoying the progress of this relationship. I feel very connected to Heather and I feel very challenged by her. She is unlike anyone I have dated before and there is something she says each day that alters my understanding of the world. I have a strong desire to grow and cultivate our relationship.

What scares me about things is that I’ve had a lot of good relationships with great girls and we have learned a lot of amazing lessons together. But I am not with any of them anymore. The relationships ran their course and all parties have moved forward with life. The story or narrative that runs within my mind is about the end of every relationship. Compounding this were the “lessons” I gleamed from the premature death of Natalie – that life ends unexpectedly.

There is little wonder why I was worried about the future, I have allowed “the end” to be a part of the present. I’ve scaled down the timeline of the future and making the end to be the next thing that I think of. Given that it was so close, I believed that I was able to make poor choices. So I made poor choices.

Writing this out is great. Most of what I’m saying has an antiquated feel. I get how it was true, but it doesn’t apply to me so much now. The notion that things will end and that I will have a hand in them is silly. Sure, I can wreck things, but that is a conscious choice, it won’t be a wrong decision in an insecurity-creating way. My desire is for happiness, fun, fulfillment and passion and a lot of it for a very long time. With these motivations, I cannot make a poor choice. Things that are good don’t end and as I view the middle as the longest, funnest and greatest part of it, the future looks a lot brighter.

For the first time in my adult life I am more excited about the middle than I am about the beginning. This really is an unfamiliar way to approach a relationship and I’m grateful to have found this way of being with Heather.

Thank You Letter To My Dad

Having completed the letter to Natalie, I started to work on the one to my dad. This one hacked opened fresh wounds; removing the new skin was needed because the flesh didn’t close the cut with any precision. My brain / spirit had been put back together, but were held in place with the same sort of scripts that had held them together after Natalie’s death. The gratitude exercise was freeing and restarted the recovery journey.

When I saw Heather the next day I mentioned that I wasn’t sure we’d ever reconnect. This comment landed oddly. “Pat, you need to clear the space in your past to allow you to recreate a history that more closely resembles what you lived.” (Or something like that). “And it wasn’t completely selfless. If this [our relationship] is to be all that it can be, your past needs to be put away accurately.”

Hi Dad,

I know I said thank you and told you how grateful I was for having you as my father a few times during your last few weeks, but now that it’s a few months later, I’d like to let you know some other things.

The last 4 1/2 months have been a wild ride. February was a month to get wasted and forget, to feel victimized and create as much pain as I possibly could. But it was also the last month of the life I had been living because your death meant that I had no one else to blame for my place but myself and once I had to start blaming myself I found it a lot easier to change my behavior.

I miss you like crazy dad, but your dying meant that I could finally start my life. It’s weird to say, but your support and belief in me was something I used to keep me standing still. I’m grateful for it, very few other people in the world have supported and helped me the way you did, it made life less risky and dangerous and it allowed me to read, write, train and have fun knowing that nothing would ever go wrong. I don’t miss spending my time like that, but I’m really thankful that your life afforded me the opportunity to do it. It was a lot of fun, I expanded my mind and I was able to do a lot of things first hand that others can only read about or observe.

I’m grateful that you taught me how to love a partner! Your relationship with mom is special. She doesn’t cook very much anymore, she doesn’t see the point of it. I get that, I just didn’t realize that the two of your were so much a part of each others identity. I miss her cooking and knowing that there was an outlet for her love. I still think back on all the amazing food over the last 6 weeks of your life and am happy with the thought that maybe those will be the best meals I’ll ever eat. Anyway, I still like food and have stopped eating sugar for the most part because you warned me not to eat too much of it because I could end up like your dad. I’m kind of rambling because I’m sad. I haven’t been crying much recently. I burned a lot of it out and kind of blame the crying and grieving for why things didn’t go well with Sharyl. I sort of haven’t really opened up with Heather about you, and I think she’s noticed something incomplete about it. Heather is amazing dad, she’s everything I believed a partner could be, but never felt I deserved. All of this is to say thank you for modeling how to love your wife because I plan on being my version of those behaviors for Heather.

Thank you for being an amazing dad! I’ve told you this a bunch of times, but I have a greater understanding of it now. You were tolerant and understood things that you didn’t need to understand. You continued to learn so you would have stuff in common with Des and me and you deferred to us as experts when I noticed a lot of other peoples parents wouldn’t accept that their kids had developed skills that far exceeded anything their parents could possess. You never played small or made us feel bad for being the experts in these areas. You had a young spirit still, and you allowed us to mentor you. I know very feel parents like that and it is a quality that I am working hard
to maintain – that is to remain open to a changing world even when it becomes difficult to adjust to the newest trends and information.

Thank you for being an amazing friend to those you impacted. Your wake was a lot of fun, it was the kind of event you would have loved! 🙂 George from across the street told me and Des separately that he really liked you and that you never had a bad thing to say about anyone. It chocked me up because I am often a little quick to condemn others for their actions. Hearing him say it and then having Des tell me what that he had said it to him changed me. While I don’t really need people to say the same thing about me, I do need to mellow and accept others for doing the best they can. I remember you saying that to me once, that you do your best regardless of what comes of it. I didn’t really understand that so much until recently.

This is hard dad. I’m crying because I’d love to chat with you about how things have adjusted over the last few months, to tell you that I get it now and to talk to you about the world as I see it. The world is an amazing place full of wealth, possibilities and opportunities. It isn’t the scary place I was pretending it to be so I didn’t have to try. It is the world that you tackled so many years ago, the world that you taught Des and me to enjoy and the world that had you and mom move us to Canada, to give-up the familiar for the possibility of a better life.

Dad, you and mom were right, this is a better life than what Ireland would have been. Canada is amazing, the people are great, it’s a fantastic society and most of the people respect each-other. I will become everything that I have ever wanted here and that is because you created the possibility by giving-up what you were doing so Des and me could do what we wanted.

Thank you for showing me how to be a father. I may never become a dad and I’m okay with that, but if I do, I’ll be a lot like you. I’ll be honest and teach my children to be compassionate and loving. I’ll be fair to them, not a friend until they get old enough to know what a parent friend is, but not a jerk either.

Most of all dad I want to say thank you for putting up with me and helping me deal with the challenges life gave. For a lot of it I thought I knew better and didn’t really appreciate just what you knew and did. We did chat about this on the Saturday before you ended up in the hospital and I remember driving away thinking we were complete. I didn’t want it to be that way, I wanted there to be lots more chats, but under the circumstances, we both knew there wasn’t much time left. You were amazing, you were open and loving and you were my dad. You were so much of what I am and what I will become. I am so grateful for you. I’m half your dna and half your upbringing and I am 100% your son.

I knew we would eventually part ways, that life ends for everyone. You were open about this and you never avoided this reality. You were honest with me, even when it didn’t make me feel better. And I suppose that’s what I needed. You were trying to set me free from the demons of my past, from the meanings I created from the events that occurred. I not sure I ever thanked you for that part of it. Thank you.

I’m going to go now dad. I’ll close this with saying that I am becoming me for the first time in my life. I’m feeling the possibilities that I felt when we moved to Canada and I’m very aware that you have guided and helped me become so much through your life and in your death. Thank you for all of it.

No matter what becomes of life, I will always strive to be a man that you are proud of and to cultivate the compassion for other people that will have George say “you’re just like your father you are.”

I love you!
Pat

Thank You Letter To Natalie

Heather seemed to tune into and then ask the question “what roll does Natalie’s death play in my life now?” I made a few jokes, effectively denied that there was any, accepted that there was some and should be and finally said that I wasn’t sure other than being sure that life was going to end some day. She continued to ask questions, tough questions that I didn’t want to answer and questions that made me feel like she didn’t want anything to do with me. But I trust her and tried to stay with the topic. It was hard because what I say about Natalie’s death is scripted, well rehearsed and automatic. Yet she continued and as I shrank, as I have made so many of my clients shrink, something began to occur.

When I realized that no matter what happened between Heather and me, I needed to clear the space in my past of these stories. She encouraged me to write a letter to Natalie and one to my father explaining the things I was grateful for having learned because of them. Below is the letter to Natalie.

Dear Natalie,

I am writing you this letter to let you know how grateful I am to have been in your life and for all of the experiences that our life together brought.

You were my first real girl friend so much of what I know about passionate love came from our time together. You gave so purely to me and you always talked about our relationship and our future in a way that made me feel amazing; the things is, I didn’t realize just how amazing that was at the time. There were times when I took you and your heart for granted because I believed love was easy and finding someone who was capable of giving it so freely wouldn’t be difficult. It has taken me a very long time to reach the same level of connection with anyone else. Now that I’m older and can see things more clearly I want to say thank you for sharing your love with me in a way that let me know that I was worth it.

I need to say thank you for being loyal, supportive and standing beside me when I needed to make the tough decisions. When I didn’t get to be a TA during my first year at Brock, you never made me feel bad about it, in fact, you explained why I didn’t get the job perfectly and I still use this description when coaching others about their view of a failure to get an opportunity. When I made the decision to overload my schedule and take on more classes, you stood beside me, proud that I was being fearless in my pursuit of academic success. You never made me choose between going out and having fun or doing my school work and you celebrated my good marks with me. Thank you for believing in my dream of getting a masters degree, a PhD and becoming a professor.

Okay, the things you may not know anything about.

I need to say thank you for the experiences that your death brought into my life. Some of these were really hard to live through and I made some potential limiting choices as a result of the thoughts and stories I told myself about them, but now that we’re almost 2 decades on, I’m able to see how they were neither right or wrong and were simply a part of my journey. I’m growing more confident that the stories I told myself were exactly the opposite of how the world is or was, so here you go.

I’m grateful for the sense of loss that I experienced because of you dying. There was a big hole left, while mostly a narrative, it came to represent what can happen when someone is gone. Leigh once told me that I felt as bad as I did because I loved you as much as I did, and I get that. People are important and I will always remember this because you left my life and the world so completely. Knowing this allowed me to connect with people in a way that has added so much value to my experience here and I think it has been useful to others. I learned to listen better because you never know when you are having your last conversation with someone. And everyone will always have their last conversation with us.

I’m grateful for the sense of meaninglessness in life that your death showed me because it allowed me to create a reason for being any time to suit the situation. There have been moments in the last 18 years that I was moved and performed fearless and great actions simply because I knew that there is no meaning to any of it. Through your death I learned to be of service to others who had been effected by death or were dying. I’ve never regarded them as victims, just fellow human being who have been rocked by the challenges of life. At worst they got a friendly ear to actual hear their words and at best they got a temporary partner to share and live their pain. Others were not alone because you taught me what is was like to exist in a state of grief, the one common emotion that all of us will eventually experience.

I am grateful for the escapist decisions I made to help manage life. There were moments that I regarded much of the last 18 years as a big waste of time, but presently I look at them as some of the greatest lessons that a human being is capable of acquiring. I didn’t die during any of those moments, I didn’t really suffer. There were times when I thought that I had lost my mind, but it always came back. I had fun running, I really did, but it got boring and I started to need more out of life. In fact, some of the escapist behaviors will go down as the most dangerous things that I will ever do; not strategic or calculated, just silly and dangerous. But I lived through all of them and now that I stand on my own two feet, clean and in control, I am forgiving myself for those things because I see how they have created the possibility for me to help others avoid some of them. I have a wisdom that many have but don’t ever share because they remain lost in the behavior.

I am grateful for the challenges of having to come to terms with your death and for how this impacted the analytical nature of my brain. This is what will make me most of what I will become because I needed to dig deep to manufacture an understanding that was compatible with someone as young and health dying one night without warning or purpose. It was tough, but my brain is good, my mind creative and my desire for answer strong enough to figure things out. The accuracy of what is created doesn’t matter because they are all stories, but the fact that there is something is what means the most. I’m rarely stuck for words or an explanation and what does come out of my mouth is a well processed and richly synthesized reason for whatever.

In life, you taught me how to love, you taught me that I am worth loving and you taught me that the right people will support and stand behind me. Thank you for those lessons!

In death, you taught me how to grieve, how to be of service to others and how to live a life based on the knowledge that everything will end eventually. I miss you and while I don’t know if we would still be in communication I believe that your life should not have been cut short. But it was, and the impact of your death changed and shaped me. I’m proud of who I have become, how I have grown and I am grateful for the lessons and the impact you have had on my life from the moment we meet.

Thank you Natalie! You will always remain a dear friend!

Relative Of Terminally Ill Person – The First 3 Weeks

Note – I’m posting this now because I believe it is useful. It was the only article that I wrote in the series because my dad died 6 weeks after he was diagnosed. In talking with peers who have experiences GBM it is not uncommon for things to end extremely quick. I miss my dad, I miss his laugh a lot and I miss the relationship he and my mom shared. That, more than anything is what I feel the worst about. My mom is a great lady, my dad was great man, their relationship was still going strong so it’s sad that it ended so early.

This is the first in a series of articles about being the relative of someone who has been diagnosed with a terminal illness. It could be useful for those not directly impacted by the illness as it may give some insight into what we’re going through. For those who have been leveled with the news of the coming premature ending of a loved-ones life, invest in yourself and the experience you have begun. This is a process that hurts. The biggest legacy you can now leave for your relative is to get good at helping them enjoy dying and learn as much as you can from the experience so you can be useful to others when they join our ranks.

Day Of Terminal Diagnosis (DOTD) +3 weeks.

There are going to be two points in this process that are going to be highly significant. The second is when your relative dies, the first is their day of terminal diagnosis. You experience both of these as deaths although there is a relapse of sorts in the grief if there is an improvement in their condition. With GBM most people experience a reversal of cognitive symptoms so their return to life is welcomed because it blunts the sharpness of the news and the waves it caused.

There is no right way to feel although feeling some things is better than others. Happiness, laughter, joy, reflecting back on their memories, harvesting their wisdom and experience. If they have given of themselves to move your life forward pay them the respect and hear every word they are saying.

Your friends feel as useless as you do and they don’t realize how to help most effectively. The most important thing they can do is to be completely honest with you and forfeit their judgments of you. It should go without say, but sometimes people need a reminder. Watching someone you love die isn’t as easy as watching someone you love grow-up. Both are challenging, but with one you see the potential be actualized, with the other you see the potential float away.

They are dying, you are not. Make your peace / say those really important things early and when appropriate, let them process it and let it go. You did what you did for reasons that felt valid at the time. It doesn’t matter very much anyway, they’re dying and they’d rather live in the present than rehash the past. If you have unresolved issues consider the key thing that you need them to know and tell them that. If you don’t, consider telling them how grateful you are that they did what they did to help you become the person you are, someone you are happy to be. Then let it go, have some fun and be happy! They will be gone soon and you will have plenty of time to grieve, grow-up, adapt, and find your peace with your own place in life.

There are stages of grief that have been well documented and which are scientifically proven. Get to know these stages because with a terminal diagnosis there will be a blurring of many of them. Encourage those who offer support to get to know them too, because if they take the anger personally, it isn’t going to help you at all. In fact, it can shift focus off of your loved one and onto something that will remain well after they have gone. This isn’t a great way to spend the final weeks and days of someones life.

I’m hopeful that I’ll get to write a bunch more of these articles. Fingers crosses!

On Finding A Therapist

For me it was fairly simple, I just connected with an old friend who I trusted and who was a therapist. I’m an open book of sorts and kind of shamelessly float through life broadcasting myself (or the stories I tell myself about myself) to whoever seems willing to hear them. It worked effectively because I had spend a lot of time analyzing myself, my actions, my expectation and my past to be open to whatever they asked me to consider. Strangely enough, they didn’t say very much that was different from what my last couple of girlfriends, my brother, my dad, Tony and many of my clients have said. What was different was my willingness to hear what was said when they said it because the wall was already crumbling.

Below is a message from a friend who found therapy to be helpful in moving past a relationship challenge about 18 months ago. I found it to be very succinct and accurate.

Therapy is something that is very personal and it’s like hiring a personal trainer, you need to have a certain rapport and confidence in them. I found mine through my group employee benefits with work. The bulk of her work is life coaching with companies and some work on the side for personal type crisis.Also, therapist are very expensive and can cost $200 an hour. This is a big commitment. She has 20+ years experience, so she can set her price. I can certainly provide you with her info – she is in Oakville, however my suggestion would be to look in the yellow pages for therapist that are close to where they live and then ask a set of preset questions – interview style and then pick one to try.

For instance, what is their specialty, how long have they been practicing, what is their approach, do they assign homework, what is their pricing, etc. I know this sounds tedious, but you right away feel like you at least made some sort of best decision. You have to remember that you are telling this person your most intimate stories and need to feel really comfortable with them. It’s like hiring a doctor.

My Strongest Trait – Analysis – Why My Relationships Breakdown

My interpersonal relationships began to go wrong when I started to suffer depression a year after Natalie died. My analytical strong trait developed as a way to cope with the feeling of being alone after Natalie broke-up with me and then died. It didn’t take hold until about a year later when my depression faded. I had been working diligently to uncover a solution to my grief and confusion and found that everything could be altered by changing the context. Life was then simple because all I needed to do was understand enough to change the context.

My relationship with Natalie was normal for a first relationship. Fun, passionate and fearless. The first part of it with Leigh was the same, along with spontaneous. But after the depression, I started to analyze things in a way to fix them. It’s a truism that a human being will stop what they are doing spontaneously EACH AND EVERY time something goes wrong. Most of our coping strategies are attempts to fix or avoid the things that we judge to be wrong.

I became and remain effective at identifying the things that aren’t working. This isn’t a problem for the most part, it made me an effective manager and trainer, and now serves me well as a performance coach, but it creates challenges that many people do not face with their relationships given that I’ll usually try to fix as opposed to accept my partners for who and what they are or graciously part ways with them. I work aggressively to correct the things I judge to be wrong; and with an alienating intensity that makes people back away. It will be even worse when someone mentions that they like to be challenged because I’m immediately enrolled in the process of their future optimization.

I LOVE the analysis! Human beings are programmed to find being right to be rewarding – we get jolt of neurotransmitters with every right answer we get or with every pattern we match. It stands to reason why I do this because I’m able to identify things that are wrong and get rewarded. But there is one major flaw in this which makes it unworkable in my interpersonal relationships – there is nothing wrong with the girls I date. All of them are amazing, highly intelligent people and are very highly functioning. Some optimization may be possible, but it isn’t needed. The types of people who are drawn to me tend to be fairly self aware, bright, articulate and passionate. They are looking for spontaneous partnerships and NOT a tune-up.

It’s clear that my strongest trait, the one that developed to keep me alive and reorganize my life after the almost unmanageable trauma of the premature and unexpected death of a loved one, served its purpose well. I’ve used it countless time to manage lesser traumas, a number of tough break-ups, and, ironically, it seems to be the cause of a greater amount of pain in my relationships than it now prevents. It’s a fantastic tool for work, I can uncover the things that aren’t working for my clients quickly and almost effortlessly. Efficient service and exceptional value are two things that clients deserve, but they are things that girl friends tend not to be in the market for.

My future is loaded with possibilities that didn’t exist before and in many ways they exist because of my strongest trait of analysis. My career has started and I’m closer to fulfilling my purpose. The quality of my relationships can improve with the expression of this trait outside of the context of them. For this piece of knowledge, I am grateful!