I have been writing as often as words come to mind on my psychotherapy website: Hearts as Gold. Over there, my blog is called “Growing Up, a blog.” We are all “little children” on a (treacherous) spiritual and emotional journey of growing up. Growing is relative! I view our grown-up years as toddlerhood in the grand scheme of things. And, just as in the lives of all the toddlers we love, the ways in which we move through disappointment has a wonderful way of showing us our “emotional age.”

9 times out of 10, the immature ways my children address disappointment and conflict mimics…their dad…

Just kidding ;)

My children’s behavior mirrors my behavior. If I’m annoyed with something they are doing, I know where I really have to look, and ask from where their behavior stems. Then I can address whether I’m ready to accept who really needs to practice growing up.

I love doing therapy, with my whole soul. I love truth telling, abandoning guise. Asking for and seeking truth (primarily about ourselves) is how we gather information needed to choose, in actuality, whether we’d like to grow up. The benefit: emotional immaturity is carved out of us, opening deep wells that fill with laughter, smiling, adventure, ease, contemplation, steadiness, troves of gratitude... It’s a slow process and a fast one all at the same time.

I admit, it never feels good.

The girls and I were watching a movie tonight and the juxtaposition of being confident while remaining a learner came alive for me. I am new to psychotherapy. I do it imperfectly, yet I have something that can benefit someone — can benefit generations. I’m trying to learn as fast as I can—within natural limitations—and am practicing gratitude for what I am able to see and accomplish, now—in life and in session.

I’ll wake in the morning and a diagram has formed in my mind of the (immature) patterns a couple employs to preserve Self (actually, to preserve self-serving Egos). We all do this and is why truth telling/truth receiving is critical for growth.

I feel gratitude and excitement for clarity, while remembering, “We never arrive.” It feels well for me to not work toward calling myself an expert. I prefer the image of a learner—learner of people, of patterns, of the untruths we cling to for dear life. Forever a learner, possibility remains endless.

Once we accept that we only lose ourselves in attempts to control outcomes and timelines, then we can settle into softness, into acceptance. Paradoxically, it is then more clarity, wisdom, maturity, intelligence, and light than we have ever known, comes. Despite circumstance. It is not forced, captured, coerced. It flows, it distills, it settles—lightly, gently, with ease.

It is a bit complex for me to describe, but tears of gratitude don’t cease for this learning that benefits me, my family, clients, friends, people asking for referrals, even clients of peers. While staffing cases a month ago, another therapist asked for advice for her client who had succumbed to some former patterns of self-harm. I shared what came to my mind. Yesterday she reported that—though this woman experiences exceptionally painful transitions in every area of her life—she has ceased all self-harm behaviors.

Good therapy works. Healing works. Embracing uncertainty works. Practicing proficiently while remaining a learner works. Jesus works, even when we don’t call it Jesus. Repentance works, even when we don’t call it repentance. Settling down works best when I don’t get what I want.

It’s all forward motion. It’s all growth, even the parts we hate.

And really, it’s in these moments I finally learn love.

I get to host a class at a stake Relief Society event in a few weeks. I’m very excited for it.

Photos of Amy and I in Seattle a few weeks ago.

The sun is not photoshopped—it was THAT NEON.

(Quick) References

Dr. JFF speaks extensively using language of “not getting what we want”, differentiation, growing up.

Dr. Kathleen Smith writes humorously on Bowen theory, differentiation.

Scriptures: little children (D&C 50, 78 and lose our life to find it (Matt 10:39, 16:25, Luke 9:24, 17:33)