Dolphins!

            My Dialectical Behavioral Therapy skills mentor Charles Holton introduced me to a sneaky deep tool I use daily. He wrote on a white board the words ‘dolphins!’ and ‘rhinoceros.’ He drew circles around each, a line through ‘rhinoceros’, and then an arrow pointing at ‘dolphins!’ He said, “It’s easier to think about dolphins than to not think about rhinoceroses.” (He contends that it was polar bears and dolphins, and I remember it differently. Ah, human memory…)

            The idea here is that it’s easier to direct one’s brain toward something than away from something. When I get caught in a cul-de-sac of thinking and notice it feels yucky or stuck or I need a break, I use ‘dolphins’ as a trigger, especially in my journaling, to remind myself to return to something positive.

            A common phrase when I go off on uncomfortable tangents is: ‘circling back, this time with more dolphins…’ Other variants: ‘dolphinology,’ ‘so, how about those dolphins?’ ‘how can I dolphin this?’ Sometimes I’ll imagine, and describe in detail, swimming with dolphins.

            Some metaphors and symbols really work well for me, especially the more I like and use them. This is one of the ways I can consciously develop/program positive triggers, like a song that might lift my mood, or that I listen to when I do a compassion meditation (see my post on compassion for a description of the ‘tonglen’ practice I use) to help prompt the feeling. Everyone is different, so substitute whatever positive thing you find it easy and desirable to visualize or thing about for ‘dolphin’ and give it a whirl. Brain hacking!

            Sometimes it can be hard to ‘dolphin’ myself out of something pervasively negative, particularly if it’s a problem that really needs validation and action to address it, rather than being ignored. Approaching it from a more ‘where can I find the dolphins in this situation?’ can be useful, or at least provide some needed respite.

            This is one of the ways I look for to make things easier, to introduce more positivity even into the really distressing tasks and places in life. Not to take away from the seriousness of the situation or invalidate my pain, but to make it easier on myself and get through it. It’s helpful for me to have a choice when I get stuck in a moment, a feeling, a thought, that sucks, and fighting it just makes it worse.

            Here’s a live dolphin webcam! (Live feed may be down periodically, so here’s some older footage.)

Ways to Always Have the Support You Want

            A concept emerged from self-exploration and journaling that I later found mirrored by ideas in Barbara Sher’s ‘I Could Do Anything if I Only Knew What it Was’ and a website I’m frustratingly unable to find again that gave advice to survivors of child abuse. It’s been so enormously beneficial to me I want to share.

            I want supportive people in my life. I think that’s pretty universal. However, other people have their own lives and concerns and stuff and can’t always be there for us, and even when they are they may not say what we need to hear (or listen as much as we need) or provide the support for which we long.

            I, like many, find inspiration and encouragement in quotes from famous people, and in the creative work and behind-the-scenes sharing of artists who inspire me—television, movies, music, art of all kinds. In my imagination I found I could extrapolate on what I knew about these people, what I liked best, what words they had said, and envision characters based on them, sitting with me in my distress. I could clearly imagine what they looked like (like Jim Henson’s awesome sweaters), their expressions (like Audrey Hepburn’s winsome smile), and most especially what they would say to me.

            This for me was a good way of finding out what I wanted to hear, what the support I craved looked and felt like—not only that, but giving it to myself. Once I realized this I started listing the people that I would like to imagine supporting me, that seemed to offer me the best comfort and advice. I look at this as a way of tapping into that place in my imagination and subconscious that knows what I need, and giving it to myself.

            Even if your imagination has been repressed, as mine was and many others as well, I truly believe there are ways that most everyone who wants to can create within themselves the support of the people they find most inspirational.

            Here are some of the ways I find and give myself exactly the support I want—whenever I want it, and particularly when I need it most. They’re incremental, but each also can be used independently.

Collecting Quotes and Putting them Up Everywhere

            This is a pretty common idea and practice. It’s also a really good way to figure out who it is you want in your corner, and familiarize yourself with their ‘voices’—what words they say, how those words ‘sound’ in your head, what you see in your mind when you sit with those words.

            I have a list of my favorite short motivational phrases, but also longer quotes taped up where I’ll see them every day, and a document of quotes I collect whenever I spot one I like.

Collecting the Work of Inspirational People

            Books, movies, television, music, interviews, audiobooks, pictures, sculptures, poetry—go to town collecting the stuff that lifts you when you feel down. Make playlists. Set aside a shelf in your library for your favorite books, underline or highlight passages and turn down corners (or mark passages in your favorite e-reader; I often export highlighted Kindle passages using Bookcision), bookmark the best bits. Make a section of DVDs you watch when you’re blue, or when you have what Holly Golightly in the movie ‘Breakfast at Tiffany’s’ refers to as the ‘Mean Reds’:

            “Suddenly you’re afraid and you don’t know what you’re afraid of. Do you ever get that feeling? Well, when I get it the only thing that does any good is to jump into a cab and go to Tiffany’s. Calms me down right away.”

Making Self-Comfort a Daily Practice

            This is one of the hardest parts for me. Sometimes cultural, financial, health, life, work, or family pressures mean we don’t prioritize or take seriously making ourselves feel better. It’s all about working, and serving others’ needs, and doing things necessary to keep our lives going and all the plates spinning.

            It takes determination and practice to overcome the sense that if you’re taking time out for yourself you’re being lazy, unproductive, or selfish. Yet it’s so important to take care of yourself in order to be productive, active, and be able to give to others. You are the only you there is, and it’s your job to take care of you for the good of yourself, your life, and everyone you encounter.

            I still struggle with remembering to use things that I’ve found that help me every day. I make and protect time in my daily routine for it. As much as eating, drinking water, showering, and sleeping, it’s part of self-care that is essential to being healthy. Like those other basic self-care things, the easiest way to make it a habit is to make practice a part of your daily routine.

            You have your collection—use it. Suggestions: have music you like when you’re getting ready in the morning or on hand in the car or at work, have pictures and quotes of your favorite people up in your workspace and on your computer, watch or read favorite quotes or poems or passages every day. Find the best time and things that work for you. You’ll know you’ve got it right when it feels good and you want to do it, rather than getting that ‘eat your vegetables, it’s good for you’ feeling.

            Doing this not only gives me daily doses or inoculations of positivity to offset the world’s negativity, it also ingrains favorite people and kinds of inspiration I like in me. It helps me notice and seek out more. It helps feed my imagination and build my capacity to extrapolate from what I know, and create new phrases and words tailored to specific times of distress.

Having Imaginary Conversations

            Barbara Sher refers to the people one looks up to and is inspired and influence by as a ‘cheerleading squad.’ I call them an ‘Imaginary Family.’

            After saturating my life with my favorite words and inspiring people, I would imagine and often write down in my journal conversations between myself and what I imagined the other person would say. Having put in all those hours watching and listening to and reading what I love—a positively reinforcing experience—I could begin to create my own imaginings based on what I knew about the people who inspired me.

            It wasn’t easy at first. I was self-conscious, and it took a while to learn to tap into those voices and practice imagining them more and more. It also felt wrong, selfish, and like a violation of these other people. I’ll share what I’ve come to think and feel to help me cope with that.

            First, I hold strongly to belief and knowing that the people I imagine are characters and figments of my own imagination. This not only keeps me from mixing up reality and fantasy and creating unrealistic expectations about the real people these characters are based on, it reminds me that everything I’m imagining these people saying to me is something within me, some part of my subconscious that knows how to take care of me. This doesn’t diminish the value of the imaginary play for me. It helps me feel safer from losing touch with reality and more confident and aware of my own capacity to support and encourage.

            Practicing this not only makes me more effective at taking care of me, but also gives me access to that source of comforting and soothing to share with another person. If I have these words of support and affirmation and encouragement in me to give to myself, and I practice that, I can call on them to support and encourage and affirm others.

            Second, and equally important, I resist the temptation to share these things with anyone else, especially any living persons I am imagining. Again it’s important for me to remember that although I am inspired continually by these people, that is all I am getting from them—inspiration, and what words they’ve actually said. I give them credit for that, and I am very thankful to them, but I remember that everything else is something I am giving myself, and it’s important to recognize and give myself credit for the words I am imagining and creating. It helps me build up belief in myself. It also helps me remember that I always carry around these ‘people’ I imagine with me.

            The more I play with and practice this, the more accessible this place of self-comfort becomes for me. In the BBC series ‘Sherlock,’ they refer to and show Sherlock Holmes’s ‘mind palace,’ a space in his imagination to organize and access what he knows to work. I sometimes imagine not just the people who comfort me but actual places—the imagination is unlimited in what places and characters and  things one can create.

            It’s important for me to practice imagining first when I’m just a little distressed or down, for the little things. It builds up my imagination muscles—think of it like starting out with little weights before moving on to bigger ones. This makes it easier to try draw on my positive imagination when I’m really freaked out.

            Sometimes my thoughts are spinning so fast I can’t possibly use my imagination for anything but terrible fears of apocalyptic destruction and failure and shame. Recently I’ve found something really special to deal with the most distressing times in life.

Making Tangible Representations of What I’ve Imagined

            This is what I do to prepare for those times when things are just so bad, or busy, that I can’t sit down and imagine my cheerleading squad, my imaginary family. This way I can still draw on them in the times when I need them most!

            First I made collages of my favorite pictures of them, sometimes with quotes and words woven in. Collages are something I like to do. You can draw on whatever creative talents and skills you have to put together something you can look at that don’t require much imagination work.

            I started working recently with self-hypnosis, under the guidance of my therapist. I’m drawing on everything I know about hypnosis, trance, the power of story to subliminally suggest and aid learning and retention, narrative therapy, DBT, positive psychology, behavior change, the principles of implanting and reinforcing ideas (which can be used negatively in brainwashing and mind control but also positively to overcome the results of such abuse), and what I know about myself and what words and mediums are most effective to me. I record scripts for me to listen to, paired with music that puts me in the right state of mind—soothing, gentle, invigorating, inspiring, whatever is called for by the subject of the script.

            I write them in a kind of open verse poetry form to have the freedom to switch between prose and powerful words. I interweave phrases and quotes that are inspiring to me. Some of the scripts are just audio collages of my favorite inspiring quotes, or short stories and zen koans that encourage and inspire me.

            The final ingredient for these audio tracks is the piece de resistance. I’ve enjoyed editing audio digitally for eighteen years as a hobby. The first things I recorded and collected were sound bites from movies that lifted my heart.

            Because I’ve so often turned to these things for comfort I could easily call to mind words I’d love to hear over and over again. Using Audio Hijack Pro and audio editing software Audacity I captured and edited down just what I wanted from online videos and DVDs and MP3s, and pieced them together into sound collages, tracked over music. I can sprinkle the voices of the people who inspire me most in with whatever hypnotic tracks I make, or build tracks entirely out of words of encouragement and support in the voices I’ve come to associate with those things.

            I can even cut apart phrases and words to create things that these people haven’t said all at one time, but that I have imagined my characters based on them saying, and written down, that I find most effective in self-soothing. ‘I love you exactly as you are, no matter what,’ is a favorite of mine, and ‘How can we make it easier?’ helps remind me to use my creativity and knowledge to do that.

            It sounds weird, but think on this: How many times have we had something specific we wanted someone to say to us? And we know we can’t force someone to say that particular thing, or to say what we know we want to hear exactly how and when we want to hear it. In a lot of ways it’s not fair of me to expect or demand that of others. If I know what I want to that specific degree, why don’t I find a way to give it to myself?

            That’s what I’ve done. It may sound weird, selfish, even a little creepy to mess around with the voices of people we don’t know. But it’s not for them or for anyone else, it’s just for you.

…And the Benefits Keep on Growing

            By giving myself these things I’m no longer solely dependent on others for emotional support and encouragement. I’m no longer making unreasonable demands of them or having unreasonable expectations. When I can soothe and comfort myself, I can be more effective and calm. I’m less afraid and needy or clingy when it comes to other people when I draw on what I’ve created to take care of me.

            I also found out a lot about what I want and what it feels like for me to be comforted and supported. I can recognize a lot more readily when I find those things in others, and when I don’t. This means I spend less time and energy on relationships that aren’t healthy for me or the other person. I’m naturally more drawn to invest time and energy in people with whom I get the feelings I get from my inner support system.

            When I know what I want it’s easier to go after it, to give it to myself, and to find others who find value in what I have to give as well. With all this practice, I’m getting good at knowing what I have to give, and giving it—whether to myself or someone else.

Shades of Depression: Anhedonia, Anxiety, Anger, and Alienation

            Depression has been described in many ways. Through my experiences and my reading and discussions with others, I think that while there are some common experiences, the details of each person’s experience with depression are unique, and vary even among multiple experiences of depression for the same individual. I’ve felt terrible sadness, apathy, hopelessness, helplessness, and these things I thought were all normal. Yet I’ve also had other experiences less well-associated with depression, and I’m not alone.

Anhedonia

            “Anhedonia is defined as a loss of capacity to experience pleasure. This inability to enjoy pleasurable things is associated with a number of mental health problems including depression. The word anhedonia comes from ancient Greek and means without delight. The individual who is experiencing this condition will find that their life is emotionally empty.

            “…A world without pleasure is a grey place indeed. Without this emotion, life become monotonous, and there doesn’t seem to be much point in doing anything. Day to day living becomes an endurance race, and there is no motivation to try to improve things. The inability to experience pleasure means that life can feel pointless, and that is not a satisfying form of existence. It is a particularly dangerous way to feel if people are trying to recover from an addiction.

            “…Pleasure is a vital component of the internal reward system – it helps people grow and learn. If the individual is unable to experience rewards they will fail to make any progress.” —‘Anhedonia in Recovery’

            Anhedonia sucks. It sucks away your motivation to recovery, to do anything at all. “What’s the point?” you may think.

            “I know nothing. I can do nothing. I understand nothing. I know nothing. Nothing. And all this misery does not even make me particularly unhappy.” —Gerhard Richter

            I go through the motions, but get no pleasure, and soon may not have the energy or motivation to go through the motions. I wander through a twilight fog where everything has lost its color.

            In this state, anytime I feel a glimmer of feeling for anything, I grab it, fiercely, and hold on as long as I can, until that fleeting joy is gone. I feel as though I am hopping from melting ice floe to melting ice floe over a killing-cold lake, and I wonder if they will sink, or get too far apart, or run out before I reach the other side I’m hoping is there.

            “I tend to find the ecstasy hidden in ordinary joys, because I did not expect those joys to be ordinary to me.” —Andrew Solomon

Anxiety

            “If you told me that I’d have to be depressed for the next month, I would say, “As long as I know it’ll be over in November, I can do it.” But if you said to me, you have to have acute anxiety for the next month,” I would rather slit my wrist than go through it. It was the feeling all the time like that feeling you have if you’re walking and you slip or trip and the ground is rushing up at you, but instead of lasting half a second, the way that does, it lasted for six months.” —Andrew Solomon, ‘Depression, the secret we share’ TED Talk

            Living in terror or panic for a prolonged time affects your body. Your adrenal glands wear out. You’re hypervigilant. You can’t sleep, and your body doesn’t recharge. The cortisol soup your whole system is swimming in takes its toll. Your brain rewires. Your sense of the future becomes foreshortened. Anything can trigger you to fight, flight, or freeze. It can become too much to leave the house, into a world of unknown variables and overwhelming stimulation. It can feel like having no skin.

            You develop learned helplessness when nothing you can do stops the source of fear and panic. It wears you out when you feel you have to keep this vulnerability hidden, which if you are living with someone or something that is threatening to you and more powerful than you, is highly likely. You feel small, disempowered. You are liable to lash out at the smallest trigger. It is as though the gain has been turned up on everything—a whisper is a shout, a simple word is a hammer blow.

            It is hard for me to tell, having lived with terror all my life, what is a genuine assessment of a threat, what is a childhood flashback, what is either causing or a result of depression. What I do know is, regardless of cause and effect, terror is the most debilitating of all. With anhedonia, even at its worst, I still can connect to the idea that I haven’t experienced absolutely everything, and perhaps there is something out there in which I can take pleasure. Anger, even frustrated and helpless anger, urges me to action against that which is intolerable and unjust.

            Fear chases me into a corner, binds my chest with invisible iron bands so I cannot even dare breathe or make a noise, lest someone notice I am here and take more from me when I have nothing to give, or beat down someone so beaten down by life I feel paralyzed.

            “Suicide is really more of an anxiety response than a depression solution: it is not the action of a null mind but of a tortured one. The physical symptoms of anxiety are so acute that they seem to demand a physical response: not simply the mental suicide of silence and sleep, but the physical one of self-slaughter.” —Andrew Solomon, ‘The Noonday Demon’

Anger

            “First, you are faced with an experience that seems wrong or unfair. Second, you don’t feel able to calmly correct it. And yet, in order for you to feel okay, the situation must be successfully resolved because leaving it as it is does not feel like an acceptable option (the third factor). You feel a strong desire to right a situation that seems wrong, yet you also believe that, at least for now, you are unable to do so. When this set of circumstances occurs, your normal, built-in, human response is anger.”
—Marcia Cannon, ‘The Gift of Anger’

            “A lot of painful things happened to me, and I just wanted to forget. I would wake up in the mornings and just be angry that I woke up. I felt like there wasn’t any help for me, ’cause I was just on this earth wasting space. I lived to use drugs and used drugs to live, and since drugs made me even more depressed, I just wanted to be dead.” —Sheila Hernandez

             “It’s like a hurt. It’s just like they raking your heart out your body, and it won’t stop, it’s just like somebody’s taking a knife and keep stabbing you all the time.” — Danquille Stetson

            It’s been said that depression is anger turned inward. I think depression can have in it anger both turned inward and outward. In depression what I have felt is helpless anger.

            I’ve been angry at hurt I could not prevent or defend against, angry both at the source of the hurt and at myself for my impotence or weakness.

            All this anger is exhausting and demoralizing, and without effective ways to express all this anger non-abusively and feel heard, it becomes a hopeless, angry despair. Loneliness is not just the absence of people but the absence of compassionate understanding.

            “I meet people and I know that they don’t have the level of experience that I have.” —Bill Stein

            Despite a lifetime of painful interpersonal traumas, I have come to believe there are some out there who aren’t habitually, mindlessly hurtful. Yet the absence of a flaw doesn’t indicate the presence of a virtue.

            We humans are rarely comfortable with the expression of emotions like anger and fear and shame, even when we are only bystanders. It takes awareness, effort, investment, and a willingness to learn from inevitable failures to practice empathy, compassion, validation, and humility in the face of these things; with emotional boundaries that don’t trend to self-protective insensitivity. Too often we rely on comparison and pity in the face of others’ pain; or unwanted and inappropriate judgment, advice, and humor. Intellectual understanding blocks empathy.

            “Generosity and love demand great expenditure of energy and effort and will.” —Andrew Solomon, ‘The Noonday Demon’

            Prolonged anger can also have physical health consequences—heart attacks, hardening of the arteries, strokes, hypertension, high blood pressure, heart rate and metabolism changes, muscle and respiratory problems (Dr. Herbert Benson, The Relaxation Response, 1975).

Alienation and the Struggle to Overcome it

            Depression is an alienating experience. Anhedonia, acute anxiety, and anger are alienating experiences.

            “You can’t measure in objective terms how sick people are or what their symptoms are. You can only listen to what people say and accept that that’s how it feels to them.” —Deborah Christie
 

            “There is an interaction between illness and personality; some people can tolerate symptoms that would destroy others; some people can tolerate hardly anything. Some people seem to give in to their depression; others seem to battle it. Since depression is highly demotivating, it takes a certain survivor impulse to keep going through the depression, not to cave in to it.” —Andrew Solomon, ‘The Noonday Demon’

            Compassionate understanding isn’t something we’re automatically good at, nor empathy, nor non-judgment, listening skills. Capacities for these are there, unless you’re a sociopath, but it takes mindful work and perseverance, and humility, to build and practice these skills. It’s not easy, it’s not always fun, and it requires uncomfortable self-examination and self-honesty and a willingness to fail and try again.

            Becoming a brain surgeon is hard work and you would (I hope) not presume to try brain surgery without that work. Yet many people try to offer support who have underdeveloped humility, awareness, and trustworthiness necessary to be effective. We do this because we don’t know what we don’t know. We also do this because shame shuts down genuine human connection and vulnerability (see Brené Brown’s work for more on overcoming these issues).

            I’ve been there. I’ve not only bought the t-shirt but run the t-shirt stand. But having had the experiences I’ve had, I can never return to not-knowing. Sooner or later I think most everyone is touched by tragedy or trauma, and ignorance is no longer an option. The choice is, what do you do then?

            “You cannot draw a depressed person out of his misery with love (though you can sometimes distract a depressed person). You can, sometimes, manage to join someone in the place where he resides. It is not pleasant to sit still in the darkness of another person’s mind, though it is almost worse to watch the decay of the mind from the outside. You can fret from a distance or you can come close and closer and closest. Sometimes the way to be close is to be silent, or even distant. It is not up to you, from the outside, to decide; it is up to you to discern. Depression is lonely above all else, but it can breed the opposite of loneliness. …So many people have asked me what to do for depressed friends and relatives, and my answer is actually simple: blunt their isolation. Do it with cups of tea or with long talks or by sitting in a room nearby and staying silent or in whatever way suits the circumstances, but do that. And do it willingly.” —Andrew Solomon, ‘The Noonday Demon’

            “Our needs are our greatest assets. I am able to just be there with people because of the stuff I’ve needed from people. I guess I’ve learned to give all the things I need.” —Maggie Robbins

Sources and further reading:

            ‘Anhedonia in Recovery’ article

            Hyperbole and a Half: Adventures in Depression by Allie Brosh

            Hyperbole and a Half: Depression Part Two by Allie Brosh

            ‘Depression, the secret we share’ TED Talk by Andrew Solomon

            ‘The Noonday Demon’ by Andrew Solomon

            ‘The Gift of Anger’ by Marcia Cannon

            ‘Honor Your Anger’ by Beverly Engel

            ‘Healing Through the Dark Emotions:The Wisdom of Grief, Fear, and Despair’ by Marcia Greenspan

            ‘The power of vulnerability’ TED Talk by Brené Brown

            ‘Listening to shame’ TED Talk by Brené Brown

            ‘Suicide: Read This First’ on metanoia.org

            ‘What can I do to help someone who may be suicidal?’ on metanoia.org

            Emotional Intelligence information on EQI.org

            ‘EQ for Everybody: A Practical Guide to Developing and Using One’s Emotional Intelligence’ free PDF by Steve Hein

Encouragement and Criticism

Why is criticism a dangerous habit?

“Perfection is the enemy of done.” —Andrea Scher

            Criticism has many pitfalls. What we do to others, we do to ourselves, and vice versa. Criticism encourages judgment, shame, inflexibility, externalization or projecting, persistent negativity, perfectionism, lack of distinction between opinion and objective reality, and intolerance of discomfort or imperfections.

            Whatever you feed will grow. The more we criticize, and the more mindlessly we indulge this very human propensity, the more it becomes a default way of interacting with and viewing other people and the world. It is hard, if not impossible, to have a positive life experience with a negative outlook.

         This is not to say that setting boundaries and expressing dislike or dissatisfaction are not important. I will address how to assertively set boundaries at another time, and speak on the gift and importance of anger. Speaking up is important, particularly if you have otherwise been silenced.
         I want to add to our natural skills for criticism and judgment, to give us the option of cultivating encouragement of what is creative and additive in ourselves and one another. It is important to own our own point of view, and to have the capacity to focus on encouraging what we enjoy and want to increase.

               Any time we provide feedback with the goal of getting someone to better meet our needs, rather than being responsive to theirs, it’s unlikely to prompt the desired outcome.
             …The second mistake we make in giving feedback is failing to hold the other person’s value in the process. Even the most well-intentioned criticism will, more often than not, prompt us to feel our value is at risk, and under attack.
               The third mistake we make is to assume that we’re right about whatever it is we’re inclined to say. Like lawyers, we take a series of facts and weave them together into a story that supports and justifies the case we’re seeking to make.
             The problem is that our stories aren’t necessarily true. They’re simply one interpretation of the facts. It makes much more sense to think about offering feedback in a spirit of humble exploration rather than declaration, dialogue rather than monologue, curiosity rather than certainty. Humility is the recognition that we don’t know, even when we think we know. As Steven Covey says, “Seek first to understand.”
           Ultimately, we’d be better off eliminating concepts like “feedback” and “constructive criticism” from our lexicons altogether. They’re polarizing, and mostly destructive. We need to think of these interchanges instead as opportunities for honest inquiry and genuine learning.
            “Here’s the story I’m telling myself about what just happened,” we might say. “Have I got that right, or am I missing something?” —Tony Schwartz, ‘There'sNo Such Thing as Constructive Criticism’

            There is nothing more off-putting than having someone, even someone you love, continually telling you that you should be handling things or doing things differently.

       Do your loved ones one more favor. Remove the word “should” from your vocabulary. “Should” almost always comes with an undertone of criticism, and since it usually references a situation that has passed and cannot be changed, the word does nothing but breed resentment. 

           Trust that people will ask for advice when they need it. Ask them if they’d like a thought when you feel you need to step in, and always allow them the courtesy of saying no. —‘Unsolicited Advice is Criticism in Disguise’

            The Writing Monster should be flexible, able to handle the editing of any kind of writing, whether it’s a little blog post, a speech, a short story or a screenplay.

              It should also expose people to new ideas and new ways of looking at writing, and inspire us to rip the pages out of stupid pretentious books. 

             And it should expose us to different types of writers and editors, not just fellow writers who have the same exact skills and writerly prejudices.” —Guy Bergstrom, ‘Why Critique Groups MUST DIE’

Why cultivate encouragement?

            “The only good teachers for you are those friends who love you, who think you are interesting, or very important, or wonderfully funny.” —Brenda Ueland

            Encouragement leads to openness, flexibility, curiosity, surprise, collaboration, connection, invention, imagination, creativity, diversity, discovery, exploration, acceptance, imperfections, mistakes, successes, comedy, happy accidents, serendipity, appreciation.

            Rufolf Dreikurs state that all maladaptive behaviors primarily result from discouragement, and Wexberg (1969) stated that education for the most part consists of encouragement. Presuming that these statements are valid, we can conclude that there is no more important task than to be a model of encouragement and teach others the techniques of encouragement. —Theo Shoenaker, ‘Encouragement Makes Good Things Happen’

            Some imperfection is not bad. You don’t need to be ashamed. It’s a way to stay in touch with reality and with all the imperfections, like me.
            A little imperfection is good. You need a little imperfection to be perfect enough. This way, your feet stay firmly planted to the ground, and you can allow others to be as they are—imperfect like you.
            A little imperfection makes life easier, and helps all of us to forge ahead. Don’t be sad that you are not perfect. This way you stay connected to all imperfect people—with you and with me.
            A little imperfection allows yourself to be who you are, spontaneous and creative. You will not need to hide, you will make mistakes, and you will demonstrate that you are an imperfect human, just like me.
            I hope that one day you will meet a partner who is imperfect like you—and that both of you can find it amusing, so that you can love and not only admire him. —source unknown

            I think the dilemma exists because art, among all the other tidy categories, most closely resembles what it is like to be human. To be alive. It is our nature to be imperfect. To have uncategorized feelings and emotions. To make or do things that don’t sometimes necessarily make sense.
             Art is all just perfectly imperfect.
          Once the word Art enters the description of what you’re up to, it is almost like getting a hall pass from perfection. It thankfully releases us from any expectation of perfection.
            In relation to my own work not being perfect, I just always point to the tattered box behind the couch and mention the word Art, and people seem to understand and let you off the hook about being perfect and go back to their business. —Nicholas Wilton 

Six ways to encourage

1. “I really loved what you were trying to do.”

            Here’s how Jim Henson encouraged:

            Most of us think that we need negative feedback to know what to do better next time. But as [Dave] Goelz said, [Jim] Henson himself used to delight in the positive aspects of his work to make the next one better. He didn’t need shame, and he didn’t give it to others. When he met Caroll Spinney for the first time, Spinney had just bombed on stage at a puppetry festival. Goelz recalled: “Jim said, “I really loved what you were trying to do.” And he was absolutely sincere about it.”
           Henson appreciated Spinneys performance on the level of concept, even if the execution was terrible. An artist has his own internal judge of quality, and it’s not necessary, Henson knew, to point out his mistakes to him.
            This  radical abstention from criticism can be seen as weak. Duncan Kenworthy explained: “He would never ever say, and this was actually to a fault, if he didn’t like something, if he thought something hadn’t been done well, he would never ever say that, and he’d say, “Hey, I wonder if we just should try…” and somehow he would turn the corner and it would be a positive. “Let’s try it a different way.” He would never say, “God, that doesn’t work.””
            …Perhaps a better way to improve is to stop criticizing ourselves and simply appreciate what is good about our work, so that the next take will be better. As an artist, it is essential to first treat one’s own talent humanely. From there, it is easy to treat others this same way. —Elizabeth Hyde Stevens, ‘Make Art Make Money’

            Wil Wheaton once said, “We applaud the wrong things.” When we successfully achieve something, we already feel the positive reinforcement of that success. When we most need encouragement is when we are struggling, and most especially, when we have experienced failure and our feelings of worth and agency may be low. While you can’t always appreciate the results, appreciating and reinforcing the effort made is vital to making the effort again.

2. Appreciate and Receive Appreciation

            The effect of praise and applause is temporary. The following may be a familiar experience—you were successful one evening and received either recognition or applause, but by the time you went to bed that night, or at the latest at breakfast the next morning, you began to doubt your own worth again.
            The desire to be successful, to be the best, to be the most beautiful, to deliver perfect and praiseworthy accomplishments, leaves us susceptible to criticism. The acknowledgement of others becomes the measure of our own worth.
            …Praise can also turn into pressure because the next time, less laudatory performance is not acceptable.
            …Others rebel against praise because they sense in it either the superiority of the person doing the praising or the pressure to have to live according to the expectations of others. —Theo Shoenaker, ‘Encouragement Makes Good Things Happen’

3. Affirmation and Noticing

            In InterPlay practice, there are two skills we use to give words of encouragement to one another, by describing (using ‘I’ statements or just descriptive words) our own positive reactions to what we liked about another’s performance:

            Affirmation: to seek out, notice, and name the good in others and the world.
            Noticing: the ability to perceive and reflect on our experience. —Cynthia Winton-Henry with Phil Porter, ‘What the Body Wants’

            We’re encouraged to notice what we had in our own bodies, in our own emotions, what we experienced, as we were watching whatever performance just took place. This can be applied not just to performance art but anything we are evaluating, and it’s even more important as a place to start if we’re looking to suggest areas of improvement.

4. Direct and Indirect Encouragement

            A direct encouragement would be, for example, if I recognized your initial attempts as valid and supported them with an enthusiastic “Yes.” …I could also say, “Yes, it seems logical to me to do it this way,” or “This was a great idea on your part.” I could also smile while watching you or express my support of your effort by winking at you. That would also be a direct encouragement because it is an action on my part that directly focuses on your activity. I could also indicate a thumbs-up or other signal of agreement or approval.
            An indirect encouragement provides the proper emotional atmosphere in which human beings can flourish. You will feel this atmosphere particularly when you meet people who possess inner peace, who believe that they are okay the way they are, and with whom you have the feeling that you may be just as you are; they are patient, and they are interested in you. Such people convey that they trust that you can manage the tasks you may encounter. They do not talk much about these matters, they do not have unreasonable expectations, and they do not overemphasize the importance of mistakes.
—Theo Shoenaker, ‘Encouragement Makes Good Things Happen’

5. Cultivate the Qualities that Encourage Encouragement

         Here are the 10 most important desirable qualities for an encouraging and encouraged person:
            • Interest in others
            • Attentive listening
            • Enthusiasm
            • Patience
            • A friendly look
            • A friendly voice
            • Recognizing what is good
            • Acknowledging attempts and progress made
            • Being responsible for one’s self
            • Creating approximate physical proximity
—Theo Shoenaker, ‘Encouragement Makes Good Things Happen’

6. Find What Works and Practice, Practice, Practice

            Self-encouragement and encouraging others lead to one another. If it’s too challenging now to encourage yourself, find others you can encourage; and vice versa. Practicing skills and habits of encouragement will build them.

            Be gentle with yourself if it doesn’t always have the desired result. The goal is more to practice the skill than elicit a particular response. Appreciate your effort—every failure is another opportunity to practice encouragement with yourself.