Dear Young Therapist: Consider Your De Rigueur Requirements | The Post-Doctoral Tie Incident

image credit: Nicholas Ruiz. Bow Tie #10. Assembled November 2011.
 Acetaminophen pills, multiple adhesives, plastic knife. Forest Hills, Queens, New York.

The man interviewing me for a postdoctoral fellowship unwrapped the aluminum foil encasing his dry turkey sandwich and proceeded to stuff it into his mouth.

"Do you mind if I eat? Not that you really have a choice. I'm doing the interview and have the power in this situation."

He continued to masticate and fill his office up with the seasonally incongruent smell of Thanksgiving. This was going to be a fun filled interview.

"I'd like to ask you why you aren't wearing a tie today for your interview. Before you answer, I want you to know that as a psychologist I think everything has a meaning. I hope you have thought about the meaning of why you didn't wear a tie. If you haven't, then you aren't what we are looking for in a post-doctoral fellow. We'll end the interview here and I'll wish you good day."

I had a variety of inside-thoughts that I considered sharing. They included:

• Asshole. 
• Drop dead. 
• Who the hell do you think you are? I just had fucking brain surgery, a post-operative infection, and joint damage from an adverse reaction to the antibiotics that treated my infection. 
• Your turkey sandwich is making me want to throw up. 
• I'm scared because I can't find a job. 
• Do you know who the fuck I am? 
• Am I going to fail as a psychologist?

I took a middle course and smiled politely. I noticed the air flowing in and out of my nose. I watched as my agitated thoughts floated like clouds in the wind from the center of my awareness, to the edges of my mind, and then off into places where I can no longer notice them.

Birthday: Mid-Life Edition

I've been thinking a lot about birthdays this week. Mostly it's because my birthday was this past week. Before getting on with these evenings musings of an irreverent (and aging) psychologist, why not return to the scene of my original birthday for a couple of moments? Here I am with my mom and dad, two days old, and just a little squished up bundle of potential. 

It dawned on me that I passed a tipping point somewhere between these pictures and today. I stopped growing and started decaying. There were no parties on that day--no cakes were eaten, no cards were received, and no party hats were worn. There were no forms of recognition and no fanfare on that day when I crossed the invisible line. 

Science guides me to think that tipping point happened sometime in my mid 20s. My body was developmentally at it's strongest. My brain was at the apex of its ability to process information. With that in mind, the moment I crossed that line probably happened somewhere in Vermont. I was a graduate student working on the first masters degree that I would complete.


Here, if you look closely, is me around the time of the peak of my physical development. As you can see, my hair was also near the maximum length of its development.

It's bothered me, a little bit, to realize I am decaying. This realization isn't a particularly delightful thought.  What's worse is that I have also recognized that from an actuarial standpoint, there are more years on the road behind me than there are on the road ahead of me.

Bummer. If I live a normal life expectancy I'm actually a little more than half way dead. 


Double bummer. 

All things decay. I've known this in an intellectual way for most of my life. However, it wasn't until recently that I've learned to find comfort in knowing since I too am thing, I shall decay. It's not as if I really have a choice in the matter. I'll decay just the same, whether I want to or not.

The hints of my decay are hovering around the edges of my perception.  There are the inevitable aspects of decay. They are cosmetically annoying. The dark hair that suddenly burst forth from my chest and face announcing the arrival of a new man is gradually turning grey with the frost of age. There are also the unexpected aspects of decay. I've  begun to notice the subtle ways my middle-aged self is either invisible to younger people or commands an unexpected authority--an authority that I've not yet learned to be entirely comfortable with. 

There is something else I've discovered too. Somewhere in this time, between the summer and autumn of my life, I'm finding the joys of adulthood. What are these joys? Keats suggests our adulthood, the long autumn of our lives, is the season that ripens the fruit, harvests the fruit and makes the music.

I'm hope I have plenty of life left to make the transition from summer to autumn. I think I have some pretty good crops that can be ripened and harvested. The music sounds good, too. 

This makes the grey hair a very welcome sign--a sign of the harvest that is yet to come. In the end, it's the spaces between growing and decaying that life really happens--every moment--every day. I'm not entirely convinced that we could even have a life if we didn't also have decay and death.


There is not beginning without and ending.

Plus their is always hair dye, should all else fail. 

To Autumn

by John Keats

Seeking Shambhala in Gallery 280

During a recent visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston I discovered a variety of interesting curiosities. One, which I blogged about previously, is the discovery that I don't ever want to own or wear man pants. The main event of this particular trip, however, was the special exhibition in Gallery 280: Seeking Shambhala. The show is up until October 21 so you have plenty of time to catch it.

Shambhala, according to Tibetan Buddhist and Indian Buddhist traditions, is a mythical kingdom hidden somewhere deep within inner Asia. The land is said to be shaped like a giant lotus flower surrounded by eight petals which, in turn, are surrounded by snow-covered mountains. The inhabitants of Shambhala are protected by both the mountains and supernatural forces which ensure the residents are protected from the rest of the world. Those who live here lead an evolved spiritual life and are free from all forms of suffering and strife. Sounds kind of nice, doesn't it?

Prior to this trip to the MFA, the closest I've gotten to Shambhala was a trip to another museum. I think it was in 1997 that a group of Buddhist monks came to the Cleveland Museum of Art and created a sand mandala that was a physical representation of Shambhala. I also got fairly close to Shambhala when a group of monks were in residence at Northeastern University underneath my office in the counseling center. They also were building a sand mandala.

On both occasions I quietly hung out in the back of the room watching the monks carefully build the mandala--sometimes a grain of sand at a time. I also got to watch the ceremony at the end of the creation of the mandala where the sand was swept up and washed away in a body of water.

Impermanence. It gets you every time.

Among the various pieces in gallery 280 I came across this Buddha by Gonkar Gyatso. It was one of those great moments with art--I got drawn into the piece and all the little adornments placed onto the Buddha. Those few moments seemed like an eternity and when I left I saw everything in a different way. I got to thinking of all the little (and big) experiences of our lives that get imprinted upon us and shape our understandings of what comes next. I also got to thinking about the form of what is beneath this surface of impressions.

What might be like to take water and a scrub brush to this Buddha (I wouldn't actually do this, of course, except within my own mind). Might it be possible to wash away these small adornments on the Buddha--these impressions of life--and reveal the true form of the statute? Might it be possible that we can wash away the impressions of life--like the monks wash away the sand mandala--and be left with something pure?

I frequently tell clients who are working through trauma something similar. Trauma work, as I see it, is much like going to the doctor for wound debridement. Every bit of contaminant needs to be located and scrubbed out. I realize that for as many times as I've told a client this, I've never talked about what is left behind.

I'm not sure what would be left. That's probably why I've not thought to talk about it with a client. It's easy to think about what this Buddha would like like with all these impressions washed away. It's a lot harder to think about what people might look like. Maybe we'll figure it out if we ever get to Shambhala.

In the meantime, it's worth it to make a trip into Boston to spend some time with this Buddha. He has a lot to teach.