Catherine Auman, LMFT

Back in the days when Freudian lying-on-the-couch therapy was all there was, insight into one’s problem was considered enough to provide a cure. However, insight-as-cure didn’t turn out to be the case – we’ve all heard about Woody Allen in treatment for decades, his neurosis only growing. Many people walk around with great insight into why they do what they do, baffled as to how to use the information to change their lives.

Caitlin understands there’s a correlation between her father’s abusiveness and her attraction to unkind men, but still she continues to date them. Josh knows the reason he drinks too much is because he’s shy and lonely, but that doesn’t help him cut down or stop. Both Caitlin and Josh berate themselves constantly as “stupid” because they know they’re smart and have good insight, but neither knows what to do about it.

Do you remember Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle? — that amazing discovery last century that states that just to observe something changes it.  To those seeking personal growth, this means that merely the act of observing ourselves will bring about change. However, most of us need to learn to observe ourselves in an entirely different way than we are accustomed: without judgment, not berating ourselves as “stupid,” but instead, with awareness and compassion. We develop compassion for ourselves when we accept that we, like everyone else, are caught in not-useful patterns. We can practice calmly observing the impulse to act in ways we don’t desire, trapped in patterns we have discovered through our insight.

As we observe and become aware, the next step is to gradually make a series of different decisions. One by one, step by step, different decisions will be made and behavior will change. After observing her patterns, Caitlin met a man she was really hot for, but after seeing him treat a food server rudely, decided to say “no” to further dates. Josh still has the desire to drink, but one day at a time, he doesn’t pick up the glass. Each of these meticulously changed actions is a victory in itself. Slowly but surely, as you too observe yourself with compassion and follow up with different decisions, you will gradually become a new person, more in alignment with your true self.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

You’re enjoying the perfect stroll along the beach: the crunch of sand between your toes, the lapping waves, the glorious sun on your face. You notice the wind caressing your hair — suddenly you hear cries for help! – the agony of a fellow being beginning to drown. Your impulse is to heroically swim out, drag the person to shore, provide mouth-to-mouth resuscitation and thereby save their life.

Have you heard about this?  That’s the exact thing you must not do. Unless you’re a trained lifeguard and know exactly how to help, you can’t go in the water. A drowning person, in their panic, will pull you under in an attempt to save themselves, and there will be two drowned persons instead of one. It’s a nasty fact, but if you want to save a life, the only thing you can do is summon help.

Even if it’s a family member, you can’t go in unless you’ve received training in saving lives. Standing on the shore, knowing you can’t help: heartbreaking. Choosing to save your own life rather than two people dying: excruciatingly painful.

“Dan” is a patient of mine who has reached a certain degree of success with his acting. He has all the talent, looks, and charisma needed, but lacks the persistence to complete the daily tasks to further his career. In therapy, we’ve been examining his close bond with his family back in the Midwest who are uniformly depressed, unhappy with their lives, and lack the will to change. There are unwritten rules that family members are not supposed to become too successful, or stray too far from unhappiness. In other words, Dan’s family is drowning, and in an effort to try and save them, Dan is being sucked down and is drowning along with them.

Dan and I have been talking about how he needs to “let his parents drown.” He’s not trained in lifesaving. If he wants, he can go back to school, study psychotherapy or social work, and change his profession to become a “trained lifeguard.” But even those of us who are, aren’t effective working with our own families.

Although it is painful to stand on the shore and realize that someone you love is drowning and you cannot save them, it is a decision you must make in order that your own life be saved. Certainly you can try to summon help by pointing them to therapy, but they may not choose to go. It’s essential that at least one life be saved. It’s time for you to become free and save yourself.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

The adorable young woman sitting in front of me had been sent by her boyfriend for counseling because she doesn’t orgasm in a few minutes as a porn star pretends to.

The main source of sex education for many young people these days is online porn, and much misinformation is being disseminated. The major inaccuracy is that yang sex is all there is: sex is only about looking a certain way, vigorous activity, technique, and performance. There is no place for sensual exploration, non-goal oriented play, or relaxation in the presence of the beloved. Very few even get the opportunity to learn that yin sex exists.

When a man and a woman can be totally themselves in each other’s presence, a whole other dimension opens up. When I was studying tantra in India, we spent much of our time doing exercises to get over our fears of the opposite sex and learning to be emotionally real with each other. It wasn’t about performance. It was about learning to take it slow, slower, and slowest.

Osho, the great tantra master, talks about an unknown-to-the-West phenomena, “valley orgasms.” These are the opposite of the yang orgasms that end with a bang or, as Osho says, like a sneeze. A “valley orgasm” occurs from surrendering so deeply with the partner that an inner explosion happens.

“There are two types of climaxes, two types of orgasm. One type of orgasm is known. You reach to a peak of excitement, then you cannot go further: the end has come…In the second, excitement is just a beginning. And once the man has entered, both lover and beloved can relax. No movement is needed. They can relax in a loving embrace.

“When the man feels or the woman feels that the erection is going to be lost, only then is a little movement and excitement required. But then again relax. You can prolong this deep embrace for hours with no ejaculation … You may not be aware of it, but this is a fact of biology, of bio-energy, that man and woman are opposite forces. Negative-positive, yin-yang, they are challenging to each other. And when they both meet in a deep relaxation, they revitalize each other.”  (Osho, 1998, The Book of Secrets, NY: St Martin’s Griffin)

Once you become honest in your sexuality, both the yin and the yang of it, you will be able to enjoy the performance aspect of sex without being trapped in it. Sometimes you will act the porn star and use all the fabulous techniques you’ve learned (that everyone else has learned too), and other times you will experiment with your soft, flowing yin nature. You will be free to be alternately passive or aggressive, hot or not, and able to admit when increased intimacy scares you. You will be sexually real and not have to fake orgasms like a porn star.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Pole dance classes at your local “Y,” burlesque and striptease billed as “female empowerment,” fetish shoes worn as ordinary daywear, cougars on the prowl, and porn star sex not only ubiquitous on the Internet but expected in every bedroom – contemporary sex is all about the yang.

You’ve seen the yin/yang symbol: the white and black teardrops coexisting inside a circle, each half complimenting the other, each essential for the other’s existence. In the East, the timeless symbol demonstrates that all in the manifest world exists as a pair of opposites: fast/slow, hot/cold, passive/aggressive, male/female. These opposites exist only in relation to each other, creating a world of perfect balance.

In terms of sex, yang is outer directed (like a penis): aggressive, hot, noisy, fast, focused on technique, and headed toward the goal of orgasm. Sex is often voyeuristic, a spectator sport, with a preference for the visual.  In prior times, yang was the sole province of men, the masculine.

Yin sexuality is the opposite: inner directed (like a vagina): passive, cool, slow, quiet, meandering, with no other goal than shared sensuality. Yin is full of secrets, soft, yielding, private, hidden, shy and reticent. Women, the feminine, were the sole holders of yin.

Women in the sexist past had no choice but to embody yin, or men yang, with dire consequences for those who strayed from their stereotypes. Most people of today enjoy our potential for greater flexibility and the openness toward people of all persuasions. Ideally, both men and women would embrace their inner yin as well as their outer yang, but that is not what is happening.

Yin is no longer an option anywhere in the West, including the bedroom. Women are boldly exhibiting their yang qualities — nobody wants to be seen as weak. We are prejudiced against the slow, the soft, the passive, the diffuse, the meandering, the unfocused, the yielding. Self-help books and seminar leaders encourage eradicating any yin qualities in oneself in order to be always assertive, bold, virile. Porn promotes a preference for yang sex. We devalue the yin, both in ourselves and others, which is misogyny in a subtle, insidious form.

It is a timeless truth that both yin and yang are essential, and that everything and everyone carry both qualities. It doesn’t help to repress or pretend you don’t have yin. If you do, you will never know yourself. The next time you notice you are feeling shy, or reticent, or passive, or slow, that you don’t feel like sharing, or that you want sex that explores aimlessly and doesn’t go anywhere, instead of finding it wrong, you begin a fascinating exploration of what this hidden part of yourself is all about.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

People who grow up in difficult families miss learning some of life’s most basic skills. In homes where physical abuse is present, for example, children often don’t grow up with the understanding that their bodies deserve respect.  If the parents were emotionally cold, the child misses learning what it’s like to live in a world where affection is easy and can be taken for granted. Kids grow into adults who don’t believe they can fend for themselves when their parents are controlling and over-protective.

A common thread running through these challenging environments is an inability to speak the language of feelings. These kinds of families often have unspoken rules about not feeling, not speaking about feelings, or not feeling feelings they believe are incorrect to feel. Not learning the language of feelings can lead to feeling alienated from oneself and others.

It’s as if your parents didn’t teach you how to speak French and you suddenly realize you’re living in a world where everyone speaks French but you. Yes, it’s a handicap, but you can learn, even at the advanced age you are now. You will have to work on it diligently for at least a couple of years, but it can be done.

The first step is learning that feeling feelings is okay, even preferable, and to welcome their presence in your life. Next is to learn the names of the various feeling states and their many gradations. Sometimes I’ll give my patients a simple chart with faces mimicking the various emotions such as anger, happiness, or fear, and we’ll go through them methodically noticing the attendant physical response. The patient begins a process of checking in with their body to identify what they are feeling. They learn to bypass the mind, that purveyor of false information.

Patients practice “speaking French” during the week between sessions and report back what it is like to identify their feelings and live with their responses. The next stage is to practice expressing these feelings in words, both in the therapy session and with trusted people in the patient’s life. Expressing feelings to a loved one can lead to closeness and intimacy, often of a type which the patient has never experienced before.

It is certainly harder to learn French when you’re an adult than if you had grown up bilingual at home, but we all know people who have done it. It is quite possible to become fluent in a second language and enjoy eloquently conversing with friends, write poems and sonnets and essays, and who knows, maybe even share a few jokes.

© 2011 Catherine Auman