“Let’s start with that ‘I can’t,’ ” I told her. “First of all, it’s a lie. I can’t means I’m helpless. And unless you’re an infant, that simply isn’t true.”
When we say “I can’t,” what we’re really saying is “I won’t.” I won’t accept it. I won’t believe. I won’t escape the fear. I won’t stop policing and monitoring him. The language of fear is the language of resistance. And if we’re resisting, we’re working very hard to ensure that we go nowhere. We deny growth and curiosity. We’re revolving, not evolving, shutting down opportunities for change.
I asked Kathleen to eliminate I can’t from her vocabulary.
If you’re going to take away something, you’ll be more successful if you can replace it with something else. If you’re skipping a cocktail, replace it with another beverage you enjoy. If you want to stop withdrawing and hiding from a loved one, like Robin in an earlier chapter, replace the habit of leaving the room with staying, with regarding your partner with a smile and kind eyes.
I told Kathleen, “Anytime you start to say ‘I can’t,’ replace it with ‘I can.’ ” I can let go of the past. I can stay in the present. I can love and trust myself.
I pointed her to two more fear-based phrases she’d used back-to-back in the first minute of our conversation: I’m trying and I need to.
“You said you’re trying to live in the present,” I said. “But trying is lying. You’re either doing it or you’re not.” If you say, “I’m trying,” you don’t actually have to do it. You let yourself off the hook. “It’s time to stop trying and start doing.”
When we’re on the cusp of taking action, many of us use the phrase “I need to.” It sounds like we’re identifying goals and setting priorities. Kathleen wanted to change the relentless fear and vigilance in her marriage, and she said, “I know I need to learn to trust him again.”
“But that’s another lie,” I told her. “Needs are things without which we can’t survive. Breathing, sleeping, eating.”
We can stop burdening and pressuring ourselves, telling ourselves that something is necessary for our survival when it isn’t. And we can stop looking at our choices as obligations.
“You don’t need to trust your husband,” I said. “You want to. And if you want to, you can choose to.”
When we talk as though we’re forced or obligated or incapable, that’s how we’re going to think, which means that’s also how we’ll feel, and consequently, how we’ll behave. We become captives to fear: I need to do this, or else; I want to do that, but I can’t. To free yourself from the prison, pay attention to your language. Listen for the I can’t, the I’m trying, the I need to, and then see if you can replace these imprisoning phrases with something else: I can, I want, I’m willing, I choose. This is the language that empowers us to change.
Kathleen doesn’t have any guarantees that her husband won’t cheat again. If she leaves the marriage, she has no foolproof armor against being betrayed by someone else. But she has tools to free herself from paralysis.
Whose responsibility is it if your dreams and behaviors aren’t aligned? One patient said he felt he would be more on top of things at work and more patient with his family if he had better sleep habits—but he was still drinking five cups of coffee. Another patient longed for a stable, committed relationship, but she kept waking up in a different man’s bed. These patients’ goals and choices didn’t match. I’m all for positive thinking, but it goes nowhere unless it’s followed by positive action.
And we can stop working so hard to go nowhere.
One of the ways we resist change is by being hard on ourselves. A patient told me she wanted to lose weight, but when she came to see me she’d spend half the session berating herself. “I’m pigging out on ice cream,” she’d say. “I’m pigging out on chocolate cake.” The minute you put yourself down, you’re never going to change. But if you say, “Today I’m not going to put sugar in my cappuccino,” then you’re doing something about it. This is how growth and learning and healing happen—by what you do, little by little, on your own behalf.
Sometimes seemingly trivial changes can have a big impact. Michelle, who had struggled for years with anorexia, had always avoided doughnuts. She’d been afraid of them her whole life—afraid that if she ate one, she’d eat the whole box. Afraid that if she let herself indulge in even one small bite, she’d become fat in an instant. Afraid that she would lose control. Afraid that if she gave herself permission to experience pleasure, if she dared to let go, she’d fall apart.
But she knew that as long as she lived in fear of an old-fashioned glazed, she was still in prison. One morning she summoned her courage, walked into a bakery—even the jingly bell on the door and the smell of sugar made her sweat—and bought two doughnuts and brought them to her therapy session. In a supportive place, with the comfort of her therapist sharing the experience, Michelle let herself feel the fear, all those deep-seated anxieties about her self-image and self-worth, about losing control. And then she got curious about the experience. Together, she and her therapist took bites of doughnut. Michelle felt the crunch of the glazed icing on her tongue. The soft, cakey texture when she bit in. The rush of sugar flooding her body. She turned her anxiety into excitement!
We aren’t born with fear. Somewhere along the way, we learn it.
I’ll never forget the day when Audrey was ten. She had a friend over and they were playing in her room. Just as I walked past her open door with a basket of laundry, an ambulance
