Introduction to Meathead Therapy

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being yourself, express feelings, forgiveness, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, marriage, parents, psychotherapy, relationship

This month I am featured in Psychology Today’s Healthy Connections blog by Maryann Karinch where she tells the story of what she calls my introduction to “meathead therapy.”

When my husband and I were young and first married we went to his Aunt Maureen and Uncle Meathead’s on Christmas Eve. Theirs was a modest gathering, but I loved it because the one thing that was not modest was the connection I saw between the people who came and went. Folks arrived at the door and each was welcomed like a king. They were offered a drink, some food, a seat, and all the time in the world, crowding onto the attic stairs when room at the table ran out.

The goal was to entertain, to tell funny stories even at each other’s expense, even as it exposed each other’s bullheadedness, ignorance or misery.

And I was spellbound.

These folks cared for each other. I’d go so far as to say they loved each other. My family didn’t sit around the kitchen table on Christmas Eve welcoming one another in with drinks and smiles and all the time in the world because of our handicap of taking life seriously and rejecting one another for our human foibles.

Since that night with Maureen and Meathead, and with my steadfast husband next to me, I have worked hard in psychotherapy and have learned about the healthy attitudes of accepting one another for who we are and learning to celebrate one another no matter how goofy we get.

I think the healthy connections we make are born of the dedicated showing up at each other’s kitchen tables no matter what the circumstance.

 Check out my story in Psychology Today.

 

 

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Is it possible to be more romantic than this?

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, friendship, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, listening, love, marriage, passion, relationship, words

Paris Opera House Ceiling

Everything about this moment was romantic. It wasn’t enough just to be back in Paris thirty-five years after we’d honeymooned there, but we were also staying at the same hotel and stopping in at Fouquet’s, the same place on the Champs-Elysee we’d stumbled onto late one night when we were newlywed where we had chocolate mousse we hadn’t ever forgotten.

No, all that wasn’t romantic enough.

My husband thought we should have a date out on the town and lined up a trip to the opulent Paris Opera Garnier. We donned our fanciest travel clothes and sat beneath the blessing of Marc Chagall’s colorful celebration of art itself.

And as if that wasn’t enough, the program that night, an homage to Jerome Robbins, harkened back to our early days. As newlyweds we often attended the New York City ballet at their outdoor summer home at Saratoga Performing Arts Center in upstate New York. The staging of “Glass Pieces” in particular was so familiar that it took my breath away to know I was in Paris, France, at the Opera House, with my boyfriend who was still following me around and delighting me with his thoughtfulness and kindness and shared joy of all things artistic, that I could barely watch through the tears in my eyes.

We left that night, awed by the layered gilded building, the rainbow of Chagall’s ceiling, the drama of ballet and the deep thankfulness in our hearts for one another and for the great good fortune to be able to hold each other’s hands still and take it all in.

Wedding Love Altar

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being yourself, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, parents, relationship

This is the “love altar” I created as a centerpiece for my son’s recent wedding. A number of women special in their lives were invited to make a table decoration that reflected the love they feel in their lives and particularly as it relates to either the bride or the groom. Each table had a different creation but all had a crystal as the centerpiece. After the wedding the bride and groom took home the crystals and now have a centerpiece there, of crystals, to take into their future that are charged with the love of family and friends.

My card reads, “The authentic bird’s nest here represents the happy home that the bride and groom have created that will serve as the foundation for their love going forward. Mom’s love, the groom’s love for his bride, and her love for him, are sometimes expressed through baking, thus the spatula. Worn but faithful, Spot, is present at this wedding as a reminder of the security found among old friends. They joy, laughter and sense of extended family is tied up in one Wise and Otherwise playing card. The wooden photo frame made by and depicting the groom’s great-great-grandfather hints at the groom’s own creativity, a source of solution should trouble arise. And the idea, no matter how lame, of the groom’s parents as Brazilian dancers, suggests you do not have to be great at what you do together, you just have to mean it.”

Stepping out

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being yourself, dreams coming true, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, mother-in-law

He may look tired and worn but Spot would not miss his old buddy, my son’s, upcoming wedding. He’s all decked out in a custom bow tie I made him for the big day.

 

Teach your kids to be honest about how they feel

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being yourself, express feelings, family, Jane Butler, love, Thanksgiving

Here’s why we must teach our children to be honest about how they feel, not squelching emotions and denying the truth. When kids grow up they must use this ability to survive the holidays. Take a look at what I mean:

I went back into scared kid mode this Thanksgiving! It happened, fittingly, when my last baby tooth broke. Yes, I still have one baby tooth that never came out, and the day after Thanksgiving the hors d’ouvres did it in. I have been dreading this my whole adult life, avoiding the inevitable.

There are many turns in this story but the end result is that I was unnerved by both this experience and the ensuing laughing and joking about my tooth problem by the gathered family. I left the room angrily telling people to stop talking to me like this. I went up to my room and looked in the mirror.  I cried. I felt awful.  But eventually I went back downstairs.

By the time I returned to the group people were mad and leaving! I had ruined what had been up until my tooth broke, about the most fun time I’ve had with family ever. We’d been to a terrific show that had us all laughing and howling with delight. And we were happy to be together, as always.

The little kid in me was a mess, though. I had acted out of the fear of the dental work to come and the embarrassment of a missing tooth (right in front) and who knows what else. And I had ruined everything. People were mad.

I pleaded with my sister-in-law not to leave but she said I had been rude and they had to go. I was shocked. I had no idea my feelings could have this effect. Thankfully, I blurted out the truth. I felt afraid of dental work and the embarrassment of a missing tooth. That I had been dreading it my whole life. That I didn’t mean to snap at everyone or leave the group angrily. That it was just me being scared. Upset by the joking. Sorry everybody, I said. It isn’t you, it is me being afraid.

That changed everything. Coats came off, folks would put the dinner together for me. I was told to go upstairs and recover, then get down here and join in the group. And by the way, we love you.

What??? This never happens. People understanding? My little kid mode swears that adults don’t understand, or say they love me. That’s the experience my little self had. People didn’t understand and people didn’t say they loved me.

So, this Thanksgiving weekend, after I’d screwed up pretty bad, I risked telling the truth. Being vulnerable to the rejection I am most familiar with, at least, that is when I am being scared and acting like a child. I was taught through years of training that my problems didn’t matter, my fears were unwarranted and wrong. I was taught to reject my own feelings as invalid and unimportant, and it has taken a lifetime to get that straightened out.

As miserable as this situation was, it worked out well because I told the truth about how I was feeling.

I aim to teach all my kids to do the same.

Too good to be true?

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dreams coming true, Jane Butler, love, marriage

There’s this guy who has been following me around for years. Like forty or so. Everywhere I look he’s there. And he’s friendly still, and funny, and really level-headed, just like he was back in the 1970’s when I first noticed him. I was nineteen then and I thought he was a stalker and probably a bad person for taking such an interest. But that’s just how I thought back then.

Shush….I hear him coming down the steps right now. He’s been following me around, persisting in being my friend forever. Good thing too, because what did I know as a teenager about selecting a husband? It really wasn’t on my mind. I wanted to try to get through each day and he was out there making it easier, so okay let’s get together.

Despite not really thinking the best of him at first, apparently I did know quite a bit about selecting a husband since I eventually, at the urging of a friend, gave this guy an audience. She said, “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you see he likes you?” Sure, I told her, but he seemed too good to be true.

What I’ve learned is that my nineteen year-old self wasn’t too weighed down with other thoughts to risk trusting intuition, or instinct or whatever you want to call it. I didn’t let my head get too involved in convincing me he was too good to be true, trying to analyze whether responding to the guy was a good idea or not. And I am not recommending throwing caution to the wind while dating since the older we get the more complicated our lives get, but trusting our intuition should have an equal weight to trusting our intellect.

Obviously I did eventually go out with the guy and he’s been the best thing that’s ever happened to me. Just look at the wedding pictures. The photo of us exiting the church hand-in-hand shows me at my happiest, absolutely sure in the moment that I had just committed my life to someone who truly loves me.

It is corny to say I felt the love at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference?

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change, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, love, Philadelphia Writer's Conference, psychotherapy, writing

Here’s something I don’t understand so help me out and tell me. I know how I got out of being an unhappy person unable to connect and engage rationally with others, it was psychotherapy and lots of it. I have often thought that it is a form of love, sold for those who can pay and whose hearts are not clamped shut so tight they cannot be methodically and incrementally pried open by a professional. In general, in life, I’ve noticed other people who seem to know, claim that love is the power that matters.

It is the most powerful force on earth. I don’t understand how the prolific writer Jonathan Maberry got out of his issues, and he mentions a few, to share love freely as he does today. Or how anyone changes for the better. A profound transformation has to occur. It’s not casual, you don’t just think, oh I’ll embrace the concept of love now. Something more provocative has to occur. It must have for him, and for the others at the Philadelphia Writer’s Conference last month, because love is indeed what I felt there. The leaders were tossing it out so I snagged some and carried it home.

It is a powerful thing that finds its way to hurt and injured folks and changes them into people who extend themselves and who care and who try to make love grow. Maybe I am always just in the mood for love, but whatever it is I am struck by the power of the idea that benevolence, generosity, kindness, patience, understanding and the like can move mountains in me.

Sometimes you have to give to yourself that which you most want from others

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being yourself, control, dreams coming true, express feelings, friends, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, love, trust

Is it wrong of me to have American Idol singers playing on continuous loop while I am home paying bills and cooking and writing a book? Is it wrong of me to want to find connection with others through a screen or a speaker?

Sometimes I feel that I have been left out of the circuit that binds others together and I cannot figure out where humanity has gone.

So it turns out that every one of these singers is telling me the same thing: I need to be my own best friend. I need to love myself. I need to accept that I am on a path in life that is alone. No amount of trying to get others to be with me, to understand me, to explain themselves to me, will do. No amount of trying to connect in a way that cannot be, will do. I have to walk alone and be alone until I connect. And until that happens I have to trust myself and love myself and be myself, alone.

And in all the moments I am next to someone who is right there with me, hallelujah for that moment. Otherwise, I am loving me because that is who I have for sure.

No matter how many times I reinvent the wheel, rediscover that I must love myself best because no one else can do it for me, I seem to have to learn it all over again. It is a long road, this life, I am in.

Junk TV accidentally models civility!!

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change, dreams coming true, goals, higher power, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, mother, parents, relationship, security, trust

My daughter and I watched the entire season of The Bachelor on television this Spring, and I am so excited about how it ended. It ended with a decent guy finding a decent girl, jilting a decent other girl who was quite classy in her reaction to being dismissed, seeking to learn more about herself and wishing the happy couple well, and thus highlighting the possibility that this junk TV show could serve to inform millions on how decent people behave. I was most impressed by the father of the bachelor who said he welcomed either of the two possible young ladies his son might select, and that he’d be that girl’s biggest advocate once she joined the family. The turmoil of having to pick a bride on national television, on a timeline, when two outstanding choices were at hand, was managed with prayer, the bachelor told us. Now prayer is a loaded term if you ask me, but I see it as a code word for any kind of soul searching, introspective, meditation or reverence that includes rationally considering many options and waiting to sense clarity after doing so. Argue with me if you want to on that, but that is how I am interpreting what the young man said.

I love the idea that possibly many households across America, mine included, will learn by watching what it is to be loving and kind. This family highlighted support for one another, and as one of the young women said, everyone knew what was going on and everyone was trying to help. In an impressive conversation we see the bachelor tell his mother he values her opinion and will weigh it, but more than anything he wishes for her support whatever he chooses to do. It was the model of loving civility and both of the girls he was considering looked at this family and were delighted at the prospect of joining such a seemingly healthy group of people.

Now who knows what the truth is. We do not know what goes on behind closed doors, or what miracles are generated through skilled editing, but regardless of the validity of the scenes with which we were presented, they represented to me a wholesomeness I wish for all families on earth.

Working on my marriage

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being yourself, cleaning, express feelings, inspire, Jane Butler, Jane Paffenbarger Butler, joy, love, marriage, relationship

I am working on my marriage today. Not that it really needs anything special but it is time. I am not that great at finding good gifts for people, you know, at the store, but sometimes I find a good gift at home, in the living room, where the vacuuming is really needed. I worry about gifts that you buy since I have a lot of things in my life already and I don’t like adding more. It’s tricky. I know, my folks gave a lot of presents, they gave me a beach house for Pete’s sake, but their presents were not what I needed. And I grew up around seriously wealthy people who seemed to have everything you could ever want, and I am not sure that is working out so well either. But there is always that thing we cannot buy that makes a great gift. The time.

My guy is wonderful and he does great things like decide one day to put in recessed lighting because he knows how. The problem is that it makes a giant mess what with all the spackling and sanding of the ceiling afterward. So to show my appreciation for the hours of work it took to improve our home, I take the job I know my guy will do, the clean up, but that he will be thrilled to see I have done for him. And anyway, shouldn’t we dust once in a while? Like behind the sofa and into the corners. So that’s what I am doing today because finally I got a day off from work and noticed the place is a mess. That is, all except for that great new lighting in the living room.

I am taking the time to tell my man that I like it that he did that cool job on the lights, by sprucing the place up just to celebrate and to make sure he knows I think he’s terrific.