Being part of a couple is the norm.  Living solo is a minority lifestyle, with lots of complications.  Being single and living alone with one’s art, or one’s mad entrepreneurial dreams, feels empowering one day, and isolating the next.  Anyone who has ever been single at midlife has stories to tell, of being the extra at the dinner party, or presumed to be gay and closeted, or shy, or difficult.

But increasingly, living solo –whether by choice or not – has sustained such rapid growth that researchers are taking notice.  Scholars seem startled to discover that single adults are often comfortable with their lifestyle.  This week, sociologist Eric Klinenberg  published a new and interesting study called Going Solo: the Extraordinary Rise and Surprising Appeal of Living Alone.   He was interviewed last week on Smithsonian.com.  Dr Klinenberg notices that living alone does not imply loneliness, in this era of abundant online networking and Starbucks on every corner.   He thinks that the revolutionary changes in social media have transformed the experience of living alone from something to be tolerated, to a distinct coping advantage: living alone offers respite from too much communication, an oasis in the middle of a busy life.

Being single seems to be working, for a lot of Americans.  It’s just another response to the eternal paradox: how do we gain companionship, while holding onto our individuality and our solitude?  So why does the coupled lifestyle get celebrated with Valentine gifts, leaving singles to explain themselves?

Question: if going solo is really fine, why is Valentine’s Day so depressing?

The hope of true companionship has not lost its power to charm us.  Eharmony is making its fortune on the impulse, even in the midst of busy, fulfilling lives, to find new partners.  People don’t like to dine alone.  As a therapist, I’ve seen  lots of strong women jump into iffy relationships with men whose hearts they barely know, or fear to leave them when the time comes.   Being solo scares us.

I think depression about being solo, living on one’s own, is less about the lifestyle, and more about the way it gets us marginalized.  Yes, of course you can cope with Valentine’s Day.  Watch a movie.  Share cappuccino and dark humor with your nonconforming friends, or play laser tag.  But that’s not the point.  It’s that our hearts require special tending, as if being solo were a failure of the natural order of things, rather than an alternative.  If this thought is lurking, bring it into daylight.

Single people do feel sad on Valentine’s Day, even when they have full, creative lives.   It’s not a betrayal of our solitary journey, to acknowledge this sadness.  Lives often unfold differently from the way we had imagined them.   Disappointment for the lack of a soulmate is not a clinical diagnosis, nor is it a sign that finding a partner is the thing to do.   Enjoyment of the solo life is not at odds with the hope for deep, meaningful love.  But in the meantime, what?  Why aren’t there celebrations for solo contentment?

It’s hard for solo people to remain centered while forced to bear witness to all the champagne and frou-frou of Valentine’s Day, but that is the path toward wholeness.  It is somebody else’s holiday, masquerading as everybody’s  fantasy.   Breathe.  Step away.  There are some interesting online resources for solo life with all its ambiguities, such as Quirkyalone.   This imaginative site describes itself as a community for people who enjoy being solo, offering a mindset of self-acceptance, high expectations for love, and tolerance for the nonconforming journey.   On February 14 it celebrates International Quirkyalone Day, when uncompromising romantics go their own way.

May we all allow ourselves solitude in a noisy world.  May we enjoy our chocolate on a vista overlooking the meadow or the skyline or the sea, in the company of ourselves, and whoever may love and nurture us, without reservation.   Solo is fine.

This news has been greeted with intense emotion in the blogosphere.  Facebook Timeline: There’s no Escaping it Now, observes Technolog  at msnbc.com, a bit ominously.   They report a new study in which half of the respondents –thousands– say they are worried about this change, and nearly a third say  they don’t know why they are still on Facebook.   When people respond so  strongly, the anxiety must go deeper than feelings  about having to learn one’s way all over again.  The tech savvy are anxious too.  What unease has this design update stirred up?

For those not already in on the story, Facebook is about to replace everybody’s personal profile, the place where we post our thoughts, images, and self-description, with a substantially changed homepage for our Facebook life.   Now, with Timeline, everything we have ever posted will be readily available at once, for a big picture nobody, even we ourselves, may have seen before.   Our stuff, the small ephemeral sharings of late nights online, will all become integrated into a story.  Once Timeline is in place, we will have a week to edit, compose, and reconsider our requirements for  privacy.

Of course, privacy concerns are nothing new for Facebook regulars.  Long before Timeline emerged, users demanded – and got—nuanced controls of who has access to their personal words and pictures.  Timeline promotes more sharing.  It offers “frictionless” apps, designed to automatically share with our Facebook friends what we are reading on the Washington Post app, what coupons  we bought on LivingSocial, and how our exercise plan is progressing.   We can still control privacy settings, with some effort.   HuffPost’s Captain Gadget blog gives clear directions.

Thinking about privacy does stir unease.  But Timeline anxiety feels even more personal than that: exposure of a much bigger, and more revealing, picture of who we are, or who we say we are.  No wonder we are anxious.  No doubt, advertisers will enjoy this greater insight, and use it as a marketing strategy.  But this possibility seems more suited to irritation than anxiety.   I wonder if the trepidation may have more to do with what our Facebook history may expose to ourselves, and those we want to see us kindly.  How do we cope when we feel vulnerable?

Changing the place we call home resonates deeply.  Zuckerberg, the Facebook founder and guru, understands this.  “We want to design a place that feels like your home,” he said of Timeline, quoted in HuffPost Tech on January 26.  “Where you tell your story online is very personal.   It gives you the ability to curate all your stories so you can express who you really are.”

Timeline makes us uneasy because we will now be doing openly what we have always done unconsciously: curating our own online life story, making it more flattering, or more zany, or more coherent, or more something, for our Facebook friends.  We will be creating our own autobiographies.   But first, we will get a peek at the data we have generated over time, and see what we make of it ourselves.  Living in the moment, we do not have the perspective that Timeline offers.

We are about to become curators of our own story.  But are we doing it right?  In a post called The Existential Angst of Facebook Timeline, Big Think blog wonders if we will now obsess about posting the right amount of information, capturing the right moments with the right pictures and the right music playlist, to capture the truth of who we really are.   We are a work in progress, and we are potentially always on.  The boundaries between public and private have become so blurred that we have some radical rethinking to do about who we want to be, online.

Breakthrough Journal reflects on What it Means to Forget on Facebook.   Having an online archive of our small moments, our evolution as a human being, forces us to remember what we might be happy to forget.  What are the implications of this, as we go forward, stumbling through the journey of personal growth?  Will we take fewer chances, or will we choose to let go of anxiety, knowing the record can always be curated later?  Or can it?

All new things stir emotion, as the most adventurous of us hold tightly to our moorings.  While we wait to see how significant the impact of Timeline really is, we are wondering what to hope for.  Meantime, early adopters have already signed on; perhaps some of them are your friends.  In a time of anxiety, it can be comforting to survey the impact of small changes.   One thing, for sure, is contributing to our unease about Timeline: it would have been nice to be asked.

Public  condemnation has come from chefs, doctors, and furious bloggers who wonder what she has been thinking.  Has she owned up to the role of diet in her health crisis?  Not so much.  Will she repent, change her culinary style, and assume a new mentoring role, leading us away from our obsession with deep fried anything?  Not so far, but the story is just unfolding.  Her self image and cultural identity are involved, and she states she will continue to be who she is.  Why are we so angry?

After all, it’s not as if we didn’t know better.  High fat diets lead to overweight and, quite often, to adult onset diabetes, somewhere down the line.   The stats are worrisome.  Yet we continue to fall under the spell of celestial desserts, as well as fast foods not chef made at all, as if there were no consequences.  Sounds a bit like the mind of an addict. Scary, isn’t it?   Ms Deen shares the inner sanctum of her restaurant kitchen with us, and her hospitality is part of the food experience.  We want a part of the contagious delight she takes in her food; we are hungry for unambiguous joy.  We have turned the TV chef into a guru with a whisk.

But seriously, how can this be?  In the era of abundant health information online, with a hundred food apps for your phone, the public has fallen in love with Ooey-gooey Butter Cake, Deep Fried Lasagna, Fried Butter Balls, a burger served between two Krispy Kreme donuts, and, yes, Deep Fried Cheesecake.  Ms Deen told Oprah, a few years back, “Honey, I’m your cook, not your doctor”.   She might be a lot of fun, but we clearly need to choose our gurus more mindfully.   Now she is diabetic.  Nothing is more infuriating than having cold reality pull back the curtain on our fantasies, or our wizards, and discovering that they are fragile, and so are we.  What have we projected onto her, that we are so angry?

The Trouble with Paula Deen’s Diabetes Announcement Isn’t the Food, observes Slate.com.   Perhaps it’s the rationalizing:  the outrage is attributed by her supporters to food snobbery toward Southern culture, or to her folksy femininity.  Would a male French chef with a pint of heavy cream receive similar scorn?  Perhaps not, but that’s a thin defense, if you’re a Food Network star,  for creating food fantasies that lead your fans in a dangerous direction, in an era of epidemic obesity, even among educated people.  Of course, it’s our choice to follow her into the pantry.  Southern chefs complain, too,  that her food misrepresents their culinary traditions.  It’s complicated.

But the blogosphere is mostly angry that Paula Deen continues to teach recipes that, arguably, led not only to her illness, but to an opportunity to reap profit from the medications that treat it.  Diabetes is not a death sentence, she proclaims, and that is in many ways true.  But does she promote naïve confidence in the ability of pharma to save us from our food obsessions?  Meanwhile, her faithful viewers continue to stir their butter cream frosting, trusting in Paula and in the redemptive capability of modern medicine.  The chefs and doctors and bloggers are furious.   Will she yet repent, while remaining true to herself?  Will we?  Not clear.

Anger can be a healthy emotion.  But is our anger placed where it belongs?

Those who carry true phobias about travel need lots of support.  Those who struggle with fear of flying, fear of strangers wearing ethnic garb, or fear of catching life-threatening germs, will have a rough ride.  Some people I meet in the airport will perhaps be braving agoraphobia, the fear of being away from a safe environment when a crisis occurs.  May they have kind travel companions.

For most of us, travel angst is an intrusion on the inner peace we have been cultivating, on the benign thoughts we want to bring to the holiday season, and on dignity itself.  We don’t doubt these assaults are survivable; but we prefer to rise above them if we can.  Let’s try.

What have I forgotten?  This thought comes to me as soon as I merge into highway traffic en route to the airport.  Ticket and login ID, check.  Toothbrush, check.   Gifts, unwrapped, with wrapping stuff, check.  Phone charger, check.   I did forget the phone charger one year, long ago, and the anxiety about dwindling minutes of access to the universe never left me.    Imagine how magnified that anxiety would be, now that I have bonded with my smartphone.   Perhaps there is a hidden gift here: an opportunity for reflection on what we would miss most, in an unplanned electronic retreat, a day or two offline.   Where to find peace in this: know that you get to choose your  apps, in this life journey.

Leaving pets behind.   Adult human loved ones presumably understand that you are not abandoning them, and will return.  But part of the opportunity for self-torture that  travel provides, is the lingering worry that our furry (or feathered or finned) loved ones are miserable without us, or rearranging the living room, or that they will not recognize us when we return.   We can remind ourselves that this ritual has played out more or less successfully in past years, but then again, this is not a rational worry.  We miss our critters.  They miss us.  To find peace while traveling, it is necessary to tolerate being apart, and also, at times, disappointing loved ones.  We can find peace by confirming, in our quiet moments, that our bonds are strong.

Loss of dignity in the airport is not a small thing.  I have witnessed a public suitcase search, in which some poor traveler’s lingerie was held up for close inspection.   I have been scanned by uniformed personnel bearing wands, and ushered through a booth that sniffs for explosives.   Once I even left behind a set of keys that had been set aside in preparation for the walk through the metal detector.  That will not happen again.   I have noticed, though, the benign relationship between strangers making their way through this awkward process we call airport security.  We do not stare, as others are scanned.  We empathize, as others repack and rebuckle and verify that keys are in place.  If there is peace to be found in this experience, it is that this indignity has a sane purpose.  And that we are capable of showing maturity in airports that would be welcome in, say, city traffic.

Coping with fellow travelers is not always pleasant.  That five minutes between the time the plane lands and the time the door opens, is subjectively longer than the entire rest of the journey.  It would be easy to succumb to anger with the passengers who stuff the overhead bins with their worldly possessions, hogging shared space and flinging precious sporting equipment they do not wish to check.   Of course they want to avoid baggage claim, and extra fees.  But they invoke irritation by presuming about who gets space, and whose stuff is important.  The reality is that the journey causes some people to prioritize their own convenience over yours.  It is essential to find peace here, by reminding yourself that their insensitivity does not have to be contagious.  We can all continue to be generous of spirit, in a time that others do not.  That is the nature of the journey.

May it be peaceful and stimulating, each at the right time, and may you come home safe, the same person and a new one, each in the ways that matter most.

But what if you become worried about fictional characters, as I do sometimes, or miss them when they’re gone?  Crazy?  What if you made the chocolate dessert, and feel hurt by a harsh criticism, or offended by a politician’s joke?   You might be told you take things too personally, or too seriously.  If you avoid stepping on bugs, you might be called hypersensitive.

What if you feel overwhelmed with big loud parties, sparkly holiday lights, and  joyful music blasting in public places?   You might be called a grinch.  (Good luck, if you are an introvert in our extroverted culture, in an extroverted season.)  Is there such a thing as excessive sensitivity to noise or nuances of speech, and does it call for treatment, or does the very question reflect a bias of our times?

If any of this sounds familiar, you might be among the 15-20% of us who psychologist Elaine Aron calls “Highly Sensitive People” (HSP).  She has researched this personality type for 20 years, and made some interesting observations.  There is a neurological basis for our quirks; our brains work differently.  70% of us are introverts.  We do typically notice more than others, which doesn’t always make you popular; the extra information takes longer to process, so we take longer to make decisions; we are more sensitive to light, sound, and coffee, etc; and we experience emotions more intensely than others.  As a result, we are more easily hurt, even by the suffering of others.  What used to be pathologized, labelled as fragility, shyness or neurosis – a symptom cluster that certainly makes you eligible for treatment – may, as it turns out, be a reasonable way for the HSP among us to stay sane in what feels like a harsh world.  Maybe we are also more easily amused?

In short, you may not be crazy.  And you certainly don’t need to defend yourself.

Being highly sensitive may seem like a mixed blessing; the majority, who do not experience it, are statistically “normal,” and sometimes greet HSP traits with resentment.  Some of them may be your relatives.  WebMD addresses this in an article called Are You Too Sensitive?  The author, Helen Kirwan-Taylor, acknowledges that she initially wondered whether HSP would expect special treatment, or force everyone else to “walk on eggshells”.    Awkward, to realize that others experience your comments, or the volume of your music, differently from the way you do.  But wouldn’t you want to know?

If you think you might be an HSP, there are lots of online resources for coping in a world that has a slightly different operating system from yours.  You know that a topic has gone mainstream when Psychology Today has a blog about it, called Sense and Sensitivity.   Facebook also has a Highly Sensitive People Support Network.

Being highly sensitive, needless to say, offers gifts as well as challenges.  Psychologist Douglas Eby has written about the 5 Gifts of Being Highly Sensitive, for the Psych Central blog.  He observes that the HSP can detect more subtle differences of color or taste or sound, and often has greater awareness of  inner emotional states, which is helpful if you happen to be a writer, a musician, or an artist.  Heightened empathy can be a great resource for teachers and healers.   A Highly Sensitive Person is likely to notice nuances of meaning, and therefore weigh possibilities more carefully before acting.  (Note: this seriously gets on people’s nerves, even if they benefit from the result.)

Not surprising, if an HSP feels different from others.  There is no minimizing the seriousness of being temperamentally at odds with the majority culture.  Because others may not notice or accommodate your heightened feelings, self care is critical.  When you need a break from the action, take one.

At least, the knowledge that one has a healthy trait not shared by everyone, and not a personal weakness, can be helpful.   Being highly sensitive can support us in our creative work and our passion for healing the world. Naming it may help us respond well to others who may urge us to just toughen up, calm down, fit in.   In the midst of a world designed for others, our ability to find peace and coherence may end up offering lessons useful to everyone.  Or, who knows, it may lead to a great science fiction movie.

Reality doesn’t always look like that.  We don’t all have a toasty hearth to return to.

Nonetheless, gratitude is something we long to feel in November and December: appreciation for our friends and relatives,  our health, our gifts, our cats, the seacoast and the scent of cinnamon, and the odd mix of people who have been put in our path.  We want the feeling of gratitude to be evoked naturally, by a deep sense of contentment.

What then, in challenging times, in the presence of disappointing relationships, financial anxiety, depression, and the lack of a beckoning hearth to call us home?  Can we bring ourselves to a place of authentic gratitude anyhow?

A lot of us have a conviction that  we “should” feel gratitude.  But holding this viewpoint and actually experiencing gratitude are quite different, are they not?   What’s been your experience when you have dutifully made a list of things to be grateful for?   My sense is that we cannot will ourselves into gratitude; that feels shallow, medicinal, and somehow soulless.

But we can prepare.  We can tweak our inner landscape, allowing the possibility of being warmed by the unexpected, or of noticing anomalies that are easily overlooked in our darker moments.   In suspending our negative expectations, we make a place where gratitude can find us.

The produce section at Whole Foods, as it turns out, can be a place of transformation.   The other day a stranger, also shopping, invited me to try a sample of an ominous looking green beverage made of wheatgrass, assuring me that it would be pleasant.  (She was right.)  Her spontaneous kindness evoked my gratitude.

Stress, in its many flavors, tends to narrow our focus, leading us to attend only to the source of our trouble.  Sometimes we are blocked from experiencing gratitude, because we assume it requires us to minimize our hurt, frustration or anger.  It does not.   You can be mindful of the mean, insensitive thing your uncle said, or the exasperation of dealing with tech support, and  also make space for unexpected grace.  Have you ever asked tech support how the weather is in her city?   Small humanizing moments, when we feel overwhelmed and invisible, can evoke feelings of gratitude.

The archetypal images of yin and yang, the polar opposite forces of the universe, are of two entwined shapes, black and white, each containing a dot of the opposite color.   A possible resonance: even adversarial relationships may contain a hidden gift.  A recent post on the blog Tiny Buddha called “50 Ways to Show Gratitude,” offers examples of benevolent responses to people who drive us crazy.  Pinpoint something you admire about their conviction, it suggests.  Or introduce them to someone who may help them grow, as they have helped you.  (Me: Insert emoticon for ironic laughter here.)  Our search within for a benevolent response is a way of acknowledging underlying gratitude — not necessarily the warm fuzzy kind, but the kind that appreciates a life lesson.    Every relationship has something to teach us, points out Lori Deschene, the author of the post.

Willingness for gratitude, then, can become a way to not waste whatever experiences may come. Disappointment in love can bring self awareness that perhaps would not have arisen another way.  This is not to minimize hurt or grief, but to appreciate the potential for something good and useful to redeem even a terrible moment, if we are willing.

Gratitude is not limited to people who cultivate superficial faith or optimism; in fact, its deepest expression may belong to people who know suffering and the precariousness of our lives, and savor the moment anyhow.

In the hollow place of our distress, paradoxically, we may find a hint about what we did not know we seek.  In preparing our hearts for something new to happen, gratitude can be the uninvited guest.

Lying is tricky business.  Most of us on this side of sociopathy tell small lies, but place value on truth telling in important parts of life.   A vast category of human experiences call for the plain truth, and we expect that falling short will eventually result in suffering.   Lies about being faithful to a lover, or the owner of the car we are driving, are understood to be serious and consequential.   Loss of trust is a heavy burden.

Some lies feel innocent, even virtuous.  The term “white lie” refers to the things we hear ourselves say that are not true, and we don’t mind.   You haven’t aged a day.  The casserole was delicious.  Guess I never received your irate message/invoice/request for a favor.   We see this lying as gracious, or face saving, or relationship saving, or harmless flattery.   Why not?  Bloggers on Asperger’s Syndrome, the mildest form of autism, comment that they are handicapped by the lack of skill in telling these small socially acceptable lies, and seek those skills in their therapy.

Question: how do we reconcile this socially helpful, comfortable lying with our quest for authenticity?  Barnes and Noble sells a lot of books about learning to interpret facial expression and body language; I take this to mean that while we accept some deliberate misdirection, at the same time we want to know how each other really feels.  Living with this ambiguity can be challenging.

This ambiguity is hinted at in the September issue of Psychology Today, in a piece called “What kind of liar are you?”  Truth telling can be less than it seems, when it uses humor in a way that distracts from something difficult to hear, or invites a misleading interpretation, or leaves out something important.   Vague communication can seem like avoidance, and this can lead to anxiety.   Is the boss telling us the business is solvent or not?   Does this relationship, with all its quirks, have a future?

Ambiguity can be hard to bear.   Do we want to know about possible, but very far from certain, medical diagnoses of our health concern?  How much is enough truth about the mixed feelings of a waning love?  How much do you want to know about what your facebook friends think of your posts?   How much is it appropriate for you to share?  Authenticity and mercy are engaged in a strange dance.

We lie with the wish to avoid hurting others, and the wish to appear in a good light.  But there is some risk of drifting into small convenient lies that, from the point of view of the hearer, compromise relationships, conceal  mistakes , protect us from consequences, or deny people information they need.  We sometimes lie kindly or defensively or lethargically, when truth is called for.

Lying is normal, and yet we resent it when we are on the receiving end.   Navigating the foggy gray area of massaged truth requires reflection.  How much awkward truth does a relationship require, and how much can it bear?  No instant answers.  A few possible questions:

Who benefits from a comfortable lie?  Is anybody’s autonomy compromised, by  not knowing the truth?

Is your lying a creative, witty experience, or an easy out?

What  opportunity for getting to know you would be missed, if you lied instead of telling it as it is?

Do you really want to lie to your therapist?

Imagine how startling it is to get that pithy message from a person who reflects deeply on the practice of eastern spirituality.  An article appearing in Huffington Post on October 27, entitled “Depressed?  How to Just Cheer Up,” suggests meditation practice, in the Tibetan Buddhist tradition of Trungpa Rinpoche, really can help us just cheer up.

Liberation from negative thoughts is a shared goal, whether you think of the challenge in spiritual or psychological terms.  In the world of western mental health counseling, depression is often treated by finding and testing our unexamined negative beliefs, in a process called cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT).  In the world of spirituality, negative thoughts are unwelcome attachments we can choose to simply let go.

What’s the difference?  Therapy requires us to sit still, in the company of one another, and focus. The discipline of meditation helps us to sit still, and to become aware of our thoughts as visitors that appear, welcome or unwelcome, without judging them.  We do not have to take each one to heart; we become aware that we are more than our thoughts.  We can appreciate the present moment, and smell the incense.

The trouble is that many of our disturbing thoughts, released into the cosmos, keep coming back.  We have enduring heartaches, resentments, and nightmares; it is possible for them to plague us for years, even if we are more than willing to let them go.

The author of the article, Susan Piver, points out that knowing the back story behind our negative thoughts might be interesting, but still not lift our spirits.  And that is the thing most wanted, is it not?  Perhaps you’ve endured an unfaithful partner or a tornado or a belief that you are unlovable, or without talent.  Insight is wonderful and life changing in the long run, but deep peace – now – is the holy grail.

Letting go of negative or disturbing thoughts is a spiritual practice, because it is grounded in a sense of where meaning lies.  With the discipline of letting go of control, for example, comes humility.  We were never entirely in control. The spiritual dimension is one of making peace with our place in the universe.

But that awareness does not complete the process of healing; it has only just begun.  Here is where my viewpoint may differ from the one attributed to Trungpa Rinpoche. To let go of distress and savor a moment of peace is a healing practice.  But healing often requires us to sit with troubling realities, and allow transformation, sometimes within, sometimes without. To stop clinging to toxic thoughts is not necessarily to cheer ourselves up.

Simply noticing that we exist without our negative thoughts is healing.  Asking  questions about what, within us, keeps producing more, is helpful as well.   When we are seeking the path out of depression, the letting go allows peace, here and now.  Discovering what belongs in their place, is the vexing part of the work of healing from depression.

Spiritual practice and therapy can both be good companions for this journey.  Western therapy is skillful in bringing order to our thoughts, those we know about and those that haunt us from the shadows.  Eastern spiritual practice is skillful in noticing the obsessive ways of the thinking self, and noticing its limits, welcoming the parts of us that are simply present to one another. Western therapy is skillful at clarifying social relationships, and taming discord.  Eastern spiritual practice is skillful at cultivating empathy.  Each benefits from the other.

Depression is not necessarily done with us when we are willing to let it go.  But cultivating that willingness is essential.  We cannot necessarily heal ourselves by evicting every negative thought; but the willingness to imagine ourselves without them, is a pretty good beginning.

If we believe the cause of delay is outside of us, we can get extremely frustrated.  If, truth to tell, we have procrastinated or become stuck, hung up on an unresolved decision, we have moments of being angry with ourselves.  Perhaps the feeling of falling behind takes a toll on self-esteem as well.  We sincerely intend to do better.  Where’s the reset button?

Most of us are great at making lists, and finding a little irony in them.  After all, who wants to get to the end of the list of interesting books, or highly recommended films?  Our failure to do so is an indication that our curiosity grows faster than we can respond.  That’s a wonderful problem.  But maybe the list hasn’t budged.  That can be discouraging.

Some lists are a form of self discipline: the list of undone housework tasks, for example, or the check off list as you get ready for a trip.  Keeping chaos at bay is an endless process.  How much effort  is enough?  If nothing short of complete reversal of kitchen entropy is the standard, we are doomed.  If we secretly expect this of ourselves, we have what is called a maladaptive thought, and it leads to depression.

Discouragement doesn’t necessarily come from  having a long list of things left undone.  Sometimes I deliberately make to do lists longer by breaking them down into small items that can be quickly and satisfyingly crossed off, with a fat pink highlighter.  (Dust the monitor.  Find the suitcase.  Feed the cats.  Buy pistachios.)

It’s the sense of having a stagnant list that can weigh on self esteem.  We all have an inner voice that constantly critiques our progress, and it can be harsh.  Call it our inner editor, critic, executive, or nag.  Its useful purpose is to help us maintain focus; it seems at times to lose its empathy and sense of humor, though, especially when the items on our to do list have important consequences.

If self esteem is being wounded by the rumblings of the inner critic, it’s time to make peace.  If you have been hitting the snooze button on the self-assessment process for, say, 3 years running, she may feel neglected.    The dread we may feel about  facing ourselves, and sitting with our internal contradictions, is poignant.  We can make sure the meeting goes well.  Ok, so we want to go to the Y and we don’t want to go to the Y.   By facing our mixed feelings, we gain strength.

So what to do, when you reach that moment of awakening that progress has stalled on one of the great lists of life?  Perhaps this is a time for more coffee and reassessment.  Is the list still valid, a genuine expression of your life goals?   There is no shame in revising our priorities.  Explicitly giving ourselves permission to do so is empowering, and respectful of the wisdom we have accrued.   Remembering why something was on the list in the first place, is an opportunity to notice the gradual shifts we have made without even noticing, and consciously choose them, or change them.

Here comes the soul searching part: when is a revision of our list an authentic and realistic reassessment of what needs to be on there, and when is it just caving to lethargy, lost confidence, addiction to Angry Birds, or negative input, aka sabotage?   Here’s the good news: even if you discover one of those problematic habits of thought, you are better off than you were before, because you have identified something that can be changed.  Depression and low self esteem come to us when we feel powerless.  Identifying a problem is empowering.

Of course we are behind on our plans.   But in the meantime, life has taken us on some lovely uncharted journeys, like ivy climbing on a found surface, to catch an unexpected view.   There’s much wisdom in the excursions off the list, into places the thinking brain has never considered, but spirit nurturing nonetheless.

When I tell my colleagues that I offer counseling online, they are intrigued.  Therapists are adjusting to the idea, meaning they no longer think it’s insane, but a new genre of worries is percolating.  What would happen to trust, asks the Times, if a counseling conversation were in progress and the Skype signal  was lost?  Or to self image, if the video image suddenly became pixillated?   Can counseling survive the risk of misunderstood irony in a text message?

A consultant from the American Psychological Association thinks that three years from now, technology and social media will be so familiar and accessible that online counseling will be common.  Still, traditionalists will prefer the specialness of the shared physical space for counseling.  “There is something important in bearing witness,” says a therapist in Glastonbury, Connecticut; “there is so much that happens in a room that I cannot see on Skype.”  “It’s not the same as being there,” laments another therapist from Colorado Springs, “but it’s better than nothing.”

But younger clinicians, the consultant thinks, will be increasingly comfortable using online media to conduct the work of healing.  Counseling is a deeply personal experience, and it’s worth reflecting on the changes we are witnessing as online media become more transparent, and allow us to have personal communication online that feels genuine because it is genuine, and even therapeutic.

How is that possible?  Sharing virtual space may not be the same experience as being on the same sofa, but it is consistent with honest talk.  The APA guy seems to think that future therapists won’t even miss aromatherapy or the sharing of physical space.   Everything essential to  therapy, he suggests, can happen in the exchange of electronic words and images.

The missing third, mystical possibility: the experience of being emotionally present, in subtle and nonverbal ways, will always matter.  We can experience some variant of true intimacy, online.  Counseling has a poetic dimension.  It will only look different.

Going online will not delete that quality.  It might even strengthen it.

Online counseling can, for example, parachute into a wilderness where nothing else would have a chance.  Somebody struggling with shame might just be willing to do counseling  while safely at home, with only a laptop to bear witness.  Some of my online counseling clients have chosen it for that reason.  Others have done so because they wanted to work with a counselor located somewhere else, and not in their own close knit community.   Others just like the fluid medium that can seize the moment.   (Hint: Counselors do too.  I was at a conference recently; when a speaker went on too long, I lost count of furtive texting conversations in progress. Almost actually LOL.)

It has become almost too easy to go online for respite from boredom or stress.  Counseling online has new pitfalls because of the possibility of quickly arranged contact,  “counseling on the fly”, as the Times put it.  A message exchange can happen anytime, while a client’s difficult experiences are fresh.   Spontaneity can be a huge advantage for online counseling.

The unexpected challenge: could counseling become too available, tempting us to miss the struggle? Maintaining good boundaries has always been important to the relationship.  It’s not good for counselors to be on call all the time.   Butterflies, I understand, benefit from the struggle of emerging from the cocoon.

Online counseling is an emerging medium, and it is listening to our conversation.  The challenges of forming trust online may yet teach us something we need.   How to survive pixillation, perhaps.

Stay tuned.