Reframe
During a Narrative Therapy workshop back in early 2020, I was speaking with a woman who’d been living in Australia for only a short time, and was still learning English. She commented on the variety of ways she’d noticed Australians using the word ‘country.’ I must have looked puzzled because she started offering examples: I’d just shared with her that I’d grown up ‘in the country.’ Our workshop had started with a moving Welcome to Country under the trees in the courtyard. And then there was the way she’d originally learned the word, as in the country of Australia itself.
‘Oh, wow; I’d never considered that before!’ I said, just as one of the workshop leaders wandered past.
‘Yes!’ he cried, throwing his arms in the air and grinning at us. ‘“I’ve never considered that before” is one of my very favourite things to hear! You just learned something new!’
I notice more of these moments now, thanks to him. It’s become one of my favourite things to hear, too, and one of my favourite things to feel. The frequency of these revelations is the thing I miss most about studying, or the pre-Musk version of Twitter.
I listened to a podcast episode about values at some point last year, which I had to pause due to one of those ‘Oh, wow!’ moments. It would be amazing if I could point you to the specific podcast, or the psychologist guest who was speaking, but, unfortunately, I still have no great system for tracking such things when I’m driving.
Anyway. The psychologist guest was talking about how women tend to choose values that are based on relationships with others – compassion, respect, authenticity, etc. – but that she encourages her clients to think of the kinds of values that would apply to them even if they found themselves stranded alone on a desert island.
I ended up having to pause the podcast because my thoughts were drowning out whatever she went on to say. My first thought was: ‘Oh wow.’ I’d done values activities with clients a million times before that morning in my car, and I’d never thought about how their answers – or my own! – might shift based on imagining ourselves with no one else around.
My second thought was that this doesn’t just apply to women; when I’ve done values activities in groups, there’ve been no obvious differences between the final lists of anyone in the room, no matter their gender. And my third thought was related: the similarities make sense, because we’re a social species whose survival has depended on our belonging to community; of course so many of our values naturally tend towards relationship-y ones.
I try to be careful in all my therapy, both as the client and also as the psychologist, to take off my white-person lenses so I don’t end up with individualism as the answer to any of life’s important questions, but I wanted to give the podcast guest’s challenge a try to see if it was helpful, so my fourth (and last) thought (about this, at least) was this: If I was to find myself alone on a desert island, the values I’d prioritise, neither of which have ever made it to my Top Six Values lists in the past, would be FUN and CREATIVITY.
I’ve started facilitating a new outpatient program at work, which is a great thing because it’s new and cognitively stimulating after many years of running the same addictions program, and also a not-great thing because it’s new and cognitively stimulating after many years of running the same addictions program.
One of the upsides to my new group is that everyone starts and finishes the program at the same time (it’s called a ‘closed group’), which means that as the weeks progress, the group members feel more and more safe and comfortable with each other, and this is when group therapy is at its most juicy and rewarding.
One of the downsides to closed groups is that everyone starting and finishing at the same time means a giant pile of paperwork on admission and discharge days. With a booklet per person requiring two signatures each, as well as the notes for the day’s session, an intake day now requires me to sign my name THIRTY-SIX (36!!!) times! That’s at least thirty times too many.
(I also write my full name and job position twenty-four times. When I first received my endorsement a couple of years ago, I proudly wrote CLINICAL PSYCHOLOGIST on maybe three forms before giving up; now, I crankily scrawl PSYCH instead, figuring that if anyone ever desperately needs to know whether this is short for -ologist or -iatrist, they’ll just ask.)
With the rest of the pages that also need completing (scoring psychometric tests, filling in information that could easily be found through our online system instead of handwritten in a paper booklet), the whole intake-day admin process took me almost twice as long as it usually does when I started the new group in November, and I left the office late, feeling grumpy and vowing to buy myself a stamp so I never had to write my name by hand in a booklet ever again in my whole life.
At work the following week, during my morning check-in chat with my work little brother (he is too young to be my work husband), I learned that his group was discharging on that day, so he’d be facing the same paperwork hell I’d been through the previous week.
‘I can help!’ I heard myself saying excitedly, and then, later, I happily followed through on my offer: I wrote his name and position (not his signature, of course) on seventy billion booklets, and, even though his full name has one more letter in it than mine does, and even though I once again finished later than I should have, I left work feeling light and satisfied.
I often think of Mary Poppins’ line: ‘In every job that must be done, there is an element of fun. You find the fun, and snap! The job’s a game!’
In the past, I haven’t been good at choosing words to guide the year I’m wanting to have, but this year I’m feeling called by FUN and CREATIVITY, and so I’ve been following them, listening, exploring, considering how to turn these concepts into resolutions and then SMART goals (I came up with a long speech about how these are actually two different things, which Alan, having been forced to listen to the whole thing, may be willing to paraphrase for you if you offer him chocolate).
FUN will mean saying yes more regularly to exploring, to joy, to curiosity, to delight, to oh-wow! moments, to scariness: soccer, dancing, sex, long walks in new places, meaningful conversations, starting to offer couples therapy to clients. This afternoon, Hazel and I are starting a Couch-to-5k program to try, for the first time ever, to reach peak fitness in time for the beginning of the soccer season rather than around semi-finals week.
Making all of these things physical and cognitive challenges possible will mean focussing on the boring, fundamental stuff – drinking more water, remembering to take my medication, prioritising sleep – but it feels like it’ll be easier to say yes to these when they’re for the purpose of play (yay!) rather than responsibility (ew).
As for CREATIVITY, my resolution is to do better at recognising the opportunities for creativity I already have rather than seeing this concept through the depressingly narrow, if-you’re-not-producing-new-writing-every-week-you’re-failing approach I fought with last year. Maybe the house we’re building is not a massive inconvenience, but actually an extremely cool (and expensive) artistic project? Maybe figuring out how to simultaneously hold onto teenagers while also letting them go is one of the most important creative endeavours I’ll ever take on?
I’d like to write regularly too, just for the sake of writing, not to be profound or publishable. I want to do paint-by-numbers and listen to podcasts and laugh. Maybe I’ll start learning the bass guitar?
The possibilities are endless, and I’m feeling open to all of it.
Bring it on, 2026.
Love love love this one. I’m so on board with your year of fun and creativity and now thinking about my values aside from people! (Creativity definitely being one of them) As always, thank you for the gift of your writing.