Credit: Watoker Derrick Okello
Episode Summary
Transitions are our friends. Transitions bring us new things. Transitions can also bring discomfort, but that discomfort offers us a chance to grow - if we are willing to let it have a seat at the table. What would happen if we embraced the discomfort, embraced the difficulty, embraced the challenge? What would it be like if all parts of us were offered a place at the table?
Episode Resources
→ Dr. Jocelyn Charnas: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/therapists/jocelyn-w-charnas-new-york-ny/256726
→ Why Stress When You Can See a Wedding Therapist?: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/12/03/fashion/weddings/why-stress-when-you-can-see-a-wedding-therapist.html
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About the Show
Shame Piñata is hosted by Ritual Artist Colleen Thomas, a Certified Meditation and Mindfulness teacher who helps people make sense of life through ceremony. Music by Terry Hughes.
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Full Transcript
Charnas: I often use the analogy of a shopping cart. You know, when one wheel is off, the shopping cart doesn't move right, right? You're swinging to the left and you're swinging to the right... So you know, I see that as sort of a good analogy for transition. One of the wheels has shifted around. And in order to keep going in a positive direction, sometimes we've got to shift those other wheels around. Sometimes we have to change as a whole, or adapt as a whole, or adjust to get back on track.
Transitions are our friends. Transitions bring us new things. Transitions can also bring discomfort, but that discomfort offers us a chance to grow - if we are willing to let it have a seat at the table. What would happen if we embraced the discomfort, embraced the difficulty, embraced the challenge? What would it be like if all parts of us were offered a place at the table?
This is Shame Piñata. I’m Colleen Thomas. Welcome to Shame Piñata, where we talk about creating rites of passage for real-life transitions.
Before we get started today, I want to invite you to take our listener survey. It doesn’t matter how long you've been a listener or how frequently you listen. We need your feedback to grow and improve. So please take a few minutes and visit shamepinata.com. You'll find the listener survey link right on that page. And if you like, we’ll send you a 5 minute centering meditation to thank you for your time.
Our guest today is Dr. Joceyn Charnas, a psychologist based in New York City who works with couples navigating transitions, especially the wedding transition. She explains why weddings can be so crazy-making, not only for the couple, but also for those around them. And she also shares some of the tools she offers her clients to help them stay sane and healthy during life changes.
Thomas: Can you tell me a little bit about your work, sort of in broad strokes and how you touch on transition in your work?
Charnas: Sure, sure. Well, I'm a clinical psychologist in private practice. I've been in practice on my own for about 10 years now. I see individual clients and I also see couples. And I have a little bit of a niche in premarital therapy. So I see a lot of clients who are engaged to be married and come to me to help them navigate and manage that transition. And, you know, being a psychologist in general, I see a lot of people in transition. In fact, that's often a sort of inflection point in terms of when people decide to come into therapy. You know, for the most part, people don't come to therapy when they're comfortable and everything's great - even though that would be wonderful and everyone could benefit from it and la la la… Most people, most… you know, typical people come in when they're when they're in distress or in discomfort. And so often distress and discomfort come around transitions, you know, life is... when life changes, that's when we struggle. So, both in my work with individuals and in my work with couples, we're spending a lot of time talking about transitions and managing those transitions, and particularly doing a lot of work around trying to reframe those transitions as opportunities for growth and for self knowledge and for evolution of the self, you know, as opposed to seeing them as roadblocks. We really try to reframe them and see them as opportunities for growth and that's a lot of the work I do.
Thomas: I love it. Because I've been thinking about transitions and how... why ritual can be useful in the time of transitions and it's almost like we're programmed to be the same and when we have to change... it just throws everything out of whack and brings up all this extra stuff that we don't want.
Charnas: I think that's absolutely right. The idea, as I try to help people to see, is to try to embrace that discomfort, embrace that difficulty, embrace that challenge rather than push those feelings under the rug… and because they're uncomfortable, push them underground and disavow them. I really try to work with my patients to do the best they can to embrace the changes and embrace the discomfort because I think from... in my experience, positive growth only comes from discomfort, right? We have to be in a position that's difficult for us or challenging or uncomfortable in order to change and grow. I mean, this whole concept of growing pains, I think is a true... is a truism. So, you know, to me, it's really about even though it's difficult, even though it's scary, even though it's uncertainty unknown, I really try to help people to embrace those difficult feelings because this is how we grow and this is also how we learn about ourselves. So you know, it's almost like okay, how do we take advantage of the situation instead of looking at it as a negative?
Thomas: And are there tools that you share with your clients around those issues?
Charnas: Yeah, there are. I mean, mostly it's about... You know, this word mindfulness is thrown around a lot and I think it's sort of become a little bit of an umbrella term. But I really honed in on the idea of mindfulness around our emotions. So I think that one really important tool that I encourage clients to try to make use of is to embrace the whole range of emotions and be mindful, be aware of what you're feeling, whether it's positive, negative, whatever it is. If we can really tune into what our emotions are, particularly in those moments of transition, those times of change or on milestones in life, whether it's having a child or getting married or graduate... college graduation is a huge one, work with a lot of clients around all of these milestones usually generate both positive and negative emotions and we're taught to really pay attention to the positive and tune out the negative. And so I really try to encourage couples and individuals to pay attention to the full spectrum and really get in there with those negative emotions because we can learn about ourselves from them and they're useful and they're as valid as the positive ones. So that that's a big one that I use, particularly with couples. Because you know, negative emotions in a couple, especially when you're preparing to get married, can be very uncomfortable. Nobody likes to feel doubt. No one wants to feel uncertain. No one wants to feel scared, but you know what? Everybody does. I haven't met anybody that's planning to get married that doesn't have, on some level, those kinds of feelings. So the idea of bringing them out, normalizing them, validating them, I found goes a really, really long way to help people.
Yes! Making room for all of it. Making room for all of us. Even when transitions bring up big feelings we might not know what to do with or how to handle, we can make room for them. So then at least we just have the feelings and not an additional layer on top of the feelings telling us we shouldn't have them. I love that Jocelyn brought us to this topic, so I asked her to take us a little deeper.
Thomas: Why are the negative emotions so scary?
Charnas: I mean, I think nobody likes to not feel good, right? I mean, we all want to feel good. And as I said, I think there is this sort of push in this, you know… Wellness movement and positive psychology and things… You know, 100 ways to be happy and find happiness every day… And again, there’s… Those things are wonderful, okay? But they're just one side of the coin. And I think generally we're socialized away from you know… Don't cry... All the things that are connected... Don't be afraid.. All those all these things that we sort of take for granted that are sort of so much you know, like baked into the ether in terms of our emotional lives. I think that we become… You know, I call it affect-phobic. We can become afraid of our feelings, particularly the negative feelings because we are worried that they’re signals that we're making a mistake or this is wrong, or we're somehow bad or not good enough… All those things. I think those negative emotions can be signals of those sort of myths we tell ourselves. And I really again, I'm really, really… Try to work with, with individuals and with couples to be able to sit with those negative emotions, allow them to the surface, talk about them, explore them as a way to detoxify them. You know, I think so many people are afraid of anger. People are afraid of being sad. But as I said, those are on the healthy and normal range of human emotions and so we are allowed to, and should feel all of it. Well, and you know, in particular, as I said, when it comes to, to weddings, in this period of engagement, people get really frightened of uncertainty and doubt, you know, this myth that we're supposed to be sure and, you know, so many of these myths around weddings... Happiest day of our life myth, all of these things They really push us into a corner of the way we're supposed to feel. And if we don't feel that way, then we again go back to the broken record of what's wrong with me? You know, is this a mistake? What's wrong with my partner? And that, you know, rarely does that. Take us good place. Right?
Thomas: Right.
Charnas: Right? I mean, that's, that's that's rarely a good thing.
Thomas: And all of that is, is amplified by the people around us, you know, our mother, our sister, our aunt… often the women, you know, who have their own stuff.
Charnas: I think that's right. You know, as I said, I think that I think those messages are typically well-meaning and I don't think there's negative intention behind those messages that people that love us want us to be sure and want us to be happy and want us to make good decisions. But I think it's more complicated than that. And it's less black and white than that. As I said, I really... I don't know any couple that has ever stood on the precipice of marriage, which is supposed to be, we hope, a lifetime commitment, and not felt some uncertainty and not had moments of doubt. I mean, those things are healthy and normal in a thinking, functional brain.
Weddings have been fascinating me this year in terms of their potency. I mean, there's so much happening on so many levels, but at the same time, it's just a wedding. I took this opportunity to ask Jocelyn what is actually happening at a wedding.
Charnas: Weddings are amazing, right? They're... they're this very interesting amalgam of all of the things that are complicated and challenging and evocative and emotionally loaded, right? They have this amazing ability to tap into, kick up, stir up some really intense dynamics, right? Because think about, think about all that a wedding and a marriage entails. It's love, its money, it's family, its identity, it's transition, it's appearance, its expectations... It's all of these things sort of wrapped up into one intense moment. And I think that as a result of that, people react very strongly to those things… And look, understandably so. Right? Those are the things in life that do kick up the most emotion. So I think that the wedding is sort of at the crossroads of all of these things. And as such, they really have an ability to sort of shine a very bright hot… white hot spotlight on the things in life that we kind of struggle with as humans anyway. You know, I sort of came to this work because of my own experiences and also sort of observing and witnessing people in my life around this time... a lot of friends getting married... and colleagues and all of that, and sort of starting to see that, oh, this makes everybody crazy. And yes, it makes everybody crazy in their own special, unique way. But this seems to make a sane person crazy. And so what is going on here? So I started to think about this as something that needs to be addressed and needs to be normalized and validated in a way that I really didn't find it was being talked about. I mean, when I was preparing to get married myself, I remember looking through, you know, a stack of wedding magazines. And I remember just sort of flipping through them. And there was no reference at all in probably 800 pages of bridal magazines about the emotional impact of getting married. There was, you know, 800 pages on flowers, but not a blurb on, “Oh, do you feel crazy? Are you nervous? You know, you're normal or you're not alone.” There was none of that. And I thought, gee, this is a real sort of hole in the market here real gap where people are given guidance on everything from what, you know, what color pale pink your nail should be, but nobody was talking about how you feel. So I really sort of threw myself into working with couples and to put myself out there as a touchstone to help couples try to navigate this, this time that's both difficult and also a tremendous opportunity to work on the foundation, to build tools for marriage... because a wedding is not the end the wedding as some people see it as the end. It's just the beginning. It's just it's just the beginning of the whole relationship of the marriage. Getting couples in my office for this period of time when they're sort of embarking on this transition, helping them to see it as normal and healthy that this is... this is a difficult time and to start working on the skills that make for a good marriage.
Thomas: Hmm, yeah, that's wonderful. Yeah, I can, I can totally relate to that, that it's like, “Hey, we're done. We got through this big thing!”
Charnas: Everybody's planning that you do nothing for a year plan for this party, right? And then the party comes and goes and that's lovely. But then what, right? And that's something I really that's sort of one of my basic tenets of the work I do is okay. The wedding is important, and it's and it's a symbol and it's a ceremony and it's meaningful and all of that, absolutely. But we cannot only focus on this, we have to be able to pay attention to the marriage, what the wedding symbolizes which is the beginning of a marriage and the relationship and the partnership. And so I really, really work with couples to try to shift their focus to the wedding as the beginning to the wedding as a symbol and then get into what are our expectations of marriage? What our expectations of family life and lifestyle and you know, partnership and... because that's really that's the meat of it, that's the important stuff. The wedding is just it's just a symbol. And look, at and... it's everything is easy, it's easy to get lost in it right I mean, I it was easy for me to it's easy to to to focus on the details, you know, get very, very caught up in the details of the wedding. We all do and I think we all fall victim to that. But if we lose sight of the bigger picture, I think we lose... an opportunity is lost.
Thomas: Yeah, definitely.
Touching more on the idea of the big picture, I asked Jocelyn how the other family members come into play. What might they be feeling? Because by creating a new family unit, the couple are separating from their family of origin and that brings up stuff for everybody.
Charnas: That's a huge, huge, huge part of it, in my experience and working with couples. And it's not just weddings, it's, it's... with any real significant transition in life, it often entails a redefining of the relationships in our lives, right? We grow up, we graduate from school, and that might change our relationship a little bit with our parents. We have children, we get married, all these things, they require a little bit of a redefining of the existing relationships in our lives. And again, that is not always easy, but it's an opportunity to sort of embrace that transition and maybe let your parents know that you need to be treated as an adult now, just as an example, or that you're going to be making decisions that maybe are different from the decisions that they might have made. So dealing with the sort of family around us, you know, I think of... I think often use the sort of analogy of the couples that if this is an atom, the couple is the nucleus and and the people in their lives are the protons and neutrons, whatever it is… Don't quote me on the science of that… But you know what I mean… the surrounding, you know, the sun versus the rest of the planets. So, I think that we first have to focus on the strength of the relationship and the couple is the nucleus. The couple of the most important thing. But we do have to take into account the other people in our lives that we love, because this is happening to them too, right? For the mother of the bride, her daughter is getting married, that's a meaningful moment. Or for our best friend or brother or father… You know...or for a child sometime watching their parents get remarried. I mean, these are life changing situations, not just for us, but for the people around us. And I think to find that line where we are not being completely driven by the desire to please those people around us because that's not good either. But where we can see our partnership as the center but also pay attention and be sensitive to the people... to the needs and the desires of the people around us and recognizing that this is change and transition for them too. I think that's really important and it's sort of a balance to strike.
Thomas: When I was recording the trailer for the series, I had a story popped back in my head, which I shared atthe beginning of that... which is that my mother's a very forceful person, but she's always also very gentle. She's just like, forceful underneath. You know, you don't normally see that… like unless she really...
Charnas: Unless she has to pull it out?
Thomas: Yeah, exactly! And so we literally got married and then walked out of the room and we're in the, like, the hallway outside for like... I don't know, maybe three minutes with, you know... hugging and kissing. Like, as like now we're married, and we're bonding for like three minutes. And my friend kept knocking on the door. And we were like, “Wow, what, dude, like three minutes, you know?” And he was like, “Your mom wants to see you.” And I was like, I was like, “No, I'm sorry. But no, not for three minutes. Just no, no right now!” And then... and then he came back and he's like, “She really wants to see you.” And he told me later that he said something like, you know, “Hey, do you need anything?” And she's like, “Yeah, I need Colleen.” And then... and then he like went back over and he's like, “Sorry, she's... she's not available.” Right? And she's like, “No, I need Colleen.” And I'm just like, “Oh, God!” And I asked her later... I said, “Gosh, what did you need?” You know, she's like, “Oh, I don't know.”
Charnas: And there you go, right. I mean, everybody's gonna, everybody's gonna be themselves. I'm laughing because my mother... the same thing happened to me basically. We were up in the hotel room for the two minutes between the ceremony and the party, and my mother came into touch with her makeup. I was like “Really, really? There wasn't anywhere else you could come to touch up your makeup, really?” So... so I can... I can empathize with that. And I'm sure everyone in these stories is well intended, but the thing is, it's something to navigate, it's not easy. And you know, in those moments, maybe both of our mothers, whether they were conscious of it or not, were experiencing that... those pangs of loss, or those fears of loss. In our better moments, our best selves can be both firm and setting boundaries but also sensitive to that, which is not always easy.
Thomas: Yeah. I'm so glad that you're here and you're doing your work and, and everybody gets to benefit from it including people like me who just get to talk to you for 20 minutes.
Charnas: Thank you. Thank you. Appreciate it.
Dr. Jocelyn Charnas is a clinical psychologist based in New York City. She works with individuals and couples in all phases of relationship. She was featured in Newsday and New York Weddings for her work with engaged couples - work that has earned her the title, "The Wedding Doctor."
Our music is by Terry Hughes. Be sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast player to be notified when new episodes are released. Learn more at shamepinata.com. I’m Colleen Thomas. Thanks for listening.