MFT Solutions: Healing Relationships

Category: Peacemaking

  • Load Rage

    There’s a long, wandering nerve in the body called the vagus (means “wandering”). It goes to the heart. It goes to the stomach. It goes to the face. It goes to the larynx (voice box).

    It has two main branches.

    One is covered with myelin. Insulated, it conducts faster.

    One is not covered with myelin. It’s older. Reptiles have it. It’s the slower part of the nerve.

    The fast part of the nerve goes to your face and voice box. It helps you to attract attention. Make expressions with your face and sounds with your voice, other people come running. Useful in an emergency.

    The slow part goes to the heart, and other places, to start up your internal emergency system. Fight or flight. Fast heart rate, high blood flow to the arms and legs. Also useful in an emergency. But uses up a lot of energy.

    Because the slow branch of the vagus uses so much energy we have evolved from reptiles, and developed this faster system of signalling to others for help. Energy-efficient survival.

    But it only works if we’re willing to trust others.

    I was following a car that was going slower than I wanted to go – he was a little under the speed limit – and so I passed him. He accelerated as I passed but I completed my pass safely. Then he came right up behind me, passed me, and zoomed up the road.

    I found that I was shaking. Adrenaline. My amygdala was activated. I was prepared for conflict. When he passed I wasn’t sure that he wasn’t also going to pull in front of me and brake suddenly.

    You may have had a similar experience. It happens to me a lot (is it me?). Once, I passed a guy in a pickup truck (never argue with people who drive pickup trucks) and then he passed me and abruptly slowed, blocking my path. I pulled onto the shoulder and waited for him to go away.

    Tamara Lich has been organizing far-right protests since 2018. She was arrested in 2022 and convicted of mischief for her role in leading the “Freedom Convoy” protest in Ottawa.

    She posted on X that she no longer feels safe, respected or free, [1]. I don’t use X anymore, but her message was echoed on Instagram, and when I read it, I responded that I did not have a lot of sympathy for someone who went out of her way to make others feel unsafe.

    And of course I was attacked.

    It made me think of the good people on the highway.

    I felt the same amygdalar reaction from people calling me vulgar names on social media as I did from the people (trying to kill me?) on the highway.

    You may think that I am overreacting. I am. That’s the point.

    We have forgotten how to play with others. Anyone who dissents has become an enemy. I have my way of looking at the world, and if you disagree, then I have nothing to do with you. You are my enemy.

    Which means that I am on my own. I have to use my own devices for survival. The “slow” branch of my vagus. Fight or flight. No facial signs of distress or calls for help allowed. No cooperation.

    There used to be a TV network in the U.S. called PBS. They had a song about cooperation.

    That network has been dismantled. It’s every man for himself.

    Mostly men, have you noticed? They want to roll back women’s rights. Probably because women would favour cooperation.

    We have been developing this myth, especially in North America, that we can each live independently. We don’t need other people.

    Others have been sounding the alarm bell on this. “Hey, we’re mammals, not reptiles. It costs less energy to cooperate.” PBS. Notable neurophysiologists[2].

    Cooperating means sharing my energy. If I can’t see the longterm benefits, I might be disinclined.

    And now there is all this doom and gloom about climate change. Recently a pandemic. And now perhaps an alien visitor traversing the solar system.

    But that’s okay. I can solve all these problems by myself. Without you.

    Maybe not.

    [1]         https://x.com/LichTamara/status/1952736918963167718

    [2]         Darcia Narvaez (2014). Neurobiology and the Development of Human Morality: Evolution, Culture, and Wisdom. New York: W. W. Norton

  • A Butterfly that Knows Itself Can Change the World

    I hesitated to write this column because, I said to myself, I am worrying about what I can’t control, and I tell my clients all the time not to do this – not to worry about what you can’t change.

    I am worried about the United States. Recall that my ancestors came from there. I still have family in the U.S. I also have friends: two of my closest from high school.

    I have membership in a number of U.S. organizations: for hypnosis, for marriage and family therapy, and for contextual behavioural therapy (without the “u”).

    There are a lot of good people in the United States.

    I was born 14 years after the end of World War II, and grew up in the Cold War era. Not only did I live in fear of a nuclear attack but I actually thought I was witnessing one on November 10, 1979, when a Canadian Pacific train carrying propane derailed and blew up in Toronto.

    I have never experienced war. I read about the Nazis and the holocaust. I suppose we have our share of guilt over our treatment of First Nations people. But I have, for the most part, lived a peaceful, protected life, where not a lot of bad stuff was happening at my front door.

    That’s changing now. I don’t like it.

    The United States is being transformed. It is not a pleasant transformation. Not a “good” transformation. It seems to be a big step backward.

    As a healer, I lean in the direction of wanting to help people. As a systemic therapist, I recognize that we participate in a complex system of interaction with each other, with other living systems, and, of course, with the environment.

    I have been trained to see the value in all parts. We need each other.

    Not everyone shares that view.

    I do not understand U.S. government. I tend to simplify and draw analogies with Canada. The Republican Party seems to be a conservative version of our Conservative Party. Very right: individual liberty, traditional values, limited government.

    The Democratic Party leans to the left: equality, social justice, and government intervention. Democrats are perhaps more to the right than our Liberals, but definitely left of the Republicans.

    I have read1 and I understand that we need each other. Conservatives (Republicans) remind us to value individual freedom, tradition, and to combat government overreach. Liberals (Democrats) remind us that we have a responsibility to help those less privileged.

    The tension between these two views seemed to work for years. Left and right balanced each other. But maybe I just wasn’t paying attention.

    And of course these parties weren’t operating in isolation. I have written recently on the constantly changing environment, and the need to adapt to it. The world is changing all the time.

    As the world becomes less hospitable – more heat, more storms, fewer places of safety, melting ice caps (less land) – anxiety is increasing.

    It’s great for business.

    There are more people (also great for business). As of two weeks ago, the world population passed 8.2 billion2. The number of people on the planet is increasing at a rate of nearly 10 per second.

    With more people, less land, and a climate that seems to be trying to kill us, not everyone is going to therapy to talk about it. Some people are trying to solve these problems. Some are confronting the complexity and seeking rational, scientific solutions.

    Others are not so much into science.

    I’m old enough to remember Ronald Reagan, who served as the 40th American President from 1981 to 1989. I remember how funny we all thought it was that an actor became president of the United States. He was popular because he was a change, a Republican correction at a time when people were disillusioned with the Democrats.

    He had his own problems and caused his own scandals.

    The pendulum swings back and forth, but I’m afraid that it’s going to stop swinging now. PBS reported that Trump was behind the Jan 6 insurrection (and now he has defunded PBS). This new reality TV star president famously said, “You won’t have to vote again”. He seems to be following through by systematically undermining the normal checks and balances that keep the President from becoming a dictator.

    Trump offers an alternative to grappling seriously with the world’s problems: ignore them. Get rid of all the immigrants. Get rid of all the scientists. Get rid of all the teachers. Just don’t think about the problems of the world. Stop trading with them, even. Close the borders. Shut your eyes. Everything will be fine.

    Trump is gaining in popularity and power in the same way that Hitler did, for similar reasons, perhaps. When times are tough it is tempting to put your head in the sand.

    I thought this was all going to stay in my history books, not come back to bite me. I thought I was born after World War II…

    But I am a family therapist, and this gives me hope. Because I believe in butterflies.

    Family therapy is a little different from what you might think of when you think of psychotherapy. You may think about one person lying on the couch and talking about their mother. That’s psychoanalysis. It’s helped a lot of people. It’s not bad.

    Family therapy started from a different premise. Instead of seeing the problem as residing in one person (or coming from your mother), family therapy defines the “problem” as an interaction. No one individual to blame. The whole system holds the problem. An alcoholic for example is part of an alcoholic family system: one person drinks, another pays the bills, another goes to school and pretends everything is fine at home. Everyone plays their part.

    This mess of a world – not just the U.S. but all of us – is just one big alcoholic family system.

    In a system, true, some parts are more powerful than others, but every part influences it, to some degree.

    Even the butterflies. Even me.

    My systemic lens suggests to me that Trump is gaining popularity because of climate change. The world is becoming inhospitable. Left-leaning governments and individuals are rising to the challenge and struggling to find ways to slow the rate of climate change, and help those affected by it.

    Right-leaning governments and individuals are narrowing their view of tribe. Building walls to protect their limited resources and to keep others away. Leaning in to individual freedom. Leaning away from helping others.

    Left or right, individuals matter. Speaking your own truth matters. Differentiation matters.

    If you pay close attention you will see that not everyone is singing the same tune. There are dissonant voices. You can hear them.

    Want to help change the world for the better? Speak your truth. Wherever you are, in whatever context, speak your truth. Monitor your diet of social media. Take breaks. Look for evidence. Take the harder road. Challenge your own beliefs.

    Differentiation matters. A human being begins as a single, fertilized egg. It does not remain so. As it divides, the new cells differentiate. Each assumes a unique function. Nerve, bone, blood, muscle, fat. Everything is useful, and everything is needed to make a human being.

    Everyone is needed to make a human species.

    All you really have to do is be different than the troublemakers. Speak your truth. Just that. Speak to what you see. Like the child who saw that the emperor had no clothes, add your tiny voice to the mix. Your voice that is dissonant. It refuses to buy into or believe lies. That’s all you need to do.

    Systems are powerful but they are not omnipotent. A small, dissonant voice can wear a mountain of lies away like a persistent drop of water.

    Just so. Speak the truth.

    Even large systems have to adjust to the dissenter, over time. They can’t help it. They have to follow the same rules that enabled them to form their dominant story: everyone has a part; everyone has a voice. Anyone who dissents also has a voice. And this changes the whole, over time.

    So perhaps I am worrying about what I can control. And perhaps I am doing what I need to do. By simply speaking.

    1. Jonathan Haidt (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion. New York: Pantheon Books ↩︎
    2. https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/ this is a really cool web page. You can watch world birth and death rates in real time. Ten people are added to the world every second. One person dies every second. Net growth, 9 people per second. ↩︎

  • How to Save the World

    Maturana and Varela, Chilean biologists, wrote an essential book called The Tree of Knowledge. They “explain” evolution according to a simple rule that even a single-celled organism can follow:

    Don’t piss off the environment.

    We talk about climate change like it is something we caused and can therefore reverse. That may be partly true. What is more true is that the climate – the environment in which we live – has been changing for millions of years. Since the earth was formed.

    The world is always changing. We can’t stop that. We can’t change it back. We can only change with it.

    For the single-celled organism to survive, it has to change as its environment changes. If it doesn’t, it dies.

    If the environment changes in such a way that the cell is perturbed – disturbed from its resting state, its homeostasis – then the cell has a simple reflex. Using what it has internally, it changes itself to adjust to the environmental change. And then it can rest again.

    As it changes to meet the environmental challenge, the cell acquires new skills. New organelles. New capabilities.

    The cell benefits from change. It survives.

    Cells that don’t change eventually die out. The environment continues to change, and after awhile the difference between what the cell needs and what the environment has to offer is too great, and the cell simply cannot survive.

    The cell also benefits because it acquires new skills. New abilities. If the temperature increases, it learns how to adjust its internal temperature accordingly, so that its chemical reactions continue in an optimal way. And by promoting this change, the cell develops strengths that it didn’t have before. And it is better equipped to meet the next challenge.

    Athletes know this. Students know this. Parents know this. Meet the daily challenge. Change with it. Learn something new. Become a little stronger. You are better prepared to meet the next challenge.

    There are millions of single cells out there still adjusting to the environment, one day at a time. But this has been going on for so long that some of the first cells who adapted to change have themselves changed so much and become so equipped that they can do what to a single cell would be unthinkable, if it could think.

    At some point cells started clumping together for mutual support. Groups of cells began to specialize, supporting other groups of cells with what they produced, and taking from them what they no longer made for themselves. A sort of free market of cell communities.

    These groups of cells became recognizable as living things. Plants, animals.

    Some of these animals became self-aware. Psychological1.

    Some of these self-aware animals became other-aware. Spiritual2. Recognizing that they exist in a world that places limits and makes demands. Recognizing that continued survival of the whole – all living things – requires a form of global cooperation.

    The next stage of our evolution remains to be seen. But the process is clear: when the environment challenges, you must respond. Use everything you have to meet the challenge. Adapt to it, become stronger, and be ready for the next challenge.

    We have acquired an impressive collection of wisdom and knowledge and history. Like a cell with well-developed organelles, we have powerful tools to meet the present environmental challenges, if we value and use everything we have.

    Roughly half of us don’t want to do this anymore. Don’t want to change. Change is hard. But not to change is like so much of mental illness in general and addiction in particular: a short-term gain for a long-term disaster.

    Adapting to a changing world means upgrading ourselves. Upgrades are hard. Not all the bugs have been worked out. There are glitches in this newest human operating system which has been handed down to us. That however is not a call to go back to Windows 1.0. Not a good survival strategy.

    If we want to save the world – save ourselves in the world, really. The world doesn’t care – all we have to do is embrace change. Acknowledge that the environment is becoming uncomfortable. Work together as a single organism, using what we have, to change so that we adjust. To the new world. In a way that uses everything – and everyone – that we have.

    1. Paul Tillich (1976), Systematic Theology 3. University of Chicago Press. ↩︎
    2. Ibid. ↩︎
  • Fear and Flying

    Fear and Flying

    I think I suffer from a form of OCD. You know what OCD is, don’t you? It’s an anxiety disorder where you seek to relieve your anxiety by performing a compulsive task.

    I worry about becoming irrelevant.

    So to deal with that anxiety, I learned to fly. Surely pilots are relevant.

    I became a pilot in 1991. I flew a small plane until about ten years ago. I gained in skill and I eventually got my commercial licence, but you need a lot of flying time to be hired as a pilot, and you have to be willing to travel. I had this family who needed me home. And I wanted to be home with them, too.

    So I stopped flying.

    And now I am older. I still fly. On my computer.

    So whenever I am worried about becoming irrelevant, I play a game on my computer now.

    That’s not as relevant as it used to be.

    I have a friend about my age who used to be a pilot. He flew for Air Canada. He stopped flying too. Now he does computer programming. He plays games on his computer, only people buy his games.

    So that’s relevant.

    I am more of a storyteller. And a listener. And while a part of me had always wanted to learn to fly – I was pretending to be a pilot when I was four. I crashed and broke a tooth – a bigger part of me has always wanted to be a helper and a healer.

    So now I help and I heal. Through listening. And storytelling. That, essentially, is what a psychotherapist is.

    And I still fly, on my computer.

  • Tariff Day

    Today is Tariff Day. But it’s also Chocolate Cake Day.

    Tariffs are bound to interrupt your digestion. Money generates anxiety at the best to times. Having to pay more money for things – well, that will generate anxiety. Anxiety, that signal of impending emergency. Evolution has long favoured interrupting meals in case of emergency.

    According to the polyvagal theory1 we humans have three ways of dealing with emergencies.

    The earliest and simplest is to freeze. Recall Jurassic Park. Don’t move. He can’t see you if you don’t move.

    It actually works, even on threats who can sense non-moving things, because non-moving things just don’t register as easily on a predator’s brain. Who wants a dead lunch? Might not be fresh.

    So our most ancient response to threat is to freeze, slow down the respiration rate, slow down the heart rate, and stop digestion (lest you fart and give yourself away). Play dead.

    That might work. Make no response to tariffs. Perhaps they will go away and try to eat somebody else.

    But if not, we have more evolved defence systems in our toolbox. The sympathetic nervous system (SNS) and the hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal (HPA) axis are activated in the face of a threat that might not be fooled by our freezing: we can run away, or fight. This requires energy. So now the heart rate ramps up – feel your chest pounding? – hearing and seeing are sharpened, and blood flow increases to the arms and legs (for running or fighting).

    Again, lunch is postponed. Digestion shuts down. No time to eat when you’re about to be eaten. Run away now.

    But how long can you run? And is running away, by yourself, the best option?

    You can burn rubber in an emergency, but there should be alternatives. Can’t run or fight forever. Evolution has tended to favour energy conservation.

    The vagus nerve is quite complex. It helps us freeze. It helps us fight, or flee. And it helps us call for help. Sends messages to the heart to slow it down. Sends messages to the lungs to open them up. Sends messages to the face and head. So you can call to others. For help.

    Safety in numbers.

    America is being conned. Its people are being told that they are stronger alone. They aren’t.

    It’s a small world. We need each other. Hopefully this tariff nonsense will pass away soon, and we can get on to the chocolate cake.

    1. Stephen W. Porges (2011). The Polyvagal Theory: Neurophysiological Foundations of Emotions Attachment Communication Self-Regulation. New York: W.W. Norton ↩︎

  • Lane Departure

    I used to drive somewhat faster on the highway than I do now. I have been influenced to change by several factors: when we had children, I became concerned about safety; then I learned that most gasoline engines operate at peak efficiency at about 80 km/hr: therefore by slowing down I was saving money and reducing carbon emissions; and I worked for several years as an emergency room chaplain, where I met individuals who drove too quickly – or rather, I met their families, and helped with the viewing of the bodies.


    And I got older, and paradoxically came to the conclusion that life is too short to drive fast. But there is a limit to my speed limits.

    Where I live, the speed limit is 80. I have hearsay evidence that a local police officer recommended driving at 90 to avoid rear end collisions. I’m a rule follower but only to a point. So I usually drive around 90 km/hr on the local highway.


    Coming up the highway today there was a car ahead of me, following closely on a truck and trailer ahead of him (“he” is a generic pronoun – I have no idea who the drivers were).


    They slowed down. The car put on his brakes.


    The weather was good, the highway was straight, there was a dashed line, and there was no oncoming traffic. It was legal to pass.


    I signalled, pulled out, and checked to make sure that neither of the two vehicles ahead was signalling or turning left: they weren’t. The truck was turning right and the car was continuing to slow down behind him.


    I passed them both.

    All hell broke loose.

    The guy in the car leaned on his horn. I checked my path. There was no danger. There was perhaps outrage that I would dare not stay in my lane. After the truck turned, the car came tight on my bumper, and hung there. For several kilometres. Until we passed the police station. Then he pulled back. After the police station he pulled up again.


    It was interesting that he did not seem to think that the police would share his sense of injustice.

    I was concerned that he was going to follow me until I stopped. I decided that I didn’t want to have a chat with him. I turned off at a random intersection, let him pass, and continued on my way.


    We live in a curious time. A few years ago there was concern that we, as a species, were becoming too independent. We’re mammals, after all. And there is safety in the herd. But nobody seemed to care for anyone else’s safety.


    I don’t think that this guy in the car was concerned for my safety. That hasn’t changed.


    What was he concerned about?


    I think that he was upset that I wasn’t following his rules.


    On the anniversary of Hamas’s attack on Israel, I think that the same sort of thing is happening over there. We’re getting upset when people think, feel, or behave differently. For that matter, we do it here to our First Nations sisters and brothers. And to immigrants (no, they’re not eating the dogs).


    We’ve gone from independence (which in itself isn’t good for mammals) to something resembling kingship – with each of us as kings, demanding that everyone else do what we do.


    Otherwise, we are not amused and we will lean on our horns.


    One recalls Fritz Perls: “I do my thing and you do your thing. I am not in this world to live up to your expectations, and you are not in this world to live up to mine. You are you, and I am I, and if by chance we find each other, it’s beautiful.”


    I should put that on my bumper.

  • Two Roads Diverged

    I belong to an organization that has imploded recently. We were anxious about running a large public event after the pandemic. We divided into two camps: some of us had a lot of faith that we could pull this off and that it would be of benefit to a larger audience. Others were more cautious and concerned about costs.

    Our anxiety got the better of us, and we were not on our best behaviour as we talked with one another. We tried to persuade the other camp. We stopped listening. We escalated our attempts to persuade until we were clearly stepping out of our norms for talking to one another. We broke rules of civility, and rules of order. We called the other camp on their bad behaviour, oblivious to our own.

    It did not go well.

    Now you haven’t seen this anywhere else, have you? Republicans and Democrats? Liberals and Conservatives? Regional conflicts, pandemics, and climate change have us all on edge. Some of us want to help. Some of us want to build walls.

    I tend to demonize the Conservatives. I try to fight that. I understand that at heart their message is, “Don’t tire yourself out so much. Stay home. Rest. Here’s a tax break.”

    I lean towards the Liberals and their message: “There is so much need out there. Give before more people die.”

    “To which camp do you belong?” Is a trick question. Both have merit.

    Paul Tillich, a German theologian, argued that all life has to wrestle with these two conditions. Staying home he called “self-integrity”. Taking risks he called “self-alteration”.

    Even a single cell has to deal with self-integrity and self-alteration. If it just sits in the Petri dish, protecting itself, never venturing out, it starves. If it divides too quickly, or spreads itself out too far, it dissolves.

    How much more does a society have to wrestle with these twin goals of self-preservation and self-alteration. Life is a dialectic: stay home, and go out. You can’t stay home all the time or you’ll starve. You can’t stay out all the time or you’ll die of exhaustion. Find a balance that works for you, of protecting yourself, and venturing out to help others.