211: Dealing With Your Personal Problems When the World Is on Fire

Hi everyone, I’m Dr. Marie Murphy, and I’m a non-judgmental infidelity coach.  If you are having an affair, or cheating on your partner, or engaging in anything you think counts as infidelity, I can help you deal with your feelings, clarify what you want, and make decisions about what you’re going to do.  No shame, no blame, no judgments.  

When you are ready to move beyond the drama and difficulties of your infidelity situation, there are two ways you can have me as your coach.  You can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One.  Enrolling in this course is kind of like joining me in my office for Jedi training that goes beyond what I offer on the podcast.  The course includes videos and assignments that will help you relate to your infidelity situation in a totally different way.  

If you enjoy listening to this podcast and you want to take your work with me to the next level, I invite you to enroll in You’re Not the Only One – and you can do through my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  Or, if you want my personal attention, we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  When we work together one-on-one, our work is consistent, rigorous, and intimate.  If you want my expert guidance and no-nonsense tough love, the way to get started working with me is to book an introductory coaching session, and you can do that through my website, too.  I can’t wait to meet you.

Okay people.  I want to make it clear that I am going to talk about politics today, albeit somewhat obliquely.  So consider yourself duly notified.  This is not something that I normally do, for a lot reasons.  And the first, and perhaps most important reason is this.  The point of this podcast is to expand the conversation around infidelity from a non-judgmental perspective.  It is to provide non-judgmental assistance to people who are engaging in infidelity.  There are a lot of topics that fall within the scope of achieving these aims, and there are also a lot of topics that do not fall within the scope of achieving these aims.  

And my opinion is that for the most part, it’s better to leave the stuff that’s outside of the scope of this podcast out of this podcast.  Here’s why: when I want to go learn about how to sear salmon or how to apply eyeliner or how to deal with a particular health issue, THAT’S the thing I want to hear about.  I don’t want to hear about something unrelated.  I want to get the information about the thing I want to get the information on.  That is my preference as a consumer of information.  And I try not to do things as a provider of perspectives and information that I don’t like as a consumer of perspectives and information.

The second reason why I don’t talk about politics on this podcast is because I have very strong political views, and I don’t expect everyone who listens to my podcast or works with me as a client to agree with them, or even want to hear about them.  I am NOT apolitical.  But I also don’t considerate it appropriate or valuable to wear my politics on my forehead in every area of my life.  

One of the things I love about my coaching practice is that I get to work with a diverse array of people, many of whom are very different from me in some respects, including their political persuasions.  And I really appreciate it that people who may have very significant differences can come together and collaborate very beautifully and productively.  I don’t ever want to make agreeing with me politically a prerequisite for engaging with me in a productive way, personally or professionally.  It may be fair to say that politics touches every aspect of our lives, at least to some extent, but I don’t think that means we have to talk about politics in every area of our lives.    

And maybe especially in this strange, crazy, mind-blowing era of American politics, I think it’s really important to talk about and engage in politics in a deliberate, intentional way.  I don’t think that screaming our perspectives from the rooftops is necessarily the recipe for anything great.  Maybe it is sometimes.  But from the time I started this podcast, I knew for sure that I didn’t want to use it as a megaphone for my political beliefs.  

That said, I am going to talk about the current political climate a bit today, and with that, I’m going to say a thing or two about my own political orientations.  And on the subject of my own political orientations, I’ll just say that you very well might be able to guess what they are, in general or even maybe in very granular terms.  Historically speaking, people have often been right when they stereotype me or make assumptions about me.  Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing I don’t know, but the point is, I seem to live up to expectations.  In some senses, anyway.  

For instance, eight hundred years ago, when I was 19, I was attempting to get on a ferry from Brindisi, Italy to Patras, Greece, and the passport control guy was kind of flirting with me and kind of sexually harassing me, and he was looking at my American passport and asking me where I was from, and I said San Francisco, and it was a very warm day and I certainly wasn’t dressed for snow and he was not so subtly checking me out and he was like, “You’re from San Francisco, you have short hair, you have tattoos – you must be bisexual!”  

And I was like, “I live in San Francisco, I have short hair, I have tattoos, how could I not be bisexual?”  And it was all very funny and I did not feel threatened and if I did I would have had few hesitations about telling this guy to go fuck himself, but it was all okay.  And he was like, “You are bisexual?  Let’s have a threesome.  Right now.  Let’s go.”  And I was like, “No, let’s have a threesome when I come back to Italy.”  Which I had no plans of doing.  And I’m sure he knew that and we all got to end this exchange with me getting on the ferry and him not getting kicked in the nuts and all was well.  But anyway, the point is that, sometimes we see something that looks a certain way, and we’re right.

Another funny example is that I’ve had like approximately a million people ask me, out of the blue, “Are you a vegetarian?”  And for a long time I was, although now I do eat seafood.  And when I would say yes, I am a vegetarian, people would say, triumphantly, “I knew it!!  You look like a vegetarian!”  And on the one hand this could be completely offensive and fucked up, and on the other hand, well, some people just look really gay.  Some people just look like vegetarians.  I say this lightly, of course, but there is something to this.  Incidentally, my spouse worked in delis for many years and when we first met he was like, “You’re a vegetarian, right?”  And he was like, if you sell sandwiches for any length of time you can ALWAYS tell who’s going to order the vegetarian sandwich.

Now I’m not saying all of this to advocate for wanton stereotyping and assuming that your assumptions about people are correct!  Please do not do that.  This is all just a lead up to me saying that if you’ve made any guesses about where I stand on politics, there’s a good chance you’re right.  I live in San Francisco.  I have a Ph.D. in sociology, which is not known for being a particularly conservative discipline.  I served in the Peace Corps.  My spouse is first generation Palestinian.  And, as you now know, I used to be a vegetarian.  For a while, I was vegan, too, and not because I stopped liking cheese, but because I was deeply concerned with the ways animals are routinely treated as they are used in or killed for the production of food for humans.  And on that subject, let my share my hilarious vegan joke with you.  Are you ready?  Here it is.  How do you know if someone is vegan?  They tell you.  I know some of you will find that every bit as hilarious as I do.  And if you don’t find that joke even mildly funny, consider yourself lucky!  

So, even if that’s all you know about me, you just might guess that I did not vote for the person who is currently the president of the United States.  And you also might guess that I’m not particularly thrilled about a lot of the things that have been happening since the current president of the United States was inaugurated.  And if that’s what you were to guess, you would be correct.

The reason why I’m coming out of the closet, politically speaking, even to this very limited extent is because of this:  some of my current clients have been telling me that they don’t know how to deal with being alive amidst the current political events in the United States.  And of course, this is true of other people I know, not just my clients, but I’ve had clients telling me that they don’t know how to deal with their infidelity situation when they’re so overwhelmed by what’s going on in the world, OR they don’t even see the point of trying to address their infidelity situation when there are so many bigger problems happening in the world.  And that’s why I decided to create this episode.

Because I think these are really important questions to contend with.

How do we deal with our personal problems when it seems like the world around us is on fire?  How do we devote serious attention to our own personal struggles and challenges when it seems like there are far bigger problems we should be concerned with?  

I think it’s important for you to have some sense of where I stand politically as I speak to these questions, because the fact is, I’m pretty concerned about a lot of things that are going on in the world right now.  If you are moderately to severely freaked out about the state of the world, especially since January 20 of this year, I completely get it, and I can relate to what you’re feeling on a very personal level.  I want to make that really clear.

But here’s the interesting thing.  If we know where to look, we can pretty easily see that the world is, or at least can be, a pretty fucked up place.  All of the time!  Human life can be glorious, but it can also be pretty horrendously awful.  In so many ways, and for so many reasons.  So the world may seem especially fucked up these days, and maybe it is, but maybe it isn’t.

Even in seemingly sunnier times in the United States, we – and by “we” I mean the United States government – have created and implemented policies that have quietly sown the seeds of disaster, and, some would say, set the stage for our current set of problems.  Did you see it coming?  Some of us did.  

So even if – for example – putting an end or even attempting to put an end to USAID is heinous and stupid, the liberal use of drone strikes to “combat terrorism” authorized by a recent president who I did vote for and generally liked very much could also be considered heinous and stupid.  That’s not to make light of anything that’s happening now.  But it is to say that if you’ve been looking closely, even the folks you think are the good guys may have been up to some pretty bad shit.

So I want to suggest that maybe things are extra-bad right now – and frankly, there are many days when it definitely seems that way to me – it may also be true that the world is and has always been full of horrors.  And wonders!  I’m not saying it’s all bad and we’re completely fucked and we should all just crawl into a hole and give up and die.  No.  But I do want to acknowledge that things that I consider really unjust and really horrific and really awful are happening all over the place, all the time, even if they never hit the headlines or our social media feeds.  

Just for example, when the stuff in Ukraine started, a certain someone I know got very upset about the plight of the Ukrainians, and talked ad infinitum, ad nauseum, about the Ukrainian’s bravery and suffering.  And finally I got fed up and I said, well how do you feel about what’s happening in Sudan?  And this person’s response was, what’s happening in Sudan?  And frankly, I wouldn’t have been totally shocked if this person had instead asked, what IS Sudan?

My point here is that depending on the level and scope of our awareness, we’re always going to see things happening in the world that we could reasonably consider quite problematic, and quite difficult to behold.  These things might not be happening in our front yard, but as our good friend John Donne told us long ago, never ask for whom the bell tolls.  It tolls for thee.  Sidenote: if you have never read For Whom the Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway, I recommend it.  Especially in this moment in history.  And I equally recommend Spain in Our Hearts, by Adam Hochshield.  Both books are about the Spanish Civil War, the former is fictional and the latter is historical, and in addition to being lovely treatments of the past, they also speak to our current political moment and to the big question of how we can learn how to exist in a world full of horrors without being consumed by its horrors.

And this is important to consider, because the bell is always tolling.  And if we are at all aware of the terrible things that are going on in the world, we’ve gotta figure out how to relate to the parade of horrors without being consumed by grief or rage or terror or overwhelm or anger.  

Because if we let ourselves get sucked into the pit of despair, first of all, it feels terrible, and second of all, it doesn’t do us any good.  Feeling awful when we get sucked into a doom spiral is bad enough in and of itself, but when we let this happen, we literally aren’t able to do anything to address whatever problems we’re concerned about.  It’s pretty hard to make positive changes in the world around us if we become debilitated by our awareness of the various atrocities, large and small, occurring on planet earth.  

So HOW do we stay aware of what’s going on, without getting bogged down by all of the atrocities of life on planet earth, large and small?  This is a big question, I am not even going to attempt to provide a comprehensive take on my answer to this question.  If you want to work with me one-on-one, we can have long deep talks about this, and the personal practices that I employ to stay sane while living in a world where things that trouble me deeply happen all the time.  

But I will share what I think is one very important piece of the answer.  And that is this: be willing to take responsibility for what you have the power to change or control.  Be willing to do your karma.  Be willing to take care of the business that has landed in your lap.  Be willing to step up to the tasks in front of you.  

What does any of that mean, in practical terms?  It can mean a lot of things.  Just for starters, it can mean learning where to draw the line between keeping yourself informed about what’s going on in the world, and inundating yourself with information you find overwhelming and depressing.  If you are spending time doom-scrolling, and you aren’t doing anything useful with the information you get from your doom-scrolling, it might be time to make some changes in your behavior.  

Sure, you still might want to consume some news, but you might want to do it differently, and you might want to start doing other things too, or instead.  Some of us think it’s very virtuous to be hyper-aware of what’s going on in the world, just for the sake of knowing what’s going on in the world.  And I certainly understand this perspective – I value awareness of what’s going on in the world, to an extent.  But I also think there are good reasons to be really conscious of what we do with all of the knowledge we amass.  And if you’re sitting around consuming information about what’s going on in the world and you’re getting overwhelmed but you aren’t doing anything that might be of service to the world, I think it’s worth questioning whether or not your awareness of world events, or hyper-awareness of world events, is a good end goal.

And to that effect, taking care of the business that’s landed in your lap can mean deciding to do SOMETHING to contribute in positive ways to your community.  Maybe you can’t stop climate change, single-handedly.  But instead of doom-scrolling and getting depressed about that and crawling into your hidey-hole and crying all day, maybe you can come up with a community resource sharing program that cuts down on the amount of waste you and your neighbors generate.  

Maybe you can’t get in front of a politician you’d like to have a word with, but maybe you can petition your local representatives to invite higher-level politicians to a town-hall meeting.  

Maybe you can’t help ALL of the displaced people in the world, but maybe you can help folks in your area who don’t have homes.

And so on and so on.  These are just a few examples.    

Doing anything like this, of course, requires you to believe in the value of your contributions.  And that requires you to trust that all change counts, or to trust that all efforts in what you consider to be the right direction count.  And doing this requires you to get out of all-or-nothing thinking.  We so often indulge in thinking that everything is either terrible, or everything is fine.  We so often indulge in thinking that we can either save the world single-handedly, or that nothing we do matters.  But I want to suggest that that’s never the case.  Meaning, we can never save the world single-handedly - sorry not sorry - and, it’s never true that nothing we do matters.  For some of us, it’s really hard to inhabit a middle ground, where we recognize BOTH the largeness and the smallness of our actions, or our importance, but I want to suggest that that’s where we may find more peace and empowerment.

The Rabbi Tarfon is quoted as saying something that goes like this: it is not your part to finish the task, yet neither are you free to desist from it.  Sometimes the quote shows up as, “Do not be daunted by the enormity of the world’s grief.  Do justly, now.  Love mercy, now.  Walk humbly, now.  You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it.”

So yes, the world may be a mess – in some ways, anyway – but don’t let that be a reason to crumble.  Also, you may find that making a contribution to creating the kind of world you want to inhabit is a balm against hopelessness and despair and fear and anger and indignation.  Doesn’t solve all the problems, but it usually feels a hell of a lot better to do something than to do nothing.

We can also practice, as the Italian social theorist Antonio Gramsci suggested, pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.  Rather than saying, “Oh my god, this is just so awful!  How can I possibly stand this?  This is just too messed up for me to even begin to deal with,” we can be ruthlessly realistic about the present, and ruthlessly optimistic about the future.  That’s a line from the book Good to Great, and it’s a different way of thinking about pessimism of the intellect and optimism of the will.  It’s a way of saying, okay, I may not like the way things are, but I’m going to have faith in a better future, and I’m going to believe in my capacity to play a part in creating it.  

Now, here’s the thing.  In order to play a part in creating a better future, it really helps to have your own poop in a scoop.  Doing your own karma and taking responsibility for what you have the power to control also includes taking responsibility for yourself, and your personal life.  It’s pretty hard to contribute to the greater good if you are suffering significantly.  Now, I know darn well that a lot of people try to save the world in an attempt to avoid their own personal suffering.  I’ve seen it a thousand times, and maybe you have, too.  I’ve seen a lot of people martyr themselves in the name of “doing good” in the world.  

My perspective is that that will only get you so far.  Sure, you might do some good as you try to save the world in an attempt to avoid your own suffering.  But sooner or later, the buck will stop.  As our friend Ram Dass says, the only thing we ever really have to offer another being is our own state of being.  So I want to suggest that dealing with the microcosm of you is very important if you want to be of service to the macrocosm, and I want to suggest that dealing with the microcosm of you IS an act of service to the macrocosm.  That’s not an argument for a lifetime of navel-gazing.  It IS an argument for the importance of dealing with major pieces of life business that may be jamming up your gears.

So, if you’ve been thinking that your infidelity situation doesn’t really matter in the face of the world’s bigger problems, I want to encourage you to reconsider.  If you think that you can’t possibly find the will to deal with your infidelity situation in the face of being totally overwhelmed by the enormity of the world’s suffering, I want to encourage you to consider that dealing with your own business actually does matter, and matters quite a lot.

Also, please consider that you not dealing with your infidelity situation isn’t going to stop any wars, or change any laws, or slow climate change.  When we tell ourselves that our personal challenges are miniscule in comparison to the challenges facing the world, what usually happens is, we stew about the state of the world, we stew about our own personal difficulties, and we don’t do much to improve ANYTHING.  Not in our personal lives, and not in the world around us.

And it might sound really obvious when I say it like this, but this just doesn’t do anybody any good.  Stewing in our own juices doesn’t help us, it doesn’t help the people we’re close to, it doesn’t help make our infidelity situations any less fraught, and it doesn’t help the world.

But sometimes it’s hard to see that when we’re stuck in a deep dark hole of doom and gloom and worry.  When it seems like everything in the world is totally fucked, it can be really easy to get paralyzed by the fear that there just isn’t much point to anything.

And this just clogs up the gears of the whole machine, personally and collectively.  When we as individuals aren’t stepping up to the plate and dealing with whatever life business we need to deal with, our lives get jammed up.  And when lots of us don’t step up to the plate and deal with the personal stuff that’s slowing us down, we get collectively jammed up.

And that matters!  That has real consequences.

If you want to do things that have a big impact on the world, fantastic.  If you see big problems out there that you want to help solve, I love that.  But it’s a lot easier to do those things when your personal life is in decent working order.  It’s a lot easier to be of service to others when you are doing reasonably okay yourself.  I’m not saying you have to reach total enlightenment in order to be helpful in the world.  I’m not saying you have to have a handle on every single challenge you’re grappling with in order to do things for others instead of focusing on cleaning up your own stuff.  But attending to your own business in a reasonably conscious and diligent way sure does help if you want to make changes beyond the realm of your own personal business.

Deal with what has come into your life to be dealt with.  Address the challenges that have presented themselves to you.  That’s what I mean when I say, do your own karma.  Sometimes when we think about karma we think about what we might have done to DESERVE or invite whatever problems we’re currently grappling with, but I don’t think that’s very helpful.  What IS helpful is to be willing to deal with the thing, whatever it is!  WHY it came to you may not matter, and it may not ever be possible to ascertain!  If your house is on fire, put out the fire.  And then maybe go do something about climate change.  But put out the fire that is destroying your house, first.  Or evacuate, if that’s more appropriate.  You get the idea.  

So all of this is to say, deal with your infidelity situation, for goodness’ sake!  Whether that means you work towards bringing it to what you consider a resolution, or whether you that means you learn how to navigate the situation differently as it continues, DO IT.  You being at ease in your own life matters.  You living in a way that you are okay with matters.  You taking responsibility for attending to your challenges and predicaments matters.  It matters for your own experience of being alive, of course.  The whole point of dealing with your infidelity situation in a way that you feel good about is for you to be able to have a love live/sex life/relationship life that you ENJOY – and to have enough bandwidth left over for the rest of your life, too.  Being totally consumed by the drama and delights and difficulties of an infidelity situation can be really fun for a while, I get it.  But there may come a time when you prefer to simplify your life and enjoy it – rather than continue to get tossed around by all your drama.

And when you are living a life that you enjoy, or at least are at peace with, you are so much more available to engage with the world in a way that you enjoy and are proud of.  And that just might include doing something to make a dent in what you consider to be the world’s most pressing problems.

So if you are ready to start dealing with your infidelity situation differently, if you are ready for change, let’s get to work.  There are two ways you can have me as your coach.  You can enroll in my online course, You’re Not the Only One, in which you get videos of me teaching you stuff that I do not share on the podcast, and assignments that will help you apply what I teach to the specifics of your own life.  If you love listening to me talk on the podcast, you will love watching me on video, coming atcha from my office.  In my teaching videos, I smile, I make funny faces, and I even talk about assholes.  No joke.  To enroll in You’re Not the Only One, go to my website, mariemurphyphd.com.  It will only take you a minute or two to enroll in the course, and once you do, you’ll get access to all of the materials immediately, and you’ll get to keep them forever, or for as long as the course exists, which should be for a very long time, barring all of the usual unforeseeable disasters.

Or we can work together one-on-one via Zoom.  When we work together one-on-one, our work is consistent, rigorous, and intimate.  If you want my personalized attention, and my delightful combination of radical compassion and no-bullshit tough love, schedule yourself an introductory coaching session with me.  You can do that through my website, too – mariemurphyphd.com.

All right everyone!  Thank you all so much for listening.  Bye for now.