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An Interview with Dr. Helene

You call this a "self-acceptance," not a "self-improvement" book. Why?

Because women are already trying to improve themselves all the time. Women today are being pulled in all directions, trying more than ever to be all things to all people. Faced with all this pressure, women keep trying harder and harder to live up to their own and everyone else’s expectations, and when they inevitably can't do it, they blame themselves.

I think women today are encouraged to live up to impossibly high expectations to look good, feel good, and have a perfect life. And when they come to me, they want to get rid of what they think is wrong with them, they want to get rid of the feelings that are bothering them. What they need to do is almost counter-intuitive -- they need to accept themselves as they are, and accept those feelings, because those feelings are going to lead them back to their true selves.

But why is this new? Haven’t we all been told these days that we’re supposed to accept and love ourselves?

Yes, we've all been told that, but no one ever explains how to do it. And I don’t think people really believe it. I think the message people actually hear is, "Love and accept yourself -- and you’ll love and accept yourself a lot better if you just lose 10 pounds." Or if you stop being angry, or if you start being more assertive, or if you wear the right kind of makeup, or if you become more organized. Self-acceptance then loses all meaning.

What self-acceptance really means is not dividing yourself up into "good’ and "bad" parts of you. Your feelings and thoughts have reasons for being there. The secret is learning how to listen non-judgmentally to yourself so you find out what those reasons really are.

A dozen times a day, without even realizing it, people talk themselves out of what they really think and feel and substitute it with what they think they should think and feel. It’s all these little denials of what you truly think and feel, minute by minute and day by day, that become big feelings of being separate and disconnected from yourself.

Why is this important to women?

Because women are trained to put aside what they think and feel in order to take care of others.

Hasn’t that changed?

I wish that were true, but unfortunately, I’ve helped more than a thousand women, and I don’t see much change yet. There’s this myth that because women aren't been told anymore that their only place is in the home, that all these problems are over. But what I see is that women are still living out of an inner legacy, passed down from generations of women's experiences, that tells them to mold, accommodate and serve others at their own expense.

I've seen career women, for example, who can spend an hour telling me about what their husbands want or what their kids need, but are totally stumped if I ask them what they want or need. And young women -- who grew up being taught that they were equal to men and can do anything a man can do -- but who still think they have to pretend to like everything their boyfriend likes. One young woman told me she stopped watching Jeopardy with her boyfriend because she knew more of the answers than he did, and she didn't want him to feel bad! This is how women lose themselves, little by little.

Also, the truth is, women are relational. It’s very important to them to tend to their relationships, and to care for and nurture the people they love. I don’t think there are many women who’d want to change that about themselves. I certainly wouldn’t change that about myself. But because relationships are so important to women, it’s easy for women to get pulled into responding to others so much, they lose touch with their own direction.

How do women get themselves back?

Women need to learn how to pay compassionate attention to what’s really true for them -- to what they know, what they sense, what they feel, what they want. They need to amplify their own inner voices, so that they Instead of talking yourself out of what you think, feel and want, and telling yourself how you should be different, let yourself be, let yourself feel what's true for you right now. What people don't know is that feelings, if you allow and accept them and aren't trying to fix them or change them, pass through you very quickly -- usually in ten minutes or less. Not only that, they change, and they teach you something you really need to know about yourself. But if you keep pushing away what's really true for you, it gets stuck and stays the same. People can spend literally years in an exhausting and ultimately futile effort to avoid their feelings.

But how does this work? Doesn't paying attention to bad feelings make them worse?

It's all about validation. Validation is so important to women. When someone validates something that you're sensing, or feeling, or validates a dream you have, it is so empowering. Think back in your life to someone who really took seriously how you felt, or what you wanted, and made you feel that it mattered. I bet that person was a very important influence in your life. That person helped you bloom.

The lesson I try to teach is, you can validate yourself. You can honor your own feelings and your own wants in the same way. You can really pay attention to your feelings, even difficult ones, without having them overwhelm you. You don’t have to immediately change your life and follow whatever your inner self tells you. What your inner self wants is to be heard, really heard. If you learn to validate your inner self, you’ll start to feel better and be more in touch with who you really are.

Can you give me an example?

I had a client who was a minister for a fairly large congregation. She looked so good, she was so nice, so caring, so conscientious, sometimes I felt like she was trying to take care of me! But one day, after a particularly stressful week, she finally let go. "The truth is, I’m exhausted," she said. "There’s a big empty space in my heart. I smile, and I smile, and I smile, and nobody knows I don’t feel good inside. Not even my husband." And she just cried, quietly, and I sat with her. I just kept her company, I didn’t try to change her or make her feel better. The next week, she told me, "I feel alive again. I talk all the time to my congregation about love. But this week, my stepson ran up to me and said, ‘I love you’ and for the first time, I felt it." Once she left herself feel her sadness, she was able to feel joy.

You also talk in the book about "outside voices." What are those?

There are two kinds. The first are all the outside influences in your life. Your mother. Your husband. The media. These are all the voices in your head of other people that get so loud, you no longer can hear what's coming from inside you. Women have a lot of these, because they're so motivated by connections and relationships. They’re very permeable to what other people think, feel or need from them. For example, one divorced woman told me that, even though she always kept her own opinions, she realized that when she was still married she filtered everything she thought and felt through the filter of "What would Richard think?"

The second kind are all the voices in your head that tell you what's wrong with you and what you should change. These can be very powerful. They can get really intense, for example, when you're trying to make a big, important change in your life. Suddenly you can have all these voices in your head telling you that you're crazy, who do you think you are, how can you do something like this...

What can you do about these?

With the first kind, you can "separate out" those voices from your own. I had one woman tell me that "just to figure out what I personally think about anything, I have to climb over a whole group of people inside me." So one technique I use is to tell women to "send those voices out of the room." Imagine that those people and their opinions have temporarily left your mind, and then notice what you think and feel just for yourself. Then, once you've determined that, if you want, you can imaginatively "invite" those people back, and see if you want to incorporate their opinions into your own. But now, you're clear about what's true for you.

With the second kind of outside voices, realize that, although they often talk to you in very judgmental, scary ways, they're actually trying to protect you. They're very scared parts of you that are afraid that if you do what you're thinking of doing, something awful is going to happen. So, while this may sound very odd to do, you can actually talk to this part of yourself. You can tell those outside voices that you appreciate what they're trying to do, that they're just trying to protect you, and you know they must be scared. And they'll get quieter.

How does all of this apply to relationships?

Women tend, even these days, to give themselves away in their relationships. Very subtly, they start to mold themselves around what they think the guy would like, and start to change their life plans to better fit into the life plans of the man they’re with. Not just traditional women do this either. I had a client, a very smart young woman, who made more money than her husband did. But she moved for his work, she helped him with his business while she ignored her own career, and she even stopped seeing her friends very much because he was less sociable. By the time she saw me, she was really unhappy. She said to me, "I believe marriage is a team effort." I told her, "You’re absolutely right. But is he on your team, too?"

What can women do about this?

I believe very strongly that the most important question a woman should ask herself when she’s becoming involved in a relationship, and as soon as she possibly can, is "Do I like the ‘me’ that I am with this person?" This is a far more important question than "Do I love him?" And it’s really not the same as, "Does he make me feel loved?" or "Does he make me feel special?" or even "Does he make me feel good about myself?" It’s really about the qualities that being with him brings out in you. If you feel comfortable in your own skin, if you feel like you’re being more of whatever qualities you most enjoy about yourself, then you know you’re on to something good. Conversely, if you notice that you like yourself less when you’re with somebody, then no matter how much you think you love him, or he says he loves you, something’s not going right.

Why do so many women get caught up in relationships that are unsatisfying to them?

Again, I think it’s because of how important relationships are to most women. Both men and women, of course, have a drive toward attachment. But the difference is that, no matter how head-over-heels they get, it’s very rare for men to define themselves in terms of the relationship. But many women, as soon as they get attached, begin to feel that there’s no separation between themselves and the relationship they’re in. Also, men don’t offer to change themselves for the relationship. But women do it all the time.

What can women do differently?

One of the keys is to remember to be self-oriented in your relationship. That’s not being selfish. It means staying centered, making yourself the starting point, not your partner.

This sounds fine for relationships that are just starting out, but what about long-term relationships? I think a lot of women will say, "It’s too late. I’ve already given myself away."

Of course, relationships fall into patterns. And there are many real-life situations where women don’t feel they have much power. If a woman has little kids and not working outside the home, or even if she is, that can be a tough situation for her to exert her power.

What I see happening is that women want and deserve validation from their spouses, and when they don’t get it, they experience a kind of split inside themselves, where they swing from being really nice to getting very angry at their spouses, but not very effectively.

Yet I’ve actually noticed that many times, women hold back more than they need to, often because men react negatively to women’s emotional intensity. Therefore, I often advise women to calm down, but don’t back down. In other words, calm down the emotional intensity, but don’t let go of what you want. Men are a lot more afraid of women’s feelings than they let on. One key is to remember that you’re not just trying to express your feelings – you’re trying to get him to understand and really hear you.

How can you get him to do that?

One way is what I call "the power of positive wanting." It’s saying what you want in a way that makes him more likely to want to give it to you. You say what you’re disappointed about, and then you say exactly what you really want, and then you tell him the good thing that will happen if he comes through – that you’ll feel so much happier, that you’ll feel closer to him, whatever it is. Of course, you can’t change anybody, and no woman is ever responsible for a man’s bad behavior. But healthy, normal men really do want their wives or girlfriends to feel close to them and feel good about them. When you tell your husband or boyfriend that it’s possible and exactly how he can make you feel closer to him and better about him, chances are he’ll respond – not always but more often than you may think. There’s a lot of power in being very clear and strong about what you want.

What can men learn from this? What can they do to help their wives and girlfriends get back in touch with themselves and feel better?

If there's one thing I can tell men to do, it's validate your spouse’s or girlfriend’s thoughts and feelings. Validation is better than chocolate! If you appreciate that she has a different perspective than you, and honor her feelings, and not try to fix her or talk her out of what she feels, you'll get so many benefits. Remember that you wouldn’t want her to be just like you! If you make the effort to listen and understand how she feels from her point of view, and tell her, "Yeah, I can really understand why you’d feel that way" or support her to do things for herself, you will be rewarded a hundredfold.

Any final tips you can offer?

Rather than spend a lot of energy on fixing what you think is wrong with you, follow your small urges, those that have the most juice for you , that make you feel more alive and float your boat. Acknowledge your feelings, especially those that come back and back again and again, and hear them out with compassion, because they’re trying your life forward. If you do these two things, you’ll start to re-connect with yourself, you’ll start to feel more whole.