– Giving with Love through Couples Counseling in Nashville, TN

From: How to Love the World.  Poems of Gratitude and Hope.  Edited by James Crews.  2021.  Storey Publishing.

WHEN GIVING IS ALL WE HAVE

by: Alberto Ríos

One river gives

Its journey to the next.

We give because someone gave to us.

We give because nobody gave to us.

We give because giving has changed us.

We give because giving could have changed us.

We have been better for it, We have been wounded by it—

Giving has many faces: It is loud and quiet, 

Big, though small, diamond in wood-nails.

Its story is old, the plot worn and the pages too,

But we read this book, anyway, over and again:

Giving is, first and every time, hand to hand, 

Mine to yours, yours to mine.

You gave me blue and I gave you yellow.

Together we are simple green. You gave me 

What you did not have, and I gave you 

What I had to give-together, we made 

Something greater from the difference.

 

By: Chris Roberts, MACP, LPC-MHSP (Masters of Arts in Counseling and Psychology.  Licensed Professional Counselor with Mental Health Service Provider designation) Two Trees Counseling Nashville.  Relational Psychodynamic Therapy Certified Therapist Trainer and Consultant.

I believe most of us have an ambivalent relationship with giving.  Especially in the hospitality and evangelical nature of the South, we are all taught (most of as, at least) the importance of sacrifice, and giving to others, and putting others first, and being welcoming and kind.  All of these are forms of giving, for sure.  If you grew up going to church at all, you probably know something of the idea of “tithing.”  Tithing, at least the way I was taught, was a guideline for how and where to spend your money.  We were taught to give 10% to the church first.  First, and no matter what.  Then, we were taught to put some percentage of money into savings.  Then pay our bills, then live off the rest.  It’s a wonderful idea and a great structure for teaching kids how to manage their finances.  And having the idea of giving away your money to others first before spending it on yourself is an idealistically benevolent paradigm for thinking about life in general!

Obviously, giving in terms of money is only a small portion of what giving entails.  And yet, if tithing is any representation of how we think about giving in general, then we have a decent starting place of understanding of giving is conceptualized in the human condition.  The problem is, most of us don’t think about giving first, when we think about how to organize our day and our lives.   And I don’t think that is a problem!  The problem occurs when we believe we “should” be giving first in all of our endeavors, but when we look at our daily life, we realize we don’t practice it.  So, it sets up an inherently guilt-induced and self-condemning narrative for how we implicitly live our lives.

DOES COUNSELING IN NASHVILLE, TN ADDRESS THIS ISSUE OF GIVING?

I wouldn’t say that counseling, in general, address this issue of giving.  However, I do believe that most people, if pressed enough, would have some thoughts and reflections about how they manage their own expectations and ideas of giving.  For instance, in areas like: how much time do we spend with our kids?  Or, how often do we visit our grandparents?  Or, how much time do we spend volunteering?  Or, how much pro-bono work do we do?  Or, what are we doing about issues like homelessness, or poverty, or malnutrition?  Or, even more mundanely, when was the last time we delivered a meal to a friend of ours who wasn’t doing well?  Or, even, just called to check in on that friend, solely for the purpose of being there for them and listening attentively to what is going on in their life.

What I mean by an “ambivalent relationship with giving” is that most of us haven’t sat down, with ourselves, to think about how we organize our life around giving.  And because we haven’t sat down to reflect on how we are living our lives in regards to how we are giving, I think we carry around much more guilt and shame and dissonance about how much we are giving.  I bet we all know someone who we want to emulate about they way and amount they give.  I bet we all know someone as well who gives so much, but their spirit doesn’t seem full of joy or lightness that we would expect from someone who gives as much as they do.  And we probably all have multiple examples of people who don’t seem to give anything to anyone, at least anything beyond their normal daily tasks of taking care of the house, paying the bills, and going to work (which, in and of itself, is a foundational, and mostly unacknowledged, form of giving, since we are usually taking care of people other than ourselves in this regard).

CAN A THERAPIST IN TENNESSEE HELP ME WITH MY GUILT OR CONFUSION ABOUT GIVING?

Very rarely does a person come to therapy directly because they are having difficulty processing or dealing with their understanding of giving.  However, as the specific content of why an individual comes to counseling becomes broadened to other areas of their life, there is usually some category of conversation in therapy that has to do with giving.  In this case, giving is usually embedded in the concept of love, and loving, and being loved.  Are we giving enough to our partner, or to our kids, or to our friends, so that the other person feels they are valuable to us?  Are we so self-focused on our own problems and hurts and dilemmas that we don’t make time to care about and listen to and be with those loved ones who are hurting as well?  These all become forms of giving that, I believe, affect us on a daily, if not hourly, basis.

Giving then, becomes about loving and being loved.  There is a lot of conversation these days about self-love and self-care, which essentially is the idea of giving to ourselves.  Giving ourselves a break.  Giving ourselves something that have wanted.  Giving ourselves permission to enjoy some momentary pleasure that brings joy and a spark to our lives.  These things MUST happen!  And they are a form of giving!  A licensed professional counselor in Tennessee can help us identify the areas where we are lacking in giving to ourselves, or in giving to others.  A good counselor knows that, at the end of the day, the whole purpose of counseling rests on the foundation of love.  And all of the thousands of conversations a counselor can have each week, each one of those conversations is just an avenue to attend to the idea of loving and being loved.  Freud even said it himself that the entire basis of psychoanalysis is grounded in love.

HOW DO I FIND A COUNSELOR IN NASHVILLE, TN FOR THIS ISSUE?

Chris Roberts at Two Trees Counseling Nashville has been working with individuals and couples for over 15 years, and would love to talk with you!  Chris has a private practice in Nashville, TN located on Music Row close to Belmont’s and Vanderbilt’s campuses.  Chris will be able to help you decide if he is a good fit for you, or to direct you to other resources or therapists that may better meet your needs.  Chris can be reached at: chris@nashvillecounselor.net, or (615) 800-9260.