By DR. JUDITH COCHE
“Bad news: I am brittle. My body is like a house of cards and I don’t quite know when the whole thing will fall down. I have always experienced my body/my health as fragile and, as a result, I live with a sense of vulnerability.
Good news: Despite that or because of that, I am a happy boy today and most days. I am comfortable with my own vulnerability. As cognitive psychologist Brene Brown says, without vulnerability, there can be no intimacy.”
– Dan Gottlieb, Ph.D.
The long skinny bookstore was never meant to hold 75 people, but they were packed in to hear psychologist Dr. Dan Gottlieb talk. His hair had turned grey since the last time I appeared on his radio show, but this was Dan, the funny guy who literally broke his neck when we were both training family therapists in the 1980s. Dan talked a while in his way of seeming to be talking directly to each person in the audience. After a bit he asked for questions. And I realized that I wanted to ask something but hesitated that it might be too personal to ask in public. As I remembered his horrific accident, my body was flooded with the same level of terror I felt 30+ years ago when I learned that Dan Gottlieb would never walk again. No option for self-care existed for a quadriplegic with young children and when I heard that he was suddenly divorced soon after the accident, I cried inside, wondering how he could possibly make his life work.
In 1984, Dan and I both knew of an upcoming national radio show called “Voices of the Family” and I rejoiced as I learned that he would host it. Over the years, we spoke enough that I knew he was okay despite severe, chronic disability. And indeed, here he was, nearly 40 years later, packing in a crowd of seniors at a tiny Society Hill bookstore. Dan told some of his famous stories of his colostomy leaking on occasion when seeing a client. He reminded us that we all need to be known more than we need to be loved. As I listened, I knew I needed to ask him my important question and I knew the answer would matter. So I stood, alerted him that Judith Coche was speaking and told Dan that I still remembered the moment he learned that he had broken his neck. I asked Dan to tell us his own story. How did he maintain his unbelievable resilience? I sat down and began to scribble notes with a ratty pencil on a folded sheet in my bag, because whatever Dan would say was going to be on target, uplifting and memorable.
Dan said that life taught him that he could manage its daily struggles, yet be a happy man. He emphasized that his resilience had nothing to do with “Dan with a capital D,” but with his genetics, his parents, his training as a psychologist before the accident happened, his good health insurance, his sense of humor, loving others, and his good fortune at being at the right place at the right time. But, he repeated with emphasis, his resilience had nothing to do with “Dan with a capital D.” Dan eloquently stated what is so right: that wisdom and courage can only come after one has fallen from the sky, shaken yourself out after the damage is done and looking around and saying, “Now what?” The opposite of taking ourselves too seriously, our resilience comes from accepting what we have left after a life’s blow and making life sing with the remnants.
A while ago Dan interviewed Karen Revitch, an expert on resilience. Sharing our emotional experience, knowing that others care and will listen to what is painful to endure is the source of ongoing resilience: Dan has successfully constructed the intimacy he needs for resilience by building an audience of listeners who care deeply and listen each week to his stories. In addition to the family he cherishes, and the colleagues who admire his courage and depth, Dan has helped faceless others who have helped him in return. In so doing, Dan has become Dan with a capital D for those who listen to his heart by turning on their radio. The vulnerability he demonstrates publically brings him the intimacy that buoys him. During the second half of his adulthood, Dan has built a circle of compassion that enhances wellbeing for all who tune in regularly. His obvious frailty provides both a framework of strength and an example of the Active Wisdom that enhances aging.
To Consider: Do you have the courage to be vulnerable with those you care about? Are you ever vulnerable in public? What might happen if you did?
To Read: Dan Gottlieb. The Wisdom We are Born With. 2014.
Judith Coche, PhD works with adults in Second Adulthood in her offices in Stone Harbor and Rittenhouse Square, Philadelphia. Find her at www.cochecenter.com.