Are you okay RIGHT NOW?

Say I go into the lobby of One-Eighty. I’m going to get a couple to bring them to my office for couples therapy. When I get to the lobby, they are laughing, giggling, and chuckling. Clearly happy. Clearly happy with each other at that moment. So I bring them to my office, and they talk about an argument they had 9 days ago. They get mad at each other in my office about that argument. And they leave my office mad.

Remember, they came in happy, and they left angry.

How would that be good therapy?

When clients leave my office, they should feel better, or at least feel the same, not feel worse.

Now imagine I go to the lobby to get another couple, but this time one of them is on one side of the lobby frowning with folded arms, breathing heavily. The other is on the opposite side of the lobby, crying. That couple has a problem on that day, for that session.

The first couple is okay, right now.

The second couple is not okay, right now.

So the question I’ve come to ask my clients, whether couples or individuals is this:

Are you okay,
right now?

Because if we’re honest with each other, that’s what we want: to be okay right now–

Satisfied with life and ourselves,
not anxious or depressed,
intimately connected with someone…
right now.

The question is, how?

How can we be okay,
and stay okay,
right now?