Why don't you just tell me the name of the movie you've selected?

I love movies. I want to start a movie club. The problem, apparently, is that movies (the cinematic arts, to the high-brow among us) are for dummies, the uncultured and uncivilized.

Mark Eaton. Uniting professional sports and the Theory of Evolution since 1982.

Whereas book clubs and literature are for the more refined among us (print books for the truly intellectual, no e-readers).

And here, my friend, is to your nude-colored turtleneck. mmyes. 

The truth is, I can't remember half of what I read in books. I get the main gist (Tom Sawyer got some kids to paint a fence...got it). But if you ask me to discuss the literary nuances and the subtle societal undertones of the story, I got nothing. I can do that with movies, though. I can talk about the depth of the characters or why the director and cinematographers chose to film the way they did. So, when I'm invited to a book club, I offer instead to start a movie club. No one ever takes me up on it. Probably because they know as well as I do every movie club would turn into this:

If you look at this picture from a distance, it looks like Yanni.

Because I love movies, I have Netflix. I've gotten frustrated from time to time with Netflix. I'm not sure they really care about my feelings. Netflix asks me to rate movies I have seen. Then, based on those ratings, they make recommendations to me. For example,

Rob, based on your interest in:

What this book presupposes is...maybe he didn't?

We recommend:

Like watching an epileptic seizure.

Clearly, Netflix just doesn't get me (or maybe they really do get me and Yo Gabba Gabba has a deeper meaning than I've ever considered). Either they are basing their assumptions (making an ass out of U and Mptions) on one small part of something I said, or they aren't even listening to me. I guess a third possibility is that their movie selection is so poor that Yo Gabba Gabba is literally the closest thing they have to The Royal Tenenbaums, in which case, I'm in the wrong line. (I can't rule out the possibility that I'm not being really open and honest with them, but we'll save that for another blerg.)

I've noticed in my time doing therapy that Netflix may not be the only poor communicator out there. I was in the kitchen with my wife the other day and she was trying to tell me something. As I am an advanced communicator and knew exactly where she was going, I went ahead and tried to finish her sentence for her. I failed, but ever resilient, I gave it another go:

The problem is assuming I know where she is going. I stop listening and fill in the blanks. I have clients who do this all the time. We all do it. Even if we hear the words, we stop listening when we think we got the message and miss the meaning completely. We hear "I want a movie," and we spit out Yo Gabba Gabba.

There are 20,000 book out there about listening for a reason. If we stopped listening for what we are going to say next and really tried to understand someone's meaning, we could have better relationships (and our intimacy with Netflix would skyrocket).

I think it's time for an epileptic seizure.

Rob Porter, Ph.D., LMFT
Marriage and Family Therapist, Austin TX

I Totally Phoned in that Dennis Quaid Movie

I think, as a society, we may have underestimated the versatility of leggings for men. We all know they are great for a night on the town and perfect for professional business meetings, but what about the more elegant affairs? 

Welcome to my Sophomore Slump. It's best to lower all expectations now. Let's face it, my first post was amazing. There is nowhere to go from here except Mind blowin', the aptly named second album of Caucasian Icon Vanilla Ice (thank goodness he left off the 'g' or it never would have sold):

We forced his hand to create musical (and lyrical) genius equal to "Havin' a Roni."

Like so many before me, I am using Rob Van Winkle to soften the blow and lower expectations for this, my second blogpost. So, without further ado, I blerg. 

I've had a problem with expectations since the 8th grade PE with Coach Rock. Our class was rotating through sports and had just wrapped up softball, where I really shined. I was catching everything. I was pulling Derek Jeter's into the stands. I was eating onions; I was spotting dimes.

Then came basketball. There were some who felt this was not my strong suit.

I am nothing if not meticulous about form.

But I knew that I was a natural athlete. Just because I was incredibly handsome and witty did not mean I was not more than accomplished on the b-ball court (that's what we basketballer athletes call basketball). Coach Rock had us running some layup drills. I was on fire. I was delicately, yet deliberately guiding the ball to the hoop. I was so on fire, in fact, that Coach Rock asked me to demonstrate the proper form, as he had just witnessed what I can only assume to be perfection. 

I was a little overwhelmed. The whole class was going to be taking notes from me on how to masterfully layup a basketball. I took a deep breath and gathered my thoughts. Focus. Poise. Athleticism. I backed up and released the graceful gazelle inside of me:

Reason #347 why the ponytail-unitard combination is widely considered to be magical.

As I...strided? strode? strooded? strooded--there is it. As I strooded toward the hoop, I wondered, "What if I am not as athletically amazing as we all know me to be? What if I'm not the person everyone expects me to be? What if instead of looking like this:

Rob Porter, Ph.D., LMFT. Saving marriages and families one villainous look at a time.

I look like this?":

When you put it like that, I will have that 7th piece of pie.

Suddenly, the weight of expectation hit me. All of the basketball training (all 3 hours of it) I had received previously left me. And instead of looking like this:

That's spot-on for my arms, though.

I looked like this:

Then this:

My ball went in, but it was ugly. Since that time, I've struggled with expectations. I still try, don't get me wrong. I don't shy away from trying to exceed expectations, I just tend to trip and slide eyebrow-first across the finish line. I even do it to myself.

I was running the other morning and set a mental finish line on the street. When I was about 4 feet from my mark, I just stopped and walked. What's wrong with me? I was 4 feet away. Just run one more step. Maybe it was fatigue from the many, many miles I had run the day before. Maybe it was mental fatigue from willing myself to go faster than before. Maybe it was the second bowl of Marshmallow Maties I had before the run. Regardless, I quit before the finish line. I had set an expectation for myself and failed to live up to it.

But then something occurred to me as I walked heroically past my finish line. I finished. I didn't run past the line, but I finished. I still crossed the finish line. Sometimes that's not an easy thing to do. If you're like me, you tend to beat yourself up from time to time about not doing something as well as you 'should' have, or maybe for not doing something as well as someone else did, or as well as someone expected. But you still did it. I ran 3 miles that morning (adjusted for inflation). Who cares if I walked the last two steps?

I'm not saying you should stop trying to improve, or that you should never try to live up to expectations. I'm saying, sometimes all you can do is finish. Not finish first, or finish gracefully, but finish. Sometimes we are overwhelmed by too many things...work, relationship, school, kids, anxiety, depression, addiction. Sometimes just getting the ball in the hoop or walking across the finish line should be applauded. If John Travolta can recover from Stayin' Alive to bring us cinematic gems like Hairspray and Battlefield Earth, I can recover from walking across the finish line.

Here's to finishing.

That's the floor of my kitchen in my next house. 

Coach Rock would be proud. Kino Jr. High School Football Rules!

Rob Porter, Ph.D., LMFT
Marriage and Family Therapist, Austin Texas

A Dive into Lake Me

Sometimes I wonder what I am doing in the therapy field. I think I'm a pretty normal guy. I like to watch movies, I go running, I took a modern dance class...you know, normal guy stuff. I don't come from a difficult background (although my mom is Canadian), but it seems like that is a prerequisite for being a therapist. Come from a difficult background...and be weird.

I think I have those pants.

Or, if you are not going to be weird, be overly touchy-feely.

Did that couple just close a business deal?

I'm just the right amount of touchy-feely.

This is where the healing begins...

And I do like to talk about feelings. The truth is, I don't know what else I would do with my life if I wasn't a marriage and family therapist. My brother-in-law is a cop. He was an undercover drug/gang cop and on the SWAT team for years. Really nice guy and a real man's man:

I could never pull off the vest.

One day I was hanging out with my manly brother-in-law. He and a friend of ours (an FBI agent....when did I start hanging out with such cool people?) were swapping manly stories about taking down culpri...felo...bandits. My BIL (that's text-speak for brother-in-law. Yes, you can borrow it) asked if we wanted to see his gun that killed a man. I suddenly became a 5-year old and yelled, 

"Cool...I mean, sure dude, whatever. Who hasn't shot a guy?" 

He pulls the gun out and he and the FBI agent talk about the type of gun. It was like a 68 caliber. The FBI agent holds it up and gets a feel for it. My BIL asks if I want to hold it. 

"Sure," I say as I wonder what emotions my BIL must have felt as he shot a man and how he handles the tears that inevitably still come. I take the gun and hold it up, just like the FBI guy. In my head, I looked sweet. My BIL's reaction indicated I may have looked something more like this:

Many less-experienced gunmen don't realize the ocular cavity is one of the best places to brace for kickback.

So, I may not ever have a moment in my life where I yell, "Put it down!" (for those of you not counting, that is 2 Twin Peaks references in one blog post). But I'm good at what I do. I relate well to people. I'm the kind of guy you want to hang out with, though not necessarily in athletic competitions.

Not all therapists are weirdos (if you are a therapist and you are reading this blog, I don't think you are weird). We don't all hope to become one with the universe and our inner chi. We don't all look like Dr. Jacoby, and none of us want to be Dr. Phil. Most of us, myself included, believe in what we do and try our best to help people.

I think I need a hug.

Rob Porter, Marriage and Family Therapist (not to be confused with Fred Garvin, Male Prostitute)
Austin, TX