Living An Imbalanced Life
Lee Cooper, Ph.D.

 

Lee is now the DCT of the clinical program at Virginia Tech, in addition to remaining clinic Director. Lee Cooper

 

I have heard repeatedly over the past several years including our last APTC annual meeting the concept of a balanced life.  However, when I reflect on my life and some concept of balance I have to embarrassingly admit, I don’t get it.  I always feel somewhat anxious, challenged, on edge, and thus imbalanced.  To me being imbalanced, or tension, is necessary for a productive and meaningful life.  I believe in living an imbalanced life, or adaptive homeostasis.  
    To be sure I have felt relaxed and pleased with myself at times, such as chilling on a sunny beach, finishing my “must to do” list, or having an enjoyable dinner gathering.  I believe these moments are to be savored but are ultimately fleeting and will be soon be followed some type of unsettling issue or problem.  Some forces are always outweighing others so a state of continual balance seems incomprehensible to me.  In my professionally preferred systems theory, the state of continual and evenly balanced homeostasis is actually not a good thing. The result is a non-adaptive and stressed system, and ultimately death.  By adaptive homeostasis, I euphemistically mean a constant, accepted, and relished tension or struggle between light and dark, virtues and demons, structure and chaos, selfish and giving, understanding and clueless, etc.  And most importantly, it is an imbalanced state that leads to change and growth.  To be clear, too much imbalance is not good such as being totally selfish, addicted to drugs, working 100 hours a week, etc.  But growth, learning, or achieving, seems to emerge from some type of deliberately imbalanced state, within a range, including academic pursuits, being married, having children, athletic pursuits, directing a training clinic, etc.  And, I truly believe failure or making mistakes is especially critical, and such mistakes create a clear imbalance. 
    My take on the commonly voiced ‘balance” refrain is; I want to work 9-5 and not weekends, be with my family,
Lee Cooper
        Quotework out on a regular basis, etc.  In some global way this can be true in my experience.  But can you schedule all your work and meetings in that time period, can you not work some weekends if a review or grant proposal is due, do your children always reciprocally respond to you when you’re there, is your body in such shape that are you always motivated to workout, etc.  Life events and interpersonal dynamics are going to intrude on this so-called balanced schedule.  Experiencing such events many times over and going off schedule (or balance), it strikes me that I am still okay, my family still loves me, work still excites me, and everyone around me still seems fine.  As such, I have developed my belief in adaptive homeostasis.  More specifically, a loss of balanced equilibrium that is attributable to an unstable situation in which some forces outweigh others.  And hopefully I adapt, and the better I am at continually adapting, the better I actually feel (and grow) in the long run.
    A couple of years ago I was depressed, psychologically paralyzed.  The reasons were just.  My twin sons left for college after several years as rambunctious adolescents and I had been feeling pretty inadequate as a parent for some time, and my marriage was strained as a result.   I lost a second and exciting job helping a family therapy service begin and grow (terribly ironic given my own family struggles at the time) but then painfully crumble under internal and external pressures.  I needed to create some type of imbalance in order to become alive again.  I challenged myself to do things uncomfortable and unsafe; voicing my opinion to peers and colleagues, politicking for recognition of my teaching and leadership abilities, embracing new technology and approaches in my training clinic, focusing on my wife’s needs and feelings rather than my own dreary inner life, knowing my children rather than just judge them.  Through this purposeful and adaptive imbalancing, and with the support of many, including some dear APTC colleagues, I am now back alive personally and professionally.