I was at the Hollywood Bowl the other night, and in the box next to me was a group of women in their late 20s. Svelte and sophisticated, wine glasses in hand, they appeared to be thoroughly in their element. As one of them held up her phone to take a photo, the two posing in front of the proscenium used their hands to fluff out their hair in preparation for the picture – an unspoken ritual. And automatically, before I could stop it, this thought popped into my head:

“I don’t fluff out my hair before a photo… have I been posing for photos wrong all these years?”

We live in a world that gives us countless conflicting messages about how we’re “supposed” to be. As women, as men, as professionals, as parents, as children, as partners, as friends, as young people, as middle-aged people, as people of a certain skin color, as people in a certain socioeconomic class, and the list goes on. We are taught to strive for “normality” and that anything outside of it is “pathology”.

In the mental health field, we have a book that helps us define pathology called the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual or “DSM”. This Big Book of Diagnosis tells us all the ways that people can be clinically considered broken. Sometimes I wish I could throw the DSM out the window, because when I’m sitting with a person who is in enough pain to have taken the overwhelming and vulnerable step to enter therapy, labels are not what matter.

As a caveat, diagnostic labels can be very helpful to some people. A person who has been through a devastating trauma and doesn’t understand why their entire perception of the world has shifted may find a diagnosis of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder to be immensely reassuring. Someone who was just hospitalized for a manic episode might better understand what they’ve experienced (and be in a better position to get targeted treatment) when they learn about bipolar disorder. By hearing someone say, “I, too, struggle with depression/anxiety,” it can normalize one’s own depression and anxiety, and foster a sense of connection. Non-diagnostic labels can also be healing: for example, a person who has always felt dysphoria in their body might feel incredible relief upon hearing the word “transgender” for the first time.

But most of the clients I see don’t call and say, “I want to work on my bipolar disorder” or “I want help with my body dysmorphic disorder.” Instead, most people tell me in our first call about the pain they feel and the ways in which their troubles impact themselves and those around them. And after 7 years of working with clients of all ages, cultures, socioeconomic classes, and clinical presentations, I’ve developed a guiding principle for this. And it goes as follows:

Rule of Well-Being :

If you aren’t  hurting anyone and you feel good on the inside, you’re probably okay.

Here are some situations where this applies:

  • If you are in a relationship that is quirky and unconventional, but everyone involved is consenting (not coerced) and happy with the situation
  • If you have a body type that isn’t plastered all over magazines and billboards, but you love yourself and feel good about who you are
  • If you are an introvert who would rather stay in and read a book than go out to a noisy club, even though all of your coworkers or friends are more extroverted

Feeling bad about situations like these tends to be more a symptom of messages we’ve received from our families, our communities, and the society in which we live than an indication that we are inherently wrong or broken.

This sounds pretty simple, in theory, and it can be, but it’s also not carte blanche to justify anything you want to do. Let’s dissect this guideline a little bit, because it can be more complicated than the examples above.

Not hurting anyone

When you’re not hurting anyone, it means making decisions that take into consideration the needs of others as well as your own drives and desires. This means not only refraining from injuring anyone physically, but also verbally and emotionally. It’s important to be aware, especially in challenging life situations, it’s easy to be blind to the impact we have on the other people in our lives. As we’ll explore below, this doesn’t mean living in a way that never makes anyone uncomfortable; rather, it means respectfully considering how others will feel in a given situation or interaction.

Feeling good on the inside

The core of this is living authentically, but the road to living authentically can be riddled with pain and sometimes loss. It can require setting and reiterating boundaries, and the process of getting to a place where you “feel good” can, counterintuitively, be a painful one. Everyone has painful moments, but the objective is to get to a place where you can say, “I feel good, most of the time, about who I am and how I spend my time.”

When The Two Parts of the Rule Conflict

Sometimes this feels like a mind-boggling catch-22. There are situations where you simply can’t both feel good on the inside AND avoid hurting the feelings of others. A common example of this is if you decide that in order to live the life you want to live, you need to leave your relationship. Naturally, in that situation, your partner may feel hurt.

So how do you reconcile this? I think what it boils down to is respect – both for yourself and for the people in your life. Relationships ebb and flow, but if you know for certain that you have a foot out the door, it’s more respectful to be honest about your feelings than to spend years trying not to hurt your partner.

A conflict may also be a matter of someone being offended by your identity. Someone who is LGBT may say, “it would kill my mother if I came out.” But ultimately, hiding a huge part of yourself from your family is likely hurting you more than coming out would hurt them.

Sometimes it’s the needs of others that need to take priority, and this is especially true if you have children. For example, you may feel that you simply cannot get along with the other parent of your child, but you need to learn to manage your feelings and interact calmly with the understanding that it can be damaging to a child to hear their divorced parents fighting.

This isn’t simple, and it can be quite a balancing act. All of this can take some work to figure out, but if you’re struggling with something, here are some questions to ask yourself:

  • Am I hurting anyone?
    • If yes, is there a good reason for it?
    • If I need to be hurting someone, am I doing it as respectfully as possible?
  • Do I feel good?
    • If not, is it because I’m being inauthentic or because of messages from other places?
    • Are the things I’m telling myself that make me feel bad true?
    • If I’m living inauthentically, can I take steps to change that?
    • If I hurt because of messages from others, can I challenge those messages in a self-affirming way?
  • If feeling good and not hurting anyone conflict, how can I reconcile that while respecting myself and the other people in my life?