The Ambiguity of “And”

As a therapist I try to pay attention to the particular words my clients choose in order to express themselves and describe their situation. I do this in part to find common language we can communicate with, in part to better understand their experience of their situation, and in part to notice themes or recurring words and phrases that play a role in their experience.

The stories we tell ourselves about ourselves, about others, and about the world around us play a huge role in how we experience ourselves, others, and the world. And so, noticing the words we use to tell our stories gives us the chance to learn about how we experience the world, as well as to play with new words that may change our experience.

There are two words that I hear all the time (they’re everyday words) that I think can come with their own very different philosophies depending on how they’re used, and so can show us some of the assumptions we may be navigating life with. These are the words “and” and “but”.

“But”

One place that I listen for the word “but” is when a client is describing different aspects of their experience, whether different feelings, thoughts, choices, actions. 

There is this feeling, but then there’s this other feeling. I think this, but then I think that. I want to do option one, but I also want to do option two. I find myself doing this, but I also find myself doing that.

The “but” often plays a role of imbalancing the two things being described. Whatever comes after the “but” seems to weigh a bit more than what comes before it, or get a kind of emphasis, or even invalidate what comes before it.

This sort of “but” description also tends to express a kind of frustration, which I have noticed usually sits on top of an assumption that both things being described can’t or shouldn’t be the case. What’s the right way to feel? Which feeling is wrong or invalid? What’s the option I “really” want? Which thought is “true”?

Let’s try an experiment by stepping from the certainty-seeking world of “but” into the ambiguity of “and”.

“And”

Rephrasing the descriptions of differing aspects of ourselves using “and” instead of “but” can play a part in removing the conflict between these different aspects. In fact, we may be the ones introducing the conflict in the first place when we assume that we must be internally consistent or land on the “right” way of being.

The word “and” instead asks us to take on the perspective that we are fundamentally ambiguous, capable of multiple feelings, states, opinions, thoughts, meanings, or wants that don’t align with each other. 

For example, after having lost a family member who was suffering from illness, it is possible to feel sad, angry, relieved, guilty, hopeful, and hopeless without any of these feelings being more true, valid, right, or important than any other. 

Rather than “I feel sad, but I also feel relieved (Which one is right, or What’s wrong with me for feeling this way?)”, the word “and” can lead to a simpler, less conflicted story. “I feel sad, and I feel relieved.” There’s no need for us to weight the feelings differently or resolve the fact that they are different and yet both exist.

As another example, in a relationship each partner may have a different experience of the same situation. “I feel like what happened was no big deal, but for some reason they’re making a big deal about it (Which one is right, or What’s wrong with them for seeing it differently?)”. Again, the word “and” leads us to the fundamental ambiguity of multiple possible experiences or meanings. “For me, what happened feels like no big deal, and for them, what happened feels like a big deal.”

Existential Psychotherapy challenges us to set aside our desire for a certain, unambiguous, right answer or way of being, to “abandon the dream of an inhuman objectivity” as existential philosopher Simone de Beauvoir (1908-1986) puts it in her Ethics of Ambiguity.

Instead of looking for an external unambiguous objective meaning, we are challenged to accept both the responsibility and freedom of making the meaning in our lives through the choices we make, including the meaning we create by the words we choose.

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