I have had so many transitions in the past few months and so little down time—but last week after a lovely afternoon with my niece I went for a long walk around a nearby lake. Part way into the walk I began to ponder what I was going to make for dinner but then my thoughts picked up speed, as they often do, careening downhill, gathering momentum from the simple thought of “I could get dinner” to “I could make dinner for the whole week—in fact I could make meatloaves and meatballs and sauce and then not only could I have dinner for the week but I’d also have enough to give my friends for dinner…” I imagined going to the nearby farm store and picking up beautiful ingredients and meal prepping for me and everyone I loved. My mind sped ahead to begin thinking of ingredients and a shopping list.
Lucky for me –the sun was setting and the light on the lake caught my attention, and I stopped to look at the lake and the colors of the clouds. Observing the lake prompted me to observe my thoughts and I started to laugh at myself.
I seem to complicate every idea I have. I get obsessed with what I have come to call my ‘triple word score’ mentality. In the game of Scrabble --there is the ‘triple word score’ where you put down a letter at an intersection of words near the triple word score and get a ton of points for ALL THE WORDS. One or two letters—A TON OF POINTS. And on that walk, I laughed because I realized that I am trying to get the triple word score at everything I do.
Doing two things at once and being rewarded for it was part of my early training as a child care worker in the 80’s. In the residential treatment program I worked in the kids would get extra points toward their reward levels if they ‘used their time well’ and did more than one thing at a time. If they, for example, folded their laundry while watching TV, or worked on a puzzle during quiet time. We had a special acronym for this behavior, GUOT (pronounced gwat) that meant ‘Good Use Of Time.’ As a young adult I took this acronym to heart and taught it to my housemates. We would all joke about doing our bills while watching TV getting extra points for GUOT and my best friend and I still will put on Airpods to talk on the phone to each other so we can clean the kitchen while we talk because, you know, GUOT.
And to be fair there were years in my life (and probably yours too) where GUOT was crucial, and the only way to survive. Years when I was working three jobs, going to graduate school and doing my training for psychology. The rare free hours I had needed to cover a lot of ground and doing three things at once was necessity---so I got a lot of practice at it.
But I may have also come to be addicted to it. Walking around the lake last week I realized I wasn’t doing the ‘triple word score’ because I had to, but because I had come to see that act as a form of ‘good’ or the right way to spend time. There’s an adrenaline rush that comes with that ‘triple word score’—but there’s also a cost.
On the last mile of that walk, I began to wonder: what it would take for me to be content with ‘just one word.’
Practically speaking, I thought, I could start with going to the store on the way home and just getting what I needed for dinner that night. I could be *radical* and even get some of the parts of dinner already prepared.
Which is what I did. I got some arugula, and some already roasted sweet potatoes and chicken, and an orange. And had a wonderful winter salad. Just one meal. No bonus points. And the world continued to spin on its axis.
Healing from trauma I have learned the power of saying just one true thing. The power of being able to admit how you feel in one word, even if that word was ‘lost’ or ‘numb’ –words that seemed to describe the feeling of not having words at all. But even these simple words, one word at a time, allowed me to be found and find myself. As much as I love the ‘triple word score’ –it’s never worked for me in healing, or really for anything I have done or accomplished that mattered to me. It may be that all important things, all things that are close to our heart—all things we love—can only be mended or repaired or built—one word at a time. One conversation at a time. One page at a time. One hour of practice at a time.
The reason I need to keep learning this lesson, or I keep forgetting this lesson is because I make the mistake of thinking that the simplicity of ‘one word’ means it should feel easy or get easier—and it never does. One word is actually always hard. One word is both small enough to hold, and big enough to feel. One word makes it easy enough to start, but then you feel the weight of staying committed. And one word is simple enough to understand so that you become seen and visible—with no place to hide—which is both terrifying and wonderful in equal measure.
© 2025 Gretchen L. Schmelzer, PhD
For more reading about one thing at a time an excerpt from Journey Through Trauma in Spirituality and Health:
