You are here: Home / Archives for Emotional health

Mom and Dad and the Problem Child

January 8, 2006 by

In some of the families I see, the child is the problem—or so the parents state. When I begin to assess the family, sometimes a much more complex situation is found to exist. In these families there are typically the following elements: a child who has a tremendous amount of power in the family, one parent who is furious with the child, and one parent who is trying to appease the child.

This isn’t the way the trouble began. If one were to reconstruct what went on in the family, it might sound something like this: Mother and father chose to have child who was born the perfect baby. As the years passed, child became more and more independent and increasingly wanted things his/her own way. However, when child didn’t get what he/she wanted, he/she would act in maladaptive ways (yelling, screaming, throwing tantrums, acting defiantly, throwing objects, destroying things in the house, refusing to eat, refusing to sleep, or refusing to get dressed in the morning, etc.) Mother or father would become enraged by the child’s behavior and would react in a non-productive manner (by hitting, yelling, calling the child names, shaming the child publicly, or taking away from the child items, experiences, or privileges in a manner that was very disproportional to the misbehavior.) The other parent would immediately intervene begging or pleading with the parent to please stop, reconsider, and not be so harsh. Once the pattern repeated itself a couple of times, the child began to see this:

I misbehave. One parent (P1) starts to punish. Other parent (P2) rushes in to protect me. Aha. I have an ally. P2 now understands that 1) P1 is unreasonable and 2) I should get whatever it is I want.

As this repeats, P2 begins to forge a coalition with child. “Mommy/Daddy didn’t really mean it. You know how she/he gets.” Child goes to P2 for comfort, complains to P2 about P1 and finds a compassionate ear. In a short time, P1, even attempting the best disciplinary methods, is rendered totally irrelevant. P2 has removed all power from P1 (which in most cases just increases P1’s less than optimal behavior). Meanwhile, child has moved into a collegial relationship with P2 which allows child and P2 to talk about how crazy P1 gets and how we all need to figure out a way to live with him/her and his/her craziness.

By then, P1 has no real options for regaining any authority with the child. P2 doesn’t want to give up the special relationship he/she has with the child, and besides, he/she really believes that P1 is harming the child.

As you might imagine, the relationship between father and mother has deteriorated and neither of them is feeling very happy. All they can really agree on is that there is a problem.

When a family gets into such a situation, often the only thing that will help is the intervention of a professional family therapist. However, if this scenario sounds familiar and you are P2, know that the best thing you can do is to discuss child rearing principles with your spouse at a time and place far away from your children. Establishing a true team approach where both of you are working together and supporting each other in disciplining the child will help the child to settle back into his/her role of child in the family. The child will become disempowered as the tyrant in the family. Parents will regain control and the interpersonal relationship between the parents will improve. Their working together and refusal to be divided will display to the child a new respect of each parent for the other and will enable the child to feel safe in his/her family.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting

Men concentrate; women multi-task

January 4, 2006 by

Several years ago I read an article about the differences between men and women. I generally stay as far away as possible from such articles since I see them as drawing distinctions that may be true of some specific people, but certainly are not true of all men or women.

People who describe men and women as being from two different universes, I think, omit a great deal of data that contradict their thesis. In fact, I think of men and women as people, each one possessing his or her own package of talents, abilities, and, yes. foibles.

But this article talked about men and women being different in terms of their ability to be doing several things at the same time and it pointed to some reportedly reputable research to that effect. The article said that men, by and large, concentrate on the thing they are doing. They may be able to do two things at one time (like walk and chew gum) but add a third, and the man is not able to cope. Women, the article says, naturally multi-task. Of course, this too is an over-simplification and there are large numbers of men who also multi-task. This article also applies to them.

Women, especially married women with children, are constantly doing more than one thing—talking on the phone and preparing a meal and braiding a daughter’s hair. Women have a lot of discrete tasks that they must accomplish, all of which take a lot of time, but some of which involve waiting time. So a woman might be mixing a cake batter when a child starts crying. She goes to comfort the child and the dryer buzzer goes off, so she goes with the child to the dryer as the doorbell rings and on the way to the door drops off the child at a toy box. Once finished at the door, she finishes mixing the cake and just as she is about to pour it into the pan, the telephone rings, but she just continues what she is doing, juggling the telephone, putting away the eggs and the milk, and closing the refrigerator door with her foot.

It’s a necessity for women who are mothers of young children to multi-task. Many women become very good at it. However, it can become an insidious handicap.

Over the years, women learn to be thinking of many things at the very same time, thereby accomplishing many tasks, but that also means that no one task has the advantage of full concentration. After years of multi-tasking, it becomes difficult to be fully present in the task and in the moment.

Time and again, I have met women who are so used to not being able to finish a sentence, that when they are finally able to speak, still can’t finish a sentence. They interrupt themselves mid-thought because another thought is present and it seems more important at the time. In fact, women often train themselves to be inattentive and to have very short attention spans.

What was a functional behavior when children were young becomes maladaptive when the woman is finally able to have uninterrupted adult conversations.

There are ways to identify if this is a problem for you:

1. Do you find yourself forgetting what you are talking about in the middle of a sentence?

2. Do you find yourself searching for familiar words?

3. Do you find yourself wondering what you heard on the news immediately after you heard it?

4. Do your husband and children report your having had conversations with them that you don’t recall?

If the answer to three or more questions is yes, then you might do well to begin teaching yourself to focus and be fully present in what you are doing.

There are several ways to do this. You can start by to turning off the radio or TV if you are reading or working on the computer. When you are speaking, keep your mind on the subject, “looking” ahead a few sentences so that you stay on the right path. You need to understand and believe that you don’t have to accomplish everything at the same time. It’s really OK to wait until you are finished with one thing before starting the next. Remember that what you are saying or doing is important enough to pay attention to. You don’t need to be in a frenetic rush to accomplish everything. After all, if you are truly present in the moment, then you will feel more centered and relaxed and you will live life to its fullest.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Relationships

The Therapist as a House Painter

December 29, 2005 by

Imagine this: you have lived in your home for a few years now. It’s comfortable, it’s familiar, it’s, well, home. But it could be better. It could be more pleasing to the eye. It could be updated. Now that you’ve lived in the home, you know what its flaws are and you know what needs to be fixed and well, you think that painting some of the rooms will make a big difference. You like the way the kitchen looks. It’s just about perfect, but the living room, aside from needing a touch-up on the magnolia colored walls should have one darker wall and you have decided on a terracotta color, and the guest bedroom, you have decided, would be nice in a mellow cantaloupe color. So you call up your local well-recommended painter who you heard about through the sister-in-law of the best friend of your butcher and you ask him to come over to give you an estimate on the two rooms.

He arrives and you ask if he has any experience painting beyond the work he did for your butcher’s best friend’s sister-in-law and he at first is a bit put off that you would even question his skill, but then tells you that he can do things with a paint brush that no one else has ever thought of. And you suppress a random thought about what he might mean, but you decide to proceed to tell him about the job you want him to do.

He looks at the kitchen and says, “Oh yeah, I see that this room really needs to be updated.” You say, “Actually, I like it the way it is.” He says, “You can’t be serious.” You ask him to please follow you into the living room and you tell him what you want done there. He tells you that you are right about a darker color, but really, you need a vibrant lime green. You tell him, no, you have decided on terracotta. He becomes insistent. You finally tell him that you need some time to think things through. Don’t call us; we’ll call you.

Once he leaves, you decide to call another painter because you want him to do for you what YOU want. After all, you are paying and you will be the one who is living with the results.

Now imagine this: You walk into a therapist’s office and you say that you are having a problem with anxiety about a job interview. Your therapist, already feeling threatened by your insistence on knowing what his qualifications are, tells you that you don’t really need to prepare for job interviews; you need to examine your childhood and discover why you have this difficulty with presenting yourself to authority figures and where it was that you missed developing healthy self-esteem.

Well, if you are like most clients, you will not walk out. You will think “he’s the expert and so he must know better.” Well, that is not entirely true. In fact, you are the expert on what’s bothering you and what you think a good solution might be. You are not hiring the therapist to do the job HE wants to do. You are hiring him to do the job YOU need done! He is a house painter. He needs to paint the house the colors YOU want on the walls YOU choose. He is in your employ and you do not have to go forward with his agenda. He needs to respect your agenda and priorities.

I believe that people are the experts on themselves. When they are faced with a challenge that is too difficult for them to face alone, they come for help. But they are the ones who determine what they want and need. And we, the therapists, are the house painters.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Ramblings

We’re on the same team

December 21, 2005 by

I don’t know where it comes from. I don’t know how to stop it. But I can tell you that one of the most powerful forces working against a good marriage is competition. I have observed, over the years, dozens if not hundreds of young couples embroiled in marital discord. He is unhappy with her. She is unhappy with him. He tells me how she is inadequate and she tells me that if I want to really know what inadequate is, I should spend a day with him.

Sometimes they sit there in my office and it seems as if both husband and wife have as the goal for the session to show me how superior they are to their mate.

And I wonder. Why does one have to be right and one wrong? Why can’t both be happy with the other. Sure her hair gets in the drain and her pantyhose are always draped over the shower door when he’s about to run a shower. But look again and you’ll see his socks on the floor and the stubble from his beard in the sink.

Even if the couple doesn’t squabble, their competition can come out in other destructive ways. The most destructive of these is the inability to appreciate the other. After all, if this person is your competitor, how can you enjoy his/her achievements? How can you appreciate when he/she is praised by others. Doesn’t that mean that he/she has scored a point over you? Such partners actually resent the other’s achievements.

At some point in marriage, there needs to be a realization that the two of you are a team. You are working together to make a full and rich life. It is, of course, not a competition, but in fact, a cooperative effort and therefore one’s success is good for the other.

Years ago when women first entered the workforce as professionals in large numbers, there was a phenomenon of men becoming angry and resentful of their wives’ success. The man would feel upstaged by a woman whose earning power exceeded his. When I mentioned the phenomenon to my husband, he commented, “Let’s give it a try!”

It is only when each person begins to see the other as an asset and not a competitor that couples can really become strong and feel secure. When a husband takes pride in his wife’s achievements in her home and professional life and a woman similarly appreciates her husband’s accomplishments in his life, then both feel loved and secure and both can enjoy the fruits of their labor. Praise and appreciation from others feels good. Praise and appreciation from a spouse is a precious gift that only a spouse can give.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Relationships

Oprah

December 18, 2005 by

Here in Israel, we are able to receive television programming from other parts of the world, but often we see the programs weeks, months, or even years later than they originally were broadcast. All of this is to explain that the other day while “riding” a stationary bike at the health club, I saw an Oprah program that is probably not one that has been recently broadcast in the US.

On this program there were several couples that had one thing in common. In each, the husband was gay and had hidden that fact from his wife. In addition, all of the men had had liaisons with males during their marriage. As you might imagine, it was a fascinating show. Oprah asked all of the questions that curious people might want to ask including the most important one: Did the wife suspect anything? The answer in all cases was “no.”

All of this was interesting, perhaps inviting her audience to be voyeuristic, but isn’t that what TV is all about? However, it was where she went with the program that worries me.

She conducted an interview with a gay single man who showed on TV how easy it was to be propositioned over the internet by married gay men. In a period of several minutes, he had received something like five invitations. Then Oprah stated that there are millions of gay men married to women who have no suspicions of it. She said that many of you women in the viewing audience are likely to be married to gay men who are hiding the fact from you. She spoke in a very authoritative manner. People trust her. I was appalled.

Does she not realize what she did? Millions of women watch her, respect her, and buy books and products she recommends. Now, armed with frightening statistics, even assuming they are correct, she tells these women that they might find out that their husbands are gay. How many women from that moment on felt some doubt about their husbands? How many women began to rifle through their husbands’ pockets, wallets, and drawers? How many women began to question their husbands? How many women who used to feel safe and secure in their marriage are now wondering if and when they will find they’ve been duped.

It is one thing to present a problem on television. It is quite another to suggest to people that something over which they have no control and which affects the rest of their lives may be happening behind their back. Inducing paranoia is not healthy for a family or for a society.

Sorry Oprah, this time you made one colossal mistake.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Ramblings, Relationships

Marriage and MAF

December 12, 2005 by

So you are married. Your spouse is the person you chose to spend your life with—a rather big and important decision. He or she does lots of things that make you feel valued and happy and some things that make you feel disappointed or embarrassed. Welcome to the real world!

All of us have married human beings. Human beings tend to be generous, kind, clever, funny, helpful, caring, and sweet. Human beings also are HUMAN. They make mistakes. They aren’t always as compassionate, considerate, or thoughtful as others sometimes wish they were.

So we find fault. We look at the human failings and we are appalled.

“How could you say that if you really love me!”
“What were you thinking!”

And our poor human partner is thinking, “Huh? What did I do now!”

And that is the way that arguments begin. The hurt one needs not just an admission of guilt from the other, but an apology.

Now that is a problem. There is one gender whose apology gene is recessive. It has to come from both its mother and its father and people of that gender who have such a gene are very rare. There are people from the other gender who also have great difficulty coming to grips with their imperfection.

So what is one to do?

There is one strategy that can be used. It is akin to the Cold War strategy of mutually assured destruction. In that case, the threat of destruction to both sides kept each from attacking the other.

In a marriage, what is needed is mutually assured forgiveness (MAF). That is, that as long as each is acting in good faith and means to do the right thing, the other will agree not to dwell on a thoughtless action.

Such a policy can lead to (MAH) mutually assured happiness. Try it; you’ll like it.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life

Words fail me

December 9, 2005 by

Sometimes I know exactly what I want to say and how I want to say it. Sometimes, like now, I have no idea how to convey what is circulating in my brain.

This week I went to see a friend. She had just suffered an unspeakable tragedy. When I saw her I understood in a new way what grief was. Her face was blank and she looked a bit dazed. Her body was bent and still. She looked, most of all, vulnerable. She is, as I have experienced her, a completely unpretentious and “real” person, yet her tragedy had still stripped her of any pretense and she was unable to relate to anything other than her tragedy. She spoke in a gentle, thoughtful voice. She spoke in a deep, reflective manner. She was completely in the moment, totally engaged in her retelling of recent events and her response to them.

I felt for her not only a profound sadness, but a profound respect. She was, during that visit, the purest, holiest soul I have ever encountered.

And that is why I am confused. Because in her pain and sadness, I found the beauty of God’s presence.

May God comfort her among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Spirituality

Being a grownup

December 6, 2005 by

What does it mean to be a grownup?

Let’s start with forgiveness. There are many people who are angry at their mother for not loving them enough when they were young, at their father for expecting too much from them, at their sister for being Daddy’s favorite, at their brother for always being the one to show off, at a friend for failing to be sensitive to their feelings. I could go on and on. People have lots of reasons to be angry with other people. After all, we are stuck in a world of imperfect people, all having needs, all trying to do the best we can, and all often failing to be as kind or sensitive or caring as we could be. And so, if you are in a relationship with someone, a family member or a friend, that other person will inevitably hurt you. And, by the way, you will inevitably hurt him or her. Sometimes we just don’t tune into the implications of our behavior and no one is immune to that failing.

So what do you do with it? Well, old style psychology insisted that you take the hurt to the person, state how the incident affected you, and then hoped that what would ensue would be a recognition of the other that he or she had hurt you and an apology and a reconciliation. That is really a nice idea. It works. In the movies.

In real life, a thoughtless action, an unkind word, ignoring another or pressing one’s point of view too hard are not always thought of by the person who has done these things as something awful. Their responses might be something like,

“I didn’t mean it.”
“You should have known I was kidding.”
“You’re getting all upset over nothing.”
“You’re too sensitive.”
“You always blow things out of proportion.”
“That’s nothing compared to what you did to me.”

And so, that expected resolution frequently doesn’t happen. People who then push and push until there is a resolution, often are disappointed and end up feeling even worse. People who do not pursue it often retain the right to remain angry.

Now let’s look at that anger:
What good is it doing? Well, it’s making one feel like they are evening the score. The underlying message is, “You hurt me. I’ll hurt you. Is that smart? Well, not really. Is hurting someone with whom you have an ongoing relationship a very smart thing? I don’t think so. How then does that impact on others who must be around the two of you? How does it make you feel inside, really, to be angry? Most people don’t feel comfortable when they are angry. Anger increases tension, adds to our stress, and makes ugly lines on our faces while we are still young. Is it worth it? What about being the grownup and simply forgiving and letting it go.

Clients I have worked with have reported feeling physically lighter and able to breathe more deeply once they let go of their anger. They learned to see their kind gesture toward to others as something that made them themselves better people. They removed the awkwardness of their friends and relatives having to choose sides.

Is it possible to feel close to someone once you have given up the anger? Well, it depends on the person. If the person is just awkward and sometimes really loses it, then probably yes. Probably you can decide that since he or she is a basically good person, that you will try to not become emotional about their behavior in the future. If the person is truly an unpleasant person who you must interact with on a continuing basis such as a family member, then you need to think about how you can guard yourself from becoming emotionally injured by them while at the same time realizing that other people in the family will resent living in a battlefield should you choose not to forgive. Sometimes the greatest gift we can give ourselves and others is forgiveness. And that is part of being a grownup.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Relationships, Spirituality

Messages in a tube

December 3, 2005 by

On Thursday I began to think about writing an entry on photographs. I had in mind a particular photograph of my older daughter. The piece was to be about how a photo of a little girl is only that. It carries with it no emotion, no context, no meanings. But when I think about the picture, I remember that it was taken in Wiesbaden, Germany, on May 9, the day before her ninth birthday. She was dressed in a pretty dress and had a too big ribbon in her hair. Her look was melancholy.

“Rachel,” my mother said, “Why are you looking sad; we are celebrating your birthday.”

Rachel responded, “I’m sad because I have the chickenpox and my birthday isn’t until tomorrow.”

“But you know why we are celebrating your birthday today,” my mother said.

“Yes,” Rachel replied, “because tomorrow you are going back to America.”

As I remembered the interchange, I too became sad. I felt my daughter’s impending loss of her grandparents for an indeterminate time. I felt my own loss of them from my life.

And that was to be the article, about the difference in perceptions and feelings that people have about their own photographs until…

Yesterday when I was dressing, I took my mother’s locket and put it around my neck and fastened it and had another memory. She was visiting us and wearing the locket. My youngest son, Akiva, asked to see the pictures inside. She opened it up and there were pictures of Ben and Rachel, my two oldest children, her oldest grandchildren. Akiva asked where his picture was. My mother said, “You are right, Kiwi (her nickname for him); I am going to get another locket and put Sammy’s picture and your picture in it.” I am sure she meant to do that, but she never did.

And then this morning, I began to understand what was happening. While riding the stationary bike at the gym on Thursday, I saw a show on the Hallmark station called “The Locket.” It was about a young man whose mother dies and who later forms a connection with an old lady who helps him with his priorities in life. She has a locket with a picture of herself and the man whom she had loved which spurs a story of her lost love. It is through her pictures and films of her life that the pathos of lost love comes through.

I realized that I had been affected on several levels by the film—by the loss of the man’s mother, by the pictures of life gone by, by the locket.

And then I began to think about the fact that at my age I have fairly well-developed defenses. Defenses strengthen as the years go by and very little creeps into the subconscious on it own, yet here I was being affected by a movie I had seen just part of on television while I was doing something else.

And then I began to think of all of the people who think that limiting a child’s viewing of television or movies is unnecessary. How much could it affect them? Well, I am more convinced than ever that it can affect them. The children themselves may not even be aware of the messages that are absorbed, but they are there.

A long time ago I began to think that there are images and concepts that pollute the soul. I still believe that is true. I think that most parents want to protect their children from the truly evil and deranged, from blood and gore, from things that are not ennobling. What I think now is that a bit too much caution is a lot better than not enough. Guard their souls and yours. All of us are vulnerable.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Parenting, Spirituality

Sex and the single baby

November 29, 2005 by

About two weeks ago, I read an article in the New York Times about upscale mothers’ toilet training their babies by about six months of age. The concept seemed a bit odd to me, but they explained that this is done in other countries and that this is very enlightened. Well, I thought, I am by nature rather conservative, so I probably should just owe my negative reaction to my personality rather than the merit of the case.

Last week, I read in the New York Times about upscale mothers teaching their children about sex at age three, reasoning that it is a natural and normal thing and there’s no reason their children shouldn’t be savvy. This one was a bit harder to swallow.

Because toilet training is largely physical, one could argue that it might not change the child’s cognitions or concepts of the world. However, when a child is educated about sexual reproduction at an early age, it is possible that his cognitive universe may be different from one who is not.

Suddenly I had a picture pop into my mind. In college, when I studied the history of music and art, one of the most amusing parts was when our professor showed us slides of paintings that included children. Many of those slides portrayed children as small adults. Their entire bodies were painted in adult proportions, small heads, long arms and legs—they looked like little adults. My professor explained that the art of the time reflected the assumption at the time that children were exactly that: small adults. Children worked long hours just like adults. They were not protected and sheltered from the world; they were part of the world from the time they could stand up and walk.

And then I thought of my own children and their childhoods. Diaper-changing time wasn’t only a physical thing. It was a time for me to interact with the child—to get him or her all clean and fresh and feeling comfortable. I was giving my children the message, “Your needs are important and I am here to provide you with support and love.” My children didn’t learn about human sexuality at three. They learned their bodies were pleasurable by taking baths and being hugged and cuddled. They had their questions answered in an honest and respectful manner. They had a childhood.

Little children are not just small adults. They have fewer cognitive structures and do not assimilate information in the same way as adults. They do not have the ability to think abstractly just as a one month old, no matter how intelligent, cannot walk or talk.

One of the best things about raising children is to watch their natural development—to watch them discover the world, each in their own unique way. Just as they are patient, waving that hand over their face time and again before they finally comprehend that the hand is under their control, we need to have patience to allow them to develop at their own pace.

There are no awards for the first parent on the block who gets their child toilet trained and no awards for having the most-informed-about-sex three year old. Children grow and develop when given love and support and encouragement. There will be plenty of time for achievement and stress when they grow older. For now, let’s let them be children.

Filed Under: Emotional health, Family life, Parenting
« Previous Page
Next Page »