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Explaining Anxiety to Those Who Don’t Get It

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What if.

Imagine you’re walking in a parking lot with your phone in your hand and you cross over a storm drain.  As you step across the grate, you reflexively hold a little tighter to your phone, because you may have the passing thought, “I don’t want to drop my phone down that drain.”  The thought came and went in the space of half a second or so, and as soon as you were back on pavement, you held your phone with a normal grip and didn’t give it another thought as you stepped into the grocery store.

For that split second, you experienced some mild and fleeting “What If,” thinking, as in, “What if I dropped my phone down the drain?” and your thinking dictated your actions (you held the phone a little tighter).  Now imagine if that “what if” thinking didn’t last a split second, but instead it lasted many minutes, or even hours, or even days?  And imagine if the thought wasn’t a mild version of “What if I lost my phone?” but instead was an intense, nervous worry of “Oh my God!  What if I dropped my phone down that drain!?!  That would be terrible!  I might be stranded…my wife might yell at me for being careless…people might think I’m an idiot…I absolutely must not drop my phone because that would be more than I could handle…”

And you knew there was no good reason to think like that.  You knew that it was silly and irrational, but the thought was so intense that you couldn’t shake it, push it out, or laugh it off.  So you just stop walking over storm drains.  Problem solved.

But then you start to think, “What if there is another storm drain that I don’t see?”  “What if I stumble near one and the phone goes flying out of my hand?” So now you avoid shopping there altogether, and you go looking for another store that doesn’t have any grates in their parking lot.  But then another thought flashes into your mind: What if I was so busy looking for storm drains that I hit someone with my car and didn’t realize it?  At first, the thought seems so stupid that you quickly dismiss it, but then it creeps back over and over until you think, “Wait…did…did I hit someone?  Is that why I’m telling myself this?”  So you pull over and check your car for damages, or you circle back to that parking lot to see if an ambulance has arrived to treat an injured pedestrian.

The entire time, there is a part of you that thinks: this is nuts.  This is crazy!  I know I’m being stupid.  But the thoughts are so intense and are becoming more frequent, so soon you just tell yourself that you can’t drive any more and you can’t grocery shop any more so that you don’t have to feel this way.

Now you’re embarrassed.  Someone has to drive you wherever you go and your loved ones have to take on more responsibilities and you feel like a burden.  You feel ashamed and start to judge yourself, calling yourself a weak-minded idiot to think like that.  You know that it makes no sense at all to think this way, but you just can’t seem to think of anything else.

It would be easier if you had surgery, you know?  After all, you can point to a cast or a scar and say, “This is what happened to me,” and people would be more than understanding—they’d be sympathetic and kind.  If you had cancer, people would send meals to your house.  But you have an irrational, intense, nervous worry; people avoid you because they don’t know what to say.

Now you start to ask yourself, “Why is this happening to me?  Why am I thinking this way?  I know that my Grandma used to worry a lot; did I get this from her?”  You start to try to find an explanation for why—and you just can’t.  You spend half your mental energy trying to fight your unwanted thoughts and half trying to figure out, “Why the hell am I like this?”

And then your wife says, “Can’t you just not think that way?  Just think about something else.”  You know: just stop it.  It seems like such a simple thing, after all: just stop thinking a certain way.  Gee—why didn’t I think of that?

Now one or two people who love you start trying to be helpful to you—but nothing helps get rid of your unwanted “What if” thinking.  Some people start to whisper about you behind your back that you’re “just doing it for attention” or that you’ve “always been super-needy.”  You want to scream, “Why on earth would I do this for attention!?!  If I wanted your attention, I’d ask for it!”  You want to say, “You know me.  I was a fairly rational person; why would I suddenly start to act like this if it wasn’t out of my control?”

Now, you’re depressed about how things are.  You’re worried about your worrying.  You might even start to drink a little more or smoke a little more, just to cope.

Spiraling, spiraling, spiraling…all from the most stupidfreakingthought…

What if?

Filed Under: Anxiety Tagged With: ,

Find a Little Victory Each Day

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If you want to lose weight, here’s a simple concept: eat less, exercise more.  Like with most simple things, though, the breakdown occurs in the application.  In other words, go do it.

That’s the hard part, right?  Applying the concepts, going out and doing it, day after day, until the goal has been met, the new habit has been formed, the old you has changed into the new you.

Sometimes we fail because we fail to set realistic goals.  “I’m going to eat boiled chicken and lettuce every day and go to the gym five days a week.”  No, you’re not.  You’re probably going to last about three days and then pig out on pizza.

Sometimes we fail because we fail to see progress.  Whether you’re trying to make changes in your physical health or your mental health or your relationship health, the key to change seems to be consistency.  You gotta put in the repetitions.  One way to keep yourself motivated to put in the reps is to find a little victory every day.

As our default setting, we tend to see more negatives than positives. There’s something in us as humans that focuses more on the things we failed to do or failed to do right and we tend to bother ourselves about those things.

Instead: work on finding a little victory every day.  What did you do right today?  What did you accomplish?  How does that feel—focusing on the success you had, however small?  I think you’ll find that it feels a lot better than beating yourself for your failures.

I did the dishes today.  I got one report done.  I took the steps instead of the elevator.  I said “no” today to one thing.  I chose oil and vinegar instead of ranch.  No success is so small that you can’t accept it for today and build on it for tomorrow.

Filed Under: Grit Tagged With: , , , ,

Just a “STUG”

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His middle name was “Patrick,” and he loved being Irish-American, so as St. Patrick’s Day approaches, I inevitably have been thinking about him more and more.Image result for irish clover

This is our first St. Patrick’s Day without Andrew Patrick Pecosh, who passed away last September.  To be honest, while he certainly valued St. Patrick the man, he didn’t really like what St. Patrick’s Day has become: an excuse for wanton drunkenness while wearing green.

Not much of a drinker, our Andy.  Loved cigarettes, though—and, boy! how he loved food.  The stories I could tell you about his gastronomic exploits!  When I think of my brother, I inevitably think back to times that we shared meals together.  What do you think about when you think of loved ones now lost?  I think about his beautiful blue eyes and his knowledge.  I think about his laughter and his utter lack of materialism.

Kisa Gotami and The Parable of the Mustard Seed—(read it here), Psalm 31 (here), John 11:1-44 (The Raising of Lazarus): they all help when I wish to be centered.  When I’m melancholy and feel like adding to it, it’s Funeral Blues by W. H. Auden (that’s right here) or McCrae’s In Flanders Fields.  In his youth, Andy dreamed of being a pilot (An Irish Airman Foresees His Death); I remember that, as a teen, he had a poster of High Flight by John Gillespie Magee Jr. on his bedroom door.

I know that death comes to us all; I also know that grief is a process, and that process is typically nonlinear.  I’ve taught others about how “adaptation” is the watchword when it comes to living with a profound loss.  Whenever grief that has been buried a bit bubbles up to the surface, we counselors even have a name for that–it’s a STUG reaction: a Sudden, Temporary, Upsurge in Grief.  This, too, shall pass, but it hurts a bit just now.

“Strange, isn’t it?” asked George Bailey’s angel, Clarence, in It’s a Wonderful Life.  “Each man’s life touches so many other lives.  When he isn’t around, he leaves an awful hole, doesn’t he?”

Forgive my use of this forum to share some personal thoughts of grief and loss; I guess I’m just really missing my big brother today.

Filed Under: Grit, Uncategorized Tagged With:

The Most Valuable Life Skill?

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I am—statistically speaking—more than halfway through my life.  And I’ve been a professional counselor now for just shy of 13 years.  I honestly don’t know how many clients I’ve had over that time, or how many hours I’ve spent in sessions, listening to people, hearing their concerns and problems.  Conservatively, I’d estimate that I’ve spent almost 20,000 hours with clients.

The point is this: I’ve been around (professionally speaking). And I have a bit of life experience—not as much as someone in their fifties, but more than someone in their thirties.  And the more that I think about it, the more I believe that the most valuable life skill one can develop is the ability to deal with disappointment in a healthy way.

Oh sure, grit is an extremely important measure of success—and we stress that to our clients.  One could make the argument that relationship or interpersonal skills are essential to a healthy life.  Learning how to achieve balance or healthy boundaries—I get it.  But I submit that developing an ability to handle disappointment—sometimes called frustration tolerance—is an element of all of those things and more.

The tantrums that we throw as children, the defiance that we exhibit as adolescents, the sheer chaos that we bring into our adult relationships—so much of those things stem from frustration intolerance.  Over 2,500 years ago, the Buddha famously said, “Life is all suffering,” and that so much of that suffering comes from “craving.”  To put it in more contemporary terms: we often don’t get what we want, and that can be frustrating.

This has been attested to from different traditions from time immemorial.  The Greek philosophers talked about it.  In their Wisdom books, the ancient Hebrews wrote about the frustrations of desire and the unsatisfactory nature of life.  Jesus—particularly in John’s Gospel—talks about yearning and thirsting.

Ask almost anyone in their eighties to talk about their lives, and they will nearly always describe their past losses, their suffering, their frustrations, with simple dignity and acceptance.  “Well, that’s just the way it goes,” or, evenly simpler, “That’s life,” is what you’ll hear.  They know—they’ve lived.

So frustration—disappointment—is a basic element of life.  There’s no getting around it; there is only getting through it.  Dealing with disappointment, then, is a skill you’d better develop, or else you’re going to have two problems every time you have one: the problem, and your problematic reaction to your problem.

One would think that parents would make “learning how to deal with disappointment” a primary focus of what they teach their children.  Sadly, it too often isn’t.  Many of us in my field (and in the field of education) are not seeing children who have been taught that they often have to adapt to the world; we see kids that have been taught the opposite: the world will adapt to them.  When it inevitably doesn’t, low frustration tolerance leads to problematic or unhealthy behavior.

So, here’s a test: the next time you tell your child “no,” watch to see his or her reaction.  Turn off the Xbox, tell them they can’t go to their friend’s house, make them put up their phones after 9:00, and then see what they do.  Do they sigh and grumble a bit, but then comply?  Good!  Some grumbling and eye-rolling is to be expected, no?  Do they fight you about what you’ve denied them and then ultimately accept it?  Well, that’s not too bad—it happens, of course.  If, when frustrated or disappointed, your kid displays meltdowns, tantrums, or aggressive behavior–over the next few months, you may want to make the focus of your parenting Dealing with Disappointment 101.  It’s a class that they’ll inevitably take–as children or adults. 

Teach frustration tolerance to them now, and watch them fail with grace, succeed with pride, and take frustration in stride.

Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: , ,

10 Words to Change Your Life

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When I was a younger man, I got myself into some trouble now and again.  Don’t let your imaginations run wild; I got into some small town, “You’re twenty-one years old and do some dumb things” kind of trouble, not the “We’re filing charges” kind of trouble.  Still, I may have been on a path toward a darker future if I didn’t wise up.  You can only dodge so many bullets…

I can remember talking to my father the day after I’d gotten into some trouble.  I was lamenting my bad luck as we sat on our porch and I told him what had happened.  “These things always happen to me,” I said, self-pityingly.  “Just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”

My father glanced at me.  “You don’t actually believe that, do you?” he asked.

I looked at him sharply.  “Well, yeah.  What do you mean?” I asked.

“Mike,” he said, “You’ve been making some really poor choices.  Trouble isn’t just finding you; you’re putting yourself in its path.  You’ve got to smarten up and realize that you aren’t just in the wrong place at the wrong time–you’re putting yourself in the wrong place, and it’s never the right time to be in the wrong place.”

I’m doing this to myself.  It’s never the right time to be in the wrong place.  That was a revelation to me at the time, and I wish that I could say it was the last time I made a bad choice, but I was twenty-one, and still had a lot of maturation to do.  It was, though, one of the last times I had a youthful lapse in judgment; my father’s words stayed with me.

You’re doing this to yourself.  That’s the lesson I try to teach young people now that I’m an old man of forty-one.  Stop asking yourself, “Why is the teacher picking on me?” or “How come my parents are so mean?”  It’s not “Why do I have to do it their way?” or “How come these things always happen to me?”

The right question isn’t “why?”  It is, “what?”  As in: “What can I do to make things better for myself?”  In fact, I often tell young people that these are the 10 Magic Words That Can Change Your Life:

What am I doing to make life better for myself?

I understand asking “why?”  I really do.  It’s human to wonder about fate, or karma, or bad luck.  We often are tempted to blame others or our past or the way we were raised.  In my experience, often the best we can ever do is speculate as to the “why” we do what we do.  Instead, isn’t it a better focus of our time and energy to stop focusing on the past and start focusing on what we can do here, today, right now to make things better for ourselves?

When we blame others or our circumstances for our present predicaments, we can feel helpless and hopeless.  When we focus on what we can control–our thoughts, words, and actions–we can feel empowered to take charge of our lives and move in a different direction.  I am not responsible for the things that you think about me–I am responsible for the things that I do and say.  I can’t undo the trouble that I’ve caused, but I can make better decisions in the present.

Don’t spend another minute asking why bad things are happening to you.  

What do you want?  What are you doing to make that happen?

What am I doing to make life better for myself? 

Filed Under: Choices Tagged With: , ,

I Still Clean Toilets for a Living

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In the late spring of 1989, just a few weeks shy of my fourteenth birthday, I got my first paying job.

My neighbor’s son-in-law, Ray, had spotted me at some yard work and asked, “Hey–you looking for a job?” as he drove by in his truck.  It hadn’t even occurred to me that perhaps I was.  “Sure!” I excitedly replied.  Ray worked for a company that provided janitorial services to Phar-Mor, the now long-defunct discount drug store chain. 

“How old are you?” he asked.  I tried to deepen my voice, “I’ll be fourteen in a few weeks,” I told him proudly.  He thought about it for a moment or two.  “Okay,” he said, “We’ll just keep you off the books until you turn fourteen.”   

The work required being picked up by Ray at 5:30 AM to be dropped off at one of the stores scattered throughout southwestern PA.  We covered stores from Greensburg to Swissvale, South Hills to Robinson Township.  A crew of two (or by yourself if the other guy didn’t show) would clean and buff the floors from 7 AM (when the managers arrived to open the store) until 9 AM (when the store opened to the public.)  That’s right kids: not all stores were open 24 hours-a-day back then.

Sometimes we’d get a strip job–wait for it–not what you’re thinking:  the worn wax would need to be stripped from the floor and replaced with new wax.  Such a job required at least a four man crew, and we’d get locked in the store over-night while we swept the floor of debris, threw down warm stripper, scraped the wax up by hand and by a single-disk scrubber, mopped the floor clean, and then applied four coats of new wax by mop.  After all that, we’d run a propane-powered buffer as loud as a jackhammer over the surface of the new wax to bring out a high-buffed shine.

Like most people of a certain age, when I tell teens today about what I did when I was young, they scarce believe it wasn’t illegal child endangerment!  Some scoff that their overprotective parents would never let them do the stuff we did.  “I would get dropped off in East Liberty at 6:30 in the morning with nothing but a propane tank for company while I waited for the manager to arrive and open the store,” I recalled to a young client.

“What if somebody tried to rob or hurt you?” he asked. 

“I guess most of the robbers and kidnappers in East Liberty were either asleep at 6:30 AM or they didn’t have any use for the tall, skinny kid in sweatpants sitting on a propane tank.”

“Did you have a phone?”

“In 1989?  Yeah–they were attached to booths and you had to put money in them to use them.  They were called ‘pay phones.’ Look ’em up.” 

Working on those all-night jobs and on those early mornings taught me a lot about responsibility and hard work; I can still remember the awful smell of the ammonia-based stripper that we used and the callouses on my hands from manning my mop–all for a whopping $3.35 an hour!

Cleaning floors at Phar-Mor wasn’t so bad, though, and Ray was a kind and friendly boss (still one of the best I ever had). His company also cleaned the two area Bally’s Scandinavian fitness clubs (also now long gone).  That was work that I didn’t enjoy.  Vacuuming and sweeping around people doing cardio and dusting weights between people doing sets was drudgery–cleaning locker rooms and the sauna were among my least favorite things.  And then there were the toilets.  Oh, the toilets.

You have to understand that, as a teenager from Brownsville, the South Hills gym-goers seemed fabulously rich and endlessly sophisticated to me, which made it all the more frustrating when they left the toilets in–shall we say–various stages of ill-use.  With apologies to anyone who patronized the male locker room at Bally’s from approximately 1989-1992, “Rich pigs!” is what I’d mutter to myself as I cleaned the row of toilets.   I couldn’t appreciate then the valuable lessons in humility they were unknowingly teaching me; but I did resolve then and there that I would always be fastidious in my use of public restrooms.

I got to thinking of my time as a gym janitor the other day after joining a health club (a gift from my wife–read into that what you will).  I made a point of introducing myself to Dan, the friendly custodian (another resolution of mine from my Bally’s days: be nice to service personnel and never forget that I used to be one!).  I couldn’t help but think of how blessed I am to be able to attend a gym instead of having to clean one.

I went to use the restroom at my office earlier this week, and someone had done something unspeakably vile to the commode.   Looking down at the wretched mess and realizing that the cleaning crew had already come and gone, I knew that, if this thing was going to get clean, only one person was going to do it.  I don’t want this soiled toilet to be a representation of my business.  With breath held and teeth gritted–I cleaned my first public toilet in years.

Gentle reader: life loves circles.  Janitor to gym patrons–gym patron–janitor once again.  Life doesn’t ask how many degrees you hold when life wishes to teach a lesson.  Dirty jobs don’t end just because you have your own business cards.     

Filed Under: Choices, Grit, Hard Work Tagged With: , ,

Lynyrd Skynyrd Was Wrong

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“Play Free Bird!”

It’s been a running joke, almost since the song’s debut in 1974, for some guy to shout out that request, regardless of the musical venue.  I bet Andrea Bocelli hears it at his shows.  I’m embarrassed to admit that I, too, have been “that guy,” and, in all probability, I’ll laugh when some other guy does it again.

Let’s face it: guys love that song.  Some women do, too, of course; but few of them have the strong, primordial bond with the tune that we men have with it.

Maybe it’s the simple, no nonsense lyrics that can evoke bittersweet feelings of wanderlust and relationships that could have been “if only.”  Maybe it’s the monster guitar riff at the end.  It could be nostalgia for a bygone era, a longing for “a simpler time.”  Funny to watch a live recording of the band playing the song in 1977 and see no cell phones in the air, just people enjoying music in the moment…

I think the reason it resonates with men so much is the notion that “this bird cannot change.”  I think that men love to say, “This is who I am, and I ain’t changin’.”  Many, no doubt, are tempted to add to that proclamation, “And if you don’t like it, there’s the door.”

As a marriage counselor, I’ve seen men being their stubbornly worst.  “You knew who I was when you married me” seems, to many men, to be an excuse for almost any boorish behavior that their long-suffering wives thought their husbands would have outgrown years ago.  “This is who I am” is usually code for “Don’t expect me to have grown or evolved as a person–that’s too hard!  It’s easier for me to be who I was when I last really liked me–in my 20’s.”  Most aging men miss their youth; some blame others for the loss of it.

The following is a list of just some of the reasons I’ve seen couples in marriage counseling because that bird you cannot change:

I will not quit the bar.

I will not quit wing night.

I will not take off my muddy boots at the door.

I will not stop parking the motorcycle in the living room.

I will not come home before 4 AM, and I will not stop bringing home drunken friends to continue the party at our house.

I will not ever take the kids to their friends’ houses.

I will not help with housework or with paying the bills.

I will not stop my flirtatious relationships.

Soon enough, almost all of them are once again free as a bird.Flying Bird

The thing is, guys: we can change.  It turns out–we actually can!  It’s just hard.  It can be incredibly hard, and that’s why most of us don’t want to do it, so we instead belt out anthems celebrating our unyielding nature.  Change can be the toughest thing in the world for men, but it is possible!

Sometimes you can make that change on your own; sometimes, you need some professional help, big fella.  Nothing wrong with that.

I’m glad to report that, while I’ve met my share of rigid men, I’ve also met many guys who have worked at it and brought about sustained, significant changes in their lives–and no one came to take his Man Card!

It turns out, if I stay here with you, girl, things can be better than the same.

Filed Under: Divorce, Grit, Marriage, Relationships Tagged With: , , , , , ,

Guaranteeing Success for Your Child

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I first heard of Geoffrey Canada in 2008 when his story was featured on the NPR program, This American Life.  (You can listen to it here.)  His ambitious program to end poverty captured my imagination in its simplicity.

He and his team approached every parent they encountered within a certain area of Harlem and asked them to come to hear how they can make life better for their children.  They approached women pushing strollers and men holding the hands of toddlers and said, “Come to the community center at 9 AM on Saturday morning to learn how you can ensure your child makes it out of Harlem.”

When the parents of these babies and infants and toddlers gathered in the meeting place, Geoffrey Canada looked at them and said, “Who here wants a better life for their children than they have?”  Every hand went up.  “I’m going to show you how you can do that,” he said.  And then he told them the secret:

Read to your children.

Now, if you are reading this blog right now, chances are excellent that you are middle class or upper middle class–and so the notion of reading to your children when they are little isn’t exactly earth-shattering to you.  In fact, you are probably thinking, “Duh!”

But to those lower income families gathered in Harlem, the thought of reading to their children was as foreign as the thought that you shouldn’t yell at them all the time or let them drink Mountain Dew.

Mr. Canada knows that stimulating a child’s brain at an early age is the key to ending poverty.  To put it succinctly: kids who like to read do better in school = they get better grades = they stay in school = they get better paying jobs.

So he founded the Harlem Children’s Zone and then The Baby College for the parents of children age 0-3, and for 9 Saturdays in a row, he and his staff teach parents the solution to poverty: read to your children.

daddy-reading-behind-1432160-639x491The more you introduce language to children, the more they grab it.  Middle and upper middle class parents typically know that, but in those 97 city blocks of Harlem, no one had previously stressed the importance of reading.

It turns out that the biggest difference between the haves and the have-nots is language acquisition, because that translates into verbal ability.

James Heckman, an economist at the University of Chicago, found the difference in the sheer number of words that middle class parents speak to their child–as opposed to poverty class parents–differs by about 20 million words.  So, by age three, your middle class child has been exposed to 20 million more words than a poor three year old.

Heckman found that job training isn’t the solution to ending welfare because, by the time poor people are young adults, very basic skills haven’t been learned: the ability to communicate, read the newspaper, have self-control–even the ability to get out of bed to regularly go to work.

This is harder and harder if not achieved by ages 8, 9, 10–to some extent, it’s already too late!  Those early years are the time to snuggle up with a book and read to your very young child.

The sad reality is that, if you are reading this, you probably already know that.  Please spread the word to someone who does not.

The Harlem Children’s Zone and the Baby College.

Filed Under: Choices, Good communication, Parenting, Uncategorized Tagged With: ,

The Homework Parent vs. The Holiday Parent

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Divorce

They say that you never forget your first, and that is certainly true of my first outpatient client.

To be honest, though, Declan (not his real name) wasn’t all that memorable.  He was, all-in-all, a pretty good kid.  He had decent grades in school and had some friends there, too.  He was unfailingly polite to me during sessions and engaged in dialogue.  However, his parents had divorced, and his mother had some concerns about Declan’s ongoing adjustment.  She was more memorable to me than her son because of the uphill battle that she was fighting.

I remember well what she said to me once when describing her frustration with her ex-husband.  We were talking privately while Declan was waiting in the lobby and she sighed in angry weariness.  “You know what the biggest problem is?” she said.  “I have him Sunday night through Thursday night, and when he’s with me, he has a bedtime that’s set in stone, he has to do his chores and his homework.”

“When he’s at his dad’s Friday through Sunday, he has none of those things!  Declan gets to do what he wants there–stays up late playing video games, eats whatever he wants, doesn’t open his bookbag.  His dad is constantly taking him to fun places and restaurants–because it’s the weekend!  Then Declan comes home to me, and the first thing I have to do is make him get out his homework!”

She almost sobbed.  “I’d like to take him out every night and not fight over bath time, but I’m too damn responsible.”

Sadly, I have heard that echoed far too often since the first time I heard it from her.  I’ve come to think of people in her situation as the “Homework” parent and the “Holiday” parent.  Homework parent is typically the custodial parent who says, “Stop,” “no,” and “don’t” while Holiday parent says, “If you want to–do it.”   Guess which house the kid typically prefers?

When you’re a preteen, who wouldn’t like an irresponsible parent?  It’s also easier to be Holiday parent, so, in a sense, who wouldn’t want to be that person?

People in my position, though, get to see and hear many things.  While I’ve certainly worked with kids like Declan who liked Holiday better, I’ve met many, many older kids (and young adults) who came to recognize the good that Homework did and appreciate her now.  Some of them even come to resent Holiday for not being a more responsible parent to their children.

My message to all of you Homework parents out there:  hang in there!

While your child may hate what you do today, chances are excellent that he’ll come to appreciate it tomorrow.  “At least my mom cared enough to make sure I brushed my teeth and read a book once in a while,” said a young man to me recently in a session when he was describing his childhood.  “My dad didn’t give a s–t what I did.”  That’s an actual quote–and that’s how he came to see his Holiday parent: as someone who didn’t care.

Let Holiday parent be Mr. Popular now; your child will someday appreciate you and what you did for him.  He’ll probably come to regret how he treated you during those years when his other parent should’ve known better.

Homework parents of the world, hear my cry!  Stay strong!  Don’t take the easy way out.  You care too much about your children to compete with your ex- for their affection.  Keep taking the long-term approach, and cling to the realization that you aren’t raising him to be a child–you’re raising him to be a man.

 

Filed Under: Divorce, Parenting Tagged With: , ,

What Wound Do You Bear?

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first-aid-kit-1416695-1280x960At any given moment, most counselors have someone on their caseload about whom they wonder, “Am I helping her?”

You may be surprised to learn that counselors–even very seasoned, talented ones–can feel inadequate at times.  We wonder how we can be more helpful.  We search for the right words to say or the right technique to to help a client to think differently, feel better, act in a new way.

Sometimes we see people suffering, and we want so desperately to ease their pain.  By far and away, the most challenging cases I have are not marriage counseling clients (that’s a close second!); my biggest challenges are in working with people who have experienced a loss, or who have been wronged or hurt by a loved one.

Emotional pain can cut as hard as a gash to our bodies; it can feel like a wound to our soul.

The difference between an emotional hurt and a physical wound is that we can often decide how deep our emotional wound will be, or, failing that, we can dictate our response to it.

There are three types of emotional wounds, much like the physical variety: boo-boos, scars, and life-altering.

The first is the least serious; this is a hurt of the boo-boo variety.  We all get boo-boos once in a while.  At any given moment, I usually have a few scratches on my hands or arms from my bad cat, Brutus, who likes to play rough.  The boo-boos hurt when first inflicted, but quickly fade and are soon forgotten.  Emotional boo-boos may be the fight that ends with an apology, the unkind word that is said but forgiven, the time you were disappointed but got over it.

Next we have the type of wound that heals, but leaves a scar.  I’ve got a good one on my left foot from the time as kid that I accidentally stuck myself with a hatchet (long story) and another on my right hand from when I pledged a fraternity in college (an even longer story).  The initial pain was intense–however, over time, I healed.  But a scar formed, and I bear it forever.  It doesn’t hurt to touch, but I’ll be forever reminded of what gave me that scar.

Emotional hurts that scar could be the infidelity of a partner, the betrayal by a friend, the abusive relationship, or the terrible things your addicted adult son did.  The pain has healed, but it has left a scar–it can’t be forgotten.

And finally there is the life-altering type of  physical wound.  The solider who loses a leg in the war.  The woman who is paralyzed in an accident.  Nothing will ever be the same for them–the leg will never grow back, she will never walk again.  In my experience, life-altering emotional wounds come from a significant loss, such as when a parent loses a child.  There was life before he died–and then life every day since.

However, just as we wouldn’t say to that solider or that paraplegic, “Just lay on the couch for the rest of your life,” we wouldn’t let someone who has a life-altering emotional wound wither up and wait to die.   We would expect the solider to do the best he can with a prosthetic limb; we would teach the paralyzed woman to use a wheelchair.

In short, we would expect them to adapt.  And that is how we can live with a life-altering event: we adapt to life as it is now. If you’ve experienced a life-altering emotional wound, the watchword for you is “adaptation.”

Sometimes that process can be figured out on your own; sometimes friends and family can help you along the way.  And sometimes, a trained professional is best suited to help you to adapt to your loss.

If you’ve experienced a serious emotional wound, perhaps you could benefit from speaking to a counselor, someone Carl Jung referred to as a “wounded healer.”  Share your pain with us, and we’ll share our scars with you.

Nunc coepi 

Filed Under: Counseling, Depression, Pain, Uncategorized Tagged With: , , , ,