While a direct relationship between aggressive behavior in children and difficulty in relationships at home has been studied in some length in many parts of the world, researchers in more remote places are adding their data to the collection, presenting a strong case for the need for more nurturing and stable home environments. Recently, a researcher from the Basque region in Western Europe produced a study of eight year old children, discovering that of the few who exhibited aggressive behavior, there were high rates of disruptive home environments, especially the absence of one or both parents. The work may help family counseling and health advocates make a stronger case for the creation of greater family services.

Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

The weather’s slowly warming across the country, and along with snow melt and longer days comes that familiar family travel time known as Spring Vacation. And though they may not be, as Charles Dickens’s wrote, “the best of times, the worst of times” in your family’s lives, travels together as a group can be some of the happiest as well as most stressful times you have together as a family.

Time away from our regular routines is essential for good mental health. We do tend to thrive with a healthy balance of the familiar and the different, and vacations are one way many of us create difference in our lives. We can put away the same responsibilities, schedules, foods, sights, people, and weather for something different, a change that can make for a sense of escape as well as renewal upon our return. When we travel with our families, we get a chance to make shared memories and then recall them again and again in the future. Many of us remember the time spent in the back seat of our family station wagons going somewhere together as hallmarks of our childhood.

But like everything else with our families, traveling together as companions is a mixed blessing. While we can anticipate one another’s reactions and find pleasure in those shared experiences and understandings, we also make instantaneous assumptions, judgments and responses to each other that can zap the joy out of the newness of travel. In other words, it can be great and awful at the same time! (Recall the Clark Griswold’s of the 1983 movie, “Vacation,” and you’ll instantly know what I mean).

So, before you come unglued in your rush to close the house and get on that plane for that long-awaited winter escape, consider a few things that may make for a more relaxed, pleasant and renewing family trip. If you have some more ideas to share, be sure to add your comment at the bottom of this post.

1. Stay Within the Budget

Nothing can kill the joy of a family trip than spending more than you can afford. No one wants to be paying off credit card travel expenses 11 months after that dream visit to Disneyworld. Do all you can to stay inside your planned budget, making room for the spontaneous and unexpected, and you will have a much less stressful time while vacationing, and particularly, upon return.

2. Prepare to Travel

Don’t wait until the night before you leave to know if you have enough cash, if you have or need your passport, if your favorite shorts still fit, if the car needs an oil change, or if you have renewed your daily prescriptions at the pharmacy. None of us needs the emotional turmoil of last-minute, rushed packing. It can take all the pleasure out of the first part of your vacation, and can really stall your trip through airport security!

3. Lower your Expectations

No destination is going to be as great as the travel brochure, the website, or your dreams set you up to expect. Even Hawaii has problems. Lower your expectations of your perfect honeymoon or family trip, and instead, ready yourself to be pleasantly surprised and flexible. More fun will be had by all!

4. Manage your Job

Most successful employers know that we are better at our jobs when we can leave them for awhile. While it’s tempting to stay connected via email, texts, photos or even phone calls to work, unplug from the people at work and turn toward the people you’re with. After all, it’s your family that will stick around long after that job is over. And if you are self-employed like I am, make a plan to limit the contact you need to have with your business and stick to your plan.

5. We Bring Ourselves with Us

Your son isn’t automatically going to be well behaved just because he’s visiting grandma, and your spouse isn’t miraculously going to be easy going, generous and relaxed just because you’re in a different place. Remember that while your family is pretty much the same wherever they go, so are you. Cut everyone a little slack.

6. Staying with Extended Family

Nothing says “emotional overload” like traveling with your family and staying with even more. Be sure to treat the family you visit with respect, do your share of the extra work you create, and make time to get out from under their feet, and you will probably be invited back!

7. Returning

Some of us appreciate more time at home before the rush back to the normal begins. I know I need time to get some of the laundry done, to make sure there’s enough milk in the refrigerator, and to sort the mail before I go back to work. Others don’t need much re-entry time, eking out as much vacation time as possible. Know your preferences and honor them. That way coming home will be as pleasant as possible.

And in all journeying, safe travels!

©Copyright 2010 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

In this article I want to focus on one particular aspect of recovering from an affair: punishing the offending partner.

I am frequently asked: “How long is this pain going to last!?” That’s impossible to answer, but I can give you one way to shorten the life span of your pain, and perhaps shorten the recovery process: If you’re punishing your partner, stop. Why? Because punishment can slow the recovery process, thereby extending the pain you are working so hard to reduce.

Frequently in my office the injured party will tell their partner, “I want you to hurt for as long as possible, just like I do, so you’re just going to have to take this punishment and deal with it!” And the punishment begins, in a wide variety of forms which, in the end, prolong the injured party’s pain. In the early stages of recovery dishing out punishment seems to provide the injured party SOME semblance of control after feeling profoundly powerless, helpless, deeply wounded, and out of control.

However, punishment has some downsides: It can lead to bitterness in one or both partners. Bitterness is swallowing a poison pill hoping the other party will die.

Second, it delays recovery due to the need for more repair. Punishment causes additional pain to a relationship already suffering on several levels. More pain means more recovery work. More recovery work takes more time. Inflicting emotional pain in someone else seldom leads to relief from our own pain because our brains are simply not wired to do that.

Punishing the offending partner means the injured party is working at cross purposes, and here is what that looks like: Part of you wants to stop feeling so terrible and get your life back, perhaps save the relationship, or try to figure out whether or not the relationship even CAN be saved. Another part of you wants your partner to suffer, so you punish them. But, punishing your partner, although understandable, only adds MORE pain to the relationship. The pain you feel as a result of the affair is real, it’s deep, and it’s pervasive. Adding pain to one side of the relationship while simultaneously trying to reduce it on the other side of the relationship simply will not work. It is impossible to repair something that is simultaneously being damaged.

Try these alternatives to punishing your partner:

First, realize that your desire to punish is normal, but it’s the consequence of your own pain.

Second, understand that purposely causing pain for pains sake in your partner will not relieve your pain in the long run, even if it seems to provide a short-lived sense of satisfaction.

Third, talk with your partner in detail about YOUR PAIN! Expressing your pain gives you a greater likelihood of being heard and understood. It also provides an opportunity for your partner to experience their own pain derived from losing your TRUST, damaging their CREDIBILITY, and losing their INTEGRITY, not to mention the realization that the relationship is in jeopardy. Punishment may divert them from facing those all-important issues.

Fourth, remember, bitterness and punishment are damaging.

So think about it. If punishing the offending party must play a role, try to make it short lived and limited. For when it persists, bitterness may take over, individual and couple repair is stalled, and your pain and recovery will be prolonged.

Recovery from an affair for many couples is a long, arduous process, but if the punishment stops, you can shorten the recovery process. If need be, find a good counselor to help out.

How do you find a counselor who has an understanding of infidelity recovery? Ask if they have read Peggy Vaughan’s book The Monogamy Myth. If not, look until you find a counselor who has. And if you haven’t read it, do so.

If you and your partner really want to do yourselves a favor, you can attend one of Brian and Anne Bercht’s workshops for couples recovering from an affair.

Limit the punishment, reduce your pain, shorten the recovery process.

©Copyright 2010 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

The final alcoholic family “role” I’d like to discuss in the context of recovery is the “Lost Child”. This is the child who stays under the radar, invisible, quietly decamping to his/her room, disappearing behind a stack of empty booze bottles or cloud of marijuana smoke. To paraphrase D.W. Winnicott, for a child it is normal to hide, but a tragedy not to be found.

What happens when a Lost Child gets clean and sober? To understand this, we have to look at what happened to make this child “lost” to begin with. This child in a way becomes, almost literally, a skeleton in the family’s closet. The child’s disappearance serves the dysfunction of the family in that this child will never divulge the family’s skeletons. There are many “elephants in the room” in such families; sometimes untreated addiction, other times abuse or neglect. The family’s collective shame must be hidden; the Lost Child serves as a kind of metaphor for what is repressed. When a child like this stays lost, he learns that his needs don’t matter, and so the adaptive “hiding” strategy becomes a way of life, later to be soothed and narcotized by the powder, needle or bottle (as well as a series of codependent relationships).

The ambivalence this child struggles with in new-found sobriety arises from the advantages and disadvantages of the “lost” role. On the one hand, this person has protected herself from the vortex or volatility of the chaotic family dynamic. She has not had to enter into the fray and risk attack, injury or humiliation. Invisibility becomes the best form of defense. On the other hand, she lives with a kind of emotional anorexia and is a prime target for a host of destructive behaviors: self-harm (cutting, burning), eating disorders, sexual compulsivity, codependence, addiction, and so forth. This child wants to be heard, needs to be heard…but is terrified of being heard, as that means facing the feelings beneath the cloak of invisibility, and risking the judgment and/or abandonment of the family members who rely on her to stay quiet. Such a person carries heavy feelings of shame, guilt, rage, isolation and a longing for (and terror of) human connection.

The question of whether the family can be helpful or destructive as the child gets sober hinges, not so much on the degree of their past dysfunction, but on their current willingness to get honest and authentic and face their own skeletons. This of course is preferable than accusations of the child being “bad” by “forcing” them to look at long-hidden family secrets. The family may consciously yearn for her sobriety while unconsciously defending against their own shame and guilt. I once knew the father of a “lost” daughter, newly sober (my client); he was often enraged at her for a variety of puzzling reasons, until I discovered that he himself was an alcoholic who was terrified of having to face his own problems. His words said “get healthy” but his behavior said “let’s keep things as they were.”

It only takes one relatively balanced member of the immediate family who is willing to align with this newly sober “lost” person, and live in honesty rather than deceit, to bolster the addict’s support system. Having just one family member on board who loves and accepts the addict, who is not overly threatened by his/her recovery, can bolster a sense of hope. This actual relationship can shed light on the addict’s attempts, prior to sobriety (and usually futile) to find surrogates for lost family members.

Of course, the addict’s partner or family members often cannot or will not accept their loved one’s condition and his/her desire to change, and are threatened by the prospect of recovery. They may defend this terror by insisting on seeing addiction as a moral “failing” or “weakness”. Still the addict has a chance of success, as always, though the recovery work proves more formidable: this is a case that requires immediate support-building as the “lost” person begins speaking the truth and breaking the bonds of repression. Like all addicts, he/she will require the support of a sober community, therapy, and intensive recovery work. Being rewarded with love, acceptance and higher self-esteem is often strong inspiration.

It is still amazing to me how threatened alcoholic family members become as their loved one becomes healthier; as order is threatening to chaos, health is threatening to the ideology of sickness, which casts a black pall over everything and fosters a sense of futility. Thankfully, recovery can lift the black veil of these (mis)perceptions, when the addict is truly ready to surrender and begin the slow, sometimes grueling, but always worthy path towards wellness. This can happen without the aid and support of loved ones, but recovery comes easier when family, too, is willing to change.

©Copyright 2010 by Darren Haber, MFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Even though there can be life long debilitating psychological effects, sibling abuse may be the most ignored – if not accepted – form of domestic (i.e. sexual, physical, emotional) abuse. Why is this kind of abuse ignored or minimized? There is a lot that is swept under the rug in the guise of “sibling rivalry.” And American law does not consider this a prosecutable offense unless a child is turned in by their parent(s). In other words, parents would have to be willing to file an assault charge against their own child. So parents keep this type of abuse within the family. And a lot of the time, they even blame the victim.

First some statistics: In an article entitled “A Major Threat to Children’s’ Mental Health,” Hart & Brassard reported that “There is evidence that brother-sister sexual relationships may be five times as common as father-daughter incest.” Finklehor and Baron, who are prominent researchers in the area of child abuse, state that “sibling sexual abuse is prevalent in a remarkably large quantity of individuals from virtually all social and family circumstances.” And a survey of 796 undergraduates of six New England colleges found that 15% of the females and 10% of the males reported having some type of sexual experience involving a sibling (Sibling Abuse – Wiehe). In this same publication it states that parents are aware of sexual abuse among siblings 18% of the time, emotional abuse 69% of the time and physical abuse 71% of the time.

Sexual abuse aside, how do we define or recognize abuse among siblings? When there is an inequity in power between two adolescents and one uses control over the other to repeatedly hurt, threaten, or degrade, that is abusive behavior. Even name calling and ridicule can wear away at a child’s self worth and self-esteem. “Children are especially vulnerable to degrading remarks because it is during their childhood years that they are developing a positive sense of self.” Unfortunately, most parents see this behavior as sibling rivalry. And while most emotional and even physical abuse, should and can be handled by parents rather than the law, first parents have to recognize that it is abuse.

Sexual abuse is another story. Most incidents of sexual abuse by siblings go not only unreported but also undetected by parents. Most times, the siblings themselves recognize that what is happening is wrong and certainly it is recognized by society as wrong. So unlike physical and emotional abuse, this should be easier to detect by parents. But most kids don’t tell. They don’t tell because the older sibling is an authority figure, or because they are threatened or scared, or because they don’t realize that it is abuse because they blame themselves as much as their sibling for what is happening. And unlike physical or emotional abuse, it is happening secretly because the older sibling knows that they have crossed a line.

What causes one sibling to abuse another?

1. Acting out anger at parents on sibling or acting out anger at an older sibling on a younger sibling.
2. Parents overwhelmed by their own problems not paying attention.
3. Inappropriate expectations – older sibling given too much responsibility or freedom.
4. Mirroring parents behavior.
5. Viewing the behavior as normal by parents.
6. Socialization of males as dominant over females.
7. Contribution of victim – “Research supports the hypothesis that the behavioral patterns of the abused child tend to invite further abuse” (Sibling Abuse – Wiehe) – it becomes a vicious cycle.
8. “It is important to note that this interactional cycle theory does not blame the victim!” Rather it identifies a pattern in order to treat and help prevent further abuse.

What are the long-term effects of sibling abuse?

Time does not necessarily heal. Adult victims of childhood sibling abuse generally have lower self-esteem and are overly sensitive and insecure. They have trouble with relationships and repeat the victim role in their other relationships. They can have sexual functioning problems. There is continued self-blame at the same time that anger at their perpetrator is played out with others.

So how do parents and other family members distinguish between abusive and normal (sibling rivalry) behavior?

1. Is it age appropriate?
2. Does one child appear to be a constant victim?
3. Is the purpose of the behavior humiliation, sadism, to cause suffering, a result of a continual explosive anger?
4. Was the behavior planned, has it happened before, does the perpetrator feel remorseful?
5. Was property destroyed or animals abused?
6. The length and the degree of the behavior. One-time incidents, if serious enough (i.e. sexual abuse), can create a life long problem. Whereas name calling, ridiculing, and even teasing if done consistently and at certain vulnerable ages (i.e. between six and seven years and/or between eleven and twelve years of age) can also create life long problems.

We need to build awareness and educate families about the difference between abusive and normal behavior among siblings. Listen to children and believe them. Good supervision and encouraging openness about discussing sex while informing children to “own their own bodies” and respect others are simple, logical steps towards protecting our children from abuse by siblings, cousins and other children.

©Copyright 2010 by Roni Weisberg-Ross L.M.F.T. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Roni and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Paul and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

In my experience with psychotherapy with the elderly client in family settings, I’ve found that the ability to facilitate a sustaining positive outcome after long-standing family dysfunction involves two main factors: 1) the client’s emotional constitution (i.e. their ability to accept the fact that maladaptive behavior exists) and 2) the client’s willingness to take the emotional risk of making amends. A third factor is the adult child’s ability to understand the parent’s life journey.

In the course of my work with a 96-year-old woman, “Lilly”, who had recently lost her third husband and her older daughter (aged 70) within six months of each other, it had become clear that I had the task of not only helping her through her bereavement, but also of trying to repair sixty-plus years of undischarged feelings of shame, embarrassment and guilt. These feelings had resulted from the years of routine abuse – mostly emotional but periodically physical – that she had inflicted on her younger 66-year-old-daughter, “Dina”. (The actual names of mother and daughter have been changed.)

Dina had contacted me to serve as almost a stand-in “hand-holder” for her legally blind mother, to relieve Dina of the weekly barrage of complaints she received from her mom about the caregivers obtained from a variety of homecare agencies. Lilly later admitted to me, jokingly, that she had caused her daughter’s ulcers.

My weekly home visits with Lilly soon revealed her hunger for emotionally reconnecting with her surviving daughter, as well as her poignant re-awakened feelings of abandonment and emotional deprivation from her own painful childhood. At first, Dina reported that Lilly did not want to talk about her past, that it was too painful and I should stick to discussions of the present. However, I gently prodded Lilly, as I saw that she was resilient enough to face her past. It was possible to actually do psychotherapy with this sharp 96-year-old, rather than just supportive counseling.

In reviewing Lilly’s difficult past with her, I began to draw a parallel to Dina’s emotional deprivation. It was this growing understanding that motivated Lilly to have the courage to risk her daughter’s impatience and anger and forthrightly approach her about their long-standing rift.

During and after the period in which we had stabilized Lilly’s homecare situation, Dina and I had exchanged e-mails. I could see that her extreme anger towards her mother for the years of abuse had blocked any understanding of the subtext of her mother’s nagging about home attendants and other routine matters. Lilly’s complaints and various requests reinforced Dina’s impatience with her. Anger at mom – particularly at taking her stepfather’s side when it came to Dina’s choices of careers and friends — prevented her from clearly seeing Lilly’s own fears of her strict Austrian–born husband leaving her if she took her daughter’s side. In further understanding her mom’s horrendous childhood, failed marriages, and disappointments, Dina gradually began to look at their relationship differently. She came to understand how Lilly’s own emotional deprivation as a child and her yearning for greater closeness with Dina led to her pattern of constant complaining.

After Lilly’s initial expression of remorse to her daughter, Dina felt relieved but that it was still “sixty years too late”. She sent me an email about this and when I responded I helped Dina understand the immense pain that her mother felt. Dina then was able to see Lilly’s apology as “extraordinary”. She wrote, “If she was brave enough to face herself and give me what she owed me, I felt I could take the plunge too”. She told her mother that “the past was in the past” and described a long embrace with her. “It was touching and difficult but also easy”.

When mother and daughter both realized the similarities of the emotional betrayals that they had each suffered, a significant amount of misperception was dissipated and both were willing and able to give each other the gift of a new beginning. It was a great achievement for these two strong-willed women.

Of course these issues were not completely resolved, but an important breakthrough was achieved a few months before Lilly’s passing at 98. At any stage in one’s life, when an individual reaches a point of understanding of their own motivations and life patterns as well as their loved one’s, a true bond of caring and reassurance can be re-established. Dina wrote me, “I can’t get my life back, but I’ve always been amazed at the fine job I’ve made of it, given what I started with”. Dina had forgiven herself for her own feelings of shame and inadequacy that she had felt as a victim.

The bond that was re-established between Lilly and Dina made Lilly’s final months and battle with cancer a little easier for both of them. Dina invited me to a memorial service that she held for her mother several weeks after her death. When she eulogized her mother she spoke about their reconciliation and how much that had brought some peace of mind to her own life.

But what about adult children who are not as fortunate as Dina was to reach an understanding with her mother and receive the apology that she had always needed? We can only do our best to understand our own parents’ painful lives, allow ourselves the time and space to mourn both what we lost and never had, then forgive ourselves and know that we did the best we could for our parents and ourselves under very difficult circumstances.

©Copyright 2010 by Paul Cohen, LCSW. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Paul and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Nothing is more basic to human life than eating. The food and drink that fuel our bodies requires our attention every few hours every day, and provides us with experiences of pleasure and rest that most of us share with others. Food choices vary from country to country, and from century to century. While some eat beans and others fish, we all worry about our food. Is it safe? Is there enough? How will it taste? We spend enormous amounts of money, time and energy producing food, transporting food, buying food, making food. Yet fewer and fewer Americans spend equal amounts of time and energy enjoying it.

We want food, but we want it fast. We want it easy to prepare, tasty and attractive, and we don’t want to spend a lot of time cleaning up. We may eat standing up, in front of the television or computer, and even in our cars. And while all of us are well aware of the effect this increasingly rapid and processed food consumption is having on our national levels of heart disease, cancer and obesity, fewer of us are aware of what it’s doing to our family relationships.

For centuries of human life, families have made it a priority of daily living to eat together. At our tables, food is shared, conversations held, relationships cemented. It’s no wonder that in all the major religious traditions, some kind of eating ritual or food offering is a central act. Our holidays are often focused around the foods we prepare and share. Can you imagine celebrating Thanksgiving without a major family meal, or a child’s birthday without cake?

The sharing of food together is such an integral act to family function that when this emotional process gets twisted, eating disorders like anorexia, bulimia and morbid obesity can develop. Each of these difficult mental health disorders is on the rise in our country, and is notoriously difficult to heal. The best current practice of healing eating disorders includes every family member in the treatment process. The whole family has to learn to eat together again.

Many families with growing children have two working parents, whose work lives often extend into the evenings via their business emails, beckoning them from their smart phones or laptops. If those same parents aren’t going to the gym, doing laundry, paying the bills or running errands in the evening, they are often back in their cars taking their children to dance, basketball or Scouts. Dinner may be picked up on the way, or eaten piecemeal by each family member as they come in and out of the house. Even families with one parent home most of the time have difficulty scheduling a time when “dinner is ready.” While dinner might be ready on the stove, is there anyone home to eat it?

As simplistic as it may sound, eating shared, calm, regular meals together as a family is as close to a “magic pill” we may get to hold the scattered American family together. Current research demonstrates that families that eat at least a few meals together at home during the week have children and teens that are more successful at school, are less apt to experiment with early sexual activity, alcohol and other drugs, are less prone to eating disorders and have higher self esteem. Parents have increased sense of connection with each other and their children, and have healthier eating habits.

The only downside is that stressed and busy adults have to make the buying, storing and preparation of food a personal priority. Somebody has to think about and organize the meals. Food is costly, perishable and heavy. Cooking at home can be enormously stressful to an already time pressed and distracted parent, whose own life feels like it is already poured out for the sake of their children, their employer, and their spouse. The regular cook may feel like the only one in the family who isn’t enjoying all the emotional benefits of their hard work.

As important as eating together has been and continues to be, it’s well worth the time and energy it takes to make eating as a family a new priority. Schedules may need to be trimmed down, and rearranged. Expectations will need to be shared about when dinner is eaten and who needs to be there. Work must be shared so that the family chef doesn’t give up from overwork. And new attention may need to be given to the emotional tone of the family dinner, so that laughter is on the menu as much as problem solving. When it comes to helping the family function, the daily question, “what’s for dinner?” may just be one of the most important questions you hear all day.

©Copyright 2010 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Lynn and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Susie could tell right away when her father had been drinking – he had extra sparkling eyes, he smiled a lot, he breathed heavy, and he talked non-stop for endless hours. She was supposed to listen to every word, agree real fast and with enthusiasm, and then tell her dad what a great man he was.

This got boring, but when her father was on a jag she was expected to stay right with him every minute; she was not allowed to go to bed just because it was a school night or because it was 2:00 AM and she was tired. Her dad poked her in the ribs if he thought she was nodding off.

Susie learned to hit the sack real early, before her father had time to tie one on. She didn’t want to get caught in her father’s endless web of stories, tales of daring, of fights and beating people up, of how mean people are, how sick the universe is, how nothing matters, and nothing is any good; everybody is out for themselves, and anybody who says different is a phony. In Susie’s family, life was a war.

Susie wanted to kill herself, if she had to live in that kind of world, so she had to prove to herself that the world was different.

When she grew up she adapted. She had a decent job – she was a social worker in a foster care agency, helping kids survive their families. She didn’t make much money, but it was enough.

She lived on her own now, she could sleep when she wanted, she didn’t have to hide in bed any more, but she couldn’t stop. It was her pattern to go to bed early and stay there as long as she could, then get up and run fast to work, no breakfast. Or else stay up all night and sleep at her desk when no one was looking.

She had a boyfriend. He was glamorous, sexy, handsome—but he ran around with other women. He liked to get high, and he told her she was selfish when she didn’t lend him money.

“I promise to pay you right back, payday after next.”

“Sure, right.”

Susie was miserable. She still thought about killing herself. Or maybe she would just get run over by a bus sometime, or catch a fatal disease or something. She was always imagining her own sudden death.

She knew she wasn’t normal – every time she got in the subway she was scared some guy would push her in front of an oncoming train, so she went to therapy, where she complained long and loud about her boyfriend. After a while she began to see that he was treating her as she expected, which was terrible. She tried to break up with him, but she kept going back, over and over. Her therapist told her she was a masochist. Susie knew what that meant – she knew her therapist was right. She got mad. And she slowly got better.

Underneath it all, she had always been furious. Who wouldn’t be? She talked a lot in therapy about her father.

Her therapist, Caroline, asked Susie, “Where was your mother? Didn’t your mother protect you?”

“Mom didn’t protect me, no. She hid behind me. She used me to hide from Dad.”

Susie had been taught to be an instrument belonging to someone else, and not belonging to herself. She had been taught to live for others- as her father’s own personal cheer leading squad, as her mother’s defensive armor.

Caroline was outraged on Susie’s behalf. That helped a lot. And Susie was in charge of how far, how deep to dive in therapy; Caroline always checked, asking, “Where do you want to go with this? You OK?” Susie could rely on Caroline to protect her.

A lot of times Susie wanted to quit therapy because it was hard, it was expensive–even though Caroline gave her a break on the fee–and it took up a lot of time; but she knew she was worth something, and her time was better spent in therapy than wasted on some guy who didn’t really care about her anyway. She wanted to learn how to have her own life, and then maybe share it with someone worthwhile.

Therapy rules were clear and fair. Caroline had faith that Susie’s life could be better. Susie worked hard to understand herself, to clear her vision, to look around and see that the world wasn’t only harsh as her father made it.

She called for a truce inside herself, and outside too.

©Copyright 2010 by Lynn Somerstein, PhD, RYT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lynn and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Today let’s take a look at the powerful consequences of blame.

In my opinion we have a very blaming culture, and I won’t go in to why that is right now–I’ll save that for a future article. For now, just focus on blame–Blame–we all do it. We blame others:

• For our problems
• For our behavior
• For what we feel

We all know what blame looks like, but what is the essence of blame? In my opinion, blame is the act of refusing to take responsibility for yourself.

What are the immediate consequences of blame? Blame leaves both you and your partner, or you and your kids, whomever the third party is, feeling helpless. Blaming also sends a direct message to your partner, spouse or child that you are not going to take responsibility for your emotional state and/or your behavior. Blaming says: “I am not in control of how I behave or feel, you are.” That’s a scary thought because if it were true, and it is NOT TRUE, it means we have little or no control over changing what we feel.

We do have the ability to change how we feel, but only if we stop wasting our precious psychic energy blaming others.

When somebody blames, everybody feels helpless, defensive, and probably angry, bad, or frustrated. The experience of helplessness then leads to fear. When fear takes over, the conflict is no longer about understanding each other, it is about reducing the fear. It is hard to be understood when you’re blaming or operating in fear reduction mode. Feeling helpless, afraid, angry and ragefull all lead to distance and disconnection. This dynamic undercuts trust, thereby damaging the relationship.

My guess is, there isn’t a parent out there who wants to teach their kids how to be emotionally helpless by exhibiting parental helplessness when managing conflict. So…what to do instead is this: Talk about your experience, and own it–make it your own.

It sounds like this…

Instead of saying “You MAKE me feel terrible!”, or, “how do you think that makes your mom and me, your dad and me feel?” you might say, “when I hear you tell me I’m stupid, I feel hurt and angry. If you disagree with me, just say so, and we can talk about where we differ. But please don’t call me ’stupid.’” Or, “when you throw your toys at your sister/brother/mother/father/ it’s scary. Instead of trowing your toys, just tell me your angry, we can talk about it.”

That is what is sounds like when you HAVE a feeling, EXPRESS the feeling, OWN the feeling. That is the essence of describing an experience versus blaming someone for it.

If blame is part of your relationship, you change that by creating a new foundation belief.

Think of the following: It’s like going to the doctor–who do you talk about? YOURSELF! Do the same thing when your talking to your partner, spouse or children. It is a simple law: You CANNOT, indeed WILL NOT, be understood if you are talking about someone else. The odds for being understood and trusted go way up, and the odds for feeling helpless and distrusted go way down when you eliminate blame, and talk about yourself.

Give it several repetitions–practice it–I believe you will be pleasantly surprised with the results.

©Copyright 2010 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

First I want to thank those of you who took time to comment on my last article. I love getting feedback, so keep it coming.

Last time I discussed what happens when members of alcoholic families, who are alcoholic themselves, get sober. The members of these families tend to fall into certain behavioral patterns, or “roles”, which classically include: the hero, the scapegoat (or identified patient), the mascot, the “lost child” and the caretaker. I wanted to explore further the patterns I have observed in my clinical experience with literally hundreds of clients and their families, both in my private practice and at Promises Treatment Center, where I am a therapist in their 30-day residential program.

What’s interesting to observe is how the entire family dynamic changes once their loved one gets sober. I never cease to wonder at how the client’s stabilization in treatment leads inevitably to an increase in their family’s anxiety. Thus, as soon as the client completes detox and starts showing signs of improvement, the parent or sibling or spouse of the client will call the staff in a more anxious state than ever. This, of course, is a sign that the family’s homeostasis is changing, which is terrifying to a dysfunctional system (which tends to reject change) – another reminder that, to paraphrase James Masterson, clients often come to therapy or treatment to feel better, not necessarily to get better (Masterson & Lieberman, 2004).

What happens when a family “mascot” enters the treatment process for alcoholism or addiction? The mascot is someone who lessens family anxiety by providing distraction and deflection, often via humor and comic relief. Here is the “class clown” who can break tension by cracking wise at precisely the right time.

Keep in mind that family members may play more than one role simultaneously; for instance, I once had a client who was a recovering alcoholic – and a stand-up comedian. Quite a good one, in fact. Fortunately, he was able to provide insight and painful emotional truth, along with the laughs. The good news with such a person is that humor is often a filter for truth, so if he/she can step out of the spotlight and get in touch with the pain of addiction, without deflecting it with humor – or to enhance rather than distract from truth – then recovery can begin.

The problem is when the person tries to re-enter the family system. Family members are inevitably going to find themselves unsettled, antsy, perhaps even critical of the clown who sheds the mask. Very often you will hear people say of a recovering mascot, “She used to be so funny, now she’s kind of boring” or “He’s so serious now that he’s sober, what happened to the exciting guy I used to know?” What often happens when a mascot (or any such family member) gets sober, is that the other members (or even close friends and co-workers, etc) are now left with an absence of deflection, or distraction, which creates a void – filled, inevitably, with each persons’ unexamined problems. Now the sibling, parent or spouse of the mascot no longer has the luxury of distraction, and that anxiety must be contained and processed by a system that is inherently uncomfortable with “owning” or processing anxiety healthily.

Thus the mascot may be left with feelings of guilt, shame, self-criticism – the usual feelings that come with early sobriety, magnified by a dysfunctional family system which gives lip service to sobriety but, in fact, isn’t exactly sure how to deal with it. This person may feel they are “causing” the anxiety in a family, when it’s been there all along: in subterranean form. This speaks again to the importance of viewing alcoholism as a “family disease” in which each person is required to look at his/her “stuff” without passing the buck any longer (i.e. shaming/blaming, etc). For each member, this process will at first feel very uncomfortable. But getting better does not guarantee, at least in the beginning, feeling better. Paradoxically, the constant laughter and tension-breaking shenanigans of the mascot, within an actively-addicted family system, has drowned the pain that must now be dealt with head on, if the system is to truly have a shot at health.

This, sadly, did not happen with the sober comedian I mentioned earlier. With sobriety came anger on the part of his spouse, much of which was justified, given the destructive way he behaved in his addiction. However, she refused to acknowledge the fresh start his sobriety provided, declined to get help via al-anon or counseling; in turn, he blamed her for his feelings of guilt, shame and (eventually) rage. Neither took responsibility, or found healthy support, and word has it that he is now drinking and using with abandon while his wife is hurt, angry, and seeking divorce.

References:

1) Masterson, J. & Lieberman, A. (2004), A Therapist’s Guide To The Personality Disorders. Phoenix, AZ: Zeig, Tucker & Theisen.

©Copyright 2010 by Darren Haber, MFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Stress is something from which many people can benefit in small, occasional doses, revving up their motivation or helping them to be more alert. But scores of people are unable to regulate the amount of stress in their daily lives, and an excess can lead to serious complications from burnout to physical symptoms including ulcers and many issues in between. Stress may also present a threat in families, suggests a new Finnish study conducted at the University of Jyvaskyla. The study examine both parents and their children, and distinguished between those parents who were experiencing stress and burn out at work and those who had a more positive attitude about their jobs.

The study’s results show that parents going through stressful periods at or attitudes about work were far more likely to have children who felt disillusioned about school and who were stressed and unhappy with their performance. One especially interesting piece of data to emerge from the study was the trend in which family members of the same gender appeared to have a more direct stress-affected relationship than those of different genders. As a result, daughters were most affected by mothers who felt stressed at work, and sons showed greater influence through their relationships with their fathers. The researchers noted that an increase in financial worries also contributed to higher rates of stress among children.

The precise way in which stress and burnout are communicated within the home may have an important impact on the link between parents and their children. Further research into whether families who constructively or calmly talk about their issues at work rather than “letting off steam” at home may help researchers understand the precise mechanism through which stress is made contagious.

Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Family harmony is a dream we all share. Wouldn’t it be great if we could function day to day like our favorite families on television? Sure, life would come along with a one-two punch, but because we are so connected, in sync, funny and resilient, by the end of the day we would land on our feet, together. Whether you relate more to the family of The Cosby Show, Malcolm in the Middle or Family Guy, those families always come out wiser and still united in the end.

Real families aren’t so predictable. Marriage, child rearing, going to work, moving across the country, cleaning the house, going to school, loaning or borrowing money, having medical problems, dealing with one another’s moods; this is family life. It’s a messy marathon, and some of us find the experience more painful than others. Into some families comes divorce, or alcoholism, or mental illness. Perhaps poverty or abuse. These families struggle to be connected and have positive relationships. And with enough pain, some of us walk away from our families and never look back.

There are times when it is wise to create some emotional distance from our relatives. We don’t need to be intensely involved with every member of our family all the time. Our family systems have their own sense of rhythm, and closeness and distance is one of those human emotional processes that moves us in toward each other, and then away from each other over time, in the natural dance of maintaining manageable emotional energy. We all do it, and it is a function of every close relationship we have.

Some of us have the experience of deliberately cutting off connection, particularly with one or both of our parents, for an extended period of time. We have another argument, the phone gets slammed down, and something inside us closes. We have run out of energy to explain, defend, and extend ourselves and we just need to give ourselves a rest from that intensity. Such periods of distance and recovery are common in families. You may be in one of those periods right now. It may feel like a burden has lifted, and you vow you’ll never go through that, whatever that was, again.

But here’s the thing: while shorter times of disconnect won’t interfere in your life, years of emotional shunning or cut-off can. When we cut out a key family relationship from our life, it takes quite a bit of energy to keep hold that emotional door closed. And the emotional energy that that relationship could potentially provide us is gone. While the bad stuff isn’t active, neither is anything that could be positive. We compensate for that missing support, interaction and connection by leaning more heavily on other close relationships, like our marriage, our children, and our job. Our other relationships can take the extra expectations for awhile, but they can’t provide extra emotional stability indefinitely. Those relationships can get stressed. And then instead of one cut-off, people can find that they are being distanced or shut out by other key relationships. Loneliness, isolation and distress can erupt, seemingly, “out of nowhere.”

We are better balanced human beings when we strive to maintain some measure of openness and connection with all the key people in our family system. It’s like the water pipes that feed my basement sink. In Minnesota, winter temperatures can dip well below zero. I’ve discovered that when the temps are that low, the pipes to that sink can freeze. And frozen water pipes are one problem I don’t want to have.

So I have learned that if I keep the faucets slightly dripping on the coldest of nights, I prevent a huge problem. Drip, drip, drip: that’s all it takes to keep my pipes working. Drip, drip, drip is all the energy you really need to expend to keep connected to the most difficult family members in your own life. You don’t need to open your emotional “faucets” very far to prevent your own emotional system from freezing up.

This can look like a birthday card, a call on Christmas, an invitation to a baptism. It can mean returning an email graciously, showing up for an anniversary dinner, knowing your parent’s cell phone number. It means simple connection, the kind that keeps families functioning, particularly at times of high anxiety or emergency. You don’t want to have the first connection you have with your mother for years be in the Intensive Care Unit of her local hospital.

It boils down to this: we need each other, particularly our core family members, to be in our emotional world. Don’t cut someone off from your life completely. The relief you feel is short lived, and the pain can last a lifetime.

©Copyright 2010 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Your partner isn’t the problem, your BRAIN is! Imagine that. And the irony is that your brain is just doing its job! Alright, so here’s the deal: We have not just one, but three brains. One brain in particular–the limbic brain, otherwise known as the mammalian brain–often gets in our way when managing conflict.

A Nano View of the Three Brains:

The Reptilian Brain is the brain responsible for keeping us alive without having to think about it. It manages body temperature, pulse, respiration, heart rate, blood pressure, and many other autonomic functions.

The limbic system, or mammalian brain, is informally referred to as the three “F” brain—fight, flight, and sex (you get my point). It is the center of all emotions, and contains all the pleasure, pain, and addiction centers. This brain, however, is the culprit that gets in the way of managing conflict. The limbic brain is what allows us to react without having to think.

It’s how we automatically snatch our finger away from a hot burner without first having to determine whether or not we are at a barbeque. It’s a survival mechanism, and is responsible for the bulk of our reactivity. More on that later.

The third brain, the cortex, the largest of the three brains, occupies the space just beneath the skull. The prefrontal cortex, a portion of the larger cortex system, often referred to as the CEO of the brain, evolved from the limbic brain.

The pre-frontal cortex portion of our grey matter is responsible for deductions, reductions, decision making, thinking, abstracting, etc. Located right behind the forehead, this part of the brain is crucial for effective conflict management, as it is the part we literally think with.

The three brains do much more than I have outlined, but for our purposes here, this is all you need to know for now.

Now back to the limbic brain. This brain operates within us like a scanning dish—it is always on the lookout for danger. It stores and records every experience we have ever had. In a sense, it also rates our experiences. In other words, an intense past experience may trigger an intense reaction in a similar contemporary experience.

How the Limbic System Works and Why it Matters:

The limbic system senses danger—that’s its job. When danger is perceived or sensed, a particular part of the limbic system relays a signal to the adrenal glands to send adrenaline to the prefrontal cortex. Why? Because then the adrenaline shuts down the pre-frontal cortex, thereby inhibiting it from thinking. The body is further readied for action, which will generally result in one of two alternatives: standing ground and fighting or taking flight. In some situations, an individual may freeze.

One way to understand the relationship between the limbic brain and the prefrontal cortex is by way of ratio: the degree of limbic activity is usually inversely proportional to prefrontal activity. The more reactive (limbic) we are, the less we are in thinking (pre-frontal cortex) mode, and vice versa.

Therein lies the problem with regard to managing conflict: the limbic brain’s job is to be in opposition to the pre-frontal cortex’s job. Given that our brains are built to be at odds with each other makes trying to operate under stressful conditions and managing conflict understandably and predictably difficult! It often results in you, or your partner, saying or doing something inappropriate in a knee-jerk fashion.

The Limbic Brain and Managing Conflict:

Think of the last conflict you and your partner had that did not go well. What the conflict was about doesn’t matter for our purposes here, but how you conducted yourself matters a lot. Your discussion probably started off on a reasonably good note, but maybe it degenerated in to a mess. One or both of you yelled, got over-the-top-angry, maybe left the room, or said some things you would take back if you could, or accused, blamed, or called each other names. The list of ineffective behaviors is long.

Those ineffective tactics may be motivated by fear, or any feeling you find too painful to tolerate. The limbic brain will do its job to protect you in those instances. The resultant ineffective behaviors ultimately push your partner away in an attempt to reduce or eliminate the undesirable emotion. But, the conflict has not been resolved, it’s still there, ready to rear its ugly head in the future, actively or passively.

Couples frequently tell me, and each other, that they would have been more effective “if only he/she would not have…” Fill in your own blank here with whatever button of yours got pushed. The problem is, blaming your partner for your ineffective/reactive behavior makes your partner responsible for it, but your partner can’t change your behavior—only you can do that. Regardless of who pushed your buttons, when you take responsibility for your own ineffective behavior, you can change it. Simple as that.

With that in mind, you can then make a decision to calm the limbic brain so that you can INCREASE THINKING, AND REDUCE REACTING when in conflict. Ultimately, each partner must assume responsibility for their own effective, ineffective and reactive behavior.

How to Calm the Limbic Brain:

Simply knowing the role of the limbic brain isn’t enough. Now, you need to know how to calm it down. Many couples report the following three exercises are very helpful.

First, before you begin your talk about the issue bothering you, describe for your partner how you plan to comport yourself. You might say, “…honey, this is really a loaded topic for me, so this time I’m going to remain outwardly calm even if I’m not feeling calm inside. And if I get angry, rather than screaming at you, instead I’m going to report to you that I’m feeling angry, or hurt. I will speak in a softer voice; and instead of rolling my eyes after you recap what you heard me say, I will let you know if what you heard matched what I was trying to convey. And rather than calling you names, which I always regret afterwards, because I know that’s like throwing gasoline on a fire, instead I’m going to tell you what I am feeling.”

Second, state your goal or goals for the talk. Stating goals lets your partner understand your motives. It’s likely you each have different goals. In my office the other day, one highly reactive couple stated the following:

He said: “Believe it or not, my goal is to listen, and not give any solutions to you, because I know you feel angry when I do the fix-it thing. I guess my real goal is to show you I care about you by showing you that what you have to say matters to me, and the best way to do that is for me to listen, while you talk.”

She said: Thank you, your goals make me feel safe. My goal is to give you a chance to understand what I am saying by leaving room for you to recap what I’ve said, because my deeper goal is get out of my own way, and take responsibility for being understood. And, if you don’t hear what I was trying to tell you, I’ll say it again, in a different way,
rather than criticizing you for not getting it.”

Third, if you feel activated, and unable to achieve some calm, call for a time out. There is nothing wrong with taking a break, collecting your thoughts, and soothing your emotions. Activation not only comes in the form of feeling over-the-top-angry, you might experience yourself unable to think clearly, fumbling for words, or crying. After all, don’t lose sight of the fact that the limbic brain inhibits the pre-frontal cortex from doing its job: thinking.

If you cannot think, it is very difficult to express yourself in a way that will increase the odds of being understood. A time-out can dramatically reduce reactivity. By the way, there is nothing wrong with crying, or any other emotion in and of itself. There is a problem only when the intensity of the emotions precipitate ineffective behavior, and/or, they reduce your ability to think. Before the time-out begins, agree on a specific time to resume the conversation.

Those three methods for reducing reactivity are effective for both practical and neurological reasons. For practical purposes, they clue your partner in to what you want, and pave a clear path for making the discussion emotionally safe for both of you. Furthermore, when goals of any type are made verbal or explicit, the odds for achieving them go way up. Employing these methods also sends a direct message to partner that you are taking responsibility for your side of the street.

Neurologically, these methods send positive commands to the pre-frontal cortex. That is important because recent brain research suggests that the brain does not respond so well to ‘negative commands.’ A negative command comes in the form of telling yourself what NOT to do, rather than what TO do. When you focus only on what NOT to do you create another problem: not clarifying for yourself what to do instead. Therefore, turn your WILL NOT command in to a what-you-WILL-DO command. Now you have something to work with because the pre-frontal cortex is adequately engaged.

That is exactly what the couple above did when they used the first method for reducing reactivity. They each described the behavior they wanted to stop, and then verbalized the behavior they were going to replace it with. By the way, their discussion went very well!

Understanding the brain’s role in conflict management is new. Putting effort toward understanding the relationship between the limbic brain and the pre-frontal cortex, and managing them effectively, will net you much greater return on investment than struggling to control your partner’s behavior. Bottom line: when the limbic brain hijacks the prefrontal cortex, now you have some ways to reverse it.

Now it’s time to give your brain a positive command. Repeat after me: “In my next discussion with my spouse/partner, rather than trying to get my partner to behave in a particular way, I instead will manage my own behavior by reducing my own reactive (limbic) brain using any or all of the three methods I am now aware of.”

This takes practice, perseverance and the desire to put the necessary effort toward being the partner and person you aspire to be. You will never regret doing any of that.

©Copyright 2010 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Sometimes the hardest thing about getting sober is…getting sober – or rather, what “sober” means to the person in regard to their family. This is especially true for members of alcoholic or addictive families, where maintaining the status quo may require members to operate according to prescribed “roles”. Getting sober means surrendering this role, eventually, in order to become more authentic or real.

This is not easy, to say the least, within a family where roles are required to keep the (dysfunctional) system going. The recovery slogan, “The only thing that has to change is everything,” points to the enormity of the change required. Sure, change happens slowly, a day at a time, but addicts are not stupid and understand that their way of handling life and relationships is now subject to change, especially when it comes to the roles they have implicitly been assigned – and accepted. Sobriety can be threatening to both person and family, since alcoholic families have weak coping skills and difficulty adapting to the new. The status quo, or “homeostasis” of such a family, is resistant to change.

Take, for instance, a child or adult child of an alcoholic family who assumes a “hero” role: here is the overachiever who excels at academics, sports, college, and so forth. (These roles most often apply to the children or adult children of such families.) This person feels that they are loved not so much for who they are but what they achieve. When such a person turns out to be an alcoholic, the injury to his/her self-esteem is severe; not only are they letting themselves down (since failure to control drugs or alcohol is often seen initially as a “weakness”), but they’re letting their whole families down by removing their hero-mask and getting real. In the big picture, they are now authentically heroic by having the courage to face their problems. In the short run, however, family members can no longer say, “Well as screwed up as we are, at least we have one high achiever in our midst!” The hero can no longer be celebrated as the “pride and joy” of a struggling family, carried on the shoulders of jubilant parents – and above the heads of their siblings. Now the hero must abandon the mask, come down to their siblings’ level, and risk being seen as a “loser” (or scapegoat), someone who brings stress to the family by challenging homeostasis.

This is enormously difficult terrain to navigate – not only for the sober person but also the family, who may even subtly indicate that maybe their beloved is not really an addict or alcoholic. Very often the messages, conscious or not, sent to the newly sober person are, Please don’t change or Don’t make us change (or look at ourselves honestly). The family may (unintentionally, most of the time) undermine the hero’s sobriety, because of the threat to the status quo. They may pile on a stack of requirements impossible to fulfill; they may create distraction, sabotage therapy, or refuse to support treatment. Siblings may minimize the person’s drinking or using, lest they have to look at their own issues. One rule of thumb you can almost always count on is, Once the alcoholic stabilizes, their family will become more anxious and agitated. Sobriety causes undue stress and agitation within such a system. Thus many heroes feel guilt or remorse, not so much for their own suffering but how they’ve caused their families to suffer, or “make” them suffer by threatening homeostasis.

They may end up trying to be a (false) hero in sobriety by trying to speed their recovery as quickly as possible. Look ma, all better! This rarely works over time, for obvious reasons. Often heroes are surprised at the tepid or lukewarm responses they receive from some family members, responses that may leave them feeling like a scapegoat.

This brings us to role number two. The scapegoat, of course, is the “cause” of most if not all the family’s woes. Their new sobriety, by default, pushes not only the alcoholic but also his family members to begin looking at themselves and “their part” rather than continue to blame. Scapegoats may end up receiving a lot of mixed messages; i.e., we’re glad you’re sober, but you’re still messed up in these ways over here. They may, hopefully, begin to finally receive positive support, which can be an awkward adjustment. A longstanding pattern of negative attention conditions a scapegoat to feel that negative attention and blame is all they will ever get, or even deserve. They often sense, consciously or not, that they are doing a service to the family by distracting or diverting everyone from their own accountability (while continuing to numb their own conscience with alcohol and drugs). Getting sober, in this instance, is often felt by them to be a kind of “betrayal” because now the skeletons will have to be dragged from the closet if he/she wants to truly clean house and drop false pretenses. Many of those skeletons involve family members’ culpability in sins of the past, and some of the old family myths (that it’s all the addict’s fault) are now threatened. Why did our kid get sober again?

Most families, of course, are frightened to face this kind of change, and may cling to the old patterns for dear life. Change is often frightening, even when necessary. The scapegoat may feel some isolation and disorientation as they take the heroic, honest journey of sobriety – stepping out of their role, and away from the family (at least temporarily). This can be a lonely place to be at the beginning, since it’s not at all certain that the family will follow them on their new path.

So it is that the newly sober person – and this applies to both roles described above – is risking abandonment, which is the worst fear an alcoholic family member often has (especially a child or adult child of an alcoholic). Add this to the fact that getting sober is very difficult under any circumstances, and you start to get an idea of the level of commitment required to stay sober. This is why “it takes a village” to help, via recovery (peer support, sponsorship), therapy or counseling, psychiatry and hopefully family counseling as well, to help everyone make the difficult transition to sanity.

Next: In Part II I will discuss what happens when a Mascot or Lost Child gets sober…

©Copyright 2010 by Darren Haber, MFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Darren and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

For better or worse, we first learn about making and keeping relationships in our families. During our formative years, our parents establish patterns with us; patterns of connection and separation, of independence and dependence, of give and take, that literally shape our developing brains and how they work for the rest of our lives.

The problem, of course, is that this is a very imperfect process. Our parents have inherited their own patterns from their own parents, families and culture and combined them into their own style. Very few of these emotional patterns are conscious; we rarely notice or examine them. This automatic process is why family emotional patterns are so often repeated generation to generation. When they work for us, they help us develop into caring, connected, loving human beings. When they don’t work well, we can be shaped by anxiety, demands, rigid roles and expectations, and inflexible rules for behavior. Of course, most of us have a unique, messy combination of both.

One of the most emotionally charged family experiences we share are the subtle and not so subtle family expectations that swirl around “The Holidays.” Whether the holiday is Christmas, Passover or the cultural New Year, many families have traditions that involve returning “home,” visiting parents or relatives, eating, and sharing worship or rituals together year after year. For adults who have left their parental home and established an independent life, these expectations can arouse surprisingly high anxiety and worry. We can be caught off-guard by overwhelming feelings of obligation, excitement, frustration, pleasure, anger or any combination of feelings about the family traditions we know but now have a small measure of distance from. And if we add into the mix the distance and cost of travel, or the demands of college, work or a new spouse or child, it can feel like a chaotic world inside our heads.

Most of us solve this internal family stress in just a few ways.

We may promise to return home, but find a conflict at the last minute. We may go, but
bring along a friend, spouse or child, and use them as an emotional buffer. We may go and find the old emotional patterns so arousing we eat, drink, sleep, or spend too much while there. We retreat to the computer, the new novel we brought, or constantly check our smart phones for communication from the outside world. And still others of us find the whole returning to our family so stressful we end up in huge, raging family fights just when we want to be relaxed and connected.

It is hard to return home to our families. We want to behave well, but find our own reactions surprising and troubling. How can we stay connected in a more healthy way to the people and traditions we had growing up, without completely throwing them out? How can we be calmer under the stress of bad communication, or alcoholism, marital conflict, unspoken rivalries, disappointments or fear?

Family systems theory understands the family as both the source of this emotional stress as well as the soil in which new, more flexible personal patterns of connection need to grow. How can we change our point of view of family and behave in slightly more helpful, relaxed ways?

The answer is two fold.

Firstly, we must recognize that we are part of that same family that makes us so confused. We need to return to our families over time, in small amounts, and become a witness or observer of our family’s emotional process. We can enter into our family process as both participant and student. What do we notice? How do this family work? How do I participate in these patterns? What if I were to do something slightly different than before?

And secondly, we make a steady effort to talk with, deal with, and know each member of our family one to one. When we can have real, face to face relationships with the people in our extended emotional system, we stop behaving with them in old, rigid, familiar ways, and have to deal with them as people in the here and now. And not surprisingly, they have the same experience with us.

These basic emotional changes are the building blocks to creating a more flexible self when dealing with our families from a distance. We don’t have to cut our families out of our lives, and we don’t have to simply accept their unique problems and bear our burdens silently. Observe your family system, and focus on your relationships with people individually. You can go home again, with a shift in purpose and perspective, and find yourself better connected and less anxious.

©Copyright 2009 by Lynne Silva-Breen, MDiv, MA, LMFT. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Lynne and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

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Do you ever wish your partner could read your mind? What I mean is, have your partner anticipate your desire so that you don’t have to ask for whatever it is you want?

Well, for sure, NOT having your mind read has been a source of conflict for many couples. But, here’s the rub: You may not get what you want if you don’t ask, because your partner cannot read your mind! Many of you tell me, while sitting in my office, irate at your supposedly insensitive partner, “But, if I have to ask, it doesn’t mean as much.”

That’s truly unfortunate. And besides, whatever happened to old adage that the power of the gift is in the giving? When did it change to the power of a gift is in the guessing and getting it right? If you refuse to ask because you think it means less, you the risk building a gap between the two of you in three ways:

First, you prevent your partner from giving to you, when he or she may be very willing to meet your request or desire, if you would only ask.

Second, you’re telling partner you are willing to receive, but only if it’s on your terms. You partner is likely to experience that as being selfish.

Third, your desire to be anticipated becomes more important than what you wanted in the first place.

Why does the mind-reading phenomenon play such an important role? Consider this:

To begin with, it partly goes back to courtship when, indeed, there probably was a fair amount of mutual anticipation and meeting of each others desires. Naturally, we would ALL love to have a blissful courtship continue endlessly, but it’s not realistic for a number of reasons I won’t go in to now.

Also, in courtship you probably experienced your desires endlessly gratified, some by request, but many without request. After awhile, when you think your partner knows you well, you then believe you need not ask for what you want—your partner should “just know.”

And consider this: The continuous desire for anticipated gratification is a way to feel now, long after the courtship, the same way you felt during courtship. Again, unrealistic, even if understandable.

Furthermore, some people don’t want to ask for what they want because they fear they might hear the dreaded word “no.” Rather than face the prospect of disappointment, they shoot themselves in the foot by not letting their desire be known. And, when they don’t get what they want because they did not ask, they blame their partner.

Finally, part of this goes back to the family of origin. If you experienced chronic disappointment connected to not having basic needs tended to as a kid, there is a chance you will easily feel disappointment when you magically wish for something you are to afraid to ask for, and don’t get it.

So, both courtship, and early familial experiences play a role in this interesting issue that many couples face at one time or another.

Your partner does his/her best to anticipate you, and is also willing to give when you ask. Appreciate that, and reciprocate. Tell yourself that you ‘get’ to ask, not that you ‘have’ to ask. When you get what you want, show your appreciation of your partner for listening, hearing, and showing up. After all, he or she fundamentally cares for, and loves, you.

©Copyright 2009 by Jim Hutt, Ph.D. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jim and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Though in most places in the world, family courts exist to help resolve conflicts and make difficult decisions nevertheless designed to create the best possible good in complex situations, family court experiences themselves are rarely if ever enjoyed by those who are obliged to attend. In fact, many such experiences are marked by emotional and mental difficulties of an exceptional nature, and the path towards recovery from family break-ups, re-structuring, and other issues may be long. Certainly, however, interactions with family court should be able to provide a minimum of care, capable of helping people establish happier and healthier lives. Such is the concern of a family court judge in New Zealand, who recently spoke out against inadequate services and understanding which has led to an alarming eighteen suicides among family court visitors in the space of a year.

Noting that domestic violence, mental health issues, and other concerns are often encountered in the family court setting, the judge states that those working within the judicial system should be better equipped to identify people who may be in need of specialized care, and that greater, more accessible services should be created to not only meet with clients, but to help them stay enrolled in support programs. Many people who experience traumatic emotional events in family courts do not seek treatment, or, if they do, a substantial number drop out of programs early. By making bold calls for better mental health measures, the judge may inspire court systems around the world to take mental health into greater consideration. With the right attention and professional, heartfelt care, family courts may one day greater embody the mission of service for which they were originally established.

An often overlooked age group, the 85 and up set face many challenges that are typically reserved for old age. Memory issues, difficulty finding energy, and the rapid or prolonged loss of friends and loved ones can all contribute to symptoms of depression, which is experienced at a high rate among those in this age group. Efforts to develop targeted therapy programs and other forms of treatment for such clients are on-going, with a recent development having been made through research at the University of Michigan and Kyungpook National University. The research found that involving the very old in family affairs and keeping them informed of events can greatly help to ward off symptoms of depression. A simple strategy, including the elderly in decisions and discussions may go a long way towards relieving some of the psychological burden often carried during old age.

Click here to contact Jason and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

In the midst of a world economic crisis, millions of families will be challenged in ways that can cause significant negative effects to their lives. As a Marriage and Family Therapist here in South Florida, economic stress is one of the main reasons why a couple or family will initiate therapy with me. In fact, Viktor Gecas, professor of sociology and head of the Department of Sociology at Purdue University notes that “research shows that this kind of stress can lead to changes in family members and in family dynamics, such as husbands becoming irritable and wives becoming depressed, as well as more extreme problems such as mental health issues, alcoholism, drug abuse and family violence.”

How we learn to cope with this present situation is based on the resources that we have access to. Families that were already struggling before the present crisis may be hit the hardest. The friends and family members that they usually can count of in times of need may also be affected by their own economic woes.

On the other hand, when a crisis happens in ones life, we are often able to have a period of self-reflection. This ability to determine what are the most important aspects of our lives that need to be focused on right now can help us get organized and allow ourselves to set aside extra expenses that can be put on hold till the economy gets back on track. We can find a way to become more creative and resourceful in how we get things done in our day to day life.

According to Evergreen State College Professor Stephanie Coontz and CCF research intern Valerie Adrian, economically distressed parents are more likely to use harsher methods of disciplining their children. With unstable housing and the loss of neighborhood connections, they also are less likely to have the support of their social networks to engage in effective
parenting. Additionally, children living with economic uncertainty and stressed-out parents are more vulnerable to depression—and their expectations (and motivation) can become lower.

Children are the first to be able to spot changes in their parents behaviors. They may see you coming home from work or meetings upset or even notice that many of their favorite snacks for school are not getting refilled quite as fast. Either way, finding a way to express how you are presently about the situation can actually be a great way to increase open discussions about other subjects as well. Identifying feelings is helpful, but it is not enough.

Remember to give children the skills to deal with their own feelings by sharing how we cope and offering them specific tools that work for us. This may be the time where you start to notice changes in their own behaviors at home, at school and even with friends. By ensuring that you have open communication, you can help decrease the probability of any significant challenges.

In order to combat the parenting challenges that may arise, here are some suggestions:
• Stay positive.
• Spend more time at home with your children.
• Start a new hobby with the entire family, even one as simple as working on puzzles together.
• Prepare fresh, healthy meals.
• Learn to slow down and remember it may not be that important.

Using this time to take advantage of the resources available to your family will help get you on track for the long run during this hopefully short economic downturn.

©Copyright 2009 by Jason Wasser, LMFT All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Jason and/or see his GoodTherapy.org Profile

Click here to contact Pamela and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile

It happens every week. I walk into the bathroom. There is no toilet paper on the roller. The good news is there is a new roll of toilet paper sitting right on top of the roller! Does anyone else face this dilemma? At church last Sunday, among the four of us talking, three of us are the official and only changers of the toilet paper in the house. One woman said she walked into her daughters’ bathroom and found three rolls stacked on an empty roller. Changing the toilet paper is probably the easiest of household chores, so those of us allocated that responsibility should be relieved. Instead we are annoyed. Does no one else know how to do it? Is it too much to expect that one could put a new roll of toilet paper on the roller? It’s a brainless job.
For many a mom, taking care of the home is a form of loving our families and we find joy in it. BUT—are we creating monsters of the next generation who will enter marriages expecting Hilda Housekeeper to take care of everything? Are our children and husbands blind about all we do and then cannot function when we are gone? How do we handle this? This is more than toilet paper. The issue is not the tissue. This is about the balance of power and balance of managing a home. Many couple and family fights are about chores. How do we as families address the notion of community responsibility, roles and expectations? There is a way not to do it and a way to do.

What Not to Do:

•Keep changing the toilet paper and feel increasingly resentful.
•Criticize everyone in the house for being lazy.
•Whine that you are the only one who does anything.
•Refuse to provide toilet paper.
•Get fed up, and move out.
•Ruminate about the slugs you live with and rant and rave.
•Bore your friends about your lazy family.
•Refuse to have sex.

What to Do:

•Have a respectful conversation with your husband about your interest in balancing roles and responsibilities in your home.
•Make a list of everything each of you does to contribute, along with the time and energy it takes for each of you to do the task.
•Note the things you each enjoy doing and the things you hate or resent doing.
•List the tasks that children can do and later have a family meeting around the topic.
•Give playful reminders like wrapping the doorway with toilet paper.
•Realign tasks so each of you feels good about the balance—a win/win.
•Express appreciation weekly for the things you each do for the family.
•Evaluate weekly how you each feel about the task allocation noting resentments and overwhelm.
•Brainstorm alternatives when either feels resentment.
•Get help from a professional if resentment continues.

Living with others brings a myriad of issues to us and the holidays can accentuate tensions. The challenge is to use communication and negotiation to maintain balance, appreciation, and humor in the home. If something annoys us greatly, some of the annoyance may be the imbalance. If the irritation is a very high level it may be our own history—the story we tell ourselves about the problem. That part may require help. Otherwise, we talk about it. It is only toilet paper.

©Copyright 2008 by Pamela Simmons, LPC. All Rights Reserved. Permission to publish granted to GoodTherapy.org. The following article was solely written and edited by the author named above. The views and opinions expressed are not necessarily shared by GoodTherapy.org. Questions or concerns about the following article can be directed to the author or posted as a comment to this blog entry. Click here to contact Pamela and/or see her GoodTherapy.org Profile