Sad Memories“It’s taken me a long time to get here,” Jessica lamented in her first session. “I don’t know what my problem is. I just feel unhappy. Something is missing in my life, but I don’t know what I want or what it could be. I’m a 46-year-old married woman. My marriage to Peter is fine and I like my job as a speech therapist well enough. I feel boring and bored and maybe have more anxiety than I should. What do you think is wrong?”

Jessica’s statement at the start of therapy began our quest to understand Jessica’s sense of emptiness. In our sessions, her talk was tinged with melancholy. Jessica said that when she looked in the mirror she saw “a not very attractive, aging, unsatisfied woman who feels empty.” Apart from Jessica’s sad demeanor, she brought urgency to the sessions with her intense desire to find out “what is wrong with me?”

Jessica grew up in a suburb of a large city as the younger of two daughters. Her parents divorced when she was 9 years old. Her father quickly remarried and had a child with his new wife. Jessica had vivid memories: “I was crying and my father was hugging me. He said he was moving out because he and my mother had too many problems to stay together.” A tearful Jessica continued: “I remember thinking, ‘How can he leave me?’ I couldn’t stop crying and ran to my room.”

[fat_widget_right]

Jessica and her sister saw her father weekly for a little more than a year, but when he became involved with his wife to be, their visits became less frequent. She recalled, “It was never the same after he left. I never saw him alone and I couldn’t hold onto the feeling that I was special to him. I lost that when I lost him.”

Jessica tried in our sessions to recapture what growing up was like. She wondered if she had been sad even before her father left: “I think I’ve always been sad. Maybe our whole household was sad. My mother was not an energetic or happy person. She often seemed far away. I think she was depressed after my father left and she definitely became more anxious. I was always anxious, too. My sister, who is five years older than me, always did her own thing. But I was very attached to my mother. I felt a strong need for her, and it must have gotten more intense after my father left. She wasn’t very affectionate, and I was very clingy. I remember we used to play cards a lot and we’d go shopping together. I wanted to be around her. I didn’t have a lot of friends. When I went to high school, I started to make friends, but I was always nervous around them. I felt different and not part of the group, so I didn’t do as much at school or with them as I now wish I had.”

When Jessica left home for college, she became somewhat more engaged with the world. She had her first date at the end of her freshman year and dated occasionally throughout college. For the most part, she focused on her education. The college and graduate school Jessica chose was two hours away from home. She spent most weekends and school vacations home alone with her mother (her sister had married and moved to California).

Jessica recalled her conflicted feelings about going home: “I missed my mother when I was away at school, but I don’t know what I missed, exactly. Going home was pretty boring. My mother wasn’t very interested in what I was doing. Whenever I was excited to tell her about my classes or my patients when I was in grad school, she seemed to change the subject. I don’t know what it was, but being around her made me anxious about school and dating and I guess about most everything. Still, after grad school I moved back near my mother and got a job as a speech therapist. When I think about it now, I don’t get why I went home. I think I felt my mother wanted something from me, but I don’t know what.”

I asked Jessica to talk more about her experience with her mother.

“It’s hard to describe,” she said. “I felt so ambivalent about her. I loved her desperately but always felt something was missing in our connection. I wanted her to tell me I was terrific, to give me the feeling she was interested in me and my life. I wanted to feel like she took pleasure in what I did and who I was, but she never did. If anything, I made her feel good. I felt she needed me, but I didn’t know what she needed me for. She was very sensitive, and I was very anxious around her. It didn’t take much for me to feel I had hurt her. She seemed like a pretty lonely person. I think I felt I was supposed to do something to make her life better. She seemed to like it when I was around, but she never seemed to want me very close to her. It was confusing because I also needed to be with her, but it never made sense to me that I felt that way.”

Jessica was beginning to recognize that her mother was limited and couldn’t provide her with feelings of being special that she desperately needed and longed for. Jessica also began to appreciate the consequences of her strong feelings that she would hurt her mother by being special or fulfilled.

Tears started to flow: “You know, she died too young. She developed heart problems and became very sick when I was 32. After that, I spoke to her every day and visited as much as I could, even if I didn’t want to. All my energy was focused on her. She was very depressed, and I was very careful not to make her feel worse by telling her anything that was good in my life.”

Jessica’s mother was ill for four years and died when Jessica was 36, 10 years before she came to see me. During her illness, Jessica’s mother was a constant companion in Jessica’s mind.

“I got more anxious and very depressed,” Jessica recalled. “My mother was dying, and I felt totally helpless. I was so worried that I would say or do something that would upset her. I was preoccupied with thoughts about what I should be doing for her and what she would think about my life. Sometimes I still catch myself wondering what she would think about me. I’m very sad that she never got to meet Peter or know that I married. But sometimes I think marrying Peter was a betrayal of my mother. She never felt very good about herself. How would she feel if my life went well? I think it would hurt her. She might think I was arrogant if I said I had a good life or expressed excitement about my accomplishments. I’d feel like I was being mean to her.”

Even now, after the death of her mother, Jessica still expresses a strong need for her mother: “Since my mother died, she is in my head more than ever. I find myself wondering what she would think about everything: would she like something I bought or would she be OK with my coming here?”

“What kind of response would you want from your mother now?” I asked.

Jessica began to sob: “I wish she would give me a big smile and look really delighted with me. I don’t think I ever got that from her.”

As we continued to explore Jessica’s relationship with her mother, it became clearer that her mother had been unable to provide Jessica with the basics for developing positive self-feelings and a sense of being valued, admired, and recognized. Jessica’s mother couldn’t mirror Jessica’s excitement, enthusiasm, and good self-feelings back to her. Consequently, Jessica infrequently experienced these feelings as part of herself. This left a space inside Jessica, which I believed was what Jessica described as “something missing.” Growing up, Jessica did not know that her need and longing for her mother was her effort to find her missing good and valuable self in her mother’s experience of her.

Jessica was beginning to recognize that her mother was limited and couldn’t provide her with feelings of being special that she desperately needed and longed for. Jessica also began to appreciate the consequences of her strong feelings that she would hurt her mother by being special or fulfilled. We spent many sessions talking about all the ways Jessica had held herself back in her life. She became aware of how her relationship to her mother governed her choices and kept her trapped in patterns of behavior, thought, and feeling that interfered with her ability to enjoy life, engage with people, and ultimately feel self-confident and pleased with herself and her life. She began to understand how, unconsciously, she had lived her life to assure that if her mother contrasted her life to Jessica’s, she wouldn’t feel threatened by finding too much “good stuff” in Jessica’s life. Jessica wondered if she was only able to find a partner and marry after her mother’s death.

Jessica and I worked hard exploring her attachment to her mother. Now she has emotional knowledge (knowledge with feelings attached, not just thoughts) about that connection. She knows she connected to her mother by becoming like her: she internalized her mother’s sadness and duplicated the absence of her mother’s good internalized self-feelings. She knows that her sadness about her missing good self-parts was a kind of mourning for the absence of a nurturing mother and the good feelings she was never able to obtain from her.

Now Jessica is freeing herself from protecting her mother. Now she can be there for herself. She can nurture her missing parts and change her internal world. She will be able to own a new sense of self-confidence and self-esteem and follow her own wishes, get her needs met, and feel special.

Note: To protect privacy, names in the preceding article have been changed and the dialogues described are a composite.

You are not alone in feeling out of place in your family of origin. Just because we start in one place doesn’t mean that’s where we ultimately end up. As we get older, we often find ourselves spending more time with the family that we have chosen or created. Sometimes that includes the families we came from, but often it does not. It sounds as if your path has taken you in directions that your family members have not shared. It is only natural to feel out of place. It’s great that you feel so comfortable with your wife’s family. What a wonderful resource to have.

I wonder if some of the distress you are feeling comes from a sense of being responsible for the choices your family makes. You talk about not wanting to expose your wife to your family—is that from fear of what she will think of them, and by extension you? Do you believe they present a threat to you, your wife, or your relationship? You are not defined by your family, only by the choices you make. The fact you’ve chosen a path that differs so significantly from your family of origin makes a clear statement about who you are and what you believe. I wonder how much fear of judgment is contributing to the discomfort you are feeling when you are around your family.

Your intolerance for your family suggests that, whether you’re aware of it or not, you are likely grieving your emotional distance from them. I encourage you to identify the pain, fear, or vulnerability which colors the lens through which you view your family. If you can attend to the deeper vulnerability within you, this lens may become clearer, the distance you are feeling may diminish, and along with it—to some degree—your grief. (Of course, there may still be some grieving to do.)

You have many choices as to how you handle family situations. It sounds like it is important to you to retain a sense of your history, your roots, and where you came from. You also mention that your mother’s health is declining. Cutting off your family right now could cause you pretty significant distress. It doesn’t have to be an all-or-nothing proposition. You can insulate yourself from the discomfort you feel at the differences in your current life choices without cutting yourself off from them.

You seem to be focusing on the ways you differ. Are there things that you share? Even though you don’t share many of the values your family does (politics, animal rights, etc.), are there some things that make you feel connected? Was there something in the way that you were raised that allowed and encouraged you to forge your own path? Are there qualities about your family that you can appreciate?

You seem frustrated by your family’s unwillingness to change their ways when you are with them. Do they expect you to change your ways when you visit or do they accept you as you are? It is possible to love and accept others who don’t believe in what we do or act in ways we would. In fact, once we stop trying to change others and accept them as they are, it can bring significant relief. If we accept that we can love people by virtue of a shared history without necessarily liking them, that can make things easier as well.

If you focus on the qualities you appreciate about your family, on how your experiences in your family shaped the choices you’ve made, you can value your family connections for what they are—part of a shared history. You can also limit how much time you spend with them if being around them causes you distress. Ultimately the shift is not going to come from them—and may not even come from avoiding them. The most impactful shift will be an internal one. You may want to work through some of this with a therapist who can help you integrate your past and your present more peacefully.

Best wishes,
Erika

Schizophrenia is often found in families with high rates of psychological illness. When one member of a family has schizophrenia, the chances of other members developing psychological problems, including schizophrenia and psychosis, increase. Some of the factors that are considered when analyzing risk for illness are family history, life stressors, trauma, and IQ. Each of these had a unique relationship with risk and schizophrenia.

In a recent study, Kim W. Verweij of the Department of Psychiatry at the University Medical Centre Utrecht in the Netherlands sought to explore the influence and evidence of IQ in families with schizophrenia. Using a sample 696 individuals with schizophrenia and their siblings (766), Verweij compared IQ scores to those of 517 individuals with no history of schizophrenia or psychiatric issues. Researchers collected data from all participants without schizophrenia and scored them separately. Those with schizophrenia also completed IQ tests and their results were analyzed independently.

The results showed that siblings of those with schizophrenia only had elevated IQs if they themselves had any history of mental health issues, or if other members of their family did. Those siblings who did not have a family history, excluding the member with schizophrenia, had average IQs compared to siblings with a robust family history. Verweij also found that the individuals with schizophrenia, who also had a family member with mental health issues, had higher IQ scores than the individuals with schizophrenia and no family history.

Verweij believes that this suggests a high familial influence on psychiatric impairment in the participants with family illness, while those without may be more influenced by external and variable factors, such as trauma, premature birth, or other stressors. Not only do these factors create a ripe environment for psychological impairment, but they also increase vulnerability for intellectual and cognitive disability.

This study provides much needed insight into the unique association between IQ and genetic predisposition for schizophrenia. Verweij added, “Since the association between IQ scores and family history of psychiatric disorder in siblings is not extensively investigated, more research is needed to further address this question.”

Reference:
Verweij, K.H.W., Derks, E.M., Genetic Risk and Outcome in Psychosis (GROUP) investigators (2013). The association between intelligence scores and family history of psychiatric disorder in schizophrenia patients, their siblings and healthy controls. PLoS ONE 8(10): e77215. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0077215

Two teen girls with disabled brotherWith the magnitude of demands placed on special needs families, siblings of special needs children can often feel overlooked and in need of emotional support. A “special needs child” is defined as having a medical, developmental, or neurological challenges, or another type of disability which impacts the entire family system, thereby requiring special supports (i.e. medical, educational, etc.). In many families where such challenges are present, it’s inevitable that the added stress impacts not only parents and the child in question, but also typically developing siblings. In fact, rates of depression, anxiety, and chronic stress are higher for the special needs family. But with adequate supports, such impediments can be reduced. Special needs disabilities can run the gamut from severely disabling conditions, such as cerebral palsy, in which a child is wheelchair bound and cannot speak, to a high-functioning child with an “invisible” disability, such as attention deficit (ADHD) or dyslexia.

Special needs siblings may feel the following:

Your child may benefit from a referral to a competent and compassionate psychotherapist who specializes in special needs family therapy. It is of vital importance to special needs parents is to look for the following symptoms in siblings of special needs children:

Likewise, if any parent/caregiver exhibits the above symptoms, I recommend seeing a family psychotherapist as soon as possible.

There are also many benefits and unique experiences for siblings of special needs children, however. They have the opportunity to learn caregiving and sensitivity that many of their peers may not experience.

Special needs siblings may also feel the following:

It is true that there are an equal or greater number of positives and opportunities for the special needs sibling, when given the appropriate support and resources. Several websites and references are listed at the end of this article to support the special needs sibling in acquiring appropriate support to thrive and embrace being a special needs family member. The following objectives are also of great importance for special needs parents, in an effort to ameliorate the stress involved with being a member of a special needs family:

Most importantly, keep communication open with regular family meetings to problem solve about communication issues, chores, etc. Then take the opportunity to play a family game, laugh, dance, sing, and bond. As parents, keep a positive spin on being a special needs family; your situation does not have to be one of drudgery.
On the contrary, with the right resources and supports in place, life can be deeply meaningful, full of purpose, and imbued with unconditional love. Gifts and talents not detected before are discovered and embraced. Life can actually be beautiful. It is up to the parent to set the tone, to take the “emotional read” on the family, and link the family up with resources and supports, which make a world of difference in supporting the emotional health of the special needs family.

Resources for special needs siblings:

  1. Siblingsupport.org: for a listing of support groups for special needs siblings and how to get a group up and running in your community
  2. Thearc.org: sibling support network
  3. med.umich.edu/yourchild/topics/specneed.htm: University of Michigan link for special needs families
  4. friendshipcircle.org/blog/2013/04/25/the-importance-of-parental-support-and-guidance-for-special-needs-siblings/: Article with resources for sibling support The Friendship Circle website
  5. nytimes.com/2001/03/06/health/06SIBL.html: Article from New York Times (2001) in support of special needs siblings
  6. Meyer, Donald and Vadasy, Patricia. (2008). Sibshops: Workshops for Siblings of Children with Special Needs (Revised Edition), Brookes Publishing Co.
  7. Meyer Donald. (1997). Views from Our Shoes: Growing Up with a Brother or Sister with Special Needs, Woodbine House.
  8. Meyer, Donald. (2005). The Sibling Slam Book: What it’s Really Like to have a Brother or Sister with Special Needs, Woodbine House.
  9. Bleach, Fiona. (2002). Everybody is Different: A Book for Young People Who Have Brothers or Sisters with Autism
  10. Gordon, Michael. (1992). My Brother is a World-Class Pain: A Sibling’s Guide to ADHD-Hyperactivity
  11. Stuve-Bodeen, Stephanie and Devito, Pam. (1998). We’ll Paint the Octopus Red
  12. Choldenko, Gennifer. (2004). Al Capone Does My Shirts
  13. The Sibling Information Network Newsletter: for quarterly support for special needs families

Attention deficit hyperactivity (ADHD) manifests with symptoms of inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity. In the criminal population, impulsive behavior is a common thread. However, few studies have sought to determine whether ADHD increases the likelihood that a person will engage in criminal behavior. The effects of ADHD are broad, varied, and long term. To accurately predict how ADHD will influence future behavior, one must look at other environmental and familial factors. To this end, Jean-Baptiste Pingault of the Research Unit on Children’s Psychosocial Maladjustment at the University of Montreal and Sainte-Justine Hospital in Canada recently led a longitudinal study involving more than 2,700 individuals.

The participants were first evaluated for ADHD, physical aggression, inattention, and family adversity when they were 6 years old. They were reassessed annually for seven years. When they were 25, criminal records and teacher and parent reports were examined in order to find any association between the measured risk factors and criminal behavior. Pingault discovered that in certain analyses, childhood ADHD was linked to criminal behavior. But in the most sensitive analysis, the association was weak at best. However, childhood physical aggression was directly predictive of later criminal behavior.

The findings revealed that while less than 10% of the total sample exhibited physical aggression in childhood, this small group represented 30% of the criminal activity in adolescence and young adulthood. Further, these same participants were responsible for almost half of the criminal charges on record and nearly 60% of all the violent criminal charges. Family adversity also increased the risk for criminal behavior in the aggressive participants. Pingault believes these results show that not all children with ADHD are at risk of engaging in criminal behavior. But children with aggressive traits, and especially those with ADHD and family adversity, are more vulnerable to criminal activities. Therefore, efforts to reduce crime may not be most effective if focused solely on children and young people with ADHD. “Crime prevention should instead target children with the highest levels of childhood physical aggression and family adversity,” said Pingault.

Reference:
Pingault, J-B., Côté, S.M., Lacourse, E., Galéra, C., Vitaro, F., et al. (2013). Childhood hyperactivity, physical aggression and criminality: A 19-year prospective population-based study. PLoS ONE 8(5): e62594. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0062594

GoodTherapy | You’re NOT Too SensitiveHave you ever been told that you can’t take a joke, that you overreact, or that you are just too sensitive? Well, sit back and find out that there is absolutely nothing wrong with you. You see, sensitivity to criticism is earned. Yes, you read that correctly. No one is born to be sensitive to criticism; one is groomed and nurtured in environments of emotional harm. If you have a history of family members being harsh, judgmental, or verbally cruel, you are more vulnerable to verbal slights, teasing, and criticism than the average person. It’s not your fault, and you are not weird.

Roots in Your Family of Origin
Since you may have grown up in this kind of family, you might think that criticism is normal. Truthfully, I believe any kind of criticism (other than artistic or professional constructive criticism,) is never acceptable, warranted, or okay. Healthy relationships are born of acceptance and tolerance. If a friend or partner can’t tolerate you or your behavior, then they shouldn’t be your friend or partner. If someone is often telling you that you’re too sensitive, that is akin to telling you over and over again that you are not good enough, that you are flawed or inadequate.

These statements wouldn’t make anyone feel good, but it’s especially destructive to someone who came from a family where they were put down verbally, or even silently with rolling eyes and demeaning physical postures. You, the so-called “overly sensitive” person, are actually having a normal reaction to a hostile comment.

[fat_widget_right]

Roots in Mental Health Issues
Did you know that many people who are highly critical of others often suffer from depression and anxiety? Criticizing others is a means of making themselves feel better. They may go on and on about how awful someone is, in order to feel less empty, bored, or depressed. Often, unfortunately, those they criticize buy into these negative comments and end up feeling just as awful as the critics.

If you are in relationships with people who are hurting you with criticism or judgments, you might want to consider why you are surrounding yourself with these people when there are so many kind, accepting, and loving people out there. If you want to perform a little test, a good question to ask yourself after being with a friend or loved one is, “Does this person lift me up or tear me down?” If you have more “Tear downs” than “Lifts” you might want to consider getting some individual counseling. Allowing others to criticize you destroys your sense of being good enough, likeable, capable and empowered.

Roots in Self-Criticism
If you are tolerating this kind of criticism from others, chances are that you are used to talking to yourself like this. Your relationship with yourself could be more loving and accepting. For example, when you make a mistake are you constantly reaming yourself unmercifully for messing up or are you able to forgive yourself relatively quickly and move on?

Self-criticism is actually worse than being criticized by another, as there is no immediate escape from it. So, if you are relentlessly telling yourself that you are bad, flawed, fat, unattractive, stupid, uncaring, lazy, etc., you may have trouble even wanting to get out of bed. You may feel depressed, angry, helpless, or ashamed, because you don’t know how to get out of this cycle. But with guts, patience, compassion, and time you absolutely can change the way you talk to yourself. It is a huge commitment to constantly monitor your mind chatter, but well worth the effort.

Boy, father and grandfather sitting in rowHistory repeats itself, especially in our psychological lives and in our relationships.

Although this fact has been recognized for millennia, one of its earliest formulations in the field of psychology is called repetition compulsion. According to Freud (1914) repetition compulsion is a psychological phenomenon in which a person repeats a traumatic event or its circumstances over and over again, either in real life or in dreams.

Does this idea resonate with you? Are there patterns you tend to repeat in your relational life that you just can’t seem to break or, at the very least, have been slow in changing?

Although Freud attempted many explanations of this phenomenon, some more satisfactory than others, it was only in later years that we’ve gained a fuller picture of why these sorts of events are repeated.

Over the course of our lives, we interact with many different systems. However, our family of origin – the first system we encounter – has the most pervasive influence on our emotional and physical development and future relationships. As we grow up, our parents teach us what’s good or bad, valued or worthless, important or unimportant. In many cases, we learn this from what our parents say and do. In other cases, we learn more indirectly, impacted by our family’s emotional atmosphere [1].

Dorothy was a 45-year-old woman who came to psychotherapy knowing exactly what the problem was but with no idea how to solve it. Mostly, I was struck by her exhaustion – she had deep circles beneath her eyes and looked completely drained.

“I’m not living my own life anymore,” she quickly told me.

As we talked, I learned that Dorothy was exclusively caring for her aging mother, in spite of the fact that her two sisters lived less than an hour away. She visited her mother morning and night. Most days, they talked on the phone ten times. Dorothy’s mother was emotionally abusive, often calling her a terrible, hateful daughter; at other times, she phoned Dorothy’s husband to complain about Dorothy’s failings. Dorothy never confronted her mother or insisted that her sisters contribute to their mother’s care.

Dorothy experienced ongoing emotional neglect during her childhood. Although her mother was well intentioned, she’d suffered from severe mental health issues. Dorothy recounted innumerable incidents in which she sought, without success, to elicit her mother’s love. “I remember her lying on the couch almost every afternoon when I got home from school. She’d been crying and hadn’t changed out of her pajamas.”

After a brief pause, I asked, “You just wanted her to notice you?”

Dorothy sighed. “Yes,” she continued, “but no matter what I did, that never happened. I brought home artwork from school, cleaned up the house. Several times, I even cooked dinner. But my mother never got off the couch or thanked me for my effort.”

“I wonder,” I offered, “whether you’re still trying to get her to love you now.” Dorothy began to cry, a first lightly but then in more heavily, making contact with deeply held but rarely acknowledged feelings of disappointment and loss.

We all leave our family of origin with emotional baggage. Some people have more baggage than others, and some are more aware of what’s packed in their bags than others [1]. Learning what’s packed in these bags, and perhaps deciding to work through and leave a few items behind, is the essence of family of origin work.

Dorothy understood that she was repeating a pattern from her early childhood. But change did not come quickly. Over a series of meetings, we discussed the strong emotional pull Dorothy felt to recapture her mother’s love and attention – though she freely admitted that she’d never had these in the first place. Several months later, Dorothy came in and said, “My mother started insulting me again on the phone today.”

“And?” I said, waiting for her to respond.

“And I told her, ‘If you can’t speak to me kindly, then we’ll have to talk another time. Maybe tomorrow when you’re feeling better.’”

“What happened next?” I asked

Dorothy sighed. “She kept going, like we expected she would. But I rose to the occasion. I said, ‘I’m sorry mother, we’ll have to talk later,’ and I hung up the phone.”

This article will be continued in future installments.

References:

  1. Brown, F.H. (2006). Reweaving the family tapestry: A multigenerational approach to families. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
  2. Freud, S. (1914). Remembering, Repeating and Working-Through (Further Recommendations on the Technique of Psycho-Analysis II). The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud, Volume XII (1911-1913): The Case of Schreb¬¬History Repeats Itself

GoodTherapy | Dividing Family Loyalties When You MarryThere is nothing like bringing home a close friend or partner to shine a spotlight on the unspoken rules by which every family, your family, lived and lives.

Every family that lives with one another for some time develops a set of patterns for emotional engagement that soon feels like the “family rules.” These expectations for behavior may start within a marriage and strengthen their grip as children are brought into the home. Once the children catch on to these patterns, they begin to live by them. Only family members know how that family works, even though no one may have ever spoken these powerful expectations out loud.

Many of these rules are quite helpful, and create a kind of emotional shorthand that members count on. Some rules families frequently live by are: this family lets one another know our whereabouts; this family goes to church/synagogue/mosque; this family values education; this family values friendship, and this family works hard. Others might be less helpful. They might be expressed as: this family avoids conflict; this family never questions mother/father; this family relies on men for money, women for support; this family doesn’t live outside our region; this family keeps secrets, and this family doesn’t trust anyone outside the family.

With these internal rules, members keep the connections of their family relationships, even unhealthy ones, intact. Once we bring another person into close relationship with this family system through marriage, the rules become more obvious; our new partner has no way of knowing or observing these internal rules except by bumping into them. Because they don’t have the years of unconscious training in working within the boundaries of these family expectations, newcomers invariably stir up distress and even conflict by disregarding these rules or even openly disagreeing with them. This is one way newcomers remain permanently on the outside of their partners’ family systems.

This is where the partner, whose family of origin is the one getting stirred up, has to bring his or her best self to the party or he/she will end up offending and damaging the new family and partner. If the rule is “no one can challenge the way Mom behaves,” Mom can run roughshod over the new wife of her son and her son gets caught between his loyalties toward his family of origin and that toward his partner. Because the loyalty to one’s family of origin is older and deeper, chances are that is the one that most easily wins.

In families where emotional connection has never been particularly intense or expected, this kind of division of emotional importance happens automatically. Parents have children, raise them, and expect that once their children marry, the old family changes. The new has come, and everyone has to adjust. In more emotionally intense, enmeshed, or distressed family systems, blending a new spouse and/or grandchildren into the mix may require an our-way-or-the-highway kind of behavior from the newcomer that can make for chronic distress for everyone.

I counsel couples who find themselves in conflict over family rules to think about loyalty as an emotional quality of relationships that can and must be shared unequally. One can be loyal to both one’s family of origin as well as to a new spouse, but the most successful marriages have partners who transfer their primary loyalties to their new partner. Mom or Dad may still be core relationships, but if there is any important conflict, decision, schedule, or issue to decide, the default must move to the spouse and couple.

If you and your partner seem to be in constant conflict over your visits back to visit your parents, your time spent with siblings, or the ever-present sense that you care more about pleasing your parents than you do your spouse, check in with yourself regarding that unequal balance of loyalty. If you feel miserably caught in the middle, it’s time to shift your focus. Unplug some of that urgency from your family of origin and give it to your new partner and children. And, of course, if it’s just not as easy as that for you, consulting with a local marriage and family therapist will help you more easily make that emotional transition.

AdobeStock 436758539According to sociobiology, genetic preservation is at the core of human behavior. Because it is inherent in our genetic structure to ensure survival, individuals are predisposed to take measures to guarantee their genetic survival. In other words, they favor strategies and methods that will increase the likelihood of their family lineage being carried on. This is done through positive and negative methods. Positively, people have children so that their genetic tree can be extended to further generations. Negative methods of preserving genetic lineage also exist and include violence and aggression toward people who are not blood relatives. Based on these theories, it could be assumed that stepchildren are more likely to be abused by parents than biological children. In fact, some research has provided evidence of a 5-fold increase in risk of child abuse for step-children compared to biological children.

There is abundant evidence that children living in stepfamilies are more likely to experience sexual abuse. And children living with unmarried parents are also at risk for abuses including physical, sexual and emotional abuse. However, it has not been clearly established if stepchildren are injured as a result of their abuse more often than biological children. To get a better look at abuse rates among biological and stepchildren, Stewart J. D’Alessio of the Deaprtment of Criminal Justice at Florida International University recently examined data from more than 130 cities that was used as part of a larger study on abuse incident reporting. He looked at the biological status of the children, as well as the socioeconomic condition of their environment, as it has been suggested that disadvantaged communities have higher levels of stepchildren abuse.

D’Alessio found that children living in disadvantaged communities were more likely to experience abuse than those in socioeconomically advanced environments. He also found that the age of the perpetrator was influential of abuse. Younger parents were more likely to abuse children than older parents. However, there was no evidence suggesting that stepchildren were at increased risk for injury. “Contrary to expectations,” said D’Alessio, “Our results showed that the effect of a child’s genetic status on the likelihood of physical injury was in the opposite direction as predicted by sociobiology.” In fact, the stepchildren were less likely to be physically injured than the biological children. D’Alessio notes that these findings raise more questions for future research, and that that exploration should consider that many incidents of abuse are never reported. Methods to ascertain more reliable and valid abuse rates should be investigated in future work in this area.

Reference:
D’Alessio, Stewart J., PhD, and Lisa Stolzenberg. (2012). Stepchildren, community disadvantage, and physical injury in a child abuse incident: A preliminary investigation. Violence and Victims 27.6 (2012): 860-70. ProQuest. Web.

Leaf making ripples in still pondMy last piece on focusing ended with a definition of felt sensing as a “temporary wave, from the sea of being” (Madison, G.). What is meant by a temporary wave from the sea of being?

It is time to introduce Gendlin’s conception of human being. Note that I said “human being,” not “a human being.” For Gendlin, human being is “interbeing”—what we think of as an individual being is a “livings in the world, and living with” (Gendlin, 1978-79). He calls this principle Interaction First.

Gendlin conceives of human beings experientially not as separate “things” in interaction with each other. More radically, he sees our environments and us as a continuous co-creative process. We are not “inside our skins, but are our living-in the world, and living-with others” (Gendlin, 1978-79). Even our physical being is a continuous process with its inner and outer environments. Hence, in his view, it is impossible to conceive of human being as a separate entity. We are interbeing.

What is a living body such that it has the intricacy of our situations? … With the old concepts, people might say that Focusing is “subjective.” But clearly, if the situation is carried in the body, then a felt sense is not subjective. Objective then? No, also not, since “objective” means the units and patterns to which science limits anything it studies. We could fashion a new sentence that is neither subjective, nor objective, nor both: The body IS an interaction process with the environment, and therefore the body IS its situations. The body isn’t just a sealed thing here, with an external situation over there, which it merely interprets. Rather, even before we think and speak, the living body is already one interaction process with its situation. The situation is not out there, nor inside. The external “things” and the subjective “entities” are derived from one single life-interaction process (which they always bring along with them). (Gendlin 2004)

This is a radical view and paradigm shift that is difficult to absorb. We are used to thinking about ourselves and the environment “around us” through the lens and language of a Cartesian world. We are imbued with philosophical assumptions idealizing objectivity and neutrality and a mechanistic relationship of mind over body. For example, we may have heard of such concepts as the “observer effect,” yet we go about living in a way that leaves context out of the equation.

For Gendlin, the making of meaning is a pluralistic, contextual, constructed process; it is changing and dynamic, not static and eternal (Mitchell, 1993). Our lived bodily sense of things is a function of our interbeing, and our capacity for felt sensing extends us beyond the confines of our delimited physical body.

Recall that I started my first piece by saying that you have within you—“beneath” your everyday practical use of language—another dimension, an inner language that is an imagistic dialogue between you and your immediate experiencing. It is you speaking to yourself (and listening to yourself) in your own code. Gendlin calls it the zigzag between the everyday use of language and the way we may actually hold our experiencing in a bodily felt way.

Gendlin says that this kind of processing exists preconceptually, beneath our everyday use of language and concepts and the assumptions we have about how the world works. In focusing, we find our own language and meaning that is in fact much more specific and precise than our usual use of language. We find language from the sea of our being.

A client with a traumatic history sits quietly, with eyes lowered, pausing to find a way to articulate why his time in boarding school (60 years ago!) is still so meaningful to him. His life before boarding school was consumed by his father’s collapse into psychosis. He is sensing into the situation regarding boarding school—without any explicit reference to his catastrophic childhood history. After a full few minutes of silence, he finds one word that fits: Life at boarding school was “manageable.” At the point that he says “manageable,” tears come to his eyes. He doesn’t know why, but his felt sense tells him, preconceptually, that “manageable” feels right.

The therapist, attuning to her client, takes in “manageable” and acknowledges it. As it resonates within her, she realizes how much is contained in this word “manageable” for her client. Then she drifts into her own felt sense of his childhood and finds ‘unmanageable’ experientially embedded in the world of her client’s meaning making, the therapist quietly offers the newly emerging word “unmanageable” without any reference to his history, and the client considers it.

A few moments later, the client’s full catastrophe of life with his father’s illness impacts him, but in a different way. His therapist has offered a word that touches into his world precisely and with great specificity. What is captured here in two words—manageable and unmanageable—is much more than the common meaning of these words. The client is referring to the experiential world of living-with and living-in his father’s psychosis, as well as to the emergent significance of what boarding school provided for him. The unmanageable and the manageable.

 Notice that the felt sensing came first. With “manageable,” he has begun to capture the world of his experiencing—the profound relief of finding himself for the first time in a world that he could handle (boarding school). Then “unmanageable” is intoned, and he resonates with the years of struggling with the catastrophe of his father’s psychosis. “Manageable” arose as a temporary wave from the sea of being. “Unmanageable” emerged from their shared sea of being.

And this shared moment deepens their therapeutic journey.

References

  1. Gendlin. E. T. (1978-79). Befindlichkeit: Heidegger and the philosophy of psychology. Review of Existential Psychology & Psychiatry 16, 43-71.
  2. Gendlin, E.T. (2004). Five philosophical talking points to communicate with colleagues who don’t yet know focusing. Staying in Focus. The Focusing Institute Newsletter, 4 (1), 5-8. From http://www.focusing.org/gendlin/docs/gol_2187.html
  3. Madison, G., www.gregmadison.net.focusing_way_being.
  4. Mitchell, Stephen A. (1993). Hope and dread in psychoanalysis. New York: Basic Books, pp. 285.

As people age, they face challenges that they may never have experienced before. Loss of friends due to death, loss of independence as a result of diminished income, and loss of physical health can all create significant stress in a person’s life. The way that people choose to cope with that stress is directly related to the skills they learned throughout their lives. Attachment styles developed in early childhood can dictate the response people have to a variety of stressors, including ones encountered in later years. Additionally, an individual’s ethnic origin influences how he or she will respond to stress at various stages. To better understand how attachment style affects coping and overall well-being in older adults and what role ethnicity plays, Eva-Maria Merz of the Netherlands Interdisciplinary Demographic Institute at The Hague in the Netherlands recently conducted a study of 1,116 older adults from varying cultural backgrounds.

The participants, which included European Americans, African Americans, Eastern European immigrants, and Caribbean immigrants, were examined to determine how attachment style affected their well-being. Specifically, Merz looked at secure or dismissive attachment styles in comparison to avoidant and fearful attachment styles. “As expected, secure attachment and dismissive attachment were associated with greater well-being, whereas ambivalent/fearful attachment was related to reduced well-being in this older cohort,” said Merz. The link between secure attachment and positive well-being was most evident among the Caribbean and African American participants and weakest among the other two groups. When she looked at avoidant/fearful attachment styles, Merz discovered that it negatively impacted well-being in all the ethnic groups with the exception of the Caribbeans.

The results of this study support previous research highlighting the importance of healthy attachment styles on well-being. This new evidence extends the existing data by demonstrating that attachment styles are especially important in later life when unique challenges arise. Further, attachment styles are influenced by ethnicity. Taken together, this information provides new insight into the underlying factors that contribute to the general physical and mental health of older adults and should be considered when implementing interventions to help older adults cope with life’s stressors.

Reference:
Merz, E.-M., Consedine, N. S. (2012). Ethnic group moderates the association between attachment and well-being in later life. Cultural Diversity and Ethnic Minority Psychology. Advance online publication. doi: 10.1037/a0029595

Related articles:
Patterns of Attachment in Adults
Individuation Issues with Elderly and Ailing Parents
The Importance of Attachment in Early Caregiving

Young man walkingPeople in their 20s seem to have it all: youth, energy, health, and looks. But they are also still figuring themselves out, and this time of change can bring certain mental health concerns as well. Experts have information on these issues that tend to impact people in their 20s, and provide some solutions for addressing and coping with these problems.

Clinical psychologist Dean Haddock, a marriage, family, and child counselor and the executive director and founder of Community Counseling and Psychological Services, points to a fairly common activity of 20-somethings that can lead to mental health issues if it’s not checked: alcohol and drug use.

“The first problem that leads to many others is alcohol and chemical abuse, which often leads to dependency,” Haddock said in an email. “The mental disorders that follow are often depression, anxiety, and brain injury. Of course, self-esteem and body-image problems often lead to eating disorders.”

Haddock gives three tips to help people in their 20s prevent and get through some common mental health concerns:

  1. Know your genetic history of mental disorders. Knowing is half the battle to avoid those disorders in yourself.
  2. Be choosey about your friends, as they will influence your decisions. Healthy friends lead to healthier decisions.
  3. Self-esteem is often the result of the people who matter to you. If they do not esteem you, then you will not esteem yourself.

Nerina Garcia-Arcement, a clinical psychologist and clinical assistant professor at NYU School of Medicine, suggests that the many life changes people experience in their 20s can cause mental health issues at times.

“Your 20s are filled with life transitions that can be stressful,” Garcia-Arcement said. “This is a time when young adults are solidifying their personalities, developing their independence from family, starting or finishing college, beginning new jobs, developing a career, forming romantic relationships, and learning to manage their existing family relationships and friendships within these context.”

“Individuals in their 20s don’t have a lifetime of experience to draw on when managing multiple life transitions at once,” she added. “When someone experiences these transitions, anxiety and depressive disorders can occur.”

Here are six of Garcia-Arcement’s tips to help people in their 20s cope with mental health issues more common to that age group:

  1. Seek out and form strong support networks.
  2. Seek out others who are going through similar experiences and share your feelings, whether you are feeling worried, nervous, scared, sad, confused, or excited.
  3. Know that you are not alone in your confusion about your career and relationships.
  4. Seek out mentors who have achieved their goals, and ask for advice.
  5. If you are feeling stress, sadness, or anxiety, engage in activities that will help you manage those feelings such as yoga, meditation, exercise, hobbies, social activities, relaxation exercises, and deep breathing.
  6. If you feel you are not getting the necessary support and feel overwhelmed or depressed, seek out mental health professionals who can help you manage the feelings related to your life transitions.

Stephanie Sarkis, a licensed mental health counselor, said in an email that anxiety and depression are some of the main mental health issues 20-somethings face.

“We have seen an increase in these issues due to the lagging economy and difficulties finding employment,” Sarkis said. “Many people in their 20s have moved back in with their parents, which can trigger feelings of failure and frustration.”

Dr. Maiysha Clairborne, a family physician and wellness and stress management coach, added in an email that eating disorders associated with body dysmorphic disorder and body-image issues are also common for people in their 20s. She has three overall tips for people in this age group:

  1. Talk to someone. The worst thing that a person can do when they are feeling depressed, anxious, or alone is to isolate more. Many times when we talk with someone we trust about what’s going on, we come to realize that we are not the only ones experiencing it and then we can get support.
  2. Get active. Staying physically active not only helps to keep the body fit but also helps release endorphins and serotonin in the brain, which help keep the mood elevated. Physical activity is also a good release for stress and anxiety.
  3. Minimize sugar and junk food. Sugar and processed junk foods can worsen the emotions of stress, anxiety, and depression because they cause erratic changes in your body’s blood sugars. This can disrupt the normal release of hormones in the brain that keep your moods stable.

Scott Carroll, a psychiatrist with dual board certifications in adult and child and adolescent psychiatry, said there are many issues specific to people in their 20s, including problems associated with medication use.

“Many people were on stimulants/meds for their ADHD when they were younger, but they thought it was okay to stop their meds when they were done with school,” Carroll said. “Now they are struggling at work and don’t know why. I’ve also seen young adults stop all kinds of meds like their thyroid meds because they didn’t know why they were even on it, and then they have all kinds of problems.”

Bad habits involving drug and alcohol use can start to become a major substance abuse issue when people are in their 20s, and other mental health issues start coming to the forefront at this time in peoples’ lives. Examples include bipolar disorder and schizophrenia. Also, panic attacks can start for people who have a genetic predisposition and who have higher amounts of stress associated with newfound adulthood.

“The 20s are an important time of social/emotional development,” Carroll said. “Unlike previous generations, identity formation often takes the entire 20s due to the complexity of modern society. It could be said that adolescence lasts until the early 30s in today’s society due to [prolonged] periods of education (grad school, law school, med school, etc.), lack of stable job options, and delays in getting married and starting families.”

Carroll, who is also an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine, suggests that when it comes to serious relationships and marriage, people in their 20s should consider how their choices could eventually affect their mental health and how their brain plays a part in their decision.

“Many 20-somethings are tempted to get married, but it is generally a bad idea because the brain in not done developing until about 25 [years old] … which leaves young adults vulnerable to having their rational mind be overwhelmed by their feelings or stress,” Carroll said. “Relationship choices often dramatically change from the early 20s to the late 20s, so many people find that the person that was perfect at 22 is a disaster at 27.  This can be an incredibly hard transition, to have to break up with your former soul mate that you thought you’d love for life because you’ve changed so much over the last several years.”

Related articles:
Do I Have a Healthy Relationship With Food and My Body?
Social Anxiety Can Be a Hidden Problem in College
How Schools Could Prevent Depression

Important Notice

GoodTherapy is not intended to be a substitute for professional advice, diagnosis, medical treatment, or therapy. Always seek the advice of your physician or qualified mental health provider with any questions you may have regarding any mental health symptom or medical condition. Never disregard professional psychological or medical advice nor delay in seeking professional advice or treatment because of something you have read on GoodTherapy.