Feeling homesick or anxious is normal when children are away from home, and these feelings do not mean that something is wrong with your child. Children of all ages can get homesick, but younger children and children who have never been away from home tend to be more prone to homesickness. Children may also be more likely to experience homesickness if they are going through a transition in their lives, have family instability, have trouble with emotional regulation, or have been diagnosed with depression or chronic anxiety.

If you are concerned that your child will be homesick or anxious while away, avoid the urge to warn him or her that it may be difficult. Empathize with and listen to any fears, and tell your child that you will help him or her strategize. Avoid bargaining, cajoling, or bribing. Instead, offer support and help your child gain insight into his or her processes. One way to do that is to talk about how the human brain works. If your child’s brain receives a message that something seems wrong or unknown (like the unfamiliar surroundings of camp), the brain responds in ways to keep the body safe. This can help your child to understand that anxiety and homesickness are how his or her brain is communicating that he/she is in unfamiliar territory. [fat_widget_child_counselor_right] You can further help your child minimize these feelings with proper preparation and by teaching him/her healthy coping tools. When your child understands the underlying messages of homesickness and anxiety, has a toolbox of positive coping skills at hand, and is aware of the importance of paying attention to his or her feelings, the child will be well-prepared to enjoy time in new environments. Here are seven specific tools to help a child counter homesickness and anxiety:

1. Plan Ahead

A little preparation can go a long way. Give enough notice of an upcoming trip or departure for your child to adjust to the idea, but not so much notice that there’s too much time to fret. Just how far ahead you announce the trip should depend on your child’s developmental stage and the length of stay away from home. It can be beneficial to hang a wall calendar in a common room. Mark the calendar with the date of departure as well as fun or interesting events that highlight the time away, and occasionally remind your child about these, increasing as the time approaches. This will give your child something to look forward to, which can help ease the transition. Of course, prior warning is not always possible and plans can change unexpectedly, but allowing your child time to adjust to the idea of staying away from home can be helpful.

2. Practice Self-Care

Another way to help prepare your child for being away is by having him or her learn and practice self-care skills ahead of time. Self-care skills include life-skill basics such as brushing teeth or changing underwear. However, they also include ways to calm, relax, and soothe, such as taking deep, slow breaths, picturing a relaxing scene, or imagining upcoming fun activities and experiences. Calming techniques take practice, and are best learned and practiced at least a few weeks prior to a departure date.

Effective self-care also includes keeping up healthy habits while away from home. Eating well and adequate rest have several benefits. Your child is less likely to enjoy his or her time away if he/she is running low on steam. When a child has insufficient rest or fluctuating blood sugar, internal resources are utilized elsewhere and coping skills become less available. Encourage your child to stay in tip-top shape by making healthy food choices and maintaining regular sleep hours. (If you have a younger child, the responsibility of maintaining healthy habits would of course lie with the caretaker.)

3. Offer Encouragement

Prior to the departure date, discuss the fun things planned for your child while he or she is away from home. Offer your child encouragement about the positive experiences and the new friends they might make. Encouragement would include the typical, “You can do it!” and, “These are the fun things you will get to do,” as well as reminders of heathy skills, such as, “You know just how to breathe deeply and slowly so your body relaxes.”

4. Positive Self-Talk

Support and encouragement are important, but in the long run, utilizing positive self-talk can be even more powerful. Positive self-talk is encouraging yourself by talking to yourself out loud or in your head. An example of positive self-talk is saying, “I am safe, and even though I am someplace different than usual, it is a good place and someplace where I can have fun.” As simple as positive self-talk is, it takes a lot of practice to be effective. In other words, saying something positive to yourself once or twice does not usually suffice. Teach your child to encourage or reassure himself/herself many times throughout the day, especially during transitional times, such as upon rising or before bed. When most children are missing home they are missing their typical framework of sensory cues and the patterns they are used to.

5. Talk It Out

Talk with your child about his or her particular concerns about being away from home. Building your child’s feeling-words vocabulary can help. When he or she uses words that more accurately express his/her emotions about leaving, he/she will more likely feel understood, and it can then be easier to explore potential strategies together. Help your child to identify who he or she might choose to talk with if he/she feels the need while away. This may be a close friend, sibling, camp counselor, grandparent, or other relative.

6. Bring Along an Element of Home

Bringing along a sense of home in the form of sensory cues (visual, scent, or sound) can help make an environment feel more familiar. Have your child pack a reminder of home, such as a favorite stuffed animal or pillow, a spritz of mom’s perfume on a hankie, a family photo, or favorite music. Also, sending something small along for your child to decorate his or her sleeping area with can help make it feel more personalized, thereby increasing a sense of safety and familiarity.

7. Stay in Touch (Sort Of)

Anxiety and homesickness in children sometimes stem from a fear of being forgotten while away. Even though frequent phone calls may not be possible during your child’s trip, you can still let your child know that you will not forget about him or her while you are separated. Regularly scheduled contact may help alleviate anxiety, such as phoning to say goodnight, if possible.

However, unscheduled phone calls may increase stress. When a child is at camp, written communication may be best. Whether your child is at camp or spending time with relatives, encourage him or her to write you a note or draw you a picture (or two) for hand delivery when you reunite, and make a point to read and respond after you are reunited. Note: If anxiety worsens or does not subside after utilizing the coping tools above, your child may need the support of a licensed, qualified counselor.

Editor’s note: How do egalitarian couples with a shared goal of equal partnership navigate differing work demands? In deciding what to address this month for her ongoing series about relationships under intense work demands, the author grasped at what was right in front of her: the dynamics of partners who work different shifts. Specifically, this month she’s writing about partners whose work hours are as different as night and day. How do partners with these contrasting schedules make it work?

At the beginning of the month, my partner worked the second of two holidays at the hospital. As a resident physician in her department, she was given the choice to take off Christmas or New Year’s, but not both. If you picked or were assigned off for Christmas, like she was, you had three glorious days—from Christmas Eve through the day after Christmas—where you didn’t need to be at the hospital.

Of course, if you were off for Christmas, you worked over New Year’s. As I mentioned in an earlier column, my partner works in obstetrics and gynecology, and it turns out that people don’t stop having babies just because it’s a holiday.

So for the week of New Year’s, to cover for those on vacation like others had done for her, she worked a 24-hour shift every other day. Then she started a four-week block of nights.

You can imagine our adjustment as a couple—from the rare shared-vacation bliss and relaxation, to full days where we don’t see one another, to weeks where she’s going to bed as I’m getting up in the morning.

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I fear the potential of living parallel lives with my partner, with no intersection or coming together. I think most of us in healthy relationships strive to avoid this possibility. But what do we do when our schedules don’t line up?

To keep a complex topic simple, I came up with a “top five” tip list of common challenges and issues of contention for partners who work conflicting day/night combinations. First up is the most obvious: partners who work contrasting shifts don’t see each other nearly as often as they would like to!

1. Recognize that loneliness may come, and strategize about how to effectively cope with it. A woman named Jess wrote a great piece for Offbeat Home and Life (2013) reaffirming that, no, these schedules aren’t ideal, especially at first, but there are perks. Partners may have the ability to confront codependent tendencies and become more independent and self-assured. They can seek out their own friendships and hobbies—after all, you aren’t in a good place to take care of your partner if you’re not taking care of yourself.
2. Make time for intimacy and connection. Find effective ways to have sex, make decisions, and resolve conflicts. For one couple, what were usually conflicting times of sexual arousal (before bed and in the morning) actually worked out well when their work schedules didn’t otherwise match up. Bernstein (2014) writes that “physical closeness, even without sex, stimulates the hormone oxytocin, which reduces stress and promotes bonding.” Some contact is crucial! Regarding decision making: Dr. Tina Tessina (n.d.) points out that when two partners aren’t home at the same time for days on end, some decisions will likely need to be made unilaterally, which can “create an uncomfortable change in the power structure of your relationship.” Partners need to discuss and get onboard with that reality. Tessina also spells out some great ways of resolving conflicts with schedule restrictions in the mix.
3. Respect your partner’s sleep needs—and your own. Jess of Offbeat Home (2013) cautions that it can be tempting to wake up your partner to get him or her to spend time with you, and it can also be tempting to neglect sleep in favor of precious time together, but resist doing either of these in excess. Less sleep for either of you (or both!) can lead to chronic cycles of dysfunction and feud. In her Babble column “Love on Opposite Shifts,” Chaunie Brusie (2014) writes that a coworker was so resentful of her night shift-working husband seeming to “sleep the day away” that she started counting the hours he slept, only to find that he was sleeping normal amounts. Bonus! Enjoy a higher quality of sleep: There’s evidence to suggest that couples sleeping separately can reduce sleep disturbances (BBC News, 2009; CBC News, 2013) and actually promote peace instead of escalating tensions based on differing sleep needs (Bernstein, 2014), so to boost all of our relationship-egos I’ve included references about sleeping separately in the list below. I know that this largely excludes the effects of working nights on circadian rhythm and that it’s nearly impossible to revel in the silver lining when your arrangement isn’t one you’ve chosen for this reason, but it’s still worth noting.
4. Utilize technology creatively and often. Sending picture texts or updates about your day, calling to say goodnight at a bedtime that’s not your own—these efforts can go a long way.
5. Rekindle the lost art of love letters! We write love notes often, so this isn’t something different when my partner goes on nights, but last year, when our work schedules prevented us from seeing one another for days on end while we were both working action-packed jobs, our letters became more vivid and interesting, and I felt closer to her for sharing them. Plus, it was easy to see how much the other person missed us. It feels good to be missed. So long as there’s a payoff, missing your partner is the sign of a good thing—not a symptom of impending doom.

Whatever your schedule and sleep needs, I hope you find peace after reading that there are others like you who are making their partnerships work in reliably creative ways.

Be well!

References:

1. BBC News. (2009). Bed sharing ‘bad for your health.’ BBC News. Retrieved from http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/8245578.stm
2. Bernstein, E. (2014). Couples on different sleeps schedules can expect conflict—and adapt. Wall Street Journal. Retrieved from http://www.wsj.com/articles/couples-on-different-sleep-schedules-can-expect-conflictand-adapt-1410217854
3. Brusie, C. (2014). Love on opposite shifts. Babble. Retrieved from http://www.babble.com/relationships/love-on-opposite-shifts-2/
4. CBC News. (2013). More couples opting to sleep in separate beds, study suggests. CBC News. Retrieved from http://www.cbc.ca/news/health/more-couples-opting-to-sleep-in-separate-beds-study-suggests-1.1316019
5. J. (2012). Shift work: Learning to love our offbeat schedules. Offbeat Home & Life. Retrieved from http://offbeathome.com/2013/02/different-schedules
6. Tessina, T. (n.d.). Marriage advice for work schedules: Same love, different shifts. Your Tango. Retrieved from http://www.yourtango.com/experts/dr-tina-tessina/dr-romance-married-different-shifts

“I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious ambiguity.” —Gilda Radner

You’ve shown up for work only to be told that your position has been eliminated, and now you find yourself jobless and afraid. You find out that your spouse has been having an affair, and suddenly you are in a panic about what the future holds and how your life will change. You have a health condition and begin to live in a space where nothing seems certain. In moments like these, anxiety takes up residence in our minds: What will the future look like? Can I handle what is coming down the road? Will I be OK?

We’ve all been there at one time of another: stuck in uncertainty. It’s a scary place to be, and can leave you feeling out of control, hopeless, and helpless.

Although each of us differs in how much of life’s ambiguity we can tolerate, there are some situations that challenge even the most risk tolerant among us. Humans love a sense of order and predictability; chaos and the random nature of life can be very scary.

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When you are living with uncertainty and feel like some of your power in life has been taken from your hands, how do you cope? How do you manage to live in that ambiguous place without falling apart or dissolving into stress and worry?

This is a challenge I’ve faced as a person living in the shadow of cancer. As a cancer survivor, living with the knowledge that your cancer could come back and ultimately end your life is a significant challenge. Finding a way to manage and live with that uncertainty is necessary in order to lead a fulfilling and whole life, as it is with all uncertainty we face.

Here are some tips on how to find peace in an uncertain time:

1. Recognize That Total Certainty Is an Illusion

This is where we take a turn for the philosophical. In learning to live with uncertainty, it took me some time to recognize that the life I had been living pre-cancer was not necessarily any more secure than the life I am living post-cancer. In considering the temporary nature of all things and in acknowledging that change can come at any moment, we can see that total certainty in life is but an illusion.

As much as we would like to deny it, we are always in a state of uncertainty. We take for granted that things will remain relatively constant and have a hard time accepting that huge changes can befall us with nary a warning. As distressing as it is to consider, the truth is that your life can change on a dime.

Driving home from work today, you could be hit by another car and find yourself permanently paralyzed. You could find out that your newborn has a significant medical or mental health issue that will impact your family for the rest of your lives. You could arrive home to find that your house has been gutted by fire and you have no place to live. Alternately, a sudden windfall of cash could land in your lap from the estate of Great Aunt Agnes, or you could get a call from the employer of your dreams, asking you to join the team.

We like to believe we have total control over what lies before us, and, in truth, we do maintain a huge amount of control in the trajectory of our lives. But we don’t control all of it. It’s helpful to remember this during hard times. Just because you now recognize the uncertainty in your life because it is bolded, highlighted, and in flashing neon lights doesn’t mean uncertainty wasn’t there before. It just means it wasn’t as in-your-face as it is now.

Knowing that this is the case makes it much easier to accept that uncertainty is not necessarily an indication that things are going all wrong—uncertainty is the natural state of things. Once you recognize this truth, it’s easier to loosen from the grip of anxiety around the unknown.

2. Practice Meditation

A growing body of research shows that meditation can be of tremendous benefit to people coping with anxiety and depression. I will frequently draw in a mindfulness piece when working with people in therapy, and often this includes meditation.

The real benefit of mindfulness meditation is that it allows you to create some distance between you and your automatic thoughts and emotional reactions. Putting even a 15-minute practice into place in the morning will provide a space for your mind to calm and your anxiety to be reduced.

3. Utilize Exercise

I recently attended a workshop focused on releasing stress and trauma held in the body. The woman leading the workshop noted that, in the wild, animals often shake as a way to reduce tension. She pointed out that after an antelope runs from a lion and survives, it will spend some time shaking as a way to discharge the physical tension and release the energy brought on by the fight-or-flight response. Many animals release tension this way, but humans don’t have such a built-in response for discharging the stress we carry. Exercise can function for us in much the same way that the need to tremble functions for a dog.

Running, walking, aerobics, yoga, and weight training are all great for discharging physical and emotional energy that we carry with us during the day. Getting proper physical exercise can also help with getting good sleep, which is essential in thinking clearly and being our optimal selves.

4. Take Action Where You Can

Frequently when we are living with uncertainty, we feel as though our power to control the direction of our lives has been taken from us. This can feel very unsettling, to say the least.

While it’s important to acknowledge that uncertainty is a natural part of life, it’s also important to take action on those parts of your life that you have control over. Sometimes, the only thing we have control over is how we choose to react to the challenges we face. How you choose to face uncertainty is all up to you. Consider how you’d like to move forward with this in mind.

5. Get Support

When difficulties befall you, it’s easy to feel alone. The reality is that each of us experiences suffering. It’s a part of the human condition. The feelings you are feeling have been felt by millions of others. People all over the world, in your town, in your neighborhood, are dealing with uncertainty, too.

Reaching out to others for support can be helpful. Find that friend who has faced some really hard times, who has been through the wringer and kept going. Talk to them about what you are coping with. Some people prefer to seek out a therapist in this circumstance; therapy can be grounding during uncertain times. No matter whom it is, find someone who can help you reconnect with yourself when you start floating into anxiety about what the future holds.

Learning to live with uncertainty is one of the great challenges of life. It’s not an easy task, but learning to tolerate ambiguity is an essential skill for living a satisfying life. It will carry you through many challenging times, and you’ll find yourself living with more appreciation of the moment, which is really all we ever have anyway. Uncertainty can be a great teacher; allow it to be yours!

As the new year rolls on, I keep thinking about the idea of radical change. My first idea has to do with losing my temper with my kids. Here’s a radical thought: What if I just stopped?

The reason I blow up is because I think it will have the effect I’m looking for. I think the kids will realize I mean business and stop doing whatever they’re doing that’s bugging me. They will—and they should—take me seriously and be frightened into submission, because sometimes kids just need to follow their parents’ rules without backtalk or questioning. And that idea isn’t inherently wrong.

Except that it doesn’t work.

The way I remember it, when my dad yelled, my sisters and I hopped to it. His word was law, we respected it, and if he was mad, we feared him and obeyed. But my kids don’t respond that way. As soon as I get mad, they turn angry, fearful, and hurt. They either yell back and throw stuff, do what I’m asking them to do while sobbing theatrically, or run to their room and slam the door.

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Maybe I’m misremembering my childhood and it’s not true (although it seems that most of my peers agree) that kids used to blindly respect their parents. Or maybe we parent so differently today that we can’t expect—nor do we want—our kids to fear us. Perhaps it’s just me and I’ve spoiled my kids, who wouldn’t know obedience if it was an app on their i-gadgets. But whatever the case, losing my temper isn’t cutting it for me. And a lot of the time, my kids don’t really deserve my anger. They aren’t snorting coke or burning the house down, actions that warrant rage. They’re just being lazy, not listening well, or misbehaving—actions that call for consistent, clear rules and discipline rather than inchoate fury.

So, what if I stopped?

If the value I want to teach my kids is that my husband and I have rules that are there to keep them safe and healthy, and there are times when they need to follow our rules respectfully, then what’s the best way to teach that value? Is it by me acting out of control and nasty? Or is there a better way? Well, sure. Pretty much every parenting book out there will tell you that the best practice is to set rules, communicate them clearly, and have reasonable consequences for failing to comply. Research shows over and over that anger and putdowns (“What is wrong with you?” “Can’t you ever listen?” “You little brat!”) make our kids feel low self-esteem and therefore more likely to act out, or make them rebellious against us and therefore more likely to act out.

The next time I feel like yelling, instead I’m going to take a deep breath, walk away if necessary, regroup, and then state what I want to happen. I might even ask my daughter what she wants in the circumstance. For instance, my oldest has trouble turning off the TV. Sometimes, to be honest, I get lax on the TV-watching rules and let her go on too long, and by the time I’m ready for her to stop watching, she’s in full TV-junkie phase, watching glassy-eyed and seemingly unable to tear herself away. If, instead of demanding in increasingly loud tones that she step away from the remote, I can catch her attention and get her involved in the process, it works better. “I’d like you to get off the TV now and I know that’s hard for you. How should we handle it?” She generally answers with something unreasonable—“Let me watch until the end of this movie”—but at least then I can counter with another idea and we can meet in the middle. I usually get close to what I want, while at the same time she feels more respected and more involved in the decision.

I have to admit, it’s hard for me to imagine declaring that I’ll never blow up and following through on it. It feels, well, radical. We want to be able to be the final word in our own homes. We want to be able to lose it sometimes. To a certain extent, we want to be feared. And it’s OK to not always be that perfect, reasonable, calm-headed person the parenting books describe. Instead of shooting for perfection, I’m just going to commit to giving this new, no-explosions regime a shot. It seems like it’s going to feel good for everyone. And I’ll report back as to whether my house declines into anarchy, or whether the most recent parenting intelligence turns out to be true—that clarity and collaboration produce kids who (mostly) listen, are (often) respectful, and (usually) feel good about themselves.

After experiencing relationship disappointments such as breakup or divorce, it can be hard to move forward and have hope that you will find love again. In today’s online dating world, it is easy to meet many potential mates, but that makes it just as easy to experience letdowns and heartbreak when a relationship doesn’t work out. It can also feel like our dating culture is increasingly superficial, squashing our dreams of finding meaningful and committed connections.

It’s hard to pick yourself back up after heartbreak, and the more rejection you experience, the harder it may be to believe that you will be able to find the right person and relationship for you. We’ve all heard the cliché sayings—“date yourself,” “take time for you,” and “find yourself” among them—thrown out as advice, but what does that really mean, and what do we do when we feel as though we’ve lost all hope of finding a life partner?

Taking time for yourself is more about working on yourself than it is “finding” yourself. The person we are inside changes over time. We grow, learn, change, react, and respond to our environment and the people around us, so who we are isn’t necessarily something that is concrete.

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Working on ourselves consists of taking an honest look at the ways in which we have responded to hurt, anger, and loss following a breakup. It’s normal to develop walls and barriers in order to protect ourselves, and it’s also normal to feel anger. We are allowed to feel and express our feelings, and doing so speeds our recovery. However, we don’t want to bring these feelings into our next relationship or dating experience.

Hanging onto these emotions and keeping walls up gets in the way of us opening up to the possibility of allowing someone to get to know us, thus greatly reducing the chance we will find the relationship we are looking for. So, working on ourselves means identifying our feelings, expressing our feelings in healthy ways, and then releasing those feelings so that we can move on.

Breakup and divorce can be devastating, and it’s important to know it’s normal to grieve the loss of the relationship. It takes time to move through the stages of grief, and the more we can feel and release our emotions while we are moving through the stages, the quicker we can let go of the old relationship and be ready to move forward with a new one.

Relationships are built on foundations, and those foundations are made up of the things each person in the relationship brings to the table. We all have our baggage from past experiences, but in order to create the best possibility for a healthy, happy relationship, we want to bring our best selves to the table and show up for ourselves and for our potential mate.

Bringing our best selves to a relationship means forgiving ourselves for the mistakes we may have made in previous relationships. If we are harboring blame, regret, or feelings of shame, we sabotage our confidence and our chance of bringing our best selves to a new relationship.

Another way we can regain hope that we will find the relationship we are looking for is to focus on self-care. Although the term “self-care” is overused by life coaches, psychologists, and yoga teachers, the premise is possibly the most important component of healing after a breakup and regaining hope for the future.

Self-care starts with taking the time to know who you are and what you like. This may sound easy, but your preferences typically change when you are in a relationship and then change again after a breakup. There is no magic formula to getting to know yourself again, but taking time out to focus on what is important to you and the activities that make you feel good is the first step to knowing how you can nurture your true self.

When we’ve experienced hurt and heartbreak, it can seem overwhelming. We can’t always deal with it on our own, nor should we have to. Building a strong community of support helps us heal. Seeking the guidance of a compassionate therapist can help you get back on track, regain hope of finding love in the future, and empower you to bring your best self to future relationships.

Thank you for your question. Boy, oh boy were you put through the wringer. My heart ached to read of your experiences. I suppose the short version of my answer would be to see a therapist soon as you can, if only for the reason that you mention suicidality from your teens and depression today. This is not to be alarmist, but depression is something you don’t want to go unaddressed for long, more a sign of trauma than any “character issues.”

Clearly, your mother’s traumatic flight and your dad’s withdrawal left psychological scars that now need attending. This is not to blame anyone; the tragedy of mental health issues (you mentioned your father’s depression) is that those afflicted often end up passing on their condition by creating, as the authority figure in the home, a psychological mood or atmosphere of depression, anxiety, etc., which children are liable to absorb. They don’t call them the “formative years” for nothing. These wounds are passed along from generation to generation until someone has the courage to say “enough” and get some professional help. The good news is that you are young and in an excellent position to get help, and in so doing, start life over again and find contentment and purposeful living. Your experience, believe it or not, can be a vehicle for compassion and empathy for others down the road.

I am a fan of author and psychoanalyst George Atwood, who says in his excellent book The Abyss of Madness that, to paraphrase, people become depressed when depressing things happen to them. There are so many ways in which your trauma would upend anyone’s psyche. The most common question people ask me is, “Is this normal?” I usually say I gave up on normal a long time ago. Also, we therapists can relate to the childhoods and suffering of the people we work with more than we sometimes let on.

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Yet another wounding occurs when the abandonment pain is not acknowledged or permitted to “exist.” A depressed parent may withdraw for self-protection and neglect the child, who cannot help but take it personally. Of course, as a young adult you now want to drink alcohol and blot it all out. What happened was wounding indeed, but not only were you alone with the abandonment, but you also had no one to even acknowledge or help you cope with its scarring legacy. Thus you were in the impossible situation in that you couldn’t have or not have these feelings; the terrible loneliness you experienced was compounded by not having a caring witness to empathize and help bear your very understandable feelings—a kind of solitary confinement.

You sound like a psychologically resilient person who survived a very difficult upbringing, who cares enough to do something about it now. I would encourage you look for a therapist who understands the kind of trauma you experienced, someone who is willing to be patient with you as these injuries to selfhood—which, actually, you seem to have borne quite nobly or you wouldn’t even be writing—begin to heal. Consuming vast quantities of drink or drugs is understandably tempting, but I encourage you not to. In the end, it will only erode your self-esteem and, in a sense, repeat the abuse by neglecting the hurt that needs a safe place for healing. You’re worth the effort (even if it doesn’t always feel like it). Thanks again for writing.

All my best,
Darren

In today’s world, pornography use has become quite common. In fact, 40 million Americans are regular visitors to pornographic sites, 12% of all websites are pornographic in nature, and 25% of all search-engine requests are for porn. Does this high prevalence mean it’s OK? Does the fact it is common mean it is harmless? Does the fact it is widespread mean it’s all right for all individuals and couples?

If it is not OK with you, then it is not OK in your relationship. When one or both parties have an issue with pornography use, it needs to be addressed.

Most people I encounter in my practice for whom porn is an issue “discover” a partner’s secret pornography use. It’s not something they share together. Due to the fact it is kept secret, it’s typically toxic. Would your partner be doing this if you were standing right there? Would your partner be fine with you knowing? Do you watch pornography as a couples activity? If the answers to all of these questions are no, then the pornography is likely a problem in your relationship.

Of course there are relationships in which pornography use is mutually condoned and enjoyed. But if your relationship isn’t one of them, you might be thinking, “What do I do now?”

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If you feel like your partner’s pornography use is a violation of trust, like it is some sort of infidelity, or feel disgusted and hurt, try these suggestions:

1. Take a moment to process things. If you haven’t already had an all-out argument, take a day or a week to think, calm yourself, and prepare for how you will talk to your partner about this. According to John Gottman’s reseach on couples, the first few minutes of a conversation generally determine the outcome. Start your conversation right!
2. Remember: this is not your fault. Your partner’s pornography use likely is not because he or she finds you unattractive, and it is also probably not because you have been having sex less frequently. Multiple studies show that one consequence of frequent pornography use is reduced interest in sex with one’s partner. So you may have been having less sex because of the pornography—but probably not the other way around.
3. Ask questions about the pornography use. Attempt to have a mature and calm conversation about your partner’s use. How long has this been going on? How often does he or she look at pornography? What kind of pornography does he/she look at? Does he/she pay for it? Does he/she use interactive websites or passive videos? How does he/she feel about his/her use? Does he/she feel guilty? Does he/she say “it’s not a big deal” or “everyone does it”? What is his/her reaction to you knowing? Though it might be tempting to raise your voice, calmly tell your partner how hurt and offended you may be; try your best to simply gather information. This is the time to let your partner talk about what it means. You’ll get your chance.
4. Tell your partner what pornography use means to you. Talk about feelings of betrayal, jealousy, or shame. Talk about your insecurities. Talk about your fear that this will slide into another form of betrayal, secrecy, or sexual infidelity. Talk about how you may now be feeling pressure to perform in the bedroom, thinking that he or she will be comparing you to what he/she has seen. One study reports one of the most common negative results of pornography is women feeling that they must behave like porn actors and actresses.
5. Come up with a plan. Talk about where you go from here. Assuming it’s what you want, is your partner promising to quit? Is your partner defensive and feeling like he or she shouldn’t have to stop? Can you agree on a plan? If not, consider seeking a couples or marital therapist to help you come up with a compromise. Some people may say that they are willing to stop but find it difficult or feel compelled to look at pornography. If this is the case, I encourage seeking guidance from a therapist who specializes in pornography addiction.

Pornography use can be a sensitive topic for many because it involves intimate and personal acts. It can trigger insecurity, mistrust, anxiety, and depression. It’s OK if you are not OK with your partner looking at pornography. Just because it is common does not mean that you must be OK with it. Just as you have other rules in your relationship, talking about pornography use will help clarify your values as a couple and your expectations intimately.

References:

1. The Stats on Internet Pornography. Retrieved from http://thedinfographics.com/2011/12/23/internet-pornography-statistics/
2. Gottman, J., and Schwartz Gottman, J. (2013). The Empirical Basis for Gottman Couples Therapy. Retrieved from https://www.gottman.com/wp-content/uploads/EmpiricalBasis-Update3.pdf
3. Kirkova, D. (2013). Vanilla Sex is OUT, Porn Addiction is IN: Disturbing Survey Reveals How Porn is Damaging Our Relationships. Daily Mail. Retrieved from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2264419/Vanilla-sex-OUT-porn-addiction-IN-Disturbing-results-Cosmo-survey-reveal-porn-damaging-relationships.html#ixzz2OfMGpMJ6

We like to think we are in charge of our own life, master of our ship. We do in fact have the ability to choose how to act, what we say, who we are—up to a point. Neuroscience gives us a perspective that is rather humbling. It turns out that we share a great deal with lower creatures in terms of our basic survival instincts, and in terms of how the brain works. Like other animals, a lot of what we do is on automatic pilot. We share 98% of our DNA with chimpanzees. The 2% difference is mostly in the prefrontal cortex, the most advanced part of the brain that is unique to us humans. We are animals, but animals with a difference.

The Amygdala: Threat Detector

Most of the time, our brain is humming along, working on automatic pilot without our awareness. The amygdala, a key part of the emotional brain, is always scanning for danger. When it senses threat, the amygdala kicks into high gear, prompting a cascade of neurological and chemical messages throughout brain and body to deal with the crisis. The fight-or-flight response is triggered. This is very helpful if you’re hiking in the woods and see a snake. Your amygdala gets you to run away before you’re fully aware of what you’ve seen. But perhaps it was just a stick and you overreacted. The amygdala doesn’t dabble in niceties; it is biased toward the negative, and can save your life in a pinch. Its job is to protect you from danger, and a few false alarms are part of the deal.

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The amygdala is a great ally in a dark alley; one whiff of danger and it’s efficiently doing its job. The heart races, the feet make us run, and we (hopefully) escape the bad guy. But the amygdala isn’t very smart; it often sees danger where none exists. Let’s say you’re in your living room with your partner and he or she gives you a look of disapproval. Your amygdala registers danger, and you have two choices: fight or flight. You start defending yourself or you counter-criticize your partner for being so critical (two forms of fight); maybe you storm out of the room, slamming the door for good measure (flight).

Success! Your amygdala has saved you from a threatening moment with your partner. The problem is, he or she is now in the living room stewing over how you abandoned him/her, and more trouble lies ahead. Perhaps it would have been smarter for you to ask about his/her concern and address it calmly. If only you hadn’t reacted so rashly! Now he or she is going to be angry for days, and you’re going to feel guilty. It’s a mess.

Prefrontal Cortex to the Rescue

Your animal instincts are protective, but they also can lead to a lot of heartbreak. Fortunately, we do have a higher brain; the prefrontal cortex (PFC) allows us to pause, think, and choose to act according to our higher values. It also allows us to repair with a partner when we have acted badly.

The prefrontal cortex calms the amygdala, helping us regulate our emotions. You don’t have to be a victim of your own reactivity, anger, or defensiveness. If you have the intention to be your best self, you can stop and make a better choice. I know this from personal experience. When I was a little girl, I had red hair—and a temper to match. My father shared with me some wisdom from an ancient Roman Stoic philosopher, Seneca, who said: “Most powerful is the person who has himself in his own power.” This had a big impact on me, even though I was only 8 years old. I understood that I could be powerful by taming my temper.

I’ve been working on my temper ever since, and these days I am often able to catch myself before I blow up at my husband. I pause (activating my PFC) and think before I yell or get reactive. Then I raise my concerns with him in a more loving and respectful manner—getting much better results than if I blast him with anger. In these moments, I am acting according to my higher values. When I can pull this off (not always!), I am choosing who I want to be in my marriage.

Emotion Regulation

The goal is not to stamp out our emotions. Emotions give color and vibrancy to our lives. They inform our decisions, allow us to love, and orient our moral compasses. But we do need to learn how to deal with our feelings, identifying and regulating them so we are not victims of our own reactivity.

Some people never learn to read their emotions. Men especially are socialized early in life to tune out or become numb to their vulnerable feelings: “Big boys don’t cry.” But if you can’t name your emotions, how are you going to regulate them? It’s not that the emotions go away—they’re just not available to consciousness. Let’s say Ted feels vulnerable when his wife, Amy, turns her attention away from him and he feels unimportant. But he’s never learned to recognize or understand his vulnerability. He may blow up at her if he’s felt ignored too often; neither he nor she has any idea where his tantrum comes from.

Neuroscientists point out that emotions start in our body; the information travels from the gut or heart up the spinal cord to the brain, where we become aware of our feelings. Ted needs to learn to identify his body cues when he is feeling left out or ignored by his wife, name the feeling, and take more constructive steps to address this issue with her.

Step one is identifying the emotion; step two is regulating it. When Ted feels upset with Amy, it’s not OK to just lash out. He needs to work with his feelings so he can raise his concerns respectfully. There are many ways to regulate emotions when we are upset. Deep belly breathing is particularly helpful; the out breath activates the parasympathetic nervous system, which calms down the sympathetic nervous system (part of the fight-or-flight response). Mindfulness meditation likewise calms the emotional brain. Counting to 10 or taking a break for a few minutes are other ways to settle down when upset. Cognitive reappraisal or reframing is also helpful (“my husband didn’t leave his shoes by the back door to trip me up on purpose; he just forgot to put them in the closet”).

Living and Loving Intentionally

Rather than living with knee-jerk reactivity, driven by our animal instincts for self-preservation, we can choose to live intentionally, thanks to the prefrontal cortex that differentiates us from other animals. I encourage couples to who come to me for therapy to identify their own higher goals and values; I then help them operationalize these values into concrete skills to improve their relationships.

Identifying your values and intentions helps you maximize the power of your prefrontal cortex. It allows you to develop relational virtues and reach for your best self—even when you start to get reactive. Instead of lashing out at my husband in a fit of temper, I can take a deep breath and say to myself, “This is the man I love. I want to act in a caring manner, not fly off the handle. I want a relationship of mutual respect.” In these best-self moments, I am relationally empowered, as my father and Seneca taught me so many years ago. It takes work to be able to calm yourself down and act in accordance with your higher values. The payoff is well worth it.

In my work with people who have survived narcissistic abuse, I find that many have endured a devastating form of emotional abuse called gaslighting.

The film Gaslight (1944), starring Ingrid Bergman and Charles Boyer, is based on a 1938 play from which the term originates. In the movie, Bergman’s character falls head-over-heels in love with her significant other, played by Boyer, a dapper gentleman with classic signs of narcissism. Boyer’s character rushes Ingrid into marriage after a whirlwind romance, before she has any time to process the speed and savvy with which her suitor has wooed her.

Swiftly, the couple is married and moves into a London brownstone, whereby Boyer slowly inflicts an insidious form of emotional abuse that leads Bergman to question if she has lost her sanity, believing her captor as having omnipotent power.

Boyer literally dims the gaslights in their flat every evening, without Bergman knowing that her partner is playing mind games with her. Boyer slips away to the upstairs attic every night to create a climate of unease and brainwashing. When Bergman questions if Boyer has witnessed the flickering lights, he denies having any knowledge of such incidents, and gradually implies and insinuates that Bergman must be “going crazy” or “seeing things.” With time, Bergman believes she is losing her mind because she depends on Boyer as her window to reality.

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The film is an excellent example of how emotional abuse can slowly creep up upon an otherwise healthy, innocent target, only to overwhelm and devour the abused person’s sense of reality, self-confidence, and personal power over time.

Gaslighting in this day and age can exist simply by an abuser denying the confirmation of reality to a target. The abused individual could be a love object, family member, or colleague. Typically, such a lack of validation or confirmation of reality is a slow or insidious process wherein the targeted person gradually comes to doubt his or her sense of what is. Initially, the abused person may question if he or she misunderstood the situation, and often believes that the abuser knows better and has superior comprehension of the circumstances. With time, self-esteem is also stripped of the abused person until he or she realizes he/she has been denied trust and honesty with a loved one.

In my practice, I see many individuals who have endured such abuse either in their families, love, or work relationships. Psychotherapy can be helpful in healing from this form of trauma. Often, healing involves allowing the abused person to narrate his or her story in as much detail as possible, such that the person can in effect master his or her trauma and become empowered to lower the cognitive dissonance that rises oppressively in such an abusive relationship. As mentioned in my prior article on cognitive dissonance, this confusing state of mind occurs when an individual holds two diametrically opposed ideas, and the result is tremendous anxiety, which can include obsessive thoughts, panic attacks, and depression.

Cognitive dissonance can be one of the results of the emotional abuse tactic of gaslighting. Bergman’s character held in her mind that her lover, Boyer, had the best of intentions for Bergman and was protecting her from her own unraveling mind. Doubts slowly crept up in her mind that her lover may have ulterior motives. The horror of fathoming that Boyer’s character could be sociopathic/narcissistic created a suspended state of denial for Bergman, who then further suppressed her own reality of the situation, sinking into utter despair and apparent anxiety and depression.

With the help of a skilled therapist who knows how to support survivors of narcissistic abuse, people can thrive and restore their confidence in themselves. Mastering the trauma by narrating a story helps to synthesize facts, even contradictory and confusing facts/emotions caused by gaslighting and cognitive dissonance. With a compassionate, nonjudging psychotherapist, the abused person then learns or relearns how to trust his or her perception of the abuse history, thereby strengthening the individual to release the trauma and any associated anxiety. Increasing coping skills in moving through anxiety and depression is also essential, in addition to mourning the loss of the abusive relationship.

Editor’s note: Tempus Bell is a continuing contributor to the Share Your Story feature on The Good Therapy Blog. Tempus Bell’s previous article is Stigma: Come at Me, If You Can!

Just the other day I made a choice to stop going to a therapist that I haven’t seen in over three months. I stopped going to this therapist because they told me when I called to make a scheduled appointment that they were going to have to ask the therapist if they wanted to see me again because I have a record of canceling. This made me feel really uncomfortable to go back to them. It made me feel as if I was more of a dollar sign then a person with a mental illness.

I am in the process of finding a new doctor, but until I do I am looking online for free help, at the urging of my previous therapist. Did you know that there are workbooks online that are for specific mental illness and mental problems? Why do you have to pay all this money and insurance and doctor fees when you can go online and find the same kind of information you would get from your doctor?

It’s hard for me to find a therapist because first I have to like them, second I have to feel like they understand me and like me, and third I have to feel like I’m not a money bank to this organization. If those don’t line up, then I won’t go back. I have seen a total of three therapists and two psychiatrists in my life. I do not have a history of going to a lot of doctors and messing up the relationship. I’m actually really skeptical of doctors and hospitals because I feel like it’s always about the money and not really about my illness and me.

So to help myself in the meantime, until I find a doctor, I have downloaded some cognitive behavioral therapy workbooks to help me understand where my anger and depression come from, other than my mental illness. CBT therapy is a form of treatment that focuses on the relationship between thoughts, feelings, and behaviors. So it’s a therapy that helps you understand why you think something, how you think it, and how to help you try not to think those thoughts anymore. CBT has been helping me since I never understand where my anger comes from. It seems to come over me out of nowhere and I’m just always angry for nothing. But by writing things down and going through the workbooks, I can look back and actually see the trigger of my anger or depression.

When I was seeing my last therapist, she gave me handouts from a skills-training manual for treating borderline disorder. While she said she didn’t think I had borderline personality, she thought that the worksheets and handout she gave me would help me in my situation. I recently rediscovered them and thought to myself, if she can print out something from a website and give it to me as homework, why can’t I do the same thing?

I started to search Google for bipolar worksheets, anxiety worksheets, and anger worksheets, and that’s when I came across cognitive behavioral therapy and related worksheets online. I printed out two sheets: one for anger, and one for depression. The worksheets have homework that takes a whole week to do, and after that week you go back, look at what you did, and try to put together the pieces of how you feeling the week before.

Consistency is not my strong suit, but I know that I need to figure out what my triggers are and why I’m feeling the way I am. These worksheets haven’t cured me, but they have put in perspective the possible reasons for my anger and depression, other than my mental illness. I can’t do anything about my mental illness other than take medicine and go to therapy, but if I don’t want to take medicine and go to therapy what else can I do?

I find the trigger and let it go.

Here are some websites that I’ve found for worksheets on CBT training and other worksheet help. Good luck my friends, and please tell me if you know where I’m coming from!

• http://www.getselfhelp.co.uk/freedownloads2.htm
• http://psychology.tools/download-therapy-worksheets.html
• http://www.therapistaid.com/therapy-worksheets/cbt/none

OhTemp writes a blog called Bipolar, Unemployed, and Lost, which you can read at bipolarunemployedlost.com.

Thank you for reaching out and asking these important questions. I appreciate how hard it is to ask for help and I’m really glad you did. I am going to share my thoughts on your situation as candidly as possible.

You say, “I’ve never cheated on my wife,” and I would venture that you are talking about never having had sexual contact outside of your marriage. However, there is another side to infidelity that many people are unaware of or fail to acknowledge—the emotional affair. An emotional affair is when a married or committed partner turns to an individual outside of the partnership to fulfill emotional needs. The situation you are describing with your coworker sounds like an emotional affair, especially because it appears that your wife is not aware of the type and amount of contact you have had with this woman.

While affairs may progress in any number of ways, they don’t generally “just happen.” Affairs happen by a series of small compromises: sharing secrets with someone other than your partner; doing things with someone that more often than not should be reserved for your partner, such as going to the movies or having nice meals out; and hiding behavior. Eventually, many people find themselves in an all-out affair. While I’m not suggesting that you are having an affair, you are certainly on a slippery slope, and it is apparent that this “friendship” is taking a toll on your marriage. Even if nothing has happened yet, there is a very real possibility that could change very quickly.

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There are a few significant things that make a relationship with someone outside of a partner so enticing. For one, it’s new. As anyone who has ever purchased a new car can attest, the newness of the car is exciting. You can’t wait to show it off, tell everyone about it, and you burst with excitement every time you drive it. After a while, however, the newness wears off and you get accustomed to it. Then, you become more aware of its quirks and maintenance costs. At this point, some people will trade in for a newer car to try to recapture that feeling.

In marriage, the concept is the same—when you met your wife, it was new and exciting. Now, after 32 years, two children, two grandchildren, and a life together, the newness is gone. The excitement has worn off, and you know this woman like you know yourself. I suspect that is part of what makes the relationship with this other woman so exciting—it’s new. There are new things to learn, explore, and share, while with your wife you may be feeling like you’ve been there, done that.

Starting a new relationship after a long marriage can be exciting, but I must caution you that the friendship you describe is steeped in fantasy; almost every new relationship is. At this point, your life with your wife is full of responsibility and with the daily tasks of living—the bills, kids, grandkids, work, college tuition, and household chores. The relationship with the other woman doesn’t have any of those components now, but should you choose to end your marriage and start a life with her, those elements will be present along with the added challenge of blending families. Before you make any big decision, it’s important to step back and look at this from a realistic perspective, beyond the fantasy and romantic idealization.

Finally, you state that you want to be happy and that you’re concerned that you will lose the opportunity to live your days in happiness. From my perspective, happiness is an internal condition. Viktor Frankl reminds us that the “last of the human freedoms [is] to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s own way.” You are making your happiness contingent on what happens in your life and your relationships, when your focus really ought to be on how to find fulfillment, happiness, and joy in your life on your own. If there is one thing that is constant in this life, it is that nothing stays the same. Therefore, the highest task of living, in my opinion, is learning how to surf the waters of life and maintaining an inner sense of peace, joy, and happiness … no matter what is happening.

You do not have an easy choice to make in this situation, and I would encourage you to seek out someone to talk with you about this. A good therapist can help you navigate the waters and help you become aware of things you may not presently see.

Best wishes in the journey,
Lisa

Humanistic in nature and concerned with the existential qualities of human relationships, Virginia Satir was considered a founder and leading catalyst in the evolution of experiential family therapies.

Satir’s method revolved around two core elements—family life chronology, in which she sought to understand the developmental patterns of relationships in the family as a basis for change; and family reconstruction, in which she attempted to guide families through a process of engaging positive change using experiential interventions from guided fantasy, guided contemplation, hypnosis, psychodrama, family sculpting, parts parties, and role playing (Gross, 1994; Satir, 1988; Winter and Parker, 1991).

One of Satir’s chief concerns was communication within families. Satir (1988) went as far as to write, “Once a human being has arrived on this earth, communication is the largest single factor determining what kinds of relationships she or he makes with others and what happens to each in the world.”

Satir developed within her model five conceptual styles of communication: placating, blaming, computing, distracting, and congruent communication. In Satir’s conception, placaters act as pleasers and are often self-effacing, blamers act self-righteously and often accuse, computers are emotionally detached and often rigidly intellectual, distracters are unfocused and seemingly unable to relate to what is actually being communicated about or going on in the family, and congruent communicators are expressive, responsible, seem genuine, and articulate themselves clearly and in the appropriate context.

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Satir utilized experiential techniques that allowed families to explore, acknowledge, and modify their own communication patterns in-session. Role plays, family sculpting, and guided contemplation were three prevalent forms of experiential communication therapy used by Satir in her work with families.

In observing a family, Satir centered her focus on family interconnectedness, especially triad units, the relationship emotional system between three members of a family. The mother-father-child triad frequently held the center of her attention, as she believed that it is most powerfully in the crucible of this triadic relationship that children begin to learn about and practice intimacy (Baldwin, 1991).

Satir held four assumptions: (1) All people await the potential of growth and are capable of transformation; (2) people carry all the resources they need for positive growth and development; (3) families are systems wherein everyone and everything impacts and is impacted by everyone and everything else; and (4) the beliefs of counselors are more important than their techniques (Satir and Baldwin, 1983).

Satir was concerned with family members’ uniqueness and potentials, and she was always concerned with their spiritual development as well. Satir (1988) wrote, “I believe [spirituality] is our connection to the universe and is basic to our experience, and therefore is essential to our therapeutic context.”

She challenged behavioral and cybernetic epistemologies, criticizing that, in the effort to change behavior, people’s spirits are often crushed, “crippling the body and dulling the mind.” She saw error in equating the value of a person with the nature of his or her behavior. “Remembering that behavior is something we learn,” she wrote, “… we can simultaneously honor the spirit and foster more positive behavior.”

Satir viewed poor communication as a perpetuator of unhealthy relationships, and she championed more open and congruent communication between and within individuals as a key to increasing awareness, compassion, and connection in families and society (Satir, 1983).

Satir (1986) stated, “[People] use their past to contaminate their present, which in turn creates a future that replicates their past, a stuck place, and often a hopeless quagmire” (changed from past to present tense). She added, “It is the learnings from the past that form the approach to the present. To change the perception and the experience of the present so it can become a steppingstone to a healthier future, I need to somehow introduce ways to stimulate new learnings to take place.”

Satir, unlike her contemporary Carl Whitaker, for instance, was concerned with directly identifying and addressing symptoms. Satir held that symptoms of individuals in families express family pain and that children’s symptoms are related to marital difficulties in which they become triangulated (Luepnitz, 2002).

For Satir, the goal of therapy was essentially to increase self-worth and nurturance within families.

Deborah Luepnitz (2002), a prominent feminist voice in the field, criticized Satir’s theoretical simplicity:

Satir’s fallacy is the fallacy of believing that one can change the world by appealing to principles of therapeutic change alone, ignoring the global political changes that must be understood and grappled with. Satir said in our 1984 interview: “If tomorrow morning, every school, every family, every workplace had a transformation in the middle of the night to love and value themselves and treat others likewise, you know we would transform like that!” [snapping her fingers]. This is hardly a theory of social renewal. It cannot help us understand the extraordinarily complex problems of development in the Third World nations, nor the dismantling of weapon systems, nor the bitter mystery of AIDS. There are reasons that people do not decide in the middle of the night—or by the light of day—to love and work as well as they might … Satir, however, has no theory that will help explain violence or the evil that has broken individuals and entire peoples on the wheel of history. Low self-esteem simply cannot account for the eradication of entire nations.

Luepnitz reasoned that Satir’s concept of “self-esteem” is nothing more than a derivation from ego psychology or else just a crude and imprecise conceptual oversimplification.

Satir’s lack of theoretical clarity and precision cost her equal respect alongside other major family therapy pioneers. Alan Gurman and David Kniskern (1981) chose not to represent Satir’s work in their Handbook of Family Therapy because “no discernible school or therapeutic method has evolved from her contribution.”

Nonetheless, many important family therapy trailblazers who have followed after extol Satir’s inspirational genius. Another distinguished family therapy authority, Lynn Hoffman (1981), attested to “the power of her presence with families” and her “extraordinary and unique contribution” to the field.

References:

1. Baldwin, M. (1991). The triadic concept in the work of Virginia Satir. In B.J. Brothers (Ed.), Virginia Satir: Foundational ideas. Binghamton, NY: Haworth.
2. Gross, S. J. (1994). The process of change: Variations on a theme by Virginia Satir. Journal of Humanistic Psychology, 34 (3), 87-110.
3. Gurman, A., and Kniskern, D. (Eds.) (1981). Handbook of family therapy. New York: Brunner/Mazel.
4. Hoffman, L. (1981). Foundations of family therapy. New York: Basic Books.
5. Luepnitz, D. A. (2002). The family interpreted: Psychoanalysis, feminism, and family therapy. United States: Basic Books.
6. Satir, V. (1983). Conjoint family therapy (3^rd ). Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books.
7. Satir, V. (1986). Foreword. In W. F. Nerin, Family reconstruction: Long days journey into light (pp. v-xii). New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
8. Satir, V. (1988). The new peoplemaking. Mountain View: Science and Behavior Books.
9. Satir, V., and Baldwin, M. (1983). Satir step by step: A guide to creating change in families. Palo Alto: Science and Behavior Books.
10. Winter, J. E., and Parker, L. R. E. (1991). Enhancing the marital relationship: Virginia Satir’s parts party. In B. J. Brothers (Ed.), Virginia Satir: Foundational ideas. Binghamton, NY: Haworth.