GoodTherapy | How to Be a Parent to a Teen Who ‘Hates’ YouOften, I meet a mom who is on the verge of tears describing how her teen hates her. She can’t understand it, and she wants her baby back. The teen looks on sullenly, once again exasperated by a parent who just doesn’t understand.

As a nonparent but a therapist for many kids, teens, and families, I can easily understand what this teen is going through. I remember it well. I hated my mom, too, and she was a sobbing mess due to my abrupt withdrawal. All I wanted was independence and for her to get off my back. Looking back, I want to kiss my mom for being so annoying. She saved me from so many negative experiences by having rules and expectations, but she also pushed me away by being emotional and reactive to my teen antics.

The preteen and teen years are filled with intense emotions and conflict. Historically, this change has been attributed to hormones, which is certainly a large part of it. Through our entire adult lives, we wrestle with hormones surging in our bodies, but after our teenage years we have developed enough to manage most of the residual emotions. Teens, on the other hand, have not. They feel so many different and new things, and they don’t always have the ability to slow down their reactions.

Educate Yourself

[fat_widget_right]Learn more about what your teen is going through and try to develop an objective lens through which to look. This may help you make meaning of some of the wilder behavior your teenager exhibits. It won’t buffer the sting of hateful comments, but understanding where they come from may help you think rationally about it all and not question every parenting move you make. Read books, articles, and websites about teen development. An informative, easy-to-read book I recommend is The Teenage Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Survival Guide to Raising Adolescents and Young Adults by Dr. Frances E. Jensen.

Remain Calm

When the situation is tense, take three deep breaths before responding to your teen. Don’t respond impulsively, as doing so may fuel the fire and create a bigger rift in your relationship. Attempt to process your emotions with another adult if you need to, and present yourself as calm, cool, and collected when approaching your teen. When this is not possible, try your best not to engage in an argument and instead walk away. If you are losing your cool or crying, your message may not be as effective and may further contribute to your teen’s negative perception of you.

See It from Their Perspective

It may not be sensible to you, but there is usually some merit to your teen’s argument. Validate it. Let them know that you get it, and you want them to be happy.

Guide Them

Looking back, I want to kiss my mom for being so annoying. She saved me from so many negative experiences by having rules and expectations, but she also pushed me away by being emotional and reactive to my teen antics.Almost all teens need some major guidance. Many lack the ability to think far ahead and weigh all the consequences of their choices. Part of your job as a parent is to control impulses. Your teen may rail against you, but don’t give up! Letting your teen run wild will help neither you nor your teen. Teens can be harsh, hurtful, and even intimidating to their parents, but you are the adult in the relationship and it’s your job—not your teen’s—to stand strong and maintain boundaries.

Stay Strong

Forget the messy rooms, don’t worry so much about the heavy eyeliner, and simply focus on safety and love. You love your teen because they were once your baby, and even though they can seem cold, moody, and sometimes downright mean, your teen loves you underneath it all and they do NEED you.

Young woman sitting with her son reading bookYes, middle school may be a time full of awkwardness and self-doubt, but it is also a time of incredible transformation and movement toward independence. With regard to its impact on human development, this period of life is second only to the period from infancy to age three.

Think about that for a minute.

Remember how much your child changed from birth to age three? That’s how much change, growth, and development will happen over these next three years as your teen navigates middle school! Get ready for a wild ride!

Many of the parents I work with feel lost, unsure of how much support to offer their middle school student. How much independence is enough? How much is too much? How do you support a child without being a helicopter parent?

I like to compare the situation to teaching a child to swim. Think about the stages we go through with swimming. When our kids are toddlers, we go in the pool with them and we never let go. Later, we let them swim farther and farther away from us, but we stay in the pool so we can rescue them at any moment. Eventually, when we are comfortable with their skills, we let them swim while we watch from our lounge chair. I think of parenting during middle school as that last stage. We are on the sidelines offering guidance and support. We are right there if they get into trouble, but, mostly, we let them do their thing.

In the spirit of parenting from the sidelines, here are some tips to help make your child’s transition to middle school successful:

1. Encourage self-advocacy.

[fat_widget_right]Self-advocacy is one of the most important skills your teen will learn over the next few years. Speaking up for himself or herself and knowing how to ask for what they need is a critical, lifelong skill. Your teen can only learn it if you make an intentional effort to back away and let him or her step up to the plate.

Side note: With all of these examples, I encourage parents to follow up with teachers to make sure your child really did follow through and advocate for themselves. I have written many emails that simply say “I’m just checking to make sure my daughter talked to you about … ” This is very different from taking the lead and contacting teachers to solve it yourself.

2. Allow your teen to struggle.

This one is always hard for parents, and for good reasons. We don’t like to see our children struggle. Our instinct is to jump in and rescue. However, we all know that the greatest lessons in life come from learning from our mistakes, and if our goal is to raise children to become strong, independent adults, we need to learn to let them stumble.

The most important thing parents can do at this age is learn to ask, “How can I help? What kind of support to do you need?” instead of “How can I fix this for you?”

3. Encourage positive risk-taking.

Middle school is the perfect time to try new things, and becoming comfortable with taking positive risks is another critical skill in teen development. Some ideas for middle school risk-taking include:

There are so many ways your teen can learn to take a positive risk. The important part as a parent is to always acknowledge and praise the effort and courage it takes to try something new.

4. Keep your communication and connection strong.

Even with all of this new independence, your teen still needs you. In fact, I would argue that he or she needs a strong connection with you now more than ever. Your teen will most certainly start pushing you away, but rest assured he or she is craving connection. Some new twists on connecting at this age:

Middle school is hard. There’s no doubt about that, but it doesn’t have to be miserable. Be thoughtful about the messages you are sending your kids about this new adventure. Are you allowing your own biases to fill their heads with the idea that middle school is terrible and you just have to suffer through it and try to survive? Or are you letting your kids know that it’s going to be exciting, energizing, challenging, and new?

Our kids take their lead from our energy as parents. The attitude you project will be the attitude they absorb. These next three years will be an unbelievable transformation! Prepare for it, brace yourself for it, but most of all, enjoy it!

Young woman relaxing on the beachJust as the body works to maintain homeostasis on a physical, cellular level, I believe the mind strives to create balance emotionally. Both happen unconsciously, though you can accelerate the processes with various interventions. Just as physical wounds heal more quickly with antibiotic cream and a bandage, psychological injuries heal faster with rational self-talk, breathwork, journaling, therapy, good food, yoga nidra, plenty of sleep, and other supportive strategies.

How the Conscious and Unconscious Affect Emotional Balance

It’s hard to imagine that emotional homeostatic work can be accomplished unconsciously, but how else can sayings such as “Time heals all wounds” be explained? How does the simple passage of time assuage psychic pain? You may not notice incremental improvement, but suddenly, one day, you feel differently about something that previously disturbed you. That’s your unconscious mind processing change over time. Certain practices can support this growth and transformation.

[fat_widget_right]When you choose to pay attention to your thoughts, feelings, and bodily sensations, you will often speed up the emotional healing process. It does not have to be solely relegated to your unconscious mind. Practices like yoga, meditation, journaling, psychotherapy, yoga nidra, dreamwork, and breathwork can all help soothe the nervous system and make conscious what has been unconscious so it can be safely felt, dealt with, and transcended.

All these interventions may seem challenging or annoying at first because they are unfamiliar, require learning new skills, or bring up unpleasant memories or feelings from the past. With practice, the initial break-in period will pass quickly, and you will begin experiencing a feeling of mastery. These intervention can also serve as healthy tools for future times when you feel anxious, angry, sad, or overwhelmed.

Practices to Move You toward Emotional Homeostasis

Take a close look at your inner landscape. Where are the boulders blocking your path? Are they out in plain sight, or are your obstacles more like potholes, only noticeable when you’re right on top of them?

Some great ways to analyze your internal topography include:

  1. Take a deep, slow breath through both nostrils and exhale.
  2. Take a close look at your inner landscape. Where are the boulders blocking your path? Are they out in plain sight, or are your obstacles more like potholes, only noticeable when you’re right on top of them?Now, without touching your nose, focus on inhaling through the left nostril and count ONE.
  3. Exhale though the right and count ONE.
  4. Inhale through the right. Count TWO.
  5. Exhale through the left. Count TWO.
  6. Inhale through the left. Count THREE.
  7. Exhale through the right. Count THREE.
  8. Inhale through the right. Count FOUR.
  9. Exhale through the left. Count FOUR.
  10. Inhale through both nostrils. Count FIVE.
  11. Exhale through both nostrils. Count FIVE.
  12. Inhale through the left. Count SIX.
  13. Exhale through the right. Count SIX.

Continue in this manner and inhale and exhale through both nostrils on every multiple of five. If you lose count, go back to the beginning and start with one. If you would like a beautiful explanation and walkthrough of this technique, check out Swami Janakananda’s CD, Experience Yoga Nidra.

Like all good habits, the benefits from these practices accrue over time. In addition, doing yoga nidra, an ancient passive guided meditation, can strengthen your emotional resilience and nervous system, allowing for more easy switching from fight-flight-freeze mode to rest and digest.

Some other excellent yoga nidra sources I recommend:

AdobeStock 571896603Nope, this isn’t a strange riddle where someone is found in the desert in a scuba suit. The answer to the question posed above is actually pretty simple: brain integration.

What is that? Excellent question; I am glad you asked. As you may know, we have two hemispheres of the brain. Neuroscience is a relatively young field, and we are continuing to learn more about the complexity of the brain and its function with time and as research evolves. We do know that there are different roles played by different sides and areas of the brain, and that integrating neural networks appears to be helpful in resolving traumatic memories.

The success of eye movement desensitization and reprocessing (EMDR) in treating trauma and mental health challenges teaches us that alternating right- and left-brain stimulation, via visual, auditory, or tactile experience, helps facilitate emotional processing. Through the simple act of holding something that buzzes between your right and left hand, or listening to something shifting from your right to left ear, a memory that was once charged with emotion can become less distressing. During the process, it is common for relevant associations to arise, for memories of thoughts and body sensations to arise. With support, this process can facilitate lasting and integrated healing.

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Right-left brain stimulation may sound like a scary, science fiction-like process, but I assure you there is no electricity involved in this type of therapy. Your body receives input in the form of sound, touch, or sight, without any added energy.

Along with helping us process emotions, EMDR can help build up positive memories, experience, thoughts, and feelings. We call this resourcing, and use imagined or real resources to cultivate feelings of peace, nurturing, protection, and wisdom. In addition to and as part of processing negative experiences, it is crucial to cultivate the positive, sometimes the opposite of what occurred in the experience of trauma.

Think about your life for a moment and ask yourself: when do I engage in an activity that engages my right and left brain in alternating rhythm? How do I feel before, during, and after the fact? How can I incorporate this information into my healing path?

How do walking, running, and drumming factor in? Think about it for a moment. When you walk, run, or drum, you are using your body in a rhythmic way, alternating the stimulation or use of your right and left brain throughout the activity. Have you ever gone on a hike or run and felt that you were sorting through your thoughts, developing new insights, or becoming less distressed about something? We know that exercise has many benefits; EMDR highlights for us some of the mental and emotional benefits.

There are a million ways to alternate right- and left-brain activation, including dance, yoga, and some tai chi moves. People have naturally gravitated toward right-left movements in many healing rituals across the world. Think of how many sacred rituals involve drums, movement, or voyages on foot. Understanding brain integration, plasticity, and resilience gives us some insight into why these rituals have been effective and why they continue to be passed down through generations.

Think about your life for a moment and ask yourself: when do I engage in an activity that engages my right and left brain in alternating rhythm? How do I feel before, during, and after the fact? How can I incorporate this information into my healing path?

If you are looking to heal from specific traumatic memories, I highly recommend working with a skilled EMDR professional who can provide structure and guide you toward health and resolution. Consider how your own choices outside of therapy can support your process as well. Perhaps you will choose to walk or bike to your therapist’s office this week, or do a little dance after your session. Whatever you choose, may it serve your healing and integration.

GoodTherapy | What to Do When You’re the JerkI’ve been a jerk many times in my life. But one time that stands out for me happened when I was 13. I had been invited to the bat mitzvah of a girl I barely knew. A bat mitzvah is a big event; at least 100 people were there. After singing “Happy Birthday,” some kid usually started chanting, “Skip around the room, skip around the room, we won’t shut up until you skip around the room.” Obviously, the intent was to make the birthday child … skip around the room.

On this occasion, I started the chant, but it fell flat on its face. Not a single person joined the chant with me.

It wasn’t until I was in college, recalling this embarrassing incident, that I finally realized my shameful behavior. The birthday girl, who appeared in class sporadically, sometimes showed up on crutches and sometimes arrived in a wheelchair. I had completely forgotten about her disability because she had put them aside for her bat mitzvah. Ignorantly, obliviously, I had thrown her illness in everyone’s face. What a horrible child!

It’s easier to forgive a child’s behavior than an adult’s. It’s also easier to forgive unintentional cruelty than intentional harm. But regardless, I will always feel a little ashamed that I hurt that girl and her family that day.

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Shame, that gut-wrenching, nauseating feeling, keeps people from acknowledging when they’ve been hurtful. So often, admitting that you’re guilty means being overcome with shame. We all want to be the good guy. It’s awful to discover that we’ve been the villain.

The other thing that stops people from admitting when they’ve been wrong is punishment. Often, the punishment is shame: “Shame on you!” If a person admits to a spouse that he or she has been overreactive or harsh toward the spouse, will the person be understood and forgiven or will he/she be punished and repeatedly shamed?

Being able to take responsibility for one’s bad behavior is in everyone’s best interest. Being condescending, being harshly critical, being explosive, being prejudiced—these behaviors and more may occur for all of us, but unacknowledged and unchecked, they can become a person’s identity, overshadowing higher qualities and damaging or destroying relationships.

What to do:

What not to do:
Twelve-step groups, support groups, and psychotherapy can assist individuals in regaining clarity and self-compassion in order to end abusive behaviors, including the abusive behavior of self-loathing and self-abuse.

These suggestions are sometimes easier said than done. It can take time, patience, and emotional support to work through these steps. A person may not get the understanding and forgiveness he or she desires. It’s important to do it anyway, regardless of the reaction. Just because someone becomes aware of his or her behavior doesn’t mean it won’t happen again. Hopefully, with repeated awareness and commitment, the person can learn to stop it faster.

In families that carry histories of substance abuse and/or physical abuse, the level of damage can be extreme, resulting in a greater need to justify, ignore, or suppress awareness of these behaviors. Twelve-step groups, support groups, and psychotherapy can assist individuals in regaining clarity and self-compassion in order to end abusive behaviors, including the abusive behavior of self-loathing and self-abuse.

No one is perfect. There is no shame in learning, growing, and striving to be your best self.

Couple Sitting on Sofa with Television Off“Time is the currency of relationships. There’s no way to invest into a relationship without investing your time.” —Dave Willis

Time is a mystery. When we’re young, we have all the time in the world. When we’re married with kids, we never have enough time. When the nest is empty, we wonder where the time went. As we age, we increasingly comprehend the value of time. When faced with the realization that time will end, we truly appreciate just how precious it is.

I learned that lesson 20 years ago when my younger sister, Harriet, age 30, got a rare and aggressive type of cancer—only 200 cases or so of adrenal cancer are diagnosed per year in the United States, according to cancer.org. They gave her six to nine months. True to her personality, Harriet fought; she had surgery, then chemo, then more chemo and more surgery. She extended her life for 15 months. She taught me the meaning of time. She wanted as much as she could get.

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During those 15 months, I had a full-time practice, a 2-year-old and a 4-year-old, and less time than ever. But I knew I had to make time. Time to spend with her, time to go to the hospital, time to shop together, time to talk, time to laugh, time to grieve, time to say everything we could think of to say to each other before she passed. If you asked me where I got the time, I couldn’t tell you. I just made it. Harriet taught me the value of time. I stopped saying, “I don’t have enough time.” I realized that time is priceless, and that I had more control than I had previously thought.

We choose how to spend our time every day.

In couples and marriage counseling, I often hear frustrated couples complain, “We don’t have time for date nights,” or, “We don’t have time to work on our relationship.” There are too many tasks, long days at work, food shopping, laundry, homework, after-school activities, sports, and lessons. The list never ends.

My response is, “You have to make the time.” If your relationship, your marriage, and the future of your family are important, become the master of your time.

You may think it’s impossible, but even small changes can make a big difference. Here are some examples of what my husband, Bob, and I did to master our time over the years:

Time is precious. We all have 24 hours a day. What we do with our time will define the quality of our lives and our relationships.

The secret to finding more time for your relationship is to realize that you have the power to create it. Here are six tips that will help:

  1. Take stock: Have a conversation with your partner about how you spend your time each week. Talk about work, time with kids, activities, laundry, cleaning, shopping. Discuss what is working and what isn’t, and what you would like to change.
  2. Create your time wish list: Brainstorm the activities you would like to do together if you had more time. Then prioritize them. Don’t forget sex; making love often ends up on the bottom of the list.
  3. Identify what you can change: Figure out what you can do to create more time together. For instance:
    • Take personal or vacation time to spend the day together without kids.
    • Adjust work schedules; go in earlier and come home earlier.
    • Limit the number of activities the kids participate in.
    • Establish cutoff times for electronics in the evenings—computer, cell phone, Facebook.
    • Hire a babysitter more often or trade off babysitting with friends.
    • Pay someone else to clean or do chores.
    • Lower your standards about the neatness of the house.
  4. Build time rituals: Create activities that you can build in habitually so you don’t have to remember to make time. Some examples are:
    • Schedule a regular date night.
    • Get up 15 minutes early and have coffee together.
    • At the end of each day, spend 15 minutes together talking.
    • Have a weekly lunch together.
    • Buy a subscription to the symphony or tickets to the ballgame.
    • Go to bed together at night and cuddle.
  5. Plan ahead: Make time together a priority. Each Sunday, look at your calendars for the upcoming week and plan your time together. Make appointments for sex. You may prefer spontaneity, but that’s not always possible.
  6. Share gratitude: Don’t take time for granted. We may have 24 hours a day, but we never know for how many days. (At his yearly checkup, Bob always asks his doctor for his expiration date, but the doctor won’t tell him.) Show your partner you are grateful for your relationship, for your life together, for your family. It’s the greatest gift on earth.

Here’s to my wonderful sister, who taught me the most important lesson of my life: to spend the gift of time wisely.

I’d love to hear how the issue of time shows up in your relationship. Please comment below.

Businessman standing in a desertThe dark thought, the shame, the malice,
meet them at the door laughing,
and invite them in.
—Rumi

Growing up, we are formally taught for at least 13 years how to read, write, and perform basic mathematical equations. We take hundreds of tests, learn to spit out essays, play team sports, and toot on the recorder. But when—and where—do we learn how to deal with our feelings? We are rarely taught about our feelings with any intention. We learn emotion by observing our families and by experimenting in our relationships, mostly without anything that could be construed as constructive feedback.

If you think about any other learning experience in your life—picking up an instrument, starting a job, developing a new skill—you probably had some official starting point when you got information or direction to launch you on your quest. Along the way, you probably got a lot of feedback from a teacher, mentor, or parent.

So how did you learn to process your anger?

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The answer is, of course, that most of us never did. Rarely do we learn how to deal with this challenging emotion. People often get professional help only when it is causing them severe distress—for instance, when they are so angry that they have been assigned to anger management classes, or they are so afraid of their own anger that they engage in self-harm, directing it inward instead of toward the appropriate target(s).

How do you identify your (probably unconscious) relationship with anger? Here are some simple exercises to help you explore your anger.

1. Examine the Messages About Anger—Spoken and Unspoken—You Received Growing Up

Did your parents argue? Were they mean or even violent? Was anger simply avoided? Did their differences get resolved?

Were you allowed to be angry and express it? What were the repercussions when you did?

Did your parents apply the same “rules” about anger to themselves as to you and each of your siblings?

Think about the unconscious messages you internalized as “normal” and put them into statements you have carried with you all these years (i.e., “If someone gets angry at me, then I will hurt them worse,” or, “Just surrender your anger to God”). Try not to judge the statement as good or bad; it is just what you have learned.

2. Look at Yourself in Your Relationships

When someone is angry at you, how do you react? Do you just swallow it and internalize it, or do you retaliate and say something that hurts the other person even more?

What about when you get angry? Do your friends and family listen and allow you to express it? Do they ignore it? Do they suddenly accuse you of all the things they have been storing up as resentments?

Do angry feelings just pass for you and do they get resolved? Or do they sit with you and rear their ugly heads when there is a minor issue and suddenly you erupt at some unsuspecting bank clerk? Again, don’t judge yourself.

3. Ask Yourself What You Fear in Expressing Your Anger or Tolerating Someone Else’s

If you understand what you are afraid of when it comes to anger, you will be able to make sensible choices as you begin to deal with it differently. Are you afraid for your safety or for that of a loved one? Then, clearly, it is important to work toward a place where you are generally able to live without fear.

If you make peace with your anger instead of avoiding it or overindulging it, you may find that it no longer feels like a dreaded enemy but rather a caring, if uncomfortable, friend that arises to help you—even move you forward in some way.

If, however, you fear anger because it has always been unsafe in the past, you might choose to practice it with a willing and aware partner or friend. Many of us fear our anger because we worry we will be overwhelmed by it. Or sometimes we experience other people’s anger as criticism of who we are, instead of just applying it to the issue at hand. Sometimes the anger is masking other emotions, such as sadness, which can be easier for some to tolerate.

At this point, you might be thinking I mistakenly advised you to practice your anger.

I meant it!

As I mentioned earlier, we have treated any other skill in life as a process, one which we continue to hone—hopefully with compassionate feedback—and one through which we may need to stumble. If we are willing to allow and accept our anger, we may begin to learn that it is just an emotion—an emotion needing expression, but one that will pass. And like any new skill, it takes time and practice to hone.

If you make peace with your anger instead of avoiding it or overindulging it, you may find that it no longer feels like a dreaded enemy but rather a caring, if uncomfortable, friend that arises to help you—even move you forward in some way.

If you are struggling deeply with your anger, it may be most effective to work on it with a qualified therapist.

relaxing in hammock

“Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.”

This recognizable quote from the movie Ferris Bueller’s Day Off can be helpful to remember when we find ourselves saying things like:

“I simply can’t keep this pace up for much longer.”

“There just aren’t enough hours in the day.”

“Stop the merry-go-round. I need to get off!”

Often, we miss the signs that we’re moving too fast or that we’ve got too much on our plates. Sometimes our tendency is to switch to autopilot, and we may become suddenly unaware of what we’re doing in a given moment.

To help foster self-awareness, here are nine important indicators of when you might wish to slow things down before they go awry:

1. You’re always late to appointments.

[fat_widget_right] You might think that slowing things down will only cause you to be later. However, if you take a few moments to check your schedule and budget the appropriate amount of time to get from place to place,  you won’t constantly be racing and apologizing for being tardy. Always build in a few extra minutes for travel in case of traffic or delays that are beyond your control.

2. You keep losing things.

The first time you lose your keys, glasses, or wallet, you may simply let it go. The second time it happens, it’s a sure sign that you’re moving so fast you’re not aware of what you’re doing. You put things down without a thought and then don’t know where to retrieve them.

It can help to have a designated “home” for your belongings, but if you seem to be rushing lately and have tunnel vision, slowing the tempo can also help you stop misplacing things and find them more easily when you do.

3. You don’t know how you got from point A to point B.

Ever drive somewhere and wonder how you arrived? A little scary, right? What that means is that you weren’t focused on the task at hand and were too distracted be be engaged with your surroundings.

4. You’re not getting enough sleep.

You need to give the tasks in front of you the proper attention they deserve to tackle them efficiently. Otherwise, they could end up costing you more time. Listen to that spilled milk or stubbed toe when they tell you that you need to slow it down.Sleep is required to fill your tank so that you can face the challenges of each day. Of course we all are short-changed sometimes for various reasons, but if it’s happening for an extended period of time, it’s often a signal that something has to give. Take it down a notch if at all possible.

5. You have no time to eat.

If you don’t slow down long enough to nourish yourself, you’ll find that you will eventually come to a screeching halt, regardless of how much you desire to keep going.

6. You’re plagued by clumsiness.

Are you frequently dropping things, bumping into things, tripping, spilling or breaking things? That’s a strong indicator you’re moving too fast. You need to give the tasks in front of you the proper attention they deserve to tackle them efficiently. Otherwise, they could end up costing you more time. Listen to that spilled milk or stubbed toe when they tell you that you need to slow it down.

7. You’re forgetting appointments.

“Where are you? You were supposed to be here 10 minutes ago.”

Heard that one lately?

Missing an appointment feels awful. You wind up disappointing both yourself and others. It can put relationships at risk and cost you money. If you’ve missed a meeting, you might want to decelerate before it happens a second time.

8. You’re always multitasking.

You might be an amazing multitasker, but once in a while it’s important to discover what it’s like to put all of your focus and energy into just one thing. With multitasking, it’s possible to spread yourself too thin. If your schedule seems to ruthlessly demand multitasking, see if you can delegate things to others or at least assign each activity its own time slot.

9. You’re repeatedly getting sick.

If you find yourself feeling ill a lot more often than usual, it’s likely your body’s way of letting you know you’ve got to slow things down and rest! Listen to what your body is saying and don’t wait for your health to decline further.

Taking notice of just one or two of these meaningful signs should be enough to ease your current pace, which will serve you well in the long run.

Woman jeans and sneaker shoesWhen your “get up and go” has “got up and left,” when there’s no more “pep” left in your step, sometimes the best thing you can do is just stop trying for a while.

Moving forward feels great, but movement takes energy. When’s the last time you took a break without feeling guilty?

If you dislike the idea of resting, it might help to know that it’s a productive and appropriate project that could help you get your groove back.

Having said that, maybe you don’t have the option of sitting around doing nothing. Somehow, you’ve got to find or create the motivation to get moving again, regardless of how stuck you feel.

That’s when it’s time to do two things.

The first is to remind yourself of your own agency. No matter how helpless you may feel at a time like this, no matter what challenges you face, you have control over the little things in your life.

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You’re the only one who gets to decide whether to brush your teeth, rinse out that empty yogurt container, or sweep up that debris on the floor near the front door.

When life won’t give up its rewards to you, you can still reward yourself with clean hair, a timeout, or—here’s a novel idea—a carrot. (Make it a baby carrot with peanut butter; you need the nutrients.)

Losing motivation creates a sense of powerlessness, not to mention a lack of direction and purpose. It casts a spell that makes you forget your autonomy. But total powerlessness is most often an illusion.

Who else makes those moment-to-moment decisions about whether to wash a dish, darn a sock, or do a push-up?

When you feel paralyzed by obstacles like apathy, low energy, or indecision, taking small, unrelated actions can rev that idling engine.

When you feel paralyzed by obstacles like apathy, low energy, or indecision, taking small, unrelated actions can rev that idling engine.

The best activities are simple acts of grooming and household management.

Sprucing up your résumé and applying for jobs on the Internet is not a small action; don’t ask yourself to do that before you have some wins under your belt in the form of clipped nails, a tidy drawer, or a changed light bulb.

Once you inspire yourself by being proactive in smaller tasks, you’ll be better able to roll up your sleeves and do some heavy lifting on the bigger stuff.

The second thing to do if you’ve lost your mojo is to follow these three, simple words: Just start it. I remember an instructor in graduate school telling us that if you simply begin to do a task, motivation kicks in within 10 seconds.

You read that right: 10 seconds may be all it takes to shift from “I don’t want to do it” to “I’m already doing it, so I might as well continue.”

Let’s say, for example, you’re trying to get yourself to go to the gym. Get up right now and gather your workout clothes and/or shoes. Fill a water bottle or do whatever it takes to prep for a trip to the gym.

You’re far more likely to follow through and actually go if you start doing anything related to your goal.

Between these two tools—inspiring yourself through small actions or committing to just 10 seconds of activity—you’ll be able to make more progress than you would by sitting there berating yourself for being stuck.

Loss of motivation can be a symptom of depression. If your condition becomes entrenched, please consider speaking with a counselor or other mental health professional.

Child helping mother with choresWhat I am going to describe is what can happen when children grow up and begin to realize that they are not living their lives according to their own wishes and desires. They start to recognize that their sense of personhood—who I am and how I must be—is based on expectations learned in their earlier relationships with significant others. In therapy, they engage in a process that allows them to discover the ways in which they are controlled by what were spoken and unspoken expectations and the consequences of noncompliance. This was the work with a person I’ll call “Annie.”

Annie began therapy by expressing strong feelings of confusion and unhappiness about her sense of self:

“I’m so unhappy. I don’t know who I am and I can’t figure out what I want. Or if I think I want something, I’m never sure if it’s me who wants it, or my mother, or my husband. Everybody thinks I’m so wonderful: sweet, kind, easygoing. They have no idea how sad and irritable I feel. I find myself getting angry at everyone, but they don’t seem to deserve it and I don’t know why I’m angry. Who am I, anyway? What is wrong with me?”

Annie, a 48-year-old recently married woman, began to tell me how, since her marriage two years ago, she has been feeling increasing dissatisfaction in her life:

“I don’t get it. I met my husband Steve three years ago. We had a very strong, instant attraction and immediately started to see each other all the time. It felt wonderful to be together. He was funny and smart and he made me feel special. He was always saying how kind and sweet and thoughtful I was. We got along amazingly, never argued or disagreed. My parents loved him. After five months we were engaged, and married about five months after that. I think something started to change for me when we were planning the wedding.”

I asked Annie if she and Steve had conflicts about the wedding. She responded:

“It’s funny. Steve wasn’t very involved in the wedding plans. Me and my mom really put it all together. I don’t know. Maybe it started when Mom was so clear about what kind of wedding it should be. She wanted a large, fancy wedding. I was not a young bride, and I thought something small and more intimate would be better. But she was so excited and kept telling me that she was going to give me the wedding that she and my father never had. So I agreed to the big wedding. I think I was very used to saying yes to my mother, so I don’t think I let it register that it wasn’t what I wanted. At the time, it didn’t feel like a big deal. Looking back, after the wedding I started to feel more irritated toward anyone who told me what to do. It didn’t even matter whether or not I wanted to do it. I just wanted to say no to everything and everyone. I stopped making sense to myself. I didn’t feel like the nice, sweet Annie anymore. “

Annie and I began to explore the “nice, sweet Annie.” I asked: “Who is she and how did she get that way?”

Half smiling, half crying, Annie recalled that her parents used to sing made-up songs to her about “sweet little, kind little Annie” who everybody loved. She began to sing to me: “She’s sweet and neat and very, very good. Just ask anyone in the neighborhood …”

This cute, little song became central to our work. Annie and I began to look at her associations and memories as we unpacked the meanings the song evoked. Annie spoke of her close relationship to her parents and how wonderful it felt to be so loved. She began to wonder if she associated all the approval, love, and appreciation she got from her parents with the expectation that she be a good, nice, sweet girl:

“I have this very strong memory—I must have been 9 or 10—where I remember begging my mother to let me go for a weekend with my friend Ellen and her family. My mother didn’t want me to go and, very unlike me, I yelled at her and told her she was mean. She started to cry. My father was in the room with us and started to berate me. He told me, ‘You’re mean. How can you be so hurtful to your mother? She knows what’s best. You need to listen to her.’ I was devastated. I felt like such a bad person. I’m pretty sure I was crying and ran up to my mom and tried to hug her. She pushed me away and left the room. I felt so ashamed and sorry. It was awful.”

Over many sessions, Annie uncovered many meanings and expectations of what it meant to be a good girl: “Good girls listen to their parents. They are polite. They don’t get angry. They work hard in school. They are helpful. They don’t upset people. They don’t disappoint people. They don’t make people angry. They’re cheerful …”

Annie began to recognize that she was expected to fulfill these good-girl requirements or risk painful consequences: “I think the memory of my dad telling me I hurt my mother is significant. It was one of the worst moments of my life. I think I spent the rest of my life making sure my mother was not upset, hurt, angry, or had any bad feelings. I think I not only made sure I wasn’t the cause of any of her bad feelings, but I took on the job of protecting her from anyone else making her uncomfortable or unhappy.”

The more Annie and I talked, the clearer it became that she has been feeling pressure and anxiety to conform to those old good-girl requirements with “Steve,” her new significant other. She began to emotionally understand that the expectations she attributed to Steve belonged to the relationships with her parents, her earlier significant others.

The more Annie and I talked, the clearer it became that she has been feeling pressure and anxiety to conform to those old good-girl requirements with “Steve,” her new significant other. She began to emotionally understand that the expectations she attributed to Steve belonged to the relationships with her parents, her earlier significant others. She explained: “I feel pressure with Steve to be compliant and make sure he doesn’t have any bad feelings. Now I’m beginning to think this is not so much what Steve wants, but more about me and my parents. I think this is how I believed I had to be in any loving relationship. I’ve started to talk with Steve about this and I’m feeling less pressure to be the ‘good girl’ with him.”

Annie was beginning to make efforts to let Steve know her wishes even when she thought he would not approve. With Steve, she was becoming more comfortable allowing herself to discover her needs and wishes and to ask for what she wants. Her relationship with Steve is developing into an attachment that repeatedly confirms that she can experience acceptance and love in the face of not always being the “good girl.” This is helping Annie with her most noteworthy transformation: her evolving strength to tolerate her mother’s bad feelings and emotional withdrawal.

In contrast to her relationship with Steve, it is much more difficult to express her own opinions, needs, and desires around her mother. The old beliefs that she is responsible for her mother’s bad feelings and required to protect her mother from hurt and disappointment were internalized at a young age. Ideas about what is required of a good daughter are not easily transformed. Annie can acknowledge intellectually that it is not her job to keep her mother in an emotional comfort zone. She recognizes how her impulse to respond to her mother’s unspoken requests for soothing is triggered when her mother calls her to report an emotionally upsetting reaction to something. She is aware that when her mother is upset by something that occurs between them, she immediately feels responsible for causing the bad feelings and needs to act quickly to make her mother feel better.

She explained:

“I know I am feeling more anxious around my mother because now I’m aware of my conflict between wanting to take care of her feelings and wanting to be free to know what I want and be able to express it. Since we’ve been working together, I am much better at knowing what I want, but it mostly still feels too risky to not protect my mother. I feel like I must soothe her. I’m so afraid of her hating me. She can get very cold when she feels hurt, angry, or disapproving. It’s so scary to think of losing my mother.”

When Annie’s “good girl” behaviors toward her mother began to change, it was difficult for her to consider the possibility that her mother’s old responses could also change. It was helpful for Annie to accept that if she took small steps to express her own voice to her mother, she could test if there could be any change in her mother’s old emotionally abandoning responses. Annie has discovered that while her mother can get cold and dismissive, she recovers after rejecting Annie and can shift to being a more loving mother.

Annie continues to work on developing the ability to assert her individual self to her mother. She now understands that she has not only been protecting her mother, but has also been protecting herself from feeling emotionally abandoned by her. She knows she can’t significantly change her mother, but she has been slowly changing her own ability to withstand the intolerable fear of being abandoned and losing the emotional connection with her mother. Most essential in this process has been Annie’s growing ability to feel her emerging strength and resilience as she increasingly believes in her capacity to survive abandonment and be less frightened of asserting her own wishes and needs. This bodes well for her ability to develop and express all of her self states to others as she allows herself to engage more fully in the world.

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

Friends sitting in a circle at park“They say they understand, but how can someone who wasn’t adopted know what it feels like?”

Sixteen-year-old Lisa’s voice trails off as she explains the many frustrating conversations she’s had with her friends about adoption. The other teens sitting in the room nod their heads in agreement.

“I know, right?” adds Jake, 15. “How can they possibly know what it feels like to miss the mom who gave birth to you or why sometimes birthdays are really hard? Not to mention how uncomfortable it is to hear for the zillionth time, ‘Where were you born?’ because I’m a different race than my [adoptive] parents.”

More nods from the group.

“You guys get it,” laughs Adam. “That’s what’s so cool about this group. We don’t even have to explain ourselves.”

This conversation is one of many that seem to occur each time a group of adopted teens come together for the support group I co-facilitate in my community. In the group, teens can exchange stories and give and get support. Whether they are talking directly about adoption or not, the common thread of a shared experience puts them on a similar playing field and helps them “feel felt.”

Where Do You Belong?

[fat_widget_right]The experience of “not belonging” is common among those who were adopted. Coming together with others dissolves separations. Most teens come to the first group coaxed by parents, who often explain, “She probably won’t say too much” or “I don’t think he’ll want to stay, so maybe I’ll just sit outside.” That said, we have a 100% return rate so far! The teens who “won’t say too much” are frequently the ones who open up and expose their vulnerabilities as they share intimate details of their adoption stories to a group that welcomes each detail and listens attentively.

Participants in Teen AdoptCONNECT, our support group, include teens who were adopted transracially and domestically, as well as foster and former foster youth. Bringing together teens with varying stories and experiences allows teens to normalize similar issues on a bigger scale. It also further emphasizes the fact that they are not alone, that they belong to a “tribe.”

AdoptCONNECT is another unique group that invites all adult members of the adoption and foster care community to come together to give and get support. Adult adoptees, adoptive parents, former foster youth, first/birth parents, and waiting parents sit side by side, exchanging stories, fears, challenges, struggles, and wisdom. Members share thoughts and emotions openly and honestly without the worry of hurting someone’s feelings, all while coming to the realization they are not alone.

You’re Not the Only One

Support groups are an essential place to express feelings, give and get support, build lasting connections, and ultimately “feel felt.” The importance of sharing experiences with those who are walking a similar path as you cannot be over emphasized. It is pretty powerful to witness the exchange between an adult adoptee and adoptive parents of an adolescent.

“What did you need?” the parents ask.

The adult adoptee takes a few seconds and tearfully responds, “I needed my parents to realize that I thought about adoption all of the time growing up and that being curious about my biological family wasn’t a threat to them. I wish I could have shared my thoughts with them.”

An adoptive mom cries in relief after hearing another adoptive parent express similar feelings about sometimes not feeling good enough as a parent. “Wow, I thought I was the only one who felt that way.”

Why Support Groups Can Be So Important

My colleague and I started these adoption support groups to serve an unmet need in our community. The groups provide a place for the adoption and foster care community to come together and share stories, ideas, and concerns in a safe environment. Support groups are an essential place to express feelings, give and get support, build lasting connections, and ultimately “feel felt.” The importance of sharing experiences with those who are walking a path similar to yours cannot be overemphasized.

I encourage you to join a group or start a group if you are a member of this community. If you need help with this, please contact me for guidance.

kissing-in-rainWhen it comes to relationships, many clichés exist for a good reason: a lot of them are true. Making and keeping long-term connections is, of course, some of the oldest and hardest work humankind has ever undertaken, and there isn’t much that’s new to say about it.

The following five basic truths about relationships form the core of my couples counseling. Yes, you’ve heard them before, but when they are looked into more deeply and practiced more willingly, they often lead to a strong, healthy relationship.

1. The secret to a long-lasting relationship is to not split up.

It’s so clear-cut it almost sounds glib, but sometimes the simplest fact is also the most profound. Relationship longevity, at times, comes down to a decision each partner makes to value being in the relationship above all else. We all get seduced by the idea of a new mate who promises more fascination, more compassion, and more romance (the three qualities quickest to fade after a few years together). One characteristic common to all enduring marriages, however, is a shared sense that a long-term connection is worth more than a short-term one. In other words, the security and stability that can come only after decades together is just as, if not more, important than the pull of a shiny, new partnership.

Long-term relationships are for realists. They aren’t easy. Periods that are lovely tend to be interrupted by periods that are stormy. During those tough times, you might feel as if you’re only staying together because it’s the right thing to do or because there’s no other way to achieve longevity. The commitment is to each other, yes, but during those times when “each other” is not the haven you’d like it to be, the commitment becomes to commitment itself.

2. We marry our parents.[fat_widget_right]

This one is the basic tenet of the kind of psychotherapy I practice. The belief is that we all carry scars from our childhoods—even the happiest childhoods—based on disappointments or conflicts with our parents. As adults, we meet partners who we swear up and down are nothing like those disappointing parents, but one day we wake up and realize, “How did this happen? My partner is exactly as critical as my father was.”

We therapists would say that you’ve chosen this partner in the subconscious hope that your childhood wound could be healed. In other words, if your dad never seemed to fully appreciate you, you fall in love with someone who is also withholding so you can finally get the approval you’ve always been looking for.

Your partner is probably not a mirror image of your dad. Instead of being outwardly critical, he or she might say all the right words but then be easily hurt so you consistently feel you’ve failed. The patterns are rarely obvious, but if you look hard enough, they are almost always there. We recreate in adulthood the most pressing problems from our childhood in the hopes that now we’ll succeed where in the past we could not.

The good news about this cliché is that once we’re aware of the pattern, we can work on what really needs to be healed: our own self-esteem. The key to overcoming a critical parent is not to find a partner who is unerringly supportive and non-judgmental, but instead to silence our own inner critic. Sometimes when we see a pattern in our relationships, we have to look at the only constant, ourselves, to see what needs to be repaired.

3. You can’t love someone else until you love yourself.

When you can accept that a problem isn’t going to be fixed, it has less power. If you have to “win” all the time, you’re going to end up losing the most important prize: the relationship itself.This cliché seems to imply that you can’t have a decent relationship until you reach some sort of mythical, enlightened state of self-love. Instead, I interpret it as meaning that often the best gift you can give to your partner is to know yourself better. Getting to know what you need, what makes you tick, and how to stand up for yourself are tools that can seem to strain a relationship at first but make it stronger in the long run.

This leads to a sub-cliché I often share with the people I work with. Just as they tell you on airplanes to put on your own oxygen mask before you help others with theirs, you can only make your relationship strong when you’re coming from a strong position. “Loving yourself” can be as simple as taking the time to know what makes you angry and why and learning a few tools for calming yourself so that you can communicate clearly even when you’re upset.

4. You can’t change anyone else unless they really want to change.

If you go into a relationship expecting your partner to change, you’re in for a disappointment.

This is not to say that others can’t change, just that they won’t, unless they decide it’s incredibly important. People who see me for therapy tend to express frustration when they hear this. If true love means becoming the best person you can for your partner, then does my partner not changing mean he or she doesn’t love me?

The truth may be less romantic, but it’s also more respectful and more compassionate. When we let our partners know what they are doing hurts us and when they trust that we’ve looked at and worked on our own issues before pointing the finger at them, they are often able to agree to modify their behavior and find a compromise.

The end result, then, of two people who are working on “loving themselves” and “not changing others” is that they’ll give more love and more potential for change to their partners. It sounds paradoxical, but it’s more of a shift in perspective. Mutual esteem will bring change more quickly than critiques and blaming.

5. In relationships, you can be right or you can be happy.

Giving in is sometimes the best place to start. Relationship expert John Gottman talks about dozens of ways to communicate more effectively but reserves space for what he calls “perpetual problems,” or the issues that just aren’t going to get resolved. They’re the ones that come back no matter how many times you fight over them. In a long-term relationship, there will always be a couple of key conflicts that you simply can’t figure out how to solve. If they seem insurmountable, they probably are, and that’s OK.

The trick with these issues is to label them—“There’s our old ‘you spend too much, you’re too cheap’ fight again”—and let them go. Instead of getting angrier and having to prove once and for all that you’re right, how about just walking away? When you can accept that a problem isn’t going to be fixed, it has less power. If you have to “win” all the time, you’re going to end up losing the most important prize: the relationship itself.

Sometimes, to find love, just follow the time-tested, worn-out old tropes. But this time, follow them with intelligence, depth, and complexity. After all, any fool can make something complicated, but it takes real intelligence to make something simple. Or is that too cliché?

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.