| INTRODUCTION |
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| ADDICTIONS |
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| ANXIETY & CODEPENDENCY |
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| BOOKS |
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| COUPLE'S
TROUBLES |
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DEPRESSION & EXPECTATIONS
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| DIVORCE & BLACK/WHITE THINKING/FEELING |
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| EMOTIONS, ANGER, GUILT, & EMOTIONAL HONESTY |
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FAMILIES,
CRYING, CHOICES,
& PAIN |
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| FORGIVENESS, IRONY, PITY & RESPECT |
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| GRIEF & FATIGUE |
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HAPPINESS
&
VITALITY IN LIVING |
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MOVIES
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PARENTING
&
PARENTING ADOLESCENTS |
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| RELATIONSHIP
TRIANGLES & MANIPULATION |
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| SELF-HATRED,
SELF ESTEEM, BOREDOM, RESENTMENTS, & PROJECTION |
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| SEXUALITY |
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| SINGLE
& DATING |
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| ONLINE RESOURCES |
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| RELATIONSHIP REALITIES BLOG |
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Families
“Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern like bad wallpaper.” - Friedrich Nietzsche
“The family is one of nature’s masterpieces.” - George Santayana
Most families get into trouble with either too much distance
or too much confluence (co-dependence or mush). In most families,
confluence is cultivated. Anger is employed to make you stay
the same as me, instead of respecting the difference and learning
to communicate the differences. Remember that problems are often
embedded in what we take for granted.
Pittsburgh is a lovely city. It is true there are more kind people here per square mile than in other cities. Unfortunately, Pittsburgh’s weakness is that too many grown adults will follow their parents advice on who they should date or not date instead of following their own inner convictions that may be different. Grown children will live at home, and instead of embracing their own life’s journey, they will get lost in their parent’s idea of the best path. Parents in Greensburg (45 minutes away) will unfairly view a move to Pittsburgh as a betrayal of the family. Really, they are frustrated with being too far away to know everything happening in their children’s lives. This is called confluence, not enough separation and differentiation. They have no respect for changes in boundaries even though a grown child is no longer in high school. Children need both roots and wings to grow. Many Pittsburgh parents are terrific at the roots part, but haven’t learned about enough about wings.
In the words of Laura Perls, "Taking care of people as if they are infants is not taking care of them at all."
Ask yourself are your children protected or only prohibited? A movie that demonstrates confluence in a Hispanic family that must come to terms with a daughter going to college instead of getting married and working in the family business is
Real Women Have
Curves.
As much as we love our children it's important to support
their independence to meet and greet the world on their own
terms with their own mistakes and successes. The reason the incest taboo is so consistently upheld across almost all cultures is because children need some reason to leave home. If all of their needs are met: food, shelter and sexuality, then why would they
leave? Celibacy is for nuns and priests who choose it, not for grown adults who will miss out on a pleasurable part of life.
A word of advice to grown children who are allowing themselves to be trapped:
Try to give yourself some perspective by being more objective about your parents and then you can be more objective about yourself. Stop trying to please parents who can’t be pleased. Remember that disagreement has an important function in every relationship and learn to tolerate your own anxiety about disagreement. Stop pleasing everyone else and losing track of yourself.
Split Energy in a Family vs. Healthy
Dynamic Energy
Sometimes in listening to people describe their families you
can tell that mom has chosen one kid and dad has allied with
the other.
One remedy for this family would be for each parent to spend individual time with the kid they are not aligned with, to build energy back into the dyad and for mom and dad to work at repairing their own relationship.
A healthy family has energy going between every dyad.
This is why it is important that young couples with babies don’t neglect the husband/wife relationship.
Disagreement is an important element in healthy families. There cannot be intimacy without the fight.
Stepfamilies
"When children have permission to care about all the adults in their lives, it adds richness and variety to their existence." - Dr. Emily Visher
Stepfamilies require each family member to juggle a greater degree of complexity. Be careful of the fantasy most stepparents begin with; "I’ll rescue these kids and be the parent they want and need." Kids must be aware of divided loyalties. It is okay to love and care for each adult without feeling betrayal. This is a long process that requires a great deal of patience and generosity. Both adoptive families and stepfamilies become heroic in learning how to share with a greater number of people than the "normal" core family. The complexity involves appreciating each family member’s struggle. Stepfamilies can polarize so easily. Kids often need a big chunk of time to sit on the fence before they can embrace the transition of new people in their lives. It’s crucial when kids do move closer to a stepparent that it not be interpreted as disloyalty to either of the biological parents.
Stepfamily:
Living, Loving, and Learning by Elizabeth Einstein is
highly recommended.
In-Laws
"Healthy in-law relationships are a wonderful blessing in any marriage. Unhealthy in-law relationships can be a continual drain and irritation." - Drs. David & Jan Stoop
These are the most difficult relationships to be successful in, because you have not chosen each other. As a result, the differences become more pronounced. These relationships can only be successful if the differences are respected and even welcomed.
Crying
“Man’s cry is to reach his fullest expression.” - Rabindranath Tagore
Crying is another way of giving up. Crying also honors what is important.
Both of these are true.
If you are crying and feeling helpless, review the victim role described on the relationship triangle page. Former U.S. Representative Patricia Shroeder of Colorado has a favorite saying about taking action: "You can either wring your hands or roll up your sleeves but you can’t do both at the same time."
Experiment with your body and see if you can sit up and feel your backbone. Your backbone and your guts are a physical source of courage.
The "I can't live without you" crying is different
than grief. "I can't live without you" is a phrase
that still insists on what you want. Crying over loss is
feeling bereft and honoring what was.
Reframe the crying that accompanies PMS as a gentle reminder to think about
you instead of only others. Ask yourself what's missing in
your life to make things work better for you. Crying may be exaggerated
but is one way to get your attention focus back on the self, especially for those who caretake others too lopsidedly.
Getting stuck in crying is dangerous. One of the signs of being mentally healthy is movement through your feelings. Feelings are not meant to be a paralyzing swamp.
Choices
“It is our choices that show what we truly are, far more than our abilities.” - Joanne Kathleen Rowling
Restore your range of life’s possibilities. Think of life as improvisation through choices, since life is built on choices. Fear constricts choices. Parents, in an effort to protect, will often prohibit choices. Avoiding choices keeps your place in the world too small. People who get stuck in shame or were humiliated growing up will have a tendency to restrict their choices so that more bad things won’t happen. Procrastination is often a way to avoid the responsibility of choices.
Remember that we live in a culture of fear, as illustrated by Michael Moore in the movie
Bowling for
Columbine. Why do we need to have the right to own an AK-47? The answer is to defend ourselves in a culture of fear. Increase the range of how you see yourself by recognizing more choices. If you are serious, ask yourself how to be more playful in your life. Recognize that you have choices available and define yourself in new directions. It’s so easy to make a list of eight things you don’t like about yourself—now ask yourself what would be the opposite of each. How might you go about acknowledging and making these eight characteristics real (in small steps) in your life?
Choices are definitely improved by a healthy dose of imagination. Television is only one culprit in the disintegration of imagination in our culture. What a chuckle in the movie
The Italian
Job when characters kept commenting on Edward Norton’s lack of imagination. Asking clients who their heroes or heroines might be often produces no response. We don’t even think about this anymore. Heroes and heroines offer opportunities, pictures of how we might imagine ourselves.
If you suffer from a lack of imagination, then begin with choices that spring from your curiosity. Making meaningful choices means giving yourself permission to fail. Anything worth doing is worth doing badly. Making mistakes in choices is how we know we are human.
If you have a dilemma, such as: Should I leave him/her?—know that without a doubt if you can give yourself enough time, choices will make themselves. Stay with the process of truth, don’t avoid anymore, and you will know the answer. Following the path of the easy way is wasteful (and always is a part of the trap in addictions).
Chautauqua Institution is our favorite vacation location where
learning and lectures are a part of relaxing. There is a four-seat
gray bench in front of the art gallery at Chautauqua. Every seat is labeled either choice or chance. I believe that they are inextricably bound together. Make the choices that chance offers you because that may be the path to your passions. The more narrow your world is, the less likely you are to find your passions. So embrace possibilities and pursue experimenting with all the different parts of who you might become.
It can be useful to think of some choices as self-defeating and to step away from those choices such as:
#1. Loneliness and not doing anything about it.
#2. Procrastination to avoid the responsibility of choices.
#3. Obesity which affects life energy.
#4. Saying "Yes", when you really mean "No".
#5. Indecision as a way of avoiding the hard path an authentic choice may require.
#6. Defensiveness instead of learning more about yourself.
#7. Trying too hard to please others and losing track of yourself.
#8. Substance abuse or excessive fantasizing which leads to coasting throughout your real life.
#9. Silence on a dying sex life instead of solving the obstacles to rekindle the vitality.
#10. Unrealistic expectations of yourself or others that creates constant disapointment.
There are life enhancing choices also to pursue:
#1. Embrace awkwardness and making mistakes as crucial to growth.
#2. Try new things, take risks, practice courage.
#3. Be more authentic with people you love.
#4. Know what is important to you and work hard at those things.
#5. Excercise, floss your teeth, and eat more fruits and vegetables.
#6. Reduce consumerism and materialism.
#7. Decide to be warm and affectionate with others.
#8. Write an old fashioned letter instead of an e-mail.
#9. Bring back spontaniety to your life.
#10. Consider greediness can be a fine appetite for life.
Pain
"It feels just like walking on broken glass" -lyrics by Annie Lennox
from the song Walking on Broken Glass
Profound pain can never be erased, and it always gets smaller over time. Learning to make pain bearable is an important part of life. A majority of Chinese movies attend to the telling of very painful stories (see the Chinese Section under Movies on web site). It is paradoxical but true that if you honor and respect your pain it will take up less space in your heart.
It is important to share pain, to have it witnessed. Too often in life we are the Tin Man in the Wizard of Oz with our jaws rusted shut. The secret to life is middle ground: sharing but not oozing your pain everywhere like those who are bitter or resentful. Choicefully sharing can make a difference. To be known truly is one of
life's joys and risks. Without a doubt, unspoken pain creates cracks and crevices in the soul. Consider writing a letter to God, to yourself, or to someone who has hurt you, not to send but to allow the pain to take up less space in your soul.
There is another kind of pain that Iris Murdoch writes about in The Good
Apprentice. Therapy is often about coping with our broken self-delusions. Murdoch writes:
"Your picture of yourself, your self-illusion is in process of being broken. This places you in an unusual position, very close to the truth, and that proximity is part of your pain...you hate your damaged self and feel you cannot live with it, yet you desperately cherish it at the same time. You describe your grief as a system. Indeed it is, a defensive system of mutually supporting falsehoods instinctively produced to defend your old egoistic self-image which you cannot bear to lose, you cannot bear its death which seems so like your own. Your endless talk of dying is a substitute for the real needful death, the death of your illusions...you say you live in pain. Let it be the death of the old false self, and the life-movement of the new real truthful self."
This is said by a character who is a psychiatrist to young Edward, who has had a part in the death of his roommate. Great tragedy does open up possibilities. As an aside: The Chinese symbol for crisis also has the dual meaning of opportunity.
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