1. Do you spend time alone on a regular basis? When you are alone, are you comfortable or do you get anxious?

2. When your partner wants to spend time alone, do you feel rejected, scared or unloved?

3. Do you get jealous or upset when your partner spends time with other friends or family members?

4. Are you afraid that when your partner is out of sight, you are no longer in his or her thoughts?

Autonomy is the Foundation of Intimacy

If you are puzzled about what autonomy has to do with the capacity to be alone then keep reading. Autonomy gives us the ability to make choices according to our own free will. Without it, we feel like victims. If you cannot tolerate being alone, then you will choose to spend time with anyone but yourself. You will sacrifice your autonomy, your very sense of personal freedom, in order to feel connected.

If you feel that you cannot survive being alone, then fear will be in the driver’s seat. When run by fear, people choose partners who aren’t good for them (or are even dangerous) just to avoid being alone or rejected. On the other hand, if you know that you can be alone—and take care of your own needs—then you can risk being the unique individual that you are. You are able to let your partner come and go, both physically and emotionally instead of desperately clinging on for dear life.

The Balance Between Closeness and Distance

Most people value their relationships above everything else. Half of my clients come to therapy longing to find a healthy relationship, and the other half seeking to improve an already existing one. We are, by nature, social animals. But living in close quarters with family members is anything but easy. Part of what makes the dance of relationship so difficult is the ongoing tension between closeness and distance, connection and autonomy.

Unfortunately, too many people fall prey to the myth that intimacy is only about connection. Authentic connection is a big part of it, of course, since …

“There exists, for everyone, a sentence – a series of words – that has the power to destroy you. Another sentence exists, another series of words, that could heal you. If you’re lucky you will get the second, but you can be certain of getting the first.”                                                                                            -Author Philip K. Dick

It will probably come as no surprise that I have been writing since I could put pen to paper–that’s my bias. That being said, I’m not sure what I would have done without it. In my teen years and early adulthood when I would never (and did never) set foot in a therapy office, I created a safe space in my journals to express everything I couldn’t talk about. Years later, when I began my journey of self-exploration and healing in early adulthood, I was able to reflect with new eyes on everything I had written. What had I learned, if anything, and what was I supposed to learn from the lessons life was giving me?

If you are not in therapy because you don’t believe in it, can’t afford it, or it’s against your religion, writing may help you. If you are in therapy, writing may help you deepen your experience and make yourself the hero of your journey. If you are a parent, and want to know how to help your child deal with the recent traumas from Boston or Newtown, here are some ideas. What is the story you tell yourself about your life and what do you want it to be?

The Health Benefits of Writing

There is now a considerable body of research showing how powerful it can be to …

“If your emotional abilities aren’t in hand, if you don’t have self-awareness, if you are not able to manage your distressing emotions, if you can’t have empathy and have effective relationships, then no matter how smart you are, you are not going to get very far.” -Daniel Goleman

As a psychotherapist, I am constantly struck by how little the average person knows about emotions– both why we have them in the first place and what we are to do about them when they cause us pain and suffering. It seems as though half of humanity wishes they could do without them–and they try very hard to avoid or suppress any painful feeling that comes along. The emotion-avoiding types say things like, “I don’t want to talk about it because then I’d  feel sad,” or “It won’t change anything to get angry, so why bother…”

The other half, the emotionally dramatic as-if-on-a-roller-coaster type, seems to honor their emotions, giving them not just a voice but the whole driver’s seat. These folks say things like, “I can’t do that when I don’t feel like it,” or “I can’t possibly change the way that I feel since it is who I am.” If given too much weight, feelings can be used to blame or shame others or to justify inappropriate behavior.

As clinical psychologist and Buddhist practitioner Daniel Goleman so aptly reminds us, feelings are an essential part of our humanity, and we need to learn how to work with them so they don’t get the best of us. As infants, our emotions helped communicate our needs to our caregivers, and as adults they still help us to know what we like and don’t like. They are essential in order for us to be able to empathize and have compassion for ourself and others. The trick is how to find the balance between too much expression and too little. For most of us, this is a lifelong process. Here is a way to begin.

First, ask yourself which one of these two tendencies are you most likely to exhibit? Are you able to express your emotions? When was …

“Humor is mankind’s greatest blessing.”     -Mark Twain

Every year, at this time of year, tensions mount. The arrival of the gift-giving holidays like Christmas and Hanukkah (“What should I get my mother-in-law?”) accompanied by impending vacations from school (“What will we do with the kids all cooped up in the bad weather?”) collide with the week-long visits of friends and relatives (“Will my divorced parents fight in front of the kids? What will we do with everyone? How can we feed a group with two vegetarians, a die-hard carnivore, and six fussy kids?”). These questions and others like them threaten to put most of us over the proverbial edge.

What can you do to prevent the slippery slope of irritability and overwhelm? How do healthy families manage? Although the complete answer to these questions could fill an entire book, the swiftest solution is to find the humor wherever possible. As William James, the father of modern psychology, so aptly said over a hundred years ago: ”We don’t laugh because we’re happy, we are happy because we laugh.”

What Kids Can Teach Grown-ups     

Did you know that the average kindergartner laughs 300 times a day–in vivid contrast to adults who average only 17 laughs a day? They also indulge in generous amounts of spontaneous play. Now that is something to stop and think about. I don’t know about you, but I’m going to start counting my giggles and see if I can get back into the hundreds. Clearly, most of us grown-ups are taking life far too seriously for our own good. The more stresses that build up, the more essential that we find something, anything, to laugh about.

Laughter Cures What Ails Us

Not only will our laughter make the holidays go more merrily, but we will be less likely to catch the latest virus. Although we have known instinctively for millennia that laughter, like crying, can be a powerful antidote to pain and suffering, the scientific world is catching up. According to the American Association for Therapeutic Humor, laughter may …

“The best gift you can give your kids is to tend your own garden–cultivating strength, humor, and kindness.”   -from How’s Your Family Really Doing?

It’s tough to be a good parent. Actually, let’s be honest. Sometimes it’s tough just to show up, let alone be good at it. Personally, I think it is one of the hardest jobs in the world. What other job demands you be available 24/7, offers no paid vacation or sick time, and routinely disturbs your sleep? And once you’ve accepted the job, so to speak, it’s yours for the rest of your life, like it or not.

On the other hand, raising two sons to adulthood with my husband (and fellow team leader), has been one of the most fulfilling, growthful, intense, fun (I could add dozens more adjectives) and precious journeys that I have ever undertaken. Both my husband and I have had to learn a lot of things along the way–some by trial and error, some by educating ourselves on child development and effective parenting strategies, some by pure luck.

One of the most important lessons we have had to learn–and continue to teach the many parents who have been coming to our counseling clinic for the past thirty years–is how important it is to take care of yourself in order to be able to take care of others. We use the metaphor of a garden because even the most beautiful garden, if left unattended, will eventually wither and die.                                             

Just as plants need water, healthy soil and regular weeding, so do budding humans need care and attention in order to thrive. Perhaps this seems obvious (as truth often does), but most parents get so caught up in taking care of the kids, the house, the job and all the other responsibilities of daily life that they simply forget themselves or run out of time.

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Continue reading… »

“Man cannot discover new oceans unless he has the courage to lose sight of the shore.” -Andre Gide

What do things like asking loved ones for advice, reading stacks of self-help books, taking classes, searching for a good therapist, or hours of web-searching all have in common? You probably guessed it. There is something the seeker wishes to change. As a family therapist, I am called on for help with many different types of problems but all with the same goal–making changes to find greater happiness, deeper love, greater success in life, or fewer failures in love or work.

Change is a great teacher, although certainly unpredictable–sometimes harsh, sometimes exciting, often frightening or overwhelming. What makes change so difficult? Why is it so hard to sustain? What is it about change that the very idea of it can put fear into the hearts of otherwise courageous folk?

Given that change is an inevitable part of life, it makes sense that each of us figure out how to increase our capacity to rebound or spring back from change and loss, a concept now called resiliency by social science researchers. Although some aspects of resiliency are inborn, other aspects can be learned and practiced.

Just as individuals go through stages of growth and development from infancy to adulthood, so does the family move through the various cycles of life, including sickness, death and other losses. At each stage, and especially in crises, the relationships of each member to others in the family need to adapt and change.

The demands of babies and toddlers are vastly different than when kids reach school age. At first dependent upon adults for their very survival, children seek for more and more independence as they grow and mature. All of our relationships–between child and parent, brother and sister, partner or mate, adult and aging parents–must keep being redesigned to meet rapidly changing circumstances if they are to remain helpful and healthy.

“Any change, even a change for the better, is always accompanied by drawbacks and discomforts.”  -Arnold Bennett      …

We are told that people stay in love because of chemistry, or because they remain intrigued with each other, because of many kindnesses, because of luck. But part of it has got to be forgiveness and gratefulness.” -Ellen Goodman

In spite of the headlines revealing the breakdowns and sordid secrets inside the marriages of the rich and famous, most Americans who tie the knot seem to have bought the prevailing myth of romantic love. None of us like to think of ourselves as one of them (those lying, cheating, no-good married types). No, as the song goes, our love is here to stay.

What is the harm, you might ask, in basking in the honeymoon love-will-conquer-all phase? The problem is that the expectations of marriage, when blown up to mythical proportions, leave couples believing they have failed when the proverbial stuff hits the fan. In truth, conflict and suffering come with the package, and can strengthen the trust and bond if the couple has the right tools to work with.

Far too often in my role as a psychotherapist, I have sat with couples in distress because one of them reports that he or she is no longer “in love”, and therefore must leave the relationship to find a more perfect love with someone else. Or the rejected partner tells the other to go ahead and leave, convinced that love, once lost, cannot be rekindled. How tragic that we have been so filled with images of romantic love that we think of it as something outside of our control. We wait for love, like a giant bird, to descend from some distant landscape and settle in our branches once again.

This destructive myth makes many believe that love, once set into motion, will carry us along through the complexities of life, if only we are lucky enough, or if we choose the right person. Not so, since conflict, disagreement, hardship and misunderstandings are inevitable in every close relationship. To build a strong, lasting relationship, love is better thought of as a verb not a noun.     …

“The price of success is hard work, dedication to the job at hand, and the determination that whether we win or lose, we have applied the best of ourselves to the task at hand.”  -Vince Lombardi

A week from tomorrow, on Election Day in America, there will winners and losers galore. Many people will be happy but just as many will be disappointed and upset. The same thing happens over and over (although certainly not with the same price tag) every day, every week. Countless contests flood the television channels, and prizes are awarded in our schools, in athletic events, in the arts world, and on the world stage, each declaring someone a winner and someone a loser. What values do you hold about competition? What lessons are we teaching our children, consciously or not, about how to interact with others when they are on the “other” side?

More than four decades after his death, the famous Green Bay Packer coach, Vince Lombardi, is one of America’s most recognized and remembered sports figures. I have been pondering the question of just how well are we doing at living up to his most famous credo–the one that says it’s not so important whether you win or lose, but how you play the game.

In my work with couples and families, no subject is out of bounds. Last week, I spoke to a family where the teenager stopped speaking to his parents because of what happened when they were watching one of the presidential debates. The mother, a staunch believer in her particular political party, was yelling at the television. She was calling one person a liar, a cheat and a scumbag. Her son asked the mom to be quiet so he could listen. A huge fight ensued that left everyone upset.                      

Does this sound familiar? How many households witnessed the same fireworks, or worse? Or perhaps during the World Series or the Super Bowl? It is one thing to be passionate …

“You gain strength, courage and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face. You must do the thing you think you cannot do.”                             -Eleanor Roosevelt

We know from the previous blog that a certain amount of anxiety is a necessary part of life, but what do we do when fear begins to rule someone’s life? And especially if that someone is our child?

Short of getting professional help or using medication, what tools can help build more strength and resiliency to face common fears and phobias? What’s the best way to help our children move forward in a world that will always have dangers?

“Men fear death as children fear to go in the dark; and as that natural fear in children is increased by tales, so is the other.”  –Francis Bacon

Young and old, child or adult, fear is one of our companions in life, and we should be glad that it is. Our brains are hard-wired to notice signs of danger and to alert us to take protective action. A certain amount of anxiety can actually enhance our performance in stressful situations. Certain fears go hand in hand with childhood. Others don’t.

Key #1: Know what is normal given your child’s age.

There are a lot of fears that are part of the normal process of child development. Most come and eventually go away on their own as kids get older. For example, babies startle at loud noises and are afraid of large unfamiliar objects. At around six months, your formerly easy-going baby will suddenly be afraid of strangers–which can unfortunately include grandparents if they don’t see them much. Stranger anxiety often peaks, then will seem to disappear, only to reappear again and again over the course of the next year.

Separation anxiety is another normal developmental milestone that can appear suddenly at around eight months. It is a good sign that your baby is smart enough to realize that his or her survival depends on you, which is why the baby screams like crazy when you try to leave them with a babysitter. Although stressful for parents, babies naturally move through this stage by having the painful experience–and the reassurance of you and other caregiving adults–of how you come and go and come back again. Practice and repetition is how we learn to confront our fears.

Preschool kids, aged 3 to 6, are typically afraid of the dark and often worry about monsters, ghosts or wild animals. They hear noises in the night and want to sleep near or with their parents to feel safe and protected from these imaginary beasts.

As kids get older, they typically develop more realistic fears such as anxiety about being sick or injured, or the …