The Musings of Diana Brennan

commmunication for couples

2010-01-09T08:47:00.000-08:00

COMMUNICATION FOR COUPLES

I have been working with couples on communicating with each other for about 30 years now. I have also taught communication skills at various venues from Torrance Adult School to Antioch University. Communication was also a frequent topic for my weekly column in the Daily Breeze.
Following are some simple, but by no means easy ideas to empower each of you to enrich your relationship:
THE DON’TS
FIRST: Please lose the words never, always and why from your vocabulary when you are endeavoring to talk to your partner / beloved.
Each of these words, when attached to the pronoun “you”—surrogate for your p / b—becomes accusatory and attacking, as in “You never…”, “You always…”, “Why did you—Why don’t you?”
And as soon as your p / b feels threatened, he / she becomes immediately defensive and ready to go on the offensive and escalation becomes the order of the day. Communication dissolves.
SECOND: Forgive me for using the word never in a completely different context, ie counselor to client. Please, NEVER threaten divorce, or that you are leaving permanently, or that you are “kicking the other person out.”
Every human being has abandonment issues. When you threaten your p / b with such a final ending as divorce, or demanding he or she leave, you guarantee that your p / b’s loss / abandonment issues will kick in and escalation becomes paramount. What sadly, yet most frequently, happens, is one of you endeavoring to leave, and your best other is standing in the doorway blocking all egress. Super escalation!
THIRD: Forgive me for saying always, yet please, the instant YOU realize you and your p / b are escalating, ALWAYS cease and desist, pull back, and say something like, “I love you, but we are escalating / we are not accomplishing / we are just hurting…and cetera—and I am ‘going in the other room’, or ‘outside and around the block’ or ‘out to a film’, and I will be back in ‘5 minutes’, ‘2hours’”—and / or whatever is appropriate to a SEPARATING AND COOLING OFF time.
I know, telling your p / b you love him / her during your escalating wounding of each other might seem a Herculean task. So please express the most positive and respectful words you can, so you both know you are separating only temporarily, and only in order to avoid inflicting further pain on each other.
COUNSELOR COMMENT ON SECOND AND THIRD DON’TS: Please note well the profound difference between a respectful and caring leavetaking and a threatening leavetaking.
FOURTH: When the two of you reunite—whether after 5 minutes or 24 hours—your emotional wounds are still raw and your brain chemistry is still likely awry. Please do not even think of taking up where you left off in order to resolve your concerns. It won’t happen. And after yet another round of hurtful escalation, you end with more unresolved issues.
Instead, please read on.
THE DO’S
FIRST: Please agree with each other to “take a meeting” the day after your conflict, in order that your brain chemistries and rawest heart wounds have had an opportunity to settle down. Otherwise, endeavoring to resolve conflicts are more likely to re-open hurts and misunderstandings and once again, escalation. It is fine to set up the meeting when you are still hurting.
SECOND: Initially, setting a 5-minute time limit to your first meeting is essential. If communications go awry, you have a gracious means to ending same and re-scheduling. When your endeavors succeed, you can agree to continue as long as you are meeting each other’s needs.
THIRD: Please set aside a “sacred” time and space for your meeting. This sets a tone or mood of respect for yourselves and what you hope your meeting will accomplish. Establish eye contact, and I suggest you hold hands.
FOURTH: The person calling the meeting begins by asking your p / b if he / she is ready for you to share. This is again, setting an ambience of caring and respect. State your concern by sharing your genuine feelings with your partner about a recent and specific event, which obviates “dredging up old stuff from the past”, which sabotages your meeting and leaves more hurt feelings unresolved.
Share your genuine feelings of hurt or fear or whatever, about what you experienced from your b / p’s words or actions. Please do not slide in to any blaming. Then ask your partner to repeat back the jist of your statement. This is important because it focuses you both on listening skills, which are at least 50% of communicating.
FIFTH: When your partner has repeated back what you shared, please ask him / her if he / she wishes to respond. This response also needs to be the stuff of genuine feelings, with no excuses and no blame. Frequently, it comprises an apology.
SIXTH: If you feel your meeting has been successful, you may want to repeat the process, with either partner beginning. Or, you may wish to celebrate your success and schedule another meeting soon!

COMMUNICATION FOR COUPLES

I have been working with couples on communicating with each other for about 30 years now. I have also taught communication skills at various venues from Torrance Adult School to Antioch University. Communication was also a frequent topic for my weekly column in the Daily Breeze.
Following are some simple, but by no means easy ideas to empower each of you to enrich your relationship:
THE DON’TS
FIRST: Please lose the words never, always and why from your vocabulary when you are endeavoring to talk to your partner / beloved.
Each of these words, when attached to the pronoun “you”—surrogate for your p / b—becomes accusatory and attacking, as in “You never…”, “You always…”, “Why did you—Why don’t you?”
And as soon as your p / b feels threatened, he / she becomes immediately defensive and ready to go on the offensive and escalation becomes the order of the day. Communication dissolves.
SECOND: Forgive me for using the word never in a completely different context, ie counselor to client. Please, NEVER threaten divorce, or that you are leaving permanently, or that you are “kicking the other person out.”
Every human being has abandonment issues. When you threaten your p / b with such a final ending as divorce, or demanding he or she leave, you guarantee that your p / b’s loss / abandonment issues will kick in and escalation becomes paramount. What sadly, yet most frequently, happens, is one of you endeavoring to leave, and your best other is standing in the doorway blocking all egress. Super escalation!
THIRD: Forgive me for saying always, yet please, the instant YOU realize you and your p / b are escalating, ALWAYS cease and desist, pull back, and say something like, “I love you, but we are escalating / we are not accomplishing / we are just hurting…and cetera—and I am ‘going in the other room’, or ‘outside and around the block’ or ‘out to a film’, and I will be back in ‘5 minutes’, ‘2hours’”—and / or whatever is appropriate to a SEPARATING AND COOLING OFF time.
I know, telling your p / b you love him / her during your escalating wounding of each other might seem a Herculean task. So please express the most positive and respectful words you can, so you both know you are separating only temporarily, and only in order to avoid inflicting further pain on each other.
COUNSELOR COMMENT ON SECOND AND THIRD DON’TS: Please note well the profound difference between a respectful and caring leavetaking and a threatening leavetaking.
FOURTH: When the two of you reunite—whether after 5 minutes or 24 hours—your emotional wounds are still raw and your brain chemistry is still likely awry. Please do not even think of taking up where you left off in order to resolve your concerns. It won’t happen. And after yet another round of hurtful escalation, you end with more unresolved issues.
Instead, please read on.
THE DO’S
FIRST: Please agree with each other to “take a meeting” the day after your conflict, in order that your brain chemistries and rawest heart wounds have had an opportunity to settle down. Otherwise, endeavoring to resolve conflicts are more likely to re-open hurts and misunderstandings and once again, escalation. It is fine to set up the meeting when you are still hurting.
SECOND: Initially, setting a 5-minute time limit to your first meeting is essential. If communications go awry, you have a gracious means to ending same and re-scheduling. When your endeavors succeed, you can agree to continue as long as you are meeting each other’s needs.
THIRD: Please set aside a “sacred” time and space for your meeting. This sets a tone or mood of respect for yourselves and what you hope your meeting will accomplish. Establish eye contact, and I suggest you hold hands.
FOURTH: The person calling the meeting begins by asking your p / b if he / she is ready for you to share. This is again, setting an ambience of caring and respect. State your concern by sharing your genuine feelings with your partner about a recent and specific event, which obviates “dredging up old stuff from the past”, which sabotages your meeting and leaves more hurt feelings unresolved.
Share your genuine feelings of hurt or fear or whatever, about what you experienced from your b / p’s words or actions. Please do not slide in to any blaming. Then ask your partner to repeat back the jist of your statement. This is important because it focuses you both on listening skills, which are at least 50% of communicating.
FIFTH: When your partner has repeated back what you shared, please ask him / her if he / she wishes to respond. This response also needs to be the stuff of genuine feelings, with no excuses and no blame. Frequently, it comprises an apology.
SIXTH: If you feel your meeting has been successful, you may want to repeat the process, with either partner beginning. Or, you may wish to celebrate your success and schedule another meeting soon!

THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE

2009-12-07T16:22:00.000-08:00

THE SUCCESS OF FAILURE
The cliché about learning from all experience, including failure, is a cliché only because it is so true.
In order to learn from failure, I believe we need first to decide whether or not what we might be experiencing as failure is perceived as failure by anyone else / the rest of the world. Or is our experience of failure completely subjective?
In other words, how ultimately responsible have we been for what we choose to view as our failute?
Is it not possible that what has occurred around our perceived or even genuine failure is nothing more than what could and / or would have happened, considering all surrounding circumstances? With or without our input?
Those of us whose major defense is control—much the same as those of us whos major defense is anger or depression / anxiey, or victimness / doormatness—likely experience many occurrences or events in our lives as failures.
I think this is because we do not, in our own selves, allow any slack for lack of perfection—we are “hard on ourselves”!
I also am sure, that self-absorbed as we might be in our own sense of personal imperfection, we do not realistically see that whatever situation / person(s) we experience ourselves embroiled in and failing at, is simply not working! And not likely to work, no matter how long we remain embroiled.
Ergo, our only failure is in not recognizing that the situation / person(s) is not only beyond our control but that we likely need to remove ourselves from it.
How terrifying and how painful to let go of our need to control—or be angry at or depressed / anxious about. And how liberating.
And, our subjectively experienced failure is the quintessential opportunity to “go inside and look around” at our deeper and more inner selves and ask some cogent questions:
1) Can I accept my own personal limitations?
2) Can I accept situational limitations?
3) Can I accept defeat graciously?
4) What does losing / defeat really mean to me?
5) Am I able to relinquish responsibility in happenstances that are not, actually, my responsibility at all?
6) Am I able to disengage my self from my attitudes and values about success and failure?
7) How can I learn to detach and disengage from making everything all about me?
I encourage each of us to ponder and address these questions as they apply to our lives.
And then, what about the times we genuinely do muck up and muck up royally?
We “simply” own our responsibility. We man up and own it.

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIOS KILL

2009-11-07T12:37:00.001-08:00

UNREALISTIC EXPECTATIONS KILL

We expect, when we wake up in the morning, that the floor will be awaiting our feet, that the shower will be where we always shower, that the aroma of coffee—if we are blessed with a programmable pot we know how to program, or a partner up and about before we are--will invite us to breakfast.
We expect the buildings we work or run errands at to continue to be there, we expect the weather to fluctuate--not necessarily according to meteorological predictions--the news to bring a typical blend of horror and lightheartedness, and the trees and grass and houses we pass in our comings and goings to remain basically as we expect them to be.
So far, so good. The above and thousands of other examples manifest healthy and realistic expectations that enable our lives to function without major drama.
So how do expectations kill?
By being un-realistic and un-healthy!
Unrealistic and unhealthy expectations can make navigating our lives vulnerable to lotsa’ major drama.
For example, expecting your basically sloppy adolescent to understand that a cleaner, neater room might improve his / her grades and please you in the process.
For example, expecting the partner you’ve known for some time as a basic homebody, to want to go out to shop, picnic, attend a film or social occasion willingly.
For example, expecting your procrastinating partner or child to leap up and immediately comply to your request to take out the garbage, feed the dog or empty the dishwasher.
For example, expecting your cranky and emotionally withdrawn supervisor to say, “You did an excellent job on that project yesterday!”
For example, expecting the twenty pounds you gained over the past three years to disappear and stay disappeared in three days of crash-dieting misery. Or that you, an inveterate nightowl will wake up singing like a lark, or add four inches to your five foot two inch height.
Think about it. Having the above and similar unrealistic expectations and fretting when they are unmet is about as realistic as fretting whether or not the floor will be under your feet when you get out of bed.
Unrealistic expectations of family, friends, work colleagues and one’s own self can create major unhappiness in our lives, including strife in relationships—which can be “killed”, and a high enough self-administered load of stress to actually lower our own immune system.
Our UR’s, by enabling us to indulge in chronic disappointment in those around us, allow us to feel superior and pick any number of fights—disagreements—which chronically tear at the warp and woof of a healthy relationship.
Conversely, our UR’s directed against ourselves—sometimes known as perfectionism and “being hard on ourselves”-- enable us to feel not quite up to the mark, and therefore, no matter how much we achieve, succeed and excel, we are sure we have not measured up.
UR’s can also give us ready excuses for our not quite ever getting around to endeavoring new experiences and / or completing countless projects.
Either way, we lay the foundation for feeling bad about ourselves, because on some level—perhaps in our deep unconscious--we know that our feelings of superiority over anyone else are pretty fragile.
Then why would we continue to maintain unrealistic expectations and their chronic disappointments?
How can such self-defeating behavior possibly serve us?
UR’s do not serve our mature, adult, rational selves. But please imagine an immature, childish, irrational self still “residing” in your unconscious who remembers every hurt and emotional wound throughout your entire life, and sometimes needs to protect him / herself and you from a potential hurt or threat.
Unrealistic expectations, like denial, control, depression*, anxiety* and anger are defenses against our deeper and more genuine feelings.
Indeed, unrealistic expectations are defense mechanisms that must have worked once to protect us from feelings we were unable to tolerate. Now that we have matured enough to bear the unbearable, those defenses that served us well in infancy, toddlerhood, childhood, adolescence and young adulthood have become perverted to work against us.
I believe that each and every one of us, in our earliest and later years, experiences hurt and disappointment and abandonment and rejection and shame and humiliation and fear and a slough of other negative or yucky feelings. Early on, we are actually unable to tolerate the intolerable or bear the unbearable, or simply experience many many hurtful negatives in our lives. So thank goodness, our defenses come forth.
Yet in adulthood, we often do have the resources to tolerate the intolerable and bear the unbearable, and that is the time to let go of our UR’s.

JUST A FEW THINGS ANGER COVERS UP

2009-11-07T11:13:00.000-08:00

JUST A FEW THINGS ANGER COVERS UP

ANGER IS A SECONDARY EMOTION
ANGER IS A COVER-UP EMOTION
ANGER IS NOT AN EMOTION AT ALL
ANGER IS A DEFENSE MECHANISM
ANGER PROTECTED US FROM PAINFUL EMOTIONS WHEN WE WERE YOUNGER
ANGER ALLOWED SOME OF US TO BEAR THE UNBEARABLE AND SURVIVE
ANGER ALLOWED THE REST OF US TO COPE WITH GENUINELY PAINFUL FEELINGS
ANGER STILL PROTECTS US FROM PAINFUL FEELINGS
ANGER PROTECTS US FROM:
GRIEF
LOSS
SADNESS
HUMILIATION
SHAME
EMBARRASSMENT
HURT
PAIN
FEAR
ABANDONMENT
REJECTION
HELPLESSNESS
HOPELESSNESS
OVERWHELMEDNESS
LACK OF CONFIDENCE
FEELINGS OF INCOMPETENCE
FEELINGS OF LOW SELF-WORTH
ENVY
JEALOUSY

JUST A FEW THINGS ANGER COVERS UP

2009-11-07T10:55:00.000-08:00

THE MATCH AND THE CONFLAGRATION / OR HOW TO DISCERN A TRIGGER FROM A DISASTER

2008-06-20T12:08:00.000-07:00

“You only hurt the one you love…”
Makes no sense, and yet a genuine phenomenon it is in our lives. The words flown out of our mouths we would give anything not to have uttered, the disconnect of the phone when the other is speaking, the storming out and slamming the door in the other’s face, and—yes, it happens—the push, the shove, the slap we horrify ourselves with. How could we have let things go that far, how could we have done / said anything so terrible?
Let us step back for a moment to our feelings just before we spoke and / or acted. Likely, we were experiencing out-of-control feelings of rage, which were in reality covering up feelings of grief, fear, shame, humiliation, sorrow, loss, fear of loss, threat, rejection, abandonment, and so much more pain. Pain we have known before in our lives, unless we have been living under a rock.
Pain that happened to us long, long ago, before we were able to deal with it, defend ourselves, know that it was not about us at all, but about someone who was wounding us grievously. And perhaps more recent pain, because those of us who were wounded early on, tend to attract ourselves to people who will wound us again—yet that is the topic of another “musing”.
Time after event after occurrence after drama, again and again, we mistake the trigger, which might be symbolized as a “newly struck match”, with its small, sweet flame, for a conflagration. And rather than respond with a breath drawn in and quickly expelled to extinguish the match’s flame, we react, seeing not a tiny match flame, but rather envisioning an inferno descending upon us, and usually, we react badly, saying and doing the hurtful things we regret.
If only we could learn to discern the tiny flame for what it is, and realize that the conflagration is actually from so many painful experiences from our past.
When a trigger is pulled at work, or in traffic, or by a neighbor or casual acquaintance, we are so much more likely to experience that appropriate match flame, rather than a fireball headed our way, and “deal with” whatever actual hurt, fear or anxiety the trigger effected / produced. No, not always, otherwise desk rage and road rage would never have entered our vernacular. Usually, however, because we do not hold the same stakes with those more distant folk and experiences, our reality check resources are more firmly in place.
Yet when a loved one pulls a trigger, we frequently do not even see, feel or experience the tame match flame. Because we have great stakes in giving ourselves over to love—of spouse, lover, partner, child, friend—we are vulnerable, and everything we see, feel and experience is magnified. Ignited into threatening flames.
Because we invest such magnitude of resources upon those we love, we make ourselves vulnerable to them because we fear losing them.
All that fear, loss, abandonment, fear of rejection, shame and so on appear as a bonfire to us, and we are incited to stamp that fire out with an arsenal of hurtful words and actions.
Again and again.
Resistance to going back in time and blaming families of origin and others who wounded us early on abounds, but I am not talking about any moral or ethical or even theological motivational issues here. All parents do the best they possibly can with us and for us, given who they are and what resources they have and what experiences they are going through themselves. Ditto all the other hurtful folk in our younger years. Simply recognizing and acknowledging the results of our early experiences within our families, neighborhoods and schools liberates us to experience all those old pains as the bonfire, and see clearly the tiny match flames in our present.

THE ROLES WE LIVE

2008-05-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

“Some are born great. Some achieve greatness. And some have greatness thrust upon them.”

The above quote about greatness applies equally well to those roles which are “thrust upon” us during childhood—toddlerhood—infancy—and even as early as the womb.
Yeah, families do that—thrust roles upon family members! Nothing personal. And it is likely that nothing is done on purpose. Yet family dynamics—that interchange of energies and personalities and feelings and values and beliefs, both conscious and especially unconscious—create and establish roles for each of us that we adhere to not only during our sojourn within our families of origin, we carry them in to our adult lives.

Perhaps you will recognize some of the following roles from your own family of origin; perhaps one or more might even have been thrust upon you:

1) The Star
Also known as the cheerleader, athletic hero, excellent student, popularity plus, volunteer extraordinaire—

2) The Mini-Parent
Mediates disagreements amongst all family members, makes sure schedules, obligations, appointments and daily living requirements are met--

3) The Bad Boy / Bad Girl
Just cannot get it together, seems to fail at everything and act out in anger

4) The Child Who Is Easily Ignored
Possibly this child hides out on purpose in order to avoid family dynamics, or, sadly, because of low self-worth, actually loses him / herself in profound isolation

Some roles become ours through sobriquets which family members insist are “terms of endearment”, such as, clumsy, princess, dumbo—referring to either or both ears or intellect—pipsqueak / runt / geek / loser / shorty / fats / handsome / gorgeous and so on. Such nicknames and their accompanying roles can be positive, as well as negative, and such positive labels sometimes lead to an inflated sense of ego and self-importance.

The point is, all “endearing terms” impact one’s self- belief, self-worth, and the attitudes and behaviors which follow. In other words, they impact how individuals see themselves as successes, failures, or mediocrities.

Please note well, that these roles that we have carried with us from our childhoods, lack reality. We have internalized them, but we have not owned them. Children internalize. Adults own.

Roles are thrust upon us, in other ways, as well, by circumstances in families.

Some examples follow:

Families in which one or more—I am referring to step-parents as well as biological parents—parent is alcoholic or addicted to party drugs or prescriptive medications

Families in which a parent—especially a mother—is depressed

Families in which a sibling has died or is chronically ill—either physically or mentally—or chronically acts out or is a prodigy

Families in which a parent dies

Families in which a divorce happens

Families in which hardship—economic, environmental, numerous internal losses is chronic

Every family bestows roles upon its members. The process does not follow a game plan of each and every parent giving a particular role to each child. Siblings thrust roles upon one another, and children create roles for their parents on a continuum from demon to saint! When extended family members are closely involved, and the family, as is most common these days, is a blended family, the complexities of roles within family life can resemble a—well, a—drama.
As successful as we are in our careers, as parents, as spouses and partners, even on the golf course or at the gym, we may still hear an inner voice calling us clumsy or dumb.
Fortunately, we create new “families” throughout our lives—friends, work colleagues, neighbors and the families of our spouses and partners to interact with. And from them, we can learn new, healthier, and more realistic ways in which to experience ourselves. We can shed the old roles and evolve into new ones.

LOSS AND GRIEF

2007-12-25T11:44:00.000-08:00

No-one ever tells us we need to grieve the loss of kindergarten or pre- or play- schools when we “graduate”. I do not believe grief plays much of a part in graduating from high school or college, either.
And yet we will never experience these integrative and major years of our lives again. Does that not constitute loss? Does that not cry out for grieving?
Marriage can be a joyous transformation, yet does anyone ever give us permission to grieve our loss at no longer being single? Even when we so wanted not to be single any longer? No longer being single is a loss, and it needs to be acknowledged and honored.
Then, sometimes, after joyous marriage, comes divorce. Grieving—and raging—through the divorce is usually accomplished, but grieving the marriage itself, the loss of all the past positive times and memories, frequently gets smothered in the vitriol of the break-up, as all the present - day negative thoughts and remembrances take priority.
Moving, whether across the street or a continent away, evokes loss. Hovel to dream home spells success, but also nostalgia. Losing—not misplacing—keys or wallets creates frustration, but we do not usually grieve over this loss, and it would help if we did.
Theft, job loss, injury, illness and aging all incur loss, but do we mourn our youth—or even the younger self that looked at us in the mirror yesterday? Every day we are a day older, but do we mark the past days as lost to us forever? If we did, we just might welcome the todays and tomorrows as being more precious. Injury and illness can mean great or not so great loss of mobility and good spirits. Do we honor these losses by mourning them? If we did, we might clear a path for optimum healing.
Theft is a blow to ego and our sense of security—job loss blows our ego to smithereens and torches our sense of security. Yet most of us respond to these events with anger in order to cover up our grief and fear, as we “Let Go And Move On.”
Wait a minute!
Letting Go And Moving On is not doing the hard and painful and even terrifying work of grieving. LGAMO is a shortcut that cheats us. Stepping up to the plate in order to allow ourselves to be immersed in the pain of loss is how we grow and grow up.
Death, of a beloved, or our own imminent death, surely stands forth as the greatest loss, the loss of precious life itself.
And, if we have not yet dealt with life’s smaller yet still shattering losses how might we fully grieve death? What do we authentically know about loss and grief that prepares us to mourn to the fullest?
And yet, and yet and yet—every single one of us experiences our first loss, abandonment, rejection at birth! When our own moms push us out of that seemingly lovely, serene, peaceful, secure bucket of warm water we have been floating around in, fully nourished without our having to lift one of our tiny fingers, into bright lights, meaningless voices, dry air, unwanted—because it is unknown—touch!
Amazing any of us survives our call in to our--at that moment helpless-- place in our new world.
However, every loss and rejection we suffer from our birth abandonment forward, resides in the reservoir of our unconscious, whose very existence comprises waiting around for triggers!
Triggers comprise any and all painful incidences and / or reminders of rejection and abandonment, and / or loss. Because these triggers from present losses delve so deeply in to the unconscious morass of pure pain from the past, any of us who experience a loss, bounce for only a way too painful nanosecond in to and quickly out of our overwhelmingly painful past emotional memories.
Grieve? Mourn? Feel the loss? Not! I am far too busy LGAMO!
Guess what? The pain accompanying each and every loss, great and small, is bearable when we realize and honor that this pain from this loss is authentically about every little and major loss my life has encompassed and prevailed over.
I can and will bear the unbearable. I can and will grieve and mourn each loss, even until death with respect and honor.

PATTERNS--TOOLS FOR HEALING AND TRANSFORMATION

2007-12-19T16:57:00.000-08:00

Clients ask me for tools to guide them in their journeys, make essential personal changes, build confidence and self-worth, enhance relationships and release their inner most creative and positive and powerful selves.
Not such a tall order.
The “solutions”* lie in our pasts. No, I do not advocate “Woody Allen” therapy—5 days a week for 55 years.
I do advocate delving in to our earlier life experiences in order to recognize the patterns which pervaded then, which have continued to pervade over the years, and which now will be used as tools for growth.
Patterns emerge from our observing how our parents interacted with each other, and from experiencing how each of them interacted with us. And just think about all the complexities arising for individuals with backgrounds of divorce, re-marriage, step-parents, unknown parents, adoptive parents, more than one step-parent and so many more variations of patterning / patterns.
If you are that complex person or are involved with him / her, listen up! If you manifest a simple nuclear family and / or also manifest simplicity in family connections, you, also, please listen up and read on!
Siblings create patterns, as do half and step siblings and
no siblings. Neighbors--both adults and children contribute to early patterns, as do teachers and classmates and clergy and other folk at church when that applies. Extended families make patterns, both those which meet the fairly unrealistic expectations of one marriage with children and grandparents and aunts and uncles, and those extended families in other circumstances, which meet different expectations of many folk playing multiple roles on multiple occasions. Extended families pattern our early lives into kaleidoscopic complexities!
And those early years only begin our life patterning.
Our lives’ original patterns tend to re-create themselves with variations on the original themes as we enter school and forever after, unless and until we create our own transformation. Are we the klutz in our family? Or perhaps the hero or star? The always relied-upon one? The loser? The brain?
While it pains me even to write some of these personae families imbue their members with and which we carry on from day 1 into our lives, recognizing and acknowledging these roles / labels and their associated feelings liberates us to recognize and acknowledge the familiar—same yet different—patterns we, as adults, continue to perpetuate.
Recognizing self-defeating patterns and their repeated negative outcomes in our lives allows us to make healthy changes for positive outcomes. Yes, the changes may be painful and even frightening, but the patterning technique can readily be as rapid as “solution” or cognitive therapy, yet on a far more profound level.

WHICH COMES FIRST?

2007-10-31T08:37:00.000-07:00

While anti-depressants seem to be the first treatment of choice requested by patients who are bombarded by television and magazine ads, research over the past decade plus, has reported the most effective treatment overall for depression is a combination of both medications and talk therapy, rather than either meds or therapy alone. Mind you, most folk do not read the research, yet they do absorb the ads, and therefore make their choice for meds. After all, pills and / or capsules present as certainly quicker and easier, when and if they are effective.
Many of us remember, from the popular press’ reportage a decade or so ago, about a large number of suicides by those taking a then popular anti-depressant. These powerful and popular drugs are not always effective. As a clinician, I have heard, for want of a better cliché, horror stories about adverse reactions to anti-depressants. I am also aware, that frequently, when several anti-depressants are tried and fail, that the next line of treatment is electroshock therapy.
Anti-depressant medications seem to be miracles for severely depressed people with what is likely to be a genetic and genuine depression—in the olden days, it was called endogenous, meaning inner, in terms of being in the body, rather than—again, in the olden days—exogenous, meaning outside the body.
While the terms might not be used any longer, the distinction between an inner or genetic depression, and an outer or environment-caused depression exists. Reactive depression can be caused by another’s death, a job loss, a divorce, an ending of a relationship / friendship, a lack of physical activity, a lack of activity in general, a narrowing of one’s life to few or no interests, a lack of involvement in one’s own life that reflects back as helplessness / hopelessness.
You may have noted that my list began with possible causes for depression, and moved on to what might be thought of as symptoms of depression. They are both / and. Please read on.
Dr Beck—please see earlier blog--created a self-inventory to screen for depression, which you can find on his web site. Some of the questions ask if you, the one taking the inventory, have lost pleasure in people, places, things and activities which formerly brought you pleasure. Mental health clinicians routinely ask folk coming for treatment if they have lost interest in or no longer enjoy what used to be pleasurable for them. This lack of pleasure phenomenon is called anhedonia. It encompasses the hopelessness and helplessness not only of Beck’s dogs, but of people who describe their depression as paralysis—please see earlier blog.
Now back to my above paragraph summing up the possible causes of reactive depression as also sounding like symptoms people describe as their depression.
Point being, to my mind, which came first, the inactivity or the depression?
I believe it is both /and. If one’s depression is a lifelong malaise which deepens over time to become unbearable, depression likely came first. Medication and therapy likely work. I also wonder, however, if this lifelong depression might not be learned from family members who model anhedonia, narrow lifestyles and inactivity, rather than inherited from one’s gene pool.
If the depression results from a negative life event, it is likely that a person’s coping skills, being pushed to the max and more, lead to feelings of helplessness and hopelessness, along with a narrowing of interests and a lack of pleasure. I think that perhaps the inactivity exacerbates feelings of loss, lack of pleasure and so on, and that therapy and exercise will be most effective.
The newest research gives accolades to exercise once again, as being not only beneficial both as prophylaxis and as treatment for diabetes, heart disease, hypertension, obesity, and cancer, but also for depression.
University of California, Berkeley’s November 2007 issue cites a “growing body of research” reporting that depressed people improved with several months of supervised “cardio-fitness” programs, when they had not responded positively to anti-depressants. Remember, the usual protocol when depressed people do not respond to several anti-depressants is electroshock treatment.
This particular article did not designate if the depression was lifelong or reactive depression, calling the malaise major depression. Either way, the fact that activity lifted the malaise is positive. The researchers credited both the change in brain chemistry created by activity and the phenomenon of getting a depressed person out of life-narrowing isolation and giving him / her a sense of accomplishment.
If depression plagues you, make room in your life for exercise and
life-expanding activity.
Please go to Mayo Clinic’s website for more information—their research includes exercise as beneficial for anxiety—and I shall write on that soon.

DR BECK'S DOGS AND DEPRESSION

2007-10-15T19:42:00.000-07:00

I genuinely planned on having this piece on my blog for the past two weeks in order to honor 11October as National Depression Screening Day-- however life intervened.
Nonetheless, depression is. Every day. So I am adding some background and cetera to the statistical and cetera on my web site.
First, the very word depression derives from the French word d’espere, meaning without hope, or espere, in French. The very power of someone’s being without hope qualified it as one of the Seven Deadly Sins in the early Church. The Sin was called Sloth, and meant an apathy so great that someone experiencing it would actually take his or her own life, rather than feel for a single moment longer that profound hopelessness.
It is toward preventing that possibility of a life taken by its owner, that so many mental health professionals commit themselves—including Dr Beck.
A decade or two ago, Aaron Temkin Beck, MD—please go to his web site to see all he is still doing / involved in, including being Director of the Center for the Treatment and Prevention of Suicide at the University of Pennsylvania--conducted an experiment with dogs in order to re-create the human response to helplessness / hopelessness.
Following is what I remember from my graduate school readings of Beck’s experiment, because it affected me so profoundly in having a glimmer of what deeply depressed people experience that might lead them to a helplessness so great they would take their own lives.
Beck’s experiment began with dogs in containers. The dogs were administered electric shocks on a frequent basis. When the dogs endeavored to escape, by lunging at the container doors, they fell back, as the doors locked. Over time, the dogs stopped trying to escape the shocks, stopped trying to get out the doors, and lay down in the corners of the boxes, behaving listlessly, with no interest in food or movement or people.
In the second part of Beck’s experiment, he brought in a control group of dogs, along with the dogs in the original experiment. As before, electric shocks were administered. However, this time, the doors on the boxes were unlocked.
The control group dogs, upon receiving the first shock, knocked open the doors of their boxes and escaped.
And the dogs who had previously been unable to escape locked doors did not even attempt to break out through unlocked doors, but rather retired to their corners as listlessly as before.
As I remember, Beck and his team hypothesized that the original dogs’ observable helplessness to escape, and their non-active behavior exemplified human depression, with its self-described apathy, inactivity, and sense of hopelessness.
Clients over the years have described their severe depression as a “paralysis” making the simplest every day tasks, such as showering, combing hair, brushing teeth, getting out of bed as impossible.
I encourage anyone feeling depressed to go online and take the Beck Depression Inventory, as well as the Mayo Clinic Depression Inventory. Please, if according to the inventories, you believe you are depressed, I encourage you to first seek a licensed Psychologist or licensed master’s level clinician—Social Worker or Marriage Family Therapist for counseling. If you and your therapist decide it would be beneficial, then make an appointment with a Psychiatrist for medication management.
Research over the past decade reports that treatment with both therapy and medication is more effective than either therapy or medication alone for those with depression severe enough to benefit from medication.
I will be writing more on depression next week.

WHAT LOVE IS / WHAT LOVE IS NOT

2007-10-14T18:09:00.000-07:00

WHAT LOVE IS / WHAT LOVE IS NOT

I was recently asked to submit an article to a magazine on the topic of this blog’s title, and I am now re-writing the piece for said blog.
Just think for a moment, about all the different kinds of love each of us is involved in. Between parent and child, filial, among siblings and friends, fraternal, towards god(s) / goddess(s), and towards humanity, agape, and yes, love between two people, considered romantic love, and called eros.
Erotic love, then. Awesome. And how does that intense, powerful, overwhelming “love” transfer into marriage, children, a lifetime partnership and…?
I was asked to write about romantic love for the magazine, and I shall repeat that theme here, with variations.
Example: St Paul in I Corinthians of the Christian Bible, says that “love is patient and kind; it is not jealous or conceited or proud;…love does not keep a record of wrongs…” In reality, Paul is talking about God’s love toward humans, and our love towards all other humans, agape. Yet I am not alone in believing his thoughts also apply aptly to love between two people.
Working with couples for twenty-five years in my private practice, I would say that negative variations on Paul’s words comprise a pretty fair compendium of couples’ issues which they bring to therapy. And, while I do not actually work with couples towards Paul’s specific words, I happily acknowledge that the basic goals expressed in Paul are ideals my clients strive for.
Example: Kahlil Gibran shares a definite and repeated message about marriage / romantic love in The Prophet , that two who love each other deeply and dearly do well to maintain a distance between them.
A few quotes from Kahlil follow: “…let the winds of the heavens dance between you…drink not from the same cup…eat not from the same loaf…stand together yet not too near together: For the pillars of the temple stand apart…”
What a lovely metaphor! Can you visualize a temple roof tipping and sliding off two pillars joined two closely together? Nor can a couple hold up their myriad commitments if they are “joined at the hip”. the temple over two pillars joined together, all tips and slides into uselessness and chaos.
Then, again for the magazine piece, I asked several friends—who are also couples—to tell me what they think love is and what love is not.
Example: love is a smile from your heart, a gift; love is not a reward; love is sharing space; love is not intrusive; love is a connection with constant flowing energy; love is not hasty, rude, selfish, egocentric nor hard to attain; love is living your life for someone and enjoying every minute; love is neither guarantee nor destination; love is seeing that sparkle in your beloved’s eyes when he / she sees you; love is not disappointing your beloved; love is recognizing your partner’s world of experience; love is not a goal.
Thank you friends, for your thoughtful sharing.
I have a few thoughts on love myself. I believe that love is a choice. I believe that love is a partnership. I believe that love is based on respect.
Choice. Yes, we all want that feeling of bliss, euphoria, chemistry, perhaps a tad of “out-of-my-mindness” that falling in love / lust showers upon us.
I believe that this lovely feeling is the opposite of choice—which means sticking it out no matter what—ill children keeping us up through the night, job loss, financial reverses, each of us stepping up to the plate not only to weather the tough times, but to stand together to make the future as “better-est” as we are able.
I also believe that when we choose to love we choose to become a partner. Creating and accomplishing goals together, setting decisions forth jointly, agreeing to disagree when necessary—think about how much harder to blame or point fingers at each other when you have been working together as partners all along.
I believe that mutual respect is a necessity in a loving relationship, the ballast, the gravitas, the roots that let love soar.

MALE DEPRESSION

2007-09-28T17:57:00.000-07:00

Overwhelming sadness, debilitating guilt, and shame-filled isolation all shout depression—for females.
Depression in males, both adolescent and adult, manifests with a dramatic difference—reckless and super-fast driving without seatbelts, heavy drinking, promiscuity, eating disorders, not going to doctors for physical concerns, refusing medical treatment, broken relationships, job loss, domestic violence and suicide!
For even younger, grade-school-age males, eating disorders, experimenting with drugs and alcohol, school failure, wounded friendships, family disruptions and yes, suicide, are symptomatic of depressed male children.
Every year some 24,000 males end their untreated depression by taking their own lives. Others engage in dangerous, angry and self-rejecting behaviors that can also end in death.
Males are only half as likely as females—again, all ages— even to be diagnosed with depression, let alone be treated for it.
Sadness, guilt and isolation are not acceptable ways for males to express inner anguish. Yet, rage, bullying, and workaholism are.
Men who have been interviewed after diagnosis and treatment of their depression, share how unacceptable sadness was to them. “It felt as if I were lazy, and not carrying my own weight,” reports Sam. “So I worked harder and played harder. Looking back, I can see I was over-compensating, but at the time, I actually felt as if I weren’t man enough when I was sad. And not being man enough was completely unacceptable.”
Robert tells of suffering horrific skin rashes and burning stomach pain for years. When he finally sought medical help, he was fortunate to find a doctor who talked to him about stress in his life and then about his responsive anxiety and depression.
“I felt so threatened, so invaded by that dude,” Robert shares more recently in his support group. “I was so ready to walk out of his office. And then I just felt like I was so tired of feeling so rotten. So, here I am.”
Male depression manifests in all social, racial, economic and age groups.
Recent research at Johns Hopkins Children’s Center states that one half of young boys believe that going to a doctor is a sign of weakness.
In the same study, adolescent males reported their belief that “men” must always be ready to have sex in order to get respect from other “men”.
Successful male executives in successful enterprises, as well as male sports heroes and male celebrities follow the typical mode of aggressive and frenetic and self-destructive behaviors described above, only magnified, because they have more money to spend and more to lose.
Black, Hispanic, Asian and Pacific Islander groups have strong traditions of keeping anything shameful, for example, a depressed male family member, within the family, rather than seeking medical or counseling help.
Older males in our society, who have identified for years with their work, face depression and loss with both retirement and losing friends and family members to death.
I seem to remember that back in the day—the seventies—myriad young men chose to set aside focus on career in order to play a larger role in their families. Their role models? Their own fathers, who had been largely absent during their own growing up years. Those young men chose to give their children a different experience.
That was the same decade we encouraged our daughters to play with trucks and be on soccer teams and be the doctor rather than the nurse, and encouraged our sons to play with dolls, bake cookies, cry when they were hurt or scared and still play soccer!
Yet for the most part, our culture supports male children suppressing emotions and learning to be strong and responsible and overcome problems without help, denying their fears and hurts along the way, allowing only anger and aggression as appropriate expressions of feeling.
While medication and therapy alleviate depression for the men and boys who get diagnosed and treated, far too many still suffer alone.

Diana Brennan is a licensed Marriage Family Therapist in private practice in Redondo Beach since 1984. Please check out Diana’s web page.

Taking Charge of Your Anger

2007-09-20T21:13:00.000-07:00

The main thing to remember about ANGER !: anger is a “cover-up”emotion!
Face it. Anger, with all its adrenaline-pumping, cave-woman uber-energy, feels good!
And all the feelings anger covers up, such as fear, rejection, and sadness, feel yucky!
Every single one of us is born with defense protections—repression, denial, sublimation, to name a few—for an excellent purpose. Survival.
Infants, toddlers, children, and even, yes, adolescents, need those built-in defenses, because we have not yet learned how to protect ourselves from all the people and events and occasions which wait in readiness to wound us.
In reality, every family is a wounding environment. Parents say, “No!”, or sound and act preoccupied, or tease. Siblings actually torment, on occasion. Neighborhood children can also excel at torment and bullying. Teachers display impatience, and classmates tease, torment and bully whenever they sense vulnerability.
Anger steps up to the plate when we feel hurt or frightened. Because the process begins so early, by adulthood, we are completely unaware of how quickly we whip out that protective anger, and neglect to feel the genuine feelings of abandonment, fear of loss, grief, or whatever “yucky” feeling we authentically need to feel in order to transform in to the best person we want to be!
The challenge: learn to remember that anger covers up the feelings you need to feel in order to grow, and feel them. This means setting aside your anger, which is so difficult. The process will take time and hard work, so be gentle with yourself, and be rewarded as you take charge of your anger.