Castlelight Counseling

Friday, August 28, 2015

5 Relationship Clichés That May Help You and Your Partner

When 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.

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.

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?

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.

Why Do I Freeze Up When I Speak in Front of People?

Dear GoodTherapy.org,
I used to feel like I had no problem talking in front of people, even large groups of people. That's less so as I get older, though. Is there something wrong with me? It seems to me like it should get easier as you get older. I have to give presentations and pitches as part of my job, and in the last couple of years I have been getting much more nervous, to the point I sometimes get sick beforehand. I have even pretended to be sick in order to not work on a day of a presentation, so that others had to give it in my place. I feel like it's putting my job at risk. There have been a couple of times when I have stood up, thought I was starting to speak, but no words actually came out of my mouth. I couldn't talk. I just froze. I had to ask to step out for a minute. Eventually I powered through those times, but what the heck? Why would this be happening more as I get older? I am 37. In college I was a teacher's assistant and had no problem giving lectures in front of 150 people. Am I developing a medical problem? Please offer some possible explanations, not just suggest I go to therapy. Thank you! —Speechless

Dear Speechless,

Whenever a problem develops where no problem existed before, my first question is always: what is different now? You mention that you previously gave lectures to 150 people as a teacher’s assistant without the anxiety (or, perhaps more to the point, performance anxiety) you are currently dealing with in your professional life. What feels different to you about the two experiences? I wonder if the stakes seem higher now, the content more complex, or the audience more inquisitive or demanding. It seems reasonable that any of these possibilities, or something else along these lines, could create and/or intensify anxiety around public speaking.

If you can figure out what has developed to cause the problem, perhaps you can figure out some strategies for addressing it. For example, if upon reflecting on the differences between your experience as a TA and as a professional you discover that the content is more complex and the audience more inquisitive, it might be helpful to take some trainings or courses to deepen your knowledge of the content area. This might increase your confidence in your ability to answer questions as they come up. Maybe reflection will lead you to discover that your anxiety is less about content and more about style. Perhaps you have realized that the level of polish expected of professionals, as opposed to student TAs, is quite different and you don’t feel like you measure up. If this is the case, participating in a group like Toastmasters might be helpful in mastering and developing confidence in your public speaking skills.

You also raise the possibility that there is a medical problem that has developed and is to blame for this. The only way to rule that out for sure is to schedule an appointment with your doctor for an exam and discussion about this, and I recommend that you do that sooner rather than later. I am not a doctor, so as much as I hear your desire for explanations, it would not be appropriate for me to speculate as to potential medical issues you might be experiencing.

It is also possible that the problem is neither medical nor a reflection of simple insecurities about speaking in public. How do you feel about your career and where you are professionally? Sometimes, unexplained anxiety that seems to come up out of the blue can be a way of getting your attention and forcing you to address dissatisfaction with an area of your life that you are not fully aware of. If the above recommendations don’t yield any solutions and you land on a vague dissatisfaction with your career, what might be helpful is partnering with a career counselor to explore where you are, where you want to be, and developing a realistic plan for how to get there.

Best wishes,
Sarah Noel, MS, LMHC

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org

How to Get Back on Track When You’ve Lost Your Motivation

When 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.

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.

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.

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.

What If Your Emotions Are In Fact Perfectly Rational?

I have a healthy concern for many people’s view of emotion. This view suggests that emotion means being irrational, negative, out of control, subject to the whims of others who “make” us feel things, and holds that being emotional is generally a sign of weakness or abnormality.

Being a professional counselor affords me a unique position from which to view the dangerous byproducts of this view. I’d like to start the process of reframing emotion and putting it into a healthier context that allows us to learn and grow.

What I’ll tackle first is the eons-old disparagement that emotions are irrational and therefore inferior to intellect. This argument states that emotions have no reason within them at all and that, because of this, an emotional person loses control. Furthermore, the thinking goes, the way to regain one’s composure and control is to push away or get rid of emotions as fast as possible.

Suffice it to say this belief stems from a practice of demonizing the body and our baser instincts. What this view does get right is that our bodies are storehouses for powerful energies. Left unchecked and ignored, these energies can turn into juggernauts that can destroy and create chaos. The key point to recognize here is that these powerful energies get built up through a willful practice of emotional self-denial and from not realizing the true sources of our emotions.

Seen from a healthier vantage point, we begin to see the truth that emotions come from and are energetic expressions of our beliefs. Although it can take considerable time and effort to discover this truth, effective counseling or psychotherapy and meditative techniques are designed for just this sort of discovery. Myriad techniques work toward helping us create space between our thoughts and our reactions to them.

An example helps here. Let’s say you react strongly to people who frown at you. Every time you notice someone frowning around you, you assume it means he or she doesn’t like you or disapproves of something you did or said. This, in turn, causes you to feel ashamed or anxious. Notice that the belief you have creates your emotions. Because of your possible (if not probable) misinterpretation of the other person’s behavior, you stay in a semi-constant emotional state of anxiety and shame.

Now imagine that, rather than personalizing other people’s facial expressions, you develop an attitude of curiosity. With this curiosity, you can do many things. One thing you might do is, much like bird watching, set a goal of noticing as many frowning faces as you can. What would you feel now? Perhaps interest, perhaps amusement, perhaps even happiness if you beat yesterday’s record.

Taking this curiosity one step further, imagine you generally wanted to know why the person is frowning. Instead of anxiously staying in your head, mind-reading and creating a story that may not be true, you become inquisitive and talk to the person. You discover that he or she lost a job, forgot where he or she parked, or something else that has absolutely nothing to do with you. Because you let go of the perspective that everyone is judging you and embraced curiosity instead, you connect with someone. Now you feel close, empathetic, and connected.

Emotions are actually very rational, as they spawn directly from our belief systems and attitudes. Put differently, emotions are logical and reasonable extensions of our beliefs. The issue lies in not being mindful of our beliefs. When we aren’t being mindful of our beliefs, the emotions seem to pop from out of nowhere or seem to be caused from the outside. Knowing that our thinking creates emotion puts us on a path toward taking control of our lives.

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.

The Expectation Trap: How Wanting Is Making You Angry

In my articles on anger management, I frequently talk about how anger gets disguised as another emotion. Conversely, I also emphasize the reverse: other emotions left unnoticed and unacknowledged can turn into anger. In this article, I offer no disguises, no cover-ups. Witness instead a direct creator and perpetrator of anger.

I expect things. So do you, and so does everyone else. These expectations encompass virtually everything we conceive. We expect things about our bodies and minds, other people (along with their bodies and minds), our jobs, our pets, the sun and moon. If I sound a bit hyperbolic, it’s because I mean to emphasize this: the vast majority of the thoughts we have throughout any given day are comprised of expectations. And with these expectations—every single one of them—we create frustration, irritation, and anger.

An expectation, put in the simplest of terms, is a thought about the way we want something to be. Expectations can range from the obvious form of “I really want to get that job” to more subtle expressions that hardly go noticed, like heavy sighing or rolling one’s eyes. Regardless of what form an expectation takes, it ushers in personalized judgment about the way we think the world should be.

Expectations trap us when we cannot see past them. When we lead with them and then meet up with something very different from our particular desire, anger is typically the result. At its core, anger expresses dissatisfaction with reality. All the different words for anger apply here: irritation, frustration, annoyance, being “miffed,” etc. The intensity of our anger is often directly correlated to the level of attachment we have to our expectations of reality.

It might seem as if I’ve made expectations out to be truly heinous. Usually at this point, a person I’m working with in therapy might say something like, “Well, then, I suppose I should have no expectations at all? Just have no standards?” On the contrary! Standards dictate our commitment, connection, and drive for excellence. What I shop here isn’t an end to expectations, but a renegotiation with them.

Expectations in and of themselves are actually harmless. They can be viewed from the perspective of expressing personal tastes and preferences. Expectations get the better of us only when they become rigid barriers keeping us from flexibly working with what life hands us. Toward a more functional use of expectations, I offer the use of what I call basic requirements.

Basic requirements express the base-level necessities that must be met for us to continue cultivating a relationship with another person, a job, a lifestyle, etc. Whereas expectations get used as billy clubs to bash over the head of a reality that doesn’t meet our desires, basic requirements take a more open stance. They state that certain things will need to be in place in order for the relationship to continue—for example, respect and trust in a committed romantic relationship. If for some reason the basic requirement isn’t met, both parties may move on.

The reason expectations so often create anger is we stubbornly keep insisting that the thing in question be different, be what we want. Basic requirements free us from this trap. Instead of staying locked in a constant struggle to get an experience from someone or something that just can’t supply it, we take our basic requirements elsewhere. We relieve ourselves of the need to be constantly angry, because we no longer resist the truth that X can’t give us Y.

Notice that attachment is the real culprit here. Basic requirements express how we want the world to be. Attachment keeps us locked in struggle. Freeing ourselves from chronic anger becomes easier and easier when we let ourselves move on from no-win situations.

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.

After Divorce: When Children Resist Seeing One Parent

Amid or following divorce or separation, some families face the issue of one or more children refusing to be in contact with one of the parents. While the dynamics of any family experiencing this can be quite complicated, children may behave in this way for a variety of reasons.

Here are some examples (for the purposes of this article, one parent is referred to as the preferred parent, the other the resisted parent):

There may be conflict between the parents, and the child does not want to remain caught in the middle.
The child may have been closer to one parent than the other when everyone lived together.
The child may be in a developmental phase where alignment with one parent over the other is age- and/or gender-related.
One parent may be involved with a new partner before the child is ready and/or comfortable with the situation.
The preferred parent is more financially secure or otherwise stable than the resisted parent.
The child chooses who he or she believes most needs to be taken care of based on the circumstances.
There is ongoing litigation (even if the children do not know the details, they often see the effects of the stress).
Both the preferred parent and the child believe the resisted parent is not safe.

In these situations, it is often the favored parent’s belief that the resisted parent caused the resistance; meanwhile, the resisted parent often believes that the favored parent is responsible for the child’s refusal to see him or her. While either of these scenarios can certainly be the case, families are complicated systems in which many behaviors and relationships impact what everyone experiences.

There are two important options, which are not mutually exclusive, to consider here: (1) Improve both the favored and resisted parents’ relationships with the child, or (2) improve the co-parenting relationship. As complicated as the family system may be, individual relationships within the system can be addressed. Both parents have responsibility for their part in the family dynamic, including the favored parent.

The favored parent may have a difficult time seeing or appreciating how he or she responded when the child did not want to see the other parent. When a child tells you about something negative that happened with the other parent, for example, it can feel natural to sympathize with the child and build a case against or undermine the connection between the child and the resisted parent. This isn’t fair to the other parent or the child. When a child provides negative information, contacting the other parent and asking what he or she knows about it is a good place to start. Secondly, it’s important to help your child understand that he or she can talk to the other parent about it and not have you be his or her voice.

The resisted parent, of course, has an important role to play in the relationship with the child and in behaving in a way that is inviting. Children who resist a parent sometimes feel the expression of affection, for example, as intrusive. It can be expressed, however, without the expectation of reciprocation. This gives the child room to make a choice. It sometimes happens, with time, that the child begins to respond. It is important that the resisted parent let the child know he or she is loved, without conditions.

There are many more ways for both the resisted parent and the preferred parent to alter their behaviors with the goal of improving the relationships between children and parents. The most important is to improve the co-parenting relationship. When children can see their parents having civil and respectful interactions and making it a mutual priority to offer safety, this often leads to a relaxation of the need to push one parent away.

If a child in your family is resistant toward one parent and your co-parenting strategies have been ineffective, contact a therapist in your area for help.

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.

When Your Partner’s Opposites Aren’t So Attractive Anymore

There’s a reason you and your partner can’t agree. It’s because you started out as opposites. And opposites attract. So annoying, right? But you are in excellent company because opposites attracted long before the human species got here.

It turns out that Einstein’s theory of relativity is built on it, and if you remember your high school science, electrons and protons whoosh right into each other. In the animal kingdom, opposite-ness has the survival value of creating a diverse set of genes.

But among humans, the problem gets a bit complex when the very qualities that attracted us in the first place are the ones we now find highly irritating.

In the world of corporate America, it is well known that people work well together when they are similar in outlook and disposition. If we merely choose people we can get along with, we tend to choose similar ones. But if we choose those we are attracted to, then our unconscious tends to kick in and lead us down paths we probably wouldn’t take if only we knew (consciously) we were doing it. Often, those paths lead to our opposites.

Then again, attraction is hardwired into the animal kingdom, so it must have a positive purpose. What could that possibly be? Back in 1967, Henry V. Dicks had a theory about this (Whitehouse, 1981). According to his view, we are attracted to someone who has a quality we don’t have because that quality was a part of our personality when we were children. At some point, it was attacked or rejected by our parents. So we also rejected it, but at the same time missed it.

Because the quality was put down, we don’t care for it. But because the quality was a part of us at one time, it is still attractive. So, we now have ambivalence about that quality. In a 1981 study of 30 people, it turned out that the annoying quality was an exaggeration of the very quality the person was originally attracted to, supporting Dicks’ theory.

So, for example, if a person was attracted to someone who was outgoing, years later the complaint might be that the object of attraction socializes too much and doesn’t pay enough attention to the person.

This is an interesting psychoanalytic approach. Here’s mine: We are here on Earth to learn and grow. We reach for the stars. That is hardwired into us. That part of us that wants to expand our horizons naturally would be attracted to people who have qualities we don’t have. Yet, we of course get along best with people whose outlook and style are more similar to ours. We are pulled in both directions. I think it’s as simple as that.

What if you find yourself in exactly that situation right now? You are in a relationship with someone who seems to be your polar opposite. You are a saver; the other person is a spender. You like to travel; your soulmate likes to stay home. You feel that a comfortable home is a tidy one; your significant other feels home is where it’s most relaxed. You prefer time alone together; your mate wants to socialize. What do you do? How do you resolve these sorts of things without giving up who you are?

Step 1: Get the Magic Back

Without the magic you once had, all the discussions in the world may be of no avail. There was a time when you counted the minutes to being together. There was a time when the list of things above would have been petty in your eyes.

Do something fun, exciting, romantic, and then do something else that’s wild and happy.

The magic comes when you put the whole person into perspective. You used to love something deep and undefinable about that person; now it’s time to reach for that something again.

Step 2: Take a Look Inside

Use the ideas presented above to look at yourself. What is it that you wanted in this other person? What is it about you that is missing that thing? How did that happen? How did you come to find it attractive in your partner?

A little soul searching may help you remember that you had a reason—a good reason—to be attracted to this person. There was, indeed, something about him or her that completed you, even if you were not consciously aware of it at the time.

Step 3: Cherish That Quality

You were once attracted to that quality, so now is not the time to reject it. Cherish it.

True, it may need some refining. We were all put here to grow, and that includes not only you but your friends and relatives as well. By being in contact with one another, each of us can grow.

But the best possible climate for growth comes from acceptance, not rejection. If Dicks’ theory is correct, then plainly we see that rejection by our parents did not help us grow. Take responsibility for the fact you chose this partner.

Step 4: Say What You Need

If you have done all of this introspection and recognize where the attraction came from for this now-annoying quality, and it is still intolerable, speak up! But do it with love.

So many people think that being assertive is the same as being harsh, demanding, and autocratic. That’s the furthest thing from the truth. The reality is that an assertive response is one that doesn’t beat around the bush but doesn’t say it with anger, either. Although you may be annoyed, do some deep breathing and let go of the bad feelings.

Step 5: Figure Out a Solution Together

The beauty of relationships is that so much can be accomplished by putting your head together with someone else’s. Almost every problem really does have a solution. Enjoy the teamwork and the renewed sense of closeness it fosters.

And if you need a little nudge or guidance in the right direction, contact a qualified therapist.

Reference:

Whitehouse, J. (1981). The role of the initial attracting quality in marriage: Virtues and vices. Journal of Marital and Family Therapy, 7(1), 61-67.

Originally posted on GoodTherapy.org.