The Backwards Thinking in Healthy Relationships

I've seen many couples get tangled over certain issues and never resolve them. Like moths to the proverbial light, they become hooked into point - counterpoint; debate, argument, and the irresistible urge to prove that he / she is right about something. But pursuing these things really never promotes love, closeness or emotional intimacy. So, why do we do them? Maybe it's our cultural heritage - born on the notion that being right entitles us to something - privilege, or power or status. Maybe it's about feeling more in control in a relationship which leaves us feeling less vulnerable. But being right doesn't create or sustain love. Most couples who report having a big argument during the week, can't remember what the fight was about. But they remember how they were treated.

It's hard to let go of being right, or even the pursuit of being right. If we were to let go of this score-keeping, we become more anxious. We've lost a central mooring in the seascape of relating to others. But, William Butler Yeats invited us in his poem, Into the Twilight, to "....come clear of the nets of right and wrong." For to be in the business of judging others as right or wrong leaves us tangled in webbing that is contrary to love.

So, I coach couples on some decidedly un-American notions. Let go of fairness. It's way over-rated and doesn't promote love. It almost certainly promotes resentment. In the end, most of us are looking for love, tenderness, emotional intimacy, resting softly and safely in the arms of a lover. We simply can't there through debate, argument and amassing evidence in yet another 'courtroom' setting (which, with many couples,  doubles as a bedroom).

Just like defensiveness and argumentation encourages the same in the other person, so also is there a reciprocity around the opposite. Vulnerability invites vulnerability. Tenderness invites tenderness. Humility, kindness, putting love above being right all encourage the same behaviors on the part of the other. Strive to be your most loving, tender, vulnerable, humble self, letting go of being right and winning an argument. You'll be surprised by how over-rated being right is in the end.

If you're tangled in the did not - did do arguments (which quickly go nowhere), and are locked into the same arguments again and again, ask someone you trust for the name of a reputable counselor to help you with your relationship. In the Chicagoland area, consider one of the counselors at Heritage Professional Associates.

Forgiveness

Forgiveness is an often misunderstood concept. Most of us think of it as something we do for another person. We let them off the hook. We think that it should only happen after the other person recognizes their wrong-doing, apologizes, and then we forgive. We think that forgiveness is predicated on fairness, and should only be used when the other person makes the first (right) move.

But, forgiveness is really more for the benefit of the one doing the forgiving. When we forgive, we're released from our resentment. Forgiveness can occur even when the other person has no idea that they've hurt you (as in "forgive them Father for they know not what they do"). It is about choosing to no longer focus on the injustice. There are some pretty good quotes and sayings about forgiveness floating around in various literature and on the internet. These are not my original ones:

1. If you want to bury someone with your resentments, dig two graves.
2. I can be happy, or I can be right.
3. Resentment is you drinking the poison hoping that it will hurt the other person.
4. Don't choose forgiveness because the other person deserves it; choose forgiveness because you deserve peace.

I also think of the various things I have done to hurt others. There are the things that I am aware of, and then there are the things I've done to others that I don't realize.  A great book on the spiritual aspect of forgiveness is Tim Keller's book, The Prodigal God. It's a compelling look at how self-righteousness can be a more problematic form of wrong-doing than the more obvious kinds of misdeeds.

I challenge myself with the notion: "getting better at love is more important than being right." Forgiveness brings us closer to others, softens us, tenderizes us, and in the end brings us peace in a way that not even the best of confrontations can accomplish.

If you're trying to forgive but are stuck in your resentments, talk to a trusted member of the clergy. Or seek out a trusted mental health professional. In the Chicago area, consider someone at Heritage Professional Associates.

Why should I do my homework if I'm learning the material?

I hear it often from bright, but unmotivated students: "what's the point of doing homework if I'm able to learn the material without it?" As a parent, you may be stumped to find a good answer to your child's question, even as you know in your 'gut' that there's something fundamentally wrong with this picture. For most students, doing homework is a way to reinforce the classroom content and textbook material. And some subjects such as math and higher level science courses, really go better when supported by regularly completed homework assignments even when the student is bright.

Beyond the benefit of better grades when homework is completed, I believe that a potentially even greater outcome is derived from regular homework completion. And that is this: every job imaginable that your child may do in the future, will contain some duties which are mundane, boring and tedious. Learning now to develop the capacity to endure and complete the mundane and tedious tasks in his/her life, will prepare your child to better manage the tedious, boring tasks involved in any future career.

Conversely, bright but unmotivated students who do the bare minimum to get by now, may be able to get decent enough grades just based upon his/her native intelligence. But they will pay the price later in the form of compromised job reviews largely because of their lack of self discipline to attend to those important little boring details which are part of any job.

If you have a bright but unmotivated student who is doing the minimum to get by, consider a consult with a reputable mental health professional. In the Chicago metropolitan area, consider one of our professional staff at Heritage Professional Associates, with offices in Hinsdale, Wheaton, and downtown Chicago.

Giving it Your Optimal Effort: A Remedy to School Stress and Overachievement

"Do your best" or "give it your best effort" are phrases most of have heard for the majority of our lives.  And, there is something to be said for applying ourselves in a sustained, disciplined way over time. As a psychologist, I have seen way too many students who are giving their best efforts toward school. And while they have phenomenal grades and get into good colleges, their maximum effort comes at a price. Signs of unhealthy levels of effort include:

• trouble falling asleep at night because your mind won't shut off
• going past your normal bedtime routinely by an hour or more in order to get school work completed
• spending way more time on schoolwork than most of your peers 
• persistent feelings of stress, anxiety, worry or depression related to school
• feeling pushed too hard by one's own or by one's parents' expectations
• engaging in little, if any, recreational time
• being unable to tone down your perfectionism

I promote the notion of "give it your optimal effort" when it comes to important activities such as school, sports, music, etc. An optimal effort means that you apply yourself in a sustained, disciplined way to accomplish things. But, the effort is not a maximum one, at least not over time. It allows for balance, moderation, and an emotionally healthy life. Signs of optimal effort include:

• feeling like your life is in balance - there's time for studying, "down time", wandering time with friends, exercise, and creativity
• you don't feel stressed on a daily basis
• you can fall asleep pretty readily at bedtime and you sleep through the night most nights
• you feel encouraged and prompted to do well, but not too pushed by either yourself or your parents 
• your natural ability and your grades seemed to be in balance (that is, there is neither under-achieving or over-achieving going on)

If you're concerned that you might be stuck in a cycle of over-achievement, chronic school stress, and a life out of balance, contact someone you trust for the name of a reputable mental health professional. In the Chicago metropolitan area, consider someone at Heritage Professional Associates, with offices in Hinsdale, Wheaton, and downtown Chicago.

How Can We Respond to Awful Things That Happen in the World?

Fresh in everyone's minds this morning is the massacre of children in Newtown, CT. As our President said yesterday, there have been too many of these tragedies. With media so accessible to us so much of the time, it's hard not to get 'disaster fatigue' when something big and bad happens. Whether it's the mass murder of innocents, or seeing the destruction on a grand scale wrought by Mother Nature, it's the feeling of helplessness in response to something so massive and tragic that creates weariness, and in some, depression.

Soon following a disaster are the many images, personal accounts of tragedy and loss, and with them an unsettling of our sense of security. If it could happen in Newtown, CT, it could happen anywhere. And it has. I still remember the images of Hurricane Sandy, or the Tsunami in Japan, or 9/11 or Chernobyl. The list keeps getting longer.  So what can we do?

Doing something in response to these tragedies is a way of reducing disaster fatigue, weariness and our vulnerability to depression and despair. In response to the Newtown massacre, I sponsored another third world child in need, in memory of the children lost yesterday. When I have lost a loved one, I re-commit to love those in my life a little more, a little better. Spreading love, charity, compassion and mercy in response to disasters, both personally and globally, are ways to react and set in motion a greater good. It's my personal statement of protest to bad things to make the world a little better.

America and Gun Violence

I think a lot about this issue. As the attached post shows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate), the US ranks 12th in the per capita death rate with guns. All of the other countries with higher per capita rates have much smaller populations (exceptions being Brazil, Mexico and the Philippines). Brazil's death-by-gun per capita rate is more than double that in the US, a fact that probably most people in the world would never guess. Yet Brazil's population is approaching 2/3 of the population in the US - no small number.

But the US is a country that's unique in several ways. 'She' manages to put herself and/or find herself in the world's spot light much of the time. When there's something grand going on in the US - science, technology, music, humor, the world knows about it. Probably more is known about the US abroad than is known about a lot of other countries. So, too, will the world know more about America's problems than the problems of other countries (like El Salvador having a murder-by-gun rate that is more than 5 times that of the US; but it has a population of only 6 million to the US's 312 million).

I also look at the comparison of the US to its neighbor to the north. The gun-per-capita rate comparison of the US to Canada is about 2:1. But the murder rate is way lopsided, with the US per capita murder rate exceeding Canada's by a large margin (there are about 4-5 murders in the US per 100,000 of population compared to Canada where the number is about 1 per 100,000). I think that there are some attitude differences that account for this. The average US citizen is more entitled, arrogant, territorial (we simply took a bunch of Canadian land more than a century ago when 'buying' Alaska) and has a culturally ingrained right to self defense borne out of its origins. The massacre and / or mistreatment of the native American Indian population aside, Americans have defined themselves as adversaries or opponents to oppressive governments - hence they left those mother lands for the US over the last few hundred years. And when the mother lands came to the US to take back the land or its people, the right to bear arms was engraved in its constitution. This defiant, defend my land at all costs has taken on absurd proportions. People buy hand guns to defend their 'land' even when that may be an apartment. And the fact that such self defense weapons are used against one's own loved ones more than predators by overwhelming margins, does little to change our country's engrained right to bear arms.

I'm hoping that in the US, a faction as popular and powerful as the National Rifle Association (NRA) will sprout roots and become as influential in American politics as the NRA but in the opposite direction, that of education about gun violence, and making a stance of getting rid of guns from American households. It could become a new American initiative, like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers has done to educate the country to not drink and drive.

Masculinty Redefined

What does it mean today to be a good man? Men are struggling to feel good about themselves in an increasingly complicated world. Men who were trained to work themselves to death in service of providing for their families end up feeling disillusioned. They feel unfulfilled, lonely, and have a vague sense of emptiness without knowing why. They often don't know even how to name what it is that they are feeling, other than frustrated, worn out, defeated, and maybe angry too much of the time.

Current beer commercials tease the man who cries, who wants to be close to his woman, or who is afraid, and tells him to "man up." Of course what this really means is to drink the right kind of alcohol like a real man and tease the men who are vulnerable. But, outside of beer commercials, these older definitions of masculinity seem to work less well today. Men who try to follow older masculine stereotypes are frustrated when these archetypes fail. The macho tough guy who prides himself in being competitive, self-reliant, aggressive, self-promoting, and restricted in the so-called vulnerable emotions is becoming archaic, out-dated, and useful in fewer and fewer circumstances in life. This older, more traditional view of manhood does not promote emotional intimacy and greatly limits the quality of marriage and of being a good dad to children.

So what is a template for today's man? It is a blend of work and commitment to family as a provider. But it also is about a greater capacity to experience and communicate about the vulnerable emotions. Fear, doubt, shame, uncertainty, loneliness, are examples of these. These are vital emotions, together with more familiar ones, love, tenderness, caring, assertiveness, which are important ingredients for emotional intimacy. When a man in angry, 99% of the time, one of the vulnerable emotions lies beneath the anger. A man is more adaptive, flexible and socially competent when he can recognize the vulnerable emotions within himself, and communicate about them directly and openly.

So, what's a man to do? There is help. Men need to learn how to first recognize, and then communicate about a wider range of emotions without the over-use of a limited number of emotions (anger, jealousy, pride, arrogance). Dr. Ron Levant has done extensive work treating what he refers to as normative male alexythymia. This refers to the inability to name a feeling. It recognizes that our culture has supported male roles that limit the emotions that are culturally acceptable for men to express. After all, what country could send an army into battle whose soldiers were trained to be in touch with their vulnerable emotions? Men are first taught to improve their vocabulary for emotion. This is because vocabulary is essential to perception. If we don't have a word for something, we are less likely to perceive it (some eskimos have 14 different words for snow. Try it - I'll bet you can't come up with that many, hence you will not perceive that many kinds of snow either). Once the vocabulary is enhanced, men are encouraged to use the newly acquired words in their communication with loved ones. The book, Masculinity Reconstructed, provides more specifics about the protocol for improving men's social competence.

Men use for coaching in business, personal trainers for fitness, so why not use one for improving social competence, and becoming better equipped to be a good husband and dad?  In the Chicago area, try one of our experienced psychotherapists at Heritage Professional Associates. Outside of the Chicago area, ask someone whom you trust for the name of a qualified mental health professional.