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

“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

“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

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

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?

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

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

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.