Author: Administrator

Recently one of my children had a birthday. I couldn’t help myself but buy a sappy card and gift and fuss over him and how wonderful my life has been since he’s been here. And then it hit me. Why am I so sentimental at these times?  Is it just about this young human I am trying to raise…or is there more to the pangs of joy and sorrow that hit me like waves, lapping at me one after the other after the other? Is it really just that this little boy, now becoming a wonderful young man, has spent another year on this earth with me?  Or is there something much greater stirring in my soul?  

Well you know my motto…stay curious!  So I did. I started thinking what is sad about this day for me. Because tears are always present in my happiness around my kids’ birthdays. And sometimes I think we blow too quickly past the tears of joy concept. We just think it’s all good. That only happiness should be present at such a joyous occasion. And yet there it is. Unmistakable tears that I am trying to gloss right over and tell myself mean only that I am excited at the prospect of another year on earth with this beautiful child. But that’s not it. Something more is there. And how many times have I stopped one of my clients in their tracks and held their “feet to the fire”, so to speak, so we could explore the true nature of a complicated and multi-faceted feeling that has presented itself and not allowed them to gloss over it? Honestly folks, its been so many times I can’t even count. I would never let an opportunity like that pass up without trying to help a client uncover buried and unprocessed emotions, so I am deciding not to pass up this opportunity for myself either. 

So there are the obvious reasons an occasion like my child’s birthday may cause me to tear up. For starters this guy is another year older and another year closer to being an adult, out on his own in this really tough world. That’s not only sad to think about, because I love having him in my life as much as he is now, but also sad because I don’t know what this world is going to throw at him and don’t want to see him suffer at the hands of the realities this world will most certainly throw at him. There is something more to these tears of mine though. It’s not just the small little boy I miss seeing or the prospect of his losing this innocence. There is something that runs deeper that that. Something older than that. Something almost archetypal underneath this aspect of grief my child’s aging brings. 

So what do I do?  Well of course I keep staying curious. Only now I’m really curious. If this sadness is not drawn out of the obvious things that one may think about as their child ages, then it has to be something rather interesting don’t you think?  Of who am I kidding? I think everything is pretty interesting.  This one has really pulled my attention though. So I started to think about what are the ambiguous griefs here or the good griefs I am not recognizing. Certainly one of the good griefs is that as my child ages and starts to become his own person in this world, some doors are closed, while others are opened when I see the man he is becoming. I am starting to know what kind of person he is, the way that he thinks, the things that he’s interested in, etc. This is not the meaning behind my tears though. Yes there is a child he was not or a man he will not become because of choices he is making and has made, or maybe even ones I and his father made as his parents, but that’s not what these tears are about.  Well…not really anyway. 

So that got me thinking a little more and getting even more curious about whether this sadness is not for or about my son at all. Sure, it’s the celebration of his birth that has brought this complicated wash of feelings on for me, yet there seems to be something bigger driving them. I started to realize that it may be me I’m crying for and about. And not in the ways one would expect. I am sad that he isn’t little anymore, but truly I am more happy than I am sad. Really. I love seeing him grow and knowing him more as his older self. He is such an interesting human. And I really am happy to see all that unfold. Much more than I am sad that his little self may be gone. I have loved all the years, months and days, and truly get excited to think about the many more days, months, and years there may be to come. 

So what is it about these tears of joy that seem to ring a familiar bell about myself?  What kind of silt is at the bottom of this river of grief that is running underneath these feelings?  And if it is a grief about me, what part of me is grieving or am I grieving for?  

Then it hits me, as these things often do when I have been staying curious and mindful about them for a while. I am sad for the part of me who felt forced to make choices for her son that now looking back she may have made different decisions about. I am sad that this young mother in me doesn’t get to know how wonderful things will turn out even though she isn’t happy about the decisions she did make and the opportunities she didn’t get to have. I want her to know I forgive any indiscretions she thinks she may have made, because honestly there were no mistakes. Those were points of learning and she and the son that has come to be are all the better for them. 

I am sad for the part of me that is that young mom, meeting her child for the first time and beginning to know herself in a way that she never had before. She will never experience the newness of motherhood again in that way.  I am sad about that and yet so grateful this is something I get to miss, because so many of my friends, family, and other women I have known have not had the same “newness to motherhood” feeling I was afforded. Their experiences were different. While it is sad I cannot feel this “newness” for the first time again, I am so fortunate that this was part of my story. 

And beneath these parts of me, I grieve for an even younger part of myself whose life was forever changed by decisions beyond her choosing that set me on a course to want to be a mother much more than I wanted to learn who I was and what I wanted in this world. You see, from a very young age I knew I would be a mother and that this was a calling chosen for me long before I was even old enough to know what all that entailed. It was a role destined TO me as much as I was destined FOR it. I chose part of how it came and under what circumstances it finally happened, but the truth is being a mom is something that had been chosen for me long before I was pregnant with and had my first child. And I feel sad for the little girl inside me who was rushed into that role so swiftly that she did not learn about who she was first. She was not rooted in herself when she became a mother, so her becoming a mother for the first time also thrust her into adulting when she had little tethering to what would constitute her adult self. I feel for this part of me. I think she thought that arriving in motherhood would be some kind of Garden of Eden that it was not. It left her searching for years for the other parts of herself that she had not solidified before starting her journey towards being a mother. I grieve for this little one too.

And yet, I believe whole heartedly that things happen as they are supposed to and these journeys I’ve made through my lifetime and my children’s lifetimes were meant to happen as they have.  I wish I could go back and whisper into the ear of all the younger parts of myself and tell them, “Do everything exactly the way you are going to. Don’t change a thing. And don’t worry about making mistakes. You will. And guess what? They aren’t mistakes. They are the right decisions at the right time to help you be the person you will become. And I love the person that we become. So don’t change a thing!”  

So maybe when you’re perusing Amazon.com looking for the right gift for the holidays or picking out a sappy card at Hallmark that you think really explains how you feel about that child, you’ll have a tear or two come to your eyes. Or maybe you don’t have kids and this context will come up some other way, when you realize you are at a juncture in your life that moving forward is mandatory and being who you once were can never happen again. My challenge to you…STAY CURIOUS!  Don’t blow off those pangs of sorrow mixed with joy.  Feel them. Think about them. Live them. And love them. You are exactly where you are supposed to be and your feelings are guides for exactly what you should be paying attention to. Stay curious and you might learn something about your journey that you never saw coming. 

Letter to my son:

My boy, you are such an amazing being. You have such a kind heart.  You have always been sensitive to the needs of others and cognisant of your impact on them.  I love this about you. Perfectly imperfect! I am writing you a letter to help you understand my hopes for you and to acknowledge that I may not have poised you as well as I could, but I did the best I knew how with what I had.

I know this world can be challenging, yet I also know that you are ready for this challenge.  The world may ask you to be tough, to be successful, to be, to be, to be… I hope you see the flaw in this reasoning.  I hope I have given you eyes to see that these social constructs are not yours, they are not any of ours. They are derived from years of collective fear in the scarcity that there is never enough.  Never enough power. Never enough money. Never enough youth. Never enough success. Never, never, never enough. The fear of scarcity is false. It always has been, yet our feeding these ideals has lead us smack dab into the middle of a war with ourselves.  We don’t always see that though. Instead we continue to internally oppress ourselves by aspiring to these ideals over and over again. I’m here to tell you anything that is born out of fear, uses fear to continue to feed itself. In this case, it uses a blind fear…one that is not able to be seen or heard such that we forget it’s there…or worse, believe it to be the truth.

There are some hard conversations that need to start happening and I know, my love, that your generation is our greatest hope in these efforts.  I do not envy this position, however you would not have envied mine either. I am of the generation that let this all continue to play out and is now having to face the knowledge that we are in large part responsible for keeping ourselves in this condition. We are just waking up to this now and it is never any fun to have to look in the mirror and see that you were the one keeping yourself miserable.  Of course it is never that simple. We don’t hold all the cards to our oppression, but we do hold many…and I would contend many more than we have been aware we do. This is actually an empowering revelation, because it means within us is the power to heal these issues. Here is the bind though…internalized oppression works in large masses only. If only one or two facets of the group drink the kool-aid and try to convince the rest of us this is the way it is and the way we need to be…well the rest of us look at that, laugh, and move on.  For it to work, internalized oppression needs large numbers of people to buy in. Reversing the power of internalized oppression will take the same amount of people to overturn it as it does to keep it in place. Here is where you come in my son. Your voice, your gender, your generation, you are poised to start this movement of push back on the established oppressions we have believed in for so long and lived in as our reality for too long.

You are given a great gift of opportunity here, and this carries with it a great responsibility.  I pray I have prepared you enough. That I have instilled in you the values and intrinsic worth to stand up and say, “No more”, “Time is up”, because “This is all of us.”  You are a young man that passes as white in our culture. You are privileged in your education, financial standing, education, and supportive family and friends. I know that your culturally created position in our society puts you in a position to make a large impact on this movement out of our internalized oppression.  It starts with having uncomfortable conversations about what your parents, and their parents, and their parents’ parents and so on, have done for centuries to wound our nation. And I am telling you, it is mortally wounded.

I have worked with many individuals as a psychologist and over and over have seen how sometimes the smallest of traumas snowball into the largest of adult wounds, which contribute to those adults continuing to wound themselves and others in the same ways they were wounded in their families of origin.  Our nation is no different. It is our collective family of America. It has a colorful past. We love to celebrate its victories, but we are not as generous in honoring the wounds it has had and this hinders our healing. We need healing desperately. We need to talk about these wounds to release their power over us. We need your help desperately.  No more resentment. No more stale mates. No more pointing fingers, assigning blame, and denying one another’s painful intergenerational traumas. No more. This is all of us, my son. We will all stay oppressed together or we will all heal together. We are inextricably connected and we cannot change this fact. And just like any intergenerational family trauma, it often takes just one generation to wake up and without judgment towards themselves, their parents, their parents’ parents and so, this generation starts to normalize the conversations that are hard.  They start to acknowledge the devastation that grows when a painful emotion is denied generation after generation. I have seen this healing catalyst many times as a therapist. It’s a beautiful thing to watch. It can start as gently as when your little sister turns to me when I have been short tempered and she tells me, “Its ok mommy. I get mad too sometimes.” It’s genuinely said in a way that normalizes and acknowledges the pain and honors it too. I pray for you, my son, that you and others like you will be this simple and kind voice that firmly compels us to move forward and step out of our pain and internalized oppressive suffering.

It will be hard work, but such sacred work too.  I hope that I have given you enough tools to do this.  I hope that I have loved you well enough and long enough that no matter how difficult the beginning of this healing process is, you stay the course with it.  I promise to do my part. To acknowledge my oppressive nature on myself and those around me. I promise to make changes and not buy into a cultural ideal that can only occur at the expense of others.  I know it will be hard and some of my generation will not be ready to face how their buying into societal norms and constructs has inadvertently empowered oppression to keep occurring. I promise you though, I have seen this before…that young voice, full of hope, and lacking the tainted nature of years of participating in the system as it is…I have seen this young voice move mountains in traumatized families.  Please, my boy…my love…please know that we are awaiting the healing powers of your young voice to start this healing. Because #thisisallofus

Oh and don’t worry….I have another one of these letters for your sister;)

Love, Mom

“Be one who nurtures and who builds.  Be one who has an understanding and a forgiving heart, who looks for the best in people.  Leave people better than you found them.  If we could look in to each other’s hearts and understand the unique challenges each of us faces, I think we would treat each other much more gently.”      Marvin J. Ashton

I hope you have been finding this series stimulating.  I hope it has stretched you a little in how you are thinking about the things happening in social media these days.  Change is hard, and any “movement” is asking us to bring about change.  We do not know what the outcome of that change will be and this uncertainty is one of the very reasons change is so hard on us.  Last week we talked about how when negative emotional content is as pervasive as we are seeing it in all forms of media right now, we are absorbing this negativity.  And absorbed negativity will do one of two things, it will eat at us or it will eat at others.

So, Doc, what are we supposed to do about that?  Its not like we can stop people from being jerks online.  True.  We cannot control others’ behaviors, only our own.  Yet we hold some of the most powerful tools in our own behavior.  Ok Doc…what powerful tools are those?  Kindness and compassion.  These two tools can help to redirect the energy of negativity into something more constructive.  I want to be sure that we are all on the same page about what that means however.

Kindness is a means by which we deliver our communication with one another and compassion is the means by which we receive it.  We cannot control the actual content of communications always, but we can always control the way we give and receive it.

Sometimes it is easier to describe what these definitions are not, rather than what they are.  Kindness for instance does not mean just being nice.  It does not mean that we are looking to say things in a way that others will be pleased by what they hear.  Instead it is more about showing one’s intention as a bridge of love, while we may possibly be delivering a very difficult message.  I have sat with many people in my office, talking about very difficult things, and have had occasion where the most therapeutic response I can give them is to reflect their own responsibility in their suffering.  This is not an easy message to hear.  No one wants to know that they had any part in what is hurting them, and most of us want to rise up against this and defend ourselves.  There is always a way to deliver this message with kindness. To be on one another’s side in an effort to want to change what is being talked about, while simultaneously communicating a difficult message that would seem opposite to what one another wants to hear.

Compassion is another means for us to meet one another where we are at, when on the surface of the issue there seems to be conflict in our meanings. Compassion is not feeling sorry for someone (sympathy).  It is not knowing better than someone else and having the foresight to see their errors.  Compassion is feeling with somebody (empathy).   In the faith tradition I was raised in, we say, “There if by the grace of God go I.”  This is a reminder that I could be in the very position another is in and I should always receive information with this in mind.  Showing understanding that we too could feel the way that another is feeling and want to say the things that they are saying, takes pause.  It takes patience.  It takes courage.  And most importantly it makes us vulnerable.  Vulnerability of putting ourselves in another’s shoes is difficult, yet it is also truly the only path to understanding and demonstrates great strength.

So, while we are not in control of the content we are seeing in the media and this content is likely to stir a myriad of thoughts and feelings, we are in control of how we give our messages to one another and how we interpret the messages of others.  And when we start to listen and speak with this kind and compassionate approach, we will begin to transform the message without ever changing the content.  We will start helping ourselves know that this is about all of us.  That acting in kind and having compassion for all perspectives will open us up to the knowledge that we help all our cause when we start thinking of it as ours, not theirs versus ours.

My challenge to you my friends…take that pause before you respond.  Think from a stance of compassion.  Say your words with kindness.  Know that the message you are sending is not only in the words but in the manner in which those words are delivered and received.

Be well my friends.

So, here it is.  Part 2.  I know you think that I am going to wax eloquent about #Metoo movement and my opinions on the significance of last week’s events.  But you would be wrong.  Sure, I have opinions on that kind of thing, but “This is about us…all of us.”

So, there are plenty of great conversations and some not so great ones happening about the Dr. Ford/Judge Cavanaugh issue and I will encourage you to go look at those to have more discussion about that issue.  This blog is going to cover a broader issue that is more interesting to me.  What issue is that you ask?  Well my peeps, that would be the mental health of all us and how what we are seeing play out in the media is having a toll on us all.

If you are continuing with me from last week’s blog, you recall that I took us through an exercise of evoking emotion.  It wasn’t a long blog and the visualization was rather simple, and yet, when done right should have evoked some real emotional response from you.  (If you haven’t read that blog, go back and do it…it’s a good one, I promise).  So, think for a minute about how much of an emotional response you had last week after reading the blog and also think about what, if any, affect it had on you the rest of the day.

Why is this important Doc?  And why do you find this interesting?

Well folks, here is why.  We are steeped day to day in stress.  Good stress, bad stress, fun stress, strenuous stress…all around stress.  It comes from our responsibilities to family, friends, coworkers, and honestly to all of us.  A good stress for me is having to get up earlier than I would like to get both myself and my three and half year old ready in the morning.  She is so into brushing her teeth and picking out her clothes and showing me how big she is.  It’s darling, but it is also an extra half hour of an already crunched morning.  I am tired just thinking about it right now, and yet I wouldn’t give this stress up for the world.  A strenuous stress for me is cleaning the house, which I would love to give up if anyone is offering.

When we know our baseline is stress and then are inviting in more emotionally evoking activity into our “down time”, what do you think is going to happen?  You got it…more stress.  And how much stress do you think any one of us can take?  Well that is the really interesting part for me.  Of course, the standard answer to this is “It depends”.  But no lie folks, it REALLY depends.  It depends on how much resiliency you have built up, what your home life is like, where you work or whether you work, how your social life is, your genetic make-up, and on and on and on.

So, the upshot of my point today is, this level of conflict in our life is detrimental and if not well balanced out, it will start to leak out in ways we may not mean or want it to do.  Remember how I asked what you felt like the rest of the day after reading my blog…well, this is what I am talking about.  If you evoke negative emotion it will come out.  If you consume negative emotion it will come in.  And once it comes in, it will make its way out again.  Your resiliency will predict if that is done in a healthy way or in non-healthy and sometimes even abusive way.  And when I say abuse, I am not using that word lightly.  And I am using it in a broad sense.  We “self” abuse through negative self-talk, emotional eating, abuse of drugs and alcohol, among other things.  And we “other” abuse when we cause conflict, yell, say hurtful things, and otherwise cause relational disruptions.  This is real people.  If you have ever seen the movie The Green Mile I would liken it to the green cloud of bug like stuff that the John Coffey character would suck out of one person and then spew into another.  When that stuff was sucked in it made him sick until it was released.  And when it was released it made the receiver sick as well, unless of course it was released into the air and disbursed without harming anyone. Every time you read, watch, or otherwise engage in the “Us vs Them” conflicts that you are seeing used in all media platforms, you are sucking in some of that bad stuff.  That negative emotion has been absorbed into you and will have an impact on you or others if not disbursed in a constructive way.

Remember this as you are engaging with this emotionally laden material.  Even when the topic is a good one to be aired, the emotional toll it takes on all of us is very real.  Be mindful of this.  Take care of yourselves with it.  And do not underestimate how much of a disruption it can and will cause you if you aren’t taking it seriously.  This is the landscape in which the stress you already have in your life will be occurring.  How much of it do you want to let in?  Be intentional.  This is an added emotional need you will have to address.  Be sure it is something you are choosing and not something you are inadvertently exposing yourself to because the average American adult looks at their phone somewhere in the neighborhood of 50 times a day depending on age.

What is happening in the media is affecting all of us, whether we directly engage or not.  Because as long as some of us are engaging, all of us are in play to be affected by the negativity that can result from these conflictual interactions.  Now, here is the good news…(It’s about time, Doc because this has been a Debbie Downer blog today.)

…the positive energy of emotion works the same way.  It will spread with the same amount of fervor and I would contend is the only real solution to dispersing the negativity in a healthy way.  How you ask?  Well that will be part 3 of this series.

Did it again, didn’t I?  Looped you in for another blog.  Come on, at least you may have learned something.  And if not learned something you at least want to go watch a really good movie, The Green Mile.

‘Til next week…be well my friends.

I think that every young person in this world needs to grow up to remember the name Dr. Christine Blasey Ford.  I think every adult in this world needs to know her name.  Now, several of you have already rolled your eyes and decided to scroll down on your screen because you are so over hearing about this.  I would strongly urge you to read on.  Yes, I am long winded.  Yes, you won’t get these 5 minutes back in your life.  And Yes, Dr. Marr will leave you with something to think about that makes you maybe even want to know more. “Sure Doc” (insert sarcastic vocal tone here).

So here it is folks.  Those who know me well know that I have strong opinions on these things and I am fun to banter with about it.  Others of you may be reading things I’ve written for the first time, because some Facebook friend of yours decided to repost this.  Doesn’t matter to me why you are reading it.  I am just happy you are.

“Why Doc?  Why do we need to remember this name (Dr. Christine Blasey Ford)?” Well my peeps, courage of this magnitude only comes along once in a great while and should be respected just because of that.  Think of a time when you really got scared.  Like when you forgot to wear your pants to work (oh wait, that’s dream analysis).  Try again.  Like when you had to do something hard for the very first time and thought you might get hurt and didn’t know what the outcome would be.  Ok…you got it.  Yes I’m serious, I want you to call up a time when you were really really scared…. waiting….waiting….do we all have the image.  Good.

So, take this image of yourself being scared (do you feel the butterflies in your stomach, because that’s when you know you got a really good image) and put that scared version of yourself in a room full of politicians and media.   Got that.  No, no.  Don’t stop reading now.  I’m a psychologist, this is what I do for a living…make people feel.  And yes, it is extremely inconvenient to have to feel scared while your reading a post from this quack Doc on the interwebs but do it any way.  Seriously you’ve gotta already be a couple minutes in.  What’s a few more going to hurt?

Ok…so you’re in your image of a scary moment in your life and now you are also on public display in front of a world audience.  Right?  Get what I am doing here (of course you do, even my three-year-old has to do this because she has a quack Doc for a mom and has no problems doing it).

And now think of the most humiliating thing you’ve ever experienced.  You know, that thing that you’ve buried deep deep down and have so much shame about that you have told no one…. literally no one about…. EVER.  Yup, get that deep dark secret out, put it in the mouth of the image of you feeling scared and now tell that story to this panel of politicians, while on camera, and with all of the world tweeting, snapchatting, Facebooking (yeah…that one isn’t a verb is it?) all about what you are saying and then putting their own two cents in on what they think of your most humiliating story being told from your scared self, while in front of the COMMITTEE.

So, if you went on this journey with me and didn’t just read this to roll your eyes, what are you feeling (and there it is Doc…the quintessential therapist question)? But seriously…. what are you feeling?  I’ll tell you how I felt while I was typing this.  It got the adrenaline pumping through me and my fingers literally are shaking.  If this didn’t happen for you, you just didn’t put enough effort into it.  The biology of our fight or flight system is easily activated even by our thoughts, so go back to paragraph three and repeat.  Yes, I mean it.  Go back. We’ll wait…. still waiting….yup we are still here in paragraph seven….we won’t go on until you are here…done?  So…. what was it like (which is another way therapists ask how you’re feeling, because we just love that question)?

I hope you enjoyed this uncomfortable exercise.  I use humor to ground you through it, because really we can harm ourselves going back in our minds to scary times of our lives without the right skills to deal with it.  Our minds are that powerful.  It’s so dang cool. It’s also dangerous, so don’t do this without the assistance of your favorite therapist (and I am dead cold serious on that me peeps…dead cold!)

And there is the answer to your question, “Why doc? Why should we remember Dr. Christine Blasey Ford?”  Because, courage of this caliber is not often seen outside its captivity of the deep internal reaches of our souls.  No matter the content, no matter the subject, no matter the outcome, when someone stands up in the face of that much adversity in what I can only imagine was a horribly awful emotional and physical state and despite all that was thrown at her, stayed standing until the end…well that my friends is what we call a hero.  She will certainly always be one of mine.  I have trouble telling the dude at the phone store, “No I don’t want to get that upgrade and let you syphon more money out of my dwindling checking account”, so I have no earthly idea how much courage that took her yesterday, but it is genuinely at heroic levels. Truly awe inspiring.  Sacrifice like that my friends, is genuinely something we should all revere.  For the sake of all of us.  And make no mistake it’s about us.  There is no us and them.  There never was a them.  “Them” is a made-up construct to create a false dichotomy of either/or, because our brains try to simplify things (and sometimes a little too much).

Now…as for the subject matter of what Dr. Christine Blasey Ford did yesterday (keep repeating it…learn that name folks), I have plenty of thoughts on that too and because I am the quack Doc that I am, I absolutely know they aren’t what you would think they’d be.  I’m so unpredictable like that.  Stay tuned…more on that later (see how I did that…just shaved several minutes off your life and now you’re going to have to keep scrolling next week to find part two in this tantalizing read…. yup, that’s what I did).

Be well my friends.

So, let’s talk a little about parenting.  First off…it’s no joke!  I have children and I have helped with a ton of kids in my lifetime.  What I’ve gathered in wisdom is what I can witness to, and what I’ve studied in books has helped me in clarifying what is really at work in those little minds.  I would recommend the books “The Whole Brain Child” and “No-Drama Discipline” (along with their respective workbooks) by Drs. Dan Siegel, MD and Tina Payne Bryson, PhD.  These are great resources for parents with no background in the way the brain works and even for parents who do have this background.  It gives a better understanding of the what’s, why’s and how’s on the things we see our children doing. These books also give some tangible methods to use with our kids.  I’m not going to go into those in any detail here, since these lovely scholars have already done that.  So, you’ll just have to get these books.  Look at me, making recommendations with no affiliate payment for such a great plug.

Instead, I want to give you three principles to bring to your parenting.  I may flesh these out in later blogs if I get enough interest, but for now, let’s stick to these three.

1. First of course is self-care. “Doc, alright already with the taking care of myself first.”  I know, I know…you’re tired of hearing me harp on self-care. Well…too bad.  This principal is just that elementary to all we do in life.  And within our relationships, self-care is of chief importance. I’m not sure if I have spoken of the piggy bank metaphor before, but it applies here.  The idea is that we are a piggy bank.  Change goes in when we care for ourselves and our relationships, like when we have that great first cup of coffee in the morning before the kids wake up or when we have a night out away from the kids.  Change gets cashed out when things are needed, like when we have to be an adult, parent our kids, or not flick off the driver that just cut us off in traffic (this may fall under being an adult, but I felt compelled to give this its own category). Confused yet?  Ok, let me try to explain this a bit more.  You are a finite resource, meaning there is only so much of you to go around.  If you are not filling that resource back up with self-care, its depleting your piggy bank and you can only bring the change you have to pay for the hard things that are always happening in parenting.  If you have no change left, what happens is you regress into your back-up generator.  “What’s that Doc?”  It’s those instinctual behaviors and feelings that come from our fight/flight system in the brain.  If we are tired when our kids act out, we are much more likely to give them a tablet and retreat from the chaos or get in their face yelling and commanding they behave differently.  This is why it is important to take care of yourself so you have more energy to take a minute, regroup when the kids irritate you or act out of turn, decide how to address the situation, and then do that thing.  Without this energy in your reserves (put there through your own self-care) there is no number of cute things I can teach you that will help you with your parenting. No reserves…no ability to use those cute things.
2. Secondly, there is the matter of time. Time is also a finite resource, as I have spoken of in an earlier blog.  If there are so many hours in a day and so many things that need to be done, we will inevitably start to run out of time for good parenting if we don’t save time for ourselves (see #1) and for our kids. I’m going to tell you a trademark secret as a therapist for children.  You know what the single most valuable tool is when counseling kids?  Time.  The kind of time that is short in duration (only an hour tops) but high in quality.  I spend an hour a week, when I am doing therapy with kids.  And during that hour, I am giving my full attention to this child.  I am letting them do whatever it is that they desire, with what is available in my office.  When I first start to see them this lasts the whole hour, setting the stage to build a strong relationship them and I. Once a child is comfortable with me, I start to incorporate therapeutic activities. Even so, I am still allowing the children to set the time table for when we do things that they want and when we get to the therapeutic activities. Have you ever given your children a full hour of your undivided attention?  I’m not talking about an hour of your time while you are also doing something else like cooking dinner, looking at your phone, or watching TV. I mean a whole hour where they are the sole focus.  It’s amazing what just this time does.  And remember the piggy bank metaphor, well guess what…this time spent is coins in the relationship piggy bank between you and your kid.  This means when you have to cash out (usually by taking some sort of disciplinary action) that you will have the change needed to do so, without harming the relationship.  What generally happens when we run out of coins in our jar, is that we start to disconnect from our kids and then discipline of any kind becomes harder and harder, because the kids stop caring what we are asking of them…dare I say it even seems like they ignore us, or even worse, hate us.  Now, the single most important part of this step is that you are spending this time with your child NO MATTER WHAT.  It doesn’t work if it is contingent on them behaving well.  Your positive attention goes a really long way, but if you make it contingent on their behavior, especially with kids under the age of about 10, kids will automatically see your lack of engagement when they are bad as a non-verbal communication that they are not good enough as a person.  Let me say this again, they will look at your pulling away from them when they have acted poorly as meaning they are broken in some way.  This is the single most damaging behavior between child and caregiver that I see, and it’s so subtle.  We think that what we are saying is that we don’t like their behavior, but what our kids hear is that we don’t like them.  So, step two: spend quality time with your kids (doesn’t have to be long), in a one on one environment (this is especially important in families with multiple children), and that this time happens no matter what (ok…so this may have to pass my Mom’s test of “Is anyone bleeding or dead?”…if the answer is “No”, then this time should be spent with your child no matter what).
3. My third step is more about looking inward and deciding what kind of action you really are planning to take with your child. The books I reference above are great at coaching you through ways to do this, so I will just give you the gist here.  This step is about being sure you know what it is you are trying to do with your child through this interaction. So much of the time, we do what we know without thinking through what outcome we are looking to accomplish.  For example, if your child is whining and you are responding, what is truly your intent?  Are you wanting them to stop? Most likely, yes, but what else is your intent? Is it to punish them?  Is it to teach them not to do this again?  Is it to vent your own frustration with that intolerable behavior?  Be sure to really know what it is that you are trying to accomplish and then align your action with this.  So, in this example of a child whining, if what you really want to do is keep them from doing this in the future, I would suggest using this as a teaching opportunity. Get down eye to eye with them, tell them the whining is not acceptable, and then recite a line you would like them to say instead, using the vocal tone you want them to use.  This teaches a new thing for them to do and just like any newly learned skill for any of us, your child will need you to repeat this teaching lesson several times before you will see them start to use it on their own. Now, often what I hear parents tell me is that they just want the kids to stop. Believe me, I appreciate that; yet, if all you say is “Stop”, what you are actually asking your children to do is to have another way to deal with their frustration (the emotion which is most likely when whining shows up). Guess what?  They don’t know any other ways.  So, if your intent is really to make them stop, you will want to give them a replacement coping or communication skill or you will be going around and around on this with them.  Sound familiar?  So, in summary this step is about more closely examining what you want to accomplish, and then cashing in your coins accordingly to be able to come up with your own energy to do what needs to be done to accomplish this with your child. See how I did that?  Looped back around to self-care again.  “Doc, okay, okay, we get it already!”

I challenge you this week to take a look at how you are doing with these three steps and then try your best to improve in any areas that you see need it. If you are great with all these steps, I would look in the mirror…you just might be a Unicorn. Just sayin’…

Let me know if you’d like to see more on parenting.  There are so many ways to go with this topic, and I would be interested in hearing about your thoughts on this.

What is it with these school shootings?  Why do we still see so much pain and suffering among our young people? Or people in general?  What is the real cost of a society that is disconnecting from one another?  I do not claim to be an authority on these matters, but I do have some professional observations about the landscape within which these events keep occurring.

So you may have noticed it’s been a while since I last posted.  Sometimes time is needed to calm the soul a little.  I had been living in the eternal winter of Minnesota and abruptly Spring sprung and Summer is here, and my soul has been singing once again.  Sometimes even psychologists need to take some self-care time away from projects and responsibilities, so I took it.  Now I am ready and raring to go.

I recently took a trip to Seattle and was able to take a ton of awesome pictures.  The cover photo was one of those and I just love it, because it so closely paralleled a blog topic I have been mulling around in my head about connection and disconnection.  Of course, right?  A shadow drawing on the sidewalk of a person on their mobile phone.  “Of course that is about connection and disconnection, Doc…uh…err…Huh????”

“Doc you’re a psychologist, so of course you’re going to tell us phones are bad, right?” Nope.  That’s not true.  It’s missing the point when we make global statements like phones are bad.  It’s not about the phones…it’s about us.  We are disconnecting more and more.  I see this in the despair of our nation that seems to be spiraling out of control with violence and apathy.  My opinion…school shootings are not about guns any more than death by domestic violence is about anger management issues.  It runs much deeper than that.  It runs so deep that we have stopped being aware of where it is coming from and we are fighting about the wrong end of the problem.  This despair is a symptom of our disconnection…to each other and to ourselves.  “Whoa Doc!!! Them’s fightin’ words! You better be able to back this up.”

Okay, so let me start with our perceived connection.  I am not an old woman by any stretch of the imagination, but I am part of a generation that had phones connected to wires, connected to walls.  I remember my Dad being so mad at all of us stretching that cord into our bedrooms to the point of nearly ripping those cords out of the wall. I also remember fighting for who got to be on the phone in a household of siblings.  And I remember my siblings trying to pick up one of the other lines in the house and listen in.  Man that was a way to start a drop down, drag out fight.  Yet, it was the way of our world back then.  Nowadays, my children think of such things as items you will see in the history museum (not going to lie, while humorous that is also quite irritating that they think this).  “So, what does this have to do with connection and disconnection, Doc?” Well what do you think we did when we were waiting for the phone, or it wasn’t our turn for the phone, or our Dad was mad that we nearly ripped the cord out again?  Well…we went out and saw our friends in person instead.  Too much work to fight for the phone.

Today we basically have entire computers/cameras/telecommunication devices in our pockets (well lets be real…they are in our hands).  Plus there is the internet.  What a revolution that is.  We are now so connected with technological advances, how is it ever possible to be disconnected? Ah, my friends and therein lies the issue.  In a world of virtual connection, we lack more and more in actual connection.

“Alright Doc…that’s nothing new. Everyone knows that.” Do they?  Really?  I beg to differ. Here is the thing, I know that we have talked about how words have meaning in an earlier blog, however words don’t have all the meaning.  When you are talking to someone face to face there are so many other ways that we communicate.  For example, in my house we joke that mocking is our language of love.  In other words, we all speak fluent sarcasm and there are some dead pan faces that deliver these lines.  True comedians my friends.  If I didn’t see those faces and know the tone and intonation, read the body language, and ultimately feel my loving attachment to these people anytime we are in the same room together…well folks…I would think that they all hated me…a lot…like a lot, a lot.  Can’t deliver these conversations in a text or an email.  Can’t create the laughter in these statements even by phone.  No, these are truly communications that must happen in person.

And then there is the type of communication that facilitates connection, using no words at all.  Like the touch of a loving hand, a pat on the back, a hug, or a kiss.  What about the words unarticulated, yet very much said in every one of those interactions? Those won’t happen through technology at all.  Even the best of emoji’s won’t express these enough.  Now clearly we make efforts with things like emoji’s, LOLs, or GIFs, yet it just isn’t the same.  I can type out all the actions that go into embracing someone in a hug, but the words I put on the page won’t even scratch the surface of the feeling you get when someone hugs us.  What a message that can be. It won’t ever be able to translate into words, much less delivered through technology.

So what we are left with is the false sense that we are connecting, when actually we are connecting much less than when we just went outside and played with our friends, took a walk with our heads up saying hello to passersby instead of reading the text that just buzzed across our phone.  It’s actually an illusion of connection. And of course there are also the illusions of perfection that we peddle to one another.  Our Instagram lives that point out only when things are great (or at least make it look like they’re great).

And then there is the real culprit of disconnection in a technologically integrated society. What’s that you ask? Anonymity.  This one is a real silent killer and its motis operandi is to kill us slowly.  Death by Tweets. Am I right?  We can be politically fundamentalist and engage in battles of whit and will that far exceed anything we would have the guts to do in person.  And for kids it can be much worse.  In a time when their brains are just developing, when they are still impulsive, not great at thinking things through, and without any hindsight to have learned from, our kids can be even more hateful to one another. And this is the kind of environment we have been in as school shootings have escalated in frequency and intensity.

Do you know how many people I see that have social anxiety?  I see adults and children and I see far more folks in all age groups that have social anxiety than I do kids with ADHD.  We thought that was epidemic and over-medicated…guess what is happening with this anxiety epidemic?  Lots of scripts and very little teaching of how to be in public, how to have a conversation, or how to be with other people in general.  And what do you think will happen once the generations who have been raised in technology and have less in-person interaction start teaching their kids how to interact?  What will that look like?  It’s worth thinking about.

So you see, this is why my feeling is that there is more disconnection than connection these days. I don’t think phones are bad. They are plastic, glass, and wires. They have no inherent goodness or badness.  It is the user that determines the value.  So I challenge you to start thinking about how you are using these devices, or even how much.  In an earlier blog I referenced a way to do look at how to manage your time to be more in alignment with your values.  Mostly though, I challenge you to look up at the world, not down on your phone.  I challenge you to look people in the eye as you’re walking by them.  I challenge you to smile at someone, instead of sending a text.  I encourage you to pay more attention to the messages you receive that don’t have words and to give those same unsaid messages to others. Connect with people in real time, with real actions and real communication.  See what happens.  You may surprise yourself and like it more than you think.

Are you one of those folks who feels so busy all the time, yet can’t seem to get accomplished the things that you want to?  Well, join the club…and that club is big.  I have a handful of pointers here you may find helpful.  Full disclosure, I suck at this.  It’s an area I strive to be better at all the time.  I think it’s actually a chronic problem in America, so my guess is this blog may strike your interest.  You’ll only waste a few minutes of your time.\

1. Being “Busy” is Not a Commodity!

I can’t take credit for this concept and would love to give credit to the person that I heard it from, but I don’t remember his name.  It was another therapist I met while working in Community Mental Health.  Here is what it means though.  A commodity is something that is a raw material that can be bought and sold.  Items you get at the grocery store would be considered food commodities.  “So why are you calling being “busy” a commodity Doc? It’s something we do, not something we buy or sell?”  Well my friends here is what has happened in our society.  Being “busy” has a new cultural value, sometimes positive and sometimes negative.  We talk about it like it is a thing we own, such as “You think you have a busy schedule?  I have more to do than time to do it in?”  Then we start talking to each other like we have more or less of it, like it’s a competition.  For instance, “I have three kids.  Busy is just a way of life.  The more kids and the more activities the more busyness we have.”

Remember how I have talked about words being powerful, well this is a prime example of how the way we talk about things shapes how we think about them. Stop it. Being “busy” is not a thing we have (or want to have).  It is not something we should compete with one another about having more or less of. Busyness is really a reflection of where we are putting our priorities, which leads me to the next tip.

2. Get Back on Track with What Your Priorities are.

So, what are your priorities?  If you are like a basic American, you may think that it looks like this:

1. Work
2. My family
3. Me

I would strongly encourage you to take a good look at this and think about it for a while.  Be more curious about how these priorities got to be in the order they are in.  Be a Colombo in your own life (and for those of you too young to know who that is…look it up, there are great clips online).  He was the master at staying curious and asking questions about things in a way that you could finally get to the kernel of truth underneath the surface.  So, for example, when I think my life is getting out of whack like this, I start asking myself things like:

Me the therapist: “So Natalie why is work first right now?”

Me the workaholic: “Well, it’s because I want to be the best provider for my family.”

Me the therapist: “So what you are telling me is that you value your family more than work, and are using work as one way to do right by them”

Me the workaholic: “Ok.  I see what you’re saying.  So maybe my priorities are more like: 1) Family/Loved ones, 2) Work, and 3) Me”

Me the therapist: “Alright.  Help me understand why family and loved ones are so important.”

Me the workaholic: “Well I am responsible for them and need to be sure I am doing everything I can for them.”

Me the therapist: “I see.  So, you really value making sure you’re at your best so you can best be able to help those you love and feel responsibility for.”

Me as a workaholic: “Huh.  I hadn’t thought of it that way, but I guess that is true.”

Me the therapist: “So if I am hearing you correctly what you are really saying is you put yourself first in order to be the best you can for your family and one of the ways you are doing that is by providing for your family?  Am I hearing that right?”

Me the “former” workaholic: “I kind of lost sight of that order.  I guess I better think about how to pull that back in line again.”

So, after you’re finished scoffing at the fact that I talk to myself, think about how I did this.  It’s pretty easy.  It’s just exploring with curiosity (and not self-judgment) how things got out of order for myself.  I encourage you to try this and see if part of feeling “busy” all the time is you are putting the wrong things first, second, and third, which means you aren’t getting to the things that are really important to you.

3. Take an Audit of Your Time

I can’t take credit for this one either.  I recently was reminded of it by my pastor.  He was helping some of the leadership in our church think about where we are putting the bulk of our time.  A great way to start this is to get data.  If you’re an analytical person this will seem like a great idea.  If you are more of a person that goes by the “feel” of things, this will seem like a form of torture.  Do it anyway.  Just log each hour of the waking day for a week and count up your sleep time too. What you will be left with is a good snapshot of the discretionary time you have, and I am warning you, it isn’t as much as you think.  Another point my pastor was making when he mentioned taking an audit of your time, is that the average American consumes about 50 hours of media for pleasure on average.  “What the what?!?!?” How is it humanly possible to have this time?  I’ll give you a hint, you are robbing from somewhere else.  Could be less sleep you are getting, no time with your spouse, no fun time with your kids just discipline and necessary caretaking, etc.  So, try taking this audit.  Remember, there are only 168 hours in a week.  If you are sleeping your 8 hours a day, that leaves 112.  If you are working a 40 hour a week job, that leaves 72 hours (3 days of time).  If you are an average American consuming 50 hours of media outside of this time that is ONLY 22 hours left (less than one full day’s time).  So, what are you doing with that 22 hours?  And are you being too hard on yourself for not getting to 60 hours’ worth of things in this 22 hours.  Remember, I didn’t even count in travel time to/from work, daily/weekly household tasks, daily grooming, etc.  I told you it wasn’t a lot of time.  Give yourself a break and go back to #2 and realign yourself with what is really important to you in life.

4. Take Care of You! Schedule it in to Your EVERY DAY!  I Mean It!

All joking aside, self-care is pivotal to all this working.  You may not arrive at the same values I did in the example in #2, but I want you to really think about better prioritizing yourself.  You are a finite resource, just like your measly 22 hours of discretionary time each week (approximately).  If you are not taking care of this resource it gets depleted.  If it gets depleted there is less of it to use.  Math is not my best subject, but even I know if you are only subtracting eventually you go bust.  So, remember to put into yourself.  It doesn’t have to be a lot of time, but I would encourage at least 30 minutes of your day dedicated to doing something that just lifts your soul.  Now this might be media related, like watching your favorite Netflix show, yet I’d encourage you to think outside the box on this one.  Get creative.  Sometimes its 15 extra minutes to take a bath instead of a shower in the morning, or 10 extra minutes to smell the hair of your little one after they have finished their bath as you read them a book before bed, or a phone call to your bestie to laugh your behind off at the latest antics your everyday life brings you.  Whatever it is…do as Nike has trained us to…Just Do It.

5. Last, But Never Least…

You’ve now done a great job of taking assessment of what your priorities are and where your time is going.  You’ve started to change your language about being “busy” and shift your mindset to how to best use your precious time.  You are remembering to honor that your biggest resource can be your biggest vulnerability if you are not attending to it, and you are taking time each day to lift yourself back up and replenish this finite resource.  Now that you’ve got all this going for you, re-arrange your time.  It’s that simple…”Uh Doc. I’m sorry but nothing about this is simple.” Ok, I agree. You have to be intentional on this, but new habits can form in about three weeks.  Take that discretionary time and rearrange it to better fit getting your needs met in the order you value having them met.  Sure, that means some sacrificing, yet it is well worth it.  When we are working in alignment with what our purpose and values are in life, we feel better about our time.  “Busy” becomes just another four-letter word.