It hit me hardest this past week as I watched the news and began to imagine how the healing of the three girls who were abducted would unfold. So much has been shared about it, how teams of specialists have moved in quickly to provide, safety, privacy and mental health clinicians. I don’t want to be negative or leery but I guess I am. I know from both personal and professional experience that trauma of this sort takes way more than a team of experts. Those traumatized young women and their families have a long, long road ahead of them. The journey will be agonizingly hard and painful. It will take many leaps of faith and perhaps moments of helplessness, guilt, perhaps an urge to run away from both the interpersonal pain and the helplessness that comes with watching this type of pain and agony.
So how are families to help loved ones who are often tortured by their mental illness? How do we help the people who long to see the healing journey through but can barely get themselves up off their knees?
First we have to understand what the person in pain needs because many of us don’t and the reasons for this are too numerous to explain here in this blog entry. One of the things that Hillary Clinton spoke of during her presidential campaign in 2007 set off a bell in my head, “I still believe it takes a village to raise a child.” … I didn’t believe she meant just on the campaign trail.
I believe that it also takes a village to get through the challenge of mental illness.
Watching pain is not for the faint of heart and many disorders are chronic—PTSD can be chronic, eating disorders and addiction will always need to be monitored and the biologically based disorders like bi-polar disorder, depressive disorders, borderline personality disorder, schizophrenia, etc. are very often here to stay, sensitive to medication failures and the general ups and that tend to arrive with regularity.
I am not trying to paint a negative picture but to offer one that is colored with reality. These disorders are not ones that are brought on by the sufferer, they are disorders of biology and tragic circumstances. We need to understand. We need to build a village. We need to teach people how to build one.
I’m not finding that the state of the world is what is most perplexing to the 18-25 year olds that I work with. Surprisingly, I don’t hear a lot about the violence around the world and in our own country, or the prospect of never getting a job. Sure, there are many young people — especially those recent grads who are back living at home and for many who have lived away from home for four years, both parent and graduate are understandably not too happy about it. But this doesn’t seem to be the biggest issue.
I feel a strong undercurrent of loneliness and I’m not clear yet what the source of this is. But trust me, it’s pervasive. I love technology so I’m not a complete naysayer when it comes to gadgets and tech stuff. I’m often the first on line to touch, feel and potentially own a few of those nifty things. But none of these things become my sole means of communication.
Amongst young people I hear about their relationships with friends, often cultivated and maintained in long trails of text messages. When trouble arises, it is often carried on in a text and this includes intimate relationships. Romances have ended with a few clipped words “Don’t call me again,” “I can’t do this anymore.” “I’m defriending and blocking your from my Facebook page”. and so it goes.
What happened to looking someone you once cared about in the eyes, reaching out a hand, saying “I’m sorry” in the warm, human way that once was just what you did. The relationship may not go on but I can’t imagine that an edgy text or email helps build strong relationships or makes for healthy ends.
Are my feelings coming from a personal bias about facebook, texting and emailing? I can’t be sure. I do however experience young people as not having enough face time and I don’t mean facebook time. Many of today’s social interactions are discussed and scheduled with a hand held device. I don’t know about you but I hardly ever get a real, human voice when I call someone and I’m on intimate terms with a few select voicemail boxes, often rehearsing my message before I hear the beep.
So I’ve taken to asking my “young” clients how many times they talked to anyone today. I usually get a confused look. Of course they talk to their friends — all the time, sometimes as many as 10x’s a day. And then I ask how many times did two voices actually meet? I’m often told that days can go by.
I am not suggesting we light a bonfire and burn our iphones, androids, ipads and minis but I believe we need to help, facilitate and perhaps re-teach young men and women how to reach out to each other in a more human, less tech dependent way. We have to remind them to call, touch, laugh and cry with each other. We have to stress how important it is to actually speak to someone—in person and knowing when the quick messages via text, email, and voicemail do the trick. I can’t help believing that more personal interactions wouldn’t be healing and in the end, does anyone really believe that technology can replace a warm hug?
Vacations are the best! Except those pictures of yourself? I am the family photographer so I am most often behind the camera rather than in front. But there are those moments when someone takes the camera from me just so I can look back on a trip and see that I was actually there. And there they were—those extra pounds around my waist and on my face and oh how I despised them.
Like most women I struggle with staying at what I consider to be my best weight. I have developed a measure of leniency over the years not only because that “young” weight is unattainable (for the most part) but also because quite frankly, I look older. I once read that Catherine Deneuve said that at some point you have to choose between your face and your a-s. She believed there was no contest and I would have to agree. [Read More...]
You’re between 40 and 60 and lately you’ve beem asking yourself if you are really happy. Prior to this you may have been too busy to think about being happy or fulfilled but suddenly you realize you aren’t—happy that is. It could come slowly with a few inner rumblings that increase over several months or even years but a friend of mine said that she was feeling as if “I got dropped on my head”.
At first you think you are depressed but you aren’t sure why. Midlife musings and questions can certainly trigger feelings of loss, sadness and confusion (and can lead to more serious depression if the issues aren’t acknowledged and worked through). There’s generally a landmark of some kind that gets things rolling—a big birthday, kids leaving for college, moving out, marrying, a job transfer, or a job you are afraid to leave but know you have to and the big one—a divorce.
And then you read something or someone suggests that you are going through a “midlife crisis”. [Read More...]
I believe revisions are a healthy part of life. When I speak about a life revision I am thinking about a process that involves exploring and questioning where you are today and what you imagine your future to be. It’s about asking yourself questions and discovering whether you are being true to yourself–does your life feel like yours and if not, what is it you need to do to make it yours. None of this requires that you make any changes, it’s just your own personal question and answer process that may or may not lead to changes both large and small. Here are some ideas to get you started on your personal exploration and potential revision.
–Assess where you are in your life whether you are 20 or 70.
–Know you can make choices about the future and never, ever, let yourself believe it’s ever too late
–Create some goals
–Chart a new path
–Take tiny steps and set small goals. Clean out a drawer rather than then take on the whole house.
–Do one thing a month you haven’t ever done before
–Keep a journal and write something each week
I recently read this quote in a book by M.J. Ryan called “This Year I Will…” and I was drawn to it–perhaps because I am venturing into the coaching world and coaching focuses on quicker movement, less of the past and a lot planning for the future. It’s essentially less talk and more action. This is not unlike how I practice as a therapist. I often used the addiction example and have the belief that soon after you admit your addiction (you aren’t ready to do much introspection or personal growth without that), you have to get on to the business of stopping the addiction. In other words, you have to do the action piece – namely to stop drinking, stop gambling, stop smoking, etc. [Read More...]
Step 1. Relinquish the need to “win” an argument. Think about this–if someone “wins”, the other person in the relationship loses. In the end, both parties lose. Think of disagreements/arguments as communication errors and just sit and talk. Agree to disagree and find a fair compromise.
Step 2. Do NOT email when you are upset or angry. This is a true relationship destroyer. Emails have an edge to them and if you really want to mend, this is not the medium to do it with.
Step 3. Write a letter to the other in the relationship. Express why you are upset and what you are looking for as a result of your disagreement. Give yourself the freedom to write anything you want in the letter. Now, rip it up. You’ve had the opportunity to vent in a safe way and get some of the anger out. This is like letting some air out of a balloon before it breaks. Venting is not constructive. Name calling is not constructive. Time to settle in and settle down is a gift to the relationship.
Good luck and if you use any of these suggestions feel free to comment.
When I was a child I painfully recall being told I was average. Although I wasn’t completely sure what that meant I had the distinct sense there was nothing (at the moment) different or unique about me that would distinguish me from others. I was as Webster would say average
typical; common; ordinary: “the average person”. And no, this isn’t a blog post about how my parents messed me up and how much therapy I’ve needed to correct it… no, it’s nothing about that at all. It’s about the labels we put upon ourselves as well as the ones we are given by others and how likely we are to begin to identify ourselves with “smart”, “pretty”, “unattractive”, “fat”, “skinny”, ”funny”, “geek”, “nerd”, “shy”, there’s no end to the list of labels. [Read More...]
