Tag Archive for: Family

Your Relationship Bill of Rights

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By Rebecca Matthes,

When we enter into long-term relationships—and certainly marriages—we may keep in our mind a list of the things we’d like to get from (and, one hopes, are willing to give to) a partner. Recent research suggests certain gestures are especially important for fostering satisfaction and are closely associated with couples’ long-term success. Collectively, these can be thought of as a Relationship Bill of Rights.

“Expectations are essential, and if you’re not expecting good stuff, then you very likely won’t get it,” says social psychology professor Eli Finkel, who directs the Relationships and Motivation Lab at Northwestern University and is the author of The All-Or-Nothing Marriage. “We should be honest with ourselves about what things are essential for us to get through the marriage, focus on those things, and let the other things go.”

This goal, he says, shouldn’t be put aside when couples face conflict, because every partner has the right to disagree—and to be imperfect. “It’s constructive to think of difficulties not only as unpleasant circumstances to be endured but also as opportunities to learn about each other and deepen the relationship,” Finkel says. “I’m optimistic about people’s ability to make progress on problems.” But he notes that resolution is more likely if partners’ beliefs about relationships are not based on the theory that people must find the one and only individual who’s perfect for them. The idea that any given partner is “meant to be”—or not—can make someone more likely to discard a relationship when hard times hit, convinced that the search for an ideal mate needs to continue elsewhere.

The following rights have consistently been found to form a baseline that gives couples the best chance of going the distance.

You have the right to your partner’s attention.

Your partner’s attention is likely to improve your satisfaction with a relationship, whether it’s spontaneous—like an unexpected afternoon text that makes you smile—or in response to your requests. A 2017 study on relationship experiences published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology found that on the days when their partners had supported them or said something that made them feel loved, people reported higher relationship quality.

Couples often show attention to each other in the little things they do. Jennyvi Dizon, 37, a fashion designer in New York City, is touched every time her husband of 15 years picks up a treat for her at the grocery store or remembers that she needs almond milk for her breakfast. “He says it’s his job to remember,” she says. “He really believes in the saying, ‘Happy wife, happy life.'” In return, she makes a point of tucking him in when he goes to bed every night, though she herself often doesn’t go to sleep until a few hours later.

How to get it: If your partner is kind, but not naturally attentive, it may help to explain the sort of attention you need and then to give positive feedback when you get it. And if busy schedules conspire to keep you from each other, engineer some together time. As Finkel explains, “Spouses who spend more time together engaged in actual conversation tend to be happier than those who spend less. And spouses who pursue more leisure activities together—including outdoor activities, sports, card games, and travel—are at reduced risk of divorce.”

Proposed amendment: The arrival of a child typically causes couples to take a short-term happiness hit because their attention is diverted from each other to the new addition; newborns in particular tend to be quite vocal about their own rights. New parents spend less time talking or doing activities together, and their relationship satisfaction declines as a result, making this a time to be even more conscious of finding or making moments to focus on each other.

You have the right to a partner who will try to work out your differences.

All long-term relationships encounter sore spots and conflicts. Ignoring these problems won’t make them go away, even if partners do so because they sincerely don’t want to pick a fight. “No relationship can thrive when the two parties hold in frustrations that need to be shared and resolved,” says Leon Seltzer, a clinical psychologist in Del Mar, California. “When couples stop trying to work out their differences and revert to passivity to keep the peace, they hold more and more inside of them and their alienation grows. The frustrations tend to leak out through sarcastic, taunting remarks, thinly veiled criticisms, or increasing inattention to the other’s needs.”

Illustration by Eric Palma
Illustration by Eric Palma

Addressing problems as they arise improves spouses’ psychological well-being and ratings of marital quality, especially for women. One study of 205 married couples found that wives who believed that their husbands did more emotional work were more satisfied with their relationships.

Once differences are out in the open, even those that might have seemed irreconcilable in one’s imagination can often be addressed with a compromise or a conscious agreement to disagree. “You can learn to validate the hardcore differences that exist—and will always exist—between you and your mate,” Seltzer says. Consider a scenario in which one partner is far more extraverted than the other. Rather than sitting at home seething, or endlessly haranguing a husband or wife who doesn’t want to go out, partners who open a conversation might discover that their mate really doesn’t mind if they sometimes socialize without them.

Monica and Melvin Pullen, both 42, of Lititz, Pennsylvania, had been married for about four years, and were expecting their first child, when they bought their first home with the understanding that both would continue to work. However, once their daughter arrived, “I knew immediately that I didn’t want to return to work,” Monica says. But she kept it to herself. After about six months, the family started to feel the financial strain. Finally, she confessed her feelings. “He was fine with my staying home; we would just need to downsize.” As they prepared to do that, a new job came along for Melvin that allowed them to get by without needing to move. Still, Monica says, “the experience taught us to be upfront, open, and honest about what we want, regardless of the outcome.”

How to get it: “The party that initiates the discussion must do so with tact, diplomacy, and restraint—and the willingness to respect the other’s reluctance to engage on a topic that might make them feel very vulnerable,” Seltzer says. If your partner is prone to conflict avoidance or stonewalling, you may need to maneuver around those defense mechanisms: “I know this topic makes you uncomfortable, and that’s the last thing I want, but I think pushing it under the rug is keeping us from being closer. Can we talk about this in a way that helps us both understand why it’s so button-pushing? I want us to be closer and more trusting of each other.”

The discussion should help each of you better understand the other’s needs—and you’re both entitled to a partner who will validate your position, even if they don’t agree with it. “Resolution doesn’t always take the form of one person having to change their views or behavior,” Seltzer says. “It’s empathic understanding that minimizes the conflict.”

Proposed amendment: In some cases, as a couple ages, confronting problems head-on can actually lose some of its positive effect and even turn counterproductive. A 2015 study published in the Journal of Family Psychology suggests that for older wives, more marital “work” is associated with decreased satisfaction with their union. A research team led by Jakob Jensen of East Carolina University proposed that as we age, our marital priorities shift away from conflict resolution and toward maximizing the emotional rewards of maintaining a relationship.

Illustration by Eric Palma
Illustration by Eric Palma

You have the right to a partner who’ll share the load.

This is a right well worth defending, in part because it appears to deliver significant benefits to both partners.

The stark division of household labor that was nearly ubiquitous in households of the past is less common today, with both outside earnings and domestic responsibilities more likely to be shared by partners. A 2018 study, published in Socius and led by Daniel Carlson of the University of Utah, compared national data from the early 1990s and 2006 and found that contemporary couples shared more household tasks than did couples in even the recent past, and that this advantaged many aspects of their relationships, starting with their sex lives. “Sharing housework is associated with greater feelings of fairness, teamwork, and overall relationship quality,” Carlson says. “In particular, feelings of teamwork—communication, cooperation, and shared vision—are important to sexual intimacy.” These feelings foster a partnership based on reciprocity and mutual gratification, he has found, improving a relationship’s quality and lowering the risk of its dissolution.

It isn’t necessary that couples split the work precisely in two, research finds—which is fortunate, because most couples still do not do so. In about 31 percent of families with two parents working full-time, women still handle more household chores and responsibilities; 59 percent report that they share them equally. And in more than half of these families, women continue to do more to handle children’s schedules and activities, according to 2015 data from the Pew Research Center. But Carlson’s work still shows measurable benefits to a couple’s sex life as long as neither partner does more than 65 percent of the domestic work. Partners tend to be satisfied with relationships in which the work is divided, not necessarily equally, Carlson says, but in a way they both feel is fair.

How to get it: Discuss your expectations with your partner. “I would even recommend writing down the tasks that you have and coming up with a plan to divide them and then track their completion,” Carlson says. “Partners—men especially—often don’t see that they are not contributing to the degree they promise, so having something concrete to point to can be helpful.”

“We had a lot of fights about housework,” says Anna Aquino, 40, of Canal Winchester, Ohio. “The majority of it wouldn’t get done or would fall to me. Because I work from home, I understand I can have more to do, but I would get frustrated, and my husband would get annoyed when things weren’t done. It didn’t seem fair to anyone.” The couple finally agreed to post a chore chart on the fridge. “It saves a load of fights,” she says. The day-to-day chores aren’t split down the middle, since Aquino’s husband works more outside the home, but she says both partners are happier now because “it’s pretty fair all around and everyone agreed to it.”

Proposed amendment: When it comes to sharing domestic responsibilities, couples don’t need to aim for a specific target, but should work to find the breakdown that serves their relationship best. “You could have a good relationship with someone doing 100 percent of the household work,” Finkel says. Your partner might actually love cooking, cleaning up, and caring for kids or pets, while you feel more fulfilled by work and hobbies. “If a couple sees that as fair,” Carlson says, “they certainly can be happy.”

Illustration by Eric Palma
Illustration by Eric Palma

You have the right to honesty about sex.

What are partners entitled to in the bedroom? The answer will vary from couple to couple, but the research finds that it’s not necessarily the presence or absence of sexual activity, a specific schedule or frequency, or even the pleasure derived from it that is most associated with relationship satisfaction. What matters is that both partners’ expectations, whatever they are, are met. That’s why two people can sincerely find satisfaction in a sexless relationship: If neither expects sex, nor seeks it, its absence doesn’t affect how they feel about each other. But sexual expectations can and do change over time, and it’s crucial for a couple’s satisfaction that partners communicate shifts in both their desire and their capability.

“It’s the disparity in partner preferences, whether for frequency or type of stimulation, that can potentially result in the greatest unhappiness,” says sex and marital therapist Michael A. Perelman, a professor of psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medicine in New York City. When such a disparity exists, “communication and compromise skills become critical to mutual satisfaction.” Both partners need to be upfront about their expectations and help their partner understand them. From this place, a mutually agreeable plan can be drafted. If never-uttered sexual concerns are leading one partner to question his or her place in the relationship, the other partner has the right to hear about it, no matter how awkward the ensuing conversation may be.

How to get it: Find a comfortable time to talk about the issues, Perelman advises. For some, it might be while relaxing in bed, a setting that can lead to openness and intimacy; for others, he says, such a conversation will best be broached over a glass of wine or a cup of coffee, “in any comfortable place that affords privacy.” Try a gentle opener: “I have a few thoughts about our sex life I’d like to discuss, if that works for you.”

Proposed amendment: Partners should never criticize each other during sexual activity (unless something is uncomfortable or painful). If you’re hesitant to start a conversation, you might unilaterally consult a sex therapist first. “Even if only one person in the couple seeks assistance, it’s highly likely that some relief can be found,” Perelman says.

Illustration by Eric Palma

You have the right to affection.

Sexual passion may wax or wane over time in any long-term relationship, but it’s important that affection carry on. “Giving and receiving affection is associated with feelings of pleasure, acceptance, happiness or contentment, and a sense of being loved or cared for,” says Anita Vangelisti, a communications professor at the University of Texas at Austin who has studied affection’s effects, specifically in the early years of marriage. She has found that hearing “I love you,” and receiving physical affection outside of sexual intercourse, among other behaviors, predicts higher marital satisfaction for both men and women.

While expressions of affection typically become a little less frequent over time, she says, “partners who maintain relatively high levels tend to be happier.” Research on the physiology of affection has also shown that giving and receiving it are associated with the release of oxytocin, as well as the regulation of stress hormones throughout the day, enhancing well-being and enabling each partner to manage stress more successfully.

How to get it: “Ask for it,” Vangelisti says. You can start by giving more affection to your partner. “Once your partner sees you giving them more affection, they may reciprocate.” You can try to arrange more opportunities for affection by planning relaxed time together. “If one or both of you are always busy and rushing around, it’s more difficult to give and receive affection.”

And don’t fear that “manufacturing” affectionate behaviors, or the opportunities for them, will strip them of their power. Research by Brittany Jakubiak of Syracuse University and Brooke Feeney of Carnegie Mellon University has shown that people felt more secure and trusting in a relationship, and more confident that it would endure, after a partner held their hand or threw an arm around their shoulder, even if they were told that the partner had been instructed to show them affection.

Proposed amendment: Be clear about the type of affection you seek and make sure you and your partner both understand how you each define the term. If they think they’re showing affection by taking your car to get washed, while you want hugs and a whispered “I love you,” that’s the kind of misunderstanding that can erode satisfaction with a relationship.

Illustration by Eric Palma
Illustration by Eric Palma

You have the right to the benefit of the doubt.

Relationships flourish when couples attribute the best of intentions to each other all the time. This means that, yes, your partner really should view you through rose-colored glasses, idealizing you in normal circumstances and forgiving you relatively easily when you fall short. “A little bit of positive illusion is better,” Finkel says. “It’s easy to go down rabbit holes of perceived slights, but if we have a general view that our partner is loving and at core a decent person—maybe even more decent than they really are—then when we do have difficulties, we’re better at overcoming them. Some amount of self-delusion is linked to better relationship quality.”

Relationship satisfaction typically starts falling immediately after a couple says “I do,” but many studies have pointed toward a prescription for sustaining it. In just one recent example, Sandra Murray of the University at Buffalo found that partners who continue to idealize their spouse, even somewhat unrealistically, experience less decline in satisfaction with the marriage over three years than people who cannot maintain the same belief.

How to get it: “We have a lot of latitude in how we perceive our partner’s behavior,” Finkel says. If you show up late to an important event, your partner could label you inconsiderate—or remember that you’ve been overwhelmed at work but are still trying to get everything done. If you or your partner tend more toward reflexively blaming the other, try thinking about the situation from the perspective of a neutral third party who wants the best for both of you. “It gets us out of our myopia and gives us a broader perspective,” Finkel says. Implementing some psychological distance can help you and your partner feel less angry about conflicts and should strengthen the relationship over time.

Proposed amendment: Beware of the doormat effect. “We have studies showing that if someone is highly forgiving, with no amends made, or if a partner is always difficult, forgiveness may still have beneficial consequences, but it undermines the aggrieved party’s self-respect,” Finkel says. If a problem festers over time, the relationship is likely to suffer. Minor flaws or occasional missteps can be sugarcoated, but more serious issues must be addressed and ideally resolved.

“It’s a shared responsibility,” Finkel says. Partners need to own up to hurtful things they’ve done and express regret, even if they don’t fully believe they are in the wrong. For the hurt partner, there’s a lot of benefit in both hearing an apology and seeing amends. It can help you both put infractions in the past. “Let them be speed bumps, rather than barricades.”

Illustration by Eric Palma
Illustration by Eric Palma

You have the right to gratitude.

Partners who are grateful for each other, studies have shown, feel more satisfied in their relationships. And even when just one partner feels gratitude—whether on an existential level or for simpler things like being brought a favorite drink—both benefit. Amie Gordon of the University of California, San Francisco calls it a cycle of gratitude. “If you start doing nice things, and your partner picks up on it and feels appreciated, it should inspire their own good feelings,” she says. Gratitude can increase people’s motivation to stay in, and improve, a relationship, and make them more likely to engage in more considerate behaviors, like better listening and sacrificing for their partner. Gordon’s research has shown that more grateful people are likelier to maintain long-term relationships.

A recent study in Social Psychological and Personality Science suggests it’s the feeling of gratitude that makes a difference, not the acts that engender it. Researchers found that people are equally likely to notice a partner’s sacrifice as not, and they are just as likely to see a sacrifice where there is none as they are to correctly note its absence. No matter: When a person believes a partner has sacrificed for them, accurately or not, the benefits of gratitude accrue. And when they fail to detect a sacrifice, their partner feels less satisfied.

How to get it: Your partner is not obligated to keep a gratitude journal or meditate with you on life’s blessings. So how to elicit it? You can prime a partner’s expressions of gratitude by showing your appreciation for them. “If you feel unappreciated or taken for granted, try doing some of the things you wish they would do for you,” Gordon suggests. “It’s a nice way to jumpstart gratitude in a reasonably well-functioning relationship.” If you’re having trouble accessing your own gratitude, think about what life was like before you were with your partner. That can help counter hedonic adaptation—or becoming accustomed to, and perhaps less appreciative of, the benefits they bring to you. When showing your own gratitude, make it personal. “It’s not just, ‘Hey, thanks for taking out the trash.’ Say, ‘You know how much I hate it; you’re so thoughtful for doing the thing that I hate.’ You’re not just thanking them for the act,” Gordon says, “but for the person they are. It bumps it up a notch.”

Proposed amendment: Gratitude shouldn’t be used to gloss over problems such as emotional abuse. “It’s not healthy to try to feel gratitude because, hey, this person didn’t yell at me today, or get mad when they usually do,” Gordon says. No one should use gratitude to prop up a relationship that they should be exiting.

 

https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/articles/201811/your-relationship-bill-rights

Tips For Successful Family Therapy

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For most my life, my mom and I have had a turbulent relationship. Vague reassurances from others that “everyone has family problems” never helped with our nonsensical fighting or how I felt. I never knew what to do, but I knew it had to stop.

Family relationships are sometimes responsible for life’s biggest conflicts. They’re often complicated and can span decades. For many, it’s the steady drip of unresolved arguments and personality clashes that leave lasting feelings of resentment and bitterness. But there is a way to work through this. There is a hopeful course of action—it’s called family therapy.

Giving It A Chance

Family therapy is a collaborative and inclusive process which focuses on the family as a unit. Family therapists are skilled in dealing with a variety of conflicts whether it involves communication issues, estrangement, financial problems, divorce, a death in the family and more.

There might be a time before starting therapy when you won’t want to go. I certainly didn’t. My mom certainly didn’t. The pains of having to sift through years of battles wasn’t appealing. But without confronting the past, we are bound to repeat the same mistakes. Therapy may lead to the resolution you’ve been searching for. It’s important to give it a chance.

Finding The Right Therapist

I knew that the family therapist I chose was effective because within our first few sessions, I felt comfortable. I knew I would be able to open up to her. And I never dreaded talking in session. She also brought up Narcissistic and Borderline Personality Disorder in regards to my mother. This helped me to trust my therapist and her expertise even more, because she was able to spot that early on.

If you feel that a therapist is not effective, it’s okay to keep looking. In my experience, most therapists don’t take it personally. In fact, they encouraged my family to find the right fit for us. Your comfort level and ability to open up are essential in a therapeutic relationship.

Over time, your therapist will learn your family’s communication style. Some families are louder than others, while some fill the minutes with silence. Certain family members may be withdrawn at tense moments, while others might be aggressive. Your therapist will be see these differences and guide each of you accordingly.

How To Have Effective Therapy Sessions

A typical therapy session is 50 minutes, once a week. It’s a short amount of time to work through a lot of issues among multiple people. In order to best use your time with your therapist, here are a few tips to have effective sessions.

  • Prepare prior to therapy. Each family member should jot down questions or issues they would like to discuss.
  • If there is one family member you don’t get along with, carefully decide what you’ll say to them when you have your chance to speak.
  • Remain strong and respectful.
  • Speak calmly.
  • Try not to argue.

You may feel as though your family will never resolve long-standing conflicts. But it is possible. With listening and restraint, your family can reaffirm its bond and clear up old disagreements and hurt. Or you may decide it’s time to move on. For me, the decision to lessen contact with my mother, while controversial to some, was the right choice. I am no longer consumed with guilt about not being able to get along. Without therapy, I know I would still have an extremely close and volatile relationship with her.

Because it was such a positive and powerful experience for me, I always recommend family therapy to others. Even the more exhausting and uncomfortable sessions were necessary. Without them, I wouldn’t have been able to identify toxic patterns of behavior, understand my depression, or take control and realize what I needed to do in order to change my life.

There is nothing to fear about family therapy—it’s a safe place to work through negative feelings and move forward. Any decisions you make with your family will be based off careful discussion and thought. When I look back now, I know I wouldn’t have made the same choices without the support of my therapist.
Amanda C. Dacquel is a mental health writer and advocate. In 2014, she started TheCurrentCollective.com to share mental health experiences, resources and news. You can connect with her at AmandaDacquel.com.

6 Ways You Can Help A Loved One On Their Healing Journey

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Take a moment to consider all the people in your life: your coworkers, friends, family. At any given time, 1 in 5 of these individuals is living with a mental health condition. You may have noticed them struggling, but if you’re not a trained mental health professional, you may not have known how to help.

However, you can help. You can be supportive and encouraging during their mental health journey. Here are a few tips on supporting the mental health of those you love.

1) Educate Yourself

There are hundreds of mental health concerns; your job is not to become an expert in all of them. When you do notice potentially troublesome symptoms, it’s helpful to determine if those signs may indicate a mental illness. Familiarizing yourself with common symptoms can help you understand and convey your worries. You may also benefit from expanding your knowledge by taking a course or joining a support group of individuals who can relate to the hardships you and your loved one may be facing.

2) Remain Calm

Recognizing that a loved one might need help can be daunting, but try to remain calm—impulsively approaching the individual might make you seem insensitive or aggressive. Try to be mindful and patient. Take time to consider your loved one’s symptoms and your relationship before acting. Writing down how you feel and what you want to say may be useful to help you recognize and understand your thoughts and feelings, and help you slow down while connecting to your good intentions.

3) Be Respectful And Patient

Before talking to someone about their mental health, reflect on your intention to promote healing and keep that in mind. Ask how you can help in their recovery process and be cautious not to come off as controlling. While encouraging a person to seek help is okay, it is not appropriate to demand it of them. Let them know that if they ever wish to talk in the future, you’re available.

4) Listen

Give your loved one the gift of having someone who cares about their unique experience. Don’t bypass their narrative by making connections to others’ experiences. You might recognize a connection to your own experience, however, sharing your story prematurely may undermine their experience. You may be prepared with hotlines, books, or a list of community providers, and although these are excellent sources of support, it’s important to take time to thoroughly listen before giving advice. It’s a privilege to have someone share intimate details of their mental health. Be present and listen before moving forward.

5) Provide Support

One of the best ways to help is to simply ask how. It’s not helpful to try to be someone’s therapist, but you can still help. People don’t like being told what to do—asking how you can help empowers them to take charge of their recovery, while also letting them know you are a source of support.

6) Establish Boundaries

As you support your struggling loved one, it’s important to consider both your boundaries and theirs. When trying to help, you are susceptible to neglecting yourself in the process; boundaries will help you maintain your self-care, while also empowering your loved one. Be sure you’re not working harder than they are at their own healing process.

As a caring person, you may grapple between wanting to encourage and support your loved one while wanting to honor their process and independence. Unfortunately, there are no foolproof guidelines for helping your loved one on their journey towards recovery. However, you can connect to your intentions, convey compassion and maintain your own self-care while empowering your loved one regardless of where they are in their healing journey.

By Shainna Ali

https://www.nami.org/Blogs/NAMI-Blog/March-2018/6-Ways-You-Can-Help-a-Loved-One-on-Their-Healing-J

5 No-Phone Zones for Parents and Kids Alike

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Places like the dinner table can be designated phone-free for the whole family.
Marie D. De Jesus/Houston Chronicle, via Associated Press

 How can we get our kids to put down their phones when they see us on ours so often?

A 2016 survey by Common Sense Media, a nonprofit children’s advocacy and media ratings organization, asked almost 1,800 parents of children aged 8 to 18 about screen time and electronic media use by the parents. The average amount of time that parents spent with screen media of all kinds (computers, TVs, smartphones, e-readers) every day: 9 hours and 22 minutes. And on average, only an hour and 39 minutes of that was work-related; 7 hours and 43 minutes were personal.

Maybe that’s one reason you hear more and more often the recommendation that families delineate specific screen-free times and places in their lives. James P. Steyer, the chief executive of Common Sense Media, cited the idea of “sacred spaces” advocated by Sherry Turkle, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and author of the 2015 book “Reclaiming Conversation: The Power of Talk in a Digital Age.”

It’s just as important to regulate our own use of devices and put them aside for screen-free periods as it is to ask our children to disconnect. And it certainly adds spice to family life if children understand that the same rules apply for all ages: that Dad will get grief for surreptitiously checking his phone under the dinner table and Mom has to park hers in the designated recharging zone for the night just as the children do.

Here are my own top five sacred spaces, but I’ll tell you frankly that they’re very much “aspirational” for me; I have a long way to go before I’m a good example.

1. In the Bed

Keeping TVs out of children’s bedrooms and bedtimes is an old pediatric recommendation from back in the day when TV was the screen we worried about most. Now we also stress keeping smartphones out of their beds, but many of us as adults also struggle with this imperative, which pretty much everyone agrees is critical for improved sleep and therefore improved health. Those of us with children out of the home, of course, tell ourselves that the phone has to come into the bedroom in case a child needs to call — but the phone can sleep on the other side of the room, not on the night stand.

2. At the Table

If the family gathers around the dinner table, basic table manners dictate no digital participants. And yes, that means parents get in trouble if they lapse, and you don’t get to use the old let-me-just-Google-this-important-and-educational-fact strategy to settle family debates and questions of history, literature, or old movie trivia, because everyone knows what else you’ll do once you take out the phone.

3. Reading a Book

I don’t read books well if I’m toggling back and forth to email. That’s O.K. for other kinds of reading, maybe, but not for books. If you made a New Year’s resolution to read more books or you’re going to try for family reading time, you can allow e-readers, but you might keep other screens at a distance.

4. In the Outdoors

It’s definitely worth picking some outdoor experiences that are going to be screen-free. One of the dangers of carrying our screens with us wherever we go is that wherever we go, the landscape is the same — it’s a conscious decision to go outside and see what there is to see, even if that means losing the chance to take a photo now and then. It may also work to put phones on airplane mode for travel and family activities, so they can be used only as cameras – or for maps or emergency calls if needed.

5. In the Car

This is a tougher one for many families, since screens in the car can be so helpful on long rides, especially with siblings in proximity. But time in the car can also be remarkably intimate family time (yes, I know, not always in a good way). Some of the most unguarded conversations of the middle school and adolescent years take place when a parent is chauffeuring, so it’s probably worth trying for some designated screenless miles. I assume that I don’t have to say that the driver should not be looking at a screen — but the parent riding shotgun in the front also has to play by the rules.

Mr. Steyer said his organization’s survey showed that parents are paying attention to the ways that their children use screen media, and that they see it as their responsibility to monitor and regulate their children’s use of technology. In fact, two-thirds of the parents felt that such monitoring was more important than respecting their children’s privacy.

Parents’ role has to include awareness and also a willingness to “use media and technology together whenever you can,” Mr. Steyer said; “it’s good for parents to watch and play and listen with their kids and experience media and technology with them and ask them questions about what they see and hear.”

In a new policy on screen media use by school-age children and adolescents released last October, the American Academy of Pediatrics suggested that families develop and regularly update a family media use plan, using an online tool that takes into account the individual family’s patterns and goals and lets you designate screen-free times and places. That can be helpful for screen-loving children and for their screen-loving parents as well.

There’s No Such Thing as Equal Parenting

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I have a feminist marriage, except I also don’t.

I’ve been meaning to write this piece for weeks, but I’ve been too busy parenting. In fact, I’m only starting this after the dog’s been walked and fed, the baby’s had some food placed optimistically in front of him and been convinced to go to sleep, and the dishes have been (mostly) done. There’s a pile of clean, unfolded laundry in the hamper and another wet one festering in the washer, but I’m choosing to ignore both. I know that if I take those five minutes to put the damp clothes in the dryer and another 15 to fold the dry ones, it’ll somehow be 30 minutes before I’m back at my computer, and this sliver of nighttime quiet is precious, precious time.

My husband and I didn’t give much thought to what would happen when our careers ran up against the challenges of having a child. We had muddled through the domestic stuff fairly decently until then―or at least that’s how it seems in retrospect. And then we dropped a kid into the mix and what seemed like occasionally uneven scales tilted dramatically in one direction. I don’t mean to imply that my husband doesn’t help. He’s a modern, enlightened, all-around good sport who is especially receptive when handed to-do lists, although he often greets them with an “I’ll do my best”―a phrase I’ve come to loathe for its impervious good intentions.

Man washing dishes

GETTY GEORGE DOUGLAS

But the truth―and he would not contest it―is that I do more. Once, in a fit of peevishness, I tracked every minute he and I devoted to household work and tallied the figure at the end of the week. I had done over 12 hours, my husband just over five. I accounted for our totals for a few more weeks and then gave up because of―what else?―lack of time. Was this tabulating ungenerous and shrewish? Probably. Did that make its conclusions any less annoying? No.

The disparities are augmented on nights like tonight when he’s across the ocean tending to business, and I’m at home white-knuckling it on my own. Because of some combination of social, professional, and financial pressures, he travels more for work, works longer hours, and when, in a few weeks’ time, we have our second child, I’ll take about 12 weeks of leave from my job and he’ll take two.

We are far from alone, although we are, in many ways, on the extremely fortunate end of the spectrum. We have a babysitter who works pretty much full-time Monday through Friday, allowing us both to have careers, and local grandparents who help out with childcare. We’re able to pay someone to clean our apartment every now and then and someone to come fix cabinet doors that won’t stay shut. All this means that we spend less time than the average American woman or man on household work, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics: She clocks in at 2.6 hours a day; he logs 2.1. (Childcare, in the BLS’s metrics, is broken out as a separate category, but women still exceed men in those responsibilities.)

WAS THIS TABULATING UNGENEROUS AND SHREWISH? PROBABLY. DID THAT MAKE ITS CONCLUSIONS ANY LESS ANNOYING? NO.

But all that good fortune doesn’t stop me from harboring resentment about the disparity in our household labors and wondering if the dream of an egalitarian marriage―hell, even the honest attempt―inevitably collapses under the responsibilities of child-rearing, when social pressures amplify and leisure time diminishes. Because, I thought in some subconscious section of my brain that I’d married a Marty Ginsburg (husband of Ruth Bader) or an Andrew Moravcsik (husband of Anne-Marie Slaughter), a man with ambition and drive but also a willingness to put his own career on the back-burner when his wife’s was taking off.

Ruth Bader Ginsburg being sworn into the Supreme Court
Ruth Bader Ginsburg, with her husband in the background, as she’s sworn into the Supreme Court.
http://www.elle.com/life-love/news/a31821/egalitarian-parenting/

33 Things All Daughters of Strong Women Will Relate to

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My mom is not only a strong mother, but a strong woman.

She’s the woman who packed up her tiny life to move to NYC at 16 years-old. She’s the woman who had a special needs child, and then another child after that – on her own.

She’s the woman who started her own business with no college degree, and made it to the top in a man’s world. She is strength and dignity and beauty all wrapped into one.

Any girl who grew up with a mother like this – the kind who won’t take no for an answer; the kind who will drive two hours to pick you up in the middle of the night; the kind who can solve any problem with a phone call – has learned a few things from her.

Mom’s words will always be the loudest ones in your head. They will always ring clear when you need that extra push from her tenacious, compassionate, lionesse-heart. From being her daughter, she has taught you so much about being a woman:

  1. When someone tells you that you can’t do something, do it anyways. And do it well.
  2. You can go it alone. And it’s better to be alone than unhappy with someone else.
  3. Don’t apologize for being successful. Never apologize for being great.
  4. Or for having a voice. It’s better to speak up and be wrong, than to not speak up at all.
  5. Empower other women, don’t compete with them.
  6. Brush it off. There will always be people who put you down, but don’t mind them. Their shittiness is more about them than it is about you.
  7. Do things that make you feel pretty. When you feel beautiful inside, you look beautiful outside.
  8. Be humble. Big-headed people are just insecure.
  9. Always have a little black dress in your closet. And sometimes two.
  10. Don’t let other people’s accomplishments intimidate you. Use it to feed your hunger for success.
  11. Do your squats. Feel blessed to have that big booty.
  12. Don’t go to sleep with your makeup on. In 20 years you’ll be thankful.
  13. It’s okay to love yourself. It doesn’t make you narcissistic; it makes you confident.
  14. In order to lift yourself up, don’t knock someone else down. It won’t get you anywhere bigger, better, or faster.
  15. Don’t compare yourself to other women. It won’t make you better.
  16. Take pride in being a woman. We’re so much luckier than men are. *wink*
  17. Your body’s a temple. Respect it; be kind to it; love it.
  18. Use condoms. Seriously.
  19. Do your kegels. Seriously.
  20. Don’t write your story before you’ve even opened the book. Things change, plans change; life happens.
  21. Don’t let boys be mean to you. Don’t cry over anyone who wouldn’t cry over you.
  22. Forgiving someone doesn’t make you a doormat. It makes you healthy.
  23. And apologizing doesn’t make you weak. It shows growth.
  24. Accept a compliment with a smile. But inside you can scream FUCK. YEAH.
  25. If a man wants to give you a gift, let him. And no, it doesn’t mean you owe him something.
  26. It’s okay to cry. And to laugh, and to scream. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
  27. Sleeping around won’t make you feel good. Your body should only be shared with the special ones.
  28. Focus your energy on making yourself better, not making others worse.
  29. Wear red lipstick, and own it.
  30. If someone wrongs you, let it go, and move on. Success is the best revenge.
  31. Primping should feel like a treat, not like a job.
  32. Don’t aim to be perfect, aim to be human.
  33. The three best things in life are chocolate, champagne, and sex.And that’s the truth.

http://www.puckermob.com/relationships/all-daughters-of-strong-women-will-relate-to

It Didn’t Start With You: How Inherited Family Trauma Shapes Who We Are

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Trigger Warning: Self Harm, Suicide

A well-documented feature of trauma, one familiar to many, is our inability to articulate what happens to us. We not only lose our words, but something happens with our memory as well. During a traumatic incident, our thought processes become scattered and disorganized in such a way that we no longer recognize the memories as belonging to the original event. Instead, fragments of memory, dispersed as images, body sensations, and words, are stored in our unconscious and can become activated later by anything even remotely reminiscent of the original experience. Once they are triggered, it is as if an invisible rewind button has been pressed, causing us to reenact aspects of the original trauma in our day-to-day lives. Unconsciously, we could find ourselves reacting to certain people, events, or situations in old, familiar ways that echo the past.

Sigmund Freud identified this pattern more than one hundred years ago. Traumatic reenactment, or “repetition compulsion,” as Freud coined it, is an attempt of the unconscious to replay what’s unresolved, so we can “get it right.” This unconscious drive to relive past events could be one of the mechanisms at work when families repeat unresolved traumas in future generations.

Freud’s contemporary Carl Jung also believed that what remains unconscious does not dissolve, but rather resurfaces in our lives as fate or fortune. “Whatever does not emerge as Consciousness,” he said, “returns as Destiny.” In other words, we’re likely to keep repeating our unconscious patterns until we bring them into the light of awareness. Both Jung and Freud noted that whatever is too difficult to process does not fade away on its own, but rather is stored in our unconscious.

Freud and Jung each observed how fragments of previously blocked, suppressed, or repressed life experience would show up in the words, gestures, and behaviors of their patients. For decades to follow, therapists would see clues such as slips of the tongue, accident patterns, or dream images as messengers shining a light into the unspeakable and unthinkable regions of their clients’ lives.

Recent advances in imaging technology have allowed researchers to unravel the brain and bodily functions that “misfire” or break down during overwhelming episodes. Bessel van der Kolk is a Dutch psychiatrist known for his research on post-traumatic stress. He explains that during a trauma, the speech center shuts down, as does the medial prefrontal cortex, the part of the brain responsible for experiencing the present moment. He describes the “speechless terror” of trauma as the experience of being at a “loss for words”, a common occurrence when brain pathways of remembering are hindered during periods of threat or danger. “When people relive their traumatic experiences,” he says, “the frontal lobes become impaired and, as result, they have trouble thinking and speaking. They are no longer capable of communicating to either themselves or to others precisely what’s going on.”

Still, all is not silent: words, images, and impulses that fragment following a traumatic event reemerge to form a secret language of our suffering we carry with us. Nothing is lost. The pieces have just been rerouted.

Emerging trends in psychotherapy are now beginning to point beyond the traumas of the individual to include traumatic events in the family and social history as a part of the whole picture. Tragedies varying in type and intensity—such as abandonment, suicide and war, or the early death of a child, parent, or sibling—can send shock waves of distress cascading from one generation to the next. Recent developments in the fields of cellular biology, neurobiology, epigenetics, and developmental psychology underscore the importance of exploring at least three generations of family history in order to understand the mechanism behind patterns of trauma and suffering that repeat.

The following story offers a vivid example. When I first met Jesse, he hadn’t had a full night’s sleep in more than a year. His insomnia was evident in the dark shadows around his eyes, but the blankness of his stare suggested a deeper story. Though only twenty, Jesse looked at least ten years older. He sank onto my sofa as if his legs could no longer bear his weight.

Jesse explained that he had been a star athlete and a straight-A student, but that his persistent insomnia had initiated a downward spiral of depression and despair. As a result, he dropped out of college and had to forfeit the baseball scholarship he’d worked so hard to win. He desperately sought help to get his life back on track. Over the past year, he’d been to three doctors, two psychologists, a sleep clinic, and a naturopathic physician. Not one of them, he related in a monotone, was able to offer any real insight or help. Jesse, gazing mostly at the floor as he shared his story, told me he was at the end of his rope.

When I asked whether he had any ideas about what might have triggered his insomnia, he shook his head. Sleep had always come easily for Jesse. Then, one night just after his nineteenth birthday, he woke suddenly at 3:30 a.m. He was freezing, shivering, unable to get warm no matter what he tried. Three hours and several blankets later, Jesse was still wide awake. Not only was he cold and tired, he was seized by a strange fear he had never experienced before, a fear that something awful could happen if he let himself fall back to sleep. If I go to sleep, I’ll never wake up. Every time he felt himself drifting off, the fear would jolt him back into wakefulness. The pattern repeated itself the next night, and the night after that. Soon insomnia became a nightly ordeal. Jesse knew his fear was irrational, yet he felt helpless to put an end to it.

I listened closely as Jesse spoke. What stood out for me was one unusual detail—he’d been extremely cold, “freezing” he said, just prior to the first episode. I began to explore this with Jesse, and asked him if anyone on either side of the family suffered a trauma that involved being “cold,” or being “asleep,” or being “nineteen.”

Jesse revealed that his mother had only recently told him about the tragic death of his father’s older brother—an uncle he never knew he had. Uncle Colin was only nineteen when he froze to death checking power lines in a storm just north of Yellowknife in the Northwest Territories of Canada. Tracks in the snow revealed that he had been struggling to hang on. Eventually, he was found facedown in a blizzard, having lost consciousness from hypothermia. His death was such a tragic loss that the family never spoke his name again. Now, three decades later, Jesse was unconsciously reliving aspects of Colin’s death—specifically, the terror of letting go into unconsciousness. For Colin, letting go meant death. For Jesse, falling asleep must have felt the same.

Making the connection was a turning point for Jesse. Once he grasped that his insomnia had its origin in an event that occurred thirty years earlier, he finally had an explanation for his fear of falling asleep. The process of healing could now begin. With tools Jesse learned in our work together, which will be detailed later in this book, he was able to disentangle himself from the trauma endured by an uncle he’d never met, but whose terror he had unconsciously taken on as his own. Not only did Jesse feel freed from the heavy fog of insomnia, he gained a deeper sense of connection to his family, present and past.

In an attempt to explain stories such as Jesse’s, scientists are now able to identify biological markers— evidence that traumas can and do pass down from one generation to the next. Rachel Yehuda, professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at Mount Sinai School of Medicine in New York, is one of the world’s leading experts in post-traumatic stress, a true pioneer in this field. In numerous studies, Yehuda has examined the neurobiology of PTSD in Holocaust survivors and their children. Her research on cortisol in particular (the stress hormone that helps our body return to normal after we experience a trauma) and its effects on brain function has revolutionized the understanding and treatment of PTSD worldwide. (People with PTSD relive feelings and sensations associated with a trauma despite the fact that the trauma occurred in the past. Symptoms include depression, anxiety, numbness, insomnia, nightmares, frightening thoughts, and being easily startled or “on edge.”)

Yehuda and her team found that children of Holocaust survivors who had PTSD were born with low cortisol levels similar to their parents, predisposing them to relive the PTSD symptoms of the previous generation. Her discovery of low cortisol levels in people who experience an acute traumatic event has been controversial, going against the long-held notion that stress is associated with high cortisol levels. Specifically, in cases of chronic PTSD, cortisol production can become suppressed, contributing to the low levels measured in both survivors and their children.

Yehuda discovered similar low cortisol levels in war veterans, as well as in pregnant mothers who developed PTSD after being exposed to the World Trade Center attacks, and in their children. Not only did she find that the survivors in her study produced less cortisol, a characteristic they can pass on to their children, she notes that several stress-related psychiatric disorders, including PTSD, chronic pain syndrome, and chronic fatigue syndrome, are associated with low blood levels of cortisol. Interestingly, 50 to 70 percent of PTSD patients also meet the diagnostic criteria for major depression or another mood or anxiety disorder.

Yehuda’s research demonstrates that you and I are three times more likely to experience symptoms of PTSD if one of our parents had PTSD, and as a result, we’re likely to suffer from depression or anxiety. She believes that this type of generational PTSD is inherited rather than occurring from our being exposed to our parents’ stories of their ordeals. Yehuda was one of the first researchers to show how descendants of trauma survivors carry the physical and emotional symptoms of traumas they do not directly experience.

That was the case with Gretchen. After years of taking antidepressants, attending talk and group therapy sessions, and trying various cognitive approaches for mitigating the effects of stress, her symptoms of depression and anxiety remained unchanged.

Gretchen told me she no longer wanted to live. For as long as she could remember, she had struggled with emotions so intense she could barely contain the surges in her body. Gretchen had been admitted several times to a psychiatric hospital where she was diagnosed as bipolar with a severe anxiety disorder. Medication brought her slight relief, but never touched the powerful suicidal urges that lived inside her. As a teenager, she would self-injure by burning herself with the lit end of a cigarette. Now, at thirty-nine, Gretchen had had enough. Her depression and anxiety, she said, had prevented her from ever marrying and having children. In a surprisingly matter-of-fact tone of voice, she told me that she was planning to commit suicide before her next birthday.

Listening to Gretchen, I had the strong sense that there must be significant trauma in her family history. In such cases, I find it’s essential to pay close attention to the words being spoken for clues to the traumatic event underlying a client’s symptoms.

When I asked her how she planned to kill herself, Gretchen said that she was going to vaporize herself. As incomprehensible as it might sound to most of us, her plan was literally to leap into a vat of molten steel at the mill where her brother worked. “My body will incinerate in seconds,” she said, staring directly into my eyes, “even before it reaches the bottom.”

I was struck by her lack of emotion as she spoke. Whatever feeling lay beneath appeared to have been vaulted deep inside. At the same time, the words vaporize and incinerate rattled inside me. Having worked with many children and grandchildren whose families were affected by the Holocaust, I’ve learned to let their words lead me. I wanted Gretchen to tell me more.

I asked if anyone in her family was Jewish or had been involved in the Holocaust. Gretchen started to say no, but then stopped herself and recalled a story about her grandmother. She had been born into a Jewish family in Poland, but converted to Catholicism when she came to the United States in 1946 and married Gretchen’s grandfather. Two years earlier, her grandmother’s entire family had perished in the ovens at Auschwitz. They had literally been gassed—engulfed in poisonous vapors—and incinerated. No one in Gretchen’s immediate family ever spoke to her grandmother about the war, or about the fate of her siblings or her parents. Instead, as is often the case with such extreme trauma, they avoided the subject entirely.

Gretchen knew the basic facts of her family history, but had never connected it to her own anxiety and depression. It was clear to me that the words she used and the feelings she described didn’t originate with her, but had in fact originated with her grandmother and the family members who lost their lives.

As I explained the connection, Gretchen listened intently. Her eyes widened and color rose in her cheeks. I could tell that what I said was resonating. For the first time, Gretchen had an explanation for her suffering that made sense to her.

To help her deepen her new understanding, I invited her to imagine standing in her grandmother’s shoes, represented by a pair of foam rubber footprints that I placed on the carpet in the center of my office. I asked her to imagine feeling what her grandmother might have felt after having lost all her loved ones. Taking it even a step further, I asked her if she could literally stand on the footprints as her grandmother, and feel her grandmother’s feelings in her own body. Gretchen reported sensations of overwhelming loss and grief, aloneness and isolation. She also experienced the profound sense of guilt that many survivors feel, the sense of remaining alive while loved ones have been killed.

In order to process trauma, it’s often helpful for clients to have a direct experience of the feelings and sensations that have been submerged in the body. When Gretchen was able to access these sensations, she realized that her wish to annihilate herself was deeply entwined with her lost family members. She also realized that she had taken on some element of her grandmother’s desire to die. As Gretchen absorbed this understanding, seeing the family story in a new light, her body began to soften, as if something inside her that had long been coiled up could now relax.

As with Jesse, Gretchen’s recognition that her trauma lay buried in her family’s unspoken history was merely the first step in her healing process. An intellectual understanding by itself is rarely enough for a lasting shift to occur. Often, the awareness needs to be accompanied by a deeply felt visceral experience. We’ll explore further the ways in which healing becomes fully integrated so that the wounds of previous generations can finally be released.

An Unexpected Family Inheritance

A boy may have his grandpa’s long legs and a girl may have her mother’s nose, but Jesse had inherited his uncle’s fear of never waking, and Gretchen carried the family’s Holocaust history in her depression. Sleeping inside each of them were fragments of traumas too great to be resolved in one generation.

When those in our family have experienced unbearable traumas or have suffered with immense guilt or grief, the feelings can be overwhelming and can escalate beyond what they can manage or resolve. It’s human nature; when pain is too great, people tend to avoid it. Yet when we block the feelings, we unknowingly stunt the necessary healing process that can lead us to a natural release.

Sometimes pain submerges until it can find a pathway for expression or resolution. That expression is often found in the generations that follow and can resurface as symptoms that are difficult to explain. For Jesse, the unrelenting cold and shivering did not appear until he reached the age that his Uncle Colin was when he froze to death. For Gretchen, her grandmother’s anxious despair and suicidal urges had been with her for as long as she could remember. These feelings became so much a part of her life that no one ever thought to consider that the feelings didn’t originate with her.

Currently, our society does not provide many options to help people like Jesse and Gretchen who carry remnants of inherited family trauma. Typically they might consult a doctor, psychologist, or psychiatrist and receive medications, therapy, or some combination of both. But although these avenues might bring some relief, generally they don’t provide a complete solution.

Not all of us have traumas as dramatic as Gretchen’s or Jesse’s in our family history. However, events such as the death of an infant, a child given away, the loss of one’s home, or even the withdrawal of a mother’s attention can all have the effect of collapsing the walls of support and restricting the flow of love in our family. With the origin of these traumas in view, long-standing family patterns can finally be laid to rest. It’s important to note that not all effects of trauma are negative. In the next chapter we’ll learn about epigenetic changes—the chemical modifications that occur in our cells as a result of a traumatic event.

According to Rachel Yehuda, the purpose of an epigenetic change is to expand the range of ways we respond in stressful situations, which she says is a positive thing. “Who would you rather be in a war zone with?” she asks. “Somebody that’s had previous adversity [and] knows how to defend themselves? Or somebody that has never had to fight for anything?” Once we understand what biologic changes from stress and trauma are meant to do, she says, “We can develop a better way of explaining to ourselves what our true capabilities and potentials are.”

Viewed in this way, the traumas we inherit or experience firsthand not only can create a legacy of distress, but also can forge a legacy of strength and resilience that can be felt for generations to come.

https://www.scienceandnonduality.com/an-excerpt-from-it-didnt-start-with-you-how-inherited-family-trauma-shapes-who-we-are-and-how-to-end-the-cycle-viking-april-2016-by-mark-wolynn/