Posted Oct 07, 2017

By Hal Shorey, Ph.D.

Identify Underlying Relationship Issues.

My last round of blog posts centered on the idea that you can intentionally change your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors around relationships.  In this article about relationship issues, we discuss understanding your attachment style and the styles of the people you are in relationship with. Each attachment style deferentially impacts how you perceive (or ignore) interpersonal threats and challenges, the quality and intensity of your emotional reactions, and the behaviors you enact to defend yourself and regulate your emotions. By focusing on each of these areas of functioning, you can get more of what you want, and get less of what you don’t want, in your relationships with others.

In this post and those to follow, I am going to focus, not on eliminating conflict in relationships, but on helping to manage it and have it be productive. In order to do this, we need  to learn how to break those “stuck points” that keep us time and time again getting  mired in hurtful interactions.

In order to change your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors in relationships it will serve you to focus less on being right and more on what works. Consider being a pragmatist.

Time and time again in working with my clients, the issue of being right rises as perhaps the most salient factor that escalates and maintains interpersonal conflict. This is most evident in couples therapy, but the same issues apply in friendships as well as relationships at work.

In the early phases of working with a couple or family, my focus is usually on identifying the core themes that underlie the conflict. By themes, I am not talking about what each person is saying to the other, I am talking about the deep meaning underlying what they are saying. At first the themes seem complex. But, once understood, they are usually straight forward and simple. Once the simpler core themes are uncovered, changing the interaction pattern for the better becomes less daunting for everyone.

Anything can set off an argument when both parties are invested in being right and preventing the other party from getting something over on them.

For example, one member of a couple might say, “He always does what he wants… has his way…He doesn’t care what I think.” The other person, feeling misunderstood and falsely accused, might respond, “That is so not true. Just last week I asked you where you wanted to go to dinner and we went there.”  Our first person then continues, “Yeah, but that’s just because I gave you such a hard time.” The second person, now feeling flushed in the face, escalates: “That’s a bunch of BS…..” And a few minutes later, voices are raised, and the pair is making accusations and counterpoints about some other event that happened two years ago. Before you know it, both parties are feeling hurt, angry, and wounded, and the argument often ends when someone shuts down or exits the room in a furor.

The point here is that neither member of the couple is actually hearing what the other person is saying. And this is where knowing the other person’s attachment style again becomes important in relationship issues. If we knew that the person had a preoccupied attachment style, we might realize that what they were saying was “I’m angry and worry that he doesn’t care much about me anymore.” We can infer this because preoccupied people are inter personally focused, worry about security in relationships, and register any act that could be construed as uncaring as a threat.

Based on our hypothetical couple’s discussion, we might also infer that the second person has a dismissing attachment style. He responds to whether the objective facts are correct. He is most concerned with whether his partner is misrepresenting the facts or falsely accusing him. But, he knows he is right, so he cannot allow this transgression and assault on his rationality to stand. This reminds me of an old joke that goes: “I thought I was wrong once, but I was mistaken.”

Our embattled dismissing partner may come back time and time to the evidence… facts of the interactions and recounted events.  His partner may come back time and time again to saying that he just doesn’t care about her or what she thinks. Before you know it, after dredging up multiple examples from years past, he is accusing her of being neurotic and crazy and she is accusing him of being self-centered, callous, and out of touch.

So, what happened to promote relationship issues?  Her message is, “I am feeling distance between us and want to know that you still cherish me.” His message is, “You are telling me that I am wrong about events that I am recounting accurately. You are trying to alter the facts to make me out to be the bad guy. You are saying that I am no good and stupid.”

Consider whether you and your partner are actually having two separate but parallel conversations.

We all know these people. They could be your favorite neighbors. They could be you or me. And, the only fact we can know for sure is that they are both right. In my own interactions with my wife, she has at times told me:

“Don’t listen to what I say, listen to what I mean.” 

Even though I am an attachment theory expert, I have to confess that it took me a couple of years to get her meaning here. In my example, if our dismissing friend could hear what his partner meant (“I’m sad and worry that you might not care as much about me anymore”), he may have been able to be on the same wavelength with her and respond accordingly. He could have replied, “I really care about you and I’m sorry that the way I interact with you sometimes doesn’t leave you feeling that way.”

Instead, his focus on the facts shows her that “he just doesn’t get it.”

He could also ask himself this question:

“What would happen if I let my partner be right?”

In other words, would he lose anything if he didn’t fight back? What would happen if he thought, “Okay. I’m going to let her get this one over on me.”

Instead, he attempts to prove to her that she is wrong about the facts… as if this would make her retract her statement… as if her knowing her error would lead her to cancel out her sad feelings or thoughts that he doesn’t care. Knowledge of human nature, however, tells us that emotions are never wrong (you are feeling what you are feeling, no matter what anyone else says). His continuing to argue the case of his “rightness” just further invalidates (i.e., you don’t have a right to feel what you are feeling) her and confirms her suspicion that he is out of touch and doesn’t care about her feelings. Now, dismissing people are pretty logical. They like rational thought processes and should be able to see that it just isn’t rational to argue to win here unless the goal is to create more distance and strife in the relationship.

So, let the other person have this one. Let go and don’t worry about how right you are. It won’t hurt you and could even give you more of what you want… a healthier and happier relationship.

Posted Sep 17, 2017

By F. Diane Barth, L.C.S.W

When You Feel Like Trust is Missing

We live in a time when everyone is talking about trust and no one seems to be feeling much of it. Have you, like many others, lost faith in the government, your relationships, and maybe even yourself?

Before we talk about what you can do about this lack of trust, let’s talk about what trust means. The Merriam Webster online dictionary  says it’s “assured reliance on the character, ability, strength, or truth of someone or something.” It involves placing our confidence in someone or something; and it also involves hope.

Now, let’s talk about trust and emotional and psychological development. Consider this scenario: A four-year-old boy stands hesitantly on the side of a pool. His mother is in the water in front of him. “Come on,” she says. “I’m here. I’ll catch you.” He hesitates and she adds, “I’m getting tired and cold. Either jump or don’t. I’ll catch you.” He says, “You’ll catch me, right?” She says, “Yes, I said I would catch you.” “Okay,” he says, and, closing his eyes, jumps.

What would it mean for that child if his mother didn’t catch her son as she promised, but stepped back and let him go under the water? What would it mean if she did keep her word and, in fact, caught him?

A moment in time is like a single photograph, with many different possible interpretations. But one possibility is that the child jumps in, his mother catches him and keeps his head above the water, and he feels safe and secure. He will feel braver the next time he ventures into new territory, because he trusts his mother (and therefore other adults) to be there to protect him; and he has also learned to trust himself to do something that he was unsure about.

Or, if he jumps and his mother steps back and lets him sink in the water, he might learn that she cannot be trusted, the world is not safe, and he was wrong to take a chance.

Psychiatrist and child developmentspecialist Daniel N. Stern points out that in general one single unpleasant experience is less likely to make a big difference in a child’s developing psyche; but repeated experiences in which a parent proves to be either consistently trustworthy or consistently not, over time, can have a major impact on a child’s ability to trust others and his or herself as well. And ultimately trust leads to feeling safe in the world.  Experiences that are repeated, in different forms and different circumstances, tend to be taken in or internalized. And the child will begin to form an internal pattern of expectations about the safety of the world.

According to the developmental psychologist Erik Erikson, the development of trust in parents is a basic building block of a child’s self-esteem and future identity. With trust comes a sense of security and hope for the future. Without trust a child will develop doubt, suspicion, and hopelessness.

Contemporary attachment theorists call this a matter of  “secure attachment,” by which they mean, among other things, that a child feels protected and cared for by his or her parents. Although some interpretations of attachment parenting suggest that parents not leave their children at all, most attachment theorists agree that leaving a child at appropriate times with a caring, careful, and responsible adult, and coming back within a time that is tolerable and not overwhelming to the child, can actually be more beneficial. These optimal separations help a child develop the “muscles” for separating and connecting (two important components of attachment). Further, in agreement with Erikson, attachment theorists believe that this process of healthy connection and separation helps a child learn to trust his or her parents, adding to their sense of trust and safety.

But even loving, trustworthy parents can’t overcome the impact of external trauma on children or adults, if the trauma is too great for the psyche to handle. And the world today is filled with such trauma. Hunger, deprivation, and homelessness, the results of war, terrorism, territoriality, displacement, and weather related tragedies have left their marks on the population of the world.

According to some trauma specialists, physical trauma can sometimes, to some extent, be easier to manage than emotional trauma. Of course, starvation, illness, and loss of family and home involve both kinds of trauma and the consequences are often horrendous.

Some people who have grown up in terrible life circumstances turn to alcohol, drugs, violence, and revenge; others become paranoid, withdrawn, and/or hostile. All of these reactions seem to make sense.

And yet, there are others, who have had the same experiences, who seem resourceful and resilient, comfortable with themselves and trusting of others.

What makes the difference? It is hard to answer this question, although social worker and author Alex Gitterman says that a willingness to keep struggling, good support from others, and even a sense of humor all help.

Some Ideas that Could Help you Regain Your Trust

Talk to other people: The first instinct for many of us when we stop trusting is to stop talking to anyone else. But Gitterman says group support is crucial to maintaining trust and finding your way through adversity. Sheryl Sandberg and Adam Grant talk about Sandberg’s journey after the death of her husband. One of the important things she did and learned was to share her grief and to talk to other people. The psychoanalyst and philosopher Robert Stolorow and the psychotherapist Ghislaine Boulanger both say that one of the painful responses to adult trauma is feeling that no one else has gone through this, that no one can understand you, and that somehow you are outside of the sphere of human experience. Talking to and with others, even if it cannot make the problem disappear, can help you find better ways to deal with these feelings.

Find and use support:  Support does not have to be group therapy or even a group focused on your particular problem. But Gitterman suggests that social structures, that is organizations and institutions, can be “critical buffers, helping people cope with life transitions, environments, and interpersonal stressors.”

Join with others working toward the same goals: Working with like-minded others toward a goal, whether it is fighting rape, promoting care of the earth, raising money for cancer research, building homes or applying for financial assistance and a place for your family to live can restructure your view of yourself and the world.

Be proud of your own accomplishments: Taking pride in what you can do, no matter how small or insignificant it might seem at the moment, is important. You might not change the world. In fact, most likely, you won’t change it. But if you are doing anything at all to help make the world you live in a better place, you are doing something important. Own it.

It is well-known that trust must be earned. Over time trust can be built and destroyed. But it can be built again. One of the most important things to remember is that trust is a relational process. The little boy who jumped into his mother’s arms in the water was connecting with his mother, and she was connecting with him.

By connecting to others you also build their trust in you. And by building that mutual trust, you are also building your own — and their — self-esteem, self-confidence, and sense of well-being in the world.

Posted March 09, 2017

By Margaret Wehrenberg, Psy.D.

When Stress and Depression cause Under Commitment

Stress and Depression affect us all at different times in our lives.  Meaghan was telling me about how stressful her life is, trying to get everything in that she is committed to. She has a small, thriving business out of her home that she could allow to take up 40 hours a week. She runs with her running group two mornings a week and trains at the gym on Saturdays. She has three school-age children, all involved in sports and music, and she tries to get to every practice and every game and every recital. She has been asked to manage a volunteer fund-raising drive that is very important to her, and it is taking three mornings a week to get it all done. This is one busy person who is involved in a lot of activity.

Meaghan uses all this activity to avoid thinking about her depression. I refer to this as a “high-energy depression” in which all the activity covers feelings of worthlessness. In a sense, she is racing ahead of a depression that could catch her if she stops.

Very often the person with this kind of depression is one who has had some early life adversity, or a family life in which they were treated as worthless and only valued when they were performing. That is not 100 percent the case, but is not unusual as an origin of a high-energy depression.

But now Meaghan has a problem that is making her feel even more stressed, i.e., she cannot find a solution that makes her feel good. Her sister Tiffany needs some help from now until the end of the school year, and asked if the kids could get off the bus and stay with Meaghan for a couple of hours, so that Tiffany could take a necessary training class for her job so she will qualify for a promotion. Meaghan told me that she regrets she has to say “no” to Tiffany. She is “over-committed” to the rest of her activities, and she just cannot do more when she is already stressed.

I initiated a discussion with Meaghan about why it’s stressful to say no, and she talked about how helpfulness is a big value for her, and family is important. These are values that matter deeply to her. But she is also a bit miffed that Tiffany created this stress by asking her to help when she knows it would be hard for Meaghan to add more to her schedule. Meaghan kept referring to herself as “over-committed.”

It occurred to me that this is really a situation of under-commitment. I am not just doing semantics here. Meaghan says that her commitment to being helpful and devoted to family is very important to her, yet here is a situation in which many other activities interfere with fulfilling that priority commitment.

I asked, “What if we defined the problem as under-commitment?” At first Meaghan did not like this: she felt it meant she was bad or wrong, yet some positive thinking can come out of viewing the problem through this window. Being committed implies that we have an emotional investment as well as probable investments of time and money. People committed to fitness probably spend time doing fitness routines and probably spend money on equipment or clothing. Think of the commitment of an Olympian! What about a loving spouse committed to carrying for the partner who has a debilitating disease? That care-taker may spend many hours a day and give up the idea of vacations or outside fun to stay lovingly with this spouse. Are the Olympian or the caretaker “over-committed”? Describing them as deeply committed makes more sense, especially compared to Meaghan’s rushing about to many disparate activities.

Learning to Prioritize is a Vital Step to Appropriate Commitment

When Meaghan began to think about what, if anything, reflected deep commitment in her life, she had to think about her priorities. At first, she wanted to see every activity as important, because all of them added to her life in some way. But when she looked at what things are most important in her life, she had to first identify what values are most important. If she listed health, extended family, marriage, money, helpfulness, charity, supporting her children’s well-being, community, and so on, she started to see some challenges to her activity level. She could keep on saying yes to everything that seemed like a good idea, but she did not know where to draw the line. Saying “no” to her sister made her realize she had too many activities going on if she could not honor two important values: helpfulness and family.

First, she had to decide what comes first, and prioritizing the list made it clear that family is first for her. But then she began to realize the family first would include nurturing the relationship with her spouse, who rarely showed up on her activity list. She would need to find ways to make time for the two of them. And then she had to think about the support of her children, realizing she spent an inordinate amount of time observing them playing sports and very little time interacting with them. Now, she was passing up an opportunity to help her only sister and interact with her niece and nephew in order to spend time watching sports practices or piano lessons. She began to consider that interaction might have more value than watching every practice. She decided to car-pool with neighbors for practices, seeing some, but not all of them. That would allow her to say “yes” to her sister, fulfilling her values to family and helpfulness and feeling valuable herself as a result.

Meaghan also started to think about her business, which was not a source of necessary family income, even though she saw that in time she could build it to be significant. She remembered she and her spouse chose she would work at home, because taking care of their children without day care was a value they shared. She could believe she was valuable as mother and homemaker, contributing that time and skill to the family well-being, and later she would contribute money. Meaghan knew succeeding at her home business and having the income it generated was good for her self-worth, but in fact, it was lower on her current priority list. That would change as her children got a little older.

Other activities, such as managing the fund-raising drive and running with her group, supported worthwhile goals. But she finally decided the running was a part of her identityand her stress-relief and her health, and she wanted to continue that. But she gave up her leadership of the fund-raising, opting to remain a volunteer, but not be in charge.

Re-commit to your values. It will decrease stress and increase self-worth.

This example of letting priorities about what you value in life guide your choices to commit time, energy, and money is really about one way to change the negative self-belief(“I am worthless”) that underlies depression from early-life adversity. When you deeply commit to what is important to you, you reduce your stress, and you learn your value too. Both of which are great anti-depressants!

Posted Aug 31, 2017

by Christine L. Carter, Ph.D.

Setting Goals is, at its core, About Behavior Change

I went into the summer with big plans, mainly to meditate and exercise a lot more. Then I went on vacation, and then the kids were home, and then I had a bunch of work travel… you know how it is.

Here’s the thing: Intentions are never enough. Even full-blown goal-setting isn’t worth much if you don’t do it right.

My error this summer was that I didn’t make a specific, science-based plan; I just vaguely wanted to do more exercise and meditation. Enter behavioral psychologist Sean Young, who summarizes all the science around how to change your behavior. And setting goals is, at its core, about behavior change.

Using Sean’s framework—as well as the research I wrote about in The Sweet Spot—I’ve freshened up my plan for how my kids and I set our goals (and institute behavior change) before we go back-to-school. While here I use my desire to exercise more as a model, this can obviously be applied to many things—and to working with kids to set their own goals for the school year. I’ve created a goal-setting worksheet to make it all easy.

How to set and Attain Goals

1. First, state the big goal. What would you like to accomplish in the next three months or so? My hope is that I’ll get back to an efficient but well-rounded exercise routine that includes a little stretching, strength training, and aerobic exercise in about 20 minutes, six days per week.

This isn’t a ton of exercise, but because I can do it in so little time, it is realistic. (Six days a week seems ambitious, but I have given myself the option of combining two days, for three longer workouts if, say, I’m traveling or something.) One thing I’ve learned a million times, over and over: realistic is better than sexy. I’ll take a small success over an ambitious failure any day. Small successes show us that we really can change our behavior in a lasting way.

2. Next, break this larger idea down into long-term goals. My long-term goal is that by the end of the year, I’d like to have had 10 “streaks,” or weeks in which I have completed my exercise plan.

3. Break it down again, into short-term goals, which take one-to-three weeks to accomplish. I have three short-term goals:

• Work with a trainer to set up my workouts (the specific exercises and stretches)
• Memorize the circuits and learn to do them properly
• Have two “streaks” (entire weeks where I complete my plan) in a row before Labor Day.

4. Now break your goals down into very specific, ridiculously easy baby steps. What can you do today? Tomorrow? My first step was to call my friend Aaron, a trainer, who put together the exercises for me. Today, a baby step is to learn the warm-up stretches he gave me. Try to break your baby steps down until they are so easy you feel little or no resistance to them.

5. Set up your environment to make things easier. Our environment dramatically influences our behavior. We like to think our behavior is all our personality and preferences, or that it’s the strength of our iron-clad will that determines our success, but actually, we are hugely influenced by the people, places, and technology that happen to be in close physical proximity to us. This means that to be successful in reaching our goals, it’s very helpful to set up our environment to make things easier, to create structural solutions. This usually means removing temptations—if your goal is to stop checking your phone while you drive, keep the phone in the trunk or somewhere out of reach. And make sure that what you need is easy and convenient—if your goal is to eat more kale, keep a lot of kale in the fridge, and a list of restaurants that serve it.

I made exercising even easier for me by moving my yoga mat and other equipment into my office. I work out at four in the afternoon, when my attention at work is starting to flag and I’d rather exercise than work… and everything I need is right behind me!

6. Involve other people, even if you are an introvert. We humans can often get ourselves to do something we might otherwise resist if it makes us feel more a part of a tribe or a clan—if it deepens or increases our social connections in some way. Other people can also work as a bit of external willpower, getting us to do something we’d rather blow off.

I scheduled a series of Skype calls with Aaron, both so he can make sure that I’m doing the exercises correctly and because I look forward to talking to him. I can tell you that if I didn’t have a call with him today, I’d be very tempted to push my workout time out a little bit, so that I can finish this post. For me, changing the routine is a very slippery slope—10 more minutes at work can easily become 20 and then 40…until it’s time to make dinner and there is no time for exercise.

7. Identify why your goal is important to you. Think less about what you want to achieve and focus in on how you want to feel. Identify a “why” for your goal that will motivate you over the long haul.

We do better when we let go of our logical reasons for why we want to do something. Why? Because research shows that good, solid, logical reasons for doing something—like exercising because we want to lower our blood pressure or ward off cancer—don’t actually motivate us over the long haul. It turns out that emotions are far more motivating than achieving goals in the long run.

So shoot instead for a feeling-state that you want more of (for example, maybe you want more happiness, confidence, or calm). I want to establish this exercise routine because I know it will increase my energy. Feeling awake and energetic is very important to me.

8. Make it a part of your identity. As in: I am a person who exercises. I’ll be tracking the days I exercise, so that I can look back and see: Yup, I’m an exerciser. Collect evidence that you are the type of person who does whatever it is that you are trying to do.

9. Make the behavior more enticing. We human beings pursue rewards: a pretty little cupcake, attention from a mentor, a sense of accomplishment. When our brains identify a potential reward, they release dopamine, a feel-good chemical messenger. Dopamine motivates us toward the reward, creating a real sense of craving, wanting, or desire for the carrot that is being dangled in front of us.

10. Make the behavior more habitual. Once a behavior is on autopilot, everything is easier—we don’t need much willpower to enact our habitual behaviors. Can you make your behaviors related to accomplishing your goal habitual in any way? Do this by anchoring behaviors in existing habits or routines, or even a schedule, using a When/Then statement: “When I do X, then I will Y.” For me, it’s “When it’s 4 p.m. and the reminder pops up from my calendar, then I will exercise.”