Another teeter-totter

Hot topic on the net this week, at least until the Supreme Court ruled on the Affordable Care Act today, is this great article about “having it all” at The Atlantic.  I can’t even begin to cover all the great discussion this article has launched, but I am thoroughly thrilled that people are talking. I’d like to look at the main reasons I loved this article and the tidal wave of discussion it’s started.

1) The fiction that the first wave of feminism accomplished what we wanted it to accomplish is exposed. “Having it all” with no costs is a breezy lie. Finally, honest, heartfelt discussion on this topic. It’s validating for men and women who are trying to balance work and family and finding it impossible at best. Just to know that we are not the only ones struggling can make us feel better. This honesty ends the guilt and worry about “something the matter with me” if I can’t do it.

2) The author, Anne-Marie Slaughter, makes the point that we need cultural, societal, policy changes to improve the situation. This isn’t about just the challenge to couples on their own, that it will be all right if only they work smarter, get more education, build better support systems. Yes, those tools can help. But unless there is a shift in workplace expectations, whether industry, business, government, or academia, we will continue to lose talent when parents choose to opt out of their fields in order to pursue the elusive balance. Let alone what the current trend to crazy work schedules is doing to our collective and individual health as a nation that has sky-high rates of stress-related diseases.

3) Slaughter speaks up about wanting to be home, a truth that is often frowned upon and greeted with glazed-over eyes by those who don’t get it or scorn by those who perceive a parent as “wasting” one’s skills. Yes, we can want to be home more to make that critical contribution to our children, that in turn is a contribution to society. I am NOT implying that making a choice to NOT be home with children is NOT a good choice. What I’ve always espoused, because it’s what works for parents and children: to be the best parent you can be in the way that works for you. There is not a single Right Answer for every parent or every child.The point is the freedom and support to do what works for you.  To be your own perfectly good mom.

We need to remember that balance is not a set point, rather it’s a constantly shifting target. It’s looking at the big picture of balance over the long haul in a life, not the teeter-totter of every day. Let’s continue to evolve–through just this kind of discussion, inching us toward a livable solution.

Just in time for Father’s Day, a new “Survivor” series . . .

Six married men will be dropped on an island with one car and 2 kids each for six weeks.

Each kid will play two sports and take either music or dance classes.

There is no fast food.

Each man must take care of his 2 kids; keep his assigned house clean, correct all homework, complete science projects, cook, do laundry, and pay a list of ‘pretend’ bills with not enough money. In addition, each man will have to budget enough money for groceries each week.

Each man must remember the birthdays of all their friends and relatives, and send cards out on time–no emailing.

Each man must also take each child to a doctor’s appointment, a dentist appointment and a haircut appointment. He must make one unscheduled and inconvenient visit per child to the Emergency Room.

He must also make cookies or cupcakes for a school function. Each man will be responsible for decorating his own assigned house, planting flowers outside, and keeping it presentable at all times.

The men will only have access to television when the kids are asleep and all chores are done. The men must shave their legs, wear makeup daily, adorn themselves with jewelry, wear uncomfortable yet stylish shoes, keep fingernails polished, and eyebrows groomed.

During one of the six weeks, the men will have to endure severe abdominal cramps, backaches, headaches, have extreme, unexplained mood swings but never once complain or slow down from other duties.

They must attend weekly school meetings, and find time at least once to spend the afternoon at the park or a similar setting.

They will need to read a book to the kids each night and in the morning, feed them, dress them, brush their teeth and comb their hair by 7:30 am.

A test will be given at the end of the six weeks, and each father will be required to know all of the following information: each child’s birthday, height, weight, shoe size, clothes size, doctor’s name, the child’s weight at birth, length, time of birth, and length of labor, each child’s favorite color, middle name, favorite snack, favorite song, favorite drink, favorite toy, biggest fear, and what they want to be when they grow up.

The kids vote them off the island based on performance.

The last man wins only if…he still has enough energy to be intimate with his spouse at a moment’s notice.

If the last man does win, he can play the game over and over and over again for the next 18-25 years, eventually earning the right to be called Mother!

And of course, there are fathers out there who can kick these tasks out of the park. Kudos to them, and cheers to all on Father’s Day!

(And if anyone knows the original author of this piece, please give them my thanks and credit!)

Psychologists: they’re just like us!

During the phase of parenting teens, I was introduced to one of my daughters’ favorite features in Us Weekly Magazine called Celebrities: Just Like Us. In this feature, photos of megastars were shown in everyday, human activities: shopping for groceries, playing fetch with the dog, wiping noses of small children. This was a healthy dose of reality for our celebrity-worshipping culture, where airbrushing has given most of us an unrealistic view of the bodies and lives of those in the media spotlight.

Once recent research study pointed out the time-honored reverence we have for the title, and  in particular the clothing, of  “doctor.” In this study, those who wore white doctor coats commanded significantly more attention and focus than those dressed in white painters garb. Anyone claiming the title of expert does not need to don a white coat, however. By writing this blog and hanging out my shingle as an expert on human behavior change, I may be subject to this pedestal-placing. One psychologist friend and I were talking about how we, as health professionals, may lose track of our impact on others. We’re here in our offices, doing what we do day after day, and forget how difficult it is for new clients to call, make that appointment, and present themselves, sharing their stories openly on our cushy couches. We are often surprised when a client quotes back to us, “you said X, and that really changed my life,” when we may either a) not remember that specific statement and/or b) wonder silently “is that really what I said?”

Which leads me to today’s story, with several goals. Partly to question: who says psychologists (or doctors) are anything special, to be raised up to the status of all-knowing guides? Partly to explain my sporadic blogging. And partly to demonstrate that which I’m always urging others to practice: self-compassion. Health professionals like me may look like we have it all together, when in truth, we (at least I) have terrible days–and even strings of days–just like everyone else. And pitiable, overreacting responses to life as well.

I awaken Monday morning, feeling good, enjoying my newly-remodeled, not-quite-moved-into bedroom. I love the deep green wall color, the smooth, glistening amber wood floors, the stark white crown molding. I take a meditative shower in my new glass-walled shower with the rainfall showerhead. All is well and I am cruising along, ahead of schedule. I release the three cats from their night time containment in the laundry room, and real life begins. There is cat pee all over the room. Some prolific peeing feline has overshot the monster cat box, spilling gallons onto, and beyond, the protective tray designed to prevent such problems. I slip in pee. I clean up, using several rags and lots of spray cleaner, while harnessing my flowing skirt, picked to impress today’s clients with my graceful sense of fashion. I wonder how good client noses are. I turn with a sigh, and another cat is behind me, straining to release drops of blood-tinged pee, due to her flaring interstitial cystitis (who knew a cat could even get such a thing?!) Uh, oh, better take her to the kindly vet on my way to work. I search the cluttered, post-remodeling project garage, then dash to the attic, in search of cat transport device. No cat carrier is to be found!  I recall it was lent to kind neighbors, and perhaps not yet returned. Check my schedule, to alert first client that I will be late. Said client has new phone number, which of course I entered into my work computer but did not transfer to home records.

Regroup: will take cat on my lunch hour instead, dashing home to corral sick cat in a cloth grocery bag, her favorite mode of transport anyway. Now I’m covered with cat hair and urine. Hastily wipe my shoes on the grass as I dash to the car.  Maybe I can still get to work before the client decides I’ve goofed on the schedule and departs. Traffic is snarled at malfunctioning red light at major intersection. I’ll use my secret, scenic neighborhood short cut. Feeling triumphant, I dash up the side street, round the bend, and am stopped by a construction flag man, guarding the white barriers ahead. I roll down the window, asking if I can get through. He responds in Spanish. My second language (a description that’s stretching it) is French. I consider move to Quebec. Or maybe some Caribbean island where French is spoken. I cut down an unknown side street, and find myself dumped back out into the same traffic mess. I exhale deeply and turn on the “Spa” channel on Sirius. Time to practice what I preach, or risk dissolving into sobbing mess.

Psychologists: they’re just like us!

On letting go

Letting go is such a challenge to most of us. Releasing our attachment to the ways we’ve always done things, to the dreams we thought we wanted, to the children who must grow up, to those old outgrown clothes, to that too large portion on the restaurant plate; it is all hard to do. I don’t find letting go to be easy at all. I tend to hang on and beat my head against the wall until, callused and bruised, I must admit defeat. Insanity is, as Einstein said, doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.

So I was inspired by this poem that arrived in my newsletter from Rejuvenation Lounge, one of my favorite sites, that makes the process seem so easy. I’m going to aim for thinking about letting go with this much ease, particularly by silencing the “committee of indecision” within me.

SHE LET GO. Without a thought or a word, she let go.

She let go of the fear.

She let go of the judgements.

She let go of the opinions swarming around her head.

She let go of the committee of indecision within her.

She let go of all the right reasons. Wholly and completely, without hesitation or worry, she just let go.

She didn’t ask for advice. She didn’t read a book on how to let go. She just let go.

She let go of all the memories that held her back.

She let go of all the anxiety that kept her from moving forward.

She let go of all the planning and all the calculation, about how to do it just right.

In the space of letting go, she let it all be. A smile came over her face. A light breeze blew through her. And the sun and moon shone forever more.

Written by Ernest Holmes (1887-1960)

Just say no!

A good firm “no” is hard to come by in most women’s lives–and we’re not talking about the campaign related to drugs that most of us heard in middle school. Socialized as we are to please others, we buy into the unrealistic expectation that pleasing is even perfectly possible.  And so we say “yes”–to another event, another task, another responsibility, all in the hopes of making everybody happy. Creating happiness and getting approval are worthy goals–until we find ourselves getting pulled into the depths of too much responsibility. The Berenstain Bears and the Over-committed Woman never made it into print, and Jan Berenstain, coauthor of that series, died last month at the age of 88. So I guess we won’t get to read that one over and over at bedtime.

I learn so much from my clients; thanks to one for this shift in perspective on saying “no.” Every time we say “no,” we are actually saying “yes” to something else. This realization freed me a great deal, as it settled into my brain, allowing some old perceptions to release and drift away like the cotton from the North Texas trees. Wow. Sayng no to another work commitment means saying yes to more down time. “No” to a second helping translates to “yes” to a smaller size. “No” to a volunteer job turns into “yes” to time to vacuum my own kitchen floor, reaping the benefits of greater control of my home. Or maybe saying no to bothering about dust bunnies and scattered cat litter means saying yes to time for creativity. Letting go of anger–“no, I don’t have to react to that”– opens the way for compassion to flow in.  “Yes,” replacing negative feeling for positive, like water finding it’s level.

A simple little word. It’s another powerful shift in perspective, just the kind I love, that can transform the whole world. What can you say “yes” to today?

“No” to a longer blog means “yes” to running off to yoga.

Another thought about life’s pits

While I don’t usually do ‘themes’ over several weeks, lately I seem to keep finding more to say about navigating the really tough parts of life. Part one noted that all of life involves struggles, and we fool ourselves if we believe 1) that life is harder for us than for others and/or 2) that we can avoid this part of life if we just behave in the right way. Part two stressed that the challenge of life is to navigate these trials; just see that they are essential to the path we’re living and we don’t have to like them. Reading while I enjoy my breakfast on a patio this lovely spring morning placed part three squarely in my face.

Too often, when faced with unavoidable challenges, we wish we were stronger to face them. We don’t want to be we scared by them. We believe if we were stronger/smarter/more well-adjusted, the tough mess we’re about to have to tackle wouldn’t seem so awful. Again, second guessing of our abilities is powerful. Lacking confidence, looking around, we are certain others don’t shirk from their challenges. Confidence would mean breezing through, unphased by the bumps in the road, right?

Wrong. This morning, in Everything Happens for a Reason, Mira Kirshenbaum reminded me what it’s like to be inside someone who is confident. Mira says:

“Confidence only means something when you’re talking about a task that’s difficult. If the task is easy–something like making toast–you wouldn’t even use the word confident. It would sound pretty weird to say “I’m very confident I’m going to be able to toast this slice of bread.” If the task is easy, you just do it without thinking about it.”

The inner world of confidence in the face of difficulty means trusting that 1) yes, it will be tough to navigate the challenge ahead AND 2) I can do it. That’s how confidence manifests itself: that you have an inner knowing that you will be able to survive whatever happens. This is the best script I know for getting through anxiety, depression, loss, and other bad stuff. In other words, the usual path of life. You know it will be hard, AND you know you will be able to do it.

As Mira says, “deep in the heart of confidence is a shrug, not a swagger.”

Shrug on, survivors.

Just Do It?

Growing up, my father had a signature phrase that my sisters and I despised absolutely. This is just and right, as most children are wont to feel about those parental lessons that drag offspring kicking and screaming into the realm of responsibility. And that cringe-worthy phrase? His own Hoosier-raised, preacher-wisdom version of the popular Nike slogan, “just do it.” None of the upbeat, inspiring energy of a Nike commercial, however. Daddy always expressed his maxim in a matter-of-fact tone, bordering on exasperation: “you don’t have to like it, you just have to do it.” Homework, bedtime, chores, death and taxes alike; the truth of my dad’s phrase popped into my head after I launched last week’s post on the inevitability of angst in our lives.

Life is hard and our task is simply to get through it. To survive. Permission to dislike whatever “it” might be, while persevering in the face of “it” seems particularly aligned with the Buddhist view of life as well. Pain is a universal process. You can’t live life and avoid pain. Connecting with others emotionally, striving to better our lives, truly all the worthwhile activities that bring joy to life have the inherent potential for causing pain as well. Suffering is attachment to the pain. In non-Buddha speak, suffering is when we get stuck in that pain process.

We can wallow in our dislike of the trials life casts on our path, lamenting and worsening the inevitable blunders of life. Or we can just do it: deal with those painful pieces and keep moving. I heard somewhere this week that blunders are how we evolve. Just a fancy way of saying we can learn from our mistakes. And Daddy knew best: the only way out is through.

Pits or cherries?

Who says life is a bowl of cherries? Mary Engelbreit? No, wait, that quote was “life is just a chair of bowlies.” Actually, my quick Google search shows that “Life is just a bowl of cherries” was a song written in 1931, sung by Rudy Vallee and then in 1967 by Doris Day, with plenty of others in between. The original idiom implies that everything is carefree and life is wonderful.

Even though most of us would probably protest that we know life is hard and full of challenges, this idiom is sneaky, invading our expectations and coloring our daily lives. As with many figures of speech I like to challenge, this little idea is insidious, lurking in the shadows, unrecognized. Too often, we think life should be simple, carefree, and easy. We expect that we can dodge difficulties. We yearn to protect our children and loved ones from all pain and tribulation, so that they can have smooth, trouble-free lives. More importantly, when none of these unrealistic aspirations are achievable, we blame ourselves. We feel like failures when we are unable to meet this impossible expectation to make life’s trials vanish.

Even though we know life’s path is often through the pits, we lament the toll the negatives will take. The all or nothing, black and white thinking invades, and we think one difficulty wrecks the whole. One bad day for your child will ruin her life. One setback for you means you never meet your goal. To paraphrase another familiar fruit idiom, one spoiled cherry does not ruin the whole bowl. Especially if you clean out the bowl frequently! Sure, the mold will spread if you don’t weed out the rotten ones.

Moving through our lives, we need to note the rotten moments, and set them aside, just like that one funky cherry. The hard spots, the pits, are where the growth comes. The challenges that strengthen, calling us (or our kids) to stand up, to define what works for the life we have crafted, would not be possible without the pits. A life that is smooth, always running well, is not only boring, unrealistic, and unachievable, it is not a road that stretches us. No obstacles mean no push to change.

All of this is not to say that we can’t lament the tough spots. Validation that life is hard is very comforting. Release the sense, however, that life is hard because you are not doing your best or have failed somehow. We are all doing the best that we can, in a way that works for us, at any given moment. There is just much hard stuff we encounter that we cannot control. It’s as much a part of being alive as the fact that your brain keeps thinking, your heart keeps beating, and your lungs keep breathing. So have a little self-compassion–life is hard, no matter what you do. And these challenges offer us a juicy chance to evolve.

Love Shouldn’t Hurt

The fable goes that you can boil a frog alive. Just immerse the frog into a big pot of room temperature water, place the pot on the burner, and ever so slowly raise the heat. The temperature will rise so slowly that the frog will not notice. The frog’s body acclimates to the water as it gets hotter and hotter, and before the creature knows what’s happening, it succumbs, simmered to death.

In partner relationships, emotional abuse can sneak up in just this subtle way. In many families, teasing is a way to show love. As a teen or adult, you may tolerate such teasing, oblivious to the often inherent, yet thinly-veiled criticism. One woman put up with taunts of “clumsy,” which her partner turned into a nickname, “clumsy Clara.” Even though he insisted it was a term of endearment, she had not come from a teasing family and to her it was an insult. Over the course of the relationship as positive interaction declined, this label hurt more and more, affecting her self-image. It became a self-fulfilling prophecy; she tripped much more often when her critical partner was around. The socially-accepted vehicle of teasing also allowed her partner to up the ante, and he soon became overtly abusive with his words, worsening his taunts.

Emotional abuse is any behavior that is designed to control and dominate another, especially through humiliation, intimidation, and guilt. While we might recognize name-calling and constant, overt criticism as abusive, I think we need to call attention to more subtle tactics, such as repeated disapproval or even the perfectionistic demands of a partner who can never be pleased. One woman’s husband constantly chided her to work a little smarter in running their busy household. They had five children, all under the age of six. The poor woman was doing a respectable home-making job and the children were happy and healthy. But the fact that their home was not magazine-perfect allegedly authorized him to continue his criticism of her performance.

John Gottman, one of the premiere marital researchers in the United States, has identified such criticism and contempt as patterns that sound the death knell for a relationship. Criticism that involves attacks on personality or character, with the intent of making one person right and one wrong, is abusive: “You always,” “You never,” “You’re that type.” Contempt involves attacks on sense of self, with the intent to insult. Name-calling, sarcastic teasing, and nonverbal expressions such as eye-rolling and sneering are included. A third pattern that falls into this simmering pattern of abuse is stonewalling: withdrawal from the relationship to avoid conflict. This can be seen as trying to be neutral, but when stony silence, distancing, and disconnection convey disapproval, contempt and/or smugness, the effect is emotionally damaging.

The lesson of the frog becomes relevant as subtlety and sophistication of the abuse increases. In current culture, an accepted premise is that we must compromise for relationships to succeed. To stand ground on some issues, to refuse to sacrifice one’s wishes, is seen as a selfish threat to the relationship. This assumption may be true, in extremes. But the degree to which many women have accepted this directive sets us up for emotional abuse.

People-pleasing is socialized in girls from an early age, by phrases such as “did you hurt your friend’s feelings?”, or “don’t make Mommy mad”. We’re good girls. We want to get along. In the name of compromise, too often we internalize the unrealistic expectations of others for our behavior. After all, we already hold June Cleaver standards for ourselves. Or we lower our tolerance for another’s behavior; he’s stressed, she’s tired, he’s overworked. Criticism, impossible standards, or another’s temper are crosses we think we must bear to make the relationship work. We don’t see that the temperature is rising. The emotional abuse begins to wash away our self-esteem and confidence, much as boiling vegetables leaches out all the nutrients.

Healthy compromise is essential to relationships. Compromise, not sacrifice. When we sacrifice parts of ourselves to subtle efforts to control us, this is emotional abuse. The biggest mistake I see in women is this sacrifice, this loss of one’s self in order to make a relationship work. (This can happen without emotionally-abusive pressure from a partner. But such abuse accelerates the process.) In any significant relationship, the ideal is that our partners affirm us, allowing us to be our best selves, rather than attempting to recreate who we are. Compromise is about events and preferences, not changing self to fit another’s model. Compromise needs to be balanced, with both parties giving and taking. Sacrifice involves losing your strength and sense of self for the sake of the relationship, in a one-sided battle. And emotional abuse in the form of stonewalling, contempt, and endless criticism is a powerful vehicle to this loss of self.

The first step in freeing ourselves from the simmering pot of emotional abuse is awareness. We need to step outside ourselves and question. Who says this is an okay way to be treated? As a culture, we have an odd double standard, allowing behavior in couple relationships that we’d never tolerate elsewhere. If you are being chastised, teased, criticized, judged–verbally or nonverbally– in a close relationship, do a reality check. Is this any way to treat another human being? If you would not treat a friend or a coworker in this manner, speak up. “No one deserves to be treated like this” is a powerful statement to confront the abuse. Love should not hurt.

This post appeared earlier on the 411 Voices website as part of this month’s campaign, “Love Should Not Hurt.”

Truth or consequences

One of the hardest tasks in life is being true to one’s self. However inadvertent, most little girls are taught to value niceness over self-affirmation: “Did you make your friend cry?” “Don’t make Mommy mad.” “Be a good girl and smile”. While it is admirable to be a kind, considerate, nurturing person, too often we make this a priority at expense of our own needs. When generation upon generation parents with this goal of creating “nice” girls, models and skills are lacking to teach:

  1. How to balance our own needs with the needs of others.
  2. How to be strong and secure in oneself, able choose what works for us in the face of others’ disapproval.
  3. How to preserve sense of self against the ever-constant societal expectations for women to please, serve, or nurture others.

This lack of a strong model of “this is me, warts and all” leads to the biggest mistake that I see in relationships: sacrificing one’s self for the sake of the relationship. Women aren’t silly putty, forming to the container created by others in their lives. Accepted common sense in relationships (thanks, feminist movement!) asserts that we must be willing to compromise. We know that partnerships involve give and take, negotiating so that each party’s preferences are met at times. Too often, in our ever-present all or nothing thinking, however, we confuse this healthy compromise with sacrifice. There needs to be a balance between compromise over issues and sacrifice of personality preferences that leads to loss of self.

Let’s explore this. Person A loves to entertain, and Person B, (partner of person A) is extremely shy. Person A can compromise, and agrees to only invite two guests to dinner at a time. This might be an acceptable give and take. However, if Person A does not wish to stress Person B, so gives up entertaining all together, this is a sacrifice that may lead to resentment. In a recent episode of the award-winning drama House, MD, a couple was treated who were allegedly asexual. They each had agreed that sex was not important to their marriage. House, in his relentless style, pursued this problem until he discovered a pituitary tumor in the husband which had rendered him dysfunctional sexually. When treatment restored sexual function, the wife revealed that she was not actually asexual. She had chosen this path for the sake of her husband.

Granted, this arrangement appeared to be working for this TV couple. However, too many women sacrifice similar parts of themselves, to appear to be something they are not, for the sake of the relationship. I have yet to see that this is a workable model for relationship success. The challenge is to be yourself in all realms of your life. We want to surround ourselves, in significant partnerships and friendships, with others who can accept us as we are and enable us to be our best selves. In this month of love, that’s the truth for which we want to strive. I’m my own unique me, and my choices make me who I am. My goal is to affirm that, regardless of others’ reactions. This is truly one of the most difficult–yet ultimately rewarding–challenges of life.

Be yourself. Know in your heart that you are acting in a way that works for you. And feel the strength grow within you as you do.