“Need” is not a four letter word

Ever since the Declaration of Independence 237 years ago, the concept of self-reliance has been instilled deeply into our consciousness. As a nation, the fledgling United States was not going to have to answer to some mother/’nother nation. Fast forward a few years to frontier days, and the concept of the lone cowboy or sole homesteader reinforced that independent ideal.  Perhaps the Women’s Movement piled a few more bricks onto this wall of expectation, with quotes (widely attributed to Gloria Steinem) such as “a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.”

No wads of panties, please; I’m an ardent feminist (actually humanist) and do feel there is value in self-reliance and independence for all. The problem once again is the all or nothing bent the culture widely attributes to the concept of needs, given the above background: needs are bad. I’m a good person if I can take care of all my own needs, and a pitiful loser if I don’t. No one wants to be needy, and of course our dichotomous brains snap like a magnet to that interpretation of needs.

Recently, I heard the phrase that is the title to this post, and realized how often we do actually treat our needs as something to be denied, avoided, even damned. The need to look strong and run from any possibility of being labelled as needy is endemic, and I hear sad stories again and again about the toll this belief takes.  A woman with breast cancer who revealed her illness only after treatment left her so ill she could not function. A family suffering the loss of a loved one who refused the help of meals. A friend traversing a divorce who revealed the fact only once the divorce was final.

We fear that if we speak up about our need for help, not only will we violate the unwritten code of strength, but we’ll bother or burden those who love us. We’ll slip into that category of needy, and they’ll shrink from us, unwilling to take on one more task in their already swamped lives.

Perhaps the best perspective to adopt when evaluating whether you should clamp your own mouth shut and not reach out to others in time of need is to practice a reversal. How would you feel if you found out a dear friend or family member was traversing one of life’s dark valleys and denied you the ability to help? Almost universally, we want to help–and feel deprived and even insulted if our friends don’t trust us enough to reach out and honestly express their needs.

Back to the pioneers. They weren’t really completely self-sufficient, but traveled in wagon trains because that increased odds of survival. The founding fathers had an enviable network of support, like-minded souls sharing lively debate over a beer. The reality is like the potty-training book Everybody Poops. Everybody has needs.  No shame. Not an unspeakable expletive. Accepting support, emotionally or practically, is a great way to bond with others, as well as get what you need out of life.

Holding up half the holiday sky?

Grumble, gripe, and moan seems to be the less than merry refrain from nearly every woman I’ve encountered in the past week, as the break-neck pace of parties, school events, shopping, decorating, planning and scheming, card-addressing, and baking hurtles us toward Christmas. Women as a whole make Christmas happen, seemingly holding up way more than half the proverbial holiday sky. It’s a time of year that challenges the ever-teetering balance that we’ve carefully wreaked out for our lives. Yoga class, a daily run, healthy meals, time to sit and breathe, or any other form of hard-sought self-care seems to vanish like snowflakes in Dallas.  What’s a mother—or any other woman, for that matter—to do?

Change that harried voice in your head, the one that says either “I’ll never get everything done” or “I can’t stand this craziness.” Here’s some new phrases to try:

Mantra #1:  It will all get done. Just like one of my favorite lines from Shakespeare in Love, one of my favorite movies: “It all works out—magically.” That’s paraphrasing,  but you get the gist of it.

Mantra #2: You are not alone. Every other woman in your age/life group probably feels exactly the same way. Take solace in the fact that we’re all holding up this Christmas sky, shoulder to shoulder.

Mantra #3:  You are not a bad person because you hate the crazy preparations. Who can enjoy such stress?!! Try another version of one of my favorite mantras: love the kid, hate the job. You can love the end result, and still hate the process that gets your loved ones to that magical Christmas moment.

Mantra #4: It will all be over soon, and you’ll survive. Women do. Every year.

Meanwhile, just squeeze in twenty seconds for a great big exhale every hour or so. Calms that revved up fight or flight mechanism and brings a teensy bit of sanity. You’ve got twenty seconds.

Happy Holidays!

Won’t she just grow up?

Hardly a girl escaped exposure to middle school terrorism: biting criticism about clothing, mean notes circulating, gym class taunting, teasing about lunchbox contents, cliques loudly discussing parties from which some were excluded. Even if you weren’t a target, bullying was surely on your social radar. You may have cringed as you witnessed it, rigorously monitoring your own behavior to avoid attracting the same fate. Perhaps you eventually breathed a sigh of relief, finding your high school or college niche, feeling strong in your network of supportive women. You grew out of it, beyond it, and trusted you were done with that phase of your life, having to dodge or defend against mean girls.

Then you joined a mom’s group, the PTA, or even a work setting;  flashback to middle school. Gossip flies: “did you hear what happened at Joni’s bachelorette?” Criticism is thinly veiled: “can you believe she doesn’t vaccinate her kids?” Exclusive social events are whispered or bragged about: “girls’ escape to the lake house this weekend.”   You dash out of work at lunch to volunteer for the band, only to have other volunteers ignore you and chat among themselves. When you excuse yourself for the return dash, one exclaims, “oh, too bad you’re a working mom.”  You proudly dress for a party, feeling good about the style you assembled from Nordstrom Rack, until other guests begin to brag about their $465 boots and $800 jeans. Bullying is not confined to middle school.

Relational aggression (RA) is one form of bullying. According to Cheryl Dellasega, PhD, author of Mean Girls Grown Up, RA is verbal violence in which words, rather than fists, cause damage. October is Bullying Prevention Month, a good time to look at the ways in which RA continues to have a sneaky presence in women’s lives, regardless of age.

Competition and comparison seem to be human nature. An inherent gauge of success is how our accomplishments measure up to those around up. So keeping score–and possibly bragging or lamenting about it–doesn’t stop. Social media such as Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest are injecting it with new adrenaline for all ages. How many friends do you have? What glorious picture of your life can you paint with your tweets, pins, posts? Even at midlife and beyond, opportunities to “top this” and criticize abound. “Can you believe her son still hasn’t graduated?” “They spent that much on that wedding?!”

If you find yourself a target of RA, your first thought might be “I thought I was done with this; can’t she just grow up?” Here’s my short list of quick tips to cope with adult relational aggression directed at you:

1)  Expect people to be who they are. Bullies don’t automatically grow out of it as they grow up. If an acquaintance seems like a bully, trust your gut that you are reading it accurately. Expectations are our biggest enemy (check out my list of posts under “Expectations” to the right, for further reading) and thankfully, one category that we can control to improve our well-being. Bullies just are. Don’t expect them to be otherwise, and their tactics will lose some power.

2) This is not about me. You aren’t the problem, the bully is. You are not deficient, weak, or unlikable. Behavior like this says it all about the bully, nothing about you.

3) Toxic people aren’t toxic if we fail to react. If you apply the first two tips, it’s much easier to step away and not react. Breathe. Dismiss. Let go. Invoke the mantra “what other people think of me is none of my business.” The final authority on approval lies within you.

Have you been a victim of adult relational aggression? How have you coped?

 

 

What’s with all the nature photos?

Perhaps you’ve noticed the new web design. An update was needed, as my old template was a bit outdated and dysfunctional. But what’s with all the nature photos? Think I’m bragging about all my summer escapes? Well, since I am a human being, I did enjoy a number of relaxing and/or productive journeys to beautiful locales this summer, and I had a lot of fun taking pictures. Following in the big steps of my dad, I suppose. When we were sorting through the thousands of photos he took in his amateur photography career recently, it seemed like two-thirds were sunsets, mountain views, or beaches.

Nature does have healing properties–whether that is five minutes in actual nature or time in your day to pause and look at nature photos. Research has also shown that exercising in an outdoor setting inspires us to do more, more willingly.  Connection to nature has been associated with increased mindfulness (being in the moment in a nonjudgmental way), positive emotions, awe, and purpose in life. I encourage everyone to enjoy a little fix of nature everyday–either in vivo (i.e. get yourself outside into a natural setting, in real life) or enjoy visual images of nature.  That’s my motivation in providing nature photos here on my blog. Pictures like these always make me breath a sigh of relaxation–just what I’m hoping to do for my readers by sharing them here. Enjoy!

Are you a sponge or a brick?

The need for approval leads many women to sculpt and mold their bodies, personalities, even lives to fit either/both a societal ideal and an individual’s expectations.  Maybe the recent Olympics launched tears of boredom rather than emotion in you, but you smiled and nodded at others’ enthusiasm. In most women’s lives, it’s an ongoing struggle to find that balance of being fully me while still pleasing others.  Back in February, I explored this need for honest truth in our relationship lives, concluding that loss of self for the sake of a relationship does not lead to a happy life. It’s not a good idea to “give up me to be loved by you,” as the classic book says.

Healthy or not, backed by psychological science or not, it is often true that we are attracted to those who have characteristics that we seem to be missing. An introvert feels that that wild party person will fill life with greater fun or connection. A serious planner loves the spontaneity of that ”live-in-the-moment” person.  In the words of Jerry Maguire, “you complete me.” In the best incarnation of this trend, we seek out relationships with those who help us grow, challenging us to be the best ME we can be. It’s healthy to be a little putty-like, flexible, inspired to try on new interests, characteristics, even personas. And, ideally this is mutual. You both want to meet in the middle, stretching yourselves to be more. In long-term relationships, a sign of health is the ability to adapt to the growth of one’s partner.

(In the worst case scenario, we come to hate the very traits that drew us together in the first place. That spontaneous person fails to follow through on any planning.  The introvert needs more quiet time. We lose track of what we liked about each other at the beginning. But I digress . . .)

The grown-up challenge to the adolescent “but everybody is doing it” refrain may apply, even though you might cringe at the comparison: “Are you really going to jump off a bridge because your best friend is?” Don’t be a lemming, and follow even one other lemming off the cliff if that doesn’t feel consistent with who you are.  Do you have to homeschool your kids because your friends are and the schools do seem so scary and inadequate? Must you embrace S&M just because Fifty Shades of Grey is hiding on everyone’s ebook shelf and it might enliven your own gray sex life, even if the thought seems laughable or offensive to you? Do you have to start running because your partner does and it’s “good for you” when it makes your knees ache?

Check out this checklist about sacrificing too much for a relationship. When considering what and how much to change when the inevitable push comes from those we love, it is important to be mindful, thoughtful, careful in evaluating what parts of ourselves we do want to alter. Is this inherently good for me? Can this person inspire in me a healthy degree of change, versus complete transformation or loss of me? Will this benefit me outside of this relationship? Is this consistent with my values? What do I want to do?

The biggest challenge of our lives is to be our own version of our best selves, in the face of pressure to be someone else’s ideal, whether that someone is a loved one or the culture. Be neither a sponge–squashed and shaped to others’ ideals– nor a brick–rigid and unaffected–in your own continual evolution to be YOU.

 

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.

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)

Items of interest

I know I’ve not blogged in awhile; alas, I’m busier than usual this spring due to teaching commitments. This overload will end for me soon (when the semester ends) and I will up my effort to post more consistently here. Meanwhile, here are a couple of items to keep my readers amused and/or educated.

1) I am now blogging on Vibrant Nation, one of the top sites for midlife women. Under the same flag as my posts here, “Who Says?!”, I will be challenging issues more specific to that site’s purpose and age group. I will try not to repeat myself. However, when posts have an across-the-ages relevance, I will mention those here, linking to the posts on Vibrant Nation. In that vein, dear readers, you may enjoy this post, based on a slogan I saw last week on a car dealership’s marquee: “every custom begins with a broken precedent.”

2) I’m forever railing against our current culture of overwork, where the standard for a nearly 60 hour work week seems to be gaining ground. I am certain this trend is to the detriment of individual–not to mention societal–health and well-being. You might enjoy this week’s post on this topic over at Inviting Joy. I could not have said it better myself! Here’s to the 8/8/8 rule taking a firm hold in all our lives.

3) The film Miss Representation aired on OWN, Oprah’s network, in October 2011, taking on the mainstream media’s portrayal of women and girls. According to the film’s producers, Miss Representation:

exposes how mainstream media contribute to the under-representation of women in positions of power and influence in America. The film challenges the media’s limited and often disparaging portrayals of women and girls, which make it difficult for women to achieve leadership positions and for the average woman to feel powerful herself.

If you are in Dallas, there’s a great opportunity this coming Tuesday, April 17, to see the film at the Episcopal Church for the Transfiguration, on Hillcrest Road. Click here for the details. Should be a great evening! And check out other opportunities coming up to see the film as well, in the next month.

If you aren’t in the Dallas area, you can check here for a chance to see it in your area.

Thanks for your support and interest for my items of interest!

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.