You’re Killing Me

Ron Johnson communication, emotional maturity, grief, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

Have you ever said, “You’re killing me,” to anyone? Or perhaps some cognate of this expression like, “I’m dying here” or “I can’t live through this.” Or perhaps, you just thought such things and never actually said them to anyone. These kinds of statements can be frivolous, like being with someone who is severely besting you on the tennis court or in your sales department. It could even be a statement you might make with a project that you need to complete, whether at the office or a book you’re writing. As I say that, I am immediately reminded of the hard work Deb and I recently put in on the finishing touches, review, and revision of our latest book. My interest in the “you’re killing me” or its cognates like, “She’s killing him” or “She’s dying under his attention” or less damaging, “He’s killing her with kindness.’ The interest I have in this blog is to address the very real fact that people are, indeed, killing one another but not with kindness, meanness, guns, or pills but with being a severe emotional drain on them. Let me explain.

Kinds of “killing”

  • Caring for a physically impaired person
  • Caring for a mentally impaired person
  • Being in an intimate relationship with someone who is toxic
  • Being in a work setting that is toxic for you
  • Being in an environment that is toxic for you
  • Being toxic to yourself

In all of these circumstances there is never any conscious malicious attempt to “kill” someone. Yet there is a subtle effect that someone, someone, or you yourself has on you. Very importantly, there is rarely an actual intent to do harm to someone by the “killer.” They are not trying to kill someone or even bring them harm. Sometimes, like the “killing with kindness” is meant to do the very opposite. In most cases the “killer” is trying to survive in some way without actually meaning to do the “victim” any damage. These cases are like the proverbial person who can’t swim but drags someone down the water in an attempt to stay alive. The lack of intention to bring harm is central to the case I wish to bring here together with some possible understanding and remedies for such things. I would like you to be alive.

Examples of people being “killed” by the people in their lives:

  • A pastor who has been working diligently, perhaps too diligently, to serve people in his congregation found himself emotionally spent but kept up his work only to recently be in a meeting where the congregation identified the “administration” (which means he) needed to be changed. In simple terms the congregation (by a very slim majority) of voting people (not all of whom had been in church for years) voted against him. In this case he was assaulted by several people whom he had diligently tried to serve over the years he was at this church. When I saw him recently, he admitted that he felt like so many people feel: he didn’t want to live. Not that he wanted to die or that he was suicidal but he felt like he was dying or would rather not live because his profession and his livelihood had been taken away from him. His antagonist people in church are “killing” him.
  • Another pastor (yes, I see such people frequently) has cancer and the “numbers” are not good. He and his wife have been married more than 50 years and have served many churches, raised children, and have done well in their denomination. Due to what we might call too much kindness, this pastor was unable to deny his wife anything over these 50 years and ended up now well into retirement with an excessive amount of debt. The debt load has been hard to bear over the recent years, and importantly, his wife didn’t really that their purchases and traveling were on credit cards, now towering over them. I think some of his cancer has actually been exacerbated and to some degree caused as the result of his being overwhelmed by the debt. Perhaps more importantly, however, he has suffered under the nearly constant, but subtle attack from his wife of leaving them in such a state instead of enjoying being fun-loving grandparents. Most markedly, when I recently saw them together, the wife was far more worried about being “straddled with debt when her husband dies” than actually concerned about his health. I think she has been “killing” him for years, only now being quite obvious.
  • My brother died nearly 25 years ago at age 59 from cancer, but it is my belief that the people in his life “killed” him, albeit without their intention or his knowledge. Bill cared for our aging, mother who suffered from debilitating Alzheimer’s disease for perhaps five years. There is a good bit of research on the care of severely impaired people, whether the impairment is physical, mental, or otherwise. Caregivers actually die sooner than they should die, or at the very least suffer physical and mental diseases as a result of caring for their loved ones. So, my mother “killed” Bill, at least to some degree, certainly without any intention to do so. Caring for a person suffering from dementia is like caring for a two-year old with a 70-year old body. It’s a chore. Additionally, my brother suffered for being with a mentally disturbed individual in his life whom we might say put a “drain” on him, perhaps “draining” him of his ability to sustain life. Indeed, he died specifically from liver cancer but it is my belief that the disease was exacerbated or perhaps caused by the mental strain of caring for people whom he loved but who were impaired.
  • I see many people in my practice who are caring for impaired people, and all of them suffer. The woman who graciously adopted a young man who had been abandoned by his parents in India only to discover that this 13-year old had a mind of a 4-year old, and was found to have sexually molested several other children. He is “killing” his mother.
  • I know of a child who was so outrageous and demanding that he was partly due to the early demise of his mother who died at 45, possibly due to the strain of trying to love and limit this child who was so demanding of her. Of course, he has no idea of the damage that he caused his mother nor would I say such a thing to him, but I am convinced that this young man, possibly in conjunction with his equally impaired sister, caused the demise of their mother.
  • I have not spoken of the sad fact that there are some truly dangerous people in the world, like abusive husbands and wives, fathers or mothers, and the like. Certainly, there are these people.
  • I have felt that someone was “killing me” a couple times in my recent life. One was a time when the two closest members of my family behaved in a way that I felt quite rejected. I didn’t feel “suicidal” but there was a kind of “I could die and that might be not so bad.” These feelings lasted for about an hour as I took a long walk. The feelings past but the memory remains as an important time in my life. I told my wife about the experience. She said that she had had a similar experience not so long ago. We are not immune to such feelings but have a way of processing them.
  • Many men have said “I don’t want to live,” sometimes with my assistance for them to admit to these feelings. These people don’t want to die and they are certainly not suicidal. They just feel quite overwhelmed in life for some reason.

Examples of situations that “kill” people

  • I know of several men who are in jobs that they hate, some of these men making a great deal of money. It seems odd to me that a person stay in a job that he hates “for the money” or allegedly doing it “for the family.” Sadly, I know of several men who have stayed with such jobs and ultimately lost their physical health, mental health, property, or marriages because these jobs were killing them.
  • Other situations that are non-personal include projects people do, perhaps on houses, cars, money, weather, or some event in the world far away.
    • I felt quite distressed during a time when we were in the midst of a kitchen remodeling project somewhat due to delays from the tradesmen, somewhat because it wasn’t my desire to do the project, and perhaps form some other unknown projects.
    • People often feel that they are “being killed” by unforeseen weather, not necessarily a tornado but just some kind of extension of undue heat or cold
    • People often feel “killed” by their lack of money, perhaps enough to just pay the bills of life and limb.
  • People often feel that they are dying because of some physical/medical condition and perhaps treatment. I understand the “chemo” treatment for cancer seems worse than the cancer. I just talked to someone with a variety of things going on with his body, any of which could be life-taking. Interestingly, people can be quite at peace at what might seem to be the end of their lives compared to some kind of debilitating disorder or disability.
  • There several verses in the Bible of God “killing” people, usually “enemies” like in the Hebrew Scriptures, but even more dramatic statements that are unique to the New Testament. It seems that the writer of these verses felt God killing him.

How to handle “you’re killing me” feelings

  • Know that these feelings are quite normal
  • Know that the word “killing” and its cognates is an attempt by the person to present a metaphor, strong as it might be, to him/herself or to someone else. We try to give people a “wide berth” as we often say, when they seek to say some “feeling.” “You’re killing me” is such a statement
  • Be careful to whom you say such things. If you feeling like you “don’t want to live,” be even more careful to whom you say such a thing. The listener has to know this is a feeling, not a fact, not a plan.
  • Do find someone who can hear such things. This would be someone who could hear the feeling and not conclude the fact that the feeling words seemed to suggest.
  • In the rare case where you are in some real danger, whether physical, mental, or spiritual, find a way out whatever the case

 

Thriving and Surviving

Ron Johnson addictions, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, happiness, mindfulness, Self-Awareness

Some years ago I asked to talk to an African American man who had written a number of pieces in the local paper. In my email I said that although I had two Black sons in law and had Black men occasionally come to my office, I often felt that I was missing something important about the Black subculture, namely how Blacks actually engage in conversation, friendship, and intimacy. Intimacy is the heart of any good therapeutic alliance between therapist and patient. I was to meet him in a local café. I had been interested in some of the things he had said about his work, which was essentially with primarily Black kids. When I entered the café, he waved at me and invited me to come to the table where he was sitting with a friend/colleague (who happened to be White) with whom he had been working for a few years. As I approached the table and had not yet sat down, he volunteered something that has stuck with me since our meeting although I have not had contact with this man since. He said something like, “I want to start by saying that you look confident and a man who is thriving in life. If you want to know that your very appearance suggests thriving and it is off-putting. I have lived in an environment that has been one of surviving, not thriving.” I was not offended by his comment, but I did take a figurative step back from the conversation because I had never heard of the difference between thriving and surviving, and I immediately knew that I had not been raised in a survival context. This matter of surviving has continued to be an important aspect of my understanding people, to some degree the subcultures of America like the African American culture, but in a larger context of how many people engage life: they are surviving. Let’s look at the whole business of thriving and surviving that people do. There are many people who survive terrible ordeals, like physical illness or even war, but my focus will be primarily on people who survive through emotional challenges.

People who are surviving

  • People with physical limitations
    • Blindness
    • Debilitating illnesses like cancer and heart disease
    • Physical disabilities
  • People with household difficulties
    • Financial limitations or challenges’
    • Deteriorating living quarters
    • No living quarters
  • People who interpersonal difficulties
    • One partner is seriously physically limited
    • One partner wants out of the relationship
    • One partner is unfaithful
    • One partner is addicted to some behavior or chemical
    • Partners have substantially different religious/philosophical orientations
    • Partners have a cognitively impaired child, which causes them to frequently be at odds with each other
    • Partner one does not like the biological family of partner two. Makes Christmas celebrations difficult
  • And many other difficulties that people need to manage by surviving

People who are surviving personal matters

  • Jack is unable to conquer his addition to one of the following: alcohol, drugs, food, promiscuity, gambling, video game playing, other screen time, working, playing, toxic relationships, or sleeping (too much or not enough)
  • Marge is generally not happy with herself. She thinks she is stupid.
  • Peter is not happy with himself. He thinks he is smarter than everyone
  • Both Marge and Peter are lonely
  • Stan continues to pine for the woman he thinks he should have married, a feeling that makes life difficult for him and secondarily and unconsciously for his wife
  • Dad doesn’t really like his son. Thinks that he is too much like his wife
  • Mom really favors daughter # 1 over daughter #2 because she is more like #1

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. The essence of avoiding these difficulties means that they avoid the feelings associated with these difficulties. When they don’t finish the feelings associated the challenges, these feelings stay with them. These feelings then become repressed. It wouldn’t be so bad if these feelings stayed repressed but that is not what happens. The feeling show themselves in things they say or do. When they are speaking or doing something that is a result of not having felt through these feelings, they are accommodating. Very likely, they are not aware that they are accommodating. What happens is that the things they say or things they do are coming indirectly from the repressed feelings without their conscious knowledge. It just “feels right” to say something or do something that may seem quite odd or offense to other people. What are the things that they do to accommodate?

Accommodation

Depending on the individual, the subculture that they live in, the people they live with, the work they do, they play they do, or the any environment where they live, there are many possibilities of accommodation including:

  • Being distrustful of everyone
  • Being dishonest, or at least easily dishonest when they run into some kind of challenge
  • Fall into some addiction, chemical or behavioral
  • Become isolated. Introverted people tend to isolate
  • Become very active. Extraverted people tend to talk a lot
  • Fall into depression
  • Fall into a generalized anxiety
  • Take some kind of radical action
  • Take some kind of radical philosophical or religious orientation

To avoid these unfortunate accommodations, what can people do to move from surviving to thriving?

Positive coping mechanisms

  • Without a doubt, the most important thing for a person to do when he or she has faced with the trauma that caused the person to survive is to face the trauma and understand that they were in a dangerous or untenable situation and they did what they needed to do to survive. This takes away the false guilt of being a bad person.
  • Grieve the loss of what happened. This is easier said than done. It is hard enough to face the violence of sexual abuse or any other kind of abuse. It is much harder to face traumata that occurred over a longer period of time or traumata that occurred to one’s family or one’s heritage. How will Palestinians cope with the trauma of being assaulted? How Israelis cope with their traumata? How will Black people face the trauma of slavery that occurred for 300 years and the aftermath of racism for another 100 years?
  • Most people need a confident, which could be a good friend, family member, therapist, or clergy person to do this kind of grief work.
  • Slowly replace surviving words and activities with thriving activities.
    • Being more honest
    • Being more trusting
    • Taking a chance with some activity like work school, friends
    • Facing and overcoming addictions whatever they may be
    • Finding a community of people who have moved from surviving to thriving

I wish you a time when you can achieve a life of thriving, which of course, will be imperfect. It will also be more honest, graceful, and peaceful. But it will also be sadder as you see that you lose things every day and have disappointments every day.

And I wish you a wonderful holiday season.

Lost Children

Ron Johnson Connection, emotional maturity, Feelings, grief, love, mindfulness, relationships

There are many lost children in the world. We hear of “trafficking of children, often originating in Africa, and many other tragedies of lost children, the most recent being the apparent thousands of children killed in Gaza. I have seen many examples of “lost children” recently from many different perspectives including the loss of children to death, the loss of children from divorce issues, and the loss of children from their own decisions to depart from their parents in some way, not always pleasantly. Some examples:

  • I have had the privilege of serving or attempting to serve many people in my office who have lost children to early deaths, this coming on the heels of our having lost our daughter four years ago. It seems remarkable that I have had six patients in the recent four or five years who have lost a child to an early death.
  • I know of a man who has lost a second child after having lost his first child to death. This lost child has separated himself from his biological family, seemingly primarily from the father, for reasons that are not yet entirely clear.
  • I have a patient, also someone with two adult children, both of whom have been lost to his wife and him. One of their children “came out” as being “trans” and has separated himself (herself) from his (her) parents because of his perception that they were not “affirming” of his new gender status. Their other child has simply been distant from his parents for reasons that are not entirely clear
  • Another patient is in the midst of a contentious custody dispute as their divorce progresses. He has 3 biological children and one older child. His relationship with his older child is good and developing and his relationship with his seven-year old child is what to be expected with an elementary school child, but his relationship with the two middle children is quite problematic. One, the older of the two of them, is now in college but hasn’t communicated much to him about her desires in life while his 15-year old has refused to see him at all, allegedly from the standpoint of the father, due to the influence of the mother of these children.
  • I know of a grandfather who has not had much of a relationship with his (only) grandson largely due to the fact several incidents that have happened over the past couple of years, one of which during the several months this young man lived with his grandparents during the beginning of Covid restrictions and another incident that was quite offensive to the grandfather when he stayed with them again a couple years ago.
  • Another patient has is in a less than successful marriage, which has actually been unsuccessful for its 30 years of existence. Due somewhat to his wife’s behavior over the years, and due to his complicity with her desires for the children, now adults, there is a large rift between parents and children, albeit somewhat subtle.
  • I know of many children who have never seen one or both of their biological parents, and many children who rarely or never saw their biological fathers.
  • A man lost one child and nearly has lost another. This man is an evangelical and raised his children within that arena of faith. One child “came out” as trans and is evidently in the process of adjustment to his (now her) life. He has cut off all contact with his parents. The man is also less than satisfied with his relationship with his other son. Both parents are grieving, thinking, and wondering.
  • I know of a man who only over the past two or three years did he have any contact with his daughter after a contentious divorce when the daughter was 4 or 5. Now, 15 years later they are finding their way together.

I know of many more such examples of “lost children”, often through unhappy marriages and other stressors in life. Likewise, I have known of stepparents who have continued good relationships even after the divorces and many feeling their stepchildren ripped from their hearts after a divorce.

What are the feeling associated with these lost children and their lost parents?

In a word: sadness. But then this sadness has migrated into various coping mechanisms, most of them not healthy or healing. I know of many parents and stepparents who have found some kind of addition to cope with their losses, whether chemical or behavioral. It is remarkable how people can not only “drown their sorrows” in alcohol but do a different kind of drowning with promiscuity, gambling, overeating, or isolation. None of these things actually helps. Many other people do not find addictions per se but find ways to hole up with their feelings and have a certain resistance to facing the feelings that they have. One of the cases I mentioned above has developed an attitude of “not caring” about his two lost children “if they’re going to act that way.” Other parents spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about the children, often in connection with complaining about ex-spouses. Some people simply keep all their feelings to themselves, usually finding some solace in addictive behaviors like TV-watching, video gaming, or eating. All of these ways of “coping” and “accommodating” to the loss of children are ways to avoid the real feeling: sadness.

What can be done to deal with the feelings associated with the loss of a child?

In a word: grieve. Deb and I allowed ourselves a good deal of time to face the loss of our daughter when she died four years ago including a “grieving trip” that we took to be away from home and the challenges of a life now without the life of our daughter. We talked to people, often random people like a cashier at a coffee shop or a passer-by at a waterfall that we saw, sometimes revealing out loss, sometimes our feelings trying not to burden the people who happened to listen to us. This speaking to people we knew and more often to people that we didn’t know allowed us to share the grief and end the grief.

I actually think it is easier to lose a child to death than it is to lose a child who is still living. I can grieve, and however hard grieving might be, it does end, and it always ends if I allow it to run its course. It is much harder for a parent to grieve the loss of a living child often because that child might live five blocks away (a real incident) or “might” come back into the parent’s life. So, how would a person “grieve” the loss of a child who lives 5 blocks away or a child of 15 who refuses to see you, or a stepson whose mother won’t let you see him? All of these require grief but all of them require different forms of grieving.

Grieving, if it is “finished,” as we say, does not change history. It changes the emotion associated with history. The resolution of PTSD is not in changing history, forgetting the loss that was caused the trauma. It is not complaining about the person, persons, or situations that caused the trauma. It is finishing the feelings that come when I have been traumatized. The loss of a child is a trauma in whatever form it comes. So if you have lost a child in some way who is still living (as I hope), your grief will need to be substantially different from someone like me who can simply (and profoundly) grieve for a certain amount of time and end it. How do you do this seemingly ongoing loss? Ongoing grief? No really.

I am reminded of a patient I saw for many years who was in a nursing home because he had deteriorating muscular dystrophy (MS). His loss was not of a child, per se, although he had lost the opportunity to be with his children and grandchildren due to his MS. His loss was the daily experience of not being able to move, feed himself and care for his bodily needs. I helped Jim (not his real name of course) to learn to grieve every day. At first, he thought this was crazy and would only make matters worse. I didn’t want him to complain and feel awful every day. I wanted him to find, face, feel, and finish the grief of not being able to move effectively. He slowly and painfully learned to grieve every morning, sometimes for seconds, sometimes for minutes, until his grief was finished for the day. They he could go about doing what he was able to do without feeling the burden of being disabled. Sounds impossible? It is not. Grief ends, it always ends, if you give it room, time, and place.

Grieving sufficiently

In this light I try to help parents face the lost children first and foremost recognize that they “have a love problem” as Deb and I say to patients all the time. A love problem means that I love something or have loved something that I have lost. This is the cause of grief, nothing less. If felt, it will finish, but usually grief is not sufficiently felt to finish, and people get used to the secondary emotions and accommodations that occur if they do not grieve sufficiently. This can be done is private or in the company of a friend, family member, or therapist, but to share grief with someone is not to get advice or even “support” but to share the grief with someone. A good friend (family member or therapist) actually enjoys the privilege of sharing the grief because that person is sharing in the love as well as the lost.

If you can grieve sufficiently, you will arrive at a place where you have accepted the loss. When you arrive at this place, you still love what you have lost but you are no longer grieving, much less anguishing, feeling angry or feeling fear. If you can get to this place, you might be in the place to do or say something, but you can’t do anything or say anything until you actually find the end of grieving, which is always the love you have for you loss. Grieving for the loss of a living child doesn’t mean giving up on him or her, much less giving up hope for some reconciliation and rekindling of the relationship. It means you aren’t angry anymore. It is very hard for a man or a woman to get beyond being angry at a former spouse for having caused a separation from a child but it is necessary before you take any kind of action or say anything to the child or the other person. We use the 10-2-1 rule, which means feel ten times, think twice, and then act or say something once. The problem is not in the action, it is in premature action (or words). The solution is to feel it until it is finished. Then you can think clearly so you can act or speak decisively. If it stops with feeling and you never think or never act, you have not been honest. Indeed, you may have to wait for months or years before you can speak or act, but eventually, you will need to do both. But only when you are free of anger and fear.