relationships

Surviving or Thriving

Ron Johnson appreciation, Development, Discovery, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, love, mindfulness, relationships, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

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 long term personal and interpersonal challenges

  • 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 people. He doesn’t know how to admit that he is smarter than most people.
  • 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 Mom is more like #1
  • Martha loves, or thinks she loves Sam, but Sam is quite neglectful of her. She has tried everything to accommodate to him and to change him without success
  • Anthony just went through radiation treatment for prostate cancer but his PSA numbers are even worse than before treatment.
  • Anthony’s wife is surviving his illness and imminent death by worrying about how she will make it alone given their current financial disaster

The ways people survive these difficulties

In a nutshell, they avoid them. This means that ignore the feelings associated with their lives. What happens then? They turn to anger, avoidance, addiction, or some kind of fruitless activity.

  • Philip on the cruise boat holes himself up in his cabin coming out only to eat when he is desperately hungry
  • Alex spends 85% of his day playing video games
  • Francis takes Tylenol every two hours
  • Craig does his best to ignore the mess his dogs makes and covers the smell with incense
  • Frank talk about doing something on the house that pleases his wife but never actually does anything
  • Anthony’s wife goes silent for the most part, occasionally throwing barbs at her husband for not managing their finances well
  • Anthony indulges in a good deal of self-hate, which seems to be a way he can atone for his mistakes.
  • Some people start projects and abandon them because they are tired or bored. This leads to a lot of clutter in their lives, like property, relationships, and projects half-done.
  • Many people go to doctors and hospitals to have yet another blood test or CT scan to find the magic bullet

What has gone wrong with these people, many of who are intelligent and kind, and been productive in life?

In a nutshell, they haven’t grown up. But what does that mean? Almost all of the people I have noted above (all of whom have had their presented situations altered for privacy) have had pretty good lives and then got stuck somehow. They got stuck because they stop growing, which means that never learned to adapt, adjust, compromise, and find a way to adequately meet the new challenges of life. They might have had good marriages and jobs to start with. They might have successfully raised children. They might have even made a great deal of money along the way. But somehow, they never were able to move from one element of life to the next, from one need to the next need, from one job to another, from one house to another, or maybe even from one spouse to another or to being alone. They didn’t adapt to the changes that occurred in their lives thinking that the old things should still work.

Secondly, they didn’t learn how to feel, particularly the feeling of disappointment and hurt that comes in life, usually every day, allow themselves to feel sad for a season, and then take stock of what lies in front of them.

Thirdly, because they haven’t grown up and haven’t found a way to deal with disappointment, they have fallen into the avoidance, anger, avoidance, or fruitless activity that used to work but no longer works.

Fourthly and most importantly, they haven’t found ways face the paradoxes of life. They want the old things to work rather than finding new ways to succeed in life. They haven’t found ways to love you wife but not like some things about her, like your job for the most part but not like the 20% that you don’t like, love the house and hate the housework.

So, what can be done to do more thriving and less surviving?

  • Admit to your feelings. If you have read any of our blogs, you have already heard this call: admit to what is there, particularly how you feel. You will feel some combination of:
    • Hurt
    • Disappointment
    • Sadness
  • Then note the quick transformation of these basic feelings hurt and disappointment and the natural emotion of sadness quickly transfer into something else:
    • Anger
    • Fear
    • Avoidance
    • Addiction
    • Undue activity
  • Tell someone how you feel, ideally a person who doesn’t give you advice or “get over it” or “just do something.” Such a person could be a good friend, family member, or a therapist-like person.
  • Consider that there might be drastic action, like divorce, moving to a new house, quitting your job. Most of the time you won’t have to do such things. Just give these thoughts some room
  • If you are really in an intolerable situation, whatever it is, find a way out of it.
    • Leave your wife or job or house
    • Find a way to live the life you have left on this earth
    • Go to the country you have wanted to see all of your life
  • If drastic action is needed (it usually isn’t), note your feelings
    • Admit to the feeling of disappointment. Life at this point in your life is just not what you expected
    • Admit to the sadness
    • Allow your sadness to run its course. Sadness always ends
    • Work diligently to prevent anger, avoidance, addiction and fruitless activity
  • Do something that you really don’t want to do
    • Work out
    • Fix the garage
    • Clean up after your dog
    • Dare to look for a job even though you don’t want to work at “some stupid job.”
  • Then sit back and realize you did something you really didn’t want to do and appreciate your small effort.
  • Take a break from doing what you didn’t want to do and indulge yourself in video game laying or eating a donut.
  • Take a bit of stock of the other paradoxes in your life. Maybe read a snippet or so from the Stoics, like Marcus Aurelius.
  • You will find that much of your life, perhaps most of your life, is pretty good for the most part and enjoyable. Allow yourself a few moments to appreciate and enjoy.
  • Then, and only then will you be able to slowly move beyond surviving to thriving. Thriving takes time and a lot of work. It is not about money, property, or even relationships. It is about seeing what is, accepting what you can, changing what you can, and trusting yourself.
  • You will notice that you will begin to have a very positive effect on the world around you: people, places, things, and ideas

 

 

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.

I Don’t Like My Kid

Ron Johnson Children, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, marital, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

“I don’t like my kid.” This statement must sound outrageous. It certainly isn’t something that should be said frivolously or even teasingly. It most certainly shouldn’t be said to any child. It might, however, be a statement that could be said to a confidant who could be of some help understanding and dealing with not liking a child. We hear these statements rather frequently from people who come to us seeking some guidance with dealing with their children. More regularly, however, we hear statements of dislike for some member of one’s family, be it child, spouse, or extended family member. Let me give you some examples of the reasons people feel these things and feel safety saying them to us in confidence. Secondly, I would like to provide some reasons for why people don’t actually like people in their families, how liking and loving are often quite disparate, and thirdly, how people might handle such feelings.

Before we get to examples, causes, and cures, I should mention that people don’t readily make such statements about their family members. Rather, they tend to simply complain about them. With a few exceptions most people come to therapists with complaints about people in their lives, very often their spouses, parents, or children, and sometimes their bosses or colleagues at work. It is always a challenge to help people understand their feelings of dislike, which is usually based on some kind of loss and concomitant hurt, but it can take months or years, if ever, for people to see their own feelings. It is hardest for people to admit that they don’t like their children, which is where we will start.

Disliking children

Consider the following stories of children that we have heard (all identifying information adjusted retaining the essence of the complaint:

  • Child has molested several other children. The church the family used to attend has not allowed them to return to church, at least with this child. School has been on the alert because of the possibility of his molesting other children. He has been tested as intellectually functioning several years below his physical age
  • Child of nine tends to throw a fit when he doesn’t get his way, yelling and screaming, often breaking things, and rolling on the floor. He is actually quite bright and has been tested as being intellectually far ahead of his physical years
  • Child is almost completely nonverbal with anything he thinks and feels. He can be satisfactorily in his room playing on his computer for hours. He does not respond to questions or statements.
  • Child steals food, so much so that her parents have had to put a lock on the fridge door and pantry to keep her from stealing food.
  • Child frequently stops up the toilet with his feces and refused to deal with it. Often, he has left the toilet bowl full without telling anyone. Once, he tried to plunge the toilet without success and then used several towels to clean up the mess before hiding the dirty towels in a closet only to be found several days later by a parent.
  • Child is routinely dishonest, even about very small things, so much so that she can be trusted in any way. She might lie about what she did in school, what she likes, where she went, or what she feels.

None of these children is intrinsically likable although understandably, it is hard for a parent to admit they don’t like these children despite their tendency to yell at them, demean them, punish them, and complain to us about them. We have found it helpful to help parents of difficult children to admit that they “don’t like them.” Then, this disliking tends to decrease in intensity and duration and be replaced with not liking something about the kid, perhaps most things. This can lead to appropriate encouraging and challenging children who need both. Importantly, we do not suggest saying, “I love you but I don’t like what you do” because a child cannot really distinguish between what s/he does and what s/he is.

Dislike other family members

  • Man and wife couple. I regularly do an intake assessment on a couple in which I initially meet with the couple to hear what their concern is, then meet with each partner separately to gather a social history and make clinical observations, this followed by extensive psychological testing and then an interpretative session with both of them present. The couple in my mind is one where during my session with the wife, she demanded that she spend an hour talking singularly about what she determined was wrong about her husband, and wanted to continue for a second hour.
  • Other couples. With few exceptions all couples complain about one another taking the forms of feeling neglected or registering complaints about the spouse
  • Extended family members. This is very common, like the mother-in-law who isn’t liked, the father-in-law who intrudes on the family all time, the alcoholic family member, or perhaps just the family member who has a substantially different political or religious persuasion. These days, many people separate from extended family because one member loves Trump or hates Trump together with all that goes with these loves and hates.
  • A sister who alleged that her brother molested her when she was a child. This woman later admitted that it was their father who molested her, not the brother, but she hasn’t had the wisdom and courage to apologize for her allegation
  • A woman who has totally separated herself from her biological family bringing a good deal of hurt and misunderstanding to her family members. Many people have been in the same situation where one child is molested and damaged while another child is favored in the family making two people being raised in “completely different families.”

You didn’t have any choice to what family you were born. You do have a choice with whom you make friends., Certain family members may not be ones you choose as friends. Then you might find a way to keep a safe distance from family member you don’t particularly like. It is never helpful to tell family members that you don’t them, and even worse to act out your dislike of them by choosing to be with them more than you want to.

So, what are the things that have caused a person to dislike a family member, and what can be done about it? Let’s first look at the causes of disliking a family member.

Causes of disliking a family member

  • Simple, if also profound differences in persuasion, values, and beliefs
  • Projection of other people you dislike who are of a similar persuasion
  • Long-term dislike that has not been seen and expressed, much less resolved
  • Outrageous behavior that you have tolerated but not effectively tolerated
  • A genuine impediment in the other person, such as intellectual, physical, or emotional that has implications for how the person engages the social world
  • Envy of the other person, perhaps that s/he has something or has had opportunities that you haven’t had
  • You love the person, perhaps deeply, even though you don’t like him/her. This is something that Deb and I deal with all the time. Love is blind, so the saying goes, but liking or disliking is not blind. So, we end up with blind spots that are related to the people we love.

Dealing with not liking someone in your family

  • Admit to it: first to yourself and find a way to accept the fact that you may, indeed, love someone, perhaps very deeply, whom you don’t like.
  • Differentiate what you like from what you don’t like. You may discover that there is a lot more that you like than what you dislike but you have fallen prey to thinking that you have to like everything about someone.
  • Admit to at least one other person that you don’t like, not the person him/herself; perhaps a close confident or a therapist
  • Find a way to carefully distance yourself from this person. You may never need to deal with the disliking, but you can keep a safe distance so the dislike doesn’t turn into hate or disgust, much less your saying something untoward
  • Keep a safe distance, which may in terms of geography, frequency of contacts, and intensity of contacts. You may never really be able to particularly like certain family members but you can love them…at a safe distance.
  • Not liking spouse is a case in its own because ideally one’s spouse or life’s partner should be a friend first, a lover second, and a partner third. Many romantic relationships begin with love and sex first and then partnership but never friendship. Making friends with a spouse is a real challenge, especially if you have been unhappy with him/her for a long time and have been tolerating them.

The more you admit to not liking someone, the less the not liking will dominate your feeling and the more you might just be able to love the person more as the not liking shrinks.