Children

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.

 

 

 

Are All Men Selfish?

Ron Johnson appreciation, Children, communication, Connection, Development, emotional maturity, Feelings, happiness, men's issues, Positive psychology, relationships, Self-Awareness, social esteem

What an outrageous question, right? This is just as outrageous as my previous blog about “women never admit that they’re wrong.” This equally outrageous statement about men is not made in jest because men are frequently accused of being selfish, particularly by the women in their lives. I think there is something very important in this question because there is a certain truth to the statement that all men are selfish, or at least look selfish. We will examine several things in this blog, not the least of which are related to my last blog about women seemingly having a difficult time admitting that they’re wrong. Let’s examine what “selfish” means, especially as it compares to narcissism. We will look at the positive aspect of selfishness, the negative aspect of it, and the very opposite of selfishness, selflessness, which can be good and not so good. Then let’s look at how men operate, at least for the most part, that makes them look selfish and act selfish.

What is selfishness?

This is an unfortunate word that has creeped into the English vocabulary over the recent decades, perhaps centuries. On the surface selfish means one is oriented towards oneself. So, at least at this level, there isn’t anything particularly wrong with being selfish if it means that he (or she; but let’s stay with “he” for now) is aware of himself and looks at the world as a person who is independent from everyone else. John Donne said, “Every man is an island to himself” 400 years ago, but Donne’s intent was to deal with the isolation that so many people feel. So, we could say that there is at least some value in being selfish while there is a danger. This will be the main point I wish to convey in this essay. In other words, you need to know who you are in order to do anything in the world.

This “knowing who you are” ideally coms early in life, starting about age two but blossoming during the years 2-5 or 6. These toddler and early childhood years when ideally the person has received the security, nurturance, and comfort one needs during the first year or two of life, and is now ready to engage in the social world. The heart of “self” as we discuss it in psychology is having a sense of security that can only come from a secure environment. So, if the infant has received these basic three elements (security, nurturance, and comfort), s/he will be able to then bridge safely and confidently into the world. And this is very important because the rest of the world will not provide these three basic elements. The individual needs to find a way to find his or her (now let’s just go with “his”) way in life by his own wits. This is the positive aspect of “selfishness,” i.e. knowing who you are and going through the rigors of the toddler/early childhood years when you still think that you should have everything you want. You don’t know that at age, say, four, your wants have accelerated 100-fold while your needs have stayed the same: security, nurturance, and comfort. During infancy your wants were quite simple as they were essentially needs, i.e. food and safety. So the positive essence of selfishness is having sense of self, where I provide most of my security, nurturance, and comfort. I look out to not fall off a cliff or run in front of a car, I feed myself, and I take care of myself for the most part. I should not need the same amount of comfort as a 4-year old that I needed as a one-year old. But what happens when I don’t get my infantile needs met? I remain “self-less.”

The two aspects of selflessness

Unfortunately, many people do not adequately receive these three basic elements in infancy and are not prepared to engage the world that does not care for them as their parents did…or should have done. When this happens, the individual (we’re talking mostly about men, so let’s use the masculine pronoun from here on) does not have the groundwork to enter the years 2-6 where he needs to find himself, be himself, and exert himself in order to make it in the world. If the person does not get a foundation in infancy, particularly of safety, nurturance, and comfort, he will not be ready for the journey that begins in these early childhood years and never ends. Such a person will then be seeking these basic infantile needs from other people, or perhaps by some kind of addictive substance or behavior to give him a sense of self. Chemical addictions give the man an artificial sense of self as he finds a chemical way to feel safe and productive. Behavioral addictions do the same thing because they give the man a sense of purpose: gamble (and hopefully make a million dollars) or work all the time, and hence give the man a sense of safety, eat excessively (and serve the need for nurturance), or engage in some form of sexual addiction (and give the man a sense of comfort). All of these addictions are attempts to find a sense of self because the man didn’t have an adequate sense of self when he was four.

The other aspect of selflessness is what we normally think of with the term: a tendency to take care of others and serve the world. People who do, indeed, focus their lives on service can be people who have a good sense of self, so good, in fact that they forget about themselves in their charitable work. People who are truly generous are people who have a good sense of self, so good that they are able to spend hours or dollars without needing or seeking any kind of reward beyond the satisfaction and pleasure of taking care of people or the world in some way. My first therapist and life’s mentor, Dr. Vernon Grounds, was such a person. He had a very solid sense of self, so solid that he didn’t have to prove himself to anyone and could spend 18 hours a day caring for people like me and other students and faculty in the seminary where he was president and professor.

These are two distinct kinds of selflessness but they can seem to appear together, which actually never happens. Many people who are apparently quite generous and positively selfless are seeking approval and attention. They have not found the intrinsic value of giving and the satisfaction of improving the world in some way. Many good men work too much and give too much because they are unable to say “no” to the needs of the world, often the seeming needs of people in their lives. True positive selflessness is demonstrated by the man who “let his nay be nay and his aye be aye.” In other words, the man who can say no just as easily as he can say yes. Many men struggle with this.

Selfishness and narcissism

Deb and I wrote a chapter in a book a few years back where we unpacked the word narcissism. Unfortunately, in contemporary society, this term has been used to a fault and without a real understanding of what the word narcissism means and what narcissism comes from. In our paper we proposed that there is a natural narcissism and an extensive of natural narcissism into adult life. On the surface narcissism seems to suggest that the individual is selfish, i.e. cares only about himself and thinks only about his own needs and wants. There is some truth to this with people who we might dare to call narcissistic, but there is great danger in using this word without knowing what natural narcissism is.

Natural narcissism, or childhood narcissism is what we have been discussing in the 2-6 year old time of life where I have the opportunity to develop a sense of self so that I can effectively engage the world. So, the 4-year old is “narcissistic” because he is looking to get his needs and wants met (even though he doesn’t really distinguish wants and needs). Then he meets some kind of resistance or limitation, puts up a fuss, and finds a way to get around the limitation, or hopefully adjust to the limits of life. This finding and fighting limits during these early childhood years is where most people fail in personal development. They either continue to fight so much that the world around them (usually parents) give into him, go their own way and trust no one, or they give up trying and find ways to accommodate to what everyone wants of them. Ideally, the boy finds a way to accept some limits and challenge others in such a way that he learns that he can have want he needs but not necessarily what he wants. What generates out of this crucial time of life is that the individual develops a sense of self from which he can engage the world successfully. When the boy has been indulged with getting too much of what he wants, he will continue to retain the natural narcissism of childhood into adulthood. If he has not been given enough freedom and encouragement together with appropriate limitations, he will also retain a narcissistic view of life but hold onto the belief that he needs to find the right place, people, and parental substitutes to give him what he wants. These are two different forms of narcissism in adult life, one “selfish” (I get what I want by demand), and one “selfless” (I’ll never get what I want so I have to depend on others to give it to me).

The bottom line is that adult narcissism is not selfishness so much as it is a lack of self, namely a self that knows that he can get what he needs, mostly by his own hands, but he can’t get most of what he wants because we all, quite simply, want more than we can have. These are the two holes that so many people fall into: I have a right to get what I want all the time or I have to find people to give me what I want. Most men tend to fall into the former group. Most women tend to fall into the second group. Both forms of narcissism are dead ends in life. But before we end this diatribe on selfishness, let’s look at another aspect of men’s apparent selfishness that has more to do with their independent nature…to a fault.

Independence to a fault

There is an interesting passage in Genesis, chapter 3 where God speaks to the metaphorical characters Adam and Eve after they have discovered the difference between good and evil when they ate the forbidden fruit from one tree. God said that the man would “work by the sweat of his brow,” in other words working hard. God said to the woman that she “would look to the man.” We dealt a bit with the “looking to the man” with women in our last blog. Notably, in this same chapter God said that he kept them from eating from the Tree of Life. We might conjecture that had Adam and Eve been more obedient to the limits (of childhood?), that they would have matured into Life more successfully. Regardless as to whether you believe this story as fact or myth, or disbelieve its value altogether, it does provide an interesting view of what a male needs to do in life: work. Carol Gilligan in a marvelous piece of psychological literature suggested that women are more naturally “communal” while men are more naturally “agenic.” This means that men might be more inclined to do their own thing while women being more inclined to do something with someone else, often with the man. Some biblical theologians have suggested that in Genesis 1, where Adam and Eve are created together, both worked side by side and both were communal, but in Chapter 3 these dimensions of humankind were separated. Let’s leave the Bible and go into how men actually operate with this work thing.

I propose that it is more natural for men to be independent and women to be more communal. Note that I do not suggest that women are the opposite of independent, i.e. dependent, but rather that they are more communal. We discussed the value and angers of communality in the previous blog, namely women tending to tell men what to do in an attempt to find communality. But the men’s side of the phenomenon here is their tendency to be independent to a fault, i.e. do what they want without regard for the other people in their lives, especially the women in their lives. Let me give you some examples.

Jack is an independent guy. He, like most of the men who come to my office, came with the figurative “female handprint in his back,” namely because his wife thought that he had some kind of problem. I talked about Jack’s wife in my last blog, but here I want to talk about Jack. He has been a successful tradesman and businessman for many years and has been in various businesses over time largely because he works hard and he works smart. Unfortunately for Julia, his wife, she has not always been a part of his business decisions and directions. He has, simply stated, gone on his merry way doing what he has thought is the right thing to do. And he has done quite well as he has looked at the business landscape. The difficulty with Jack, as he relates to Junie, is not his work or his decisions, but he going on with it on his own. Nothing wrong with doing things that seem right to you, but if you’re in a marriage where your wife wants to be a part of your life, you might want to converse with her about what you’re planning to do. This just doesn’t occur to Jack. Hence, his wife sees him as “selfish,” or worse yet narcissistic. There is a lot of truth her allegation but I have to be very careful with dealing with Jack’s independence because he has taken care of himself all of his life and has never really trusted anyone.

Sam is quite like Jack, i.e. independent to a fault. A physician, he has also chosen many directions in life, some having to do with his profession, some having to do with his philosophical and theological orientation to the world. He has spent thousands of dollars, much of it unwisely, investing in one thing or another but hasn’t consulted with his wife about these decisions. She sees him as selfish and narcissistic. Like Jack, he does not have a good sense of self and has, indeed, been independent because he needed to be that way to survive the shaming father in his life. Unfortunately, now he has also suffered the shaming of his wife who doesn’t know any way of dealing with the fact that he doesn’t consult her on his decisions.

Jack and Sam are representations of many men who have this biblical directive, “work by the sweat of your brow” without knowing that they are doing it. It just doesn’t occur to men who are exceedingly independent that there is a danger of going it alone. There is nothing wrong with independence, just as there is nothing wrong with communality, but there are dangers in both.

Dealing with men’s selfishness

  • Point one: value your orientation to life as an independent entity. You are good at doing your own thing and good at taking responsibility for your successes and failure
  • Realize that independence to a fault is selfishness, built on a lack of a clear sense of self. If you re in this category, you must find a way to get a better foundation of your self that is not only what you do and not only doing something on your own.
  • Admit to your significant other, or if you don’t have one, to a trusted friend, what you think, what you feel, and how you look at what you do in life. You will find that you don’t so much need advice as communality, i.e. a feeling of togetherness.
  • If you’re a person, say, a woman in this independent man’s life, tell him how you feel. Don’t tell how you feel about him. Tell him you miss him, enjoy his company, and enjoy hearing about what he does and where he’s going in life. He doesn’t know that he needs you, that he needs someone in life. Be careful to avoid telling him what he should do. Instead, tell him that you love him and want to be more a part of his thinking, feeling, and doing.  By the way, you got together with him in the first place because you liked his independence.

References

Gilligan, Carol. In a different voice.

Johnson and Brock, I want to tell you how I feel

Johnson, blog: “Why Good Men Lie”

The Only Mental Health Diagnosis

Ron Johnson Children, Development, Feelings, grief, Mental, Self-Awareness

I am amazed how frequently people talk about various mental health diagnoses. It is common to hear people talking about their “anxiety,” “panic disorder,” “ADHD” or other things, so much so that I hear such conversations while waiting in a cashier’s line. Of course, it is even more common in my business. I regularly do “ADHD neuropsychological evaluations” for people, both children and adults, who come to my office seeking some kind of answer to what ails them. Often, adults want to be “tested for ADHD” because they have some kind of trouble with memory or focus in their daily lives. I met with the parents of a teenager recently who has been diagnosed and treated with medication for his alleged ADHD condition for nearly 10 years. I found it interesting that the father noted that he most certainly suffered from ADHD as a child and adolescent but somehow got through childhood without medication. I told them that I was the same as a kid as I remember my maternal grandmother telling my mother that “you’re never going to raise that kid” because I was so active and unpredictable, like running down the block stark naked when I was three with my aunt chasing me all the way.

ADHD is certainly one of the more common “diagnoses” that people like to have. I use the phraseology “like to have” because it is my belief that ADHD and other diagnoses give people a sense of what is going on with their lives when things aren’t working out well for them. A diagnosis, namely a mental health diagnosis, helps people make sense of what is wrong in their lives. It is as if a person can have some kind of diagnosis, then they have some hope of recovery from the mental health “disorder” or “disease” that they have. Rarely, is that the case. Rather, people get this diagnosis and are not really better for it. Importantly, it is not only the mental health diagnoses that keep people busy figuring out what is wrong in their lives. There is even a larger number of physical anomalies that people suffer that lead to a similarly large number of physical/medical diagnoses. I see a couple whom I have seen off and on for 20 years as they have struggled with a variety of challenges in their marriage, interestingly, not the typical arguments and dissention that usually brings couples to see me. In this case, the original “presenting problem” (which I prefer to call the “presenting situation”) was the man’s impotence, but over the years we have dealt with a number of other (seemingly) external matters including finances and vocational adjustment. It is interesting to me that when I see this couple, the first thing the woman talks about is the great variety of physical/medical problems that she has, talk that could last for 30 minutes of our 2-hour time together if I allowed her to tell me all that ails her. This occurs while her husband sits patiently by until he can then tell me of his physical ailments. True, these people are in their 70’s where such things do occur more frequently, but it is continually interesting to me that they can talk about what ails them physically more fluently then they can talk about how they feel or what they think, this despite the fact that they are both well educated. When we finally get around to talking about how they feel or what they think, they then talk about the various mental health diagnoses that they both have.

The dependency on physical and mental health diagnoses has increased so much over the recent years that it is not uncommon for people to allege to have several diagnoses. I recall a woman I saw for an evaluation who initially said that she suffered from “bipolar disorder, ADHD, PTSD, anxiety, panic disorder, borderline personality disorder, and depression in addition to a similarly long list of physical disorders. I was amazed at her willingness to have all this wrong with her.

The popular mental health diagnoses

Consider how often you have heard about someone’s “bipolar disorder” over the recent years. Note that you never heard the term 10 years ago, much less 20 or 30 years ago. As you probably know, bipolar disorder was previously manic-depressive disorder. Despite the fact that you probably hear about someone having bipolar disorder, this is a very rare disorder that, like so many other diagnoses, is way over diagnosed. In fact, true bipolar disorder is a psychotic disorder where someone has a kind of delusion, often “manicky,” like s/he is going to be the next benign dictator of the world, or will most certainly suicide tomorrow. Bipolar disorder is not the ups and downs that all people have. It is not the grandiosity that we sometimes see with people or the hopelessness that we see with others, much less the changing of mood from one day to another.

The other “popular” diagnoses are as follows along with the symptoms of these disorders:

  • ADHD: impulsivity, distractibility, hyperactivity
  • Panic disorder: accelerated heart rate, feeling of dread, fear of a heart attack
  • Depression: disturbances of three elements in life: low, high, or inconsistent:
    • Appetite (too much, not enough, not hungry)
    • Sleep (too much, not enough, erratic)
    • Energy (too much, not enough, erratic)
  • Anxiety: fear of the unknown future; usually together with increased heart rate
  • PTSD: symptoms of depression and anxiety related to past traumatic events
  • Borderline personality disorder: feeling of a “deep hole” in oneself
  • Addictive disorders (chemical or behavioral): compensations for traumata

There are many other mental health diagnoses that are less frequently self-diagnosed, like schizophrenia and personality disorders, but the foregoing are the most commonly rendered, often by the individual and frequently by a therapist or physician. It is notable that one of my psychology journals reported that fully 40% of Americans were on some kind of psychotropic medication; possibly more now. Medications are antidepressants, anxiolytics (sedatives; anti-anxiety agents), stimulants (usually for ADHD), and anticonvulsives (given to treat bipolar disorder). So, does have the country suffer from one or more mental health disorders? I don’t think so.

What do people suffer from, and what can be done about it?

  • First, there is only one real mental health diagnosis.
  • Secondly, there is only one cause.
  • Thirdly, there is only one effective treatment.
  • Fourthly, there is only one real “cure” because there is nothing “wrong.”

The one real mental health diagnoses: PTSD

PTSD stands for post-traumatic stress disorder. This is the correct diagnosis for 95% of mental distress, as I call them rather than “mental health issues” or “mental disorders.” In fact, I think it would be better “diagnose” this condition as PTD: post-traumatic distress, which would be more accurate. Better yet, when I deal with people who are really seeking psychotherapy for improving their self-understanding and their lives, I simply call it “distress” rather than PTSD, much less depression, anxiety, and the like. It is the distress that people find so disruptive in their lives, and it is the distress that I work diligently to help them to end.

I should make a comment about the so-called biological or inherited tendency people have towards various mental health disorders. There is no clear science in this matter but there is a good deal of theorizing in the matter. We do find that certain families have proclivities towards something, perhaps anxiety or depression. But the science is not yet clear as to whether this finding has to do with the environment (usually the biological family) or the heritability factor. We do know that if identical twins are separated at birth, and then they have some sort of mental illness, there is a 50% chance that they will have the same illness. Interesting. But what about the other 50% that don’t share the diagnosis? We come to the mixture of nature and nurture in this situation, with the suggestion that we may, indeed, have an inclination towards some kind of mental distress that surfaces because of the family environment. In my own family there is a plethora of people who have suffered from some kind of anxiety. I have found it necessary to attend to the phenomenon in my own life as well. But was I “taught” anxiety or is there a propensity in my genes towards anxiety? The answer is probably both are true. The larger question, however, is what shall a person do when s/he has some kind of mental distress, a question we shall tackle shortly. Certainly, in my own life, I suffered traumata in childhood, which may have caused or quickened anxiety in me. Read on.

The one real cause of mental distress: trauma

What is “trauma”? Trauma is an unexpected event that causes some kind of damage, be it physical, mental, or relational. We might even suggest that are other kinds of traumata (I use the German plural of the word, but “traumas” is just as good), like financial trauma, property trauma (some kind of loss), or even vicarious trauma. I think I was vicariously traumatized by watching a war-based movie last night that adversely affected my sleep. But PTSD is not just trauma. It is the emotional element in the trauma that causes the distress.

PTSD (or my “PTD”) is a condition in which an individual has not resolved the emotion attached to the trauma. The most obvious kinds of PTSD are sexual trauma and war trauma. I was thinking about the poor soldiers facing a myriad of traumata in the movie from which they might later suffer PTSD. A veteran of war or a victim of sexual abuse suffers PTSD because at the time of the trauma the individual is not able to feel the emotions associated with the trauma. The emotions associated with war are anger, fear, and sadness, but if you’re in a foxhole and need to shoot the bad guy, you don’t have time to feel these emotions. Likewise, if you’re being molested, you aren’t in the position to feel the emotions of fear, which is predominant, much less anger at your perpetrator, much less the pleasure that might actually be associated with the abuse. So, such people suffer from not having felt the feelings that naturally occur in these circumstances. But traumata are not just related to sexual abuse and war trauma.

Developmental traumata are situations where a child fails to receive one or more of the basic ingredients of childhood, which can be summarized as the following:

  • Security and safety
  • Sustenance (food)
  • Physical affection
  • Emotional affection
  • Freedom
  • Limitation
  • Encouragement
  • Challenge

In all of these circumstances, there are three possibilities for traumata:

  • Too much
  • Too little
  • Inconsistent

Allow me to explain. Many children live in circumstances that are, indeed, dangerous, hence lacking in security and safety. But there are children who have too much security. Ideally, a child needs 100% security through much of her first year of life, but if she receives infantile security after that year, she will then feel unduly afraid of the world, perhaps for the rest of her life. Or, she might receive inconsistent security, which means safe and unsafe, which is actually even worse than no safety at all. Research psychologists call this “intermittent reward” (or punishment). Likewise, all the other aforementioned causes of possible trauma could be the “not enough, too much, or inconsistent” categories. Some children have too much limitation and are not allowed to explore the world with trials and errors, while other children have so much freedom that they fail to understand the value of laws and natural limitations. All of these circumstances contribute to PTSD to some degree or other.

Some children suffer from more than one of the lack of one of ingredients of an ideal childhood. For instance, some children are not loved right (lack physical affection), so they put up a real fuss in life. Then, to quiet them down, they are indulged with something. Then, they become even more demanding, and are then shamed. This combination of neglect, indulgence, and shame causes the condition known as borderline personality disorder. The other so-called mental disorders might be seen as having been caused by various traumata:

  • Anxiety: almost certainly caused by some kind of neglect during early life
  • Depression: most likely caused by losses in early life
  • Bipolar disorder: both neglect and losses
  • Schizophrenia: inconsistent love and limitation and some kind of chaos in general
  • Personality disorders (narcissism): lack of encouragement, challenge, and limitation
  • ADHD: too much limitation or too much freedom
  • Additions: a coping mechanism that replaces what was lost in childhood

So what can be done to successfully treat these conditions?

The one real treatment for mental distress: grief

As you may know, Deb and I wrote a book on sadness entitled The Positive Power of Sadness, subtitled How Good Grief Prevents and Cures Anger, Sadness, and Depression. In this book we discuss how the mental disorders of anxiety and depression are prevented by honest sadness in addition to the phenomenon of undue anger. Let me summarize:

  • You love something
  • You are assaulted
  • You lose this something
  • You feel hurt
  • You feel afraid of losing more
  • You get angry to protect yourself from future loss
  • You compensate with some kind of addiction (chemical or behavioral)
  • You then develop “symptoms” like anxiety or depression

Our suggestion in the Good Grief book (as we all it) is to stop the process at the hurt level and then back up from there. If I feel hurt, I will simply and profoundly feel sad. Just sad. Not angry, not afraid. Not compensating. Just sad. The beauty of sadness is that it ends. It really ends. There is nothing that we cannot finish feeling sad about if I allow myself the privilege of feeling sad. Way too much so-called therapy focuses on fixing sadness or making up for it instead of just feeling sad and allowing sadness to run its course.

This having been said, it is important to note that feeling sad is painful. Hence we avoid sadness by feeling fear or anger or having some kind of compensation. But the problem is that people are generally not good at simply feeling sad. They would much rather feel angry at what happened to them, which always leads to depression, or feel afraid of what they might lose in the future. Both are delusional: we can’t change the past and we can’t change the future. We can reflect on the past and finish the feelings of sadness, or we can consider possible losses in the future and feel anticipatory sadness. But we can’t change the past or future. So, the “treatment” for all trauma is to feel the sadness that comes with all loss, e.g.:

  • Loss of freedom as a child
  • Loss of limitation as a child
  • Inconsistent freedom and limitation
  • Loss of security
  • Loss of physical or emotional love

All of these losses can be felt and finished, but this is no easy task. Simple, but not easy.

The one real “cure” for PTSD

We have already suggested that the treatment for PTSD, or for any other mental distress is grief. Honest grief. But how is this done? Grief is simple, but it is hard, as I just said. It is simple because it is natural. It is natural to cry when I lose something, and it is just as natural to feel the sadness associated with crying. But it is not easy. It is not easy because of several matters, not the least of which is the cultural resistance to sadness and crying, particularly in America. Yet, there are ways to deal with the resistance we all have to grief:

  • Find a competent therapist. There aren’t many, sad to say.
  • Find a true friend…one who does not try to fix you and says very little but stays with you
  • Find a time when you can be alone…and grieve the loss(es) you have suffered in life
  • Write these losses down. You will see some “large” losses are no longer grievous, while smaller ones are still unfinished.
  • When you are angry or afraid “back up” your feelings until you find the hurt that always precedes anger and fear. Then back it up further, and you will find the love that you have for something

If you do this process of finding the core “problem” in PTSD, or any of its derivatives, you see that they are all about love, principally the love of yourself, which has been lost along the way. Love of self is natural, and it is not the same as liking oneself, liking what you said or did. But this is another subject.