family

The Other F word

Ron Johnson appreciation, Connection, family, Feelings, relationships

Family. That is the other F word. And it can be much worse than the curse word. We can dismiss the curse word when we hear it. We can use the curse word with impunity as many people do. It’s just a word. But we can’t do the same with the other F word: family. There is nothing like family to bring you great joys and great grief. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. You know what I mean. You can get away from the F word, but you can never get away from the F people. And this creates tremendous problems for everybody. Difficulties with family members include marital dysfunction, but are even more common among other family relationships.

When we think of family difficulties, we usually think of dysfunctional marriages and contested divorces. Indeed, bad marriages and bad divorces are challenging, both leading to fights of all kinds. But the really difficult family challenges are those that are blood related or related by marriage. You can actually get rid of your former partner or spouse, at least to some degree, but you can’t get rid of your blood relatives. Money, children, and property often divide couples and make for tremendous difficulties. These are hard to endure, but they have a way of eventually fading as children grow up, property deteriorates, and money problems slowly disappear. Not so with siblings, young children, adult children, parents, and to some degree in-laws.

You can quit your job if you don’t like your boss; you can move to a new neighborhood if you don’t like your neighbors; you can end a friendship; and you can leave your spouse, however difficult that might be. But you can’t get away from family. You can’t divorce your brother, you can’t quit your children, no matter what age. And you are stuck with your in-laws for the duration of the marriage. Relationships with children of any age, siblings of any age, and in-laws are often fraught with discomfort, dissatisfaction, and distress.

Childhood by its very nature is challenging, both for parents and for the children. Who really likes being awakened by an infant in the middle of the night, or the changing diapers, the colicky baby, or the eight-year old bed-wetter? Things get dicey particularly in the toddler years of two to six where kids are learning the use of their basic feelings. These years can be very taxing on parents as they attempt to nurture and direct their children beyond the natural narcissism of the toddler years into the social years of middle childhood. It is hard on parents to deal with the demands of these young children, but realize that it is even harder for toddler-age children to cope with having to transition from getting most of what they wanted in infancy to getting very little of what they want. These are years when parents and children often simply do not like each other even though they usually love each other. So much of early childhood is not particularly likable. I try to help parents admit to the paradox of loving a difficult child while not particularly liking the child.

Children are difficult and not always likable at any age, but siblings can be truly vicious to one another. The teasing, poking, prodding, and humiliation that goes on between siblings rivals the gang wars of Chicago. There seems to be no limit as to how some siblings talk to each other and treat each other. I think this sibling rivalry thing exists because you can’t get away from your sibling, no matter what age of the sibling. You can get away from your parents by running away from home, at least for a few hours. Eventually, you grow up and leave home. You can get a new teacher or a new job or a new friend, but you can never get a “new” brother. You’re just stuck with him. The terrible things siblings say and do to one another is due to this “can’t get away from him” phenomenon.

You would think that this sibling dislike and attack would end with adolescence but it often doesn’t ever end. I occasionally hear of wondrous friendships between adult siblings, and many of these relationships have been fostered after years of childhood and adolescent rivalry and hatred. My very best years of friendship with my own brother began when we were both in college and then lasted another 20 years. More often, however, relationships among adult siblings continues to be challenging, seemingly forever. I know of siblings who despise one another. Some of this vitriol is due to the fact that they are forced to be with one another at family functions, but more often these adult sibling problems are due to resentment that stretches back into childhood, and then continues into adulthood. It is remarkable that Jack still resents the fact that (he thinks) his sister was spoiled. It doesn’t help if his sister is back at home with Mom and Dad together with her three kids. It would be easier for Jack to see some distant acquaintance going back home to live as an adult, but when he sees his sister there, it galls him. The difficulties between siblings that began in childhood often exacerbate in adult lives to the point where these siblings never see each other at all. Yet the old feelings of ambivalent love remains. It is as if these still rivalrous siblings wish they could start over and understand each other. My first 18 years of modest rivalry with my brother was followed by 20 good years as we went to college, got married, and went to work. But the relationship deteriorated after that, partly due to the influence of in-laws.

There are many other combinations of siblings that cause potential problems, such as liking one sibling more than the other, having “two families,” one composed of the three oldest children and the second family of the four youngest ones. Rarely do these early “families” unite. It makes life with adult siblings challenging.

Equally challenging are adult child and parent relationships. When children leave the nest and find some life in work and their own families, their values and standards often change. Sometimes the adult kids don’t live up to their parents’ expectations, whether in school, partner, work, or how they raise the kids. Parents say to their adult children, “That wasn’t the way it was done when we raised you.” And from the adult children’s perspective, things are even harder. A child who might revere parent or parents early in life might later find fault with those parents when he is an adult himself. I know of one mother who hasn’t seen her son for a year and a half and has never seen her new grandchild, all for some unknown reason. I know of other grandparents who haven’t seen their grandchildren for months without hearing why their son has kept his children from them. These parent-child adult relationships might be some of the most difficult of all.

And of course, there are always the in-laws. Relationships with in-laws are fraught with potential difficulties. My parents did not want me to get married and refused to come to our wedding forcing us to postpone it for months. Perhaps my intended wife was not good enough for my parents for some reason. Variations of scenario are played out in all quarters. The problem is that the in-law doesn’t love, and may not even like, their children’s new partners. We don’t have the “love him but don’t like him” phenomenon; we may just have the “don’t like him” part. I certainly didn’t like my former sister-in-law and she certainly repaid me the favor.

Parents, children, siblings, and in-laws. It is the best of times. It is the worst of times. It is never easy. Young children can find ways to fight out their differences and have no trouble “hating” one another, but when they grow up, they no longer have the privilege of childhood. And adult relationships are much more complex. They seemingly have to find ways of relating to relatives that they really don’t like. The typical answers are: (1) never see your relatives and pretend that they are dead, or (2) pretend that you really like them and put on a happy face. Neither of these practices works.

My advice? Take it slow. There is no quick fix. Try the following:

  • Note that you are sad more than mad. Sure your sister was spoiled when you two were growing up, but that was not her fault. She probably still harbors some of the results of this spoiling, but you can’t change it. It is sad that you can’t change it. There is no value in your being angry at her for what happened 30 years ago.
  • Note that if you are sad, you love your sister, or whoever is difficult in your life. The only reason you get sad is because you love that person, whether parent, sibling, parent, or adult child. You probably even love your in-laws to some degree, and they can easily be frustrating.
  • Speak kindly to your loved one without pretending. Kindness is a choice, and it should be done out of generosity, not obligation.
  • Note that you don’t like your family member while also noting that your dislike for this person may not be entirely rooted in the present. Perhaps it is about something long remembered or long forgotten. Yet it still bothers you.
  • Let your sadness run its course. Sadness always ends. When you are no longer sad about your sister, brother, mother, child, or in-law, you might then be able to think clearly enough to know what to do or say.
  • There may be nothing to say or do, at least not right now. But you should never say or do anything while you still are resentful. Eventually, you might be able to say or do something out of love that is genuine, but first you have to get over the resentment, even if you still dislike this person.
  • Be honest. But that doesn’t mean telling your difficult family member everything you think or feel. Better to say something short and sweet that is true rather than to make it into something that it isn’t. Honesty, by the way, doesn’t mean saying everything you want to say. You need discretion, which you can discover only when you no longer resent your family member. Then the words will come carefully and honestly.

You might be interested in the following:

  • A chapter Deb and I wrote on narcissism a few years ago in a three-volume series on Evil edited by J.H. Ellens and published by Praeger.
  • Our forthcoming The Power of Positive Sadness by Praeger Press due out next month also by Praeger
  • Our 4-8-12 blog and forthcoming book by the same name

I Don’t Want to Live

Ron Johnson family, Feelings, happiness, Self-Awareness, Spiritual

I have the opportunity of hearing things from people that they have never told anyone else. This is a tremendous privilege that we therapists have. Close family members, good friends, pastors, doctors, and bartenders often hear private things from people, but there is something almost sacred about the therapy office, especially after trust is established between therapist and patient, that allows for someone to say, “I never told anyone this…” and finish that statement with a story, a fear, a hope, or some kind of grief. I always listen such statements with admiration for the person who has found the courage to say out loud what he or she has thought privately for a long time.

Yesterday I heard an out loud statement from four of the six people I saw in my clinical day, and felt the same statement being said by the other two: I don’t want to live. Two of these individuals said unequivocally that they didn’t want to live, while the others needed a bit of help to admit to that feeling. Today I heard a 14-year old boy tells me that he wished he could just disappear, or that he hadn’t been born, a statement that is tantamount to “I don’t want to live.” Most of the time when I sense this “not wanting to live” feeling with someone, I need to help the individual (usually men) to admit to it. I get some resistance to admitting to this not wanting to live, understandably because it sounds so dreadful. I suggest that they feel one thing, think another, and have a third statement regarding what they might do. Thus, the three elements of human existence, thinking, feeling, and doing, show themselves in different statements:
 I don’t want to live.
 I don’t want to die, meaning I don’t want to go through the dying process.
 I certainly don’t want to kill myself.

I have found it profitable for people in some circumstances to find the courage to say these three things. People who are very depressed, those who have one or more debilitating physical illnesses, and people who are in some seemingly hopeless situation often feel this “I don’t want to live” feeling. Importantly, this statement represents a feeling, not a thought, and certainly not an act. When someone (usually a man) finds the trust, willingness, and courage to admit to this feeling, he finds a certain freedom. Indeed, for such people life has become intolerable in some way, perhaps physically, emotionally, or relationally. So I find myself in the odd place of helping say something that sounds suicidal. I have to remind the people who say such things that they have every reason to not want to live any longer. “Feelings are never wrong,” I say, but feelings are not thoughts and they are not actions. In fact, I think that I may very well have prevented some people’s suicidal thoughts or actions by helping them say that they didn’t want to live…even though they didn’t want to die and certainly didn’t want to suicide.

One of the reasons that people need a bit of help to admit to this feeling of not wanting to live is that it sounds suicidal. It isn’t. I think everyone has had such feelings at one time or another in their lives even though they might not have used these words. In most cases this not-wanting-to-live feeling comes out of some kind of long-term difficulty, whether emotional, relational, or physical. The other reason it is difficult to admit to this feeling is that no one can hear it. What family member is going to be able to affirm their loved one’s statement, “I don’t want to live”? Everyone would want to reassure the person that he or she should want to live for some reason. Family and friends would say something like, “You have your family to live for,” “You have a lot of reasons to live,” “It is a sin to kill yourself,” or “What would your children think if you killed yourself.” This theoretical interchange misses the point. We call the people who make such statements “friendly enemies,” meaning that they might very well dearly loved the desperate person, but they are not helping the person admit to the feeling that he or she has. Remember, “I don’t want to live” is a feeling, not a fact, not a thought, and not a desired action. The reasons friendly enemies have for their “you should want to live because…” are reasons. “I don’t want to live is not reasonable; it is emotional.

Yesterday was a painful day for me having heard, directly and indirectly, from so many people who didn’t want to live because life had become so intolerable. I had the opportunity to share this terrible feeling, this terribly private feeling, with these folks. And it is this sharing of such deeply personal things that makes my job both rewarding and painful. If I can help people say their feelings, however they come out, and give them a wide berth in their emotional expressions, they can then think clearly, and act reasonably. Unfortunately, at least in our Western society, it is difficult to make emotional statements because we live in such an emotionally undeveloped society. When people repress their emotions, they later blurt out in some kind of irrational thought or irrational action, and very often in some kind of irrational anger or explosion.

Kids are much better at this than adults are. They have the privilege, or should have the privilege, of just feeling, just expressing these feelings, and then usually getting over these feelings about as quickly as they came. I wonder how many kids might say, “I don’t want to live” when their parents refuse to buy them the ice cream cone they so dearly want. When my older daughter was five, we had shopped together for a few minutes and she wanted me to buy something for her. I didn’t, and she didn’t like it. On the way home in the car, she falteringly said, “I want a new daddy!” What a reasonable statement for a five-year old to say. It was the way she temporarily figured out the universe. And five minutes later when we were playing on the floor of the living room, she didn’t remember what she said. The beauty of the emotion that children express is that it is not expressed in thoughts or actions; emotion is expressed in actions or utterances, not all of which are words. We do well to teach our children. We could do well to learn from them as well.

Social Esteem

Ron Johnson Children, emotional maturity, family, Feelings, happiness, social esteem

Much has been written about self-esteem including thousands of professional journal articles and hundreds of books. When we are discussing self-esteem, we are looking at low self-esteem, namely where one does value oneself or feels inadequate in some way, or perhaps many ways. I remember doing a project in graduate school on self-esteem looking at various aspects of it including cultural differences. I remain interested in the cultural and subcultural aspects of self-esteem particularly as it is seen in America’s subcultures. Simplistically stated, there appear to be problems with low self-esteem in the Latino, Native American, and the African-American communities. Interestingly, there does not seem to be such a difficulty in the Asian subculture and communities. Caucasians seem to fall somewhere in between these two poles with some White people liking themselves and many disliking themselves.

My psychotherapy practice is largely limited to men and children. The children I see are usually brought to me, and sometimes mandated to come to see me, because of some sort of “behavioral” problem. Perhaps they are too easily or too often angered; they may tend to throw things or hit people; they may be mean to other people; they may tend to disregard property; they may resist some or all of schoolwork; they may be regularly dishonest. Interestingly, many of these so-called behaviorally challenging children seem to have good self-esteem: they like themselves. They are often happy with themselves, and enjoy life a good bit of the time. They may laugh a lot, joke a lot, and play a lot. So this phenomenon of a very challenging child who seems to like him/herself is a challenge for any therapist and certainly for parents and teachers. The problem as I see it is that many children with high self-esteem do not have good social-esteem.

What is social-esteem? It is akin to self-esteem, in which I value myself. Social esteem is valuing other people. A truly developed person has developed many areas of life, namely development in academic pursuits, vocational pursuits, relationships, and care of property. In other words a developed person cares for him/herself in conjunction with caring for other things, particularly people. Many people, for instance, properly value property so that it can be protected, used, and possibly given away. Other people value their vocations and work as evidence of a valuing of society in general and making life better. Many more people value relationships and focus their attention on what is going on between oneself and other people. We could examine all of these different kinds of “esteem,” but my focus in this article is to focus on the social-esteem aspect, and in particular, the difficulty many kids (and many adults) have valuing other people.

Note that I said valuing other people. Valuing other peole is not the same as liking people, loving peole, seeking their approval, or finding ways to relate to them. Social-esteem is seeing another person as a creation of God and hence valuable in him/herself, something to be treasured and admired in some way. Importantly, valuing other people is good for the person doing the valuing. Ultimately, valuing other people should not be an effort. It might be effortful to like someone or love them, but valuing others should come naturally.

It is not possible to have too high a self-esteem. You can’t like yourself too much because true self-esteem naturally generates social-esteem. What happens is this: as I grow in self-esteem I consequently grow in self-awareness. If I grow in self-awareness, I will simultaneously see what is good about me and what is not so good about me. I will see what I am good at and what I am not good at. So as I grow to admire what I am good at, my self-esteem grows. And at the same time I grow in humility as I see that others are good at something that I am not good at. Humility and self-esteem are natural partners in life. So if self-esteem grows, so does humility, which is based on my awareness that I am not good at some things that other people are good at. For instance, I am not good at music, art, colors, beauty; and I am only marginally good at various physical things like athletics and carpentry. Luckily, my income is not based on my athletic skill or ability in the trades, much less on my artistic (in)ability. My self-esteem, however, is not based on plumbing and basketball, much less on my artistic skill, so I can see others who are skilled in these endeavors when I am not able to perform adequately.

Social-esteem is based on self-esteem, as well as the humility that self-esteem can engender. The Apostle Paul said that one needs to have pride in oneself (Gal. 6, 4) but also watch to avoid feeling conceited (Gal. 5.26). Psychoanalyst Karen Horney said that the true origin of envy is gratitude. In other words, she said that if I truly envy the other person for his/her ability or success, I value that achievement and that other person. And if I value that other person, I will gracefully appreciate that other person with gratitude for that person’s ability or success. I will not envy that other person thinking that I should have what he or she has because what that person has is not the same as what I have.

So how does social-esteem develop, or fail to develop? Social-esteem is based on self-esteem and self-enhancement. In other words, I need to see myself as valuable by being and doing something valuable. Real self-esteem is based on achievement and success. And success in based on trial and error, namely many trials and many errors. What we see in much of society today, and with many of the children I see, is self-esteem that is built on parental approval. Oddly, many of these very challenging kids have been loved…and loved…and loved. But they haven’t been limited; they haven’t been encouraged; they haven’t been challenged. They have been loved to a fault. And love is not enough. Indeed, love is probably the basis for self-esteem: if I am loved, I will naturally feel that I am valuable. That is the start of it, and many people do not get started in this way. But for many others, they get loved and loved and loved, but they don’t get the encouragement, limitation, and challenge to develop further self-esteem based on trials and errors.

I try to help kids build their self-esteem, usually with measures of love, limitation, encouragement, and challenge. This is difficult, if not almost impossible, in a one-hour time period. I often wish I could take the kid outside and help him learn to throw a ball, paint a picture, watch a bird fly, or write a story because it is only in doing these things that kids feel great. I use the term “great” in place of good, or even successful, because greatness is not built on better than. In that same Pauline passage I quoted above, the Apostle says to avoid thinking of yourself as better than others, just great. Too much self-esteem is built on better than someone. Desiderata says it well: “Do not compare yourself with others for always there will be persons greater and lesser persons than you.”

What can be done, especially by parents, for kids without good social-esteem? An important question, but I don’t have much of a good answer because social-esteem is based on truly valuing oneself and then naturally valuing others equally. Social-esteem comes primarily from being social, namely being in the company of others kids, some of whom are better than you, some worse than you at some skill, and all of whom are working together. This is what I think is the best ingredient of group activities, whether athletic, artistic, or communal, where kids have to cooperate with teammates to succeed. Social-esteem can also be developed in any group activity where kids cooperate with one another, challenge one another, and improve in some skill or some activity.

Social-esteem is the cure for narcissism, which simply stated, is the undue care about oneself over other people. It is natural for infants and toddlers to be “narcissistic,” namely concerned about their own welfare and success. Childhood should ideally be a time when kids are given the opportunity for cooperation and competition during which they learn that they are good at some things while other kids are good at other things. Adolescence should be a time when kids (now teenagers) try out their new found skills of self-esteem and social-esteem. Adulthood should be a time when we spend more and more time concerned about others’ development based on the value of our own success and failures.

A final word of suggestion and caution: it is not helpful to tell a kid (or anyone) that he or she “doesn’t care about anybody but him/herself.” This is just a criticism, and while largely true, it is not helpful to say or to hear. Rather, a child who, indeed, seems to care primarily about him/herself needs first to build self-esteem, first by trial and error, and subsequently by developing social-esteem. This is no easy project, but it is a way of seeing the “problem” with seemingly selfish kids find a way to have both self-esteem and social-esteem.