Sociopaths on Parade
November 5, 2011 | 
Author 
Again.
The other night during the news there was an announcement for a rerun of the interview done with the Madoff family. I looked at my husband, the question in my face.
“I don’t know,” he said.
“They interviewed the Madoff family???” I asked anyway. Sometimes you can’t help these things. It’s like an emotional Tourette’s.
In any case, I came to learn that recently there was a flurry of media activity related to the release of two new books by Madoff family members.
ABC aired the first Madoff family member interview on October 21, when Mack, the widow of Bernie’s son, Mark, appeared on 20/20. The show scored its best ratings since February 2010, with 7.6 million viewers overall. Surely not coincidentally, The End of Normal, published by Blue Rider Press and another book, Truth and Consequences: Life Inside the Madoff Family, hit bookstores in October.
Now, while it delivered wonderfully high ratings for the media, it did little to inspire book sales.
I’m not surprised by the fact that fewer than expected sales were reported. Who wants to give the Madoffs any more money than they already stole?
But I am—though I shouldn’t be—surprised by the fact that ABC and CBS both took a huge amount of time (and money) with these moguls of misfortune, these scoundrels who are now bleating poverty and victimization.
Why is anyone listening to them?
Why is anyone paying them a dime for their opinions when they haven’t paid a dime in compensation to their victims?
Worse, yet, why are we watching them? Not just once, but in reruns.
It seemed to me to be a form of bizarre cultural rubbernecking, not much different than what we do with car wrecks; a minor fender bender off to the side of the road can cause a ten-mile back up on a major freeway even though all the lanes are actually open. The jam is only because we slow down to look: Is there any blood? Any bodies? Despite all the anatomically correct horror shows on TV (CSI, Bones, Criminal Minds), we can’t seem to get enough of it. We want to see all the bad and awful things that people do.
This is even more pointedly true with famous people. There’s nothing the media or the media generation likes more than watching the crash and burn of a wealthy celebrity. Hence the inordinate amount of attention given to the slow, sublimating near-death experience of one Charlie Sheen. He even had live video to capture his expected demise from alcohol, drugs, and sex addiction and to disperse his rants about being dumped from Two and a Half Men all over cyber-land.
And, as far as I could tell, everyone was watching. It was amazing, but they were watching themselves watch him. And the media talked about it as if it were as important as the impending collapses in Greece and Europe, the epidemics and violence in Africa, or the economic issues in this country. If we measured importance in terms of airplay, I think Charlie won.
What does that say about us?
I am loath to consider the implications.
Because, in my experience, what we look at tends to reflect what we are. What we choose to do tends to be an expression of who we are.
Which says we, like Sheen, are on a slippery slope towards self-indulgent suicide. We, like the cyber-voyeurs who wait for the shape-shifting demise, are caught up in our own “near-life” experience. We, like the Madoffs, are prone to expect something extraordinary for nothing. We too are entitled. We too want our 15 minutes of fame, sometimes at the expense of our good names, even our souls. It may be more a matter of degree than essence.
Not because I am immune to any of the above or because I don’t sneak a peak at traffic accidents, but because I had a momentary lapse of sanity, I turned the TV off and left the Madoffs to their new book-sale travails and to their lonesomes. In fact, the more lonesome the better.
Posted in Blog, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy, Keynote Speaker, Verbal First Aid | 
Tags: ABC, CBS, Charlie Sheen, entitlement, Interviews, Madoff, Madoff family, sociopaths | 
15 Comments »
The Necessary Death of Romance
In My Lost City, Fitzgerald wrote, “I can only cry out that I have lost my splendid mirage.” He was referring to the life and the loves that he and so many others had enjoyed in New York when it truly roared in the 1920’s.
It was a giddy mirage, an imagined impression across the distance of a desert; a time of the swirling, singing nouveau, the sultry and seditious slipping off of Victorian repression, of skyscrapers and millionaires and railroads that seemed to be able to leap over mountains, of planes that hurled themselves through the air. It was the era that led to the consummate American hero in 1932 with the birth of Superman. It was an era of Romance that made people feel they could finally catch up to the horizon, and—better yet—go beyond it to a life never imagined before. The possibilities were limitless. They were limitless.
Until, as all great romance must eventually, it crashed.
And all the wild speculation encouraged by big business at the time came tumbling down like a torn party dress around the ankles of the people who could afford it the least. Farmers, small businesses, dreamers, and desperate immigrants were swindled into sinking their lives’ savings into high-risk real estate investments, even though it was plainly evident that the need for space was almost nil, production schemes, even though growth was slowing, and consumer gimmicks even though they were as shady as an unregulated economy had ever been.
Sound familiar? Seems we have neither changed nor learned much since then.
It was heartless scheming. It was ruthless capitalism. It was cronyism at its worst. All true. Yes. But it was the Romantic Vision that allowed and perpetuated it. It was the insistence on the impossible and the belief in the limitless self that made people easy prey.
When I speak of romance in this sense, it is not just a reference to that flurry of the heart when we are falling in love. It is there then, as well. But it is more than that.
When Romance Is Good
In The Four Loves (1960, Harcourt Brace), C.S. Lewis talks about Romance as Eros and distinguishes it from lust by defining it as the rapture of the divine, the emotional foreplay of the gods within us.
When we are moved by this sort of romance or Eros to “fall in love,” what we are actually doing, he says, is seeing the divine in the other. When that happens we are inevitably guided by the impression that “Love conquers all” or that “In love all is possible.” It was the guiding principle of the late 1800’s and has been, in one form or another, one of the American four basic philosophical food groups since then.
He says, rightly, I believe, that this willing self-deception is both necessary and good for meeting and wooing the Beloved.
“By Eros I mean of course that state which we call "being in love"; or, if you prefer, that kind of love which lovers are "in"….
“Sexual desire, without Eros, wants it, the thing in itself; Eros wants the Beloved. The thing is a sensory pleasure; that is, an event occurring within one’s own body. We use a most unfortunate idiom when we say, of a lustful man prowling the streets, that he ‘wants a woman.’ Strictly speaking, a woman is just what he does not want. He wants a pleasure for which a woman happens to be the necessary piece of apparatus. How much he cares about the woman as such may be gauged by his attitude to her five minutes after fruition (one does not keep the carton after one has smoked the cigarettes). Now Eros makes a man really want, not a woman, but one particular woman. In some mysterious but quite indisputable fashion the lover desires the Beloved herself, not the pleasure she can give.”
This state of heightened awareness and ecstasy is precisely what allows us to become blissfully unaware of the Beloved’s imperfections and to begin a relationship which we might otherwise too quickly dismiss. For a relationship in which perfection is no longer necessary, we must move past Eros into Friendship.
To the extent that romance allows us to struggle through obstacles, hold out hope when it is truly needed and helpful, and imbue our lives with both promise and purpose, it is good. Meaning, when it serves us—when it helps us to build relationships, conceive of such miracles as airplanes, anesthesia, or cell phones, or push through malevolent military blockades to rescue the innocent—it is a blessing.
When it leads us to see ourselves as somehow beyond the laws of nature, as capable of controlling what is not controllable, as immune to the inevitable draw of gravity, it is a curse.
When Romance Is Not So Good
All things must ripen or fall off the tree too early and die. It is the way of things. Often it brings terrible sadness to us. Sometimes, shock. It is never easy to see the sun come up after the revelry and delight of dancing gods and goddesses; even harder to see what the brighter light reveals about who we’ve been dancing with.
But for us to have the lives and loves we long for—both individually and collectively as a culture—it is absolutely necessary for Eros to be replaced by a more sanguine and subtle understanding. If it doesn’t, we wind up like Fitzgerald, lost in a lost city, besotted by booze and benumbed by grief. And our society winds up in the same position we found ourselves in ’29 and in ’08, bereft of our fortunes, throwing ourselves out of windows in despair and shame.
Eros cannot tolerate bright light. It must either die or flee or be reformed by a new reality.
If it is reformed, we will be transformed.
We will stand ready to see clearly and know the Other. We will stand ready to be seen. Not for who we might be, who we represent (Venus or Mars), but for who we are.
Easier said than done.
We are surrounded by forces—economic and cultural—that will do anything to keep us from making that transformation.
If you look carefully at what happened in the twenties, you may notice a profound connection between the rise in advertising as a broad medium of communication and the rise in a sort of cultural far-sightedness, in which we could only see that which was far away and nearly out of reach. (“You, too, can have this X, Y or Z when you just send us…”) We became in many ways the nation we are now—consumers and climbers, always waiting on line for the next version or the newest sensation that will somehow make our lives what they “should” be.
This is the romanticism that is sold on Madison Avenue, not the Romance of the gods.
And, I believe, it is the one that has shaped us as a country and kept us from that which we long for most: love, joy, gratitude, companionship, a sense of belonging, purpose. So long as we exist for the revelry of Eros, dance only in the dark, and shield ourselves from the morning’s truth by turning our faces inside out so we can only see our own ideas, we are trapped in a lie. We may become mortals without morals, but we cannot become humans without limits.
The irony is that we are so much more.
"It is a serious thing," says Lewis, "to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no 'ordinary' people. You have never talked to a mere mortal.”
–C. S. Lewis, From The Weight of Glory.
Posted in Blog, Faith-based Counseling, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy | Tags: advertising, CS Lewis, false hope, Fitzgerald, Madiison Avenue, market crash, Roaring Twenties, Romanticism | 8 Comments »
Pin Numbers for People over 40!
I've had it. I give up.
It's utterly impossible.
I have more than fifty, maybe even one hundred different so-called "accounts"–linkedin, huffington post, twitter, cable, phone, internet, website administrator, google, yahoo–the list has become a ten-page typewritten list of account names, numbers, passwords, and pin numbers.
I can't remember any of them.
And each time I call a company for either customer support or account management information, I sound like a thief.
"And may we have your pin number to verify your account?" they ask.
And I stammer over three or four that spring to mind. Sometimes I have to make them wait and go look it up.
But they tell you–very urgently–never, ever to repeat a password. Make each one unique. Make each one impossible to guess. Fill them with numbers, letters and symbols for which most of us don't even have names, like "ampersands" (&).
I don't know how much better I'd be at this if I were 25. I can't imagine it would be all that much easier. But I do know I'm not alone in the sandy-haired set.
One woman at the grocery store had to input a password to get access to the cashier so she could scan our food order. She stood there mesmerized. She was probably a little older than I am. But her face became utterly blank.
Finally, she turned to me, chagrined, "I can't remember my number," then locked the system back up and went to get her boss. It became a 15-minute process.
So.
This leaves us with a bit of a problem. Do we carry around lists of passwords? That would make having a password rather foolish since anyone could just grab it out of our pockets or off our computers.
Do we have a separate system under a single password, in which all our other passwords are available? Sounds like an idea, but it still leaves us one password away from identity theft.
My husband had a great idea.
"Why not just have one password for the whole lot of 'em?"
"What?"
"Fuggedaboudit."
I thought that was the best idea I'd heard all day.
Posted in Hudson Valley Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy | Tags: computers, memory, memory loss, pin numbers | 3 Comments »
JEMS Book Review on Verbal First Aid for Children
Thank you, JEMS.
74 JEMS OCTOBER 2011
BOOK REVIEW
It’s probably quite easy to recall an injury or sickness that occurred during your childhood,
but did you know that the first words you heard after the event played an
invaluable role in how well you would manage the situation, heal and subsequently deal
with similar events in the future?
Derived from current medical research, Verbal First Aid demonstrates how the words
a caregiver chooses to say when a child is sick or in pain will cause chemical responses
to travel through the child’s body and either help or hinder the healing process, as well
as set the course for their physical and emotional recovery.
Techniques provided through descriptive scenarios teach the reader how to empower
children to actively participate in their own healing, conquer their fears and turn seemingly
tragic events into an accepted part of life.
Easy to read and compassionately presented, Verbal First Aid announces revolutionary
non-pharmaceutical healing that can be used anywhere at any time. This book is perfect
for healthcare providers, teachers and parents. It provides the key that can unlock
a child’s inner strength in any situation, thus promoting a healthy and happy life.
JEMS—By Natalie Harris BHSc, AEMCA
How Dreams Really Do Come True.
The Force of Will or the Fancy of Fortune?
I've dreamt about farming all my life. You wouldn't know it by the way I live, but it's true. Somehow over all these years, my dreams and my realities have been separated by an inexplicable chasm.
I think for most people it is the same, or at least similar in essence. We dream or plan or talk more than we do. We blame our unrealized dreams on circumstance, other people, lack of support, money. Sometimes we call it luck—good or bad. And I think some of you already know that I think luck (however we define that) is a bigger factor than most of us care to admit.
But the other day I met a woman who really did it, who turned a whimsical idea into a reality in a big way and it made me start to wonder a bit about what really kept me from doing what she did. It wasn't for lack of capacity or cognitive muscle. I could "visualize" as well as anyone. So, what was it?
I met her via the Internet. We just moved into town and we were looking for someone local to supply grass-fed beef. We found a few local people, but were most attracted to a small place called Brykill Farm. After a few rounds of phone tag, I finally got to talk to the owner and manager of the farm, Susan. “Come on down,” she said as if she were inviting us for a picnic.
We turned onto her road, a winding dirt and gravel mix that crossed over a small river and led us through a dark thicket of oak, maple and birch after which it burst open onto pastures as broad and green as Ireland itself, each hill studded with what had to be the happiest cows on the planet. In a whispering huddle to the side were three or four iconic stone buildings from the 1700’s.
We wandered around with a cattle dog trailing behind us for a few minutes, unsure which door to knock on when a woman came out, barefoot, smiling, a youngster trailing behind her. She looked to be in her 40’s but her manner was youthful and energetic.
We were escorted inside to a kitchen that was clearly the heart of the house, filled with books, cups, flowers; we chit-chatted a bit until I couldn’t resist and asked her, “Who started this?”
She said, as matter of fact as telling me the time, “I did.”
I looked at her. Her hands were of average size, her face still unlined, her posture relaxed but straight. A cattle farmer? I had to know more. She was living the life I had told myself I always wanted to live, but this, that and the other thing had stopped me somehow.
She was born in Connecticut and in her 20’s, around the time that my friends and I were consumed with going out dancing, she invested in land. It was her idea. She was not married. She had no backers. She had no training.
Then she bought a couple of cows. Her friends thought it was “cool” and she eventually slaughtered those cows and bought more. Then she got a bull and the farm began in earnest.
How did that happen?
How did she do what seemed so insurmountable to me?
It wasn’t some outrageous fortune, no Mega-Lotto win. I don’t believe it had anything to do with any universal “secrets.”
It wasn’t the forceful hand of fate…she hadn’t inherited a farm she didn’t want or become indentured through familial obligation.
It seemed to be as simple as a decision. To be more accurate, a series of small, but decisive ones.
The Power of Thought or the Punch of Will?
In recent years, Descartes’ axiom—I think therefore I am—has been transposed, sharpened to an unprecedented perversion: I think therefore I have. Or the newest interpretation of the American Gospel: I think therefore I deserve to have. Our lives can be perfect, abundant, sublime…if only we think it so.
Was this what had taken place for Susan? Was it only a matter of thought? Was her belief what propelled her?
There was no denying that some of her thinking predisposed her to the choices she made, but as she described it to me, this was a case of Will leading the way. How else does a divorcee from Chicago wind up running a restoration and beef farm?
It started with one book that resonated with her, Chicken Tractor by Joel Saladin, in which she was exposed to the idea of homesteading. (As I see it, this is the first piece of evidence that Will is at work: unexpected and unconscious resonance.) As the ideas fermented in her, she stumbled onto the Brykill estate, which also appealed to her. What was it, I asked, that was so appealing?
“It was going to take a tremendous amount of work to rehabilitate it and I would be able to just plunge into a project.”
Again—this simple statement takes us way beyond mere thought to the potent underworld of Will and character. For most people work is the big turn-off, rather than the turn-on.
Initially, she lived there alone with her two labs. “There was maybe one working bathroom and ceilings came down in some rooms, but the more time I spent out here, the more interested I became in the farm’s history. While my father was incredibly handy and loved puttering in the garden no one in my family since the Eltings have been farmers. My dad was an engineer and my mother was a homemaker. It was Miracle Grow all the way…”
While a few “bravos” could be heard from friends, most folks, she recalls, “thought I was nuts.
“There was this wonderful local man named Pat Kelly, who is sadly no longer with us, who really egged me on. He would stop by a lot and give me advice here and there. He sold me my first bull and a cow and her calf—truly the most pathetic looking cow you can possibly imagine. I'm sure he got a good chuckle out of all of it. He sold me my tractor too. It was sort of a Martha Stewart moment when I would bring a few packages of ground beef from our "herd" but while my friends couldn't understand why I wasn't raising horses they all asked if next time they could get more.
“Because the process was totally grueling, I had no background, had to learn everything from books or the internet, the learning curve was brutal. Yet it seemed like something I really needed to see through. I would get such wonderful help from our neighbors the Watchtower guys and from our local vet Lyle Goodnow who just tirelessly helped me deal with some of the realities that comes with raising live animals. Those people just seemed to enter my life to make sure I didn't abandon the project.”
In listening to her talk about sustainability, humane treatment of animals, living in a beautiful environment, I asked myself: Hadn’t I had the same thoughts? Hadn’t I believed the same things? As far as I could tell, I had. What stopped me? What swept her up?
I believe it is something that few people talk about today because it has become so awfully unfashionable. I believe it was two things, actually: Will and character.
Will may arguably be a function of thought, but I believe it is much more than that. Will starts before the thought itself and extends far beyond it, long after the thought has made an appearance and taken its bow. Will is the motor, the very engine that expresses spirit.
Thoughts are extensions of that. We think “I like this” or “I hate that” or “I shall do this tomorrow” or “that dress is so lovely,” but all those thoughts are expressions of Will, which may also be seen as a reservoir of our deepest longings. So we may find ourselves thinking thoughts of delight (“how wonderful my friends are”) when we are given what our Wills crave (attention, respect, tenderness—all according to the individual constitution) or thoughts of terror or rage (“I wish they’d disappear” or “I’m going to die”) when our Wills are frustrated or threatened.
Character is the drive shaft of the Will and, similar to thoughts, expresses the Will in ways that are more directly palpable to others. A person with a strong Will to live or to love may show tremendous fortitude and patience where others who have a strong Will to possess material goods may demonstrate a gross lack of tolerance.
What I lacked in my twenties was more than luck. I have survived those years, so in my eyes, I had more luck than many of my peers did. What was missing was both Will and character.
What I truly longed for—more than the simplicity and solidity of a farm life—was the activity and attention that the lifestyle I was living brought me. I was more beguiled by “cool” than by cows, no matter how much I thought I wanted them, no matter how I “dreamed” or visualized.
I could have said a thousand aphorisms a day, but they would not have changed an iota of my Will. And they would have done even less about my character, which was, to be polite, “budding” in those days. My life was a continual manifestation of what I wanted at that time—and it wasn’t Green Acres.
In our discussion, Susan called it “good fortune” to have found an incredibly capable farm manager (Carlos) and an animal whisperer (Peggy) who eventually helped her develop the land and tend the animals properly so that it became a true working farm. I was not convinced, and left wondering whether it was fortune or fortitude.
To answer that, I started where she did: It was not the book or the farm or the friends or the thinking. It was the resonance of all those things with her Will. Any of us could have read the same book, driven by the same rolling hills and looping river and said, “How nice,” but never been moved to act. She was touched the way a single note vibrates crystal.
The magic, the surprise is in discovering precisely how that crystal sings in response. It’s often not what we “think” but better yet.
“I guess I had this vision of myself in the beginning as being Audra from the Big Valley,” Susan recalled. “Do you remember that show? I thought it was going to be all me with great hair coming out with lemonade on a tray for all the cowboys. It wasn't until one afternoon of sorting cattle in the rain and yelling at everybody and coming inside to write checks and balance books that I realized, ‘Oh, God, I'm Barbara Stanwick!’”
What Susan made clear to me was not just the “power of thought” but the manifestation of Will and the necessity of choice, of making the right turns in the road, of taking hold of the wheel and steering, gripping it when the pavement ran out.
On very rare occasions I have seen good fortune just “drop” into someone’s lap. I can count those instances on one hand. On every other occasion, I have seen goodness, purposefulness, and the sorts of green pastures I saw at Brykill Farm seeded and grown by deliberation over years of sweat, sacrifice and a steady hand.
We are all tossed and tumbled by circumstance, by forces we don't understand. But there is one force we do understand and it is the one that pulls the sails taut and turns the ship into the wind. That one is up to us.
In closing, Susan told me, “I think being a little bit of a control freak is part of it. I want to control what I am eating and serving to my family, even if it’s a teeny tiny particle of a powerful food system. I'm also just sort of oblivious sometimes to why I can't do something. My current headaches with trying to start a restaurant in Gardiner are more proof of that. I just think, ‘how hard could it be?’”
Indeed.
Posted in Blog, Holistic Psychotherapy | Tags: beef farming, control, farm, Fortune, sustainability, Will | 4 Comments »
Detachment or Avoidance?
The other day I went into a store to buy some wine. I got three bottles and what I believe was an unprovoked sermon on detachment. I use the word “unprovoked” with deliberation.
I'd never met the man before and we were having a pleasant conversation. We were talking about wines, then about where we lived and where we'd been. He'd spent a lot of time in the southwest, where I had lived for a while. He said he visited several times a year to study with a guru whose name was utterly unpronounceable and unrecognizable. I told him I’d never heard of his teacher, and he said, “Oh, he’s world famous.”
He asked me why we had moved back to NY and I simply said "family." He looked at me quizzically. I explained we had aging parents and felt the need to be with them. While sometimes challenging and other times cumbersome, it has not been a personal or emotional burden. Both my husband and I feel that it is a gift and a blessing to be able to do this and share what will be their last years on earth. It has not been easy, but it has been right and often joyful.
So, suffice it to say that I did not whine, grumble, or pout while I was talking to him. I felt neither needy nor resentful as I described the situation. However, without a second between sentences, he waved his hand, "Oh, you need to detach from all that. I left everyone I know in Europe and I don't think of them at all."
He said this as if it were a model of good behavior, an example for all, particularly me, to follow. I believe he meant well, but I was taken aback.
A bit of history: For much of my early life, detachment was precisely what I needed. I had to learn to see where I began and ended and other people began and ended. I needed to learn what it was I truly longed for and what was the contrivance of a frightened heart. I needed to let go of expectations and deal with what was true about both people and circumstances. In concrete terms this meant I had to stop trying to control others. It is an ongoing lesson, no doubt. But, over the years and with increasing faith in God, I get better at it. For me, letting go has only been possible because I've been able to hand the reins over to Some One I believe is better at it than I believe I am. That's how I have learned to accept the circumstances I cannot change, deal with the loves that have been lost, and allow for the sorrows I cannot soothe.
So the idea of detachment–and its importance in healthy relationships–is not new to me. But his idea of it was, which was to use it as a weapon of self-negation so that feeling, love, and attachment to others in any fashion was unfashionable in that it revealed a gross psychological immaturity.
Is that true? Should we detach in order to feel nothing for friends, family, beloveds who are not with us? Should we cut ourselves off from longing of any kind? Should we exorcise our hearts so we can be more “spiritual?”
Since this encounter I have broached this topic with numerous people whose spiritual stances I particularly respect for their erudition and grounding: a Buddhist, an Orthodox priest, a Hasidic housewife, a Catholic theologian.
I half-expected my Buddhist colleague to agree with my friend at the wine store. But he said, “No, people who say that don’t understand what Buddha meant. We are meant to deeply feel each moment, not to use our minds as weapons against ourselves. We are called on to feel sorrow and joy fully, to be fully.” Detachment, as he explained it, was a way to see what was true about self and other.
The Orthodox priest had an interesting take on it and agreed that we are asked to feel for others, look to help, and love; that, indeed love was the greatest and highest calling. However, he added, “We are also told to be in the world, but not of it. We are born into a fallen world. And expecting it to be other than it is, is foolish and makes us ineffective. When you know you are in a pig sty, why do you get surprised when you get dirty? You’re in a pig sty. It’s a mess.”
Contrary to my new friend’s call to detach, as I grow older I find myself more surefooted in my commitment to be available, to respond when needed, and to love while I have the chance. As I see it, there may be many flaws in trying to control, but there is no failure in love.
But I continued to pursue the thoughts of others on the topic.
When I asked my husband what he thought about detachment, he admitted he found it hard. “Especially,” he added, “when it comes to what other people think and how they feel. I always want everyone to be happy. I want to like everyone and everyone to like me.”
I brought it to my mother, who in typically no-nonsense fashion, said, “What do you mean by detachment? You mean to let go? Well, then, seems to me you want to detach from evil, but not from good. It’s a matter of choice, isn’t it?”
All this left me with more questions than I’d started with, and certainly more than I bargained for when I went in to buy a bottle of wine.
What should we detach from or attach to?
Does love mean attachment? Are they distinct?
What about the desire to love (as a verb, not as a fuzzy feeling) and make others happy? Should my husband have not bought me flowers the other day because he knew they would delight me? Should he have detached enough to not care how I felt?
We know that control and manipulation and heartache are the results of a failure to detach when that is what is necessary, but what happens without any attachment whatsoever?
In my experience, the failure to attach is like a house built without struts or support beams. There is no connective tissue and the organism eventually fragments, falls apart. We see this in abandoned or severely abused children who are left to their own devices far too early. Without anyone to depend on—to attach to, they become like leaves loosed in a gust of wind. They have no sense of who they are, how they feel, or how to deal with those feelings as they arise. They are socially utterly lost. As a result, what they wind up feeling most of the time is a blend of rage and panic. Anyone who’s worked with these children comes to understand, if only viscerally, the utter necessity of attachment in order to live. This is not limited to humans. It has been shown to be equally as important in other animals, particularly primates.
The problem, of course, is that attachment—even a healthy one—comes with a price tag. When we lose the one to whom we are attached, or the thing (a house, a sentimental picture, a job), we lose a part of ourselves and we grieve. We feel pain. Sometimes the pain is so great that we are forever altered, our lives a limping replica of what they once were. This phenomenon is not limited to humans, either. We see evidence of exquisite attachment and wrenching grief in primates, dogs, sea lions, dolphins, whales, elephants, and geese. Attachment–at some level–seems to be universal.
I think I know what the fellow at the wine store was trying to say to me—that he has learned how to avoid that pain. He was saying that he had become self-aware as a spirit who was temporarily occupying a body, that he had successfully conquered his fears, vanquished his needs as the irrelevant yearnings of a feeble psyche, become part of small club of humans who have surpassed their own humanity.
Foible or fortune, for today I remain rather human.
Posted in Faith-based Counseling, Holistic Psychotherapy, Hudson Valley Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy, Verbal First Aid | Tags: animals, attachment, committment, detachment, dogs, family, primates | 8 Comments »
Five Questions You Better Ask Your Kids!
This is a guest blog by author Vanessa Van Petten, creator of RadicalParenting.com a parenting website written from the teen perspective to help parents understand them. She is also the author of the parenting book, “Do I Get My Allowance Before or After I’m Grounded?” (http://www.radicalparenting.com/books-and-products/book-youre-grounded/)
Was there ever a moment when your teen said something snarky or gave you a dirty look and you thought to yourself, “Who is this person living in my house?” There seems to be a time for many parents where they realize their once loving child has turned into an adolescent, moody, quasi-stranger.
I often hear parents saying things like, “I swear, she woke-up and it was like I didn’t even know her anymore!” or “When did my son turn into a man?” These statements are usually tinged with both regret and nostalgia as parents realize their child is not only growing up, but turning into what seems like a new person.
Even though this can be disconcerting for parents, many adults do not realize that there is a flip-side to this knowledge for your teen as well. Teenagers often tell me that they also have a moment of apprehension when they realize their parents still think they are children—and they no longer feel like children. They say things like, “I liked the Simpsons when I was in 5th grade, my parents don’t realize that I have changed a lot since I was 11!” or “My parents think they know everything about me, but they don’t, I’m not a kid anymore!”
Both parents and teens are going through their own confusing ‘aha’ moments of their own adulthood. I find one of the best ways for teens to feel like their parents are accepting them as adults and for parents to feel like they still know their children is to ask some character defining questions. In my book, “Do I Get My Allowance Before or After I’m Grounded?” I talk about some great questions to get to know your kids. Here are my favorites, feel free to expand this into some great get-to-know-each-other conversations:
Conversation Starters to Get to Know Your Teens
1. What is the hardest thing about your life, what do you worry about most?
2. Is there something that you wish I knew about you?
3. What are three words to describe you?
4. What do you think is the most important quality a person can have?
5. How were you different five years ago from who you are now? What do you think you will be like five years from now?
These questions are meant to not only help you get to know each other, but also help get your teen thinking about their own identity. By discussing these issues with them in an open-minded fashion, they know they can come to you when they are trying to figure themselves out…and when you want to figure them out as well.
Here are some more: 20 Teen and Tween Conversation Starters (http://www.radicalparenting.com/2008/06/02/table-topics/)
The Separation Question: Who's More Afraid, Parent or Child?
Recently I found out that a beloved niece — one with whom I lived until she was about two years old — was pregnant. And suddenly, everything I had learned to let go of as she became a toddler, then again as a school-age child, then a teenager, then a young adult, then a married woman, had flown out the window. I had grabbed hold of that life-long chain of release, release and re-release and pulled it back to me and rolled it into a big knot. Then, I found out that she (in her last trimester) and her husband were going to visit the wild, wonderful world of Mickey Mouse in the height of summer. Every adrenal-driven, hormone-based horror came rushing out like a hot flash. I thought of every ride that could make her sick, every long drive that could give her a blood clot, every soda that would push her blood sugar into a snit. What if X and what if Y? And did you talk to your doctor? And how will you ever be able to stand on line?
I was my own worst nightmare, a caricature of the anxious stunt-mom, the stuff I have warned my sister about far, far too many times for both her and my own liking. And even writing this to you, I am embarrassed. I'm supposed to know better. This is generally the sort of thing I teach to parents — how to generate a sense of authority, safety, and assurance and then transfer that to their children or loved ones. I'm supposed to be the maven of ,Verbal First Aid not the Grand Ol' Mama of Woe and Oh No.
But as I look back on it — and how I had to retrace my steps, backpedal, and make it right with my niece (first with an apology and then with some true correction), I see it more as a gift. As hard as it is to let go of the people we love, it is that easy to grab them right back. Control is like a tether ball. It may look like you've slapped it past the horizon, but then there it comes around and slams you upside the head.
What I've learned is that letting go of someone I love so that she may properly live her own life is an ongoing struggle — at least for people like me whose natural tendency is to fret. For others who are more like my husband, it is a grace, a way of walking and breathing in the world. So I went back to basics. As she talked about all the things she was going to do I went through the list I teach but forgot to practice:
1. BREATHE! I honestly forget to breathe more times than I care to admit. It's a wonder I'm not perpetually cyanotic.
2. CENTER! This word has a multiple meaning for me. In one, obvious sense it means to get centered physically in my own body, which is the only way to manage an unreasonable anxiety, even though everything about anxiety pushes us in the other direction… to leave our bodies. (If it's going to feel like this, I'm OUTTA here!)
The other thing it represents for me is a spiritual center. I have to remember, or to be more accurate, actively remind myself by reading something, praying, talking to someone who knows better than I do, who I really am, who she really is and what our ultimate destinations are. Even though I love her as if she were my own child, she is far, far more than that and has her own purpose in life. She is God's child, just as I am. She has never belonged to me (or anyone else for that matter) even though at times it may feel like that.
3. The ABC's of Verbal First Aid with children and adults. Even though this was not a "crisis" (at least not for anyone but myself), it was a good opportunity for me to remember what makes for truly therapeutic communication–Authority, Believability, Compassion. Usually these qualities are important to cultivate when someone is in shock or had a traumatic or frightening experience so that we can lead them towards health or healing. In our case, it was oddly reversed. I was the one who, with my fear, was creating a traumatic or frightening experience where none did or needed to exist. To reverse it, I had to go back to what was the essence of any good parent or healer relationship: the ability to be a leader (to help her to move forward without the unnecessary baggage of MY anxiety), to be believable in my assertions (not a fear-monger), and to be understanding. She was tired and desperately wanted a vacation. If she wanted to see Donald Duck and be a little girl for a week, who was I to judge? And where did I come off assuming that she didn't have enough sense to get out of the sun or find a chair in which to rest her weary legs? I had messed up on all counts.
4. Rapport. In this case, because I was such a worry wart, I had to re-establish what I once had but rapidly lost because my fear had begun to affect her. The more fear I had, the more I lost the rapport we had cultivated over so many years. Obviously it was not "lost" in the sense of "gone forever" but it was tenuous in the moment. With every "what if" she had to defend not only her status as an adult or her decisions, but her sense of well-being. The more afraid I was, the more she really had to resist me. I remember quite a while ago when I was undergoing these quick twists and turns with my parents and how their fear had more than annoyed me, it had angered me. As the years passed, I realized why: it resonated with me. If they were afraid (and if secretly I was, too), then there must have been something to be afraid of. I didn't want to be afraid. It made me feel helpless rather than empowered and alive. And being pervasively (as opposed to realistically) fearful never gave me a single useful tool in my life.
So, this time, I was lucky. Not too much water or wasted emotional energy had flowed under the bridge before I caught it. I was able to recapitulate in short order and she, gracefully, laughed at her aunt once again. When, inevitably, I imagine her walking across miles of parking lots and waiting on long lines in sweltering heat to get through the Pearly Gates of Disney, I will instead take a breath, sit back, remind myself of the basics and think of her as a brave and happy young woman with a baby on the way, running up to Cinderella and smiling from ear to ear.
Posted in Blog, Holistic Psychotherapy, Psychotherapy | Tags: babies, children, fears, letting go, parenting, separation, toddlers | No Comments »
Am I Mine?
[Currently appearing in Huffington Post, Religion section.]
Am I?
Yesterday I sat watching a storm tumble in as they can do only in this region of the country — catapulting, cranky and fast. There were spiny shards of lightning, whipping sheets of rain you could see approach from a distance of 30-40 miles, and a thunder roll that had three large dogs shaking behind my legs.
I was mesmerized. I gathered up the dogs and went inside to watch. It was not a small storm. It brought hail, the noise of nightmares, darkness and ferocity.
And I had this unbidden, strange, delicious thought: I am created. I am a creation.
It seemed more like a letter addressed to me than a self-generated idea and what it appeared to be telling me was this simple and magnificent thing: I am not my own. I no more created myself than the thunderhead before me or the mountain with which it collided.
Now, to me — as much as to you — that is a very strange idea. It is almost a cultural betrayal. Like everyone else, I have told myself many times that I am very much my own. I have not only told myself, I have repeatedly taught that idea to others. I was told to believe in myself, so I cultivated that belief. I was told I am my thoughts, so I have aimed to think well. I was particularly told to think well of myself and have developed what is generally considered to be a healthy sense of self esteem. I own my home. I have a career. I build friendships. I am ME. I am MINE.
But then the storm said, "Well, not exactly…"
It went on to say that I was not my own, certainly not in the way I had thought. It said I was God's. That, like the thunder, the lightning, the birds taking refuge in the trees, I was His creation and that it was all constantly unfolded, rolled into motion and kept in existence by an act of Will that was not by any means mine.
Given how I was raised, trained and educated, I would have more than expected that thought to be anathema to me. What do you mean I'm not my own??? It was an odd moment overall. But when I think back to other moments of great understanding or fragments of Grace, I think much of what has been shown to me has been odd. Some were real head tilters. I imagine they made me look like my dogs do when I start talking to them. And in some ways, those experiences weren't much different. It was as though I was hearing a language I'd never heard before except that I could understand it — just not with my ears or my conscious mind. And this was no different. It was very strange and very big. Much bigger than my body, my mind, or anything else I considered proprietary.
Looking back I would've normally expected myself to be either a bit frightened or annoyed; it surprised me to find out that I was actually relieved. If I was created, my existence not only had meaning, it was personal.
I finally began to understand what "self-esteem" alluded to but never gave me: a sense of belonging. In that storm, a new truth was revealed; none of us — not me, not the dogs, not the mountains or the rain — stood solely for ourselves. All of us in unison pointed to Something Else, a Magic that was deeper than magic, a single Breath that filled the lungs of all life. And all of it inhaled, hoping for more. Self-esteem had never been enough.
Not for a moment in that reverie did I feel as though belonging to Another had stripped me of the ability to choose. The moment came with an invitation, not an ultimatum or a compulsion. I could continue to rely on myself — or not. I felt perfectly free to choose what I did next: ignore the message, dismiss it as unscientific, laugh at it, write about it, sit with it. The possibilities presented themselves and later that evening I chose (as you can see). And as I wrote, trying to sift through the sensation (because it was quite physical) of being actively, consciously and purposefully created, I found that it made me more than I was, rather than less.
A bit of history might help you understand why this is such a great relief for me and why I chose to write to you instead of to ignore the experience.
Most of my life has been spent in fear, fighting fear or treating fear. Of what? Of everything. Of death, of life, of loving, of losing, of being well, of being sick. The why's are too numerous to go into here (maybe another essay), but suffice it to say that it was exhausting, at times incapacitating. It's been many years since then, but the body memory can be recalled with ease.
The natural result of all that fear was — for me — the futile attempt to control my circumstances. If I can "just" drive this way, or I can "just" get him to do it that way, or if I can "just" keep my schedule in "just" the right order, all will be well, I will be safe, I will be loved.
Needless to say — and you all surely know this from your own experience — it didn't work. I just spent more and more time trying to ward off an army with a toothpick. Controlling didn't bring love, never guaranteed safety (only the temporary illusion of it) and never made me well. If anything it called forth the opposite: It made me annoying, it put me in situations which I should have hastily avoided, and it weakened me so that I took sick.
As I watched the storm I began to understand that the fear had the power it did for so many years because I had felt utterly alone. Of course, I wasn't alone — neither in the social sense, the psychological one, nor the spiritual one. But I felt alone, on my own the way a forsaken orphan does, one who mistakenly struggles against the world with the full load of survival on his way too narrow shoulders. And because of that I believed I had to manage everything. If I didn't, who would? I was convinced that it was up to me.
That is the price of separateness. I was mine. But, then, with that, so was everything else.
I'd like to share with you a wonderful idea. It comes from a book entitled "Orthodoxy" by G.K. Chesterton. In one segment, he talks about the Will that beckons us from behind every rock, breeze and berry tree, and how the perceived repetition of nature (the sun that rises again and again, the tides that rush in and out at the same time every year, the exchange of synaptic chemistry in predictable ways) is due not to a series of unimaginative scientific laws or a dull and insensate lifelessness but to a conscious vibrancy, "a rush of life."
He likens it to the way children kick their legs back and forth, back and forth, enough to drive more sedated adults to distraction, not because of an absence of vitality but because they have so much of it. He recalls also (who hasn't done this?) the way children will happily hear a story over and over and over, pulling on someone's shirt sleeve, "Read it again!" The adult may be bored to tears, but the child is enthralled every time.
Because of a child's unbridled enthusiasm for life, because they are still unfettered in spirit, everything they see bares the stamp of the Great Magician, all of living is an act of mystery, daring and surprise, every day is prefaced by the curtain being pulled up to reveal a new rabbit or an inexplicably empty box.
He says,
"It is possible that God says every morning, 'Do it again' to the sun; and every evening 'Do it again' to the moon. It may not be automatic necessity that makes all daisies alike; it may be that God makes every daisy separately, but has never got tired of making them. May be that He has the eternal appetite of infancy … our Father is younger than we are."
He goes on to reveal that he has always seen life as a story, and "that if there is a story, there is a story teller."
I saw at least a bit of that story in the dark clouds and torrents of rain yesterday and finally, finally got a sense of the Great Story Teller Himself as he wet his thumb and turned the page and asked me, "Would you like to see what happens next?"
And my heart leapt and my lips said "Yes!" glad beyond words that finally I did not have to know the ending, that I could be a part of something much grander and beloved than I ever could have if I had tried to do the writing myself.
Posted in Blog, Christian Counseling, Faith-based Counseling, Holistic Psychotherapy | Tags: belonging, Chesterton, creation, fear and control, God, grace, Magic, religion, self-esteem | No Comments »
Living On YouTube.
[This article appeared in Huffington Post in the first week of July, 2011)
There's a man I know who is talented, empathic, possessed of a keen intellect and frightened of everything. The fear has been built the way thunderstorms gather over mountains — imperceptibly at first, then slowly, silently but with great force. With every approaching rumble, it has shut his world down piece by piece. First it was work, then it was social activities, then it was driving and finally it was family. His universe has folded in like a sheet, corner over corner, until it has reduced his life to spending the day in front of the computer trolling YouTube. He didn't understand how it all happened and his anguish was palpable — so was my confusion.
"You're living other people's lives," I said.
"They're giving me their lives," he answered tersely. Clearly I had no idea what was going on in cyberspace or how such a thing could happen to someone so gifted.
"What do you mean?" I asked.
He explained that there were people who addressed their audiences daily, sharing from their own lives and "interacting" with their fans about everything from hair care to emotional and physical intimacy. Nothing was verboten. The video monologue disguised as discussion might as well have been occurring between lovers. There was no pretense of "expertise" in any particular field, just one human being talking to another (well, sort of) over high-speed cables.
"They give so much," he added poignantly.
"Wouldn't someone real?" I was baffled.
"But you'd have to go and find someone real. These people are just delivered to you."
"Like Chinese food," I thought, but didn't say. In my mind I became lost in my own past, when I was very young and very foolish and due to various all-nighters was unable to get into a car or walk to a grocery to get food. I thought of the times that I had called for delivery and what motivated that avoidance — whether it was lethargy or fear.
I believe it was mostly lethargy, but there were a few times when it was fear. It didn't happen often and it wasn't with the ferocity or chronicity of this fellow's experience, but it was enough to begin to understand the call to sequester he was hearing. It's a formidable thing, fear, particularly when it is not rational. A rational fear (there is a bus heading for me and I must move or die) can be argued for or against. There it is — or isn't. Either there is someone following you or there is not. An irrational fear — that which stems from within as opposed to without (like a bus or a real stalker rather than a paranoid delusion) — is a much harder thing both to face and fight.
The times I called for food to be delivered so I could continue "hiding" in my apartment were, as I recall, times I didn't feel particularly good about myself. My fear was of being seen and judged. I fully admit that the fear was decidedly not rational, because there was no particular reason for any judgment (who knew me and who cared? It was New York!) Furthermore, I don't believe retrospectively that I looked especially bizarre or off-putting. I felt bad about behaving badly and believed, erroneously, that someone else would see right through me. I was afraid of the judgment I was already indicting upon myself.
A man who is very dear to me is a recovering alcoholic. When I asked him if he had ever been afraid of going out of his house, he answered in no uncertain terms, "for more than two years."
His story takes place moments before the internet became de rigueur, around the turn of the millennium. He has not had a drink in nearly a decade, but those last struggles are still painfully vivid. His liver was moving toward a meltdown, his faculties were frayed, his hitherto well-planned life a shambles. "I became afraid of everything: of collapsing in public, of being judged, of having a panic attack and being out there with no help. I was afraid of being afraid, of breathing, of being without alcohol, of needing more alcohol. It was so overpowering, I stayed home. I couldn't do anything else."
If he had been connected to a thing such as YouTube as a substitute for human relationship, it is entirely possible that he would have never gotten out of the house. What he believes saved him were the relationships in his life. His friends called him and he answered the call. He went out, even if sporadically. Those friends were the ones who drove him to rehab. For some reason — and I admit I still don't know what that is — his fear did not overtake him the way it did our other fellow and he lives to talk about it with others.
I am sure there are numerous studies about the effects of the Internet on relationships, just as I am equally sure of the numerous effects and speculations that result from it. How could there not be? I know that texting has had a profound effect on people's (particularly young people's) ability to speak in full sentences. But this essay is not about the effect of the internet on us. Rather the opposite. It is fully about us. It is about what is in our hearts (or not in our hearts, like faith or courage or self-worth) when we sit down at a computer. It is about what we bring to the cyber-table (like a fear of being seen or judged) that makes us mortally vulnerable to a system of pseudo-intimacy that offers free delivery.
It is a human story, not an empirical one. The sad truth is that while YouTube may sometimes be fun, it is not a relationship. Nor can it ever be a relationship. It is a one, not even a two-dimensional format. It is a dead-end street. It is delivered, yes, but nothing more may be asked of the deliverer and nothing may be given back.
I wonder, now, if that isn't precisely what keeps our first fellow sitting in front of the screen, if the fear is that someone real would require something in return? Or, worse, that he may find a swell of love in his own heart and wish to give something back only to be refused or rejected?
What is the ultimate consequence of this behavior? It is not, as some people falsely conclude, that people are hoodwinked by the internet's false promises. It is actually worse. It is that their fear cuts them off and they are kept from ever loving. For to love one must be able to give either selflessly or in return for being loved. It is, in fact, the a priori definition of love. This is perhaps the worst and saddest sort of emotional twinkie, the kind we keep insisting should make us feel better but never, ever does.
Posted in Holistic Psychotherapy | Tags: alcoholic, Fear, home-bound, internet, love, video, youtube | No Comments »