On Being Right

You wonder, don't you, why it is that some people can never be wrong? Even caught, busted, backed into a corner, they'll lie to your face, tell you they didn't understand the question, or that you're interpreting what they said incorrectly. Never wrong, can't be.

It is everything to them, everything to be right. I'm sorry isn't in the vernacular. Nothing to be sorry for if you're always right.

If it's an acquaintance, you can let it go, maybe laugh it off privately, placate your friend. You intuit that this person needs validating, an emotional lift, an ego boost. Applause. So you give it. It's cheap.

If it's a colleague, someone on the team at work, or a fellow committeeman in an organization, a herd of industrial psychologists can't budge this person, will throw arms up in despair, slap together an agreement nobody likes. You just can't negotiate with some people.

When it's the boss, and it often is, well, you know who is right, and it isn't you.

Ditto, maybe, if it's family. History proves resistance futile, so you coach the kids,

Don't bother arguing with ___(Dad, Mom, Uncle Herb, etc.).

It's a waste of time.

Those of you coping with this emotional system come to therapy, usually, because someone else can't cope with this person. And the someone else won't let it go, insists upon arguing with the one who has to be right. Maybe it's a child or a teenager in charge of the revolution, or maybe it's you, finally fed up, sick of letting the baby have his bottle. Everyone in the family feels this negative emotion; it's palpable. Family and/or marital therapy is an attractive option.

Mainly because there's no sex in the marital relationship anymore, so changing this is an incentive for therapy. Anger's just not sexy. Or one of the kids is off "doing his own thing."

The ones stuck being wrong all the time are the ones who volunteer for individual therapy. The therapist is empathetic, knowing how difficult difficult people can be. It's not easy always yielding, always being wrong, for if you live with someone who is always right, and you disagree with that person, then you're always wrong.

Which feels bad. You might even come to believe it, too, that you really are more wrong than right, especially if you start out in the relationship a quart or three low in the self-esteem department. If you start out full, you'll find it runs out easily if you're always wrong. (This is systems thinking.) Like the Dementors in the Harry Potter books who whoosh down and sap happiness from others, steal it, make it theirs; you get sapped of self-esteem, happiness, no matter how well defended.

Generally we think you get this valuable commodity, self-esteem, maintain it or lose it, too, in a social process: direct communication or meta-messages, messages embedded in messages, body language, tone of voice, spacial positioning. These all communicate one's value, good or bad. Very little gray in most messages like these.

Such a humbling experience, too, being on the receiving end. Our partners, our parents, are supposed to be the home team. They are supposed to value us, validate us, tell us we're smart, we're good. People are supposed to be pleasant to one another in caring, intimate relationships.

Like FD will tell me, "You're not so bad."

It helps to have positive feedback, and the running hypothesis here, surprise surprise, is that people who have to be right all of the time didn't get positive feedback when they needed it most, during childhood. Those critical years, the formative years, really are critical, they are formative. And they can be wonderful, full of awe and wonder, or not.

The have-to-be rights never experienced wonder years. No happiness or wonder for them.

Those of us who adore our children, who praise and encourage them, who use reason when they're out of line, as opposed to beating on them in one way or another, believe children should stay in wonder for as long as possible. We know that the world is full of let-downs, disrespect, wallops, lumps. Nobody knows us out there, few care, really, how we feel. If we have three good friends, we are very, very lucky.

By and large, life's about taking the punches, coping with rejection. And our friends and family, people who care about us, buffer that.

You apply for a job and there's not so much as a rejection letter for non-candidates. We used to get these, Thank you for applying. . . but. . . letters. Now we know that if there's no call back, there's no job. No communication is communication.

Thus the Rodney Dangerfields are everywhere, getting NO respect. No "I value your opinion, your thoughts, your skills." That's why parents have to do it first, get a quart of three into us when we're little, hope it keeps. Value, validate. The words sound alike. A giving thing, this expression of someone's worth. We don't have to agree with our kids, with anyone necessarily, to say, Wow, now that you've explained it, I see why you feel the way you feel.

That's validation.

In the Chicago Public Schools there's a new program, the WOW program. Teachers are supposed to say WOW, no matter what a kid does.

"You didn't do your homework? WOW, I imagine you just didn't have time!"

Implicit respect. Wow, I see why you feel the way you feel.

No need to add the but; it's not a compound sentence. Validation means no qualifiers necessary. If I didn't ask for an alternative opinion, why give it to me? I may still be glowing in the Wow. The but can come later. And if there isn't any communicated respect, no validation, which takes some time, actually, in discussion, it's likely there's no interest in alternative thoughts and opinions.

This is the rationale behind the intervention you read on this blog relatively often, validating without regard for receiving validation in return, or unconditional validation in communication. Here the one who is always wrong (according to the one who is always right) patiently validates the one who clearly needs to be right.

To do this and not lose your mind, you actually need to know your subject, why he or she needs to be right, which can be very personal, very intimate information. But if it's a parent, or a partner, you have the right to know.*

So you snoop around and find, in all probability, that there's abuse in this person's background, shame and abuse, verbal, physical, emotional, psychological. This person has been labeled

stupid, retarded, fat, a wimp, a loser, maybe a fool.

Something. He or she may have been slapped silly for being so dumb. Stupid and dumb are operative words. Children should be seen, not heard, you can assume this, in families like these.
A child learns to stay invisible, is afraid to venture an opinion, knowing that the opinion isn't wanted, commands no respect.

You would think parents would naturally know, would simply have the empathy necessary to know that kids need to be asked an opinion now and again, that they need to feel important, to have a say in their lives, that this is how they emerge from the Petree dish of family with some self-esteem, a modicum of self-worth. We all need the You are important message. You are someone very capable. Without this type of messaging a person suffers a hunger, a growling in the tummy that won't quiet down.

Although I like to think that a corrective relationship feeds the beast.

Childhood abuse and emotional neglect is transgenerational, zips right past go, starts somewhere in the lower branches of the family tree and grows, like ivy, up. Subsequent generations might copy the behaviors of aggressive parents, identify with the aggressor. But it is not so simple as this. More likely, if one has been muted, called stupid often enough, shut down, there is still a thinking brain, a healthy vector of self that whispers, mouths silently to the aggressor, on more than one occasion during childhood,

"Actually, I'm not always stupid. You're stupid. You know?"

This voice grows louder inside, this shoot of a child's budding identity, this personality in progress, and grows very rebellious, even, over time.

I call it the Survivor Ego. Maybe others have other names for it. I've never read this in a book, to be quite honest.

The silent scream volleys hard,

"I am not always wrong, I am not always stupid, and damn it, one day, you'll all have to listen to me because I am not going away. You will contend with me when I am older. I live!"

The beginning of the oppositional personality.

Having been shut down for so long, the Survivor Ego lives to revel in expression, thrives in the countering of opinions, thrills with the power of final say.

"I live, okay? They didn't kill me. Won't somebody please notice?"

It is a micro-decision of youth, to respond this way, rather than cower every time, yield every point. It is the black/white of borderline. And the decision is unconscious by adulthood, that decision that turned the key, for evermore, the one that cheers the adult child on. "I'm right!" It's like a drug.

So you see why there has to be some psychotherapy, some good old fashioned psychodynamic therapy, to end the reign of terror, and the one who needs it is in no hurry, feels no need to get it. But when it happens, a person can change.

The change, albeit unstable at first, maybe forever, yields the point, many points, to significant others. The changed individual feels compassion for others, even empathy. This is possible for the memory of his history empowers him, substitutes for the other drug, having to be right all of the time. They believe me. They get it. They know I'm not stupid.

And when being right feels irresistible, when Mr/Ms Has-to-be-Right slips?

A raised eyebrow is enough, assuming you've agreed on that signal. In family therapy we're big on such things, signals.

therapydoc

*Just my opinion here, as usual, what you pay for when you read this blog.

Leave Me Alone

That's Greta Garbo.

Every once in awhile I'll see someone who says she's fed up and wants to be left alone. I think it's a Greta Garbo line, I 'vant to be alone, but it's not hers exclusively. Greta doesn't own it.

A person can have a million reasons for wanting to be alone, but one of the more interesting patterns I see in therapy tends to look like the one below. We'll keep it simple, give you a snippet of a typical conversation with a hypothetical new patient.

Patient: I just wish everybody would leave me the ____ alone.

Me: What's the feeling behind that, wanting to be left alone?

Patient (doesn't have to think hard): Anger.

Me: Do you feel angry often?

Patient: Yes. A lot. People think I'm a real b___. They can tell when I don't want to be bothered.

This type of interactional sequence is almost always with a female patient, eldest in her family of origin, sometimes the only girl. She is expected to keep a degree of order and cleanliness in the home, even as a young child and isn't given the freedom to explore the world beyond that home, either.

As an adult, usually an outwardly independent person, she's developed a sometimes testy, irritable nature, and gives overt signs to others that they had best not try to get too close to her. She says No, more often than not, to social events, but she isn't phobic. She's just not interested, she will tell you.

A nice way to describe this personality is off-putting. Another way is to say she's threatening. I like her right away, as soon as she walks through the door. I've seen her many times before.

I give her a cryptic once over after she's used the "b" word, for she describes herself this way. I'll give it a pregnant pause, wait, eventually make empathetic eye contact. Then she sees a smile. We both laugh. It is the laugh of understanding, relating. Empathy.

Me: Well, we all have our days.

Patient: Some people have more than others.

Me: You got that right.

Her story tumbles out, first in the present tense. This is about all the idiots out there who make life miserable; how there's so much stuff to have to take in life, on the job. So much aggravation.

Eventually she'll get to the codependent song* I'm waiting to hear. It goes something like this. . .

Patient (describing her life): And my family in . . .

(Fill in the blank, Poland, Puerto Rico, Mexico, Guatemala, Viet Nam, China . . . )

depends on me for money. And I send it, but the money goes to things like drugs and alcohol. And my uncle just sits around and does nothing. And my sister does nothing. And my brother does nothing except he eats a lot and does nothing and he lives with my mother, who does everything for everyone. And did I tell you that my brother uses drugs, too?

Me (anxious to get treatment under way): You know, there are alternatives. . . You don't have to . . .

Patient (cuts me off): I know, I know.

But tell me, doctor, on another subject, why do I get so upset with people? I have this feelings, all the time, like I'm to blame, like people are blaming me. And I'm the good girl. I'm the one who does everything good. I don't drink. I don't smoke. I don't sleep around. I work. I send money home to my family. I do everything right. So why, when someone says something about me do I always assume they're insulting me, accusing me?

Why does just being with people make me feel guilty?

This confession of personal history signals Psychoeducational Lecture #72 (these are arbitrary numbers, don't Google them) . When innocent people feel guilty it's often because as children they were accused of doing bad things that they didn't do. Or they were accused of wanting to do bad things they never wanted to do. These accusations happen repeatedly throughout childhood until the patient gets out of there, free from family imprisonment.

What follows them, unfortunately, and exacerbates their problems, is that they've been undeservedly punished, usually severely, for these things they didn't do, didn't want to do. The punishment is often violent, accessorized with homemade weapons. We call it child abuse.**

Patient: Oh, man. I got hit. Did I ever get hit. I got hit with belts, paddles, and I was kicked with boots, slashed with electrical cords. I was beat bad.

Me: I know.

Patient: How do you know?

Me: It's my job to know. Sometimes people like you, the victims, survivors, call it what ever it is, hardly recognize harsh punishment like this as child abuse. You don't even own your right to feel angry about it. What good does it do you anyway, you think, to be angry? So you aren't conscious of the connection. You have what is called unresolved anger. And the guilt is unresolved guilt. We have to resolve it.

We therapydocs explains that we have seen it many times before, the eldest female's involuntary role of responsibility, taking care of little siblings as a little child herself, unprepared, the parental child syndrome. This pint-sized, ill-equipped parent is rarely appreciated and is treated badly. She'll try to please, try to keep Daddy or Mommy from getting angry. It's a lot of emotional work.

Meanwhile, her parents don't understand parenting. If anything, they think it's okay that she feels guilty for the behavior of her siblings. They think it's okay to make her feel guilty for talking to a boy, even if she doesn't like him. They are trying to protect her. They think they are doing a good job, instilling in her what I call an overdeveloped sense of responsibility.

And too much responsibility makes us angry.

At some point in therapy she'll want to know that the reason others can afford to under-function is that she over-functions.

If I hadn't heard so many Wild-Person stories I might not have copped the likelihood of abuse in a case like this. The Wild-Person will abuse and blame everyone, all of the children, usually, but there is one child, often the oldest girl, who gets the brunt of the rage. And alcohol is usually the fabric of family life, so well woven that it is hardly mentioned in the history.

Me: They do it for your own good, the beating, the isolation, the insistance that you come right home after school. It's all so you can turn out all right. GOOD. And look. You did.

Patient: Ha! More like a wreck is what turned out. A crazy person.

Me: So you're an emotional wreck, but a good emotional wreck.

Patient: That's the whole thing, all so I should be a good girl. Meanwhile, how many times do you think I got molested as a kid by some drunken relative?

Me: Of course. And you wonder why you want to be left alone.

Who needs people when the ones who say they love you, who should love you, beat the ___ out of you and forget to protect you?

Better to be alone.

therapydoc

*For more on codependency, visit The Second Road. The writing over there is terrific, and every week or so I'll post there, too. You might want to read about what I did yesterday, for example, on The Drinking Holidays. The post is about religious days like St. Pat's, Purim, and Passover.

**There are many reasons to be angry, child abuse is only one of them. A post like today's is supposed to highlights associations between a few different variables. There are many more, of course.

History and Strategy

You might find this question and answer interesting.

A reader writes in response to the shame post, The Bistro and the Date (below). First he answers those all important questions* then asks

How can I keep my boundaries tight when my family tries to sabotage what I think should be a moratorium (a.k.a. cut-off ) for the sake of my mental health?

The reader worked for years to distance himself from his verbally abusive father, a man who denies his emotionally violent parenting to this day.

If I were the reader's therapist, I would explain that it is shame that is buried under those layers of denial, that his father and he may not be all that different. The difference is subtle but important. His father's shame is so tragic, so toxic, that it is no longer conscious, he has successfully defended with that most primitive of defenses, denial, unconscious denial, the worst kind. He has to believe himself a good dad. Anything else would destroy him. He hasn't psychic permission, he hasn't given himself permission, to be imperfect.

An identified patient like our reader will sometimes try to cut off communication with people in the family who were "dysfunctional" "toxic" "violent." He may try to hang onto one limb, to save a relationships with a sibling, the seemingly healthiest member of the family.

But this last branch, his only connection, will eventually become angry and resentful, may even threaten to cut him off unless he reconnects when parents become elderly and physically unwell. Siblings needs one another when that happens, when there's family work to share.

We're addressing cut-offs here, obviously. The reason people cut-off their families is not that they don't need them or feel responsible and connected to them, but their families became sources of pain. Families do abuse and shame, betray members. Mis-steps such as these (including addicted siblings who visit and steal the silverware) make us wary. We put up boundaries.

It's the permeability of the boundary that concerns me. Boundaries need to breathe.

Parents who emotionally abuse with words, who shame their children, who fertilize a child's self-doubt, sense of inadequacy, and unworthiness have to be sealed off for a little while. The fence needs some sturdy nails. Not electricity. No, I won't block the metaphor, let's keep it going.

See, you need a fence, because children who grow up with verbal abuse believe it and when it's a steady stream of negativity will join the dissension, believe the words, find someone else who will abuse them, or do the dirty work themselves, continue the lashing, cut, try suicide. Maybe succeed.

This is why therapists will advise conflicted patients to stay away from the source, to protect themselves from further emotionally violent communications with family. Heal.

But we're all human. We will want to cling to the healthiest member of the family, perhaps the one who saw the abuse, who may have also been a victim. And ultimately cut-offs fail. The family guilt and invasiveness is stronger than the average soul can stand. Therapists often get cases like these when they're sinking, shored up by a quick but ineffective hospital stay.

Sometimes during that stay the family has been involved. A family therapist like me will keep that going if I can, at discharge, will contact family members (with the patient's permission and release of information). I work to convince the family to let me take over for awhile, to give the patient less of themselves, not more. But don't worry. We'll be in touch.

And I stay in touch.

It takes time, but if a family therapist can work with the healthiest branches, things can change, really change for the best. Branches only need be a little green to grow. People change late in life, given the chance, given the relabel, the opportunity to be a hero.

But what do we do when it's too late for that, when the cut-off is fragile and not working, and Dad is sick in the hospital and our Identified Patient hasn't the strength to deal?

Not at all uncommon. The sibling, the one care-taking Dad, wielding the chain-saw (help me or you're no longer my brother/sister), is clearly of the tougher child variety. But even the tougher children wear down when they have to care-take sick parents. They look tough. But it's just for show.

Family therapists push for direct communication. First the identified patient has to be straight with his or her sibling(s), the care-taker(s), either by writing (under a therapist's direction and editorial skill) or calling (in the therapist's presence) to communicate something along these lines:

I'm going to call Dad or write to him and tell him what's going on with me. I'm sorry you're stuck with this, but for the time being I probably won't be visiting. I'm not quite healthy enough yet, but I'm working on it. Here's what I'm going to tell our father:

And here is what the identified patient would tell his or her father, either by telephone or in a letter, not face to face, something along these lines

I'm sorry that I'm too sick to reconnect with you right now, that I'm no good to you. Some children, the ones with big issues, get a little funky when parents get sick, and that's what I am right now, laid a little low, too depressed and withdrawn to get out of my shell to help out with you, visit with you.

I know you don't believe in mental illness, but you and I are different like that. You probably see this as a weakness and an excuse. So be it. It's real enough to me to make visiting impossible right now. I just can't do it. I hope that you don't hate me for it. I imagine you do.

One day I'm sure I'll regret this decision, not seeing you, not helping you. It doesn't seem fair to do this to you, especially now. But I don't see life as fair. A parent raises his kids, gives them his all, and just when he needs them, they're gone.

I have bad memories of us, and they haunt me (this is called chipping denial, you're not accusing him of anything). I have to work through things, mostly negative thoughts about myself, nobody else. You did the best you could. You tried to parent the best you could.

I feel like a bad person, a failure, for not meeting your expectations.

I'm in therapy, working on my own set of expectations, and how I'm going to live with myself when you're gone.

Maybe I'll get it together soon. Who knows? I don't expect you to forgive me for this or to really understand me. But despite your take on mental illness, I think everyone gets depressed sometimes. Maybe even you.

And then the identified patient stops talking or signs off (he doesn't have to write "Love" that's up to him) and hopes his father begins to talk about his own feelings, his own depression, his own childhood abuse, knowing he probably won't.

But he might. They sometimes do.

This is a strategic intervention, full of lies. The identified patient is not remorseful, probably doesn't even believe his father did the best that he could. The identified patient may never regret not talking to his father, cutting him off.

With good therapy, he will live with himself just fine once his father has passed on. He probably won't care. Some celebrate. It is survival we're talking about here. And you can't always sleep with a person you perceive as the enemy. You can't always go home just because they're ringing the dinner bell.

The therapy, surely, is about changing that perception, the one that identifies the parent as the enemy. If that's possible.

To do that, you need history. You need the extent to which the parent suffered abuse during childhood. If the identified patient doesn't know the history or denies transgenerational abuse, I make finding out a therapeutic objective. It's there.

He was criticized, abused, shamed. Not loved. Abandoned. The child who cuts him off finishes the job. It's the unkindest cut.

In family therapy you want to get to a point with an abusive parent that you can admit you're not so tough. You don't know how he survived his childhood. How did he do it?

Families can toughen us up or wear us down. The resilience variable is having a healthy adult around who counters the abuse, one who puts a hand on the abused child's shoulder and says, "You're a good kid, a wonderful kid. You'll grow up. You'll get out. Talk to me any time. Tell me everything."

We can get into calling authorities about child abuse another day. In a word, Yes. Call.


therapydoc

*Those questions include:

Did (your father/mother/guardian) call (you) lazy?
Retarded?
A loser?
A fool?
Stupid?
With gusto? With sarcasm? With hate? Disgust?
Were there tirades directed at making people feel badly about themselves?

The Bistro and the Dating Interview

I'm at one of those bistros with live music and I know one of the guys in the band. But we're entertaining cousins from out of town and I don't generally chat it up with more than one or two people at a time. So I'm not interacting with him. But when he finishes for the night and turns to leave, he looks my way and I wave. He smiles but walks off muttering,

"I just hope I don't end up in someone's blog."

What's that supposed to mean? I wrack my brain and decide that he means, "I hope I do end up in a blog and get some Free PR." Happy to oblige, dear. (And you need not have worried. There's no way I'd give you a bad review.)

Friends. Support your local restaurants, and if there are musicians in your neighborhood, give them reason to play. Applaud, praise them, on and off stage. Encourage the arts.

Go up to any musician you know and tell that person how much you like his or her music. It's the least you can do, and it shows good manners and good breeding, thanking people.

Don't ask for autographs, unless you have a pen in hand and a napkin.

Not much else matters, when it comes to social skill, more than sensitivity and good manners. But it's a fine art, a lost art in some families, making people feel good, not bad.

And we're in the business of feeling good, not bad, or why else would we be here on the Internet, when we could be in bed with a good book or hanging out at the beach?

Okay, here we go.

FD always complains that the family doesn't visit us. He's from a huge family, we're talking huge, something like 55 first cousins, who have been fruitful and multiplied. Most of them hold that Chicago is either (a) too cold, (b) too far, (c) too full of gangsters, or (d) not Baltimore.

But we got a nibble and plenty of notice to prepare. A cousin came to stay with us for the weekend and brought along a spouse and offspring, and we were ecstatic. Their miniature Al Pacino, the youngest, has launched successfully into adolescence, and almost as interesting, the three oldest, one more striking than the next, are ready for marriage (in my culture we still do this, marry).

On Saturday I let them pick my brain about what to look for in a marriage prospect, what to discuss on a date.

Then on Saturday night we all went out and I left the clean-up for the next day, knowing full well that leaving the clean-up is a real source of anxiety. But you do what you gotta' do in life.

And it was great, foregoing the usual stay at home, clean up the house, risk the unthinkable by renting a movie, get to bed at a reasonable hour options. But Sunday morning, in the closet, searching for something to wear, the flashbacks started, the conversations we had had, the ones between me and those young adult cousins, about what to look for in a partner.

And as words came back to me I realized I had forgotten to tell the kids something important, something else to check out when they're dating, not quite a quality as much an affect, something people don't automatically ask about, but which has great impact upon a future partner's self-esteem, and consequently, will have tremendous impact upon the self-esteem of future generations.

Shame.

A sense of shame is elemental to mental health. You need a little, but not too much. Too much affects your personality, and not in a good way. It can make you angry, or the opposite, self-hating, passive, withdrawn. Shame makes people lie.

The power of shame takes its energy from criticism in early childhood. As children we can't always advocate for ourselves against bigger, more authoritative people who have bigger, edgier vocabularies. Usually these people are our parents. Our powerlessness against their criticisms contains the seeds of unworthiness. And that unworthiness can settle into our chests for the long haul, the duration of our lives.

So among the many important answers you'll want to weasel out of the potential candidate for Partner and Other Parent of your Future Progeny, while waiting for your pizza at the bistro, might be:

How did they handle criticism in the family?

Did anyone shame anyone else? Did it happen in front of other people?

Was that considered okay, shaming in the name of behavioral change?

Sometimes it isn't so terribly pathological. We may call a children a mildly pejorative name, like slob, so that he becomes interested in not being a slob (untidy would be a better word) forever.*

Some children really catch on when they're called slobs, although if you do use this intervention to build character, it's best to use the word in a less personal way. You might say, I wish the people in this house weren't such slobs! This gentle shaming gives everyone a chance to triangle you, gang up on you, make fun of you for being so O-C, since you, apparently, are the only one who cares.

If it is more direct, however, but funny, as in, You are such a slob! One day you'll get it together, maybe, but I'll probably be dead by then, it might actually work. With direct, yet gentle shaming, the child has a chance at getting it together and becoming tidier. As neat and tidy, he** is highly praised, "Look how nicely my Johnny takes care of his room!" so that his fledgling self-esteem, swimming for life during slobdom, improves.

Out of the chest, into the head, I always say. Praise goes directly to one's ego. It's a good thing, in the Things that Make Us Feel Good category of life.

Horrible shaming, as in, You're an unbelievable, disgusting, good for nothing slob, and you'll never become anything, you unbelievable loser, I can't stand to look at your face, get out of my sight, is well within definitive shaming bounds and might do the trick, damage the child forever, contribute soundly to the development of various ugly and painful personality glitches and Axis I or II or both disorders.

So mainly, you want to find out:
Did anyone call anyone lazy?
Retarded?
A loser?
A fool?
Stupid?
With gusto? With sarcasm? With hate? Disgust?

Were there tirades directed at making people feel badly about themselves?

You want to know about that, you really do, you want to know if the shaming took the form of verbal abuse. If the answer is a resounding Yes, negative labels stuck pretty well, parents used crazy glue, then the next question is, "Ever get any therapy for that?"

And if the answer to that is a resounding No! you want to find out if your date made any promises to himself, like maybe conscious or unconscious decisions, based upon shame.

Like what he would do, for example, if he married, and his spouse accidentally insulted him or somehow shamed his children, even if it was gentle shaming?

Would he get very sensitive? Would he shut down?

Would he get angry and mean, insult back? Would he leave?

Or would he have the presence of mind to say to a partner, "I think you could have said that nicer. I'm sure you didn't mean to make me (little Johnny) feel so badly, but you did."

That's the right thing to say when another person hurts your feelings. "I'm sure you didn't mean to do that, to hurt me like that." You need to give people a chance to take back what they said. Right away.

And finally, Would he do that to you? To the kids? Talk down. Shame. Do unto others. . .

This discussion about childhood can naturally flow into how a couple will want to raise children if they have that in mind. How do you get children to behave, to do the things they don't do naturally like to do, like clean up? How do you do that without shaming a child?

It can be okay, sometimes, to shame a child, you can sometimes get away with it. You have a better chance at doing it with less emotional residual if it's done with love, a better chance, perhaps, if it's done in Yiddish.

But it's possible not to be received this way, as loving, under most circumstances. And it's remembered, for sure. Shaming can be a slippery slope, places a distant second to positive reinforcement. Shaming is the easy way, the slacker way. M and M's and Hersey's Kisses require trips to the grocery store and the dentist. Work and expense. But nobody said parenting would be easy.

So you want to talk about things like these, maybe before the engagement, before you plunk down 4 grand for the ring. These kinds of things are more important than, say, Does the whole family have to eat dinner together? Or, Can you play tennis?

Go right for the emotional stuff. Sure it can be a source of pain, but it is also a source of comfort, joy, and humor. Understanding one another is a happy thing. Where you find committed relationships that work, you'll find couples who have talked about at least some of the traumas of their childhood before their engagements. They knew each other, touched one another's souls.

So take your date to your local bistro, support the music industry.
And tell them to play a little softer so you can talk about what matters. Onions on the pizza? Or not. French fries? Oh, yes. Definitely!

therapydoc

*In Yiddish the word for slob sounds even worse than it does in English. Parents can get a fairly decent rise out of their children using the word shlumpf. Everything is more effective in Yiddish.

**I use the masculine gender through out the rest of the post, but there's no bias. Women are put to shame, too. Never a bias, really, with child abuse.

Season Closers: Friendship

Warning: May contain spoilers.

Like many of you, I've been watching way too much TV this week. It's the end of a very short season.

So to make up for it, I thought a little extracurricular cleaning might help. Having emptied the refrigerator this morning, I yanked the blue plastic trash basket from under the sink. You have to toss the science experiments. Underneath the pipes I saw a little rust and definitely, crud.

The kitchen was already in disarray. It couldn't hurt to attack the cabinet, too.

It's not rocket science, understand, so your mind drifts off. Mine drifted to the two shows I watch religiously, Desperate Housewives and Boston Legal.

Last week's cringe on Desperate upset me so much that I almost swore off the show forever. A little girl emotionally blackmails step-mom Lynette Scavo (Felicity Huffman). Lynette, always the sympathetic character, will go to jail for child abuse in the closer because of this manipulative, unlikeable kid (Rachel G. Fox is perfect) .

She really creeped me out, even though her character and the story line didn't ring true. So I didn't want more, but I said to myself, You're tougher than this. Watch the finale.

The truth is that television is kind of new to me. I watched it as a young person, as a little kid, then checked out. We had shows like Leave It to Beaver, Andy Griffith, Lassie, Mr. Ed, and Father Knows Best, shows that reflected the hopeful mores of the time. Plots didn't vary much. A kid gets into trouble, the parents (or animals) help resolve it, and everyone whistles at the end.

When I checked in again, television was mostly people taking off their clothes or shooting at one another, and nobody rode a horse or loved a dog. So what was the point?

A couple of years ago a patient, an adolescent, talked about Gilmore Girls. She really wanted her mom to watch it so her mom could become more like Lorelai. Empath Daught also liked Gilmore so I checked it out and found the relationship between mother and daughter interesting. Rory could see right through Lorelai's issues, and there were many.

So if I watched the show I could say to the kid (or to my daughter), "Did you see last night's Gilmore?" and we could talk about it.

And I loved the stuff with Rory's grandparents. Lorelai had cut them off because they didn't accept her as different, or so she always thought. Lorelai stayed angry at Richard and Emily, so that conflict kept my attention; that and counting everyone's drinks. (Edward Herrmann and Kelly Bishop are totally watchable and wonderful actors, which certainly helped).

So yeah, I got hooked. It was the entry drug.

And sure, I broke down and watched the two-hour season finale of Desperate on Sunday night. I set the VCR so that if I couldn't stand the cringe I could tape the show and watch it another time, fast forward through the stuff that upset my equilibrium. But the show was pretty good, the ending a real winner.

The enactment of spousal abuse, the whole Katherine sequence (Dana Delaney, so good) is amazing. You can watch this at ABC.com whenever you want.

And last night, well, my mother reminded me that Boston Legal would be on, so hey, who am I to lose the recreational intimacy of discussing that with Mom?

So there I am, cleaning under the sink, and I realize that both shows ended (stop right here if you don't want to read the spoilers) with messages about friendship.

Look here! the networks are telling us. You people are getting better. You want friendship in your lives. Sex and violence? Sure, we can provide that, too. But what you really want is friendship and we know it. So we'll give it to you. You get it here. We'll give you friends. Live vicariously.

What we want are friends.

Listen to this amazing dialog on last night's Boston. Background, first.

Alan Shore (James Spader) is in a huge disagreement with his best friend, Denny Crane (William Shatner) and they're about to go head to head in the courtroom on opposite sides of a case. Alan, in the hallway, overhears their mutual partner, Shirley Schmidt (Candice Bergen, my hero) tell Denny that Alan is very competitive. He's so competitive when it comes to his work, and this case is work, make no mistake about it, that he will take no prisoners. He will crush even his best friend to win.

After the commercials Jerry Espensen (Christian Clemenson, brilliant as the lawyer with Asperger's) argues with Alan about something immaterial. Alan has always been Jerry's arch support. But lately, they've drifted apart.

Alan, always the mentch, has already tried to make peace with Denny and failed. Now he wants to make peace with Jerry. He alludes to the fact that they have drifted apart over the past year. They're not as close. He misses him.

Jerry makes light of it. You can tell he's very nervous but he tries to play it cool and says, "Work! It's work! I have so much work, and you have so much work. We're both busy working and that's just the way it is. Back to work."

Alan doesn't move. He thinks awhile, then says, "I never thought of myself as a person who put work before friendship. But it seems I do."

Jerry looks up. He gently replies, "Friendships are like little gardens. We plan to tend to them but always seem to put them off until next week."

Pretty good writing for television, no?

Alan and Denny make up, too, at the end of the show, and leave their scotch on the balcony to go fishing, perhaps camping, who knows? They can do what they want. They can work on their friendship if they want. It is their choice. The two of them walk arm in arm in the streets of Boston in the middle of the night in their Coast Guard jackets and those silly plastic or rubber pants you wear when you're about to walk into a river to fish.

It is a great scene. The type of scene that makes us wistful for that sort of freedom.

That, only days following the Desperate closer. The Desperate epilogue takes place five years later, following the drama, and the wives are seen playing cards, Gabby (Eva Longoria, such a star) has gained a lot of weight and has two little plump daughters, maybe two and five. Susan (Teri Hatcher) is married to a hunk we've never seen before (I haven't). Lynette's children are older, more difficult. Bree is back with Orson. And Katherine is among them. She's one of them now.

We know that the writers will start next season with these themes, children who are out of control, sex, family tension and desperation. We also know, that they know, that we're glad these housewives have each other.

So there I am, under the sink, going over this stuff. I finish up the scrubbing and get to cleaning up the mess I've made emptying the fridge. I toss an almost empty Dannon yogurt (vanilla, if you must know) into the trash then fish it out. I've used the yogurt as a starter and made my own, surely more fattening and worse for you, but better.

Rather than throw out the container, I'm thinking that I should wash it out and use it for my yogurt. Then, when I see it in the fridge, I'll know it's yogurt, not mystery food.

Somehow (so me), while washing it out, that foil at the top slices my left index finger.

No panic, no pain, I move to the bathroom. The blood drips into the sink (you're reading popular media so you don't mind a little blood, right?) and with my good hand I get out the BandAids. It's getting a little difficult. The paper on the first BandAid sticks to the adhesive and the second BandAid gets wet. Things aren't going so well.

In my head I'm wondering, sheez, do I need a stitch? I begin to really regret this stupid idea, using a Dannon yogurt container when I have a houseful, no joke, a house full of Tupperware.

Then somehow, I remember Lillian.

It's her fault I made yogurt.

When I was in college as an undergrad, Lillian taught me two things. She taught me to make bread, and she taught me how to make yogurt. These are invaluable skills and may have exceeded in utility far beyond whatever I learned in the classroom.

We lived in a university student co-op (all women) and I was the R.A. She was one of the only really mature kid in the house, although I loved them all the same. Lillian, from a tiny farm town in Illinois taught me how to make bread the old fashioned way, no dough hook. I use one now and bet she does, too.

So here I am, thinking about Lillian probably for the first time in many, many years, wondering where she is, what she's up to, wondering if she's married, has children, maybe grandchildren. For all I know, she's no longer alive.

I let her go. I just let the friendship go after school let out. No idea where she is now. I think I remember her last name, but there must be a thousand women with that name (last name starts with an L, maybe you know her).

So I ask myself, and you probably do, too, How do we let this happen? Don't we know as much as the television producers when it comes to the importance of people?

You have to wonder.

therapydoc

Different Children

Get yourself a cup of coffee, maybe cut up some fruit. Then come back. Don't forget the napkin. And kids, remember. Your teachers can check online for that plagiarism thing.

We've talked about the trauma of childhood, how personality is shaped by things said and done.

Different children are shaped in some of the same ways. One child can come out of an abusive childhood forever needy and clingy, not having established basic trust in people, life, or himself, Don't Leave Me, Please, a song for a lifetime. No, make that a whine. This adult child wears his fear of abandonment like a badge.

Whereas another grows the proverbial chip on the shoulder; paranoia the flavor of anxiety. He's easy to anger and will attack first; a partner had best know that.

The acquisition of such personality traits is not a given by any means, or an either/or. Understand, there are many variants of children born to abusive circumstances, and many variants of abusive circumstances. But these two products of child abuse are often seen together as a couple, attracted to one another, repelled at the same time.

So we'll look at their dynamic, consider a male-male relationship, just to shake things up a bit. We could easily have chosen a heterosexual example.

Bad Boy, now in his late twenties, has suffered verbal and physical lashings from both parents and has internalized negative messages about himself. But he's not stupid. He knows that parents should never be mean to their children, even as they say, We do this for your own good. They are lying.

Some children, like him, have built in deception receptors; they sense that the people hurting them are not of stellar character. And they know that despite those reassurances that this is for their own good, that they will lose more than they gain in the process of "character development." Bad Boy still smarts from the words of such people.

Good Boy has suffered fewer personal attacks than Bad, but watched a good deal of parent on parent violence. He has also taken in his fair share of negative communication, insults, and abuse. His parents, locked into one another, wasted their personal best on their own conflictual relationship, while he identified with the victim, his mother, bleeding with her tears. He hurt when she hurt; he hurt past her being hurt. He was more vulnerable than she, only a boy, after all.

He's not stupid, either. He knows parents should be attentive, that they should be there for their children, should answer to their children's fears and emotional needs, and that his couldn't. He knows he's been cheated of a healthy childhood and he knows that his dependency, his insatiable needs from a lover, dominate his interaction in relationships. He can't help his need for feedback, his craving for love.

Love is Good Boy's drug. His lover is of a different psychic make-up, more prone to avoidance, more likely to abuse substances, enjoy rough relationships, and avoid closeness. This is unfortunate for both of them. One really can't help the other without some sort of intervention, some cognitive change.

Neither is whole, neither feels quite right. Bad Boy, the more aggressive young man, is less mature, lashes out under pressure to be emotionally intimate. (We think of intimacy as mature, but measured). Good Boy, in touch with his own desperation to be in-relation, shares all, intimate to a fault. He endangers himself.

So different! What are they doing together? The simmering one, his anger palpable, actually feels safe with one who wants him, needs him, adores him, and he has talked with him about his childhood. He's talked some, not a lot.

The one who craves intimacy isn't happy with the volatility of their relationship, but feels safe, ironically, with someone who seems so strong. Tough. Strong. Same thing?

The dynamic is captured, frozen early in their relationship.

Bad Boy knows that if anyone metes out punishment, it will be him. Good Boy is willing to risk that, knowing there's little he would do to endanger his lover's favor. He'll keep the conflict to a minimum, and the dynamic is just that, conflict at a minimum. The verbal sniping is uni-directional, from Bad Boy to Good Boy, never the other way around. To both of them it is relatively tame compared to what they had as children. But painful.

Bad won't work to please Good. He's not going to change, he says. This is me; I won't commit. I'm my own man. He has that edge, well-hewn over a lifetime.

The most important people in my world were never there for me. I don't need them, or you, or anyone else.

He thinks he has overcome his dependency needs and is annoyed at the dependency of his partner, although he needs him to be this way, dependent, to feel safe.

Such a conundrum.

Then it sometimes happens that Good Boy is let in, sometimes for quite awhile, and things get very affectionate. This is when being in-relation for Good Boy is wonderful, but most scary to Bad Boy. The intimacy tweaks at his primitive, unconscious, failed familial relations, which is where it gets dangerous.

Feeling violated by the intimacy, Bad has to stop the tweaking. He's entitled to his privacy; the rule is he gets to be secretive, gets his space. So he lashes out when violated in the name of intimacy, pushes Good Boy away.

Good: Where have you been?

Bad: You don't need to know. You have no right to know.

Good: Oh, sorry.

These games may be described as dances in the various self-help books at Borders. Go there and read them before they close all the book stores and you can't get an education for free off-line anymore. I personally prefer the feel of books to the glow of the screen.

But back to our story:

Bad Boy becomes mean and immature, aggressive and spiteful when Good wants more of him than he's comfortable giving. Bad Boy becomes abusive like the people who raised him. Transgenerational? No question.

Good Boy takes it. Ironically, he's perceived by his aggressive partner as smarter and more accomplished, and he is, but insecure.

Bad, even though he's less educated, less accomplished, even though he feels inadequate by comparison, is only safe because Good is this way, insecure. Bad Boy benefits by association, too, with an accomplished partner, and owns some of that accomplishment (in-relation).

And he stays on top by sniping when his partner is most vulnerable, when he says, Don't leave me, please.

It's a hot button. You don't own me, his refrain.

Some of us see relations more as opera than dance.

It is the needier, sadder partner who comes for therapy. Tougher, perhaps more wounded people, the bad ones, don't voluntarily risk exposure, the stuff of therapy. It's an art, of course, therapy, peeling back all those layers, and takes forever sometimes. Exacted carefully, it shouldn't hurt, but not everyone knows this.

So angry people like Bad Boy mostly come to therapy when they're court- ordered, or when Good Boy can take it no longer, forces the issue and leaves. And he's not likely to want to take that step, so in love.

It's the needier sadder partner, who comes to understand (in therapy) that his tough lover really needs his sweetness, his warmth and tenderness, but in small doses.

Affection can be overwhelming, a reminder of what a person didn't have as a child. And as a child, Bad learned, Don't get sad, get mad. He's a master at putting on the brakes when reminded of what he didn't have, when he begins to grieve, unconsciously. He reflexively pushes tears and all tenderness away.

His defense,

I don't have to tell you.

You have no right to know;

you don't own me

completes an emotional feedback loop. Only a strong person can say things like,

Because, that's why.

Good Boy could never talk back in this way, it's not nice. Good Boy's greatest mistake is that he misinterprets that resoluteness as strength, and he associates strength as potentially protective, as often happens in child abuse.

Nevertheless, he'd like a way into his lover's psyche. How do you gain entry to a gate that's been locked, double locked, triple locked, then locked again?

Couples therapists label the interactive dynamics for Good Boy, who comes to treatment. We'll do the psychoeducation, draw the feedback loops, assist in highlighting the childhood relationship systems of our patients. (It's what you pay us for.)

But when one partner is in therapy and the other is not, it is expecting too much to send the attendee home to teach, especially if the other is already on the defensive and doesn't want an education.

So we'll say to Good Boy,

When he's mean, tell him, 'I know what you're doing, and I just want you to know, you don't have to do this.'

Good can get even more specific and say,

'I know you need to push me away. It's okay. I just want you to know, I won't hurt you. I would never say those things to you, those things your momma/poppa said to you. You know that by now. Don't you?'

Changes in these relationships, these homeostatic feedback loops so deeply rooted in the psyche, can take years, literally, with therapy. That's why most individual therapists will say, Forget him. Change you. Become independent. Don't be so desperate. Find someone nicer. All good advice.

And so easy, right?

copyright 2008, therapydoc

EDITS: Things I took out of this essay for one reason or another, yet feel are still relevant.

In adult relationships we become the mothers, the fathers, the sisters, the brothers, the best friends and enemies of our significant others. For better or worse. Recognizing where they need to be better, how they feel worse, this is the essence of a couple diagnostic.

The types of loving parents you read about on the Mommy Blogs are as illusory as fairy tales in the minds of abused children.

In couples treatment, when we suggest to the healthier partner that he or she model positive parenting, it can be a huge stretch, very difficult to enact, and the audience is booing, scoffing.

It's always that trust thing.

In individual therapies the therapist can take on the role of the good parent. Or the bad parent, when therapy is stressful. Or when we take a vacation.