An Assortment of Links That Have Nothing to Do With One Another

In keeping with the promise to link to people who link my way, take a look at Saints & Spinners, who writes about books and song and what could be bad. I'm taking the liberty of handing you a ticket to her site.

Then there are people who recommend books, crazy I know, check out Reading is My SuperPower

And as long as we're talking about music, there's the Soul of Rock. Who knew so many types of rock could co-exist? I just didn't know.

Leah in Chicago/Accidentally Jewish will fill you in on some of the features of another cool Jewish custom (honestly, it was never my intention, when I started this blog to have so many Jewish spins on things, but you can take the Yid out of the shtetle (suburb, not), yet you can't take the shtetle out of the Yid.

For movies, you have to see Nehring's blog--it looks great, but looks aren't everything as you well know. Check him out.

And for those of you interested in nursing, check out Change of Shift.

Or of course, there's Emergiblog.com

Change has been kind enough to link over here, when really, the rule is nurses are a club and try to keep on topic. You know that for me, that's impossible. But what a blog that is.

Musings of a Highly Trained Monkey

Dr. Sanity is another academic who has fun on the net. Always a good read.

And anything about child abuse you can find a Wired for Noise (it's still happening, I don't understand it, oh, actually I do)

And Yehuda at Haveil Havalim does a great round up of J-blogs and includes my Intimate Opportunities post. He read way too much into it, as men tend to do.

The mommy blog of the week is Mommy Babble, what else would one expect, really. Can't blame the cell phones for this one.

Find Religion is a nice place if you're thinking out-there thoughts. We won't judge you, honest.

Then there's the Centre for Emotional Well-being, which is nice because it gives us that British spelling thing that makes us all feel very cosmopolitan, and all (plus Talia's very smart).

Then there are all the cat people. Check out Life From a Cat's Perspective for good cat pics. Then there's The Modulator, a virtual Friday's Ark on pets, cats included, of course. And CatSynth--about music and cats, what else. I can't wait to move on to fish.

On the Coach Team, there's Think Happy Thoughts. THT tells us to assume people are stupid, not mean. Gotta' love it. Even though "stupid" is a little harsh and surely isn't "happy", I like it better than Think Happy Thoughts. Rock on, Miguel.

There are also MONEY BLOGS on the net, and MsMoneyGirl linked over here. One thing you won't get here, I'm sorry to say, is money. I do avoid talking about it, let's say have for over a year now. But okay.

Whereas, FOOD I can always relate to and ATeam has recipes, so why not try something new?

And as long as we're talking about food, Cindy is a holistic wellness person and has recipes for stuff that HAS to be good for you. Although you're not getting an endorsement, frankly, from me if you think I'll prescribe herbs over what your doctor recommends. I've heard horror stories about St. John's Wort, for example. But Cindy's blog is cool.


She SAYS she's an oddball, but Pollywog's Pond isn't nearly as odd as she thinks.

The SKWIB is as odd as he thinks, and we do love him. He's Canadian, which might explain it. I have Canadian relatives and tho we hate to generalize, there's something about it. . .like being American is a trait, too, right?
Wired for Noise gives us a Carnival Against Child Abuse, good idea to be down on that and I like the blog.

Homespun Honolulu takes us to various cities, and face it, if you stay home too long you'll get grumpy so you may as well get out of your rut.

If you're into art, try Arts and Stuff. It takes me away.

And Travel Minx collects travel articles and some of the pictures her bloggers post are just great.

Tracee, at Blog Fabulous mentions an association between anger and backpain and links to my Angry, did you say, post. Gives new meaning to what my mother would call a pain in the neck.

UrbanWanderLust is the kind of blogger who really does the diary of wandering, which is probably healing.

And if you like a feminist point of view (like me) check out Femtique.

That's enough for now.

Thanks to all of you for linking over here,

therapydoc

Yad Vashem

were sent to slave labor.

Our tour guide told us that those who were sent to slave labor were allowed 200 calories a day.

The photograph above is in the Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem. I took it off their website. The album is the only surviving visual evidence of the process of mass murder at Auschwitz-Birkenau. It is a unique document and was donated to Yad Vashem by Lilly Jacob-Zelmanovic Meier.

When I was a teenager one of my cousins (a South Sider) came to stay with us for what was supposed to be a couple of months. It turned out to be over a year and great for me, because as you know I was the only girl in my family and had my own room and it got a little lonely. So she and I talked into the night that year and it was very nice on all kinds of levels.

My cousin suffered from migraines and when she did, she mostly slept. One day I asked her what she thought caused them and she said she didn't know, but they started the day she heard about the Holocaust. I was fourteen and I hadn't even read Night by Elie Wiesel, or heard any first hand Holocaust stories, which was ironic since my parents had at least a handful of survivor friends.

All four of my grandparents had come to America in the early thirties, escaping Hitler's reign of terror.

Or I wouldn't be here.

I always felt a little guilty for not pouring over the books about the Holocaust. I read NOTHING about it in my social studies primers in grade school the fifties and early sixties. And I'm still a little light in this department. But I go to the museums if I'm in a city with a memorial museum and suck up as much as I can.

L.A. is good, Washington's better. The one in Jerusalem is the best.

So I was in Israel a couple of weeks ago, and since Yad Vashem is considered the world’s largest repository of information on the Holocaust, of course I had to go. I had been there ten years ago, but new founders have reinvented it, turned into performance art, a collection of photos in motion, sculpture, visuals and sounds, a sophisticated vehicle that breathes life into the victims, the perpetrators, and the bystanders of that awful period in time.

I've had it in mind to go to there since my youngest son, a particularly sensitive young fellow said to me after I booked the flight to Israel, "You should definitely go to Yad Vashem, Mom. It's very cool."

I rely on my kids to direct me in life, especially to things that are cool. For example, Empath Daught tells me what to wear (sends me home with sweaters), the Stooge tells me what movies I'll be able to stomach.

If you haven't been to any of the Holocaust museums then you're missing out. These memorials are much more than store houses of historical facts, artifacts, newsreels, etc. Their entire raison d'etre is to put you face to face with so much truth that you have to be emotional.

If you suffer from depression and know you can't handle too much reality then forget about this particular reality field trip. I tell MANY of my patients not to read or watch the news. Stay in LaLaLand and don't go to the Holocaust museums. But you HAVE to tell others to go in your stead. It's your responsibility.

I went with FD, his mom, sister, and brother-in-law, a few days after my niece's wedding. You last met them in a post I wrote about how saying incantations can help you find lost objects (I AM a social scientist, I REALLY am). We sang show tunes at Borders that Saturday night. It was unforgetable.

Anyway, bro-in-law Michael immediately sized up that we needed a guide for this exhibition. We were lucky to get Devorah Gold, perfect. Her grandfather made sure that her father escaped the Nazi's. He sent him away. I think she said that her father met her mother and married her in a DP (displaced persons) camp.

Devorah delivered every powerful line of her script with careful precision. It was like psycho-surgery. Hypnosis. I felt right at home.

FD was upset by the way the museum worked emotions. The museum is set up to make you feel the experiences of those who perished, and those of the few who survived. My guy found it all too emotionally manipulative. After the tour he wandered off for about an hour to see the art and other exhibits. He totally tranced out, didn't even answer his phone. I was a little worried about him.

But I feel that this type of emotional upset is good for people. It connects us with reality and we have to know this reality. It's good to go through this. It's nothing, frankly, compared to the horror that that generation suffered.

It's a fact of life that the world is replete with horrific acts of mankind. Rape, torture, and murder are universal. Violence sells newspapers; it is the stuff of NPR. I have to wonder if there's something wrong with a society that is so captivated by horror. We're literally entertained by horror films and desensitized to violence.

Some of us even LIKE the Holocaust museums. Even though 6-10 million people died in that genocidal world war they remember.

And to this day there are people who deny that it ever happened. Not the war, the death.

We listen to fireworks on the 4th of July, barely connecting them to the rockets red blare, but at least it's an effort to connect to death and destruction. Annual memory pitches that honor Good Wars include Memorial Day and Veterans Day. We LIKE seeing photographs in newspapers and magazines of men (mostly men) in uniforms wearing medals; men who fought for freedom.

Yet, most of us manage to avoid the pictorial side of the Holocaust. The emaciated bodies of starved concentration camp survivors, the piles of dead in mass graves, the death marches to gas chambers, the empty eyes of children. .. just not attractive. A downer.

I have a well-heeled, wonderful friend who set up a social service agency for rape victims. She had problems getting funding. "I could get the money to stage a week's worth of performances of Madame (pronounced Ma-da-meh) Butterfly, but get funding for rape victims? Ha!"

So most folks don't volunteer to see photos of emaciated, dying people, or medical experiments that turn the stomach either.

But it is VERY cool going to museums in Israel these days, technologically speaking, seriously. Yad Vashem is virtually new, and at Masada, too, there's a new museum, complete with a "smart" audio tour. No longer do you have to hit a button on the remote control to hear narrative . The remote control knows where you are in the museum. You go into a room and you hear about what it is you're supposed to hear about what you're looking at, perhaps ancient coins or pottery inside the display case. It is very cool.

And at Yad VaShem, if you use a guide like Devorah Gold, you get a head set and hear her speaking loud and clear, explaining what it is that you're seeing, assuming you haven't drifted too far away from your group. The head-set audio tour is great for the predominantly aging populace that visits the museum.

Ten years ago, before the remodeling of Yad Vashem, I saw hundreds of pairs of shoes behind a vertical glass display case, the shoes of the victims of the Holocaust. Now the shoes are in a display under a floor covering of thick glass. We're encouraged to walk on the display, to walk on the shoes.

Go ahead, walk on it, walk on those shoes, says our guide. No one does.

I do. She's really saying,Walk in those shoes.

The museum is like that, very experiential. Do you want to know what the German soldiers were thinking? How could they kill every Jewish child under the age of 10, for example (a 1942 proclamation, Every Jewish Child Under the Age of Ten Must Die) .

Open the door to a wooden box on a wall and read a soldier's explanation to his family.

One officer, Karl Kretshmer says (I'm paraphrasing): It is a weakness not to be able to stand the sight of dead people. The way to overcome this weakness is to kill more often. You get used to it.

I'm told there's a movie we should see, The Wave, about a brilliant teacher who teaches children how to be murderers, willing executioners.

When the Germans invaded the Soviet Union, soldiers were ordered to shoot victims in the head at close range. To do this they were ordered to first drink 1.5 liters of vodka.

14,000 people were murdered at Babi Yar in two days.

It is a weakness. . .

The Pope didn't leave his palace. . .

Martin Niemoller, a German pastor wrote these famous lines:

They came for the Socialists, and I did not object because I was not a Socialist.

They came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not object because I wasn’t a Trade Unionist.

Then they came for the Jews, and I did not object because I was not a Jew.

Then they came for me, and there was no one left to object.

The only children who survived the Holocaust were those sent away by their parents. Some left on the KinderTrain (Google the Kindertransport Association). They left Poland, Austria, and Czechoslovakia on a train to Great Britain. Alone.

The "Righteous Among the Nations," risked immediate death if discovered harboring a Jewish person. But the Righteous (euphemism for Gentile) hid Jewish children in attics and closets. After liberation, some "lucky" children were reconnected with war-traumatized parents who came for them, whisked them away from their adoptive parents, the people who had loved and cared for them.

The enormity of such separation, so many separations, is inconceivable, even to those of us who think we understand separation.

Devorah Gold asked her father why he married her mother, how he chose her. He said, straight faced, "She was rich."

"Rich!" shouted Ms. Gold. "How could she have been rich? She was a survivor!"

"She had two sisters," he replied.

She had relatives. Anyone who survived the Holocaust with relatives was rich.

It gives us a little perspective, I think, when we begin to feel sorry for ourselves.

Lest we forget.

therapydoc

THIS is love?

I had an associate professor who didn't particularly like me. He taught Research 540 (I think that was the number, could be wrong) first semester, first year, first research course on the way to that Ph.D.

Most of the docs-to-be in my cohort bucked to become either full-time academics, grant writers, or social service agency directors. He knew I'd probably shirk all that, continue to do what I do best, maybe charge a few dollars more.

In the end, ironically, I did continue on to teach and do research, if not full time, and had an offer to direct a social service agency.

Anyway, the first day of class we tossed around dissertation ideas. The doc encouraged us to fantasize about things we wanted to study. I naively suggested Internet Addictions, explaining that I had been treating a woman who had an obsession with chat rooms. At that time what she did was called "hot chat." Her spouse didn't approve.

He chuckled at my expense (embarrassment).

"And how would you propose to get your data for that," he laughed. "How would you get a sample?"

Ha, ha, ha.

I crawled back into myself and didn't say much for the rest of the semester.

So imagine my not surprise reading Is This Man Cheating on His Wife? a Friday Weekend Journal feature by Alexandra Alter.

This man is Ric Hoogestraat and he spends 12-18 hours a day on-line in a virtual video world, Second Life. There he has a virtual wife and a virtual job. He goes to virtual parties and has virtual sex. He is strong, handsome, viral. He is Someone.

And his real time marriage is in pieces. His wife attends a support group for women who have lost their spouses to video games.

Some 30 million people are involved in these virtual worlds. Their avatars, computer generated cartoon likenesses of themselves, are living the good life in a "better" world.

Ms. Alter tells us that according to researchers at the University of Washington, the brain doesn't distinguish between virtual reality and reality. Processing stimulation from a computer screen (virtual reality) is the same as processing real sensory data. Byron Reeves, a professor of communication at Stanford University, says that the social dynamics of virtual relationships mirror real life. "People feel bad when something bad happens to their avatar."

Yes. This certainly explains our compulsion to run to the computer or check our Blackberries fifteen times a day. It explains why 30 million people create cartoon alter egos on-line and are willing to live vicariously through them, interacting socially with other cartoons. We feel badly for our on-line friends and creations, we feel good for them. They make us happy, they make us sad.

And the data seems to indicate that we can't tell the difference between our virtual lives (or those of our virtual creations) and our real lives.

Well let's try to think critically for a moment, please. I for one, can tell the difference, and think you can, too.

If I couldn't then I'd have to believe that 30 million people really, really are at risk, marriages are in the toilet, parents, siblings and friends are shut out, virtual relationships are ascendant, more real and important than the flesh and blood creatures who share our bathrooms.

For sure there are such things as Internet addictions. The Chinese take kids from their homes and put them in isolated treatment for this. Kids are skipping school to play on line. I've seen it in my practice.

Games aren't for children. And they're probably dysfunctional in a lot of adult relationships

But let's think. I'm going to object with the U of W findings, provisionally, and hypothesize that most adults who have lives on line do know the difference between virtual reality and reality, and propose alternatively that we choose, believe it or not, reality. We do choose Life.

Still I have to wonder, sometimes, where our loyalties really lie. Our friends wonder, too.

Like I've worried that my real friends are jealous of my Internet relationships. (They're not). Or if FD, perhaps, wonders if I'm carrying on with one of my readers in some gathering place in the sky.

Oh dear.

Were it not for the fact that the better sensory data isn't available on-line, he might have cause to worry. A computer screen is only marginally stimulating compared to other sensory input.

Sex therapists encourage sensate therapy for that reason. We believe that most sexual problems are curable by couple work that re-establishes connections between the body and the brain. It's recommended you enhance ALL of your senses if you're having difficulty with arousal.

As a therapist I recommend enhancing sensual stimulation for all kinds of disorders, not just sexual ones. What is aroma therapy all about, anyway? Or art therapy?

How do you do that? Try playing around with . . .

the sense of smell (rose petals, perfumes, Bvlgari if you're me),

the sense of taste (apples or apricots, chocolate, but it's your call),

the sense of touch (tell him/her for crying out loud, what feels good),

the sense of hearing (music or chirping birds on a window sill)

and the sense of sight (your choice, of course, perhaps take a look at a decent art history book or show someone your In Style, Vogue, or W).

Or dress up and go out and accomplish all five.

I'm sure that what people see on line, including virtual games can be really, really good, unbelievably entertaining, and for sure emotionally satisfying.

I don't play the games, but I'm sure they distract nicely from hum drum every day life. But you can't touch the people behind your screen. You can't smell your avatar's cologne (not yet).

So I don't think they're a threat to most of us sentient types.

I recently went to I-Tunes to download a song for a mix. I couldn't remember the name of the song and had no idea who did it, but it went something like this. . . far away for far too long. Must've been 200 songs with that lyric and I-Tunes gave up on me.

So I Googled the lyric and found a music video on YouTube with avatars, or perhaps they were only cartoons. It was fantastic. I'd never seen anything like it, visually (I live a sheltered life). Mickey Mouse and these romantic/beautiful cartoons all interacted in a virtual StarWars/Gilligans's Island music video and I said to myself, "THIS is what the kids are talking about. THIS is what's so appealing about the new graphics on the Internet. I get it."

Except I can't smell it. I can't taste it. I can't feel it. The music and visuals are nice, though. But like television, all they do is say, Gotcha'. Your computer snags only 2 of the 5 senses.

Another good dissertation for a young therapy-doc-to-be is how imagination IS the 6th sense. That would still net only make 3 out of 6 senses though for on-screen stimulation.

Our brains are SENSORY PROCESSORS. They are capable of processing ALL of the five senses. And it's true that what you don't use, you lose. And I think most of us want to use them. It's why we shop.

As good as you make him, you can't smell an avatar. You can't touch him.

And virtual friends? We can't stand in line with them at the movies, we can't kvetch about our portions at a restaurant, and we can't get an opinion on new shoes. Not really.

I'm loyal to you readers. I seriously get all warm and fuzzy and just love it when you comment, don't care what you say. I love the virtual relationship thing and surely you "read me." The definition of that expression may be grounded in our blogging culture.

But will blogging ever be better than dinner out with the girls? Come on.

I can look at pics on blogs, but the eyes will never look back. We're not sharing real tears (okay, sometimes we do, I take that back). But at the end of the day, how really satisfying is it?

And is there anything on the Internet more interesting, attractive, exciting or seductive than your guy's hands on your trapezius, deltoids, supraspinatus (shoulders), squeezing them just right, and saying, "How about you and me go to bed early and read until we fall asleep?"

That's love, Mr. Hoogestraat. Get out of Second Life. Go back to your wife and get a first.

respectfully,

therapydoc

The 4th Carnival of All Substances-Therefore, Choose. . .

WHAT? You come here for booze, meth and coke and I offer you cheese, figs, spices, grapes, almonds a pomegranate, olive oil (that's an ancient olive press, perhaps used 2008 years ago), carob seeds, baklava and a peach?

Maybe you can make a substance out of something. Frankly, they're better for you, taste better, will get you high if you consume in the right frame of mind (mainly if you're hungry), and have fewer calories, except for maybe the baklava and the cheese.

But when was the last time you had cheese like that, and when has anyone had baklava, seriously?

Those who burtz (yiddish, rhymes with tour, add the "tz", means complain) about sugar addictions haven't submitted anything so I can totally get away with all of this!

You've heard "Therefore choose life?" We say, Therefore, choose . . .

Okay here we go.

Erin, who beat an Oxycontin addiction tells us about differences in motivation (like why be dirty when you can be clean) over at What Winners Do.
Thanks, Erin.

Two Dogs Barking reminds us what a drag co-dependency can be. She tells us how it's pretty hard not to be angry when an S-O who had been using through-out the relationship finally gets sober, except she's already booted him and now he's with someone else. Two wanted to break dishes but got a grip (yay).

Fact is, it's pretty hard to express anger safely. The sixties are over, basically, but I'd like to get my hands on those styro-foam bats, if anyone still has them.

And Jimson Lee, over at Speed and Endurance informs us that real athletes know how alcohol messes with your body. His personal fave drink is Gatorade mixed with H20. I'll have to try that. (Isn't Gatorade loaded with caffeine?)

Another fitness buff, RT, tells us who to call if someone we love is using. Ghostbusters, it's not.

Meanwhile, the Registered Addiction Counselors at Bright Eye-Online Alcoholism and Addiction Counseling give you a nice rational, cognitive therapy approach to coping with cravings for drugs and alcohol (picture your S-O saying Bye, Bye, been nice to know ya'). They also present a cognitive tx spin on relapse prevention. This is EXACTLY the stuff I taught at Univ of Illinois. You'll love it (if you like this sort of thing).

Charles H Green, Trusted Advisor generally writes about business, but is kind enough to lend us a philosophical spin on recovery. Booze, drugs, money, there are parallels to finance, obviously. Charles has a really nice post about apologizing that probably is more connected to us, check that one out, too.

Addiction Recover Blog reminds us of 15 signs of trouble, as if we need to be reminded(we do, we do!).

Tracee Sioux at So Sioux Me, Complaint Free House kvetches about her kid's kvetching and then tells us that she thinks she's also addicted to complaining. She writes, Could complaining be considered a substance if the idea of giving it up as a coping mechanism makes me feel as if I'm in recovery? Sorry dear, you're reaching.

But Scott, equally off the track, presents the characters from Harry Potter as real people you meet on campus, in College and Finance, the first humor blog I've seen about money.

Let's finish up with a couple of late submissions that I haven't read but you probably should (or could, or would, far be it from me to tell you what to do):


You get the professional take on co-dependency, Nancy at Emotional Well-being tells you where that's at. I trust Nancy.

Andy at Money Walks (is this an addiction, spending? I suppose it is, fine). Has something to say about paying off those cards. Just do it, maybe, I had to shop so I didn't have time to read it, but you should.

John, at the Universe of Success is serious when he tells you how to stop drinking.

And finally, Bill, at the Universe of Success (would I lie) asks if we're all nuts.

Very nice. My daughter-in-law's mother once sent me a nut-cracker shaped like a squirrel. Not a small item, takes up a lot of room on the table, and it's grown on me. But I have to tell you, I don't take that kind of talk lightly, don't appreciate words like "nuts" or "crazy" to describe people who have the guts to talk about issues in therapy.

Just an FYO.

THE BAR IS CLOSED. YOU CAN ALL GO HOME NOW. PEACE AND LOVE AND HAVE A SOBER WEEKEND. That goes with slow down when you drive, you'll live longer.

therapydoc

Holding On and Letting Go

You're Wearing That is the title of a new book by Deborah Tannen.

National Public Radio's Susan Stamberg excerpts from the book and interviews the author. I excerpt from her excerpt below, but it's worth reading the whole post, and I'm sure it's worth reading the whole book (sight unseen I say this).

Most of us instinctively identify You're wearing that as a mother's communique to a daughter, and that's what the book is all about, mothers and daughter and how they talk to one another.

Quick and dirty:

You've heard it here before that when you talk to a significant other you should try on the idea that your S-O is important, as important, indeed more important than your boss, and you wouldn't speak to your boss harshly. You wouldn't second guess or psychologically undermine (out loud) your boss's choices. You wouldn't yell at your boss. You wouldn't hang up on your boss.

Parents assume that they have the right to do these things to children. Children, especially when they get older, assume that they've earned the right to do them to their parents.

Earn the right? There's a right to emotionally abuse a family member?

A little harsh, let's dial that down.

Of course if you don't correct your children then they might grow up feeling the world owes them a living and that they're always right, or conversely, that no one cares about them and they're nobodies. But there is a right and a wrong way to advise people, and probably Dr. Tannen discusses all of this in her book.

(Why is it I didn't get an advance copy of THAT one, by the way?)

Recently a patient told me that the state of being angry is now considered emotionally abusive, a real kick to therapies that encourage you to beat your pillows. I still like the beat your pillow concept. Who does it hurt, after all?

But for sure if you're in therapy or have ever been in therapy and the topic of anger has come up then you know that the expression of anger can be extremely abusive, even in low tones. It's exactly what we tell people in anger management.

You have potential to emotionally damage by being angry-- either at your spouse or at a child-- at anyone, if the way you express your anger as volatile and unpredictable, or if it's cruel, biting, mean.

I've told you this on my Because of You post that discusses Kelly Clarkson's song. She bemoans the domestic violence she experienced by watching her parents fight. I tell you that her anxiety, her fear is a response to trauma.

So no, you don't have the right to be angry, rather, you don't have the right to express it without sensitivity.

I titled this post Holding On and Letting Go because so much of what happens between parents and children is about control. We have such a need to hold on, take care of, protect our children, that letting them fly can be supremely difficult.

Sending them to kindergarten can be hard, how can we do weddings? The stress of letting go (and the energy it takes to hold on, double entendre intended) is a variable that surely drives the way moms and daughters talk to one another.

So when it comes to communication, walking on eggshells, even if it is uncomfortable and doesn't feel intimate is a good thing. The intimacy will come if we're careful about how we talk to one another. It's okay to have to watch what we say-- to think and rethink everything, to couch communication in the most sensitive, caring fashion.

When the kid is about to stick a finger into an electric socket or run into the street, THEN you can scream. But most of the time children aren't doing that. They're not sticking fingers into electric sockets. They're not running into the street. They're looking both ways.

I don't mean to minimize this subject in any way, trust me. I understand that if your child's shooting up that you'd better do something and it might be best to be strict, calculatedly rejecting, even mean. We can talk about that another time.

Meanwhile, here's a quick excerpt of the book, excerpted from the NPR website. Congratulations Ms. Stamberg and National Public Radio and thanks Dr. Tannen.

A woman in her sixties expressed this: “I always assumed that once my daughter became an adult, the problems would be over,” she said. “We’d be friends; we’d just enjoy each other. But you find yourself getting older, things start to hurt, and on top of that, there are all these complications with your daughter. It’s a big disappointment.”

Small Spark, Big Flare-up

Especially disappointing—and puzzling—is that hurt feelings and even arguments can be sparked by the smallest, seemingly insignificant remarks. Here’s an example that comes from a student in one of my classes named Kathryn Ann Harrison.

“Are you going to quarter those tomatoes?” Kathryn heard her mother’s voice as she was preparing a salad. Kathryn stiffened, and her pulse quickened. “Well, I was,” she answered. Her mother responded, “Oh, okay,” but the tone of her voice and the look on her face prompted Kathryn to ask, “Is that wrong?”

“No, no,” her mother replied. “It’s just that personally, I would slice them.”

Kathryn’s response was terse: “Fine.” But as she cut the tomatoes—in slices—she thought, Can’t I do anything without my mother letting me know she thinks I should do it some other way?

Gotta' love it.

copyright 2007, therapydoc

Feeding Them

They look like they can take care of themselves.

That's a pic at Newark. We're waiting for a flight to Ben Gurion Airport, Tel Aviv, Israel. We took a little vacation last week.

Number three son Duv, youngest daughter-in-law Cham, FD and I took off for a simcha (happy event). We still think of weddings as happy events.

Although Cham’s been part of the family for a long time, she and Duv are only married a couple of years. She’s slowly, perhaps quickly learning the family culture.

For example, the four of us had to get to the airport by 6:00 a.m.

Although I pride myself in running on time, when we were young FD and I literally ran down the tarmac to catch planes. In the late seventies a flight crew stopped a taxi-ing plane to Eilat (or maybe it was Sha'arm El Sheich) and rolled down the stairs so we could climb aboard.

I have to admit, it was pretty cool. And did I mention? We're nobodies. We're not dignitaries, not Clintons. Life was simpler back then. Oh, you're late? Not to worry, come on in.

The airlines don’t do that anymore and Cham and Duv are nervous types. She's from a family that makes the Girl Scouts look lame. It's the Girl Scouts,with that motto, Be Prepared, right? I think that three hours early for a flight's about average for Cham's fam.

I totally admire this, of course, as one who prefers to be early over late, if it has to be one or the other. Why does it always have to be one or the other?

Then there's FD who wrings every minute of its usefulness. Every second counts and he's in a hands-on profession. So being early can feel like a real waste of time. I've tried the cognitive therapy stuff on him (and me), but at the beginning, middle, or end of the day, someone always has to show him something. Or he has to listen to something, or talk to someone about someone about something.

What DID we do without cell phones?

Anyway, to be fair, FD really does his best to make sure that we aren't chasing down planes on tarmacs anymore.

So we took this vacation a couple of weeks ago and had it set up so that we'd meet the kids at the airport. We were relatively on time, made it by 6:20 a.m. and if it weren't for the budgers (those people who just HAVE to stick their suitcase on the scale ahead of yours, even though your boarding passes are ready and theirs aren't) we'd even have been early for our flight.

We all sighed the collective sigh of relief in our seats at the gate. On time for an international flight means your flight will take off 2 hours after you've checked in, assuming it really is on time.

Cham: Hey, Ma. Did you happen to bring anything to eat?

Me: Uh. . .

Duv: We're starved.

Me: I. . .uh. . .I didn't. . .

Duv: It's okay, don't worry about it.

Me: I'm so . so sorry. . . but. . .

I forgot. A failure as a mother. I forgot food. My mother would never have forgotten food.

Now if you recall, in one of my posts about visiting the kids in L.A. I packed such mouth-watering sandwiches that the lady in security almost confiscated them. She said, "You know, if you had made liver and onions I really would have confiscated them."

Who knew you could joke around with security? Ah, our care-free post 9-11 days, always funny.

For this trip I had it in my head that we'd eat on the plane since EL AL, the Israel trans-Atlantic airline, serves fairly edible kosher meals. They're standard; you don't have to order kosher.

But we were on American connecting to EL AL in Newark and American is American, meaning no meals no how.

I tried the, "Get yourself a latte kids, and a yogurt/apple," but that didn't work. I think they really wanted a sandwich.

No problem, they tell me. Worst case scenario they'll graze at Newark between flights.

So of course it's no big deal, and they really didn't care. They were hungry because they had just moved into their apartment and hadn't stocked the fridge, knowing we were leaving for vacation in a day or two.

They hadn't actually depended upon me bringing breakfast, being supremely independent in so many ways.

And they know they can raid my fridge any time.

But I have to admit. It was nice there for a moment, being back in the mom role, even if so characteristically disappointing for them at "crunch" time.

copyright 2007, therapydoc

More on the field of Infant Mental Health

I got a great comment, one that took issue with the way I took on the issue of infant mental health.

Jaylark has left a new comment on your post "The Field of Infant Mental Health":

I work in the field of infant mental health, and thought that I would provide a little more context about it. Speaking as a therapist, you wrote “Of course, we love infants, so bring them along, if you'd like.” Speaking as an infant mental health therapist, we're generally seeing the children together with their parents in play therapy, not working with the parents alone in talk therapy... although if it will be useful, we can do both, to be sure. For this reason, the level of reflection about the parents' own childhoods and parenting styles varies a lot from therapy to therapy. However, even with a parent present, play therapy is usually either child-centered or “parent-child relationship”-centered: the parent’s own parenting experiences receive attention to the extent that they appear within, help with or disrupt the parent-child relationship in the room.

Classic articles about this include Fraiberg, Adelson & Shapiro’s (1975) Ghosts in the Nursery and Lieberman, Padrón, VanHorn and Harris’ (2005) Angels in the Nursery.

There may also be confusion about he term “infant”, which in this context includes toddlers who can talk. There is now very compelling evidence that infant mental health (often defined as therapy provided to children ages 0-3, or even ages 0-5) is by far one of the most effective forms of therapy when necessary. For each $1 invested in infant mental health, estimates of effectiveness range from $4-$17 of subsequent savings in physical and mental health costs to society in later life. For more information about the value of investing in early intervention with children, the free resources at the following links may be helpful:
http://mi-aimh.msu.edu/Policy/InvestmentintheEarlyYears.pdf
http://www.rand.org/pubs/monographs/2005/RAND_MG341.pdf

I agree that infant mental health would be a lot less useful when, as you imply, the purpose of the therapy is to make money from parents experiencing normal parenting anxieties. All therapy is most effective when it addresses actual problems that cause actual heartache. It seems to me that when the goal is money, the same criticism could be leveled at any professional endeavor, whether psychological or educational or in business. On the other hand, I imagine that helping a parent to alleviate or address parenting-related anxiety could be phenomenally helpful to both parent and child, since children are always well-attuned to their parent’s moods even when they might not know what those moods mean.
Like most therapy, however, I believe that infant mental health is typically sought if a child has left the normal development track and is having problems.

At the hospital where I work, our therapies are all grant-funded, meaning that they are provided to families free of charge for periods ranging from just a few weekly sessions to 50 or 100 free sessions. Rather than seeing our work as a cash cow, we're trying to help address psychopathology when patterns of behavior are still least fixed and most flexible, and often among society's poorest and least-connected children. When they display problematic behaviors, we endeavor to get them back onto healthy developmental tracks before they begin having behavioral, attentional, social or learning problems in school that can contribute to lifelong social or emotional problems, as well as lifelong struggles with feelings of shame, alienation, rejection or failure.

Just another perspective.

Publish this comment.

So I published it and responded to his comment as follows:

Jay, I don't think I've ever intentionally implied that the purpose of therapy is to make money. As a matter of fact, I'm pretty sure that if a doc wants to make money, I've suggested real estate.

Your comment is so important, however, that I'm going to copy it and post the whole thing on a separate post.

Thanks for your valuable input. When I post on something like this I'm really fishing for input like yours.

And Jaylark wrote back the following:

Thanks for your response. I apologize if I misunderstood about the financial end of things. To share some of my own context, I'm an all-but-dissertation predoctoral intern. As such, I work unpaid and full-time with clients who typically cannot afford to pay. I think I pushed my own hot-button there, and I absolutely agree with you that real estate would have made more sense financially! Reading over my post, which is a little dry, if you approve I'd like to include a few more specific examples about infant mental health.

As with all therapy, of course different things are needed for different situations. When you wrote, “But the therapy's about you and the family you came from (or your spouse's), I'm 99% sure” , I have also found this to be mostly true of any therapy, whether infant, child, adult or family. However, when a little child has lost a parent and is talking daily about wanting to die in order to see them again, and maybe is fascinated with window ledges or knives (and maybe their little siblings), I think you’d agree that the therapy is necessarily about the child. Even two year olds grieve when they lose their parents, through their play if not in their words. When their words fail them, they can still fail to understand that the parent did not want to go, did not mean to leave without saying goodbye, still loves them from up in Heaven, and so forth. That’s where infant mental health can come in, hopefully with the input and active involvement of the caregiver.

At our hospital, see many children who have been abused, molested or have witnessed horrendous acts of inhumanity. To name a few examples, many of these children have repeatedly witnessed one parent being battered by the other, suffered physical or emotional abuse themselves, or seen a parent die or murdered in front of them. Many have effectively lost a parent due to custody battles, prison terms or deportation of the parent by INS/CIS, none of which are within the normal range of a child’s ability to understand... but all of which are becoming distressingly common childhood experiences in this 21st century. These are the issues that can drive adults to therapy: children, while arguably more resilient than adults, nevertheless remain much more primitive in their coping skills and defenses. And while I might wish that these were isolated cases, unfortunately there are often many more children on our waiting list than our staff of 15 or so is able to see, and many more whose parents never follow up on referrals to us after incidents of domestic, community or personal violence.

As any parent can attest, parenting is not an easy job for anyone, but it can be much more difficult for parents of children who have suffered traumatic events. Parents can find their children’s trauma symptoms baffling. As you likely know, in traumatized children we sometimes see overwhelming exaggerations of common problem behaviors like tantrums, nightmares, clinginess, being controlling, or attempts to harm self, siblings or other children. These symptoms are pleas for help every bit as much as they are misbehavior. While love and discipline are both important, if trauma symptoms are not understood in the context of the child’s emotional life and experiences, there is a risk that discipline will actually compound the trauma and its symptoms, rather than alleviate them. For examples of this, I would refer you to Bowlby’s On Knowing What You are Not Supposed to Know, and Feeling What You are not Supposed to Feel, and Slade’s Making Meaning and Making Believe: Their Role in the Clinical Process.

Another thought is that, for two year olds as for older children, play is a critical form of communication in which children not only have fun, but also attempt to process the issues that they encounter in real life. Their play is a window into their thoughts and feelings. In play therapy, we see play in session as an opportunity to strengthen experiences of mutual understanding, attunement and relatedness for both parent and child, creating experiences of happiness and relatedness that can sustain the child emotionally and in relationships for the rest of his or her life.

With a little less grandiosity and more pragmatism, infant mental health also includes assessing a child’s sensorimotor, cognitive and emotional development. This can help to identify signs of the disorders you mentioned, but may also alleviate any potentially unnecessary parental concerns, or help parents to shore up any areas of developmental weakness that might potentially be substantiated.

Some kids (and parents) don’t really know how to play, and infant mental health can help to teach this critical relational skill, as well.

I also agree that one of the most important things that infant mental health therapists do is to help parents to reflect upon how the parenting they learned when they were children themselves does or doesn’t respond to their own children's needs. Many parents are, of course, doing a wonderful job and are very responsive already. However, in many instances we provide services to families in which the parents' own parents were either neglectful, abusive, substance addicted or absent. For a parent who never experienced "good enough" parenting themselves, some time to reflect with a professional upon what they'd like to do, or not to do as parents in sessions with their children and the dilemmas of parenting present in the room can already be an invaluable gift for parent and for child, no matter what the therapy is called. Therapists can help parents to understand the meaning inherent in their children’s play, what it might imply about the child’s inner life as they try to make sense of their world... but highlighting, emphasizing and enhancing the relationship between parent and child is paramount.

We believe that this is most easily and most usefully accomplished with the child in the room.

This is all a very long-winded way of saying that what we do depends upon the children and the parents, which, of course, you know already. But I thought a few more concrete (if long-winded!) examples might help.

See why I love this job? Children on window sills. You bet they need therapy. I wrote back:

Sorry, I mistakenly thought that the field of INFANT MENTAL HEALTH was about INFANTS and thought . . .infants, as in. . .babies.

I stand corrected. Who knew? The Wall Street Journal article said nada about children.

Of course CHILDREN need therapy. Everyone needs therapy. Infants, apparently, too.

Thanks again, JayLark. Something tells me you're a super therapy doc, ESPECIALLY if you like to play and have some good toys. My bets are that you won't ever sell out to real estate, even when the market picks up.

We look forward to that book on the dissertation, btw. Good luck.

therapydoc