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You know, it’s all so fresh. I went to a conference last week, a really good one, and three-quarters into it realized my family had buried my father only two weeks past to the hour. I have no idea what happened in the third quarter of the presentation.

Later today somebody called me, left voicemail for me to call back. I totally thought it was about business, but all he wanted was to call, to see how I’m doing. That just threw me.

My dreams scare me.

I go through the usual words with people: It’s hard. I find myself crying at nothing. I have a headache. I’m cold. I have a stomach ache. (Somaticizing isn’t hard, but it is an art).

And it’s very different, not what I would have thought it would be.
You get a break and it comes back. You’re surprised every time.

Heck, I had four months to get used to the idea that my father was living on borrowed time, and we had some very intimate moments. Dying is very intimate if you share it, and it occurs to me that maybe some people have an extended dying just so they can be intimate.

Probably we can never be prepared, can never predict what it will be like, no matter the type of relationship we have had with a parent. If you take a hit, you shouldn’t be surprised, and if you don’t, it’s okay. The books on death and dying recommend that if possible, grieve as a family. Discuss your different trajectories, mark important days, discuss memories. Let the emotions roll. And spread it out, talk to all kinds of people if you feel like it.

Meanwhile, here I am at work as if nothing has happened and it really feels this way at the moment. Gotta’ love the brain.

A follow-up on eulogies:

I started out mine about my father admitting that before writing the eulogy I looked up the rules of eulogies in one of the rule books. There, in black and white and a little Hebrew, it said:

You can exaggerate. Not that much, but if there’s a question, you can. You can err on the side of the positive.

Now this is incredibly important information. I don’t know anyone who can’t stand to be idealized a little bit in life or death, do you?

A story:

A man was dying. He had lived a full life but was clearly, undoubtedly, beleaguered with not one personality disorder, but with features of several. He hoarded, he was narcissistic, he stole on occasion, and his jealousy was completely, totally irrational, bordered on psychotic at times.

His son, let’s call him Eugene, went to the funeral of a friend’s father. His friend spoke glowingly of the deceased, tearfully, and as Eugene listened, he panicked.

“I’m ____ed,” he moaned. “What in the world am I going to say about my father? My father was such a nothing compared to this guy. So selfish! And he’s not going to make it through the year! He could die any day now!”

Eugene went home and quickly wrote a eulogy emphasizing whatever good he could find in his father’s life. The focus was entirely on his father’s good qualities, and he made some of the bad sound comical, not dysfunctional.

When the time came, when his father died, Eugene stood up in front of the crowd at the chapel and delivered a wonderful eulogy, had people in tears of laughter and love, and everyone said what a wonderful man his father must have been.

Eugene didn’t know what to do, didn’t want to correct anyone who said, Your father sounds like he was such a wonderful man. You were so lucky to have had him; what a wonderful family it must have been to grow up in. So he would disclose just a little now and then.

“My father was difficult,” he might say. Or, “You couldn’t correct my father, if you did he would call you stupid.”

But this bothered him, made him feel guilty, besmirching the name of the dead, his father, the man who gave him life, for better or for worse. So he stopped it and let the positives of his dad’s life eclipse the negatives. He could talk about the truth with his wife and his mother, for they knew this man. They grieved who he hadn’t been, too, and their emotions were plenty rich. With others, however, he took one for the team.

He found that he was really angry and his anger wouldn’t quit. Unable to shake it, he went to therapy. Here he learned that this is normal, being angry at someone who didn’t treat you well, who could be irresponsible, difficult. Eventually he would be able to let it go, who his father really was, even forgive.

Perhaps it’s not much of a story. But let me tell you how some of us would work a therapy like this, thanks, in part, to what we know about mental illness.

For sure we’d aim for acceptance while working through the full range of grieving, the sadness, the anger, the guilt, the denial, the shame– the Kubler-Ross stages of grief. And some of us might even bring in other family members.

Family therapists will sketch out at an emotional family tree, inquire about the suicides, the mental illness, the infamous experiences in the extended family, reaching back in time. We want to know who left town and never came back, what became of the black sheep, what the norms are in the family about differentiation, and why. We inquire about how anger is expressed, and sadness, and who set these rules, and why. We want to know the meaning of success to those who are no longer living, and the meaning of failure.

To investigate, to get more of the story, patients are encouraged to interview living elderly relatives, to find photographs, letters. The job is to uncover, if possible, the good in the family, but also the mental or behavioral disorders, too, and the quirky, if not always so pleasant, personalities.

Based upon this, some of us will proffer a tentative individual diagnosis or three, defining, psychologically, members of the family who may have long since passed away, at least labeling the features. This may or may not make people feel better, but it is what it is and it’s something to consider, something important to talk about, something to grieve.

“Is it genetic?” patients ask about a particular diagnosis.

We’ll say yes, if we think so, or admit we don’t know. Maybe, maybe not, depending upon who is fertilizing whose egg. But it’s a good thing to know, isn’t it, that if an ancestor has features of a disorder, that descendants might have these features as well?

For whether or not things are genetic, everything behavioral can be learned and passed down. All of us struggle with our nature, and we fight how we’ve been nurtured, too. Both are likely to be transgenerational, even dysfunctional in some way.

I like to think that we can fight both, that much of personality can be shaped and confronted in a nice way, and that most mental illness can be treated. We may have to change how we define success and failure.

The kicker, the part that is most difficult for many patients to buy in this psycho-educational family therapy, is that it’s good to “out” our mentally ill, personality disordered, addicted relatives. Out them to the children, mainly, expose those who, dead or alive, have or had issues, or were perhaps differently-abled.

Certainly when it comes to mental illness, rather than attempt to erase a person from the family tree, own the mishigas, (rhymes with wish-ih-moss, Yiddish for craziness) and vaccinate the kids, empower them.

It’s so funny. When you tell your kids about the colorful people in the family, they get it right away. And no, they don’t want to be just like them. The research on self-fulfilling prophesies has always been a little light.

All that said, you don’t have to roast anyone at a funeral, not unless you know your crowd.

therapydoc

Go to Source

I’m up and it’s only 2:30 a.m., happen to catch a glimpse of myself in the mirror. In a shiva house the mirrors are covered, for the most part, for that first week of mourning following the passing of a first degree relative. There are all kinds of superstitious reasons, frankly I’m not interested in them. All I know is that one of the towels fell off the bathroom mirror and there I am, looking at me, and it isn’t pretty.

Has it aged me, losing my father? Or should we say, wizened me. Both right. It is a new experience, not at all like I thought it would be. It feels as if I’ve been hit in the back of the head with a baseball bat, still, over a week later, and that I’m in some kind of daze. It is surreal, detached.

We call it Bereavement, a V code, V62.82. Thankfully I have very few of the symptoms that distinguish bereavement from Major Depressive Episode. I haven’t got the guilt over what I didn’t do, no morbid preoccupation with death, no marked psychomotor retardation (although driving has been a little scary, haven’t quite got the coordination back). No hallucinations, although my dreams, really scary.

And sure, it’s hard to sleep, and it is very early in the morning. I throw on a heavy FBI sweatshirt, one that my youngest son bought on his senior trip to Washington, DC, take a tour downstairs to the kitchen. I haven’t been home in a few days, have stayed overnight with my mom. It is traditional to choose a site for visitation, so my brother and I, without ever discussing it, have been at her home for the week, receiving visitors.

It is the flip of being a therapist, ideally. Being a therapist is all listening, or 80% listening, 20% feedback. Being a mourner, in my tradition, is talking or sitting quietly, but the mourner is the initiator. You don’t impose your stuff on a mourner. Visitors come to sit with you for seven days, keep you company. It’s about consolation, paying condolences.

You talk about whatever you want to talk about, so if you don’t want to discuss your father you don’t have to. But this is your chance, so to speak, to honor his memory, to publicize his goodness, his life experience.

We learn about life from the obituaries, at a certain age, and the eulogies.

I’m sitting near the toy box, see toys on top, not inside, remember putting them there, picking them up from the living room. My daughter came in for the funeral of her grandfather with her almost toddler, and after she left I didn’t want to put it all away. I look at the toys and it feels as if her visit was years ago.

I make a stab at reading from a novel, American Wife, by Curtis Sittenfeld, a wonderful treatment of Laura and George Bush, but can’t concentrate. There are a few newspapers on the table, but the words don’t penetrate. Something about winter Olympics and bobsleds. And of course, Tiger Woods. I think, I should blog about Tiger. Then I think, I should blog about my father.

He buried my brother 40 years ago to the day of his death. Isn’t that amazing? Someone says to FD, Sometimes you get a glimpse of how things are actually run. It’s not all random.

Here are some of the things I said at the funeral:

My father was such a complicated man that I can’t tell you if he would want me to make you cry, or not. I think not, because he was such a social guy. He would be happy to see such a nice crowd.

He simply had this magnanimous warmth, he greeted everyone as if he’d been waiting all week for you to stop by. Always someone knocking at the front door window, the telephone always ringing. Almost always for my Dad.

Last Wednesday morning, we’re in the ER. He’s in terrible pain. They put a gown on him, hook him up to an IV, his clothes are in a plastic bag. He’s on oxygen.

“You never saw me like this,” he says to me, for the hundredth time since he’s been so ill. This has been his mantra for months, now, “You never saw me like this.”

Every day it surprises him, embarrasses him that he’s weak, short of breath, and he’s embarrassed about it. Like many men of his generation who did not experience the hunger of the concentration camps, being physically weak is unfathomable. It isn’t who we are, he would say, for he encouraged us to take good care of ourselves, always. You eat right, lots of garlic, you sleep right. Your body cooperates. He has to remind me; this isn’t him.

And I tell him that it’s okay. I know who he is.

A story: Kovel, Poland: the end of the Russio-Poland War, 1920. Bands of marauding Cossacks, White Russians; they’re raiding towns everywhere, especially the ones with Jews. They pillage and rape and kill babies with their bayonets, toss them into the air.

My grandfather is running an errand, probably buying something for the farm. My grandmother is in bed nursing my infant father. A gang of these animals bursts in on her. They see my grandmother, a beautiful woman, probably all of twenty, nursing. One says something, probably in Russian, to the others. They argue, banter back and forth. They stare at her, they look at my father, they look at one another. The toughest one says something. They shrug. And they leave.

My grandfather returns from the store, he hears what has happened, and he packs a few things, takes this little family to the forest at the outskirts of town for as long as it takes until the hooligans move on to another.

But you know, a small town family, they’re always waiting for another gang of Cossacks.

Probably in response to my grandmother’s fears, and being the oldest son, my father takes the protector role in life when he can, which is how I see him as a kid, watchful. Bigger than life, really. I’m a naturally fearful person, irrationally afraid of home invaders, as you know. But if he’s home, I’m not afraid.

There are too many stories, a blog is just a blog. Okay, just a little more.

Things not everyone knows:

He was charitable, he couldn’t say no, especially not if people asked him for something directly. A total softy, if you looked my father in the eye, respected him for who he was, he would give you the universe if he could find a way. And honestly, he believed he owned that, too, that the world was created for him.

Which is how we’re supposed to think.

He would teach that it’s what’s inside that counts, not what you have. It’s not acquiring things, it’s living that counts, living fully. This in the heart of of the suburbs, a very material world.

The world is not going to be the same, not for a lot of people, without my father.

therapydoc

Go to Source

I wanted to move on, to talk about failure, but then I get this comment on the last post. It’s about failure, but not exactly the failure I had in mind, and not being a failure, but fearing failure. You’re not exactly a representative sample, not if you read me, but still. What do you think?

The comment is in response to my hard stand about taking Viagra for anxiety that’s situational: a young woman expects a good sexual performance very early into a relationship, maybe even the first date. And a young man wants to rise to the occasion. PRESSURE.

Mr.P and Vitamin V said…

Doc,

1st of all, I’m a huge fan!!!

Let me represent Mr. P and Vitamin V for a moment..

I can tell you that very often by the 3rd date, if the man hasn’t made some sort of sexual “move”, the woman gets insecure and feels that something is wrong with her..And trust me, talking about how wonderful she is and saying that I like to take things a little slower does not work at all..

She wants something to happen!! Granted, I’m not complaining about that, but if something is going to happen, I like to insure that it actually happens..Without Viagra early in the dating process, my anxieties often take control and make things not work properly..

And oh my goodness, if it doesn’t work, she either feels that she’s not attractive OR she thinks something is wrong with me…It’s not necessarily about her achieving an orgasm, it’s more about showing her that I like her and I’m attracted to her. It doesn’t have to be spectacular the 1st, 2nd or 3rd time, etc..It just has to happen…As things progress and I feel more comfortable, I don’t need the V..

And your description of the healthy relationship is what I would love to achieve..I guess what I’m trying to say is that early in a relationship, words don’t seem to have as much of an impact..They’re not believed as much as they should be…Later on, words mean more..And one more thing, Doc!! I don’t see 2 women for every man out there.

February 11, 2010 10:59 AM

Go to Source

When things come in threes, I write about them. I think, this can’t be an isolated issue, maybe it isn’t random, not if it’s coming in threes.

A guy tells me that he has found a solution to dating anxiety. I’m interested in the solution, I really am. But first, of course, want to know

Why should a guy have dating anxiety?

After all, there are two single women for every single man, probably three. A man can have six eyes and he’ll still be a hot property in certain circles.

Hold constant (control for) any predisposition toward anxiety, anxiety disorders in the past, anxiety disorders in the family, post-traumatic stress disorder, child abuse, obsessive-compulsive disorder; hold all that in abeyance, and there’s still a likelihood, or so I’m hearing, that dating is scary as hell.

I don’t mean to be glib. I understand why people are anxious about dating. It’s the rejection that’s terrifying. Rejection hurts, and the chances of being rejected after a first date are rather high, actually. This we understand.

What’s confusing is not the anxiety, but what men are doing now to resolve it. To resolve dating anxiety, men are taking Viagra. Young guys. We’re not talking just the Medicare set.

Apparently they’re sure that women expect a really good performance in bed. Nobody’s watching Oprah or Dr. Phil, or Dr. Laura or Dr. Ruth, not as much as we once thought. If they did they would know that a good sexual relationship does not depend upon a good performance by anyone.

On television, thankfully, and even in most of the books in the self-help section at the book store, we learn that a woman is supposed to be responsible for her own sexual satisfaction. If she’s interested in this, sexual satisfaction, and she should be, since this is great marital glue (don’t get me started, I don’t know if it works as glue if you’re not married)

(a) she should try to connect with her partner while she’s alert, not about to fall asleep,

(b) both of them should focus on their sensuality, wake up the brain, stimulate all five senses,

(c) she, especially she, since he’s had his sexuality in his hand since he learned how to urinate, but she should get to know her body, understand what makes her happy (I know, I know this is an unpopular suggestion, especially for some people who have religious concerns, one day we’ll give it more time) and

(d) if she wants him to feel he’s doing something, then she has to tell him what to do to pleasure her.

True story. Guy calls me for marital sex therapy. He says,

“She’s too small. Maybe we need a pelvic floor therapist, or maybe you. The doctor thinks we probably need a sex therapist like you, but I think a pelvic floor therapist.”

I haven’t a clue what this is, a pelvic floor therapist, am hoping this is a sex therapist. This young man has called me many times before, but we’ve never met. He’s never satisfied with my telephone assessment of the situation, yet I still hear from him every six months or so, feel we’re old friends. (He could be a she, or maybe an avatar, we’re not outing anyone here).

I reply,

“There’s no too big or too small. You need a relationship therapist, one who understands sex therapy, or a sex therapist who understands relationships.”

“No, she’s too small.”

End of conversation. No too big, no too small. At least one of us is clear on this.

That had to be said, that there’s no too big, no too small. A couple has to manage with what they have and can, should, try to enjoy the process, try to figure it out. Somehow.

So if size doesn’t matter, then what does?
You guessed it:
(1) communication,
(2) discussion of mechanics and myths about sex,
(3) practice at home, and
(4) resolution of emotional interference.

Why would anyone think that you can have all that, and what you don’t have can be resolved, all on a first date? Surely it takes a long time to get any one of the four right, let alone all four. Most couples who come to a sex therapist have been working at it a long time and have given up. They’ve already spent a few years getting to know one another, getting to know one another’s likes and dislikes, exploring and talking day after day, year after year, and even then, it just isn’t working. They know there’s baggage, too, that is in the way, even secondary trauma. We’ll never get it right! There’s something really, really wrong here!

This isn’t second nature, really, a sexual relationship, or any other kind of relationship, to tell the truth. But we’d best focus.

Sexual behavior as a couple is learned, and it is learned in process, from one another, since there are two of you. And you both have baggage, attitudes, histories. It can years to learn to communicate in certain areas, about certain things, without fear, embarrassment, or anxiety, for some of us. And people get so angry at one another! When we communicate anger, intimidation, power, or dominance it can be a huge turn off (I know, I know, the exceptions).

And there are many of us who are depressed, and nothing kills libido like depression, nothing; and past traumas, too, like incest, or other sexual abuse, abortions, not sexy. Really not.

Then there are the mechanics of sex, the how-to’s, and these are, perhaps should be, trial and error, too, and there’s a lot of room for error, so it can take years, without direct communication, without straight talk, honesty, to develop a mutually satisfying sexual relationship. The joy is in the process, really.

Then there’s that whole trust thing. Sex and trust go together. How are you supposed to have that on a first date? A second date? Surely you fool yourself, you say, Oh, this person’s had that vasectomy, and then, surprise, he was kidding. Or she says, You’re the only one, and she’s checking her phone. You get hurt and your trust issues get worse, not better.

This is why people like me don’t even feel it should be happening without commitment, sex. Crazy, I know, and so unpopular, so unreasonable, that this is likely not going to catch on. But it’s too important, sex, too integral to what makes a healthy couple healthy, content, establishing a good relationship while naked. The reality of sex is that it exposes us. Who wouldn’t be terrified, seriously?

Let’s draw a parallel to aggression to explain this phenomena, the pressure to satisfy the girl, the pressure to have sex in general, no matter the status of your relationship.

It’s compelling that the Saw movies are in their seventh year. Every year there is another one of these very, very violent, horrible, graphic movies. People go to them, we think, to master their fear of violence. If you see the film often, or you see a new one every year, eventually it doesn’t upset you, the thought of cutting off your own leg, and well, you’re tough. You’re strong. You’ve desensitized to your fear.

Some of us would disagree, however, that this is what makes a person strong. If this is what makes a person tough, seeing violence and not feeling anything, not being affected, then that person’s definition of strong is perverted.

The corollary is sex. We can regard this fascination with sex, this insistence upon it, because it is supposed to be a loving act, the flip side of violence. And we can see the obsession with it in the same way. Have it often, have many partners, do it perfectly, and at some point you will be immune to the anxiety, the embarrassment of taking off your clothes, of someone seeing you for who you really are.

That’s pretty sad, isn’t it? In a good relationship, one that is trusting, loving, caring, and kind– taking off your clothes might still be embarrassing, but it’s a good kind of embarrassing, a shy kind of embarrassing, even, an intimate one.

You might say, for example, “I’ve gained five pounds this winter,” and your spouse will say, “Don’t ever lose them! I love them! I love these pounds!” For he knows that you are responsible for your own weight, too, and he doesn’t want to work your program, he just wants to make love. And he loves you.

And in a good relationship, one that is committed, you are staying the night, so staying the night isn’t even a question, it happens all the time, it’s not a big deal. So theoretically, if you have that, commitment, you can roll over when you’re both a little tired of sex play, and say, Goodnight, even if everyone’s not completely satisfied, and it’s okay.

But not anymore. Oh, no. Committed or not committed,

NO! YOU (I) MUST BE SATISFIED OR FORGET IT! WE CAN’T POSSIBLY CONSIDER GOING TO SLEEP YET!

Where are people learning this?

This dysfunctional pressure to reach orgasm is perhaps a reaction to what could have been the rule, perhaps even as recently as forty years ago, a covert rule that men didn’t need to concern themselves with female satisfaction. Nice girls didn’t like sex. So slam-bam, thank you ma’am, theoretically ruled. But perhaps that whole thing was a myth, that men who loved their women ever even did the slam-bam, thank you ma’am thing. Yet the reaction formation for sure is alive and well.

Now, men have to perform, their needs are important, but hers are, too, and she’s demanding a performance, or so some of the guys feel. The guys are thinking they have to be studs again. THEY have the secrets to female satisfaction, and if they don’t, well, no second date. So of course they’re anxious, because in their minds, and apparently in hers, too, what makes it great, sex, is that erection.

Zachen v’aitzen Columbus. (Yiddish for, What in the world is wrong with this picture? Don’t ask me for a direct translation. Find my mother, ask her.)

This is fantastic news for the makers of Viagra and Cialis. Forget that only one woman in five has orgasm during intercourse, anyway, with or without these drugs. Forget that without an intimate understanding of a partner’s arousal, physiology, and how much he or she had to eat, meaning how extended, distended, in other ways one might be, that there’s no way one partner can help the other achieve orgasm. Forget that foreplay should take a half an hour, intercourse maybe five minutes, maybe ten, or it’s going to hurt, certainly will irritate her. None of this matters. It’s all about Mr. P.

It shouldn’t baffle us that the importance of sex has taken on such magnitude that a man will take a medication that could be dangerous, just to be sure to please a date. This is horrible and is indicative of a related issue, that we have grown accustomed to instant relationship gratification (hand me my phone, please, I need to read my email NOW). She wants it now. Or so he think. Why waste time?

Nobody’s taking the time to nurture the relationship.

And the joke is that people think they can nurture their erection, their arousal, without it.

therapydoc

Go to Source

I throw my backpack into the backseat, announce to FD:

I’m doing something radical. I’m just leaving my phone in the back of the car.

He goes into a rant:

You, on a bad day, checking email while driving, texting, answering calls, making calls, talking on the phone. . . you’re still a better driver than most people. I think it’s about skill, attention, coordination, . . .blah, blah, blah.

And that is so about denial, I tell him.

It is radical, and delicious, I learn, driving without the extra stress, without having to attend to one more thing. You find yourself changing channels on the radio, figuring out how to do this without ever taking your eyes off the road.

And would you believe? As I’m thinking about this, about how scary it is, knowing that the guy in back of me, the woman in the car in front, is tempted to distract, that song comes on, Your Song. Rod Stewart is singing it, not Elton John, and it’s even better, something else FD would disagree with me about.

How wonderful life is, while you’re in the world.

They all have people, probably, most of them, that they value, that they don’t want to lose, who don’t want to lose them for the sake of a lousy text.

Makes you kind of wonder, doesn’t it, what we’re doing?

therapydoc

Go to Source

I see a lot of really good people. You could say that most of the people in my practice– no, make that all of them– are just great people. Not that some don’t have personality problems, or disorders that make them difficult to like, necessarily, or to be around, but if you get to know people, basically, they’re pretty lovable.

So it baffles, me, low self-esteem, even though it shouldn’t. A therapist like me will be working with a perfectly wonderful person, an individual that most people like, indeed rely upon, the go to guy, girl, and this person doesn’t feel he or she measures up. The person I see as kind, good, caring, unprejudiced, compares himself with other people and thinks, I’m so not as good.

I, personally, want to blame society, more-so than the family, the values of the greater culture, the world out there, television, advertising, the movies, movie stars, professional athletes. How can we compete, seriously, with the wealthy, the talented, the beautiful? Most of us equivocate about buying a new purse, new socks.

When I say most, I mean most.

So society knocks us down several notches. And then there are parents. It’s not cool to pick on parents anymore (so much else enters into the equation), but parenting matters when it comes to building self-esteem. Kids are vulnerable, look to parents as large people, giants, really, whose judgment means every thing. I told my son recently that I know that I still hope, want, approval from my parents, and feel that’s a good thing. It isn’t a primary motivation for my behavior, but it’s in there, deep inside. And they weren’t bad, to tell you the truth. They esteemed me plenty.

Not all of us are great at self-esteem building, even when we think we’re doing a great job. It’s a humbling job. In fact, we can be perfectly clueless when we have values. We really want our kids to learn these things, so we try hard to get our message across, and often it is and it is rejected. But sometimes we’re trying to inculcate a value that doesn’t need inculcating. Take humility. There’s a value that needs to be reconsidered.

Humility, I’ve humbly suggested on this blog before, can work against kids, not for them. It’s a good thing to understand that in the grand scheme of things, we’re very little, that it’s not about us. Our contributions are few, and our lives are short. We spend most of our lives becoming, changing, maturing, changing some more, and when we’re old enough to really understand the errors of our ways, it’s too late. When we get old and sick we lose the power to do anything about it, can no longer start all over again.

So we should be humble, really, because face it, we’re so limited.

But a person has to believe in himself. You have to believe in yourself, if you intend to ever accomplish anything. You can’t say, Why bother trying? Because if you don’t bother you’ll never know who you are. You’ll never recognize your own skills, your own value. What’s the worst thing that can happen? You fail. Aw. Get over it, get over yourself when that happens, no big deal. Brush it off, try something else. Life is long, or it might be.

It can feel huge, failure. Slows us down, is what it does, smashes the ego, forget about deflating the ego, these aren’t balloons. Unfortunately, not knowing that potential is immeasurable, failure slows most of us down, sometimes to a crawl, not a good crawl. So it has to be good to brush ourselves off, pick ourselves up, not look back. Learn from it and move on as fast as we can. Let’s not dwell here in our failure. The company is depressing.

Ball players know this. A professional football player can play ball with a dislocated shoulder. Not that that’s a good thing, but that these men do this is significant, illuminating, really. The human spirit dominates pain, can forget, can get over anything. (For $50,000 a game, I might consider this too, come to think of it.)

Probably the only good thing about humility, actually, and this is a very good thing, is that it tempers conceit. No one finds conceit attractive, indeed it’s pretty repulsive, a big ego, which is probably the reason some fiercely believe in beating a kid into humility. Not to argue with religious teaching, discuss this with your clergy-person, please, but you don’t want to miss the lesson that most of us will fall somewhere between narcissism and being a nobody. (Jewish joke, remind me to tell you one day).

Thus a little humility is a good thing, but beat the “I” out of a kid only if you want that kid to forever compare himself and come up short. Any beating will do, to facilitate low self-esteem. Just name your abuse of the day– emotional, verbal, physical, financial, sexual– they’ll all do the job.

The most clever method, of course, often innocent, too, is denying praise. Deny it. Deny this thing called praise. It is in your power, as a parent, to do so. You don’t want your kid to grow up with a “big head”, right?*

Never say, Great job. For sure don’t say, Brilliant! And those little pictures they make in nursery school? Be sure to say, oh, don’t worry, one day you’ll be better at this.

If your kid is upset about a ‘B’ be upset, too. Tell him he should have made an ‘A’. What an idiot, seriously, for getting a ‘B’. He could have done, should do better.

Parents who buy into this method of child rearing tell me that it gives the kid a bar, a standard to strive for, “You’ll do better next time, you’ll try harder, study more, workout more, practice more.” Not all of them will, however, do better, I mean. Sometimes you want to go with what you got and see it as good, doing your best with what you’ve got.

Thankfully, most kids are resilient. They know they’re strengths, and they resent, rightfully, a parent who withholds praise. It feels good, praise, doesn’t it? Who doesn’t love praise?

Let’s not forget, too, that peers at school can be harsh, and siblings merciless. I’m preaching to the choir, you all know this, when I talk about parenting. Anyone interested in being a good parent should be able to do a pretty good job; there are parenting classes at community centers, zillions of websites and blogs to read. If you let your kids carp on one another, beat on one another verbally, physically, sexually, the siblings will do damage. Nothing like brothers and sisters to humble a person.

So what have we got here? And do football players have low self-esteem?

I don’t know. But let’s review:

(a) there’s that comparison thing, looking around and seeing how small we are, how incredibly powerless, and how inferior to others in, well, so, so many things

(b) and there’s the social war our egos have to battle, growing up with people who beat on us, remind us how inferior we are (even if we’re not), how fat, how dumb. And remember, we’re supposed to take failure on the chin, especially as adults, for failure makes us feel like losers. Failure in adulthood can hurt us even more if our parents and siblings have already fertilized the field,

and finally,

(c) the praise-deficiency model, which suggests that we need praise, and without it some of us will never be quite sure of ourselves, won’t ever have a solid, I’m good enough feeling. Not that that’s always good, feeling good enough. It suits some of us well to feel we could always be better, try harder.

But you don’t want to be feeling bad, inferior, not all the time, not to the degree of pining and moping, depression. You just don’t. And praise is the antidote for this. It’s like water. A little every day, some form or another, and a person thrives.

Apparently there’s a movie, can’t remember the name, about enlightenment. (oh, someone just told me it’s the Celestine Prophesy by James Redfield). It’s sci-fi and the idea is that some people in society are enlightened, they get it, and others don’t, and those who do try to keep it to themselves. Apparently enlightenment is understanding that the only thing that really matters is kindness, being a good person, meeting people in a way that communicates acceptance and understanding.

I might be wrong about the message of the movie, because I didn’t see it, but that’s what I got out of my friend’s description. What it means to me is that enlightenment and self-esteem may actually be discrete variables. People who have all those qualities surely don’t feel enlightened, not if their self-esteem is low. Which means that one has nothing to do with the other, not necessarily.

Okay, so you already knew that. But I thought it was interesting.

therapydoc

*I am being facetious, here, tongue in cheek. Do not withhold praise thinking it a good parenting strategy, and do not abuse children, either.

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Just one of my favorite social-political action initiatives, Men Can Stop Rape.

I’m an urban girl, so when the word wheelbarrow pops up twice in a week, it has to be discussed.

I have fond memories of a sturdy wheelbarrow in my father’s backyard, me tossing dandelions into it. He was the consummate suburban farmer in his day, my father, second only to his own, my grandfather. Huge zucchinis. Real sunflowers. The gene passed me by, however hard I tried to grow things, although I did manage to sprout a few avocado trees in college.

Still. You don’t want me to water your plants while you’re away.

But back to wheelbarrows. The other day they were filled with bodies in Haiti, today we fill them with women who have been raped. It’s an obsession with me, right? The sexual assault thing is an obsession, gets me riled up, and the very idea of marital rape sends me into Let me at ‘em mode. Militant, angry, feminist. Whatever you want to call the outrage that describes mine when I hear about rape.

Anyway, today I’m reading from a women’s anthology, Transforming a Rape Culture (some of you wanted to know what I’m reading lately). This is the 2005 edition and it opens with a reprint, an essay by famed feminist Andrea Dworkin. She speaks to 500 male attendees at the regional conference of the National Organization for Changing Men, 1983, St. Paul, Minnesota.

How would you begin such an address? Five hundred men! Here’s how Ms. Dworkin begins:

What I would like to do is scream; and in that scream I would have the screams of the raped, and the sobs of the battered; and even worse, in the center of that scream I would have the deafening sound of women’s silence, that silence into which we are born because we are women and in which most of us die.

Every 3 min, a woman is raped; every 18 seconds, a woman is beaten, she tells them.

Could this still be true, 27 years later?

What would you say if I said, Yes.

Actually I don’t know. I was hoping one of you could tell me.

She beats on them, of course, the men who have come to learn to be better men. She tells them she doesn’t care much for their guilt, for their sadness at the way things are, sorrow for seemingly unstoppable male aggression towards women. She cares not at all for their feelings or determination to change themselves as people, or partners, friends. She wants action, some kind of political action that will inspire a truce, a 24 hour truce. No rape, not anywhere in the world, for 24 hours. That kind of truce.

I’m quite sure we’re still waiting for it.

Ms. Dworkin continues to say,

Do you remember pictures that you’ve seen of European cities during the plague, when there were wheelbarrows that would go along and people would just pick up corpses and throw them in? Well, that is what it is like knowing about rape. Piles and piles and piles of bodies that have whole lives and human names and human faces.”

Most men received the address with love, she remarks. One threatened her physically, but her female body guard stopped him.

Anyway, it’s time we promoted male responsibility here on the blog. And it’s time you knew that men, actually, do get involved. They do more than rape. Most probably don’t rape, is the truth.

The National Organization for Changing Men has morphed into NOMAS, the National Organization for Men Against Sexism.

They’re still standing. And then there’s Men Can Stop Rape, a truly fabulous worthy cause. I have one of their posters up in my office, the one you see above.

Also check out Men Against Sexual Violence.

You would think, seriously, that rape is no longer a spectator sport, with all this attention. But wouldn’t you know? It still is. Boys still think it’s cool to brag about their conquests, and they grow up into men who do the same, and sometimes one or two of them will hold a woman down while five to ten more rape her. This still happens.

Why? Because if a guy is invited to rape a woman and he says no, he is obviously a wimp. Or maybe he’s gay. That’s the thinking. Men afraid of other men.

I wish I were making this up. Twenty-four hours. Just 24 and we’ll all be free, according to the late Andrea Dworkin.

therapydoc

P.S. Andrea Dworkin only lived to 58. She wrote 10 books on radical feminist theory. Her website is a must-see.

Quote from the home page:

“Every century, there are a handful of writers who help the human race to evolve. Andrea is one of them.”
Gloria Steinham

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Today:

FD says to me, “Maybe I’ll go to Haiti. They need doctors there. Some of the guys at the hospital are talking about it.”

I nod. I want to make a joke, “What would you eat?”*
But I don’t.

The New York Times delivers meta-messages, news about news, The World News Media Enters Port-Au-Prince and on the radio, from Port-Au-Prince, Carry Kahn reports:

Buildings of cement and steel are still standing, masses on the move, huge buildings fall over on cars, on other buildings, people sleep on the streets, frantic rescue efforts to dig people out of buildings. Screams, cries, Help me. Help me. Pillows, cushions, make-shift beds, and then an aftershock, another jolt, more chaos as if this weren’t enough.

Oy vey.

Yesterday:

I drop off FD at work, head over to Jewel for groceries, flick on the radio. That intro to Viva La Vida, I Used to Rule the World by ColdPlay wakes me up, makes me happy. This is refreshing, for all morning long I’ve listened while making lunches, straightening up, getting dressed, the numbers are impossible, they make 9-11 a minor-league player, nature is the real terrorist and there’s nothing, no scanner that can stop her. Thousands upon thousands.

A home now a hovel, children stand on rooftops, the ones that remain, looking around, dazed, people push wheel-barrels full of other people, the smells of death, dust is everywhere, destruction, rubble, all that and more. This is the largest earthquake to hit Haiti in 200 years, a 7.2 on the Richter.

The Richter is a logarithmic scale, FD tells me in the car, and my almost 21 year old physics major son reiterates this as we bring in the groceries.

A text: Am in the car. Can u help w/ groceries?

There really is something to having one of these at home.

The night before:

One of my doctoral students works in Haiti, on hiatus in New York for her doctorate. She calls me as I walk in the door but I don’t recognize the caller ID and she is babbling incoherently. Must slow her down. “Who is this again?”

Ah.

“Did you hear?” she cries, breathlessly. “Everyone I work with! The entire agency!” (This is a social service agency.) “No one has heard from them. I won’t be able to concentrate in class if I make it to class at all.” Class is online. We’ll pray, I tell her.
We understand.

They’re sorting through the rubble. I lecture for almost 2 hours about research questions and hypotheses, finding meaning in inquiry, being clear about change, how to measure it.

Now:

Reality check. Viva la vida means Long live life. For the first time, on my way to the store, I catch some of the words of the song!

I used to rule the world
Seas would rise when I gave the word
Now in the morning I sleep alone
Sweep the streets I used to own

I used to roll the dice
Feel the fear in my enemies’ eyes
Listen as the crowd would sing
Now the old king is dead, long live the king

One minute I held the key
Next the walls are closed on me
And I discovered that my castles stand
Upon pillars of salt and pillars of sand

It’s a pretty sad song, self-deprecating if not abnegating, spouts the wisdom of having lived beyond I live for me, why wouldn’t I, the cocky confidence of youth and omnipotence, having the world by the tail. Ruling rocks, for sure, like a rock star.

So what, go the lyrics, I’m a rock star. Pink is one of these people, in your face. But you don’t have to be a rock star is the truth, to have that omnipotence, a high that some people, certainly not all of us feel as adolescents, the young, the strong. It’s a feeling that is punctuated with acting out and careless, risk-taking behavior, cuz hell, you rule.

Depletion precipitates a low, the very normal depressive drop of serotonin, so much bopping around. Until it is gone. You think you rule the world, and then you don’t, nothing to do with earthquakes.

Quick story, a composite of many, with a happy ending:

Guy in his forties, probably, by now.

Had strength, good looks, intelligence and good luck as a younger man. More than a little wild in his youth, took nothing from no one, no criticism, no orders. Didn’t care about school, drank and partied a lot, women came easy, continued to rule into his twenties.

Got a disease, took him down, of course, but he beat it, eventually. Even so, in the years of fighting lost his mojo, never quite lived pain free after that, even though he was disease-free, and you would think, you know. . . remission should be good. . . but isn’t always.

Sought out illicit drugs for the pain and these are easy to find. His doctors wouldn’t prescribe, they knew his history, don’t get him started.

Years of self-medicating with whatever people give other people on the streets, alone, homeless, wakes up one day in rehab, the family is trying. You want to save your kid, believe he is worth saving.

He takes a job selling newspapers for the homeless. Too much pain for this, has to quit it, the first job in years, how demoralizing. Finds his way to me, depressed and for all intents and purposes, catatonic.

I tell the story, I guess, because this is how it is for so many. Most of us can’t rule the world forever. A biological, if not sociological, ecological reality, there will be a drop. What goes up, must come down. Then we work on picking ourselves back up again.

But there’s a post script to the story! Although it’s been years, I get cards on occasion from him, especially at Christmas. He keeps up with me, and wouldn’t you know, he’s married, has a doting spouse and a kid he adores. He’s doing well, despite working against chronic pain, has a desk job, something like selling magazines, and although his partner makes more than he does, she apparently couldn’t care less, loves him for who he is, a person he’s still finding.

Of course he goes to meetings, has found serenity, always a good thing, whatever it is called, peace, equilibrium, his way, is working a program like many people at TSR one of your better recovery websites.

And you have to wonder, you know, if he sings that song.

therapydoc

*This is a reference to kosher food. People from my tribe have to figure out how we’ll eat when we go on vacation.

I liked this one better than the band’s original video.

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Yeah, it’s been a long time since I’ve had time to do this, link back to bloggers and readers who link to me or comment below. And I really don’t have the time, but you know you make time for the things you like to do, meaning steal time from the things you should do. In other words, my 3:15 canceled, so rather than call people back, which would be the logical thing to do, well, let’s do this anyway.

Thanks Tara for guilting me into it. I hadn’t responded to this email until now, weeks later, but that’s okay, right?

Dear Therapy Doc,

I have recently been given the job of developing and promoting our blog and
while researching this new task to me I have found your excellent blog site.
I am not sure how you go about developing such an excellent collection of
links for your Blogs Roll but certainly something to strive towards!

How can I go about inclusion of my blog?

I add you is all, and finally did. (sunglasses, people, think sunglasses). And to make your own list of amazing blogs, hang around, loiter and read other writers, like . . . .

DaMama Motherhood is Not for Wimps. Find me someone who disagrees. Try.

The Second Road, the best recovery blog.

And Penelope Trunk’s Brazenist Career, almost spelled brazenist wrong, seriously brazen.

UK’s Community Care Blog World, cuz they care.

The Doctor’s Girlfriend (great pugs on the page)

My good buddy Jack at the Shack is kvetching about tuition. Hello.

Opining online simply gives an _____

If you’re dreaming again, in no hurry to wake up, try Wanda’s Wings

There are blogs that like sharing their music, and this one liked my post about a rock star. I wish I could remember her name, Ingrid somebody.

Over at Trench Warfare you’ll read yarns about social work in the trenches. It’s more than one war, you know. There are so many.

Eyes opened wider, always worth a read.

Totally into The Known Universe, read TechnoBabe.

Uppity-crip might make some people think about disabilities, and you know, we should.

Retriever’s clearly got her head on straight. And that dog. . .makes me nostalgic . Not nostalgic enough to ever get another dog, although I don’t like ever saying never to anything.

Kerro’s Korner’s great, even if there’s a “K” in corner.

Shattered into one piece-- can get pretty, well, shattered, just warning you. But it’s a good shattered.

Sandy Andrews has that picture of the shrink on the Sopranos for her header. Where’d you get that, Sandy?

Tears Behind the Smile blogging about therapy and Ikea.

Calm Acceptance Patty’s got the idea.

Becky has a guard dog, Cricket. I’m new here, but love it.

Lisa Marie Always love a good dysfunctional daze, Lisa Marie.

Syd I’m just fine. The myths about 12-Steps, see his Jan 11, 2010 post is simply fantastic.

Blognut’s mindless ramblings can get poetic.

Mark, at The Naked Soul knows how to tell it like it is. People should listen. He answers the age old question, “Why do people see prostitutes?” It’s a hole in the soul, is what it is.

One Wild Ride links over to my buddy Thriver at the Thriver’s Toolbox. April the Optimist tells us that surviving s not easy, but there’s support out there.

Mean Something is about literature (it should mean something).

Lou at Subdural Flow has what to kvetch about. Kids are a challenge, never easy.

Isle Dance has some unbelievable pics up, as always.

Cassandra recommends books for 2009 at Some are classics.

Zan at My Journey So Far tells us about leaving the Jehovah Witnesses. What a story.

Definitely stop by Café Jeannie and chew a little.

Maha always says, call bells make her nervous. She and a friend, way behind on their sleep, tell us 12 mortifying ways to die.

To learn a little Torah, check out the Rebetzin’s Husband. Where else would you go? /

and while you’re at it, try New York’s Funniest Rabbi , not feeling particularly funny lately. So sorry for your loss.

Sissi at is getting it on paper.

Dr. Deb is a wonderful blogger. Looking forward to reading her book.

Jew Wishes / and I also go way back. I get my booklists from there.

My Social Work Network has great daily inspirational quotes/ We could always use one once in awhile.

Miriam L paints! Check her out.

MHMS at Made You Look– Exactly how it sounds. / a must see.

Special mentions, Seaspray, Porcini, Rachel Z for helping me out with the community crisis, Tzipporah for comments, Margo, and the other Margo my daughter for her occasional snarky comments like, Did you actually post that comment?! A Mother in Israel, MizFitOnLine, Jumping Frogs, Curiosity Killer, and Leora, and to anyone I forgot, kindly kick me in the head, just guilt me with an email.

We’re good with guilt.

therapydoc

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Just a quick story.

A few years ago I couldn’t stand kvetching about winter, forfeited a hundred bucks and bought myself cross-country skis (ebay). Got the boots new.

The following year, despite his protests that he wouldn’t like it, that he’s a downhill ski kinda guy, I did the same for FD, got him skis. He didn’t love it, but no one does, not at first. It’s not easy picking up a new sport at our age.

The original idea was to ski to work, clearly a pipe dream. We’re a few years away from that, stamina-wise, skill-wise. But when the snow started yesterday, the thought of cleaning off the car, the dread of losing my parking space, the memory of spinning rubber, all that negotiating with people who can’t drive, and the pathetic hunt for a spot at work, all of it feels overwhelming.

“I’m taking my skis, catching a bus to work. At least I can ski home, or try to ski home. When it’s too much for me, I can flag a bus anywhere.”

This is Chicago.

FD comes up with a better idea. He’ll park the car on Granville, half-way between my office and our house, meet me somewhere in the park by the Chicago River. This is a big park, but because Chicago is flat, you can still see everyone within 500 yards. We’ll meet somewhere in the middle, ski back to the car.

And we do this, and it’s fabulous. If you ever want to be alone in the city, this is the way to do it. Get out your skis in the evening and live a little. Nobody’s out doing this, not at night.

Fast forward. This morning, new snow. This time I ski to the bus stop, one that’s about a mile from my house. There won’t be time after work to play around. I miss the bus by that much, keep going until one is approaching from the opposite direction, measure out time in my mind, get to the next bus stop, take off my skis, and wait.

The bus comes, I hop on. People surely give me the look that says,

you are one eccentric weird person carrying skis and poles on a bus.

The bus driver isn’t appearing appreciative, either. He scowls.

As I settle into my seat, however, a young woman across the aisle strikes up a conversation.

YG: You ski in the city? That’s so cool.
TD: Well, I walk on skis, but yeah.
YG: Like, uh, why? And how? I mean, uh. . .
TD: No, not everyone shovels, and if you look around, there’s snow everywhere!
YG: So it’s good exercise, right?
TD: Uh, huh, and I have this very sedentary job, and so it’s good to shake out the emboli.

Etc.

We talk until she gets off the bus, and I learn she’s from out of town, has recently moved here from Michigan where everyone drives everywhere. Well, of course, Michigan.

I’m thinking, during this social encounter, I really don’t want to be talking to her, I want to check messages and stuff, just breathe, but she’s young and enthusiastic, and I’m flattered, you know, in a way.

She gets off before me and says, “It was so nice to meet you. Take care.”

And I’m thinking, it was so nice, actually.

These kinds of things can’t happen to you unless you carry skis.

therapydoc

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