At dusk the drone of the cicadas is deafening. For a species that theoretically only spawns every three to five years, this annual event puzzles Chicagoans. We’re confused because we hide from the elements most of the year so any summertime visual/auditory arousal throws us off.

My 8-year old grandson takes the cicada fertility boon as an opportunity to collect molted shells, the exoskeletons. He’s delighted with this process. To add to the wonderment of it all, his aunt bought him a plastic bug farm for live insects. I told her that one day, when she has grandchildren, I’ll try to return the favor.

But even an 8-year old can’t take the sight of maggots eating through the head of a dead bird. Master Scientist comes running to inform me, after my Saturday nap:

“Bubbie, you’re not going to believe this! On the deck, in a flower pot, is a dead bird! A very large, dead, black bird! And his head is only a skeleton! The worms are eating him. You have to see this!”

I’m sick at the thought, pass on the demonstration, and he totally understands. The culprit is West Nile Virus, or bird flu, some such plague. Black crows are dropping from the sky. You see them in the parks, quite dead, if you look carefully. This is an opportunity for my daughter, a good Jewish mother, to teach her son, “Now you have to be SURE to wash your hands when you touch bugs. You could catch the sickness, too.”

This is probably where it begins, I’m thinking, the female aversion to bugs, for it does seem to be associated with women, the EEEK, thing. Generations of prejudice against things that crawl, for no one likes anything crawling on the skin, and the fear of disease. Perhaps there is also a fear of the unknown, a fear of invasion. They are small. They’re fast. They hide. Who can keep up with them?

But honest. They’re so small, bugs. We can kill them fairly easily. Seven in one blow, if necessary. And RAID is amazing, has subdued many a crawling or flying six-legged monster.

A person can’t let them get the psychological upper hand. You just can’t. Even in quantity, they’re still just bugs. I can say this because aside from a few spiders and a few ants, resident centipedes and water bugs, my house is bug free. If there were other, strange, territorial, hard-to-kill bugs, I’d probably move.

We’re supposed to be tolerant, I guess, and loving. But last week we were playing a little tennis near a city garden and a bee stung my hand as I reached for a lost ball. It was a little bee, an aggressive bugger, and I got angry because I had been trying to teach the kids what I learned from the book, The Secret Life of Bees (fabulous, Sue Monk Kidd, that if you love them, bees, they won’t hurt you. Send them love.

Rubbish. Do not believe this.

Once I had a friend who told me a bug story. Her mother ridiculed her for being afraid of bugs, and she didn’t even have a fear of bugs, not in the plural. It was one particular bug that threw her off her game, a big indestructible thing.

None of us like the indestructible ones.

I have a fond memory of waking up to the sound of a mosquito buzzing in my ear, me trying to rouse my parents from their sleep. My mother groggily inspires me, “You can do this, I know you can. Turn on the light, track him down, and kill him.” She didn’t like mice, particularly, but there wasn’t a bug she couldn’t dispose of with alacrity. Once I mastered mosquito detection, it was a short step to swatting and murdering the bloody things.

So why the bug phobia, you asked, didn’t you? I think that the EEEK! thing is a combination of what we’ve already said, they’re small, they could go anywhere, but we should add the functionality of the behavior, see it, sometimes, as a coy female reaction that begs male attention. Bring out the club, caveman. We have roaches.

This vulnerability is modeled by a woman’s mother, a woman who assigned the job, killing house bugs, to a man. Not all that different than Do the lawn, dear, it’s grown to my knees. It is endearing when they come to the rescue, and gives the fellow something easy to do, something less taxing than the lawn. Some swat with a bare hand.

My daughter didn’t see a bug-killing role division, for if you remember, bugs didn’t blow my own mother away. So theoretically, knowing how transgenerational these things can be, my daughter shouldn’t have shrieked this morning when she opened her laptop to find an ant. She shrieked once, then she shrieked again when she saw another. I brought out the RAID, but she blamed herself for letting the kids eat terrible sticky things while playing Club Penguin (the Facebook entry drug).

The shriek, we concurred, was associated with the thought of insects devouring the inside of her Mac. A fairly good reason to fear them.

Now, if I hear a drone from inside that thing at dusk? Something’s going to have to give.

therapydoc

Go to Source

Those of us raised in affectionate families sometimes find physical intimacy the easiest thing in the world; it’s difficult to conceive of life without it. Feed us with love and we love back, cringe at anger. Some of us develop an allergy to anger to the degree that we’ll walk out of films, change the channel on the television when the volume feels too much.

Those who suffered violence in the home, as opposed to peace-love as children, can be conflict-avoidant, too. Others identify with the aggressor and are consciously aggressive. There are many variations here, including one in which two people are drawn to one another, feel they’re soul mates because they both grew up in violent homes of one type or another.

But expectations are everything in a relationship, and expecting a partner to be a peace-nik when you want him to be a peace-nik, just because he should, in your opinion, be conflict-aversive, having grown up with so much conflict, doesn’t make it so. If you think about it, logically it makes sense that one of the two should be good with conflict, and the other, not-so-good. Laws of chance.

And when that happens, things get pretty wild. Let’s pretend the person comfortable with conflict is a guy, and the person who is conflict-avoidant is a woman. (Substitute genders at will).

The assumption on her end is that he gets it, this soul mate of hers, that she’s had enough insults or sarcasm to last a lifetime. She’s thinking that he, too, doesn’t want to raise his voice or hear her yell, that he won’t want to behave like his parents behaved. He understands.

Yet he’s hardened off, is immune to verbal and physical violence. The continuum of violence is what is meaningful to him. A jab, a joke, a minor insult shouldn’t hurt. It’s a left-handed insult; or sarcasm, no big deal. A good fight, even, no big thing, nothing to fear; it’s something to win.

Whereas she truly could be overly sensitive. Negative communication might hurt her to the degree that she feels re-traumatized. She’s already too bruised, can’t handle any more bruises, emotional or not.

Sticks and stones will break my bones but words will never hurt me. His refrain. Doesn’t she get that?

For him it has become something of habit, rising to the offensive under pressure, and it is hard for him to change, even if she has called him on his words, told him how much they hurt.

She’s disappointed in him, is the truth, which depresses him. He senses it. She’s disappointed that he hasn’t changed, for she has said something to that effect on numerous occasions. But she doesn’t yell about it, doesn’t punctuate in the way that he’s used to people yelling when they want to make a point. So he doesn’t hear, doesn’t respond, and out of nowhere, he spontaneously cuts her with words, especially if he’s feeling attacked.

She’ll walk away, get some fresh air, won’t even say,

You know, Words hit as hard as a fist. Watch what you say.

That’s the tagline for the National Committee for Prevention of Child Abuse, highlights a poster that a patient once stole for me. She took it off a bus. I’ve had it for thirty years.

This is a simple family therapy. We revisit both childhoods, talk about feelings, explore the intimacy avoidance characteristic of the behavior of both partners.

What’s amazing to me is how long some couples endure this pattern without insisting it change. You would think the conflict avoider would explode, at some point, for exploding is necessary, to make the point. It is most typical that a child will bring a couple like this to therapy, will think of some way, act out, carry a symptom. It can take a good while for anger to become the motif of that treatment. The anger management is eventually requested, interestingly, by both partners, and begins with old fashioned insight, psycho-dynamic psychotherapy, reaching into childhood.

Only after that, will the cognitive-behavioral strategies really work, the self-relaxation, the breathing, integrating a positive parent figure, the one we all want to be. There are a host of anger management techniques. They don’t work, not until you get to the root and yank it out, because it is primitive anxiety that drives the conflict as well as the conflict avoidance.

You can’t really apply a band-aid to the deep stuff is the truth.

therapydoc

Go to Source

So back to work.  Do I have to remind you that I make up people? The patient below doesn’t exist, so if you think it’s you, it’s not.

The Story:

A woman who has been passive all her life determines to make a change. No more Mrs. Nice Guy. She wants to level the playing field when her husband’s family criticizes her.  She wants to err on the side of aggression, and wants me to teach her how to criticize, to insult back.

I’m thinking: No.  Let’s not.  It would work, would make her one of them.  But it’s not who she is; she’s better than that.  Why regress?

The joke is that her spouse has married her because she is really, really nice. She never hurts anyone’s feelings. Before she opens her mouth she thinks, “Is this going to hurt someone’s feelings? Am I going to be disrespecting this person?”

I know, unbelievable. But there really people like this. If you find some of these, don’t let them go. Hang on for dear life.

Anyway, he marries her because she’s so nice, and he’s very happy. But she discovers that his family is very difficult, very different from hers, very quick to criticize. She has married the white sheep, a nonjudgmental, easy-going person, but they judge people, especially her and how she looks, expect her to be perfect, at least to look perfect, to be like them.  And they carp on her when she’s not.

Perfect, in this family, means every hair in place, dressed to the nines, make-up. Some people dress up to go to the grocery store, others wear sweats. Our friend falls somewhere in the middle. She asks me,

Should I have to put on heels to visit a sister-in-law in the middle of the day?  Is this normal?

I’m thinking: No.

But maybe, yes. Maybe she should.   Maybe if she does this, dresses up like them, looks like they want her to look, they’ll feel more of a connection to her. The subtext, the unconscious text, is that when we conform, when we follow the herd, the other sheep assume we admire them, that we’re not judging them, irony of ironies, so their unconscious anxiety is mollified. That’s why like attracts like. So fake it ’til you make it, baby.  Join the club.

Those of you with self-esteem are thinking: No.  Let’s not and say we did.  (This is a sarcastic remark, passed down to me by my older brother, very useful, although in general I frown when it comes to sarcasm).

And you are correct. No matter how hard we try, we’ll come up short with a person who wants us to come up short. Sometimes I think the world is binary. There are only two kinds of people* — those who communicate in a sensitive fashion, and those who don’t.

Many would say we learn more from those who are not esteeming, who are insensitive. We hear a negative message and think, “Wow, I really am a zjihlub!  (Yiddish, two syllables, je, as in the French je, and lub, rhymes with tub  Means slob). I should change!”

Except most of us are just hurt when someone insults us, so we don’t change. We get angry and resistant and depressed, immature. We’re regressed when it comes to criticism. We feel like we did when we were little and our parents shamed us for things like playing with our food.  It is an art delivering a message that fosters emotional growth, personality change, and still doesn’t hurt feelings in the process. It is why parenting is so hard.

But back to our story; better would be to assert:   When the sister-in-law frowns, turn on the baffle, that confused look.  Act as if you seriously don’t get it but want to understand.  If you use the following script, first emphasize that you don’t want to be interrupted.

The long version, for the short, skip the first paragraph:

I notice you always make a point of making nasty remarks when I’m not wearing nice clothes. In your family, seems to me, people can take it, the nasty remarks, it just bounces off of you, and you seem to enjoy jumping on one another, or on anyone who isn’t dressed up.  You’ll even laugh about total strangers if they don’t meet your approval.

But you need to know that  when you say something negative about how I look, it hurts my feelings. I wasn’t raised to be judgmental. So I take it as this huge put-down, a comment about how I look. Could you try not to do this? Just don’t comment about how I look and I won’t go home feeling badly.

And why do you do it, anyway? Why is it so important for everyone in this family to have to look fabulous all the time?  I don’t know how you all pull it off, always gorgeous.   I don’t understand why it’s so important.  Seriously, what’s the deal?  Where’s this come from? How do I get to be like you?  How did you all get so fashion conscious?

This should stimulate dialogue that you can steer to the topic of criticism in the family.  It can be a really decent, intimate dialogue. Often about child abuse.  Don’t back down if they shrug and say, “Don’t know.”  Someone knows.  Someone’s got some psychological saichel.  (Rhymes with Rachel, but a soft-gutteral ch, means smarts).  After the dialogue you predict the future.

“Okay, so when I come over here in pajamas, you are not going to say anything, right? But I’ll try not to come over in pajamas if it’s a disrespect to you.  I’ll wear sweats.”

Then you label the process. When it happens again, the criticism, you say,

“See? You’re doing it again. I thought the new deal we have it that it’s okay that I be the zjilub, and you be the gorgeous one.

Works every time.

therapydoc

*Binary thinking is shallow, black-white thinking, and virtually nothing is black and white. That’s what the bell curve is all about, normality, the normal curve. To be exceptional, extraordinary, abnormal, one’s score on a certain trait must be in the tails, must be rare. But you can be anywhere, totally normal, and still not know what’s flying when it comes to relationships.

Go to Source

Alone on the sofa, remote’s all mine, I hit Power and what do I see? Well, it’s Sarah Jessica Parker.

Do I really want to watch Sex in the City? No, but this looks like it’s the movie, the first one, 2008.   And I missed it. So yes.

Except it’s a No, a serious waste of time. The film is overly soppy, boring, and as much as I love a good chick flick, this doesn’t work for me. The only thing I like about Sex in the City I  is Jennifer Hudson. Carrie Bradshaw, a writer, has hired Louise from St. Louis, Ms. Hudson, as her personal assistant. 

Jennifer owns the screen, she’s the only thing to watch in this movie.  When Louise leaves the job, when she leaves the script,  I’m thinking, I don’t need to watch any more of this. But I do watch just a little more to see how Carrie resolves her conflict with her girlfriend Miranda, and how in the world will Miranda ever get back together with Steve?

Marital therapy, of course.

Anyway, why bring up a movie with very little, in terms of redeeming social content, unless you’re into not-so-soft porn?

Because Jennifer Hudson is a woman of color, and you say to yourself, watching this eminently watchable, lovely, young woman,  How could anyone judge anyone else based upon the color of their skin?

A Story:
I’m training my intern about sexual discrimination and sexual harassment.  She asks me a question about the law.

What law?

The Civil Rights Act of 1964, specifically, Title VII. The Civil Rights Act, Title VII, defines protected classes of people.  Individuals in these classes are protected from unfair discrimination in the workplace, and in schools. The ironic history of this law is that in the early sixties, when the law was not a law but a hotly debated bill in Congress, the United States workforce consisted of primarily males. Indeed, most working people wore blue collars in the early sixties. This was a time when a person in tool and dye, or the auto industry, could find steady work.

It was pretty obvious to the men (men– I think they were all men) in Congress, certainly the men of the South, that if it became illegal to discriminate based upon race, skin color, national origin, things like that, then the security of their constituents, their job security, was at risk.

And yet, that’s what was on the table. A bill to do just that, eliminate discrimination. So someone thought up something absolutely brilliant. Throw in sex! Make gender a protected class, and the bill won’t pass!  Nobody wants women competing for jobs!   But when this came out, that this was all hype, political strategy, the good people in the Congress passed the law anyway.

All well and good, says my intern.  But why are people so prejudiced? How do they become judgmental? Is it because they learn this in their families of origin?

Sharp kid.

And maybe it’s true, for sure some people carry on a fine tradition of racial/ethnic hatred. But for others it is the personal experience that cinches racial stereotyping. Joanne Trapani is a diversity presenter for Cook County and I had the pleasure of hearing her associate being Irish with being a drunk. (Three dates with three Irishmen who drank her under the table).

Here’s my experience with generalizing based upon too little data.

My mail doesn’t come. Not altogether true, but it isn’t delivered, on occasion, not to my office address.  Worse yet, it isn’t picked up from the box on the street, either, not at the times posted on the mailbox.  My mail carrier is Afro-American. The last mail carrier was Afro-American, as was the one before her. I work in a postal district primarily staffed with Afro-Americans. I should, of course, know better than to blame race or skin color, and I don’t.  But the data speaks for itself.

So even though I won’t stereotype, I’m not stupid, not usually, so when I want my mail delivered, not resting in a blue metal box on the corner,  I take it to another neighborhood. Over there the postal workers are Asian, primarily Korean. Once I mailed a letter at 10:00 a.m. and the letter arrived same day. So you know who’s getting my business.

What do I do with this? Fortunately, the same thing that Joanne Trapani had to do with it, see that my experience has nothing to do with race, that there are dozens of other variables at work.  Never, ever assume that skin color has anything to do with productivity.  The bell curve indicates otherwise.  My experience is random.

When social scientists say, It’s all random, we’re saying, when it comes to mail carriers, my luck is bad.  That’s all it is.  Nothing to do with color.

It is scary, however, how our assumptions about people are formed based upon a few random acts, how our attitudes about millions of people are shaped by our experiences with a few.  It is so scary that Congress made it illegal to do this in the workplace, act upon our fears.

And lucky for us, Hollywood is doing everything possible to to publicize the absurdity by sprinkling our positive experience of diversity with something millions of people love.  Soft porn.

therapydoc

Go to Source

Contrary to popular belief . . . I’m not depressed.

If you catch that I am, what you’re feeling is my V62.82, Bereavement. I don’t even have the newly touted grief disorder, which would be cool in a sick kind of way, to have a brand new disorder, fresh off the press, Complicated Grief Disorder, or Prolonged Grief Disorder, so far as I know.

We diagnose a person who has lost a loved one with Major Affective Disorder only if that person is experiencing sadness, insomnia, poor appetite, and depressed mood beyond two months post loss. If major clinical features like these disappear at the two month mark, it’s Bereavement.  My friend who lost his father over a year ago, is suffering from bereavement.

We call it depression if a survivor has

1. excessive guilt about things other than actions taken or not taken at the time of death,

2. thoughts of death other than feeling he or she would be better off dead or should have died with the deceased

3. morbid preoccupation with worthlessness,

4 marked psychomotor retardation,

5. prolonged and marked functional impairment,

6. hallucinatory experiences other than thinking that he or she hears the voice of, or transiently sees the image of, the deceased person.

If you have those features (you might add the loss of appetite and problems sleeping) then you’re talking Major Depressive Disorder.

So let’s talk about me.

Slept great last night, 5.45 solid hours, dreamed of the Black Hawks playing hockey on a black and white TV set over forty years ago.  Had to have been nine or ten, but in the dream, can’t tell.  It’s cool that when you get older and you talk about things you did as a kid, you might dream about them.

It’s Friday and on Fridays I like to have dinner prepared before leaving for work.  The idea is that when I get home I can just do what I want, meaning visit my mom, talk on the phone, clean, maybe even go to the movies with FD. So this morning I wake up and mumble a couple of things under my breath and stumble into the kitchen to see if the coffee’s on.

Yes!

I’m only writing the list below because (a) I like lists and (b)  to illustrate the difference between depression and bereavement. A person suffering from depression would be hard-pressed to get all of the following done (not bragging, just saying) in about an hour, between 6-7 a.m.  My wave must have crested yesterday.

(1) small corn salad, generously seasoned
(2) three loaves of bread, punched down for a second rise,
shaped and proofed
(3) nine raisin muffins.  Not sure why my recipe only makes 9, but it’s okay.
(4) fish– fairly tasty, not my best, but not bad
(5) introduction to this post–jotted on napkin–
Contrary to popular belief . .I am not depressed.
(6) grocery list appended–chocolate chips, zip-locks, decaf beans, rice
(7) added to the “to do” — “Pay Gary” — auto mechanic

Forgot the last.  The miracle is nothing burned.

Oh, and I changed the format to this blog.

The last, of course, was a tough call, because if you notice, to the right there’s no blog roll, no Blogs I Love! It got lost in the shuffle and I’ll have to do it by hand, add my resident buddies, many of you.  Time consuming, for sure.  When you grieve a loss you become painfully aware of how little of this you have, time,  and how important it is to use it wisely.  So email me if you’re in a hurry to get me moving on it.

therapydoc-at-gmail-dot-com.

The new blog looks better though, doesn’t it?  Eventually I tired of admiring my new look and wrote today’s post. Here you go.

Dad, how to I fix this watch? I replaced the battery and it still won’t run!

Or Dad, what DO you do with this gadget. It looks like a watch-maker’s kit. Is it?

Or Dad, why did you make barrels of wine if you never intended to drink it or even serve it to anyone?  (He had a glass of wine perhaps once every couple of months, maybe.) 

One of my more fond memories is sitting on the couch and watching a ball-game with him, sipping his beer. (He had a beer maybe once a month, too.)

Or Dad, what do you want on your headstone? How about we go with your name and the date of birth, date of death.  Wait.  Nobody even agrees on your birthday! Your parents made it up at Ellis Island.  A little help here?

Or Dad, where did you put the (too many of these to list).

Go to Source

What kind of a fan would I be if I didn’t say something about the Blackhawks? Last night they won their first Stanley Cup since 1961. Now that was wonderful. It doesn’t get better than this for Chicago. Of course, we want to know, why are people still playing hockey mid-June?

A few weeks ago I went to a baseball game, watched as the St. Louis Cardinals clobbered the Chicago Cubs, as usual. It was all too depressing. Real soon I’ll get serious, write a therapy post about managing this, depression and sports. Or just depression.

Last Thursday I canceled out and got on an airplane, returned with a carousel of slides, invited all my friends over to see pictures of my trip to France, Germany, and Italy.

No, not really. I went to Atlanta, ninety minutes by air, to visit my kids and their kids and the machetunim (too tired to explain this word). The machs provide me healthy snacks with sugar, like Think Fruit (sold out on Amazon, but I tried). Healthy snacks with sugar– not an oxymoron in the South.

1.

The kid is a little cranky and his Mom tells me,

“Just wait until we turn on Waltzing Matilda. You’ve never seen a kid smile like this one smiles when he hears Waltzing Matilda.”

And she’s right, of course. It’s a smile that lights up the room, and the chant, Tilda, Tilda, delicious. The next Matilda he meets, he’ll surely follow home.

Waltzing Matilda is a folk ballad written in 1887 by Australian poet Bajo Paterson. This unofficial national anthem is the story of a swagman or hobo, a drifter who carries his few things in an over-the-shoulder sack hanging from a stick. The swagman in the legend is caught steeling a sheep, a crime punishable by death in Australia, circa 1887. He hastens the execution by ending his own life, then returns as a ghost, apparently to dance.

This isn’t going to be good for my kids, is all I can say, when they hear the real story. One can only hope that the song loses its glitter real soon.

2.

I chose Atlanta over Paris because Rak told me her pantry was a mess; she needed me. Although many people, maybe most, resent their mothers-in-law when they begin to clean, move things around, meddle in their lives, Rak does not, knowing I’m a total sucker for a good pantry.

3.

The kids belong to a book club and wouldn’t you know, they sent Rak a parenting book, one I’d read about on DaMomma’s blog. Rak hasn’t read it, she hasn’t got time to do most things, but child psychologist Wendy Mogel had me at the title– The Blessing of a Skinned Knee: Using Jewish Teachings to Raise Self-Reliant Children.

You know how I feel about self-reliance (a.k.a. independence) and taking calculated risks– both good– maybe to the degree that a person breaks a little skin on occasion. At least get a paper cut without freaking out.

Skinned Knee is a quick read, one full of good behavioral strategies for parents, and lots of fabulous theology, if you like that sort of thing.*

4.

It’s a jungle in Atlanta in the summertime, all green and wet and fertile. You can’t predict the weather; it changes hour to hour, minute to minute, but you can count on the humidity. At least that’s how it is whenever I visit. But they grow bamboo in the backyard, so it feels very exotic, if wet, and hardly ever snows, which might be a good thing.

Before picking up Skinned, I was in the middle of a war novel about Viet Nam, a random find at the library.

Tim O’Brien, the guy with the baseball cap, author of  The Things They Carried, had to make the decision that many draftees made in the sixties,

Do I run away, dodge the draft, move to Canada?

Or,

Do I fight a war I’m pretty sure I don’t believe in?

What a choice!

Mr. O’Brien chose war rather than cope with the townies whispering coward behind his back. Shows how far we’ll go for our reputations, what we’ll do to avoid bullies.

The Things They Carried is literally about what they carried with them, our troops in Viet Nam, and the telling of war stories. He tells us that if you don’t tell your stories, if you don’t talk, you will be sick.  One story, perhaps the most powerful, is about a soldier who can’t talk about his experiences in Viet nam, post-war. The best he can do is drive around the lake alone in his father’s old Chevy, again and again and again. He can’t talk and he doesn’t make it, doesn’t survive civilian life.

You read this book until you can’t take anymore stories, then you put it down, take a break, read something else. But make no mistake, you come back to finish it. The things they carried, some heavy, some symbolic, all terribly, terribly lush.

5.

I don’t have a photo of the tomatoes or flowers, but on one of my walks with my granddaughter (4) we met up with a typical Southerner who offered us starter flower and vegetable plants to take home and plant, which we did. Another neighbor wouldn’t let us move on until she packed us up with fruit and crackers. This is not a Yankee town.

6.

We had to go to the Botanical Gardens, of course. FD is a very empathetic guy, you can tell, communes with nature.

They have flowers there at the gardens, and frogs, and the trees hug you, apparently, if you’re not careful, with their oxygen.

7.

Trees Hug Back is the headline.

Remember that bumper sticker, Have you hugged your kid today? What happened to that campaign? Probably too much hugging– all those helicopter parents spoiled it for everyone.

8.

FD found us a new park to break in, complete with nature trails made from recycled tires.

You young people may not even realize that there was a time when a kid had to skin his knees. There was no choice. A playground was a dangerous place, none of this soft landing stuff.

9.

Speaking of landings.

That’s an AirTran wing.  I did not sit with FD, and the fellow who had the window seat to my right, James, did his best to get out of my way so I could take a picture.  But it was still hard to focus from the center seat. James had pushed out his hand for me to shake the moment we made eye contact, and it was refreshing, such natural warmth. I think it’s a southern thing, but we do feel it, sometimes, when we travel by air, no?

We landed in Chicago, fairly softly, Sunday night around midnight, about as softly as one can on that short runway at Midway.

Good to go, good to come home. The CBT post might be more significant, I guess.

Although there’s nothing insignificant, you have to agree, about ghosts.

therapydoc

*Some of us might consider this a kiddish haShem, (rhymes with skittish ha! gem)a positive force in the universe.

Go to Source

Topic #1

I took out the spiritual cognitive therapy stuff on the last post and a reader wanted to know why.

In that post we were talking about how people cope with crises, and I suggested that when you lose your job, one of the things you might do, if you have a spiritual side, is to use that side to your advantage. I think there were three ways to do this in the long footnote that’s now history.

I deleted it because I felt it took away from the post, made it all about religion, which gives the wrong impression. One thing I’m not, I hate to disappoint anyone, is all about religion. Sometimes, however, it creeps into my posts, my beliefs, maybe even, dare we say it, a little spirituality. I’ve even referred to the “Old Mighty,” the moniker my grandfather dubbed his higher power. My grandfather was European, didn’t always catch the nuances of the language, or so we think. He also said he was hard of hearing when my grandmother talked to him.

Anyway, what I left out, one of the things I deleted, was a quote from someone I admire.

This young woman attended a funeral and it changed her life. She listened to the many things said about the deceased, a guy who had suffered most of his life.  He suffered with illness and poverty, had difficulty supporting the family he loved, that loved him.  He devoted himself to doing “good” to doing things for anyone who needed him, the family, the community.  He worked selflessly, no money, no job success, no fame outside of his deeds. Mainly he helped others for very little in return– the type of person who has nothing–  but they rob him anyway, twice. True story.

“Maybe we suffer,” my friend said to me, “so that when we die, others will hear stories about us, and they’ll learn what it really means to live.” Or something like that.

For the life of me I can’t remember what the other two spiritual cognitive strategies were. Does anyone else?

That’s how spiritual I am.

Anyway, there’s nothing good about death, not usually, except perhaps when there’s too much suffering, and there’s nothing good about war and senseless killing, which is why I’m posting #2.

Topic #2  Flotilla Passengers Shooting at Israeli Soldiers

I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve discussed Israel on this blog. Actually, one finger.

At the time I was in Israel and scud missiles from Gaza dropped on cities only a few miles away from me.  I thought, “People in America just don’t know, they don’t get it. The Palestinians are not the defenseless people they’re made out to be in the media. They get weapons from other nations who have much to gain in a war against my people.”

Anyway, today I hear that Israel is on the defensive once again, this time for intercepting a ship bringing humanitarian aid to Gaza. As a rule these ships are intercepted to ensure that the flotilla do not carry arms to Gaza that will be used against the Israelis.The top paragraph of the Jerusalem Post:

Dozens wounded, including 10 soldiers, in pre-dawn battle at sea; Israel says its commandos were brutally attacked before opening fire.

It didn’t happen peaceably, the humanitarian drop. First fire came from the flotilla, not the Israeli Defense Force. But that’s not the coverage you’re going to hear on television, I can guarantee.

But if you’re Jewish, you get all kinds of email about Jewish things, and today the email was all about what happened, complete with links to Youtube.

First, if you’re interested, read the story by Yaacov Katz.

Then go to Youtube. Experience war.

Okay, feel free to shoot the messenger.

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Seriously, it’s not that I don’t have any original stuff. There’s a deeper essay waiting for the pen, all about food being the thing women, men, too, obsess about most– weight, to be more specific– and how money rivals this.

But let’s just settle for one out of the two, okay. It’s summertime.

Have you seen Up in the Air? If you haven’t, think twice before reading on. Not that it’s a must-see, but maybe it should be. For Up in the Air is an emotional vehicle. We hear what have to be real stories told by actors who appear to be real people, stories about the torment of unemployment: the initial impact of losing a job; the mental anguish of facing foreclosure, the loss of status and purpose, bankruptcy and shame; suicide. Required reading? Walter Kirn wrote the book. Maybe.

If you’re me and you travel a lot, the opening sequence is captivating– aerial photographs like the ones I’m always snapping with my phone. Some of us really, really like flying, despite the hassle, the aggravation in line, the paranoia of security, the wait. The cancellations. I’m taking off for a couple of days this week, that’s the plan, and my excitement is palpable. Some of the twitter in my belly has to do with being up in the air again.

Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) loves flying, likes the feeling of living out of a carry-on, paring down his possessions to what he can pack into a light-weight vessel on wheels. He is a motivational speaker, talks ad nauseum about the backpack, how if you filled one of these with all of your possessions, all that you have, all the things you own, packed in all of your friends, your family, your people, you would find that you are mightily burdened.

All of this, he implies, the weight of living as a social animal, being grounded, is a burden.

Live like Ryan Bingham and set yourself free.

Has he got OCD, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder? Sure, maybe. Or is he Schizoid or Avoidant disordered, fearful of people to the degree of self-imposed isolation? Nah. He speaks to people for a living, empowers them to be good with a solitary independence, tells us to look forward, unafraid. And he has relationships with women, is handsome and so socially fluid; he even falls in love. (The female supportive actors make the movie, by the way, Anna Kendrick, Vera Farmiga)

Ryan has an agenda with that backpack metaphor, even if he believes in it. What he is really doing, when he tells people that life as a social animal is a burden, a life full of possessions is too hard, is a verbal equivalent of slight of hand, a con.

He works for an outsourcing company. You may be familiar with these. They take the pinch out of unemployment, present you with the package, the severance, point to the finger to other sources of employment. Ryan has the ugly job of having to tell people,

“You’re fired.”

He doesn’t say it like that, he says it nicely. He relabels the experience as, “All great people have been let go.”

Or, “Now you have the opportunity to do what you’ve always wanted to do.”

Or, “Now you can be great, meet your aspirations.”

If you’ve ever treated anyone who has lost a job, the same words, maybe, have come from your mouth. They can be soothing, they can be true. They are a Bandaid, you both know this, but you’re not applying it unless the patient has opened with the concept first, alluded to relief and desire to pursue a dream, sees the possibility. You both know that being let go means there’s a likelihood you may lose everything, certainly much of the life you’re accustomed to living, the one you have grown to know, maybe even love.

You don’t lose your family, however. You don’t lose your soul. You don’t lose your goodness, all that is you, or you shouldn’t, when you lose your job. We hear this in the denouement, at the conclusion of the film.

Real people, people who just couldn’t be actors, speak into the camera to tell us the rest of the story, as Paul Harvey used to say. This air of documentary makes the film so appealing, so real to those of us who don’t mind a little reality in our escape. Escape is therapeutic. The movies can be therapeutic, some more than others.

That’s what happens in therapy. Real people tell real stories, and when the story is about job loss, we talk primarily about how job loss can change one’s role in life, identity. But that is changing all the time, identity, anyway. Change is sometimes inspiring, often painful, and in this case, the change of role, the challenge is gut-wrenching, a test of one’s mettle. We shrinks subtly suggest:

Don’t let the test destroy you. Stay alive, stay well for your family, if not yourself, but do it for you, too. They can’t take that away from you, who you really are, your essential goodness

This is a crossroads. Things will change. You will survive. What was that Spock line?

Oh yes. And prosper.

Perhaps.

And yet, to minimize what has been lost? Unfathomable, unconscionable, very bad technique. Platitudes are a condescension on the part of the therapist, or the employer, assuming the hatchetman is thinking he can really minimize the pain, that by waving a magic wand, speaking with snake oil, that we’ll will fall for the politics. Now you can be great.

Now you will be broke. How is that great? How at all is that great?

When it comes down to money, everyone obsesses. Thus the job of therapy, when money is the crisis, is to increase denial, distraction, help a person draw upon resources and finding new ones, problem solve, and most importantly, stay clear of self-pity, for this eats a person up from the inside out. We might suggest that one of the resources is spiritual resolve, too.* Attention to anything outside oneself, if not just anyone, be stabilizing. (Be careful here, pick your charities wisely).

We don’t say it, but we tiptoe around it.

It’s not all about you, is the truth. Get out of bed. Do something. Anything. You’ll be more tolerable to live with if you do.

Job loss is stress, in no uncertain terms, and managing it is the art of good problem solving, coping strategies, and most of all, maintaining supportive relationships.

So nurture these, I tell people. And while you’re nurturing, grab some dinner with friends. Maybe share a salad.

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*Spiritual stuff-  I originally put up some of the cognitive therapy that goes into this, but took it down, sorry. 

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Seriously, when the weather gets good in Chicago, it just doesn’t get any better than this. Yeah, so the allergies kill you, but a person’s muscles need the heat, and it’s finally, finally, hot.

What’s on TV?

This morning I’m up a little late and a little groggy and shuffle off to the family room. Like many couples who believe that television in the bedroom is bad for a certain type of intimacy, we make it work to have to watch, and I have to negotiate stairs to find one. FD has brewed the coffee. He’s nowhere to be found.

The remote is mine.

Nothing like morning news teams.

Here’s the good news. ABC is having a contest to name the new Shedd Aquarioum beluga whale. Despite rumors that these creatures can and will eat their trainers (or is that another whale, help me here), the Shedd tells it like it is:

A beluga’s mouth is permanently upturned like a smile. It’s easy to connect with these sociable whales as they glide by in their Oceanarium pool: They might turn a curious gaze your way, crinkle their melons (foreheads) and whistle—or even spit a stream of water!

You can enter the contest at ABC if you have a good name for this little guy.

A good name is everything, really, which is why I’m still boggled at all the sex. Sex, sex, everywhere. It’s only Tuesday, but a quick sample of the kinds of things a person like me hears, rounding the weekend:

(1) men need Viagra, perceive that women need them that way, (nobody wants to work at anything anymore)

(2) fourteen year old kids need birth control,

(3) and the usual beef: I’m just not interested in sex, doctor.

Not to minimize, these are the concerns of the day, not depression, not anxiety. Mostly sex, which is fine, important, and very, very good for one’s mental health. Or bad, depending upon the context. That who, what, when, where and why, thing.

On the 6 am WGN news, it’s Sex in the City every day for a week, fashion shows and interviews with starlets.

I didn’t have time to catch the interview this morning, had to turn off the teev, blog about Law and Order.

Last night it was crunch time to book a fare to Atlanta. So nervous, I had to enter my credit card information five times (wish that were an exaggeration). All day, beat myself up for having waited too long. Chicago to Atlanta round trip should be, at worst, $189 on Airtran, and flights were running $217 each way! But FD promised me they would come down and my son texted me that sure enough they had, so there we are, scoring one of these more reasonable (thanks Airtran) flights, no longer staring at the screen, dejected.

When FD breezes through the front door and shouts, “Law and Order! Final episode!”

“I never recorded Law and Order,” I tell him, pretty sure he doesn’t know how to use the DVR-D.

“I did,” he brags.

“You’re my hero!”

So we book our trips, shut the browser, don’t look back, and settle into the final episode. Law and Order, in case you’ve been truly withdrawn or in solitary, is

the longest-running crime series and the second-longest-running drama series in the history of television, now in its 20th season on NBC.

And wouldn’t you know (serious spoilers coming up, stop reading now) the final show is about a blogger! Unfortunately, he makes bombs. But he’s discovered, lost his cover, because he blogs and has told all, vented on the Internet. It’s going to be epic, he tells us, his exit from the world.

He has also put up pictures of naked girls on his blog, his undoing. Somebody doesn’t like this, that a picture of his unclad teenage daughter is floating around cyberspace, and has reported it to the police.

No pics of the bombs and guns here, or the naked teenager, sorry. Cruise around, I’m sure you can find both someplace else, if you’re that interested.

Anyway, we learn that the bomber is a disgruntled teacher, not a gruntled student. This NYC teacher suffered disciplinary measures and to stay salaried while the case against him is under investigation, must spend 8 hours a day in “the rubber room.” Sort of like detention for teachers, but they do crossword puzzles while on the dole.

The injustice of this, confinement to the rubber room, ostensibly for minor indiscretions like ruffling a kid’s hair, or advising a kid, If you don’t study, you will be not rise above stupid, makes a professional angry. But most don’t leave the rubber room after a hard day of puzzles to make bombs to blow up their school. The mental health issue isn’t explored, unfortunately, there’s no time to really assess why anyone would do this. We assume, stress. But for all I know, I’ve bastardized the entire story line altogether while grabbing chips from the pantry.

I imagine that this is vengeance, and our bomber, Moot, has a severe case of one of the disorders in the DSM IV-TR, probably one that will be stricken from the DSM V, coming to us in a few more years. You’ll get a review soon. I’m in favor, is all I can say.

The issue of privacy is ascendant, that I get, in this last episode. Executive Assistant D. A. Michael Cutter has assembled a grand jury and is asking a crowded roomful of parents for permission to detain 2800 students, to interview them and scan their laptops for clues. Uh, uh, says the grand jury. In fact, we’d like you to ditch the entire inquiry altogether!

That’s not gonna’ happen. Finally, finally, Sam Waterston – District Attorney Jack McCoy, convinces a teacher to rat out the bomber. He is the best, Sam Waterson. Nobody will ever replace him in this type of role. Nobody. All of us want our sons to grow up to be just like Sam.

Meanwhile, we learn whether or not Lieutenant Anita Van Buren (S. Epatha Merkerson) either has a recurrence of her cancer, or is in remission. The docs are going to call her any minute to let us know.

And if you think I’m going to tell you, forget it. That would ruin everything.

Modern Family? Everyone, everyone, everyone, tells me they know a couple like Mitch and Cam. This can’t be. There is such a thing as hyperbole.

Can this be? Seriously? But they are the funniest, the most lovable, except for maybe, Manny, Rico Rodriguez, lower left.

Thirty Rock, and we’ll be finished.

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There’s a chill in the early morning air; it’s May, not June, and I’ve got on a good Republican wool coat that my Mom gave me a few months before my father passed away. We were on the way to the hospital, talking about how we both needed coats for the winter, and I complained that Uncle Sam takes so much of my take-home that it’s a luxury I don’t usually afford myself, buying a coat.

“I have one that will fit you,” she says. She’s a fraction of her former self. She can’t wear it anymore.

So it feels good, this black wool coat that is no longer in style, for the shoulders are huge, even without the shoulder pads. I ripped those out, gave it a hard winter, the coat, by spring have ruined the pockets. Decimated them in record time. She might have said something about that once, not anymore.

I’m walking to shul (Yiddish, rhymes with pull, depending upon your dialect, means synagogue) for Saturday morning services, am going to the early service, the one that starts at 7:30, am a fashionable half-hour late. FD always attends this one, but I don’t because most of my friends, if they attend at all, go to a later service, and I like to see them, catch up on the news. But I’m not in the mood to talk today, not even with friends.

Do you ever feel that way? Like you just don’t want to talk to anyone? Your mouth feels stuck. You get to know the inside of your lips. You notice things about them you never noticed before.

The kids came over for dinner Friday night, always the ray of sunshine, goodness. Empath Two, the almost psychologist, is planning a small celebration for my son, her partner-by-legal-contract. He’s now a lawyer. We talk menu and reflect upon the graduation. Although it was wonderful, the graduation precipitated the worst negative interpersonal interaction (code for marital fight) that FD and I have had in years.

FD doesn’t like getting anywhere early, hates wasting time, and he had three hospital “emergencies.” I’m supposed to pick him up at 1:03 for the graduation. I wait until 1:20 and am about to leave without him when he finally exists the hospital, opens the car door. I say nothing, think, we’ll make it.

But I’m driving like a maniac, because doors will close at 2:15, and my mother-in-law is in the back seat, and traffic is murder this Sunday afternoon and parking will take time. FD is on my right, trying to coach me on how to drive, always appreciated. I’m seething, he’s nervous, too, and contrite, I can tell. I’m trying to get a traffic report, like this will matter at this point, and the well-intentioned announcer warns,

“You don’t want to miss. . .”

I shut it off.

“My son’s graduation from law school!”

I shout this at the radio. It’s tense, not funny, my tone of voice. Still, we laugh, all of us, to shake off the tension, at least I hope my mother-in-law is laughing.

But the kid, the kid, we’re so proud of him. The books on his desk intimidate me, and all of us are very proud of that, feeling intimidated by a kid in his mid-twenties. Our kid. We’re proud of all of our kids and their accomplishments. Awed.

But today, six days later, I feel so useless.

As a mourner I can’t make him a party, my new lawyer. Not only that, I don’t feel like making him a party. It all works out well in the end because Empath Two not only feels like making a party, but is doing all of the work. I’m not even making the potato salad, although to be fair, I offered.

It’s a small party, a few friends, some family. I can miss it.

They say that the way Jews mourn is elevated, absolutely brilliant. Those who study mourning rituals for their sociology or psychology classes agree that the week after the death of a first degree relative, the shiva, that full week dedicated to nothing but receiving visitors, grieving, is inspired. There’s no leaving the house for work, or shopping, no cooking, no cleaning, no bathing, either, although some make exceptions.

Cultures within cultures vary, and some make it into one long party, this first week of mourning, but you’re really not supposed to. You’re supposed to sit, preferably on a lower chair, like a patio chair, and chill. You face your visitors who are also sitting, sometimes in rows, for there are often many sober visitors lending dignity to the occasion. Their presence, just sitting, honors the dead.

You can talk about the deceased, if you’re a visitor, but otherwise you wouldn’t open the discussion. The mourner leads and if the mourner wants to talk about baseball or the economy, then that’s what you talk about. But nobody’s flipping on the radio. There is no rock and roll, and in the evening before bed, no movies, no teev for the mourner. I didn’t want to watch anything, not even Glee that week, and muted the Academy Awards the week after.

In fact, for a year, if it is a parent that you are grieving, a Jewish mourner doesn’t go to parties, doesn’t listen to any music at all! Can you imagine? FD is a musician! Should he not play in his own home because I am a mourner and will hear it, unless of course, I’m in the shower? Honey, would you mind taking a shower?

For the first two months following my father’s death, he didn’t play, but he plays a little now.

Occasionally, while listening, the it’s not what we do raises it’s head, that cognitive dissonance. My brain can’t absorb it, the conflict. It doesn’t feel right, doing what we don‘t do, listening to music.

Hey, he’s not playing the Goyescas.

But I’m not turning on Miley or ColdPlay. I just can’t. Not listening to music on the radio has been a challenge, that’s for sure, but it is what it is. And listening to the news is getting very old, because the news is really depressing, the same newscasts over and over again. Shoot me. (No disrespect to those of you who are sensitive to the thought).

I have a best friend who is marrying off her daughter in a few weeks. Ordinarily I’d take part in that celebration, or would try to participate. But I won’t even be going to the wedding, and I won’t be making a shower or a party the week after the wedding for the family, either.

We never quit with these after-the-wedding-dinners-for-the-children-of-our-friends, our relatives, the Polish, the Greeks have nothing on us. We basically wine and dine and bless a bride and groom for a whole week. We try to get the new couple off to a good start. Their whole first year, in fact, is a special year. The groom would never go off to the army in his first year of marriage if they lived in Israel. The bride wouldn’t either, I suppose, since women serve in the army there.

You don’t make the connection between the seven days of mourning following the death of a first degree relative and the seven days of feasting following a marriage, or the customs of the following year, not until you’ve lost a first degree relative. Sevens everywhere, and ones.

Such conflict! Any rabbi would say, Go ahead, you can go to the wedding, especially if she’s like family, the bride, like a niece. Go to the graduation party. But because in our family we don’t do this, in my head it’s an impossibility. And my friend certainly understands, as do the kids. They wouldn’t come to one of my parties either, were the situation reversed, G-d forbid.

So I’m walking to the synagogue wearing a winter coat in the springtime, but feeling good about it, if a little quiet, and I flash on last night’s dream.

There I am, at a party. It feels perfectly natural, too, being around people celebrating, and the music is good. There’s definitely music. It occurs to me that I’m not supposed to be there, not supposed to listen to music, to celebrate.

I wake up in a panic, relieved. It’s just a dream. It’s like an eating on Yom Kippor dream (rhymes with dome-keep-poor– refers to the Day of Atonement), eating on the holiest day of the year, a day of contrition, a 25 hour fast, no food, no water, nothing by mouth, no leather shoes, no anointing.

Hysterical, that so many of us have this dream on Yom Kippor, the eating dream. You wonder, why it’s so common, and then, if you’re me, you realize that both psychological drives for dreams are at work, wishes and fears. Eating on Yom Kippor? A Jewish person who is fasting on the holiday (a happy holiday, ironically) either wishes it or fears it, or both!

Jews, we could safely say, make themselves a little crazy, this is no chiddish (rhymes with kid-ish, hard ch, means newsflash).

And yet, it seems everyone has their neuroses and solutions. Whenever I’m talking to someone who works a program– and I talk to so many people who work 12-Step programs, and more people who should be working programs –maybe for gambling or over-eating, abusing alcohol and drugs, or abusing themselves with sex, or compulsive spending, or they’re working an Anon program, a program to cope with someone else’s issues, now their issue by proxy, or a program for co-dependency– sometimes when I’m with a program person I’ll say,

“It works, if it does, I think, because many of us need structure, some kind of program, a credo of do’s and don’ts that make sense, a way to make our lives and our behavior meaningful. Religions are basically program. There’s small comfort in knowing what you’re supposed to do.”

And that’s what we’re looking for, right, even in therapy? At least some of the time.

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