May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.2013-05-25T17:21:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/index.php?author=may-benatar-phd-lcswCopyright 2008, HuffingtonPost.com, Inc.HuffingtonPost Blogger Feed for May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.Good old fashioned elbow grease.Rehearsing for Life and Deathtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.29258682013-03-22T11:00:50-04:002013-05-22T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
I think after a year and a half of working at a cancer support and wellness center in the D.C. metro area, I am just coming to understand what drew me to this work. I volunteer once a week to lead a mindfulness meditation group. I have not been officially trained to do so. This is in itself remarkable. I am, however, a qualified, trained, and experienced therapist and a fairly longtime practitioner of meditation myself, but my teaching experience is not particularly in this genre. In the group we mix it up with other practices, and I am always drawing on my skills and various tools acquired as a therapist to deepen and broaden the experience for my very enthusiastic group of meditators.
Remarkably, the changes in those individuals who come consistently and even attempt to practice at home are discernible to themselves and to me, sometimes in a short period of time.
The members of the group declaim rather loudly and proudly about the benefits and positive energy of the group -- they testify to and regularly recruit new members. But I am quite aware that my benefit is at least as great as theirs. It is the high point in my week. Really.
There is the pleasure in doing something that is popular, useful, and positive. But beyond that, I think I benefit greatly from my relationship with members of the group and with the group as a whole: their optimism, their strength, their ability to grow in the face of terrifying, often painful, and always life-threatening conditions.
Many are dealing with the long-term effects of treatment, more than the threat to their lives. Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation leave a variety of "gifts" behind. The hair grows back, but the neuropathy in hands and feet does not necessarily abate. "Chemo brain" may recede, but memory may never be quite the same for some. Unanticipated pain may linger for quite some time after radiation. Anxiety may take up permanent residence, and thin places in the fabric of family life may become deep fissures.
I get a front row seat on how individuals are dealing with these challenges to their bodily integrity and mortality. Mostly what I see are courage, dignity, and grace under fire. Of course, it's only an hour a week and a self-selected group of individuals who are well enough to sit and listen to the sound of my voice directing them to more peaceful places inside of themselves. And I don't observe the moments of sheer terror and rage that walk beside them as well. But these glimpses of resilience in the woman who dons a stylish chapeau to cover her sparse hair, or manages to look fetching in her outfit despite the loss of 25 pounds or so, enrich my spirit. The man who teaches himself and practices piano to deal with his overwhelming anxiety and depression, and the generous cordiality and even gratitude of those who face the final stages of their disease, inspire and soothe me.
This opportunity to bring comforting practices and to learn from my meditators represents for me a kind of rehearsal for what is inevitable in all of our lives. Unless we die suddenly, we do need preparation for the last chapter and the loss of those close to us. There are few models available, for most of death and dying are hidden. We cannot model ourselves on the brave and the resilient if we don't know them, if we don't see them. They are hidden in nursing homes, hospitals, or hidden away at home. They are for the most part unidentified. I have the unusual privilege of meeting, working with and learning from many.
I learned to teach graduate students, something I was also terrified of, by "channeling" one of my most admired teachers and then pretending I was him. I faked it until I made it.
For more on meditation, click here.]]>Me and Newtowntag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.26187482013-02-06T12:20:59-05:002013-04-08T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
The setting, a large institution in rural Newtown, Conn., was woefully isolated for two young women in their early 20s, dispatched by Antioch college to fulfill their co-op job requirement. We hung out with some other co-op students from Boston and two male psychologists doing their internship at the hospital. Gimlets at weeks end with the psychologists were all that was available for "partying."
There was basically no town in Newtown, as I remember it. We had to catch a ride into New York City if we expected much fun.
My memories of the facility where we worked -- me as an occupational therapy assistant, my friend J. as an art therapist -- are quite positive. The woman under whom I worked was a consummate professional. She was highly skilled at creating a program for people who were severely mentally ill, and compassionate in her attunement to each individual. I learned a lot from her. When I wasn't working directly with patients, she sent me down to read case records.
On one of those occasions I accidentally discovered that one of the inpatients with whom we worked had come to the hospital voluntarily, for a short period, had somehow gotten lost in the system and was now a long-term resident. Tommy was not psychotic, he had come to the hospital for the treatment of depression. Over time, he had come to look like he belonged there and did not have anyone to advocate for him. He was heavily medicated, and a physical impairment made him look much sicker than he was.
When I shared this with Madelyn, my boss, she got busy, had him reevaluated and, in short order, "sprung" from the hospital. Tommy was the poster boy, you might say, for "institutionalization." The system had swallowed him whole. It was only a lucky accident that freed him.
Madelyn was not alone among the staff of competent and compassionate employees. This was a good facility. Some people got stuck, but most were there because they needed the shelter and the supervision. Many had nowhere to go. Larry was an example. He was in the end stages of Huntington's disease, a neurodegenerative genetic disorder (the disease that Woody Guthrie succumbed to) with no cure. The end stage is sometimes characterized by psychosis.
Larry was a very sweet, bright guy. He had been a working jazz musician in his prime. Now he had a hard time walking, controlling the jerky movements characteristic of Huntington's disease. And he had psychotic episodes. He needed the care that the hospital offered and had few or no other options. Madelyn was very fond of him and took good care of him.
Patients like Tommy inspired the civil rights activists who felt that the mentally ill were unjustly stripped of their legal rights and were often incarcerated against their will. They became "institutionalized" and were unable to care for themselves out of the hospital only because they had been socialized to the hospital setting. In Tommy's case, all of this was true.
But they forgot about Larry, and so many other patients who derived protection from the system, not exploitation and abuse. Sadly, Larry needed the care and protection that the hospital provided.
How strange it is for me to meld my memories of Newtown with current events, in which how to care for the mentally ill is heartbreaking front-page news. My memory is also vivid for the sweeping policy changes and paradigm shifting of the late '60s and '70s that emptied the state hospitals, filled the streets with the homeless mentally ill, and made it next to impossible to care for the seriously mentally ill in any viable custodial arrangements.
In the name of freedom, we forsook the mentally ill decades and decades ago. Instead of re-thinking the system, we jettisoned it, de-funded it, and provided nothing to take its place.
I join my voice to all the others calling for a humane reconsideration of our responsibilities to the seriously mentally ill.
For more on mental health, click here.]]>What Good Can It (Psychotherapy) Do?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2013:/theblog//3.24118982013-01-09T06:54:25-05:002013-03-11T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
What can they tell me that I haven't already thought of myself?
Life will take its course no matter who I talk to. My partner will die and I will be alone.
I'm going to die anyhow.
Talking won't bring her/him back.
I'll still have cancer/multiple sclerosis/end-stage heart disease.
There really is no way out of my marital/familial/work dilemma.
My depression is a result of a chemical imbalance.
I'm frequently not quick enough on my feet to respond thoughtfully, so I'd like to take a moment to do so now.
Therapy, at least the kind that I know about, is not chiefly about finding solutions -- i.e., problem solving. Intelligent people are generally quite aware of a range of solutions to their problems. They just can't act on them. They are frozen.
They think that no potential solutions are really applicable to their situation or relevant or available to them. Or they feel, and perhaps this is the most frequent, that in their particular case there are no real solutions. Its almost reflexive for the listener, the relative, the loved one, the good friend, the clergy person, even some therapists to offer some thoughts as to possible solutions. Inevitably they fail. Its not about that.
Within most adult folks there is an inner wisdom that would offer great assistance in resolving the impasses of our life. Therapy is about accessing our inner, innate wisdom, not replacing it with someone else's. I can think of many instances where I felt that there were no solutions. I was trapped. In retrospect I knew the solutions and just found them totally unpalatable. I could not end that destructive friendship, it was just too important to me. I could not resolve a domestic or an economic problem, I just wasn't strong enough.
So what are the elements of psychotherapy that enable that inner compass?
1. The magic of relationship: When researchers have tried to isolate the "active" ingredient in successful psychotherapies, across many theoretical approaches (CBT, psychoanalysis, mind/body approaches) they frequently come up with the same answer: "it's the relationship, stupid," the connection between therapist and patient is the key remedial.
Neuroscientists have a more exact way of stating this. It's about "limbic (a key brain structure) resonance."[1] Simply stated, therapy is not so much about the rational, linear, thinking mind. It's more like music. In the best situation the therapist hears the particular "melodic essence" of the individual, playing softly in the background and is able to tune in and hum along, maybe even in harmony. Just this tuning in is deeply healing. How many people in your life have actually heard your "melodic essence?"
2. A therapist listens differently than other people: I heard a story once of a psychotherapist describing his occupation as one of listening -- "I listen for a living."
A therapist's training and experience sharpen and educate their musical ear. It has been called "listening with the third ear," among other things.[2] When things go well, a good therapist hears what others do not, even the speaker.
A therapist may hear anger where others only hear hopelessness, fear where others hear anger, shame where others hear belligerence. Truly thrilling for both the patient and the therapist is the moment when a door opens and the narrator gets a slightly different perspective, a different way of hearing their own feelings/problems. "Maybe its not my inadequacy, maybe I am feeling truly alone in this intimate relationship." "Perhaps my adversary doesn't hate me, perhaps they are deeply ashamed of their failures in life and feel humiliated." And most powerfully, "maybe there is meaning embedded in my confusion and in my unremitting pain." Meaning can set one free.
Certainly there is much more to be said on this subject. But I will pause here and invite readers, both those who have experienced therapy and those contemplating dipping a toe in, to share their thoughts.
References:
[1] Lewis, T., Amini. F., Lannon, R. A General Theory of Love New York: Vintage Books, 2000. p. 169
[2] Reik, Theodore. Listening with the Third Ear. New York: Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux, 1948.
For more on mental health, click here.]]>Mental Health Notes: Personal Transformation and Wrestling With the Dark Sidetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.18442132012-08-31T17:55:00-04:002012-10-31T05:12:02-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/my last post and reviewing the comments I received, it occurred to me that I hadn't told Stuart Smiley's entire story. Stuart's dark side is an important part of his story, indeed an important part of all of our stories. I did mention that he was a mess.
I'm going to switch characters here. The story of Jacob's struggle with an angel (in Genesis 32:24-30) provides a more sober and profound metaphor for the following exploration. Personal transformation is not just about affirming the positive, it's about investigating the negative as well; it's about struggle. The task of psychotherapy, at its most profound and meaningful level, is all about transformation, inhabiting more fully who we are. And that is Jacob's story as well.
In Genesis (32:24-30), the first book of the Bible, the first book of the Jewish Torah, Jacob leaves home to meet his nemesis and twin brother Esau. Esau wanted to kill him. Esau was angry with Jacob for having stolen his birthright, his father's blessing, many years before.
While on this journey to meet Esau, Jacob had the famous encounter with a mysterious entity. It was an encounter marked by struggle and suffering. They wrestled throughout the night. They wrestled to a draw, and Jacob was released by the angel, who insisted Jacob take a new name: Israel.
Interpreters of the Bible story have various ways of interpreting this narrative. Who is the angel? Is it G-d? Is it Jacob's own fear of the coming encounter with Esau? Or is it Jacob's own dark side? And it appears he had a very prominent dark side. He manipulated his father and stole from his brother, for one thing. The latter explanation, the most psychological one, of course, appeals to me. This interpretation has Jacob struggling with his own flawed character. In the process he is both wounded and reborn. He gets a new name, he becomes more of who he really is. And this is the nature of transformation.
What a wonderful paradigm for the best outcomes of psychotherapy. And I emphasize best, over common. While the power of positive thinking is an important and real possibility for us all in recasting our fates, the need to embrace the shadow -- those elements of our personality, our souls, of which we are least proud -- is a necessary element of transformation.
Trudy wanted to retire and to begin working seriously at her bucket list: to travel to Nepal, to write more poems, to read and garden to her heart's delight. She knew it was time. She felt really burned out by her 40 years of work as an emergency room physician. Nothing called to her anymore about her profession. The adrenaline generated by the high-intensity work had in the end depleted her. It was definitely time to move on.
Strangely, she found that she couldn't. She was dogged by guilt, haunted by bad dreams. And that was when she could fall asleep. Insomnia and an exacerbation of her long dormant ulcer had her prescribing medications for herself. Finally, feeling it was a last resort, she went into therapy.
It took about six months of pretty intensive work with her therapist to uncover the source of the guilt.
Trudy came from a high-achieving, well-to-do but essentially emotionally disconnected family. The three children had had to fend for themselves as their parents pursued their own interests, their travel, and their careers. Despite this, the two oldest children adapted well. They performed well in school, had many friends, and took care of each other.
The youngest did less well. He struggled in school, seemed to be the odd man out socially, frequently got into trouble with the authorities, and was finally expelled from school. As the oldest child, Trudy knew what was expected of her to help: She needed to take care of her little brother. But she didn't want to. For one thing, she didn't know what to do about him -- although five years older, she was a kid herself. For another, she was successful both socially and academically, and had no real interest in parenting.
She had made half-hearted tries, but she resented anything she was asked to do for him. And plenty was asked. The parents were preoccupied and clueless themselves as to how to help their son.
The baby brother never did pull himself out of his troubles. As an adolescent he got into harder and harder drugs and very tragically died of an overdose at age 20.
What Trudy discovered in psychotherapy was that she had never forgiven herself for abandoning her brother. And she really had to acknowledge that it was an abandonment. True, she was a child herself and did not have the knowledge or skills to help her brother, but on a deeper level she just didn't want to. She didn't much like him or sympathize with him -- he was always a troublemaker and a drain on the very slim emotional resources of the family. The stain on her soul was not what she did or didn't do, it was what she felt.
What she had to wrestle with was her own nature, or what she thought was her nature. She had not wanted to help her brother, and he had died.
It took another 18 months at least for Trudy to come to terms with all of this. Actually, it probably will take many years beyond these months. Trudy had to seriously consider that she had become an ER doctor because it was an arena in which she could save people. And that she did. And now she couldn't leave it, because to do so would expose the wound: her own self-loathing.
The struggle (in this case, her work in therapy) left its mark on her -- the wound that had been there but invisible became visible. For a short time she needed antidepressant medication, later something to help her with her anxiety. But in the end, she knew her own name. She became more of who she was. And eventually she retired.
For more on mental health, click here.]]>Mental Health Notes: Stuart Smalley and Neuroplasticitytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.17290702012-08-08T14:42:46-04:002012-10-08T05:12:32-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/Saturday Night Live played by Al Franken, now a distinguished member of the Senate, then a distinguished comedian. In the '90s he was a regular on Saturday Night Live. Blonde and dimpled, somewhat effeminate, Stuart was an earnest simpleton, distinctly un-cool in his cardigan. He was "a member of several 12-step programs, not a licensed therapist." Actually, he was a mess.
One of his funnier bits was staring into a mirror and speaking aloud affirmations, to be repeated daily. "I am good enough, I am smart enough, and doggone it, people like me." There was also: "I am an attractive person, I deserve my share of happiness, I deserve good things."
The hilarious implication was of course how silly and self-indulgent it was to think flattering yourself in front of a mirror really meant anything.
But you know what? It turns out that Stuart Smalley was on to something.
What we now know about neural functioning indicates pretty strongly that what we think can and does change our brain. In the last 20 years there has been an explosion of new understanding in brain science. There is more sophisticated detail mapping of the brain and its functions, and very importantly, we have learned that the brain is malleable, not fixed as we once thought. This is why a meditation practice, learning a language, and taking up a musical instrument can demonstrably change brain structure, even quite late in life.
What changes the brain, and/or the mind, changes the body, the immune system, blood pressure, cardiac function, stroke recovery and so much more. Sophisticated methods of brain scanning have given us access to how all of this works.
The slogan is: What fires together, wires together. As neurons fire (which is what happens with thought) they connect to each other. The more they fire, the stronger the wire. If you practice weight lifting, or swimming, or piano, or French, you gain more facility, you get better and better -- the neural connections grow stronger and stronger. So if you think good thoughts, that might have an effect also, right?
I have just read the book Freedom From Pain: Discover Your Body's Power to Overcome Physical Pain by Peter Levine, Ph.D. and Maggie Phillips, Ph.D. This book is chock full of exercises and regular practices that can help people in acute or chronic pain manage their pain. Many of the exercises are based on Somatic Experiencing (SE), many on energy medicine. Somatic Experiencing, developed by Peter Levine, is a body awareness approach to treating trauma. Pain is a form of trauma.
Pain management is a very challenging area of health care, with pain conditions nearly epidemic. Medication can be helpful but sometimes falls far short of bringing comfort and almost always has side effects that can be distressing. So practices that depend only on our ability to focus attention have enormous potential benefit. And no side effects.
I was somewhat amused to see that Stuart Smiley's methodology was one of the practices recommended by Levine and Phillips. Here is the scientific justification:
Neuroplasticity research has turned this theory (genetic determination) on its head and gives us an entirely new way to look at the impact of our thoughts and beliefs ... We know that thoughts literally change brain chemistry. Research indicates that the chemical composition of the body can change in relation to a specific thought within twenty seconds (Levine and Phillips, p. 112) ... Research indicates that the chemical composition of the body can change in relation to a specific thought within twenty seconds (p. 11).
Neuroscience has caught up to Saturday Night Live!
Try it. And if you need inspiration, consider where Stuart Smiley is today: The United States Senate.
For more by May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., click here.
For more on emotional intelligence, click here. ]]>The Orange Biographies, the Healing Narrative, and Somatic Techniquestag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2012:/theblog//3.14418312012-04-24T13:17:09-04:002012-06-24T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/New York Times that David Sedaris read the orange biographies as a child. I believe I read them all -- everything that the children's library in Marblehead, Mass., had to offer. These were the stories of "great Americans." The list that I recall included Abraham Lincoln, Clara Barton, and Wyatt Earp.
Looking back I think that even in third grade I found the personal narrative captivating and inspiring. If I was going to be a great American, these were the books to read.
I suppose I have given up my aspiration for greatness. But I have not relinquished my passion for stories, the stories of a life. This has sustained me over decades in the practice of psychotherapy. My job is mostly about helping people tell their stories. I wrote in a blog several months ago about the value of creating the coherent personal narrative and the role of the therapist in this creation, this construction. Sometimes it's like solving a thousand-piece puzzle: the story is jumbled, chaotic, fragmented. Sometimes it is like picking out threads from a weave tangled with other people's version of our story. "Mom said I was this kind of a child/person. Auntie M. thought I was better than that."
Sometimes there are holes as big as a truck in the story of one's life -- the individual seemingly retaining only crumbs of a history. Figuring out what one's own story is, from one's own perspective, is both challenging and fascinating.
The enterprise of constructing a coherent narrative of one's life is mostly a cognitive process. With the support and guidance of a skilled, empathic and alert listener, e.g., the psychotherapist, we come to understand how we got where we are, what has motivated, shaped, and had meaning for us. We get to claim our own experience from the inside out. This is powerfully healing all by itself.
I have recently been learning about another kind of narrative: the narrative of the body or the "felt sense." There are two new-ish techniques in which therapists are being trained, adding to their store of tools. These techniques go beyond the verbal, the cognitive, beyond the prefrontal cortex so to speak. Developed to work with trauma, Somatic Experiencing (SE) and Sensorimotor Psychotherapy (SP) focus attention from the grassroots, so to speak: Pat Ogden (founder of the Sensorimotor Psychotherapy Institute) refers to this as moving from the bottom up, felt experience, vs. working from the top down, a more cognitive process. The basic assumption is that the human nervous system is not unlike other mammalian nervous systems, which have a self-correcting, self-healing potential. Peter Levine (the developer of SE) reports that wild animals face trauma every day and seem to bounce back within minutes of surviving a life-threatening experience. Trauma does not derail them. There is no PTSD in the wild.
These new technologies, which are being learned and mastered by practitioners around the world, tune in to a very different story: the story stored in our body, in our "felt sense." Interestingly, the stories that have been lost to the cognitive narrative may be stored in the body and be accessible if one pays a certain kind of attention. The body may have a very different story than the "remembered" story.
Next time you have a back ache, a bellyache, an attack of anxiety, tune in for a few minutes, place your attention on the sensation and track it with your awareness. Watch what happens. Does it change? Does it move? Does it yield any information, image, anything? Does tuning in make you want to move or gesture in a certain way?
Doing this will give you a taste of what these new techniques are like.
For more by May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W., click here.
For more on mindfulness, click here. ]]>Adaptation Is Lifelong: The White Egret and Youtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10939262011-11-16T14:11:25-05:002012-01-16T05:12:02-05:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
Strangely the bird was still there in the same spot, standing like a statue, unchanged, 30 minutes later when I passed on my return trip. I raced home for my camera, sure he/she would be there when I returned. In the meantime I had an elaborate fantasy (the kind of fantasy only a psychotherapist would have!) about that poor bird. It went something like this: The bird, probably young, had adapted to the stream at its lowest ebb during the summer. Growing up beside a trickle, it was well adapted to those conditions. When the stream swelled, her/his adaptation style no longer sufficed and he/she could not figure out what to do.
The Human Dilemma
Of course, this reminded me of the essential human dilemma. We adapt as children, with brains, nimble and flexible, to the conditions of our environment: the family we are born into, the emotional surround, be it one of privation or abundance. We are veritable geniuses of adaptation. Problems arise later when our brilliant adaptation styles no long suffice. When the floods of later life come, we are often at a loss. The tools of the earlier years are more than likely useless.
You may be the child of a mentally ill parent who had to not know how ill your parent was, in order to get the best that parent had to offer. Now you are unable to see the creeping alcoholism of your spouse who is slowly deteriorating.
You may be the Holocaust survivor who starved as a child and had to scrounge for whatever food was available in order to live. Now you have trouble at the dinner table, an older adult now seated at the groaning board of American abundance: obesity and diabetes II ensue.
Or you may be the woman who has witnessed the suffering of older siblings who resisted a controlling parent only to be vilified and rejected by that parent, and you have learned submissiveness at home and failed to develop the assertiveness you need to succeed in adult life.
Snowy Egret, Part 2
I returned to the falls with my camera, maybe 15 minutes later. My egret was gone. And so was my lovely theory and elegant metaphor. Somehow the lovely bird had navigated the falls.
Maybe he was just a patient fisherman all along.
Days passed, no egret. No egret, but another lesson came my way.
We keep growing: Adaptation, a lifelong process
A week or two later, I had the good fortune to reconnect with a client I had known over many decades.
She was in her mid twenties (I in my mid thirties) when we met. We worked together for many years and then just on and off thereafter. She was in tough shape in those early years, nearly mute in our sessions for probably two years. I did the talking, guessing at her pain, her shame, her fear. She cancelled more often than not. But often I could talk her into coming. She had adapted well to an early environment in which it was dangerous to speak up, it was dangerous to be noticed at all. From a very large family, dominated by alcohol, violence, including sexual violence, she was denigrated, humiliated, unprotected. She felt insignificant, unsafe, and unworthy.
Most significantly she was separated from herself -- to survive her childhood her essential self had gone into hiding. What was left was a child hovering in fear, whatever strength there was seemingly defeated. She was the only one among 17 children who had managed to finish high school, but there was very little evidence of pride, and certainly no accolade from the family. Any sign of independence, strength, or intelligence was seen as a negative, not a positive, by her family.
Fast forward 20 years. In the interim this woman went to college, gave birth and raised a child single-handedly and successfully without a father. She bought a home, rose in her profession to a role of leadership, survived a life threatening illness through sheer grit. On and off she used therapy to help her navigate these crises. At times I was the second parent to her daughter, but for long stretches of time she did not call or come in to see me.
The one longing unfulfilled, was the inability to sustain an intimate relationship with a man.
Now in her 50's we are again back in touch and this time because she is in an intimate connection with a man, someone who sounds mature, loving, and accepting and who wants to marry her. She knows she needs a little extra support until she decides what to do.
The white egret has adapted to the falls.
A sustaining relationship with me over the years was certainly part of that critical adaptation. But the real wonder here, the awesome reality, is that she had the capacity to use that relationship and all other positives in her life: the terrific child she gave birth to, her teachers in school, friends, neighbors, a few members of the extended family that did not put her down -- whatever came her way she used to grow and change and reconnected with all that was positive in her.
She herself has described it as the child within, the one I saw cowering in the early days mute and frightened, has grown up.
This is not the only story I have of the awe-inspiring nature of our ongoing, life-long capacity for change. It's just the latest.
]]>Embracing Mysterytag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.10167732011-10-19T15:02:41-04:002011-12-19T05:12:01-05:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
Dr, D. recalled asking me, way back then, how I reconciled my interest in astrology with my evidence-based practice as a clinician. My answer, she remembers, was, "I see no need to reconcile them." She told her class this was a good example of someone who could tolerate a fair amount of "cognitive dissonance."
I, of course, have no recollection of this conversation. But Dr. D.'s example does point to something that separates me from lots of folks I know -- and that's the room I make for "mystery," that which makes no logical sense, cannot be seen, touched, tasted or smelled or proven directly or indirectly and yet seems to be there.
A vivid example is the testimony of many individuals working in hospice care who report that sometimes up to three days before death, their patients appear to be reaching for someone or seeing someone or hearing someone from "the other side." My neighbor, a women who classified herself as non-religious, an atheist, not even spiritually inclined, reported that her mother, at death's door, raised her paralyzed arm to reach for someone, presumably her dead father. She had no way to account for how her mother who had suffered a stroke on one side several years before had lifted that arm. But it did happen.
In this culture we lack a paradigm that can embrace, no less explain such phenomena. But probably almost all of my readers can think of some example of "mystery" in their lives. If you can't perhaps its because you have too rapidly dismissed a phenomena that you could not explain.
For many years I had a client who claimed to be connected to another dimension. I knew her very well, she was not psychotic. She had been severely traumatized throughout her childhood. Psychic or paranormal phenomena are not uncommon among individuals who have suffered extreme cruelty. Clinicians report this both formally and informally.
My patient's reported phenomena was that she dreamt of spiritual beings in another dimension who had messages for her. At other times it was during waking consciousness that she received guidance. They guided her and they chided her. They instructed her about her life, her therapy, her healing process. The counsel was invariably wise. If she followed the advice it led her in the direction of healing and wholeness. She frequently resisted. The counsel was difficult to implement and went against the grain, it would cause pain.
Of course one could argue these were her own wise thoughts, or an internalization of my view point. That, however, was not how she experienced it, and I had to make room that there really was a mystery here. More than once I wished I had thought of the counsel, myself. These beings seemed smarter and more far-sighted than I.
My position as her therapist was to be consistently agnostic. I neither believed nor disbelieved. But I supported these "advisors." And I was not above calling on whatever forces were at work here to support the direction we wanted to go.
What was much more challenging, however, was dealing with what my patient knew about me through the spiritual advisors. I had no explanation for these phenomena. She knew things she could not have Googled or learned from any another source -- news items that only my immediate family had access to. Sometimes the news was joyous, sometimes it was profoundly sad. I could never explain her clairvoyance. I did not dismiss it as mind reading either. I could only receive it, and I believe it enlarged my spirit to do so.
It has always seemed to me that dismissing mysterious phenomena, those that don't fit our existing paradigms, is rather narrow-minded, irrational, and at bottom unscientific.
Being able to live with the mysterious only enriches us.]]>Kafka and the Doll: The Pervasiveness of Losstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9813482011-10-03T10:40:59-04:002011-12-03T05:12:02-05:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
Kafka offered to help her look for the doll and arranged to meet her the next day at the same spot. Unable to find the doll he composed a letter from the doll and read it to her when they met.
"Please do not mourn me, I have gone on a trip to see the world. I will write you of my adventures." This was the beginning of many letters. When he and the little girl met he read her from these carefully composed letters the imagined adventures of the beloved doll. The little girl was comforted.
When the meetings came to an end Kafka presented her with a doll. She obviously looked different from the original doll. An attached letter explained: "my travels have changed me... "
Many years later, the now grown girl found a letter stuffed into an unnoticed crevice in the cherished replacement doll. In summary it said: "every thing that you love, you will eventually lose, but in the end, love will return in a different form."
There are many versions of the story of Kafka and the doll. I heard this one from Tara Brach, psychologist and Buddhist meditation teacher in Washington D.C.
Only after many tellings am I able to relay this story without crying. And I have found that when I tell it to others young or old, my listener is invariably moved, occasionally bursting into tears.
When I went online to find confirmation for the story, I found one source that referred to it as a "healing story." That seems right. For whether this actually ever happened the story is real and true and provides a template for healing.
For me there are two wise lessons in this story: Grief and loss are ubiquitous even for a young child. And the way toward healing is to look for how love comes back in another form.
I think there are advantages to viewing grief as omnipresent, an inescapable part of being a human being. Grief encompasses far more than the loss of a loved one, although that is perhaps its most profound manifestation. The loss of the doll in the story is devastating to the little girl. This is what moves Kafka to create the wonderful stories of travel and adventure. He perceived the depth of her pain. It is reported that he put as much time and care into creating these letters for the little girl as he did in other writings.
Holding the perspective of the universality of loss, helps us with shame and loneliness. If a profound grief reaction to divorce or children leaving home or the loss of a pregnancy, or unemployment, or retirement, or having to confront the limitations of our children, or aging, or the loss of health is something I share with my fellow beings, I am less alone. And I don't have to be ashamed that I feel the way I do, for shame is part of the legacy of isolation.
And love coming back, in a different form? I believe it was Kafka's letters that were the real gift of love, and what was ultimately healing for the little girl was the relationship that was the balm. Someone cared enough for her pain to write her lovely stories of the lost doll's adventures. A great writer at that.
How healing it is to hold this conviction, that love will return. It is our job to recognize it in its new form.
]]>More on Inner Wisdomtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9479082011-09-06T14:54:00-04:002011-11-06T05:12:02-05:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/O, The Oprah Magazine on a similar topic and inspired by the enthusiastic and interesting comments on the previous post.
The existence of "inner wisdom" is based on the assumption that there is something in all of us that, unimpeded, will right us when we wobble. Maybe "inner gyroscope" is more accurate. A gyroscope will always get us back in balance if we just let it.
Logical reasoning is a tool with which we are all familiar. We are trained by our teachers and our culture to be fluent in logical thinking. Inner wisdom is from a different source, or perhaps the integration of many different sources. The mind is a complex entity and modern neuroscience is virtually exploding with new information about this complexity (see Dan Siegel, Alan Schore, Les Fehmi to mention just a few, for more information).
One of the commenters on the previous HuffPost article mentioned "heart math" stress reduction and access to inner wisdom. I think of inner wisdom as right-brained, body-based and not necessarily verbal. It's that still small "voice" within which may not be a "voice" at all, but arrive in the form of images, kinesthetic sensation or even sound.
I sat with a client once on the same morning I had received some awful news about a dear friend. I tried to set this aside and set to work with this client. I thought I had. Very quickly, I got drawn into a confusing, chaotic, tumultuous session. It wasn't until she reported "hearing" a loud bang that we began to get some clarity. The bang, it turned out, was the dreadful memory of the sound of a car hitting and killing her best friend, an event that she had witnessed decades past. Her "inner wisdom" was telling her something very similar was happening to me. And it was.
We live in an extremely left-brained culture. By this I mean we value words, logic, reasoning and socially conditioned values. We more often make choices based on "shoulds," "oughts," the evaluations of others and negative judgments. We don't let the gyroscope do its work.
We also live in a culture brimful of distraction. To "hear" your inner voice you have to get quiet, you have to learn to cultivate and tolerate silence. The blackberry, iphone, NPR, your lovely ipad, gmail, twitter and facebook all have to go away for a little while every day. Processing experience comes more naturally when you are walking in the woods, taking rhythmic breaths in the pool, doing yoga without the radio on (my personal downfall).
Taking note of our dreams, by keeping a log of them and sitting with them for at least a few minutes every day, increases clarity. There very well may be meaningful cues that are coming through our dreams that can be guiding us. A patient reported that as she was sifting through old journals, she found notes of a dream that almost exactly predicted the location and manner of detection of a malignancy in her breast -- a malignancy that would be discovered many years later.
Meditating on a regular basis also increases the accessibility to cues, often within the body, that are signaling us as to which moves are prudent and which imprudent.
Sometimes I have the experience of feeling upset without really knowing why. I know my nervous system is buzzing, my body is sending signals of distress, but I haven't a clue as to what this is about. I have to get quiet to have any chance of getting a handle on what is really going on. More than likely, sitting quietly and patiently (for it may take awhile) with the question of what it is that is upsetting me, what is calling for my attention, will yield some clarity. The upset doesn't disappear, but its power does diminish and I am less likely to be reactive to it in a way that will neither benefit me nor those around me.
Cultivating this inner voice yields great benefits. I think we all instinctively know this. I wonder what keeps us from actively listening.
]]>Consult Your Inner Wisdom: It Has All the Answerstag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9313742011-08-20T11:17:00-04:002011-10-20T05:12:02-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
The idea is simple: At bottom, no matter how fractured our identity, or sense of self, there is within us a wholeness and a wisdom that we can consult as a sort of inner gyroscope. The theory goes that there is a unity within, and if we can gain access we can find a treasure trove of wise guidance.
I have worked with individuals who were highly "fractured" due to a severe trauma history, as well as more intact individuals. The technique worked well with all kinds of people, but I found that individuals with these fractures had an easier time accessing their "inner wisdom."
The technique involves a simple visualization. One woman with whom I was working was diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder, formerly known as Multiple Personality Disorder. This means, simply, that her identity is complex and multiple: She has very distinct and separate identities within a seemingly stable "self." Her appearance in the outside world is quite ordinary. It is mostly only within the consultation room that one can see clearly the multiple identities.
Each "part" of this individual has a discrete and often contradictory point of view on any matter you could imagine: What to buy at the supermarket, junk food or organic kale for instance. Or if on any given day, I, her therapist, am perceived as benign or as a threat. So checking across parts as to what the inner wisdom might suggest on any given topic is relevant to our enterprise.
What surprised me was that when we went through the inner wisdom, I got the same answer to the question of the day: no contradictions, no wildly fluctuating points of view, no evasions.
With this particular client I was often uncertain as to how to go forward in any given session, which part to address, how much to push for the traumatic memories that were just outside of her awareness. They could either liberate her from painful symptoms and/or de-stabilize her. Actually I was almost always struggling with these choices.
The inner wisdom always directed me to the traumatic material: Go for it, it seemed to say. Don't pay so much attention to the complaining about the pain that this causes. And the inner wisdom was right. After a period of turmoil, which was always difficult to weather, my patient was more solidly grounded, more mature and eventually more integrated.
Now this is not magic, if the client was in retreat, warding me off, defending herself from incursions, I might get nothing. But this was relatively rare.
I describe the technique so that you can try it yourself. It is probably better in the beginning to have some one read you the directions rather than just thinking it through.
Sit in a quiet place, close your eyes and visualize a corridor. This is a safe place. Off the corridor are doors. The door on the left is labeled "hall of inner wisdom." Open the door into a room that resembles a small movie theatre. The seats are comfortable. Sit down and see that at your finger tips is a keyboard. Type in the question that you are addressing: "Why does my hip hurt so much today? Or what should I do about a troublesome relationship? Should I change doctors?" Look up at the screen in front of you and there will be an answer.
Here you may see pictures or writing. You may just get thoughts or images popping into your head -- memories, strong feelings. If nothing comes, just sit quietly for awhile and see what happens. It usually takes a little bit of time.
I have tried this myself, going through the same steps of visualization. It feels a little like meditation, but with a very specific goal. Sometimes I get an answer. Not as frequently as my patient, alas. Often the answer surprises me. That's what makes me think that this really is coming from a source quite different than my logical, linear and deliberative mind.
What I think is going on here is that with the right tools, and probably a bit of practice, one can have access to a part of the mind that is less rigid, less defensive, more intuitive and more astute than the reasoning mind. I find it exciting and re-assuring that there is a guidance within with which we can make contact.
There is a lot of data that the mind takes in that is not necessarily available to the conscious mind. But it is there. We just need to be creative and we can have access to it. ]]>Why Some People Go Crazy When Their Children Get Marriedtag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.9016362011-07-18T12:07:11-04:002011-09-17T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
Much to my amazement, my article was accepted. I look back on what I wrote and I have no idea how I knew back then, what I seemed to have known. Maybe it was channeled.
I was puzzling over a little noted developmental stage of adult life: "marrying off children." Obviously my children were far from marriageable age, but I did have a front seat on my sister-in-law losing her mind as her son was planning a wedding with his fiancé. And a good friend was in mourning when her son became engaged to a lovely, completely appropriate young woman, her only flaw being that she was not Jewish.
A client of mine became unaccountably depressed when her daughter became engaged after many years of living with her boyfriend, a young man who both she and her husband admired and felt close to. It was in trying to unpack this latter situation, which was after all my job, that I gained some insight into the red thread that ran through all these situations.
My client was in a profession wherein she kept thumping her head (hard) against the glass ceiling, which back in the 80's was both thick and bumpy, particularly in her professional group. She could rise to only an "associate" position in her chosen and beloved field. She vacillated between rage at those in a position of power and feelings of inadequacy as she identified with the devaluation that was inherent in the failed attempts to advance in her field.
What became evident after several sessions of work on this issue was that her ambitions had been (somewhat unconsciously) shifted onto her eldest daughter, the one now engaged. My client had four children, but it was onto this particular daughter that she had placed her hopes for soaring achievement. Her daughter was very bright, ambitious, and in a profession where her talents could be appreciated. Her parents had been able to provide her with the Ivy League education that they had been denied and the network of connections that easily flowed from that advantage would help her throughout her career.
What was hurting my client was the possibility that by marrying this particular man, her
ambitions might come to naught. The prospective groom intended to live with his bride outside of the country, far from the network of connections, and in a culture where a woman's ambition was unlikely to blossom. This did not worry the bride, she thought she could overcome those obstacles. But it both worried and saddened my client, for baring so many bruises from her own career made her exquisitely sensitive to the possibility, she thought probability, that her own narcissistic agenda was threatened.
The interesting thing about this agenda was that it was mostly outside her awareness. She knew she had tremendous pride in her daughter and hoped for her future happiness and success as she did for all of her children, sons and daughters. What was outside awareness was how invested she was in this particular daughter succeeding where she felt she had failed.
I call this her "narcissistic agenda," but I do not mean to imply by this that my client was selfish, self involved or not loving or concerned for her daughter. Just that her own identity, her "self" needs you might call them, were very tied in to the imagined future of this daughter.
Narcissism is part of the package of parenthood. It comes with the layette.
First, a short exposition on "narcissism." Narcissism, self-love, is really key to human survival and healthy development. It morphs over time, as we grow, from believing ourselves to be the center of the world as young children, to something maybe slightly less over-weaning, like being confident of our abilities, and having the instinct for self preservation. Having a good relationship with our narcissism helps one navigate adult life.
I know a five year old who confides to me that he is "super-good" at soccer, running off to kick the ball to kingdom come. He thinks he's great, and this makes him happy, happy.
Over time he will probably come to evaluate his soccer skills in a more modest and balanced way.
Becoming a parent often gives us another stab at satisfying these wishes to be "super-good," for we do become the center of our young children's universe and for a substantial period of time, we get to vicariously enjoy their triumphs, their achievements, their incredibly rapid development. The besotted-ness that is the norm for young parents absolutely in love with their offspring, could be viewed as a very benign form of narcissism, the child as an extension of self.
This is mostly good. It facilitates the kind of adoration that young children need to grow. It is fertilizer, sunshine, and water.
That's the good stuff.
The bad stuff comes in when they are just themselves, not us, not an extension of us. Inevitably they will frustrate our expectations, the ones we are aware of and the ones outside of our awareness. It is inevitable. I repeat, this deflation of our narcissistic agenda is inevitable. This happens in small ways, they don't make the team whether its softball or the debating team, and later it will happen in larger ways: their career choices, their choice of a mate, where they choose to live, how they choose to live.
So, "marrying off children" brings with it a host of challenges. We can imagine the shape of the future for our children, they are making a choice that is fraught with consequence, where they will live, how likely they will be culturally or religiously like us, who will be in our extended family in the future, even what our grandchildren will look like (perhaps), or even if there will be grandchildren. It is a significant challenge to that narcissistic agenda, the one we may not even know about.
This is a moment in which we may feel enormous loss, depression, deflation. We are challenged on so many fronts, but a significant one involves having to face something of which we may not have been aware: the secret plan we never knew we had for these later chapters in our life.
Plans need to be revised, we may need to re-balance, re-write that agenda.
We may need to pause and acknowledge the upheaval and pain that this is all causing us, and, just for a bit, be kinder to ourselves and trust that in time we will re-write our agenda.
My sister-in-law found her mind, and even though she has not come to love the daughter-in-law she came to accept her and even welcome her. My sister-in-law is resilient.
The friend who needed to mourn the Jewish daughter-in-law who would not be, has a wonderful relationship with her daughter in law, decades after the engagement. They have become close friends over the years.
And my client, who I had the good luck to see again many years after the incident described above, lived to see that her daughter was right: she flourished in her career despite the transplanting, although the transplanting itself did become problematic over time.
Like all developmental stages: "marrying off children" is challenging, painful, and in the end, an opportunity for growth.
]]>Parenting: Where Do 'Bad' Feelings Come From?tag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8718382011-06-20T18:46:00-04:002011-08-20T05:12:01-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/an interesting post on "Motherlode," a popular parenting blog in The New York Times.
Rebecca Abrams, a novelist, writes about having "fallen out of love" with her firstborn after the arrival of her infant son. This was a courageous and frank confession of not-so-nice feelings toward her eldest. The comments on "Motherlode" were numerous, and generous. Most commenters applauded the frankness of Ms. Abrams and openly owned their own negative impulses toward their children. The anonymity of the blogosphere helps promote this kind of openness and acceptance. When we have no cover, it's often harder to own the dark side.
Reviewing these comments, I thought about what I would do as a therapist with mothers (more likely than fathers) who whispered their horror and shame in my office.
After an attempt to "normalize" the feelings, I would push on and want to know more. I, and most other therapists, would get very interested in the wellsprings of these feelings: where does this all come from? Where were you in the birth order? Do you know how your mother fared after giving birth to your sibling(s)? Or to you? Was she ill, either mentally or physically? What was going on in the family around that time? What do you know about the early relationship with your siblings, younger and older?
Creating a family of one's own inevitably invites "reenactments." Not all memories are conscious. We stumble somewhat blindly through unconscious reenactments from our own early dramas, particularly at key points in adult life. And becoming a parent, either the first or subsequent times, and raising children, can be powerful triggers for such dramas. The more we understand the text and subtext of our stories, the more empowered we will be as parents.
A friend of mine spoke frankly to me about flashbacks, horrifying flashbacks, of physical abuse from her own childhood. These pictures came unbidden when her first child was born. She had no impulse to harm the baby, but she became very afraid in caring for her firstborn. Her confidence in her ability to love was undermined. She was ashamed and frightened.
Just talking with me and seeing that I was not freaking out with her about this phenomenon seemed to help at the time. Having worked with trauma for years, I was familiar with the phenomenon she was describing, and it seemed quite understandable in the context of what she had experienced at the hand of her own parents as a child.
You don't have to be traumatized, however, to experience reenactment. Everyone has wounded places. It's just that parenting is more likely to kick the door in on those places. What was "then" is "now" again.
Having a chance to explore all of that creates a context for the present moment. And seeing the larger picture, the context for our feelings, can facilitate compassion with ourselves. Context and compassion both are key to handling all of this. It mitigates the guilt, freeing us to be creative in solving the present dilemma.
In the case of my friend, she decided to go back into therapy to help her process the old wounds. The risk of reexperiencing the past without awareness motivated my friend. We are all more or less at risk of moving through our child's infancy and early childhood in a trance, one induced by our own revived pain.
One never knows what is going to trigger the flashback or the reenactment. One can sail through the early days and years of our children's childhood and then hit a wall when they go to school, when they hit adolescence, when they go to college and leave us, when they fail to leave home at what we deem the appropriate time, when they declare a sexual orientation with which we are not comfortable, or when they act up in a surprising and distressing way. If it's not happening now, it probably will after a while.
When in trouble, think "context."]]>The Healing Power of a Personal Narrativetag:www.huffingtonpost.com,2011:/theblog//3.8622852011-05-16T06:00:00-04:002011-07-16T05:12:02-04:00May Benatar, Ph.D., L.C.S.W.http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/
This may seem like a curious task given that we all know, or should know, the story of our lives. We've been imagining the movie to be made from that story forever, right?
Well, that may be true of some of us, but a surprising number of people actually don't have a coherent story, something that hangs together, makes sense and has some internal consistency to it. The story may have large, important chunks missing. Or the narrative is fragmented and chaotic. Sometimes the story is there, but it is self-condemnatory and unfair.
A woman who was raped at the age of 15 has told herself forever that she consented to sex with a man much older than she, someone she barely knew. She thought of herself as a slut. All the adults in her family would agree (if they knew the story): a 15-year-old is a grown-up and responsible for her actions.
I had her look up the definition of "statutory rape."
It took years for her to empathize with her frightened and confused 15-year-old self, and for her to restructure the story to reflect her naïveté, her fear, her isolation and her vulnerability at the time.
Our stories may not be our own; we may have adopted the stories of our parents, grandparents, siblings or some other authority figure rather than developing an account of our own experience as we felt and perceived it.
To construct a story of our lives is to make meaning of it. To compose memory, emotion and internal experience as well as autobiographical facts into a story helps us become who we are. Interestingly storytelling is taught in school very early, in preschool and kindergarten. A preschool teacher noted that children's stories often become autobiographical quite spontaneously. The children include details of family life without prompting.
Storytelling is an important part of self-development. The narration that has gone awry can be addressed and realigned in psychotherapy.
There is compelling research evidence that the coherence of a primary caregiver's autobiographical, relational story is a key component in parenting. There is good reason to believe that the quality of children's relational lives, as well as their sense of security in the world, will be positively affected by how their parents have come to understand and narrate their own relational history. (See the work of Robert Karen and Daniel Siegel.)
What researchers found was that a strong predictor of stable, secure attachment in babies was the primary ability to recount a coherent story of their own lives. That story doesn't need to be historically accurate. It does not need to be positive. It is not necessary to have had a happy childhood. All that is necessary is being able to tell both yourself and an interviewer a story that hangs together, that makes sense.
This is how coherence is described by attachment theory researcher Mary Main (paraphrased by Arieta Slade):
[A] coherent interview is both believable and true to the listener; in a coherent interview, the events and affects intrinsic to early relationships are conveyed without distortion, contradiction or derailment of discourse. The subject collaborates with the interviewer, clarifying his or her meaning, and working to make sure he or she is understood. Such a subject is thinking as the interview proceeds, and is aware of thinking.
The research behind this assertion comes from the attachment literature in which adult caregivers' "attachment status" is evaluated as a measure of the quality, stability and security of the adults' relationship bonds. This in turn was correlated with the attachment status of their offspring.
Given the robustness of this research finding, frankly, I don't understand why everyone who wants to be a parent or is a parent doesn't run to their nearest therapist. It would seem to be the best argument for undertaking the admittedly arduous and expensive (and sometimes painful) process of psychotherapy.
So many of us have accepted, wholesale, someone else's version of our lives. If you have been told forever that your childhood was idyllic, you might be tempted to go along and not validate some of your own memories, or even your weak suspicions that things were not always perfect. If you were always told that you were an overly sensitive child, you might buy this wholesale. Never mind your own dim sense that people were actually pretty mean to you.
People in therapy will often be concerned that they are blaming others for their problems, and this seems unfair. Their empathy for their parents and siblings will make it difficult to empathize with their own younger selves. Empathy for others, those adults who did the best for us growing up, is a positive thing. But not if it's prioritized over empathy for the self.
It is truly amazing how much fog, depression, confusion and anxiety begins to lift when the story one narrates starts to be one's own. It needn't be a pretty story or even a wholly accurate story -- just one's own.
A college freshman grew up "knowing" that he was just like his father, a depressed, somewhat ineffectual man who had problems functioning at work and at home. The father was bedeviled by chronic procrastination and low energy and a robust depression. As a result, the job he held did not reflect his true talents. The family struggled financially.
The young man was brought to therapy for some of the same issues. Despite a very high IQ, he was barely passing his classes at school. He had trouble getting his work in on time and was virtually paralyzed when he had a writing assignment. He saw himself as depressed, learning-disabled, and an all-around loser. His "diagnosis" was confirmed by mental health professionals, who put him on antidepressant medication, as well as medication for ADHD.
An important chapter in our work together was getting him to readdress the story of the self that he had constructed, the story that the apple lay right next to the parental tree.
Psychological testing ruled out the possibility that he might have ADHD or any learning problems at all. He suffered from self-esteem issues but was not seriously depressed. Perhaps he was not the "loser" that he had told himself he was?
With a lot of support and constant readdressing of his basic assumptions about himself, this young man was able to construct a narrative that had more complexity, nuance and coherence than the family story that he had been sold and had bought.
He went on to finish college with good grades and an increasingly robust sense of self.
The examples of the rape victim and the young man who saw himself as a loser illustrate that creating an authentic and coherent narrative of self is an important part of the complex enterprise of psychotherapy -- and one that pays great dividends an in unfolding life story.]]>