On Losing a Parent

Losing a parent is hard at any age. For most people, our parents are among the few people we’ve known all our lives. Each parent provides half our DNA, naturally, and the good ones stick around after making their genetic contribution to provide loving instruction and point us in the right direction for productive, fulfilling, even joy-filled lives.

Since my father died of heart failure at age 61 last month, one of the nicest comments I received was, “He must have been a great dad, because he raised a great son.” I was fortunate: my dad was a loving father who taught me a lot about how to live my life. Many memories have come flooding back since my dad passed away. Fortunately, these memories are mostly positive and I can see how his influence shapes how I parent my children. When you lose a parent, you may pause to reflect on how you might leave the world a better place for those you love the most.

Normally in this blog I try to offer practical suggestions that might help readers through various issues, the ultimate goal being to promote more awareness of how our own choices affect our psychological, emotional, and spiritual well-being. There are choices to make with grief, also. Most importantly, choose to experience grief rather than denying your feelings in hopes they’ll just go away. Choose to spend time remembering your loved one; embrace the memories you treasure and if you have regrets or hard feelings, make the choice to come to peace with the memories that bring pain. Seek the help of a counseling professional if you find this is too difficult to do on your own.

Our parents bring us into the world, and when they leave the world a piece of us no doubt goes with them. Memories and love remain, and the legacy of a positive parent lives on, in us and through us and the choices that define our lives.

Your Choices, Your Happiness

My wife brought home an interesting movie out of the RedBox a few weeks back I’m still thinking about. “Small Apartments” is an odd film about a very odd young man named Franklin who accidentally kills his landlord. Although the point of this blog is not to review the movie, the best part of the film is, without a doubt, the end. That's when Franklin hears the following message:

“It’s all in your mind. Every moment of your life is what you make it. Pain. Love. Fear. Happiness. You choose to feel each of them. So choose to be happy, Franklin. Choose to be happy! ‘Cause happiness is a state of mind.”

The psychology espoused in “Small Apartments” may seem counterintuitive. Sure, any self-help book will tell you that happiness comes down to choices, but what about the converse? If we choose happiness, we must also choose unhappiness. This was the message of renown psychiatrist William Glasser, the father of an approach to counseling called Reality Therapy, who died last month (August 2013) at the age of 88. In his 1998 book “Choice Theory,” Glasser wrote: “We choose everything we do, including the misery we feel.” So why would people pick suffering over happiness when both are mere matters of choice?

According to Glasser’s theory, people are driven to fulfill five basic needs for survival, love/belonging, power, freedom, and fun. When unable to successfully meet a psychological need, unhappiness may result...but unhappiness doesn’t just happen. The choice to express discontent through symptoms of depression, anxiety, or other “disorders” is our best effort (at least at the time) to regain the sense of control that may be missing from our lives. Humans are, according to Glasser, inherently social and creative beings; when our needs are unmet the creative system of the mind goes to work to resolve the resulting frustration. We then choose to think, feel, and behave in ways that let others know we’re struggling and in need of help and support (we might also choose misery to restrain our anger or as means of avoidance—more on these aspects in future posts).

Of course, we usually don’t realize we are responsible for our unhappiness while we’re experiencing it. As Glasser wrote, “When we depress, we believe we are the victims of a feeling over which we have no control.” In his work, Dr. Glasser used education, not medication, to help people overcome their problems by teaching them to make better choices to satisfy their needs. Critics have argued Glasser’s theory was overly simplistic, even naïve…after all, the psychiatric establishment views mental illnesses as diseases of the brain which require strong psychoactive medications to treat. But to Glasser, the “mental illness model” reinforces the concept of patients as victims and undermines the foundation of the “mental health model”: the ability live a happier life by learning, as Franklin in “Small Apartments” learned, to make more effective choices.

Aggression & The Absence of Empathy

Think back for a moment over the sad list of school shootings and terrorist incidents on U.S soil, including last week’s bombing of the Boston Marathon. Notice anything about the perpetrators of these tragedies? The X-Y chromosome combination is one key. In virtually all cultures across the globe, men are more violent than women. In 2005, 90% of U.S. murderers were male. In school shootings across the nation and terrorist events from 9/11 to the marathon, all the attackers have been men (or, in some cases, boys).

Testosterone certainly does not excuse the sometimes lethal behavior of physically aggressive males, but it certainly helps explain it. Animal research has indicated strong correlations exist between higher testosterone levels and more aggression. This relationship also holds true in research using human participants, although the correlations are generally weaker and it is unclear if testosterone causes aggressive behavior—some have speculated that perhaps aggressive acts trigger the release of more testosterone.

Nor can researchers ignore the effects culture might play in shaping the aggressive behavior of men. Albert Bandura’s social learning theory holds that behavior is learned from observing how others act. In short, men—and women—learn to be aggressive from watching others’ aggression; yet many men are aggressive while (thankfully) relatively few are homicidal maniacs.

Although psychological science is beginning to understand what makes people act aggressively, there is much still to learn about what might contribute to the blatant lack of empathy demonstrated by school shooters, terrorists, and others who show utter disregard for the lives of their victims and the victims’ survivors. The absence of empathy is another obvious commonality among all of the recent massacres, and it should be the goal of psychologists to better understand how to reverse this frightening trend.

Though tragedy is often born when high levels of aggression meet low levels of empathy, the compassionate response that follows is good news for humankind: as a culture, we are outraged and sickened by these despicable acts. We see acts of love and kindness in the face of adversity, we see survivors mourn their dead, and we see the nation rally together once again, if only fleetingly. We wouldn’t have it any other way. “We are all born for love,” wrote British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli, “It is the principle of existence, and its only end.”

Mental Health Monday - Mindfulness Matters

It’s important to “stay in the moment,” but the demands of life and worries about the future can make it difficult to keep focused on the here and now. One effective way you can train your mind to “be present” is through the use of mindfulness, which involves paying attention in a particular way… on purpose, in the present moment, and without judgment.

Mindfulness is generally considered a state of awareness in which one’s attention is focused on the here and now, but meditating in this manner requires concerted effort and practice. Kabat-Zinn (1990) provided instructions for the practice of one popular form of mindfulness known as sitting meditation. Begin by finding a place and scheduling a time to engage in sitting in which you are unlikely to be interrupted. A chair can be used or you might choose to sit on the floor with your head, neck, and back straight. Kabat-Zinn (1990) noted this posture has the dual purpose of allowing one’s “breath to flow most easily. It is also the physical counterpart of the inner attitudes of self-reliance, self-acceptance, and alert attention” (p. 61). After assuming the position, begin to focus on your breathing, attending to and fully feeling the inhalation and exhalation of each breath. Do this for as long as you can, and try to work your way up to a longer  duration by practicing mindfulness frequently.

Recognize that it may take you some time to get the hang of mindfulness. In the words of Kabat-Zinn (1990, p. 62), sitting meditation “is simple but it is not easy.” Being still for any duration of time can pose challenges for many people accustomed to hurriedly responding to the demands of life, and keeping one’s thoughts focused on the moment can be next to impossible for someone new to sitting meditation. The answer to these problems, according to Kabat-Zinn (1990), is to just let them be. Simply note—without judgment—the urge to get up and do something different or the arbitrary thoughts that pass in and out of your stream of consciousness. When these inevitable distractions do occur, Kabat-Zinn (1990) recommended observing the impulse or thoughts at face-value and then gently returning attention back to your breath, focusing on the rising and falling of the abdomen.  

Empirical evidence strongly supports that mindfulness interventions are effective in treating psychological problems including depression, stress, and anxiety. Of course, mindfulness may not be for everyone, but those who enjoy the practice of quieting and centering the mind will likely find it a worthwhile endeavor. Although it is called “mindfulness,” it is as much about the heart and soul as it is the mind.

Reference:

Kabat-Zinn, J. (1990). Full catastrophe living: Using the wisdom of your body and mind to face stress, pain, and illness. New York, NY: Delta.

Mental Health Monday - Great Expectations

What kind of day did you expect to have when you woke up this morning? Good, bad, or indifferent—check back at the end of the day and see if your day surpassed, met, or failed to meet your expectations. Better yet, think back to last week and try to remember if how you thought your days were going to go actually predicted how your days went. For most people, most days are a function of the expectancy effect.

Clinical trials of medication utilize double-blind research methodology (i.e. neither researcher nor subject knows whether the pill being administered is real or placebo) because the effects of expectation are so powerful. That is to say, someone can show significant improvement on a sugar pill simply because he or she believes the pill will work. Or consider the example from the Norman Cousins book “The Healing Heart” about a cardiac patient whose heart was failing and reportedly beyond repair. The patient did not know of this prognosis and overheard his doctor refer to the “wholesome gallop” of his heart. The patient was unaware this phrase meant that his heart was failing; instead he assumed the doctor was impressed by his recovery. The story goes that the patient relayed to the doctor several months into his recovery that his condition began to improve after overhearing the “wholesome gallop” comment. From that point forward he thought we would feel better, so he did.

The expectancy effect is closely tied to the self-fulfilling prophecy: if you tell yourself you will fail enough times, your predictions, most likely, will come true. Fortunately, such prophecies can also be positive…but here’s the catch: for the effect to work, you should focus your expectations on things within your control. Sorry, you can expect to win the lottery all you want, but your expectations aren’t going to improve your odds. You can also expect to lose weight or ace an exam, but your expectations will be meaningless unless they are accompanied by the necessary actions to make what you expect to happen actually happen.

Go ahead and try it. You’ll find that great outcomes begin with great expectations.

Mental Health Monday - Tune In to Your Kids' Feelings

Emotions are the heart of the human experience. Day in and day out, our feelings wash over us naturally, like waves on a beach. What does not come as naturally for many people is how to manage uncomfortable emotions like sadness, frustration, and anger. Childhood is primetime for learning to handle these feelings appropriately, and tuning in to kids’ emotions is one of a parent’s most important jobs.

As children grow and their vocabularies expand, they gain the ability to speak about their feelings and the feelings of others, but they need parents’ help to manage emotions. Experts have distinguished between emotion-coaching and emotion-dismissing parents. An emotion-coaching parent monitors a child’s feelings, helps the child label his or her feelings, and sees negative emotions as opportunities for teaching children by coaching them how to deal effectively with strong feelings.

In contrast, emotion-dismissing parents view their role as to deny, ignore, or change negative emotions. It’s hard to see our children upset and hurting, and many parents jump to helping kids feel better as soon as possible. However, an emotion-coaching mom or dad recognizes the value in helping their child process the feeling as they console—for example, “I see you’re sad your ice cream fell to the floor; that would make me sad, too” or “I can tell you’re mad your brother took your toy. Let’s ask him to give it back.”

Helping kids tune into their feelings and the feelings of others is an incredibly important part of parenting, the result of which could be a generation that grows up with strong emotional intelligence and appreciation for the power of feelings.

Matrimonial Blues

My husband and I argue…A LOT. I’ve suggested we see a marriage counselor but he refuses to go. What should I do??

I begin marriage counseling sessions by asking which partner called to schedule the session, although it’s usually apparent: in many cases, the husband sits quietly, arms across his chest, sometimes scowling about having to spend money to talk about personal problems. To be fair, counseling can be hard work. Talking about what’s making the marriage suffer is sometimes painful, and partners may feel that the therapist is on their spouse’s side (in some situations, therapists do take sides, but, by-and-large, good marriage counselors are on the side of a healthy relationship, not one partner over another).

You could tell your husband how important it is that he attends counseling with you. Let him know that this is about fixing your marriage, not him; it’s about what you both can do to improve the relationship. When couples are unhappy, arguing more often than not, and thinking about divorce, very rarely is one person entirely to blame. To be honest, a failing relationship isn’t necessarily a 50-50 divide, either. Sometimes one person has contributed more dysfunction than the other, but the goal is to fix the marriage by taking responsibility—not by assigning blame.

After you’ve expressed to your husband that you would like to go to a marriage counselor so you can both work on bettering your relationship, suggest that you consider the counseling a trial and after three sessions you will evaluate its usefulness. At that time you can decide together whether to proceed with counseling, try a different counselor, or discontinue therapy altogether (but, a word to the wise: if you can’t reach an agreement about the usefulness of counseling without arguing, you should probably continue counseling!). If your husband still refuses to attend even once, you could begin individual counseling. Although it would be best for you both to see a marriage counselor, you personally will still likely benefit from discussing your feelings about the relationship with a licensed professional.