Can You Think Positive and Have All Your Feelings?

Thinking Positive

Last week a friend of mine who is a great, positive, upbeat guy, came down with the flu.  When ran into him last week I gave him a hug. His cheek burned into mine. I said, “Charlie, you have a 102 fever!” He said “Naw. I’m fine.”
This, of course, is the way we are taught to think positively about illness and not acknowledge that we are ill because doing so will make it reality.  This is how anything with the potential to be viewed as “negative” is dealt with in the world of positive thinking. Ignore it and it will go away.  Focus only on the positive things that you want and that is what you will get.

I’m a “positive thinker” from way back

Understand, I am a positive thinker from way back, but there are some obvious flaws in this type of thinking.  I believe that we should always focus on the positive and use affirmations and picture what we want.  This keeps us focused on our goals and helps us realize them.

Rescuing ourselves

But what I have come to recognize is that the practice of ignoring the problems that occur is a way of “rescuing” ourselves from the consequences of our choices. It helps us to keep ourselves from feeling the pain of what has occurred in our past and from feeling the results of our choices.  It also prevents us from learning from them and healing them.
This is what we do when we pretend that hurtful things don’t exist or choose not to “dwell on the past”.  These are words and practices that help us avoid dealing with the feelings about what has happened.
A lot of people rush to the practices of positive thinking because it will help them continue to avoid feeling pain.  It is painful, sometimes, to face the consequences of our choices and to process through the pain of what has happened to us in the past. Our old wounds don’t go away simply because we don’t focus on them, no matter how much we desire it.

The consequences of ignoring wounds

Ignoring our emotional wounds is like continuing to walk on a broken leg, insisting that it’s not broken.  Actually, it’s even worse than that, because emotional wounds fester in subversive ways that prevent us from functioning in our lives the way we want. Emotional wounds that are not addressed result in corrupted thinking and distorted emotional responses to others and ourselves. They end up sabotaging our every intentional positive thought.  Our unconscious feelings and thoughts always override our conscious ones.

Treasure hunting

Inside every painful emotional wound lies a treasure. Each wound holds a piece of our personal power and our preciousness.  Without being willing to open up those wounds and explore their meanings and discover their gifts, we are forced to be a Victim.
Any time someone is wounded they are a “victim” (as in the terms “shot victim”, “bite victim”, “rape victim”, etc.) until these wounds are healed.  Carrying around unhealed wounds keeps us stuck in being a Victim.
Ignoring them using “positive thinking” as an excuse to avoid them is using “positive thinking” to become your own Rescuer.

Uncover the pockets of power

Making the choice to work through the wounds allows you to uncover the pockets of power buried there.  This works in exactly the same way as the methods proposed by Robert Scheinfeld in “Busting Loose from the Money Game” (available in the Unity Book Store).  In this book, Scheinfeld encourages readers to expand upon feelings as they come up and to deeply explore what the feelings are all about before letting them go. In doing this, he claims, you unlock the power to have everything you want in your life.
Unlock your full potential by allowing yourself to have full access to all the power hidden inside your wounds.  Change everything by no longer hiding from the power you hold back by being your own Rescuer.

What do you think, am I crazy?

Can feelings really hold the power to your unconscious will? Can you really discover the secret to having everything you want by simply allowing yourself to process through your unprocessed wounds? Or have I gone off my rocker? Tell me what you think. Comment below!

Don't Hold Back Your Anger!

New Study on Anger
CNN ran a story yesterday about the results of a recently published study on how much longer we live when we actually speak our true feelings: "The study published in January followed 192 married couples in Michigan from 1971 to 1988 and found that those who kept their anger in when unfairly attacked did not live as long as those who expressed their anger, says lead study author Ernest Harburg, Ph.D., an emeritus research scientist at the University of Michigan's School of Public Health and psychology department.” Validation
Wow I feel validated!  I’ve been preaching for years the importance of expressing your anger and not shying from conflict. Now research validates its importance to the quality of our lives.  Holding back our feelings has dire consequences, it seems.
Of course, that doesn’t mean we have license to attack each other, it just means we are encouraged to speak our angry feelings out loud.
Confusion between anger and violence
Those of us who grew up in homes where angry outbursts accompanied hitting, verbal abuse, throwing things – or worse – are often frightened of anyone expressing their anger, no matter how benignly they do it.  Some of us are down right anger phobic, both of our own and others.
In my family growing up, the only people allowed to have their anger were the adults.  If one of us kids smarted off or expressed our anger we were punished by being shamed with laughter, sent to our rooms and told we were being “ugly”.  But the adults were allowed to hit us with belts, “green switches”, hairbrushes and their hands and to yell and scream as long and as abusively as they choose.
Of course, I didn’t want to be like that myself, and certainly felt ashamed if I ever found myself provoked to anger.
The result is that we think that any time anyone expresses anger they are being violent.  We then put them in the role of “the bad guy” and think of whoever they dumped their anger out on as “the victim.”
Choosing to be rational
Many people growing up in very refined homes never witnessed anyone expressing anger directly and they internalize it and rationalize it away without ever having a chance to even let it come to conscious awareness.  That doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist!  Just because we renationalize it away doesn’t mean we haven’t felt it, and that it still doesn’t need release.
The physiology of anger
Anger is like any of our emotions, a necessary part of being a human being. We feel anger for a reason, again, like all of our feelings. Anger is there to tell us “Something is wrong. I need to do something about this!”  When we fail to express the need to do something differently, we end up locking this “energy-in-motion” (the definition of emotion) into our bodies.  The energy of the emotion of anger starts out in our root chakra and moves outward and upward through our bodies.  But, if we block the flow of emotion and fight it down using our physiology to stop it (holding our breath, tensing our diaphragm, tightening our shoulders, gritting our teeth) we lock it into place so that it does not get expressed.  Then, the effort of locking in that emotion takes its toll on the body. We experience stomach problems, breathing problems, muscular aches and pains, perhaps fibro-myalgia, some say even cancers can be triggered this way.
What I am NOT saying
I am not saying it’s okay to blast people with unbridled attacks, either.  There was a period of time when people used “I’m just having my feelings!” as an excuse to attack anyone and to dump their feelings off on others. I am NOT advocating this kind of behavior.  What I am advocating is that we all MUST find a way to express our feelings of anger appropriately and consistently if we are to remain healthy and have strong, long lasting relationships.
A paradigm shift
The next time someone appears angry take the time inside to remember 1) this does not mean they are going to hurt someone (necessarily) 2) this person feels something is wrong in their world and may need some help.  The shift that takes place when you begin to view anger in this way can change everything for you.
What do you think?
Are you able to handle it when people express anger? Or do you clam up and try to avoid the situation? Is it best to avoid anger and conflict at all costs? Let me know what you think. Comment below.

Good Girls Acting Badly

Watch out for those girls!

Yesterday CNN ran a story about women’s tendencies to revenge.  Wow, this story certainly validates the statement “Hell hath no fury like a  woman spurned”.  Teri Garr took a hammer to a cheating boyfriends’ windows and wasn’t even arrested.  Catch a guy going that and he’ll spend time in the slammer.
Women throughout history have been considered “the weaker sex” and always considered to be the Victim and rarely thought to be the Perpetrator in any conflict. We like to think of women as nurturing caregivers or helpless victims. We don’t like the view of women as the Perpetrator, so even when we do find them there, we justify their behavior by claiming that (as Teri Garr said) she really was.

Our cultural and biological bias

Our biology and our culture demands that we find someone to blame for anything that occurs and that we put ourselves (and everyone else) into defined roles. This helps our rational mind make stories out of what has happened that we can tell future generations and ourselves. This history making activity is as old as time and we still practice it today when we think of our own lives and the stories we tell ourselves.
In Teri Garr’s story she is the victim, and her cheating boyfriend is the bad guy. But can you imagine his story? “There I was eating my dinner after leaving work and this crazy b**ch starts breaking out my windows with a hammer! Then I called the police and they did nothing! Can you believe it?”

Good guys and bad guys

When we categorize the people in our life stories as being the “bad guy” and “to blame” for what occurs and put ourselves in the Victim position then we can leave the story with a clear conscious that we have done “nothing wrong”.  We have a logical explanation for what has happened and we can view ourselves as blameless in the situation. We are good while the other guy is the bad one. Whatever behavior we choose to take retaliation on the bad guy is acceptable since they are the bad guys.
When we are attacked, when our sense of safety and well being in threatened, we have a right to fight back don’t we? After all, not doing something to fight back would be considered weak wouldn’t it? Isn’t that why we have the death penalty in Texas, to punish the bad guys? Isn’t that why we go to war, to defend ourselves from the “evil doers” of the world? At least that is what our president told us.

Self Protectors

When we find ourselves thrown into this (what I call) Self-Protective role, we end up being perceived as the “bad guy” by the other person don’t we? I’m sure Teri Garr’s boyfriend (now, “ex” of course) thinks of her actions that day as being that of a perpetrator.  He and his property were attacked after all.

Blame drives the game

What blame does is to assign all responsibility for something on to someone in order to meet our survival needs.  We either assign all responsibility for something on to someone else in order to preserve the idea that we are perfect, or at least, not all bad or we accept all the responsibility for something in order to reinforce the idea of our worthlessness.
Blame is all black and white. There is no complex formula that includes partial equations. It’s a simple 1+2=3.  But life, as in math, is seldom, if ever, that simple.

Is there another way?

What if we stepped out of the simple equation and started seeing the complexities that are the realities of our lives and our world? How would that change your perceptions, not only of your own life, but of the world?

The US Rescuer

Throughout our national history the United States has been the worlds Rescuers. We give more per capita than any other nation in the world. We take our wealth around the world and help developing nations in whatever ways we can think of (whether that’s the help the country wants or not) and then we move on to our next project. Yet on September 11^th, 2001 the US became, not a Rescuer, but a Victim.  We then responded by becoming a Self-Protector, fighting against the perceived perpetrators.  Now, of course, the world sees us as the bad guy.

What if we had looked at the equation differently?

What if we had done as I thought Donald Rumsfeld was going to do when he said we needed to look at the circumstances which led to this event? We helped Afghanistan beat the Russian invasion and then left the country broken, and without the means to heal itself.  Charlie Wilson warned the US government that it would leave Afghanistan as a time bomb.  It was a bomb that exploded in New York City on that fateful day.
It really does change everything when you start to look at the fractions in the equation instead of rounding off the numbers. When you do this you get a much clearer picture. What was going on with Teri’s boyfriend that he would “cheat” on her? Did he think she cared more about her career than him? Did he feel his needs didn’t matter to her? When someone “cheats” then there are obviously intimacy issues within both parties.  One person’s acting out on the problem is not good ethics, but they are not to blame for the problem.

What do you think?

Is it easier to think of the world in terms of blacks and whites? Does it make more sense to view people as either the good guy or the bad guy? Tell me what you think. Comment below.

What are YOU Projecting?

The power of projection

John Gottman is the doctor of love, at least love of the conventional sort—he's an internationally known researcher on what makes marriage last and what makes it fall apart. In his work at the University of Washington, he has managed to apply strict scientific rigor to what seems like the most subjective of areas, and he's popularized his findings in a string of best-selling books (The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work is the most recent).

Our search for the perfect person

He writes about the power of projection in this article from Seatle Weekly.  He suggests that our power of projection is so powerful in the early stages of our relationships because we want so desperately to find the perfect person that we will project those wishes on to the object of our desire – whether they have the wished for qualities or not!
This of course sets us up for a disastrous relationship.  We think we are getting something entirely differently than we actually get.  I have had more than one couple enter my office saying “Where is the person I married?”

What changed here?

They, of course, think their partner has changed, when in actuality, their partner has not changed, but rather the awareness of who that partner really is has now come into the complainers consciousness.
Projection can work the other way around, too.  When we carry childhood wounds (and, okay, tell me someone who doesn’t and I’ll tell you somebody’s not being honest) we have learned things about the world that we believe to be true.  These are like the Four Agreements by Don Miquel Ruiz, we learn or accept certain things to be true about the world, then we go about proving them through the process of our lives.

Projections at work

For instance, I have a friend who gets really frustrated with her husband because he insists that she doesn’t “listen to” him.  My friend is an awesome listener.  That’s why she is my best friend, I always feel heard by her.  I suspect this is one of those things being projected on to her by her husband. Of course, it could be that she projects on to him that he is never going to be happy with her.

Our wounding

You see how it works? We have some wound from childhood (my friend’s husband’s family never listened to him) and then we go about projecting this as an undeniable truth in our lives “no one listens to me”. It changes everthing when you can recognize your projections.

How about you?

Do you have something you project on to someone? I know most of my life I have projected that my anger is not acceptable (therefore pretending I don’t have any).  Or is do you feel someone is projecting something on you that is not yours?

Workplace Conflict is Costly!

Zowie, workplace conflict is costly!
Dealing with conflict in the workplace takes up to 60% of human resource managers time, according to an article by Rachel Zupek on Careerbulder.com.   And, the number of incidents of employee violence has been increasing.
Her article encourages a sensible approach to dealing with conflict, she gives a list of well researched, common sense ways to deal with conflict.    Check them out at cnn.com/living

The article really just skimmed the surface of the issue, of course. But if you really want to fully understand what is happening during workplace conflicts, you need to understand how the Cycle of Egocentrism works.

Conflict Resolution
One of her sources, Gus Stieber, national director of sales for Bensinger, DuPont & Associates, a professional services company says; “Avoid retreating to the safety of withdrawal, avoidance or the simplistic view that your co-worker is a "bad person." Zupek goes on to say “These are defense mechanisms that prevent the resolution of conflict.”

The Cycle of Egocentrism

Here, Stieber is talking about the Cycle of Egocentrism.  It’s easy to think we are avoiding this kid of “defense mechanism” but most of the time we do it so automatically we don’t even realize it’s happening.  And avoidance is only one of the ways the Cycle of Egocentrism works.

Getting a full understanding of how the Cycle of Egocentrism works is key to managing workplace conflict, and well, any other kind of conflict.  When we understand how our brain tricks us into believing our survival is at stake in conflicts we can discover new ways to respond.  The Cycle of Egocentrism locks us into believing that there is a good guy, a bad guy and a rescuer in every situation.  This old game helped us manage to survive in our old primitive world, but it no longer serves us so well.  Most of the time we are not in those kinds of dire circumstances, but our brain fools us into thinking we are.  Then we get stuck in certain ways of responding that keep us trapped in conflictual and painful relationships.

Learning how to apply the Cycle of Compassion, the opposite of the Cycle of Egocentrism allows us to have deeper, more meaningful relationships with ourselves and others. It changes everything.

Short on Empathy?

Do you have an Empathy Deficit Disorder?

On Oprah.com there was a great article this week about empathy.  The author of the article (Amanda Robb) reported that her own empathy deficit became obvious to her in her twenties after an incident with a roommate loosing her job.  It seems this roommate had rich parents and, unlike the author, didn’t really have to worry about money.  So when the roommate lost her job the Amanda responded with “"You'll have an amazing story for Jim's party tonight!"

Egocentrism

Amanda, it seems turned to therapy to get help for her problem relationships and began to learn about empathy from her then therapist.  It was not an easy road for her because from childhood she had never experienced empathy from anyone. Her father’s death at age four sent her mother scrambling to provide for Amanda and her siblings, leaving little time for such fluff as emotions.

Moving toward Empathy

But Amanda did learn that to escape the egocentric world she lived in before empathy she had to go through a lot of grief.  She says, “About six months into psychotherapy, I started using what I thought of as my therapist's ‘lines,” instead of saying her automatic egocentric responses.  Still, she had taken the first steps toward empathy: faking it.
“If you want to act more empathetic, you follow certain steps: Instead of telling people what they ought to do, or becoming tyrannically optimistic, you offer sympathy, inquire about feelings, and validate those feelings. You'll be giving comfort to the other person, even if you yourself can't feel what they're going through.” Robb says.

The Wall of Grief

At first this worked to improve her relationships, and she was happy with that until one day, Robb says, “I began feeling something intensely when comforting friends: terror.”  She was for the first time beginning to feel empathy for someone else.  But to feel empathy we first have to walk through what I call “The Wall of Grief” which is first characterized by the terror Robb described. While finding empathy “profoundly uncomfortable” she acknowledges that it is the ‘emotional connective tissue” that keeps us from feeling alone.
The path to compassion for others and for ourselves is to walk through that discomfort and to be brave enough to let ourselves feel the terror, anger and grief that comes with “The Wall of Grief”.

The Rewards

Robb says, “If you have a romantic partner, he or she will someday believe that you are entirely wrong about something, and if you can see the problem from your partner's point of view, you'll be able to get through that conflict without smoldering in the corner or splitting up. If you work with someone you despise (and who despises you back), and you try to understand why that person dislikes you, then you stand a chance of not hating every minute with her at the office. If you live in a world that you would like to see less divided by ethnic, economic, and religious strife, you'll find that attempting to comprehend the needs of your sworn enemies is a prerequisite to any meaningful action you can take.”

The path to Compassion

This is the path to compassion: the painful, rewarding, joy of allowing ourselves to feel connected to others.  It is something we have to learn, it is not something that comes natural to us.  The natural thing is to stay in the “Cycle of Egocentrism” and fighting for our survival against others also fighting for their survival.  The unnatural process of allowing in the feelings the Cycle of Egocentrism keeps us from feeling takes courage and commitment.  The path to experiencing the compassion that is the result of that courage is the Cycle of Compassion: Empathy, Ownership and Respect.
The simple words do not convey the difficulty of the process but can simplify our understanding of path to compassion.  But learning to practice the Cycle of Compassion changes everything.

Comments?

Have you had or do you have EDD?? Do you know someone who suffers from it? What has that been like for you? Let me know what you think. Comment below.

The Struggle to Say What You Want

O Magazine published an article in September about the difficulties women have with saying what they want.  It was a silly, fun article with references to words I don’t believe are really words (like “wanty”) but it hit home.
We have all been bred to keep what we really want to ourselves.  It’s what I would call a “Victim” reaction to having desires because one sure way to never get what you want is to never let anyone know what it is you really do want.  But how many of us men or women, have spent most of our lives trying to guess what others want and how to avoid saying what we want?

Hiding starts early

Case in point my own desire, from an early age, to play the piano.  I guess I never came out and told anyone but I know that any time I got near I played on it.  If the other kids were playing outside, eating ice cream, or any other fun activity - if there was a piano around, I was playing it instead.  So I was amazed when my mother said she never knew I wanted to play.
My own inability to say what I want has shaped my life in many ways. I am not sure how I learned the lesson, but I obviously did.

Emotions make it harder

Now, don’t get me wrong its not that I can never say what I want, because that is not true. I have learned to ask for what I want from waiters, cashiers, and other service people. I can even ask my friends to do things with me. But, if it is something that has some kind of emotional weight, it has not always been easy.
Women get the impression you are pushy if you make it clear what you want and don’t back down at the first sign of dissent.  We get labeled as “bitchy” if we insist on getting what we want.   Of course, men, in similar situations would be considered “strong”.  But I don’t think men are any better, over all than women at asking for what they really want. Emotional things, things that would seem to make them “weak” are strictly forbidden for men to ask.

Divorce and truth telling

It’s no wonder our divorce rate is so high.  Because if we remain in a place of being unable to communicate what we want and need from our partners we are stuck in the helpless, Victim, position with no hope of escape.  Unless of course our partner is astute enough to glean what it is we want from our manipulative behaviors. Of course, hiding our sexual reality has become such a commonplace thing that according to a Lavalife survey even 53% of men fake orgasms (82% of women do).
Rescuers often can figure out what their partners want, but we don’t always get it exactly right. Guess work is like that, sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t.
Taking ownership of our wants and needs is the only hope we have of really getting what we want instead of some close approximation.  Our partner’s may be pretty good, but nobody can always guess right.
Do you know what you want?
Someone commented on the O Magazine article that she had not addressed the whole issue because she hadn’t addressed how you even KNOW what it is you want.  A lot of us are so out of touch with ourselves, our bodies and our emotions that we have no clue what we want.  That makes it even tougher to ask doesn’t it?
Learning to connect with our bodies and emotions is the first step in being able to identify what we want and need.  I love the series Mad Men on AMC.  It portrays the social environment that set us up to never say what we want or know what it is we need.  My favorite characters are the mysterious Dan Draper and his wife Betty.  Dan (not his real name but, that’s the identity he assumed) doesn’t have a clue what he feels and is constantly in search of something that will make him feel something.  Betty, his sweet, picturesque wife is equally clueless because she is not supposed to need or want anything other than the house and home that Dan provides her. Betty reminds me of my own mother during that period, dressing up to look the part, but always a bit out of place.
Isn’t that how we all feel when we deny ourselves awareness of what we want and need? Learning connect with our bodies and emotions and then being courageous enough to speak our truths changes everything.
What are you not saying?
Almost everyone hold things back from their partners.  Do you? What do you not like to say? Do you tell your friends what you do and don’t want? Your family? I’d love to hear. Comment below.

Clueless Men and Unsatisfied Wives

For the past couple of years I’ve been writing articles for Dan and Jennifer of the askdanandjennifer.com website.  Lucky for me they live close by and Mike and I have had dinner with them a couple of times and I now consider them to be friends.  They are a great, generous, and hardworking couple of kids.  I’m proud to know them.  They have an interesting website but – be warned they deal with a lot of sexual material.  I personally think this is good thing because they answer a lot of people’s questions about things that are hard to get good answers about.

The Forum Questions

In the past couple of months I’ve been answering a lot of their forum questions – in fact I’ve been doing more of that then writing articles.  It’s as fascinating thing to do because it gets to the hear of what intimacy means to people.  Of course, sex and intimacy are not the same thing – but to most people they are deeply connected.
So many of us seem to have trouble with intimacy and sex simply because we are stuck in the fear based reactions of the Cycle of Egocentrism.  Our old brain reactivity kicks in and we loose sight of ourselves and our partner.

Not so silly message

I watched a silly movie with my daughter yesterday, “Waitress”.  It had the guy from “Serenity” (Nathan Fillion) in it so my daughter wanted to watch it.  It was not all that well written and had a seriously slow pace, but it was cute. Two things struck me about this movie though. The first is that the waitress’s husband, Earl, (played by Jeremy Sisto) was painted as being a “bad husband” from the beginning of the film.   The waitress, played by Keri Russell, never had one bit of empathy for him.  Now, I’ll concede he was a painfully difficult person; he was somewhat abusive and controlling.  But as the movie progressed it became clear he was also in a lot of pain, and horribly incapable of knowing how to connect with his beautiful, uncommunicative wife.  When the waitress did connect with someone it was with a married man (Nathan Fillion) who was also her OB-GYN.  This relationship contrasted with that of her marriage by showing her new lover as being emotionally caring, and sensitive to her feelings.  During the narration she did she stated that she realized how great it felt to have someone really listen to her like what she felt and thought mattered to them.  Obviously her husband didn’t have that gift.

Clueless men and dissatisfied wives

I bring this movie up because it reminded me so much of some of the questions sent in to the forum on Dan and Jennifer’s website.  Clueless men asking why their wives have no interest in sex anymore and dissatisfied wives seeking out connections with other men because their own husbands don’t know how to connect with them emotionally.

“Bad guys”

Now, I realize how I just framed things makes it look like it’s the guys fault for not being emotionally available.  The truth is that it’s not their fault, and it’s not entirely about them not being able.  Men are frequently raised to hold all sign of emotions inside and are not given a vocabulary with which to express their feelings.  They are not supposed to need any kind of affection or nurturing from anyone past about the age of three.  Then we marry them and suddenly they are expected to know how to give and receive nurturing and to talk about feelings; and if they don’t they are a “bad husband”.

When we put people in categories of “bad” and “good” were are limiting them – and ourselves – as human beings.   And it absolves us of any responsibility for what occurs when we label someone else as the “bad” one.

My “bad guys”

I did this during my first two marriages. I was caught up in seeing how “bad” my husbands were at being husbands.  I believed I was the innocent victim wanting intimacy with men who were incapable of expressing it.  I had no desire for sex with them because I didn’t feel the least bit connected with them.  And that, I believed, was because of them.
What I know now is that they and I came into the marriage with baggage from our pasts. We all do.  And I was no more capable of intimacy than they were.  I had to learn how to be empathetic for them, and for myself, in order to allow myself to experience the intimacy I so desperately wanted. To do that I had to let go of the belief in “good” and “bad” guys. Getting out of what I call the Cycle of Egocentrism changes everything.

Is there a “bad guy” in your life?

Tell me what you think? Comment below.

Enemies: A Love Story

Stay or Go?
That’s the question addressed in the series of short stories about women struggling in a bad relationships.  Each of these stories have different women, different relationship issues, and different outcomes.  What is the red threat that holds these stories together?
I guess O thought it was the fact that these women all struggled to find themselves and to muster the courage to do what was right for them, whether it be addressing problems head on and fixing the relationship or leaving.
Egocentric positions
The interesting thing to me is how much egocentrism existed in each of these articles. Each woman felt they were alone in their marriage, and the decision was up to them.  Each flailed about on their own with the decision instead of recognizing the issue as being about a lack of intimacy that was present in the marriage, not just the man.
My own choices
I remember making similar choices twice before in my life. My first to marriages were stuck in a battle for each of our survival and neither of us fared well in the process.  Growth as an individual is impossible if the marriage is not growing too, but growth of the individual is magnified if growth is happening in the marriage.
Making unilateral decisions every day
The funny thing is that in unhealthy relationships we make unilateral decisions about the marriage every day, sometimes every minute. How do we do that? We do that by becoming reactive to our partner and putting up barriers to hold them away from us emotionally.  Sometimes it’s all we can muster. I get that. I lived that. But if we are to push for something more than just mere survival we have to be more compassionate.
What compassion really means
Being compassionate means that we stop seeing our partner as the enemy, the “bad guy”, the “wrong” one.  It means we accept that all of us are not perfect, including us.  When we do that there is a chance of really experiencing closeness, and perhaps even great sex. It changes everything!
What do you think?
Are there times when you just have to accept that your partner is in the wrong and keep your protective boundaries up? Comment below.

The Case for Lasting True Love

Arthur Aron,  a psychologist at Stony Brook, is said to have reported to the Sunday Times that “Traditional views of romance are that it drops off sharply in the first decade”.  But he goes on to say that for some people (10%) romance remains as acute after decades.

Its for real!

“We are sure its real” Aron says.
Researchers at Stony Brook say they scanned the brains of couples that have been together for more than 20 years and then compared them to the brains of newer lovers. The results: 10% had the same level of chemical reactions when showed photos of their loved ones as those whose romance has just begun.
According to earlier research, romantic love fades after 15 months and is completely gone after 10 years! (according to the NY Times)

The real question

My question is: why is it that for 90% of us “love” fades so fast?
What erodes love so quickly? In my experience of working with couples over the past 20 years, its mainly because the “love” most of us start out with has little to do with the person we are “in love” with!  We have a whole slew of fantasies about what and who this person is that we have found. These fantasies only vaguely resemble the object of our “love”.

The illusion

It is impossible to maintain “love” when the illusion that we have woven is broken down by reality. Now, that does not mean the person we picked is not lovable! It just means that what we thought we got is not what we actually got. Surprise, surprise, the person we picked because of our fantasies of who they are doesn’t usually turn out to be who we made up that they were!
Most of us are so desperate for love that we will pretend to have found it even when it is clearly not there.  Stalkers and “fans” are an extreme example. They have no idea who the object of their affection really is, its all made up in their own heads.
When we e discover our lover is not who we think they are we have let go of the illusion.

Disillusionment

The disillusionment stage is generally the phase in which most marriages start to dissolve. Having illusions about who and what someone is means we didn’t really know them in the first place.
Once the illusion is gone we can begin to discover who they really are and here is the real surprise: just because they are not who we thought they were doesn’t mean we can’t love them!

The good news

A lot of pre-arranged marriages become quality, long lasting love affairs. Why is that? Because once we get right down to it, with the right ingredients of behavior and respect we are all loveable!
The good news is that this means we are not as awful as our disillusioned partner may think either. Being dis-illusioned means no longer being stuck in a fantasy. That is a good thing.  Let the disillusionment help you discover your lover, and your lover discover you. Whoa, I know it’s scary but truth really is better than fiction! And, it changes everything.
Comment
Have you suffered a disillusion of you lover? Have you discovered how amazing the real thing is? Do you agree with me or not? Let me know. Comment below.

Domestic Abuse Myths

Five mistakes we make when we talk about Rihanna and Chris
Brown's relationship. Raina Kelley's article, "Domestic Abuse Myths"  was a powerful piece. She is right is some ways, of course, there is a cycle that happens when abuse is taking place and both parties take part in it.  She is also correct in that no one should ever have to accept physical abuse from another person and the "Injured Party" has to get help. 

It's also interesting to note that while the larger the person is the more damage they can do; there are plenty of cases of women being perpetrators of physical abuse to their spouses as well.  These cases to not result in arrests or taking pity on the injured party since they cannot do as much physical damage. Plus, men tend to get laughed at if they complain about a woman abusing them. But the dynamic of physical abuse happens to both men and women. It's just not "manly" to consider yourself as having been abused by a woman."

The thing is, there are five major mistakes when the media and others talk about what transpired between Chris Brown and Rihanna.


Mistake #1 BlameIts easy to blame the perpetrator of abuse for the incident. Its easy to see them as the bad guy because they, clearly, were the ones that lost control and caused physical injury to the other person. But the reality is, both parties are always a part of the cycle and can and do learn to change from a posture of blame and fault to one of empathy and compassion. 

Mistake #2 Considering yourself a Victim
Both parties feel like Victims. When you consider yourself to be a "Victim" of someone else, and the world at large supports that position, you are powerless to do anything to change what is happening.  You are innocent and have no power in the situation.  That's what defines a victim isn't it?

Several years ago Oprah had a show on domestic violence perpetrators. She went to a facilty where men were being treated and given help for their behaviors.  Oprah could not comprehend how these men could possibly behave as they did.  One man, who had taken a frying pan to his wife's head, helped her understand. He told her that what happened is that he felt so out of control, so powerless in the situation that he felt driven to do what ever he had to do to make the pain and misery stop.  At that moment, Oprah got it.  She said, "Oh, it's just like me and food!". 

Rihanna, like other adults being abused, have the power and responsibility to learn from what is happening and take action to change. Chris Brown has the power and responsibilty to learn and take action to change.   But neither is really a Victim.

Mistake #3 Having No EmpathyWhether you are the person being beaten or the person doing the beating, when abuse occurs, it occurs in the absence of empathy.  Neither party has any understanding or empathy of the other person's pain.  Someone who strikes out in fear and pain by hitting someone else feels terrified and horribly alone. They feel as if the person who is supposed to love them and understand them has become their enemy by hurting them beyond tolerance. Of course, then the person they hit feels exactly the same way. But the person beaten is clearly the victim, right?

Learning to have empathy for the person doing the hitting is the only way to change the pattern.  This is not to say excusing the behavior, but it is to say having empathy for the pain and helping the person change. 

On the same Oprah episode, a woman who was in her second marriage and third abusive relationship spoke up.  She said (roughly), "I began to recognize that something that was going on had to have something to do with me.  This was my third relationship in which I was being hit.  I knew this man loved me, but something I was doing had to have something to do with what was going on. When I began to have empathy for what he was going through and how my behavior was impacting him, things began to change."

Mistake #4 Taking No OwnershipWhen we are in a conflict with someone else, the conflict will escalate out of control if one party refuses to take ownership of their part in the conflict. Ever had a conflict with a business? What makes us irrate is when no one in the company will acknowledge that we have been injured. 

In the past few years, hospitals have begun to implement a policy of telling patients who have been injured by malpractice or neglect that they are sorry this happened. The hospitals have recognized that by accepting responsibility they are much less likely to incur legal action if they accept responsibiity than if they do not. This goes against traditional legal views, but is in fact born out in actual statistics. Things do not escalate if when ownership is accepted.
Mistake #5 Not Respecting When someone goes to the hospital with injuries, like Rihanna, or shows up with blackened eyes we assume they had no responsibilty in what occurred and they are incapable of having protected themselves.  This is remarkably disrepectful of the person.  Obviously Rihanna is substantially smaller than Chris Brown, and in an argument turned physical, he clearly has more physical power.  But that does not mean she was powerless. 

When we, as a culture, decide that someone is powerless, we remove any potential for them to behave in responsible ways for themselves.  The result is that we actually cripple them by encouraing them to see themselves as having no power or responsiibility in their situation.  Like the woman on Oprah, Rihanna has to learn how her behaviors impact the relationship and how she can shift her awareness to change the dynamic between the two of them.  Otherwise if its not Chris Brown the next time, it will be someone else. 

Simple Model Not EasyThis simple model, "The Cycles of the Heart" can transform how we experience conflict and our most intimate relationships. It can literally change everything in how we respond to ourselves and the world. But, while it is simple, it is not easy to do. It requires shifting how we have viewed ourselves and our world. It's no small task.

What Do You Think?Have you been a victim of abuse? Have you perpetrated abuse? Do you think I am dead wrong or right on? Let me know. Comment below.

The Practice of Compassion

The Cycles and Teachers

Today I talked to a group of teachers about how the Cycles can work for them in their classrooms, with their administrators and within their own families. I was touched to tears as I told them of an experience I had with my Third Grade teacher, Agnes Conner who recognized the pain I was in and began helping me see value in myself. She did it incrementally, respectfully, empathetically allowing me to see that there was something in this life for me.
As I talked to them I realized what a hard job they have. Now, understand, I come from a family of teachers and know how hard they work and how little they get financially compensated for the most important job in the world next to parenting (also not financially compensated for).  But today I thought about the task of trying to model the Cycles path for their students and with administrators whom have lost sight of their real task.  One woman talked about how the current head of the Houston school district was hired after having bankrupt Corpus Christie’s school district. This administrator increased his own salary by 9%, she said, and then he told all the teachers in the district not to expect any raises in from 3-5 years.  Next he started building stadiums and new schools and laying off teachers.  Talk about failing to take ownership of the realities of the needs of the district!

Are the Cycles “Christian based?”

But in the middle of her frustration she turned to me and said “This is not Christian based is it?” I had ask why she asked that question. She said it is because at some point in my presentation she got chills and it sank in that the Cycles of the Heart is exactly what Christ taught.  I hugged her and thanked her for seeing the heart of the model so clearly.
The practice of Compassion is more than understanding the words.

My Spiritual Path

I remember an experience I had at the age of 13.  I had been exploring Christianity since I was nine, having walked across the street to the United Methodist Church to attend Sunday School by myself because my family didn’t attend, though my Mom said we were “Methodists”. By 13 I had developed a healthy spiritual life of my own and had read the Bible and learned to pray in a way that felt connected and had a real relationship with Jesus and God.  One morning after a long prayer session I suddenly felt a calling to be a minister. I thought, “I’m a girl! And I’m only 13! How is that supposed to happen?”
Well, I did what I could. By this point I had really gotten a sense of what God is and that I could take it literally that “God is Love” as Jesus so often told.  It became a sort of mission for me to express this newfound wisdom with the people I knew.
My opportunity to share my knowledge An opportunity arose for me to share this with my Sunday school class.  Each of us were assigned to be in charge of a lesson for the class. One week a boy in the class brought popular music and talked about how this music drove people to use drugs and about how, as Christians we could not let the music induce us into that world. I was inspired to teach my lesson of love.  I brought in some great popular music at the time about love. I don’t recall what songs I used, but it was 1969 so there was no shortage of music about love. I wrote a slew of poetry expressing my own feelings about the importance of and need for, Love in our lives. I dimmed the lights, lit incense, played the music and read my poetry.  The room was filled with titters and inattentiveness.  Of course, in retrospect I am certain these 13, 14 and 15 year olds could not yet hear what I was trying to communicate.

Teaching something foriegn

This is of course what the middle and high school teachers I talked to this morning are dealing with themselves.  But now, unlike then, I understand the blocks to being able to express love and to be compassionate.  The Cycles of the Heart is a model that clearly lays out a path to being able to practice the compassion that Christ, Budda, Mohamed, the Dali Lama and all the other great Spiritual teachers have taught. So I guess, as it turns out I am a “minister” of sorts, teaching people compassion.

The greatest Spiritual goal

It is the practical application of how to achieve the greatest Spiritual goal of being a compassionate person. Understanding the Cycles of the Heart and practicing it inside of ourselves and outside of ourselves in our relationships, in our workplace, our communities and in our world we really can “change everything!”

What do you think?

I know I have not blogged in a while. I’ve been going through some re-grouping of my life and professional direction in the past couple of weeks. It has not been easy and will not be an easy change, but it is absolutely what is right for me and ultimately, everyone. 
I’d love to hear from you. Tell me what you think about what you know about the power of compassion or how you have applied the Cycles of the Heart to your life. 

The Case for Speaking Truths

Anger phobics tend to avoid speaking their truth at any cost. I think that has been true of me most of my life, for a variety of reasons. Funny thing, though, most of the time it happens is when the person is important to me.  I can say almost anything to a waiter.

But my children, my husband, my best friend, or my boss... well, that is something else altogether.  Speaking my truth to them has a higher cost than it does a waiter.  Only in the past few years have I begun to recognize my misplaced priorities. The waiter or clerk has better things to do than deal with my own misdirected hostilities.  Because the truth is if I come across as angry to them, they don't really care.  They may placate me, but they don't really care. It would be beter to speak my truth to people who care wouldn't it?

Speaking truths to the people who are most important to us can be terrifying.  What if they disown us (our kids or parents) or leave us (our partners or friends)? Being able to speak our truths requires a level of trust and skill in communicating. But if we do it before we have fully explored the feelings ourselvees, it's possible we will incite more conflict than is necessary.

When we practice compassion for ourselves and everyone else, we are more likely to speak truths in such a way as to be heard, and to have a reasonable outcome. When we can own our own truths and speak them with empathy and respect for others we pathe the way for deepening our connections and communication. 

The Ethics of Compassion

The Five Principles
In January 2008 the “Ethics Guy” Bruce Weinstein, Ph. D, started writing abut his “Five Principles” of ethics in Business Week magazine.   His principles are these:
• Do no harm
• Make things better
• Respect others
• Be fair
• Be compassionate
Weinstein says, “These principles reveal the secret to living a rich, satisfying, and happy life, and we have known about them for more than 5,000 years. Every religious tradition in the world teaches them, as do parents in every country.”
Why don’t we do them?
He is right; of course, these are principles we have all been taught for generations. But if we all know about them, why don’t we practice them?
Our primitive brain takes over our rational thinking when we feel threatened in any way, that’s why.  Our sense of threat can come from both irrational and logical sources, but the list of potential threats is endless. And, what is threatening to one person may not be in the least threatening to another.
Our primitive brain
It is only by understanding how our primitive brain works that we can begin to practice compassion and the other principles Weinstein talks about.  Having respect for others is impossible if we feel badly about ourselves.  Being “fair” is impossible if we are fearful of the other person.  Making the commitment to “do no harm” is impossible if we don’t recognize that we are all doing the best we can and we will make mistakes.  We can’t focus on “making things better” when we feel badly about ourselves and we are fearful for our safety or well-being.
Practicing Compassion
To make the leap into the ethics of the practice of compassion requires courage and determination.  Compassion is not just a word to pacify religious scholars.  Compassion is a daily practice that requires first being able to be compassionate with ourselves. Taking the leap means being willing to feel the fear of doing things differently than our primitive survival brains tell us we “have” to do them.
Having compassion for our partner’s hurt feelings when we know we didn’t do anything wrong takes courage.  Having compassion for our co-worker when they are acting like a jerk takes courage.  It takes courage because our instinct is to respond defensively.  When we can learn to respond with compassion instead, it changes everything.
What do you think?
Are you able to let down your defenses when you feel attacked? Does that seem like a crazy thing to do. Tell me about it!

The Case Against Selfless Love?

This week someone told me "I don't think I will encourage my children to love selflessly the way I have." I thought about this a lot. The idea that we are only truly loving if we are "selfless" is such a stupid myth.
What people think they are doing when they are "loving selflessly" is that they are being big hearted and noble. In fact, what they are doing is being a Rescuer. Being a Rescuer means suppressing you own needs and wants in deference to the needs and wants of another. You do this because you think the other person "needs" this from you.
You convince yourself that the other person's needs and wants are more important than yours. Or perhaps you do it because you fear a loss of connection in the relationship if you don't. You don't want the other person to know what you really think, feel or need because then how would you feel if they didn't care? Or you don't share those things because you really don't think they can handle it. Either way, you are not being honest and you are in fact driving a wedge between you.
So the next time you are tempted to be "selfless" ask yourself if it really is that, or is it that you choose to not honor what's important to you just because it's easier to not respect the person than it is to tell the truth.
Feel free to comment, I'd love to hear what you think!

Marriage is Hard

Last week Newsweek ran an article about how the fundamental Christian's are having a hard time staying out of divorce court. The rate of divorce among fundamental Christians is significantly higher, Lisa Miller says, than the national average.
Yet of course, the Smart Marriages coalition and the anti gay marriage activists all claim marriage as their highest value. So why is it if this is the highest value for this group, that their marriages fail?
Not being a part of a fundamental Christian group myself I can only conjecture. But I do believe its a failure of learning, not values.
Christians are often caught in a belief system that does not allow them to seek help outside the church. The church provides counseling of course, but a "Christian Counselor" does not have to be licensed or even have any kind of degree, they simply have to have a reputation as a Christian.
Simply being a Christian Counselor does not necessarily give a person the ability to help people negotiate the difficult task of making healthy marriage.
Having sex is an important part of that and since it is such a taboo subject for most Christians, talking about sex is akin to talking about Satan himself. I believe if we, as Christians, could change that one hang up, our marriages would stand a better chance!

Men are Pigs and Other Lies

I'm not sure when it happened, but at some point I began suspecting that our culture has turned the tide on "anti-feminism" and has become "anti-male".  As a mother of a young man who is remarkable, I find this repulsive.

It's so insidious that its likely we won't even notice it. I've noticed it myself at various times. First, I started noticing it in male bashing commercials. Then, in the dialogue of my friends and female clients. The jokes are so commonplace that they have become as real as the air we breathe.

We have become so inured to it that we don't even notice it. We assume boys are quicker to anger, and are less able to control their sexual impulses.  We laugh about a man's inability to know how to hold a baby (never mind that he may never have been allowed to hold a child before).

This week, on Oprah! I was shocked to have it thrown out inadvertently both  by Oprah herself, and the mental health professional on her show. Drew Pinsky, an addiction specialist and host of the VH1 reality series Sex Rehab with Dr. Drew, said he thinks women are "the better part of humanity, containing all the good things about humans" or some such nonsense.  What a sad statement of our culture that even our men are convinced they are less-than!

Oprah, being her sincere, caring self was able to offer a lot of empathy for the young woman on her show who had behaved disrespectfully toward all the men in her life.  But in the next sentence, to her other guest, she said, that, well, in getting better (in the sex addictions) women would learn to avoid the "jerks".  So, the bottom line is, she can have empathy for the females who behave irresponsibly and cruelly toward men, but the men who demonstrate the same behavior are "jerks"!

Until we find a way to have compassion for all us, and drop the habit of bashing men (or women) our divorce rate will continue to climb, and men will continue to have "anger issues" (said as if they have no reason to be an

Saying Im Sorry Is Hard

Saying I’m sorry is hard, and it’s especially hard to say it to someone who we are pretty sure doesn’t trust anything we say. It can feel like an act of surrender and will give the other person power over you, or will open you up to the possibility of further attack. But would you rather be right than be in the relationship?

The person who feels you harmed them often badmouths you, and that makes it even harder to apologize. Once you have been labeled as a bad guy, your need for self protection increases and it’s really difficult to get those words out.

Admission of ownership or remorse can throw you into the victim corner and bring up feelings of shame.

Often, there is a very bad start when you try to make a verbal apology. The person you are apologizing to may say something like; "You should be sorry!” or "Too little too late", or "I've heard that one before", or "How do I know you won't do it again?" Reactive responses like these come from anger or hurt feelings, but its part of the process.

The words you choose really do make a difference. "I apologize for hurting you" is a lot easier to take than "I apologize if what I said seemed hurtful." And even that is not as strong as "I'm sorry I said you aren’t helping." Don’t qualify it with a “But you” or “But I”… it takes the power out of your apology.

When you are the type of person that tries very hard to do the right thing, to be considerate, and to be helpful, but your efforts to please have backfired - it's just a tremendous letdown to have hurt someone. Accepting that disappointment in yourself can be very difficult and apologizing requires overcoming your sense of shame.

What lies underneath is pride. I don’t mean selfish, arrogant pride; it’s the pride you take in who you are and what you do. Basically your self-esteem is at risk. So to admit that you’re wrong means that you’re admitting that you made a misstep, and that hurts your self-esteem.

Tips for getting an apology:
1. You are a lot more likely to get one if your rebuke conveys your belief in other person’s basic goodness.
2. Publicly chastising someone exposes them to even more humiliation, making an apology even more of a challenge.
3. If the person you want an apology from is someone you know takes pride in themselves, expect it to be hard, and try to make it safer for them by expressing your love or respect for them.

Tips for giving an apology:
1. Express understanding of the other person’s hurt feelings, and that you appreciate why they are angry. (Justifying your feelings will likely be interpreted as you missing the point of an apology.)
2. Communicating vulnerability can help, even if it’s hard to do.
3. Be as specific as you can about the mistake, and as clear as you can about your responsibility.
4. Allow the person time to think about your apology—the time they take may vary but the offended person has the right to determine how much time that should be.
5. Clearly request forgiveness but don't expect or demand it.

I’ve come to the conclusion that we are all very fragile beings. We may pretend we are not, we may even be pretty good at it, but we are.  We also have wounds and unmet needs from our childhood that get played out in every relationship we have as adults, which makes our interactions way more complex than we realize.

Gracefully confronting someone with a wrong, and navigating an apology can be very tricky, and very painful.  Recognizing the difficulty of the action while at the same time honoring our own need to hear it, is the trick.