When my mother lost her father it was sad, but not unexpected. He was 80 years old, had had that lingering kind of cancer that old men often get, and there was plenty of time to prepare for his death. Not that any of us ever acknowledged his demise or named the dread disease he lived with for so long. Until the day he died he spoke of getting well, would not reveal his feelings or let us tell him ours, and we all aided and abetted his fantasy.
Many relationships hit a low point, a really low point, where sincere apology and forgiveness are required if the relationship is to go on. Not just saying the words – but meaning them. This is extremely painful and difficult because I am talking about major ruptures between the couple like affairs, addictions, lies, abuse or even the less obvious but non-the-less lethal long term estrangement which has finally hit an icy rock bottom….
How do you know when it’s time to have a baby? As a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist, I frequently hear that question from my couples. The answer is much simpler than you might expect. The answer to the question is… a question. (Don’t you just hate when therapists do that? Sorry. But this is so important.)
When families come in we emphasize family relationships as an important factor in psychological health. We view problems as symptoms of dysfunctional interactions, communications and emotional dynamics within the whole family, rather than the fault of any individual.
One of the main reasons a family seeks counseling is that someone’s behavior is upsetting everyone else. They want the therapist to smooth things out and keep things going the way they were. We work with couples from a family systems perspective. We help you to reflect upon and understand the intergenerational aspects of present dysfunctional family interactions. Once you understand this you can free yourselves from the painful family patterns, and re-create your relationship into your shared, unique vision . We teach you productive communication, effective problem solving skills, how to de-fuse conflict, and how to find the happiness that a shared life can bring.
But the family therapist knows that the person with the troublesome behavior is the “Identified Patient”, meaning that’s who the family sees as psychologically ill. In reality, the identified patient is the family member who is behaviorally speaking for everyone. No one feels good about the way things have been going and something has to change.
As a family therapists, we may focus more on how patterns of interaction maintain the problem rather than trying to identify the cause, as this can be experienced as blaming by some families.
Family systems theory assumes that the family as a whole is larger than the sum of its parts. Instead of meeting with one individual, all or most family members are involved in the therapy process.
Family therapy is particularly helpful during transitional crises in a families’ life cycle, for example: ·
Working together with us, you will examine your family’s ability to solve problems and express thoughts and emotions. You may explore family roles, rules and behavior patterns in order to spot issues that contribute to conflict. We often brings entire families together in therapy sessions. However, family members may also see her individually, in pairs, or with extended family members according to her ongoing assessment.
Family therapy may help you identify your family’s strengths, such as caring for one another, and weaknesses, such as an inability to confide in one other. Family therapy can help you pinpoint your specific concerns and assess how your family is handling them. Guided by your therapist, you’ll learn new ways to interact and overcome old problems. In the end, you will be better equipped to cope with problems and emotional pain, understand each other’s needs, desire to help each other, and enjoy healthy interactions.
We also specialize in helping stepfamilies. Our approach is based upon a teaching model created by Jeanette Lofas, who received a presidential commendation in 1996 for “outstanding efforts in strengthening stepfamilies across America”.
One of the first things that couples must understand is that new families don’t blend. They learn to co-exist peacefully and, hopefully, with love. This is the primary goal of the counseling. A peaceful home, not a battlefield!
Conflict immediately arises when parents expect their suddenly newly assembled family to operate like the traditional nuclear family. It cannot work. It’s like trying to build a contemporary new home on the blueprint of an historic colonial house. Can you imagine what the result would look like?!
Most of the counseling is done with the parents, one of whom has called the office with anxiety and the complete overwhelms. We teach them that they must work as a united parental team, and that the children must respect this hierarchy. It is normal to find this to be challenging. Alliances must shift: parent with parent rather than each parent with their own kids. Without this shift in boundaries you will never achieve the harmony you and even more, your children yearn for.
Once the counselor has empowered the couple to accomplish this, the parents work on family rules, consequences and rewards, consistency, dealing with the shuttle of children between two households, and even the conflict between your partner and the ex-spouse.
It can be done! With true dedication to this new family, hard work, and a change in perspective, you can reap rewards you would never have expected when you started this counseling journey.
Many people have never questioned their biases toward gays and lesbians. The culture and the families they grew up in excluded and hated people who were different from their own sexual orientation. They were disgusted by sexuality outside the norm, as if what gay people do in bed defined them. (Do heterosexuals define themselves by what they do in bed?)
What do you like about yourself? Are you proud of yourself? If these questions make you feel uncomfortable, or you can’t answer them, chances are that you have a problem with self esteem. Why is that? Why do so many of us basically dislike ourselves? Why are we embarrassed to “esteem” ourselves?
So what exactly is self esteem? Self esteem comes from the inside out. It means that a woman is not dependent upon anyone else to make her feel good about herself, because she already knows she’s fine just the way she is. She is confident and aware of her strengths and abilities. She wants to share them with others.
This does not mean she is conceited. She is also aware of areas needing work and growth. But that’s ok, because she knows she’s not perfect, and she doesn’t have to be. No one is. She understands that we all have our strengths and weaknesses.
Self-esteem is a core identity issue, essential to personal validation and our ability to experience joy. Once achieved, it comes from the inside out. But it is assaulted or stunted from the outside in. A woman with low self-esteem does not feel good about herself because she has absorbed negative messages about women from the culture and/or relationships.
The reign of youth, beauty and thinness in our society dooms every woman to eventual failure. Women’s magazines, starting with the teenage market, program them to focus all their efforts on their appearance. Many girls learn, by age 12, to drop former enjoyable activities in favor of the beauty treadmill leading to nowhere. They become fanatical about diets. They munch like rabbits, on leaves without salad dressing, jog in ice storms, and swear they love it! Ads abound for cosmetic surgery, enticing us to “repair” our aging bodies, as if the natural process of aging were an accident or a disease. Yet with all this effort, they still never feel like they are good enough.
How can they? Magazine models are airbrushed to perfection, and anorexic. “Beautiful” movie stars are whipped into perfect shape by personal trainers, and use surgery to create an unnatural cultural ideal. But youth cannot last. It is not meant to. If women buy into this image of beauty, then the best an older woman can strive for is looking “good for her age” or worse yet, “well preserved”. Mummies are well preserved. Mummies are also dead.
Abusive experiences join with cultural messages to assault female self esteem. Abuse is pervasive and cuts across all socioeconomic lines. It invariably sends the message that the victim is worthless. Many, many women have told me that verbal abuse has hurt them far more than any physical act. As one woman put it, “his words scarred my soul”. Women whose abuse started as children have the most fragile sense of identity and self worth.
Poor self esteem often results in depression and anxiety. Physical health suffers as well. Many times, women with this problem don’t go for regular checkups, exercise, or take personal days because they really don’t think they’re worth the time.
Relationships are impacted as well. Their needs are not met by their partner because they feel like they don’t deserve to have them met, or are uncomfortable asking. Their relationships with children can suffer if they are unable to discipline effectively, set limits, or demand the respect they deserve. Worse yet, low self-esteem passes from mother to daughter.The mother is modeling what a woman is. She is also modeling, for her sons, what a wife is.
In the workplace, women with low self-esteem tend to be self-deprecating, to minimize their accomplishments, or let others take credit for their work. They never move up. Finally, with friends, they are unable to say no. They end up doing favors they don’t want to do, or have any time for. They end up going where they don’t want to go, with people they don’t want to go with! A woman with low self-esteem has no control over her life. But that can change. These women can get help and emotional healing.
It is critical to remember that no one deserves to be abused. If something bad has happened to you, it does not mean there is something wrong with you. The responsibility for the abuse lies with the person who chooses to hurt you. If you are presently being abused, you must put yours and your children’s safety first. If you think you are in danger, you can call your state domestic violence hotline number. NJ STATEWIDE DOMESTIC VIOLENCE HOTLINE 1-800-572-7233.
You can choose your own identity. You can discard the popular cultural image and replace it with something real. As I read someplace once, “We are bound by our fate only as long as we accept the values that determine it.”
Nobody is perfect, but everyone is worthwhile. Believe in yourself.
©2016 Maggie Vlazny
Parenting adolescents can often feel overwhelming and downright impossible. Behavioral changes, mood swings, and our child’s development of “an attitude” are a challenge to most parents in this universal transition. Who are these strangers who used to be our kids?
It helps to remember that adolescents are in transition from the role of child to the role of adult. It is an evolving process, with many tasks to be mastered along the way as they prepare to leave the nest. They work through the task of emotional and psychological separation even as they begin to experiment sexually. It can feel awful to the parent but they’re supposed to do this!
Teens must also learn to establish satisfactory relationships with peers. Learning cooperation, feeling comfortable in groups, and forming friendships lay the groundwork for future romantic and work relationships. As they move into the later teen years, adolescents begin looking outward, beyond family, friends, and self. They begin to develop a philosophy of life, a world view, moral standards, and a guiding belief. They begin looking toward the future. Educational and career goals take center stage at this time.
Throughout these stages, teens must learn flexible coping strategies and how to behave appropriately in different situations. Much as we might like to, we cannot prevent them from making our mistakes. Just as we had to learn from experience, so must they. But we can teach them how to make decisions, how to cope, how to behave. We do this by modeling (showing them, through example how we do it). They will close their ears when we try to preach, but their eyes are always open, watching how we manage relationships and life. They miss nothing.
As teens grow and change, parents need to be fluid. The parents must be able to change their rules, parenting methods, and ways of relating, in order to encourage teen autonomy. And they must do this without totally relinquishing parental guidance and control. If parents lose their control, the result is an adolescent who is out of control. The trick is to strike the proper balance between setting limits and allowing increasing independence at each stage of the child’s developmental process.
The years of adolescence can be hard on all involved, but with love and careful guidance, the transition can be a time of growth for the whole family.
College kids and other young adults often have a really tough time during this period of transition. And so do their parents. Anxiety runs high for everyone now that its time to lay down a path toward the future. Parents want to be sure that the destination is visible, safe, and secure. Kids…not so much. This too can create conflict within the family.
It might help to know that the majority of people do not arrive into young adulthood with all their life decisions already in place. Now is the time when they have finally left the nest and are just beginning to spread their wings. That heady feeling of flight understandably distances them from the ground and the flight pattern is unpredictable. Parents, take heart. This is part of the normal life cycle, mastering the developmental task of separating from the family. A simultaneous developmental task is creating a new, age appropriate connection with the family. It will all happen in due time.
Common issues for parents of young adults are:
Common issues for young adults are:
All of the above…with the added challenges of forming new friendships, learning to have mature, intimate relationships, doing well in school or work, and establishing goals for the future. If your child is not in school, you may feel like a failure. You are not, and neither is he or she. You do not ever want to convey that message because it will cause unimaginable damage to your child’s soul. It will also become a self fulfilling prophecy. Which brings me to my favorite question, anyway: How do you define success? Does success mean acquiring wealth? I personally don’t think so, but I’m in the minority. I define success as being my own authentic self (not what people or society expect me to be) doing work that I love, and living with someone that I love. It’s that simple. And that difficult. But I can tell you that the people I know who agree with my definition of success, and make it happen, tend to be the happiest people I know.
©2016 Maggie Vlazny
Many people have never questioned their biases toward gays and lesbians. The culture and the families they grew up in excluded and hated people who were different from their own sexual orientation. They were disgusted by sexuality outside the norm, as if what gay people do in bed defined them. (Do heterosexuals define themselves by what they do in bed?)
