Relationships are funny things. No two are alike and yet, at the same time, all share many similarities as well. One such similarity we all share in are times of frustration with our loved ones.
I often speak with couples having hard times in their relationships or marriages and they often sound quite clear on what their partner is doing that is flaring up their frustrations. At some point I always ask what it was that first attracted them to their partners and what they initially fell in love with and, like clock work, their answers reveal that the things they loved and cherished in each other, as they fell in love, were the same qualities that frustrate them now.
For example, seven years ago John fell in love with Louise; he loved how care free she was and how spontaneous and in the moment she could be. He was much more ordered and practical and was more used to a life well planned out, a life without too many surprises. John was attracted to those qualities in Louise, which he himself would have liked to possess.
Louise, on the other hand, fell in love with John’s solidity. He was grounded, stable and practical, all qualities which she was attracted to which she wasn’t accessing in herself, and qualities which were needed to balance her out.
Now fast-forward seven years. John is frustrated with Louise and needs her to change. In his mind she is inconsistent with her commitments and responsibilities and he is angry that he can’t rely on her to do things when he feels they need to be done in the home. As a result he is feeling unsupported and let down. He wishes that she could be better planned and fly less by the seat of her pants.
Louise, on the other hand, is feeling squashed and forced to live in a way that doesn’t suit her style of being. She wants John to ease up and take more risks in life. She is bored with the blandness of their relationship and wants more excitement with him.
This is typical example of how the qualities that attract couples end up eroding the warmth they have for each other. As a result of this, the qualities which partners fell in love with often become the same qualities they try to change about each other.
In my line of work as a couple’s counsellor, I often find myself saying to one or both partners, “That’s not going to happen”, or “He is not going to give you that”. Couples are often startled to find that I don’t roll up my sleeves and help them change their partners.
When couples find themselves in the situation of trying to change their partners so they feel better about themselves the role of therapy is to interrupt this trance rather than empathise and support with their needs to change the other.
The undeniable truth with relationships is that those we love are also our burdens. Too often we just want to take the parts that work for us right now and leave the rest of them in the bottom drawer.
For many couples, the magic bullet to getting back on track with their marriage and finding more harmony again is to be able to look at their partner and say, “this is who they are, and this is who they will continue to be”. Once this is acknowledged, a different and scarier reality is seen by each of them.
At this point couples often see that they struggle to love each other for who they truly are; eventually this leads to a more useful and practical question to ponder, and that is “How do I learn to live with this person for who they truly are, while living with who I truly am too”?. And the answer to this is, of course, will be different for us all.
https://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/psychotherapy_couple.jpg200200Andrewhttps://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HITB-Horizontal-Header-Logo-Colour-02.pngAndrew2015-02-12 01:39:112016-07-23 14:05:28What attracts us to our loved ones is what ends up repelling us.
We live in world filled with research from Neuroscientists proving that our brains are the cause of everything that arises within us. We are told to think differently if we want to feel differently. More and more we are given snippets of studies demonstrating that our thoughts are the cause of everything we do, say and feel. But have we really got the whole picture?
Neuroscientists neglect the scientific fact that the heart actually sends 3 times more mood altering signals to the brain than the brain does to the heart. And that the Vagas nerve, which is located at the core of the stomach, sends 9 times the mood altering signals to the brain that the brain does to the body. Scientists have now realised that more than 60% of the heart is composed of neurons with the same structure as those in our brains. We have also discovered that the Vagas nerve is largely comprised of these neurons as well. Does this suggest that both our hearts and our stomachs actually have the capacity for intelligence similar to our brains?
With this in mind, the research is starting to suggest that although there is much use in changing our thinking to improve the way we feel, we could get better results if we worked more on our bodies than our thoughts.
You can’t think away most feelings!
To make such a statement suggests that in fact our brains are not in complete control of our experience and unfortunately this is often true.
Unfortunately what most of us try to do is to think our way out of feeling what we don’t want to feel, such as sadness, anxiety and anger, and by trying to figure out the cause of the feeling, or how to fix the feeling, the person loses contact with the feeling momentarily, only to have the experience re emerge later, and then the cycle of thinking kicks in and the cycle continues. Many people who try to fix their emotions like this find themselves waking in the night with that very same feeling back to haunt them for hours on end before getting back to sleep.
I see this approach to attending to our experience a little like trying to wash one’s car by watering their plants. No matter how much watering one does, the car still remains the same.
Similarly with situations where we want to change the feelings of sadness or anxiety and others, rather than moving our awareness away from the feelings and to our thinking, what ultimately transforms our felt experience is moving our awareness towards and into the feelings.
For example, when we are sad, rather than thinking through how to be happy, sit with and fully experience the sadness. Allow the feelings to pour through your being without judgement or resistance. It can often be easier than you think, and by doing this the sadness shifts and changes and the body’s innate wisdom of the sadness (the what’s and the why’s of the sadness) are realised like flashes of recognition giving rise to new ways of being with sadness. And we often realise truths about our sadness that all the thinking in the world wouldn’t achieve. When one sits with their experience without trying to change it a very strange thing occurs. The experience actually changes. In Gestalt therapy we call this the paradoxical theory of change. The paradox being that when we accept what is and allow what is and fully be what is within us, change occurs.
So next time you feel blue, angry, anxious or lonely try this out. Remember, allowing the feeling is the key to transforming the experience.
https://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HITB-Horizontal-Header-Logo-Colour-02.png00Andrewhttps://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HITB-Horizontal-Header-Logo-Colour-02.pngAndrew2014-10-07 07:35:112016-06-28 10:08:33Can we really think our way out of unhappiness?
In my sessions the thing I hear from many clients is “I don’t want to turn out like my father”, or “I am not going to treat my son like my mother treated me”.
It’s common for people who had difficult relationships with their parents to hold such views. The challenge for many people is that “not being like one’s parents” can be a difficult task to achieve.
What makes us similar to our parents?
There are many influences to the development and forming of an adult personality and genetics aside, much of this influence comes from those who raise us. In family and systems therapies, there is a term called “Multi Generational Transmission process”; this is a term that describes the process of how a developing person takes on attributes and qualities from their family of origin and makes these qualities and attributes their own. Most often the qualities of a parent, which they are not aware of, are the qualities the parent tends to project onto their child. For example, a mother, who is not aware of how they may manipulate their spouse, could begin to see these same learnt manipulative qualities in their child and then come to the conclusion they have a manipulative offspring. The offspring, being told over and over not to be so manipulative ends up swallowing the fact that they must be the manipulative one in the family and they begin to view themselves in the same light as the mother does. Typically this locks into place a dynamic where the mother and child only see the child to be the manipulative one and in this, the mother’s own manipulative traits stay out of her awareness.
The shadow of the unseen parent
When we vow never to be like our parents in some way we deny the fact that we hold the same capacity to do the same things that they did. Often this stifles much more of the person than only the parts they are trying to avoid. For example, a man who grew up with a father who was very angry may vow never to be angry for they know how damaging this can be to a child. Over time, this person loses their sense of power, as power cannot be developed in a person without the correct use of their natural anger. In negotiations they are more likely to back down whenever things get tense, for fear of being angry, and in doing so they set up a pattern of not getting what they need. The tail end of this is that the longer they go without getting what they need, the angrier they are likely to become. And eventually the person will explode, allowing their anger to rise. After this they typically feel remorseful for the way they showed their anger in negotiating their needs and they vow never to be angry again, which leaves the anger once again building and building and thus the cycle continues.
Unfortunately, denying these aspects of oneself is like shaking a bottle of Pepsi and leaving the lid on. The pressure builds and when the lid is twisted just a little bit, half the can fizzes out and it makes a real mess, just as we do with blocked anger, fear, grief and other disowned feelings and aspects of ourselves.
The real tell tale sign this is happening is when I hear somebody say “ that wasn’t like me at all to get so upset/scared/angry about this” . This statement reveals that the parts of the person that “fizz over”, to use the pepsi analogy, have not been recognised as part of who this person is.
How can one move on from unliked and unwanted family traits?
As I mentioned, the aspects of oneself that are resisted and denied become interrupted in their organic development and are misunderstood and lost to their owners. Many people think that by accepting those traits similar to our parents will mean defeat, giving in, or it will be a cop out to just accept being like them.
What is often misunderstood in these situations is that by accepting those parts, we don’t end the journey we actually begin the journey.
When we meet those parts that are like our parent, without trying to change or judge them, we then have the opportunity to move and grow as a person, which often means those traits actually change over time as the person, and those aspects within them, develop.
So the paradox is that if one wants to truly change the parts of them selves that are like their parents, the first step is to accept the ways in which they are like their parents.
When we deny these parental traits, it’s like trying to travel somewhere by reading a road map while not knowing where we are starting from. It becomes impossible to take the first step. And the first step, as it is in many forms of personal development and healing, is to accept it.
Its only when the disowned parts of oneself are acknowledged and accepted that there is then room for these parent-created pasts to move and change. Once the denied aspect is allowed a voice and a place in oneself, the true needs and requirements of that aspect typically emerges.
For example if it’s the parental anger which has been finally owned and accepted by the off spring as their own, what typically occurs is an understanding of what the person was really trying to achieve through the anger. Once this is realised the anger changes form and the person becomes different with their anger in themselves and behaves differently with their anger in relationship with others. Ultimately, the more we resist those parts of ourselves that behave similar to our parents, the more we actually stay like them. And the more we can accept these parts as our own the more likely we can grow and evolve them.
https://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/psychotherapy_father_son.jpg200200Andrewhttps://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HITB-Horizontal-Header-Logo-Colour-02.pngAndrew2014-05-13 05:28:292016-06-28 09:58:10Why “Not Being Like Our Parents” is hard to achieve
When our children face adolescence and the inevitable struggle with this transition, the best way we can help them is often to help ourselves!
A famous poet wrote : “I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words… When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly [disrespectful] and impatient of restraint”
Surprisingly, this was written in the 8th century by Hesiod, a greek poet.
It seems that just as our Gen Y children think that they are the first generation to break free of the status quo of their parents ways of life, the parents of today’s children think they are the first generation to face such a prolific generation gap with their children. The truth is neither are the first to face this. The truth is ; this gap between parent and child has occurred through all previous generations ; it is inevitble and this gap grows during adolescence.
Ultimately this coming of age process, that adolescents and parents both struggle with, is less of a problem to be fixed and more of a right of passage that parent and child need to acknowledge as an essential and unavoidable phase of development. To the degree it is negotiated well, it forms the foundations of adulthood within the child.
The task for parents here is finding useful ways of negotiating through what can often become a very charged and confusing period of parenting.
Of course there are as many ways to negotiate adolescance as there are children ,and yet regardless of a parnet’s approach, there are some useful dynamics to consider through this process.
To put the teenage to adult transition into perspective here are some of the major milestones and developmental tasks faced by adolescents.
Aquiring more mature relations, same and other sex, in their age group.
Resolving their masculine or feminine roles.
Accepting the physical changes they experience.
Finding emotional independence.
Identifying and working towards their chosen career path.
Crystalising a set of values and ethics – becoming consistent in their approach to life and others.
Becoming socially responsible.
With these milestones in mind, there are many ways in which parents are challenged and confronted with how best to negotiate with their adolescent to achieve these tasks safely and without interrupting their child’s development.
The best way to raise a child to adulthood is to ensure that you you yourself are sufficiently raised first.
Parents don’t fail teenagers in adolescence through lack of trying; parents typically fail teenagers when their own triggers and issues get in the way of healthy negotiations with their coming-of-age teenagers. When a parent negotiates with their teenager on an aspect of this transition to adulthood well the coming of age process is supported. When it is negotiated poorly, with shouting and rigid positions, coming of age is thwarted.
We now know that issues that are unresolved in paretns typically transfer down to the child and although they can lie dorment in the child for many years, when adolescence comes this can often be the time that parents realise their child has these same issues. This can be a very confronting and tomultuous process for parents and can leave them with a tricky dilemma ; how can I show my child how to accept these parts of their own growing adulthood when I have not accepted them in me?
The pendulum swing- do parents know whats best for their children.
Its reasonable to say that one part of learning how to parent is taking and using what worked from when you were a child and leaving what didn’t work for you as a child.
We all know parents, maybe its even ourselves, who have looked back on the shortcomings of how they were raised and after some consideration have decided “ I don’t want to make the same mistakes my parents made with me”, or “I’ll never do to my kids what my paretns did with me”.
I call this the pendulum swing. Parents who were raised in overly restricture and conforming families often raise children with a lot of freedom and too few constraints. Alternatively, parents who were raised with too few rules, leaving them unguided or unboundaried, can often end up with a parenting approach that’s over-controlling and over imposing on their children. I call this the pendulum swing because what happpens is an arbitrary and total spitting out of their parents approach to parenting. Resulting in a polarised or opposite approach to raising their children than the way they were raised.
This pendulum swing decision can lead to blindspots in ones approach to parenting. These blindspots typically go unnoticed in childhood, yet they are quickly pointed out once children reach adolescence.
The risk with this approach is that the parent decides on whats best for the child, based on needs that were unfulfilled in their own childhood; I call this fulfilling phantom needs. The needs are phantom because they are assumed to be important for the child, because they were important for the parent. What is often left unexplored is how important are these needs for the child and their own unique development.
So how do you get this right?
The easiest way to be able to negotiate what’s right for your child, as well as for you as the parent, is to face how you feel about the way you were raised. To understand which emotional thirsts were not quenched and what that has meant for you in your life. The more a parent understands their inner world, their unmet needs, their fears and their buried feelings towards their upbringing, the less these concerns will get in the way of seeing their children and the more they will be able to really respond to their child and see what the child truly needs.
The best and the worse in us. – How to change their behaviour through changing ours.
When parents feel that the behaviours their teenager is displaying is beyond their understanding or control, they often turn to psychologists and counsellors for help. Typically the conversation starts with “ can you see my child, theres something not ok going on”. You can imagine their surprise when they hear the therapist say “ so you think theres something wrong with your son?, ok , when can you and your spouse begin couples therapy then?”
A common dynamic when a child goes off the rails is for the parents to focus their energy on fixing the child. What goes unnoticed in this process is that typically the child is acting out due to whats going on in their parent’s relationship. Often this is hard for parents to hear, and usually its not the case that the parents have been bad or neglectful parents; its often that theres just some kind of dynamic that exists in the family that the parents may be OK with, but the child is not.
For example when there is extreme hostility between parents a child often becomes naughty or sick to unsonciously change the focus away from the fighing and back onto the child.
There are as many examples of how this plays out as as there are parents with children. Whats important to remember is that to shift the responsibility for things to change onto the parents allows the child to no longer be “the problem”. As such the child is able to then stop identifying themselves as “the problem” which of course is a very empowering shift in a child/adolescents self view.
This also allows parents to look at their children’s unwanted behaviours as clues to what may be occuring within themselves and their spousal relationship, providing them ample opportunity to grow in themselves and in their marriage.
Some basic questions to ask yourself when you are considering taking your child for counselling , or where you feel your child is behaving inappropriately , are :
What is it that my child is doing that I don’t accept? Where doesn’t this behaviour or dynamic play out in myself and/or my marriage?
What am I trying to change in them? Where have I not made this change myself ? How can I make that change in myself to show them how its done?
Which rules or boundaries that my child breaks make me the angriest? When these rules are broken what feelings are under my anger? ( often its sadness, fear and powerlessness ). How can I get to understand these feelings in me?
Pain is very important to us. It is the body’s warning signal to us that something is not right. It is a signal that usually makes us stop and take notice and then hopefully take action to change it.
Back pain can come from several structures. The spine is made of 24 moving bones which are interconnected at joints, called Facet Joints, along the back of the spine. Between the ends of the bones in the spine there is a disc which is soft to allow mobility as well as shock absorption.
If the Facet Joints are not moving freely then there will be irritation at these nerve-rich joints, resulting in pain.
The same change in movement in the joints, or acute trauma, can result in the dics becoming inflamed and swollen, or even ruptured. The disc can then push on the nerve exiting the spine, again resulting in pain.
Together with these issues the muscles along the spine will spasm which is again a common source of back pain and stiffness.
Chiropractic care has helped many people with these problems by utilising appropriate techniques which improve the movement of the facet joints and the relationship between the vertebrae of the spine, hence reduce any of these sources of pain. If you don’t already have a Chiropractor, or would like to try a different approach schedule an appointment today.
https://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/spoon.jpg200200Andrewhttps://healthinthebay.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/HITB-Horizontal-Header-Logo-Colour-02.pngAndrew2010-06-13 02:22:392016-06-25 13:03:50Why do we get Back Pain?
