Quiet people in an extroverted world….

January 10, 2013 by Leave a Comment

“In a gentle way, you can shake the world.” – Mahatma Gandhi.

Introversion, from a cultural point of view is concerned with “the person of contemplation” as opposed to “the person of action.” If you are someone who recognises yourself as thoughtful, serious, subtle, solitude seeking, and risk averse, you may possibly be more of an “introvert.” However, if you are expansive, sociable, gregarious, active, excitable, and outer directed you are more likely to be an “extrovert.” Few people identify fully with only one or the other.

Jerome Kagan, a developmental psychologist, devoted his career to studying the emotional and cognitive development of children. He did a series of long term studies following children from childhood to adolescence.  He had a theory that temperament effects people’s reactions to new stimuli and determines whether they will become more introverted or extraverted. Some people describe temperament as “the foundation” and personality as “the building.”

Anyway, what Kagan found was that the highly reactive kids got more jangled when confronted with new and stimulating things. He observed that a child’s sensitivity to novelty determined whether they would become introverted or extroverted later on in life. For highly reactive children, their sensitivity is linked to “noticing” in general. High reactive kids pay alert attention to people and things. They tend to think and feel deeply about what they notice.

David Dobbs in The Atlantic, Magazine, 2009 “The Science of Success” said that many children are like dandelions, able to thrive in just about any environment. However others, including highly reactive types are more like orchids, they wilt easily, but under the right conditions can grow strong and magnificent.  Orchid children are more strongly affected by all experience, both positive and negative. High reactive kids who enjoy good parenting often become empathic, caring, and co-operative adults. They’re successful at things that matter to them.

The advantage of introverts in a world that privileges the gregarious and participatory extroverts, is the power of their temperament. Introverts can help you think deeply, strategize, solve complex problems and spot difficulties ahead. On the other hand we also need extroverts who can be active and risk taking in new environments, who can quickly adapt to new people and novel situations.  Who can thrive in group activities, be assertive and eloquent.

I guess armed with this information the challenge for us all is to understand and value the different experiences of people depending on how reactive each person is in the world.

 

References:

Cain. S.  ”The power of Introverts in a world that can’t stop talking.” (Penguin. USA. 2012)

Kagan.  J. & Snidman A. “The Long Shadow of Temperament” (Harvard Press. Cambridge. 2004)

 

Filed Under: Relationships

Must you always have it all together?

June 3, 2012 by 1 Comment

In a recent post I talked about the pitfalls of being the eldest child. Often as eldest children we still feel we have to be responsible for other people and come to the rescue when things go wrong. It also means that other siblings can get to coast along and avoid finding solutions to their own difficulties.

Yet how do you avoid the golden boy / golden girl role that is so seductive and be a bit more genuine about your less than perfect “real self?”

Recently I had a client (whom I will call) Louise who was complaining bitterly about her relationship with her hopeless younger sister. She was so sick of her sister  Jane  (not her real name) dumping all her problems on her. Yet she honestly believed although it really irritated her,that she could never change the way they related.

We worked together to come up with some small ways she could begin to be more authentic with Jane. Firstly she began by telling Jane when she had a bad day. This sounds small, but Louise was used to letting Jane talk incessantly, hardly ever saying anything about her own life at all. Louise was quite hesitant about doing this at first, because she felt her little sister would not have anything constructive to say to her and would immediately swing the conversation back to her. Yet I encouraged her to persist, explaining that it isn’t really fair to allow someone to dominate the conversation and then blame them for it! It took more than one attempt, but Jane seemed to be getting the message!

Little by little she began to show a bit more of her less than perfect side to Jane. It required work because family patterns change slowly but she began to see that maybe she didn’t have to be the perfect eldest child all the time, maybe she could practise not having it together all the time after all…..

Filed Under: Relationships

Escaping the eldest child trap….

May 28, 2012 by Leave a Comment
  • Do you have an enthusiastic desire to be helpful all of the time?
  • Do you suffer from anxiety and manage this by being helpful?
  • Do you know what’s best for other people but not necessarily know what’s best for yourself?

In families, eldest children often have trouble staying away from other people’s troubles. We are unable to allow our family and friends to work out their own solutions to the problems they face. Usually we have been the strong one, the one who copes well in a family crisis and who everyone turns to in a time of need.

Yet the problem is that this over-functioning role has left us feeling not very comfortable voicing any fears or weaknesses we may have. How would it be as the eldest child to be allowed to express your own limits and fears? Maybe this could lead you to feeling more authentic and also result in better relationships with the people around you.  Yet how can you go about it?

My suggestion is as follows;

  • Firstly you have to recognise you have had enough of being the one that solves everyone else’s problems for them.
  • Next, you have to be willing to experiment trying something new, with the very people who desperately want you to keep fixing things for them. Experimenting with conversations where you talk about your limits or concerns is a really good way of practicing showing this other side of yourself. Start with someone who is a good listener and not so attached to you solving their problems for them.
  • Lastly, for a real test, build up to a family member who uses you all the time to dump their troubles on. Your goal is to test out what is possible in your relationships so that you feel enhanced and more authentic and generally less depleted.

If doing this on your own feels too overwhelming, enlist the support of a good friend or a skilled therapist, who can help you interrupt the pattern and gently point out to you when you are slipping back into over functioning once again. Resisting the strong emotional currents that pull you back into fixing things takes practise and time.  Yet eventually those people in your life will get the message and start to find a new way to relate to you. We all resist change even as we seek it, so be prepared for your own resistance to giving up relationships where you don’t get much in return. It will take time to create more balance in your relationships, but it will lead you to being able to show both your competence and your softness to the important people in  your life.

 

Filed Under: Relationships

“I felt we were at a stalemate ~ a crossroad in our relationship and I knew we both wanted to get “unstuck” but just didn’t know how!”

May 20, 2012 by Leave a Comment

Do you feel like you are in a relationship rut and don’t know how to get out? Can you talk to someone when you are feeling frustrated, mad, insulted or hurt? Many of us did not learn the skills in school or in our original families to be able to speak to the people we love with clarity and conviction. However learning how to speak with personal integrity, when we feel desperate or worn down by the other’s person’s criticism, can help us rescue a difficult relationship from a merry go round of suffering.

Learning to speak wisely and well to the people that matter can be done in a number of ways.

  • Some people can pick up a book and then practise the techniques explored.
  • Others can scan the internet for helpful stories and blogs to inspire them to try new ways of getting their point across. These methods require  motivation and self discipline, but perhaps that is the way for you to get unstuck from your particular relationship rut.
  • Yet it is a real challenge to be able to find your best self in your most important conversations. It requires you to be centred and clear about what is important to you and to find empathy for the the other person involved.
  • Another effective way most people discover who they are and what they really want is through their relationships with other people. Unfortunately with our most important relationships with a partner we often find that we tend to have narrow, habitual conversations, where our experience of ourself and the other person is small and fixed.
  • So the challenge in this situation is to find your real voice and enlarge it in these relationships.

One way to go about learning how to do this is through seeing a skilled relationship counsellor. Some people can empower and enhance us to bring forward our best selves. You can be professionally  assisted  to create a more accurate and complex picture of yourself and your partner. You can learn to navigate a crisis point when you can’t make yourself heard by the other important person in your life. Learning to use your voice is the heart of who you are in the world.  It is the foundation for helping you achieve greater intimacy and self regard. So if you would like to learn to navigate your most important relationships with clarity and courage, consider  the personal care and intellectual rigour that couples psychotherapy offers.

Filed Under: Relationships

Modern motherhood – is it about trade offs or can you have it all?

March 23, 2012 by Leave a Comment

 

A wise person recently said to me…. You can have everything but not at the same time. This may be especially relevant for modern mums who are under increasing pressure. Should they stay at home or return to work? If they return to work should it be to a demanding role or a small part time role that fits in with the family? What is best for the baby, the family and themselves? A recent article in the Sunday Age quoted a 2010 Spanish Journal of Psychology, which in a survey found on average, woman tend to feel guilt more intensely than men. In every age group, female participants were more likely to feel distressed when faced with interpersonal situations that trigger moral dilemmas. Perhaps this helps us understand why it is easier for new Dads to not feel bad when they have to return to work. Or perhaps woman are socialized far more heavily from an early age to take care of and nurture relationships.

Yet why else do mums seem busier and more conflicted than ever before? A 2006 report from the Australian Bureau of Statistics shows women who work outside the home haven’t given up their household responsibilities. Women still manage two thirds of all household chores. So if you are a working mum (this means all mums wether it is inside or outside the home) then the pressure to keep up with everything could easily trigger guilt. Also as Andie Fox a blogger (bluemilk.wordpress.com) says  “in our culture there is this pressure that if our children aren’t high achievers in every area, they won’t make it in the global economy.”

So women are supposed to be tireless and dedicated and conform to some notion of being a super mum, in order to foster these high achievers. It is very hard in our culture for women to appreciate the demands of the mothering role and recognize that like any other role with large responsibilities attached, failure is related to the complexity of the work. However, at the end of the day, children need to feel loved by both their parents and most mums ultimately try to do what is best for them in a myriad of ways. There is no one way of mothering that is the right way, each mum must find out what she can and cannot offer as an individual to support her unique child. We need to get behind mums more and support them in the important trade offs they have to make in order to be “good enough” mums, in a society that is stressful, chaotic and fast paced. Maybe its true….we can’t have everything at the same time, but maybe we can have enough and do enough to help raise happy and healthy children.

 

References

 

“The Age” March 5, 2012. Isolation the bane of modern motherhood.

“The Sunday Age”March 11, 2012. Separation Anxiety.

Self and Systems Vol 1159. Vanderheide. S. &  Coburn. W. Vol 1159.Boston 2009.

 

Filed Under: Uncategorized

How to help your child thrive….

February 19, 2012 by Leave a Comment

In a previous link I talked about “good enough” parenting. Recently I heard a story about a woman called Tara who heard funny scratching sounds at her front door. She opened the door and a weary looking Labrador drifted down her hallway, took one look at the comfy couch, jumped up and promptly fell asleep. She smiled and her dogs didn’t seem to mind, so she left him there and after about an hour he woke up, jumped down from the couch and went to the front door expectantly. She let him out and he trotted off purposefully she thought he was presumably homeward bound.

The next day the dog appeared again, scratching at the door, he came in through the house dragging himself wearily, straight up on the couch and once again fell asleep quickly as though he was exhausted. This became a regular occurrence and Tara began to be concerned that the dog’s owner may be wondering where he was.

She decided to pin a note to the dog’s collar on his way out the door, saying ”your dog comes to my place every afternoon and has a nap, I don’t mind but I thought you should know where he is”. The next day the dog reappeared with another note tied to his collar. ” He lives in a very busy house with three small children, he is trying to catch up on his rest. I’m glad you don’t mind him coming..but can I come with him for a nap tomorrow too?”

So we know it is tough to be a parent and exhausting at times for all caregivers in the household…..in this case, even the dog!  Yet we all want our children to thrive and with the advances in neuroscience, brain scans and research on primates, we now know that child / parenting experiences molds the key emotional systems in the brain of your children. So despite the constancy of the demands, the upside of this fact is that we have millions of opportunities for “parent – child” sculpting moments. In your child’s life you can help them set up systems and chemistries that will assist them to have an enriched life. You help provide an important and enduring template of experience for your child and their experience of being with other people. (Rustin 2009).

So how do you build your child’s capacity to explore and embrace life?

Tip 1. Every time that you help your child “think and feel” about what she is experiencing, and each time you find the right words for her intense feelings you are helping develop a more sophisticated network in your child’s corpus callosum (the linking tissue between brain hemispheres).

Tip 2. Similarly every time you respond with a cuddle when your child is distressed, this physical soothing releases wonderful calming chemicals in your child’s brain (Beebe & Lachmann 2002).

Tip3.  It’s important to know when you are not in the headspace to do either Tip 1 or Tip 2.!! Sometimes if you are not able to be the cuddly one, you just need to know that another caring adult needs to step in, so you can take a step back, calm yourself and regroup. Western society privileges independence and the nuclear family unit, but anyone who has had to juggle children knows, it is smart to accept assistance and support from your partner, your family, your friends and anyone else in your network willing or able to lend a hand in a stressful moment.

Tip 4. If you can learn to be an emotionally strong parent who is clearly in charge most of the time, your child will feel secure and be able to thrive. Of course this is easier said than done, but the key (which I will explain further in another blog) is managing your own feelings, and taking seriously your needs for emotional support. Parents need to be able to talk with others who really understand what they are going through.  Parental self care is very important and very understated within our culture, so understanding what recharges you and making guilt free time to do it, will be of benefit to you and to your child. Give it a go! Happy parents lead to a happy child.

Filed Under: Attachment

Can you turn a new year’s resolution into a reality this time?

January 9, 2012 by 1 Comment

 

Often at this time of year we get asked about our new years’ resolutions. Have you found that often you resolve to turn over a new leaf only to find within a few weeks the same old bad habits have crept in? Do you sometimes wonder what the easiest and most effective way is to actually create and stick to a new habit.

Here are three simple ways you can turn this year’s resolution into a reality.

1. Start Small

Often you decide that it is time to get fit, lose weight or get organised. But these things all take time and effort and slip ups can be very discouraging, sending us spiraling back to the couch or the biscuit jar for consolation. The most straightforward way to get started is to begin small. For example, lets take fitness, instead of joining a gym and paying out a lot of money at the beginning, maybe you could start the fitness campaign by just resolving to walk for five minutes a couple of times a week. Or perhaps you catch the tram to work and you could choose to walk one tram stop at the beginning or the end of the day to start off the process of building a walk in to your day. If you become clever about choosing something realistic and small  you will  weave it into your lifestyle and avoid the usual excuses about being busy, tired or too stressed to do it.

2. Choose Something You Enjoy

It is said that it takes twenty one days to create a new habit, so in order to motivate your self to do this new thing …you  need to start off with something you enjoy. If you hate walking for exercise then pick another form of fitness that allows you to start off small and do something you actually find fun. Maybe bike riding is better for you? If you are more motivated with some company, line up a friend or work colleague to help motivate you , for example choose to take the stairs at work instead of the lift together twice a week. You can then build up slowly without feeling overwhelmed or daunted by what you have committed your self to and the motivation of the enjoyment will help keep you going when it feels hard to persist.

3. Forgive your self when you slip up.

Often we start off enthusiastically and then our motivation wanes. If you have a bad day or a bad week, make sure you remind yourself that this doesn’t mean you  have blown your whole resolve. Try to understand what went wrong, why did you not persist, what are the obstacles keeping you from continuing on? The more you allow yourself to make mistakes and see it as part of the learning process of developing a new habit, the less likely you are to throw in the towel completely when things go wrong..

So start small, choose something enjoyable, and forgive yourself when you inevitably slip up. This sounds like such a simple way to approach a new year’s resolution, however, these steps can be an effective way to turn a new year’s resolution into a reality. For more help with developing and maintaining changes in your life, see melbourne counselling.

 


Filed Under: Uncategorized

Do you have an addictive personality?

December 15, 2011 by Leave a Comment

Food, sex, drugs, or alcohol are just some of the things people use excessively, but does that mean they have an addictive personality and as such are stuck repeating the same mistakes over and over again? Our media is littered with the tragic wreckage of famous celebrities from Elvis Presley, Lindsay Lohan through to Amy Winehouse. Being labeled as addictive has connotations of a disease with no cure, but perhaps there is a more hopeful way of understanding what is really going on for someone who is an addict.

Heinz Kohut (1913 -1981) was an Austrian-born American psychoanalyst best known for his development of Self Psychology. According to Kohut, the self can only develop when one’s sense of worth and well-being, are met in relationships with others. Kohut (1971) explains addiction as a way a person compensates for the unsatisfied psychological needs they missed out on when they were young. He emphasized that the craving for substances was an attempt to cure the feeling that there was “something wrong with me”.  Substances are the substitute for parental praise, support and the experience of having parents to lean on that are strong, capable adults. If we think about the lifestyle of a childhood star like Lindsay Lohan, it is not hard to imagine that a normal lifestyle, where all these stabilizers were in place, may have been missing.

Following on from Kohut’s work, Bernard Brandshaft (1988) described the histories of people who suffer from addiction as ones “derailed” in their early years in their attempts to become authentic and separate people from their parents. Brandshaft discovered that often addicts used alcohol and drugs as a response to manage their own intense feeling states, because they knew no other way to take care of themselves when they were feeling very distressed. Intolerable feelings of helplessness and an inability to trust and turn to others to help with these overwhelming feelings, resulted in the use of drugs to restore a sense of control. Certainly celebrities have an even a harder time knowing whom they can really trust and developing safe trustworthy relationships.

Similarly, for my client whom I will call Peter, who suffered childhood neglect and domination and as a result was unable to trust or turn to other people for support. He discovered in desperation that the only means of relief was to turn to the bottle because then he was relying on himself not others. His challenge was to build enough trust with me in therapy to be able to have a new experience of empathy and support with someone that could help him withstand his pain. It took many attempts for Peter to let go of the old crutch of alcohol but gradually he got truly sick of using it to numb himself.  Slowly he became more courageous and began to turn towards me, to help him learn new ways of bearing the trauma he had experienced as a child and the intense feelings that it triggered in his day to day life now.

So……Is it really possible to give up addiction?

From a self-psychological point of view, the problems started in early relationships and therefore one way for an addict to get help is via new and different relationships. Seeking a professional therapeutic relationship where you get to understand and explore your unmet emotional needs, allows you the chance to learn new ways of managing your feelings. If you have someone responding appropriately with empathy, to what is going on for you, then some of the ways you take care of yourself can be understood and new ways of soothing distress can be learnt. To read more about this see my homepage at counsellor melbourne.

The path to giving up a chronic use of substances is by no means easy or straight forward. However, when seen as a compensation for important and much needed parental praise, connection and guidance, it becomes much more understandable and it can be worked with compassionately, by both the addict and the person they choose to help them give up the addiction.

 

Brandshaft, B. (2001) Obsessional disorders. Pschanal. Inq., 21: 253-288.

Jones. D.B. (2009) Addiction and Pathological Accommodation. In: International Journal of Psychoanalytic self-psychology, 4:212 – 234.

Kohut. H. (1977b) Self deficits and Addiction. In: The Dynamics and treatment of Alcoholism: Essential Papers, eds. J.Levin. & R.Weiss. Aronson. 1994, pp vi – xi.

Filed Under: Addiction

Being a “good enough” parent……

December 2, 2011 by 2 Comments

Every person longs to know the secrets of good parenting and fortunately the neuroscience research and John Bowlby’s attachment theory has delivered.  It provides us with theoretical evidence we can turn into practical suggestions of how we can help our children grow into resilient and resourceful adults.  The challenge for parents is that we live in a very fast paced “doing” orientated society. Often both parents have to work and juggle multiple responsibilities, and this hectic lifestyle can challenge our ability to get enough balance in our lives and get our children on the right track both emotionally and intellectually. Health and well-being have become much sort after commodities that are not so easily obtained.

So the first important tip is that parents need to find positive ways of creating rest and relaxation in their lives, in order to provide a calm environment for their children. This is challenging in itself, however it is crucial because the studies now show stressed out parents are the last thing children need. Mums who can’t manage stress well, often have had no-one help them with their distress in childhood and so they never set up effective stress – regulating systems in their brains. In fact it is sobering to learn that parents can have a direct effect on the wiring and long term chemical balance of their children’s brains. As neuroscience has uncovered, both excessive distress and tender loving care leave lasting impacts on the emotional circuits and thinking processes of developing brains.

So the second important tip is to remember that children whose emotional feelings are cherished and respected, even those hard to handle angry outbursts, live more happily than those whose early passions are denied. This involves parenting by slowing down, listening and being responsive, all skills that require you are not rushing around stressed and overwhelmed yourself.

If we can be encouraged to take the time with our children, really be in “the moment” with them, then we can help our children develop an ability to manage their feelings. It is reassuring to know that if we do these tiny acts of service over and over again, we are using the millions of parent / child-sculpting moments in childhood to help them set up systems and chemistries in their developing brains.

Luckily since all this new parenting information has unfolded, there has also been a greater appreciation of the demands of parenthood. Raising a child is one of the most challenging jobs you will take on. So because of the complexity of getting it right what is most important is to remember tip three. You only have to be a “good enough parent”. This means that the plasticity and flexibility of our children’s brains requires that we don’t have to get it right for them all of the time ……just some of the time. So by making mistakes at times, we don’t necessarily harm our children, we just provide opportunities for them to build resilience and to learn that relationships are about getting it wrong, asking forgiveness and trying to make amends.

I will explain more about the child development research that has given rise to contemporary theories about how we manage our feelings, in my next blog. However if you are interested in becoming more aware of what it takes to be a “good enough parent” there are plenty of encouraging suggestions in “The Science of Parenting.” Margot Sunderland. First published 2006.

 

 

 

 

Filed Under: Attachment