Growing Mind: general issues of psychology, therapy, human nature

THE PROBLEM WITH THE 'PROBLEMS' WITH THE MILLENIALS 6/12/10 by Margie Nichols


The Millenials (aka Generation Y) are the generation of people born between 1982 and 2002. The oldest of them are in their late twenties, and for a while now there's been a lot of bashing of these young folks as they have entered adulthood. Dubbed "Generation Me," they've been characterized as entitled whiners whose parents heaped on way too much praise for way to little, and who were 'awarded' far too many prizes for insufficient amounts of achievement. As Judith Warner says in a piece in the Times called "The Why-Worry Generation" they've been assessed as psychological basket cases, narcissistic wimps. Apparently, the latest piece of news about them is that they are "unreasonably" optimistic in the face of the recession, that they don't second-guess themselves and they're sure that bright days are ahead.


This is a problem? It's called resiliency. I'm glad Warner has taken on those who sneer at this generation's more laid-back values (they are turning down jobs that require them to work more than 40 hours a week, even this year). She points out that the young adult Millenials may be annoying to those of us raised on Woody Allen-style anxiety about the future and overachievement as a laudable goal. We may think that their unquenchable faith in themselves looks a lot like a big fat ego. But they aren't really 'maladjusted.' They seem to deal with the stress of everyday living better than many of their elders. Actually, we parents accomplished a lot of what we wanted: they have faith in themselves and they see the world as a good place.


I take issue with those who tsk tsk about 'overpraising' children. As a clinical psychologist, and as someone who has raised or had a hand in raising five children - if the result of praising children for everything they do is a somewhat inflated ego, that's fine. If you have to err in one direction or another (and all parents do) it's better to err in the direction of praising the kid for breathing than to have more of your statements to your child be critical. Years ago, Russell Barkeley, writing about AD/HD kids, said that praise should outnumber criticism (and "correcting" and nagging count as criticism) by a factor of four or five to one for the child to grow up with intact self esteem. It's not just true of AD/HD kids, it's true of all kids.


As a clinician, I can tell you we rarely have to deal with adults whose major problem is too much self-confidence (I'm not referencing true narcissistic personality disorder here, that's a different animal all together). And it's a lot harder to boost damaged self-confidence than deflate over-confidence. Frankly, life has a way of taking care of the latter naturally.


So let's hear it for trophies "just" for showing up to practices and games and developing the discipline of a sport, praise for mastering the smallest thing, or encouragement just for effort. Why is being "best" so important anyway? Most human beings are never going to be 'best' at anything besides being themselves. "Good job!" doesn't imply "you are the only one to ever do this wonderful thing" and there is no reason why children shouldn't hear "Good job!" two dozen times a day.


Warner ends her piece: "Maybe having a bulked-up ego really does serve as a buffer to adversity."


Duh. Just like therapists have been saying all along, and just like any parent - or just any astute observer of human nature- knows instinctively.

Sunday, June 6, 2010

CHEESECAKE FOR PARADISE 6/6/10 by Sue Menahem, L.C.S.W.

I put the cheesecake in the back seat. It was a double chocolate cheesecake with a freshly pureed and naturally sweetened strawberry topping and it was perhaps the best piece of cheesecake I had ever tasted. This culinary masterpiece was entrusted to me by a friend -- its creator – who carefully packed it up with the instructions to “make sure this gets back home to your better half.” It was in the back seat of the car because honestly, I couldn’t trust myself. All I needed was a long red light to retrieve that luscious package and enjoy a midnight picnic right there in the car on the ride home.


But, I remained strong and merely eyed the reflection of the package in the rearview mirror resolved to deliver it as instructed. Surely if this had happened years ago, when our relationship was still enjoying its glorious infancy, I’d have that package safely seat belted to the front passenger seat with my outstretched arm guarding it every time I hit the break. I would have been as the cat, who dutifully and lovingly lays the dead bird at the feet of its owner, head bowed, soft meow, awaiting the pat on the head from a happily satisfied owner so touched by this outwardly vulnerable display of affection.


Interesting how in the beginning of the relationship we feed off of the ecstasy of that new relationship energy (sometimes called "N.R.E.") until finally we deplete it, the gas gauge on empty, feet once again hit the floor. We feel duped, conned, disappointed and as average as every other relationship on the planet. Still as amazing as N.R.E. feels, think about the implications if it remained at an unlimited and constant supply. Sure we’d all be holed up having marathon- swinging- from- the- chandelier sex complete with cardboard pizza boxes strewn about, and piles of dirty laundry and dishes everywhere. Our only distraction would be the adorable twitch of our beloved’s nostril prior to a rip roaring sneeze. Our lives in every other aspect would come to a screeching halt (who needs clean underwear anyway??) In retrospect, there are some benefits to N.R.E. remaining in limited supply!


Once N.R.E. is depleted we find ourselves left to choose between one of three options. 1) Coast along with fond memories of “the way it used to be” allowing inertia to dictate the meanderings of the relationship. 2) End the relationship. 3) Learn to feed the relationship.


N.R.E. says “I can not live until I get my soul mate this beautiful card with neatly scripted expressions of love etched on a background of water colored images of mountainous scenery.” After all, that card was written especially for this relationship and no other relationship is as wonderful and magnificent and truly sanctioned by the powers that be as this is and if I don’t satisfy this urge to buy this card I will go out of my mind!


Inertia says “Card? What card?” and eventually resolves to try to remember to send a text message.


Ending the relationship says “I’m throwing away all of those lousy cards you gave me in the beginning of the relationship because I never want to think of you again!”


Feeding the relationship says “My world will certainly continue to spin if I do not buy this card, my relationship won’t end, the sun will continue to rise but the card will bring a smile and warm feelings to the person I am committed to and in turn, that will make me feel happy and will make us feel closer. While option “3” hardly seems spontaneous and absolutely requires work, if you want to keep a relationship humming along the work is worth it.


So, tonight, I am conciously feeding my relationship a decadent slice of double chocolate cheesecake with a freshly pureed strawberry topping. But, who are we kidding -- I will certainly bring two forks to the table. After all, we’re talking about double chocolate cheesecake, surely love will understand!

LET THE GAMES BEGIN: DATING, HONESTY, AND VULNERABILITY 5/31/10 by Sue Menahem, L.C.S.W.

Was it fate? Was it the stars that brought them together? Does it matter? She's in her mid 40's attractive, never married. He's also mid 40's, married twice, has 3 children between the 2. She's been through it before, disappointed again and again, wants to settle down and at this point is trying so hard to play her cards right because, after all, this one could be a keeper.



She's heard her bio-clock tick and tock, run out of steam and start ticking again. Sure, mid 40's may be a bit too old to give the bio-clock another shake but then again stranger things have happened.

According to her plan– she should be a grandmother by now! But somehow she never really got a relationship to click. Unmet promises, a few hearts broken and she finds herself now 3 months into something that at this point shows some potential. This time though, things will be different. She will be even more on guard. No more vulnerability. No more showing her hand – at least not until he does it first. Nope, she was going to play this one the right way. Strategically. "X" takes the center square.

And now they're out for dinner... atmosphere is perfect, conversation flowing, laughs, flirty touching. He pours the wine, smiles at how beautiful she looks and suddenly asks: "So, do you see yourself having kids one day?" Wow! Where did this one come from?? The answer could make or break the entire thing. Sure she wanted to try for kids. Why wouldn't she? After all, she was a healthy woman and thought she could be a great mom. Still, what if he didn't want them? Would he still want to be with her if he didn't want them? She took a sip of wine to buy a few seconds as she thought out the strategy. How could she continue the conversation, see what his position is and get the answers she needed without putting herself on the line? And then it came to her! The perfect response!


“What a funny question. With three children already I’m surprised that in your 40’s you’re still thinking about it.” She smiled. “Oh” he responded. “It isn’t important. I just was interested in what you had to say about it. How about a refill on the wine?” With that he lifts his hand and motions for the waiter. The rest of the conversation meanders about. Throughout the night she revisits it in her mind and can’t help but wonder if she was just blown off. How could she know? The answer he gave was to the response she made and the response she made had nothing to do with the questions rolling around in her mind. If you really want the truth, those two things have got to correspond.

THE BRAIN KEEPS THE SCORE PART TWO 5/17/10 by Margie Nichols (continued apologies to Bessel van der Kolk)

Let me start Part Two with a personal story that reflects how traumatic memories are stored differently than ‘regular’ memories and how they can be problematic. My story is more dramatic than many, but nevertheless an example of how all trauma works, whether it be chronic moderate abuse in childhood, or the loss of a loved one in a hurricane. I lost my daughter Jesse six years ago on June 2, 2004. She was born on June 6, 1994 and her memorial service was June 6, 2004. You don’t need to have lost a child to know that those anniversary dates are probably more painful than most other times of the year for me- we all intuitively understand the power of implicit, sensory memories. This year was the first year since Jesse died that the dates and days of the week coincide. I’ve found, somewhat to my surprise, that this congruence of date and day of the week lights the old limbic system memory circuits– and the emotional affect associated with them-with more intensity than they’ve been fired with in years. Some days I feel, in a small way, the same way I did back in 2004, when I was in the hospital with a gravely ill child. Because I’ve done a fair amount of work to resolve my trauma, the physical and emotional ‘re-living’ of the original experience usually fires neurons connected to my narrative memory, which is conscious and tells the story of my life. If this DIDN’T happen, I’d feel depressed, anxious, jumpy, and irritable and not know why, or worse, I’d attribute it to something going on in my current life. Instead, I have conscious, vivid memories of that time, and though the sensory re-living isn’t pleasant, it’s not a game-stopper.

You don’t have to have lost a child to have these kind of traumatic events leave ‘hot spots,’ booby-traps in your limbic system. Actually, chronic abuse or neglect in childhood leaves is far more damaging and traumatic than almost anything that happens to us as adults. Even mild to moderate abuse – the impact of years of living with a parent who is prone to raging or may be hypercritical and un-pleasable- leaves deeply wired neuronal networks. When these circuits ‘light up’, we re-live the emotional and sensory parts of these childhood injuries, often without conscious awareness of what is happening to us. And the less conscious we are, the more likely we are to react as we did to our old trauma, or as we wished we had, instead of forming a response based on present-day reality.

So, in Part One I promised to talk about how to ‘fix’ this situation – how to re-wire the brain.

And I will, but first I want to point to my recovery from trauma as an one example (there are many) of a realistic recovery from any trauma, childhood or adult. While my therapy and other personal work has ‘dialed down’ the experience of my loss tremendously, it has not totally erased the implicit memory, and very unusual triggers, like the date/day of the week congruence this year, can still make the old circuits light up . Again, the work I’ve done has re-wired my brain so that the unconscious limbic sense memories are connected to my conscious narrative: I recognize the ‘re-living’ for what it is. And it’s way less intense than it used to be, so the aversive feelings are easier to manage. So I don’t – too often – lash out at a loved one for no reason. I’m more often grumpy, sad, and agitated right now, more than I have been in a long time, which sets me up to be emotionally overreactive. I have to think more before opening my mouth, it takes more effort to be aware of what is a ‘rational’ reaction. But – overall, my recovery has been so much more complete than I ever would have imagined – I feel blessed. It’s definitely been worth the work, and if anything I’ve written so far in Part One or here sounds familiar, I encourage you to avail yourself of the wealth of excellent methods of healing from trauma that are out there.

What’s the work you can do to reduce your hypersensitivity to certain situations or people when that reactivity is based in neuronal networks wired deeply in your limbic system? There are many types of work- body work, spiritual work , physical, nutritional- that can be effective, but here I’m going to confine myself to psychological work, whether through formal therapy or ‘self-help.’

Three key facts about trauma will help you understand. First, not all people will be traumatized by the same events. Two people survive a horrible earthquake, one recovers, the other is fearful for life. Two children are subjected to a contemptuous parent, one is traumatized for life, the other escapes into sports. Key factors are how HELPLESS, HOPELESS, PARALYZED you felt or actually were during the trauma, so children are particularly vulnerable. A second is that the trauma is usually associated with cognitions, thoughts, that represent negative statements about the self, some evaluative (“I’m to blame for this”), some expressing feelings of helpless/hopeless/paralysis. The thoughts, called ‘automatic thoughts’ arise in conjunction with the sensory memories, and become part of the same neuronal network. And third, every time we consciously force ourself to ‘bring up’ a memory, which means activating narrative memory, we store it a little differently. Depending on several factors, which I’ll discuss later, we either blur it around the edges and soften it, or store it with the negative affect intact or even increased.

The techniques that conquer trauma- and I’m talking cognitive-behavioral, psychodynamic, EMDR, hypnosis- all have certain elements in common. (THIS IS BECOMING LONGER THAN I HAD EXPECTED – TO BE CONTINUED NEXT WEEK IN PART THREE)