Gregg Dana's Journal

Converting Anxiety into Fear

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 21 Nov 07 19:53:00 UT

Fear is a highly useful, although unpleasant, emotion. We feel fear when we perceive something in the world around us that is likely to cause us harm. Whether it is an out-of-control car, a summons from the boss, a drunk in a fighting mood, or a crashing stock market, we feel the same physical sensation that we recognize as fear. Itâs a sudden onset of muscle tension throughout the body, stimulated by the release of the hormone adrenaline. Fear sends the body into a âfight or flightâ response, which reallocates most of our blood supply to the large muscles, preparing for intense physical activity. The brain begins scanning all our senses to learn more about the threat and develop a response.

Fear has the purpose of warning us of danger and providing us with the resources of physical energy to do something to prevent the harm. Fear directs our attention to what is going to hurt us, and we get ready to protect ourselves.

Anxiety feels the same as fear, just as unpleasant, usually with reduced intensity and without the sudden onset caused by a perceived threat. We become anxious when we believe that something in our lives will go bad and cause some kind of pain or distress. The threats that stimulate anxiety are uncertain, at some unknown time in the future, based on circumstances that may or may not occur.

So the warning we get from feeling anxious is vague. The body prepares for defensive activity, but it is not clear what we should do. The brain scans intensely to identify what will cause us pain and choose a response, but we find nothing definite. This anxious state can become chronic, with muscle tension, hyper-vigilance, worrisome thinking, and ineffective activity.

Anxiety is usually a complete waste of mental and physical energy, causing fatigue with no useful outcome. Symptoms of one of the anxiety disorders, or anxieties about some situation in their lives, are often the distress that motivates people to seek help from a mental health professional.

One of the approaches to treating anxiety that my patients have found helpful is what I call âconverting anxiety into fear.â This consists of examining the general or vague negative thoughts that are causing anxiety to identify the specific threats that can be addressed.

As an example of this process, I recall talking with a woman in her 60âs about her anxiety. She had a history of being âa worrier,â but generally her life had gone well. In the months before she called for an appointment, she had been through a series of health challenges, uncomfortable but not life threatening. Some of the diagnoses she had received were chronic, requiring daily medication. Sensible management of these conditions meant giving up some elements of her lifestyle and adding some new routines. But even with these changes, she was a vital woman with a satisfying family life and many fulfilling activities.

The anxiety that kept her up at night and caused her to feel tense and unhappy focused around the possibility that her future aging process would lead to years of increasing pain and disability. She could envision herself as a pitiful nursing home patient with a life empty of meaningful activity or delight.

The threat of living through years of increasing illness, losing parts of her life that she had enjoyed for many years, and ending up pitiful seemed very real. It made her feel bad to think about it, but she couldnât stop worrying about it.

I asked if she had talked with her husband and children about planning for a time in the future when she might become very old and sick. She had not wanted to bring up such a dreary subject.

I suggested that she convert her anxiety into fear by carefully thinking through her anticipated problems, losses, and illnesses, facing the fear that each one of them would generate in her. Identifying the specific threats clearly would allow her to think about actions that might prevent or reduce their impact, and talk with her loved-ones about those more hopeful plans.

To start this work, we talked about her joy from gardening. She feared that she might one day have to give up those pleasures. I suggested that she think carefully about how she might participate in gardening as an old, frail woman. Perhaps a younger relative or friend with a garden would be glad to have her help, in whatever way she could, at planting time.

Identifying the feared threats and planning a response which would eliminate or reduce the harm has the effect of taking the power out of the anxiety. Vague future troubles and possible negative situations are faced directly, and the fear generated provides energy to plan strategies or coping mechanisms.

It would be nice if there were a way to eliminate anxiety completely, since it is an uncomfortable, useless feeling. Unfortunately for many people, including myself, we are quite hard-wired to worry about future unhappiness, scanning the world for even the vaguest threat. Learning to identify the real threats and feel our fear can make anxiety-prone people happier, with more energy to give to our important goals and relationships.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Acknowledging Our Limitations, Acting on Our Gifts

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 3 Nov 07 19:22:00 UT

In the twelfth chapter of his first letter to the Christians of ancient Corinth, Paul writes that people have a variety of gifts. To illustrate this point he uses the metaphor of the human body, made up of many parts with a variety of distinct functions, all of which are necessary for health and success as we live. What our hands do well is impossible for our ears. Our nose possesses the gift of smelling, and no other part of our body can do that. Each of us has some special abilities, and we canât do things that come easily to other people. This truth seems obvious, but a recent incident got me thinking about the importance of discerning our strengths and weaknesses, and making choices that allow us to use our gifts.

Our piano tuner came to our home recently to do her semi-annual service on our piano. She and I were visiting as I wrote the check, and she asked me if I play the piano. I told her I had taken lots of piano lessons in my youth, but I lack the talent I needed to be a good pianist. She responded by telling me how she taught herself to play as a child, never having a single piano lesson. She admitted to having what I lack, a natural gift to make music at the piano. I said, âIf you had been given all the piano lessons I had as a child, you might be a famous concert pianist.â We both laughed, but I am not sure either of us was really amused.

Some success gurus and positive-thinking advocates tell the people who come to their seminars or watch their info-mercials that they can achieve any goal with the help of the proper techniques and mental attitudes. Some parents tell their children that they can do anything and be anything if they try hard enough. I believe such encouraging statements to be dangerously false. Each of us has specific strengths and weaknesses in our mind, our body, and our character. When we do what we are good at, we are likely to achieve good results. When we attempt tasks the bring out our weaknesses, we are prone to disappointment, if not complete failure.

I remember vividly the day on which I concluded that I simply do not possess the ability to play the piano well, regardless of my motivation or effort to do so. Admitting that truth was both very difficult and quite liberating. It was painful to conclude that all of the years of lessons and hours of practice were largely a waste. I was my motherâs best hope for having a child who could play the piano as she did, so I knew she would be disappointed. I knew I would miss the appreciation of other people because I could play. But at the same time, admitting the truth freed me from further struggles to reach an unachievable goal. It explained why playing recitals had always been so much harder for me than for other more-talented students. Best of all, the energy I had spent on the piano could now be devoted to other pursuits using the talents I do have.

I suspect that the woman who tunes our piano also has vivid memories of childhood disappointments when no one figured out a way for her to have the piano lessons she wanted. Her musical talent and desire to play were obvious at a young age. No one acknowledged her gift and provided her the resources she needed to achieve the level of skill of which she was capable. She may enjoy her profession as a piano tuner, but she may also live with deep sadness because her musical gifts are not being more fully utilized. Maybe she really could have been a famous concert pianist.

One of the maxims of Alcoholics Anonymous is that it is insanity to do the same thing over and over again expecting each time to achieve different results. This saying means that if we are to live sanely we must pay attention to the results we achieve in our lives and learn from them truths about ourselves and the world. Things that go well can help us find our strengths. Struggles, disappointments and disasters can help us learn about the gifts we lack.

There was plenty of evidence that my piano playing was not going very well. It would have been very nice if I or my parents and teachers had understood my lack of talent earlier. I might have been able to find another musical or artistic skill I could do well. There were clear signs of our piano tunerâs gifts. If someone had discerned and encouraged her special skills, her life might have taken a very different path.

The Apostle Paul was correct that we possess a variety of gifts that complement each other like the parts of a human body. When we all bring our best abilities to our families, our workplaces, and our neighborhoods, those skills combined can lead to healthy, thriving communities. If we know and acknowledge our weaknesses, others can use their gifts to compensate for what we donât do well.

When itâs time for some piano playing, I know better than to volunteer, and I hope that our piano tuner, or some other talented person, will take their place at the keyboard.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Rituals of Greeting and Parting

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 1 Oct 07 21:51:00 UT

In his book, Take Back Your Marriage, Bill Doherty defines a ritual as a repeated experience that has meaning. If we do something often, but we donât care about it and wouldnât miss it if it stopped, that is not a ritual. If we do something, even something very small that only takes a moment, and it feels important, and we do it regularly, itâs a ritual.

Successful married couples usually have lots of rituals that support their partnership and romance, without really noticing that they are doing things over and over again. They are just doing what feels natural at the time, calling each other every day just to say hi, watching a favorite TV show together every week, telling each other that they look nice when they dress up, saying âI love youâ before they go to sleep each night, etc. There is no list of necessary marital rituals, and what works for some couples would not work for others.

When someone is out of town, or their routines are interrupted in some way, their rituals donât happen, and thatâs not a big deal, but they both notice and miss their little moments of closeness. I encourage couples to complain when something gets in the way of their normal ways of showing their love for each other.

When the relationship between a husband and wife starts to deteriorate, it is not unusual for their rituals to diminish. That change, in turn, leads to disappointment and distancing, further pushing their romance toward failure. When I am working with couples in marital therapy, I often encourage them to turn that process around consciously by agreeing to upgrade their rituals. Anything they can do to recapture the little moments of affection will help them rebuild their marriage. I often focus especially on improving their rituals of greeting and parting.

When couples are in the excitement of courtship, they greet one another with enthusiasm and they say good-by in a way that says they will miss each other while apart. When years together has made it all seem routine and the stresses of bills, jobs, kids, etc. turn their attention away from romance, couples often greet and part in ways that say nothing about how important they are to each other.

He leaves early for the office, the job site, or the fitness center and never comes back to the bedroom to say good-by to his sleepy wife with a quick kiss. He runs to the hardware store on the weekend without detouring through the house to tell her where he is going and say good-by like he means it.

She gets home at the end of a long workday, hangs up her coat, checks to see what the kids are doing, goes through the mail, changes her clothes, and starts on the tasks of the evening, never taking a moment to tell her husband that she is glad to be home, with him. She comes home after visiting her ailing mother on the weekend and immediately gets on the phone with her sister without telling him how her mom is doing.

I encourage couples to notice what they do when someone leaves or arrives, reminisce about what they remember doing when their marriage was at its best, and decide what they will do now to rekindle their warmth and affection. Improved greeting and parting rituals are easy to do, require no time or money, and happen several times a day. If spouses agree to do a better job with this part of their relationship, and they both do it, there are two important consequences.

First, it shows that they are both trying to make their marriage better. Couples can put up with a great deal of dissatisfaction in the short term if they believe that they are both motivated and working hard to improve things between them. Second, even little moments of warmth and contact remind both of them of the very special feelings that they can generate in one another by being close. A quick kiss is a sign of a special, close relationship. A brief hug or touch of hands is a hint of the profound delight that couples can find in bodies touching and hands caressing.

If a marriage can be compared to a bank account, then a rich marriage is one in which there are many more deposits than withdrawals. Good greeting and parting rituals are small, frequent deposits, and over time they can add up to a lot. Usually when someone says, âif I had a dollar for every time youâ¦â they are criticizing the listener for doing something often that never works. But if a married couple had a dollar for every time they expressed their love when coming or going, they would be rich indeed.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Schizmogenesis

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 26 Sep 07 21:00:00 UT

Schizmogenesis: literally "creation of division"; the term derives from the Greek words skhisma "cleft" (borrowed into English as schism, "division into opposing factions"), and genesis "generation, creation" (deriving in turn from gignesthai "be born or produced, creation, a coming into being") [from Reference.com]

I like words, especially words new to me that express an interesting thought or portray an action or thing in a new way. I remember being delighted when I first encountered âschizmogenesisâ while studying the fundamental principles of systems theory. I donât often use it when I talk, because it is technical jargon, but I use it in my mind when I am thinking about dynamics I find in families.

My recollection is that this word was developed as anthropologists and historians tried to explain phenomena in the natural world and in human history. For example, there are animals that are completely adapted to living on grassy prairies. These animals live on land areas that are grassy prairies, but could also have been forest. The question was how this situation occurred. Did the prairies develop, and animals learned how to live there? Did the animals develop and behave in ways that resulted in the prairies?

Both of these questions assume that causation is linear, with one thing acting on another to produce a result. This kind of linear thinking is relatively simple, and much of life works that way, so it is frequently the way we understand events. The cue ball collides with the 8-ball, and it goes into the pocket of the pool table. I drive my car recklessly, so the police stop me and give me a ticket.

But schizmogenesis describes the concept that causation is often better understood as reciprocal, or mutual. In the prairie example, the behavior of the animals influences the terrain and the plants that grow on the land. The developing prairie influences the animals that live there. Over time, their mutual influence results in a situation that they both caused, together. On the pool table, the 8-ball causes the cue ball to stop, or to bounce in a new direction, so the new arrangement of balls on the table is mutually caused. This idea of mutual influence and causation is one of the most important ideas of family systems theory.

So, in families, systems theory proposes that whatever happens is mutually caused by all of the participants, with each person playing a part in the events that unfold, and being influenced by what others do. This perspective uses the behavior of all the individuals and the relationships between them to explain a family event. It is even more useful in understanding a series of events that together result in changed relationships.

An illustration of this concept: Teenagers are passing through a developmental process that furthers their maturity and individuation. They often want to do things their way, rather than following the guidance of their parents. If the parents enforce rules, teenage sons and daughters seem compelled to challenge them, or at least protest that their parents are unreasonable and controlling. This often results in a schizmogenetic process.

Parents Sam and Sue declare that their son Bill has a curfew, which they regard as reasonable parenting, helping him to make good social decisions and get enough sleep. Bill protests, and before long he arrives home after his curfew, giving the excuse that the friend who was driving took some other people home first. Sam and Sue are unhappy about the curfew violation and the fact that Bill didnât call on the cell phone they pay for. They ground him for the next weekend, which results in an argument. When the weekend comes, Bill spends the whole time on his computer, IMâing his friends and playing a video game his parents donât approve. He refuses to do homework or have anything to do with the family.

Sam and Sue tell Bill that his behavior is unacceptable and has reduced their trust in him. When they threaten to extend his grounding and restrict his computer time, Bill gets angry and uses nasty language as he tells them they are insane parents. His name-calling offends Sam and Sue, and they put a password on his computer so he can use it only with their permission. The next weekend, Bill violates the curfew again, staying out intentionally and refusing to answer his phone when they call. His parents are waiting up when he gets home, and they tell him how disappointed and worried they are. He responds sullenly that they are stupid and goes to his room, where his parents hear him talking angrily on the phone to a friend. The next morning he gets up at the last possible minute, gives his parents the silent treatment, refuses breakfast, and slams the door as he leaves.

I get a phone call from Sue later that morning, asking for a counseling appointment for Bill as soon as possible. Their normal son has become a rebellious, disrespectful, rule-breaking, angry teen. She wants me to diagnose Bill and provide treatment for whatever is wrong with him. She wonders if he would benefit from medication.

This oversimplified story of escalating family stress is an illustration of schizmogenesis. In real life, there could be many possible explanations for the story Sue, Sam, and Bill tell me in their first session. For the purposes of this article, I am presuming that no one is seriously ill, mentally or physically, no one is involved in substance abuse, and no one is living with unbearable stress outside the home. They are all okay, but their interaction has mutually caused a situation that is unpleasant for all of them. As Bill challenged his parentsâ authority, they became anxious and responded with stronger efforts to control him. Fighting for his maturity and independence, Bill escalated his behavior, and a cycle of increasing conflict developed.

The benefit of my understanding this familyâs problem as schizmogenesis is that I can work with any or all of them, depending on who is willing and capable of change. If Bill refuses to consent to counseling, I ask Sue and Sam to come without him. If the parents just want me to fix their son, I can work with Bill alone. Ideally, they would all have a part in cooperating to develop more harmonious ways of dealing with each other.

This perspective on family problems gives me many, flexible interventions as a therapist. Treatment can be rapidly successful, because any person in the family system can change his/her role and influence all the other people and the outcome of their interactions.

It can be challenging to work in this way with families who want to pathologize one member, clearly asking me to diagnose and arrange medication for the person who is being blamed for the family distress. Then I must be very quiet about my thoughts about schizmogenesis, providing treatment that they regard as competent, but also seeking ways to use my position in the family system to address the unacknowledged schizmogenetic issues.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

A Time to Keep, A Time to Throw Away

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 23 Sep 07 19:48:00 UT

I was walking my dog early in December. I noticed a very sad Jack-o-lantern sitting on the front porch of a home in our neighborhood. It appeared moldy and its Halloween grin had become a collapsed grimace. This pumpkin had been carved as a part of a familyâs Halloween celebration, and the children in that home had probably been delighted with their Jack-o-lantern. But cherished as it may have been on Halloween night, the time had come weeks ago for that pumpkin to be thrown away.

The moldy Jack-o-lantern got me thinking about the issue of keeping and throwing away. How can I decide reasonably what to keep and what to discard? What am I hanging onto that should have been thrown away long ago? I regularly face keep/discard decisions when I am in a de-cluttering, organizing, cleaning-out mode, dealing with all the stuff that sits on shelves and in boxes, in closets, the attic, basement, and garage. It feels like a minor victory every time I carry a box of seldom/never-used items out of the house, to be contributed, recycled, or discarded.

When I am in a reflective mood, I face keep/discard decisions about more important, less tangible parts of my life. I ponder my life and the choices I have made on New Yearâs Day, on my birthday, or in a season of preparation for an important religious holiday. Which of my habits are good and should be kept? Which parts of my character are negative and should be discarded? Which of the traditions I inherited from my family should I honor and preserve for future generations? Which errors of the past should I let go?

My clients find that a part of the work of counseling is a similar process. They need to identify and make choices about the parts of their lives that caused them enough distress for them to seek help. Perhaps they recognized that some people find life to be more pleasant or achieve more success than they do. Or, they found themselves in pain, physical or emotional, and want relief. Or, they did what seemed right, or necessary, or fun, and people close to them responded negatively.

As clients join with counselors in therapy, we seek to understand the deeper meanings of these unhappy experiences. Clients explore the influences of the past and the present-day situations that contribute to their uncomfortable feelings and unfortunate choices. They identify personal strengths and weaknesses, good and bad formative experiences in their families, positive and negative aspects of their current life experiences, and their character traits that work well or badly.

Even before the problems are completely identified or the underlying factors fully understood, clients start to make keep/discard decisions about what is working in their lives and could be strengthened, and what needs to be discarded to make room for new behaviors and responses.

Depressed clients learn what makes them feel better or worse. Many of them decide that they must keep every chance to exercise, even when they donât have much energy. They must discard thought habits of pessimism and negativity.

Anxious clients learn what triggers their anxiety and panic attacks. They often decide to keep and cherish moments when they can relax. They discard useless worrying and exhausting hypervigilance.

As clients in individual therapy learn more about keeping the positives and discarding the negatives, they find themselves less burdened by symptoms, their mood brightens, and they begin to vision a future in which they can enjoy life more fully.

Couples in marital therapy go through the same process on another, interpersonal level. We are all taught about being married when as little children we observe the behavior of married adults. Children in those formative years are uncritical as they absorb information about what husbands and wives do and say and feel. Years later when we get married, that ceremony changes us from boyfriend and girlfriend to husband and wife. We reach back into our childhood experiences, and in many ways we behave as spouses based on the lessons we were taught.

Some of those traditions about marriage work well, and we thank our parents and other influential adults for their example. Others ways of behaving as a husband or wife donât work at all, even though they come naturally and âfeel like home.â

If a coupleâs distress becomes acute or their affection withers over time, work with a counselor consists of identifying their strengths, so they can keep and enhance those parts of their life together. And, admitting their negative behaviors that have diminished their love, they discard them and choose new ways to rekindle their romance and strengthen their partnership.

Keep/discard decisions are not easy. It feels disloyal to admit that a keepsake is really just junk, or that a tradition no longer works. It takes attention to notice a moldy pumpkin, and it takes energy to put it in the trash. But if we donât do the work of making keep/discard decisions, about our stuff and about our lives, we will find ourselves burdened with things we donât use and a way of life that doesnât work.

Spiritual growth through dog-walking

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 16 Sep 07 21:36:00 UT

After a few months of neglecting my blog, I am back.

I have decided to post on my blog several articles that I had previously written for an occasional newsletter of our center.

In the early fall our family got our first dog, Gretta, an energetic Weimaraner puppy. We want her to be a well-mannered pet, so her training routines have become an important part of our life. We have learned that when she exercises long enough and hard enough, she is in a better mood, settling down more easily, and finding more times for napping.

My part of exercising Gretta is an early morning walk while my wife begins to get the day organized for herself and our daughters. This discipline of daily dog-walking has been good for me in at least two ways: by increasing my exercise level and by giving me an opportunity for spiritual growth. This second benefit that Gretta has brought into my life has come as a pleasant surprise.

My first mornings of dog-walking gave me a chance to get reacquainted with the dawn. As the days shortened into winter, I rediscovered the phases of the moon and the stars in the sky. In my pre-Gretta way of life my attention almost always focused on the task before me, the person I was talking to, the road ahead, the screen on the TV or the computer, etc. Seldom did I find an occasion to pause and be aware of the creation that surrounds me, appreciating its beauty, noticing its natural rhythms. I have found myself feeling more connected with the handiwork of God as I have seen the pinks and blues of the dawn, heard the rustle of my feet on fallen leaves, felt warm breezes and chilling winds on my hands, and smelled the aroma of a neighborâs cooking bacon for breakfast. It has been a very good thing to be taken out of my climate-controlled, artificially-lighted, Palm Pilot-scheduled, 65 mile-per-hour life, receiving a gift of a deeper awareness of the natural, enduring parts of life from my dog.

We take the same basic route every morning, through the neighborhood and the nearby nature preserve. We have explored other streets and routes, but Gretta and I seem to have agreed that one particular route for our walk is best. I cannot identify any objective reasons that make this path the right one for us. This experience of finding ourselves on a path that seems right for no apparent reason could be understood as random or meaningless, but I have come to see our route as our response to mysterious guidance that is almost imperceptible but nevertheless powerful. Pondering our crooked route through streets and pathways has helped me to view my entire life journey from a new perspective. Through the years I have tried to make good decisions and deal with the challenges I have faced. Even so, as I look back over my life it often appears that my path was set before me, that I was guided into new directions, that I arrived at destinations I had not chosen. Understanding my life in this way as I have walked my dog in the morning has made it possible to take on the rest of the day with greater calm and confidence.

One morning I left the house in the dark and found that it was raining. It was a cold, blustery morning that I immediately experienced as quite unpleasant. Turning back into the comfort of our home, but with Gretta un-walked, wasnât an option. So off we went, my hat pulled down over my ears, my gloved hands clenched against the cold. Gretta paused often to shake off the rain. I figured out that there were two very different ways to understand my experience that morning. I could view my dog-walking in the cold rain as an uncomfortable obligation, or as an unusual opportunity. I found a way to choose the more positive view, and my walk was transformed. I became deeply grateful for my warm and waterproof coat. Once I got moving, I was not in fact uncomfortable. I came to appreciate that of all the people living in the homes of our neighborhood, I was the only one who was out in the rain with the rich experience of feeling the drops hitting my shoulders, watching the puddles form under the streetlights. I got back home with a renewed awareness of how wonderful it is to live in a warm, dry dwelling. That wet walk with Gretta became an occasion for deep gratitude.

I have been taught by my Christian heritage that awareness of the wonder of Godâs creation, trust in Godâs guidance through my life, and gratitude for the gifts I receive every day are strong, spiritual foundations on which I can build my life. I had allowed the artificiality, stress, and hurry of my modern, American life to weaken those foundations. Gretta needed to be walked every day, and in my obligation to meet her need, I have found a rich opportunity for spiritual growth.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Singing in the Shower

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 16 May 07 20:38:00 UT

An obsession is defined as a thought, mental image, impulse, or worry that gets stuck in your head. In Obsessive/Compulsive Disorder, the obsessive thoughts and impulses are disturbing, causing patients so much distress that they must engage in some compulsive behavior to relieve their discomfort.

There are also ânormalâ obsessions which many untroubled people have. They accept them as the way their mind works, perhaps taking it for granted that everybody has them. These ordinary obsessions are associated with an anxiety-prone personality structure. There are, in my opinion, several basic designs of the normal human psyche, none better or worse, but different. Generalizations about human beings that are this broad are very problematical, but if you get âsongs stuck in your headâ I would take that as a strong clue that your personality structure leans toward anxiety. This is okay; donât worry about it.

If you have never gotten a tune stuck in your head, repeated, sometimes for hours, in the background of your thinking, you have no idea what I am writing about. Just imagine living with background music from a weird radio that constantly re-played the same advertising jingle or song from a kidâs TV show. What gets stuck in your head doesnât have to be music; it can be a word, a personâs name, an image, or impulse. For those of us who are used to it, this background to the objects of our conscious attention feels normal.

But, for people who do obsessions routinely, there are times when the stress load rises, or worries become more substantial and intense. Then the obsessive moments can become more unpleasant, with thoughts or impulses that are unsettling, moving in the direction of OCD. This variability in the content and comfort of obsessions can actually serve as an accurate gauge of how stressed, tired, or worried we are.

In these less-pleasant times, we look for some way to quiet the unsettling racket in the background of our minds. One of the obvious ways to do this is to âget busy,â engaging in some activity that is so interesting that we focus our attention strongly on it. When we are in a worrisome, obsessive spot, and we watch an exciting show, engage in a vigorous sport, or take on a complex job, our worrying and obsessing are reduced to a level that they are not intrusive. Essentially we are ignoring them.

This means that the most difficult moments for being bothered by obsessive thoughts are those times when we are doing something routine, which does not require our full attention. We can think about and do two things at once if one of them is well-practiced. When we are driving the car, walking the dog, taking a shower, or walking behind the lawnmower, we are busy, but doing a task that doesnât require our full attention.

Those are moments that invite our obsessions to fill the unoccupied part of our minds, and it can change a routine, even pleasant task into a fretful, worrisome, âI am feeling pretty crazyâ experience.

It is my theory that this phenomenon explains why people sing in the shower. I believe that it is impossible to sing and obsess at the same time. There is something about the way the brain works that we cannot do these two activities together. If you can obsess and sing simultaneously, please let me know. Most of us simply canât do it.

There are theories about the acoustics of the shower improving the sound of ordinary singers, transforming us into Broadway stars. I can carry a tune, but as far as I can tell, the shower fails to make me sound like Luciano. Bad singers donât seem inclined to seek out phone booths and other enclosed spaces so they can sound good. Itâs a shower thing.

Many of us shower as we are getting ready for the day. While we are lathering, something we have done a million times, our minds fill with obsessive thoughts about possible stresses, risks, mistakes, failures, problems and disappointments we can imagine. We become uncomfortable, even while standing under the relaxing warm water.

So we break into song, and it all goes away. After a couple of stanzas of âZippedy-do-da,â it is time to dry off and get busy with the day.

If I am right about all of this, the generalization from it is that we should sing more, consciously choosing to fill our minds with music. I believe that almost any kind of music-making will do: singing badly or beautifully, humming when we walk, whistling while we work, harmonizing with the car radio, etc. I donât know, and would be interested in knowing, if playing a musical instrument has the same effect.

And, if you are close to someone who suffers from OCD, tell them about this article. I have never seen an article about the treatment of this very unpleasant disorder which suggests singing as a powerful way of silencing troubling obsessions. In my clinical experience, I have suggested this to patients, and they have reported heartening results.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Romance and Spouse Selection #1

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 13 May 07 16:36:00 UT

Working with struggling couples in my counseling practice has led me to become very interested in the nature of romance, the process of spouse selection, and the relationship between romance and marital success. I recommend the books of Helen Fisher and Pat Love about these subjects. I plan to write on these subjects as a way of clarifying and articulating what I have learned.

Romance between spouses is usually defined for them by their experiences in the first few months when they fell in love. Although their special version of romance is unique to every couple, there are common elements that usually cause love to grow. (These same elements can also be a source of problems later on.)
1. New lovers notice and enjoy the best parts of each otherâs behavior and character (which can lead to ignoring rather obvious negative attributes)
2. They have increased energy and libido, reduced need for sleep, and obsessive preoccupation with the new lover (which can produce impulsive or uncharacteristic decisions, especially about sex)
3. They dream together about a wonderful, optimistic future (which can lead to wildly unrealistic plans)
4. They feel euphoria, head in the clouds, feet not touching the ground (which can lead to the false belief that love will always be exciting)
5. They have a strong desire for togetherness, hours of âjust usâ (which can lead to social withdrawal and damage other important relationships)
6. They make their courtship a highest priority (which can lead to one or both working too hard at the romance, with a level of effort that cannot be sustained)

Scientists who study human romantic attraction are learning more and more about the forces that shape our romantic feelings and influence our spouse selection. Clearly, how we behave in courtship and marriage is complex, but several influences seem apparent.
1.There is a chemical basis to âchemistry.â When we are close to attractive potential mates, the levels of important chemicals in our brains rise or fall to produce the high of infatuation. Since we humans are very good at habituating to anything we do repeatedly, this release of the brain chemicals of infatuation reduces gradually over time. Most couples can still experience some degree of the original romantic âsparkâ for about 6 months.
2.Although I never found a researcher who wrote about it, our desire for the experience of romantic chemistry explains for me the rather mystifying practice of kissing, which is often very important to lovers. By such close, intimate contact, both get a strong dose of the body chemistry of the other, which causes the release of infatuating brain chemicals. We have the capacity, below the level of conscious sensation, to identify people with whom we might have healthy children. If kissing proves to be unexciting, like âkissing my sister,â that is probably an indication that childbearing together is not a good idea.
3.Romantic behavior has real power to shape our wishes and choices. Time spent together for personal talk, physical touch, romantic closeness, and sexual arousal increases the desire in both men and women for the relationship to grow toward stronger intimacy and partnership. If we donât want to get more deeply and emotionally involved with someone, romantic activities, although pleasant in the moment, are probably not a good choice. There is no such thing as âcasual sex.â
4.People who lived before modern times believed that they could find their one âsoulmateâ and never feel that kind of romantic attraction toward another person. Songs, poetry, and romantic stories convey the idea that romantic success comes from finding that unique person with whom we can feel true love. For good or ill, it is not like that in our modern world, for the simple reason that we meet so many people. If soulmates are âone in a million,â then I have several such people just in Chicagoland, over 250 in this country, and some 5000 in the world. For us in the 21st century, romantic success is not so simple as finding the one cosmic match which makes life together happy ever after.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

On Reducing Resentment

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 10 May 07 07:28:00 UT

I honor and appreciate people who have a sunny disposition and an optimistic, positive view of life, but my inner life doesnât work that way. It seems to me normal and routine for my mind to be more negative than positive, dwelling on resentments about hurts, disappointments, slights, losses, and other negative experiences of my life. Sometimes my resentfulness is just an undercurrent of unspecific negative feelings that darken whatever I am doing. Sometimes an event in my current life triggers a storm of active resentment by reminding me of a past hurt and the emotions I felt at the time.

I have recently become more aware of my resentfulness because of two experiences that reminded me of old pain. I was invited to go horseback riding by a friend, but I had to decline because I do not know how to ride a horse. In my disappointment I encountered my resentment of the fact that I was never given a chance to learn to ride horses when I was a child. From growing up on farms, my parents were both experienced with horses and riding. We lived in a rural community, so my parents were friendly with people who had horses and enjoyed riding. It seems to me that it would have been quite easy and probably inexpensive for my parents to arrange opportunities for me and my siblings to learn the basics of horseback riding. That never happened, and I resent it now that I do not have the skills necessary to enjoy the pleasure of riding a horse with a friend.

I began marital work with a couple whose situation reminded me very much of the time, now many years ago, when my ex-wife and I sought the help of a marital counselor. Remembering my own experience as a client as I listened to this couple tell their stories, I felt deep resentment about my ex-wifeâs behavior and about the way our counselor handled our case. I am fully aware of the ways that I contributed to the breakdown of my first marriage, but I resent the particular choices my ex-wife made as she responded to her unhappiness. I resent our counselorâs failure to deal more directly with her behavior, which at least prolonged the agony of the ending of our marriage. I am pleased that the couple I have been counseling are moving strongly toward a renewed marriage.

These two situations are just a sample of the pages and pages I could write about the details of my resentfulness. I have made an important discovery as I have been thinking about all of my resentments about my parents, ex-wife and counselor, other members of my family, teachers and fellow students from kindergarten through grad school, various institutions, bosses and coworkers, etc., etc.

I discovered that my resentfulness is a huge waste of emotional energy. The disappointments of my childhood happened a long time ago, and my mom and dad are no longer living to do anything about their parenting failures. My ex-wife and I have both recovered from the losses of our divorce. It is a problem for no one but me when I am filled with negative, resentful feelings.

Being resentful is very unpleasant. My happiness is diminished and my emotional energy is wasted by my resentfulness, so I have decided to undertake the emotional project of reducing resentment in my life. I am not sure that I have discovered all the best ways to arrive at this goal, but I have found two tools that have helped me take the first steps toward it. Now I can repeat these behaviors until they become habits.

First, I can make a point of reminiscing about some of my happiest moments, occasions of achievement and success, unforgettably wonderful experiences, and times when I have felt deeply loved and fulfilled. For this particular project, the most valuable of those memories are ones that relate to people and settings that also caused me pain. I can make the choice to fill my mind with the good memories rather than the painful ones, and instead of resentful, I feel grateful.

For example, I never will forget an evening when I sat next to my wife, years before she became my ex-wife, in the second row of an opera hall. We heard Beverly Sills sing the role of Violetta in Verdiâs La Traviata. It was a spectacular, amazing evening of music. The lovely arias that she sang still lift my spirits every time I hear them. As part of my project of reducing resentment I checked a recording of that opera out of the library and listened to it. I was taken back to a truly wonderful evening of music during the years that I was married to my ex-wife. I believe that those good memories reduced my resentment about her and the pain of divorcing.

Second, I am actively seeking ways for my resentments to motivate me toward positive change. My feelings about past disappointments and failures can point to ways that I can be more satisfied with my life today and energize me to make those changes.

For example, my resentment about my lack of horseback riding skills can push me toward learning to ride now. If I want it badly enough, I can find a stable, set aside the time and money for lessons, buy the necessary gear, and endure the embarrassment of a being a beginner. The same process could help me reduce my resentments over never being allowed to buy a motorcycle when I was a teenager, not studying abroad as a college student, etc., etc.

As the years of life pass, it becomes more and more clear that I do not have time and energy to waste on useless activities. The resentful process of remembering old pain, reliving moments of distress, and feeling again the emotions they generated, is largely, if not completely, unproductive. It will be much better if I can spend my days whistling the tunes of operas that have thrilled me, occasionally go horseback riding, or take a motorcycle tour in Europe.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

On Becoming a Dad

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Tue, 8 May 07 14:14:00 UT

Iâm a dad. I have two sons and two daughters, and I feel deeply blessed to be their father. I work hard at being a good dad, doing the things that a man can do to care for my children. They are, without reservation, a wonderful, fulfilling part of my life.

I will never forget the experience of becoming a dad when my older son was born. It was an astonishing, miraculous, frightening, and fatiguing day, so I know I did not fully understand what it meant when the nurse put my son into my arms and said, âCongratulations, dad.â

Now I have experienced three more unforgettable birth-days, and I have matured enough to have a fuller awareness of how it changes a manâs life when the birth of a child converts him from just a guy into a dad. I have also had the privilege of listening to men talk about the impact of fatherhood on their lives.

I have learned that, along with all the wonderful things about becoming a dad, there are also important negatives. I decided to write about these negative parts of the male experience of new fatherhood because I believe it would help men who are new fathers to adjust to that change more smoothly if they understood the unpleasant experiences and negative feelings that are a completely normal part of becoming a dad.

I have become even more concerned about this transition in a manâs life when I have listened to many couples tell me that the deterioration in their marriage began with the birth of their first child. I believe that becoming parents for the first time is the most important normal transition that couples face in a lifetime together. When that change is not handled well, the damage to their relationship can be deep.

In short, I believe that, unless proactive steps are taken to prevent it, husbands may become emotionally distanced from their wives as a part of their shared experience of becoming parents. It is a step-by-step process in which the man loses important elements of the happiness that his wife provided before the pregnancy.

It starts when the pregnancy test is positive. Suddenly the husband is no longer the most important person in the wifeâs life. It is not that the wife has a reason to love the husband any less. Her love for him may intensify, but she naturally invests much of her emotional energy in her pregnancy, wanting to do everything to be a good mother. Her energy for her role as wife is reduced, and the welfare of her baby correctly takes priority over the happiness of her husband. This is a significant change from what a man feels in courtship and early marriage.

In the first trimester come morning sickness and hormone levels that make the mother more intensely female than she has ever been before. Women are a mystery to men under normal circumstances, but the experience that a pregnant wife is going through is totally incomprehensible to her husband. He may no longer feel much confidence that he knows how to care for her, and as she experiences all the different parts of being pregnant, his efforts to be close and supportive may seem inadequate.

Most men think that trying to get pregnant is a delightful project, because it means making love with a special significance and intensity for both partners. But, as the pregnancy progresses, the sexual life that they have enjoyed is affected, and the fun for him may diminish. Her shape changes and she gains weight, so she may feel less desirable. Sexual activities that were enjoyable in the past may become uncomfortable. For many couples their sexual relationship wanes as the pregnancy progresses, and perhaps for the first time, weeks may go by without sex.

After nine long months the blessed event arrives, and again men have almost no way of relating personally to the experience of childbirth. At best, husbands cheer from the sidelines as the wife does something difficult, even heroic. She rightly gets most of the credit for the bundle of joy in the nursery. He gets tired and goes home from the hospital to sleep alone.

Mom and baby come home, and life is never the same. A full nightâs sleep becomes only a fond memory, and Mom is tired all the time. Dad goes back to work, and wanting to be a good modern dad, he also does some childcare and housework, so he is tired too. The idea that he and she might do something romantic seems almost a joke.

Breastfeeding is wonderful for the baby, but the hormones involved in nursing extinguish libido. A new momâs body knows that it is not good for her to get pregnant again while her baby is very young. After she has recovered fully from delivery, dad begins to suggest that their sex life resume. If she is nursing, the answer that her hormones give her is âNever!â When she agrees to resume their love live, her enthusiasm is reduced.

The husband misses the full attention and sexual warmth of his wife. Times for just the two of them, for relaxing fun and fulfilling sex, for projects together and talk about workplace challenges, seem a distant memory. If he talks about how he feels, his wife has little energy to give to his concerns. It is more likely that he will be quiet and withdraw emotionally a little from the marriage. At this point, the new dad often begins to invest his emotional energy in other parts of his life, especially his job and earning the money that is necessary to provide for his expanded family.

A slow decline in marital connection and satisfaction has begun, and both may feel it, but there seems no alternative to their child-focused life. The needs of children trump adult wishes every time. After years of devoting themselves to loving children at the expense of their love as a couple, they end up sitting miserably in a counselorâs, or worse in an attorney's office.

This trajectory toward marital distress has no single cause, and it is probably best understood as a normal dynamic, with no one at fault. Clearly, it can be avoided if both the new mom and new dad are aware of this danger. They can find ways to stay close and adjust their life together so that their love as a couple remains strong, maturing and growing to include love for their children.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

The Waiting Room Factor

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sat, 5 May 07 21:47:00 UT

Research shows clearly that there is one element in counseling that correlates most strongly with success. It is called the therapeutic alliance. If this therapeutic connection between counselor and patient is good, they experience mutual respect. They are working toward shared goals, and the process in the counseling room is comfortable for both of them.

Therapists donât like this research, because we want to believe that it is our favorite theories or practiced techniques that help our patients. These can be good elements of a patientâs experience, but itâs the quality of the therapeutic alliance that counts the most.

We had an in-service training recently on how this therapeutic alliance can be strengthened. Our presenters had a whole list of good ideas, most of which were familiar to me. They made one point that was new, and I have been thinking about it ever since.

One of the presenters had made an arrangement with his coworker to use âthe waiting room factorâ to strengthen the therapeutic alliance at the very beginning of treatment. When a new patient arrived in the waiting room, the therapist who was not treating the patient greeted him/her, offered beverages, started the paperwork, and in those few minutes, found an opportunity to say that the treating therapist was a kind, skilled clinician, predicting that treatment would go very well.

This technique had the purpose of reducing the patientâs anxiety before meeting his/her therapist and increasing the patientâs optimism about the outcome of treatment, thereby enhancing the therapeutic alliance from the very first moment of treatment.

If these two clinicians had not had genuine appreciation for each other, this technique would have been false and manipulative. But, both of them were speaking the truth and predicting a good outcome based on their experience with each other. Our presenterâs opinion was that using this waiting room factor was a good thing, improving the patientâs feelings about the first session, enhancing the prospect of success for the whole counseling process.

In my thinking about âthe waiting room factor,â one thing seems clear so far.

This process of providing a positive, optimistic welcome for new patients should be expanded beyond two therapists to include every part of that patientâs experience with our center. In the first phone call, the insurance verification, scheduling, and instructions for parking, the atmosphere of the waiting room and the comfort of the chairs in the counseling rooms, we should be communicating to patients that their experience at our center will be positive and successful.

New patients are never comfortable when they call our center or arrive at our front door. They are admitting that something is wrong in their life, and their emotions are on edge, despairing, afraid, ashamed, guilty, angry, etc. Clearly it makes perfect sense that a positive, hopeful experience, regardless of the therapistâs theories or techniques, would contribute to their comfort and healing.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

The Power of Gratitude for Couples

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Wed, 2 May 07 21:48:00 UT

Often it is in the first phone call that I begin to hear what has gone wrong in a marriage. The person who makes the call feels bad enough to do that, so before we can get to the time of the appointment and instructions about parking, his/her unhappiness just overflows. I hear the beginning of the story of stresses, hurts, and disappointments that have eroded their marriage.

When the joint counseling begins, both the husband and the wife tell me their sides of the story. Itâs usually all negative, a recounting of years of a gradually declining relationship, or sometimes a disastrous decision that has thrown the marriage into crisis. I ask questions about their history and about the situation that brought them to the decision to seek marital counseling. Before long I have heard the basic facts of their deteriorated relationship.

At that point I ask them to shift gears and tell me what is still working well in their marriage: âWhat still makes you glad to be together?â Sadly, some couples are unable to think of one thing about their partner or their life together that they still respect and appreciate. The majority of couples begin almost grudgingly to name positive qualities in each other and elements of their life that they enjoy. âShe is a great mother.â âHe coaches Little League.â âWe always have fun on vacations.â âHe has done a beautiful job on our landscaping.â âShe remembers my sisterâs birthday.â

The change of the atmosphere in the room is almost tangible. When we start talking about these positive elements of their relationship, they start looking at each other more often. The tone of their voices lightens. They may even smile or laugh when they remember a nice moment

Typically they can tolerate this kind of less-hurting, less-angry interaction only briefly. Soon someone shifts back into a negative mode, explaining how the negatives overwhelm the positives, and elaborating again on the partnerâs shortcomings in character or behavior.

When it becomes clear that even with all their pain, anger, guilt, and anxiety both spouses want to repair what is broken in their marriage, the real work of treatment begins. Obviously we have to find ways to stop the negative behaviors by which they hurt each other. Their unresolved conflicts and poor habits of communication must be addressed. This is the part of treatment that I call âputting out the fire,â because clearly their marital home cannot be repaired and rebuilt if it is still in flames.

In every session, even when we are working on extinguishing negatives, I again draw their attention to the things they like about each other and the parts of their life that are still happy. With decreasing resistance they reminisce about happy times, or recall what attracted them to each other, or tell me about shared goals they hope to achieve. Again the energy in the room turns positive. With each repetition of this exercise, sitting on the loveseat in my office affirming the positives, feeling gratitude for each other and their marriage, their relationship grows warmer, more connected, and more affectionate.

When they can be grateful in my office, I often suggest a homework assignment. Every day they are to remember and add to their list of things about their partner and their shared life for which they are grateful. By this daily practice of gratitude they rediscover the positive qualities in each other that originally drew them together. They generally also find ways that they have grown or developed as people since courtship. They notice each day the ways, large and small, in which their lives are easier, more pleasant, and more fun because they are together.

Serious conflicts must be addressed and poor communication must be improved, but I have concluded that it is by focusing on the positive elements in their personalities and in their life together that a troubled marriage is healed. Kind words and affectionate gestures come more naturally. Sexual intimacy becomes fulfilling when partners can relax together in a warm, trusting, passionate and playful atmosphere.

Conflicts seem less serious when partners view the otherâs weird ideas or odd preferences as the strange behavior of a person with lots of other positive qualities. In short, it is hard to get yourself in the mood for a nasty fight when you are deeply grateful for each other, when you are aware of all the ways you enhance each otherâs lives.

People who are just starting to date someone new often tell a family member or friend about this very interesting person and all of the positive qualities that are being discovered as the romance grows. The coupleâs mutual appreciation and respect grow, and they find themselves feeling happy and grateful for their times together. This process of increasing gratitude for one another is a key element in falling in love. In the same way, rediscovering gratitude is an important part of healing a troubled marriage so that an estranged couple can fall in love again.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Change

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Mon, 30 Apr 07 14:06:00 UT

Change

I pay attention to the process of change, to my personal reactions and the systemic responses around me, because most of my patients are working to make big changes in their lives. People seek help from a counselor when they are having trouble adjusting to something in their lives, struggling to make changes in themselves and in their surroundings to move their lives toward stability and success. I have noticed three things that seem important.

(1) Change is tiring. Old, familiar ways are comfortable, even if they donât work very well. I complained for years that our operations were not fully computerized. But now, as I try to figure out the programs on my new, networked computer, I almost find myself wishing that we had not made this change. I know this is not a good reaction to the newness and difficulties of the new system, because I am sure the day will come when using it will be comfortable, but I feel it anyway.

Interpersonal systems theory describes the ârubber band effect,â which says that we are attached to our spot in life by forces like an invisible rubber band. When we move from our accustomed place to a new place, by changing ourselves or the way we do things, the rubber band is stretched and pulls us back toward our old spot. The farther we move, the bigger the change, the harder the rubber band pulls against it.

This theory about the difficulty of making and sustaining changes, even very good changes, describes how I can feel. It is fatiguing to keep resisting the tug toward the familiar as day by day I work with changes, until the new spot and new practices begin to feel normal. The learning point for me is that change makes me tired. When my patients report deep fatigue, I can understand that better.

(2) Change is stressful. Stress is cumulative. It doesnât matter whether stresses are positive or negative, welcome or unwelcome, they just add up. When our stress load begins to approach our capacity, we get uncomfortable. When our stress load exceeds what we can manage, we donât cope well, and we get symptomatic.

I sometimes compare this to carrying a backpack. When our load is light, or if we are really strong, it doesnât matter what we are carrying. But when our shoulders and legs are hurting and we donât feel like going on, it is time to dump out the backpack and examine our burdens, deciding what we must carry, what we want to carry, and what we can get rid of.

Frequently this examination of stresses reveals that there are big burdens that we cannot change and will carry because it is the right thing to do. But, there are often many lighter, less-important stresses that can be resolved, reducing the total load significantly.

When changes are coming rapidly from every direction at me or my clients, our stress can become uncomfortably high. Then it is time to dump out our backpacks, examine every concern, worry, responsibility, and problem, and figure out how we can make our lives easier.

3)Change induces pessimism. Facing new situations seems to make me focus on the negative. This tendency to give more importance and emotional weight to negative experiences than to positives makes it easy to feel discouraged and pessimistic about the future, even when the long-term picture is bright. I notice that I am likely to ignore important positive elements of change, filling my thoughts instead with less-important negative aspects.

If my wife and I manage to earn more money, I fret more over our increased tax bill than I enjoy the occasions when our budget can be more relaxed. When road crews are improving the highway I commute on, I am bothered by slow-downs more than I anticipate driving on a smooth, free-running highway.

I believe that we humans are deeply programmed by all the millenia of human experience to pay more attention to negatives, such as threats, pains, and losses, than to successes, delights, and good times. That makes sense, because the negative things can kill us, while the positive ones can only make us happy. Since almost every change has good and bad effects, it triggers this programmed response, and we emphasize the negative.

When our personal struggles or the changes that we face are major, this tendency seems to become stronger than usual Negativity about life and about the future are important elements of depression and anxiety, so many of my patients find their minds full of negative thoughts and feelings most of the day. It is often useful for me to direct their attention to the good things in their lives, suggesting that they consciously remind themselves to notice and nurture hopeful, positive experiences.

Change is a part of life. Something very important would be lost if our lives were completely stable. Even if we are stressed, fatigued, and pessimistic during our times of signficant change, those times are also challenges that can bring out the best in us.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

Rituals of greeting and parting

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Sun, 29 Apr 07 20:17:00 UT

Rituals of Greeting and Parting

In one of the books I recommend often, "Take Back Your Marriage" by William Doherty, he defines a ritual as a repeated experience that has meaning. If we do something often, but we donât care about it and wouldnât miss it if it stopped, that is not a ritual. If we do something, even something very small that only takes a moment, and it feels important, and we do it regularly, itâs a ritual.

Successful married couples usually have many rituals that support their partnership and romance, often without really noticing that they are doing important things over and over again. When their relationship is going well, they are just doing what feels natural to them. Examples of marital rituals might be: calling each other every day just to say hi, watching a favorite TV show together every week, telling each other that they look nice when they dress up, saying âI love youâ before they go to sleep each night, etc. There is no list of necessary marital rituals, and what works for some couples would not work for others.

When routines are interrupted in some way, their rituals may not happen. Thatâs not a big deal, but they both notice and miss their little moments of closeness. When something gets in the way of their normal ways of showing their love for each other, I encourage couples to complain together. Without blaming or being needy they acknowledge the importance of their marriage and its rituals.

When the relationship between a husband and wife starts to deteriorate, it is not unusual for their rituals to diminish. That change, in turn, leads to disappointment and distancing, further pushing their romance toward failure. When I am working with couples in marital therapy, I often encourage them to turn that process around consciously by agreeing to upgrade their rituals. Anything they can do to recapture the little moments of affection will help them rebuild their marriage.

I often focus especially on improving their rituals of greeting and parting. When couples are in the excitement of courtship, they greet one another with enthusiasm, and they say good-by in a way that says they will miss each other while apart. When years together have made it all seem routine, and the stresses of bills, jobs, kids, etc. turn their attention away from romance, couples may stop greeting and parting rituals entirely. In fact, the ways they say hello and good-by may communicate a negative message..

Hopefully avoiding gender stereotypes, here are some examples of failed rituals of greeting and parting:

He leaves early for the office, the job site, or the fitness center and never comes back to the bedroom to say good-by to his sleepy wife with a quick kiss. He runs to the store on the weekend without detouring through the house to tell her where he is going and say good-by like he means it.

She arrives home at the end of the workday, hangs up her coat, goes through the mail, and starts on the tasks of the evening, never taking a moment to tell her husband that she is glad to be home, with him. She returns from visiting her ailing mother on the weekend and immediately gets on the phone with her sister, perhaps later telling her husband how her mom is doing.

I encourage couples to notice what they do when someone leaves or arrives, reminisce about what they remember doing when their marriage was at its best, and decide what they will do now to rekindle their warmth and affection. Improved greeting and parting rituals are easy to do, require no time or money, and happen several times a day. If spouses agree to do a better job with this part of their relationship, and they both do it, there are two important consequences.

First, it shows that they are both trying to make their marriage better. Couples can put up with a great deal of dissatisfaction in the short term if they believe that they are both motivated and working hard to improve things between them. Second, even little moments of warmth and contact remind both of them of the very special feelings that they can generate in one another by being close. A quick kiss is a sign of a special, close relationship. A brief hug or touch of hands is a hint of the profound delight that couples can find in bodies touching and hands caressing.

If a marriage can be compared to a bank account, then a rich marriage is one in which there are many more deposits than withdrawals, more positive interactions than negative. Good greeting and parting rituals are small, frequent deposits, and over time they can add up to a lot. Usually when someone says, âif I had a dollar for every time youâ¦â they are criticizing the listener for doing something often that never works. But if a married couple had a dollar for every time they expressed their love when coming or going, they would be rich indeed.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007

"Bad" Grades

g-dana@sbcglobal.net — Thu, 26 Apr 07 07:22:00 UT

âBadâ Grades

After a few years, students understand completely how school works. They know the scholastic rules of the game, and they can predict accurately the kind of feedback they will get from the school for various kinds of behavior. On the bus, in the classroom, on the playground, they know what is expected and what will happen if they donât play by the rules.

This means that students know how to make good grades, and how to make bad grades. Some studentsâ ability to make good grades may be limited by their academic talent, but any child can make bad grades if he/she chooses.

This is an area of the childrenâs lives over which they have real control. If, for some reason, a student decides to make bad grades, there is absolutely nothing any parent or teacher can do to force students to improve their report cards. I have talked with parents who made truly amazing efforts to help their child achieve better grades, and I have learned that it is a power struggle the student can win every time.

Mom or Dad sits with the child to make sure every piece of homework is completed correctly. They email teachers to make sure their child hasnât forgotten an assignment. They pay for tutoring. They deliver impassioned speeches on the importance of good grades for a successful future. They take away privileges and offer bribes. They call a counselor. After all their hard work, parents get really upset when the student makes lame excuses for homework never turned in or tests covered with red marks. The report card filled with bad grades proves that the student is in control, not the parents.

I learned an important lesson from a 13-year old client whom I will call Katie. Her mom wanted me to talk with Katie because of the bad grades she was bringing home. After years of being a responsible student, making the grades that were good for her, Katie was now doing terribly.

Her mom explained to me that she and Katieâs dad were separated. The parents had been fighting too much, and they both realized that their affection had been eroded by years of taking each other for granted and leaving problems unsolved. Separated, things were better for them, but not for Katie.

When I talked with Katie alone, she told me how she was making her âbadâ grades and why. She knew that she was smart in math, so she worked the problems on her tests correctly to maintain her self-esteem. Then she erased the correct answers and put down wrong answers to get the bad grade she wanted.

She had learned that if she brought home a test with a good grade, mom would be pleased over this expectable behavior. But, if she brought home a failing grade, her mom would become very concerned and call her dad to talk with him about what they should do about this problem. Katieâs bad grades resulted in her mom and dad talking in a cooperative way about their concerns for her, working toward Katieâs goal of her parentsâ saving their marriage. They spent hours together developing parenting strategies to improve her report card.

What Katieâs parents didnât know was that her bad grades were working very well, but on her project of reconnecting her parents, not their project of a good report card. She didnât mind the Fâs if it increased her hope of her family together again.

What was especially impressive about Katie was her ability to understand and tell me what she was up to. She had a good reason to get bad grades, and it is my belief that it is not unusual for students to trash their grades for some understandable motive, which they may or may not understand consciously. Until they change that goal, parents will feel only frustration.

Therefore, I recommended to Katieâs mom and dad, and I suggest to other parents in that situation, that they admit defeat, acknowledging that their child is completely in control of his/her academic performance. This suggestion typically comes as a shock to strong, caring parents.

I do not want the parents to stop caring about grades, or withdraw needed help. I suggest they make it very clear they understand that the grades belong to the student. This means that parents stop hovering and pushing, give up bribing and punishing, and stifle the impulse to make repetitive speeches. Although this change in parental behavior may feel odd, even wrong, it often has positive results. If it doesn't, it is important to find out why.

It is pleasant and satisfying to make good grades. Students know that without being told. They receive all kinds of benefits in the school for trying hard academically and being responsible students. If the parents relax and give their student responsibility for his/her behavior in school, unless there is some reason not to, children will pull their grades up and enjoy the fun of a good report card.

If there is some reason why the student has chosen to make âbadâ grades, the parents and others who are concerned about his/her welfare can work together to identify that motive and respond to it. In thinking about why students would make bad grades intentionally, many family therapists would believe that, like Katie, the children are responding to some kind of family issue, such as marital problems, overwhelming family stress, unbalanced or inconsistent parenting, etc.

This is not to say that all bad grades are âbadâ like Katieâs. Students can suffer from a variety of disorders and disabilities that affect academic performance. They may have social struggles, personality conflicts with teachers, or genuine failures with good effort. Some use drugs or make other choices that dull their ability to think and learn.

So when a report card is disappointing, it is important to discover whether the problem is within the student or in the family and social network that surrounds and influences him/her. Parents, teachers, and counselors may prefer to find the cause in a diagnosis or the studentâs character, so mental health treatment can solve the problem. In my opinion, however, there is often nothing wrong with the student, and the grades are only âbadâ if you donât understand the studentâs life situation. If that is true, the problem must be addressed by changes made by the parents and other adults who create the relationship system surrounding the child.
Copyright Gregg Dana 2007