Author Archives: Dr. Lori Puterbaugh, LMHC, LMHC, NCC

I didn’t intend to eavesdrop…

August 5, 2015

Timeline: breakfast in Savannah, July 30.

I certainly didn’t intend to eavesdrop – listening in feels too much like the part of family psychotherapy called the enactment, when we observe a few moments of an argument that randomly unfolds before us, just to get an understanding of how problems are addressed – but the “free” breakfast in a small, historic inn doesn’t give a lot of space for privacy. So there we were, my hubby and I, in a beautiful old inn, forced to listen to two intelligent, good-hearted parents making fools of themselves in an attempt to talk a school-aged child into eating breakfast. Their efforts included cajoling, bribing, self-deprecating jokes about the father’s supposed fatness and thus how it would be OK for him to go hungry (but not the child), and more increasingly shrill gambols in gambling with their little angel.

How wearisome for them, and how sad for the child, who apparently holds all the cards in this little trio. All day, every step is manipulated by the whims of a child who really doesn’t need or want this much control. The professional part of my brain darkly predicted that this is how they live. The little narcissist-in-training laughs (now adorably but not so for long) at dad’s loving goofiness as he describes himself as “fat” to make her smile and perhaps pick at a bagel and some fruit. Mom tries a bit less hard than dad. I suspect she wishes he would be less willfully weak and is fast losing respect for him, and herself, and feels guilty at her burgeoning resentment towards the dictator-daughter. The teenage years ahead loom miserably, unless the parents decide to nudge their little darling out of the driver’s seat.

They did not ask, and I did not offer…but all that suffering (on the part of all of them – a child running a household suffers, too) is unnecessary. The parents can change how they behave, and the child will catch on quickly enough. No need to drag the girl in for counseling: she is merely taking the scepter handed to her. No, this is an adult problem. If the parents will it, we can fix it. If they choose not to, I predict that the parents’ marriage will suffer and the child, too, will grow up to be  impatient, bossy, and self-absorbed: an impossible-to-please adult who feels entitled to happiness.

As I remarked, at this point, the parents can change that future.

But I was on vacation, not in the office, and it was not dire enough to necessitate violating their privacy by speaking to them.

Still, I wish I could tell them, hey, you can fix this.

 

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

Parents go home…Again!

Parents, go home (or at least pretend to read a book)!

A few years ago, I wrote a column for USA Today Magazine entitled, Parents go home! I think it bears repeating.

When your child is at sports practice, or dance practice, or band practice…go home. Leave. Banish yourself. If you can’t because of the organization’s requirements that parents be present, or for purely practical reasons, then at least immerse yourself in reading, tearing yourself away from your book while feigning a vaguely surprised expression when your child presents him/herself, sports-gear in hand, to leave.

The common alternative is the shrieking, waving, thumbs-upping, video-recording parent on the sidelines for every practice. Kiddo, your performance is already on Facebook before you get to the drive-thru for dinner. This parent usually also feels obliged to provide all sorts of coaching advice and constructive criticism on the way home. This is bad for kids in all sorts of ways:

  • Your child is learning to be a narcissist. You are sending the messages that everything little Jason or Jennifer does is spotlight-worthy. It’s not.
  • You are nurturing the seeds of histrionic personality disorder: a character problem in which the person has to be the center of attention at all times. The child who repeatedly complains that you weren’t watching during some random moment of practice has internalized an expectation of being observed and admired at all times.
  • Your child is not learning to appropriately transfer filial obedience and acceptance of guidance from you to other adults. This is part of the benefit of teachers and coaches: other people besides you (mom and dad) can be experts, guides, and sources of leadership.
  • Your child is being taught, by your attention, to focus on performance rather than learning goals. Performance goals focus on enacting a flawless routine. It may mean a lot of intense focus, but a performance goal limits us because of the fear of making mistakes. Ultimately, performance goals lead to stagnation. This is because growth – learning – requires mistakes. Great guitarists, including the rich and famous, practice hours a day because they are always learning, pushing themselves, making mistakes, analyzing those mistakes, and integrating what they learn into new skill sets. The same principle applies to any skill. When you place unending pressure on your child by turning every practice session into a performance, you are creating an environment where doing the “safe” thing is best, even in practice, where failure ought to be risked without fear.

There is also the possibility that the obsessively watching parent is gratifying his/her needs through the child’s performance: a need to feel special, to achieve excellence, to be noticed. Our children do not exist to be flattering mirrors for our egos. They are unique and wonderful in their own right, not for our rights. The parent whose need to be recognized as great, via the reflected glow of a super-kid, needs to do some serious self-reflection of a different sort.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

 

22 hours a week…

The contact lens product advertisement in my Sunday newspaper asserts thats that the average gamer spends 22 hours a week playing video games and demands to know if my contact lens solution handle that.

Ugh, who on earth can handle that?

22 hours a week, average, playing video games. That’s right in there with the 3 to 6 hours we hear people who watch television (or whatever form of streaming video they prefer) spend on their habit daily. Hmm, what could you do with 22 hours a week?

  • Take a walk and do yoga every day, spend one day a week building houses for Habitat for Humanity, or working in a food bank, or some other form of service, and still have time to read a book for an hour a day.
  • Train for a triathlon.
  • Earn your HS diploma, your tech certificate, AA, BA, BS, MS, MA, or Ph.D.
  • Learn a new skill: paint, fly fish, built a robot.

The possibilities are tremendous. They are all life-changing.

In five years, what story do you want to tell about the person you will be tomorrow? Do you want to look back and say, “Hey, I was a serious gamer and invested a lot of time and energy into mastering levels of this one game for hours a day”? Is there any other sort of story you can imagine you’d rather tell in a few years, about the person you will be tomorrow?

What about the person you want to be in five years? Will playing video games (or watching television, or streaming video, or surfing the internet) for 22 hours x 52 weeks x 5 years turn you into that person? That’s over 5700 hours. Do you think you could manage to pack some great memories and amazing changes into your life with 5700 hours?

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Posts are for information and entertainment purposes only and should not be construed to be therapeutic advice. If you are in need of mental health assistance, please contact a licensed professional in your area.

If you need an answer right away, the answer is no…

…if you need a “yes,” a “yes” takes time.

So states the Sirusas Principle, named after a former boss who asserted this to, among others, commercial lending customers who were rather insistent on getting disbursements on the strength of a phone call.

No doubt the same can be said when dealing with children, employees, friends – and anyone else whose misbehavior or request seems to demand an immediate response.

One of the old tenets of parenting, based on behaviorist research, is that we have to immediately intervene with some sort of brilliantly thought-out and superlatively consistent response to every instance of misbehavior. Not only do we inflict this impossible standard on parents (including ourselves), but we carry it out into the world at large. An employee wants an extra day off? A friend needs a favor? Your second cousin wants to know if you’re flying out for a baby shower for your third cousin’s fifth child? Car salesperson wants your decision now? We foray into each encounter expecting that we must have a great decision, instant intervention and surefooted strategy for every possible situation.

Meh, not so much.

This notion no doubt is rooted in psychological research involving birds and rats. People don’t need an immediate consequence to get the message. Even your toddler can wait while you calm down and figure out what message you want to transmit. Sure, yelling and acting like a mean, angry giant works, if by “works” you mean, terrorize your kid and teach them that “might makes right,” no matter what. Was that the lesson you had in mind? If not, announce calmly that a response is forthcoming and change the subject until you can figure out what to do, or remember what your great plan was for just such an occasion.

If you doubt a child, or employee, or friend, can wait for a response to misbehavior or a request, consider whether said person would forget a positive promise. Odds are if you tell a three year old you are going to the zoo “tomorrow,” or in “three days,” the three year old will be able to remember you promised. So, if said three year old is a real stinker at the grocery store, you can say, “Wow, I’m so disappointed. I thought you knew better how to behave at the store. We will have to have a consequence when we get home.” No yelling, no screeching, no suspicious looks from naïve fellow shoppers who have not yet learned how difficult children can be. Your child will not forget that you are “thinking.” Meanwhile, you can calm down, think it through, and come up with a response that makes sense. The consequence may mean a short period of quiet “thinking time” for the three year old – and a very short conversation (one or two minutes) about making good choices next time.

Some people feel they must act immediately or they fear they will look weak, or, knowing their own dislike for confrontation, they suspect they will simply allow themselves to be misused. This is sort of fear is a powerful force, and merits its own attention, beyond the scope of this short essay.

Whether it’s fear of looking weak or fear that you will ultimately fail to act at all, consider learning to put that reflexive need for action away and take a deep breath before you decide what to do. Perhaps you will decide that making that first decision be to temporarily postpone a specific decision is the most useful option for you.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Happiness Hint #1: take happiness hints with a grain of salt!

The world is full of advice on happiness, and there is plenty of research on happiness, too. A word of advice: investigate before you “buy” into information or guidance on becoming happier. Happiness, like beauty, is not something on which people universally agree. Sometimes happiness refers to having fun; at other times, it refers to a more enduring state of life satisfaction, meaning and purpose.

Here’s an example: a few years back, some researchers announced that their study indicated that having children decreases “happiness,” and that’s the headline. Under the headline, deep in the research, you find a narrow definition of happiness used that reduces happiness to little more than an assessment of how much fun one might be having at any given time. For most parents (I hope!), while there are certainly aspects of parenting that are not as much fun as others, that is not the same as being substantially less happy – finding life less purposeful, less rich with meaning and emotion – than before kids. So, as you seek answers, be aware that often hundreds of pages of research have been selectively narrowed to a blurb. The “facts” presented to us are often just the tip of the iceberg.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Enjoy yourself! It’s later than you think…

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I can’t accuse my guardian angel of lacking a sense of humor. I woke up this morning – the last dream I recall was one of those “I’m at a conference and can’t even find the registration desk, never mind the place I’m supposed to be after that,” dreams – but the song stuck in my head had nothing to do with the dream. It was the 1940s era song by Sigman and Madigson:

“Enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think,

Enjoy yourself, while you’re still in the pink.

The years go by, more quickly than a wink,

Enjoy yourself, enjoy yourself, it’s later than you think.”

I haven’t heard the song performed since the last time I watched Guy Lombardo and his Royal Canadians at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel on New Year’s Eve (via television), necessarily before 1977, so it’s vexing to have it rattling around in my brain.

I don’t subscribe to the Bart Simpson philosophy of life that it’s “just a bunch of stuff that happened,” so I have to assume the song has meaning for me and elbowed its way into my conscious mind for a reason. Is the message actually along the lines of, “Hey! Hey! Apparently the whole week or so of readings from Ecclesiastes during the daily Masses in Ordinary Time didn’t get your attention. How ‘bout this?” Or is it some hiccup from my unconscious, nudging me to live up to my commitment to spend more time on art, reading and writing this summer? Either way, message received. It’s always the right time to discern about priorities, and apparently, it’s the right time, now, to give it some serious reflection.

Meanwhile, don’t forget to enjoy yourself.

Dr. Lori Puterbaugh

© 2015

Odds are…your child is not autistic

Your kid who can’t eat peas because peas “feel gross” is probably not autistic. There is tremendous fear around the ever-expanding construct of Autistic Spectrum Disorder, including rapidly inflating rates of incidence. Interested readers are referred to the ongoing and vociferous feud about this within the American Psychiatric Association and other organizations. Suffice it to say, many experts worry that the increasingly flexible diagnostic criteria, which are, after all, a checklist of concerns, can now embrace a larger number of children who are not autistic but rather are within what used to be the wide range of normal, with a few little quirks. For example, many sensory sensitivities are  normal. I, for one, cannot stand those fuzzy blankets with satin edges. If that fuzzy stuff touches me I feel like my cuticles are crawling. It just makes me crazy. Other people, of course, find fuzzy blankets cozy and comforting but to me, that’s like suggesting nails on a chalkboard are melodious. Some children are more sensitive to food textures than others; some are more sensitive to noise, or bright lights. Without other evidence, do not make yourself, and your child, miserable by assuming your child has a brain disorder.

If you have concerns, consult your pediatrician.  Early intervention and support are critical for children, and minimizing real problems, or over-emphasizing minor quirks, can get in the way of children who really need extra care and assistance getting the help they deserve.

Finally…I like peas. They are not “gross” to me, although there was that protracted standoff when I was four…

D Puterbaugh © 2015

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Self Care: For Mental Health Counselors (and anyone else)

Hello, everyone,

My upcoming article for Counseling Today is now available online at:  http://ct.counseling.org/2015/05/self-care-in-the-world-of-empirically-supported-treatments/

the gist of it:  I propose that the mental health field’s focus on diagnosing and eliminating symptoms has contaminated self-care, and more and more people are making the mistake of treating symptoms of stress instead of taking truly good care of themselves so they can properly care for others.

Counseling Today is a publication aimed primarily at the members of the American Counseling Association, but I think there might be something useful in there for others, too.

Have a wonderful day!

D Puterbaugh © 2015

Are the popular kids running your life?

Are the popular kids still running your life? Sure, you’re a competent, confident grown-up, more worried about your kids or family members being bullied than yourself, but that doesn’t mean you’re immune to caving in to the popular kids. Before you pooh-pooh the idea, consider…

How much time do you spend comparing yourself, or your stuff, to other people and their stuff?

Checked Facebook lately? Felt slighted because no one “liked” your latest post? Feeling badly because everyone seems to be having a more fun, exciting life than you?

Does an innocuous compliment from a stranger make you glow, like an approving word from your kindergarten teacher would have?

Do you read gossip magazines?

Do you go-along-to-get-along even when it’s uncomfortable for you? Examples: joining the work bunch for lunch out when it’s doesn’t fit your budget; having that piece of cake even though you and your medical conditions don’t’ think it’s a good idea, or contributing to yet another office pool for a lottery ticket or shower gift?

If you have interests that are outside the typical range, do you hide your light under a bushel basket because you worry others will think you’re odd? Not mentioning it because you are a private person is different; if you are selectively mentioning the activities you believe other people will “get” and never mentioning your passion for volunteering at the museum or reading everything you can about the history of aviation (because they aren’t “cool” in the popular people’s opinions), then you are caving in to the popular.

Are you picking up the slack for people beyond the point of it being part of being a good team player and developing a more-than-sneaking suspicion that it’s a one-sided deal?

In short…are you letting the popular kids run your life?

Wasn’t the misery of the middle school cafeteria experience enough for you?…Or are you reliving just a little bit of that, every day?

D Puterbaugh © 2015

Television: Does it make you sad?

Oh, you think not? Are you addicted? Mesmerized? Just stuck in a rut?

Well, then, “Drop the Remote and Back Away from the Television!”

Do you also complain about being too busy? No time to exercise, or read, or work on the projects you enjoy?

Some people are genuinely busy. Others…well, consider that the average US adult watches five hours of television per day, not including services such as Netflix and streaming video, web surfing, and other passive screen-focused entertainments. For retirees, it’s worse: the average retiree in the US watches 43 hours of television per week. That means that a full-time job was replaced with full-time television viewership. Is your extra time stuck, as my husband would say, “right behind the television?”

If you are watching more than an hour or so a day of television on average, you are inviting dissatisfaction and unhappiness into your home from two angles. First, you are using time for passive entertainment that could otherwise be spent enriching your life. You could be walking, reading, conversing, creating, dancing, or playing, but instead you are sitting there, being fed a diet of stimuli especially designed to make you unhappy. Advertisements point out how miserable your sorry life really is, and the shows themselves are full of people who seem to be beautiful and competent. No one on television is wearing three-year old fashions (unless they are the butt of jokes) or surreptitiously using a permanent laundry marker to touch up scuffed dress shoes. Plenty of real people live that way, and they watch television and can’t help but begin to imagine that what they see there is real.

If you’re the average American, imagine how much happiness you may find in the 35 hours per week hiding with the dust bunnies behind your television. No, I’m not a “television hater,” but I do have a lot of things I’d rather do with my free time.

Can you generate a list of at least 20 things you can do in the place of television? Things you’d like to do? Make them realistic, free or nearly so, and fun! The list should include things you could do when you’d otherwise watch television. For example, at 10:30 at night you aren’t likely to go walking around the park. It’s not recommended; you need activities you could do, safe at home in your pajamas. For example: read a book; write a note to a family member; listen to a learn-a-language CD (you probably have one you have been trying to ignore!); dig out your old art or craft supplies; brush the dog or cat; read to your kids; go for a walk; dance; sit outside and do nothing; go to the library; color on the driveway with chalk…

Keep the list handy, and then cut back to two hours or less per day. When you cut back, make notes to yourself about how it feels: are you anxious? Edgy? Bored?

You are not going to feel instantly happier, but you will be creating opportunities for some elements of happiness to enter your life.