Tag Archives: counseling

For Those Mourning a suicide

If you have lost someone to suicide, my sincere condolences:  peace be upon you in these incredibly difficult times.

I have been involved in grief counseling for a long time. I began volunteering as a grief support group facilitator about 20 years ago. Grief is always painful – the Irish language word clumsily translated into English as “Troubles” actually means tearing apart.  Losing someone to suicide is definitely a tearing apart, and one that carries particular burdens.

  • They are even more likely than other mourners to look backwards and try to reinterpret events to make sense of what happened. We humans like for things to “make sense,” even things that can’t be understood. Looking back can lead to a lot of unnecessary suffering – self-blame, recrimination, guilt.  Our culture pretends we can control just about everything, but we cannot. Through the lens of grief looking backwards, even a passing sad day years before can seem like a sign that was “missed,” and the perfectly normal little disagreement turns into the possible cause. Every memory is scoured for warning signs. The lists of warning sides of suicidality are helpful, but not all people have them. In reality, about 70% of suicides are impulsive acts – there are no real warning signs or markers, beyond the events of life that many people experience without becoming suicidal:  relationship struggles, financial struggles, legal struggles, job loss.  Some people will show some of the warning signs but are not be suicidal at all, such as someone who is enthusiastically minimizing their possessions in order to downsize. Please try to refocus on something else, even a small physical task, when you find yourself looking back to try to see what you “should have” seen: you are at risk of burdening yourself with unnecessary guilt.
  • Those whose loved one committed suicide are likely to hear even more of the hurtful things people can say to those grieving. Granted, most people’s hurtful remarks to mourners are well-intentioned, and yet incredibly unhelpful, such as the dreadful, “You’re still young…you’ll have other children,” or, “You should be glad they’re not suffering any longer.”  There are some people, though, who say truly, intentionally horrible things about those who commit or attempt suicide, and this leads mourners to lie about the cause of death and/or isolate from others.  Avoid these people; seek the company of those who are compassionate.
  • Those who have lost someone to suicide are especially likely to avoid going to grief support groups, or will only go to those about suicide.  I encourage going to a general grief support group, too; it can be a place to learn a lot of skills and strategies that are helpful to all mourners, and can be that first, safe place to talk about what really happened and get support as you manage the tangle of terrible emotions. You will find strategies and support for how to take one step at a time into a world that seems to no longer make sense. Please do not isolate out of pain, unnecessary shame or unnecessary guilt.
  • See your primary care doctor, avoid any mind-altering substances, and try your best to follow medical guidance – even though you will often not feel like eating right or exercising.
  • Seek individual or family counseling to help with the grief process as needed.

And, of course, as this is not psychological guidance or advice – just information and encouragement – reach out for help if you are struggling with suicidal thoughts or fear for someone else. Besides your health care provider, the local emergency room, or 911, you might call the National Suicide Hotline at 988 or the 1-800-273-TALK (8255) National Mental Health Hotline.

If you are reading this and thinking of someone you know who has lost someone to suicide, please reach out with compassion. Be present; keep reaching out. Invite for simple things; offer specific help (with chores, for companionship, to go with them to a grief support group because going is, at first, absolutely terrifying). Please do not ask a lot of questions about the death; if the person is open, instead ask about the person: the happy memories of the past. Ask if you can help and don’t be surprised if you hear, “I’m fine,” or, “You can’t bring them back,” or, “I don’t need anything.”  In that case, come back another time with specific offers (“Can I come by sometime and help with the lawn?” “Are you up for a cup of coffee at the park?” etc.).  Be gentle with people who have been torn apart.

Thanks for reading.

Cutting off Mom and Dad, Part 2

As previously explored, the culture undermines parent-child relationships. One way is the manipulation of expectations of normalcy. Young adults are frequently told to believe that anything less than absolute, craven praise and approval, of anything, is some sort of miserable toxicity and not to be borne. The relationship must be severed, even with parents.

On the flip side, many parents feel that their position as parent gives them license to offer criticism, advice, and endless commentary on their adult child’s habits, clothes, parenting, etc.  If you are financing an adult child, then I would suggest you tell your child what you will do – not what the adult child will do. You can’t make them do anything, but you can control yourself.  A self-sufficient adult who lives on their own, paying their own way, and raising a healthy, well-adjusted child does not need unsolicited advice or undermining, either.

If you’re thinking, reading this, that you jolly well can make them do something – well, actually, no, not without force.  We parents specialize in saying things that can’t be enforced, silly things like yelling at a toddler, “You’re going to get in there and go to sleep right now!” The average three-year-old has figured out you can’t make her go to sleep; and if you do anything that forces sleep, and I find out, I will report you to Child Protective Services. A three-year-old is portable:  you can pick them up and transport them to their bed, over and over, but the command to sleep is just a waste of syllables.

Sometimes, fellow parents, you may be grieving. You had your child, and you had dreams. You imagined a long future, that child’s adulthood, and the ideal fantasy of whatever your engagement with that child’s future life would be.  I was hoping for a shared private practice (we had discussed this, to be fair!) and lots of hands-on times with grandchildren and spent a couple of decades amassing cookie cutters and art supplies that seldom needed, and given away with much grief, grief not for the things but for the unfulfilled dreams. Instead, I have an adult child of whom I am immensely proud who lives many hours away, and that means her husband and their lovely child are far away, too.  I don’t get to impose my dream, or a guilt trip about my unfulfilled dream, on them. Doing so would be foolish and unfair, and reduce the likelihood I can enjoy what I have, which is far more than many people have, and a situation that those who are involuntarily childless would envy.

So…this set of posts on family cut-offs doesn’t solve anything. I don’t have any big, smart solutions or a therapy intervention that will take away the pain of alienation from the very people for whom you would willingly die. Perhaps it can open up some ideas for reflection, or conversation. If you are an adult who has cut off a parent, please reconsider, seriously and prayerfully, on whether their behavior warrants that wall of silence. If you are a parent, wondering what you have done, perhaps there is room to change the ways in which you try to influence or even make demands on someone who does not belong to you.  Perhaps there is nothing to be done except wait and pray, which comprise tremendous power in the long run.  What to pray? I do not know. I can tell you how I pray, across all relationships: family, friends, clients, students, our leaders, our enemies…that both the other party, and I, be open to becoming who God wants us to be. Amen.

Cutting off Mom and Dad, Part 1

We were talking about families, generally, over breakfast.

“I don’t know why family therapy isn’t held in greater esteem,” my husband commented. “Look at what things are like for families…people are really struggling.”

I agreed with the struggling. And, yes, it would be nice if family therapy were more respected. It is rich with the integration of lifespan development, evolutionary psychology, personality, temperament, and culture. Family psychology and family therapy seem to be the neglected child in the world of mental health. Yet every theory of development, and most personality theories, see the family and early life experiences as foundational to the development of the adult person.  How we attach to others, the ease of trust, our expectations of the world, are all rooted in life experiences, particularly those early life experiences most often lived in the context of family.

Well, of course, if we emphasize family then we are saying family is important, pivotal, vital. And that, it seems, flies in the face of much of the mainline culture.

I will take one small slice for now: the bizarre movement to cut off parents who were not, and are not, abusive, neglectful, cruel, or so otherwise dysfunctional that remaining in active relationship with them would be endangering to one’s safety and/or sanity. There seems to have been, over the past few years, a growing movement in this regard. I have spoken with people, and read books by professionals, on both sides of these issues: the grieving parent and the disgruntled adult child; the professionals who attempt to help parents bridge the gap or, if that is impossible, to heal from the grief, and the therapists whose main lens is the toxic relationship that will only hurt you until you extricate yourself.

Are there cruel, abusive and destructively manipulative parents? Yup. And, likewise, selfish, cold and manipulative adult children, too.  And my somewhat limited professional experience (I’ve been in this field about 30 years) is that sometimes children who cut off parents did not have abusive, cruel parents. Sometimes, people cut off parents who did not do what the child wished, did not read their minds, did not feel obliged to agree and praise everything their child did.

And here we come to a piece of the culture guaranteed to undermine the family: the demand that people validate and accept whatever one thinks, feels, and does as indisputably “okay” because it is how we “feel,” etc. Well, now we have a problem that any family therapist could easily explain.

Mommies, generally, give children the majority of early care.  They provide unconditional love and approval because, as Dr. Jordan Peterson often points out, infants are “always right.” If the baby is crying, the baby is right: something needs attention, swiftly, lovingly and gently! That loving care must come even if baby is colicky, pukey, poopy, or otherwise quite disagreeable.  The baby is, after all, always right. However, this stage of life passes, and then Daddy’s influence increases: Daddies specialize in unconditional love with conditional approval. “I love you, and the room is a mess. Get going on it, kid. Here, I’ll give you a hand.”

This coordinated approach works great: it prepares children for the real world, where people have expectations and you can’t just do “whatever” and then complain it’s how you feel, and have everyone act shame-faced, shrug and say, Oh, OK. If that’s how you feel. Whatever.  Children benefit from the solid backing of both parents’ love, and the experience that disapproval of how I behave does not mean I am not loved. It means my behavior probably needs improvement.

The world, or the part of it to which children and young adults are often exposed, plays another tune. The modern message is that the relentlessly approving gaze of a nursing mother ought to be the perspective of parents forever, across all circumstances. That is a set-up to disrupt and undermine the family.

And it appears to be working terrifically.

A child goes off to college and is enlightened about…it matters not.  Politics, nutrition, whatever. They realize their parents are abject idiots. Worse, their parents may be bad and ill-intentioned because, look! A younger sibling is being raised in a religious/liberal/conservative/omnivore/vegetarian/whatever home. Big sibling becomes disrespectful towards the parents, dismissive, and undercuts them in an attempt to rescue little sibling from the fate of growing up in the same family.

Or, a young adult who is apparently sliding along, perhaps in perpetual adolescence, shifting from goal to goal, engaged with street pharmacology or alcohol, resents the parent who dares express concern and perhaps even the intent to turn off the money tap. Anger, resentment, and accusations flare; the young person demands parental fealty, blames the parents, and the parents, afraid of losing the relationship, are tempted to cave and pretend that a ten-year cycle of major changes in undergraduate school is just okay. It wouldn’t be okay even if the young person was the one financing it with their series of so-not-serious jobs; it would still be a waste of talent and youth.

In short, the mainstream culture offers the illusion that new-mommy bottomless approval is what is normal for adults. Do parents contribute to the problem of parent/child alienation? Absolutely; and that will be a story for another day.

What’s up with that?

Why do you do what you do?

No, seriously. Why do you do what you do, whatever it is that you do?

Could you get a bit obsessive about this question? I suppose so. But it is worth asking, over and over again.

You got out of bed at whatever time it was. Why? For what purpose?

Why did you eat and drink what you ate and drank? Or, why did you choose not to eat?

What did you put on your body to wear out into the world, to tell other people about you, your tastes, and your intentions?  Why those messages, and not some other messages? Why are those the messages you choose to give to the world?

Why did you go to work? Why did you choose that work?

Why did you behave that way, and not some other way, towards whatever persons you encountered along the way?

Why, why, why, why.  Sometimes it is important to take a step back and ask that defense-raising question of yourself, repeatedly, digging in.

Well, why, you might ask, and it is a worthwhile question.  Asking ourselves “why” is very important, because, if we drill down far enough, we come down to whether or not we have decided upon a central principle, a guiding ethic, a core belief that allows us to direct our behavior with cohesion and authenticity towards our purpose.  If you don’t have a “why,” you are less focused than the average toddler. A toddler can be remarkably determined in pursuing her goals, despite an inability to clearly articulate the “why” for coloring on the walls or giving Teddy Bear a bath in the toilet. 

For religious people, the central “why” comes down to a covenantal relationship with the Lord and, for Christians, a relationship with Jesus, the Christ.  That is the “why.”

Why get out of bed on time? Because an orderly life (ordered to what is best) requires self-discipline and routine, and honoring one’s legitimate commitments to others.

Why be kind to the barista, the cashier, the slowly shambling person in front of you on the sidewalk? Because they, like you, are a child of God and your rooted relationship with Him requires you to treat others as His children, too.

Why be honest with someone when you know it will be ill-received – the student whose work is apparently plagiarized, the employer asking you to do the unethical, the adult family member who is drinking in excess? Because it is important to be truthful, to not allow dishonesty to muddy the waters of relationships and to let yourself slip into that mud out of fear of conflict. Because your relationship with the Lord requires you to act honestly, justly, and with love.

Wishing you a new year full of the joy of discovering beautiful “why’s” in your life!

When God Speaks

“It just seems awful convenient that whenever my dad prays, it turns out God tells him to do whatever he wanted to do in the first place.”  The teenager was slouched, watching me sidelong through floppy bangs, waiting to see how I, the Christian counselor, would respond to his cynical appraisal of his father’s approach to prayer.  I nodded slowly and asked for examples…examples that seemed, I thought to myself, to at least support the child’s misgivings about prayer in particular, and religion in general.

My experience is that, more often than not, what I experience as God suggesting a course of action is precisely what I do not want to do.  Whether this is because I am by nature and habit a worse person than this boy’s father or I am more honest about not liking to do some things, I cannot know.

If you are not a person of religious faith, no doubt this all sounds pretty crazy.  Perhaps you suspect that Christians are hallucinating, or pretending to do so, in order to fit in with the group.  Who know; perhaps that happens.  What a non-believer may not know is that when Christians talk about discerning a message from God, we are likely talking about one or more of these experiences:

  1. The thought that pops up, unexpected and persistent.  For example, I had the thought pop up to call someone with whom I hadn’t spoken in a year or two. The thought nagged at me. “I really should call ‘Beth.’”  It turned out that ‘Beth’ had just had a death in the family, and other trials, and needed some friendly encouragement.  A non-believer thinks of that as a coincidence; a believer attributes it to God’s Spirit at work in and among us.
  2. The events of our lives: the series of experiences that are, perhaps, unexpected and beckon us to pay attention to a pattern. Perhaps we have been ignoring that pattern; perhaps the busy-ness of our lives has fogged our attention. This might also include
  3. The people around us; their words and actions may plant seeds. They might speak truth to us, including truth we don’t like, such as confronting us on a bad habit or poor choices.
  4. God’s Word: Scripture speaks across the centuries. For example, consider how quick many biblical persons were to rebel and give up when the going got tough – despite all the good they had experienced. How different are we, and what could we draw out of these examples to be more persistent in times of trouble?
  5. Through beauty:  nature, art and music, literature.

There are others, of course, but these are perhaps the most common. I have known two people who claimed to have heard a booming voice speak to them, but mostly, when people talk about messages from God, it comprises one or more of the above categories. They do their daily scripture reading, and then encounter a similar message in a song, or a news story. A friend shares an experience that echoes that theme, and a thought pops in, unbidden and somewhat surprising, “Perhaps I should…” or, “I really need to…”

If you are a non-believer, you might attribute all this to coincidence, or some vague power in the universe. A matter of quantum physics, you might shrug, imagining a little particle in “Beth’s” brain synchronizing across the miles with its partner in mine. It seems that the most elemental grasp of what is suggested by quantum physics should quell any urge towards atheism.

Anyhow…that’s a mini-explanation of what believers often mean when we talk about hearing from God. I hope that clears up any silliness about mass psychosis.  As my young client noted, it might be discernment, and it might be a convenient little personal excuse; that is inevitably our human nature.  We see what we want to see, except when we unexpectedly encounter a mirror. But that is a story for another day.

A Fool in the Slow Lane

One of the common criticisms I hear from people who are skeptical about religion is that so many religious people say one thing and do another. To which I respond, well, yeah. You’re correct, and don’t we know it. It’s right there in our Scriptures – the Scriptures overflow with it, including one of our most famous saints bemoaning to an entire city of Christians that he can’t quite get himself in line (St. Paul, in Romans Ch. 7).  It turns out that goodness is a work in progress. So, the question isn’t whether people are imperfect, it’s whether or not they seem to be making a good effort at being better than their nature might call them to be.  

In a sense, we’re like automobiles.  Except we’re not very good automobiles; most of us need to be in the shop, so to speak, day after day. Something is always going wrong. A tweak there, an adjustment there.  Driving all day and keeping an eye on the dashboard: what trouble light will pop up next?  Yep, there’s something; what can it mean? We pull over, often, to check things and scratch our heads in bewilderment; now what?  Then there’s a smooth stretch without any bumps and we unconsciously speed up, no longer paying close enough attention, until something dings or squeaks or clanks. Then it’s time to spend time in the shop, so to speak, and our Mechanic sets things right and, kindly and perhaps with a bit of a twinkle, reminds us that regular maintenance could keep this sort of thing from happening.  We bow our heads, determined to do better.

Off we go – we’re supposed to be paying attention to the road signs, the weather, the conditions in general. We have directions and we’re supposed to check them frequently.  If things go okay for just a bit, we breathe a prayer of thanksgiving.  So here we are, we “religious” people; we drive along through life, trying to keep it together and stay on track – and to the person zipping past us in the fast lane, who feels sure of where they’re going, we look like bumbling idiots.  

And, if we’re doing this right, we know that we are, at best, God’s fools, full of good intentions, accidental mistakes and self-absorbed carelessness, just trying to stay on the right road.

The Problem of Re-Emerging Shame

Perhaps you have had this experience, too.

Suddenly, for no apparent reason, some stupid, thoughtless, awkward, or embarrassing thing you said or did, years or even decades ago, pops up and invades your brain like lyrics from a an old song you didn’t particularly like, only instead of a pesky earworm you are troubled by the bubbling up of shame.

There are a lot of ways to look at this, and I would like to offer one that, perhaps, you haven’t tried. With the earworm, we try singing it out loud, singing something else out loud, and complaining.  With the shameful episode, consider this.

The episode has come to mind for some reason. What could it be?  The accusing spirit (the word is Satan) would have you believe that you are the sum of this event, you are always “like this,” and encourage the shame. Shame frequently leads to angry behavior, withdrawing from the good, even giving up.  It’s a great trick to encourage bad choices.

But the accusing spirit is not the only spirit. It is not the most powerful Spirit; the most powerful Spirit in on your side, working in mysterious and subtle ways. Perhaps the purpose of this re-emerging memory is not to humiliate you but to help you. If that sounds perplexing, stay with me.

If you believe that you have grown at least a little since that time, been forgiven by God, if not by yourself, then the thought has some purpose besides seeking forgiveness. I wonder if it emerges to remind you that, perhaps, you need to remember to forgive yourself, grow, and be grateful for forgiveness.  Further, this notion that you have grown, changed, realized how wrong or silly or selfish you were, may have direct utility because, no doubt, there is someone who needs that generosity of spirit from you at this very moment.

I suspect you can easily come up with a list of people who have stymied or offended you recently with their version of your suddenly recollected episode. Perhaps it is a family member who was having a bad day. Maybe it is the coworker whose discomfort with death led to awkward and profoundly unhelpful remarks after you lost a loved one. It may be a friend. Whoever it is, maybe the thing to do is recall the forgiveness you’ve received and allow that to temper your response.  Your words could be gentle when you offer correction, quiet and calm when you express disappointment within affection. Perhaps, on reflection, you decide it isn’t even worth bringing up – just an off remark on a tough day. Then dismiss the temptation to wallow in your shame and give thanks to have grown some, at least, since those days.

Try taking those seemingly random eruptions from memory and turning them into grace and gratitude, and see what happens. Odds are, it will definitely be better and healthier than shame.

It looks good from the school bus window

In 1976, I was in 8th grade. 

It was the year the entire country had bicentennial fever.

It was the year the assistant principal’s son, usually diffident and polite, in my grade, slugged my friend “Tara,” who had spent the first half of the school year exploiting female privilege by kicking him and whacking him with a large hairbrush on a several-times daily basis. He said the suspension was worth it.

It was also the year that the Tara’s younger brother, “Tommy,” announced that he wanted to grow up to be a…cow.

Not a cowboy.  Not a farmer. A cow.  Tommy was abundantly clear, and he was impervious to reason, science or bribery with a combination of ice cream and more typical ideas about things he could be when he grew up, as any five-year-old would be.  The ice cream bribe having failed, the family shrugged and figured he would outgrow it. They didn’t play along; they kept calling him Tommy and sending him away from the dinner table if he pretended his salad was cud. Eventually, of course, Tommy moved on to the next thing, probably driving race cars like Speed Racer – something plausible enough to make his mother pine for the sweet, innocent cow days.

I’m sure that for Tommy, choosing the life of a cow made perfect sense.  Imagine how it looks from the window of a school bus, especially for a small boy.  The heavy humidity of a New Jersey summer has passed. It’s finally perfect weather to play outside all day. Nature’s colors are sharp and bright, the air is clean and crisp, and the cows are out there reveling in it, with the bunnies, turtles, birds and white-tailed deer.  Then winter comes – the dour, endlessly gray winters of the Raritan River valley, and after shivering in soggy boots at the bus stop, and climbing slippery steps into the bus, the cows can be glimpsed, in their shelter, occasionally outside into the snow, but ambling back into the warmth at their pleasure.  Yes, to a five-year-old trapped on the cold, rattly school bus, whose eyes are barely window-high, the life of a cow probably looked pretty sweet.  Perhaps if they’d lived along the water, Tommy would have aspired to be a fisherman, a pirate or a dolphin, but we were in landlocked rural New Jersey. He wanted the life of a cow.

Tommy has been a reminder for me to always explore the vision people have of what life when they reach a goal.  For example, if a young person announces they want to get a degree in (whatever), I think it’s important to explore the pieces of the dream around that. What do they see life being like with that degree? What do they imagine will be better for them?  What will they have to give up to reach that goal? What will they have to surrender for that career, realizing that every door opened means many others will close? What texture of life goes with that career, and will that work for them?  What about that career appeals to them? How will they handle the particular negative aspects of that goal?  What draws them to that work? How many people who do that work have they met? In what ways do they see themselves as similar to those people?

Similarly, if someone wants to make any major life change (say, moving from their parents’ home in coastal Florida to live off the land in Alaska), it makes sense to ask questions that make the expectations, underlying assumptions, and perhaps misperceptions, clear. It’s not that I want to be a fun killer; I am obligated to accompany clients on an exploration of their suppositions, knowledge base, and emotional reasoning.  If the Alaska-dreaming young person has innocent delusions about being free, about being “my own boss” in the wilderness, well…actually, Mother Nature will be your boss, and she is far harsher than the weary assistant manager where you bus tables and more relentlessly demanding than your high school physics teacher. The adult’s job is asking questions to elicit thought and inspire more research. An idea may feel “fun” but the reality may not be so jolly.

People may disclose all sorts of ideas and aspirations, wishes and whims. Ask questions about the expectations, beliefs, assumptions, sacrifices. Be curious, be compassionate, but be realistic. Be honest, because ultimately honesty is kind. Iceberg lettuce salads and fish sticks are not cud; major life choices should not be made on a whim, or when under the influence of mind-altering substances, or when distraught.

Because Tommy was never going to grow up to be a cow. But I hope that, whatever he grew up to become, he has plenty of time to enjoy nature on those clear, beautiful days.

**Tara and Tommy are not their real names.

Taking it to the mats

What ever happened to giving someone some grace?  Or being tolerant?

As regular readers, I occasionally page through popular magazines just to see what sort of toxins are floating around in the public sphere.  It’s less time-consuming and annoying than hours of screen time. Between what I read, and what I hear from those on the receiving end of what is often cruelty, there is a whole lot less tolerance in these self-referentially oh-so-tolerant times than in the past. Often supposedly tolerant people demand that any disagreement be taken to the mats, verbally if not physically.

To be clear, I am talking about disagreements between people where there is no violence or threat of violence. I am not talking about adopting a “live and let live” attitude about child abuse or elder exploitation or criminal acts. I wonder where tolerance and grace went when it comes to the people we encounter in nonviolent settings in our daily lives.

A simple little example was an advice columnist’s suggestion that dealing with an annoying “friend” who calls during work hours and drains your energy and time with daily drama should comprise a formal sit-down in which you express how their thoughtless behavior impacts your feelings and your work, and expect some sort of mature, measured apology.  I am practical. My guidance would be along these lines: this is your “friend.” Surely you noticed before this that she seemingly has the thoughtlessness and flimsy self-control of a spoiled tween.  You accepted the friendship under those terms; she hasn’t changed. You have. Stop taking calls or looking at texts from her during work. What kind of job allows you to chat with friends on the employer’s dime?  Call her back when it’s convenient. And, if you choose to be friends with her, accept that she is as she is. She will be immature and you will have to set boundaries. Sure, tell her you can’t be interrupted at work. But you and I both know that having a nice little sit-down with her isn’t worth the aggravation. Imagine the flood of drama, spilling and splashing all over the table at the coffee shop.

In families, people disagree. At Thanksgiving, if you are fortunate enough to have family and friends with whom you can gather, people will have differing opinions. At least one of them may have misplaced their tolerance or drowned it in some substance of abuse. What to do? You might have fun arguing. My late cousin George, who had Soviet bullet fragments in his leg from his teenage adventures helping people escape from East Berlin, would take a perspective he didn’t necessarily agree with, for the entertainment of developing and defending a position, and do it with a twinkle in his eye. You might find that stressful; your plan may be to discreetly go do some dishes because “here s/he goes again.”  You might enlist at least one ally in a plan to divert and change topics if the intolerant person who expects everyone else to be tolerant starts pontificating. You might decide to politely express your perspective. Depending on the people present, any of those may be prudent.

Some people implode relationships foolishly. I know people who were cut off on the flimsiest of rationale; because they are “too negative,” or “worry too much.”  People cut off parents because their parents do not “support” (as in overtly cheer and brag about) their adult child’s career choice, tattoos, or other decisions.  And, conversely, parents cut off adult children.  In cases where people are dangerous, or truly disruptive (the addicted adult child who breaks in and steals from the parents; the abusive parent; the family member who is aggressive and belligerent about their cause-du-jour, as examples) then yes, safety and sanity require appropriate distance-setting. This is sad, even when necessary.

I’m not an appeaser or a door mat. When it comes to disagreements, I think that freedom requires that we live and let live in peace (that’s what tolerance used to mean) until the circumstances are such that it is necessary. Necessary means that an expectation for compliance is placed upon me, a demand that I change my mind or pretend to agree with something I find false.  It is necessary when harm is being done, is threatened, or is imminent. That is when it is important to speak up, calmly and rationally, to base my position in fact and refuse to play silly word games. Speak calmly, peacefully, firmly and succinctly, refusing to pretend. That would be a way to “take it to the mats.”

Paraphrasing St. Francis of Assisi – Peace and every good to you.

I could tell you, but you’re not going to like it: Anxious Youth

As you know, this column isn’t intended as psychotherapy or professional advice. It’s information and entertainment, and, I hope, the spark for some conversation with someone who can help with a problem. The problem here is anxiety in all its forms.

According to the Anxiety and Depression Association of America, about 31.9% of youth have some sort of anxiety disorder.  This would include diagnoses such as generalized anxiety, separation anxiety, panic disorder, and trauma disorders. It’s hard to believe this is accurate; if it is, then as a culture, things have gone horribly wrong. 

We know a lot about what works, and what doesn’t work for anxiety.  Isolation, the vortex of doom the internet can be, the misguided or malevolent support of random strangers online, endless social networking, and a sedentary, sleep-starved, junk-fed existence don’t work.  Overscheduling doesn’t work. Avoidance doesn’t work. Irresponsibility doesn’t work. So do the opposite.

Get off the devices except for schoolwork.

Get enough sleep. Go to bed at a set time, get up at a set time. Every day, even weekends.

Cut down on activities.

Read real books. Learn about other people’s interior lives via good fiction (that’s a primary reason that we read classic literature in school; to understand more about how other people think, feel, and respond to life’s events). Then talk about them. That means parents should read them, too.

Get physical activity.  A healthy young person needs at least two hours of activity a day, and ought to be standing, moving around, and active a big chunk of the rest of the time.  

Learn useful skills.  For example, everything it will take to manage one’s own money, car and home.

Socialize in person, often while doing something purposeful (whether that’s a sport, volunteering, or other activity).

Spend a lot of time in nature. If it can’t happen just about every day, plan a four- or five-hour chunk on the weekend.

Have chores and responsibilities for young people.  No, “school is not their job” and therefore nothing else is to be done around the house. How are they going to learn necessary life skills? Plus, who wants a spouse or roommate who thinks going to work covers them for any contribution to home and family life?

Learn mindfulness meditation skills, to slow down the stress response and “step back” from anxiety-provoking thoughts. This facilitates the cognitive restructuring of cognitive-behavioral therapy, in which new ways of thinking and behaving are identified and rehearsed.

…and try cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), preferably with at least one parent learning, too, to be coach and to help the parent. Anxious parents tend to teach their children fear-fueled ways of thinking and behaving, and anxious parents are apt to facilitate avoidance.  Avoidance is like jet fuel for anxiety. Find a licensed mental health professional who will work with you as a family to teach the skills. Keep in mind that CBT will work much better if the other parts of life are in healthy, working order – proper sleep, nutrition, exercise, etc.

To expand on an earlier point: parents, often your anxiety feeds your child’s anxiety. If you are behaving as if the world is a terrible, dangerous place, do not be surprised if your child responds the same way.  Making changes together to have a healthier, less anxious lifestyle will help the whole family.