PROGRESSIVE IMPACT

You might have been looking forward to this holiday season as a time for more exciting sex with your partner.  Like many, you might have been hoping that a holiday schedule would create the right atmosphere for some good, maybe even great sex.  But, like many, you may feel disappointed that it hasn’t happened.  And you wonder why.

I’m often asked that question by men and women who feel puzzled about why things didn’t go so well, just when the situation seemed ideal.  It’s ironic, they think, because they’re absorb the flood of advice and prescriptions for having super sex out there.  The magazine covers touting “10 new techniques to drive him/her wild;” the online e-zines like Your Tango or Libido for Life.  Some of the advice is pretty sound, like that from the respected sociologist of sexual relations, Pepper Schwartz, or the advice on sexual matters that’s useful for both straights and gays from Dan Savage.  But there’s so much more that’s not so good.  It touts juvenile-sounding, superficial advice.

In fact, the majority of the advice, strategies and techniques overlook the core of a sustaining, mutually energized sexual connection: It’s Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, inner life, marriage conflicts, resilience, sexual conflicts, sexual connection

That’s how a man in his 50s described his life to me not long ago: “It’s my long slide home.” He was feeling morose, anticipating the long holiday period from Thanksgiving through the New Year and what he knew it would arouse in him. I often see the “holiday blues” strike people during this time of multiple holidays (Hanukkah and Christmas; as well as Ashurah, Bodhi Day, and Kwanzaa). The tendency to reflect and take stock of one’s life often triggers sadness, regret, or depression — especially during midlife.

For example, this time of year can intensify feelings of losses you’ve experienced as well as fears about change, in general. In a previous post I described how you can become frozen into a mindset and perspective that your life is fixed and will spiral downward from your middle years onward. Such a mentality restricts your vision. You can’t see that it’s possible — and necessary — to continue evolving your life, while reframing your emotional attitudes about the life changes that will continue to occur. I’ve always liked a line from one of Norman Mailer’s novels, “It is a law of life… that one must grow, or else pay more for remaining the same.”

Many of 78 million baby boomers, now in the thick of midlife, are vulnerable to feeling demoralized about their lives. For some Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world career dissatisfaction, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience

I often hear people tell me that they feel their work is getting in the way of their life. And they’re only partly joking. In fact, several recent research studies find that the workplace is pretty unpleasant for many people. Large numbers of men and women are severely stressed or depressed at work, often to the point of being unable to function and becoming sick, emotionally or physically. The numbers are at the highest levels, ever. Conventional explanations point to career uncertainties in today’s economy, or heavy workloads. Those are obvious contributors, but I think such explanations miss a deeper, more systemic problem that’s pervasive throughout the workplace culture of most organizations today.

In brief, it’s that management practices, the workplace relationships that result from them, and the overall business model is stuck within a 20th century mindset and worldview. And that’s dysfunctional in today’s world of chaos, interdependency, and transparency. Today, collaboration and openness are essential for generating and sustaining success, both in work and in life outside of work. The new world environment includes clear shifts in what people look for and want from their careers; and from the organizations to which they’ll commit their creative energies. These new realities are pushing companies to transform how they do business and how they treat people working within them. The push is towards supporting new learning, creative innovation, and long-term vision that promotes sustainability as well as contributes to greater well-being via the product or service.

What Happens At Work

With those emerging shifts in mind, some of the new findings shed light point to what may help support these transformations in people’s life at work and within business leadership. Consider a new survey from the consulting firm rogenSI. It reports that about 25% of the global workforce is depressed. The primary source is Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career development, career dissatisfaction, inner life, psychological health, stress, workplace conflicts

The day Steve Jobs died — Oct. 5 — coincided with HBO’s broadcast of the first part of Martin Scorsese’s documentary on the life of George Harrison, “Living In The Material World.” That conjunction of events brought to mind some interesting parallels between the lives of Jobs and Harrison. I think we can learn something of value about their life journeys — their ups and downs, their losses and transitions during their middle years and… how they handled the prospect of death.

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" careers, inner life, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience, social impact

Whether you’re entering a new relationship or hoping to resurrect your existing — but flagging — relationship, the upheavals and changes of midlife can make anyone pretty apprehensive about what lies ahead.  That’s particularly true for many of the 78 million baby boomers who face a long stretch of middle years with greater health, new desires for personal growth, but no so much certainty about what keeps a love relationship alive for the long run.

I think what helps support a long-term, positive relationship through midlife is not so much finding the right techniques – for good communication, compromise, and so forth.  We know how many of those are available in all the  self-help books crowding bookstore shelves. Instead, it’s building your relationship’s spiritual core. By that I mean your sense of purpose and life goals as a couple; and dealing with how your values and ideals change and evolve over the years. The challenge is whether these and other spiritual dimensions remain in synch over your years together.

In this post I describe a path that can help build (or resuscitate) your relationship’s spiritual connection. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, empathy, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, midlife, psychological health, resilience, sexual conflicts

Despite the volumes of books and magazine articles advising midlife baby boomers how to prolong or renew their health, happiness and vitality, I continue to hear many of them tell me about feelings of stagnation and loss. Or worse, a sense of being on “a long slide home,” as one 50-something put it.

For example:

• You happened to catch an old episode of “Sesame Street” or “Mister Rogers” on TV, and you felt engulfed by a wave of nostalgia and loss over your children, who are now grown and building their own lives without you.
•  You worry about whether your career has peaked, especially when you’re reminded every day of the hordes of younger people coming up right behind you — or who’ve now moved ahead of you.
• You’re divorced and dealing with new challenges as a single person.
• Or, you’re married/with a partner, but feelings of passion and intimacy have faded like autumn leaves.
•  You’re stressed about your financial future in your later years, given our economic uncertainty.

I think there’s a core reason why such feelings and experiences aren’t helped all that much by the midlife guides and programs out there: We’ve learned to experience midlife through Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world anxiety, inner life, midlife, psychological health, psychology, purpose, resilience, resiliency

In my previous post I described how abusive bosses and psychologically unhealthy management harm both employees and business success, and I explained that such behavior in the workplace is increasingly dysfunctional in today’s highly interconnected, interdependent economic and social environment. This follow-up piece offers some suggestions for dealing with such situations when you find yourself within them.

Many people struggle to find ways to better cope when subjected to unhealthy, abusive management. Often that means learning stress management techniques. They can be helpful, especially when you don’t think any alternatives exist. But ultimately, they aren’t enough. However, reframing how you envision your situation to begin with can open the door to proactive, positive actions in the situation you feel trapped in.

Cathy’s example contains some ways you can do that. She was at mid-level in her company and had a record of steady promotion. At one point, senior leadership in her area changed abruptly, and she was now reporting to a newly appointed boss. “I’m here to shake things up,” he told everyone when he took over. “Everyone’s job is on the line.”

Cathy’s assessment of her new boss was that he didn’t really know her area of expertise, nor was he very interested in learning about it. Nevertheless, he freely criticized her work. Moreover, he kept sitting on a promotion that she had been in line for.

It wasn’t just her: Her boss stirred up much resentment among others because of his arrogant, controlling, dismissive style. When Cathy researched something he had requested and presented it to him, he exploded, Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career dissatisfaction, careers, flaws in love relationships, psychological health, stress, workplace conflicts

The latest “sex and power” scandals flashing across the media in the last few weeks underscore just how commonplace, even repetitive, they’ve become. Some are new, like the sexual assault charges against former IMF President Dominique Strauss-Kahn, or Arnold Schwarzenegger’s revelation that he had fathered a child with a former member of the household staff. Some are recycling, like John Edwards’ indictment or Newt Gingrich’s presidential aspirations, which revive memories about his lying about an affair while impeaching President Clinton for lying about an affair.

The list goes on, the latest being the Anthony Weiner’s “rolling disclosure” episode. The Washington Post recently compiled may of the scandals into a nice summary – for those who are interested in keeping track.

But I think this steady stream of sex-related scandals is just the most titillating and graphic part of something more widespread and troublesome in the lives of many men and women today: the gap between people’s public lies and private truths.

That is, many people live with contradictions between their inner lives (the truths about their desires, emotional experience, self-image and ideals) and what they do with those truths behind the scenes, hidden from view (their private selves), and the lives they conduct publically, in their career paths, their relationships with their families or others they deal with and the positions they espouse or advocate (their public selves).

Public lies that contradict private truths have been part of our culture for some time. But in my work with people over the last few decades, I’ve seen it grow more rapidly since 9/11 and the economic/political events of the last few years. As I reflected on the reasons for this gap, how it damages people and our society, Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Politics, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career dissatisfaction, inner life, Politics, psychological health, purpose, resilience, social responsibility, workplace conflicts

“Every being is intended to be on earth for a certain purpose.”
– Sa’di, 12th Century Persian poet

I’m often asked, “Why can’t I find the purpose of my life?” Over the decades I’ve heard many men and women — whether they’re psychotherapy patients working to build healthier lives or business executive trying to create healthier leadership — say at some point that they don’t know what they’re really here, for, on this planet. They’re not necessarily religious or spiritually inclined, but they feel a longing for that “certain something” that defines and integrates their lives.

Many turn to the various books and programs purport to identify their life’s purpose, but most come away dissatisfied. No closer than they were before, they identify with Bono’s plaintive cry in the U2′s song, “I still haven’t found what I’m looking for.”

And yet, many do find and live in harmony with their life’s purpose. Here are some of my observations about why many don’t, and how they differ from those who do.

First, I think everyone feels a pull towards some defining purpose to his or her life, no matter how much it may have become shrouded over along the way. In fact, you can say that all forms of life, all natural phenomena, have some purpose. There’s always movement or evolution towards some kind of outcome or fulfillment — whether it’s a tree that produces fruit or clouds that form to produce rain. But we humans become so enraptured by our daily activity, engagements, goals and so forth, that our awareness of our own unique life purpose is easily dimmed.

And there are consequences to not knowing or finding your purpose. I often see men and women who’ve become successful in their work or relationships — their outer lives — and yet they feel hollow, empty, unfulfilled. They describe feeling “off-track” in some way, or incomplete, despite a conventionally successful life. Sometimes they wonder if they’ve been on the “wrong” path all along — chosen the wrong career, or the wrong life partner. Or that perhaps they Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career dissatisfaction, common good, global citizen, inner life, psychological health, purpose, resilience

When I read the news that Paul McCartney is going to remarry, it brought to mind the challenge and trepidation so many people feel today about their prospects for keeping a love relationship alive. Whether entering a new relationship, like the former Beatle who’s about to turn 69, or hoping to resurrect one from the dead zone, the old adage that remarriage is a “triumph of hope over experience” can give anyone pause.

Even worse, some become outright despairing and cynical about love relationships in general. That became evident to me from some of the comments and emails I received about my previous post, in which I explained why most relationship advice doesn’t really help. There, I argued that most “expert advice” mistakenly focuses on techniques rather than on the relationship’s spiritual core — your sense of purpose and life goals as a couple, and how your values and ideals change and evolve over the years. The challenge is whether these and other spiritual dimensions are in synch.

Here, I want to point out one particular practice — a perspective, really — that helps build or resuscitate a relationship’s spiritual connection: learning to “forget yourself” when relating to your partner. I’ve described this Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, affairs, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, resilience, sexual conflicts

The other day I was browsing through Barnes & Noble, and as I passed by the rows of books about love and sex I felt annoyed. Seeing those volumes brought to mind the biggest open secret in today’s culture: Most relationship advice doesn’t really help you and your partner improve — or sustain — your love life.

Most people know this to be true. And ironically, the never-ending stream — books, magazine articles, workshops and now, websites and e-zines — confirms it, because If any of them really did help, there wouldn’t be so many of them. In fact, substantial research confirms that these programs and advice aren’t very effective at all.

I think the reason this: Most of the prescriptions for restoring emotional and sexual vitality focus on the wrong things. Most teach techniques – actions and strategies for having better sex, for improving listening and communication, or for successful negotiating around conflict. But if you want to deepen intimacy and build greater vitality in your whole relationship, you have to nourish its spiritual core. Acquiring new techniques won’t do it. However, there are some practices that help you nourish your relationship’s spiritual connection, as I describe below.

What Handicaps Most Relationships

Let me explain. By “spiritual,” I’m referring to a less visible, less behavioral realm than most relationship advice and strategies deal with. Your relationship’s spiritual core includes, for example, your sense of purpose and life goals as a couple; how your values and ideals may change and evolve over the years, as separate individuals and as a couple. The relationship challenge is whether these and other spiritual dimensions are in synch. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, psychological health, sexual conflicts, sexual connection

But even more interesting, I think, is the prospect of being able to evolve your whole person in specific new, healthy directions. I’ve often heard my psychotherapy patients as well as my corporate executive clients ask – or lament – why they don’t think they can change, or grow.

Here, I’ll describe some of the evidence that conscious evolution is possible, and a part of building psychological health; and then show five steps you can take to evolve yourself.

Much research indicates that the capacity for self-evolution — of your personality, mental capacities, relationships and actions in the world — is based on conscious intent.
That is, shaping your being is an art form – the way an artist develops, evolves and creates a painting; or a composer creates music. You can make your conscious being and all that emanates from it a work of art. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world common good, empathy, inner life, psychological health, purpose, resilience

Life has changed a great deal since we entered the 21st Century. Massive, worldwide economic, political and social upheavals are impacting all areas of our lives. Marriages (and equivalent relationships) are no exception. In fact, long-term relationships face new stresses and challenges. People enter them within a world of shifting social norms, diversity, and increasing openness about emotional and sexual engagements, including ones that differ from the conventional.

These new realities raise a important question for couples to face, head-on: Do you want to stay married at this point in your life — in your relationship as it now exists, and at this time in our culture?

Consider this: It may be psychologically healthier to end your marriage. That is, I think that the conditions and challenges of the 21st world – the “new normal” – point to considering a more radical way of life: Engaging in two different kinds of marriages may be a better response to the emotional and sexual realities of our fluid, interconnected world.

On the other hand, you might decide to reconstitute you marriage in ways more in synch with how each of you are “evolving” in your individual lives; and more consistent with your vision of what you want a partnership to be as you become older.

Let me explain both paths. Increasingly, people recognize that our post- 9-11 world — the economic downturn, global crises and uncertainties, the impact of climate change, the increasing diversity of our population, global interconnection, and a host of other shifts – all of it forms a new era of uncertainty, unpredictability and diminished expectations of career and material success.

Part of this new normal includes turmoil in people’s emotional and sexual attitudes and behavior, and generates what looks like contradictions in relationships. For example, Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, affairs, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, midlife, psychological health, sexual conflicts

The overall theme of my blog posts is about revising what we think a psychologically healthy life is, in today’s 21^st Century interconnected culture.  That is, what psychological health and resiliency look like in careers and organizations, and in intimate relationships.  Some of my earlier posts have described features of healthy relationships in this new era, based on new thinking and research studies.  And, that our culture undermines the emotional attitudes and behavior that support connected, energized intimate relationships – one’s that don’t go south after that early rush of excitement and passion fades.

In this and future posts I’ll describe more about what supports a positive relationship, emotionally, sexually and spiritually.  What won’t are the fantasized portrayals and simplistic formulas promoted by the advice and technique books and magazine articles.    Most of them don’t work anyway, and can do more harm than good because they can make couples feel inadequate if, for example, they can’t find the right words to reflect back to their partner; or they discover that the new sexual technique or tantric exercise just doesn’t arouse them.

This post is about a frequently overlooked first step towards a sustainable relationship with your current or future partner.  Couples I’ve worked with find it helpful because it builds the self-reflection and self-awareness you need for growing and evolving yourself in your relationship capacities.  I call this first step doing a “Relationship Inventory.”  With it, you can review, understand, and learn from your past relationships; and then face forward with greater clarity and capacity for creating and sustaining emotional and sexual intimacy in the present and future.

Begin by making a list of all your significant romantic relationships.  For each, Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, psychological health, resiliency, sex

When President Obama urged Americans to “win the future” in his recent SOTU address, he called upon the innovative, communal spirit that’s enabled us to “do great things.” Ironically, that part of his message exposes a glaring contradiction: How we’ve defined achieving “success” in our lives has become outmoded and maladaptive in our 21st Century world. To meet the challenges of our “Sputnik moment,” we need to revamp our thinking about what success is, as well as what psychological orientation is necessary to achieve it.

Consider this: The old, conventional view of a successful life is mostly defined by financial and self-interested criteria — getting, consuming and possessing for oneself. As Ronald Reagan once said about pursuing the “American dream” everyone “...wants to see an America in which people can get rich.”

But as President Obama pointed out in his address, “That world has changed. And for many, the change has been painful.” The reality of today’s interconnected, highly interdependent world, greed is not good. It’s psychologically unhealthy; it undermines the values, mindset and actions people need to strengthen in order to meet the challenges we face as individuals and as a nation.

That is, our security, success and well-being now require strengthening communal values and behavior; working towards common goals, the common good. Acting on self-interest alone, especially in the pursuit of personal power, steady career advancement and money Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Politics, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career development, common good, empathy, global citizen, health, Politics, psychological health, resiliency, social responsibility, sustainability

This post continues what I wrote about in In my previous post – that we lack a clear, relevant description of what psychological health is, in today’s world; and, how you can build it.  Here, I describe more about what a psychologically health life looks like – what it’s criteria are — in your relationships, your work, and in your role as a “future ancestor.”

To begin with, I want to emphasize that psychological health isn’t the same as the absence of mental or emotional disorders. For example, you can’t say that a happy person is someone who’s not depressed. Many people have consulted me who aren’t depressed by clinical criteria, but they aren’t happy with their work, relationships or their overall lives, either.

Moreover, self-awareness isn’t equivalent to health. It’s a necessary underpinning, but it’s not enough. Therapists often help their patients deepen self-awareness about the roots of their conflicts, only to wonder why they remain the same. Psychiatrist Richard Friedman described that dilemma in a recent New York Times article in which he illustrated the puzzlement practitioners experience when they are confronted with the limitation of awareness, alone.

To the extent there’s a conventional view of psychologically health at all, it’s mostly equated with good life-management and coping skills. That is, managing stress in your work and personal life, and coping with — if not resolving — whatever emotional conflicts you brought with you into adulthood.

A less visible view of psychological health also exists: Successful adaptation to and embracing of the dominant values, behavior and attitudes of the society or milieu you’re a part of. The problem here is that such socially-conditioned norms have also embodied greed, self-absorption, domination, destructiveness, and divisiveness. They’ve been equated with “success” in adult life.

The upshot is that you can be well-adapted to dominant attitudes and behavior that are, themselves, psychologically unhealthy. So you may be “well-adjusted” to an unhealthy life.

We’ve been witnessing the fruits of that form of “health” throughout our society in recent years, in the form of Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world empathy, health, inner life, psychological health, resilience, social responsibility, stress

The aftermath of the Tucson shootings is likely to spawn new discussion about serious mental illness and its legal implications. Coincidentally, the mental health establishment has been debating what to include or exclude as a mental and emotional disorder, for the forthcoming revision of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders. For example, one controversy is whether to remove narcissism as a bonafide disorder.

In contrast to discussion about mental disorders, I think we’ve neglected its flip side: What constitutes psychological health in today’s world? What does it look like? And how can you promote it in your own life, your children and in society?

These questions loom large because the most psychologically healthy people and societies will be best equipped to create and sustain well-being, security and success in the tumultuous road we’re now traveling on.

Take a look: At the start of this second decade of the 21st Century our lives and institutions are reeling, trying to cope with an interconnected, unpredictable world turned upside down by the events of the first decade: terrorism that’s come home to roost; economic meltdown at home and abroad; rapid rise of previously “underdeveloped” nations; and in our social and political spheres, the rise of hatred, bigotry and intolerance, as Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupik commented on following the Tucson shootings. This upheaval has fueled what I described in recent posts a “social psychosis” that’s locked in conflict with a societal need to serve the common good.

The problem is that we know what severe mental illness as well as “garden variety” neurotic conflicts look like in daily life. Those have become more prevalent in the current climate. But what we think of as psychological health is pretty vague. Moreover, it’s a 20th Century view that doesn’t fit in the new world environment.

That is, psychological health has been pretty much defined as successful resolution and management of childhood traumas and conflicts; coping with stress and adapting to the world around you, as an adult. The problem is, that view has assumed a relatively stable and static world. One in which you can anticipate the kinds of changes or events that might occur. And when they do, a healthy, resilient person could bounce back to the previous equilibrium that existed. But today, there’s no longer any equilibrium to return to. Psychological health requires living with disequilibrium. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world anxiety, empathy, health, inner life, psychological health, resilience, resiliency

As the 52 year-old man entered my office one afternoon, he asked, plaintively, “How do you start over when you can’t start over?”

He had just been let go by his company; he was devastated and frightened about the future. Despite a successful corporate career, he had no prospects in sight, and his wife’s income wasn’t enough to support the family — especially with a daughter in college and a son headed there next year.

He’s one of a rising number of people who’ve been hit hard by the recession in two ways: a forced “career transition” (the euphemism for firing), which is always difficult, and the emotional consequences of job loss, which are more severe in today’s world of uncertainty and insecurity about what the future holds.

Nevertheless, I think the career-related and emotional impact of the economic implosion could prove to be the best thing that ever happened for some people’s lives.

To explain, let’s look at the man I described above. Like so many others who’ve sought my help over the years, he had defined his worth, his value to others, his whole identity, through his career. Now he felt thrown out to sea, alone, not knowing how to “start over when you can’t start over.” In the years prior to the economic meltdown, he could have expected to land another position within a reasonable period of time. He’d probably be dealing with a manageable degree of anxiety.

But that was yesterday. The current economic recession is taking a severe emotional toll on many people: Increasing anxiety and depression, family conflicts and stress-related physical ailments. Moreover, the practical and mental health consequences of job-loss and job-seeking can be especially severe for midlifers. In fact, many are considering the possibility that they may never work again.

So how can I say that this situation could be the best thing that ever happened to someone? It’s because I’ve found Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career development, career dissatisfaction, inner life, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience, stress, workplace conflicts

Even in the midst of our economic disaster that’s hitting all but the wealthiest Americans, a transformation is continuing within people’s orientation to work. I call it the rise of the 4.0 career. 

This growing shift concerns how men and women think about and pursue their careers. It also defines the features of organizations that they want to work for and commit to. This shift that I describe below transcends its most visible form: Generation X’s and, especially, Generation Y’s attitudes and behavior in the workplace. Those are part of a broader shift whose origins are within men and women at the younger end of the baby boomer spectrum.

I first encountered this while interviewing yuppies (remember them?) in the 1980s for my book Modern Madness, about the emotional downside of career success. I often found that people would want to talk about a gnawing feeling of wanting something more “meaningful” from their work. They didn’t have quite the right language back then to express what that would look like other than feeling a gap between their personal values and the trade-offs they had to make to keep moving up in their careers and companies. The positive ideals of the 60s seemed to have trickled down into their yearnings, where they remained a kind of irritant.

Flashing forward 25 years, those people are now today’s midlife baby boomers. Their earlier irritation has bloomed into consciously expressed attitudes and behavior that have filtered down into the younger generations, where they’ve continued to evolve. Today, they’re reshaping how people think about and pursue their careers within today’s era of interconnection, constant networking and unpredictable change.

I’ll oversimplify for the sake of highlighting an evolution of people’s career orientations:

Career Versions 1.0, 2.0, 3.0… And The Emerging 4.0

The 1.0 career describes  Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career development, career dissatisfaction, careers, global citizen, midlife, new business model, psychological health, purpose, social impact, social responsibility, sustainability, workplace conflicts

Many people who enter psychotherapy today aren’t helped at all. Some end up more troubled than when they began treatment. And ironically, some therapists are examples of the kinds of problems they’re trying to treat. In this post I explain why that is and how to become a more informed consumer when considering psychotherapy.

The popularity of the TV show “In Treatment” is one indicator that there’s a large, market for psychotherapy, today. Despite the decline of the more orthodox psychoanalytic treatment – the kind that Daphne Merkin described in a recent New York Times article about her years in treatment – people continue to seek competent professional help for dealing with and resolving the enormous emotional challenges and conflicts that impact so many lives in current times. Beyond healing, they want to grow their capacity for healthy relationships and successful lives.

Many skilled and competent therapists are out there. (I use term “therapist” to describe psychologists, psychiatrists and clinical social workers – professionally trained and licensed practitioners.) Moreover, research shows that psychotherapy can be very effective. Either alone, or sometimes in combination with the judicious use of medication.

Yet so often practitioners don’t help people very much. Some struggle for years in therapy with one practitioner after another, and never seem to make any progress. Others resolve some conflicts, but then are hit with others that hadn’t been addressed.

I see three reasons for this situation. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world anxiety, psychological health, psychology, psychotherapy, resiliency, social responsibility, stress

After rebooting your life, it’s time for a remix.

In Part 1 of this post I wrote that the reality of life today includes much confusion, uncertainty, and confused emotions about pursuing success and wellbeing. In fact, our tumultuous, changing world spurs actions that often undermine rather than support psychological health. That’s visible in the dysfunction and unhappiness emerging from the choices, decisions and overall way of life of many people, today.

Based on current research and new thinking about resiliency and psychological health, I suggested three practices for “rebooting” your life in today’s environment: Self-awareness (“Wake Up”); envisioning your life circumstances with out-of-the-box perspectives (“Lose Your Mind”); and actions that support positive growth rather than stagnation (“Push The Envelope”).

In Part 2 I propose that you combine “rebooting” your life in those ways with a life “remix.” That is, create an intent to activate six important dimensions of your life, each with a new, clear purpose. The “remix” reflects the holistic reality that everything you do in each “part” of your life affects and is affected by every other “part.” A life “remix” in the dimensions I describe below helps you evolve in healthy, proactive ways. And the latter is a necessity for positive, resilient living within this fluid and uncertain world that we now inhabit.

The Six Dimensions:

Here’s what you do:

• Formulate specific new goals for each of the following six interconnected dimensions of life. Each should be modest; that is, realistic and able to be achieved within a reasonable time-frame that you specify and commit to.

• Then, describe some specific actions you can begin taking right now that support each of the goals.

The six dimensions are: Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world inner life, midlife, psychological health, purpose, recession, resilience, resiliency, sexual conflicts, stress

There’s an old saying that if you want to see into your future, just look into a mirror. That is, how you live your life each day — through your choices, your values and behavior — shapes and determines who you will be in the future.

Many people today don’t like what they see when they look into that mirror. Especially when so much feels out of control: Economic decline with no end in sight; social and political changes that can feel frightening, even threatening; career uncertainty; relationships unraveling under stress; climate disasters, both man-made and natural. All of these events impact your mental health and overall well being, as research and survey data show: Emotional, physical and social symptoms are rising, such depression and anxiety, obesity, demagoguery from media personalities like Glen Beck, emotional disturbance in the workplace…the list goes on.

All of that can make you feel frozen in today’s world. How can you find a psychologically healthy path into the future, in the midst of such confusion and turmoil? And, within a cultural and political environment that feeds self-serving, shortsighted behavior?

I’ve been addressing the impact of living in our new world upon people’s emotional health on my posts for this blog, Progressive Impact.  In this post, I suggest three ways to “reboot” you life in positive ways, within today’s unpredictable, interdependent and often scary world.

Wake Up!

Common lore is that it’s harmful to wake up a person who’s sleepwalking, but that’s not true. And when you’re sleepwalking in your life, Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" anxiety, empathy, inner life, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience

A woman in her late 30s was telling me about her work-life conflicts. She has a busy career, three children, and a husband who travels a great deal for his own job. She suddenly paused, recalling a recent, terrifying dream: She’s on one of those moving sidewalks, and can’t get off. Passing by on either side are scenes of herself, but living different lives with different people. Suddenly she recognizes the Grim Reaper standing at the end of the sidewalk, arms outstretched, awaiting her.

She wakes up, screaming.

You might think her dream sounds more typical of someone in the throes of “midlife.” In fact, I think it reveals the need for new thinking about what we’ve called “midlife.” That is, changes in our culture and in how people live require tossing out old notions of “midlife” and the “midlife crisis.” With people living longer, healthier, productive lives, what used to be a narrower “middle” period of adulthood has greatly expanded.

Instead, think of a broad period of true adulthood that starts somewhere in the 30s. From that period onward men and women face a range of truly adult challenges of living and working in today’s world. This new, longer adulthood extends for several decades — recent surveys find that about 80% think “old age” begins at around 85 — so the term “midlife” is no longer accurate.

No surprise, then, that 30-somethings are reporting symptoms associated with a “midlife crisis” – marriage boredom, careers flatlining, work-life juggling, trying to keep it all together, trying to maintain sanity…and, wondering what the point of it all is, like in that Talking Heads song.

To better explain all this and how to reverse that “death spiral,” let’s look at recent contradictory Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world decline of romance, emotional conflictds, inner life, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience, resiliency, sexual conflicts

So often our romantic and sexual relationships end in regret, sadness, and loss. Initial feelings of excitement and connection just seem to slip through our fingers, and often we’re not sure why that happened. Nevertheless, men and women continue to hope for finding that elusive “soul mate,” a relationship of sustained vitality. But so often, partners descend into the “functional relationship,” or become lost in a maize of unfulfilling sexual connections or affairs.

In previous posts I’ve written about the roots of that seemingly inevitable decline and what helps. But there’s another part of relationship failure or loss that can be a basis of new growth. Let me explain. Over the decades I’ve witnessed countless examples of people drawn into new relationships that are simply new versions of previous, failed relationships — old wine in new flasks. And inevitably, disaster is lying in wait, right down the road. I think that often happens when an important part of the foundation for a positive, sustainable romantic and sexual relationship is neglected or overlooked.

That is, mental health practitioners focus a great deal on building better mechanics of listening, mirroring to each other, techniques of communication and compromise, and so on. All good stuff. But what can go missing is Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, affairs, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, midlife, psychological health, resilience, sexual connection

Upgrade To Career 4.0; Practice “Harnicissism;” and Become a Good Ancestor

In a previous post I wrote that a key pathway to psychological health and resiliency in today’s world is learning to “forget yourself.” This post describes ways to do that in three important realms of your life – your work, your personal relationships, and your life “footprint.”

In the earlier post I explained that “forgetting yourself” doesn’t mean neglecting your own legitimate needs or concerns. Rather, it means letting go of our human tendency to overly dwell on ourselves – our own concerns, needs, desires, slights, complaints about others, and so on. Psychological health and resiliency in today’s world grows when you can do that and put your energies in the service of something larger than yourself: problems, needs and challenges that lie beyond your own personal, narrow self-interest.

That may sound like a paradox, but it’s based on a new reality: Today’s world is changing more rapidly than you can imagine and is becoming immensely interdependent, interconnected, unpredictable and unstable. In this new environment you can’t create or sustain a positive, healthy life through the old ways of reactive resiliency, of coping and hoping to rebound.

That is, chronic unhappiness, dysfunction and overt emotional disturbance lie in store for those who remain too locked into thinking about themselves and who use old solutions to achieve success in relationships and at work. For example, trying to achieve power and domination over others, and thinking you can hold on to that. Fearing collaboration and avoiding mutuality with people who are different from yourself, or with whom you have differences. Looking for ways to cope with stress and restore equilibrium or “balance” in your life. And overall, being absorbed by your own conflicts, disappointments and the like. The latter are inevitable, and dwelling on them is a breeding ground for resentment, jealousy, and blame. That’s a dead-end. The consequences are visible in people who are unable to handle career downturn, who experience mounting relationship conflicts and who suffer from a range of psychological problems like depression, boredom, stress, anxiety and self-undermining behavior.

In contrast, positive resiliency in today’s environment is the byproduct when you aim towards common goals, purposes or missions larger than just your own narrow self-interests. That keeps you nimble, flexible, and adaptive to change and unpredictable events that are part of our new era. Then, you’re creating true balance, between your “outer” and “inner” life.

Here are three ways you can move through self-interest. Each describes a shift, or evolution from the older, reactive form of resilience to the new, proactive form:

Upgrade your career to the 4.0 version; Practice “Harnicissism;” and Become a Good Ancestor

Yeah, I know — those descriptions sound odd. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" career dissatisfaction, careers, empathy, global citizen, inner life, psychological health, resilience, resiliency, social responsibility, sustainability

Here’s a typical couple’s lament: “We just see things differently.” That’s certainly true for many couples, but I see a deeper problem that undermines many relationships today. And it won’t be fixed by any of the marriage education, relationship improvement or sexual enhancement programs out there. That is, often the problem isn’t that you and your partner see things differently; but rather, that you see different things.

Facing what that means can be painful. It may even feel relationship-threatening. But doing so can open the door to strengthening the true foundation of your relationship: Your vision of life. That refers to what you’re really living and working for, both individually and as a couple.

That’s the fundamental core of a relationship, and it’s often overlooked or seldom discussed. When you do face it you may discover that you and your partner were never in synch about your vision of life. Or, that you may have gone off on different tracks over time. When either is the case, you end up seeing different things altogether.

That’s a crucial problem because your core vision of life will increasingly impact your long-term health and well-being in today’s world, whether you’re in a relationship or not. We’re now living in a totally interconnected, unpredictable, “non-equilibrium” world. My 35 years as a psychotherapist and business psychologist convinces me that our new era requires a new and revised picture of psychological health and positive resiliency — what it looks like and what helps build it – to support your outward success and internal well-being in the years ahead. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, midlife, psychological health, purpose, resilience, sexual conflicts, sexual connection, soul mate

Not long ago, my now-adult daughter called from New York to let me know about a medical scare she was facing.  She assured me that she was handling it, had the best doctor, and was confident about the outcome.  I could sense her concern, though, beneath her surface calm.  I wished I could do something, and was troubled by knowing that I couldn’t.

That event triggered a memory of an event that occurred more than two decades earlier.  It made me reflect on what we do as parents that affect how our children will deal with uncertainties and unknowns that lie ahead in their lives.  But it also reminded me that children have some innate “adult” powers that we haven’t fully recognized.

It happened one morning in early spring.  We were sitting at the airport, waiting for the plane to begin boarding.  My daughter was going fly alone.  It wasn’t the first time she had flown, but on this trip she would be unaccompanied, and would meet her mother in another city.  She was excited about it, but was also scared about going alone.

We sat side-by-side in the airport lounge, where we could look through the large windows at the baggage loading and refueling activity outside.  She began peppering me with unnerving questions — like why planes crashed, how frequently, and whether I knew that this one would be safe.  Oddly, though, each time she asked I thought I detected a faint, sly grin, followed by a quick sideways glance with her twinkling blue eyes.  I sensed that she was feeling something she couldn’t quite express, beyond her fears.  Maybe was looking to me to affirm whatever that was, if  only I could tune into it.

Then suddenly, it was boarding time.  We rose together, and she hugged me tightly.  “I’m still scared, Daddy,” she murmured quietly.  Quickly reviewing my parental options, I thought of something: Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult development, child development, parenthood, psychological health, resilience

As a young boy growing up in upstate New York, I sometimes roamed through some nearby woods and fields. As I did that one bright summer afternoon I came upon a large tree – perhaps an elm or poplar.  I noticed that its trunk had a deep scar; it looked like it had been struck by lightning some years before.

That memory came to mind recently, while reading two recent New York Times articles about loss and love.  They appeared on the same day, and reflected two very different kinds of life events. Yet I think they go together, in a way.

One was the “Modern Love” column in Sunday Styles, titled “Affirmation, Etched in Vinyl,” by Connie May Fowler.  It was about the loss of her father from a heart attack, when she was six years old. Both parents appear flawed, apparently alcoholic.  But Fowler describes her mother as having been intent on portraying her father as malignant.  She writes that

“…most of what I knew of him came from my mother, who considered him the embodiment of evil.”

And most significantly,

“…My father’s death stole many things from me, including the sound of his voice.”

Ever since, she had longed to be able to know and hear what his voice sounded like.  Well, it turns out that her father had somewhat of a career as a country and western singer.

“The lack of any memory of my father’s true living voice was all the more perplexing to me because before my birth, my father, Henry May, had enjoyed a reasonably successful run as a country-western musician. He had a television show in Jacksonville, Fla. He and his band, Henry May and his Rhythm Ramblers, were a major draw all along Florida’s northeast coast.”

In her essay, Fowler describes her search for a record that he had made along the way, as she looked in old record bins and on e-bay, over the years.  Then, one day, she received a message from a stranger who had learned of her search and, in fact, had a copy of her father’s record in his possession. At last, she might be able to hear his voice.  Here’s Fowler’s full story.

The other essay is “First Love, Once Removed,” by Lee Montgomery.  It describes a drop-in visit by the son of her first lover, with whom she had many romantic and adventurous experiences in her early youth, during the 1970s.

“When I think of Ian, I think of endless days hanging out in the woods and fields around our New England prep schools, sucking dope out of a metal chamber pipe. Ian showed me the world and taught me to live in it. New York City. The Great West. And Europe, where we lived for several months during his first college year abroad. He was socially connected and wealthy, two things I was not. For a long time, it didn’t matter.”

Eventually, their relationship ended.  No surprise, for two 18 year-olds.  She went on with her life, married, began a career.  He inherited money, married

“… had no career that I knew of and shot himself when he was in his 30s.”

The son, quite young at the time his father committed suicide, was now about the age Montgomery when she and his father were lovers.  He had dropped by her office hoping to hear some stories of what his father was like.  Montgomery’s essay describes how fresh and alive the memories felt to her, as she drew into them and spoke with her young lover’s son about his father:

“Sitting across a booth studying this young man, I was overwhelmed. So many years later, I was stunned to find the feeling of first love still there.”

The full article is here.

To me, these two essays read like bookends.  Both portray the enduring loss of love and connection and how it affects us, permanently.  No matter whether it comes from a child’s loss of a parent, from the ending of an adult love relationship at any age; or from an unexpected death.  Or, for that matter, if the loss results from something you did that harmed or damaged a relationship that was important to you. None of those experiences can be undone.  Their legacy becomes woven into the larger tapestry of your life, where it remains, even as that tapestry expands over time.

And that’s what brought to mind the old tree trunk.  Damaged where the lightning had struck, I noticed that the trunk had continued to grow around it and gradually encompassed the damaged part within it.  It was like ourselves: Even if we continue to grow and change, learn from our experiences and continue on with our lives, our losses nevertheless remains part of us…. always there, a visible, enduring part of our lives.

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, flaws in love relationships, inner life, psychological health

Following his victory over the establishment’s candidate in Kentucky’s Republican primary for the US Senate, Tuesday, Rand Paul repeated the familiar Tea Party mantra that his victory shows the Tea Party movement is sweeping across the country; that we’re going to “take America back!”

Well, OK, but take it back from what? And to what?

Well first, I think that many of those drawn to the Tea Party are genuinely concerned about the rising scope and size of government and want lower taxes.  Some have become fired up with rage about that (while also, of course, wanting to keep all the benefits and support that Big Government provides, as Louisiana Gov.Jindel recently discovered).

And some are so fired up that they just want to get rid of everybody on the Hill and the inhabitant of the White House – all those who are taking our country in the “wrong” direction.

But let’s take a look at what the Tea Party’s dominant ideology includes, with respect to what it thinks is the wrong course; what they advocate it it’s place; and, especially, what the Republican party is embracing as it bends over backwards to drink from the Tea Party’s cup (sorry for the mixed metaphors.)

Take Utah Republicans.  There’s a movement afoot to repeal the 17^th Amendment.  Having trouble remembering which one that is?  Well, it’s the one that gives people the right to vote for and select their Senators.  That’s right – elect their Senators.  Taking away that right is a favorite of Tea Party supporters, and they’re getting Republicans to join with them.

It gets better.  On the other side of the country, the Republican Party of Maine has adopted some Tea Party proposals of its own. It’s official platform calls for the elimination of the Department of Education and the Federal Reserve; demands an investigation of “collusion between government and industry in the global warming myth;” insists that “healthcare is not a right;” calls for the abrogation of the “UN Treaty on Rights of the Child” and the “Law Of The Sea Treaty;” and says we must resist “efforts to create a one world government.”  There’s more.  If you’re interested, here’s the whole thing.

The Maine Politics blog calls the official platform for the Republican Party of Maine “a mix of right-wing fringe policies, libertarian buzzwords and outright conspiracy theories.” It quotes Dan Billings, who’s served as an attorney for the Maine GOP, describing the new platform as “wack job pablum” and “nutcase stuff.”

In contrast to the claims of Tea Partiers around the country, Washington Post columnist E.J.Dionne has pointed out some actual facts.  He writes:

“…there was evidence on Tuesday that there are limits to the anti-government mood that is supposedly sweeping the country.  In Arizona — nobody’s idea of a liberal state — voters supported a temporary increase in the sales tax from 5.6 to 6.6 cents on the dollar, to raise $1 billion annually. This, coupled with a large tax increase on businesses and high-income earners endorsed by voters in Oregon earlier this year, suggests a pragmatic electorate that is far less reflexively opposed to taxes or government than Tea Party cheerleaders would have us believe.

He also points out that:

The most significant result for the fall was the Democrats’ success in holding the western Pennsylvania House seat left vacant by the death of John Murtha. Democrat Mark Critz won an impressive nine-point victory over Republican Tim Burns by distancing himself from Obama and liberal positions on guns and abortion, but also by running a relentlessly economic populist message on jobs and outsourcing.

Circling back to the rising star Rand Paul, the new candidate has also made it clear that he opposes the Civil Rights Act.  That’s the Act that most of the then-Republicans voted for, back in the days when Republicans were strong supporters of civil rights, back before the party morphed into a bastion of right-wing mostly southern white men.  Paul emphasizes that opposing the Civil Rights Act is not racist.  Go figure.

If you look at some hard data about what is, in fact, transforming our society, in contrast with what the Tea Party sees, it’s hard not to conclude that their appeal is to a small number of people and will remain a fringe movement.

Sometimes we become so convinced of our own convictions, when they are shared by others, that we seduce ourselves into seeing a movement that will transform the world.  There’s a long history to such delusions.

The sad consequence for our two-party system is that the Republican Party is allowing itself to upend it’s own principles and ideals as it tries to capture this “movement,” and thus risks marching into oblivion.

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world political delusions, Politics, psychological health, republicans, tea party

1.  Why “Work-Life” Balance Is A Myth

Meet Linda and Jim, who consulted me for psychotherapy.  Linda is a lawyer with a large firm; Jim heads a major trade association.  They told me they’re totally committed to their marriage and to being good parents.  But they also said it’s pretty hectic juggling all their responsibilities at work and at home They have two children of their own plus a child from her former marriage. Dealing with the logistics of daily life, to say nothing of the emotional challenges, makes it “hard just to come up for air,” Linda said.  Sound familiar?

Or listen to Bill, a 43-year-old who initially consulted me for help with some career challenges.  Before long, he acknowledged that he’s worried about the “other side” of life. He’s raising two teenage daughters and a younger son by himself – one of the rising numbers of single fathers.  He’s constantly worried about things like whether a late meeting might keep him at work. He tries to have some time for himself, but “it’s hard enough just staying in good physical health, let alone being able to have more of a ‘life,’ ” he said. Recently, he learned he has hypertension.

It’s no surprise that these people, like many I see both in my psychotherapy practice and my workplace consulting, feel pummeled by stresses in their work and home lives. Most are aware, at least dimly, that this is unhealthy – that stress damages the body, mind and spirit. Ten years ago, a report from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, found that 70 percent of all illness, physical and mental, is linked to stress of some kind.  And that number has probably increased over the last decade.  Much of this stress comes from struggling with the pressures of work and home – and trying to “balance” both. The problem seems nearly universal, whether in two-worker, single-parent or childless households.

I think these conflicts are so common because people have learned to frame the problem incorrectly to begin with. That is, there’s no way to balance work life and home life, because both exist on the same side of the scale – what I call your “outer” life. On the other side of the scale is your personal, private life – your “inner” life. Instead of thinking about how to balance work life and home life, try, instead, to balance your outer life and inner life.

The Other Balancing Act

Let me explain. On the outer side of the scale you have the complex logistics and daily stresses of life at both work and home – the e-mails to respond to, the errands, family obligations, phone calls, to-do lists and responsibilities that fill your days. Your outer life is the realm of the external, material world. It’s where you use your energies to deal with tangible, often essential things. Paying your bills, building a career, dealing with people, raising kids, doing household chores, and so on. Your outer life is on your iPhone, BlackBerry, or your e-calender.

On the other side of the scale is your internal self.  It’s the realm of your private thoughts and values.  Your emotions, fantasies, spiritual or religious practices.  Your capacity to love, your secret desires, and your deeper sense of purpose.  In short, it embodies who you are, on the inside.  A “successful” inner life is defined by how well you deal with your emotions, your degree of self-awareness , and your sense of clarity about your values and life purpose.  It includes your level of mental repose:  your capacity for calm, focused action and resiliency that you need in the face of  your frenetic, multitasking outer life.

If the realm of the inner life sounds unfamiliar or uncomfortable to you, this only emphasizes how much you – like most peple – have lost touch with your inner self.  You can become so depleted and stretched by dealing with your outer life that there’s little time to tend to your mind, spirit or body. Then, you identify your “self” mostly with who you are in that outer realm. And when there’s little on the inner side of the scale, the outer part weighs you down. You are unbalanced, unhappy and often sick.

When your inner life is out of balance with your outer, you become more vulnerable to stress, and that’s related to a wide range of physical damage.  Research shows that heart attacks, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, a weakened immune system, skin disorders, asthma, migraine, musculoskeletal problems – all are linked to stress.

More broadly, when your inner and outer lives become unbalanced, your daily functioning is affected in a range of ways, both subtle and overt. When operating in the outer world – at work, for example, or in dealings with your spouse or partner – you may struggle with unjustified feelings of insecurity and fear. You may find yourself at the mercy of anger or greed whose source you don’t understand. You may be plagued with indecisiveness or revert to emotional “default” positions forged during childhood, such as submissiveness, rebellion or self-undermining behavior.

Even when you’re successful in parts of your outer life, neglecting the inner remains hazardous to your psychological and physical health. Without a developed inner life, you lose the capacity to regulate, channel and focus your energies with awareness, self-direction and judgment.  Personal relationships can suffer, your health may deteriorate and you become vulnerable to looking for new stimulation from the outer-world sources you know best – maybe a new “win,” a new lover, drugs or alcohol.

And that pulls you even more off-balance, possibly to the point of no return. The extreme examples are Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world, Work & Career "4.0" anxiety, career dissatisfaction, depression, inner life, marriage conflicts, psychological health, resiliency, stress

Well, people, it looks like the fight over the “e-word” has started again.  Remember last year, when President Obama said that the capacity for empathy was an important criteria for selecting a Supreme Court nominee?  He was quickly attacked by those who apparently heard “empathy” as a code word for some kind of ideological bias.  And shortly after, Obama backed off from using the term.

Last June, I wrote here about why I thought he should keep on using the word empathy, not back away from it.  I have a particular interest in the subject, having written about our national “empathy deficit disorder” in The Washington Post a few years ago — and which I recently updated on my Psychology Today blog.  During last year’s Supreme Court nomination process, critics distorted what empathy is.  It’s  actually the capacity to experience what another person experiences.  It’s what gives you the capacity for wisdom, perspective and sound judgment; not bias or distortion or being bamboozled into the other’s point of view.

Nevertheless, as Obama decides who to nominate as Justice Stevens’ replacement, it’s like Yogi Berra said: “It’s déjà vu, all over again.”

To wit: A recent article in  The New York Times asks if  Obama is looking for empathy “by another name.”  The piece, by Peter Baker, points out that

A year after Mr. Obama made “empathy” one of his main criteria in picking his first Supreme Court justice, he is avoiding the word, which became radioactive, as he picks his second nominee. Instead, he says he wants someone with “a keen understanding of how the law affects the daily lives of the American people.”

Baker goes on to say,

The issue is more than semantic. …The president emphasizes that while adhering to the rule of law, judges should also be able to see life through the eyes of those who come before the bench. His critics call that a prescription for twisting decisions to reach a desired outcome…..

The dispute became so contentious last year that even Mr. Obama’s nominee for the court, Sonia Sotomayor, disavowed the notion of empathy during hearings before her confirmation, saying that “judges can’t rely on what’s in their heart.”

In the same vein, Lee Epstein, a constitutional scholar at the Northwestern University School of Law, said in the Times piece, “You hear ‘empathy’ and you don’t think impartiality, judicial temperament.”

And getting right to the “heart” (whoops, sorry!) of the matter,

Senator Jeff Sessions of Alabama, the senior Republican on the Judiciary Committee. “It seems to be calling again for judges to be less committed to fidelity to the law and calling for them to reach decisions that somehow endeavor to decide who ought to win.”

All of this posturing should be exposed for the ignorance and manipulation it contains, and presented in hopes that the public will buy it.  We need to emphasize why empathy is a plus, an inborn capacity, and the basis of healing the serious wounds in our global society, as Jeremy Rifkin has written in The Empathic Civilization.  But as far as the relevance of empathy to the Supreme Court issue, The Nation’s  Katrina vanden Heuvel, writing in The Washington Post, put it in proper context:

Is it better to have a corporate stooge on the bench than someone capable of understanding how his or her decisions will affect 300 million fellow citizens? Better to have a biased judge than a humane one, a dishonest justice instead of one who’s insightful?  It… goes to show how hysterical those critics have become about empathy.

It’s sad and discouraging to witness fear-fueled distortions coming from elected officials and others.  I hope that President Obama returns to his well-founded support for empathy as a criteria.  It’s especially important at this time in our history when we need more, not less empathy, not only in a Supreme Court justice, but in our society at large, to help face and solve major problems that confront us – economically, socially, psychologically.  As I wrote previously, in the Bible King Solomon asked God for “a heart that listens.” Notice that he didn’t ask for “a head that thinks.” Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Psychological health in a post-globalized world empathy, empathy deficit disorder, global citizen, obama, Politics, psychological health, resiliency

Nora, 43, has a successful career as a free-lance magazine writer with two children.  She’s been married for 15 years to Ken, a media executive.  They’re typical of many couples today — committed to their relationship and family as much as to their careers. Yet something troubles them. It’s what’s happened along the way during their marriage.

There’s nothing “wrong” with it, exactly. But the excitement and energy, the feelings of connection and passion that were once there have gradually faded over the years.  “The old feelings haven’t exactly disappeared,” Nora says. “Now and then it feels something like it used to. But mostly it feels like our relationship has ‘flatlined.’”

Another person, David, recently celebrated the eleventh anniversary of his second marriage.  He describes a similar shift a bit more sardonically, saying that his relationship has settled into a state of “depressing comfortableness.”  He’s thought about having an affair.

If these laments sound familiar to you, it’s likely because most men and women find that their long-term marriages (I’m defining “marriage” to describe all committed relationships, straight or gay) tend to head south over time.

Gradually, they descend into what I call the Functional Relationship.

Most people think it’s inevitable, but there’s a unique way to liberate yourself from it.  It’s learning to “leave” your relationship in order to transform it.  You do that through becoming “indifferent.”

First, let’s look at what typically happens in the Functional Relationship.  The relationship continues to “work” fairly well, but mostly in a transactional way, around the logistics of daily life: “I thought you were taking the car in for repair.” “Whose turn is it to take the kids to soccer practice on Saturday?”

Sometimes, it becomes more adversarial: “Why did you schedule the plumber for tomorrow when you knew you couldn’t be here? I told you that I have a meeting I can’t miss.”

But even when “functioning” goes fairly smoothly, feelings of passion or even fun just hanging out together diminish, especially in contrast to how it felt early on in the relationship.  As I’ve studied contemporary marriages in our post-9-11/post-economic meltdown-world of the 21st Century, I find that couples experience this diminishment in three main ways:

• Decreased emotional intimacy and sharing of feelings.
• Less equality in decisions and daily interactions, which are often tinged by power-struggles and silent maneuvering for the “upper hand.”
• And dampened sexuality, both in quantity and quality.

A note about that third item: Even when arousal is jacked up by Viagra or the new products purporting to enhance women’s desire, your libido — desire for the person you’re with — remains diminished.  That’s no surprise, because the latter is relationship-dependent. It remains unaffected even if you’re physiologically able to become aroused.

Overall, couples in a Functional Relationship report a diminished sense of connection with each other.  Sometimes it’s a feeling of not being on the same wave-length.

Most people assume that the Functional Relationship is completely “normal;” just a sad reality of adult life. Some are resigned to it as just one more part of the “long slide home,” as one 47-year-old journalist described his experience of midlife. Of course, not everyone feels so bleak, but many would agree with this woman’s lament about her 18-year relationship: “What was once a bright flame has turned into a pilot light.”

You, too probably assume that romantic and sexual connections are supposed to fade over time. Common sense seems to tell you so. After all, you’re seeing the same person day-in and day-out, not just when he or she is most attractive.  And like the majority of couples today, you’re probably dealing with the impact of multitasking, dual-career lives. Raising children in addition absorbs enormous time and energy.  Just trying to carry on in this uncertain, unpredictable world adds another huge layer of stress.

If everyday experience doesn’t convince you that the Functional Relationship is inevitable, there are the pronouncements of various experts. For example, some researchers claim that brain chemicals such as dopamine, norepinephrine, and phenylethylamine, associated with sexual excitement or desire, decline with familiarity. At the same time, oxytocin and endorphins, which generate feelings of quiet comfort and calm, rise. Therefore, they say, you are going to feel diminished desire for your partner over time.

Many marriage and relationship experts advocate just accepting this decline and learning to be happy with it. For example, in her  book Surrendering to Marriage Iris Krasnow advocates learning to appreciate and live with the security and comfort that come along with the “inevitable” decline — unless, of course, you want to go down the slippery slope of an affair, or dumping your partner altogether and look for a new one.   It’s easy to think it’s best to stop complaining about what you don’t have and learn to live with lowered expectations.

If all of the above is really true, then you’d better resign yourself to the fact that a “passionate marriage” is an oxymoron.

But before you do that, consider this: Descending into the Functional Relationship is neither natural nor inevitable.  True, the experience is widespread. But most people descend into the Functional Relationship because it’s the natural outcome of how you learn to engage in love relationships to begin with.  As I wrote in a previous post, it’s a version of adolescent romance. Its features — like intense arousal by a new person; infatuation, often followed by deflation; manipulating and game-playing, are part of normal adolescent development. But we carry them into our adult experience. And  that model of love can’t sustain long-term connection and vitality.

Becoming “Indifferent”

Through my research and clinical work I’ve been discovering how and why some people defy the norm and generate new energy and vitality within their long-term relationships. I’m convinced that there’s a way out of the Functional Relationship. There’s even a way to avoid it altogether.  I call it the art of Creative Indifference. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, midlife, resiliency, sexual conflicts

“What Happened To My Mental Health?”

In Part I of “Becoming Sane in a Turbulent, Interconnected, Unpredictable World,” I wrote about why you need a new kind of emotional resiliency for success and well-being in today’s world.  Here, I’ll extend those thoughts about resiliency to psychological health in general.  Just as we need to redefine resiliency, I think we need to reformulate what a psychologically healthy adult looks like in this transformed world.  Here are my ideas about that:

Throughout most of the last century, adult psychological health has been largely equated with good management and coping skills: Managing stress within your work and personal life; and effective coping with or resolution of whatever emotional conflicts you brought with you into adulthood – and we all bring along some.

So, in your work that might include being clear about your career goals, and working your way up a fairly predictable set of steps to achieve power, recognition and financial success – all the things that we’ve equated with adult maturity and mental health.

At home, it would mean forming a long-term relationship that withstands the power struggles and other differences that often lead to affairs or even divorce.  You would assume that the healthy adult doest that via compromise at best, or disguised manipulation at worst.  In addition, you would accept “normal” decline of intimate connection and vitality over time.

But the fallout from the worldwide upheaval over the last few years have turned all those criteria of health upside down.  To be clear, it’s important to be able to manage conflicts that could derail your career or personal life.  But doing that isn’t enough to ensure future success, sanity or well-being in this turbulent and highly interdependent world we now live in.

Massive, interconnected forces within this globalized, unpredictable world add a host of new emotional and behavioral challenges to living a psychologically healthy, well-functioning and fulfilling life.

I deal with the fallout almost daily: People who’ve functioned pretty well in the past, but now feel as if they’re standing on tectonic plates shifting beneath them. Despite their best efforts, they struggle with mounting anxiety about the future of their own and their children’s lives, and confusion about their values and life purpose.

There’s the former Wall Street financial executive who told me he’d always defined himself by “making it through the next end zone” in his career, working long hours to ensure financial success. Now, as his company – and career – crumbled, he found that in addition to sacrificing time with his family, he had sacrificed his health: He has diabetes and high blood pressure. “Kind of a reverse ‘deal-flow,’ ” he lamented to me.

And the management consultant, pressured to ratchet up her travel to keep her career on track. “I’d been coping with everything, I thought,” she told me, “though I don’t like needing Zoloft to do it.” Instead of her career becoming more predictable as she gained seniority, her career propelled her into an even wilder ride. “Now I don’t have enough time for my daughter or my husband,” she said. “What kind of life is this? . . . My husband’s checked out, emotionally. And what am I teaching my daughter?”

Or the lawyer, who’d prided himself on “eating what I kill, and I’m a good killer.” He told me he has “more money than I ever dreamed of,” but also says that, “secretly, I hate what I do for a living.” But what’s the alternative, he asks, without “looking like a dysfunctional failure if I opt out?” After a failed marriage, he entered therapy and had begun to realize how his father’s unfulfilled dreams of “success” have impacted his own life — when suddenly his father died. “I’m in a tailspin,” he says; depressed and confused about what his own purpose in life is.

All of these people were on the kinds of life paths they expected would bring them predictable rewards. But counting on that linear upward climb is now hazardous to your mental health.

In fact, following that old path can make you more vulnerable to Read more…

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The other day Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke stirred up some interesting reactions.  He said in a speech that Americans are faced with having to accept higher taxes or readjustments in programs like Medicare and Social Security, in order to avoid ever-increasing budget deficits that will be catastrophic.

Now I’m not an economist (see former Undersecretary of Commerce Ev Ehrlich’s blog for such matters).  But I started thinking about Bernanke’s comments — and the reactions from some Republicans and assorted “anti-tax patriots” who came out with guns blazing (metaphorically….so far) — from a psychological perspective.  I find some psychological attitudes and ideology about the role of individuals in society driving the reactions to what Bernanke raised.  They’re visible as well in the angry, hostile response to the health care legislation and, more broadly, the fear and loathing of “government takeover.”

Here’s what Bernanke said:

“These choices are difficult, and it always seems easier to put them off — until the day they cannot be put off anymore. But unless we as a nation demonstrate a strong commitment to fiscal responsibility, in the longer run we will have neither financial stability nor healthy economic growth.”  And, “To avoid large and ultimately unsustainable budget deficits, the nation will ultimately have to choose among higher taxes, modifications to entitlement programs such as Social Security and Medicare, less spending on everything else from education to defense, or some combination of the above.”

In The Washington Post story reporting Bernanke’s speech, writers Neil Irwin and Lori Montgomery point out that:

“…the economic downturn — with tumbling tax revenue, aggressive stimulus spending and rising safety-net payments such as unemployment insurance — has driven already large budget deficits to their highest level relative to the economy since the end of World War II. This has fueled public concern over how long the United States can sustain its fiscal policies.

The upshot of what we’re facing appears to be this: Our current way of life is unsustainable.  So what’s a possible remedy, according to Bernanke and others?  Raising taxes, not lowering them.  Cuts in Medicare benefits.  Raising the retirement age.  And bringing rising health care costs down.  To  do any or all of that requires a different mentality about our responsibility and obligations to others in our society.  And it’s not pleasant.  That’s the psychology part.

That is, we’re highly attached to the ideology that we are and should be separate, isolated individuals; that each of us should look out for one’s own self-interest.  And we define that largely by material acquisition and money.  Hence, opposition to “redistribution” of wealth, even though that’s exactly what we do via taxes that support all the services that we expect society to give us.  We also define our self-interest as psychologically healthy, mature, even; the hallmark of a succesful life.  Those that don’t do as well are not my problem.

Except now they are:  We’ve been hit with the reality that our world is so interconnected that someone else’s “problem” is also our own.  To consider subordinating some of our personal wants and goals for the larger common good feels foreign and frightening.  Yet that’s exactly what we’re faced with doing. It begins with shifting our mental perspectives towards recognizing that we’re all in the same boat — not just we Americans, but all of us in this global community.  And it means stimulating the emotional counterpart of that perspective — the hard-wired capacity for empathy.  And then, making the sacrifices that result from embracing the new realities.  The economic collapse has made the need for those shifts very apparent.  We’re faced with learning to sacrifice in ways that we’re not used to doing, in order to thrive as individuals and a society in the world as it now exists.

But such shifts meet with strong, ingrained resistance and denial.  They’re fueled  by unrealistic, almost delusional notions that pursuing self-interest at all costs will lead to success and well-being. So, for example, Republicans pounced on the suggestion of increasing taxes.  They also went after remarks by Paul A. Volcker earlier this week, who spoke very directly in favor of higher taxes.  He said that the U.S. might have to consider a European-style sales tax, known as a value-added tax, to close the budget gap.  He said “If at the end of the day we need to raise taxes, we should raise taxes.”

That’s a pretty direct, unvarnished statement of reality.  But Republicans accused Obama of plotting a big tax hike, for nefarious purposes.  ”To make up for the largest levels of spending and deficits in modern history, the Administration is laying the foundation for a large, misguided new tax, a first-time American VAT.” Sen. Charles E. Grassley said in a statement.

Onward goes the struggle between facing reality and dealing with it, or not facing it….and still having to deal with it

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Why Emotional Resiliency Doesn’t Work In The 21st Century

It’s becoming clear that our understanding of emotional resilience – what it is and how to achieve it — (and, more broadly, psychological health)  doesn’t mesh very well with today’s realities. Conventional descriptions of resilience and pathways to mental health don’t enable you to handle the challenges and stresses we face in the 21st Century.

Let me explain. Resilience is generally defined as the ability to cope successfully with misfortune or traumatic events. Being able to bounce back from adversity and keep on going. What helps you do that includes, for example, reviewing your strengths, focusing on positive thoughts and feelings, learning stress management, looking down the road to what you can manage better. And, by getting psychotherapy and medication when you’re unable to bounce back very well on your own.

Prior to the 21st Century, that view of resiliency and how to build it was more relevant than today. The adversity and disruptions you were likely to experience were more stable, in a sense. The world was more predictable, more linear, with respect to the kinds of stresses and disruptions that would occur – as emotionally troubling as they might be.

Most of our thinking about emotional resilience and healthy functioning, then, fits a world in which unanticipated negative events are fairly predictable. They follow a fairly understandable course, following which you can reasonably anticipate a return to some form of previous stability. In that world, wars eventually ended. The economy went through recessions, then recovered. You might suffer a career or relationship setback but could assume that there was a path to recovery.

That notion of resilience and the ways to build it remain an important foundation for mental health. But they don’t help so much when you’re faced with the challenges of today’s environment. That’s because the very notion of resilience and the strategies for bouncing back are reactive. They focus on responding to something that happens to you, rather than on what you need to be doing proactively, as part of your way of life.

Starting with 9-11, and especially since the economic meltdown that began in the fall of 2008, we’ve been living in a world that’s rapidly transforming beneath our feet. Today’s world is an interconnected, interdependent, diverse, unpredictable and unstable global community. And that’s created new psychological challenges for everyone, challenges that require a highly proactive mentality.

Without it, you might feel like the woman who consulted me recently. Even before she sat down she said,  ”I don’t know whether to reach for the Prozac….or Prilosec!”

Her grim humor masked her “recession depression” and other emotional battering. She didn’t know what would help. I’ve witnessed that a great deal in the last few years: Career and financial worries or losses; the ripple effect of those upon family life; anxieties about what sort of future one’s children are headed into, especially with climate change and terrorist threats; and the increasingly polarized views about our government’s role in people’s lives. Research and clinical observation show that all of the above are taking a psychological toll on relationships, families, career expectations, and on people’s entire sense of what they’re living and working for — their life purpose.

Unfortunately, those of us in the mental health professions haven’t been much help with these issues. Most of us continue to look through the rear-view mirror at a model of resiliency and health defined by coping with and managing conflicts in relationships and the workplace; conflicts that you can bounce back from and reestablish some kind of stability…all while continuing to pursue self-interest, such as getting your needs met, your personal goals achieved, your “happiness” acquired.

But today’s world of ongoing disruptions, continuous uncertainties and insecurity has become the new normal. Seeking to bounce back to stability and focusing on self-interest, which we’ve learned to think is the pathway to success, health and well-being, isn’t the right ticket.

In short, there’s no state of equilibrium you can bounce back to. In this highly diverse, interdependent, interconnected world.  Trying to do so is a fast ticket to dysfunction and derailment. You can’t reestablish equilibrium within a constantly shifting world. But engaging these new realities in positive ways will support your success and well-being.

Research shows that you can proactively build specific emotions, thoughts and actions that are effective for adapting to life in the non-equilibrium world we now live within. That’s encouraging, because I think we’re evolving towards a new definition of psychological health via rethinking resilience.

The criteria of a new, proactive resiliency – maybe call it “prosilience – may sound contradictory because they include letting go of self-interest in your relationships and work. The new view of resilience emphasizes being flexible, open and nimble; being able to shift and redeploy your personal resources – emotional, creative, intellectual – towards positive engagement with others.

Resiliency grows from putting your energies, your values, emotional attitudes and actions in the service of the common good – something larger than just yourself. That’s what supports both success in your outside life and internal well-being. And in today’s rapidly transforming world, you need both.

In the future look for new posts about perspectives, research and actions that relate to “becoming sane in a turbulent, interconnected, turbulent world.”  Through them I hope to contribute to a revised and needed reformulation of what psychological health and resiliency are in today’s world — in all realms of life:  intimate relationships, career challenges, engagement with diverse people, and in our responsibilities as  global citizens.

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In a recent op-ed piece in The New York Times, columnist Bob Herbert wrote that the G.O.P. has become

…the party of trickle down and weapons of mass destruction, the party of birthers and death-panel lunatics. This is the party that genuflects at the altar of right-wing talk radio, with its insane, nauseating, nonstop commitment to hatred and bigotry.

Glenn Beck of Fox News has called President Obama a “racist” and asserted that he “has exposed himself as a guy, over and over and over again, who has a deep-seated hatred for white people or the white culture.”

Mike Huckabee, a former Republican presidential candidate, has said of Mr. Obama’s economic policies: “Lenin and Stalin would love this stuff.”

The G.O.P. poisons the political atmosphere and then has the gall to complain about an absence of bipartisanship.

And over the weekend, such civil rights leaders as John Lewis were subjected to racial slurs; Congressman Barney Franks was slammed with homophobic labels as he walked to the Capitol.  Much of this occurred with the egging on of Republican House members, shouting and sign-waving from the balcony, as they watched Tea Party members engaging in what Michael Steele described as just “stupid things” being said by “idiots.” But they aren’t.  They are statements of bigotry and racism.

The interesting thing, psychologically, is what propels this in 2010, and how pervasive such intolerance is, in our country.  I think it may be more widespread in appearance than in reality, however, though it certainly looks like the former.  And Herbert is dead-on when he writes,

…it is way past time for decent Americans to rise up against this kind of garbage, to fight it aggressively wherever it appears. And it is time for every American of good will to hold the Republican Party accountable for its role in tolerating, shielding and encouraging foul, mean-spirited and bigoted behavior in its ranks and among its strongest supporters.

I think the real trends across our culture are in opposite directions — towards greater, not lesser tolerance; towards awareness that we’re all interconnected in this globalized world, and that we rise or fall together, as a species. Read more…

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The other day Tiger Woods began his “I did bad things” tour of the talk shows, and I recalled a recent moment with George (not his real name), who had consulted me about the dilemma posed by his new affair.  As he told me how it began, visions of Woods, Mark Sanford, and John Edwards began flashing through my head — along with the similar stories of countless patients over the years.

“She was standing off by herself during a conference break, leaning against a wall, sipping coffee,” George said.  “As I walked by, our eyes met and I felt a sudden jolt — a rush of energy, real connection.  Suddenly we found ourselves talking, feeling like we had known each other for years.”  The affair “just “happened,” George added.

That’s an explanation I’ve heard many times.  Another is a bit more “strategic.”  For example, Jan, a 41 year-old lawyer, said her affair was a “marriage stabilizer….safe and discreet, a perfect solution for me.”  She decided it was a rational alternative to the disruption of divorce.

Of course the public always enjoys being titillated with stories of public figures’ affairs, especially when hypocrisy is exposed.  But cultural attitudes have clearly shifted towards acceptance of affairs.  They’re seen as a life-style choice; an option for men and women yearning for excitement or intimacy that’s lacking or has dulled during their marriage.  So given that new reality, I decided to write this piece, about the psychology of affairs — their meaning and their consequences.

Based on my work over the decades, I find six kinds of affairs that people have today.  I think a non-judgmental description of them (but with a tinge of humor) can help people who have affairs deal with them with greater awareness and responsibility.  Here are the six I’ve diagnosed: Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, affairs, decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, marriage conflicts, psychological health, sexual conflicts, soul mate

Most men and women long to find a partner who is their soul mate…even if they don’t think that such a person exists outside of the imagination.  Over the years, I’ve heard many of my patients describe their longing for a soul mate, and a few of them believe they were fortunate enough to find one.  But most have concluded that it’s just an elusive dream, fueled by idealized illusions.  And many of them have had to face how their longing for a soul mate drew them into relationships that ended up distorted or dysfunctional, partly because of their idealization of their partners.

Of course, one reason for that is the damaging impact of our adolescent model of adult love that I described in a previous post.  Many people become socially conditioned into a view of love that they equate with an intense yearning for the feeling of being “in love.”  That heightens desire for an idealized lover, especially when he or she is elusive or unavailable.  Longing for the unattainable ideal is more of an enthrallment with your own experience of feeling in love, than a reality-based interest in the real person of your partner.

Beyond that flawed experience that colors most people’s romantic lives, many relationships that begin with a positive charge, emotionally and sexually, crumble under the weight of daily life, with all it’s pressures, conflicting desires, bills to pay, career conflicts, children’s needs, and so on.  Therefore, many assume that boredom with your partner and the corresponding sexual decline is “inevitable.”  And that can reactivate old yearnings or hope for a soul mate who might be out there, after all, beckoning you to a simple, pure, passionate love.  Of course, that’s what leads many people into affairs – a subject I’ll go into in a later post.

But I think there’s another way to envisioning what the soul-mate experience is and how it can grow and develop, as part of a mature adult love relationship; something that’s attainable in reality.  In essence, sustainable adult love blends together erotic desire, friendship, respect and support of each other’s growth and development — as independent, different human beings. Think of the way in which a new substance can arise from the joining of two separate elements, like water emerging from the coming together of hydrogen and oxygen.  Similarly, adult love is the product of two self-sufficient, “non-needy” people.  It’s more of an art that you practice and cultivate, not a set of techniques that you acquire from a how-to book.

So how do you build it?  I think there are three sources of the adult version of a soul  mate: what I call “radical transparency;” “words-into-actions;” and “good vibrations,” sexually-physically. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world adult love, decline of romance, love conflicts, sexual conflicts, sexual connection, soul mate

Like most men and women today, you and your partner are almost guaranteed to descend into what I call the “Functional Relationship.”  One that lopes along OK, but with declining energy and connection, emotionally and sexually.   That’s because most people learn a way of relating within romantic and sexual relationships that is a version of adolescent romance.  “But I’m an adult,” you may protest.  “I grew out of that teen-age romance stuff long ago.”

Not quite.  We’re socially conditioned into intimate relationships that are basically extensions of the adolescent experience.  That is, the features of normal adolescent romance shapes and defines most of the expectations, behavior, and experience about romance and sexuality that you carry into your adult life.  Few realize it, because most don’t learn any other way.  And that’s a big problem, because adolescent romance is incompatible with building an adult love relationship.

Take a look at some typical features of adolescent romance:  Short-term intense arousal from a new partner.  Infatuation and idealization of the new love, often followed by deflation and feelings of loss.  Intense longing and yearning — especially when the person is unattainable or elusive.  Emotional upheaval and turmoil.  The novelist Graham Greene captured much of this in The Heart of the Matter, in which he described  “…the intense interest one feels in a stranger’s life, the interest the young mistake for love.”

Emotional tumult and intense emotional-sexual arousal by a new partner are part of what a person experiences when such feelings are new - physiologically and emotionally.  That’s a part of normal developmental experience for hormone-driven teenagers.  Dion captured the anguish this can cause in his classic song, “Why Must I Be A Teen-Ager In Love?” The problem is, most people are still singing the same tune at 40.

Men and women tend to become frozen within the residue of adolescent romance by the time they enter adulthood.  It morphs into the Functional Relationship the longer a couple stays together.  The reason is that adolescent love extended into adulthood undercuts sustained the vitality and connection needed for a long-term relationship.  You can see the features of adolescent romance in what adults do when they are seeking or forming a new relationship.  For example, manipulation and game playing; trying to find the right “strategy” to get and possess the partner; jockeying around for control, and so forth.  Generally, we learn to associate intensity of feelings with “real love.”

Even though most people don’t really enjoy being caught up in all this, most learn to accept it as part of “normal” love relationships. But a more accurate understanding is that such experiences reflect an enthrallment with our own feeling of being “in love,” much more than a response to the other.  The former is part of the adolescent experience. Read more…

Midlife Conflict and Renewal, Modern Love, Sex & Relationships, Psychological health in a post-globalized world decline of romance, flaws in love relationships, love conflicts, sexual conflicts

• A social justice advocacy organization is stung by accusations from some of its staff that the leadership doesn’t “walk the walk” when it comes to racial and sex bias. Complaints also include that the organization’s mission has become too diffuse.  Anger and resentment build.

• A public interest research organization discovers that shared staff commitment to consumer protection doesn’t preclude staff relationship conflicts or complaints about management practices. “We all believe in what we’re doing,” the Director tells me, “so we shouldn’t be having these kinds of problems.”

• A social service organization is faced with apparent emotional disturbance of a senior staff member. Increasing amounts of management time are spent trying to deal with the person’s declining performance, absenteeism, and behavior toward coworkers. The Executive Director is unsure how to deal with the problem, and asks me “How do we balance compassion with the needs of our agency, in situations like these?”

Sound familiar? I have observed many nonprofit organizations trying to carry out their public interest or social service missions effectively – but within a workplace and cultural environment that gives rise to problems like these.  Such problems reflect an increasingly common, interwoven mixture of personal and organizational conflicts.  Many are similar to those I find in for-profit companies.  But the unique circumstances of nonprofit groups makes knowing what helps – and what doesn’t – critical to maintaining their internal and external success.

Read more…

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During the holiday season, many people feel the need to volunteer their time to charity organizations.  Feeding the homeless is especially popular at this time of the year, and then often forgotten – duty done.  Such volunteering is often met with eye-rolling by the staff of organizations, who wish that such earnest desire to help would continue at other times of the year as well.

It’s easy to be cynical about holiday volunteering.  But for an increasing number of men and women, young and old, volunteering their time, service, and expertise has become an integral part of their lives; an expression of their core values.  And that raises the question: Why do people volunteer?

Moreover, how does it impact your own life, as well as those whom you help? Over the years I’ve explored these questions with men and women, and tried to help them discover the meaning and impact of their volunteer work upon their own lives, both personally and professionally. I’ve found that volunteer work can impact peoples’ values, perspectives, and even their life goals.  For many, it spurs new growth, spiritually and emotionally.

This makes sense.  Over the years, as I’ve investigated the link between career success and emotional conflict, I’ve found that many highly successful, career-oriented men and women acknowledge feelings of inner emptiness, and absence of meaning in their lives. At the same time, many say that their volunteer work is the only arena that provides a sense of meaning and human connection.  Far greater than their career, and – sadly – often greater than their intimate relationships.

Read more…

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I think the reasons suggested for the uproar over President Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize miss a deeper issue.  First, no one would dispute that Mr. Obama has not yet achieved the level of contribution to world peace that other honorees have.  He, himself, acknowledged that.  Critics of both right and left argue that the reward reflects an unhealthy cult of personality, and that his rock star status has overwhelmed better judgment.  Some point to the Europeans’ apparent delight at sticking it to Dubya.  And, needless to say, racism is part of the angry outbursts as well.

But there’s a missing source of the outcry.  It’s probably less conscious; certainly less articulated.  It’s that the award gave a new focal point for mounting fears generated by a profound shift the world is undergoing on many fronts: The economic meltdown; global dangers and threats; the impact of climate change.  It’s an interlocking world, in which everyone has to figure out how to compete and collaborate with everybody else.  And it’s a diverse world – not “out there,” somewhere, but right here in people’s community and workplace.  Moreover, shifts in how people conduct their social, sexual and individual lives are visible all around.

In today’s new era of tumultuous change, we’re shifting from an environment of  old-style “command and control,” in private relationships, careers, and organizations, to “collaborate and cooperate.”

This wave-change, this new reality that the future has arrived, is very hard to digest for some. I’m not referring, here, to the Fox crowd — the right-wing commentators and pundits.  Most probably know better; and know what’s going on throughout our society and the world.  They may not like the changes taking place – perhaps symbolized for them by a black man in the White House.  But they’ve chosen to exploit fears among segments of the public hardest hit by these massive changes.  They’re exploiting them for their own avarice and self-promotion. Read more…

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Unless you’ve been living in a cave, you’re probably aware that the 78 million baby boomers have entered midlife. As a psychotherapist and business psychologist – and member of this new midlife generation myself – I’ve worked a great deal with midlifers seeking help for emotional conflicts, career dilemmas and life transition issues.

I’ve heard many expressions of midlife distress, but few as poignant as this one: A 47 year–old married mother of three told me of a dream in which she’s on one of those moving sidewalks, but can’t get off. On either side scenes pass by – it’s herself, living different lives, with different people. Suddenly she recognizes the Grim Reaper standing at the end of the sidewalk, arms outstretched, awaiting her. She wakes up, screaming.

How to best understand it’s meaning? One problem is that much of the research and clinical understanding about midlife is contradictory. Some, like a MacArthur Foundation study, suggest that there’s no such thing as a “midlife crisis” today; that most people sail through it smoothly. Others, like two recent studies, suggest that midlife is a time of universal depression;
sometimes severe.

For example, a study by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that found a 20 percent rise in midlife suicide among 45 to 54 year–olds from 1999–2004 – a rise that exceeded all other age groups in the U.S.

Another study reported an increase in depression during one’s 40s to early 50s, after which happiness rises again. Researchers from the University of Warwick and Dartmouth College studied 2 million people from 80 nations and found this pattern to be consistent across gender, socio–economic levels and among developed and developing countries alike.

Some experts think the rise of midlife suicide may reflect the decrease of hormone replacement therapy among women, the stress of modern life or increased drug usage among midlifers. But they’re groping in the dark.  Such experiences can lead to many outcomes, depending on how the person handles them, not necessarily suicide.

Regarding the rise of “happiness” after midlife depression, some speculate that people may feel happier after their 40s because they’ve learned to count their blessings, or resign themselves to life goals they know they’ll never achieve.

Based on my own work over the last few decades, I find these explanations unconvincing. The data only underscore the need for a new understanding of midlife; a new framework through which people could learn to deal more effectively with the positive and negative changes they encounter. Here’s mine:

What Is “Midlife”Anyway?

First, I think the term “midlife” is a misnomer. Psychologically, it’s really the portal into full adulthood, the time when you face the challenges of “evolving” into a fully adult human. Successfully crossing that portal involves addressing some core questions: “What am I living for?” “What’s the purpose of my life?”

These questions are the source of most adult emotional conflicts, because facing them often arouses tremendous fear, denial or escapism. After all, we’re highly conditioned to define ourselves by what we have rather than who we are. We learn to turn away from looking down the road, where we see Death patiently awaiting us all, as that 47 year–old woman did in her nightmare.  The economic downturn that began in September 2008 has added to the fears about what may lie ahead.

Moreover, “midlife” actually kicks in around 35.  That’s when most people start Read more…

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President Obama recently shifted away from speaking about “empathy” as an important quality in a Supreme Court justice, in favor of “an understanding of how the world works and how ordinary people live.” A nice phrase, but I think he should stick with “empathy,” and not let the Right redefine the term as they’ve been doing.

I feel compelled to weigh in on this in part because I introduced the term “empathy deficit disorder” in an article I wrote in the Washington Post in the recent past. There, I argued that our culture suffers from a dearth of empathy; absolutely necessary today for effective functioning, as individuals or a society, within our interconnected, post-globalized world.

Consider this: In the Bible King Solomon asked God for “a heart that listens.” Notice that he didn’t ask for “a head that thinks.” There’s a reason: The head – repository of the mind – is more akin to a processor of information within a logical framework and sequence; like a computer program. It uses reason without context or “real world” judgment.

In contrast, the heart symbolizes the repository of wisdom; of judgment. And that’s based on the accumulation of life experience, broadened perspectives, and tested values, including the consequences of the behavior they generate. Overall, it derives from a leavened character.

Empathy is central to judgment and wisdom. It’s the capacity to step outside of yourself and experience the world of the other from the inside, so to speak. It’s different from sympathy, which is based on identifying with something another person experiences; that is, relating it to your own self. For example, “I feel sympathetic to her situation because that’s what I felt when it happened to me.”

But suppose you can’t relate it to your own experience? That’s where empathy is critical, because it means stepping inside the mindset and emotional experience of the other person. With that immersion, you can make more judicious, fair, and wise assessments in relation to your actions — whether towards friend, foe, or someone who’s neither.

In the Bible, God grants Solomon’s request, in the form of “wisdom in your heart.” Note He didn’t say, “wisdom in your head.” He gave him “discernment in administering justice.” Further, it was said that the whole world sought audience with Solomon to hear the wisdom that God had put in his heart.

The Right is trying to redefine empathy to mean — at best — personal emotional preferences; at worst, irrational emotion that drives behavior. Using this shift, they then advocate “fact-based” judgments, devoid of anything “emotional.” They are wrong in both efforts.

If an important matter in your life was being adjudicated, would you rather come before someone with a developed capacity for empathy, and who can access it in the service of administering justice; or, someone following a flow-chart of logical sequence as the basis for deciding the proper administration of justice?

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Republicans have been criticizing Obama’s “empathy” factor, when considering possible Supreme Court nominees.  It’s an interesting example of what I wrote about in the Washington Post — about the rise of what I call (slightly tongue-in-cheek) “EDD,” or Empathy Deficit Disorder, that plagues our society.  Read it on my main website (click on Center).

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