Category Archives: Modern Love, Sex & Relationships

Life’s Turning Points: The Mystery of the Self Within Your Self

While driving in my car the other day I heard an old song that instantly transported me to a vivid scene in my life.  I’m a not-yet teenager, sitting in the kitchen and having an after-school snack.  I reach for the radio to tune in a Yankee’s baseball game, as I usually did (back then, games still played in the daytime).  But for the first time, I hesitated.  Instead, I turned the dial to a rock and roll station.

I recall feeling at that moment that something had just shifted in my sense of who I was; who I was becoming.  I believe it was more than just the rumblings of impending adolescence, or thinking about that new girl in class.  It was a new awareness about who this “self” was, inside me; that I was no longer just the person I thought I was a moment before.  It was a turning point in my consciousness about myself.

We experience many turning points in our lives, whenever we shift direction this way or that.  Perhaps a decision about a relationship, or what interests to pursue.  Maybe about an educational or career choice.  Some turning points are conscious, others less so; some may be imposed by family or other persuasive people.  But all involve turning away from one path, and towards another.  And they shape the self that you experience and define as “you,” along the way.

In my work, I often ask people to describe what they think were the positive and negative consequences from their key turning points, because there’s always a message contained in what you turned away from, or towards.  It’s a message from Continue reading →

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Live With Impermanence…And Discover Your True Self

When the reality of impermanence and change in life hits you, it can feel sad, even terrifying. Seeing your children grow up before you eyes. The end of a love relationship. Losing your job, fearing you might never get “back on track.†The death of someone close. Some freeze with fear when faced with how impermanent everything is, especially the things we’re attached to and define us. Others can’t redirect what they were aiming for, with damaging consequences.

But consider this: Learning to embrace impermanence is the portal to discovering your true self and letting it emerge from beneath all you’ve learned to believe about who you are. Considerable research shows that you can learn to embrace the flow and flux of life’s impermanence. That enables you to awaken and act upon your more authentic self: Your capacities, unique facets of personality, your talents and birthright to fully flower as a connected, engaged, loving human being; a person who can thrive in the face of present and future unknowns.Of course, people know in their heads that everything in life is impermanent, that change is constant. The Eastern traditions, especially, describe the underlying reality that all is constant flux, evolution and change. It has been and always will be. Our planet circles the sun, which is about midpoint in its own lifespan. All life on our planet repeats the cycles of birth, growth, death, including the cells of our physical body,

Yet it’s difficult to incorporate that awareness, flow with change, yet retain energy and wellbeing. Impermanence doesn’t penetrate so easily because what you fear losing when it confronts you is largely external – beliefs, values, “needs,†and all that defines who you are. The culture conditions us into defining ourselves by such external criteria. That creates a false, surface ego. Social conditioning of self-definition is powerful, visible, even, in brain activity differences between people of different cultures regarding their self-definitions.

Then, when change occurs, it subverts your conditioned attachments and you can become unglued. The essential falseness and illusion of much of your world is suddenly exposed.

Living With Impermanence – And Flourishing

The key is looking for the upside in whatever situation now exists. Flexibility in the face of change, rather than dwelling in it. But also, creating a vision of what to aim for now, in this moment. Research confirms the brain’s capacity to modify itself and strengthen emotional attitudes that enable you to do just that, as Richard Davidson and Sharon Begley describe in Your Emotional Brain.

Several studies show that depressed people tend to remain stuck on negative thoughts, while people who focus on positive emotionswithin their situation experience greater wellbeing and healthier lives. Moreover, research also shows that people can learn to change their personalities with intent and practice. You can promote such shifts by disengaging from negative emotional reactions, as Eastern meditative practices have indicated. For example, according to the lead researcher in a University of Michigan study, Ethan Kross, “Reviewing our mistakes over and over, re-experiencing the same negative emotions we felt the first time around, tends to keep us stuck in negativity. It can be very helpful to take a sort of mental time-out, to sit back and try to review the situation from a distance.â€

Other research finds that the stress associated with change can actually help you make better decisions. It focuses you more on the positive potential rather than the negative aspect of your situation. A man in his late 20s, who had become overly dependent, financially, on his family, illustrates this. When he was cut off following a painful falling out with his parents, he focused like a laser beam on how to arrange what he needed to do to support himself and become more fully independent, whatever it took.

In a relationship, remaining fixed on what’s changed – refusing to acknowledge it or sinking into regret about it – undermines the potential for new growth within the relationship as it now exists. Interestingly, studies have found that women are happier in their relationships when men expose feelings of pain or disappointment. That’s understandable — it brings both partners into confronting the reality of the moment they’re living in. That opens the door to dealing positively with what’s changed. An example happened in a couples therapy session, when the man suddenly shouted, “No more lies! I don’t like our relationship! We’ve got to deal with this, regardless of where it leads!

Consider a person whose lifelong dream to become a musician ended. She experienced loss, but then retrained for a different career that provided alternative fulfillment. Contrast that with the man who became bitter, comparing himself with peers who had “gotten farther ahead†in life. He berated himself for getting a degree in the “wrong†field. He languished, entrapped himself, and couldn’t envision the possibility for moving in a different direction that could become more fulfilling. People who are unable to find a career foothold in the realm they hoped for, but then seek a different path towards another kind of work, experience greater psychological health and fulfillment. In a similar vein, some baby boomers who left their careers to do work that involves helping others report feelings of growth, connection and service.

Whether in your relationship or at work, embracing impermanence and change pulls you out of the fixation with your own thwarted wants or desires. It enables you to put your energies into another form, another venue, that could lead to new kinds of fulfillment and positive energy.

The Indian Sufi mystic Hazrat Inayat Khan, who lectured in Europe and the U.S. in the early 20th Century, pointed out that “Inner life is not separate from outer life. Nor does it require leaving the world renouncing all pleasures and comforts. It is the enrichment of life with qualities that will last, with a source of energy and love which is truly your own… What we (have been) seeking slips out of our hold sooner or later. We depend upon things outside ourselves. Let us find our real being.â€

Some guidelines to help you live an impermanent life and affirm your true, inner self when facing change:

  • Self-examine what your “successes†and “failures†reveal about your true self; where you resonate, or don’t. Look at what that tells you about what you may have been trying to express through your life choices.
  • Open yourself to looking for new possibilities or directions that feel more in tune with your true self. Pursue them fully, vigorously, with great intent. Look for the feedback your actions give you until you see whether it’s the right path or not.
  • Infuse your actions with a spirit of service and love for what you’re engaging in, each moment. When you consciously display kindness, compassion, generosity, and justice in your thoughts, emotions and behavior, you keep your ego contained. You can see your true self with greater clarity.

When you embrace life’s impermanence, you become better able to recognize the kind of relationship you desire and feels right for you; the right mesh. And the kind of work or career that’s more in synch with your talents. And, you’ll know what actions contribute to a positive future for those to whom you are, right now, a future ancestor.

So, let it go and let if flow…

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The End Of Mental Health — And Why That’s Good

The idea of mental health—as we know it—has reached a dead end. It doesn’t describe much of anything relevant to people’s lives today. If you Google “mental health,” most of what comes up describes mental illness, not mental health. Both practitioners and researchers focus more on understanding and treating emotional disturbance, than on describing what health is or how to build it.

That’s good, actually, because it opens the door to a needed, broad re-thinking of what psychological health looks like in today’s world—in your emotions, thoughts, attitudes, values and behavior. In this post I explain what’s brought us to this dead-end, and I sketch some features of psychological health that reflect new challenges and realities of today’s tumultuous world.

First, let’s look at why we’re at this dead-end. The aims of treatment for emotional conflicts—whether via medications, psychotherapy or a combination of the two—have been, in essence, good management, coping and adaptation. That is, management of emotional conflicts that create dysfunction and symptoms like depression and anxiety. Coping with stress or sustained conflict in your work, relationships and other parts of your life. And good adaptation or adjustment to the norms, values and conventional behavior of the society or group you’re part of. Those goals are useful, per se, but there are three problems with them. One is that Continue reading →
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Hoping For Good Sex During The Holidays…But Disappointed? Here’s Why

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 Continue reading →

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Does Your Midlife Feel Like Just “A Long Slide Home?”

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 Continue reading →

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Baby Boomer At Midlife? Why Your Relationship May Not Survive

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. Continue reading →

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Overcome the Maladies of Midlife By Transforming What “Loss” and “Change” Mean

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 Continue reading →

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How To Retrieve Your Love Relationship From The Dead Zone

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 Continue reading →

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Why Relationship Advice Won’t Improve Your Love Life

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. Continue reading →

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Here’s How You Can Evolve Within Your Lifetime

You may not think that you can consciously direct your own evolution. But there’s increasing evidence that you’re able to evolve your conscious being – the driver of your personality, cognitive capacities, emotions and actions.

Of course we normally think of evolution in terms of physical changes over eons – though some recent observations raises the possibility that some evolution is occurring right now, perhaps spurred by need or desire. For example, the noted nature writer and photographer Boyd Norton recently caught on this video a baboon that suddenly began walking and running upright. And the Moken people of Southeast Asia, who live off the sea, are able to evolve the capacity of their eyes to have superior vision underwater, by maximally constricting the pupil to achieve superior vision. This is something other humans are unable to do.

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. Continue reading →

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Why Bother Staying Married?

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, Continue reading →

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Doing A “Relationship Inventory” Helps Build Sustainable Romantic and Sexual Intimacy

The overall theme of my blog posts is about revising what we think a psychologically healthy life is, in today’s 21st 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, Continue reading →

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Psychological Health In Today’s World Needs A Redefinition

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 Continue reading →

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What Is Psychological Health In Today’s World?

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. Continue reading →

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Notes From Serbia: A Different Take On The Career Treadmill

The following is a guest post by Tijana Milosevic, a Belgrade-based freelance writer. Before returning to Serbia, Tijana received an MA degree from the School of Media and Public Affairs at the George Washington University in Washington DC and worked with various public diplomacy and international communications organizations in Washington. She currently lectures in media psychology and media research at Singidunum University for Media and Communications in Belgrade. Tijana was trained with the Radio Free Europe in Washington and BBC World in London. She is also the recipient of the Goldman Sachs Global Leaders Award and numerous Open Society Institute scholarships. tijana.milosevic@gmail.com


Coming from Serbia — a country of six million in Eastern Europe that once belonged to a larger, war-torn entity called socialist Yugoslavia — I wasn’t fully aware of the notion of “career anxiety” when I came to Washington DC for my MA degree. Until one evening, that is, at the very onset of the school year.  A colleague of mine who was just turning twenty-seven raised his glass and voiced his fear: “Twenty-seven: no serious job and no stable career track.”

I was twenty- three at the time and could not comprehend why anyone would be obliged to have a “career track,” let alone a stable one, especially at (what I saw as) the tender age of twenty seven. In fact, I had never entertained the concept the way my American friends were referring to it.

While many Americans move out of their homes when they’re 19 to hit college, the East- European model is quite different.  Countries are smaller, and if there’s any migration it is directed typically towards the capital, so young people continue to live with their families through college. Because of high unemployment rates and poor standard of living, they aren’t expected to become financially independent, and many depend on their parents well into their late twenties or even early thirties -without a sense of shame that such state of affairs entails in the US. These factors reduce the relevance of what Americans often describe as “the treadmill feel”- an almost compulsive desire for continuous promotions, financial gains, followed by a rise in social status, and an increasing social anxiety.

In societies that are similar to mine, the American model is looked down upon as “harsh capitalistic,” “individualistic” and above all “alienated,” as American parents are not perceived to provide enough financial and emotional support for their children. In fact my family and friends had observed that I shouldn’t have chosen America, since I would probably feel better in Western Europe – where life is not as fast paced as in the US and capitalism still has a “human face.”

For example, Americans still work nine full weeks (350 hours) longer than West Europeans do and paid vacation days across Western Europe are well above the US threshold. The French still have the 35 hour working week, while the hourly productivity is one of the highest in the world. On the other hand, in the US an increasing popularity of employment therapy suggests that a high-paying job still comes first, as job issues “have a huge mental health component,” and therapists emphasize the importance of “toxic co-workers and the ramifications of massive layoffs.”

Numerous writers have outlined the dangers of isolation and careerism in the American society. In her famous work “Eichmann in Jerusalem,” Hannah Arendt equates careerism with lack of thinking that led to Holocaust: “what for Eichmann was a job, with its daily routine, its ups and downs, was for the Jews quite literally the end of the world. Genocide […] is work. If it is to be done, people must be hired and paid; if it is to be done well, they must be supervised and promoted.”

In Serbia even young and busy corporate-minded career professionals do not have to mark their calendars to meet with close friends.  One can always find the time for a spontaneous chat over coffee. Still, this laid back culture is now beginning to change with an increasing development of free market capitalism.  I still remember how strange it felt when I first came to DC and had to schedule coffees and lunches with people weeks or even months in advance. I found it odd that people rarely picked up the cell phone (which, granted, could be merely my personal experience, although many Americans confirmed it!) and would often leave the time and date of the call in their voicemails, which implied the other person might not get back to them in a while. I also came to discover that what Americans often referred to as “friends,” people from my region would prefer to call “acquaintances.” The term “friend” cannot be reserved for someone you meet once in a couple of months and do not know well enough to open up to.

Those experiences bring to mind a memorable line from from “Eat, Pray, Love,” a biographical story recently turned into a Hollywood blockbuster starring Julia Roberts: “You Americans know entertainment but you do not know how to enjoy yourselves,” Roberts plays a successful thirty-something American who decides to embark on a soul-searching trip to Italy, India and Bally after realizing her job, husband and newly bought house are not what she really wanted from life. Perhaps that’s a superficial take on what many would describe as an equally superficial Californian trend to “do something spiritual,” but the above quote shows there’s something to the American career frenzy that remains unique to the United States. The opportunity cost for “dolce far niente” or “the joy of doing nothing,” runs high.

Reflecting on this, I ran into an interesting take on “Eat Pray Love” by a 23-year old blogger: “We are not sympathetic to spiritual personal crises anymore. If you want to have an emotional breakdown about something, you better have a logical, elaborate and secular reason; otherwise you will be dismissed as whiny, annoying and laughable.” I wonder if her comment has to do with the lack of experience or the possibility that the generation entering the work force will not have an adequate justification for its desire to escape the treadmill feel– amidst all the superficial takes on this complex topic.

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Why Psychotherapists Fail To Help People In Today’s World

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. One is rooted in the�kind of people therapists tend to be today. Their personal values, social attitudes and how they relate to conventional norms and behavior contrast in several ways with those of the “pioneers†from Freud’s era. That contrast impedes effective help.

Then there are the�kinds of problems that people experience. They’ve evolved over the decades, but especially since 9-11 and the near-depression that began in the fall of 2008. But many therapists aren’t in synch with the impact of that shift. They fail to understand how�21st Century conditions impact emotional lives and conflicts. Many are clueless about how life in today’s world interweaves with the dysfunctions or family conflicts that patients bring with them into their adult lives.

The third reason is the therapists’ vision of the�goals of treatment; what a healthy outcome or resolution of conflicts should look like, and how to get there. Many remain stuck within an older model – helping patients better manage, cope with or adjust to change and�traumas; build�resilience and restore equilibrium. But that’s no longer possible: Our�new environment is one of “non-equilibrium†and unpredictability. That creates new emotional and life challenges across the board — for intimate relationships, careers and for engaging with a changing society – the “remix†that America is now becoming.

The Psychotherapist – Past and Present

The early analysts were pioneers, adventurous explores of uncharted terrain. They were trying to uncover how human�personality and�unconscious passions evolve within people to create symptoms and dysfunctions. They courageously risked their careers when they called attention to the impact of repressed�sexuality. Aside from the accuracy of early theories about the causes of emotional disturbance, the practitioners’ aim was to reduce suffering. They wanted to help people develop more love, reason and independence – albeit within the context of the norms of their era that they, themselves, accepted.

Moreover, most were well-read in literature, history and culture, more so than today’s practitioners. That gave them a broad outlook and perspective on life. For example, Freud’s writings are filled with references from Shakespeare, Goethe and other great works of literature, drama and mythology. He drew on their themes, plots and character portrayals to help illuminate and understand the motives and�moral dilemmas underlying his patients’ emotional problems.

Most contemporaries and followers of�Freud possessed a radical spirit. They wanted to uncover the truth beneath patient’s symptoms; see beneath the surface. They shared the view that successful treatment was based on a love of the truth; that is, emotional reality. And that it must preclude any kind of sham,�deception or illusion.

Of course, Freud and his contemporaries interpreted their patients’ problems in many ways that were flawed. They made assumptions about psychological health that were part of the prevailing values and norms of post-Victorian, early-20th Century society – a largely patriarchal culture. For example, most assumed that a normal, successful life derived from being well-adjusted to those norms.

Nevertheless, their spirit of truth-seeking, rooted in broad understanding of human culture, literature and history, has become lost. Today’s practitioners tend to be�technicians, looking for the right technique that will treat the patient’s symptoms. Many tend to be cautious, often disengaged and detached people in their manner and interactions with patients. They are largely ignorant of philosophical,�religious, cultural and socio-economic forces that shape people’s psychological development, especially those in non-Western societies. And yet, all of those forces in all parts of the globe profoundly impact how and why we learn to think and behave as we do. Much current world conflict reflects those differences that define what we think in “normal†or “disturbed.â€

Many therapists today simply assume that adjusting to prevailing values and norms reflects psychological health. Now that’s desirable for those whose conflicts have disabled them from minimally successful functioning. But it misses the mark for those whose conflicts are linked with their successful adaptation to begin with. The therapist then fails to explore their patients’ definition of “success†– how it’s shaped their�career and life goals, their conflicts and disappointments.

Some therapists will spend inordinate time ferreting out tiny truths about the patient’s family and�childhood, without figuring out which have relevance to the person’s conflicts today, and which don’t. They may ignore the impact of trade-offs and compromises patients made as they created their sexual and intimate relationship patterns

Overall, today’s practitioners tend to�share in, rather than�critique and examine, the social norms, values and anxieties of today’s world. Too often, they uncritically accept good functioning per se, and conventional values like power-seeking, as psychologically healthy. This blinds them from recognizing that “normal†adjustment can mask repressed feelings of self-betrayal, self-criticism, and the desire to be freer, more alive. All of those longings can conflict with or oppose parental expectations or the pressures from social class membership.

Emotional Conflicts In Today’s World

People’s problems have evolved. Up through World War II and into the 1950s-early 60s symptoms that were more typical of Freud’s time — hysteria or specific phobias, for example – diminished. People wanted help for fitting in with the apparent paths to success and�happiness and for dealing with conflicts that interfered with or limited it. Therapy often addressed things like guilt, inhibition, the need for approval, and dealing with the conflicts generated by defined, rigid roles for men and women. Desires or longings that deviated too much from the prevailing norms were troublesome and created conflicts, often unconscious.

The popular TV show “Mad Men†is a good portrayal of conflicts of that era, especially issues of�identity, longing for an authentic self and�gender�roles. At the same time, the men enjoyed the surface appearance of power and control. And women chafed against the limits imposed by gender roles, as the women’s movement began to arise.

The period of social upheaval of the late 60s and 70s created more openly conscious conflict and struggle for many people. The theme, here, was seeking more freedom from oppressive relationships and social constraints. Some therapists were able to address these issues in helpful ways. But others were bound by their own uncritical embrace of the very norms their patients wanted help to free themselves from.

Partly because of that disconnect, many�psychotherapy patients were attracted to the vision of personal development offered by the rising “new age†movement, although its gurus generally lacked any depth of understanding about emotional conflicts or psychological development.

Then, from the 1980s to about 2000 more men and women sought help to create more personally fulfilling, engaged relationships, and more personal meaning from their work. The�costs and limits of success became visible in patients who wanted help to create greater work-life “balance†while preserving their relationships and their upward climb in their careers. Dealing with the emotional fallout of the dot-com bubble burst added another dimension to these stresses. During this period of greater fulfillment-seeking, more people turned to�spiritual development as a companion to or substitute for traditional therapy, especially via older traditions like Buddhism and other Eastern practices.

And now, in the current era, emotional conflicts spring more from the psychological impact of our nonlinear, unpredictable, highly interconnected world. For example, financial and�career uncertainties. Changing practices in romantic/sexual relationships. Facing one’s responsibilities to fellow inhabitants of the planet, and for sustaining the planet for future generations. The psychological impact of these issues interacts with the legacy of family conflicts and their dysfunctions that people carry with them into the adult world. It’s a�new universe of potential pain and confusion that people are now struggling with.

What Helps?

Therapists need a vision of what healing and emotional health looks like, today, and how to help the patient achieve it. And therapists must engage in self-examination about their own values and attitudes. That’s one safeguard against rationalizing failure to help their patients examine these same issues within themselves. Otherwise, the therapist may collude with a patient to avoid confronting issues relevant to both of them. Then, it becomes like a Shakespearian play where the motives of the characters are visible to members of the audience, but the characters themselves remain oblivious to their�unconscious motives that propel them along.

Therapists bear a responsibility to help patients uncover the deeper truth about their life dilemmas – not just continue to detail all of its manifestations. Like the branches of a tree, all of them spring from the same trunk, the same roots. For one person, that might be a deep, unconscious desire to remain protected and secure like a baby. Or a desire to destroy one’s father or mother. It could be intense lust for power and domination. Exposing and confronting that core of truth can be liberating, like in fairy tales when the power of the�evil spirit is broken when you can call it by its name. At least you then have an opportunity to do something about it.

Being a more personally engaged therapist is also important today. People are increasingly turned off by therapists who maintain the old manner of silence and detachment. Or whose rigid focus invokes in patients the same unmet longings for nurturance and acceptance that patients may have experienced in their families to begin with.

The traditional practice is for the therapist to divulge little or nothing about him or herself. That’s been fading, especially in a Google world. More are drawn to people like the psychiatrist played by Gabriel Byrne on “In Treatment.†While that TV show has elements of a soap opera and the therapy sessions often sound like “life-management†discussions, the psychiatrist shows more openness and flexibility with his patients.

The viewer sees him as a human, himself, struggling with his own personal issues. People like that openness. It’s more consistent with psychoanalyst Steven Kuchuck’s�comment about Merkin’s article in�The New York Times. He described the greater appeal and benefit of practitioners who emphasize “…greater patient-analyst�collaboration, the analyst’s selective self-disclosure and other techniques designed to address many of the concerns and limitations Merkin has experienced…â€

In addition to personal qualities, therapists who are familiar with the broad impact of our post-9-11, post-economic meltdown world on people’s mental health are better positioned to help their patients. In addition to knowing that people’s emotional issues are tightly interwoven with global political, social and economic forces as I described above, it’s helpful for therapists to be tuned-in to demographic and other changes that are pulling many in our culture to move beyond motives of purely self-interest, and towards serving the�common good.

Similarly, too many practitioners tend to be sadly uniformed about the realities of life in business and career world — the political realities, the politics and conflicting agendas; the challenges of transparency, collaboration, and�innovation — all needed for success. Without that awareness it’s hard for them to�differentiate problems that people bring with them from in their�attachment issues and family relationships, from those that are reactive to confusing, demoralizing, non-linear challenges and constantly shifting goal posts in their workplace.

It’s also valuable for therapists to be current with new research relevant to dealing with today’s conflicts. Two recent examples:�One finds that people who maintain a long-range perspective of their past, present and future are better able to navigate through turmoil or setbacks and maintain greater well-being.�Another study finds that some adversity in life actually contributes to mental health and resiliency.

The upshot of all this is that you need to be an informed�consumer of therapy. To aid that, here are some useful questions to ask:

About Your Therapist:

  • Does the therapist seem to enjoy his/her work? Sound bored or depressed?
  • Does he or she convey a sense of�humor?
  • Does he or she seem to have a broad, understanding perspective about the variety of human lives?
  • What experience and knowledge does he or she have regarding the impact of work and careers on people’s lives? Be wary if the therapist indicates that such familiarity is irrelevant to treatment.

About Yourself:

  • Do you feel challenged by your therapist to look at yourself, but within a safe, respectful, non-judgmental environment?
  • Do you feel the therapist is capable of “seeing†you; your hidden truths?
  • Do you think the therapist is engaged and interested in helping you, as opposed to treating a diagnostic category?

Keep in mind that everybody has some barriers to facing and dealing with unpleasant truths about themselves. You might rationalize your own and conclude that you’re dealing with a bad therapist. Try to be open and honest with your perception. Use your�intuition, but in consort with your reason. Don’t’ hesitate to discuss these questions and your response to them with the therapist.

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Reboot and Remix Your Life for Greater Health – Part 2

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: Continue reading →

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For A Healthy Life In Today’s World: Reboot and Remix – Part 1

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, Continue reading →

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Reversing the “Death Spiral” During So-Called Midlife

You may ask yourself: well… how did I get here?
You may say to yourself?My God!… what have I done?
Letting the days go by/into the silent water
— Talking Heads

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 Continue reading →

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Why Failure And Loss In Your Relationships Can Be Good For You

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 Continue reading →

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Three Essential Pillars Of Health and Resiliency In Today’s World

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. Continue reading →

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For Adults Only: Sustaining Your Emotional and Sexual Intimacy

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. Continue reading →

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Love, Loss…And What Endures

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.

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Hook-Up Sex, Marital Sex, and Making Love

This post is about the differences between “Hook-Up Sex,” “Marital Sex,” and “Making Love.” I’ve found that confusion about those differences play out in many of the conflicts people experience in their sexual-romantic relationships, no matter what their ages or kinds of relationships.

First, some clarification about what I mean by each term. “Hook-Up Sex” refers to just plain f***ing; that is, a purely physical encounter. “Marital Sex” is the kind of sex life that most committed couples tend to have — married or not, straight or gay. And “Making Love” is a different kind of experience that transcends both of the other two kinds.

That is, the three kinds of sexual relationships occur on different planes, different levels of integration between your physical, animal being, and your relational and spiritual beings. The kind of sexual life you have – and its conflicts – are embedded in the overall relationship you learn and how you “practice” it with your partner. I’ve described some of these connections in my previous posts, here and on my Psychology Today blog, on our adolescent model of love, the soul mate, and the positive power of “indifference.” Most relationships limit the capacity for “Making Love.”

Hook-Up Sex

“You know how there’s good sex, great sex, and then really great sex? That’s what it was like with her!” With gleaming eyes, Ken was telling me about his latest sexual encounter. He was a 44 year-old trust fund guy who lived with his mother and had never married. He entered therapy because he wanted to learn why he hadn’t been able to form a lasting relationship.

In Hook-Up Sex you and your partner use each other’s bodies for your own pleasure. It can be extremely intense and arousing, especially when you feel lust towards a new partner. There’s a place for this kind of sex, but it’s also the most primitive, least evolved form of sex. It reflects the purely animal part of being human — our physiological needs and impulses. We share those with other animal species. From a human standpoint, though, it’s mostly void of relationship beyond the physical connection; a form of playing through using each other’s bodies.

Aside from Ken’s deeper emotional issues that he’d never faced or dealt with, another barrier to his forming a relationship was that he had turned sex into a technique-dominated sport. He saw himself as a great lover and, in fact, had become very proficient in Tantric sexual practices. Handsome and charming, he was able to find women eager to participate. Tantric and related practices are, in fact, part of “Making Love,” but they can also be misused. Ken’s mastery of them had become an end in itself, and they were entirely divorced from Continue reading →

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The Tea Party – Believing Its Own Delusions?

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 17th 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.

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More About Your “Inside-Out” Life

2. Building Your Inner Life

In a previous post, I wrote that your inner life is usually neglected, in contrast to your outer life.  I gave some guidelines for identifying and reducing the gaps between your inner and outer life.  That’s an important step towards building psychological health and resiliency that works in today’s 21st Century world of heightened interconnection and instability.

Here, I’ll describe some specific steps you can take to strengthen your inner life and make it the driver of your decisions, choices, and actions within your outer life.

Think of your inner life as something you develop through practice, similar to building stronger muscles, or developing skill in a sport or play a musical instrument. Below are some inner life practices most anyone can do. The more you do, the better, because they reinforce each other.

Fill Your “Inner Reservoir”

  • Sit quietly, without distraction. Observe your breaths as you breathe slowly, in and out. Count each breath as you exhale, from one to 10; then repeat. Twenty minutes daily is ideal, but if you do only five, that’s a good start.

An “entry-level” meditation-breathing practice, this one builds an emotional shock absorber.  It helps maintain centeredness and focus when dealing with your outer life demands and conflicts.

Some forms of meditation are rooted in Eastern and Western religious-philosophical traditions; others in current medical and scientific knowledge about effective stress-reduction. All provide a range of physical and emotional benefits that strengthen your inner life. Ongoing research supported jointly by the Dalai Lama and the U.S.-based Mind And Life Institute shows that meditation produces changes within specific regions of the brain associated with greater internal calm, resilience to stress, and focused concentration.

Amazingly, one study found that the sound Continue reading →

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Building An “Inside-Out” Life

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 Continue reading →

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Learning To “Forget Yourself”

“Becoming Sane…”  Part IV

In Part III of “becoming sane….” I wrote that our prevailing model of psychological health needs revision for today’s world – for outward success in a changing world, and for internal well-being.  I concluded by saying that a key to emotional resiliency and, more broadly, psychological health, in current times is learning to “forget yourself.”

So what does that mean?  Not thinking about your own needs?  Not looking out for yourself?  Not quite.  I’m using the phrase “forget yourself” to highlight an important capacity for health, survival, and “happiness” in today’s tumultuous, interconnected environment: the capacity to focus more on problems, needs, and solutions beyond just your own.  That is, the person who is too absorbed in his or her own self, own conflicts, own disappointments, and the like is much less able to engage the larger dilemmas and issues in positive, solution-oriented ways.  And that deficiency circles back to create dysfunction, damaged relationships, and career downturns.

Along the way I’ll be writing more about specific ways you can learn to “forget yourself” in your work, your relationships and your role as a global citizen. Here are some guidelines that help lay the foundation.

Three Responsibilities:

Think about your responsibilities as a human being living in today’s world, and on this planet.  Specifically, consider the following three responsibilities. They can serve as helpful guidelines for moving through and beyond the tendency we all share — to focus too much on our own selves.

Responsibility for your own mind-body-spirit

Recognize that it’s your job, alone, to continue learning and developing your emotional, mental, creative and physical capacities. Enlarging these capacities helps provide the flexibility and adaptability you need to deal with changes, good or bad. Don’t become like the character John Marcher in Henry James’ “The Beast In The Jungle,” who waited passively, believing that something significant was going to happen…and ended up with a failed life.

Responsibility for those less able

Part of the new criteria for psychological health include this awareness:  You grow through your efforts to help and support others, less able than yourself, to find and follow a healthy path in this world. Find someone who needs and would welcome your aid, whether your children or family member. But stretch further, to include a stranger or those within the extended world community who suffer from lack of clean water, from famine, disease or torture. Organizations and individuals who could use your help are a click away on the Internet.

Responsibility for the planet

Reflect on the fact that your actions at home or in your community can help maintain a healthy, sustainable planet for future inhabitants, including your own descendants. Or, they can further jeopardize the environment they will live in. Look at your own actions in your home, your community, and at work. Ask yourself, are you becoming a “good ancestor?”

Some Steps You Can Take:

Loosen the grip of self-interest

Use self-awareness to observe – and contain – your Continue reading →

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The Paradox of Indifference – The Key To A Revitalized Relationship

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. Continue reading →

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Today’s Psychologically Healthy Adult — Neither Adult Nor Healthy

Becoming Sane….Part III

In previous posts on the theme of “becoming sane in a turbulent, interconnected, unpredictable world,” I described why conventional emotional resiliency doesn’t work in the 21st Century; and what that means for building a psychologically healthy life in today’s world.

In this post I’ll explain why many of the conflicts men and women deal with today stem from this contradiction:  The criteria for adult psychological health accepted by the mental health professions and the general public doesn’t really describe an adult. Nor, for that matter, does it describe psychological health.

A contradiction, to be sure, so let me explain: As we entered the world of the 21st Century our definition of psychological health was largely defined by the absence of psychiatric symptoms. The problem is, that’s like defining a happy person as someone who’s not depressed.  Moreover, sometimes what appears to be a psychiatric symptom reflects movement towards greater health and growth in a person’s life situation.

But more significantly, our conventional view of psychological health is, in effect, a well-adapted, well-functioning child in relation to parents or parent figures.  Or, a sibling who interacts appropriately in a social context with other siblings. Either way, it describes a person functioning within and adapted to a world shaped and run by “parents,” psychologically speaking.

That is, we pretty much equate healthy psychological functioning with effective management or resolution of child- or sibling-based conflicts. For example, resolving and managing such child-based conflicts as impulse control; narcissistic or grandiose attitudes; and traumas around attachment, from indifference, abandonment, abuse, or parenting that otherwise damages your adult capacity for intimacy or trusting relationships.

Healthy resolution of sibling-type conflicts includes learning effective ways to compete with other “siblings” at work or in intimate relationships; managing your fears of success or disapproval; containing passive-aggressive, manipulative or other self-undermining tendencies; and finding ways to perform effectively, especially in the workplace, towards people whose approval, acceptance and reward you need or crave.

It’s no surprise, then, that many people feel and behave like children in a grown-up world. Examples permeate popular culture.  A good one is the popular TV show, “The Office.” It often portrays the eruption of these sibling-type conflicts, as the workers act out their resentments or compete with one another to win the favor of office manager Michael, another grown-up child who is self-serving and clueless about his own competitive motives and insecurity.

Unconscious child-type conflicts are often visible within intimate relationships and family life, as well.  They provide a steady stream of material for novels and movies. You can see, for example, fears of abandonment in a man who demands constant attention and assurance that he’s loved; or low-self worth in a woman who’s unconsciously attracted to partners who dominate or manipulate her. Of course it’s critical that you learn to become aware of and manage effectively whatever emotional damage you bring from your early experiences into adulthood. We all have some.  That’s a good starting point for adult psychological health, but it’s not sufficient.  A well-adapted member of a community of other “children” and “siblings” within a psychological world of “parents” is not the same thing as a healthy adult.  Especially not within today’s interconnected, non-linear world.

So – without a picture of what a healthy adult would feel, think and do in the current environment, you’re left with questions but few answers. For example:

  • How can you maintain the mental focus to keep your career skills sharp and stay on a successful path at work when you suddenly acquire a new boss who wants to take things in a new direction? Or if your company is acquired by another, or goes out of business?
  • How can you best respond, mentally, if you have a new baby and a drop in family income at the same time that globalization sidetracks your career?
  • How can you handle the pressure to work longer or do more business travel when your spouse faces the same demands?
  • What’s the healthiest way to keep your relationship alive with fresh energy – or avoid the temptation of an affair?
  • And how do you deal emotionally with the threat of terrorism — always lurking in the background of your mind — while enjoying life at the same time?

We now live within a world where the only constant is change, and where a new requirement is being able to compete and collaborate with everyone from everywhere about almost everything.

Doing that with self-awareness and knowledge of how to grow and develop all facets of your being – that’s the new path to adult psychological health.  But you need to know where to find the path.

Learning From The Business World?

Actually, I think we can learn a lot about what’s needed for psychological health from changes occurring in the business world. Continue reading →

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Becoming Sane….Part II

“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 Continue reading →

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Becoming Sane In A Turbulent, Interconnected, Unpredictable World — Part 1

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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Welcome To The New “Real America”

In two recent New York Times columns, both Frank Rich and Charles M. Blow dug beneath the current surge of anger and right-wing extremism and came up with some penetrating insights about the sources of the outrage; insights that are also the tip of an iceberg:  Both of their analyses reflect a broad, sweeping evolution within the mentality of men and women that’s been taking place beneath our feet for the last several years.  I’ll describe some of those broader changes below, but first let’s look at what Rich and Blow describe.

Rich points out that the “tsunami of anger” today is illogical, in the sense that the health care legislation is less provocative than either the Civil Rights Act of 1964 or Medicare.  He also reminds us that the new anger and extremism predated the health care debate:

The first signs were the shrieks of “traitor” and “off with his head” at Palin rallies as Obama’s election became more likely in October 2008. Those passions have spiraled ever since — from Gov. Rick Perry’s kowtowing to secessionists at a Tea Party rally in Texas to the gratuitous brandishing of assault weapons at Obama health care rallies last summer to “You lie!” piercing the president’s address to Congress last fall like an ominous shot.

He’s pointing out that major changes are occurring in the demographics of our country.  These changes – and others, concerning what people look for in relationships and in their careers —  are beginning to have major impact on us psychologically, including our psychological health.  For some, they generate tremendous fear that can give rise to hatred and aggression; a desire to “take back our country.”

Rich points out that:

Demographics are avatars of a change bigger than any bill contemplated by Obama or Congress. The week before the health care vote, The Times reported that births to Asian, black and Hispanic women accounted for 48 percent of all births in America in the 12 months ending in July 2008. By 2012, the next presidential election year, non-Hispanic white births will be in the minority. The Tea Party movement is virtually all white. The Republicans haven’t had a single African-American in the Senate or the House since 2003 and have had only three in total since 1935. Their anxieties about a rapidly changing America are well-grounded.

Then, in a similar analysis, Charles M. Blow writes in his column:

It’s an extension of a now-familiar theme: some version of “take our country back.” The problem is that the country romanticized by the far right hasn’t existed for some time, and its ability to deny that fact grows more dim every day. President Obama and what he represents has jolted extremists into the present and forced them to confront the future. And it scares them.

Even the optics must be irritating. A woman (Nancy Pelosi) pushed the health care bill through the House. The bill’s most visible and vocal proponents included a gay man (Barney Frank) and a Jew (Anthony Weiner). And the black man in the White House signed the bill into law. It’s enough to make a good old boy go crazy.

Blow cites a recent Quinnipiac University poll that found Tea Party members to be just as anachronistic to the direction of the country’s demographics as the Republican Party. For instance, they were disproportionately white, evangelical Christian and “less educated … than the average Joe and Jane Six-Pack.”  Blow points out that this is at the very time

when the country is becoming more diverse (some demographers believe that 2010 could be the first year that most children born in the country will be nonwhite), less doctrinally dogmatic, and college enrollment is through the roof. The Tea Party, my friends, is not the future.

Well said.  Mounting demographic and psychological research are confirming and extending what Rich and Blow describe.  In fact, several strands of change have been underway and coalescing into a changing psychology of people – their emotional attitudes, mental perspectives, values regarding work and relationships, and behavior towards people in need or who suffer loss.  These are shifts within a wide range of thought, feelings and actions.  Here are some of them: Continue reading →

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Having An Affair? But Which Kind?

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: Continue reading →

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Healing Our “Empathy Deficit Disorder”

You may not realize it, but a great number of people suffer from EDD.  And no, I don’t mean ADD or ED. It stands for “Empathy Deficit Disorder.”

I made it up, so you won’t find it listed in the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.   Given that normal variations of mood and temperament are increasingly redefined as “disorders,” I’m hesitant to suggest adding another one. But this one’s real.  It’s based on my decades of experience as a business psychologist, psychotherapist and researcher, from which I’ve concluded that EDD is a pervasive but overlooked condition. And it has profound consequences for the mental health of individuals and of our society.

Our increasingly polarized social and political culture over the past year  has prompted me to post this — an expansion and revision of  an article I wrote for The Washington Post a couple of years ago about our nationwide empathy deficit.  It’s worse than ever, but ignored as a psychological disturbance by most of my colleagues in the mental health professions.

First, some explanation of what I mean by EDD:  People who suffer from it are unable to step outside themselves and tune in to what other people experience, especially those who feel, think and believe differently from themselves.  That makes it a source of personal conflicts, of communication failure in intimate relationships, and of the adversarial attitudes — including hatred — towards groups of people who differ in their beliefs, traditions or ways of life from one’s own.

Take the man who reported to me that his wife was complaining that Continue reading →

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Looking For Your 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. Continue reading →

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Our Adolescent Model of Adult Love and Sexual Relationships

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. Continue reading →

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Behind the Obama Nobel Prize “Outrage”

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. Continue reading →

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Understanding The ‘Marriage Gap’

American society is undergoing some major shifts in how men and women think about marriage –whether to enter it, stay within it, or consider alternatives to it.  But some recent explanations about what these shifts mean contribute more confusion than clarity.

First, some facts:

• The divorce rate continues to hover at around 50%, regardless of greater awareness of the potential emotional and financial impact of divorce upon couples and their children.

• Polls find that about 60% of those surveyed accept affairs; and about 30% actually admit to having had one.

• The marriage rate has dropped by 37% in the last four decades

• Cohabitation has risen dramatically during the same period

In 1960, 430,000 unmarried couples were living together.  By 2000, that number had soared 12-fold to 5 million.  Today, only 2.3 million couples marry in a year.  It’s possible that cohabitation is on its way to becoming the dominant form of  male-female unions.

Clearly, people are thinking and behaving differently about marriage than previous generations — especially how necessary or desirable they think it is compared with other forms of intimate partnership.  This raises questions about how best to understand these shifts, and what they portend for the decades ahead.

Some answers have been provided by socially conservative organizations, such as the National Marriage Project and the Institute for American Values.  But these answers are shaped by an ideological agenda, rooted in two convictions:  First, that divorce and cohabitation are social evils, to begin with, and should be curtailed through legislative action, whenever possible.  And secondly, that the best social arrangement is the traditional marriage (heterosexual only, of course) in which the wife is a dutiful subordinate; an unequal partner.

Such self-described “pro-marriage” groups seem especially annoyed by Continue reading →

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