THE COPING CORNER

THE FAMILY: WHAT IS IT?

The family unit is in many ways simple and basic, and yet sometimes very complicated and difficult to understand. In the next few weeks I’m going to talk about some of these complexities and try to untangle some of the confusion that often bring people into my office.

So what is a family anyway? Parents and kids, right? What about grandparents, aunts uncles, cousins, in-laws, step-parents and children, half brothers and sisters and friends of the family you’ve always called aunt and uncle, but aren’t really? And what about your adoptive family vs. the family members you never met?

Growing up in our family of origin is what most of us base our understanding and beliefs about family on. Many relate to the “Leave It to Beaver” traditional family with working dad, stay at home mom and 2.5 kids. But many more today do not relate to that at all. Single parent, blended and re-blended families are much more common. As the configuration of each family unit changes and becomes less “definable,” so do the roles of all the individuals involved.

The primary purpose for a family remains the same. Safety, physical and emotional, is the number one function of the family, yet many fall short of supplying that. It isn’t just the configuration that alters that; it’s the people in that group called a family and the lessons beliefs and behaviors they bring to the family, and the organization and compatibility that is built as a result, that can create or destroy stability and safety.

In the next several weeks we’ll look at some of the critical factors that make families work better in providing for the most important needs of all of its members. Any ideas you have about how to improve family life or struggles you are having with this are welcome.

HUMOR IN THE FAMILY

My eldest niece is getting married today. I can’t believe it. She’s now 26, I think. I will always remember Katy as a little girl sitting on my lap, watching the fire works on the 4th of July.

When I got married almost 9 years ago—yikes!—Katy was one of my bridesmaids. At 17, she had the audacity to give me marital advice. It was this simple: always keep a sense of humor. I’ve been a marriage and family therapist for over 20 years, but that was far and away some of the best advice I’ve ever heard.

Does that mean laugh all your problems away? No, of course not. I’ve seen plenty of couples and families trying to nervously laugh and joke inappropriately through serious issues, as I have also witnessed passive-aggressive sarcasm, guised as humor, become vindictive and cruel. Humor should neither be evasive nor attacking.

What humor can do very effectively to enhance relationships, however, is to make for a more comfortable relaxed atmosphere in which it is easier to broche more difficult circumstances. Humor can provide safety for greater intimacy, so long as it is well spirited, light hearted, and genuinely based in love and respect.

So here’s to you, Katy! Smile, laugh till your sides hurt, and enjoy life every moment you possibly can.

STRESS IN THE FAMILY

I’m sorry that I haven’t blogged in about two weeks. Professional and personal responsibilities got in the way. But I hope to resume my schedule of writing twice a week.

This month I want to look at stress in the family. This obviously has many components and directions to go into, from finances to parenting to dealing with aging parents. The important starting point is to understand what stress is and is not.

Stress is tension we feel everyday. It is the tension we feel waking up and starting a new day, tension with our spouse, our children, the traffic, work, paying bills, socializing, going to sleep at night. It is not necessarily a bad thing. It can serve to motivate us, challenge us, keep us fluid rather than stagnant. But it takes careful management to keep stress at a healthy level. Much research has been done to strongly suggest that too much stress can weaken our immune system, leading us into diseases such as Cancer, Diabetes, and heart disease, yet no one seems able to clearly define what too much stress is.

In the next few weeks I’m going to be not defining stress as much as trying to describe it as we experience it in everyday life and suggesting some ways we might be able to manage it better. I invite you to join in by giving me examples of your everyday family stresses and how you handle it. This is not Dear Abby; I will not be trying to solve individual problems, but maybe we can collectively understand what we all experience a little more.

ROMANCE SUSTAINED

I’ like to say that romance can live on forever, all on its own. Few, if any, couples can bear this out. I’m not saying that romance is doomed by longevity, just that like any living thing, it requires nurturing and TLC.

Most importantly, it requires for each of us to pay attention to our partners needs, wants and dreams. If that means a need for quiet and space, then we need to honor that. When the need for closeness and intimacy is mutually desired, then it can be a very precious time for both.

The connecting dotted line between the above two places is often the difficult territory to navigate, because our needs are so different, at different times. How do I know when the time is right? When enough is enough, too much is too much? What is pleasing; what is irritating?

The simplest and most direct answer is, ask. But for many, that is difficult. We’re either not assertive enough, bold enough or, sometimes, caring enough to open that can of worms. What if it starts an argument? What if I get rejected? Or what if I don’t like the answer I get or don’t want to do what my partner suggests? And, finally, what about my needs—don’t they count too? How do I present them appropriately?

Much of this is about timing and cadence, maturity, self-confidence and selflessness. Much more is about good communication skills and being willing to practice and use them daily. That’s the biggest challenge in most relationships. It’s so easy to become stagnant, to assume that everything has been talked about. He or she should just know what I need. No, we change, they change; life is fluid.

Keep romance vibrant. Talk about it. Stay open for new possibilities with each other.

ROMANCE AND LOVE

Love is such a complicated thing. It seems so simple and straightforward. Either you love someone or you don’t. RIGHT? Well, not always, not all of the time.

We think of love as an emotion, usually. And it is, bundled up with a bunch of other emotions, needs, desires, expectations, life experiences, etc. Because such bundles are custom fitted to our personalities and unique ways of doing things, we often don’t recognize what others see as loving or not loving.

So many poets, philosophers, psychologists, and other scholars have tried to define or, at least, describe it, most falling short of a comprehensive, universal depiction. The Bible has probably one of the most succinct, all-encompassing descriptions, albeit highly idealistic: “LOVE IS KIND; LOVE IS PATIENT…EXPECTS ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, HOPES ALL THINGS, ENDURES ALL THINGS, LOVE NEVER ENDS.”

No, I’m not trying to preach here, just trying to point to a worthy model to consider as we celebrate this day of love, as commercialized as it is. Today will be full of joy for many, hurtful and sad and lonely for many more. I hope for each of us, that we can be grateful for those we love and show love to those who need it, including ourselves.

Happy Valentine’s Day.

ROMANCE AND FRIENDSHIP

Often I hear “I don’t want to be JUST friends!” when I’m counseling couples. While I understand their sentiment, I often remind them that friends tend to have stronger and more sustainable relationships than couples who are not really friends, but just housemates, sex-mates, etc.

The couples I see succeed the most often are ones who really LIKE each other, like similar movies, books, hobbies etc., and like at least some of the same friends. Once the honeymoon ends, and it almost always does, the friendship you hopefully had in the beginning, takes hold. If that’s not in place or is not fed, the relationship often fails.

So if you’re looking to ad spark this Valentine’s Day, buy her or him something sexy, but also think of something fun your friend likes to do like bowling or sailing or rollerblading. It’s nice to have someone you can just relax with. Enjoy!

ROMANCE AND TRUST

Almost everyone has experienced at least one relationship in their lives in which trust has become an issue. We all want a partner we can confide in and rely on emotionally. To have a sense of confidence and security that the person we love also loves us and will be faithfully there for us is a pretty universal need. We want to depend on that safety as we become more intimate and vulnerable in our relationships.

So if this is a universal need then why is trust ever an issue? It seems logical that if we have that common desire in relating to one another, then we all would be dependable and faithful in return. But wait, you say it isn’t so? The sad truth is that we are all broken creatures to some extent. We tend to let ourselves down, much less another person. Call it human nature or imperfection; we all fall short of compassion and empathy sometimes.

It has been said that being in a relationship is hard work, and it’s true. Once we lose the rose glasses we have to start renegotiating our emotions and expectations. He might not always remember your birthday; she may not always be on time. We let each other down. We become disappointed and angry and then tend to not try so hard. And so it goes. Our trust is broken once again.

The problem is that our expectations we have now in our current relationship seems to be guided a lot by what we’ve learned from prior relationships, even our interactions with our parents and siblings. We have sometimes been conditioned to expect bad communication, abusive behavior and/or rejection, if that has been in our past, and therefore trust is harder to believe in or achieve.

But it’s not impossible. It takes some relearning sometimes. And it takes trustworthiness, openness and honesty from both you and your partner. It takes a willingness to be vulnerable, to believe in yourself enough to believe you are really worth loving and to be able to love with a trusting heart.

ROMANCE AND RESPECT

In this month of February, we typically think about VALENTINE’S Day and relationships we are in, or used to be or wish we could be.

This month I’m going to be talking about different aspects of relationships, the good the bad and the ugly. Mostly, I’m going to talk about how to make them better, stronger and more enjoyable to be in.

The first word and probably the most frequent word I will use to describe how to have healthy, comfortable, and sustaining relationships is respect. The reason I decided to write an entire book about respect is because as a therapist and in my own life, I am so aware of the impact genuine respect between partners can have and, conversely, how devastating and crumbling the lack of respect can be to any relationship.

Respect is more than a noun; it is also verb. It is action. The Latin origin of the word is “respectare,’ which means to look back or look again. To reconsider. How many times do we, and I mean all of us, charge on with our own thoughts, feelings, wants and needs without really considering these same things in those we love. It’s easy to get in a rut or a pattern and forget that there really is another perspective other than our own. It only takes a few minutes, with some practice, to refocus, reevaluate our intentions and how they come across to the one we love. We may not be mal-intentioned at all, but need to do a little fine tuning or clarification in our communication.

So when we’re out buying the obligatory flowers, chocolates and cards, maybe we can also think about a kind word or patient action that would touch their hearts in even a deeper place.

CHOOSING OPTIMISM

Last week, on the day of President Obama’s inauguration, I spoke of choosing hope in the spirit of what I think he brings to our troubled world.

Today I’d like to go further with that idea. I’d like to talk about choosing optimism as a philosophy, an attitude, a way of life.

Before I do, however, I want to fully acknowledge the difficulty and complexity in this choice. Many tragedies, such as 9/11, wars, and natural disasters, not to mention personal losses and challenges we all experience at one time or another can alter our perception and understanding of any good existing in our lives. Pain and suffering can block our awareness of good all together.

Optimism, I think, goes deeper than just being hopeful, in that it is a belief, an attitude of confidence that there is good among all the bad, and beyond that, a desire to find it. When someone is depressed or grieving or worried about paying next month’s rent it’s really hard, if not impossible, to be hopeful about much of anything. To be optimistic isn’t just turning a switch or denying reality. It is the hard work of accepting that reality, feeling the pain and being willing to work through it with the expectation that there is something good at the end of it, maybe even in the middle of it.

So given all of the above is true, how can I presume that optimism is a choice, when it so seemingly out of reach for so many? The truth is, I can’t presume that at all. I can only offer it. I can only suggest that the sun is still shining in the middle of a bad thunderstorm, when we can’t see it, and that it will be visible to us again.

CHOOSING ACTION

As grand as the inaugural was a few days ago, it was only the beginning. It’s time to roll our sleeves up and get to work. Yes, I said OUR sleeves.

Michelle Obama as called us to volunteer action. This is a very strong, positive directive for of us. First, and most obvious is the fact that we are in dire times, when human needs are great for everything from food to clothes, jobs, education, etc., anything we can do is probably not enough, but is certainly better than sitting by and doing nothing.

There is also a lot to be said for building community. We tend to live in a society where we barely know the neighbors on either side of us, much less down the street. Just maybe, if we knew our neighbors a little better, we could be less afraid to walk down our streets at night. Maybe we’d know who to call when we need something ourselves. Maybe we could just feel better about this small piece of the planet we inhabit.

Beyond all this, I think is the internal benefit there is in doing something, just because it is good and right. Many of us will say I barely can keep food on my on table, keep my job, or keep my own kids out of trouble. And that might be true. Times are tight and we are stressed. But when we are able to reach out of own little corners and actually do something for someone else, no matter how small or who that someone is, we have stretched ourselves into bigger, finer persons. And we have added another drop of sweetener on this thing called humanity.