Tag: mental health

Changing as We Age

         There is something about life transitions that makes them more difficult the older we become. I have noticed this with my clients as well as myself, and I’m certain that it’s not a simple function of declining vitality or just a well-earned preference for our own habits. What is it about life change in later life that seems to be so challenging?

         Human development is a long process of accumulated experience. It seems to take most of us about two decades to become independent of our caregivers, and during those twenty years we experience innumerable changes in our bodies, our environments, our relationships and our knowledge of the world. New people, new shoes, new ideas. Repeat.  Whether we are moving from one classroom to another, or one neighborhood, state or country to another, our younger selves are constantly integrating change into our understanding of our self and the world.

         I recall being an excited 21-year-old in the late summer of 1979, just weeks past college graduation, packing a dozen cardboard boxes full of records, books, clothes and personal items, weighing them and dropping them off for shipping. And then, accompanied only by my hard-sided sky-blue Samsonite suitcases and my guitar, getting on a series of planes beginning in Burlington, Vermont and landing in St. Paul to begin my new life as a Lutheran seminarian and would-be pastor, never to live in New England again.

         Such full-scale moves are the norm for many young adults; new jobs, new relationships, joining the Peace Corp, moving alone to a new city for graduate school. What makes such dislocation possible is the fewer and transitory ties that young adults have made so far in their lives. Change is the standard young lives have known, and it is only by living into later changes of career, marriage, parenthood, childcare, student loans, chronic health issues, mortgages and aging parents do those transitions grind to a slow march.

         I have watched this middle life deceleration of change out my living room window. Of the 6 middle-class homes surrounding me, 4 of them, including our own, have had the same owners for over 20 years. I used to think that remarkable. Now I understand what creates that stability because I have sought just that stability for myself. Moving is such an enormous disruptor when over the years you have made a house your home, when you value your children’s school district or your church, when you rely on key friends and health care professionals you know, when you live in a region with enough economic diversity you may be able to change careers in place, as I did. If those core resources have been established, one thinks long and hard before taking a geographic leap to begin putting that all in place again.

         But the changes within and around you may catch you off guard. If you are lucky, your children grow and succeed and leave your home for one of their own. The work you sacrificed for changes or you change, or you age out and now it’s done. Your parents, blessed with long lives, die and you are suddenly the oldest generation of your family. Your body, which you’ve trusted to go and grow suddenly stalls and reveals new pain, problems and limitations. How did all this suddenly happen, you wonder, and of course the answer is that it was all happening while you were busy looking down, raising children, earning a living, trying to stay focused enough to create a full-grown life. And before you know it, you’re on the other side of trying. You’ve suddenly arrived, only to have to figure out the next transition into older adulthood.

         No one as of yet has handed me a life map. We each end up sketching out our own with just enough foresight to help us imagine what comes next. And that may be the greatest and necessary emotional skill of later life: imagination. The ability to mentally image our next steps with greater wisdom and hard-earned courage than we could have possibly hoped for at 21 or even 41. Because it takes that kind of skill to discern how to live in an aging body, how to let go of old resentments, what of everything we have accumulated to keep and what to let go. If we’re lucky, there is so much left to learn.

(Originally published in the Savage Pacer Online 4/15/19 and in print 4/20/19)

Gender Control & Body Shame: The Purity Movement

Nothing makes me sadder than the way a part of the Christian family, the conservative evangelical community, has shamed women for their gender, leadership and sexuality. In the 1990’s, a bizarre, controlling movement spread in churches to have young women be told that sexual purity was their responsibility alone;  that young men were so weak that they couldn’t control their sex drive. Girls were trained to pledge their “purity” until marriage at the cost of their integrity and sense of self. Girls were indoctrinated to such a degree that their sexual expression was wrapped in shame, guilt and fear to traumatic degree.

I hope that any woman for whom this story is a personal one will seek care with a good, skilled mental health therapist who has religious training and deep background. I work with such women.

Want to learn more about the way women have been shamed and controlled by this movement? Listen to this recent Fresh Air broadcast in which Teri Gross interviews the author of the new book, “Pure.” https://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2018/09/18/649070416?showDate=2018-09-18

 

Video You Should NOT Be Watching

Smart cellphones are everywhere, and ever since the advent of very high definition small lenses and amazing software, so are self-made video clips. Everything from stupid pet tricks to police high speed chases are there on YouTube, FaceBook, Instagram and any number of other social and media platforms.

But just because they are watch-able, doesn’t mean you should be watching them.

Today on the Minneapolis StarTribune website was posted a caught-on-tape — from one lane over — a high speed rear-end collision of a heavy dump truck hitting a line of cars stopped at a light in my neck of the cities. Now: I am, like many adults, the victim of a violent car crash, caused by a drunk driver. It was, in fact, the central trauma of my young life and while I have found significant healing from its effects, that event reshaped my life in profound ways. I have never expected driving to be perfectly safe. I worry about car accidents while trying each day to be a relaxed driver. I have to mentally work to trust that my family can make it home safely from the roads every day.

I saw that video come up on the site today. And though a part of me was curious, along with over half a million other viewers of the video were, I knew that another part of me would be re-traumatized seeing that clip. (And I bet you expected me to post a link to that very video: Nope, I’m not going to.) A great deal of traumatic experience is processed through our eyes and into our bodies in an instant. To run that clip was to reinforce a part of my brain I have worked so hard to heal. It is not worth days of increased anxiety, hyper-vigilance, or plain worry just as our young adult daughter starts her new job she has to drive to in St. Paul. So I didn’t watch. That was a choice of good self care.

I know that today, 9/11, there are those that are remembering by watching those twin towers fall again and again. Or recalling the heroes aboard the flight that crashed in the fields of Pennsylvania instead of Washington, DC. You don’t need to re-watch the video of that awful day to be a proud American.

Are there experiences in your life that have caused serious harm to you or loved ones that arise in videos, TV series or films? Pay attention. You may not need to participate in those visual experiences, even though they are many steps removed from you. Your emotional system has a life-long memory, and awakening the dragons of our past isn’t always the best medicine. As the old bible camp song goes, “Be careful little eyes what you see….”

 

Tiger Woods : How Far the Great Have Fallen

With news this morning that Tiger missed the cut in the latest PGA tournament, sports journalists are beginning to comment on his astonishing fall from golf and sports greatness. It does seem as if his personal and professional troubles have created a failure that reminds us of an airplane in free fall. How could someone with such unusual talent lose it so disastrously?

There is something of gloating in all this talk, too. After all, who among us doesn’t feel just a bit of pleasure in seeing the untouchable hero now seem so human?

While the sports writers opine over this and that detail, it seems sadly simple to me. He is suffering, and his life is demonstrating the difficulty he is having holding all the pieces of his super-star world together. What propelled him to greatness – his focus, consistency, precision, unflappability – are all possible because he once managed an internal calm. Even if that calm was managed, or maybe controlled, even masked, by dozens of handlers, unlimited resources and a sex addiction. What we are seeing is a man whose masks have been ripped away, and what is left is the internal chaos, doubt, confusion and frustration that remains.

I hope, for his sake and the sake of his children, he can heal his mind (and his chronic injuries) and successfully return to the game around which he shaped his life. It doesn’t matter if he returns to his former greatness. I doubt that is possible. But what is possible is a re-made adult life, a life he can live in the long run, a healthier, happier, more whole self.

And wouldn’t that be a fabulous story? I just doubt it will make the front page of the Sports sections. No matter. It will make for a better life. 

Pastors are a Bridge

When I first began my private mental health practice, I knew one thing was certain: I needed to meet as many area clergy as I could. Today I had the pleasure of having coffee with an another local parish pastor. Thanks, C!

So many people still experience embarrassment, resistance and fear when it comes to seeking therapy for relationships, emotions, or behaviors, they stall when it comes to getting help. They may talk to their friend or family member. They may occasionally tell their physician about how they feel. But as they get ready to reach for help, they may also talk to their pastor.

Most pastors are great at emotional triage. Trained in basic listening skills, taught how to manage themselves in emergencies, experienced at handling emotions at funerals, parish clergy are the go-to folks in many people’s lives when it comes to figuring out what to do when the going gets rough. I am honored so many people trusted their lives to me over my years in the parish. I learned early on to have a small group of trusted counselors I knew and to whom I could refer my parishioners who needed more help than I could give. I tried to think of myself as a link between suffering and help, and I kept in touch with those counselors on a regular basis.

Now, I strive to be one of those counselors that the pastors, ministers and priests around me trust. Someone they have met, looked in the eye, and gathered a personal sense of me for themselves. As I reflect on clients who have recovered well, who make the most progress in their personal goals, the ones who feel that therapy was a success: most have come to therapy via their pastors.

Thank you, Pastor, for being on the front lines in people’s personal lives. You are under appreciated in our secular culture, and over-worked inside the special world of the congregation. You may not feel it often enough, but you are loved, respected and trusted by your members, and a lot of neighbors and strangers, too. Helping people navigate the details of mental health care is a compassionate gift you give. Thank you for trusting people you care to me, and to other therapists you know and trust.

Oh, and one more thing: you are often neglectful of your own mental health. Don’t forget to reach out for help yourself. Some of us know exactly what your life is like, and can be trusted as a confidential guide to increasing YOUR emotional health.  God’s grace surround you!

The Recession and Mental Health Care

The recession has kept people who need care out of therapy.

That was the consensus of a small group of private practice therapists I met with Monday. We are a interesting and somewhat diverse group of folks: three licensed psychologists, three LMFTs and a social worker. Each of us has an individual private practice in the southwest Twin Cities, and we meet every month or so in each others’ offices for support, case consultation and resource sharing.

As our meeting was coming to a close, one of us looked around and said, “I think people are coming to therapy less often, and when they do come, they are worse.” All of us agreed. We are seeing that in our new clients: more severe symptoms of anxiety and depression; people who need medication taking themselves off and showing up in therapy; couples who might have been helped out of their patterns two years ago, making appointments like a “Hail Mary” touchdown attempt and often not even showing up to their first session.

Stereotypes of psychotherapy, widespread in the American culture, already do enough to keep people away from getting the care they need. The same kind of fear of the unknown (people avoiding their annual mammograms or other preventative exams) keeps them from seeing therapists. People fear that therapy is all about dredging up past pain, and they would rather avoid it. Or they believe that they should be able to “get over it,” whatever it is, themselves. To be fair, therapy isn’t all about the past, but it takes long looks back in order to understand the present, so the stereotype is partially accurate. What isn’t true is that it’s a waste of time, or it never works, or that its a huge money drain.

That last part, about the money, is what we’ve noticed about this recession as providers. People have lost their jobs, or are afraid they will. That anxiety alone makes us more conservative, and hunker down, and save money, and stop doing anything new. The added anxiety about what may happen to health care and insurance in the current political debate stops even more people from reaching out.

One thing I know for certain, though: nothing matters if you feel like you are losing your mind. The mind you count on to talk to others, to do your job, to care for your children, to connect with your family and friends. Actually, good overall health is dependent on mental health. If you are so afraid you can’t leave your house, or so despondent you can’t get your kids off to school in the morning, it matters little if you have low cholesterol.

Psychotherapists live with the fact that we are the lowest paid professionals in our health care system. We struggle to overcome the giant obstacles to care placed in our way by costs and stereotypes, by stigma and shame. What we wish for is for people to seek help before they are desperate, before they decide to leave their spouses, before they think often about suicide, before they start to think that they can’t get any better. Life can be so much easier with good, quality care and a compassionate professional guiding you along.

If you need help, please reach out. And if you know someone who does, ask them to help themselves. Today.