Author: lsblmft

Does Men’s ‘Bond’ with Porn Ruin Them for Real-Life Sex?

The instant availability of pornography on the internet is a serious, life-altering problem for some people, leading to secrecy, shame, and addiction. It can ruin a marriage, and ruin a life.

But what of the rest of pornography’s casual users? Research is beginning to point to the problem of disconnect for men from real sexual experience with their live partners. Men (who are the heaviest users of pornography of all kinds) can become so accustomed to the rush and impersonal nature of pornography they can lose attention, desire and connection with their own partners.

Here’s a recent article from TIME Magazine:

Does Men’s ‘Bond’ with Porn Ruin Them for Real-Life Sex?

How to Become a Good Stepparent

While most of us who marry intend it to be for a lifetime, about half of all first marriages in the United States end in divorce. Divorce ends not only a couple relationship based at least initially on attraction, trust and commitment; it marks the end of a dreamed future as a family. Despite the pain that most divorces bring, the desire to be happily married doesn’t seem to end, since most of those who divorce will eventually remarry.

Marrying at any age or stage of life is a challenge and a good deal of personal work and adjustment, but choosing to marry for the second (or more) time brings with it some additional complications. The most prominent complexity involves entering into an already existing family system as stepparent to the new spouse’s children.

As a therapist, I have noticed that a strategy for entering into relationship with the new spouses’ children seems to always take a back seat to the excitement, distractions and stresses of a new love, moving into a single household, and planning a wedding. Many adults who blend families believe, with good intention, that settling in as a new family will be easy as pie. After all, most of them already are parents, and have come this far as a new couple. How hard can it really be?

Well, it can be really, really hard.

I don’t believe one can be too deliberate or mindful when joining an already existing family, especially one that has been stressed by divorce or the death of a parent. In my practice, I frequently consult with adults who are planning to remarry, but whose children, especially teenagers, have grown increasingly angry, sad, disrespectful, demanding, or even hostile to their parent’s new partner the longer they are in the family circle. What was once a ride of excitement and anticipation erupts into bitter conflicts about moving homes, changing schools, losing friends, shifting visitation schedules, add step-siblings, and confusion over family roles and responsibilities. It can become so divisive couples may consider calling the whole thing off.

What’s an excited but hopeful new stepparent to do? I’d like to offer some basic strategies that can help your new family system adjust, adapt and thrive through the necessary shifts that come with merging family systems.

  1. Slow down! Perhaps the most important thing any new couple can do as it plans to blend families is to take it as slow as possible. Every family, no matter how fractured or stressed, holds loyalties and patterns of relating and functioning that need time to adapt to new people. I frequently tell my clients that though marriages may begin and end, families are forever. Don’t assume everyone will happily embrace your presence without some time to adjust.
  2. Take an outsider’s position. While all of us know what it’s like to be part of our own families of origin, and the family of choice we created as adults, you have never been part of a family exactly like your new partner’s. Be curious, respectful, and observant. Learn about how this family works. Become a student of the new family you want to join.
  3. Don’t try to become Mom or Dad to your partner’s children. Always remember and respect the role your new partner’s former spouse has with the children. It doesn’t matter whether they are awful parents, in prison, or deceased: children are loyal to their biological parents, and will fight you tooth and nail should you ever forget it. You may one day be called Mom or Dad, but don’t ever begin this way. Strive instead to be a positive, new adult friend in the children’s lives and a respectful, tactful partner in the eye’s of the children’s mom or dad.
  4. Allow the bio-parents to discipline the children. Family rules, expectations, negotiations and limits can create serious, lasting difficulties for children and their new stepparents. Don’t try to discipline the children alone. Allow their parents to enforce the family expectations. Dialogue about the children privately with your new spouse, and in matters of discipline, defer to your partner. If you keep your distance, eventually you’ll be able to set your own limits. Just not at first.
  5. Build relationships with the children one on one. Don’t assume that joining the family at Chucky Cheese every month is going to create a close bond with your new spouse’s five-year-old son, or that attending a few of your new 16 year old stepdaughter’s basketball games is going to make her think of you as a loyal fan. Taking the time to talk regularly with each child privately, reading to them, listening to their stories, going out somewhere easy and fun together is going to help bridge that long divide between stranger and stepparent. Take it easy, let them set the pace, and you will become a new friend instead of an unwelcome outsider.

While these ideas can go a long way in helping you make positive, lasting adjustments to a blended family, don’t suffer alone if things aren’t going well. Family therapists are mental health professionals who can help when family relationships get strained or problematic. Going to therapy as a couple or family regularly for a while can give you the skills and courage to recreate a happier family experience. After all, that’s what getting married and sharing our lives as families is all about.

TMI

One of my professional supervisors recently referred someone to my practice for couples counseling. A day or so later, my colleague got an angry call from this same person, wanting to know why he gave him my name. Did he actually know who I was?!

Of course, my colleague said. I gave you her name because she’s a very good therapist.

I looked her up online. Have you read that newspaper column about the Church? he countered.

Well, yes, and I don’t think there was anything in that column about the Church and child sex abuse that wasn’t true, my mentor said. After some other choice words, the caller asked for a different referral.

I think that’s what we call client “self selecting.”
 
One of the risks of writing or speaking in public is that people may actually listen to you. Since most if not all of what I write would be considered persuasive speech, what happens as a matter of course is that some people will agree with me, and some people won’t. And in that process, some form strong opinions of me as a therapist, or former pastor, or even as a human being.

And while occasionally it brings with it positive, affirming comments, it’s the angry, bitter, divisive opinions that most often get shared with me. Before the internet, my audience was my congregation and those who received the local paper. Now, my published words are stored, copied and accessible for anyone who wants to find them online.

Being someone who likes people, ideas and happy relationships, it’s a bit painful to hear that my name is being denigrated for an opinion that is factually true and holds church leaders accountable for their power over children. Am I willing to stand up for what is true, and advocate for change in the Church, for example, even if I get personally attacked? I am. But I will also have to grow a thicker skin, because some people who might have sought me out for therapy will turn elsewhere, convinced I can’t serve them because I don’t think just like them.

Too Much Information: does my writing give potential clients too much information before they contact me? Should a psychotherapist be perceived, as we once were, as aloof, private blank slates upon whom clients projected their lives for reflection and perspective? With all my words out there, that’s not possible for me. I believe that I have been given an important opportunity to write, think and reflect on life in newsprint and online, and I’m not going to waste it.

If people who might become my clients think it’s important to vet my ideas for their own version of truth and correctness, so be it. We probably wouldn’t be happy together as client and therapist, anyway. I seek the light of God in every person I serve. If a client can’t get their focus off of me and onto themselves, we won’t get anywhere.

Best they find themselves a therapist they THINK thinks just like them. I guess that’s what being online does for me: if someone believes their counselor needs to pass a political or religious litmus test to help them, they can test drive me without ever dialing the phone. And I’ll just keep working to help those whose hearts open to include the unique writer, person and therapist I am.

Violence and Mental Illness, Again

Yes, most mentally ill people are not violent. Thanks to the USPRA for such a wonderful professional reflection on the violent attack in Arizona.

USPRA Issues Statement on Tucson Shooting      January 13, 2011

The US Psychiatric Rehabilitation Association released the following statement in reaction to Saturday’s Tucson shooting in Arizona:

In wake of Tucson’s tragic shooting that shook America over the past weekend, we wish Congresswoman Giffords and the 13 other wounded individuals a speedy recovery, and our thoughts and prayers go out to all of those whose lives were impacted by this act of horrific violence.

With such senseless acts, we often search for someone or something to blame. The assassination attempt on Congresswoman Giffords has generated considerable speculation around the mental condition of the suspected shooter, which has heightened the stigma associated with mental illness. We must remember that there is a weak link between mental illness and violence. According to SAHMSA, nearly five percent of the US population suffers from a mental illness resulting in serious functional impairment, but only a very small group of individuals with mental health issues shows any violent behavior. Most people with mental illnesses are not violent, and most people who are violent are not mentally ill.

While we have no way of knowing whether or not our nation’s mental health system failed this individual, the Tucson tragedy should spotlight mental health policy & the provision of mental health services as a national priority.  The best strategy to providing individuals with mental illnesses the assistance they need is to have an accessible system of care that is easy to use. However, because the majority of mental health services are delivered through public systems, these are usually the first programs to be cut in a state budget when money runs short. More socially accepted diseases like diabetes, heart disease, high blood pressure and other physical illnesses don’t experience the same inconsistencies, yet funding for mental health programs seems to fall to the cutting room floor year after year.

In light of the Tucson shooting, we must also increase awareness of the need for mental health services within schools and colleges. The Mental Health on Campus Improvement Act attempted to increase accessibility to a range of mental and behavioral health services for students—including a focus on prevention, identification and treatment of students in college and university settings—but failed to gain any traction in the last two Congresses. We must realize that only by providing resources for prevention and outreach programs, can we ensure that students can obtain the support they need in order to recover and re-establish themselves in the community.

USPRA hopes that this tragic event brings the essential mental health system reforms that we so need in our nation and we will continue our responsibility to urge legislators to effectively address the needs of individuals with mental illness.

Resource: (Friedman, R.A. (2006). Violence and mental illness—How strong is the link? New England Journal of Medicine, 355(20), 2064-2066. )

Violence and Mental Illness

Today I pray, along with so many others for the victims of the Arizona shooting yesterday: six dead, at least 12 others injured, including Congresswoman Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. The man in custody for this violence is now being held on multiple counts of murder, and his background searched for clues to his destructiveness. The county sheriff says the young man has mental issues. I say No Kidding.

Most of us who suffer from issues of behavior, emotion and thinking have what are called mental disorders. In other words, we as individuals have problems. Problems we know as something a part of ourselves but distinct from ourselves as a people. Those who suffer mental illness are people whose disorders have them. Major mental illness (MMI) like schizophrenia or psychosis so distorts the mind, mood, perception and behavior that we have commonly called these people “out of their mind.” They behave as if they don’t have two normal thoughts to rub together. Often, they don’t.

American courts have long recognized this distinction, with what most of us know as the insanity defense. Someone may be considered guilty of an action but not punishable, not sent to prison, because they were “out of their mind” when committing a crime. Instead, they are committed to a psychiatric hospital in a locked ward. Prison for the insane. Most never get out, because it’s pretty hard to get your mind back once you’re out of it.

Our current cultural political and religious speech, so out of control with hatred, divisiveness and extremism, is like gasoline to MMI’s fire. Words do have that kind of power, to inflame emotions and create sides where there needs to be common cause. Shame on those who, like former Alaskan governor Sarah Palin, have used their political power to incite violence with website images of a gun’s cross-hairs on an picture of a political opponent. Her ignorance of how her words can hurt people is mind boggling.

Internet technology gives hate speech a world-wide audience. When politicians stir up hate in the name of partisanship, it is no wonder those whose minds are disturbed and distorted by illness take their rhetoric for truth. And occasionally act on it.

Mental illness is the next great medical frontier. Just as MRIs, blood tests, CT scans and Xrays have given us astonishingly detailed windows into our bodies, I pray for increasingly clear windows of understanding into the most mysterious of all our organs, our brains. One day we may be more able to anticipate and treat MMI before individuals become violent to themselves or to others. It won’t save us from our stupidity and ignorance, though. So far, there’s no cure for that, save education, humility and self control. Something, at least right now, is in dangerously short supply amongst many in politics, media and self promotion. 

Disorders of the Will : Happy New Year?!

On this day when so many of us are glad for the blank sheet of paper, the turn of the calendar, the new year’s fresh start, I continue to wonder about how people change. That, after all, is what people are really after when they seek therapy. Some relationship, some turn of mind, a problem beyond their experience to avoid or help draws them to consider the time apart, the confidential help that therapy provides.

After years of reading, debating, writing and anguishing with others about this human problem, I believe that change requires a combination of pain, hope and resources. Personal pain to want to create difference, hope that will pull us forward even when we continue to fail, and the resources that help us act against habit, behavior, will, environment and even genetics. One of those resources is imagination; another, time; yet another, self control.

It’s that self control that is such a stinker for us all. And to that point, I was reading an online excerpt today on the NY Times book review from a new book I may have to purchase soon. This paragraph really stood out; it’s commenting on why disorders like anorexia or ADHD are such common diagnoses now. We have such a wide-open, tolerant culture, that restraints against human desire are fewer and fewer to find:

Maybe this is one reason disorders of the will are so much more common than they used to be. Anorexia nervosa and obsessive-compulsive disorder, both still relatively rare, are nonetheless much more common today than they were fifty years ago, not to mention the explosive growth of attention deficit disorder and addictions of all kinds. Some of this boom is just more frequent diagnosis, but it also reflects changing circumstances. That it’s now possible to be addicted to cocaine, shopping, or sex is evidence of how far we’ve moved beyond the constraints of budget, custom, and embarrassment. There aren’t many compulsive eaters, video game addicts, or — God knows — anorexics — in sub-Saharan Africa, but in the West men and women can be consumed with almost anything, including not eating, because here you can get or do almost anything. Opportunities for obsession abound. 

          from the new book, “We Have Met the Enemy” by Daniel Akst  (Penguin Press, c. 2011)

So, good luck with those resolutions. One of mine is going to continue to be curious about human will (I think Martin Luther may be right: he wrote that our wills are in bondage….) and what to do about those wills when they stubbornly, dangerously, get us into trouble. Happy New Year!

My Take: Who owns Jesus? Who owns yoga? – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs

Yes, if purity of faith is what you’re looking for, eventually you will be very – VERY – disappointed. Even the scandalous, unique aspects of faith eventually become part of culture. “All religions are mash-ups,” writes Stephen Prothero, religion scholar at Boston University.
My Take: Who owns Jesus? Who owns yoga? – CNN Belief Blog – CNN.com Blogs