relationships – Inspiring Change LLC

How to Have Better Family Holidays

As the leaves change and the light grows softer, many of us begin to make plans for the coming winter holidays. While these annual events stir up images of good food, travel, family, and friends, they can also raise anxiety as these very same events dump added stress on old relationships that may have years of unsettled conflicts baked into their patterns and don’t change easily.

You may be going to see your family weeks after you have announced a new partner, a pregnancy, or an impending move or divorce. What will your parent say when they meet you at the airport, what smart remark do you anticipate from your younger sibling about your body or relationship, what anticipated struggle over food choices or sleeping arrangements make you less than relaxed as your holidays approach?

Participating in milestone events like holiday visits with our families of origin raises some expected and automatic emotional reactions. We don’t always manage to be our best selves. Anxious and stressed, we may become defensive and reactive, trying to dodge the discomfort that spoken comments or obvious body language raise up. We may begin to mind read, assuming we know what someone thinks; we might withdraw and engage only with the relationships in which we feel safe. It’s then quite easy to blame others for misunderstanding us or nursing a grudge over some long-ago hurt, while finally discussing it directly seems almost impossible.

If we have a partner, we also may feel pressure to manage their emotions. Our partner may feel isolated, and needs us to support them, even while we feel stressed and unseen by these life-long, important, but imperfect relationships. The pressure on your couplehood may increase as each of you tries to navigate the waters of these familiar family patterns and people. It is no wonder these holiday events can make everyone feel unheard and unseen while being surrounded by people!

What can we do to make these important extended family events better for ourselves and others? Is there some magic wand we can wave to make everyone more calm and connected?

Unfortunately, there is no magic solution to feeling more at ease with these intense occasions. Because the truth is, we don’t have control over how others behave. All we have is the capacity to adjust our own thinking and behavior, a difficult enough, life-long task. It’s the challenging, very personal effort of self-awareness, grieving and accepting the truth of what has been, while developing ideas about how we want to grow toward a healthier emotional life.

What can we do to help ourselves manage these high stress family events with greater peace of mind? Here are a few ideas to help you manage your part of family events.

Lower your expectations. The build-up to trips or vacations can set all our hopes a bit too high. Remember that a key to managing these kinds of occasions is to expect them to be a real mix of highs and lows.
Become a family observer. Ask yourself occasionally: How does this group normally function? Who leads, who follows, what role do I play in the family system? Is that something I would like to change?
Remain as present as possible. When things aren’t perfect, it can be very tempting to check out and just drop your attention into your phone or laptop. What emotions make you want to withdraw? Could you pay attention to what is happening in a way that helps you understand rather than avoid?
Reflect every day in a journal or with a trusted other. Daily private reflection can make a big difference in our ability to adjust and sustain our emotional connection to family members and to our own behavior.
Get physical exercise, preferable outdoors. Make sure you have time to be physically active every day to move your body and clear your mind. Eat as well as possible, and limit alcohol.
Focus on individuals and a bit less on the group. One of the best ways to step out of group behavior is to focus on having individual conversations with family members. It is probably the only real chance people get to be themselves, be heard, and to learn about others in real time.
Work on creating new memories. While it can be fun to reminisce about the shared past constantly, it’s far more fulfilling to create new memories together. A new board game, a trip to a theme park, even making a new recipe together can pull us into the here and now.
Bring your sense of humor & humility. You didn’t choose this group of people to be your family, but somehow it’s part of who you were and have become. As they have influenced you, you have done the same for them. You are on a team, and you can have a better time when you are less demanding about yourself and others.
Have an exit strategy. Even bringing your best intentions and good emotional habits to your family event doesn’t always change how you feel, behave, and respond. Your parent may still be the same deeply arrogant person at 70 that they were at 30. Know when to take a break, seek support, or even leave. It’s better to manage your stress than to never return again.

And when good self management doesn’t work well, this is where good therapy can help. When we bring these repeated and unhelpful experiences into our private conversations with a skilled family counselor, we can better develop a capacity to observe our beliefs, our emotions, and our behaviors. Observing our own patterns gives us the distance and ability to imagine how we might behave differently. We begin to see that we have some choice in how we function, even during intense, important, or occasional family events.

Growing ourselves up into the people we want to be may not solve your familiar family fights over who manages the kitchen, or the alcohol, or the children. But it will give you increased resilience for the times when it is important to connect, to speak up when conflicts arise, and the capacity to accept, and perhaps even to forgive, those imperfect souls with whom you are intricately linked.

(Written originally for Lineage Counseling blog, New Hope, MN)

Why is It So Hard to Make Adult Friendships?

This article was written for Lineage Counseling (lineagecounseling.com), a private therapy practice in New Hope, MN.

Here in Minnesota, land of lakes, prairies, MaltoMeal, and Post It Notes, we pride ourselves in our understated neighborliness. We are a down to earth, mostly friendly sort. When I first moved here 45 years ago, it was something that I noticed right away: the “Minnesota Nice” attitude, a kind of quiet, calm sense of community. Yet, at the same time, I also noticed that it didn’t always extend much farther than that. That old joke, that Minnesotans will gladly stop and give you directions to anywhere but their own home, seemed all too true.

Even with the new community created by my seminary classes, it was hard to get traction in creating new friendships. Many of my new acquaintances had lived in the area all their lives, had friendships they had maintained since high school or college, and still had most of their family here. Nearly everyone around me seemed content with the relationships they already had. Out of the classroom I often felt like a social afterthought.

Perhaps you have had a similar experience moving to a new community or trying to make some new friends as an adult. The folks who study social trends in culture have been reporting that as our social habits have changed over the last half century, we have become a much lonelier and disconnected people. What at one time consumed our free time as well as placed us in regular, in-person contact with diverse neighbors – groups like bowling leagues, youth sports, church activities, art, music, and local civic groups – have all had less participation as we spend more and more of our free time at home. Working hard and commuting farther, we spend very little time talking with people we don’t know well. Leisure looks increasingly like individual video entertainment on our screens, whether they are large televisions, 15” laptops, or our even smaller cellphones.

In a recent large cross-cultural study, large numbers of us report that we have no close friends. The numbers vary across genders, age, educational level, and population density, but up to 25% of Americans report that they are socially isolated and feel chronically lonely. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy sponsored a 2023 report called “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation,” an important document containing results from studies across the country, available on the web. It’s worth a read.

As socially connected beings, when we don’t get the amount of positive social interactions we need or prefer, we’re subject to mood problems like anxiety, sadness, anger, and self-harm. We become physically susceptible to higher blood pressure, infectious diseases, and a shortened life span. In search of an answer to our invisible despair, we may even be enticed by the extreme rhetoric of political leaders, disturbing visions of prophets and preachers, or the worldview of violent hate groups that offer a clear enemy, self-righteous purpose, and tight community.

The core message in all this social science is that we are a culture that has become increasingly isolated from one another, with the effects visible everywhere: from the aging grandmother unvisited in a nursing home to the angry middle-aged man sitting at this home computer fueling his grievances. It’s a systemic issue, and we can’t rewind the clock on how our free-time choices have changed with technology, variable work schedules, or an urbanized culture. So, if loneliness is this large an issue, what’s a person to do? How do we make and sustain friendships at a time when social structure doesn’t do much to support us?

Without the relationship opportunities that different social customs gave people generations before, it’s up to us individually to foster our own emotional habits to create and sustain adult friendships. Here are 10 of the most important ideas to consider if you’d like to increase the number of people you call friends.

If you assumed a therapist would first tell you to think about your own unique circumstances, you are right. Such an important gap in your emotional life is worth some serious reflection. Ask yourself some questions: Who are my friends? Do I have enough? To whom do I feel most close? How did you make this friend? How focused are you on maintaining the time and energy needed to keep the relationship positive and honest? Are there friendships that you once valued that seem to have soured? Can you identify the circumstances of that change? How much energy and time are you willing to spend to increase your friendship circle? How open or interested are you in people who are younger or older than you are?

This kind of inner reflection can help you know what you already understand about your personal circumstances and how interested you are in making change.

Because so many friendships begin with people coming together in new circumstances (think: the new freshman class; the start of a new soccer season) the primary way you can help yourself as an adult to get open to new friendships is to seek out and put yourself into new positive social settings.
Keep it local. By keeping these group connections closer to home, we are more likely to have multiple points of connections with people already in play, like your favorite restaurant or your children’s school. Additionally, you are more able and more likely to re-connect with new people if it is easier to get together.
Look for groups of people that meet regularly over time. Is there a hobby you do alone that might be fun to share in person? A running club, a puzzle group, a choir that has a regular schedule and is open to new people? Over time, shared experiences and common ground can lead to great conversations and invitations to gather in some different way.
Show up in person. While many of us have created real friendships while online with gaming or other interest groups, real-time, real-life interactions with people more fully satisfy our social and emotional needs. Without the technology barriers, we more fully feel and read one another’s faces, body language, energies, and attitudes. Having more of this emotional data helps us better evaluate one another’s mood and interests and develop personal connection.
Grow your tolerance for feeling awkward as you navigate a new social situation. This is some of the hardest inner work for creating adult friendships. It takes some confidence and courage to step into a group of people you don’t know. In a situation where everyone is new, everyone feels as awkward as you. But when entering a well-established group, you will want to bring your best version of a warm, open attitude. (And no, alcohol is not a great substitute for social courage. Invariably, you underestimate how impaired you are, and overestimate your charm. Save the drinks for time with established friends and a safe ride home.)
Develop your natural interest in others. What does that look like, socially? It is demonstrated by two core communication skills: asking interested questions about the other person’s life and perspective; and actually listening to their answers. It’s quite a special experience when someone asks you about your life and listens to you without argument or interruption. Many of us never have that as a regular experience. People are attracted to others who make them feel positive and calm.
Don’t expect everyone to be a best friend. We need all kinds of friendships that support us: social friends, work or sport friends, neighbors, and acquaintances. The neighbor who you occasionally help shovel snow or get their mail? The classmate from college who you talk to every once and awhile to catch up? Your sibling, the one who you see every holiday, but who has shared so much of their growing up with you? All of them form a rich emotional system. And we do the same for them. They all matter.
Stop keeping score. While the most intimate relationships, including our best friendships, need to feel mutual and balanced in effort and vulnerability to remain close, if we want to have friends, we will need to create more opportunities for us to get together with others. Are you the one who more often is asking to get together for lunch, to see a ball game, to take a trip or grab a beer? Do you feel that you are the one who is always having people over? The more you generate opportunities to gather with others, the less lonely your life will feel. And the more you model hospitality to others.
Express yourself. The key human ingredient to feeling known and cared for is being real, honest, and vulnerable with those we care about. Let your friends know they are important to you. Be honest about your life and struggles and listen as others share hard things with you. Celebrate and grieve together. Stay flexible with your expectations and be open to change. Find things to share and laugh together. Sharing this human experience is what friendships are all about.

When it comes to our social and mental health, the key is to never stop making social connections. Not only do our individual lives improve, the more we have friendly connections beyond our doorsteps, the healthier and more resilient are our social and political lives. And even here, in friendly Minnesota, we can better learn to be curious about people we don’t already know well. And perhaps, on occasion, even to give them directions to our homes.

Grief is Love with Nowhere to Go : Therapy

One of the privileges of my therapy practice, quite distinct from many of my colleagues who work in large counseling clinics, is the ability to have long-term relationships with clients. I have several clients with whom I have worked with for over a decade. That longevity is not the norm for most therapy experiences, of course. Most of us access therapy to find help for mind/body problems that can find a great deal of relief and resolution in a few months’ time. My practice is a bit different; while I do see clients for the many common psychological problems humans have, my work is centered on our experiences within our families.

Families are how human beings form loyal connections, raise children, share culture and manage change. No matter what form our nuclear family took, we are each a product of our parents’ genetic lines, and their emotional outlook on the effort of living. The decadeslong development of human children means we are subject to the personalities, resources and behaviors of those we live with. Then in adulthood, most of us form intimate partnerships, creating the next generation of our family. The continuing influence and problems that this large network of relationships creates for each of us is the focus of family systems therapy.

A couple of weeks ago, I came close to another aspect of life families manage, death. One of my wonderful clients — a person of faith, so passionate for her spouse and children, a devoted professional, loving neighbor, co-worker, and friend — lost her life to an aggressive cancer, smack in mid-life. We had talked together about her personal challenges for over 10 years, and when the cancer that had been quiet for a while rose back up with force this spring, I knew that our remaining time would be precious and short.

I know how to walk with those at the end of life as a pastor. I know how to provide spiritual care at this mysterious, liminal passage. But I had yet to grieve a client who had been in current therapy with me. As her last difficult weeks passed, even our brief conversations had to give way to more critical ones with physical medicine providers. One of my client’s final acts of grace toward me was to put her pastor in touch with me, who could share her experience and keep me informed of funeral plans. Then my client died as she had hoped, quietly in her own home. Her pastor as well as her husband lovingly reached out to me later with the funeral plan.

On a hot Friday morning, I drove to her church. Hundreds of us came together to grieve and remember. I was an anonymous mourner, known by sight to only two people in that large sanctuary. And yet, I belonged. It was perhaps one of the best funerals I have ever attended. Gorgeous music she chose; loving, true words spoken about her; and God’s gracious love for us spoken and shared in word and sacrament filled the sanctuary with quiet hope. It was a wrenching, heartachingly joyful service for someone gone too soon from those who needed her and need her still. Need her still.

We live in an increasing isolated culture, each stuck in our pockets of neighborhood, home life, children’s activities, workplace, political concerns and a thousand small but essential obligations. While there may be so many times in your life when you feel unseen, forgotten or left out, I want to remind you of the power of your most essential relationships. Human beings hold one another together, and while it may go unspoken so much of the time, we are the world for one another.

And yet, we don’t often say it. Or believe it could be true that we are that important to others. We have so many hundreds of thoughts and concerns we manage just to get through each day. We have deep cultural belief in the myths of individualism and independence; we may live quiet, solitary lives. But, as this experience of loss has reminded me again, our lives are so unique and irretrievably short. We don’t know the length of our lives, and yet we barrel on as if we can live forever.

Nothing matters more than love. Loving ourselves for our own mental and spiritual health, loving our neighbor for the sake of our shared world, loving our friends for the deep and varied connections they make and loving those who share our daily life in family. What is that beautiful and true saying about grief? Grief is just love with nowhere to go. May you love with breadth and abandon and may you know that deep love in return.

Written for / published in the Savage PACER 9/30/2023

Do You Have Enough Friends?

Do you have all the friends you need? Chances are that you are among the majority of American adults who recognize that they are struggling with fewer close friendships than they want. As emotional beings, all of us are biologically designed to connect to others in and outside our families of origin. While we may be surrounded by others at work, or sporting events, in our neighborhoods or churches, few of us feel that we have a core group of steady, supportive, mutually caring same gender friendships. We are friend hungry. And we don’t know how to fix it.

This emotional scarcity can come on quite slowly. While we are progressing through school, the constant shifts from playgrounds to classrooms to new schools provide us with an ever-replenishing sea of faces from whom we may find sympathetic chums. But just as quickly as those people move into our lives, they can move out, as new environments and opportunities sweep our time and attention elsewhere. Our friends and we may marry. And right before our eyes, our emotional circle becomes instantly smaller and more fixed.

It becomes harder and harder to stay in regular, meaningful touch with people. Phone calls help but don’t completely replace in-person conversation. Getting together can take enormous scheduling and financial efforts not everyone is able to sustain. When was the last time you hand-wrote a distant friend a letter? Many of us have tried to find less isolation in the connections we make on social media. They soothe us with easy digital connections to people across the globe. But unless those relationships are mutual and sustained, they won’t fill the emotional gap that face-to-face time with people provides.

This scarcity of friendships seems to hit American men even harder than it does women. We have a culture that still assumes men need to be independent, stoic and in competition with one another. Generations of this gender ethic have led to families that raise boys to dismiss healthy emotional dependency and under-value one another, even within the same family. This places men in emotionally vulnerable positions, overly dependent upon their romantic partners for support. Women shoulder this by becoming the emotional centers of their families and becoming adept at managing everyone’s interpersonal relationships. It leaves men empty and women exhausted. While many of us reject these old models, they still shape the way we live. What are we to do?

I don’t think we should give up on being and having good friends. The emotional cost of loneliness is a true mental health crisis for many, and there are no quick and lasting solutions. Over a lifetime, we need many real friends with whom we can share common interests, new experiences, shared struggles and spontaneous laughter.

One of the most helpful resources I have found that helps to describe how we make good, close friendships is the 2016 book, “Frientimacy” by Shasta Nelson. Nelson has created an online community around friendships, speaks around the country to groups and corporations about her research, and was a featured speaker at TEDx in 2017. What she has to teach us about the qualities of good friendships is inspiring to me as a relationship therapist and someone who wants to be and have close friendships throughout my entire lifespan.

The core qualities we must cultivate within ourselves and our key intimate relationships are Positivity, Consistency and Vulnerability. In other words, our key friendships should feel good, be mutually maintained, and let us be our real selves. These are high standards, and they take time, good boundaries and mutual intention to develop. Not every friendship can or will experience all three qualities. There are all kinds of people in our lives who may be able to sustain one aspect, like positivity, but can’t meet other aspects like consistency or real-life sharing. Or we may be more interested in someone as a friend than they are in us, and the relationship never grows. I’ll point you to Nelson’s book for more details about these key aspects, but you get the point. Real friendships take work and commitment to one another. When they work, they make us feel fully human.

No matter who we are, we need good friendships. Perhaps the last good friend you had was someone you knew years ago but with whom you have fallen out of touch. What did that friendship teach you about how to recreate that small, essential, positive human community of two close friends? Perhaps it’s time to discover more about how you can be a friend and welcome new friendship in return.

(Written for/published 5/28/2019 The Savage Pacer)

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

Why You Should Learn to Cook

A recent survey conducted by a food industry consultant Eddie Yoon (printed here and reported on elsewhere) finds that 90% of American adults hate to cook. This 90% is comprised of folks who don’t know how to cook, don’t like to cook, or do it reluctantly some of the time. They are purchasing pre-packaged food (fresh, frozen and dried) in grocery store isles as well as in take-and-go options such as Dunkin’ Donuts, Starbucks, as well as the familiar fast food restaurants like McDonald’s and Subway.

That leaves just 10% of Americans who continue to prepare food from fresh ingredients and who have mastered at least the basic skills once taught to most middle schoolers in Home Economics. In his article, Yoon advises the major suppliers of groceries to get with the trend and embrace more technology in food preparation as well as diversifying their ownership in alternative on-the-go food restaurants or brands that show an upward trend. The writing is on the wall on this, he advises. There seems to be no turning back.

If this is the case, and most of the industry is turning to preparing food for us and seeing the kitchen as a place to store food and eat it, but not prepare it, why should you buck the trend and get firmly in the minority food lane and learn to cook? I can think of several reasons, all of which are quite important to me. Maybe one or more might be important to you, too.

Your long-term health and the health of your children. Why are we an obese nation and just keep getting fatter no matter how hard we try to slim down? Because we let other people prepare our food for us, filling us with unseen but powerful fats, salt, artificial fillers and preservatives and chemical flavors. Even with the recent trend to label the calorie content of your Big Mac or Chipotle burrito bowl, most of us will eat more than our bodies need if a meal is presented to us on our plate and we are in a social (loud, busy and people-centered) environment.
Cooking is a human art, and it’s crazy to lose what we have spend tens of thousands of years figuring out as a species. I am particularly thinking about the women who have throughout the generations toiled in field, barnyard and kitchen to feed their families. Using tools and ingredients common to their culture, it has been the traditional work of women to manage the preparation of food for families in their homes. I’m not willing to give this part of my gender identity over to some multinational corporation. I want to know something of what my grandmothers and earlier generations passed down to one another, in prosperous times and in depressed.
Food is a gift of God to and in creation, and when I am gardening, or shopping, or cooking at home, I am participating in the work and renewal of creation. Am I thinking such high theological thoughts when I am boiling my brown rice and marinading my chicken breasts? Uh, no. But give me a minute and I will tell you that I pray with my family over our dinners and I pause to think about the gift that good food is in a world in which so many are starving. I marvel at how many wonderful foods are available to me in America. And how many will keep me healthy.
Real food is more than fuel. Real food is medicine and learning about and committing to preparing it creatively is community building. It is a creative necessity, and a way for families to take time out daily to look at one another and talk face to face in their home. Children who eat dinner with their families grow to have a sense of belonging in their families, know their parents better, learn to talk with adults, and have so many less food addiction and eating disorder issues than their peers who don’t have families who eat together. And in these families, children can slowly and with confidence learn to cook so they can eventually cook for themselves as adults.

With the fantastic television shows about cooking that are on right now, you’d think we would all be inspired. Apparently not. Even the Great British Bake Off can make food preparation look like the work only of experts. We all have to eat. I just want to eat well, eat to care for my family, eat to keep this amazing human art form alive. It’s not impossible. If you can reluctantly learn a thing or two about sifting flour in 7th grade, I know that you can learn as an adult by reading a good simple recipe, getting the right ingredients, getting a few essential tools, and having patience as you become better skilled. Your body will be healthier, your mind clearer, your budget better balanced, and your family life calmer. It’s worth your time.

Reader Response: Dividing Family Loyalties

Many thanks to M who took the time to write me about his experience with family loyalty. Here is his letter, in part:

“I am writing because I have been on the wrong end of this issue. That is, my wife has put the needs of her parents ahead of me and our marriage. We married in 1987. In 1995 we made the fateful decision to move in next door to her parents. Problems stared within a few months of moving in.

When a spouse puts parents (or really, anyone else) as a higher priority ahead of the needs of the marriage and their spouse this is the biggest domino that falls causing a cavalcade of other bad actions and decisions…The anger that is festered, self-doubt, damage to self-esteem causes so many poor decisions from how your money is spent, time and priorities are allocaated, how the children are engaged, infidelities and job effectiveness.

Unlike if this happens with friends or worse, a spouse has an affair, in these cases the offending spouse can make those people disappear from the relationship and the relationship has a chance to heal via distance, deeds and time.

When it is a parent or family member, in my wife’s case she was unwilling to stand up to her parents (mostly her mother) and say my husband comes first. When a spouse does not stand up …the family member takes full advantage of this weakness and manipulates the entire engagement. In my case, this continues to damage the marriage. The relationship with the in-laws only worsens and cannot heal or improve. The constant conflict is beyond exhausting.

You may ask why did I not see this before we got married. We met and married and started our life together 2000 miles away from her hometown. Consequently, I did not have the opportunity to witness this enmeshed relationship prior to 1995.

My wife in 2017 moved in with her mother. And I am now at 60 years old alone, trying to put the pieces of my life together.”

Netflix’s “The Crown” & Joy in Marriage

Netflix’s major release of the second season of “The Crown,” a lavish and brilliantly acted biography of England’s Queen Elizabeth II in her very first years of her reign, is worth every moment of your time. Writer Peter Morgan is creating a masterpiece of historical drama.

At it’s core are the conflicts that face a young woman whose father dies relatively young and has the British monarchy thrust upon her at 25. We’re witness to the parallel sacrifices of her husband, nuclear family members, and all those who serve the royal family. As her husband Prince Philip chafes under the demands of his marriage to the Crown, his roguish behavior brings increasing pain and anguish to Elizabeth. Despite the developing pressures, Elizabeth suggests a small party to celebrate their 10th wedding anniversary. And it is at this dinner party that Philip makes a brief speech that describes the core of marriage’s worK:

(laughter …) “Ten years has taught me,
The secret of a successful marriage is actually to have different interests.
Well, different interests, not entirely different interests. It’s a funny business.
One sees the whole of the other person. You see even that part of them that they don’t see themselves.
And presumably, they see that hidden part of you.
One ends up knowing more about one’s partner than they know about themselves.
And it can be pretty tough to keep quiet about it.
So you have to come to an accommodation, an arrangement, a deal if you like.
To take the rough with the smooth.
But the extraordinary thing is down there in the rough, in the long reeds of difficulty and pain,
that is where you find the treasure.
So I would like to propose a toast in the name of love, in the name of our beloved country, in the name of steadfastness, in the name of another ten marvelous years.
I give you mon petit chou, Lilibet, Elizabeth, The Queen.”

(The Crown, S2E4, “Beryl”; starting 19m.00s)

What brilliant insight – spoken in Philip’s voice – of the hard but joyous human work of living closely with another person, and knowing more about them than they do about themselves; and vice versa. And rather than using that knowledge as a weapon, the happiest marriages reach an accommodation, an emotional arrangement, to take both the best and worse of their partner and accept this as the wonder of what it means to be loved well by another human being. “It’s there were you find the treasure,” says Philip. Yes, indeed. This is what it really means to love another person. To know all about them, accept them, and be accepted and cherished, despite this deep knowledge, in return.

Thank you for saying it so well, Mr. Morgan. May it be so for all of us.

What is Structural Family Therapy?

I’m grateful to Sal Minuchin for helping us as family therapists understand, conceptualize and maneuver within the dynamic structures of families: the way that the emotional and legal connections of parents to their children over generations create fluid as well as fixed patterns of hierarchies, loyalties, rules, subsystems, coalitions and boundaries. While we may know these experiences instinctively, his theory gives us a vocabulary, structure and system of talking and thinking about these automatic family features.

I’m particularly glad for the way his ideas give us a way to talk about family power. How are marriages formed? How do parents use their power over children? What does it mean to be a grandparent, a sibling, a twin, a youngest or oldest child? Who creates the family rules? Who breaks them? Of critical importance is the way that this theory helps me to conceptualize children’s emotional dysfunction. I don’t have to think simply in individualistic, intrapersonal terms. I’m free to think, speak and intervene with children’s pain interpersonally by helping their parents better manage their own functioning, power, and relational well-being.

Every time I draw a new genogram, and hear about a conflicted marriage, a stressed child, or cut-off grandparents, and think about rules, power and family structure, I draw upon the core ideas of Minuchin and generations of clinicians after him who have helped us all become students of family structure.

1/2021: Here’s a great detailed look at Structural Family Therapy from a new counseling resource, Choosing Therapy: https://www.choosingtherapy.com/structural-family-therapy/

Sometimes it IS About You

As a family therapist and systems thinker, I view the conflicts and discussions in my therapy office as shared events and problems. We are all connected; what I do effects my spouse, my children and other close relationships, just as what they do effects me.

But there are times when one person’s habits, behaviors, attitudes, or choices are the source of a system’s pain. A problem frequently has a source. And it just might be you.

One of the most pained expressions I hear after couples therapy is the complaint that “therapy is always about me” and never focused on their partner. I hear it most frequently from my male clients. This reflects, I believe, the fact that men don’t often start conflict conversations in their relationships, leaving their women partners to do all that heavy emotional lifting. If their troubled patterns have been going on long enough, and the woman, despite how often she requests help or change, is always doing the complaining, the man is inevitably backed into his corner. Of course he feels that therapy is always about him. Because he has to travel so many emotional miles to catch up to where his partner has been.

In other situations, it may be that addiction is stealing away all the relationship and family stability. Or infidelity and secrets have damaged the sense of safety and closeness. Or one partner’s failure to care for their health, or work life, or family of origin problems weighs the entire family down. While all of these issues have system impacts, it just might be true that therapy, at least as we begin to unwind the issues, may truly feel like it’s All About You.