Why some people get crazy when their children get married

In 1987, when my children were quite young (nine and fourteen), I had an idea for an article that I wanted to publish in an academic journal.  This was my first foray into academic writing.

Much to my amazement, my article was accepted.  I look back on what I wrote and I have no idea how I knew back then, what I seemed to have known.  Maybe it was channeled.

I was puzzling over a little noted developmental stage of adult life:  “marrying off children.”   Obviously my children were far from marriageable age, but I did have a front seat on my sister-in-law losing her mind as her son was planning a wedding with his fiancée.   And a good friend was in mourning when her son became engaged to a lovely, completely appropriate young woman, her only flaw being that she was not Jewish.

A client of mine became unaccountably depressed when her daughter became engaged after many years of living with her boyfriend, to a young man who both she and her husband admired and felt close to.  It was in trying to unpack this latter situation,  which was after all my job,  that I gained some insight into the red thread that ran through all these situations.

My client was in a profession wherein she kept thumping her head (hard) against the glass ceiling, which back in the 80’s was both thick and bumpy, particularly in her professional group.  She could rise to only an “associate” position in her chosen and beloved field.  She vacillated between rage at those in a position of power and feelings of inadequacy as she identified with the devaluation that was inherent in the failed attempts to advance in her field.

What became evident after several sessions of work on this issue was that her ambitions had been (somewhat unconsciously) shifted onto her eldest daughter, the one now engaged.  My client had four children, but it was onto this particular daughter that she had placed her hopes for soaring achievement.  Her daughter was very bright, ambitious, and in a profession where her talents could be appreciated.   Her parents had been able to provide her with the Ivy League education that they had been denied and the network of connections that easily flowed from that advantage would help her throughout her career.

What was hurting my client was the possibility that by marrying this particular man, her ambitions might come to naught.  The prospective groom intended to live with his bride outside of the country, far from the network of connections, and in a culture where a woman’s ambition was unlikely to blossom.  This did not worry the bride, she thought she could overcome those obstacles.  But it both worried and saddened my client, for bearing so many bruises from her own career made her exquisitely sensitive to the possibility, she thought probability, that her own narcissistic agenda was threatened.

The interesting thing about this agenda was that it was mostly outside her awareness.  She knew she had tremendous pride in her daughter and hoped for her future happiness and success as she did for all of her children,  sons and daughters.  What was outside awareness was how invested she was in this particular daughter succeeding where she felt she had failed.

I call this her “narcissistic agenda,”   but I do not mean to imply by this that my client was selfish, self involved and not loving or concerned for her daughter.  Just that her own identity,  her “self” needs you might call them,  were very tied in to the imagined future of this daughter.

Narcissism is part of the package of parenthood.  It comes with the layette.

First, a short exposition on “narcissism.”  Narcissism, self-love, is really key to human survival and healthy development.  It morphs over time, as we grow,  from believing ourselves to be the center of the world as young children,  to something maybe slightly less over-weaning, like being confident of our abilities, and having the instinct for self preservation.  Having a good relationship with our narcissism helps one navigate adult life.

I know a five year old who confides to me that he is “super-good” at soccer, running off to kick the ball to kingdom come.  He thinks he’s great, and this makes him happy, happy.

Over time he will probably come to evaluate his soccer skills in a more modest and balanced way.

Becoming a parent often gives us another stab at satisfying these wishes to be “super-good,” for we do become the center of our young children’s universe and for a substantial period of time, we get to vicariously enjoy their triumphs, their achievements, their incredibly rapid development.  The besotted-ness that is the norm for young parents absolutely in love with their offspring, could be viewed as a very benign form of  narcissism,  the child as an extension of self.

This is mostly good.  It facilitates the kind of adoration that young children need to grow.  It is fertilizer, sunshine, and water.

That’s the good stuff.

The bad stuff comes in when they are just themselves, not us, not an extension of us.  Inevitably they will frustrate our expectations, the ones we are aware of and the ones outside of our awareness.  It is inevitable.   I repeat, this deflation of our narcissistic  agenda is inevitable.  This happens in small ways,  they don’t make the team whether its softball or the debating team,  and later it will happen in larger ways:  their career choices, their choice of a mate, where they choose to live,  how they choose to live.

So, “marrying off children” brings with it a host of challenges.  We can imagine the shape of the future for our children, they are making a choice that is fraught with consequence, where they will live, how likely they will be culturally or religiously like us, who will be in our extended family in the future,  even what our grandchildren will look like (perhaps), or even if there will be grandchildren.  It is a significant challenge to that narcissistic agenda, the one we may not even know about.

This is a moment in which we may feel enormous loss, depression, deflation.  We are challenged on so many fronts,  but a significant one involves having to face something of which we may not have been aware:  the secret plan we never knew we had for these later chapters in our life. 

Plans need to be revised, we may need to re-balance,  re-write that agenda.

We may need to pause and acknowledge the upheaval and pain that this is all causing us, and, just for a bit, be kinder to ourselves and trust that in time we will re-write our agenda.

My sister-in-law found her mind, and even though she has not come to love the daughter-in-law she came to accept her and even welcome her.  My sister-in-law is resilient.

The friend who needed to mourn the Jewish daughter–in-law who would not be, has a wonderful relationship with her daughter in law, decades after the engagement. They have become close friends over the years.

And my client,  who I had the good luck to see again many years after the incident described above,  lived to see that her daughter was right: she flourished in her career despite the transplanting,  although the transplanting itself did become problematic over time.

Like all developmental stages:  “marrying off children”  is challenging, painful, and in the end, an opportunity for growth.

Notice to Readers

I have a new piece in the Huffington Post, on Parenting.
Some of you have seen it before, in a modified form.

If you are someone you think might be interested, please take a look.
If the URL doesn't work, just go to huffingtonpost.com and search my name, it will pop up.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/parenting-bad-feelings_b_871838.htm

Feel free to share and to comment.

Thanks for reading.

May

EMBRACING MYSTERY

My friend Dr. D., a professor of social psychology at a very fine liberal arts college, told me that she quoted something to her class that I said a hundred years ago.   She was lecturing to her class on the subject of “cognitive dissonance.”  Wikipedia defines cognitive dissonance as “…an uncomfortable feeling caused by holding conflicting ideas simultaneously. The theory of cognitive dissonance proposes that people have a motivational drive to reduce dissonance.”

Dr, D. recalled asking  me, way back then,  how I reconciled my interest in astrology with my evidence based practice as a clinician.  My answer, she remembers was “I don’t feel the need to reconcile them.”  She told her class this was a good example of someone who could tolerate a fair amount of “cognitive inconsistency.”

I, of course, have no recollection of this conversation.  But Dr. D.’s  example does point to something that separates me from lots of folks I know—and that’s the room I make for “mystery,”  that which makes no logical sense, cannot be seen, touched, tasted, smelled or proven directly or indirectly and yet seems to be there.

A vivid example of something not uncommon but no less mysterious is the testimony of many individuals working in hospice care who report that sometimes up to three days before death, their patients appear to be reaching for someone or seeing someone or hearing someone from  “the other side.”  My neighbor, a women who classified herself as non-religious, an atheist, not even spiritually inclined, reported that her mother, at death’s door raised her paralyzed arm to reach for someone, presumably her dead father.  She had no way to account for how her mother who had suffered a stroke on one side several years before had lifted that arm. But it did happen.

In this culture we lack a paradigm that can embrace, no less explain such phenomena.  But probably almost all of my readers can think of some example of “mystery” in their lives.  If you can’t, perhaps its because you have too rapidly dismissed a phenomena that you could not explain.  Without the paradigm we don't see, we don't hear that which we cannot understand.

For many years I had a client who claimed to be connected to another dimension.  I knew her very well, she was not psychotic, she did not hallucinate nor harbor delusions, but she had been severely traumatized throughout her childhood.  Psychic or paranormal phenomena are not uncommon among individuals who have suffered extreme cruelty.  Clinicians report this both formally and informally.

My patient’s reported phenomena was that she dreamt of spiritual beings in another dimension who had messages for her.  At other times it was during waking consciousness that she received guidance.  They guided her and they chided her.  They instructed her about her life, her therapy, her healing process.  The counsel was invariably wise.  If she followed the advice it led her in the direction of healing and wholeness.  She frequently resisted.  The counsel was difficult to implement and went against the grain, it would cause pain.

Of course one could argue these were her own wise thoughts, or an internalization of my view point.   That, however,  was not how she experienced it, and I had to make room that there really was a mystery here.  More than once I wished I had thought of the counsel, myself.  These beings seemed smarter and more far sighted than I.

My position as her therapist was to be consistently agnostic.  I neither believed nor disbelieved. But I supported these “advisors”.  And I was not above calling on whatever forces were at work here to support the direction we wanted to go.

What was much more challenging, however, was dealing with what my patient knew about me through the spiritual advisors.  I had no  explanation for these phenomena.  She knew things she could not have googled or learned from any another source—news items that only my immediate family had access to.  Sometimes the news was joyous,  sometimes it was profoundly sad.   I could never explain her clairvoyance.  I did not dismiss it as mind reading either.  I could only receive it, and I believe it enlarged my spirit to do so.

It has always seemed to me that dismissing mysterious phenomena,  those that don’t fit our existing paradigms, is rather narrow minded, irrational, and at bottom unscientific.

Dr. D. tells me that people with a higher tolerance for inconsistency are considered more “open and oriented to flexibility in their behavior.”  That seems like a good thing, right?

Being able to live with the mysterious only enriches us.

Huffington Post

You can find a post on the Huffington Post  at  http://www.huffingtonpost.com/may-benatar-phd-lcsw/personal-narrative-healing_b_862285.html    If that doesn't work,  just pop in my name on the website
and it will come up.

Many of you have read this already in other forums.
Just wanted you to know I have not forgotten about blogging altogether
and hope to post more there.  When I do,  I'll let you all know.

Thanks again for following.

Coping with suffering: Lessons from the the Warsaw ghetto

Today I want to tell you a story that I “heard” from Diane Ackerman. 

I read a version of this story in The Zookeeper’s Wife: A war story,  http://www.amazon.com/Zookeepers-Wife-War-story/dp/039333306X/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1299774100&sr=1-1, It was also included in The Best Spiritual Writing of 2010,  http://www.amazon.com/Best-Spiritual-Writing-2010/dp/0143116762.

We know that at least 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.  What is less well known is that almost the entire community of Hasidim,  religious Jews who, among other things, carried within them the oral history of centuries of Jewish mystical teachings, including meditation practices, were wiped out.   Sadly the finer points of this deep tradition may be lost to us forever, for little was written down.

The diaries and writings of one Hasidic Rabbi, Reb Kalonymous Kalman Shapira,  were found in the ruins of the Warsaw Ghetto after the war.  He died in the gas chambers. 

His writings describe how he led and ministered to the trapped and the doomed.

Reb Shapira  could have left the ghetto, as others with powerful Aryan friend’s did,   but he chose to stay, to teach, and to lead.

Beyond the heroism,  the almost unfathomable altruism of Reb Shapiro, what caught my attention was his method.  He taught his followers what in Buddhist and secular circles today would be known as mindfulness meditation.  His flock were starving, they were beset by illness, constant fear of being shot and deported.  They were unable to properly care for, educate, and comfort their children.  Many knew that their future would hold even more dreadful suffering.  What could he do for them?

He taught them to focus on the moment… to watch the stream of consciousness from a distance.  He taught that noticing negative thoughts and negative character traits  decrease their power and the suffering they could create.  Dispassion and equanimity were the tools he used to neutralize the conditions that could not be otherwise addressed by his powerless flock.  Be mindful when you eat and drink. Be mindful of all sounds, those of nature and those of humanity.    Meditate on nature, a nature that could only be accessed through imagination and memory.  No trees or birds or flowers or streams existed in the ghetto.

For Shapira this was a path to God, to the oneness of Heaven. Knowing who they really are, not their thoughts, not their suffering, their anxiety  but something calmer and divine within. 

Although the teaching of mindfulness in our world today, does not focus on the Divine,

Buddhism is a non-theistic religion and there are many forms of secular mindfulness training that populate our modern world,  I believe the goal is the same.

From Ackerman:

Even when saturated by more suffering that we bipeds were ever meant to feel, by paying deep attention the brain enters a state of vigorous calm, especially if one can meditate on joy, compassion, or gratitude.  In the ghetto meditation helped by tugging the mind from its sorrow and limiting rumination and by giving practitioners a sense of agency that was scarce, allowing them to take charge of their own well-being and to create moments of tranquility and wonder, and occasionally something even rarer: pleasure…. (Best Spiritual Writings, 2010)

NEWS

Dear Readers,

Just wanted you to know that

Scientific American posted another essay by me, entitled "How conducting therapy changes the therapist": http://www.scientificamerican.com/blog/guest-blog/
(2. 26.11)

 Also  I was very pleased that the New Yorker cited the first essay published in ScientificAmerican.com in a recent article: http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/books/2011/...

My File Cabinet/Myself

In recent days I have learned a lot about identity.   Mine.

As we unpack our belongings: furniture, clothes, files, books, knick knacks, family photos, art,  in our new home,  many months and miles from our old home, I have experienced both the joy of reunion with  my “stuff” and the profound grief over “stuff”  gone forever.

Some of our “stuff” I haven’t seen for 3 or 4 months, some, almost a year.  As we put our house up for sale we were required by various “stagers,” consultants to the real estate industry,  to pack up beloved books,  family pictures,  and even art pieces that told too much about who we were (“too ethnic”).  Though I thought this was highly unscientific advice and was incensed by the implied criticism,  I acquiesced.

My house started to feel like an alien space.  It looked more like a “model home” than my

slightly cluttered, but very personal and, I thought, warm and homey abode. 

Due to a sluggish housing market and some bad luck,  it took many more months to sell our house and move into our new digs here in Maryland. 

The worst was the books,  followed closely by family pictures.  Both tell the story of our lives. I don’t see collecting books as a vanity project but rather a chronicle of where we have been with our intellectual passions our not so intellectual passions and indulgences, our journeys both geographic and spiritual.  Some books go back to college and graduate school.  The pictures and photo albums… well we all understand about the pictures.

What really threw me was my reaction to not having a place to unpack my files,  old patient files,  courses constructed and taught over the years, material from particularly treasured courses I took as a student,  research for academic articles long since published,  ideas for books not read,  projects never launched.

I had already wrenched myself away from boxes and boxes of this stuff.  This was the distillation  of all that torturous weeding process.

My crummy metal filing cabinets were sacrificed on the altar of expediency and the knowledge that new housing would be substantially smaller.   After all we were downsizing. 

I was really bushwhacked by how horribly upset I was when there was no cabinet to hold this aspect of my identity.   Where were my ideas, my life’s work,  going to live if not in those battered, garage-sale-quality file cabinets?  What would happen to them?   What would I do?   Who will I be?

This may all sound crazy.  I guess it is a bit,  but  I really think this aspect of my work life

was and is much more central to my identity than I realized.  My file cabinet and its contents  contribute to what makes me feel whole, integrated, and worthy.  Even if I never look at another piece of paper in those files their presence affirms me in a way that I really need.  Still.

I think its worth thinking about what there is in our lives that fulfills this role.  Sure there are our core people that play this role, spouse, children, grandchildren, extended family, good friends. And then there is art in all of its expressions that fulfills this function.  Even pets. 

What is it for you?