Tag : Relationships

Our Wake-Up Attitude is Pre-Determined

Posted by docapc at 7:08 pm

I was listening to a client this morning tell me that every day when she awakens her first thoughts are always anxious. She immediately thinks of the problems she must face. Her tension is visible in the mirror as she washes her face and her perspective has already become narrowed as anxiety produces worry. Worry limits her ability to view problems objectively which in turn causes a panicky state as she walks out the door to face the day. 

                                              How Come I’m so Negative?

I asked my client how she was awakened as a child. “Oh my God is was horrible, my mother would try to be kind for a few minutes but sooner or later she would start with all this tension, telling us were already late, we have to hurry and eat, she would be grabbing clothes out of the closet and talking so fast I just wanted to hide under the pillows”.

    Rita’s mom was chronically late, relatively unprepared for the day herself, and usually worried she would be late for work so she unintentionally passed her anxious, worrisome ways onto her children as their eyes first saw daybreak. Rita learned from this habitual pattern that each day ahead should be approached very carefully, something was going to go wrong and you should always be prepared. This worry made her mind speed, and her ability to calm herself was non-existent. She was prescribed Ritalin in those days because her teachers thought her concentration was poor, her ability to attend and focus seemed to be neurologically programmed, and medication was seen as the answer to this dilemma. Needless to say Rita never realized in her teens that she was not necessarily a child with ADD, but was rather a child being programmed for worry and negativity.

                                           Can Worry be changed to Optimism?

  The answer is yes, but not without hard work. The first step is to identify, as Rita has, the origin of this conditioned way to beginning the day. If we were awakened to an environment of worry, anxiety, neglect, inattention, anger, irritation or any other negative emotional state we are carrying that habitual behavior with us today. We need to be very focused to turn our old embedded thinking pattern around so we can begin each day with an open, appreciative attitude.

  Rita is a single mom, waking her 8 year old daughter with the tension she herself brings into the world every day. She then gets irritated with her daughter, just as her mother did with her, when she doesn’t obey her commands immediately. She starts to worry about being late for work, about forgetting something like her daughters lunch etc. When this tension filled process ends she is on her way to work in a state of mind that assures difficulty focusing, difficulty remembering and difficulty being able to perceive with an expanded view.

    I asked Rita what she hoped would have been different in her own family experience. “ I wish my mom could have been affectionate, hugged me in my bed, a little kiss, soft words easing me into the day, I just wished she could have made me feel secure, made me feel like everything would be ok, sent me off with a smile rather than with that worried look of hers”.

                                              Changing a Habit means Changing Behavior

 I could have told Rita to exercise, mediate and eat nutriously to start her day, all valuable means to calmness. However Rita’s longings gave her the answers she was looking for, the most important variable to change. If she begins doing what she wished for she will not only change her daughter’s story but in the process she will change her own. We change by doing; it must be an active process. It is never easy; Rita will have to train herself to approach her daughter differently every day for some time before it will feel natural. One thing I know: if this new beginning makes Rita and her daughter happy it will continue and become a natural way of being.

                                                       Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, Ed.D., Ph.D.

Matters of the Heart aren’t Rational

Posted by docapc at 7:10 pm

       When I was studying at a psychoanalytic institute many years ago I heard the saying “we all marry parts of our mother and father”. At the time being a single man I thought this idea was a bit extreme. Now after 30 years of treating couples and from my own personal experience I can say it is not so farfetched. Of course it stands to reason that we are attracted to what is familiar, particularly familiar behavior. People often wonder why they pick people to love who ultimately present them with the same conflictual issues they experienced in their families. It seems paradoxical but in fact it makes good sense. We return to the scene of the crime whenever we have not resolved old issues, whenever we don’t understand how our emotions regarding love developed.

   Babies learn to love their parents without knowing if they are beautiful, handsome, intelligent, rich or poor. It is not an intellectual exercise. The memories of these early experiences, when we are cognitively not able to discern what appropriate behavior is and what it is not, are recorded deep in our psyche without our awareness. We remember experiences based on feel far more than experiences based on fact.

                                             But Love Should Make Sense!

    Intelligent people often become disturbed because they falsely believe that because they are intellectually quite capable they should be able to pick the right love partner. Not so I am afraid. Bill Clinton by all accounts is quite intelligent, has a highly developed capacity for empathy, yet he had an affair with an intern in the white house. We all know quite capable people who seem to make ridiculous choices in love relationships. When we fall in love all reason goes out the window. Why? Because matters of the heart are not governed by reason. Until we understand the story we created in our minds about ourselves and love early in life we are governed by those initial experiences.

                                              Returning to the Scene of the Crime

     Let me give you an example. Recently I began working with a woman in her mid-thirties who was referred to me because her marriage was falling apart. She called shortly after her husband was arrested for a DUI, driving under the influence. She is an attractive, intelligent woman who one would think would have been able to choose a good life partner. Marie’s husband by all accounts is an active alcoholic. The irony that troubles her most is that when she met Paul she was determined to pick someone unlike her father. Her dad, who she loves dearly, is also an alcoholic. She has tried to rescue him throughout her life; he has never accepted treatment, refused to go to AA and to this day remains active and a constant worry for Marie. So why would she return to the scene of the crime if alcoholism caused her so much pain?

                                              Matters of the Heart Bring us Back in Time

   We return to our past behavioral patterns that were emotionally hard wired if we have never worked on understanding our story and resolved past conflicts. Today Marie realizes she denied the extent of Paul’s drinking because unconsciously she was returning to the past in an effort to emerge with a different result. She could never facilitate her father becoming sober but with her rescue mentality she felt, and I accent “felt”, she could finally be effective in saving a man in distress. She had always been the one trying to help her dad, and even today she is the only one of three sisters who remains in contact with her dad.

                                      Everyone has a Unique Love Story

   Marie’s story is fairly straightforward and not complicated to understand. However many of us have more complicated stories that result in confusion in terms of who we choose to love. Make sure you spend time getting to know yourself in relationships with others before you make love choices that could bring you back in time in an unfortunate way. It’s complicated for sure but when you’re in empathic relationships with rational others, when your able to give and receive feedback openly we are all in a position to learn a great deal about the story we carry forward to new people.

        If you are interested in learning more about this subject please read chapter 7 in The Curse of the Capable, Learning to Read Between the Lines-Intimacy.

                                                Arthur P. Ciaramicoli, Ed.D., Ph.D.

Image Love

Posted by docapc at 4:16 pm

     Performance Addiction is the belief that perfecting appearance and achieving status will secure love, happiness and respect. It is an irrational belief system hardwired early in life and reinforced by cultural expectations, especially American cultural expectations.

     As a result Performance Addicts have great difficulty maintaining intimate relationships. None of us fall in love with a real person initially; we fall in love with an image. In the obsession and compulsion of romantic passion we escape from time, we escape from responsibilities and the binding and blinding effects of sex delude us.

   The binding part is pure physical attraction-lust, raging hormones, and sexual excitement. The blinding component is a screen of illusion obscuring the love object, the partner who is the target of sexual devotion. He or she is not perceived as a real person. The partner is a source of escape and ecstasy, an object of desire. This is what I call Image Love.

                                          Love’s Illusions

     The emotional part of the brain has a powerful influence on relationships. If you have Performance Addiction some of the characteristics that attract you to a person are probably written in stone in your brains emotional center.

    Given the importance of achievement to performance addicts it’s not surprising that sex itself has become a performance issue in many marriages. Expectations of sexual performance are set high. What if you can’t meet those expectations? The problem can often be resolved through understanding your unique belief system. A negative story created early in life can drive performance and create unrealistic expectations of yourself and others.

     Sexual intimacy is an expression of uncritical affection. How can you be uncritical if you are perfecting your own performance while judging and evaluating your partner?

                                      What Is Love Really?

Performance addiction can be unrelenting in its demands for comparison, measurement, and competition-and none of these is a component of love. Loving is quite different than being “being in love”. “In love” demands only brief acquaintance to establish emotional connection. Loving derives from sustained intimacy, the prolonged journey of knowing another’s soul. If you have Performance Addiction you may find it very difficult to make the transition from being in love to loving. Whenever you lose faith in the promise of relationships, you are likely to substitute performance measures and become obsessively driven and isolated.

                                     Loving a Real Person

         If you and your spouse/lover were meeting for the first time today, would you choose the same partner again? In other words, given what you know now, when image love is long gone, would you make the same choice? And if not, do you have clear reasons as to why you would make a different choice?

        Your response reveals a great deal about how you feel about yourself and your current relationship. No love relationship is an easy road leading to ever deepening commitment. The level of empathy shared with a spouse tells a great deal about where your relationship has been and is likely headed.

                                       Daring to Meet in the Middle

        Initially we are drawn to each other to make us more complete people. We are attracted to an aspect of the other’s personality that is under-developed in ourselves and very developed in our partner.  As we become more interested in developing the skill we admire we can move past image love. Achieving that balance, as pragmatic and un-romantic as it may seem, just might be the key to lasting love.

      In the final analysis, true love is dependent on our ability to place relationships with those close to us above our quest for image and status.

Healing from an Affair

Posted by docapc at 8:52 pm

Contrary to what many believe recovering from an affair can actually make a marriage stronger. It is unquestionably a devastating experience that takes much time and work to overcome but I have witnessed several marriages that have reached a deeper level of love when both parties learn a great deal from the pain caused by infidelity.

Of course this positive outcome does not always occur. If the individual who has had the affair is not deeply regretful and willing to have the courage to absorb the anger, frustration and pain of his or her spouse there is little hope for resolution. A poor outcome is quite likely when the cheater continues to blame his or her spouse. Let’s face it, there is no excuse. Many people are miserable in their marriages and they seek help, they tell their spouse how unhappy they are and they open the door to doing the work necessary to form a deeper bond.

We all become disappointed in our long term relationships at times, it is perfectly natural. In our fast paced lives we often take each other for granted, store resentments and then if we don’t know how to communicate directly and honestly we find ourselves drifting into despair.

I had a wonderful experience with a couple earlier this year after an affair. The husband, a very successful businessman, was over-worked, stressed to the limit, feeling unappreciated by his wife and children and one night, late in the office he and his administrative aid ended up kissing. From there an affair began that had an anti-depressant effect on his mood, he was feeling younger, more desired, and of course she listened to his woos about his marriage with undivided attention. Eventually her husband, feeling suspicious of her late work hours, checked her phone messages and was able to retrieve text messages that were filled with sexual talk and love statements. Everything unraveled thereafter and when I met my patient he was living in a hotel feeling confused, sexually attached to his young lover but feeling tremendous disappointment in himself for his actions. He didn’t know if he loved his wife, he felt so much excitement with the younger woman and could not resist talking to her regardless of the fact that his business and marriage were failing.

Even though he is quite bright his ability to express directly was very limited. He could manage work conflicts but when it came to expressing his deeper feelings to his wife, friends, children he felt very inept. He grew up in a home where achievement was a stringent requirement. His father, a surgeon, and his mother, a divorce attorney, showed little warmth to their children or to each other. When his father died he felt little emotion, his mother did not shed a tear and re-married 12 months later.

As we returned to what I call the scene of the crime we discovered how distorted his views were of success and in particular of intimacy. He learned early that to gain love you must achieve at all costs. He was worn out, somewhat depressed with his existence despite his affluence and he found a way to stimulate himself out of the monotony of his life through the affair.

We tend to reenact the roles we saw in our parents marriages without much awareness. If we received little empathy growing up we don’t really know how to share with others in a deeper, more meaningful way. My patient longed for closeness but if it didn’t come easily he retreated into work, never letting his wife in, or allowing her to understand his disappointment. His views of mature intimacy were extremely limited. Most importantly he began to realize how he over-rated his closeness to his lover; the excitement of new sex gave him relief in an addictive fashion. It wasn’t based on truly knowing another person.

Over time he felt less and less attachment to her as he and his wife discussed openly the disappointments they had in each other and with my help, we discovered the negative stories about themselves that both brought into the marriage. They gradually increased their understanding of each other’s histories, their empathy for each other grew and at the same time their feelings of love were uncovered and deepened. She still has a long way to go before she regains the trust she previously had but the process is evolving.

Today my client participates in one of my group coaching sessions; he is most respected by members as a person who tries valiantly to understand others and himself. An experience he had never witnessed in his own home. He has apologized to his children and he has become an emotionally involved dad rather than a dad always trying to motivate his children to achieve more and more. His wife recently commented that he is actually fun, not as serious and intense as in the past. He is no longer exclusively pre-occupied with achieving and performing to win love. He has learned that the most important ability for sustained success in love and in work is to be able to employ empathy to listen and understand others. In the process we learn more and more about ourselves. So today a man who sought a secret affair for solace can’t wait to go home, play with his children and actually give his wife a real, passionate kiss rather than the perfunctory peck he gave in previous years.

He is liberated internally by increasing his ability to relate assertively, even when he is about to express dissatisfaction. We all need to continually practice expressing when we are in conflict, if we don’t the emotions won’t go away, they come out sideways. Thus the formula for being vulnerable to an affair.

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