Archive for January, 2010

Newer Entries »

Book Review: THE LAST DAY OF MY LIFE by Jim Moret

Thursday, January 7th, 2010

41buGMRUv8L._SL500_AA240_We all have bad days. But when that bad day involves suicidal thoughts, psychologists prefer to label it clinical depression. That was exactly what happened to CNN and Inside Edition anchor, Jim Moret. Like many of us during the recession, he faced some days of career crisis, financial stress, and personal relationship anxiety that, when bundled together, propelled him to review his own life-insurance policy and determine that he was worth more dead than alive.

“The Last Day of My Life” begins with that chilling anecdote and then proceeds through a review course of one life. Jim’s story is one of relationships, a child used as a pawn in a Hollywood divorce battle, the loss as a boy of two best friends, and finally, it meanders into human triumph. The successful relationships that include long-term marriage (not one without bumps), his three healthy and happy children, and his deep personal adult friendships. Throughout the book, he prompts the reader to ask themselves what would they do if they had only twenty four hours to live.

“Should you finally forgive the one who hurt you the most and would you find the courage to apologize to the person you wronged? Who would you remember as your life’s greatest love? Could you recognize what you are truly grateful for?”

I have actually met Jim Moret a couple times in my life but would never have known his depth, had he not been brave enough to write this honest, touching book. It is part memoir, part self-help book and a reminder to us all that no matter our career or our circumstance, we are all humans stumbling and making difficult choices everyday. This book is the great equalizer. We all have had anxiety during the recession. We have all lost loved ones. We have all had anxious moments as parents. But Jim, though his own moving prose, reminds us that relationships are everything, and certainly worth living for. Jim, you certainly made the right choice on “The Last Day of Your Life” and we are all the beneficiaries!

Posted in Celebrity Love | 1 Comment »

Do You Know How to Fight Fair?

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

couple-arguingWhen couples tell me they have emotional intimacy I often ask them about their fighting style. If they tell me they don’t ever fight I am quite assured that they don’t have true intimacy. When two separate people join together for common life goals, clashes are inevitable. But conflict alone is not an indicator of a relationship’s health. The better barometer is the nature of repair. How do couples make up after a fight? With apologies, contrition, consoling and even laughter? Or is the aftermath of anger marked by silence, distance and a new rule to never speak about the subject of the fight?

Learning how to have healthy conflict is crucial to having emotional intimacy. But what exactly is healthy conflict?

Well, for starters, fighting fair means using words that identify your feelings rather than blame and point fingers. Easier said than done. Even though psychotherapists stress that we should focus on our feelings rather than level accusations, even the most educated of us resort to blaming sentences that begin with the word “YOU!” That alone doesn’t indicate a “bad fight” unless it is also followed by vicious name calling. Name calling is a bad sign. It indicates that one partner has temporarily forgotten the other’s identity and has substituted it by a skewed stereotype. It’s hard to drop those evil caricatures once our minds have created them. If you see him as a loser and tell him over and over, you are also rewiring your brain to believe this is true. One other thing to consider is the amount of voice time alloted each arguer. If the yelling is terribly lop-sided and one partner gets more air time, then something else is going on. Either intimidation by the loud mouth, or an emotional retreat by the other. Both things are not fighting fair.

As injurious as a fight can be, the biggest determinant of whether it is a “good fight” is the way repair is made afterward. There are many unique ways that couples come back into relationship after a fight. Notes left by the morning coffee pot, flowers at the office, and my favorite — off-the-charts make-up sex. But the important thing to remember is that love and respect can return.

Dangerous aftermaths include icy treatment for days on end. Little jabs thrown into unrelated conversations. Passive aggressive, retaliatory behavior. And worst of all, a fight that morphs into other fights that get flooded with material from old injuries. “Remember the time you…..”

The best way to learn to have “good fights” is to establish ground rules before any fighting begins. Men love rules of the game. It reminds them of sports and makes fighting a healthy challenge rather than a confusing battle with a scary, invisible opponent. Some ground rules might include, no name calling, no stonewalling, no fighting in front of the kids, no going to bed mad, and most importantly, scheduled make-up time the next day. It is also important to understand that each person has their own fighting style that must be respected. A man who walks out the door for brisk walk during an argument may not be rejecting you, he may be protecting you from a shift from words to action. Some people need a time-out to regroup and think during a fight. The time to talk about fighting styles, of course, is when you are not fighting.

Studies on couples conflict style show that the two most important ingredients to healthy fighting are empathy and humor. When you are feeling unheard, disrespected, or on the losing end of a power struggle, try as hard as you can to put yourself in your partner’s schools. Imagine you are on the other side of the dynamic battling with the likes of YOU. Best of all, is to find comedy in your tragedy. If you can muster the brain power, step outside your fight and imagine you are a fly on the wall. Reframe your dialogue as a script from a Saturday Night Live skit or a prime-time sit-com. Now look how silly you sound!

The most important ingredient during an conflict is the knowledge that love can return and that spirited negotiation is all part of building intimacy. When I once commented to my favorite bickering couple that I notice that there is love behind their arguments, the husband winked at me and said, “Not love. Sport.” Even in conflict there can be a bond and a secret agreement to respect each other.

Tags: , ,
Posted in Family, Relationships | No Comments »

Do You Know How To Fight Fair?

Wednesday, January 6th, 2010

couple-arguingWhen couples tell me they have emotional intimacy I often ask them about their fighting style. If they tell me they don’t ever fight I am quite assured that they don’t have true intimacy. When two separate people join together for common life goals, clashes are inevitable. But conflict alone is not an indicator of a relationship’s health. The better barometer is the nature of repair. How do couples make up after a fight? With apologies, contrition, consoling and even laughter? Or is the aftermath of anger marked by silence, distance and a new rule to never speak about the subject of the fight?

Learning how to have healthy conflict is crucial to having emotional intimacy. But what exactly is healthy conflict?

Well, for starters, fighting fair means using words that identify your feelings rather than blame and point fingers. Easier said than done. Even though psychotherapists stress that we should focus on our feelings rather than level accusations, even the most educated of us resort to blaming sentences that begin with the word “YOU!” That alone doesn’t indicate a “bad fight” unless it is also followed by vicious name calling. Name calling is a bad sign. It indicates that one partner has temporarily forgotten the other’s identity and has substituted it by a skewed stereotype. It’s hard to drop those evil caricatures once our minds have created them. If you see him as a loser and tell him over and over, you are also rewiring your brain to believe this is true. One other thing to consider is the amount of voice time alloted each arguer. If the yelling is terribly lop-sided and one partner gets more air time, then something else is going on. Either intimidation by the loud mouth, or an emotional retreat by the other. Both things are not fighting fair.

As injurious as a fight can be, the biggest determinant of whether it is a “good fight” is the way repair is made afterward. There are many unique ways that couples come back into relationship after a fight. Notes left by the morning coffee pot, flowers at the office, and my favorite — off-the-charts make-up sex. But the important thing to remember is that love and respect can return.

Dangerous aftermaths include icy treatment for days on end. Little jabs thrown into unrelated conversations. Passive aggressive, retaliatory behavior. And worst of all, a fight that morphs into other fights that get flooded with material from old injuries. “Remember the time you…..”

The best way to learn to have “good fights” is to establish ground rules before any fighting begins. Men love rules of the game. It reminds them of sports and makes fighting a healthy challenge rather than a confusing battle with a scary, invisible opponent. Some ground rules might include, no name calling, no stonewalling, no fighting in front of the kids, no going to bed mad, and most importantly, scheduled make-up time the next day. It is also important to understand that each person has their own fighting style that must be respected. A man who walks out the door for brisk walk during an argument may not be rejecting you, he may be protecting you from a shift from words to action. Some people need a time-out to regroup and think during a fight. The time to talk about fighting styles, of course, is when you are not fighting.

Studies on couples conflict style show that the two most important ingredients to healthy fighting are empathy and humor. When you are feeling unheard, disrespected, or on the losing end of a power struggle, try as hard as you can to put yourself in your partner’s schools. Imagine you are on the other side of the dynamic battling with the likes of YOU. Best of all, is to find comedy in your tragedy. If you can muster the brain power, step outside your fight and imagine you are a fly on the wall. Reframe your dialogue as a script from a Saturday Night Live skit or a prime-time sit-com. Now look how silly you sound!

The most important ingredient during an conflict is the knowledge that love can return and that spirited negotiation is all part of building intimacy. When I once commented to my favorite bickering couple that I notice that there is love behind their arguments, the husband winked at me and said, “Not love. Sport.” Even in conflict there can be a bond and a secret agreement to respect each other.

Posted in Family, Relationships | No Comments »

Talk is Cheap but Feelings are Priceless – How to Use Emotional Communication

Tuesday, January 5th, 2010

couple talking8-saidaonlineHaving emotional language skills is crucial to not only the relationships we have with others, but also the relationship we have with ourself. If we can’t name our feelings and share them, we are a long way off from being able to process them and use them in a healthful way. Having an honest emotional vocabulary is crucial to emotional intimacy, though this communication art is easier for some of us than others.

There’s a joke I make about men. I like to say that most of them act like they’re afraid to say the “F” word — FEELINGS. And  I’m not totally off base here. Men and boys are socialized to express less emotional communication and I think the are also biologically wired to have less emotional awareness than women. There’s even a diagnosis is the therapist’s bible of mental disorders, the DSM, called Alexithymia, which basically means an inability to connect feelings with words. In recent years a Harvard professor, Dr. Ron Levant came up with the phrase “normative male alexithymia” to describe how American males are culturally conditioned  to repress their vulnerable and caring emotions, causing them to become underdeveloped in emotional expressiveness.

But a fear of talking about feelings is an equal opportunity afliction. Since feminism gave way to the no-rules relationship revolution, an age where emotions are less and less risked, many women have followed the example of men. I would venture to say that women’s greatest assets — an awareness of emotions and verbal skills — have been abandoned by too many of our gender.

The solution? To delve into the the squeamish sea of honest communication that focusses on personal feelings rather than points fingers at others.  One of the reasons this is a challenge for some is that this important skill was neither taught nor modeled by our parents. Parents of the 1960′s more often practiced critical parenting rather than emotionally intimate parenting. Critical parenting sounds like this: Johnny you are a messy boy! Look at that disgusting room. No TV for you, bad boy! Emotionally Intimate parenting sounds like this: Johnny, I feel angry when I have to clean up your mess and I want you to feel proud of your room, so I’m going to help you become neater by saying a clean room means a reward of TV. See the focus on feelings, in this case anger and pride, with a positive reward instead of shame as the behavior shaper.

So, assuming that you were parented in the more common, critical way, here’s a crash course in how to use emotional language to grow intimacy in all your relationships. First of all, in every communication, try to identify your own feelings and express them as a reaction to someone’s behavior rather than an assault on their behavior. People get less defensive when they hear the words, “I feel” than when they hear “You are.”

Having trouble labeling that uneasy feeling in your stomach? Here’s Dr. Walsh’s handy dictionary of the most common feelings people express. I like to call them the twenty power words of emotional intimacy. Next time you tell a story to someone, add your emotional experience by saying “I feel,” followed by one of these words: Nervous, Happy, Sad, Angry, Disappointed, Hopeful, Ignored, Embarrassed, Envious, Jealous, Lonely, Excited, Surprised, Proud, Scared, Guilty, Aroused, Uncomfortable, Rejected, Loved.

This kind of language will open the door to the most tender parts of your psyche and help you become more accessible and ultimately more lovable. It will also model skills for others, including your kids. Yes, even your sons. Using emotional language is a bit terrifying at first, but trust me, it can enrich all your relationships. “I feel” quite confident about this.

Posted in Relationships | No Comments »

Newer Entries »