Posts Tagged ‘Psychology’

Your Unconscious — Look whose driving your car!

Thursday, September 10th, 2009

10424_152186811833_115788661833_3449596_98040_aHow many times have you asked yourself, “Why did I do that?” I should have learned that doesn’t work.

I have a favorite metaphor to explain how unconscious processes drive our behavior. Imagine that you have grown up, away from your troubled childhood, and have created your dream adult life. You are in the back of a limo. You have cash. And you look great. The only problem is the limo driver. You can’t see his/her face and no matter how often you order them to take you to the finest restaurant and most beautiful mansion, that darn driver keeps turning that car around and going back to some dirty bird restaurant you ate at as a kid. And rather than taking you to a mansion, your driver keeps pulling up to the house you grew up in. Urrgh!!!

Whether you are a layperson, like most screen writers, and use the term “sub”-conscious, or have training in Psychology and like to look smart by saying, “un”-conscious, the meaning is the same. We all have early life feelings that are out of our awareness, yet drive most of our conscious life.

So, are we a slave to our unconscious, or can we break the shackles of early life programming and think, feel, and behave as an adult? The answer is yes, but not without help. If we’re super lucky, we have a love relationship that both contains us and challenges us to grow. The rest of us pay for therapists to do that.

Sigmund Freud may have been a victim of his Victorian era, but he was a genius when it came to understanding the unconscious. He believed that by helping the unconscious become conscious, people can be relieved from psychic pain and bad behaviors. He also believed that dreams are the “royal road to the unconscious” in that they contain “pre-conscious” material. Not that dreams are literal. But that dreams are feelings with pictures. My advice: If you are choosing a therapist, ask them if they do dream therapy. There is plenty of material in the nocturnal theater of our minds.

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Women Who Orgasm While Breast Feeding

Friday, September 4th, 2009

When I was pregnant with my first child, I was hosting a show for TLC called “How’d They Do That?” And everyday my mind was asking the same question about pregnancy and breast feeding. All my female co-workers became a petri-dish for me as I probed their minds for information about what the heck was going on with my body.

I was most nervous about successfully breast feeding. Frankly, I had no idea how the two orbs with nerve endings directly connected so some pleasurable southern region, could be converted into a cafeteria. One morning, as I sat in the make-up chair with my middle bursting with new life, I posed a seemingly crazy question. Could a woman have an orgasm while breast feeding?

There was a pause. There was a sly smile from the make-up artist. The hairdresser hooted and hollered. Others just laughed their asses off. But I didn’t take my eyes off the make-up artist.

Later, when we were alone, I asked her again. She smiled again. “It’s more of a sensuous experience,” she said, “not a sexual one. It feels warm and cuddly and pleasurable, but it’s different from sex. If you had an orgasm, it wouldn’t be on purpose.”

Years later, I thought of this conversation. I was in one of my human sexuality classes in my Psychology Ph.D program, and we were learning that the nerve endings in our body can respond to physical stimulation even if our brain is not on board. In this case we were talking about rape, and the confusing feelings that can happen to victims of rape because during this horrific crime they sometimes experience a spontaneous orgasm. What an awful thought.

When my first daughter was finally born (pried out after 42 weeks in the oven,) breast feeding was anything but pleasurable. I like to call the newborn phase of breast feeding, the Vampire weeks, as that tiny, violent, sucking machine increases milk supply. But after a few months, my make-up artist was right. Totally pleasurable. But a far cry from sexual arousal.

As I continued to nurse, I read far and deep into the benefits of breast feeding for mother and child. One thing I learned is that prolonged breast feeding can help reduce your chances of getting breast cancer because it stops your periods and the monthly assault of estrogens on your breasts. That was enough for me, since my mother had died of breast cancer. I continued on. I also learned that often babies suckle for comfort rather than hunger and there are psychological benefits to this suckling. That sounded good too.

You saw the title of this article, so you know where I’m going here. I never, ever, mentally connected a breast feeding experience with a sexual experience. The mental boundary was so great, that I was convinced it was impossible. Then one night, while I was sleeping with my baby in my bed, I had one of those fabulous dreams that if a guy had it, it would have involved moisture. You’ve heard about them. I woke up from the dream to find that my tiny vampire had been doing some nocturnal suckling while I slept. Let me tell you, the experience totally freaked me out. And that was it. Co-sleeping bed beside me after that. I needed that bundle an arms length away.

Later, in another human sexuality class, I asked my professor about this experience. She confirmed that it is possible and probably quite common, although people have feelings of shame about it. Pleasurable breast feeding was probably one of nature’s ways to make a survival behavior attractive. She also told me that many women quit breast feeding for this reason. For some woman the feelings of an infant suckling can be so pleasurable that women feel that it is somehow wrong. That made me feel sad too. Breastfeeding is not pedophilia. Nature brought mommies and babies together for one of the most physically pleasurable relationships on earth. Let them suckle and do enjoy it ladies. It is such a short period in both your lives. And if your body responds without your consent, relax. Just buy a co-sleeper, side rider bed.

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Cope with September Mom Syndrome (SMS)

Sunday, August 30th, 2009

september-mommy-syndrome-250I don’t know about you, but I dread the month of September. Saying goodbye to the lazy days of summer where kids can sleep in and stay up late is hard to do. Last night I watched “Sleeping Beauty” at 11 PM with a 6-year-old! It’s morning now, and my little sleeping beauties are snoring away while I get some writing done. September will be a different story.

September means back-to-work for mommies. Lunch packing, carpools, music lessons, club sports, homework (where the math sometimes escapes us), and firm media control. And, don’t forget your responsibility to volunteer at your child’s school(s) — from room parent duties to bake sales to getting ready for that darned silent auction. Yuck. The real world of mommy life is fast approaching. I remember one year when I was simultaneously a room parent, president of the parents’ association, and, oh, I also helped develop the P.E. program. I was so crazed that I learned to walk across the schoolyard with my head down, because I was approached by so many wonderful, though tiring, parents who had questions or needed direction.

We do it all because we love our kids and because that’s what being a good parent is all about. If we’re lucky, we have an evolved guy to pitch in, but from what I hear from my married friends, the burden of raising kids still mostly falls on the troops of mommies across America who are doing their best to create good employees and entrepreneurs rather than more expensive prisoners. So, with September just around the corner, here are a few tips to get you through SMS:

1. Plan ahead. Start the bedtime schedule at least one week before school starts. Yep, that’s today. Sleep experts say that jet-lagged travelers must take at least one day to recover from each hour of time change. So, if your kids normally hit the sack at 8 PM during the school year, and during the summer it is more like midnight, they’ll need nearly a week to adjust.

2. Work out a fool-proof carpool with lots of back-up plans. If, like me, you’ll have two kids going to two different schools, you’ll need the village to get them there. Make plans right away to pinch hit for others who may have to cancel.

3. Have your children lay out clothes for the entire first week (or every week). No morning arguments allowed. If you’re unlucky and don’t have a uniform policy, the morning routine can be delayed by a bedroom fashion show. Nip that one in the bud by buying extra-large ziplock bags. On Sunday, have your kids stuff five of them with outfits, including socks and underwear. Mark each bag with the day of the week, using a black Sharpie. Make a firm rule that kids cannot change their mind once they’ve chosen on Sunday.

4. Make a bath and hair schedule. Some kids, especially the athletes, bathe every day. My delicate girls, with their “mixed chicks” coarse hair, only wash hair once or twice a week, but bathe three times a week. We have a Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday policy so there are no arguments about baths, and I can schedule my commitment to the lengthy hair-combing event.

5. Make homework, reading, and media rules before school starts, and write them on a white board in the kitchen for everyone to see. I usually get quite severe in September — no media at all during the week — and then loosen up by Thanksgiving if I see good behavior. I like to keep something to give as rewards, and a little TV usually does the trick.

6. When you do finally wander on campus, volunteer carefully. It is important that we all do something for our schools. Studies show that kids whose parents are involved in the school do better academically, even if they don’t interact directly with their child. It’s like the child has a sense that they are being watched by their mom’s network of other volunteering parents. However, the exuberance over the new school year causes some parents to overextend themselves in September and then drop the ball later. It’s better to choose wisely. And choose something you really like to do, so it feels more like a pleasure than a chore.

7. Finally, take care of yourself. Go to bed early. Take time to shower and go to the gym. During that crazy September when I once over-volunteered, I even went more than a week without washing my own hair! If you can help it, don’t fall victim to the baseball hat and ponytail. It’s a dead giveaway. Remember the flight attendant rule: put your own oxygen mask on first.

And, most of all, don’t compare yourself to other mommies. There will always be a more organized Mom with cleaner kids and more elaborate science projects. When you’re feeling overwhelmed, reach out to the mommy village for help. People feel good when they help others.

And finally, know that all mothers make mistakes, and it is through our imperfections that our children grow. I once rushed my kids to school late, and in my haste, tuned out my daughters’ “But Mommy….” Did I feel like a fool when I returned home to a ringing phone call from the school office. I had sent my second grader to school with no shoes!!!

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Jaycee’s Abductor. Is Rape Natural?

Friday, August 28th, 2009

5532_144390991833_115788661833_3339069_5427959_aThe registered sex offender who abducted Jaycee Lee Dugard and kept her captive for eighteen years had a prior record of rape. According to some experts, a rapist “gene” is something that may have helped evolution, that is, if men could procreate with both willing and unwilling women, it indicated fitness. And in doing so, they would also be passing on the gene that provided a penchant for forced sex.

This theory was expounded In a 2000 book co-authored by biologist Randy Thornhill, called “A Natural History of Rape: Biological Bases of Sexual Coercion.” But this year, in a Newsweek article, the debunking of the notion began. According to Newsweek’s Sharon Begley, Anthropologist, Kim Hill at Arizona State University, had a hunch that sloppy projections had been made about the fitness of rape. Although Anthropologists still study a fewhunter/gatherer societies today, few have ever seen a rape. That doesn’t mean the gene wasn’t selected for increased reproduction though.

Hill and some colleagues decided to do a calculation using an example of the Aché, a traditional hunter/gatherer tribe living in Paraguay. Using an example of a 25-year-old Aché, they mathematically projected how rape would affect the evolutionary journey of one male. They basically calculated a rapist’s costs and benefits and the likelihood that his genes would survive. They were also generous with their calculations — assuming that the subject would only rape women of child-bearing age, when in actuality, women of all ages are raped. The calculations included a demerit point system — the man would lose fitness points for things like getting killed by a rape victim’s relative, having the child abandoned by the rape victim, the likelihood that conception would happen at all based on a woman’s reproductive cycle, and even if being a rapist in a small town would affect the likelihood that others would share their food.

And…. drum roll please…. the final math, from Begley’s June, 2009, Newsweek article:

“Rape increases a man’s evolutionary fitness based on the chance that a rape victim is fertile (15 percent), that she will conceive (a 7 percent chance), that she will not miscarry (90 percent) and that she will not let the baby die even though it is the child of rape (90 percent). Hill then ran the numbers on the reproductive costs and benefits of rape. It wasn’t even close: the cost exceeds the benefit by a factor of 10. ‘That makes the likelihood that rape is an evolved adaptation extremely low,’ says Hill. ‘It just wouldn’t have made sense for men in the Pleistocene to use rape as a reproductive strategy, so the argument that it’s preprogrammed into us doesn’t hold up.’ ”

Yep, from the mouths of scientists — if you are a rapist, you can’t blame your genes fellas. It’s your own damn fault. Well, actually it’s probably the fault of some receptive biology mixed with a bad childhood. But it’s your own damn fault if you fail to seek help.

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