Waiting at the Surface

Sometimes being a parent to an older teen is like being in a row boat waiting for your scuba diving child to come back up for air. We wait patiently. We can't go down with them but we are there, ready when they surface. It's risky. You can't see where they are going, but it's a fools errand to dive after them. You don't have an air tank. They could be anywhere. But, they will come up for air some time and when they do you are there ready to receive, love, and guide. Then they dive again. And you wait, again.

This metaphor is not perfect and certainly doesn't pertain to younger children. Our older children, our young adults, are increasingly making their own decisions, wise or unwise. Hopefully we have been parenting them to prepare them for this time. We are still their parents, they are still in our home, but (whether we like it or not) we are no longer in control. It's tempting to pull the 'you're still my child' card. No one could blame you. But it's largely an exercise in futility. The secret is patience and timing. At some point they will come to you and genuinely want your input and guidance. You are close to launching them (there's another less than perfect metaphor) and the air in their tank is limited. They will come up to breathe at some point. Wait patiently.

Mindfulness Practice and Parenting

http://www.pbs.org/thebuddha/blog/2010/mar/17/mindfulness-2-minutes-chade-meng-tan/

Check this site out. Mindfulness, speaking for myself, has been a major contributor to my own flawed quest for more patience, attentiveness and compassion toward myself and others. This piece offers a great way to integrate mindfulness practice with everyday parenting. Give it a try.

Here's one mindfulness practice I do with my clients (including my teen clients):

• Sit in a relaxed but dignified position
• Bring your attention to your breath
• Your body breathes all on its own, so all we are going to do is notice our body doing its work
• As your body breaths in, say to yourself 'Breathing In'
• As your body breaths out, say to yourself 'Breathing Out'
• Bringing attention to the automatic, the mundane, is a great way to expand our general ability to pay attention to the moment, as it arises, without judgement
• Your mind will wander; that is totally natural and not to be avoided; the goal here is to notice when your mind wanders.
• When you notice your mind wandering off of your breath, gently bring your attention back to your breathing
• Do this without judgement
• The goal is not to 'not be distracted' but to notice when you are distracted and kindly bring your attention back to the present moment: breathing
• We will do this for about 4 minutes and I will let you know when we are done

Help Yourself by Helping Others

I have a client who's been dealing with a lot of changes and loss over the past year. She's a bright and very intelligent young woman and is very motivated to help herself. One strategy I deploy with clients is to help them focus on troubles other than their own.

My client was very receptive to this idea. I suggested that maybe she consider volunteering. Locally the possibilities are rich; the Mission, Vandy Children's Hospital, Food Not Bombs, Hands on Nashville etc. She said she would consider these options and even gave herself the assignment of making a choice by the next session.

She came into to her last session and told me she had made a decions: She's going to Haiti. For seven days she is going on a relief mission trip. She will be helping build temporary shelter. I was amazed. She had investigated and researched organizations going to Haiti and found a local group that had an open spot on their team. She will be sleeping in a tent and working hard every day in an environment more unlike Nashville than I can imagine. My hunch is that the symptoms she is dealing with will be absent for the week she is in Haiti.

Volunteer work, focusing on the needs of others, is not a panacea, but it is very helpful when we have become overwhelmed with our own struggles.

For anyone dealing with chronic health or mental health issues there is a built in self centered-ness that can be stultifying. Getting out of our comfort zones seeking to be of service to others, or better yet to be of service to a greater good, can be amazingly therapeutic.

WISDOM TO KNOW THE DIFFERENCE

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

The Serenity Prayer contains just about all you need to know with regards to making personal change. (If you don't want therapy then check it out, maybe you won't need therapy. Just kidding, every one needs therapy!)

The Prayer has three BIG TRUTHS.

1) The ability (or skill) to SERENELY ACCEPT what 'IS' is huge. I encourage my clients to identify their 'wishful thinking' habits. Fantasizing that 'if only things were different' is a trap and a time waster. It is a version of 'magical thinking'; cute in children but problematic in adults. Usually folks wish for something to be different in somebody else. This refusal to accept what is only keeps us stuck because it prevents us from seeing the one thing we can change; Ourselves.

2) Once we clear away the fantasy of wishful thinking about changing others we are left with looking at ourselves. Boy, that takes COURAGE! Like standing in a full length mirror, naked, without sucking in your gut (I speak from personal experience). To see what really is in ourselves is the second big task in therapy. The irony is before we CHANGE courageously we need to ACCEPT what it is we see in the mirror. THAT is ME; and THAT'S OK. In short, we need to unconditionally love ourselves, harder than it sounds.

3) 'Wisdom to Know the Difference' between what you can change and what you can't is the third major task of therapy. Inevitably what you can change is YOU and not HER or HIM. Once this nugget of TRUTH is recognized a huge amount of garbage can be wiped away, let go of, and the real issues arise. But gaining this WISDOM takes practice, patience and skills. Understanding that we all have EMOTIONAL and REASONABLE parts of our mind is an important skill (brain science is bearing this out btw). Being aware of this tendency can allow us to wait before we make decisions; giving time for our REASONABLE side to 'have a say'. Decisions made only in one or the other state of mind are often regretted. WISDOM can be gleaned when we are aware and listening to both our EMOTIONAL and REASONABLE minds. This IS NOT easy. Mystics spend years trying to achieve this perfect balance. Luckily we don't need perfection to see real progress. Mindfulness meditation is one way to work on this skill (and I teach it to just about all my clients).

God grant me the serenity
to accept the things I cannot change;
courage to change the things I can;
and wisdom to know the difference.

Be Grateful for What You Got, Give What You Can

What are we to do in the face of unmitigated tragedy like the earthquake in Haiti? For any with one empathic bone in their body (hopefully anyone reading this would qualify) the sights and sounds we witness on tv, the web and the paper can only bring the ache of shock, sadness and a sense of powerlessness. What can we do? After we come to our senses there some answers to this question.

First, give money. Give as generously as you can afford. Give to organizations with a good track record of getting resources to those who need them and who have low overhead.

Second, take stock of your blessings. We all have struggles that at times seem daunting, but Haiti puts our troubles in perspective. Give thanks.

Third, talk to your children about Haiti and what is happening in words they can understand. The realization that the world is bigger than the world they know is part of growing up. Talking about this tragedy can help build a sense of empathy for the suffering of others. At that is precious.

Fourth, if you can, think globally and act locally. Get involved.

Fifth, hug your children, hug your partner, let the people close to you know how much you love and care about them.

Here are some organizations I would recommend: Doctors Without Borders, Oxfam USA, Save the Children, Catholic Relief Services, Mercy Corp, Haiti Emergency Relief Fund, Fonkoze.org (a micro lending group based in Haiti)

New Years Resolution: CONNECTION

On the eve of the eve of a New Year I am thinking about resolutions. With my clients lately I have been using this event, admitting it's a cliche, to suggest thinking of new beginnings, renewed efforts, enriched meanings in their lives. So many of my clients are lonely and disconnected. The social worker in me wants to get them 'out there', involved, volunteering, joining the gym, hiking trails, going to 'meet ups', meditating, in a word....connecting with something bigger than themselves.

Addiction is perhaps an over used word but I do think that when we pull back, isolate, cut our selves off, we open our selves up to our 'lesser angels'. I know this is true for me and my intuition (I've done no research on this) is that it's true for others. Many of us, perhaps all of us, deal with unfillable holes in ourselves. In the attempt to fill these we can easily turn, compulsively (addictively), to all sorts of unhealthy activities. So how do we attend to our fractured, incomplete selves, without falling into the addiction trap??

So my suggested New Years Resolution for all my clients and any one who stumbles across this blog is to find a way to connect with others. There are so many ways: take a yoga class, sign up to volunteer with Nashville Cares or Hands On Nashville, go to your church, temple, mosque or whatever is your cathedral, pray, meditate, talk to your neighbors, ask a friend to train with you for the country music marathon, call an old friend you haven't spoken with in years, join a cause (political, social justice, labor, environmental), join a book club.....you get the idea.

Let 2010 be the year of CONNECTION.

Explode with Happiness

My 6 year old daughter Camille: "Daddy, how many days until Christmas?"

Me: "Three sweetie."

Camille: "Only three more days 'til I explode with happiness!"

Setting a good example for Stress Management

The most effective way for helping your teen deal with stress and anxiety is to deal with your own stress and anxiety effectively.

That means doing the following: 1) get enough sleep, with enough sleep you have the 'shock absorbers' you need to handle the normal ups and downs and frustrations of your day; 2) eat right, your body is what feels the stress and if it's not getting its fuel it will not be able to go the distance; 3) exercise regularly (see #2); 4) develop a supportive network of friends and peers; 5) schedule time for 'doing nothing', recreation, down time; and 6) nurture a meaningful spiritual life, prayer and/or mindful meditation are good practices for managing and coping with stress.

In doing these things you are setting an example for your adolescent. Teaching your child by word and example to take care of themselves, set time aside to relax, make good, supportive, friendships and manage time effectively will provide them with tools to handle what has become a very stressful time of our life. On a downer note, stress that goes unaddressed and unresolved can lead to depression. Depression in adolescents, especially older adolescents, is dangerous. Suicide is the 3rd largest killer of our teens and the 2nd largest amongst college age students.

"There do in fact exist creators, seers, sages, saints, shakers, and movers...even if they are uncommon and do not come by the dozen. And yet these very same people can at times be boring, irritating, petulant, selfish, angry or depressed. To avoid disillusionment with human nature, we must first give up our illusions about it." -- Abraham Maslow

STRESSED OUT TEENS what the research shows

I've been asked to speak to a parent group at a local high school regarding Adolescent Stress. What stresses teens out? Well according to the research done by Johns Hopkins in Baltimore there are 5 big ones:

1) school work 2) parents 3) friends' problems 4) romantic relationships and 5) dealing with younger siblings (#5 changes to 'drugs in the neighborhood' for kids in poor and working class communities).

What is Stress? Researchers define stress as a physical, mental, or emotional response to events that causes bodily or mental tension. Simply put, stress is any outside force or event that has an effect on our body or mind. Sometimes stress may be hard to define, but we know it when we feel it (as long as we are paying attention). Stress is not 'bad'; Stress helps us to deal with life’s challenges, to give our best performance, and to meet a tough situation with focus. When we are feeling excitement, whether it's because we are giving or watching an artistic performance, playing sports, watching a movie, skiing down a slope, we are feeling a type of stress. We seek some stress out.

The body’s stress response is important and necessary. However, when too much stress builds up, we may encounter many physical and emotional health problems. If we don’t deal with stress, the health problems can stay with us and worsen over the course of our life. Riding a roller coaster is fun once or twice, but what if you felt like you were unable to get off?

What are the signs and symptoms of stress? They can be seen in 5 domains: 1) physiological problems like aches, pains and fatigue; 2) emotional problems like depression, tearfulness, increased fragility, rage and anger, acting out and even violence; 3) relational problems like increased isolation, conflict and arguing with family and friends; 4) cognitive problems like forgetfulness and confusion and 5) spirituall problems such as feeling alone, disconnected, forgotten, empty and even suicidal.

When stress becomes a problem how do teens cope? The Baltimore study looked at this too.

1) They may give up sleep. This is especially true with high achievers or students in demanding schools. The problem is that teens really do need their sleep and studies have shown that lack of sleep has a direct effect on academic performance and testing. 2) They may try to escape their stress through avoidance, sleeping too much, drugs, entertainment and partying. 3) They may (we hope) seek out supportive and non judgmental peers or siblings. 4) They may act out by being more oppositional, argumentative and rebellious (in some cases we see teens resorting to self harm as a coping strategy) or 5) They may engage in increase physical activity, sports, and exercise.

The problem is that we (Parents, Counselors, Authority figures) are out to lunch. We tend to focus purely on the 'goals' of immediate or long term achievement; projects due, tests to study for, college prep etc. What we often do not do is non judgmentally listen, pay attention, listen, resist giving lectures and advice. And yet these are what can benefit stressed out teens the most.

In schools, even though these types of problems are recognized it is rare that stress management and coping strategies are woven into the curriculum. Or that parents are encouraged to learn more about how to handle their stressed out teen. Indeed, parents themselves are often under a great deal of their own stress without a clue of how to deal with it. (Part II will be Effective Stress Management Skills)