“Why does it always have to be only about him?” “When do I get to have my needs consider?” In work done by Jeffery Young PhD he discusses how skewed thinking can emerge when people become overly self-referenced or self-absorbed. The partner or parent that is self-absorbed certainly does not adequately meet the psychological, emotional or social needs of their family members. That one of the damaging effects of being involved with the self-absorbed is that it frequently feels as if they lack the ability to be consistently considerate, sensitive, empathic and caring.

This may actually be a resultant thinking and emotional pattern developed in childhood when social and emotional needs failed to be met and the individual learned to focus primarily on their own needs. The thought of others people’s wishes does not come instinctively to them, and without significant prompting they will likely not think of them and even when they do think of others feelings and needs they may respond poorly. In the case above the woman’s own strategy to get her need met was to take care of others, and she frequently put other’s needs ahead of her own, but never felt that these efforts were reciprocated by her husband, or for that matter her children.

Offra Gerstein PhD has stated that the childhood of self-referenced individuals is often devoid of empathic and compassionate parenting. That a brilliant, if personally costly survival strategy is to become increasingly self-centered which is a preoccupation with attempting to meet those early attachment and bonding needs. Dr. Robert Rhoton of Psychological Health and Wellness suggests that attachment is about the degree that one feels emotionally connected to others, and the predictable nature of that connection. When attachment is inconsistent or poor the predictable nature of the emotional connection is vague and ill-formed. This appreciably reduces trust and the calm expectation of support that human beings rely on to feel a part of a community or family. Additionally, it is not uncommon to find individuals that grow to adulthood in this dynamic learn to react with aggression and hostility, or by withdrawal and victimization of self.

There are two courses of action to help this very sad woman to improve how she feels about the situation she finds herself. First is to look her patterns of getting her own needs met and what she expects in relationship to others. She has traditionally shown love by be focused on the wants and needs of others at the sacrifice of her own wellbeing, this was a strategy to meet her own needs for attachment and bonding, but that strategy has put her at risk of finding friends, and a marriage partner that the equivalent of emotional black holes that are sucking the energy she offers in every increasing amounts. She began working on setting more balanced boundaries with others, articulating what she expected not waiting for them to intuitively “know” as she did what she might want, prefer or feel.

After working on the first part of dealing with her own patterns and needs, this very competent young mother and wife began to realize that she had to see things differently, and react differently to her husband. The following are things she developed in therapy that worked for her, they are not being offered as a set of guidelines that will work for all, but simply as a review of what worked for her.

The actions she took to deal with a self-absorbed husband:

1. She changed how she viewed her husband, rather than continue to see him as intentionally ignoring or hurting her, she decided that he was emotionally wired differently, and that his personality had been impacted, that he truly cared for her and his family, but did not know how to adequately express or show it.

2. She began to see herself differently, rather than her tendency to see his self-absorbed ignoring behavior as a criticism of, or lack of feeling for her, she began to look for self-esteem and worth with in herself.

3. Abstained from judging herself based on others inability to express love, devotion or caring.

4. She began to express exactly what she expected in simple exchanges. “smile when you see me walk into a room”; “greet me with a hug and a kiss”; “hold my hand as we walk into the store”

5. Practiced gratitude that she is an empathic individual, capable of emotional connection with others.

6. Focus on reaction to her husband’s underlying needs. She developed a belief that underneath her husband’s self-absorption is the need for attention and approval. She became very specific with compliments and expressions of merit

After six months of therapy, the woman felt much relief, had decided to stay in the marriage and was clear about what to expect from her husband. This might not be everyone’s choice for how to deal with difficult and self-absorbed marital partners, but for this woman as she became stronger and truly compassionate toward her husband, the relationship improved and she felt worthwhile.

“Love is a Verb” is a book that I have recommended many times to couples who are struggling to work through problems in their marriages.  This book presents practical and useful steps to developing greater love and connection in our most intimate and important relationship.

Working as a marriage and family therapist, I have witnessed many times where people want to explore the problems until the point where both parties are in full misery, and feel a sense of hopelessness.  This text delivers a powerful and common sense approach to focusing on what works in a marriage, building the relationship that is desired rather than conducting post-mortems on a disillusioning marital relationship.

I highly recommend this book to couples seeking marriage counseling and help in their marriage.

Forgiveness has a tremendous number of religious overtones and moral implications. Many people want forgiveness, and those they seek it from frequently have a price tag of performance or penance attached to granting it. This is obvious in marital counseling where one member or the other of a couple have strayed from the fidelity expected in marriage.

The couple may be wanting to stay together and move forward, but one of the perplexing challenges is that the wronged part requires some form or restitution or redress from the one that has strayed, and the one guilty of infidelity frequently wants to be forgiven.

Offering forgiveness, or holding it aloft as a beacon for the guilty almost always has a behavioral or emotional price tag which frequently keeps the problems from being resolved more quickly.

Many times those that are in extreme pain fail to see the benefit of forgiveness. A partial reason for that attitude toward forgiveness is an immature view of forgiveness as an action associated with acceptance that would act as a psychic stamp of approval for the negative and hurtful behavior of another.

It might be helpful to develop a better definition or at least offer a broader definition of forgiveness that can illustrate the psychological benefits of forgiveness.

What is forgiveness?

Fundamentally it is a letting go or releasing of resentment and feelings of emotional demand around wanting revenge or justice as well as a freedom from requiring a price or performance from another. This is not a lessening of the responsibility of the offending party or the personal or society accountability that drives consequences toward the offending party.

To be continued…

She then recounted all the problems and challenges she had raising her now 14 year old troubled teen and how different he was from his three sisters.  “I don’t understand him; he makes me want to strangle him almost every day!” She told of his failures in school, and his difficulty socially with others in church and in the neighborhood.  How he had been arrested for breaking curfew, and was beginning to hang out with boys several years older that she labeled “losers”

After 10 minutes of venting all the horrible things related to this son of hers, the question came up: what does he ever do that is a little less horrible?  She had a stunned look, and asked “what do you mean?”

“Well, in would be impossible for someone to be horrible 100% of the time, so what does he do that is a little less horrible?”  After a momentary pause, she again launched into diatribe about just how horrible and terrible he was and how no one really understands what an overwhelming struggle she has just tolerating him at this point.

After a workshop, with many people milling around, really isn’t a good venue to have the kind of discussion that this woman was trying to have, so I asked her another question.  “Who are the positive male role models you or your son had in your lives?”

This question proved her undoing; she related a history of three abusive step fathers as she grew up, a mean grandfather and two of her own terrible marriages.  She followed that up with a statement about how unreliable men are in general, that they are always going to disappoint and fail to follow through or keep their promises.  As she talked, it became apparent that her views of men were being applied to her son as well.

I made a referral to a good therapist I knew in the area, and suggest that she might be painting her son with all of her hurts and disappointments rather than just seeing his behavior as his behavior, which will sometimes be immature and irresponsible as one might expect of a 14 year old child.

This doesn’t mean that real problems are not happening in this family, it doesn’t mean that this mother’s frustration, pain, and discontent, are invalid to any degree, only that it is hard to correct a child for his own poor behavior and choices when many of his actions bare an additional weight of meaning.  Hopefully, in therapy, the mother can learn to deal with her son without adding the weight of her prior disappointments towards man and transferring it and redirecting it towards her son.

If you have a negative relationship with your troubled teen, if you are disappointed and frustrated by your child to the point of anger and feel that family counseling may help we encourage you to speak with one of our counselors.

Being assertive means that you express yourself effectively and stand up for your point of view, while also respecting the rights of others. Assertiveness, isn’t being overbearing, dictatorial or in other ways over controlling.  If one were to conceptualize assertive communication as a scale, it would be the balance spot between being too aggressive and too passive.

Sometimes in families, there exists and out of balance communication system, this system may have a petty tyrant lording it over the rest of the family.  This overlord of communication may not tolerate or appreciate assertive communication, and may actually pursue any assertive communication as if it were an inappropriate breaking of a mighty and scared law.  This Lordling, may castigate and ridicule those that try to be assertive, which has the result of creating emotional and social distance between family members, erodes individual worth and self-esteem in the family members.

It has long been recognized that assertive balanced communication is a necessity for effective long term and satisfying relationships.  Relationships where more than just one person feels heard, understood and respected.  If assertiveness is an area that has been a struggle in your family, then maybe it is time to move into a more balanced and assertive style of communication.

To learn how to stand up for yourself and be more assertive in your family circle and to seek family counseling in Mesa AZ.

If you find that you need support to increase your ability to evaluate and look at things in a different more helpful way in family relationships then we encourage you to speak with one of our family counselors.

Every family has a unique way in which words produce responses.  For example one family might really enjoy movies and insert movie lines to convey large bits of information in a specialized way.

Another family that I know has digested the movie “Princess Bride” to the point that line after line from that movie are common language and words used in the family.   “Have fun storming the castle” being an alternative way of saying goodbye and good luck when a member of that family departs to do something important to them.

Other families are more musical in nature and may include lyrics as part of their communication.  These examples are easy to recognize, but do not capture the full array of possibilities.  Every family possesses a unique pattern of word use, meaning, and reactions to those meanings.

Problems in families can be increased when there exists a lack of awareness of how words are being used and how those words generate reactions.  In one family, the father had pet names for his children, that he thought were funny and endearing, his children however found them offensive and like they were being put down.

Names like “Leadbutt” and “horsieface” were not terms of endearment to the children, and in fact they felt diminished and ugly because of them, which was not the intention of the father.  This is a straightforward and easy example to understand, however many families behave mindlessly when it comes to words they use, and how they are employed.

Families with histories of trauma, past abuse, depression and anxiety are also frequently ones that are unaware of how words are going to create reactions that hurt each other, or make peace and satisfaction elusive.

If you find that you need support to increase your awareness of your communication in relationships to ease the situations in your home then we encourage you to one of our relationship counselors.

The reason why trust is frequently the focus of clinical work is that shortfalls in being able to trust interfere with the intimacy people may desire, the ability to solve problems and adapt to the ever changing complexity of both work and social life.

When trust is missing or diminished in the marital relationship, conflict, arguments and one-ups-manship can occur which creates a feeling competitiveness and a need to protect one’s self from possible hurts or betrayals.   Ultimately this erodes the quality of the marriage and many times impacts the other important family relationships as well, through the diffusion of mistrust in most of the relationships.

If trust is lost between parent and child this is challenging as well, this tends to generate rebellious behavior, over punitive and demanding parenting, that is neither adaptive to the needs of the child or the parent.

Building trust is one area that is regular element in many treatment approaches.  When you look at your own life, and find that the quality of trust you have with others is lacking, you may believe that is due to “them” and how “they” are.  In reality trust is a decision that each of us make and can be improved through increased mindfulness and practice.

If you find that you may need support to develop more trust in your relationships to ease the situations in your home, our family counselors are here to help.

One time a client spent considerable time trying to convince me that she wasn’t communicating anything to her husband or children when she refused to speak with them or would behave sulkily.  Of course through a discussion of this she finally came to realize that these silent communications were often louder and clearer than the verbal things she might say.

To be an effective communicator one must be able to possess certain sensitivity or sensitiveness to the messages one is sending and the interpretation of messages being sent that have no words attached to them.

Many times, people that have experienced trauma as children have some difficulty recognizing the non-verbal messages that they are both receiving and sending.  This deficit is commonly a feature in anxiety and depression, and may require support or therapy to overcome.

Many times families have tremendously good intentions and yet lack sensitivity to how members are responding.  An example of this can be found in a family that was by nature and culture a very loud and boisterous group; they were funny, sarcastic and energetic with each other and anyone that came into their circle of contact.

This family had four boys ages 12, 9, 8 and 5 before the parents finally had a little girl. During this pregnancy there were some health issues and when the little girl was born one of the side effects of the medications that the mom had taken was an increased sensitivity to light and sound, where at very low levels of sound the little girl reacted with fear, withdrawal and discomfort.

This was very difficult for this family because they had a pattern of what it meant to show love and to be with each other that was pretty set in their family.  They were very hurt that their little girl and sister didn’t like them and would go to some lengths to avoid them. By the time she was three she would scream anytime she had to leave her room.

There was no lack of love and no bad intent in this family but they struggled with being sensitive to the needs of this child who read and received the messages send by this family far differently than they were intended.

After a short consultation and a few sessions of therapy the child and family began to accommodate each other and the child through increased sensitivity.

If you find that you may need support to develop better sensitivity to ease the situations in your home, our family counselors are here to help.