The other person always feel the burden of ‘taking care’ of the one who feels empty.

On the other hand, the person who does not attach very easily, and seeks to maintain a great deal of distance in every relationship, causes loneliness in their partner. Someone who was not cared for nor given appropriate attention in their childhood, will use emotional distance and ambivalence to maintain a ‘very separate self ‘ in all of their relationships.

This ’emotional distancing’ serves to protect them form further pain and rejection.

• Learning to not take everything so personally.
• Learning specific tools for developing empathy, so the other feel s genuinely heard.
• Tools for negotiating and actually resolving conflict, rather than having it never get resolved.
• Learning to accept what differences you can live with and which ones are not negotiable.
• Stop trying to convince your spouse of how you feel and how that specific behavior hurts you. Instead, learn to be consistent with consequences, which speaks louder than words.

• Attachment and boundaries
• Communication
• Sexual intimacy
• Empathy and expectations
• Healthy arguing and negotiation skills

What tends to happen then, in their adult choice of a spouse, is that this insecure adult –A, finds someone- B, who is distant and emotionally unavailable. Their insecurity is experienced by –B, as extreme neediness, and so they pull away, causing the other partner- A, to feel abandoned.

What is a closed family system?

A “closed “ system is where the family is stuck in their pattern of communication. Often this is a pattern where either as a spouse or as a child, you feel impotent.

You feel incapable of “impacting ’’ the person who has the power.

The individual who has the power in a family, tends to not let others impact them. They avoid change at all costs ! Even if it causes pain and the feeling of rejection in other family members. They tend to be unbending when it comes to new ideas and new ways of relating to each other. One example is where a teen at 15, is still treated with the same restrictions as when they were 12 years old.

Helping a family become an open system, means teaching them new patterns of relating.

Such as –

• Listening more, rather than always having to give advice and having the last word.
• Recognizing the “developmental stages” that each person in the family is in, is different for everyone.
• Learning to not take things so personally and not always make the issue about you and how you feel.
• Being open to receiving advice and constructive criticism.

An open family system means:

• Negotiating
• Apologizing
• Forgiving each other.

This promotes healing and emotional maturity.

A therapist identifies the communication patterns and seeks to understand how this is preventing good communication.

We all get stuck in ways of relating to each other, and a family is no different. Families are often stuck in styles that are comfortable and familiar. But if you are yelling a lot, fighting and arguing often, then you are ‘’stuck’’ in your safe pattern. This is very dysfunctional !

One example would be a family that uses ‘shame ‘ to motivate each other to follow the rules.

Whereas a healthier way to relate would be communication built on honesty and forgiveness.

It is about stopping self destructive behavior and helping teens find healthy ways to build their confidence and self-esteem.

Teen counseling always involves working with the whole family as well. Appropriate patterns of communication and affirmation need to be developed.

Mark* was 14 when he first came into my office.

*pseudonym

He was angry about being there and angry for feeling that everyone blamed him for the family’s problems. His parents also reported that he was sneaking out at night and disappearing for hours. At home, he would isolate himself from the rest of the family.

He had lost interest in doing anything creative, and he had lost interest in activities that brought him a lot of joy in the past.

The cutting was a big red flag that this was more than a teen who was mildly depressed.

In the second session, Mark began to develop trust, evident by that fact that he could cry and yell about what was really frustrating him. Cutting is a clear sign of wishing that your life would end. It does not necessarily mean that you intend to end your life, but it is a serious cry for help. After very carefully and specifically exploring his suicidal feelings, it was clear that he did not have a plan and did not intend to end his life. He did not want to die.

For Mark, and for so many teens, the issue is feeling “empowered.”

Feeling ‘empowered’ does not mean that your teen wants to run the house and always get one’s way – when they have too much power and control over their parents, it creates enormous internal conflict. It is actually overwhelming for them. Your teen wants protection.

Empowerment is about having an impact on those around you. It is a sense of being ‘taken seriously’.

Yes, of course a teen feels that the demands and expectations on him or her are unfair. The deeper issue however, is being able to talk and to negotiate everyone’s expectations and feelings.

The need to be ‘heard’ and understood is paramount to their feeling accepted.

This is an emotionally charged season in their lives. For girls, the ages 11 – 16 are the most emotionally turbulent. For boys, 13- 18 is a time where they feel impulsive and demanding. Mark felt he was always shut down and never really understood, so he pushed everyone away. As a result, his parents left him alone, which is not the answer and can be dangerous.

• This is where, as parents, we need to break through their anger and defenses and show them we love them at all times.
• However, this does not mean that we agree with their actions and choices.

He needed his parents to find a way to connect to him.

He pretended to not care, but deep down he wanted their approval.

I challenged the family to get to know his friends ‘by name’ and learn about the music he loved. The entire family started to learn how to express anger effectively and appropriately. They also began to learn as a family how to not take things ‘so personally’ by getting some thicker skin.

With Mark, he had to learn effective ways to express his anger and frustration.

In order to break this cycle of mark getting angry and everyone leaving him alone, mark needed to learn how to appropriately express his anger. He had to recognize the reactions in his body and how the tension in his body made him feel. He needed to begin to label these emotions, so as to know the best solution in dealing with these feelings.

Mark had to learn to initiate conversations and stop pushing everyone away.

He started to learn about integrating his body with his emotions.

So when he wanted to cut, he could think of all the techniques for stopping that behavior. He was beginning to think about all the people in his life that really loved him and would never want to lose him.

This integrative process helped him feel more in control of his life, and thus he felt confident and “empowered!”

Whatever you teen is struggling with, I would like to empower him/her.

Recognizing the areas of one’s life that have been hurting the people we love, is key in becoming a responsible adult. We need an expert that can show us those areas of self- rejection and denial.

Next we need assistance in learning `HOW’ to make those changes. That is what a psychotherapist is trained to support you in during counseling.

It may take a longer time for some, but for others, therapy can be brief, and to the point.

We can…. get to the ANSWERS quickly and efficiently! The goals, steps and attitudes that we need to nurture and develop, will in time help us become that GENUINE and LOVING person that we have always desired to become and have known that we can become.

Addictions have a biological component.

Sometimes an addiction is coupled with a personality disorder, such as an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). Usually the treatment for OCD requires medication.

If someone you love grapples with a pornography dependency, they are often on-line for hours a day, which adds up to multiple hours each week often to the detriment of a family, a partner and a job. They hide their real pain through activities that become destructive. Only when an addict can admit they their life is “out – of –control’’, will they be able to find healthy and legitimate ways of beginning the process to heal.

By genuine I mean friendships where they can expose their true self, their fears and insecurities. No matter what socioeconomic class we find ourselves in, men have been socialized to be independent and self-sufficient. As a result we hide our addictions and fear of failure. We live emotionally isolated lives, ashamed of our secrets and addictions.

This isolation is self-perpetuating. Trapped in it, we turn to addictions for comfort, which in turn only creates more shame and isolation.

As an example, if a man was molested by a babysitter, whether the sitter was male or female, it is very common to bury that memory. That shame is suppressed deep down inside of themselves. Yet over the years the poison of that trauma permeates all of their relationships. As a result most men have difficulty attaching and bonding in relationships.

Their attachments can be fickle and fleeting. Their attachments can be very intense but they can also be very unstable. This dynamic creates the perfect foundation for sexual addiction.

This dynamic, of becoming more vulnerable with other male friends, often fosters greater intimacy with those whom we love.

A narcissist’s reality is extremely distorted. However, they present their reality about events as if it’s all black-and-white.

They despise anyone who hands out consequences. In their mind they do not deserve to have any consequences since they are special and live by a different standard then the rest of the world.

For a narcissist to actually change his or her narcissistic behavior, abuse, or narcissism in relationships they have to finally admit that something is not working.

Through the professional counseling and support that you’ve received for narcissistic behavior or narcissistic personality disorder, once you learned how to develop an ‘’emotional stance’’ of indifference, you have to establish consequences. You have to spell out the consequences for their behavior and follow through with those actions. For example: your spouse continues to promise to be home at a certain time but continues to disregard your time and your personhood by not informing you of his/ her lateness. You must establish a consequence, such as the food being eating or thrown away. He then is on his own for dinner.

The dinner is gone, not just put away. Although the requirement to make a phone call to you if he is running late, is infuriating to him, he will learn nevertheless to call.