The Cool Communicator: Clean Slate for the New Year? Embracing Forgiveness
By Rabbi Rami ~
New Year’s Day is over. Have you broken your Resolutions yet?
If you’re like me, the answer to that question is “yes,” so this is a good time to think about forgiveness.
Forgiveness isn’t a skill you can master and employ whenever you wish, or a tool you can use the way you might use an umbrella or a fork. Rather:
- Forgiveness is a natural response to reality that arises from a deep understanding of the nature of life and how best to live it.
- Forgiveness isn’t a way to escape from your past or to forget it; it’s a way of not dragging your past into your present.
- Forgiveness isn’t a way to avoid suffering; it’s a way to avoid clinging to suffering.
Life is a blend of joy and sorrow, happiness and horror. Forgiveness won’t change that. But it can free you from dragging sorrow into your moments of joy, and prevent you from allowing moments of horror to corrode your moments of happiness.
There are two keys to living life with forgiveness at its core. The first is found in Ecclesiastes (3: 1-8).: “To everything there is its season, a time for every purpose under heaven: a time to plant, and a time to uproot… a time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance… a time to embrace, and a time to let go… a time for love, and a time for hate… a time to be born, and a time to die.”
Everything has its time, its moment for arising and its moment for passing on. You cannot have one without the other. Just as front goes with back, so weeping goes with laughing, and loving goes with hating. What you can have—all you can have—is one thing after another, so the key to navigating life well is to know what time it is: to know when to laugh and when to mourn, when to love and when to hate. When you know what the moment requires, you know how to act in it. And when the moment passes so does the action that it required. Forgiveness is what happens when you know and live with the arising and passing of time.
Forgiveness is the art of living life with clarity and humility moment to moment. Forgiveness requires you to know that everything has its time; that everything that can arise will arise; that there is no escaping joy or suffering. And that knowing leads us to the second key to forgiveness: you are rarely if ever the target.
Imagine you’re canoeing on a lake and a thick fog rolls in. Fearful that you will get lost, you paddle for the dock as quickly as you can. Along the way you notice another canoe with the same goal, but this one is on course to ram you. You start shouting to warn the paddlers off, but they pay you no heed. You try to avoid them, but they adjust course and seem intent on hitting you. And when they do, you grab the other canoe, and thrust your head into it screaming your outrage. It is then you realize the canoe is empty. Somehow it had gotten loose of its moorings and, caught by the current, could do nothing other than what it did: ram you. It did what it did because it couldn’t do anything else.
What is true of this canoe is true of most people as well. Most of us most of the time are caught up in the currents of our lives, doing what we think will make us happy, and often causing ourselves and others unintended suffering in the process. When you realize this, forgiveness is axiomatic. There are going to be moments in your life when pain just happens. The actors are locked into their scripts and the drama unfolds and you get hurt. But the canoe is empty: no one set out to hurt you, and you didn’t set out to hurt anyone else. It just happened because that is what life is: things just happening.
When you know this, forgiveness just happens as well. Forgiveness is difficult only when we imagine things could be other than they are. But they can’t. Given all the conditions at play in any given instant what happens is what must happen.
This is difficult for many of us to accept. We want to believe that people could have acted differently than they did, but this only works in hindsight. People do what they do because, at the moment of doing it, that was all they could do.
We make decisions based on partial data because complete data is never available, and because we do so unexpected things happen. We choose our actions based on conditioning rooted in both genes and memory, and because we do so we are never truly free. We do what we do because doing it makes sense at the moment.
Once we realize that most of the hurts we receive and even cause are unintended, that we are all doing the best we can with what we have to work with at any given moment, forgiveness is choiceless. When we know that we are all conditioned by the past, compassion arises within us, and forgiveness is how we express it. We hold no grudge because we know our suffering is rarely the other person’s goal. And even when it is, forgiveness arises for we know it could not be otherwise. This doesn’t mean you can’t change, grow, or mature; this doesn’t mean that you should excuse hurtful behavior; it only means that what happens does so because nothing else could happen in that moment.
Forgiveness isn’t something you need to cultivate, but the natural response to a truth you need to know: everything has its time.
Rabbi Rami Shapiro, PhD teaches religious studies at Middle Tennessee State University and is the director of Wisdom House Center for Interfaith Studies in Nashville. He has written over two dozen books and a new series, Rabbi Rami Guides: Roadside Assistance for the Spiritual Traveler, available at Spirituality & Health Books and Amazon.com; see www.rabbirami.com.
Photo Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
The Cool Communicator: What is a Dysfunctional Home?
By Karen E Herrick, PhD ~
Many popular television shows talk daily about dysfunctional homes. One of the most dysfunctional types for children is a home where parents argue and then refuse to speak to each other. This type of atmosphere causes children to live in a highly stressed environment. In this atmosphere the children’s emotional needs are not met because their parents are not paying attention to them. Their parents are expending their energy in their power struggle with each other. These children will then assume “survival roles.” Depending on their individual personalities they will rigidly fall into the roles of:
- Heroes are overly responsible children and people
- Scapegoats who get attention through negative behavior
- Lost children who are shy and withdrawn
- Macots or clowns who use humor in any way to get attention
- Placators who are always taking care of others’ needs
How rigid the role of each child becomes depends on the degree of dysfunction in the family. The type or personality of your parents is important also. Whether or not you perceived yourself to be in a dangerous situation as a child determines whether or not you believe your family to be more or less dysfunctional. Statistics are that 95-98% of families in the United States are dysfunctional on some level.
The three rules in most dysfunctional families that children learn are: don’t trust, don’t talk and don’t feel. Many times it is therapy that teaches us how to trust again. Guidelines for being with people who you can trust are:
- They should not abuse your feelings
- They should be honest with you
- They should let you be yourself and not judge you
- They will keep confidences when you ask them to do so
- Being with people like this will teach you how to trust yourself
Stages of recovery start with coming out of your family with certain survival skills. You watch a TV show, read an article or a book and realize you are from a dysfunctional home and have assumed a particular role or roles. Then comes a flash of a lightening bolt as the “ah ha” feeling comes over you. This is what is wrong! With this awareness comes new energy that allows you to identify some of your behaviors and give you new strength to learn more about yourself.
Identifying your “core issues” such as: the issue of wanting to control, which is usually huge, ignoring personal feelings and needs, not trusting your own feelings or perceptions, which fills decisions and self-direction with anxiety, feeling overly responsible for parents and other sin the world and having difficulty with intimate relationships.
If you are in therapy or are a “self-help” person you can start making the connections between your present behaviors and past circumstances and learn how to change to new behaviors. This transformation takes time – about 10% of the age you are when you begin this journey into recovery. Integrating new behaviors feels wonderful when you not longer think one thing, feel another and do something else. You can also make mistakes without hating yourself.
The genesis stage is the final spiritual stage where you learn to transcend your past traumas and become creative using your recovery as a stepping-stone to a different life. One positive spiritual component that comes from dysfunction that is virtually unknown is that dysfunctional people “zoned out” in their original family, which is called dissociating. This means they have a greater ability in adulthood to have spiritual experiences.
A spiritual experience of the immediate kind is often described as a transcendent relationship between a person and a higher being, which goes beyond a specific religious affiliation. Some types of spiritual experiences are
- Seeing and/or talking to dead loved one (25% of population)
- Having extrasensory perception (5l% of population)
- Having a Near Death Experience (20% of population)
Usually when people tell of a spiritual experience they’ll start by saying, “I don’t have the words to describe this to you” or “You’re going to think I’m crazy when I tell you this but…” And then they tell you what happened to them.
If more people realized that approximately 50% of people in the United States and England have these types (and other kinds) of spiritual experiences, may more would explain theirs to us and the world would be a more spiritual place. These experiences add substance to people’s lives and people need permission to talk about them. This is a huge benefit that comes from living in a dysfunctional home.
This excerpt comes from the book “You’re Not Finished Yet” written by Karen E. Herrick, PhD. who has shared her clinical expertise for the past twenty-plus years in her private practice in Red Bank, NJ (www.karenherrick.com). She has lectured throughout the United States on dysfunctional homes, grief, loss and dissociation. Her book reveals ways to overcome one’s childhood and ends with chapters on spirituality and the development of your soul. Available on Amazon.com, Authorhouse.com & E book.
The Cool Communicator: Making Long-Distance Marriages Work ~ 5 Steps to Help Keep the Spark Alive
By Doug and Polly White ~
During much of our dating and the first eight years of our marriage, we had a long-distance relationship. That is, Doug’s work required that he be away from home several nights each week, while Polly’s work kept her in mostly in Richmond. While the old adage states that, “absence makes the heart grow fonder,” distance can actually put a lot of strain on a relationship. We came out of our “traveling phase” with a strong, loving relationship. Here are a few tips that helped us keep the fires burning across the miles.
1. Remember, business travel is not a vacation – It is easy for the one left at home to believe that living in a hotel, eating out and having maid service equals a grand vacation. This can be especially true on laundry day. However, anyone who has spent significant time traveling on company business would beg to differ. They would tell you that eating by yourself in restaurants or entertaining business clients or associates is not as enjoyable as spending time around the family table. They would explain that having the whole bed to themselves is actually lonely. Maid service is nice, but most travelers would gladly put up with a ring in the tub and toothpaste on the sink if it meant they could kiss their spouse and kids goodnight. If you are the one at home, know that your traveling spouse would rather be with you than on the road. As much as advertisements try to make it glamorous, staying at a Holiday Inn Express will not make you feel like a star.
2. Find ways to do simple, everyday things together – When Doug was traveling, we use to make time to watch T.V. together. Thank goodness for cell phone plans that allow unlimited minutes to specific numbers. Before and during the show, we would talk to each other, make comments about the show, or simply sit quietly and watch until a commercial break. Being linked by phone while doing the same activity made it seem like we were sitting together on the couch rather than hundreds of miles from each other. We found other ways to spend time together. Doug would call the home number each morning to wake Polly. “She called him, her personal alarm clock.” We always talked the first thing in the morning and the last thing at night regardless of how busy our schedules.
3. Find ways to share special occasions – We remember one Halloween when Polly had to be out of town and Doug was home. This was a rare occasion. She always looked forward to the kids arriving in costume and demanding candy with a loud, “Trick or treat.” Polly was actually a bit upset to be stuck in a hotel room, missing out on the fun. Doug had a solution. He slipped his cell phone into his pocket each time the doorbell rang. He would greet the the children by saying things like, “What a pretty princess you are with your pink dress and sparkly crown,” or “how scary you look in that ghost mask.” He kept a running commentary going, chatting with each goblin and witch, allowing Polly to feel a part of the action. With the advent of Skype and other technology, travelers should never have to miss singing happy birthday, hunting for Easter eggs, or sharing in family celebrations.
4. Actively work on your relationship – As much as you like to be together, you can get used to living apart. To keep the spark alive, you need to make your relationship a priority. You should talk to each other. Discuss your goals, dreams, needs and wants. Reminise about happy times. Tell each other about important and unimportant matters. We used to “do calendars” each week. This simply meant reviewing our schedules with each other. We would talk about what we were doing at work and in the evenings, what we had planned and what we wanted to do when we saw each other again. The point is to share more, not less. Make the other person fully involved in your life so that it will be as if they never left, when they return.
5. Make your reunion a joy – It’s easy for the spouse at home to save up chores, problems and frustrations for his or her returning spouse. Our advice: don’t do it! Your time physically together each week is precious. Yes, there are always chores to do and problems to solve, but make sure they don’t suck up all of your face time. Likewise, if you have been away all week, don’t spend your few hours at home playing golf with your buddies or with other activities that take you away from your spouse and/or kids. Work hard to find a balance between must-do activities and time together. We had a special date night each weekend. We had as much fun discussing and planning these events as going on the date. Whatever works for you, make your time together so special that you can’t wait to see each other again.
Managing a long-distance relationship can put extra strain on both the traveler and the one at home. It is easy to let relationships fade when two people are living in different cities. Developing techniques to bring you closer together while being physically apart can help you enjoy your time away as well as your time together.
Doug and Polly White are Principals at Whitestone Partners; a management-consulting firm that helps small businesses build the infrastructure they need to grow profitably. They are also coauthors of the groundbreaking new book, Let Go to GROW; why some businesses thrive and others fail to reach their potential (Palari Publishing 2011). The book explains how entrepreneurs can avoid the most common pitfalls as their businesses grow and is available at www.WhitestonePartnersInc.com.
The Cool Communicator: Make Reading Fun For Babies
By Jacqueline Shaprow ~
When it comes to brain development during infancy, research shows that early experiences play an important role. Learning spoken and written language skills is a highly interactive process. Infants and toddlers develop literacy skills through positive interactions with adults and books. Author Judith Shickendanz, who studies early literacy behaviors, describes how an infant mouthing a book and a toddler turning pages of a book are early steps of language and literacy development.
These behaviors are the building blocks of language development:
- Book Handling Behaviors
Turning pages and chewing on books. As a baby chews on a book, he or she is learning about the physical characteristics of books. Babies use their mouths to learn about the objects around them.
- Recognition
Pointing at pictures of objects, gazing at pictures, or smiling at pictures in books.
- Picture Comprehension
Imitating an action observed in a picture.
- Story-Reading Behaviors
Babbling in imitation of an adult reading. Before you know it, your baby will gurgle, laugh, and babble as you read to them.
Integrate reading into the daily life of your baby and make it enjoyable:
- A few minutes is fine!
Infants have short attention spans, so they may not be able to sit through a whole story. Don’t rush through the story; instead enjoy the pictures, words, and sounds on each page, and if you only get through a few pages – that’s fine!
- Make it a morning or bedtime ritual
Create an enjoyable reading ritual that fits in well with you and your baby’s schedule. Some parents prefer to read a short story at bedtime, and others find that their baby enjoys stories most in the morning. Do whatever works for you. My baby enjoys our story telling time in the park – we’ve made a little ritual out of it.
- Make it fun!
Learning is not a competition. Books are supposed to be fun. Allowing your baby to have fun with books will facilitate the learning process.
- Let them turn pages
Allowing babies to turn the pages of a book, is a great way to engage them in the story. Remember that babies may need small books with thick pages so that they are able to turn the pages. It is ok if you skip a few pages while your baby is turning the pages, the act of turning pages will make reading a more interactive process for them.
- Keep it simple
Find simple, fun books to read aloud to your baby.
- Breathe life into the story
Use interesting voices as you tell the story, and use your facial expressions and body language to convey the actions in each story.
- Show babies the words
As you are reading to your baby, you may want to run your fingers beneath the words.
- Be responsive to your baby
Respond to your baby as she laughs and gurgles. Encourage your baby to babble by mimicking the sounds she makes while you are reading.
- Personalize the story
You may want to talk about your own family or pets, as you read a story about another person’s family and pets. For example, at the end of a story that describes all of the Sesame Street characters, I personalize it by describing our own family members to my baby girl.
- Singalong
Babies love songs. As you are reading a story, you may choose to sing a few pages to keep your baby engaged and entertained.
- Turn the television off
Reading time should be a quiet, special time – and there should not be any background noise from a television or radio.
- Play word games
As you read to your baby, play rhyming games and give her an opportunity to make sounds with you.
- Engage your baby in a conversation
Even if your baby does not understand the meaning of the words you use, you should talk to your baby as often as possible. Talk to your baby while you are reading to her, and talk to your baby while you are changing her diaper or giving her a bath. Allow conversation to happen naturally – a book does not always have to be present for learning to take place.
Sharing books with infants is essential to early literacy, and making reading an enjoyable experience is important when it comes to early language development. The tips above will help you create a more relaxed and engaging learning environment for your baby with books – one which promotes learning.
About the Author
Jacqueline Shaprow is a writer, an attorney, and she is a graduate of Yale University. Her psychological research was published in the Journal of Health Psychology, presented at the NAASO Conference, and distributed internationally. Shaprow resides in Los Angeles with her daughter, Arianna, and teaches a Decision Making Course to pregnant women and new mothers. This course assists single mothers with making positive life decisions, and it evaluates the psychological processes underlying the decisions we make.
Photo credit: Copyright (c) 123RF Stock Photos
The Cool Communicator: Four Rules to Help You Say What You Mean and Mean What You Say
By Jude Bijou, MA, MFT ~
Were your parents good communicators? Does your communication style feel threatening to others? Do others avoid sharing personal information with you? Are you often unable to get your message across? We all struggle at times to really say what we mean.
We just weren’t taught about how to communicate constructively regardless of whether we’re talking with our spouse, children, friends, acquaintances, or business associates. Based on research and thirty years in private practice, I have come to find that four violations create all the misunderstandings and ensuing hurt, alienation and confusion we experience when communicating with others. And all good communication, from the bedroom to the boardroom, boils down to following four simple rules.
By following the rules and refraining from violations, anyone can communicate about any topic effectively and lovingly. Not surprisingly, the violations and rules are opposites that balance each other.
1. The First Violation is to tell other people about themselves (without permission). This includes blame, sarcasm, teasing, attacking, and finger-pointing. Telling others about themselves only creates separation and alienation. The First Rule is “talk about yourself.” This is our true domain. We’re best to share what we feel, think, want, and need. This brings closeness, love, as we reveal information about ourselves.
2. The Second Violation is over-generalizing. This can take the form of sweeping conclusions, abstractions, and labels, and using words like “always” and “never”, or bringing in other topics only barely related to the subject at hand. This is confusing, as we don’t hear about the real concern. The Second Rule is to stay specific. That’s what we do with music, architecture, engineering, cooking, math, physics, and computers; and what we must do when communicating. When we speak about in concrete terms, others can understand what we’re saying – the topic, the request, the reasons.
3. The Third Violation is being unkind. Focusing on what’s not working and on what we don’t like does not further a conversation but produces anger, negativity, and feelings of separation. The Third Rule, then, is kindness. Being kind fosters love. It can take the form of offering compassion, appreciations, praise, gratitude, and focusing on the positive.
4. The Fourth Violation is not listening. We know how that feels. Not good. Automatic interruptions, offering solutions, debating, and making wise-cracks don’t truly acknowledge the speaker but instead further our own agenda. The Fourth Rule is simply to listen. That means we must focus our complete attention on the person who is speaking and seek to truly understand what he or she is saying. Listening brings connection. (I playfully tell clients that duct-tape works wonders!)
Resorting to the violations is so ingrained that changing these habits can feel nearly impossible. Not so. With some consistent practice, we can get the hang of it. The idea is to stop ourselves when we notice we’re telling others about themselves, complaining about the situation at hand, talking in global abstractions, or not really listening. It’s hard, but if we catch ourselves, we can pause and take a breath. Then we can locate the topic at hand, determine what is true for us about it, and then speak it out.
Here are some examples of two different ways to communicate about the same topic.
You never help with the dishes ~~ I need some help right now.
You’re monopolizing the conversation ~~ I have something I want to say.
My parents are so mean ~~ I’m upset that my parents wouldn’t give me the car tonight.
You always say stuff like that ~~ I got hurt when you called me incompetent.
The four violations cause communication breakdowns, distance, and confusion. The four rules, talk about your own experience, use specifics, focus on kindness, and listen, create feelings of empowerment, understanding, connection, and forward movement.
About the Author
Jude Bijou is a licensed marriage and family therapist (MFT), educator and author of Attitude Reconstruction: A Blueprint for Building a Better Life (Rivera Press, 2011). A practicing psychotherapist for thirty years in Santa Barbara, California, Jude is the daughter of pioneer behavioral child psychologist, Sidney W. Bijou. For more information, visit: http://www.attitudereconstruction.com/
The Cool Communicator: Rules to Live by When Using Facebook
By Amanda Strong ~
Over 700 million users on Facebook have faced this dilemma … confirm or ignore a friend request. We’ve all been there, weighing the options of allowing yet another friend into our lives. Some may be nonchalant about adding friends, “the more the merrier.” Other users may be more selective, only allowing “specific” friends into their lives. One thing they all have in common … there aren’t many rules when it comes to Facebook.
Social networking is a huge force to be reckoned with. We are consumed by posting on news feeds, giving status updates, and sharing pictures with our “friends.” But what
does all of this mean? More than you think. Here are six (unofficial) rules for using Facebook.
1. Know your friends.
First and foremost, would you randomly walk up to a total stranger, and show them a picture of your adorable and innocent children?
Most likely not, yet people accept friend requests from friends of friends they barely know, or strangers who happen to know someone they’ve met once. Participating in the world of social networking doesn’t mean you have to throw all your regular rules out the door. Just because you can’t see the predator at the door doesn’t mean they aren’t lurking in cyberspace when your safety guard is down. When you’re chatting with someone, are you chatting with a true “friend?” Think about the person you’re adding, and who’ll be seeing the most intimate details of your life. Posting your husband will be out of town for a couple days is probably not the best idea, but numerous times a day, people do share this type of information. Would you post a huge note on your front door reading, “My husband is not home, he’s away on business until Friday?”
Common sense and knowing who you’re friends are will help keep you and your secrets safe within your inner circle of friends.
2. Know what matters to you.
People often join Facebook on a whim, but don’t really grasp the enormity of what social networking has become. Why are you choosing to be a member? Do you want to catch up with old friends? Do you want to share your life with everyone you know, or are you just nosy and want to snoop around and not participate? If you’ve identified yourself as at least one of these people, than you’re a step ahead of everyone else. Always remember the real reason you joined a social networking site in the first place. If you start straying from that truth and allow outside influences to distract you, your judgment can become clouded. Stick with what matters and be honest with yourself. If you own your actions and the way you handle yourself on Facebook, you’re less likely to run into trouble.
3. Know what to share.
Who are your “friends?” Do you care who sees your posts or pictures? If the answer is no, than go about your day but still have your eyes wide open for your sake. For people who want to share their information and details of their life with just “friends,” think before posting or downloading. Once you click the button, there’s really no turning back. Yes, you can delete your post or pictures, but who is to say someone hasn’t already taken your words or photos and saved them to their account or computer? An innocent post or picture can be timeless in the world of social networking. Don’t take the power of social media lightly.
4. Know if you want to please people.
Are you “liking” everything in sight? Do you encourage and comment on “friend’s” posts constantly? Do you say things you really don’t mean, because you don’t want to hurt someone else’s feelings? Facebook and social networking can mirror high school, the days where acceptance and fitting in were staples in the world of adolescence. Fast-forward five, ten, or twenty years. If you had the chance to do anything over or be someone else, would you? Being true to who you are is probably one of the best gifts you can give yourself. Don’t sell out or pretend to be someone you’re not, and sacrifice a part of you for that acceptance. Try not to compromise yourself for people who you didn’t really care for in the first place.
5. Know to anticipate the “what ifs.”
No one really thinks confirming a friend is difficult, but it’s not as innocent as it seems. What if your ex friends you out of the blue? Do you confirm them as a friend? What if you’re married? Do you tell your mate your ex has friended you…or is it none of their business? What if your spouse finds out you confirmed an ex without disclosing or discussing it first? What if you aren’t prepared to allow someone back into your life? Temptation has never been this close. With a click of a button, you can see what your ex is doing at that very moment and instantly communicate with a person you haven’t seen in years. Are you prepared for what comes next? Curiosity can lead to the “what ifs” being answered, even if they aren’t necessarily good.
6. Know your boundaries.
How far is too far? You’re married but speak with an old friend, sharing more intimate thoughts with that person than your significant other. An emotional connection can lead to something more dangerous … a physical affair. Can a friendship with an ex be platonic? Is discussing intimate topics, meeting for coffee or dinner, and becoming more secretive and withdrawn from your significant other crossing the line? Can you look in the mirror, and know you’re not doing anything wrong? Temptation and availability can cloud someone’s judgment, leading to mistakes and regret. When have you gone too far? Difficult questions that should be answered before it’s too late.
Today, Facebook and other social networking sites are under a microscope. Without established rules, people are making mistakes and paying for them. Have you encountered anything in life that hasn’t had some form of rules or regulations? Temptation is a driving force within social media. People simply can’t help themselves, but what are the consequences? Recent scandals show no one is immune to scrutiny and the negative spotlight that comes from making a social media blunder, so to all of you addicted to social media, remember to use with caution!
Amanda Strong graduated from Ithaca College with a degree in Televison/Radio. As a writer she firmly believes in the old maxim, “write what you know,” and the author of the new book, With Just One Click.
The Cool Communicator: Family Secrets ~ The Ties That Bind, or Devastate
By Titia Ellis, PhD ~
Never underestimate the power of secrets in a family. One of the most common reasons people justify keeping secrets is the need to “protect” someone. Secrets also originate from fear that actions within the family will be discovered and judged. Some secrets are generations old; others newly created. All have the ability to tear the fabric of the family system apart.
Healthy families don’t need to keep secrets. These people can discuss whatever goes on inside the home while also respecting the need for privacy around such issues as marital intimacy or a teenager moving towards autonomy and sharing more with his peers than with parents. No one needs to be protected; no one is fearful of anyone else. The rules are clear: people are encouraged to say what’s on their mind and in their heart, and have learned how to listen to one another. Parents set ground rules which assure all concerned that honest conversations will be safe and without reprisals. If a major roadblock does come along, family members are comfortable to go outside the system to seek help from a teacher, therapist, trusted friend, pastor or support group.
Skeptics may ask, “Do these ‘healthy families’ really feel safe sharing their feelings with each other? That’s not what happens in our family.” Many come from a background in which secrets flourish and rules are unspoken but heavily enforced. They don’t feel comfortable speaking honestly about what is going on inside the family, so the old secrets continue to simmer in their psyches.
Secrets can also cause shame. If someone has or is forced to carry a secret, that person may feel he or she is bad. Others in the family who either don’t know or can’t talk about the secret are caught up in this unhealthy mix. The shame is compounded if someone tries to tell the secret to another person in the family and is met with denial, silence, or even retribution for breaking the family rules about keeping secrets.
In my family growing up, the big secret revolved around adoption and the corollaries to that of infertility and illegitimacy. This was back in the 1930s and 1940s, when most adoption professionals and the laws of the land decreed that adoptions should be closed. In the interest of protecting all parties, no information was ever to be exchanged between the members of the adoption triad: the birth mother, adoptive parents, and the adopted child.
Why was it mandated that everyone needed protection? An unmarried woman who became pregnant was looked upon as a fallen woman who could be redeemed only if she gave up her baby to a happily married couple. She must always keep her disgrace a secret. The baby’s background must be kept a secret because others might view him or her as having inherited flawed genes. This resulted in the adopted person’s original birth record being sealed away. An amended document was created, listing the people who adopted him as the legal parents. The adoptive parents most likely were dealing with the secret of infertility. People who couldn’t have children were considered “less than” by the rest of society. Thus each member of the adoption triangle was struggling with shame over secrets that our culture and society forced them to keep.
When I was five, my adoptive mother told my older sister and me that we had not come out of her tummy the way our little brother had. She added that our first parents had died in a terrible accident. When my sister wanted to know more, my mother began to cry. At that moment my father announced that we were never to talk about adoption again. Later I learned from a cousin that those other parents hadn’t died after all. Instead my first mother had given me up. All I could think was that I must have been a bad baby. What shame I felt. It would have made a huge difference if I could have talked about my fears with my adoptive mother. Yet I remained silent, determined to be very good so this mother wouldn’t leave me.
But life has a way of getting our attention. During a mid-life crisis the urge to find my birth mother hit me with the force of a tidal wave. My adoptive parents were threatened; terrified they would lose me to my other parents. I felt guilty about causing them pain and feared my transgressions might cause me to lose their love. Yet my need to discover the truth overrode my fear of abandonment. I persisted in my search, a 15-year process that began with fear, betrayal and heartache and transformed into healing and joy. I was supported by unforeseen wisdom coming from within me and synchronistic happenings on the outside. By the end of my quest I had discovered my own self. When I didn’t receive what I was hoping for, I had to learn to let go of my expectations and become open to other outcomes. As a result I found new relatives who welcomed me into my birth family. At the same time my adoptive parents and I grew closer than we had ever been because we kept talking together and becoming more authentic.
The secrets that once held such power dissolved and the truth really did set us free.
Titia Ellis, PhD is a psychologist and the author of the new book The Search: A Memoir of an Adopted Woman.For further info visit titiaellis.com.
The Cool Communicator: An Apple a Day ~ Timeless Words to Live By
~ A Quiz on Proverbs ~
By Caroline Taggart ~
Let’s answer the second question first. A proverb is defined as ‘a piece of wisdom or advice, expressed in a short and memorable way.’ It can be anything from a quotation from the Bible (‘Spare the rod and spoil the child’) or Shakespeare (‘The course of true love never did run smooth’) to a piece of folk wisdom whose origins are lost in the mists of time (‘An apple a day keeps the doctor away’). And to go back to the first question, the point of this book is not only to explain familiar proverbs but also to see if they are still relevant today.”
Many of them are relevant. There’s a world of truth in sayings, such as “Haste makes waste,” “You’re only young once,” and “Handsome is as handsome does.” There may be room for debate over the apparent contradiction of “Many hands make light work” and “Too many cooks spoil the broth,” but it’s worth remembering that each individual proverb is only one person’s take on a situation, the product of his own culture, personality, and mood at that moment in time. Part of the beauty of proverbs is that you can adopt the ones that suit your needs and ignore the others — you’re not going to end up in jail either way. If you are cautious by nature, you can take “Look before you leap” as your motto; if “He who hesitates is lost” is more your line, then that is fine, too.
So without taking any of it too seriously, here is a short quiz on the origins of familiar proverbs and my take on them. Can you match the proverbs (1 – 5) with their sources (a – e)?
1. Don’t count your chickens before they are hatched
2. Necessity is the mother of invention
3. Brevity is the soul of wit
4. You can’t make bricks without straw
5. Early to bed and early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy, and wise
a. A piece of fifteenth-century folk wisdom
b. A fable by Aesop, written in the sixth century B.C.
c. An eighteenth-century poem about a sofa
d. The Biblical story of the Children of Israel being enslaved in Egypt
e. A quotation from Shakespeare’s Hamlet
Answers:
1. B, This is the moral of Aesop’s The Milkmaid and Her Pail. A milkmaid, carrying a pail of milk home on her head, dreams of what she will do with the profits of selling it: Buy some hens from the poultry farmer; get rich on the proceeds of the eggs and chickens they will produce; buy a pretty dress that will attract all the boys; and toss her head at their advances. Unfortunately, as she dreams, she actually does toss her head — and spills all the milk (which, come to think of it, she may then have cried over). So the warning is against acting prematurely on something that may or may not happen.
2. C, The English poet William Cowper did write a poem about a sofa — a female acquaintance had challenged him to do it — and it contains the lines “Thus first necessity invented stools/Convenience next suggested elbow-chairs/And luxury the accomplished sofa last.” The first line is the important one here: Somebody got tired of standing up all the time, so he invented something to sit on. And so it is has been throughout history: When somebody needed a cart to carry a heavier load than he could manage himself, he invented the wheel; when buildings got taller and people didn’t want to walk up all those stairs, they invented the elevator. The same poem, by the way, also tells us “variety is the spice of life.”
3. E, A lot of proverbs come from Hamlet: “You’ve got to be cruel to be kind” and “Desperate situations call for desperate measures” are two others. In this context “soul of wit” means “essence of wisdom,” so the speaker, Polonius, is advising himself to keep his information brief and to the point (he is trying to tell the king and queen that Hamlet has gone mad). But we — the audience — know that Shakespeare is having fun at his character’s expense. We have just seen Polonius giving endless worthy advice to his son, Laertes, and we know that he wouldn’t recognize brevity if you hit him over the head with it. Irony aside, however, it is sound advice: Keep it snappy and you have a better chance of keeping your audience’s attention.
4. D, This is from the Old Testament book of Exodus. The enslaved Children of Israel spend their time making bricks — of which a key ingredient is straw. Moses, their spokesman, tries to persuade Pharaoh (the Egyptian king) to “let my people go.” Pharaoh, furious at this impertinent request, ordains that not only should the Jews stay in slavery, but that from now on they will no longer be given straw. They will have to find it themselves and still produce the same number of bricks each day. The point of the proverb is that this is kind of hard. “Give us the tools,” the Children of Israel might have said, “and we will finish the job.”
5. A, People have been making this irritating claim for over 500 years — and the really irritating thing (for those of us who hate getting up in the morning) is that it is true. Once it was sensible not to stay in bed during daylight hours, when you could be working. And you wouldn’t want to waste candles sitting up late: You’d think electric light would have changed all that. Maybe, but the “healthy” part of the argument remains valid. When it gets dark, our levels of the sleep hormone melatonin rise and our levels of the stress-related hormone cortisol lower, making it easier for us to unwind and go to sleep. So although artificial light allows us to party till 2 in the morning, if we choose, it lessens our ability to cope with stress and with general wear and tear. So off you go to bed, and don’t forget to set the alarm!
Copyright © 2011 Caroline Taggart, author of An Apple A Day: Old-Fashioned Proverbs –Timeless Words to Live By
Author Bio
Caroline Taggart has been an editor of non-fiction books for nearly 30 years and has covered nearly every subject from natural history and business to gardening and astronomy. She has written several books and was the editor of Writer’s Market UK 2009.
For more information on the book and the Blackboard Books, please visit www.rdtradepublishing.com.
The Cool Communicator: Control Your Reactions – and Determine Your Destination
By Deborah Fairfull ~
One minute you can be travelling along feeling peaceful and loving towards yourself and the world – then you meet someone, they say something and the next minute you’ve been completely been taken away from your peace. At this point you have a choice: you can blame the other person or use your reaction as a learning opportunity to grow and learn to experience your world in a more peaceful and loving way.
To do this, it is important to be able to begin to understand your inner world in terms of your thoughts and feelings, which are essentially the same dynamic emotions. This involves developing skills to observe those thoughts and feelings rather than being swept away by them. Your thoughts determine how you feel; for example, if you are thinking “I love my life” on a regular basis, you are likely to feel great. However, if you were repeatedly thinking, “life is a struggle,” you would quite possibly feel sad or even depressed.
When you develop the ability to observe your reactions and thoughts in a loving way they will begin to flow energetically through your body. It is as if you are the chariot driver, your feelings are the chariot and the horses are your thoughts. As the chariot driver you want to be in charge of the horses, otherwise they can run away and you can end up in undesirable situations.
Your reactions are a wonderful guide to what is really going on in your inner world. Very strong feelings are involved in reactions, which are brain responses associated with survival. Reactions are caused by a small nut-shaped structure in the brain, known as the amygdala, which scans the environment for signs of danger. It is associated with emotions such as fear, rage, anger, and fight or flight. If the amygdala senses danger, it will signal the body to either act aggressively (fight) or withdraw (flight). The fight response manifests in things such as road rage, saying things you don’t mean and later wishing you could take back, while flight may make you feel “frozen,” unable to find the right words to say.
This survival system is lightning-fast, providing an immediate subconscious reaction to an event. You know when a reaction has taken place when you feel an emotional charge and generally don’t feel very good. Words such as triggered, hooked in and my buttons were pressed are often used to describe the event. Strong physiological changes can take place, such as: a pounding heart, shallow breathing, feeling shaky, a tight feeling in your stomach and a fuzzy head. This is because your whole body is getting ready to fight or to take flight!!
Reactions develop in childhood when a child’s reasoning centers are not fully developed, so they process the world in an emotional way. If a child grows up in an aggressive household, the amygdala may give the child signals to withdraw from a potentially dangerous situation (flight). This allows the child to draw less attention to him or herself and perhaps remain physically safe. The problem occurs when that person is in a similar situation as an adult. Any similarly aggressive situation, large or small, can trigger a flight reaction, as this pathway was programmed in the brain in the past and is now automatic. The adult will find him or herself reacting and withdrawing without necessarily wanting to. The reaction is often not proportional to the situation and leaves the adult feeling confused and out of control.
Part of the survival response is due to diminished frontal brain activity, which makes it harder to think clearly. Therefore, when the amygdala is overactive, we may overreact to a stimulus rather than provide a measured response.
However, by observing our reactions in a loving way, without blaming others, we can start to create new patterns of behavior that will in the future allow us to respond to situations rather than react.
If you find yourself reacting to a situation:
1. Get away from the other person (they could be reacting too) and allow yourself some “space” to process the reaction.
2. Ask yourself how you are FEELING, for example, angry or hurt.
3. Learn to just observe this feeling with love (no judgement or blame). In the past you may have had good reason to feel like this and your feelings were not validated.
4. Acknowledge and validate the feeling, whatever it may be.
5. In the process of containing and observing the feeling, an unconscious belief or attitude may come to the surface, such as: “I hate men,” which is fueling your anger. This is probably not going to support your having a great current day relationship with a man and could create an area in your life which is not flowing.
6. Once you are AWARE of the thought (awareness is the key to growth) you can change it to something that supports you, such as: “I love men,” which will manifest in more fulfilling relationships.
Awareness of your inner world over time allows you to gain some understanding of your subconscious world and the thoughts that are often blocking your way to peace and happiness. When you engage in this process you will be able to begin to take charge of your horses and drive your chariot where you would like to go, arriving safely at your destination.
Deborah Fairfull has been both a student and teacher of psychology and philosophy for over 20 years and is the author of Bliss Every Day: A Practical Guide to Find Peace and Happiness (available on amazon.com). For more information, visit www.Deborahfairfull.com.
The Cool Communicator: A “Time-Out” on Time-Outs
The age-old “time-out” technique is not so effective—and it can even lead to harmful side effects. Author Kimberley Clayton Blaine explains why parents should put this punishment go-to to rest for good…and offers some simple steps for a better alternative.
As parents, we’ve all been there. When the kicking, screaming, and other tantrum-y behaviors start, the easy fix is often a threat (or an order) to go to time-out. And chances are, you picked up this habit from your own parents. But according to parenting expert and author Kimberley Clayton Blaine, too many time-outs may be ineffective at best—young children simply don’t understand the concept—and downright harmful at worst.
That’s right. Kids subjected to repeated time-outs may develop poor emotion control because they are left alone without support and validation when they need it most.
“The misuse of a time-out is not only punishing but also alienating, and may spark a long-term physiological response,” explains Blaine, licensed family and child therapist, mother of two boys, and author of the new book The Go-To Mom’s Parents’ Guide to Emotion Coaching Young Children (Jossey-Bass/A Wiley Imprint, 2010, ISBN: 978-0-470-58497-2, $16.95, www.TheGoToMom.com). “In a worst-case scenario, they could internalize the emotional pain in order to cope, which can eventually turn into early childhood depression.
“Empathy is truly the foundation for effective parenting, and it is also necessary in creating a stronger bond between parent and child,” she adds. “Time-outs are the antithesis of that.”
Blaine advocates an alternate method that takes into account a child’s developmental limitations and that serves as guidance rather than punishment. For children over two, she suggests using a “cool-down” or “thinking time” instead. Not only is this method gentle, it keeps the parent by the child’s side to help him learn to calm himself down and think through what happened.
(Incidentally, for babies two and under, Blaine recommends distraction and redirection instead. At this age your baby is simply too young to understand the concept of a thinking time; instead, give him a new item of interest or move him to an exciting location.)
So, let’s assume your child is older than two and you’re ready to kick the old-school habit of time-outs to the curb. The following steps teach you how to use a cool-down or thinking time successfully:
- Get down at your child’s level. Be sure to maintain good eye contact; give a warning and ask if what she is doing is “okay” or “not okay.”
- If your child doesn’t calm down or stop the unacceptable behavior, then lead him to a “quiet area” or “thinking area.” Sit with him and offer assistance and love. Remember, this is not a punishment.
- Be aware that time is not important—having your child calm down is. Disregard the “one minute times your child’s age” stance that most use as a guide. Don’t give a five-year-old “five minutes to think”; sometimes the older child needs only a minute or two to come up with a better solution. On the other hand, a younger child may need to cuddle or sit with you for ten minutes until she’s calm.
As you’re sitting there, empathize, validate, and reflect what you see. An understood child is less likely to be fraught.
- Once your child is calm, ask him to tell you “what’s wrong” or “what’s going on.” Restate the problem again more clearly if he has difficulty.
- Ask your child, “What will you do differently next time?” Name the expected behavior if she doesn’t know.
- Thank your child for helping you come up with a solution. It’s important that he hears this positive reinforcement.
- Set the expectation for the future by wrapping up with, “If you don’t listen next time, what will happen?” Inform your child that you will take actions to help and that you will not tolerate unacceptable behavior.
“Responding to your child in a reasonable, calm, and patient manner is absolutely vital in building a connection,” says Blaine. “And, after all, connection is the key ingredient in helping guide our children. Punishment, on the other hand, forces a disconnection that undermines the goal of helping them someday become independent.”
About the Author:
Kimberley Clayton Blaine, MA, MFT, is the executive producer of the online parenting show www.TheGoToMom.TV and author of The Go-To Mom’s Parents’ Guide to Emotion Coaching Young Children and The Internet Mommy.
Kimberley is a national child development expert and a licensed family and child therapist specializing in working with children newborn to six years old. Kimberley is currently the social marketing director for a Los Angeles-based early childhood mental health campaign (Project ABC) funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. She has launched a national campaign to help American parents be all that they can be in order to give their children a healthy and fair start. You might have seen Kimberley review products, discuss the perils of parenting, blog, vlog, and take on mommypreneurship across the Internet.
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