Lynn Lott Therapy Talk

Come to Lynn Lott with questions and leave
with answers that enrich your life and
the lives of others

It’s a hot topic, right?  Don’t get stressed.  Are you stressed?  How do you feel less stress?  Reduce stress!  Live stress-free, and on and on and on.  Here’s a simple explanation of stress.  Think about it.  If you think life should be one way and it is another way, the space in between those two thoughts is called stress.  Different things stress different people and people handle stress in many different ways.  The trick to reducing stress is to narrow the space between the two lines (see video below).  That involves either changing your expectations or changing your life.  Easier said than done, but possible, and it doesn’t take a pill to do it.  What’s wrong with a pill, you ask?  Maybe nothing, but for many of us, we’d prefer to work on the deeper issues rather than medicate ourselves.  We like to know there are choices, which there are!
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KA2Cfee_JPA&feature=youtube_gdata

If you were a mouse in the corner of my office, here’s something you might see and hear on a typical day.  Since a typical day is about 7 hours and every client is different, you’ll have to use your imagination or wait for updates for more client stories.

The first client I’m writing about is the poster child for what happens when parents take the popular notions about attachment too seriously.  The attachment parenting I’m referring to is very different from the basic concept of the therapy I practice which accepts that the two most important needs humans have is to belong and to feel significant.  The first place humans feel love and attachment is in their family of origin.  I am not suggesting that feeling attached (belonging) and loved (significance) is unimportant.  I am concerned about the wave of parenting advice that encourages parents to never let their child our of their sight, to make sure they never feel sadness, pain, etc., and that it is the parent’s job to do whatever is necessary to make the child feel secure and loved.  There are a few flaws in this theory.  I’ll touch on a couple. 

 First, children are always making decisions about what is happening to them.  They think and decide even before they have language, and they may not be deciding what the parent is thinking they are deciding.  All that contact and attention might be inviting the child to think, “I can’t handle things myself and need someone to intervene for me,” or “I’m not capable.”  In addition to that, children need to feel their feelings—all of them, and then get help from their parents about constructive and respectful ways to deal with their feelings.  There’s nothing wrong with feelings.  The problem is usually the behavioral solutions that follow feelings.  Starting children out from birth with the notion that half of their feelings are inappropriate or dangerous is a sure fire way to limit their ability to solve problems or role with life’s ups and downs as they grow up. 

 You’ll see the result of this style of parenting when you hear about my client, a nine year old who has been sent by her single parent with the following instructions (my words, not mom’s).  “Lynn, can you fix the following?  I’m worried about my daughter and want her to be less anxious and happier.  Here are some of the problems:  she won’t let me out of her sight; she sleeps in my bed and won’t sleep in her own room; she follows me everywhere; she cries often because she’s worried the people she loves might die; and she cried most of the night when she stayed with a relative.” 

 I’m expecting a frail, pathetic kid to show up at my door, but instead, in walks an adorable, cheery kid who has agreed to see me because it’s important to her parent.  I start by telling her that Mom is worried about her and that she wrote me a letter with her concerns.  My client asks me to tell her what Mom wrote, so one by one we go through the concerns.  She explains that Mom doesn’t have it quite right and goes on to clarify that her biggest concern is that someone might break into the house and kidnap her like what happened in her community many years ago to Polly Klaus.  That’s why she didn’t want to sleep at her relative’s house, because the guest room was next to the front door.  That’s why she follows her mom everywhere.  She’s not afraid about her Mom getting hurt; she’s worried that if her Mom is in a different part of the house or outside, the bad guy can come and get her and no one will be there to help her.  She’s taken a martial arts class, but she’s sure she’s not strong enough to really fight off an intruder.  She lives in constant fear of being abducted.

 As she’s talking, I’m thinking that as tough and strong as this kid looks, she’s short on confidence.  She’s smart and thoughtful and extremely verbal, but she lacks courage.  Could this be because she’s been completely over-protected all of her life?  That would be  my guess.  Courage is a muscle that needs to be exercised, and it needs a parent’s help.  I make a mental note to talk to Mom to find out what her beliefs are and why she is so worried about her daughter and so protective.  But in the meantime, I’ve got to work with who’s in front of me.  Hopefully, she’ll be easier to empower than her mom.

 Usually the big issues change with small steps, so that’s where we begin.  I tell her about my fears about my kids when they were off on their big adventures around the world river rafting and traveling through third world countries.  I didn’t want to put bad energy into their paths by thinking negatively, so I figured out that I could imagine throwing a golden net over them that would keep them safe.  I told her that so far this imaginary net has kept my kids safe for over fifteen years, and that it’s amazing how powerful our imagination can be.  I suggested that she might think of something to keep her safe. 

 She countered with a sigh of relief and a big grin and told me that she did that a few days ago.  She had taken a field trip to the Science Academy and seen the albino alligator.  She figured out that she could create a crew of albino alligators who in her imagination would surround her bed.  They wouldn’t hurt her, just attack unfamiliar intruders.  I congratulated her for being so clever and told her I was sure that those alligators would work as well or better than my golden net.  She seemed relieved.  

 My imaginary golden net is what keeps me sane.  My kids are safe and strong because of the millions of opportunities they’ve had from birth on to make small mistakes and learn from them and to have room to try things out and build their courage muscle.  Now my client has just made her first decision about self-care instead of hoping someone could fix things for her.  Her albino alligators are her first steps to empowerment.

 Next, she told me that her mom won’t let her have a sleepover with a friend until she can sleep in her own bed.  I asked if it was okay if I disagreed with her mom about that and she said it was fine (another empowerment step).  So I suggested that courage was a muscle, and if she was willing to sleep at a friends, that would exercise her courage and she could worry about getting out of her mom’s bed at another time.  I told her I’d mention this to her mom if it was okay with her and she gave me permission to talk to her mom. 

 What came out next was that her mom wouldn’t redecorate her room (something we had talked about almost a year ago) until she got out of her mom’s bed.  Again, I said I disagreed and she was anxious to hear my opinion.  I explained that I believe very strongly that all kids should be able to pick out the color their rooms are painted and decide within reason what to put up on their walls.  Since a person’s room was something used all day long, it didn’t matter where they slept during the night.  I suggested the redecorating start immediately, and again, with her permission, I told her I’d talk this over with her mom.  My thinking is that as she is able to make more decisions about the small things that affect her life, the more she’ll build her confidence.

We also talked about how she controls and manipulates her mom by crying or being scared and how her mom won’t follow through on her threats to get her out of mom’s bed if she cries.  She knows this, but it helps to verbalize it and let her know she’s “the mom” when it comes to this decision.  She’s not comfortable with that, so maybe that awareness will help her move forward; maybe not.  Step by step.

 Later I spoke to her mom who thought that withholding the overnights and redecorating would help her daughter take the step to sleep in her own room.  I suggested that since she’s been trying that for a year with no results, it might be a time to shift gears and move into plan B.  It will be a lot easier to send her daughter off on a sleepover or repaint her room and let her daughter start making decisions about color and wall art, than to get her daughter out of her bed.

In this day of diagnoses, I guess I’d rate at the very least opositional defiant.  I prefer to think of myself as someone who marches to my own drummer and will only follow rules that make sense to me.  I was born upside down and backwards, and have been spending a lifetime trying to get folks to see the world from my point of view.  When I’m successful, I’m not oppositional at all. 

Many years ago our office of therapists decided to do a “ropes” course together, sometimes known as an adventure challenge course.  I couldn’t have been more excited and wanted to try everything out.  There was an activity with some sort of mesh type trampoline.  The instructions were given for all of us to line up on the side of the trampoline.  I rushed to the side as instructed, waiting for everyone else to join me, and couldn’t understand why the rest of our group (around 10 people) were all standing on the other side.   It never occured to me that I was the one who mis-heard the directions and not them.  I wasn’t trying to be opositional and actually thought I was doing as instructed, but the group was so used to me having a different point of view that, to this day, I think they still believed I was goofing off and trying to be difficult.

When I met my husband Hal, I told him that I was like a wild horse.  If someone tried to fence me in, I’d jump the fence to escape.  If they left me to my own devices, I’d be joining everyone else most of the time because it’s what I prefer.  Hal has been the best at never fencing me in.  Ahhh, how I wish I were as good at extending the kindness back to him, but alas, he’s much nicer than I am.

You may be wondering why I’m writing this and what’s my point.  Well, obviously, I may be breaking a few rules that don’t make sense to me.  The rules make so little sense, I’m not even sure what they are, but I’m intent on being my own person and doing what in my mind is the right thing.  It’s taken a lot of years, but I accept who I am and hope that my differences have added more to the world than they’ve taken away.  Or at least I’d like to think so!  And I wish for all those kids who march to their own drummer that folks stop building “fences” to hold them back and have some faith that they want to belong and contribute in spite of their difference.

If you start at the end of this conversation instead of the beginning, you’ll get to hear Katie sing one of her songs.  It’s as interesting and compelling as Katie who openly shares about her switch to Electronic High School and how it came about.  For any of you who have kids struggling with school, you might want to check out this conversation.  Katie is also curious about the meaning of her childhood memories.  We explore one of them and get an excellent picture of Katie’s private logic, or operating system, or set of rules that she uses to figure out her life.  Katie’s joy and curiosity about learning about herself are contageous.  As you listen, perhaps you will want to learn more about yourself using your childhood memories as the path to awareness.

For about 5 years I lived in the East Bay.  Yesterday, Hal and I took our favorite walk along the Bay with our dog Magic.  It brought back so many memories of living there and a lot of nostalgia.  We used to walk along this particular trail almost every morning, and I was reminded of a book I wanted to write, but never did, called Morning Walks.  I started going through some of my notes for the book, and found this entry.  It’s especially relevant because I am working with so many couples who spend so little time together, and I hope this entry will encourage them to look for ways to have some special time every day to connect and to be intimate.  It wouldn’t have to be a walk, nor would it have to be an hour each day, but it could be a special time (even 10 minutes would help) where there were no distractions allowed and the purpose would be to share some quality time without dealing with logistics of life or without fighting.  When I say no distractions allowed, I mean that the phone goes unanswered, the TV is off, and the kids are trained to give Mom and Dad some space.  It can be done, believe me, if you want to make it happen.  So come along with us on our morning walk that we took in April of 2002 so you can experience the possibilities and decide if special time would add to your life.

This morning the four of us, Hal, me and the two dogs, head out on our usual route, past the tennis courts, down the walkway to The Bay Trail along San Francisco Bay.  It’s early, so the roller bladers and families on bicycles are still in bed.  The ceonothus are just past the height of their bloom, but we can still smell the sweet fragrance of lilac emanating from bushes covered in purple flowers.  As we get closer to the Bay, the ice plant greets us, complete with blooms about to open, and other plants, whose names are unfamiliar, accent our path with colors of pink and yellow and violet.  The tide is out and ducks and birds abound, but to know their names, I’d have to walk with my son.  He’d tell me what they are called, how they mate, where they migrate and even imitate their calls.  Wish he wasn’t so far away so we could take the occasional walk together. 

We pass an occasional jogger or walker, but mostly, the Bay is ours for the next hour. Berkeley and Oakland are at our backs as soon as we turn the corner onto the Bay Trail.  San Francisco’s familiar skyline looms in the distance, (more…)