My new book
Fighting fair and protecting youself: a guide
Here are my Rules of Fair Fighting:
1. When involved in an argument, speak about yourself, your experience, your feelings. Use language such as, “I felt angry” or “I felt sad” or “That caused me pain.” Avoid: “You were an idiot” and “You made me mad!”
Only the behavior of the other person caused you to feel a feeling. But whatever you felt was unique to you; the other person probably felt another feeling. This in no way minimizes your emotion, however — it is yours to own.
2. Talk about what you want to see happen, from your perspective.
3. Stay away from absolute words like “always” and “never,” and keep to the specifics of the situation in the here and now.
Don’t throw in historical experiences such as, “I remember three years ago you did the same thing!” What matters is how you are experiencing the situation today — and that you are expressing yourself today.
4. Don’t label or shame the person with whom you are engaging. If you do, it’s shame on you! Only the weaker party resorts to shaming with expletives.
5. Take a “time out” if you don’t feel that you’re being heard — or if the dialogue between you and the other person is getting loud while tensions are escalating. Always seek a cooling off period if things threaten to become violent (verbally or physically). Also, go to a time out if you find yourself repeating the same things and getting nowhere.
6. Agree to return with the understanding that both positions are worthy of being listened to and considered.
At the end of the day, recognize that relationships are based on mutuality, negotiation and love. There must be give and take.
When either party gets stuck in the land of always and never, sparks will fly. Avoid those black-and-white statements.
Try to put yourself in the shoes of your spouse, partner, friend or child/teenager. Can you also see their point of view? You don’t need to agree with them … but do strive for a larger perspective. Maybe you can understand how they might feel. This should help with the long-term way you relate to them.
Often when we are hurt by the ones we love, they are not intentionally harming us. Sometimes they just miss the obvious, are insensitive, or fail to see an alternative perspective.
On the other hand, if intent to harm is part of the behavior pattern then it’s time to explore why you’re in a relationship with someone who causes deliberate harm. Do you deserve such hurtful behavior? Hopefully the response you give yourself will be a “no.”
We all deserve to be treated with respect.
In defense of being ‘touchy feely’
Feeling feelings can make you feel better.
The whole notion of people being too “touchy feely” is just a bad rap.
Tough-love books such as “The Blessing of a Skinned Knee
The truth, however, is that most of us rarely if ever truly express a true feeling. We tend to skirt around the subject.
If you ask an adult how they felt about being passed over for a job, or being dumped by a boyfriend, chances are they will respond with something like: “I felt that I was not good enough,” or “I felt like she should have tried harder.”
Sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, but these are not feelings. They are intellectual descriptions of an emotion.
Society has created quite the taboo about the expression of genuine feelings, as if they are to be avoided as signs of being weak, shameful or immature. This is simply not true.
Only the courageous and strong are connected with their true emotions. To have the maturity and wisdom to express feelings is a blessing. This is an important part of intimacy. Our sacred vulnerability.
Our emotions are the force of our being. To mute our feelings of pain, joy, loneliness, fear, frustration, humiliation or happiness is nothing short of a prescription for depression
Depression is often the result of buried feelings and emotions that go unrevealed to a person who cares about us.
How many times as a child did you hear the words, “Oh, don’t be upset” or “Don’t cry, it will be better” — as if being upset was a bad thing? Our parents or caregivers probably meant well, but these kinds of messages were not always in our best interests.
For in telling a child not to cry or feel, we forward this message all the way into adulthood — and suddenly the grown child is unable to express normal feelings to their partners, children, friends.
Being upset or angry (using “I” statements) or expressing fear — it’s all normal. It’s human nature to want to cry when life’s injuries bring sadness. What is the worst that can happen? Tears will come and grief or pain will be released. Sounds like a good thing, doesn’t it?
Reclaiming feelings can be disorienting at first. Sometimes these emotions seem extreme, depending on how buried they might be.
Remember to remind yourself that feelings are normal. Practice with language such as, “I feel scared” or “I felt hurt” or “I am frustrated” or “I am very happy” when this or that occurred.
A word to the wise.
At first when expressing feelings, be sure to share them with someone who cares about you and how you feel. So that the childhood experience is not repeated in a painful way with someone once again telling you to “Get over it.”
Share your feelings with loving, caring others and perhaps you’ll discover the strength and wellness within.
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The mystery of you: Help your lover solve it
How many times do we refuse to ask for help from our life partners — or not tell them how we feel about something — because “they should already know.”
How many times have you heard yourself or someone else say: “If he (or she) really loved me, they would already know how I feel about this problem.”
Sorry to break the bad news: This is simply not true. Perhaps in a perfect world we might find ourselves in love with a mind reader, but in reality there is much about us that no one knows or understands.
Relationships are journeys into unchartered territory needing ongoing discovery and exploration.
It takes a lifetime to begin to know someone. And even then how much do we really know? (On the positive side, there’s so much to discover about one another!)
The child within us desperately wants to be known. Remember how kids are often saying, “Look at me, see me!”
As children, our security and survival were dependent on our primary caregivers’ abilities to to read our cues and watch our signs. Our parents could see on our faces if we were tired or hurt, angry or scared.
As the years go by, however, we learn to hide so many of our feelings for fear of being hurt. That “open child” part of us becomes concealed once we’re adults, sadly.
Now when we feel fear it does not show so readily on our faces. If we are hurt we often we suck up the hurt and withdraw, without communicating as openly as we would have as a child. We no longer wear feelings on our sleeves.
What is important to know is that our partners and spouses are not deliberately ignoring our feelings — sometimes it is simply too difficult to read even the closest love ones if they are not communicating.
When they are unresponsive to our hurt, anger and fears, it does not mean that we are not important to them or we are unlovable.
Here’s a solution:
It’s essential in a healthy loving relationship to understand that expressing and communicating is a cornerstone of intimacy. While we’d like to go back and be the child whose attentive parents notice every nuance and understand every cry, we no longer live in that space.
We conceal ourselves more than we know.
So take a risk. Express yourself in words; ask for what you want. Chances are your partner or spouse will be all too happy to be there for you.
None of us are mind readers. Communication is the key.
Don’t keep your creativity bottled up
Just how well do you know the genie that lies within you?
So many of us haven’t even begun to explore the wealth of creativity inside us, that’s kept bottled up like a genie. Often it’s because we are afraid to experience shame if we fail at something new — so why try at all? This is such a harsh message we give ourselves. Be a little kinder, a little more encouraging to your inner self.
Do you think it’s always the other person who has the talent, the genius?
Try this approach.
Close your eyes and think about something you wish you could do, something that has always attracted you. Rather than obsessing about the chances of success or the failure, focus on the pleasure of the new experience. In other words, take the success-or-failure dynamic out of the equation.
It’s possible that by simply opening yourself up, you’ll discover new things about yourself. Imagine the smile on your face as you give yourself credit for taking this new risk.
If you get your toe wet, next thing you might put your whole foot in! Perhaps you’re hiding a treasure within — guarded by your genie — that would bring pleasure and joy to you and others in these challenging times.
In any case, exploration is all about the journey, not the destination.
If you love art, then take yourself to the art store, buy a set of inexpensive paints and a sketch book, and set about unleashing your creativity — without self-judgment.
If you have always wanted to dance or take a yoga class, do it. Even if you think you have no real flexibility. Who cares. Suspend judgment and perhaps you can move in ways you never thought possible.
Soon you’ll be looking forward to that hour or two you’ve set aside to spend with the genie within!
Things that go bump in your life
Monsters underneath the bed. Fear of the dark. Visits to the dentist or doctor. All pretty daunting experiences for a little one.
Validating a child’s fear, anxiety, loneliness and pain — helping them find ways to manage and cope — is a critical part of the parenting role.
When “scary” incidents from childhood go unattended by primary caregivers, these experiences become more traumatic, more terrifying than they really were. The child is at risk of growing up to be an adult who only sees experiences in life as black and white.
Without appropriate soothing, the child is simply not capable of regulating and soothing their fears. Comforting the youngster should not include minimizing these fears or telling a child they should not feel the way they do.
When a child sees that mom or dad can help them with reassurances, then the child develops a sense of both efficacy and emotional security. Life feels less scary — more manageable, creative and interesting.
For example: “Let’s look under the bed together, Jimmy, and see that there are no monsters there” (said with loving kindness). Perhaps Sarah and her mother can wave an imaginary wand and herald the words, “Monsters be gone!”
Soothing the inner child’s fears
Adults whose childhood fears were ignored or mishandled often live in a world of “always and never,” trapped into experiencing life in extremes — unable to moderate or soothe themselves in a loving way.
For example, when it comes time for the adult to have a checkup at the doctor’s and anxiety increases at the prospect — just as it did during childhood — the adult might be inclined to have extreme thoughts: “Oh, God, what if I have a terminal illness?” “What if the doctor finds something terribly wrong with me” … and so on.
Unable to calm itself, the child within has failed (through no fault of its own) to create a soothing voice capable of calming the inner turmoil. Developing a loving soothing voice within requires work and daily practice so that over time the extremes of the day to day become less anxiety provoking, more moderate.
To develop this voice, begin with a little self-soothing talk. Go easy on yourself.
Remember to tell the child within you the same things you would say to any youngster facing an upsetting or unknown situation.
Let’s say you were passed over for the promotion you really wanted and needed. Now you have a choice: Be brutally harsh, speaking to yourself with all kinds of cruel and self-destructive words. Or begin to be the loving, kind and gentle parent within that you deserve.
Offer yourself comforts such as, “It’s going to be OK, I love you and we can work through this — if you don’t get this job there are others.”
Try this approach, even if it feels awkward at first. You are worth it. The alternative, living a life of extreme thinking and feeling, can be draining and scary.
Once you start to soothe your inner child, little by little step by step, you’ll notice a big difference. Most importantly, you’ll feel better each and every day in your life.
Read Dr. Katrina Wood’s self-help book “That’s Not Love. This Is.”
New Year’s resolutions you can keep
Resolutions often are thought of as a good way to start the new year, but be honest now — how many of them do you really keep?
How do you feel when you don’t measure up, and how many of these resolutions simply go by the wayside with a shrug and the thought. “Oh well, I’ll try again next year”?
Consider another approach.
Say to yourself, “I am going to set myself a New Year’s resolution and I am going to try to stick to it in a ‘good enough’ way.”
Be the best that you can be in your new endeavor — be it to exercise four times a week, eat less meat, be nicer to your neighbors, whatever it is — but consider it a ‘good enough’ task.
Good enough means that if one day or one week you forget or don’t feel like following through on the resolution, don’t beat yourself up. Instead of telling yourself, “OK, I blew my New Year’s resolution — I suck,” look at things another way.
Tell yourself. “OK, I blew my New Year’s resolution just for today, for this moment in time.”
Take a beat, look at why that might have happened. Sometimes we let ourselves down because we are reacting to some other loss that we have not acknowledged. Instead we might have taken our negative emotions out on someone in the community.
Perhaps you had a disagreement with your partner and criticized your neighbor instead of confronting your partner.
Know your triggers. Own them. Remind yourself that tomorrow is another day — and you can renew your commitment to your New Year’s resolution then.
Accept your shortcomings, acknowledge your strengths and vow to keep walking down the highway, even if you stumble and fall.
Being on the highway of wellness speaks of your courage.
Mental wellness is a journey of heroes and heroines.
CDs to soothe the soul
My Relaxation Reverie CD collection offers meditation, guided-imagery and relaxation audio for both adults and children.
Here are three audio samples:
Fall Reverie
Magic Forest
Toy Store