The Shrink’s Links: Hugging till Relaxed, the Video

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Hugging till relaxed is elegant and simple. The basics require four sentences: stand on your own two feet. Put your arms around your partner. Focus on yourself. Quiet yourself down – way down.
– David Schnarch

Watch the video and learn:

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I have written hundreds of articles on mental health and relationships. The latest are published in a weekly Substack newsletter, The Reflective Eclectic.

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Thorny Issues I’ve Written About

I’ve been a counselor for more than 35 years in a variety of settings; I’ve heard everything. There are a few issues, though, that are so common, that I have a lot to say about them.

Addiction

Are you looking for hassle free help for addiction?

Anger

Truly powerful people have no need for violence

Anxiety

You can avoid anxiety or face it. I can face it with you, if that’s what you must do.

Depression and grief

Depression and grief represent a call to realign values as much as a sadness or lack of motivation

Improve Your Relationship

What kind of relationship do you want?

Trauma

If you had awful things happen to you, you might have put it away in a mental closet so that you could deal with it later. Perhaps it’s time to clean the closet.

The Shrink’s Links: Movie Review of Ways of Seeing

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

Most movie reviewers try to be the first to give you their take on up and coming movies. Not here at the Shrinks Links. Here we include those old classics that you might not have seen before, but are worth seeing now.

One of these is Ways of Seeing, a four part documentary by art critic John Berger and put out in 1972 by the BBC. The series reveals hidden ideologies embedded in visual images and criticizes traditional Western cultural aesthetics.

Good mental health requires that we question tenets that go unquestioned and challenge all the ways we are manipulated.

In the first part, Berger shows that, through the means of reproduction, art becomes free of its moorings and can be used for alien purposes. A copy of an icon of Christ Pantocrator, for instance, loosened from the churchy context of the original and not used in worship, as it was intended, can be enlisted to win votes, perhaps, or to sell cars.

Here is a copy of the image, taken out of context.

In contrast, he talks about the experience of viewing art without the words used to manipulate it.

The most important thing about paintings, themselves, is that their images are silent, still… Occasionally, this uninterrupted silence and the stillness of a painting can me very striking… It’s as if the painting, absolutely still, soundless. It becomes a corridor, connecting the moment it represents with the moment in which you are looking at it; and something travels down that corridor, at greater than the speed of light, throwing into question the way of measuring time itself.

In the second part, Berger examines the history of the Western female nude. Few of the old masters ever depicted a woman as a person in her own right rather than as a subject of male idealization and desire. These paintings school us in how to look and how to be looked at.

Women constantly meet glances that work like mirrors. Reminding them of how they look or should look. Behind every glance is a judgment… A woman is always accompanied, except when she is alone, perhaps even then, by her own image of herself.

Part three talks about how the easel painting was co-opted to promote a program of conspicuous consumption, with exceptions. One painting, by Vermeer, is an exception.

There is a painting of a woman by Vermeer which, at first sight, confirms everything I’ve said… She’s weighing gold on a pair of scales. Perhaps also, weighing the pearls strewn on the table. Her interest is commercial. In the way the scene is painted, the substantiality and tangibility of everything is emphasized. Everything suggests the solidity of a Dutch middle-class home, even the painting the Last Judgment on the wall behind her. A painting on the wall is a mark of prosperity. As you look, gradually, the painting becomes more mysterious, less easily explainable in my terms. The light falls on her face, on her fingers, on the scales, on the pearls. The moment has been preserved. As we realize that the way it is being preserved, we realize, like every moment it was unrepeatable. It is as though she’s holding the moment between her forefinger and her thumb; on the scales between the past and the future. Despite it’s apparent celebration of property, this painting is about the mystery of light and of time as we look up at the stars.

Part three argues that the role oil paintings once played has been taken over by advertising, or, as he calls it, publicity.

Publicity both promises and threatens. It suggests that you are inadequate as you are, but it consoles you with the promise of a dream.

Alas, for many, the dream constructed by advertising becomes a nightmare when we awaken to reality.

Click below to begin watching.

Discerning the Person from the Addiction

Addiction can take over a relationship, just as if it moved into the house, kicked the couple out of their bed, ate up all the food in the refrigerator, and didn’t let them leave.

It starts by taking over your partner. You think it’s your wife speaking when she says she can’t go to a party without a little bump, but it’s not. It’s her addiction. Your husband used to be good with money, but now his gambling is in charge. Your girlfriend used to be honest, now she lies all the time. It’s the alcoholism talking when he says he needs a drink.

If they didn’t used to be like this, you can be sure it’s the addiction that brought it on. In advanced cases, the original person is gone and all that’s left is an imposter. The addiction has taken over your loved one. The person you loved is missing and left this shell behind.

Now that evil is coming for you.

What do I mean? Do I mean you are going to be addicted, too? Well, maybe. You’re at risk for all kinds of problems: addiction, anxiety, depression, despair. Suffice it to say that very few people are changed for the better when they’re dealing with an addicted partner. It doesn’t bring out the best in you.

The name that’s used to describe what happens to you is codependency. Your partner is hooked on something, and you are hooked on them being hooked. It’s an addiction to someone else’s addiction. You’re caught in a maladaptive pattern of forgetting your needs and forgetting your partner’s real needs in favor of serving the addiction. At first, you don’t recognize what’s going on, and then you feel you can’t leave.

The first step in defending yourself and defeating this monster is to be able to discern the difference between your darling and the demon. It’s tricky at first, but even twins can be distinguished by those who know them.

Go through each and every one of your partner’s behaviors. Is this the man you know and love, with all his foibles, or is this the disease? Does the behavior serve health or sickness? Decency or despair? Be sure that you can keep them straight.

If you’re angry with your partner for succumbing to addiction, your anger is justified, but misdirected. It’s the addiction you should be angry with. I know, you want him to be responsible for his addiction. He isn’t and he can’t, but he is responsible for his recovery.
Now look at yourself and the things you’re doing. Do they support your partner or the illness? Be honest. If you’re going to lick this thing, you’re going to need to know what you are doing to promote it.

Don’t blame yourself. You didn’t make him addicted, even in cases where you were the first to give him the drug. You just reacted to the addiction by doing the natural thing, taking tender care of your partner and accommodating his or her natural needs. It was only later on that those needs became all consuming. It tricked you, until now. You’ve caught on.

Finally, get connected with the portions of your partner that remain illness-free. Look into his eyes and find his soul if you have to. Listen for that still small voice of vitality. Feel around for his strength. Once you’ve got a hold, don’t let go.

The next step is to take action against the addiction and support your partner. This is why you need to be able to tell the difference. Everything else you do is going to be based on knowing friend from foe.

The Shrink’s Links: Terry

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

You may think you know George McGovern.

Maybe not, maybe you’re too young to know the Democratic presidential nominee who challenged Nixon in 1972 and lost abysmally. Politically, he was my generation’s Bernie Sanders.

Long after his presidential bid, he wrote a book, Terry: My Daughter’s Life-and-Death Struggle with Alcoholism .

She lost, too.

You can read it for the riveting, tragic story.

If you have ever questioned the standard, tough love, let them hit bottom approach, you can read it for that. He questions that, too.

Click here to go to the link.

Addiction Wants it All

The trouble starts when you accommodate the wrong thing.

Partners deserve accommodations. Reasonable compromise is at the heart of friendship, much less love. It’s better to give than to receive. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours. There is no greater love than to lay down your life.

If your girlfriend had the flu, you would make her chicken soup. You wouldn’t pout if your one-legged boyfriend didn’t take you out dancing. You’d soothe the nerves of a phobic spouse, cheer up a depressed one. You’d get them to the doctor, remind them to take their medicine, not walk so fast if there’s a struggle to keep up. Few people would begrudge such kindnesses; most are willing to sacrifice quite a lot. Even those who freely break other wedding vows take in sickness and in health quite seriously.

However, there is a danger that, if you accommodate the wrong thing, it’ll change the character of both the ill person and the one taking care of him. It ain’t pretty.

It starts in a chicken or egg type manner. It’s hard to say what comes first. You have a person who needs accommodations, but the needs are so great that they push aside all other needs. All the time. Then there’s the helping person whose identity, the very core of why they matter as a human being, can be wrapped up in caring for others and in being what they think is a good person. To stop caring is to provoke an existential crisis.

This is how addiction takes over. Caring for the addiction is so absorbing, nothing else you do matters.

The addicted person believes the addiction is all powerful, its demands insatiable, so she obeys. He drinks, she shoots up, he gambles, she screws around, he shops, she smokes, he’s mad as hell and can’t take it anymore, because they feel they must. They have a craving, an urge, a reason, so they obey.

Obeying the addiction gives it power. Addiction, or any illness, is fed by the accommodations we make. The sick person who doesn’t eat because all she does is throw up, gets weak. The paraplegic who doesn’t push himself in his physical therapy, withers away. The anxious person who lets his fears control him, puts his fears in control. The depressed person who doesn’t open the blinds, does not receive the healing properties of light. The alcoholic who makes everyone else responsible for his recovery will drink again because others cannot stop him.

The sick person may not have given himself the disease. The paraplegic may not have made herself paralyzed. Anxiety, depression, and addiction may all have a genetic component, but when a person makes themselves more ill, my word for that is madness.
Madness is a good word for the things ill people do to make themselves more ill. Having alcoholism is not madness, but drinking when you know you have alcoholism is madness. Being depressed is not madness, but not getting up to start the day is madness. Having anxieties is not madness. It’s very normal, and may even be advisable, to have anxieties; but letting your fears control you is madness.

Once madness takes over, the non-sick partner, if he does not already derive satisfaction in self-sacrifice and helping, finds that’s all he can do anyway. The needs of illness push aside all other needs. The non-sick partner stops listening to his own desires. It makes little sense for him to acknowledge, for instance, that he needs to get out and see friends when he’s not going to be able to do it anyway. He has to stay home with his sick wife. He becomes more attentive to the madness than to himself, until, at last, he’s a hostage and there is no self left.

It’s hard for the non-sick person to take action though, without feeling as though he is betraying his partner. It’s a very delicate matter to stop feeding an illness, even if it’s an addiction, because it looks as though you have stopped caring for a sick person.

So, let’s talk about a way out.

The Shrink’s Links: Surviving Infidelity

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

There are few experiences as painful and as confusing as learning your partner has been unfaithful. Was it him, her, or you? Do you stay together or split? What do you tell your children? Can anyone understand?

survivinginfedelity.com conducts forums staffed by experienced moderators. There’s a healing library and they can help you find a counselor. Check it out. Click here.

So, which is it? Are you a partner or a hostage?
Which do you have? A partner or a hostage?

The Shrink’s Links: The Global Rich List

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

Is money tight for you? Are you feeling discouraged because you can’t afford the things you want?

Enter your yearly income or net worth into this site and find out just how wealthy you are in comparison to the rest of the world.

Click here to go to the site.

When Addiction Takes Over a Relationship

Even when people are firing on all cylinders, relationships can be tricky. When your partner is addicted, they can be impossible.

Addiction takes a relationship into a dangerous territory where clarity turns gray and selfishness rules the day; where individuals disappear and are replaced by need; where spouses are objectified, resented, and manipulated; where wedding vows, conceived to guide people to be the best they can be, are subverted into an evil parody that no one intended.

You may think you know your spouse, partner, child, parent, friend; but, when she is addicted, that person is missing. She’s been taken over, hijacked, commandeered. Addiction has taken possession, hollowed her out, and filled her with need. You may think it looks like your loved one. It’s voice may sound like hers. It may reminisce secret memories you had together, recall passwords, carry distinguishing characteristics she always had; but it’s not really her any more. It’ll fool you. It’s her evil twin.

Your partner doesn’t even need to be intoxicated by his drug to be changed. Addiction changes him completely, sober or not. With all the time it takes to obtain the drug, use the drug, recover from the drug, lie for the drug, regret the drug, crave the drug, and defend the drug; there isn’t any time left. Everything is devoted to the drug. Not only are you forgotten, but he has forgotten himself.

Even if she has years clean and sober, addiction could still be there, undercover, hiding until it’s safe to come out. You won’t know it unless you know the signs. If you don’t know that you are dealing with an impostor, you could be fooled.

You could never let a sip of alcohol pass your lips, never do a drug, never buy a lottery ticket, never buy a thing on credit, never say an angry word, and be chaste and circumspect in all you do; but, because your loved one is enslaved to addiction, so are you.
You could be as sober as a judge, but if you buy the booze, clean up after the booze, justify the booze, or even try not to notice the booze; you’ve done enough. You’ve served the addiction. Not him. You haven’t served your loved one. You’ve empowered the thing that’s overpowering him. What’s more, you’ve abandoned yourself. You’ve taken your needs, much less your partner’s, and put them aside to support the addiction. Addiction has taken you over, also; and you never had to take a drink.

Addiction loves to masquerade as normal, desirable, everyday activities. They are all good things at first. Your partner may have been the life of the party when she was drunk, before she turned into an alcoholic. He may have been hilarious when he was high, before he never left the couch. You might have liked the way she jumped your bones four times a day, but not so much when she signed up for Ashley Madison. He was a take charge guy until it started to look like rage. You had good times when he was winning, then he started chasing. She always complained before she discovered Vicodin. He was sweet so long as he smoked.

At some point, things started to go bad. They went bad long before you said so. You always gave her the benefit of the doubt. You trusted him to take care of himself. Everyone’s got their faults, you reasoned. He overlooked yours, so the least you could do was give her some space. You never liked to fight. It was never a good time to talk about it. It would just make him mad.

Then something happened. Something you could not ignore. She drove drunk and crashed the car,. He didn’t go to work, so he lost his job. You found some pictures of a strange man’s penis. He beat you up. He hocked your retirement. She stole your mother’s pills. He got lung cancer and is about to die.

You recognized the problem then. You knew what you’re dealing with. You’ve got it straight, now. It’s addiction. There’s no two ways about it.

You lost your shit. You let him have it. It all came out. You told her she had to change, see someone, let you check on him, go to a program. She said it was OK. He claimed it would never happen again. She was sorry, she’ll make it right. He wanted another chance.
You didn’t know what to do. Maybe you still don’t know what to do.

Well, here are your options:
1) End the relationship.
2) Pretend everything is OK.
3) Threaten to end the relationship, then pretend everything is OK until you can’t take it anymore, then threaten to end the relationship. Repeat.
4) Work it out.

You want to know more about working it out? Read on

The Shrink’s Links: Review of Room

Bringing you the best of mental health every week.

No matter how well you think you understand, you don’t understand well enough.

If you don’t understand what I mean, go see the movie, Room, while it’s still in theaters. Or read the book. Or, like I did, do both.

The first part is set in a single room where a five year old boy and his mother have been held captive by a creepy abductor. The boy has never known the outside world and the mother allows him to believe it does not exist. She’s created a life for her son; but she knows there’s more out there. She hatches a bold escape plan, but is unprepared for it to actually work.

Watch for two crucial moments in the story. The first is when the mother tells her son about the outside world. The second occurs later, (spoiler alert) after their escape, when the mother realizes that there can be other ways to interpret her relationship with her son. Had she been holding her son captive?

They don’t like that new story. They both have a breakdown.

Breakdowns are what people have when they find they can no longer believe their own beliefs or the beliefs they have adopted. Breakdowns can lead to breakouts; but, before they do, they are breakdowns. Scary, guilty, wretched breakdowns. People love their rooms, even as the walls imprison them.

As a therapist, I see people every day in the middle of their breakdowns. They want their questions answered, their guilt forgiven, their fear assuaged. No, they want me to say, of course you haven’t been holding your son captive. They like the old story they’ve heard over and over. They don’t want anything new. They want me to help them repair the walls of their rooms and keep them in.

Stay in, if you must; but, before you do, look outside. There’s more out there. Go see.

Click here to get the book.