"What are you gonna DO about it?" Intention Matters

Sit. Sit! Sit!

I give parenting talks at preschools and frequently get questions about how to avoid the need to repeat a request 10 times.  I recently ran into a mom who had been to one of those talks and told me that the most helpful part for her was a story about training dogs.  “I always think about that when I’m trying to get my kids to do something and they aren’t listening!” she said.  So here it is:

In college and graduate school I worked as a dog trainer.  I taught classes with 5-8 people and their dogs.  Because it is easier to un-train a dog than to train a dog, my philosophy was to teach people to train their own dogs instead of having me do it.  With every group there would come a point when the owners would start repeating the commands while the dogs acted like they couldn’t hear them.  Sound familiar?

The dogs had already been taught to “heal,” which means that they would walk right next their people on the left side and sit automatically as soon as they stopped.  I asked the group to walk around in a circle with their dogs in a “heal” position until I asked them to stop.  I told them, “Give your dog a second to sit without you saying anything.  If they don’t sit, tell them to sit.  If they don’t listen, tell them again.  If they still don’t listen, tell them a third time and then put them in the sitting position by gently pulling up on the leash and pushing down on their rump.” 

Practically every dog in the class would stay standing when the owner stopped and stay standing after the first two “sit” commands. But almost all of them would sit after the third command, before the owner actually placed them in the sit position.  Why?  Because dogs are very sensitive to body language and tone of voice and therefore to intention.  The dogs knew that their people didn’t really mean it the first couple of times.

Children have similarly tuned antennae. Kids can feel it when you ask them to do something at a time when you can’t walk away from the pan cooking on the stove, or don’t want to get up off the couch after a long day. It feels very different to hear a parent holler, “Stop hitting your sister!” from the next room if you know that they are on their way in to deal with the problem.

This is partly why it helps so much to get down on your child’s level, touch their shoulder, and ask them to look at your eyes when they are focusing on something and you want them to shift gears.  This helps them to “unlock” from whatever they are doing.  But it also demonstrates a level of involvement and intention. They can feel the fact that you are there to make sure whatever you are asking of them actually happens.

Intention isn’t the be all and end all.  It doesn’t create perfectly attentive and compliant children.  But it does make a difference.  And like everything else with kids (and dogs) it works best when it is consistent. 

A Classic Fight About Nothing

It’s pretty amazing how familiar this sounds, even without any actual content.  There are so many aspects of our arguments with loved ones that seem universal.  Certainly in any one relationship, there are common “re-runs” of the same argument over and over.  The individual topics might be the same or they might vary. 

Every relationship has these in one flavor or another but some relationships weather them better.  These conflicts may leave you feeling frustrated, stuck, and misunderstood.  They can sometimes cut to the core and leave you feeling painfully hurt, abandoned and lonely.  But it is also possible that they might be just a source of mild irritation and good hearted teasing.

Research out of the Gottman Institute shows some pretty specific differences in what couples actually do in these discussions.  In distressed relationships, communication is rife with criticism, blame, defensiveness, and contempt toward each other.  One or both partners often turns away and withdraws emotionally. 

Couples like the one in the video get stuck in these patterns.  Partners create a dance in which their attempts to manage the pain of disconnection actually elicits the most painful response from their partner.  Withdrawing creates an intolerable feeling of abandonment, but it might at least keep things from getting worse.  Putting up a wall is often an attempt to protect our most important relationship from the escalation that seems inevitable.  Criticizing may make your partner feel unloved and unaccepted, but it is often a way of protesting the lack of connection.  Getting bigger and louder may be a fear response to an experience of abandonment or loss of the person that matters the most.

Neither of these reactions make any sense to your partner unless they understand what is happening between you at the deepest levels of emotional need. But when we do understand this dance, we can start to notice it happening as if we are watching it from the balcony of a theater.  It can start to look like the one in the video in which we know that it’s not really about the content but rather a need to reconnect with a foundation of love and acceptance.  Then the content can be addressed in a safer and easier way.

Just Fix It: A Perspective

It's Not About The Nail

If its not about the trailer (see post 2012), its also not about the nail. Easier said than done.

This YouTube video was sent to me by at least 5 “fixers” in my couples therapy practice. Yes, they were all men, which fits the stereotype... and the statistics. Men are more likely to focus on the solution to a problem rather than the feelings about it. Of course, we know that plenty of women are fixers too. Regardless of gender, the partners of fixers often feel unheard when they try to share life’s struggles.

The thing I love about this video though, is that it so poignantly shows the dilemma of “the fixer.” It is very hard to slow down and listen to your partner’s problem when it seems so much more useful to solve it. When you have been socialized to roll up your sleeves and jump in to take care of any problem, and your partner is hurting, the most loving and caring thing to do seems obvious: Figure out what is causing the problem and change it.

Although this video spoof presents the clear message that all you need to do is take the darn nail out, relationships are more complicated than this. Unfortunately for fixers, we know that in order to deepen intimacy, the listening has to come first. Active and interested listening helps build a connection that solves the deeper “problem”: The innate need to feel known, accepted, and close. With this as a foundation, advice may be be eventually desired and even gratefully accepted.

This video shows how challenging and “illogical” this can seem. But I have also seen quite a few fixers find relief in this realization: “You mean all I have to do is listen?” Hard to believe... but often quite true.

It's Not About The Trailer: Part 2

                                                         Horse Sense And Friendship


“Horse sense is the thing a horse has which keeps it from betting on people.”
-- W.C. Fields

Horses make great friends. The relationship between the teenage girl and her horse is iconic.  The Academy Award nominated movie, War Horse, was about a horse whose profound connections (formed instantly, just as Hollywood likes it) compelled him and his people to risk their lives for each other over and over.  To “ride off into the sunset” has become an idiom for the romantic happy ending.

A lot of people think of a stable and reliable friendship as somehow dampening romance and intimate connection in committed relationships. Or they think that the romance in their relationship has faded and only the friendship remains. When you dig deeper, what you’ll find is that the quality of the friendship has faded and taken the romance with it.  Most relationships don’t split up as a result of fighting or even affairs.  Most split up as a result of emotional disengagement and security.  We often don’t have the horse sense to know that the friendship and trust in our relationships have to come first.

Be A Better Horse

Horses are huge and strong, but unbelievably perceptive.  They can feel a tiny fly land on their fur. They can turn their ears to listen to sound on all sides of them. Their field of vision is significantly wider than ours. They are also very sensitive to emotions.  Horses know each other and their owners accurately and deeply. 

Successful couples do this as well.  They are curious about each other.  They keep current about each other’s lives at every level.  When people are beginning a relationship, they spend hours talking about their families, friends, work, hobbies, likes, dislikes, and values.  Non-judgmental attention creates an emotional connection and safety which helps to draw them closer.  When people commit to each other and get into their busy lives they often stop doing this. People change and mature through every life stage and it is important to stay up to date and stay connected. 

This means listening to details about each other’s day but it also means talking about deeper feelings and ideas. What would your partner like to change or accomplish in their friendships or work lives? How do they feel about the kids growing up?  What are their biggest stressors or sources of inspiration? Talking about these types of things, and listening without trying to fix problems, helps keep a friendship strong and emotionally connected.

Sometimes this is easy to do and people just don’t get around to doing it.  Sometimes it can be hard to do because couples get into cycles of criticism and defensiveness/withdrawing.  This cycle can be hard to avoid when painful issues within the relationship have been left unaddressed.  Also, the desire to “fix” things for our partners often gets in the way of these conversations.  Couples usually want to feel heard by someone they can trust to just listen and not judge.  Fixing is often felt as an attempt to shut down the expression of the feelings. 

If you come home and tell your partner that you hate your boss, a response such as, “What did she do?” or “Yeah, he is a jerk sometimes. What happened?” feels like your partner is supporting you and wanting to share your life.  If they say, “I told you to get another job a month ago.” or “You should ask him what you are doing wrong.” or “You can’t keep complaining about it unless you are going to do something to change it.” shuts down the conversation and misses an opportunity to deepen friendship.  We all have the desire to be effective caretakers.  This help may or may not be welcome (always a good idea to ask) but it should wait until your partner feels like you know what they are experiencing and what it means to them.

“A horse doesn’t care how much you know until he knows how much you care.”
---Pat Parelli

I know that none of this seems particularly romantic or sexy, but that brings me back to, “It’s not about the trailer.”  Elizabeth Taylor said, “Some of my best leading men have been dogs and horses.”  It makes sense.

The Importance Of Sleep

Babies And Sleep Deprivation: Effects On Emotional Stability

A friend of mine reminded me recently of a time when her twins were about 3 months old.  She had called me because she was furious at her husband for being insensitive, unappreciative, and selfish.  When I asked her what had happened, she explained that he had stayed up to do the midnight feeding so she could get a few hours of sleep.  But when he had come in to go to bed himself, he had “taken his belt off too loudly”.  When her husband suggested the intensity of her reaction was related to the fact that she hadn’t slept more that 4-5 hours (in 2 or 3 blocks of time) for weeks, she got even more angry. We laugh about it now, but it is a great example of what makes parenting newborns so hard.  

A recent study, done by Dr. Mathew Walker at UC Berkeley, explains this phenomenon which is all too familiar to new parents: Sleep deprivation makes it harder to manage stressful emotions.  In this experiment, healthy men and women were shown emotionally disturbing pictures after varying degrees of sleep deprivation. Brain scans showed significant differences in neural activity.  "Rather than the brain being dulled or suppressed in its activity when you're sleep deprived, we found that the deep emotional centers of the brain were approximately 60% more reactive when you're sleep deprived," said Dr. Walker (Medscape Psychiatry, October 25, 2013).

The parts of our brain that enable us to moderate our emotions by using logic, problem solving, and creating context for our experience are sleepy, while the survival “fight or flight” part of the brain is working in overdrive. And this situation in and of itself makes it even harder to understand what is happening at the time. 

So the lesson for new parents?  

• Most likely, regular 8 hour nights of uninterrupted sleep are not in your near future.  But make it an actual priority to get as many naps as you can squeeze in.  People always tell moms to nap when the baby naps - and this advice is often ignored because of the piles of other uncompleted tasks that are building up.  
• Learn to ask for (and accept) help.  This is a great time to develop this important skill.  It really does take a village.  If people offer help, tell them what you need.  If you have a fridge full of lasagnas, let them tidy up your house or hold your baby while you sleep.  
• Keep mindful of the fact that sleep deprivations makes you more vulnerable and reactive so you can try to step back and breath when overwhelmed. Relaxation breathing actually helps to change brain activity.
• If you and your partner (or other sources of support) are snapping at each other,  cut each other a little slack and take things one day at a time. It will get easier.

Preserving your mental health is an important part of caring for yourself, your baby, and your family.  In the words of may wise flight attendants across the globe, “In the event of an emergency, if you are traveling with young children, put the oxygen mask on yourself before helping your child.”

A Hard-Wired Need To Feel Close

Research has shown us a lot about what happens in relationships that last, and what happens in relationships that split apart.  The bottom line is that all of us need to feel emotionally connected and safe with our partners.  We need to be able to trust that we matter, that our partners accept us and value us.  We need to know that when we reach out, our partners will be there to receive us.

Primates are hard wired to need this.  One study showed that baby monkeys would choose to cuddle with a soft mother figure without food rather than a hard metal mother figure with food.  The babies would choose the feeling of comfort and closeness, even if it meant they were left hungry. 

Human babies can fail to thrive if not held and touched, even if their physical needs are met.  We are not designed to "grow out of" these needs.  They are lifelong and the emotions that come up when we feel this security is threatened are involuntary. 

In every relationship there are arguments and misunderstandings.  Almost 70% of these problems are not actually solvable. If I tend to be messy and you like things clean, that's not going to change.  But in a secure relationship where both people feel known, supported, and loved, these differences tend to be irritating rather than painful.  There are enough reserves in the "emotional bank account" to repair hurtful interactions when they do occur.  

Relationships that have lost this sense of security and closeness can absolutely repair and rebuild.  Learning about the negative patterns of interaction that occur in your relationship can help you create and experience something new (or something old that has been lost) in which the fighting and loneliness are replaced with warmth and connection.

What Do Horse Trailers and Bedrooms Have In Common?

Horse Training, Romance, and Sex

"Women need a reason to have sex...Men just need a place."

---Billy Crystal

The vast majority of couples that come see me have little to no romance or sex left in their relationship. Many have not had sex for months or even years. Men often, although not always, have a higher sex drive than women in heterosexual relationships. Often sex is a way to feel close for men (although men report more satisfaction with their sex lives when there is a foundation of supportive emotional connection in the relationship). In contrast, women are typically less interested in having sex unless they already feel close and connected.

With a history of dog and horse training, I sometimes find myself using examples from these fields in my therapy office. Although it might sound odd, there are many similarities between teaching a frightened horse to get into a trailer and re-building the romance and sex in your relationship.

Horses are prey animals. Their every instinct tells them to avoid strange noises, stay off of unstable surfaces and, above all else, never let themselves get cornered or trapped. So why in the world would a horse ever let you put them in a trailer and drive them down the freeway at 60 miles an hour? And, more importantly, why would you expect to have a good sex life when you don’t feel close and connected in day-to-day life.

It is possible to have a passionate “fling” with someone you have been committed to for years... but, unlike with a one night stand, it takes some groundwork first. If your trailer is falling apart and about to collapse, your horse is going to back away from it even faster. Your partner is probably as insightful as a horse when it comes to moving away from something or someone that doesn’t feel safe and secure.

Some horses are hesitant to get in a trailer and some are absolutely certain they will never step foot in one. It is very common to see people unsuccessfully bribing horses to get into a trailer with food, trying to pull a lead rope attached to a horse who is leaning away from the trailer, looping ropes around it’s butt in case pushing and pulling at the same time works better. Frequently the horse is crowded and whipped until it fearfully leaps into the trailer and has the door closed quickly behind it. As you can imagine, this doesn’t set the stage for the horse to look forward to it’s next trailer experience.

You might be more familiar with the bedroom version of this. The proverbial “I have a headache.” It looks more like:

 “I’m too tired.” (continues reading book)

“You always say that. Why don’t you go to sleep if you are really so tired? You say you are tired and then you read for another hour. Last night you said you were to tired and then you spent 45 minutes re-organizing the linen closet!”

“Why are you always guilt tripping me? You have no idea how much I have to get done everyday... and then it’s always me putting the kids to bed because you are too stressed out”

“Well, if we ever had sex, maybe I wouldn’t be so stressed out!”

Good horse trainers have a lot to offer in changing this dynamic. Twenty-five years ago, I was lucky enough to have the opportunity to bring my horse to a clinic taught by a cowboy named Ray Hunt. This was the one of the horse trainers that inspired the movie “The Horse Whisperer.” During this clinic, Ray worked with a horse who had to be sedated in order to get in the trailer to come to the clinic. He spent about an hour and a half working with her on trailer loading. At first she was wild eyed, stomping, pulling and snorting at the mere sight of the trailer from across the arena. Ray worked with her calmly. There was never any pressure that made her uncomfortable. By the end, Ray was taking her to the front of the truck and sending her back around the truck and trailer to load up by herself. He described a horse he had had decades before that was wild and aggressive. “And pretty soon I learned that to get respect, I had to give respect.”

The relationship between this lesson and romance is surprisingly simple. Ray wasn’t actually teaching that horse to get into the trailer. He was building a foundation of relationship, of trust and communication. The trailer was only a vehicle for the creation of a loving, safe, and supportive partnership. One of Ray’s students and colleagues, Pat Parelli, has a horse training video entitled, It’s Not About the Trailer. It is also “not about the sex.” It is about the strength of emotional connection. A good sex life is the byproduct.

Pat Parelli describes this perfectly in the following quote. As you read it, substitute the words “trailer” with the words “romance/sex” and substitute the word “horse” with “partner.”

“A horse trailering problem isn’t about the trailer. It’s usually about your relationship with your horse. It’s about inspiring confidence in the horse and getting him to trust you... The more you push..., the less the horse will trust you and the less he will want to follow your lead. Your success with easily loading your horse into a trailer starts a long way away from the trailer. You need to know how to get your horse to trust you...The trailer loading is somewhat incidental, although it is an important goal.”

--Pat Parellli