It has been a pleasure speaking with Karen Springen, a very experienced and talented journalist who now writes regularly for NBC-owned family website, Family Goes Strong. Karen seems to conjure all sorts of topics related to family life, and presents them in an enjoyable way. These include ideas for couples of all ages to ponder, and timely subject matter that parents and children might find enriching to discuss at the dinner table. Here are links to some of Karen's articles in which she was kind enough to include my psychological comments:
As a psychologist I think a lot about my own inner emotional life, and I try to use images and metaphors to help my clients do the same. Some people have said, Carl, your mind is like a steel trap"! Actually, I think of it more like a phonograph! Remember the vinyl 33 rpm record albums when we were kids? Remember how annoyingly the needle would sometimes get stuck and play the the same lyrics over and over? Sometimes a few minutes might go by before your realized it! Then you'd get up and tap the needle to get it back in the groove.
It often seems that our minds are like that phonograph. We get caught on a track thinking about something, worrying about something, over and over ... We dwell on it, and it continues until something else comes along to tap the needle. Often we are then dwelling on the next topic! Our inner lives too often seem like an endless progression of these. We worry about one thing until the next worry comes along!
Psychologists have shown that our thought patterns in daily life are influenced by a number of "cognitive biases" that I believe make this 'stuck needle' feeling so common. For example, we all are aware of the recency bias in memory: If we have a list of things we've just read, the last one often is the easiest to remember. Then there's what we might call the myopia bias, an emotional nearsightedness, where we focus on the short-term problem or seek the immediate reward, not paying enough attention to the longer term (and very often bigger and more important) aspects of our lives. Then there's the well known and researched Zeigarnik effect, which captures how it's the nature of our memory to latch onto things that we haven't finished, such as the incomplete tasks and the unsolved problems in our daily lives. These are just a few of the ways that human nature plays into our minds, and our daily lives, feeling like a stuck phonograph needle.
I believe that thoughts of thankfulness and gratitude are an important way that we can tap the phonograph needle and get it back in the groove, back to the harmony and melodies that really define our lives. Much recent psychological research has shown that thankfulness and gratitude correlate with lots of good things in life: from reduced stress, illness, and pain, to increased happiness, life satisfaction, productivity, even longevity. Perhaps thankfulness and gratitude exert their positive effects by dislodging the stuck needle. Some people are more adept at this than others. They're quicker to recognize that the same lyrics are repeating again and again and they nudge the needle by thinking about the many positives in their lives. Thanksgiving Day is a time that we all can nudge the needle together. We can get beyond the recency bias, the myopia bias, the Zygarnik effect, and all the daily worries and smaller goals, and think about what's really important: the bigger things, in the longer term of our lives, for which we know we are grateful but just don't think about often enough.
January 6, 2012: Co-producers John Larson and William Brangham made a brief documentary in Nashua about the impact of the economic recession. Entitled, Help Wanted: New Hampshire, it aired nationally on PBS, on the eve of the NH Presidential Primary. It is an installment of the weekly PBS program,Need to Know:
I was glad to get my thirty seconds as "the marriage counselor" in this engaging video shot on the Main Street where I head to work each day. I've looked out that window onto Main Street, Nashua, NH for twelve years, and worked locally for twenty-five: that's how many recessions?
Frankly, I would argue that "the recession" was the one which occurred in the 1989-1990 time frame, and that's when so much changed, never to fully "recover" in the sense that many of us would wish. When I saw counseling clients during that recession circa 1990, they were long time employees laid off from major companies where they'd worked for decades, and often where a parent worked for decades as well. They were devastated financially, but especially wrought with feelings of betrayal. Those companies in which they'd worked their way up, those companies which had seemed to invest in them and their families to keep them for the long term (and fund their retirement thereafter) were cutting them loose based on numbers and organizational charts at headquarters far away. "How could they do this to me?" was what I heard day after day.
These folks were heading into the new era, and handed the new lexicon of buzz words that were to be their hope for the future: "Network ... Keep your skill set up to date along with your resume ... Go to the outplacement service, see the headhunters, attend support and networking groups ... log onto Monsterboard..." Everyone was to be a free agent now, looking out for him or her self, not expecting long term employment (That actually would look like a negative on your resume!).
And the stock market recovered. Or did it? And the recession ended. Or did it? It seems to me that we entered an era where corporations increasingly lived quarter-to-quarter -- or even more tempestuously, as news of the quarter presaged the quarter's end. The stock market has risen and declined, but always seems to be on a razor's edge, susceptible to so many forces (international, political, psychological) and fluctuating as much from the superficial factors as the fundamental ones. It's a short-term world.
I'm a psychologist and marriage counselor, not an economist or politician. What hits home in the therapy room, I believe, is that we are living longer term lives in a shorter term world. And this is very stressful. I believe that individuals, couples and families need always to feel that they're "getting somewhere," "making progress," "have something to show for the year," "are further ahead this year than last year" ... That we are "getting somewhere," not just getting older (and approaching whole new sets of worries!) The sense of forward movement seems very important. Without forward movement, we feel more buffeted by all the daily problems and pressures. In a quarter-to-quarter short term world, this seems increasingly difficult. Psychologists always talk about the influence of our pasts. I think it's important to see that we are pulled toward the future ... and when the picture of the future is fuzzy and uncertain, anxiety and depression increase. We need to feel an "internal locus of control," "self-efficacy" ... Call it what you will, it's the belief that our efforts, our work, our determination, will lead to the goals we want in life. What is the opposite? It's that the rewards in our life are not under our control, but under the control of luck, chance, and powerful others (And folks point to a gridlocked political system, corporate greed, shortsighted profit-taking over longer term "values," and so on). Maybe if folks feel little control over their future, we can understand why they might just run-up their credit cards, buy lavish items they can't afford, head out on vacations using their home equity, and care less about their weight and nutrition ... The future is NOT where it's at. Spend! (Hey, we are told that spending is what's needed to invigorate the economy!)
In doing marriage counseling, I believe that couples need to have their dreams for their future. They need to be able to share those dreams by talking about them, exploring them and dreaming them together ... It's part of that pull toward the future. When we have the degree of uncertainty about the future which we now face, it seems that the pull of the dreams is lost. More than lost, it can cue feelings of powerlessness and despair. Talking about "what we hope to do in retirement," "selling our house and moving to the lake," and "sending our children to top notch colleges" now raise our blood pressure rather than give us pleasure, and they come between husbands and wives rather than bring them together. So we are more likely to avoid those conversations about future hopes and plans. The sharing of the dreams is too often replaced with the sharing of the tensions of the day. Couples come to counseling increasingly bickering about the daily minutia as they don't feel they are "getting anywhere."
I've noticed the psychological research of eminent psychologist Carol Dweck, at Stanford. She asks the question, "Is there such a thing as will power?" Her research, in short, indicates that there is will power for people who believe in it! This sounds a lot like the "internal locus of control" and "sense of self-efficacy" of which I spoke earlier. How do we restore it, for more people more of the time? How do we restore the belief that we can achieve what we want in life through our self-determination and hard work? We need to find ways to take that back.
With my clients I share the sentiment that, amidst all of this, we need to find ways to give meaning and purpose to our lives, and to have that sense of forward movement even if it's not with money-linked-goals. If there is a silver lining in these financially challenging and always changing times, it's that it requires us to think about things differently. Even in discussing this challenge, I feel some camaraderie with others who know what I mean, and that's a start (like people bonding in hard times) ... And I try to remind myself that psychological studies of happiness show us that it's our relationships with others, our daily experiences and engagement in life that brings happiness.
The title of this podcast was, "How to Get Him to Propose, and Her to Say Yes." It turned out to be a more free-flowing chat about commitment, "commitment phobia," and marriage. So many of the ideas are ones that I enjoy discussing and wish I could have elaborated. They are very relevant to premarital counseling and marriage counseling more generally, and come up regularly in the course of my work as a relationship-focused psychologist.
You can listen to this interview by clicking below:
This WMUR-TV interview and story dates back to 2009 but of course it's a never ending story! The problems for relationships -- with boundaries, trust, fidelity, sharing, decision making, and communications -- certainly aren't new, but Internet technology magnifies the problems ... And some things about Facebook in particular seem to add to this.
For example, when couples have profiles on Facebook, they have his and her profiles, not a shared profile. There's no convenient and fully functioning way to have a Couples Profile. Yes, they can link to one another and make their relationship status clear. Still, they are found by others and friended as individuals. It can easily become too much about "me" not "us." One is found and friended by people more often from their individual past ... and partners' pasts may not intersect that much prior to their relationship with one another. Not only are there people from your distant past, but there are people whose paths crossed with yours in inconsequential ways (You said hello at the sports bar or the gym, were introduced in a group of people, helped them with a task at work, or flirted with them in a way that seemed harmless at the time) and then they "find you" on Facebook. With FB so widely used, and with powerful search capacities, you will be found!
"You've got a Friend Request!" Names appear requesting to be "friends" (Friend is the only status offered: they don't ask to be distant acquaintances, familiar faces, or ex-boyfriends!). Then you are given the choice either to accept the friend request, deny or ignore it. It's an awkward choice, not exactly like the real world (People don't tap you on the shoulder at the mall and ask, "Friend or not friend?") Since it's "just on Facebook," too often it's almost automatic to accept the friend offer. Once a friend, hard to delete!
What a mixture you then have among your cadre of so-called friends. On your friend list are a few genuinely close friends and relatives, distant relatives, Aunt Jane who you haven't seen in years, acquaintances, names and ghosts from the past, your work colleagues, your neighbors and local merchants, someone you just met yesterday, and who else? What a gathering -- mishmash of people with whom you'd generally maintain very different "boundaries" and levels of sharing that could range from highly personal to nothing at all. You are strangely exposed behind a nebulous boundary, yet may feel hidden, at a distance, alone behind your laptop or smart phone.
Then there's all that personal psychological stuff. There can be a false sense of familiarity with some of these people whom you really don't know: You may have grown-up in the same town, went to the same elementary school, were somewhere down the hall in the college dorm, have an interest or two in common, or feel some attraction you don't (really want to) understand. But do you really know this person? How much do you really have in common? You dated her in ninth grade? Do you really know her any better than a total stranger? Or is she just someone who was present at an earlier time in your life, maybe a time to which you'd like to return for a visit? Maybe a person and a time where there's unfinished business. It's not a Pandora's Box that you usually would set out to open. Ten years ago would you have hired a private detective to track down this person so you could re-unite! No! But Facebook is different.
Facebook is on your desktop or smartphone, and you may start to check-in regularly. You start to pass through regularly, kind of like going through the fast food drive-through (Theme: If it's too easy and convenient, it can become a problem). It can be habit forming, and increasingly take the place of other activities and connections. Then, at times of personal vulnerability -- when you're feeling down, stressed, preoccupied, lonely, old, insecure -- it can be too easy to turn away from the people in your life with whom you should strive to stay close and connected, and instead find (perilous) comfort on Facebook ...
It is common now for couples to come to relationship and marriage counseling when Facebook play into an assumed "boundary" in their relationship being over-stepped and trust broken. This can be very distressing for couples. If there is a potential positive aspect, it's that it brings these concerns out into the open sooner for a couple to address. Hopefully it allows the couple to face these risks, better understand what makes them vulnerable, talk about their needs and what's getting in the way, stop bad habits, make more explicit and understood their relationship agreements and commitments, and sure-up their relationship with one another. While there might be a lasting loss of innocence for the couple, hopefully it will help "inoculate" them against some of these problems in the future.
Should you tell your teenager about your own past sweethearts? How much do you tell and how do you talk about it? A journalist recently e-mailed me those questions and it got me thinking. She quotes me in her story, but I feel the urge to elaborate a bit.
Recent psychological research on "happiness" makes clear that relationships are pivotal to happiness. Studies of people's regrets in life show that relationship regrets top the list [Not financial regrets, which actually are low on the list]. Personally, we all know that we have experienced the heights of happiness and the depths of despair over relationships. Now we are parents and want our children to be happy. We've learned a lot, wish we knew then what we know now, and want to help our teenagers.
Don't you sometimes wish you could teach them what you've learned about relationships? We probably all wish we could somehow "download" to our children all that we've learned about men or women, about love and loss, and about what's most important if a relationship is going to last for decades. We could lead them to happiness and shelter them from despair! But, alas, it's one of the harshest (or perhaps most splendid) facts of life: Our children will struggle and learn about love and relationships for themselves. We can't tell it to them! Maybe we can watch and guide a bit.
And these aren't new topics. Ovid tried to teach about love more than 2000 years ago. Available in a modern translation, in reading Ovid's "Art of Love" we see how little has changed! Whether you're taking your girlfriend to a gladiator match or a hockey game! Scribing on parchment or sending text messages ... So little changes at the core of relationships and love, yet everyone has to struggle to learn it for themselves. As parents we certainly can help, but it has its limits (e.g., What teen is going to listing to their Mom or Dad lecture on love?) and its pitfalls (e.g., The parent may convey negative or defensive attitudes, or push their teen away, even if they had the best of intentions).
We can talk around the dinner table about how people relate to one another -- how people may be thinking and feeling, how their words and actions reflect what's happening "inside them," "down deep." Self-awareness and perspective-taking. We can teach "understanding others," which I've long argued is at least as important as understanding ourselves. This is something we want to be doing with our children from the youngest age. It isn't something we start doing the day our daughter announces that she has a boyfriend!
(If your first love was a Ford Mustang, that might be a whole different story!)
Keep in mind that we are "teaching" them much more effectively about relationships by what we role model for them in the present time, than by what we tell them, or God forbid, preach to them about our pasts. The love relationships which your children observe in their own home, throughout their childhood and teen years, are one of the two most important influences on their own relationships. The other is the relationship you have with each of them. Together, what they observe and experience, will shape them far more than what you try to teach verbally. As parents, it sometimes seems that our words are used by our teenagers more often to point out how we are hypocrites! "Well, you say one thing and do another." What you do will carry more weight than what you say.
Of course you don't want to tell your teens about your past relationships in ways that are disparaging, which might say more about yourself and your "baggage." Nor do you want to talk in ways that would be hurtful about children's parent or others in the household. Judging others often says more about the judge than the judged, and your teens' radar will detect that quickly.
Be aware of the attitudes about men and women that are embodied or implied in what you communicate. This also is true of subtle attitudes about sex roles, about how men and women treat one another, what they expect of one another, how relationships end, and so on. These attitudes may have more cumulative impact on your children than you realize now. The attitudes, the tone, the implied judgments will be 'heard' much more than the content (e.g., the child may dismiss much of the content as somehow irrelevant because it's coming from Mom or Dad, or because they think it's "ancient history" that doesn't apply to them. I think of those cartoons where you here talking-type sounds but can't make out the words, or a conversation in another room that you can't quite hear: the tone comes through even when the words do not.
Can we agree to one rule? If you're talking about an ex-sweetheart, then please be sure you portray the father (or mother) of your children in the better light? "I am so glad I met your father!" Certainly don't have your children's parent portrayed as the lesser in the comparison, nor sound as though you have regrets about your spouse, or wistful thoughts of how it might have been better!
I do not believe a parent should talk about their own sexual relationships. References to sexuality should be framed in the context of loving relationships, not callous sexual behavior, in the context of mutual sharing rather than self-centered need fulfillment, etc. There are ways to talk about the thoughts and feelings involved in sexuality. Be mindful of the developmental stage of your teens. You want to validate the normal emotional struggles of teenage life. You want them to know that they can learn from their struggles. It is better for them to be consciously aware and open about all the mixed feelings and contradictory thoughts, the impulses and fears, and the short term versus longer term concerns. By validating their struggle, you can encourage their openness, encourage their being more mindful than impulsive, more sensitized than repressed ... Open to learning rather than repetition.
As parents we can gently impart our values while empathizing, and do it in a non-lecturing way. Yes, we can say "I wish I knew then what I know now," and use it to convey understanding, empathy and encouragement (rather than condescension, judgment, or negativity).
Would you rather be a teenager in love, or a parent watching your teen go through it? Is there a third option?
