I’m a big fan of David Sheff’s book “Beautiful Boy” and was excited to finally come up for air after the holidays and watch the movie. While I don’t have an addicted family member, I’ve worked with many parents who do, and I couldn’t help imagining what they’d feel as they watched.

The message seemed to be: Nic Sheff was a beautiful, perfect boy overtaken by the monster of drug addiction. How he found his way back? That was left unexplored, and a very significant part of the narrative that could have engendered hope was left out.

So I wanted to highlight that missing part of the story for all the families struggling out there.Nic Sheff has written extensively about his experiences in several books including his memoir “Tweak” and on the website The Fix. While he studiously avoids offering prescriptions to others, his writing can be helpful diagnostically. At least, it can open up lines of inquiry.

One of those lines is about the connection between mental illness and addiction. Nic Sheff talked about how he resisted being labeled as bipolar when a psychiatrist first brought up that diagnosis in 2003. He writes how crystal meth and heroin seemed more palatable to him that Lithium and Prozac.

That sort of resistance is common, that people are often extremely frightened by the idea of a lifelong label or lifelong psychotropic medications. But the alternative for person who is suffering and turns to drugs to ease that suffering can be unspeakable.

Sometimes parents also go into a form of denial. They want to whitewash the past, believe that their child was once perfect and that drugs took over, while the reality might be more complicated. That child might have been struggling with pain already and concealing it, thinking their parent wasn’t ready to see them as less than perfect.

This was a theme in the movie–Nic not wanting to let his parents down because they were close–but what wasn’t a theme was that Nic experienced mood swings (what was later called rapid cycled mixed states) for years, that much of his  darkness was chemical in nature and would have been responsive to medication.

As parents, we can’t collude with the denial, resistance, and shame; we have to accept our children for all they are and make it safe for them to reveal their suffering. We have to make sure they get the right kind of help.

The reason I say “we” even though I haven’t yet been impacted personally is because I have a seven-year-old. I don’t know what her future holds. But I have to be prepared. I have to be willing to face potentially frightening truths so that she can, too.

While I haven’t blogged in a long time and it’s likely I’ll be discontinuing this blog due to time and energy constrains, I felt moved to write this. With education comes hope.

There’s a great blog post with more information, and some excellent links:

https://www.helpguide.org/articles/addictions/substance-abuse-and-mental-health.htm/

And in terms of prevention, and the idea that forewarned is forearmed, I was happy to see that David Sheff and Nic Sheff have written a new book that came out today aimed at kids ages 10 – 14 (a critical time in the development of substance abuse):

https://www.davidsheff.com/high/

Wishing all the best for you and your family.

But there’s also enormous capacity for healing. Because awareness has increased, there are more safe spaces than possibly ever before. While people can heal without talking to others, healing is more likely when you share.

Here are some thoughts on who to talk to, and under what circumstances.Unfortunately, not all people who’ve been through trauma in the past have emerged into safe situations. In fact, going through trauma can make you less likely to know how to spot and seek safety. If you haven’t experienced it, how do you know what it looks like?

Then there are people who’ve been raised in relatively love and security but been the victims of an assault or violation. Those people might know who to talk to–the same ones who’ve been by their side for their entire lives.

Or they might feel too much shame and self-blame to do so. They might fear that people would see them differently than before, or that the relationship would change.

This is a legitimate fear. Maybe some changes would result. But don’t assume they’d all be for the worse, or that what’s temporarily worse can’t become better. People can learn how to be allies.

One way to determine who you should be talking to is looking at how they’re responding to the current political climate. That doesn’t mean they have to immediately believe accusers, but if they’re immediately assuming that the accused are the victims, then you’d want to look elsewhere for a supportive ear.

What you need is someone who has the ability to be open-minded in general, and who has been loving and supportive to you specifically in numerous other situations in your life. When you approach people about matters unrelated to the abuse (for example, work stress or problems in your other relationships), what kind of reactions do you typically get?

And perhaps more significantly, what do you feel after the conversations? If you tend to feel loved and valued, if you experience relief and a sense that you have someone in your corner, if you know deep down that this is a person who wants you to feel your best, then this is a potential ally.

This doesn’t mean you need someone who always agrees with you. Being challenged is vital at times. But that’s not being challenged on your truthfulness. Someone who simply doesn’t seem to believe your reality (especially your emotional reality) is an unsafe choice for disclosure.

You need it to also be someone who is invested in your relationship, someone who’s been there for you over a period of time, someone with a track record. That means that when you ask yourself the question “Are they there for me when I need them?”, the answer is an immediate and unequivocal yes.

This person doesn’t need to love you, but they need to care for you. You should have observed that they have the capacity to care for others, too. Like how do they treat other people in their lives? How do they talk about them?

As I write this, I notice that it’s not simply a primer on who’s an  ally; it’s also a guide to who you should allow in your life. Who deserves to be there. I’m hoping that when you look around, you see multiple people of their quality, multiple relationships of this caliber. If not, that could be slowing your healing.

To recover from what you’ve been through, you need to first make sure you’re not being retraumatized–that you’re not surrounded by the same elements of abuse. This is the time to take stock and create a healthy future.

You can do it. You just can’t do it alone.

But what kind of summer?

As the school year is winding down and the summer is beginning, there’s an opportunity to be mindful, to reflect on where you are with those you love and to make sure you strengthen those bonds. That way, when the madness starts up again, you’re feeling grounded, individually and relationally.

It all starts with reflection. Consider whether you’re feeling as close as you want to your partner, children, and friends. Are you feeling emotionally connected to others?

If not, the odds are good they’re not feeling very connected to you either. And if you’ve noticed that your kids are listening to you less and acting out more, it might be because of that reduced sense of connection. Our kids behave best when they’re feeling close–when they feel heard, when they feel like you’re interested in them and enjoying them.

One of the things that often gets lost in the grind is the pleasure of each other’s company. There’s so much to get done in a typical evening: cooking, eating, extracurricular activities, homework, bedtime routines. It doesn’t leave a lot of room for connection.

That’s where the summer comes in. You’re probably under a lot fewer time constraints. The sun goes down later, so you might be staying up later. You’re (hopefully) feeling more relaxed.

But often, with more time, what rushes in to fill it is not connecting activities; it’s more screen time. TV, video games, computer, social media…and that’s not just the kids, it’s often the adults, too.

The way to connect with the people we love is to be deliberate about it, to make sure you’re turning things off and tuning in to one another more. Don’t just do the same things all summer that you did the rest of the year. If you do, you’re missing a great opportunity.

You don’t have to get as much done; that means you don’t have all those fights and all the stress of getting so much done. That can create space to simply have fun–to sit longer at the dinner table and have great conversations or to play games or do puzzles or whatever your family happens to be into.

It’s simple really: Have fun and feel closer. Happy summer!

The second episode of her show CITIZEN ROSE just aired, and she continues to emphasize that trauma isn’t pretty, and it isn’t over. She can’t always contain it; nor can she be contained. Continuing to fight while hurt is a truly heroic endeavor, and I’m grateful to her.

CITIZEN ROSE is powerful. It’s important. But is it recommended viewing for those who’ve been through trauma? Not necessarily.

Watching the show is a visceral experience, and frequently uncomfortable. At times, it just feels too intimate; her pain is evident in nearly every frame. But that’s not accidental, and discomfort can be an education.

She often breaks down; she cries; she rages. Sometimes she lashes out, like in the clip that circulated a few months back about her snapping at a transgendered woman who was challenging her at a book reading.

That’s what people can look like when they’re re-triggered. She is doing her best to channel it into activism and advocacy, but sometimes it bleeds out nonetheless.

For those who’ve experienced trauma themselves, it might be too much. If you’re watching for an example of healing, to see yourself in her, this might not be the show for you. She is a role model in that she so clearly feels the fear and does things anyway, which is bravery, but it’s also incredibly destructive to her personally. She’s been vindicated by #MeToo–everyone knows now that she wasn’t crazy when she was detailing Harvey Weinstein’s decade long persecution of her–and yet, she is not healed.

If you’ve been thinking that what’s needed is some degree of justice in order to heal, then you might be disappointed. Justice can be helpful, for some it might feel necessary, but it’s not sufficient. It’s one of the awful truths of trauma: Others harm you, and you have to do the emotional work to get better. That unfairness is part of the anger you likely feel, and will have to process.

The show might also cause you to feel pressure to use your trauma to help others. And if you feel strong enough to do so, that could be very worthwhile. But avoid feeling pressured toward activism. You don’t need to read every #MeToo story; you don’t need to tell your own, not if it’s to your detriment. Someday, it might feel like part of your healing, but if you’re not ready, it can be a retraumatizing. You could be triggering yourself.

Remember that the #MeToo moment has become so much more than that; it’s become a full-fledged movement, and more and more industries are feeling the pressure. We’re a society in flux, and more people are realizing that there are no bystanders. More good men are stepping up. So there’s no rush, even if there is urgency.

The time is now, and the time is later. Focus on your healing. Remember that it will be incomplete, in that every one of us continues to live with our raw spots and our vulnerabilities. If we keep trying and fighting, those can actually become part of our strength.

So how do we walk that line and find that middle ground? How do we help our girls find their confidence and their voices?

I’m the parent of a six-year-old girl. I want her to skin her knees. I want her to climb high. I want her to soar.

I don’t want her objectified. I don’t want her limited. I don’t want her worrying how she looks more than how she feels. I don’t want her to be made to feel small or uncomfortable. I don’t want her to be touched without her consent.

I want her to know what consent is, and that it’s hers to give and to take away.

And yes, I want her to know that at age six. Sometimes I wonder if I should have told her at age four. But I like to think that I’ve shown her through our behavior. Like, she doesn’t have to hug people when she doesn’t want to; she does have to politely say hello and goodbye.

The reason I’m talking so much about consent is that it’s the backbone of so many other things I wrote about above, of my hopes for her and for all girls as they become women.

They can say ‘yes’ to experiences; they can say ‘no.’ And they need to be able to evaluate risk. They need to assess safety versus danger. They have to make informed choices and then speak up clearly.

A lot of this can be modeled. You can do it out loud: Let your girls hear your thought process. Avoid “because I said so.” If your decisions are about them, then make it a dialogue. Help them to talk through the risks versus the rewards and allow them to negotiate. Honor their voices, whether you ultimately say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’ Because you want them to be able to say ‘yes’ or ‘no.’

Sometimes they can say ‘maybe.’ Present that as an option. A ‘maybe’ can become a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ based on the information you (and they) gather. They may feel the pressure to be immediately definite. We can help them to resist that pressure.

The world may try to bend them to its–and other people’s–wills. They do need to know that. Sometimes they can bend with it like a willow; sometimes they need to withstand.

How do they know the difference?

Because you’ll be there beside them, modeling and teaching and listening.

Parenting is a triggering experience. When we deal with our kids, we’re also interfacing with ourselves as children, and the remnants of how we were parented (for better and for worse.)

As parents, we’re inundated with tips on how to manage our children’s problematic behavior. But the #1 tip doesn’t have to do with your kids; it’s all about you.

Kids are incredible mimics, and if you watch and listen to your kids with an eye to what you can learn about yourself, you might be surprised at what you discover. For example, when you’re snapping at your kids about their rude tone, what tone are you using yourself, or have you used recently?

Being able to step back and consider what we’re modeling for our kids is a crucial skill, and it’s often overlooked in parenting guides that are overly technique focused. The best technique is self awareness and reflection. It’s being able to think about whether you’re demonstrating the traits that you want your kids to inherit and imitate.

This might seem like a daunting (or even a frightening) task. By concentrating on our kids, we are inadvertently getting to avoid looking at our own baggage, or our own sub-optimal behaviors. Saying “What’s wrong with my kid and how do I fix it?” might be getting in the way of actually being able to fix it. You might be looking outward when you should be looking inward.

Now, this isn’t to bash parents. I get how incredibly hard this is, because I have to do it regularly myself. I have to recognize that the ways my daughter pushes my buttons are quite similar to the ways I push hers–that when I’m grumpy, so is she, and vice versa. We act on each other in reciprocal ways.

I’ve found that my triggers are predictable, as are many people’s. So I’m now more alert to my own mood state, and to the times of day when I’m most stressed. I get myself grounded and centered before I interact with her, and I self-monitor. I know when I need to step away.

I give myself time-outs before giving them to her, because often, I’m the one who needs one in order to deescalate the situation. And I tell her this specifically: “I’m taking a break so that I can  get myself under control and speak to you the way I want you to speak to me.” I’ve noticed she’s doing this herself: slowing down and noticing her own triggers and when she needs to step away.

Knowing that I’m a part of the problem has been really empowering, actually. Because it means that I can meaningfully contribute to the solutions. I need to be the person I want her to be.

So Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux just announced their split after two and a half years of marriage. As a couples therapist, what I always think when I hear of a short duration like that is that the seeds of discontent were already present by the time of the engagement, and most likely a lot sooner.

That’s why I’m a proponent of premarital counseling.

If you’ve never heard of it but you’re thinking about marriage, planning for it, or just hoping, you might want to read on.Premarital counseling is a therapy that is designed to prepare you for marriage. Some therapists do this in a structured way, with specific handouts or questionnaires, but whatever the method, the goal is to help you recognize areas of strength and weakness in your relationship.

Yes, no matter how happy you are, there are some weaknesses, or maybe a better world is vulnerabilities. If you think of your relationship as a rope, there are certain parts that are more frayed than others. In premarital counseling, you can identify in a specific way what those parts are, and figure how to lend additional support.

Every couple has positive and negative dynamics. When you’re under stress, the negative dynamics will tend to show themselves most clearly. It might be that you tend to seek closeness, and he tends to withdraw, or vice versa. But these are repetitive ways of interacting that can be become problematic over time–either because they’re more frequent or more intense or both.

So with premarital counseling, you’re essentially kicking the tires, and then if you need to, you can work on how to fill them up with more air. That decreases the odds of them going flat, and you ending up divorced.

One of the reasons that premarital counseling is so effective is reflected by the old adage: An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. You can learn to recognize and anticipate. You also normalize–you realize that every couple has their problematic dynamics; it’s about how you manage them. It’s about staying a team no matter what.

Another reason premarital counseling tends to be effective is because your investment level is high. Too often I see couples after one of them has lost his or her commitment to the marriage; this doesn’t mean infidelity, it just means being checked out. One of them is no longer invested in staying together, and is just going through the motions with one foot out the door. Sometimes they’re showing up for counseling because they think it’s what they’re supposed to do so they can say they’ve done everything; it eases their guilty conscience. They can say they’ve tried but really, they’re not prepared to do the work to restore their relationship. They’re out of love, and out of gas.

But when you’re engaged, you’re preparing to tell the world that your relationship is fit to last forever – that you want it to last forever. Premarital counseling helps you do the work that will increase the likelihood that you’ll get the happy ending you seek.

The reason I said you’re “allowing” it–and there’s no judgment in that word–is because you’re more powerful than you may think. And when children get away with habitually mistreating anyone, including you, they’re learning very dangerous lessons.

Read on for the most common subconscious reasons that parents don’t assert themselves in the ways they need to. It can be with younger children, adolescents, or adult children.  I point out these reasons with compassion, but also with a sense of hope: Our subconscious is powerful; making our emotional rationales conscious is even more powerful.

1)  On some deeper level, you think you deserve mistreatment.

Like I said, this is about the subconscious. It’s rare that people consciously tell themselves, “I deserve to have my children yell in my face and call me names.” In fact, they consciously feel the opposite, and they’re angry.

But when it comes to making significant shifts in their own behavior, they encounter a roadblock. That roadblock may very well be that they’ve been mistreated at other points in their life, and have internalized a sense of unworthiness. So when it comes time to take firmer action, they lose their confidence, and their will, and they continue to live out the same toxic pattern.

2)  You feel guilty.

Maybe you think it’s your fault that your children act the way they do–either because of what they may have witnessed in your home, or because you couldn’t afford a better neighborhood or better schools, or because of some other “failing” of yours. You blame yourself, and that keeps you from taking the steps that you need, both for you and for them.

Because when your kids get away with treating you–with treating any living being in an excessively disrespectful manner–they are learning that’s acceptable. They may grow up to treat their romantic partners that way, or their own children, or they may learn the reverse and accept that treatment from others.

What I’m saying is, your guilt may be trapping you and your child in a negative cycle that can continue to perpetuate itself throughout the generations. Whatever’s gone before in your life or in theirs, the time to stop the cycle is now.

3)  You’ve given up.

Sure, you’re still there, but a part of you isn’t. Some part of you has checked out and ceased to believe that you can make a difference or impact your child’s behavior. Again, this is subconscious, but you might be conscious of some powerless, helpless thoughts.

It could be that you’ve tried a variety of tactics but none of them long enough to get results, or it could be that you’ve gotten stuck in a rut where you do the same thing but expect different results; or somewhere in between. You might not have come across the answers you need. Maybe you’ve exhausted your internal and external resources and could use a therapist to help guide you. Or maybe you’ve done therapy without success, and now you need to find someone else who’s a better fit for you and your family. Not all therapists are created equal.

Identifying that you’ve settled into a posture of defeat is necessary for re-entering the fray. Your kids can feel when you’ve disconnected, and you have to consider what message they’re taking from that. You might think that they’re feeling happy and powerful, like they’ve won, but it’s much more likely that they’re feeling out of control and adrift and insecure. If you feel hopeless, how do you think they feel?

Hope comes and goes. You can work to bring it back. You can find the strength to set a different tone in your household and to create positive changes. The fact that you read this far is already a hopeful sign. My hope is that you follow it up with action.

I wanted to share what resonated most with me as a therapist and the mother of a future teenager girl (my little one just turned six.) Hope it resonates with you, too.

When we learn our kids are being bullied, many of us want to run out and fix it. But I really appreciated the cautions by the A & E therapists, the reminder that the goal of parenting is to raise people who feel empowered to take care of themselves. We have to activate their bravery and their resilience.

That means being able to engage in active listening and collaborative problem-solving. It’s finding out what matters most to your teenager. You might, for example, really want justice and to see the perpetrator punished, whereas your teen might just want it to stop. So it’s about going with what they care about most, and talking with them about creative ways to make that happen.

You might have the “you need to stand up to a bully!” attitude, but that might not fit who your child is. It also might not be the most effective strategy to get the bullying to stop, which again, may be your teenager’s main aim. And you don’t want to make your child feel like that’s a weak or invalid route; to the contrary, commend your teenager on being able to know what’s best for her and how to protect herself.

We also want to help our kids understand what bullying is: It’s not about how people feel about the victim; it’s about how the perpetrators feel about themselves. They put people down in order to elevate themselves just for a little while (it doesn’t work long-term, which is why bullies are often repeat offenders.)

It might seem counterintuitive to humanize the people who are attacking your child, but what bullies are lacking in empathy, and what we want our children to continue to have is empathy. Help your kids realize that they have what the bullies lack — that they have the strength of kindness, that they don’t try to feel better by making others feel worse.

Or maybe they are doing that some of the time. Sometimes bullying is a verb rather than a noun, as in, lots of otherwise decent people sometimes engage in bullying behavior, or they fail to stand up against it. Perhaps it’s in retaliation, but then that’s a merry-go-round that’s hard to get off.

We need our children to be educated and empowered, but also to be responsible. What they do has consequences for how other people feel, too, and for what’s coming back at them.

We’re not a society of heroes and villains, and our kids need to understand that. They learn it through us: when we’re honest about our mistakes and our biases, when we can model the empathy we want them to show toward others and the compassion we want them to have for themselves, when we can assist them in finding solutions to their own problems and help them tap into their own strength and resilience so they can shrug off attacks that have no basis or merit, and when we show we believe in them.

If you or your partner find that you don’t tend to want sex but then you enjoy it once you’re having it, fear not. It’s entirely normal. For women, it’s common. Knowing you have responsive desire and adjusting accordingly can really jump-start your sex life.

Read on to learn more.

The most common fear when it comes to sex centers around the question, “Am I normal?” And many of our notions of normalcy come from abnormal sources (i.e. movies, TV, the media) where sex manages to be both glamorized and debased.

One of the most dangerous myths is based on old research. The Masters and Johnson model said that desire precedes arousal, and that means that many people–especially women–are led to feel deficient when they don’t experience desire independent from actual physical stimulation (when they’re not aware of their sex drive throughout the functions of daily life.) If we’re not getting horny on a regular basis, what’s wrong with us?

New research has shown that the majority of women and a good number of men fall into the category of having responsive desire. What that means is, you don’t necessarily crave sex but once you’re having it, it’s like, “Hey, this feels good! Why don’t I do this more often?”

The answer is you can forget how good it feels because you’re not routinely cued by desire. Therefore, you and your partner need to figure out a system wherein you create more cues–where you don’t just decide whether you’re in the mood on a given day or night, but you actively work to get in the mood; and you’ll be rewarded handsomely.

With responsive desire, the desire is cued by arousal itself. This is a very liberating idea for many people who thought something was wrong with them, with their partner, or with their relationship. It just means that you have to approach sex differently than if you were driven to do it. You might not be driven there, but you can enjoy it just as much as your partner. It’s akin to starting a stick shift car in second rather than first gear. Once you’re moving, there’s no difference in the ride.

Something to be aware of is if you’ve stopped doing certain things that might lead to sex because you’ve decided it’s foreplay. For example, a lot of couples don’t do open-mouthed kissing unless they already know they’re going to have sex. With responsive desire, that means you’re shutting off a primary route to pleasure.

The act of making the decision–not tonight, I’m tired or I have a headache, etc.–then means that desire won’t be triggered, since desire is simultaneous with arousal. It can also mean that you find you go a looooong time without sex, even though, paradoxically, you actually like sex.

Allow yourself to have an experience that may or may not lead to arousal, and just stay open to the possibility. You could cuddle naked, or give each other massages, or kiss deeply with no stress or pressure. At the very least, you’ll feel close to your partner; at the most, you’ll give your sex life a boost.