Tag Archives: Family

The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

Posted on by
Reply

The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

Dateline: Chili’s bar, Little League World Series Final. These kids are great fun.

What was your first thought when seeing the two boys in the pool. Was it, where were their parents? Not that the question is a bad one, just not the only one.t was your level of fear seeing pic? Remember herding sheep in other countries. The swimmers do look a bit younger than the third graders in the situation below.

Okay, one more shot at James Arthur Ray, then I’ll let him go. Maybe. The sweat lodge situation is just such a good example of one person saying to others (who ended up dead, by the way, even though they were good “Warrriors”) “Listen to me. Not your own mind. You are safe because I know you and you don’t know yourself. You are safe because I am with you and I am so cool and great, you should trust me with your bodies and your money.” Okay, I paraphrased a little. But you get the message. is the same.

Remember the pledge. No judgments. James Arthur Ray and both mothers came by their responses to anxiety honestly. A child’s anxiety is hard to resist. It’s hard to keep
ourselves calm and communicating confidence once our fears are stimulated, once
we know or think we know danger lurks.

The following situation came about accidentally, but taught one father a lot about his
daughter and himself. This particular weekend Mrs. W was out-of-town and Mr. W
was in charge of his ten, four, and two-year old daughters. The mother of one
of his ten-year-old’s best friends called and asked if she could attend a small
slumber party.

The friend’s aunt, staying at one of the best hotels in town which happened to include
an indoor pool and miniature golf course, had offered to arrange a room next
door for their niece and three of her friends. The niece was excited and happy that her aunt had made such a generous offer. The plan was for the aunt to supervise an afternoon in the pool, then take the girls out to dinner before settling in.

What actually happened: An hour after the girls were in the pool, the aunt got into a huge argument with her husband on the phone. After the battle, the aunt
left the hotel, then returned with a six-pack of Mike’s Lemonade. Afte the swim the now intoxicated aunt retreated to her room and room service alcohol.

The girls went down to the indoor miniature golf and played a couple of hours. Returning to their room, the niece peeked in on her aunt to find her passed out on the bed. The four third greaders were on their own and for some reason, probably the fun
night ahead, no one called parents.

They made a joint decision for everyone to shower and change into the dresses brought for dinner. The four girls escorted themselves to hotel’s fine-dining restaurant signing the check to their room. Afterwards, the evening was spent with television and games as planned. Ice cream sundaes were ordered from room service.

The next morning, the aunt still in bed, the girls enjoyed breakfast in the restaurant then returned to the miniature golf course to wait for parents to pick them up at the
assigned time.

Once the niece’s parents were beyond their anger at the aunt, they could step back and see how well their daughter and the other girls had handled themselves. Would they have allowed her to go if they’d known what was going to happen? Of course not. But instead of raging on about the irresponsibility of the adults, or about the fact that his daughter had not called him the night before, they were able to appreciate how the girls had managed a tough situation quite well–and without anyone having to instruct them along the way.

Hang on, no one’s saying leave your third grader with a drunk relative in a hotel. Ten-year-olds do herd sheep and tend to the store in other cultures. (When a young person tells me he or she just can’t do a chore, I tell them about the young herders. Straightens them out in a hurry, since they do not want to end up with more responsibility.)

Next: Relationship
Dependence, the “Woman Who Used Two Potato Peelers at Once.”

 

 

 

Stress, the “It’s Just Thunder” Incident

Posted on by
2

Relationship Stress and the “It’s Just Thunder” Incident

I’m Okay and You’re Okay… as Long as I’m With You–

Dateline: Willie’s Roadhouse, Truck Stop Cafe in Abott, Texas. And, yes, the chicken-fried steaks lap over the edges of the plate.

Note: This entry, along with the next introduce the series: “Las Vegas Mary Grows a Self: Relationship Dependence, A Soap Opera in Four Parts.”

We live in anxious times. Whether the current era is more anxiety-producing than frontier times, I don’t know. What is different is that presently we have much greater access to other people in times of stress.

With magic phones, tablets, computers, most of us can make contact with others instantly. The result?

We don’t learn how to build personal tolerance for anxiety. We don’t learn and we do not model how to simply sit with disappointment, anger, hurt, or even joy. I’m not suggesting a return to dial-up, only noting that in our child-focused times, parents are instantly available both as resources and as supervisors. parents have bought into seeing instant availability as being a good parent and any less as being a neglectful parent.

We don’t rush in taking our childrens’ problems away from them and making them our problems because we want to undercut our children’s resilience. We do it because we love them and want the very best life for them and we are anxious critters.

Real Life Example with Fake Names: Mr. and Mrs. C are in my office to address a serious marital issue. During the session, Mr. C receives a cell phone call. He indicates it’s his childrenm, thus he must answer. He and the caller talk back and forth a few times. Then Mr. C turns to Mrs. C and reports on the fight over the television going on back at home. Mrs. C takes the phone and speaks to each of the three children twice until she senses the battle has been resoved, at least for the moment. Their children, like most, do not live on isolated farms without communication devices, but have strings of numbers to call and neighborhoods loaded with adults glad to help in an emergency. I’m wondering what would have happened had the parents turned off their phones, trusted their children could work out whatever came up, and focused on the issue at hand.

Consider the following dilemma:   It is two in the morning when a loud thunderstorm breaks over the city. A frightened child calls for her mother who shows up immediately. The experience is new to the child, we’d expect her to be anxious.

Mother number one hugs the child and says, “It’s a thunderstorm. You are safe because I am here with you.”

Mother number two hugs the child and says, “It’s a thunderstorm. You are safe because when you are inside a house, thunderstorms are not dangerous. Sure, there’s lightening, and that can be dangerous if you are outside, and loud noise, but that’s all there is to thunderstorms. Did you ever think what would happen to all the animals in the forest if it never stormed?”

Next:  “The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders.” More on what happens to us as adults if we have not developed the capacity to tolerate anxiety and find our own solutions. Or even try to find our own solutions.

Chameleon. Stress Management Through Changing Colors

Posted on by
Reply

Chameleon, Blending with Environment to Calm Anxiety
Dateline: Chili’s International Branch Office

The Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries went on– from our midnight burgers during my second year of college—to a lifetime of confusion and efforts to find her ‘self’ through other people. And though I tried to mold her myself that fateful night, the WWDKILFF continued to choose only men to form her ‘self’ against. Remember lack of ‘self’ is demonstrated by the inability to define oneself (her), and the inability to leave other people alone and running their own lives (me).

Think of the WWDKILFF as hot wax and men as molds at the ready.

The man she was leaving that fateful night she met at a country club party. He was 17 years older than her, wealthy, worldly, and dashing. WWDKILFF, uncomfortable at the university and not knowing what she wanted to study, became a country club wife. She traded generic beer for martinis and Manhattans, jeans for cocktail dresses, the casual look of poor students for regular visits to the manicurist, the personal trainer, the dermatologist, hair stylist, and personal shopper.

After the cocktail circuit, WWDKILFF returned to college where she met a charismatic protestor who headed up an organization opposing government military expenditures. She quit college again and traded her cocktail ways for old jeans, saggy T-shirts, vegetarianism, and pot. Now vehemently anti-materialistic, she cut ties with her middle-class family. The next time I heard from her she was standing in line at the free clinic in Houston to receive no-cost pills to treat gonorrhea.

Next she met a cowboy. Since I showed horses, she called thinking I’d be delighted with the news that she was learning to ride and rope. She traded her protestor ways for boots, and saddles, expensive beer, T-bone steaks, and thrill rides.

At our tenth high school reunion I learned that the WWDKILFF was now married to a man who sold life insurance and owned his own company. She’d traded her cowboy ways to take care of a big house in the suburbs, two kids, a maid, and twice weekly visits to her psychiatrist.

Couple Stress, the “Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries”

Posted on by
Reply

Fusion and the “Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries Incident”

Dateline:  Bergstrom Interantional Airport, which is deep in the forests of northeast part of Germany or in south Austin.

Fusion is the emotional process that occurs when the way one person feels is automatically absorbed by another person. Every close relationship includes a certain amount of adaptation to calm the other, the question is, to what degree?  It’s only with too much fusion that we get into trouble.

For example:  the family member who avoids going home for Christmas because he or she feels like a different person (less confident) when around family. The usual rationalization is to claim nothing in common or to have a list of past injustices.)

The horse I had once who wouldn’t eat at horseshows unless his buddy in the next stall at home came along with him on the road. (Fusion can get expensive.)

The cheerleader’s mother who tried to murder the mother of one of her daughter’s rivals so that the girl would be too upset to be competitive.

The wife who longed to tour Italy but stopped bringing it up after a few years to avoid the anxiety in her that was stirred up by her husband’s anxiety at the thought of shaking up the routine.

The student who can only perform well when ‘liked’ by the teacher.

A loved spouse who only feels safe when his or her partner is happy.

and…

The Woman Who Didn’t Know if She Liked French Fries:

A college roommate, we’ll call her K, met an wealthy older man who promised her a new life.  Not all that happy with the life she had, she married him. K gathered up her country-raised self and welcomed the makeover into an upscale wife.  Three years later the new look wasn’t worth putting up with the all the other women her husband provided with new lives.  The night of their last big fight, K and I met at midnight at a 24 hour café.  I ordered the burger and fries, but K told the waiter she needed more time.

K picked up the menu and stared.  “I don’t know what to order,” she said.

“Burgers and fries are good here,” I said.

“That’s the problem,” K said. “Dave thinks I should lose weight, so I always order what I know he thinks I should eat. I don’t remember if I like French fries or not.”

The emotional process of calming self by calming the anxious other has many names and faces. The term co-dependent, no longer in vogue since insurance won’t pay for it anymore, was defined as calming self when next to an anxious other by ‘helping’ that person. The co-dependent is the person who lies for the addict, supplies money, and sometimes takes on responsibility for locating the ‘drug of choice’ for them.  In this situation the addict is very clear about what will calm them down—for the moment. He or she is good at promising that if the other doesn’t do what he or she commands worse consequences are to come.

The addict turns responsibility for his or her life over to the other. The addict learns to be very good at convincing others to listen to his or her claims about life and to ignore their own beliefs.  Through this process, a person can end up “living” another person’s life.  Much like the woman who didn’t know if she liked french fries.

Next: Anxiety and Potatoes Part Two, the “Woman Who Used Two Potato Peelers at Once” Incident.

 

 

 

 

 

Are You In Charge of You?

Posted on by
Reply
The role of anxiety, yours and other people’s, in your life. Entry in progress.
“Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show.”
Charles Dickens
David Copperfield 1850

Fall Series on Bowen Family Systems Theory

Posted on by
Reply

Bowen Theory: Chronic Anxiety and Defining a Self

Fall 2011 Seminar

This early notice is to provide information for department heads and agency directors.

As a part of our commitment to study and share Bowen theory, eight sessions on the theory originated by Dr. Murray Bowen will be presented in Austin by Hal DeShong, Ph.D. and Barbara DeShong, Ph.D.  Programs will be two hours each on every other Tuesday beginning September 13 and concluding December 13.  To accommodate the holiday season, December sessions will be held on the first two Tuesdays of that month. The time for the program will be determined by surveying participants for a time the time that is the best fit.

Classes will be held in the DeShong offices off Mt. Bonnell Road in
northwest Austin.  Class size will be limited to provide a comfortable, interactive program.  To sign up or for questions, please email: hdeshong@austin.rr.com or telephone (512) 451-9426, Option 1(for Hal
Deshong).  For a brief introduction to the topic of defining a self, a tab can be found on: barbaradeshong-mysteryshrink.com.

Who can benefit from this program?  Anyone interested in learning something new regarding how to think as opposed to what to think.  Anyone interested in reducing the amount of anxiety in their life.
Anyone interested in being more in charge of their functioning.  It is not necessary to have had any prior introduction to Dr. Bowen’s well-researched and thoughtful theory. This format will provide lectures, interactive questions and answers, and the opportunity to present and receive feedback on one’s multigenerational family history. Supplemental readings will be offered, but not required.  Additional information can be accessed by clicking Bowen Center for its homepage.

The fee is $200 per participant for the full program payable at the first session.  If a different arrangement is preferred, please let us know.

This program can be offered for credit.  The number of hours will meet continuing education in virtually all fields.  If you are a student, an instructor, or an instructor with a student you would like to have attend, materials will be provided to meet all requirements for receiving credit at your institution.  Exams developed for the course can be given if required and written assignments can be made and reviewed to meet class
requirements.

Preliminary Outline:

September 13              Bowen Theory: A New Way to View Human Behavior

September 27              The Family as an Emotional Unit: Emotional Process in Action

October 11                  Differentiation of Self: A Way of Thinking and Functioning

October 25                  Anxiety and Symptoms: Forces for Togetherness and Individuality

November 8                The Multigenerational Family System: The Flow of Chronic Anxiety

November 22              Marriage: Children’s Involvement in the Family Emotional Process

December 6                Emotional Process in Physical Disorders: Inflammation and Stress

December 13              Bowen Theory Wrap-Up: Touching Untouched Bases

 

Dr. Hal DeShong has studied and taught Bowen theory for almost three decades, receiving his training at the Bowen Family Center in Washington, D.C. and the Menninger Center in Kansas City. Relevant national and regional publications include: Power and Differentiation of Self;  Thinking and Differentiation of Self;  The Processes of Self-Focusing and Other-Focusing as Related to Objectivity and Differentiation;  Thinking About Suicide; Broadening the Context: Rethinking Participation in Religious Issues;  Bowen Therapy: An Introduction;  From Relationship Therapy to Bowen Theory Based Clinical Work;  Organizational and Family Reaction to Death;  From Other-Focus to Self-Focus as the Essential Shift; Suicide: A Family Emotional Regression; and, What Does a Bowen Family Systems Clinician Think Like?

Dr. Barbara DeShong has been studying and utilizing Bowen theory in private practice, in teaching and in conducting seminars for over twenty years. She received her training through a three-year program at the Menninger Foundation Bowen Theory Center in Kansas City and attending numerous seminars at the Bowen clinic in Washington D.C.   Her presented papers include: Elements in Clinical Changes Using Bowen Theory; Bowen Theory After One Year of Study;  Consistency Over Specialness: The Therapeutic Relationship; and, Are You an Emotional Prisoner?

Start times will be in the early evening, either 6:30 or 7:00 p.m. as best fits participants schedules.

Stress and Two Fools Making the Best of the Worst, Episode 2

Posted on by
Reply

How What Looks Like the Worst that Can Happen, Could be the Best that Could Happen

Episode Two: Stress deep in the night, deep in Mexico, way out of our comfortzone..

Dateline: Mexico City Reforma Hilton International Branch Office.  The richest man in the world lives here.  He built, filled, and donated an incredible museum to Mexico City.

Note: to get on board on this late night Mexico highway, you need to have read Episode One.

As the miles clicked along, Sam read to me the mile by mile tracking of our trip from El Sanborn, adding a little history of her own.  With her announcement that we were about to pass the mountaintop where Maximilian (unfortunate king sent from Europe  believing his services were wanted when they weren’t) was shot, we decided a celebration was called for at El Sanborn’s recommended restaurant in Queretaro.  And toast the fallen Maximilian we did. And his wife (best played by Betty Davis), we gave her a salud or two as well.

Now if you’re hung up on the facts that we weren’t yet twenty and driving through the night in Mexico, kids were freer then or at least the ex-nun and the divorcee were. My mother had died the year before and my father was now in Europe with my ex-mother-in-law-now-stepmother escaping in his own way.  Sam’s family wasn’t speaking to her, much less asking where she was going and who with.

In fact, Sam’s fresh-from-the-convent status is the important element of this whole story.  A good story, I’ve learned, centers around the main conflict and the change happening in the person with the conflict.  And our Sam was indeed conflicted.  She had been in the convent since her fourteenth birthday at which time she’d been determined to make up for her older brother’s disappointing the family by leaving the priesthood, opening up a Church’s chicken franchise, and marrying a woman ten years his senior who claimed to be a Communist.

Yes.  Sam had a lot of making up to do and, for the first four years, she’d been steady in her commitment.  Only during the past year, culminating in the  psychology class we shared at the university, did Sister Victoria Marie start having second thoughts. This means that when we launched our Freedom Celebration Hayride, Sam had never had a date. She had never kissed a boy, had never talked on the phone to one who wasn’t her brother, or even flicked her eyes flirtingly at a person of the opposite sex.

She was terrified.  And me, already married and divorced, was just the person to frighten her straight back into the convent.  That’s why the tequila sours came in so handy.  All that pent up tension.

Now back to the highway between Queretaro and Mexico City.  We’re really singing now, “Dell-ell-ta dawn what’s that flower you have on?” Singing and laughing and singing and then I noticed we didn’t have but the tiniest bit of gasoline left.  I asked my jolly friend, “Say, my jolly friend, please consult with El Sanborn there and tell me where the next Pemex station can be found.”

She checked El Sanborn for instructions, then looked it up and said, “About forty miles.”

And I said, “Well, we ain’t a gonna make that.”

Sam shot me a look that me doubting she was ever serious about the nun project. Gasoline stations in Mexico are government owned which means—few, far-between, and hideously mismanaged.  We were stuck, the last fumes now being spent.

Sam freaked and started rethinking the convent.  In her weakened condition, she even suggested I was responsible for knowing how much gas we had since it was my car, and by the way she’d never even driven a car.  Since she was determined to maintain that delusion, it was up to me to find a solution.

“Okay, here’s the plan,” I said, with a tone implying that because I’d been married and divorced, I knew exactly how to deal with our situation. “First, we are going to find some non-scary person and get him to follow us until we run out of gas.  Then we’ll give him twenty or fifty dollars to go get gas for us and bring it back.  It’s simple.”  I had to go over the “simple” steps several times before Sam calmed down enough for her to point out we were on a highway, and “How, exactly, did I plan on alerting Superman to our dilemma?”

Which is when I realized that being already married and divorced wasn’t the kind of credential commonly referred to as a ‘useful learning experience.’  It was evidence of chronic poor judgment of which the current predicament was only the most recent example. I had to come up with help and, unlike when I was in a bad marriage, the plan couldn’t be put off until tomorrow, and the potential downside was too scary to contemplate. At least that’s the way Sam was viewing our situation.

She had a point. I had an idea.  I pulled off and spotted a small restaurant, okay a cantina.  I assured Sam that in my travels with family, I‘d been in a pinch like this before in Mexico, many times.  There was no problem.  (Picture Bill Clinton staring into the camera saying, “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.“)  We cruised the gravel lot until we spotted the person to save us–a man with a child in a truck.  Perfect.  I man with a child wouldn’t hurt us I assured Sam. I pulled up alongside the driver and punched Sam without mercey, shouting instructions in English I expected her to translate.

Turned out it wasn’t a man and a child.  It was a tall man and a short man.  Great.  Oh well, as I pointed out to Sam, it’s not like we had a lot to choose from in the parking lot of a country bar in the
middle of nowhere Mexico in the middle of the night.  As luck would have it, the truckers said they’d be glad to help us.  We breathed a sigh, brushing aside the pictures we were both entertaining of our bodies being found in the morning after the rain cleared.

The sigh of relief was a bit premature.  As the driver explained, this was a toll road and the truck didn’t belong to him or his shorter friend. Thus, they could not turn around and come back bringing the
gas.  The driver said the best they could offer was for one of us to come along with them in the truck.  When they got to the Pemex station, they’d let out whichever one of us was with them, and we could for sure find a trucker to take us the other way back to the car. Oh, yeah. righ.

Okay, let’s clarify the situation.  It is one-thirty in the morning and raining. We are two nine-teen-year olds on the side of a highway north of Mexico City in an almost out-of-gas vehicle.  Add that Sam has seen very little of the outside world and I happened to be dressed in pink pants suits with diamond shapes cut out down the sides of my legs.

I’m thinking, “Oh yeah, now I remember why I wanted to get married instead of growing up.”  I was pretty sure Sam was visualizing the advantages of cloistered safety, too.

Next:  Will help be found at the Pemex station or is ever making it to Mexico City a dream?  Episode Three:  Riding in Glorious Mangos.