A Psychologist on the Loose
Posts tagged sisters
Baseball, Rose Colored Glasses, and Family Stress.
Baseball, Rose Colored Glasses, and Family Stress.
Dateline: Las Vegas Paris Sportsbook International Branch Office. Just put my twenty on my team to win over 59 games this season. Usually, I put my twenty on them to win the pennant. Odds 500 to 1. I’m pretty sure the bet taker doesn’t even register my bet. The cashier merely winks at his co-workers and pockets the money. But this time I could bet only on them winning 59 out of 162 games. Happy Dance.
Loyalty is not about winning. Or depending on others, including family, to make you feel like a winner.
Why Do You Make Me Feel Like This? “The Man Who Couldn’t Ask His Wife a Question” Incident
Why Do You Make Me Feel Like This? “The Man Who Couldn’t Ask His Wife a Question” Incident Dateline: Las Vegas Branch Office at the Bellagio Race and Sports Book. This is the kind of place where when I bobbed my cargo-shorted person into the restaurant, the host asked if I preferred an allergy menu, a non-gluten menu, a vegetarian menu, or, in case I was one of those crass Texas types, a regular menu? They make a dandy hamburger, but I can’t remember what they called it.
First a little booster shot of the Mysteryshrink pledge. Repeat after me, I, More >
Letting Others Be Themselves
Which, of course, they are going to be anyway. But since we’ve given our precious permission, what that means is that we CANNOT be all surprised when they are themselves.
Remember we expected that. Gave permission. Later in evolvement we’ll even recognize that others have THE RIGHT to be themselves. But, not yet. For now we’re just being generous.
Which means:
The person who cuts in front of you at the grocery store with 80 items, you said she could do that.
The person who’s late to Thanksgiving dinner–you said that would be fine.
You gave the person who doesn’t return your e-mail for four days–you More >
Rachel Getting Married: The Myth of Sibling Rivalry
The myth of sibling rivalry–the blanket acceptance that the main preoccupation of children is is garnering attention from their parents–doesn’t even make sense.
Yet it’s one of the simplistic and convenient drawers we use to account for behavior and sometimes to excuse immature relationships into adulthood and throughout our lives.
Now, everyone wants their way, thus sibs fight like other species, and husbands and wives–to get their ways. Nothing wrong with this. It’s the institutionalized idea and explainations and rationalizations where we get into trouble. The problem comes in when WE BELIEVE AND THEREFORE “CREATE A CORRESPONDING WORLD.”
Our freedom to become More >
Who’s In Charge?
I was going to lie low until the Spring as I have a book coming out in early summer, timing and all. But I can’t wait. Yesterday on the plane the man behind me chastised his wife, “You make decisions based on your emotions while I make decisions based on what I see and hear for myself.”
I had to mention this because so many times this argument is used as if WHAT YOU HEAR and WHAT YOU SEE isn’t determined by your emotions. Example later.
I’m A Big Wennie, Too
Lest there be any question, I did not intend to put down the struggling wife mentioned yesterday. Never. Some people have better “front offices” than the rest of us.
They hold in their anxiety, and thus they come across cool instead of HYSTERICAL like the rest of us. But the husband in the example was no more functional than the wife, just using means other than obvious “relationship dependence” to calm himself down. Who knows, maybe he had someone on the side (or gets someone) using relationship dependence in spades.
“Relationship dependence” is when we need a particular response from a particular other More >
RELATIONSHIP DEPENDENCE
A supreme and successful effort to manage . . . RELATIONSHIP DEPENDENCE.
I was seeing a couple, both of whom were university professors. (All descriptions are disguised and combined to not apply to actual persons. I have enough wacky people in my family to use anyway.) The husband was frustrated with the marriage and had moved into his own apartment. Things were improving with therapy as each learned more about their reactivity and anxiety management, but the husband was not ready to re-commit. The wife had a research report tour scheduled which would take her on the road for two More >