The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 3:

More ideas on Fred's unhappiness with his relationships with his wife and his daughter

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, April 30th 2010

Introduction

For the past two weeks, I have been writing about Fred Brown, who had written to me about his unhappiness with his life.  His daughter had gone off to university and not come back, except for one or two visits each year, for one day at a time.  His wife nags him from morning till night.  I have given him quite a bit of help in learning how to manage this situation more effectively; and I will continue that work today.

Applying the Five Windows model

Hello Fred,

Today I want to look at your problems in the context of the Five Windows model of CENT.

You probably imagine you are being quite objective about your problems with your wife, Dora, and your daughter, Suzy.  But I can assure you that you are not!  Humans are delusional beings.  We are about 95% non-conscious most of the time, and we live inside of stories that are normally significantly false to facts, or at least significantly distorted.  CENT therapy is designed to break up your non-conscious fantasies, and to help you to be less mono-focused in your (distorted) view of the world.

The Five Windows model begins from the understanding that you are already looking through some kind of tinted window lens at your problems with Dora and Suzy.  And the Five Windows model is designed to break up that mono-focused delusion.

Imagine a shed on your lawn - just like an ordinary wooden, garden shed, but with nothing inside except one camp bed.  There are windows in each of the four walls, and one in the (flat) roof.  Each window has a slogan written around it, and you are advised to experiment with believing this slogan while you are looking out through each window.

To begin, please go into the shed (in your mind) and look through Window No.1, which has the following suggested slogan, or affirmation:  "Life is difficult and/or frustrating for all human beings much of the time".  Now, as you look out through this window, believing this slogan, visualize Dora and Suzy standing on the lawn, and remind yourself about your difficulties with them both.  Only now - for the first time - these difficulties are happening in the context that life if pretty difficult for all individuals much of the time.  Does that shift your perspective on those two relationships?  Does that change how you feel?  Probably, somewhat; but the exercise is not over yet.

Turn to Window No.2.  The slogan is now: "Life is without difficulty provided you avoid picking and choosing".  Look out through the window.  You still see your difficulties with Dora and Suzy, only this time they are framed by the context that life is not difficult, except when you are picking and choosing. In other words, to the degree that you are upset about your difficulties with Dora and Suzy, you are creating that upset by picking (unrealistically) that Suzy should have stayed and Dora should have left; or you are choosing (unrealistically) that Dora should be different from the way she actually is - right now!  As if a black door could be yellow, or a rainy day could be dry!  If you give up picking and choosing that life not be the crummy way that it often proves to be, you will reduce your suffering considerably.  Does this shift your perspective on your two central relationships?  Does it help you to feel better? It will probably make some difference; but again the exercise if not over yet.

Now turn towards Window No.3.  This time the slogan or affirmation says: "Life is both difficult and non-difficult".  Look out through the window at your problems with Dora and Suzy, while believing this slogan.  Where, in this scene, are the non-difficult aspects?  They are not present, are they?  You have squeezed them out, or air-brushed them out.  You have selected out all the bad bits, and dumped the good bits.  If you think about it, you will find that there are good aspects to your relationship with Suzy.  She could refuse to come home at all, but she comes home a couple of times per year.  She could berate you for being a lousy father from the moment she arrives to the moment she leaves, but she doesn't.  Can't you find something to be grateful for in your relationship with Suzy?  If you can't find anything positive, then you are in denial about the nature of reality.  Are there no positive aspects to your relationship with Dora?  Does she nag you every single minute that you are together?  No!  If she did you would be staying in a bed and breakfast establishment down the road.  Is she ever available to you, but you are too busy sulking about yesterday's nagging?  Be honest with yourself.  Life is both difficult and non-difficult.  Stop air-brushing the good moments out of your story so you can awfulize about your crummy existence!

Next, turn towards Window No.4.  Here the slogan or affirmation is: "Life could always be a whole lot worse than it is".  Look out through this window at your relationships with Dora and Suzy.  Those relationships could always be a whole lot worse than they are, couldn't they?  Haven't you been saying "This is totally bad - as bad as could be?"  And isn't it more accurate to say that life with Dora and Suzy could always be a whole lot worse than it is?

Finally, go to the camp bed and lie down.  Now you are looking up through the window in the roof - Window No.5, which bears the slogan or affirmation: "There are certain things I can control and certain things I cannot control".  Looking through that window, consider your difficulties and disappointments about Dora and Suzy.  About those relationships, what can you control and what is beyond your control?  And is it not the case that you have been trying to control some uncontrollable bit, and failing to try to control some aspects that are probably controllable by you?  Take responsibility for making this distinction, and try to only set out to control what is potentially controllable, and give up trying to control the uncontrollable.  You will be a whole lot happier and more serene if you follow this advice.

Go over this Five Windows exercise at least two or three times, and write it out for maximum clarity.  Then, whenever you are feeling down about the situation with Dora, or Suzy, or both, quickly remind yourself that you are probably looking through some crazy window in the basement of your non-conscious mind.  Wake up!  Look through the Five Windows and return to sanity! 

And if your problems with Dora and Suzy are ever really painful, try to look through all five windows at once.  If you try that, really seriously try to train yourself to do that, you will get a very pleasant surprise.  Why?  Because human attention cannot be split like this, in five directions at once.  When you try to split your attention like this, you ‘short circuit' your working memory, and all information processing closes down.  Your gabbing mind shuts up - mercifully.  Then, because you are no longer processing information about your problems with Dora and Suzy, you cannot have any negative emotions about them! Peace pervades your body and mind.  Nice!

Managing Effective Marriage Relationships

Over the past ten or more years of providing couples therapy, I have developed a list of 18 principles to guide my couples in managing effective marriage, or marriage-like, relationships. Today, I will present the first three of those principles, and I will present the remainder of them over the next five weeks.

On my Couples Therapy page there is a quote from Ursula Le Guin, the science fiction author, which provides a context for working on your relationship with Dora:

"Love doesn't just sit there, like a stone; it has to be made, like bread; remade all the time, made new".
Ursula Le Guin.

The first three principles of my approach to Couples Therapy fit neatly under that sentiment.  Here they are:

1. A marriage is a "house" that is built every day.  What actions did you consciously take to build the "house" of your marriage today?  If you go to sleep in your relationship, you will wake up to find it has collapsed from want of repair.  Rowing with your partner about who is right and who is wrong, and especially who is ‘top dog' and who is ‘under dog', is equivalent to trying to polish the walls of your "house" with sledge hammers!  You will wreck it in no time.  So I ask again:

# What actions did you consciously take today to build the "house" of your relationship?

# What actions did you take to stop swinging the wrecking ball against the walls of your relationship?

2. If you want your relationship to survive, then you need to maintain a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments.  If you fail to do this, then your relationship is heading for disintegration.  "But what more can I do?", I hear you ask.  Try this:

Avoid criticizing your partner.  Criticism is corrosive and destroys self esteem and good feelings in a relationship.  Use reasonable ‘assertive complaints' about behaviours, not about your partner's essence, or personhood.

# Remember to set up dates and assignations with your partner, for friendly talk, walks, outings and sex-love encounters.  High quality time together counts towards the 5 positives that you need. 

# Ignoring or abandoning your partner counts towards the negative side of the equation.

3. The best way to get love is to sincerely offer it to your partner.  In what ways could you offer love to your partner which you are not currently doing?  "But", I hear you protest, "what love do I get from them?"  That's a really crazy way to do the sums.  It's just like the man sitting in front of a cold and black stove, with a huge wooden log in his hands, and he's saying to the stove: "If you give me some heat, I'll give you this log!"  Crazy!  All he has to do is put the log in the stove, ignite it, and fan the resulting flames a little; and - whoosh - up comes the warming heat. 

# Do not wait for your partner to start loving you before you will love them.  That's crazy.  Become the source of love in your relationship, and watch the magical results!

Postscript 1:

I had hoped to add some comments on the differences between the REBT and CENT approaches to Couples Therapy, but I have run out of time and space.  I also had hoped to present some additional ideas on the father-daughter relationship, but that will now have to wait till next week.  And, I had hoped to say some more on the development of ‘a viable marriage contract', but that will also have to wait.

Postscript 2:

Have you begun to implement any of the ideas that I presented last week?  If not, then nothing will change.  If you continue to do the things you have been doing, then the emotional and behavioural responses that you get will continue to be as before.  You have to work at changing YOU before your world will change!

I hope this is helping.

Best wishes,

More next week.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 2

Fred is unhappy with his relationships with his wife and his daughter

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, April 23rd 2010

Introduction

Last week I wrote about Fred Brown, who had written to me about his unhappiness with his life.  His daughter had gone off to university and not come back, except for one or two visits each year, for one day at a time.  His wife nags him from morning till night. 

I asked Fred if it would be okay to respond to his message in my Happiness Blog, provided I changed his name and did not give any clues to his identity.  He said he was happy for me to do that.

Therefore, last week, I began to outline some of the ‘facts of life' regarding the nature of relationships in general between husbands and wives, and between fathers and daughters.

However, readers of this blog will know that Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT) is a holistic therapy, which always looks at the contributions made to the human mind of three variables: diet, exercise and self-talk (or thinking/emoting).

What this means is this: We do not know just how much of Fred's emotional misery and distress is caused by his daughter's absence, his wife's nagging, his own biochemistry resulting from an inadequate diet and/or lack of daily physical exercise.

Therefore, today, I want to begin to focus in on some ‘lifestyle issues', and I will return to a more detailed consideration of the relationship issues proper next week.

~~~

Dear Fred,

I hope you found my previous message helpful; and that you have identified a local counsellor to consult in case you happen to become distressed when we are reviewing your life problems.

So far, I have given you some insights into the nature of relationships between husbands and wives, and between parents and daughters.  Next week I will go into marital relationship skills in more detail; and I will also present some research findings on the father/daughter relationship in particular.

Today I want to look at some more general ideas:

Firstly, if you want to be happy, you have to take as much control of your life as is possible, and render it enjoyable.  That necessarily means to make it peaceful and harmonious.  Every day should begin peacefully: Get up in the morning with plenty of time in hand to have a leisurely breakfast, and to make a slow and peaceful journey to your place of work, whether that is in a remote location, or an office in your own home.  (If you stay in bed too late, and then have to rush, you will crank up your sympathetic nervous system and induce ongoing stress in your body and mind).

Secondly, central to creating a happy and peaceful day is the arrangement of a quiet breakfast.  This requires the establishment of some kind of understanding with your wife, so set this up in advance.  Explain to your wife that Winston Churchill, when asked for the secret of his long and happy marriage, responded that it was the result of an agreement with his wife to never discuss anything significant or important over breakfast.  Save that to the end of the day.  Do not talk about bills; the broken fence; the cracked ceiling; your sexual difficulties; etc., while you are having breakfast, or at any point during the morning.  Outlaw anything that could be experienced as stressful, and relegate it to later in the day.  And then, only discuss it by appointment!  Yes, an appointment: an agreement to talk about a specific problem.

Thirdly, avoid churning up your own mind, and dumping its contents into the minds of others, such as your wife's mind.  Much of the misery of the world, including the world of marriage, is caused by ‘ontic dumping'.  Ontic dumpingrefers to a process whereby Person ‘A' experiences anger, or anxiety or depression about something and verbalizes their upsetness in an agitated and uncontrolled way to Person ‘B'.  Person ‘B's nervous system begins to vibrate at the same agitated frequency - inducing unhappiness and stress - and Person ‘A' walks away (happily or otherwise) leaving Person ‘B' to wrestle with the dumped ‘reality' - which may have no more reality than the vivid imaginations of both parties involved.

Stop dumping your ‘carp' into other people's lives; and stop other people dumping their ‘carp' into yours.  If you want to be happy, you have to protect your mind from internally and externally generated pollutants and agitations.

So your first priority is to create a peaceful breakfast scene.  No heavy topics.  No ontic dumping.

Fourth, from the moment you awake begin to affirm: peace, peace, peace, as a ‘mantra' - or repetitious affirmation - while you shower, shave, set up breakfast, consume breakfast, etc.

As you walk to the bathroom you are silently affirming in your mind: Peace; peace; peace; peace.  As you walk to the kitchen you are affirming silently in your mind: Peace, peace, peace, peace.

Alternate with: Happiness, happiness, happiness, happiness.

Fifth: You then have to decide whether to exercise before or after breakfast.  And what kind of exercise you are going to do.  About 20 minutes of yoga or calisthenics, or 30 minutes of brisk walking outside, every morning, should be enough to calm your body, wash out accumulated stress hormones, and release enough endorphins (or ‘happiness chemicals') to render you happy for most of the day.

Eat your breakfast in silence.  Chew your food thoroughly.  Make sure you eat slow-burning foods - complex carbohydrates, with or without protein.  Do not eat sugary foods, like commercial breakfast cereals, as quick-burning sugary foods will give you a quick spike of blood-sugar elevation, which is stressful, followed by a big slump in blood-sugar levels, which is even more stressful.  Relax; while eating healthily.  And keep affirming: Peace, peace, peace; Happiness, happiness, happiness.

Sixth: You need to engage in about 15 to 20 minutes of meditation each morning.  This, at its simplest, should involve sitting in an armchair, with your open hands resting on each other, thumbs touching.  Keep your back straight, and feel your hands touching your stomach.  Begin to focus on your breathing.  Breathe in and out slowly.  To stop your attention wandering, try to keep your attention on your in and out breaths - and count each breath from 1 to 4.  In - 1 - out - 2 - in - 3 - out - 4; and start again: In - 1 - out - 2 - in - 3 - out - 4. And continue this process for the full 15-20 minutes.  You mind will wander, so gently bring it back to focusing on your breaths, and sound the number count in you mind.  Keep you eyes facing downwards at an angle of about 45 degrees, so your eyelids droop to almost closed, so that you see only the floor in front of your chair.  (To imporve your meditation process, at some point in the future you could benefit from watching a video online about how to meditate; or read an article or book on the topic.  Meditation has now been shown to reduce stress and increase happiness, as well as promoting better physical and emotional health).

Seventh, for the next month, at least, go on a ‘news fast'.  Do not watch TV news.  Do not listen to radio news.  Do not read the daily papers.  Bad news is bad for your health, and the mass media maestros love to shovel out bad news by the ton.  And part of the reason it is so bad for you is that you cannot do anything about of the bad news items you hear or read about.  So it increases your feeling of powerlessness in a rotten world!  Keep your mind calm and serene. Live in this present moment.  There are no problems beyond your immediate purview that are of immediate concern to you. 

Eighth: When you first encounter your wife each day, SHOW her how you feel about her.  Show herhow you want to relate to her.  Show her that you love her.  Don't waste time with words.  Don't insist that by this stage she should ‘know' you love her.  Smile at her, as if you are seeing her for the first time.  (It could, by the way, be the last time!  So please don't forget that!)  Greet her kindly.  And offer whatever physical affection she might be open to receiving at this time: a touch of the hand or arm; a gentle embrace.  Do not try to ‘take anything' from her.  You are not a dependent child, and she is not your ‘mummy'.  Do not try to suck anything out of this encounter.  You are not a vampire in need of a blood transfusion!  You are a spiritual male, a vital organism.  Inside of you is enough electrical energy to light up a whole city for several days.  Stop blocking that energy.  Let her feel the energy of your love!

Ninth: Arrange to leave home peacefully.  No ontic dumping.  No bad temper.  Smile.  Affirm: ‘Peace, happiness, calm and serene.  Peace, happiness, calm and serene'.

So much for the start of the day.

~~~

Tenth: Before you arrive home in the evening - assuming you are out in the world working - check your mind set.  If you are a senior figure in a work hierarchy, you will have a particular attitude and orientation towards the people who report to you.  If you go home with this attitude in mind - or ‘wearing the boss hat' - you will upset your wife.  She is not one of your ‘reports', one of your subordinates!  If you are in a relatively powerless position in the work hierarchy, you may resent the management.  Do not take that resentment home and dump it on your wife.  You need to learn how to cope with that work dynamic as a separate issue.  (Write to me about this and we can deal with this in a different medium).  If you are a teacher, and have to be in Controlling Parent ego state all day long; do not go home with your Controlling Parent hat on, as this will induce a Rebellious Child response from your wife.  Get you Adult ego state in the executive position in your mind, and arrive home affirming: "I'm okay, and Dora (or whatever her name is) is also okay.  I'm okay, and Dora's okay.  I'm okay, and Dora's okay".

Eleventh: When we have covered more ground in this blog, you will be ready to have a particular conversation with Dora.  This is the foundational conversation for your relationship.  You will not be ready to do this straightaway, but it must be done fairly soon.  This is the conversation for a ‘viable marriage contract'.

Most people have non-viable marriage contracts, because they are often based on fantasy.  Most people in the western world have been infected by the childish fantasies of the ‘Hollywood dream'.  Love in the real world is nothing like the Hollywood, or Bollywood (Bombay), fantasy.

A basic script for this conversation would go something like this:  "Dora.  I have recently discovered that Professor John Gottman, at the University of Washington, working with hundreds of married couples, over a couple of decades, has established a magic number that determines if a marriage will succeed and last, or fail and fall apart.  That magical number is this: a couple must be able to maintain a 5-to-1 ratio of positive to negative moments in their relationship or it will fail and end in separation/divorce.  I am therefore committed to building a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative moments in our marriage relationship, and I want to find out if you are willing to make a similar commitment".

It won't be quite as simple as this statement implies.  You will have to learn how to assert yourself; communicate clearly; and handle Dora's push-back.  But that can definitely be achieved.  I can teach you the communication techniques you need to create this kind of 5:1 ratio of positive moments in your relationship.  This is the basis of a viable marriage contract. 

Twelfth: On the flysheet of ‘Mother Night', one of his best novels, in my view, Kurt Vonnegut Jr wrote: ‘Spare me your bulltish about love and being in love.  A little common decency would go a long would'. From the moment I read that statement, I have been for common decency in relationships.  Before love, and before romance, and before ‘mooning and spooning', I am a stand for common decency in relationships - my own and my clients'.  I strongly recommend that stand to you also, Fred.

Thirteenth: Commit to an equal relationship with your wife.  Get rid of any ‘top dog - under dog' values or attitudes you have, and encourage her to respond in kind.  There cannot be any bosses in successful sex-love relationships.

Assuming you can get through a whole evening together without any ‘ontic dumping', and without any ‘child tantrums', or any angry outbursts, you then arrive at bedtime.

Fourteenth: Starting tonight, place a writing pad and pen by your bed, and, just before getting into bed, write out three things you can be grateful for this day.  Perhaps something nice happened at work - somebody was friendly, or a project got completed successfully, or you had something nice for lunch.  Perhaps your breakfast time with your wife was peaceful and harmonious (for the first time ever!), or perhaps your daughter phoned your wife.  If nothing positive happened, then list those things you can be grateful for, such as: I do not live in a Palestinian refugee camp; I am solvent; I have a job; my health is good; my wife is trying to meet me halfway.  If you cannot think o three things you can be grateful for, Fred, then you'd better come and see me for a brief training in imagination and clarity of thought.

Write out the three things you can be grateful for, and then make a commitment: ‘I now intend to get into bed, and to pre-set my mind to dream about (this one) of my three gratitude items'.  Kiss your wife goodnight, and hug her, to show you love her, and then settle down with that one gratitude item in mind, determined to cause yourself to dream about it.

Fifteenth: When we reach a certain point in this conversation, you and Dora will be ready to make love again.  At that time, begin to make love-making dates with her at a frequency that fits with both of your appetites.  Also, find out what you both like to do, in bed, and how you like to do it, and aim to please each other.  Do not leave it to Mother Nature to manage this aspect of your life.  If you do, it will either never happen, or it will happen too late, the wrong thing will happen, something that is desired may never happen, or it will frustrate one or both of you that the frequency is all wrong.

Sixteenth: Write a letter to you daughter saying ‘goodbye' - letting her go - but do not send it.  Aim for a moderate number of negative points in this letter - about loss, sadness, emptiness, etc - but aim for a larger number of positives - e.g.: she is safe and well; she has to leave us in order to find out who she is; she has to establish her independence; she may come back with a grandchild one day; and so on. End your letter with some coping statements, e.g. I can use the love I feel for Suzy (my daughter) by ploughing it into my work; or I can do volunteer work at the local youth club, and invest my surplus love-energy there. (I will have a lot more to say on this point - about the father/daughter relationship - next week, hopefully; and for a few weeks thereafter.  This is a big and important topic).

Seventeenth: Establish a mission bigger than yourself.  Take the focus off your little life.  Set some goals to achieve something that you would be proud to have on your headstone!  Headstone?  Yes. You know the line: "Man who is born of woman is bound to die" (as is she)!  We are on this planet for a short visit.  What do you want your life to be about?  What do you want your obituary to say?  What are your goals in life?  Life will resist your goals, and it is easy to conclude that ‘I'd better stick to something small, or cling to those people who are in my family for security in a difficult world', but that is a recipe for failure and a very small life.  Set some goals that are beyond your reach today, but which are within sight, and achievable with a little effort (or even a lot of effort), and get to work on them.  That will crowd out most of your worry and anxiety and disappointment about your relationship with your daughter.  Fill your life with enjoyable activities, and relatively difficult challenges, and you will have a lot less space for ruminating about your relationships with your daughter and your wife.

~~~

Next week, I will begin to introduce my 18 principles of couples therapy; and to look at your problems in the context of the Five Windows model of CENT.  And I will say some more about the father/daughter relationship.

I hope this helps.

The Happiness Blog:

An Unhappy Man Seeks Help - Part 1

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, March 2010

Introduction

On Wednesday morning, when I was very busy, this message arrived:

"Dear Dr Byrne,

"I have been reading your website in search of some relief, but have not been able to find what I need.  I wonder if you can help me.

"I am a middle aged man with an absent daughter and a nagging wife.  My life is miserable most of the time.  I try to be happy; I've tried to apply some of your ideas; but I keep slipping back into sadness and misery very quickly.

"My daughter went off to university when she was 18, and rarely came back home while at university.  When she graduated, she stayed living a long way from home, and only comes home once or twice a year.  She is now 28 years old and I miss her all the time.

"My wife nags me from the time we get up in the morning till I leave for work.  She resumes her complaints and moans as soon as I return home, which gets later and later in the evening.

"I just want to be happy.  Bottom line: What can I do?  Life is not worth living at the moment".

"Sincerely, Fred Brown (not his real name)"

~~~

I asked Fred if it would be okay to respond to his message in my Happiness Blog, provided I changed his name and did not give any clues to his identity.  He said he was happy for me to do that.

Unfortunately, I was too busy to deal with this note straight away.  But it kept invading my thoughts whenever I had a moment to pause from work.  Last night, as I lay in bed, answers began to form in my mind.  This is not a quick and easy problem to resolve.  It is going to take at least two or three weeks to outline the options and possibilities available to Fred.  So today I will begin with Part 1: Clearing the decks.

~~~

Dear Fred,

I have worked with more than 550 clients over the past eleven years and more, and built up a considerable bank of experience of various kinds of relationship problems.  Your relationship with your daughter is problematical for reasons that have probably never occurred to you, because they are so counterintuitive.  Your relationship with your wife is also a ‘textbook tragedy' from both sides.

Today I will present some preliminary ideas on both of these relationships; and next week I will look at some ‘lifestyle changes' that might be most helpful to you.

I would like to be able to say: "Fred, here are three tips.  Apply them and happiness will spring forth in your life.  That's it.  Bye for now".  However, unfortunately, life is never quite as simple as this.  Indeed, you are probably going to have to find a good grief counsellor to help you to work through your loss of your daughter; or be very brave and do the grief work on your own.

Does this surprise you?

In the Anglo-American tradition, grown up children do tend to leave home and move on into their own lives.  Indeed it might be more accurate to say that this applies to the children of Northern Europe and North America (including Canada); plus Australia and New Zealand.  (In Southern Europe and South America, they often tend to stick around until marriage).  I have also worked and lived in Bangladesh, Thailand and the Sudan.  In those cultures, family traditions are often significantly different from the European and American traditions.  However, children still leave home, and become significantly unavailable to their family of origin.

Indeed, Kahlil Gibran, the Lebanese poet, and author of ‘The Prophet', was probably accurately grasping the human condition when he wrote that: ‘Our children are not our children.  They are an expression of life's longing for itself'.  He goes on to describe parents as being like long-bows, and their children like arrows.  The role of parents, in the drama of life, is to let their bow strings be pulled by nature, to launch their children into life - into the house of the future, in which the children will dwell, but which the parents may never even visit.  Fred: we are just cannons from which the next generation is fired into a future that belongs to them; until they too, in their turn, get to fire a new generation into a future which they too, in their turn, cannot ever visit. 

What do you think of this idea?

(There probably are some sub-cultures in which children like your daughter could never have left home.  However, in those few cases she would have lived her life like a wild bird in a cage.  And a wild bird in a cage is a parody of a wild bird.  A wild bird, by definition, is free to fly the wide open skies of life.  If it returns to a tree near you occasionally, then that is a major bonus).

You have to let your daughter go, Fred, and to mourn her loss.  If your marriage had been working better when she left, you would still have missed her, but not so acutely.  But you cannot fill the holes in your life with your daughter's presence.  You have to work on those holes, and learn how to fill them yourself.

Is this ringing true, or making sense for you?

So the bad news, Fred, is that, before you can achieve happiness, you are going to have to complete your experience of your loss of your daughter.  That will seem like a death.  Like a huge loss.  You will have to grieve and cry.  You will have to mourn and lament this sad loss.  It may take eighteen months to two years to complete that grieving process, and in the early stages you may feel you are literally going to die.  But grieve her, and release her, you must.  (If you don't do this grief work, then you are probably destined to feel long term depression about this great loss).  Gradually you will realize you're not going to die; you are just being taken in to the field-hospital of life for the surgical removal of a narrative-fantasy: the fantasy of Big Daddy and Cutsie-pie living happily ever after!  The truth is you cannot hold on to your daughter, and it is only in your fantasies that she seems to ‘belong to you'.  Your daughter is not your daughter; she is the daughter of life.  She belongs to the house of tomorrow.  You have to let her go. If, later on, after you have clearly released her, she chooses to come back closer to you and your wife, then that is a bonus.

I know you will find this hard, but can you at least begin to open your mind to this possibility? 

~~~

Your marriage is the next priority.

Many men come to see me and tell me they have an anger problem - which manifests almost exclusively in their relationships with their wives.  Many men come to see me and tell me their wives are angry, volatile and nagging.  When I dig a little deeper into these stories, I find they are not the original drama.  The original drama in both cases is this: These men do not understand what it means to be a husband!

In CENT couples therapy we teach this central story: The role of a husband is to create for his wife the palpable experience that she is the original Love Goddess (Aphrodite); Pure Woman; and the constant object of his heart.  The role of a wife is to create for her husband the palpable experience that he is the original Love God (Eros); Pure Man; and the constant object of her heart.  Imagine how a couple would feel, if both of them were operating successfully according to this CENT narrative.  They would both be way too happy and fulfilled to bother with nit-picking about who did what, or what needs to be done, when.  Nagging and whining would be the last thing to enter either of their minds.

If this CENT narrative drama of marriage sounds like a goal too far for you, Fred, then consider a lower level of functioning.  Ask yourself this: Do I like my wife?  Do I care about her?  Do I love her to some degree?  If the answer to these questions is 'Yes, definitely!' then you have a basis for a happier marriage.  Just get into action, DEMONSTRATING that you like her, care about her, and love her (to some degree); over and over and over again.  If you do this diligently, you will eventually melt whatever resistance is there on her side, and then you will have a much happier marriage.  If she cannot reciprocate, after you have been trying to 'light her fire' for a few months, then perhaps the relationship is beyond hope, and a mutually agreed separation/divorce would seem to be called for.

Couples come to see me because they think that one or other of them has an anger management problem; and/or that their partner needs to be ‘fixed'.  In fact, all that needs to happen is that they both take their marital roles more seriously.  This is not something to ‘talk about' - but something to DO!  Marriage is not a ‘noun', or ‘thing'; it is a ‘verb', or ‘action'.  A marriage is a house that is built every day, or it dies!  For further insights into what makes couple relationships work, see my Couples Therapy pages.

Love is not a ‘nice feeling', or being fed like a little bird in a nest.  Love, as described by M. Scott Peck, means extending yourself in the service of another.  Love is what Werner Erhard would call ‘an act of contribution'.

The reason many couples fight and bicker is that neither of them feels fulfilled as a marriage partner.  They do not feel like they are vital, vibrant, potent, magnetic and ‘dangerous'.  The romance and sexual passion has died in their lives.  All they are left with is an ‘uncomfortable comfort' of having a ‘place to go' where they can misunderstand and be misunderstood.  A great, mutual #'=876g tragedy!

Am I hitting the target here, Fred?  Am I describing your ‘relationship' with your wife?

How does this kind of marital tragedy happen?  Well, according to psychodynamic theory, nature brings couples together for the purpose of reproduction; and, when they have reproduced and raised a child to the age of about two years, nature is finished with them.  The child is now likely to be able to survive without a ‘bread winner' supporting the mother.  During the first couple of years of these ‘nature dictated' relationships, everything works effortlessly.  Originally, nature grabs both potential partners by the heart (and the nether regions!) and magnetically attaches them to each other.  Love is effortless; sex is fresh and exciting.  After about two years, or sometimes less, nature concludes that successful reproduction has probably occurred by now, and the fires go out; the magnetism dies; and the bickering, unhappiness and ‘straying' begin.

Is this how it was for you, Fred?

When nature abandons you to your own devices in your marriage, it is then time to engage your Adult ego state.  You then need to ask yourself: How am I going to make my marriage work, now that I am getting no assistance from Mother Nature?  And: How am I going to light the fires of passion in my wife, and make her feel like a fulfilled woman, all on my little lonesome?

Answering those questions is the first step in becoming a real husband - according to the CENT narrative of marital drama.  So that's your first homework assignment, Fred: learning how to answer those two questions.

Try writing those questions out in a journal, and then try to identify some draft answers.  If you don't want to do this work, and you cannot be bothered to work on your marital relationship, then there is no future for that relationship - except more bickering and misery as you head inexorably towards the exit.

Hope this is beginning to help you, Fred: (even if much pain will be necessary before the clouds pass and the sun of happiness comes out in your life).  As I have said in this blog in the past, you have to be willing to complete your experience of the dissatisfaction in your life before you can create the space for the emergence of some satisfaction. 

The Happiness Blog:

A Rocky Childhood - Part 5 (Finale)

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, April 2010

Introduction

Over the past four weeks, I have been trying to help a young woman, Jain (not her real name), with some problems which she reported as follows:

"I feel that I've had a rather rocky childhood that made me the person i am.  I'm a young woman, but I always feel very alert and find it hard to relax and have fun.

"I guess I'm unhappy because I don't know how to loosen up or I don't tolerate a lot of things that people do.

"Also another thing is that my mother and I argue every day about petty things.  We never seem to get along.

In the previous four posts, I outlined a number of strategies, both deep going and more surface focused, which could be helpful to Jain in resolving her problems.  Today I want to look at Jain's problems in the context of the key features, or core beliefs, of Cognitive Emotive Narrative Therapy (CENT), as follows:

Revisiting the CENT philosophy

Firstly, CENT takes into account that we are bodies as well as minds, and so diet, exercise, sleep, relaxation/meditation, drugs and other physical inputs and stimuli are seen as important factors in determining the emotional state of the individual client.  In relation to Jain's stated problem, it is important to ask: Just how much exercise do you take each week?  You need to do a minimum of 20 to 30 minutes of exercise three or four times per week.  If complex physical exercise systems seem too onerous, then 30 minutes of brisk walking every day would lift your mood.

Diet is also important, namely having a balanced diet, low in sugar, salt and saturated fats.  For good cognitive and emotive brain functioning, you need an adequate supply of omega 3 and 6 fatty acids, which are plentifully supplied by consuming oily fish at least three times per week.

If diet and exercise seem a long way from psychology, then you would be surprised to find just how many clients I get whose depression and/or anger is largely driven by dietary deficiencies; often combined with lack of exercise; and/or inadequate sleep; and also some negative self-talk (or defective thinking strategies).

To help Jain with this aspect of her life, I would recommend that she read the following article by my wife, Renata: The High-Speed Guide to Self-Confidence for Women.

I would also recommend that she read my Anxiety and Stress Diet information sheet.

Secondly, CENT starts from the assumption that we are primarily social animals, and not solitary individuals. We are social to our very roots, especially from the moment of parturition, when we are handed into the arms of our mothers. Everything that happens from that point onwards - and also including the original birth trauma - is significant for the development of the so-called 'individual' (who is really an amalgam of significant other 'individuals' with whom we are related from birth onwards, and who we 'internalize' as 'models').  It follows from this perspective that, since Jain was socialized by her mother, and is now in conflict with her mother, she needs to enter into a new relationship which will help her to change her patterns of interaction from negative/destructive forms to positive/constructive forms.  Such a relationship could be achieved with a counsellor, therapist, assertion trainer, life coach, or with members of an encounter group, a therapy group, etc. Does it matter what school of thought her coach/counsellor comes from?  Not particularly, as all systems of counselling and therapy that are intended to be therapeutic have been found to be broadly equivalent in terms of the outcomes they produce for their clients.  How can that be so?  This probably results from that fact that each system of counselling/therapy sets out to help the client to change their self-story, or narrative, from a negative frame or orientation to a positive one.  (Smith and Glass, 1977; Smith, Glass and Miller, 1980; Messer and Wampold, 2002, etc)[1].

Thirdly, the CENT model represents the new born baby as containing two potentials: to develop pro-social and caring attitudes; and to develop anti-social and egotistical attitudes. Part of the process of socialization is to ensure that the new person mainly develops their 'good side' (or what the Native American Cherokee people called the 'good wolf') through the moral teachings of their parents, teachers and others; and that their 'bad wolf' is constrained and contained. (It cannot ever be totally or permanently eliminated. We each contain the capacity for significant levels of 'evil' to the ends of our days!) But the happy functioning of social animals depends upon the extent to which we develop our pro-social, moral virtues, and resist our anti-social, immoral or amoral vices. Some clients are clearly operating mainly from 'good wolf' and some are significantly operating from 'bad wolf'. That latter client group needs coaching in moral philosophy; and encouragement to operate mainly from 'good wolf'.  It is a matter of speculation as to what the balance might be with Jain.  Perhaps she needs to choose to operate from a more loving, charitable and compassionate ‘place', rather than an angry and judgemental place.  (This harks back to ‘being on it' and ‘getting off it', from last week's post).

Fourth, CENT sees humans as primary non-conscious beings, who operate tacitly, automatically, from layers of cumulative, interpretative experience, stored in the form of schemas, frames and stories, in long-term memory, and permanently beyond direct conscious inspection. About 95% of all of our daily actions are executed non-consciously and automatically. So change is not easy; delusion is our normal state (i.e. our perceptions of ourselves, others and the world are false to facts); and we project our own 'stories' onto our environments, and judge them accordingly. To wake up to a more accurate understanding of life - with our adult-functioning in the driving seat - is not easy, but it is possible. Because of our non-consciousness, it may often be more realistic to use the APET model, from the Human Givens school of thought, rather than the A>B>C model; as follows:

A = Activating event: Something frustrating, challenging or noxious in some way, happens to the client.  For example, Jain's mother is argumentative with her.

P = Pattern. Our 'organism as a whole' recognizes this activating event, because it can be assimilated to an existing 'schema' or ‘frame', (or recognizable pattern), in long-term memory.

E = Our organism as a whole then 'outputs' a standard, habitual, emotional response to this stimulus (at 'A' above).  For example, Jain responds with a critical or judgemental retort.

T = Thoughts. Thinking follows on from consciously registering the fact that the emotional response has already occurred.  For example, Jain feels regretful or guilty about fighting with her mother.

What are Jain's patterns?  Perhaps: To judge negatively?  To criticize?  To argue?  Suppose she worked very hard at trying to teach herself to try to judge positively first, and only later to judge negatively or critically; how might that help?  This could be very helpful.  Perhaps she normally wears what Dr Edward De Bono calls ‘the Black hat' - which is for critical judgement. Perhaps she does not use the White Hat (to collect information); or the Yellow Hat (to create positive appraisals and judgements).  Perhaps she should get a copy of de Bono's Six Thinking Hats.

And in CENT, the next element, after the APET steps above, is:

NI = Narrative inquiry:

What is going on 'in the basement' of Jain's mind? What do you tell yourself about your mother and others that makes you so critical and judgemental?  Do you think she absolutely should not be the way she is?  That it is totally bad that she is like that?  That she is a bad person because of her bad behaviour?

In other words, what is the story that produced this (E [emotional]) response to this particular 'A' (or activating stimulus)?

What is the narrative that is implied by this reaction?

How helpful, logical or reasonable is this implicit narrative?

What could Jain change in her implicit narrative, or what more empowering narrative could she develop instead of the problematical one?  If she cannot figure this out for herself, she could consult an REBT therapist, or a CENT therapist, to get help with reframing those noxious stimuli that trigger bad reactions in her.

Fifth, we humans mainly operate from one of three so-called 'ego states', or 'ways of being' (as described in Transactional Analysis [TA]). As discussed in Pare 2 of this series, these are:

(P) Parent ego state, when we think, feel and behave just like some parent figure from our past experience;

(A) Adult, which is the logical, reasonably cool and rational, computing part of the brain-mind. And:

(C) Child ego state, which is characterized by our thinking, feeling and behaving just like we once did as a young child.

Perhaps Jain is too high on Critical Parent ego state, and has Parent>Parent fights with her mother.  Or perhaps her mother is high on Critical Parent, and Jain is high on Adapted/Rebellious Child ego state.  The solution for Jain would then be to learn how to be more Adult (or to operate from Adult ego state most of the time - to have the Adult ego state in the Executive Position in her personality).  Jain could read some of the books on TA that I recommended, or she could consult a Transactional Analyst (or TA counsellor) to get help with the challenge of becoming more Adult.

Sixth, we seem to be story tellers in a world of stories. (Language is the sea in which we swim, unknowingly; as fish swim in water without ever 'spotting' the water). And so our neurotic reactions tend to be outgrowths of old, illogical, unreasonable and unhelpful narratives and stories, scripts, schemas, beliefs and attitudes. What does Jain tell herself that makes her so unhappy, tense and critical? 

Seventh, it may be that we each have a vulnerability towards angering, panicking or depressing ourselves when we are stressed by external events or objects; and CENT tries to help the client to work on curing those vulnerabilities, by changing elements of their beliefs, attitudes, schemas and stories. Significant stories include: The story of origin, including birth and birth-family; The story of personal identity; The story of relationship; Stories of transitions; The story of wealth/success/poverty/failure; The story of present problems; The connections between the story of origin, the story of relationships, and the story of present problems; and so on.  I recommended the reading of a couple of these stories to Jain in Part 1 of this series, below.

Eighth, our adult relationships (such as marriage and living together) are strongly coloured, shaped and driven by the original drama between baby, mum and dad. We repeatedly re-enact our family drama, until we work on it and resolve it. We have to 'complete' our relationships with our parents before we can grow up and move on. And completing those relationships means allowing them to be, exactly as they were - accepting them, and getting over our judgemental attitudes about our parents, who were just 'blokes and birds doing their (highly imperfect) jobs'.  I discussed this task two weeks ago.

Ninth, we can re-frame our experiences, so that they no longer seem so distressing or difficult.  Last week, I discussed this process of reframing when I described the 'Mind Hut' model, or the ‘Five Windows' model, which can be reviewed here.

Tenth, from the object relations school, CENT takes the view that the first three phases of development of childhood can be disrupted, between birth and about the age of six years - or the first four sub-phases from birth to age three - resulting in specific forms of relationship dysfunction in later life. The solution to these problems tend to include a mixture of 'being with' the client; 'holding' the relationship; helping them to make conscious and then process their unexperienced or resisted emotions; and providing analysis and models as cognitive-emotive ways forward.  For this purpose, Jain would need to see a good psychoanalyst (or CENT therapist) for face to face sessions.

~~~

That is the end of this series on the use of CENT to help a client with relationship conflict.

~~~

I hope this helps.

[1] Smith, M.L. and Glass, G.V. (1977) Meta-analysis of psychotherapy outcomes studies, American Psychologists, 32, 752-760.  (Summarized in: Banyard, P. and Grayson, A. (1996) Introducing Psychological Research: sixty studies that shape psychology. Basingstoke: Macmillan Press Limited).

Smith, M., Glass, G. and Miller, T. (1980) The Benefits of Psychotherapy, Baltimore, Maryland: The Johns Hopkins University Press.

Messer, S. & Wampold, B. (2002) Let's face facts: Common factors are more potent than specific therapy ingredients'.  Clin Psychol Sci Pract. 9: 21-25.

Wampold, B.E. (2001a) Contextualizing psychotherapy as a healing practice: culture, history and methods, Applied and Preventive Psychology 10: 69-86.

Wampold, B.E. (2001b) The Great Psychotherapy Debate: Model, methods, and findings. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.

Wampold, B.E., Ahn, H., and Coleman, H.K.L. (2001) Medical model as metaphor: Old habits die hard.  Journal of Counselling Psychology, 48, 268-273.

Wampold, B.E., Mondin, G.W., Moody, M., Stich, F., Benson, K., and Ahn, H. (1997) A meta-analysis of outcomes studies comparing bona fide psychotherapies: Empirically, "All must have prizes". Psychological Bulletin, 122, 203-215.

The Happiness Blog:

A Rocky Childhood - Part 4

Copyright (c) Jim Byrne, March 2010

Introduction

Three weeks ago I began to respond to a correspondent - who I called ‘Jain' - who reported that she had daily conflict with her mother.  I have outlined a number of strategies that she could follow to deal with that conflict, beginning with quite deep psychological approaches, and then looking at more surface related strategies.  Today, I want to present an example of how to use the Five Windows model to help with this problem.  And next week I will conclude this series of posts with a description of how this person's problems are understood in relation to CENT theory in general.

Message to Jain

Hi Jain,

Over the past three weeks I have reviewed several therapeutic strategies that you could use to overcome the three problems that you complained of.  My recommendations would involve a considerable amount of reading (or bibliotherapy), which would give you new knowledge and skill to cope with, and transcend, your difficulties.

Today, I want to present you with an illustration of how to apply the Five Windows model to one of your three problems.  If you have taken my advice, and read my Story of Relationship, then you will have seen how I applied the Five Windows model to my own relationship with my mother.  Reading that account might have helped you with your own problem with your mother, but it will not be enough to solve your problem.  Why not?  Because it is very difficult to think ‘in your head', as compared with ‘thinking on paper'. 

It is much more effective to think thorough your problems with a pen in your hand, ready to jot down ideas as they occur to you.  As you write down your thoughts, they become fixed, external objects upon which you can reflect.  You can make notes about them, and return to them again and again to think about how the various bits of your problem relate to each other.  You can place a central idea in the middle of a page, and then construct a ‘spider diagram' showing different ‘branches' for each sub-idea.  This will help you to understand how the various elements of your problem relate to each other.

Let us then apply the Five Windows model to your problem with you mother, which is that "...my mother and I argue every day about petty things.  We never seem to get along".  What follows are the five ways that you can look at this problem, in order to get it into some kind of manageable perspective.

Imagine you go inside a ‘Mind Hut' which has five windows, one in each wall, and one in the roof.  Each window has a slogan, or ‘affirmation', written around the frame. Here are the five frames, as related to your problem with your mother:

Frame No.1: Life is difficult (or suffering, or frustrating). This means that life is difficult, frustrating or painful for most humans much of the time, and all humans at least some of the time. 

So you look out through this window, having read the slogan on the frame, and you see the daily hassles you have with your mother, but now you ‘hold them' in the ‘frame' that life is difficult and frustrating.  How bad does your conflict with your mother now seem?  It should look a lot better than before, because previously you may have held this conflict in a frame that says: ‘Life should never be difficult, since most people have perfect lives, and I must also have a perfect life!'

Frame No.2: Life is without difficulty, provided we refrain from picking and choosing (between outcomes).  That is to say, it is not difficult if we simply accept that we got what we got!

Now, look out through this window frame, having read and understood the slogan/affirmation, and see the daily conflict between you and your mother, but now you hold it in this frame which allows you to see that if you are experiencing this as a difficulty, then you must be picking and choosing - or telling yourself something like this: I absolutely insist that this conflict should not exist.  It's awful to be involved in such pointless, daily hassles. I cannot stand this situation.  And the world's a rotten place for giving me this kind of life.

So now you have a choice.  Give up picking and choosing, and thereby escape from the pain you currently feel about this (apparently unavoidable) conflict with your mother; or keep on choosing not to have what you have in your relationship with your mother, and thereby keep causing yourself to suffer.  Choose!

Frame No.3: Life is both difficult and non-difficult (or frustrating and pleasurable; or painful and pleasurable) - in that it contains objectively difficult and objectively pleasurable bits. 

Look out through this window at your conflict with your mother, and recognize that you are pushing something out of awareness.  Every waking second of your day does not consist of conflict with your mother, so you need to put those non-conflict moments back into the frame.  Also, there are probably pleasurable moments in your day involving people other than your mother, so you also need to return them to this frame.  So life is not all black or white, good or bad.  It's a mixture.  Pleasure comes, and pleasure goes.  Happy moments come, and happy moments go.  But you may be distressing yourself because you are trying to cling to the happy moments, and avoid any unpleasure.  But that is unrealistic.  Life is not like that.  Life is both difficult and non-difficult for all people.  That is the pattern of human experience.  So stop demanding that you should only have pleasure in your life.  Learn to take the bad with the good.

Frame No.4: Almost any suffering, or frustration, or difficulty, could always be a whole lot worse than it currently is. Are you aware that your problems could be a whole lot worse than they are? 

Do you realize that you could have twice as much conflict with your mother, and that that would be a whole lot worse than your present situation?  Do you realize that you could have conflict with your mother, and three or four other individuals, and that would be much worse than your reported problem?  Learn to rate the badness of your life's hassles realistically.  How many limbs would you give up in exchange for getting rid of the conflict with your mother for all time?  One arm?  One leg and one arm?  Three fingers?  None of those things?  Probably the latter.  If you are not willing to trade one limb to get rid of this conflict, then it is probably not more than about 15% bad; but you are probably telling yourself that it is 100% bad.  So learn to be more realistic in your assessments of the degree of badness of your problems. 

Frame No.5: "There are certain things we can control, and certain things we can't control".  Therefore, obviously, we accept the things we cannot change and change the things we can (because we can control them).

Can you control your side of the arguments with your mother?  I guess not, otherwise you would do so.  Can you control her arguing with you?  I guess not, otherwise I imagine you would control her, and prevent arguments happening.  Therefore, since you cannot control them, you have better learn to accept them!  If you would just accept that you have uncontrollable arguments with your mother about petty things every day, then that would take all the heat out of the situation.  You would then be "dedicated to reality" which is an important stand to take. 

Summary

If you applied the Five Windows model to your problem with your mother, as shown above, and wrote it out on paper, and went over it many times, you would eventually convince yourself not to be upset about the fact that you and your mother are in the habit of quarrelling about petty things.  You would still have the arguments with your mother, but you would not longer have the emotional problems that you have, which arise out of non-acceptance of what is the case!  You seem to be demanding that life should not be the way it is, and it is awful that it happens to be this way.  This, however, is an unrealistic view, since, when it is raining, it is raining, and it is never 100% bad that rain falls into our lives.  And when a person has an argumentative relationship with their mother, what they have with total certainty is an argumentative relationship with their mother.  So accept that that is the current reality, and then ask:

1. What could I do to change this reality?

2. How could I do it?

3. Do I want to do it?

4. How can I practice doing it?

5. How can I get support to train myself to do it?

Some of the ideas that I presented over the past three weeks might help you to answer those five questions.  Having worked through the answers to those questions, you would then be in a very good position to change your life in respect of how you relate to your mother.

I hope this helps.