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Mental Health Notes
by Daniel Shaw, LCSW
The following essays are two examples of the newsletter subscribers receive every other month.
The first essay, "Making Up Is Hard To Do," deals with relationship issues. The second essay, "When The Boss Is A Bully," deals with work-related issues.
1. Making Up Is Hard To Do
Most of us have had - and some of us still have - the fantasy that if someone really knocks your socks off, and if they are a scintillating, fantastic person with no problems, then they will make a constantly delightful, always exciting mate, and life will be one big high, all free and easy, for evermore.
Sorry to break the news, but it just doesn't happen like that, at least not to members of the human race. The fact is, we're all - emphasis on the all, including men, women, straights, gays, and others - fallible, sensitive, vulnerable people, with blind spots and weaknesses. It's exciting to meet someone and feel that old sexual chemistry; but when you get really close, sooner or later the other chemistry inevitably kicks in - the chemistry of buttons getting pushed.
Nobody pushes buttons like those we come closest to. It's a fact of life. When we're born, we start pushing our parents' buttons, and they push ours, and from there on, you can be assured that later in life, anyone you become intimate with will eventually push your buttons, and vice versa. And that especially includes the one person you were most sure was in no way like either of your parents.
That's because, in any couple, both parties bring their relationship history with them - meaning that how we saw our own parents relate to each other, and how we related to our parents, is deeply rooted in our psyches. Once the initial potency of the chemistry between new lovers begins to cool down, our buried relationship history will usually turn up like a bad penny and get acted out, in one way or another.
That is the point where the real work of intimacy begins. Intimacy is not about never having fights and always having good times. Intimacy is about recognizing that we are always vulnerable to each other, always needing one another, and always capable of hurting one another. It's about learning to respect that vulnerability while being more and more honest with each other. It's about making it through hard times, each other's hard times. And it's about learning how to have fights that end - not somewhere in the middle with nothing resolved, but all the way to a point of better understanding and deeper connection, with real apologies and forgiveness.
That's how intimate trust and mutual appreciation deepen and grow. When human beings get close, we inevitably come into conflict. Personal growth for couples comes through struggling, over time, to learn how to negotiate conflicts. Repetitive arguments are signals that each member of the couple - not just one, but both - needs to grow, change, bend. Couples who get really good at repairing the disruptions that inevitably arise between them become able to breathe clearer emotional air. When a couple has learned well how to make up, how to apologize and to forgive, they have more than just fun - they have love.
© Daniel Shaw 2008
2. "When The Boss Is A Bully"
I was once seeing two young women for therapy during roughly the same time period, and the differences in how they each handled very difficult bosses were instructive.
Carla could tell a good, amusing, entertaining story about the boss she assisted and how insane he was. Eventually, Carla stopped entertaining me and exposed how deeply resentful she really felt. But Carla was so good at being perfectly accommodating that her boss considered her indispensable, and came to depend on her more and more. While Carla was complaining bitterly to me in therapy, at her office she was smiling and entertaining and placating her boss, without adequately setting reasonable limits.
Carla also had a boyfriend whom she complained about, yet she couldn't stand up to him, even though we agreed he seemed to endlessly avoid real commitment. As we explored further, the pattern and its history became more visible. Carla had been daddy's girl until Carla was a young teen, at which point her father stopped being interested in his family and found a young girlfriend, bought a motorcycle, copped out of paying for Carla's college expenses, and so on. It seemed that Carla was used to being in relationships where she gave her all, but ended up not getting much in return, especially if she tried to get her needs recognized. She kept working harder at being the perfect daughter, the perfect girlfriend, the perfect assistant. She had become used to being the one who did all the giving, and couldn't see that she repeatedly got stuck in involvements with people who responded to her ambivalently, as her father had, and balked if she asked anything of them. Luckily for Carla, a friend gave her name to another company, and she left her underpaying job for a much better situation. But Carla still needed to learn to believe in herself enough to form healthier, more mutual relationships. As confident as she was in her talents, she lacked confidence in her sense of authority and entitlement in relationships.
Another patient I'll call Andrea had grown up feeling that her parents had her back at all times; and that they trusted and admired her. Andrea was working on important issues in therapy, but confidence in what she deserved in her relationships wasn't one of them. After an initial good year at her job, Andrea's boss began playing her off against a co-worker. The boss was always demanding more of her, but would make himself unavailable to Andrea when he knew she wanted anything from him, and wouldn't go to bat for her with the higher ups when it would have been appropriate to do so. In her second year, after a holiday bonus that fell short of what Andrea knew she deserved, she started looking for work and quickly found a far better paying job. She was careful to communicate with her new potential employers what her salary requirements and expectations would be, and what her hopes were in terms of office environment. Andrea and the company heads who interviewed her hit it off beautifully.
At her new job, Andrea handles a good deal of stress in a highly competitive environment. She probably stresses as much as Carla does. The difference between the two women is that Andrea doesn't feel trapped and stuck, and doesn't put on a happy face while simmering with resentment when difficult situations arise. Andrea maintains a positive sense of her value, communicates assertively, and knows when to dis-invest herself from dead-end situations.
Angry, selfish, envious, demanding, manipulative, sadistic - whatever flavor of
craziness a boss might come in, it's likely that anyone who works will encounter
a bad boss sooner or later. If you are constantly frustrated about your boss,
and you're not finding ways to make your situation better, your sense of your
own value, and your patterns in relationships may be part of the problem. If
that is the case, psychotherapy could be helpful in turning things around. When
so much of life is our work life, doing whatever it takes to make work better
should be a no-brainer.
© Daniel Shaw 2008
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