Should I Stay or Should I Go Now?

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Your Relationship Shouldn’t Feel Like a Wrestling Match

Certain life skills are baffling to many people.  How to keep a tidy home or cook a reasonable meatloaf or pick a flattering dress are all skills that come with practice and by practice I mean screwing up.  This is all well and good and in some ways the only justice in aging: we’re not as hot as we used to be, but we’re a heck of a lot more sensible and competent.  Twenty-somethings dinner parties suck, while fifty-somethings dinner parties are delicious AND interesting.

There are certain areas where screwing up costs a lot more emotional coin than a lousy diner or an ugly dress.  I’m talking about intimate relationships and the discernment it takes to decide whether to stay and invest or sever and heal. Most of us were never taught how to assess the quality of our love relationships and that makes it hard to decide when things are bad enough to leave.

Without a functional paradigm to make this assessment, we may find ourselves bouncing between distress and hope when our relationship is troubled, telling ourselves “maybe it will work” and “I hope it will work” and “I just don’t want to start all over again.”  Many good-hearted people with a lot to offer (as in folks who can find love again) will stay in preoccupying and damaging connections due to two factors of human nature: our universal reluctance to change and our universal fear of being alone.

Here’s how emotional attachments are supposed to work: we meet someone we feel a natural affinity for. They have enough qualities in common with us that we easily connect to them, and enough qualities different from us that they are interesting. We spend time getting to know them before becoming physically involved.  Why delay jumping into bed?  Not because our grandmothers would disapprove, but because good sex is so captivating—our very cellular biology is interested in the perpetuation of the species and doesn’t give a hoot about compatibility– that if we are having it we won’t pay attention to major incompatibility markers.

A healthy connection progresses over time from purely delightful to durable and real.  Along the way it loses some of its magic sparkle (wah!) but develops into a deeper and richer thing of mutual understanding and enjoyment, comfort, a shared history and vision for the future, and a sense of safety. There is conflict (always!) and it is managed in a way that allows both parties to tell their truth, to listen and learn from one another, and maintain their own dignity.  The most vital overriding emotion of a good relationship is mutual gratitude. Gratitude happens naturally when both parties value the connection, feel seen and loved by one another and know that the other doesn’t have to, but chooses to be there.

The opposite of gratitude is contempt. Contempt is the active expression of disrespect and stems from feelings of superiority and judgment (secretly the contemptuous party actually feels bad about him or herself but that’s for their therapist to deal with and not something their romantic partner can repair).

Contempt is a subtle but poisonous emotion.  It manifests in scornful communication, eye rolling, rejecting or disregarding reasonable requests, avoiding contact, saying cruel things, private rage and public politeness, and withholding information about why one is upset.  No one is contemptuous all the time and this makes things even more confusing.  A contemptuous partner is a Jekyll and Hyde routine and you never know who is going to show up.

If you are in a relationship with someone who treats you contemptuously, first check yourself: are you showing up respectfully?  Are you making requests and not demands? Contempt can be a (lousy) defensive strategy by people feeling attacked and judged. If you are communicating with respect and being met with contempt, ask your partner to get help.  If they are unwilling, ask yourself if you can tolerate living the rest of your life giving in to a bully while biting your tongue or enduring explosive conflict to stand up for yourself.

Intimate relationships require daily collaboration and decision making between two different people with separate agendas and experiences, differing skills and deficits, therefore relationships will always have problems to solve.  Conflicts arise from two people rubbing together through time and space and sometimes rubbing each other the wrong way.

If those inevitable conflicts can’t be discussed and solved in a manner that honors both parties’ legitimate human needs for dignity, that’s a good reason to go.

Repairing Trust: Why and How

by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

At birth our developmental “job” is to receive love and care. This systematically builds our capacity to trust on three levels:  first with our caretaker (the immediate, intimate relationship), then our environment (the larger world), and finally ourselves.  With this trust-skin in place we can show up in the world with discernment of who to trust and who to avoid, and confidence that we are worthy of receiving love.  Just like a good immune system, a healthy trust-skin allows us to protect ourselves when our emotional or physical safety is jeopardized.

A former client came in recently to show me her beautiful new baby. It was awesome to see the way she attended to her child, anticipating her needs, offering help but not interfering with the baby’s exploration.  Her baby was calm, curious and joyful. This child was getting her needs met and felt pure trust in her mother as well as the world around her.

Of course none of us received or can possibly provide perfect care all the time, so we all bear some wounds in our trust-skin. The size of our wounds varies due to family circumstances as well as individual temperament and mitigating influences. Children born to parents with addiction, depression, anxiety, abuse, poverty, and discrimination have caretakers only partially available. Imagine watching a toddler only half the time.

A child who grows up without a trustworthy caretaker and safe environment becomes an adult who cannot trust themselves. Mistrust of others is a healthy adaptation in a physically or emotionally dangerous environment.  But without repair, adaptation becomes mutation. The neglected or abused child might become the adult who shields themselves in isolation and cynicism in order to avoid the pain of relationship disappointments. They may become rigid and judgmental, striving to control people and situations around them so that they feel safe.  They may lack interpersonal boundaries and accept or perpetrate abuse.  They may compulsively people-please, taking care of the needs of everyone within a mile radius in order to feel likable.

These painful adaptations do not have to be life sentences. Our trust-skin is formed, damaged and repaired through the magic of relationships. Healing damaged trust happens naturally in stable and long term relationships where we feel safe, deeply known, and valued.  The best form of this is a healthy love relationship with a partner who can express their own as well as accept their beloved’s full range emotions (love/anger/sorrow/fear/joy/curiosity/etc.) without alarm or rejection.  Honestly, this is rarely seen. Typically women are emotional virtuosos able to indentify, describe and express emotions while men treat emotions like Shaggy and Scooby Do entering a dark cave: with mortal terror.  But men need repair of their trust-skin as much as, if not more than women.

And these generalities are not limited to heterosexual couples.  Gay and lesbian couples have the exact same patterns, with one party typically being more emotionally expressive and relationally oriented and the other being more emotion-avoidant.

Providing the safety to heal our trust-skin requires both members to value their connection above the familiarity of emotional withdrawal, above being better-than and above the moment’s convenience.

How do we value connection over the moment’s convenience? It means you stop playing on your computer or reading your book or watching your show when someone you love is talking to you. It means eye contact, listening, asking clarifying questions, responding thoughtfully and affirming your partner/child/best friend.  It means asking for time and space to meet your own needs so that you do not show up for your loved one filled with resentment.

Therapy is a venue for this type of repair as well. In therapy you are attended to in a safe, stable and predictable fashion by a person whose agenda is your wellbeing.  There are no distractions and the time is limited so the experience of being solely focused on is not too overwhelming.

People in therapy are then able to bring the experience of finally feeling valued into their larger life as a functional set of expectations for how they treat and are treated by those around them.

It’s never too late. We are never too old. And we are–every single of us–worth the work it takes to heal.

Put This On Your “Don’t Do” List

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

In honor of Mother’s Day I’m writing about a psycho thing that ladies do that simultaneously disappoints/infuriates us and terrifies our family members. Sounds charming, right? It happens around holidays, birthdays and anniversaries. It comes from giving too much throughout the year and then racking up a serious emotional deficit that can only be paid off by a grand, perfect gesture.

Ever know exactly what you want from someone—a specific gift, a hug, a declaration of love, an apology—but you don’t tell them because somehow it would seem less genuine if they did it in response to your request?  Bull Spit! You my dear, are prideful. And what’re more, you don’t want to lower yourself to the position of being a mere mortal who has to use that thing in their face that makes noise to explain what you want. Because that would require admitting to yourself that your own needs/perspectives/agendas are not the only ones and thus, also not the most obvious One True Right ones in the world.

This behavior sets every single person around you up for failure. It’s like asking someone else to tell you when you are hungry. They. Don’t. Know.

There is a reason the ancient Greeks considered Hubris—making oneself equal to the Gods—a mortal sin. You are awesome, unique and have fabulous taste in self-help blogs (obviously!). But sweetie, you ain’t God. And just because something is dead obvious to you doesn’t make it obvious to anyone else. And especially if it’s not obvious to the people you are closest to, you have two choices: one is to wait for them to figure it out. Civilizations could rise and fall. Homeo-Sapiens could evolve into sleek titanium robots. You could become a bitter and cynical person. Or…you could just go ahead and name your need.

This week for Mother’s Day I bought myself a B.A.W.C. (Big Ass Wind Chime), the kind I have wanted for years. I presented it to my kids to wrap. They will wrap it themselves, which is to say it will look like a hastily buried murder victim when they give it to me on Sunday. In addition I have requested a hand drawn picture from each boy. As evidenced by the photo above, the art gene has skipped an entire generation. But a handmade picture from each of my sons thrills me. So I’m getting exactly what I want for Mother’s Day. Because instead of hinting, I named my need. Put “Dimly Expressed But Strongly Held Expectations” on your do-not-do list. Now it’s your turn mamas: what will you be asking/purchasing for yourself this weekend?

 

Deserving Good

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I’m starting an adult anxiety support group in March.  It’s going to be good. Details are here: SeattleAnxietySupportGroup.com

Therapy practice offers a daily meditation on healing. Lately I’ve been talking to clients about the healing practice of feeling like they deserve the good things they have or want in their lives, be they a loving relationship or nice home or even the simple ability to go to sleep at night without a litany of worries and tasks trampling their brain.

Many people grew up on homes where they were not told “I love you exactly the way you are.” Instead they were told directly or indirectly “you are loved only when you please me.” This earn-my-love message creates a belief that they are not worthy of esteem or success unless they are performing a task to benefit another person or agency/business.  This creates a people-pleasing workaholism that prevents them from developing true self worth.  The lack of self worth then creates anxiety, feelings of phoniness and unworthiness when good things do happen.

Self worth exists independent of our actions or their effect on others. It is an internal sense of value and dignity that alerts us if our boundaries are being violated and thus functions as a protective barrier. Self worth also allows us to give to and receive from other people comfortably. If we are valuable internally, we can “afford” to share our things because they are not overly precious. If we are valuable internally we can receive generosity from others because we are worthy of time, attention and material.

Many people worry that feeling good about themselves will make them selfish, that developing self worth will cause them to become socially abrasive or exploitive. In truth operating from a place of self worth will be off-putting to those who don’t have any. That’s because asking for what you want, meaning what you say, communicating directly and unapologetically is terribly threatening to people who don’t have internal permission to do the same. So as we develop self worth there is sometimes a readjustment of friends.

But becoming our own friend means that we actually have more compassion for others, more patience and generosity because we are no longer sinking our energy into trying to derive worth from others’ recognition of our effort (no one can possibly track our accomplishments all the time anyway).

For the New Year here is my wish for you:  Deserve the good stuff in your life. Deserve to change the not so good stuff. And if all this sounds like I’m speaking Swahili, get some help. You deserve that too.

 

In Praise of Advice

by Tanya Ruckstuhl-Valenti LICSW

In honor of the end of the year I wanted to write a blog that encapsulated my favorite mental health maxims, but I’m fighting a cold and between the hacking cough and the frequent nose-blowing I’m adjusting my expectations downward, so you’ll have to make do with just one (but it’s a good one).

Alfred Adler said there are just three tasks of adulthood: love, work and friendship. To know how true this is, reflect upon a time in your life when one or more of these areas were not flowing for you. Even if you are lucky enough to have other attributes that society applauds, a high IQ or lots of money or great athletic ability or a beautiful body or heck all of them, if you don’t feel secure in your love relationships your career or your social connections you aint got nothin’.

One of the primary differences I see between people who succeed in love and labor and friendships and those who do not is the capacity to humbly solicit and incorporate feedback. We live in a planet positively teeming with life. There are seven billion people out there (and counting!). And every one of us has a slightly different perspective. Perspectives that round out our own blind spots and intellectual and emotional shortcomings.

Do not be so arrogant as to believe that you alone have the wisdom to navigate the complexity of life. None of us do. And thank goodness! It would seem a terrible waste to crowd this many people on a planet (overpopulation concerns aside) with no upshot to the story. And so the upshot is: we grow our capacity to do anything and everything in direct proportion to our capacity to ask for feedback.

While we all have that still, small voice inside that we can turn to for guidance, we also have a big honking world all around us teeming with folks who have figured out stuff we didn’t even know was possible. Not to mention that plenty of folks have an inner voice that’s a total asshole and not capable of contributing productively towards overcoming one’s struggles.

So my New Years wish for you is this: ask for advice about anything that is important to you, particularly in the realms of love, work and friendship. And listen to advice that comes your way, even if it’s unsolicited. Be willing to listen to people you don’t consider overall examples of success. A homeless man in Minneapolis once told me “Disrespect will get you killed” which is mighty good advice.

Occasionally we will be the recipients of cruelty couched as advice and then we get to do the hard, good work of differentiating between the two. There is the pain of hearing something that is embarrassing to our egos but useful to our social functioning (my friend Kate once told me that the paint-splattered pants I wore out to dinner with her when I was on a painting jag “gave her trauma”—ouch!) which is different than a negative summary judgment of who we are (i.e. someone telling us “You are such an idiot”) which is not advice but insult.

Happy, advice-filled New Years to you all!

 

Is it Pain for Gain or Just Plain Pain?

 

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

As a trauma therapist I often feel like a dentist: it’s my job find the painful places and clean them out. It sucks to make people hurt but I have a theory about pain that helps me and hopefully, it can help you.

I separate pain into a couple categories. One is repetitive and worsening pain. This includes phobias, compulsions, and addictions. They are repetitive in that they are triggered by the same things over and over again (elevators! driving over bridges! imagining germs! walking past a bar!) and they are worsening in that they create an increasingly limited range of choice for sufferers who don’t get help.  The purpose of pain in this category is actually vital and healing: it is meant to break through our barriers of denial, minimization and resistance to change and tell us THIS IS NOT OKAY.  We are meant to listen to this emotional pain the way we would listen to the physical pain of a toothache. It means STOP WHAT YOU ARE DOING AND GET HELP.

The second category is transitory, productive pain. Think about a woman in labor. Think about a teething toddler. Think about a teenager applying to college. None of these scenarios are any fun. But they are necessary for what comes next: human life! Teeth! A more secure adulthood!

Changing lifelong patterns of self criticism and hyper-vigilance—patterns that were productive during childhood abuse because they mitigated some of the helplessness that all abuse victims feel—feels like a risk and even an outright lie. “If I hate myself how can I possibly treat myself kindly?”

Well, you have to change your inner self talk BEFORE your self-regard changes, because self-regard is a product of self talk. And it will make you feel uncomfortable, disingenuous, dishonest, and all manner of out of sorts when you start to change because positive self talk doesn’t feel true…yet. This is transitory, productive pain.  This kind of pain doesn’t mean stop. It means GO. Transitory and productive pain is a big huge fluorescent pink arrow that points in the very direction you are going and is your body’s way of marking change.

Here is how you can tell the difference: Repetitive pain happens when you are isolating. Productive pain happens you are exposing vulnerabilities. Repetitive pain results in more of the same (misery! hating all of humanity!) and productive pain pisses off your defense mechanisms because you are doing something different and don’t know what the outcome will be.

Here’s a super-duper secret available only to you…shhhh….don’t tell anyone: no one knows what the outcome will be. Of anything. For anyone. At any time.  We can hope and set an intention and make an educated assessment and run statistical analysis of likely outcomes and we can prepare…but we never really know. So our task is keep going on living and deciding and evolving while holding the weight of our powerlessness as part mystery, part magic, and part universal human challenge.

 

Push, Pull, Grow

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW, MSW

Today I’m writing about my mother. Specifically a recent interaction. First, the back-story: my beautiful mother is a former model who became a fashion journalist and personal shopper so she is exactly five thousand times more fashionable than I.

She also is my mother, which is to say I both want and want to stay independent of her opinions.  This push-pull is pretty much the stuff of all intimate relationships: two people negotiating their cravings for connection and independence at varying moments in time and space.

I’m going on vacation next week and asked for my mother’s advice on packing. As I tried on the various outfits she gave me her thumbs up or down and I threw things in or out of the suitcase accordingly.

All was going well…until I put on The Skirt. The Skirt is a gorgeous impulse buy that cost more than my wedding dress. I love the skirt because it is a beautiful, ethereal design in one of my favorite colors but also because it represents something important to me. It represents getting to a place in life and career that I can occasionally throw caution to the wind and get something extravagant. The Skirt means there is no wolf at my door.

She looked it and wrinkled her nose.

“I love this one,” I said.

“You would need just the right hat and just the right bag and just the right shoes.”

“No one wears hats,” I said.

“They do in London,” she said.

“This is two thousand fifteen.”

“If you didn’t want my opinion you shouldn’t have asked for it,” she said.

“I asked for your opinion, not your instructions.” I said.

I put my skirt in the suitcase.  I will wear my skirt even though I do not have the exact perfect accessories for it. I feel beautiful and abundant every time I look down and that is more important to me than how I look to others.

In every important relationship we are trying to learn how to share power, how to receive and transmit influence without domination or passivity or blind resistance. This requires learning how to filter suggestions through our own beliefs as opposed to swallowing them whole or chucking them away as alien invaders. It also requires transmitting suggestions in a spacious, generous way.

I’m still learning how to be less bossy (my kids would give me low marks) as well as how to be less passive.  But I have at least one awesome skirt to wear on the journey of growing my skills.

Coping With Chaos

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

There must be some term for that point in a project when you have all of your crap stuff out from whereever it normally lives and it looks like a bomb has gone off in your house and you feel completely overwhelmed by the chaos and think my home will forever look like it’s been ransacked by the Gestapo.

I was there. This week I decided to rearrange a room.  Out came the tools to disassemble a large piece of furniture.  They were the wrong tools. Out came clothes, suitcases, décor, art, shoes, random stuff from the corners, etc. etc. I looked around and wondered what the heck I was thinking.  I was surrounded by piles of things, all out of place.  It was the visual equivalent of an emergency vehicle with siren wailing. I felt paralyzed.  I know from experience that when I feel paralyzed I need to ask for help.

I asked my boyfriend to help me. He has a stronger back and a better tool collection and is generally a pretty dauntless fellow. Within an hour we had the furniture disassembled, moved and reassembled. The majority of things were rearranged.  The room looked much better than before the project started, never mind midstream.  Embarking on this ambitious task was rewarded by a room with improved flow and less clutter.

This sense of success in turn gave me the courage to edit one of my collections down to favorite pieces and get rid of the rest. Or at least, stick them into my trunk where they are currently awaiting donation.

Change is hard. Change is necessary. The Buddhists say the only constant in life in change. If you are going through change and are facing that point where chaos overwhelms you, there are two things you can do:

1. ask for help and
2. keep on going.

We are not meant to do the hard parts of life alone.  We all deserve to experience the delight of being needed (the helper) as well as the delight of being helped (the recipient).  Just be willing to play both parts when your time comes.

Trauma Trio

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Trauma is like a recipe with three specific and recurring ingredients:

1. fear of death or substantial pain/bodily injury: aka Terror
2. helplessness to stop the event, aka Powerlessness
3. hyper vigilance in the aftermath, aka chronic Anxiety

Each of these components builds upon one another.

The first ingredient, terror, is meant to alert the body and brain that something very dangerous is happening and that all of the nonessential functions (digestion, immune system, blood pressure regulation) need to STOP WORK so that every ounce of energy is available to fight or flee the threat.

The second ingredient, powerlessness, is a realistic survival strategy: if we submit to an event or a perpetrator we have no hope to flee or fight, we conserve our energy and increase our chances of survival.

Finally, hyper vigilance is like the condolence prize (although living with it is certainly no prize): If you must experience a terror you cannot stop or escape from, being hyper vigilant allows you to at least not be surprised by it.  You are constantly scanning for danger and even though this costs you peace and quiet, it provides you with a level of anticipation that protects you from shock.

Hyper vigilance is common among child abuse survivors, soldiers returning from war, domestic violence survivors, anyone who has been repeatedly exposed to the first two ingredients.

Therapy for PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) is not short term, but it IS effective.  I have seen chronically anxious abuse survivors transform their lives from isolation and fear to connection and purpose.  If you are a trauma survivor you don’t have to stay stuck in hyper vigilance. You deserve recovery.

Fully Grown: How To Be An Adult

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I’ve been talking lately with clients and friends alike about Adulthood, and what makes this different from just being a grownup, which any bozo with a certain number of years on planet earth can claim.

Near as I can figure, adulthood has three requirements.  First, an adult is primarily responsible for themselves.  This doesn’t mean they never need help from others–in fact the capacity to receive is a hallmark of emotional health—but it means that an adult is someone who tries to meet their own financial and practical and emotional needs first, before turning to others for support.  An adult knows that they are their own responsibility regardless of what another person did or didn’t do to them in the near or distant past.

Second, an adult protects the freedom to make their own choices.  This means avoiding or getting treatment for addiction because addiction creates the removal of choice. This also requires getting treatment for mental health conditions, because depression and anxiety remove the freedom to choose fun things like throwing a party or asking that cutie out on a date.

Third, an adult feels a moral obligation to try to help others.  This need extend no further than one’s own family: being a good parent and/or a loving spouse is one of the most radical acts of social improvement we can engage in.  It can extend to one’s larger neighborhood or a marginalized ethnic group or city or this whole gorgeous blue and green planet we are all spinning around on.  It doesn’t matter what scope of impact we choose, but we must try to have a beneficial effect in order to be a full-fledged adult.

It’s never too late to heal.  If you find yourself falling short of these or your own internal benchmarks, reach for whatever support is available. We live in a generous world of second and third and five-millionth chances. We live in a generous world with many paths towards healing.