Self Care Rebellion

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

There is a social psychology term for resistance called reactance. The theory goes like this: we humans like to believe we have free will, are acting on our own behalf, and when we feel forced to do anything we balk, even if that thing we are being forced to do is in our own best interests.

This balking or reactance is amplified if the behavior is a new one. Seat belt laws, for instance, initially drew the criticism that they were creating a “big brother” role of government, even though seat belt use would clearly save lives. (Tangent: even a cursory reflection on the role of government should confirm that a big brother—that is, an older, more experienced and concerned member of society telling us what to do—is EXACTLY the kind of government we want to create and live inside of).

Now combine reactance with the is-ought fallacy, or the common mistaken belief that the way things are, are the way they ought to be. Slave owners claimed their right to own humans was divinely ordained and pointed to the fact that they owned humans as proof. The old adage “might makes right” and the entire conservative political party could be summed up as the is-ought fallacy in action.

While there is something in the human mind capable of imagination and creativity, unfortunately the much more well developed portion of the mind is the yearning for repetition and stability that comes from knowing what to expect.

When I assign self-care homework to my clients, most of whom are survivors of childhood abuse and neglect, they leave my office with the best of intentions. This week they will step away from their computers and go for a walk, or schedule their dental cleaning, or stand up to their demanding boss.

But when they come back to therapy, most have forgotten about the self care homework that they selected for themselves the previous week. What’s happening here? My clients are spending good money and time on therapy. They want to increase their self esteem, improve their empathy, reduce their anxiety. But—they also want to be able to rebel in a low stakes sort of way.

Standing up to their boss or taking space from a mediocre boyfriend, or even scheduling time to think about what they really want can have real world consequences. They might lose their job or their partner or no longer be able to pretend that a well paying sixty hour a week job is a tolerable fit.

Forgetting to do their homework is an easy way to demonstrate reactance, that is the part that says “You can’t tell me what to do” while keeping all the truly important—albeit possibly toxic—elements of their life in place.

But here’s the thing: without even knowing it, they are nonetheless practicing self care, because they think they are disappointing me. When I remind them that homework is only and always an option, their choice, then they have the experience of knowing that they can do something contra to what someone else wants them to do, and still be treated with respect.

And that’s the homework underneath the homework: one they only get to via rebellion. My hope is that by rebelling agains their therapist and still being okay, they can take memory that into their larger lives and risk staging more significant rebellions. Because that’s what most of us really came to therapy to do: to be a better adult parent to ourselves than they one we got as a kid.

How to Break Up with Your Therapist

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By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I tend to do long-term therapy work with people. A result of specializing in trauma survivors: they usually need support for a long time before they can even trust me enough to go into the depth of pain they come from. Within the framework of long-term therapy, I try to keep frequency at the minimum effective dose: weekly if they are struggling or just need a strong routine of mental health support to stay functional, twice weekly if they are in crisis, and every other week if they are doing well but still want the structure and accountability of our appointments to stay focused on their mental health and personal growth.  

Sometimes folks are reluctant to reduce therapy frequency, worried that if they do well that means they no longer deserve support or—even worse—that only by suffering will they get attention.  I try and move gingerly when suggesting to a patient they can reduce their frequency, lest they feel rejected or dumped. Over the years, sometimes I’ve done this too forcefully and hurt people’s feelings when what I really meant to do was to highlight: “Look how well you are doing! Yay! You don’t need me as much anymore!”

This article is to help you break up with your therapist.  That way YOU are in charge! There are many reasons for a therapy relationship to end, from happy (you are doing well and ready to navigate things on your own) to sad (this therapist sucks) to anything in between.

Let’s start with therapist red-flags. Please end your therapy relationship right away if you feel your therapist is not genuinely and intelligently trying to understand you, or if they are treating you in a way that seems disrespectful or inappropriate. A therapist should never make you feel responsible for their feelings. And they should NEVER try to turn you into their friend or sexual partner.  If your therapist has behaved in an unethical way (ie: made sexual advances on you, tried to hang out with you outside of therapy, discussed other clients with you), please report them to the department of licensing (In Washington State contact Health Systems Quality Assurance (HSQA) Customer Service Center at 360-236-4700) thus protecting other people from this dangerous person.

Pink flags: Your therapist should remember your scheduled sessions and be timely. Everyone occasionally makes scheduling mistakes, but they should not be a regular occurrence. If they occasionally run late for your session, they should make up the time by extending the end of the session, unless they have allowed your session to run late other times. You should be the focal point of therapy. Your therapy session is not a back-and-forth check-in about your life and theirs: You should not know as much about your therapist as they know about you, because you are paying for their focused attention and not vice versa.

Just like when dating, if you think “maybe this isn’t a good fit?” it’s probably NOT. Cut your losses and find another therapist. This is not to say dump your therapist if they ever piss you off: in good quality therapy, you WILL have moments when your therapist says something provocative in a way that might initially upset you but also makes you to think about your behavior/boundaries/expectations differently. That’s not a reason to stop therapy. I’m suggesting that if you are experiencing a pattern of feeling disappointed, misunderstood, or demeaned by your therapist: break up.

When you are ready to stop seeing your therapist, here are some things you could say.

1. “I’ve decided to go in a different direction from our therapy.” You would then usually have a conversation about what you will be doing instead, which might be anything from pursuing a different form of personal growth to taking time off from therapy.

Another explanation could be

• “I’ve decided to take the time and money I’ve been spending on therapy and do more fun things with it.” Imagine how many cool classes you could take or art supplies/books/plants you could buy with your therapy dollars if they are not being well spent!  Therapy is usually not fun, but when done well, it’s a worthy and useful expense. If it doesn’t seem worth it, take that money, and do something that makes you happy.

An easy thing to say is

• “I’ve decided to take a break from therapy.” Many of my clients take breaks and come back when life gets challenging.  Some work with me for a long or short while, and then take a break due to any number of reasons: first and best, because they are doing well, but they might take a break due to the complexity of their lives, travel or work or parenting commitments, finances, or just because they want to prove to themselves that they can take our clinical work into the laboratory of their own lives. Remember, that therapy is to help YOU. Not vice versa. You haven’t signed a contract with your therapist and you do not owe them your continued support.

What if you are breaking up because your therapist really sucks? Should you tell them what they have been doing wrong? If you feel confident that your therapist can treat your feedback with respect, then offer it! If it would be empowering for you regardless of how your therapist responds, then yes. You can even start with “I don’t like the way you’ve been treating me and here are some specific examples…” However, you don’t owe your therapist feedback about what they did wrong if they have been treating you poorly. If they were dismissive/disrespectful while you are a current client, they are unlikely to take criticism constructively because…they are an asshole not interpersonally healthy.

Hopefully you will never have to break up with a bad therapist. My wish for you is that you will have good therapy experiences, and you will take breaks or end therapy in a peaceful and supported manner. Sadly, numerous clients have genuine emotional trauma from prior therapists, so it’s always a good idea to know how to end the therapy relationship. Drop me a comment, and let me know how it goes! 

Wintertime Survival Strategies

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By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I moved to Seattle in 1997, so I have been here—as my kids would say—a “fat minute.” There are a few foods, activities, and products that make life better in the wintertime that I have listed here: We need all the help we can get when the skies are gray and will be so for a long, long time.

1. Sun-a-Lux combo therapy light box: all winter long, I spend the first half an hour to 45 minutes of the day in front of mine, and it helps me feel more energetic. http://www.solarhome.org/browseproducts/SUN-A-LUX-reg;-Combo-Light-Therapy-Box-with-new-Blue-Lux–153;-Technology.html
2. Eufy robotic vacuum: I’m a robotic vacuum geek. Between kids and two dogs with a dog door and a husband, I need the floor cleaned daily.  I’ve had the Roomba, the Shark, the RoboRock, but the Eufy is cheaper and just as good. Warning: never preprogram your robotic vacuums because at least on one occasion, a vacuum that could not dock started a house fire when the lithium battery overheated while the owners were out of town.  Just turn it on when you are around and stay out of its way.
3. Houseplants: in the winter, go to the nursery or hardware store and buy yourself some beautiful houseplants and some lovely ceramic pots to put them in. Even if you have a brown thumb, you will figure it out eventually.  You may need to get a plant light in the winter depending on your window situation.
4. Hamilton Beach single serving coffee maker: Ever since a scientifically knowledgeable girlfriend told me that bottom-heated coffee makers create methylxanthine’s, a volatile chemical compound associated with breast cancer in women, I make single serving coffee, but NOT with a Keurig, because they are environmental disasters.
5. Vitamin D: the Pacific Northwest has one of the highest rates of MS (multiple sclerosis) in the world, and one possible reason is the lack of vitamin D. Consider it an immune system assist.
6. Good Quality Fish Oil: I use Jarrow EPA-DHA Balance formula. There is some research suggesting that fish oil helps with myelinization of the dendrites in our brains, making the chemical messaging more efficient. It is also associated with healthier joints.
7. Green, leafy vegetables: I try to eat Kale or spinach every day. They—like all leafy greens–are anti-inflammatory and associated with a reduction in depression. Get yourself a kick-a*& kale recipe like this one: https://www.femalefoodie.com/recipes/chelseas-kitchen-kale-salad-recipe-hack/  Even if you think you don’t like kale, one bite of this vegetable heaven will make you a believer.
8. A rain hat: okay they look goofy as hell, but if you can go for a walk in the rain and keep your head and face dry, you are more likely to get out there no matter what the weather. And if you are like me, we keep one hand on a cup of coffee when we walk so don’t want to have the other hand holding an umbrella. Embrace your dorkish side!  Be comfortable.
9. A cheap winter getaway. Here in Seattle, Palm Springs is only a 2 ½ hour flight and if you book your tickets in advance, costs around two hundred bucks round trip on Alaska Airlines. You can find affordable Airbnb’s or hotels if you avoid the Coachella/Stage Coach/Indian Wells Tennis Tournament weekends. Yes most of the restaurants there are mostly lousy (not all of them: Vicky’s in Rancho Mirage is wonderful and they have the best house band, and Farm has great food and magical ambiance) but Palm Springs is not the place for culture it’s for….Sun!

So that is my list. What are your favorite wintertime survival strategies?

Redundancy Redux

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by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

I recently flew internationally and noticed a few things. First of all, the redundancy. Redundancy is not a bad thing. We have two lungs and two livers and two eyes and two ears, all in case one fails/is damaged. Engineers design for redundancy so that if one safety feature fails, another can take over.

But redundancy is annoying and extremely time consuming. To fly: first show proof of negative Covid test and vaccination and identification at the departure point at check in. Then show identification and have our bodies and carry-ons x-rayed to go through security to get to the gate. Then, show our identification and ticket to get on the plane. At disembarkation, show identification, proof of negative Covid test, have luggage checked and provide declarations of what we are bringing in or back. All of this adds about another six hours to travel time. But it’s for safety. Each of these individual steps are to ensure that the traveler is safe for the airline employees and fellow travelers to be around. They are not infected or carrying dangerous weapons or contraband.

Our brains have two systems that constantly scan for safety and make the TSA look like slackers.  They are the limbic system and the amygdala, and they have one question that reverberates in all novel situations: Am I in danger? These parts reside in our hindbrain, the old brain, the part that was around when we lived in tribes and met up with other tribes in order to trade and/or mate and/or raid and/or murder one another.  Opportunity and danger have always been twinned together.

I’ve been an eager observer and cheerleader of the Me-Too movement and its goal to increase the safety and justice for my kind: girls and women. I am an unapologetic feminist. Females are physically smaller than males. We are less strong. We are less violence prone. Each person’s safety is every person’s responsibility. The vulnerable require and deserve special protections if we want to earn the claim of being a civilized society.

But I’ve been concerned, as a mother of males, as a lover of humankind, as someone who holds fairness as my apex value, how there is now a primitive tendency to frame all uncomfortable or awkward sexual situations as the result of predatory male behavior.

Young people are dumb, dumb, dumb. Literally, as in the old English word dumb, meaning “temporarily unable to speak.” They don’t know how to ask for what they want, identify their emotional needs, set boundaries, to say yes or no in a clear and consistent manner, give or receive honest and constructive feedback, because…they don’t know.  And they have to develop self-awareness and figure out how to communicate these important bits of information by bumbling around, just like we all do.

This lack of ability to speak up effects all genders, and blaming one gender for every mis-attunement is outright unfair. It’s just as toxic as blaming rape victims for looking attractive, or asylum-seeking political refugees for being illegals.

I think we need a greater redundancy system around sexual consent. Especially because boys first and primary exposure to adult sex is via online porn. Porn is expectation poison because it depicts penetration-focused, male-dominance, clitorally ignorant sex that is exactly the opposite of mutually pleasuring, consensual physical contact. Female porn stars are actors. They are pretending to enjoy it. Just like any other actor they are paid to pretend. Entertainment is not reality. Those radio love songs about perfection and adoration don’t depict an actual relationship. Freddy Kruger is not real. King Kong doesn’t exist. And porn is insidiously fake.

Young people need to be willing to ask permission before touching, to ask before progressing from one type of touch to another, and to ask questions like “what feels good to you?” so that sexual exploration is safe and consensual. This also removes the pressure from one party (usually the male) to somehow psychically know what the other party (usually the female) wants. Remember, young people are dumb!  They need extra words between them, and extra time to find their own truth.

All of adulthood is a master class in balancing one’s personal agenda against the validity and importance of other people’s agenda. Our boss, our kids, our spouse, our pets, our friends, and our various community commitments all have agendas for our time and activities.  What we want or need is not always in harmony with these other sources of demands.

We navigate these tensions via communication.  We acknowledge when we can’t fulfill a commitment we have made. We apologize when we disappoint someone who relies on us. We figure out when to end a relationship with an overly needy or demanding person. We suck it up and do what is asked of us when that seems like the important or appropriate thing to do. We take care of our own needs even when it’s inconvenient for the people around us.

I propose more words, more checking in, more time spent planning before acting on sexual impulse. Redundancy shouldn’t just be for fuddy-duddy engineers or bureaucrats or organs. We need consent redundancy.

Flowers

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Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Spring is a special time in the Pacific Northwest. It starts with the puffy white cherry blossoms in late February. Then in March the pink magnolia trees bloom and from April on there is a riot of color: red tulips, yellow daffodils, fuchsia camellias, orange rhododendrons, pink azaleas and purple irises. Every empty patch of dirt is overrun with pretty little blue forget-me-nots. Now, even if the skies are gray the ground is a festival of color. We get more and more sunny days. Everyone’s mood lightens.

It seems like spring is the makeup kiss nature offers us for fighting through the darkness of winter.  During the dark, cold months its easy to forget this beauty is on its way.   

Spring comes regardless of our ability to anticipate it.  And so too the overbaked dryness of summer, the wet and windy autumn, and the dark, chilly winter.

American culture is obsessed with the good-time parts of life. Vapid reality shows feature small-minded hotties who have youth, beauty, fame—all the short lived, spring-like parts of existence. (no offense to the flowers—I’d take the companionship of a peony over a Kardashian any day).

The thing about spring is it cannot go on forever. Flowers are plants in heat, spring is a reproductive cycle that costs all the plant’s energy to put on this fancy show once a year. After flowering, the plant must rest and put energy into photosynthesis, growth and roots.

It is natural to delight in the parts of life that are bright and beautiful. We just need to remember that flowers, beauty and youth are all part of a cycle that includes dormancy, decay and death.  What goes on below the surface, at the root level is what ultimately determines the health and longevity of plants and people.

Hold Fast

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

It is mid-February and the nonmigratory hummingbirds have lost all their natural food sources.  I make nectar and fill the feeders, feeling sorry for the little guys.  They are tiny and live outside in the cold and have no food.  The skies are gray, the air is frigid, and the news a continual cycle of body counts and doom. Even the trees looked depressed with their mossy bare branches scratching the sky.  Covid seems to have lasted for fifty years and we now have new variants to worry about. Youth suicide up. Employment is down.  

And things are about to get better. We have two and soon will have three vaccines. Spring is coming. Those naked tree branches have tiny buds that will burst into leaves and flowers. The sun will come out. The spring flowers will bloom: daffodils, tulips and crocuses.

If you are despairing, take a deep breath and wait. Remember what you look forward to and imagine what it’s like to enjoy it.

If you are depressed, remember that practicing gratitude—even if you don’t feel like it—especially when you don’t feel like it—helps. Always.

Get outside and move.  Clean up a messy part of your house/room/garage/car. Play some saucy music and dance. Read a wonderful novel by your favorite author. Take a bath. Learn how to do something on YouTube. Solve one small problem you have been avoiding.

During the best of times, this part of the year in this part of the world sucks donkey butt. This year the donkey butt-ness is especially awful. Just remember: it’s about to get better. Don’t give up. We are in this together, even while physically apart. And soon we will be able to gather together–friends and family–and tell stories of our survival. Hold fast.

Phases of Healing

Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Back in the late 60’s, Swiss psychiatrist and kick ass trail blazer Elisabeth Kubler Ross developed the five stages of grief through her work with terminally ill patients coming to terms with their own death. Those phases have since been applied to everything from death to divorce to disappointment. The five phases are: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance. This framework for sorrow helps normalize and make some sense of the pain of loss.

In my work with trauma survivors, I’ve also noticed recurring patterns of healing.  The first phase is Rigidity and Anger. These are folks who need things just exactly so in their lives. They are often highly productive but not personable. Trauma survivors in this phase usually have more projects than friendships. They are usually workaholics because they don’t trust anyone else’s contributions. They often drop out of therapy because they are not ready for the vulnerability of being seen or having any part of their thinking or behavior challenged.

When the strategy of avoiding feeling by staying busy no longer works due to exhaustion or becoming healthy enough to start feeling the pain left by childhood trauma, trauma survivors enter the Anxiety Free Fall phase. In Anxiety Free Fall there is tremendous fear about future events, personal safety, loved ones, medical and economic vulnerability. They are downright creative in coming up with things to worry about!  They face a constant feeling of looming and inescapable disaster. People in anxiety free fall often seek therapy to relieve the discomfort from finally feeling.

Then comes the hardest phase: Shame and Self-Hatred. Just as rigidity/anger functions as an armor protecting survivors from the anxiety free fall, anxiety is a distraction (ironically a protection) against the underlying pattern of shame and self-hatred.

Why do abused or neglected children learn to hate themselves? First, let’s look at the world at large. Unlike an American courtroom where you are innocent until proven guilty, in the world at large you (and me, and everyone) are irrelevant until proven useful, or interesting, or attractive in some way. Strangers might care about others from of the goodness of their hearts, out of general care for the welfare of our fellow wo(man), but these strangers don’t actually know you enough to care about you personally. The focus of our caring starts with those we know the best, and moves out in concentric circles of distance. We feel the most investment in the wellbeing of those who we personally feel connected to.

This pattern of tribalism is okay as long as everyone is born into a household where they are flat out adored just for showing up on the planet. In a reasonably healthy family, each and every baby is the best thing that ever existed. Every child is a source of delight and wonder. This experience of being precious, worthy, special, smart and beautiful in one’s family is the counterbalance to the world at large, which says “you don’t matter until you prove your value.”

In families that are deeply unhealthy, babies are not adored. Children are a burden. And they are told this in a number of ways: rough handling, resentful or bored facial expressions, lack of touch, ignoring, screaming, pinching, hitting, etc.

An un-adored baby in a world of prove-your-worth is filled with a sense of emptiness and insecurity. There’s no tap root of knowing “I’m special” inside that person to counterbalance the world’s apathy.

That’s the bad news. The good news is that we can all move towards the phase of Healing. Just as the deepest wounds are inflicted relationally–by the very people who are supposed to take care of us–the deepest healing also comes this way. In a healthy love relationship, people develop a sense of personal value. They discover that they matter to another person, and that allows them to matter to themselves. This is a slow process because it’s a total change in personal identity.  Evidence of healing is both internal and behavioral:  they take less dangerous risks but more emotional risks. They take breaks from work, protect time to sleep, eat vegetables.  As they discover that they are lovable even while being imperfect, they stop hyper focusing on their own and other people’s flaws. (Which reminds me of the perfect bumper sticker I saw this week: “Proud parent of a great kid who can occasionally be an asshole and that’s okay”)

In a healthy relationship—which can be love, friendship, therapy or any combination of the three–we can reprogram our sense of value from “nothing” to “special.” Not everyone will feel this way about us. In fact, most of them won’t give us a second thought. Because they don’t know us well enough to have an opinion.  Pop culture aside, we cannot and do not need to impress everyone. We just need to *adore* ourselves, and hopefully, have a few other folks in our lives who join our fan club, as we also join theirs.

What To Do When There’s Nothing To Do

by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Photo by Artem Beliaikin on Pexels.com

Here in Washington state, our governor just clamped down restrictions to slow the spread of the Corona virus and prevent deaths. In this strange time, we must minimize contact with the outside world. Our winter rituals have changed. No longer do we gather in extended family and friend groups around a table filled with communal food. No longer do we lighten the dark, chilly days with the warmth of our tribe.

Collectively we are in the wilderness, looking for ways to find comfort and remember: even the longest winter ends.  And then comes spring. We are left hoping. Hoping a decent vaccine will be made. Hoping our world will return to some semblance of safe-enough. Hoping to return to our offices and schools. Hoping we can once again take up our petty concerns and stop tracking projected body counts.

When my twins were born, premature and medically fragile, I looked forward to the day I could get mad at them for stupid things: leaving socks on the floor, refusing broccoli.  Trivial annoyance meant they were safe, and I longed to be free of the terror of their deaths.  (I got my wish. So. Many. Piles. Of. Objects…So. Much. Food. Pickiness.)

We don’t think about irritation as evidence of good luck, but guess what people in real crisis are not doing? They are not thinking about who owes them a text back or how many weeds in their own yard came from the neighbor’s non-gardening.

There are some deep healing opportunities within this Covid restriction time. We live in a cornucopia of distractions: the news, Netflix, pasta, Paris, Amazon, beer, books, pot, porn, gambling, virtual farming, cat collecting, this world offers distraction 24/7.

With Covid getting worse, some of those distractions are no longer available. Loss of distractions is uncomfortable at first. What do we do with ourselves? With our time? We can comfort ourselves by doubling down on the ones that are still in our grasp. Numbing out with food and television was already a national pastime before Covid, and it’s only become more common.

Or we can try something else. With the television off and phone down, there is an opportunity to sit alone in the company of our own consciousness. Try this. Take stock of what you notice, feel, and think.

In this moment I’m sitting in my sweet little backyard office. The space heater is noisy. The amber light bulbs above my desk cast a weak ring of light. It’s still dark out, and the shapes of the tree branches shade the sky. I’m tired but also proud of myself for waking up early. I’ve been wrestling with non-writing, trying and failing to become more productive. I wish I craved writing like I crave coffee. But I don’t. I regret this.

If you want to grow emotionally, to be more resilient and kinder there is a simple way. All we have to do, in any given moment, is to notice and then tolerate whatever feelings arise. The good feeling ones and the bad feeling ones have this in common: They won’t last forever. A moment of irritation will turn into a moment of gratitude and then we might feel hungry. Or bored. Or overwhelmed. Or sad. Or playful. Or focused. Or inspired.

Today I’m going to try and tolerate feelings, one moment at a time.

The Right Amount of Responsibility

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

Many of the good people I see had really rough childhoods. Their psychological diagnosis is Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD.  PTSD usually manifests in symptoms such as flashbacks, pervasive anxiety, an exaggerated startle response, dislike of surprises, controlling behavior and a sense of coming danger, as if they are always bracing for the other shoe to drop. The public has heard of PTSD, so the label provides trauma survivors an explanation of some of their behaviors and struggles.

But today, I want to go deeper into the effects of trauma. Let’s talk about self-blame. First, some basic developmental information: all kids think their parents are gods. Because the adults taking care of them have so much more power, life experience, understanding and agency then they do, children believe they control the world. And in a small way they do: they control (most of) the child’s world. I remember having a conversation with my son when he was four years old.

“Mommy, I want you to make it stop raining.”

“I can’t do that. I can’t control the weather.”

“Mommy just give it your best.”

“Sweetie. I can’t make it start or stop raining.”

“You can! You’re not even trying!” (starts crying in frustration).

Children believe their caretakers know everything and can do anything. Parents are the absolute compass for children, ever pointing in the “right” direction. So, when caretakers beat them, ignore them or sexually abuse them, the children blame themselves for causing it to happen. They think “it’s because I’m bad.”

And the perpetrators of abuse also add to this mistaken belief. They say things like,

                “You were asking for it.”

                “It’s your fault.”

                “You’re more trouble than you’re worth.”

Self-blame is a perfectly reasonable survival mechanism for a young and dependent creature living in a dangerous family. It keeps the world in order. Parents remain gods. It allows them to believe change is possible: if this happens because I’m bad, well I can always change. Self-blame protects abused/neglected children from despair. It keeps them submissive and obedient to their parent/abusers, so more likely to survive and get some emotional needs met. In a dangerous childhood, self-blame makes a ton of sense.

News flash: it’s false. It never was and never could be the child’s fault that they are abused or ignored.  Even though this belief system helped children survive lousy childhoods, it’s toxic to maintain in adulthood. Self-blame keeps trauma survivors committed to partners who are dishonest or unreliable, or who consistently berate and devalue them.  It keeps them working long hours for withholding bosses.  It makes it extremely difficult for them to set boundaries and follow through with consequences when other people trounce those boundaries. Self-blame is a false belief that needs to be grown out of, as soon as safety is attainable.

On the other end of the problematic coping style, there are those who refuse to take personal responsibility. Entitlement issues are also forged in childhood. Parents who don’t feel proud of themselves convey a religious-type worship of external accomplishments and accolades to their children. These kids grow up thinking they must become Nobel laureates or supermodels or Russel Wilson in order to be lovable. Because the mark of acceptability is so lofty, they never make it.  Then they feel inferior, and hide it by pretending to be blameless and perfect. Because that is what they had to pretend to be in order to feel approved of as a child.

When entitled folks screw up, they can’t take responsibility.  This is a problem because accepting reasonable responsibility is just as important as not taking over-responsibility.

It means admitting mistakes, apologizing WIITHOUT qualification, and understanding that one’s own comfort and convenience is of equal value to others. It means playing by the rules and not thinking of oneself as special or deserving extra cookies.  People who cannot take personal responsibility often partner with…. those who take too much!  It’s a perfect, gnarly marriage of entitlement to codependence.  

We are all in this world trying to heal the wounds of our childhoods.  The good and bad news is: if you struggle, you are not special.  We all share this story of personal growth and joy and pain.

Of Plants and People

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

By Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW

As the Equinox draws near, signs of spring are everywhere. Crocuses poke their fragile heads up from the ground, fat buds of future flowers weigh down the tips of rhododendrons and camellias in the garden. The snowfall and rain made the earth heavy and wet. I’ve been swapping around roses and hydrangeas, responding to new light patterns after the weight of the snow broke off tree branches that created shade.  The hydrangeas need filtered, indirect light and the roses prefer strong, baking sun.

People are like plants in the garden; different people need different things. Some people thrive best with low levels of stimulation. For these folks, a trip to the market on a Sunday afternoon constitutes all the weekend excitement they need. Others are more stimulation seeking and need social, physical and intellectual pursuits during down time.

The hydrangea is a picky beauty. She needs a lot of water and ample shade. But she’s also a prolific bloomer and one of the only flowers that doesn’t need dead-heading. Worth it! Roses, meanwhile are just as needy. While you don’t have to water them nearly as frequently, they need fertilizer, protection from leaf mold, aphids, deep watering, and plenty of sunlight. You will stab and slice yourself if you keep roses because no matter how careful you are, thorns are sneaky. But a rose in full bloom is the one of the greatest delights. Well, after puppies. And our own children.

In this time of transition, think about your needs. No matter how resilient or tough you are, if you are not taking care of yourself, you will not be able to express your full potential. Like my hydrangeas and roses, you might need a new environment or some other small or large change to be at your best. The cool thing about being human is we have both brains AND mobility. Plants, alas do not. You must cultivate your environment (relationship, home, job, friends, education, activities) to meet your needs. I wish you great success in the garden of your life!