Do’s and Don’ts for Living in Balance

by Tanya Ruckstuhl LICSW, MSW

One of the primary differences between seeing a clinical social worker and seeing a psychologist is the emphasis on person-in-environment which is unique to the social work profession. This dual focus on the individual as well as the ways in which she or he is shaped by environment comes from the social justice movement.

Social workers have their roots in the social justice work started by Jane Addams and the Hull House settlement in the late 19^th century.  Working with recent immigrants in the Chicago area, Ms. Addams organized education, parenting, sanitation, and nutritional support for people who were desperately poor and without help would have been at high risk for starvation, domestic violence and alcoholism due to the extreme challenges in their environment.

We humans do best in life when our physical, emotional and spiritual needs are met.  These needs are unique in detail but universal in overarching structure: we all need to feel loved, a sense of personal contribution, a feeling of belonging, and the types of challenges that raise our skills rather than overwhelm our sensibilities.

Some types of stressors are completely self-made. We need to cultivate the discipline to overcome our own bad habits and the bad examples around us. This enhances our mental health more thoroughly and quickly than any pharmaceutical or therapeutic intervention.

With this environmental influence in mind, here are my top “Do’s and Don’ts” for the holidays (as well as for the New Year, spring, summer and fall):

Do remember that your body needs movement. You are evolutionarily designed to walk six to twelve miles a day while gathering or hunting. Today we sit almost the entire time we are awake. Walk with friends, walk a dog, walk during meetings, go out dancing, go to the gym, take every opportunity to move.

Do give others the benefit of the doubt. When someone behaves in a way that disappoints you or hurts your feelings, ask yourself if it was intentional or just a failure on the other person’s part to understand the significance of this particular issue/event/activity. Many conflicts are interpretive problems, meaning that the motivation we assign to the other person’s behavior is actually what creates the problem.

Do not “give them another chance” if you are being mistreated. Mistreated is not getting your feelings hurt due to a misunderstanding or the other clumsy stuff we humans do to each other as a result of our limited time/energy/understanding. Mistreated is dishonesty, abuse, consistent failure to provide reciprocity.

Do not make lifestyle choices that require carrying debt at high interest. If you can’t pay off your credit card at the end of the month, don’t buy it. We live in an economy that seems to encourage the neglect of the very basic laws of physics: for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. For every impulsive big ticket spree there will be protracted and compounding debt.

Do protect your health. If you drink or smoke or do any toxic activity (including constant worrying!) with abandon, your body will not last as long—or even worse—will last a really long time in a constantly uncomfortable condition.

Do refuse some requests. If you leave your house on a regular basis, you will be asked to do things that you don’t have time for. “I’m sorry I can’t help with that,” is a perfectly reasonable answer to requests made when you are barely meeting your current obligations. Sometimes you may even have to apologize for agreeing to do something you later realize that you cannot comfortably fulfill.

Don’t let your fears rule. Every choice we make requires giving up something we want in order to have something we want MORE. The fear of making the wrong choice, of making a mistake keeps us paralyzed. Go ahead and screw things up and learn that you can fix a mistake. Once you trust your capacity to repair you can show up in the world with ease.

Do remember that we all have vastly more in common with each other than we are different.  Therefore, you can and should take social risks, open up and connect with others regardless of what might look on the surface to be differences between you and them.

Happy holidays and happy beyond!

Addictions and Mental Health

by Tanya Ruckstuhl-Valenti LICSW, MSW

I was talking with a friend recently who shared with me that she started going to AA after an incident of over-drinking in which she had to re-assess her own alcohol issues.  This is a particularly savvy and insightful person, and I was struck by her awareness of feeling irritable and resentful and her ability to connect this to sobriety. 

I started thinking about the how addictions offer a comfort—dysfunctional and emotionally expensive, but a comfort nonetheless—from feelings of malcontent and anxiety. 

When an addict stops their addiction there is no chemical or behavioral buffer between themselves and their emotions.  This is something the addict is rarely warned about in advance.  It will hurt.  Perhaps we don’t warn them because it’s hard enough to muster up the will to dump one’s best friend without knowledge of the loneliness that follows. 

Drug addicts report a six to twelve month depression following “kicking.”  As a sugar addict (I know that sounds wimpy by comparison, but believe me it’s the same thing) after I quit I went through months of self pity (“Other people do it!  Why can’t I?”—duh, cause I’m an addict!), of dreaming of chocolate and ice cream, of feeling at my wit’s end about how to celebrate, comfort or simply chill without desert products.   If I weren’t committed to self-awareness AND self acceptance it would be easy to look back and scoff at my naiveté and the extent to which food, rather than relationships, took center stage in my mind. 

I’m not sure we mental health providers offer full disclosure when we blithely recommend a separation from a substance or behavior of choice.  I think clients sense this loss and avoid complying with our recommendations because they are frightened, feeling that they alone know how important their addiction is to them.

This is why a twelve step program in addition to mental health services is recommended for successful treatment of addictions.  Therapy alone is famously unsuccessful at treating addictions (in AA’s Big Book, one of AA’s founders flies to Europe and receives treatment from the venerable Carl Jung…and is not helped). 

I would make the bold statement that 12 step groups alone are no more successful.  Many people in one twelve step group report that their addiction morphs into another one as soon as they feel comfortably abstinent. 

The focus of therapy is different from the focus of twelve step groups.  Your therapist is there to focus just on you.  Your twelve step group is there for you as well as themselves. 

Therapy provides a supportive and structured environment for exhuming old hurts, seeing how current behavior is influenced by previous trauma and answering the important WHY question: When it hurts, why do I act/think/feel this way?  The twelve step program provides a spiritual, social and emotional support system which answers the important HOW question: How do I live? 

Jettisoning an addiction hurts.  We are not meant to do life’s most difficult tasks alone.  And ultimately the effort; shared and mitigated by support and understanding, is worth it.  I liken it to getting cataract surgery for eye sight.  At first the light, shaded for so long by the damage of the cataract/addiction, hurts like hell….Then you can see clearly. 

 

 

Related Articles

• Twelve-step Approach to Recovery From Codependency (socyberty.com)
• Addiction during the holidays: Recovered or not, it’s important to be prepared (psychologytoday.com)
• Gender Differences in Trauma and Addictions (drsharma.ca)

From Cockroaches to Cleaning Products

By Tanya Ruckstuhl-Valenti LICSW, MSW

                                                                     

Fifteen years ago I worked for Child Protective Services in Kansas City.  I’ll never forget one particular investigation I went on as a neophyte social worker.  The report alleged that the parents had an “unsafe home.” 

I drove out with the senior social worker.  It was summertime in Kansas and the sun was blazing hot.  We knocked on the door.  The mother who opened the door spoke in the accent of a person with a developmental disability. 

“He-woo?” she said, her greeting a question, her brow furrowed as to how to assimilate these two strangers at her door. 

We came inside the home, a converted garage.  The smell of body odor hung in the air thick as incense.  A mattress and pillows blackened with human grease lay on the floor.  We asked to see the refrigerator.  The sole item was a can of liquid infant formula.  It had a dead fly floating on the crust of it.  The woman explained that she diluted the formula, even though the can read in bold letters “DO NOT DILUTE.”  But the most horrifying detail of my memory was this:  a steady rain of live cockroaches climbed across the floor, up the walls and fell from the ceiling, one landing on my head and another on my shoulder. 

The baby was removed from her mother’s care. 

Eight years later I started collecting vacuum cleaners.  We went from owning the standard suburbanite fare of one vacuum and a Shop-Vac. to owning a full series of cordless vacuums, a hand-held cordless vacuum, and a spot-steamer, on top of our original two.  And then there were the mops:  a regular mop was joined by a high-performance German mop with a swivel head and microfiber cloth as well as a disposable Swifter mop. 

Why?  Because we had children. 

In each case I told myself we needed these tools.  I needed the Shark sweeper for daily carpet and floor maintenance.  I needed the hand held cordless to vacuum cheerios and cracker crumbs from the car.  I needed the steamer to cope with wet messes.  I needed the mops to keep the kitchen floor clean. 

But this wasn’t just about cleaning up after the children.  I believe my passionate need for clean floors came from the earlier trauma of the Cockroach Home, and my unconscious decision:

 Dirty Floors + Baby=Danger.   

If I were not willing to look beyond the surface of my behavior, mildly insane behavior I could readily justify with self-righteous indignation–“I’m trying to create a sanitary environment for Our Children!”–I would never understand why I had this clean floor compulsion. 

And if I didn’t understand why I had the compulsion I would not be where I am now: typing happily in a kitchen whose floor has not seen a mop in two weeks.   Hey, I’ve been busy. 

Awareness opens up space around behaviors, and space creates room for choice.

Often in therapy I ask individuals or couples about childhood experiences that are thematically connected to their adult conflicts.  It can be a hard question for people to answer, especially when they want to stick to the here-and-now. 

But think of it like this:  in every profession we study the past.  To be a good architect you need to know about the classical proportions worked out by ancient Greeks, about medieval and renaissance and mid century modernism as well as contemporary architecture.  

To be a good architect of your own life you need a current as well as a historical understanding.