THE MOTHER OF ALL OUR ISSUES?
by
Terrence Shulman

Mother’s Day is around the corner and the holiday often brings up strong emotions which may triggers relapses into addiction. So be prepared and be on guard! The relationship between mother and child-no matter how old we are–is likely the most important, primal and fundamental relationship we’ll have.

I can’t tell you how often in my counseling practice that clients’ “mother issues” are at the very root of their addictions and relationship problems. This is not to blame mothers, per se, as no mother is perfect. But it is important for us to acknowledge, understand, and do our best to heal old (or newer) wounds and to develop a healthier relationship with our mothers whether they are actively in our lives or not.
Some of the most common reasons both men and women have mother issues include the following:

1. a mother died early in a child’s life or committed suicide;
2. a mother was addicted and/or mentally ill and was not able to be physically and/or emotionally present and attuned to her child;
3. a mother was overtly/covertly seductive/sexual with her child;
4. a mother appeared to favor one of her children over another;
5. a mother needed rescue, help, or companionship and her child played the role of partner or parent;
6. a mother held unrealistically high expectations of her child and the child became inauthentic to receive mother’s love/approval;
7. a mother was physically, emotionally, and/or verbally abusive toward her child;
8. a mother had little natural or cultivated interest in being a mother to her child;
9. a mother betrayed her child’s confidence in some way;
10. a mother was “perfect” and modeled this in a way her child felt unable to compete with;
11. a mother was overly critical of her child;
12. a mother was overly “smothering,” domineering or controlling
13. a mother committed infidelity in her marriage & her child knew;
14. a mother encouraged her child to tell or keep secrets;
15. a mother broke the law and/or modeled dishonesty.

Which of the above issues seems to resonate with you? The core effects of the situations described above often result in persistent feelings of neglect, rejection, abandonment, self-doubt, low self-esteem/self-worth, codependency/care-taking others, as well as loneliness, depression, anxiety, and anger. There may be other wounds or conflicts that develop around our relationship with our mothers than are listed above. Have you worked through any of these issues or does it feel like you still need to?
Because I didn’t have the best role model for a father, I found myself feeling ashamed to be a man, not trusting men or authority, and quite confused about both women and what I wanted to do with my life. Fortunately, I had a great therapist who encouraged me to read books about men’s issues and to participate in men’s support groups and retreats where I found I was not alone, began to trust men again, and to see the positive aspects of men and authentic masculinity. We rarely talked about or looked into our relationships with our mothers in my men’s groups. It’s been theorized that the reason the “men’s movement” of the 1990’s petered out was that we didn’t know how to individually and collectively deal with our mother issues and, so, we kind of hit a wall. At least for most men, regardless of sexual orientation, our issues with mother often are more subtle yet also more scary and dangerous.
Compared to my father’s more obvious failings, my mother was a saint. But in the past few years, events led me to come to the conclusion that I had to deal with my mother issues, too. For me, part of this arose in the context of my 10 year marriage to my wife. It’s not uncommon for men to have issues with their wives that are, at the core, issues with mother or “the feminine.” How many men, when asked to do something by their wives or face a and felt he needed to live his truth before he died–for his own happiness as well as to be an inspiration to other trans-folk who often face even more judgment than gays and lesbians. The U.S. is still trailing most of the world in its tolerance and extension of rights to these folks and, yes, it does appear that change is coming too quickly for some. But would anyone deny how complex and mysterious sexuality is?

I also realized that I’d continued to play the good son role despite having made progress on this. I still felt scary to speak up more, share my feelings and truth, and risk my mother’s love–I’d been so used to being her protector, her biggest fan. I had to come to terms with my mother’s (and my own) limitations in our relationship. I’ve been learning to let go of that primal desire to have “mommy” be there for me as I continue in adulthood and it’s my judgment that my mother has had to learn that I won’t always be there for her as I was in the past. I think we both needed to be knocked off our pedestals a bit. It’s been painful for both of us but necessary, too. It’s natural to look to Mom (or Dad) to be a safe space to share our pain and our opinions (even if it hurts them). It doesn’t mean they don’t share their own pain and opinions back but, I believe, a primary role of a parent is to be strong and mature enough to absorb their child’s expressions, to model this even, and to be secure enough even in their imperfections to listen, try to understand, and try to see the gift in their child’s courageous, if imprecise, offering of their pain, their perspective.
As we grow up (and, hopefully, we do) we learn to differentiate from our parents, need them less (emotionally, financially, etc) and develop compassion for them (they did the best they knew how to do given how they likely were raised). But this doesn’t mean it’s easy. We are taught to honor thy parents but that doesn’t mean we don’t speak our minds our share our hearts. I also am slowly coming to realize, as my mother ages, that she won’t always be around: Mom is mortal. She just turned 80 this year and is dealing with both some physical and cognitive changes. The question arises: what do I/we need to say to my/our mother or feel in my/our heart so /wel can be as complete as possible when she passes? I can only say that when my wife and my friends are able to hear each others’ grievances and concerns without attacking back or defending (and when I can hear them), it creates safety and trust and deepens our relationships. I can’t think of a better way to honor each other. In this context, wouldn’t it be great if–this Mother’s Day–instead of cards and flowers, we could give the gift of honesty, our mother could receive it lovingly, and we would return the favor?

SIGNS WE’RE LIVING IN GEORGE ORWELL’S “1984”?
by

Terrence Shulman

“Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.” –1984.
One primary message of Orwell’s seminal 1948 novel 1984 is that totalitarian governments such as those of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia are/were bad. When Orwell wrote 1984, he was concerned that governments were moving more toward totalitarianism. He worried that these governments might start taking away more and more of people’s rights and freedoms and the terrifying degree of power and control a totalitarian regime can acquire and maintain.

“Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.”–1984.

We seem to be a country more and more divided than ever. While we can’t blame only the President for this problem, we can ask whether he is contributing to this divide or working to bridge this divide. In the 1984 book, Orwell describes an atmosphere of fear that is often seen in totalitarian states where people increasingly feel afraid to speak up against “Big Brother” for fear of being arrested, tortured, reprogrammed
or killed.
“Big Brother is Watching You.” –1984.

“It’s pretty scary,” Comedian Bill Maher has said, somewhere between a joke and a wince. In his “signs of a dictator” routine, he submits that the president has veered into unchartered territory for a U.S. president by gaining a number of check-marks on his “common signs you’re a dictator” list:

1. Name or face on buildings;
2. Family members in positions of power;
3. Frequent rallies that resemble lynch mobs;
4. His own propaganda outlet (Fox News);
5. Using his office for personal financial gain;
6. Aligned with other other dictators and strongmen;
7. Claims minorities are responsible for the country’s problems;
8. You lie so freely that people don’t know what the truth is anymore;
9. Proposed military parades or calls on police and armed forces to be ready to quell rebellion; and
10. Dress like a dictator
11. Telling lies on a daily basis.

HOW MUCH SHOULD YOU KNOW ABOUT YOUR THERAPIST’S LIFE?
In Today’s World It’s Impossible for Any Professional To Be A Blank Slate.

by

Lori Gottlieb (March 30, 2019 New York Times

When I was starting out as a therapist, a colleague told me what was intended to be a cautionary tale. After suffering a series of miscarriages, she was in a Starbucks when her doctor called with the news that her pregnancy wasn’t viable. Standing at the counter, she burst into heaving sobs. A patient happened to walk in, saw her hysterically crying therapist, walked out the door, canceled her next appointment and never went back to her.
“You’re not going to keep writing now that you’re a therapist, right?” she said, more a statement than a question.
My colleague knew that before going back to school to become a therapist, I had been a writer: I had written in books and magazines and newspapers about personal topics such as my childhood, my romantic life, having a baby on my own and being a parent. Maybe she thought that, say, a single woman in her late 30s who wanted to be a parent but would never do so solo wouldn’t seek me out as a therapist, or wouldn’t tell me the truth about how she felt for fear of offending me.
I understood her concern. The therapeutic relationship exists in a certain context. Patients share their lives with us, not the other way around. But even if I stopped writing, the work I’d done was out there, available at the click of a mouse. Now I worried: If patients read about my life, would they be more reluctant to see me? Would they bolt like my colleague’s patient in Starbucks?

Therapists, of course, deal with the daily challenges of living just as everyone else does. In fact, this familiarity is at the root of the connection we forge with strangers who trust us with their most intimate stories and secrets. Our training has taught us theories and tools and techniques, but whirring beneath our expertise is the fact that we know just how hard it is to be a person. Which is to say, we still come to work each day as ourselves – with our own sets of vulnerabilities, our own longings and insecurities and our own experiences and histories. Of all my credentials as a therapist, my most significant is that I’m a card-carrying member of the human race. Without this humanity, I’d be useless to help people.
But revealing this humanity is another matter.
Most therapists nowadays use some form of what’s known as self-disclosure in their work, whether it’s sharing some of their own reactions that come up during the session or acknowledging that they watch the TV show a patient keeps referring to. Better to admit that you watch “The Bachelor” than to feign ignorance and accidentally say Colton Underwood’s name when the patient hasn’t mentioned him yet.
The question of what to share gets tricky. One therapist I know told a patient whose child had Tourette’s syndrome that she, too, had a son with Tourette’s, and it deepened their relationship. Another colleague treated a man whose father had taken his own life, but he never revealed to the patient that his own father had done the same. In each situation, there’s a calculation to make, a subjective litmus test we use to assess the value of the disclosure: Is this information helpful for the patient to have?

Outside the therapy room, though, what are the rules? Here are some things you don’t want to do in public as a therapist: Cry to a friend in a restaurant or say, “I know, Mom!” petulantly into your cellphone while in line at Costco with a patient nearby. If you’re a respected child psychologist, like a colleague of mine, you don’t want to be standing in the bakery when your 4-year-old has a meltdown about not getting another cookie, culminating with the ear-piercing proclamation “You’re the worst mom ever!” while your 6-year-old patient and her mother look on, aghast. The story of my colleague’s patient’s reaction to her crying in Starbucks haunted me, or at least its moral did: When patients see our humanity, they leave us.
And yet, many patients are also curious including me. I once Googled my own therapist and discovered that his father had died at a young age of a heart attack. Afterward, I began editing myself in sessions, wondering whether talking about my close relationship with my aging father would be painful for my therapist, being careful not to rub it in with an especially moving anecdote. When I finally fessed up, I learned that my assumptions were wrong. What I read didn’t capture his experience the way hearing it firsthand did.
I know that patients Google me, too, not because they necessarily tell me, but because eventually – inevitably – they slip up. An offhand: “Well, you know what middle school boys are like” – despite my never having mentioned my son or his age; or adding “No offense” after making a negative comment about a sorority I belonged to in college and later wrote about.
This is why therapists don’t Google their patients – we want to know about your lives, but only as narrated by you. We’re interested not just in the information but in the process of sharing that information: what you leave in, what you leave out, at what point you choose to share something that makes it seem as though you buried the lede, as when a patient might appear happily married but one day say, “There’s this guy at work I’ve been flirting with for months.”
Not one person I know well, maybe the very narcissistic – wants to talk to a therapist without a deep inner life, the human equivalent of a brick wall. When my colleague lost her pregnancy, she had the reaction any of us might have and that’s a good thing. If I’d been her patient, would I want her to take that call in my session? Of course not. But if I had seen her in Starbucks that day, it would have made me feel even safer with her, trusting her all the more to understand me and my own sources of pain.