Lisa Find Love

If you love what you do, it’s all-too easy for it to consume your identity—especially if your career is demanding and fast-paced. You find yourself checking email after hours, and thinking about work. All. The. Time. You find yourself falling asleep with a laptop in your bed.

It’s also all-too easy for work to consume your identity when money is at stake. For instance, therapist Erin K. Tierno sees clients in New York City, where in order to survive financially, they must prioritize work—“because there will always be another person eager to fill their position.”

It’s common for young professionals to feel so emotionally drained by their work that they have zero energy to dedicate to dating, hobbies, friendships and everything else, said Lauren Canonico, LCSW, a psychotherapist and consultant in private practice in New York City.

For many people work—and overwork—is comfortable. What isn’t comfortable is what resides outside the office walls. Because inside there are clear-cut steps, structures, systems and goals, while other areas of life don’t adhere to a rulebook.

“There’s no magic number of dates to go on before you find the one. No set amount of difficult phone calls with your mother before she ‘gets’ you and understands what you need from her,” said Canonico, who offers affirmative counseling and therapy to adults and teens, and clinical consulting services to individuals and organizations.

“Life is much grayer and murkier, which is scary—particularly when your capacity to tolerate discomfort is all used up during your work day,” she said.

But letting work define you is problematic. When they’re not at work, Canonico’s clients describe feeling anxious, overwhelmed, lost, stuck and disconnected from themselves.

Licensed mental health counselor Diane Webb noted that when people don’t nourish their passions, they report a lower sense of who they are, a surge in depressed mood and a sense of emptiness. Some of Webb’s clients describe feeling like a real-life version of the movie “Groundhog Day.”

But it doesn’t have to be this way. Below, you’ll find a range of tips to help you figure out who you truly are outside of work, and as Webb said, “give your life a richness that is full of things that enlighten you, teach you, thrill you and soothe you.”

Wander your city. This is what Tierno prescribes to clients who can’t find anything they’re interested in outside of work. Tierno is a licensed clinical social worker and founder of Online Therapy NYC, where she specializes in helping dynamic, intelligent, driven, busy people to connect in healthier, more fulfilling relationships through online therapy.

That is, explore your city without any agenda. The only rule is to pay attention to what piques your interest. Because that’ll likely point you in the right direction.

“If your eye catches a spectacular piece of pottery in a shop window, let yourself go inside and spend some time looking around. Could this be the fledgling stages of a ceramics hobby?”

After you’ve gathered some data on what you might be curious about, give yourself several months to explore these interests, Tierno said. For instance, you might take a local class in wheel-throwing.

Don’t be surprised if you feel some discomfort: “[T]hese muscles have never been used before, or at least not in a very long time,” Tierno said. You might be used to being in charge and being seasoned at work. Try to embrace the unfamiliar, and focus on the process.

Set boundaries. Many people don’t have strict boundaries between work and home. Understandably. As Webb said, “People now carry their ‘office’ with them all day via their smartphone and other devices.” Maybe you actually work from home several days or every day. In other words, our home is no longer the place we exclusively relax and leave work behind.

Canonico stressed the importance of having a dedicated workspace to give yourself some concrete separation, if possible. Maybe that’s an office, or a desk in your living room or the same corner of the couch or kitchen table (depending on how much space you have). She also suggested changing clothes as soon as you get home (or perhaps stop working), “to ‘take off’ the day”; and not checking email or working for at least one hour after waking up and two to three hours before bed.

Boundaries are critical when you’re just starting your career, too. You might be tempted to work long hours and be available to your clients all the time. However, Canonico said it’s best to set boundaries right away. This way, “your clients and colleagues [don’t] have to ‘unlearn’ having 24/7 access to you. It’s easier to loosen as you go than tighten along the way.”

Other examples of boundaries include: not responding to work-related matters on weekends, and requesting another team member if you’re feeling overworked or overburdened, said Webb, who has a private psychotherapy practice in Clifton Park, N.Y., and pens the blog The Peace Journal about helping people develop emotional wellness as a lifestyle choice.

Your “boundaries with work should suit your work environment, the needs of your position and your individual needs to have the best result.”

Revisit old hobbies. Reflect on the activities and hobbies that you loved as a child, teen or young adult. Then carve out time to practice them. According to Webb, this might be anything from sports to hiking to baking.

Revisit relationships. “When someone’s work life takes precedence, their personal relationships often start to suffer,” Webb said. This is why she recommended refocusing on your relationships with a partner, kids, friends and family. Spend quality time with them. Have real conversations without interruption.

Create space to just be. “We have to intentionally create space for our true selves to emerge, which means holding time for ourselves to just be,” Canonico said. This is also a helpful way to practice tolerating discomfort.

Canonico shared these examples: You might spend 20 minutes in the morning drinking your coffee or tea, without any digital devices, or spend Sunday afternoons by yourself. Notice what thoughts and feelings arise. Where does your mind go when there’s no task or structure?

If you do need some structure, Canonico suggested finding writing prompts or doing Julia Cameron’s Morning Pages.

Meet like-minded people. Check out local meet-up groups, spiritual centers or adult sports teams, Webb said. Think about other places around potential passions, such as book clubs, art clubs and non-profit organizations.

Experiment with new experiences. This might include anything from trying watercolor painting to taking a dance class to participating in National Novel Writing Month, Canonico said. Even if you end up not enjoying an experience, that’s still important information. “There’s no such thing as failing when it’s an experiment.”

Tierno’s clients are initially fearful that their work success will suffer if they focus on other things. However, she finds the opposite is true: “[P]eople’s work lives actually flourish when they dedicate time to rounding out their life experience. That fulfilled person brings far more energy and curiosity to their work life, and is a heck of a lot more interesting to talk with at the company holiday party.”

Toxic relationships include relationships with toxic parents. Typically, they do not treat their children with respect as individuals. They won’t compromise, take responsibility for their behavior, or apologize. Often these parents have a mental disorder or have a serious addiction. We all live with the consequences of poor parenting. However, if our childhoods were traumatic, we carry wounds from abusive or dysfunctional parenting. When they haven’t healed, toxic parents can reinjure us in ways that make growth and recovery difficult. When we grow up with dysfunctional parenting, we may not recognize it as such. It feels familiar and normal. We may be in denial and not realize that we’ve been abused emotionally, particularly if our material needs were met.

Toxic Behavior

Here are some questions to ask yourself about your parents’ behavior. If this conduct is chronic and persistent, it can be toxic to your self-esteem.

1. Do they over-react, create a scene?
2. Do they use emotional blackmail?
3. Do they make frequent or unreasonable demands?
4. Do they try to control you? “My way or the highway.”
5. Do they criticize or compare you?
6. Do they listen to you with interest?
7. Do they manipulate, use guilt or play the victim?
8. Do they blame or attack you?
9. Do they take responsibility and apologize?
10. Do they respect your physical and emotional boundaries?
11. Do they disregard your feelings and needs?
12. Do they envy or compete with you?

Detach from Toxic Parents

Detaching is an emotional concept and has nothing to do with physical proximity. It means not reacting, not taking things personally, nor feeling responsible for someone else’s feelings, wants, and needs. Our parents can easily push our buttons. That’s because they’re the ones that put them there!  It’s harder to not react to our parents than to our friends and partners, with whom we’re on more equal footing. (Related reading: “Getting Triggered and What You Can Do”) Even if you move as far away as you can, emotionally, you may still react and have trouble detaching.

Be Assertive and Set Boundaries

Sometimes, it’s impossible to hold on to healthy behavior when we’re around our parents. Our boundaries were learned in our family. If we don’t go along, our family, especially parents, may test us. You may have trouble setting new boundaries with your parents. Perhaps, you have a mom who calls every day or a sibling who wants to borrow money or is abusing drugs. Confused, they may attack you or blame your new limits on your partner or therapist.

Relationships with toxic parents can be hard to walk away from. You may need distance from your parents to create the boundaries that you’re unable to make verbally. Some people cut off from family for that reason or due to unresolved anger and resentment from childhood. Cut-offs may be necessary in very abusive environments. However, although they reduce emotional tension, the underlying problems remain and can affect all of your relationships. Many family therapists suggest that the ideal way to become independent from your family is to work on yourself in therapy, then visit your parents and practice what you’ve learned. It’s far better for your growth to learn how to respond to abuse. I’ve witnessed clients who felt uncomfortable returning home do this. They gradually transitioned from reluctantly staying in their parents’ residence during visits, to becoming comfortable declining invitations home, to staying in a hotel or with friends without guilt. Some could eventually stay with their parents and enjoy it.

When you visit, pay attention to unspoken rules and the boundary and communication patterns.  Try behaving in a way that’s different from the role you played growing up. Pay attention to the habits and defenses you use to manage anxiety. Ask yourself, “What am I afraid of?” Remember that although you may feel like a child with your parents, you aren’t one. You’re now a powerful adult. You can leave, unlike when you were a child.

Where active drug addiction and abuse are present, consider what boundaries you require in order to feel comfortable. Know your bottom-line. Is it a one-day or one-hour visit or only a short phone call? Some adult children of addicted parents refuse to talk on the phone or be around them when their parents are drinking our using drugs. You may have siblings who pressure you to rescue a parent, or you may be tempted to do so. With difficult family situations, it’s helpful to talk with a therapist or other people in recovery from codependency.

Some Truths about Having Toxic Parents

Healing a relationship begins with you — your feelings and attitudes. Sometimes working on yourself is all it takes. That doesn’t imply that your parents will change, but you will. Sometimes forgiveness is necessary or a conversation is required. Here are some things to think about when it comes to your family:*

1. Your parents don’t have to heal for you to get well.
2. Cut-offs don’t heal.
3. You are not your parents.
4. You’re not the abusive things they say about you either. (Related reading: “Codependency is Based on Fake Facts“)
5. You don’t have to like your parents, but you might still be attached and love them.
6. Active addiction or abuse by a parent may trigger you. Set boundaries and practice nonattachment. (See “14 Tips for Letting Go.”)
7. You can’t change or rescue family members.
8. Indifference, not hatred or anger, is the opposite of love.
9. Hating someone interferes with loving yourself.
10. Unresolved anger and resentment hurt you.

What You Can Do

Start therapy and attend CoDA, ACoA, or Al-Anon meetings. Learn to identify abuse and manipulation. Learn How to Raise Your Self-Esteem and heal shame and childhood trauma. (See Conquering Shame and Codependency: 8 Steps to Freeing the True You.) Have a support network, and become financially independent from your parents.

Do the exercises in my ebook, How To Speak Your Mind – Become Assertive and Set Limits and webinar “How to Be Assertive.” With abusive and difficult parents, my ebook, Dealing with a Narcissist: 8 Steps to Raise Self-Esteem and Set Boundaries with Difficult People lays out particular and specific strategies for confronting bad behavior with highly defensive people.

©Darlene Lancer 2018

* Adapted from Codependency for Dummies 2nd Ed. 2014, John Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Suicide is tremendously hard to talk about. It can be especially overwhelming for people without mental health training. Yet friends and family are often the first to learn that a loved one is having suicidal thoughts.

As therapists, we can do more to help someone in crisis. Underestimating this need is a terrible mistake. Suicide is the second leading cause of death for 10 to 34-year-olds, says the National Institute of Mental Health.  

We can help people learn safe, helpful ways to respond to those whose suffering is so great, they see no other way out.

Here are 10 questions and answers about talking with someone who you are worried may be suicidal.

1) How do you know someone might be suicidal?

You may hear them say statements like:

• “I wish I was never born.”
• “Your life would be so much better without me.”
• “I feel like I’m just taking up space.”

If hearing such statements worries you, it should. These sentiments are warning signs that a person is thinking about suicide, also called suicidal ideation.

Though these are passive suicidal statements, they should be taken very seriously. They may mean a person is thinking about ending his or her life. This person is struggling with a mental health crisis and we need to attend to this.

Even passive thoughts of suicide deserve prompt attention. Respond immediately. To know better what to make of the statements you just heard, ask more questions.

2) What behaviors are warning signs for suicide?

Some people may keep their thoughts and plans for suicide to themselves, which makes helping them very difficult.

However, those considering suicide sometimes show signs that they are thinking, preparing, or seeking the means to carry it out. Suicide warning signs (adapted from helpguide.org) include:

• Appearing agitated, anxious, irritable
• Becoming extremely sensitive and strongly reactive to criticism
• Talking, writing, journaling or joking about suicide
• Making statements like “I’d be better off dead”
• Withdrawing from activities or friends
• Gathering special items to give friends or family
• Saying what sounds like a final goodbye
• Seeking out the means to kill themselves — a weapon, substance, or dangerous location

3) If a person seems troubled, is it safe to ask if they are thinking about hurting themselves? Can asking increase the danger of suicide?

It is a myth that asking questions will increase the chance people will harm themselves.

Asking questions shows you care.

One of the most important things you can offer — as a therapist, family member, bystander or friend — is living proof that someone cares.

People start thinking of suicide when they feel hopeless and alone in their struggle. They do not see a way out. Telling them they are not alone — and really meaning it — is huge. They desperately need someone to care.

4) What kind of questions can you ask someone if you are worried about their mental health?

Here are some questions you can ask:

• “You seem really depressed lately — how are you handling that? Getting help?”
• “Do you think about hurting yourself?”
• “What do you think about your future?”
• “Are you feeling hopeless?”
• “Have you thought about doing something about that?”

In general, ask to learn if the person could be a danger to him- or herself.

5) What if you are not sure what to make of the answer, or the person is resisting help?

If you are in relationship with someone and you are fearful they might hurt themselves, tell them so. You can say,

• “I am worried about you.”
• “I care about you.”
• “I am scared you may be thinking of hurting yourself because…”

Tell your loved one why you are worried. Listen. Offer to help them get support. Remind them they are not alone, you care!

Call a therapist as soon as possible.  You will need support to take good care of yourself and your loved one. Your loved one will need help to evaluate and treat their depression. You may not be able to see the therapist right away, but your call will help you get the support you need.

If you see warning signs of suicide, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-8255 or 911.

The Crisis Text Line also helps people through live text messaging with a trained specialist: Text “START” to 741-741. See resources below for more support.

6) If you ask someone “Have you thought about hurting yourself?” and the answer is yes, can you believe the answer?

I would urge you to believe the answer. They are telling you they need help!

7) What do you do with the answer?  What do you do when you realize, for example, “my child just said: “I’ve thought about taking all the medicine in the cabinet….’”?

If your child has told you something that shows a thought-out way they would end their life or hurt themselves, call their therapist, a suicide prevention hotline, hospital, or 911.  You may decide to take them to the nearest emergency room to avoid leaving them alone.

It does not matter if your child says they are going to hate you for getting them help.  They may hate you, but by taking action, they will still be alive. That is the priority.

8) What if I suspect that my child is just being dramatic?

A person who feels enough emotional pain to make desperate statements needs someone to assist them in getting support.

It is true that a person can talk of dying, and not intend to take his or her own life. But a suicide attempt or suicidal ideation are not mere stunts for attention. They are important ways people communicate dangerous levels of distress. More of us need to know how to respond.

“Most people who die by suicide tell someone they plan to hurt themselves before they take their lives,” says the American Society for Suicide Prevention.

If someone talks to you of their own death, or the means to carry it out, you have a precious, urgent opportunity to act before it is too late.

9) Isn’t suicide rare?

Suicide is not nearly as rare as people think.

Suicide is the second leading cause of death for people aged 10 to 24 — second only to accidental death. Suicide rates have gone up 28% from 1999 through 2016. The up-trend is continuing.

10) Who is at greatest risk of suicide?

No one is 100% immune to mental health conditions that can raise the risk of suicide.

People who are experiencing depression are at risk for suicide.  It can come with general depression, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), and bipolar disorder.  It can come with a number of other mental health conditions.

Teens and young adults can experience emotions with greater intensity since their brain is not fully developed until the mid-20’s and may have difficulty regulating their thoughts and feelings within a range they can tolerate.

In his book Brainstorm: The Power and Purpose of the Teenage Brain, psychologist Daniel Siegel describes the “emotional spark” of adolescence, in which “emotions can arise rapidly and intensely with out the calming influence of the prefrontal cortex” (the reasoning part of the brain which redevelops during this time).  Therefore, people may be more susceptible to suicidal ideation during adolescence and young adulthood than at other points in their lives.

Resist the urge to judge, dismiss, or try to talk someone out of how they feel. Asking questions and taking action to get needed support are two of the most important things we can do to prevent the tragedy of suicide.

Even If You Feel Hopeless, There Is Hope

We are only human — nobody is perfect. Sometimes we misunderstand each other, or get overwhelmed by what is going on inside of ourselves. But we do not need to be perfect to be healthier, happier, and more supportive to ourselves and each other in the ways we need it most.

People can — and do — recover even from the darkest, most frightening places a mind can go. Even if you feel like giving up, hope is not lost. Hope and caring are meaningful, powerful gifts we can give each other — ones that can make all the difference in relieving anguish and saving lives.

More Resources:

National Resources:

Active Minds – helping students on college campuses change perceptions of mental health

American Foundation for Suicide Prevention See also : 2015 Facts and Figures Infographic

Crisis Text Line – Text “START” to 741-741

Josh Anderson Foundation – providing teens with mental health education

National Suicide Prevention Lifeline: 1 (800) 273-8255
See also the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline website

Local To Alexandria Virginia:

Alexandria 24-Hour Emergency Mental Health Services
720 N. St Asaph St, Alexandria, VA 22314
703-746-3401

PRS Crisis Link (formerly Crisis Link)
24/7 regional hotline: 703-527-4077

“In individual emotional development the precursor of the mirror is the mother’s face.”  – D. W. Winnicott, Mirror-role of Mother and Family in Child Development

When we look into someone’s eyes, we can feel loved, or hated, dismissed or understood.

Even as an adult it’s often a powerful experience and brings us into contact with the lingering resonance and echo of infancy and with that a sense of our struggle to be recognized by our first mirror — our mother.

We all have buried inside us a felt memory of the experience of being mirrored in our mother’s eyes.

For first-time mothers, breastfeeding and interacting with their infant can bring back that sense of continuity, symbiosis and connection — in a good way.

But it can also bring feelings that are frightening and incoherent, like falling into an alternate existence — or into nothing at all.

In his article inspired by Lacan’s essay on The Mirror Stage, psychoanalyst D.W.Winnicott examines our early experiences of being mirrored.

“What does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother’s face? I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself, In other words the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there. All this is too easily taken for granted. I am asking that this which is naturally done well by mothers who are caring for their babies shall not be taken for granted. I can make my point by going straight over to the case of the baby whose mother reflects her own mood or, worse still, the rigidity of her own defenses. In such a case what does the baby see? 

Of course nothing can be said about the single occasions on which a mother could not respond. Many babies, however, do have to have a long experience of not getting back what they are giving. They look and they do not see themselves. There are consequences. [… ]the baby gets settled in to the idea that when he or she looks, what is seen is the mother’s face. The mother’s face is not then a mirror. So perception takes the place of apperception, perception takes the place of that which might have been the beginning of a significant exchange with the world, a two-way process in which self-enrichment alternates with the discovery of meaning in the world of seen things.” [My emphases]

Although, of course this is quite dense, what I think Winnicott means is that mothers who are distracted by their own thoughts or are emotionally unavailable (through stress, anxiety, fear, or unresolved trauma) will not respond to the baby in a way that is useful for the infant’s developing sense of self. This lack of response takes away the opportunity for the baby to see his or herself reflected and responded to in the mother’s face. They also lose the opportunity for exchange and to understand the social environment as a place of exchange where their developing self is part of a potential for relationship.

This early mirroring is also theorized by self-psychologist Heinz Kohut in his psychoanalytic theories. For Kohut, the major task of the therapist is to provide the mirroring that was absent in infancy and he sees the therapist’s role as that of “self-object”, providing empathetic acknowledgement for the often neglected or repressed “true” self and allowing that often fragile self to emerge.

Both writers underline the power of these experiences — the experience of being mirrored. They also emphasize that our first social experiences can impact our felt sense of being attached, being loveable and underneath those, being there at all.

It seems like a huge and weighty impact for something that most of us don’t remember.

Contemporary researchers have found evidence to support Winnicott’s theories. For example, we know from the work of Alan Schore that facial expressions and visual cues are vitally important for early development and the attachment relationship.  Schore has theorized that our right brain dominates brain growth in infancy and he has helped us understand where some of the unverbalized feelings teased out through the work of therapy come from and why they provide a powerful undercurrent for our social relationships — and our sense of self.

In her book on attachment and mother’s eyes, psychoanalyst Mary Ayres argues that the consequence for those who miss out on being mirrored adequately is a primary sense of shame. This sense of shame becomes conflated and incorporated into the developing sense of self and provides an unrecognized core around which the personality is formed. It is not normally available to conscious thought, but remains as a felt sense of being unloveable or somehow defective.

As adults in therapy we seek help for issues that unfold as a result of underlying feelings of unloveability. The right therapist will provide us with mirroring, and allow us to feel understood and empathized with.

As a therapist, I am well aware that words often fail — they fail me and they fail my clients. But understanding, empathy,and yes, love can bridge the gaps that language just falls into.

For Kohut and other theorists, empathy is the primary healing force in therapy, and without it we merely provide intellectual argument — words and ideas that glance off the deeper wounds of early trauma.

Parenting involves a lot of minutiae, and from sunup to sundown, the days can feel crammed. And amid all the details—changing diapers, potty-training, making meals, driving everywhere, helping with homework, doing bedtime—what can get lost is the bigger picture.

Even if your kids are older and don’t need as much hands-on attention, your days are likely quite full. Which means it can be tough to pause and reflect on your role in raising your children.

Yet, knowing your role as a parent is vital. It’s like a writer knowing the theme of their story. It’s the infrastructure for everything that happens, driving their plot and what their characters do. Your role as a parent guides your actions and the choices you make in raising your kids. It guides your answers to tricky questions and situations.

We asked parents to share how they see their roles, along with suggestions on how you might go about identifying your own role. After all, it’s personal.

Ryan Howes, Ph.D, a psychologist who has 7- and 9-year-old boys, sees his role as a mirror: to help his kids see who they truly are and how they can be effective in this world. For instance, he might tell one of his sons who’s an introvert: “You have a big event coming up, and I know how those exhaust you, so let’s take some time to be mellow today.” He might tell his other son, who’s an extrovert: “You’re so excited to be around people! That’s wonderful! Let’s see how you can use that skill to help others feel included.”

In other words, how Howes guides his kids really depends on who they are—not on what society subscribes or what his past or ego believe they should be. He wants to help his kids become the best version of themselves.

“My biggest fear is that they work for years to reach some external goal, only to realize it was never congruent with who they are at their core,” Howes said. He tries to find ways to encourage their natural tendencies and interests. If one son loves playing music, Howes finds instruments and makes time to help him learn. If the other doesn’t like crowds, Howes helps him to decline those invitations and learn to cope when saying not isn’t an option.

Therapist Shonda Moralis, LCSW, who has a 16-year-old and a 6-year-old, sees herself as an unconditionally loving guide. This includes allowing her kids to “venture out, discover what lights them up, make mistakes, and enjoy successes.” It includes picking “them up when they fall or nudge—sometimes kindly shove—them back in the right direction when they veer off-course.”

Moralis, author of Breathe, Mama, Breathe: 5-Minute Mindfulness for Busy Moms, also gives her kids room to grow within safe limits. She doesn’t dictate what they should do and how they should do it. Because if she did, they wouldn’t “learn to make their own healthy decisions—including mistakes, which I view as invaluable learning opportunities.”

Other parents also see themselves as guides and teachers. Emily Fonnesbeck, RD, a dietitian and mom of four, believes it’s her role to teach her children how to create and achieve goals, care for themselves, make wise decisions and love and serve others. “That is in large part influenced by my faith and values, which I hope to pass on to them.”

Psychologist Kevin Chapman, Ph.D, whose daughters are 11 and 13, believes his role is to steward his kids “in becoming spiritually, emotionally, and physically healthy adults with a stable sense of self that allows them to effectively contribute to society.” He also believes it’s his responsibility to teach his daughters to recognize the importance of emotions, and the effect they have on navigating the world.

Clair Mellenthin, LCSW, a child therapist and mom to three, also helps her kids learn to navigate their emotions, new places and relationships. She helps them “shape their knowledge about self and others.” She prioritizes listening to them to learn about what they need and want to experience. “[U]ltimately, they get to make their own decisions and hopefully, launch successfully into adulthood with a strong foundation to stand on.”

Rebecca Wong, LCSW, a relationship therapist and mom to two daughters, believes it’s her role to teach her kids about the various realms of human experience, including physical, emotional, spiritual and intellectual. She also teaches her kids that they have inherent worth and imperfection is good and normal. She teaches them about healthy boundaries so they protect themselves and don’t hurt others.

Identifying Your Own Parenting Role

Self-reflect. “The more insight we parents have into ourselves as individuals, the more able we are to deliberately choose our behavior and parenting style, instead of unconsciously imitating our childhoods,” Moralis said. That is, how were you parented? How does it affect your parenting and habits today?

Chapman encouraged readers to consider these questions: What behaviors, both positive and negative, do you model for your kids? What behaviors do you need to modify? Are you emotionally regulated around your kids? How do you communicate love, security and safety to them?

Mellenthin suggested these questions: Can you look in the mirror and feel proud of what you’re doing? Are you using certain situations to punish your kids or allow them to learn? What feels best inside of you?

Turn to reputable resources. Howes suggested learning about child development and reading Unconditional Parenting or The Whole-Brain Child. Wong stressed the importance of identifying where you struggle in relationships and working on that. She suggested reading Parenting from the Inside Out and Facing Codependence.

Harness your own assets. Identify your strengths, skills and interests, and use them in ways that most benefit your kids, Howes said. For instance, if you’re a natural-born artist, teacher or explorer, how can you use that to support your kids? This also helps you spot your biases. Howes shared this example: You’re highly organized, but your child is the opposite. How can you step out of your comfort zone to make the most of their free-spirited nature?

Learn about your child. Pay attention to your child’s temperament and natural tendencies, as Howes illustrated above. Moralis also noted that some kids need more direction than others. “It is about being tuned into your child, his natural proclivity for impulsivity versus restraint or caution and guiding accordingly.”

Don’t live your child’s life. Howes advised against seeing your child as “a redo of your own life.” He knows so many people who’ve spent decades achieving their parents’ goals, “while they withered a little with each passing year.” “I’ve seen parents who are insecure with their intellect forcing their kids to always perform above and beyond…Or the ashamed introvert who pushes her introverted children to be the life of the party because she never could.”

Some call the theme of a story its heartbeat or soul. Which I believe are perfect terms for thinking about your role in raising your kids. Because your role is what gives your parenting meaning, purpose and life.

Throughout college and university, I had the rare opportunity to study and observe what we would deem as sociopaths, psychopaths. At the time, very little was understood about these groups, such that it wasn’t reflected in the DSM-IV, the instrument I was studying at the time. Professors made cases for the study of psychopathy and subsequent placement into the DSM-IV of this type of constellation of features, and also made several arguments that thrust certain celebrities into the spotlight.

Antisocial personality disorder, not to be confused with psychopathy, does not mean that a person is against being in public or doesn’t like to hang out with other people. Instead, in psychology parlance, it refers to individuals with select traits that make them “violate the rights of others,” in highly dysfunctional ways, which can include anything from lying, cheating, to killing. It should be noted however that individuals who fall within this category have a range of these spheres of behaviors, from trivial to severe and many also have different conditions where their antisocial behavior can be mixed with narcissism or histrionic disorder.

Although psychopaths can be characterized as antisocial, they come with more specific attributes. Robert Hare best defined “psychopathy” by creating the famous Psychopathy Checklist (PCL-R) to help detect psychopaths. He also wrote the book Without Conscience, a book that describes numerous encounters with these extraordinary (for better or worse) individuals.

Most professionals in criminal justice have used this checklist since its inception around the early 2000s and it’s considered the premier checklist for helping objectively identify psychopaths. While there are some possible flaws in the test, since it is a self-disclosure tool and there is the chance that test takers are lying when they give it, it nevertheless shows high reliability across inmates who have been given the test and also of those who have administered this test in others setting.

In Mark Dutton’s book, The Good Psychopath’s Guide to Success, he makes the case for distinguishing between “good psychopaths,” and “bad psychopaths.” Never before have I read in the literature psychopaths being distinguished as good or bad, so this is a very interesting interpretation and re-evaluation of the literature.

In the book, when he describes the differences between a “good psychopath” and a “bad psychopath”, he says you can distinguish them from whether they commit good or bad deeds, at least what we would consider “good,” and “bad,” in a given context. A “good example,” would be fighting on behalf of one’s country, doing impulsive and wrong deeds for the betterment of humanity (which of course, is subjective) while a “bad example,” would be killing someone just for the gratification of it.

Dutton describes psychopaths as being overall more casual and more straightforward and matter-of-fact. They do what they do and they don’t need to feel anything. This is one of the main ideas in Dr. Hutton’s book, this emphasis on not feeling and just taking action, come what may. Of course, you don’t need to be a psychopath to take action on a goal, but certainly it would seem that psychopaths have this down better than most!

Dutton doesn’t say you should go out and kill someone; rather, he argues that you can and should crank up some of your psychopathic qualities—those specifically favorable to taking action– so you can be more productive, value your time better, and get the most out of your day. Obviously this has a lot to do with productivity, but there are other traits as well to consider.

Impulsivity

At some point, you just have to move, the way money moves. Most people don’t realize that money moves. It actually does. And sometimes in order for you to catch a wave of a trend you have to act fast. This is all about being impulsive and spontaneous. Realizing what you want and taking action instead of just waiting around and wasting time.  

Shallow Affect

Psychopaths just don’t get affected as much by the circumstances around them. They don’t dwell on them.

They are, for all intents and purposes, straight arrows accept that they will muddle through life and take the licks with everything else. This we learn in Dutton’s book as well, this sense of making peace with the licks that you get in life.

Lack of Remorse/Guilt

To the extreme, this could be very terrible, but a little bit of lack of inhibition and guilt in the world can really take you a long way. For example, Steve Jobs wasn’t thinking about whether people liked him or not, he just staked his claim and was even fired from his own company that he created until he was re-hired again. Many people with lots of emotions and feelings of betrayal would need to be wooed back and demand an apology, but not Jobs. He just went to work. It wasn’t personal. He just did.

Glibness/Superficial Charm

Charm can be defined in many ways but I generally think of charm as being able to identify with another person and to give them the space to think and speak. Not to give them dismissive remarks but to actually give them the recognition of their humanity. Psychopaths can be very charming, but so must we all be when we’re selling something to someone. As many authors have noted in business literature throughout the decades, we are all in sales.

Grandiose Sense of Self Worth

A lot of successful people have something called “showmanship” (Kennedy, 1996). Barnum had it, Jobs had it, and yes, even Trump has it. It’s that quality, that je ne c’est quois, which makes a person look electrifying in public, and that makes them seem like a character on a stage in a theater. People in business are promoters (Kennedy, 1996) and we all have to promote at one time or another the projects that we’re doing, to get buy-in support from others. For many, especially psychopaths, this quality comes natural.  

Stimulation / Proneness to Boredom

The devil is in the details. But if you’re scatterbrained and jumping from one idea to the next, the way many psychopaths have done, you’re likely to just spread yourself thin and not accomplish anything. Still, there’s that sense of keeping and building momentum that psychopaths possess which actually turns out to be good for business. When we’re in a sales slump, for example, where we’re not selling enough of what we have to offer and the numbers—our income—is low, we have to keep going and keep the vigor up so that we can perform to optimal capacity and speed. Psychopaths just do this naturally, but you can too. Don’t get scatterbrained, but keep going, keep the energy up, don’t get bored, vary your activities a little. In the book The Closers, for example, you are advised to re-group by reversing your sales pitch and doing it backwards or going out and buying something as a respite between sales, or even just acting like you don’t care about the sale at all. In a way, you are advised to vary up your strategies so that you’re not being monotonous and boring in your sales approach, to trick your mind. But psychopaths, it would seem, don’t need to trick themselves. They just… are.

Conclusion

All business endeavors lie in actions. Not even action steps that you write down to take later, but actions. And this is by far one of the most important lessons, if not the most important lesson, to learn from a psychopath. When they imagine what they want or picture doing something, they just do it. There are no reservations. No holding back. They achieve their goals through their impulsiveness and without letting personal emotions get in the way.

There’s a lot we can learn from the psychopath. Of course you don’t want to have all the traits of a psychopath, but some of their traits can come in handy in business. Their natural charm that allows them to be persuasive, their high self-esteem that allows them to appear confident to the public eye, and their shamelessness that allows them to do as they please without feeling guilty or judged are all traits that can help one succeed when running a business.

Eating disorders are dangerous, life-threatening conditions that affect all aspects of the individual. In the past, many treatment models focused solely on the psychological, medical and nutritional components of the eating disorder itself rather than treating the complete, individual person. Now there is a model that builds off the traditional methods to focus on healing all dimensions of the whole person. To do this, clinicians must understand the biological underpinnings that cause eating disorders and the behaviors that help maintain them long-term, and work together in multi-disciplinary teams to achieve total health.

The Adaptive Care Model

The Adaptive Care Model was developed by a group of industry experts at Alsana, an eating disorder recovery community, working together to create a comprehensive, integrated model for eating disorder treatment centered on total health for each client. This model is built on the belief that full recovery is possible when an individual is approached collaboratively with compassion, and has the opportunity to receive evidence-based treatment. The model treats the whole person, addressing five dimensions through an integrated approach:

• Therapeutic: The therapy program is centered on an understanding of the complexity of eating disorders and their underlying biological, behavioral and environmental influences. Therapy is provided with compassion and acceptance to create an environment in which clients stabilize symptoms, process underlying issues, and integrate changes to create a life worth living based on values and a sense of purpose.
• Nutritional: The nutrition program integrates the balance of nourishment and pleasure within a real-world environment to restore a nurturing relationship with both food and body. This dimension is focused on helping clients learn to experience food, meals, cooking and even shopping with joy.
• Medical: The medical program is based on building health resilience to provide a physical foundation of recovery. Clinicians treat the nuanced medical, physical, and psychiatric complications of eating disorders with a comprehensive plan, consistent methods, precise interventions and compassion.
• Movement: The movement program is built on evidence-based treatment that integrates progressive levels of movement as healing for both body and mind. Clients learn how to enjoy and relish everyday activity and exercise in a healthy way.
• Relational: The relational program provides guidance and support for clients to explore and grow their own sense of purpose as part of the recovery process. Individuals recover in relationship with others, themselves and in connection with a deep sense of purpose.
  

Data-driven and innovative treatment methods support recovery by targeting areas of the brain specifically affected by eating disorders. When combined with ongoing assessments and feedback from the client, interventions are tailored to meet the specific needs of the individual. The Adaptive Care Model is not based on a specific method or intervention style, but rather encompasses all the appropriate methods available, and determines how best to apply them to each client based on his/her unique situation, assessments, feedback and personality. At the heart of the Adaptive Care Model is compassion and understanding. By viewing the individual as a person and treating all dimensions of that person, the model is better able to adapt to each client’s needs to achieve total health.

Treating the Root Cause of Eating Disorders

The Adaptive Care Model builds off of a neurodevelopment model of etiology for the eating disorder, and addresses the eating disorder in its development and maintenance phases. Eating disorders develop in individuals with a biological diathesis that is triggered by a behavioral activator – typically dieting behavior. This biological diathesis is the result of a genetic predisposition and interpersonal neurobiological development within the individual. Eating disorder symptoms are then maintained based on the emotional, relational and neurological adaptive function they have taken on.

The Adaptive Care Model takes into account the biology, genetic predisposition and neurochemistry that result from early attachment patterns. It leverages the interpersonal neurobiological model that describes human development and functioning as a product of the interaction between the body, mind and relationship, understanding how the brain and mind are developed and how they function based on the interplay of genes in the context of relationships.

The model recognizes the predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors that contribute to the disorder’s development and maintenance over time, allowing clinicians to target interventions to specifically address these factors:

Predisposing Factors
The heritability of eating disorders is estimated to be as high as 70 percent, while children of individuals with eating disorders are up to 11.3 times more likely to develop one themselves than the general population. Common temperamental factors associated with eating disorders include harm avoidance, novelty-seeking, perfectionism and persistence, while specific neurochemical and neurobiological findings have also been identified including problems in reward system, decision-making, perseveration, interoception and perception of body size.

Precipitating Factors
In terms of precipitating factors, dieting has been identified as potent predictor in the development of eating disorders. Relatedly, the vast majority of individuals with eating disorders reported that dieting attempts preceded the onset of their disorder, suggesting that dieting may represent a common developmental path to both disorders.  

Perpetuating Factors
Once the eating disorder has been triggered, perpetuating factors — emotional, relational, neurological and chemical – take hold to maintain the disorder. The maintenance of the eating disorder is usually a protective strategy, yet these perpetuating factors have different and multiple functions, often evolving over time to explain what the individual gets out of the eating disorder and why he/she continues to engage in the behaviors. For example, the eating disorder may start as a coping mechanism for emotion dysregulation and eventually transforms into an obsessive compulsive disorder ritual or a relief from depression. Other perpetuating factors include:

Neurodevelopment Model Applications

The Adaptive Care Model places significant importance on educating clients and families on the neurobiology of eating disorders to help remove shame and provide a deeper understanding and appreciation for the complexity of the condition. Brain-based interventions and attachment-based interventions are then applied to prime each client’s brain for change. Using relationships as vehicles for change, methods include:

• Stabilization interventions, including cognitive behavioral therapies, to eliminate behavioral precipitating factors such as dieting
• Processing interventions, such as Eye-Movement Desensitization Reprocessing (EMDR), Somatic Experiencing (SE), and Expressive Therapies, to create neural integration
• Integration interventions, such as Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) and spiritual/relational therapies, to create an application of strategies for a life without an eating disorder

The Adaptive Care Model integrates evidence-based practices to prepare the brain to change its behaviors, enabling the individual to accept changes to eating disorder behaviors faster and more effectively.

Cognitive remediation therapy and self-directed neuroplasticity are used to improve brain flexibility and cognitive speed and processing. Brain changes with neutral stimuli are practiced first so muscles are ready when individuals work to change their eating disorder behaviors. Examples of these exercises include crosswords, timed tasks, word-find puzzles and spatial reasoning tasks.

By addressing the etiological, underlying causes and maintaining aspects of eating disorders, clients can progress in all five dimensions of care throughout their recovery journey, and prepare to transition back to the demands of everyday life while learning how to live healthy, happy and meaningful lives.

Adaptive, Collaborative, Compassionate
The Adaptive Care Model places each individual client at the center of the model and with all efforts adapted to meet their needs through collaboration and compassion.

Adaptive
Rather than establishing a specific style or method of treatment, the Adaptive Care Model embraces all evidence-based methods and uses data from ongoing assessments and client feedback to inform treatment plans and identify opportunities for adjustments as needed.

Through ongoing assessments, emotional regulation, cognitive abilities, self-compassion, mindfulness and neural flexibility can be measured, helping to monitor neural integration associated with the recovery process and confirm that applied methods address all predisposing, precipitating and perpetuating factors.

To ensure all methods are available to clients, treatment teams must be trained in a wide variety of treatment practices and be nimble enough to recognize when something is working and when it isn’t to shift gears when needed. Staff must become experts in these methods so they can adapt their strategies based on each client’s needs and neurobiology. The Adaptive Care Model is best served in a supportive work environment where staff are trained, supervised and supported so they can provide the highest-quality of customized care to each client.

Collaborative
Implementing a multi-disciplined approach to treatment that integrates five distinct dimensions of an individual’s wellbeing requires teamwork and communication. To guarantee consistency of care, all teams must constantly be in synch, collaborating on treatment plans and dynamic interventions that address the unique needs of each client.

Adaptive Care Model treatment plans are designed to include all five dimensions of care on a daily basis. For example, clients may start each day with mindful activities such as stretching and yoga, as well as eat their meals with gratitude and intention. These seemingly normal tasks address the psychological, medical, nutritional, relational and movement components with overlapping methods, similar to real-life circumstances.

Through regular assessments and team meetings, providers can track individual client progress across all five dimensions and make adjustments as needed to ensure sustainable recovery. In addition, clients meet with the team every week to provide his/her feedback directly to care team members and get updates on progress to ensure everyone is involved in the process from start to finish. Assessments begin upon admission and continue throughout treatment and discharge.  In addition, treatment teams follow-up with the client one year into recovery to provide a source of ongoing support.

Compassionate
In addition, the Adaptive Care Model approaches treatment with compassion and understanding. Eating disorder recovery is a difficult journey, with mental, physical and spiritual challenges along the way. To help clients develop trust, it is important to create a nurturing environment where clients feels safe to try new things and take risks. This model encourages clinicians to demonstrate their own vulnerability and authenticity so clients know the evidence-based practices are built on a foundation of compassion and caring.

The strength of the therapeutic alliance is vital to the success of the Adaptive Care Model. Regardless of which methods are used, good outcomes depend on the relationship between each client and their providers. This relationship is key, as we know that relationships impact neurochemistry to facilitate the change process. . Measuring the strength of each client’s therapeutic alliance on a weekly basis helps gauge the ups and downs of recovery so adjustments to interventions can be made to improve the quality of the relationship.

The Adaptive Care Model is designed to bring together treatment methods from five different disciplines to form a comprehensive, cohesive approach to caring for the whole person. Providers must understand the difficulty of eating disorder recovery and value each of the five dimensions of care as part of achieving total health in the individual. Through data collection, understanding and compassion, the methods can be properly applied, tailored and implemented for a collaborative approach between teams and with clients.

Generational Sin. As you can probably guess it is Sin that is passed down by generation, but not in that you’ve learned sinful traits and acted upon them, more in the way of that the past generations “Spirit of Sin” is stuck to you. So if you think about Karma and what goes around comes around, I suppose it would be similar except that what happened in your family from past generations is in your DNA — and not just your DNA, but your “Spiritual DNA”.

When I was conceived by two people under the influence of drugs and alcohol. The woman having low self esteem, and an early alcohol addiction (passed on by generations before her) and the man being a big drug pusher and womanizer around town, passed on by his alcoholic, adulterous, abusive father — the man (hardly, age 19) and the woman (age 22) who I am guessing was in love with said man.

Pregnant? That is not supposed to happen. The man gives the woman money for an abortion — I heard this story my whole life — sixty dollars, to be exact and he left, and it turns out he later was “narked” on (big words for a young girl to hear asking about who her father is) and sent to prison. Cocaine.

I learned recently that my mom who was scared and alone, and really never wanted to be a parent walked into the abortion clinic, and what happened that day-I will never know, but someone or something talked her out of the abortion and she walked back out.

Hearing my whole life that my real father gave my mother money for an abortion and left dug a hole in me somewhere. I think it dug the same hole in my mother who continued to fall into abusive and alcoholic relationships after she wrote father unknown on my birth certificate.

Walking in her footsteps, although I swore I never would, I found myself pregnant at 16 by a boy I believed I loved. The drugs and alcohol were the same, but the difference was this boy loved me back. When I conceived the baby on a park bench in 1994, it was the summer before my senior year. I had been sexually active since 12, and boys were my life. I see now I needed something to disassociate from my mom’s abusive boyfriend, and her alcoholism.

Drugs and alcohol made me feel a part of the crowd for the first time, cool, rebellious, and like I just didn’t care. I had turned off to the world, and given up on having a “normal” life.

When I found out I was pregnant my boyfriend had already moved to Utah to live with his mom. When I was working out one morning, I ran to the bathroom to throw up. I called him from the gym I worked at. I somehow made plans to fly to Utah that summer while pregnant, and thought about moving there and having the baby and going to college there. I arrived on my 17th birthday. They were all so gracious to this young, scared pregnant girl.

We talked and talked and through my morning sickness, and our love, I couldn’t wrap my head around having this baby. His mom sat with me over Red Robin and told me she had also had an abortion, and she would support me either way.

Many of my close friends were having abortions left and right, and so I felt validated. But another close friend of mine was pregnant too and having her baby. My boyfriend was distraught and felt like he had no choice, but I couldn’t believe that my life could be any different if I didn’t finish high school, and my mom had already said there was no way I could have this baby. So I felt powerless, and let it go.

My boyfriend slid further and further into his addiction, and every time I would visit it was worse.

He committed suicide ten years later, after a life of incarceration and drug addiction.

Another part of that story is one time he came to visit me at work in Seattle. I was 21 and newly sober, and guess what? Pregnant. He stood in my line at The Bon Marche and wanted to surprise me. He was clean, too. We’d been talking and writing, but I failed to tell him I was in a new relationship, and was expecting. So when he arrived all excited to see me and saw my baby bump, I think that was just too much for him to handle.

Life feels so tricky sometimes. I know for many years I walked a path of self, and didn’t know there was a Heavenly Father watching after me. I hoped so, but I didn’t think I qualified to be loved by anyone — least of all God.

So, I continued to be distant and follow what I knew. I chased the things I thought would make me happy or feel somewhat normal, but that hole just kept getting deeper.

Shame is a powerful thing. As an adult in her early forties, I feel the attachment of all of those things, the things that happened to me, the things I did. It affects many aspects of my life, many that I’m just realizing after being thrown into a small town in rural Minnesota. I’ve had to detox from distractions and habits that were keeping me running.

I’ve decided — and feel worthy enough for once — that I am ready to let go of all of this. It has kept me held down for so long, feeling not good enough, causing me to create more sin, chaos, and drama in my own life. Whether it be shopping too much to fill the void, creating arguments, not being able to be present with myself, anger and rage, anxiety and fear. Feeling unworthy of making friends, putting on a persona or false self and not being able to be the real me. I have worn many masks and been anyone you wanted to me to be, a chameleon of sorts to avoid being seen. My walls are high and my heart feels like a heavy stone. I am unable to let people in, and I am now willing to let that go. Totally just bringing up the feelings and pain and surrendering them and my past to the God of my understanding.

My parents have long since passed and I am carrying around all of this bondage, and this generational sin. The anger, complaining, judgment, envy, greed. Even the swearing, gossip, and pride. This feels like all of me. What will I be without all of my sins?

I can’t wait to find out.

Although the push-pull behaviors in our current relationships seem to be triggered by our partner, they are actually a result of old fears we carry from our childhood.

Anxiety is a normal part of being in an intimate relationship. It usually comes in two forms — the fear of abandonment, and the fear of engulfment. Part of us worries that if we dive in to love, we will be abandoned. On the flip side, we fear that if someone gets too close, we will be swamped or never able to leave.  

This article focuses on the fear of abandonment, which, to its excess, could show up as a lingering feeling of insecurity, intrusive thoughts, emptiness, unstable sense of self, clinginess, neediness, extreme mood fluctuations and frequent relationship conflicts. On the flip side, one might also cope by cutting off completely, and become emotionally numb.

Neuroscientists have found that our parents’ response to our attachment-seeking behaviors, especially during the first two years of our lives, encode our model of the world. If as infants, we have healthy attachment interactions with an attuned, available, and nurturing caregiver, we will be able to develop a sense of safety and trust. If our parent were able to respond to our calls for feeding and comfort most of the time, we would internalize the message that the world is a friendly place; when we are in need, someone will come and help us. We would also learn to calm ourselves in time of distress, and this forms our resilience as adults.

If, in contrast, the message that we were given as an infant was that the world is unsafe and that people cannot be relied upon, it would affect our ability to withstand uncertainty, disappointments and relationships ups and downs.  

Object Constancy

Most people can withstand some degree of relational ambiguity, and not be entirely consumed by worrying about potential rejection. When we argue with our loved ones, we can later bounce back from the negative event. When they are not physically by our side, we have an underlying trust that we are on their mind. All these involve something called Object Constancy, the ability to maintain an emotional bond with others even where there are distance and conflicts.

Object Constancy originates from the concept of Object Permanence — a cognitive skill we acquire at around 2 to 3 years old. It is the understanding that objects continue to exist even when they cannot be seen, touched, or sensed in some way. This is why babies love peekaboo — when you hide your face, they think it ceases to exist. According to psychologist Piaget, who founded the idea, achieving Object Constancy is a developmental milestone.  

Object Constancy is a psychodynamic concept, and we could think of it as the emotional equivalence of Object Permanence. To develop this skill, we mature into the understanding that our caregiver is simultaneously a loving presence and a separate individual who could walk away. Rather than needing to be with them all the time, we have an ‘internalized image’ of our parents’ love and care. So even when they are temporarily out of sight, we still know we are loved and supported.

In adulthood, Object Constancy allows us to trust that our bond with those who are close to us remains whole even when they are not physically around, picking up the phone, replying to our texts, or even frustrated at us. With Object Constancy, absence does not mean disappearance or abandonment, only temporary distance.

Since no parent could be available and attuned 100% of the time, we all suffer at least some minor bruises in learning to separate and individuate. However, when one had experienced more severe early or even preverbal attachment trauma, have extremely inconsistent or emotionally unavailable caregivers, or a chaotic upbringing, their emotional development might have been stunted at a delicate age, and they never had the opportunity to develop Object Constancy.

The lack of Object Constancy is at the heart of Borderline Personality traits. For the insecurely attached individuals, any kind of distance, even brief and benign ones, trigger them to re-experience the original pain of being left alone, dismissed, or disdain. Their fear could trigger coping survival modes such as denial, clinging, avoidance and dismissing others, lashing out in relationships, or the pattern of sabotaging relationships to avoid potential rejection.

Without Object Constancy, one tends to relate to others as “parts,” rather than “whole.” Just like a child who struggles to comprehend the mother as a complete person who sometimes rewards and sometimes frustrates, they struggle to hold the mental idea that both themselves and ourselves have both good and bad aspects. They may experience relationships as unreliable, vulnerable, and heavily dependent on the mood of the moment. There seems to be no continuity in the way they view their partner — it shifts moment to moment and is either good or bad.

Without the ability to see people as whole and constant, it becomes difficult to evoke the sense of the presence of the loved one when they are not physically present. The feeling of being left on their own can become so powerful and overwhelming that it evoke raw, intense and sometimes child-like reactions. When abandonment fear is triggered, shame and self-blame closely follow, further destabilizing the anxious person’s emotions. Because the origins of these strong reactions were not always conscious, it would seem as though they were “unreasonable” or “immature.” In truth, if we think of them as acting from a place of repressed or dissociated trauma — and consider what it was like for a 2-year-old to be left alone or be with an inconsistent caregiver — the intense fear, rage, and despair would all make sense.

Healing from the Void

A big part of developing Object Constancy is to have the ability to hold paradoxes in our mind. The same way the caregiver who feeds us is also the one who fails us, we must come to grapple with the truth that no relationship or people are all good or all bad.

If we can hold both the faults and the virtues in ourselves and others, we would not have to resort to the primitive defense of “splitting,” or black-or-white thinking. We do not have to devalue our partner because they have disappointed us completely. We could also forgive ourselves. Just because we are not perfect all the time does not mean we are, therefore defective or unworthy of love.

Our partner could be limited and good enough at the same time.

They could love and be angry at us at the same time.

They might need to distance themselves from us sometimes, but the foundation of the bond remains solid.

Fear of abandonment is over-powering because it brings back the deep trauma that we carry from when we were a little child, being thrown into this world as helpless beings, utterly dependent on those around us. But we must acknowledge that our fears no longer reflects our current reality. Although there is never absolute certainty and safety in life, we are an adult now and have different choices.

As adults, we could no longer be “abandoned” — if a relationship comes to an end, it is the natural consequences of a mismatch in two people’s values, needs, and life paths.

We could no longer be “rejected” — for the value of our existence does not depend on the opinions of others.

We could no longer be engulfed or trapped. We can say no, set limits, and walk away.

As a resilient adult, we could cradle the 2-month-old inside of us that was terrified of being dropped, we learn to stay inside of our bodies even in fear without dissociating, and we could stay in relationships with others even in the midst of uncertainty, without running away into avoidance and defenses.

Rather than getting stuck in a search for the “missing piece,” we come to recognize ourselves as a whole and integrated being.

The trauma of being dropped and left alone has passed, and we are given the opportunity for a new life.