Resolving Unfinished Business

From Brad

     I settled into my seat as the professor began the lecture. As soon as he started talking, I started feeling uncomfortable. I shifted in my seat. With each word he spoke, I found myself feeling more and more nauseous. It felt like the walls were closing in on me. I began to sweat and feel dizzy. I wanted him to talk about something else. Within minutes I stood up and left the classroom. I went to the bathroom. I felt sick to my stomach. I took a few deep breaths and splashed water on my face. I realized that if I ever wanted to be an effective psychologist, I would have to do something about how I felt. My professor was talking about how to help clients who are suffering with unresolved grief issues. Unexpectedly, I had been flooded by memories of something I hadn’t thought about in years. During the lecture, I flashed back to when I was 11 years old, and the moment I got the news that my older brother had died unexpectedly. It came as a total shock, and to cope I shut down and avoided thinking about it as best I could. While I had been a client in therapy for several years prior to the class, my brother’s death had never come up for me as an issue I needed to explore. However, in that moment, I realized that I had “unfinished business” surrounding his death and its impact on my life. I realized that if I wanted to move forward, both in my personal life and as a future psychologist, the unfinished business I had around his death would need to be resolved.

     “Unfinished business” is the phrase therapists use to describe the emotions and memories surrounding past experiences that a person has avoided or repressed. The feelings around the event are not fully processed at the time, often because they are too overwhelming or traumatic. Since they are unresolved, they linger in the background of a person’s heart and mind. When not appropriately expressed, the sadness, grief, fear, anger, anxiety, mistrust, or terror associated with these events are carried into our present lives where they interfere with our ability to be emotionally present in our current lives. Unfinished business limits our ability to connect with ourselves and others. Research has shown that unfinished business is associated with anxiety, depression, and interpersonal problems.

     Children instinctively know how to deal with difficult feelings. However, they are often taught by parents and society to not cry or be angry. As such, when difficult thoughts or feelings come up, many of us are trained to push them aside or avoid thinking about them. In fact, human beings are experts at finding ways to avoid uncomfortable feelings or dial down their intensity-- often resorting to things like alcohol abuse, smoking, compulsive eating, compulsive spending, to keep the volume down. However, these avoidance techniques only end up adding to our problems. While our ability to distance ourselves from painful feelings helps us survive in traumatic or overwhelming times, this same numbness can limit our ability to feel joy, love, peace and serenity when we are no longer in danger.

 

     But who wants to dredge up the past, especially the painful parts? Shouldn’t we just let bygones be bygones? Ironically, while we have a tendency to avoid unfinished business, the effects on our life persist until we face the issue and deal with the unexpressed feelings. There are many avenues for allowing these feelings to be addressed- including journaling, therapy, support groups, pastoral counseling, or a talk with a close friend. When we access these old memories, we are able to supplement them with new information and insights, and thus change the hold they have on our lives.

 

     Addressing my unfinished business with my brother did not change the reality of his passing, but it did significantly change my experience of his death. Prior to talking about it in therapy, I had no idea that I carried feelings of guilt and anger, as well as unexpressed sadness. By facing this very difficult experience I had tried to forget, and by fully experiencing the emotions I had about the event, I was able to release pent-up tears and express unacknowledged anger. Almost instantly, it felt like a great weight had been lifted from both my heart and mind. I was able to look at the experience in an entirely different light, allowing me to challenge some of the distorted lessons I learned about myself and life itself by my 11-year-old mind.

     While I will never be able to get my brother back, the intensity of the pain has diminished. By resolving my unfinished business around his death, I was able to get a part of me back that I thought had died with him. As a result, I believe I experience life more fully and with greater appreciation than I may have otherwise. While we can never change the past, resolving our unfinished business can improve our moods, lighten the load on our hearts and minds, improve our relationships, give us new understandings, and enhance our appreciation for the basic and fundamental aspects of life.

FPA Retreat 2008

Ted will be speaking at the FPA Retreat 2008 in Ft. Lauderdale, Florida on Sunday June 1, 2008.   His session is entitled "When Clients Don't Follow Through: What Works and What Doesn't".

US Journal Conference

Ted will be speaking at the US Journal's 21st Annual Northwest Conference on Behavioral Health and Addictive Disorders May 29-30, 2008 in Seattle, Washington.

FPA's NorCal Conference

Ted will be a speaker at the FPA's 36th Annual NorCal Conference on May 27-28, 2008 in San Francisco.  His session is designed to give participants the rationale for and share some practical ideas about how, with a greater degree of intentionality and skill, they might more effectively enhance their client’s decision making process.

Managing Difficult Feelings

From Ted

One of my clients recently asked me to share with them ideas on how to manage their anger.  My theory is that denying or holding on to a feeling like anger simply makes it stronger.  Feelings like anger (and all the others) have their origin with some kind of a physical sensation.  A recent study was able to document that a sensation always precedes a person’s awareness of a feeling.

A tightness in the gut, heaviness in the chest, a tingling in the arms, a pain in the neck, and so on.  Those sensations are messages from our bodies, telling us that something is going on that needs our attention.  My experience is that most of us are not very tuned into those messages, mostly missing them all together.  The body will not be denied, however, and such unacknowledged initial messages grow in intensity and finally register in our awareness as a “feeling”, usually a pretty big one, and quite often a difficult one, such as anger, fear, depression, etc.

I encourage clients to participate in activities and exercises designed to help them become more aware of the initial sensations, so as to make choices earlier in the process.  By doing so, one has many more choices than if they wait until the sensation becomes a full fledged feeling.

So back to the client’s question?  How to explain this rather dense concept?

Being a person of metaphors (you may remember the old saying “A picture is worth a thousand words”, you may not be as familiar with “A metaphor is worth a thousand pictures”), I remembered that when typing on my Blackberry the way to capitalize a letter (make it go from ‘a’ to ‘A’ for example) is to simply hold down on the key an extra long time.  ‘So the way to keep an ‘a’ (a pain in the gut) from becoming an ‘A (anger at another person) is to pay attention to the ‘a’ when it first shows up. Much easier said than done for the average person, myself included.

Redemption

From Ted

A friend called me from London and asked if I would consider presenting at a conference she was helping organize, called “Be the Change”.  She knew of our work and our book, “The Financial Wisdom of Ebenezer Scrooge” that uses Charles Dickens’s “A Christmas Carol” to explain our perspective of how to help people change their destructive financial behaviors.

After quite an extended and engaging conversation, she asked if it would be possible to make my points during the presentation without mentioning the name of Scrooge, our book, or the Christmas Carol metaphor.

Somewhat taken aback, I thought, “Here I will be in London, the home of Charles Dickens, the source of much of his work, and they don’t want me to mention him at all? What’s that all about?”

So, I asked why.  She said “The people who will be attending are very informed, caring, evolved, involved people”, and finished that statement with an adamant “We are not Scrooges!!!”

My response was, “I know you, and if the people who will be attending the conference are anything like you, you are all in fact, very much Scrooge like.”

 

After a very long silence, she responded with a measured coldness that I had not encountered before, “What do you mean?” 

I said “You are very much like Scrooge, the Scrooge at the end of the story.” 

Another long silence and she said “I never thought of Scrooge that way.”

I went on to say that I saw the story of Scrooge as one of redemption and one that gave great hope for all of us no matter how old we were and how fixed we were in our ways.

Her initial reaction to the story of Scrooge is actually very common.  For some reason, very few people consider Scrooge to be an enviable man, yet by the end of the story he has become as good a person as can be imagined.

The moral of this story for me?  Redemption.  I ask for people to judge me on how I am today, rather than judge me for how I might have been in the past; in other words asking them to give me the gift of redemption.  I too am frequently challenged to give that gift to others who have hurt or betrayed me.

Good Parenting: It’s All About Style

From Brad

The long awaited day has finally arrived. Your child is born. As parents you finally get to take your baby home. It is all very exciting and joyful. As you walk in the door, you suddenly realize they didn’t give you an instruction manual. What do we do from here?

     Several decades ago, Psychologist Dr. Diane Baumrind identified four types of parenting styles. These styles were classified on two dimensions- warmth and control. Indulgent parents are loving and affectionate, but permissive and lenient. They don’t set limits. They avoid confrontations with their children, preferring to act more like a friend than guardian. Like indulgent parents, uninvolved parents avoid enforcing rules; however, they also don’t show love or affection. In the extreme, uninvolved parents neglect their children. It comes as no surprise that children of uninvolved parents tend to be the most troubled. Authoritarian parents are strict punitive. They demand obedience, but don’t show much warmth or affection. In terms of child adjustment, authoritative parents are the ideal parents. They set and enforce limits but are also very warm and loving.

     Surprising to many, the second worst parenting style is not the authoritarian parent, but the indulgent one. Children of indulgent parents may feel loved, but like children of uninvolved parents, they often exhibit behavior problems. Because they have never had to obey rules, they lack respect for authority. Since they can run roughshod over their parents, they don’t learn to regulate their emotions. As a result, they often experience anger problems and struggle in relationships. Indulgent parents often realize their mistake when in early adolescence their children begin disobeying curfew, skipping school, using drugs, and defying authority. Oftentimes teens of indulgent parents may perform well in academics, sports or the arts, but are secretly involved in risky behaviors without their parents’ knowledge. Unless indulgent parents are willing to set and enforce limits, society often has to step in and do it for them. The result can be traumatic for both the child and parents, and can result in arrest and incarceration. When the child is eventually locked up, he or she is often shocked, having never had to experience any real consequences before. This is a hard way to learn.  

     Indulgent parents are usually permissive because they want the best for their children. Sometimes they are reacting to overly strict parenting they received as children. They don’t want to stifle their children; instead they want to empower them. Some give their children excessive freedom due to guilt, perhaps trying to make up for an uninvolved parent. Without structure and consequences, however, indulgent parents hurt children more than authoritarian parents, who show little affection, but are strict and punitive. The children of authoritarian parents may also have relationship problems in the future, being unpracticed at giving and receiving love, but they typically comply with basic rules of conduct and do well in society.

     Children of authoritative parents tend to be the best adjusted. They feel competent and confident. They are well behaved, conscientious and socially skilled. What follows are suggestions for implementing an authoritative-type parenting style:

     Set limits. It is essential for your children to learn to follow rules. Structure makes the world predictable and helps them feel safe. Children crave it. It teaches them to control their behaviors and manage their emotions. When you do not set limits, your children are given more power then they have the skills or judgment to use appropriately.

     Enforce consequences. Children need to experience consequences for their misbehaviors. If you shield you children from this, you will set them up for failure. If your child swears at the principal and is suspended, it is not helpful for you to step in and try to circumvent the consequence. Doing so gives your child the message that he or she is above the law. Learning this is not true outside of the home can be profoundly painful for everyone. A better lesson is to hold him or accountable for swearing, and teach him or her better ways for expressing frustration.

     Rethink the use of corporal punishment. Research shows that punishing children through violent means increases the chances they will engage in delinquent behaviors, bully and victimize others, and experience mental health problems. The skillful use of time-outs and loss of privileges are equally effective in discouraging problem behaviors, and are not associated with such negative results.

     Give them time. Children grow up fast. You will never regret spending time with your children. They want time with you more than they want things. Get involved in their lives.

     Show affection. Hug your kids. Cuddle with them. Tell them you are proud of them for their unique talents and strengths. Tell them you are glad they were born. Never let a day go by without telling them you love them.

     Lack of parental affection and/or parental control leads to various levels of maladjustment for children. Children benefit most from parents who express affection and maintain and enforce rules. If you have trouble instituting an authoritative parenting style, consider seeking professional help. Someday, your children will thank you for it.

Financial Infidelity: The Little Green Lies We Tell

From Brad

Do you keep money secrets from your partner? Do you spend money without your partner’s knowledge? Do you hide your purchases from your partner? Do you tell your partner you spent less on something than you actually did? Do you have secret stashes of money that your partner knows nothing about? Have you made investment decisions behind your partner’s back?  If you answered “yes” to any of these questions, you may be putting your relationship at risk by committing acts of financial infidelity.

In a survey of 1,001 people commissioned by Money Magazine, forty percent of the respondents admitted that they have told their partner that they paid less for a purchase than they actually did. Sixteen percent confessed to buying something that they did not want their spouse to know about.

While both men and woman admitted to financial dishonesty, women were more likely to tell their husbands that they paid less than they actually did for clothing and gifts, while men minimized their spending on cars, entertainment, and sporting events. Almost twice as many men admitted that they had spent over $1,000 without their wife’s knowledge, while women were more likely to say that the most they had spent without telling their husbands was $100.

Forty-five percent of those who admitted being deceitful around spending stated that they were not honest about their spending in order to avoid their partner’s anger, disapproval or lecturing. In the same survey, 44 percent reported that they believe it is okay to keep financial secrets from their spouses.

It is not surprising that people keep secrets about money. Many couples avoid talking about money because it is such an emotionally loaded issue. If and when financial infidelity is discovered by one of the partners, it rocks the very foundation of their relationship. “If he/she is being deceitful about this, what else are they lying to me about?”

Financial infidelity is such a common issue in our work with couples that my father and business partner, Ted Klontz, Ph.D., and I developed a four step process for addressing financial infidelity in relationships, which uses the acronym SAFE:

  S: Speak Your Truth. Talking about money and our financial behaviors is a taboo topic in our culture. We find that people are often more willing to talk about their sex lives than their financial lives. Many of us carry significant shame around money, often because we think we have too much or too little. The first step to establishing financial safety in your relationship is to sit down with your partner and talk about money; what it means, your early money experiences, your preferred spending/saving style, and your financial goals.

  A: Agree to a Plan. Many acts of financial infidelity occur with couples who lack explicit agreed-upon strategies of spending and saving. A comprehensive spending plan is an essential component of a healthy financial relationship. It is helpful for couples to agree on the amount of money that each can spend without needing to consult with their partner. When a potential purchase goes above the agreed upon amount, the couple agrees to consult with each other prior to making the purchase.

  F: Follow the Agreement. It sounds simple, but this is the hard part. An agreement is only as good as a couple’s commitment to honoring it. It is helpful in the beginning to set up the agreement to be valid for the next 30-60 days. After the agreed upon period of time, the couple meets and answers these three questions: Is the plan working for me? Is it working for you? Is it working for our relationship? If either person in the couple answers “no” to any of these questions, the couple should renegotiate their plan.

  E: Establish an Emergency Response Plan. If couples find that they can’t talk about money without fighting, can’t come to an agreement, or can’t keep their agreements about money, they may be in trouble. As such, it is important to have an Emergency Response Plan, which goes into effect when these types of difficulties arise.  This plan identifies, ahead of time, what the couple will do when they arrive at an impasse. For example, when a couple cannot arrive at or adhere to a plan, the Emergency Response Plan might include an agreement to seek help from a psychologist, pastor, social worker, or marriage and family therapist.

With money being the number one cause of marital conflict and the number one cause of divorce in the early years of marriage, couples cannot afford to be financially unfaithful. Use the SAFE process to establish an agreement around money with your partner to maintain financial fidelity in your relationship.   

Standard VS Metric

From Ted

A theme that keeps presenting itself in my work with couples, is the baffling reality that the ‘tools’ that many people use to be incredibly successful in their professional lives, are absolutely guaranteed to mess up an intimate relationship.  I have the opportunity to work with some of the most successful professional people in the world.  They are almost as equally unsuccessful in their personal relationships and this is a mystery to them.

The metaphor that I use to try to explain this phenomenon is that if one thinks of tools, (i.e. wrenches, sockets, etc.) there are two different sizing mechanisms.  One type is known as ‘American standard sizes ( ½ inch, ¼ inch, etc.) based upon the ‘inches’ standard.  The other type is known as ‘metric’ tools, (10 millimeter, 15 millimeter, etc.) based on the metric system.  Though they look the same, though they are used in the same applications, (tightening up or loosening nuts and bolts) they are not interchangeable.  If one tries to use a standard tool on a metric nut or bolt, if they even come close to fitting, they will end up damaging or destroying the metric nut or bolt.  This destruction comes from using the very same tool that would be so successful with a metric bolt.

Many people who have a successful work life are very adept at using the ‘standard’ tools.  When they come home and try to use the same tools, they find that they don’t work.  Relationships require ‘metric’ tools.  For example, I have a client who is very successful and is paid very, very well for coming into companies and telling them what to do.  He is in high demand and the companies are very grateful for his advice.  He is very adept at using ‘standard tools’ if you will.  When he comes home and tells his family members what to do he can’t understand why it doesn’t help and in fact makes things worse.  The ‘metric tools’ we gave him consisted of teaching him how to listen; how to really listen instead of offering advice.  He needed to put away the ‘standard’ tool box when he came home.       

Once clients understand to look for ‘metric’ requirements while interacting with loved ones, it is a very simple task to make the switch.  Relationship coaching and therapy provide the ‘metric’ tools that allow people to be successful at home and work because they have more tools in their tool box. 

Putting off Procrastination

From Brad

Vacuuming the house. Filing taxes. Mowing the lawn. Returning phone calls. Starting a project at work. Writing your column for the Kauai Business Report. You know it needs to be done. You know you have to do it. The fact that it has not been completed nags at you. Sometimes it’s hard to enjoy the moment because you feel guilty that you have not finished the task. A sense of incompleteness is always in the back of your mind. You may spend more energy complaining about, feeling bad about, or avoiding the task than it would take to complete it, but you still put it off. Often you wait until the last possible moment to get it done, where you either come through with a nail-biting, flurried, and dramatic finish, or you end up falling flat on your face, promising yourself you won’t wait until the last moment next time. 

Research shows that 20% of adults admit to being chronic procrastinators, most of who believe procrastination is harmful and something they want to curtail. The word procrastination has its roots in Latin and means to put forth “in favor of tomorrow.” One of the first mentions of the problem of procrastination was in a speech by Cicero, a Roman Consul, in 44 B.C. He said, “In the conduct of almost every affair slowness and procrastination are hateful.” Procrastination was a human trait that Cicero found loathsome. Today’s social scientists are a bit nicer, but little more complimentary. They call procrastination a “failure of self-regulation,” or an “irrational delay of behavior.” Sounds pretty bad, eh? Well, it turns out it can be. Procrastination has been linked to poorer performance, lower ratings of personal well-being, and worsening medical conditions, as patients putt off seeking medical attention or putting healthy behaviors in place. Procrastination can also cost you money, both now and in the future. A recent survey by a major tax preparer estimated that the average American overpays $400 per year to the IRS due to procrastination, through errors made by a last minute rush to complete tax forms. Many people delay saving for their retirement, significantly limiting their resources, options, and freedom later in life.

If procrastination is so bad for us, then why do we do it? One reason is that we try to avoid tasks that we find unpleasant, or at least less pleasant than other options before us: “Watch a movie or scrub the toilet? Hmm, that’s a hard one.” We also tend to procrastinate when we think a task is going to be too difficult for us to accomplish: “Why start feeling overwhelmed and inept today if I can put it off until tomorrow.” Or maybe, “This task is too hard right now, maybe by some miracle it will get easier tomorrow”.  A more subtle and often less conscious reasons involved the idea of “self-handicapping,” or procrastinating to provide yourself with an ego-saving reason for possible failure: “I know I did not do so well, but after all, I only worked on it for a few hours.” Regardless of our reason for procrastinating, we usually end up regretting it. Here are some tips to help you putt off procrastination:

     1) Make a “to-do” list. Lists help you organize your thoughts. They help make them concrete. They can keep things from falling between the cracks. They help you prioritize. If you don’t want to make a “to-do” list, ask your spouse, partner, and/or parent to assist you with the task. I am sure they would be more than happy to write one for you.

     2) Break larger tasks into smaller parts. If a task feels too big it can feel overwhelming and you may be tempted to avoid starting it. Breaking larger tasks into smaller parts can make the task feel much more manageable. Successes on smaller tasks can bring you closer to your goal and inspire you to continue moving forward.

     3) Set deadlines for each step. The further away a deadline, the less motivated you will be to complete the task. Building in a series of deadlines for the smaller parts of the task can help keep you on track and help you avoid a last minute rush.

     4) Build-in a reward system. All work and no play is no way to spend a day. Brainstorm a list of things you like to do that you can use to reward yourself for meeting your daily objectives.

     5) Use the “Premack Principle,” otherwise know as grandma’s rule: “No dessert until you eat your vegetables.” The Premack Principle is a psychological tenet that states that a person is more likely to complete a less desirable behavior if, as a result of doing so, he or she can then engage in a more desirable behavior. We have rewarding activities built into our daily lives such as drinking a cup of tea or coffee, watching a favorite television show, reading a good book, or eating dessert. One way to put off procrastination is to delay doing something you enjoy until you have completed a task that you have been avoiding. Grandma knew that if you fill up on cake, you will have no stomach for dinner. The same is true for your reward system. Do the less pleasant task first, and then you are free to indulge in your daily pleasures.

Take these steps today to put off your procrastination. You may find that getting things done without the last minute rush can improve your performance, reduce your stress, and enhance your emotional well-being.