Personal Thoughts of a Psychologist working with children

From inside the therapy room.

The idea of authentic living, as opposed to false living, has a long history. The idea of an inner nature than can become corrupted, resulting in multiple difficulties,  is a philosophical concept that has come a long way.  It is an idea that is strong in cultures with at least some individual focus.  From calling for sexual revolutions and an end to traditional family structures, to concepts such as the true self (as opposed to the false self), there is a call that has as aim the liberation of the individual from inauthenticity – a state that is regarded in the Western world as a primary cause of unhappiness.  Yet there is a shadow side to this ‘liberation’ from one’s existing realities, and within it lies the potential of spreading much unhappiness all round. Ironically, searching for ‘the truth’, may result in more false living, exactly as we struggle to rid ourselves of the noxious unhappiness dwelling inside of us. And is inauthentic living really a root cause of unhappiness?

False living, as I know it from inside the therapy room, has to do with not knowing who you are or what you want.

Or knowing whom you are and what you want, but being too afraid to live that.

All of this resulting in much inner unrest and inner turmoil.

Not knowing who you are, nor what you really want is tough. This state of being is normally rooted in a traumatic family history, where your spontaneous responses were nipped in the bud already early on, and had to go underground in the face of attack, whether physical or verbal. Intrusive, critical parenting is a typical example. This is a style of parenting characterised by an adult continuously admonishing you, and finding fault, and directing you, and interfering with your actions.

In worse case scenarios these children, once they become adults, tend to re-traumatise themselves – to do unto others as done unto them, or to choose others who will repeat their history for them.  So that you have a terrified and traumatised person who acts out, as if a threat remains ever present. Such a person may be sexually permissive, self-harming or violent. Self-aggrandisement or self-abasement are common features. The impression that they create to others is of being FAKE. Here we have a highly vulnerable person combined with a very destructive one. Great despair exists, because the real loss that this person is experiencing is the loss of a felt self that is grounded in reality.   With the traumatised person, the advice to “do whatever makes you happy”, can only end up in empty pursuits as they strive to strengthen the defensive mask that they have put on. They can work hard to achieve fame and financial success, to gain adoration from others, or to serve others, and yet an overwhelming emptiness is always waiting on the sidelines.  So that despair is really what they are experiencing at the core of their very being.  Denial plays a huge role. This is why drug abuse, alcoholism, self-harm and partner violence often occurs: The sense of annihilation of the self is combined with deep despair that becomes overwhelming. The depression that they feel can be bipolar, sometimes they are on top of the world (but also this feels fake), and then they drop down into the deepest abyss. But even here they are not at home. So you can understand their despair. Everywhere is fake – not true, not solid ground.

Often well-meaning self–help books advise us to listen to our inner voices and to have positive thoughts. These are good pieces of advice, but they are based on the assumption that we have a clear inner voice, and that the exchange of negativity for positivity must in itself be a force for good. Here’s the thing for traumatised people: They have to be able to think the negative. They have to be able to bring into mind sad, scary, bad things. It is exactly the running away from these thoughts that have brought them into so much trouble. Because they become overwhelmed when they think about the bad, sad, mad things that have happened to them in their lives, and that they have caused, they have spent their lives fleeing into the false positives in order to escape from these realities. But they can’t. None of us can. So here is what happens in such cases- your inner voice (I assume what is meant by this is internal, private thinking), has followed suit. So that the internal thoughts are; “this is way too scary to think about” and “just don’t think about it.”

To be real is to be able to think and speak about the bad things that have happened to you, as well as about the bad things that you have done without becoming ungrounded. This is why you need a therapist or someone who can listen without becoming overwhelmed themselves, or wanting to run into “solving your problem”.  Only once you have named them, will you be able to move forward, and only then when will the good things that you have also done, feel true.  It has to be both.

Sometimes I ask the person coming to see me to make a dual alphabet: One containing the A-Z of all the negatives that have happened to them, another with all the positives. And then the second: Of all the bad things that they have done to others, and only then an A-Z of gratitudes. 

*

The person who knows what they are not living, but who fear to do so, comes in despite their efforts to pretend that it does not matter (“I do not matter’”). They live with a pervasive grief that they cannot shake off.  These are the people who, generally speaking, have averted their spontaneous responses in the service of another.

Here are two different examples:

A young student comes to see me. She was adopted as an infant by a single mother. Her mother, who comes from a close-knit family who lives in the same town, has never had a serious boyfriend.  Her mother has worked for the same corporation ever since she left university, and since her daughter’s adoption, they have stayed in the same house in the same town where the daughter now goes to the same university that her mother attended.  This young girl is her mother’s best friend, her companion to the theatre and to family dinners.

Two things were clear for her from an early age: a) that she had to be grateful for the life that she had. Every evening she and her mother would say what they were grateful for on that day. “Thank you for our house”, “Thank you that we have each other”.  Being grateful became a strong counter-measure to the unspoken ‘being ungrateful’ (you could have ended up being aborted or in in an orphanage, for example).  b) The young woman understood that she provided the central meaning in her mother’s life. She was a talented young woman, sociable and musical, so that it was easy to feel welcomed within the extensive family and to be her “mother’s pride and joy.”

It is not difficult to understand why she became depressed, and why her mother became so acutely distressed by the depression. The mother, by the way, looked herself very depressed to me.

This is why one cannot pretend to be happy. And when no amount of gratitude statements can make you happy. Neither can good manners, and not wanting to hurt the other.

This is not to say that the young woman had to reject her mother. But she had submitted herself to serving her mother’s needs; to love and be loved by another, to be submerged in another. She was too afraid of hurting her mother, who was already depressed (read sad), to say no to her, never mind challenging her.

I have often seen that families get into trouble when they are unable to take the next necessary developmental step. In family therapy it is well known that in families where the psychological needs of one member dominates, depression is a predictable outcome. 

This young woman knew that she was much more adventurous than their lifestyle allowed for. She also knew that she wanted to be free of her mother’s cloying need for her. She knew what she needed. What she did not know how to do, was how to set her mother free too.

A retired man comes to see me. He was a successful professional man and a dedicated family man, who suffered from periodic bouts of depression, but he always got himself out of them, sometimes with the help of medication. He has been in and out of hospitals lately, he is on heavy medication, and tells me pleadingly, “All I want is to be able to feel joy again.”

Over time it becomes clear that the marriage has been a huge compromise. He soon realised that he had made a mistake. He was more intelligent than his wife, and longed for more intellectual conversation. He found her conversation boring, and petty. But she was more practical than him, and in times when he felt depressed, his wife took over the practical arrangements of their life, to his great relief. Now that he was retired, he felt her presence smothering, her interests bored him, and waking up next to her every morning was “depressing”. Here is a man who had for all his married life pretended to be happy in his marriage for the sake of his good wife. He could escape into work, except occasionally when it somehow caught up with him, this grief for what was untrue. In a way his depression served them both as it kept him from moving out, and gave her the role of supporter and the provider of vitality in times of need.

In such a case, listening to an inner voice, and following one’s dreams make sense.

Authentic living, as we can see from the examples above, have to do with being honest about one’s own life. The good, the bad and the ugly.  The realities that we have denied as well as the longings that have been suppressed.  

Some hard truths

1. Often the deepest longing that we have is to have been adored and cherished by a parent. It is surprising how long this can survive. This is not an unreasonable desire, all children have this need. It is a natural, instinctive desire of babies and children. If you have/had a parent who could not give this to you (who probably inherited this incapacity from their parents), that is really unlucky, but you have to let it go.  To keep on pining for this impossibility is plain stubbornness combined with fantasy. To put it harshly: it is part of the refusal to grow up and accept responsibility for your life. I have a really hard argument with any therapeutic process that overemphasizes this loss. For it is a real loss, and should always be part of your therapy, and never be denied. At the same time, it should never become the primary focus of your therapy, for to do that, is to keep yourself trapped in infancy.
2. A deep, deep longing does not go away. Best is to accommodate it. This rarely means divorce or emigration (we tend to place the responsibility on external realities), more often we can find a way from where we are.  With depression comes that old-fashioned ally laziness. Very un-psychological term! But yes!

So that authentic living simply means to take your deepest desires seriously, and to put in the required efforts to get as close to them as possible. I would like to argue that depression is more about the unlived life than it is about fate.

Aristotle may have been be right:

 First, have a definite, clear practical ideal; a goal, an objective. Second, have the necessary means to achieve your ends; wisdom, money, materials, and methods. Third, adjust all your means to that end.

Man is a goal seeking animal. His life only has meaning if he is reaching out and striving for his goals.                                        

By definition, depression is about the loss of power. Somehow power has seeped out of your veins. Which is why you just want to lie down. Go to sleep. Give up. Die. It is all too much. You no longer have the energy or the will to take it on. It is psychological defeat. You are the vanquished. What is this battle that you have lost?

I dare say that it is the battle for your own power, your own will, your own efficacy to have life flow with your deepest desires.

A strange paralysis of feeling, or a deep insecurity that can lead almost to a sense of nullity, may sometimes be the result of an unconscious opinion. In the depths of our being, the voice whispers: “You are hopeless. What’s the use of trying? There is no point in doing anything. Life will never change for the better.

Adapted from C.G. Jung. Man and his Symbols. 1964.

How did this happen?

When he enters my room, he is wearing a white t-shirt with a print of black skulls and bones.  The mood of the t-shirt is reflected in his posture as he slides onto the armchair, only barely managing to remain seated. I have a sense that he could easily slide off the chair, and land on the floor in a slumped heap, where he would stay. This young man, in his final year of school, has thoughts of death, including the magical idea that he could kill others with his thoughts. 

His story is marked by disempowerment. He remembers being bullied in primary school, and his hippy pacifist parents advising him to “do nothing”. He also remembers wanting to call his parents “mom” and “dad”, but them insisting that he calls them by their names. And that when he started taking drugs at age 13 they, knowingly, did nothing. A child who had the double-whammy of not experiencing parental power on his behalf (it is not a long way for the mind to go from “do nothing” to “I am nothing”), and being powerless to have his pressing needs met (for advocacy in the face of adversity, for the need for parents to be parents, not buddies – so much can be in a name, or the denial thereof). The young man had not only lost the link between I desire and therefore I am able to achieve what I deeply desire, it had become distorted into a negative impossible (“I can kill people with my thoughts”). In my final paper in this series, I write about how we have to engage with imagery to heal. I will then write more extensively about how this young man was rescued.

Circumstances do not need to be this extreme for the loss of power to occur. On a personal note: Both my parents lived active, interesting lives – out there. We, four kids, somehow made do. We spent our teenage years in boarding schools. Our school achievements, whether in academics or sport, received scant attention. It was logical for us to come to the conclusion that what we did or how we felt about it, was not of particular relevance. We still tend to feel like that to this day. A friend once asked me, “How come you never feel that you are entitled to anything?” This came as a surprise. It struck me that she was right, and that I had better change my attitude!

For a child to feel power, it has to be challenged (no, not pushed) to achieve according to its potential. We four kids were bright enough, but were never challenged to aim higher, nor admonished when we fell below par. Thus we were robbed of the real pleasure that striving for achievement according to your potential brings.

Disempowerment thrives when you do not harness your potential. Self-discipline & perseverance, the strongest driving forces behind motivation (and our best allies in times of stress and distress), are undermined when we are not adequately supported and encouraged to extend ourselves.

Under-achievement is also, ironically, one of the main drivers of the pervasive guilt that marks depression. I am not sure how the corrolation works, but somehow, once you begin to work on your own unmet goals, the guilt recedes.

On a more ‘simple’ level, depression can occur when an individual, for one reason or another (from plain laziness or out of insecurity or false beliefs), denies a real talent its expression. This blocks the pathway for renewed energy to flow. A sense of ennui, of life as ok but somehow purposeless, occurs. When someone tells me, “I do not know what is wrong with me; I have everything I need, and yet I am unhappy”, there is a some aspect of life that has been pushed aside, and that needs to be addressed before the sadness will shift. Not un-seldom, the person has been living a life that has denied something essential to their being. Interestingly, a religious aspect has also often been a missing link.

On depression and anxiety

A woman comes to see me. She comes because of high anxiety that is threatening her daily existence. No longer able to make even the simplest choice, e.g. what to make for supper, her anxiety about her own anxiety is now putting a stop to any attempts to live a ‘normal’ life.  I have previously written that anxiety and depression are twins. Here we see the connection clearly: The father was physically and verbally abusive. An unstable man, who could not be predicted. Unpredictability in a parent causes high levels of anxiety in children. It results in a set point of hypervigilance. Such a child is always on the lookout for telltale signs of a potential threat. Children of alcoholic parents have this same hypervigilance. Going home from school, they are already tense. What is it that they will find? Or when a parent comes home from work: How will it be today? Such children often go into fawning, to appeasing the other.  Natural reactions go underground, perceived to be too dangerous an option. In time they may no longer ‘know’ what their natural reactions in a situation would be. Such a child grows up compromising their own needs, and when faced with adversity, will either overcompensate in favour of the other, or at times ‘lose it’, and react like the feared parent.

Depression is inevitable under such cases. The connections to their own natural reactions and a positive form of assertiveness have to be learnt anew.

In my blog on suicide, I wrote about the successful man who came to see me because he was gay and could not come out. A man who was loved and revered, both by his family and his colleagues, so it was not as if he could rebel against negativity. Coming out would mean such hurt to his wife and children as well as his parents, that he could not do it. His family was deeply religious,  and believed that homosexuality was against God’s will, his wife was a good woman who loved him dearly. His children looked up to him, he was his parents’ pride and joy. The impossibility of it all led to deep despair. Here we have a person who had to deny a deep longing in himself.  Depression always has this component.

Depression at heart, I believe, is the dampening down of early spontaneity, whether through cultural or familial factors, especially with regards to our liveliness, our power, our identity, and our natural drive for exploration. The loss of spontaneity of being and of power to affect our own lives, is a substantial loss. If the inherent human responses to threat are flight, fight, freeze and submission, depression has them all. Siblings, peers and romantic partners play a scandalously underestimated role. They can prevent us from being ‘ourselves’ as much as parents can do. Siblings can block your natural path, even before you take your first steps out into this world.

Peers can deny connection, or demand such a high a price of falsification, that it mocks your very being.  

Romantic partners can stifle your very being by insisting on a way of life and a ‘truth’ that is inherently against your natural inclination.

The dampening down of spontaneity, whether through cultural or familial factors, are the precursors of the shutdown in spontaneity that marks depression. 

A compromised lifestyle, where you tend to settle for second and third best, cannot be soothed by denial.

Becoming proactive in line with your deepest desires, even in the smallest of things, are the stepping stones out of despair.

It is so: being respectful of your deepest longing, will bring you out of the grips of your great despair.

A. Medication & Genetics

I have procrastinated writing about depression. It is such a monumental field: How do I cover this vast field in a few short essays? Here is a short piece about the most often heard untruth as well as the most honest route to ‘cure’.

The most frequently overheard misunderstanding:

1. It is a genetically transferred illness.  My father had it; my grandmother had it, so now I have it. We have to take pills for the rest of our lives, and that is all there is to it. It is an illness, just like diabetes. You don’t feel ashamed if you have diabetes, so why should you feel bad about having depression? You can’t help it.

This type of reasoning is understandable. It takes the personal out of the particular, and makes it easy to engage with: We all understand about a clearly defined illness (diabetes, high blood pressure, epilepsy). Medication is simple to administer (if not that simple to adhere to). This helps family members to take themselves out of the equation (it is inside the person after all) – providing a protective shield that quarantines against personal, familial and social liability.

I suffer from depression myself. Many of my family members do. It is not a crippling depression; we function fairly well in spite of it, some even becoming high achievers, despite the chronic dysthymia that runs through our family line (dysthymia is the old-fashioned term for low-grade depression. It stems from Hippocrates, meaning despondency /or a tendency to be despondent/despair – literally, bad soul. In current medical terms it is known as Persistent depressive disorder).

Well then, it must be genetic. Yes and No. Yes, but No.

So is it genetic? Probably. Somewhat. This one is tricky to pinpoint, as we know that genes respond to an environment. We know, for example, that rat mothers who are trained to be anxious (by consistently evoking anxiety in them), not only have anxious pups, but that their pups also have anxious pups. So here we have something that did not exist before, being trained into the genes. But it is not as simple as that either, because anxious mothers react differently to their offspring than non-anxious mothers do, so that their reactions are also transferred through learning, and learning gets wired into our brains. Thus it is not that easy to discern genetics and learning, given genes also get triggered in specific environments. Taking this argument into consideration, unlearning and not triggering a gene could therefore also happen. In other words, we could reverse the anxiety in the rat pups – and in their pups.

The most truthful answer is that depression is most probably genetic and environmental: In other words, a gene to be triggered needed to pre-exist, but it also required an environment to trigger it. As the trigger usually happens early, the environment is most usually familial as well as societal.

A. Typical familial triggers: A loss that cannot be properly grieved, nor restored.

This can be a real loss (death, stable & secure environment, disability, etc) or a psychological one: power, spontaneity, emotional stability, love.

B. A wider loss: It can also be the loss of something more abstract, but equally vital: meaning, true connectedness, authenticity, truth, depth, spirituality, creativity, and engagement.

C. And more modern/societal: The loss of childhood, the loss of security, of certainty, of community, and of time spent in nature.

2. The most ineffective way to treat it: With medicine.

No, this is not my personal opinion because I am anti-medicine. I do not tell people with diabetes or high blood pressure not to take their pills. But, as any medical practitioner will tell you  – with exasperation, or resignation, depending on how long they have been in practice – the problem is that many people with diabetes continue with their unhealthy lifestyles, even when they become blind, or a foot has to be amputated. That persons will high blood pressure will not exercise, or keep their weight down, despite being told to do so repeatedly.

Research has conclusively shown by now that a) anti-depressants on their own will not –cannot – cure you of depression, and that b) at least one third of people do not respond to anti-depressants positively, and a significant percentage will respond negatively, that is, become more depressed. The long and the short of it: Anti-depressants help in the short term, and may be vital for that initial kick-start that you need, but if you do not make the necessary lifestyle changes, you will become depressed again.  This I can guarantee you. The same goes with anxiolytics (anti-anxiety meds). Depression and anxiety, by the way, are twins.

3. The best cure is the hardest one. Its name is truth.

To be objective about ourselves is probably thé most difficult task that we can undertake. I had a wonderful friend who died prematurely of cancer. I still miss him. One day he said, “All life is based on a white lie. Without it we could not function.”  This may be true, but for a person with depression, the only way out is through the gates of honesty.  If we are not honest about own lives, we will not overcome it. In our family for example, we have generations of unloving stepmothers. How could this not have impacted on us? (Small wonder that is such a prominent feature in fairy tales). But, important as this is, and it is, it is still only á backdrop.  There are many more: You have to go through the entire ABC above, and unpack them one by one.

The most efficient way to begin: Ask your best friends, your family, and then your colleagues. Ask them to be honest. Grin and bear it.

Much of depression is rooted in an overcompensation that had you compromise the very essence of your being. It is disempowerment combined with grief. The greatest grief: The loss of your vital, authentic self. The loss of the connection to that which is vital. No amount of pills or the distraction of your choice will extinguish the longing for something more vital. 

You have to put up a fight to get yourself back. Don’t give it up.

Available online:

To read: “Depression as a Social Disease”, by Michael Bader in Psychology Today  

To watch: John Hari on you tube: “Why disconnection is at the center of depression and anxiety today”

To research: The research on medication consists of a host of contradictory findings, opposing each other. Even reliable websites can contain directly contradictory research papers.

Here is a cautious reaction from the World Health Organization (WHO)

There are effective treatments for moderate and severe depression. Health-care providers may offer psychological treatments (such as behavioural activation, cognitive behavioural therapy [CBT], and interpersonal psychotherapy [IPT]) or antidepressant medication (such as selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors [SSRIs] and tricyclic antidepressants [TCAs]). Health-care providers should keep in mind the possible adverse effects associated with antidepressant medication, the ability to deliver either intervention (in terms of expertise, and/or treatment availability), and individual preferences. Different psychological treatment formats for consideration include individual and/or group face-to-face psychological treatments delivered by professionals and supervised lay therapists.

Psychosocial treatments are also effective for mild depression. Antidepressants can be an effective form of treatment for moderate-severe depression but are not the first line of treatment for cases of mild depression. They should not be used for treating depression in children and are not the first line of treatment in adolescents, among whom they should be used with extra caution.

https://www.who.int/en/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/depression (19/03/2019)

I send out a whats app:

“I am doing a small informal survey: Would you mind giving me 2 examples as a child when you felt like “thriving”. Mine, for example are, doing my homework on my own, and riding my bike from athletics back home.”

I have some ideas about thriving, but like to keep an open mind.  It is enjoyable to find patterns in people’s responses, especially when they are completely unaware of each other. The return messages fall into two categories.

Examples from Category One

I wanted to sing in the choir, but was told that I sing off-key. So I practiced and practiced, sometimes my mother would play the piano for me to sing, until I made it. I loved every moment of that choir.

From someone else

I was ten years old, and joined a gymnastic club. I was scared, as I was the only Coloured child there, and what if I could not do it? The trainer was kind, and to my relief I could do it.  Wednesday afternoons became the highlight of my week, and when I received my certificate at the end of the year, I felt really proud.

And another

I had some difficulty with Physics, until Mr M. came along and showed me logic; I felt completely in control and developed a new sense of independence.

From a woman

When my dad helped us to make bows and arrows, and we went swimming with him in the forest, although he could push us too hard to jump from a high ledge into the pool that has no bottom or slide down a slimy slope.

Category two

As cousins we enjoyed riding our bikes, even if it meant getting into trouble for not being home on time.

Saturdays in Mr M’s garage, playing table tennis. That’s where our table tennis club was.

Playing in the veld with kids from the neighbourhood.

Where we lived it was very hot. My cousin, my brother and I spent hours playing in the pool, with our dog for company. There was no adult supervision. Afterwards, ravenous with hunger, we would lie on our stomachs, eating watermelon with pieces of cheese.

What do we see here? Experiences of challenges overcome and of camaraderie, of gaining independence and of support & encouragement. It strikes me how physical and sensorial the majority of the examples are (Another person wrote about baking cakes on Sundays whilst her parents are sleeping).

A final example

I always dreamed of having a horse. Never thought it would be possible. My father made it realise. Saddling and riding and caring for my own horse gave me a great sense of independence and competency.

Here we see a great example of thriving: Where an individual with the right type of support, experiences independence and competency.  Physicality and the outdoors perfect the picture. The only thing missing, maybe, is the camaraderie.

So what do we have here?

Camaraderie, adventure, freedom, independence on the one side  – Overcoming fear, achieving incremental goals and pride in our accomplishments on the other.

One thing is for sure: supportive others that help you to reach your own goals are often (but not always) necessary, as long as they do not undermine your independence and your freedom.

Sounds like excellent parenting advice!

And a fine challenge to our own lives.

All this reminds me of Internal Motivation. This is how internal motivation is nourished. As we saw in a previous blog, internal motivation in essence depends on three capacities (these are innate to all children, if parents, teachers and siblings don’t interfere too much): Self-determination, perseverance to achieve own goals (self-discipline), and pleasure in the doing so.     

“Self’ 

“ I do it myself”.                 

It is a common human experience this; surviving rather than thriving. Many of us live like that: We are grateful for small islands of thriving amidst an ocean of surviving.

Living with satisfaction is an encompassing topic that covers a range of possibilities from “The Power of Positive Thinking” to “Man’s search for Meaning”, as well as a bookshop full of titles from “How to win Friends and Influence People” to  “Rich Dad Poor Dad”. I do not mean to bash these books; they are the result of a collective need for pointers in the right direction. The abundance of self-help slogans also attest to this, forming handrails to the shaky bridges that we have to cross daily over increasing divides.   With escalations in diversity, with ever-expanding uncertainties and divisions, combined with the invasion of compelling Internet posts, we have the inevitable decrease in communal wisdom and certainty, so that we have become increasingly distrustful, and at the same time needy.  What is to guide us in the land of Babel?

Who I am then? Another squeak in a world of tweets, so to speak. One more person trying to make sense of the Babylonian confusion. For adults, I have little advice – Find out what you like and do lots of it, is still the best advice I ever got. 

For parents I have two sources: My own experiences as a parent and my professional life working with children and their parents. I have made many mistakes over the years.  In my professional life I had the advantage of getting second chances, and of learning from experience so that I could get better over time. With my own children alas, by the time that I had realised my biggest mistakes, it was too late.

Secondly I read research. I confess that I like reading research.  When longitudinal research over different cultures bring out same research findings (in other words, if research about happiness in children in China reports similar variables to research done in Ethiopia, I begin to trust it a little. I am fortunate in that I am able to understand research designs, so that I can cast a critical eye on the processes that have been used).

Here are my best parental guidelines, gleaned from my own failures and successes and from reading research:

1. Have Fun. Do fun things. Create adventures. Plan adventures. Save money for exploits in nature.  Go OUT THERE.  The more often the better. In the case of children: At least once a day be outside for at least one hour. That is the minimum!
2. Let your children be. LET them BE. Do not continuously monitor, organize, admonish, help or cuddle your child. For at least one hour per day: Let them do whatever it is that they are busy doing, and do not interrupt, interfere, guide – just keep yourself in check! Intrusion is the curse of our time, and a major cause of irritable children. Not spending enough time outside is another. They often go together.
3. You are the boss. Yip. This is true. NO, you are not Hitler nor Mrs. Rottenmeier  (“You do so because I say so”), but you are the “calm, assertive leader” to quote another television character. It means you earn respect.  This clearly means that you have to demonstrate the exact behaviours that you are expecting from your children (here is where the self-help books come in really handy). Your child has little motivation, no self-control? How does yours look? Shows little respect?  I learnt this one the hard way: the strongest influence of all, overriding even all the best how-to practices, is how you are yourself. How you behave.   Check it out: Take one behavioural problem that a child of yours has. Now ask yourself: How do I fare on this dimension?

4. Which brings me to:Humor and compassion. Wherever you take these two, they add value and improvement. Want to insist on a rule being kept?  Want to make sure they do their homework/eat healthy meals?  Wherever you add humor and compassion, and combine this with calm assertive leadership, and practice what you preach, you will have far greater success, and believe me, far fewer future regrets. 

5. Make work pleasurable. No, I do not mean fun, I mean inherently satisfying. Without work our lives would be empty and meaningless. (Yes, plenty of research has shown this to be true). So make work time such an experience: Clear the table, make a pot of tea with some rusks, have an attractive holder with coloured pens, and sit down and work with your child. Ignore their sighs and moans (children can be just like dogs: even unconstructive behaviours can become reinforced if they are given sufficient attention). Emphasize that work is a privilege, that without it we would not only be destitute, we would also feel worthless and inferior. That, when all is said and done, work is what gives us purpose, and what makes of us constructive members of society. This takes us back to rule no 3: That you work on your own attitude!

This is as true for very clever children (who can rush off their work) as it is for children with learning difficulties: The former has to learn to savior their work (Ok not all of it, some work is simply tedious)- that depth brings satisfaction. The child who struggles has to experience that the setting of small incremental goals, and the achievement of these, can be truly satisfying. Let me reinforce this idea: When work is satisfying, it can compensate for a lot of what is missing in our lives. When work is unsatisfying, the rest of our lives can barely compensate. Which brings me to the next point:

6. Set the bar higher (or lower). We are all born with some level of inherent aptitude. Within our aptitudes there exists a range: a bottom level and a top level. Do not accept performance at the bottom level. It brings no cheer. Of course, some parents are wildly optimistic. Because primary school can be relatively easy, some parents believe their children to be way more talented than they really are. I am not sure how to help you get an accurate measure without having an official IQ test done. If your child goes to a good-enough school, you can usually get a fair measure by your child’s placement in class as well as how hard s/he has to work to get top results. A primary school child, who has to work really hard to get good results, is not a very clever child. A clever-enough child, for sure, but for such a child you want to play down disappointment in results: It is the pleasure that they get out of working that matters.  Which means that it is not the pleasure that you get out of doing their homework for them that brings them any satisfaction. This downgrades their experiences of autonomy, their feelings of competency, and last but certainly not least: releases them from accountability. If there is a golden thread running through children in various forms of trouble, it is: too little accountability. (This has been well researched too.)

7. All families have Meta themes. Unwritten rules. There are positives and negatives. The negative unspoken rules are the most feared aspects in a family. We don’t talk about negative things. We pretend we are happy. We avoid conflict. We all toe the line around X. We blame outside forces. We have a scapegoat whom we blame for everything. We all pretend we don’t know. These are the topics that we talk about in therapy that bring great relief. Simply airing them can help. At least talk about them to a good friend. And practice talking about them a little with your family. It will bring relief to you, and often releases tension in the family home. If you would like your children to talk to you about their troubles, then you must demonstrate to them that talking about troubles is something that happens in your family, and that it is fine and normal to do so.

These can become especially pernicious where real abuse and stepparents are involved. In essence they come down to pretending for the perceived stability of the group. Teenagers are usually excellent at pointing them out. Stirring the communal pot is an effective function of adolescents. It is a pity that they are often criticized for doing so. The most lively and warm families are able to have open conversations where even the Meta themes are open to gentle mockery and compassionate discussions.

8. We find pleasure and comfort in the company of our peers. This is human nature. Children most definitely do too. Not having close peer friendships must be one of saddest fates to befall any person, big or small. So we must aid our children in the best ways that we know how. This is often the main reason that children participate in group activities: to feel part of a group is an instinctual need. Art lessons, chess club, it does not really matter: Most important is to share regular interaction with peers.

 9. Rules: Rules regulate societies. Without any rules there would be overwhelming uncertainties. I have written in a previous blog about the immature and stressful expressions of power that emerge when children are in charge. Rules are there to help us have less stressful and more harmonious lives. Example: Children who go to bed at a set, reasonable time are more rested in the morning, resulting in less stressful early morning routines. Limiting unhealthy foods on a rule basis (no sweets during the week, for example), results not only in fewer illnesses (which are stressful in themselves), but also to less mood swings and better concentration.  RULES THAT CAUSE CONFLICT are the bad ones. These are usually the ones that are set in concrete, and where the aim is not harmony, better relationships and well being, but obedience and subservience. These are really toxic as they lead to either rebellion or depression (or both). They are smothering and take away joy and freedom: and either a fear or a hatred of authority.  If you Google authoritative vs. authoritarian parenting research, you will find great research on the benefits of authoritative parenting.

 10. Thriving is about daily experiences of joy and freedom and at the same time developing self-discipline and tenacity. If you can get this combination right, you will have won the jackpot. It is the Olympic gold medal of getting life right.

Dreams speak in metaphor. This means that the events taking place in a dream should not be interpreted as reality.  Instead they offer sideways (and sometimes very obscure) reflections on something else that is happening in our lives and lifetimes. Somewhat like an idiom or a figure of speech would.  “A penny for your thoughts” and “at the drop of a hat”, clearly do not mean that you will be paid when you speak out, nor that a hat is to be dropped before an action is to occur.  Dream images work in the same way.  A person dying, water rising, a wondrous sexual encounter, a baby being born – these are metaphoric enactments – they are not real.  It is as if a short dramatised impersonation is taking place, where people and objects and activities are selected to represent themes from your life.  Your very own home theater, so to speak.

Five basic guidelines that will help you to benefit from your dreams:

1. Dreams exaggerate.  Wildly. Dreams are experienced as alarmingly real. Take these facts into consideration when you engage with a dream. You will need to take a little distance from the emotionality of it all. It all feels so very real. Remember: It is not.
2. Take note of the ways that you are behaving in your dreams. Most usually you will find that this is similar to how you respond in everyday life.   Dreams are really useful in that they can help you to identify your own nonproductive and self-limiting, and often habitual, responses to the challenges and opportunities that you face in real life. Dreams can be enormously helpful in this way. Take this as good advice, and to identify what would be better ways of responding in everyday life.
3. The event (the “drama”) in the dream. For example: Water rising: This is an image that typically comes up at times of rising sadness/depression/anxiety. It is the combination of water (tears, grief/strong emotions) plus the fear of ‘drowning’, and the danger of being overwhelmed by it all. It is a double or triple metaphor: Your own emotions rising, drowning  (that is, not coping), and the fear of becoming overwhelmed. Note how I have taken the elements apart to make them work: If it happens in your own home, you can add a fourth possibility: that of your own home is being invaded – being ‘taken over’.   A new baby being born  often refers to the potential for new opportunity, new life, whereas death in a dream can refer to a big change. “death of the existing/the old”). Real death more often come in various disguises, from transformation to more ominous messages that I will deal with later. 

Do beware: There is no such thing as a complete dream dictionary. Your dream is tailor-made for you: You have tomake that little bit of an effort to form your own associations to whatever is being presented. Look for the theme, and then unpack it bit by bit, until you understand what is being presented.

4.Old injuries. Much like cold weather can activate old injuries, situations in the present can activate old wounds.  Felt unloved as a child? Watch how a snub in your current life awakens old feelings.  Watch out for these in your dreams. Many a nightmare can be defused by making the link between past and present.

5. Dreams comment on your present situation and offer better ways forward. This is the tricky part. What could/should I have done differently? What would be a solution to the problem in the dream? Driving too fast in a dream? Well, clearly in real life you have to slow down, to be more cautious.  If the solution does not represent something that you knew deep down anyway, I would recommend that you rather leave it. Dreams repeat themes anyway. The danger of misinterpretation is real. Any solution that requires drastic change should evoke great caution. It is here where people forget that dreams exaggerate and that the dream stories are metaphorical.  However, if you are able to bring a sane and rational mind to a dream, you will be able to pick up the life-giving advice that stand in opposition to a stubbornly persistent, habitual mind.

Why do eighty year olds still feel pain for having been inadequately parented,  and this despite having been not-so-good parents themselves? Why does human nature not improve over generations? It seems to me that human nature, unlike science and technology, is repeating itself. This led me to wonder – do dreams play a part in this? Let me hasten to add that I fully appreciate the healing and spiritual dimensions that dreams can express[1], but this is about a different question. I will write about the positive aspects in a follow-up piece.

A six-year old girl was brought to me by her parents. The mother was having a relationship with another, and was considering divorce. The parents whispered arguments behind their bedroom door.When their daughter asked them about this, they replied that it was adult business; she must not worry; they will sort things out. When I mentioned the whisperings to the six-year old, she looked at me with wide-eyed fear, and asked,But what does it mean? Does it mean murder?

I am reminded of this incident when a client brings a nightmare to a session, and asks, with trepidation:  But what does it mean?

What does it do to the human psyche to regularly experience anxiety and fear during dreaming? Similarly, what does it mean to be exposed, night after night, to our own fears and failures?  Content analysis of dreams shows that a significantly high percentage of dreams express negative experiences (failures, misfortunes,threats, self-negativity, and aggressive acts) (Domhoff, 2002).  Darwinian aetiology has dominated our thinking, including our search for meaning, over the past century. Because we have such a firm belief that, for behaviours to continue to exist, they must have a (positive) adaptive function, the search for the meaning of dreams has been consistently characterised by the search for the constructive intent and/or adaptive function of dreaming.  Dreams have, for example, been explained as compensatory or potential healing messages from the unconscious (Jung, 1964), sleep preserving or wish-fulfillment (Freud), guiding messages from God or the ancestors (for the function of religion see Bulkeley, for an overview of ancestral dream interpretation see my book (Frank, 2004), a biological necessity as yet to be clarified (Hadfield, Holmes, Jouvet), memory preservation (and more recently, as a somewhat contrived function between Freudian concepts and neurology (Solms).

In this article I would like to highlight a different feature of dreaming – one which does not appear to be benign, nor positively adaptive, but instead seems to reinforce negative memory, non-constructive coping styles and the continuation of  negative associations.

The three dreams below highlight different responses to anxiety-provoking events, and reflect the possibility that our coping styles in our dreams will be consistent with our habitual ways of coping in real life.  This would be consistent with the finding that the actions that occur in dreams are usually not bizarre, but could occur in real life.  It is also consistent with the hypothesis that the actions of the I-figure in the dream are consistent with the dreamer’s actions in real life. At the end of the article I ask the question whether our dreams can serve the function of keeping our anxieties, and by implication, our existing maladaptive responses, in place.

When I began working with dreams I tried my best to have an open mind. Looking at my own dreams I was surprised to recognize all my own faults. Night after night, it seemed, there I was in my full incompetence, shame and fear – and with my typical style of coping.  The actions of the I in the dream responded, albeit often in an exaggerated form, in ways that were clearly recognizable in my everyday life. So I took my cues from my dreams and began to act more constructively, less neurotically in real life. How did my dreams respond? To my surprise my dreams continued for an extended period of time to reflect the old (more) neurotic self. This made me wonder – do our dreams tend to be resistant to change, to confirm neuroticism, to have a tendency for repetition compulsion, and in this way work against constructive change?

Dream one: The dream of a woman in her mid-fifties who comes to see me because of recurrent panic attacks. As she recounts the dream she looks terrified, and it seems to me that it feels very real to her, as if it represents a living nightmare.

 I am in a car with some people, they seem faintly familiar.  I think they are distant relations. The people at the back seem to be making out; when I look I realize to my horror that they are eating each other and somehow enjoying it.  Then someone starts chewing on my arm. I wake up severely shaken. I cannot fall asleep again. After about an hour I take a tranquilizer. In the morning when I have to get up for work I am groggy and still disturbed by the dream. What does it mean?

            The woman recounts a history of severe physical abuse during a marriage of twenty-two years. At the age of 45 she fled to a town 2000 miles away.  She appears to be suffering from post-traumatic stress, and it becomes increasingly clear that her nightly dreams are not helping to alleviate her distress, but instead are keeping her traumatic state of mind alert. The dreams also contribute to keep hyper-activating strategies in place.  We have to tell the dream consciousness that it is OK; that the danger is over. Some time on we have to take an assertive stance towards her dream-mind, and during a similar nightmare the woman manages to become conscious during the nightmare and to take a stand in the midst of a dream.  Slowly but surely, the nightmares become more benign, and she, in real life, can begin to relax her petrified state of mind. 

Dream two: A middle-aged professional man, who emigrated to England from South Africa eight years ago, still experiences difficulties with adapting to his new country. He tells me that he is still struggling to find his place, to feel familiar and to make good friends in England.  He recounts this recurring dream:

I have been sent back to boarding-school. Everything is strange and I do not recognise  anybody. I feel panicky. I cannot find my room and am lost in the corridors, which all seem strangely unfamiliar to me. Surely I should be able to find my way? I can not understand why there are no familiar faces or recognisable scenery.

The dream reinforces the dreamer’s sense of alienation. By doing so, his feelings of distress are reinforced. This acts to keep negative associations (of having been “sent back to boarding school”), and his pervading sense of “unfamiliarity”  in place.  The dreams also points to another ‘truth’: “I have been sent back to boarding school.  This had clearly been a negative experience of being out of control in his own life, a time when he was not consulted and was forced to stay in a place where he was miserable. He is in the UK however, out of his own volition. The fact that he is responding as if he is back in boarding school, needs to be challenged and his overwhelming sense of powerlessness then, has to be addressed in the here and now.

Dream three: The dream of a 17-year old adolescent who lived in a children’s home. She was part of a small group that I ran at the home. Group members were encouraged to bring dreams.

I find myself in a zone where there are many skeletons. The skeletons want to kill me. They want to turn me into a skeleton. I fight the skeletons as hard as I can. It is an enormous battle.  One skeleton manages to get me into a coffin, where he lies on top of me to prevent me from getting out. The dream shifts and I have managed, somehow, to magically get out. I stand outside the coffin. The dream ends there.

This girl is known for her fighting stance. She tends to respond to any sign of rejection or injury with a fighting response. When a new social worker failed to return her greeting, she verbalized aggression towards her, stating, “I don’t care, I will fuck her over, you will see.” When her younger sister was sent to a home for troubled youth (they are all aware that this is usually a dead-end solution), she denied feeling sad or troubled, but stated defiantly, “She deserves this, she was looking for it (meaning trouble), this will teach her.”  Her dreams confirm her view of the world as an adversarial, life-threatening space, where one has to fight and deny vulnerability to survive. The solution is magical, and has the effect of supporting her fantasies of magical rescue as opposed to constructive self-determined action.

Could it be that in our frequent and repetitive dreams, we link past and current concerns, re-experience past fears,  and reinforce maladaptive responses? Do dreams in this way keep our habituated cognitions, our coping styles – as well as our psychological complexes – in place? To speculate rather wildly; could this be the reason why childhood injuries follow us into old age? Why humans find change so difficult? If I have inherited distrust from my childhood, and my dreams keep reinforcing this at night, why would I believe differently? I find this way of thinking startling, but also helpful: Once we keep in mind that our regular anxiety dreams can also serve the function of reinforcing past injuries and fear-based response patterns[2],we can move to a position of alternative consciousness towards the dream. We can take into consideration that our dreams, as much as they can heal, can also keep old wounds festering. And boy, can they exaggerate!

“Thanks to you I had the most horrific nightmare last night”.

This is the remark of my friend Jan. I had been staying with them to write a book on dreams. Jan had declared on my arrival that, “I never dream.” Our daily discussions on the nature of dreams had, I surmise, lead to the breaking through of the dream contents into his consciousness.

Why did I laugh? Because it was no surprize that it was a nightmare.

[1] Dreams appear to be truthful, and to be experienced as independently generated: features that allow for trust where distrust has become the norm. This is especially true in work with high-risk adolescents and traumatized individuals. Dreams can be of great value at times of grief, when known reality is not sufficient to provide relief.   

[2] Recently I asked  a class of grade 9 learners (14-15 year old girls) to write down a most recent dream. 52.4% of the dreams depict assault or the threat of assault   28.6% Depicted ‘ominous’ content (e.g. “bubbling green stuff ”   that explodes in the science room, starts to flow down the corridor, and threatens the whole school). South Africa has one of the highest crime rates in the world. The majority of the girls seemed to carry fear, which was illustrated vividly at night. This would serve to keep their fears alive, and maybe even to embed them. 

REFERENCES

Bulkeley, K. http://www.kellybulkeley.org

Domhoff, G.W. (2003) The Scientific Study of Dreams. Washington: APA

Frank, E. (2004) The book of dreams. Cape Town: Human & Rousseau

Freud, S.  (1953) The Interpretation Of Dreams. London: Penguin Books

Jung, C.G. (1963) Memories,Dreams, Reflections. London: Random House

Payne, J. D & Nadel, L. “Sleep, dreams, and memory consolidation: The role of the stress hormone cortisol”. In Learning & Memory. 2004 Nov; 11(6): 671–678. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC534695/

Solms, M. http://psychoanalysis.org.uk/articles/the-interpretation-of-dreams-and-the-neurosciences-mark-solms

Dear Samantha

“First impressions count”.

My first impression as I look through the car window: Steely. Broken.

Two oppositional realities.

I notice a small internal movement; a sharp intake of breath. And have the immediate thought that I must meet you as an individual. You had arrived, pale and retracted, sitting at the back in your mother’s car. Strange this sense that I had to take on two individuals, as my practice is based on healing the relationship between a mother and a child.

You spoke openly. The outer shell that people build around themselves out of necessity had broken. This left you so vulnerable that any arrow shot now would have shattered the tiny part of you that could still relate to me. It was as if I found myself in the presence of a severely wounded animal.

How did it come to this Samantha?

As your story unfolded, my heart broke a little. I am used to sad stories. I hear them every day. It was your bravery that got to me. Especially given how exposed you had remained for so (too) many years, without someone taking matters firmly in hand, so that your life could be simpler, better, more normal. You were magnanimous about your parents’ well-intentioned, but misguided attempts to help you. With each year passing grievously, that inevitable twin development happened: Escape from the world (who would not want to, given such a reality), and then, inevitably, the more maleficent one: A voice inside your head that, as frightening as it was, it was at least, some kind of a reliable ‘ally’. “Someone” who understood your pain and your suffering.

This is what happens when adults are unable to help growing children who are in deep distress. Sometimes they want to help, but do so in ways that keep the problem in place or that make it worse. These adults do not mean badly, they are either out of their depths or are themselves hurting badly.

Now it is time for healing

Healing means “new”, different, not as before. It means different and not as before for all of you: Your parents, your brother and yourself. It means that you finally have someone who understands and accepts your reality, and who takes it seriously. It means no more lies. It also means that the change that happens now is towards your best interests. It means changing your mind, and your daily self-soothing habits.

It means saying goodbye to the voice in your head. This last one is hard, and we will begin by changing the conversation that you have with it, so that you begin to have equal power to it. It means resurrecting or inventing helpful images that can be called upon in times of distress.

But you won’t be alone anymore: We walk together. And in time, you and your mother and you and your father and you and your brother, will be able to walk a different path. If this is not possible, then still you won’t be alone, because as you change, life will open up in different ways for you, so that helpful friendships can develop.

Seven steps towards healing

1. If we were not cared for in the ways that we needed when we were little, these unmet needs remain pressing inside of us. Mostly, we react in one of two ways, “It doesn’t matter, I don’t need anybody”. Or the opposite; being clingy, having a desperate neediness that either puts people right off, or attracts people with similar unmet needs. Our task is to get you to a place where you need others (we all do), but not to be overwhelmed or driven by that need. What you have to do for now: Press Pause. For now you must rely on professional people to hold you and support you. They are the stepping-stones towards another livelier, more intimate connected shore.

2. When the beckoning voice inside your head becomes strong, engage with it. Tell it that you have changed your mind, that you have chosen life, and that it can either help you in your quest or, in case it cannot do that, you give it permission to recede.
3. Evoke an image of its opposite. What would be an image of life, of healing for you? It may be vague at first, but make it real by drawing, or sculpting, or taking a photo, or cutting out an image in a magazine of it. Make it grow in your mind as an image of life and hope.
4. Every single day, do something normal that you have either stopped doing, or something entirely new. Plan for this. Have it in your diary.
5. During this activity try your level best not to think about your problem. Practice to interrupt sad thinking. Remember the 2.5 minute rule: If you can distract yourself for two-and-a half minutes from your usual thinking, you will be able to interrupt that negative train of thought that runs away with you. Remember: Rumination (thinking about something over and over and over) is one of the main channels keeping despair in place. I do not mean that you must change your negative thoughts into positive ones. For now, take time to think about something neutral. For example, you are busy baking, and you begin to think about how sad it is that you are not doing it together with someone else, or for someone else. So you stop that thought, and look at the dough to see what the consistency is, and you take a look to see what the temperature on the thermometer is, and look around the kitchen until you see something that you really like, or something that you would really like to change… whatever is concrete and real around you, there you place your eyes and your thoughts.

6. Whatever you do, don’t give up. You don’t want to get up out of bed? Just get up. You don’t want to walk the dogs? Just walk the dogs. You don’t want to do something normal today? Just do something normal today. Think of all the mountain climbers who wanted to just lie down in the snow when they thought they could go no further, and didn’t. Of all the ballet dancers who thought they could not take another step, and did.
7. Be glad and give credit. Most of all to yourself. For all the years that you still had hope, and dreams. For the battles that you have fought. For the cards that were dealt to you, and that despite them, what you still wanted  was something inherently alive and bountiful. That is something good. Deep in your innermost core, you know that. Believe with all your heart, that this is achievable: being alive and being glad.