Enough Said

A new movie is being released this week called "Enough Said," starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and James Gandolfini, the actor from The Sopranos who passed away earlier this year. It's a film that explores dating and re-partnering in mid-life, and how complicated it can be.

When they meet, both Dreyfus (Eva) and Gandolfini (Albert) are about to have their only daughters leave for college. They are both single following their divorces. Their first date is a very humorous experience, as is the scene where Eva first meets Albert's daughter.

Their new relationship is tested by Eva's friendship with Albert's ex-wife, played by Catherine Keener, who is extremely expressive about all her pet peeves about him. Ultimately, the film makes us consider how rare love is, how we need to set boundaries to protect and honor it, and about the value of truly accepting some of your partner's imperfections, just as they accept yours. Loving someone isn't as much about finding the perfect person to love as it is being the most loving partner you can be.

There is also an interesting theme about adolescent daughters and their mothers, and the process of learning to separate, letting them individuate and letting go some. There are several mother-daughter pairs in the movie, all resolving that conflict differently. The daughters are also trying to figure out the right way to navigate through the changes that need to occur in the mother-daughter relationship as they prepare for launching.

There are several bittersweet elements in the movie, such as when Eva and her daughter's father, long divorced, say goodbye to their daughter, Ellen, as she leaves for her flight to start school at Sarah Lawrence. As Eva is tearful and visibly upset, her daughter's father shares the tender moment and tells her, "We made a good person." Long after the divorce, there are often moments that are bittersweet in this way for divorced parents as their children go through developmental milestones (often, not always).

Director Nicole Holofcener did a good job of directing, injecting some humor and some really reflective, deeper themes about love and relationships. Sadly, this was one of Gandolfini's best projects as he went against character and beautifully underplays his part so that it feels effortless and natural. Good relationships are rare and deserve protecting.

What Do the Children Know?

Children may be the smallest people in the family, but they sure notice a great deal about what is going on in their families.  I am often amazed about the observations that children and teens can make in counseling with me about what's happening with the adults. So, what are some of the things they notice?

They notice if there is substance abuse going on. Children as young as 6 have told me that they worry about mom or dad's drinking. Teens are smart and are savvy enough to know if parents are using pot, prescription pain meds, or something more. They get scared when parents are driving them while intoxicated or high on substances. The worrying about parents' alcohol and drug use can make them depressed, anxious, have difficulty studying or enjoying their time with friends. What kids know about substance abuse in their families can make them feel scared, different, or isolated. These worries about substance-abusing parents can take a child or teen off track developmentally from what they should be focusing on.

Children and teens know many things about how the relationship is between their parents. They notice how you treat each other, and if you are affectionate, kind and relational with each other or not. They notice if you spend the evening together or ignore each other. They notice if you like each other, and have date nights.  Children notice whether you treat each other with respect, or you badmouth each other.You actually give your children a template or script for their future relationship or marriage, whether positive or negative.

Children notice all the little nuances of your parenting style. They know if you have an anger problem, or you don't follow through, or if you can be manipulated. They crave fairness and  reasonable limits and rules that are consistently enforced. Be careful not to play favorites if you have more than one child, because children can tell if you favor the child that looks like you, or has your same birth order, or your gender. It's best to make each child your favorite. Be honest about what you are feeling----if you are mad, sad, hurt, tired, or overwhelmed. Your kids can read your non-verbal cues anyway, so don't bother. You can role model being honest about your emotions, and coping with negative emotions in a healthy way.

Children also take notice on how you deal with money. I've seen a number of children who worry about their parent's finances. If your spending is out of control, or you buy things when you are feeling down, be aware that the children are watching.

The kids are also watching how we eat, manage our weight, and our fitness. Our example is more powerful than anything you can say.

Are you a faithful spouse or are you looking for affairs? Are you able to resolve conflict in a mature way, or do you scream and tantrum? Are you responsible with your choices, or selfish? Do you hold on to resentment and grudges, or are you able to forgive others and apologize when you are wrong? In these areas, and in many others, your life is your lesson for your children, and school is always in session.

As I continue to learn from my patients who are children, teens, and families, being someone's parent is a huge job that should remind all of us to keep working on our own growth and maturing. The children are definitely watching. All children and teens deserve parents who are stable, can be counted on, kind, loving, and interested in what the children are doing. Being an adult who your children can respect is a wonderful goal that can keep us in touch with becoming our best self.

Beautiful, Useful, or Sentimental: The Spiritual Practice of Letting Stuff Go

Minimalists proclaim the motto that we shouldn't keep any possessions in our home that aren't either beautiful, useful, or sentimental. Letting things go physically is a good metaphor for letting other things go that should also be released, like resentment, anger, grudges, jealousy, and conflict you can't remember who started. It turns out that letting some things go that we no longer need is really good for our emotional and mental well-being.

I got started thinking about this letting go of stuff process as my husband and I prepare for the big annual garage sale that's held in our community each October. We both had households before we met, so now we have my set of stuff, his set of stuff, the stuff we've accumulated together, and all the memorabilia it took to launch three great children up to college age. Now that's a lot of stuff! Seriously, with the kids all at college or beyond, the blow-up pumpkin on the front lawn for Halloween is a bit over the top. Time to release that to some nice family with little ones.

I've heard organizers say before that we should each go through our closets once a year and donate anything you haven't worn. Chances are that Goodwill, or the charity you like best, needs it more than you or I do. It feels wonderful to easily be able to find what you are looking for in the closet. Some fashion writers recommend taking two items out of our closet to donate for every one we purchase or add. The same thing could be done with household purchases.

From a parenting perspective, what a great lesson to teach our children about the joy of releasing things you no longer need and giving them away or selling them. That's a lesson that can help them learn to be organized, keep track of things, take good care of their possessions, and release things they no longer need. That's a hard lesson to learn if Mom and/or Dad don't role model it for them.

Letting things go----emotionally and physically---is a healthy way to travel lighter through life. Being focused on people, relationships, and the present is a much healthier mindset that holding on to stuff. Travel light, let love and unneeded items flow from you to others, and focus on collecting beautiful moments.

The Luxury of Disconnecting

Last week, I met up with a friend who had lost her cell phone by leaving it in a cab while out of town recently. While it was frustrating, she found the few days without a phone actually also very relaxing. It's a little luxury we can each afford, to make private time either with loved ones or friends, or by yourself, truly uninterrupted.

It turns out that setting up sanctuary time zones that are free of cellphones, email access, and social media  is trending. In today's edition of the New York Times, Caroline Tell has an interesting article titled "Step Away From the Phone" that describes how many people are setting some technology limits. AOL reported this past week on the concept of "Serenity Saturdays" with suggestions for limiting technology use that day and a suggested playlist of relaxing music to download and destress yourself.

In Tell's New York Times article, she shares that many families are using a special place in the kitchen, like a fishbowl or bowl, to deposit all cell phones during dinner time. Anybody who checks their phone can be given an extra task as a consequence, such as doing the dishes. This activity teaches everyone---adults and children---- to protect family time by becoming fully present and undistracted.

When friends or families are out for dinner or drinks, they can play "stack 'em up," where each person in the group adds their cell phone to the stack of them on the table. Anyone who peeks at theirs has to pay the check!

It's great role-modeling for parents to turn off or put away their phones when there are opportunities to play with the children, engage in family activities, or be present with each other.

You might consider a time at which you turn your phone off or put it away for the evening, as well as the computer and iPad. Add the television to the early turn off program, and you just might sleep better, interact more with those you live with, and feel more relaxed. Just because you can be available 24/7 doesn't mean you should be.

Tell also notes an increase in social invitations that are being issued with the directive NOT to bring your cell phone, or Instagram photos from the event, with signs reinforcing the policy at the door when you arrive.

Apparently, as cell phone use has reached an all-time high, it's now becoming more cool to be unavailable at times. Multi-tasking all day and evening takes a subtle toll on us. It's time to give ourselves a delicious luxury that is ours for the taking: being off-duty, and having private time to restore and recharge.

Go For The Brass Ring (Don't Settle)

I like to see people go for it. I hate to see people settle. It doesn't tend to make people happy in either their professional or personal life to do so. I encourage my counseling and coaching clients of all ages not to. There are key moments in each of  our lives where we need a gentle nudge to step up to becoming a better version of ourselves. Less complacent and comfy perhaps, but reaching and stretching out of our comfort zone. Don't give upon what you REALLY, REALLY want.

In our work life, I like people to go to work happy. I often ask my coaching clients how they feel each day when they are driving to work. Are you excited to get started, or do you dread getting there? Do you wish you could drive someplace else? Since most of us are going to be living longer, and working longer than our parents did, we really need to begin to think differently about work. More of us will have portfolio careers, with different chapters of our work life. It's almost never too late to retrain, rethink and regroup for another chapter.

If you aren't that crazy about your work, you are part of the majority. It's normal to not like your work, but why be normal? Many people kind of passively "fall" into something work-wise, rather than choose a goal and go for it. You my start by remembering what you liked to play when you were a child. You may want to get some career testing done to identify your strengths, career preferences, and help you consider what kind of work environment would be the best match for you.

Even Sigmund Freud felt that we all need two things in life: work and love. It's wonderful if you can invest in yourself enough to find work that uses your gifts and strengths. Now, how about going for it in your personal life?

I see too many people settling for mediocre marriages and love relationships. Life is too short. Step it up. Have an honest conversation with your partner about what you could do to be a better partner for them, and vice versa. Marriage is a lot like an empty box you need to fill with good things and experiences, not just unpack it, and be mad the box is empty. Don't settle for a mediocre relationship: instead, be a leader making things better.

When you are considering a life partner, make sure it is someone you find interesting enough to have as a forever dinner date. I think people know on a deep level if they are settling, or if they are with a partner who makes them come fully alive. It's helpful if you have chemistry, because I find it hard to help a couple create later if they never had it.

It's also important to choose a partner who shares your values, that you share some fun, companionate activities, and have similar life goals.Are they somebody who you can trust? Be yourself with? Do they inspire you to be your best? What is your positive influence on encouraging them?

How are you doing as a parent? If your children are school-age or older you can actually check with your child directly and ask them. Find out if you are giving them the support, time, and kinds of attention they need now. You can ask them the best ways to connect with them, and what you may be doing that annoys them. When do they feel closest to you? Never settle for being a mediocre parent when you are capable of doing better.

People settle for all kinds of reasons. Sometimes it's because it's easier and doesn't require leaving the comfort zone.We can be fearful of being alone, risking failure, or looking defeated to others. We may feel pressure directly or indirectly to please others. We may need more information.  Change can be hard or anxiety producing, but change is sometimes a necessary condition for growing. Ignoring boredom or the feeling of settling either at work or in your personal life can actually make you anxious or depressed.

Go for the brass ring in your life. Why would you settle for anything less? You'd be shortchanging yourself and others, and missing out on your own growth from REALLY going for it. Go with courage towards your dreams.

"We are the ones we have been waiting for."
---Hopi Indian Elders' Prophecy

"Be yourself; no base imitator of another, but your best self. There is something which you can do better than another. Listen to the inward voice and bravely obey that. Do the things at which you are great."
----Ralph Waldo Emerson

"Life is an opportunity, benefit from it.
Life is beauty, admire it.
Life is a dream, realize it.
Life is a challenge, meet it.
Life is a duty, complete it.
Life is a game, play it.
Life is a promise, fulfill it."
 -----Mother Teresa

Short Term 12

I saw a great psychologically-minded movie recently that really made you think about teens and some of the struggles they have and the support they so badly need from the adults around them. Short Term 12  is about a  fictional short-term foster care facility, and the young residents and the staff who care about them.

The writer-director, Destin Daniel Cretton worked at such a facility, which really shows in the film's honesty. The characters feel complex enough to be real. Cretton effectively captures the improvisational feel and emotional intelligence that is necessary to be effective in good treatment.

Each teen has their own story. Behind their quietness or their acting out, they are trying to cope with unstable, abusive and neglectful parents, loss, self-esteem, and change. It's hard enough to be a teen in a stable home with all the pressure from peers, self-consciousness, body image concerns, hormonal changes, mood swings, and  the search for an identity. Just imagine having to do that when your parents are damaged themselves, chemically dependent, abusive, or absent entirely.

The teens in the film have a hard time trusting, and understandably so. Sometimes the teens just runaway from the facility, and the staff go running to encourage them to return. It reminded me about that old saying about the impact of teachers: It doesn't matter how much they know until you know how much they care. There are some beautiful sequences in the film where a young staff person chases and follows one of the residents and demonstrates how much they care about them.

There is also a storyline about a romance between two of the young staffers that is interesting. Grace (Brie Larson) is superb as the senior staff person, who understands the kind of pain many of the teens are going through in a deeply personal way. Larson gives a strong and vulnerable performance as she tries to open up and risk letting people close, not too differently from the teen residents she watches over. Several of the staff give great performances, demonstrating how parallel play, like drawing with a teen who draws or performing music with a teen whose language is music, can be a powerful unspoken language of connection and joining.

The movie Short Term 12 is well worth seeing. There is pain, but also profound hope. It makes you see how much all teens need love, consistent limits, the ability to test those limits, and adults around them (related or not) who truly care about them. I always think we could change the world if every child and teen had at least one adult who really listened from the heart, and tried to join and connect with them. Bruising happens, but healing is always a possibility as long as we are alive.

The Words We Choose

I started college as an English major, so I am always very interested in word choice, either in the written word or in conversation. As a therapist these last 25 years, I'm curious about what people's word choice means about their relationships and their world view.

What does it imply when one partner describes their home as "my house," their financial resources as "my money," or their shared child as "my child?" There are underlying power dynamics in most human relationships. I often stop couples when they do this, and ask them to reframe their statement.

Words can heal and also have the power to hurt. Children think that as parents, we know everything. (Then as teens, they often find out we don't.) The words a parent says get imprinted on a child's developing core self. I often ask people in individual therapy how their parents viewed them in the family. Were you told you were the smart one or the pretty one? Could you never measure up in your parents eyes to a sibling? Were you told you weren't an athlete, weren't a good student, or couldn't be something you wanted to be?

Clearing up some of those old messages that were imprinted on you by your parents is liberating. Maybe your parents were human, and not clairvoyant or all-knowing. Perhaps it is time to update your own view of yourself, and watch what you say to yourself. Self-talk is powerful. Why can't you feel, think, and be who you'd like to be already?

In your relationships, watch what words you use. Create joining and union with your partner. Focus on we, not I. Share the power, share the ownership, and lean into your closest relationship. You won't believe the difference.