Christmas Blues and SAD - The Double Whammy
Mon Dec 13, 12:12 PM by Stewart Bloom
The holiday season is supposed to be a time of fun, excitement and happy times. The vision of gently falling snow, holiday lights, hot cider by the fire, and children’s shrieks of excitement typify the American image of Christmas.
And many do live the dream. Christmas time offers the opportunity for busy families to unite. The holiday season holds the promise of giving to and receiving from those we love, and those we care about. Most people get some time off from their work, and everyone has the chance to put on some extra pounds they can later resolve to get rid of.
But there are many who take no joy in the holiday season. In fact, there are many who find the holidays unsettling, if not downright depressing. The nostagia that inevitably surfaces during this period may be mixed at best; with memories of unhappy childhoods that offered very little pleasure and fun.
Not a small number of people experience stress related to the mountain of expectations that society has around holiday time. For those who live on the edge financally; Christmas is often a time to feel shame, depression or inadequacy. The relentless pressure to buy, buy buy, along with other aspects of the holiday season can cause severe depression and other symptoms and open traumatic wounds that don’t feel very jolly at all.
Season Affective Disorder
Seasonal Affective Disorder, or SAD is a form of depression that is triggered by the early onset of darkness and the accompanying lack of sunshine for long periods.
While we may not know it, most of us are affected by the seasons. We may become wistful of childhood when fall arrives and the crispness of the air and falling leaves bring us back to happy times. In the spring, the freshness of new flowers may bring us back to our first love or the end of a long year of school. Summer may remind us of our first job, trips with our family, or days at the beach. It’s as if we are swept back to these days of pleasure, pain, boredom or ecstasy.
And just as we are impacted by other seasons, many of us are affected by winter’s cold and gloom. When the sun goes away and darkness falls early, day after day, it’s easy to see why anyone could get the blues. But for those who suffer from SAD, we’re talking about a severe depression; one in which getting out of bed is difficult task. In these instances motivation is diminished, one’s sense of pleasure is dulled, and the ability to communicate effectively goes away.
It’s difficult to get into the spirit of Christmas when you suffer from SAD. Unfortunately, people around you may not understand what’s wrong, and are therefore unavailable to be of support. It’s not only depressing but very lonely.
If you have “the blues” around the winter and holiday season, and don’t understand what’s the matter, consider the possibility that you may have SAD. Don’t feel guilty because you’re not “in the spirit” of the holidays. To take your mind off things, participate in activities when nightime sets in. If your depression doesn’t get better, or gets worse, consider seeing your doctor to be evaluated for a course of anti-depressants or some other form of treatment. In fact, SAD is so common that there are product lines that sell portable and stationary lights that are intended to serve as substitute light of the sun. Research has demonstrated that these devices are useful in alleviating symptoms associated with SAD, and are available on the internet. Search under Seasonal Affective Disorder Lights.
The holday season really does offer us the chance to enjoy life, and you don’t have to be rich to do that. Don’t feel pressured to do anything that you don’t want to or cannot do. Allow yourself to enjoy the holiday time as much as possible. Most of all do your best to be around the people you love. That is what the holiday season is all about.
Couples Treatment - The Earlier the Better
Mon Nov 22, 04:54 PM by Stewart Bloom
The last thing that most couples want to do is to get into therapy; and this is understandable. When things are going well, and there are few conflicts, couples therapy is generally not indicated anyway.
But on the other end of the spectrum are those couples experiencing significant and chronic conflict which has gone untreated for years before something occurs which generates a call for help. By this time, in many instances, the dysfunctional behavioral and communication patterns are often indelibly imbedded in the relationship.
Does this mean that positive change can’t occur? No, not at all. But I have found that the longer dysfunctional patterns in relationships go unaddressed, the less resiliant the couple is, in terms of making changes, and the less hopeful and motivated participants are to work for a better relationship.
My style of providing couples treatment is to identify with the couple dysfunctional patterns in the relationship; including communication, intimacy and trust issues, and conjointly developing a series of exercises or activities that are specifically designed to improve and align these aspects of the relationship.
Many troubled couples have physically and emotionally detached over the years and have actually come to live separate lives. There is more of a sense of tolerance rather than alliance. Intimacy diminishes or becomes perfunctory. In this stage, some couples may argue continuously and others may just stop talking. A sense of hopelesness sets in.
More often than not, it’s at this juncture that many couples decide to start treatment. Sometimes an event prompts the call. It could be something as dramatic as an affair, or it could be that the detachment and sadness becomes overpowering. Everyone has their own reasons for coming in. And when they do, I regard that decision very seriously, and expect my clients to do the same.
Since my practice is largely dedicated to coules counseling, I’ve been able to observe the referral paterns for couples. As I indicated earlier, most couples come in a little late in the game, and this affects the treatment plan and process. In these instances, I typically need to spend more time working to help the couple to practice new ways of relating to each other, as they are so accustomed to their existing syles, as unproductive as they may be. Additionally, after a number of years, even if there has not been a significant violation in the relationship, the sense of trust has usually diminished, and the value of trust needs to be reinforced and demonstrated. These exercises may be time-consuming as well.
As you can see, there are a host of things that need to happen for the relationship to begin to flourish again; and this can only occur through the hard work of the individuals in the relationship. Couples counseling is very different from individual therapy in that it is a very active process, in which the majority of the work takes place outside of the session. A couple who experiences the maximum benefit of therapy is one who is dilligent and disciplined enough to consistently practice the tasks identified in the treatment. So in some ways, I see myself as a coach and motivater in this process, and not your conventional counselor.
Functional Co-Dependence: Beneath the Shadows
Tue Nov 16, 04:34 PM by Stewart Bloom
In the last column I continued writing about the phenonmena of functional co-dependency in committed relationships. Yesterday’s column featured a discussion about functioning co-dependent relationships with people who are narcissistic. In these relationships, the dysfunctional aspects of the relationship are cloaked by an external appearance of mutuality and equality between the couple.
While these relationships lack the abusive and highly dysfunctional behaviors and interactions that typify a traditionally co-dependent relationship, close inspection often reveals a phenomena this writer calls Imbalanced Accomodation. This term refers to the broad freedom in which the controlling partner can function outside of the primary relationship. These “person-oriented” activities are unrelated to the couple or the family system and are on the surface, generally endorsed by the partner.
In addition to the above, imbalanced accomodation has very subtle features that permeates all aspects of the relationship from sexual to social to child rearing. In these instances the business of the household, the social life, and the relationship is primarily deferred to the controlling, often narcissistic partner. All aspects of the primary and family relationship pass through the the controlling partner. However it “seems” as though decisions are mutual and democratic. There is a significant and constant undertone of conflict avoidance and control in these relationships.
In observing many of these relationships, this writer has also noted a subtle “as if” quality in which the narcissistic behavior is regarded by the partner as a postive and enduring quality that encapsulates the powerful feelings of attraction between the co-dependent person and his/her (narcissistic) partner. The “as if” component refers to the fact that there are no apparent feelings of resentment, hostility or helplesness on the part of the co-dependent person. This is a key distinction between what is know as classic co-dependency and functional co-dependency; and it is what creates the frequent appearance of harmony in the relationship.
Narcissistic Infatuation
In spite of how it sounds, narcissistic infatuation is not intended to refer to a dysfunctional infatuation with the self, which is a component of the narcissistic personality. In this context, narcissistic infatuation is what I mean when I discuss the co-dependent’s unwavering accomodation of his/her partner. This dynamic may be in play for a variety of reasons: One example is that the co-dependent person may be insecure and derives his/her own positive sense of self by idealizing the partner; thus believing that he/she has value by virtue of being in relationship with the individual. This is common with people who are externally secure and confident but beneath the serface are actually insecure and often quite needy.
In instances related to the above, there is actually a serious fear of rejection should the co-dependent person “stand up” to the partner, and so the individual becomes expert in rationalizing the co-dependent nuances of the relationship. The defense of rationalization is used specifically to preserve the sense of connectedness to the acting-out partner to avoid abandonment and rejection. What makes this type of co-dependence so resiliant (and subtle) is that this process of rationalization is accomplished and maintained in a psychologically painfree manner; the negative feelings associated with it are unconscious and covertly avoided. It is like the story of the elephant in the middle of the living room.
We’ll continue on this topic and include discussion of how children of functionally co-dependent couples are impacted in a future entry.