A New Relationship: Understanding the Loyalty Dilemma for Someone Whose Spouse Died

In today's Sunday New York Times Modern Love section, there's an article by Eve Pell about her relationship with her husband (see link below).  One of the things that she mentions is that when they were dating, her then-boyfriend was hesitant about making a commitment to their relationship because he still felt loyal to his deceased wife, who had died several years before.

Understanding the Emotional Dilemma For Someone Whose Spouse Died
Reading this article brought to mind how common this experience is.  Rather than getting competitive with a deceased spouse, Ms. Pell, who sounds like a wise woman, understood her boyfriend's emotional dilemma and let him know.

Understanding the Loyalty Dilemma for Someone Whose Spouse Died

Instead of feeling like his love for his deceased spouse meant more to him than his love for her, she spoke to him about it with a lot of empathy.  She acknowledged that she understood, respected his feelings for his former spouse, and reframed the issue as there being enough room in his heart for both of them.  According to Ms. Pell, her boyfriend appreciated this and, eventually, they got married.

Working Through the Loss of a Deceased Spouse
There are times when people haven't worked through the loss of a deceased spouse and it keeps them stuck.  Each situation is different.  But reading Ms. Pell's article reminded me of how conflicted a person can feel with a new love, especially when the former relationship ended because of a death.

People, who are widowed, who are still in love with their deceased spouse, often feel that it's an act of disloyalty to begin a relationship with someone new.  Their spouse might be gone, but their feelings are still very much alive.  They might feel confused and not know how to reconcile the fact that they can fall in love with someone new while still loving their former spouse.  If the new love gets jealous and makes emotional demands too soon, it can create an even bigger conflict and ruin an otherwise good new relationship.

Reframing the Love and Loyalty Dilemma
Like Ms. Pell, it's often better to take an empathetic step back, try to understand your romantic partner's emotional dilemma and talk to him about it.  When the dilemma is reframed as there being room for both the deceased spouse and the new partner, it can reduce a lot of tension and offer options that your partner might not have seen before.  Your partner doesn't need to completely bury his feelings for his deceased spouse, which wouldn't be possible anyway.  It's really not an either/or question.  He can still honor the feelings he feels for her and make room for you.

Some people, who have lost a spouse, never get over it, and they're unable to make a commitment to a new relationship.  For other people, this issue works itself out with understanding on both sides.  Sometimes, the person who is widowed needs help in individual therapy to work it out.  Other times, it helps for both people to come into couples counseling to negotiate this problem.

Either way, I found Ms. Pell's approach to this common dilemma to be a mature and refreshing approach.  Thank you, Ms. Pell, for a heart warming article.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

To find out  more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.


The Race Grows Sweeter Near Its Final Lap--Modern Love, NY Times by Eve Pell (1/27/13)

Is That All There Is? When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

For many people, the meaning of "success" and "having it all"means making a lot of money, buying a big house, having a new car, and being married to an attractive spouse (not necessarily in that order).  For other people, "having it all" might mean being smart, having a graduate degree, and the prestige of being published and recognized as an expert in a particular field.  

Is That All There Is?  When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

"Having It All," But Feeling Something is Missing 

But, more often than not, people who have attained their definition of "having it all," are surprised to discover that, instead of making them happy, after a while, they feel empty inside.  They're confused because they feel like there's something missing, but they can't understand what it is since they already have everything they set out to get, so what else could there be?

What Does It Mean to "Have It All"?

How we define "success"' and "having it all" usually determines our focus and the direction we take in our lives.  Early on, we're given implicit, and often explicit, messages about what it means to be successful.  In school and the world around us that usually means striving to be competitive and to get excellent grades so you're at the top of your class with the end goal of getting a well-paid job so you can have monetary success and prestige.

Is That All There Is?  When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

Most people would agree that having a certain degree of financial comfort is better than struggling financially.  And while there's certainly nothing wrong with being smart and striving to have monetary success and prestige, if that's all you want, more than likely, when you get it, you'll be wondering, "Is that all there is?," like the song with the same title.  This can be a tremendous letdown, especially if you've invested years of your life to attain these goals.

When Disappointment Leads to Striving For More of the Same

Often, people respond to feeling this disappointment by striving even harder to have more...more money, more prestige, a bigger vacation house, a more expensive car, and so on.  They become even more competitive with their colleagues, friends, loved ones, and neighbors.  But the problem with this is that there will always be someone who is smarter, richer, and more powerful than you are, so where does this end?  For someone people, it ends with deeper disappointment. For other people, it ends with sudden cardiac arrest.

Getting Help When "Having It All" Leaves You Feeling Empty

At about this point, people who might never have come to therapy, seek help.  Striving more, working harder, being bigger and better, smarter and faster hasn't brought lasting happiness, and they're in emotional crisis.  They've done everything they've been told and everything they know how to do to be happy, but happiness eludes them, and they don't know why.  They often come to therapy feeling that their lack of happiness is, somehow, their fault.  

What Is a Meaningful Life to You? 

Rather than looking for a place to cast blame, when "having it all" leaves you feeling empty inside, it's important to take a look at how you're defining success.  Although it might sound like an old cliche, when your definition of success is only narrowly defined by the external things in your life, after a while, these things become less meaningful to you.  If you haven't broadened your definition of success to include a rich inner life and contributing in a meaningful way to the world around you, more than likely, if you're at all in touch with your emotions, you'll feel empty inside. 

Whether you call this empty feeling inside "a spiritual crisis," "a mid-life crisis" or a crisis by any other name, usually, when you get to this point, you can feel desperate because, along the way, you might not have learned any other ways for being happy other than to be more and to get more.  Perhaps you've also surrounded yourself with like-minded people.  And, when you compare yourself to them, they seem to be happy with their lives, so you might ask yourself, "What's wrong with me?"

Psychotherapy:  A Place to Explore and Discover New Aspects of Yourself

Psychotherapy is a place where you can explore and discover what it would mean to you to have a meaningful life.  In the privacy of a therapy session with an objective therapist who is empathetic and with whom you have a rapport, you can start to focus on your inner world, as opposed to being exclusively focused on your external world.  

Whereas friends and loved ones might have their own views of what it means to have a meaningful life, a skilled clinician can help you develop your own new definition of what it means to be successful in a much broader sense without judging you or imposing his or her own views.

Psychotherapy: A Place to Explore and Discover New Aspects of Yourself

Your psychotherapy session is a time and place dedicated to you where you have uninterrupted time to develop and discover aspects of yourself that you might not have even known exist.  It's a chance to discover and experiment with new possibilities of who you are and what might make you happy.

When continuing to do more of the same of what you've been doing continues to leave you disappointed, you owe it to yourself to work with a skilled clinician who can help you expand your definition of success and happiness.  

About Me:

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 or email me: josephineolivia@aol.com.

Can't Stop Looking at Your Ex's Social Media Pages? Here Are Some Reasons to Stop

On some level, most people know that continuously reading their ex's Facebook page can be very upsetting, especially if you discover things about your ex--like he has a new girlfriend or, worse still, he got married--that you're not prepared to face.

Can't Stop Looking at Your Ex's Social Media Pages?

Over and over, I hear from psychotherapy clients as well as people in my personal life that they can't stop themselves from looking at their ex's Facebook page, even when they know it's really over.  For many people, it becomes an obsession.  They want to know what's happening in their ex's life and, more importantly, has s/he found someone new?

Although it might be tempting to keep looking at your ex's Facebook page because you feel that you just can't resist, there are some very good reasons to stop:

• You're going to find it very hard to move on if you keep looking at your ex's Facebook page.
• It can be a form of emotional self torture to find out that your ex is with someone new. And, anyway, what can you do with this information, aside from making yourself miserable and upset?
• If you see her looking happy with someone new, it can make you feel awful about yourself, wondering why she wasn't happy with you (even though the pictures you see on the Facebook page might not reflect reality).
• Like any obsessive habit, the more you do it, the more you want to do it, making it very difficult to stop.

Here are some tips that might help you the next time you feel the urge to look at your ex's Facebook page:

• De-friend your ex.  As hard as it might be, it will help you not to have such ready access to your ex's Facebook page.
• Try waiting 20 minutes, when you feel the urge to look, to see if the urge passes.
• Ask yourself, "What do I hope to accomplish by looking at his Facebook page?"
• Go out for a walk or distract yourself by doing something else.
• Talk to a supportive friend who knows how to listen attentively to your feelings.
• Take a break from social media and go out and do something nurturing for yourself.  

When You Don't Want to Let Go of Your Ex
Continually looking at your ex's Facebook page might mean that you're not ready to move on yet, and you might be harboring wishes, no matter how unrealistic, that the two of you might get back together again.  Be honest with yourself and ask yourself if this is what's going on with you.

Are You Avoiding Feeling the Emotional Pain of the Breakup?
Nobody likes to go through the emotional pain of a breakup.  But if you're holding onto unrealistic fantasies of rekindling your romance with your ex, part of this might be an unconscious wish to avoid feeling the pain.  Unfortunately, there's no way to avoid going through the pain in order to get to the other side so you can move on.

Getting Help in Therapy
Mourning the loss of a relationship is hard, but you can make it harder on yourself by holding onto what you know deep down is really over.  Everyone is different and every situation is different when it comes to mourning this type of loss.

No one can tell you how long it should take.  But if you find that, over time, it's not getting a little easier for you, you might consider consulting with a licensed psychotherapist who can help you get over your obsessive reading of your ex's Facebook page and also help you through the mourning process.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.

Also see my article:
Stalking Your Ex on Social Media

Psychotherapy Daily News - 1/25/13

Psychotherapy Daily News for today, 1/25/13, has articles from Psychiatric Times, American Psychological Association (APA) Help Center, Good Therapy.org, New York Times Health, Harvard Business Review, Psychotherapy Networker, Science Daily, and this psychotherapy blog, among others, about mental health issues, science, health, the environment, and leisure issues.

Here are a list of just some of the articles, which represents the latest and most interesting news stories:

• Your Relationship:  Should You Stay or Should You Go?
• Relationships:  Covert Belittling
• Overcoming Trauma with Somatic Experiencing
• The Joy of Being Attuned to Your Inner Child
• Working with the Borderline Client
• Can a Sense of Control Increase Your Lifespan?
• Red Explosions:  Secret Life of Binary Stars is Revealed
• Scientists Discover How Epigenetic Information Could Be Inherited - Mechanisms of Epigenetic Reprogramming Revealed
• Parenting - The Art of Benign Neglect
• Getting Naked:  It's Not Just About Sex

Subscribe to Psychotherapy Daily News
You can subscribe to get your daily copy in your in box by going to Psychotherapy Daily News and clicking on the "Subscribe" button.  Your information will be anonymous (even to me) so you don't have to be concerned about getting SPAM.

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  
Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (212) 726-1006.

Psychotherapy Daily News

Psychotherapy Daily News - 1/24/13

Psychotherapy Daily News features articles about mental health, science, health, education plus more from various sources, including New York Time, Yoga Journal, the Harvard Business Review, GoodTherapy.com, Psychiatric Times as well as some of my own psychotherapy-related articles.

Here are a list of some of the articles in today's Psychotherapy Daily News:

• Interpersonal Neurobiology in the Consulting Room With Dan Siegel
• Psychiatrists With Ethics Training Less Likely to Push Brand-Name Drugs
• Managing Suicide Risk of Clients With Borderline Personality Disorder
• Emotional Demands:  The Exhaustive Effect on Technology Workers
• Sugar Addiction and Mental Health:  America Needs Rehab
• Does Religion Help You Quit Smoking?
• Find Your Authentic Self and You Just Might Find Your Next Career
• Starting Therapy--and Ending It Too
• Reasons for Substance Use Predicts Treatment Outcome in Adolescents
• EMDR Self Help Book:  Getting Past Your Past
• Feeling Lonely in a Relationship
• Can You Read the Face of Victory?
• Th 28-Day Meditation Challenge Returns on February 1
• Why You Should Emphasize Your Potential Rather Than Your Achievements on Your CV
• It's Time to Cut Back on Social Media
• What Capitalism Can't Fix
• May I Be Happy?
• Long Term Effects of Life Expectancy From Smoking
• Addiction in the Home:  Healing Lives, Families and Communities
• It's My Job and I'll Tweet If I Want To
• Tips For Managing and Preventing Stress
• Science News From Around the Web
• Krishna Das Nominated For Grammy Award
• Stop Underage Drinking - Gateway to Federal Resources
• Study Links Cognitive Deficits and Hearing Loss
• Positive Psychology News Daily

You can subscribe for free by clicking on this link:Psychotherapy Daily News and clicking on the word "subscribe" so you don't miss an issue.

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  
Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (212) 726-1006.

Visit Psychotherapy Daily News for the latest information about mental health issues.

Psychotherapy Daily News - 1/23/13

Today's Psychotherapy Daily News, which has articles from my psychotherapy blog as well stories and videos from 
other psychotherapy sources, includes the following stories and videos:

• Psychotherapy:  Healing Your Emotional Wounds
• Psychotherapy and Beginner's Mind
• Resilience:  Bouncing Back from Life's ChallengesEMDR Self Help Book:  Getting Past Your Past
• Memory Experiment
• Update on Adolescent Mood Disorders
• Planck's Law of Generations - Psychiatric Times
• Family Habits:  The Key to Controlling Childhood Obesity
• Video:  Stories of Hope and Recovery - Jordan's Story
• Video:  Hurricane Sandy - Dr. Steven Southwick (Psychiatric Times)

You can subscribe to Psychotherapy Daily News by going to the site and clicking on the "Subscribe" button.

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapy, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.

I work with individuals adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (212) 726-1006.

Visit:  Psychotherapy Daily News

The Dreamer and the Pragmatist

I'm reading Adam Phillips' book, Promises, Promises - Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature. In Chapter One, "Poetry and Psychoanalysis," Phillips discusses, among other things, the difference, generally speaking, between two different types of clients, the Dreamer and the Pragmatist.

Psychotherapy Clients - The Dreamer and the Pragmatist:
According to Adam Phillips, the client who is a Dreamer wants to free associate in therapy and go wherever his thoughts lead him, and the Pragmatist is focused on resolving his problems in therapy.  Whereas the Pragmatist wants to achieve things, the Dreamer is focused on the experiential.

The Dreamer and the Pragmatist

Adam Phillips says the Dreamer wants the therapist to help her get back into her reverie, and the Pragmatist wants the therapist to help her find a solution to her problem.

The Pragmatist wants to know, in a practical way, what to do.  The Dreamer wants to discover the way and see what happens.

Of course, these are generalizations, and most clients don't fall neatly into one category or another.  People are often a combination of the two.

I've worked with both Dreamers and Pragmatists in my psychotherapy practice in NYC and both types of clients appeal to the different aspects in me that I identify with.

Psychotherapy with the Pragmatist
In many ways, I'm a Pragmatist and I like helping clients in a down-to-earth manner, especially clients who come in for brief therapy, assuming that brief therapy is the appropriate form of treatment for them.  

Brief therapy is appropriate where a client has a specific problem, with no major trauma, that lends itself to brief solution-oriented therapy.  Often, this client just needs some direction or guidance, an objective mental health professional to check in with, and they can often come up with practical solutions to their problems.  Long-term treatment isn't necessary, unless, over time, the client becomes curious and interested in exploring more about his inner world.

Psychotherapy with the  Dreamer
I also have a side of me that is a Dreamer or Seeker, and I also enjoy working with clients who are more interested in discovering their inner world and more focused on the "journey" rather than the "destination."

My original training is in contemporary psychoanalysis.  I'm fascinated by the unconscious, including dreams.  When I work with dreams, I have different ways that I work, including contemporary psychodynamic dream work and Embodied Imagination dream work, which is a post-Jungian way of working developed by psychoanalyst, Robert Bosnak.  This type of psychotherapy is more open ended than brief treatment and, as in all therapy, the client decides when s/he has completed treatment.

Many Different Types of Psychotherapy - Many Choices for Psychotherapy Clients
Whether you're someone who seeks brief therapy, more open-ended psychodynamic treatment or something in between, there are so many different types of therapy today that you have many choices, including psychoanalysis, psychodynamic therapy, solution-focused therapy, cognitive behavioral treatment (CBT), EMDR, hypnotherapy, and Somatic Experiencing, to name just a few.

I usually recommend that people looking for a therapist trust their gut instincts when choosing a therapist.

See the link below for my article, "Psychotherapy: How to Choose a Psychotherapist" for more information.

About Me

I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist.  

I work with individual adults and couples.

To find out more about me, visit my web site:  Josephine Ferraro, LCSW - NYC Psychotherapist.

To set up a consultation, call me at (917) 742-2624 during business hours or email me.


Psychotherapy: How to Choose a Psychotherapist

Promises, Promises - Essays on Psychoanalysis and Literature - by Adam Phillips