Creating Personal Rituals as Part of Your Emotional Healing Process

In a prior article,  The Power of Creating Personal Rituals, I discussed creating personal rituals and how meaningful rituals can be to enhance a sense of well being.  In this article, I'm focusing specifically on creating rituals for emotional healing.

Creating Personal Rituals as Part of the Healing Process

What is a Ritual?
In the most general terms, life is full of rituals.

Every culture has rituals.  Rituals are usually associated with meaningful religious or cultural observances where there is a ceremonial act or a series of acts that are performed in a certain way. It can be at certain times of the day, month, year or certain seasons.

The acts or words of the ritual are often done in a certain repeated way.  There might be certain places associated with the ritual and particular garments that are worn.

Rituals can be done in groups, as when people from a religious group join together to observe a holiday, or rituals can be a solo observance.

Meaningful rituals usually have a mindful quality to them.

Rituals mark transitions from:

• Childhood to adulthood
• Uninitiated to initiated
• Single to being married
• Life to death
• One season to another
• One state of mind to another

and so on

Most children learn about rituals from a young age.

Children Learn About Rituals at a Young Age:  Bedtime Stories

So, for instance, when I was a young child, my mother would read a book to me before I went to sleep, which is a common ritual that parents have for helping children to transition from day to night and from being awake to relaxing into sleep.  It's also a bonding experience between parent and child.

Artists and writers are often known to have certain rituals (or habits) that they engage in before they write.  It can help them to be more disciplined about doing their work as well as helping them to transition from their everyday thoughts and feelings to their more creative inner world.

You don't have to be a spiritual person or an artist to create a ritual.  In fact, many rituals that people engage in everyday aren't spiritual at all.  Think of your morning ritual, which most people have.  It's easier to transition from sleeping to being awake if you have somewhat of a ritual.

Creating Personal Rituals as Part of Your Emotional Healing Process

Your morning ritual might begin by making coffee or tea, feeling the warmth of the cup, smelling the aroma, and enjoying the first taste as you begin your day.  You might enjoy a few moments before the rest of the family gets up.  Maybe you look out the window and see the sun rising.

Creating Personal Rituals as Part of Your Healing Process

Rituals also don't have to be rigid or dogmatic.  As a matter of fact, it's better if they're not because then they can lose part of what's comforting and meaningful about having a ritual.

Why Are Rituals So Powerful?
Rituals create a bridge between your conscious and unconscious mind.  They appeal to the right side of your brain which is associated with creativity and emotions.  In that sense, a ritual can be emotionally transformative.

Creating Personal Rituals as Part of Your Healing Process

The intention, preparation and structure of the ritual as well as anything that is meaningful to you that you use to create a ritual often creates a transcendent quality that goes beyond you and your everyday concerns.

A ritual, whether done in a group or alone, can also be centering and grounding.  It can help you to relax you and clarify your thoughts and intentions.

In an earlier article, I discussed how setting an intention each day can be powerful (see my article:  Starting the Day With an Intention).

In another article about dream incubation, I discussed how you can set an intention for your dreams (see my article:  Dream Incubation: Planting Seeds), which came out of a dream intensive workshop that I attended with Jungian analyst, Robert Bosnak, who wrote the book, Embodied Imagination.

Dream Incubation as Ritual

Whether you set an intention for an hour, a day, a week, a month, a year or for the rest of your life, just the act of setting an intention is meaningful and helps you to focus on what's important to you.

The repetitiveness of a ritual can also be trance-like so that each time you do a ritual, you enter into a certain internal state, both physically and mentally, that is part of the ritual intention.

Why Create an Emotional Healing Ritual?
There are many ways to heal emotionally:

• Talking to friends and loved ones
• Healing in psychotherapy
• Writing in a personal journal
• Listening to music
• Visiting places that are meaningful to you

and so on

In addition to these other ways of healing, creating a personal healing ritual is empowering because you're creating it yourself in ways that will be healing for you.

A ritual can be as elaborate or as simple as you like.

Creating a ritual is only limited by your imagination.

A ritual can be as simple as doing a particular meditation each day at a certain time.

Meditation as Part of Emotional Healing Ritual

There is a simple meditation that I learned from Nancy Napier, a psychotherapist in NYC, who taught my first year of Somatic Experiencing.

When it was time to begin the class, she would have us get quiet and centered in our bodies.  This settling down and focusing on our internal experience was a transition from whatever we were doing before to being present in a meaningful way in that moment.

After a few moments, she asked us, in a quiet and soft voice, to feel ourselves connecting with all the healers in the city.  Then, gradually she expanded it to include all the healers in the country, and then all the healers in the world.

After this short meditation, the feeling in the room changed.  Everyone looked more relaxed and open to learning.

I often use this meditation at the end of psychotherapy sessions with clients who like it because it's so grounding and centering.  It's especially helpful if we've been working on trauma.  After this meditation, even if trauma work was difficult, clients usually leave the session feeling relaxed.

This is a simple enough meditation that anyone can use it on his or her own.

If you prefer more elaborate rituals, you can use candles, artwork, pictures, poetry, movement, flowers, statues, inspirational sayings, and "props" to help engage your inner world.

Creating Personal Rituals as Part of Your Emotional Healing Process

Some people who have health problem set up a space in their homes where they place objects that are meaningful to whatever they're working on healing.  This space can be a corner of a credenza or it can be a table that is set aside only for this purpose.

Engaging and inspiring your inner world is what's most important in terms of creating a healing ritual.

Rituals don't need to be solemn.  Rituals can be a lot of fun.

You can use humor, if you like, which, in itself, can be healing.  Humor can help to lighten your mood, especially if you've been feeling weighed down by stress or illness.

When you're creating a healing ritual, the important thing is to make your own.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

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

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

Healing the Mother-Daughter Relationship Where There Was Role Reversal

In my prior article,  Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships, I began discussing some of the dynamics related to role reversal in mother-daughter relationships, including the dynamic in the daughter's early childhood and the possible outcomes of the mother-daughter relationship when the daughter is an adult.

Healing the Mother-Daughter Relationship Where There Was Role Reversal

In this article, I've given a fictional vignette, which is made of many different cases of role reversal between mothers and daughters, about how it is possible to heal problematic mother-daughter relationships in mother-daughter therapy (see my article:  Healing Mother-Daughter Relationships).

Jane and Patty
Jane and Patty sought mother-daughter therapy because they were unable to reconcile their relationship on their own.

The daughter, Patty, had been in individual therapy with another therapist to deal with this issue, but she had a strong desire to be able to talk to her mother about their role reversal, especially during the time when Patty was a young child.

In the past, Patty said, whenever Patty attempted to talk to Jane, about it, Jane would dismiss Patty's concerns and change the subject.  Not only was this hurtful, Patty said, but it also left her feeling angry and frustrated.

Healing Mother-Daughter Relationships Where There Was Role Reversal

Even though neither of them would describe their current adult relationship in very negative terms, Jane felt that she was harboring a lot of unexpressed resentment towards Jane for her role as a parentified child when she was younger, cooking, cleaning, taking care of her younger siblings, and being Jane's confidante, especially when Jane was drunk.

During Patty's early childhood and teen years, Jane was an active alcoholic.  She would drink until she passed out leaving Patty and the younger children to fend for themselves.  Since Patty's father had left the household before Patty was born, there were no other adults at home to help.

Patty recalled that when she was six years old, Jane would get drunk and unburden her problems on Patty.

Patty recounted how sad she felt that her mother was so unhappy and she was willing to do whatever her mother wanted because she hoped this would make Jane happy.  But it never did.  And Patty grew up feeling like she failed her mother, which made her try even harder to please her mother and to work even harder at home.

When Patty was a teen, she said, she often had to help her mother walk up the stairs to her bedroom because Jane was too drunk to walk up the stairs by herself.  Then, Patty would put her mother to bed and take care of her younger siblings.

Patty recalled that she often felt lonely and overwhelmed as a child because she had no one to talk to about it.  She also missed out on a lot of social activities because she stayed home to take care of her mother and the other children.

Patty said she was so glad when her mother got sober when Patty was 18.  She was glad for Jane and glad for herself and her siblings.

Jane's sobriety allowed Patty to go to college without feeling guilty that she was leaving Jane and the children.

While Patty spoke, Jane kept her eyes cast down and sat stiffly in the chair.  It was evident that it took a lot for her to sit and listen to how emotionally damaging it was for Patty to function as the mom at home.

After Patty spoke, Jane said she wasn't sure what to say.  She said that she had apologized to Patty many times, but Patty didn't accept her apology.  As she said this, she appeared somewhat emotionally disconnected from their conversation.

Patty responded by saying that even though Jane apologized, Jane also told her that all of this happened a long time ago and Patty should "let it go."  Patty felt that Jane didn't know what Patty went through and she didn't want to know.

The first several sessions were intense and emotional with both mother and daughter becoming upset and angry at various times.

The breakthrough came in their sixth session together when Patty said that she didn't see how they could ever be close if Jane continued to say she was sorry and, at the same time, she was dismissive of Patty's feelings by telling her to "just let it go."

"Mom, if I could 'just let it go,' don't you think I would have done that a long time ago?" Patty said to her mother, "I'm beginning to feel hopeless that you and I could ever have a close relationship."

At that point, hearing her daughter's sense of hopelessness, Jane broke down.  It was the turning point in their therapy.  She said that the thought that they could never heal their relationship was unbearable to her.

Then, she began talking about her own childhood.  She wanted Patty to understand why she wasn't a good mother when Patty was a child.  Until then, Jane was never willing to talk to Patty about her childhood before.

Jane revealed that her mother, whom Patty had never met, was not only emotionally neglectful, she was also physically abusive.  When her mother was drunk, Jane said, she would bring home strange men and, after her mother passed out, they would sexually abuse Jane.

Since her mother would black out when she drank, she never remembered what happened and she didn't believe Jane when she tried to tell her that these men were sexually abusing her.

Jane said that this was the first time that she had ever revealed this to anyone, and she felt deeply ashamed about the sexual abuse and how she neglected Patty when she was a child.

Healing the Mother-Daughter Relationship Where There Was Role Reversal

At that point, Patty took her mother's hand to soothe her, and they sat silently for a few minutes.

Over the next several sessions, Jane and Patty continued to talk about their relationship.  Something shifted between them.  They seemed genuinely close.

Patty said that, for the first time in her life, she felt that her mother understood and she was glad that she wasn't dismissing her feelings.  She also said that, knowing her mother's history, she felt a deep sense of compassion towards her and forgave.

Jane said she felt closer to Patty than she had in a long time, and she wanted to continue developing their relationship.  She also said that she decided to begin her own individual therapy to deal with her traumatic history.

Conclusion
Trying to reconcile the emotional aftermath of a role reversal in a mother-daughter relationship can be challenging for both people.

The fictional vignette above is one variation on many themes between a mother and daughter trying to bring about a reconciliation.

Healing between a mother and daughter is possible if both people are willing.

If they can't accomplish this on their own, mother-daughter therapy is often helpful to heal old wounds.

Getting Help in Therapy
As people become better educated about psychotherapy, more mothers and daughters are participating in mother-daughter therapy.

Getting Help in Therapy

If you're stuck in a mother-daughter dynamic that you want to change, you could benefit from mother-daughter therapy with a licensed mental health professional who can facilitate the emotional healing.

Life is short and by healing your mother-daughter relationship, it's possible for you to have a healthier, more loving relationship.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples, including mothers and adult daughters and fathers and adult sons.

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

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

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships

In the past, I wrote several articles about mother-daughter relationships, including:  Healing Mother-Daughter Relationships, Life Stages in Mother-Daughter Relationships and Mother-Daughter Relationships Over the Course of a Lifetime).

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships

In this article, I'm focusing on role reversal between mothers and daughters, including the dynamics when the daughter is a young child as well as the effect on their relationship later on when the daughter is an adult.

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships: Early Childhood
When there is a role reversal dynamic in a mother-daughter relationship, the young daughter usually takes on the role of the mother in terms of mothering the mother (and other family members) by becoming the helper, confidante, and caretaker of the mother.

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships: Early Childhood

It's not unusual in this dynamic for the daughter to take on adult responsibilities at a young age such as cooking, cleaning, taking care of the other children in the household, listening to the mother's problems, and trying to solve the mother's problems.

In some highly dysfunctional families, it might also involve the daughter taking on the role of the sex partner to the father, sometimes with the mother's knowledge and sometimes without.

Why Does a Mother "Allow" Her Daughter to Take On the Mothering Role?
Mothers who are part of this dynamic often have their own unmet emotional childhood needs from when they were growing up, possibly in a similar dynamic with their own mother.

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships: Early Childhood

Growing up with unmet emotional needs makes it more likely that mothers will unconsciously seek the nurturing that they didn't receive from their own mothers from their young daughters.

Aside from having unmet emotional needs, the mother might also have other problems, including:

• Being incapacitated by depression
• Lacking parenting skills
• Getting pregnant at a very young age and lacking the maturity to take care of her daughter 
• Having unwanted pregnancies
• Being physically sick
• Being overwhelmed by too many other responsibilities
• Abusing alcohol or drugs, engaging in compulsive gambling or other impulsive/compulsive behavior
• Being in an abusive relationship with the father (or another man) 
• Having a succession of men in and out of her life with each one becoming the focus on her attention rather than her daughter

and so on.

Often this dynamic is perpetuated from one generation to the next without the mothers or daughters even realizing it, unless they get help in therapy.

Young daughters who take on the mother role are usually emotionally overwhelmed because they are behaving in ways that are beyond their developmental capacity.

Not only are their own emotional needs not being met because they're being emotionally neglected, but they are overexerting themselves mentally, emotionally and physically, often without any emotional support.

If they're also taking on the role as the father's sex partner, this is, obviously, extremely damaging and exacerbates the emotional trauma.

Often the mother in the role reversal dynamic, without realizing it, lacks empathy for the daughter.

The mother might lack empathy because she hasn't dealt with her own history of being in a role reversal with her mother.

This is a complicated dynamic and, as illogical as it might seem, this doesn't mean necessarily that the mother in this situation doesn't love the daughter.

The lack of empathy usually means that the mother is unable or unwilling to see the damage being done, despite the love she might feel for the daughter, because she doesn't know how to be nurturing and her own unfulfilled emotional needs are so great.

The mother also might not know how to express love to her daughter because her own mother never expressed it to her.

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships:  The Adult Relationship Between the Mother and Daughter:  Possibilities for Healing
It's not unusual that later on in life, when the mother is older and the daughter becomes an adult, for there to be tension between the mother and daughter.

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships: The Adult Relationship Between Mother and Daughter

If the mother is now better able to be loving towards her adult daughter because she has matured and developed more emotionally, there is the possibility for healing their relationship, even if the mother has a lot of shame about the role reversal and the daughter is resentful.

A lot will depend upon the particular mother and daughter.

Some mothers and daughters continue to have an ambivalent, codependent relationship as adults (see my article:  Ambivalence and Codependency in Mother-Daughter Relationships).

Some adult daughters have so much anger, resentment and bitterness towards the mother that they find it difficult to forgive her, even if the mother expresses remorse for their role reversal when the daughter was a child.

Other daughters might develop a kind of intellectual insight ("I know my mother did the best that she could") but, without help in therapy, they remain stuck emotionally and ambivalent in their conflict because even though they might have an intellectual understanding, they don't understand it on an emotional level.

Unfortunately, this is a common experience for many daughters in this situation.

Many daughters are aware that they paid the emotional price for the role reversal, and they're determined that they won't perpetuate this dynamic with their own children.  Many of them go on to have healthy relationships with their children.

But many of them, despite their best efforts, end up having dysfunctional relationships with their children.   They might overindulge their children (like giving them everything that the child wants because they didn't get what they needed when they were children).

They might over function for their children, doing things for their children that their children are capable of doing for themselves. Or they have some other emotional blind spot with regard to their children, especially their daughters.

Some mothers find it difficult to acknowledge the role reversal either because they're in denial about it, they're too ashamed to discuss it or they're dismissive of the pain it caused the daughter due to their lack of empathy ("That was a long time ago.  You should just let it go").

Role Reversal in Mother-Daughter Relationships: The Adult Relationship Between Mother and Daughter

Other mothers want to make a sincere effort to heal the relationship with their daughter, but they don't know how.  Or, their daughter, as an adult, might be unwilling.

There are many variations on this theme.

In a future article, I'll continue this discussion and give a fictional vignette to illustrate the points that I've discussed in this article.

Getting Help in Therapy
Overcoming the emotional consequences of role reversal in mother-daughter relationships can be challenging and, for some people impossible, to do on your own.

Many mothers and adult daughters have been helped by coming to mother-daughter therapy to overcome the problems between them.

With an objective mental health professional, who understands the dynamics involved with this type of role reversal, mothers and daughters often find that they are able to heal their relationship with each other.

Even in situations where one person, either the mother or the daughter, is unable or unwilling to come to therapy to work on this problem, many individuals have healed in individual therapy from the trauma of this dynamic.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples, including mothers and adult daughters and fathers and adult sons.

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

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

Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

People often to come to therapy after their own efforts to heal emotionally haven't worked for them and they realize that they need help from a licensed mental health professional.  

It's understandable that a big part of the reason why they come to therapy is because they want to feel better, and it's often the case that when they begin to talk about their problems, they start to feel better.  

But the problem arises when clients stop attending therapy as soon as they start feeling better as opposed to when they have emotionally healed by working through the problem (see my article:  When Clients Leave Psychotherapy Prematurely).

Leaving Therapy:  Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

Since starting to feel better often begins during the initial stage of therapy, a client who leaves therapy before s/he has worked through the problem is leaving prematurely and will usually experience a "relapse" of the emotional problem because starting to feel better isn't the same as resolving the problem.  It's just a temporary alleviation of symptoms until the symptoms come back to the surface again.

Let's take a look at an example of this in the following vignette which is a composite of many different cases to protect confidentiality:

Jack
Before coming to therapy, Jack tried to deal with his panic attacks around his difficult boss by working out at the gym, attending yoga classes, and talking to friends about it.  But none of these efforts helped him (see my articles:  Workplace: Coping with a Difficult Boss and How Your Workplace Can Feel Like a Dysfunctional Family).

Leaving Therapy:  Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

When he went to see his medical doctor, his doctor gave him a prescription for anti-anxiety medication for short term use and recommended that Jack see a psychotherapist to work out whatever underlying issues might be affecting him.

Jack discovered that the medication helped to relieve his panicky symptoms for short periods of time. But he realized that, after a while, he needed a higher dose to alleviate symptoms, and he didn't like becoming dependent upon medication.  So, although he preferred not to go to therapy, he followed his doctor's advice and contacted me for help.

After we talked about his family history, both Jack and I began to see parallels between his situation at work and his abusive father.  Both men were overbearing and verbally abusive.  Jack's father was also physically abusive with Jack when Jack was a child.

Just knowing this was a tremendous relief for Jack.  Until then, he felt that he was "going crazy" whenever he had a panic attack around his boss.

As Jack started to understand that he was reacting to his boss as if he were a child and his boss was his abusive father, he began to be able to separate his current experiences from his childhood experiences (see my articles:  Reacting to the Present Based on Your Traumatic Past).

At that point, Jack decided that he didn't need to continue in therapy anymore because he "understood" why he was having his panic attacks.  So, during a period of time when his boss was away on an extended business trip, Jack decided that he was "feeling better" and he would end therapy.

Leaving Therapy:  Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

I tried to explain to Jack that the alleviation of his symptoms was probably temporary since he had not worked through the underlying emotional problems (his childhood history of being abused) involved in his current problem.  Understanding logically was the first step, but it usually doesn't resolve these types of problems.  There was also the fact that his boss was away so Jack wasn't getting triggered at that point by the boss's abusive behavior.

But Jack had made up his mind about leaving therapy.  So, I told him that my door remained open and he could return in the future.

Within a couple of weeks, after his boss returned, I received a call from Jack, who said that he was having panic attacks again. In one instance, he thought he was having a heart attack and he went to the ER.  After the ER doctors ruled out a heart attack, they told Jack that he was having a panic attack with heart palpitations, shakiness and sweating and he should seek help from a licensed mental health professional.

Leaving Therapy:  Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

Jack said that this was, by far, the worst panic attack that he had ever had and it frightened him to the point where he was now constantly worried that he would have another panic attack.

We resumed our work that week.

I began by helping Jack to develop internal resources, which are basically coping skills (see my article:  Developing Internal Resources in Therapy).

After helping Jack to develop the internal resources to do the therapeutic work, we started doing EMDR therapy (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing), a mind-body oriented type of therapy to work on the current situation as well as the underlying issues that were getting triggered by his unresolved childhood trauma (see my articles:  What is EMDR?, How EMDR Works: Part 1: EMDR and the Brain, How EMDR Works - Part 2: Overcoming Trauma and EMDR: When the Past is in the Present).

As we worked together, Jack learned to manage his panic-related symptoms.  More importantly, over time, the EMDR therapy helped Jack to work through the unresolved childhood abuse he experienced with his father that was getting triggered with his boss (see my article:  Mind-Body Psychotherapy: The Body Offers a Window into the Conscious Mind).

He no longer had panic attacks because the underlying traumatic issues triggering the attacks got worked through so they were no longer there to be triggered (see my article:  Experiential Therapy. Like EMDR, Helps to Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs).

Leaving Therapy:  Confusing Starting to "Feel Better" With Emotional Healing

Not only did Jack "feel better," but his boss's abusive behavior no longer frightened him.  In fact, for the first time, Jack saw that his boss was really an insecure man who bullied employees to bolster his own low self esteem.

Rather than freezing in panic, Jack's attitude about the work situation was that, although it was unpleasant, he no longer felt threatened by it.

A few months later, Jack found a better job where he felt happier, respected and well compensated.

Summary
Just like "Jack," many clients think that their work in therapy is over once they understand their problem and they start to "feel better."  Unfortunately, this usually doesn't last, especially when emotional trauma is involved.

An intellectual understanding is a good start, but it's not the same as actually working through the problem, as "Jack" discovered.

The working through process necessitates working on a deeper level than just having a cognitive understanding.

EMDR and other mind-body oriented types of therapy, like Somatic Experiencing and clinical hypnosis tend to be more effective and efficient than regular talk therapy when the problem involves emotional trauma (EMDR: When Talk Therapy Isn't Enough).

Of course, everyone is different and these types of therapy aren't a quick fix but, as an experienced therapist, I have found that EMDR and other mind-body oriented types of therapy tend to work faster to resolve trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you have tried unsuccessfully to work out your problems on your own, you owe it to yourself to get professional help from a licensed mental health professional (see my article:  How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

Rather than continuing to suffer on your own, you could work through your problems so that you can lead a more fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

In addition to providing mind-body oriented psychotherapy, I also use talk therapy with clients who would benefit from it.

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

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

Overcoming Your Denial About Family Problems

As I've written in previous articles, adult children from dysfunctional families usually survive their family chaos by being in denial about the problems in their family and how they were affected (see my article: Dynamics of Adult Children From Dysfunctional Families).

Overcoming Your Denial About Family Problems

What is Denial?
Denial is an unconscious defense mechanism. For people who grew up in a dysfunctional family, denial helped them to survive emotionally by preventing emotional trauma from overwhelming them as children.  But whereas denial helped them to survive as children, it gets in the way of healthy emotional development.

Coming to terms with the dysfunction in a family of origin is emotionally challenging, but not coming to terms with it is even more damaging.

Overcoming Your Denial About Family Problems

The unconscious process of denial keeps disturbing emotions out of awareness.  People who are in denial about the problems in their family of origin and how those problems affected them often use dissociation as a way to keep uncomfortable emotions split off from their conscious awareness.

While denial might ward off uncomfortable feelings, unfortunately, it also affects other areas--not just the emotions that are meant to be kept at bay.

There are degrees of dissociation--from mild to severe.  Even a moderate level of dissociation can dampen overall emotions, including happiness, so that people who use dissociation to remain in denial are often out of touch with their feelings.

It also takes a lot of energy to keep uncomfortable emotions out of awareness so that it can leave a person emotionally drained.

Adult who use denial as a maladaptive form of coping often have problems in their relationships.

Often, these adults are out of touch with issues in their marriage and with their children (see my article:  Unresolved Trauma Can Create Emotional Blind Spots That Affect You and Your Family). And if they're forced to deal with difficult situations, they might become emotionally overwhelmed.  At that point, psychotherapy can be helpful, especially experiential therapy.

Let's take a look at the following vignette, which is a fictional scenario that shows how denial creates problems and how experiential therapy can help (see my article: Experiential Therapy Can Help Achieve Emotional Breakthroughs):

Emily
Emily came to therapy because she felt overwhelmed by her problems with her husband and 17 year old son.

Overcoming Your Denial About Family Problems

Her husband, Mark, had been telling her for over a year that he suspected that their son, Tom, was drinking with his friends.

Although, like Mark, Emily smelled the alcohol on Tom's breath, she felt that her husband was making too big a deal out of it.  Her feeling was that Tom was rebelling and if they overreacted to it, Tom would want to act out even more by drinking more.  She felt that Tom would grow out of it.

Emily's attitude toward the situation infuriated Mark and when she wouldn't agree with him that they both should confront Tom about his drinking, he decided to do it on his own.

So, one evening when Tom came home from seeing his friends smelling of alcohol, Mark called him into the living room where he and Emily were sitting and told Mark and told him that he was concerned about his drinking.

As Emily talked about that evening in therapy, I asked her what she was feeling at the time.  I already knew, based on Emily's family history, that her father struggled with alcoholism and her mother and the rest of the family, including Emily, tiptoed around the father's problem.  Even after her father died from alcohol-related causes, no one in the family ever discussed it (see my article: Overcoming Childhood Trauma).

Emily response to my question about how she was feeling at the moment when her husband confronted their son about his drinking drew a blank look, and she told me that she wasn't aware of feeling anything in particular--except possibly being annoyed with her husband for creating the confrontation.

As we focused on what she might have been feeling at that moment, Emily thought back and she remembered her attention drifting out of the room and she felt like she was floating.  She described it as an oddly pleasant feeling that was familiar.

Then, she remembered that her feeling of floating was interrupted abruptly by an argument that broke out between her husband and their son.  They were shouting at each other and then Tom stormed off to his room slamming the door behind him.

Mark was angry that Emily remained passive when he confronted Tom.  He expressed his anger and frustration that she refused to see that Tom was in trouble.  He accused her of colluding with Tom.  Then, he told her that he was sick of trying to get her to see that Tom had a drinking problem, and he was moving out of the house for a while.

Emily remembered feeling emotionally paralyzed as Mark packed his things and drove to a hotel.  Other than shock, she wasn't sure what she felt.

During our second session, Emily was upset and crying because a week after Mark moved out, the police called her to tell her that her son and his friends were arrested for underage drinking during a routine traffic stop.  The driver was also charged with DWI.

This was a shocking wake up call for Emily.  When she called Mark to tell him, he came home immediately so they could face this problem together.

Our work together began with helping Emily to develop basic coping skills and, gradually, to help her to connect with her emotions.

Since Emily was so disconnected from her feelings, we began with basic Somatic Experiencing exercises to help her to connect what she was sensing in her body with her emotions.

Over time, she realized that, for her, tightness in her stomach muscles was anxiety, a sinking feeling in her chest was sadness, and so on.

When Emily was at the point that she could tolerate it emotionally, we used EMDR to help her to process her current family problems and, eventually, her unresolved family of origin problems.  By then, she could see the connection between her family of origin problems that were getting triggered by her current problems.

The work was neither quick nor easy, and Emily had setbacks along the way (see my article: Setbacks Are a Normal Part of Psychotherapy on the Road to Healing).  But by the end of therapy, Emily no longer used denial as her attempt to cope, and her family life improved.

Conclusion
Denial, which is an unconscious defense, can take many forms, including dissociation and emotional numbing.  It often develops in childhood to prevent the child from being emotionally overwhelmed, and continues in adulthood where it creates its own problems.

Experiential therapy, like Somatic Experiencing and EMDR, can be effective in helping clients to develop better coping skills and to overcome current and earlier trauma.

Getting Help in Therapy
Since denial is an unconscious defense mechanism, you might not be aware that you use it as a maladaptive attempt to cope with your problems, but you might have some awareness that you're out of touch with how you feel and how this is affecting you and your relationships.

Rather than struggling on your own, you could benefit form seeking help from a licensed mental health professional who uses experiential therapy.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

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

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

Developing a Sense of Safety and Trust With Your Therapist

Being able to trust your therapist and feel safe in therapy is an essential part of psychotherapy that develops over time.

Developing a Sense of Safety and Trust With a Therapist is a Process
Developing trust can take a while, especially if you have a traumatic history where your trust was violated by family members or other people in your life who were supposed to be trustworthy.

Developing a Sense of Safety and Trust With Your Therapist

Skilled psychotherapists know that the initial stage of therapy is about building a rapport and a sense of trust, and it's up to the therapist to create a therapeutic environment that fosters trust and safety (see my article:  The Creation of the Holding Environment in Therapy).

Feeling like you can trust (or not) isn't an all-or-nothing process.  Trust develops gradually by degrees over time.

From the moment a client walks into a psychotherapist's office for the initial consultation s/he is trying to assess whether or not the therapist can be trusted.  Often, this is more of an unconscious process that occurs not only in a therapy setting but also in most situations where people are meeting someone new or coming into a new environment.

But, unlike many other settings, since you're coming to work on personal problems, you're more emotionally vulnerable in therapy than you are in more casual circumstances.  So, it's understandable that most people feel a degree of apprehension and ambivalence when they begin therapy (see my article:  The Psychotherapist's Empathic Attunement).

How to Use Your Therapy Consultation Session
When potential clients contact me about therapy, I usually tell them to think of the first session as a consultation.  It's an appointment to talk about their problems in a broad way, to ask questions about how I work in therapy and my experience, and to get a basic sense of whether they feel enough of a rapport to come back for another session.  It's also a time for me to assess whether or not I feel I can help the client.

Most clients don't take the time to ask questions on their own about the therapist's background, skills and whether she has worked with other clients on this same issue (see my article:  How to Choose a Psychotherapist).

These are important questions that can save you time and money as well as help to ensure that this is the right therapist for you (see my article:  Getting the Most Out of Therapy).

Assuming that you set subsequent appointments, the process of assessing whether you can trust a therapist and if you feel safe in therapy continues over time.

Some tips to consider as to whether a therapist is right for you:

• Do you feel heard by the therapist?
• Does the therapist seem to be empathetic?
• Is she reliable and professional?
• Does she seem to have your best interests at heart?
• Is she clear about her policies with regard to fee, cancellations and appointment times?
• Has she collaborated with you about the treatment?
• Does she have the therapeutic skills necessary to help you with your problems?
• Does she adhere to the fee structure and other policies?

If, after a few sessions, you feel that you and the therapist aren't a good match, it's best to talk about this in your next therapy session.  Don't just abort treatment abruptly.

Most experienced therapists know that every therapist isn't right for every client, and this often has nothing to do with the therapist's skills.  Often, it's an intuitive sense that the client has.

To evaluate this for yourself, it's important to be honest with yourself and to be able to distinguish your possible discomfort with dealing with your problems in therapy vs. your comfort level with the  therapist.

It's easy to fool yourself and tell yourself that you're not comfortable with the therapist when maybe there's an unconscious part of you that would rather not deal with your problems at all, no matter who the therapist is.

Once again, if you come from a traumatic background, the idea of "safety" is a relative issue.  It might be challenging for you to trust anyone, so the initial stage of treatment might be about how you can know if you feel safe and trusting enough.

Getting Help in Therapy
Allowing yourself to be vulnerable enough to start therapy can be challenging.

Many people avoid therapy, even though they feel they need it, because they're too afraid to take that emotional risk of finding out if they can trust a therapist.  But, even for people who feel most vulnerable, when the thought of continuing to be affected by their problems feel worse than taking the risk of being vulnerable, they will consider coming for a consultation.

Most people can use their instincts as to whether they feel they can trust a particular therapist, especially if they remember that it's a gradual process and not an all-or-nothing event.

Getting help in therapy can make the difference between continuing to suffer with your problems or working through your problem and living a more fulfilling life.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

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

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

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere With Your Relationship

In a prior article, Learn to Stop Interfering in Your Adult Child's Relationship, I focused on well-meaning parents who get overly involved in their adult child's relationship and the problems that this causes.  In this article, I'll be discussing this issue from the perspective of the adult child who needs to learn to set healthy boundaries with relatives who might be attempting to interfere with their relationship.

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere in Your Relationship

The earlier article about parents learning not to interfere in their adult child's relationship, is one of the most popular articles on my blog.  Not only have people emailed me (from both perspectives), but I've received phone calls from parents and adult children who feel frustrated.

Let's start out by saying that I'm not talking about relationships where something dangerous is going on, like domestic violence where children are involved.  In those cases, the safety of everyone involved is of paramount importance and parents, the children's school and others might have to contact the child welfare bureau.

I'm focusing on everyday problems that most couples have where one or both parents insert themselves in the situation between their child and the spouse.

Let's also start out, as I did in my earlier article, by assuming that, with some exceptions, most of the time, parents who interfere in their adult children's relationship are usually concerned and they mean well. They're usually not trying to create the havoc which often results when parents interfere in their children's adult relationships.

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere in Your Relationship

But, as the old saying goes, "The road to hell is paved with good intentions," so good intentions aren't enough.

So, is there a way for an adult child to set boundaries with a parent without alienating that parent or causing resentment?

The answer is:  Most of the time, yes.  But there are situations where the parent might not "get it" and might feel hurt or angry.

A lot will depend upon your relationship with your parents and how you handle boundary setting.

As a psychotherapist, over the years I've heard many accounts from both the both parent's and adult child's perspective.

Let's take a look at a fictional vignette which is based on many different cases where no confidential information is revealed, but the essence of the problem is discussed.

Mary
Mary and her husband, Tom, were married for a year and, generally, things were going well between them.

One issue that they were trying to work out was how to handle their money jointly.  Tom felt that they should pool all their money, and Mary felt that they should each keep whatever money they had before they got married and just set up a joint account, where both of them contributed, for bills and long term saving.

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere With Your Relationship

As far as Mary was concerned, it was not a big problem.  She and Tom had married friends who were dealing with the same issue.  Her sense was that she and Tom would work it out.

But Mary happened to mention her frustration to her sister, Carla who, in turn, discussed it with their mother, Pam.  Soon after that, Pam, who tended be a worrier, called Mary and wanted to talk to her about this issue.

Mary's initial reaction was to be annoyed with Carla for getting their mother involved.  Then, when she calmed down, she told her mother that everything was fine and she didn't feel the need to talk about it with her.  Afterwards, she made a mental note not to confide in Carla about similar issues.

A couple of weeks later, Pam called Mary again sounding worried and tried to talk to her about this issue again, asking Mary if she and Tom were having financial problems.

Once again, Mary tried to calm her mother down, and assured her that she and Tom were doing fine financially and they would figure this out on their own.

Sounding somewhat hurt, Pam persisted by telling her daughter that if they needed financial help, Mary  could tell her and she would help her.  Exasperated, Mary told her mother that this issue had nothing to do with financial problems and she asked her not to ask about it again.

Mary heard nothing more about this until she and Tom went to visit her parents for the holidays.  She happened to walk into the room where Tom and her mother were talking and she overheard her mother offering to lend money if things were tight financially.

Tom had a bewildered look on his face as he looked over at Mary to try to figure out what was going on.  Mary changed the subject.  But on the drive home, Tom asked her about it again.

Knowing that her mother's behavior seemed odd to Tom, Mary explained that she happened to mention to her sister, Carla, that she and he were trying to work out a way to deal with their money and Carla told her mother.

She explained that she had already told her mother that they weren't having financial problems and it wasn't a big deal, but her mother is a worrier and it has all been blown out of proportion.

Hearing this, Tom got annoyed and asked Mary why she talked about this to Carla.

From there, it escalated into an argument where Mary said that she just happened to mention it without thinking and Tom feeling that Mary was talking about him behind his back and her mother had problems with boundaries.

By the time they got home, they weren't speaking to each other.  Mary was tempted to call her mother and Carla to confront them with what they started, but she thought better of it.

Instead, she decided to wait a couple of days until she went to her therapy session to discuss it with her therapist.

After she spoke to her therapist, she had a plan for what to do.  Things were still tense at home with Tom, but they were starting to talk again.

Based on her discussion with her therapist, who knew Mary for a few years, she explained to him that she should have stopped to think before she spoke to Carla, who had problems keeping confidences to herself.

Mary acknowledged that she didn't use good judgment and she apologized.  This helped to ease the tension between them.

She told Tom that she realized, in hindsight, that all of this could have been avoided if she spoke to her therapist, who is bound by confidentiality not to divulge anything that she says.

She also told him that she planned to have a talk with her mother face-to-face to address this issue and to try to set healthy boundaries with her.

Tom seemed satisfied, and he came up with a compromise about how to handle their money that both of them could live with.  This eased tension between them.

Setting Boundaries With Family Members Who Want to Interfere With Your Relationship

So, Mary invited her mother to lunch and talked to her tactfully.  Mary told her that she knew that she was concerned, but there was no need--she and Tom were doing well financially and they were only trying to work out an issue that many couples do.

She also told her mother that, no matter how well meaning she felt, she didn't want her to go behind her back to talk to Tom.  She explained how this caused an argument between her and Tom, and she didn't want to see this happen again.  She also told her that she and Tom worked everything out so there was no need to be concerned.

Pam apologized for causing problems between her daughter and Tom, and she agreed not to interfere again.

Conclusion
The situation that I described in the fictionalized vignette is not unusual.

Setting boundaries with family members might feel awkward and uncomfortable at first.

Rather than assuming that your family members just want to be busybodies, if you realize that, for most families, these situations come up due to their concern, you will probably approach the boundary setting with more tact and compassion.

Before you speak with a family member about a boundary issue involving your relationship, it's better to talk to your spouse first so that you're both on the same page.

Getting Help in Therapy
If you feel that the situation that you're dealing with is beyond what you can handle or your efforts to try to handle it haven't worked, you could benefit from consulting with a licensed mental health professional who works with these issues.

About Me
I am a licensed NYC psychotherapist, hypnotherapist, EMDR and Somatic Experiencing therapist who works with individual adults and couples.

I have helped many clients to deal with setting boundaries in all areas of their lives.

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

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