Daughter Detox

by Peg Streep

  This means there’s a strategy that permits you to exert control and manage your feelings. Knowing what you’re feeling—distinguishing anxiety from fear, shame from anger, etc.—allows you to tamp down the emotionality your amygdala is fueling and have access to the thinking part of your brain instead. That access lets you assess and understand the situation using reasoning: “I am anxious because he’s acting out of character.” “I am scared because this reminds me of my childhood.” “I feel shame because she’s right about my overreaction.” “I am angry because her tone is nasty and bullying.” “I feel threatened by his tone.” This type of thinking permits you to exert some initial control over your emotional responses and opens the door to being able to manage your feelings in the moment.

  USING COGNITIVE REAPPRAISAL

  We’ve already seen that suppressing negative emotions and thoughts is a flawed strategy that only increases rumination and anxiety because when you try not to think of a white bear, you can think of nothing else. But science suggests that one helpful tactic is what’s called “cognitive reappraisal.” Let’s say you’re in a really stressful situation—about to be interviewed for a big job opportunity or in the middle of a fight with someone you really care about—and you are just flooded with emotion. What can you do? You pull back and you mentally reappraise the situation as being less threatening than it appears. You remind yourself that this job isn’t a make or break situation (there will be other opportunities after this one, and the world’s not going to end if you don’t get it) or that the person you’re arguing with looks tired and stressed, too, and this can be defused with some effort without your totally losing it.

  Cognitive reappraisal allows you to cool down your emotions—think of it as taking a deep breath, but with your mind—and calm down enough to start sorting them out. Getting a handle on why you are feeling what you’re feeling requires cognition and applies the brakes to the way your emotions are hijacking your brain. It allows you to get back into the driver’s seat.

  So is cognitive reappraisal as effective as naming emotions? It turns out it isn’t. That was shown by an experiment by Katharina Kircanski, Matthew D. Lieberman, and others that looked at the comparative usefulness of labeling your emotions, cognitive reappraisal, and distraction with a group of participants who suffered from arachnophobia, an acute fear of spiders. They did so by having the participants approach a Chilean rose-haired tarantula, which had a six-inch leg span, in the pretest. (No, the number of inches is not a typo, and you could not have paid me to be a participant!) They began five feet away from the spider at first, were instructed to approach it continuously, and then—as the last step—were instructed to touch the spider with the tip of their index finger. Then, in a subsequent test, they were exposed to a different spider but one just as large and were randomly assigned to use affect labeling (“I feel anxious the disgusting spider will jump on me”), reappraisal (“Looking at the little spider isn’t dangerous”), distraction (looking at furniture instead of the spider), or given no verbal instruction at all while they looked at the spider. The strength of their emotions was measured by skin conductance response. (Skin becomes a better conductor of electricity when something happens that is physiologically arousing, and arousal is part of emotional response.) The researchers found that naming and labeling emotions reduced the skin conductance response more than other techniques. That said, affect labeling did not offer an advantage when it came to self-reported fear, which was described after each test.

  So while cognitive reappraisal should be part of your emotional tool kit, naming emotions remains the go-to strategy.

  MINDFULNESS

  Yes, this has become a buzzword of sorts and is very much in vogue but it has science to back up its usefulness. You may have read magazine articles or books about mindfulness and meditation as an approach to life—a concept drawn from Buddhism—but let’s take a look at what it means in terms of emotional regulation. Being mindful means that you are intentionally and exclusively focused on ongoing sensory, cognitive, and emotional experience without judging it or elaborating on it. It’s total awareness with acceptance. Studies show that mindfulness reduces stress, stimulates positive emotions (producing joy and tranquility, among other feelings), and increases cognitive flexibility. These are all very good reasons to reach for a yoga mat.

  I’m going to offer a demurral here, however. At the end of your journey, mindfulness may be a good technique to manage emotions and maintain emotional equilibrium, but it’s not likely to be an effective one if you are still working through identifying your reactions and your basic attachment style. It will surprise no one that, despite the benefits mindfulness bestows on people, it comes relatively easily to the securely attached (they’re better equipped to accept and have compassion for themselves) and is problematic for the insecurely attached. Why is that? Because the strategies that the insecurely attached use—pushing off from emotion and suppressing distressing thoughts for the avoidant and desperately trying to maintain connection with a cascade of anxiety for the anxious-preoccupied individual—diminish the capacity for mindfulness. The ways insecurely attached people have of coping make it very hard for them to be open, aware, and nonjudgmental, which lie at the heart of mindfulness.

  That was shown in an experiment by Jon G. Caldwell and Phillip R. Shaver, who hypothesized that the deactivating strategy of avoidants and the hyperactivating strategy of the anxiously attached predicted lower levels of mindfulness and found exactly that. But having made that discovery, the same researchers set out to examine whether mindfulness could, in fact, improve the regulation of emotion in insecurely attached women. It turned out that the experiments’ participants, who were part of a three-day intensive program (eight hours a day, with focus on exercises, understanding of both mindfulness and attachment, guided meditation with images of secure attachment, writing and discussion of unhealthy attachment scripts, and more), showed significant improvements in rumination, emotional clarity, emotion regulation, and mindfulness.

  This seems to suggest that initial intensive training is actually necessary for the unloved daughter to make use of mindfulness as a self-help regulatory technique. Keep it in mind as you get further along in the journey; taking classes might be a good idea, too.

  SHUTTING DOWN THE CRITICAL TAPE

  As studies show, self-criticism is often the result of a child’s internalizing the harsh and abusive verbal assessments of a mother, but it might be a father or siblings as well. It also grows from the messages conveyed by both actions and inactions (hostile encounters or withheld comfort or support). Unloved daughters with verbally aggressive mothers often report—and I can attest to this from my own experience—that shutting off the tape loop of self-criticism in your head is surprisingly difficult, even with a therapist’s help. Among the legacies unloving mothers bequeath is the unhealthy default setting of self-blame when life goes south, made worse by the fact that insecurely attached daughters have difficulty regulating their emotions.

  What to do about uprooting and silencing the critical voice? This is, anecdotally at least, one of the hardest things to learn. Following are some strategies for you to consider.

  ♦ Recognize the voice

  Bring your thoughts into consciousness and make them explicit, Say them out loud. Write them down. Realize that the voice is that of a person who didn’t love you. She is an interloper.

  ♦ Challenge the voice and the thoughts

  Giving voice to the internalized words and even writing them down so you can see them in black-and-white make it clear that they only have power because you believed them to be true as a child. Argue with what was said, pointing out that you’re neither stupid nor lazy, not a burden or a bother or whatever untruths were pounded into your head. Say the words out loud if you are alone.

  ♦ Countermand the voice with facts

  These old habits of self-criticism pop up when you’re feeling down and stressed because you’ve experienced a setba
ck, rejection, or have failed at something. Disarm your reactivity by identifying your emotions or using cognitive reappraisal first. Then sit down and analyze why the stressful event happened. Writing down alternatives to the automatic response of self-criticism may give you more of a handle on silencing it, especially if you’re able to take responsibility for your mistakes without devolving into self-criticism. Let’s say that someone has broken up with you, ending a friendship or intimate relationship, and the default settings in your head are telling you that you’re unlovable, lacking in charm, and unattractive. Take on the voice by seeing what happened as a neutral observer might. For example: “The relationship ended because I chose someone who did not listen and probably didn’t want to be in a close relationship with me under any circumstances. It had nothing to do with my failings or my appeal. It had everything to do with the fact that I chose the wrong person.”

  Learning to accept both your strengths and your weaknesses and seeing setbacks as part of life are essential to your healing.

  ♦ Practice self-talk

  Remind yourself of your own strengths and talents, which your mother and perhaps the rest of your family ignored, scoffed at, or marginalized. (My own mother, who was self-conscious and worried about how smart she was, always denigrated my academic achievements, except when she could brag about them to her social circle.) Write them down and put the list somewhere you see it every day and read it aloud. If you’re having trouble coming up with a list, ask a friend or intimate to tell you what she or he admires about you. Remember that what you internalized was meant to make you feel small and lousy about yourself .

  EXAMINE YOUR BELIEFS ABOUT THE SELF

  Do you believe that personality—yours and anyone else’s—is inborn and fixed, or do you believe that people are actually capable of growing and changing in meaningful ways? This sounds like a philosophical question, but it isn’t because your beliefs can enhance or diminish your sense of self and influence your behaviors, as the work of Carol Dweck has shown.

  Think about your beliefs carefully. If you actually believe that personality is set in stone, silencing that critical voice will be next to impossible because your belief gives what was said to you in childhood a boost of credibility.

  According to Dweck, our theories about the self influence not just how we respond to specific situations but also how we process and think about them. So spend some real time asking yourself whether you believe that personality is fixed or is malleable and capable of change before you continue reading. Think about your attitudes toward yourself—your personality and traits—as well as those of others. Dweck notes that people who believe that personality can change confront challenges confidently, stick to difficult tasks, and bounce back from failure more easily.

  YOUR BELIEFS AND DEALING WITH REJECTION

  In an interesting bit of research, Lauren Howe and Carol Dweck discovered that people who embrace the idea that personality is fixed have more trouble recovering from rejection than those who see personality as fluid and changeable. The reason, as they write, is that these people see rejection as “revealing a core truth about themselves,” and that prolongs their suffering.

  The people who believe that personality and character are fixed are unlikely to believe that they can grow and learn from rejection, and the researchers found that some people actually still had lingering pain as long as five years after the rejection took place. Many actually want to edit the failed relationships out of their history, believing that anyone who knew the story would somehow be encouraged to reject them, too.

  Do you recognize this pattern in yourself? It’s an important question to ponder. This is how Carole, 51, answered: “I’d like to believe that I can change, but then I look at all the failed relationships in my life and I wonder. I’m starting to see that I’m actually driving people away with my need for reassurance and always looking over my shoulder in fear. If I can’t fix that part, I think real change is going to be impossible.”

  I answer that by saying that what was learned can be unlearned, and despairing of change is not just unproductive, but incorrect. Unlearning is hard, to be sure, but definitely possible.

  TURN DOWN THE HEAT: DEALING WITH REJECTION SENSITIVITY

  One of the best discussions of rejection sensitivity I’ve read describes it as “hot” reactivity, which is completely emotionally fueled. (Yes, this is the same terminology used in the discussion on how to reframe memories using cool processing.) Ozlem Ayduk and a team that included Walter Mischel (who ran the famous delayed gratification “Marshmallow Test” described on page 103 ) wanted to know if children who had successfully been able to delay gratification would actually be more skilled at managing rejection sensitivity.

  You may remember that the children who managed to resist the marshmallow did so by distracting themselves—looking away, singing, staring into the distance, whatever worked. The researchers suggest that people high in rejection sensitivity can also use strategic rerouting of attention, away from those cues that are clanging, “Rejection imminent! Arm yourself!” and instead pay attention to situational cues that contradict the rejection sensitivity (such as appreciating body language—“He’s smiling at me so why I am panicking?”—and tone of voice) and be able to take cognitive control.

  Note that this is a deliberate cooling strategy, which is different from thought suppression. As we know, thought suppression only serves to jump-start the brain to search for the thoughts you’re trying to tamp down and ends in a ruminative loop, as Daniel Wegner’s “White Bear” experiments showed. Learning to cool down consciously and with effort works .

  BECOME FLUENT IN THE LANGUAGE OF SELF-COMPASSION

  It’s been suggested by many that self-compassion is a successful strategy for those trying to recover from childhood and who need help stilling that critical voice. Additionally, self-compassion has been shown in studies to bolster resilience from failure and to support self-improvement. What is self-compassion exactly? Just as compassion involves feeling for the plight of others, and extending caring and understanding to them, self-compassion directs caring toward the self in the same way. According to researcher Kristin Neff, self-compassion requires that you see your pain in the larger context of humanity’s experiences—and as a part of them. It necessitates that you treat yourself with the same loving-kindness your compassionate self would offer to others. (This understanding is drawn from Buddhism, as you probably know.)

  What’s important is that self-compassion isn’t anything like self-pity because self-pity focuses on the self as separate from others, and promotes a “poor me” point of view that paints the self as worse off than anyone else. Self-pity is more self-involved and selfish than not.

  Self-compassion also doesn’t involve self-aggrandizement or puffing yourself up to make yourself feel more important because that stance, too, sees the self as separate. Self-compassion is displaying empathy toward yourself and your experiences.

  Neff describes self-compassion as having three parts, which I’ll paraphrase:

  ♦ Extending kindness and understanding to yourself, rather than judgmental criticism

  ♦ Seeing your experience as part of the larger human experience

  ♦ Keeping yourself aware of your painful feelings without over-identifying with them

  The problem, though, is that all three of these steps are hard for most of you. (If they’re not, skip this part. I’m troubleshooting for those who struggle with self-compassion.) The reasons why self-compassion is difficult aren’t hard to see. The first step relies on self-love and self-esteem, which are usually in short supply, and if you’re used to being self-critical, it’s not likely that you’ll be nonjudgmental when it comes to assessing yourself. The second is complicated, too, because most unloved daughters feel isolated and singular and aren’t likely to believe that their problems are like those of most other people. The third step, as we’ve already acknowledged, also presents a hurdle since you have to be able to manag
e negative emotions first in order to achieve that equanimity and balance. That said, self-compassion can be learned and accomplished.

  Since research shows that self-compassion really does help people deal with challenging times and stops rumination—another thing most unloved daughters suffer from—how do we build our capacity so we can use it to still the critical voice? Here are a few anecdotal layperson tips, slightly aided by science but informed by experience, which may be of help on the road to self-compassion. As you do these, be sure to use cool processing, which has you recalling why you felt as you did, not what you felt.

  ♦ Get a photograph of yourself when you were little and spend time with it .

  Look at that child (you) and see her as a stranger might. What’s cute and appealing about her? Talk to that little girl and give her some comfort and recognize how lonely and sad she was. And while you’re there, ask yourself why anyone would ever think that child was anything less than adorable. I’ve had hundreds of people on my Facebook page do this exercise and not one has found her childhood self less than utterly endearing.

  It’s fruitful, too, to look at photographs of yourself in late childhood or adolescence. Try as I might, when I looked through photographs, I was unable to see the “fat” girl my mother saw or the supremely difficult one she described 24/7. Again, look at you as a stranger might and remember what she was really like back then—what she liked doing, the books she read, what made her laugh, what she dreamed of, what she yearned for. Getting to know our younger selves in this way supports feeling compassion for ourselves.

  ♦ Focus on at least three things you love about you .

  They can be characteristics or talents or abilities, but they need to be things that make you happy that you are you. Cast a wide net as you think about yourself in this way because you may discover that some of the best things about you aren’t big things but small details. For example, it might be the way you can put people at ease or your ability to raid the fridge and create a meal; it doesn’t have to be something grandiose like playing Wimbledon, writing a bestseller, or running a major corporation. You can love your hair, the way you transplant seedlings, how you make your child laugh, or the fact that you’re kick-ass at your job. If you’re stumped, ask a friend or another intimate to help you.