I am thin-skinned or very sensitive.
Uncertainty makes me nervous.
I prefer not to take risks.
I think about my problems without intending to.
If these experiences are always or often true for you, then you have a response pattern that may be contributing to overreactions.
Part 2
While some of us may be born with heightened sensitivity, many of these patterns are passed down from our parents or exacerbated by early childhood experiences with them.
Were the following experiences almost always, often, or rarely true for either or both of your parents?
They complained about my smallest failings.
They filled the house with worry and tension.
They were critical of each other or other relatives.
They were overprotective of me.
They didn’t really know how to help me feel better when I was down or upset.
They would get extremely upset or angry in ways that frightened or upset me.
They tended to be pessimistic or negative thinkers.
They got upset when routines were disrupted.
They worried a lot about me and other family members.
They didn’t have as much fun as other parents seemed to have.
If you answered that one or both of your parents frequently responded this way, then you may have learned a response style that works against you. Remember, our beliefs and expectations are created when we are very young, but as adults, we have a choice. Our parents probably would have chosen to do things differently if that choice was given to them. Fear of the unknown and self-doubt work to erode our sense of efficacy and the energy we need to move forward in life. You will have to work to undo the power of your schemas and emotional memories, but if you are motivated to free yourself from the power of the past, you will find that it is completely possible.
Anxiety is experienced in the body as well as the mind. People who are alarmed by the changes in their bodies often turn to the left side of the brain to solve their dilemmas. As you probably know, brooding, worrying, and focusing on what-if scenarios only serves to keep the amygdala in a state of heightened arousal. If you recognize yourself as having neurotic tendencies, then the first step is to learn how to notice and work with anxiety in your body. Challenging expectations that are the products of splitting and old emotional memories and replacing them with realistic goals may help you out of many difficult situations. Learning to calm your emotions and your physical state of hypervigilance will provide you with the energy you need to make major changes in your life.
Chapter 13
Subduing Known Triggers
Prevention is the best medicine. Throughout this book I have suggested ways to learn how to recognize the triggers and emotional memories that hold the greatest power over you. I have suggested that in a moment of overreacting, it is important to divorce yourself from these forces until you have regained your emotional balance. However, once things have settled down, it is just as important to return to these issues in order to work with them in ways that diminish the power they hold over you.
The Power of Beliefs
Our minds work very quickly as we process events and sharpen our understanding of what is happening. While one part of the brain references working knowledge to help us perform simple tasks, other parts of the brain provide the information we need to generate conclusions about more complicated issues. The beliefs we draw on in these moments are accumulated from multiple experiences, many of which were acquired in childhood. Some of these beliefs incorporate positions that were held by our parents and other adults who influenced our development. Other beliefs were formed by more recent experiences, including ideas we were exposed to through books or TV.
Even though there is still much to be learned, research suggests that certain beliefs can create problems and compromise our coping mechanisms. Drs. Daniel Molden, Jason Plaks, and Carol Dweck (2006) describe two different approaches people tend to take when they form conclusions about themselves and others. Entity thinkers see things as fixed realities, while incremental thinkers look at the layers that make up the whole. Your style makes all the difference in the conclusions you reach and in many of the feelings that are consequently generated.
Entity Thinking
Entity thinkers believe that people are a certain way and that they are unlikely to change. They view the characteristics or attributes they have assigned as being absolute, and they usually have a philosophy about human nature to back up their position. For example, Jake sees his son Paul watching TV instead of doing his homework or putting his clean laundry away. In Jake’s mind, Paul is the kind of person who will avoid work whenever he can and use other people to get away with it. He suspects that people are just born that way and remembers that his sister was also born lazy. His parents were always spending money on tutors for her and wasted a lot of the family’s financial resources trying to get her through school. After all the work they put into helping her get accepted to a university, she ended up failing out anyway because she was too lazy to do the work. Jake’s son Paul seems to be made of the same cloth.
There are many problems with this approach to reasoning. Once an entity thinker assigns a characteristic to someone, it is very difficult to alter that perception. If Jake believes that Paul is simply born that way and that any effort to help him is ultimately a waste, he will give up trying to help Paul change. Obviously, this means Paul won’t get help he could probably benefit from, but it also makes Jake predisposed to come to rapid conclusions that support his viewpoint. His resentment and despair about his son’s character will grow deeper, partially because he will conclude that Jake is being lazy in situations in which laziness isn’t actually a factor.
Jake’s approach to life as an entity thinker also applies to decisions he has made about himself. If there were things in his life he didn’t instantly excel at, he probably came to global decisions about his own attributes as well. For example, when he couldn’t quite get the sense of timing required to hit a baseball, he decided that he just wasn’t athletic. Rather than work at getting better, he concluded that he just didn’t have what it took to play baseball, or perhaps any sport, and moved on to something that came more easily. Entity thinkers are inclined to see themselves as failures and give up when they encounter small challenges. They are more inclined to see things as beyond their control and less likely to believe that change is possible. Without a goal that you believe in, this becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Incremental Thinking
Incremental thinkers understand that people pass through different stages and that there are multiple factors that influence behavior in every situation. They tend to see people as being malleable or open to improvement. For example, if Jake notices that his son Paul is watching TV instead of doing his math homework, he might question what is causing his son to act this way. He might wonder if Paul is taking the lazy way through school or if he is avoiding his homework for a reason. He knows that when Paul was younger he tended to be very critical of himself and easily frustrated. He wonders if he can do anything to help his son tackle his responsibility and decides to have a talk with him. After he learns that Paul doesn’t understand the math and blames his teacher for his inability to get it, Jake acknowledges that it’s hard to sit down with homework that makes you feel stupid for not getting it. He offers to stay with Paul and help him look through the textbook until they find the lesson that was difficult for Paul to follow in class. Although Paul initially squirms and shows impatience, his father notices that, after a few minutes, Paul’s face lights up as he sighs with huge relief. Paul gives his father a big grin and announces that he can finish the homework in ten minutes now—it’s really easy. Jake feels proud of his son and at the same time sad as he remembers how his parents used to yell at his sister for being lazy and stupid. With all of those negative messages, it was no wonder that she dropped out of college.
When Jake encounters a setback in his own life, he tries to think about what needs to be improved. He acknowledges that there are some things that come to him easier than others, but he knows that practice makes all the difference. He tries to set a goal that is realistic, even if he knows he’ll have to work at it before he gets it right. He also knows that he performs better under certain circumstances. Just as with his son Paul, it helps when someone is there to give him support and offer strategies to help him try a new approach. Jake is known as being goal directed and for persevering when things get tough. That style has helped him in his job, his marriage, and, just now, with his son.
Rewriting the Script
Narrative therapists Michael White and David Epston (1990) suggest that the way we tell the story determines the outcome. Often, the most painful incidents from the past have been filed away without being fully understood or questioned. Many of these unprocessed experiences form the “road map” we refer to when we need help figuring out what lies ahead on the highway we are traveling. Imagine how you would feel if someone told you that the map you are using is thirty years old and that new towns, shopping areas, and points of interest have sprung up all over the area. Wouldn’t you be curious and ask for an updated map?
When we focus on past failures or the parts of ourselves we dislike, our version of the situation is automatically problem focused and saturated with negativity. Narrative therapists understand how quickly things can turn around when people are guided to remember times when they succeeded and those things that they did to achieve that preferred outcome. Therapist Michael White (1989) encouraged people to think about the ways that they fought self-defeat and how to reconnect with the parts that carried efficacy. He gently inserted alternative explanations that allowed a shift in the way the situation and the outcome might develop. When the situation and potential outcome can be revised, the old map can be replaced.
Challenging Your Expectations
What we think will happen often determines the outcome. This point was made clear to me in a karate class I observed. When the students were asked if they could split a block of wood with their hands, most of them took one look at the thick piece of wood and decided that there was no way they could break the wood without shattering their hands at the same time. A few students made a gesture of taking a swipe at the wood, but it was obvious that they were holding themselves back in self-protection. When the instructor showed them the trick of holding their fingers a certain way and demonstrated how easily the wood snaps, the students approached it quite differently. After the first student followed the instructions and succeeded, the mood in the room changed from uncertainty to eagerness. Once the students believed that they were capable and had seen others succeed, everything turned around. This time, they approached the situation with confidence and vigor and shattered the blocks of wood exactly as they expected.
As I described in chapter 5, splitting and flooding can put us in the “all bad” drawer, where we will only find memories of disappointment and defeat. When we can replace the doubt that stems from this perspective with the possibilities that can only be discovered when we have closed that drawer, then there will be new options that somehow we just hadn’t noticed before.
Challenging Old Emotional Memories
Going back to painful emotional memories is hard but necessary work if we want to reduce the power of the curses in Pandora’s box. Even when we have tried to write these memories off or dismiss them, they have a way of reinserting themselves when we are feeling vulnerable. In a moment of doubt or frustration, emotional memories are rekindled without our awareness. The better we know the contents of Pandora’s box, the easier it will be to recognize old messages and their origins, and the better prepared we’ll be to loosen their grip and figure out how to effectively shut the box.
Some of the most painful revived beliefs are about whether we are loveable or good enough. Other important memories concern the people we live and work with and our ability to trust and depend on them. We have beliefs about power, fairness, forgiveness, and competence—all driving forces that can trigger emotional overreactions.
Many of the end-of-chapter exercises were written to help you identify some of the themes that may emerge when you are vulnerable. If you are like the clients I have worked with, then your greatest vulnerabilities were probably formed when you were a child and too little to have any power over the situation. Therapy is one way to explore and challenge old beliefs, but there are things that you can do on your own behalf as well.
Making Peace with the Past
It is staggering to read the research that documents how many of us have endured painful childhoods (Dube 2001). Too many children experience or witness physical abuse and trauma and suffer from anxiety or depression as a result (Heim and Nemeroff 2001). Psychologists now suspect that even children who are relatively protected don’t always get the empathy and secure connection they need to achieve their potential (D. J. Siegel 1999). Although it is normal to feel angry when we think about being deprived or abused, holding on to that anger will only reinforce the beliefs that make you suspicious and reluctant to trust others. It is far better to make peace with the past.
A Multigenerational Perspective
It is not uncommon for my social work students to declare that although they feel gratified working with children who have been abused, they are filled with horror and disgust at the adult perpetrators. They think that the adults who harmed children or allowed children to be hurt are monsters who don’t deserve any sympathy. They see how injured the children are as evidenced by inappropriate behaviors like lying, stealing, hurting themselves, and even abusing other children. I ask my class to fast-forward and predict what their young clients might be like in twenty years if treatment fails. I then ask them to rewind the years and imagine that they are working with their clients’ parents when these people were teenagers. I ask them to see these clients as they were when they were young and to imagine the families and circumstances they grew up with. This exercise is all it takes for students to realize that trauma is most often multigenerational. It is easy to love the victim and blame the aggressor, but it is confusing when the aggressor is also viewed as victim.
I have found that, most of the time, my clients are people who are doing the best they can with what they have. Often, pain begets pain, and people end up repeating what was done to them. It is impossible to forgive someone when we view their behavior as purposeful, but quite possible when we begin to take into consideration the challenges, limitations, and burdens that may have prevented them from doing things differently.
Harmful Family Myths
Dr. Froma Walsh (1988) once told me that her most useful training came from her undergraduate courses in anthropology. Learning to search for and respect the details that make cultures unique taught her a valuable lesson in how to understand the values and beliefs that operate in every family she works with. Even when family members share the same ethnic, religious, and educational backgrounds, there are profound differences in how each member of a family conducts her life.
The way we want things done is often informed by family rules and customs we have adopted without question. For example, families tend to serve certain foods on the holidays and to uphold a moral code regarding what is appropriate and unacceptable behavior. Family therapists know that families have their own values, customs, and informal rules about displays of affection, privacy, dependency, gender-based competency, and family obligations. These become assumed truths that are easily absorbed and seldom challenged. Often, examining these things from a historical perspective is the first step of the change process.
Ann’s Story
Dr. Ann Hartman illustrated this point by telling a story from her own family (Hartman 1988). She noticed that the adults on her mother’s side of the family were uncomfortable with physical affection, even though they all seemed to have a great deal of love for each other. They were particularly standoffish toward the ch
ildren, giving them polite nods instead of hugs and kisses. Puzzled by her own sharp instinct to keep a distance from the children she adored, she decided to search for family stories that might shed light on the situation.
The eldest living relative on her mother’s side of the family did not seem at all puzzled by this family pattern. She told Ann that shortly after the family immigrated to the United States, there was an outbreak of tuberculosis. She recalled how distraught the family was when her young niece was diagnosed with it and instructed to go to an upstate sanitarium. Just the week before, they had all been enjoying a birthday party celebration for her four-year-old son. Everyone had seemed so happy. Tears fell down her cheeks as she recalled the scene at the train station: her niece scooping her two small children into her embrace as she promised that Mommy would get stronger and come back to them. In those days, very few returned alive. The family said good-bye to this beautiful young mother and prepared themselves for the worst. A year later, their niece did return—fully rested and healed. But the first thing she did was visit the graves of her two children, who had died months before from tuberculosis. From that day on, it was silently forbidden to kiss a child for fear that it would be a kiss that would consign a child to death.
Making peace with the past often requires us to stop thinking in terms of fault and instead accept that there is usually a context and background involved in events that end badly. Rethinking the context is not the same as denying that a bad thing has happened, but it may allow you to replace anger and resentment with a sad recognition of shared disappointments and hardships. Instead of focusing on how difficult it was for her to be affectionate with children or being resentful that affection was withheld from her when she was young, Ann could feel compassion for herself and all the generations that had struggled with unresolved loss.
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