The Juniper Center Newsletter - Spring 2009
Welcome! This is the maiden voyage of our monthly newsletter. Our goal is to provide some thoughts and insights about issues that people are struggling with in their lives and in their relationships.
We also hope to provide a forum to communicate information about what we are doing here at The Juniper Center.
New Offerings:
We are always listening to what our clients are telling us about the services they need. Some people are looking for low cost, time limited, topic specific groups to help them speed along their healing or as a more desirable option for getting help. Groups can be very cost effective and they are often covered through insurance. In the service of this we will be offering the following groups in the months to come:
Improving Self Esteem – An asset in uncertain times
Many people are concerned and scared about their jobs, the jobs of their loved ones and the economy in general. Stress levels are higher and resources are fewer. Loss of a job or income source, the dismantling of businesses and agencies can add to feelings of insecurity about life. When these factors exist it is easier to feel badly about who you are. Feelings of not being good enough can hamper efforts to find a new job, to pursue other new avenues, or to just feel good. Life can feel more bleak and hopeless.
This group is designed to help people examine the thoughts, feelings and behaviors in their lives that result in them feeling badly about themselves and their lives. The group will follow a format designed by Dr. David Burns, author of Feeling Good: The new mood therapy. Practical exercises and discussion will make up the format. The group will be closed meaning that once the group begins, no one new will start until the beginning of the next cycle. This group is designed to be 12 weeks in length. May, 2009. If you or someone you know is interested, please call our inquiry line at 847-759-9110, ext.10.
Leaving the Maze of Disordered Eating
Most of us over eat sometimes. Some of us over eat most of the time. When eating takes on a life of its own and you are thinking about food, are distracted by thoughts about food, suspect or know that you use food to deal with feelings, and/or you feel as though you can not control your eating or weight gain, you might suffer from compulsive over eating.
This group will utilize discussion and practical exercises based on the work of Dr. Linda W. Craighead, a nationally recognized expert in treating compulsive over eating. The group will be 12 weeks in length. April, 2009. If you or someone you know is interested, please call our inquiry line at 847-759-9110, ext. 10
Our Topic this month:
Some Thoughts On...
Relationships: “True love is allowing the other to be” other
St. Francis Assisi
I had a revelation this past year that has made my own relationship of 15 years infinitely better. The revelation sounds something like this: You can not hold your partner/spouse accountable for your agenda. When this thought floated through my head I had a feeling similar to the one I experienced when I first saw a squeezable ketchup bottle: if only I had thought of that before. This is not a new concept. In fact, I am quite sure that I did not invent it. I have read many, many books and articles that say something similar. In treating couples over the past 22 years I have said something like this to couples many, many times. So what was the revelation?
Oftentimes we know that people are who they are, but we still think they should, or wish they could be more like us, behave more like us, think more like us. We enter into relationships hoping that the other will provide us for what we’re looking for. Most of us want to feel loved and respected. We want to be #1 with this person and we want the relationship to make our lives better, richer, happier. We can become angry, resentful, disillusioned, bored when they don’t. This just seems to be what people do. We have so many expectations for our primary love relationship. There’s a lot riding on it. It’s supposed to bring us to happily ever after. So why, so often, do things not turn out as they’re supposed to? I’ve sat with many couples who say something like “it’s so simple, if he/she would only……..” The problem with this, and here is where the revelation comes in, is that the other person may just not see things the way that we do. Literally. It sounds so simple, but we often assign meaning to WHY people aren’t doing things the way they should, in a way that seems logical and makes sense to us.
I will make up an example here based on some real experiences that people have had:
She says:
"I came down the stairs and saw toys strewn all over the living room floor. And there he was lying on the couch watching TV. I couldn’t believe it! He knows I can’t stand having toys all over at the end of the day."
To which he replied:
"I don’t really know what happened. I was lying on the couch relaxing and all of a sudden she comes down the stairs and starts screaming at me that I don’t care about anything but myself, that she could kill herself working and I wouldn’t care.” She screamed so loud that it woke the kids up. I didn’t feel like getting into it with her so I went up and got the kids settled back down and then just went to bed."
To which she replied:
"He knew how upset I was and he still didn’t bother coming back down to help me. I don’t know why I stay with him."
I asked what made her believe that any of this was about him not caring about her.
To which she replied:
"If you care about someone, you help them!"
The wife in this scenario has assigned a meaning to her husband’s not helping. This wasn’t the first, last or only time that he had not helped her and it hurt her deeply because in her mind, if he loved her, he would help more. In his mind, picking up toys or helping are not indications of love. Being faithful and dependable and sticking together even when things are hard is what defines love. Her threatening to leave mad him wonder if she loved him. Both have an agenda about what it means to love and be loved. Their interpreting the other’s behavior through their own lens without taking into consideration what the other might really think or feel, created conflict and ongoing bad feelings. This is just a small example of the larger problem for this couple. The larger problem is that they have both spent years being angry because the other does not see things in a way that makes sense. They actually don’t understand some very important things about who the other really is.
Two things need to happen for this couple in order for things to get better. They need to find a way to hear each other, really hear each other more accurately. That is a lot of what we would spend our time on in counseling. This sounds simple, but it isn’t particularly easy. Secondly, they need to heal from the ways that not truly understanding each other has damaged their relationship.
As St. Francis Assisi said, “true love is allowing the other to be” other.
