Sunday, February 14, 2010
Art, Love, and Hope.....
The basis of fully loving another is that IN PART we must successfully be able to bear the eventual loss of that person – partially or in whole in one way or another. To fully love in a mature way means to remain open and still loving despite the fact that everything –people, places, things- are transient.This is more bearable if we feel complete inside- if we are enough for ourselves- that our pot is full. Art- whether in word or image- is the embodiment of hope because that very process of creativity for the artist transcends the shallow world of change that we know is sure to come. As a writer if I can make one person think, feel, and/or grow because of my work, my place in this world is intact- I know I’ve done some good and the gratitude that comes from that transforms into an ongoing sense of hope….yes?
Friday, December 25, 2009
At the Cusp of the Year...
For all those quick-fix-it lovers, I do have some succinct advice for folks in relationships they want to see "work." I've said it before.
In your dealings with your significant other, pretend a thousand cameras are trained on you in everything you say and do -24/7- and don't let up. This is not a contrivance...it is an acknowledgement and a plan.
This advice springs from the inevitability that our character armor reasserts itself and decent intent wanes after the fireworks and newness fades.
www.relationshiphandbook.com
In your dealings with your significant other, pretend a thousand cameras are trained on you in everything you say and do -24/7- and don't let up. This is not a contrivance...it is an acknowledgement and a plan.
This advice springs from the inevitability that our character armor reasserts itself and decent intent wanes after the fireworks and newness fades.
www.relationshiphandbook.com
Friday, October 2, 2009
UPDATE-STAY TUNED
I've been extremely busy with my private practice, article writing, managing and maintaining my personal life not to mention my passions in travel and angling.
I've recently gotten more involved in the social networking sites, but I do intend to start posting advice and observations from my thirty years of working with patients later this Fall.
I've recently gotten more involved in the social networking sites, but I do intend to start posting advice and observations from my thirty years of working with patients later this Fall.
Sunday, January 25, 2009
The S.O.A.M. Model of Growth
The S.O.A.M. Model of Growth
By Jan Stephen Maizler,LCSW
Achieving transformation and growth requires three critical steps: self-ownership, self-appraisal, and self-management (SOAM). The SOAM model is a cogent, practical working model of personal transformation that is dependent only on oneself. It is also that is easily taught to others. While griefwork transformation applies to times when loss forms the vehicle of change, the SOAM model of transformation can be utilized at any time in the life cycle.
SELF-OWNERSHIP-
Self-ownership is the assumption step. In order to initiate transformation, we must assume full responsibility for our own life rather than ascribing responsibility to other people, places, and things. The tendency to blame others is known as externalizing, and is a defense against change, growth, and responsibility. In order to free ourselves from externalizing, we must realize that we cannot control anything that is outside of ourselves, and nothing outside of ourselves can control or cause our actions. Loss often causes individuals to attempt dependency on others who assume a supportive role. The leaning (on another), which then occurs, can cause resentment or hostility towards the supportive figure, because people inherently want self-sufficiency in the long term. Over dependency on another also runs the risk of blaming them, when in fact; the problem is with ourselves for depending too much. When we assume self-ownership, the blaming ends.As architects of our own lives, all our actions and reactions are entirely our own. Realizing the inevitability of this fact leaves us free to create an infinite number of new actions and reactions. Hence, we assume the power to exert change in our lives.
SELF-APPRAISAL-
Self-appraisal is the reflection step. Once we have assumed ownership of our life, we can begin to subject it to appraisal by reflecting on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This includes exploration of our earliest experiences in childhood and our genetic influences, which together formed the foundation of our early emerging selves.Self-appraisal can be done in many different ways. Because this process can create discomfort by disturbing the status quo, self-appraisal must be mindful, conscious, and vigorous. Frequent self-appraisal helps to offset the self-delusions and other defense mechanisms created to avoid discomfort.Reflecting on our ideas, feelings, and behavior is similar to the process of “taking one’s inventory” in 12 Step Programs. We take an objective look at whom we are and what we have to work with. When we begin to recognize our patterns and our weaknesses, the opportunity for change arises.Through self-appraisal, we begin to understand how our decisions about people, life, and love affect our conduct of living. Our decisions are based on our beliefs about life, and are not always made on a conscious level. In order to change, we must become consciously aware of our decisions and be able to modify them. We then have options that we can be ready and willing to take.
SELF-MANAGEMENT-
Self-management is the action step. We begin to form new behaviors based on what we learned through self-ownership and self-appraisal. The implementation of new behavior initially may feel awkward and unnatural, but the important thing is that the new behavior is real. The old adages “action speaks louder than words” and “the smallest deed is worth more than the grandest intention” reinforce the importance of action. We can spend our entire lives planning an incredible journey, but until we take the first step, we go nowhere! The more the new behavior is repeated, the more natural it feels and it becomes “second nature.”Positive new behavior gives rise to increased self-esteem, which provides further motivation to sustain new behavior and initiate further change. For the alcoholic, going a day without alcohol may create enough self-esteem to spur him or her to try the same tomorrow. For the codependent, new behavior may involve letting go of controlling others or being firm when they say “no.”The SOAM model of transformation is an evolving process through which we grow and try to become what we desire to be. Because our desires change, it is important to recognize that the process of transformation is a life-long process. The steps of self-ownership, self-appraisal, and self-management are ongoing and require mindful effort and repetition to transform us into a new self.
Jan Stephen Maizler, MSW,LCSW is a veteran therapist practicing in Miami, Florida since 1980. He has published over three hundred articles and nine books. He can be reached at http://www.transformationhandbook.com/ or http://www.relationshiphandbook.com/
By Jan Stephen Maizler,LCSW
Achieving transformation and growth requires three critical steps: self-ownership, self-appraisal, and self-management (SOAM). The SOAM model is a cogent, practical working model of personal transformation that is dependent only on oneself. It is also that is easily taught to others. While griefwork transformation applies to times when loss forms the vehicle of change, the SOAM model of transformation can be utilized at any time in the life cycle.
SELF-OWNERSHIP-
Self-ownership is the assumption step. In order to initiate transformation, we must assume full responsibility for our own life rather than ascribing responsibility to other people, places, and things. The tendency to blame others is known as externalizing, and is a defense against change, growth, and responsibility. In order to free ourselves from externalizing, we must realize that we cannot control anything that is outside of ourselves, and nothing outside of ourselves can control or cause our actions. Loss often causes individuals to attempt dependency on others who assume a supportive role. The leaning (on another), which then occurs, can cause resentment or hostility towards the supportive figure, because people inherently want self-sufficiency in the long term. Over dependency on another also runs the risk of blaming them, when in fact; the problem is with ourselves for depending too much. When we assume self-ownership, the blaming ends.As architects of our own lives, all our actions and reactions are entirely our own. Realizing the inevitability of this fact leaves us free to create an infinite number of new actions and reactions. Hence, we assume the power to exert change in our lives.
SELF-APPRAISAL-
Self-appraisal is the reflection step. Once we have assumed ownership of our life, we can begin to subject it to appraisal by reflecting on our thoughts, feelings, and behavior. This includes exploration of our earliest experiences in childhood and our genetic influences, which together formed the foundation of our early emerging selves.Self-appraisal can be done in many different ways. Because this process can create discomfort by disturbing the status quo, self-appraisal must be mindful, conscious, and vigorous. Frequent self-appraisal helps to offset the self-delusions and other defense mechanisms created to avoid discomfort.Reflecting on our ideas, feelings, and behavior is similar to the process of “taking one’s inventory” in 12 Step Programs. We take an objective look at whom we are and what we have to work with. When we begin to recognize our patterns and our weaknesses, the opportunity for change arises.Through self-appraisal, we begin to understand how our decisions about people, life, and love affect our conduct of living. Our decisions are based on our beliefs about life, and are not always made on a conscious level. In order to change, we must become consciously aware of our decisions and be able to modify them. We then have options that we can be ready and willing to take.
SELF-MANAGEMENT-
Self-management is the action step. We begin to form new behaviors based on what we learned through self-ownership and self-appraisal. The implementation of new behavior initially may feel awkward and unnatural, but the important thing is that the new behavior is real. The old adages “action speaks louder than words” and “the smallest deed is worth more than the grandest intention” reinforce the importance of action. We can spend our entire lives planning an incredible journey, but until we take the first step, we go nowhere! The more the new behavior is repeated, the more natural it feels and it becomes “second nature.”Positive new behavior gives rise to increased self-esteem, which provides further motivation to sustain new behavior and initiate further change. For the alcoholic, going a day without alcohol may create enough self-esteem to spur him or her to try the same tomorrow. For the codependent, new behavior may involve letting go of controlling others or being firm when they say “no.”The SOAM model of transformation is an evolving process through which we grow and try to become what we desire to be. Because our desires change, it is important to recognize that the process of transformation is a life-long process. The steps of self-ownership, self-appraisal, and self-management are ongoing and require mindful effort and repetition to transform us into a new self.
Jan Stephen Maizler, MSW,LCSW is a veteran therapist practicing in Miami, Florida since 1980. He has published over three hundred articles and nine books. He can be reached at http://www.transformationhandbook.com/ or http://www.relationshiphandbook.com/
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Barriers to Relationship Intimacy, Part 3
9. Hypersensitivity and emotional bingeing create a lack of control in a relationship.
Hypersensitivity can be defined a disorder of feeling too quickly hurt, affected, and/or resentful in response to the events and discomforts of everyday life. Hypersensitive people are emotionally affected more easily and quickly than the vast majority of their peers.
Hypersensitivity can arise from inherited constitution, depression, active drug and alcohol intoxication, and many other sources. Hypersensitive people have something wrong with them that they need to face, fix, and manage.
Emotional bingeing, in contrast, refers to manipulative behavior under conscious control which overplays emotions regarding a given situation.
Emotional bingeing reveals that the overdramatizing or exaggeration of feelings about a situation or an event - such as an affront - is an attempt to purchase a secondary gain such as feeling like a wounded victim or martyr. People who emotionally binge need to control themselves and be more responsible, because the flooding and prolongation of excessive emotion in the couple eats away at the logic, intellect, and science that lays at the foundation of healthy relationships.
10. Poor needs negotiation creates conflict.
You recognize that all people are different and that even the most compatible couple will have individual needs that differ at times. Effective management of differing needs takes a problem-solving approach that uses compromise and negotiation as its tools. Partners in a relationship who compromise often feel a sense of pride in modifying a need downward when they know it will satisfy and stabilize their partner and the relationship itself. Mutual giving flourishes in an atmosphere of cooperation.
When any of the above elements are absent, by conscious choice or by lack of awareness, the satisfaction of individual needs in a relationship becomes more conflicted: a relationship loses its health when it becomes a battleground.
11. Reactivity creates run-away fighting and arguing.
A famous directive from Alcoholics Anonymous instructs you to exercise restraint of tongue and pen. In contrast, reactivity is a mindless, thoughtless reflex and involves the least evolved, most primitive parts of yourself and your animal origins. Restraint is equated with thoughtful, conscious self-control and indicates better ego functioning. Soccer match riots epitomize the reactivity that leads to run-away fighting and even murder. A group becomes a mob. Restraint of reactivity minimizes the likelihood of rioting in a relationship.
12. Litigious behavior changes the relationship into a courtroom.
Litigious behavior stands alongside psychoanalyzing one's partner as the newest form of verbal violence in a relationship. Specifically, litigious behavior is a deeply neurotic relationship dynamic in which one partner sets out to prove they are right and the other partner is wrong. The goal and method is inevitably one of competitive domination.
Litigating in a relationship is different from mindless immature bickering. Litigating can hook a couple into an addictive, competitive battle in which victories are sought through the intellectual and strategic conquest lawyers often use in court.
Litigating is to be avoided at all costs. Not only does it damage the goodwill in a relationship; it also creates the illusion that there is only one right way. Do you want to create a courtroom out of your relationship? Certainly not.
Hypersensitivity can be defined a disorder of feeling too quickly hurt, affected, and/or resentful in response to the events and discomforts of everyday life. Hypersensitive people are emotionally affected more easily and quickly than the vast majority of their peers.
Hypersensitivity can arise from inherited constitution, depression, active drug and alcohol intoxication, and many other sources. Hypersensitive people have something wrong with them that they need to face, fix, and manage.
Emotional bingeing, in contrast, refers to manipulative behavior under conscious control which overplays emotions regarding a given situation.
Emotional bingeing reveals that the overdramatizing or exaggeration of feelings about a situation or an event - such as an affront - is an attempt to purchase a secondary gain such as feeling like a wounded victim or martyr. People who emotionally binge need to control themselves and be more responsible, because the flooding and prolongation of excessive emotion in the couple eats away at the logic, intellect, and science that lays at the foundation of healthy relationships.
10. Poor needs negotiation creates conflict.
You recognize that all people are different and that even the most compatible couple will have individual needs that differ at times. Effective management of differing needs takes a problem-solving approach that uses compromise and negotiation as its tools. Partners in a relationship who compromise often feel a sense of pride in modifying a need downward when they know it will satisfy and stabilize their partner and the relationship itself. Mutual giving flourishes in an atmosphere of cooperation.
When any of the above elements are absent, by conscious choice or by lack of awareness, the satisfaction of individual needs in a relationship becomes more conflicted: a relationship loses its health when it becomes a battleground.
11. Reactivity creates run-away fighting and arguing.
A famous directive from Alcoholics Anonymous instructs you to exercise restraint of tongue and pen. In contrast, reactivity is a mindless, thoughtless reflex and involves the least evolved, most primitive parts of yourself and your animal origins. Restraint is equated with thoughtful, conscious self-control and indicates better ego functioning. Soccer match riots epitomize the reactivity that leads to run-away fighting and even murder. A group becomes a mob. Restraint of reactivity minimizes the likelihood of rioting in a relationship.
12. Litigious behavior changes the relationship into a courtroom.
Litigious behavior stands alongside psychoanalyzing one's partner as the newest form of verbal violence in a relationship. Specifically, litigious behavior is a deeply neurotic relationship dynamic in which one partner sets out to prove they are right and the other partner is wrong. The goal and method is inevitably one of competitive domination.
Litigating in a relationship is different from mindless immature bickering. Litigating can hook a couple into an addictive, competitive battle in which victories are sought through the intellectual and strategic conquest lawyers often use in court.
Litigating is to be avoided at all costs. Not only does it damage the goodwill in a relationship; it also creates the illusion that there is only one right way. Do you want to create a courtroom out of your relationship? Certainly not.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Barriers to Relationship Intimacy, Part 2....
4. Resentment and begrudgement invites wounding and sniping.
Resentment is an angry feeling towards another who you judge has significantly mistreated you. Resentment can go from a pre-occupation into an obsession that last for a lifetime. Resentment can also grow into begrudgement, which is a focus of ill will that objects to the good fortune of another. At worst, it is a wish for the suffering of someone who has hurt you.
When people in a relationship harbor resentment for each other, their emotional field becomes a hot zone with ongoing risks of flare-ups, arguments, and enmity. Minor problems become enlarged fights because the pre-existing resentments and begrudgements find a foothold and ignite into a firestorm of controversy.
Just like cigarettes, resentment and begrudgement are poisons. They should be prevented or extinguished as soon as possible. The best way of preventing these poisonous feelings is through the use of effective relationship skills. The best ways of extinguishing them is through a effective conflict resolution.
5. Unwillingness to take behavioral ownership creates scapegoats and destroys a partnership.
In my recent work with a gay couple, one partner claimed to feel free to flirt with the waiters in the café's of South Beach, right in the presence of his significant other. When that significant other spoke up and voiced his discomfort over the flirting, he was chided as being narrow-minded, possessive, and insecure. The flirting partner took no responsibility for his behavior. Where is the basis for a healthy trusting partnership?
6. Too much historical baggage creates relationship cynicism and distorts the present moment.
One of the worst caricatures of this barrier is the multiply divorced person who is lost in a fog of chronic bitterness towards the opposite sex. They appear unable to see truly new experiences. All they can offer are generalizations that prove to meager, clumsy, and incorrect in navigating the world of relationships. If they can see their baggage and dump it, they can lead freer lives.
7. Mockery and devaluation of your partner kills love.
Couples want to be esteemed by each other. There is no excuse whatsoever for diminishing your partner. Mockery and devaluation are inevitably symptoms of anger, resentment, personal insecurity, fear, personal unhappiness, or pathological narcissism. If you feel the urge to put your partner down, refrain from it, and try to find the source of this impulse. This will generally involve some unfinished personal ore relationship business. Giving in to the impulse to mock and devalue your partner will eventually cause their love for you to wither away and die.
8. Addictive behavior creates damage, mistrust, and pain in a relationship.
This topic has been discussed elsewhere [special conditions in relationships] yet it will help to repeat some basic facts.
* no relationship can ever attain health in the presence of active addiction;
* anyone who knowingly pairs up with an active addict is as sick and crazy as the addict;
* addiction is incurable, but manageable when the addict is involved in some form of 12 Step program. At a minimum, this requires going to meetings, getting a sponsor, working the Steps, and doing service. You should also be aware that psychotherapy alone as a treatment for addiction is woefully inadequate.
Resentment is an angry feeling towards another who you judge has significantly mistreated you. Resentment can go from a pre-occupation into an obsession that last for a lifetime. Resentment can also grow into begrudgement, which is a focus of ill will that objects to the good fortune of another. At worst, it is a wish for the suffering of someone who has hurt you.
When people in a relationship harbor resentment for each other, their emotional field becomes a hot zone with ongoing risks of flare-ups, arguments, and enmity. Minor problems become enlarged fights because the pre-existing resentments and begrudgements find a foothold and ignite into a firestorm of controversy.
Just like cigarettes, resentment and begrudgement are poisons. They should be prevented or extinguished as soon as possible. The best way of preventing these poisonous feelings is through the use of effective relationship skills. The best ways of extinguishing them is through a effective conflict resolution.
5. Unwillingness to take behavioral ownership creates scapegoats and destroys a partnership.
In my recent work with a gay couple, one partner claimed to feel free to flirt with the waiters in the café's of South Beach, right in the presence of his significant other. When that significant other spoke up and voiced his discomfort over the flirting, he was chided as being narrow-minded, possessive, and insecure. The flirting partner took no responsibility for his behavior. Where is the basis for a healthy trusting partnership?
6. Too much historical baggage creates relationship cynicism and distorts the present moment.
One of the worst caricatures of this barrier is the multiply divorced person who is lost in a fog of chronic bitterness towards the opposite sex. They appear unable to see truly new experiences. All they can offer are generalizations that prove to meager, clumsy, and incorrect in navigating the world of relationships. If they can see their baggage and dump it, they can lead freer lives.
7. Mockery and devaluation of your partner kills love.
Couples want to be esteemed by each other. There is no excuse whatsoever for diminishing your partner. Mockery and devaluation are inevitably symptoms of anger, resentment, personal insecurity, fear, personal unhappiness, or pathological narcissism. If you feel the urge to put your partner down, refrain from it, and try to find the source of this impulse. This will generally involve some unfinished personal ore relationship business. Giving in to the impulse to mock and devalue your partner will eventually cause their love for you to wither away and die.
8. Addictive behavior creates damage, mistrust, and pain in a relationship.
This topic has been discussed elsewhere [special conditions in relationships] yet it will help to repeat some basic facts.
* no relationship can ever attain health in the presence of active addiction;
* anyone who knowingly pairs up with an active addict is as sick and crazy as the addict;
* addiction is incurable, but manageable when the addict is involved in some form of 12 Step program. At a minimum, this requires going to meetings, getting a sponsor, working the Steps, and doing service. You should also be aware that psychotherapy alone as a treatment for addiction is woefully inadequate.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
Barriers to Relationship Intimacy ...by Jan Maizler
1. Insufficient shared information creates a relationship vacuum and promotes guessing, projection, and suspicion.
Healthy relationship choices are the outcome of thorough relationship evaluations, which are based on the receipt of thorough, accurate information. You must fully know the data that you aim to process.
It is a psychological maxim that data and information hook a person's logic, provides structure, support healthier ego functioning, adaptation, and planning. Conversely, no data isolates you and throws you into an intra-personal world full of hunches, suspicion, and inner mental meandering.
The early experiments of people put in isolation or sensory deprivation chambers caused them to regress, hallucinate, and grow psychotic.
These extreme examples indicate that true interpersonality and the facts attached to it, support reality testing.
What you share with your partner is a germane consideration as well. You best criterion for what is asked and what is answered is that information should be relevant and helpful, but never hurtful and damaging. As an experienced relationship choice maker you soon learn to know what is necessary and essential and what is more than you or your partner need to know.
2. Incomplete pre-relationship work creates a flood of unfinished business.
Nothing complicates a new relationship more than the unfinished business of an individual. As discussed elsewhere in this book, the three major elements that a person needs to finish (in a work-in-progress sense) are:
* a sense of completeness;
* fulfillment of potential;
* ability to take care of oneself.
All of these features are your pre-relationship work. This means that these three areas should be basically taken care of in large measure before entering a relationship.
The personal unhappiness that stems from relative incompletion of these three spheres will cause significant disturbance and will slowly poison an unfolding relationship.
A healthy relationship is not composed of two halves, but rather two wholes.
3. Fear of closeness creates distance and isolation.
The fear of closeness and intimacy has reached epidemic proportions in relationships. Why would someone be so afraid of becoming close to another person? The answer would reveal that the sufferer must be believe that closeness and intimacy must be dangerous and threatening to their well-being. A possible origin of this fear might be that the person may have suffered a traumatic loss of a loved one or someone's love. Alternatively, the person may have witnessed their parents fighting and quarreling so often that they have concluded and believe that closeness is dangerous. While it is understandable that such a conclusion is reached, it is also premature and prejudicial: all relationships are not dangerous.
Fear of closeness is a phobia-driven illness, and its cure lies in progressive attempts to safely and methodically get closer to another person who is capable of doing the same. No relationship can survive in a healthy fashion when the fear of closeness exists in any measure.
Pursuing and attaining closeness with a loved one should proceed while facing the inevitable fact that you will ultimately lose them. It is the reality of impermanence that makes the pursuit and attainment of intimacy and closeness even more meaningful, worthwhile, and necessary.
Healthy relationship choices are the outcome of thorough relationship evaluations, which are based on the receipt of thorough, accurate information. You must fully know the data that you aim to process.
It is a psychological maxim that data and information hook a person's logic, provides structure, support healthier ego functioning, adaptation, and planning. Conversely, no data isolates you and throws you into an intra-personal world full of hunches, suspicion, and inner mental meandering.
The early experiments of people put in isolation or sensory deprivation chambers caused them to regress, hallucinate, and grow psychotic.
These extreme examples indicate that true interpersonality and the facts attached to it, support reality testing.
What you share with your partner is a germane consideration as well. You best criterion for what is asked and what is answered is that information should be relevant and helpful, but never hurtful and damaging. As an experienced relationship choice maker you soon learn to know what is necessary and essential and what is more than you or your partner need to know.
2. Incomplete pre-relationship work creates a flood of unfinished business.
Nothing complicates a new relationship more than the unfinished business of an individual. As discussed elsewhere in this book, the three major elements that a person needs to finish (in a work-in-progress sense) are:
* a sense of completeness;
* fulfillment of potential;
* ability to take care of oneself.
All of these features are your pre-relationship work. This means that these three areas should be basically taken care of in large measure before entering a relationship.
The personal unhappiness that stems from relative incompletion of these three spheres will cause significant disturbance and will slowly poison an unfolding relationship.
A healthy relationship is not composed of two halves, but rather two wholes.
3. Fear of closeness creates distance and isolation.
The fear of closeness and intimacy has reached epidemic proportions in relationships. Why would someone be so afraid of becoming close to another person? The answer would reveal that the sufferer must be believe that closeness and intimacy must be dangerous and threatening to their well-being. A possible origin of this fear might be that the person may have suffered a traumatic loss of a loved one or someone's love. Alternatively, the person may have witnessed their parents fighting and quarreling so often that they have concluded and believe that closeness is dangerous. While it is understandable that such a conclusion is reached, it is also premature and prejudicial: all relationships are not dangerous.
Fear of closeness is a phobia-driven illness, and its cure lies in progressive attempts to safely and methodically get closer to another person who is capable of doing the same. No relationship can survive in a healthy fashion when the fear of closeness exists in any measure.
Pursuing and attaining closeness with a loved one should proceed while facing the inevitable fact that you will ultimately lose them. It is the reality of impermanence that makes the pursuit and attainment of intimacy and closeness even more meaningful, worthwhile, and necessary.
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