mid-life

I’m speaking primarily to men in this blog, because in my experience with counseling couples, theirs is the voice that is quick to turn abusive towards themselves and toward their partner.

When life gets really tough for us men; loss of employment, loss of libido, a move to a new environment, or a new arrival to the family, we will lapse into a rather familiar voice. Wether we want to admit it or not, the harsh sometimes judgemental voice is that of our fathers. As children this was experienced in one of two ways.

A father projects his own fears, jealousy and arrogance onto his son. You’re a bum, you’ll never amount to anything!
“I’ll never be more than I am. I’m surprised your mother married me!” Here’s dad not only being insecure, but telling you that your mother is somehow flawed as well.

Since these men were our first role models, like actors on a stage we received our first lessons on what marriage is like, and what a man and woman can or cannot do. We unconsciously took this information in, because we’d yet to develop the skill-set necessary to quiet or process those voices of our parents which became internalized by their repetitive dialogue and action. During this Pre-operational stage according to the patriarch of cognitive therapy; Piaget, this usually starts at 18 months for a child and continues to around 8 years. Young children are able to think about things symbolically. Their language use becomes more mature. But their thinking is based on intuition and still not completely logical. They cannot yet grasp more complex concepts such as cause and effect, time and comparison. As young men we left home to take a job, attend college, join the armed forces or move to another state for some adventure. All the while learning to be independent, to become what we wanted to be, or at least to try and figure out without our parents judgment’s. The years past and the young man finds his own voice, and his standards of morality, fair-play and ethics. We marry, divorce and marry again. Sometimes we have children. Our lives appear to be ours, completely original and away from our fathers predictions. ——————- “I’m just not worth worrying about. I should have never moved here. You have to take care of me as if I was a dog. I have nothing to contribute!” This was expressed by a man to his wife during a session of couples counseling. He had been unable to find employment in the two years since his move here to marry her. Lately, they’ve been having disagreements, escalating with him shouting at her and her closing down, which to him felt like abandonment. She was tired of being yelled at for the littlest thing and because he mistook her silences as her way of telling him she wanted a divorce, he assumed in session that perhaps he should just return to his country of origin. As men, we’re taught to keep messy feelings to ourselves and tough it out. Isolation is a sign of resiliency, and to reach out for help, or share candidly with our spouse what we’re going through, is, for the most part, considered a sign of weakness. This belief system was and continues to be “Old School”. Consequently, its effect on men with feelings of self-loathing, hopelessness and rage limits the definition of how a man can express himself. It leaves no room for all the positive thoughts, creativity and logic that took us years to get to. It is at these low times that we are most vulnerable to damaging thoughts or as Piaget like to call them; cognitive distortions. We fall back into that which we thought we achieved some distance from, the cycle of self-loathing of our fathers. Perhaps we’ve even talked ourselves into thinking that they were right all along in their assumptions and we are wrong. “A man is only a man if he can support his family.” If you weren’t given any brains then your life is like that of a draft horse. You work until you drop.” “None of you are going to amount to anything. You just watch and see.” “I get up and go to work, come home, eat, then its bed, and then its off to work again. You call that living?” When our wives or long-term partners hear this kind of talk, it angers them and they get upset with us. Some of them may even challenge our thinking, knowing its origins and tell us to stop talking like our fathers. Our pride might take it a step higher, with the result being hurt feelings and closed doors. Never a good way to be understood. It’s our fight or flight, knee jerk response to anxiety which covers our own feelings of depression that was loaded into our DNA when we were very young. Relationships with our fathers can be complicated. They’ve grown and perhaps mellowed and stopped voicing their criticisms. If they are living they may be the first ones to let you know that their idea’s of themselves and you were mistaken. Its’ first and foremost essential to understand that it was someone else’s script that you memorized. Yes, as much as we hate to admit it, some of us have turned into our fathers. Yet, its important to distinguish the moment this dialogue from your father starts surfacing in your own relationships. You still have a choice. That choice being to distance and reject any ownership of this self-deprecating violence that brings such suffering and conflict to those we love. THE FOLLOWING ARE STEPS YOU CAN TAKE TO REDUCE OR STOP THESE REACTIVE THOUGHTS AS THEY GATHER ENERGY IN YOUR HEAD.

STOP VOICING THE NEGATIVE THOUGHTS. Your voice is a very central part of your own personal power. You’ve listened to it since birth. The effect it has on you, with whatever information you’re feeding it, makes it stronger than any other voice. If your calling yourself a loser, your voice brings it right back to you and as you hear it, its effects are like taking orders and over time will produce that loser. That’s the power of your own voice. Imagine the good it could produce if your tone changed and you expressed that you were a winner!
NOW, LET’S GET THOSE THOUGHTS. It’s considered a cheap shot, a blank slug and a total waste of breath when a negative thought is delivered on the back of anger. So I understand when you say you can’t control your thoughts, so do the next best thing, “HESITATE” before you are about to say anything out loud to yourself or before you share it with someone else.
YOU ARE NOT STUPID. You have to want to change, right? Usually when you get a feel of how this works, you might also take a breath, because physiologically while the thoughts are building in your head and are determined to capture your voice……you’re not breathing. As your heart is hammering for more oxygen, you’re getting pretty angry. Take a breath and then take a deeper one. Give the moment a chance to transform. It will. I promise.
THIS MAY BE NEW INFORMATION FOR YOU, so I’ll break it to you gently. YOUR THOUGHTS ARE NOT REAL. The way I explain this to clients is that there is very little of a filtering system that decides what goes in and out of your head. Those sophisticated neuron pathways can deliver any amount of information without discretion.
NO ONE CAN CONTROL THEIR THOUGHTS. I’ll say this again. The most educated and respected minds in the country cannot control the stream of random thoughts that go in and out of their heads throughout a day.
THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN ALL OF US is what thoughts we choose to pay attention to, and the amount of time that we give them. For example, if some foolish thought comes to a new-born’s sleep deprived parent to put a pillow over their child’s face to quiet them, is that really going to be carried out? ITS JUST A THOUGHT!

So, let me ask you, are you still a card-carrying member of the “My Thoughts are Me” club? Understand that all our lives we will be in some sort of skirmish with our thoughts. In the course of time we will hopefully come to depend more on our intuition to help us make better choices. Any arguments for; I believe these thoughts are real and I have to express them, are moot. Court is adjourned. The case, thrown out for lack of substantial evidence. John Shinavier , MA is a Therapist/Life Coach in Private Practice. Give me feedback on what specifically you need help with. Rate the blog or E-mail me at jjshinavier@gmail.com

(Your Inner Slug )

Procrastination is an engine of regret. It has been defined as the voluntary delay of any action that we realize we ought to pursue now.

For habitual individuals and frequent dawdlers who tend to harbor self-critical thoughts and wrestle with depression and anxiety, they consistently are found to yield more to impulses more often than other people. When chronic procrastinators are asked about their thoughts, they tend to share snippets of a dark, gloom-ridden internal dialogue. “I am too stupid to do this,” they say, or “If I can’t complete this paper, everything else I’ve done is meaningless.”

Numerous studies have demonstrated that negative emotions diminish self-control. Anxiety undermines diets, as well as smokers’ efforts to quit. When people feel upset, they are more likely to act aggressively, spend too much money or play video games when they know they should be doing something else, like studying or working. Feeling down is a strong predictor of relapse in a number of addictive behaviors, such as alcoholism and drug use.

Distraction, it turns out, is a fabulous way to cast off unwanted feelings. [ADHD] We doodle in the paper margins, sweep the floor, call a friend or take a nap. This quells our emotions for a while. This is our way of restoring self control or dodging our feelings.

Turning the mind away from a dull or disturbing thought is one reason we delay. A Bruised ego might compel someone to procrastinate as a way to repair his sense of self. After a set back a person might open up face-book or check out the latest sports scores to affirm his sense of connectedness.

Many procrastinators use a set of thoughts known as counterfactuals (contrary to facts). These statements often begin with phrases such as “at least” or “if only”—-, “at least I didn’t crash the car!” or “if only I’d gotten a good nights sleep.” Downward counterfactuals always illustrate that things could have been worse. This serves to elevate mood. Upward counterfactuals, which capture how we might have avoided a mistake, do the opposite.

Individuals, who procrastinate more, dreamed up more downward counterfactuals than those less prone to postponement. Chronic idlers might be less resilient when beset by negative feelings, so their defense mechanisms kick in sooner. There is discomfort that comes when you approach a task that brings up insecurities, and for some people that is just not a place they like to be.

What to do

One obstacle for any procrastination-beating technique is that managing our internal state and herding our thoughts and feelings so they align with our highest goals—often demands self-control, and this effort can leave us with less cognitive firepower for the tasks at hand, Resolving to not check e-mail for an hour, for example, can make you more likely to sneak into the kitchen for a bag of chips.

The idea that negative emotions drive procrastination has opened up new approaches for bolstering resilience. Several strategies that leave self-control intact are now being discussed.

For instance, since my wife and I moved into a new house, I was determined not to fill up our new house with stuff from our last house, so it remained in the garage where, when we both had the time, I assumed that we would go through it all again and get rid of the majority of the clutter. Every time I opened the garage door, I was overwhelmed with all the boxes and the fact that it was increasing and not the opposite. It wasn’t until months had passed when I purchased two large tables from a yard sale, where I could use one table as a work-bench in the garage and the other I would refinish and place against the dining room wall. The shift in motivation that made me go through and get rid of most of the boxes was the space I needed for my workbench. Clearing out the gaggle of moving boxes in the garage became virtuous, not vexing. Without realizing it, I had tapped into one key way for overcoming procrastination: a new motivation!

This is called cognitive reappraisal a deliberate move to change the meaning of a situation by altering our emotional response to it. In my case thinking of the task as self-improvement [a la work bench which I could then repair or make furniture for our new house] decreased my vulnerability to the temptation of taking that nap whenever I thought of tackling the clutter.

If you can harness the incredibly powerful force of your emotions, you’ll have a lot more fun than if you’re constantly turned around and around by them. Your initial emotions to tackling any thing out of your comfort zone are not the only emotions that you have. If you break the task at hand down in smaller parts [going through 3 boxes per day in my garage], inevitably the job gets done.

Another way to view an event more positively is to give yourself a break. Because procrastination seems to trigger harsh self-criticism, it may be self-reinforcing, sending us spiraling further downward. For this reason, Self-Forgiveness: a three-step process to reduce the emotional distress that procrastination stirs up. It entails acknowledging having made a mistake, weathering feelings of guilt and than experiencing a shift in motivation as self-punishment gives way to the positive feeling of self-acceptance. Acknowledging your error and feelings of guilt, and then move on.

Self-affirmation can restore self-control, because we are powerfully motivated both unconsciously and consciously to pursue self-worth. By reflecting on the best parts of ourselves it stops our fixation on the negative, which at times we are so use to, that it’s almost a perverse pleasure, and to focus descriptively on what matters in life. Seeing the bigger picture can be the motivation to change.

Over time, by hesitating before surrendering to the nap, or the drink, or the internet, our self-control becomes stronger and we can begin tailoring external circumstances instead. Ultimately, it seems, the key is not to constantly fight temptations but to learn to avoid as many of them as possible.

Thus self-control may not be the capacity for titanic acts of willpower but instead an ability to shape one’s environment proactively through effective habits and routines.

So if your planning on starting an exercise plan the next day leave your workout clothes laid out for the morning and tuck your keys under the clothes the fewer obstacles the fewer opportunities for negative emotions to arise. And when you encounter an urge to avoid doing what matters most, check in with your feelings first. They may rule the moment, but you can still have power over the day.

John Shinavier, MA

Generally speaking, a man can wake up at any point in his life. Developmentally this happens first in his early thirties. It’s a gut feeling that he senses when he’s not doing what he supposed he’d be doing or is not where he feels he should be in his life. He also might come to the realization that what his choices may have been at a younger age were more his parents choices then his. It can be a little overwhelming in the early thirties, but there is still hope and youth to fuel any new direction, whether it be in career, relationship, or higher education. Some years later there is quite a different man entering his late thirties, early forties. If he has not met any of his important goals that he had set in his late twenties or early thirties, then, this realization can have a crippling effect coupled with an urgency to change his life. His whole world is sometimes called up for review and his attempts to change may show themselves superficially in buying that sports car, leaving his spouse/partner, cheating on the one he does have or self medicating his feelings of low self-worth by drinking, using drugs or just behaving badly.

“Seasons of a Man’s Life” is a small group of like-minded men who will gather together one night a week for ninety minutes of introspection, discussion, education and story telling. Along with interesting exercises that will reveal what truly is important to them. The group will hopefully find answers to questions, learn problem solving skills that will help them reevaluate their lives and find fresh energy for the work that lays ahead of them.

If this sounds like a group for you or for someone you know, please call me for an initial free consult to see if you could benefit from such a group? It’s open to all men between the ages of thirty to fourty eight. It will initially run for eight weeks at the cost of two hundred and seventy five dollars, payable at the first meeting. The group is planning to begin towards the end of September. You will be given an informative packet of the schedule and the topics that will be discussed on any evening. I look forward to hearing from you.

Sincerely

John Shinavier, MA, Life Coach, RYT

John Shinavier - MA, RYT, LC

Therapist | Life Coach | Career Coach Speaker

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