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What Happens When We Don’t Like Our Kids?

Posted on December 7, 2017

I am always a little surprised when a mother tells me with great shame and in great secrecy that she finds she doesn’t particularly like her child. Of course we don’t always like our children! It seems there is too much secrecy around this fact, and greater acceptance of the wide range of feelings that motherhood stirs up would reduce the shame and self-judgment that many mothers feel.

There are many reasons that a mother may find she doesn’t like her child at a particular time. For sure, we are likely to see our worst qualities reflected in our children. When this happens, it will be very hard for us to like them in these moments. How we handle these instances can make a big difference in our ability to be there for our kids – and for ourselves.

The film Lady Bird is a poignant portrayal of a wounded relationship between a mother and daughter. It explores that ways in which our self-judgment and shame keep us from being able to accept our children. In the film, Marion McPherson is a middle-aged woman raising her teenage daughter, working too hard for too little money. The family lives on the “wrong side of the tracks.” Marion had had hopes of moving her family to a larger house in a better neighborhood, but was not able to make this happen. Marion’s own mother was a violent alcoholic.

Marion emerges as a warm-hearted but troubled woman struggling with shame and self-doubt. At the emotional climax of the film, we learn that she has poured her heart out to her daughter in numerous drafts of letters, all of which she crumpled up and threw away for fear that her daughter would think her writing wasn’t good enough. Marion’s sense of inadequacy runs very deep indeed.

Marion’s 17-year-old daughter, who goes by the nickname Lady Bird, has inherited some of this shame. She dreams of living in one of the large, stately homes in the nicer parts of town. When she befriends a popular girl at school, she lies about where she lives, hiding her family’s modest circumstances.

Just as she can’t accept herself, Marion struggles to express her approval to her daughter. She is frequently cruelly critical. As the film opens, we see the two of them driving, discussing Lady Bird’s college choices. Marion tells Lady Bird she will never get into an East Coast college, and, with her work ethic, ought to “go to City College, and from there to jail.”

In an important scene, Marion takes Lady Bird to go shopping for a dress for the prom. Lady Bird tries on several dresses, critical of how she looks in each one until she finds one she really likes. As she stands admiring herself in the mirror, the lack of approval from her mother is palpable. Lady Bird challenges her mother to express her full, enthusiastic for how she looks in the dress. Marion cannot do it. “I just want you to be the best version of yourself possible,” she says, as a lame explanation. “What if this is the best version of me?” asks Lady Bird. (If you haven’t seen the film, this trailer samples a few of the scenes I have mentioned above.)

As viewers, we have empathy for Marion. We see that her limitations are a result of her own wounds. Yet we feel the ache of the gulf between her and daughter that is never quite bridged.

A fairy tale from Sierra Leone entitled “The Story of Two Women” contains an image of confronting our most shameful aspects while mothering, and the healing potential inherent in cultivating self-acceptance and compassion.

In the tale, two women find themselves childless. Seeking a remedy, one journeys to a village where there is an old woman who knows the medicine for having children. Before the old woman agrees to help her, she asks the young woman a series of questions about how she will treat the child. The young woman answers always in the affirmative.

“Will you wash of its filth?”

“Yes.”

“Will you allow it to wet on you?”

“Yes.”

“Will you be able to be vomited on?”

“Yes.”

“Will you like the vomit”

“Yes.”

“Well, sit down.”[i]

The young woman must go through several trials that night, but the next day, the old woman gives her a basket and some medicine. In the basket is a girl child covered with sores. The young woman carefully lifts the sore covered child out, covers her with kisses, and lovingly washes her with medicine. As a result, he sore covered child is healed, and in a little while, the young woman becomes pregnant with a child of her own.

Seeing her success, the second woman decides also to seek the old woman with the medicine for having children. This woman, however, does not answer in the affirmative to the old woman’s questions. She is insulted by them instead. She is subjected to the same trials, but complains about them bitterly. In the morning, the old woman gives her a basket with a sore covered child in it. Unlike the first woman, the second woman stuffs rags in the child’s mouth to keep her from crying. She doesn’t want anyone to know that she has a child with sores. The second woman not only doesn’t have a child – she quickly dies.

“The Story of Two Women” teaches us the necessity of accepting our own inner sore covered child. If we cannot accept those parts of ourselves that are shameful or disappointing, it will be much more difficult for us to accept the less likable aspects of our children.

When we can welcome with compassion what is most despised in ourselves and our children, this material can be transformed. Motherhood may provide a redemptive opportunity to reclaim rejected parts of ourselves because we are able to relate to them more compassionately when we see them carried by our children.

Marion is challenged to find and express unconditional love and acceptance for Lady Bird. At the end of the film, Lady Bird reads the crumpled up and discarded letters from her mother that her father rescued from the trash. Each letter expresses Marion’s profound love for her daughter.

Marion finds it difficult to accept herself – and Lady Bird – fully and unconditionally. But she tries. When we find ourselves experiencing irritation, embarrassment or disappointment with our children, we may find that cultivating greater self-acceptance is the healing factor.

[i] Ragan, K., & Yolen, J. (2000). Fearless girls, wise women, and beloved sisters: heroines in folktales from around the world. New York: W.W. Norton.

Photo by Gerome Viavant on Unsplash

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Originally published at PsychCentral.

Article

Gifts From Our Mothers

Posted on November 30, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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When my client Rose was around nine or ten years old, she and her family were camping. With her parents’ permission, Rose set off on a walk through to woods to join up with friends at the lake. Rose remembers being suddenly startled by a large black bear rearing up in front of her. Frozen in fear, she didn’t know what to do. Then she heard her mother from behind shouting at the bear. Her mother pelted it with stones, and rushed at it brandishing a stick. The bear soon retreated.

Rose’s mother told her later that she had had a sixth sense that Rose might meet with danger, and had decided to follow her daughter to the lake. Rose admitted to me that she is not sure what would have happened if her mother had not been there when she met that bear.

Now Rose is an adult with a teenage son who is struggling with a debilitating and mysterious medical condition. Over the last few years, Rose has spent many hours at the local children’s hospital advocating on his behalf. She says that the memory of her mother shouting and hurling stones at the bear often comes to her when she finds herself needing to stand up to doctors or insurance companies as she oversees his care.

The Gifts of “Good Enough” Mothering

If we were lucky enough to have “good enough” mothering, we will likely find that that experience left behind a deep well of strength and courage that we can draw upon when we face parenting challenges. (Sometimes, good enough mothering doesn’t come from our own mother, but we may have gotten it from somewhere just the same.) We might not even realize that these resources are there until we need them.

The gifts given to us by our mothers often come to us in surprising ways. I read one story about a mother who had just given birth to her first child. As she held her newborn daughter in her arms, she was surprised to notice that she was singing to her in French, her own mother’s native tongue, which she had not realized she even remembered.

Vasilissa the Beautiful

The Russian fairy tale “Vasilissa the Beautiful” contains a poignant image of the way a mother’s gifts can serve as inner resources.

Once upon a time, a merchant lived with his wife and daughter in a forest. One day, when the little girl was eight years old, her mother fell ill, and it was clear that she would soon die. She drew her daughter to her, placed a small wooden doll in her hands, and said:

“Listen carefully and don’t forget what I am about to say. With my blessing, I leave to you this doll. Whenever you are sorrowful or distressed, give the doll something to eat and drink, and then tell it your troubles, and ask for its advice.”

So saying, the mother kissed the little girl and died.

Little Vasilissa grieved greatly for her mother, and her sorrow was so deep that when the dark night came, she lay in her bed and wept and did not sleep. At length she be thought herself of the tiny doll, so she rose and took it from the pocket of her gown and finding a piece of wheat bread and a cup of kvass, she set them before it, and said: “There, my little doll, take it. Eat a little, and drink a little, and listen to my grief. My dear mother is dead and I am lonely for her.”

Then the doll’s eyes began to shine like fireflies, and suddenly it became alive. It ate a morsel of the bread and took a sip of the kvass, and when it had eaten and drunk, it said:

“Don’t weep, little Vasilissa. Grief is worst at night. Lie down, shut thine eyes, comfort thyself and go to sleep. The morning is wiser than the evening.” So Vasilissa the Beautiful lay down, comforted herself and went to sleep, and the next day her grieving was not so deep and her tears were less bitter.

Here and throughout the rest of the tale, Vasilissa’s magical doll functions very much like a “good enough” mother’s psychological inheritance. “Good enough” mothering leaves us with a comforting inner voice that we can turn to in times of distress. Such inner resources help us find compassion for ourselves, and allows us to keep our problems in perspective so that we don’t become overwhelmed. They can be surprising sources of strength, resilience and courage.

As Rose struggles with her son’s illness, she has the gifts her mother passed on to her. These have allowed her to face adversity fearlessly and tenaciously. And she sees that she is passing such gifts on to her own children.

Photo by Rhendi Rukmana on Unsplash

Originally published on PsychCentral.com

Article

Helping Our Kids Become Whole

Posted on October 25, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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“The right way to wholeness,” Jung wrote, “is full of fateful detours and wrong turnings.” And yet many mothers worry that there is a right way and a wrong way to parent. We spend time reading books and blogs. We listen to podcasts, and pay for expert advice, which is often contradictory.

Of course, there are general approaches in parenting that are superior to others, but we do ourselves a disservice when we overestimate our ability to control outcomes when it comes to parenting. Our children enter the world with their own distinct personalities and inclinations. Environmental factors that are out of our control shape their lives further. And even when we parent with intention, how can we know for certain what effect our efforts will have? Any parent of more than one child knows that the parenting technique that works wonders with one child has an entirely different effect on another child.

Though I am not advocating against parenting thoughtfully and with intention, I do think it is important to remember that we our ability to purposefully shape our children through our parenting has its limitations. Sometimes the ways in which are children are influenced are quite unintended.

Patricia was raised by a single, alcoholic mother. Due to heavy drinking and erratic behavior, Patricia’s mother had difficulty keeping a job. The two of them moved frequently, and Patricia recalls that life was chaotic and unpredictable. Every now and again, she would stay with her father and his wife and children. Her father’s family lived a much more stable life. “The children always had clean clothes. They lived in a house, and it was neat and orderly. When I stayed with them, we ate together at the dining room table.”

From these brief visits with her father, Patricia learned that there was another way of living than that she knew with her mother. “I remember being very young – maybe around ten years old – and realizing all of sudden that my mother was kind of a wreck. I loved her, but I knew she wasn’t taking good care of me, and that a different kind of life was possible. Somewhere inside of me, I resolved to myself that I was going to create that different life for myself just as soon as I could.”

Patricia became a stellar student. She excelled in school, and advocated for herself successfully. She was skipped a grade, allowing her to graduate and leave home to attend college when she was barely 17, and had a PhD by 25. Today, she is highly respected in her field.

Though her chaotic early life took its toll, she can look back and see that the deficits of her childhood also created a firm resolve in her to take advantage of the opportunities life offered her.

This is a common theme in fairy tales as well. One of the central paradoxes of psychic life is that it is often the witches, dragons, and ogres that stand in our way that eventually lead us to into a discovery of our own depths. It is no coincidence that the confrontation with these dark elements almost always leads to a discovery of the treasure.

In the Hungarian fairy tale “The Boy Who Could Keep a Secret,” a child is beaten by his mother, and sits crying.

For a long time the child sat sobbing, and the noise was heard by the king as he was driving by. ‘Go and see who it is that is crying so,’ said he to one of his servants, and the man went. In a few minutes he returned saying: ‘Your Majesty, it is a little boy who is kneeling there sobbing because his mother has beaten him.’

‘Bring him to me at once,’ commanded the monarch, ‘and tell him that it is the king who sends for him, and that he has never cried in all his life and cannot bear anyone else to do so.’ On receiving this message the boy dried his tears and went with the servant to the royal carriage. ‘Will you be my son?’ asked the king.

By the end of the tale, the boy has become the King of Hungary, and he acknowledges his gratitude to his mother for the beating that set him out on his path. “If you had not beaten me, nothing would have happened that has happened, and I would not now be King of Hungary.” The mother’s beatings were in fact the thing that set him on his hero’s journey.

Of course, we shouldn’t beat our children! And parental alcoholism has well-documented negative effects on children. But the fairy tale makes it clear that we can’t always predict with certainty the outcomes – either positive or negative – of our parenting interventions. The day to day cultivation of a human personality is such a complex task that there can’t possibly be one right way.

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

Photo by Peter Hershey on Unsplash

Article

Listening to Our Instincts

Posted on October 14, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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I suspect that parenting is more difficult than ever because of the proliferation of expert advice everywhere one turns. Advice can certainly be helpful. There are those who have done this before, who figured out things that can be helpful. There are scientists who have studied children and their behavior. There are therapists who have spoken with dozens of parents, so have an enriched context for understanding.

However, sometimes sources are untrustworthy. There are political agendas that drive the way we see certain issues, such as the impact of daycare on a child, or the benefits of preschool. Older parents or even therapists have their own biases, or may simply never have seen a situation quite like ours. Research often creates an incomplete picture, and in any case, the population level information that research yields may not be relevant to the unique person that is our child.

As a therapist, it can be easy to assume you know the right thing for someone else. When I work with parents, my orienting goal is to help my client attend better to her own intuitions about her child. “What do you think is going on?” I’ll ask. “What do you think you ought to do? What is your gut telling you?”

There is an exception to this, however. Most of us judge our children with the same overly harsh lens with which we judge ourselves. If a mother comes to me despairing that her child can’t seem to manage himself, I often try to help her see the strengths the child is manifesting in his unruliness. Whatever the problem, there are usually a number of ways of coming to understand it. Some of these are going to be more pathologizing, and some less. In the case of our kids, often our negative assessment of ourselves – and them – can override our intuition.

The Scottish fairy tale “The Stolen Bairn and the Sidh” can be instructive about how precious our own knowledge and instincts are when it comes to mothering our children.

A poor young woman was out wandering with her infant son. She laid him down for a moment while she went to fetch him some water, but while she was gone, two members of the fairy folk known as the Sidh came and took the boy away. The mother was distraught. She asked everyone she could what had happened to her child. A wise woman in the village discerned that he had been stolen by the Sidh, and advised the mother to give up her search, for no one ever returns alive from the fairies’ realm.

“I will not stop until I have found my son,” the young mother said. At last, the wise woman told the mother that she might have a chance of gaining back her child if she were to sneak into the fairy realm on a particular night. “Remember, the Sidh cannot produce anything themselves, but must steal and beg everything. They want to own all that is rare and precious.”

“But I am poor, and own nothing!” cried the young mother. “What can I offer them?”

Nevertheless, she did as the old woman suggested. She gathered eider down from ducks at the seaside and made a cloak as soft as a cloud. She found bones along the shore bleached to brightest white, and used these to make a harp. She had nothing to use for strings for the harp, however, so she plucked her own golden hairs and strung the instrument with these.

By stealth, she was able to sneak into the fairy kingdom. The Sidh were so delighted with her cloak that they agreed to take her to their king if she would give it to them. When the fairy king saw the harp, he had to have it. He agreed to give the woman back her child in exchange for it.

When the king played the harp, the Sidh were so spellbound by the beauty of the music that they didn’t even notice the mother escape with her child.

This beautiful tale uses the eloquent language of symbol to show that what our children most need is what we alone can offer them. Our love, our knowledge of them, and our instincts about them are uniquely ours, and cannot be replaced by the dictates of any expert, no matter how wise.

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

Article

Cultivating Creativity While Mothering

Posted on October 6, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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Sasha entered treatment with me when her back pain became unmanageable – and nothing else she had tried was working. Sasha was trained as an opera singer, but had stopped performing when pregnant with her daughter. Though she had intended to go back to music in a professional capacity after her child was born, one thing after another got in the way – her husband’s job required them to move; she had difficulty finding reliable childcare; and then another baby came along. It had been more than four years since Sasha had performed, and as she admitted to me tearfully, she had begun to think she never would again.

Being a mother can indeed interrupt a creative life. When others need so much from us daily, it can be difficult to find the time and energy to invest in our creativity. In an article entitled Portrait of the Artist as a Young Mom, the author quotes a photographer, who explains that she has not been able to pursue her art since having kids.

There are moments when I feel like I’m dying a little more every day. I feel like a fish that’s been caught and then abandoned on a dock, lying there, flopping and gasping, each gasp weaker than the last.

Sasha, too, felt as if a part of her were dying. We wondered together whether she could reclaim her deep connection with music while continuing to mother. Is it possible to mother and live a creative life? Could it ever be that motherhood could feed a woman’s creativity?

Sheila grew up the only daughter of an alcoholic single mother. Her mother was harshly critical, and Sheila suffers from crippling doubt. The first time she ever experienced a sense of trust in her own creativity was shortly after her daughter was born.

“The first person who ever gave me any confidence was Crystal, because I could see that what I did by instinct was working,” Sheila told me. Being a mom to Crystal was not a panacea that restored Sheila’s creative self to her once and for all. However, it did begin a process that years later led her to work in a creative field that fed her soul.

The novelist Fay Weldon found that being a mother put her in touch with her own wellspring of creativity. In a 1978 interview, she stated that “the process of being pregnant and then of having the baby and getting up in the night only puts one more in touch with the fecund part of one’s self. …It reminds one that there is always more where that came from and there is never any shortage of ideas or of the ability to create.[i]”

In our work together, Sasha was eventually able to find ways to honor the importance of her creative life. Though it was difficult to hold the tension between investing in herself and being present for her children, she found that doing so paid off. She felt more at home in her body, and capable of accessing joy once again.

What makes the difference between mothering that helps a creative process versus one that hinders it? Might it sometimes be a little of both? I recently explored this topic further in a podcast episode of “Launching Your Daughter.” In it, I discuss some additional case examples, and talk about creativity in motherhood using the fairy tale “Rumpelstiltskin. ” I hope you like it!

[i] Nina Winter, Interview with the Muse, Moon Books, 1978, p. 40.

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

Article

When Motherhood Defeats Us

Posted on August 3, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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It is a human need to experience ourselves as competent. When we are mothering children, whether we feel competent can play a significant role in determining how satisfying we find this role. While some women come by a sense of competence easily after becoming a mother, others may have a more difficult time. Some women find the infant and baby stage easy, but feel at a loss when their child becomes a toddler. Others may not feel as though they hit their stride until their child is older.

Whatever our initial experience of motherhood may be, it is undeniably true that we will face defeat again and again as we parent our children. Some defeats are small – we throw up our hands and give up on trying to switch from white to whole wheat pasta. Other defeats carry grave and permanent consequences that alter the shape of our lives.

An Algonquin tale illustrates how we are defeated by motherhood, and gives us an idea of how we might grow from this experience

Glooscap and the Baby

Glooscap was the mighty hero of the Algonquin people. He had conquered a race of giants, and cunning sorcerers, wicked spirits, fiends, cannibals, and witches. He boasted that there was nothing left for him to defeat.

But an old woman laughed. “Are you so sure, oh Great One? There is one adversary who remains unsubdued, and no one can conquer him.”

Dismayed, Glooscap asked the name of this foe.

“His name is Wasis, but I advise you not to have any dealings with him!”

Wasis was a little baby who sat on the floor sucking a piece of maple candy and cooing to himself as he slobbered. Glooscap had never married, and had no idea how children were to be managed, but he was very confident that, if he could handle a race of giants, and a pack of witches, and some cannibals, he would make out just fine with one small baby.

He smiled at the child. “Come here, Wasis!” said the great Glooscap.

The baby smiled back, but didn’t move. Glooscap tried to coax the child by imitating a beautiful birdsong. Then he motioned again for the baby to come to him. Wasis laughed in delight, but still did not do as he was commanded. He just went on sucking on his candy.

Now Glooscap worked himself in a terrible rage. He was not used to being defied in this way! He shouted angrily at Wasis, demanding that he okay, but this only made the child erupt in deafening wails that were so loud and distracting, Glooscap could barely hear himself.

Then the mighty warrior summoned all his great powers. He recited all the magical incantations he knew, and recited all of the most powerful prayers. But Wasis just sat and sniffled a little.

Finally, Glooscap rushed from the hut in utter defeat, while Wasis the baby went back to cooing.

For women who may have lived heroically before becoming having kids, motherhood can pose special challenges. If we have defeated the giants and witches of academic or professional challenges, we may be very used to feeling competent. For some women who fit this description, having a baby can indeed mean finally meeting their match.

Defeat

My client Aimee was a successful attorney. When she became pregnant with her first child, she was excited to become a mom. She shared that she wasn’t particularly worried about juggling parenting and work, because she had identified a trustworthy nanny, and her husband had a flexible schedule. She first came to see me a few months after her daughter was born.

Aimee had a difficult birth, and healing from it took many weeks. She hadn’t expected that labor would carry such lingering physical difficulties. She was also unprepared for how all-engrossing caring for a newborn would be. Her physical difficulties, sleeplessness, and postpartum hormonal soup left her profoundly disoriented. Though she had hoped to go back to work after six weeks, she found that wasn’t possible. This significant defeat caused her to re-evaluate assumptions about herself and her life she had long taken for granted.

For Aimee, the reality of motherhood and birth was a significant defeat for that part of her determined that life should go on as before. She had to admit that things would never be the same for her. This admission opened her up to question values previously taken for granted. It gave her a chance to re-evaluate her priorities and engage with aspects of herself that had long been neglected.

Aimee did return to work eventually, though she admits she is a different person now than before her daughter was born. Though she did lose aspects of herself, she gained others.

“I have a broader perspective now. I think I am more accepting and understanding of the people I manage. Overall, I think I’m a better lawyer now because of this.”

Photo by Tim Bish on Unsplash

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

Article

Teaching Kids to Value the Inner Life

Posted on July 27, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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Last time, I wrote about how becoming curious about our inner life – and helping our kids to do the same – can be helpful in managing difficult emotions. Relating creatively to our inner life brings other benefits as well. When we cultivate openness and acceptance toward our thoughts and feelings, we develop a capacity to engage life symbolically.

One of Jung’s great insights was that psychological growth requires that we separate ourselves from thoughts and feelings. Our conflicts, problems, and difficulties are a part of us, but we are not them. When we remain in identity with inner contents, we do not allow them to change and transform.

Identity versus Separation

Identity does not make consciousness possible; it is only separation, detachment, and agonizing confrontation through opposition that produce consciousness and insight (The Collected Works of C. G. Jung, vol. 9i, para 289).

This is partly why the mental health field has encouraged a shift in language when speaking about diagnosis. When we say, “I am depressed,” it gives the sense that depression defines and limits us, whereas “I have depression” underscores that depression is just an aspect of self.

“There are things in the psyche which I do not produce, but which produce themselves and have their own lives,” Jung wrote in his autobiography. “Thoughts [are] like animals in the forest” (Jung, 1989, p. 183). Our conscious self encounters myriad thoughts and feelings that have been spontaneously generated by the unconscious. It is indeed a bit like wandering through a forest and finding various animals there with us. It doesn’t make sense to judge the animals in the forest and determine that they shouldn’t be there. It doesn’t make sense to deny them and pretend they don’t exist. It also doesn’t make sense to overvalue their significance. The thoughts and feelings that inhabit our inner forest are unlikely to represent an ultimate truth, or to have more inherent value than something produced by conscious thought.

Taking Feelings Seriously, Not Literally

When we become too attached to a particular thought or feeling, we overvalue it, and this can lead us to respond too concretely. We fall into the fallacy of emotional reasoning, wherein we conclude that our feelings prove that something is true. This can lead to us trying to fix the immediate problem, which can in turn subtly reinforce a too concrete understanding. When this happens, exploration of our inner experience is prematurely foreclosed.

If our seven-year-old child is beside herself with terror at the thought of sleeping alone in the dark, we can acknowledge the seriousness of the feelings. We can encourage her to take them seriously, even while we help her not to take them literally. One father I knew gave his daughter a “magic pebble” to keep under her pillow that had the power to defeat any monsters. His creative, respectful intervention contrasts markedly with another family I know of who took their son to a psychologist because of their child’s nighttime fears. Unfortunately, the psychologist gave the child a diagnosis, which reified the symptom. This did not help the child to creatively meet the developmental challenge he faced.

The Symbolic Life

Responding concretely to emotional distress closes down opportunities to be curious about the symbolic element in the experience. For example, when our teenager falls into a depression after having a first love relationship end, we may feel pressure to do whatever it takes to help end his suffering, particularly if we sense he is slipping into a genuinely dark place. Before we rush to set him up with someone else or reach for a medicalized solution, we may want to remember that some suffering opens us up to our inner life, orients us toward ultimate meaning, and teaches us wisdom. If we can hold our child’s suffering as an initiatory plunge into the depths, he may be better able to experience it that way, even if we don’t explicitly speak of it in these terms.

A fairy tale image can serve to amplify the distinction between an orientation that is overly concrete, versus one that is more expansive and symbolic. The image comes from the Russian fairy tale “The Frog Princess.” In the tale, the three sons of the Tsar have all been given instructions on how to find a bride. The two older brothers find beautiful noblewomen to wed, but Ivan, the youngest son, is paired with a frog in a swamp. The two older brothers mock Ivan for his homely bride, but she displays some unusual qualities.

The sons and their brides are invited to a ball, and Ivan’s frog wife arrives in the form of a beautiful woman. At dinner, she tucks small bits of food up her sleeve. The two other brides think this is a bit strange, but not wanting to be impolite, and desiring to emulate the beautiful woman, they do likewise.

After dinner, the frog-girl dances with Ivan. As she does so, she occasionally waves arms and lets fall a bit of food. The bits of food turn into a garden with a golden pillar on which sits a tomcat singing and telling fairy tales, and a park with a lake inhabited by swans. When the other brides wave their arms to drop bits of food, bones are flung across the room that hit the tsar in the forehead.

According to Jungian analyst Marie Louise Von Franz, dancing and creating the beautiful fantasy world are…

an aspect of creating the symbolic life, which one lives by following up one’s dreams and day fantasies and the impulses which come up from the unconscious, for fantasy gives life a glow and a color which the too-rational outlook destroys. Fantasy is not just whimsical ego-nonsense but comes really from the depths; it constellates symbolic situations which give life a deeper meaning and a deeper realization….The two other figures take this too concretely (Von Franz, 1996, p. 103).

As parents, we can enrich our own lives – and those of our children – by avoiding responding to distress in a manner that is overly concrete. While of course there are times when concrete action needs to be taken, we can provide our children a more expansive sense of their inner lives by being sure to honor feelings and keep one eye on the symbolic aspect of the experience.

To learn more about how fairy tales help us understand ourselves better, join my mailing list.

References

Jung, C. G., & Jaffe, A. (1989). Memories, dreams, reflections. New York: Vintage Books.

Jung, C. G., Adler, G., & Hull, R. F. (2014). Collected Works of C.G. Jung, Volume 9 (Part 1). Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Franz, M. V. (1996). The interpretation of fairy tales. Boston: Shambhala.

Image by Viktor Vasnetsov – Scanned from A. K. Lazuko Victor Vasnetsov, Leningrad: Khudozhnik RSFSR, 1990, ISBN 5-7370-0107-5, Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=215931

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

Article

Helping Teens Manage Big Emotions

Posted on July 21, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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Research indicates that emotional regulation is one of the most important skills we can teach our children. Teens who lack an effective way of managing distressing emotions may choose maladaptive ways of coping, such as avoidance or numbing through addictions. Managing difficult or complex feelings requires a capacity for self-reflection. The quality of interiority – an awareness of and interest in our inner, psychic landscape – is essential for self-reflection.

When we know ourselves to have a complex inner life, we are able to be curious about the thoughts and feelings that take place there. Being curious about our emotions allows us to see them as something that is distinct from us, and this in turn gives us choices about how we respond to them.

Imagine a teenager who has just gotten a failing grade on a quiz. He is devastated. Powerful emotions are compelling, and feel real. It is difficult for this student to find a mental frame of reference outside of the strong feeling of upset. He forgets that last week he did well on an assignment and felt good about himself. It is hard for him to imagine that he might feel good again next week.

By contrast, when we value our inner life, we can stand a little aside from strong feelings. They are still there, and still powerful, but we have cultivated just enough space in our inner world to stand back from them. We know that feelings are not facts. We still feel awful, but we see the emotion for what it is – just an emotion, not absolute truth. We can also look around our inner psychic landscape and see other features. Strong emotional experiences are relativized.

Feelings come with narratives, and these are often generated unconsciously, without our being aware of them. This means that it takes some degree of effort and insight to evaluate the accuracy of these narratives. Being panicked about a poor grade may lead to black and white thinking that tells us we are a failure who will now not get into a good college and will have a terrible life. If we can’t manage to keep the big feeling and its associated narrative in context, we may become attached to this understanding of what happened, which may mean that we decided to give up. We may avoid asking for help, or even drop the class.

With the distance that comes with self-reflection, we can contextualize our distress. This helps to generate more options when deciding how to respond. Even though we feel really frightened and hopeless, we might remember that the teacher told everyone this would be a difficult quiz. Perhaps doing poorly on it doesn’t mean we are stupid. Maybe we can ask for an opportunity to earn extra credit, or seek help so that we do better on the next assessment.

In this way, our degree of distress is decreased because we are better able to keep our difficulty in perspective. We are able to assess the situation more objectively, and we have a wider range of options to choose from when deciding on a response.

Developing interiority means appreciating our feelings and honoring them as important, even while we also recognize that they may not be true. It means neither overvaluing or undervaluing our emotional responses. We don’t want to tell ourselves that our feelings don’t matter, or that we are not allowed to feel certain things. On the other hand, we also don’t want to overvalue our feelings by deciding that the impulses that come with big feelings need to be acted on, or the narrative generated by the emotion is true.

Helping our children develop interiority will require us to develop it as well. What we model to our children in terms of dealing with our own distress – and theirs – will in large part determine what they learn about managing emotions. When something upsetting happens, all of us have an immediate impulse to make the problem go away as quickly as possible. It may be difficult to stay with upsetting feelings of fear or despair, and so we plunge headlong into action.

While this is an understandable response, in many case, it works against us. Rushing to fix a problem leaves us with little time to feel our feelings and be curious about them. It encourages our kids to see the inner life as something that needs to be managed rather than experienced. It is easy as a parent to fall into the trap of responding in this way. When children are upset, we feel an urgency to resolve their distress.

When our kid comes home from school teary with frustration about his friends calling him names on the playground, we may feel tempted to give advice or take action. While it is possible that either advice or action might be needed at some point, listening with openness and curiosity shows respect for the feelings in their own right. It gives those feelings space to just be there, and time to see if those feelings need to transform into something else of their own accord. Attending to our feelings helps us cultivate an awareness of and appreciation for our inner life.

Photo by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

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What if I Feel Envious of My Kid?

Posted on July 5, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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Janice had been seeing me for a few years, but I had never seen her quite this uncomfortable before. She was telling me about her daughter’s high school graduation party. Janice was a devoted mother who had worked hard to support her daughter through some academically tumultuous high school years. The daughter’s successful graduation and acceptance to one of her first-choice colleges ought to have been a cause for rejoicing, but Janice felt something much more complicated.

“Of course, I felt proud and happy. And of course I also felt sad. I will miss her terribly!” But she also felt something a little darker – something that she had trouble putting into words.

“We had a tent set up in the backyard, with strings of lights, and a DJ. I stopped in the middle of the rushing around getting the food and watched her. She was standing there, surrounded by dozens of other beautiful, vibrant, young people. Her hair is so shiny and full, and she has a gorgeous figure. And it was as if I suddenly saw something I hadn’t seen before. She is young and full of promise, and has her whole life before her. She doesn’t even realize. I was like that once, too. But now so much of my life is in the past. I am very proud of her, and happy for her, but if I am being honest, I have to admit that I also felt a pang of the most awful jealousy for a moment.”

It was brave of Janice to admit to me – and herself – that she felt envious of her daughter’s attractiveness and promising future. Janice’s own mother had been depressed. Left to raise Janice and her two siblings alone after her alcoholic husband disappeared, Janice’s mother struggled to cope and was often resentful of her own lost youth. In very many ways, Janice had transcended her difficult childhood. She was sending her own daughter out into the world feel safe, cared for, and confident. While she wouldn’t have wanted it any other way, there was some envy there.

In the well-known fairy tale “Snow White and the Seven Dwarves,” the young heroine becomes the object of her step-mother’s envy as she grows into a beautiful young woman. While it may be challenging to relate to the evil step-mother in the story, it in fact is not unusual to feel envy of our children at some point or another.

Feelings that are not fully felt can indeed become poisonous. Unredeemed envy can solidify into toxic resentment, which kills off new growth in our own life and also in our children’s life. On the other hand, if we allow ourselves to feel the sting of envy and become intimate with it, we allow it to transform.

Befriending a feeling is different than indulging it. When we accept our feelings – however unacceptable they may be – we can be curious about our experience, and wonder about its meaning. Such an intimate exploration of our emotional landscape can yield the treasure of new knowledge that can deepen our self-understanding. This in turn helps us become more tolerant both of ourselves and others.

Indulging a feeling, on the other hand, means that we become attached to the feeling. We believe it is “right,” and we act from it. Acting from a place of envy can be very destructive, both for ourselves and for others.

Symbolically, the acid of envy may dissolve old psychic structures that need to be cleared away. In fact, poisonous envy may have a paradoxically healing effect. In the tale, Snow White is too trapped in her own innocence complex to protect herself. Her transitional state of keeping house for the dwarves represents a kind of interim, provisional solution to her dilemma – a sort of apprenticeship to shadow. (In the original versions of the tale, the dwarves are thieves.) Snow White is getting to know the darker, more transgressive parts of herself. Ingesting some of the step-mother’s poison apple is what allows her to awaken to her own authority.

Janice came to see that her own envy may have had a positive role to play as she and her daughter got ready to negotiate their next phase. Janice was dismayed to find that she had an impulse to pull away from her daughter in those months after the graduation party. The pain of feeling her own envy was too much. But Janice was able to be curious about this feeling. She could see how the envy functioned in part to protect her from the terrible grief she felt about her daughter’s immanent departure.

We were also able to excavate her own experience of being 18. Janice recalled her mother’s resentment and bitterness when Janice announced that she would be moving out. In our work, Janice was able to get in touch with anger at her mother, but also powerful feelings of guilt for abandoning her mother. Eventually, she was able to forgive herself for leaving her lonely, depressed mother.

As Janice was able to grieve some of these frozen feelings, the heat around her envy of her daughter dissipated. The hard-won wisdom she had gained about herself as a result of exploring these difficult feelings made it easier for Janice for her to release her daughter with joy and love.

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

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Can Motherhood Make You Badass?

Posted on June 13, 2017

by Lisa Marchiano, LCSW

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My mother was never very good at saying “no.” When as I teenager I would ask her for something she needed to deny me, it would tie her in knots. She would get angry at me for having even asked.

When my daughter became a toddler, we began to have battles over TV. She would scream and cry if I turned it off, and beg for me to turn it back on. I remember feeling tied in knots.

One Simple Word

And then one day it hit me like someone throwing a brick through the window. If she asked to watch TV, I could say no. She might scream and throw a fit, but I could still say no. All I had to do was hold firm to that one simple word, “no,” and be prepared to tolerate her reaction.

This was the beginning of a new phase in my learning about how to carry authority.

Like many women, saying “no” in the face of fierce opposition and then tolerating the other’s unhappiness has never come easy for me. In my late 20’s, I achieved a senior management position at a non-profit. A seasoned employee came to my office with an outrageous request. He smiled, chatted me up, and asked nicely. I said yes. Some part of me knew it wasn’t right, but I couldn’t even imagine how to say no.

So having children taught me how to say no. I remember being curious as to whether being able to say “no” to a screaming four year old demanding dessert after consuming no dinner would carry over into “real” life. Would I now begin to feel more firmly rooted in my own authority in all areas of my life?

Dreams of Anger and Aggression

When my kids were small, I had the following dream:

I am in a beautiful boutique, and in a lit glass case is a priceless object carved in black stone. It is a gargoyle-type figure about the size of my fist. I somehow know that it had been carved and used for religious purposes a long time ago. It hangs on a cord. I ask the proprietor if I can see it. When I put it around my neck, its eyes begin to glow red, and it comes to life. It attacks the people I am with, choking off their breath, so that they clutch at their throats. I am frightened, but I fight to control the figure. To do so, I used the same counting technique I used with my strong-willed son when he was a toddler. “That’s one!” I tell the gargoyle firmly. It ceases its attack. My companions are alright. I have controlled this fiery power. I feel a little afraid, but also slightly exhilarated. The others in the shop agree that the totem obviously belongs to me by right.

I couldn’t really figure out how to describe the carved figure until the kids and I were driving past a local college campus and they asked me about the gargoyles on some of the dorm buildings. Then it hit me that the totem in the dream had been just like a gargoyle. “Mom,” my daughter asked. “Are the gargoyles there to scare things away?” “Yes,” I explained. I remembered the Chinese New Year celebration we had been to together, where dragons scare off evil spirits. “Sometimes you need one kind of demon to scare off another,” I found myself saying.

The Legend of the Gargoyle

This discussion gave me a new appreciation for my dream, and made me want to learn more about gargoyles. It turns out that gargoyles originated with a medieval French legend of a fire breathing dragon-like creature called the “gargouille” that inhabited the Seine, devouring boats and terrorizing villages. Saint Romanus subdued and conquered to creature with the help of a convict and brought its remains back to be burned. The head and neck would not burn, however, since they had been long tempered with the creature’s own fire. This head and neck were hung on the cathedral to serve as a water spout.

It’s significant that the saint is able to conquer the gargouille with the help of an outcast and criminal. The convict in the legend would correspond to Jung’s concept of the shadow. This was the name that Jung gave to those aspects of ourselves that we would rather not know were ours. The shadow often contains elements that are truly objectionable, but also those that were unacceptable to our parents or culture, but may be of great value. Anger and aggression are likely to be in the shadow for many women. Certainly, they have been for me. Just as in the legend, accessing disowned parts of ourselves can help us to conquer our demons in a way that produces something of lasting value. The terrifying gargouille becomes a helpful gargoyle. Its energy is no longer destructive, but can be used for scaring off evil spirits, and channeling water.

Motherhood Teaches Us to Hold Authority

My dream is showing me how, as a mother, I had begun to learn to tap into my own aggression and anger in a constructive way. My anger had always been somewhat frightening, but in part through my experiences holding authority with my kids, I was now able to access that side of myself in a way that made this tremendous power available to the conscious part of my personality.

My favorite quote about motherhood comes from the novelist Faye Weldon, who said that “The most wonderful thing about not having children must be that you can go on thinking of yourself as a nice person.” Maybe one of the gifts of motherhood is that we no longer have to be stuck thinking of ourselves as nice people.

Originally published on PsychCentral.com.

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