Polyamory – Is there enough love to go round, or is three a crowd?

The idea for this blog post came after some recent publications that were discussing changes in modern family composition, particularly in relation to adults having multiple romantic relationships within the family unit.  One of my favourite journalists Louis Theroux addressed this issue on BBC Two this week in his series of programmes called Altered States.  The episode was called ‘Love Without Limits’ and gave a brilliantly insightful view of three American families that have incorporated this lifestyle into their domestic setups. Watch Love without Limits Here

For those of you unfamiliar with the term ‘polyamory’, a definition can be found below.  The important distinction for me is that the people involved are both aware and consenting with the relationships that are occurring.  Some of the relationships are traditional threesomes, where partners share beds and engage in collective sex.  It can also be relationships that are separate and in a similar fashion to polygamous marriages, partners will take turns with each other and can effectively have certain aspects of their relationship that are exclusive to particular partners.  I think it is important to demarcate these configurations from being simply seen as ‘swingers’, as the relationships are often functional, resource sharing opportunities, inclusive of child care and not just built around stereotypical sexual perversions or mate swapping.

(from Greek πολύ poly, “many, several”, and Latin amor, “love”) is the practice of, or desire for, intimate relationships with more than one partner, with the consent of all partners involved. It has been described as “consensual, ethical, and responsible non-monogamy”

As a relationship therapist and a researcher in family organisation, I am incredibly interested in polyamory and have always considered that the idea that traditional monogamous relationships that provide all of our physical, emotional, sexual, financial and spiritual needs are highly ideological and at some level unrealistic.  The evidence for traditional relationships not fulfilling contemporary needs comes both from demographics that show nearly half of marriages failing (ONS 2018), as well as years of clinical practice with couples who have often come into treatment due to one or both partners having had an extra-marital affair (Rates of people in the UK admitting to having had at least one affair vary from 25 -50%).  The graph to the right is findings from research conducted by an Italian dating site that collated data of disclosed affairs in European countries.  Discoveries of infidelity are often highly wounding to both partners and can lead to  relationship breakdown, alongside intense feelings of betrayal and blame.  I addressed this attribution of affair accountability in a previous blog – It’s your fault I had the affair… How gender can influence infidelity blame attribution.

I think that with affairs, one of the most tantalizing and seductive elements is the secrecy, which produces a mixture of guilt and excitement that is often reported by the individual having the affair.  It is also this same alchemy that leads to the intensive emotional destruction that typically follows the affair becoming unearthed, when betrayal causes the recipient to feel duped, humiliated and that their entire relationship was farcical.  In contrast, polyamory removes the secrecy, and as a result, also removes the explicit betrayal, as the relationships are common knowledge, agreed upon and consensual.  The diagram below from Dr Elisabeth Sheff illustrates the differences between monogamy and polyamory.

In some respects, if a relationship finds a couple having incompatible sexual drives or preferences, or one partner who is unwilling or unable to meet other emotional or physical needs, polyamory allows needs to be fulfilled without ending the existing relationship.  Ideologically this makes sense, as it allows families to remain intact and for partners to have their all needs met, theoretically making them happier.  This is the idea that underpins many of the relationships in Louis Theroux’s documentary when he introduced the novel concept of ‘compersion’ to my lexicon…

compersion (uncountable) The feeling of joy one has experiencing another’s joy, such as in witnessing a toddler’s joy and feeling joy in response. The feeling of joy associated with seeing a loved one love another; contrasted with jealousy.

In practical terms, I have seen marriages forced into this arrangement through illness, disability or other unplanned circumstances.  In these cases a previously available aspect of the marriage was no longer able to be accessed, and rather than abandoning the afflicted, the couple incorporated alternative people to meet certain needs.  However, in some cases, polyamory is a lifestyle choice and I wonder if this could be propagated by the increasing sense of successful individualism, the importance of self, disposability and hedonism that is now prevalent in a social media-driven Western society.  In terms of cultural influences, I also imagine that the movement away from heteronormative married couples with biological children is also a factor.  With a rise in blended and queer families, single parent and communal lifestyles, the nuclear family is no longer the only choice and is the result of this an evolution to polyamory?

So, upon watching the documentary that met families identifying as polyamorous, what did I discover?  The most interesting aspect for me was the distribution of power and what seemed like what I interpreted as ‘reluctant or forced consent’ from some individuals.  It appeared that within these arrangements, only one person seemed to be benefitting and was genuinely happy, as they were able to be a parent, lover and companion to the people they wanted.  The other people seemed to take more of a position of acquiescence, where they seemed compelled into satisfied compliance about being in a polyamorous relationship where they received a paltry share of the material benefits.

In one case Heide and Jerry were a traditionally married couple until Heide started to struggle and ‘reached out for emotional support’.  Fast forward a few years and now Joe regularly stays over for sex dates with Heide whilst Jerry and his child sleep upstairs.  Jerry is fully informed and on the surface provides joyous approval and consent to the relationship.  Both partners adhere closely to the compersion narrative that Joe makes Heide happy, this, in turn, benefits Jerry and also keeps the marriage alive.  Heide goes so far to widen the discourse by claiming Joe generates more love in the system, love that she can then distribute to Jerry.  At first glance, this all seems glorious and embodies the purest form of compersion.  However, when Jerry stares into the distance through watery eyes whilst robotically voicing his contentment, his pleasure feels hollow, empty and even trauma-induced, reminiscent of some form of romantic ‘Stockholm Syndrome’.

I think that the dysfunction highlighted is fuelled by the highly unequal power structure, as in essence, Jerry is an old-fashioned cuckold.  As he regularly sits alone and forlorn in his bedroom listening to another man ravishing his wife in his own living room downstairs.  In fact, Jerry has no other partner, and when Louis beautifully asks if he has ever joined his wife and Joe in their more intimate moments, Jerry resembles an excited puppy.  Heide quickly squashes this prospect and shuts down the conversation, even naively claiming that the thought of a threesome had never crossed her mind.  Jerry looked as though someone had popped his favourite birthday balloon, and it was at this point that the tiresome hippy rhetoric of infinite love felt desolate and even abusive.  It was clear that Jerry was infatuated with Heide, yet she was bored with him, and in a desperate attempt to keep her in his life he had surrendered his own dignity, masculinity and pride by allowing her to move from intimate partner to a sexual fantasy that he can only experience through other men.

I felt a sense of immense sadness for Jerry and I wondered that if polyamory is to truly work, then the people involved must be incredibly resilient to jealousy, envy and be uncompromisingly boundaried.  I also feel that the crucial component of polyamorism is that all individuals must hold parity in the power structure.  Put succinctly, if one person is having a great time, whilst another paints on a compliant smile and pretends that this makes them happy, this cannot be construed as authentic compersion.  By simply being transparent about multiple intimate relationships, we may not automatically eliminate the violation of intimacy that some people experience.  My thoughts are that polyamory is definitely a valid choice for some, but it is also a system that can be inadvertently abusive and exploitative.  I do wonder that if as a species, we have socially constructed the ideas of exclusivity and monogamy as being associated with loyalty and love.  Polyamory does reduce the sanctity of intimacy by sharing it, and can only be practised by those who can generally not bristle at the thought of their beloved enjoying a romantic meal or being entwined in a naked and euphoric post climatic embrace with somebody else.  Maybe, in this case, three can sometimes be a crowd…

The dark ages of the internet – The inadvertent cost of our obsession with the online world

As an update to this article, I believe that the COVID-19 pandemic has meant that our reliance on the internet has exacerbated exponentially as people have had to transition to working, learning and socialising through screens. The costs of this have been widespread mental health difficulties, chronic loneliness and horrendous exemplifiers of how institutional disadvantage (Douglas, Katikireddi, Taulbut, McKee, & McCartney, 2020) means that UK citizens have had a myriad of experiences of lockdown that vary from waiting for the weekly Ocado delivery whilst working in the garden office, to less fortunate people who single-handedly homeschooled several children for months on end whilst effectively imprisoned in a one-bedroom flat in an inner-city tower block – June 2021

I decided to write a blog on this subject after two very separate items in the media that appear to be underpinned by a similar phenomena.  The first story concerns a new technological concept that essentially allows us to observe our elderly relatives over an internet camera link by using an app on a smartphone.  The second was a article from the department of education who have launched a campaign based on research of 2,685 parents in 2017, their findings claimed that only 51 per cent were helping their under-fives learn the alphabet or recognise words once a day or more Department of Education – Chat, Play and Read. Even though both stories tackle social issues that affect individuals on the polar extremes of the human life cycle continuum, the common factor is the rise in use of technological communications and online social interaction.

Hive Link smartphone application

Addressing the first issue, the use of the ‘Hive Link’ app allows people to be constantly connected to elderly relatives or friends who are in their care, yet live independently.  On first glance the app feels a useful tool that allows busy people to be virtually available to their loved ones, it also uses AI algorithms to learn their daily routine and issues alerts if the person is overtly sedentary or unresponsive, indicated by triggers such as a lack of motion or the morning kettle not being switched on.  This allows early assistance to be sent as a precautionary measure based upon signs of the person falling ill or needing medical attention.  For strokes, heart conditions and similar afflictions, this rapid response can be the difference between life and death.  It also allows elderly relatives to remain in their own homes for longer, rather than having to be moved to assisted living or a shared residence.

In essence, it is difficult to make a case to be critical of this type of friendly technology that gives carers peace of mind, whilst simultaneously affording the elderly autonomy with privacy and personal risk management. However, with more exploration, as with most aspects of technology and the internet, there are inherent problems.  The main one of these is the well documented issue of loneliness within the elderly, with a 2015 systematic review by Age UK claiming that 1 million of our aged parents, grandparents and friends feel permanently or periodically lonely, with half of these feeling pets or the television are their primary form of company.  The same research associates loneliness to both physical and mental health deterioration, doubles the risk of Alzheimer’s disease, causes chronic depression, increases reliance on alcohol and exacerbates the suicide rate.

Only 46% of people 65 and over said they spent time together with their family on most or every day, compared to 65-76% for other ages. 12% of people 65 and over said they never spent time with their family

Davidson and Rossall, 2015

My thoughts are that these type of apps do allow us to be virtual supervisors of our older generations, yet they also give us a huge opportunity to simply assume that because the person appears safe, they are also happy.  So, rather than popping round with the grandkids for an hour or dropping by for a chat over a cup of tea, we simply assuage our residual guilt by convincing ourselves that they are happily existing, based on limited evidence of well-being that is assumed from the boiling of kettles and television channels being changed.  It is easy to extrapolate that wide use of this type of technology will change that 12% to much higher figures, as it is a lot easier to swipe through ‘GrannyCam’ on the daily train commute, than it is to make time to visit her that evening after work.

Loneliness in the elderly

The second issue to be considered is the report from the DofE that feels that parents need support in understanding the value of spending time narrating the world to children, as well as formalised reading time.  The report suggests that around half of children do not get daily reading time with a parent; leading to reduced language abilities, delayed cognition, lack of attunement and difficulty recognising and regulating emotions .  As reading is not just about providing an educational bedrock, it also acts as a fundamental link to how a child interprets and learns about the world around them. Donald Winnicott (1957), profoundly wrote how the role of the mother is to show, explain and interpret the external world to the child. My thoughts are that the reasons for the decline of this practice are complex and varied; with issues such as social conditioning and austerity that encourages both parents into full time work, feminism empowering women’s workplace access,  the devaluing of the parenting role, increases in family breakdown leading to lone parenting and people just becoming busier.  All of these are significant contributors to lowering the numbers of parents dedicating themselves to the full time raising of children.  I regularly get parents in my treatment room who complain that the demands of modern life, especially work commitments mean that just getting home before children have to be in bed is difficult and that the list of domestic and professional tasks they have to then complete are never ending.

Parent to child attachment

These social challenge are further compounded by our obsession with social media, as well as being constantly available online to employers, making the demarcation of work and life boundaries increasingly blurred.  I think that we are incredibly unaware of just how much our smart devices dominate our attentional sphere. I often see young mothers walking with prams, completely oblivious to their children’s  desperate attempts to interact by pointing, gesturing and cooing at them.  Similarly, I hear of corporate parents tuning out to children because their phones are alerting them to the needs of their transatlantic clients as the stock market in America wakes from its slumber.  Seminal research by (Bowlby, 1969) and numerous others have shown that children need an active, consistent, predicable and empathetic response from caregivers to enable them to form meaningful attachments and develop functional social identities.  They crave parental input and their behaviour amplifies and becomes maladaptive when their cues are not met with reciprocal behaviour.  Weinberg and Tronick (1996) shows compelling evidence of how just briefly ignoring a child’s attention needing cues results in rapid behavioural change and then leads to anger, shame and disappointment Tronick’s still face demonstration.

If this happens enough contemporary attachment research (Crittendon 2016) has shown that children can develop increasingly extreme behavioural strategies that are often interpreted as diagnoses such as ADHD, as well as leading to withdrawal, dysfunctional mental health , lack of affect regulation, poor social adjustment and the sad outcome of simply giving up trying to engage (Fearon et al., 2010, Schore, 2001).  The policy implementation of the DofE may seem to some like an ever creeping advance of the ‘Nanny State’, but it does highlight that parents are often choosing not to to allocate their time having interactive and immersive experiences with their children, and in my opinion this choice is partly influenced by the seductive and authoritarian nature of our digital devices. It may also simply be that younger parents are not realising the value and crucialness of non-digital relationships to infants; as the online world has become normalised as the preferred mode of modern communication.  Recent research (Kildare and Middlemiss, 2017) has published the following findings that they have associated to parents prioritising technology over attending their children:

Distracted parents are less responsive and sensitive to their children.

Enhanced mobile connectivity can distract parents from parent-child interactions.

Children engage in risky behaviours while attempting to regain parental attention.

Distracted parenting could be linked to increasing childhood injuries.

Managing device use is complex and contributes to family conflict.

Kildare and Middlemiss, 2017

These are worrying symptoms of being so disengaged and I become further concerned when we consider the meteoric rise and reliance to digital communication that has captured us all.  From an evolutionary perspective, I feel that for thousands of years humans have thrived on face to face contact, empathetic response, subtle interpretations of emotional states and physical interaction (Crosier et al., 2012).  In the last decade, this has radically shifted to us employing apps to emulate company to our elderly, and on the other end of the spectrum the digital revolution has turned us into parents who feel their children will simply google how to achieve sentience and individuation , rather than having us assisting them with their love affair with the world. Our cognition and psychological schemas have developed to be receptive to ‘actual’ social contact and I wonder if by transferring our lives into a virtual environment will have detrimental effects for generations, as we struggle to acclimatise our psychology to cultural paradigm changes. In the same way that physiologically, our bodies interpret crash dieting as famine and as a result activates metabolic fat storage as a survival mechanism, rather than understand that we are trying to lose a few pounds to fit into a wedding outfit. Will our brains interpret the reduction in physical interaction that have been superseded by our digital relationships as social deprivation, leading to depression, anxiety and unhappiness?

Are we bound to the digital world?

As I was writing this article, my concerns were once again piqued, as a news article informed me that Facebook are implementing code to prevent us inviting dead friends to events and sending them birthday greetings. This sums up the vacuous nature of the digital world, when a computer system has to take responsibility for us not inviting our deceased ‘friend’ to a birthday celebration. In a slightly trite analogy, can you imagine how absurd it would be leaving a event invitation next to a passed acquaintances gravestone? For me, this represents the loneliness and disconnection that a virtual life has the potential to immerse us in. Behaviour and evolutionary psychological adaptation takes generations to accommodate any environmental shifts, and I feel that the two discussed examples of the human condition being transformed into binary internet coding could be what future scholars look back on as the ‘Dark Ages of the Internet’.

REFERENCES

BOWLBY, J. 1969. Attachment and Loss: Vol. 1: Attachment by John Bowlby Basic Books.

CRITTENDEN, P. M. 2013. Raising parents: Attachment, parenting and child safety, Routledge.

CROSIER, B. S., WEBSTER, G. D. & DILLON, H. M. 2012. Wired to Connect: Evolutionary Psychology and Social Networks. 16, 230-239.

DAVIDSON, S. ROSSALL, P. 2015. Evidence Review: Loneliness in Later Life. Age UK.

DOUGLAS, M., KATIKRIREDDI, S.V., TAULBUT, M., MCKEE, M. and McCARTNEY, G., 2020. Mitigating the wider health effects of covid-19 pandemic response. Bmj, 369.

FEARON, R. P., BAKERMANS-KRANENBURG, M. J., VAN IJZENDOORN, M. H., LAPSLEY, A.-M. & ROISMAN, G. I. 2010. The Significance of Insecure Attachment and Disorganization in the Development of Children’s Externalizing Behavior: A Meta-Analytic Study. 81, 435-456.

KILDARE, C. & MIDDLEMISS, W. 2017. Impact of Parents Mobile Device Use on Parent-Child Interaction: A Literature Review.

SCHORE, A. N. 2001. Effects of a secure attachment relationship on right brain development, affect regulation, and infant mental health. Journal of Infant Mental Health 22, 7-66.

WEINBERG, M. K. & TRONICK, E. Z. 1996. Infant affective reactions to the resumption of maternal interaction after the still‐face. Journal of Child Development, 67, 905-914.

WINNICOTT, D. W. 1957. The Child and the Outside world: Studies in Developing Relationships, London, Tavistock.

Thoughts on the male suicide epidemic.

This week, we received the sad news from musical pioneers ‘The Prodigy’, that their flamboyant frontman Keith Flint (49) had taken his own life.  This happened on Monday 4th of March 2019 at his home in Great Dunmow Essex and followed  a recent separation from his wife, alongside a well documented struggle with depression and substance use.  I was especially affected by this tragedy as I regularly run parkrun in Chelmsford, an event that Keith had recently joined.  I also consider his music, which fused techno, punk and rock as  a huge part of my eclectic musical journey that I began in my adolescence.  Suicide has unfortunately been a really present topic for me this year, as two of my friends have already lost loved ones to the epidemic in 2019.  One was a successful middle aged businessman and the other was a young man who was starting his adult life at University in Manchester.

Keith Flint is another life taken too young and goes along with the all too familiar reports of  suicide by men in the UK , his name is added to a growing list of young male casualties that have been fatally overwhelmed by their mental health conditions.  This is a position that we find ourselves in far too often, as we still remember the news about Frightened Rabbits singer Scott Hutchison (36) in 2018 and rock singer Chester Bennington (41), who sadly took his own life in 2017.  Given these events, I thought it would be fitting to use this as an opportunity to discuss the worrying trend of increased suicides amongst middle aged men like me.  Chester’s suicide was one that seemed to emerge from nowhere as bandmates said that they were planning to make videos for their new album, whilst friends commented that at recent meetings he spoke of being happy and enjoying himself.  Looking from afar and with no knowledge of his personal circumstances, Chester was a successful singer, liked by friends and fans and was a father to six children.  Yet, something was so difficult that he was unable to share how much he was struggling with those around him and ultimately felt the only solution was suicide.

This story is unfortunately not a unique one as fellow singer Chris Cornell (52) took a similar decision few weeks previously after performing on stage for his many fans.  It is also a narrative that I have heard many times in my treatment room where men talk about how they are considering suicide or I speak to clients who have lost important men in lives this way.  Below is an excerpt from the Telegraph in 2015 that reports on the increase of successful suicide attempts by men like Keith Flint, Scott Hutchinson, Chester Bennington and Chris Cornell…

The number of people killing themselves in the UK rose in 2013, official figures have revealed, as male suicides hit their highest rate in more than a decade.

A total of 6,233 suicides were recorded among people aged 15 and over, the Office for National Statistics (ONS) said, up 252 – or four per cent – on the previous year.

The UK suicide rate was 11.9 deaths per 100,000 population in 2013, while the male suicide level was more than three times higher than for females, with 19 male deaths per 100,000 – the highest since 2001.

The male suicide rate in the UK has “increased significantly” since 2007, the ONS said, while female rates have stayed “relatively constant” and been “consistently lower” than in men.

In 1981, 63 per cent of UK suicides were male, compared to 37 per cent who were female.

The UK suicide rate of 11.9 deaths per 100,000 population was last seen in 2004, it added.

Of the total number of suicides in the UK, 78 per cent were male and 22 per cent were female, the ONS said. Some 4,858 male suicides were recorded in 2013, compared to 1,375 female suicides.

The highest UK suicide rate was among men aged 45 to 59, with 25.1 deaths per 100,000 – the highest for that age group since 1981 and the first time that age group has recorded the highest rate.

North East England had the highest suicide rate among the English regions, with 13.8 deaths per 100,000 population, while London had the lowest at 7.9 per 100,000.

Women aged 45 to 59 had the highest female suicide rate with seven deaths per 100,000 population. The female suicide rate across the UK was 5.1 deaths per 100,000.

In England, the suicide rate in 2013 was 10.7 deaths per 100,000 (4,722 deaths), compared with 15.9 in Wales (393 deaths).

Suicide remains the leading cause of death in England and Wales for men aged 20 to 34, accounting for 24 per cent of all deaths in 2013, and for men aged 35 to 49 years, where it accounts for 13 per cent of all deaths.

The suicide rate among men aged 60 to 74 also “rose significantly” from its 2012 level to 14.5 deaths per 100,000 population in 2013. There were 672 suicides among the age group in 2013, up from 562 in 2012 when the suicide rate was 12.3 per 100,000.

In contrast, men aged 15 to 29 were the only age group to record a decrease in the rate of suicides in 2013 to 12.5 deaths per 100,000, compared to 13.6 in 2012.

In previous blogs, I have spoken about how men are somehow disillusioned with their roles being unclear and not as defined as previous generations, and this is one of the factors that academic literature cites as a possible cause of the phenomenon.  Other authors discuss that men are less interdependent than women and as a result tend to not share problems as easily or ask for help.  My experience is that men will often struggle to seek help and will often be constrained by gendered societal discourses around being strong and that expressions of feelings are weak.  Common language such as ‘man up’, ‘grow a pair’, ‘boys don’t cry’ and similar epitomise how men are conditioned by parents, media, contemporaries and each other to not discuss their problems or notice when they need assistance or no who to ask.  When I see men who are suicidal, they are often on the surface like the two rock singers mentioned earlier, with family, friends, children and successful careers.  On face value they seem to have most of the elements that most of us feel are essential for contentment.  It somehow seems easier to understand suicide amongst the marginalised and un-visible in society such as the addicts, homeless and chronically mentally ill, as these individuals are somehow not as representative of our own fathers, brothers and sons and their despair is more accessible as we can easily imagine how their lives may not be worth living.

What seems to be really difficult to interpret is that men who are successful or not completely fractured through substance abuse or trauma can be that unhappy that suicide is their only remedy.  My thoughts are that this perceived expectation can also further suppress men from getting help, as why would someone with all these reasons to exist not want to be here?  I feel that all men who feel suicidal have internalised a feeling that they have no meaning and that even though others may feel they matter, the suicidal men feel that they don’t and that it is this existential meaninglessness that is fueling the epidemic.  Carl Jung describes this sense of loss as a vocational crisis and I believe that this manifests as a feeling of being trapped.  If one feels trapped with no escape then it starts to become more understandable that suicide can be one avenue of escape.

I often discuss how suicide impacts families and that many people see suicide as a weak choice, especially with fathers who should somehow be able to rally with the thought that all they are achieving is abandoning their children.  My experience is that suicide is an incredibly frightening, brave and usually the only perceived choice, and that to be so despondent and unhappy to even consider it means that an individual is suffering immensely.  People often minimise the suffering of individuals by saying that people need to ‘get a grip’ or ‘cheer up’ and ‘do something about it’.  These further isolate already depressed people and compound the powerful social construction that those who take their own life were weak or could not be bothered to make themselves better.  I often hear men who are severely depressed talk about being unable to connect to the people and things that they love and are usually in bleak, dark and lonely places as their conditions mean that they become shut off from the emotional context of reality.

The moral implications of suicide have long been discussed with English philosopher David Hume writing a seminal piece in the 18th century.  He described that suicide is a choice and is a right of autonomous being, he discusses how suicide does not harm society as we stop receiving societal benefits and that we are then free of moral obligation and duties once we make this choice.  In some ways, I agree that suicide is the right of the individual but that perhaps if that individual could get help before making the choice, then they may see that other choices are also available and may then pick another.  As the selection of only once choice is tantamount to a democracy with one candidate.  I believe that men should be able to have opportunity in discussing suicide as a choice but should also be allowed to also reject that choice in favour of another choice to live and that my work has often showed that with the right help we can start to increase our potential choices when we feel trapped.

In order to do this conversations must be had and we must get to point where we can start to be work out our choices before only one fatal choice is available to us.

If anybody resonates with the feelings above, The Samaritans are often the first port of call where men start their journey to not choosing suicide and are a brilliant service that are available 24/7 365 days per year and are free from any phone, even with no credit by calling 116 123. I always advise depressed patients to put this number in their phone as it may be a number that proves invaluable when the world is horrendously dark.  Calling this number may be the one extra choice that may just help start a journey to stop the sad figures increasing by one more.

Letting Santa’s secret out of the sack – Negotiating the myths of Christmas with children…

For the past few months I have been running a group therapy meeting with parents of children with emerging mental health issues.  It has been a great experience and we started every session using a check-in’ technique which asked how participants understood a word that encapsulated the theme of the session.   Previous sessions have used words such as relationships, family, communication etc.  So, as a bit of fun and because our final session was a couple of weeks before the festive holidays, we used ‘Christmas’ as our ‘check-in’ word.  I was really surprised with the amount of discussion that was generated by the idea of Christmas and thought it was worth producing a blog that shared some of the conversations, as they have applicability to many families.

The whole experience of Christmas does really create a fairly partisan split in people.  There is one camp that embraces the spirit and spends hours watching festive films, decorating the home and pretty much devotes a whole month of the year to celebrating one day.  The other position was made by people who were not looking forward to Christmas and felt that it was time that they found difficult for a variety of reasons.  I addressed the challenging issues of family feuding, expectations and finances in last years blog.  Similar themes quickly emerged within the groups I facilitated, and it was interesting to see how people who were not big Christmas enthusiasts as being situated by the festive proponents with jokey remarks such as being ‘Scrooges’ or characterised with the phrase ‘Bah Humbug’.  However, when we started to look at more nuanced experiences of Christmas, it became apparent that people on both sides collectively experience an ambivalence that makes sense of the previously simplistic and polarised debate.

Aside from the mixed feelings of guilt, anxiety, excitement and enjoyment that often accompany over indulgence in consuming and spending, most people were also able to resonate with difficult feelings of loss and nostalgia.  I have heard many clients speak with sadness that Christmas time really emphasises the gaps left by people who are no longer in their lives, mainly though bereavement, separation or relationship estrangement.  This creates a bittersweet atmosphere of reflection and vulnerability for the fragile human condition, as we mourn those no longer here and regret our mistakes in relationships that have concluded badly.  It was also noticeable that the majority of people develop a relationship with Christmas based upon their own childhood, with some trying to recreate an almost utopian ideal of feasting and joyous familial love that they remember.  Others recall hard times that were tarnished by events of domestic violence, arguments or significant figures such as parents or partners leaving the family home over the festive period, a phenomenon evidenced by a spike in divorce petitions submitted in January (Pett et al., 1992).

One in five married couples are considering separating from their partners after staying together over the festive period, according a poll of 2,000 spouses by legal firm Irwin Mitchell.  – (The Independent online January 3rd 2015)

There is an idea in family therapy that we either recreate or correct significant scripts that we have lived through (Byng‐Hall, 1985), a concept that goes some way to explain how people use their childhood version of Christmas as a prototype that they either reconfigure or imitate when they plan their own festive ritual.  My observation was that even when people were incredibly excited by Christmas, this was often a veneer that hid an underlying anxiety that they had to create an impossibly magical experience.  This is a problematic expectation, mainly because every ‘perfect’ Christmas has to be improved upon.  In a similar fashion to capitalism’s infinite growth model, the success of one Christmas inadvertently initiates a challenge that demands that next year’s event is even better, creating incredible stress which is often shouldered by a single member of the family (Fischer and Arnold, 1990).  Many people describe how they can feel unsupported at Christmas as other family members just turn up on the day and gorge themselves on food and drink  before passing out in front of the television.  This is a stark contrast to the experience of the unfortunate person involuntarily appointed at the start of December to provide a month’s worth of unpaid labour as a gift wrapper, stock taker, chef and server.  So, do spare a thought of how we can all contribute a little bit and share the work, as many arguments are started when the one person doing all the organising finally protests.  Unfortunately, this is typically in a fiery and aggressive expression over a minor transgression in a board game after a few too many alcoholic drinks…

Perhaps the most thought-provoking element of Christmas that was discussed was the concept of Father Christmas and how parents maintain a universally shared deception of epic proportions.  The majority of people feel that the myth of Santa Claus is a lie worth telling and that it provides a fun-filled fantasy that  keeps us buoyant in a world that is usually full of rationalism, responsibility and challenges.  However, lying to our children does seem to come at a cost when we start to consider the wider implications, as most families have either explicit or implicit codes that warn family members that lying is not acceptable and  can get you or others into trouble.  It also plants the seed that if those they trust the most are not to be believed, what else could they be lying about, and can we trust them in the future?

One interesting point of discussion is what happens following the moment that children discover that Santa is make-believe.  I have heard stories of children being both angry and disappointed as they are forced to alter their belief systems and question their reality.  They can also direct aggression at the people that they feel have misled them.  This can be as a retaliation for their parents both lying and being hypocritical, as ‘lying’ and ‘bad’ is an association endlessly drummed into us by parents, teachers and those in authority.  However, it can also mask the shame they feel from allowing themselves to be duped and the sadness that a part of their childhood has been taken away.  This is often beautifully illustrated in playgrounds when children get into disputes  as distinct groups form of those who are enlightened by the truth, and those who valiantly defend the myth.   Most parents dread the day children come home distraught after being told by a classmate that they are stupid and babyish if they believe Santa Claus delivers their presents.  At this point some parents confess their deception, whilst others use Machiavellian tactics to quash the rumours by discrediting the source of the claim or cautioning the children that  if they do not believe then Christmas may not happen.

This in turn creates a hypocritical dilemma where parents can be disempowered into untenable positions where they tell their children not to lie, yet they have blatantly lied to them over a period of years.   Most children eventually forgive their parents and understand that the deception was underpinned with good intentions, with the majority of children choosing to perpetuate the same deception to their own offspring.  Nevertheless, this poses a difficult conundrum where people then have to make a fairly subjective judgement call to decide that if a lie is told, if it is done to protect somebody or avoid trouble, then it could be argued as acceptable.  Although, when this is contextualised as a partner not disclosing an affair due to fear of fracturing the family, or when a sinister uncle tells his niece to not tell anybody about their special secret, the impact of deception to protect or circumvent conflict starts to feel considerably less beneficent.  This creates a paradoxical premise that  lies are allowed providing they are the right type of lies and they are told for valid reasons.  However, who gets to decide if these conditions are met is debatable and if we view the lie from an alternative perspective, we may transform what was at first considered a harmless ‘white lie’ into catastrophic treachery.

Another issue to think about is around how Father Christmas distributes presents differently and how do our children make sense of this?  Many parents feel financially stretched over Christmas and the pressure to make it special often hinges on providing the latest gadget or en-vogue garment.  Parents regularly overspend as contemporary present lists typically request gifts that can amount to hundreds of pounds.  Some individuals can also feel disenfranchised when their hard-earned cash is spent and the gratitude is directed to a mythical figure who comes down a chimney with a magical sack full of the latest consoles and phones.  Although, some canny adults have made a demarcation between the small ‘stocking fillers’ that Santa delivers and the big ‘photo moment’ presents that are definitely marked up as having  been provided by the adults.

However, this also can be problematic as children feel envious of friends from more affluent backgrounds who seem to be favoured by Santa by him showering them with more or better quality gifts.  The popular discourse of being a good boy or girl is then activated, as it’s a fairly logical inference that if I haven’t received what I asked for, this must be due that I am not good enough, or that Father Christmas likes the other children better.  This discourse is also regularly used as a disciplinary device when parents effectively threaten children that if they  misbehave, then they could contact Lapland and cancel their order.  Children can become highly distressed and even fearful when these type of threats are used, even when they are genuine attempt to manage difficult behaviour.  Coercion is always a risky strategy to use with our children, as consequences can be anxiety, activation of the flight or fight reflex and power struggles (Crittenden, 2016).  It is also well evidenced that prolonged use of coercive strategies can impact psychological well-being and lead to the attachment between parents and children becoming disrupted and  characterised with mistrust and hostility (Morris et al., 2002).  So, my advice is to be careful with threats as they can easily be misattributed and can trigger feelings of abandonment, self deformation or lessen emotional safety.

The final big question that is always asked around the myth of father Christmas, is how do we manage when to tell children the truth about the legend?  As with most difficult questions like where do babies come from, is there a God and what happens when you die?  Having to dampen the Christmas spirit by confessing about Santa’s true manifestation can be heart-rending and can cause incredible anxiety when attempting to convince older children to not tell younger siblings.  However, with most difficult conversations, if handled with reassurance, love, a hug and a smile most children will see the legend as one they can still appreciate.  It is also incredible to see that even in adulthood, most people find that if they believe hard enough then they can still be children for a couple of days of the year and fully embrace the magic of Christmas.

References

BYNG‐HALL, J. 1985. The family script: A useful bridge between theory and practice. Journal of Family Therapy, 7(3), 301-305.

CRITTENDEN, P. M. 2016. Raising Parents: Attachment, Representation, and Treatment – 2nd Edition, Abingdon, Oxon, Routledge.

FISCHER, E. & ARNOLD, S. J. 1990. More than a labor of love: Gender roles and Christmas gift shopping. Journal of consumer research, 17(3), 333-345.

MORRIS, A. S., SILK, J. S., STEINBERG, L., SESSA, F. M., AVENEVOLI, S. & ESSEX, M. J. 2002. Temperamental Vulnerability and Negative Parenting as Interacting Predictors of Child Adjustment. 64(2), 461-471.

PETT, M. A., LANG, N. & GANDER, A. J. 1992. Late-life divorce: Its impact on family rituals. Journal of Family Issues, 13(4), 526-552.

How come we are only just about managing? When working families are struggling to make ends meet.

Something that has recently started to feature more frequently than I find comfortable in the treatment room, is that clients are reporting widespread issue with finances, housing and feelings of only just about managing.  The constant struggle to make ends meet may seem like a long-established issue for those in the lower socioeconomic levels of society, but what is novel in this observation is that these families are working/middle class and have two adults in gainful and professional employment.  These individuals are teachers, policeman, nurses or work within skilled trade and administrative roles.  The interesting point here is that they are not unemployed, long-term sick, part of the gig economy, disabled, recovering addicts, homeless, criminally active or refugees.  In some ways when members of these categories report poverty or financial woes, the response is often one of being able to understand why they are struggling, as they are usually pervieved to have limited or uncertain earning potential.  There is a normative expectation people who are traditionally of low social mobility will not have stable housing, access to transport, holidays and will rely on state handouts and food donations.  However, what we are seeing within the UK today is that these traditionally ‘normal’ families are now feeling financial pressures that are epitomised by restricted access to both private or social housing (Guardian article).

‘Frankly if we weren’t both working, I don’t know how we’d make it.’

My recent experience is that the threshold of poverty is shifting and starting to consume those who may identify as middle class, often defined through criteria such as having degrees, working in trained professions and being homeowners.  This is a strange phenomenon as it is hard to imagine that family with parents working as teacher and a nurse may be regularly accessing food banks, missing mortgage or rent payments and being forced to stay in an unhappy relationship, as finances prevent separation.  Conversely, it is far easier to conceive that a person who does not work and is alcohol dependent could be homeless or living within a ‘hand to mouth’ environment.  Some clients have even voiced that in a fair arrangement, people who do not meaningfully contribute to society have not earned the right to thrive.  Consequently, this thinking creates an uncomfortable cognitive dissonance, as when a person is contributing but is still financially constrained and experiences both their agency and choices being constantly disadvantaged, how is this explained and how who is responsible?

Paul Verhaeghe wrote a fantastic and prophetic commentary in 2014 about neoliberalism problems, that essentially linked psychopathic leadership in corporations to the unbridled growth motivated by ruthless market forces.  I agree with his underlying rationale that proposed that neoliberal practices of ferocious capitalism generating infinite financial gains and rewarding those who work hardest being intrinsically problematic.  The issue being that those at the top are able to generate massive incomes and have the resources to effectively grow exponentially.  Simultaneously the rest if the workforce are forced into parsimony to streamline operations and create larger profits, fashioning a hegemony that means you work harder, yet get less and sometimes even sacrifice what you already have, examples being wage caps, reduced workers rights and diminished union power. This is demonstrated in how public sector jobs in education, healthcare and civil services have had years of below inflation wage rises in the name of national austerity measures, although at the same time CEO’s wages grow without restriction to up to 387 times that of someone on national working wages Guardian article on UK pay disparity   This is also compounded by the popular myths that are peddled within the media about how successful individuals are always self-made men who have simply applied themselves.  Men such as Donald Trump, Jacob Rees Mogg and George Osborne, propose that they built fortunes from nothing, yet in reality inherited wealth and simply used existing privilege to generate greater riches.  However, they make normal people feel like they fail when they cannot replicate these trajectories, unbeknownst to them they simply were denied the proverbial ‘leg up’ these men were given, yet sneakily fail to mention in their dismally narcissistic biographies.

Going back to how this manifests in the treatment room,  my male clients regularly disclose distinct feelings of shame in not being successful.  Many men pride themselves with discourses of ‘working hard’, ‘providing for the family’, ‘being the breadwinner’ and by diminishing their financial power, it emasculates and diminishes masculine identity.  This engenders disenfranchisement and directs blame to arbitrary factors such as immigration, automation etc. or turns disappointment inwards, making one feel distinctly responsible for their own lack of success .  They have unrealistic expectations set by male generations before them who lived in boom periods where financial parity was more widespread and a single, traditionally good job could support a family, buy a house and allow the occasional luxury purchase.  Nowadays, a single income is rarely sufficient and two incomes are often inadequate to cover all the family outgoings.  The result is depression, anxiety, anger and unfulfillment.  It is also worth noting that recent statistics of growing numbers antidepressant prescriptions (Guardian article evidencing rise in prescriptions) seem to correlate with the number of families being financially challenged, with around 1 in 6 adults taking medication and 1 in 5 families being defined as living in poverty.  Below is an extract from a book called The Spirit Level (2009) that assimilates a large amount of research and suggests that inequality is inextricably linked to a variety of health and social problems, including criminality, obesity and poor mental health.

This is definitely reflected within my clients experiences, especially in their view of themselves as being deficient and forces fruitless searches for fulfillment within affairs, substances ,or results in uncontrollable bouts of impotent anger.  This anger can be seen as displaced and exaggerated reactions to bad driving, work stress, requests from partners and demands from children.  As these low moods become entrenched, I often see men who present as clinically depressed, suicidal or in positions where family has broken down because they feel overwhelmed by not only the financial pressures and lack of time spent at home, but also the self attribution of blame that portrays the situation is down to them not working hard enough.  In my long experience of treating addiction, marriage issues, abuse and family dysfunction, this problem is one of the hardest to foster improvement.  The reason is that this is not a failure of the person, or an attitude or belief that is creating negative context, but a political and institutional oppression that makes the working man feel as though he is an abject failure.  We can perhaps orientate ourselves differently to the problem, which can alleviate self-deprecation, but until society changes direction and shares wealth in a more fair way, the inequality gap will continue to batter those who do not occupy the lofty and often condescending echelons of the privileged 2%.

 

 

The drugs do work? – Large scale study provides compelling evidence on antidepressants, but do we want to take them?

This week saw the release of an interesting study Click Here for Lancet Journal which provided clinical evidence that all the major commercial antidepressants outperformed patients who were treated with a dummy dose known as a placebo.  The researchers collected their data from multiple studies that used the gold standard of clinical research of randomised controlled trials.  These type of experiments use control and treatment groups to provide evidence that the treatment group are being directly affected by the drug under investigation, and also attempts to eliminate any biases that could influence results.  The published review showed that all the 21 drugs they examined had positive effects on alleviating the symptoms of major depressive disorder.  They showed that the drugs varied in their effectiveness, with the graph below illustrating the most commonly prescribed drugs.  Anything to the right of 1 is positive result and shows performance against the taking of a placebo.

As a counter argument, Prof. John Read  critiques the study and asks for a more balanced approach in his Letter to the Guardian.  He questions the data’s neutrality, the agenda of the researchers (whom they work for) and how drugs are unable to manage the actual social distress caused by problems one is exposed to in their life.  Other critical voices have also cautioned that an effect size demonstrated here barely outperforms baseline readings.  Effectively, questioning that these medications have negligible real life effect on mood, challenging the notion that they help alleviate anxiety and depression at all.  It is worth noting that the measure being used, the Hamilton Scale is cited by the National Institute for Clinical Excellence (NICE) as needing at least 3 points to exhibit a scientifically significant effect.  Therefore, it could be argued that the range of results below would register very little improvement to real world symptoms.

Always check with a GP on the best medication for you, as side effects and the disorder that a person has will have an impact on the most useful and safest treatment that is prescribed.  It is worth noting that these results do not suggest a hierarchy of how good a particular drug is and should not be used to take certain medication over others.

What contributes to the depression?

I see many men who are diagnosed with depression and they often complain of feeling disinterested, exhausted, trapped, avoiding social relationships, unpredictable in mood, angry and full of anxiety.  Chronic cases can be crippling and can effectively leave sufferers housebound, isolated, prone to self medicate with alcohol or drugs, destructive within relationships and work life, and can eventually lead to attempting suicide.  My feelings are that depression is a psychic reaction to feeling trapped within your life.  This can be literally within an unfulfilling career, relationship (or lack of one), or by unresolvable financial problems.  It may also be more abstract with feelings of being constrained by thoughts of failure, lack of self-worth, or one that I often see in men is the loss of tangible identity and a lack of purpose within life.  The quote below is one man’s sentiment of how he struggles;

My biggest difficulty about being a man is that I often do not know my purpose or feel that I am not making a success of myself.

I also believe that the myth of the perfect social media life is a huge problem for many men.  Endless celebrities and entrepreneurs are shown as physical adonises, wealthy playboys and all round happy successes, who do jobs they love for vast sums of money, all whilst they flex their chiselled torso.  This creates an unrealistic expectations of oneself as when compared to the reality of being an average employee, partner or parent, we will often fall short of an unattainable ideal.  This causes perception of our own lives to be downgraded and for us to feel somehow substandard and lazy for not achieving more or looking better.

Men have explained in the treatment room that this existential unfulfillment is difficult to fully comprehend and can occur when one has embarked on a career and family life, and something just suddenly feels missing.  At this stage men will sometimes became obsessed with outside interests such as fitness, social clubs/pubs or online worlds, they can also be vulnerable to temptation of extra marital affairs.  Men will often say that they feel unloved, unnecessary and invisible, as they work long hours and feel excluded from their families, as partners and children function with little input from themselves.  It can be tempting to have the fun and excitement of a new romantic liaison, the result often being a wounding to the relationship that can leave men guilt ridden and shamed, and the relationship to potentially fail.

This man has consented to his views of his mental health challenges being shared, this highlights the pressure of just trying to be functional for others;

Even if people don’t say or think that we should just get on with it, I still feel that it is expected. When my brain just cannot process everything expected of my role as father, husband, and employee, no one will spend time to walk alongside; they just want to say some ‘magic words’ and me to leave them ‘fixed’ in order to meet their needs.

I have never felt so alone, despite family and colleagues trying to help.

Off to an NHS mindfulness course now; let’s see if that helps unlike everything else.

Should I take Medication?

This accompanying piece in the Guardian The Guardian Online Article suggests that more than a million people in the UK should have access to antidepressants.  This is on top of around the 11 million regular prescriptions already dispensed.  Men often ask me if they should go on medication and I always advise to talk to their GP, but we will discuss the process of using antidepressants.

My thoughts are that medication can be helpful, especially when used alongside talking therapy.  My main problem is that although drugs can alleviate the feelings of despair and hopelessness, allow better functioning and an opportunity to see things differently, they cannot fix all our real world problems.  They allow us  to be more proactive in changing parts of their lives they are unhappy about.  However, without additional support and introspection, making meaningful change can be difficult, especially around careers or relationships.  Men can feel stuck as they have to earn a wage and have responsibilities which they feel force them to stay in roles they do not like.  Likewise, the reality of leaving the family home is often impossible, as few people are financially secure enough to afford to find a home by themselves. The resulting separation can often be acrimonious and fears of  not seeing children all adds to the depressive environment of having no choices.  My experience is that these type of difficult problems are not simply resolved through just taking pills.

Another common fear is whether I will be medicated forever and how will life be when I am not taking the pills?  This can be difficult, but working with a good GP should allow a treatment plan that allows for a safe withdrawal process when symptoms alleviate.  In some respects we see the paradox of change we discussed earlier, as unless someone has made significant changes then it is likely the depression may reappear after the treatment ends, my main argument for accompanying therapy with medication.  Something that also often prevents ending medication is both the psychological reliance that I cannot cope without the pills, and the effects of withdrawal.  Even when managed well and clinically weaned off the drugs, withdrawal can last for weeks and often mimics depressive symptoms, making the patient panic and resume treatment.

The final issue that many men complain of is the side effects.  Reading the information leaflet that comes with medication can easily induce terror, as side effects can be physical symptoms such as cramps, yawning and nausea, or further mental health issues such as paranoia and anxiety.  Many men often suffer libido loss and erection problems, especially on popular SSRI (Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors) such as Citalopram and Sertraline.  This can impact the very essence of masculinity and heighten feelings of being a failure who is unable to perform.  I have had couples who have reported that they ceased sex after taking medication, leading struggling relationships to have further losses of intimacy and causing partners to blame themselves or each other for why they cannot have intercourse.  Another paradox, as even though the medication can elevate mood, the crumbling relationship can counteract this effect and cause relapse as marital tension rises.

This man generously allowed me to share his journey which demonstrates the complex nature of his own relationship with his mental health and treatment.  I feel this shows how hard work, medication and support can help combat depression, but also shows that we can often be taken unexpectedly by our illness…

I certainly feel things have improved socially since I was first diagnosed with ‘nervousness & depression’ in the late 70s. [generalised anxiety disorder – as it later became known] Attitudes are more sympathetic and people less likely to judge or discriminate against you these days. It’s easier to find and get help.

However, on the inside I still see my condition as a failure, as a weakness. My partner is incredibly supportive and understanding but in spite of her help and love I’m especially hard on myself. Despite and the rational arguments and evidence to the contrary I still feel the need to be masculine, strong and silent. The brave protector and stoic provider for my family. Not the dark, uneasy, tormented shell I currently am.

At 53 I am able to look back on over 30 years of this behaviour pattern, something which in itself I find particularly upsetting. I often fear that if I’ve 30 years of this to look back on, I’ve therefore another 30 years of mental health issues to look forward to.

I’ve always found these winter months especially difficult and this year is no different. I know it’ll pass and I have a great many tools and techniques picked up over years of therapy and learning which help me function on a day to day basis. But still, here I am …again.

I am pleased to see that medication has been shown to be effective and can be a lifesaver for those who cannot cope with what life throws at them. However,  I am not sure if a nation of people taking psychopharmaceuticals for the rest of their lives is a measure of public health progress.  I think that there needs to be more done to treat the causes of why so many of us feel depressed, rather than just fixing our symptions by changing out brain chemistry temporarily.  I have some thoughts and may share them in my next blog.

Thank you to the men who allowed their voices to be used in this article.

 

 

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The dark side of Christmas… How expectation, conflict and the mess left behind can take the sparkle out of Christmas.

With Christmas fast approaching, I have noticed a growing sense of arousal and hysteria within both my personal social groups and client work.  This time of year always seems to have the same tangibly electric crackle in the air, which carries a multifaceted identity and a sinister sense of ambivalence.  People’s moods can be highly unpredictable, as stress is either induced instantly or felt as a growing feeling of pressure as the clock counts down.  People seem to oscillate from being excitable and euphoric into abrasive annoyance and irritability.  Both of these emotional states are underpinned by a similar neurological frameworks of being intensely aroused, a highly uncontained disposition that can see behaviour switch quickly from frivolous fun into unbridled aggression.  These types of states often accompany highly emotive occasions such as weddings or football matches.  These events can see lightning switches in atmosphere as tension suddenly overspills and causes the heady feelings of enjoyment to morph into the threat of hostility.  At this point, our limbic systems move into automatic mode and our threat response starts to activate, this causes previously innocuous activity such as crowd pushing or ‘friendly banter’ to be interpreted as personally targeted acts of war.

 

This highly emotional context seems to dominate the month of December and people seem to be both looking forward to having some well deserved time off from normal life, whilst holding an anticipatory dread of having to meet high expectations and manage the uncertainty Christmas can bring.  Statistically, it is estimated that divorce rates double in the period just after the Christmas break Huffington Post Article, I always see a spike in couples therapy referrals in January.  The reasons for this are complex , with the simplest being that some couples are already planning separation and feel it will be inappropriate timing to do so just before Christmas.  Therefore, they try to have acted fun with a person with whom they are simultaneously attempting developmental closure with.  This causes high levels of anxiety as one metaphorically sits in a party hat with a smile, alongside trying to hold at bay the seething resentment, rage and loss of a sinking relationship.  This is a highly volatile state as the ego has to manage two very disparate positions and the actual self becomes further from the portrayed false self that is needed to socially navigate the festive period.  In some respects this could be literally interpreted as the horrendous festive activity of being forced to stand up and perform a cringe inducing charade.

With the idea of high arousal in mind, other circumstances that initiate relational breakdown is that people spend a disproportionate amount of time together.  Hectic modern life routines mean that many families will rarely spend lengths of time together during normal week cycles.  With longer and more erratic working patterns, couples can literally pass the other going to work, managing the home and caring for children.  Christmas essentially forces people into the unusual situation of being with each other for long periods of time and removes the usual escape hatches that can be activated if tension becomes overwhelming.  This forced togetherness is further exacerbated by the intensive consumption of alcohol and compounded through the presence of periphery family members who are we often have fairly fractious relationships with.  A sniping remark or the disguised critique and disapproval is easily taken as a call to arms as we feel humiliated or devalued by those we would usually skillfully avoid.

“Do you remember when Christmas was all about the family getting together and having a big fight?”

Interesting dynamics are in play during the Christmas break, as individuals often place massive expectations onto one day.  The pressure for everything to be perfect is immense and on many levels is both unrealistic and unachievable, a formula that sets us up to inevitably fail.  The desire to make a fantasy into reality is one that I feel is underpinned by the high levels of disappointment that accompany most people’s everyday lives.  The feelings of not achieving youthful ambitions or being trapped in careers and social structures that are not quite what we expected are somehow transposed into Christmas.  The nostalgic childhood magic that made Christmas special translates into the adult domain and our hopes and dreams become pinned on achieving the perfect day.  All the personal and professional failures of the year will somehow become bearable if we can create the idealised version of what Christmas should be.  Unfortunately, most Christmas’s do not achieve this as ovens fail, presents are not quite right or somebody finds the drunken courage to tell a relative what they really think of them over the dinner table.  When this occurs I believe it can reenact all the losses of the past year and we feel shame and anger as Christmas once again fails to be perfect panacea to resolve the difficulties we experience in the real world.  This then leads to blame, criticism and conflict… The familiar cocktail of conflict that many families see erupting out of nowhere during a game of Pictionary or in the hazy and drunken lull that occurs post dinner.

The dreaded post-Christmas slump is also always gnawing in our unconscious, as like the alcoholic or drug addict, the fantastic high of intoxication is always accompanied by the inevitable depression that follows.  Many families overstretch themselves financially and also hold that fearful feeling that once the festive period is over, the cold, dark days of winter that demand the payment for the extravagance are not far away.  In terms of psychology this creates an emotional context of threat that people often defend themselves from using over-exaggerated performance of childish excitement and denial of reality that sees people behaving like parodies of Disney characters.  Again this distances us from our authentic versions and compounds the difficult self-discrepancy described previously.

The final challenge at Christmas is the reactivating of previous traumatic experiences.  We will often unconsciously grieve for bereaved loved ones who are no longer here and the avoidance of morbid subjects means that the forced fun of Christmas makes these difficult emotions to share.  Many parents will also feel upset at Christmas, as families can no longer be together, or we become nostalgic at historical trigger points such as relationship breakdown, arguments and parents leaving home that occurred in or around the festive period.  This can cause unhelpful social comparison, where we start to validate our sense of self by seeing others as having more functional families or distorting how happy we once were at previous Christmases.  The effect of this can lead to people feeling isolated from the festivities around them, leaving them described as a killjoy or Christmas Scrooges.  It is worth bearing in mind, that for many Christmas has been experienced as traumatic or is feared to be a place that they will be shown up as not being good enough and will be forced to face their usually locked away attachment losses.  So, my advice is to enjoy Christmas by removing the need for it to be perfect and let it just be a day that it can be okay to feel slightly less than exuberant.  It may also be worth framing a classical family dispute as potentially an integral and necessary part of the developmental process and not a damning indictment of shameful dysfunction.

 

 

 

The pain of bereavement… How loss makes us disorientated.

This is my first post in a few weeks as I have been busy with work and research and have also not really felt like writing.   Today’s post will have a personal element as I suffered a loss during the week and I am hoping this will be a way of both processing the event and achieving some learning for when I work with clients undergoing their own losses.  Much of my work is centred around loss and these can be located on a very varied spectrum.  The most obvious are the bereavements of family and friends, but loss can also take the guise of the breakdown of intimate relationships, loss of a job, changes in health or as more abstract losses such as when one loses personal choice, autonomy or liberty.

I have worked with some really excruciating losses with clients in recent months, the most difficult perhaps being the sudden passing of a child.  It is easy to empathise and imagine how this type of event would cripple the most resilient of people.  I think the underlying feeling expressed here is that it does not represent the expected natural order of the world.  At some level we all understand that parents and grandparents will eventually die and that as you approach middle age this becomes normalised as peers experience the parental departure. Even though when it happens it can be devastating, there is a part of the psyche that expects and understands that this is an existential inevitability of being human.

When the bereaved is a child, this mechanism is disrupted and the loss intensifies by the natural order of the world being defied and the perceived proper sequence of events becoming disjointed.  In these type of cases, clients often struggle to reach acceptance that the person has gone and they will often voice irrational bargaining narratives that they would swap places or that life will forever be contaminated and never as good as it was before the death of their child.  These type of expressions are not usually heard when the loss is in line with the natural order of things.  The function of the counterfactual expressions are often around alleviating guilt on not saving them, or simply that they are still here, yet their child is not.

Another loss that often affects men I work with is how ill-health of themselves or a loved one forces an aspect of their identity to shift.  Many men, including myself define themselves by their vocation and we still have societal discourses that men are less masculine or emasculated if they adopt traditionally feminine roles of being either stay at home parents or a carer for those in need.  I have worked with numerous men who occupy archetypal male personas and have strong and masculine jobs such as policeman, builders or financiers.  When these roles are removed through circumstances such as declining health the individual suffers a catastrophic loss to a core identity component.  This leaves men wondering what their roles are and places them into unfamiliar positions of marginalisation and disempowerment.

An interesting phenomenon that occurs here is that men will often fantasise about their previous life, which they view as empowered and idyllic.  Similarly to the loss of a child, there is a real resistance to change expectations, to renegotiate their roles and decide what is now meaningful, rather than clinging to the memories of what they used to ascribe value to.  I think that this type of impasse epitomises the position of not being able to reach acceptance, a position that is often seen as the successful resolution of grief. I often wonder that is this ‘stuckness’ related to the increased levels of atheism that are now prevalent in contemporary British culture.  We may become isolated and helpless through our grief, as we no longer have the strong spiritual and religious beliefs that previous generations were able to use to sooth and re-balance perceived injustices and unfairness that often accompanies unexpected loss.

In comparison to the types of loss described above, mine feels inconsequential but as I always say to clients “We live the lives we do and that our experiences are valid”.  This sentiment is explained by the idea that we cannot simply compare our situation hierarchically to others by looking at people who have undergone greater suffering, or at the other end of the spectrum seem to lead easy and charmed lives.  I think that this type of rationalisation does not allow us to connect with our emotional state and can leave us with shame or anger as we try to suppress and resolve our own situation without being able to authentically process our emotional material.

My loss was of a pet bearded dragon, imaginatively named ‘boy beard’, I had been his owner for over 15 years and raised him and his mate ‘girl beard’ from small ‘moustaches’ to fully grown dragons.  When he died on Monday, I was expecting it and was relieved, as he had been shutting down for a few weeks and was ancient by species standards.  Yet,  I have spent the last few days feeling tremendously melancholy.  I have even had some bouts of uncontrollable tears and intrusive thoughts about missing him.  I rarely cry and this has been a comfort to me, as it enabled me to understand that he was a hugely important part of my life.  I have always been puzzled by the anthropomorphism of placing human emotions and traits onto animals, but I can say that I genuinely loved boy beard.

After much thought, I think I loved what he represented to me and that he had become internalised as a sense of security and safety.  I have many friends, but have always felt distance and an innate feeling that I am able to leave human relationships and survive. This has probably been derived from the fractured and at times unsupportive family of origin that I hail from.  I keep in touch with relatives, but I suppose that unlike many people they are not the place I go when in need or relationships that I greatly invest in.  The fear of being vulnerable and exposed is too much and somewhere I do not trust that these relationships will be consistent and available.   As a result boy beard had been a stable and constant ‘secure base’, that I had symbolically internalised as the ‘good mother’, a role that has been vacant for me for some time.  He was always available and never questioned me or asked too much.  He also had the fantastic ability to just allow me to be in his presence and feel content.  This is much like how Bion describes containment or how Winnicott talks about the holding of the infant by mother, that ultimately allows the infant to just sit and be without tension or impingement.

This was vitally important as the last 15 years have involved family estrangement, my journey into psychotherapy, loss of relationships and periods of physical, financial and emotional instability and uncertainty.  Boy beard was my transitional object, a symbolic entity that I was able to equate to reassurance and safety when distressed, and importantly was an object that I could take wherever I went and at some level represented home, safety and the feeling that things would be alright.  This is perhaps why his passing has had such a profound effect on my sense of well-being, as it has disrupted my sense of safety in the same way a toddler is inconsolable when leaving his favourite bear on the bus.  Like the missing teddy, I have fond memories of boy beard and will forever think of him as source of comfort when I feel that I am struggling.

Can you have an addictive personality? Exploring how addiction may not simply be down to a personality trait.

Last week a prominent addiction academic published results that have been accumulated from thirty years of research and refute the highly popular idea that certain people have predisposed addictive personalities Mark Griffiths -The Myth of ‘Addictive Personality’.  This is a claim that I often hear within the therapy room as men talk about their own compulsions as genetically inherited phenomena.  Last week’s blog post posited the idea of neurological processes leading to some men being unable to move away from strings of superficial romantic liaisons that lead to entrenched and repeating behaviour of trying to gratify a desire for the ‘honeymoon period’ chemical buzz associated with fledgling relationships.  These type of conversations have been similarly applied to alcoholism, recreational drug use, gambling and pornography, but all seem to conclude that the addict is an unfortunate victim of the genetic lottery, where they have inherited a defective DNA blueprint that removes control and ultimately any autonomy.

My position as a social constructionist is in accordance with the published paper and suggests that this type of discourse alleviates responsibility from the addict and as a result would concluded that the addict can never recover or will always be waiting for the next form of addiction to accost them.  I agree with Griffiths that this position makes us helpless and also means that the addict’s social network will be responsible for managing the addictions or policing this person’s behaviour, so that they are forever kept away from the gym, betting shops, the internet and any form of licenced premises. Griffiths couches his findings within a positivist scientific framework by suggesting that the addictive personality has some correlations to the popular psychological theories of personality traits.  He has identified that individuals who score high on traits of neuroticism

Neuroticism is a trait in many models within personality theory, but there is little agreement on its definition. Some define it as a tendency for quick arousal when stimulated and slow relaxation from arousal; others define it as emotional instability and negativity or maladjustment, in contrast to emotional stability and positivity, or good adjustment. Others yet define it as lack of self-control, poor ability to manage psychological stress, and a tendency to complain

and low on conscientiousness

Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or vigilant. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to easy-going and disorderly. They exhibit a tendency to show self-discipline, act dutifully, and aim for achievement; they display planned rather than spontaneous behavior; and they are generally dependable. It is manifested in characteristic behaviors such as being neat and systematic; also including such elements as carefulness, thoroughness, and deliberation (the tendency to think carefully before acting.) Conscientiousness is one of the five traits of the Five Factor Model of personality and is an aspect of what has traditionally been referred to as having character. Conscientious individuals are generally hard-working and reliable. They are also likely to be conformists. When taken to an extreme, they may also be “workaholics”, perfectionists, and compulsive in their behavior. People who score low on conscientiousness tend to be laid back, less goal-oriented, and less driven by success; they also are more likely to engage in antisocial and criminal behaviour

are more at risk of developing addictions.  He also notes that people who fit this criteria are not always addicts and that other addicts do not show these levels of personality trait.  Therefore, we cannot simply say that any one trait of personality is a definitive marker for being addicted.

My position is more rooted within social psychology and the individual’s actual lived context, rather than their inherent character.  I feel that addictions are often used as substitutes for meaningful and effective relationships and whenever I have worked with an addict, they have always spoken of a history of fractured or inconsistent relationships with important caregivers such as parents.  The use of substances, sex, gambling etc. is then used a way of managing and regulating both anxiety and psychological distress. These patterns become established as they temporarily experience relief or escape from an unpleasant state during the placing of a bet , sexually releasing or through becoming intoxicated.  As the pleasure drops and the difficult feelings reemerge they go back to their addiction and essentially setup a mechanism of self-soothing.  This mechanism then becomes established as a way of negotiating stress and starts to setup a psychological dependency that is the the root of uncontrollable compulsion.  This process is a substitute for the individuals inability to always regulate their own distress, which has become maladaptive due to past experiences where attachment interactions have been inadequate.

These individuals have internalised this history of insecure relationships, which means that they relate to a world that has the potential to be uncertain and unsafe.  So what causes the addict to choose certain addictions and not others?  I think that this has a lot to do with availability and will be determined to what sort of activities or substances can be easily attained and also what can be maintained financially and socially.  This is the idea of being able to partially function in terms of keeping some relationships and normal practices, as well as satisfying the addictions.  For example the ease of access to gambling and pornography means that men can access these services quickly and privately, and can effectively still work and be partially active within society.  I have heard stories of men masturbating in work toilet facilities using smartphones or following bets on obscure foreign sporting events in the middle of the night whilst their partner sleeps on completely unaware.

One point to note is that addictions such as exercise are very difficult to identify as problematic because they are often seen positively and encouraged as healthy living practices.  In comparison, drug use is usually met with social disapproval and certain drugs such as heroin instantly provoke interventions or concern by others.  In contrast, drugs such as cannabis and cocaine are increasingly being viewed as acceptable by certain groups, which can lead to there use and abuse being unnoticed or minimised. Alcohol, steroids and stimulants are are also being seen as perfectly normal practices, especially in aggressive male environments such as bodybuilding communities and intensive city vocations, where the discourses around working hard and playing hard are activated and alcohol and party drugs are used as in networking rituals, to facilitate social bonding and establish hierarchical structure.

The last component that I feel contributes to addiction and to what practice is chosen, is the experience of a traumatic trigger that has a relationship to the addiction.  This can be something like being raised by an alcoholic father or a less obvious interaction which was built around a  risky event, for example; a one off bet that led to high wins or losses, or being disturbed during a sexual encounter.  Therefore, my feelings are that the addiction is born from an insecure relational history managed by self-soothing, access to the addictive behaviour and a related trauma trigger.  Relating to the journal article and thinking about the idea of how high neuroticsim is a predictor of addiction, individuals who are neurotic present with histories of turbulent relationships and have the need for lots of intensive arousal to make experience meaningful, as well as having a likelihood of experiencing various traumatic events that have occurred due to living unpredictable lives. Similarly, low conscientiousness can be framed as not always taking account of consequences and having a tendency to avoid responsibility for actions by blaming others or saying that the addiction took hold of them and diminished their control.

The take-home message here is that many men are addicts, but my belief is that these addictions are both understandable and treatable.  By subscribing to the myth of the addictive personality, we run the risk of being incapacitated by addiction and effectively being slaves to negative behaviours or substances.  The first step to taking back control is to accept the behaviour as part of us and taking the responsibility for allowing it to happen.  This allows us the potential of being able to make alternative choices in the future and not simply being a victim of a genetic lottery…

 

 

Where has all the love from Love Island gone?… How relationships fade as fast as they form.

So a month after the finale of Love Island and its seems that the promises of perfect matrimony and the finding of soul mates have become shipwrecked upon the jagged rocks of relationship breakdown.  What has caused this rapid decline of romance from excited and anticipatory talk of settling down to many of the new relationships nose diving into the ex-partners graveyard?  A simple and sceptical analysis would say that the show is a constructed entity and the relationships are dramatised, with the contestants simply trying to launch a potential career in day-time television.   Therefore, the romances are scripted to engage viewers and any observed relationships are attempts by the production crew and cast to create a love fantasy that the viewers can indulge in.  This makes perfect entertainment senses as trying to promote a ‘Love Island’ that is devoid of any love would leave us with a desolate version of the Bear Grylls show where miserable middle classes become eternally frustrated whilst trying to start fires and catch fish.  What is more interesting is that this pattern of intense passion and expectations of lifelong partnership that very quickly turns to disharmony and disintegration is one that I often see within couples in the real world.

The very concept of Love Island seems like a fairly artificial place to meet a partner as the couples have limited choice, enormous amounts of time together and no escape-hatch to other stimuli and networks external to the show.  This creates a very intensive environment where relationships move rapidly, simply based on the amount of contact time.  By comparison, it is unlikely that traditional courting would have this level of time together so early on, so the pattern plays out at a slower pace.  Many men describe this initial and intense part of the relationship as a ‘honeymoon period’, and there is a real expectation that this is part a prescriptive journey that inevitably comes to an end after a few months.  The relationship at this point is categorised by lots of sex, intrusive thoughts about the other person, prioritising time with them over usual work/social activities, elation and positive mood.

Neurological explanation is that this process floods our neural system with the hormone oxytocin, this neurotransmitter facilitates bonding and is linked to our very early experiences of birth, feeding and maternal security.  Our brains become consumed with a natural drug that makes us feel good and motivates us to spend more time with the source of our pleasure.  Unfortunately, as with any pleasurable high, repeated exposure starts to lessen the effect and the effect diminishes over time.  Interestingly, oxytocin also has a sinister social side effect where we begin to establish allegiances by creating in/out groups.  Love Island exhibits this perfectly where we observed couples became collusive and suspicious of the other couples, as well as fostering competition, rivalry and envy. This neural circuit activation is also one contributory factor which causes some men to be promiscuous, serial cheaters or unable to commit to relationships.  In these cases the internal chemistry of the man acts very similar to that of a drug addict where desire must be satiated and moving to new partners gives a temporary high.  The behaviour starts to become entrenched and circular as once the buzz of the relationship lessens another source must be found.

Men with these compulsions have often struggled to establish fully secure early attachments and as a result require higher and more frequent levels of oxytocin to feel emotional and physical intimacy.  One presentation that occurs alongside compulsive pleasure seeking is the absence of guilt and conscience, this can be construed by the man’s partner as lack of care or even maliciousness.  Men who exhibit this lack of concern about the consequences of their actions do so because they have a reduced capacity for empathy, this is due to experiencing positive affect from the new sexual encounter which makes identifying with another person’s distress difficult.   Previous post It’s your fault I had the affair… has looked at how blame is attributed during infidelity.  The pleasure associated with new relationships begins to setup an unrealistic benchmark that longer term relationships have no possibility of reaching and maintaining and therefore this cognitively positions them as unfulfilling and monotonous, this motivates behaviour to seek a new relationship that offers the promise of the hallowed honeymoon hedonism.

We create a socially constructed, illusionary and idealised template of how we should feel in a relationship for it to be deemed satisfactory and when our current relationship loses the initial high, a comparison is made against this template and we reject the relationship as failing or not right for us.  The process is self defeating as these are not objective comparisons but a natural process of a relationship neurologically plateauing and then being dismissed for a new relationship that generates the much sought after high.  This is a very similar process to how psychological substance dependency is established.

I also think think that the mystical and almost supernatural form of language that gets used around new relationships contributes to maintaining this biased comparison.  We enact terms such as ‘soulmate’, ‘fate’, ‘destiny’,’we have a chemistry’, ‘they are like a version of me’ and ‘we just get each other’ when we want to position the relationship as almost pre-ordained.  This is a bizarre contradiction as the same people often dismiss religious, spiritual or unexplained phenomena as nonsense and unscientific, yet they describe relationships as having mystical and cognitively irrational properties.  Similarly, when the relationship fails we employ the discourses of mumbo-jumbo to describe why; ‘we just don’t fit’, ‘turns out they were a psycho’, ‘they have issues’, ‘they changed’, ‘just doesn’t feel right’, ‘the sparks gone’ etc…

Alongside the chemical explanation and how it sets up an unattainable expectations, we also have numerous social factors that compound the problem.  When partners first meet they work very hard to be what they believe the other wants them to act.  For example if a partner is fond of dogs we may over inflate our own affinity to pets so that we seem likeable.  We may also espouse political or cultural attitudes that seem desirable, an example here would be a allegiance to gender equality when a private view may be one which is more patriarchal and that women are better suited for being the main caregiver with children and that men should be the primary worker.  The main issue here is that we begin to create a false-self that in context is completely understandable, we want this person to like us so we simply say, do and act in ways that will please them and increase their fondness of us.

The problem is that this is not possible to maintain over time and we begin to revert to type. This can be perceived as that we have changed or that we are no longer making an effort by the other person.  This occurs simultaneously with us having a greater threshold for the prospective partners undesirable traits, as due to the oxytocin rush we want more of the good feeling and we let transgressions or failings pass without criticism.  Over time the chemical high lessens and we begin to be more judgmental and can become antagonized by the same traits we previously found endearing.  An example here is that a spontaneous and fun seeking person could be viewed initially as exciting and adventurous but after a period of time may be seen as childish and immature.  In real terms, both partners start to act less accommodating, as well as being more critical and less tolerant. Again, this can be perceived as not putting in effort or not being of consistent personality, another fallacy that we believe we possess and that thoroughly concerns us when we see instability in the other.

To summarise, when we see relationships that appear to be all consuming, indulgent and fulfilling in the initial stages but then to fall apart as quickly as they occurred, we need to consider the actual chemistry that is going on.  In the case of Love Island, we can dismiss the issue as ‘showmances’ or scripted pantomimes, but is interesting to explore the pattern further as it often manifests itself in everyday relationships.  The bias that we establish around relationship expectations that occur when we stop over-performing our pretend desirable traits and overlook our partners negative are forever doomed to disappoint us by positing the view that something better must be around the corner.  So to coin a popular island based phrase “There are plenty more fish in the sea”, but unfortunately in the end they all taste the same and maybe we need to treat the fish we have with care and not be so demanding of their capabilities, otherwise we may end marooned on Love Island all by ourselves.