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.

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.

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…

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 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.