Posts Tagged ‘Jantz’

How We Perpetuate Emotional Abuse

Friday, February 3rd, 2012

Bill and his wife, Margaret, brought to our counseling center their teenage son, Kevin, who was becoming increasingly rebellious and hard to control. He was throwing things around in his room, staying out late with friends whom Bill did not accept, and coming home drunk. After running out of options, and on the advice of their son’s school, they sought professional help to sort out their differences.

Bill was convinced that a therapist would tell Kevin to clean up his act, learn to behave responsibly as a near-adult, and stop engaging in his destructive, disobedient behavior of staying out late and partying. Bill believed that a professional would help Kevin jettison his childish behavior and learn to accept the realities of the adult world.

Bill thought the therapist would deal only with Kevin’s behavior. He’d pretty much had enough of trying to talk to his son. Their talks always seemed to end with them yelling at each other at the top of their lungs. Bill was determined to bring Kevin’s behavior under control, and Kevin was just as determined not to be ruled by his father anymore. Bill was looking to the therapist to provide weight and a second opinion to his attempts to reason with Kevin. Bill had prepared himself for being told about all the problems Kevin had. Although they would be difficult to face, these problems were a fact of their life. They had to be faced squarely and dealt with in an adult and responsible way.

Instead, Bill was challenged by Kevin’s therapist to take a hard look at the way he was treating his son and the messages he was transferring to him. Bill had to turn his view around from the adult he expected Kevin to be to the child Kevin actually was.
Bill discovered that Kevin really did want to please him but felt he never could hit the mark. Frustrated after years of trying unsuccessfully, Kevin not only had given up but in anger had rebelled against everything he knew his dad wanted him to be. Bill learned that the anger Kevin was feeling had been brought on by a deep sense of loss that he could never gain his father’s approval.

Kevin discovered that Bill really did love him – so much so that he wanted him to be perfect so that nothing bad would ever happen to him, and so that if it did, he would be tough enough to handle it. Kevin learned that Bill was raising him just the way Bill himself had been raised.

Bill realized how powerful his words and messages were in Kevin’s life and how much Kevin needed positive, affirmative messages from his dad in order to grow and function. Bill learned it was okay to show Kevin his love, his fears, his hopes, his emotions.

Kevin learned to begin to trust his dad.

As with other types of abuse, emotional abuse can be self-perpetuating. You accept the abuse, deny its impact, and ignore your inner self so much that, if you are not alert and careful, you end up continuing the cycle within your own relationships. Either you again take up the role of the abused in your new relationship or you switch roles and become the abuser.

Click here to learn more about emotional abuse and get help if you need it.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 2 in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Dr. Gregory Jantz.

Tags: , , , , ,
Posted in abuse | No Comments »

Emotional Abuse: The Goal of Control

Friday, January 27th, 2012

Not all relationships are perfect, and people say or do things in anger that they regret later. But if those things are a pattern, and if they are used to degrade and control, no matter how subtle they may seem or how much the other person tells you they are really for “your own good,” in truth they are abuse . You may be asking yourself, “Where does constructive criticism end and abuse take over?”

Emotional abuse by itself or used in conjunction with physical or sexual abuse is easily recognizable if you know what to look for. Many types of emotional abuse will take the form of a message – the spoken and unspoken messages of your self-identity and self-esteem. These messages, either positive or negative, have become incorporated into how you feel about yourself.

Whether you were emotionally abused as a child or an adult, the messages were meant to belittle, devalue, shame, and ultimately control. Additionally, if those messages were given by the very people you looked to for love and guidance, the very one whose opinions you trusted, they have been given the appearance of validity and have added weight.

Emotional abusers have very select ways they use to control those they are abusing. The messages may differ slightly, but the ultimate goal of emotional abuse is control. By controlling those around them, abusers are attempting to control their circumstances and situations. By belittling those around them, abusers are attempting to make themselves feel better
The tragedy is that while sometimes these abusers are aware of what they are doing, often they are not. A habit of abuse has become a life pattern that is so comfortable, so normal for them, that they have stopped questioning the reasons behind their words and actions. As is so often the case in abuse, many abusers have a history of abuse in their own past and are acting out behavior that seems normal to them.

Whether it is a long-term abusive relationship or a onetime traumatic event of rejection that created a later resentment and unresolved anger, it is still damaging. It is vital that you identify it and learn how to deal with its consequences.

Acknowledging and becoming aware of abusive patterns in your life will lead to healing and the recovery process.

Click here to learn more about emotional abuse and get help if you need it.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 1 in Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse by Dr. Gregory Jantz.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in abuse | No Comments »

Know Yourself, Know Your Teenager

Wednesday, November 16th, 2011

In relationships, the only person you really have control over is you. To paraphrase Scripture: If it is possible, as far as it depends on you, live at peace with your teenager (Rom. 12:18). You establish the peace, and you do that through stabilizing the relationship from your end regardless of what your teen does. You must become the port in the storm for this sometimes turbulent relationship. You take charge over yourself first by understanding and accepting the ways you’ve contributed to any difficulty in your relationship. You take charge by apologizing and making an honest effort to do better. You model by removing your own plank first and then bringing up specks. Teens don’t expect you to be perfect, but they’d appreciate a little honesty, especially where your faults are concerned.

The firm foundation your teenager needs is you as a parent to be clear about who you are and what your role as a parent is, even when that role is confusing and frustrating. There is a real danger here, if parents decide to abdicate their role as parents during the adolescent years for something else that feels more comfortable. Many of these situations, taken to extreme, are outlined in my book Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse. Teenagers who are cheated out of that childhood role and thrust into another by a parent suffer a form of abuse.

The parent-child relationship can become warped during adolescence, especially creating a role reversal where the parent begins to look to and expect the teenager to fill the parent’s needs. It is not healthy for you to begin to look to your growing teenager as someone to fill your adult needs. These can be adult needs for companionship or camaraderie, even advice and protection. Adolescence is meant to be a process for teenagers to grow and mature into their own person, filling their own needs, not yours.

I have seen mothers, afraid of their own aging, being to morph into older, distorted images of their teenage daughters, even wearing similar clothing and adopting similar hairstyles.

I have seen fathers, fearful of their own aging, treat their sons as peers and demand their sons reciprocate, requiring time and attention to the detriment of same-age friends.

I have seen mothers, fearful of the coming empty nest, bind their teenagers to them through increasing demands and intentional displays of incapacity.

I have seen fathers, troubled and discontent with their own lives, transfer that negativity onto their teenagers, dragging them down just at the point of launch in order to experience companionship in failure.

I have seen parents burden their teenagers with the weight of their own fading dreams of accomplishment.

Granted, these examples are extreme and produce an unhealthy attachment and enmeshment, a sort of relational strangulation. However, I say this as a reminder to all parents. Adolescence is a time of discovery and possibility for teenagers. It can also lcome at a time of disappointment and a sense of loss for parents, because of the juxtaposition of age. Aging parents can become fearful of advancing time and look to their teenagers to help slow the march. Solitary parents can become fearful of being left alone and look to their teenagers to fill the gap. Angry, embittered parents can look to teenagers as an outlet for venting and release. Maybe these examples aren’t you, but please be aware and willing to look inside yourself to see if any of them claim even the smallest place in your heart.

Teens are growing into their potential at a time many adults may feel their own potential waning. This can cause jealousy and envy and contribute to the tension and friction between teens and parents. These sorts of issues have the capacity to damage and sever your connection with your teenager, without you even really understanding why. As you enter into this pivotal time of transition, I encourage you to make sure you hang onto your identity as a parent so you allow your teenager to retain his or her identity as a child for a few more years.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 4 of my new book, The Stranger in Your House. I’ll be posting more excerpts from it here in the weeks to come, but you can receive a FREE copy of the book itself between now and December 15, 2011. To participate in this book giveaway, simply share some of your own thoughts or experiences about raising teenagers – in the comments section of this or future blog posts, or on the Facebook or Twitter pages linked to below.

Tags: , , , , , ,
Posted in teenagers | No Comments »

The (Teenage) Stranger In Your House

Sunday, October 16th, 2011

He’s in his room for what seems like days, emerging periodically and answering questions with sullen, monosyllabic responses.

She’s moody, teary, and irritable, one minute demanding you drop everything to tend to her needs and the next minute demanding you just leave her alone!

He’s not going out for tennis this year, even though he did well last year. When you ask him why, he can’t really give you an answer, other than he’s not interested anymore. As you think about it, there are a lot of things he just doesn’t seem that interested in anymore. He seems to fill up his time somehow, but you’re not sure with what. When he was younger, his life was an open book; now, he’s closed the cover and locked you out.

She’s constantly negative – about everything. Nothing ever goes right; she never looks right; you never act right. She used to be a fairly happy kid, but now she’s just difficult to be around, which kind of works out because you hardly ever see her anyway.

He complains about headaches and not feeling well. It’s hard to get him up in the morning to go to school. If he could sleep until noon every day, you think he would, and suspect he does when you need to leave early for work.

She’s rarely at the dinner table anymore. Instead, she says she’s already eaten, grabs a bag of chips and a soda, and goes to her room. When you ask her about it, she says she’s too busy to spend time with the family and prefers to work in her room, but you’re not exactly sure what she’s doing in there.

He used to spend hours chattering away about all sorts of things; you used to spend time together. Now, having a root canal seems higher on his priority list than spending any time with you.

As sure as she is that she’d really rather not spend time with the family anymore, that seems to be all she’s sure about. It takes her what seems like hours to get dressed in the morning, her chair piled high with discarded outfits. She doesn’t know what she wants to do or what she wants to eat, and getting her to sit down to do her homework is almost unbearable.

You know he’s got clean clothes because you do the laundry, but he seems to constantly wear the same clothes you could swear he went to bed in. His hair is never combed, and you’re worried about how often he’s doing things like brushing his teeth and wearing deodorant. He never seems to stand still long enough for you to really tell. Instead, you see more of his backside leaving than anything else about him.

You’re living on pins and needles, wanting to maintain family rules and responsibilities for the sake of the younger kids, but it’s sheer torture to get any sort of commitment from her to do her chores. She always promises to do them later, but, somehow, that later never seems to happen. It’s often more tiring to keep asking her to do her chores, so you just end up doing them yourself.

Sunday mornings are even worse than weekday mornings. Getting him up and ready for church hardly sems worth it. He used to go willingly, but now there’s always a reason why not. Just getting him in the car is a 30-minute argument.

All of this wouldn’t be so bad if you didn’t get that sense in your gut that your teen is unhappy. It’s as if he or she walks around in a swirling cloud of discontent, frustration, and irritation. Sometimes it’s so thick you have trouble making out the person inside. It hurts because that person is still your child, no matter the age.

None of us want our kids to be miserable as they’re transitioning from child to adult. And none of us, frankly. want to be miserable ourselves, weathering an incessant barrage of teenage moods and behaviors. Navigating this time of life can be complicated, and it’s perfectly reasonable to reach out for some answers and some help.

The above is excerpted from Chapter 1 of my new book,

The Stranger in Your House. I’ll be posting more excerpts from it here in the weeks to come, but you can receive a FREE copy of the book itself between now and December 15, 2011. To paricipate in this book giveaway, simply share some of your own thoughts or experiences about raising teenagers – in the comments section of this or future blog posts, or on the Facebook or Twitter pages linked to below.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in parenting | No Comments »

Chris’ Story: Nothing Gold Can Stay

Thursday, August 12th, 2010

Chris felt battered and bruised by life.

When he got into his car, it seemed like all the other drivers were idiots; driving to work was a real chore. Arriving at work didn’t really make him feel any better because even though he never knew what the day would bring, he always felt underappreciated and overworked.

It wasn’t any better at home, where Chris felt vaguely disapproved of by his wife and consistently disrespected by his children. At 47, he couldn’t get up after sitting for any length of time without something somewhere hurting.

Drinking brought him a sense of relief.

Alone in his study, a couple of drinks were just what Chris needed to take the edge off the day and build up a warm, hazy buffer against the problems that kept grim vigil in the hall. He knew they wouldn’t go away, but for a time he didn’t have to think about them. He didn’t have to think about anything. Just drink is scotch, watch the television, and shut out the world.

Chris is like so many people who choose the temporary fix of their excessity over the deeper work of the uncovering the source of suffering in their lives. Chris, like so many people, chose the death of a thousands cuts over emotional surgery to correct the true issue. They keep on believing their pain will go away if they continue to plaster it over with an excessity. The problem is that such a shortcut solution has no hope of lasting.

NOTHING GOLD CAN STAY

This life is based upon impermanence.

Psalm 144:4 says “Man is like a breath; his days are like a fleeting shadow.” Anything that we create to be lasting is, because of our own fleeting nature, short lived at best.

I think one of the most poignant descriptions of the impermanence of life is the famous poem by Robert Frost called “Nothing Gold Can Stay.” It is, appropriately, very brief and speaks about the fragile nature of nature itself, beginning with the golden miracle of a tiny leaf. Such a miracle, though, is temporary, with the inevitable withering of that golden leaf, and leaf by leaf after that. The poem ends by lamenting,

So dawn goes downt ot day. / Nothing gold can stay.

We hold on to our excessities like they are golden leaves, but they were never meant to stay. Any comfort they produce cannot last.

Source: Chapter 3, “Our Need for Comfort” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.
 
30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY
If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in Alcohol, Gotta Have It! | No Comments »

Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse [TESTIMONIAL]

Saturday, August 7th, 2010

I recently received a touching testimonial from a woman who found help from Healing the Scars of Emotional Abuse, a book I wrote several years ago, and revised last year. In her testimonial, she expressed a desire to help others who have suffered similar pain.

With her permission, I am sharing her story, in her words, below:

I filed for separation from my husband. There was verbal abuse, lack of empathy, stonewalling, and plenty of other warning signs. I was able to see abusive patterns that I had grew up with from my step-dad. He raised me from the age of 5 years. When I was 11 his job had him gone all week, I was left at home alone with my invalid grandfather who was in his 80’s. I was beginning to see the emotional damage that those actions might have caused me.

The step-dad was very verbally abusive. Calling me stupid, yelling at me, ignoring me, and put-downs.

I married at age 17. Now I can see that I did that to get away from the abuse. The first marriage lasted 14 years. Looking back now I cannot remember much detail of the bad. I do know it is there because when I remarried I had to go through this huge custody trial. In that trial, the ex-husband was vicious. It was a yearlong litigation. Any time I had to talk to him in that first year I would get triggered, my body would get heated and I would freeze. Which tells me that I had a history with this man that was negative. Within that yearlong trial, I healed and did not get intimidated by his threats and games any longer. I started to see him as an irritation and insecure to act that way.

Therefore, after I was having a hard time in this second marriage, I started to think that I was repeating my past. However, this time I chose somebody whom was worse to the extreme. It was a big burden to feel the guilt that I did not see a pattern. The treatment from the second husband was so much worse.

After four years of couples counseling, one separation, and a lot of pain, one day at counseling I mentioned to the therapist that I tried an idea. My husband works from home and some of the ideas why he was getting upset with me could have been that I was trying to interact when he was focused. I knew that this seemed off. One day I went a whole day without talking to him. The next day I did try to interact. He blew up. At counseling I mentioned this; that it was any time I would try to talk to him. I asked her what this problem was. She leaned over and gently told him that she has seen Asperger traits in him!

Whew, I did go through the emotions of healing. Finally it had a name. I was then able to take a load off my shoulders and let go of the guilt for thinking I was living in a generational cycle. It was a hard thing to go through which for a while made me angry at what I endured, then I thought of how it brought me through the deepest deep and made me look at my past.

I have been separated from my husband for 9 months now. He has since been officially diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome. I have done a great deal of healing. I am attending school working towards becoming a Registered Dietician. That is another thing to be thankful for – that the abuse and stress that goes with it pushed me to learn how to take care of myself with nutrition, diet, and exercise. I got into reading self-help books from Gottman, Dr. Weil, Dr. Mark Hyman and Dr. Amen. I found my passion for health. I knew that I was at risk if I drank to hide from my problems. I have several siblings who have heart problems, diabetes, and addictions from not coping with their problems. I made it through!

Subscribe to This Blog

Follow Dr. Jantz on Twitter

Fan Dr. Jantz on Facebook

30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY

If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

Tags: , , ,
Posted in abuse | No Comments »

Are You Living Like The Princess and the Pea?

Thursday, August 5th, 2010

Comfort is highly prized in our culture, while discomfort is barely tolerated.

We buy comfortable cltohes and comfortable shoes. Whenever possible our homes and work spaces are kept at a comfortable temperature. We have comfortable places to sit and comfortable places to sleep. Because we are surounded by comfort, we have finely tuned radar for anything that causes us even a modicum of discomfort.

For some of us, we have become the princess in that fable of The Princess and the Pea — the classic fairy tale of the princess who goes to bed on twenty feather beds atop twenty mattresses, under which the queen has placed a single pea. In the morning, the princess says she was hardly able to sleep at all because of something hard in the bed and claims to be black and blue because of it. From this, the queen knows she is a real princess because no one else could be that sensitive.

I sometimes wonder if some of us have become the princess, and any discomfort — even caused by something as small and insignificant as a pea — is reason for an endless stream of complaint. While hypersensitivity is a virtue in this fairy tale, I’m not sure it plays out that well in real life becuase the greater your sensitivity to discomfort, the greater your need for relief. The greater your need for relief, the more susceptible you are to comfort-seeking excessities.

There are quite a few conditions that produce distress and unease. There are loneliness, anxiety, fear, guilt, boredom, and restlessness. These are irritaiton, frustration, and agitation. I have heard each of these given as a reason why people run to their particular excessity. They seek comfort from the distress and unease — the discomfort they feel has interrupted their lives, their sleep, their peace of mind — that have left them figuratively black and blue.

They want relief, and they want it now.

But is that really the role of comfort? Is comfort meant to be a universal and immediate panacea for every uneasy thought or interpreted distress?

When I was a new father, I thought my job was to rush in to comfort my child at the slightest sign of distress. It was difficult for me to hear him cry. I wanted to do something. Wisely, my wife reminded me that sometimes the best something to do is nothing. Children often are fussy and irritable “just because.” They need to learn how to work through those feelings on their own. Sticking a pacifier or a bottle in their mouths or picking them up at every turn or giving in to every demand does not teach children to be adaptable; it teaches them to be dependent. It teaches a child that comfort comes from outside, instead of from within.

When children are young, they are dependent on adults for just about everything. As they get older, however, they begin to learn how to handle some of their needs. This fosters their sense of independence and identity. By letting children learn how to handle their discomfort, they will grow and mature, learning how to weather the inevitable storms of life without looking for the quickest or most convenient way out.

Please do not mistake me here. I am not advocating depriving children of comfort. Far from it! For I have also seen what happens when comfort is chronically denied a child. Each occasion of distress and unease is geometrically heightened by the failure to comfort the time before. Panic and anxiety set in, producing a world where there is no minor discomfort because every discomfort is sucked into that black hole of neglect. When an excessity is grabbed on to in order to counterbalance that black hole, there isn’t enough Gotta Have It! activity possible to fill the gap.

Each end of the spectrum produces an excessive response. Grow up with too much comfort from the outside, and we develop intolerance to any discomfort or an inability to generate comfort from the inside. Grow up with too little comfort, and we develop an insatiable need to fill that void.

Source: Chapter 3, “Our Need for Comfort” in Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.
 
30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY 
If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Gotta Have It! | No Comments »

Our Need for Comfort: Jennifer’s Story

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010
We live in a harsh world with deceit lies, and falsehoods — a world where one of our deepest needs is to be comforted but that comfort is often in vain. Any comfort received from false sources is fleeting at best, requiring us to continue in fruitless comfort-seeking behavior.
  
JENNIFER’S STORY
Jennifer needed comfort every day. When she prayed “Give us this day our daily bread,” she meant it for comfort not for food. Bread — in all its carbohydrate forms — was Jennifer’s comforter. She liked just about anything baked, but there was something sublime about fresh, hot, yeasty bread with its crusty, crunchy outside and soft, warm middle. And when it was slathered with sweet and salty butter…well, there just wasn’t anything more comforting to Jennifer. Often she would go to the market near her house specifically to buy a fresh loaf of French b read, knowing just what time the hot loaves would be set out on the racks by the checkout stand. Before she got the bread home, along with the other groceries she bought as cover, she would eat over half the loaf tearing off large pieces gulping them down in the front seat like someone winded gulps for air.
Life made Jennifer feel winded — physically, emotionally, and spiritulaly. Food — bread in particular — helped to ease that discomfort and give Jennifer a sense of relief. Lost within that moment of fulfillment, Jennifer felt a golden sense of being satisfied, something she rarely felt during her life-as-usual.

The only problem for Jennifer was that the fulfillment never lasted very long. By the time she got the bread home and put away the rest of the groceries, it was already starting to cool off, and the kids wanted in on the action. Before she knew it, the loaf was gone along wiht that transcendent moment of relief. Instead, it was replaced by anxiety over her weight and how much she’d eaten. Everything about the bread, it seemed, always went from warm to cold.

COMFORT FOOD
 
Food is a comfort commodity. From our earliest moments of life outside the womb, one of our first feelings of distress and discomfort comes from hunger. And one of our first feelings of being comforted comes from being fed. There were panic and agitation; there were relief and calming. Growing up, you may have lived in a household where food was given as a universal pacifier. When you were hungry, you were fed. When you were upset you were fed. When you were bored you were fed. When you were good, you were fed. When there was a reason for celebration, you were fed.
Or you could have grown up in a home where real connection was tenuus and comfort a do-it-yourself proposition. In the absence of affectionate feelings or expressed love, you learned that the comfort found in food was ultimately more reliable and always more controllable. You learned to grab comfort where you could because at your house it was in chronically short supply.

Often, because of denials and rationalizations, it can be difficult to reach an understanding of how much a role food plays in comfort seeking. People tend to downplay the need for their food of choice; they downplay the amount they actually consume of it; they downplay the importance it has appropriated in their lives. They downplay all of these things until they are asked to withhold that food of choice. When this happens, they quickly realize it has become their go-to source of comfort.

When speaking of comfort, food is the first thing that comes to my mind because of the amount of eating disorders I work with, but I have seen many other activities join the go-to-for-comfort club. I have seen that loaf of French bread replaced by a double-tall caramel macchiato. I have seen that double-tall caramel macchiato replaced by a video game controller. I have seen that game controller replaced by a credit card. I have seen that credit card replaced by the satisfaction of a verbal outburst or a sarcastic put-down.

The ways people choose to provide themselves with comfort is virtually endless. When you factor in each person’s unique situation and capacity for creativity, the permutations go off the chart.

Source: Chapter 3, “Our Need for Comfort” in
Gotta Have It! by Dr. Gregory Jantz, founder of The Center for Counseling and Health Resources, Inc.
 
30-DAY BOOK GIVEAWAY 
If you would like to receive a free copy of Gotta Have It!, share your thoughts about this book excerpt in the comments section of this blog post. Or share your thoughts on Dr. Jantz’s Facebook page or in a Twitter update mentioning @gregoryjantzphd.

Tags: , , , ,
Posted in Eating disorders, Gotta Have It! | No Comments »