Healthcanc

Couples therapists try not to take sides. To be effective (and keep a couple in therapy) we have to be on everybody's team.  We say, with total confidence: There are three patients in the room, You, You,  and Your Relationship. We have to treat all three to beat this problem—no matter the problem. And inevitably, when we get to the gory details, each partner remembers things differently. Only the relationship gets it right. When perception is so different, it behooves each partner to elaborate on his narrative. In the process of really fleshing out a argument, as if you’re on a debate team, you get closer.  The goal is to find a mutual narrative that you don’t mind going down in family history, something you can tell your grandchildren, or to your family, not a one-sided drunken rant on a holiday.  We tend to remember things from our own perspectives, forgetting, or never understanding, that of our partners. WSJ psychology reporter Elizabeth Bernstein adds ...

(1) Ducks in a Row Families fall into three camps, usually. We're either: (a) anxious, (b) depressed, or (c) both. Not a scientific fact, just my humble opinion. My fam, depending upon the weather, runs on high anxiety. Discussing it at a recent wedding, obsessed with shooting photos and getting them right before stuffing our mouths, even the younger cousins agreed that yep, most of us run scared. For those who worry and over-think situations, not dinged with technical OCD (obsessive compulsive disorder) or GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), but symptomatic enough to get sick with worry, the thought of leaving on a jet-plane is exactly as Peter, Paul and Mary sing in that l969 song about leaving on a jet plane; don't know if I'll be back again. Leaving on a jet plane is loaded with meaning. Rationally you know you have a round trip ticket. But emotionally, you're not sure. It is that return trip in the back of the brain, talking trash. Will you make it home? So you m...

I used to tell young parents that until their kids learned to read, there was no sedating them. We've since learned that television does a more than admirable job Not that I'm condoning it. FD and I literally cut the power cord. He transformed the piece still attacked to the TV to a female, and added a male connector to the other (both ends male) and either took it with him to work, or hid it where we thought they would never think to find it. They would, of course, we heard years later, and dangerously fiddled with the double-ended male electrical cord, eventually turning on the tube to watch He-Man and the like.  It is a miracle no one electrocuted themselves. But anything electronic will lull most of us into a state of uncomfortable consciousness, sleep without the glitter. There seems to be research to the effect that our electronics keep us awake. It isn't that way for everyone, and with very small children the effect might be paradoxical. It probably depends u...