In Autumn, the Truth is Revealed

In autumn, the truth comes out.

And by autumn, I mean any autumn. Autumn the meteorological season before winter; Autumn on the calendar; Autumn in our life span; and Autumn in the liturgical year.

In every case, if you step back far enough, you can see the patterns. The photo op brilliant foliage reveals what was there all along, shaped by experience. In spite of the sometimes-brutal clarity of autumn, I love this time of year.

Deciduous trees that turn yellow, gold and orange in autumn are not so much changing color as revealing the color that has been resting underneath, hiding under the green of chlorophyll. As the days grow shorter and cooler, chlorophyll production decreases. The leaves have always been golden. The trees have experiences, and these matter, too. Perhaps there has been plenty of rain and the soil is rich, or perhaps a hurricane has blown off so many small branches that the tree suffers malnutrition from a lack of chlorophyll. Then, too, if it is the sort of tree that turns red, its intensity will be impacted by sugars manufactured and stored; more sweetness makes for a more brilliant red.

In October or November, looking back at the resolutions, motto, word or intentions for the new year, the truth is revealed. In March one might kick that can down the road; even in June there is still “plenty of time.” But in autumn, reality comes to visit. We either did, or did not, step up and out into the life we intended to try to make. The combination of who we are (like it or not) and the experiences thrown at us by life bring the outcome we assess in the autumnal review of our intentions for the year. I’ve had the same motto for years now because apparently I’m a slow learner.

In the mirror, in the season of life poets call autumn, we see the person we have been all along, plus our experiences. The smoothness and sameness of youth is gone for those in midlife and later; laughter and tears, pain and care, habits – good and bad – all are revealed. A twenty-five-year-old might hide bad habits, but by forty-five, the entire body shows the pattern and at sixty-five, odds are the mind and spirit are far from what they promised to become before a bad habit became an addiction. On the other hand, there can be an explosion of energy, creativity and spiritual growth at in the autumn of life that startles those who mistook the responsible behaviors of younger years for that person being “boring.” This is when adult children wonder if their parents have gone a bit crazy – taking up new hobbies, traveling, refusing to be properly “old.” No, they were never actually boring, just busy with lifegiving, the drive that Erikson called “generativity,” that leads people to make sacrifices for others, and trees to manufacture food out of sunlight to nourish themselves and the seeds for future trees.

And then the liturgical year winds around, ending about four weeks before Christmas, with the Scripture readings for the last few weeks focused more and more on the last things – our own death, the final judgment, the need to take account of how we are living and make changes in accord with the highest good. How appropriate that this unveiling of the reality beneath happens in such a pervasive way – that we are offered the chance see ourselves, our year, our years in total, through the same golden lens.

Happy mid-autumn; wishing you all the golden light the season offers.

Believe that there is more to you

It is a sad and common theme.

A person is struggling: with an addiction, or obsessions and compulsions, or moral injury, or the impact of trauma, and has come to a place where the sense of self has been entirely subsumed by the problem and its pain.

The definition of self becomes “the addiction,” or “the monster who did (whatever has led to moral injury)” or “the mental disorder diagnosis.”

And, of course, as a therapist, I believe it is critical to address mental health troubles with the best of the science we have, with the particular approaches suited, as discerned ongoing, with the specific needs of that client.

But I also believe that a parallel need is extant and urgent: the need for this person, who is suffering, to come back to an awareness of self as a deeply beloved child of God. Not generically loved, like we may say that we “love” some food or activity or type of animal – but particular, personal, and intense. Women who, like me, have been blessed to give birth will recall that wild wave of emotion that engulfs us when we meet that little person face-to-face after the peculiar intimacy of pregnancy. It makes us irrationally jealous of everyone and anyone; what mother doesn’t remember resenting the nurses and physicians who separated us from the baby long enough to do the general assessments and necessary care? Well, that is a reflection God’s love for each person.

If a person who is suffering is willing to enter into, and do, the hard work of therapy, which will include lifestyle changes and “homework,” and also becomes open to reconsidering his or her existence as a deeply loved person, someone who is more than the addiction, or bad choices, or terrifying memories, or intrusive thoughts and painful compulsions, then true and deep healing can happen. This is what I would wish for every person struggling with emotional wounds.

Riding the Rapids

We recently spent a few days hiking up mountains, camping and white-water rafting in Wyoming and Montana, because isn’t that what people who are afraid of heights (me) and can’t swim (yeah, me, again) do for fun? And it was fun. It’s good to push out of the comfort zone.

Most parents and the other adults who care for and work with children are quite serious about helping them get out of their supposed comfort zones and into a healthier lifestyle. Recently, I was speaking to a group of adults about the topic, “Raising Mentally Healthy Children.” We spent our time focused on what we can do.

One problem that arises in these conversations – whether in a group, one-on-one, or with a family, is that making time for change seems impossible. The days are packed, and nothing on the schedule seems negotiable. Yet, in reality, what’s not negotiable is what humans need to be healthy and thriving.

What most kids need, and what we need, too, is more appropriately divvied-up time. For example, children and teens benefit from a solid two hours or more of physical activity every day. They need time outdoors, in nature, for their immune systems, Vitamin D, circadian rhythms and even their eyesight development. The near-and-far variation in focus that being outdoors elicits promotes healthy eyesight in young children; kids are supposed to go from crouching down to study a beetle to peering across the field to see if that’s a hawk in the tree and then taking off running to make sure. Optimally, they’re outside for at least two or so hours every day – more on weekends.

Kids need enough sleep – probably 9 or 10 hours a night, with an absence of screens. Recent research links high levels of artificial light at night (ALAN) with increased rates of cancer due to disruption of the circadian rhythm. An immediate risk with insufficient sleep is the attention system. Sleep-deprived people are irritable, inattentive, forgetful, disorganized and generally not fun to be around. Sleep-deprived drivers test as impaired, much like those with alcohol and/or drugs in their system. Think about inexperienced and sleep-deprived teenagers driving to and from school and work, often in the dark.

Kids, and we adults, need unstructured time. Most of the adults present had a creative hobby or two, and we all agreed that it takes time to shift gears into that hobby. It’s hard to walk in the door after work and immediately pick up a paintbrush, or guitar, or journal, or woodworking tools, and be in flow. The segue into creativity requires a sort of almost boring downtime – something many adults and children avoid compulsively through electronics.

I can’t tell people what sacrifices have to be made for their family to have a healthier life. It varies from family to family, and it is never easy. It might be simple or quite complex, but it is never easy. However – after the white-water part, when you aren’t on nature’s roller coaster, there are always some smooth, easy times ahead. Thank you to all the parents who go for it – who strive to be sure their children to have the range of experiences they need to grow up resilient, curious and confident.

Ouch! Hey! and, Yay!

It can be hard for parents to make the changes they see would be best for their families. Every good idea seems like a Sisyphean struggle.

Sometimes it’s useful to start very small. Let’s begin with a short, very simplified review of behavior modification from Psych 101. We’ve got positive reinforcement (YAY), negative reinforcement (also YAY) and punishment by application – life does something to you (OUCH), or withdrawal, when life takes something away (HEY!).

Let’s say it is noonish on a pleasant day, I have a break, and decide to take a walk outside. I will enjoy the breeze, the birds singing, a chance to move and clear my head. I will come back to the desk feeling invigorated. I have been positively reinforced. I did an action, or stopped an action, that resulted in something good (my uplifted mood).

A few hours later, it will be about 3 PM and I may have the beginning of a headache. I glance at my water bottle and realize I am way behind on fluids, so I drink a few glugs of water. In short order, the headache dissipates. I have been negatively reinforced: I did a desirable action, and something bad went away.

Punishment, on the other hand, is entirely different. If, feeling a bit bored, I decide to scroll through the news of the day, I might feel depressed and then realize I have wasted my break reading bad news (HEY!). Or, I may notice the beginnings of a headache and, instead of a drink of water, start with a few chunks of delicious, smooth dark chocolate and then (OUCH) my headache may well get worse.

The point of this little meander through intro psych lessons is that, when making changes, maybe it will progress better if you find ways to start with positive and negative reinforcement rather than what will seem like punishments.

For example, let’s say you think that at least one weekend afternoon of family time without devices would be a good start. Teens and even younger children may not agree. Wrestling their phones and tablets away is feasible, but they will consider this HEY!, and their resulting dopamine withdrawal symptoms to be OUCH for them; their miserable behavior may be a big OUCH for you. But if a family activity inherently means no devices and then everyone has fun, we now have a big YAY in place the OUCH and HEY! What might that include?

Being outdoors in nature, where devices may not work properly anyway. A movie outing. A museum that requires devices be silent and away. Physical activities. Someplace where there is no phone or internet signal. Or just take a deep breath and impose device-off mode around a slice of a day and spend it in actively doing things that would not be improved by device distractions. Have fun. Don’t lecture about how fun it was (that’s an OUCH). If your kid mentions it was pretty fun, you can agree and take that as YAY – an invitation to repeat as possible.

Hard Changes

Most of us have some changes to make. And most changes are not so easy. That’s why people postpone them, or poke at the edges, or just pretend the problem will go away by itself. Sometimes people convince themselves there isn’t even a problem, really; that it just depends how you look at it. Maybe so. But maybe there’s something that needs changing.

Let’s say you have a teenage child, or a child approaching the teens. S/he is cranky, sullen, uncooperative with chores, sulks during family meals and resists being on time for school and other appointments. S/he wants to spend time alone, in the bedroom, with electronics. The child is depressed and/or anxious and/or obsessive and/or perpetually angry. You know the situation will change, one way or the other. Everything changes. If you do nothing, you are gambling that your child will continue down this road and somehow, at 18 or 19 or 20, wake up, shake themselves off like a wet Golden Retriever and come out of their bedroom, smile and say, “Wow! How could I have been so wrong?!”

Yeah, I doubt it, too.

If you have this situation and need to take it on, it can be hard to know where to start. Here’s a suggestion: if the situation is not a crisis, then the most practical first step may be to start with yourself.

You will have to change. Perhaps you have to start the change process by being sure that all the adults in the house are on the same page in your expectations. Perhaps you need to get yourself on the right path.

You go first. You get enough fresh air, and time in nature, and sleep, and healthy nutrition, and balanced physical activity. You strive to do interesting and challenging things in what little free time you have. You will, quite naturally and incidentally, spend less passive screen time. You’ll be leading from strength rather than being a target for adolescents’ favorite criticism: that we adults are hypocrites. You’ll be in a much better stance to steer positive changes for your tween or teen.

It’s Just an Experiment

You know how it is. You want to make a change. Something needs to change. Maybe the kitchen needs organizing, or you need to sleep better, or be less stressed…whatever it may be. You want to get it “right.” And that’s where the freeze happens. “Right. It has to be right.”

But what if there’s no way to know what is right for you without experimenting?

For all the chatter the past few years about science, and following science, there seems to be a misunderstanding of what science is. Science is more of a verb that a noun. It has more in common with, Hey, let’s try THIS and see what happens, than with learning a few things and deciding that’s it – that’s all there is to know. You can see the difference in real time when SpaceX runs another experiment with the super heavy and the personnel there are excited about how much they’re learning and thus able to improve, while some people in the press call it a “failure.” No, “failure” would be not doing or, having done, failing to study and learn. That’s failure.

At an individual level, let’s say you decide to take guitar lessons. You have no idea how to do anything with a guitar, but it’s been a long-time dream. Unless you are younger than five, you surely wouldn’t pick up the guitar, strum at it, and wonder why you didn’t sound like Carlos or Angus or Eric or Brian or whomever. You would have to spend many hours, experiment after experiment, building and reinforcing the new neural connections and fine motor skills that lead to the ability to play guitar. You would not call the outcome after the first, or tenth, or thirtieth, lesson a “failure,” properly, unless you gave up in impatient disgust and stuck the guitar in the closet, where it will peek at you through the clothes hanging in front of it and reproach your surrender until you sigh and try again or give the guitar away.

If you are looking at making a change, and feeling stuck, reframe what you are doing as experimenting. Move the coffee mugs to that cabinet, over there, closer to the coffee maker, and see how you like it. Buy a battery-operated alarm clock and leave your phone in the kitchen overnight for a few weeks and see what happens. Try turning screens off during meals, or leaving the audio off in the car, for a month or so.

Start the experiment, and then pay attention. That’s a critical part of an experiment. What happens in the absence of the old behavior? What seems better? What’s harder? What is your theory on why it’s better or worse? Can you build another little experiment – not a long-term commitment – on this one? It’s an experiment, for goodness’ sake, not a marriage. That is science, and that is a way to get unstuck, make changes and work around any lurking perfectionism.

Not another horrible day

A different day, another awful situation.

A child, or teen, or young adult has been struggling with emotional turmoil and is tumbling into danger. They confide in a friend, or maybe a few friends.

They may have “met” someone in an online chat and now this person is their “boyfriend” or “girlfriend,” and they are planning to run way to meet this person.

Perhaps the young person has been “sexting” with someone they know personally, or “met” online, and now are being threatened with “sextortion,” that the images of them will be spread around, unless they meet some demand. This has recently led to many teen and young adult suicides.

Perhaps the young person shares that they are a victim of abuse.

Or, perhaps they stumbled upon, or were led to, the terrible misinformation that hurting oneself is a useful way to cope with painful feelings. The young person proceeds to experiment with self-harm, and posts online about it.

So-called friends hear the plan, listen to the horrible stories, or see the images of scratches, cuts or burns, and fail to turn to an adult for guidance.

Every parent I’ve ever spoken to is under the impression that their child would, of course, come to them if a friend were in grave danger. And sometimes that is true, but an awful lot of the time – in almost any of these kinds of incidents I’ve ever encountered in clinical practice or consulted on, as it happens – that was not the case. The case was, almost every time, that other young people knew about the plan to run away, or the abuse, or the self-harm, and did not seek the guidance of an adult.

Sometimes these “friends” have an unflagging alliance, suddenly, to keeping promises (unlike the promises they have made to you, dear parent, about everything from cleaning their room to homework being done well to treating your automobile with respect). Sometimes they believe they are better equipped to help than an adult would be, although they cannot arrest an abuser, drive someone to the emergency room or help them connect with a mental health professional for counseling, and their capacity to manage extreme distress is probably not much better than the troubled friend’s skills. Sometimes they dread social disapproval for breaking the rule that you keep adults out of it, whether the “it” is someone self-harming, or sharing that they are a victim of abuse, or are planning to run away from home to meet up with the “boyfriend” they “met” online.

I urge you to have frequent, open conversations about these topics with your young people. Make them age appropriate; be calm and encouraging. If you are too stressed out, you may be misread as “angry.” Remember that adolescents go through a stage where their brain interprets almost every non-happy facial expression as “angry.” If that happens, the conversation will probably be a complete failure.

Be calm, be matter-of-fact, and be sincere. Ask questions, too:

How do the people you know handle things like a friend telling them this kind of stuff?

If this was your friend, what would you do?

If it were (fill in the blank for some close friend or family member), what would you want their friends to do in this type of situation?

Why do you think people are reluctant to ask adults for help with this?

What would make an adult seem safe to go to with this problem?

Don’t lecture; have the conversation. It may be a conversation that occurs for a few minutes at a time over an extended period. That’s okay; sometimes a few sentence and letting it simmer is what’s necessary.

You may, without knowing it, be setting the groundwork to save a life.

Loneliness can kill you…part 3

This is the third of three posts. This one focuses on the art of conversation: being better at conversation will help you overcome loneliness. As noted in part 2 of this series, a lot of people struggle with reflection and/or asking questions that elicit a deeper conversation.

So, here are two strategies to help with these.

Reflection: reflection has to do with being able to identify how someone else feels, and mirror that back to them with your expression and your words. Laughing when someone tells you something sad (it happens, trust me) is not good. Identifying all negative emotions as some form of “mad” or “angry” is not helpful, either. Sometimes, when you are watching a show, put it on mute and try to verbalize the emotions that characters are experiencing. Then go back and watch with the sound on. See how you did. Experiment with mimicking their facial expressions and see what feelings you experience; the imitated expression can trigger a shadow of the other person’s emotion via our mirror neurons. If your emotional vocabulary is lacking, do an online search for Dr. Gloria Wilcox’ “The Feeling Wheel” for a research-based set of some of the many emotion words.

Asking questions: there are plenty of sources for “conversation starters.” I have used Gary Chapman’s conversation starter cards for couples and for families with clients, as well as a discount store’s set of conversation starters for couples, families, and general-use conversation. Basically, at this writing, for about $1.25, you can get about 100 sample conversation starters. Here’s how to practice by yourself: pull a random card, look at the question, make up an answer someone might give, and see how many questions you can come up with related to that answer.

Random example:

Who was your favorite teacher?

And, here are just a few of the many possible questions to take the conversation further:

What was special about this teacher?
What is one of your favorite memories about being in that teacher’s class?
Did other students feel the same way? Why or why not?
How did having this teacher help you out in future classes with other, not-so-great teachers?
If you could meet this teacher now, what would you want to say?
Have you had any opportunities to help others the way this teacher helped you? What was that like for you?
If you were going to encapsulate what you learned from this teacher as a “life lesson,” what would it be? How has that lesson reverberated for you since those days?
Did you ever have a teacher who was sort of the evil opposite of this teacher? Who helped you get through that school year?

Practice making up questions. You won’t be peppering people with multiple questions; the goal isn’t to overwhelm people with an endless interrogation. The idea is to develop confidence that you can invite someone to have a richer conversation by asking a thoughtful question or two, and have the kind of dialogue that helps heal the loneliness that you, and perhaps they, are experiencing.

Because loneliness can kill you.

Loneliness can kill you, Part 2

Connecting with others is vital to overcome loneliness. Just being around people, including your spouse, children, parents, other family members and friends, is no guarantee you will feel connected.

In one of the marriage prep/marriage enrichment workshops I facilitate for the Diocese of St. Petersburg, I teach (in part) listening skills that help enrich conversations and allow deeper understanding and connection.

Here are some simple steps to better listening:

Eye contact – or related means of showing dedicated attention. Put the phone down; mute the big screen. Obviously, don’t turn from driving to make eye contact, but give attention.
Reflect: reflecting is giving feedback that lets the other person know you are listening and understanding. Think of reflection in 3 levels:
1. Content: what information is being relayed? Here is where summarizing or paraphrasing feedback can indicate you are paying attention. Sometimes this is all you need, as when making sure you’ve got necessary information.
1. Emotion: when it’s more than just basic information, how does the speaker feel about the situation? Happy? Anxious? Worried? Sad? Annoyed or angry? Reflecting words that indicate a grasp for the emotion(s) being expressed helps the person speaking understand that you have an interest and concern in how they feel. This be as simple as, “That’s great news; you must be so relieved,” when, for example, medical tests come back clear.
1. Meaning: depending on the topic, and your relationship with the person, you may have insight into what the topic means to them; its significance to their life, hopes and dreams. Feedback that touches on the meaning this must have indicates you have been paying attention – not just now, but in the past, too. If someone has been working towards a promotion and their annual review is 4.5 out of 5, they may be disappointed instead of pleased. Just complimenting the 4.5 when, to them, it means the promotion just became unlikely will indicate you haven’t been paying attention to their work-related conversations.
Ask questions: elicit more information and keep on reflecting all through the process. Avoid “why” as an early question, as it can trigger defensiveness, but when you’ve demonstrated concern and interest, the “why’s” can be asked.
Show support; this doesn’t mean agreeing, but some emotional support if something is clearly a big deal to the person speaking makes a difference.
Empathize and encourage.

A lot of people struggle with reflecting and asking questions. More on that in Part 3 of Loneliness can kill you.

Loneliness can kill you…Part 1

According to new research from the journal Nature, Human Behavior published on January 3, 2025, loneliness and social isolation lead to molecular changes that, in my simple terms, seem to set the body up for serious problems – increased risk for dementia, depression, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, stroke, and early death. The researchers’ recommendations include routinely asking about loneliness and isolation, the way a health professional asks about sleep habits, alcohol use, and drug use.

If you are lonely on an ongoing basis, this is for you.

Loneliness can strike through no fault of one’s own.

Losing your spouse, for example, or a best friend, will almost inevitably lead to a long stretch of deep loneliness during the initial year or so of grief, and can continue beyond, as the bereaved person struggles to outsource some of that emotional, intellectual and spiritual intimacy to other relationships. In a healthy marriage, you share all sorts of confidences with a spouse that you simply might not share with anyone else – fears, dreams for the future, spiritual insights and struggles, and the warmth of shared memories that are no one else’s but the two of yours. Somehow, some of that must be extended to others, and depth built over time. It an absolutely monumental task to parcel out these small slices of the immeasurable depth of a healthy marriage.

Moving, alone, to a new city, for a new job, can be exciting, but the reality can include aching loneliness when everyone at the new job goes home to their lives and you go to your apartment and try to figure out how to build a life. Developing the big, and small, connections that make a place feel like home can be daunting, and for most people, it takes longer than they had ever anticipated.

Loneliness hits other people, too. Those who are living primarily second-hand, separated by screens and trying to substitute electronic connections for human ones, are often intensely lonely. Some people interact with others in person, but the conversations are shallow, guarded and therefore nearly empty of connection and meaning. This type of loneliness can be even more painful, because it seems inexplicable; how can a person live with family or a partner and yet feel deeply lonely?

So, what to do? Unfortunately, the impetus is mostly on the lonely people to do something differently.

Here are some suggestions I would give to a client in such a situation.

Go to church or synagogue. If you are grieving, try to go back to your own – but if that’s painful, go somewhere else, at least for now. If you are new to the area, just find a place that seems like a possibility. Then go to the hospitality time afterwards. Introduce yourself, and invite people to tell you about the faith community. Do not stand around with your cup of coffee and wait for people to notice you. Set a goal: perhaps that you will introduce yourself to three people, get their names, and ask a little about this community. See what happens. Try to focus on the other person; make the conversation a chance to get to know them and about their community – not about you. If it goes fairly well, go back the next week, greet those three people (and anyone else you met) by name if you can, re-introduce yourself without taking them forgetting your name personally, and see if you can meet a couple of other people. Within a month, you will have some acquaintance with a dozen or more people and have a solid idea if this community offers activities for education, worship and service for you to join.
Even if you usually like to do things solo join at least one activity – one exercise class, one art class, one talk at the local bookstore, etc. – on a regular basis. Get to be a regular. Greet other people.
Volunteer in your community. Do this with others. Doing good solo is beautiful, but if you’re not getting out of your head and focused on others in an interactive way, you are missing part of the point.
Be friendly but don’t try to bully people into being your friends. For example, if you are new to the area, don’t wear out your welcome with the neighbors who came over to introduce themselves on moving day.
Please do not use alcohol or other substances, or resort to hanging out having drinks as a way to cut loneliness.
Be patient and keep trying! Think of these steps as experiments. Track what happens over time; be willing to change to a different experiment if the first one isn’t working after a month or so.

As you can see, the remedies for loneliness all include getting out of your head and into the world. Focusing on others, in small ways (such as greeting them and showing interest) to big ones (such as volunteering), is a critical part of overcoming loneliness. This can be really hard, because loneliness tends to make people even more withdrawn, more insular – it is a self-perpetuating problem unless you boldly step out, even with small but courageous steps, into focus on others.

More about connecting with others in Loneliness can Kill You, Part 2, coming soon.

drloriputerbaugh

Psychotherapist, Author, Teacher

Category Archives: change