Is Marriage In Trouble in The United States?

Marriage | September 25, 2011

A recent study by the National Marriage Project of the University of Virginia has found that for the first time in the United States, children are more likely to be living with two biological parents who have never married than with a divorced parent, with 42% of children by the age of 12 having lived with a cohabitating parents and 24% by the age of 12 living with a divorced parent.

Since the divorce rate is falling, this could on superficial examination be seen as a positive sign, since divorce has long been shown to be disruptive and even traumatic to children.  Unfortunately, lowering divorce rates might not bode well for children of unmarried families.  If for no other reason, the project’s evidence shows the unmarried couples have many challenges that married couples inherently do not; they are younger, poorer, and less educated.   Given that though, it is hard to see how co-habitation is that problem- marrying tomorrow would have no material change in their circumstances regarding those socio-economic challenges.

The report goes on to argue that children of cohabitating couples tend to perform worse academically, have more psychological problems, and be more likely to experience delinquency and drug abuse. The report does state that the children of cohabitating couples do better than children of divorce.

My opinion?  It is complicated.  It may have much to do with unmarried couples simply not having access to resources that encourage stable, well-adjusted children.  It would be interesting to see how children fare where the unmarried, cohabitating parents have the same opportunities as their married counterparts.

Psychologically however, marriage may provide a tremendous unseen benefits to couples and families.  Study after study shows that married people tend to be happier, have greater longevity, and improved health.  Perhaps the secure attachment of knowing that a partner cannot simply pick up and leave, with marriage being an often religious and certainly legal contact, is the glue that keeps people together when things are difficult.

It is important to invest in a relationship, whether there is co-habitation or marriage. I am a marriage counseling specialist based in Newport Beach, CA. If you are interested in couples counseling or psychotherapy in Irvine or Orange County, please contact me at (949) 251-8797.

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Attachment, Couples, and Adult Relationships

Marriage | September 16, 2011

How the “Attachment Bond” Influences Our Adult Relationships

Have you ever felt strongly, deeply connected to someone for whom you would do anything? It is called being “In Love,” and ideally we have all experienced it. You probably tend to need the same essential things from every love relationship you have ever had, and that some of the relationship dynamics in your current relationship are a constant no matter whom you are with. These dynamics often come from our earliest relationship, and are strongly influenced by the quality of our earliest care giving.  The term, attachment bond, is what we call our first love relationship- the one we have with our mothers, or our primary care givers, which profoundly and deeply shaped almost everything about us, including how deeply and effectively we attach to loved ones as adults.

Attachment, Bonding, and Relationships

mother-child-sculpture

Photo courtesy Paul Stevenson

How do we learn to attach?  From our first, most important attachment-the one we have with our primary caregiver, usually our mothers. All humans were meant to bond with their mother, as infants cannot physically care for themselves. Equally as important, all infants experience intensely felt emotions such as sadness, joy, anger, and fear, which need to be managed and contained by their mother. This emotional attachment is created mostly through non-verbal communication between mother and infant.  This bonding is so profound and important to whom we are as human beings that it influences relationships throughout a lifetime as it the foundation for all attachments.

Ideally, a baby becomes securely attached to the mother.  Through a strong, loving attachment, a mother can help the child become self-confident, hopeful, trusting, and comfortable with conflict. A mother, it must be noted, does not have to be a perfect parent or perfectly in tune with their infant’s emotions- just simply good enough. Secure attachments allow us to:

  • Feel Safe
  • Develop Meaningful Connections with Others
  • Have Meaning in Our Lives
  • Experience Comfort and Security
  • A Desire to Explore the World
  • Balance Emotions
  • Have Appropriate Expectations of Relationships
  • Bounce Back from Adversity
  • Have an Awareness of Emotional Feelings
  • Maintain Successful Relationships

Maternal Difficulties with Care Giving

Sometimes a mother, for a myriad of reasons, cannot attend to her baby’s emotional needs sufficiently.   Why do Caregivers have trouble securely attaching to their infants?  The following reasons often contribute to a mother or caregiver having trouble providing secure attachment for her infant:

  • Physical Neglect
  • Maternal Addiction to Drugs or Alcohol
  • Traumatic Experiences
  • Physical or Sexual Abuse
  • Young or Inexperienced Mother
  • Maternal Depression
  • Separation from the Caregiver due to divorce, adoption, death or illness
  • Emotional Neglect or Emotional Abuse
  • Frequent Moves or Placement
  • Maternal Mental Illness

Adult Attachment Patterns

The following are the adult attachment patterns based on maternal parenting:

Dismissive/Avoidant Attachment

Dismissive-Avoidant adults have a very high level of independence from others, and often avoid attachments in general.  They deny that they need close relationships. They tend to suppress or hide their feelings, dealing with rejection by distancing themselves from their partners. Adult characteristics often include feeling anxious and insecure, being controlling, blaming, distant, critical and rigid, and having tremendous difficultly with closeness or emotional connections with others.  People with Dismissive-Avoidant attachment patterns had parenting that was too often rejecting and unavailable.

Fearful/Avoidant Attachment

Fearful-avoidant adults have ambivalent feelings about relationships-both desiring them but feeling uncomfortable with the emotional closeness involved. They tend to have difficulty with intimacy, suppress their feelings, and view themselves and partners as untrustworthy.   Adult characteristic often include feeling anxious and insecure, are controlling, blaming, erratic, unpredictable, but sometimes charming. Their parents were often unavailable and narcissistic, making close relationships very difficult for the child.

Anxious/Preoccupied Attachment

People who are anxiously attached seek a high level of approval, intimacy, and responsiveness from those they care about, and sometimes become overly dependent on their partners, blaming themselves if their partners are not responsive.  They tend to have low self-worth, and tend to have less positive views of their partners, and mistrust their intentions.  Adult characteristics include high levels of emotional expressiveness, impulsiveness, and worry in their relationships. Parents of those that are anxiously attached are often narcissistic and unavailable, but attuned enough to their child so that the child does trust, sometimes too much, in human relationships.

Secure Attachment

The securely attached have a history of warm and responsive interactions with relationships.  Securely attached people tend to have positive views of themselves, their partners, and their relationships.  They often feel comfortable with intimacy and with independency, and often seek to balance the both.  They are comfortable depending on others and having others depend on them, without worrying about rejection.  They also tend to be empathetic toward others while setting appropriate boundaries when needed.

The secure parental pattern is one where the parent is aligned with the child, empathetically attuned to the child’s emotions, and promptly and consistently cares for its needs.   As a result, the caregiver has successfully forged a secure attachment with the child.

Are you suffering from Insecure Attachment?

If you feel that you are securely attached in your relationships, able to give and receive love, relish your independence but also enjoy togetherness, consider yourself tremendously blessed.  If, however, you did see yourself in one of the other attachment profiles, you probably have more conflict in your relationships, difficulty with closeness, and unrealistic expectations from others. Depression and Anxiety can also be a result of insecure attachments.   If these conflicts are causing you enough distress, you might want to consider getting some help.

So what is to be done?

Therapy can create more secure attachments

Psychotherapy and Couples counseling can provide one of the most corrective experiences possible for those that are insecurely attached.  Through an empathetic, understanding attachment with the therapist, much of the pain of insecure attachments can be dramatically improved.  The therapeutic orientation of choice is psychodynamic psychotherapy.

Jennifer De Francisco is a marriage and couples counselor in Newport Beach and also serves the rest of the Orange County. If you think counseling can help or if you are experiencing personal issues such as depression, please call me at (949) 251-8797.

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Is Psychotherapy Cost Effective?

Depression | September 14, 2011

Psychotherapy can feel expensive in terms of time, money, and energy spent for many patients.  Fortunately, an exhaustive new study by The Group for The Advancement of Psychiatry has demonstrated that it is indeed worth the time and money.

Leaving a person’s condition untreated not only has costs in terms work functioning, substance abuse problems and increased medical expenses, but also costs in terms of personal anguish, increased marital difficulties, decreased immune system and increased child rearing difficulties. Unfortunately, despite the fact that 50% of the population needs to see a therapist or counselor at some point in their lives, there are often many obstacles to receiving treatment.  Denial, ignorance, and prejudice against those that seek treatment all play a part in mental conditions being undertreated. Furthermore, unlike skin cancer or a broken leg, responsiveness to treatment can vary greatly from patient to patient.  Many therapists use widely differing techniques as well, and the quality of treatment can vary widely from novice to experienced clinicians, all making some patients wonder whether treatment is helping at all.

Study after study shows that patients who receive treatment end up spending less money on the costly aspects of their conditions, making their counseling cost effective.  Anxiety disorders, for example, account for 31% of all mental health costs.  Those that receive psychotherapy have better outcomes and suffer from fewer symptoms than those that are maintained on medication alone.  They also utilize fewer medical services, abuse fewer substances, and miss work less often – saving money as a result.  Other disorders such as depression, borderline personality disorder, and substance abuse disorders show similar outcomes when they are treated with psychotherapy or counseling.

Unfortunately, sometimes shortsighted frugality, a lack of information, or shame can interfere with people getting the help that they need. Psychotherapy, despite seeming expensive, is less expensive emotionally and financially than not treating the problem.

If you need help for depression, anxiety, or a substance abuse disorder, please contact me at (949) 251-8797.

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How Do You Help a Loved One Get Into Counseling?

Depression | September 10, 2011

depression help in Newport BeachThe advice is almost always the same: if you are suffering from depression, seek professional help from a counselor or therapist.  Over 15 million adults suffer from a major depressive disorder, and millions more suffer from bipolar disorders, psychotic disorders, anxiety disorders, schizophrenia, and eating disorders.  As high as 50% of these individuals, for a myriad of reasons, resist treatment even when they know that they need it.  During a depressive episode, sufferers often have such a distorted sense of reality, and are feeling so hopeless, that they are sure a marriage or couples counselor could not possibly help them.  Sometimes a depressed mood distorts reality in such a way that it creates an irritable denial of the problem, and then they are hostile to the idea of treatment entirely.

Unfortunately, mental illness not only inflicts pain upon the sufferer but upon the family, spouses and friends who love them.  Depression wrecks havoc upon marriages and intimate relationships since  the sufferer  is often in an emotionally disconnected fog, unable to engage interpersonally.  This is incredibly stressful for those living with depressed individuals, and they are more likely to become depressed themselves.  This makes it all the more pressing, urgent, and challenging for the spouse and family members to get the depressed person help, and it can be exasperating and stressful if the depressed are resistant to the idea.

Some of this resistance to treatment has to do with shame. The sense of guilt and shame from having failed at life, their marriage or work can be overwhelming, and seeking help can be felt as the ultimate weakness.  Many depressed people simply have difficulty being this vulnerable with those that they feel are a stranger, i.e. the therapist.  Unfortunately, if the depressed person is experiencing a high intensity of shame and guilt, any mention of getting help is perceived as a criticism or even an insult.  If this is the case, simply telling them that they need help or that there is a need to change is counterproductive.  The depressed can start reacting in an angry, defensive way and will stop listening entirely.

So what can you do to help the depressed love one to be receptive to help?

Be Gentle and Kind.   Your spouse is probably feeling ashamed and very vulnerable.  Listen attentively and empathically. The depressed love one will be more open to listening to your recommendations and wants.

Get Your Own Help.  You are probably dealing with your own difficulties and getting counseling/therapy can help.  It destigmatizes the therapy process and the professional may help you come up with strategies for coping.

Be Available. If they want you to be there for their first therapy appointment, be there.  If they want you to liaison with mental health professionals, be available without being controlling.

Be Emotionally Vulnerable. Show that you are flawed and willing to expose your own difficulties to your loved one.  Depression can be isolating-if they feel that they are not the only one suffering from problems, their feelings are far less  shaming.

Suggest They See a General Practitioner.  Sometimes it is far easier to get a depressed person to see a general practitioner than a therapist, counselor, or a psychiatrist, since they a perceived as less threatening and stigmatizing.  After all, you have known your doctor for years and you see them for every other ailment.  Why not this?  Since the G.P. can diagnose and prescribe medication, it is a good start for treatment. Many General Practitioners are often very good about referring their patients to a therapist once they have given a patient medication.

If you are dealing with depression or you feel you a family member might need help, please feel free to contact me at (949) 251-8797.  I am in the  Orange County, Irvine and Newport Beach areas.

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Understanding Infidelity: Why You Need a Couples Counselor Who Really Understands and Treats Infidelity

Marriage | August 21, 2011

Infidelity is one of the most devastating events that can happen to a relationship, usually with serious and painful consequences for both partners. It brings up feelings that are often so overwhelming and intense, felt on both a physical and emotional level, that many describe it as the most difficult experience they ever have to go through.  To add insult to injury, the problems that are painfully unique in dealing with infidelity are often beyond the comfortable level of most couples counselors; most simply do not know how to avoid the obstacles and difficulties that come with such a volatile and emotionally raw clinical situation.

This is especially unfortunate considering that 25% of all couples entering couples counseling state that infidelity is their primary presenting problem, and an additional 30% reveal that there has been cheating at some point in the relationship.   Worse still, counselors and therapists report that infidelity is the subject that they are the least prepared to encounter, with many stating that they would prefer not to have to discuss infidelity at all!  It is therefore absolutely critical that a couple finds a therapist equipped to handle and understand the raw and messy dynamics that come with stepping outside the marriage.  At that moment that the affair has been exposed and the couple has decided to get therapy, a tremendous amount of emotion, truth, and work can be processed through, and sometimes very quickly.  The therapist does, however, have to have the experience to take advantage of these critical moments in treatment.

Where Therapists Go Wrong

As previously stated, infidelity is the subject therapists feel least equipped to handle. One layer to this discomfort is the incredibly intense, emotionally charged feelings that predominate the sessions, which often include intense rage, pain, love, lust, and jealousy.  From a psychodynamic perspective, the reason that the damage is often so long lasting and devastating is that infidelity creates an “attachment injury” to the relationship, which threatening the relationship as well as each partner’s sense of self within that relationship.   The “injured” partner very often feels an intense, almost overwhelming menagerie of grief, anger, and fear that the attachment will end.  There are often PTSD-type feelings, in that they are living in a walking nightmare, feeling that everything reminds them of the affair, and that they will never emotionally recover.  The intensity of these emotions often overwhelm many therapists who either become flooded, or jump too easily to banal solutions that are not helpful.

 

Countertransference: When The Therapist’s Feelings Get in the Way

When infidelity is involved, the therapist’s feelings sometimes get in the way. Sometimes, the therapist is insufficiently self-aware and struggling with issues of countertransference.   The term countertransference refers to a feeling, whether negative or positive, that the therapist experiences toward the client during the therapeutic relationship.  If the counselor is aware of these feelings they can be helpful to the process, but if the therapist is unconscious of these feelings, then the countertransference can be destructive.  When it comes to infidelity, many therapists are vulnerable to the influence of their own unresolved feelings, and usually over-identify with betrayed client, becoming overly reactive or defensive.  Unrecognized countertranference can be deleterious to the therapeutic process and therapist decision-making.

Not All Affairs Are the Same

Although it might be a strange concept, not all affairs are the same to all couples.  It might mean the end for some couples, yet the chance to begin to look at their relationship and begin communicating for others.  Sometimes someone begins an affair to avoid closeness with one’s spouse, sometimes one has an affair simply to end the relationship. Most affairs have little to do with sex; rather, the affair is acting out either a problem within the relationship or an internal conflict.  Many counselors treat the affair as the sole issue, and then conceptualize all affairs the same way.    Of course, the pain of the affair needs to be processed; but if the counselor only allows that single issue to be discussed, then it is difficult to understand the underlying dynamics of the relationship, and then grow from the therapeutic experience.

If the therapist is afraid of the emotional intensity that almost always goes along with infidelity and then treats all affairs the same, the treatment will reach an impasse; the therapist will not listening with sufficient empathic attunement and the therapy will be shallow and ineffective; the deeper interpersonal and intrapersonal dynamics will go unexplored, there will not be the corrective experience that the couple needs.

Examples of Therapeutic Errors or Inexperience

The follow are a the most common mistakes made by couples counselors in working with couples dealing with infidelity:

  • ·Colluding with one partner
  • ·Being Judgmental/ Intolerant of the Unfaithful Client
  • ·Avoiding Uncomfortable/Intense/Painful feelings in Session
  • ·Allowing therapist’s own feelings (countertransference) about trust, cheating, and attachment to affect the treatment
  • ·Provide quick simple solutions without really understanding the complexity of the couple’s unique situation
  • ·Talking only about the affair rather than looking at underlying dynamics

Couples Counseling Can Help Couples Heal from Infidelity

Despite its pitfalls, in a skilled practitioner’s hands can help with the healing process.   When both partners are engaged in treatment and open to the therapeutic process after an affair, the process is most successful, helping couples overcome the tragedy of infidelity.

If you are dealing with cheating or infidelity in the Newport Beach, Irvine, or Orange County area, and are interested in couples counseling  using a psychodynamic perspective, please callJennifer De Francisco, LCSW at (949) 251-8797.

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