When We Need an Apology But Are Never Going to Get One

Why is it so hard for some people to say "I’m sorry"? It’s remarkable how difficult these two simple words can be to say out loud. I’ve been gifted with my share of never-sorry people over the years. I say gifted, because not getting the "I'm sorry" I’ve craved and (I thought) deserved has forced me to investigate the psychology of apologies, as well as my own relationship with apologies and the absence of them.

I’ve spent a lot of time wondering why some people refuse to say I’m sorry even when they know they’ve done something that caused harm, and even when the offense is small and seemingly not a big deal to take responsibility for. Recently, I was confronted with a friend who refused to say she was sorry for having misplaced an object she borrowed. It wasn’t there when I needed it, so what? A simple "I’m sorry" would have put the whole thing to bed in the number of seconds it took to say those two words. But those two words were never going to happen, and I, in my less-evolved incarnation, kept at it until I was exasperated, angry, and demanding an apology for something I didn’t really care about. 

Boiled down, to say I’m sorry is to say that I did something wrong. For some people, admitting that they did something wrong is not possible, even when they know it was wrong, and even when they feel bad about doing what they did. It’s odd to witness, but this never-sorry person can actually be sorry and still refuse to utter the two words that would both acknowledge their remorse and right their wrong. 

To be able to admit that we’ve done something wrong requires a certain level of self-esteem or ego strength. People who are deeply insecure can find it challenging to say I’m sorry in part because a single mistake has the power to obliterate their entire self-worth. The idea that they could make a mistake and still be a valuable and good person is unthinkable for someone whose self-esteem is severely lacking. An apology is an admission of fallibility, which can trigger the vast reservoir of inadequacy and shame they carry, and thus threaten the fragile narrative they’ve constructed about themselves. For a person with a damaged sense of self-worth, acknowledging error can be tantamount to annihilation.

So, too, there’s the person who was blamed relentlessly as a child, who from a young age was told they were responsible for every problem that arose and punished accordingly. As adults, such people tend to go in one of two directions. Either they apologize for everything, even things they haven’t done, or they refuse to apologize for anything, even things they have done. For those that end up the latter, they decide, consciously or unconsciously, that they will never again accept blame of any kind. They’ve closed the door to anything that holds a whiff of it. For this sort of person, saying I’m sorry puts them in touch with the feelings attached to their early experience of being deemed inescapably guilty and bad. Having been unfairly and indiscriminately held responsible for everything wrong, there simply isn't any psychic space left for responsibility, even when it’s appropriate.     

And then there are those who refuse to say I’m sorry, because they lack empathy and don’t actually feel sorry that you were hurt by their actions. They believe that an apology is only appropriate for situations in which they purposefully caused you harm. There’s no sorry deserved or indicated when the pain you felt was not intentionally caused, and thus not technically their fault. Your hurt, in and of itself, has no particular value.

I’ve touched on only three aspects of the never-sorry individual, but there are many more reasons why some people cannot or will not offer those two important words to another human being. To be able to say we’re sorry is to be able to be vulnerable, which is too scary, sad, dangerous, or any one of an infinite number of too's for some people. To say I’m sorry is also to acknowledge that I care about how you feel, care that you were hurt. I care enough about you, in fact, to be willing to put my ego aside, stop defending my version of myself for long enough to hear your experience at this moment. I care enough about you to be willing to admit that I’m imperfect.

To receive a sincere apology is an incredible gift. We feel heard and acknowledged, understood and valued. Almost any hurt can be helped with a genuine, heartfelt I’m sorry. When another person looks us in the eye and tells us that they’re sorry for something they did that caused us harm, we feel loved and valued; we feel that we matter. 

When someone apologizes to us, we also feel validated and justified for being upset. The apologizer is taking responsibility at some level for the result of their actions, intended or not. And when that happens, our insides relax; we don’t have to fight anymore to prove that our experience is valid, that we are entitled to our hurt and that it matters.

I recently told a dear friend about something she was doing that, for me, was damaging the friendship and making me not want to spend time with her. I was nervous to tell her given that I’ve been around more than my fair share of never-sorry people, who react to hearing anything negative about themselves by attacking the one bringing it. But this friendship is important to me, and I couldn’t just let it go; I needed to express what wasn’t working. I had to take the chance that telling her my truth, kindly, might lead us to a better place. 

What happened was deeply healing. I told her my truth, how her behavior was painful for me. She listened, and then she said something amazing; she said I’m sorry. She was sorry she had caused this hurt, even if it was unintentional, even if she didn’t know it was happening. She went on to say many other love-infused things, but she didn’t need to, she had me at I’m sorry.

This is not an essay on how to make the never-sorry person say sorry. For the most part, I’ve failed at that task so far in my life (I'm sorry to say). What I've gotten better at, however, is accepting the things I cannot change and putting less energy into the fight for an apology from someone who doesn’t have the capacity to offer it. And I’ve gotten better at honoring my craving for an apology when it arises and providing myself with the kindness and legitimization I’m seeking. The more I practice awareness in the absence of apology, the less I need the apology to validate what I know to be true. 

When hurt by another, our bodies are hardwired to need an I’m sorry in order to relax, move forward, and let go of the hurt. But sometimes when we can’t get the I’m sorry we think we need, we have to learn to relax on our own, without the other’s help. Trusting and knowing that our pain is deserving of kindness, because it is, and that our truth is justified and valid, because it’s our truth, is the beginning of our independent healing process.     

In this season of giving, receiving, and gratitude, consider the profound value of a simple and sincere I’m sorry. When you’re lucky enough to receive a genuine apology, take it in, feel the majesty of what this other person is offering, receive their willingness to be vulnerable and accountable, to take care of you instead of their own ego. That’s big stuff. So, too, when you recognize an opportunity to say I’m sorry and mean it, relish the chance to give that experience to another, to step up and perhaps out of your comfort zone, to let go of your me story and be generous. And when you can, honor the profundity of the gift you’re giving. I’m sorry and thank you are really two sides of the same coin.  

What Does it Mean to Be a Spiritual Grown Up?

For many (dare I say most) people, spending time with parents can unleash some pretty strong emotions. No matter how grown up we are, our original family can put us in touch with deep hurts, primal longings, unmet needs… a tsunami of feelings. If we want to challenge every ounce of peace, wellbeing, compassion, wisdom and strength we’ve earned over a lifetime, we need only spend a weekend, day, evening, hour, few minutes, or maybe just say hello with the person who is our parent. 

Jane, a woman in her 40s, recently had an experience with a parent that set off a strong and somewhat unexpected reaction in her. She met her father for a meal and he behaved the way he always behaved, asking her no questions, acknowledging nothing about her, completely invisibilizing her, while simultaneously demanding that she act as a mirror to reflect his own grandiosity. It was an experience Jane knew intimately and one she had been living for decades. But on this particular day, sitting across a table from this man she called her father, a man who had never shown Jane the kindness of acknowledgment or curiosity, it all broke—the dam that had protected her from her actual experience was gone. Without warning, Jane discovered that she could not keep pretending this kind of interaction was okay. Even if she had wanted to continue the same relationship with her father, her body had decided otherwise: being unseen and unknown, receiving nothing, inauthentically playing the role of the loving validator, was no longer possible. 

Midway through the meeting, Jane took off the hat she had been wearing her whole life; she stopped confirming her father’s importance, and also stopped playing the role of the grateful daughter, who would happily enjoy the glow of his greatness while remaining forever invisible. She even went so far as to suggest that something he had said about himself might not be true, a first. The encounter ended abruptly and with obvious prickliness. While no words were spoken about the tectonic plates that had just shifted between them, it was clear to both father and daughter that their usual way of interacting was suspended, if not finished for good...  

Read full article... http://nancycolier.com/when-we-shame-ourselves/

Can a Relationship Recover From Resentment?

As a relationship therapist, I am often asked: “What's the biggest problem couples face?” The easy answers are money and sex, but neither would be exactly true or at least not what has walked into my office or my life. The most common problem I see in intimate partnerships is what I call, the battle for empathy. 

Paula tells Jon that she’s upset and hurt by something he said, a way he responded to her opinion on a family matter. She asks if, in the future, he could say that same thing with an attitude of kindness and/or curiosity and not be so critical, simply because her opinion differed from his. Jon reacts to Paula’s feelings and the request by aggressively inquiring why he should offer her kindness and curiosity when last month she had shut down his experience over a different family matter and treated him unkindly. Paula then attacks back, explaining why she deserved to behave the way she did in the interaction last month, and why her response last month was a reaction to what he did two months ago, which she believes was unkind and aggressive. Jon then barks that he was entitled to his behavior two months ago because of the unkind and critical thing she did three months ago…and back and back in time it goes, to a seemingly un-findable place before the hurting began.

Couples do this all the time. They fight for who’s deserving of empathy, whose experience should get to matter, whose hurt should be taken care of, and whose experience should be validated. Often, partners refuse to offer empathy to each other because they feel that, to do so, would mean admitting that they are to blame and thus giving up the chance to receive empathy and validation for their own experience. Boiled down, if I care about how my words hurt you then I’m admitting that I'm to blame for causing you that pain. And perhaps even more importantly, the truth of why I said those words or more accurately, why I was entitled to say those words, will never be validated or receive its own empathy. Empathy for you effectively cancels out empathy for me...

Read full article: http://nancycolier.com/blog/

How to Quiet the Little Voice Inside Your Head

Did you ever notice the little voice inside your head that’s constantly running the play by play of your life—to you, the one who’s living it.  Did you ever listen in to your inner narrator, the one who’s unceasingly packaging your life, verbally preparing your experience for transmission to another unidentified listener?  I just went on an eight-day silent retreat and apparently my inner narrator didn’t get the memo that it was to be silent.  For the first five days, the little voice in my head didn’t stop talking, not even to catch its imaginary breath. With obsessive precision, it explained to me what I was doing, how I had transformed, and what spiritual lessons I had learned. Over and over my inner narrator repeated my experience to me, prepared it for sharing, and made sure I had everything wrapped up as clearly and understandably as possible. 

It’s an odd thing really: as we're having an experience, the little voice in our head is simultaneously describing, explaining, and commentating on the experience, providing a summary of it before, during and after its unfolding. 

Often, the narration of our experience is so integral to the experience itself, so uninterrupted and merged with it as to make us wonder if there could even be an experience without the accompanying report. If an experience happens without simultaneous inner acknowledgment, thinking about, and commentary, does it actually happen? 

It’s also interesting to notice that the little voice in our head is not without its own characteristics.  It has a certain language, style, and tone; it does its storytelling and commentary with a certain thematic and textural consistency. Like a Hollywood screenwriter, our inner voice tends to write in a particular genre, for example, tragedy, comedy, drama, film noir etc. Our commentator is a character with an identity of its own.

Did you ever wonder why our mind is telling us what we’re doing while we’re doing it, as if we didn’t already know? And, why our mind is so adamant about getting the story of our life figured out, written and packaged?  And finally, why we need to rehearse the tale of our life before we actually need or want to convey it to another person?

The mind believes that we are made of mind and mind alone, and that without its felt presence, we and all else would cease to be. If the narration were to stop and the mind was not experiencing itself through the act of thinking, then there would be nothing—oblivion.  A mind off duty, experience without the thinking about it, is tantamount to non-existence. The mind creates the story of an I; it creates an I as an object in our consciousness.  In so doing, it maintains both the experience of a self and the experiencer of a self, which it believes are needed to ensure survival.

In relentlessly narrating the story of ourselves (to ourselves), the mind is also attempting to make life, and us, into something solid, knowable, and constant.  By creating a main character called me (played by mind) who’s living something called my life, the mind attempts to transform the ephemeral, groundless, ever-changing nature of being into something that can be understood, managed, and in theory, controlled.  It takes what is really one unified process, life, from which we are inseparable, and splits it into two different things, a me and a life.  We then become the liver of this thing called life, and in the process, seemingly distinct and real.  We literally think our self into existence. 

And so, the questions beg: first, is there a downside to living with this inner narrator, and second, do we have to live this way, is it part and parcel of the human condition? Is there no alternative to a second-hand version of life, knowing experience only through the mind's description and commentary? The answer is a resounding yes, and no. 

Yes, there is a downside and no, we are not condemned to live this way forever.

The small downside to living with the play by play of your life ceaselessly running in your ear is that it can be intensely agitating and distracting. There exists constant noise in the background and foreground of your life, no silence to be heard, like having a mosquito (or buzz saw) resounding in your ear, one that you can’t silence and can’t ignore. 

But on a more profound level, the downside to the inner narrator is that it stands in the way of your actually getting to experience life first hand, in all its richness. You're relegated to living through your narrator’s description, which is really just a mental representation of the real thing, like getting a postcard of the Grand Canyon in place of being there, or a description of chocolate instead of a taste. The little voice goes on then to offer commentary on the narration, which is a representation of a representation, and you are now two layers away from the direct experience of living.

You might also notice that the voice in your head presents its version of your life as a truth. It reports your life story as if it were the actual reality existing in the objective world. It’s liberating, however, to realize that the narrator’s account of what’s happening is all going on inside your own mind and only in your mind. It’s not real in some objective sense, but rather another story about a story which begins and ends inside your own consciousness.

The good news is that you don’t have to live this way, with your inner narrator acting as a middle manager between you and life. If you’ve ever been deeply involved in an activity, you might have experienced what’s referred to as flow state.  In flow, we're so engaged in what we’re doing that we cease to be aware of our self. We're no longer the one doing the activity, but literally absorbed into the experience itself. We become the experience; we become life rather than the one who’s living it, and all notion of time and a separate Idisappears. And, while the mind has convinced us otherwise, what we discover is that when the mind is not there self-referencing, reminding us of our self, we still exist. We do not in fact disappear; the mind might temporarily, but we do not, which suggests that we are indeed more than mind. Awareness remains even when we lose the felt sense of our self as the one doing our life. And, interestingly, such experiences, the ones in which awareness of our self disappears, when there is only experience but no I doing it, are the ones that we later describe as wholly satisfying, blissful, and even divine.  The experiences in which we are gone are the ones that we most crave. 

The remedy for the little voice in our head is three-fold. First, we have to exhaust of it and become so fed up with the play by play as to decide that we’re not willing to listen or live by it anymore. Once that’s happened, we must start noticing our narrator and become aware of its voice as an object appearing in our awareness. And finally, we set a clear and fierce intention and desire to experience life directly, through our senses, now, and not just receive a report on it. We commit to diving deeply and directly into the ocean of life. 

Listening to the little voice in your head is a habit, granted a habit with deep roots, survival instincts, and lots of practice time, but nonetheless, a habit. With desire, willingness and intention, a habit, any habit, can be changed. Each time you catch the voice in your head describing or commentating on your life, practice a new habit, the habit of directly experiencing your actual experience. Each time you hear your little voice, first pause and celebrate a moment of awareness; the fact that you’re hearing it means that there’s another part of you, which is not merged with the narrator, who’s awakening—the you whom the narrator is narrating to. Next, intentionally shift your attention from your head (which is where our energy is usually focused) down into your body.  Invite your body to consciously relax. Take and feel a deep breath. From there, run a sense loop: see what you’re seeing, hear what you’re hearing, feel what you’re feeling, smell what you’re smelling, and taste what you’re tasting. Experience each, one at a time. And finally, sense your own physical presence, the feeling of aliveness in your body (not your mind). With this practice, the little voice in your head will grow quieter and less relentless, and the living will become more vivid, satisfying, immediate, and ultimately, real. 

When You're Lonely Inside Your Relationship

The Buddha taught that life includes suffering. The same is true for relationships. We think of loneliness as a condition that exists outside of relationship but sometimes we feel the loneliest inside an intimate relationship. That said, it is essential that we learn how to take care of ourselves, connect with our own heart, regardless of what’s happening within our partnership. It is our intimate relationship with ourselves, ultimately, that determines our wellbeing, and our compassion for our own experience that allows us to weather, with equanimity, the suffering that is... 

Read full article: https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/inviting-monkey-tea/201709/when-youre-lonely-inside-your-relationship

IDO Podcast: Is your partner cheating on you with their phone?
http://idopodcast.com/nancy-colier/

Teens and Texting: A Recipe For Disaster

Michelle Carter is a teenager who was part of a deadly texting relationship, one that ended in the suicide of her then boyfriend, Conrad Roy.  Michelle Carter was convicted of involuntary manslaughter, wanton and reckless conduct, for encouraging Conrad to kill himself, bullying him via text to follow through with his suicidal thoughts, and not doing anything to stop him when she knew he was dying.  Last week she received a sentence of 15 months.  She was 17 at the time of the crime,

Source: Unsplash

he was 18. This tragic case has gotten me thinking a lot about teens and texting and what’s really happening to our children when they conduct online relationships. 

Michelle and Conrad called each other boyfriend and girlfriend despite the fact that they had only met in person a few times over their more than two-year relationship. They communicated almost exclusively through text messages, over a thousand of them in just the last week of the boy’s life.  Conrad was depressed and had tried to kill himself once before he met Michelle Carter.  Michelle, while socially popular, had also struggled with depression and had a history of cutting and anorexia. 

In the beginning of their relationship, and at other times throughout it, Michelle encouraged Conrad to get help for his depression and was supportive of his hopes and dreams for moving forward in his life.  But as time went by, Michelle became more callous, and chillingly aggressive in convincing him to commit suicide.  She even went so far as to tell him that she would look like a fool, after all this effort, if he didn’t kill himself.  She said, “You always say you’re going to do it but you never do” And when Conrad was scared and got out of truck once it had started filling with carbon monoxide, saying that he didn’t want to die, Michelle told him to get back in and do it.  When he worried that his suicide would cause suffering to his family, Michelle Carter told him that his family would get over him after a couple weeks, and that she would take care of them. 

So how does something this terrible happen, and why?   How does a good kid like Michelle Carter become someone capable of such emotional violence?  And does technology have anything to do with why this tragedy happened?  Is there something about the texting relationship that causes this kind of behavior and dysfunction?  It is critical that we consider such questions now as our teenagers’ relationships have become, for the most part, text-based; kids are communicating less and less in person and more through their devices, experiencing one another via abbreviated, isolated and often terse words on a small screen, without any of the necessary components and triggers for empathy and emotional connection. 

When Michelle Carter met Conrad Roy she seemed to care about him and expressed kindness and concern. But over time and text, she grew colder, less empathic, and more involved in what his suicide would mean for her, how it would get her what she wanted, namely, attention.  Towards the end, as she convinced her boyfriend over text to take his own life, Michelle requested that Conrad tag her in a last post before he died, to memorialize her as his greatest love.  So too, immediately after his death, she began posting on Facebook about her profound loss and suffering.  What we notice is that Conrad, for Michelle, had ceased to be a person in his own right, and rather, had become just an object for her, something that could provide or deprive her of her needs.  Over time, she seemed to stop caring about him or seeing him as a person truly suffering.  She stopped caring about what was in his or his family’s best interest.  Interacting solely with her screen, as opposed to a real-life human being, Michelle Carter seemed only able to feel what would benefit her. 

The texting relationship is missing three profoundly important relational elements, and the essential ingredients of connection and empathy.  Specifically, the sight of someone’s face, the sound of someone’s voice and the language of someone’s body.  Without these three elements, it’s extremely difficult to develop or maintain a sense of empathy for another person.  Texting relationships, if they are not supplemented with real time together, face to face, eventually, can and do lose a sense of empathy and even reality.  The texting teenager shifts from being in relationship with another person to being in a relationship with just themselves.  Without visual and auditory cues, the relationship is with their own words and the screen on which they appear. Teenagers are narcissistic by nature, it's normal;  they need more cues - not less - to resist turning every experience into something about themselves. Teenagers need to see, hear, and experience another person in order to remember that the words coming across their screen indeed belong to someone else real, separate from themselves, with real feelings.  

Furthermore, the texting relationship adds rocket fuel to a teenage mind.  Texting makes it possible to record and manifest every thought that appears, and so, whatever is present in the adolescent mind will be ignited and strengthened.  Because of the possibility that texting creates, teens pay extra attention to their thoughts and are encouraged to listen to and formulate their every idea.  In the past, perhaps ninety eight percent of a teenager’s thoughts might have simply passed through her mind without much attention, without even being remembered, but now such thoughts are celebrated and exacerbated in the process of turning them into texts, formulating the unformulated, and thus feeding the wild teenage mind. 

In addition, texting gives the teenager an un-interrupted audience for her every thought; it offers immediate feedback and attention. Teens today crave attention at a level that’s unprecedented.  It is paradoxical really; on the one hand, teens behave as if their every thought is fascinating and worth recording, and yet, they don’t seem to be able to maintain a sense of self-worth unless continually validated, attended to, and reflected through likes, followers, and constant online attention.  Texting makes it possible for teens to receive that attention 24/7, which is in part why it’s so addictive for the adolescent mind.    

So what is a parent to do?  How can we keep our teens from becoming the next Michelle Carter or Conrad Roy?  Many people judge parents who are unaware of what’s happening in their teen’s online life. But in truth, even the best parents can be duped when it comes to their teen’s texting relationships.  Undoubtedly, teenagers need to individuate, to keep secrets and have private spaces that their parents can’t access.  But before technology was central to a teenager’s life, parents could, to a certain extent, control their child’s access to secrets spaces.  For one thing, the private encounters had to happen outside the house, outside a parent’s earshot and view, and also in between activities like school, sports and the like.  Now, because teens are communicating with peers around the clock, outside the earshot and sight of their parents, the secrets and private encounters exist everywhere and all the time.  As a result, our teenagers’ private lives are impossible to control and difficult to know about, even by the most well-intentioned and loving parent. 

In this new world of nonstop texting teens, parents need to be extra vigilant, to pay serious and focused attention to what their kids are saying, doing, and feeling, and the silences between the words.  If your teen is becoming more withdrawn, angry, sullen, distracted, or is spending more time on her phone, more time out of sight, it’s critically important to inquire into what’s happening in her online life. And don’t just talk to your teen, talk to the parents of her friends as well, about what they are seeing and hearing.  It takes a village to raise a child, and now that their social life goes on outside our reach, we need that village more than ever.  As a parent these days we need to be relentless in discovering our children's virtual universe, and specifically, the relationships they are playing out on their screens.  We must keep open, or if need be, force open the lines of communication with our teens.  Simply trusting and turning the other way, in this new virtually relational world, is no longer an option.    

How to Be a Good Parent in a Digitally Addicted World: 9 tips for parenting confident and happy children

I write and speak a lot on digital life, what it’s doing to us psychologically, spiritually, socially and as a society. What we can do to create a sense of wellbeing and freedom in the midst of what often feels like a world gone mad.  Regardless of where I am or to whom I’m speaking however, the question I get most from my audiences is this: How do we raise healthy kids in this tech-addicted society, when we’ve all drunk the Kool-Aid and we’re all in on this condoned addiction? 

We the parents of today’s kids are true pioneers.  We’re facing a situation that no other generation of parents has faced.  People often say that previous parents had to deal with the television and telephone, and that every generation struggles with some new invention that changes everything, and that the Smartphone is really no different than anything that came before it. But in fact, where we are now, with the explosion of technology into every aspect of our lives (and our children’s lives) and our complete dependence upon it, is fundamentally different than any other time in history. Technology is a revolution and not like any other previous invention. 

For one thing, the television and telephone didn’t come with us everywhere we went.  We had to be in the world without them; the television and telephone were an addition to our lives, not the center of it.  In addition, the telephone and television were not used for every aspect of our lives, work, social, information, planning etc., as the Smartphone now is.  So too, we didn’t defer our authority and agency to the television, telephone or any other invention, asking it to make decisions for us.  We didn’t hand over our human skills, thinking and tasks to our televisions, rendering us helpless to its knowledge.

Furthermore, the makers of televisions and telephones were not employing neuroscientists and addiction specialists as they are now with the purpose of getting our kids (and all of us) hooked.  Addiction is good for business and our kids are the targets of very smart and strategic plans, by very informed experts, to make them dependent, so they can’t or are too anxious to live without their devices. Never before have our kids had legal access to something so addictive as the substance that is technology.  We’re giving our kids the equivalent of cocaine at a time in their lives when their front brains are not even developed, and they don’t have the skills, discernment or internal resources to be able to manage the drug of technology.

What we know from neuroscience is that using technology floods our brain with the feel-good chemical dopamine. Dopamine delivers pleasure and feeds the reward center in our brain.  This sets up a compulsion loop; we want more of this pleasure and thus want to engage in the activity more. What happens next however, is that each time we have a thought of using or hear or feel a notification come in, our adrenal glands send out a burst of the stress hormone cortisol, which sets off the fight or flight response and we become anxious.  We then opt to get back on our device to calm ourselves down.  Those who are addicted are, therefore, living in a constant state of fight or flight and saturating their bodies with cortisol, which besides causing chronic stress has also been linked to lowered immune function, increased sugar levels and weight gain.  It’s not a good thing.

Today’s moms and dads are stumbling down an untraveled path. More often than not, we don’t know what we’re doing.  How could we know, we’re in new territory, raising addicts in an addicted world.  Day by day we’re trying to understand how to maintain a loving connection with our children when the pull towards technology is so seemingly irresistible. We’re trying to figure out how to do our real job: to help them become happy, confident, grounded people in a society that feels increasingly anxious and untethered. 

First, it is important that we honor our intention to help our children and families stay emotionally connected and intact.  We have to be willing to work hard at this endeavor, to be good parents, because it profoundly matters. In some ways, our society depends upon it.  When the family crumbles, all else crumbles.  But also, because we want to deeply know our children, to spend time with them without a thousand other distractions, look into their eyes without the reflection of the screen inside their pupils.  As families, we don’t want to simply brush past each other at the charging station in the kitchen.

9 Tips for Good Parenting in a Digital World

1. Model It

Live the behavior you’re preaching. If you’re on your device constantly then your guidance is of no value, your rules are irrelevant.  If you don’t walk the walk, your kids won’t either. Limit your time on your device, particularly when you’re with your kids and partner.  Show your kids what it looks like to be engaged in activities that don’t involve technology. And absolutely do not leave your devices on or in sight during family meals. 

2. Make a Plan/Set the Rules Ahead of Time. 

If you want to make God laugh, make plans. If you want to make God roll on the clouds with laughter, make plans with kids and Smartphones.  And yet, we still have to set the rules ahead of time with regard to our kids’ usage. It can be a good idea to do this together as a family.  Write down specifically (and have everyone sign) what hours and under what circumstances device use (and what kind of use) will be acceptable.  For example: first half hour after school: full use including social media.  Next three hours: only computer use for homework, all social notifications off.  Half hour before bed all devices off. Whatever the rules you as parents decide on, make them specific, written down on paper, and hung up where they can be seen.  When the conflict (and screaming) begins, you will be able to point to these established rules without any hesitation or confusion.    

3. Create a Context.

Don’t just tell your kids they can’t use their devices, explain to them the larger intentions behind your rules.  For example, share that you don’t want them anxious all the time, and explain the effect that cortisol has on their growing body. Express that you actually want to know them and that technology gets in the way of that happening. Tell them perhaps that you miss them, miss talking or taking walks with them, and that it’s just that simple. Whatever the larger and more loving intentions are behind your rules, share them with your child. Create an open dialogue so the conversation can go deeper and become more connective, rather than simply arguing over screen time.

4. Ask Your Kids About Their Experience with Technology

Be curious about, specifically, how your kids experience their lives in the midst of this technology.  What it’s like for them to be kids in this kind of environment.  You might ask how it feels to be with a friend who’s constantly texting and snapchatting other people when they’re with them.  Or perhaps to be at a party when everyone is staring into their device and there’s no one there to really talk to. Ask what it’s like to have a boyfriend they text all day but feel incapable of talking to in real life. Whatever the issues that they’re pretending are okay, ask about them.  Turn these difficult experiences into something they question rather than just assume is normal.  Remember, there’s still a young person in there who’s probably feeling lonely, insecure, confused, anxious and overwhelmed by all of it.  Invite that young person to the table and give them your full attention.

5.Get Your Kids into Tech-Free Activities

It’s increasingly important to expose your kids to activities that don’t require technology and also allow them to connect with people and themselves in a different way. We need to show them that they can still enjoy experiences (like sports, music, nature) without their devices, and that there really is life outside their Smartphone. 

6. Emphasize (with Gusto) the Importance of Hard Work and Time Invested

Kids are now growing up in an age of immediacy and ease.  We value the quickest and easiest route to wherever we’re headed.  The problem is that by accepting immediacy and ease, we’re depriving our children of the invaluable rewards of hard work and time invested.  When our child lands on the top of the mountain by helicopter, he doesn’t reap the same confidence or inner strength as when he’s walked and struggled the path to the top.  As a result, he ends up feeling like imposter.  Encourage, again and again, the importance of putting in time and effort for building a confident and strong inner self, so ultimately, they will know that they can rely on themselves.

7. Be Fierce

A lot of parents these days say that the horse is already out of the barn and it’s a losing battle this technology thing.  When these parents give their kids the device, they claim they’re just giving their kid what he wants.  This is not good parenting.  As parents, we often need to take the harder path, the one our child doesn’t want, make the choice that creates more conflict, but ultimately, is better for our kids and our family.  We need to be able to hold our ground when our child is ranting and raging.  We need to dig deep, be fierce, stand our ground, and remember why we’re choosing this harder path, what’s really at stake.

8. Teach Your Kids Basic Meditation Techniques

Every child, no matter the age, can learn basic meditation practices.  Try teaching your kids the following techniques: 1. Breathing. Notice and feel your breath. Don’t control it, just pay attention to it.  Remember to breathe deeply, particularly when you’re anxious.  2. Body scan: bring your attention into each body part, one by one, and notice the sensations inside. As you go through, invite each part to relax.  3. Run a sense loop: bring your attention to each of your senses, one at a time.  Notice what you are hearing, seeing, feeling in your body, smelling, tasting and the sixth sense, thinking.  4. Visualize an elevator ride from your head down into the bottom of your belly.  Feel yourself getting calmer as you descend, floor by floor, into the stillness of your own presence.  5. Ask yourself if you’re actually here, paying attention to where you are. Notice/Feel what your own presence/here-ness feels like.

9. Bribery

As a last resort, never underestimate the power of bribery or more scientifically, cause and effect.  For every hour, afternoon or day your child stays off their device, consider gifting them with a non-tech related reward (it doesn't have to be big). The pleasure or pain they associate with their behavior will affect that behavior. Sometimes it might be the only thing that works and it’s not cheating to use the oldest trick in the book.    

Parenting these days is not for the faint of heart.  Although I don’t think there’s ever been a time that parenting was easy, the presence of these devices in our children’s lives makes now a particularly challenging and frustrating time to raise children. We’re living with addicts and they’re the very people we love the most and most want to be happy and well, the very thing that addiction prevents.

We parents have to be kind to ourselves too.  Sometimes we allow our child the device even when we know we shouldn’t, because we also know that it will make them stop whining or bitching (depending on their age) and because we desperately need peace and don’t have anything left in our own tank.  And that’s okay.  We also have needs and are not perfect. But what’s most important is not that we’re perfect, but that we keep trying.  And, that we stay in touch with what really matters to us, and behave in a way that’s in alignment with our deeper priorities. Our children and our families are what’s at stake here, and it doesn’t get more important than that.

And finally, in this distracted and addicted world, there’s something we can do in every moment, and it may be the most important piece in this whole conundrum.  When we’re with our kids, we can really be there, be with them, present. Our grounded, undistracted presence is the ultimate antidote to the anxious, untethered, disappeared world in which they are living.  Land in the moment when you’re with your children.  Give them the experience of what it’s like to be with someone who cares about them.  Remember what they tell you about their lives and ask about it.  Create continuity in a world that appears and disappears faster than memory can grasp.  Be the light in the darkness, the sanity in the insanity.  Love means presence and in that, we, blessedly, have complete control. 

How to Love Yourself When Those Around You Can't

I had been working with Mary (not her real name) as a client for several years. It was the loneliness in her marriage that initially brought her to see me. She was struggling in the relationship, but didn't want to leave. She described how sharing anything with her husband about her real experience took enormous effort and involved intense strategizing and emotional stress. She worried about how to present her truth so that it would be understood and received by her partner — not rejected, attacked, or minimized. As a result, she was starting to keep important experiences out of their relationship, only presenting what was factual or impersonal, which was then creating more isolation and intensifying her loneliness.

In my first session with Mary and her husband, it became clear to me why she felt so isolated and disconnected from him. I saw within a few minutes how her husband’s way of responding to her was entirely out of sync with what she needed to feel understood, supported, and loved. Regardless of what Mary shared, he began his response with the word "but," telling her why she was mistaken and what she was doing wrong that made her feel the way she did. He then frequently followed up his criticisms with what he knew to be true about her experience, based on his greater wisdom. I watched as he trampled on her truth again and again, and demonstrated his unwillingness to allow her to have the experience she was having, to just hear how it was for her without any "but." What I witnessed is not uncommon, however, and most of us have experienced Mary’s loneliness, frustration, and stress in trying to get what we need in similar kinds of relationships.

There are people who listen with and from the word “but,” with “but” always in between their ears and your heart. No matter what you present, they seem intent on proving you wrong or pointing out the holes in what you're sharing. Perpetually in search of the fly in the ointment, they invalidate your experience and simultaneously demonstrate that they know more or better.

Like Mary’s husband, this kind of person relates from their head and their intellect, but not their heart. Their responses protect them from taking in or feeling your experience — feeling you — or, as it can sometimes seem, allowing you to even exist. Knowing more, being the expert, keeps them from having to try to understand or empathize with what you’re expressing. Their "but'" keeps them from having to venture outside their comfort zone, to be vulnerable, or to really listen or learn. They are quick to shut down your experience with dismissive phrases like “that’s just such and such” or “I get it already,” which are further attempts to stuff your experience into a box that they can control and dismiss.

When someone relates to you in this style, you may feel that you are not being listened to — not being loved. It feels as if the other person is not on your side, not curious about or interested to know you, not offering your experience the care and nourishment that it (and you) need to grow. The other’s mission is not to understand you or help you know yourself more deeply, but rather to win the case against you and keep you under control.

There is no place for Mary’s experience with her husband, and so, understandably, relating feels like a fight, with her on the defensive, trying to force a space in which her experience will be allowed to land.

Expressing yourself in this kind of environment takes enormous effort, fending off the other’s intellect and resistance, and fighting to be heard and acknowledged, to not have your experience butchered, reduced, boxed, or denied. At the end of a conversation, you feel exhausted, or as one woman expressed it, "nailed into a coffin." Communication is an experience of loneliness and frustration — sadness and anger. Connection cannot happen, because your experience is fundamentally not allowed into the dialogue.

The tendency, when in relationships with such people, is to shut down and stop sharing, and sometimes to stop feeling altogether, to go numb. And sometimes to fight back and try harder, constructing new strategies to get your experience heard properly. But none of these options offers much lasting relief. So how can you be with the “but” heads in your life, some of whom are family or others you can’t avoid, in a way that keeps you feeling alive and well? How can you be in their company in a way that leaves you feeling good about yourself? 

The best way to stay well and on your own side in a such a relationship is by employing the skill of fierce awareness. While it is painful to have your experience constricted and rejected, you can stay grounded and feel good about yourself by staying vigilant as a witness, watching your own experience as the relational event unfolds. You can relate with such a person carefully, mindfully, with great self-compassion. First, by simply noticing what’s happening inside you as you even approach a topic that matters to you. And then, paying fierce attention physically, mentally, and emotionally to what is arising as the other responds. You may notice a feeling of desperation or franticness rising up, a tightness in the belly or throat, a feeling of rage, dizziness, tears, numbness, or who knows what else. But regardless of what appears, you keep noticing that which is happening inside you, staying vigilant in your awareness — and most importantly, staying kind and compassionate with your own experience. 

You may also become aware of a blaming or shaming, a criticism you inflict on yourself, that you should be able to express yourself in a way that’s understandable, should be able to get the other to reflect you properly, to want to know you, that you are somehow failing because you can’t get your truth across in a way that feels satisfying. Whatever arises, you keep listening and loving inside, telling your self-judging super ego to step outside, as it is not helpful and not accurate. Awareness and self-compassion are your protection from getting swallowed up and identified with your instinctive reactions. Awareness can also guide you as to when it's time to exit the conversation and/or shift it somewhere else, which is another way that you can be self-loving and take care of yourself within such a relationship. 

You cannot control another’s responses or the experiences that arise within you, but you can stay awake to what's happening within you, you can offer unwavering kindness towards yourself, and you can determine for how long you will continue watching and working with an experience that doesn’t work for you. Indeed you can love yourself in any kind of company.

Epilogue:

The response I received from the above blog was enormous. In reading the responses however, it became clear to me that I left out an important step in the process of loving yourself. I had mistakenly assumed that, like my client Mary, by the time you were reading my article, you had tried everything else to get yourself heard properly, and thus were ready for the practice of fierce awareness, on its own. While vigilantly and lovingly staying with your own internal experience is always useful when in the company of others who are not supportive, there is also a relational strategy that may be useful and empowering in such situations.

The strategy is this: ask for what you need, specifically and clearly. When your partner dismisses your truth, argues against your experience, or consistently responds to you with the word "but," ask him if he would be willing to simply listen to what you are saying without responding at all, to say nothing and just absorb what you are expressing. Or, ask him if he would be willing to repeat back to you what you had shared. Or, ask him if he would be willing to respond by rephrasing what you had said in his own words. Ask yourself what you would really need from your partner's response and ask him, gently, if he would be willing to provide just that. You might also let him know, if it feels right, what the kind of response you are requesting would offer you, what it would provide in your own process. The key here is to ask your partner with kindness, a kindness that is for both you and him, with the words "Would you be willing..." leading the way.

This strategy can always be used, no matter where you are in the relationship. It can be used again and again, regardless of whether it has been successful in the past or not. It makes a perfect handshake with fierce self-awareness and in fact, the knowing and asking for what you need arises precisely out of fierce awareness.

Asking for what you need may in fact get you what you need from your partner, and make you feel more understood and loved. And, staying with your own experience with awareness and self-compassion, before, during and after you ask, will undoubtedly get you what you need from yourself.

"Do I Look Hot?" Building Self Confidence With Selfies

It was a beautiful sunny afternoon at the swimming pool. I was happily ensconced in a good book on a chaise. Just in front of me, waist deep in water, stood four young teenage girls, 14 or 15 years-old. When I first noticed them it was noon and they were busily taking photos of each other, feverishly trading smartphones back and forth, posing in very obviously sexy positions. They flipped their hair from side to side, scrunched their shoulders to create cleavage, pouted their lips, assumed contemplative expressions with their eyes drifting off to nowhere, constricted their upper bodies to accentuate clavicles, splashed water  onto their bodies, and positioned their legs into various seductive shapes. Each time a photograph was taken, the subject would anxiously reach for her smartphone, stealing it from her friend’s hands to determine what she looked like in the most recent rendering. The girls would giggle or ooh and ah or consult on a possibly improved image. 

I watched them for a while, marveling at their ability to sustain interest and focus in the activity of photographing themselves. Eventually I went back to my book, but every now and again I would look up to see what they were up to. For two solid hours, until I left for lunch, the self-capturing went on, uninterrupted. It was interesting to notice as well that during those two hours, not one of the girls did any swimming or anything else other than posing, photographing, and evaluating. When I returned to the pool after 4, the same girls were still taking photos of themselves, but now out of the water and in new alluring poses as they reclined on their chaise lounges.

The scene that I witnessed at the pool is nothing out of the ordinary and my observations are in no way criticisms. I see the constant self-recording everywhere I look including my own home with my daughters and their friends. It seems that photographing oneself has become the primary leisure activity for girls these days. Recording and examining one’s own image serving as the most engaging, exciting and rewarding way to spend time.

While teenagers have always been concerned about their appearance, there’s never been a time when so much attention and energy has been spent on the creation and dissemination of a “hot” image or that a sexy identity was deemed so drastically necessary. (I say “hot” because it’s the word the girls most frequently use to describe the look they’re going for.) Now more than ever, with the explosion of technology that’s never turned off, young girls are saturated with media (including social media), literally living from inside it and becoming part of it. This media then shows them how they’re supposed to look, talk, think… be, and usually the message is "hot." The devices are being used, through the unceasing self-documentation, to show the world that they have successfully achieved the media-designed version of who they’re supposed to be. Know thyself has become show thyself. 

While my memories of 15 are definitely faded, I am not so far from that time of life that I can’t remember what it was like to be a teenage girl. What I know for sure is that when I was young and holding a camera, it made sense to turn the lens away from me, outward, and take pictures of the world. It would not have occurred to me nor would I have been particularly interested in taking photographs of myself. What I also know is that I didn’t spend one thousandth the amount of time that young women do now focused on my image as it appeared on camera. When I was a young girl, being perceived as “hot” was not a goal that we aspired to, and not a primary characteristic upon which we built our self-worth.    

When I ask girls and young women today (which I often do) why they spend so much time taking pictures of themselves and posting or sharing them, they usually tell me some version of this: They want other people to think they’re “hot” (both boys and girls) because if other people think they’re “hot” then they will be important and the world will like them, which will then make them like themselves.

I spend a lot of time thinking about the experiences our girls are missing out on as a result of spending so much time posing for their smartphones—what else they might be doing that could build their self-esteem in more meaningful ways. What will be the consequences in terms of who these young women become if their experiences are more and more limited to selfie-taking? What skills and strengths are they not going to develop, what self-awareness are they going to be deprived of, as a result of all these hours devoted to creating the perfect image?

As a mother of two daughters I am deeply troubled by this selfie phenomenon. We are allowing technology to be used in a way that disempowers young women, keeps them busy staring at themselves, pursuing “hotness” as designed by the modern media, at the expense of living their lives fully, being curious about the world on the other side of the camera, engaging in life beyond their image.

Not surprisingly, we are seeing an epidemic in low self-esteem in young women as they devote less of their time and energy to activities that could build a true sense of reliable self-worth and instead, attempt to build a self out of “hot” selfies.  Unfortunately, however, the selfie-created self is wobbly and ephemeral, and can be obliterated by not enough “likes” on a single post.

As the mother of two daughters, I am concerned, and not just for my own, but for all the young women who are coming up in the age of selfie consciousness. Staring into their smartphones at themselves, being driven by the desire to create a “hot” pose—none of this is a wise use of young female energy and intelligence, nor does it create a garden in which to grow empowered and confident women. 

I write this today with many questions and few answers. But the questions are important and we need to start raising them more often, more vigorously, and on a societal level. What kind of women are we growing in this digital age, in this "Am I hot?" world? And, what can we do as the grown-ups, both men and women, to redirect our girls towards a life that will provide them with what they need to feel empowered, capable, confident and ultimately, happy?