Blog Archives

Am I in a Dependent Relationship?

6/28/2017

Dependency lovers see each other more and more in order to maintain this security they find with each other. When they are apart, they long for each other.
Even if they bicker and cannot get along with each other, they long for the security of the relationship. To plan to separate or get needs met anywhere by either partner is a threat that brings great conflict into the relationship.

How serious the dependency has become is clearly evident when it ends.
Since the relationship has been used to cover up so much personal low self worth, there is disorientation and agony at the end,

Often a great deal of anger is expressed. Because the involvement has been so total, the ending of a relationship will expose the exploitation that has been going on throughout the time the couple has been together.

This kind of dependency is not limited to love relationships.
This kind of dependency can develop in friendships as well.
Dependent relationships can develop between any tow people who seek self worth outside of themselves.
The more self worth they can take from a friend, the more dependent they will be on that friend.
The lower the self worth, the more friends one needs in order to get adequately amounts of their own self worth.
This is not to be confused with the wonderful sharing that goes on between high self worth friends.
Sharing and dependency are two different things.

Here are some signs of Dependency with Lovers or Friends...

1. Initiating most of the phone calls.
2. Initiating most of the times spent together.
3. Wanting to talk about the friendship or the relationship more often than the other.
4. Feelings of anxiety when not with the other person.
5. Uncomfortable during separation times.
6. Concerned or unhappy when the other seems perfectly satisfied and happy when not together.
7. Wanting to know everything the other does, thinks and feels.
8. Carrying a disproportionate responsibility for the relationship.
9. Feeling as thought the other's wants and needs are more important than yours.
10. Feeling as th9ugh you cannot make it on your own if you leave the relationship or friendship.

It is through our own development as whole people that we find our self worth that enables us to then
choose to be in a relationship with someone of mutual high self worth.

Then we can share our worth, rather than use each other.
Personal high self esteem is necessary before one can enter a healthy relationship.

Learning to Love Yourself
Wegscheider-Cruse

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How Did I Become an Addict? The Addiction Spiral.

6/21/2017

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Most drinking and drug use starts out as social use in one's teen years, a few drinks with friends, some marijuana, and other club drugs that young individuals experiment with to "have fun." For many, alcohol and pot become a regular part of social activities while still in high school or even starting before hand.

The sort of experience an adolescent has with his or her first experiment with chemicals depends on the circumstances -- the type of chemical, its purity, the quantity ingested, the situation in which it was used, whether at a party, in a crisis, or while alone and the emotional state of the person at the time. Whether excited, happy, depressed, or in pain -- if the experience is positive, it leads to an important discovery: chemicals can change how you feel.

If an adolescent feels that alcohol makes one feel more outgoing and confident, or if an adolescent is finds it helps when he/she is flunking math or loosing a girlfriend or boyfriend then an indelible lesson has been learned.
The greater the mood swing, the more clearly the lesson is imprinted.

The next time one wants a change of mood, the answer seems obvious---get high! A positive experience with one chemical sometimes encourages them to try other drugs and more drugs or both, according to the effect the individuals desires. If one feels good at some quantity, then the rationale becomes that 'more is better.'

For many people, this early experience and learning is the beginning of a lifetime of social chemical abuse. The ill fated individual has no idea what may lie ahead of them. We can assume the person with the greatest perceived stress in
life and the fewest effective coping skills is the most vulnerable to addiction.

Some individuals find that months or years pass and they gradually are consuming larger quantities and go on to stronger and more addictive drugs. At some point the individual may notice this new tolerance acquired and is still not willing to see the early warning signs of addiction.

If the warning signs go unheeded, and larger quantities are ingested to get the "old relief" sooner or later another warning sign appears. He or she has their first black-out. As dependency develops, the memory of an entire evening may be lost. The onset of blackouts is a frightening development. It can begin to cause personal and professional problems that are costly and hard to explain because neither the victim nor their close friends or family has any clue that the blackout is happening. This now is crossing the invisible threshold of harmful dependency.

Once dependency sets in, alcohol, pot, and the 'party drugs' are no longer consumed as a social or emotional experience to cope, but now as a drug. The dependent now states, "I need it."

As the disease of addiction progresses so does the denial system.

Outright denial occurs which is, "I don't care, I am drinking or using because I want to."
The denial system is also made up of subcategories that addict or family of the addict does not recognize.
Such as justification, minimizing, rationalizing and avoiding. Many of the statements made by addicts use one of these types of denial to fuel their ongoing abuse such as, "I work hard, it is OK to get high when I am home and need to relax." And so on.

The addict begins to keep secrets from his/her family and friends. The secret protects the addicts degree and level of abuse. Secrets hold the addict in shame and the shame, in turn, is medicated by the drug. Soon the dishonesty manifests not only in the individual's denial of his/her problem, but the newly addicted individual becomes dishonest to all to contribute to preserve his abuse.

The transition to the addictive phases has now occurred and the addict becomes a helpless victim
to the disease of addiction,

At this point the addict is not able to monitor nor control the quantity or frequency or when he/she will consume their drug or combination of drugs to maintain the addiction. The addict's shame and guilt lead them to repression of all emotion, the last resort.

In order to survive, he/she turns off their painful feelings, keeps them turned off with more drugs and buries them somewhere deep in the subconscious. Unfortunately, positive feelings are also buried, like love and compassion, feelings on which relationships are built. As a result the addict gets further and further out of touch with reality. The growing delusions that "I am fine, I can handle this" becomes the strongest statement. Blaming becomes the defense and is simply a reassignment of the addict's own guilt, which he/she fills once filled themselves with their self esteem.

So lost, the addict often isolates, lies, and checks out of all aspects of life other than existing on having enough drugs to medicate for the day and using them so abusively that they cannot find their way out of numbness and the dark hole in their soul.

It doesn't have to be this way. There are answers, much help, lots of hope and love, and each individual has a different need towards recovery and a different origin to their disease. Treatment is individual to each client.
The recovering addict can once again start out life, developing a new self and a new esteem to live life deeply, are taught various means of coping with feelings other than numbing. Recovering addicts are life's hero's who have gone to the depths of loss and pain, have found the courage to seek help, and learn how to live to their fullest with peace and joy and connection.

Taken from
Another Chance
Wegscheider-Cruse

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Successful Couples Therapy

6/20/2017

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By Jo Ellen Fletcher, LMFT

With many years of work dedicated to helping couples overcome a 'stuck' relationship, I have found the most common problem with couples is the communication style. Many couples come to therapy expecting to provide "their side of the argument" and seeking a validation that they are right and their partner is wrong.

This will never happen! Those arguments become power struggles and represent 'walls' that go up and often escalate to loud voices and hurtful sarcasm. No one wins. Sarcasm strikes blows that alienate, and couples polarize and go to their corners.

Many times couples cannot stay on the subject they once brought to the couples session and begin to interject "old baggage" from the past. Many couples make automatic negative assumptions about what their partner will say or what their partner will do next. Most of the time they are not giving the other the grace or opportunity to "put down their wall" and actually communicate authentic feelings and beliefs. In fact by adding "You" statements, ie. "You need to, You should or You ought to..." creates a more defensive position and the argument either shuts down one of the partners or escalates the disagreement.

One example of a couple who comes to session argues about who provides the most thoughtful gifts to the other on holidays. The wife makes an assumption, "you never listen to me, I know you are going to pick the first and easiest thing you find at the store." Husband retorting, "I am never going to please you, I think about this for so long and no matter what I chose for you it is not right. Why bother?"

As the couples talk over each other, arms begin to fold across their chests, and the body language to each other informs both of the "unavailability" and non--listening positions.

I am experienced in identifying the process of what is occurring with couples and their communications. Most often that communication process or pattern is the enemy, not each of the partners. Many times the 'defend/blame' begins and the couple gets lost in their old pattern of behavior and the cycle goes around and around until someone stonewalls (shuts down) or one becomes very angry and yells. Another pattern of behavior can be 'purse/withdraw' or 'pursue/pursue' and deadlock occurs. Once the pattern of behavior is identified and the couples realize their habit or pattern, their awareness and language skills learned in session can stop the behavior. They can learn how to speak to each other differently outside of the old pattern of stuck behavior.

One of the most important factors is what "the wall" represents. Often anger, resistance, frustration shows up - these emotions hold up the wall. However, in working in couples therapy the secondary emotion, is vulnerability. This fragile emotion cannot be accessed when a partner does not feel safe.

Judgment and criticism is a tool used to protect a self. When children have witnessed parental fights and parents model to us how to fight and how to resolve or not resolve differences we take on those patterns ourselves in our own partnerships. One of the worst outcomes to our past is that many of us witnessed avoidance, sweeping issues under the rug, or a hierarchy of gender where one partner dominates and makes the rules and decisions. Now is the time to challenge our old beliefs and develop a new means of relating to our partners.

Developing a positive outlook about our partner, resuming a friendship, making complains gentle, asking for needs to be met, learning vulnerability and safety within the dyad, all of these skills can be learned and developed and implemented. The cost is some dedicated work in couples therapy, the outcome is learning to love and respect our partner and really understand what they are asking for in their requests for love and emotional connection. One of the most important questions couples seek is, "Are you there for me?"

How do you answer?

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Intimacy is Born out of Authentic Sharing

6/19/2017

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Children of dysfunctional families are commonly born
into terrible loneliness.

Children who are supposed to be "seen and not heard" cannot help but suffer from overwhelming feelings of alienation and rejection. Many who were silenced by the "no talk" rule in childhood continue to suffer the same kind of mute loneliness in adulthood. They have yet to learn that real connection and belonging comes from people talking uninhibitedly together.

Perfectionism intensifies the silencing, isolating effect of the "no-talk" rule. Many of us are unable to express anything about ourselves that is not 110% shiny. We are so afraid of being seen as less than perfect that there is little that we feel safe to share.

Dysfunctional parents customarily attack and belittle their children's natural inclination to be enthusiastically self expressive. One of my parents' implicit rules was that I was not allowed to express the slightest hint of pride in myself, that was bragging and was socially in appropriate and self centered. At the same time, one of their favorite statements was, "Don't you have any pride in yourself?" That kind of 'double bind' feeds the confusion of self, and the self remains undeveloped.

Many terms given were, "Get off of your high horse..." or "You are entitled to your own opinion even if it stinks" or "Everyone listen to Ms. High and Mighty."

Only when we fully express ourselves can we know that we are truly appreciated by others.
Only from full disclosure can we discover that we are lovable in all aspect of ourselves.
Much loneliness is healed through open and uncensored communication. To the extent that I can share my experience with you, to the extent do I feel received and loved by you. Self expression and self esteem are interdependent. The intimacy born out of honest and authentic sharing makes us feel good about ourselves and in turn encourages us to be increasingly forthright.

Remember, self esteem cannot be reclaimed while perfectionism prevails. Self esteem in many ways be opposite of perfectionism. Real self esteem does not dissolve because of a blemish, a dropped dish, or a dateless Saturday night. Real self esteem does not instantly evaporate when we feel sad mad, bad or lonely.

Our self esteem is as solid as our ability to accept and respect our courses in all circumstances: health and sickness, success and failure, togetherness and solitude, happiness and sorrow, enthusiasm and depression.

As Oscar Wilde said: "It is not the perfect, but the imperfect that is in need of our love."

Taken from:
The Tao of Fully Feeling-Walker

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Confusion, The Mask for Fear

6/16/2017

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The masking state of confusion arises when you cannot or will not access your fears, and your have lost your instincts.

Confusion actually tries to protect you by halting your actions,
but it can also easily spiral you down into a persistent and unresolved state.

It is fine to be confused. Our emotions inform us.

If you can unmask your confusion you can revive your instincts and intuitions and discover why you are unable to take decisive action.

The practice for confusion is simple and sometime difficult at first. You simply ask yourself to define your intentions. Ask yourself, "What is my motive?" If you do not focus on what choice you should make, or what thing you should do, or what direction should you go, you focus on "What is my intention or what is my motive here?"

Confusion stops you when you are not following your instincts. Questioning your intentions will almost always help you pinpoint why your intuition and your focus have departed.

It most cases, confusion arise to trip you up when your behavior or motives aren't in line with your stated purpose in life. If you push ahead blindly, you almost always will make a mistake.

If you can pause, and take a moment to ask yourself, "What is my motive?" you will be able to re-access your position. When you can do this, you will realize why you have been unable to think or act. When you know your intentions, you will know exactly why you have been so confused.

Empower yourself, pause, think, act.

Taken from
The Language of Emotions
McLaren

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Couples, There is a Silver Lining

6/12/2017

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We live in an emotionally impoverished culture, and those couples who stick with a long term process of working through their issues are often rewarded with emotional intelligence far beyond the norm.

Often as children, we have not met the developmental tasks in an open family system. Those may not have learned skills of self soothing their own discomfort, the overwhelming emotions, learning how to be vulnerable without judgement or criticism and able to express and discuss negative emotions. Asking for one's needs to be met is an adult skill also. Adults are able to identify their needs, find their voice and ask for their needs to be met from their partners. As survivors of any childhood "developmental trauma" one is initially injured more grievously in one's 'emotional natures' than most.

However, the silver lining in this is; many of us were forced to consciously address our suffering because our wounding was so extreme and often showed up in our relationship. Those who work an effective "recovery" and address their emotional needs evolve out of the emotional impoverishment of the general society.

Perhaps the greatest reward of improved emotional intelligence is seen in a greater capacity for deeper intimacy. Emotional intelligence is a foundational ingredient of 'relational intelligence' - a type of intelligence that is frequently diminished in the general populace.

Intimacy is greatly enhanced when two people dialogue about all aspects of their experience.
This is especially true when they transcend taboos against full emotional communication.

Feelings of love, appreciation and gratitude are naturally enhanced when we reciprocally show our full selves -- confident or afraid, loving or alienated, proud or embarrassed. What an incredible achievement it is when any two of us create such an authentic and supportive relationship!

Many of the most intimate relationships that I have seen between people are those who have done a good deal of freeing themselves from the negative legacies of their upbringings.

Complex PTSD, Walker

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Do you have an outer critic?

6/8/2017

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While scaring us out of trusting others, the outer critic pushes us to 'over control' others.

Over controlling behaviors include shaming, excessive criticism,
monologing (conversational control),
and overall bossiness.

An extreme example of such is the 'no win situation.'
Most all of us have been in this situation before.
You are 'damned if you do' and 'damned if you don't' which is also known as a
double bind situation.

Sometimes the outer critic engages in scapegoating where personal frustrations are unfairly dumped onto others. Scapegoating is typically fueled by unworked through anger about childhood abandonment.
Displacing anger on wrong target however fails to release or resolve old or unrelated hurts.

When understanding the formation of the outer critic, we look at and understand attachment disorders. Attachment issues come from the absence of a sympathetic caregiver in childhood.

When the developing child lacks a supportive parental refuge, often they do not learn that other people can soothe loneliness and emotional pain. These children don't learn that real intimacy grows out of sharing all of your experience. These children don't know how to trust others since they could not trust what they felt and said to their parents. Often, positive emotions were supported by the caregivers, however negative emotions such as frustration and fear were met with criticism or ridicule or dismissed all together. The rules of their caretakers were learned early by children in order to seek and obtain acceptance. These "rules" follow the individual throughout their lifetime.

Another technique of the outer critic to unconsciously avoid intimacy is to catastrophize out loud.
Catastrophizing out loud can be very triggering to others and can be an unconscious way of making others afraid of us.
It is being addicted to doom and gloom situations. Those who unnecessarily frighten others by excessively broadcasting about all the possible things that could go wrong rarely endear themselves to others. Moreover they force others to avoid and abandon them and the outer critic unconsciously and ultimately avoids intimacy. That is safety to the outer critic.

Reducing outer critic reactivity requires a great deal of mindfulness. This is as essential for aggressive types who internally rant against humanity as "Those F_cking People!" Blaming others keeps them away from the internal pain of their loneliness. In other words, it gives the message, of "stay away from me."

Mindfulness is the process of becoming intricately aware of everything that is going on inside us, especially our thoughts, images, feelings, and sensations. In terms of outer critic work, it is essential that we become more mindful of both the cognitive and emotional content of our thoughts. Two key elements of critic shrinking are cognitive and emotional.

Cognitive work involves the demolition and rebuilding processes of thought-stopping and
thought substitution, respectively. That is to pause, recognize the critical thought, challenge the thought, note the emotion connected to the thought, and then change the thought. It is removing the critic's fuel supply -- the unrepressed childhood anger and the uncried tears of a lifetime of abandonment.

Road rage and the less intense irritations we experience with our fellow drivers are common forms of the outer critic transference. When we become more mindful of our driving frustrations or other minor everyday annoyances, we can look below the tip of the iceberg for old unexpressed anger and hurt that it reminds us of. I encourage you to practice this the next time you are inordinately angry at some driver for a relatively minor driving mistake. You can try asking yourself, "What is this situation or feeling reminding me of?"
See what you discover.

Taken from the book, Complex PTSD
Pete Walker

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Recovery Group ~ "From Surviving to Thriving.

6/7/2017

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You are invited to come to a bi-monthly psychotherapy group called:

“Recovery Today, From Surviving to Thriving”

Facilitated by Jo Ellen Fletcher, LMFT
Specializing in Issues of Addiction and Recovery

This group meets next on Monday, June 19, 2017 from 6 pm. to 7:15 pm
There is a limit of 6 individuals.
The rate is $40 per person and the group meets 2 x month.

Please contact Jo Fletcher, LMFT & reserve a space. (805) 367-6080.

5014 Chesebro Road, First Floor
Agoura Hills, California 91301


The irony of addiction is that we thirst for what we already have,
the sense of belonging, completeness, and grace.
Through our addiction we sought the magic potion
that we believed gave us mastery over our internal world and ourselves
as well as control over our lives. The survival only lasted so long.
Today we discover that we cannot fill ourselves externally
with what we need internally.
                 We seek to thrive instead of survive.
This group is about the recovering person,
finding and defining a self and
obtaining balance in our inner lives as sober individuals.
learning how to thrive instead of survive.

In this group we will address uncovery and recovery.
The 'uncovery' of who we are as person seeking a balance
and a peaceful inner life without drugs and/or alcohol.

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A Different Definition of Addiction.

6/5/2017

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Addiction is viewed as a defense of self and a retreat into a false-self personality.
An individual hides their real self as a protection of their internal vulnerabilities.

Addiction is a way of avoiding the need for attachment to another individual.
Addiction, from this perspective, is the result of unmet developmental needs which leaves an individual with an injured and fragmented self. Meaning that the developmental needs of the individual, learning to manage vulnerability and self soothe in childhood, leaves an adult with a deficit of internal coping strategies.
Drugs and/or alcohol often fills this internal void, externally.

Vulnerable adults are unable to regulate overwhelming emotions and in many cases are even unable to identify what they feel. Unable to draw upon their own internal resources to manage overwhelming emotions, (because there aren't any coping skills), they remain in constant need of self-regulating resources provided externally "out there."

Since painful, rejecting, and shaming relationships are the cause of their own emptiness in the self, they cannot turn to others to get what they need, since they have never received what they needed in their early development.

Deprivation of 'needs' leave individuals with unrealistic and intolerable emotions that are not only disturbing to others, but also shameful to themselves. With few other options open to them, substance abusers turn to alcohol, drugs, and other external sources of regulation, (e.g. food, sex, work, gambling etc.) Each time substance abusers turn towards alcohol or drugs or other compulsive sources, their shame heightens. The cycle of numbing and shame continues and the individual goes deeper and deeper into a fixed addiction. This addiction will progress because the body also develops a tolerance to the drug/alcohol. The more an individual uses the drug, the deeper the shame develops and the more lost a person becomes internally. Externally an individual becomes more and more addicted to the drug as well. Just because an individual may stop the physical addiction, the internal struggle does not stop if coping skills are not developed.
Thus, the addicted person does not remain sober and relapses occur.

Consequently, addicted persons are always vulnerable to external "fixes" which are compulsive, obsessive and addictive behaviors, substituting one behavior for another until the vulnerabilities in the 'self' are repaired. Repair and restoration of the 'self' can be accomplished only within a healing and healthy relationship such as individual therapy.

The addicted individual needs a consistent, nurturing, mirroring, environment that can contain and manage negative and destructive impulses while giving the individual is also given the opportunity to identify, internalize, and incorporate a healthy set of coping skills to manage their emotions.

Taken from Addiction as an Attachment Disorder
Philip Flores

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Author: Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist

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Author:
Jo Ellen Fletcher, M.A.
Licensed Marriage & Family Therapist