SOCIAL MEDIA ADDICTION

Everybody has an opinion about social media.  Some people do not see or understand the attraction to social media and other people cannot understand why more people are not more involved.  Like anything else in life, we all don’t like the same things.  For those of us who do like social media, some are involved on a very minimal level and others are involved throughout their day.  The question is; when is it too much?  When social media is used as an escape it is too much. 

If someone turns down a social invitation or time with family because they want to update Facebook or follow someone on Twitter, it is too much.  Social media should add to the quality of our lives, not become the focus of our lives.   There is nothing wrong with enjoying pictures on Instagram or Facebook, or following someone on Twitter.  However, to put anything meaningful on these sites, you have to go out and live life.  If your children seem overly consumed, maybe limit them to an hour a day.  And while you are at it, limit yourself to an hour a day.  I have met people who proudly tell me that they spend up to five hours a day updating all their social media.  What else could have been accomplished in that five hours?  Maybe spending time with family or friends, working out and exercising, learning a new hobby or skill, reading a book.  Social media is an adjunct to life, not the center of life.  

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COPING WITH THE BREAKUP OF A ROMANTIC RELATIONSHIP

I wish there was one easy answer to this issue.  Unfortunately, the answer depends on so many different variables such as duration of the relationship, intensity of the relationship, age at time of breakup, and reason for the breakup.  Breakups are stressful and painful no matter how they happen, even for the person doing the breaking up.  The loss of a relationship is a form of grieving, just like when we experience a death.  We grieve many types of losses, not just by death or loss of relationship.  We may grieve the loss of a job, moving away and losing our home and community, loss of a friend, even loss of physical integrity.  When dealing with the loss of a relationship, as painful as it is, we have to remind ourselves that the pain is temporary.  We have to also remind ourselves that were the relationship strong and balanced, it would not have ended.  Therefore, I like to describe it as a dress rehearsal for the real relationship.  It was a time to learn about relationships and what you like and what you don’t like.  Many people express a fear that they will end up alone.  Better to be happy alone than miserable in a relationship that just does not work or even worse, may be abusive.  So how to go forward?  

The most important requirement to coping with a breakup is to get out from under the covers, take a shower, look great, and go out with your friends and/or family.  Stay active and involved.  If you were never that involved or active, now is a good time to start.  You can hurt and be miserable or you can hurt and be active and distracted.  That latter is better as it allows you to see that life can go on in a positive way.  Who knows, maybe when doing something you love, you might meet someone wonderful who really gets you and wants to be with you forever.

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ACCEPTING HELP GRACEFULLY

 There are many of us who are quite happy to give help and enjoy the role of caretaker.  It makes us feel good to help someone else.  However, there is a subset of us who are not comfortable accepting help from others.  We are concerned that we are a burden, we feel guilty that someone may have spent money on us or gone out of their way to do us a favor.  The bottom line, however, is that a balanced relationship allows us to be on both sides of help and sometimes we just need to be gracious and say “Thank you”.  This means not constantly or frequently telling the other person how sorry you are for inconveniencing them and accepting their help at face value.  Helping you allows the other person to also experience the joy of helping and actually creates a better balance in the relationship if you have been able to help them in the past.  All this being said, even when offering or accepting help, we need to have healthy boundaries.  Don’t accept help that you know will absolutely hurt the other person and don’t offer help that you know you either can not afford to offer or will hurt you and your family in some way.  There are times we want to help, but what we can offer may not be realistic for our current life situation. 

However, the strength of emotional support can never be underestimated.  Even small measures of help can have a tremendous impact on the other person.  For example, a phone call or visit, sending over dinner or inviting someone over for dinner.  This allows the other person to know you care.  If you are on the receiving end of this type of help, understand the other person is giving what they can based on where their life is and know they are thinking about you and you are not alone.  Remember, when someone wants to help you, they care.  Let them care.


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TOXIC PEOPLE

A staff member recently gave me a list of 15 questions regarding toxic people and I decided the best way to go about this was to just directly answer each question.

  1.      What are the signs someone is toxic?  The signs typically involve a pattern of behavior although this is not always the case.  The pattern I am referring to is when a person repeatedly engages in a behavior designed to take advantage of you, make you feel badly about yourself, make you feel guilty, and make you feel the life is being sucked out of you.

  2.      What does it mean to be toxic?  It means the person has been seriously damaged at some point in their life and maybe at several points in their life.  Rather than dealing with their emotional pain internally, this person deals with their pain externally.  In other words, they are spreading the pain and becoming an emotional cancer that will emotionally devour you and even possibly destroy your life.

  3.      What do toxic people do to our lives?  They can, if allowed, actually take over your life.  You may find that everything in your life revolves around their dramas and crises.  A sense of entitlement may develop and may develop quickly, such that you may be punished if you do not rescue them or listen to them when it is demanded of you.  Toxic people are typically master manipulators and use guilt as part of their control.

  4.      How does removing them from our lives help?  Removing toxic people from our lives helps us have more stability in our lives, allows us to develop healthy boundaries with people, and takes the contrived drama out of our lives.  It allows us to breathe emotionally.

  5.      Who deserves another chance?  If someone harms you with the intent to harm you, think long and hard about keeping them in your life.  If you keep them in your life and they intentionally harm you again, consider them malignant and cut them out of your life.  Remember, toxic people engage in a pattern of abusive behavior.  Anyone can have an occasional slip.  The non-toxic person, however, will readily apologize and not blame you for their behavior.

  6.      What is the difference between a person making a mistake or using poor judgement vs. a person who is toxic?  The toxic person engages in patterns of dysfunctional, harmful, malignant behavior with an intent to hurt you while someone just making a mistake or using poor judgement will take full responsibility and learn from their mistakes and feel genuine remorse for hurting you. 

  7.     When do you put someone out of your life? As soon as you realize they are toxic and have overtaken your life.

  8.      What does it mean to cut out toxic people and what does that look like in how we handle ourselves with or around them?  Cutting out toxic people is like cutting out emotional cancer.   As with any cancer, we cut it out and never take it back into our lives.  If you run into them, you can be socially polite, but do not give them any information about yourself they can use as ammunition to hurt you.

  9.      Why do people choose to keep people in their lives who they know are toxic and what does that say about us?  It means they may have been trained by a toxic parent to tolerate toxicity in their lives and it is expected.  People may not know what it is like to have non-toxic relationships.  How calm and beautiful it can be.  They may think toxic relationships are normal.  Many people say that someone is their friend and it is really only a relationship based on history versus a true friendship.  In a true friendship, the friend does not abuse you, use you or manipulate you into feeling guilty and doing whatever they want no matter what the cost to you.

  10. What if you’re unsure a person is toxic?  If it is a pattern of bad behavior with the same tired excuses that tend to blame everyone but that person, the person is toxic.

  11.  What if you don’t want to let go even if you know you should?  When we care about someone we don’t want to let go.  However, when we make a decision that is healthy for us it tends to be healthy for the people around us.  In the long run, your toxic person has to learn that they are the common denominator and they are the one that needs help.

  12. What if you want to let go but are afraid of backlash or just don’t know how?  There is really only backlash if the other is in a power position over you.  If this is a work relationship, document, keep your paper trail, and maybe even look for a position in another company. If the relationship is with a neighbor, just keep your distance.  However, if the relationship involves family or friends, you really need to consider cutting that person out of your life.  In these more intimate relationships, it is not so much backlash as it is punishing and guilt inducing, which really is more about their toxic agenda than it is about you.

 13.  What if you have to be around the toxic person, such as at work, in the family, at church, or a neighbor?  At work, see if you can transfer to another department or look for another job, in your family keep an emotional distance and don’t get involved in their drama, and with church and neighbors, be superficially pleasant and nothing else.  If you can’t get away from the toxic person, don’t engage these people or give them false hope for your involvement in their drama.  They will eventually look for someone else to rescue them.

   

  14.  Is it even possible for a person to start out benign but become toxic later in life?  

    Absolutely, but not the most typical.  Usually this type of dysfunction starts in childhood due to either or both an unsafe physical environment and an unsafe emotional environment.  Toxic people typically present as charming and wonderful when we first meet them.  If they are really good, they will draw us in slowly so we are sucked in to their drama before we even realize what is happening.

  15.  Can good people be toxic?  No.  Toxic people appear to be good on the surface to suck you in.  They do nice things for you and then when they ask you for something, they remind you what they have done for you.  Whatever they do for you will have strings attached.  Even if they apologize, they find a way to make you feel guilty and wrong.  If their bad behavior does not seem intentional but happens frequently, it is a pattern and a pattern of bad behavior is toxic. 

When someone in your life has a pattern of using you, making you feel guilty, disregarding your needs, or making you feel like you are being sucked dry, they are toxic and you are their prey.  If you do not want to be someone’s prey, don’t let them be your predator.    

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HEALTHY COPING WHEN CARING FOR AN ELDERLY RELATIVE

For many of us, this will mean taking care of elderly parents or possibly an elderly spouse.  This is a painful, exhausting, frustrating, incredible, amazing journey.  Whoever you are taking care of, for whatever reason, the experience will be what you make it to be.  However, there are some guidelines that will make the experience richer.  Let’s assume this is a person you love and want to take care of.   Remember that this is a very scary time for them.  They are losing their independence and for many people that translates into losing their pride.  Whether you are taking care of someone in a facility or at home, try to help your loved one keep as much pride as possible. Some people would be more comfortable being showered by a staff member than a family member.  Other people feel the opposite.  Regardless, try and do the fun things with your elder and allow staff to do some of the more difficult health care activities.   Help them do as much as they are capable of doing.  If they are able to walk, let them and help them walk.  If they are not able to walk but like to be taken places in a wheelchair then try and make that happen.  If they enjoy eating out, take them out. Even if they do not remember what you just did, as long as they enjoy the activity, then provide the activity.  When they can no longer go out, bring the take out to them.  Rent a movie for them to enjoy, especially an older one that they might already remember.  This makes it easier for them to follow and enjoy.  Ask them to tell you all their stories and record the stories or write them.  Many rich family history is lost when an elder dies.   They will usually enjoy having an audience for their stories and even though you may have heard some of the stories, this time you will be more aware that you may not hear it again and you will find yourself wanting to ask more questions. 

Go through old picture albums together, also a great way to travel back through memory lane, hear more stories, and allow your elder to enjoy some memories with you.   One of the most difficult transitions for the caretaker is to transition from the role of adult child or spouse to the role of decision-maker.  Sometimes, in your new rule, you will have to make a decision that goes against what your elder initially wanted.  If you are used to being in the role of child, it is very difficult to not “obey” your parent even when it is not in their best interests.  Remember all the things your elder has already lost:  friends, family members (maybe even a child or a spouse), job, home, pets, physical integrity such as loss of mobility, and cognitive integrity such as memory loss.  One of the most difficult aspects of aging are all the losses.  The last thing most people want to be at the end of their life is a burden.  Don’t make the caretaking a burden or it will come across that way to everyone.  There is joy still to be experienced.  Don’t forget to get help and take some time for yourself or you will burn out.  Make new stories in your life that you can share with your elder, it will make them feels more a part of your life and you will have a very interested audience.  When your elder dies, you want to remember more joy than sadness, and you are the one that can make that happen. 

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Manners And Social Etiquette

I was recently asked by a co-worker to write about manners and the lost art of social skills as a follow-up to our blog on “The Lost Art of the Thank You Note”.  Social etiquette is referred to as social skills in psychology.  Why is this training so important? Social skills are not just important as a courtesy to others, but can help or hinder us in our personal and professional relationships.  Many young children seemed to have not been taught basic skills such as saying Thank You, Excuse Me, Please, etc.  In addition to verbal niceties, eye contact is one of the most valuable social skills we can teach our children.  When we interact and communicate with others, if the other person is not looking at us, we may not feel like that person is really listening to us.  We will also miss non-verbal cues without eye-contact.  Other aspects of social skills include sharing, offering food and drink, being kind, and making people feel welcome. 

My mother used to call this being a good hostess and making other people feel comfortable, not just in your home but where ever you are and whatever you are doing.  Do not cut in line, do not make fun of people, do not imitate people, and do not try to embarrass people.  It may only be a matter of time before you are on the receiving end of that behavior and it does not feel good.  In essence, teach your children to not be bullies.  Some people seem quick to take offense and rather than escalate the situation, help your children learn how to de-escalate and calm down the other person.  For example, rather than yelling and cursing, use a calm and soothing voice, maintain eye contact, and focus on problem solving.  If the person helping you in a store seems grumpy and angry and rude, smile at them and thank them sincerely for their help.  You may be surprised at how the other person will often mellow and smile back.  In fact, smiling at people is a wonderful and underrated social skill.  It is difficult to have a negative response to someone with a genuine smile on their face.  Don’t talk about people behind their back when you are frustrated or angry with them.  Whether at work or in your social circle, it is rude, often spiteful, and may bounce back at you in a negative way.  At work, if your co-worker hears what you said, you may not be able to re-establish a good relationship with them as the trust will be lost.  This is especially true in a social relationship or friendship.  Do not say anything about another person that you cannot say to them directly.  By the way, direct communication is much better for problem solving anyway.  Filter your ideas, actions and verbalization through thoughts and acts of loving kindness and the rest will come naturally.

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Parenting Your High School Graduate/18 Year Old Adult

     Congratulations to you and your child graduating from High School.  After 13 years of hard work, your child has begun the true transition into adulthood.  So now what?  Some of you will have children go away to college, some will still live at home and go to a local college or vocational school, and some will enter the work force.  Your sons will receive a draft card in the mail and your daughters will insist that you can’t tell them how to dress.  How can you make this transition in a healthy way that allows your relationship with your children continue to grow and not deteriorate into frustration and resentment on both sides?

  The answer can be found in your communication.  Think of your 18 year old as a brand new adult, like a newly hired employee.  They still need some guidance and mentoring.  However, this has to be done in a way that is mutually respectful.  The best place to begin is with your expectations and this will depend on the history of you and your child.  Let’s assume you have had a relatively good relationship and you generally trust your child.  List out all your expectations of your child and have them list out their expectations of what is going to change in their life in terms of new responsibilities and privileges.  If your child is going away to college, work out a budget with them and be available to them when they have questions about how to deal with problems that arise.  Help them develop a budget as many children have never done this before.  Reinforce the rule of never drinking and driving or being a passenger with someone who is drinking. Talk about roommate etiquette.  Discuss how often you expect to communicate and/or if possible, how often you expect them to come home.  Please do not pick a major for your child.  That has to be their choice, good or bad.  You don’t want them to resent you later in life because they never got to explore a desired career path.  You don’t have to understand their interests, you have to support their choices.

     Things will probably be trickier if your new adult child lives at home. You will see things you may not want to see and will worry more because of it.  Again, sit down with your child and discuss your expectations and your child’s expectations.  For example, discuss curfews and how you will negotiate them.  Possibly your child will not really have a curfew, but you will want to know where they are and when they will be home.  Explain to them that this is a courtesy as you live together. Each of you need to know when to expect the other family member to be home.  If your child is working you need to discuss what expenses they take over and what you will still pay for.  If they don’t take care of their room, show them what you would like to see them do and also let them know that there will be times when you ask for their help as a family member and not a child.  Your job is to guide them and mentor them, not control them.  Allow them to make mistakes while still under the safety of your protection (within legal limits of course).  Communication and mutual respect will help your child navigate and grow into an independent adult more smoothly than rules and demands and punishments.

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