It’s February and the season of love, but what happens when that “love” is really abuse.  Typically we have a concept of abuse as a person who hits, kicks, punches, and throws things at their partner.  But what if none of those aggressive behaviors are present?  Can it still be abuse?  The short answer is yes.

A few years ago, I attended a conference workshop by Lisa Aronson Fontes, PhD in which she discussed the topic of coercive control.

Coercive Control
“It usually includes some combination of degrading, isolating, micromanaging, manipulating, stalking, physically abusing, sexually coercing, threatening, or punishment.  A relationship that should involve loving support ends up a trap designed for domination.  Victims feel anxious, dependent and afraid, deprived of their freedom, self-esteem, and basic rights.”

FONTES (2015)

One of the things that makes coercive control and psychological abuse difficult is that is largely invisible.  People who engage in coercively controlling their partner usually go to great lengths to maintain a good impression to those around them.  They may send flowers to your job so that you coworkers think that you have an amazing partner.  But when you get home you the same person micromanages everything you do, belittle and degrades you, and isolates you from friends and family.

Many people think that only “weak” people get involved in abusive relationships, but this is simply not true.  It can happen to anyone. People who control others often come across as charming, supportive partners.  Acting charming, romantic, and supportive at the beginning of the relationship allows the controlling person to believe that this is the “real them”. Over time, the controlling person will begin to micromanage you, belittle you, degrade you, manipulate you. Victims often go along with what the controlling person wants because they think “If I do what this person says, maybe they will go back to the ‘real them’.” However, as time progresses, the controlling behavior only gets worse.

What might seem like care and concern initially can quickly become a way to keep tabs on their partner. Calling several times to ask where a person is, when will they be home, who they are with.  These seemingly harmless questions can then be used to control where someone is allowed to go, how long they are allowed to stay at certain locations, and who they are allowed to be around.

Is someone controlling you?

• Do you feel threatened?
• Are you afraid to speak up?
• Is your partner constantly jealous or possessive?
• Does your partner try to limit your contact with family and friends?
• Do you work hard to avoid “provoking” a bad reaction in your partner?
• Do you feel ashamed of things your partner does to you or makes you do?

Why do people stay in abusive relationships?

A controlling partner often sprinkles moments of romance, love, and connection into their controlling behavior. These periods are meant to lull the partner into believing that the good times are great and they just need to tough it out through the bad times. Partners often see these bright spots as an indication that things could improve. However, these bright moments are usually brief and the controlling behaviors quickly resumes. Even when a partner does want to leave, there are often several factors that kept them trapped such as feelings of love, children, and circumstances.

Additionally, leaving is often the most dangerous time for a trapped partner as they are usually threats of violence and destruction of the trapped partner’s reputation.

If the trapped partner does attempt to leave the relationship, often a controlling partner will make promises to change to keep the trapped partner in the relationship. But, ultimately no changes are actually made. They may continue to blame you for how you “made” them react or try to get sympathy from your family and friends. They may say that they cannot change without your love and support. These tactics are merely meant to keep the trapped partner in the relationship.

What to do if you find yourself in an abusive relationship and you want to end the relationship.

• Seek support from domestic violence agencies, therapy, medical help, police and advocates.
• Create a safety plan.
• Protect your money and your children.

While it may seem that you will never be able to escape a controlling relationship, recovery is possible.

Domestic Violence Hotline: 1-800-799-7233

Fontes, L. A. (2015). Invisible chains – overcoming coercive control in your intimate relationshi. Guilford Publications.

This month we have been discussing “Creating the Life You Want”. In our first blog post, we discussed setting the foundation for change by forgiving yourself.  We discussed the importance of being kind and realistic with yourself in the process of forgiving your self.  In our second blog post of the month, we highlighted this process through a book review on Michelle Obama’s book, Becoming.  In this blog post, we plan on getting down to the details of how you determine and achieve the life you want also known as goal setting.

Goal setting in and of itself sounds relatively easy.  You determine a goal and set that as your goal.  Many of us do this as part of our yearly routine through new year’s resolutions. However, many of us also find ourselves coming up short and not reaching the goals that we have set for ourselves. As briefly discussed in our first blog post, often we set unrealistic goals and then become discouraged when we do not meet our unrealistic goals.

How do we know if our goal is unrealistic?  In our first blog post we used an example of someone who was not going to the gym at all and then set a goal of going to a gym five days a week for one hour a session. This is a change from 0 minutes of exercise to 300 minutes of exercise per week.  While it is possible, it is a big increase from your normal activities. While you may be able to make a 300 minute adjustment for the first week, you may quickly find yourself not meeting the mark and becoming discouraged.

For those of us who set the annual goal to lose weight, we often set new year’s resolutions which include increased exercise with diet change.  We maybe maintain the new diet and exercise plan for a week or two, but then slowly and surely begin to revert to our old ways.  Why does this happen?  In short, we attempted to make too many changes at one time.  Completely overhauling your life is a difficult task and while it may start of great, it is usually not sustainable.

 

If you cannot define your goal, how do you know when you have achieved it?

 

Before we go into great detail about breaking goals into achievable increments, we should start with how to operationally define your goals.  This may sound fancy, but it is really about taking some time to really think about your goal.

I often ask my client’s the “magic question”: “If you were to wake up tomorrow and someone had waved a magic wand and ______________ was no longer a problem.  How would you know _________ had changed?  Would you feel different?  What would be different in your life?”

This may seem like odd questioning, but the purpose of the question is to get you to think about how you define the problem in your life through your experience (your feelings, how the problem manifests in your everyday life, etc.) and how to measure change.

For example, if your goal is weight loss.  You may notice that your weight had changed on a scale.  You may notice that your clothing is fitting looser.  You might feel more happy or confident in yourself. You might notice other people complimenting you on how much weight you have loss.

 

Change is more sustainable when it is broken down into smaller achievable increments. The more successful you are at achieving a goal, the more likely you are to continue to strive toward the goal.

 

Once you have set your goal, it is time to start breaking it down into small achievable increments. In a weight loss scenario this might be deciding to change your diet or deciding to increase the amount of time you are exercising.  I usually suggest breaking your goal down into two smaller objectives and then breaking those objectives into two smaller tasks.

For example:

GOAL: Lose 10 pounds.

Objective 1: Increase Exercise.

Task 1: Increase daily steps on fitness tracker.

Task 2: Start Couch to 5K run program.

Objective 2: Change Diet

Task 1: Drink 64 oz of water per day.

Task 2: Start tracking calories.

Breaking your larger goal into smaller objectives and tasks help you work incrementally towards implementing your goals.  Instead of attempting to implement all of these changes at one time.  It would be more effective to start by increasing water intake one week and then increasing steps on fitness tracker the next week. Once you have been successful with those two tasks, you can add in tracking your calories.  After you have successfully implemented those tasks for a few weeks, it might be a good time to start your couch to 5k program.

Phasing in changes gives you time to master one step before you add more difficulty, it also gives you the opportunity to reassess your goals and determine whether or not the task, objective, and goal are realistic.  For example, you may determine after attempting to get 10,000 steps on your fitness tracker that you are only able to get 5,000 steps per day.  It might be better to scale your goal down to 7,500 steps and attempt to reach that goal instead of beating yourself up for not reaching 10,000 steps.

Never be afraid to adjust your goals in light of real data that says that your goals maybe unrealistic. The more realistic your goal, the more likely you are to successfully achieve it.

I would like to start this post by emphasizing that this is not a political post.  I am not here to discuss the specifics of the book or the political opinions of anyone mentioned within the book.  After all, I am a therapist and not a politician.  For those who do not know, I am an avid reader.  I enjoy a good book and often look for meaning within books that I think will be helpful to myself or my clients.  I found several important messages within this book and I will share them here.

DISCLAIMER: To be honest, I was gifted this book.  I had not heard about it before hand and had not looked into what it was about.  (If you know me, this would not come as a surprise as I am prone to not google or research things in advance.) Thus, I started the book without knowing what I was about to get myself into.

As a mental health professional, I appreciate the honesty with which this book was written.  It would have been easy for Mrs. Obama to obscure parts of herself or her history in order to “put her best foot forward”.  I respect that she took so much time to talk about areas with which she struggled from fertility to problems within her marriage. I wish that more people could be so honest and upfront about their struggles.  Often when I see clients, they believe that their problems are so obscure that no one could possibly understand or relate to what they are experiencing. The truth is that there are many people who are struggling in silence with some of the same things with which you are struggling.

 

“For me, becoming isn’t about arriving somewhere or achieving a certain aim.  I see it instead as forward motion, a means of evolving, a way to reach continuously toward a better self.  The journey does not end…” – Michelle Obama

 

One of the most striking parts of the book that really resonated with me is the desire and driving force to achieve a specific goal.  Often, we are so committed to a specific goal and we believe that we will finally be happy once that goal is achieved.  Unfortunately, more often than not, achieving that goal did not bring the happiness we thought it would.  It often brings up regrets of things that we wished we would have learned along the way.

When we are children, we are often taught that life is a path with a map.  If we stray off of the path, we will be lost forever and never reach the final destination.  In the work I do with clients, I work to break down this misconception.  Life is not a map to a predetermined destination. It is a journey, an adventure.  Going off the path will not lead to your demise, it will teach you important lessons that you may never have learned otherwise. Even the worst of scenarios can be a learning moment if for no other reason that it teaches you that you are stronger than you think.

In the blog post last week, we discussed setting the foundation for change and how it begins with being understanding and forgiving of yourself.  There were several points within this book where this process is depicted. I won’t give detailed descriptions of these moments as not to spoil the book for those who have not read it.  I will say notice her honesty when she recognizes that her way of being is not the only way of being.  Notice that it took her time, but she understood that she had to make adjustments to not only herself but also her expectations of others. Notice how she used the different perspectives of others as a learning experience and not just as a challenge to her belief system.  Notice her acceptance of who she is was just as important as her acceptance of others.

 

“It’s all a process, steps along a path.  Becoming requires equal parts patience and rigor.  Becoming is never giving up on the idea that there’s more growing to be done.” – Michelle Obama

 

Everyone has a different path and a different journey that they are on, but that does not mean you are alone. I recommend this book as a rare opportunity to gain insight into what personal growth and development can look like from inside someone else’s head.  Rarely are we given the opportunity to see the steps and path someone took towards overcoming their personal struggles and external adversity.

Lastly, even Michelle and Barack Obama got therapy when they needed help in their marriage.  Don’t be afraid to reach out if you are struggling. If it can help them, it can help you too!

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2019!  Through our Instagram page, we shared two of our new year’s resolutions with you:

1) Make myself a higher priority.

2) Forgive myself for my past.

In this blog post we’re going to focus more on forgiving yourself for past.

Often, we set new year’s resolution or  plan to make changes to our lives and they inevitably fail.  We will go into more depth about actual goal setting in a later blog post this month.   In this blog post, we want to focus on the foundation of the  goals we set.

Often, the goals we have set are unrealistic especially in comparison to our current behavior.  For example:

Person: “My resolution is to go to the gym five days a week and work out for one hour each time”.

Me: “How often are you going to the gym now?  How long do you currently work out?”

Person: “I do not go to the gym at all right now.”

This is not to say that you should not make a resolution of going to the gym; however, it is unrealistic that you would be able to go from zero hours of working out to five hours a week of working out.  A more realistic goal would be to try to workout 30 minutes a week and increase once you have mastered that goal.  However, this is not often what happens.  We often set unrealistic goals and then we beat ourselves up and call ourselves a failure for not being able to meet the unrealistic standard with which we began.

I often tell my clients that people have a tendency to treat ourselves horribly.  We tell ourselves mean things, punish ourselves, and expect ourselves to be perfect despite how horribly we treat ourselves.  In many ways, we treat ourselves in a way that we would never allow someone else to treat us.  Why?

I do not pretend to have all of the answers, but what I can say is that it is easy to be mean to ourselves. Usually, other people are not privy to our internal dialogue.  There is no one to referee our statements to ourselves.  I often ask people to think about their body as a separate person (a little odd put go with me here).

Imagine your body was a separate person with their own voice. What would your body say back to you?

Would your body tell you that your expectations are unrealistic?  Would it tell you that it wished you were nicer?  Would it want you to be more patient?  More understanding?

As it relates to our past, we often have a list of things that we “should have”, “could have”, and “would have” done differently.  We often beat ourselves up for mistakes that we have made in the past.  While there are often lessons to be learned from the past, we can also blame ourselves for things that we could never have known.  Just because hindsight is 20/20 does not mean that you could have seen all of the warning signs in real time.  It is easier to find the red flags when you know that there are red flags.  It is harder to know if something is a red flag in real time.

I often encourage clients to have a kind and realistic approach to themselves in the present and in the past. I think it is important to have both perspectives when examining yourself and your thoughts.  I feel it is one of the healthiest ways to address oneself and one’s past.  Here are the steps:

Forgive Yourself:  Understand that the past is the past.  You can learn from it, but you cannot change it.  Beating yourself up for things that you should/could/would have done differently will not help you move forward.  It is more likely to keep you stuck in a place of anger/resentment.  Imagine that you made the decision you made with the best information you had at the time.  It is possible that you would have made a different decision with different information, but that is irrelevant.  You made the decision.  You are wiser now.

Be Kind to Yourself:  Once you have come to a level of acceptance and forgiveness about the decisions you have made in the past.  Stop beating yourself up about it.  This does not mean that you absolve yourself of all responsibility for past actions, that is not what we are talking about.  This means that you recognize your actions, recognize your responsibility, and understand what to do about it going forward.  You can do this without beating yourself up and talking down to yourself.  Accept that it happened and all you can do is make adjustments in the future.

Be Realistic:This is often the most difficult step as it is difficult to determine what a realistic response/reaction would be especially when we have a tendency to set unrealistic expectations for ourselves.  I often tell clients to imagine a friend came to them with this exact same scenario.  What would you tell that person?  Does what you would tell that person match what you would tell yourself?  Often, we are able to give great advice to other people but struggle to take our own advice.  The gap can come from the unrealistic expectations we place upon ourselves.  We can understand realistic and rational limitations of other people; however, we struggle to recognize realistic and rational expectations of ourselves. This last step may be difficult but making the effort to “practice what you preach” can help you work on setting more realistic expectations for yourself.

What would it look like for you to forgive yourself for your past?

What would it look like for you to be kinder to yourself?

What would it look like for you to be more realistic about the standards and expectations you set for yourself?