Author: corinnemasur2331

The Transition to Motherhood: Pregnancy

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Part 5 in a series

In her book, Matresence, Lucy Jones says that pregnancy is a metamorphosis. Like a caterpillar that becomes a butterfly, the woman’s previous identity must melt away in order for her new identity and concept of self to emerge.

And during her own first pregnancy, Jones found this process very disturbing. She says, unlike other stages of life for which there are parties and ceremonies to mark the transition of one stage of life to another, during pregnancy, for which there are no ceremonies in our culture which celebrate the mother, the woman can feel profoundly awkward and alone.

Jones talks about how, during adolescence, she felt similarly awkward. She felt like she didn’t know what was going to happen next or how to be; she felt unsettled by the changes in her body.

But, she says, she had friends going through the same thing and films and articles and music which addressed the strangeness and alienation of adolescence, so she didn’t feel completely alone.

But as she went through her pregnancy, she did not feel accompanied. Part of this may have been because she, herself, did not understand what was happening to her mind, her body, or her self — and therefore she could not really talk about it with others.

She says that missing from pregnancy books or health apps was information about how pregnancy affects a woman’s mind – and her actual brain. She quotes Rosemary Balsam from the Western New England Psychoanalytic Society as calling this the “vanished pregnant body.”

She suggests that the very idea of the pregnant woman, of being two people in one, may make other people uncomfortable.

For example, there’s the the story of the runner, Allyson Felix. Felix was an Olympic medalist and many time US National Champion when she became pregnant. One of her sponsors, Nike, cut her pay by 70% and refused to offer her reasonable pay protection during her postpartum period. Felix reports being told “runners should just run” – in other words, women runners should not be pregnant.

Clearly having a premier spokesperson be pregnant was uncomfortable for Nike. And Jones talks about how it was uncomfortable for her – as it is for so many women — and not just because of the bodily changes, but also because of the emotional disequilibrium she felt and because of the changes in the way she perceived others as seeing her.

Experiencing this was hard for Jones because she felt external pressure to “pretend that pregnancy was a less dramatic and drastic event” than what she felt it to be.

And it is a dramatic and drastic event. For all women.

Thank goodness for Lucy Jones for saying so and letting us all heave a sigh of relief. We didn’t have to say it. But she did.

Toward the end of her pregnancy, Jones describes bowing out of work and not feeling guilty. She realized this was not typical of her — but she felt that she wanted to be at home and she didn’t mind being alone. She says that she felt “calm and placid, pleasantly vague, like nothing could touch me”.

Later she found out that this is normal — that there are physiological changes that accompany each of the many stages of pregnancy and that at the end of pregnancy, the reactivity to stress hormones is dampened. No wonder she didn’t feel the normal pressure to work and perform and please her boss. And luckily for her, she had the ability to step away.

The biology and neurobiological literature supports Jones. When she reports that she felt that her brain was changing during her pregnancies, she was right. In one study by Niu et all (2024), ten pregnant women were followed over the course of their pregnancies. Changes in brain structure were charted. Reductions in gray matter volume were found over the course of pregnancy. In other words — the pregnant woman’s brain actually shrinks! Their conclusion? There are profound neurobiological changes during pregnancy.

Moreover, in a review of the literature, Esel (2010) found evidence that the brains of pregnant women and women with children are very different from the brains of women who have not had children who are within the same age range. Moreover, Esel found ample evidence of neurobiological and hormonal influences on women and their feelings and behavior. She says that maternal behavior develops over the course of a woman’s life, including during pregnancy. This happens through the development of special neural networks, which are cooperatively developed by genetic, environmental, and hormonal factors.

In fact, the biology is fascinating. Esel points out the importance of hormonal influences in preparing women for motherhood. She says that estrogen, prolactin, and oxytocin stimulate maternal behavior after birth — and that the stimulation of the vagina during birth initiates the release of oxytocin, so important for the initiation of maternal behavior as well as milk production. She also discusses the finding that women are prepared to become mothers from their own birth. She says that early exposure to estrogen during the perinatal period in their own early lives may be responsible for women’s greater interest in and facility with social relationships over that of men. She suggests that this capacity primes women to be interested in and to relate to their infants once they become mothers. Then, during pregnancy the capacity for relating to their own infants is further primed by the high levels of progesterone and estrogen which are secreted. Furthermore, she says that the hormonal exposure of the brain during pregnancy plays an important role in the development of maternal neural networks and systems.

In the same vein Esel says that in humans, the ability to establish social relationships is inversely related to levels of fetal testosterone both in females and males — so in other words, men, from birth, are less primed to establish social relationships.

No wonder women feel different when they are pregnant — and no wonder they feel a shift in both body and identity. The hormonal influences on their brains, their bodies, their feelings and their behavior are powerful.

I look forward to reading the rest of Jones’s book to find out more about the research on the physiological and psychological changes that come about during pregnancy. I know too little about this.

In fact, most of us know too little about this.

Scientists are looking at aspects of the woman’s experience during pregnancy in a way that they might not have considered doing years ago, even though we have needed this information for a long time. But perhaps, as Jones suggests, science waited until there were enough women in the field to make this a priority.

References

Esel, Ertugrul (2010). Neurobiology of Motherhood. Turkish Journal of Psychiatry. https://www.turkpsikiyatri.com/Data/UnpublishedArticles/3uydyp.pdf

Jones, Lucy. Matrescence.

Yanbin Niu, Benjamin N. Conrad, M. Catalina Camacho, Sanjana Ravi, Hannah A. Piersiak, Lauren G. Bailes, Whitney Barnett, Mary Kate Manhard, David A. Cole, Ellen Wright Clayton, Sarah S. Osmundson, Seth A. Smith, Autumn Kujawa, Kathryn L. Humphreys (2024). Neurobiological Changes Across Pregnancy: A Longitudinal Investigation, bioRxiv, The Preprint Server for Biology doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/2024.03.08.584178

A Deeper Dive into the Transition to Motherhood

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More on matrescence – part 4 in a series

Posted July 20, 2024

Let’s take a deeper dive into the transition to motherhood in this, the fourth post in a series on this subject.

In the Introduction to her beautiful book, Matrescence, Lucy Jones says, “Pregnancy, then birth, and then – big time – early motherhood, simply did not match up with the cultural, social, and philosophical narratives I had grown up with…I started to realize that that my mind had been colonized by inadequate ideas about womanhood, about motherhood, about value, even love… A sense that I had been fundamentally misinformed about the female body and maternal experience set in fast” (p. 9, 10).

She describes how, during her pregnancy she noticed changes in herself which she had no language to describe – but she noticed that her “consciousness felt different: restructured or rewired” (p. 10).

She says, “I thought the baby would grow inside my body, …that I would still be the same person. But that didn’t seem to be the case” (p. 10).

I think that many if not most women feel all of these things. But do they have the language to speak about them? Or do they feel permitted to speak about them?

I suspect not.

Jones talks about how ill prepared she was for motherhood – how she had never changed a diaper and knew nothing about what it took to raise and take care of another human.

And I think many women feel this way – especially with their first babies.

Jones speaks about her guilt if she tried to do anything just for herself during those first months of motherhood.

She also writes about the idea that women are supposed to have a built in maternal instinct and how this works against the acknowledgement that motherhood absolutely requires the acquisition of knowledge and skills about babies, children and mothering.

And in saying this, I think Jones puts her finger squarely on the shame and embarrassment many mothers feel when they don’t know what the right thing is to do for their baby – whether it is something as simple as whether to put them down for a nap or something as complex and important as when to call the pediatrician.

As she says, “this is a set up in which mothers (are) destined to fail” (p. 11).

She says, “I thought early motherhood would be gentle, beatific, pacific, tranquil, bathed in a soft light. But actually it was hard core, edgy, gnarly” (p. 14).

Finally, we have someone who tells the truth about motherhood.

We have needed a Lucy Jones for a long time.

Women feel that they are not allowed to talk about the utter fatigue, boredom, tedium, panic and downright hardship of childcare. Yes, the difficulty of juggling work and child care is talked about. And the under valuation of parenting work is mentioned now and then. But as a society? We do not have much of a discussion around many of these issues – and we certainly have not made changing any of them a priority – in our own minds, with our partners and friends, or at the ballot box.

There is still pressure to put on a good face as a mother, to treat the work we do as joyous and to present that point of view to anyone other than our closest and most trusted friends and fellow parents.

Jones calls this “cultural apathy”. And she says that many women feel that they themselves are to blame for the extent of their troubles as new mothers. However, the fact is that a majority of women feel anxious after having a baby, at least 45% report feeling low, and at least 35% describe themselves as depressed. One in five mothers do not tell anyone about their feelings and over half report not feeling supported by their families. Almost half say they feel like they have to handle everything alone.

But there is hope. Jones writes about a burgeoning field of neurobiology that is looking at the changes in the brains of pregnant women and those who care for young infants. And she quotes Alexandra Sacks, a psychiatrist interested in this subject, as saying that simply by talking about the difficulties inherent in transitioning to motherhood, many women will feel relief.

And this is why, Jones says, she wrote her book: as an invitation to start talking about the process of becoming and being a mother.

And this is why I am writing this series.

Stay tuned for more.

References

Jones, Lucy. Matrescence

Matresence: The Transition to Motherhood – Isolation and Identity Shift

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A while back I wrote a post on matrescense, or the transition to motherhood, which seems to have struck a chord. This post is the second in a series on this subject.

To give some background, matrescence is a terms that was coined in the 1970’s by medical anthropologist, Dana Rafael, in her book, Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change. More recently, the term was brought back to our attnetion by Aurelie Athan, a reproductive psychologist at Columbia University.

Athan notes that Rafael “pointed out that in many cultures, the birth of a new baby is announced by saying, “a woman has given birth.” Athan’s point is that the focus is on the mother and what she has done. And that emphasis is important. The mother is given credit for what she has accomplished. This is symbolic of the meaning the culture gives to the event and how it is handled. In cultures other than our own, mothers are often more supported after the birth of a baby, and more taken care of.

For example, in South Korea, it is common for mothers to go to a retreat for the first 21 days after they give birth. There, fresh meals are delivered three times a day, they can receive massages and facials and attend childcare classes, and there are nurses available to watch over the baby if the mother needs a rest.

There is a special soup to drink, traditional in South Korea during the postpartum period, lactation consultants and exercise routines to help with recovery, and body realignment to help new mothers get back in touch with their bodies.

In South Korea, eight out of ten mothers go to such a spa after giving birth.

This is the kind of thing that mothers in the United States can only dream about.

Here, mothers are often isolated in their own apartments or homes after their babies are born. During their leave from work, they often struggle with feelings of loneliness and anxiety. And this is especially true for first time moms who are not entirely sure what they are doing.

For example, a New York Times article profiled Alicia Robbins. When she had her first two children, she, like almost every woman who has birthed a child before her in this country, felt overwhelmed upon leaving the hospital. Never mind that she herself is an obstetrician and gynecologist. She said, having a child “was way harder than I expected. I kept wondering if it was OK that breastfeeding was so difficult or that I felt anxious. I kept asking myself, ‘Is this really my new normal?’”

Her mother came to help her, “but she kind of froze,” Dr. Robbins said. “I love her, God bless her, but we had fights over things like whether you need to sterilize the breast pump for three hours.”

In this country, as Aurelie Athan says, we talk about the baby, not the mother. We pay attention to the infant, give gifts to the infant, visit the infant….and we don’t talk so much about what the mother has accomplished and what we can do for her.

But the process of becoming a mother is something that we, in our culture, need to pay more attention to. As Daniel Stern said in his two books, The Motherhood Constellation and Becoming a Mother, giving birth to a new identity may be as hard, or even harder than the act of giving birth to the actual baby.

Becoming a mother changes who a woman feels herself to be. It expands her identity — but, as with many changes, this expansion can be fraught with uncertainty and anxiety. Who am I now? Do I know how to be a mother? Am I doing the right thing? What kind of mother do I want to be? Can I ever get back to doing the things I used to like to do? And if I do, will I be neglecting my baby? Can I still work? How much should I work? Can I still be good at my job?

The questions are endless.

Additionally, becoming a mother changes a woman’s identity as a partner. And this is not always easy. Sometimes a woman wonders if she still has room in her emotional repertoire for her partner. Sometimes the partner is jealous of the time a woman spends with her baby. Sometimes a woman feels she can only share her body with one person at a time and she feels resentful of other demands being made on her or torn about who that person should be — the baby or the partner? Often, a mother and her partner differ on how they each feel caring for the child should be handled. Conflicts come up over sleep training or how much of a schedule the baby really needs. And the energy for talking through these conflicts can be in short supply. Women often feel they carry more of the mental load for making doctor’s appointments, reading up on child development, and thinking about what the baby needs.

This identity shift is especially difficult, as a new mother needs her partner for support, and any resentment, difference of opinion, or outright conflict can get in the way of feeling supported.

The identity shift a woman faces after giving birth is hard. Like shedding a skin that no longer fits, the woman must say goodbye to aspects of herself and ways of being and doing that were part of her previous self, and she must grow into her new role as she works out what that will be.

Just knowing that all women experience this, that having a hard time with this shift is normal, and that it can be named and learned about — and even, in some cases, talked about with other mothers — can be helpful to new mothers.

I recommend that anyone suffering from this transition reach out — whether to friends, other new mothers, more experienced mothers, or even to a therapist who can discuss these issues openly.

After my last post, one such mother reached out to me and said that she felt less alone just knowing that what she was feeling was not unique to her.

****************************

For more good discussion of this subject, see the references section below and watch this blog for part 3 of this series.

To find a therapist, visit the Psychology Today Therapy Directory.

References

Jones, Lucy. Matresence

Rafael, Dana. Being Female: Reproduction, Power and Change

Stern, Daniel. Becoming a Mother

Stern, Daniel, The Motherhood Constellation

Today, As We Think About the Victims of the Massive Bombing Campaign in Ukraine, a Post on War and Children

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Because of the news of a massive bombing campaign including the bombing of a Ukrainian Hospital today, I would like to post on war on children.

This is an excerpt from my book, How Children Grieve: What Adults Miss and What They Can Do to Help:

One psychiatrist said of both the children and the adults in the Ukraine, “(They) aren’t just grieving a person; (they) are grieving (their) entire existence.”[i]

And, as the United Nation International Children’s Fund (UNICEF) says:

            “In war, children suffer the most”.

As I write, children are dying and losing loved ones every single day in multiple locations around the world, including Ukraine, Gaza, Israel, Russia, Sudan, Somalia, Libya, Myanmar, Yemen, Congo and numerous other countries. These children are suffering in ways that are quite simply horrific and completely incompatible with normal development.

In fact, globally, one in four children, or over 400 million children live in a country affected by armed conflict, terrorism, or disaster.[ii] And armed conflict can last throughout a child’s entire life, such as in Liberia where civil war caused widespread trauma from 1989 to 2004.[iii]

The effects of war are innumerable. They extend far beyond the trauma that is experienced by the loss of loved ones and the witnessing and being the victim of violence. In wartime, children, teens and adults may all experience a brutal shattering of parts of their inner worlds. Their minds may become black holes of horror and despair and their mental functioning can be intruded upon and assaulted by destructive forces. [iv]

Moreover, they experience all the secondary losses of war including the loss of home and community due to fighting and bombardment. They include all the losses embedded in the experiences of evacuation and immigration including the loss of contact with friends, and the division of families. They include all the difficulties associated with adapting to one or more new living arrangements. And they include the loss of food security, the loss of the provision of proper public health measures and the loss of general health care including mental health care.

The World Health Organization (WHO) and the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) estimated that approximately 20 million children and adolescents have been displaced from their country of origin as refugees in the year 2023.[v]

And we must remember that the numbers of children living through war and experiencing displacement are even larger than this because there are many kinds of war—including not only armed conflicts between nations – but also drug wars, gang wars, and more localized street fighting caused by conditions of poverty and social inequality – and these too cause people to suffer and to flee.

In the Ukraine alone, as of March 2022, half of all Ukrainian refugees were children.[vi] And this number does not even include all of the children who have been kidnapped and forced to adapt to life in Russia.  Again, this is a LOT of children who have lost their homes, friends, neighborhoods, schools and so much more.

The past two decades have marked increasing interest in the psychological impact of war on children. Many researchers have studied this subject, it is well documented that exposure to adverse childhood events (including violence and war trauma) leads to a higher-than-average incidence of acute stress disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and physiological and mental illness).

The most important thing we know about the effect of war on children is that even above and beyond the exposure to risk and violence, the most traumatizing event for children is the threat of separation from one or both parents or actual separation from them. Given the intense attachment of children to their parents, this is the worst consequence of war for children and leads to the most suffering. [vii]

We also know that the most common mental health effects of exposure to war for children are elevated symptoms traumatic stress, depressive disorders, anxiety disorders and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

There is so much more to say about the effect of war on children. See this site for more in the coming weeks.

[i] Fleming, LaKeisha, How the War in the Ukraine is Affecting the Mental Health of Survivors.

https://www.verywellmind.com/ukrainian-mental-health-during-the-war-5225389

[ii] Gudrun Østby, Siri Aas Rustad, and Andreas Forø Tollefsen, “Children Affected by Armed Conflict, 1990–2019,” Conflict Trends 6.

[iii] Betancourt. T. S., et al., “The Intergenerational Impact of War on Mental Health and Psychosocial Wellbeing: Lessons from the Longitudinal Study of War-Affected Youth in Sierra Leone,” Conflict and Health 14, no. 62 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1186/s13031-020-00308-7.

[iv] Roth, Merav, Ten simple guidelines on initial therapeutic intervention with acute trauma following October 7, 2023. In Psychoanalysis in a Holy Land, Abramovitch, Cusin, Leo, Roth, Alaltiello and Volkan. Pgs. 135 – 162. Frenis Zero Press: Italy.

[v][v]

[vi] United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF). Two Million

Refugee Children Flee War in Ukraine in Search of Safety

Across Borders. UNICEF. Available from: https://www.unicef.

org/press‐releases/two‐million-refugee-children-flee‐war‐ukraine‐

search‐safety‐across‐borders.

[vii] Masten AS, Best KM, Garmezy N (1990). Resilience and development: Contributions from the study of children who overcome adversity. Dev Psychopathol 2: 425–444.

Bumbum Cream for YOUR Kids???

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Recently I became aware that children, tweens and teens are buying beauty products….like firming creams for their skin.

Teens?

Doesn’t surprise me.

But children and tweens?

Mystifying!

Are your kids asking for $48 a tub face or body cream?

And if so, what do you do?

In a New York Times article published recently, a 15 year old was quoted as saying, “All of my friends have it”.

Do they really think their bums need firming?

Why do they think they need something which advertises itself as “visibly smoothing and tightening the appearance of your skin”?

These kids have the tightest, most beautiful skin of anyone on the planet!

This is concerning to me.

I really do think that if your child is asking for this, you might want to open a discussion of why they want it. And if the answer is, “because all my friends have it”, you might want to ask why they think their friends all want it.

This brings up the topic of body image and the importance of external appearances. It can open the question of why our children think these things are important (if they do) and how they feel about their own bodies and appearances. Do they have worries about how their skin looks? Or do they have worries about other parts of their bodies?

It can also bring up the topic of aging. Are kids, even young kids, worried about getting older and what they will look like as they do?

These things are not easy to talk about. Your children may resist. They may say, “just forget it” and then save up their own money to buy the cream.

But these topics are important, as we all know.

And what’s more, this may be an opportunity to talk about money and what is worth spending money on and what is not.

We can also talk about advertising and how companies take advantage of people’s worries to get them to buy more products.

And THIS may lead to a discussion of values – what you value, what you want your child to value and what your child thinks about values.

On the other hand, you may just feel like one of the parents quoted in the New York Times article who said, “It’s not that serious, they’re just trying to have fun.”

For more see: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/06/16/style/sol-de-janeiro-brazilian-bum-bum.html

My new book on grief in childhood is coming out!

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In an act of shameless self-promotion, I would like to announce the publication of my new book on grief in childhood.  It is written for the general public and I hope you will share it with your friends, family, acquaintances, etc. – and also, if you like it, do not hesitate to write a review on Amazon!

Thank you so much!!

https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/738355/how-children-grieve-by-corinne-masur

The Importance of Pets

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Dr. Corinne Masur

We all want love and gratification from those who care for us – and this is particularly true of children.

But from their earliest moments of life, babies and kids must learn to put up with delays in getting what they want, mood changes in those they love and all sorts of other disappointments in relationships with parents, siblings, and friends.

But not so much with pets.

Pets provide a unique opportunity for a child to love and be loved.

Pet give love unconditionally. And if they don’t, because they are a lizard or a frog, the child can imagine that they do. And pets are there all the time. They are there if the child is sad, or angry or if the child fees lonely or misunderstood. The child can talk to the pet, cry with the pet, yell at the pet or even give the pet a little shove. According to some children, pets are better than siblings.

With pets, the child has more control over the relationship. This can be comforting because of the implicit guarantee of stability. A pet does not turn a cold shoulder (well, on second thought, maybe some cats DO…) nor does it choose to leave the relationship. A pet does not criticize (or if so, rarely). It stays at home, with the child and it does whatever it does at the bidding of the child (at least some of the time).

In moments of hardship and sorrow, children sometimes feel that their pet understands their feelings. They often feel that their pet is the only one who truly understands and is “there” for them. There is a large element of projection here, but none-the-less, the feeling for the child is real.

And pets teach kids about love. Kids learn what it is to feel deeply for someone who is not a parent or a brother or sister. They learn about what kind of care another creature needs (even if they don’t always do what needs to be done).

But there’s more: researchers who studied the subject found that the mere presence of a family pet during childhood can increase emotional expression and control in children,[1] and other research shows that even brief interactions with dogs can lower stress levels in children.[2]. Moreover, studies have found that attachment to pets can promote healthy social development, social competence, increased social interaction, improved social communication, and social play in children[3]

And also, kids learn about loss from their pets.

Most animals live much shorter lives than we do – and inevitably, during the child’s life, the life of their pet comes to an end. Children may be shocked when this happens; they may be sad or angry or upset in any of a number of ways. But this kind of loss can be useful preparation for later, more profound losses.

Recently, The New York Times published a story called, “Walnut and Me”, a first person account of the relationship between a man and his dog. It was very personal and completely heartfelt. In describing his first dog, Sam Anderson, the author of the article said, “I loved him so deeply that I became a vegetarian – my affection for this little dog radiated out to the whole rest of the animal kingdom”. But then, he says, that love turned to pain. At 12, his beloved dog got cancer, wasted away and died. The first night in bed without him, Sam reached out – and broke down sobbing when he did not feel him there. Anderson was also angry. He wrote, “I wanted to burn down the universe. I either wanted Moby back…or I wanted nothing”.

And Anderson also talks about the importance of the next animals the family had, a hamster and another dog, to his teenage daughter. He even includes his daughter’s graduation picture in the article – in which she wears her cap and gown and is holding their dog, who is looking up at her adoringly.

The kind of love a pet can provide is a rare commodity. It is valuable. It is painful when it ends – but it is comforting and healing while it lasts. And it is important.

So – when you get tired of walking the dog – or feeding the iguana – remember, you are doing a good thing for your children by letting them have that pet.

References

1. Sato, R., Fujiwara, T., Kino, S., Nawa, N., & Kawachi, I. (2019). Pet Ownership and Children’s Emotional Expression: Propensity Score-Matched Analysis of Longitudinal Data from Japan. International journal of environmental research and public health, 16(5), 758.

2. Crossman, M. K., Kazdin, A. E., & Knudson, K. (2015). Brief unstructured interaction with a dog reduces distress. Anthrozoös, 28(4), 649-659.

3. Purewal, R., Christley, R., Kordas, K., Joinson, C., Meints, K., Gee, N., & Westgarth, C. (2017). Companion animals and child/adolescent development: a systematic review of the evidence. International journal of environmental research and public health, 14(3), 234.

Anderson, Sam. Walnut and Me: How my dog helped me to accept that someday we all will die. New York Times Magazine Section, June 2, 2024.

Are You or Your Child Confusing Hate with Anger?

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Recently a mother told me that her son hates her.  

She is going through a divorce and her six year old son has been yelling at her and even trying to kick and hit her on occasion.

We needed to talk about this.

I have known this mother ever since her son was born and I know quite a lot about her mothering.

She is a good mother. And I am sure that her son does not hate her. I know that (most of the time) he loves her and depends on her and looks forward to coming back to her after time spent with his Dad.

But I also know he is very confused and angry about the divorce.

And I also know that his Dad is harder to be angry with because he is very strict.

It is easy for kids and teens to confuse anger and hatred.

When a child or teenager is extremely angry, they yell and scream and they may even say the dreaded words, “I HATE YOU!!”.

And while they may actually feel that they hate you in that moment, it is likely that they are expressing how angry they are – and not an enduring feeling about you.

The same thing can happen when we are angry – especially with someone we are in a very close relationship with, like a partner or a sibling or a parent. We may feel that we truly hate them.

Anger can be that powerful. 

But that is the difference between anger and hatred. Our children – and we ourselves – become angry with someone when they hurt us or do something that we dislike or have asked them not to do. It is a temporary emotional response. 

We hate someone because of who they ARE – because they have enduring characteristics that we just cannot tolerate and which violate our own values or morals or which hurt us or others repeatedly. 

But why is this distinction an important one to make?

For a couple of reasons:

First of all, let’s go back to the mother I referred to at the beginning. It is extremely important for her wellbeing that she understand that her son really does not hate her. If she believes that he does, her feelings about herself as a mother will be altered in such a destructive way. She will feel terrible about herself and about her relationship with her son.

Second of all, some researchers believe that when we define our feelings toward another as hatred, we are more likely to act in a hateful way. In an important study on this topic, Fisher et al pointed out that hatred is usually based on a belief that the person who is hated is always deserving of hate. Hating someone is based on the idea that the hateful things about them are stable and always present. As they say, “there is little room for constructive change”, this is just the way the person IS. ,”And therefore (the only) options left (are) to act upon one’s hate”. 

So – do we allow our children to act on their hateful feelings? Do we allow the child who “hates” us to leave the house to go stay with a friend? Do we ourselves break up a friendship because we feel this strongly about our friend?

We are living in a time of escalating division. We need to educate our children – and ourselves – in regard to the difference between anger and hatred – so that neither they nor we have to act on our angry feelings, so that we can open up the possibility that when we think we hate someone, we can actually allow ourselves to calm down and consider the possibility that we were just angry with them – and they do not deserve our hatred.

This is an important distinction for our children to learn. When they say that they hate us – it does not feel good to them – and afterwards they are likely to feel quite guilty.

We can teach them about the differences between anger and hatred – and we can also remember them ourselves so that the next time our child says they hate us, we do not feel quite so devastated.

But how do we help our children to make this distinction and how do we make it ourselves?

These same researchers I mentioned above concluded that “trying to explain the hated target’s actions in terms of circumstances rather than nature (is) a first step” in de-escalating one’s hating feelings. 

In other words, if we can believe that the way the other person acted had to do with particular circumstances rather than because that is just how they are, we can begin to understand that we do not hate them – we are angry with how they acted. 

So – when we argue with our partner – or when our child shouts at us that she hates us, after everyone calms down, the question is, can the person who felt hatred ask themselves whether the other person is really deserving of hate?

It is critical that we try to disentangle these two emotions – when we take in what our children are giving out, when we interpret our own emotions, and when we evaluate what is happening in our neighborhoods, our country and our world.

Friendships, partnerships, the parent-child relationship and the relationships between groups of people can all be fraught at certain moments of conflict. But generally, these relationships can survive anger.

We need to show our children – and remember this ourselves – that we can survive their anger – and still love them.

In fact, it would be odd if there was not some anger involved now and then in our relationship with them. 

But labeling these feelings as hatred makes the stakes much more dramatic.

We can try to help our children to understand that when they are upset with someone they may be tempted to use the words, “I hate you!” when what they really feel is anger….and we can try to remember this for ourselves as well.

References

Fisher et al. (2018). Why we hate. Emotion Review Vol. 10, No. 4 (October 2018) 309–320 

“Yes, Your Kid”

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Debby Herbenick is a researcher of sexual behavior and is the director of the Center for Sexual Health Promotion at Indiana University. Her book Yes, Your Kid explores the growing trend amongst sexually active teenagers of engaging in choking, or sexual strangulation.

This is an important read for those of you who are parents of adolescents – although you may not want to read it.

And it is important for adolescents themselves, although it is not likely that many of them will read it either.

Herbenick calls the information “lifesaving.”

She wants kids, and parents to know that sexual strangulation is dangerous, even life threatening.

Evidently, many kids think their partners expect to be choked during sex.

But why?

The depiction of sexual strangulation in porn may have led some kids to try it. After all, all kids have access to porn at this point, and most have watched some.

And those same teens may have thought that choking is part of a normal sexual experience.

In fact, the rise of the use of sexual strangulation amongst older teens and college age kids has been meteoric. According to Herbenick, the number of teen girls between the ages of 12 and 17 who say that a partner has choked them during sex has risen to forty per cent. Two decades ago, sexual asphyxiation was unusual amongst any demographic, let alone young people.

The problem is that sexual strangulation can lead to unintentional unconsciousness or even death.

And some researchers, including Keisuke Kawata, a neuroscientist at Indiana University, thinks that each non-lethal episode can cause damage to the brain, similar to the ways that CTE‘s experienced by football players do.

It’s time to approach this issue with our teens.

It may be hard – but it is crucial.

Once your child is around 14, you can have a discussion about consent and its importance. And during that discussion, you can bring up the fact that lots of kids watch porn – but that not everything that happens in porn should happen in real life – just like the fact that not everything that happens in movies (chase scenes, shootings, dystopian disasters, etc.) should happen in reality.

You can talk with your kids about what they think their partners might want or expect and where these ideas come from.

This can lead to talking about how some things shown in porn are actually dangerous – and how porn does not show you that part.

Again, this is hard to talk about – but the time to start is now.

References

Yes, Your Kid, What parents need to know about today’s teens and sex, Debby Herbenick et al.

Peggy Orenstein, New York Times, The Teen Trend of Sexual Choking (4/12/2024)

Can Children Grow From Loss?

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In our 4 part series on loss, I talked about the little losses of everyday life, how children understand death, how to introduce the topic of death to children and what a child may feel when they lose a loved one. But something I did not talk about is the fact that, as hard as losing a loved one is for a child, they can also grow as a result of the experience.

This may come as a surprise.

But many people, including children and teens, not only manage to survive difficult losses, but they also grow as the result of their experience with loss.

Scientists who study trauma and loss have found that there can be a variety of positive psychological changes for some people following challenging life experiences.

Lawrence Calhoun and Richard Tedeschi called this “posttraumatic growth.” They mentioned the following positive changes as being prominent for many people:

·    Greater appreciation of life

·    Greater appreciation and strengthening of close relationships

·    Increased compassion and altruism

·    The identification of new possibilities or a purpose in life

·    Greater awareness and utilization of personal strengths

·    Enhanced spiritual development

·    Creative growth

And, as it turns out, one crucial factor that allows people to turn a difficult event into one that promotes growth is the extent to which they explore their thoughts and feelings around that event.

Many people prefer “to look on the bright side” and to not focus on the difficult things that happen to them. In fact, one young woman who sees me in therapy told me that when she hurt herself as a child, her mother used to say, “pretend that didn’t happen”.

However, Calhoun and Tedeschi found that the ability to acknowledge that the event has happened and to think about and process the painful feelings associated with the event are what allow some people to grow from their difficult experiences.[i]

Two other researchers, Todd Kashdan and Jennifer Kane, also studied this subject. Using a group of college students, they looked at how much people tend to avoid difficult and painful thoughts and feelings versus how much they are willing to allow them. In their study, the most frequently reported traumas amongst their subjects included the sudden death of a loved one, motor vehicle accidents, witnessing violence in the home, and natural disasters.

Kashdan and Kane found that the greater the distress the person experienced, the greater the posttraumatic growth that resulted from it—but only in those people who did not avoid their feelings, or who did so infrequently.

 These findings support the benefits of encouraging children to experience and talk about their feelings following loss. It also supports the importance of having children and teens who are having difficulty experiencing or expressing their feelings get involved in some form of expressive psychotherapy, whether that be individual, group, or family therapy.

Another researcher, Jessica Koblenz specifically studied children who had lost a parent to find out what helps and what hinders them in their grief process. And she also found that there is growth from loss. One child in her study said they had a heightened sense of life and didn’t want to waste time or have regrets. Another said he had become more independent. Some mentioned that they learned to seek help from those who were able to provide it. Some found that exercise was a good method for coping with painful feelings, and others found humor helpful.

Teigan, a young woman I met through Winston’s Wish, told me that what happened to her after she lost her mother shaped what she wanted to do with her life. She described how one of her teachers at school called her every week after her mother died and provided her with much needed attention, support, and guidance. This teacher was an inspiration for Teigan, and she decided to become a grief counselor for children and teens so that she could help other students, just as her teacher had helped her. In the meantime, she was training to lead grief groups just like the one she had participated in herself.

For years, Calhoun and Tedeschi, studied the positive effects of trauma—including loss. They also found that some individuals who had suffered significant trauma experienced positive changes. These changes include improved relationships, new possibilities for life, a greater appreciation for life, a greater sense of personal strength, and increased spiritual development.

They also found some interesting contradictions. People they interviewed said things like “I am more vulnerable, yet stronger.” Individuals who experienced traumatic events tended to talk about their increased sense of vulnerability; however, these same people also reported an increased sense of their own capacities to survive and prevail.

Another experience often reported by trauma survivors was a need to talk with other people about the traumatic events, which tended to deepen some of their personal relationships. Some also found themselves becoming more comfortable with intimacy and having a greater sense of compassion for others who experienced life difficulties.[i]

In my clinical practice, a teenager whose father had died at the beginning of Covid said to me, “My dad’s death gave me a different perspective. I used to think that if a friendship ended or someone died, all the time you put into that relationship was wasted. Now I think that it was valuable. I would rather have had my dad for the time I had him rather than some other dad who was around longer.”

This young woman gained a new perspective and came to a new appreciation of the relationships in her life. She came to understand the importance of the person that her father was despite her lifelong frustration with having had an older dad. And she also recognized that relationships are important in their own right, even if they end prematurely.

Calhoun and Tedeschi also found that some people who faced trauma were more likely to become engaged with fundamental existential questions about death and the purpose of life. A commonly reported change was for the individual to value the smaller things in life more and to also consider the religious, spiritual, and existential components of life. A common theme for many people in this study was that after a traumatic event, philosophies of life can became more fully developed, satisfying, and meaningful.[ii]

Researchers such as Calhoun and Tedeschi have found that growth can occur not despite adversity but because of it.

It is true that they looked predominantly at adults, but interestingly, very similar findings have been found in research on bereaved children.

In a study of what helps and hinders children and adolescents who lose a parent, Jessica Koblenz found multiple areas of growth in many of the children she interviewed.[iii]

Seventy-three percent of the participants in her study felt that navigating and understanding death at an early age made them grow up faster.

And it is interesting to think about whether “growing up faster” is a form of growth or a toll that is paid by children who have experienced early loss. I suspect that some children might consider it a form or growth, some might feel it was a toll they paid, and some might feel that it is both. 

Some children in Koblenz’s study said they responded to loss by embracing life. One said, “I have a heightened sense of life, not wasting time, and not having regrets.” According to some grief theorists, this renewed sense of life is an adaptive form of meaning-making following loss.[iv]

Many of the children Koblenz interviewed said that support helped them to get through their loss. This finding is important because traditional psychological and psychiatric views of bereavement have minimized the role of relationships and support from others in coping with loss. However, more recently, evidence has shown that relational support plays a crucial role in a child’s ability to cope after a loss and may actually improve and intensify some existing relationships.

Interestingly, participants in Koblenz’s study stated that their most helpful source of support were other mourning children who could relate with their exact position.

Koblenz also found that becoming self-reliant was a coping strategy that some of the participants in her study utilized. In her study, kids said that they began to rely more on themselves once they decided that they could no longer depend on others. For some, it was easier to express they “were strong” and “could handle it alone” than to acknowledge their loneliness.[v]

Koblenz says that the sentiment of “needing to be strong” was expressed by many participants and reflected their inability to convey vulnerability. As one participant said of her childhood loss, “Everyone always said, ‘You’re so strong.’ No one ever said, ‘It’s okay if you’re not.’” From this Koblenz concluded that applauding children’s ability to handle their grief alone may make it difficult for them to feel they can be completely open and show their vulnerable selves. But some participants were able to find a balance of healthy independence while still reaching out to others in times when they needed help.[vi]

[i] Lawrence G. Calhoun and Richard G. Tedeschi, “The Foundations of Posttraumatic Growth: An Expanded Framework,” in Handbook of Posttraumatic Growth: Research and Practice, ed. Calhoun and Tedeschi (New Jersey: Lawrence Erlbaum, 2006), 3–23.

[ii] Richard G. Tedeschi and Lawrence G. Calhoun, “Posttraumatic Growth: A New Perspective on Psychotraumatology,” Psychiatric Times 21, no. 4 (April 1, 2004).

[iii] Jessica Koblenz, “Growing from Grief: Qualitative Experiences of Parental Loss,” Omega 73, no. 3 (March 2015): 203–230.