Helping Families Through Difficult Times
Providing comprehensive mental health services to
children, adolescents and families.
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Articles by staff members: "The
Question is ... Excerpts from an
address by: Over the past 7 years, It has been my pleasure to conduct over 45 clinical trainings on issues related to children, adolescents and families. In each of those presentations, I’ve drawn on my experience and the collective clinical experience of my staff at Family Trauma Services. In many of my trainings, I’ve referenced the latest in available empirical data from colleagues throughout the nation and I’ve facilitated panel discussions that have allowed us to share ideas and reach consensus regarding a given clinical area or treatment approach. However, I have to be honest with you this afternoon, today’s presentation will be very different. This afternoon, I’ve come to speak with you armed with more questions than answers; more fundamental concerns than eternal optimism; more challenges posed than reports of challenges met; more fear for our future than encouragement that, if left on it’s present course, all will be well. The questions that my staff and I are challenged by today are the same questions that I’m certain challenge each and everyone of you. I know that it challenges parents, teachers, police officers, judges, probation officers, mental health therapist, community leaders and even those at the highest levels of our government. Today’s questions are circulated throughout every layer of our society. It’s the subject of dinner conversations, talk shows, Barroom happy hours, political commentaries, pool halls, bowling alleys, Presidential proclaimed White House Conferences, and far too often it’s the subject of special TV news bulletins. The questions for today impact everyone in our society, whether they be rich or poor; from the north, south, east or west, or a member of any particular ethnic group. No one is immune. Interestingly enough, nothing gets lost on the fact that these questions are so significant today because for the first time in our society it’s clear that no one is immune. The question is - What in the world is going on with our children? Why are they so angry, explosive, violent, hostile, resentful and unapproachable? What is it that causes them to escalate a seemingly insignificant and trivial incident into an irreversible life altering event? What has so impacted their process that it allows them to invest massive amounts of intellectual, physical and financial resources toward collateral retribution for a perceived “dis”? “Dis”- now that’s an interesting word in itself. Does this idiom of the day go to the very heart of the matter? Is this a situation, once again, where - if we listen closely - they’ll find a way to cut to the chase, and on an emotional level, take us as deep inside as their capacity will allow? They’ve taken a word and morphed it into something of their own. This may be indicative of their last best desperate attempt to describe what’s obviously significant to them. What they may be trying to tell us is that they suffer from a severely limited emotional tolerance for a perceived act of disrespect. Well, that goes to their ego structure. It would seem that their ego structure does not process the capacity to absorb any manner of public slight. If you subscribe to the theory that the ego serves the function of an emotional capacitor - protecting the emotional center by absorbing the brunt of the emotional energy generated by a comment or other external input. The capacitor effect then allows the emotional center the time necessary to process the emotional energy at its own developmental pace. If the input is positive, the ego expands to absorb and contain it, if the input is negative then the ego constricts to give the emotional center the opportunity to develop a defensive plan. If the input is beyond the capacity of the ego to manage, it short circuits and then shunts the emotional energy to the backup/fail-safe system, which is the self-esteem. During this shunting process, the emotional center is exposed to the raw emotional energy from the outside source. The experience is painful. However, if the self-esteem is healthy and intact than the emotional fall is tolerable. If the self-esteem is low, minimal or non existent, then the fall can become unbearable and demands some form of an emotional analgesic in order to cope. Alcohol, Drugs, Sex, Rage, Stealing, Violence all can be inappropriately utilized to serve as an emotional analgesic. There’s something up with our children today. Psychotherapy 101 taught us that anger was a surface response. That there were always several emotional layers working below that anger response. The presenting anger was but the tip of the iceberg. Children today are, in fact, presenting for treatment with anger at, depending on who you read, between the 55th and 70th percentile. Now, that’s for both children who are externally explosively expressing, as well as those who are emotionally imploding. Empirical data would support that concurrent with this presenting internalized or externalized anger are feelings of fear, hurt, loneliness, isolation, and/or mistrust. Our children are in pain. Now that’s a rather broad reaching, blanket statement, but I believe it does have validity. It crosses every socio-economic group; every demographic and cyclograph family system. And these are systems that would otherwise seem to have very little in common. One is suburban rich, the other urban poor; one is rural middle class, the other upwardly mobile and on a fast track. Yet, their children - our children are in pain. Why? We have long accepted that children who come from poor, single parent family homes are at- risk. We would stipulate that a child from an alcohol or drug addicted parent family background would probably face some significant challenges. Cognitively limited children could be expected to act-out because of a cognitive inability to project the potential consequences of their behavior or to appropriately manage the response to their emotions. Certainly, children from recently immigrated families might expect to have some difficulties as the children become acculturated into our society and the parent desperately tries to hold on to the traditional ways. For these groups, although we would probably not want to admit it, the language for our clinical assessment is saved on our computers under boilerplate. We, as a reflection of our society and our profession, have come to expect that certain children from a certain family dynamic are going to present in a certain way because of that family dynamic. And that has become the acceptable explanation. Well, what the heck is going on now? We now have children whose behaviors can’t be predicted, analyzed or rationalized as easily as our boilerplate groups. How do we draw anything meaningful from the actions of a kid who seemingly has everything going for herself, yet she seeks the proverbial permanent solution to a temporary problem; and her death only serves to provide a validate able, overwhelming sense of pain to her survivors; and on the other hand we have the kid who takes the Tasmanian devil’s approach to peer conflict and feelings of social isolation. He chooses to wreck massive havoc on his environment. Eliminating, as if in some virtual reality video arcade game, every perceived enemy in his life. I think that our children are in pain. Why? Today, I am profoundly effected by a recent event in my life. They call it a life changing event. I can tell you that it has impacted literally every aspect of my being ....my work life, my play life, my spiritual life, my marital life, my financial life...every aspect on every level. And I couldn’t be happier about it. Ladies and Gentleman, presenting Miss Sarah Virginia Parks. Now, Miss Sarah was born to my wife and I five months ago, and in that time she has completely taken me back to school. She has written, rewritten, and written again everything I thought about a certain four letter word. She has looked deep into my soul and said “Daddy, I require all of the love that you can possibly muster on any given day and at any given moment. And in exchange for your gift of love, I will cause you to feel a profound sense of happiness at a level that you never dreamed existed.” And my wife and I, like most of the other parents of infants that we know, have started to call our daughter, “Love bucket.” Because that’s what she is. She has this huge emotional bucket. I understand that huge is relative, but follow me. When she was born, The biggest things about her were her feet and her head. They were disproportionate to the rest of her body. In her current psycho-social development, her emotional bucket is disproportionately greater than any other developing feature. Now, I actually can’t attribute that assertion to any particular empirical data, but I swear to you that it’s true. I can see it in Sarah’s eyes; I see it in her smile; I can see it in how she interacts with both adults, older children and peers. And what I know, both intuitively and professionally, is that in it’s current developmental stage, her emotional bucket requires constant filling. We dare not allow it to dip down below the full line. Because if we do, I sincerely believe that we run the risk of a similar thing happening that happens to car radiator. You know when the car radiator becomes empty, it will overheat and develop a hole. I am convinced that if we allow her emotional bucket to run empty at this critical point in it’s development, an emotional hole will develop. And like the radiator, once that hole has developed, no amount of water will ever keep that radiator full again. And the feeling of one’s emotional bucket running low is an extremely painful experience. To counteract that, it requires constant refilling and/or the constant presence of an emotional analgesic. Infancy is a critical developmental time for this emotional bucket; the toddler years are a critical developmental time for this emotional bucket; latency age is a critical developmental time for this emotional bucket. And I would assert to you this afternoon, that if the bucket is left to run empty, at any point during these critical developmental stages, than a hole will develop. Psychotherapy 201 taught us that, the ability of a human being to form a healthy attachment is significantly compromised by the existence of an emotional deficient. If we experienced an infant presenting with that emotional hold, we would probably pass it off as “the child’s just a little cranky (all the time)”; as a toddler, “well, their just passing through one of those stages - you know, terrible two’s, three’s, four’s”; at latency age, “Oh, he’s a hand full,” better consider Ritalin; and as an adolescent, combined with all of those brand new raging hormones, “Houston, we have a problem.”
And in the final analysis, we will utilize the best in treatment techniques and clinical services available, and it won’t be enough. Seven or eight years ago on a Valentine’s Day, a colleague and I stopped to buy flowers for our wives. The florist made a point of reminding us that when we got the roses home, we needed to cut an inch off the stem before we placed them in fresh water. For best results, the water should be fortified with the nutrients contained in the little packets that she was enclosing. She told us that plants have a way of sealing off at the point of the trauma they experienced during cutting. What you have to do is to clip an inch and open up that end, because otherwise, no amount of nurturing, nutrition or fresh water can possible get in. You can take that flower out of an old scratch and chipped mayonnaise jar and place it in a beautiful Waterford crystal vase, and unless you clip an inch at the sight of the original trauma, that rose will surely die. Well, it only took us a minute to realize that this is exactly what happens to our clients. We can remove them from their abusive and dysfunctional home environments. We can surround them with all of the warmth, comfort and nurturing in the world, but until we’re able to access the source of the original trauma - the source of the pain - more children will die. Cognitive/Behavioral therapy alone, can’t fix this; Substance abuse treatment alone, can’t fix this; Adolescent sex offender treatment alone, can’t fix this; Conduct Disorder treatment alone, can’t fix this; Anger Management alone, can’t fix this; Mediation and Conflict Resolution alone, can’t fix this; Somehow, we have got to couple our available treatment resources with some fundamental lessons on love. Our children are in emotional pain and we have got to figure out how to put our collective arms around them. Wow, I know what went through a lot of people’s minds when I said that...they thought, Oh no, boundary distortions, potential child abuse liability. We can’t do that. And that’s the dilemma that we face today. Our children are in emotional pain and our society and culture has reached a point where we can’t safely do anything about it. We have to resolve this issue. It won’t go away and it’s not going to get any better. Somehow, each of us individually has got to figure out how to inject a mega dose of compassion into our worlds. We need to take this plan to every area of our lives. We need more professional associations devoting time to developing programs to foster compassion in our society. Maybe we need to go back to some of the 1960's touchy-feely type therapies on a school wide basis. At the very least, we certainly need to convince parents that they are the tenders of the emotional buckets for our very young children. It is an awesome responsibility, with devastating consequences, if we fail. I challenge you to continue to do what you do so well, but please don’t forget to spread the love. |
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Trauma Services
Last modified:
January 24, 2008
