Posts
Saturday, November 30, 2024
The Rare and Exceptional
They celebrate your victories. They remember and appreciate quirky things about you. They respect your limits. You feel energized after seeing them. They listen without being defensive. They try the food you make and bring to their party. They encourage and love for you to fully be yourself. They make you feel safe. You don't have to watch every fucking thing you say. They have a sense of humor. They "get" you, love and support you. They appreciate you. They are RECEPTIVE. They don't care that you are not a drinker! They are not always drunk, distracted, preoccupied, or stoned when you see them.
The Marching Milkman Band 2017 · Before the deluge at the Federal Hill Columbus Day parade: From left to right Steve Wennerberg, snare drum, Ian Wykes, sousaphone, Joseph Heroux, cymbals, Bill Calhoun, bass drum, Gerry Heroux, trumpet, Jeffrey Calhoun, trombone, and Emily Lisker, baritone saxophone.
When there's a writer in the family, the family is doomed.
One of the reasons I despise my NY family is they are dysfunctional beyond belief. I ran away and have not returned since 1978 but my biological sister who has the self appointed role of alpha-mama continues to perpetuate a false narrative to anyone who will listen. She has to be queen bee rather than let the truth circulate. The truth is we were horribly abused in all ways.
God help her if the grand children ever arrive and then grow up and seek out the truth. The other branch of step, half siblings and other relatives are in California and Washington state at this point having escaped the NYC mess. If the next generation is courageous and curious they will find out the truth.
When there's a writer in the family, the family is doomed.
When a writer is born into a family, the family is finished. Czeslaw Milosz
Friday, November 29, 2024
A "green flag" in a person refers to a positive trait or behavior.
A "green flag" in a person refers to a positive trait or behavior that indicates a healthy and potentially good relationship, signifying someone who is trustworthy, supportive, respectful, communicative, and generally exhibits positive qualities you want to see in others. Examples of green flags in people: Good communication skills: Openly expresses their thoughts and feelings, actively listens to you, and is honest and transparent. Respectful behavior: Values your opinions, treats you with kindness and courtesy, and doesn't put you down. Reliability and responsibility: Follows through on commitments, shows up on time, and can be counted on. Supportive nature: Encourages your goals, celebrates your successes, and is there for you during tough times. Empathy and understanding: Can see things from your perspective, tries to understand your feelings, and is considerate. Positive attitude: Maintains an optimistic outlook, is generally cheerful, and brings positive energy to interactions. Healthy boundaries: Respects your space and needs, and doesn't try to be overly controlling. Open-mindedness: Willing to consider different perspectives and is not close-minded. Good manners: Shows basic courtesy and respect towards others. Self-awareness: Recognizes their own strengths and weaknesses, and is willing to work on self-improvement.
What is the root cause of dysfunctional families? Dysfunctional families are primarily a result of two adults, one typically overtly abusive and the other codependent, and may also be affected by substance abuse or other forms of addiction, or sometimes by an untreated mental illness.
A dysfunctional family is characterized by “conflict, misbehavior, or abuse” [1]. Relationships between family members are tense and can be filled with neglect, yelling, and screaming. You might feel forced to happily accept negative treatment. There's no open space to express your thoughts and feelings freely.
Dysfunctional Family: Signs, Causes, & How to Cope
A dysfunctional family is one that has problematic interactions that the family is attempting to ignore or mask. Each family member ends up playing an active role in continuing the dysfunction. Left unchecked, these patterns can impact the children in the family throughout their lives, including one day having their own dysfunctional families.
Parenting Is Stressful and Challenging!
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What Is a Dysfunctional Family?
According to the American Psychological Association, a dysfunctional family is “a family in which relationships or communication are impaired and members are unable to attain closeness and self-expression.”1 This means that dysfunctional families include interactions that impact healthy communication, emotional safety, and sometimes physical safety. The classic example is family members being difficult around the holidays, but it can take more sinister forms involving frequent parent-child conflicts, rivalry, emotional abuse, and/or sibling abuse.
There are a variety of reasons that a family can become dysfunctional, but everyone in the family unit is negatively impacted by this dysfunction. However, the dysfunction particularly affects the children in the family because it negatively influences their understanding of healthy relationships and healthy families, which can result in children becoming emotionally neglected. This can ultimately lead to them growing up and having their own dysfunctional families.
Signs of a Dysfunctional Family
Dysfunctional families are caused by – and are the responsibility of – the parents, because they are the ones that hold the power and authority within the family. While this can sometimes be due to toxic parenting, sometimes the cause is more complicated and nuanced.
Here are several signs of a dysfunctional family:
Addiction
Addiction is when a person struggles with alcohol or drug use. Addiction increases the chances of abuse, neglect, intimate partner violence, among other problematic interactions. Due to shame, stigma, functional impairment, or legal ramifications, this can create an environment of secrecy to cover up for the addict, which is a core component of dysfunctional families.
Abuse & Neglect
Abusive relationships are common in dysfunctional families. Abuse can look like one person intentionally harming another person, and neglect is when a person fails to adequately meet the needs of someone in their care. Similar to addiction, the shame, stigma, and legal ramifications of abuse also create an atmosphere of secrecy to keep this contained within the family.
Personality Disorders
Personality disorders are severe and long-term mental health diagnoses that impact behavior and functioning. This could include narcissistic parents, borderline parents, and OCPD parents, among others. The family system will tend to try to compensate for the negative impacts of the disorder, which often leads to dysfunctional family dynamics.
Emotional Incest
Emotional incest is when a parent heavily relies on a child for their emotional support, which is too large of a burden for a child to bear. This extreme dependence from the parent impacts all family members negatively, and the family will either stay in this place of being negatively affected or attempt to shift things to compensate – which often ends up being dysfunctional in a different way.
Toxic Parenting
Toxic parenting can include various aspects, including unhealthy discipline, relational dynamics, and lack of clear parent-child boundaries. Because parents hold the authority and power within the family, toxic parenting can play a major contributing role in the development of dysfunctional family dynamics.
High-Conflict Home Environment
A high-conflict home environment includes frequent and intense arguments between parents or children, which may or may not include physical violence. This dynamic is dysfunctional within its own right. However, this tension can create a different form of dysfunction when a family replaces the fighting with dysfunctional dynamics instead.
Emotional Manipulation
Emotional manipulation is when one person sways another’s emotions in a way that only benefits the manipulator. This can take the form of gaslighting, triangulation<, and using guilt trips. Emotional manipulation contributes to dysfunction because it doesn’t allow space for each person’s needs, which can leave family members fighting to get their emotional needs recognized and met.
Roles in a Dysfunctional Family
Families operate like a system or a machine, which means that each family member plays a specific role that keeps the machine running. All of the roles have their own “script” to follow, and people adhering to these roles end up continuing the dysfunctional patterns.
Here are the most common roles that people can fall into in a dysfunctional family:
- Role 1, The Scapegoat: The person in the “scapegoat” role is the identified “problem” and is usually blamed for all the family’s issues, whether they are actually the problem or not. This role is typically (although not always) held by one of the children.
- Role 2, The Hero: This person is high-functioning enough that the family uses them to convince themselves there is “no issue” within the family. This person justifies the presence of “the scapegoat”, and carries the burden of presenting the facade of the family being functional.
- Role 3, The Mascot: This person plays the role of emotional “referee” by stepping in with humor and positivity to diffuse or distract from serious issues.
- Role 4, The Caretaker: This individual attempts to keep everyone in the family as calm and happy as possible, even if it covers up deeper issues and dysfunction. While this helps the family to operate on a daily basis, it ends up preventing the family from healing and functioning in a healthier way.
- Role 5, The Lost Child: This family member tries to “blend into the background” in order to avoid being involved in or creating conflict. This person is usually more of a “loner” and usually struggles with self-esteem.
- Role 6, The Golden Child: This is the child that the parent(s) project all of their positive qualities onto, which often makes this child the “favorite.” This child also adopts and lives out the parents’ moral codes.
Effects of Growing Up in a Dysfunctional Family
Since the family is where a person learns to understand themselves, their world, and interactions with other people, growing up in a dysfunctional family can negatively impact all aspects of a person’s life. This can impact a person’s sense of self, create a warped sense of how relationships are supposed to look, and can make it difficult to function in normal daily activities
Growing up in a dysfunctional family can have consequences like:2,3,4,5
- A disrupted sense of trust – in yourself, in others, in the world
- Difficulty dating and forming healthy relationships
- Increased risk of alcohol and drug abuse
- Increased risk for psychiatric disorders, such as anxiety, panic, depression, among others
- Low self-esteem
- Difficulty in maintaining employment
- Struggling to set and hold boundaries
- Feeling uncomfortable experiencing and managing emotions
- Increased risk of having their own dysfunctional family in the future
How to Deal With a Dysfunctional Family
Once you recognize that you’re in a dysfunctional family, it’s critical to make sure you’re taking care of your own emotional needs. It’s important to remember that while you’re doing introspective work, your family might not be doing that same work and may stay oblivious to the patterns you now cannot unsee.
When you’re noticing yourself getting emotionally dysregulated by different interactions, set a healthy boundary or use that situation to inform yourself of the boundaries that you need to set in the future.
Remember that you are one member within your family who was playing a certain role before you were aware of it. You can now choose to disengage from that role, which will impact everyone in the family (hopefully in a positive way). Focus on how to direct all your individual relationships with family members to being more healthy relationships, including focusing on good communication, having fun shared experiences, and being authentic with each other.
When to Go No Contact
While these are good reminders, sometimes it isn’t realistic or healthy to try to change the dynamic within a family. If there was dysfunction due to a past issue that has now corrected itself, acknowledgement and healing might be what is needed to change the dynamic. If the root source of the dysfunction is still active and present (such as ongoing chronic mental health concerns, ongoing emotional and physical safety concerns), changing the family dynamic will be hard, if not impossible.
If the dynamic within the family is not fixable and it is impacting you negatively, it could be time to consider leaving the family dynamic altogether. There are many options with this, including cutting off communication with your entire family, deciding to spend time one-on-one with family members you feel safe and comfortable with, and introducing limiting factors of spending time with family (such as having your own transportation to leave situations, limiting time spent, etc.).
Regardless of the level of interaction you choose, it’s important to remember that you are only one person within the family and you are not responsible for the dynamics of the whole – be gentle with yourself as much as possible.
How to Break the Cycle
The first step in breaking the cycle is to educate yourself on the signs and roles to look out for in dysfunctional families. The second step is holding yourself accountable to showing up differently than your parents and family.
Knowing the signs, being completely honest with yourself when you’re seeing them, and holding yourself accountable to addressing them when/if they come up are critical pieces in ensuring that you don’t end up making your own family dysfunctional.
How Therapy Can Help
If you are currently in a dysfunctional family dynamic, it can be helpful to go to family therapy to change the dynamics within the family. A majority of family therapy includes all the members of the family, so that the therapist can address these interactions and help correct them in real time.
If you grew up in a dysfunctional family and are wanting to make sure that those dynamics are no longer impacting your own functioning or your own family, it can also be helpful to go to individual therapy. You and your therapist will talk through these dynamics, process your memories and your understandings of family relationships. You will then work to “re-write” these understandings into something that is more helpful and healthy. Therapy works– whether it’s in an individual or in a family-setting. To find a therapist and get started, check out our therapist directory to find the right therapist for you.
Final Thoughts
It can be difficult to realize that you have grown up in a dysfunctional family, or that you are currently in one now. Remember that this cycle of dysfunction can be broken by becoming aware of the problem, working to address the dysfunction with professional help, and by taking time to heal.
Additional Resources
To help our readers take the next step in their mental health journey, Choosing Therapy has partnered with leaders in mental health and wellness. Choosing Therapy is compensated for marketing by the companies included below.
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For Further Reading
- SAMHSA Tools for Parents & Families
- Adult Children of Alcoholics & Dysfunctional Families
- Band Back Together: Adult Children of Dysfunctional Families
- Families First Parenting Resources
- Books to read:
- It Didn’t Start with You by Mark Wolynn
- Adult Children: The Secrets of Dysfunctional Families by Jon & Linda Friel
- Surviving the Toxic Family by Marina Williams
Sophia Loren is a Lifeguard at our Pool
I asked her Did anyone ever tell you you look like Sofia Loren? She said I don't know who that is. I showed her a photo and she said. Oh my, I do look like her!
Every day I thank her for the time we shared together
Every day I thank her for the time we shared together, and the for the many gifts she left me. When she sat with a pastor and a rabbi in her final days she said "love is the only thing that matters", and these visitors said "I can't teach you anything further." She continually asked if I loved myself and I didn't know how to do that. I learned after she died and that has been so important. She taught me that life is precious and all too short, so I try to avoid spending my life energy doing anything that is not a core value. And rowing! When I get off the water, I am so ebullient that she introduced me to this activity! Being out on the water, getting good exercise with good people! I thank her each day as I'm bringing the oars back to the boathouse.
People who never met Adele ask me what she was like. I say smart, artistic, determined, athletic, a gardener, bossy. And family was very important to her.
I've picked up on the importance of friends and family -- she introduced me to many of you or helped cement my relationship with you, and that is my main joy. There is never enough time to connect with everyone, but I have a fantasy that tomorrow will be less busy than today and I'll call or drop by then. I'm still falling short by spending time reading about politics and the environment instead of communing with loved ones. I want to be prepared to make a difference for the planet, but I'm not sure that I ever will. Adele would say that I should drop the news and reach out. I'm working on it.
KB
Flaubert
Books aren’t made in the way that babies are: they are made like pyramids, There’s some long-pondered plan, and then great blocks of stone are placed one on top of the other, and it’s back-breaking, sweaty, time consuming work. And all to no purpose! It just stands like that in the desert! But it towers over it prodigiously. Jackals piss at the base of it, and bourgeois clamber to the top of it, etc. Continue this comparison.
GUSTAVE FLAUBERT
Wednesday, November 27, 2024
Fun with IMPROV
Theater is hard work.
Know this. Theater is hard. It’s a lot of work. You have to reach inside of yourself and pull out emotions and energy and drive and make it seem real to the audience. All while learning lines, reacting to other actors’ lines, moving how you’re supposed to on the stage, and any other stage business you may have.
And comedic theater? You want to talk about hard?
Making a group of strangers laugh with a performance by delivering a line with just the right timing without it seeming phony or forced is an art unto itself. What people find funny is incredibly subjective for each person. One thing may make one group of people laugh, and the same joke may offend another group of people. It’s a touchy thing, comedy.
And then there’s Improv!
Think comedic theater is hard? Now we’re going to take away your script. You can’t even rely upon the writing of playwrights who have spent countless hours working on a script, picking apart every line to make it the best line they can write. Not only do you now have to make things up, but also you have to make them up on the spot, in front of a theater full of strangers who are feeding you ideas.
That’s incredibly difficult. But for the brave performers who choose to do it, it can also be incredibly rewarding. source
there are no general rules
The advantage of reading widely, as opposed to trying to formulate a series of general rules, is that we learn there are no general rules, only individual examples to help point you in a direction in which you might want to go.
Francine Prose
Tuesday, November 26, 2024
Avi
One of the particular joys of writing for kids is that they write to you. Some, to be sure, are teacher / school assignments, but that doesn’t reduce their own young voices. Then there is the young reader who has felt a particular connection to me and one of my books and shares self and point of view in a very personal manner.
The envelopes that contain their letters are often fancifully decorated, along with messages on the outside. “Read me!” “Open me!” “Write back PLEASE!”
Depending on the handwriting, if it is handwritten, I often can guess the age of my reader.
It’s pretty rare, but now and again the young writer will tell me that he or she did not like a book. I’m interested and appreciative of those thoughts too.
And then there are questions. Everything from how old I am to why do I write books. Where do I get my ideas? How long does it take to write a book? Which is my favorite of my own books? Which is my favorite of all books? And on and on.
There are those letters that tell me I have changed their lives, or their ideas, or feelings about reading. There are those who tell me that they just enjoyed my book.
I answer every letter and try to answer their questions.
And then there are the letters from people who were once kids. Adults who now remember a particular book. Or they share a particular book with their own children. There are the librarians and teachers who have shared my books for many years with their students.
The point of all this is that I am nothing without my readers. To speak metaphorically, my book is one hand, the reader is another, and when they come together there is a joyful noise. It’s not applause. It is the sound of a human connection found in one of my stories.
How thankful I am for all of that.
Avi
What Do I Do in the Pool?
Unless you come from a swimming background, navigating the complexities of propelling yourself through the water pose the greatest challenge for athletes who are new to triathlon. Learning to swim and most training will take place in a pool. Your first race may have a pool or an open water swim. Choosing a race with a pool swim is a great way to progress through the sport. Start your swim training several months to a year before your race as becoming proficient in the water takes time, persistence and patience. The following information will help guide you to a successful beginning to your triathlon swim career.
Find a pool near you. Check out the pools in your area. Find one that is convenient to your home or office and works in your budget. There will be posted lap or open swim times throughout the week. Make sure these times correspond to the times you have available to swim. SwimmersGuide.com has a search engine to help you find a pool anywhere in the world.
Essential gear. The must-have list is: bathing suit (or triathlon suit) and goggles. An extra pair is always a good idea as they may break or get lost. If you have longer hair, a bathing cap is advised, but not required. A kickboard — a flat foam rectangular device — can be helpful when learning kick mechanics as well as the basic drills and skills of propulsion. A pull buoy — a small foam device — helps your legs float to focus on your pull. Kickboards and pull buoys are available at most pools.
Make peace with the water. The water can be a scary place. And, it’s good to have a healthy respect for the water, but don’t let your fears become anxieties that prevent you from swimming and racing triathlon. Practicing going easy and relaxing in the water is a foundational principle in swimming. Once you’ve got a foundation of enjoyment and peace with the water, you can build in more skills and faster, harder and longer efforts.
Freestyle. Freestyle is the stroke of choice for the triathlon swim. Good back up strokes to help build endurance or give you a “rest” from freestyle are breaststroke and sidestroke. Freestyle is broken down into three main parts: kick, pull and breathing. The goal is to coordinate these three movement patterns with effective propulsion.
Breathing. Breathing is a fundamental skill in swimming that will also help you relax and go longer and longer. The challenge with swimming is the water. You can’t just breathe whenever you want to or you end up inhaling a big gulp of water. The basic rhythm of breathing is: inhale with your face to the side and out of the water, exhale with your face in the water, eyes to the bottom of the pool. Breathing must be conscious and forceful. A strong exhale drives a strong inhale.
Body position. Body position is another fundamental aspect of swimming. When your body position is high and flat on the water, you create less drag and move through the water more efficiently. To learn your natural body position and flotation, practice floating on your back and on your belly.
Pool etiquette. When you hop in the lane with other swimmers, make sure they know you’re there. You can split the lane (each person stays on one side of the black line) or circle swim (swimming up on the right and back on the right). Circle swimming accommodates more swimmers in the lane. Swimming straight and navigating in the pool is done using the black line on the bottom and the cross on each wall.
Workout structure, part one. Here’s a series of skills and drills to follow to help you progress your skill and confidence. Include these at the beginning of every swim workout. As you get better, you can spend less time on them, but always, always practice the fundamentals as they will save you when you are challenged the most. Start with 20 to 30 minutes, three times a week:
- Breathing: Hold onto the wall arms overhead, face in the water and practice breathing: face in, exhale big bubbles; turn your head to the side, one ear to the ceiling, one ear in the water and inhale.
- Kicking: Hold onto the wall to practice your kick: back of your leg/bottom of foot push up on the water (upbeat); top of your leg/top of your foot push down on the water (down beat).
- Kicking and breathing at the wall. Combine the two skills above. Using your legs requires more oxygen and will challenge your breathing.
- Kicking and breathing with a kickboard. Now you can check your forward propulsion with your legs. Hold the board at the bottom, arms stretched overhead, face in the water, turn your head to inhale as you move forward. Keeping your breathing arm at your side can be helpful.
- Add one arm stroke. The next progression is to kick, breathe and pull with one arm, bringing the coordination together one arm at a time.
- Swim freestyle to the best of your ability. By working on the individual pieces of the stroke, you can focus and improve this one aspect. Always work to put the whole stroke together to continue your progression.
Workout structure, part two. Once you’ve progressed through the basic skills of working to improve your freestyle, it’s time to work on how to structure your pool workouts. There are two basic options:
- 1. Intervals. Intervals do not always mean going fast and hard! It simply means intermittent work and rest periods. A structured workout would look like this:
- Warm-up: Drills (above) and 4-8x25 yards or meters easy swimming, rest as needed between
- Main set: 6-12x25 freestyle swim with 10-30 seconds rest between
- Pull and kick drills: 6x25 kick and 6x25 pull focused swim (strong arms, relaxed legs, pull buoy optional)
- Cooldown with easy swimming, any stroke. 100.
- Total: 500-750 yards/meters
- 2. Long endurance swim. Increasing your distance or time in the pool is a logical and basic place to start. The triathlon swim is an aerobic endurance event and improving this aspect is important. When you’re ready, build on a continuous swim: 100, 200, 300, etc. from week to week. This may be intermingled with some breaststroke, sidestroke or backstroke to keep the effort continuous.
Swim Training: Breathing for Beginners
Breathing — it comes completely naturally to all of us. It is an activity that will function without interruption or conscious thought under the control of the autonomic nervous system. When necessary, we can assume conscious control in order to increase oxygen supply while under stress or in a fight/flight state of mind. In our world, triathlon equals a fight/flight state.
Breathing is easy on the bike and run. While there are a few tricks to rhythmic breathing in both of these legs, you don’t have to move around and ask your surroundings permission in order to get a breath. In swimming, you do.
From a beginner standpoint, the two most important aspects of breathing in swimming are becoming comfortable with:
- Your face in the water while swimming
- A rhythm to your breathing
Face in the Water
Keeping your face in the water is step one, because if you swim with your head up or your face out of the water, your legs and hips will invariably drop. A high-head/low-hip position requires you to push more surface area through the water, creating more drag. This makes it harder to swim because there is more resistance. Imagine cycling with a parachute attached to your back. This will force you to take additional rest breaks in training or on race day as your heart rate increases and you cannot keep up with the oxygen demands of your muscles.
There are different tricks to keeping your face in the water. Be sure to have comfortable goggles. Focus on looking at the bottom or staring at the black line down the center of the lane in the pool. If you experience anxiety related to submersion, take a lot of rest breaks and remember that as far as pool training goes, you are never very far from the wall and an exit. Private swim lessons and a lot of practice will help.
Rhythmic Breathing
Once you are comfortable keeping your face/head in the water while swimming, you need to figure out how and when to breath. The critical action here is to begin exhaling through your nose/mouth as soon as you finish breathing in.
The major problem I see with beginner swimmers related to breathing is that they hold their breath while their face is in the water, then try to exhale and inhale very quickly when turning to breathe. This results in a poor, shallow breath and a quick buildup of carbon dioxide in the lungs. Swimmers will have to stop and take a break in training or roll over on their backs to catch a few deep breaths in racing.
You must exhale while your face is in the water. So when you turn to breathe, your lungs are mostly empty and ready to accept a fresh breath of air. You do need to force the rhythm a bit. You should forcefully exhale through your nose/mouth as soon as you complete the breath. There’s no pausing. It is a constant rhythm.
Bilateral Breathing
The good thing about three-stroke or bilateral breathing? It will help you create and maintain an even stroke and improve mechanics on both sides of your body. The bad thing? It increases the time between breaths by 50 percent over a two-stroke or one-sided breathing pattern. That is a huge decrease in total oxygen flow while swimming.
My advice is to include bilateral breathing in your workouts during warm-up, drills, easy aerobic sets and short sprints like 25s and 50s. Switch to one-sided breathing for moderate/hard-distance and mid-distance sets. If you want to continue working on stroke balance, breathe to the left going down the pool and to the right coming back.
The main problem with breathing to one side all the time is that it usually creates a hitch or imbalance in one side. Typically one side becomes a bit stronger and you will veer off course in open water. The main benefit, however, is more air, which is nice when you are trying to swim fast.
https://www.mytimetotri.com/training/swim/swim-training-breathing-beginners
They will know from your firm but delicate touch that you are their safe place.
You think you know a lot. Show what you know to your children. No matter how old they are. Don't tell them what to do. Show them what you know. They are busy learning and celebrating what they know as if they know everything. Let them. So did you to your parents most likely. They do this so often so we forget that they actually don't know everything. Just some things. Like us. Show them little things you might think they know but they don't. They simply were not born yet and somethings just passed them by. So just tell them little things, great things. Like what people have said in the past, things that you have seen happen maybe, tell them what you know about love and tell them things you have never been able to figure out. Watch them closely. You are their parent. Do not demand things from them yet guide them when you see they are lost. Do these things if you want to be the first one they call when they need help or guidance. They will know from your firm but delicate touch that you are their safe place. Guide them and they will look to you forever.