Nevertheless, it was truly nowhere within the realm of my mind that the next week we would be reading that Gov. Schwarzenegger had fathered a child with a member of the family’s household staff. 

I cannot and do not suppose that I can know what is going on in the minds of either of these well known individuals, or what has gone on in the privacy of their marriage over the years.

Instead, my thoughts are with those of you who may be asking the question, “What if something like this happens to me?”  Or perhaps, “What do I do now that this has happened to me?”

What do you do if you wake up one morning to find out that the entire foundation your marriage has crumbled?

The first thing I want to say to you is yes, you can survive this. Your marriage may or may not survive, but you can. Say, to yourself, “I will survive this.”  Repeat as often as necessary.

Second, you absolutely must reach out to others for support. And you now have the opportunity to find out about what authentic, deep, real support feels and looks like over the following days, weeks and months. 

Do try to be mindful of who you choose to involve in your circle of support at this time.  Attempt to reach out to people who are not close mutual friends with your spouse, or who are otherwise so near to the situation that their feelings may cloud their perception, or make it difficult should you and your spouse reconcile.  

Third, it you want to try to stay in your marriage (and this is a possibility) I highly recommend you read After the Affair: Healing the Pain and Rebuilding Trust When a Partner Has Been Unfaithful, by Janis Abrahms Spring.  It provides excellent guidance to both partners attempting to repair their relationship when one has had an affair. It can even be helpful if the marriage is not salvageable, as a guide to trying to understand what happened.

Fourth, consider a good counselor for either yourself, or yourself and your spouse. An impartial, compassionate and objective counselor can be of tremendous help as you seek to heal the painful wounds that result from betrayal.    

Remember, repeat: ”I can and will survive.” 

Photo credit: CAAPhotography via Flickr

If it can happen to the “beautiful people,” will it happen to us?  And if it did, would that be a good thing?  A bad thing?  In any event, it would be a different thing, and research shows that even good change is experienced as stressful.

I sit with a lot of people who are questioning the future of their marriages and their lives in middle age.  For many of them, it seems as if life has been cruising along on automatic pilot for quite awhile. Decisions made one or two decades earlier – who to marry, whether to have children, what choice of a career – have just been assumed as part of the warp and weave of life.

Then something happens. Suddenly we become aware that we aren’t really piloting the plane, and may not have been for some time.  Maybe we haven’t a clue where we are.  Maybe the destination isn’t what we planned for.  Maybe we didn’t plan: we just chose a course and hoped for the best.

I think that ideally, we make little course corrections throughout our lives and over the span of many years. We continually allow ourselves to bump up against our partners, our careers, our choices, and to recommit/fix/adjust their trajectories over and over again in little increments. We don’t let the plane fly on autopilot for too long a time.   

The most difficult transitions seem to happen when we have let the autopilot fly the plane for years. Then one day we wake up, or the plane slams into a cliff side (think affairs, bankruptcy, job loss, depression) and we wonder where the hell we are. 

Who is this person across from us at the breakfast table?  And for that matter, who is the person staring back at us in the mirror?  And do these two strangers understand who they are themselves?  Or do they have anything in common with each other?

Some researchers hypothesize that the increase in middle age divorces is because we are living longer and healthier lives, and so we have time to create a true second chapter. Overall, longer and healthier lives sound like good news.

What’s most important, I believe, is putting your hands back on the controls and taking the plane off autopilot. Gather your supports. Ask the important questions. And listen to the answers with as much compassion and respect for yourself, and your spouse, as you can muster. 

You’ve got a lot of flying years left.  Choose your destination wisely.  And if you need help adjusting your flight plan, feel free to give me a call.

Photo credit:  David Armano via Flckr

Several years ago I was fortunate enough to attend a three day workshop presented by Dan Siegel, MD at Kripalu Center in Massachusetts.  In case you haven’t heard of him, Dan Siegel is a psychiatrist, author and preeminent researcher in the field of interpersonal neurobiology. The workshop was on meditation and consciousness.

For three straight days he spoke extemporaneously to the group of 150 or so participants.  He led us in a series of meditations to ever deepening layers of consciousness and awareness, and took questions from the group.

I found him to be amazingly articulate, intelligent, grounded and very available and inviting.  At one point I had a question I wanted to ask.  In all honesty I can no longer remember exactly what the question was.  I do recall rehearsing it in my mind in preparation for standing up in the group and asking it. 

But as I arose from my seat it in front of the large group, I was struck by a bit of stage fright and dissembled. I tacked a preamble onto my question, saying, “Well, I’m not the Buddha, but…..” 

He immediately interrupted me and said, “Don’t be so quick to say you’re not the Buddha….” 

It felt like a lightening bolt had gone off in my body and brain. 

It was as if his words had pierced layers of unreality, denial, and illusion and traveled directly into the core place of my Buddha nature.  By naming it so clearly, he allowed me to name it inside myself.

In that moment, I FELT my Buddha nature.  And inside my mind, I said, “Oh, right.” 

Some years earlier an intuitive counselor had cautioned me to watch how I gave away my personal power in my use of words. It was an astute warning and one that I had taken to heart. Siegel’s deftly offered interruption moved this knowing from the level of thought into one of bone deep awareness.

Time, as it is wont to do, moved forward.  I recall that he expanded a little on his comment. I went on to ask my question which he answered, and then I sat down.

Yet ever since that moment, I have been able to locate this Buddha self inside of me.  It is as if once having found it, I always know where it is. And I know the truth of it.

I am the Buddha.  And so are you. 

Can you feel the Buddha in you? Or are you denying it, discounting it, ignoring it, or otherwise not owning the reality of your Buddha self?

Don’t be so quick to say you’re not the Buddha. 

Photo credit: NLewis via Flckr.

Are you feeling it now?

Yes, no, maybe?

If the answer is anything but an unequivocal yes, you may be suffering a Case Of Lost Mojo. 

Maybe it’s been stolen by your own personal Dr. Evil.  (Fellow fans of the impossibly juvenile Austin Powers movies, you know of whom I speak.)  Maybe it’s been transported into outer space by aliens. Maybe you dropped it when you were ordering your latte at Starbucks.

Or maybe, like for so many of us, you haven’t even noticed that it’s gone.

Ouch.

But once you do notice your mojo is gone, what’s to be done?  You can try to pretend it’s no big deal.  “Excitement is for the young”.  “It’s natural to get more serious as we mature.”  “It’s not like I’m a kid anymore”.

(There’s some truth to that last one.  Did you know children laugh about 300 times a day compared to 17 times for the average adult?  Mojo seems to come easier to them by virtue of their youth.)

Or maybe you look on quietly, and more than a little enviously, of others who seem to still have a hold of their mojo.  You wonder what they know, or what they’re doing that you aren’t.

So let’s say you’ve noticed your mojo has gone AWOL and you are ready to do something about it.  What should you do?  Where should you look?

Generally when I counsel someone who has lost their mojo, I ask them the following questions.  Even a little bit of digging here can yield gold. So let me arm you with a spade and shovel via the following questions.  Good luck, and keep digging….

1.  Am I avoiding something important? 

Like any form of energy, mojo can be drained off by a chronic, unsolved problem.  Avoidance of a problem is probably the most common explanation for lost mojo, and thus the one likely to yield the richest results.  Of course, usually when we are avoiding something we’ve pushed it so far out of our awareness it’s hard to know *what* we’re avoiding anymore! 

Look to the core areas of your life. How is my marriage really doing?  Do I enjoy my work?  Or does it grate on my soul to show up there every day?  Do I play?  Ever?  Is today a good day to die?  (I’ve gone a little Zen there, but the question sure does clarify the mind, don’t you think?)      

2.  Am I compromising myself, my values, or my truth?  

In any area of life, are you doing something that goes against your values, against what you believe to be truly important in the world?  Are you being unfaithful to another, in spirit or deed?  Are you shading the truth to someone important? Do you feel like your company, or your job, is requiring you do to do something questionable?  Do you compost your trash at home, but work for a company that’s putting toxins in the local river? 

While few of us are Joan of Arc, consistently acting against our values acts like a splinter in the soul.  It festers and inflames, and depletes our mojo.  

3.  Am I stuck in a rut?

Do you allow yourself to seek out new people, situations or activities in your life?  Or do you stick to the same thing over and over? 

Neuroscience tells us the brain loves novelty.  (This may be why children laugh so much. Novelty often makes us laugh, and to a child the world brings new things every day!) 

Change it up!  Make yourself do something different, even if you don’t feel like it or if it doesn’t seem to make sense. Shop at a different convenience store.  Order something different from the menu.  Ask a coworker you don’t know very well to go to lunch.  Follow people on Twitter who do something totally different from you.  Wake up your brain and your mojo will likely come with it.   

I’ll end with a message of hope. 

(Spoiler alert!)  Austin Powers did eventually get his lost mojo back.  After going on a journey, exploring his past, and challenging his dark alter ego, he discovers it was inside him all along. 

So take heart!  Your mojo is in there, too. 

And if you need help digging, give me a call.  I’ve got a backhoe.

Photo credit:  Lucy Boynton via Flickr

So why is it so difficult to stop?  Sometimes it has become a habit, one we are often not even aware we have.  Sometimes, when we stop we become aware of a difficult feeling, thought or awareness we are trying to avoid.  (Hence, the desire to continue moving!)  Often it is a combination of the two.

Yet wonderful things can happen when we stop:  intimacy, relaxation, clear thought, pleasure, peace.  And also some of the richer, more complex and yes, even painful things happen when we stop.  Our tears, our anger, our remorse.  Difficult things, to be sure, but things that have the ability to teach us and change us in positive ways, if we let them.   

Usually if we can develop the capacity to experience the difficult things that happen when we stop, we will also be rewarded with the pleasurable things in life that happen only when we’re still.

So how can we begin to cultivate the capacity to stop, to be still?

1. Define your “Stop”.  Your Stop may mean you stop speaking.  It may mean taking one or two deep breaths.  Or perhaps your Stop will be one minute of silent, seated breathing.  (Five minutes for the ambitious!)  
2. Stop frequently.  Four, five or six short “Stops” a day will have a bigger impact that one long Stop.  Plus, you’re more likely to try something new if it is small and easy.
3. Bootstrap your Stop.  Tie your Stop to something you already do.  E.g. – Put a Post It note on your bathroom mirror to remind you to Stop before you brush your teeth.  Diary “Stop” in your Blackberry several times a day.  Use your Google calendar to remind you to Stop.

“The main thing I’ve learned is to approach everything with an easy touch and an easy heart, and just approach everything with a much more relaxed energy, ‘cause that’s when you open up.”

What a lovely phrase, and a lovely idea.  “Approach with an easy heart.” 

This got me thinking about how an easy heart might feel resting inside my chest. As I sat with this idea, I could feel the muscles around my heart relaxing and letting go. My shoulders came down, and I felt my torso softening and broadening. My breathing slowed. Ahhh….An easy heart.

I told my heart that it was okay to take it easy.  Everything is already okay.  Right now.  This very moment. All is well.

Cooper was right.  When your heart is easy, you open up.

How do you imagine you would feel if you approached life with an easy heart?

The phrase “mid-life crisis” has become impossibly trite.  But a mid-life crisis still describes an experience that many, if not most, people have at some point in their lives.  I think I had my first mid-life crisis at the age of 27, when my first marriage fell immediately and disastrously apart.  I’ve been fortunate enough to have several since then.

I say fortunate, because if used properly a mid-life crisis forces one’s attention into the present moment.  Particularly when we are young, some of us have a tendency to live life focusing on the future.  Developmentally, that can make a lot of sense. “I’ll finish college in four years.”  “I’ll get married after I’m 30.”  “I’ll make my first million by age such-and-such.”  We look forward with our hopes, our dreams, and our plans. 

A mid-life crisis is what happens when something interferes with, or in fact even destroys, this forward living perspective.  The marriage is unsatisfying.  Or it makes us miserable.  The business venture fails. We spend three, four, five years in graduate school only to discover that we can’t stand working in our chosen field.  “The best laid plans of mice and men…”, and all that. 

The golden ring of the future lands squarely in our lap, and we discover that it is in fact a rusty metal band.  The “unpleasant present” wallops us over the head.

And oddly enough, this is the gift.

All the sages agree that life is lived more fully, and in fact can only truly be lived at all, in the present. Unpleasant realities have the effect of bringing us directly in to the here and now.  Our task is to distill the gift of that reality from the mid-life crisis – the gift of living in the here and now – and use it to guide our life into the future. 

So go ahead – have a mid-life crisis.  Have one, or two, or three. 

Welcome to the present.  

I’m on a diet. The Sleep Diet. Unlike most diets, however, this diet involves indulgence rather than deprivation.

Since January 1, I have been sleeping as much as I want. I go to bed early and I don’t get up until I wake up naturally. No more alarm clocks for me.

I haven’t slept less than 8 hours a night for five weeks now. Most nights I sleep 9 hours, and sometimes even 10. I feel rich, spoiled, decadent.  I feel like I’ve won the lottery, or inherited a vast fortune. I go to bed at night greedily, hungrily. I sleep voraciously. I revel in the luxury of a vast, uninterrupted space of time between my fleecy microfiber sheets and comforter.

I’ve also lost 7 ½ pounds since January 1.

There’s science here. Research has shown that not enough sleep affects hormones that control our appetite by increasing gherlin (the hormone that makes us hungry) and decreasing leptin (the hormone that makes our hunger feel satisfied). 

Science aside, I am of course feeling supremely rested. I feel less stressed and have more energy. I have more energy, for example, to plan, shop for and prepare nutritious, home-cooked meals. I feel less need to eat for comfort, or to try to create energy to make up for my fatigue. I’m experiencing a Better Life. 

I love being on my Sleep Diet. I’d tell you more about it, but I gotta go now. It’s time for bed.

by Douglas S. Malan
The Connecticut Law Tribune
March 30, 2009

Karen Caffrey knows the feeling.

You’re in your early thirties and things are starting to click at your law firm. You’re getting to understand how to practice law and you’re good at it. But the time and effort required in your practice is immense, and the legal work really isn’t fulfilling.

You’re starting to question whether the legal profession is where you should be. You wonder if you can get out, and how. Meanwhile, colleagues and friends are getting laid off by the dozens.

Caffrey was at that point in the mid-1990s, minus the layoffs, after 10 years of practicing at a Hartford, Conn., firm and then in-house with a large corporation. She discussed all of this with a therapist and soon realized that dispensing such helpful information was what she should be doing with her life.

“It wasn’t that I hated the law,” Caffrey said, “but I didn’t love it.”

Fifteen years later, Caffrey has earned a master’s degree in psychotherapy and counseling and runs an established West Hartford practice. About 20 percent of her clientele is in the legal profession. And with the legal industry shedding jobs and reeling financially like it never has before, Caffrey is preparing for more frightened attorneys coming to her for advice on what to do with their lives.

Since the economy headed south, she said, “I do notice that when I have younger lawyers come in, there is fear about job mobility.”

Then there are the middle age solo practitioners — the group that disciplinary officials most often find committing egregious ethical violations — who are battling various crises such as depression, anxiety and chemical dependency. Often, these lawyers are referred to Caffrey through the support group Lawyers Concerned For Lawyers.

Numerous studies have indicated that lawyers are at a heightened risk for both depression and suicide. Ambitious lawyers are often perfectionist who put extreme pressure on themselves to succeed.

“Most of my male clients are older solos,” Caffrey said. “They’re coming to me with personal concerns, relationship issues, anxiety and depression.”

Many of Caffrey’s attorney patients are harshly critical of themselves, and their law school education has trained them to view the world differently, she said. “Put a person like that in a high-pressure environment and it’s going to exacerbate the problems,” she noted.

Sometimes lawyers come to her worried that they have committed malpractice or doomed a case or deal through bad decisions.

WHAT IS FUN?

Women lawyers come to Caffrey wondering if it is possible to maintain a high-powered practice while also enjoying a family life. There is no silver bullet answer, Caffrey said. Work-life balance and the glass ceiling remain very much a part of the female lawyer’s experience, Caffrey noted, adding that “things aren’t as far along as I thought they would be” when she left the practice of law in 1994.

“Then I get a younger set of relatively new lawyers who are questioning if practicing law is what they really want to be doing,” Caffrey said.

These clients are in their late twenties and early thirties, and they have doubts about their career path, especially when they have little time to themselves outside of work.

As a young lawyer, “you’re being told that you’re not going to make it in this firm if you’re not doing 70 hours a week,” Caffrey said.

With a focus on getting ahead, many lawyers lose grasp of a balanced life. In the midst of one session, Caffrey asked a young female attorney what she did for fun.

“She didn’t know how to answer the question,” Caffrey said. “She had to think back to her teenage years to remember what she did for fun. Just the sheer number of hours you put into your job doesn’t leave time for that. Then add to that the fact that you analyze everything in an adversarial system, and fun can get pushed to the side.”

And lawyers often refuse to acknowledge that they need help in dealing with their situations. Instead, they struggle alone until their problems become too much to handle, Caffrey said. She has not been surprised to hear about lawyers suffering mental and emotional stress as a result of a bad economy.

“Lawyers are trained to be so analytical and emotion is not supposed to be part of it,” she said. “I think a lot of lawyers don’t notice that what’s going on with them is often tied to emotions. It’s not where they go first” to find answers.

Caffrey spends time asking clients questions about why they went to law school and if those reasons have manifested themselves in their daily practice. She also explores the possibility that the attorney is in the right career but the wrong job, or possibly in the wrong career altogether.

At the root of her advice, “I help people unpack their unconscious or semi-conscious beliefs that lead to some pain or dysfunction in their life,” Caffrey said, such as a figuring out why the lawyer-client feels compelled to put in so many hours.

“Everything isn’t a crisis,” Caffrey tells clients, “and if you’re living that way, that’s usually not something that comes from a present-day issue” but rather has a deeper cause.

Return to Counseling for Lawyers.

For adoptees, these realities often include emotional consequences that are rarely acknowledge or discussed.  Some of them are as follows:

Profound Loss.  When an infant is separated from the mother in whose body she was carried, the infant has a deep, pre-verbal body experience of loss and abandonment. Nancy Newton Verrier, MA, an adoptive mother and well-known author on the psychological effects of adoption on adoptees, calls this loss the adoptee’s “primal wound”.  Furthermore, under the “closed” adoption system most commonly practiced in the U.S. there is no exchange of information or contact between the birth family and the adoptee.  

In a closed adoption situation the adoptee grows up totally cut off from contact with, or information about, her birth family. Birth parents, grandparents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, as well as information about ancestors and family characteristics (e.g.-artistic or musical ability), medical information, ethnic and cultural heritage, are all missing.  Most adoptees grow to adulthood never having laid eyes on or touched a blood relative.  So in addition to the actual body experience of loss, adoptees experience a tremendous break in connection with their personal past.

Denial of the Loss.  Our society has in general denied the losses experienced by the adoptee.  Imagine if someone lost her entire family and all family records and possessions (heirlooms, pictures, etc.) in some monumental catastrophe. We would expect the person to be devastated and grieve, and would offer support and condolences.  Yet does anyone say to an adoptee, “I am so sorry about your loss?”  At best, the adoptee’s pain is tacitly acknowledged by the tentativeness with which the issue is raised with her (if it’s raised at all).

Shaming.  Adoptees are often told that their reactions to their adoption are wrong. These reactions can include confusion and questioning (“Why did she give me away?”), anger at birth or adoptive parents, or a desire to address the loss by obtaining information about the adoptee’s origins.  For example, adoptees who are searching for information or contact with their birth families are often told that they are being “selfish”, are maladjusted or are hurting their adoptive parents.  (“You wouldn’t be searching if you really loved your adoptive parents”.)  When adoptees ask questions, even well-intended explanations can confusion or shame. (“Your birth mother placed you for adoption because she loved you”, equating love and abandonment, or “You should be grateful you were lucky enough to be adopted by such a caring family”, equating a need for information with ingratitude.)  

Lastly, the status of being adopted can itself be a source of shame in our society, reflecting the old stigma regarding promiscuity and “bad blood” which surrounds adoption.  Some adoptees recall being taunted as children with such statements as, “They (the adoptive parents) aren’t your real parents: your real parents gave you away”.  All forms of shame isolate the adoptee by discouraging her from expressing needs and feelings.  

Secrecy And Lies.  Sometimes families pretend, either to the adoptee or to the world at large, that the adoptee is a birth child. They keep the fact that the adoptee is adopted secret. Like any secret, it is shaming and “crazy-making”.  Lying to the adoptee (which many years ago was a recommended practice in the field of adoption) results in an ever-increasing spiral of lies. Multiples lies about the child’s birth, medical history, resemblance or lack of resemblance to adoptive family members, etc. must be told by the family.

The secret must also be maintained by a conspiracy of friends and neighbors, since at least some outsiders are aware the adoptive mother did not carry the child.  If the adoptee’s status is disclosed to her but held secret from others, the adoptee may be forced to lie to keep the secret. And like shame, secrecy isolates adoptees.  Sometimes shame results in adoptees keeping the fact of their adoption secret: they “pass” as birth children of their adoptive parents.

Legal Discrimination.  Under the adoption laws of most states, adoptees are effectively considered to be minor children throughout their lives. At the time of the legal proceedings terminating their connection with their birth families, they were infants and of course had no voice. However, they also had no legal counsel, and no laws which anticipated that there would be a time when they would be able to speak their needs. How would most adults feel if a court legally stripped them of their identity, and all future contact with or information about their family, without their consent and without legal representation?  This is precisely what happens to every adoptee. Yet when adoptees reach the age of majority, most states either prohibit adoptees from obtaining information about themselves entirely, or impose expensive, time-consuming and burdensome conditions on the process.  Alex Haley searched all the way to Africa for his roots, but adoptees are told they shouldn’t search beyond the face in the mirror.

Healing.  The mixture of profound loss, denial, shame, secrecy, lies and legal discrimination is a familiar one for adoptees.  What are some of the elements of healing for adoptees?

            One of the most powerful elements of healing for adoptees is connection with other adoptees. To borrow the slogan of a popular laundry detergent, getting a connection from others “Gets the Shame Out”.  Whether that connection is in person, through books, TV, or on-line adoption websites, express the reality of your experience and being heard by a person who understands and relates is powerful and healing. It is wonderful to realize, “I’m not the only one who feels/thinks this way.”  Fortunately, the adoption reform/recovery movement has made great strides in recent years and there are many organizations, support groups, books and films available for adoptees.

            For some adoptees, “opening” their closed adoptions by obtaining information about their origins and/or seeking contact with their birth families can help their feelings of loss and strengthen their sense of identity.  The issue of adoptees searching for their birth families is still highly controversial. It carries risks for the adoptee as well as for others involved.  The risks for the adoptee include the possibility of a second “rejection” by the birth family, an “unsuccessful” reunion, the inability to find any information, finding false information, etc. However, adoptees who have had what might be described as unsuccessful searches may feel more empowered by having more knowledge about themselves, even if it is limited or painful.

            Therapy, whether individually or in a group with other adoptees, can also help.  Issues such as, “If I have myself, my needs, or my desires, then I am being disloyal to my parents and hurting them”, are common to anyone seeking therapy and can be worked through. Whatever kind of therapy the adoptee chooses, it is important that issues faced by adoptees are understood and appreciated by the therapist, and taken into account in viewing the person as a whole.

            Becoming active in the adoption movement, working for new legislation for adoptee’s rights, and reforming the practice of adoption can also be empowering and healing for the adoptee. 

            Adoption is a complex and life-long process for all of those involved with it.  No one parents or releases a child without it greatly affecting their lives. No adoptee ever stops being an adoptee. Today, there is movement in this country towards more open adoptions, although others are pressing strongly for more closed adoptions.  There is no easy answer to the problem of children being born to parents who are unable or unwilling to parent them (or in some egregious cases, being born to mothers who were pressured or forced to release them for adoption).  Given the wounds which we have inflicted on adoptees with our closed system of adoption, and the wealth of knowledge we have about the effects of loss, shame, secrecy, lies, denial and discrimination, it seems we should be able to find a better way.