Living with the Frenemy: Two Weeks into Quarantine for COVID-19

Some experts predict a mini baby-boom in nine months. If you are one of the fortunate who is enjoying lots of delicious couple time while sequestered, bless you.

But even the most connected may begin to feel strain - especially since we just found out yesterday the quarantine in the Bay Area has been extended from 2 weeks to 6. Oy vey.

For a lot of people - especially the introverts who now have people inside their houses 24-7 - all the togetherness is a bit much. As one of my clients put it,

"It's not that they're doing anything wrong; it's that they're breathing."

Other irritations I'm hearing:

• I'm working from home, and people keep coming into my space to see if I want anything. What I want is for them to stay the f@ck out of my room!
• My kids are bouncing off the walls. Literally. I was working, and I hear this loud crash. My youngest thought he could use the back of the couch like a tightrope. Of course, the couch fell over. Luckily no one was hurt. I was so furious though. I told them, I will not take either of you to the ER until the virus is under control. If you break a bone, it's just going to heal crooked (of course, I would take them to the doctor if anything happened). Now I feel terrible. Am I a bad mother?
• I have taken my dog for so many walks, she hides now when I get the leash. I just need a break from everyone. As soon as this ends, I'm taking a vacation by myself!

It's so hard to be human. We like to think we're tough and can handle anything. But the truth is, we are exquisitely sensitive creatures. We like our routines. For all the talk of needing relationships to be happy, what we really need is the right balance of connection and alone time. And each of us falls on a spectrum, so what feels balanced for me, might be torture for you.

If you are one of those who is getting a little fed up with hearing other people breathe, know you're not alone. If you're a parent and you want to get away from your kids, you're not a terrible mom or dad.

Alone time is essential to our sense of well-being - especially for adults. It's when we process the events of the day and make sense of our lives. It's when we check-in with ourselves, noting our emotional temperature and stress level, so we can practice self-care. Alone time is when we can finally hear ourselves think, so we can plan, dream, and find the flow of our creativity.

So it's important to set kind boundaries with the people who love us, who want our attention, who are very loud breathers.

Some tips to remember:

1. Don't shame or blame, after all, they need to breathe.
2. Do explain that "I am the kind of person that..." Fill in the blank with your need, for example, "I'm the kind of person that needs a good hour of quiet time first thing in the morning and again around 4pm to hear myself think."
3. Do ask for help instead of demanding or complaining. "Would you guys help me?"
4. Do ask them for their ideas, "Can you help me come up with some ways I can get that alone time while we're all in the same house?"
5. Do thank them for helping, for remembering, for reminding you. Let them see that their help is making a difference. 

Remember that boundaries can feel like rejection to others, so using the steps above, the goal is to protect the connection and love while getting some much needed space.

Hopefully this will help my fellow introverts get some breathing room!

May you and the ones you love stay safe and healthy through this bizarre moment in history!

Gossip, Snark and other Relationship Poisons

In my family, we talked about other people all the time. My mom complained about my dad to each of us kids. My dad did the same about my mom. We kids complained to our parents about the other parent or a sibling. We complained to our siblings about our parents. An unspoken but deeply held family rule: don’t be direct.

When one or more people in a family are insecure, avoidance (especially conflict avoidance) is bound to show up. I brought this behavior pattern into my professional, social, and romantic relationships because, for me, it was normal. I complained to my friends about my love interests. I complained about one friend to another.

I didn’t think of my behavior as gossip. I didn't think about how I was “poisoning the well,” manipulating other people's opinions, and contaminating feelings between other people. Like a fish who doesn't know she is wet, I didn’t know my family pattern was contaminated. It seemed normal that one ever really trusted each other, and each of us knew that we were being judged when we weren’t there.

I also never learned to be direct, to express my true feelings, or to set effective boundaries. The really big loss, though, is that I never learned how to reestablish love and trust when I hurt someone’s feelings. I didn’t learn that relationships become stronger, intimacy deepens and trust grows when people can openly talk about hurt feelings, jealousy, bad moods and all the other normal reactions we have as humans.

I had no idea how healing and connecting a heartfelt apology could be when given sincerely and accepted with love. In psychobabble, we call this "repair," and when done well, it is the superglue of relationships.

It took a lot of therapy, some great friends, and a very patient husband to teach me how to be direct and kind, to say, “this isn’t working for me,” without shaming or blaming others. It took the blessing of a dear friend letting me know I had hurt her feelings and giving me the chance to tell her how much sorrow (the root of the words, “I’m sorry”) I felt, learning I had hurt her, to experience the sweetness and relief of her forgiveness. To this day, she is one of my most cherished friends.

There is another gift in being direct. It’s more subtle, but equally powerful. It’s the gift of realizing that when we talk about others, labeling, criticizing, or analyzing, we are really projecting (talking about ourselves without realizing it). When my mother complained that my father never helped, she was implying he was a jerk. But what she never said was that she had always felt alone and unappreciated, not just by him, but in every relationship she ever had.

I know this feeling because I learned to behave like my mom in my own relationships. I did everything around the house, hoping my husband would notice and understand the secret code: do for me as I am doing for you. He wasn’t raised with the code and didn’t know it. With the help of my therapist, I learned to ask for help directly, without any of the irritation or frustration that was my own projection:

If I have to ask, it means you don’t really care. This confirms my belief that I am not lovable. Now I feel shame, and I am mad at you for "making" me feel shitty.

Of course, the craziest thing happened. When I asked, “Can you vacuum today or tomorrow?” he cheerfully said, “Sure.” That was it. There was no drama. It was my fuming, my irritation, my assumption he was a jerk, and my unconscious belief that I was unlovable that led to our previous fights about chores.

He didn’t mind helping. He minded being treated like he was a jerk.

The deeper lesson for me was that my being lovable was separate from him being helpful. This is key for those of us who were loved conditionally. Growing up, I was loved when I pleased my parents. Anticipating their wishes and fulfilling them without them having to ask was a survival tool. If I hadn’t mastered that, I would have been shamed and blamed.

If you were raised in a family with insecure attachment patterns, it might be difficult to be direct. You may find yourself shaming and blaming others when they disappoint you (maybe just in your head). This is a rich opportunity to look for the underlying belief you might be holding about yourself. It might be a chance to practice being honest and kind, asking for what you need or want without snark. It might be an opportunity to express hurt or disappointment and see if the other person can offer you a genuine apology.

Of course, this is difficult, even scary when being direct was against an unspoken family rule. It may be easier to take this risk with support, or to try in smaller, easier ways with people you suspect are more secure and more able to manage direct communication. Maybe it’s not so much what you do differently, but just a shift in awareness. If you are talking (or thinking) negatively about someone else, what’s really happening inside of you?