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!

Worth, Deserving, and Self Love

How do we learn (earn) our worth?

Innate need to belong for security and safety + family, peers, culture, media.

People are born relatively helpless. We need adults to feed us, change us, protect us from dangers big and small. There is a biological imperative to bond that’s both emotional and chemical. 

When the bond is healthy, parents love their kids for no other reason than that they are theirs. When the bond is unhealthy, the parents project their unmet needs onto the kids. This can be a need to be special or important, as with narcissism. In this dynamic, kids may feel pressured to perform to certain standards to earn love. They may feel pressure to be attractive or athletic or whatever compensates for the parent’s insecurity. 

Parents might have other unmet needs, especially when they’ve experienced trauma or trouble in their own early bonding. Parents that don’t feel capable of adulting often “parentify” their children, relying on the child to feel soothed, cherished, or safe. The child becomes a little adult, equating their worth with their ability to support and nurture others. This is a recipe for codependence (dependency on being needed).

About half the people over the globe are estimated to have insecure bonds, regardless of any other socio-economic factor. So we are constantly interacting with people who don’t feel secure. Insecure thinking, behavior and emotion is interwoven into the fabric of peer relationships and culture, and it is delivered to us through the media in a steady stream.

In this paradigm, what gives any one person value is determined by this mix of family, peers, and culture. For example, I grew up in LA in the 1970s. My family is Jewish, but not religious. My mother is narcissistic, codependent, and eating disordered. My dad has early childhood trauma and lifelong addiction. My parents and peers were all affected by the LA lens on looks. 

I learned that to be valued, I had to be thin, sexually attractive to men, subservient, and stoic. I was supposed to marry well and have money. And I was supposed to anticipate the emotional and physical needs of others and provide for those needs. In essence, my value lay in my ability to withstand indentured servitude and unpaid prostitution without complaint - like most straight, white women of that era.

Who determines/enforces the value of a person?

Whoever holds power

First, it’s family. We learn early who is in charge of the food, the care, the comfort, and the punishment, and we adapt, mostly without awareness, because we assume our experience is normal. We don’t question until we are exposed to something different.

Later, it’s peers (sometimes teachers). We learn the pecking order at school, which kids are cool, which are losers. We do what we can to be in group 1 and avoid group 2. If we grow up in secure families, we are afforded a buffer against the insecurity of other kids. If our families are insecure, we might be more susceptible to the judgments and meanness of social stratification.

As we get older, we usually have some opportunity to confront these artificial distinctions as we are exposed to different people with different values. The more we can identify that conditional worth is always relative, the more likely we are to reject values that don’t serve us.

The more insular a family or community, the fewer these opportunities. Also, the more deeply ingrained the values (through trauma or repetition), the more difficult it is to register that these values are all relative, even when we are exposed to alternative values.

This is why therapy can be so helpful, especially therapy that is holistic and considers how culture, family, and social status impact mental health. Therapy is often the first time clients get to explore and question their basic assumptions about their value.

It’s a powerful and deeply healing experience to realize that our value is not dependent on what anyone else thinks of us.

Why are some people valued more than others?

Narcissism, sociopathy, dependency needs...

An analogy:Homer and Bart walk into an ice cream shop. Homer orders beer flavored ice cream. Bart says, “Ew! Beer ice cream is gross.” And he orders rocky road. Homer says, “Rocky road is for losers who want to break their teeth on stale almonds.” And then they choke each other till their eyes pop out. 

In this story, it is neither beer flavored ice cream nor rocky road that is gross or for losers. What is true is that some people enjoy and value ice cream that tastes like beer, while others don’t. 

The ice cream itself is neutral, and so are you. Some people will love you exactly as you are. Others will not, no matter how hard you work or how much you twist yourself into a pretzel to win their admiration or approval. 

If you try to win over a narcissist, you will have to make them feel wonderful about themselves all the time, no matter the cost to yourself. Hopefully you never find yourself romantically involved with one. You can never be enough to satisfy someone with this personality type. They live with an emptiness inside that can never be filled. And sooner or later they will let you know you are gross and a loser because your love hasn’t filled the hole. 

What they can’t and won’t accept (so don’t bother trying to enlighten them) is that the hole can’t be filled by anyone or anything but their own love. Narcissism is not an over-abundance of self love. It’s arrogance and swagger trying to compensate for shame and self hatred.

The same is true for sociopaths (both types lacking empathy for others). But with a sociopath, the end goal is not to fill a shame void with admiration. It is to abate a feeling of shameful powerlessness with power over others. A narcissist will undermine your worth for failing to make them feel good enough. A sociopath with undermine your worth to keep you under their thumb.

Unfortunately, narcissists and sociopaths tend to gravitate to positions of power in the world. They run companies and newspapers, ad agencies and boardrooms. The power dynamics in many companies are built on a foundation of vasselism. Work is structured so that employee compensation is kept at the minimum possible in order to maximize profit for shareholders. Job insecurity is the tool used to keep compensation low. Job insecurity undermines worth.

Narcissists and sociopaths also control a great deal of the information that filters through our screens regularly. Billions of dollars are made by selling insecurity.

The best way to counter these undermining factors is to look at your own dependency needs and insecurities and shore them up. Emotionally, you do this through repeated, daily acts of unconditional self love. 

Financially you do this by empowering yourself in whatever ways you can. This might mean more education, developing a side hustle, saving your pennies, working for yourself… whatever you can do to lessen your dependency on anyone who would take advantage of you. 

What power dynamics affect people we see in therapy?

Racism, sexism (gender and sexuality), bi-directional ageism, classism, ableism (mental illness stigma), looksism/sizeism.

All the systemic stratifications that are part of culture harm all of us - even those at the top of the ladder. They foster insecurity and paranoia in everyone. Case in point, the current US President.

All of these hierarchies rely on dependency and power/powerlessness to exist. This is another reason why good therapy is holistic. I have been treated as less-than based on my gender, my religious status, my weight, my height, my age when I was under 30, my age when I was over 40, and my financial status. And I consider myself part of a privileged and protected class because I’m white, educated, and middle class. My clients have shared stories of oppression based on these factors plus sexual orientation, gender identity, immigration status, skin color, accent, physical or mental health diagnosis, even hair color. 

It's important to recognize and call out systemic oppression in whatever form. In itself, this act of saying, “This is wrong,” is empowering and restores worth. It’s also important not to rent out too much head-space to fighting with people who are committed to being assholes. Sometimes the best way to honor our worth is to walk away. Strong boundaries are key to owning your power and demonstrating your value through self-respect.

What does this stratification do to people?

Subtle, chronic, trauma; depression; anxiety; low self esteem

When we are devalued, especially in childhood, when our self concept is forming, we experience that devaluation as trauma. It goes back to that innate need to belong. Ostracism feels dangerous because when we are little we can’t survive alone. Even when we are big, we survive predators and disasters better in a group. We hunt and gather better together. Feeling unwanted and devalued creates anxiety, depression, addiction and low self esteem.

Every single person I have ever seen in therapy has this exact core problem, no matter what the diagnosis.

What can we do to change how we value ourselves?

1. Stop trying to make others value us and look for those who do without condition.
2. Treat ourselves with respect and kindness all the time, without having to do or be anything to earn that care. Monitor your inner critic and listen for what it is afraid of. Then gently remind it to tell you about the fear instead of yelling at you.
3. Notice (co)dependency relationships and work on leveling power dynamics. Resentment is a good clue you are over-giving. Practice letting go of the need to please. Practice saying no without shaming, blaming or justifying. Seek out education, training and support to become financially self-sufficient over time.
4. Become aware of cultural dysfunction and create/rehearse your own counter-narratives. In the fat community, we do this by using the word fat as a neutral descriptor instead of a pejorative term. As a woman, I call out use of the words pussy, wuss, and girl meant as put downs. I actively look for role models who look like me. And I question my own learned fears and assumptions about people different from me.
5. Refuse to participate in gossip. I cannot emphasize this one enough. When you gossip, you implicitly condone it when people undermine your worth by talking shit about you behind your back. Practice saying, “I don’t gossip because I want people to know they can trust me to be kind, even when they’re not here.”

The Life Sucking Tragedy of Too Much Access

Something miraculous happened while I was on vacation. After several days of using phone GPS to get around in our rental car, streaming music, and uploading photos to our social media accounts, we got a text from our carrier saying we were nearly out of data. Did we want to buy more? Text Yes or No.



As if we shared a brain, we both knew the answer would be No. And for the rest of the trip, we chilled the f@ck out. We stopped going everywhere and doing all the things. We went to the beach and swam. We took long walks at dusk. We ate leisurely meals. We read books. It was like vacation used to be - relaxing.


For about a year now, I've been having conversations with clients about how much we have to track now, from multiple different passwords to which texts and emails need a response, to the milestones and deadlines of work projects, to the likes and follows we give (or hope to receive) online, to managing our children's activities and assignments, to tending to our friends and romantic partners, to (especially if you are over, say, 45) tending our own bodies.

Are you exhausted reading that last paragraph? I just re-read it, and I am!

There is also another fear you may not be aware of. A great many of us have a fear of down time. Because if we really do unplug and breathe, we might feel. We might feel how exhausted and overwhelmed we are. We might feel that underlying discontent about something (or someone) that feels so scary to address.

All the busy-ness becomes a way we ignore or tune out from our emotional world - and the needs that our emotions are designed to signal. By tuning out, we may be abandoning ourselves emotionally. We may be unconsciously re-creating the emotional abandonment or neglect we felt as kids. Ouch.

If you are on the road to practicing Healthy Secure Adulting, it may be time for your inner parent to some set limits. Because this can be scary and painful, you might not want to dive into the deep end. I don't recommend two weeks of silent meditation as a first step. But maybe you can designate an hour or even 30 minutes one day a week to unplug and listen inward.

It may help to remind yourself that you don't have to do anything but listen. You don't have to fix anything. Your main mission, at least for now, is to keep yourself company while you feel how you feel. Nice company. Kind, friendly, compassionate company. Your inner critic is not needed for this task.

Notice how it feels to offer yourself company without any other agenda. If sadness, fear, pain or anger come up, practice breathing into them. Imagine putting an arm around yourself. See how it feels to just validate the feeling - "Given my history/circumstances, it makes so much sense I feel this way."

When you get in touch with your feelings, a soreness may linger for hours or days after. See if you can just let it happen. When you notice it, be that kind, supportive company for a moment or two. In this way, you may build tolerance for your own emotions and ease yourself out of the feeling-phobia endemic in our culture.

Gradually, over time, you may listen and just be with your feelings more often. As you do this, the abandonment/neglect end. Eventually, you may want to address the messages your feelings are sending - in gentle and kind ways.

It may just be that in limiting the access you have to tech (and the access tech gives the world to your time), you discover more opportunities to relax, to slow down, to enjoy the moment. That's good too. It's really good.

Need practical tools/ideas for reducing access?

• Filter all your email accounts through gmail to reduce spam.
• Take 10 minutes each week to unsubscribe from all the things.
• Set up an auto-responder on your email and an outgoing voicemail telling the world you are unplugged and will respond in X days. 
• Turn off your phone, all the way off!
• If anyone complains they can't reach you, practice saying, "I unplug from X day/time to X day/time every week. I will respond when I'm back online." People will adapt.
• Designate certain days or hours "screen free."
• Spend time outside if the weather permits and look at the world instead of a screen.
• Lay down with your eyes closed for ten minutes or more and just let your mind wander. If you wander into work thoughts, planning, or fixing, gently nudge yourself into something else. You might take the time to feel your feelings. Or you might fantasize about the perfect vacation, or meal, or who you would want to visit if you had a time machine.

We are not built to be "on" all the time. Down time is essential to restore our energy and creativity. Out of doing lots of nothing come some of the best ideas. Trust that doing less will create more richness in your relationship with yourself. And as you become more available to your own feelings and needs, your inner children will come to trust you (and like you) more and more.

Managing Disappointment Securely

Secure adults manage disappointment well. They don’t shame or blame people who disappoint them. They don’t retaliate or withhold warmth to punish or coerce people into doing what they want. They can sit with disappointment and frustration, knowing the feelings will pass. They trust that other solutions will likely present themselves in time. And they know the comfort of accepting a Yes from someone who is genuine (vs. the unease when someone says Yes out of obligation).

They are also good at setting boundaries. If they recognize that someone routinely fails to honor commitments, they either:

• Discuss the dynamic openly to come to an understanding about what each person in the relationship can truly offer, or 
• See when someone has difficulty with congruence (the ability to say what they mean and mean what they say) and adjust their expectations accordingly so that they are not left in a lurch. 

As a child, I learned I would be shamed, guilted, and/or ostracized if I disappointed my parents. One of my earliest memories is from the age of two or three. I don’t remember what sparked my rage or tears, but I remember lying on my bed, tantruming and sobbing, “Nobody loves me!”

I also remember my mother telling my older sister something to the effect of, “Don’t go in and comfort her. It will only encourage her.” Sadly, many parents like mine were told by experts to “extinguish” behavior they didn’t like in their kids by ignoring it. Behavioral psychologists saw crying and tantrums as an irritating behavior to be eliminated, rather than a signal of distress.

Attachment psychology looks at crying and tantrums as a normal part of human development. All children become emotionally dysregulated at times. Their little limbic brains become overwhelmed by feelings. This can be exacerbated by fatigue, illness, over-stimulation, or frustration.

When this happens, little people need help from parents to feel soothed. We call this emotional co-regulation. Through the magic of mirror neurons, the parent feels the child's distress. This (ideally) motivates the parent to help.  By relieving the child’s distress both parent and child feel better. This deepens the parent’s sense of mastery, and it deepens loving feelings and empathy for the child.

Soothing does not mean spoiling or giving in to a child’s every wish. It means empathizing and staying present and connected through the disappointment. When parents can provide soothing fairly successfully, kids learn that someone can and will help with painful feelings. This builds trust. 

I wonder what might have happened between me and my mother had attachment psychology gained the public eye sooner. I like to imagine her telling me in a gentle voice, "It makes sense my answer disappointed you. It's so frustrating to hear "no" when you really want something. I feel the same way when I'm disappointed."

Over time, kids who are soothed internalize the process of being soothed.  They become more and more able to soothe themselves by talking to themselves the way their soothing parent does. The growing capacity to self-soothe becomes the ability to manage disappointment securely.

Kids learn:

• Disappointment can be tolerated. 
• Feelings can be expressed without fear of punishment or emotional abandonment. 
• Feelings dissipate when they can be felt fully and understood compassionately (hiding feelings makes them churn for a long time). 
• They can love someone who disappoints them. 

Why Don't Insecure Parents Soothe Effectively?

Parents with insecure attachment patterns tend to become dysregulated when their kids are dysregulated. This is what happened with my mom. She never had the experience of being soothed as a child. So she didn't have a map in her mind of how to respond. She was probably sent to her room if she distressed my grandmother. So my cries likely brought up that alone feeling and maybe the helplessness she felt as a child. 

My cries definitely dysregulated her. But instead of using her feelings to sense what I needed, she became angry. Because her attachment style is dismissive, she must have felt so validated by expert advice to ignore my cries. What a relief for her to be able to ignore me and feel that, by doing so, she was being a good parent and teaching me not to be a cry-baby.

But neither of us got to experience co-regulation. She never learned to soothe herself or others. In truth, she never learned to manage her own disappointment well. But because she too wasn't able to voice her feelings or needs directly, she used manipulation, coercion, threats and withholding love (insecure behaviors) to get other people to meet her emotional needs. She never got to experience the love and bonding that happens when help is given freely and joyfully.

I feel so lucky that I found help from therapists, teachers, writers and mentors that allowed me to repair my attachment pattern (an ongoing process!). I could so easily have gone down the same path as my mom. But I’ve learned to validate my feelings and give myself empathy and compassion. I’ve learned to soothe and comfort my own disappointment. And I’ve learned to communicate my needs, wishes and boundaries to others with an open hand - where there is room for others to say yes or no.

When others can’t help, I feel the disappointment, and I comfort myself till it passes. Then I adjust accordingly, finding what I need within or from others who are more available. I have more patience and trust that what I need will arrive at some point. I can keep looking for the right person to help. Until they arrive, I can manage the wait by keeping myself friendly company.

Your inner parent can help you manage your disappointment by:

• Validating your feelings. It’s normal to feel upset when things don’t work out the way you hoped. 
• Reminding you to just be with the feelings and keep you company while they are strong. It’s usually better to wait until the intensity passes (and it always does) before making decisions or taking actions. 
• Helping you soothe the distress by focusing on breathing, making your exhalations longer than your inhalations. This tells your nervous system that you are safe and can relax. 
• Diffusing intense sensations in the body by noticing them and giving them more room. For example, you might feel tightness in your throat, chest, or belly. Feelings are energy. When we hold them in, we create pressure. Imagine allowing the energy to take up more space. It can extend beyond your body, expanding to fill a room, a building, a neighborhood or more. As you do this, notice if/when the intensity begins to lessen. 
• Nudging you away from any desire to punish or teach a lesson to someone who has disappointed you. 
• Once you feel calmer, your inner parent can help you decide if you want to discuss your needs with the person who disappointed you and see if there is a way you can both get what you need. 
• Or, your inner parent can help you see if there is a pattern that tells you this person isn’t as reliable as you need. This might indicate that you should look for someone more dependable. 
• Set a boundary without blaming or shaming anyone - something as simple as, “I’ve decided to go a different way with this.” 
• Your inner parent can also help you be gentle and patient with yourself through this process. It takes time to build these skills. It can help to have a therapist or a friend who is good at listening and validating without advising. dismissing, or intensifying your feelings. Make sure to notice whether you feel comforted and calmed. That will tell you when you have found a good listener.

Part of the work in becoming secure is being able to sit lovingly and gently with all of your feelings rather than avoiding them (which is like self-abandonment) or acting on them too quickly (which can backfire). Disappointment, like any feeling, is a message. Listening deeply and tenderly, then acting wisely, fosters trust in your very own self.