simcha's postings about love, connection, parenting & personal growth
Commentary on the ACE (Adverse Childhood Experience) Study by Betsy McAlister Groves, MSW, LICSW
The Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACE) Study, authored in 2001 by Vincent Felitti, Robert Anda, Dale Nordenberg, et al, is important research, both because of the large cohort that was studied (drawn from a non-clinical sample of 30,000 members of the Kaiser Health Plan) and for its findings of a strong relationship between risk factors established in childhood and medical problems in later life.
How does one co-parent with someone who won’t let go of the past?
How does one afford one’s children a continued sense of stability and the chance to maintain a good relationship with both parents – when one’s ex is nasty, disrespectful, or uncooperative?
Kristin Armstrong, a freelance writer and contributing editor for Runner’s World magazine, and the ex-wife of cyclist Lance Armstrong, writes about “getting back the real me … one heartbreaking and publicly failed marriage later” (Kristin Armstrong on Marriage, Glamour Magazine, May 1, 2006).
If I were to do things over again, I wouldn’t have thrown myself so irrevocably into my new life. I would have guarded the things that made me feel like me — the places, the friends — and above all I would have spoken up about my needs. Instead, I will leave you with a lesson about how a woman can hold on to the bright, hard flame of who she is.
Children who are allowed to do whatever they want, whenever they want, and who are given whatever they ask for, have great trouble learning how to cope with frustration. When placed in settings (school!) where they are no longer at the center of anyone’s universe, they have difficult adjusting, and will often act out their frustration, anger and disappointment.
Excerpted from Tell Me No Lies: How to Face the Truth and Build a Loving Marriage, by Bader & Pearson
The route to deception in a marriage [or long-term relationship] is mainly found within routine exchanges. Couples make demands upon each other and often expect things to be a certain way (their way). By laying down the law, they may inadvertently set the stage for deception. It can take only a few snippets of conversation to cue your mate to be more open or to shut up and shut down. The situation can be hard to spot because, at first glance, it looks like everyone is in agreement. Also, a rule might not be articulated until it’s been violated.
A client shared this with me, and I share it with you: some sound, stern relationship advice from the great Noël Coward, in the form of an invaluable letter he sent to his good friend, Marlene Dietrich, in 1956. He was replying to a recent, downbeat missive from Dietrich, in which she had detailed the latest in a long line of depressing “episodes” involving her on-off lover of a few years, Yul “Curly” Brynner. Coward clearly couldn’t bear to see her suffer any longer.
The following selection from a recent Elle Magazine article about the use of antidepressants to improve couple relations (The Couple Who Medicates Together by Louisa Kamps 4.18.12,) offers an interesting look at how anti-depressants work.
Many of us believe that SSRIs work by correcting a simple serotonin deficiency in the brain, but scientists who study depression now mostly consider that to be “last-century thinking,” as one Harvard neuroscientist put it. The new view of how depression develops, and how antidepressants work to relieve it, revolves around stress — wear and tear, that is, in parts of the brain that regulate emotions.
It is our natural tendency as parents (and often as partners as well) to pay attention to, and focus more on what is wrong, rather than what is right. As a result, our children and teens feel unappreciated and become less motivated to change or improve their behavior. In addition, they quickly learn that they can get more of our attention through negative behavior or “acting out.”