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It Gets In
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Category Archives: Attachment Hope
Certainty
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Grateful For A New Day
What is that quote from Einstein? “You cannot solve a problem with the same level of thinking that caused the problem in the first place.” Actually, I am not sure that that is the exact quote, nor that it was said by Einstein, but I am going with it because it serves my purpose. If he didn’t say it, I am sure he would have agreed with whomever did say it, right?
I am so grateful for a new day, a new chance to see through a different viewfinder. Yesterday, I was all sour and sad and pathetic. And I sure needed a good cry and a couple shoulders to hold me while I did it. Time to pick myself up, dust off my soiled clothes and dirty hands, and think circles instead of boxes, inside or outside of them, as it were.
Focusing on my son’s lying problem is causing more lying. I know that. I can see it every day. So, true to form, I keep focusing on the lying every day. That is the same old thinking and it is getting me more of the same old problem.
There is a super sure-fire cure for lying. Up your empathy, expect the obvious (lying), and accept re-viewing, re-phrasing, re-doing, re-remembering, re-evaluating, re-inventing, re-seeing, re-explaining, re-visiting, and re-telling until your child settles on what is the last re-vision. Then re-joice because, little by little, your child is re-wiring for the truth.
This method happens to take the patience of a cat observing a mouse for the kill. My personal opinion: The answers to the great conundrums of the Universe are usually found in the ways of dogs and cats. Wag on, my friends, wag on and purr a lot.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up. All you need is an email address and first name.
Celebrate, YOU Need It
I am a sucker for a good ol’ Snoopy Happy Dance. Snoopy Happy Dancing is a time to cut loose, twirl around, be silly, act ridiculous.
Come on, celebrate life with me.
This is it.
This is livin’ the dream.
It is what YOU make it.
Make some happy dance memories for yourself and for your kids. Give them one more thing to remember in their childhoods that is joyful, lively and without trouble. It’s free, no ticket line, no sweaty heat, no chilly breeze, no clean-up necessary, no muss, no fuss.
Just fun.
Have YOU forgotten how to do the Snoopy Happy Dance? Here is a primer.
It’s Friday. Celebrate with a little happy dance of your own.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Save the Date: Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend is September 19, 20 and 21, 2014. Email for more information: jennifer@attachplace.com.
Feel free to invite your friends and family to receive Daily YOU Time emails, too. Click here to sign them up. All you need is an email address and first name.
I Wish
There is a part of me that wishes I didn’t have so darned much to offer in this daily email. I wish my life were smooth as silk and I woke up each morning digging through the reference books for something salient to say that would help you, rather than simply tuning into my own life and drawing from here. I know this way is more helpful to YOU. I know it is and that, of course, is why I write it. I want desperately for my attachment challenged life to have meaning beyond itself…that is the “why” I write this for me.
So many times I have listened to parents lamenting the relentless disappointment that comes with the two step forward, one (or three) step back way our children have of learning. It is so bewildering and yet so much “how it is.”
This week I had such a wonderful all-nighter talk-a-thon with my 17-year-old son that I felt my heart fill with renewed energy and soar. I know many of your hearts soared with me. And, I am pleased by that.
Yesterday, “three steps back” arrived in the form of my T-Mobile phone bill. I discovered $80.00 in gaming money surreptitiously charged to my phone. Sure wasn’t me. To his credit, my son did not lie or deny. He said he felt ashamed and retreated under his bed covers. Unfortunately, his dysregulation was great, so he skipped his chores, failed to keep a promise, and broke a house rule that day. When I got home from work last night, he was still under the covers.
An hour later he appeared in my doorway whispering, “I’m sorry.”
Wait for it…
Emotionlessly, “Saying I am sorry won’t fix all of this this time.”
Back under the covers for another day, no doubt. What in the world would prevent me from saying, “Thank you for the apology honey; let’s talk about it”? Answer: painful disappointment.
Life is so delicious. The highs and the lows make it worth living though. I am still learning to be loving in the face of my own dysregulating emotions. Upside: I didn’t yell or scold or punish. I did, in the end, reject him, which shamed and caused his internalized self-hatred to spike through the roof.
Did I really need to do that to him? Didn’t he punish himself enough already? Wasn’t my own disappointment enough? Did I really need to rub it in, push away, incur abandonment panic in both directions?
I hope there is something in this tale for YOU. There is nothing wrong with being accepting when your child has disappointed YOU. It is okay; it is beautiful; it is forgiving; it is big-hearted; it is the definition love. And love matters.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
In A Minute
For years, I put my children to bed with a tiny inside joke, “Get to sleep now because we have to get up in a minute.” When they became old enough to understand the true meaning of the word play, we had brief smiles between us at bedtime. When bedtime was not going so well, I would wait for a small window to make my inside joke and often it would turn the tide on a hellish evening. Those were hundreds of moments of intimate connection in a life scattered with big disconnects.
Last night, I stayed up all night talking WITH my son. It was delicious and I have waited 16 years for it–that is not hyperbole. Around 5am, I found my window, “Get to sleep now, we have to get up in a minute.” He laughed hard, genuinely knowing the multiple layers of what that meant–we share history, we are family, we are glued together by love, and, literally, we had to get up in a minute.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
The Attach Place
Center for Strengthening Relationships
Hope Is Wind
Those hot dry summer days when there isn’t a bit of relief, the air is still, oven-like, suffocating our lifeforce, hardly filling our lungs to capacity; those days are like dying only we are still alive–barely. Those days we wait impatiently for a breeze, prayerfully for a high wind, or ragefully for a little wisp of any kind to buoy us up and save us from the hot dry dog days ahead.
Hope is wind. It blows in unexpectedly and disappears without footprints in the middle of the night.
YOU can have faith. It always comes again. Until then, let your breath be your wind.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up here.
You can sign up for this daily email distribution at http://www.attachplace.com–Daily YOU Time.
Comparing Is Mental Kickball
Last week I was getting all emotionally preeny about my life being kinda normal. Yep, I was comparing my homelife to the fantasy “Normal Family” that has lived in my head for circa 55 years now. First of all, on the face of it, that is hysterical. If anyone saw inside my family life last week there is no way, no how, they walk away thinking “Hey, Normal Family.”
So, there you have it–my dirty little secret. Despite my zany life mission to live “outside of the box,” I secretly wanted a little box all my own. I thought mine might have a fabulous neon orange door, but still I was hoping for normal inside.
My 17.5-year-old son’s stimulant meds got held up at the doc for 8 days. Yep, count em–8! He is scary off meds. Darts into the street like a two-year-old. Leaves the front door wide open while chasing a stray dog for two hours. Gets lost going to a friend’s house on Light Rail and nearly perishes walking miles in the noon heat–he had a cell phone and could have called me, but didn’t think of that. Falls asleep on a pinhead or stays awake all night every night–no rhyme nor reason to his patterns. Talks at me like I am actually standing in Alaska. Only sees one tile of kitchen counter that needs to be Ketchup free. Spends lunch money on, uh, no idea. Thinks showering takes too long. Lives in questionable jammie-bottoms. Interrupts all conversations with nonsensical stories about cartoons and video game monsters or dreams he cannot actually remember at all. He cannot find his head anywhere, though he forgot he was looking for it.
Oh, there, I just heard a collective sigh. You just now feel normal, don’t YOU. Your life sounds like mine, sorta, right?
Well, that is because I am telling you about the inside of my normal life. When you compare your “inside family life” with the “outside of someone else’s family life,” you are playing mental kickball–and YOU are the ball.
Let me say that again: Comparing inside normals to outside normals is mental kickball, and YOU are the ball.
Embrace your “normal life.” You will feel so much better about it once you do.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up here.
- The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible. Yay!
Slow Down YOU Move Too Fast
There is an old Simon and Garfunkel song from the 60’s:
Slow Down YOU Move Too Fast
You’ve Got To Make The Morning Last
Just Skipping Down The Cobblestones
Looking For Fun and Feeling Groovy
If YOU know this song, I am sure I just clicked it on “repeat” in your head for the rest of the day.
Now do it.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
Attachment Is Everything
Teens need attachment love, too. Attachment challenged children really struggle in adolescence. All the usual questions of adolescence are magnified: Who am I? Where do I belong? What matters to me? To whom do I matter?
Fears and anxieties are huge for our teens when cortisol and hormones run high. Parents, pump-up your compassion and dial-down your fears. Remember what it was like to desperately want someone to choose you, like you, touch you, kiss you? Remember what is was like to need to pump up your vibrato, puff out your chest, challenge and win, be right, get your dream date, or be a BFF?
Remember howfitting in andstanding out were in constant cross-fire inside your head?
Remember how OLD and OUT OF IT your parents seemed?
Remember how far ahead of your brain your mouth was?
Now, multiply those memories by the intensity of 20, or so. To varying degrees our teens are us, plus sized. Icky thought for most of us. If YOU were never like this, YOU are going to have trouble with empathy for your teen. YOU still need to find some, because rejection, shaming, lecturing, disappointment, outrage, frustration and anger will not create the attachment love connection necessary to get your teen through this volatile period in life.
YOU must be the one who changes. The more YOU insist that the teen make the changes before YOU can trust, the less trust there will be. Trust is one of those things, like love, YOU just have to give away a little at a time. Sometimes you get it back, right? Sometimes you don’t. Trusting is risky business. Consider the alternative. And, no, you cannot lock them in the basement until they are 21.
Love Matters,
Ce Eshelman, LMFT
UPCOMING EVENTS:
- Next Trust-based Parenting Course is scheduled for July 19th and 26th. Sign up here.
- Next Hold Me Tight Couples Weekend Workshop for Therapists and Their Partners presented by Jennifer Olden, LMFT and Ce Eshelman, LMFT is scheduled for June 20, 21, 22, 2014. If you are a therapist and interested in attending, sign up here.
- The Attach Place is embarking on our second round of scholarships for families with adopted children who need services but have no funding to get them. We used up the last of our scholarship money last summer and are ready to start fundraising again. This time we have a pie-in-the-sky, big, hairy, audacious goal of $25,000. If you have a dollar you can afford to contribute, that is how we will pave the way–one dollar at a time. Go to: Love Matters Scholarship Fund. We are working on non-profit status, so these donations can be tax deductible. Yay!
Wisdom For Adoptive Parents 