Family Therapy

Families are systems of influence. The beliefs, moods and reactions of one family member can affect all other members. Family therapy is an invaluable tool in understanding individual intentions, interactions between family members and the patterns that lead to conflict and distrust.

Often used as an adjunct to individual adolescent therapy, our families achieve a renewed sense of unity and vision through these sessions. Communication tools, conflict resolution, strategies to repair negativity in “real time”, techniques for creating accountability by decreasing mind reading and enhancing honesty, and much more are taught.

Grief and Loss

Disruptions in our relationships are the chief sources of our stress, heartbreak and trauma in life. In addition, a change in our job, in our financial situation and even the loss of a beloved pet can precipitate a grief reaction. Traumatic grief can follow the sudden death of a beloved person and develop into serious mental health problems if it remains unaddressed.

Loss is often a precipitator of depression, anxiety and physical disease. Such events disrupt our belief that life is safe and predictable. Over time, our helplessness and hopelessness can begin to compromise our work life, academic achievement and relationships with others. It is vital that we allow ourselves to grieve. Multiple studies reveal that inadequate grieving can adversely impact our psychological and health.

Gearing Up specializes in treating these types of grief and loss situations:

• Traumatic Bereavement and Grief: The loss of a significant person in our lives is devastating. Many people struggle for years with such a loss and never overcome the pain. Overwhelming grief can compromise physical health, psychological adjustment and career success.
• Divorce Recovery: With a divorce rate of fifty percent, millions of people endure the dissolution of their most important relationship. We know that the loss of a significant relationship through divorce can be traumatic. The marriage disappears along with the hopes and dreams of a lifetime.
• Job/Professional Loss: The termination of a job or profession can introduce tremendous uncertainty, panic and frustration. Financial, marital and personal ineffectiveness can lead to immobilization and devastating depression. Being demoted, sidelined, demeaned, overworked, and bullied can be traumatic and may alter our self-esteem and self-confidence. Such circumstances often introduce a chronic sense of helplessness and hopelessness into our lives.
• Pet Loss: Millions of people develop close and endearing bonds with our “furry friends.” As a result, the loss of a beloved pet can be deeply traumatic.

Boundaries: How To Create And Maintain Them

Sustainable emotional intimacy requires clear and consistent boundaries. Boundaries change over the lifecycle as children reach adulthood, as parents develop in their careers and as partners individuate into new phases of their lives. Boundaries can become fuzzy at each transition. Our important relationships become unstable and conflicted. Articulating the need for change, integrating the old relationship into the new and defining new boundaries and expectations increases relationship effectiveness.

We teach the eight characteristics of healthy boundaries:

• Embracing Differences While Celebrating Similarities
• Avoiding Thinking Traps Such as Mind Reading and Jumping to Conclusions
• Accepting Responsibility for Creating Conflict
• Acknowledging your Partner’s Version of reality without having to Rewrite it
• Avoiding fuzzy, unclear boundaries by Clarifying and Informing
• Accepting the Decisions of Others When You Cannot Choose for Them
• Overcoming guilt and regret when enforcing necessary boundaries
• Respecting Our Own Boundaries as We Respect Others

Recovering From The Loss of Friendships

Whether it is a sister, brother, parent, peer, colleague or neighbor, friendships offer the sustaining magic of encouragement, emotional coaching and a shared experience throughout our lives. Our best mentors are our friends who willingly lend their insight and gifts, shelter us during adversity and cheer us through our greatest challenges with compassion.

Friendships are evolving relationships that change throughout our lifecycle. Friends cycle in and out of our lives depending on a shared path and circumstance. Our best friends are those with whom we share a common worldview and experience at a particular point in time. Connections with dear friends clarify our path, heal our wounds and endow our life with meaning and purpose. However, sometimes, friendships end and such disruptions can be painful, if not traumatic.

Here are A Few Topics Covered at Gearing Up!

Family of Choice: Our friends can often become our “family of choice” when painful disruptions in our biological families occur. Friends can cherish us and sustain us while providing some of our essential lessons in life.

Learning the Difficult Lessons: Healing from conflict with friends is an essential forum for learning about controlling our anger, reigning in our envy, taking responsibility for sabotaging the relationship through projection, misunderstanding and unkindness.

Bonds Never End: Friendships do not always continue due to life changes. However, the bond of friendship is eternal even when the relationship is no longer viable. When the relationship ends because of conflict, a spirit of forgiveness and charity needs to remain. Gratitude for the friendship and what it meant in our lives, even when it ends, is a important gift we give to them, to ourselves and to the world.

Narcissists: Living With the Self-Absorbed

Personal Characteristics

• Highly driven people with strong personalities can be difficult to deal with due to their exaggerated beliefs about control and their own self-importance.
• It is easy to underestimate the narcissist’s single intention to avoid discomfort, shame or vulnerability. If something goes wrong or if they feel anxious, they will blame other people or their “bad luck” rather than examining their own contribution to the outcome.
• He seeks recognition, power and influence. He may often be successful and disciplined at work since achievement is so central to his self image. Interpersonal relationships are usually highly challenging due to his self- absorption and lack of empathy.

How Narcissists Make Us Feel:

• These relationships leave us exhausted, confused and often angry since they are so draining. These folks lack the ability to accept the inevitable disappointment and frustrations that life brings and prefer to externalize blame.
• It is useless to try to predict his reactions due to his fragile self control or insight into how he treats others.
• He may idealize and then devalue others without insight into his erratic behavior. He may lash out with contempt and criticism unexpectedly leaving the recipient of the criticism confused and demoralized. Worst of all, the narcissist refuses to be emotionally accountable.
• Dealing with the narcissist evokes a deep sense of helplessness since it is utterly impossible to reason with him.
• Exquisitely sensitive to other’s reactions, oversights and comments, the narcissist will be inevitably disappointed with you no matter how hard you try. Due to our inability to constantly “mirror” his unrealistic expectations, he will inevitably lash out or withdraw in irritation.

How Bad Can It Get?

• Everyone has narcissistic characteristics but individuals with this disorder are consistently self-focused, display shallow empathy until others displease them and are exquisitely sensitive to how others treat them. The intensity of these personalities is on a continuum ranging from severely entitled, arrogant and dismissive to occasional self-importance, thoughtlessness and self-centeredness.
• The presence of such narcissistic characteristics can severely compromise marriage, friendship, child parent relationships, family and professional collaboration.
• Over time, many of us become depressed, dejected, anxious and angry when this person fails to take responsibility for his words and actions. Apologies are always up to us and when they are given, they are superficial at best . Unfortunately, they show minimal insight into to idealization/ devaluation/ contempt pattern endemic to these relationships.

Manifestations of Narcissism in Relationships:

• Contempt and a Recurring Pattern of Criticism
• Punishment through Criticism and Distancing techniques
• Blaming, Jumping to Conclusions and Personalizing
• Lack of Accountability
• Absence of Understanding of His Contribution to Conflict
• Stonewalling and Defensiveness
• Idealization/devaluation of their partner, family and friends
• Demands for absolute and perfect “mirroring” at all costs

You will learn skills in dealing with difficult personalities at work and at home including the following:

• Understanding the core characteristics of Narcissism
• Learning about the continuum of narcissism
• Learning effective skills in detecting narcissism in others and dealing with difficult people
• Avoiding the personalizing of criticism and verbal abuse
• You will learn to stop the crazy making through detachment and through challenging our negative thinking
• Healing and Repairing: Reestablishing Perspective after an emotional assault
• Distancing from the storminess and chaotic lifestyle of self-important people
• Resisting the urge to educate or reform the narcissist
• Learning to Live in Peace by Managing the narcissist in your life

Eldercare Issues

Some of our most complex and challenging relationships involve our parents. As the life span extends into the eighties and nineties, parents are living longer and independent living is often impossible as they age. Middle aged children are often the sole resource of the elderly parent. In the prime of life and saddled with the educational and logistical responsibilities for their own kids, they are thrust into a difficult and heart wrenching phase of taking over their parent’s legal, financial and medical affairs.

Without judgment or condemnation, it is important to recognize what you can realistically expect from yourself and from your parent. Regular contact, supervision and compassion are essential for the elderly parent. Striking a compassionate balance between your own needs and the obligations of attending to our parents can allow you to problem-solve the relationship pitfalls with compassion and confidence while accepting the realities and joys of this phase of life.

Areas covered include:

• Shifting Authority: How to Move from Being the Child to the Caretaker
• Keeping It Real: Balancing the Responsibilities of Caretaking with Your Own Emotional Survival
• Learning how to set appropriate boundaries without feeling guilty or second-guessing
• Discover how to navigate the weekends and the holidays with balance, wisdom and survival skills
• Remain compassionate and loving with your parent without abandoning your own life
• Learn how to avoid blame by understanding the wonderful contribution of each party, the gift of family legacies, the secrets to avoiding additional emotional hardship and the blessings of forgiveness
• Viewing Caretaking Challenges as Opportunities for Growing and Appreciation
• Loving Your Elder Parent During this Challenging Phase
• Grieving the Loss of Your Parent’s Vitality and Youth
• Appreciating the Lessons of this Time with your parent
• Joining with Others: Finding Strength in our Families, Friends and Community