DON'T LET THE DELIVERY OVERWHELM THE MESSAGE

Do you listen well when you're being shouted at? Most of us don't. The delivery of the message makes a lot of different, but the urge to yell is powerful. This is particularly true when you're talking to a child or adolescent who blocks you out or when you have a lot of emotion about a situation.

We struggle as much with how to tell others what we need to say as with what to say and this is really important. No matter that we know we should listen as much to what's being said, we are tremendously impacted by the manner in which comments are made.

Individuals tend to shout when they perceive that the other person is not listening--as if volume will solve the problem, will make the other person hear us. The opposite is generally true, but it's very difficult to resist the tendency. If shouting or saying really ugly things is how you try to get others' attention, there's already a problem in the relationship. Neither of these choices increases the odds of you being heard.

If your boss yells at you and says you're an idiot, you probably get mad, too, but do you actually get what he's mad about? Do you even care? Yelling may gain some attention, but it doesn't usually help get the message across.

It's important to realize what's going on with you when you're delivering your message with non-functional heat. When you're yelling, what are you feeling? Simple question, but it takes some thought to work this out.

Usually when you're at the shouting point, your focus is on the other guy. He's the problem(the jerk!). You may even defensively say that he's making you yell. Don't let yourself buy this. I don't want anyone else that in charge of my emotions. No question that you're upset with the other guy; mad; furious; whatever.

You are in charge of you, however. You get to decide how you handle the problem in front of you. Yes, you're very impacted by others--at work and at home--but you're still in charge of yourself. Our society is founded on the shared belief that you're responsible for your actions. Others can't make you scream or hit the wall or throw a tantrum.

They can make you want to do these things, but you still get to be the king of your personal kingdom. (And if someone is this irritating to you most of the time, you might want to reassess the relationship.) I'm not suggesting you never raise your voice. Using strong words that actually say what your problem is, actually increases your chance of changing what you want changed. The first step, however, is to ask yourself what's really upsetting you. Don't just ask yourself once and glibly answer that they are upsetting you. Really dig deep.

Understanding your own reaction--your own feeling--will improve your communication. So will lowering the volume. We don't listen better to shouted words unless it's Fire!

We all want to be heard. But the louder and angrier we get in trying to be heard, the less likelier we are to actually get our message across. Try to remember this and don't give up. It's important for you to be heard.

GO AHEAD. COMPLAIN.

Expressing distress is both normal and functional, but lots of people are feeling guilty about this now. I'm not suggesting you complain your life away or that you shouldn't change the things you need to change, but don't give yourself grief because you have unhappy moments. Some things are bad, you don't need to say that your problem is not as bad as life in Japan right now. That's a given, but being worried about problems or being stressed about a decision is part of life. Quit feeling bad about feeling bad.

Whether you're depressed (and don't have any reason to be) or concerned about a relationship issue or having difficulty communicating with your mother--all these feelings are valid. Just because there are others in this world with bigger, badder problems doesn't diminish yours. You have a right to be upset about that which affects you. Your personal world.

You may tell yourself to get over it or to move on, but this doesn't make your concerns go away. Yes, having a perspective on what's good in your life is important. It's also best for your mental and physical health if you recognize your blessings. But this recognition doesn't mean you're supposed to be 100% worry-free all the time.

The best we can do is to strive for a balanced view. Driving a car that doesn't break down all the time is a constant pleasure and relief to me--as a teen, I pushed my car more than drove it. I had nightmares about being stranded, it happened so often. I feel blessed that I'm able to drive a safe, fun car.

That doesn't mean I don't have worries.

When matters get to the place that you have to hurry to mention that your life is really okay, you have to wonder if your guilt over having worries is appropriate. Life is a challenging, rewarding thing. You have wonderful moments (we hope) and difficult ones.

Celebrate the good ones, but don't apologize for the struggles. Some things just suck. Losing loved ones to death, divorce or distance. Watching those you love struggle (i.e. parenting) or losing things or opportunities you value is hard. In order to really be clear and to rejoice in the pleasures, you need to give yourself permission to hate the stuff that gets in the way.

This hate when purely experienced, doesn't take over your life. You just feel the feelings. It is an interesting phenomena that when we refuse to feel an emotion, it tends to cling...to hang around even longer.

Give yourself permission to feel what you feel. Go a day brooding about this. Be grouchy. Most of the time you'll find the feeling then drifts off like a cloud. If your depression, sadness or worry doesn't lift, you might need to consider talking to someone. This could be a friend or professional.

Some worries don't lift because a decision needs to be made or an action taken--usually an unpleasant action or a decision you don't want to make. We all face these and they generally suck.

Complaining is okay. It's a natural part of life as long as you don't let yourself get consumed and forget the good stuff in your world.

TOO CLOSE TO YOUR KIDS?

This may seem like a crazy question--or one you think refers to a really crazy situation--but it's a good area of debate. How close is too close? Kids need parents, no question about it. They need reliable, attentive, concerned parents who watch out for them when they're little and stay up with them in the night when they're sick.

They don't need to have to take care of you, their parents, when they're little themselves. Too many kids watch out for themselves because their parents are alcoholic, distracted by other relationships, emotionally disturbed, workoholic or drug addicted. This is all bad for kids because they don't have loving adults watching out for them. They feel they need to protect their parents and while kids are generally concerned for the ones they love, they don't need to be the adults in their parenting relationships.

But can they be too close to their parents?

Most parents don't worry about this. They have lots of other things to be concerned about, but there comes a point in kids' lives that they may need to distance themselves from their parents and this generally comes before their parents think they're ready to fly on their own.

So, what's to do? New research indicates that the human brain doesn't fully mature until individuals are around 25. This is much older than we'd previously thought. Before our society as viewed adulthood as coming at age 18. After this kids are automatically tried as adults for crimes, they're considered legally responsible for themselves and we let them enlist for military service at this age.

Are we sending children off to war?

Anyone who's parented an adolescent knows the complicated relationship that usually develops around this developmental stage. If you've had a generally uncomplicated parenting experience, the teenage years can come as a shock. Let's make it clear that not all people go through the same experiences in the same order. We're just talking about generalities. Most kids deal with needing to/wanting to create their own lives as they hit the high school years.

They enter into intimate relationships, seriously begin thinking about how they're going to live their adult lives and generally start keeping secrets from their parents. They may have always done this last part, but as kids get older they become more and more aware of being separate people. Individuals. They have their own opinions and want to make their own choices.

Some of those choices scare the bejeezus out of their loving parents.

What parent of a young adult hasn't worried about their financial choices? I know my husband and I are concerned about this, but at what age to you stop voicing those concerns? When is it really none of your business?

I've talked to parents of 35 year-old children who are still doing their kids dirty work, still cleaning up after them. Most individuals don't want this, either as a parent or as an adult child. So when do parents stop helping?

The transition from child to adult is a little like crawling from a ladder to a roof top--there's a scary moment when really bad things can happen, when you can lose your balance and end up in a bad way. We parents are very aware of the possibilities. Heck, we know our own mistakes and we want very much to warn our kids, to help them not make the same mistakes we made.

The closer the relationship, the more we want to be helpful. Maybe the issue is our closeness, maybe we need to look at the nature of closeness, of helping our kids. I realized as my own daughters began this shift that my comments and cautions weren't all that welcomed. As a matter of fact, they didn't want to hear what I thought of their relationship choices or how they spent their money.

At that point--after much gnashing of teeth and weltering in self-pity--I realized that the toughest, most loving thing we do for our children is...believing in them. Trust me, I know how hard this is to do when they're making bad, bad choices. Frankly, there were moments when I struggled, thinking I thought they were smarter than this. But perspective and much thinking about this helped Roger and I realize that our kids are intelligent beings. That may sound silly to say, but they are smart. Certainly intelligent enough to figure this adult thing out. They might make relationship/career/money mistakes, but don't we all at times?

The really smart part is when we learn from our mistakes. That's what it means to be close to our children. Letting them benefit from their own choices(mistakes). Letting them learn without rescuing them...and then preaching at them. Its understandably hard not to preach. Sometimes really, really hard. But it's do-able.

Love them and believe in them enough to stay out of the way when it's appropriate to stay out of the way. They're smart. They'll figure it out. Yes, you'll hurt while you watch them struggle. You'll want to rush in to take away the hurt. But remember, if you do that, you're taking away some of the learning, too.

TOO LATE FOR YOUR RELATIONSHIP?

No one else can tell you when its time for you to move on, to leave a relationship behind. Lots of people may want to, the individuals to whom you've complained about your mate or the one's who've patched you up when things got rough.

Still, they don't get to make this decision.

I see lots of couples who are at difficult spots in their relationships. Sometimes individuals come in, asking whether or not they should leave their partners. Despite the degrees on my wall, my years of experience in working with couples and my own personal experience--having a long term mate--I still don't have the right to answer this question for anyone else.

Even when they want me to, and sometimes they really want me to tell them what to do because they're not sure. I get that. Relationships are incredibly complicated. Even when your spouse makes you crazy and drives you up a wall, you can still have loving moments that you don't want to let go of.

I get all that.

This is why only you can decide whether it's too late for your relationship. I have lots of opinions about this. I think you should consider getting out if either you're physically abused by your mate or you're physically abusive of your mate yourself. This is a very bad thing to have in relationships and can (and should) lead to trouble with the law. At the same time, nothing makes us crazier than conflicts with the one we love most.

I also think you should consider getting out if you're only staying because you don't want to be alone. I know this is very scary and, trust me on this, its a very common fear. Lots of people are afraid of being alone. The difficulty finding partners is witnessed by the variety of dating sites available. Lots and lots of people are looking and many aren't finding anyone.

That still doesn't mean you need to stay. At least when you're looking you're giving yourself a chance at finding a relationship that works for you.

There is a tendency when you have big (or a bunch of small) unresolved conflict in relationships to ride along, hoping things will get better. Hoping you'll get over it, but time alone doesn't solve problems. Lots of people want to argue with me about this, but I've never found that time clears relationship problems. It can give you perspective, but just hoping things will get better overall doesn't yield any long term improvement.

When you have relationship conflict that's not resolved these issues may no longer be discussed, but they've not gone away. They sink to the bottom, like pond sediment, and eventually you're swimming in a very shallow relationship. Pretty soon, unresolved stuff between you turns to poison and kills the love you once felt.

Only you can say if its too late for your relationship--you and your partner. The relationship is the business of the two of you. Both partners have to commit to dealing with whatever issues. No one person can will it better or resolve matters alone. Even just giving in all the time to avoid problems doesn't really avoid anything long term. After a while you get tired of everything always going your partner's way, never yours.

Don't wait for your relationship to die. Don't be like too many of my clients and show up to get help when the relationship is gasping it's last breath. I see lots of people right before they call the divorce lawyer. Learn to deal with issues when they come up.

Give the love a chance to live a little longer. In my book Should I leave Him? I go much more in depth about this decision and attempt to give a framework which might help in the decision process, but only you can decide when you're done.

GRIEF AND LOSS

A few weeks back my husband, Dr. Roger Doss, and I gave a continuing education workshop for about 100 professionals in the mental health field. The topic was grief. Because Roger and I enjoy presenting workshops in an interactive style, we started this one by asking the participants to write down--anonymously--their greatest losses. We asked them to be very brief, putting life changing moments into a sentence or two that they then handed back to us.

The results were moving and profound. Never think mental health professionals have had perfect lives and don't know how you feel. There is no such thing as a perfect life.

When we gathered the responses we received a range of situations that told of deep, distressing, painful losses. Everything from the somewhat standard losses--"my grandmother died"--to the situations that most likely made the news--"my husband killed our infant child". This being said, grief never feels standard when it's yours.

Lots of different situations brings grief. Death of a loved one. Divorce or relationship break-up. Aging or the loss of one's health. A close friend who decides not to be your friend anymore or even the loss of a community, the break down of a church or a group of friends--all this can prompt great feelings of loss.

We've all heard about the Stages of Grief and the order in which individuals deal with the emotions of loss, but this order is truly different for different people. Some people skip some steps altogether. Loss is a unique experience and there is no standard response. Some people cry openly; some rail angrily. Some are silent and stoic. Don't think these different ways of responding to loss means that individuals don't feel genuine pain.

It's very important to respect the experience and allow individuals to react in their own ways, in their own time.

This variance, however, makes it very awkward to know what to say to a grieving person. Compassionate individuals can struggle to know how to be with grieved persons. The loss experience can bring sadness, anger, relief and guilt. Crippling guilt, actually, which comes mostly from our understandable desire to control the events impacting us ("I should have done something...") to a largely irrational self-blame. Sometimes our regrets fuel guilt. And who doesn't have regrets?

Loss brings change. Sometimes big change. Whether this loss means finding a new place to live or work after a relationship ends or if the grieved person faces big changes in his financial situation now that he's a single wage earner, these changes impact lives beyond our missing the person who's gone. Insult to injury. Sadness and stress seems piled on. Sometimes life definitions must be changed--from married person to divorced person, from a wife to a widow. This can be unsettling on so many levels.

And then what? How do you move on? Do you move on? Is it wrong to move on?

Sometimes creating a new life seems awkward and we struggle with not accepting we have to go on without the lost person. Sometimes we've forgotten how to function without them in our lives. When relationships end through divorce or death, some individuals jump into other relationships, not wanting to deal with everything that comes with being alone. I've known individuals to marry again only months after the death of a much-loved spouse. Some people try to deal with loss through avoidance or denial.

Individuals can even start living very different kinds of lives. They make massive changes, jumping out of airplanes, changing careers, divorcing their spouses or dying their hair pink. Loss affects us profoundly. We have a tendency to be blown away by this kind of experience, having never thought we'd be without this person or this role.

From the outside, others may have an urge to make the grieving individual face the situation. We can want to conduct interventions.... We need to think about this carefully and only voice our concerns when the grieved is considering dangerous choices. In intervening, we run the risk of insisting they grieve on our time schedule, in our ways, rather than theirs.

Whether you're dealing with loss and grief or attempting to be with someone you care for who's facing this, you might want to talk to a professional. Not because we have magic answers, but because we're trained to listen, to give you space and not to judge.

Because when you're grieving, you need to be kind to yourself...and it's not always easy to know what that means.

DYSFUNCTIONAL FAMILY

"My family is constantly squabbling. We're more or less obsessed with being right and pointing fingers at the person who's wrong(always someone else). It doesn't really help that my son and husband...get so incensed that within seconds of the start of an argument, they're already shouting. They never actually listen to the other person's side of the argument and consider whether or not it's reasonable. When it's clear that one person isn't getting across to the other, we starting insulting each other, such as comparing one person to the father (who's known for his ill temper and violent nature) or to the mother (who's overweight and said to be careless with her money). We never get the arguments resolved and it seems like the only thing we get is more shouting and headaches.

My son is diagnosed with ADHD, but I see this as little reason to let him do whatever he wants. Whenever I come into his room while he's working (or gaming), he always tells me to 'bother someone else'. I've been working in the hallway in the house, and when I ask him not to sleep on the couch there because his snoring disturbs my work, he refuses to leave. He's also taken to heating up pieces of paperclips with a lighter, which I've asked him not to do because I'm worried he might hurt himself or set something on fire, but he disregards my warnings.

There's a total lack of connection between us. There was one time when I was having a webcam conversation with a friend...when my son came over to help me with a computer issue. He was a bit camera shy and so to disguise his nervousness, he started messing with my computer while I was chatting, occasionally blocking the camera with a piece of paper and other things. I just interpreted it as the things he normally did to annoy me, so I didn't do anything about it. At some point, he went and disabled the internet, and when I asked him to fix it, he told me to go fix it (myself). He said I shouldn't be using the webcam because it ruined the privacy of our house. He also said that since he'd paid for half the the laptop I was using, he had the right to tell me not to use it....I didn't know what to do, so I went outside for a walk. When I came back, he had accessed my computer and blocked all social websites on my computer--gmail, facebook, yahoo, etc. I got him to show me how to unblock them later when I got him to tell me why he was so upset.

I'd ask my husband to help me with my son, but he has taken to neglecting the situation and if he doesn't do something about it, we end up in screaming and yelling and nothing gets settled. I want to establish more calm in the house, so we can talk things out rationally. I don't want any more disasters like the one I described above."--Stressed Mother

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Dear Stressed Mother,

Number one, you have more going on here than squabbling and number two, you son does feel connected to you, just not in a good way.

Still, this can't be fun. The parental unit is the foundation for the family and you'll get the best results by you and your husband learning to work as a couple. If you two want to change the yelling, screaming part, you need to work on having different behaviors yourself. This can be difficult, but it is do-able.

I don't know if your son is an adult, a teen or a school-age kid, but his age doesn't make any difference--his behavior is unacceptable. That being said, he's not going to even try to change as long as he's witnessing that behavior from you and your husband. Why should he? (I'd tell you your son's being horribly rude, but I suspect there has been a lot of rude behavior in the family in general.)

The winning/losing thing usually occurs when individuals feel smaller and less powerful. This is seen often in foster kids who've witnessed really bad, sad behavior and who've suffered a great deal of loss. Do any of you in the family actually see your own personal power? It doesn't sound like any of you feel that the others care much.

It's very clear that no one in the home is listening to anyone else. That much is obvious.

Listening requires you to shut up, put your own thoughts and feelings aside long enough to actually get what the other person's saying. Not that you always agree with him, but that you understand how he feels and sees things. You'll need to repeat this back to him to make sure you heard right. We often stick our own interpretations in, failing to actually hear what's said. Sometimes what's meant isn't clearly spoken, either.

This is hard for lots and lots of folks, not just you.

If your son's an adult, he may feel he needs financially to stay in the home and resents this, at the same time. Having him there might provide a strange kind of comfort for you. Sometimes we get used to the status quo, even when it's not all that good. We get comfortable.

Change is scary, but lots of change is needed here.

* * *

Mental health issues have gotten a lot more acceptable in the last few years and this is a very good thing. Secrecy tends to make difficult experiences worse. Along with this growing acceptability, lots more people are taking medication for a variety of difficulties, including anxiety and depression.

These meds can be very helpful, but don't allow yourself to believe that pills alone will help you work out relationship issues. Your relationship will definitely be effected if one or both of you have mental health problems for which you need meds, but the actual conflicts between you? They need something more.

You need to communicate. Yes, the dreaded and over-used "C" word.

Don't surrender to the belief that you should just get over problems in the relationship. You might benefit from medication, but you'll still need to feel listened to and understood for your relationship to get better. You both need to feel valued and heard by your partner or the love between you will droop and die like a flower on a wilting vine.

Love needs care and feeding. So do you.

SHE'S AFRAID OF GROWING UP

"My daughter and I seem to be constantly at odds. We have always had a very close relationship until about 18 months ago. She went to college about 30 minutes from home, living in the dorm for the first year. Then she returned to attend a local college, living at home. Now, she stays out all hours of the night, brings her friends over at midnight to watch movies or sleep over. She sometimes leaves kids I don't know in the house when she goes to class the next morning. She and her friends are loud at night when my husband, step-son and I all have to go to work the next day. If I dare say anything to her, she yells, cusses and back talks me horribly. She does no chores around the house and very rarely picks up after herself. She works, but uses her money for her gas, movies, eating out, etc. She expects us to pay her cell bill, car insurance(we bought her car), and her school expenses(books and fees). She has gotten grants and scholarships to pay tuition, though she has taken school loans on her own, just to go shopping. Any advice I try to give her regarding the way she blows her money results in her screaming at me, cussing me and telling me it's her life, she's 19 and can do whatever she wants. We have argued over my wanting to always know where she is. She has developed a habit of driving about three times a week to a town about 120 miles from our house to go bar hopping. She says she's not drinking(she's underage) and is just dancing. But it worries me with her being on the interstate so late at night. She leaves for the bar around 10:00 p.m., stays at the bar until 3:00 a.m., and rarely gets home before 6:00 a.m. She usually has friends with her, but I'm not sure young girls alone in a situation like this are particularly safe. So, I make her tell me when she is going, text me when she arrives and let me know when she's on the road headed home. Of course, this keeps me up all night as well. She rarely gets 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep and neither do I. I have told her that if she flunks out of school, I will no longer pay her car insurance or phone bill. She ended up dropping most of her classes last semester because she got so far behind because she didn't attend class. It was either withdraw or accept failing grades. Again, every time I say anything about this or question her about what she's doing or who she's with, I get cussed, hung up on, or screamed at. Of course, as soon as she needs money, she is all sweetness. For the past month, she has been staying with a friend who has very little parental supervision. I made a point today to touch base with the father of this friend, asking if it was okay that my daughter was staying there...and I gave him my number for emergency contact. I don't know this man...and don't know this friend, either. Now my daughter is very upset that I talked with the father and says he believes I am a stalker. Am I going overboard with trying to be aware of where my 19 year old is and who she's staying with? I'm not sure whether she needs more discipline(namely making her pay her own bill because that's the only way I can discipline her) or if I jus tneed to let her go, no questions asked, and just be there when she needs me."--Concerned Mother

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Dear Concerned,

Yes, you're going overboard, but it's very understandable. What you have is a tremendously mixed up situation and you're not alone in struggling with a teen trying to make the shift to adulthood.

Yes, I'd have the girl pay her own bills. Actually, I think you and your daughter have been so close that this transition to being an adult is hard for you both (not to mention your husband and his son). When parents have been very connected to kids, the growing up shift can be really hard. She needs to be an independent adult to prove to herself that she can make it without you. Sad as it is, she'll have to make it without you one day.

This is a difficult part of parenting, to doubt about it, but you need to do less.

First off, you have to stop treating her like an adolescent (even though she's acting like one). I know how difficult this is (from experience), but it's time for you to pull back. That doesn't mean she gets to trash your life, your house or your finances. You want to help her establish herself, which is very appropriate and loving, but stop staying up nights for her texts. Stop letting her have sleep-overs at your house like she's fourteen.

Actually, I think you're best letting her make those trips without any oversight from you. Let her go and say nothing. I wouldn't continue paying her gas, however. I also would think about (depending on what she earns) not paying her cell bill or giving her money. I wouldn't buy her clothes, either.

This is the bottom line for parental assistance...if the kid's making her own way and going to school, help her pay the necessities, but don't give her money to blow. Then, don't ask her how she spends her money. Her choice, not yours. If she's not in school, let her be a grown-up and support herself.

Don't expect her to be your friend. She's trying to establish a life without you and while this can be painful for parents, kids need to work out the kinks themselves. They need to know they can. If she's got scholarships, she's capable. She's a smart cookie, even if she's doing stupid things. Remind yourself of this: she can make it. She's able. Try really hard to butt out of her life, unless clearly invited. Then don't give advice unless this is requested. Even if it's requested, be slow to give it.

The very hardest thing to do is to believe in her, to ACT like you know she's capable, even when she's not acting very smart.

* * *

One of the hardest things to realize is that it's not what you say that counts, it's what you do. Don't get me wrong, talk is important. You need to communicate verbally, but it's easy to say stuff that doesn't match your behavior. When parenting, act like you believe in the kid, don't just say it. That means you don't rescue the kid from her own mistakes (if you really believe she can rescue herself). You don't give her money and things she can earn herself. You let her make her own way.

Actions speak way louder than words. This is true in romantic relationships, as well. Behave in a truly loving manner towards those you love. Sometimes that means having faith in them getting themselves out of messes, rather than running to their aid.