Add Story #2 -- Adjusting to the Changes of Life

Hans Selye was the guru who devoted his professional career to studying stress and the effects it has on a person's life.

He didn't start out as a stressologist. Rather, he was a Canadian endocrinologist who, while working in his lab one afternoon, went to give one of his cute little white lab rats a shot. I think it may have been a hormone, if memory serves me right.

But the rat was clever. Very clever indeed. When Hans opened the door to Mr. Rat's condo, out jumped the little four-legged creature. Mr. Rat quickly found a safe place hiding behind a file cabinet. To this day, whenever I think of Hans Selye, I have this vision of him, broom in hand, trying to sweep the rat out from behind the file cabinet. Selye got the rat and quickly realized that the poor little thing's heart was going about 90 miles per hour.

Apparently the rat didn't like needles anymore than I do, but bloodwork was drawn and to make a long story short, Selye discovered that there's a chemistry to the condition of stress. And Selye said that anything that causes us to make any kind of adjustment in our lives is defined as stress.

Selye went on to identify three kinds of stress.

The first he called eustress. This is a good kind of stress. Going on your honeymoon brought about a condition of eustress. Very pleasant circumstances but a big adjustment. All of a sudden two people who had never lived together are now confined to a small hotel room, or suite. And they shadow each other. I mean, every time you turn around there's this other person about two feet behind you. Or closer. Honeymoons usually take care of those eustress situations because honeymooners can't get enough of each other anyway. That's why they come back home absolutely exhausted. And for years they will look back fondly on those glorious days of their honeymoon when they ate, drank and slept each other. That's eustress. Stress because an adjustment is demanded.

Then there's distress. That's the kind of stress we usually think about when we think of stress. But distress carries a tremendous amount of pressure to adjust. That could be from anything to losing a job or a mate or a house. It might even show itself with our honeymooning couple when they get back home and eventually want a little privacy.

The third is just called stress. We go through our daily lives experiencing some kind of stress. Not a big deal, but adjustments are needed.. It might be something relatively simple like getting dinner on the table so that all the food is hot at the same time. To the newlywed, that could be a tall order. I mean, nobody likes cold potatoes and hot meatloaf.

Or maybe there's the stressful moments when budgets have to be balanced. That's when you find out you have more month left than money. Stress.

When people aren't able to copy with their stressors, we say they suffer an adjustment reaction. It isn't so much the stress that is the problem, but rather, our inability to make adjustments that resolve the stressors. Life has to balance out and get back on track.

My story today is a good example of how important it is to communicate with the right person when there's a problem. This is a story about Jill and how her stress gave way quickly to distress.

The story also involves Jill's eleven year old son, Andy.

Andy and his very best friend Steve had decided to have a sleepover at Andy's house. Since Andy was an only child, all this sleepover business was a new experience for Jill. She wanted to get it right so she talked it over with her husband Ralph. Everything was okay. On Friday night, Steve showed up at their front door, sleeping bag in hand. Steve's mom dropped him off and drove away, never taking the cell phone out of her ear.

But that was okay. It was only Friday night and they were all going out for pizza. Then came nighty-night time. Two giggle little boys were having the time of their life. Pancakes for breakfast the next morning for a couple of sleepy heads. Lunch came and went. Dinnertime was rapidly approaching for Saturday. No problem. What's another little mouth to feed?

But Jill was wondering where Steve's mother was. She offered to call her. Steve explained that he had already talked to his mom and she was on her way.

"Good enough," thought Jill.

Dinner came and went. And hour after dinner passed. Steve tried to call his mom again but there was no answer on her cell phone.

Finally, about nine o'clock, Steve's mother showed up, blasted the horn in the driveway which was the signal for Steve to dash out the door and hop into the van. Not a thank you for a pleasant sleepover, or the pizza, or the dinner on Saturday.

When Jill came in for her appointment on Monday afternoon, she was still seething over this whole episode.

"Why does this always happen to me?" she lamented.

"Can you tell me what your expectations were?" I asked.

"Sure. Steve just asked if he could sleep over. I thought he'd get picked up the next morning. Before lunch for sure."

"Had you talked with Steve's mother about these expectations?"

"No. It just seemed like the courteous thing to do. I mean I never offered to have Steve stay over all day."

"It's a boundary thing, don't you think?"

"Everything seems to be a boundary issue with me."

"Clearly defined boundaries come from having expectations spelled out. Steve's mother clearly took advantage of your generosity. No doubt about that. And the sleepover was arranged between two eleven year old boys, not the adults in charge of their lives. To be sure, Steve's mother behaved irresponsibly. Especially since the two of you hardly know each other."

"I don't know her at all."

"It will be a sore point between you and your son's best little friend unless you can bring some resolution to the issue. What do you think you could do to bring that about?"

"I could call her and give her a piece of my mind."

"Or?"

"I could refuse to let Andy have anything to do with Steve."

"Or?"

"I could spell out my expectations more clearly the next time Steve wants to stay over.'

"What would happen if Steve invited Andy to sleep over at his house next time?"

"I hadn't thought of that. I'm still too angry at Steve's mother."

"Children need their exciting little social lives. Would you really want your son and his best friend not to have a friendship because you're angry at Steve's mother?"

"No. But I think until I get to know Steve's mother, I'm going to limit any sleepovers to our house. And next time, I'll talk to Steve's mother and get a specific time when I can expect her to pick up her son."

"Clearly there are trust issues here and boundary issues. Not to mention anger. You're still trying to make sense out why Steve's mother didn't have a specific time to pick him up. What was her name? I'm sure it isn't 'Steve's mom.'"

"I don't even know that."

"That might be question #1. And she ought to give you her cell phone number. Look, some wise old philosopher once said that we can put up with any what if we just know the why. You're a reasonable person and I have no doubt that if there had been an emergency, you would have been more than willing to keep Steve for the entire day, even perhaps his staying over Saturday night. But no emergency was conveyed to you. In fact, nothing was conveyed to you. His mother just kind of aimlessly kept you dangling with providing your good hospitality for her son. In the future, what would you do differently?"

"I would get a lot more information from her. Sleepovers shouldn't be arranged by children. That's why they have adults in their lives. That's my job and it's Steve's parents' job. His mother and I both have to take some responsibility for the lapse in boundaries. This time."

"Fortunately, there was no harm done. And the blessing that you get out of the situation is the lessons learned."

Adjustments are made when the boundary entanglements in our lives get resolved.

Add Story #1 -- Hanging On By A Thread  -- Jeff was a high school senior. Suicidal. Still in the psych ward at Memorial Hospital. High risk. Statistics say males have a higher rate of suicide completion. The social worker was calling.

Would I be willing to work with Jeff? My first inclination was to say no, but thanks for calling. But I could hear Jeff in the background, "Tell her I need to see her. I know she can help me."

Highly unusual. Where was the social worker? In his room? In her office? And why was she calling me within earshot of Jeff?

"Look," I said. "As long as he's within earshot, let me speak with him."

The next voice belonged to this young man. "Will you at least give me a chance at counseling?" he asked.

Suicidal people can be very good at holding onto the advantage in their game plan. I didn't know if he was going for a change in his game plan and wanted to get out of the hospital so that he could try to commit suicide again, or if he had scared himself enough to never want to go to the edge of his despair.

He told me his father had very good insurance. I told him that didn't matter. "I am not concerned about your financial abilities or your insurance coverage. What I am concerned about is that you are safe. If I agree to work with you, are you going to come for appointments at least twice a week for three months?"

"I'll do anything you ask," he said.

"I'm going to have you sign a contract with me that you'll do exactly that."

"I'll do it," he said.

"Then come on in. The sooner we get started, the better off you'll be. You have a big tear in your soul that needs mending as soon as possible."

"When do we start?" he asked.

"As soon as you can get here. I'm giving you the crisis appointment that I reserve every day for railroaders."

Then his voice cracked, "No one ever told me that before."

"Told you what?"

"That they want me to be safe."

Jeff never missed his appointments. Not for the entire year that he worked through his counseling needs.

At first he thought most of his misfortunes lay at his parent's feet, or rather their divorce which wreaked havoc on his young life. But as he explored that possibility, he realized that the divorce happened when he was fifteen years old. He was only seventeen now. But the divorce had been in the works in the family since he ws about ten, he said. he remembered the shouting matches between his mom and dad. The loud, lumbering arguments that strangled the logic of his young mind. Arguments that were never reconciled.

"And then my family died," he said. "It was as if my parents took a stick of dynamite and blew it apart. It just was no more. Not even little ashes of dust and memories."

Then he wanted to know, "Does love really die?"

"Not all that easily," I told him. "You have to really beat it to death. And mind you, both people in the marriage take their separate pot shots at it. It's never one person's fault."

"Well, I'm never going to get married," he said.

"I hope that isn't true. I hope you meet someone someday who satisfied all the love you've ever yearned for."

Then he told me about his stepmother. Young, lustlocked into her good looks. Drawn to this handsome football-player of a stepson. Jeff's dad was a fireman. Gone for 48 hours at a time at the firehouse. Step-mom could find a lot of things for Jeff to do during those absences. Ringaling beckoning. His mother was seldom home and when she was, she was mostly drunk. At least at his step-mom's, he knew he'd get a nice dinner.

Now Jeff didn't know where to turn. Neither place offered him solace.

"I never knew what a teddy was until my dad married Beatrice," he said.

If I were a horse my ears would have stood up. I asked Jeff, "So are we talking about a giant lapse in her moral judgment, sexual molestation, or out-and-out sexual abuse?"

He didn't know the difference. I explained. It turned out to be a lapse in judgment. "But I was horribly aroused," he said.

"I'm not surprised. Can you talk with your father about it?"

"No. She told me if I did, she'd just deny it. Unfortunately they've caught me in some lies before when I was younger, so I feel trapped."

"Can I talk with your dad?"

"No. Please don't. It would just make more trouble."

The reality of the situation is that Family Services can't handle all the abuse cases involving kids much younger than Jeff. They lacked the resources to do anything about a young male over the age of 17 being chased around by a horny stepmother. It appeared to be another instance of a minor having to act like the adult.

I also wondered if that whole thought was not part of the vision playing through Jeff's head as he stood on the sawhorse in his mom's garage that afternoon with a rope tied around his neck.

It would be months later before Jeff would muster up the courage to tell his father that he did not want to come ot his house unless Dad was home. "But why?" his father asked.

The shouting matches started again. This time it was his father and a woman not his mother. This time, Jeff left the house in the middle of the night with the shout following him out the door, "If you leave, don't ever come back."

Jeff left. I found him the next morning in the parking lot at my office. Bleary eyed and heartbroken. Trying to make sense of what was happening in his life. But first I had to lower the volume of screaming in my own head.

Pathology outshouts logic. Pathology demands clinical distance. Otherwise, I'd never be able to hear Jeff. And when I can't hear, I can't listen. Jeff needed for me ot hear him but more importantly, he needed for me to listen to his story about the previous evening.

But logic trumps pathology. I sat very still, listening to him. He attached to me like a rudderless ship looking for an anchor. I became his anchor. This was a direction changer fr his life. He had taken the fork in the road that would carry him away from all the pathology of pain he had experienced in his young life.

And what happened to Jeff?

Happily his "woe is me" attitude and fears that he would never amount to anything gave way to at least entertaining the notion that he ought to go to college. Bright he was and a talented football player too.

Before his graduation, he learned that he had been scouted during the football season. He now had letters from two colleges offering him full rides for four years.

After graduation he left counseling, fractured but well on the way toward healing.

And then I told him my Greek philosophy story about how a cracked vase never breaks.

"Why not?" he asked.

"Because a valuable vase that has a tiny little crack in it is put in a place where it will not be vulnerable. It's put in a place where it will always be protected from falling to the floor where it would surely break."

Jeff learned to take care of the valuable vase that represented his life. He learned that he would have to protect himself from breaking.

What do we mean by emotional cutoff? According to Dr. Murray Bowen, the ground-breaking guru on family systems theory, this is a powerful psychological device which helps people reduce anxieties. These anxieties are usually centered around old hurts and deep pains that have occurred in the family. What the individual does is simply move away. Kind of "get out of Dodge." Sometimes we call this the "geographical cure." Emotional cutoffs involve moving away from the family and not going back. Well, sometimes it's just not possible to move away so what the person then does is avoid sensitive issues. When someone does bring up an uncomfortable topic at a family gathering, there's a quick change of subject or some other way to divert attention away from the uncomfortable. The ability to cutoff may, in fact, lessen anxieties but at the expense of contaminating other relationships. This is especially true when stress begins to chip away and erode relationships. The best bet and most effective way to reduce anxieties is to soften the intensity of discomfort with some emotional contact, however small. (See this article for more detail: http://www.thebowencenter.org/conceptec.html)

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