10/26/2018 1 Comment Dr. Stan Tatkin on Co-Dependency Versus Inter-Dependency (as well as other aspects of relationships)![]() What exactly is the difference between co-dependency and interdependency? This is a question that comes up a lot for folks who are familiar with the idea of co-dependency. Many of us have an idea that we are supposed to "love ourselves before we can love others" and "be the source of our own happiness." We may feel that if this is not happening that we are being "dysfunctional" or "co-dependent." One of the interesting things to me about the re-focus on attachment research in the past decade of psychology has been the re-realization that humans are inherently dependent on others. We are born some of the most vulnerable babies of all species, requiring a full decade if not more of intensive parental involvement. Our brains do not actually finish maturing until halfway through our second decade of life. We have always, and continue to, live in groups or "packs". We use solitary confinement as the worst punishment for the worst humans. So how many of us got this idea that depending on others was bad or pathological seems curious indeed. I recently encountered a podcast with Dr. Stan Tatkin, a prominent couples therapist and author who utilizes attachment theory as a foundation of his work. Among other things in this interview Dr. Tatkin shows how his model is representative of healthy interdependency versus the pathological idea of co-dependency. It would take several pages for me to summarize his theory on this point and he does a perfectly fine job on his own. So for those reasons rather than try to explain his viewpoint to you I suggest that you listen yourself: http://www.neilsattin.com/blog/2015/12/19-recipe-for-a-secure-healthy-relationship-with-stan-tatkin/ He gets to the topic of codependency around 20 minutes in to the podcast. While you are there you may want to check out other topics in this podcast which specializes on relationships. The podcaster has many excellent guests on his shows and seems to cover a lot of important ground. And if you are interested in learning more about healthy relationships, as always I also recommend Dr. Tatkin's audio program, Your Brain On Love, as well as his books, Wired For Love and Wired For Dating. Wishing you happiness in your connections, Dr. Jordan
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![]() I am a self-confessed "Stan-fan". Since starting to study with Dr. Stan Tatkin in 2009 I have gained a profound understand relationships from a brain and attachment perspective. This has helped me help hundreds of couples find their way back to each other-- back to love and lust and unity. While most people will not have the opportunity to hear Dr. Tatkin talk directly, or even better to study with him as I have, he recently was invited to do a Ted talk on why relationships are hard. I think this is a wonderful primer on his theories and how to apply them. I invite you to watch his talk (it's 10 minutes) and if you like it to check out his audio program Your Brain on Loveand his books Wired for Love, Wired for Dating andLove and War in Intimate Relationships. The first three are aimed at lay-people and the last is more for psychotherapists. All are clearly written, insightful, useful and even humorous in parts. Dr. Tatkin has a fantastic approach to love and connection and I encourage anyone who has ever felt that "relationships are hard!" to check him out. Wishing you health, happiness and connection, Dr. Jordan ![]() This is, by far, the most accurate account of marriage I have ever read. Alain de Botton's most recent novel is not for those who want to maintain a fairy-tale version of marriage. It is certainly not for anyone who wants to cling to the idea of a soul mate, someone born to understand your every wish without you even uttering it. It is for those of us who seek to understand why so many marriages fail. Who seek to understand what marriage is really, truly about. (I say here marriage but really I am talking about any kind of long-term coupling). It is not a sad story by any means. It is a realistic story of two flawed people who build a life together. That life includes romance, but also children, mess, affairs, work and heartache. But in the end they continue to "choose each other" as Bruce Feiler would say in his recent book. The book follows two characters as they meet and fall in love and continues on through their lives for the first few decades of their union. During this time they struggle, sometimes together and sometimes privately, with just what to expect of marriage. In the end they come to understand that with all its flaws marriage offers us something unique and valuable-- the opportunity to truly put another's needs first, over and over, which can only be done by growing as a person. Of course like the rest of us the characters in de Botton's book had no idea what marriage was at first. The soon to be husband reflects on his desire to propose and concludes that "He hopes through the act of marring to make an ecstatic sensation [falling in love] perpetual." (p. 40) Not to be cynical here, I have been happily married for nearly two decades, but to think that by marrying as an act itself you can seal in that feeling of falling in love would be quite misguided. One has to work at continuing to fall in love like one has to work at staying in shape. Sadly if not properly guided many of us will eat too much cake, go to the gym too infrequently and then not recognize that person in the pictures from our 20 year high school reunion. Marriage is much the same. Many of us come to the institution poorly trained and somehow expect that following our instincts will lead us to the habits that build and sustain this marvelous partnership. Years or decades later when the union is on its last breath we wonder what happened. The main characters also find that being coupled sheds light into areas of our lives that previously we had happily been spared. As de Botton puts it "The single state has a habit of promoting a mistaken self-image of normalcy...[our] tendency to tidy obsessively when ...feel[ing] chaotic inside, [the] habit of using work to ward off...anxieties, the difficulty...in articulating what's on [our] mind when...worried, [the] flurry when [we] can't find a favorite T-shirt---these eccentricities are all neatly obscured so long as there is no one else around to see [them]." (p. 42) How beautifully this captures our own self-serving bias-- that how we are, what we think, what we feel, what we prefer, how we operate, is normal. Forgetting all the while that we are just as weird, conflicted, inconsistent, hypocritical, defensive or even downright crazy as the next person. This self-serving bias leads us to the problem that "Without witnesses, [we] can operate under the benign illusion that [we] may just, with the right person, prove no particular challenge to be around." (p. 42) Ah, the illusion that we are right and our partner SO wrong! That if only they would come to their senses and agree with us! Be like us! De Botton also touches on the potentially tragic tendency of humans to move towards familiarity. We think we are searching for that perfect person who will complete us, who will overlook our bad habit of leaving the milk out or staying up until 3am on Facebook only to be obscenely grumpy the next day. But alas what we are actually searching for is a relationship "that it will be reassuringly familiar in its pattern of frustration." (p. 44) He muses that when we do, accidentally, run into a person who is healthy and not inclined to replicate our painful childhood wounds we find ourselves "rejecting [them] not because they are wrong but because they are a little too right-- in the sense of seeming somehow excessively balanced, mature, understanding and reliable-- given that, in our hearts, such rightness feels foreign and unearnt." (p. 44) This is where in working with couples I think it is important to point out the opportunities of what might seem like an unfortunate union. For when we partner with this person who is inclined to hurt us in ways that are similar to our original caregivers we also open up the possibility that these new attachment figures (our partners) can HEAL those old wounds. This is the type of work promoted by Dr. Stan Tatkin in PACT. Dr. Tatkin explains why relationships are so "hard" in his brief Ted Talk and helps us to understand how the things we bring to our relationships-- our childhood wounds, our attachment styles, our nervous systems, can undermine our hopes for a perfect union. In working with couples using the PACT style I try to help partners heal each other's wounds from childhood, which has the nifty benefit of not only freeing up more resources in the now-healed-person but also creates immense gratitude, love and appreciation for the partner-who-healed. It's a beautiful gift that pays forward. The characters of de Botton's book also experience the sad phenomenon pithily described as "if it's hysterical it's historical". Meaning, when you partner reacts hysterically (i.e. going WAY overboard) they are probably "triggered" into some childhood feeling being brought up by the present situation. This has the misfortune of causing a person to react like a lunatic given the current circumstances. When triggered by our spouse, de Botton says "we lose the ability to give people and things the benefit of the doubt; we swiftly and anxiously move towards the worst conclusions that the past once mandated." (p. 84) The spouse that is 20 minutes late is confused with the father who abandoned us; the wife who circles the room chatting with everyone while her husband is left at the punch bowl becomes the mother who never had time for him. And on and on. These are the circumstances that, if misunderstood, can tank a marriage. But often it takes a professional to help the two lost souls embroiled in these patterns to see what is really going on. And much to my surprise in reading de Botton's book, his couple actually finds themselves in the office of an attachment-based couples therapist! I swear de Botton did not consult with me on this. Although if he had it's certainly what I would have recommended. And as has been my experience for the past decade of using PACT, de Botton's couple is able to heal what had previously been fodder for battles enumerable. They learn to see the wounded child inside of each other and minister to it. And their love grows immeasurably. It would sound like a fairy tale if I did not see this exact narrative play out so many times in my own practice. His couple learns that "Everyone is always impossible. We are a demented species." (p. 182) De Botton goes on to show us how "The Romantic vision of marriage stresses the importance of finding the 'right' person, which is taken to mean someone in sympathy with the raft of our interests and values. There is no such person over the long term. We are too varied and peculiar. There cannot be lasting congruence. The partner truly best suited to us is not the one who miraculously happens to share every taste but the one who can negotiate differences in taste with intelligence and good grace. Rather than some notional idea of perfect complementarity, it is the capacity to tolerate dissimilarity that is the true marker of the 'right' person. Compatibility is an achievement of love; it shouldn't be its pre-condition. " (p. 216). It's a beautiful book with a real and honest look at marriage, warts and all. Some people ask me how you know if you are ready for marriage. My usual response is that no one can be ready for marriage because it calls you to be someone you are not yet ready to be. Your fullest, highest, most evolved self. But perhaps from now on I will recommend as an alternate answer that you are ready for marriage if you can read this book and still believe in love. If you can see it not as a tragedy but as a testament to the power of two people's desire to overcome who they were and become better people within the bonds of a partnership that will push their every button. If you can see that as love, then maybe you are ready. Wishing you health and happiness in all of your connections, Dr. Jordan
7/11/2014 0 Comments What I'm Reading Now- Love 2.0I've decided to keep a reading list in case anyone is interested in the same kind of uber-nerdy psychologically oriented stuff as me. So here goes!
I just finished a book entitled Love 2.0 by Barbara L. Frederickson, Ph.D.. Good stuff. Basically the book is about the positive impact that love has on us as human beings. As I tell all of my patients, humans are "hard-wired" for connection (just ask poor Harlow's monkeys). So it's no surprise that when researchers such as Dr. Frederickson study the impact of love on things like health they find that love matters. For example, people who reported more loving contacts with others during the day had significantly better "vagal tone". Vagal tone is the relative health of the vagus nerve, the largest nerve in the body. The vagus nerve is responsible for your ability to recover from the fight or flight response. So after being scared or threatened (when your heart rate naturally accelerates) your vagus nerve helps the heart rate to slow back down to its normal pace. The better your vagal tone, the faster your heart rate recovers. People who report a higher number of loving connections during the day (this can be a warm hug from a friend, a sweet text from your significant other, etc.) have better vagal tone. They are literally healthier than people who have less positive social connections. Vagal tone is associated with heart disease also, and since heart disease is still the #1 killer in America, vagal tone should be important to us all. Vagal tone is also related to the strength of one's immune system, especially regarding inflammatory responses. Inflammation is implicated in things such as arthritis, strokes, diabetes and some gastrointestinal disorders. So again vagal tone is something we should be thinking about. Dr. Frederickson gives lots of encouraging information about how we can improve the amount of "love" we get in our lives. For example she has found that just thinking about a loving exchange with someone we care about can cause the same health improvements as having that exchange. So sitting at your desk and remembering the big hug you got yesterday from your close friend can actually re-create the positive effect of that hug right then and there at your desk. There are precious few things we can do sitting at our desk that are going to improve our health, so I think this finding is very encouraging! Another recommendation that Dr. Frederickson. makes is to practice LKM. This is Loving Kindness Meditation, a buddhist tradition. She gives explicit instructions on how to do LKM (it's quite easy) and explains-- you guessed it-- the numerous mental and physical health benefits of it. I especially appreciate that she explains how to do LMK if you have problems loving yourself (as many people do). Part of LKM can be directing loving feelings towards oneself, and that is not always easy if you come from a dysfunctional family where you were lead to believe that there were major things wrong with you. She gives some "work arounds" for this problem which I found very helpful. If you are interested in research on the impact of positive social connections (aka "love") I think you will find this book very readable and informative. It doesn't focus on romantic love (so the title may seem a bit misleading) but does a great job of expanding our ideas about what love means and how it can influence our emotional and physical health. 3/16/2014 4 Comments Sexual Addiction-- How Your Brain's Normal Circuitry Gets Hijacked by the Pornography IndustryYou may not know it, but the porn industry has figured out how to hijack your brain's normal circuitry to make you addicted to their product. And they are quite successful! Just as McDonald's uses our brain's cravings for calorie-dense food (that came from eons of living through food shortages), the porn industry uses our brain's natural mechanisms for bonding and procreation to make us crave highly sexualized, ever changing pornographic material.
Here's how it works (I am paraphrasing from Sam Black, author of The Porn Circuit):
So you can see how our brains are wired for partner sex. Each sexual experience, which based on mother nature was supposed to happen with another person, was designed to bond us emotionally to that person. To create powerful feelings of pleasure, excitement, affection and desire/craving. But that system gets hijacked by porn and turned into a powerful reinforcement system which leads the person back to porn for more and more "fixes". For more information brain circuits involved in pornography, download The Porn Circuit for free. Below are other findings from brain researchers that illustrate how the brain responds to pornography: Cambridge Neuropsychiatrist Valerie Voon, in the UK documentary Porn on the Brain, demonstrates that the brains of chronic porn users closely resembles the brains of alcoholics. She explains that her research has shown that a particular area of the brain, the ventral striatum, “lights up” when a porn addict sees porn. This is the same area of the brain that responds when an alcoholic sees a drink. So the same areas of the brain that get hijacked in alcoholism, leading to addiction, are being hijacked in people who repeatedly use pornography. And in an interesting book by Dr. William Struthers (Wired for Intimacy) brain research is quoted as demonstrating that viewing pornography and masturbating changes the singular cortex. This area of the brain is responsible for helping us have willpower and make hard moral and ethical choices. The singular cortex is actually weakened in people who view pornography habitually. The sad fact is that pornography habits make it harder for us to avoid going back to pornography! It becomes a self-perpetuating cycle. Gary Wilson, in his TEDx talk, explained why people who use porn frequently eventually have to find more and more extreme images/experiences to get the same result. As noted earlier, porn causes a release of dopamine in the brain. After using the same kind of porn over and over again the brain actually begins to wear out! It stops the production of dopamine to that stimulus (or anything that is too similar), which leaves the person craving their dopamine "fix" but unable to get it. The only way to get the high back is to find something that is more extreme than the original porn. Think of this like an alcoholic developing tolerance to drinking-- at first two drinks gets them tipsy, but in a year or two it takes 4, then 6, and so on. So the tolerance to the original level of stimulation drives them to more and more extreme types of porn just to get the same feeling of pleasure. For more information on the consequences of this particular aspect of porn addiction see the article "Why Does Porn Seem Hotter Than My Partner?" (http://goodmenproject.com/featured-content/why-does-porn-seem-hotter-than-my-partner/) One of the most important things I have learned as a therapist in this situation is that chronic pornography usage can actually cause impotency in real-life sex! The brain gets so used to responding to porn that it gets confused when we have a real-life partner. Men can actually experience impotency or other erectile problems when they try to have sex with a real person, because they have conditioned their genitals (and brain) to respond only to a virtual person! For more information on how to undo the porn habit and the hold it has on your brain (and your body), you may want to look at The Porn Circuit: Understanding Your Brain and Break Porn Habits in 90 Days. The take home point is that Mother Nature never anticipated the internet. So our poor brains are not doing a very good job of keeping up. Circuits and chemicals that were designed to help make us get together to procreate and bond to partners are going haywire when exposed to types of stimulate they never anticipated. If you want your relationships to last you may need to learn more about the detrimental aspect of pornography and how to put those same circuits and chemicals to use in favor of your relationships rather than against them. |
AuthorKrista Jordan, Ph.D., ABPP Archives
September 2018
CategoriesAll Affairs Affection Anger Attachment Betrayal Books Co Dependency Co-dependency Commitment Communication Connection Courage Depression Divorce Dr. Stan Tatkin Family Healing Insecurity Interdependency Intimacy Love Marriage Meditation Neuroscience PAC PACT Podcast/Video Quotes Relationships Self Discovery Sex Stress Technology Therapy Trauma |
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