You know that feeling when you want someone close—but the moment they actually get close, something inside you recoils.

Or maybe you feel safer on your own—until the space around you gets so quiet it starts to ache, and suddenly you find yourself craving contact, wishing someone would just reach for you?

Welcome to the “claustro-agoraphobic dilemma”, a term coined by psychoanalyst Henri Rey.

At its core, this dilemma refers to a fundamental tension: the longing for closeness, comfort, and emotional safety that exists alongside the fear of being engulfed, overtaken, or intruded upon by the very people we need.

It shows up in therapy. It shows up in love. It shows up in our homes, our calendars, our clutter, even our furniture.

Why Do We Feel Trapped… or Alone… No Matter What We Choose?

From early in life, we use others—especially caregivers—as containers for aspects of ourselves that feel too much to hold alone. We project into them our neediness, our rage, our hunger for attention, our fears of being bad. And we hope they’ll survive it. Make sense of it. Offer it back to us in a form we can live with.

Sometimes we feel lost or abandoned if we’re too distant from those we imagine are holding the parts of ourselves we’ve projected outwards. After all, the projected parts of us, felt to be inside others, in reality are not.

And projection is a two-way street. Once we’re in a relationship, others begin projecting into us, too. And sometimes that feels invasive or destabilizing.

This is where it gets complicated.

We need our objects (in psychoanalytic terms: our emotionally invested others) because we can’t fully develop or hold our sense of self in isolation, and because we’re counting on them to symbolically hold our unwanted parts for us.

But once we become vulnerable enough to need others in this way, we become vulnerable to introjection too—to taking in their moods, needs, perceptions, or projections (often before we’re capable of making sense or containing them).

This can lead us to want to push away those very same people felt to be holding split off parts of ourselves. Because We don’t want to hold unwanted parts of them.

When it’s not just our own emotions we’re managing, but theirs too, we may feel trapped—with toxic contents inside of us.

This dynamic can feel physical too. We might have grown up in a cluttered home, or with a smothering caregiver who intruded into our space. Or maybe we experienced the opposite—too little contact from a parent who feared engulfment themselves.

As children, we may have found ourselves with no reliably comfortable position—whether we were trying to avoid excess or hungering for proximity.

The Manic Defense: Coping by Controlling

To avoid the pain of this “unsolvable” dilemma—the helplessness of needing others who might engulf us, or the loneliness of too much distance (and our fears that our aggression has destroyed our objects)— we often fall into defensive strategies.

One such defense, described by Melanie Klein, is the manic defense: denying or minimizing painful feelings of loss, guilt, or need by replacing them with feelings of triumph, control, or contempt. We flip vulnerability into power. Dependency into superiority. Grief into busyness.

We become busy instead of connected. Intellectually analytical instead of emotionally present. Superior instead of needy.

We clean the house rather than feel our longing. Or hoard objects that “hold” meaning and make us feel surrounded. Or avoid possessions altogether, for fear of being buried in clutter. Some of us say we want to get rid of our stuff, but we can’t seem to actually do it.

Physical manifestations of this dilemma

As I mentioned before, our relationship to our physical space can mirror our relational anxieties.

Some of us feel safest surrounded by our things—books, blankets, candles, mugs. Others feel suffocated unless everything is pared down. And some of us oscillate between the two, just like we do with people.

Our external environment often reflects our internal tension:

I want comfort, but I don’t want to be trapped.

I want space, but I don’t want to be alone.

In the Therapy Room… and Beyond

This dilemma plays out powerfully in therapy.

A client may come craving closeness, but if I respond with warmth, they pull back. Or they may keep me at a distance, then get hurt when I don’t break through their wall. Often what they long for is for me to know—without them having to ask. They want to be seen, but not intruded upon. Held, but not engulfed. Understood, but not interpreted too soon.

And I get it. Because don’t we all want that sometimes?

The work, then, is not to “solve” the dilemma but to name it. To notice it. To get curious about it instead of collapsing into it.

Sometimes that means grieving that no one can ever fully attune to us the way we imagine. Sometimes it means risking closeness anyway. Sometimes it means learning to hold the space between wanting and not wanting. And sometimes it means changing the physical objects we surround ourselves with or the space we embody.

Can We Learn to Stay With the Tension?

Over time, as the therapy relationship holds both sides of the dilemma, clients can internalize a new experience:

That they can approach without being swallowed.

That they can withdraw without being abandoned.

That they can want connection without it meaning they’re weak or childish or doomed to be disappointed.

And that they don’t have to tidy up the mess of emotional life with manic control or busy perfectionism just to feel safe.

Because in the end, we don’t want to be alone—but we don’t want to disappear either.

And if we can stay present to the parts of us that want both—connection and space, safety and freedom—we might discover that it’s not about choosing one over the other.

It’s about learning how to breathe in the space between.

The post The Push-Pull of Closeness: Navigating the Claustro-Agoraphobic Dilemma appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Here’s a 10 minute audio clip I created with some tips for those of you living with someone abusive during Covid-19…being home all day in a hostile environment can be quite stressful so I wanted to offer some ideas and encouragement.

Tips for living with someone abusive during the coronovirus

If you need additional help, please email me at mirel@httpgoldsteintherapycom.kinsta.cloud to set up a one-time consultation to discuss your specific situation or enroll in my online course which can help anyone who is living with a difficult person:

Online Course: How to protect yourself or your children from the harmful effects of living with an unstable or abusive family member

The post Tips for Living with Someone Abusive during the Coronovirus appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

The line between stress and trauma

It’s no secret that many of us are waking up each day to a very stressful reality. Yet where is the line between stress (from which we can recover) and trauma that overwhelms us?

Trauma can occur when stress becomes prolonged, when we don’t have a chance to recover from a state of either profound shut-down or extreme hyperarousal.

Shut-down is a feeling of numbness, depression, lack of energy and motivation, withdrawal into the self and away from relationships.

Hyperarousal is a constant stream of adrenaline, activation, feeling restless, keyed up, on edge, braced for danger.

Being in either state for too long can have effects on our immune system, relationships, and ability to concentrate, focus, and function.

Yet it’s not just prolonged states of an overactive or shut-down nervous system that can turn a stressful situation into a traumatic one.

Our inner coping mechanisms, including our defense mechanisms, need to be functional and powerful enough to stop our egos from collapsing under stress. When our usual ways of coping with internal and external experiences are overwhelmed, we can find ourselves regressing to negative behaviors or emotions that feel out of control, younger, less consolidated, or habitual.

According to Judith Chertoff in the article “Psychodynamic Assessment and Treatment of Traumatized Patients”, there are 5 specific factors noted by Anna Freud that can turn a stress into a trauma:

• The intensity and nature of an event and the meaning a person gives this
• Sensitization due to prior trauma (This is when constant stress or trauma makes us extra reactive)
• Inborn factors that affect one’s ability to cope (such as a genetic vulnerability to becoming depressed)
• Age and stage of development when trauma happens
• Environment at time of trauma (for example, is it safe and supportive)

PTSD occurs when an event collapses a person’s ability to use their regular defenses to mediate between external demands (like the need to cope in daily life) and inner tensions or emotions.  A person’s normal defenses may not work anymore.

One example is when someone has a tendency to cope with difficult experiences or emotions by using the coping technique of distraction; if something happens that is so upsetting or overwhelming to the ego that distraction no longer works, he might find himself unable to cope with daily life as usual, regressing, or being completely emotionally overwhelmed. This could lead to PTSD.

What this means for all of us is that even though many of us are all dealing with objectively similar situations due to the coronovirus,  such as health fears, schools and public places shutting down, being in quarantine, fear of running out of supplies, etc., each of us will have a unique reaction to these stressful circumstances.

Some of us will become especially frightened or overwhelmed by these events if we habitually rely on a sense of predictability or control in order to cope with our emotions and stresses in our daily lives. These defenses of control and predictability may no longer be available to us, although focusing on what we can control and creating routines can certainly mitigate some of the stress.

For others, leaning on loved ones may be a way to feel secure, but our loved ones may be so stressed themselves at this time that they perhaps withdraw from us, or else feel too anxious themselves to provide support. Learning how to be in this together while each person uses their own ways of coping is important but not so easy! For example, what happens if your partner wants space while you want connection, or if your child is acting up when all you want is quiet and decreased stimulation?

Another important point is that sometimes we feel anxious about things that are going on inside of us, for example wishes or feelings that feel forbidden or conflict with our values, such as wishing your kids would move out for a few weeks because it’s so draining to take care of them, or wanting to break free and stop following the rules you live by. We often suppress these wishes or feelings, or we justify them to ourselves consciously while feeling unconsciously guilty, and then we become anxious or feel things are out of control…and it’s easier to blame our anxiety on things like the coronavirus than the actual feelings or impulses that are fueling it.

This is also an opportunity to develop new coping mechanisms, for example, instead of distracting yourself from uncomfortable emotions, learning to sit with them. Or instead of withdrawing when you feel stressed or vulnerable, sharing yourself with someone else and letting them in. It’s a time for us to get closer to those we love, to reassess our typical coping mechanism, and to find small moments of recovery even as we struggle to get through each day.

The post The Line Between Stress and Trauma appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Healing from therapy trauma:

Most therapists are good people who are competent, kind, ethical, and qualified when it comes to helping people with mental health or relationship struggles. Licensing and ethics boards also exist to help protect clients from being harmed by therapy.

But therapists are human too, even if the role they’re in seems to hide this at times!

And every now and then, unfortunately, a client may come across a therapist or therapy situation that damages them in some way. Sometimes this is not due to any negligence or fault on the part of the therapist, but occasionally this is.

In cases where a therapist violates a client’s boundaries or confidentiality in a major way, or abuses the client, the client can walk away from the experience with serious trauma symptoms or even full-fledged PTSD. This type of trauma is often the worst type of trauma a person can go through, because it involves betrayal by a trusted authority figure whose job was to help while they were in a vulnerable position in relation to the therapist.

In other cases, a therapist may simply mishandle a client’s needs in a given situation.

Therapists also sometimes have personal reactions to their clients that can make it hard for them to stay objective and do their best work in some cases. Ethical therapists do sometimes make mistakes even while practicing in an ethical way, and this can’t always be avoided (nor should it be, because part of what  heals in therapy is repairing ruptures or disappointments), but these therapists tend to seek consultation at such times and to make it clear to the the client that they share some responsibility for what is going on in the relationship and for working to make it right. On the other hand, there are sometimes therapists who have trouble acknowledging their blind spots and/or blame any problems in the therapy relationship on the client, which can be somewhat of a red flag for the client.

Sometimes a client can push a therapist’s buttons in a big way, and even though it’s not the client’s fault for doing this, and it’s the therapist’s job to handle this professionally, sometimes therapists slip up or get defensive. Sometimes a client can feel very traumatized or hurt if this happens, especially if it seems to be a repeat of negative experiences the client has had in past relationships.

Therapy can also be traumatic due to a misunderstanding with the therapist, or to the fact that the therapist seems to have so much power and authority in the relationship, which can be triggering in its own right, because many of us carry wounds from past experiences with authority figures or from not having had enough power.

If a therapist has criticized you; said things that made you question yourself in a way that was destabilizing; acted inconsistent about boundaries; or abandoned you in some way, you may be walking around with therapy scars.

After a negative therapy experience, it can sometimes be so so hard to trust again!

This makes sense of course.

After all, how can you know that the next therapist will be different, or that you won’t be hurt again?

The therapy relationship is an attachment relationship, and when we become attached to someone who is in a helping role, it can activate our brains in specific ways. What I mean by this is that there are specific brain networks that get turned on inside of us when we begin to trust a person who we feel can comfort or protect us during experiences of threat, emotional danger, sadness, or fear.

Part of what happens in attachment relationships is that our brains make it hard for us to think clearly if there seems to be a possibility of being hurt by or losing access to the attachment figure.

Feeling rejected by a therapist; worrying about being abandoned; waiting in between sessions when it feels like the therapist is not accessible; or trusting a therapist if we’ve been hurt by attachment figures in the past, can all lead to difficulties with processing emotions and interactions with the therapist in an accurate way.

Attachment anxiety can also lead a person to go into profound states of depression or despair if it feels like there is a threat to the relationship.

For these reasons,  becoming attached to a therapist can be highly triggering to some people, especially if the therapist does not handle the client’s attachment in a healthy way, or if the client has past experiences of trauma or rejection in attachment relationships (for example, with one’s parents in childhood).

There are some things you can do, however, to protect yourself from attachment trauma in therapy.

First of all, you can share only a little bit of yourself at a time, and wait and see how the therapist responds, before deciding to trust the therapist with everything you think or feel. In this way, you allow the therapist to earn your trust a little bit at a time, and also to get to know you a little so that there is less of a possibility of the therapist misunderstanding you early in the therapy, before trust is built.

Titrating the pace at which you open up to and trust the therapist can also help slow you down from becoming too attached too quickly, before  your body and mind actually know whether you’re emotionally safe in the relationship. In addition, going slowly will allow you to see if your therapist seems consistent and dependable; responds in a way that is non-defensive and predictable; and accepts your need to develop trust in your own time and your own way.

Therapists who are secure should not have any problem with you expressing fears about trusting them, or taking your time to warm up.

Healthy therapists are also able to separate their own emotions from your emotions (you should be able to sense this pretty easily) and will be able to not take it personally if you bring up a fear or concern.

In addition, it’s okay to leave a therapist if something doesn’t feel right. I have noticed that people seem to question themselves so much when it comes to the idea of leaving a therapist, especially when they can’t tell whether or not they’re being helped by the therapist, or if they feel unsure about whether they feel comfortable with the therapist or not.

In my opinion, there are lots of therapists out there (i.e. someone for everyone!) and it shouldn’t feel like a lot of work to know if you feel comfortable with your therapist!

Therapy also shouldn’t lead to you questioning everything about yourself or to constant self-doubting thoughts either (unless you have OCD or anxiety tendencies that lead you to ruminate about and overanalyze things in general). In the absence of having a longstanding pattern of sabotaging all of your relationships due to past relationship traumas, or needing a lot of time in general to warm up to new situations, if something doesn’t feel quite right, it’s fine to look for another therapist…without overthinking it.

You also don’t owe the therapist an explanation. Yes, it’s nice to have that closure and to give the therapist feedback or some information about your decision to end therapy with them, but it’s not required, and you don’t owe it to the therapist to do so. I have worked with a number of people who took way too long to walk away from a therapy situation that wasn’t working for them, because they were afraid of having to tell the therapist about wanting to end! (Of course, please do cancel any scheduled appointments within the window of the therapist’s cancellation policy or you may be charged for the session, which is reasonable).

Also, even though sometimes your wish to leave therapy may be a sign of resistance (especially if you just began talking about deeper or more difficult material in your sessions…in which case your subconscious may be trying to protect you by pulling the plug on therapy), or might be the result of a misunderstanding, there are some therapists who are not healthy enough to talk to about one’s concerns. It’s important to trust your gut on this, or at least to talk it over with an objective third party. You can also always go for a consultation with another therapist! Sometimes it can do wonders to talk with another therapist about your current therapy and to get another opinion about whether the therapy seems to be going well or not. The most important thing is not to doubt yourself just because a therapist is a therapist!

I have worked with a number of clients who came to me after having had a difficult, traumatic, or unhelpful experience with a previous therapist. It truly can be hard to start again if you’ve been hurt. But there are definitely ways you can be more cautious the second time around, and sometimes having a therapist help you process the experience can help you be open to another try…

The post Healing from Therapy Trauma- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

You’ve come to this page which means you’re likely dealing with someone in your life who really PUSHES YOUR BUTTONS, makes you feel HELPLESS, or draws you into constant BATTLES you don’t want to be having.

P.S. Haven’t watched the webinar yet? Here is a link to sign up:

The post Emotions in Personality Disorders- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Lacan suggested that the “unconscious is structured like a language”.

And for those of you who feel STUCK, it’s a language you may want to learn.

STUCK may mean that you can’t move forward with something in your life. It may mean that you feel held back from making a decision; or from reaching a goal; or expressing a part of yourself; or breaking a habit; or figuring out a career; or finding love.

Whether it’s trying to overcome a fear; finding someone you’re attracted to; finishing a project you’ve been working on for years; getting organized; getting places on time; moving on from a heartbreak; making more money; quitting smoking, etc., it can feel hopeless and exasperating to be caught in an endless cycle of trying to get results and meeting up with failure. You may find yourself repeatedly going back to a relationship with someone who criticizes you, or abuses you, or manipulates you, or guilts you, or asks you to rescue them…even though you’re determined to no longer play the same game. Somehow you get sucked back in despite your best efforts to pull away. And even when it does seem like things are finally going to be different this time around, it’s so easy to slide back into old patterns that leave us with a sense of futility about ever being free of them.

I can go on with more examples of course, but hopefully you will fill in your own.

Psychoanalysts talk about our compulsion to repeat traumas we have not mastered. Others simply speak of the need to repeat that which cannot be remembered. Freud called our need to repeat “The Repetition Compulsion”. This force inside of us returns us to the ghosts that haunt us, arousing us to confront them, speak of them, make peace with them.

The need to repeat is the source of our pain but also takes on a life of its own. It works against us despite ourselves. We get out of debt and then right back in; we make money and then lose it; we go from one job to another, but the boss is always difficult all the same. We vow not to turn into our parents, yet we find ourselves just like them anyways.

So why is change so hard?

Well, there are really many factors that hold us back from change. It could be something in the environment; something beyond our control; something we want to do differently but just don’t have the skills for; or perhaps even something inside of us that is out of our awareness. In such cases, the change should happen relatively straightforwardly once we gain the skills we need; or practice a new habit enough; or make changes to the environment we’re in; or become conscious of what’s holding us back. Of course there are also things we cannot change and sometimes acceptance is the greatest change of all.

Now, I’m not negating all the good suggestions, advice, and help that therapists, coaches, books, groups, workshops, and techniques provide us with. If they’ve worked for you, that’s great.

But for those of you who have tried just about “everything” and haven’t found what you’re looking for, this post is for YOU. This is just another perspective, one among many, about how to finally free yourself. It may be your answer or it may not, and I don’t know what your “repetition” means for you, but resolving the repetition can sometimes be done.

Another name for “The Repetition” might be “The Symptom”. The Symptom is that thing we want to get rid of the most; we blame all of our problems on it; it’s the thing we know is holding us back or getting in the way of having the life we think we want. The Symptom is the thing we want to get rid of but can’t. This is the trace left by those ghosts that haunt us, the thing that keeps coming back no matter how hard we try to make it go away.

The Symptom holds your STORY. It holds a narrative of your life, your core struggles, your buried losses, pains, rejections, and hurts.

The Symptom leaks out what your unconscious wants to say, needs to say, begs to say, despite the best efforts of your conscious mind to block, suppress, repress, and dissociate. It points to a story buried inside of you, a story that is very much alive and that is begging to be spoken, remembered, resolved. It is the stuff of our childhoods that were too painful, too primitive, too confusing, too threatening, too fleeting, or too overwhelming to remember and to speak.

Resolving the repetition is an act of deconstruction; it is pulling apart and unpacking all that is embedded in the Symptom and all that it holds; that which it disguises as well as that which it reveals. We resolve it by lifting the screens of repression through the words, dreams, slips (yes, Freudian slips!), and behaviors that emerge from the “Unconscious” as soon as we unlock its door.

This is not a journey anyone can do for you, nor is the nature of your process and its vicissitudes something that one can predict for you ahead of time. It’s about telling YOUR story, and it’s also about trading in your Symptom for the pleasure of hearing yourself in an entirely new way. It’s about grappling with core issues such as what it is to be a man or a woman; a member of your community, culture, or society; a husband or wife; a parent or child; a teacher or student. It’s about claiming your place in a world that is bigger than you, subject to its own order, and also a world in which a place is held just for you to be you. Giving up the Symptom is about sorting through the rules you live your life by; the people you compare yourself to; the ways you hold yourself back; and the ways in which others exert influence over you (whether you know it or not). It’s about where your rights end and begin when it comes to the desire of the other. And it’s about making room for multiple realities, allowing ourselves to be persons divided, as we all are.

Can you make peace with what you are not, with what you don’t have, without patching up the hole??

The role of the therapist in your journey is to highlight the questions; punctuate the punch lines; sweeten the judgments; connect some of the dots; and ultimately to help you free yourself from the formidable need to repeat that which has already happened, a story already written, in the service of what can be perhaps something new. Much of the work happens in between the sessions, in that place that is a void yet also demarcated by the arrival of each session anew. Your unconscious mind can be primed to do the work it needs to do.

Are you ready for your journey to begin?? Only you can know if the time is right for you.

P.S. Here is a link to a video that goes along with this post:

Learning the Language of Your Unconscious Video

P.P.S. Want to learn more about doing a psychoanalytic intensive with me??

Click here https://goldsteintherapy.com/psychoanalytic-intensive/

The post Your Unconscious May be Trying to Tell You Something- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Here are some recent question and answer exchanges about narcissistic and borderline personality issues:

Read Mirel Goldstein‘s answer on Quora

Read Mirel Goldstein‘s answer on Quora

Read Mirel Goldstein‘s answer on Quora

Read Mirel Goldstein‘s answer on Quora

The post Understanding Narcissistic and Borderline Personalities-Goldstein Therapy-Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

If you’ve ever looked at the people around you and wondered, Why does everybody seem to have it so easy when I have it so hard, no matter how hard I try, then you might know what I mean when I speak of the wish for a pain-free life.

Some define suffering as the struggle against pain. But the truth is that sometimes we suffer despite our best efforts to accept the pain that life brings; pain that we see as meaningful, as a test, or as something we are given to help us grow. Sometimes the pain builds up to a point that surpasses what we feel we can bear, and at that point we start to fear the pain, think about how to avoid it, and preoccupy ourselves with how to escape it when it comes. Sometimes this is healthy and sometimes it’s just a repetitive cycle of maladaptive efforts to control the uncontrollable.

The thing about pain and suffering is that when it goes on too long, too chronically, or too intensely, or when it seems like there’s no way out, no chance of relief, or no one to rescue us, then the pain can become a trauma. Desperation can set in.

Whether it’s a state of depression that seems to just creep up at unexpected times; a painful loss such as a relationship breakup or seeing someone we love become hurt, sick, or die; or experiencing a flashback of past times we felt alone, unseen, or abandoned, the suffering state can feel bigger than us. The feeling of losing control of one’s mind and feelings can be scariest at all. Often we suffer despite ourselves. We want to feel happy, to function well at home and at work, to love and to enjoy. We try all sorts of things: coping skills, healthy habits, therapies and treatments, positive self-talk, whatever…because we really want to feel well. But sometimes the pain is bigger than us, sometimes it comes independent of our efforts, sometimes God gives it to us, and sometimes we create it without even realizing we’re doing it.

And that’s the point I really want to talk about here. The point about creating suffering, attaching to our pain, identifying with the martyr position, silently and unconsciously idealizing the victim stance and the fantasy of a pain-free life that often comes along with suffering states of mind.

If pain is something you identify with strongly, if suffering feels like something that you can never escape despite so many efforts to do so, then you might need to change your relationship to the pain. I don’t just mean accepting it and I don’t just mean making meaning out of it. I mean really taking a look at the place the pain holds in your life and in your identity, in your sense of self and your beliefs about the world. What does the pain do for you? Does it make you feel special, holy, absolved of your guilts? Does it give you permission for pleasure? Is suffering a stance that seems to bring assurances of love, relief from tension, unconscious surrender, or a promise for a better future someday? Perhaps pain is all you know and at least it gives you something familiar to fall back on.

The fact that we attach to our own miseries at times does not mean that we consciously intend to do so, that we want to be hurt, or that we don’t crave, like everyone else, for our deepest wishes and longings to be met. It doesn’t mean that we don’t yearn to be loved and accepted, to be taken care of, to play, and to get a break. But sometimes we lose track of our thinking and sometimes we repeatedly do things that unwittingly draw us to situations that reinforce our deepest fears and hurts. We are looking for something and we try so hard, but it never seems enough. And feeling stuck can lead to hiding our deepest fears and to hiding our pain from others for fear of being judged. And that which we hide becomes bigger and bigger inside of us.

Therapy can’t always take the pain away, although sometimes it can!

But letting another person in, bringing them in to bear on your existing psychic economy, can change your relationship to the pain and to the role it plays in how you live your life. Perhaps you’ve tried before and you just don’t want to get hurt again. Perhaps opening yourself up to others seems to make the pain worse. There may be something to that. But there also may be another way.

Want to give a different kind of conversation at try? That space is here for you, without judgment and without agenda. Therapy can be a space of your own to let someone else in and to find a new way of seeing yourself and the world; a different kind of conversation where the ordinary rules are suspended and where a deeper kind of connection can take place.

Are you ready to give it a try?

The post When You’re Tired of the Pain- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Contamination Fears in Relationships and Toxic Shame

While most of us associate fears of contaminating others with physical illnesses like the chicken pox or the Zika virus, many people harbor similar kinds of fears about being emotionally damaged or infected in ways that can spread to others if not carefully contained within the self, kept secret, and controlled.

In much the same way that we might try to avoid contact with others when we’re sick, for fear of spreading illness to those we love and need (whether for fear of hurting those we love, or of damaging those we need), certain emotional states, moods, and feelings can lead us to avoid emotional contact with others for fear of tarnishing our relationships with parts of ourselves that feel contagiously messy, weak, damaged, dirty, or bad.

The idea of “emotional contagion” is not new to therapists who work with families, or even to social psychologists (such as Melissa Dahl, who talks about emotional contagion in the work setting in her article Is There an Antidote for Emotional Contagion?). Families high in emotional contagion are those in which emotions spread like fire, one person’s emotions triggering similar emotions in others and in the environment itself. One person panics, begins talking in a loud and anxious voice, and the next person becomes anxious in turn, etc. Moods spread from one person to the other, and anxious or angry feelings are often amplified and heightened by the response of the environment, rather than modulated by it.

But here I’m really talking about something else; a more pervasive feeling that some people carry around that their very “self” is bad, damaged, and destructive somehow. This is more of a false belief about one’s self rather than a behavioral pattern in the environment. There is a fear of being innately toxic to others, an inner shame, that leads to never-ending attempts to hide one’s true self from others, to hold feelings and emotions inside rather than expressing them, and to avoid potentially humiliating feelings of exposure. In essence, I’m referring to a disorder of hiding.

Sometimes early experiences of trauma or shame can lead to this feeling of toxicity, but other times it is simply experiences that one has that are secretly believed to be crazy or weird, such as obsessions, compulsions, panic attacks, etc.

The side effects of this kind of core belief are not simple. Holding everything inside and controlling what comes out in this way can lead to tension headaches, stomachaches, or other physical ills caused by holding everything in rather than letting things out and using others to help regulate states of tension, stress, and emotional reactivity.

Other potential negative effects are more mental in nature. You may find yourself overanalyzing everything, being kept up at night with racing thoughts, ruminating and having trouble making decisions; all effects of overusing the mind (in your somatopsychic economy) to try to contain everything all the time and to stop your inner experiences from leaking out.

And then there are the psychological costs, like feelings of being an impostor or a fraud because so much of your experience is hidden all the time, or fears of being spontaneous or speaking freely for fear of what might happen if something unexpected gets revealed.

Relationships can be affected too. While your partner may be longing for emotional connection and for the emotional openness it takes to have that connection, your fear of damaging the relationship if you really open up can frustrate the partner you want to please so much. In a funny way, it can make things even harder if your partner seems super contained themselves; in control and unflappable. I have worked with numerous couples where one partner was afraid to show his/her deepest vulnerabilities despite being with a partner who was kind, accepting, and non-judgmental- and who really wanted to know. It was the fact that the partner seemed so intact that actually reinforced the other’s sense of being the damaged one, and that made it so hard to share despite the partner’s love.

One of the reasons why therapy can help so much in this kind of situation is because of the “boundedness” of the therapy space. Therapy is a place where things can be talked about without the typical repercussions that might occur when talking in one’s real life; thoughts and feelings that are shared can stay safely in the room, and that which gets spilled out can be quarantined off from causing damage, spreading, and metastasizing beyond the therapy space. And this sense of safety is often enhanced by the notion that a therapist’s room is somehow equipped to deal with things like unruly emotions, painful confessions, fears and conflicts that feel too scary to talk about ordinarily for fear of burdening the other, rocking the boat, or losing the respect of someone you love.

Of course therapy is not the end point for the process of learning to see oneself as less toxic, to be less afraid to be open and free, and to share one’s vulnerabilities more comfortably in intimate settings where it’s safe to do so. (There are some relationships where showing our full selves is a bad idea!). But therapy is often a crucial beginning step; a first step in having some space that feels contained enough to handle that which is being held inside and where unhealthy beliefs about the self can finally be questioned and released.

If you found this post helpful, you may also be interested in this video on dismissive attachment:

“How to recognize dismissive attachment behaviors in yourself and others”

The post Contamination Fears in Relationships- Goldstein Therapy- Clifton, NJ appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.

Who is this person who abuses his/her partner?

(For the sake of simplicity, I at times have used the male pronoun to refer to the abuser, and the female pronoun to refer to the victim. In reality, the roles of victim and perpetrator are not gender-specific and either the male or the female can be in either role).

It is common for an abuser to have an extreme problem with separation. The abuser has emptiness and needs inside (often unmet needs from childhood), and expects others to become the missing parts of him/herself. There is a difficulty accepting a “no” from one’s partner, or a partner’s inability to fill in a void that can never be filled (rather, it must be mourned). The abuser is confused about boundaries, where he/she begins and the other person ends.

So the abuser tries to control the separateness of the other so that he/she does not have to face the painful reality that another person cannot in fact become part of the self, and cannot be used as putty to fill a void. The abuser will do everything possible to control the other, in order to erase evidence of the separateness of the other’s existence. Reality can be distorted at will in order to support the fantasy that the other can be used as an object rather than as a person to have a relationship with.

This issue of wanting to erase the other’s separateness can be found in most of us; it is not specific to the abuser. Most of us wish at times for others to meet our needs, and we don’t want to have to worry about the other’s needs conflicting with our own. Many of us wish at times for perfect understanding from another, and yearn to feel that another is alike to us and the same as us. Many of us feel shut out when the other says “no” to our desires or sets a boundary or a limit, whether by telling us they want space from us, or privacy, or to spend time with others, etc.

So, what is it that makes the “abuser” unique?

In contrast to the general population, the person who becomes abusive in the context of an intimate partner relationship, is a person whose separation difficulties are so extreme that control tactics designed to sustain the illusion of perfect togetherness and completion by the other override the other person’s rights to safety, autonomy, and security. In a sense, the other person’s feelings, needs, and desires are discounted (at times to the point of violence) in the service of the illusion of control over the need-fulfilling object.

Understanding these dynamics can organize a number of ideas for us. Firstly, we can now understand some of the typical warning signs of “abuse”. The abuser isolates his/her partner from family and friends because the abuser wants to possess his/her partner completely and entirely. There must be no competition in terms of time, attention, or affection. The abuser wants to know his/her partner’s whereabouts at all times, to foster the illusion that the partner is never out of one’s reach. Impatience sets in when the abuser’s needs are not met immediately because it confronts him with the reality that his partner does not exist solely to meet his needs and may at times be unavailable.

The abuser becomes angry if his partner does not follow his advice, because this means that she has her own mind and opinions, and they cannot be one if she does not think as one with him.

He blames others for his actions because in fact others are viewed as part of himself. He appears to have two sides to his personality because while under the illusion that all is “one” between them, he relates to his partner as part of himself, kindly and with compassion, with caretaking and understanding. However, when she shows up as “separate”, she is no longer part of him and he becomes enraged at the same women he loved a few minutes before.

He puts her down to keep her from having her own mind and believing that she can and is entitled to a separate existence outside of himself. He has unrealistic expectations of her because he does not relate to her as a person with her own needs, wishes, and limitations, but only as an extension of his own self.

The abuser despises his partner’s privacy because a thought that he does not have access to, means that she is free to think freely about him, the relationship, and her own needs. Her privacy panics him.

He may reject her separate interests outside of the relationship, viewing such things as hobbies, projects, or community involvements that his partner is involved in as competition for her love.

Other signs of separation issues in the abuser may include intense protectiveness of his partner (to prevent her from coming under the control of anyone besides himself), as well as the sense that they must and can read each others’ minds at times (sustaining the illusion that their minds are one). These two behaviors may be experienced as gratifying to the woman, especially if she has her own unmet needs seeking expression.

Who is Often Drawn to the Abuser?

The young woman who is drawn to this man (who promises the fantasy of perfect “oneness” while they are dating) often has issues with separation of her own, although hers are often expressed in a very different way. She often has trouble setting boundaries because she does not want to “hurt” the other by expressing her own separate needs. She may fear anger because this means that there is distance between herself and the other; this may lead her to submit to relationship expectations that are distressing or painful in order to avoid the experience of distance.

She may crave the sense of “perfect understanding” that she at times can feel with a man who wants to be “one” as much as she does; however, with time, she comes to sustain herself on the hope that she will someday get the understanding she seeks, rather than with the understanding itself, since this man often becomes quite unavailable to provide understanding when he begins to understand that she is her own person.

Many things can contribute to separation issues in such a woman, making her more prone to becoming drawn to a relationship that promises perfect togetherness.

If a woman’s parents, for example, viewed her achievements and behaviors as a reflection on them, this confusion about who is who, and that parent and child are not one and the same (or part of each other), may contribute to a similar comfort with a man who fills himself through his partner. Some families view separation as rejection and become cold when a child starts asserting her separateness and own opinions. This teaches a person to expect relationships to be about undifferentiatedness. The examples are numerous.

This is not to condemn the person who becomes a victim. Although his/her separation anxiety may be very intense; nonetheless, the victim’s behavior is not destructive and the abuser’s is. So the consequences of the same issue are not the same at all, and we cannot put abuser and victim into the same category.

Why the abusive behavior can be so hard to spot during the courtship process:

The feeling of perfect “oneness” can often be sustained during the courtship phase of a relationship, when a couple becomes preoccupied with each other, and while partners temporarily turn their attention away from pursuits outside of the relationship. The relationship at this point has also not yet been tested by the challenges of everyday reality impingements. When all is well and both partners are healthy, this is no problem. The illusion of perfect “oneness” can be very soothing and enjoyable and may serve as a memory that buffers pain in the future.

However, healthy people will come to terms with the separateness in the other in a mature way, once reality does in fact start to set in. They will accept that their needs cannot always be met immediately and in exactly the way they want them to be, and although disappointed, they can give some and take some. They can take responsibility for their own feelings and understand that when the other disappoints them, it may not be personal and is not designed to deliberately cause pain. They can forgo their own needs and see the needs of the other often enough. They can feel sad and frustrated when they wish for something and cannot get it. They can come to terms with seeing parts of their partner that they wished not to know during the dating process, until their relationship would be stronger and could handle it. One does not try to control the feelings of the other because he doesn’t like the way they make him feel about himself.

The abusive person will not come to terms with these painful aspects of adult life and reality. The abusive person will try to make it not be so that the other person really is their own person. He cannot even see the other at all. He is not in love with his partner as a person separate from himself, but is in love with the way his partner makes him feel when all is “One” between them. All love is gone when that feeling is shattered. This person cannot really understand the effect he is having on the other at all.

This may turn into full-blown abuse. The abusive partner will criticize his partner and tell her that no one else could ever love her, to ensure that she will never feel good enough about herself to expect him to treat her well or to consider leaving if he does not. He will isolate her from everyone so that she becomes dependent on getting her needs met from him alone, and then when she does not submit to his control, she has nothing. She then must submit.

He takes control of the finances so that she cannot ever leave for fear of how she would support herself and manage the finances. When she does not submit to his control despite all of the emotional and verbal abuse, and especially if she threatens to leave him (the ultimate separation), he may resort to physical force to force her to stay, to grab onto her and hold her down the way a small child will grab desperately and hysterically onto his parent’s leg when the parent is on the way out the door. However, this man is much stronger and more driven than that small child.

He may threaten abandonment when she shows signs of separateness so that she can feel how abandoned he feels when he confronts her “otherness”. He may run away, not call for hours, withdraw into cold and punitive silences, even threaten to kill himself if she leaves him.

How to Help if Someone You Love is Being Lured In

When a young man and woman are involved in dating each other, and someone notices that there is difficulty between the two of them in both being themselves and negotiating their differences, there can be many roadblocks to helping this couple become aware of the issues at hand.

First of all, the two may already be involved in a mutual state of “blissful oneness’ and may be, by that point, so intent on sustaining that feeling that they simply will not even consider any challenge to that feeling. Second of all, many children with separation issues come from families where separation is difficult in the first place, and they may feel the need to use an equally powerful attachment to separate. In this way, the person may use their dating partner to move away from their family, and if family members challenge this, the person may become defensive and defiant.

This is never an easy situation and one that often evolved through many years of family interactions. However, several things may be helpful in trying to gently nudge the potential victim of an abusive relationship to consider the potential for difficulties.

It is important to empower her regarding her concerns and ideas so that she feels supported in trusting her instincts and bringing up issues that concern her. If she is criticized by her own family, she may second guess herself and have trouble challenging criticism or mistreatment by her dating partner.

Similarly, it is important to talk about her concerns in a non-reactive way, so that she does not feel caught in between competing attachments, such as her family and her date. This person needs to be encouraged to evaluate her own sense of things, good and bad. Reflective comments may help with this, such as “It sounds like he makes you feel very protected and understood and that you like that, but other times you are afraid to say your own opinion and that you are worried about that”. This allows her to reflect on what she herself is saying and draw her own conclusions that feel like they belong to her. Otherwise, she may simply feel more and more confused about “who is right”, and defensive. In contrast, a comment that would most likely be experienced as unhelpful would be, “I really don’t have a good feeling about him. I don’t like him and I’m really worried about how much you seem to like him…”.

Similarly, it is important to encourage her to work through all of her concerns during the dating process until they are resolved in a way that feels comfortable to her. It is unhelpful thinking to tell oneself such things as:

• We’ll work that out when we’re married
• I’ll change him
• I don’t want to think about that
• Everyone is rushing me
• He said something that upset me, but he must have not meant it the way I took it

It is important for couples to have real, live data about how differences and conflicts will be negotiated, before committing to a long-term relationship with each other. Both should feel comfortable that differences can be worked through in ways that are mutually respectful and that allow both partners to have a voice.

In addition, it is important to help the young woman become aware of the process between the two of them, in addition to the content. Comments such as the following can help her to think about the process a little bit more:

• If the two of you will have different ideas about the children, how will you deal with that?
• Can he see your point of view when you disagree with him?
• Do you find yourself not saying certain things? What things are those? Why don’t you say them?

When to Seek Further Help

I would strongly recommend seeking professional help if you know someone who is dating and is showing the following signs:

• His/Her personality is changing
• He/She has lost interest in things previously enjoyed or valued
• He/She denies certain things that are obvious to everyone else.

You may also find the following book helpful:

I’m So Confused, Am I Being Abused

The post Intimate Partner Abuse: Some Inner Dynamics appeared first on Goldstein Therapy.