understanding (n.)

Shoes and I were having a discussion yesterday about marriage:  what we were afraid of, what we like, what's hard.

And I said, "I would say you're probably my best friend, for all intents and purposes."
And he said, "What!  No way.  We are not best friends."

What I know about Shoes is that sometimes a little exploring is necessary - he's incredibly bright.  Not incredibly demonstrative or affective, but sharp.  And this is what Shoes said,

"The marriage relationship is completely separate from a friend relationship.  I don't hang out with my friends all the time - I eventually want them to go home.  I don't take into account their opinion for major life decisions.  I accept support from them ... sometimes, but sometimes I just want to figure it out on my own.  That doesn't describe the relationship we have.  We are here, with each other, in each other's space, for the majority of our time together.  We take into account what the other person feels and thinks all the time.  I run almost everything by you,  because I always care what you think - it always matters.  It's not better or worse than a friendship - it's just an entirely different ball game."

Shoes and I had an in person relationship for 8 months and a long distance relationship for three years.  Right after I graduated with my Master's, I moved to rural E WA and we got married.  Our relationship is different, and it always, always serves to remind  me that all relationships are incredibly different and incredibly filled with idiosyncratic meaning.

I had a couples' counseling session this morning that was incredibly challenging for me as a therapist on almost every level.  Without going into too much detail, I almost gave feedback that was completely off base.  Right before I gave the feedback, one of the partners contributed something that clarified the issue greatly, and I thought to myself, "I had it wrong.  I was assuming, and it was just dead wrong."

We think we know.  We think we know people, we think we know relationships, we think we know behavior and motivation.  We think we know.  We just don't know.  This week has been an excellent reminder in avoiding making assumptions and to ask questions.

People surprise me always.  Even after working with families for 13 years, people always surprise me.  Including clients.  Including my husband.  Including myself.

My friend Nicole has started blogging here,  and if you have any extra time, dear hearts, it will be more than worth your while to stop by.  She is loving, charming, funny, smart and one of the most talented therapists I know.  (I know a lot of therapists.)

Nicole and I met in graduate school when we interned together at a children's community outpatient mental health clinic in NE Portland.  I can't speak for her experience, but having her there was one of the most positive parts of my last year of grad school.  I adored interning with her, Amirah from Lewis and Clark and Joyce from OHSU.  Many positive memories of our intern cubicle, the crazy phone line we shared, group supervision, process recordings, Narrative Therapy, Data/Assessment/Plan, coffee at Black Sheep Bakery ....

Nicole now lives on my side of Washington State, about 2 hours North.  Over here, that's no more than a  daily commute.  We have tentative plans to have coffee in January, and I could not be more excited.  I miss  my friend.  That time in my life (although I thought I hated it then).  The clinic.  That growth.

Glad she's blogging.

When I was a kid, we lived in Europe.
When I was a kid, we lived in Europe and every Thanksgiving and Christmas my mom would make Apple Pfannkuchen.  There is no special reason why she made it on the Holiday holidays.  She just did.

When Shoes and I started dating seriously, I began making it for him.   We don't have a lot of family traditions.  I'm not that close with my family.  Sharing this with him was a big deal.

This year, I made it again on Thanksgiving and again on Christmas.  Shoes, who is not a breakfast sweet eater, partook enthusiastically.

But Shoes did something almost blasphemous.  This year, he unceremoniously dumped a healthy pile of Redi Whip on his.

I don't have many traditions, and one of the ones I do have, he Redi Whipped all over.

I gave him the eye.
He said, "What?  Is that ok?"
And what was I going to say?  No?
Hardly.

After many glances of stink eye, I took a forkful of his to prove him how wrong he was.
Turns out, the Redi Whip made it even more delicious.
So that's how this tradition changes for us.
That's how it became ours.  Kind of the same as my mom's.  But kind of different.

Besides.
This year, in October, I found out that my mom had gotten the "European" recipe we ate in Europe from an American 1983 Kitchen Aid recipe booklet.

This bring this truth home:  We make our own family traditions.  Apple pancakes, in and of themselves, are just a dish.  A bunch of pastry, capable, in itself, of doing nothing.

We decide what's meaningful to us and what we want to carry forth.
Every year Shoes and I are together, we make new decisions about what we want to carry forth.

Next year, I'll make sure to have the Redi Whip on hand.




Also, in other December related news:

ROSIE PASSED BASIC DOG OBEDIENCE AND HAS BEEN APPROVED TO TAKE GOOD CANINE CITIZEN CLASS IN FEBRUARY!

Good job, my dog!

Rosie has her last basic obedience class next Tuesday.  It's a big one guys.  This is the class where we find out if she can go on to take the Good Canine Citizen class (a critical step in her therapy dog training).  Fingers crossed.  This week is akin to university dead week for us, and Shoes and I are asking her to so a variety of recall tasks before she does anything:  receives food, goes outside, gets playtime ... 

Rosie and I had our first official training day visit to my office up north today.  I should have gotten a picture, but too many confidentiality concerns in the room.

I feel like this is going to be a strange post.  There's these ... things ... I want to share ... but I'm fully cognizant of the fact that I have to be wise in how I share them.

So I work with families, right?  Big families.  Little families.  Single parents.  Partnered parents.  Parents with infants.  Parents with teens.  Families.

For many complex, varied, and multifaceted reasons, the families I work with are having difficult times.  Every family I've ever worked with has wanted to see behavioral change in their children.  This is completely logical ... as I'm a child and family therapist; I don't get called when the forecast is sunny and a high of 72.

Child behavior doesn't exist in a vacuum.  Families are dynamic, restless creatures with complicated interactions.  For me, working with children automatically brings a family component.  So, as a professional kid worker, here's some of what I know:

We have to model the behavior we want to see in our kids.

If we want our kids to model gentleness and problem solving, we have to model that.
If we want our kids to get along well with peers, we have to model that.
If we want our kids to display honesty, we have to model honesty.
If we want our kids to be more compassionate, we have to model that.
If we want our kids to stop yelling at us, their peers, the dog, we have to model respectful communication.

Is it always that simple?  Of course not.  At any given time, there are always a myriad of factors that are taken into account and other points of clinical focus. Am I implying that all families who have children with explosive anger have parents who have explosive anger?  A resounding no. However, this is something I find coming up again and again in my work with families.  Am I trying to shame families?  Oh, please, dear hearts, no.  Not at all.  There are varied and complex reasons why these behaviors aren't being modeled.

I get that.

But it's a place for growth to begin for the entire family.

Often to introduce whatever change is needed, I work with the family to facilitate a "Full Values Family Contract."  Family members (sometimes this has included dogs and cats, too.  I'm not picky!) trace their hands on posterboard in a circle.  On the inside of the circle we write down what values we want to keep or increase; values such as honesty, respect, fun, laughter, etc. often show up here.  On the outside of the circle, we write down what we'd like to leave behind or chance; often, this includes dynamics such as yelling, fighting, and lying.  I've found that it is incredibly validating for children to see their guardians participate in this and take ownership for behaviors they would also like to change.  It is often a point in which families, even if just for a moment, experience a shared moment of being:  This is who we are.  This is how we are strong.

We, as adults, have to be examples of what we want to see in our children.  I would even go so far as to say it is not fair or reasonable to ask our children to exhibit behavior we ourselves have not mastered.  Am I saying parents  need to be perfect?  Dear heart, please.  What kind of a family therapist would I be if I thought parents could be perfect?

What an amazing opportunity for growth.  What would happen if we modeled taking a risk to change for the better?  What would happen if we modeled grace and compassion for ourselves as we tried new things?  What exactly would our kids be seeing?  (Our kids, by the way, are geniuses - smart and savvy in surprising ways.)

This, for me, is an exciting part of family therapy.  The implications are tremendous.
Effective change.  We all jump on board.

Rosie is having a bad training day.  As in, I took her to the park to practice skills (we do this in public a lot - she is one highly distractable pup and needs to work on focusing on me) and she was just not into it.