Hints for Happiness

LISTENING SKILLS: At base, listening is a ministry of “presence”. We are a society where so many like to be the center of attention, to speak of their concerns, but not listen to the concerns of others.

In contrast, those who engage in a ministry of pastoral care, must listen to understand what the inner problem is, so as to help the person devise a solution. Even without advice, just showering the attention of listening upon others values them in a way that few persons have. Your empathic listening and understanding bathe the wounds of someone injured in our callous and cynical world with genuine concern and caring. Christ comes to them by your kind and discerning attention.

1. Pay Attention: When you talk to someone, face him or her. Maintain eye contact. Demonstrate by your body posture that they are important to you, that they are, at that moment, the only person in the world for you.
2. Observe Non-Verbal Behavior: 90% of communication is non-verbal, so watch for a frown, a raised eyebrow, or a tear in the eye. Missing that will mean missing the power of what is being said.
3. Slow Down: The goal is not to rush through a talk so as to get back to doing something else or feel like you have done your duty, but instead to truly get to know and minister to someone.
4. Help The Other To Speak:
   1. Open Ended Questions: for Information
   2. Closed Ended Questions:for Clarification
5. Body Posture: Face the person; sit if they sit – do not stand if they sit or if they are in a hospital bed – that is too intimidating and controlling.
6. Don’t Get Defensive: If someone criticizes you, your “knee-jerk” reaction will be to become defensive. This will cut off your ability to truly hear what the other is saying. For example:

1. EXPRESS VS. SUPPRESS: Tell your wife how you are feeling. Do not try to avoid telling her, or indefinitely postpone it. If you are angry, for instance, holding your feelings in today may well lead to an explosion tomorrow. As the emotional force of four issues gets squeezed into one, you end up yelling and "looking like a jerk", your wife ends up hurt, and the issue is still unresolved.

2. FEELINGS VS. BEHAVIOR: Focus on your feelings and not her behavior. If she did something which hurt you, tell her more about how it made you feel, and less about what she did wrong. If she hears your need and sees how to help, then she tends to be less defensive and listens more to what you are saying. But, if you list a litany of her failed behaviors, then she digs in her heels and prepares to knock down the case she sees you building up against her.

3. SUBSTANCE VS. STYLE: I realize that you may be nervous about looking "dumb" when you open your heart to your wife, but she is not looking for you to be William Shakespeare, just to be open and honest. If she senses that you are struggling to reveal your inner soul to her, then, if she really loves you, she will listen patiently, respecting your courage to trust her love.

4. STICK WITH ONE ISSUE: Try not to respond to her constructive criticism with, "Oh yeah, well you're no prize either!" You will have your hands full with one issue, so avoid playing tit-for-tat, which only moves you further and further away from the main point to a point where you feel lost in a forest of ping-pong accusations.

5. PROPOSE A SOLUTION: A big difference between nagging and being assertive is offering a solution. While your proposal may be altered or replaced, it will be clear to your wife that you are trying to be positive, hoping to work together to create a better union instead of pushing her away by painstakingly pointing out the depressing cracks in your marriage.

6. BE ROMANTIC: HOW you talk may help WHAT you are going to say. Sit next to your wife and hold her hand. Talk in the living room with soft music and candlelight instead of in the kitchen under lights so bright you could perform surgery. Combine sensitivity with assertiveness, and realize that your goal is not to win, but to become closer.

7. BE BRAVE: I know that talking openly means risking being criticized or rejected. But, it also means deepening your love. Realize that you are not stupid. You married your wife for a reason. Give her the benefit of the doubt, and you the marriage you always wanted.

I wonder how many people give Father’s Day the same reverence as Mother’s Day? I'm a father, and while I probably get a card once a year, I often feel that a lot of what I do goes unnoticed. Could you address that in one of your articles?

1. "Our Father": When Jesus was asked how to pray, he composed “The Lord’s Prayer” that begins with the words, “Our Father”. Often, this prayer is said in a heavy, solemn, stilted manner that makes you think of a cranky old man sitting on a cloud ready to crush you like a bug for anything you do wrong. However, the word Jesus used for “father” was “Abba”, which loosely translated into English is “DaDa”. When you then say, “Our DaDa who art in Heaven”, your image shifts to a caring, safe parent who cradles you in his loving arms. That is what we who are fathers should be giving our kids, the sense that we love them so much that they can always come to us when something is on their minds, good or bad.

2. Work = Love: Demonstrating your love is done in many ways. Love is not just expressed on the weekends at home, but also when a parent gets up early, boards a crowded, smelly train, works a long day at a job that may not be the best, and gets home exhausted at 8:00 PM. Each second of your day away from home is a present to your family, for without it, food, clothing and shelter, those essentials that your responsible love allows your children to blissfully take for granted, would disappear.

3. Two Roles: When I was a boy, mothers nurtured and fathers disciplined. While it seems archaic now, I can remember the dreaded words, "Wait until your father gets home!" I am sure he dreaded always being the heavy. Now, thankfully, parents share roles, and so fathers can nurture as well as discipline, and each child receives the full richness of each parent.

4. A Personal Story: My father became ill when I was 11, and died when I was 14. I missed him so much, as he was not able to be there for advice on how to juggle studies & sports in high school, how to pick the right college, how to handle the inevitable bumps along life's path, and to experience my children. I treasured what few years I had with him. If you are lucky enough to still have your father, then realize the treasure that is under your very nose. It will not be there forever.

5. Recipe For Fathers Day: My hope, therefore, is that fathers get far more than the customary card or 5 minute "duty phone call". I am suggesting more than cashew nuts for the ballgame and dinner out, namely, telling him how much you appreciate his many gifts, and taking responsibility for your half of having a relationship with him. What this means changes as children grow older, but just make sure that you try to love him as much as he has already loved you.

My wife died recently, and I was struck by how many dumb comments were made to me, like “It’s God’s Will.” Could you write an article to help people know what not to say when bad times hit?

1. It's God's Will : Does it make sense that a God who loves you would want to hurt you? While the purpose of life is not to live forever, God creating a finite and temporal world that eventually ends in death, that does not mean that a conniving God plays with our lives like Zeus on Mount Olympus, throwing troubles in our way to see what we shall do. Instead of giving a theology lesson, why not ask if the person would be comforted to have their priest or deacon visit them?

2. Death Was a Blessing: To whom? If you mean that the person died quickly instead of enduring a slow, lingering death, while that may be true, it does not remove the fact that a parent or spouse is now dead. Instead of trying to make something bad good, why not tell your friend how sad you are for them?
3. I Know How You Feel: Really? Even if you ooze of empathy, you do not really know how anybody else feels. Why not simply ask them how they are feeling, and then just listen. This is about them, not you.
4. You're Young And Can Remarry: Maybe so, but that does not remove the present pain, and unwittingly implies that the other person can be replaced. To remarry is to begin with a new person, not to erase the old one from memory.
5. Call Me If I Can Help: But will you? Have you thought that maybe the other person does not want to impose? Instead of waiting for a call, why call yourself, offering some specific help, like cooking a meal, washing laundry, mowing their lawn, walking their dog, etc.
6. I'll Be Praying For You : On the surface, this sounds good, but often is a way of pushing the other away with pious platitudes, perhaps due to your own fear of facing your mortality. Faith without charity is empty, so why not offer some concrete help like I just mentioned, or call to come back and pray with the other person, not just for them.
   
   

   A final comment is that when I was a young priest, I worried about what to say when visiting someone who was ill or dying, hoping to come up with just the right thought or prayer. But age has taught me that my caring presence is more important than any pearls of wisdom. So, do not sell short the value of just being there for someone, offering not a quick duty visit, but one that shows how much you really care.

Question: I have trouble understanding what's wrong with having a death penalty. If someone commits a horrible crime, they deserve to die. Why does the church and most counselors oppose the death penalty?

Answer:

1. Sinner vs. Sin: Why does Jesus, being without sin, not cast a stone at the woman who committed adultery, instead calling upon her to go and sin no more (Jn. 8: 1-11)? Because He does not identify the person with her behavior, loving the sinner while hating the sin, and knowing that the sinner has the potential for change. Executing a criminal, therefore, says that a person is a murderer, instead of a person who committed murder. It would be pessimistically giving up on our fellowman. It would be joining the crowd with a stone in our hand.
2. Selfish Behavior = Punishment: The punishment for being selfish is to be selfish, a criminal cutting him or herself off from creative interaction with others, and, therefore, being forced to live without the joys of friendship and personal growth. A long and empty life filled with anger and resentment is a far worse fate than a quick death.
3. Perfecting Ourselves: Humanity has moved from brutal retaliation at the rate of 70 X 7 (Gen. 4: 23-24), to the proportionate compensation of "an eye for an eye" (Ex. 21: 24), to the principle of forgiveness and non-violence expressed in "turning the other cheek" at the rate of 70 X 7 (Mt. 18: 21-22). This attitude does not speak of being a "wimpy bleeding-heart liberal", but of not sinking to the level of the criminal, and of trying to be perfect as our heavenly father is perfect (Mt. 5: 46-48). The death penalty is a tragic slide backwards for humanity.
4. Deterrence?: In Texas and Florida, where the death penalty is invoked, there has been a rise in the rate not only of murders, but of all violent crimes. One study also revealed that in the month following an execution, there were 2-3 more homicides than in months following those in which no execution took place. Is the death penalty really a deterrent then?
5. Cost Effective?: Finally, the cost of imprisoning an offender until he or she dies (given a life expectancy of 70 years) is $600,000. Given the cost of capital litigation (both state and federal), the cost of an execution is $1,800,000. So, we are not really saving money by executing criminals.

Question: I have heard that you and your first wife went through quite an ordeal, she coming close to dying while you were waiting for her liver transplant, and then a long, hard road while recuperating after the operation. What lessons did you learn about life?

Answer:

1. Small Stuff as Small Stuff: You have heard the phrase, "Don't sweat the small stuff." How true! What matters is not how big your pile of loot is at the end, but rather how you got it. Homer quite rightly said that the journey is the thing, the consequence of each interaction with each person on each day being indelibly painted on the tapestry of your soul. If you smugly stroll up to the Pearly Gates wearing a fancy suit, but underneath is a tattered personality, no amount of glitter or fast-talking will change who you are, leaving you stuck with shallow relationships for all eternity. Ouch!
2. Small Stuff as Big: If the journey is the thing, what is the quality of your daily interactions? Do you blow people off, or shower them with genuine attention? Do you really care about your friends and family, or do your actions speak louder than your empty words? Try to take life one moment at a time, focusing upon the person in front of you, instead of looking over their shoulder and wondering what you are missing just around the corner.
3. Find The Positive: Sure, life has plenty of bad days. Yet, even on bad days, why dwell on what's wrong? Yes, you must face it. But, you don't have to bathe in it. On your worst day, even on your deathbed, there is always something positive to find. A blue sky, a fragrant flower, a hot cup of coffee or tea, a soft blanket, an image in a picture in your hospital room, or a simple prayer you know by heart, all can bring comfort, instead of torturing yourself with what is wrong and painful. Think about it, even facing a risky operation, you will either wake up in bed or in heaven. Not bad!
4. Death Is Part Of Life: The purpose of life is not to live forever, but to choose who you wish to be: good or bad, kind or mean, helpful or manipulative, forgiving or bitter, caring or selfish. Jesus has given you life after death. You must decide how you will go through that door into eternity. Facing this fact frees you from the fear of death. Indeed, as St. Paul once said, "Death, where is your sting?"

So, what have I learned? To live a day at a time, to face what is bad, look for what is good, and to smile at the opportunity to become more of me by helping you.

I have a close friend who is  dying. What must he be feeling and how can I help?

Denial: The shock of the diagnosis of a terminal illness initially hits like a sledgehammer, taking your breath away as your eyes fill with tears. However, once home amidst your usual surroundings, and not yet aware of dramatically unusual symptoms, the shock can fade quickly and seem almost unreal.

It is reasonable for a person to need time to be able to swallow what they have just been told, as well as denial being the mind’s protection from being overwhelmed. However, failure to keep appointment or begin treatment may require those who care to lovingly, but firmly, confront the person with the reality of their situation.

Anger: But soon your illness aggressively confronts you with the painful reality of invasive symptoms. No matter how old you are, you feel robbed of normalcy, and, being only able to slow this agonizing journey, you rail against what seems unfair and capricious. Not being able to scream at your illness, you strike out at your spouse, family, doctor and God, all of whom will hopefully stay calm and listen empathetically, redirecting your energies to fight your illness and face the meaning of your life.

Bargaining: Mixed in with anger at others can be anger at self, cruelly torturing yourself with wondering “what if” you did this or that to have avoided the quandary in which you now feel trapped. Again, others help you to face the inevitable consequences of being human, that life on earth does not last forever no matter how many “T’s” you cross or “I’s” you dot, but is instead a path to a life hereafter.

Some people, much like Job, wonder if they are being punished in the present for past sins. But, God is not vindictive. The punishment for selfish behavior is to BE selfish. God’s judgment, having given you free will, is to accept your judgment. But, remember, your life is most probably more good than bad, and even if it was not, you can change right up until you die, God forever offering you forgiveness and another chance.

Depression: As the disease process inexorably and insidiously deepens, with pain increasing and quality of life decreasing, trips to the doctor or hospital seem ever so futile, and the inevitability of what is approaching depresses you.
Incredibly, when you most need people, many shy away from you, scared to face their own mortality, and soothing their hidden guilt by dismissing you with “I’ll be praying for you”, their prayers ringing hollow without being backed up by the actions of calling, visiting or feeding you.

Even those who do visit may nervously give false reassurances that “it’ll be OK”, when you know that is just not true. You then feel increasingly alone, and your depression worsens.

Friends need to let you air your feelings, and give you honest feedback, helping you prepare for death. And, as strange as this sounds, you need to focus more on the good than the bad. The negatives are all-too-evident, being rudely shoved “right in your face”. But, to dwell on them gets you nowhere. Instead, focus on what is genuinely good in your life: the love of your family and God, the warmth of the sun on your face or coffee on your palate, the softness of a robe, clean sheets on your bed, flowers from a friend ---- these are real, but often missed in our hectic world. Now you have time to notice the small things, and that will make a large difference.

Acceptance: Gradually, you are drawn to face your death because it is constantly looming before you, and honest talks with God, your pastor, and your spouse move you from seeing death as an end to seeing that it is a transition to a new beginning. Looking back at your life helps you to see the maturation of your soul; your chosen ability to connect with and love others being a treasure that death cannot touch. You then become not scared of death, but only of the process of dying, realizing that the last breath you take on earth will be followed by the first breath you take in heaven, enabling you to let go of one life to embrace another.

Question: I've got a friend who's depressed. He's always so negative, as if looking at life through a dark and gloomy filter. How can I help him?

Answer:

A. THINKING: Negative ideas bring people down because they are distorted. Helping your friend is helping him find & correct the distortion. Let me give you some examples.

1. MAGNIFYING: Flubbing a job interview neither makes you an idiot, nor does it mean that all future interviews are hopeless and futile wastes of your time. Try not to blow things out of proportion, but instead realize that a mistake today can be corrected tomorrow. Life is often more gray than black & white.

2. DWELLING: While everyone has weaknesses, why focus exclusively on them? Instead, regain perspective by taking the blinders off, and not discounting your positive qualities and accomplishments. This is not an internal "snow job", but rather seeing that the glass is really a lot more than half-full.

3. ASSUMING: Predicting that people will not like you, and that you will never find a job or fall in love condemns you to a self-fulfilling prophecy where you are sitting at home alone on a Saturday night all because you have projected your own self-doubt onto others. Try to give people, and yourself, a chance.

4. BLAMING: Playing ping pong with blame is again all-or-nothing thinking, where your anger can point inwards to see yourself as a "loser" or outwards to see others as "cruel". Stop labeling yourself and others, and instead see your thinking as depriving you and them from opportunities to grow and be happy.

B. TREATING: Helping your friend can be done by:

1. EVIDENCE: Ask your friend to prove his point, for there will not be sufficient evidence for his generalizations.

2. QUESTIONS: Ride his irrational, inconsistent, and negative thoughts until they crash. Asking him probing questions gets him to do the work of examining his own ideas, with the hope that his innate intelligence will help him to abandon ideas that now look foolish.

3. FANTASY: Get him to imagine and confront his worst fears, helping him realize that he is really facing a paper tiger. If he can deal with the worst that could happen, then dealing with less than that should be a cinch.

4. OPENNESS: As this is your friend, show him how you have faced your own demons, dealing with self-doubt, anger, or shyness. Then, he will not be alone.

5. SUBSTITUTION: Finally, get your friend to replace his negative idea with a more positive and accurate one, which will gradually result in happier feelings and more productive behavior.

C. READING: If you found this helpful, consider reading either Feeling Good by David Burns or any text on Cognitive Therapy by Aaron Beck.

Question: I have been feeling down in the dumps for some time. Could you explain what depression is, and what can be done about it?

Answer:

1. Definition: Depression is a gap between who you are (your ego) and who you think you should be (your ego ideal). When you think you are a few "shoulds" short, and, therefore, do not measure up, you get depressed.

2. Dynamics: Who we think we should be is largely determined by parents. Often, they unwittingly set unrealistic expectations for their children, communicating that love is conditional upon getting a home run in baseball, good marks in school, a good job, or a good spouse. So, when you get an F in spelling in 4th grade, or fail to get a raise in your job, you feel like you failed, and get depressed.
   
   

   As the connection to pleasing your parent is long lost, you could have transferred your desire to please to a substitute parent, such as a teacher, employer, or spouse. Should you fail to please this person, or should that person die and no longer be there to praise you, you get depressed.

3. Symptoms: As depression is anger turned in, many of the symptoms essentially punish you for being "a bad boy". Most common are difficulty sleeping, where you wake up in the middle of the night and can not get back to sleep. Or, where you do not feel like eating, and have recently lost over 10 pounds. Others are difficulty concentrating, as you are dwelling on your failures, often accompanied by crying and a pessimistic attitude. You may also withdraw from friends and fun, nothing seeming to pick up your spirits. The ultimate, and most upsetting, sign of anger at self is suicidal thinking.
4. Treatment: Involves both medicine and counseling.
   

   
   A. Counseling: Overcoming depression is a matter of accepting yourself, of looking for validation from within rather than from without. This does not mean abandoning your goals, but rather striving for them because you "want to", not because you "have to".

   Amazingly, your negative thinking is probably so ingrained, that you would fight the therapist, claiming that you are, indeed, a failure. The therapist then does not balance out a negative parent by telling you that you are good, for that only means your self-worth still comes from outside of yourself. Instead, the therapist elicits your own inner strength, getting you to challenge your negative thoughts, and replace them with more positive ones.

   B. Medication: When you are depressed, there is a decrease in the brain of neurotransmitters, such as serotonin. What that means is that you think slower, and get stuck in your negative thoughts, dwelling on them. Antidepressant medication increases these neurotransmitters so as to help you help yourself. However, they often take 3-4 weeks before they work, so be patient. The most popular ones today are prozac and zoloft, because they lift depression without having the side-effects associated with previous drugs, such as a dry mouth or drowsiness.

Question: My husband divorced me 3 months ago, saying that I was boring and had held him back from career advancements. I’m 42 and overweight. I haven’t worked in years. Who’d want a middle-age, fat, unemployed woman with 2 kids?

Answer: The truth is, however, that just as it took two to make your marriage, it also takes two to break it. Your husband, hoping to enlist allies in this war to prove his innocence, projects blame to you and relishes in the fact that you accept it.So, stop blaming yourself, and instead start evaluating your half of what went wrong.

• If you were overly dependent, take stock of your inner strengths.
• If you were shy and avoided social gatherings, force yourself to slowly widen your circle of friends and acquaintances.
• Look for a job and do not be discouraged if it takes time.
• When friendships form and compliments on job performance occur, your real, but hidden, self will finally come into focus.

Then, if you choose, you will be ready to remarry, not feeling “lucky” to have found anybody, but taking your time to find someone who will love you as much as you love them.

Question: A talk show said that kids aren’t really all that affected by a divorce. Can that be true?

Answer:

1. My Fault? Children worry that if they had been better behaved, the divorce may not have happened. Children need not only to be told that the divorce was not their fault, but also to be given a brief explanation of what is occurring so they can deal with it.
2. Security: Young children, worried that their world is falling apart, that they may lose their room or have to move, need to be reassured that they will always be cared for and protected.
3. Identity: Older children worry, “If I’m like Dad, and Mom no longer loves Dad, maybe Mom will no longer love me.” Both parents have to reassure children that they will always be loved, and each parent has to honestly help the child identify those good and bad traits that parent has passed on, keeping one and gradually reforming the other.
4. Fear of Rejection: Adolescents and young adults may so fear being rejected as to hide their deeper feelings, avoid arguments by giving in to keep peace, and live together before marrying, hoping to be safe by “testing the waters”. However, lacking honest communication and true commitment dooms the relationship and produces a self-fulfilling prophecy. Again, allowing a child to talk through their understanding and feelings about the divorce will help them in being less worried about a sudden and unforeseen rejection, in being able to bravely face problems by being assertive when angry, and to plan for vs. fear an eventual marriage of their own.
5. Parenting the Parent: As adults struggle with their feelings, they often turn to children for comfort and companionship, or for built-in maids or baby sitters, and a boy or girl’s childhood gets cut short. Parents should face their own insecurity in dating again, looking for companionship with other adults, not their children. And, while more chores in the absence of one parent may be a reality, that needs to be balanced with the reality that the decisions of two adults to divorce should not rob children of the joys of their youth.
6. Taking Sides: In bitter divorces, children are occasionally made to take sides, being pummeled with a litany of the faults of the other parent, being made to feel guilty if they enjoy a visit with the non-custodial parent (let alone the new stepparent!), or being enticed to move in with that parent by dangling their own room or more toys as the carrot on a stick. Being caught in the middle, they are forced to choose between disliking one parent or lying to the parent who pressures. Parents need to mourn the loss of their marriage vs. use their children as pawns in a chess game of blame.
7. Displacing Anger: Parents, frustrated in their inability to vent anger on their absent spouse, may displace it onto their present children, who are trapped with nowhere to hide. Children themselves, not wanting to hurt their parents, may in turn displace anger onto parental surrogates like teachers, or perhaps to their friends. Parents need to process their own anger with a friend or counselor, and help their children express vs. suppress their anger, showing the child that the parent is strong enough to handle it.

A final comment is that the above problems do not imply that parents should never divorce, just that the tragedy of divorce profoundly touches the lives of children, and that parents, while no longer husband and wife, need to continue to unselfishly work together as father and mother.

Question: An have a good friend who has bulimia. I don't know much about eating disorders. Could you help me understand them better?

Answer:

A. DEFINITION: Anorexia nervosa involves such an intense fear of getting fat that the person allows their body weight to fall at least 15% below the norm, and feels fat even when emaciated. Women in the latter stages of the disorder often experience the absence of their menstrual cycle. Only 5-10% of anorexic patients are men.

B. CAUSES: First, societal pressure on women in particular to be thin is immense. It was bad enough trying to live up to a Revlon ad with Cindy Crawford, but now an emaciated waif named Kate Moss is being tauted as the ideal woman.

Secondly, family dynamics reveal that the bulimic comes from a family typified by hostility and detachment, the absence of love resulting in a craving for the presence of food. Think of it, the first way love was communicated was a baby's bottle.

For the anorexic, their family is typified by a lack of hostility, and a presence of over-nurturing and over-protectiveness. If they doubt in their own inner strength, the adolescent transition into adulthood can be scary, and force them to increase their attractiveness by decreasing their weight.

C. TREATMENT: Whether you binge and purge, or whether you can never be thin enough, the end result is feeling depressed at "not measuring up". This is where therapy can begin to attack the problem, helping a person to realize that they have set impossible standards of perfection both for their body and their soul. Gradually, they are helped to relax, see their value as coming from within instead of from without, and set their own goals for their body weight, career, and marriage.

Group therapy and support groups like Overeaters Anonymous help by assisting people to see that they are not alone, and by learning what has or has not worked for others. Finally, family and friends must try to examine their own prejudices and behavior, so that a healthier person is not placed back in an unhealthy environment.

I recently saw a couple where the wife was urging her husband to share his feelings. When he finally did, courageously speaking with tears in his eyes, she stared at him with disgust and exclaimed, "And I thought that I married a man!" Needless to say, any further motivation of his to "let it all hang out" went down in flames.

To attack this problem, we must attack the myth that a man is weak if he expresses his emotions. Consider what it is like to be married to "an emotional rock". Whether your husband is the strong, silent type or someone who intellectualizes his feelings, giving you a computer printout of his 7.5 reasons for loving you, the end result is the same: you are starving to death emotionally. The pain you are feeling is proof positive that holding feelings in has let the air out of your marriage. So, how do you get him to change? Here are 3 ideas.

1. BE REALISTIC: Make sure that you have changed, that you are not like the wife I just described. Both you and your husband must realize that the "real man" images of Rambo, Rocky, The Duke, or Dirty Harry are just that -- images. They are imaginary, and, even if they were real, they would need intense therapy a lot more than idol worship.

2. BE PATIENT: Realize that your husband may have had some rather deep conditioning by his family. I had a client once whose father died when he was a boy. Kneeling before his father's casket at the wake, he began to cry. His brother came up and whispered in his ear: "If you can't control yourself, you won't be allowed to stay!" It took that boy years to reverse the pattern he was taught, even though he knew it was wrong.

3. BE PERSISTENT: Practice does, indeed, make perfect. My advice to couples is that they get into the habit of setting aside 1 hour per week to talk. That time span enables you to go deeper than the normal "How was your day?" conversation. Also, try to enjoy it. This is not a grilling under the fluorescent lights of the kitchen, but rather a romantic talk in the living room with soft music and lighting to set the mood. When couples smirk and remind me that they have children, I simply challenge them to get creative. If you are too tired when the kids are in bed, consider using your VCR and that favorite Disney or Barney tape. Hard -- yes. Impossible -- no. Your reward will be the marriage that you have always wanted.

When you choose a doctor, my guess is that you want someone with a good bedside manner. When you buy a car, you probably want someone who relates to you more like a friend than a potential sucker. What you want from life is not just people who are smart, but people who genuinely care. While you hope that your Rector will be somewhat of a theologian, you will be very upset if he or she is not found to be very pastoral.

But, the hope is that you can develop both. EQ and IQ are friends, somewhat like different sides of the same coin. Here are just 4 examples.

1. STRESS: If you get too flustered, you have a hard time thinking. Learning how to manage your stress can help you not "blow" a test or a work assignment.

2. DECISIONS: Knowing what you want will help you choose what to do instead of analyzing something to death.

3. ANGER: Self-Control allows you to express vs. suppress your feelings, and to do so without yelling or being sarcastic so that your chance of having your ideas heard is greater.

4. DEPRESSION: Letting go of guilt, forgiving yourself for past failures, and having a more optimistic view of life enables you to "snap out of it".

So, EQ is, indeed, important. In a society which we often characterize as being cold and impersonal, it would do us all some good to develop our hearts as well as our minds. People skills like empathy and self-awareness can help us better love ourselves and others, and attain more of the happiness that we have always wanted.

My husband is a jealous nut! He thinks that every man is attracted to me, and more than occasionally accuses me of flirting. How do I get him to stop?

To control their fear, they try to control you. Their logic is that if you are home, then you have no chance to compare them with other men, discover that you are "stuck with a loser", and leave. So, they may ask that you not work, or that you wait until they can come with you to the mall or grocery store. As this is generally impossible, they may become detectives, asking you to account for where you were and what you did. As their fear increases, so too do the accusations, often escalating from accusing you of flirting to having affairs.

Most women make the mistake of endlessly defending their behavior instead of looking into the soul of their husband. And, even when some women bravely ask their husbands what is wrong, they usually run head on into that macho mask.

But, that is what you must do. You must consistently encourage your husband to reveal his innermost fears. While he will try to resist by defiant silence or childish blowups, you must lovingly insist that this issue be faced. This does not mean nagging him, nor pursuing him from room to room, but tenderly urging him to come to you. When he does, listen carefully, do not interrupt, and be empathic.

While you can reassure him of your love, remember that the focus must be on him. Therefore, get him to see himself through your eyes. Help him to recall those fine qualities that drew you to him in the first place. And whenever he slips and accuses you, sternly tell him that behavior is unacceptable, and again talk regarding his inner worth.

Is that hard? Yes. Is it impossible? No. But, without facing the issue, his abuse will increase, and your marriage will die. So, a little assertion now will save you from a big divorce later.

Question:

Answer: First, imagine a situation over which you have no control. If you expect your drive home to take 30 minutes, and it really takes 90 minutes, you get frustrated. What can you do? You can fume about the "idiot" whose reckless driving inconveniently tied up traffic with an accident, yelling to yourself that "life sucks", and inching your car from lane to lane in a vain attempt to "speed things up". However, the end result is that your blood pressure soars, and your unsuspecting spouse is in for a nightmare of an evening.

Instead, you can calm down, accept the reality that life has its share of bumps, turn your radio to a favorite station, and try to enjoy some unplanned "down" time. When you arrive home, you are not exactly "a happy camper", but you will not be allowing something over which you had no control to destroy your evening over which you do.

Next, imagine a situation where you have much more say in what occurs. On another evening, you arrive home, hoping to take a warm shower, have a cold beer, and relax watching TV. However, your wife has had an equally rough day with the children, and wants you to not only show her understanding & empathy, but also to give her a much-needed break - immediately! Your reaction? You could blow your stack, berating her for being "an insensitive clod" in not giving you a second to catch your breath. Or, you could "cave" and do what she expects, all the while muttering sarcastic, backbiting comments meant to not-so-subtly teach her a lesson for not living up to your expectations.

Instead, you and she could sit down and think out a solution to this common problem. Oh, yes, that would probably be after "blowing it" and learning from your mistakes, but my point is that this learning would involve having the expectations of you and your spouse match the reality that you are facing. Both needs are realistic, but cannot be accomplished simultaneously. Taking control of the situation means neither blaming your spouse, nor condemning yourself to a world of frustration, but rather facing the normal limitations of life, listening to one another, and compromising.

In both situations, frustration can actually awaken you to a need for creativity and change. In the above examples, instead of suffering from angina and a divorce, you can learn to not only manage stress, but also actually turn a potential negative into a very real positive.

With all that’s going on in the world, I feel like I'm under a blanket of fear. I'm scared of flying and opening my mail. I was always a little nervous, but now it's terrible. How does somebody cope with fear?

1. What Is Fear?: Our emotions react to thoughts, real (September 11th) or imagined ("My next plane will probably crash"). To control the fear, you must first control the idea driving it.

2. Get The Facts: If there are 4,000 flights each day, what are the odds that your flight will crash? How many people live in your area, and how many have been exposed to anthrax?

3. Get The Facts Once: Try not to watch repeated news accounts that go over and over the same, upsetting information. Your fear and their ratings go up at the same time.

4. Stay With The Present: Stop crossing your bridges before you come to them, letting your imagination run amuck by picturing you in the middle of a terrorist attack, or even your boss wanting to fire you, or your spouse wanting a divorce.

5. Keep Track Of Your Thoughts: If you are always nervous, try writing down the ideas that upset you. Are they loaded with negative or cynical distortions like "I never get a break" or "The government can't really stop the terrorists"? Then remove them, and replace them with more realistic and positive ideas that will result in less fear and more control.

6. Take Back Control: Instead of negatively whining, how about being positively proactive? Don't shrink your world to shrink your anxiety, but instead try to maintain your normal routine, let laughter lighten your anxiety by watching comedies on TV, get enough rest, eat well, and get your mind off your own worries by volunteering at the Red Cross or your church.

7. Try To Relax: Use deep breathing and meditation to learn how to focus on one thought vs. allowing your mind to be distracted and tortured by many scary, but imagined, possibilities. Remember, while possible, they are not probable.

8. Don't Overmedicate: While medications (Xanax, Valium, Ativan, Librium) can temporarily help, they can be addictive, but cannot eliminate real or imagined threats.

9. Do Seek Support: Talk to people you trust: family, friends, neighbors, people at church or work. Suppressing feelings only suppresses healing.

10. Seek Counseling?: If fear is gobbling up your life, if you rarely go out, if you are easily startled, if you have tension headaches, grind your teeth, clench your jaw, have a hard time concentrating and making decisions, and those whom you trust tell you that things are out of control, then yes, let a therapist help you help yourself.

Question: I don’t understand forgiveness. It seems so weak, as if you’re letting someone get away with murder and opening the door for them to abuse you all over again. Am I right?

Answer:

1. Repentance: A person must be genuinely contrite, truly sorry for having hurt you.

2. Change: How do you know if someone is really sorry? By their behavior. This means reparation, not hurriedly reciting 5 Hail Mary’s and 5 Our Fathers, but real change. Often, this simply means doing the opposite of what was done wrong. If sarcastic, then being kind when direct. If defaming the name of someone, then restoring their good name. If lying, then telling the truth. If stealing, then the restitution of monies.

   The goal here is not to hurt the person, but rather to save him. The hope is to start the person on a path towards renewal, realizing that he is in the process of creating who he is. The judgment of God is to accept our judgment, to allow us to have the consequences of our own actions. The punishment for being selfish is to be selfish. It is written on our soul, and no amount of fast-talking will change that reality. A person is stuck with his or her choice for all eternity, and that is far more powerful than any pound of flesh that we impose on those who hurt us.

3. Pardon: Now comes what we understand as “forgiveness”. It does not mean magically erasing a sin from someone’s soul, but rather giving them another chance. Why? Because forgiveness is based less on the fact that the “forgiver” is a nice person, and more on the fact that the “forgivee” has the potential for change. We need to separate out person from behavior. We should not say, “You are a bad boy”, but rather “You are a good boy who did something bad”. Change is always possible, this, for instance, being one of the reasons why the religious community is against the death penalty.

   But, what if after all this the person continues to hurt you? Then, you withdraw your forgiveness and separate yourself from the person so as to avoid being hurt. We tend to forget that in Christian theology, Jesus told his disciples “Whose sins you shall forgive, they are forgiven them. Whose sins you shall retain, they are retained.” (John 20: 21-23).

To make this clearer, if I kept punching you in the nose and asking for your forgiveness, eventually, you would determine that enough is enough, tell me to leave, and even put up your fists to protect yourself. Are you being UnChristian? No, just UnStupid! God does not want you to be a punching bag, just to give others who are genuinely sorry, a chance to change.

Question: I have a friend who just lost $22,000 in Atlantic City. Why do people gamble, and how can his family and I help?

Answer:

A. CHARACTERISTICS: Those who are lost in their problem exhibit a number of signs. They are preoccupied with gambling, and tend to increase the amount of their bet to gain the desired "rush". They use gambling as a way to feel better about themselves. Yet, when bad goes to worse, they "chase" their losses, namely, betting more to "catch up". When they can not do that, they may borrow money from friends or relatives, or commit theft, forgery, or embezzlement to continue gambling, promising to eventually put back what they took.

B. CAUSES: What drives the problem is complex, but many point to parents who might have provided gifts and money as a guilty reparation for the lack of quality time they spent with their children. If money equals love, or the power to get love, then gambling is seen as a possible quick fix. Other theories state that people who grew up poor simply see happiness as having money, and again, gambling provides the lure of getting there fast.

C. TREATMENT: Certainly, the person must be helped to challenge the meaning of money, and seeing that one can be happy and a good provider without necessarily rolling in money like Scrooge McDuck.

Apart from a shift in thinking, there needs to be a shift in behavior. As the person is suffering from an addiction, abstinence vs. "cutting back" is required. Therefore, the person needs support, and should join Gamblers Anonymous (GA).

Family need to be counseled as to how they can help, usually by removing access to money as much as possible. This includes handing over paychecks to a spouse, taking away all credit cards, and having bank accounts which require a counter signature. Family need help in seeing these actions as kind vs. cruel, and in resisting manipulations for sympathy, such as a loan from parents being for "the baby" vs. gambling.

As the game is ending, depression and thoughts of suicide may be beginning, and counseling will return over and over to the notion of self-esteem coming from internal qualities vs. external money. Your true friendship, your caring even when the money is gone, will be essential to your friend's recovery.

Question: Why should I be humble? Being meek and mild only lets others cruise by you on the way to the top. Why does religion push being weak as a virtue?

Answer:

• Eternal: We have a definite beginning and end. No matter how much you exercise, eat lean meat and vegetables, or take vitamins, 100 years from now, you will be dead. God is not limited by time, it being an understatement to call him the God of our Forefathers.

• Omnipresent: No matter how big your house, you can only be in one room at a time. No matter how rich you become, you can only travel to one place at a time. God is everywhere.

• Omniscient: No matter how many degrees you attain, no matter how brilliant you are, you never will know it all. God does.

• Omnipotent: Think of all who held and revered power: Ramses II, Julius Caesar, Napoleon, etc. They are all dead. In a former age when some philosophers aspired to be supermen, I remember a story of graffiti having been scribbled on a wall in Berlin. It said, "God is Dead" signed Nietzsche. The next day, written underneath was, "Nietzsche is Dead", signed God. Touché.

Get the point? Even if you achieve more than any human who ever lived, you are still dwarfed by God. Why do we act so proud? Why are we consumed with trying to get others to think that we are great? Why have we still not learned the lesson of Adam & Eve in the Garden of Eden?

Like them, we want what we cannot have. We rail against our limits, always wanting more, the latest and greatest never satisfying for long. Not seeing the big picture, we are condemned to jealously vie for position in the little picture. Fearing criticism and yearning for praise, we wear masks of superiority, hoping to fool others and even ourselves. But, unlike the masks of Halloween that so easily come off at evening's end, these personality masks become harder to take off as each year passes, as we begin to believe the web of lies that we have so assiduously been spinning. Tragically, life becomes an exercise in futility, the frustrating pursuit of power being always and elusively just beyond our grasp.

Why do you suppose Moses could deal with no longer being a Prince of Egypt, or Jesus with being born in a manger, growing up in an obscure village, and dying on a cross? Because they knew what really matters. You said that you want to get ahead. Good. So, don't be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Don't choose a big house and car, but a small soul. Learn what the Pharaohs of Egypt never did. Your Lexus won't be coming with you, but your soul will. Spend more time on what goes with you from this life to the next, not simply on what glitters today but is gone tomorrow. Think about it, who is really cruising by whom?

Question: My wife is seriously ill, and enduring a crammed waiting room for hours seems to add insult to injury. How can I cope better?

Answer: You enter a waiting room that is standing room only, overly warm because of all that body heat. You luck out and get to sit next to the person who flunked “Hygiene 101” in high school. You look at many patients who stare ahead vacantly and their spouses who bury their fears by burying their heads in a book or magazine, and the optimism to which you cling seems more tenuous than ever. Then, you reflect on the reality of a long wait until your wife is called, and then waiting for her to reemerge. Indeed, waiting room agonies “add insult to injury”.

While we could write another article on why some physicians “double book” patients, your question is how to cope with the reality before you. Here are a few simple ideas, none of which are perfect, but all of which will help:

1. Attitude: While there is no denying the negatives, why dwell on them? Even if your spouse were dying, endlessly going over the gloomy details will not help anyone. Instead, what are the genuine positives of the moment: a cold soda or hot coffee while you are waiting, time to talk with your spouse or quietly reflect on the meaning of your life, the color and smell of flowers in the room, a good article to read, and people with whom to visit.

2. Service: The waiting room is ironically a self-imposed support group. Everyone has a similar problem, but everyone handles it differently. You can learn from them, or teach a new way of coping that brought you relief. Also, should someone need a cup of water or the channel on the TV changed, helping them with such a simple need will awaken in you a depth of compassion and growth.
3. Humor: Lightening a heavy mood by a witty comment or joke can sometimes make a day of mounting unpleasantries more tolerable. Also, watch more comedies and less “gut-wrenching” dramas on TV, as coping with what is on your plate is enough to face. Even a simple smile will perk up you and all who see it.
4. Deep Breathing: Try taking longer breathes than normal, inhaling from your stomach, and giving your active mind a rest by focusing upon any object across the room. Let distracting thoughts come and go vs. latching onto to them, and notice that in 5 minutes your stress will slowly decrease.
5. Prayer: And finally, you can combine deep breathing with meditation, reflecting on how Christ endured the agony in the garden, how much God loves you, or what it means for God to be your Father.

As if winter isn't dreadful enough, many have been hit by the flu this year. How does somebody cope with illness and keep their spirits up?

1. FOCUS ON THE POSITIVES: Your response to this caption is probably, "What positives?" Yes, if you have the flu, the negatives are all too apparent. You ache from head to toe, alternate from freezing to burning up, cannot stop coughing at night, and your nose is so red and irritated that you begin to resemble Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.
   
   But, instead of dwelling on what causes you pain, consider what brings you comfort: a warm cup of tea, kleenex with aloe, curling up with a fuzzy blanket and a good book, renting a favorite video, and allowing your spouse and kids to fuss over you. Also, you become more aware of what you took for granted: taking a deep breath, sleeping through the night, and going through your day relatively pain free.

2. AVOID UNREALISTIC THINKING: When sick with the flu or a bad cold which is responding all-too-slowly to your white cells and the doctor's medicine, you might get discouraged and say: "My life sucks", "I'm dying", "I wish I were dead", or "Why is God doing this to me". Try to calm down, and realize that your fear and frustration are being translated into unrealistic thoughts. You will recover. Your life is not without meaning. And, God is not sitting on a cloud purposely deciding to ruin your day.

3. REFRAME THE SITUATION: Bad as your illness feels, it often can be a wake-up call, forcing you to take stock of yourself. Are you working too many hours? Not taking days off? Do your eating and exercising habits need a tad of reform?
   
   So, bad as it is, having the flu does give you time to rest, recoup your strength, and reflect on the meaning of your life. Instead of wallowing in how "crummy" you feel, why not reframe your temporary illness into more permanent corrections to your life?

4. REFLECT ON LIFE: Illness blatantly reminds us of our mortality, forcing us to reflect on the meaning of life. It is not to live forever, for no matter how much health food you eat, or how much exercising you do, all of us will one day die. Hence, why were you born?
   The answer to this question requires a book, but my belief is that the purpose of life is to make a choice between good and evil, that choice being evidenced less by what you say and more by what you do. It is not a one-time choice, but a process of daily choices over the span of your life. The more you work on refining who you are, the more maturity and happiness are yours. When you die, the judgment of God is to accept your judgment, leaving you with the consequences of a lifetime of choices.
   Hence, being ill allows you to put things in perspective, and remember that happiness is defined less by how much you possess, and more by who you have become.

Question: What is happiness? When I was a kid, it was to win ball games. When I became an adult, it was to make money. But, I've never really gotten there. My wife tells me that I'm never happy and that my moods turn people off, but time is running out.

Answer: Consider some examples. If you do not wish to be alone, learn to be connected. Instead of complaining that no one cares, ask yourself how much you care. Do you try to put yourself in their shoes, or do you convey a rejecting and judgmental attitude? If someone explains how you have hurt them, do you listen or become defensive? If someone opens up their feelings to you, do you make that person feel like he or she is the only person in the world, or do you come across as uninterested?

When you express your feelings, how do you do it? Yelling, nagging, sarcasm, and name-calling tend not to produce the best result, causing a shouting match, a deaf ear, or ammunition that can be used against you. If that is not the type of attention you would like, consider calmly telling the other what is bothering you, being careful not to project blame, but to propose a solution, which should be in the form of a suggestion, not an order.

At work, are you known as the person who can be counted on in a pinch, or as the chronic complainer who drags down morale? Are you known as honest enough to be trusted, or are you always watched for fear you will take home supplies or duck out early? Do you look for work to do, or do you figure that no work signals an automatic coffee break?

The point in all of the above is that it is not winning ball games or making money that will make you happy, but rather how you approach the situations and people in your life. To be empathic instead of callous, human instead of macho, kind instead of calculating, and cooperative instead of resistant will bring you closer to your spouse, children, and friends at work.

Question: Recently, I woke up in the middle of the night in a cold sweat, sat up straight, and realized that I'm getting older and will one day die. I can't seem to stop worrying, the question that haunts me being: Why was I born? What is the purpose of my life?

Answer:

If you choose to view others as suckers to manipulate instead of as potential friends, then you fail to learn how to be close to them, condemning yourself to be lonely, frustrated, and angry. When you are placed in the presence of God after death, never having learned how to be close to others, you do not know how to be close to God. Then you look around and see many who are close and, therefore, happy. Finally, you realize that this state of emptiness will last for all eternity. You are in Hell.

However, if, during your life, you give of yourself so as to receive love and friendship in return, you may not be rich or famous, but you will possess the secret of life, knowing how to love. When placed in the presence of God, you will be able to be close to God, your reward being to be eternally happy. You are in Heaven.

God gives us free will. The judgment of God is to accept your judgment. The punishment for choosing to be selfish is to be selfish. It saddens God if you choose to not love Him and your fellowman, but that is your choice. You choose to be happy or sad, to be in heaven or hell. He provides eternal life. You determine how you will live it.

You should not wait to make this choice on your deathbed, but do so every day of your life. The good thief next to Jesus made the right choice, but had only a few minutes of growth left. You, however, are still alive. Each day is an opportunity to grow, to become more like Christ, more of a Christian.

So, how are you doing? If you are on the wrong path, then wake up and change! If you are on the right path, then do not become smug and complacent, just keep going. Go to church to continue to learn more about the purpose of life and be refreshed for the challenge of each day. Then love your family, give an honest day's labor at work, treat all people as you would want to be treated, and worry not about the end of this life. The next one will be very happy.

Question: Does anyone really care about anyone else? I go to parties all the time, engage in meaningless banter, but always wonder if anyone really gives a damn about me. What do you think?

Answer: Here is a powerful thought: the price for being selfish is to BE selfish. If someone genuinely cares about you, they gain you as a friend. If they do not, no matter how much “banter” is exchanged, they do not. Of course, when you hit bad times, that is, when you get sick or lose your money, then you have a better chance at discerning who is “true blue”. But my point, abstract but powerful, is that even if a person fools everyone during their lifetime, they fool neither themselves nor God.

Life is a process of growth determined by how you relate to others. Life is a series of choices. Will you be kind or cruel, helpful or manipulative, caring or callous? Each interaction with each person on each day determines the depth of your growth. Death is the end of this process of growth. The judgment of God is simply to accept your judgment. If you have chosen to be a shallow, selfish person who feels that others like you because you have money, drive the right car, live in the right neighborhood, throw the right party, or associate with the right people, then your punishment is to be what you have chosen to be: shallow and selfish for all eternity.

However, now let me pose you a question, making you look at the plank in your own eye instead of the speck in the eye of the other. Do YOU care? If you are going to parties because you are worried whether you will be liked or accepted, then you have foolishly handed over the power to determine your worth to others, nervously awaiting the mail that tells if you will or will not be still invited to a party, or being paranoid about how others view you when your business fails or your drive off the first tee travels only an embarrassing ten feet.

God loves you not because of who you know, but because of who you are. Until you breathe your last, you still have the ability to turn your life around, to believe in yourself enough to be risk saying what you think and behaving as the caring person whom you were born to be. All the accoutrements of power and glory will not be coming with you when you enter the next life. Who you have chosen to be will. So, worry less about whether others care about you, and start worrying about whether you really care about them. There is nothing you can do about the former, but you will have to live for all eternity with what you decide to do about the latter.

While this article is not sparked by a question, I thought you might appreciate my sharing a profound insight that I experienced during the death of my wife, Nicolina (“Nicki”). She died on October 8th.

When we marry, we promise to be faithful until we are parted by death. Today, I find many who think of that as a time to be feared, as a bitter pill to be swallowed, as an obligation owed in repayment for all the good and healthy years. Still others, seeing decreasing health in a spouse, contemplate divorce to escape mixing such pain and sadness with the previous years of pleasure and happiness.

Of course, no one wants his or her spouse to die. I worked with every fiber of my being to return my wife to health, affording her every measure of care possible. But, when I had to travel through suffering to death with her, I discovered a new and deeper level of love. Doctors focus solely on preserving life, but patients often know when death is coming. My wife told me that she was dying a month before she died. I was slower to accept that reality, but when she entered a hospice program, invasive procedures stopped and facing death together entered a very intensive phase.

Entering the room where you will die is a somber moment. My wife was understandably upset, and I decided to spend the night in the room with her. I positioned myself so that I could look directly at her face. She had just come off of two weeks on a respirator and so could barely speak above a whisper. I pointed to my eye, then my heart, and then her, conveying “I love you”, and she, unable to lift her arms, mouthed the same back to me. She looked inquisitively at me at one point, and when I said that I was crying, her eyes reached across the room to comfort me. We then stared at each other for about 3 hours, never speaking a word, our eyes riveted on each other, giving the sense that there was no distance between us. This continued until she fell asleep due to occasional morphine injections to hold her pain at bay. I have never felt anything that powerful before in my life!

Marriage ceremonies talk about the two becoming one. That night we were one. Nicki died 5 nights later. She was in and out of consciousness, and we never again had the clarity of that one night, but it was an experience that has sustained me through her death and into my life without her.

My words to you feel clumsy and awkward, unable to convey the power of the love felt. My only wish is to ease your fear of walking towards death with your spouse. Amidst the inescapable pain, there will also be the culmination of your love in ultimate intimacy. You will experience the joy of being one. Those who allow their fear to make them run from death will lose one of the purest gifts of life, let alone be haunted with the memory of not being there when they were most needed.

Question: Why do some people fall into the trap of getting divorced and then marrying the same type of person all over again?

Answer: Why am I so "mean"? Because marriages doomed to end in pain often start with an unhealthy reason for their attraction. Strangely, many people marry someone whose personality is similar to the parent who they felt never loved them. The often subconscious thought is that "If I can get my spouse to love me, then maybe I could have gotten my parent to love me", the hope being to "kill two birds with one stone".

Their spouse, therefore, is essentially two persons wrapped up into one: spouse + parent. If a divorce occurs, it is no great surprise that this person will repeat the process, being drawn to a similar personality. If they remarry, that person now equals three persons: parent + spouse #1 + spouse #2.

Because so much is packed into one person, someone may be willing to endure a pretty awful marriage, for to lose the love of your spouse means losing the hope of ever being loved by your parent. Hence, this may be one reason that a spouse may tolerate emotional and physical abuse, frustrating family who plead with the person to get out of that relationship.

It does not, however, always mean tolerating abuse. In other cases, it may mean giving it. For, if I felt unloved by my parent, one dysfunctional solution is to be passive and tolerate abuse, while another is to marry a passive person whom I can control. I remember once having a man come into counseling with his 6th wife, exclaiming in frustration, "Can you believe how unlucky I am? Six losers in a row!" When I did a marital history, you could have used a psychological cookie cutter to describe the wives of this man, each being immature and dependent. Once they grew up and became more assertive, his attraction for them ended, even though they were ironically now healthy for him.

Finally, try to remember that this psychological connection between a spouse and a parent is almost always subconscious, and, if I were to suddenly make the connection clear, they would think that I had "lost it" and need a quick trip to the nearest psychiatric hospital! Therefore, the connection has to investigated and exposed gradually. How this is done is to get the person to think out why they are attracted to someone else. If they are getting a mental hernia trying to describe the love of their life, then they are more open to understand that there may be underlying reasons. It also leaves the door open to exploring what qualities in a spouse are truly desired, these often being the opposite of the parent whose love they have always pursued.

1. Genesis 2:
   1. Verse 18: God says that “it is not good for man to be alone”.
   2. Verse 23: The man is so happy, noting, “This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh”.
   3. Verse 24: The ultimate goal is intimacy: “For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.”
2. Song of Songs: The core of this text goes back to the early days of the reign of Solomon, but its significance is describing the tender love between Yahweh and his people in the metaphor of the love between a man and a woman. It describes true devotion in contrast to the fertility rites in pagan temples mimicking the actions of Baal and Astarte.
3. Matthew:
   1. 5:27-30: Now we hear of a higher standard, where the bond between husband and wife is so strong, so complete, that to even lust after another woman is considered adultery.
   2. 19:1-11 (also Mark 10:1-12): Therefore, divorce cannot be considered “for any reason whatever” as in the days of Moses when the hearts of men were “hard”, the only reason being “fornication” (Matthew 5:32).

1. 25-27: Evolution of Self through Marriage: “Husbands love your wives, just as Christ loved the church and gave himself up for her to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other blemish, but holy and blameless.”
2. 28-32: Being One: “In this same way, husbands ought to love their wives as their own bodies. He who loves his wife loves himself. After all, no one ever hated his own body, but he feeds and cares for it, just as Christ does for the church – for we are members of his body. ‘For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and the two will become one flesh.’ This is a profound mystery – but I am talking about Christ and the church.”

• The disobedience and defiance of Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden,
• The Jews at the base of Mount Sinai breaking the commandments Moses is receiving at the top of the Mount,
• The adultery of David,
• The vanity of Solomon,
• The idolatry of Israel and Judah, railed against by the prophets,
• The paranoia of Herod the Great in trying to kill the Messiah by slaughtering the innocent infants of Bethlehem,
• The weakness and lust of Herod Antipas in beheading John the Baptist to appease Herodias and lure Salome,
• The spiritual blindness and jealousy of Caiaphas in seeking the death of Jesus,
• The spiritual confusion of the Corinthians in letting class distinctions sully the equality of the agape,
• And thousands of more examples sprinkled throughout the bible.

• Choosing spouse over parents in the early years of the marriage,
• Resisting affairs by seeing love as a quality instead of a quantity,
• Working cooperatively in deciding whether to have children, when to have children, how many to have and how to raise them,
• Growing to understand more deeply what really matters when looks fade, when jobs are lost, or when a serious illness strikes,
• Helping each other to realize that who they are growing to be is more important than what wealth or status that they have attained,
• Seeing retirement as another opportunity to grow instead of a loss of productivity and usefulness, and
• Understanding that dying is a process of growing rather than a reality from which to flee.

1. PAY ATTENTION: Give the other your full attention. Sit relatively close to your fiancé / lover to model physically what you are attempting to achieve psychologically and spiritually, and maintain eye contact. Do not try and talk while watching television, playing computer games, or even cooking dinner.
2. OBSERVE THE NON-VERBAL: If the other cries, pouts, or looks away, ask why. Do not drone on and ignore an obvious sign that something is wrong.
3. PARAPHRASE: After your spouse speaks, then summarize / paraphrase / give the essence of what they said. If you get it wrong, then have your spouse say it again, and you paraphrase it again, until your spouse says, “Yes, that’s it”. While this sounds like pouring glue all over the process of communication, it forces you to identify the core issue before responding, thereby avoiding the danger of addressing the all-too-obvious, but not central, surface issue.

1. INTERRUPT: If you are interrupting, then you are not listening. You are being defensive. Put aside you to listen to the other.
2. MIND READ: You can ask how someone is feeling, but you cannot tell them how they are feeling. Even if you are married for 100 years and are right 100% of the time, it is still an insult to tell your spouse how he or she is feeling.
3. NAME CALLING: While we no longer call each other “fatso” or “four eyes”, we do “push each other’s buttons”, meaning that we attack what is important to the other (such as one’s career) to hurt their feelings and win the argument. But going for the jugular vein only destroys trust, and the purpose of communication is not to win, but to be one.
4. POSTPONE FOR TOO LONG: Remember the old saying, “Don’t go to bed mad”? Well, while we cannot always do that, it is wise to express instead of suppress our feelings. Instead, many couples hold what is bothering them inside, only to explode in anger at a later point. To face what is bothering you when it is bothering you will make you nervous, but your anxiety will be your friend, helping you to carefully say what is on your mind instead of cutting someone off at the knees.
5. TIT FOR TAT: Arguments peppered with “Oh yeah, well you did this or that!” only confuse the couple as to what is really the key issue. Remember, your goal is empathy, to truly understand and feel what the other is really saying. Defensiveness will only blind you to the issue at hand, and throwing too many balls in the air will confuse both of you. This is not an argument in a court of law where you are trying to stack the deck to win. The goal here is not to win, but to understand. If one of you wins, you both lose!

• Baer, Greg, Real Love in Marriage: The Truth About Finding Genuine Happiness Now and Forever, New York, Gotham Books, 2006.
• Bloom, Linda and Charlie, 101 Things I Wish I Knew When I Got Married, Novato, CA, New World Library, 2004.
• Fortel, Mort, Marriage Fitness: 4 Steps to Building & Maintaining Phenomenal Love, Baltimore, MD, Marriage Max, 2004.  
• Halford, W. Kim, Brief Therapy for Couples: Helping Partners Help Themselves, New York, Guilford Press, 2003.
• Isaacson, Cliff and Meg Schneider, The Good-for-You Marriage: How a Better Marriage Can Improve Your Health, Prolong Your Life, and Ensure Your Happiness, Avon, MA, Adams Media, 2008.
• Larson, Jeffrey H., The Great Marriage Tune-Up Book, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 2003.
• Mikulincer, Mario, and Gail S. Goodman, Eds., Dynamics of Romantic Love: Attachment, Caregiving and Sex, New York, Guilford Press, 2006.
• Stimpson, Peter K., Map to Happiness: Straightforward Advice on Everyday Issues, New York, iUniverse, 2008.

1. Mind & Heart: Love is an attraction to what is perceived as good. Your mind has to see the worth of a person before your heart can express your affection. Love, therefore, is not a whimsical emotion, but rather a reaction to the depth and majesty of the other.
2. The Eyes Of The Other: To drive my point home, when a person feels insecure, I often ask them why their spouse loves them. Could it be your spouse is just stupid and cannot see what a loser you are? Or, could they see what a nice person is hiding underneath that rough exterior? My facetious comment makes a person see their own value reflected back to them in the eyes of their lover.
3. A Covenant: Love in marriage is not a boring, stagnant, legal contract carved in stone that locks you into a relationship, but rather a living breathing commitment to ongoing growth with one another. Your vow is like a protective bubble, keeping interference out and intensity in.
4. Brave: Love means having the courage to ask the other person to grow. Perhaps that means learning to argue with sensitivity vs. aggression or to be humbly yourself vs. wear a mask of superiority.
5. Patient: As long as a person is genuinely receptive to your sensitive call for them to grow, the speed of that growth is less important. They may be weak where you are strong, and so have to grow according to their time clock, not yours. Remember, your spouse will have to be patient with you too!
6. Kind: Growth requires sandpaper and blankets. Sandpaper for the growing edge, but blankets for kindness. If you come across as arrogant and demanding, trying to control and manipulate, all you will get is defensiveness, procrastination, and broken promises. Your spouse does not want a teacher, just a lover.
7. Forgiving: In this journey prompted by love, all of us make mistakes, say insensitive, sarcastic, and cruel things to win arguments or in retaliation for feeling hurt. What should you do? Punish the other, extracting your pound of flesh? No. The punishment for being selfish is to be selfish. Instead, if the person is truly sorry, give them another chance as forgiveness is based more on the fact that your spouse can really change and less on that you are a nice person.
8. Don't Be Envious: If your spouse showers your children, family and friends with love, that is not taking anything away from you. Love is not a quantity, so that you are getting less of the pie. It is a quality. The more your spouse exercises his or her love for others, the better able they become to love you.

Question: Do some people hide behind masks? Why do they do that?

Answer: The masks we wear on Halloween, we can take off at the end of the evening. The personality masks that hide who we are become harder to take off as each year passes, as if we begin to believe the web of lies that we have been spinning. Hence, my advice is to take your mask off, realizing that your true self is far more beautiful than any mask, no matter how bejeweled it may be.

Here are but a few examples of masks people wear everyday:

1. The Clinger: Someone who judges himself or herself to be weak, and accordingly, clings to someone else whom they think is strong. They passively allow this person to make important decisions for them, such as buying a house or car, or determining to which school the children will go. Instead of depending on a mythical hero, they need to discover their inner worth, and nervously & gradually stand on their own two feet.
2. The Martyr: This person manipulates by feelings, drawing such a "poor me" picture, that you find yourself drawn to doing things for them. However, after the 6th crisis in 2 weeks, you duck when you see them coming, as you see them as a "bottomless pit" of need. As we all want to help others, this person then just moves on to the next "sucker", never realizing that they do not have to act sad to become happy.
   
3. Macho Man: This person hides their fear of you by making you scared of them. This is yesterday's bully from grade school, who today controls by making you feel uncomfortable, perhaps by yelling or being "in your face" during an argument. When people back down, they feel powerful. But, when people back away, especially a spouse, their paranoid fear of rejection shows itself in jealous accusations of infidelity, and a cynical world view that is a definite "turn off". The more assertive the spouse becomes, the more abusive the behavior becomes, often escalating to slapping and hitting.
4. Shy Guy: This person avoids social situations, having to be dragged to a party, where they hover on the fringe of conversations, studying people to discover who is "safe". If either slightly rebuffed or ignored, they retreat to their corner, complaining enough until their spouse agrees to go home. While very talented, they often put themselves down, and are overly dismayed if they make a public mistake, each goof reinforcing the decision to hang back for fear of embarrassment.
5. The Snob: This person puts himself up by putting you down. They narcissistically throw in your face the fact that they live on the right street, drive the right car, or know the right people, the not-so-subtle implication being that you do not! They often define themselves by what they have vs. who they are.
6. The Workaholic: This person defines self by what they do vs. who they are, compulsively working long hours due to feeling short on self-esteem. They endlessly tell you about how much they have accomplished on their job, what their title is, how many people are under them, or how much they make, the implication being that the firm would fold without them. They have a hard time relaxing, taking work home with them, and even converting fun into work, wanting to shoot the lowest score in golf so as to feel high.

Question: I am so discouraged with my life. I had hoped to succeed in life, but I’m just a Mom, running kids from one event to another. My other college friends have great jobs and are going places. How can I get myself back on track?

Answer:

1. SELF-ESTEEM: By not being overcritical, you allow them to see their inner worth. Instead of offering your child love that is conditional upon hitting a home run or getting all A’s, you imbue in them a sense of their inner worth. You free them from the futility of trying all their lives to please others so as to feel temporarily good about themselves. .

2. CONFIDENCE: By not being overprotective, by allowing for the occasional skinned knee or mistakes in judgment, you allow your child to learn by stretching their creative talents, viewing life’s challenges as potential opportunities instead of inevitable disasters..

3. CONSEQUENCES: By not being overpermissive, you help your child learn right from wrong by discussing with them the effects of their behavior on others and themselves, helping them to choose a better way to reach for what they want.

The foundation for all of this, and without which it falls flat on its face, is love. Our ability to love ourselves, and therefore others, comes primarily from our parents. When parenting is abusive, all future interactions are seen through blurry glasses, often leading to failed marriages, workaholism, alcoholism, and profound unhappiness.

My job is a weaker version of yours, namely, to help people more clearly see their worth, coming to love themselves often for the first time. The whole notion of "transference" in therapy is that people heal when transferring their angry feelings at parents to a caring therapist, who, as a parental surrogate, returns love and guidance instead of criticism and rejection.

While we all make a difference in the world, the role of parents is unquestionably the most significant. While you one day will have the job for which you yearn, it will pale in significance to the job you have today: being a Mom.

Yikes! Every day the Dow goes down and down and down. My nerves are shot and I feel so depressed by it all. Am I alone? Do others feel this way? How can I cope?

1. Problem 1: Fear: When times are bad, people desperately want a quick fix. They were probably nervous when they first invested, may have felt overjoyed when the market value of their funds experienced double digit growth, but now want rapid relief that returns them to a gossamer-like yet comfortable feeling of safety. While their mind dictates otherwise, they shorten the time for their decisions, and allow daily news flashes to heighten their anxiety. The rational wisdom of “buy low & sell high” is gutted by the irrational fear that their retirement nest egg will vanish. Regrettably, their desire for quick reassurance leads to slow pain from large losses.
   
   Solution: Hope: What is needed is to fight fear with hope, using their intellect to control their feelings. They need to stop jumping to conclusions, assuming that the current trend is a never-ending death spiral. Instead, they can reframe the present from being doom & gloom into being an opportunity to buy low knowing that over time the market has bounced back again and again.

2. Problem 2: Pride: When times are good, insecure people can use the wealth that good investments provide as a symbol of their status or importance. Hoping to keep the financial dogs of disaster at bay and their haughty neighbors baying in envy, enough never becomes enough. The end begins to justify the means, the crime of climbing over the broken bodies of competitors to get to the top being justified by a cynical worldview and a desperate need to show one and all that they have made it. When times are bad, when their symbols disappear, an all-consuming depression looms around the corner.
   
   Solution: Humility: There is nothing wrong about being wealthy, but when your internal value becomes predicated upon external symbols, then your priorities are backwards, and you are always chasing a ghost that is just beyond your grasp. Humility is not eating humble pie or being a passive sap, but seeing yourself in relationship with God, and assessing your worth through your innate qualities vs. outer possessions. You are a leader because of your courage, honesty and integrity. You are loved because of your kindness and sensitivity. Your stock portfolio will not last forever, but who you choose to be in your journey in life will. The CEOs of Enron and WorldCom, and the auditors of Arthur Anderson would be a whole lot happier if they would have only swallowed this simple truth.
   
   

   A Final Note: Concern: Of course, if you have any funds invested in the stock market, it seems very reasonable to be concerned. But take heart, listen to the universe of advisors who tell you not to panic, and either sit tight or buy low. To quote Scarlett O’Hara, “After all, tomorrow is another day”.

Call me a cynic, but do you really buy what religion sells – that happiness comes from loving each other? Sounds good, but not too easy to be happy when you are poor. I grew up with nothing, got rich, and now am very happy. And, I don’t even go to church. If religion is so great, how is that possible?

You have labored long and hard to earn enough money to live “the good life”, but that will inevitably come to an end. I do not mean that you will make some financial goof and end up poor. I mean that that no matter how rich you are, one day, you will die. Have you worked hard for what does not endure, and ignored what does?

Jesus once told people that while they were great at reading the signs of bad weather, they were lousy at reading the more important signs regarding the meaning of life (Luke 12: 54-57). You can exercise daily, eat the healthiest of foods, and have money coming out of your ears, and you will one day suffer and die, losing it all! So, congratulations for reading well the signs leading to financial health, but why not add to your happiness by reading the signs for your spiritual health.

If I could offer you market advice that would lead to an extra million dollars in your back pocket, or medical advice that you add ten years to your life, you would be banging down my door. But, if your local church or synagogue offers you the key to eternal life, you look askance at their gift because you cannot hold it in your hand or see it with your eyes.

The purpose of life is not to live forever. Rather it is to make a lifelong choice between being kind or cruel, helpful or manipulative, cooperative or controlling, and trusting or cynical. Choosing one adds to your financial wealth with the ability to love, to be close to others, and not trip over your own ego along the way. Choosing the other frustrates your use of your wealth on earth by making you continuously nervous about who is trying to “rip me off” or befriend you only for your money. While you can be safely walled up with your dough, that wall also blocks out the friendships and personal depth that you could have.

So, don’t be penny-wise and pound-foolish. Read the Bible along with The Wall Street Journal, and enrich your soul, as well as your bank account. Remember, your Lexus will not fit into the coffin with you, but your soul will. Therefore, consider being religious not as being a poor sap, but rather being doubly rich.

Question: I have watched the way churches work. If I give enough money to the church, I can literally buy my way into heaven. Sinners who donate millions find that doors open and accountability goes out the window. How fair is that?

Answer: God gives you free choice. He allows you to choose good or evil by the millions of choices that you make throughout your lifetime. The consequences of each choice, of each interaction between you and others, are written on your soul. No amount of money or manipulation will wipe them clean.

If you choose to see others as potential suckers to manipulate, callously climbing over them to get to the top, then you do not learn how to love others. When you die, and are placed in the presence of God, your family and friends, you will not know how to be close to them. You will be alone and bitter, while at the same time seeing others being uncompromisingly happy. That state of being we call HELL.

If you choose to see others as potential friends to help, stretching to give when it would be so easy to take, then you not only have friends on earth, but eternal happiness in a state of being called HEAVEN.

The choice is yours, the judgment of God being to accept your judgment. You can fool us, but you cannot fool God. The consequence for being selfish is to BE selfish. While God is disappointed with your choices, He accepts them and forces you to live eternally by the choices you made over and over again in time.

Think of the story of the man who asks Jesus, "What must I do to inherit eternal life?" He smugly assumes that, as he has kept the commandments, is "in like Flynn". However, when Jesus tells him to then sell all that he has, give it to the poor, and follow him, the man shuffles away crestfallen and discouraged, as "he had great possessions" (Mark 10:17-22).

He tried to buy heaven, but Jesus demanded more that a perfunctory and shallow observance of the law. He expected a person to travel the bumpy road to spiritual maturity, to aim at becoming "perfect as you heavenly father is perfect" (Matthew 5:48). Even if he had given every dime he owned, that journey would still lie before him, money buying a lot of things, but personal maturity not being one of them.

So, can you buy heaven? NO. Can you buy some people? Regrettably, YES. But, take heart, it all comes out even in the end.

Question: I have a friend who is continually rechecking things, like whether he locked the door of his house or car, or turned off the lights and stove. Why does he do that? How can he be helped?

Answer:

A. DEFINITION: A pattern where a person is haunted by intrusive, irrational thoughts, and tries to relieve and control the anxiety created by these thoughts with ritualistic behavior. For example, if a man thinks that germs are everywhere, then he may try to decrease his fear by increasing the number of times he washes his hands.

B. SYMPTOMS: A person has both obsessive thoughts (persistent ideas that reasoning alone can not eliminate) and resulting, compulsive behaviors (ritualistic performance of certain acts), such as hand washing, arranging items (in a cupboard or medicine cabinet), and recurrent checking (doors, lights, etc.).

C. ONSET: The illness usually occurs before the age of 25. It can be sparked by psychosocial changes in life, such as leaving home for college, the military, or marriage, or later in life by menopause or a mid-life crisis.

D. TREATMENT: Effective treatment involves 4 levels of care:

1. Cognitive Therapy: Think of a train where ideas are the locomotive. Ideas cause feelings, which in turn produce behavior. Change the idea, and you change the behavior. Therefore, the person is helped to explore the irrational ideas, which result in compulsive urges. For example, the person may believe that they must be perfect, can not make mistakes without something terrible happening, are responsible for preventing harm, need to have complete control, or that they are in continuous danger.
2. Behavior Therapy: Even when the idea is changed, the person is still stuck with having conditioned himself. Behavior therapy helps recondition him, often by an approach known as "flooding" or ERP (exposure and response prevention), where the person is exposed to his fears and then prevented from performing a compulsion. Statistics reveal that this treatment is effective for 60-70% of clients.
3. Medication: Often, those suffering from OCD are depressed, and there are many antidepressants (such as prozac, zoloft, paxil, and luvox) which have proven to be effective, these being serotonin reuptake blockers. If we have fewer neurotransmitters like serotonin, our mind thinks sluggishly and, therefore, has a hard time dismissing irrational thoughts. Increase these neurotransmitters, and one can more easily assess and dismiss false ideas.
4. Family Therapy: As persons with OCD worry about making mistakes and doubt their own decision-making, they may have overly relied upon family members, who, if they suffer from poor self-esteem, may feel more powerful when helping a weak relative. When the client then improves, the family member risks losing their newfound power. Hence, treating the entire family not only deals with the stresses under which they have been living, but also focuses upon some possible hidden and unhealthy family patterns which may have developed.

Question: I recently became a single parent, and I'm having a rough time. What are some pitfalls I should watch out for?

Answer:

1. GRIEF: Work through the loss of your spouse. Let go of the desire to have your pound of flesh, face the fact that it took two to make a divorce, and try to remember that while you no longer share a marriage, you still share children and will have to work together for the rest of your life.

2. CHILD AS SPOUSE: If you do not work through your loss, then you may make one of two mistakes. Either you may displace anger from spouse to child, especially if the child resembles your spouse, or you may turn your child into your spouse, wanting the emotional closeness of which divorce has "robbed" you.

3. NO COUNSELING: Why work it through it alone? See your priest or a counselor to help you both for a re-evaluation of what went wrong in your marriage, and for a values clarification of what you are looking for when you begin to date. If you remarry, pre-marital counseling will also help you relax in your choice and get things off on the right foot.

4. COUPLE FRIENDS: The death of your marriage often means the death of some friendships that both of you shared, as they often feel the need to choose. Try not to take it personally, realize that you are about to discover who is "true blue", and see the pursuit of new friends as a new step in your new life.

5. PUSHING FAMILY AWAY: Let your family love you. If you need to move back home for a brief period, or need to accept financial help, accept the love your parents and relatives want to give you. Ministering to you is growth for them.

6. HERMITITIS:

Avoid becoming a hermit. Go to church. Join a support group. Go out for an evening with a friend. And, while dating will probably feel like being an awkward teenager all over again, realize that Prince Charming or Cinderella are not going to come knocking on your door. You may groan at going to a singles dance, but your goal is not to be a party animal, just to gradually discover someone with whom you can share your new life.

My husband says that I'm overprotective with our son. In this scary world, is there really such a thing as being too protective?

While you may be an anxious, first-time parent, your son only knows that the way you treat him is different from all of his friends. He goes to bed earlier than they do. You come out and rescue him from a minor squabble at the swings. You tie his shoes for him or dress him in the morning, to his consternation with his sleep-over friend watching, giggling, and waiting to call him "a baby".

Later, you dissuade him from trying out for football as he is "thin-boned", and from asking a girl to the dance because he cried when a girl said no the last time. When he considers a college away from home, you tell him how he hated camp, and urge him to find a local school. When he goes to marry, you imply that he is naive and being controlled by his fiancé.

What overprotective parenting says, therefore, is "You're just not strong enough to handle this". Repeated often enough, your child is conditioned to begin believing that message. Now, I realize that you did not mean to convey that message, but that is definitely what your son heard.

So, protect your child, but not at the expense of his autonomy. Trust in your own training. Your son is smart, has absorbed your teaching, and will do just fine. If he goofs, don't panic. Just help him to think through what went wrong, and establish a new game plan. Giving him some head room and helping him think for himself demonstrates your confidence and trust in him. Doing it for him, or suggesting he not try, unwittingly produces a follower, not a leader. Is that really what you want?

My brother and his wife let their kids get away with murder. A 6-year old who goes to bed at 11 PM, swear words that are excused as “expressing themselves” or getting their anger out, have made my nephew and niece brats. However, when I try to talk to them, I come across as mean. If I’m right, how do I get my message across?

1. THEIR BOUNDARIES:
   
   The Cause: The reasons for not setting clear boundaries may be many.
   1. Perhaps your brother and sister-in-law both work, get home late, and want to spend more time with their children.
   2. Or, maybe they have such little time with them, they do not want to use that time fighting with their children about going to bed, or may fear that setting clear limits may mar their images as being nurturing and loving.
   3. They may also want to counter what they themselves experienced growing up as repressive by allowing their own children to be more expressive.
   1. The Result: The problem is that your brother and sister-in-law may be unwittingly crossing the boundary line between constructive and destructive freedom. The former encourages a child to attempt sailing into the lands of creativity and autonomy, but with the foreknowledge that parents are watching and guiding the journey. The latter removes too much of the safety net underneath these flights, causing children to either unnecessarily be hurt or labeled.

   Expressing one's self is great, but telling a teacher that he or she is "an asshole", skipping school due to a fake tummy ache, experimenting with what a coke poured over a laptop computer will do, or demanding to come home whenever they want without calling, can get them in a world of trouble and labeled by their uncle as "brats".

    

2. YOUR MESSAGE: Dragging me into the argument with your brother and sister-in-law to bolster your case will only further alienate you from them, and get them so defensive as to be unable to hear what you are trying to say. Instead, help them to consider what they really want and the kids really need.

As regards what they really want, it is time with and love from their children. There are more creative ways than allowing a 6-year old to stay up until 11 PM, the grumpy, next-day behavior from an overtired child being an indication that more quality time on the weekend than guilty time on a weeknight might be the answer.

As regards the needs of the children, not setting guidelines is actually hurting rather than loving their kids, making their children think that being disrespectful is somehow permissible, and giving their children the insecure feeling that they are running the show instead of their parents. Will your brother and sister-in-law lose their children's love? No. Will they gain their respect? Yes.

My wife tells me that I’m too harsh with the kids. When I was growing up, my Dad was a lot more than harsh, pushing me all the time to work hard and giving me a good swift kick in the butt when I didn’t. Life is hard. What’s wrong with preparing kids for what they’re going to find when they leave home?

While you want your son or daughter to live up to their potential, you do not want them to sweat buckets when they come home with an F in spelling in 4th Grade, fearing that you may revoke their membership card in the family. They need to know that you want them to do their best, but that your love is unconditional. Win or lose, you will be there for them.

It is important that you teach that distinction now, for if you do not, they may later internalize the formula of inner worth being predicated upon outer performance and forever have an overcritical monkey on their backs. As kids, the examples are easy enough to spot; all you need do is watch their reaction to disappointments: not getting a hit in a Little League game, getting a C instead of an A in math, not making the football team in high school, not making honor roll, and so forth.

Your response to their reaction will be key. If you are critical, scolding them for “goofing off” or labeling them “a loser” who will “never amount to anything if you keep this up”, you are reinforcing the negative message with which they have already branded themselves. When they leave home, your role in this process will end, but they will be running for the rest of their lives to prove themselves through a better job, a higher salary, a lower golf handicap, a better neighborhood, or whatever bespeaks success to them.

By now being reasonable and sharing their disappointment, but reassuring them of your love and encouraging them to try harder next time, you mirror for them their value, and make them realize that tomorrow is, after all, another day. As their value is within them, then a loss today does not a loser make. Their innate abilities will rise to the occasion the next time, the pain of the disparity today between one’s inner potential and outer mistake being countered by another at bat tomorrow that will most probably yield a different result.

So, prepare your child for life, but do so with understanding and love, and without harshness and cynicism.

Question: My friends allow their kids to get away with murder. They reason with their children, when I think a good spanking now and then would do wonders. What do you think?

Answer: Instead of becoming the neighborhood James Bond, the child may become shy and withdrawn. Assuming that his own behavior gets him into trouble, he may become an expert in guessing "What Mommy wants me to do". While this seems to produce a "model child", the child in actuality doubts his or her own autonomy, and grows up thinking that being loved is conditional upon playing the game according to someone else's rules. Even if successful, the child doubts his own worth, and resents constantly putting his own desires in second place.

How then does a parent discipline? The obvious trick is to gain obedience without losing autonomy. Your friends are on the right track, as the goal is to help the child to think, teaching the child to talk out his behavior, making him responsible for his behavior both by consciously making him choose it, and then making him accept the consequences of his choice.

Making the child choose his behavior involves making the choice very clear, both in terns of the behaviors involved and their consequences. Not eating spinach means Sally loses desert, and not going to bed on time tonight means Steve will have to go a half-hour earlier for the next two nights. When the child protests by either whining or throwing a temper tantrum, the parent must enforce the negative consequence in a calm and consistent manner, reminding the child that the choice was his.

The dynamics for older children are the same, simply involving a longer and more sophisticated discussion. While the value of a balanced meal or a good night's sleep is hard to debate, what time your teenage daughter comes home from a date is not quite so clear. The concerns of both adolescent and parents need to be shared, alternative solutions brainstormed, and a decision with consequences chosen. So, if parents decide to trust Mary with an 11:00 P.M. curfew, and she comes home at midnight drunk, not only should the consequence previously decided upon be enforced, but another discussion should occur to go over why her parents are so upset, and how she could have handled that situation more like an adult.

A few final remarks are that the punishment should be meaningful. Sending Mike to his room may not mean much if he has a television, stereo, computer, comics, and toys there. Believe it or not, let the child propose his own punishment as this increases his sense of responsibility and decreases his picture of you as Adolf Hitler's clone. Also, calm down before talking, as losing your temper, calling your child "stupid", and imposing an unrealistic punishment will damage both your relationship with your child and his self-image, not to mention having you rescind your punishment and thereby look inconsistent.

So, remember, reasoning with your child rather than striking him will produce a reasonable adult rather than an angry rebel or a compliant martyr.

QUESTION: Stress is eating me alive. I work so hard & feel like I accomplish so little. You’re a priest. Can prayer help me?

1. INTRODUCTION: I was once asked if prayer really worked, someone writing to me that he was tired of asking and never getting anything. This complaint is more common than you might expect, but reflects that many do not really know what prayer is.

2. WHAT IS PRAYER?

•          Express our adoration of Him,
•          Gives thanks for His multiple gifts, or
•          Ask for help in our times of need.

3. PRAYER OF ADORATION:

• Theology has traveled along a continuum
    From Transcendence (the awe of God’s power that transcends our mortal limitations)
    To Immanence (the love of God who is always with us, his Son becoming Incarnate and his Spirit dwelling within us).
•  Preeminent over the last fifty years has been the latter, often to the detriment of the former, we forgetting the majesty of a creator as seen through vast oceans, the expanse of skies, and the seemingly limitless universe.

•         It is this transcendence that has us bend our knees and bow our heads, humility being an understandable response to the contrast between God and us.
•         It is this immanence that helps us feel the closeness and love of God. You send cards to those whom you love. You pay them a visit, bring them gifts, celebrate their birthdays, etc. How much time do you spend visiting God, offering him the gift of yourself, or dusting off a pew on a day other than Christmas or Easter?

4. PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING: Thanksgiving flows rather naturally from adoring God. To return to the person who once asked me whether prayer really worked, never having gotten anything, my reply was that prayer is a two-way street, which we need to balance our prayers of petition with thanksgiving for the multitude of blessings that we so easily take for granted.

5. PRAYER OF PETITION:

•          This is the type of prayer about which we are most familiar. It is when we ask God for help in dealing with the struggles in our daily journey towards fulfillment.
•          As many of us see the glass half empty instead of half full, we tend to concentrate more of asking for what we do not have than thanking God for what we do have.
•          And, when asking God for what we do not have, we often forget to ask within the context of the meaning of life. For instance, the purpose of life is not that we live forever, but rather that we choose what type of person we become through countless decisions between being good or evil, kind or cruel, helpful or manipulative, cooperative or controlling.

•          Hence, when we become ill and pray for that illness to be cured, it certainly will not always happen, for if we were to live forever in this life of limits and pain, we would never pass through this life to the next one full of eternal peace and happiness.
•          As the beautiful prayer of St. Chrysostom so aptly states, “Fulfill now, O Lord, our desires and petitions as may be best for us; granting us in this world knowledge of your truth, and in the age to come life everlasting.”
•          Therefore, when either we or those whom we love become ill, while we shall pray for them to recover, we might also pray for the strength to cope with the illness and with our eventual deaths.

6. FORMS OF PRAYER:

•          As prayer is talking with God, it is best when in your own words, coming right from your innermost thoughts and feelings.
•          However, as we all can use some help, the Church gives us countless formal prayers that can be said. Jesus himself understood this when He taught us the Lord’s Prayer.

•        In addition to prayer being informal or formal, it also can be of varying depths.
•        For instance, brief morning prayers may steady us and give perspective to the day ahead, but meditation can go deeper in understanding the meaning of our lives. Let us look at a simple form of meditation.

7. MEDITATION: Prayer in the form of meditation can quiet and refocus your mind. To take a step back empowers you to step forward with more power. Thomas Merton once said that “We must learn to waste time conscientiously.” What does that mean? To make it clearer, let me give you a thought and a process.

8. CONCLUSION: We have but glanced at the meaning of prayer. Its beauty and richness will only be known when you spend more time enveloping its wonders. We treasure our ability to talk with others. Why not God? Open yourself to an ongoing experience that will give you strength to face each day.

1. INTRODUCTION: I was once asked if prayer really worked, someone writing to me that he was tired of asking and never getting anything. This complaint is more common than you might expect, but reflects that many do not really know what prayer is.

2. WHAT IS PRAYER?

3. PRAYER OF ADORATION:

4. PRAYER OF THANKSGIVING: Thanksgiving flows rather naturally from adoring God. To return to the person who once asked me whether prayer really worked, never having gotten anything, my reply was that prayer is a two-way street, which we need to balance our prayers of petition with thanksgiving for the multitude of blessings that we so easily take for granted.

5. PRAYER OF PETITION:

6. FORMS OF PRAYER:

7. MEDITATION: Prayer in the form of meditation can quiet and refocus your mind. To take a step back empowers you to step forward with more power. Thomas Merton once said that “We must learn to waste time conscientiously.” What does that mean? To make it clearer, let me give you a thought and a process.

8. CONCLUSION: We have but glanced at the meaning of prayer. Its beauty and richness will only be known when you spend more time enveloping its wonders. We treasure our ability to talk with others. Why not God? Open yourself to an ongoing experience that will give you strength to face each day.

Question: Don’t you think that racism is largely a problem of the past? While hate still exists, most people have black friends and see everyone as equal. Don’t you agree?

Answer:

1. Racism = Prejudice + Power: Racism involves not only prejudice against a person because of their race, but also the power to implement and sustain that prejudice within our society. Thankfully, you no longer “pre-judge” a person because the color of their skin is different than yours. But, you, like me until only a short time ago, are blind to how that pre-existing prejudice is insidiously woven into the very fabric of our society.

2. White Privilege: To make my point clearer, do you think that more privilege is given you than a person of color? When most of us who are white are asked that question, we respond with a blank, questioning stare that most people of color find infuriating, wondering how we could be so dense. Consider these situations, reflecting not only upon your latent advantages, but also upon the manifest and painful disadvantages suffered by others:

   1. When you enter a store, are you seen as a potential customer or a potential thief?
   2. Does anyone think you got your job because of a racial quota?
   3. If you are late to a meeting, do people think that’s because white people are lazy?
   4. Do you worry whether your children will be discriminated against in school?
3. Why Change?: OK, you probably get my point that fighting racism involves both individual and societal changes. But, how do you and I help others to want to change?
   
   I think the answer must be to make them aware of what they are losing, how racism is spiritually killing them. This means not only moving away from the sin of racism by dismantling it in our society, but also moving towards and embracing the richness of our multicultural world. If our image of God and humanity has been largely limited to one view, think how wonderful it will be to see the world in all its glory.

   
   I think of the metaphor of a beautiful stained glass window, which, with only one color, would be boring, but with a myriad of interlocking and blending colors enlivens our souls through the portals of our eyes. Part of the problem is that we are stuck with a previous metaphor of “the melting pot”, wanting everyone to melt into one culture. Today, the image of “a salad bowl” is used, conveying the need to enjoy vs. reject other tastes.

4. Conclusion: God created us to be a family, but we continually strive to either kick people out or make them fit in, robbing ourselves of the richness of the natural diversity of our family, let alone allowing hate instead of love to rule our hearts by the persistent and longstanding abuse of others. Join me in continuing the multi-generational march to a renewed family, running with perseverance the race that is laid before us.

Question: Can someone really fall in love? Each time the chemistry seems right, I pick the wrong guy. What am I doing wrong?

Answer: Many a priest in pre-marital counseling groans when the couple draws a blank at the question, "What do you love about one another?" Serious trouble is indicated if, after much reflection, the answers indicate little depth, such as "because she's real pretty", "he's fun to be with", or, once to my horror, "because we like the same kind of pizza". While the couple may look upon the priest as if he or she has callously cast doubt on the love story of the century, nonetheless, a little work now could save a lot of heartache later.

So, after serious thought, many couples are able to identify their attraction to such fine qualities as empathy, selflessness, and a willingness to communicate in an open and honest manner with one another. They are able to spot needed areas of growth, and to develop a plan to get their marriage off on the right foot.

But, some people like yourself are often "burned" not only because they let their heart rule their head, but also because they look for marriage to heal old wounds from parents or former spouses. We are often attracted to people who are psychologically carbon copies of that parent by whom we never felt accepted. Unconsciously, we hope that if we can make our spouse love us that maybe we could have gotten our parent to love us. As we have made our 1 spouse equal 2 persons, we are willing to endure a fair amount of abuse before we give up trying to win over that person.

If a divorce occurs, amazingly many people fall in love again with a similar type of person. I can remember once having a husband come into therapy with his 6th wife, telling me how unlucky he was to have "gotten stuck with another loser". That endearing comment earned him another divorce, but his therapy thankfully helped him see his continual attraction to the same kind of person, his need to mourn instead of repeat the past, and to come to finally love and accept himself.

It is amazing to me that living in a sophisticated society, one where everyone realizes that hard work in college and on the job is essential for success, that we still cling to the notion that there is a perfect person out there somewhere, and that the fortunes of fate will somehow magically enable you to bump into one another. And, if you luck out and meet a nice person, often people think, "What can go wrong if the chemistry is right?" The answer: Plenty!

Hence, why not take luck out of the process, and begin to decide what is best for you, then using your dates to see if Prince Charming or Cinderella actually "measure up". What does that mean? Here are but a few suggestions.

1. Are They Available?: If you are drawn to someone who is either married or separated, trouble abounds. Oh sure, they tell you tales of woe about their miserable, soon-to-be ex-spouse, but all too often, your feelings will be crushed beneath the surprising news that they are going to try to "work it out" with their spouse. So, unless they are free, flee.

2. Are They Mature?: If you feel like they are selling a product, don't buy. Look for someone who is reasonably confident in their self-worth, as evidenced by them admitting their flaws, instead of endlessly telling you about how big their job, house, car, or bank account is. If they are talking about how they are going to take care of "poor little you", that is a sign that they are attracted to you because of your perceived weakness. Once you grow up, you will grow out of them.

3. Why Are You In Love?: To ask that question is not to case aspersions on the love story of the century, but rather to simply ask what qualities of the person attracts you. When people are unsure, but respond that "the chemistry is right", I get the wrong feeling. Often, if someone felt unloved by a parent, they subconsciously are attracted to someone who has a similar personality, the hidden hope being that if you can get this person to love you in the present, maybe you could have gotten your parent to love you in the past. This often explains why someone puts up with abusive behavior, long after family and friends have advised you to "dump" this person.

4. WIll They Wait?: Often, men and women feel pressured to have sex, if not on the 1st date, certainly by the 3rd or 4th date, their fear being that the other person will leave them unless they "put out". Why "sell out" for love? If someone truly is mature and loves you, they will wait, realizing that to physically "make love" to someone before you are psychologically "in love" is irrational.

5. Do You Love Yourself ?:To plunge into a relationship too early and too deep is a sign that you may be insecure, feeling that if you do not act now, all will be lost. Yet, true love is based on your true value, namely, such qualities as your kindness, sensitivity, intelligence, responsibility, and commitment. Act in haste because you feel desperate, and you will have to repent in leisure with a painful divorce. So, go slow for a relationship that will last. The point is, you deserve it!

The immediate goal of the project is to prevent violence by adolescents in the school, the family and the community. The long-term goal of the project is to offset the future costs of violence to the community by providing preventive help to adolescents before the propensity for violence becomes a pattern for the future.

The project will provide research-based individual and family counseling interventions, and case management, with the goal of intervening to prevent the child and family from acting out violent behaviors. These services start where child study teams and school psychologists' services leave off.

The project is in collaboration with the Princeton High School, and will provide research-based clinical interventions with the goal of intervening to prevent the child and family from acting out violent behaviors. These services start where child study teams and school pscyhologists' services leave off. The project will provide:

• Individual and family counseling,
• Psychiatric evaluation and monitoring,
• Assessment through the Trinity Counseling Service Assessment Center
• Case management services for the child and family

As demonstrated by last year's school shootings, violence in the schools is not restricted to urban, low-income populations. These services will be provided free of charge to all students who are referred by the high school as being at-risk for violence.

Our child is having some difficulty in school, and the teacher suggested that we have him tested. I know very little about psychological testing. Should I have my child tested?

Testing children is a process that has been around for a long time. You probably have heard of the IQ (Intelligence Quotient) test; that was developed in 1905 in France by Alfred Binet. Today, there exists a much wider variety of standardized tests of mental functioning that go deeper than a general IQ score. Such evaluations given by trained professionals to children from toddlerhood through adolescence can yield rich information to guide parents and teachers in helping children fulfill their potential.

For example, tests can help determine how a child processes different types of information, his or her ability to pay attention visually and auditorially, the quality of visual and auditory memory, planning ability, problem solving skills, and much more. Knowing how your child functions in these areas can help you and your son's teacher guide and educate him more effectively.

In addition to testing intelligence, there are tests of personality and of social & emotional functioning. Finding out why your child may have difficulty getting along with others or adapting to a routine can help a child make friends and better enjoy the social aspects of both school and play.

Testing can also be a very effective tool for preschool and early elementary school children who display delays or adjustment difficulties. Appropriate strategies at school, when put in place early in your child's life, can help correct behavioral difficulties and learning problems before they get out of hand. And, outside the school setting, psychological testing can be extremely useful for a counselor in developing a treatment plan tailored to your child's needs.

Well, I hope this has been helpful. Remember 2 points:

• First, be clear in your own mind about the purpose of testing. You want to find out what is going on under the surface so as to solve a problem and improve the quality of your child's journey through life.
• And secondly, be sure that you choose a qualified professional. Do not be afraid to ask questions. It is the job of the professional to ensure your comfort and understanding of the process.

Question: Oh God, the kids are going back to school, and schlepping them from activity to activity has them and me absolutely overloaded! Can you help me?

Answer:

1. Stress In My Child? Are you pushing your child too hard? Some parents, with the best of intentions, may unwittingly overschedule their children in the hope of giving them an edge over their peers in our competitive society. Sadly, 1 out of 3 children suffer from stress-related illnesses.
2. Signs Of Overload: The goal is not to avoid structured time, but rather to not overdo it. Here are some behavioral signs of overload: physical symptoms (headache, stomachache), being tired and falling asleep in class, being irritable and agitated, grades dropping, cheating on tests, less interest in activities, preferring to stay home and being more dependent on you.
3. Solutions:
   1. Find a Balance: Limit the number of activities, providing time to play and just “be a kid”.
   2. Realize the Benefits of Play: Encourages creativity & independent problem solving, improves social skills, and relieves stress.
   3. Take a Day of Rest: Make 1 day per week free of activities, giving you and your children a well-deserved break --- sort of a non-religious Sabbath.
   4. Choose Gifted Programs that are Gifted: More work, but less creativity, will make matters worse.
   5. Choose Sports that Build Self-Esteem: While teaching teamwork and cooperation are fine, equating worth with performance, and having a coach or teammates who berate your child are not. Ask your child the simple question: Are you having fun?
   6. Examine Yourself: Is your child overloaded because you are overloaded? Consider escaping pressure yourself rather than feeding it to your child. Being pushed to be the smartest, most athletic, fashionable, thin and popular kid in the class has been shown to push kids away from being happy. Perhaps examining your own view of life might help.

Question: Everyone tries to be a big deal, to brag about what they have done right and deny what they did wrong. Why? Has it always been so?

Answer: Overcritical parents unwittingly convey that love is conditional upon performance. Unless you get an "A", hit a home run, get into the right college, and marry the right person, your worry is that criticism and rejection will greet you with chagrin at the front door. Not surprisingly, as you get older, you subconsciously transfer that power to bring you up or down to others, like your teacher, your boss, or your spouse. Getting fired or divorced become fates worse than death, loudly proclaiming to all what a "loser" you are.

If you have given others the power to determine your worth, then you try to please them, turning yourself into a psychological pretzel to be noticed. You try to tip the scales by bragging about your accomplishments and denying your failures. Even if all goes well, you are always waiting for the other shoe to drop, for someone to peal back the mask of your phony facade and see the "real you". Hence, being on top today means nothing tomorrow, and you have to daily drag yourself out of bed to wearily climb that mountain again & again, endlessly hungering for others to give you a nod.

My wife and I recently traveled to Italy, and what struck me was how this same theme repeats throughout time. The biggest statues in St. Peter's in Rome are of the Popes, the palaces of the Medici in Florence have their pictures and statutes splashed throughout most rooms, and the paintings of Jesus or Mary in the Palace of the Doge in Venice usually have the Doge strategically in the picture as if he already had one foot in heaven.

So, if you are bothered by those who arrogantly claim to be "on the inner track" and not-so-subtly shove their bigger car & house in your face, realize that they are lost in an upside-down world where their value is out of their control, feeling condemned to anxiously compete in order to survive. Instead of jealously joining their epistemological worldview, why not realize that your worth is internal, not external, that is, determined by you, not others.

What lasts is not the position you hold or the power you wield, but rather the person whom you choose to become. Titles and positions are at best recorded in a dusty book that few read, whereas your soul vibrantly travels en toto from this life to the next. Your integrity & intuition, responsibility & reliability, sensitivity & caring, and your ability to give & receive love are the true testaments to who you have chosen to become, and most importantly are defined by you, not others. These are not tarnished by a bad economy, a bad marriage, ill health or even an early death. However, they can be damaged by you, if you choose to compromise who you are due to being fooled into playing the game of the insecure bragger, endlessly chasing the ghost of happiness that is always just out of his or her grasp.

While many well-meaning religion teachers drummed into us the need to “give till it hurts”, both Jewish and Christian scriptures tell to “love your neighbor as you love yourself” (Leviticus 19:18 & Matthew 22:39, Mark 12:30 and Luke 10:27). We tend to forget about the second half of that advice. Think about it, if you do not love yourself well, then you will not love your neighbor well. Let me give you a few examples, some with references to the bible, to help you understand what I mean.

1. ASSERTIVENESS: If you never learn to say “No”, your ubiquitous “Yes” will lead you towards “burn out” and resentment of others.

   Suppose someone asks you to help them move but you have a bad back, or your pastor asks you to run the annual bazaar but you have a demanding job and a neglected spouse. Not saying “no” leads to muscle spasms, terse words that make everyone cringe and wish they never asked for help, and more than a few arguments with your spouse. Even if all goes miraculously well, people tend to ask you for even more. So, setting realistic limits leads to more respect from others and less stress for you.

2. DELEGATING: Moses learned to delegate to Judges (Exodus 18:13-26) and 70 Elders (Numbers 11:16-17) and Jesus to 12 Apostles (Mark 3:13-19). Climbing any corporate ladder usually depends upon letting go of the perfectionistic thought that “if you want it done right, you have to do it yourself.”

3. MEDITATING: While the Apostles were always guiltily urging Jesus to move to the next town with many waiting to be healed, he instead would often go to the desert to pray, to re-create, to refresh himself through time off to pray and re-center himself (Matthew 14:22, Mark 3:7 and Luke 5:15). If we took just 5 minutes a day to do the same, the stresses and strains of daily life would shrink in importance, as would our headaches and ulcers.

4. CARE OF YOUR BODY: If Moses or Jesus were physically and emotionally exhausted, cynical, disillusioned, overweight, depressed and chain smokers, who would have seriously listened to them? There is nothing wrong with taking time for daily exercise, healthy meals, and a good night’s rest. Working 12-hour days speckled with fast foods and few breaks leads to being overly tired, far less creative, ironically less productive, and possibly dying too young, whereas good stewardship of you can lead to many more years of being able to help others.

In conclusion, to your surprise, religion actually encourages you to take good care of yourself. For it takes a healthy you to effectively care for others.

Question: Our Church has been talking a lot about sexual harassment. Could you tell us more about it? What is it? Why is it wrong? Who does it?

Answer:

1. Definition: Sexual harassment is when inappropriate and unwanted sexual advances are made by one person to another.

2. Behaviors: This can involve a wide range of behaviors, such as: sexually-oriented humor or language, displaying suggestive posters or calendars, making comments about one's clothing or appearance, making repeated requests for a date, prolonged hugs, fondling, staring at someone, facial expressions (winking or throwing kisses), making sexual gestures with one's hands or body, using nicknames with sexual connotations (hunk, babe, doll), and asking questions about someone's sexual preference or behavior.
3. Categories: These relate to someone's place of employment. a. Quid Pro Quo: This is demanding sexual favors in return for a promotion, a raise, a better office, or more vacation. This requires unequal power, usually an employer over an employee. b. Hostile Environment: Behaviors that are allowed to continue and, therefore, make the work environment offensive and intimidating. While the employer may not have been the abuser, he or she is still guilty if they have failed to stop the behavior. And, no complaint does not mean no harassment, as the victim may feel scared to speak to their employer.
4. Why Is It Wrong?: This is an abuse of power where one person forces their unwanted behavior on another. An employer (or pastor, or anyone in charge) is expected to put the needs of others before their own. Not doing so harms other people and destroys trust. Often, mistrust is generalized: to all men if the abuser were a man, or to the church and God if the abuser were a priest.
5. The Law: The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and its amendment of 1991 holds that it is the IMPACT of the behavior that determines harassment, not the INTENT of the actor. The law does state, however, that this is based upon a reasonable person, not someone who is oversensitive.
6. Who Does It?: Some abusers are immature, angry, and insecure. For example, some male employers or supervisors who fear being rejected while dating may approach a female employee at work, feeling more in control. Others may displace anger about women's liberation or an assertive wife onto a woman at work.
   
   

   Others may suffer from a personality disorder, or have a sexual addiction, or both. The sex addict tries to fill the emptiness they feel with sex; as that is not always available, they may use food or alcohol to do the same. Sexual addictions develop over years, going from pornography and strip shows, to sexual harassment, to incest and rape.

7. Litmus Test: If you ever wonder whether your jokes or comments are crossing over into harassment, ask yourself whether you would say the same if your spouse were present, or whether you would feel comfortable if your comments were published in the next company or parish newsletter.

Question: I just found out that a woman friend who was always very distant had been a victim of incest. Could you help me understand the issues and how I could help?

Answer:

A. DEFINITIONS: Incest is a form of sexual abuse perpetrated by a relative. In the case of women, this is usually the father, stepfather, grandfather, or uncle. It takes many forms, such as being forced to listen to sexual talk, being fondled, forced to perform oral sex, or being raped.

B. CAUSES: The causes are many. For women, it may be due to a father who is immature, perceives his wife as threatening, acts as a peer to his children, and wants the closeness that he feels is denied him in his marriage. Or, it could be a domineering, controlling father, who feels justified in abusing anyone in the family. Or, due to illness or divorce, a parentified child may be viewed by a weak parent as a source of emotional and physical comfort.

C. EFFECTS: Whatever the cause, the child tends to regress, fear intimacy, and withdraw from close contact with others, being mistrustful of people in general and of those who have a parental role in particular, even God. As the child may have wanted attention, they may feel guilty and sinful for causing the abuse, and feel unlovable as even a trusted family member abused them.

D. COPING: To survive, the memory of the abuse may be repressed, or the abuse minimized, such as saying it only happened once or their parent was drunk. In more severe cases, a multiple personality may form, splitting the self to allow one part of the person to escape so that the other may face the demands of the day.

E. TREATMENT: The person can be helped to bravely face that the abuse occurred, accept that it was never their fault, allow anger at the abuser to surface, and gradually move forward to forgiveness, not to excuse the abuser, but to stop allowing the abuse of the past to destroy the present. Whether the abuser is confronted is up to the victim, for amazingly, the family of the abuser may be just as deep in denial, and label the victim "crazy" or a "troublemaker" who is ruining the reputation of a beloved family member.

The memory of the abuse can never be forced, but only discussed as it slowly comes to the surface. As a friend, therefore, you need to listen with empathy, accept that closeness will come very gradually, and offer your patience and unconditional love.

QUESTION: Stress is eating me alive. I work so hard & feel like I accomplish so little. You’re a priest. Can prayer help me?

1. Statistics: Surveys show that 33% find it hard to balance work and family, and 46% feel highly stressed. The annual cost to businesses is estimated at $200 billion dollars in the forms of increased absenteeism, decreased productivity, and higher insurance costs & compensation claims.

2. Stressors: at work can be: lay-offs, mergers, too much work, too little money, a critical boss, an overly competitive colleague, long commutes, sexual harassment, and an ambiguous job description. I once saw a billboard in Times Square, which read: “What’s worse, being told that you’re fired on Friday or to pick up the slack on Monday?”
   
3. Physical Signs: of stress to watch for are: high blood pressure, tension headaches, pain in your neck or back, grinding your teeth, clenching your fists, overall muscle tension, constipation or diarrhea, frequent colds, chronic fatigue, and trouble sleeping.
   
4. Psychological Signs: Depression: Feeling down, stuck, overwhelmed, and hopeless. Anxiety: Feeling continually up tight and frustrated over deadlines. Anger: Feeling irritable, being sarcastic or cynical.
   
5. Personality: Are you a “Type A”? Do you feel hurried? Is everything a crisis? Do you take on too much, and refuse to let others help? Do you feel pressured and driven?
   
6. Ten Ways To Cope: So, you were born to become fully human, fully mature, and fully happy. Who you are inside will go with you from this life to the next. What you have on the outside, whether possessions or acclaim, will not. Do not despair for not having enough of the latter, but for your sake, seize every day you have left to add to the former, to add to who you are meant to become, a work of art.
   1. Deep Breathing: Take a series of deep breaths, consciously taking longer to breathe in and out.
   2. Focus: Try to focus on one vs. many objects while deep breathing: even a book, lamp, drape. Why? Because jumping from task to task gets you up tight.
   3. Meditation: If you are religious, focus on either one object (Cross/Star of David) or one thought (God loves me).
   4. Exercise: walk, jog, swim, lift weights, whatever. Just do it on a regular basis, and start slow.
   5. Take a Break: Get up, stretch, get some water, go to the bathroom.
   6. Eat well: Less coffee & pastries, more salads & fruit, no more quick lunches or eating at your desk, and again, keep it up vs. “yo-yo” diets.
   7. Up with Self-Esteem: Base it less on external symbols (amount of work done, salary paid, position) and more on internal qualities (being responsible, reliable, honest, caring, etc.).
   8. Down with Negative Thinking: Neither magnify the mistakes you make, nor minimize your considerable talents. Stop predicting disaster, and start concentrating on solutions.
   9. Talk: out your problems: with your spouse, a co-worker, or your supervisor/boss.
   10. Go Home: Getting re-created at home by time with family tonight leads to a more productive you tomorrow morning. And, neglecting your spouse may lead to a divorce, which will only quadruple your stress.

WAYS OF COPING

1. Recognize the Signs of Stress: The sooner you spot the signs, the sooner you can stop the stress. Common signs are: a pounding heart, sweaty palms and brow, tension at the back of your neck or in the pit of your stomach, a headache (often the feeling of a tight band across your forehead), a backache, irritability, pacing the floor, wringing your hands, and fatigue.

2. Determine Priorities: You can not do everything well. So, learn to do a few things well, instead of many poorly.

3. Drop Unrealistic Expectations: Drop excessive use of words like "must" and "should" from your vocabulary. Pick up words like "no" and recognize your limits. Not being 150% involved does not mean being lazy.

4. Talk to Yourself: Analyze whether your thinking is dominated by ideas which filter out your positives and accentuate your negatives, blowing out of proportion mistakes which you may have made.

5. Talk to Others: Express vs. Suppress your feelings. Be assertive and sensitive vs. being an explosive volcano or someone who silently seethes, until the inevitable sarcastic snipe oozes out on the victim.

6. Give in Once in a While: Make allowances for the fact that you could be wrong; avoid being obstinate and defiant.

7. Tackle One Task at a Time: Deal with the most urgent tasks first; partialize the big loads, remembering the old joke, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

8. Take a Breather: 5 minutes "off" can lead to most of your day being "on". Take a walk or just step away from your desk, instead of making yourself "stand there and suffer".

9. Deep Breathing: A simple relaxation exercise is to sit still for a few minutes and breathe deeply, not so dramatic that anyone can notice, just so that you feel relaxed and more under control.

10. Meditation: Deep breathing can be combined with focusing upon one idea or object so as to slow your mind down, and focus on one thing vs. many.

11. Join a Support Group: If your extended family is geographically distant, try to make friends with whom you can be yourself, or join a support group, whether at your church, synagogue, or civic group. Even a Men's League at a Golf Club or Bowling League can help relieve some stress by giving you relaxation + friends.

12. Exercise to Relax: A routine of walking, jogging, or any regular exercise program can work off pent-up frustration. If you are able to, try to alternate between weight-bearing and aerobic exercises, always after preliminary stretching exercises.

13. Massage: A regular massage may be too expensive, but consider treating yourself to a massage when under a great deal of stress.

14. Try Helping Others: Focusing on the troubles of others may put yours in perspective.

15. Develop a Hobby: A new interest can get your mind off an old problem; woodwork, kite flying, gardening - whatever you like.

16. Pray: I saved the best for last. Try daily prayer, meditation, or reading scripture to show you the meaning of your life.

Question:  It’s been five years since September 11 th, and with all that is going on in the world, do you have any ideas how I can help my kids cope in case another terrorist attack happens?

Answer:

1. Let Them Talk: As with adults, suppressed feelings produce suppressed healing. Set time aside to let your children vent, and listen with empathy to what they say & how they feel. If there was ever a time when they need you, this is it.

2. Accept Their Feelings: Do not be surprised by a wide array of feelings, stretching from fear of you dying, to anger at the terrorists, to being shockingly calm in the face of all that has happened. Realize that their reactions may take weeks or months to emerge.

3. Express Your Own: A child will cope better if they see you coping, even with a few admitted fears and tears of your own.

4. Recognize Age-Related Responses: Younger children may regress to bedwetting, thumb sucking, and clinging to you. Older children may have difficulty concentrating at school, and displace anger onto classmates by fighting or onto teachers by becoming a discipline problem.

5. Give Age-Related Answers: Give honest answers, but the younger the child, the more simple and brief the answer. Realize that teenagers may prefer talking with peers, but still let them know that you are there.

6. Give Realistic Reassurance: While our sense of safety has been compromised, help a child realize all the steps that your family and our government are taking to keep them safe, decrease the chance of a reoccurrence, and adjust to a "new normal".

7. Allow More TLC: Give more hugs, allow a night light, provide a favorite teddy bear, let them sleep with you after a nightmare, and just spend more time with them.

8. Limit Media Coverage: Watching horrific images over and over again retraumatizes all of us, and most certainly children. Consider more sensitive sharing of information from you and less time watching in-depth and repetitive analyses on TV.

9. Stick To Family Routines: A child will feel more secure if you maintain usual routines, such as when to eat or go to bed.

10. Let School Help: Your child's teacher will also help your child to deal with feelings through drawing, reading, writing, and class discussions. Also, they may see a problem before you do.

11. When To Seek Counseling: If a number of months go by and your child still is having a hard time, talking with a child therapist will help. Watch for ongoing nightmares or regressive behavior, dwelling on terror events, discipline or academic problems in school, continued physical complaints (stomachache / headache), or, in teens, alcohol or drug problems.
12. Want More Information?: Consider contacting your local Red Cross, which has wonderful materials that are free and very practical.

Question: Forgive me for being a cynic, but what is Thanksgiving really all about? We seem to always be under the threat of terrorism. My wife and I have been arguing more than usual. And if that was not enough, I just got a horrible case of the flu. Now, you clergy are telling me to celebrate Thanksgiving by thanking God for all he has done for me. Thanks for what?

Answer:

1. Focus on the Positives: All too often the intrusive, in-your-face negatives of life cloud our vision. While we should face problems squarely, there is little to be gained by dwelling on them. Instead, we need to not magnify the negatives, but see them in the light of countless positives that we all too often take for granted. Below are but a few.
2. What Positives?
   1. Health: You had the flu. But, you have recovered. Aching and coughing are replaced with ease of movement and the ability to take a deep breath. Even in the midst of the flu, you read a book, watched TV, took a nap, and warmed yourself with a hot cup of tea and a fuzzy blanket.
   2. Terrorism: While the terrorists challenged our ability to feel safe, our government has taken steps to protect us when we are on a plane or at work. And, born from the hatred of the terrorists has been a reawakened sense of love for each other, changing us from a "ME" to a "WE" society where heroes big and small emerge to challenge the notion that no one really cares.
   3. Spouse: While you would like to punch a terrorist in the nose, you cannot. Hence, we tend to displace our frustration and anger onto those closest to us. Instead, talk out your feelings vs. biting the hand that feeds you. Realize how lucky you are to have a wife who loves you, realizing that while she may have a few weaknesses, her strengths are far greater, and, after all, you are no Prince either.
   4. Senses: How fortunate you are to be able to see a sunset, listen to a concert, smell flowers, taste a turkey dinner, and feel the warmth of a hot shower.
   5. Intellect: Imagine not being able to go to school, read a magazine, talk with a friend, or creatively solve an annoying problem.
   6. Will: You can love and be loved, the caring of wife, kids and friends making up for an army of bad breaks.
   7. God: You are so loved by God that he was born in a manger instead of a palace, grew up as a carpenter in Nazareth vs. a Prince in Jerusalem, and died naked on a cross for your sins vs. surrounded by his family and friends at his bedside.
   8. Salvation: The result of God's love is your salvation. We would jump for joy if a doctor could extend our lives by 10 years. How about eternity!
   
   So, there is plenty for which to give thanks. Dust off your bifocals, kiss your wife, bend your knee in church, and see the treasures that surround you every day of your life, even in the midst of all our troubles.

What is your net worth? When I ask that question, does your mind jump to your portfolio? If money defines your life, then you are, indeed, crushed by the loss of your assets, and, while not poised by the window of your office ready to jump out, you think of yourself as less of a success than you were a year ago.

The problem is that you have your priorities upside down; in your mind, if you have less, then you are less. If you have lost a lot of money, then you are a loser. With that mental framework, how could you not be depressed?

Depression is a gap between our ego (who we are) and our ego ideal (who we think we should be). If you think that you should be wealthier, or should have seen the economic meltdown coming and wisely sold your stocks, then those “shoulds” push you down into the deep dark hole called depression.

The solution is to realize that you have put the cart in front of the horse. Your worth is predicated more by who you are, and less by what you attain. Who you are defines your potential or power to make money, make love, raise a family, or whatever you choose. Within you is a mind with which to think, a heart with which to love, an imagination with which to dream, and qualities such as honesty, integrity, and kindness that attract people to you. Ask your family why they love you; I doubt that it is because you have a lot of money.

Now I am not saying that losing a high percentage of your assets is good, nor am I saying that there is anything wrong in making money. What I am saying is that your net worth is predicated more upon who you are than what you attain. When you die, what goes with you from this life to the next is not your money, but yourself. Just as you have grown your investments, you can grow as a person, becoming more understanding, more forgiving, more patient --- more you. The happiness that will bring you benefits you in this life, as well as the next.

So, while the loss of your assets is bad, you are not! You are just as talented as ever. Hard as it is, try to see that while our recessionary economy has put a dent in your portfolio, you as a person have emerged unscathed. And, bad as it is, your financial loss can have a good effect, awakening you to see your real net worth, which does not rise and fall with the Dow, but is a rock solid foundation for your growing happiness.

Peter K. Stimpson
 

Question: I have been widowed now for 2 years, and feel so incredibly alone. I do not think most people understand what people like me are going through. Could you say a few words about "Widowhood"?

Answer:

1. CARING: Many well-meaning family and friends try to surround the widow immediately after death, and perhaps for the first month or two. Bereavement, however, is a process without a clock, feelings being churned up by the first year of birthdays, holiday, and anniversaries of both marriage and death. Therefore, if you see someone crying in church 6 months after the death of their spouse, don't be impatient; be caring.

2. ANGER: A widow can be angry at her spouse for leaving her with a host of medical bills or children to raise alone, or at God for "dumping" an unfair situation in her lap. You can help by just listening with empathy, realizing that anger is just a normal stage of dealing with death.

3. SOCIALIZING: Many widows find socializing with married friends to be awkward. For the widow, get-togethers have few single people, and listening to stories of happy times with spouses, while very normal, often feel like salt in her wounds. This does not mean walking on egg shells around a widow, but rather having enough sensitivity to rethink the inclusion of a widowed person.

4. REMARRIAGE: Having mourned the loss of her husband, the widow gradually entertains thoughts of remarrying, but the discouraging cry of anyone over 40 is: "Where do I find someone?" And, when she has begun dating, the challenge is to not compare a 3-month relationship with a 30-year marriage. Dating the new man does not mean forgetting your dead husband. No one can take his place. While you should not forget him, try not to enshrine him. After all, would he have wanted you to unhappily live alone for the rest of your life?

5. FINANCIAL LOSS: Hopefully, husbands have their spouses mentioned in their wills, and in their retirement and life insurance policies. But, even so, there is unquestionably less income, and that will mean not only adjusting to the loss of your spouse, but to the loss of your lifestyle. This then also impacts upon your socializing, as friends must recognize that eating out and going on trips may not always be possible.

6. TLC: Widows need to take care of themselves. While you may be depressed, try to force yourself to prepare and eat nutritious meals, and to get a good night's sleep, perhaps with the aid of a hot bath, herbal tea, or a good book. Try to exercise regularly, even if that simply be walking or gardening.

7. PRAYER: The agony of loneliness can unwittingly introduce you to the ecstasy of solitude, where you can discover that you are far more than someone's wife or mother, and that you have an ever-present friend, God. Try to pray on a daily basis, even if it is only 5 minutes a day. Wasted time in a line at the grocery store or car wash can also be a time to talk to God, as can planned time where you might keep a journal.

Question: I have been going on a lot of job interviews. Recently, I really had my hopes up, and even got a second interview. But, I didn’t get the job. I’m beginning to wonder what’s wrong with me. Do other people doubt themselves when hunting for a job?

Answer: So, how do you survive in what seems like a dog-eat-dog environment? I have two ideas.

First, do not give others the power to determine your worth. All too often, many mistaken constructive criticism as implying that their worth is conditional upon performance. Accordingly, they hunger for praise, working long and hard to earn the love of parents, the praise of teachers, the envy of peers, and the cheers of the crowd. Even if earned, the sinking feeling is that fame is fleeting and happiness ephemeral, and that a new day puts them back in the salt mines, slaving away like a mouse on a treadmill forever running after the ghost of self-esteem that is always just out of their grasp.

The solution is to define your worth from within instead of from without, based on your internal qualities instead of external opinions. You know yourself better than anyone. Take back the power to determine your worth. Realize that those qualities that have enabled you to travel through life never go away, that while jobs come and go, you always stay, defined by your intelligence, caring, sensitivity, responsibility, honesty, and integrity. Once your worth rests upon who you are instead of what you do or who others think you are, then it is as if you are wearing a psychological suit of armor. Never again will outside forces pull the rug out from under you.

Second, remember that, as Homer once wisely said, the journey is the thing. While I hope you get the job that you want, the yardstick by which to measure your success is less a position or a possession, and more the person whom you become along your journey in life. Those internal qualities of which I spoke are deepened and refined by each interaction with each person on each day of your life. Every day is an opportunity to grow, and while your salary may go up or down, and while you may gain and lose jobs, who you are stays with you throughout your life and on into eternity. No critical and tyrannical boss can take that away from you.

So, cheer up. Another job is just around the corner. But, your worth continues to grow every day, job or no job.

I've been unemployed for almost a year now. I'm trying, but I just can't find a job. I'm so embarrassed. For a while I even pretended to go to work so none of the neighbors would know. I feel like such a loser!

WAYS OF COPING

1. Recognize the Signs of Stress: The sooner you spot the signs, the sooner you can stop the stress. Common signs are: a pounding heart, sweaty palms and brow, tension at the back of your neck or in the pit of your stomach, a headache (often the feeling of a tight band across your forehead), a backache, irritability, pacing the floor, wringing your hands, and fatigue.

2. Determine Priorities: You can not do everything well. So, learn to do a few things well, instead of many poorly.

3. Drop Unrealistic Expectations: Drop excessive use of words like "must" and "should" from your vocabulary. Pick up words like "no" and recognize your limits. Not being 150% involved does not mean being lazy.

4. Talk to Yourself: Analyze whether your thinking is dominated by ideas which filter out your positives and accentuate your negatives, blowing out of proportion mistakes which you may have made.

5. Talk to Others: Express vs. Suppress your feelings. Be assertive and sensitive vs. being an explosive volcano or someone who silently seethes, until the inevitable sarcastic snipe oozes out on the victim.

6. Give in Once in a While: Make allowances for the fact that you could be wrong; avoid being obstinate and defiant.

7. Tackle One Task at a Time: Deal with the most urgent tasks first; partialize the big loads, remembering the old joke, "How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time."

8. Take a Breather: 5 minutes "off" can lead to most of your day being "on". Take a walk or just step away from your desk, instead of making yourself "stand there and suffer".

9. Deep Breathing: A simple relaxation exercise is to sit still for a few minutes and breathe deeply, not so dramatic that anyone can notice, just so that you feel relaxed and more under control.

10. Meditation: Deep breathing can be combined with focusing upon one idea or object so as to slow your mind down, and focus on one thing vs. many.

11. Join a Support Group: If your extended family is geographically distant, try to make friends with whom you can be yourself, or join a support group, whether at your church, synagogue, or civic group. Even a Men's League at a Golf Club or Bowling League can help relieve some stress by giving you relaxation + friends.

12. Exercise to Relax: A routine of walking, jogging, or any regular exercise program can work off pent-up frustration. If you are able to, try to alternate between weight-bearing and aerobic exercises, always after preliminary stretching exercises.

13. Massage: A regular massage may be too expensive, but consider treating yourself to a massage when under a great deal of stress.

14. Try Helping Others: Focusing on the troubles of others may put yours in perspective.

15. Develop a Hobby: A new interest can get your mind off an old problem; woodwork, kite flying, gardening - whatever you like.

16. Pray: I saved the best for last. Try daily prayer, meditation, or reading scripture to show you the meaning of your life.