Category Love

HEALTHY LOVE AT THE U.S. OPEN

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

The U.S. Open, the last of the tennis year’s four majors, is powering its way to the finals, and I’m psyched.

Tennis is an intense human drama that showcases the psychology of winning — belief in self, winning through intimidation, body language, gamesmanship, positive self-talk, courage, and reaching deep past pain and fatigue to tap the will to win.

It’s not surprising as a couples therapist I would remark on the irony of tennis’s scoring where zero (“love”) literally means “nothing”.  The phraseology’s origin is unclear.  Some cite the similarity of a zero’s shape to an egg (the French word is l’oeuf) while it’s also been said that “love of the game” or playing for love is what’s being referenced.

Apply tennis’ meaning of love to relationships’ meaning.  How incongruous to say that love is nothing!  That a feeling that surpasses everything, that defies explanation, and that transcends other emotions in its saving grace is nothing. Unlike tennis, healthy couples love doesn’t count winners or losers, nor does it strategize another’s defeat.

Love doesn’t take sides.  The best duos are dynamic for years, honing skills through practice practice practice, all the while getting closer and closer. Relationship longevity is the result.

The problem for many couples is knowing what to do to have things be better between them.  After all, what they’ve done so far often makes things worse.

Both partners absolutely need to learn the basic skills that account for fruitful communication.  Without it, a relationship’s foundation is incomplete, shaky, bound to crumble under the weight of all that happens in a couple’s life together. Couples have many choices when it comes learning communication skills.  Along the Denver/Colorado Springs corridor one example is the Couple Communication Workshop offered by Being Heard, a program unique in having a husband and wife team as instructors.

In a beguiling contrast to singles competition, partners in doubles — two partners competing against each other — is very much like romantic love.  Togetherness has great purpose and meaning; there’s a full and expressed range of emotional intensity that includes joy, disappointment, and frustration; and having your partner’s back is the way it’s supposed to be.

Kathe Skinner specializes in couples work as a psychotherapist in private practice.  These days the only tennis ball in her life belongs to the dog next door. Married for 29 years to David, another fan of “love”, they live in Colorado Springs with two hooligans cats who couldn’t tell a Venus from a Serena.

Copyright, 2015

Being Heard, LLC

HOW CAN PARALYZED BE PRETTY?

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. Leave a comment

Photograph of Rachel and her husband Chris on their wedding day.

Photograph of Rachel and her husband Chris on their wedding day. Photo credit: Martha Manning Photography

I blog for the government’s disability website, Disability.gov   If you haven’t visited, do so; it’s cool, comfy, and inspiring.  At a recent look-see, I plopped into a story about Rachelle Friedman, written by the person who knows her best — herself.

You might remember her story.  Last year, at Rachelle’s bachelorette party, a friend’s playful gesture resulted in a spinal cord injury when Rachelle was pushed into the swimming pool.

The wedding was as sweet as weddings always are; maybe even bittersweet. By necessity, the wedding was delayed until Rachelle was recovered enough physically.  Because of the weight she lost, Rachelle’s wedding dress fit differently.  And the couple’s first dance brought the guests to tears.

At her age, Rachelle has had to face, career-wise, what is usually faced much later in life.  Changing careers is generally a choice, but not for her.   As a Program Coordinator, Rachelle planned and taught classes like line dancing and aerobics to seniors.  She calls herself an “unreliable employee” now, one who can’t be counted on as a 9-5 employee because of low blood pressure and nerve pain.Re-focusing, this young woman looks to doing more speaking.

Unsure of a definite direction, this young woman wants to make a career out of public speaking, maybe relationship coaching (which is how we got acquainted.)  Not surprisingly, judging from her first career choice, Rachelle’s into helping others.   She still wants to be inspiring and educating to others.

What happened to Chris and Rachelle is one of those “out of time” things; being disabled young is like a long prison sentence — no choice but to serve it out.  Besides the emotional disruption, the financial cost been significant, too. Being disabled isn’t cheap, and earning potential all but disappears.

So much of this couple’s future can’t be imagined, and is one that certainly wasn’t planned.  While they don’t yet know it, this couple’s future will be different in another way, too:  the love and compassion they have for each other now will be small in comparison to what it will one day be.

Next time, I talk with Rachelle about  marriage, sex, and the fishbowl of being a disabled hero.

Visit Rachelle at www.facebook.com/rachelleandchris and on Twitter at @followrachelle.  Watch for her book next year!

Kathe Skinner is a Relationship Coach, Certified Relationship Expert and Marriage & Family Therapist in Colorado where she conducts k-cropped-4x6communication workshops for couples, pre-married’s, the invisibly disabled, and the over 50 crowd.  Kathe enjoys collaborating with other professionals in order to reach more relationships affected by hidden disability.  She sits on the Executive Board of the Invisible Disabilities Association, is a regular contributor to Disability.gov., and is an ardent-and-natural-teacher-without-a-classroom.  She has been diagnosed with multiple sclerosis for over 30 years.  More about Kathe at www.BeingHeardNow.com.

How Come It’s “We’re Pregnant” But It’s Not “We’re Disabled”?

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. 1 Comment

I don’t know when it became fashionable to identify pregnancy as an adventure à deux.  It always seemed lopsided that pregnancy excluded men from throwing up, having swollen ankles and shrewish moods.  I’m not even talking about all those forever changes like stretch marks, a bigger butt, and wider hips.  With the possibility of gestational diabetes, postpartum depression, or miscarriage, the adventure becomes a challenge, albeit one that affects the relationship although it is physically experienced only by the woman.

Not to make it one-sided, men’s experiences are extraordinary, too, and may include being the target of a woman’s whacky moods or being the late-night junk food scrounger.  For guys, it hits that the two of you are now a family, with all the attendant expectations to be the one who forevermore protects and provides.

Without a doubt there are many, many women for whom pregnancy is a delightful experience. The glowing, the growing, and giving life is an experience like no other.  Pregnant women and moms belong to an exclusive club that has unbend-able  membership rules.  So even if it was the two of you being pregnant, only one of you, in the strictest sense, is a mom.

It’s the same when a woman is disabled or chronically ill.  Only one of you is impaired even while both of you — your relationship — can be impaired.   Having an invisible disability can be the worst of all.

Our society looks for proof; needs to name it; needs to touch it or otherwise experience its reality.  You can’t be “a little bit pregnant”; you either are or you’re not.  Pee on a stick and you prove it.  With invisible disabilities, there’s no pee test.  For some people, taking it on faith is harder than believing that what isn’t seen is true.  For example, not being able to prove the existence of god doesn’t mean god doesn’t exist.  Obviously, it’s the emotion surrounding belief that counts; to disbelieve or doubt a person’s physical or emotional perceptions is tantamount to discrediting someone’s very existence.  The truth of it is immaterial, while the emotion surrounding such thoughts is what counts.  The thoughts may even be rooted in jealousy of a sort – “What, so you get a break but I don’t?”  “Buck up, you’re just being lazy.”  “I worked all day but I still have to make dinner and do the laundry and get the kids to bed before I can sit down and catch my breath and where are you? in bed.”

Quantification when invisible disability is present requires a different yardstick but most of all it requires belief, support, and compassion.

Adding a stress load to any system that is already compromised results in a predictable, and usually disastrous, outcome (think of how a building with cracks in the foundation responds to an earthquake).  The same thing happens when an already dysfunctional body system is unable to respond well when stressors are piled on.  Such stressors may include walking through a mall or having relationship difficulties.

“We’re pregnant” or “we’re disabled” is an implicit bonding between partners.  Life-changing events happen from which there is no return.  Legal sanctions apply in both situations:  the 20% of women, nationwide, who are disabled are entitled to lifetime support; children until they reach the age of majority.  Society doesn’t seem to have recognized that the “we” of marriage with children and the “we” of disability in a relationship are the same thing.

To say “we’re disabled” says that both partners are in it together, that there is emotional and physical support of the partner who is less capacitated. Pregnancy usually involves the active participation of both partners while acquiring disability isn’t chosen by either partner.  Parenthood never ends, just as disability does not; a major difference is in the expected trajectory – that parenting gets more pleasurable once the nest is empty, while disability often does the opposite.  Disability is different in that there is no consent, no pre-planning, and certainly no enjoyment in acquiring the condition.

Kathe Skinner is a Relationship Coach in private practice.   Specializing in relationships, especially those with invisible disability in the mix, she offers both in-person and web-based programs for couples.  See http://www.BeingHeardNow.com to find the right program for you!

©Kathe Skinner, 2012

CAN I BORROW YOUR FINGER FOR A SEC?

Kathe Skinner, M.A., L.M.F.T. 1 Comment

 

Here’s a news flash:  stress can make you sick.

Maybe you haven’t gotten the message that stress can have a permanent effect on chronic illness.  Clouds your thinking, screws up your judgment.  Gives you the weepies and the angries.  Can take away your will to vacuum the house or cook a meal.  The effects of stress on the mood and memory components of your brain can get screwed up or even shut down.

Stress looks like lots of things:  a fight with your partner; anger or hurt at work; having to euthanize your pet (even making the decision); the temperature of your environment; hunger; lack of sleep, and more.

And our stress reactions aren’t just “in our heads”; they’re physical, too.  For example, my ability, literally, to stand or walk is impacted by the amount I exert myself in a hot environment.  Actually, I don’t even have to exert myself when I’m hot:  the very act of being is enough!

Worst of all are the cognitive impairments suffered from too much stress.  ”Chemo brain” is a good example.  While some doctors argue that chemotherapy cannot affect cognitive functioning, recent studies have shown that negative symptoms can begin as quickly as when a cancer diagnosis is received.   Seems the only thing that can do that is quite literally what we think when that diagnosis is received.  Cognitive behaviorists won’t argue that irrational thoughts are what need to be changed in order to change our feelings and ultimately our behavior.

Likewise, Adele Davidson talks about the relation of stress to “chemo brain”  (negative cognitive symptoms like loss of memory, confusion, slow or difficult processing, etc.)  in her book, Your Brain After Chemo.  I think many our of disabilities’ stress responses mimic chemo brain; certainly my multiple sclerosis does.

I’ve been talking about “distress”, or “bad stress”; however, we can’t go without “eustress”, or “good stress”.  Unless we stress our minds and bodies in appropriate ways (which differ for each of us) by doing things like walking around the block, carrying the wash down the stairs then folding and it putting way, reading, playing cards, debating an issue, problem solving, etc. we become mentally and physically flabby.  Ever see someone in a waiting room doing a crossword puzzle?  Same reason lots of adults work on jigsaw puzzles.

There’s a double benefit: not only is the mental exercise good for the brain, the pleasure and relaxation have a measurable chemical benefit as well.

It’s clear that sticking your finger in the dike doesn’t do much to hold back a significant quantity of stress.  In the flash flood of stress, we need to get to higher ground, take a deep breath and be glad we saved ourselves from drowning.

Kathe Skinner is a FABULOUS RELATIONSHIP coach who presents workshops, couples retreats, and teleseminars for couples who want to live happily ever after.   She is sometimes stressed by her husband, David, and their two hooligan cats, Petey and Lucy.