"On Healing" February 2006

Posted on Mon, Feb. 20, 2006
A hug and a kick taught him toughness
By Dan Gottlieb

Dear Sam,

The last time we met, you told me all about your new adventures in wrestling. This is the first I've heard of a wrestling league for 5-year-olds, but it's a good sport and a promising way to learn about yourself. But then you told me you were having a problem. You said another 5-year-old boy, Luke, was small like you, and every time you wrestled him, you lost.

When I asked why that was happening, you said: "He's tougher than me." Then you looked up at me and said: "Pop, you used to wrestle when you were little. Could you toughen me up?"

I was thrilled with your request. Not that I would know how to toughen you up. I was glad that you figured out what you would need to succeed and tried to get it. And that, Sam, is the hallmark of resilience.

I think somehow you realized something that most parents don't understand: To be resilient, sometimes kids need to be toughened up. Not only does it help them cope in a difficult world, it teaches them about their inner strength.

Everybody gets hurt, Sam, whether it's by wrestling or getting mocked by other kids. And because you are on the autistic spectrum, I fear you might get hurt more than most. But the important question is, what happens after the hurt?

Your mother said you wanted her at your wrestling matches because she made you feel better by holding you until the tears went away. Your dad coaches your wrestling team, but you didn't like the way he treated you, because all he said was you weren't hurt so badly.

Whenever we are hurt, we want someone to care for us, and we certainly don't want anyone to tell us we are OK.

But if someone takes care of us every time we hurt, we begin to feel as though we are fragile and cannot handle problems without help.

On the other hand, I see people in my office every day who didn't get adequate care when they were young and spend a lifetime taking care of themselves. So now they have difficulty trusting that people will help them when they need it.

But most parents are like your mother. All of our instincts tell us to protect our children from adversity when we can.

So, Sam, how do we toughen you up? Many parents have incorrectly said that spanking or deprivation does it. But that only hurts children. We toughen children by helping them to believe in themselves. Not by words, but by actions.

When I played in Little League, I made the all-star team one year. Unfortunately, the first time up to bat, I struck out. When my turn came again a couple of innings later, our team was down by one run and we had somebody on third base. I was afraid I would strike out again, so I asked the coach to pinch-hit for me.

The coach called a time-out and took me out of the dugout. He put his arm around me and walked me up the third-base line. He said playing in the game was the most important thing and that I should just feel proud that I'd made the all-star team and enjoy myself.

I felt myself melting into this nurturing man's support, and then he kicked me right in the butt, and said, "Now, go up to the plate and try to do something good for this team!"

Sam, I don't know which felt better - the hug or the kick. In today's world, that coach might have been charged with child abuse, but he did something for me I will never forget. The talk showed me both that he cared about my feelings, and believed that I was tough. I don't remember whether I got a hit or not, but I do recall his belief in me.

So, Sam, like most kids, you need a parent who can take care of your feelings right now and another one who knows how to toughen you up.

Posted on Mon, Feb. 6, 2006
Sometimes, goodbye comes first
By Dan Gottlieb

I always loved the Beatles song "Hello, Goodbye," but I never really understood the lyrics, particularly when they sang "you say goodbye and I say hello." But during dinner with a dear friend last week, I think I finally got it.

Because of his age, he had been pressured to retire from a career he had pursued for many years. It was a terrific creative and intellectual outlet for him and a source of pride and identity. He looked for similar jobs, but was unsuccessful.

Resigned that he would never again work in his chosen profession, he feels angry, confused and frightened. All this is understandable. After all, he thinks he lost his identity.

Anger is the voice of injustice. Forced retirement is unjust, as are many of the losses associated with aging.

Then grief follows anger. Author Stephen Levine described grief as "the rope burns that are left behind when what we clutch so tightly is pulled from our grasp."

After a lifetime of seeing oneself in a certain role, saying goodbye to that identity can be excruciating. It can feel like the phantom pain of an amputee. A person hurts where the limb used to be, just as my friend aches where his identity once flourished. But just or not, if we don't say goodbye to what we had yesterday, we stay stuck.

I recently heard from a man who called himself Bill. He had been the chief executive officer of a large nonprofit when he was diagnosed with multiple sclerosis, and deteriorated quickly from the degenerative nerve disease. He went into great detail about what he had done with his life and what he had lost.

I said to him that he seemed very clear about who he had been, but I wondered who he was now. He wrote back saying that although he didn't have the answer, that was the right question and he would write again when he had an answer.

First say goodbye, then say hello.

Several years ago, I was working with a woman in her mid-50s. Her aging mother was deteriorating and she decided to take her in.

Their relationship, she described, was always somewhat shallow. They got along all right, but never really understood each other. She was worried how this would work out.

Sure enough, when her mother moved in, my patient got more and more stressed. Mother was too frail to come to the office, so I went to her house and met with them. Mother seemed consumed with bitterness and guilt. "I sit here while my daughter takes care of me and I feel worthless."

Her daughter protested that she didn't mind the extra work, but it didn't make her mother feel better.

I spent a great deal of time talking with the mother about her life. She talked about her career accomplishments and her pride in her children. She also talked about how hard it was to lose friends at this age and how frustrated she was that she couldn't function as she had in the past.

We all felt great sadness as this 80-year-old woman said tearfully, "I will miss those days terribly." The daughter no longer tried to reassure her mother. She just sat with her and held her hand and shared her sadness - perhaps for the first time.

When I asked what kind of relationship she had always wanted with her mother, she quickly said that she always wanted just to be able to sit and talk, to learn about each other's life and have genuine intimacy and friendship.

By the way, I did receive an e-mail from Bill six months after my provocative question. He told me that he still suffered terribly with MS. He said he no longer felt like a CEO, but he did feel more like Bill.

Sometimes we must say goodbye before we say hello.

Our Partners and Sponsors