Hopkins Counseling Services

What is good is not easy, but it is good! Sometimes life is hard, but what good is it that comes out of life’s difficulties? Many years ago I fell in love and felt loved by another person. I was all of 18 years old at the time. Her name was Cheryl. Being enjoyed and delighted in by each other brought richness to the relationship. Adventures together, talking about friends and family, opened doors to new friendships. Living in different towns we spent time together once a month, talking weekly on the phone. Life was good. I looked forward to the drive or flight to see her. The last time I saw her was a dreadful ending to something that was once good.  The relationship ended abruptly, something I did not anticipate. The ache I felt inside was not only painful but overwhelming. I did not know how to deal with the sadness, which I kept to myself. I eventually told myself that I would never let anyone hurt me like that again. The pain seemed to go away.  What I didn’t know, the pain was internalized, still part of my life in ways unknown to me. Many years later I was weary running from something that mattered. It was like, “I can’t run away from my pain. Its still there.

Paradoxically pain is important though not pleasant.  Ignoring our pain affects our relationships with others. We often respond with anger toward those who expose our pain. I’ve responded to others this way many times over the years. 

When we learn to acknowledge pain, this gives us the capacity to value and support those are going through painful times. Our pain is meant to be known/understand by someone else. Making sense of pain occurs in relationship with others. I believe dealing with our pain and the pain of others through genuine interest, understanding, and empathy is important. This leads to greater hope being loved through our relationships with one another. 

Even though I have heard the word desire many times, the knowing of desire in my own life has been misconceived. When I was young desires were unknowingly apparent as I experienced many interactions with different people, most importantly with mom and dad. Desires always require the involvement of someone else. What happens in relationship may meet one’s desires or send a message that our desires aren’t important to others. Looking back, relationship with mom met with kindness, patience, good will and love. Connection with dad met with impatience, reactive anger, desperation, emotional/relational neglect and abandonment.

A hope of knowing dad’s love, kindness, involvement, understanding, guidance, and patience became an unending search in my life. The search for his love turned into an attempt to please or do what I thought would make dad happy. I would do what he asked of me hoping to find appreciation. No matter how good I was, seeking his love and support were crushed by his reactions of anger, rage, and threats. I feared my dad even though I wanted to be loved by him. This led to wondering what is wrong with me, why can’t I get my dad to love me.  Finding dad’s love was beyond what I could get him to do. He could offer me a relationship he knew. Sadly what dad offered me left what I longed to know from him unfulfilled, ie, being loved and shown compassion.

Hardship followed. I felt alone and unloved, distrusting others, ignoring pain and disappointment.

Our longings to be loved, enjoyed and understood, to experience compassion, patience, and caring guidance are good and important. When our desires to be loved are ignored or met with anger, our desire to be loved turns into sadness.

Hope in my life changed when facing pain and hurt. Aware of my desires of not being loved by my dad.  Hope came from realizing my dad didn’t know how to offer a substantial relationship. 

What I desire, learning how to offer a substantial to other. This is what I desire to do, but am learning to do.

Ever realize that you are relating in ways that you’re not even aware of? May seem like a strange question to ask. Can we really answer this question? Let me explain.  Over Thanksgiving family came to visit. Talking to one family member, I had a hard time connecting with them. When the silence followed, my anxiety started to rise. What happened next, attempting to figure out what I could say to restart the conversation met with feeling like I was spinning relational wheels in the mud and going nowhere.

Anxiety in relationships been part of my life for years.  Relational struggle bared greatest anxiety with dad. Childhood years met face to face with dad’s displeasure and rage. Fear accompanied experiences that were not my responsibility, yet impacted my life. Rage, punishment and abandonment were dad’s mental model of coping with stress. Wanting to know dad’s love, behooved me directions of pleasing him. Pleasing him would bring the loved I hoped to know. I was a good boy doing what was asked of me. Being good enough never led to knowing his love. Persistence in being good led to unspoken heartache.

Pleasing others, putting pressure on myself hoping what I say or do betters relationships. When relationships aren’t bettered, my anxiety goes skyward. Pleasing others, how many times does this relational style bring about what I hope to know? Hardly ever. Efforts pleasing others put the onus of responsibility on my shoulders. How many times have I related living my life out this way with others?  More times not being aware.

Pleasing others will never bring about the love I wanted to know. Love is a gift from one’s heart. Pleasing others isn’t love, pleasing is a search for love that we never experienced from our caregivers. Love supersedes pleasing others.

Home environments differ greatly one family to another. How parents respond to children directly impacts self-confidence, security, emotional health, and self-esteem.  Secure attachment embodies parenting strategies building a child’s self-confidence, attending to a child’s emotional health resulting in a child’s development of self-esteem.

John Gottman wrote, Parenting the Heart of Your Child, Raising Children with Emotional Intelligence. He describes 4 styles of parental reaction to children’s emotional reactions. 1 Disapproving, 2 Dismissive, 3 Laissez Faire, 4 Emotionally Intelligent. Emotionally Intelligent parents attend to emotional experiences asking the child questions about feelings and helping the child understand how feelings are reactions to what they experience.  Next a parent will validate feelings while providing potential resolutions to problems related to the child’s emotional experience.

A Father called his daughter to say hello. She lived in another state with her mom. Typically his daughter would visit dad during the summers. The first words his daughter spoke, “Dad, I don’t want to come out this summer, I want to spend time with my friends, I never done this before.” Hearing these words left her father’s heart heavy with sorrow. Talking 10 minutes, dad ended the conversation and said he would call her back Saturday. Her dad thought through his own emotional disruption while pondering what his daughter might be going through. Calling the next Saturday, dad spoke, “Spending time with your friends matters to you. I wonder if the decision you made might have made me feel sad.” She responded, “Yes, daddy it was hard for me to tell you I didn’t want to come to see you over the summer.” His response, “It took courage for you to tell me you didn’t want to visit knowing your decision saddened me, I respect you for making this decision.” She responded with a sense of relief, “Daddy, I can tell you anything and you listed to me, I love you!”

This story is one example of emotional intelligence allowing this father’s daughter to speak openly to him. His response freed her to speak openly to her father. Gottman’s book offer’s many other stories which I believe are helpful in understanding parental emotional intelligence.

If you are more interested about emotional intelligence parenting, this is a very good book that I would recommend.

It was a warm and calm summer day with the barbecue turning a plump chicken on the rotisserie . Family from Texas were visiting.  That afternoon seemed to be peaceful. Being around children is always filled adventure and uncertainty in what they might do next that might disrupt their parents world. That afternoon which seemed so peaceful would soon disrupt a parent’s world. The oldest boy in the family just turned 8.  His dad asked the boy to check to see if the briquettes in the barbecue where hot. Going outside the boy used his hand to check the heat rising from the partially white charcoal.  Some how knowing the heat wasn’t hot enough to cook the chicken, instead of going back into the house to tell his dad, the boy thought he would be helpful by doing what he watched his dad do before.  Picking up a container of lighter fluid and aiming the nozzle at the briquettes, the boy sprayed the charcoal and parts of the chicken as it turned.

When children get into something, they often lose track of time.  Parents often grow curios during periods of time embracing a child’s silence.  This was true of the boy’s father.  Dad stepped out the back door just in time to see what his son was doing. When kids get caught doing something they were told what not do is to deny they did anything wrong. This father understood this about his son. When the boy saw his dad, the boy responded with an almost paralyzed silent stance. This father knew that he’d responded in anger to his son before.  Dad wanted this time to be different, sitting down on the bottom cement step, he reached out taking his son’s hand and asked “are you afraid that I am angry with you.”  Without saying anything the boy moved his head up and down agreeing with dad’s question.  The father started to cry telling his son thank you for telling me about how you feel. He asked the boy for a hug and as the boy came to his dad the boy started to cry as he said, “I’m sorry daddy.” The father gently embraced his son as he gently spoke words of comfort, “I love you so much, I am proud of you, you didn’t do anything wrong. You meant to help.  Let us work together on what we need to do to heat up those briquettes and cook that chicken for dinner. Do you want to help me with this?” The boy stepped back from the hug with a relaxed smile told his dad an enthusiastic “yes”.

There are many emotional experiences where bitterness and resentment dominate my perception of those close to me.  What is at the heart of bitterness and resentment?  The source is weeks, months or years of unresolved disappointment or conflict. When we hide our emotional distress branching out from relationship disappointment, the emotional distress does not disappear.  When others wound us and say nothing to us about this hurt this wound does not go away.   The hiding and silence of hurts and struggles eventually lead to bitterness and resentment toward those who we feel hurt, betrayed, misunderstood, or abused by. What we do with these emotional experiences is important and challenging. 

Our greatest enemy isn’t what happened too us.  As bitterness and resentment envelops our hearts our greatest enemy is born out of silence about difficult experiences. These experiences to often change our self perceptions.  People who hide or bury their struggles may grow to have contempt for their own sadness, hurt, guilt, or pain. Contempt for our own emotions may lead to resentment and bitterness toward those who trigger painful memories.

Desmond Tutu wrote ,”The Book of Forgiving” as a guide to help people work on bitterness and resentment through the path of forgiveness.  The Book of Forgiving is a book that I would recommend to help you see how forgiveness can relieve one from a living a life of bitterness and resentment.

I see a young boy laying on his bed crying, feeling unloved and alone.  Looking over him I see his tears stop as he falls asleep.  No one came in to see how he was doing or even to comfort his tender broken heart. Moments before, his dad asked the 7-year-old to investigate the condition of the briquets underneath the rotisserie chicken slowly turning above. He was inexperienced in understanding what his dad was asking of him. The boy walked through the kitchen down the stairs to exit the house.  Going out the back door he went down steps to where the barbecue was doing its magic.  The boy put his hand over the charcoal and decided the heat coming from the briquettes weren’t throwing off enough heat.

In the past he watched how his dad put charcoal lighting fluid on the briquettes to get the heating process started. Instead of going back into the house to report what the boy discovered, the boy took the lighter fluid container squeezing a stream of lighter fluid onto the briquettes and on the chicken. As this was happening dad stepped out the back door in time to see lighter fluid spreading over the coals and the chicken. Bursting into an authoritative rage he picked up his son, holding him up off the ground while striking the boys bottom with stinging and painful force. After putting the boy down, his dad said, “you go to bed now, there will be no dinner for you tonight!”  Crying due to the physical pain of the blistering strokes of his father’s hand, he walked up the stairs, through the kitchen and passed through living room where his grandparents were sitting on the couch. They looked at him crying while saying nothing to the boy.  He went into the bedroom to lay on his bed.

Watching this boy cry himself to sleep, something else was taking place in this boys heart.  Alone and unattended to, a seed of fear and distrust were painfully rooted within his heart. Soon he would understand a survival tool guided by an internal pressure of hope finding love by pleasing others through being good enough. 

Ever mess up in life, then with honesty to tell a person what you did.  How do people respond to our acknowledgement of failure or disappointment? How we are responded to is important.  How we are responded to shapes our understanding of being loved in the midst of disappointment. This shaping starts at an early age.  Let me begin by saying children are very loyal and committed to loving and pleasing both parents. Children are also vulnerable emotionally and physically to parental reactions.  When a child fails or frustrates a parent, a parent who communicates love and understanding while working through the failure with kindness and compassion speaks to a child that disappointment doesn’t define who they are. This communication speaks to a child’s heart, “I am loved for who I am, not how well I perform.”

In contrast, when a child fails or goes through disappointment knowing a consistent parental response of criticism, sarcasm, anger, or abandonment of relationship, what does the impact of these parental reactions have upon a child’s emotional life and belief system? The direction a child takes is most often unknown to the parent. Children don’t know how to express their internal world. Because children want the love of their parents, a child will often see an unloving response as their fault.  A child may experience shame, doubt, or fear that they are not loved.  Children are vulnerable and resilient.  Children deal with their vulnerability through the resilience of a belief system hoping to find the love they long to know.  Some children want to please their parents while other kids will defy their parents, (negative attention is better than no attention). Other kids avoid family conflict through isolation or time away with friends.  Strangely, when a child doesn’t know their parent’s love, a child will turn toward what is external to them for the love that is missing. This external pursuit of finding love is draped with scarcity, (I am lacking what it takes to be loved for who I am)

Love grows out of kindness, compassion, understanding, patience, and mindfulness taking place during conflict.   It is important to acknowledge how we fail our children or letting them know how they fail us.  In this genre of relationship hope of  being loved for who we are can grow in the midst of disappointment.

It is my hope the articles posted on this site will be meaningful in some ways to those of you accessing the site. Stories are a powerful way of connecting with other people. An important part of my story is looking back to see where I have come from. Doing so, continues to unveil blind spots in my own life.  Blind spots are something most of us experience. Sometimes clarity about our lives is like looking into a fog. What is revealed to us brings hope for the moment.

What I write about in future articles will reveal struggles facing blind spots in my life. Transparency about these blind spots reflect opportunities to learn from each other. Too often, openness and honesty about our lives in responded to through cynicism, criticism or judgement.  I have learned through years “who am I to judge or criticize” what I see or hear.  Yet I do so.  When the morning shows like Today or Good Morning America come on I criticize the partially told stories, wondering with doubt “do these people care about anything other than their television rating.” What I don’t see about them, they matter and are loved.

Thanks to each one of you for taking a look at the website and posts.  I do not know who you are.  What I can tell with confidence though, “you matter in this world, even if you don’t know this quite yet.”  I do welcome any feedback that you might have or if there is a subject you would like to see addressed.  What is posted is not counseling advice.  It is about sharing stories so we can discover what many of us have in common.  Each person has a challenge to face, looking back to see where we have come from.

I hope to post 2 articles per month.  It is hard to believe that October of this year will mark 2 years into the adventure and development of HCS.   Thanks for being an important person in this adventure.

Ray

Every day, that is if you watch TV or listen to the radio, there is a bombarding of messages communicating what takes place in this world.  No matter where you are, if you have a cell phone, tablet, or devices with computer connection you literally have access to what’s been captured by media, only on a more timely basis. What’s being communicated drags me down.  Glimpses of larger stories are spoken often distorting viewpoints presented to us every day.  Hearing a partially told story leads to an impasse of understanding. What are we  to do with massive amounts of partially told stories?  What about asking questions that open opportunities for dialogue?

The Apostle Paul addresses an important element of communication with this admonition, “Never act from motives of rivalry or personal vanity, in humility think more of each other that you do of yourselves.  No one should think only of his own affairs, rather, learn to see things from another person’s point of view.” Philippians 2:3-4. Dialogue embracing desires to understand deepens our knowledge of others.  When is the last time you experienced someone who took interest in you and wanted to know more about you by asking questions with humble interest?

The media tends to emphasize discouraging events, relationships, and sensational happenings. Paul’s admonition calls us to be mindful of others. What would happen if news, radio or TV shows focused on humility with a pursuit of understanding others?  This does happen and when it does our hearts are touched.

The Apostle Paul understood the importance of meaningful dialogue.  Offering meaningful dialogue in relationship communicates “I care about you and who you are.”