I am 74 years old.  A recovering alcoholic sober 22 years.   I grew up in a disfunctional family that included a father who broke his neck but lived.  He never worked again though.  I did not receive affection from my mother, my father was affectionate until the accident.  I am trying to give my adult children love and affection but I don't know how to do it.  Can you give me any suggestions. 

Nancy

Dear Nancy,

you've told me some facts about your life. But other than the fact that you are 74, what you've told me is about your history. I want to know who you are now. Are you a person with hope, fear, gratitude or regret? Are you insecure or perhaps angry at the injustice you've lived with? Are you someone who longs for love or someone who is at peace with where they are now. I could go on with my questions, but it is important to understand who you are at the deepest levels before we can talk about how to offer something called love to your adult children.

Believe it or not, I think there is something even more important than love and that is compassion. That's the ability to look deeply in someone's eyes and say "tell me about your life" and then listen for a long time. And while you were doing so, try to imagine that life is your life. Some would say that is an act of love, but whatever it is, it is precious and healing.

To offer that to your children would be a gift and I am sure something you can do. But more complicated would be to do the same thing for yourself. Because I imagine you've never received that kind of compassion either. So just take some time and look at yourself through compassionate eyes and wonder what is it like to be Nancy? The answer to that question will vary moment by moment, so please try to drop in on yourself several times a day. Over time, you might find a friend in there

Q: I work for a high level academic scholar from a leading university in Philadelphia. Whenever something goes wrong such as his laptop not working properly or work that someone has not done, I get the blame by being screamed at for sometimes hours. When I try to tell him that I deserve respect, I am told that I am "talking back" to him. Nothing I say seems to work. Reporting to HR is not realistic because my predecessor reported him 7 times without any action. Can you suggest something to say or something I should do to stop all this conflict?
Philadelphia, PA

My official response to your question is maybe. Maybe this guy is just a narcissist and doesn't care about other people's feelings. If that's the case, there certainly is nothing you can say to stop the conflict but there might be some things you can do short of quitting.

But let's first consider that he is not some kind of self-centered lug, but a regular human like you and me. So when he hollers at you, I wonder why he is hollering. Is he always on edge and does everything feel high stakes to him? If so, he is in distress. This does not mean that what he does is okay. Nor does it mean that you should allow yourself to be hollered at. But if you can begin to see him as a person in distress, his insults might not hurt so much. And perhaps you could ask him for 20 minutes of his time and try a whole different conversation. Tell him that when he screams at you it feels awful and you can't imagine it feels very good to him. Try to understand if things feel high stakes for him and if there's anything you can do to help him with these issues.

This is risky because he could reject you again but you might feel better having made an offer.

One of the best books on this subject is, "Difficult Conversations: How to Discuss What Matters Most" by Douglas Stone and others.

Hi Dr. Dan,

I am a mother to an infant daughter who is the joy of my life.

A particularly challenging part about parenting is realizing that not everyone finds wonder in children as I do. My in-laws in particular praise babies for how they sleep, eat, and stay quiet. I find joy in how she hides under a blanket to initiate peek-a-boo and likes to dance with me when I come home from work

I’m learning that expressing my excitement is not met with the same joy but rather they are concerned about the clothes she is wearing or whether she has the latest toy. Why aren’t people just amazed to see these magnificent little lives come into being?

 The most trying comments for me is when they verbalize that a baby is "good" when it is quiet and playing alone.

My child is sensitive and joyous and I don’t think that is a bad thing or even something I could change. I’m grateful for having granparents who nurtured my sensitivity and praised me for my awareness. I want my daughter to have a relationship with her grandparents, but around them I feel like I have to apologize for this  "sensitivity" –hers or mine,

Marta, a happy new mother

Dear Marta, 

Congratulations on having this wonderful new love in your life.

This business of worrying about what other people think of you (or your child) is pretty complicated. To a certain extent we must care about what other people think of us as we are social animals and want to be part of the herd. Not only that, people who don't care what others think of them are often narcissists or sociopaths.

Most of us regular humans go to the other extreme and we worry too much about what other people are thinking of us. This underlying anxiety is really about shame. Or more accurately, fear of shame. So in order to avoid this anxiety, our instinct is to conform or comply. Well, in your case, as in the case of many new parents, the babies health and happiness trumps your anxiety. So now what I am hearing is an understandable conflict. You don't want to face your in-laws rejection but you also don't want to comply with their expectations.

First we could take a look at your anxiety and learn some ways to be able to manage it.

And then there is the concern about what if impact their criticism will have on the baby. That is easier to address. Children will be affected if the people who raise them don't like them, but not distant relatives.

My grandmother didn't like me very much and she lived with us. And although I have my fair share of neurosis, I don't think my grandmother had any impact whatsoever!

Being part of the pack involves being accepted for who you are, not apologizing for it. You and and the baby will probably both be much happier if you are comfortable being the people you are and trust that things will work out pretty well.

Dear readers,
this new mother will be joining us live on Tuesday at noon to discuss the many issues raised in her letter.  Issues that all of us live with; concern about what others think of us, insecurity about childbearing and new parents trying to establish their own identity.
dg

I had dinner with a friend of mine the other night and she was telling me a story about a woman she works with whose husband suddenly left her. "Out of the nowhere", the friend said. And of course these things are very rarely out of nowhere, but they often feel that way. But while my friend was going on with the story, half of my brain was musing over that phrase. Out of nowhere was what happened to me 30 years ago when a tire crushed my car. Out of nowhere is what happens when we find a lump or hear any tragic news. So in the middle of her story, I blurt out "I hate that place". Of course she is well into the story and has no idea what I'm talking about. So when she asks what place I am referring to I said "that nowhere place where things just seem to happen."

Okay so now she's giving me a strange look that I often get when I blurt things like that out, but she is a nice person so she invited me to develop my thought.

And then I realized that "out of nowhere" is where all things happen, good and bad. It's not just about tumors and divorces. Out of nowhere is where we fall in love. But the truth is we all live right there where none of us have any idea about what's coming around the corner. We tell ourselves we do and that tomorrow will look pretty much like yesterday and we find some comfort in that. But that's an illusion.

And my final thought on the topic was when I realized that nowhere place was really everywhere.

At that point she just sighed and wondered what it was like living inside my mind. I told her I keep having these thoughts that seem to come out of nowhere

I received the following poignant and personal letter about stillbirth and pregnancy loss from a reader. She will be joining me live at this site on Tuesday at noon.

Dear Dr. Gottlieb,

On December 22, 2008, my second daughter Lucia Paz was stillborn at 38 weeks. I am a thirty-five year old woman, who had two normal pregnancies. My first daughter is now twenty-two months old. She is a beautiful girl, and we were happy to welcome our second daughter. No, scratch that, not happy, ecstatic.

Though Lucy had been monitored only three days before, I had noticed a distinct lack of movement on Sunday. Certainly, with a toddler, and getting physically ready to welcome a baby into our home, I wasn't paying close attention to her movements, but when I sat down after dinner, there was nothing. I began to get nervous, and we called our midwives group. They urged us to come into the hospital where we found out our little girl was gone.

Though we are awaiting the autopsy report, there appears to be no definitive reason for Lucia's death. She simply died. These are hard concepts to wrap your brain around as a mother, nay, as a human being. We expect reasons for things. We expect a kind of justice in the universe. Before Lucia's death, I had no idea how prevalent stillbirth The reason I didn't know about this is because it is still a taboo subject in this society to discuss birth loss.

After people found out Lucia died, they just simply did not know what to say, or what to do. It doesn't occur to most people that I am still postpartum, that my milk came in, or even that I had to give birth to her knowing she was dead. People say different things to the loss of a baby before they have taken their first breath, as though I wasn't necessarily attached to her yet. But she is a missed human being, but she was also part of our future, the idea of our family…everything has changed about us. Once upon a time, we imagined our family with perhaps three or four children, we are now not sure if we can even bear to have another pregnancy.

Six weeks after her birth, I realize I'm not exactly one of those grieving mothers who crochets angel pillows for every room of the house, nor have I ever referred to Lucy as my little angel baby. My daughter is dead. It is a mantra I have repeated for six weeks now, every minute, like I am memorizing a poem, or lines to a maudlin play I am in. "My daughter is dead. My daughter is dead." It is as though I am still trying to remember that she is dead. Whatever I find out about how she died, she will still be dead. When I go for a walk, Lucy is still dead. If I have another baby, Lucy is still dead. You want to cut in front of me in line? My daughter is dead, go ahead.

At any rate, I have been writing extensively trying to make some sense out of the conflicting emotions of this time. Sometimes, I think I will awake from the nightmare of finding out my daughter is dead, and other days I think I dreamt the entire pregnancy and have awoke to find everything just like it was ten months ago. But mostly, I am learning how to live this new life, and trying to make myself whole for my daughter Beatrice. I'm doing a pretty good job.

And there is an incredible memoir about stillbirth by Elizabeth McCracken called the Exact Replica of a Figment of my Imagination. I felt like I could have written many sections of that book myself, but I had the urge to send that book to everyone I know, so they would understand what I am going through.

A.Y. 

Dear A.Y., you signed off your letter saying "much love." And that really is the essence of the story. You hurt so badly because you felt so much love for this child. Love for the possibilities and love for your image of your future family. And now what? The child is gone, but the love remains.

Stephen Levine who wrote "Healing Unto Life And Death" said that grief is the rope earns left behind when what we have clutched so tightly is pulled from our grasp against our will.

But your grief is in its own category. Loss of a child is beyond what most of us can or would be willing to fathom, so we minimize or offer platitudes just so we can avoid facing your vulnerability and ours.

Your letter brings up so many important issues about the need to tell a story, to be in community again, to have the freedom to feel your anguish without judgment and some of the things that might help.

I look forward to getting to know you better on Tuesday,

Dan

Dear Dr. Dan,

I had an alcoholic father and was jealous of my older brother who was favored as the oldest son. On many nights I had sobbed at bed until at some point in middle school. At college age, I remember a hysterical crying day took place once or twice a year. I came to the states at 25 to go to a graduate school. The physical distance from my family seemed to have calmed me down.  In recent months, with my newly revived focus on religion, I discovered that I have a rather serious emotional issue, though. I tend to burst out tears at any moment with some thoughts dwelling on the past. I also tend to see me as a victim in most cases and to think that I suffered or endured.

I have no intention in dwelling on my past. I would like to get my problems fixed and move on. Look forward to hearing from you.

Many, many thanks,

In a poem Maya Angelou read at Bill Clinton's first inauguration, she said: "history, despite its wrenching pain cannot be unlived. But if faced with courage, need not be lived again." Certainly if you are having these symptoms again, you will need professional help in facing this. And I strongly suggest you see someone who is specifically trained in trauma. That's because you are right not to want to dwell on the past and traditional psychotherapies ask people to examine their histories closely in order to release the emotions and move past them. But newer psychotherapies assist people in looking at the past with a different lens. And then the emotions dissipate so sad ones history simply becomes ones history without bleeding into one's day to day life.

With an appropriate perspective, we can all look back and see our stories as simply stories we tell ourselves. All those effects might be true in these stories, we have incorporated them into our identity. Victim is who you were, not who you are. But there is a part of your brain that doesn't know this yet. The therapy involves training your brain to experience what is happening now in this present moment rather than reexperiencing what happened before.

There are many descriptions for these newer therapies including: "mindfulness-based cognitive behavioral therapy" and "acceptance and commitment therapy". But whoever you see, make sure they have had specific training in trauma treatment.