An Aging Elder

I woke up this morning with more aches than a porcupine has quills. (OK, a slight exaggeration here). My knee, back and shoulder all were seeing who could scream the loudest for my brains’ distracted attention. Aging and Elderhood, encroaching personal entropy and joyful evolving consciousness. What a juxtaposition!

While I am extremely grateful for entering conscious Elderhood, I am very aware that my body is slowly running down. I was talking to a friend about running recently and he said, “The older I get, the faster I was.” So true. I was reading recently that the best hope for the world was that more people worldwide were living past 50. However, it has also been noted that civilization often advances one death at a time. Enough already – I’m confusing me!

I think it is no longer enough to just get older, even though it’s true that old age is not for sissies! We also can choose to become Elders, and our journey to Elderhood begins in adulthood. I have written about Signs of Elderhood in an earlier post. If you want to become an elder, you have to begin to wake up, grow up and clean up in adulthood. Briefly, cleaning up, in addition to eating healthier and exercising more, usually involves embracing some form of depth work in psychotherapy to heal wounds from the past. Waking up means realizing you need to move beyond dogma of all stripes and become a seeker of what IS and your true nature. Growing up means a willingness to recognize and move through actual developmental stages that we have become aware of in the last hundred years.

This work may be very challenging as you transcend and include the mainstays of your culture. All of this is necessary to be able to show up as an Elder and not just an old person. Gratefully, when you choose to enter conscious Elderhood, there is much more to life than aches and pains!

John Mariner

Are you Shooting Yourself in the Foot?

The chances are high that you are unknowingly undermining the likelihood that you will get what you want from your spouse. Why is that?? It is because you privately know what you want from this relationship, and when you are hurt and angry, you ask for more than your partner can emotionally deliver. Sure, in an ideal world, you deserve to receive all the love you want in the manner that you would most like to get it. But only in Hollywood and fairy tales do “they live happily ever after.”

In reality, life involves an endless series of personal negotiations between two persons of equal value. Add to that the knowledge that what you wish for is particularly difficult for your partner to deliver. The result is that all relationships are predestined to have a lengthy power struggle after a few years. What follows are several tips for managing the negotiations of power struggles with patience and wisdom.

Think globally, act locally. Practice asking for small amounts of the behaviors that you want from your partner. Then practice thanking your partner for what he/she just did. We are all quietly influencing the behaviors of our partners by what we do after they act. If you want more loving from your partner, do not start by demanding sex three times a week. Even if you get your wish (i.e. through coercion), you will not have a happy, relaxed, and loving partner in bed with you. Begin by asking for small, specific and do-able behaviors that are on the path to connection. Ask for a little more touching during the day. Then when your partner gently touches you on the back as he/she walks by, you respond immediately with “Thanks, that touch felt great.”

In addition, you can “program” your spouse to do more of the behaviors that nurture you. Immediate smiles, approval and appreciation can go a very long way. Consider this story. A college social psychology class once decided to test the power of very small subtle social cues. They decided, without the professor’s knowledge, to appear ever so slightly more interested in what was being said whenever the professor leaned or took a step to his right. They looked up at him slightly more often, they took a few more notes, and they deliberately looked a bit more interested in the course material. They remained neutral when he stood still while talking. And they showed a tiny drop in interest when he drifted to his left. After four lectures with this subtle cuing, the professor walked into class, put his briefcase down by the desk in the middle of the front of the room, dug out his lecture notes and walked over to the front left corner of the room (to the students’ right!) where he delivered his entire lecture. Conclusion: You are always sending cues to your partner about your feelings and your support (or lack thereof) in the relationship. Everyone likes positive feedback!

Be on the lookout for what your partner is doing well. This will correspond to behaviors you like and want repeated more often. Then smile, brighten your tone, say thank you and generally be appreciative of their personhood. Over time, you will find that your mate will be more likely to repeat behaviors that get rewarded and less likely to do things that evoke boredom and loss of attention. When you focus on and amplify what is working, you are directing the relationship in the most successful direction.

This works infinitely better than complaining about what is bad or lacking in the relationship. Carping, nagging, repeating your complaints, character assassination, name calling and outright put-downs are the drivers of distance and divorce. When you attempt to negotiate from a “one-up,” “power-over” position, you invite a push back. Your partner will either “fight or flee” depending on how he/she protects him/herself. The dominant stance might feel powerful for a short while, but it is always a losing strategy in a love relationship.

Finally, when you do ask your partner to change his/her behavior so that you can feel more attended to in the relationship, make your requests small, measurable and positive. We talked about small requests above. Ask for changes in behavior that might be easy for your partner to give to you. Measurable means that you are able to specify quantity and duration of the behavior request, and you must be reasonable. You might want six hugs a day, but you would be best starting off at a lower number that your partner might do without feeling pressured. For example, you could ask for two hugs a day lasting at least three seconds each. The word positive means that you are asking for something that your partner actually does. If you are often annoyed when your partner interrupts you, you are shooting yourself in the foot when you say “Stop interrupting me.” That puts everyone’s attention on the annoying behavior, which is then likely to increase. Instead make it positive: “Please allow me to finish talking before you come back at me with an alternative point of view.” When you state your desire in the positive, the request is much more likely to happen. As stated above, when your partner makes any movement in the direction of your request, be prepared to smile, thank and appreciate even the smallest changes in behavior.

by Dr. Howard Lambert

Growing in Love in Elderhood AKA Elderlove

Elderlove . . . it’s not quite the same as love in adulthood, even though conscious love must begin in adulthood to grow into the Love that is an essential characteristic of Conscious Elderhood.

I do not want to limit my investigations, however, to the growth of love in couplehood that is possible in Elderhood, as wonderful as that may be. In our culture, marriage or coupling is too often regarded as “THE” realm of the sacred rather than “A” realm of the sacred; the former not so subtly discounting how singles also grow in love in adulthood leading to Elderlove.

When conscious love grows within the couple relationship in adulthood, that is truly wonderful and sadly, too often, rare. Not impossible, as I personally know, but not easy. It’s almost as if love begins to split its seams and demands its inherent expansion. Children demand that it opens up to embrace them, sometimes stretching the couple relationship beyond its limits. Sometimes one person grows and the other doesn’t, and the relationship bursts apart. Most often, people try the coupling route with someone else, hopefully expanding their ability to love with lessons learned from the past. Conscious love wants to keep expanding to include others, actually until there are no “others.” Conscious love keeps breaking our hearts open on the way to Elderhood, if we will allow it to. Otherwise, we gradually just close down, and at most become old and not Elders.

Elderlove is conscious love, ever expanding and developing to include more people toward the inclusion of all beings. It grows out of conscious adulthood, often but not always, developing in couplehood and parenting and tempered in the crucibles of our aging bodies and inevitable losses. Love teaches us HOW to Love if we will let it. This is one of love’s great secrets, opening us up to loving those beings we come in contact with as they need and want to be loved, awakening Love in them.

I have stated in another post that elderhood is better than adulthood. One of the reasons is that our capacity for conscious love can keep growing based on its beginnings in childhood and adulthood. Elderhood, today beginning at 65 or 70, is an expansion of our ability to love and not a diminishment! Conscious Adulthood is the necessary scaffolding for Conscious Elderhood that supports us growing in love all of our lives. The life stage of elderhood is the flowering of what has gone before. All of our work is worth it as love in elderhood pervades our lives and the lives of all that we touch in ever expanding and often surprising circles!

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Are You a Tyrant When You Are Angry?

Most relationships have one person who is a pursuer, and one person who is a distancer. These roles can change in different social settings and with different topics of conversation, but generally each member of a dyad plays one of these roles more often that the other.

When you are upset and something has been really bothering you, it is common for a pursuer to initiate a fight by barging into the personal space of the partner and declaring (as much with your non-verbal behavior as what you actually say), “I am upset, and we are going to talk about this right now!!!” You sound as if you have become an Army captain, and you are using your authority to command the movements of your troops. You have moved into a top-down tone of discourse, and you are talking to the enlisted men who have no choice but to stand there and listen to you as long as you want to talk.

When you demand your partner’s attention because you are upset, you are essentially shooting yourself in the foot. Your presumptuousness typically backfires. It drives the distancer into a psychological withdrawal and prolongs the unhappiness and fighting. Then you become a tempest in a teapot; full of sound and fury and having no effect in the real world. After you have sounded off for a while, which may include yelling and name calling (and other self-defeating agendas), you begin to notice how distant and remote your partner is behaving and how impotent you feel, even if you are loud.

The helplessness that comes with realizing you are getting nowhere can be very demoralizing. Rarely will you have the perspective to see that you helped produce the stalemate by the way you began the conversation.

Here is the task: Practice a slow start up. There are several aspects to this skill. First of all, it is very respectful to make an appointment with your spouse. This shows your spouse that you value his/her time and want to talk when he/she is ready to give you his/her full attention. Waiting half an hour and having a partner who is really present is much better than rendering yourself helpless shouting at a wall. Secondly, begin the conversation with an acknowledgement of the relationship. Launching right into your complaints and criticism might feel good to you as you blow off steam, but it tends to send the withdrawer into another universe. An appreciation might sound like this: “I love you deeply, and I really value our relationship. There is something troubling me that I want to talk about. Is this a good time, or can we set an appointment for later this evening?”

Other related “slow start-up skills” are also useful. If past arguments have melted down after 40+ minutes, agree up front to stop this discussion after 30 minutes. Speak about your concern and limit yourself to 6-7 minutes; then ask your partner to reflect back what he/she heard your concerns to be. Then give your spouse equal time to state his/her side of the story, after which you will reflect back what you hear his/her primary concern to be.

Moderation of energy and anger is the key element. Remember that if you take up too much time, space, volume, and intensity, your partner will be driven back into a self-protective walled-off silence. If you want a productive and a balanced fight, you must pull your energy down. As you learn the art of starting intense conversations gently, you will reap the benefit of a partner who does not withdraw (as much as in the past), and who will likely share much more of him/herself with you as the conversation stays moderate and your spouse feels safe enough to speak.

by Dr. Howard Lambert

When Green Attacks Orange, Amber Wins

I’m following up on my post, “Our Collective Dark Night” in which I spoke about being grateful for traditional, modern and post-modern contributions to humanity that are under fire in the US and around the world. Now I want to look at the challenge of valuing each of these structures of consciousness and culture from an evolutionary and developmental perspective, an integral perspective. In doing so, I hope to cast some light on the title of this post.

To greatly simplify, traditional culture (amber) places great value on fundamentalist, law and order. Modern culture and consciousness (orange) expands to embrace science and its contributions to our daily lives. Post-modern culture and consciousness (green) expands further to embrace equality for everyone. Unfortunately, at times the different structures war with each other, and the more evolved structure throws out the baby with the bath water instead of both transcending and including the hard won gains, the best and essential pieces, of the earlier stages of development. I want to focus on green and orange in particular.

Here is the deal: Post-modernity or Green, is the most developed stage of consciousness and culture to have evolved so far. But it is antagonistic towards Modernity or Orange in many ways. For example, when it insists that capitalism is evil and should be eliminated, it fails to transcend and include the best of capitalism and can lessen our sense of economic interdependence.
When Green insists that there is no objective truth, that all truth is dependent on context, it can support climate change deniers who can now challenge scientific evidence about the effects of climate change and say that’s just your opinion, there is no objective truth that the climate is changing.

When Green says to believe all women who accuse men of sexual assault and ignore due process, Green weakens one of the fundamental protections that is in place against arbitrary tyranny.
Also, Green, in wanting to do away with the dominator hierarchies that originated or persisted through Modernity, often wants to do away with all hierarchy, including natural hierarchies such as parent/child, teacher/student, etc., that allow us to learn and to grow in healthy ways.

In wanting to do away with the oppressive structures of Orange, a good thing, Green can leave us with no structures, a bad thing. That can allow Amber to rush in with fundamentalist structures, such as rigid definitions of right and wrong, to fill the vacuum.

Hopefully, emerging Integral leaders can support Green to not shoot itself in the foot and instead INCLUDE the best of Orange while also transcending its limitations and problems.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Martin Luther King: Reflections from an Integral Elder

I was 27 when Martin Luther King, Jr. was murdered in 1968 at the age of 39. Integral consciousness was mostly latent at that time, both in me and in the world. He was a harbinger of that consciousness. His “I Have a Dream” speech in Washington D.C. was prophetic of an integral world, even though that dream is not yet fully realized in 2019.

My adopted daughter is primarily African American. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s legacy and that of President Barack Obama are directly responsible for the evolving Integral world she is embracing wholeheartedly today. At 21 years old, she is a junior in college and active in politics, working to support women becoming elected to public office. Her amazing future is possible because no one, “trumpet” as they might, can destroy the scaffolding that these great American leaders have laid down.

On this great American holiday celebrating the life of Martin Luther King, I am deeply grateful.

By John Mariner,
Licensed Clinical Social Worker

Are You a Master of Dismissal?

Consider the number of times in your life that while arguing with someone, you have listened to them and said “Yes, but…” This is essentially a losing strategy in any conversation where your desired end state is closeness and mutual understanding. This is true because the verbal form of “Yes, but…” signals to the other person that you are engaged with them in a winner-take-all struggle. The word “yes” might be meant to communicate that you have understood what was just said, and you might have understood every single word of the message. However, you are inadvertently setting up a battle by using the word “but.” It often feels to the other person as if you have suddenly removed all of the pieces on a chess board and placed them in positions of your choosing. You now appear arrogant, righteous and controlling. You seem to be acting as if the information you are now adding to the conversation is so convincing that it will inevitably change their mind. It won’t work. It is an invitation to a duel.

What you are probably trying to create is a conversation in which there is an open exchange of thoughts, feelings and information, where everyone can contribute, speak and be heard. Such exchanges can be fun and exciting. You learn how other people think and feel, and you allow new information to influence your own position. There would be sharing between equals resulting in a superior outcome because the intelligence of the group is greater than the sum of its parts.

What the “Yes, but…” effectively does, whether intentional or not, is minimize the argument, intelligence and reasoning of the other person. You have moved into the position of being a master of dismissal. Even while you try to be fair and even-handed, you are perceived as self-righteous and pompous. The inevitable conclusion is that you should permanently strike the “Yes, but…” from your spoken vocabulary.

There are a wide variety of healthy alternatives for you to begin to use to invite balanced and fair exchanges. The simplest is the construction, “Yes, and…” When you use this form, you are adding to the conversation without negating that which has come before. You can even amplify this model by saying, “What really makes sense to me about what you just said is … And I would urge you to consider this…” By modeling such bridging techniques, you invite your partner to return the favor in his/her reply. You can also use curiosity and inquiry to develop additive dialogue techniques. In this style, you genuinely ask for explanation or expansion of what your partner said before you add what you would like him/her to consider from your point of view. It might sound like this: “I’m not sure I fully understand the point you are making here. Would you say more about it? I really want to see your view before I add my thoughts to the mix.”

It can also be useful to state out loud that what you most desire is not to win the argument, but to move together towards a consolidated resolution that incorporates the best of everybody’s thinking. It is not so important where the two of you end up; it is how you feel about each other and about the relationship as you approach your conclusion.

Finally, it is good to keep in mind that your joint decisions are not etched in stone. Either one of you could learn new information the next day that might cause both of you to shift your thinking and your preferences. Be gentle about how you express your wishes, and be cautious about pushing too hard to win an argument while sacrificing closeness and intimacy.

by Dr. Howard Lambert

Do You Always Make Sense?

The answer to this simple question is “yes.” But do you realize that the same is true for everyone else on the planet? People are like icebergs: we only get to see about 20% of them at any moment in time. The remaining 80% remains underwater. This includes their past history, traumas, life events, motivations, values, parenting, alcohol history, education, early teachings, etc. We rarely have the opportunity to ask someone who appears to be making little sense “What are you thinking and feeling that causes you to act this way?” However if we presume that some things inside that person are out of our sight and are having an influence on the current situation we can walk through life with more compassionate understanding for the apparently irrational behaviors of others.

Imagine the following scenario: you are standing in a grocery store check-out line with about 20 items in your cart. You have not had a good day and you find yourself grumpy and irritable. In front of you is a 40-something aged woman carrying a small child and nothing but a single gallon of milk in her cart. You look at the express lines and see just a few people in those lines. “Shouldn’t she be in one of those lines?” You feel critical and angry. “What is she doing here? She is wasting my valuable time. What is wrong with her judgment?” You rant like this in your head as you wait your turn. Your blood pressure goes up as you get angry. To make matters worse when it is her time to checkout she hands the baby to the cashier who smiles and coos and puts the baby to her face. As more time goes by you can hardly restrain yourself from speaking angrily to the clerk. When you move up to the cash register the cashier smiles and asks if you are having a nice day. You control your anger and instead say in an irritated and mildly sarcastic tone “Cute kid.” As she rings up your items the cashier says sincerely: “Thank you. That is my baby. My husband was killed in Afghanistan five months ago, and now I have to work here to get ends to meet. That was my mom. She is only allowed to bring him by once a day. These brief visits are precious to me.”

Of course your perception and judgment of the woman and the situation change in an instant. Suddenly it all makes sense and you understand. Your anger washes away and you feel compassion for the woman, her son, her Mom and even for the fallen soldier.

So consider this the next time you are fighting with your spouse. You do not allow yourself to say “You are not making any sense!!” Instead you say, “Tell me what it is that allows you to see this situation the way that you do. From what I know and what I see I cannot figure out how you are viewing this.” This will enable you to adopt a more patient attitude that communicates respect and concern to your partner rather than judgment and arrogance. You now realize that whenever you say (or think) “You are not making sense” what you really mean is “You are not making sense to me.”

If only people would think and feel the way you do, they would always make sense to you. However, this is not likely to happen very often. That is because their hidden 80% is totally different from your unseen 80%. The more you live with this deep understanding of individual differences, the more you learn to be tolerant and even respectful of the differences in other peoples’ world views and value systems. The next time your partner seems to assert a ridiculous position or a cowboy driver speeds past you in the right lane and cuts in front of you, you can adopt a posture of curiosity and wonder to yourself what it is in their life that supports the behavior that seems so unreasonable to you.

If you cannot figure out “where your partner is coming from” do not attack their position, instead ask for more information!

A Death Knell for Your Relationship

The research of John Gottman, PhD, has documented that there are a few specific behaviors that are highly correlated with failure in marriage. One of them is CONTEMPT. Contemptuousness is a set of mostly non-verbal behaviors that convey disgust to your partner. Chances are that you have acted this way in your relationship. It starts out subtly with sighs and shrugs as your partner is talking to you. Soon you start looking down and away while your partner is talking about something important to him/her. Later you learn to tune your partner out completely as if he/she was not even there. The message you are sending: “You are unimportant and not worth listening to.”

As the distance in the relationship increases, you move to more direct displays of disgust: You roll your eyes when your partner is speaking, or you sneer with your upper lip. Do not think these behaviors go unnoticed. They are like a knife in your spouse’s heart. You are demonstrating that you believe that you are better than your partner, and your behaviors feel condescending, even shaming, to them. Every episode of these behaviors moves the two of you closer to separation and divorce. These behaviors must be stopped dead in their tracks. If you are careening down this ugly path and you do not stop the condescension, you might move right into name-calling and bald-faced mockery. Clearly such moves do not invite your partner into a safe conversation with mutual respect at its core. You are picking a fight and trying to land a knock-out blow directly on your partner’s ego.

The path out of this quagmire lies in realizing that the goal is not winning the fight. No matter who “wins,” the relationship loses – every time! The goal is to create a contempt free zone where you listen carefully to each other and have collaborative conversations about the important topics. Reconciliation only occurs between equals.

It is important to stop in the middle of a fight and ask yourself, “How are we doing as a couple as we talk about this subject?” If it feels like a winner-takes-all fight, STOP whatever you are doing and do something softer, nicer, and with more overt respect for your spouse’s position. Consider that your spouse’s position makes just as much sense to him/her as your viewpoint does to you. Remember that respect is the minimum of love, and contempt is its polar opposite! Contempt cannot co-exist with a loving relationship. The person you verbally beat up this afternoon will not want to snuggle with you when you get into bed this evening. If you want your partner to roll over, put his/her arms around you and say, “I love you,” you have to help your partner feel loved – or at least respected – all day long.

By Dr. Howard Lambert,
Colorado Licensed Psychologist

Relationship Tip: Do People Find You Arrogant?

It is not uncommon in your daily casual conversations to speak offensively to even your closest friends. For example, you tell other people they are wrong, tell them what they really meant by what they just said, or you invoke higher authorities to support your personal beliefs. You love to win arguments because it momentarily makes you feel powerful or important inside of yourself. You fail to see that you “win” at the expense of the other person (i.e. the loser).

It may be true that, in any given area of discourse, you have more information than the person you are talking to. But do you really want to feel falsely inflated while making your partner feel stupid? Loving relationships flourish when you work to create a collaborative conversation in which everyone’s viewpoints are valued and folded into the final decision. You have been in conversations during which you learn new information, digest it and reach a new conclusion. When talking with someone who communicates respect and personal interest, you feel enriched by the new information and happy with your new conclusion. When the delivery of the new information seems to come from a position of that person stooping to give you what s/he knows, you grow annoyed and resentful even when you know they are correct. It is all in the delivery.

To avoid having this unintended effect, you must be aware to your tones, posture and mannerisms. Eighty percent of communication comes through the non-verbal cues you give off as you send your messages to the other person. The remaining twenty percent is in your choice of language. Let’s look at both of these areas.

The non-verbal check-in comes by attending to your attitude and your internal self-talk. If you are thinking, “You must be crazy to believe that nonsense,” or “You can be such an irrational bitch,” or “You really are a controlling SOB,” how do you think your tones will sound? On the other hand, if you are thinking, “We really see this in two very different ways,” or “You are my beloved, and I think you have bad information,” or “I will wait until you are done speaking and then share this new information I have learned,” you will inevitably sound more cooperative and collaborative.

The language you use often reveals your inner attitude. There are three common insulting forms of speech people use when arguing with one another.

1) When you are arrogant, pompous and filled with yourself, you say things such as “That’s totally wrong,” “You are so full of s—t,” “That is not what happened,” “You don’t know what you are talking about.” This is called “talking to be right” (i.e. “I know what the truth is.”)

2) A second form of obnoxious talking down to your spouse is the Emily Post Position. Here you say, “Everybody knows that it’s customary to …” This leaves your partner feeling like an uninformed idiot only because he/she has a thought that is different from your own.

3) Finally, there is “Quote The Expert.” This involves referencing some knowledgeable expert who has much more credibility than either of you and happens to agree with whatever position you are espousing.

You make these speaking errors because our culture sets you up to fight to be right, to win at all costs, and to feel personally gratified when you land a good blow (metaphorically) on your partner’s argument. To change your tones, your attitude and your spoken behavior, you need to practice living in a new relational paradigm. You must practice telling yourself that closeness and intimacy is far more important in the flow of your life than feeling a momentary burst of righteousness at your partner’s expense.

How can you talk to each other with respect, compassion and collaboration? You have heard it a hundred times: SPEAK FROM THE “I.” Your personal power is always greatest when you state your own thoughts, feelings, ideas and perceptions. Do not shoot down whatever your partner is saying. Listen to understand. Validate what makes sense in what your partner is saying. Live with the attitude, “There are many ways to handle every situation. Mine is not better than yours; it is just different. Let’s work together to figure out what we want to do in this situation.”

By Dr. Howard Lambert,
Colorado Licensed Psychologist