Dr. Roher

I used to see them all the time: a couple running together. She was friendly and smiling when we passed each other. At times she had a kind word or a comment about my dog, which I took as an acknowledgment of me. He seemed less friendly, at best grunting a “hi” as we ran in opposite directions. She was clearly much younger than he was, as he ran hunched over, and she with her high step.

They ran together every day, early in the morning, following the same route. Their pace seemed to be synchronized, as they ran side by side, at times conversing with one another, at times quiet.

I noticed that, through the years, things with them began to change, slightly at first, then more noticeably. She began to use an iPod, so conversation was no longer an option. She also began to lengthen her step or perhaps increased her speed. I never figured out what happened, but she started to run ahead and he was behind. At first I thought it may be for security, as they were running on a busy road, but then again they never did it before, so why now?

I was then in the process of writing the book “Couples at the Crossroads” and wondered if this is what was happening to this couple as well. Were they getting to the crossroads in their relationship? Or was I just seeing crossroads everywhere because this is what I was working on?

I didn’t want to rush any interpretation solely based on the changes I noticed on how they ran together, or no longer together, as was now the case. So I kept watching them.

As time went by, I noticed that the distance between her and him grew wider. She was still smiling when she passed me and seemed full of energy, while he looked gloomier and gloomier. He didn’t even say hi any longer when we passed each other. He seemed to be lagging further and further behind her and she no longer seemed to care whether he was there or not. There was no doubt about that. I decided this wasn’t my imagination. At times, she was almost a quarter of a mile ahead of him.

Then I didn’t see them for months. I wondered what had happened to them. They had stopped running. Was this a reflection of a much bigger issue?

It was. It was confirmed when somebody told me they got divorced and she moved out of town.

A few months later he began to run again, this time alone. Actually he wasn’t even running any longer. He would walk for a while, then break into a short run and then walk again. His head was down. He no longer looked at anybody when he passed people but looked at the road as though he was intently looking for a lost penny he could never find. He was looking for something that was gone.

It became clear to me now that their running together – and separately – was a microcosm of the gradual disconnection that had been developing between them, a reflection of a bigger disconnection in their relationship. I wonder if they were even conscious of how their emotional disconnection reverberated in many other areas of their lives.

And, I kept asking myself, would I have noticed, had I not been writing a book on couples at the crossroads?

Tags: arizona psychologist, counseling a marriage, counseling for couples, couples marriage counseling, jungian analyst, jungian psychologist, jungian therapist, psychologist arizona, therapist, therapist counseling

When couples living together break up, sometimes no one moves out. Why? The answer is money. Some people who can’t save the relationship still live together to save money. How can two people live in this situation? Here are my five tips:

• Sit down and go over the finances BEFORE anything else. Leave feelings out of this as much as possible. Come up with a plan that both feel is fair and feasible. Try to divide things up as closely as possible to 50/50.

• Set a goal such as: “We are going to be living in the same place until …” This could be a time frame: six months, three months, one year and so forth. This could be a financial frame: “We are going to live together until we both have paid our joint debts” or “until one of us has paid off what he or she owes the other” or “until one of us finds a job. This should happen within a certain number of weeks.” Make a commitment to each other to respect your joint plan and not change it unless you discuss it first.

• Share with each other information that affects the two of you. Did one of you find a new job or did you or your partner lose one? Is there a major change that may affect your mutual agreement? Couples should also share minor changes that affect each other. For instance, if you decide to spend the night somewhere else and you have always been very consistent with your schedule, leave a note or send a text to your partner about this change so he or she does not worry about your whereabouts. This doesn’t mean you need to tell your partner everything you do and everywhere you go, but it is common courtesy to let your partner know that you are OK.

• Talk about your feelings for one another. Quite likely one of you is emotionally ready to move on, whereas the other may still be hoping your relationship can be repaired. It is important you know where each of you stands.

• Discuss how you want to handle new relationships. How does each of you feel about the other getting involved with someone else? Is it OK to bring a new friend home? How can you do this in a courteous and respectful way?

Tags: arizona psychologist, counseling a marriage, counseling for couples, couples marriage counseling, jungian analyst, jungian psychologist, jungian therapist, psychologist arizona, therapist counseling

The idea for our book about couples at the crossroads in their relationships came to me one day as I was thinking about how to reach more people than just my patients with information I thought would be helpful to them. After all, we are all in relationships of one sort or another. We all have been in relationships from the first day of our lives and on and off since then. So I figured some information that addressed the “common denominator” to most interpersonal problems would be useful! And I think this is the core message of the book: No matter how different your individual circumstances are, there are some basic issues that come up in all relationships. These are the issues addressed and explained in the book we are working on.

Dr. Susan Schwartz and I began to write and meet regularly to discuss what the book would look like. We would e-mail our parts, read them out loud to one another, revise them and move on.

We typically met in restaurants. You can imagine how much food consumption is associated with the writing of this book! We can say we tried a lot of restaurants in town that offer lunch, typically sticking to one we liked for a while, then moving on to the next one once we got tired of the same food. We also moved to different parts of town, covering most of the Phoenix area.

I typically write in the morning. Like now, it’s before 6:30 am and I have been at the computer for over an hour. Mornings are times when my mind is fresh and full of ideas. It is also when I still remember my dreams and spend some time pondering over their messages. At times they provide flashes of insight into what I am doing.

I write with Mozart. Not the composer. Mozart is my dog. He lies under my desk while I write and keeps me company.

I rescued Mozart through a rescue group for Golden Retrievers. He was neglected from birth. When we adopted him last spring, he had never had a bath, been on a leash, driven in a car or visited the vet. No one even pet him. Now he follows me everywhere and gets anxious when I leave because he is afraid I will abandon him. So I guess I have become his mom. He is extremely attached to me.

When we got his papers, I saw his mother’s “family” name was Mozart. Mozart also happens to be one of my favorite composers. The name was totally spot on!

Can you see how the issue of attachment, which I discuss at length in the book as being the bedrock of all human connections, applies to relationships between dogs and animals as well? Dogs love you unconditionally, just like children do. It’s adults who at times mess things up. And when that happens, we hope our upcoming book can help those couples reconnect.

Tags: arizona psychologist, counseling a marriage, counseling for couples, couples marriage counseling, jungian analyst, jungian psychologist, jungian therapist, psychologist arizona, therapist counseling

I call it “debriefing,” you can call it anything you want. It is a few minutes at the end of each day that you take for yourself. You will be surprised how effective it is in relaxing you and clearing your mind.

This is how it works:

•Select a room in the house that is quiet and where you won’t have any interruptions. Turn your phone off and forget about it for five minutes or so. Tell your partner, children, pets and anyone else who may be in the house not to disturb you until you come out of the room again.
•Find a comfortable chair to sit on.
•Lower the lights but make sure that the room is not totally dark.
•Close your eyes.
•Now, think about the most salient part of your day: was it successful? Did you accomplish everything you had set up to do? Why did you choose that particular moment of the day, instead of any other?
•Observe your feelings as you think about that particular moment: are you anxious, tense, happy, relaxed, upset, or anything else?
•Don’t try to talk yourself into changing your feelings, reassure yourself if you feel insecure, or chastise yourself if you made a mistake. Just observe with no judgment.
•If the moment was a successful one, congratulate yourself.
•If the moment was not successful, think if there anything you can do right now to settle whatever wasn’t settled during the day, like writing yourself a note for something you can do tomorrow.
•Now, focus on letting go. Observe, with your eyes closed, how whatever it is that you were thinking about is moving, slowly, further and further away from you, until it disappears entirely.
•Tell yourself it is gone now and commit to not revisiting until tomorrow.
•Return to the present moment and the room you are in.
•Open your eyes and observe what’s around you.
•Shift in your mind from what you were thinking earlier to where you are right now.

You can now go back to your family or to doing whatever it is that you want to do before going to bed. You will find that you are better able to relax and keep good boundaries between where you were earlier in the day and where you are now.

Try to practice this every night, ideally at about the same time and following the same routine.

Good night!

Tags: Dr. Roher, manage stress, psychotherapy, relax

Let’s discuss what approaches to deal with difficult situations are effective in helping us manage our stress levels and increasing our abilities to cope with it.

The number one thing that can help you cope with stress is creating a strong support network around you. Studies over and over indicate that, when we feel supported, comforted, reassured and empathized with by people we love and respect, our abilities to handle stress greatly improve. Likewise, when we are alone, isolated and socially and emotionally disconnected, our strengths decrease considerably, and we are more vulnerable to external and internal stressors.

Do you have a strong support network? Remember that emotions always look much less scary and overwhelming when we have someone who can hold our hand, figuratively, and tell us that everything is going to be ok. Our fears, in particular, can be managed much better in these situations. So, think about how you can strengthen your support system – by being available to people who need you; by reconnecting with people with whom you have not been keeping in touch; by making an effort to reach out through your work, or your place of worship, or through your community or school.

One element that considerably increases your ability to deal with stress is knowledge. The more you know and understand about a situation that could cause stress, the more prepared you will be to deal with it. For instance, one situation that creates a lot of stress for most of us is our health. If we have medical problems, or if we need medical treatment or surgery, the more information we gather on what our condition is and the various treatments, the less stressed we are going to feel. So, get on the Internet and find information. Take the time to talk to your doctors and go to medical appointments with a list already prepared of all the things you want to ask. Go for a second or even a third opinion if necessary, and make sure that you know enough to feel comfortable with your level of knowledge and understanding. Being informed will help you better manage your anxiety. Also, make sure you bring a loved one with you.

Another element that helps you better manage stress is control. The more you feel you have a handle on what’s going on with you and what you need to do, the less likely you will be blindsided by something you didn’t see coming and thus didn’t have time to properly prepare for it.

So, write daily lists of what you need to do, and keep them in a place where, periodically, you can look at them. Consult them throughout the day, and check them off as you get them done.

Organize this list in terms of priorities, from the most to the least important, and make sure you don’t avoid what you don’t like to do! Pushing things aside, even though at first it can provide some relief, in the long run will make you more anxious. If you tackle these disliked things right away, it will reduce the level of stress for you.

These tips for stress management, and others we didn’t mention in this blog for lack of space, have the purpose of changing your assessment of stress. They do so by improving your views about your abilities, assets and strengths. This view, in turn, makes you see the stress as less overwhelming and intense.

Do you have some techniques that you found to be very helpful in dealing with stress? Can you share them with us?

Tags: cope, manage stress, stress, support

Why another blog on 9/11?

Because I want to remember this date by offering something that hopefully can shed further light on some of the repercussions of the fateful events of ten years ago.

As a psychotherapist, I am deeply aware of the importance of traumatic events that occur unpredictably and seemingly without any logical reason, such as the events of 9/11 ten years ago. These events affected each of us individually as well as collectively.

We know that the goal of terrorism isn’t only or even primarily to cause physical destruction, but mainly and more subtlety to cause psychological damage to the people targeted by these heinous and random acts.

The main psychological damage of the 9/11 events is that it forever changed the sense of security each of had prior to that day.

Feeling safe is an important need that all humans have. We seek security from birth on, by developing attachment bonds to people we believe will protect us and take care of us, thus creating and preserving a sense of security and emotional and physical safety that we all need. As we grow up, we continue to maintain this need for safety and achieve it by creating relationships and environments around us that keep dangers at bay. In this way, we can keep fear and anxiety under control.

Prior to 9/11 most of the people living in his country felt safe. Though aware of dangers in the world, in fact, most of us in this country nonetheless felt we had a level of safety that allowed us to pursue our goals and interests. After September 11, however, this sense of safety disappeared and our views of life and the world changed forever.

So, what happens when this feeling of security disappears?

Social psychologists tell us that we tend to react to the loss of perceived security in two ways: by feeling “moral outrage” and a need for “moral cleansing.”
Moral outrage is triggered by ANGER, which pushes us to seek vengeance, to direct our feelings toward the people whom we believe responsible for the terrorist attacks, or to people who are close to them (like people of the same ethnic background, of the same religion, similar political views, and so on.)
More cleansing is triggered by FEAR, which pushes us to adopt those behaviors that tend to reduce our fear by recreating a belief in fundamental goodness and in positive values (offering help, volunteering, getting closer to family, friends, community and people directly affected by the attack.) If we look back at the last ten years, we can see examples of both.

Ten years on, what can we do with what we have learned from this horrific tragedy?

If I were to summarize in a few words the biggest lesson of 9/11, this is what I would say: We learned that we need to acknowledge both our fears and our anger, and channel these legitimate feelings in behaviors and public policies that acknowledge our emotions and express them in healthy, balanced and constructive ways by reinforcing physical and emotional security. We also learned that we need to keep the memories of that day fresh in everybody’s mind, so that we strengthen and reinforce the ties that were built on the loss of many lives and the pain of those left behind.

Tags: psychological, psychotherapy, relationships, safety, security, traumatic

We cannot escape stress. We are surrounded by it in our busy lives, where we tend to get as many things done as possible in as short time as possible.

What is stress? Stress is a normal physical response to situations that are perceived as being dangerous. We perceive our abilities to cope with this danger as being inadequate to handle it. So, we get ready for a fight or flight. When we face a danger, our breathing and heart beat increase, and so does our blood pressure; we sweat, we feel a rush of adrenaline; our muscles get tense, and we become very alert. Stress, therefore, is nature’s ways of protecting us by shifting our body responses into high gear and thus increasing our chances of survival. In this way, we get ready to deal with the danger.

Some stress is to be expected, and, in fact, it can be even positive. However, when it gets too intense, or when it becomes a chronic way of life, we are likely to experience serious health problems, both physically and emotionally.

If the stress persists, in fact, our body can develop symptoms like aches and pain all over our body; we may suffer from digestive problems, we may have difficulties concentrating and remembering; we may feel anxious most of the time, irritable, overwhelmed; we cannot relax. I could go on and on, but you get my point of why acute or chronic stresses are bad for you.

And who wants all this?

When we feel stressed, we try to cope with all these symptoms by getting our minds off the areas that cause stress. However, while some of these ways are healthy, some are not. Drinking too much, for instance, or relying on drugs, cigarettes, overeating or oversleeping obviously are not good ways of coping with stress. They don’t remove the cause of it and don’t help us learn good and healthy coping skills. They are, however, quite popular because, temporarily, they allow us to tune out how we feel, so we can better manage our emotions and relax for a little bit. When their effects are over, though, we find ourselves in the same original position we were in at the beginning, or even worse, and this pushes us to seek more relief by using again. Eventually we become dependent on some substance to make us feel better, in this way adding another problem to the original one.

Some healthy ways of dealing with stress, temporarily, are: taking a relaxing bath; going for a walk; doing some relaxation and meditation exercises; listening to calming music, and so on. These are ways of getting our minds off the reason(s) for our stress and, giving us a needed break. However, they don’t address the cause(s) of the problem. So, none of the ways we discussed so far, be them healthy or unhealthy, really help you in the long run.

Are there better ways of coping with stress? Absolutely there are. These are ways that help reduce the distance between the seriousness of the problem and our abilities to cope with it. Once we feel that we have the ability to handle a stressful situation, in fact, we can reduce the amount of stress we feel.

In the following blog we will discuss some of these healthy ways of assessing both situations that can create stress and our resources in dealing with them.
Think of some of the ways in which you cope with stress: what’s helpful and effective to you? Write down some of your answers and compare them to what we will suggest in our next blog!

Tags: cope, coping, Dr. Roher, manage stress, psychotherapy, relax, stress, stressed

In the previous blog we discussed some of the main reasons why couples tend to be hesitant to seek professional help when they experience serious relational problems. In this blog we will discuss what makes therapy work.

The therapist, in addition to his or her knowledge of relational problems and experience in the new field of the science of relationships, provides something for couples that most certainly nobody else can provide for them and that is absolutely indispensable for the health and renewal of any relationship. He or she can provide A SAFE ENVIRONMENT WHERE COUPLES CAN BRING UP THEIR PROBLEMS AND ADDRESS THE FEELINGS RELATED TO THEM without the fear of being attacked, ignored, dismissed, ridiculed, as it may happen if they were to talk to one another on their own. Let me explain what I mean.

When problems start to crop up in intimate relationships, feelings get hurt. The emotional safety partners felt with each other goes away. Now they are defensive when together, guarded. They don’t open up with each other any longer; and they don’t share how they truly feel. Often they don’t even know themselves how they truly feel, or where their feelings come from. They are only in touch with how angry they are at their partners; how betrayed, disappointed and frustrated they feel, and how dismayed and hopeless they are by how things devolved in their relationship.

So, certain areas – I might add, the most important ones for the health of an intimate relationship – no longer get addressed. Instead, they get shoved under the carpet. However, what gets ignored doesn’t disappear, but continues to fester, maintaining aversive emotions for one another. This situation can continue without any resolution and turn into a chronic way of being together, with both partners staying on the surface in their interactions with one another, and carefully avoiding anything than goes deeper. Avoidance may maintain a certain status quo, but it doesn’t help couples move toward a clearer understanding of the dysfunctional patterns in which they are stuck. So, couples caught in these unhealthy situations don’t have any chance to improve.

Therapy, on the other hand, can provide the safe environment that allows for issues and feelings to be raised and verbalized, heard without judgment and discussed, leading to increased understanding and acceptance. It is when couples can get past their anger and resentments at each other and reach down to deeper feelings and share them so that they can begin to reconnect and re-establish the emotional safety together that had been lost.

So, the fear of opening up to a stranger, the fear of being judged, criticized, and even the cost – after all, the cost of a breakup is by far much bigger and much more painful to sustain than the cost of therapy – are not good enough reasons to avoid therapy. Remember this when you are faced with this option, and don’t make a decision based on fear and share, but one based on a clear determination of what’s best for your relationship.

Tags: couples, intimate, relationship, therapist, therapy

Many couples who experience relational problems at some point may consider the option of couples counseling. They often do so when they get so frustrated and stymied by what is happening to them that they do not know what else to do. So, unfortunately, therapy becomes the last option for a lot of distressed couples, rather than an aid earlier on, when couples first notice problematic areas in their relationship.

Seeking couples counseling is indeed a difficult decision to make, particularly for those individuals who have never been in therapy before and don’t quite know what to expect. There are many reasons for this reticence.

First of all, it is uncomfortable for most to “spill their guts” in front of a stranger. Relational problems are private, intimate. They touch the very core of who we are. They expose our deepest insecurities and fears. They make us feel naked, with no way of protecting ourselves from the accusations and attacks.

Additionally, or perhaps as a way of avoiding an uncomfortable exposure, there is a tendency to believe that one should be able to address and resolve his or her problems without having to relay on someone else, and that relying on someone else is a sign of weakness.

As a psychotherapist, I often hear couples commenting, “How can someone who knows nothing about me help me feel better?” and “How can a stranger understand why I feel the way I do and help us feel love again for each other?”

The issue of money also can be used to avoid therapy. And, indeed, therapy can create some financial stress for some already distressed couples.

All of this is understandable. After all, we are confused about our relationship, and we believe that, more than anybody else, we know what is going on, so how can someone who knows nothing about it have any advantage over us?

These are some of the reasons why couples, when they finally decide to get to a therapist’s office, typically get there three years later than they should have! This is a shame because, by then, their dysfunctional ways of being together may have caused irreparable damage, changing partners’ feelings so much that they don’t seem to have any love left for one another.

Paradoxically, it is because a therapist is neither a friend nor a member of the family but a stranger that he or she can help. It is by being an outsider, knowing nothing about one or the other partner, hence not taking sides, that a therapist can remain as objective as possible and focus not on one or the other partner, but on their RELATIONSHIP. Also, we know that KNOWING what may be going on is not enough to remove the problems and regain the closeness that was there before. Something else is needed, and a therapist can provide that.

In the next blog we will discuss what this something is.

Tags: counseling, couples, relationship, therapist, therapy

In this seventh and last blog on sexting, we discuss what happens after one partner has acknowledged sexting with a third person outside of the primary relationship. How can the two partners rebuild their relationship, or is this impossible to do?

First of all, it is important to say that each situation is different, so what applies to one may not apply to another, as there isn’t a single answer that applies to all of them.

At one extreme sexting may be part of a much bigger pattern of dysfunctional behaviors, just the tip of the iceberg. These behaviors may have been going on for a long time, with the person acting inappropriately and feeling no remorse about their actions. The two partners may have been estranged for quite some time, unable or uninterested in reconnecting at an emotional and physical level. Couples here, if interested in addressing these dysfunctional issues, need to bring everything to the surface in order to grasp the full impact of the problems on their relationship.

They often may need professional help, like couple counseling, sexual addiction counseling, and/or individual psychotherapy that searches deeper for the root causes of behaviors.

At the other extreme, a partner may have been sexting for the first time, for a very short time, with a familiar person. He or she may be remorseful and guilty, conflicted about these acts and feeling bad about them, even while continuing them. In general, the relationship between the two partners is a healthy one. Both feel close and loving toward each other. Neither has any thoughts of disaffection and/or plans to leave. These couples need an open and frank discussion about what’s going on and what each thinks, feels and wants from their relationship and commitment to one another.

In between these two extremes, there are all kinds of permutations and combinations of intimate relationships, with different degrees of communication and emotional and physical connection. Additionally, one or both partners in the relationship may have various degrees of dysfunction and pathology that influence their actions.

It is, to a large extent, what partners do once they open up the discussion with one another that determines how the relationship will fare. If both partners are interested and willing to work at repairing their relationship, one conversation doesn’t do it. They need to make a commitment to talk on a regular basis; to find the time, at the end of each day, to sit with one another and share their thoughts and FEELINGS. They need to be honest while being empathic; confronting while expressing compassion, and collaborative, instead of adversarial. There has to be time for expressing anger and hurt, betrayal and disappointment, shame and guilt, humiliation and remorse. There has to be an opportunity for each partner to listen without attacking; to be emotionally available and committed to the work.

Beyond that, there has to be time to understand, together, what went wrong; where the disconnection occurred; what triggered the impulse to seek elsewhere something that seemed appealing and fun. Can that be recreated IN THE RELATIONSHIP? The focus should be on how to do so, by being open about likes and dislikes, different views of relationships, expectations, goals. Together, couples should work at rebuilding the feeling of emotional safety that used to be in their relationship, but that at some point disappeared. Additionally, a discussion needs to take place about the future: how can these kinds of actions be prevented from occurring again?

Can all of this be achieved? It can, if couples commit to the hard work that brings about deeper understanding, stronger feelings for one another and a closer loving bond.

Tags: behavior, couple, psychotherapy, relationship, sexting