]]> http://www.drmichelle.com/blog/dr-michelle-on-today-discussing-toxic-people/feed/ 0 http://www.drmichelle.com/news_and_events/events/dr-michelle-on-today-discussing-surviving-divorce/ http://www.drmichelle.com/news_and_events/events/dr-michelle-on-today-discussing-surviving-divorce/#comments Mon, 09 Aug 2010 14:00:23 +0000 drmichelle http://www.drmichelle.com/?p=1822 Dr. Michelle joined Kathie Lee and Hoda to give tips on how to move forward after a divorce.

Fighting Happily Ever After

By ELIZABETH BERNSTEIN

If you fought with your sweetheart last night, does that mean that your relationship is on the rocks?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Couples are more likely to divorce if they exhibit negative behavior during a conflict before they get married. WSJ’s Bonds columnist Elizabeth Bernstein provides you with tips on how to fight better, which psychologists say can save your marriage.

Research shows it’s how we fight—where, when, what tone of voice and words we use, whether we hear each other out fairly—that’s critical. If we argue poorly, we may end up headed for divorce court. Yet if we argue well, experts say, we actually may improve our relationship.

Esther and Bill Bleuel learned to change the way they fight. A few years ago, they had a serious spat while driving down Interstate 5 in California. The topic was a sore one: His adult daughters from his first marriage. Ms. Bleuel felt her husband paid more attention to them than to her.

Suddenly, Ms. Bleuel, who was driving, saw red lights flashing behind her. Glancing quickly at her speedometer, she realized she was traveling 96 miles per hour in a 65 mph zone. She pulled over, and a policeman approached the car. Before she had a chance to speak, though, her husband said: “Officer, it is my fault. I was arguing with my wife and she got upset.”

Ms. Bleuel, a 64-year-old psychotherapist from Westlake Village, Calif., says that the policeman looked stunned, then replied: “Oh boy, I know what it’s like—I’m married, too. But please, in the future, try to go easy on her.”

It’s great advice for everyone, right? But how do we do it? How can we learn to keep our cool when we’re upset? How long should we let a disagreement go on? Is there always a “winner”?

“All couples disagree—it’s how they disagree that makes the difference,” says Howard Markman, professor of psychology at the University of Denver and co-director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies. For 30 years, Dr. Markman has conducted research that looks at how couples deal with conflict. A key finding: Couples who argue well are happier. Or, as Dr. Markman says, “You can get angry, but it’s important to talk without fighting.”

Tips on Disagreeing the Right Way

• DO IT: The problem will not go away if you don’t talk about it.

• COOL OFF: Pick a time when you can return to the argument with less emotion—ideally, within 24 hours and in person.

• DON’T ASSUME: You probably don’t know exactly what your partner is thinking, even if you think you do.

• FLEXIBILITY ISN’T WEAKNESS: You can change your position without “losing.”

• SEE THE OTHER SIDE: This is the best way to downgrade a heated conflict into a momentary disagreement.

• HOLD HANDS: Sit close, make eye contact, which can help make your interactions more positive.

• ARGUE IN FRONT OF THE KIDS: Do this only if you’re modeling good argument techniques.

• AGREE TO DISAGREE: Recognize that you are in a partnership. Look for the middle ground.

• CHOOSE YOUR WORDS CAREFULLY: You can never take them back.

Source: WSJ reporting

The latest findings from his research, published in June in the “Journal of Family Psychology,” show that couples who reported they had negative communication before marriage—criticizing each other’s opinions, rolling their eyes, leaving the room—were more likely to end up divorcing.

Although research shows that the biggest issues couples argue about are money, sex, work, kids and housework, we all know the possibilities for conflict are endless. I’ve been asking couples what they argue about and have heard about plenty of fights over home renovations, plus sports cars, mini-skirts, how to a pack and whether to buy mayonnaise or Miracle Whip. One man said he and his girlfriend argue over whether to argue.

Diana Miller, a 65-year-old financial advisor from San Diego, once fought with a former boyfriend over Trout Amandine. She had spent more than an hour preparing it one evening. Her boyfriend loved the dinner, she says, but he became upset when she tossed the leftover wrapper and fish skin in the trash.

“I couldn’t believe how unhappy he became about a potential fish stench when I had just cooked this great meal,” she says. “I felt underappreciated and furious.” Ms. Miller responded by stomping her foot and telling her boyfriend that she was going for a walk—and they could discuss the issue when she returned.

It may be helpful to note that the experts make no distinction between arguing, fighting, bickering or even nagging (I was horrified to learn). They’re all ways of expressing disagreement with another person that often become destructive, with one or both people using insults, clamming up or storming off.

Why do we do this? For starters, many of us learned by watching our parents have destructive arguments—or bottle up their anger and give each other the silent treatment. We’ve also been raised to believe that success means winning—and if one side wins, the other must lose.

The Juggle

• To Fight Right, Have a “Couple’s Meeting”?

Now, here’s the good news: It’s possible to learn to argue in a much healthier way. The first thing you have to do is talk to the other person. “The longer a conflict stews, the more likely we are going to get into catastrophe mode,” says Jennifer Samp, associate professor in the speech communication department at the University of Georgia and a fellow at the Institute for Behavioral Research.

“We are mulling it and thinking about it and it will become bigger and scarier and more threatening than if we are able to talk about it if it just comes up,” she says.

Dr. Markman has developed a method, for helping couples settle disputes, called the “speaker-listener technique,” which he details in a newly-revised edition of a book he wrote with several colleagues: “Fighting for Your Marriage.”

He says that couples who have a disagreement should call a “couple’s meeting” to discuss the issue without looking for a solution—and set a time limit of 15 minutes. They may flip a coin to see who speaks first.

The person who wins the toss, let’s say it’s the wife, should explain her position in two to three statements. Her husband should listen, then repeat what he heard, to show that he understood. The wife should then speak again, further explaining her position. And, again, the husband should listen and repeat her points.

They then reverse roles and repeat those same steps.

Ray Bartkus

.

So she asked to use the “speaker-listener technique” and told him she interpreted his coolness as anger and asked if that was the message he intended. He apologized for his mood, explaining that he’d had a tough day at work.

“Now we see it less as arguing,” says Ms. Kendall-Gebel. “It’s less competitive and more cooperative.”

The Bleuels, of the speeding incident, fight differently today. (The officer never did give them a ticket.) Subsequently, Ms. Bleuel earned a master’s degree in conflict resolution at Pepperdine. It was there, she says, that she learned how to argue, including how to set a time limit and other rules.One recent weekend, she and her husband sat down at their kitchen table and politely discussed some home renovations, which they disagreed upon.

“The best thing was that at the end of it all, he was comfortable and so was I,” says Ms. Bleuel. “It’s a much easier way to live.”

—Write to Elizabeth Bernstein at bonds@wsj.com and follow her column at www.Facebook.com/EBernsteinWSJ.

Copyright 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved

But new research is revealing the disorder can bring both profits and perils.

Though perfection is an impossible goal, striving for it can be a boon for one’s health, causing one to stick to exercise programs to a tee, say, or follow a strict regimen for treating chronic illnesses like type 2 diabetes. But the same lofty goals can mean added mental pressure when mistakes are made and the resistance to asking for help from others in fear of revealing one’s true, imperfect self.

In fact studies show the personality trait of perfectionism is linked to poor physical health and an increased risk of death.

Researchers are just beginning to tease apart this complex trait and its relation to health.

“Perfectionism is a virtue to be extolled definitely,” said Prem Fry, a psychology professor at Trinity Western University in Canada. “But beyond a certain threshold, it backfires and becomes an impediment,” she said.

Fry and several of her colleagues recently spoke at a symposium on perfectionism and health at the Association for Psychological Science convention in Boston.

What is perfectionism?
While some might aim to be perfect in certain areas of their life — such as an athlete who must stick to a grueling workout schedule — true perfectionism comes in a generalized form.

“You should want to be perfect across a variety of aspects of your life,” said Gordon Flett, a psychology professor at York University in Canada.

“It’s natural to be perfectionistic in the thing that matters the most, like your job  — if you’re a surgeon, there’s no room for error,” Flett said. “[But] you don’t want that same person to be going home and using those same standards to evaluate family members, which causes stress,” he said. “It has to generalize.”

Perfectionism tends to have two components: a positive side, including things like setting high standards for themselves; and a negative side, which involves more deleterious factors, such as having doubts and concerns over mistakes and feeling pressure from others to be perfect.

Some scientists have argued a subset of these high-achievers can be classified as “positive perfectionists,” those who reap the benefits of perfectionism without falling victim to its ills. However, others say that while perfectionism might seem to be advantageous in certain situations, it always has a dark side that inevitably rears its head. For instance, a perfectionist might seem fine under normal circumstances, but lose control under stress.

While the existence of “positive perfectionists” is still debated, there’s no doubt the trait can be quite counterproductive in some cases.

“That, in essence is the paradox of perfectionism, that certain people have extraordinarily high standards, but objectively can often look very dysfunctional in terms of their daily functioning, their physical health, their achievement,” said Patricia DiBartolo, a psychology professor at Smith College, in Northampton, Mass. “They flunk out of college, and the reason why is they’re so perfectionistic they can’t actually achieve any goal; as you begin the process, it’s just impossible.”

Perfectionism and lifespan
Compared with the number of studies looking at perfectionism’s impact on mental health, relatively few have examined the condition’s toll on physical health. Some earlier work has linked the trait with various ailments, including migraines, chronic pain and asthma.

Fry and her colleagues recently looked at the relationship between perfectionism and overall risk of death. The study followed 450 adults aged 65 and older for 6.5 years. The participants completed an initial questionnaire to assess their level of perfectionism and other personality traits.

Those with high perfectionism scores, meaning they placed high expectations on themselves to be perfect, had a 51-percent increased risk of death compared to those with low scores.

The researchers suspect high levels of stress and anxiety, which are known to be linked with perfectionism, might contribute to the decrease in lifespan.

Next, they reasoned that if perfectionism showed this association in a normal population, it might have an even greater impact on those with a chronic disease, which would put their bodies under even more stress.

But after following 385 patients with type 2 diabetes for 6.5 years, the researchers actually saw the opposite effect. Those with high perfectionism scores had a 26-percent lower risk of death than those with low scores.

The results suggest that in certain situations, perfectionism can have advantages. With type 2 diabetes, scrupulous attention to blood sugar levels and strict adherence to dietary rules can have payoffs in terms of reducing disease severity, the researchers suspect.

“[Perfectionists] are very self-critical, they are not satisfied ever with their performance,” Fry said.

“In this particular study on diabetes, those kinds of perfectionistic attitudes, normally we would regard them to be dysfunctional attitudes, but in the case of the diabetic sample, they turned out to be very positive traits,” she said. “These individuals were highly self-critical, they worked harder than the average person to adhere to the instructions of the physician or the attending doctor in staying with all the do’s and dont’s of diabetic diet constraints.”

“So they ended up taking better care of themselves through self-management than people who were sort of more easygoing and lax,” she said.

Who expects perfection?
Some studies suggest the role of perfectionism on health might depend on who’s imposing the high standards.

In 2006, Danielle Molnar, of Brock University in Canada, examined the perfectionism-health link in nearly 500 Canadian adults between the ages of 24 and 35.

The study assessed participants for three different dimensions of perfectionism: self-oriented perfectionism, in which individuals impose high standards on themselves; socially prescribed perfectionism, where individuals feel others expect them to be perfect; and other-oriented, in which individuals place high standards on others.

People experience these perfectionist traits to varying degrees. One person might score high on all three, or they might fall into one extreme or another such as self-oriented perfectionism.

The researchers found socially prescribed perfectionism was associated with poorer physical health, which in this case meant individuals experienced more symptoms of health problems, had more doctors visits, took more days off work, and gave themselves low scores when asked to rate their health.

On the other hand, self-oriented perfectionism was associated with better physical health.

So what’s behind this relationship?

One factor could be the degree to which people feel happy or sad, known in psychology as positive or negative affect. The 2006 paper showed general negative feelings, including feeling anxious and upset, could partially explain the relationship they saw between socially prescribed perfectionism and poorer health. And feelings of happiness explained self-oriented perfection’s link with better health.

However, the pathway that connects perfectionism to health is likely more complex.

For instance, in more recent research, Molnar found self-imposed perfectionism conferred pros and cons with regard to health that canceled each other out.

“On one hand it was related to higher levels of stress in students, which was related to lower levels of health,” Molnar said. “On the other hand it had a protective factor, because it was also related to lower levels of high risk behavior,” which includes things such as smoking and drinking.

“You really have to look at the mechanism, not just looking at how perfectionism is directly related to health, but what pathways link it to health?” Molnar said. “Unless you look at the mechanism, a lot of the time [the effect] washes itself out because it will have opposing relationships.”

Other factors
Those who feel others expect them to be perfect might also experience declines in health as a result of distancing themselves from other people, and any support from friends and family.

“We know social support is a huge indicator of physical health. If you tend to have strong bonds with people, good family life, good friendships, you tend to be healthier,” Molnar said. “And we know socially prescribed perfectionists, they tend to have this sense of disconnection with other people, so it would make sense that one of the ways they would experience poorer health is because of this sense of social disconnection from others.”

Even if others reach out to help, socially prescribed perfectionists may view the kind actions as critical.

“Even when the levels of received support, so the support they’re actually getting, is the same, there’s been some work showing that perfectionists will actually appraise it differently,” Molnar said. “They don’t see it as nurturing and supportive, but that people are being critical of them, and they’re interfering, they’re perceiving that people aren’t there for them,” she said.

Other perfectionists might hold off on asking for help altogether, because they don’t want to let on that there’s anything wrong, or that they’re imperfect in some way.

“If you have to ask someone for help, well that means you’re flawed, that means you’re weak, right? And so I think there’s also that presentation of not wanting to seem like you need help from others,” said Fuschia Sirois, of the University of Windsor in Canada.

Poor health could also be the result of perfectionists leaving little time to care for themselves, while spending every minute striving for perfection, Sirois said.

Future work
More work is needed to untangle the intricate relationship between perfectionism and health.

For instance, few studies have examined perfectionism in older adults, which might be due to the incorrect notion that perfectionism eases with age, Fry said.

“We’ve gone along with the misconception that if people are perfectionistic in their earlier stages of life, that in late life their perfectionism sort of automatically tapers off, but it doesn’t tapper off,” she said.

Perfectionism in the elderly is of particular concern because, although they still have the same high expectations, they are unable to perform as well, which could ultimately lead to greater depression and anxiety, Fry said.

Researchers should also focus on understanding exactly why perfectionism is associated with poorer health or better health, depending on the situation.

“Without knowing the whys we can’t intervene, we can’t help these people,” Molnar said. “These people are walking around with incredibly unrealistic expectations … they’re not just striving for excellence, they’re striving for absolute perfection, which of course is impossible. So they’re setting themselves up for more failure experiences,” she said.

“We have to start understanding what’s going on in the middle so how can we help these people.”

© 2010 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

by Rachael Rettner

Those who pine over a lost love might have a biological reason for their prolonged yearning. New brain research suggests getting over romantic rejection might be akin to kicking an addiction.

The study is one of the first to examine the brains of the recently broken-hearted who have trouble letting go of their relationship.

The researchers found that, for heartbroken men and women, looking at photographs of former partners activated regions in the brain associated with rewards, addiction cravings, control of emotions, feelings of attachment and physical pain and distress.

The results provide insight into why it might be hard for some people to get over a break up, and why, in some cases, people are driven to commit extreme behaviors, such as stalking and homicide, after losing love.

“Romantic love is an addiction,” said study author Helen E. Fisher, a biological anthropologist at Rutgers University who studies love. “It’s a very powerfully wonderful addiction when things are going well and a perfectly horrible addiction when things are going poorly,” she said.

The researchers speculate the brain’s response to romantic rejection may have an evolutionary basis.

“I think the brain circuitry for romantic love evolved millions of years ago, to enable our ancestors to focus their mating energy on just one person at a time and start that mating process,” Fisher said. “And when you’ve been rejected in love, you have lost life’s greatest prize, which is a mating partner.”

“This brain system becomes activated probably to help you try to win this person back so you focus on them and crave them and try to get them back,” she said.

Brains of the heart-broken
Fisher and her colleagues scanned the brains of 15 college-aged volunteers (10 women and 5 men) who had all recently experienced a break up, but were still in love with the person who had rejected them. The average length of the relationship was about 2 years, and about 2 months had passed, on average, since the relationship ended.

All participants scored high on the Passionate Love Scale, a questionnaire psychologists use to measure the intensity of romantic feelings. Participants also said they spent more than 85 percent of their waking hours thinking about their rejecter.

In the experiment, the subjects viewed a photograph of their former partner and were asked to think about events that occurred with him or her. The subjects also looked at a neutral image of a familiar person, such as a classmate or friend of a friend. To try and suppress the romantic feelings conjured up from the first half of the experiment, the researchers had participants compete a math exercise in between viewing the rejecter photograph and the neutral photograph.

Among the findings:

* Viewing their former loved one stimulated a region of the brain called the ventral tegmental area, involved in motivation and reward. Previous work has found this region is also active in people who are madly in love. This makes sense, because “Whether you’re happily in love or whether you’re unhappily in love, you’re still in love,” Fisher said.

* Brain regions known as the nucleus accumbens and orbitofrontal/prefrontal cortex were also activated. These regions are known to be associated with intense cocaine addiction and cigarette addiction.

* There was also increased activity in the brain’s insular cortex and the anterior cingulated, regions associated with physical pain and distress.

Some good news
The researchers did find some good news for romantically rejected: time seems to heal. The more time that had passed since the breakup, the less activity there was in a brain region associated with attachment.

Brain areas involved in emotion regulation, decision making and evaluation were also active when participants viewed their rejecter. This suggests participants were learning from their past romantic experience, evaluating their gains and losses and figuring out how to deal with the situation, Fisher said.

These findings suggest that talking about their experience, rather than simply moping in grief, may have therapeutic benefits for the lovelorn.

“It seems to be healthy for the brain, to instead of just wallowing in despair, to think about the situation more actively and try to work out how you’re going to handle it.” Fisher said.

The results were published in the July issue of the Journal of Neurophysiology.

© 2010 LiveScience.com. All rights reserved.

The study shows that if one of your friends, co-workers, or family members is getting divorced, your chance of doing the same increases pretty dramatically. Dr. Michelle discusses this and why it may be true.