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While mental health concerns are universal, those of us with marginalized identities (such as BIPOC, LGBTQ, disabled, veteran, Spanish-speaking, or other demographic characteristics) bear the weight of additional mental health barriers.
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Khesed’s Illinois State Manager Dawnn shares a personal story about where her passion for mental health stemmed, why accessible therapy in Chicago matters - especially on the South Side, and how Khesed aligns with her values.
The senior population has been disproportionately impacted by COVID-19 due to the unique vulnerabilities they face with the virus, leading to isolation and a lack of connection and purpose. We must create ample space to honor the pain, loneliness, and grief caused by this past year for the seniors in our community.
Maintaining and reclaiming intimacy is never easy even when the rest of life is going smoothly. Our current struggle to understand and manage the uncertainty of the Coronavirus Pandemic makes it even harder to put our partners anywhere but at the bottom of our long list of priorities. Maybe it’s time to reclaim your relationships. One way to do that is to carve out a few sacred moments each day. Consider going on daily 10-minute dates and recall your partner of yesterday while getting to know your partner of today.
How does it work? Each person dedicates ten minutes completely and exclusively to their partner. This means you will have two 10-minute dates each day, one for each partner. Busy households consisting of multiple people find this easiest at the beginning of the day and at the end of the day. Are you feeling a little overwhelmed about one more thing to learn, relearn, and implement? No worries! A quick yet deeply meaningful way to both know your partner and be known by your partner is by asking each other the 36 Questions developed by Arthur Aron and his research partners designed to foster vulnerability and intimacy. According to Aron and his associates a key element in developing and maintaining close relationships is sustaining and deepening mutual, personal self-disclosure.
When thinking of where to have your date; make sure the date location is not in the same physical space as you or your partner’s work from home space. The location can be fun and creative or as simple as spending 10 minutes together on the front porch. The only rule is the focus of the date completely on listening to your partner’s responses to the questions and not on the long lists of things each of you have to do. Start with just asking one of the 36 questions. You can ask each other the same question each day or you can mix it up a bit and pick a different question. You may find it will be more fun and spontaneous to ask different questions so you both have the opportunity to be equally spontaneous. The questions are divided into three sets. It works best if you work your way through the question sets in order, even though you may decide to ask each other different questions from within each set. Get ready and make your first date!
Below are the questions referred to in the Blog. Please feel free to print the PDF and take it with you on your first date. Happy dating.
Set I
1. Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?
2. Would you like to be famous? In what way?
3. Before making a telephone call, do you ever rehearse what you are going to say? Why?
4. What would constitute a "perfect" day for you?
5. When did you last sing to yourself? To someone else?
6. If you were able to live to the age of 90 and retain either the mind or body of a 30-year-old for the last 60 years of your life, which would you want?
7. Do you have a secret hunch about how you will die?
8. Name three things you and your partner appear to have in common.
9. For what in your life do you feel most grateful?
10. If you could change anything about the way you were raised, what would it be?
11. Take four minutes and tell your partner your life story in as much detail as possible.
12. If you could wake up tomorrow having gained any one quality or ability, what would it be?
Set II
13. If a crystal ball could tell you the truth about yourself, your life, the future or anything else, what would you want to know?
14. Is there something that you've dreamed of doing for a long time? Why haven't you done it?
15. What is the greatest accomplishment of your life?
16. What do you value most in a friendship?
17. What is your most treasured memory?
18. What is your most terrible memory?
19. If you knew that in one year you would die suddenly, would you change anything about the way you are now living? Why?
20. What does friendship mean to you?
21. What roles do love, and affection play in your life?
22. Alternate sharing something you consider a positive characteristic of your partner. Share a total of five items.
23. How close and warm is your family? Do you feel your childhood was happier than most other people's?
24. How do you feel about your relationship with your mother?
Set III
25. Make three true "we" statements each. For instance, "We are both in this room feeling ... "
26. Complete this sentence: "I wish I had someone with whom I could share ... "
27. If you were going to become a close friend with your partner, please share what would be important for him or her to know.
28. Tell your partner what you like about them; be very honest this time, saying things that you might not say to someone you've just met.
29. Share with your partner an embarrassing moment in your life.
30. When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?
31. Tell your partner something that you like about them already.
32. What, if anything, is too serious to be joked about?
33. If you were to die this evening with no opportunity to communicate with anyone, what would you most regret not having told someone? Why haven't you told them yet?
34. Your house, containing everything you own, catches fire. After saving your loved ones and pets, you have time to safely make a final dash to save any one item. What would it be? Why?
35. Of all the people in your family, whose death would you find most disturbing? Why?
36. Share a personal problem and ask your partner's advice on how he or she might handle it. Also, ask your partner to reflect back to you how you seem to be feeling about the problem you have chosen.
Claudia Nell Hawley, Apprentice is an unlicensed psychotherapist pursuing a Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Denver Seminary. Working alongside clients in her former career as a realtor instilled in Claudia a deep empathy, and a sincere desire to serve couples, families and individuals in the journey through depression, anxiety, and fear to healing, connection, and self-worth. Claudia spends her free time cooking for friends, capturing the beauty of Colorado with her camera, and reading.
You may be someone who goes all out of Valentine’s Day for your partner by making them feel special in whatever way you can. For others Valentine’s Day may bring up feelings of sadness, anger, or loneliness. Valentine’s Day may be another reminder of unmet needs and let down expectations of their hopes and future as a couple. This feeling can be really difficult to face and most days it may be easier to put on a good face and push down your longings and desires for intimacy, closeness, and living out your dreams with you partner. Acknowledging these distant gaps can leave you feeling discouraged, guilty, or even shame.
Brene Brown’s definition of shame was developed by her decade of research on shame and connection. She defines shame as “the intensely painful feeling or experience of believing that we are flawed and therefore unworthy of love and belonging” (Brown, 2012, p. 69). This feeling of shame can take many different forms to help protect us from our own vulnerability -- perfectionism, addiction, anger and criticalness. When we ignore or suppress our need for connection, we are literally suppressing a primal human need.
Since the early 1900s, John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth’s research revealed from their studies of infants at orphanages and hospital institutions that attachment is a necessity for infants’ survival (Bretherton, 1992). There has been a recent breakthrough in attachment research that has revealed that belonging and connection are just as primal of needs for adults as they are for babies. This survival need is met for adults in long-term significant relationships that create a sense of safety, meaning, and intimate connection. This might be with a close long-term friend or family member, or with your partner or significant other. If you feel that you and your partner have lost that sense of safety and connection in your relationship, that does not have to mean that it is over. Many couples get caught in what Sue Johnson, the developer of Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy, calls a negative cycle. She describes a couples negative cycle as a dance that has changed from music that was once beautiful and effortless to something painful and difficult.
A common dance couples get into is when one partner will get very angry and upset when they feel their needs are not being met and the other one shrinks away and disengages either emotionally or physically. Often anger or withdrawal are what each partner in the relationship experiences, however, there is a deeper level of interaction happening where both are really seeking to connect. Oftentimes, these surface reactions of anger and withdrawal were learned in childhood or in another significant relationship that wounded them as a mechanism to help them survive when they feel their primal need of love and belonging being threatened.
If you and your partner feel like you are stuck in a negative dance with one another, know that what each of you may be experiencing is probably not the full story. Underneath every negative reaction to conflict, there is the need that each of you have to connect and belong. Dr. Sue Johnson has designed a method of couples therapy called Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy to help couples begin to realize their negative cycle. She also has written the book “Hold Me Tight” to help couples begin to unpack the layers of their relationship to help them make disconnection the enemy and not one another and find their way back to connection and intimacy. If you would like help with your relationship, please feel free to reach out to one of our therapists. Amy McCann is one of our couples therapists and she is certified in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy. Please feel free to reach out today for a free intake today and know that there is hope to find a way back to love and belonging.
Sources
Brown, B. (2012). Daring greatly: How the courage to be vulnerable transforms the way we live, love, parent, and lead. New York, NY: Penguin Random House.
Bretherton, I. (1992). The origins of attachment theory: John Bowlby and Mary Ainsworth.
American Psychological Association, 28, 5, 759-775.
Amy McCann, RP, Apprentice, is earning her Master of Arts in Clinical Mental Health Counseling at Denver Seminary. She is open to seeing many types of clients of all age ranges. She is trained in Emotionally Focused Couples Therapy and desires to help couples strengthen their relationship. Amy earned her Bachelor of Science in Exercise and Movement Science from the University of Vermont, and desires to help her clients in a holistic way. She is passionate about people finding true freedom and healing in every area of life. Amy also has rich cultural experiences with living overseas and enjoys cross-cultural work with clients. Amy is originally from Boston, but loves living in Colorado with her husband. They enjoy hiking, fly fishing, playing games with friends, and eating ice cream.
The beginning of February is upon us, and with the start of the new month, businesses and advertisers have lost no time in reminding us that Valentine’s Day is right around the corner. Originating from stories of martyrdom and religious feast days, Valentine’s Day (or “Singles Awareness Day” to many of us who view it less favorably) has developed into an annual celebration of love and romance, commemorated with the exchange of cards, flowers, and chocolate. Every year, romantic partners flock to various date locations to express their affection for one another, and the world is momentarily adorned in various shades of red and pink. I, however, want to talk for a moment about what happens after the dinners, and the couple’s massages, and the flowers and chocolate. For where there are demonstrations of romance, sex is usually not far behind.
Working with sexuality in a clinical capacity, I often hear stories of sexual thrill-seeking and the search for partners who inspire electricity, chemistry, and passion. These stories are appropriate and understandable; sex can be fun, exciting, and passionate, and in a lot of ways, many of our sociological influences orient us, in one or another, toward the pursuit of really great sex. Media outlets display quests for sexual fulfillment, industries thrive on the marketing toward “spicing up” sex lives, and even religions that teach abstinence before marriage often do so with the promise of “mind-blowing” intercourse post-wedlock. While sex can be mind-blowing, spicy, and fulfilling some of the time, however, it can also be complicated, awkward, routine, and quite frankly, unremarkable at others.
Now, I am not a person you will ever hear demonize partners’ attempts to keep things interesting. Quite the opposite, in fact. If everyone’s full, non-pressured consent is involved and nobody is in danger, have at it. I would say, however, that those experiences are only ever part of a sexual relationship. Sex is sometimes boring, especially if you’re having it with the same person over a long period of time, and especially if you’re having it with only that person. Sometimes it’s a little lackluster rather than mind-blowing, and sometimes in the pursuit of really great sex, you wind up having really mediocre, ordinary sex, instead.
That being said, I would propose for your consideration, dear reader, that in every sexual relationship, there is a place for mediocre, ordinary sex, too; that boring sex can, in and of itself, still be really great sex. Author Lauren F. Winner suggests that many of the elements that can be
“important about sex {are} nurtured when we allow sex to be ordinary… Sex needs to be clumsy. It should at times feel awkward. It should be an act we engage in for comfort. It should also be allowed to hold any number of anxieties – the sorts of anxieties, for instance, we might feel about our child’s progress in school, or our ability to provide sustenance for our family. Sex becomes another way for two people to realistically engage the strengths and foibles of each other… If we allow sex to be ordinary, we might better understand that human love is forged in, say, time spent cooking together, or in picking up our loved one’s laundry, or in calming our children’s fears. Through sexual practice, we come to find each other fallible, and we come to love each other for the way we see each other creating very human lives out of those very fallibilities.”*
As we approach a holiday that commemorates romantic love, it seems important to also acknowledge the atmosphere in which this type of longstanding love grows. If you are cultivating a committed, long-term relationship with your partner, it is likely built upon a foundation of shared experiences that are fairly mundane, and the relational components that must be nurtured for a lasting, successful relationship are often the very same components that strip away some of the thrill. The type of intimacy that truly sees and knows another person in all of their beauty and flaw usually develops through the unsexy day-to-day moments of paying bills, getting groceries, and doing the dishes. Developing a secure attachment to a partner means less of the titillating, risky, and anxiety-producing energy that gathers around the uncertainty if they will call you again or not, if they’ll become “clingy” afterward, or if you’ll still like them once you know the history of mental illness in their family and in which direction they replace the toilet paper roll. The more openly and effectively you communicate with your partner, moreover, the less racy cultural taboo and unspoken sexual tension sex and sexuality will carry in your relationship.
Like much else in our Western world, sex has not remained untouched by our culture of consumerism. Many of us are fortunate enough to have the option of seeking personal fulfillment, new experiences, and low investment entertainment, and there is always a wide array of option for us to do so. We purchase items that provide a variety of personal benefits, and if an upgrade comes along, we can trade in the familiar version for something new and innovative. Relationships, however, often require a different mindset of us. Relationships demand more giveback, malfunction, familiarity, and repair, and in the midst of our cultural pursuit of ease and comfort, push us into difficult and uncomfortable spaces. When sex becomes about more than infatuation, consumption, and intensity, some of the thrill and passion gives way to make space for deeper connection, comfort, and intimacy.
In the same way that we don’t linger over courses or experiment with new, exotic recipes for every meal, our sexual appetites are sometimes best fulfilled with the comforting, the plain, or the on the go. Sometimes we simply need the connective sustenance to keep our relationship healthy and strong. So, if you are planning an elaborate dinner and spicing things up this Valentine’s day, linger and enjoy. If it fits better for your relationship right now to order takeout, watch Netflix, have vanilla sex, and go to bed early, then celebrate the work you’ve put into your relationship that’s allowed your sex to get occasionally vanilla in the first place. If you’ve taken the time and put in the effort to cultivate a deep intimacy, communication, and comfort, you may just find that your boring sex is the best you’ve ever had.
*Lauren F. Winner, Real Sex: the Naked Truth about Chastity (Grand Rapids, Brazos Press, 2005), 81-82.
Zach Verwey, MA, LPC, NCC holds a Masters degree in Clinical Mental Health Counseling from a CACREP accredited program and is a Licensed Professional Counselor in the state of Colorado. In his clinical practice, Zach has worked extensively with LGBTQ+ concerns, eating disorders, holistic sexual health, values and identity, and grief and loss, and he is Prepare/Enrich certified in working with couples. He is especially passionate about addressing the ways in which body image difficulties impact the LGBTQ+ community and regularly works with clients and provides education through writing and public speaking on this topic. Zach believes deeply in the power of interpersonal and intrapersonal relationship work in the therapeutic process, and offers a holistic and integrative approach that honors the mind, body, and spirit. In his spare time, Zach enjoys reading the memoirs of comedians who also happen to be women, experimenting with new bread recipes, and exploring Denver’s latest hot spots with a friend or two.
