Why Learn How to Help Someone with Depression?

Clinical depression is one of the largest health issues in the world today.  It has the capacity to kill (through suicide), to break apart marriages and families, to lead teens and young adults to street drugs, and a whole host of other negative impacts on individuals and communities.  In light of this, it is of crucial importance that as many people as possible know something about how to help someone with depression.

But there are some people in the world who are sitting next to vein of gold and don’t know it.  That vein of gold is a mother, father, son, daughter, friend, teacher, or coworker who dares to care enough to help them with depression.  These are not mental health professionals.  These are simply people who care enough about another human being that they are willing to endure  a relationship in which they are doing all the giving–for a season.

One Tip for How to Help Someone with Depression

An important tip for how to  help someone with depression is to manage your own frustration by enlisting the support of others.  It’s important that you monitor your frustration level and get your needs met as best you can.  It’s best to bring in other friends and family so that no one person will be overwhelmed.  Why is this necessary?  Because depression messes things up.  You have to recognize that your relationship will be strained and you will be become frustrated with the person you are trying to help.  When you think about how to help someone with depression, know that the “someone” is going to withdrawn and unresponsive at best and irritable and angry at his or her worst.  This is not fun.   It requires you to get your hands dirty with the relationship engine grease of a medical condition.

Hope:  This Might Be the Most Delicate Mechanism of the Mind

One of the most delicate psychological mechanisms in the depressed mind is that of hope vs hopelessness.  This always has something to do with brain chemistry, no matter how the depression originated.  If someone is stuck in a clinical depression, then the mood centers of the brain are not working as they could or should.

But it goes far beyond biochemistry.  Our sense of hope is woven into the intricate tapestry that holds us up from the black hole of despair.  It forms the underpinnings of our daily functioning as well as our long term aspirations.  It connects what is psychological with what is spiritual in us.  Our sense of hope is our assumption that our efforts to engage in some effort, activity, or relationship will result in something worthwhile.  It’s the part of us that knows, “My efforts matter.”   That’s why we can go to work, hang out with friends, make plans for the weekend, etc.  Hopelessness seeks to unwind all that so that life becomes so miserable that we are willing to be deceived into thinking that death is a better alternative.

Example:  “Don’t Get My Hopes Up and Then Flake!”

When a friend comes along side a depressed person to help, there can be an enormous opportunity for the bitter cold hopelessness to begin to melt.  This is why it is worth it to learn how to help someone with depression.  Consider this hypothetical example.  If I am depressed and can count on you to contact me regularly each week, I will likely begin looking forward to this time with you.  Something as simple as that can begin to thaw the hope mechanism so that hope can return to other areas of life.

On the other hand, if you create an expectation in me that you care and then pull away, then it will likely cause damage to that delicate hope vs. hopeless mechanism.  I may become even more reluctant to believe that something good can happen.  In fact, I have known people who will deliberately lash out at a friend trying to help them because they cannot bear the pain of having their hopes raised … only to be crushed when that same friend leaves out of frustration.

Have you ever taken a depressed person to lunch?  It can be really difficult to keep a conversation going.  But your presence in regular intervals communicates a powerful, quiet message:  “you matter to me.”

Simple, Informed Caring

So then there is tremendous benefit that can come from you knowing how to help someone with depression in simple ways.  But you have to manage your frustration so that you have others to whom you can vent and rely on.  You have to be careful to limit what you do so that you don’t feel compelled to pull away.  The best way to do that is to be the orchestrator of building a supportive team of friends and family around them.  How can they help?  It may be that one person can help by encouraging you to not give up.  Or, together you may encourage the depressed person to seek out professional help.  Perhaps someone else on the “team” is calm enough to keep an eye out for suicidal tendencies without shaking like a leaf.

HealthHOWTOs.com

What another health blog?  Yes, I have launched a small blog website that discusses various health, fitness, and medical issues from the perspective of communication.   Often prevention, treatments, exercise routines, instructions from a trainer, a physician’s messy handwriting, etc. are compromised by a deficit in communication skills.  As a psychologist, I have noticed that people trying to improve their health are empowered by information. But health information has to be communicated and it can break down at the source, become confused by the receiver, and diluted by deficient communication skill along the way.

Here is an excerpt from the first post at HealthHowtos.com

Before Your Workout:  Warm-Up Exercises Can Help Prevent Lower Back Pain

Reducing lower back pain begins with prevention.  And prevention begins with resisting the urge to skip your warm up before a workout.  It’s tempting to skip the warm up and go straight for the work out, especially when we’re short of time.  It may save time, but it’s not the best plan to stay safe.  While it seems more efficient to go as hard as you can for as long as you can, this is a recipe for lower back pain.  Read more…

It can be really difficult to explain how panic attacks feel to someone who has never had severe anxiety and panic attacks. So how do you explain these severe symptoms of anxiety to someone who just doesn’t get it?

Anxiety and Panic Attacks: What Are the Symptoms?

What are the symptoms of anxiety? What about anxiety and panic attacks? Anxiety attacks are the same as panic attacks. But you can have the symptoms of anxiety without having it crescendo into an “attack.” Anxiety and panic attacks reflect the changes in your body when you have an extreme response of fear.  The often last about 30 minutes

You may remember an experience where you thought a large dog might attack you, or some other type of real danger. Your brain prepares your body for danger by dumping stress hormones into your bloodstream. Since your blood goes everywhere in your body these stress hormones are able to activate other physical responses: dry mouth, shortness of breath, rapid heart rate, tense muscles. These are all normal symptoms of anxiety.

Now, when these types of symptoms of anxiety become so intense that you feel like you might die or at least go crazy, then you are in a state of panic. But being in a state of panic is not necessarily the same as experiencing clinical anxiety and panic attacks. Why not? Because if you really are in mortal danger, then it makes perfect sense to be in a state of panic. Let’s imagine together how this might look and feel.

What Do Anxiety and Panic Attacks Feel Like? Picture This Luxury Cruise!

You are on a cruise ship. You lean against the guard rail to take in the sunset. Suddenly, the guard rail falls apart and you fall over the side. But one part of the metal railing is still dangling from the deck. You have a hold of it and you are able to grab a metal pole  just before the piece of metal you were clinging to snaps and falls to the sea below.

In a flash you realize that you just had a brush with death because you came within an inch of falling overboard. You feel your body flooded with emotion.  Is this the feeling of anxiety and panic attacks?   Your heart is pounding so hard you feel like it’s going to jump right out of your chest. You vividly see in your mind what it would be like to fall that great distance to the water below.

You are sitting on the deck of the ship gasping and trying to get your breath. You are so scared that you feel like you can’t get enough air in your lungs. Your stomach feels sick with fear as you picture the ship going on without you while you try to scream.   At the very same moment, you imagine how you would not be able to yell for help because you would have had the wind knocked out of you by hitting the water at such a high velocity.

This short, overwhelming burst of fear might be called a panic attack by some. But actually, doesn’t it make sense to have all those symptoms of anxiety when you have been that close to death’s door?

The point here is that the intensity of your symptoms of anxiety fit the real danger of the situation. Your thoughts about dying are real and rational. You did almost die.

But now suppose that you had all those same feelings—the symptoms of anxiety and panic attacks—but with one difference: there is no real danger.

Let’s rewrite the story of you on the cruise ship. You are standing on the same place on the deck leaning on the railing. Suddenly, you start having all the same emotions that we described in the first story, but nothing is wrong with the railing. There is no danger. That overwhelming fear just ambushes you out of the blue. The fear, the anxiety, and panic attacks are quite real because your brain’s danger meter is giving out the wrong signals and the wrong time. It makes you feel crazy. How can I be so afraid when there is no problem?

That’s what a panic attack feels like for many people.

Will Therapy Ever Become Unnecessary?

Self help for panic attacks provides a good example of the possible relationship between therapy and self help. The proliferation of self help resources in recent years allows many people the opportunity to learn information previously available only in the office of a mental health professional. This has raised the question of whether or not therapy is even necessary. Research the web, buy a book online, save money. Why shoulder the expense of therapy when self help information is so readily available?

To answer this question, it is necessary to clarify the respective roles of self help and psychotherapy. Good therapy should provides targeted knowledge and information, a process sometimes referred to as psychoeducation. But the face-to-face aspects of therapy support the process of positive change in a way that can’t be obtained from a web page, video or a book.

Self help for panic attacks offers a good illustration of how therapy and self help approaches compare and contrast. There are tools and techniques that can be extracted from information sources. Information and skills can be obtained using audio training and other types of media learning. But there are at least two important challenges that are difficult to meet without live therapy.

Two Distinctive Benefits of Therapy

First, therapy can save time in the process of change by utilizing the unique strengths of a person for maximum benefit. A good therapist is always listening and adjusting the direction of therapy based the personality strengths and needs of the client as well as the details of the situation. In contrast, a set outline of self help for panic attacks uses the same approach for everyone.

Second, the underlying causes of panic are significant in determining how to proceed in therapy.  If a person is anemic and never engages in exercise, then stopping panic attacks may be quite simple. If the anxiety attacks are primarily due to a long-standing depression, then the therapy takes an entirely different direction.  The relationship between past trauma and present anxiety attacks (and depression, for that matter) is often not recognized by the man or woman seeking relief. Self help for panic attacks and self help for depression become  hard-pressed to provide the kind of emotional intelligence to understand subconscious forces giving rise to recurring panic attacks or the signs and symptoms of depression.

So therapy simply cannot be replaced entirely by self help.  But is self help for panic attacks worth the effort? It is worth it, especially if it works in tandem with therapy.  Consider: the more that knowledge, skills, and tools can be acquired via self help for panic attacks, then the less these same basic tasks need to take up the more expensive time of therapy sessions. This has the advantage of freeing up more time in therapy for the conversations that cannot be obtained any other way. On the other hand, the benefit might be that fewer therapy sessions are necessary.

Three Options for How to Fight Depression

Once people realize they have a problem with depression they have three options. There is the medication option where the doctor writes a prescription for an antidepressant and sends you on your way. In this day of fast work, fast food and fast cures that just may fit your picture of  a solution for how to fight depression.   But it isn’t the best nor the safest way. Research has shown that people who use one of three types of psychotherapy alone or psychotherapy and medication are taking a route for how to fight depression that has much better results than those only using medication. Depression is caused from an alteration in brain chemistry. The question many people ask  is,” what caused the alteration?”   Theoretically the change could happen genetically, from a genetic predisposition or triggered by stress. Or it could be triggered by all three. At this time researchers have not been able to identify a specific gene for people to be depressed, although there are genetic predispositions that are triggered by stress. Also, from a statistical point of view, depression seems to run in families.

How to Fight Depression:  How Important is it for a Person to Know Specific Causes?

While it is interesting to know why your depressed it doesn’t necessarily change the treatment plan for how to fight depression.  Depression is a chemical change in the brain regardless of what caused the change.

Treat the Signs and Symptoms of Depression or the Underlying Condition?

This being the case, medication without any other treatment can give a person relief from the signs and symptoms of depression, but leave them empty-handed when it comes to a method for how to fight depression as an underlying condition.  One of three different types of psychotherapy supply many of the answers to patients questions and concerns about their problems.

Three Main Approaches for How to Fight Depression

There are three specific psychotherapeutic approaches to treating depression. Many times people consider psychotherapy as a talking cure (Sigmund Freud) when in fact it is a way to figure out what ails you and to find better ways of coping with the stress. In these different types of psychotherapy your words and feelings play a central role. The job of the therapist is to support and professionally guide you through the process. You will examine your thoughts, feelings and actions and then determine how well they have worked in the past and how to change the ones that have been non-productive.

It is important to work with a therapist who you can trust enough to be open and honest. You may have to shop around a bit before settling with someone but this is important since keeping your thoughts and feelings to yourself can deepen your depression. Although there are three different types of psychotherapy most therapists are versed in all three. This knowledge can help you to pick from various tools for how to fight depression that may work for your individual situation. Of course the explanations are a bit simplistic but they help you to understand the basic premise behind each approach.

CBT:  Talking to Yourself Is How to Fight Depression

In Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) the basic idea is that thoughts, feelings and behaviors are all interconnected so that if you make a change in one area it will affect others. For instance, if you make a change in the way you feel about something then they way that you act and your thoughts will also change. If your depression is making you feel worthless then you and the therapist will explore the specific, unrealistic beliefs you have about yourself and the world that make you feel worthless. Then you’d choose alternative behaviors until the system you are stuck in breaks down and your symptoms fade.

How to Fight Depression?  Some Say, “Interpersonal Therapy is the Way to Go”

Therapists who believe that Interpersonal Therapy is the key weapon for how to fight depression assume that the most difficult aspect of depression is how it affects your relationships with others. This type of therapeutic approach is effective with people who have had unresolved grief of the loss of a loved one or significant conflicts within relationships. The therapist and the patient focus on the relationship to identify personal needs that are going unmet and find ways to meet them by ending negative relationships and building social skills.

Using Brief Psychodynamic Therapy for How to Fight Depression

This approach for how to fight depression involves  uncovering an event in your life that triggers core conflicts. These events may no longer play and active role in your conscious memory or thoughts. For instance an individual may be feeling overwhelmed by a situation as an adult that isn’t in proportion to the event but may have been appropriate in a similar situation when they were much younger. The aim is to help the person make a connection between the past and the present and work through the feelings associated with the past events.

So, once informed, choose a method for how to fight depression in a systematic way.  It’s important that you feel the treatment you are receiving is relevant and helpful to your individual situation and to have a voice in the approach you are using. However, since there are three types of psychotherapy that lend themselves very nicely to the treatment of depression you should have no trouble picking a therapeutic approach that works for you.

If self help for panic attacks could be compared to planting a garden of peace of mind, then dealing with the signs and symptoms of depression is weed control.  One of the important tasks in learning how to fight depression is to learn how clinical depression operates.  While there are many types and varieties of depression,  they all fall into one of two large categories.  The first kind of depression is what most people mean when they say something like, “I was so depressed yesterday…I got stopped for speeding.”  Feeling sad or blue is a normal part of life.  It is also normal to bounce back relatively quickly.  The second type of depression is a medical condition because the brain actually undergoes a change in which it loses the ability to bounce back quickly.  This is sometimes referred to as clinical depression or major depressive disorder.  If you are reading this and wonder how to fight depression, you are most likely concerned about the second type.  It’s important to be clear about which kind of depression you are targeting.  In this article the word depression refers to the various types of depression that fall into the second large category.

This begins with learning to recognize the signs and symptoms of depression.  There are two important questions to ask.  First, what are the signs and symptoms of depression?  Second, when do the signs and symptoms of depression become a clinical condition that needs medical treatment and/or therapy?

Another task in learning how to fight depression is to learn each of the signs and symptoms of depression and to understand what they mean.  The official list (DSM-IV) identifies 9 symptoms.  The first five are the obvious physical signs and symptoms of depression:  (1) Significant change in weight not due to dieting (weight gain or loss of more than 5% of body weight in a month); (2) Sleep problems nearly every day (excessive sleeping or insomnia); (3) Agitation (irritable attitude and physical tension) or marked slowing of one’s thoughts and actions (e.g., much more difficulty getting started on something than usual); (4) Fatigue or loss of energy every day; (5) Diminished ability to think or concentrate or indecisiveness, nearly every day.

The 2nd group of signs and symptoms of depression have more to do with a person’s subjective experience.  They are: (6) Feelings of worthlessness or excessive (or inappropriate) guilt nearly every day; (7) Sad mood most of the day, nearly every day; (8) Noticeable loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all activities most of every day.  This set of symptoms poses the frustrating challenge of how to fight depression when it is something so vague as a mood and difficult to measure.

The third group is really just one symptom in a class of it’s own:  frequent or recurring thoughts about suicide or death.  If that symptom is present it should be evaluated by a professional.  It takes special training to evaluate the level of risk that suicidal thoughts pose to a particular individual.

Additionally, it’s good to learn something about the severity level or intensity of depression.  This can be a bit tricky because the severity level (mild, moderate, severe) doesn’t always follow the level of unhappiness that a person is or is not experiencing.  In other words a “mild” clinical depression can have enough effect on a man to impact his marriage to the point of divorce, even though he never experiences the more debilitating signs and symptoms of depression.  It requires a particular type of training to accurately assess a man or a woman’s depression as severe, moderate, or mild.  Also, the options for treatment are often very different for each severity level.

While there is much to learn about how to fight depression, knowing these few basic facts can be a good start.  It can help you know which questions to ask.  It can help provide a framework for thinking about what to do next.  When in doubt, it’s good to consult with someone who knows how to spot which species of depression are strong enough to sabotage your efforts at self help for panic attacks.

When do the signs and symptoms of depression become a medical condition that needs treatment?  For the signs and symptoms of depression to have clinical significance these two important criteria must both be true:

1. The signs and symptoms of depression last for several days (at least 2 weeks)
2. Depression symptoms become disruptive to major areas of a person’s life;  and depression symptons negatively and noticeably impact relationships, work, or school

Major Depressive Disorder,  is usually defined as a combination of any five of the following signs and symptoms of depression that persist for more than 2 weeks:

1. Sad mood most of the day, nearly every day
2. Noticeable loss of interest or pleasure in nearly all activities most of every day
3. Significant change in weight not due to dieting (weight gain or loss of more than 5% of body weight in a month)
4. Sleep problems nearly every day (excessive sleeping or insomnia)
5. Agitation (irritable attitude and physical tension) or marked slowing of one’s thoughts and actions (e.g., much more difficulty getting started on something than usual)
6. Fatigue or loss of energy every day
7. Feelings of worthlessness or excessive (or inappropriate) guilt nearly every day
8. Diminished ability to think or concentrate or indecisiveness, nearly every day
9. Recurrent thoughts of death (not just fear of dying), recurring thoughts about suicide, or a suicidal gesture (deliberate carelessness in dangerous situations) or an attempt, or specific plans.

If a person is having thoughts about death that keep returning, this is almost certainly an indicator of clinical depression, whether or not the person can recognize any other signs and symptoms of depression.

With clinical depression, “our brain starts working in a different way and gets stuck in a mode that displays the signs and symptoms of depression,” says Dr. Greg Hamlin who addresses this topic in more depth.

Many Children Have Anxiety Disorders

Anxiety disorders usually start at a young age effecting children and teens. Anxiety in children can be overlooked because parents can remember certain times in their childhood that had many uncomfortable feelings and also some awkwardness involved. Moving to a new school, going out on a date and even falling down can cause butterflies in a child’s stomach. Children can get nervous and embarrassed and this is a pretty common feeling to a child. But severe changes in behavior that seem really exaggerated could be warnings of an anxiety disorder in a child.

Some of these symptoms that a child may experience are a unrealistic worry about their daily events, the need of reassurance from authority figures, having severe self conscious behavior, extreme fear of certain social situations or events, sweating and dizziness, having pain or discomfort with no explanations, repetitive behaviors, an over reaction to having physical contact, and insomnia and having trouble sleeping. People love watching their child grow and change. As a child develops abilities and fascinations they will also develop new fears and worries that go along with it and this can be very normal.

A Child May Only Reveal a Few of the Signs of Anxiety

It just depends on the child. The Department of Health and Human services suggests that you observe a child’s behavior between the ages of six to eight years old for symptoms that come along with anxiety disorders. During this stage of development a lot of parents begin to notice that their children are less afraid of things in the closet and tend to become more eager to go to school instead of clinging on to mom or dad. There are ways that a parent can tell if their child may need to seek treatment for their behavior. If you think that your child may have an anxiety disorder then you may want to speak with a healthcare provider. A healthcare professional with a background for treating children can be a child’s best hope when it comes to living with anxiety. There is treatment for anxiety in children like behavioral therapy and medication. When you seek professional advise let the healthcare professional know everything about how your child is acting so that a proper treatment can be given to your child.

A Common Form of Child Anxiety:  OCD

Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD) usually begins in adolescence or young adulthood, although it is rarely diagnosed then. It is seen in as many as 1 in 200 children and adolescents and the rate is climbing. OCD is characterized by recurrent obsessions and/or compulsions that are intense enough to cause severe discomfort. Obsessions are recurrent and persistent thoughts, impulses, or images that are unwanted and cause marked anxiety or distress. Frequently, they are unrealistic or irrational. They are not simply excessive worries about real-life problems or preoccupations; they are obsessions that interfere with every day life.

Compulsions are repetitive behaviors or rituals (like hand washing, hoarding, and checking something over and over) or mental acts (like counting, repeating words silently, avoiding situations and objects).

In OCD, the obsessions or compulsions cause significant anxiety or distress, or they interfere with the child’s normal routine, academic functioning, social activities, and most relationships. The obsessive thoughts usually vary with the age of the child and may change over time, most of the time getting stronger and less subtle. A younger child with OCD may fear that harm will occur to himself or a family member, for example an intruder entering an unlocked door or window. The child may compulsively check all the doors and windows of his home after his parents are asleep in an attempt to relieve anxiety. The child may then fear that he may have accidentally unlocked a door or window while last checking and locking, and then must check again.

An older child or a teenager with OCD may fear that he will become ill with germs, disease or contaminated food. To cope with his or her feelings, a child may develop rituals (a behavior or activity that gets repeated) to make themselves feel better about the anxiety or fear. Sometimes the obsession and compulsion are linked; Fear is the root of their behaviors and conquering the fear means getting rid of the behaviors. Research shows that OCD is a brain disorder and tends to run in families, although this doesn’t mean the child will definitely develop symptoms. Recent studies have also shown that OCD may develop or worsen after a strep or other bacterial infection.

A child may also develop OCD with no previous family history, although some studies show that it can run in families. Children and adolescents often feel shame and embarrassment about their OCD, the same as adults do. Many fear it means they’re crazy. Good communication between parents and children can increase understanding of the problem and help the parents appropriately support their child.

Most children with OCD can be treated effectively with a combination of psychotherapy (especially cognitive and behavioral techniques) and certain SSRI medications or herbal treatments or example. Family support and education are also central to the success of treatment. Antibiotic therapy may be useful in cases where OCD is linked to streptococcal infection. Seeking help is the key to getting better. The further it gets out of control the harder it will be to reverse it.

If a child is having panic attacks they may be generated by an underlying OCD or another type of anxiety disorder.  Self help for panic attacks should involve proven cognitive behavioral techniques in an easy-to-learn package.  But it is important to recognize that for child anxiety, self help for panic attacks really means parent help for panic attacks.  The child must take responsibility for conquering the anxiety, but only after the child clearly understands how he or she can be empowered by tools and techniques.  The child is most likely to achieve success in his or her own self help for panic attacks if there is a loving, patient mom or dad who has gone through a self help for panic attacks course.  The magic of peace of mind can come when the child can thrive with mom or dad as his/her coach.

No matter how much you adore your child, when he or she starts to whine, your irritation level climbs and your adoration level falls. When kids whine, it’s an all out attack of undesirable behavior that makes most parents crazy. Enter operant conditioning skinner.

If you’re looking for a good, healthy way to get your kids to stop whining, you need to know that yelling at them probably won’t work and neither will giving in to them. If you give in to whining, it will make them stop whining for the moment, but it will also let them know that whining works. Operant conditioning Skinner style says that if you a reward a behavior of an organism, then you increase the probability that the specific behavior will be repeated. It will get them what they want, so they’ll use it again and again.

Instead of giving in or losing your temper with your child to make them stop whining, you could use Operant conditioning, Skinner style.

B.F. Skinner’s operant conditioning theory says that all behavior is a response to certain stimuli, and because of this, you can change behavior by changing stimuli. Skinner said, “When a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence of having this behavior is called a reinforcer.”

Can you see where B.F. Skinner was going with this? In parenting, Operant conditioning Skinner style can work to reinforce a child’s poor behavior or good behavior. It will work both ways. How exactly can you use B. F. Skinner’s operant conditioning to teach your child not to whine?

Operant conditioning Skinner style works by using consequences to modify behavior. So if your child whines to get a toy or to have dessert before dinner and you give in, he or she sees that the consequence of whining is getting something they want.

If, on the other hand, your child whines and you either turn a deaf ear to the whining, not saying anything or giving the whining any acknowledgement, or if you give the child a negative consequence for whining such as a time-out and don’t give them what they’re whining for, you’ll teach them that whining produces unwanted results for them.

The eventual result will be that they will stop using whining as a way to get something. This is a very simple, yet effective parenting technique. You can pair this method for stopping the bad behavior of whining with rewarding good behavior.

You can teach your child that when he or she doesn’t whine, good things will happen – not necessarily that they will get the toy or be allowed to have dessert before dinner, but good things nevertheless.

Simply saying, “Thank you Amy, for helping me shop for your little brother’s birthday gift,” can reward a child’s good behavior. Keep praising them with words like, “I loved having you with me to do this” or “Thanks for helping prepare dinner, Emily – that was fun”

An encouraging word is often an excellent way to use operant conditioning Skinner style to reinforce good behavior and to teach your kids the difference between good and bad behavior. B.F. Skinner said that behavior that is rewarded is the most likely behavior to be repeated. This is a valuable lesson to learn in parenting. Using operant conditioning Skinner style is one of many good ways to gently, yet effectively teach your children good behavior patterns.

Recap

Skinner said, “When a bit of behavior is followed by a certain kind of consequence, it is more likely to occur again, and a consequence of having this behavior is called a reinforcer.” In parenting, this means positive, positive, positive. To put operant conditioning Skinner in a nutshell: Offer focused encouragement to specific good behaviors.  But this approach to parenting by itself is inadequate and even cold.   To see more of the heart of authoritative parenting see Steps for Change.

Know Your Blind Spots

Adult children of alcoholic parents are wise to figure out their own blind spots when they become parents themselves. Although you grew up in a home with one or both of your parents being alcoholics, you want to be certain that you provide a better atmosphere for your own children to grow and thrive in. Adult children of alcoholic parents share certain blind spots while parenting their own children. You know the pain of growing up in an alcoholic home and you know the ways you learned to cope with growing up in that situation. You may have become a miniature adult, a caretaker, and a super responsible little person.  Adult children of alcoholic parents often play the role of the “parentified child.”

Or you might have become the troublemaker or clown to compensate. Maybe you were the peacemaker or the one who never made a fuss and just went along with the program. You may have suffered – not only mental and emotional abuse – but also possibly physical or sexual abuse. You might have felt the disappointment of lies and broken promises or been scared of abandonment. You may have avoided getting too close to anyone for fear that they would go away or neglect you. As tough as it was to grow up like this, you know that’s not the way you want your own children to live. Good for you! You’ve committed to giving your kids a better, healthier, happier life. In that case, it’s important for you to seek out alcoholic help for families and to know where your blind spots might be. What might be your stumbling blocks to giving your kids the best life possible? Adult children of alcoholic parents may find it difficult to break their childhood patterns of coping with life. This is something that you’ll need to pay close attention to when dealing with your own children. Adult children of alcoholic parents carry a heavier load as moms and dads, but they can also discover that they have a lot of support in striving to create a better home atmosphere. You need to look at your current patterns of behavior. If you were the clown or the troublemaker, are you still carrying around those characteristics, and if so, are they causing problems?

Mark the Clown

Little Mark as a 4th grader learned to be a clown to diffuse Dad’s anger when he was about to explode. Mark also learned to be hyper alert to changes in Dad’s facial expressions so that he would know when to start entertaining his Dad. People like Mark as adult children of alcoholic parents often find that their coping mechanisms become obsolete or downright dysfunctional when they trying to navigate parenting themselves. A clown can be fun to be around, but are you also irresponsible? A troublemaker who hasn’t learned to stay out of trouble may be leading a life of legal troubles – not a good example to set for your kids, and certainly not nice for them if they can’t see you because you’re incarcerated.

If you’re a perfectionist as a result of being the responsible “parent” in your childhood home, are you demanding too much from your little ones, who are still learning about life through play and fun? Or have you become an adult doormat who just goes along with the program because you don’t want to make waves? None of these methods are terribly healthy for you or your children. Certainly a dose of humor, responsibility and ability to go with the flow is important for everyone. Even raising Cain once in awhile is probably something that everyone does, even the most emotionally healthy people, now and then.

It Helped You Cope Then;  It’s Dysfunctional Now

Your blind spot might come from still being that person that you were as a child of an alcoholic household. That worked for you then, but now, as a parent, it might be more detrimental than anything. If you are an adult child of an alcoholic and you have children yourself, don’t be afraid to get help. Because there are so many adult children of alcoholic parents, it’s usually possible to find resources and help. Making use of help for adult children of alcoholic parents is an important step in recovery in creating a healthy, happy home. Your family is depending on you to do what you can to help yourself deal with your childhood in a way that makes you into a happier, healthier person – for your sake and your family’s.