
Alcohol Is Not a Health Food
Here’s yet another reason for “Dry January,” if not “dry indefinitely”: US Surgeon General Vivek Murthy says alcohol consumption causes cancer, that it is responsible for 100,000 cases of cancer and 20,000 cancer deaths annually.
“The direct link between alcohol consumption and cancer risk is well-established for at least seven types of cancer including cancers of the breast, colorectum, esophagus, liver, mouth (oral cavity), throat (pharynx), and voice box (larynx), regardless of the type of alcohol (e.g., beer, wine, and spirits) that is consumed. For breast cancer specifically, 16.4% of total breast cancer cases are attributable to alcohol consumption.”
Do we need warning labels on every bottle, as he’s proposing? Setting aside the fact that it won’t happen due to pushback from the alcoholic beverage industry, I think it would probably be a waste of time and money, because it’s not likely to change anyone’s behavior. Most people who drink already know that alcohol can be harmful to the body, because they’ve had one or more harmful experiences, or “negative consequences” as we say in healthcare, and yet they keep drinking anyway. But that’s the cynic in me talking.
The optimist in me says, Yes, even if it only moves the needle 10%, that could save 200 lives! More, given the many ways that drinking can lead to death. While most people don’t heed warning labels, some do, and although it won’t help the folks who are committed to drinking regardless of risk, it may get the attention of those who are concerned about their health and want to increase their chances of living a long and healthy life.
His advisory has already got our attention – I’ve seen half a dozen news articles on the topic in the past week – and talking about it could lead to behavior change. We can’t change that which we are unaware of, so the first step in change is awareness.
If you’re skeptical of this news, that’s not surprising. After all, hasn’t the medical community been telling us for decades that moderate drinking is safe, even a healthy habit?
Here’s what I know, based on my training as a substance abuse counselor, over 40 years of experience counseling adults who drink too much, and my own personal experience. In a nutshell:
* Alcohol is both an intoxicant and a toxin
* Its addictive potential is strong
* In small amounts, it produces some pleasant benefits, like relieving social anxiety and stress
* But it comes with serious risks, including painful illness and death, which are not always proportionate to the amount consumed.
* It is so ubiquitous in our society that if you don’t drink you’re considered odd, and if you do, it’s very easy to consume too much.
How much is too much? That’s a key question. Do you know that before the 1980’s, a standard drink was considered to be 1 oz of spirits, or 4.2 oz of wine? You could get six drinks from one bottle of wine. But drinks, like food, got supersized, so that now the standard drink is 1.5 oz spirits, 12 oz beer and 5 oz wine. Many restaurants offer 6 or 8 oz pours of wine, while craft beers and hard seltzers have a higher alcohol content. Right there you can see how easy it is to overdrink, and how common it’s become. (Here’s a standard drink chart for reference.)
The notion that moderate drinking is healthy originally came from Scandanavian health survey data, which showed a correlation between “moderate” alcohol consumption and low rates of disease. First, correlation is not causation. Moderate drinkers might have good genes, or a healthy lifestyle, or get health checkups more often. Second, it turns out that “moderate” drinkers in those surveys were those who drank “more than none,” anywhere from 1-2 drinks a year up to 1 drink a day. From this data, our American healthcare experts extrapolated that it must be healthier to have a drink a day than none at all!
To be clear, alcohol is not a health food, and there is no universe in which it’s healthier to drink alcohol than to abstain. Doctors who have “prescribed” a drink a day, or assured their patients that “moderate drinking is perfectly safe” are either uninformed, afraid to offend their patients, or in denial about their own alcohol consumption. But we can’t just blame doctors; most people want to believe that 1 to 2 drinks a day is okay.
In reality, for most people most of the time, drinking is a pleasant experience. Alcohol is an effective mood enhancer, at least initially, and it can anesthetize physical pain as well as numb emotional pain. Because it lowers anxiety and inhibitions, it serves as a “social lubricant” for many people. Many people like the taste, and enjoy trying different drinks.
Can something be both good for you and bad? Sure, consider acetominophen (Tylenol). It’s available over the counter, so it must be safe, right? Yes, if you take 325 – 1,000 mg every 4-6 hrs, as the label directs. But wait – just 4,000 mg over 24 hrs can cause liver damage! The same is true of ibuprophen (Advil), which is safe for pain relief if taken as directed, but can destroy your stomach lining if you take it in large quantities. There’s a fine line between a safe amount and a risky amount, just as with alcohol. (And fentanyl, which I had for a recent surgery, but obviously wasn’t given a 12-pack to take home!)
The comparison with fentanyl is more apt than with acetominophen, because of the potential for addiction. Nobody gets addicted to Tylenol. Why? It’s not an intoxicant, it doesn’t give you a buzz or mellow feeling. So understanding the addictive potential of alcohol is also an important factor in deciding whether it’s safe for you to drink.
For many years, people thought it was perfectly safe to smoke cigarettes, and they smoked in restaurants, offices, airplanes, even hospitals! We now know that for many years the tobacco companies spent lots of money to suppress the research that showed smoking causes cancer, and that nicotine is addictive. Now these are well-known facts, and yet, some people still choose to smoke. (Another US Surgeon General warned about smoking and cancer back in 1964, but smoking behavior didn’t change for decades.)
The risks associated with alcohol consumption are also known, and the alcoholic beverage industry has also tried to hide that research, but mostly, it just spends millions of dollars every year on marketing campaigns to convince you that everyone drinks (not true), and that drinking alcohol will make you happier, sexier, and a lot more popular!
These days, it’s a safe bet that most people who drink are drinking too much, and should drink less or quit, for their own good. So why don’t they? The most common reason people have trouble changing their drinking habits is simply that a habit can be difficult to change, especially when there’s so much encouragement for drinking in our society, and when it’s so readily available and relatively inexpensive.
Most people can drive over the speed limit without getting a ticket or having an accident, and we usually don’t even think of that as “risky” behavior. In the same way, we don’t tend to think about drinking as risky, and any negative consequences from drinking may seem so rare or unlikely to happen that they’re easy to dismiss as “it’ll never happen to me.” (By the way, that’s the title of a classic book about children of alcoholics, and ironically, if you have a parent who is or was an alcoholic, your odds of developing alcoholism increase by 50%.)
Another reason some people drink too much is they believe “everyone drinks like this, and that’s just how it is.” They think of drinking as a super fun activity to do with friends, which makes them feel sexy and no longer shy, and so what if they black out or have a terrible hangover the next day, doesn’t everyone? This thinking is common among people who may have started out with binge drinking in high school or college, and don’t know any other way to consume alcohol. (Binge drinking is defined as 5 or more drinks on one occasion.)
I have counseled hundreds of adults who have experienced “negative consequences” (blackouts, DUIs, relationship problems, health issues, job jeopardy) from drinking, and would like to learn how to avoid future negative consequences. None of them have wanted to quit completely, and most didn’t believe they needed to quit, because “I’m not an alcoholic, I just enjoy [the taste, the way it relaxes me, the social aspect]”. So we start with a treatment goal of drinking less, not quitting.
My experience has confirmed what the research shows: indeed, some people can learn to drink less, so that they lower their risks of negative consequences. Usually it’s younger people, who have been drinking for fewer than 10 years, who don’t have a family history of alcoholism. Occasionally it’s an older person who just needed to learn a few tips, like to drink only occasionally, not drink on an empty stomach, alternate alcohol with drinking water, stick to 1 or 2 drinks, and to say a firm “no thanks” to another one.
But most of my clients who have experienced one or more negative consequences from drinking haven’t been successful at moderation. They quit counseling instead, or in some cases, come to the decision that it might actually be easier to abstain completely, because it seems to require too much self-discipline to drink less.
Frankly, one major reason some people continue to drink too much despite negative consequences is that they’re already addicted and just don’t know it, because alcohol use and abuse exist on a spectrum, where the lines between “moderate drinking,” “risky or problem drinking,” and “alcoholism” are difficult to discern. If addiction has already taken hold, chances of learning to drink moderately are slim, no matter how much willpower a person has.
I believe it’s still worth trying to reduce a dependence on alcohol, so I support “Dry January,” and “Sober Curious,” and encourage you to consider other experiments in abstinence. Keep a log or journal of thoughts and feelings that arise when you’re choosing to not drink, and pay attention to what your mind and body tell you – it might be very informative!
If you’d like help figuring out your relationship to alcohol and whether it needs to change, please feel free to reach out to me. I’m not taking new patients for long-term therapy, but I am available for short-term consultation, assessment, and referral. I also recommend checking out the ReThinking Drinking website.
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8 Tips to Relieve Seasonal Depression
Today, the shortest day of the year (in the northern hemisphere) is a good day to talk about seasonal depression. At my latitude, there are fewer than ten hours between sunrise and sunset. That’s bad news for people like me, who have a hard time getting up before daylight. If it’s cold outside too, that makes it harder to fight the urge to stay in bed, or at least in PJs, all day. In the winter months I’m more sluggish, prone to irritability and sadness, and more likely to take a negative view of things. I’m not clinically depressed, however, I’m just very affected by sunlight, and the absence of it.
While many people are similarly affected, some do experience a true clinical depression during the winter, whether caused or simply made worse by the absence of sunlight. Here are some tips for coping with seasonal depression, or SAD (Seasonal Affective Disorder, as it’s known in the clinical literature), gathered from both my experience as well as scientific research.
Wherever you are on the SAD – Depression spectrum, I’ve learned that giving in to those urges to hide under the covers, sleep all day, isolate from people, or use alcohol, food, or other substances to numb your emotional sensitivity just doesn’t work. These things actually feed the depression, and keep it going longer. What works better instead:
1) Move your body! Even though it might feel like slogging through molasses, and your stiff joints may complain loudly, get up and do physical exercise, or some kind of movement. Exercise has been well documented to be one of the most effective treatments for depression – more effective than medication, and without any negative side effects.
When we get depressed, stressed, anxious or fearful, there’s an unconscious tightening of muscles, and a holding in of emotion, that produces a tension throughout the body. We have many expressions for this, including “putting the armor on,” “hardening our shell,” or “holding it together.” This takes effort, and expends physical energy, so if we’re doing it for a long time, we’ll get tired, even to the point of exhaustion. Have you ever felt so exhausted you couldn’t relax or sleep? When that happens, what actually helps the most is to start moving your body.
Don’t overdo it at first, just take a walk, do some gentle yoga or stretching, or any easy movement that will allow those tense muscles to loosen, and will also release neurotransmitters that can improve mood. I recommend this slightly dated but still excellent article on the benefits of exercise in Scientific American Mind: The Exercise Cure – Why it may be the best fix for depression
2) Stop feeding your depression. When mood and energy are low, we’re much more likely to crave sugary foods and drinks, as well as caffeine, to get us going. While anything with sugar will often give a brief burst of energy, it’s the wrong kind of energy, leaving you more depleted after the quick high wears off. And although the temptation to imbibe may be strong, especially around the holidays, keep in mind that alcohol is actually a central nervous system depressant. Both alcohol and sweets will feed depression far more than relieve it. If you want to learn more about why we crave sugar, and how it affects mood, cognitive function and health, I highly recommend Gary Taube’s 2017 book, The Case Against Sugar.
If you are a coffee or tea drinker, it may help to increase your consumption of caffeine a little during the dark days of winter. But leave the sugar out, and try stevia, or any kind of milk (almond, oat, soy, or dairy) instead. If you simply must have a sweet treat, balance it with lean protein (e.g. low fat milk, cheese, or yogurt). Add more fruits and vegetables to your diet. If you’re not a big fan of vegetables, try putting them in a smoothie with some fruit, cook them in soup or stew, or stir fry them. My colleague Susan Blanc, nutritionist and cooking teacher, has some great classes and recipes to improve mood and brain health: Kitchen Table Remedies
3) Let the sunshine in. Seasonal depression is often a function of lack of sunlight, which helps our bodies produce Vitamin D, needed to help us regulate sleep, energy, and mood. Fortunately for those of us who live in California, we rarely have to wait very long for a sunny day. If the sun is shining right now as you’re reading this, stop! Use this time instead to get outside and go for a walk, or at the very least, find a sunny spot to sit and soak up some rays for 10 -15 minutes. If the sun hasn’t been out for awhile where you are, and/or you’re particularly sensitive to seasonal depression, you might want to look into getting a light box. Here’s a link to some solidly researched information on how light boxes help, and how to use them safely: Light therapies for depression
4) Do an enjoyable activity. Research from Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy has shown that doing an activity that gives you pleasure or mastery, or both, is one of the most effective ways to get out of a low mood. When we’re down in the dumps, that self-critical inner voice is most active, telling us we shouldn’t do something fun or pleasurable until we get our work done. But if you’re not getting your work done because your mood and energy are low, then you need to reverse-engineer this, because motivation works backwards in depression. So give yourself permission to do a fun activity, something you enjoy and that just might put a smile on your face. Play an instrument, do a craft or hobby, watch a favorite TV show or funny movie – you get the idea. One caveat: do it for 30 minutes to a couple of hours; you don’t get to do this all day!
5) Clean or declutter your space.. If nothing sounds like it would be fun or give you pleasure, you may be suffering from one of the hallmark symptoms of clinical depression: anhedonia, a loss of interest in things that normally are pleasurable. So if that’s where you’re at right now, think of something you can do that will give you a sense of mastery or accomplishment. Pick a fairly simple task, one that will yield a visible result, like decluttering your desk or work space, organizing a drawer, or even washing dishes, and set a timer for 15 minutes so that you don’t get bogged down in it. When the timer goes off, take a break. Then you can choose whether to continue working on the task, or do something else. Clearing a space can help clear the mind. For more tips on how to clean & declutter, 15 minutes at a time, visit The FlyLady (no, she’s not an insect, she’s a human who loves fly fishing and helping people get control of their clutter).
6) Don’t be a hermit.. Depression can make contact with others challenging, so we isolate instead. And the pandemic has made social contact even more challenging, and isolation more common. But humans are social animals, and we are hard-wired for face-to-face connection to help regulate our moods and emotions. Among other benefits, it releases oxytocin, a chemical that promotes feelings of safety, security, and connectedness. So if you’ve been hiding out, relying on social media to feel connected, use your phone the old-fashioned way, and call a friend, or put the phone down and just go talk to someone. Don’t start the conversation with how depressed you are (and don’t talk about politics!) – instead, ask them about what they’ve been up to, or pick a more neutral topic, like the weather, sports, or the latest crop of movies. Make eye contact, and maybe even try a hug.
7) Listen to music. Music not only soothes the soul, but helps us feel connected with others. I recently attended a concert where the audience was asked, “in the midst of chaos, how do you find peace?” As I listened, I meditated on how music has helped people throughout history transcend their suffering. I thought about the origins of jazz and the blues, the protest songs of the 60’s, and my own personal soundtrack of favorite albums and artists that have helped me through troubled times (including the song with this line: “Everybody’s had the blues sometime, and everybody knows the tune.”) What are your favorite tunes? Can you sing or play one of them right now?
8) Get out in nature. I have found that one of the most effective ways to relieve my depression, stress, or anxiety, is to go for a walk in the hills near my home, or drive to a nearby regional park for a hike. Not only do I get the benefits of fresh air, maybe some sunshine, and moving my body, but it’s very powerful to ground myself in the natural world. Even if you don’t have access to a park, there are birds, trees, and wild creatures that exist in almost every environment. (The photo with the monarch butterflies was taken in Pacific Grove in February 2016.)
Putting it all together: Reach out to a friend you haven’t seen in awhile, and make a commitment to do an activity together: have coffee or lunch, take a walk in the park, go to a musical performance or art exhibit. Or go for the Trifecta and do all three!
If this sounds overwhelming, remember that motivation works backwards in depression, so you’re going to have to challenge yourself. Consider also that face-to-face contact with people you care about, especially sharing a meal together, stimulates the production of oxytocin, the chemical in your brain that helps you feel safe and connected. Remember that moving your body will release the tension that comes from resisting reality, and may actually give you more energy as it helps produce mood-enhancing neurotransmitters. And finally, don’t forget that fresh air and sunshine replenish essential nutrients that improve mood; and that music (and art) soothe the soul and stimulate right-brain creativity and positivity.
(This article has been updated from a previous article I wrote on 12/21/16.)
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Calming the Anxious Mind
We are living in turbulent times. If you are paying attention at all, it’s hard not to feel anxious about the state of the world we live in and the fate of humanity. While violence, war, and natural disasters have occurred throughout human history, we seem to be experiencing them today with a new level of intensity – from the effects of climate change to the rise in terrorist activity – while our leaders and politicians seem more concerned with their own approval ratings than providing actual leadership.
We also live in a “500-channel universe,” a world of seemingly infinite possibilities for distraction. Distraction is a common coping strategy against anxious thoughts or worries, but when we are bombarded by TV and radio programming that aims to offend and shock, advertising that urges us to spend money we don’t have in a never-ending quest for happiness, and the constant stream of bad news, our nervous system gets stressed, and may become overloaded.
The pace of daily life has sped up, to a speed that may actually exceed the brain’s ability to process and respond to our experience in an effective way. When I was growing up, we were promised that technology would make our lives easier, and give us more leisure time (remember “The Jetsons”?) Instead, we have less free time, with our cell phones, laptops, and tablets keeping us connected to the office and to everyone we know 24/7, even while we’re supposed to be sleeping or on vacation. This lack of down time adds to our stress and anxiety.
Anxiety and worry are normal human emotions, emanating from the part of our brain that houses our survival instincts. (Read what Rick Hanson, PhD says about the brain’s “negativity bias.”) Anxiety can be passed down in families, both as a genetic predisposition and as learned behavior. Everyone experiences anxiety at times, though some people are more sensitive to it, while others are anxious all the time. Anxiety is one of the most common reasons that people take medication (or use alcohol, drugs, or food to “numb out”). So what are some healthy ways to relieve anxiety, and calm the anxious mind?
One way is to “unplug”: see if you can turn off your devices when you’re eating and sleeping, and leave them at home while you enjoy a walk in nature. Stop watching the news on TV before bedtime, and read a book instead. Can you go for a whole day without checking email or texting? Finding ways to reduce the amount of stimulation to your brain may lower your anxiety level.
Another way is to challenge your assumptions and thoughts about whatever is making you anxious. If you’re prone to playing the “worst case scenario” game in your head, you may be scaring yourself, and making things worse than they actually are. The gold standard of anxiety treatment is Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT), which teaches you to change how you feel by changing your thoughts and behaviors. Check out this new CBT workbook: The Road to Calm
Because we experience anxiety in the physical body, as well as in our minds, Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT), a newer variation of CBT, incorporates meditation and yoga practices. As a CBT practitioner for over 25 years, and an MBCT practitioner for the last seven, I’ve found that mindfulness and meditation practice improve the efficacy of CBT, and are also stand-alone practices that can be very helpful to manage anxiety and relieve its effects.
At its most basic level, mindfulness invites us to wake up to the present moment, and notice that we’re breathing – “I’m awake and alive, right now.” While this might not strike you as a reason to rejoice, if you stop to think about it, that we breathe automatically is truly amazing. Mindfulness is about stepping out of autopilot mode, and using the breath and body to ground us in the present. However, if you’re experiencing anxiety, this can get dicey.
A typical mindfulness meditation practice is to focus on the breath. Many people find that this promotes relaxation and calmness, but if you are prone to anxiety, focusing on your breath can actually make you more anxious. You might notice that your breathing is kind of shallow, or a bit rapid, so you try to take a deep breath or slow your breathing down, but then the harder you try the more it seems to speed up, until it feels like you can’t breathe at all! Has that ever happened to you?
And did you then conclude “meditation is not for me?” The problem here is that bringing conscious awareness to automatic processes in the mind and body, while beneficial for most people, can backfire for anxious people, who are already hyper-focused on things that other people don’t even notice, like their breathing, heart rate, and worrisome thoughts. But if you give up on mindfulness and meditation so soon, you don’t give your mind and body a chance to reap the benefits, which are signficant. Herein lies the paradox of mindfulness.
Whether it’s your breath, or your life, if you start with wanting things to be different than they are, you create more stress and anxiety for yourself. Mindfulness invites you to just observe what is, without judgment or worry, and without needing things to be different. If you can do that, then change may come, often effortlessly. You might try this brief breath meditation:
Still not sure about meditation? Perhaps some mindful movement, like Yoga, Tai Chi, or Qi Gong, can help. One of my favorite forms of mindful movement is walking meditation, where we focus our attention on the sensations involved in walking, slowly and intentionally, just being present with our experience without needing to go anywhere. Walking this way, we find there’s actually a lot to notice, so we’re not just focused on the breath, and this, plus the gentle, rhythmic movements of our body, can help to calm the anxious mind. If you’d like to try walking meditation, here are some instructions:

Healing from the Trauma of Toxic Narcissism
I have been struggling to write something relevant to the current political and social turmoil that might be helpful; yet while I have many opinions, I am not an expert at political, economic, or social trends. But one thing I do know about is narcissism and its effects.
I know that narcissism exists on a spectrum, from charmingly self-absorbed to pathologically destructive, and I’ve known people who fall all along that spectrum. I’ve witnessed the effects of growing up with a narcissistic family member; I’ve been personally affected; and I’ve spent years in therapy healing from it. I’ve had several narcissistic bosses. And I’ve also had, not surprisingly, lots of clients who are dealing with the effects of a narcissist in their lives.
I have been triggered by the election of a pathological narcissist to the highest office in the land, and felt somewhat traumatized these past four years by his words and actions. I know many others have as well. Maybe that’s why I haven’t been able to write about it until now, now that he’s finally headed out the door. (Cue, “Hit the road, Jack, and don’t come back no more no more no more no more. . . .”)
Because of my experience, I have excellent radar for narcissists, and avoid them whenever possible. This one’s extreme narcissism seemed so glaringly obvious, I didn’t understand why people voted for him in the first place, and I’ve been at a loss to make sense of why so many voted for him again, after seeing four years of his total lack of empathy and concern for others, the self-aggrandizement, the grandiosity, the meanness, the lies, lies and more lies. His “purposeful, vindictive chaos,” as I heard Jon Stewart say on the Colbert Show in January 2017.
When you grow up with a narcissistic parent, your own sense of self doesn’t fully develop. You are more vulnerable to being manipulated by other narcissists, because you’ve been trained to seek affirmation through people-pleasing. You are more likely to be attracted to, and seek out relationships with, other narcissists. Or you may eventually become one. Unless, of course, you’re lucky enough to have some positive, nurturing adults in your life, and the opportunity to get therapy, and to find a support group.
The support group I found, quite by accident, was Adult Children of Alcoholics, a self-help group modeled after Alcoholics Anonymous. At my first meeting in 1982, I was completely blown away as I heard others sharing thoughts, feelings and experiences just like mine, which I had never told anyone. For the first time in my life, I felt I belonged. Which was very weird, because there were no active alcoholics in my family.
Turns out that narcissism is a key trait of alcoholism, and the two co-occur in families with great frequency. In fact, today the group is called Adult Children of Alcoholics/Dysfunctional Families. I also learned later that the effects of growing up with an alcoholic can be passed down over generations. But I didn’t need to know those things in order to know that I should keep going to ACOA meetings. What I learned there was tremendously helpful in healing my own wounds, and allowed me to become a healer for others.
When you grow up with an alcoholic parent, you are vulnerable to becoming addicted yourself, whether to alcohol, another substance, or compulsive behaviors like gambling and shopping. You’re also more likely to be attracted to, and seek out relationships with, other alcoholics or addicts. You may become a people-pleaser, or be terrified of abandonment. The most common traits of Adult Children of Alcoholics have been compiled by members, and called The Laundry List.
Back in the 1980’s, when I was learning about my own dysfunctional family dynamics, there was a popular PBS show hosted by a man named John Bradshaw, who talked about family dysfunction caused by alcoholism, and explained how the children in these families each take on different roles to protect themselves, or other family members, from the chaos, confusion, and fear that the alcoholic’s unpredictable rages and destructive behaviors cause. They may become super-responsible, taking over the parent’s role, or they become enablers or super-caregivers. They might fight back against the alcoholic’s raging, or they might try to become invisible and disappear.
Everyone in this country has been affected by the actions of the narcissist in the White House, but just like in alcoholic families, the effects are different for different people. Some people have taken heroic action to speak up and stand up to his bullying behavior, risking their jobs. Others have mirrored him, seeking his approval by striving to be just like him. Others have exhausted themselves trying to make everyone else happy. And some are simply lost, numb, mute. Those are the ones I’m most worried about.
When you don’t develop a healthy sense of self, you can’t take care of yourself. When your sense of self is distorted by narcissism, you can’t take care of others. The narcissistic parent only loves him/herself, and demands unconditional adoration while dispensing scorn and disdain. That is a traumatizing experience for a child. This country is now full of people who have been traumatized by the narcissist in the White House, directly or indirectly.
Rates of substance abuse and addiction are up, so are rates of anxiety, depression and suicide. The effects of trauma show up in other ways: emotional withdrawal or dysregulation, nightmares and insomnia, difficulties in interpersonal relationships, bullying behavior, lack of academic or career progress, or outright failure to navigate the stages of adulthood.
So now what? How do we begin to heal these wounds? We can start by recognizing what has happened to us, and calling it what it is: the Trauma of Toxic Narcissism. Trauma therapists know that the most important first step in healing trauma is to create a safe space for trauma survivors to process what’s happened. Even when the toxic terrorizer has been vanquished, people still may not feel safe. (I know people who didn’t feel safe even after their narcissistic bully was dead.) Bessel van der Kolk, author of The Body Keeps the Score, has some wonderful videos and resources on Healing from Trauma, and Lisa Najavits has excellent books and trainings on Seeking Safety originally developed for women with PTSD and addiction.
We also need to take immediate and strong action to stop the proliferation of toxic ideas and behaviors that the narcissist has spawned, stopping these Mini-Me’s in their tracks so they can no longer intimidate others. The United Nations has published guidance on countering COVID-19 hate speech, which builds on their global plan to counteract hate speech and contains recommendations for business leaders and individuals. This might be a starting point.
I wish everyone would learn what I have known for years: the narcissist doesn’t change. He doesn’t listen to feedback, he doesn’t learn from his mistakes, he doesn’t acquire wisdom, and he is incapable of developing compassion. He only becomes more of what he is: vain, selfish, mean, delusional. But WE can change, and that’s what truly matters.
Above image created by Freepik – www.freepik.com
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