About Home And Family

Through the years, the kitchen has been a gathering place for family and friends alike. Two, three, and four centuries ago, the home had only one or two rooms – the kitchen/living area and one or two sleeping areas. So, the kitchen was quite naturally the place where everyone ate, studied, talked, visited with friends, played, celebrated, sewed, spun wool into yarn and made clothing.

As homes became larger and rooms more specialized, the kitchen also became its own room. However, that did not prevent it from being a gathering place. It remained a place for a mother and daughter to confide over a cup of tea; a father and son to discuss a problem or a victory over ice cream at midnight; or a husband and wife to share a glass of wine at the end of the day as they reminisced about the day’s activities and discussed the coming day. The kitchen has also served as a place for card games, board games, crafts, homework, school projects, birthday parties, canning, making jams and jellies, and the list goes on and on.

The wonderful aroma of cinnamon buns or apple pie baking; the enticing smell of a turkey roasting; or the mouth-watering aroma of chili wafting through the house on game day naturally draws people to the kitchen for pleas of, “Is it ready yet”? The banging of pots and pans, the clinking of flatware, the gentle ring of china touching china can all be heard as preparations progress for a holiday meal. The anticipation builds as the aromas reach their peak and awareness heightens that food is moving from the kitchen to the dining table. At last, the feast is ready and everyone takes their place. Suddenly, the sounds of people talking earnestly, laughing heartily, and enjoying each other’s company as they dive into the meal with gusto take over and the kitchen is allowed to rest for a time.

The wonderful sounds of laughing and talking, the aroma of wonderful food so lovingly prepared, and the mental picture of all those people sitting around the table enjoying each other and the prepared meal is incredibly satisfying. And, in the background, the kitchen where the meal preparation began, stands quietly, ready to go into action again when the meal has ended and the focus reverts back to the kitchen for cleanup where, once again, it will become the gathering place.

By Jo Ann Hancock

“I thought marriage and having a family would really be more about sharing and having fun together”  “What I am finding is that it feels like all the light and energy have been sucked out of me, and I am miserable and feeling hopeless!”  So spoke a mother of four struggling with depression and intense feelings of inadequacy.  She then recounted her belief system about marriages that they “should” be a joining where both husband and wife feel seen, understood, giving and receiving of attention and love, and her disappointment at feeling like her relationship with her husband of eleven years was one-sided, where she was constantly ignored and treated as being unimportant.

“Why does it always have to be only about him?” “When do I get to have my needs consider?”  In work done by Jeffery Young PhD he discusses how skewed thinking can emerge when people become overly self-referenced or self-absorbed.  The partner or parent that is self-absorbed certainly does not adequately meet the psychological, emotional or social needs of their family members.  That one of the damaging effects of being involved with the self-absorbed is that it frequently feels as if they lack the ability to be consistently considerate, sensitive, empathic and caring.

This may actually be a resultant thinking and emotional pattern developed in childhood when social and emotional needs failed to be met and the individual learned to focus primarily on their own needs. The thought of others people’s wishes does not come instinctively to them, and without significant prompting they will likely not think of them and even when they do think of others feelings and needs they  may respond poorly. In the case above the woman’s own strategy to get her need met was to take care of others, and she frequently put other’s needs ahead of her own, but never felt that these efforts were reciprocated by her husband, or for that matter her children.

Offra Gerstein PhD has stated that the childhood of self-referenced individuals is often devoid of empathic and compassionate parenting. That a brilliant, if personally costly survival strategy is to become increasingly self-centered which is a preoccupation with attempting to meet those early attachment and bonding needs. Dr. Robert Rhoton of Psychological Health and Wellness suggests that attachment is about the degree that one feels emotionally connected to others, and the predictable nature of that connection.  When attachment is inconsistent or poor the predictable nature of the emotional connection is vague and ill-formed.  This appreciably reduces trust and the calm expectation of support that human beings rely on to feel a part of a community or family. Additionally, it is not uncommon to find individuals that grow to adulthood in this dynamic learn to react with aggression and hostility, or by withdrawal and victimization of self.

There are two courses of action to help this very sad woman to improve how she feels about the situation she finds herself.  First is to look her patterns of getting her own needs met and what she expects in relationship to others.  She has traditionally shown love by be focused on the wants and needs of others at the sacrifice of her own well being, this was a strategy to meet her own needs for attachment and bonding, but that strategy has put her at risk of finding friends, and a marriage partner that the equivalent of emotional black holes that are sucking the energy she offers in every increasing amounts. She began working on setting more balanced boundaries with others, articulating what she expected not waiting for them to intuitively “know” as she did what she might want, prefer or feel.

After working on the first part of dealing with her own patterns and needs, this very competent young mother and wife began to realize that she had to see things differently, and react differently to her husband.  The following are things she developed in therapy that worked for her, they are not being offered as a set of guidelines that will work for all, but simply as a review of what worked for her.

The actions she took to deal with a self-absorbed husband:

1. She changed how she viewed her husband, rather than continue to see him as intentionally ignoring or hurting her, she decided that he was emotionally wired differently, and that his personality had been impacted, that he truly cared for her and his family, but did not know how to adequately express or show it.
2. She began to see herself differently, rather than her tendency to see his self-absorbed ignoring behavior as a criticism of, or lack of feeling for her, she began to look for self-esteem and worth with in herself.
3. Abstained from judging herself based on others inability to express love, devotion or caring.
4. She began to express exactly what she expected in simple exchanges.  “smile when you see me walk into a room”; “greet me with a hug and a kiss”; “hold my hand as we walk into the store”
5. Practiced gratitude that she is an empathic individual, capable of emotional connection with others.
6. Focus on reaction to her husband’s underlying needs. She developed a belief that underneath her husband’s self-absorption is the need for attention and approval. She became very specific with compliments and expressions of merit

After six months of therapy, the woman felt much relief, had decided to stay in the marriage and was clear about what to expect from her husband.   This might not be everyone’s choice for how to deal with difficult and self-absorbed marital partners, but for this woman as she became stronger and truly compassionate toward her husband, the relationship improved and she felt worthwhile.

By Robert Rhoton