I must be watching too much TV these days because I’ve seen two commercials to which I needed to respond as noted by this and the previous post.

There was a cell phone commercial where the dad walks into the room where his two teenage children are draped over a sofa and a chair. He says to them something like, “Now you can talk and text message all you want with this new cell phone plan!” They respond, “We do that already.” Dad says, “Yes, but your mother will now be able to give up her second job!” Mom walks out in a sandwich board-type costume suggesting she is walking advertisement for a Taco place! Okay, folks. What’s the problem here?

Why in the world are we not limiting our children? Why are we giving them free reign? Why are we raising children with a huge sense of entitlement? They don’t get that on their own. We give it to them. You do not have to follow the trend. You can stand up and say “NO, STOP, I WON’T HAVE IT!” You can do this. I promise.

I need to get this out! Parents, please, please, please, do not, let me repeat, DO NOT have a DVD player in your SUV/car/Hummer! If you do, you will be missing the very best time to talk to your child/children. It is during these times together that you can get into conversations with them because they are a captured audience. And visa-versa. They have you as a captured audience. You can actually have a discussion. This is when you TEACH them about: Your values (via stories); Your world view: or whatever else it is that parents TEACH children! Do not stick your little ones in front of a TV show, a DVD (even Baby Einstein!) or a computer! YOU need to be the one who teaches them! PLEASE, PLEASE, PLEASE.

Baby boomers are becoming entrepreneurs at a tremendous rate. According to CBS The Morning Show, more than a million baby boomers start their own businesses each year. The link to this morning’s segment is: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2007/04/12/earlyshow/living/money/main2675209.shtml. I’m sure there’s another way of showing this link, but I’ll have to ask A or D how to do that! (A=Aaron; D=David) (Aaron= Aaron Ross, Aaron Ann or Aaron Michael)

I am ready to start my business. I am ready to stop being a mental health professional. I am now a business woman with a product to sell. The public is starting to see the benefit of a personal coach.

I will be starting a group for baby boomers who are ready to talk about their next steps, whether it is to start a business, go back to school, take time to travel, or a combination of next steps. It’s time to help people decide.

I’m giving a talk to a group of mothers tomorrow on the topics of sibling rivalry and behavior management. Some of the points I want to make are:

Anticipate the thoughts, feelings, actions of each child prior to the outbreak

Encourage each child to deescalate the dispute. (Mary, what can you do to not fight?)

Read Pain and The Great One by Blume and Trivas or I’d Rather Have an Iguana by Mario.

Discuss with your children how communication and empathy can prevent conflicts.

Are you comparing the children? Are you encouraging sibling competition?

Actively listen to each child’s feelings concerning the conflict without taking sides.

Parents role model ways to improve family interactions: stop the put-downs, don’t interrupt, share.

Parental love and recognition are abundant resources that can be shared by all of the siblings without any child being deprived.

Parental interference in sibling disputes often intensifies the conflict. Coach the children out of the dispute.

Basic process to assist siblings to resolve dispute: 1)State the problem 2) each states point of view 3)how does this FEEL 4)what could be done about this (brainstorm) 5)agree to a solution and implement it.

Strengthen bonds between siblings through positive recognition, fair treatment, and awareness of personal feelings. (Consequences which follow common sense)

Recognize the individual personality, needs, sensitivities, goals, and aspirations of each child and work to reduce competition. Use the criterion of “unique” rather than “equal” in the distribution of love, attention, time and physical needs (I love you each uniquely).

Hold weekly meetings during which family chores are delegated, family problems are resolved, and recognition is given for the efforts of each family member.

Have activities that involve total family and one-to-one interaction among family members.

Family members need to work together to establish a loving, respectful and cooperative family atmosphere.

There is damage caused by assigning negative family roles like bully, untrustworthy, loser, OR exclusively positive family roles like most gifted, best athlete, beautiful.

Model and affirm the behavior you hope to bring out in each of the children: persistence, responsibility, rather than identifying negative traits you want to eliminate, giving up, shirking duties, etc.

In a previous post, I went into a diatribe about how our culture is over-diagnosed. I know there are some readers of this blog that may believe that each and every mental health practitioner and every medical practitioner are correct in their diagnosis. So be it.
What many people forget is that it is normal to have feelings of depression, anxiety, irritability, distractibility, etc. If you have never felt some of the above, I would like to talk to you about your lack of awareness of yourself! It is only when these feelings occur over a specific period of time and to a specific degree of difficulty that they become a disorder. Please, please, please, fellow mental health practitioners, ask the right questions to find out if the problem is “within normal range” or not, before you give a hefty diagnosis. Adjustment Disorder is always an option! Then the patient/client will have a better outlook for their future!

I will probably address this subject many times. It is probably the number one reason I have chosen to change the direction of my professional life. And, this is a very touchy subject.
I have a big problem with my profession (along with psychiatry and the drug companies) making everything a disorder. Major Depressive Disorder, Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder, Bipolar Disorder. A large percentage of my therapy clients attribute their health and well-being to their medicine level at the time. They take zero credit for how they feel. There are so many people with the Bipolar Diagnosis. Many wear the diagnosis like a badge
My profession, as well as psychiatry (actually, more so psychiatry), has taken the likelihood of making choices about one’s life out of the picture. People feel depressed usually because life is not going the way they want it to go. (I am not saying there is no brain chemical involvement. There is in many cases. Just not to the major degree we see it in practice.) So they go to a doctor, get an anti-depressant, and expect life to change, or at least for their feelings to change. That is not going to happen unless they make different choices, either in the way they appraise their lives, or in the environment, or in their behavioral choices.

Another way to look at this is that “emotions happens”. People are hard-wired to feel. People are SUPPOSED TO FEEL! Feelings can even fluctuate. You can feel pretty good and then something can happen or not happen as expected and then you feel bad, down, angry, pissed, embarrassed, etc. This is what gets medicated, especially in adolescents. Teens seem to experience a pretty wide variety of emotions in a pretty short time. Parents freak out because their teen is crying, sullen, or anything emotional at all! Then they rush them to the pediatrician’s office who sometimes sends them to the psychiatrist. Everyone agrees that they need to give the teen anti-depressant medication or worse yet. a mood stabilizer because they now have the diagnosis of Bipolar!!!

One of the things that is important in making the Bipolar diagnosis is a family history of it. Sounds reasonable. The problem I see with this is an explosion of diagnoses of Bipolar Disorder. What use to be a very distinct and scary diagnosis is showing up all over. When I was a Medical Expert Consultant for Office of Hearings and Appeals for Social Security, I would regularly see people who used alcohol and drugs claiming to be Bipolar. The problem with that was, the diagnostic criteria for alcohol and drug abuse and addiction were similar to Bipolar Disorders. The key to a correct diagnosis is being able to rule out that a person was not a drug and alcohol abuser before you could look at the Bipolar diagnosis. That is the problem. Mental health professionals are NOT doing that. In fact, they seem to be going more on family history (which may in fact be a false history) to make the diagnosis. “If granddad was Bipolar, Uncle Ned was Bipolar, well then, you must be Bipolar!” Now, did the psychiatrist ask about granddad’s and Uncle Ned’s drinking or drugging use? Probably not. I’ve seen many people go to their psychiatrist to get the diagnosis
Discussion with N. People couldn’t possibly enjoy something because that would be incongruent with the notion that they are “depressed” . That is, “I am a depressed person. I take anti-depressants. I can’t have a good life because that would be totally counter to the depressed persona I have to live up to!” So, my premise is that psychiatrists and drug companies with their pushing the psychiatric diagnosis are making people UNHAPPY, UNFULFILLED, JOYLESS, etc. because of their bottom line. Let’s move on to the Bipolar diagnosis.

When I was in graduate school, the preponderance of this diagnosis was considered to be,very low. Then, in the years that I was a Medical Expert Consultant for Social Security and testified at hearings based upon a person’s mental health record, it was amazing how many people received the diagnosis of Bipolar. Because I could see their entire medical record, I would often note that the signs and symptoms needed to make that diagnosis were not present in other venues of the claimant. They were present only for the examining psychiatrist. What the claimant would often leave out of his/her history was their alcohol and drug use. So often, Bipolar Disorder is misdiagnosed.

Why do I care? It just goes against everything I believe in for people. I want people to have the best life they can have. I hate that they want a diagnosis that implies a chronic mental disorder. A person’s outcome is directly related to how they think their outcome will be! What do you think that means for people who go for the diagnosis?

When I think about my life and the lives of my cohort, I think, “Wow. This is really different from the lives of our parents and grandparents.” I wonder what my mother would have said about computers, Blackberrys, iPods, etc., had she stayed around for 20 more years! It’s made my “Next Steps” that much more difficult because I thought I knew what direction I was headed from years ago. No, that’s not the way of the world. I actually need to figure out what I’m gonna do with my life for the next 30 or 40 years! Well, actually, I know what I’m going to do; I’m going to continue what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years, with a twist. I’m going to be coaching people rather that doing therapy with people. But my point is, people need to see their next steps as very different than their parents steps at this part of their lives.

Even after having had a financially successful working life, folks are saying to me, “I made the money, but I’ve never really felt fulfilled!” How can that be?

Research has shown that it is more about work and life satisfaction, relationship satisfaction, and helping others, that is what makes people happy! Not the amount of money in the bank!

See, I’m getting back on course!

I have been distracted by going in way too many directions! I’m getting back on course by focusing on what I think is the best direction for me to go. It’s where my energy is. It’s where the energy of 70 million baby boomers is. What are we going to do with the rest of our lives?!! Our generation, on average, is going to live thirty years longer than our parents’ generation!

We were raised by depression-era parents and we were conditioned to pursue careers that were capable of providing financial security. That’s a wonderful idea for the most part. What was often missing though, was the part about loving your work. So many of us, have worked in careers that were fine, but something was missing. The joy, passion, and/or personal desire related to the work was missing for some of us, but certainly. not all baby boomers!

From another direction, we find baby boomers who are no longer at the top of their game for whatever reason. What are they to do for the next 30 years.

We will be changing the face of work and leisure as we move into what used to be called retirement. We are not retiring. We need to come us with another name for it!

With that said, for those baby boomers who are happily retired, I say, Great! Have fun! There are no rules here! So whatever I might say about finding out about what you want to do for the next 30 years, know that you are fine just the way you are!