And how long do the effects of emotional connections last? There may be a huge difference between the length of contact and their half life. Half-life is the period of time it takes for a substance undergoing decay to decrease by half. It is a term typically used to measure how long medications work after we take them. Paraphrasing the above definition, I apply it to the period of time it takes for the effects of connections to be reduced by half in people’s minds.

Some connections, the most important ones in our lives, live on forever, their “decaying” never taking place. At times, a very brief encounter can touch and affect us in very deep and transformative ways that can also last a life time.  Others may fade through time, with varying degrees of speed in “decay.” Others have very brief half-lives, lasting but a few seconds.

The relationships we develop with our primary caretakers during our childhood years continue to have a very powerful influence throughout our lives, possibly the longest half-lives of all connections, regardless of whether they were good or bad. They mold us into who we become as human beings. They teach us rules and ways of being that eventually become second nature to us. Even when not consciously thinking about them, they influence our views, decisions, choices and our emotional reactions to events around us.

Relationships with friends also affect us deeply, molding our social personae into who we want to be.  Our emotional partners hold a special place in our hearts, and our connections with them affect what we seek, value or fear in intimate relationships. Their half-lives vary according to the quality of these relationships.

Other relationships also can have long lasting half-lives, even if we may not be aware of them.  As a psychotherapist, I feel privileged to be in a position of touching people’s lives in very special ways. When my patients first get to my office, they are in pain. This facilitates their opening up to me and allows me to see through some of their defenses and resistances. When they leave, I often wonder what they will retain of our work together, and which part of our relationship will hold special value for them and will have the longest half-life.

We often don’t directly know how we affect other people. When, after a long time of not hearing from them, I hear from my patients again, they tell me which part of our relationship is still alive in their minds. This part is no longer mine, but has become part of who they are.  After all, we are all made of bits and pieces we took from people who touched and influenced us from birth on. All these people become parts of our identities. Holding on to these bits and pieces keeps us connected with those who influenced us, even when they are no longer present. When someone dear to us dies, we remember some traits of the departed, as they have now become part of who we are. This process is called internalization and it is very useful in making the grieving process more tolerable.

The fact that we can touch people’s lives in meaningful ways is the reward that makes our work as psychotherapists and counselors well worthwhile. There is nothing like it.  The feedback that our help may have contributed to improve the lives of some of our patients is absolutely priceless. This feeling is so powerful that it keeps us in the helping professions motivated to continue what we are doing. It is our biggest reward.

If I touched even only one person in all the years I worked as psychotherapist, my entire career will have been well worthwhile.

So, let’s be grateful for this gift of touching each other in ways that can be transformative and healing, and let’s use it generously with all the people in our lives.

We may deal with these feelings by getting angry – at our president, at one party or the other, at our representatives and at whomever else we believe is not taking care of our needs. But, just like in any dysfunctional family, when we express our fears and hurts through anger at each other, we get neither relief nor help.

So, what’s there for us to do?

First of all, we need to acknowledge our feelings for what they are – fear, for instance, not hostility – and express them in ways that are constructive. We need to get in touch with our fears, our disappointments and our deep hurts, and use them to propel us to make healthy changes.

Let’s not use our current situation as a judgment on who we are. We did not cause this recession. It is not our laziness, our lack of drive, our lack of talents that put us in this situation. We can’t afford to take responsibility for something we are not responsible for, because this will make us feel worse about ourselves and decrease our self confidence in our ability to succeed.

So, the first step to making positive changes is to reach down inside and acknowledge our strengths and assets. What are or were we good at? What did we use to feel confident about? What are or were our biggest successes?  Let’s make plans that will make use of these assets again. They are not gone, in fact, but just inaccessible, covered as they are by layers and layers of doubts and insecurities. We forget they are still there, and can be as useful now as they once were. So, let’s resuscitate them, shake the dust from them and put them to good use again.

Then let’s look at which resources are currently available to us. Can we use any of them? How can that be achieved? What worked best in the past?  Can we make use of the same approaches, or how can we modify them to make them applicable to today’s reality?

Let’s make a commitment to stay focused, maintain hope, and provide self support and encouragement throughout this process. Let’s not isolate, but ally with people who can help and support us.

Let’s stretch our abilities to be creative and resourceful. Let’s work at being resilient. We need to tell ourselves that things will get better, as this is a cycle and cycles never go on indefinitively. Nobody knows for sure what will happen, but if we believe in something we can make it more likely to happen.

All these approaches decrease our sense of powerlessness and helplessness, which, in turn, help reduce fear and increase hope.

If we follow these ways, we can improve our situation, one step at a time, and gradually feel more empowered. This way it will be more difficult to give up.

Let’s remind ourselves daily of the assets available to us. Let’s be grateful for them and let’s use them to support, soothe and encourage us all the way along this difficult journey.

Data from 2009 indicates that more than 20% of Americans experienced a loss of 25% of their income. This is the highest percentage since these data began to be collected and studied. Since 2009 the economy has been getting progressively worse and the unemployment rate has steadily increased, without any indication of this trend slowing down or turning around. Savings have been mostly wiped out for a large part of the middle class, and the poor are getting poorer. Based on this, we may assume the percentage of Americans who lost 25% or more of their income will continue to increase.

How is this going to impact people emotionally?

The first element that creates a lot of stress is that of surprise. Nobody had predicted the intensity and magnitude of this recession. Nobody had expected it would last so long and its recovery would be so slow (if there is recovery at all.)

Young and old Americans alike have no personal experience of living through a recession as severe as the current one. Therefore, they had no way of preparing for it and, most importantly, THEY DID NOT BELIEVE IT WAS POSSIBLE. Everybody knew, intellectually, that things couldn’t go on the way they were forever. But there is a huge difference between knowing things intellectually and actually experiencing them emotionally.

It’s like when we know someone dear to us will soon die. Intellectually we acknowledge this reality. We can even convince ourselves that we are preparing for this event, so when it happens we will be ready for it. But, in reality, when this person actually dies we realize we had no way of anticipating the emotional impact of this loss. We had no idea of how it would feel like FEELING it. So, we get blindsided by how powerful and out of control our emotions are, and how destabilizing.

Well, something similar is happening to us now, as we try to grapple with feelings of ambiguity, confusion, fear and helplessness due to the current economic uncertainties. We look around for support, directions, comfort and reassurance, but there is very little to be had.

Like children, we look around for surrogate parents to reassure and help us regulate our emotions These are the politicians, the government representatives and other people in power positions we thought would be able to look after our needs and protect us from these kinds of frightening situations. However, they seem to be unable or unwilling to provide us with what we need. Even when they reassure us, their voices sound tentative and their body language not reassuring, so we have a very hard time believing them.

We are like a huge dysfunctional family where the parents are asleep at the wheel and failing to provide safety for its members. The children – all of us – always assumed they would take good care of us: that they would come through for us if/when needed, so we placidly continued with our comfortable lives, expecting things to go on forever. Now the parents are like the emperor without clothes, who is showing his nakedness for all to see, even though he still thinks he is hiding it.  But we now know better, and because of it, we are scared and deeply hurt.

In the next blog post we will describe what can be done to improve this situation and feel less powerless.

Feel free to give us your views by clicking the “comments” button below.

Without getting into a political or moral discussion on the use of atomic bombs in times of war, I want to focus on some of the effects these actions provoked from people from all over the world.

Most of us have seen footage of the big white cloud spreading over the entire city of Hiroshima, seconds after the bomb was dropped. Most of us have seen daunting images of people dead in the streets, burnt to a crisp, or disfigured beyond belief. We also know of the many genetic and cellular mutations that brought about forms of cancer at levels never seen before for years after the bomb was dropped, and the birth defects that occurred for a long time.

The entire city was leveled, but if you go to Hiroshima today, you will see a modern city that does not have any reminder of this tragic past, with one exception. At the epicenter of the bomb, while everything else was destroyed, one building stood, and it is till there today. Now this building is the center of a memorial park dedicated to the victims of the atomic bomb. Here and there are statues and thousands and thousands of paper crane garlands, brought by school children in commemoration of a little girl who died of cancer a few years after the bomb. In Japan, paper cranes are thought to bring good health to sick people. When this girl was still alive, children made origami paper cranes and brought them to the park, wishing she would get healthy again. When she died, this tradition continued, the paper cranes being offered to whomever still suffered from the after effects of the bomb.

When I visited the park and the museum, two things surprised me: a profound silence, and people’s attitudes. People were shuffling around from one exhibit to the next without making any noise, or wandered under the trees outside in complete silence. They did not talk to one another. They were in a state of shock. I felt the same. The enormity of what I was seeing – pictures of children screaming terrified, with their skin falling off their little bodies; mothers holding their dead babies, terror in their eyes and confusion because they couldn’t understand what was happening, houses burning, entire areas reduced to rubble in a matter of few seconds – was such that my mind could not process it in any logical manner. I felt overwhelmed by intense emotions that prevented me from thinking about what was going on.  Like a traumatized person, I felt frozen.

The other thing that surprised me was the kindness in the eyes of people I met there, young and old alike, toward me. I expected them to look at me with reproaching eyes, with anger, even hatred, because I looked American, but I saw and felt none of that.  It was a though we were all together in this, Japanese, Americans and everybody else.

It felt to me as though the enormity of this event had for a moment blurred our ethnic differences. The tragedy of the destruction caused by the bomb somehow united us in grief and determination not to make it happen again. In the end, we were all human, and it was our humanity that united us.

The answer is YES. Vacations have value both for our bodies and our minds.

When we go on vacation, we are more likely to relax, we sleep longer and better, take it easy, slow down and take time to enjoy things around us and activities we typically don’t have time for in our busy lives.

But what about our minds? How are vacations good for the mind? In a few words, they give our minds a much needed break.

Our brains work all the time. They never shut down, even when we are sleeping or lying on a lounge chair doing nothing. We may think about what’s going on in the present; we may recall events that happened to us in the past and can bring back the events and the feelings associated to them; we hear fragments of conversation from people around us and these may trigger associations that can take us to all kinds of places in time and space.

Even when we sleep, our brain continues to work. It processes the day events, making sense of them and arranging them in a system that is logical and organized. It connects these events to past ones, thus creating continuity and imbuing them with personal meanings.

Of course, our brains continue to work even while we are on vacation. So, you may ask, what’s the difference?

If we succeed in letting go of our daily lives and stay focused on the present, on vacation we get engaged in new activities and interests that provide our brain with a rest from the daily grind. It is, in fact, when we are able to shift from one topic to another that we allow our mind to rest. Working in the garden, for instance, can be more hard work than sitting in an office all day long. However, because we can relax while planting, weeding, re-potting or whatever else we do in the garden, our brain has the opportunity to shift gears, so to speak, and use different synapses to think about gardening. The same is true when we play golf, or relax under an umbrella by the pool, hike or read a book. In short, it is not the place or the activity, but the ability to shift our focus from daily activities to something different that gives our brains a well deserved rest. In order for a vacation to be truly rejuvenating and resting for our mind as well as our body, we need to be in the same place mentally and physically.

This means that we could be on the most wonderful beach, or visiting the most amazing places on earth, but we may as well be in the office, if our mind cannot let go of it.

So, please leave your Blackberry and your computer at home and disconnect from anything that keeps you chained to your daily concerns and preoccupations. By going in and out of two places –where you physically are and where your mind is – you will enjoy neither. If you stay in the moment, on the other hand, you will give yourself an opportunity to truly take advantage of your vacation and come back relaxed and ready to get back to your daily life.

And, have a wonderful time!

When we are in pain, mornings can be the most difficult parts of our day, as they force us to think about the day ahead, and all the things we need to do but don’t want or have the energy to face. So, the daily activities we look forward to when we are well, now become reminders of what causes us pain. We feel we have no energy to take a shower and get ready for the day, for instance. We’d rather pull the blanket over our heads and go back to sleep, so we don’t have to face a reality and feel overwhelming emotions out of our control.

Even at these painful times, however, daily routines are very helpful, because they gradually move us out of this paralyzed state. When we force ourselves to get up even if we want to stay in bed, in fact, or when we make ourselves take a shower and get dressed, we begin to feel a little less helpless and powerless.

We shouldn’t give in to sadness and pain because these feelings will paralyze us more and more if we don’t fight them. So, we need to force ourselves to go through daily routines as though each day was a normal day and we felt all right. Daily routines, even in times of sadness and pain, keep us in touch with the reality around us. They maintain a sense of consistency and continuity even when we are not well. And it is by facing reality, day in and day out, that eventually we will lift the veil of apathy, disinterest, pain and sadness that can keep us paralyzed.

There are situations where, for one reason or another, we have to let go of our daily routines. Their loss – due to illness, divorce, relocation or getting old, for instance – creates anxiety and discomfort, as though without them we temporarily lost our bearings. Older people who move into retirement homes, for instance, typically have difficulties adapting to a life where daily routines are so different and foreign to them. Older people, as they learn to rely less and less on their memory, sight and hearing because they are not as sharp as they used to be, and who battle mental confusion, rely more on their outside environment to compensate for these internal losses. So, relocation needs to be handled with sensitivity and awareness that these changes can be quite difficult.

When older people are moved from a familiar environment to a strange one, in fact, at first they feel lost. They may be unable to function at their usual level and they may appear to be more confused. To re-establish daily routines for them and make sure they are helped at the beginning, can make the relocation much easier. As they gradually get used to their new environment and re-establish daily routines, they often are able to regain their previous level of functioning.

These challenges, to a bigger or lesser extent, affect anyone who moves from a familiar place to an unfamiliar one, not only older people. It is important, therefore, to make sure that, wherever we are, we set routines in place as soon as possible in order to preserve a feeling of continuity and normalcy so fundamental for our wellbeing.

Feel free to offer your views on this topic by clicking the comments button below.

Our minds seem to be focused most of the time on major events, decisions we need to make, grand plans for the future. We believe this is what makes our lives meaningful; it is what we look forward to, what gets us up in the mornings and get us ready for a new day. And, of course, this is true. But it is the little things that are parts of our daily routines that provide the scaffolding for our lives. The familiarity of doing the same things day in and day out anchors us to the present, and provides continuity, predictability and comfort.

I love getting up in the morning and start my daily routines. I know exactly their sequence, from one to the next, as I have done in the same order for longer than I can remember. These times have a magical quality to them, suspended as they are between sleep and wakefulness. They allow my body to gradually transition from one state to the other, without pressure, and without too much effort. This is the time when I don’t think about what is awaiting me during the course of the day, or what happened the day before or the day before that. I JUST AM.

Likewise, we believe that our history is made up a bunch of events that happened to us or around us, one after the other, in a sequel defined by time and place. In reality, our past is mostly made up of day-to-day familiar activities, with something extraordinary sprinkled here and there. These familiar activities make up most of our past and keep it alive, reinforcing our identities.

When I remember the house where I grew up, for instance, I can still smell its smells, and hear the daily noises of life back then. I recall the daily routines that constituted my life. Now those routines remind me of a time in my life that stretched over several years, made even longer by the fact that, as a young person, time seemed to move at a much slower pace than now.

So, tomorrow morning when you get up and go through your routine daily activities, appreciate them as reminders that you are alive, that life is normal and you are the same person you were yesterday and hopefully will be tomorrow.

But what happens when we are in pain, when we feel depressed, anxious, sad, or lonely?

In the next blog I will discuss how the little things that make our lives great when we are in a good place may increase our stress and frustration when we are in pain.

It’s like when you go to the doctor because you don’t feel well. The doctor treats the symptom, but also decides to run some blood work, maybe sends you to have an x-ray or an electrocardiogram to find out what is behind your symptoms. When the results come back, the doctor may tell you that you have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, or high blood sugar you did not know you had. You probably wouldn’t have found out about these conditions until they got much worse. Without knowing, you wouldn’t have taken care of them with proper medications, a healthier diet and changes in your life style. So, going to the doctor, even though you went for a different reason, may have saved your life.

When an affair occurs, some partners get stuck in anger and hurt, as we said in our previous blog. If they continue to stay there without doing anything about the situation, chances are their relationship won’t survive. Some couples, however, don’t want to let go of their relationship and are willing to explore what can be done to heal the wounds. They may decide to seek professional help to guide them out of these stormy waters.

In therapy partners may find out that one of them was feeling isolated, sad, mad, disillusioned, caged in, or uncomfortable with closeness, commitment and intimacy. In therapy they may uncover events and feelings that began the distancing process between them, perhaps quite some time ago, but that they never discussed with one another, because they were not aware of them. Now they have an opportunity to get these feelings out into the open, acknowledge them and share them with one another in an environment that feels safe. And what happens?

In therapy, the cheated partner finds a place where he or she can talk about feelings of hurt, disbelief, anger, disappointment and fear. The cheater may feel relieved that he or she doesn’t have to keep secrets any longer. He or she may begin to work at understanding why the infidelity occurred. Both can examine their feelings not only about the affair, but also about their relationship in general, and together work at repairing the damages to it. This process, though grueling and painful, is a transformative experience that will make partners feel closer together. It is a life saver because it makes couples look and address deeper, often unconscious issues, just like the visit to the doctor that sounded the alarm for other, underlying medical conditions hitherto unknown to the patient.

Of course, seeking therapy for infidelity is not the only way of addressing the problem, but it is certainly one of the best tools couples have available. The therapist is the professional whom provides support and guidance to couples; helps them get in touch with their feelings and identify the root causes of their problems; teaches them new skills about healthy communication, and guides them towards acceptance, understanding and, finally, forgiveness.

At the end of therapy, couples know each other better and are ready to make a new commitment to each other, borne out of the hard work together. By going through this transformative experience, couples discover an unexpected gift: their love for each other, which they had thought was gone forever.

Do you have a story that reflects this experience? Please comment on this blog, so that we can provide hope for couples who are willing to do the work to restore their love and trust in one another and get their marriage back on the right track.

We want to hear from you…please comment below.

It is important to remember that in most cases affairs are symptoms of something deeper that is going on in intimate relationships, of which couples may not have been aware.  And here is where I can see the silver lining. The affair is such a shocking event in their lives that couples cannot ignore it, while in the past they may have ignored other, less obvious symptoms.

It’s like when you go to the doctor because you don’t feel well. The doctor treats the symptom, but also decides to run some blood work, maybe sends you to have an x-ray or an electrocardiogram to find out what is behind your symptoms. When the results come back, the doctor may tell you that you have high blood pressure, or high cholesterol, or high blood sugar you did not know you had. You probably wouldn’t have found out about these conditions until they got much worse. Without knowing, you wouldn’t have taken care of them with proper medications, a healthier diet and changes in your life style. So, going to the doctor, even though you went for a different reason, may have saved your life.

When an affair occurs, some partners get stuck in anger and hurt, as we said in our previous blog. If they continue to stay there without doing anything about the situation, chances are their relationship won’t survive. Some couples, however, don’t want to let go of their relationship and are willing to explore what can be done to heal the wounds. They may decide to seek professional help to guide them out of these stormy waters.

In therapy partners may find out that one of them was feeling isolated, sad, mad, disillusioned, caged in, or uncomfortable with closeness, commitment and intimacy. In therapy they may uncover events and feelings that began the distancing process between them, perhaps quite some time ago, but that they never discussed with one another, because they were not aware of them. Now they have an opportunity to get these feelings out into the open, acknowledge them and share them with one another in an environment that feels safe. And what happens?

In therapy, the cheated partner finds a place where he or she can talk about feelings of hurt, disbelief, anger, disappointment and fear. The cheater may feel relieved that he or she doesn’t have to keep secrets any longer. He or she may begin to work at understanding why the infidelity occurred. Both can examine their feelings not only about the affair, but also about their relationship in general, and together work at repairing the damages to it. This process, though grueling and painful, is a transformative experience that will make partners feel closer together. It is a life saver because it makes couples look and address deeper, often unconscious issues, just like the visit to the doctor that sounded the alarm for other, underlying medical conditions hitherto unknown to the patient.

Of course, seeking therapy for infidelity is not the only way of addressing the problem, but it is certainly one of the best tools couples have available. The therapist is the professional whom provides support and guidance to couples; helps them get in touch with their feelings and identify the root causes of their problems; teaches them new skills about healthy communication, and guides them towards acceptance, understanding and, finally, forgiveness.

At the end of therapy, couples know each other better and are ready to make a new commitment to each other, borne out of the hard work together. By going through this transformative experience, couples discover an unexpected gift: their love for each other, which they had thought was gone forever.

Do you have a story that reflects this experience? Please comment on this blog, so that we can provide hope for couples who are willing to do the work to restore their love and trust in one another and get their marriage back on the right track.

I would like to hear from you on your views. Please click on the “comments” button below to make your view known.