Dr. Norquist

Dr. Norquist responds:
We each have our own ships to navigate through the ever-changing waters of life. It sounds like you have a tendency to abandon this responsibility and try to join your boyfriend on his ship. You cannot give up your self to be with another, and expect the relationship to be healthy. After a while, you feel like you desperately need to be on his ship, in order to survive. But since his ship is not yours to steer or to control, it’s easy to become needy and insecure and perhaps controlling. The remedy for this is to find your way back to your own ship, so to speak, and start taking responsibility for your own life. This analogy can be used for describing codependent and addictive relationships. Melody Beattie’s books on this subject would be very helpful for you.

There are others who play a complimentary role. They operate in such a way as to entice, demand, or compel their significant others to hop on board their ship, to be their audience, to build their lives around them, and to take responsibility for their feelings and needs. Often these others have addictive or narcissistic tendencies. This is a perfect fit for someone who doesn’t feel comfortable taking responsibility for their own life. Does this sound familiar?

Your job is to discover your own center, your own ship, and to start taking control of your own life. Get to know who you are; what you like and dislike, what talents you have to offer, what resonates with who you are. Practice staying true to yourself, paying attention to your own feelings, needs, and drives. Love your boyfriend for who he is, but don’t take on responsibility for his feelings or his life. Love is not merging with, or filling up on another’s life. In a healthy relationship, each partner takes responsibility for his or her own life, talent, health, and happiness.

Don’t wait for your boyfriend to join you in this growth process. That is his decision. By growing, you may end up leaving him behind, or he may follow your example and initiate his own growth. This relationship does not sound workable as it is. Unless you want to live a continuous roller-coaster ride, you have no choice but to pull back and work on learning how to operate from your own center.

Learn to steer your own ship. It will provide the sense of fulfillment and inner security that will always elude you should you continue to try to get these things from your attachment to another.

Dear Dr. Norquist:
We moved to a new school system a year ago, and started our son in the third grade in the local school. Over time, I’ve noticed that he is becoming more and more excluded by most of his classmates. He calls to invite them over and is usually turned down. Now he has started to hold himself apart from the others and not join in with group activities. One on one, he seems to do fine. But lately he has started talking about how no one likes him, even saying “everybody hates me.” He often feels rejected by his classmates. This breaks my heart. He is quiet, kind, and quite sensitive. I’ve spoken with his teacher about this, so she is trying to support and encourage him. I stay up at night feeling hurt that he is having to deal with this rejection. What can I do?

Dr. Norquist responds:
Sometimes we feel our children’s pain even more than they do. We attach worries from our own experiences to our perception of their pain, and can easily make the burden of their pain much heavier for us than it is for our children. We cannot always protect our children from pain. Pain is an inevitable part of life. If you can embrace this pain, it changes into a deeper experience of life itself.

As a mother, your role here is to guide your son in his perceptions of and understanding of this situation. The easiest internal response on your part would be to feel angry at and critical of the classmates who you feel are hurting your son. But what are the consequences of this response? What state does it leave you in, and what does it teach your son? Help your son to understand why some children may act rejecting towards others. Help him to see that we all have similar fears and insecurities. All are worthy of being treated with kindness, despite their behavior. We are all worthy of love. Do your best to help your son to experience his worth and his loveableness through how you listen to him, how you respond to his needs, and what your words or actions convey to him. When one feels “I am as good as another,” the world responds accordingly. Remember, our children have their own paths, their own lessons to learn. We can do our best to assist and guide them, but we do not have control over what their lessons in life will be. The highest response we can learn and we can guide our children to learn, is to respond with love, towards themselves as well as towards others.

Dr. Sallie Norquist is a licensed clinical psychologist in private practice and is director of Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center, a center for upliftment and enlivenment, in Hoboken.

Dr. Norquist and the staff of Chaitanya invite you to write them at Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center, 51 Newark St., Suite 202, Hoboken, NJ 07030 or www.chaitanya.com or by e-mail at drnorquist@chaitanya.com, or by fax at (201) 656-4700. Questions can address various topics, including relationships, life’s stresses, difficulties, mysteries and dilemmas, as well as questions related to managing stress or alternative ways of understanding and treating physical symptoms and health-related concerns. Practitioners of the following techniques are available to answer your questions: psychology, acupuncture, therapeutic and neuromuscular massage, yoga, meditation, spiritual & transpersonal psychology, Reiki, CranioSacral Therapy, and Alexander Technique  2004 Chaitanya Counseling and Stress Management Center