Category Archives: Relationships

The Neuropsychology of Long Lasting Love: Can Brain Scans Tell Us Something Useful About Staying in Love?

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The Wall Street Journal today has an article called Keeping Love Alive, which documents some fascinating research looking at why a small minority of long-term couples seem to maintain intense passionate loving connections.

First the grim background to these findings. Keeping love alive is no mean feat, as the research on long-term relationships suggests that for most couples love is a fading affair.

From the article:

“Each year, according to surveys, the average couple loses a little spark. One sociological study of marital satisfaction at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Penn State University kept track of more than 2,000 married people over 17 years. Average marital happiness fell sharply in the first 10 years, then entered a slow decline.”

This is not such good news for all of us in long-term relationships. What do we have to look forward to? A sharp decline in happiness for the first ten years, and then a slow erosion of whatever remaining happiness is left until we run out of love or time, whichever comes first? Ugggh!

But then to the rescue comes Arthur Aron, who is a social psychologist at Stony Brook University. He’s looked at those unusual couples who claim that their love is just an intense years later. It’s a strategy of research which is called examining the outliers, those people who fall outside the averages.

Aron and his students are studying these couples in an interesting way. They are taking pictures of their brain function, using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). They have a person lie inside an MRI machine, and look at pictures of their spouse while measuring the activity in their brain.

What have they found? It turns out that when these passionate couples look at or think about their spouses, a part of their brain called the ventral tegnmental area lights up. This is a section of the brain that is rich in the neurotransmitter dopamine, which is connected to our ability to feel pleasure and joy. The results have been duplicated in China, suggesting this is not just a western cultural phenomenon.

So what does this all mean? It’s not of much help in the challenges that I face as a marriage therapist, in helping couples repair damaged love. One of the interesting details reported in the article was that these passionate long-term “in love” couples show one behavior in common. They are constantly affectionate, kissing, hugging, and holding hands. They display many PDA’s (public displays of affection).

Now that there is a brain measure of this intense love, it is important to study how people get there. Are these couples just more intensely in love to begin with? Perhaps it works like cognitive functioning, where those who start off smarter and more educated deteriorate more slowly in old age. Maybe these passionate couples simply start with more love and then it erodes, but they have such an excess that it doesn’t matter.

We might be able to answer some of these questions with a long-term study of new couples that followed them over 10 years or longer.

Is it a selection process, where better mate selection leads to better long term outcomes? Or are there behavioral differences, a set of behaviors and attitudes that preserves love? These are the key issues in answering the question of how do we go about Keeping Love Alive.

What I find deeply fascinating is that in spite of the fact that most people value love as one of the most important things in their lives, we actually know very little about what predicts success, and even less about how to help people love better. Brain scans may tell us more about the process of love and attraction, but unless we develop a “love beam” that changes the activity of the key brain regions, it won’t help us fall in love and stay in love.

…Excuse me, I’ve got to go kiss my sweetie!

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How to Stop Anger in its Tracks: Applying the SAP™ Model in Three Easy Steps (Part 2)

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In my previous article, How Anger Works: The SAP™ Model (Part 1), I wrote about the SAP™ model, which stands for Shoulds, Awfulizing, and Personalizing. In this article I want to teach you basic anger management skills that will help you to neutralize anger.

Background Concepts About Anger

I should point out a couple of important concepts about anger first. A simple way of conceptualizing anger is that it is related to the amount of difference between our expectations and reality. The larger the difference, the more anger and frustration we experience. Thus if I expect a 10 percent raise, and I only get a 5 percent raise, I will be more angry (and disappointed) than if I got a 9 percent raise.

This leads to an obvious point. To decrease anger and frustration, we need to lessen the difference between our expectations and reality. There are two ways of doing this. One is to change reality so it better conforms with our expectations. The other way is to change our expectations so they better conform with reality.

Here is where it gets tricky. Which should you try to change, reality or your expectations? It depends. When it’s possible and easy to change reality, it makes sense to do so. If you don’t like rush hour traffic you can leave earlier or later to work. Or if you have been dating someone for a few weeks and they consistently annoy you, break up with them. It’s easy, and solves the problem. Or if you have an abusive boss, and you can relatively easily transfer or find another job, do it!

But what if you are angry at your wife or husband of many years? Or at your children? Or you feel angry at the fact that Republicans have run the country for 8 years. These are much harder to change, and more costly. So in cases where you either can’t easily change reality or you don’t really want to change reality, then you need to adjust your expectations. Instead of happiness meaning getting what you want, it can mean wanting what you’ve got.

The famous Serenity Prayer summarizes these concepts elegantly: In Latin, “Deus, dona mihi serenitatem accipere res quae non possum mutare, fortitudinem mutare res quae possum, atque sapientiam differentiam cognoscere.” Or in English, “God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change; the courage to change the things I can; and the wisdom to know the difference.”

I like to use the “80 Percent Rule” in determining whether my expectations are reasonable ones or not. If 80 percent of the time, my expectation matches reality, then it is okay to hold onto that expectation. Therefore, if my friend Hugh is on time for our dinners 80 percent of the time, it is okay for me to expect that. But if he is only on time for dinner 20% of the time, then I need to change my expectation, or change friends.

Step One: Defusing Anger by Changing your Shoulds

The first step in reducing anger is to change your “shoulds”. What is a should? We tend to assume that it is a universal law, but in reality, it is simply our personal demand on the universe. If I have a should that says, “People should always treat me fairly,” this is really just a different way of thinking “I want everyone to treat me fairly all the time.”

The first step to defusing anger is to change your shoulds into preferences. Instead of thinking “My wife should not spend so much money on clothes” you would think “I would prefer she not spend so much money on clothes.” Simply doing this reduces the intensity of anger significantly. You are owning your beliefs, instead of putting them into some imaginary universal law. If they are your beliefs, then you can choose to alter them.

Try a mental experiment. Think of something that makes you mad. Identify one of your shoulds that has been violated. Say the should to yourself a number of times, and notice how angry you feel. Now transform it to a preference statement. Instead of “They should _____”, it becomes “I would prefer that they ________”. Notice what happens to the intensity of the anger.

What you will notice is that the intensity of the anger diminishes. It doesn’t disappear, but it does transform in intensity. Why doesn’t it go away entirely?

This is because even our preferences may be distorted. Let me give you an example. I live in the Bay Area, where traffic tends to be quite heavy and slow at rush hour. Let’s imagine that I have the should statement, “I should be able to drive at 65 mph on the freeway, even at 5:30pm.” This should is likely to frustrate me when I am stuck in 25mph traffic. So I turn it into a preference, “I’d prefer to be able to drive 65 mph at 5:30pm.” This doesn’t really help very much. I’m still going to be frustrated because there is a large gap between my preference and reality.

Here is where applying the “80% Rule” is helpful. I ask myself if my preference is true 80% of the time. The answer of course is no. Perhaps only 10% of the time does traffic flow well at rush hour. Thus even my preference violates the 80% rule.

So I need to change my preference. A more reasonable preference would be “I prefer that traffic moves at 25 mph during rush hour.” Now there is a better match between my preference and reality, and I will not get as frustrated.

So, to summarize Step One, first you turn your Should Statements into Preference Statements. Next, evaluate the preferences using the 80 percent rule; does reality match this preference at least 80 percent of the time? If not, change the preference. This should at least lower your anger level, if not eliminate it.

Step Two: Defusing Anger by Putting Things Into Perspective and Emphasizing Coping

The next step of the SAP™ model is Awfulizing. Here we tell ourselves, “It’s awful and terrible, and I can’t stand it.” This creates a lot of internal psychological stress, and intensifies our feelings of anger and helplessness.

How can we change these patterns of thought? We can do so by putting the problem into perspective. On a 100 point scale, how awful is it really? Imagine that a 100 represents having a leg cut off without anesthesia, or a root canal without Novocain. Then rate how terrible is it to not have your should or expectation met. So if I am stuck in a traffic jam, and no one is shooting at me, and there is no blizzard outside, how awful is it really? Maybe a 10 on the 100 point scale.

Most frustrating events are actually relatively minor in the grand scheme of things. But we lose perspective, and this creates anger and stress. Another trick is to ask yourself if you will remember this event in one month, one year, or five years. If the answer is no, then it’s really not very awful.

The other aspect of this is the second part of the awfulizing statement, which is “I can’t stand it.” How often do we say this to ourselves? I define “not standing it” as meaning that you are going insane, hallucinating, curling up in a catatonic ball, or standing on the roof of a building getting ready to jump. Anything less than that means that you are actually standing it!

So what you want to do is replace “It’s terrible and awful, and I can’t stand it,” with “It’s inconvenient, or a hassle, and I don’t like it, but I can stand it.” This will greatly alter your emotional response.

So to summarize the second step in anger management:

  1. Ask yourself “How awful is this really?” Rate the awfulness on a 100 point scale, where 100 is something truly awful, like a serious injury or death of a loved one. Put the event into perspective.
  2. Remind yourself that most events will be quickly forgotten, and that most things in life are really hassles or inconveniences, rather than genuine disasters. Substitute the phrase “It’s a hassle, and I don’t like it but I can stand it,” for the Awful-izing statement of “It’s awful and terrible and I can’t stand it!”

 

Step Three: Defusing Anger by Reducing Personalizing

The final step in defusing anger is to de-personalize events. Remember from the previous article, that personalizing an event greatly intensifies the anger. If I believe that someone is purposely doing something to hurt me, I will get much angrier than if I believe it is an impersonal event.

This is easy to say, not so easy to do. The trick here is to realize that most of the time, when people don’t meet your shoulds or expectations; they are not doing it to harm you. When the clerk ignores you in the store, it’s more likely that they are tired or stressed than they saw you and thought, “Gee, I think I will piss off Dr. Lounge Wizard by ignoring him as long as possible.”

But what about people we love. Don’t they purposely hurt us?

Probably not. Most of the time, when loved ones do things that we are frustrated by, it is because that’s their nature. For instance, a messy person is messy because it is their nature, and it’s not because they are trying to anger their neat spouse. (Believe me, I know.) Everyone is trying to do the best they can, and pretty much doesn’t worry about you, or plan to hurt you.

So the secret is to simply assume that most things aren’t personal, and even when they appear to be, to reframe it as the person’s nature. A critical boss is critical of everyone, in most cases. A bad driver in front of you is probably always a bad driver, even when you are not behind them!

To summarize Step Three, remember than most of the time, no one is out to get you. They are just doing their natural thing. Use compassion, and think gentle compassionate thoughts that other people are flawed, but this isn’t personal.

So there you have it; the Three Steps to Anger Management. Try it out. I suggest you keep an anger/frustration log, and write down the S.A.P’s and then write down the counter thoughts for each step.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge™/TPL Productions All rights reserved

How Anger Works: The SAP Model ™ (Part 1)

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In this article I will give you a simple cognitive behavioral explanation of how we get angry, and how you can use this knowledge to short-circuit and defuse your own anger. Anger is probably the most cognitive of all of the emotions. We can’t get angry without thinking. And most anger directly stems from our distorted thoughts.

There are three cognitive steps to getting angry. The first two are absolutely necessary for anger, and the third is like gasoline on fire, it intensifies anger. The acronym for remembering these three steps is SAP(tm), which is what anger will make you if you think these thoughts.

To help illustrate this lets consider a common situation where a person might get angry. You are driving on the freeway and a car cuts you off. You instantly react with anger. You steam all the way to work.

STEP ONE: VIOLATION OF SHOULDS or “SHOULDY THINKING”

The first step to getting angry is that you must have a set of shoulds or expectations that have been violated. Without this there is no anger. In the driving example what are your expectations? You tell yourself that the other driver shouldn’t have cut you off. He or she should have looked first and seen you. Obviously this should has been violated. This is what some cognitive therapists call “shouldy” thinking!

STEP TWO: AWFULIZING

But just having a set of shoulds or expectations is not enough to generate anger. The second step is necessary. In this step you exaggerate the negative consequences of the violation of the shoulds. You tell yourself it is awful and terrible that this event has happened. In our driving example your self talk is “Wow, the idiot could have killed me. It’s awful and terrible that they allow people like that to drive. Grrrrrr!” This step is called Awfulizing. Or Terribilizing, if you prefer. The key distortion is that you blow the event out of proportion. After all, if you are able to have these thoughts, then obviously no serious accident has ensued.

STEP THREE: PERSONALIZING

The first two steps will get you mad, but the third step of Personalizing or Blaming will make you crazy angry. If you tell yourself that the person didn’t see you, and it was an accident that they cut you off, you may still get angry. But if you tell yourself they did see you and purposely chose to cut you off anyway, then your anger spirals out of control. Blaming thoughts are like pouring gasoline on the fire of anger. They are responsible for such things as road rage.

So this how anger works. Let’s consider another example. This time we will use one closer to home. It’s early Saturday morning, and you are sleeping in after a long hard work week. Suddenly you are awoken by the loud noise of a lawn mower. It’s your neighbor George, who for some unknown reason, has decided that Saturday at 7:30am is a good time to mow his lawn. You are furious.

Let’s analyze this. What are the shoulds? Basically that your neighbor shouldn’t do noisy activities until 10 or 11 am on a weekend day. This should has been violated by George. What is the awfulizing? You are thinking that now you will be tired all day, and you’ll be cranky and irritable, and won’t have any fun. Is there a personalizing statement? Yes, you think, “George knows I work late, and knows I like to sleep in, so mowing his lawn so early is a direct insult to me!” And so you explode with anger.

So there you have it, a simple cognitive model of anger, the SAP model: Shoulds, Awfulizing, and Personalizing. Try an experiment. For a week, write down each anger incident you have by identifying the three Anger Thought Steps. This will help you to increase your awareness of how anger works, and prepare you for the next step, learning to defuse and eliminate your anger, which I will discuss in Part 2 of this article,  How to Stop Anger in its Tracks.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/ TPL Productions All Rights Reserved

 

Sadder but Not Necessarily Wiser (and not quite as sad as expected)

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Here is some more evidence that we poorly predict happiness and unhappiness.

A recent article in the Journal of Experimental Social Psychology again shows how poor we are at predicting our future states of happiness or unhappiness. As I wrote about in previous posts on happiness, we seem to be quite poor at predicting how we will feel in the future.

Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick at Northwestern University studied young lovers to see if their predictions of unhappiness after a breakup matched their actual suffering when the breakup occurred.

They looked at college students who had been dating for at least two months and had them fill out multiple questionnaires. Twenty six of the students broke up during the first six months of the study and these students predictions of distress were examined. The students at rated how painful a breakup would be on average two weeks before the breakup.

On average people overestimated the pain of a breakup. There was some correlation between how much people were in love and how much pain they suffered after the breakup, but everyone recovered more quickly than they had predicted. Looking at the actual study it appears that people were able to predict somewhat accurately their suffering in the first two weeks after the breakup. The correlation between their prediction and the actual distress was about 0.60 which means that they were able to predict about 36% of their suffering. But between weeks six and 10, the correlations dropped to about 0.30, which means that they were only able to predict about 10% of the variation in their suffering.

This is interesting in terms of the habituation process that I wrote about earlier. We habituate to both good and bad events. And we underestimate our ability to adapt to both types of events.

Now we shouldn’t make too much of this study. Remember this is a study of college students who had been dating for at least two months. This isn’t exactly a study of deep connection and commitment. It would be interesting, but much more difficult, to look at the same data for married couples who later break up.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge ™ /TPL Productions , All Rights Reserved

Can Cognitive Behavioral Therapy Make a Baby? How Psychological and Behavioral Factors Can Reduce Infertility

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An article in the May 7 edition of U.S. News and World Report titled “Success at Last: Couples Fighting Infertility Might Have More Control Than They Think” shows how health psychology can impact even something as basic as making a baby. This fascinating article shows that behavioral and psychological factors may play a big and controllable role in producing the infertility that 1 in 8 couples suffer. It turns out, that the body may be smarter than we gave it credit for. Woman’s bodies may recognize certain states as not ideal for childbearing, and therefore prevent or lower fertility. Two examples are being overweight or underweight. Overweight risks pregnancy complications such as diabetes, high blood pressure, so the extra estrogen produced by body fat interferes with ovulation. Underweight women may not have enough body fat to sustain a baby, so the pituitary gland releases less of key ovulation hormones. Other behaviors strongly influence fertility. Take smoking for example. Multiple studies show that smoking can delay getting pregnant by a year or more. And one study at Columbia University found smokers entered menopause 3 years earlier on average. Or diet. Trans fats, a key component in such unhealthy foods as donuts, cakes, etc. may raise testosterone, which suppresses the ovaries. Research shows that as little as 4.5 grams, which is the amount found in one donut, can have this effect. Even positive behaviors can negatively affect fertility. One study found woman who exercised four or more hours a week were 40 percent less likely to conceive after their first IVF (In vitro Fertility) treatment than women who didn’t exercise. Once again, it may be that the body interprets hard exercise as danger and stress, and shuts down the fertility system.

Even pure psychological stress can affect fertility. Here’s the biological mechanism. A few hours before ovulation, the pituitary gland sends out luteinizing hormone (LH), which tells the ovaries to release an egg. But if you are experiencing psychological stress such as a fight with your husband, or a dressing down from your boss, or a kid having a tantrum, then your LH will be suppressed, disrupting ovulation.

Even mild stress may have a big effect. One study of monkeys found that moving monkeys to a new cage, combined with a little less food and 1 hour on treadmill caused 70 percent of the monkeys to have irregular menstruation! So don’t skip that meal and take a long run when stressed, or you’ll greatly lower you odds of getting pregnant.

What’s worse is that IVF treatment itself may lead to large amounts of psychological stress. One fertility expert found that 40 percent of women in infertility treatment had all of the symptoms of an anxiety disorder or depression: sleep disturbances, difficulty concentrating, and irritability. So if stress lowers fertility, and fertility treatment increases stress, then fertility treatment may actually harm fertility!

But cognitive behavioral therapy may improve the situation. Alice Domar and colleagues at Harvard found that a 10 week cognitive behavioral group therapy program improved the success of fertility treatment from 20 percent to 55 percent in the women who participated in the group therapy. So what can we learn from this research?

  1. A woman’s body is wise. It will respond to behavioral and psychological stressors by lowering fertility. Anything that resembles stress, even hard exercise, will trigger physical responses that lower fertility.
  2. At critical points such as several hours before ovulation, even normal stressors can disrupt the ovulation process. And in stress-prone or perfectionist or angry women, the likelihood of experiencing stress during these critical hours is very high. Thus for women who are experiencing difficulty getting pregnant and who by personality are “stressy” (you know who you are!) cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) will be helpful in learning to manage and lower stress.
  3. Infertility treatment is by its nature stressful, and this leads to a paradox; infertility treatment may lower fertility if it increases stress. It may be helpful to evaluate stress levels in women undergoing IVF and if stress is high, intervene with CBT group or individual therapy.
  4. The ultimate in infertility treatment may be what I recommended to my friend Jill, who had tried many cycles of IVF to no avail. I told her, “You’re young, why don’t you and your husband stop trying to get pregnant, and just have sex for fun, and enjoy life for a few years. If nothing happens then you can adopt.” She was pregnant within the year, and now has two lovely children. A good long relaxing vacation with no schedule, no hard exercise, healthy food, and no stress may be the best fertility treatment available, and even if it doesn’t work, at least you’ve gotten a great vacation!
  5. Finally, what this research shows us is how linked our minds and bodies are. Changing thoughts and feelings and behaviors changes our bodies, and fertility is just one example of this.

Copyright 2007 The Psychology Lounge/TPL Productions