On “Re-Parenting”

The concept of re- parenting is widely used in family therapy, couple’s therapy or even in parent management training. For those of you, who might interpret the above words as “jargon”, let me explain.

As a therapist, we see a good number of parents. Some, who bring them to life, but don’t really know what to do with them. Some, who have such grand plans for their children, that even one lifetime is short, for their child to fulfil their unmet wishes, and then there are those who absolutely are oblivious to the concept of parenting and upbringing!

In the above cases and many, we as therapists introduce the idea of the many life cycle stages of a family. It’s interesting how the child is seen in many Indian families. Many parents continue to follow the same cycle which their parents followed, in technical ways it’s called an “inter- generational pattern”. Children are rarely given space to simply “be”. And after all that the child continues to do, comes a stage where confusion reigns supreme!

Many Indian parents continue to stretch the umbilical cord, which connected them to their child, way more than its capacity. Rarely is a space given or, for that matter offered, to a child to find his own identity! Jean Piaget’s developmental stage of “Identity Vs. Integrity” talks of finding answers to the most basic quest of “Who am I?” Unlike, in the west, where individualism truly offers a room to find one’s identity, here, instead of finding, it’s imposed on to the in-divide-ual! I think that’s primarily the reason that this stage stretches wee more to the adult years. So one will see a man, married, staying in a joint family, but still not able to find his “own” voice or a girl in her early twenties, working as an engineer, yet not being content in her life.

I truly believe, that as parents, people have, no right to control their children’s lives on their terms. Just because they bring them to this world doesn’t means they have a ‘license-to- rule’. This is not to say that parents don’t understand this, but when they do, it’s way too late. By then, the child comes to us, with innumerable behaviour or conduct problems. A behaviour that the family has been maintaining for the past 15 years can definitely not be changed in a month’s time. As therapists, we teach them‘re-parenting’. It emphasizes on teaching parents to set up limits, to offer space, at the same time connect with their child; in the process to understand the ‘person’ in them.

Parenting, much like health, has become a fad. Umpteen number of books to read and follow. However, what is essential is offering space, at every juncture, understanding their perspectives, letting them “be” and accept them for who they are! For the question is: “Did that little precious one stopped being precious just because you brought your perceptions mid- way?” What do you think?

Reality- A Maze

Reality- A Maze

If you’ve ever been in a maze,

You’ll know what it is for sure,

And then there’s a maze of all mazes,

A ‘Metamaze’- phrase of my own,

Reality, you see is not what you think,

There’s a lot which goes behind the scenes,

A peek outside, a peep within,

Layers travelling beyond extremes,

And then I ask,

Who are we?

To define ‘normality’?

A disturbance for one, a pleasure for another,

What’s the criterion for reality?

The chaos, my dear, is all around,

For some its noise, for others silence,

And then out of a million, a voice stands out,

Making its presence felt in the absence.

A thousand books have come and by,

People narrating their philosophy,

But if we have the right to live,

Don’t we all have our realities?

We’ve entered a maze,

And played for years,

The exit we may not know,

Lost one moment, found in another,

That’s how we play the show.

PS: This poem was written  in the OPD when thoughts simply got weaved into words.

Insanity & Creativity

” In our sanity we only create what we find. “

~ D.W.Winnicott

As I reached the end of Winnicott’s writing on ‘Living Creatively’, this simple line took me by surprise as many times Winnicott surprises me.

As I read this line again, a certain kind of simplicity along with a mystery enraptures me in the world of my own thoughts. As he wrote this line, I wonder what he had in mind.

And while I read it, what strikes me is, that it is in our ‘insane’ moments we end up creating or discovering things or ideas which we had no clue about ( that they belonged to us and ‘in’ us!).To elaborate it further, I’ll take an example of my own life- one which is very close to me i.e. writing poetry.

I have a storehouse of vocabulary from which I pick up words to write, and over these years, it hardly takes me few minutes to pen down my thoughts ( just like now), but underlying my ‘poetic’ moments is something which I now presume is of great significance, and that is what perhaps was the mystery in the beginning.

As I pluck a layer of this petal of mystery, I understand ( also as I have often wondered) that may be these moments of sheer creativity had that magical element in them, and that is why they served as very satisfying and blissful moments to me.

Bringing in the theme of insanity, as I have been hearing in the past one year from my teachers, I do feel that patients in their ‘insanity’, in their symptoms reveal to us that which had been hidden for long, that which could only be reflected or perhaps divulged in an ‘out of the ordinary’ way and it is in this very arena where they end up creating something which becomes apparent only after it has been created.

This creation may include a variety of art forms- for a patient with Hypochondriasis, it may be some kind of guilt in indulging in ‘gundagardi’ in his college days that led him to ‘acquire or create’ the symptom of his inner nerves being twisted and crossed thus leading him to experience pain almost in the entire body. In the ‘sane’ world, innumerable tests do not report anything, but his so called ‘insanity’ has depths which are hard to imagine, for he has created a symptom from his inner layers of mind, that which astonishingly not only causes him pain, but makes the other person (me) question and wonder his creativity.

Philip in his writing on ‘Clutter’ says :

“Clutter may not be the way we hide things from ourselves but the way we make ourselves look for things. It is, as if it were self-imposed hide and seek.”

Perhaps here is where we can come close to the unconscious, its majesticity along with dynamicity, for it hides many a things which one finds may be in moments so ‘insane’, so undefined that their worth becomes far greater than the usual ‘conscious’ utterances! 

Define 'Ab-Normal'.....

Define : ‘AB-NORMAL’

Right in the third year of my undergrad, this was the very first question that had been asked and discussed about, not only in our Abnormal Psychology classes and books, but also in the final exams.

I’m sure no matter how many years you spend in the profession of Psychology or Psychiatry ( if at all you are attuned to the ‘human’) this is one question whose answers keep changing with time, experience, yet one thing remain s constant – ‘What’s normal and ‘ab’ normal?’

For those who are unaware of how it feels to be in a clinical setup, I’ll just share some bits.. Pls note that experiences differ according to a private or a govt. setup.

In a governmental setup, you’ll see hoards of patients and their family members waiting for their turns to come. They’ll either be sleeping on the benches or holding the hands of the ‘ patient’ so that he doesn’t run away. They got to wait and wait and wait. So here perhaps comes the first lesson of being clinician – BE PATIENT.

Well surely you can read in between the lines, for

The beginning.....

Many a doors you might have seen,

Some wooden, some glassy, some pretty clean,

And here am I welcoming thee,

To see a new world of you and me….

Where reside: calmness,’life’ in itself, spirituality,

A few discussions on abnormality…

And if you wish, may as you please,

Come quietly through this door, and take a seat,

And see how we unravel life’s mysteries…..