Filed under: Astrology stuff, Books, Healing, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., therapy
Amazon.com is taking pre-orders for a new book that’s coming out concerning Adult Children of D and relationships. I haven’t looked at it but the synopses and reviews looks interesting. It’s pretty pricey at $40.00 so I guess it might be marketed to and written for Mental Health Professionals.
Adult Children of Divorce: Confused Love Seekers by Geraldine K. Piorkowski
An Astrological Note: The word “Confusion” indicates a link between Neptune and growing up in Divorce. “Romantic Love” in a chivalrous way is ruled by Sun/Leo. “Romantic Love” in an idealistic way is ruled by Neptune. Libra/Venus rules Marriage.
The Following Reviews and Synopsis are taken from Amazon.com:
Review
“Piorkowski demonstrates her masterful understanding of the developmental experiences that facilitate and those that interfere with intimate relationships.”–Alice Bernstein, PhD,, Past President, Chicago Association for Psychoanalytic Psychology“Piorkowski’s unique contribution is to help us understand why adult children of divorce find it so difficult to develop true intimacy. They frequently lack the blueprint that would enable them to move from an idealistic picture of romantic love to the more realistic one of commitment and skills needed to develop true long term sustaining relationships. Her penetrating analyis clearly indicates the urgent need to guide and support these confused love seekers.”–Michele Baldwin, PhD., Chicago Center for Family Health
“What is love? Our parents’ divorce undermined the idea that love is forever. The media feeds us the myth that love appears instantly and magically heals all our wounds. Today’s grown children of divorce are confused in the realm of love. Dr. Piorkowski brings a wealth of compassion, over twenty years of clinical experience, and a discerning eye on current research to help grown children of divorce to find the love they are looking for and to form the stable relationships they hope to give to their own children.”–Elizabeth Marquardt, Author, Between Two Worlds: The Inner Lives of Children of Divorce
“Dr. Piorkowski’s book defines in depth the concept of love from a philosophical, cultural and artistic perspective providing the reader with a foundation by which they can reach their own determination as to the true meaning and feeling of love. Aided with this knowledge, the reader can better understand an interpersonal relationship. Then the book focuses on the viable by-product of failed “love,” as most strongly illustrated by children of divorce. Piorkowski examines how they react and how they can manage their own relationships to avoid the pitfalls of the past.”–Floyd N. Nadler, P.C., Nadler, Pritikin & Mirabelli LLC
Product Description
Romantic love is often an elusive, fragile, and tenuous state, difficult to maintain across years. The rates of divorce, re-divorce, relationship violence, and abuse today attest to the fact that Americans are failing at romantic love. For teenaged and adult children of divorce, romantic love is especially elusive. Because they have no road map of a satisfying, stable romantic relationship derived from their own parents, they are confused about what love is and tend to make poor partner choices. Borrowing heavily from popular culture for their unrealistic standards regarding love, they become disillusioned when their all-too-ordinary lovers don’t measure up. Especially vulnerable to the problems their parents had, they tend to overreact in a similar negative fashion and are all too ready to consider divorce when unhappiness strikes. In trying to halt intergenerational transmission of divorce, Psychologist Piorkowski points out how American popular culture presents an over-sexualized, explosive, and superficial version of romantic love that can’t last. With this book, adult children of divorce can begin to recognize how they have been affected by familial experiences and develop a new, realistic map to provide directions for more fulfilling and enduring romantic relationships. Piorkowski, in an extensive review of literature, also looks at cultural factors and how they impact romantic love and marriage. In contrast to American popular culture’s shallow rendition of romantic love, many cultures elsewhere in the world emphasize compatibility, religion, and family allegiance. As a result, says the author, such marriages appear more stable than American unions built upon the shifting sands of emotion.
Filed under: Books, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., therapy
Today while rummaging through the Library Book Sale I picked up a copy of The O. Henry Awards Prize Stories from 1999 and turned immediately to a story called “The Depressed Person” which starts out:
The Depressed person was in terrible and unceasing emotional pain, and the impossibility of sharing or articulating this pain was itself a component of the pain and a contributing factor in its essential horror.
Despairing, then of describing the emotional pain or expressing its utterness to those around her, the depressed person instead described circumstance, both past and ongoing, which were somehow related to the pain, to its etiology and cause, hoping at least to be able to express to others eomthing of the pain’s context, its–as it were–shape and texture. The depressed person’s parents, for example, who had divorced when she was a child, had used her as a pawn in the sick games they played…”
I had to buy the book and read the rest. Turns out the story is a very bitter black humor description of going through psychotherapy. Of course, the character has to be described as a Child of D and female in order to make people accept her as an emotional sponge. Er, I was angry. Since Wallace’s descriptions of growing up in Divorce were very outsiderish I didn’t think he was talking from personal experience. Men from Divorce in particular tend to be wise to other people’s feelings. This guy wasn’t. Or, at least, I’m angry that he misused this particular cliche. But the observation was right on and the story telling was great. And the sentences are really weird and well crafted.
I have to admit Wallace’s voice in the story was really strong. He seemed a lot like a loser ex boyfriend who was getting even with an old girlfriend, so I started googling his situation and found out that tragically Wallace has very recently committed Suicide. The story was about mental illness and the futility of going through therapy and the divorce just made the depression sound more reasonable. I was angry with the editor and the O.Henry Awards and everyone who has to pick on Children of D for their own private pathos. (I will add here that if you go to a Therapist and mention anything about your parent’s divorce you are immediately considered depressed. Children of D. are reacting to a real life event, whether their chemicals are nuts is a completely different thing.)
It’s a really awful coincidence that I find this story right now. Wallace passed away on September 12. May he Rest in Peace. His obituary is here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/15/books/15wallace.html
Filed under: Exemplary Children of Divorce, Possible Personality Traits of Children of D., Stepfamilies, therapy
Was channel surfing on TV the other night and stopped at Larry King Live for a show on Psychic Kids. There’s a therapist who has put together an actual TV show that documents Children who exhibit exceptional psychic talents. One girl who is 14 now said that she began to have psychic abilities right after her parents’ divorce when she was 6. I was so proud of her for stating this outright. Larry King asked her if she thought that the divorce had something to do with this and she said Yes. I do know that Children of D are much more sensitive than kids from intact families. It makes sense that one has to develop greater abilities to understand human nature and at such a young age the extra stress and fear can open one up to all levels of existence.
I’ve never heard of this TV show and don’t know what channel it’s shown on. It would be interesting to see if an abnormally large quantity of the children on it are from Divorce.
Someday hopefully Scientific research will show that extreme stress such as going through one’s parents’ divorce or living in blended families can bring out these traits. The child might have gifts but I suspect that within a family, especially within a step-family any personality trait of this kind would not be considered ina positive light overall. These children would be considered manipulative or psychotic and the kids would be tortured extra hard. Could explain especially why Step-Mothers are so hard on their Step-Daughters. Women play on these psychic battlefields all the time as it is.
The therapist was pretty good about saying that the kids don’t exhibit symptoms of psychosis and that she thinks they really are having spiritual experiences of some type. Being a therapist, of course, she couldn’t let the “D” word come out of her mouth. It is, however, a positive thing that she’s open to developing the childrens’ abilities. Since Divorce is so common it is best for society to be open to the new forms of thinking that will come from it. The parents are trying to develop an improved lifestyle for themselves but they expect the children to act as if they live in a normal family. The whole idea is to improve society, isn’t it?
The young girl said that because of the spirits who were haunting her in her Mother’s house, the family had to move. That seems stress related and I hope she doesn’t grow up with a continual theme of housing hell. I know that that’s been a major problem in my life and have met others with the same problem.
Sorry I don’t remember the young girl’s name on the show. But I certainly appreciate her courage to speak openly and honestly.
Filed under: therapy
This is a really strange video about Anorexia that shows “expert” after “expert” in the field of Eating Disorder treatment stating that Anorexia is not caused by the parents. That’s such bull shit.
I’m including it here because, this is the same stupid attitude that the Experts use for growing up in Divorce.
Point is. Blame has nothing to do with it. Looking honestly at the reasons for why a problem exists is the only way to deal with it. Much of the bizarre behaviors that an Anorexic takes on, the obsessions, the isolation, the self-injury, the secrecy and games, have been proven to be symptoms of malnutrition. People have known about this since the Minnesota Starvation Project found this out in the 1940s. That along with family and society pressures are enough. Start there you idiots. It’s a massive project. Yet the experts have decided that, since they can’t cure Anorexia, they will now call it a brain disorder.
This is all a waste of energy and time. This is the mess the Psych community would make of Divorce if they were to actually come out of their comas with regards to effects of the situation. So maybe best to let them do their stupid studies. What else are they going to do with their lives?
Okay, another rage session. This is really unhealthy. In college I stayed in a Psych 101 class for exactly one day and I was flying off into rages. They were trying to impress an ampitheater of students with a movie showing a science experiment where researchers were abusing monkeys with electrodes. I can’t forgive that.
I assume that Anorexia and Divorce are not related. It’s just an oddball coincidence in my case that mine started because I couldn’t eat after my Mother’s repeated suicide attempts. There’s such a huge difference in personality and motivation between sufferers according to age of onset that I don’t even think of that as a factor. The teenagers are obviously buckling from changing body issues and are working in secret. The little kids are absolutely frightening to me. The older, drug addict types are trying to kill themselves. I’ve only known two and they were showmen and really like the attention.
Filed under: Exemplary Children of Divorce, therapy | Tags: anorexia, therapy
I suppose it’s easy to see why the Psych community is oblivious to growing up in Divorced Families. I just quickly ran over a list of the Forefathers of Psychology and, I may have made some errors, but it looks like none, nada, zippo, grew up in Divorce.
This is my list.
Alfred Adler; Carl Jung; Sigmund Freud; Erich Fromm; Richard Dawkins; Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, William James, Kay Redfield Jameson, Arthur Janov, Frederick Skinner, Alice Miller, Ken Wilber, Carl Rogers, Jean Piaget, R.D. Laing, Howard Gardner, Jerome Bruner, Jacques Lacan.
Who needs to listen to more problems if you’ve grown up listening non-stop to your parents’ problems? I’ve known a couple of therapists from divorced families. They were highly manipulative people who worked at the most God awful social work jobs. Definitely not the trailblazers of the profession. It always fascinates me to see books written about growing up in divorce that weren’t written by people who grew up in divorce. Written by the shameless self marketers who are looking for a niche. It’s the same thing with anorexia. As an ex-anorexic I’ve been fascinated by the amount of fat therapists who want to work with anorexics. They just love bowing down their heads to show off their 30 chins and tsk, tsk, tsk about how sick the anorexics are. It’s literally abusive. I went to a free lecture in my community of a panel of people speaking on eating disorders. They had a family speak, they had a psychiatrist speak, they had an ex fat woman speak, and they had a fat therapist speak. There were no anorexics or bulimics telling their stories. The fat therapist laughingly told about how much more full of joy fat people are to be around than the sad, wispy little control freaks in the clinic. And no one thought anything of it. Whenever I hear about psych studies that say that treatments don’t work, well, it’s just amusing. Fat people who can’t go on a diet. What can you do? The psych industry is a multi-billion dollar industry with no accountability. You can put on your puppy dog face and offer treatments that offer no cure and it’s legal. Yoo hoo.
Filed under: therapy
Here’s a link to Google Books version of Children of Divorce: Developmental and Clinical Issues. It’s a collection of studies that try to understand Divorce from the Child’s Point of View. Yippie.
http://books.google.com/
Crap, the link is really long; just Google it. Doing this is sort of dragging me down and I’m getting a little wiggy. I think I may take a little break.
Filed under: Bad Children of Divorce, Suicide, indifferent parents, self-absorbed parents, therapy
I suppose “Problematic” is a fairly gentle term for some of the screws up that spawn from Divorce. Not all Mass Murderers come from broken homes, but, frankly, I’m sort of surprised that more aren’t. Here’s one. He wasn’t even on psych drugs. But he did tell his therapists that he wished his parents loved him. Robert Hawkins is the mass murderer who entered a Shopping Mall in Nebraska last month (Dec. 5, 2007, Omaha) and killed 8 people and himself. His parents divorced shortly before he turned 2 years old. Hawkins and his older sister lived with his Father. His sister is 4 years older and reportedly doing very well in life.
Both parents remarried new partners when he was 4. His Mother went through a second Divorce when Hawkins was 8 years old. His Father divorced his StepMother when Hawkins was 17. Hawkins had one birth sister, 4 years older, and 4 half-siblings, all younger. He had been receiving therapy since he was 6 years old. His Mother fought for custody about that time saying that the Step-Mother was verbally abusive. Hawkins was put into a Mental Hospital on or the day after his 14th Birthday for threatening to kill his Step-Mother. After that he was made a Ward of the State and lived until Age 17 in State Facilities or in Foster Homes. His Mother visited him for the first time after 2 1/2 years in July, 2005. At 17, Hawkins moved back in with his Father who was going through his 2d Divorce (not the best timing but I guess Daddy felt lonely), then dropped out of High School. Hawkins was detained a couple of times while in Foster Care for dealing marijuana. At the time of his death he had just been fired for stealing money from McDonalds, had broken up with his girlfriends and was having legal problems for alcohol and drugs.
The Director of the Facility where Hawkins was kept says that his Treatment cost $245,000.
Description of Hawkins’ life: http://omaha.craigslist.org/pol/511019475.html.
Filed under: Exemplary Children of Divorce, Mentally Ill parents, Suicide, self-absorbed parents, therapy
Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love were sort of like the Prom King and Queen of Generation X. This was a generation that sort of grew up stunned by Life. They were the first kids to talk about growing up in Divorce.
Kurt Cobain’s parents divorced in 1975 when he was 7. He lived for a year with his Mom and then moved in with his Dad and after that shuttled around. His Mother said that the Divorce completely changed him. He became out of control and after a few years when Dad couldn’t handle him he bopped around between family and friends’ houses. He dropped out of high school and lived for a while under a bridge. Cobain’s saving grace was that he started playing guitar at Age 14. I guess an outlet for expression helps. Unfortunately it doesn’t fix anything. He seems his health was frail his whole life and he suffered from depression, Scoliosis, bronchitis and stomach problems.
Cobain started using drugs when he was 11 and was hooked on heroin by 1986.
From what I’m reading Cobain became the voice for Generation X and for the Grunge style of Rock. The Grunge style certainly seems to fit with growing up in a chaotic household. Cobain celebrated instant celebrity as lead singer for Nirvana and struggled with his success. He married Courtney Love in 1992 with whom he had a daughter.
Cobain killed himself on Apr. 8, 1994 in Washington state, Age 27.
Courtney Love was born in San Francisco to highly dysfunctional parents. Her Hippie parents divorced when she was 5. Her Mother gained custody by telling the court that Courtney’s Father had fed her pills when Courtney was 4. Her Father continued to feed her drugs for the rest of her childhood. Her Mother remarried twice more and had two more daughters. Courtney’s Mother is a therapist and says that Courtney became magically screwed up on her own at Age 2. Courtney was given an insulting nickname as a child, Miss Pee?, because her clothes were so filthy. One can see where the Grunge look originated. She has since become a Fashion Icon who is known for a sloppy, but stylish look.
Courtney’s Mom sent her to therapy when she was 6. That worked well. They spent much of Courtney’s childhood years traveling around the World. When Courtney was 8 the family moved to New Zealand and left her behind because she fought with her Mother. Courtney was eventually brought over but was sent back. She ended up spending most of the rest of her childhood in Mental Hospitals, Foster Homes, Detention Centers and Strip Clubs.
Love became the Lead Singer and Lyricist for the group Hole. She met Cobain in 1989 and they married in 1992 when Courtney became pregnant. Cobain committed Suicide and Love has somehow managed to keep her career going although fairly messed up by the drugs. In addition to her music she is a really great actress.
Love’s latest album is called “Nobody’s Daughter.” It looks like maybe Rehab worked this last go round at least. Rolling Stone has called her “the most controversial woman in the history of rock.” While Courtney was at the peak of her worst problems, The Mother took advantage of her Fame and published a book telling all about Courtney’s messed up family from the point of view of a rational therapist. I’m sure that helped her daughter. Where do these idiots come from?
Here’s a link to a review of Constance Ahron’s book called We’re Still Family: What Grown Children Have to Say About Their Parent’s Divorce written by Elizabeth Marquardt called “The Bad Divorce.”
http://www.firstthings.com/article.php3?id_article=157
I highly recommend reading this as Marquardt speaks as a researcher who actually grew up in a divorce. The last psychiatrist I went to was a single Mother and refused to let me talk about trauma from growing up in a divorced family because it made her defensive. She suggested that I find a therapist to discuss my concerns with. I asked if she could refer me to one who had actually grown up in a divorce so I wouldn’t have to worry about hurting any feelings since most therapists are divorced and extremely defensive about effects on kids, it’s important to ask these questions). She said something like (and I’m not kidding): “Oh that wouldn’t be something you ask, it’s personal.”
So, trust me, Marquardt is telling the truth.
