Looking for a little advice about your relationship? Perhaps you have questions about parenting in Europe? Ask Andrea! Our social worker, Andrea Liss will pick one question a month and answer it in our mid-month bulletin. You can submit your questions anonymously to her at https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME.
Dear Andrea,
Having just spent a fabulous two weeks with one of our adult children who live in Canada, it reminded me just how difficult it is living so far away from our children. My experience has been that it doesn't get any easier each time you leave them at the airport. Do you have any suggestions and resources for parents to help them work through the extremely emotional and difficult experience of sending their young adult children back to Canada when one is posted OUTCAN?
Long-Distance Mom and Dad
Dear Long-Distance Mom and Dad.
It doesn’t get any easier, does it? No matter how many times the sweet reunion with our already launched children takes place, the parting can be the hardest part when the visit has been a fabulous one. All the deep adult conversations, all the storytelling, and the many opportunities for hugs and caretaking fill us with tremendous joy and fuel all sorts of strong emotions related to bonding. How cruel that then, at the two week mark, the kids are ripped from our greedy clutches! Love Sickness! The worst sickness of all! Dear Readers you will probably hear me say this a number of times over the course of this column but Love Sickness is the worst sickness of all.
There are all kinds of Love Sicknesses but none of them have yet officially made it to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, or DSM , which is basically the psychiatric bible for assessment and diagnosis in the world of psychology. Ahh Love Sickness. Remember the pain of your first few break ups? Remember unrequited love? Remember when your adolescent started to choose time to contemplate in her room over hang out with you mom and dad? Remember when your teenage son started to date and started confiding in his girlfriend instead of you? OUCH. And I haven’t even touched on the pain of the loss of a pregnancy, a dear friend, family member or pet. Long Distance Dad and Mom, welcome to the hard ache of heartache and the low cost of love. Let’s start with a biological explanation of what may be occurring and then look at what you can do about it.
Oxytocin is a powerful neurotransmitter that acts like a hormone. It has been given several nicknames including “the cuddle drug” due to its role in infant-parent attachment. Recent research is revealing that Oxytocin release is more complicated than just being a mother-infant or partner-intimacy chemical bonding surge. Lab rats separated from their kin group showed both high levels of Cortisol (typically associated with stress) and high levels of Oxytocin (in https://www.psycom.net/oxytocin). This biological process may give us a sense of what is happening to you Long Distance Mom and Dad as you dis connect from your child at the airport.
The secretion of Oxytocin while with your children for two weeks followed by the cessation of this when they leave is a biological explanation as to the intense feelings that parents feel when having to say goodbye to their kids. My own experience is that after this ‘high’ I can then feel deep melancholy and sadness. I can feel listless, teary, and quiet. When our system has been so filled with pleasantness and comfort and the source of that goes away, our system has to readjust and come down from the “high”of being with our “babies”. It’s a very complicated hormone and neurotransmitter wash out that takes over the body and understanding this can be of some comfort.
The reason that I have described the Oxycontin process is to help you manage the extreme emotional state by understanding it. It is very important for people to make an ‘attribution’ about their emotional and cognitive states. An ‘attribution’ is the assignment of meaning to events. When people ‘mentalize’ themselves (keep their minds in mind) by noting and describing their internal processes, it helps them to regulate their emotional circumstances and say “Oh, this is what is going on and this is why I am feeling this way”. Noting that we are having feelings, thoughts, wishes and needs is the first step in helping regulate internal processes. It’s important to stop and label what is happening within us. This process of observing creates a slight pause between the emotional experience and the labelling process which then can down-regulate our emotional system enough so that we can make an attribution of meaning. This process is not new to us as adults. We teach our children to identify and label feelings as soon as they are able to acquire language. As children grow they need to be able to assign meaning to their internal processes and to use their attributions to either regulate themselves or regulate relationally by talking things out with another person. We assign meaning to biological states all the time. Common examples include acknowledging when we are having premenstrual dysphoria, are becoming angry, are having hunger pangs, or need to use the washroom.
I mentioned earlier that Love Sickness is the low cost of love. Love Sickness is the cost of those deep and exhilarating feelings we experience by raising children. Even when we accept this cost, it will always be painful. To mitigate the pain, it’s important to have a plan to take care of ourselves. We need to bolster ourselves and prepare for the grief that we know will surely come. Because it’s a guaranteed experience, we might as well be prepared! Here is what other parents told me they do to help them work through their Love Sickness:
After waving goodbye, have plans for a special outing that is soothing but not isolating- it’s important to titrate as gradually as is possible from the relationship with the kids and attempt to move to another very satisfying relationship get together. Now is not the time to be alone- make plans with friends as it won’t be so jarring on your system to move from one relationship to another. Otherwise put, move from 100 to 60, rather than 100 to 0 on your emotional arousal scale.
Tell yourself that you are going through Love Sickness- the worst sickness of all!
Be kind and gentle with yourself by acknowledging to yourself that you are going through Oxytocin withdrawal and that this is an incredibly painful process. You can say to yourself “This is as hard as it gets. I am sad and I need to take good care of myself right now.”
Start writing a short and powerful letter to your child about your observations of them since the last reunion. Share with them one or two very specific observations about what you like about them which is totally unique to them. It could be about their values or personality. Beam with unabashed pride. This is good emotional processing and who doesn't love receiving a love letter?
Practice Opposite Action. When it starts to get too much and melancholy or worry creep in, mobilize yourself to act in opposition to what the feeling wants you to do. If you are sad, go after joyful activities. If you are worried, face your fears.
Good Luck Long Distance Mom and Dad! Print this column and keep it in your passport holder or on your OUTCAN fridge so you can prepare for the next bout of Lovesickness- you know it’s coming!
If you would like to pose a question for the Ask Andrea column, please send your anonymous question to https://bit.ly/MFSEAndreaSFME and Andrea will do her best to share some of her ideas.
Andrea has a master’s degree in Social Work is a Registered Social Worker and Registered Psychotherapist (Ontario) with over 20 years of experience. She maintains a faculty appointment at McMaster University where she teaches in the Masters of Science in Psychotherapy program.
Kommentare