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When He Thinks You’re Crazy . . . Could the Reason Be Your Girly Thoughts?

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD,
author of: The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI, 2013)

Order: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
www.patriciaogorman.com

I know these might seem like strange words coming from a psychologist, but stop a moment and try this on: When you back someone you love into a corner by blaming him for feeling bad about yourself, and he tells you you’re nuts, it’s hurtful—to him and to you. But consider that you may be literally making yourself nuts by your thoughts and feelings telling you that you are not good enough and you need to change.

Those “I’m not okay the way I am” feelings are due to your girly thoughts—those thoughts that you need to alter how you act, how you look, or you’ll lose your man.

Making Ourselves Nuts

By saying this, I’m not implying that all relationship challenges you are experiencing are your fault. No, I am definitely not saying that. What I am saying is that some of the negative ideas you may be struggling with are within your control. And I’m encouraging you to take control of your thinking.

Don’t Blame Him

The problem is that you may not be identifying your girly thoughts for what they are: a function of our intense media holding up images of desirable women—many of them so digitally altered that they do not look like themselves—as the “ideal” to which we should all aspire. The result is that when we don’t measure up—as we cannot because these are no longer real people—we feel terrible about ourselves.

But instead of seeing your girly thoughts as the reason you may be feeling insecure, you’re tempted to blame your feelings of inadequacy on your partner, creating conflict in a part of your life where you need support. For example, you decided to be a sexy watermelon for Halloween. You put on your costume, went to a party, and decided he thought you looked fat because he was hanging out with the good witch. Now, he didn’t say this. You assumed it, and the unfortunate result was confusing him and making him feel defensive because he doesn’t know where you are coming from.

Are we crazy?

Why do women do this? Because trying to keep up with what you feel you should do and should be is exhausting. He’s there. He becomes a logical target, because someone has to be responsible for how bad you feel about yourself.

Wrong. Consider the possibility that it isn’t him. Try on that it’s probably your girly thoughts.

Consequences of Your Girly Thoughts: You Push Him Away

As a result of being blamed, he:

• feels hurt, wronged, confused, maybe angry, and frightened (even though most men are loath to admit to this)

• can feel your unhappiness, but he knows he hasn’t changed, so he thinks it’s you—you’re crazy.

So what to do?

• First, take a deep breath and realize that you’re not crazy even though your girly thoughts can make you feel that way;

• Then realize he probably doesn’t think you’re crazy, he’s just not sure what to do.

• And when you are ready, talk to him. I know: this is the scary part. But don’t you think that because he cares for you, he wants to know what is going on? He’ll want to reassure you? He might even laugh with you at some of the absurdities in the media? Who knows, maybe sharing your girly thoughts with him will bring you even closer.

Send me a post about how challenging your girly thoughts has changed your relationship with him.

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Patricia O’Gorman, PhD, a psychologist in private practice in Albany, and Saranac Lake, New York, is noted for her work on women, trauma, and substance abuse and for her warm, inspiring, and funny presentations that make complex issues accessible and even fun. She has served as a consultant to organizations in preventative and clinical strategic planning including Lifescape Solutions in Delray Beach, Florida. Dr. O’Gorman is a cofounder of the National Association for Children of Alcoholics, and she has held positions ranging from clinical director of a child welfare agency to interim director of a crime victims organization to director of the division of prevention for the National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (NIAAA). Learn more at http://patriciaogorman.com

Digital Dreams and your Girly Thoughts

By Patricia O’Gorman, PhD,
author of: The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (HCI, 2013)

Order: Amazon / Barnes & Noble
www.patriciaogorman.com

In case you think you are not really affected by the media, watch this short video. It shows a perfectly lovely young woman who is digitally altered—and I’m not speaking about the changes we all enjoy, like adding makeup and doing our hair. This is on a whole different level.

Here is a short, brilliant example of how we all chase the digital dream. The challenge we have is that we do not know we are dreaming, and we forget it is a digital dream—that means it’s been photoshopped. So we need to wake up! We need see this manipulation for what it is and understand what happens to us when we internalize these digital dreams of how we should look. If this video wasn’t so ridiculous and compelling, we’d all be tempted to laugh.

Digital Dreaming . . .

There are changes to the young woman’s facial features, cosmetic surgery-type changes. Her facial features are sculpted to the point where she doesn’t even look like herself; her shoulders are reshaped oh-so-subtly, and there is, of course, the mandatory tummy tuck and breast enhancement. Her torso is even elongated (which is still beyond the skill range of most surgeons, I think, but let me know if I’m wrong). You get the picture. Please watch it now.

This is a perfect example of what I address in my newest book, The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, where I give a name to these messages—the negative things we are encouraged to about ourselves—our girly thoughts. The result is that as you berate yourself for not being able to obtain these digital dreams; you use your personal power for everyone in your life but yourself. And if someone mentions how good you look, you tend to doubt that person’s sincerity. Talk about a no-win situation! It’s a trap for you and for those close to you.

The way out? Develop your conscious resilience so you can combat those girly thoughts, laugh at images like these, accept that the media’s message about beauty is digitally enhanced beyond reality, embrace your own perfection, and find more peace and joy in your life.

How to Wake UP . . .

First, recognize when you are looking at a digital dream.
When you get together with your girlfriends, start a conversation about the latest one you’ve seen.
If you are a mother, teacher, counselor, or neighbor, please point out the digital dream to your daughter, or niece, or the child in your class who is trying to copy some of these looks or is fretting about not being that tall, that thin, that pretty. Give them the term girly thoughts to describe this type of societally driven thinking, and help them avoid being sucked into this nonsense that robs them of developing their power.

Send in the images you find that are clearly digital dreams. I hope you’ll bookmark this article and come back often to post those you find in the comments. Let’s out these images that trip us up when we think of them as real, and let’s support each other in doing this.

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Our Mother, on Mother’s Day: Honoring Our First Model for Our Resilience

We all come to the celebration of Mother’s Day with a long history of being a daughter, profoundly influenced for better, or worst, by our mothers. For some, the notion of honoring our mother on Mother’s Day brings about a mix of emotions. Into this emotionally charged day full of obligations, memories, some sweet, others not, I’d like to propose that if for no other reason than giving you your first example of how to deal with life challenges by developing resiliency, we should honor our mothers on this Sunday, Mother’s Day.

There is no one who we are, or were, as close to as our mothers. They were our model for who we wanted to become, and did not want to act, sometimes simultaneously. We did, at one time, idealize our mothers. Many still do. We did want to just be like mommy, and many of us still use our mothers as a measure for our actions, even if this surprises us. Not that every example we were offered, worked. Nor that our mother didn’t have her own struggles: perhaps, with an alcoholic husband, or her own drinking, eating, or drug use; or her needing to deal with violence in her home, or in her community while protecting her children, or her facing discrimination at her job. Not that our mother didn’t have her own girly thoughts, those negative messages we internalize from society that serve to both limit us and blame us. Because she both loved and wanted to protect you, her daughter, your mother may have reinforced many of these messages, after all, that was all she knew.

But our mothers did show us what worked, and what didn’t. Through our close observation of them, we absorbed our earliest life’s lessons of how to make it through life with dignity, while respecting others, and ourselves. As such we are simultaneously so very close to our mothers, and often shocked and repelled by how much we are indeed like them. This is the mother/daughter dance.

The relationship between a mother and her daughter is complicated, at the very least. There is great love, tenderness, even, pride, but this relationship can also be tinged by other feelings, less talked about, less patriotic: envy of the power a mother has, particularly when we were a teenager; jealousy, on a mother’s part particularly as daughters matures, and she ages; caretaking, as mothers become infirm, and daughters become in some ways their nurturer, coming often at a time when daughters are over-whelmed by the needs their our own children. Being a daughter is a challenge. Having a daughter is a challenge. And it is within this very challenge, that our resilience is staged and begins to be developed.

Continue reading “Our Mother, on Mother’s Day: Honoring Our First Model for Our Resilience”

You Are More Beautiful Than You Think You Are

Yes, you are more beautiful than you think you are! How can I make such a stunning statement without meeting you in person? Because you, like many women, have been brainwashed by something beyond your control, a force so strong yet so insidious that you probably aren’t even aware of it. Yet this powerful force is the reason you focus on all your imperfections. You see defects on your face and flaws with your body, and you feel crappy about yourself as you go through your day.

What is this mysterious—yet overwhelming—force? I’ve labeled it girly thoughts—those societal messages women receive about how they look and what makes them appealing. Girly thoughts are born from our need to be loved and accepted. They are nurtured through the fairy tales on which we were all raised, stories that speak to our need to be weaker than we are so we appeal to men, and they are reinforced through the practice of digitally enhancing a woman’s natural beauty to the point that the model doesn’t even look like the actual woman being photographed. The result of this blurring between what is real and attainable and what is not is the huge price we pay for chasing this illusion: we lose access to our personal power, and we berate ourselves for not looking or acting as we feel we should.

During a recent radio interview about my book The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, a professional model called in and told me that when she wakes up in the morning and looks at her face, she is depressed because she does not look like the slick photographs she sees of herself in magazines. She wondered if this negative self-image was an example of girly thoughts. “Yes,” I answered sadly, “this is how your girly thoughts are affecting you.”

Continue reading “You Are More Beautiful Than You Think You Are”

How Women Sabotage Business Relationships with Girly Thoughts

“The brain is hardwired to keep us focused on others, and on our role and status. When we’re not engaged in some kind of exchange, we’re often thinking about them.”

Marsha Shenk, a pioneer in business anthropology, consultant to leaders from the Fortune 50 to Solopreneurs, and founder of The BestWork® People, wrote those words in this slideshare. Her statement is particularly interesting when we consider that sometimes, we are our own worst enemies because of our focus on others, our role, and our status. How we manage those relationships can ultimately determine our career success. Women bring a unique point of view about relationships to the workplace. While we juggle work and family issues, we rarely spend much time or attention on what we think about ourselves, and how that translates into how we interact with others. We can sabotage all our professional efforts with thoughts about why we weren’t able to achieve a goal when we reason with our inner girly thoughts.

Our girly thoughts are those self-limiting thought and images of who we are, what we are capable of, what we are good for, how we should look, how we should act, and the consequences we can expect when we don’t fit within this very narrow and often unobtainable expectation. Girly thoughts are the subtle, outside messages we internalize that cause us to blame ourselves—even berate ourselves—for not achieving what we feel we should.

This is an especially fearsome problem in the workplace when we are dealing with interpersonal relationships. Because we don’t even realize we are thinking these negative thoughts, we look to external factors to blame for our unhappiness and lack of successful career relationships. Yet our professional failures aren’t found in a specific, unachieved goal—the promotion we didn’t get, the contract we weren’t awarded, or even the ten pounds we gained. And when we try to “fix” these problems, we do what all too often comes naturally: we blame ourselves for the actions of others.

For example, if your boss snaps at you, do you automatically assume it’s because you’ve failed in some way? It’s entirely possible that your boss was up all night with a sick child and is exhausted, or she is facing a major budget cut and has to figure out how to run her department with less money and fewer people. YOU are not necessarily the reason she lashes out, even if you are the recipient of her displeasure.

Using our girly thoughts to navigate relationships assures us that the difficult situations we find ourselves in must be our fault due to something lacking in us. If I’m too opinionated, no one will like me, or If I don’t lose ten pounds, I won’t be considered for that promotion. This is all nonsense, but the tendency for women to blame themselves for the ills that befall them is so widespread as to be considered almost universal. This is energy misspent in a negative internal dialogue that could be better spent understanding and achieving personal and professional goals.

In my book, The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power, I discuss how to overcome girly thoughts and consciously decide to use your resilience to deliberately challenge them. By addressing and challenging your girly thoughts, you position yourself to step into your power. Particularly in workplace relationships, your ability to access your personal power is paramount to every interaction you have and will ultimately determine if you stay at the bottom of the corporate totem pole or move forward in your career by embracing your personal excellence.

How to combat girly thoughts at work? Listen to an oldie but a goodie by Helen Reddy after the jump

Continue reading “How Women Sabotage Business Relationships with Girly Thoughts”

Stepping Into Our Power – Nothing Can Stop Me Now

For all of us, our private road to personal power has been strewn with awful events that challenged us, boulders that have unexpectedly tumbled down about us, detours signs we saw at the last minute, rerouting that we needed to figure out on the fly, moments, weeks, years we’ve gone through that no one should have to endure, actions we’ve taken that made us feel we might not survive, and yet to quote Lana del Ray in Radio we can all arrive at a point where we feel: nothing can stop me now. This iconic singer speaks freely about how she became powerful, by learning how to love herself. Her lyrics:

“No one even knows how hard life was,

I don’t even think about it now

because I’ve finally found you”

reflect her recovery and her happiness. “People will always hate, but I love myself now, and that’s all that matters,” she muses as she recalls her journey in finding her resilience.

What Lana del Ray is speaking about is our personal power, our resilience. Our personal power comes from successfully meeting, navigating, and coming out on top of our challenges from whatever source they stemmed: from being the oldest, the only girl, the responsible one, to being the smart one, the pretty one, the one who stood out, the one who didn’t, to our addiction, the abuse, or discrimination we survived.

We, like Lana del Ray, deserve to feel real good about ourselves, feel confident, even feeling impressed, because we have not only survived, but in many cases thrived in the face of the numerous tests we have experienced. But we often don’t feel pleased with ourselves. In fact, many times we don’t even stop to consider what we have just accomplished when we have been challenged, and for each of us our challenges are different – whether it was speaking to our son’s teacher, listening to our mother’s pain, driving into a new part of town, telling our partner enough. Somehow, it is so very complicated for us as women to embrace the resilient part of who we are.

Yes, our power can ebb and flow. It surrounds us, it lifts us, and it appears to vanish, but we know it is still there. But to consciously walk around feeling it? Yes, we’ve all had the experience of hearing “you’re so powerful” from a loved one, an employer, a friend, and simultaneously feeling our inner response of “no, I’m not.”

Recognition is always a humbling experience. As women we’re been trained to say “who me?” when special qualities of ours are noticed. So to notice what is right with us, is a challenge, a much bigger task, than fixing things for others, than helping out our friends, our family, shining at work. Because if we feel our power, then we need to own it, prompting us to answer the “who me?” that comes to mind, with the “Yes, you!” And of course, this is uncomfortable.

Having heard this from friends, family members, patients, and having felt this in moments within myself, I’ve wondered why do we become uneasy when we hear what is obviously a compliment. Or is it??

I’ve come to the conclusion that something about this statement, another acknowledging that they see our power, must feel so very threatening, yes threatening, but to what? What does being seen as powerful hit upon within us that often provokes such an immediate, and so common response? Could it be that being powerful doesn’t jive with our culturally reinforced image of how a woman should be seen? Could it be that being seen as strong, that loving ourselves as Lana del Ray sings, doesn’t comfortably fit with what has been drilled into our head that we are really vulnerable, that we are the loving party, but not capable of self-love, and to the assumed statement that we can be only one or the other, one culturally acceptable, and the other not as much?

By doing this we can choose to step into our power, and have a life sweet like cinnamon, as Lana sings. We can allow ourselves to be complicated, nuanced, maybe not so predictable, even to ourselves. We don’t need to live in a box, and we certainly don’t need to put our power in one.

Like the pebble in the pond, by releasing ourselves from being defined by others, we not only affect ourselves and our future, but in doing this, we can knowingly influence the next generation of women in our lives — our daughters, sisters, aunts, mother, nieces, cousins, the women in our office, our apartment building, our town.

How to do this? … Begin to embrace your resilience. Yes, your resilience, those skills we develop under stress, sometimes extreme stress. Need some motivation to own your power?

Continue reading “Stepping Into Our Power – Nothing Can Stop Me Now”

Hearing Our Own Voice – When Faced With Being Blamed for Violence We’ve Experienced

Our past trauma can be triggered in a variety of ways. Just after The Feast of the
Epiphany (January 6), a patient brought in an article sent to her by a friend in California;
and she was triggered. The article concerned a priest who actually blamed women
for abuse they experienced at the hands of men. She was deeply upset but laughed at
some of the excerpts she read. After all, it was all so familiar. She, as many of you have,
heard it before, in so many ways since we were children. But as she spoke about it, she
noticed that it really disturbed her.

So she began by doing what we all know how to do so very well. She began to find
reasons to explain why this man of God did this very un-Christ-like act. She expressed:
well, he’s probably done some good. He’s probably old, and being kept on due to his
past good deeds. Yes, she rationalized his actions, but she was still feeling it.

But through the process that I taught her, she began to listen to that little voice inside.
She heard this voice of reason begin to whisper, then speaking more clearly, then
demanding to be heard, and finally screaming: what about YOU? She realized that
she had caught herself being the “good girl”, yet again, explaining the abuse instead of
feeling her response to it as she remembered it, yet again.

Being so trained to be the good girl is a type of cultural trauma that is so subtle, so
pervasive, that it took her speaking to me, for her to finally hear herself, and risk
stepping outside of her conditioning to express her anger at this very poorly informed
man. All I did was to point out: you sound angry, inviting her to check in with the part
of herself that has been traumatized, and prevailed, her resilience. When she did she
discovered she was incensed!

Violence against women is making the news, as usual. It is for some sexy, young
women, usually, strong men exercising their power over women, women hurt, killed—
shot in the head, raped on a public bus, beaten by their husband. Oops, that usually
doesn’t make the news.

So what’s the big deal? Aren’t women always blamed for a man’s bad actions? Nothing
new in this, except this time it is a priest delivering this disgusting message in his
Christmas message. The Pasadena insert of the LA Times this Sunday reported on
Father Corsi’s gift to his congregation on the Feast of the Epiphany, the Feast of The
Three Kings. http://www.pasadenasun.com/opinion/pas-0104-in-theory-an-italian-
priests-divisive-words,0,224530.story?page=1

Yes, Father Corsi, from Northern Italy, was very clear in his text: Women and Femicide,
women bear the responsibility for everything from sexual attacks to sexual abuse. And
he exhorted women to search their conscience. Yes, you have that right. He didn’t
pressure the men to examine their conscience, those who are the major perpetrators
of the 1/3 increase in domestic violence deaths in Italy in 2012, but the women, who
were the victims. Now don’t be so ungrateful. So what if what he offered was a piece
of coal? Down deep inside, what do we expect?

Continue reading “Hearing Our Own Voice – When Faced With Being Blamed for Violence We’ve Experienced”

Binge Drinking – Taking Away Your Own Power

Most women read “Excessive alcohol consumption is the third leading cause of

preventable death in the United States and is a risk factor for many health and societal

problems,” (1), and think, “Oh, too bad, this really isn’t about me. That’s about all those
others, who really have problems,” without stopping to think how it could apply to them.

I know this may make you a tiny bit anxious, but let’s take a moment and look at the
definition of heavy and binge drinking:

Heavy drinking is defined as more than two drinks per day on average for
men or more than one drink per day on average for women. One drink a
day! (1) Some of you are thinking “this is crazy,” but bear with me for a
moment longer.
Binge drinking is defined as five or more drinks during a single occasion
for men or four or more drinks during a single occasion for women (1).
Four drinks, you may be hearing yourself say–that’s just a moderate night
out!
The reason why this doesn’t feel like a problem is that it’s common: about
1 in 8 women aged 18 years and older and 1 in 5 high school girls binge
drink (2).
Women who binge drink do so frequently – about 3 times a month (2) that
is going out most weekends. And therein lies the problem for many, not
realizing the impact of a “girls night out.”

Most girls and women don’t realize that drinking four or more drinks, even on occasion
can create a problem, a serious problem, even a permanent problem. Binge drinking
increases the chances of breast cancer, heart disease, sexually transmitted diseases,
unintended pregnancy, and many other health problems. Drinking during pregnancy can
lead to sudden infant death syndrome and fetal alcohol spectrum disorders (2). I know
the long-term health effects seem very remote, to women of all ages, so let’s look at the
immediate ones, and add a couple.

Sex and alcohol is a complicated relationship — it giveth and it taketh away. Alcohol
gives us lower inhibitions leading to feeling more relaxed, less worried, less observant
about what we’re doing, or saying. That can be, and is frequently, nice. And yes, it
can ease our way into a sexual situation. This may sound even better. But alcohol also

say, what I won’t repeat now, my head cleared a little. I realized I had another choice. I

could leave, and I did.”

But, if we decide we want sex, the next question is how do we protect ourselves
– yes ourselves for once, not everyone else, and not his or her feelings when we
make arrangements to be safe. This much alcohol can also make our thinking fuzzy,
particularly when it comes understanding not only what we want to do but also how
to protect ourselves by asking the right questions, and taking the right actions. Think
STDs, yuck, I know, but many are preventable through the use of a condom. Think
unwanted pregnancy, and yes it can happen to anyone from the President’s daughter in
TV show 1600 Penn, to friends, to you.

Anger and alcohol is another potent mix. I have found in my clinical work that many
women binge, many times alone, because they are angry. And since we’ve all been
raised to be good girls, a key belief being that we shouldn’t be angry, many women
unconsciously deal with their anger by anesthetizing themselves through alcohol use.
Speak about a no-win solution. God forbid they actually allow themselves to know that
they are angry and express their anger. Who knows what could happen then? Maybe a
solution could be reached.

Alcohol and weight gain. Yes, alcohol can make you fat. It is after all highly caloric,
and has no nutritional value. I know none of the models are fat, and yes it is so unfair!

So what to do? No easy solutions you say. Well, there is one. Stop giving away your
power, and using alcohol to excess is one way that women give away this vital inner
resource. Begin to tap into your inner strengths, your resilience. You know what these
are — the parts of you that you use in situations to help everyone else: the skills, the
behaviors, others see and comment upon, so very favorably; what you do for others, the
advice you give your girlfriends about drinking, about guys. What if you remembered
your own advice and gave to yourself. How good would that be? Now that would be
power!

Continue reading “Binge Drinking – Taking Away Your Own Power”

Christmas and Perfume

If ever there was a season celebrating resilience it is the Christmas Season. As women, this season represents a virtual treasure trove of elements around which we build our resilience, because our resilience is built around our response to stress; and this is the season of stress, both good stress and the other kind.

During this holiday time we find ourselves playing our own version of three-dimensional chess. We are navigating our commitments to our children, creating a happy holiday season for them whether they are three and still believing in Santa Claus, or twenty-three and moving out on their own. We feel both our love and the pull of obligations, both stated and expected, to our family. This is compounded by needing to make the decision of who to spend the actual Christmas Eve or Christmas Day with, or whether to create the magic of the holiday within our home, figuring out how to do the cooking, shopping, decorating, and still for many of us, keep our day job. We need our friends who tend to be less available, as we are, due to being equally stressed out, running, laughing, and at times stuttering instead of speaking.

And this is compounded by our image of what this important holiday season is supposed to contain, an image not formed by Hallmark, or by the endless ads on TV, but an image rooted far deeper in our psyche, an image formed in our own childhood, an image we revisit, one formed by needs and desires remembering them as fulfilled leaving a smile on our face, or memories of want and need that that are still full of pain.

It is this last element that makes this season so challenging, the fact that we are present to this season not just as a forty-five year old, but also as a five year old. That we are navigating not just a list of expectations of those who we love who surround us, but also we are carrying those needs and wants from the child within us.

This is why it is so important to find a way to give to ourselves this season. Not just an actual gift, which may not be a bad idea, but also an inner gift, one of personal perspective — a gift of gratitude, of appreciation for all the resources that we have, of respect for all that we do, and of promise, a promise to do something special just for us, whether this is taking one single moment to put on a dab of perfume that we like, to remind ourselves as we gently waft it’s aroma throughout the day, that we indeed are special, that we can take care of ourselves, to a commitment to use our considerable resources, our resilience, to begin to take better care of ourselves. Now that would truly make this a merrier Christmas.

By Patricia O’Gorman, Ph.D.

Author of

The Resilient Woman: Mastering the 7 Steps to Personal Power (publication date 3/5/13)

pre-order available through Amazon and Barnes & Noble