Catherine Auman, LMFT

The young woman sitting in front of me in my psychotherapy office is articulate, intelligent, well groomed and attractive. Jessica has also thrown up her food three times a day, every day, since puberty. “I have to be prettier,” she says. “I just can’t go on looking like this.”

We might think Jessica’s anxiety is all in her head, but a disturbing trend is leading to a different conclusion. A new study published in the journal Sexuality and Culture (September 2011) “has found that the portrayal of women in the media over the last several decades has become increasingly sexualized, even ‘pornified,’” according to Erin Hatton, PhD, assistant professor at the University of Buffalo. “In the 2000’s, there were 10 times more hypersexualized images of women than men…this is problematic because it indicates a decisive narrowing of media representations of women.”

A report by the American Psychological Association’s Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls (2007) found compelling evidence that the rise in sexualized images of girls and women in the media is harmful to their self-image and healthy maturation. This can mean undermining a woman’s confidence in her body promoting shame, anxiety, eating disorders and/or depression. Sexualized images of women have been found to increase violence against them, and to decreased sexual satisfaction among both sexes.

“The consequences of the sexualization of girls in media today are very real and are likely to be a negative influence on girls’ healthy development,” said Eileen Zurbriggen, PhD, chair of the Task Force and associate professor at UCSC. “As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings – ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls….The goal should be to deliver messages to all adolescents, boys and girls, that lead to healthy sexual development.”

As parents and other trusted adults, we play a major role in contributing to either the sexualization of the young women in our lives or to giving them a healthier sense of what it means to be a human being. We can take an educative role by encouraging young people to question the images that are being promoted and by sharing information on the negative effects.

Sexualization means that a person’s value comes only from his/her sexual appeal to the exclusion of other characteristics. We can help young women like Jessica and all our daughters, nieces, friends, and yes, our young men, to understand that kindness, creativity, intellectual competence, physical abilities, compassion, service, spirituality and love matter more than being sexy.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

“When in doubt…” was a slogan on a card I received that I’ve never thrown out because it makes me laugh every time I see it. That would be an easy out, right? You don’t need to accept responsibility for yourself because your parents made you the way you are. If you do something harmful to yourself or someone else, it’s not your fault, it’s your parents’!

Sounds silly put that way, but you’d be surprised. People who had difficult childhoods sometimes use that as a justification as to why their lives are not working today. Oprah Winfrey, certainly a successful person, has shared that she overcame being sexually molested as a child; obviously she didn’t consider that a good excuse. There are many people who had traumatic childhoods whose lives are flourishing, so we really can’t blame the parents.

Clients in therapy may be reticent to do historical work because they love their parents, feel loyalty to them, and don’t want to blame them. The clients are afraid we’re going to find out the parents were villains, which is rarely the case. Usually, although not always, our parents were well-meaning people like ourselves doing the best they could with what was handed down from their own parents.

It’s not necessary to stop loving your parents to see what they taught you that wasn’t helpful, but it is necessary to identify the messages from the parents that were not accurate. I sometimes call these false messages “brainwashing” to underscore for clients just how strong this conditioning can be.

If, for example, you were taught that sex is sinful, you might want to change that brainwashing. If you were taught you should never speak up, or that your ideas are nonsense, or that you don’t have your own special form of attractiveness — these beliefs taught by well-meaning parents are not helpful in the world of adults and would benefit from examination, then elimination.

In psychotherapy, we’re not about blaming your parents. We are about you examining the things your parents instilled in you that are not helpful and throwing them out with the trash. But, we want to make sure you do keep the many useful things your parents passed on. We don’t want to interfere with you having the best relationship possible with them. The more love in the world, the better.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Tiffany is looking at me as if I’ve lost my mind. She is a corporate executive for an international, brand-name company; a new mother, a sister, a friend, a daughter and wife. She struggles to control her diet and stay fit. She wants to accomplish more with her time, not less. “Do nothing?” she asks plaintively. “And do what?”

Nothing’s wrong with accomplishing a lot, as Tiffany does. Western culture is focused on achievement which requires a lot of “doing.” People are asking more of their lives than ever before – we want to be successful financially, and have perfect health and great relationships. These are laudable aspirations, but we’re out of balance, at the expense of non-doing or just “being.” We’ve lost the great art of doing nothing at all.

I knew nothing about this until I spent a year at an ashram in India. It took awhile to wind down from my manic Western pace, but after I did, I fit in quite well. There was plenty of time to sit by the river, watch the clouds and cows grazing, meditate, enjoy leisurely meals, and spend lazy afternoons chatting with friends. Life was so relaxed; we thought we were getting a lot accomplished if we mailed a letter that day.

Of course, the realities of needing to earn a living intruded, and it was time to go back to work. Too much leisure is deadening to the spirit which wants to be of service to its fellow beings. But I learned the great value of doing nothing at all, sometimes referred to as meditation. Some meditations suggest watching the breath or the thoughts: some concentrate on a mantra or sound. Some listen, which was especially delightful in the tropics, with the sounds of birds and roosters reminding us to wake up. All meditation methods involve doing nothing productive. They teach us to just “be.”

One way to incorporate doing nothing into a busy life is to take up a meditation practice. A few minutes of quiet inwardness can balance many hours of outward doing-ness. However, I am reticent to prescribe meditation to my patients, as it often becomes one more item on the dreaded to-do list. It’s often easier to do nothing whenever you can find a moment, such as in the car when you get home before going into the house.

The point isn’t to live a life of non-doing. Instead, we can incorporate doing nothing into our lives in precious bits of time. We have to give up chastising ourselves for taking that time. We need to question our high standards for productivity. If we don’t, we’re in danger of losing the connection to that which makes life most meaningful.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

I invented The Egg Meditation after reading Becoming a Woman by Dr. Toni Grant. The book was the first time I encountered the idea that as women, we are losing our yin. Dr. Grant never used that language, but as a Jungian she taught that humans are made up of different components or subpersonalities, and that as modern women; we are emphasizing our active “doing” parts at the expense of our quiet “being” parts. Today, women are busy expressing our assertiveness: becoming CEO’s, stripping for our lovers and being on top. We reject what has classically been considered female: being quiet, receptive, and demure. We’re all yang and no yin.

When I took sex education in high school, we were shown the most amazing video of an egg being impregnated by a sperm. There She sat, unmoving, glowing, queenly, radiating, waiting patiently in all her splendor. The sperm were wriggling and squirming and jockeying for position, all of them anxious to enter Her. One victorious little tadpole finally succeeded. The egg didn’t move a muscle, and, except for a little squeal of ecstasy when he entered, appeared unmoved by the whole experience.

The old fashioned way of pursuit was reportedly like this: men pursued women who were non-active. Men did all the work. Then during the radical changes of the 70’s, Germaine Greer exhorted women to take the lead and pursue whichever men we wanted – it seemed like a good idea at the time. Men and women should certainly do whatever is right for their personal temperament. Nevertheless, neither modern men nor women have any connection to their yin self.

I took some time and meditated on the Egg, imagining myself as Her: sitting silently, radiating, waiting.  After practicing a few times, I took it on the road. Since I’m an average looking woman, I’d never been approached all that much in bars, so as usual, I sat and watched all the hotties move on each other. I closed my eyes there on my barstool and did my Egg Meditation, envisioning myself as the Queen Egg, glowing, unmoving, and calm. When I opened my eyes, much to my surprise, several attractive men had wriggled up, jockeying for position. I never got approached so much in all my life as I did that night.

Yang is looking for yin, sorely missing in today’s world. I’m not advocating that women give up the gains we’ve made, not by a long shot. But both men and women are missing the element of yin. That’s why some men think they want younger or submissive women. Most modern men don’t really want submissive; they want a worthy partner. But yang is looking for yin and not more yang. There has to be a balance.

So just for a few minutes, imagine…you’re the queen Egg, sitting unmoving… getting fully in touch with your feminine side.

© 2011 Catherine Auman

Many people who come to see me announce that they have already forgiven the people who hurt them, so the work is done. They’ve read in spiritual books that forgiveness is the key, so wanting to be good people, they are anxious to forgive and forget. Unfortunately, it’s not that simple.

This type of forgiveness is done from the level of the mind, by making a decision to think about the situation differently, which is as helpful as putting a Band-Aid on a broken arm. The pain happened emotionally, physically, and/or sexually, and must be dealt with on these levels. For the mind to pronounce that “all is forgiven” is New Age nonsense, as if all it takes to come to forgiveness is to pronounce it so.

To truly get to a state of forgiveness, you must first fully experience the feelings associated with the betrayal or abuse. This doesn’t mean that you need to act the feelings out, become overly dramatic, or hang onto them for years. But it does mean that the energetic frequency of the emotion needs to be allowed to pass through the physical body on its way out. When forgiveness is merely an idea or a mental construct pasted over the inner rage, horror, betrayal, hurt, or anger, the emotions will continue to exert pressure to be released. When through the process of therapy we drain those feelings, leaving the person free and cleansed, the forgiveness process can begin.

It’s understandable that a person would want to bypass this step, because dealing with these historical emotions can be intense. The work is hard, but it is worth doing. To be free of blame and resentment is worth the pain it takes to clear it out of your system. It can be done. Get some help so that it’s not just a mental exercise.

If you try to forgive prematurely, or before you have done your work, you run the risk of being stuck with painful feelings lying hidden under everything you do. When you explore and confront past emotional wounds, eventually you will come to accept the humanity of whoever harmed you, along with the realization that we all hurt each other. Then true forgiveness is possible and when it comes from that genuine place, it will flow out truly like the love that it is.

© 2011 Catherine Auman