Over 50 and dating...

““Hope for love, pray for love, wish for love, dream for love…but don’t put your life on hold waiting for love.”
― Mandy Hale, The Single Woman: Life, Love, and a Dash of Sass”

Dating ain’t the same no more

I just wanna know….when did it get so hard?? The struggle is real people. There’s no more “magically” bumping into someone at the grocery store, exchanging phone numbers and letting the fun begin. The art of dating is forever lost! First of all, with the set in of COVID we all have our groceries delivered! We have our Walmart, Target and Old Navy purchases delivered as well. Whatever is left that we need is delivered from Amazon. If we happen to be out and about, so many of us are not paying attention to who or what’s in front of us so it doesn’t really matter. We’re looking at our phones, worrying about our afternoon appointments or adjusting the mask that’s irritating our face for the 50th time!

As a woman over 50, the dating pool is even more narrow and complicated than it is for energetic and perky 20-year olds. Seasoned vets of the relationship game like myself have probably had a heartbreak or two so the whole princess being saved by the prince theme is long gone and played out. We don’t buy it. We don’t believe it. We don’t even look for it anymore.

I don’t know if I’m jaded, but I look at relationships like transactions now. Each party has an idea of what they would like to get out of the interaction. Perhaps it’s love or maybe it’s just a hot roll around in the bed. Regardless of what IT is, there are still some healthy and positive ways to find a partner that can be the peanut butter to your jelly!!

Do you know what you want?

1. First and foremost, make sure you know what you really want in a relationship. I’m not talking the aesthetics of the person but the meat and potatoes of what the relationship brings to your life. Sit down, be honest with yourself and think about what are your needs? What brings you happiness? What puts a smile on your face? What are your non-negotiables? Most of us don’t have a clue because we don’t take time to have a conversation with ourselves. Do you want adventure, safety, companionship, freedom, etc. etc.? List the top 3-5 concrete things that you need within your relationship for it to be positive and fulfilling.

2. Once you know what you are looking for, learn how to articulate it!! Again, many of us use generic descriptions to define what we want. Use the phrase “I want” or “I need” when communicating with potential dating possibilities. If you’ve taken time to do the work of self-discovery then you don’t have to waste your time on folks who aren’t gonna fit the bill for whatever reason. I’m all about expediency!

3. At one point in time, I had a long exhaustive list with bulleted items that I wanted my potential sweetheart to possess. However, it came painfully clear to me that I was being super ridiculous and unrealistic!! So, we must learn to be flexible and remove the expectation of what we think we want and allow the energy to manifest what is best for us. Now that doesn’t mean settle but that does mean be realistic in your thinking.

4. This is a big one! Be open to new experiences!! Somebody important once said if you want something new and different then you’ll have to do new and different things. Go and actually grab your own groceries in person. Try a new coffee shop. Take a daytrip to try a new restaurant. Join a dating site. Take a girls’ trip. Just be open to changing your routine to allow for new people to enter your world. That greatly improves the odds of meeting more new and interesting people.

5. Be in the moment! Don’t look at each potential as “the one” but instead look at enjoying that person at that moment. See where things go if anywhere. Just realize and understand that dating is a numbers game! If things don’t work out don’t take it personally. Remember that who and what is for you will easily make it into your life and pathway.

6. Take care of you. Make sure you are being the best and most healthy version of yourself. When we are single that is the best time to do the “work” necessary to process the old baggage from previous relationships. Don’t mix old crap with new possibilities because it just won’t work out in the end. Deal with your past, forgive yourself and others then move on to live.

At the end of the day, there are no guarantees. We’re set in our ways. We like things to be a certain way. Dating and finding love over 50 has its own unique set of challenges. Make sure to build and develop the life YOU want as a single woman. Enjoy living and do the things necessary to make your life rich and full of contentment on your terms. Don’t sit around and wait for “the one”. Go out and live your best life and remember that a life partner is just an added dimension to an already beautiful love story with yourself.

If you’d like to explore this topic some more, don’t forgot I offer a complimentary 30-minute consultation! Take care!

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Is There a Connection Between Childhood Emotional Neglect and Adult PTSD?

childhood emotional neglect

Time and age share the same forward trajectory. Though it might seem that neither time nor age carries a significant enough relevance to help you live free from the past. Furthermore, your past experiences could haunt you or impact you in unexpected ways. And you might not even realize it. The way you feel or react could catch you off guard. You might even have trouble identifying why you feel the way you do. Many people experiencing symptoms from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) have that problem. If that's you, here's how your past and PTSD may be connected.

Who Is the Young Trauma Victim?

Childhood emotional neglect sounds like a very serious and intense experience. And it is. The thing about it is that it happens in little bits at a time, and it can be very subtle. Many people imagine neglect as withholding food or water from a child. While it certainly can be failing to provide the basics, it can also be a lot more. For instance, emotional neglect also includes not giving a child appropriate emotional support. This could mean failing to answer a child's cry for help, ignoring them when they were talking, or not validating their feelings. Overly critical parents or the absent parent also fail to provide emotional support. Many victims of emotional neglect often weren't hugged or shown physical affection. One of the most significant forms of childhood emotional neglect is the failure to form secure attachments. For one reason or another, a parent or caregiver isn't emotionally available for the child. In turn, that child goes about life with a shattered sense of trust because they weren't able to form a healthy attachment to the parent or caregiver.

When Flashbacks Debilitate

Those who face emotional neglect in their childhood often have developmental struggles. It can impact you so greatly that you may not have physically or cognitively developed properly. On the other hand, you may have appeared perfectly normal on the outside all the way to adulthood. It's on the inside where you most likely feel abnormal. But, eventually, these unseen effects slowly begin to overflow into other areas. Certain situations, turn of phrases, or even smells could trigger what are known as "flashbacks." You may feel like you did as a child during these flashback moments. Feelings of worthlessness or anger are common ways people with PTSD react when experiencing those flashbacks. Moreover, flashbacks have a way of interfering with your relationships, too. When you weren't able to form an attachment to your parents or caregiver, it conditioned you to approach all other relationships the same way. That's why, throughout your life, you may have always felt distant or detached from people. In short, flashbacks are a key element in identifying PTSD and many survivors of childhood emotional neglect experience them.

How the Trickle Qualifies as PTSD

Professionals used to believe that a diagnosis of PTSD was only fitting for those individuals who had an intense emotional response to the traumatic event. This meant that a person had to go through a jolting and extreme event to trigger PTSD symptoms. But childhood neglect is more like a trickle or continuous little drops. Kind of like a faucet that never turns off. Eventually, it overtakes you like a flood, but it doesn't happen all at once. Yet, at the same time, victims of childhood emotional neglect display many of the same symptoms as those experiencing PTSD—avoidance, a negative outlook of the world, and feeling detached from other people. As mentioned before, flashbacks are also a key symptom. Today in the field of mental health care, the ongoing trickle of childhood emotional neglect now qualifies as a cause for PTSD. In fact, the two are connected in a cause and effect sort of relationship that can have a an impact for many years. If you'd like to learn more about the connection between children emotional neglect and PTSD, please contact me for your 30-minute complimentary consultation. Together, we can uncover the hidden causes for why you feel the way you do and find a way to empower you to reclaim your life.

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Trauma and Ethnic Mental Health

Trauma and ethnic mental health

Trauma and ethnic mental health

There's a direct connection between trauma and ethnic mental health. There's no getting around it or sugar-coating the facts. Due to racial trauma, the mental health among communities of color continues to decline due to a very specific social injustice that still exists in America.

Racial trauma, which is similar to post-traumatic stress, is a psychological trend experienced by black and brown people of America. Likely factors leading to this type of race-related stress include re-experiencing historic trauma, experiencing or witnessing current racially-motivated violence or being within a community of poverty that perpetuates institutional racism.

Traumatic interactions can happen directly, as victims of racial violence and discrimination or even by continuously witnessing it in public. Trauma and ethnic mental health can be related to experiencing police brutality (real or on TV/social media) living in institutional poverty, being subjected to stereotypes and hate crimes. Results of such experiences as the victim or the witness, include depression, anxiety, paranoia and anger management difficulties. Mental health professionals have also found that racial trauma also perpetuates the divide among races that creates the problem in the first place.

Declining mental health

Many experiencing racial trauma tend to have a distrust against the oppressing race, a hyper-vigilance to threats and even the attribution of their own race as reason to be failures. Such distress over a lifetime often leads to mood disorders that bolster unhealthy coping mechanisms such as substance abuse or violence, further leading to problems with addiction and crime. This creates a direct correlation between trauma and ethnic mental health. The trauma can behave as a trap across generations that only further internalizes the self-hate broiling among the traumatized on the sole factor of their race creating additional historic trauma. Feelings of hopelessness discourage any break in the cycle of trauma and failure among people of color. Although the effects of racism are identifiable in people of color, the racial trauma has yet to be recognized as a diagnostic label in the mental health community.

Advocate and Educate

Responding to hate crimes and racial acts of violence with a mission of advocacy is one way to feel accomplished and purposeful. Rather than demonstrate apathy and acceptance that its “just the way it is” for a person of color, standing up in the name of one’s race scrapes away at the self-hatred that can contribute to certain mood disorders and unhealthy coping. Feeling a sense of contribution instills a feeling of empowerment, and with empowerment comes a will to live and serve in the name of race and humanity as a whole.

Educating yourself and others about the detriments of racial trauma also reassures the confidence-building necessary to face these social injustices while spreading awareness. Teaching children, relatives and friends builds an advocacy network that slowly creates the dent toward breaking down the infrastructure of racial unfairness. For many of these groups, obstacles like poverty and lack of insurance prevent access to professional help, yet the act of educating to promote awareness may spark a desire to seek healing through online communities. There are also several online sources from professional organizations that educate on how ethnic inequality adversely affects our society, and ways to address the issue.

Self-Empowerment

Evolving the societal consciousness as a whole could still take several lifetimes before racism against ethnic groups is obsolete, there are ways to cope with this form of PTSD. Committing to self-care and obtaining professional help with the self-awareness of racial trauma can also act as a weapon against racism.

Whether it’s building a Mental Health Toolbox, speaking with a licensed social worker specializing on race-related stress or learning the process of proactive coping, equipping yourself with the right strategies can ensure the mental evolution necessary for a productive life.

There are also areas of racism exposure that can controlled, as to not perpetuate the trauma within oneself. Disconnecting from certain explosive social media pages, limiting the consumption of news and redirecting energy from getting angry into self-care can be helpful in combating race-related stress.

If you are a person of color, do you feel that ethnic inequality has contributed to any mental health imbalances within yourself? If so, how are you coping now? I’m interested in hearing how you’ve learned to evolve from discrimination based on your race and community, with the intention to help others in your very unique situation. I’m always available for a 30-minute consultation!

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Teen Dating Violence and Mental Health

teen dating awareness

February is Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month

Happily ever after---or not? It’s easy for our teens to become enamored with an idea that’s been told over and over again during story time and Disney movies for most of their childhood. What isn’t so easy for them, is to recognize that an unhealthy relationship may not quite be the puppy love story they believe. Teen dating violence and the shadows of mental health illness linger among victims as well as abusers.

Many types of abuse

Teen dating violence involves several types of abuse ranging from physical, emotional/psychological or even sexual. It can be delivered to the victim ever so subtly in the form of bullying, humiliation and jealousy, or it can be visibly obvious on their body or through their behaviors. Sadly, abusive relationships among teens is prevalent, occurring in 1 in 10 teens by way of physical or sexual violence. Even more frequent are the moments of verbal or emotional abuse. In other words, there’s a good chance your teen may have friends involved in teen dating violence or worse, be in an abusive relationship themselves.

Such violence, regardless of the degree of severity, negatively impacts overall mental health. When intimacy is confused with violent or abusive behavior, the seed of abuse and mental illness has likely been planted within the victim and most likely the abuser. The cycle will continue unless the problem is recognized and those negative seeds of intimacy are addressed. Ideally, prevention of teen dating violence is the first step, particularly by dealing with underlying mental health issues.

Why does it happen?

There are factors in a potential abuser's behavioral patterns that can increase the likelihood of teen dating violence which include depression, anxiety and other trauma symptoms. Instances of aggression towards others, the use of drugs or alcohol and being sexually active at a young age are also among those circumstances. Parents and peers involved in relationship violence also influence the probability of teen dating violence. And so, this continuous cycle creeps into its surroundings until the recognition and desire to evolve from it arises.

Some of the very same factors affect a potential victim’s risk of getting caught up in teen dating violence, shining light on the need to address depression, anxiety and trauma issues early on before intimate abuse degrades mental health further. If you see any of the signs of mental health illness (such as anxiety or depression) in your children, there are resources and steps you can take to help them evolve from a state of mind vulnerable to teen dating violence.

What can I do as a parent?

Proactively approaching the situation can steer a potential bad situation from ever happening at all. The most effective tool you have in this situation is communication! Next important step is to provide your teen with a safe place to talk with you. It doesn't happen over night but it will happen if you're consistent and patient. Finally, work on empowering your child or teen with problem solving skills. Even though you're the parent and can "demand" your teen stop seeing someone who is abusive, the reality is unless your teen understands why they are in an unhealthy relationship the possibility of them continuing to engage in those behaviors and relationships are very likely. Information is key!!With technology being so prevalent within our culture, many teens experience dating violence through their social media and electronic devices. Again, talk with your teen. When my kids were teens, I advised them that my job was to protect them and if I had a suspicion or concern regarding their electronics and/or social media that I would randomly ask to see their device content. Many might think this is an invasion of privacy, however, if you have the conversation and are forthright with that message then teens know what to expect and will respect the honest between you.

Last but not least...

At the core of this social problem is the quality of mental health among individuals and their families. It’s important to take a deep breath as a parent and know there are resources within reach to address concerns within your teen’s psyche, or even be proactive about maintaining balance. School counselors, social workers, and online education are all support reserves waiting to be tapped to ease the pressures of effective parenting. Learn more!! You’ll become empowered by educating yourself and asking for help! Don’t forget, I’m always available for more conversation if you have a concern. Contact me for your 30-minute complimentary consultation. Take care!

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Call for Action!! Walk!!

 T. Morgan and Vanessa Garrison give a heart-felt presentation on Tedx Talks Walking as a Revolutionary Act of Self-Care that all women particularly women of color need to see, hear and implement. Follow them on Facebook and be part of the journey. Where's your Fire? Watch. Share. Repeat.[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1xpuZBSclwE[/embed]