There is a way of looking at human development as a process of becoming attached and then working the rest of our lives to undo that attachment. We are supposed to be safe and then to separate and become individuals. Many toddlers go through a stage at about age 18 months when they become very clingy – the image of a small infant clutching his mother’s leg while she attempts to cook dinner comes to mind. At the same time, this little “appendage” is fiercely applying the newly discovered power of “NO”. Saying “no” is one of the ways of asserting ourselves and declaring our independence.

A term used for this stage is Rapprochement – a term from the French expressing the idea of reconciliation from an estrangement.  The idea is that as toddlers develop the motor skills to physically separate themselves from “home base” they are driven to reach out – explore the unknown and this exhilarating sense of independence.  At the same time that they are naturally driven to discover the world ‘out there’, the idea of being alone scares them profoundly – so much so that they cling more tightly to their sources of security.

This complex and profound conflict is alive within most of us – the need to get help from others and the need to “do it my byself” as my grandson says.  All of the stages of human development can be looked at as ever more complex versions of this basic conflict.  Adolescence is arguably the most intense and complex of all these stages and it often sets the stage for our capacity to engage in authentic relationships for all of adulthood. Adolescence well-traversed is a road well-traveled and an achievement of the highest order.

It is also often strewn with missteps, embarrassments, anger, frustration, shame, what seems like unbearable intensity and off-again on-again relationships especially between the principals – the teenager and the parents.

In retrospect, for a number of the key years that Kathleen and I parented we had an amazing dynamic that worked really well for us.  In the merged family we each brought two children to, our daughter was 17 and the three boys–then 13, 11, and 10–were at the center of major conflicts.  Life often felt like the ‘whack-a-mole’ game.  One of the boys would act out and we’d channel all our energy to that crisis and when it cooled down another of the boys took his turn testing our sanity.

The dynamic that I give much credit to for our survival as a family that now plays really (Really!) well together was a follows. As a girl Corinna had a slightly different sensibility than the boys and, as it turns out, a way with words. She became the intermediary – nay the interpreter. She would come to us and explain what the boys were up to. When we tried to engage directly with the boys, it almost inevitably became a power struggle – us trying to assert our need to define the secure home base, them trying to assert their need for a say in how their world was being run. Corinna was a champ at giving us each a much better view of what was important and real for the other. She helped us create a space where the effort to understand came to trump the power play.

As the parents we still had the responsibility for defining certain limits – especially regarding personal safety and how money got spent but I think the really essential parental responsibilities were much less often an issue as we developed a way to address conflict where everyone felt heard and the scenario was problem solving rather than “I’m the boss, you’re the kid”.

After Corinna left for college there were some major stumbles and I don’t want to paint the untrue picture of a family in non-stop harmony when there were real periods of discord. At the same time I think we all learned a valuable lesson about the role of mediator/interpreter when there is discord. Growing up is hard to do. We not only have to integrate the secure base into our need to be individuals, we need to make space between us for the back and forth that is the path to understanding and intimacy – connected and independent.

My practice seems to be evolving.  More talk, fewer supplements.

Lifestyle science continues to accumulate evidence that confirms the comic strip character Pogo’s observation “yep, son, we have met the enemy and he is us.” That now-famous comment appeared in an anti-pollution cartoon/poster in 1970. The cartoon character’s author, Walt Kelly, was pointing out that our character defects get us into trouble. These human frailties beleaguer us doubly.  Firstly, as Pogo pointed out, they make us foul our nests (the cartoon had a picture of the beloved swamp where the animals in the cartoon lived littered with junk, making it difficult for the characters to enjoy the “forest primeval”).  In my practice I work with human frailty and its environmental effect in another arena—the internal one–and the accumulation of junk that gets in the way of healthy functioning ecology of the forest that is our health.

Most of this internal junk is in the mind (the heart actually, I think) in the form of feelings, and some of it is in the body (the mind really, I believe) in the form of unhealthy thinking.  Some of it is literally the accumulation of toxins in our tissues. The place where all this junk so often comes to disturb us is the gut.  It is our gut that often tells us of the intimacy of that connection between these different forms of junk.  (See, it IS all connected).

I have been working with a number of people lately who have identified the chaos and violence in their childhood as a factor interfering with their ability to make good choices today. Even though the threats they lived with are years in the past they still find themselves living in a place of insecurity and anxiety. This influences the way they eat, sleep, make love and exercise.  Some of their significant others say their fight or flight response is on a hair trigger.

At some level this is purely a biochemical phenomenon.  Early traumas disturb our brains.  They affect the function of our neurotransmitters.  This is the family of chemicals that control our mood – from worry and anxiety to depression and anger – and our autonomic nervous system responses – from heart rate to digestive function and sleep.  The epidemiologists that study risk factors for cancer, heart disease, and the degenerative diseases of the mind and body are turning over stone after stone and all finding the same thing:  we die by our own hand.  It is our sad diets, our poor activity levels and our lousy sleep that undo us.

What I now believe is that what we eat, how we make love, exercise and sleep is intimately connected to our experience with chaos and violence.  Or more accurately, our fear of these things.  How do we deal with these fears?  That is a REALLY important question.

I have a grandson whom I spent a long weekend with while his parents went on vacation.  Ezra is two, his language is exploding and he has a zest for lots of things: trucks, watermelon, dirt, screwdrivers and – did I say trucks?  He stands with his hands held pensively behind his back when he studies something.  He holds his hands in front of him, palms up, when he asks a question like “where Baba?” the name he uses interchangeably for both Kathleen and me.  His new passion is his age-mate and neighbor, Ed. Given the opportunity he will race out the gate, down the sidewalk, up to the front door of the house where Ed lives and yell for Ed to come out and play.

I am fascinated by the power and pure joy this friendship seems to hold. What is it?  They seem to share the same joys. They seem braver in each other’s presence. They look at each other with a quizzical look as they contemplate a move, then race off together to push the edge of their frontier – whatever it might be.  Friends can be powerful medicine.

So why am I spending more time talking and less time pushing pills? This is what I observe in most, maybe all of my patients.  Even though Walt Kelly told the truth on us when he declared us our own worst enemies, I think we also know, maybe from our earliest childhood friendships, that we can be the source of peace as well.  Fear and illness coincide.  To get better, to be well, we need to face the fears and dispel them, not try and ignore them or hide them under hard work or hard exercise or too much beer or Krispy Kremes.  We can face the demons inside, as we must do if we are to prevail, more safely and comfortably if we hold hands.  When we hold hands, actually or metaphorically, we can talk about these things that hurt us.  And then they lose their power.

More power to us and our friendships. They will make us better.