Five Skills For Your Career and Your Relationship

A recent survey indicates that 93% of employers want college graduates with a broad background. They want to hire people who possess the following five abilities:

• a capacity to think critically
• an ability to communicate with clarity
• the ability to solve complex problems
• to think and function with ethical judgment
• to engage others with integrity

These are the same abilities and skills required for a successful, healthy relationship:

1. critical thinking is thinking about what you bring to the other person every hour; every day
2. communicating is about being honest and open - no smoke and mirrors
3. solving problems is what couples are supposed to do - together
4. being ethical is about being honest and not living with secrets or not trying to manipulate
5. integrity is about being consistent and dependable; it's being able to be trusted

A few things for all of us to think about.
Chandler Welch
www.drcwelch.com

The Battle To Be Who You Are Today - Video

The Battle To Be Who You Are Today

Sexually Molested and Angry

After talking with women who were sexually molested in some way when they were young, I've found an interesting pattern. Many (maybe most) are still angry at what their father, brother, grandfather, etc did. But many of them verbalize just as much anger - and sometimes more anger - at their mothers for the way they responded or didn't respond to what was going on.
Most people don't think about this part of the equation, but it's obvious to me how real it is. What's unfortunate is that most of the time the mothers fell victim to what was going on as well - in the sense that many of these women dealt with this emotional hot-potato from a place of:

•  personal emotional weakness
• emotional/financial insecurity;
•  fear of what others would think or say
•  fear of their partner
• or incapacitated by their own history of having been molested.

Whatever the reason the bottom line is that a surprising number of mothers failed their children at a time when they needed to be protected. But before anyone goes for the tar and feathers - the fact is - that insight and understanding into those mothers can help (to some extent) to heal at least some of that lingering hurt and anger. It's not going to make it all go away but maybe it will help some of those mothers become a tad more human in a situation when their response was less than what was needed!
If a few of these now grown daughters (and some sons) can help today's mothers be less fearful and more clear about what their response needs to be as they face a similar situation - then maybe that anger, as justified as it has been, will help protect some children today who need that protection now, as much as they, themselves, needed it years ago.
Chandler
drcwelch.com

Obsessive/Compulsive Personality Disorder Or OCD ??

There's an important difference between an Obsessive Compulsive Personality Disorder  and an OC Disorder. Both are grounded in a person's previous life experiences.

The Personality Disorder is based on a way of coping with repeated experiences of being overly criticized, put-down and even shamed by parents, grandparents or others.
As a result, there is an learned avoidance of making choices that might get criticized or disagreed with. The person becomes protective and somewhat controlling of projects or finances or anything that can ensure that he won't be able to be criticized or rejected again. Another way of describing this person is that he/she has learned to fly under the radar. Instead, the individual learns to be guided by:

• a set of internal "shoulds" and "directives" that give the person a careful blueprint of how to act and what to pay attention to from one situation to the next and from one day to the next. It's all about being careful not to be criticized or shamed - again.
• This Personality Disorder results in an emotionally constricted, rigid, and difficult-to-deal-with-change personality.
• Social, family and intimate relationships are challenging and difficult. 

Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, however, is a way of coping with a more specific painful or traumatic experience from the past that gets dealt with by separating the memory of what happened in the past from the feelings that continue to accompany that memory.

• the compulsive part happens as the person does battle with anxious and fearful feelings by:
• repeatedly needing to push to the side or push out of sight those bad or painful feelings
• that haven't been completely repressed or pushed out of sight in the first place.

And finally, an Obsessive Personality Disorder is a more fixed part of one's personality while OCD is considered to have a very different origin and to affect a part - but not all - of a person's personality and life and relationships.
I hope this helps,
Chandler
www.drcwelch.com