As you can see, these are the questions without easy answers.They will define your life for decades. And for many of us, the answers may be that part of me wants to do X while the other part of me wants to do Y. It can lead to a war within the self. Looking at the what you did in the past that lead to a good decision can help. This period of life is more about developing a process to use to make good decisions than about each particular decision. If you are torn inside or cannot develop a good decision-making process, this is a time in life to consider therapy.

1. Unrealistic expectations that do not function as promised. The best-seller “The Secret” could easily encourage someone to believe that all you have to do is visualize and it will come true. A positive vision is necessary but not sufficient by itself to produce results. It is only one of many factors that contribute to success.

2. The high cost of some self-help programs can lead you to spend excessively and create more stress. Read a book called “Helping Me Help Myself” to hear one writer’s experiences of seeking help over the course of a year and the costs of these programs. If you are going into debt for self-help you can end up in a difficult situation. If your resources are limited, stick to proven methods.

3. Most of my patients who come to therapy after a period of attempts at self-help have self-diagnosed and are working on the wrong problem with the wrong methods. Sexual problems are especially likely to create confusion and the majority of sexual help products and sexual advice is just incorrect ( such as:” Have a drink and relax and everything will be fine”).

The only self-help that I encourage is reading books. The cost is reasonable and learning, thinking and contemplating your problems is likely to be of benefit to you, even if it is not the whole solution. For this reason I have started a bookstore on my site so that you will have a chance to choose the best of the self-help genre out of the bewildering array of self-help material.

Often fathers have no idea what to do and avoid the situation by withdrawing and resigning themselves to a wife’s mental difficulties. Fathers are the adults who have the most impact and power to change the situation but many are afraid to rock the boat for fear of angry outbursts. Extended family members could also step in and insist that a mother get some help or could at least be willing to talk to the children about mom’s problems and let them know that it is not their fault. Many times daughters are left to try to care for and help their mothers with mental issues. We call this kind of child the “parentified” child since they are attempting to fill the role that a parent should undertake.

Families do not have to remain helpless in the face of a mother’s refusal to seek treatment. There are a number of people who now specialize in doing interventions with emotionally unstable family members and even if it may be an upsetting experience, the problem now has a name and the children will know that someone cared about what happens to them. When the problem is brought out into the open and made clear, the children no longer have to wonder if they are bad and somehow caused it. If you cannot tolerate your family member’s emotional outbursts, imagine how her children might feel. It takes courage to bring out these types of problems and there can be some difficult fallout but the alternative is to continue to whisper and dance around the issue without really confronting it.

What is likely to help you go into the group that would be described as enhancing your personal development and maturity from this experience? Not surprisingly, the ability to put away hostility and move from the conflict and adversarial positions of the initial divorce period into a more comprehensive understanding of the dynamics of the divorce and the part you played in it are essential. Although the anger and blame you feel are initially useful in helping you to sever the bonds you feel with your former spouse, eventually the dynamic needs to change to a more neutral and businesslike climate between ex-spouses. This is the first indication that the partner is no longer as important to you as he/she once was. The opposite of love is neutrality not hatred. Hatred and anger reflect a continuing concern with what your partner is doing or not doing and it means your ex is still the focus of your attention. Moving beyond your former partner means putting your own life first and making the best of yourself and your life with minimal interest in your ex-partner’s life. The concept is not complex but the execution of this ideal requires a lot of self-discipline and perhaps developing yourself in areas that you never anticipated or desired to develop. For women this can mean a re-focus into the world of earnings and work and for men this can mean developing relationship and emotive skills that have previously been delegated to a woman.

If you are a couple who is divorcing and you have children together the change from adversaries to co-parents is both difficult and worthwhile. I would strongly suggest that you look at the 2 best longterm research projects done in this area and learn from the wealth of data gathered over 40 years of studies. The references for these 2 are as follows: Mavis Hetherington For Better or for Worse and Constance Ahrons We’re Still Family.

If you are having difficulty moving past the feelings and experiences related to your divorce, consider psychotherapy. Many people wear out their support systems with the length of time that it can take to recover from a divorce. Family and friends are often reluctant to help you understand your part in the marital failure because their primary job is to serve a more supportive role. If you would like a consultation on your situation, please feel free to contact me at mg@doctorgresham.com .

On another note, I am starting my women and money ongoing group this fall. This is a group for women only as all the research and my personal experience leads me to believe that women work best on subjects that are considered “Male-expert” (math, computers, finance) in small same sex groups. This is an ongoing group that follows after two years of offering one day workshops. I feel the one day workshop format does not work as well to sustain ongoing changes as the open-ended group. The group will meet 2 times monthly on wed evenings from 6:30 to 8:00 and is both educational and psychotherapeutic in nature. This is unusual but I think it will be a powerful combination and is modelled on the program at Onsite. The charge for the group is 65 per session and the initial committment is for 6 groups

. The group will be diverse in nature and is appropriate for a variety of issues and ages. Some referrals may be for younger women who want to prevent the problems they see in others; some will be women who have money but are afraid to invest it or use it; some may be for women who are afraid to negotiate or market on their own behalf; some may be for overspending problems, some may be for women who are in partnerships where there is severe conflict about money, etc. If you have a colleague, partner or client or client’s spouse that you believe is a good fit for this program, please have them contact me

You can start your own money group with some trusted friends and learn this way.

1. Be sure each member is free to learn and discuss whatever she wants, whether it is her relationship to her partner or her negative feelings about having a spending plan.

2. Make personal sharing and storytelling an acceptable way to participate.

3. Let each member have a chance to decide on a topic of interest to her and lead a session.

4. The group has to suspend all judgments of each other’s ways of relating to money and be mutually supportive.

Please contact at mg@doctorgresham.com if you are interested in having Dr. Gresham present to your women’s group.

What does the research tell us about how to make sure your business is one of the successful ones? Dr. Edward Hess who is the Goizueta School of Business’ Adjunct Professor in Entrepreneurship recently presented the results of his 30 years review of the research to a group of us,women alums from Emory. The news is both good and bad. He finds that there is no correlation to personality,age, IQ, education and numerous other variables for successful business owners. Rather he finds that there are several processes that are essential: being good at “iterative” processing and taking a series of small risks. The iterative process is one that develops through trial and error and is constantly being refined over time. It is not rigid and final but is constantly taking in new information and responding to that. The small risks are a more cautious outlook;risks that don’t bet everything on one outcome and can afford to fail without a wipeout. This may go against the typical stereotype of the wheeler dealer but it is a finding that should encourage women as we are especially strong with this kind of process.

The disadvantage of being a women relates to the existence of the “boys” network and the facility with which men are able to give each other a boost along the way and create a network of people who owe each other favors. Hopefully as we women get better and better at network creation and have more resources with which to help each other this will begin to shift. In the meantime, there are many men who are interested in mentoring women and who are helpful to us and the trick is to find one who takes an interest in your project. Also as you move forward in your success, make a committment to help the other women who are coming behind you.

This is how most women build their emotional and relationship skills. They discuss every detail of conversations with others and then ask their friends about it. A money group that you form with your group of girlfriends where you begin to share the skills that you are developing is really a great way for women to begin to overcome this. If you think about it, invite a friend over and have her/him teach you how to use financial software or how to balance your checkbook..in exchange you can do something for your friend. This is the way that women learn best and stay motivated. There’s nothing wrong with Suze’s book but most of the women I end up working with already have the money management books on their shelves, unread and it is not until we start exchanging small bits of information through personal contact that the real changes begin.

Where does the resistance come from? I think from my own analysis that many women are willing to trade competence for the feeling of “being taken care of” and loved by having their money managed by someone else…and if no one else is there to do it, they would prefer not to be reminded of that. This is one of the last hallmarks of “feminine privilege”..that we will worry about everything and take on every task except the money…..and turning it over reminds us that we don’t have to do it all. We feel loved and cared about in this way and that feeling is just too pleasurable to question too much. Many times it doesn’t matter to us to whom we have turned it over..to a partner, a parent, a professional…as long as we do not have to worry about it. If you examine it, most adults at some level have dependent longings..it looks so easy and inviting. Men long just as much as women to “be taken care of” but they have less permission to enact it.

The difficulty with this option is that we are exchanging genuine adulthood for dependent pleasure and along with that we also sacrifice self-esteem, power and control over our lives. Money is like oxygen in contemporary society…it sustains and supports your life by buying you food, shelter, medicine, transportation,recreation, utilities, social connection in the form of phones, etc. It is too important to turn it over and risk that you may end up without enough to sustain your life through to it’s natural conclusion. It also takes 2 adult partners working in sync with each other to learn all the skills necessary to make the complex decisions they need to make about their resources and their life paths.