Down To Earth Newsletter
Volume 5 – Issue 3 – April, 2006
Taking My Heart to San Francisco
April 27-May 1 is the 64th Annual Group Psychotherapy & Psychodrama Conference and I’ll have a chance to see my teacher, Dr. Dorothy Baldwin Satten, receive the 2006 J. L. Moreno Award, the highest award given by the ASGPP. Congratulations, Dorothy!!! I will also be presenting a mini workshop on Saturday about connecting effectively with the public.
Debunking Myths:
Does sex have to go out the window when you have children?
Myth: Indiana reader Bryon F., asks: I am married, I have 3 kids, and I’m in my 40’s and my wife and I have a satisfying sex life, but all my buddies at work are constantly complaining that they haven’t gotten any sex since their kids were born, and some of these guys, they’re 60 years old and their kids don’t even live with them. Am I just super lucky or what’s the deal?
Fact: Bryon, you’re very fortunate, but luck doesn’t have a lot to do with it. Good decisions and hard work are likely responsible for your satisfying sex life. You’re right, many parents report an unsatisfying sex life that continues to be unsatisfying long after the kids have left home, and that’s unfortunate.
There are several reasons this happens. First, men and women generally have a somewhat different sex drive, that is biological in nature, not psychological. Men can easily reproduce from about age 12 to age 90. Women have a successful reproductive window from about 14 to 40. Therefore, men are geared to be more sexually oriented for a much larger portion of their lives than women are.
Next, within a family, a male tends to feel most responsible for himself and for his partner, whereas a female tends to feel most responsible for her children. While a man is looking out for his own interests, including his own sexual interests, a female tends to put her own needs aside to satisfy those of her children and sex can often be the farthest thing from her mind.
Finally, the ‘use it or lose it’ notion has quite a lot of validity. If you go 15 or 20 years without intimate relations, that part of your psyche just tends to shut down. You cease operating as much of a sexual being. So, if parents put aside sexual activity to raise their children, they may find, 20 years later, that neither of them much cares about sex anymore.
However, it is certainly possible to maintain a healthy, satisfying sexual relationship throughout the course of a marriage, but it really takes great communication, a willingness to talk about sensitive subjects, and a conscious decision not to let the bedroom relationship die while you attend to other things. It won’t always come naturally to a couple. There will be times when they really have to work to have a satisfying sexual relationship, but sex doesn’t have to go out the window just because you have children!
March Discussion Question:
If you could make a new law for your hometown, what would it be and why?
C.B. from Green Bay, WI offers this (edited slightly): I would outlaw cheeseheads. Because NOBODY in Green Bay owns one or wears them to the games. Its all the out of town Packers fans. And whenever they show highlights nationally on TV… they show the drunk guy in a cheesehead with no shirt on in zero degree temperatures. The announcers say… those Green Bay people sure are crazy and make us look like hicks.
Too funny! I cannot imagine them ever being able to pass such a law, but maybe you can run for office on that platform. Your awesome Dr. Marlo prizes are on their way!
April Discussion Question:
If you were really, really brave, what would you try?
E-mail answers to: discussion@drmarlo.com and answers will appear next month. Your state of residence, your first name and last initial will be used unless you tell us not to use them. Anyone who responds and also includes a mailing address will receive a BRAND NEW Down To Earth PRIZE as well as temporary tattoos until supplies are exhausted.
Thought For The Day:
Anything you learned can be unlearned. Some things just take more unlearning than others.
FEATURED ARTICLE:
Who do you know who’s been dead for 3 years?
I read an article today about a woman found dead in front of her television, possibly having been dead for 3 years. Unbelievable. I thought of how very horrible it would be to be so isolated that no one even knew you were dead for three years. In her case, the only reason anyone even entered her place was to see about collecting rent payments from her. It wasn’t even a family member or friend who was looking for her. That really got me to thinking about the people that I know and love and how many of them could have been dead for three years without my knowledge.
Take a moment right now and see if you can think of 10 people that you know and care about who could actually have been dead for 3 years without you even knowing about it. Maybe it’s a friend who stopped sending Holiday cards a couple of years ago, or a relative who moved away when they got married, or a buddy you used to know in the Army, or an old college roommate…
If you were able to think of any people that really could have been dead for 3 years without you knowing, get on the phone today, or look them up on the Internet, or write a letter to their last known address, but don’t let them die in front of their T.V., not knowing how much you care about them.
The Psychology Session:
Internet Radio Show
Coming up on April 17th, a husband/wife team will discuss recovery from addictions, AA, and Al-Anon. Featured in the December, 2005 issue of the APA Monitor, this internet show broadcasts every Monday from 11:30a-12:30p at radio.drmarlo.com. We welcome suggestions for topics or guests we should have on the show. You can also advertise on our show for $5 per 15-second spot . E-mail suggestions or inquiries to PsychologySession@drmarlo.com. Learn to Podcatch now! Easy instructions are at the end of this newsletter. Join in on the fun!
Dr. Marlo’s Movie Madness:
Entertainment & Education
Historically held on the Third Thursday of each month, Dr. Marlo’s Movie Madness will be moving to Friday mornings, starting in July, to try to accommodate clinicians’ schedules. Each month we show a free movie with a mental health theme. Interested parties can stay after the movie for a discussion about the movie. One credit informal CE awarded for a $10 fee. Upcoming Features: April 20 – Pay it Forward, May 18 – Crash, June 15 – Door to Door (FREE Watkins products for the first 8 to register for the June 15th movie!). Networking at 7:15pm, Movie at 7:30pm, Discussion until 10:00pm. The July movie will be “Walk the Line.” Watch for the date/time. Sign up for Movie Madness updates by sending a blank e-mail with ‘subscribe’ in the subject line to MovieMadness@drmarlo.com.
E-Therapy!
Do you have a relative or friend who would die of embarrassment to walk into a therapists’ office, but who could really benefit from therapy? Perhaps e-therapy would be right for them. Dr. Marlo provides e-mail consultation and phone sessions. Please refer your family or friends to www.drmarlo.com/EasyPay.html to select a 30 or 60-minute phone or live chat session or e-mail consultations. Perfect for people outside of Arizona, people too busy to come into the office, or people who want to investigate therapy a little bit before coming in for face-to-face sessions.
Publish Your Work:
Promote your Practice
Two ways to publish – for free as a semi-anonymous author (your state of residence, your first name and last initial will be used), or, for $10, as a professional promoting a mental health practice (your full name, with credentials, address, phone number, and e-mail address will be included). We reserve the right to decline to publish any submissions. Send creative contributions to: articles@drmarlo.com.
Dr. Marlo in the Media:
Mike Chamberlain and Nicole Crites interviewed Dr. Marlo on Tuesday, April 11th, following some organized marches addressing illegal immigration issues. The topic was, “When is it too early to start teaching your kids tolerance.” Dr. Marlo’s main point is that kids already know tolerance, it’s adults that teach them intolerance. View the clip by clicking here.
How did I get on this Mailing List?
This mailing list started with all of my family and friends and colleagues, about 6 years ago. Since then, I have added just about any e-mail address I come across as well as people who request to join the mailing list. If you do not want to be on this list, you can unsubscribe by clicking the unsubscribe link below. I continue to subscribe people upon receiving their e-mail addresses because I get positive feedback for doing so from many of those I subscribe. My apologies if you are not one of them.
Let’s hear it for the rebirth of Spring! –Marlo J. Archer, Ph.D.
If someone forwarded you this newsletter and you want your own subscription, click here.
We never sell or publish e-mail addresses of our subscribers.
TO PODCATCH THE PSYCHOLOGY SESSION:
This is an introduction to the podcatching process, by Techie Jon Archer, translated into English (but very poorly understood) by Dr. Marlo Archer.
Podcasting is the process of broadcasting over the internet and Podcatching is the process of receiving, or subscribing to, such broadcasts. Although these procedures were popularized by the Apple iPod devices, you do not need to own an iPod to have fun with Podcasting and Podcatching.
Devin Jones, M.Ed. and Dr. Marlo have been Podcasting an internet show called The Psychology Session for almost a year now. Now you can learn how to Podcatch it.
However, if you do already own and regularly use an iPod to subscribe to Podcasts, all you need to do is add this link to your subscriptions to begin receiving our show.
The rest of you will first need to download a Podcatcher. That is software and we recommend one called, “Juice,” which is free. To download and install Juice:
Go to http://juicereceiver.sourceforge.net/index.php. Download the version of Juice that will work with your machine – either Windows, or Mac, or Linux. You will be asked to ‘select a mirror.’ All that means is that you’re selecting a website from which to download the free software. There are ‘mirrors’ all over the world. Find one that is close to your location and click the “Download” link. When a window opens to ask what you want to do with the program, select “save to disk,” then hit, ‘okay.’
When the program file is done downloading, go to where the file is and open it. That is, go to where your computer puts new downloads and open the program. It will be called something like: JuiceSetup.exe. It will probably have numbers between the words Juice and Setup (e.g. Juice22Setup.exe.), but those numbers may change between today and when you try this process, so I am not going to put exact numbers in there right now. Anyhow, it doesn’t matter, you probably don’t have anything else in your download folder that looks like JuiceSetup anyhow. It will be an ‘executable’ file and your computer may have some concerns about that, but that’s okay and you should reassure your machine that it will be alright.
The Juice Setup Wizard will then take over and help you install the program. For most common folk, all the default settings are fine, just agree with everything and keep hitting, ‘okay’ or ‘next.’ until you get through all the screens. The only thing you may want to change is that you may want for Juice to be installed into your start-up folder, meaning that it would automatically check for new broadcasts every time you power up your machine. If you specifically want that, you have to select that during the installation process. The default is to only put an icon on your desktop. For those of you who are intimidated by this process, the desktop icon alone will be fine, so don’t worry about anything I just said, just let the Wizard install Juice the way it wants to.
You may have a firewall that informs you that Juice is trying to access the internet. You should let it. You then must agree with the licensing agreement to begin using the program.
Then you can follow the ITunes Setup Assistant to configure it for your machine. It will probably inform you that Juice is not set to handle some file types and ask you if you want to set them now. You can hit ‘yes.’ and then hit ‘save’ when it goes to the ‘one-click subscription’ options. The items: .rss and podcast should already be checked, and that’s fine.
Now, to subscribe to our show, The Psychology Session, click on the little green plus sign, to add a subscription. When the window opens, cut and paste this link into the URL space, and then hit ‘save.’
It will instantly catalog all our past shows for you and only the most recent one will be selected to download. You can download as many or as few as you want. Select the shows you want to download by checking the little box to the left of the show titles. Then, when you are ready to download them, click on the green square button that has two yellow arrows on it. (Hovering over the button reveals the words, “Check for new podcasts”)
Once your selected shows are downloaded, a green ‘play’ button will appear next to each show you downloaded. Click on that ‘play’ button to play the show.
When you’re ready to quit listening and close the Juice program, it will ask you if you want to just leave Juice running in the background. If you do that, it will automatically download new episodes of The Psychology Session if any come out while your computer is still on. To have Juice running constantly, you would have had to let it install itself into your start-up directory during the installation process.
When you return to your computer on another day and you want to check if you have any new podcasts, click on the Juice icon (a yellow lemon) to open the Juice program.
This whole process will create a new directory in the “My Documents” directory, called “My Received Podcasts.” It will even organize each of your subscriptions into it’s own folder. There should be a folder there for The Psychology Session, if you installed it correctly and downloaded at least one show.
There may also be some sort of Adam Curry iPodder Test Channel there, and you can just ignore that. Deleting it probably won’t actually make it go away. If you really don’t want it there, then you have to go into the Juice program and unsubscribe from the Adam Curry iPodder Test Channel, then go delete the folder. Otherwise, it will just keep downloading the welcome message for you. You will also be automatically subscribed to “Juice News” which doesn’t currently have any messages in it. You can unsubscribe from that or ignore it, whichever you prefer.
That’s it. You’d be subscribed to our show and ready to Podcatch!
