Tarnow Articles

Navigating the turbulent waters of life’s numerous transitions can stir the undercurrents of obsessiveness, a trait often concealed behind the guise of diligence or meticulousness. Unlike Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which is a recognized psychiatric condition, obsessiveness can manifest within any individual, portraying itself particularly during times of stress or significant transitions. As a practicing psychologist, my journey has led me through the corridors of human emotions, unveiling the varying shades of obsessiveness across different age groups, markedly accentuated during pivotal life transitions such as transitioning to middle school, stepping into the collegiate sphere, embarking on a professional journey, embracing parenthood, or confronting job changes and interpersonal discord.

The Early Veil: Childhood to Adolescence

In the tender years of childhood, obsessiveness may cast a subtle veil through an excessive need for routine, order, or perfection. As children transition to middle school, this need might burgeon. A child might find themselves spending an inordinate amount of time organizing their backpack meticulously, driven by an ingrained fear of forgetting something vital. The whirlpool of puberty, peer pressure, and the burgeoning desire for social acceptance can further fuel these obsessive tendencies. The escalating need for control amidst a landscape of change often propels the engine of obsessiveness. Exemplifying this, a teenager might find themselves incessantly checking their social media, driven by a fear of missing out or a desire for social validation.

The Youthful Gust: Transition to College

With adolescence dovetailing into the realms of higher education, the leap to college often stokes the fires of obsessiveness further. The quest for academic perfection, overshadowing fear of failure, and the undulating pressure of forging new social connections can trigger an overwhelming emphasis on meticulous planning and perfectionism. For instance, a college freshman might find themselves spending excessive, often draining, hours on a single assignment, striving for elusive perfection, or harboring an overwhelming focus on maintaining an impeccable appearance to fit into newfound social circles.

The Adult Tide: Venturing into the Workforce and Parenthood

Transitioning into the professional arena or embracing the tender yet demanding realm of parenthood marks significant life milestones, often accompanied by a discernible spike in obsessiveness. The aspiring need to excel in a new job or the heart-driven desire to be a perfect parent can lead to an over-analysis of every minuscule decision. For example, a new parent might find themselves engrossed in an endless spiral of researching the best parenting strategies, while a new employee might dwell on every word uttered during an inaugural meeting, analyzing and re-analyzing their performance.

New Horizons: Navigating Job Changes and Interpersonal Disagreements

As individuals ascend the career ladder or navigate the often tumultuous waters of interpersonal disagreements, obsessiveness can manifest through an incessant need to prove oneself right or to maintain an unblemished reputation. The face of obsessiveness may unveil itself through over-preparing for presentations, endlessly rehashing conversations to dissect what went awry, or an overwhelming preoccupation with feedback and validation.

Coping and Thriving Amidst the Whirlpool of Obsessiveness

A profound understanding of the dynamics of obsessiveness and the triggers ensconced in life transitions is pivotal for fostering resilience and nurturing healthy coping mechanisms. Cognitive-behavioral techniques, mindfulness practices, and a robust support system can significantly mitigate the tendrils of obsessiveness, offering a sanctuary of balance amidst the storm.

Each life transition, laden with its unique bouquet of challenges, can either entangle us in the complex vines of obsessiveness or offer a golden pathway to cultivate resilience, self-awareness, and adaptability. By cradling a balanced perspective, seeking a haven of support, and adopting healthy coping strategies, we can navigate through life’s diverse tapestry with a fortified sense of self and a nurtured capacity for joy, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Through the lens of empathy, education, and empowerment, we can traverse through life’s manifold transitions, with obsessiveness in the rearview, steering towards a horizon adorned with hope, growth, and boundless potential.

For appointments, please call 713-621-9515, and ask for the Intake Coordinator.

Lynn Ayres, M.Ed.

The Tarnow Center is excited to be offering a new program to help your child reach their full potential. STRONGER BRAINS offers a fundamentally different approach to addressing children who are struggling with learning, behavioral, or social difficulties.

SCIENTIFIC APPROACH

STRONGER BRAINS is a scientific-based program developed by Dr. Michael Merzenich, a world-renowned neuroscientist who is a pioneer of brain plasticity research. Brain Plasticity refers to the brain's ability to adapt responses to experiences and environments. Our brains are constantly changing, developing, and are shaped by our sensory input and social interactions. Dr. Merzenich’s research on brain plasticity has shown that targeted and intensive training can promote positive neurological changes in children leading to improved cognitive function, better academic performance, and even increase self-esteem, emotional regulation, and overall mental wellness.

STRONGER BRAINS provides an online platform for children to engage in fun and challenging activities that are designed to stimulate brain plasticity and to enhance neurocognitive abilities while strengthening emotional control, self-regulation, positive self-image, and a growth mindset.

RESEARCH OUTCOMES

The brain-plasticity-based training exercises on STRONGER BRAINS were rigorously designed and evaluated by 200 peer-reviewed studies that demonstrate their positive impacts on individuals with cognitive and mental health challenges, as well as the general population.

After completing STRONGER BRAINS, children showed significant improvements in a range of key cognitive skills, including attention, working memory, processing speed, and executive control. 56% of children identified as at risk for mental health challenges were no longer at risk after using STRONGER BRAINS. 80% of children showed overall positive gains in behavioral regulation and resilience.

WHO IT CAN HELP

• Children – ages 10-22 struggling to find academic or social success
• Children with –
  • ADHD
  • Executive Function Disorder
  • Autism
  • Social / Emotional Difficulties
  • Slow visual or auditory processing

HOW IT WORKS

• 40 – 60 sessions completed online (35 – 45 minutes each)
• 3 – 5 sessions per week
• 8 – 12 weeks
• Each session includes a combination of gamified cognitive skill-building and social-emotional health focused exercises.
• Brain training 
• Self-regulation
• Brain health evaluation
• Mind-body scan

HOW TO ENROLL OR FOR MORE INFORMATION

Contact Lynn Ayres – 713 – 621 – 9515

Email - This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

Human beings are social animals, and as such, we spend most of our lives in connection with those around us.  These social relationships facilitate the expression of emotion, the development of empathy, and the learning of specific social skills.  Further, our relationships have far-reaching implications.  Most psychologists believe that our perception of ourselves is highly influenced by how others respond to us.  When we are very young, a healthy attachment to a sensitive caregiver helps us to feel safe and to perceive ourselves as separate from our parents.  As we grow older, the peer group becomes more important and whether we are accepted and liked or excluded and disliked often contributes to our own opinion of ourselves.  Our ability to function and self-manage in a group also has important implications for our physical health.  Positive social affiliation has been shown to be the most important factor in health and disease since having a good social support network can actually protect us from disease.

For children, the ability to function as part of a group is particularly important.  The family (the group in which we learn the most) is the first group in which a young child must learn to function.  Fitting in to the family group is essential for fitting in to all future groups.  By the age of six, a child must know how to be a good group member to be successful in school. The lives of school age children are filled with groups including the family unit, the classroom, neighborhood playgroups, clubs, and athletic teams.  One of the main social tasks in middle childhood is to learn to fit into a peer group.  At this age, the peer group serves as a prime source of self-esteem.  Success in these groups involves skills such as eye contact, reciprocity, perspective taking and most importantly, empathy.

For children with ADHD and other self-management difficulties, maintaining relationships is not always easy.  These children are often impulsive, non-reflective, and have behaviors (such as being aggressive or disruptive) that may irritate others. As a result, children with self-management difficulties may experience social rejection, which in turn, can limit further opportunities to benefit from relationships. 

Group treatment is considered one of the most effective ways to address deficits in self-management and social interaction during the school years.  Middle childhood is a time when youngsters are readily responsive to group experiences.  For them, the group is a natural setting for learning and group treatment simulates the world to which they are accustomed.  Cognitive changes in the school age years also facilitate the use of group therapy.  By the time children reach the school age years, they have more fully developed verbalization skills and a greater capacity for self-awareness.  Peers at this age play an increasingly prominent role and peer reinforcement becomes very powerful. 

Like a family, the group provides reinforcement and support of appropriate social behaviors and provides limits for overly excited and aggressive behaviors.  It provides a setting for members to practice and generalize skills and concepts learned in individual or family treatment.  Children with self-management disorders such as ADHD sometimes do not generalize well what they have learned in one setting to another.  For these children, a group setting that recreates the world in which they will use the newly learned information may be more effective than individual psychotherapy.  Group facilitators serve as models of sensitive and caring behavior.  In a therapeutic peer group, children can obtain feedback from the peer group members, become more aware of behaviors that could be interfering with their interactions, and adopt more appropriate behaviors.  Group treatment offers children with self-management difficulties the opportunity to see that they are not alone in their difficulty; it gives them a chance to help others as well as accept help from others.

A brief example of a typical session may help explain how school age children can work on recognizing feelings in themselves and others. The facilitator may discuss how feelings exist on the inside and the only way to determine how someone is feeling is by looking on the outside.  Children can take turns making “feeling faces” and having the others in the group guess the emotion.  The facilitator may also show pictures of real people cut out from magazines or newspapers and have the children give examples of what might be happening to make the people feel that way.  They might play a game in which they take turns drawing cards that describe sticky social situations.  Each child in the group might describe how they would feel about the situation and how they would cope with it.  The facilitator may then encourage the children to share with the group a time when they felt a similar way.  Activities such as these help the group members understand how other children may react differently from themselves in a similar situation.  The children can learn the more subtle aspects of social relationships and share their experiences in a supportive environment.

The characteristics of group treatment often render it the most efficient way to address specific issues.  For example, mental health professionals believe that empathy (the ability to react to another’s feelings with an emotional response that is similar to the other’s feelings) is necessary for the development of cooperating and helping behaviors.  Also, research suggests that empathy develops most easily in an environment that:

1. accepts and supports a child’s feelings and emotional needs
2. encourages a broad range of emotions
3. provides numerous opportunities for a child to interact with others who are sensitive and responsive
4. provides peers that the child may consider similar in some way to themselves
5. focuses on the feelings of victims if they have been wronged

By providing an environment conductive to the development of empathy, group treatment can lay foundations that facilitate emotional connections and close friendships.

The effectiveness of group treatment for school age children is greatly enhanced by corresponding parent groups. In their own group, parents of children with self-management difficulties can learn about the happenings in their children’s group, learn ways to support gains made by their children, and exchange feedback with group facilitators and other parents. Families of children with self-management difficulties are the primary source of support for their children; however, sometimes they feel isolated, alone, and unsure how to best manage the social interaction difficulties.  A parent’s group can provide families with ideas of how they can help their children generalize newly acquired skills in real-life settings.

Research supports the use of group psychotherapy for peer and relationship difficulties.  For example, a recent study (Sukhodolsky et al., 2000) compared the therapeutic effects of group therapy and of a structured playgroup for boys between 9 and 11.  They found group therapy to be superior in reducing aggression toward others and classroom disruption (as reported by teachers).  Further, these boys reported that they were more frequently attempting to use anger control strategies.

In summary, groups are where we all learn our most important lessons in connecting and sharing with others.  For those with self-management difficulties, group treatments can offer abundant opportunities to learn to better manage our relationships and ourselves.

Current Groups forming

College Group – Herschel Ebner, PsyD

• Overview
• Details

College Readiness Group for High School Students – Herman Adler, LPA & Meaghan Devlin, M.Ed, BCBA, LBA

• Overview
• Details
• Flyer

For more information about groups or to make an appointment, please call 713.621.9515 and ask for the Intake Coordinator.

W.Walker Peacock, Psy.D.

Braden Markus was, by all accounts, headed for greatness. At 15 years old, he was a gifted student and athlete, making the varsity football team in his sophomore year. Despite these talents, most people remembered him for his kindness, his infectious energy, and a smile that could “light up any room he entered.” But on October 17, 2021, Braden took his own life. Braden had been communicating with a teenage girl who had approached him on social media. After sending nude pictures of herself to Braden, the girl began pressuring Braden to do the same. Despite Braden’s multiple refusals, saying “I’m only 15”, the girl was relentless and eventually Braden gave in. Once he sent the picture, the story changed.

It turns out that Braden had not been speaking with a teenage girl, but instead had been communicating with an adult male who lived in Africa. The man had created a fake account on social media and sent Braden a friend request with the goal of obtaining personal information and/or photos, and then using the photos to extort money from Braden. Once he had Braden’s picture, the threats began. The man threatened to send the photo to Braden’s family and friends, as well as post the photo “on every porn site in the world” if Braden did not pay him $1,800.00. Braden pleaded with the man, explaining that he was only 15 years old and didn’t have that kind of money. The back and forth went on for roughly 27 minutes, at which point Braden ended the conversation and killed himself.

Braden was just one of thousands of people who are targeted in this way. It is a crime known as “Catfishing”, or “Sextortion.” Since 2016, the CyberTipline has received 262,573 reports of online enticement, including acts of sextortion, according to a report from the National Center for Missing or Exploited Children. Between 2019 and 2021, the number of reports involving sextortion more than doubled, according to the same report. And according to the FBI, the number of online romance scams and confidence scams increased by 22% in 2020.

The connection between the dates and the proliferation of these crimes is no coincidence. The pandemic’s surge in 2020 forced all of us into our homes, and cut us off from face-to-face social interaction. Teenagers, who are in the stage of development where social connections are of primary importance, were left to seek social interaction on the internet. In short, the internet became a target-rich environment for online criminals.

I have more than a handful of clients who have been targeted by these types of scams, and I want to pass along what I’ve learned from them:

1. Never accept a friend request from a stranger, even if they share some of the same friends as you. I know this may seem obvious, but I also know how rational thought can fly out the window once a beautiful woman strikes up a conversation.
2. Even if you do accept that friend request, do not engage in online conversation with that person. Catfishers can be master manipulators, and know exactly how to be whoever you need them to be.
3. Signs that you may be dealing with a sextortionist include (but are not limited to) the following:
   • Something does not add up. Their online profile doesn’t match what you see and hear when you talk or chat with them. 
   • It happens too fast.  They express strong emotions for you almost straight away, and quickly tempt you across to a more private channel, suggesting you get nude or sexual in a video call. 
   • They make excuses.  They say their webcam is not working and instead they send a nude photo which they claim is of them. Or they can’t talk to you on the phone because they don’t want siblings or parents to hear.
   • They pile on the pressure.  They keep asking you to be sexual and to send nudes with your face in the shot.
4. Never. Ever. I mean, EVER send a nude pic over the internet. Fellas, I don’t know how to break this to you, but the only woman who will ever ask you for a pic of your junk… isn’t a woman. It’s a dude somewhere who is going to extort money from you and eventually sell the pic online. And for all of you who are under 18, I’ve got another solid reason not to send a nude pic: it’s a Federal Offense. Taking a picture of your junk and sending it to someone qualifies as both production and distribution of child pornography. Penalties for these crimes range from prison time (up to one year) and fines (up to $2,000.00). But there’s also a different sort of life sentence. You will have to register as a sex offender. That means that every potential college and employer will have access to that information. So… don’t do it.
5. Now, let’s say you ignored my previous three points and you’ve found yourself in a bad spot. You accepted the friend request/follow request from that wicked hot girl from Tuscaloosa. She’s sent you photos and coerced you into sending some of your own. Now she’s become a he, and he is threatening to ruin your life if you don’t pay him NOW. This is the tough part, but trust me on this. You ready? Don’t pay. Don’t negotiate. Don’t beg. He doesn’t care and he won’t listen. Block them and delete them across all social media sites, and walk away. To a man, each one of my clients who has been through this experience has told me that once they cut off contact with the Catfish, the problems went away. My clients who contacted the police during their ordeal also told me that the detectives recommended cutting off all contact with the Catfish.
6. You are NOT alone. As I said earlier, this crime has targeted thousands of teens over the years. Falling into this trap does not make you stupid or make you a bad person. These criminals are master manipulators who prey on the vulnerability and insecurity that are the hallmark traits of adolescence.

Tell someone. If you feel stuck or scared, that’s okay. The Catfish is going to threaten to do horrible things if you block them or if you tell anyone. They’re banking on the idea that you will feel scared and ashamed and you won’t want anyone to know. Don’t listen to them. Talk to your parents, an older sibling, or a trusted adult. You can also contact the FBI if you don’t feel ready to tell a friend or family member.

FBI Tip Line: 1-800-CALL-FBI (1-800-225-5324)
Website: www.tips.fbi.gov