The world can be a very lonely place. GIVE BACK. This is a sure fix for the aching heart.
Mon 19 Mar 2012
You are Valueable
Posted by Donna Burstyn under Uncategorized
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Did you ever imagine that you were more valuable then what you are boosting? Has it been unimaginable that you shine brighter then the sparkle you are attacked to? Think again.
When did you start worshiping the dollar and the “true cost” it’s value contains. It will put you behind bars. Statistics hold that for people shoplifting daily, every 43rd time there will be an arrest. Clearly you believe the odds are in your favor. Let’s look at the downside.
*Embarrassing your family
*Cost of Penalties & Attorneys
*Destroy your ability to work
*Jail time
*Deportation
*Humiliation
The cost is GREAT. The average criminal attorney costs $350/hr
Thu 3 Nov 2011
There Is No Such Thing As Something For Nothing
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The letter I sent November 3, 2011 to the Director of Loss Prevention for the TARGET stores
I had the pleasure of spending an excellent conversation/meeting with one of your associates in early October. I expressed to him my expertise in the field of Kleptomania, Shoplifting and recovery. I have learned that there are basically four different motivations , and therefore, different behaviors regarding theft.
What I do know from being in this field for nearly twenty years is that jail or even a prison sentence does not create positive change or rehabilitation. Most times while on probation for an offense, they will get caught again trying to boost items to repay someone who bailed them out; or to pay bills they missed while they were doing time. It becomes a revolving door.
Many companies today, just like the airlines are studying body language, eye movements, store pacing, voice intonations —– yes, profiling. I work to help those caught get to a place of true healing through deep psychotherapy, a magnificent 12-step program based on the tools of A.A, called CASA, and often medication.
I am aware that you have a policy to follow when theft is involved.. I am asking that you hand out literature on CASA that I left with your colleague, on their way out with law enforcement.
Through recovery, your loss prevention numbers will improve.
There is however other signs and bullet points that speak to the shoplifters —- “we prosecute” does very little if anything at all to deter crime.. I have spoken to hundreds of shoplifters to see what wordage or pictures will make the difference between taking action or choosing not to steal that time, that day, in that store. This information I would like to share with you as well as helping those who still suffer with kleptomania by getting them into treatment.
MUCH MISUNDERSTOOD. KLEPTOMANIA IS NOT AN ILLNESS OF GREED, IT IS AN EMOTIONAL PROBLEM, A DEEP EMOTIONAL PROBLEM THAT SOOTHES AND TEMPORARILY SATISFIES ONES’ NEED TO “FILL THE HOLE IN THEIR SOUL”.
I am desirous of helping large corporate chain stores make shoplifting more difficult while giving the thief options to heal…options that few people know about for permanent behavioral and emotional change; and now you know about it.
I am imagining the glory & the leadership role Target would take if this new prevention program would grow to a larger scale. There is so much positive public relations the company would gleen from it. I would like your thoughts on this matter and to set up a meeting with you within the next few weeks.
My compliments to you for putting together such an extraordinary loss prevention team.
Sincerely,
Donna
Mon 12 Sep 2011
The Serenity Prayer
Posted by admin under Personal
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God Grant me the serenity to accept the things I can not change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference
AA Serenity Prayer
I’ve had many conversations with my God lately. I made an oath on my 50th birthday that I would change my life. That I wanted to take a new road, a road of greater care for myself, a road of greater integrity and honesty and decision not to pull anyone’s weight but my own. In my 50th year I have celebrated the marriage of a daughter; I am pending a divorce; I am selling my family home and downsizing financially; I have made four women friends.
I thank G’d that I am no longer the thirty year old with three babies and one in my belly entertaining forty people at our “perfect home” in our “perfect family” every Shabbas for dinner and lunch. I no long aspire to be Super Mom and drive to three different schools daily to give each one the education that met their unique needs – Anyway, I failed miserably at perfection and it cost me dearly.
Today I am O.K.
Thu 1 Sep 2011
I took a deep breath and I imagined the smell of death and the machines, the sounds of respirators pumping air into a brain dead Rina, my dear friend who helped me kick start my life again. At 50, just after midnight Friday she dropped to the ground in a home she shared with her boyfriend in Santa Monica. Never to suffer, never to know that a weak blood vessel blew in her brain bleeding to her endlessness, drowning the beautiful, spontaneous, tennis player, ballroom dancer, lover and friend to many – taking life away. Like a sponge absorbing water, her brain absorbing her blood.
Only the day before, we played on Montana, had Pete’s coffee and ate Indian food. She insisted in paying a part of the check though she only tasted my nan. G’d Bless Her. I join the crowds of people that mumble prayers, apply rituals, attempt to make meaning of events beyond my comprehension. I know that helps me live a more meaningful life, though I have no clue if it helps anyone other than myself.
My dear Rina that cut my hair, that believed in my goodness and strength; that stood up to me when I was off track, that taught me the power of being of my word, of showing up, of living. My dear Rina in her daisy dukes and halter top and floppy hat that reminded me of teenagers of the 70’s. My dear Rina that suffered by the hand of her father and grandmother who turned her self destructive life into a shrine for the abused – she lived victoriously and was humble.
I mourn the loss of a friend, a sister by choice. I feel alone. My cheerleader has passed.
Tue 10 May 2011
Life’s Experiences
Posted by admin under Depression
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The first time he attempted suicide, he was ten years old. His parents had divorced. His father was a classic hippie. His mother was more reserved. He came from an Orthodox yeshiva-going family but his mother and aunt chose a different path and disappointed his father terribly.
This father is still alive in his nineties. He’s outlived two of his kids.
He once looked at me in the eyes and he said, ‘Those of us in the camps who were nice, didn’t survive.’
I heard him loud and clear. He was not one of the nice ones.
He married into a tight family. Several sisters survived the Holocaust together and formed a community. His wife was the most quiet. They raised two daughters. No one was close. The kids thought they raised themselves. By the time they were teens, the parents had divorced. The family was devastated and embarrassed.
Everyone married for the wrong reasons, such as to please grandpa. No one found love. From grandpa, there wasn’t much love, just a lot of strict love. The younger generation didn’t want all the rules. They wanted the love and the meals and the conversation. That was something he couldn’t do. His wife was so depressed that she would often show up to the table and not say a word. The daughters were raised with a mentally ill mother and a father who survived the Holocaust and at age 94 is still doing everything himself, going to shul three times a day and saying the mourner’s kaddish.
One of his daughters had no kids. She’s in her sixties. I don’t know if she’s gay or straight.
My client’s mother died around age 50 to cancer. That was the same year he married his wife and everything went against them. He didn’t have training to be married. He was a yeshiva bachur (student). She was a baal teshuva from another country. A beautiful woman. They had great intentions but little in common.
When his mother died, she left an inheritance. They bought a house and tried to create a home and failed. They tried for seven years to have children. They tried for seven years to find things of common interest. The husband was unable to find employment so he sat around with time on his hands. She got several teaching jobs. She was exhausted when she came home and looking for his support. And it wasn’t there.
So when he was driving across country with the little he had collected after his divorce, she kept the house, he stopped at his grandfather’s house to unload the van. His father and grandfather with their strong accents said, ‘This is all you have? Your mother left you an inheritance and this is all you have? You’re going to let her keep the house.’
My client felt guilty. He felt he took her child-bearing years and there was no way to pay for it. He still struggles with it. Perhaps he deserves some of his inheritance back?
As he grows, he decides who he is. He develops backbone. He’s not grandpa. He’s not an ultra-Orthodox Jew. He keeps the Sabbath and the dietary laws. That’s more than enough for him.
I’m often asked by young couples, what happens when I go through a journey and my husband goes through a different journey? Does that mean our marriage is threatened? If you don’t let your spouse grow, you’ll have an unhappy marriage because they won’t reach their potential.
If his growth is watching online porn and putting personal ads out there, clearly that is not in the best interests of the marriage. Let’s say one person develops an interest in astronomy and the other in cooking. If they don’t go with each other to the classes, maybe they will find other people in those classes that they have more in common with. Will this threaten the marriage? They’ll have to work that out together.
As my client spoke to me, he poked and pulled at the hairs in his beard and ate them. He’s unable to defecate like a regular person. He has to go to the hospital. He holds everything in.
It’s taken a long time for him to trust me.
We work together two or three times a week on a reduced scale. When I met him, the thought of working was incomprehensible. He got a respectable job.
Last Yom Kippur was the last day he wanted to be on earth. He boxed up and gave away everything he had. Then he rethought and kept living.
That was six months ago.
On another note, I have a client who when he sees me, he folds his hands in prayer position and says, “Teacher!” And I fold my hands in prayer position and say, “Teacher!”
I know it is not popular in today’s age to have equality with one’s therapist but I feel comfortable with it. I’m comfortable with being a mirror, hearing the things people say and throwing it back at them and seeing if it makes sense for them.
I meet a new teacher every day. I am open to being open. I thought I was for many years and I was not. It’s not as easy as it sounds.
Tue 10 May 2011
She’s driving home from a bar at 2 a.m. and you see her crash into a clothing store, breaking the glass on a mean street. She flies through the window, hitting somebody on the sidewalk. A 38-year old mom with four kids.
Rewind to three years earlier. Nancy, a 40-year old convert to Judaism who’d inherited a fortune, was brought to my office. They plopped her down on the couch. Ten minutes before the close of our session.
I thought she was a no-show but she finally got there. She was barely conscious. She’d been partying all night. Somebody was worried about her and brought her to my office. She was barely coherent but made another appointment and there began the relationship.
Her father was a classic narcissist. Her mother was a classic borderline. They began their lives with little and built it into a mega conglomerate. A lot of attention was paid to her older brother. Little attention was paid to her. She was always the victim. She hoarded and used and used and hoarded and felt entitled.
Upon learning about her hoarding behaviors (eight months into therapy), I asked her if she would let me into her home. She said fine. When I came to her house, it was a collection of disgust and waste, tampons mixed with hair, clothing mixed with unfinished meals, cat food, litter, ashtrays filled with cigarettes. Piles of clothing. Closets filled with clothing with tags on them.
She wears the same outfit every day – black leggings with an oversized t-shirt or sweater depending on the weather. She blames the world for her broken heart, for a man she loved who did not love her back. She pays for sex. She pays for weed. She pulls her hair out. She over-eats. Her father would fly in regularly for our sessions and would say if she only took zinc, she’d be fine. He’d march in like a Napoleon, often on somebody else’s session. I had to tell him to wait in the waiting room. It was intolerable for him.
Dad and mom divorced. Neither had anyone in their life. A lot of their attention was paid to their misery instead of their fortune.
As Nancy grew up, she depended on her parents. They provided protection at every angle. She never had to take responsibility. Her father put her in several rehabs, including Passages and Malibu, Betty Ford, UCLA. Money was no object. She did not want to get clean. She saw 12-step programs as a waste of time.
I saw her three times a week. I felt like I could not contain her. I suggested she go to an out-patient program. She said she did not want to be a loser like everyone else there. She would not go.
We started to bag the trash in her apartment. When the day came we could see carpet, it was a celebration. She hadn’t seen carpet in years. She wasn’t ready to let go of the bags of garbage. We piled them on the terrace with garbage bags filled with trash. The inside of her house became livable and she became scared. There was too much space. It was too reminiscent of the hole inside of her so she filled it and filled it with junk.
There isn’t a happy ending. She never got well. On her first car accident, her father bought off the police department so she could maintain her license. I begged him not to because she was a danger to herself and others. He did it anyway and bought her a new car.
The second accident was a tragedy. She hit a woman, a mother of four, crossing the sidewalk at night and put her in a coma. I never found out if the woman lived or died.
It was only then that the father decided to have her driver’s license revoked. He said he would send cars for her. He’d have a limo take her anywhere. She decided to buy herself a car and drive without a license.
I didn’t feel like I could help her. She didn’t want insight and growth. She didn’t want to change.
She returned home to their mansion. I haven’t heard from her since. It’s been over ten years. I think about her and the woman she hit while wasted. I think about her father who kept supplying her so she could keep using.
I spend a lot of time wondering if I would do anything different. Would I have taken the case knowing how it would turn out? It’s painful when one goes in with an open heart and feels the lack of receptivity.
Now I would’ve discontinued therapy. I was working harder than she was. That’s not a symbiotic relationship. I was babysitting her. I was her only friend.
I was bought for someone to talk to. I’d like to think that today she reflects on her responsibility but I doubt it.
These children with tremendous narcissistic injuries grow entitled to be different than others because their family’s wealth buys them this opportunity to treat others poorly. That never flew well with me.
I learned she was a classic borderline. These are the most difficult patients. They get you before you get yourself. They hook you in and keep you there and know your weak spots. To walk in the room with a borderline patient is like no other experience. They suck the air out of the room.
My office is in Beverly Hills. One day she decided to pull her pants down and put her bare butt out of the window and farted. “That’s what I think of the people of Beverly Hills,” she said.
She often talked to me with her dirty feet on my table. I’d have to remove her feet.
When she walked into the office, she wanted to claim it like a dog yearning to leave its mark. She wouldn’t sit in chairs that were warm because she said it bothered her that I saw other patients.
How could one envy that this woman could have anything she wants? It was mystifying that she chose her grandiosity. She had no charity, no love, no contribution. It was me, me, me.
This is a personality type that either I am attracted to or they attract me. I’m working through this so that I don’t get stuck with legal, ethical and boundary issues. These people get creative and seductive and it is hard to say no.
Usually we go down a list and if a person has a certain number of items on the list, we diagnose the person with a certain diagnosis and their prognosis is XYZ. With a borderline, it almost doesn’t matter what it says on the page because you feel them when they come in the room. You feel dirty and empty and drained. You feel scared. There’s no you. Just them. Lots of lies and manipulation and fear and vulnerability. Years would have to be spent to gain their trust to begin the work.
God bless those who do this work.
Who knew that it would be one of those days that would forever change your life? Dodging the bullet but always remembering the war. The day destiny would have me crawled up in its arms. Unthinkable traveling but that’s life. And here we go.
This book is dedicated to those out there who are not getting help and are still suffering. What would have to happen for you to hit bottom? What crime would you have to commit? What community would you have to lose? What parent would you have to bury? What shame would you have to experience? What wedding would you not be invited to? Or can you not get married? Are you unmarriable? Too difficult?
Tue 10 May 2011
Rethinking Jewish Day Schools
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I was calculating what I spent on the education of my four daughters before they hit college. Three of them went to Orthodox Jewish day schools. A fourth one went until third grade and then was in other schools that catered to her special needs better.
I spent around $400,000 for their education.
Many people in my Orthodox Jewish community shrug their shoulders and say, we all have to spend that.
I’m having a different look at it now that I’m 50 and have two married daughters, a granddaughter and another one on the way. I’m looking at the cost of a college education.
My desire to have my kids at Orthodox Jewish day schools cost me more than their college did. It was such a tremendous strain and drain financially to keep up with what was expected of me as an Orthodox mother that in retrospect, I would’ve done it differently.
I am so bothered by what it costs for Jewish day school. I remember having a patient come to me who was a non-practicing Catholic. She had her child at a Catholic day school because they had a finer education than the public school in her district. She told me that she had to pay $212 a month. That included lunch. Everyone paid that. Why so little? Because the Archdiocese of Los Angeles subsidized the rest of the tuition.
I remember thinking how fortunate she was and how appalled I was that there wasn’t a central system that would subsidize Jewish day schools. I’m not talking about scholarships at individual schools. For seven years, I did get a discount on my bill as a single mother, but I still ended up paying out $400,000. It probably would’ve been $500,000 if I had not gotten those scholarships.
There’s a message that we’re sending our children and an expectation that they are assuming – that they should give to their children what I gave to them. I don’t agree with this message any more.
I’m trying to think of other ways than a Jewish day school to implement the ethics of our fathers, the transmission of our values, the teaching of Torah.
With my fourth daughter about to go to college, I don’t have the funds to support her going away from home. Her dream was to get good grades and to go to the best four-year college she could get into and live in a dorm and have a college life experience.
Some people reading this column will say that is not what an Orthodox girl should do. She should go to a seminary her first year out of high school.
Some of my daughters chose to do that. Another went to Bar Ilan University. But even that was thousands of dollars.
Are we telling our children that you have to be rich or you will be a beggar?
The scholarship process was so humiliating at the Jewish day schools, except for a couple of years when a gentle soul was there. He understood. He was not wealthy. Other than that, the scholarship process usually consisted of a committee of five and some would be assigned to my case. I would be asked to bring in my check stubs and they would go through everything I wrote. And then they would decide if I was eligible for a scholarship or if I was negligent with my money. If I overspent elsewhere, then I wouldn’t qualify.
This is a big issue I’ve yet to fully grapple with, but I don’t want to see for my grandchildren this same problem. I’m not in a position to support them or to make a dent in their day school tuition. The finances are much too difficult for me.
I’m self-employed. I don’t have a matching 401K plan. I have to protect my future.
I suppose I could say – let my kids struggle as I struggled. Let them have less now. They’ll have more later as a result of a Jewish education.
I’m not sure that is the case. My daughter who did not go to a Jewish school past third grade is as magnificent as the other three, even though she does not read Hebrew.
Wed 30 Mar 2011
Party Of One
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A client of mine recently gave me a book called Party of One by Anneli Rufus. It was very important to him that I understand his aloneness. He spoke to me about being a loner and how different it is from being lonely. For him, being in the world takes incredible energy from him. It’s not just that he enjoys his own company, it’s that to be with other people drains him tremendously. He would be the perfect candidate to be in a small cabin in the woods of Montana or Wyoming, hunting for his own food, but there is something in him that can’t do that. He happens to be an Orthodox Jew and sometimes needs community. He’s not anti-people. It’s just exhausting for him to be with people.
So when he came to see me for psycho-therapy, he was severely depressed. And it had nothing to do with being a loner. It had everything to do with being misunderstood, for being attacked by others for what they saw as strange behavior.
Today he is out in the workforce. His mood has much improved. His aloneness continues. He wanted me to explain to as many people as possible that being a loner doesn’t mean that you are weird and strange, despite the news stories to the contrary. So many of the suicide bombers and the kids who do horrendous things are often considered loners. He said, ‘They are not loners. They may want to be loners. They may feel estranged or pushed out, but the true loners don’t do this. True loners are generally not violent. They just like to keep to themselves. They’re not strange and criminally-inclined. They’re misunderstood.
My client is a lovely man. He chooses to be alone, which is very different from being lonely.
Sun 2 Jan 2011
Kleptomaniacs
Posted by admin under Kleptomaniacs
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There’s a new 12-step support group for kleptomaniacs and shoplifters. CASA. It’s held in the Share building in Culver City.
Often times, court-ordered appointees are sent to 12-step programs to show that they are serious about getting well. This is the first such group in California. It was developed by Terrence Shulman in Detroit, Michigan, when he was arrested several times over and tried to explain to the judge that it wasn’t a matter of stealing anything he needed. It was a matter of emotionally stealing what he felt he never got.
This is a disorder rarely understood. The DSM V (the diagnostic manual of psychological disorders) is thinking about putting it in the sub-category of disorders.
This type of stealing has nothing to do with the amount of money one has. It has to do with the empty feeling one has in one’s soul. There is also a sensation for most people associated with taking that which is not their own. There is the build up to a heightened euphoria, and if not caught, it is like any “drug”, it is a feeling sought after repeatedly.
Many times, people are not caught, so they experience a high and they want to do it again.
As with other addictions, people are willing to be incarserated just to experience the “high”, or in this case, the “fill”. This is a serious disorder and should be taken as seriously as any other type of addiction.
Unfortunately, it is easier to say today that I am an alcoholic than to say that I am a kleptomaniac. It is more socially accepted. With alcoholism, perhaps one is only hurting oneself. With kleptomania, they are hurting others by stealing. But they are truly stealing from themselves.
My preference would be that courts send people to rehabilitation. People can be rehabilitated from kleptomania with therapy, medication and twelve-step groups.
Getting sober from this emotional behavior (which in this case is not an axymoron), and with the creation of self-help groups, populations of people who would have spent years behind bars are sharing their wisdom, hope and experience with new comers in groups around the nation and staying clean. There is hope.
