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Apologizing is Difficult

Apologizing is Difficult

by | Apr 14, 2025 | Performance, Relationships, Wellness

There was a bad decision. It didn’t work out. People are talking. Your reputation has been stained. Now what? Own it? Full disclosure? “Umm…this happened. We’re sorry for the consequences. We wish we could take it back but, unfortunately, the damage is done. Here’s what we’re going to do next.”

Many years ago, I was heckled by two professors who believed I was under-credentialed to be speaking on the topic I had been hired by the college to present. When word of the event got to the college president, he was mortified by his faculty’s behavior, and he required my colleagues to formally apologize.

It was easy for the ringleader. In a monotone, he said, “sorry.” Absent of meaning, it sounded like a kid trying to get out of trouble. So, I said, “Say it like you mean it.” He paused, rolled his eyes, let out a deep sigh, and said, “SORRY.” Done.

His co-heckler took a different approach. She was embarrassed by having been led into unprofessionalism and wished she could rewind history. She sheepishly approached me, and she fell to tears. She explained that she had gotten caught up in the moment and had regretted her actions ever since.

Seeing that she was unable to find the right words to apologize, I encouraged her to let it go. Lesson learned. There was nothing more that either of us needed to make it right. Move on.

Apologizing is difficult. Here’s a template: I effed up. I didn’t intend to eff up, but I now see that I did. I’m sorry. I wish I could have a do-over, but that’s not the way life works. So, all I can do is apologize and try to do better in the future.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Where Did You Get Your Spirit?

Where Did You Get Your Spirit?

by | Mar 31, 2025 | Performance, Relationships, Wellness

We are all some blend of our ancestors’ genetics and the environmental experience we’ve traveled. My mom was a creative and my dad was an engineer. She told captivating stories while he studied the ingredients on a catsup bottle. I got a little of both. But my environment shaped the outcome.

Nature or nurture? Face it, we all become some variation of our parents eventually – unless we see the landmines and decide to make changes. Perhaps the goal is to capture the best of previous generations and avoid the pitfalls of passing our pathology on to the next generation.

So how do you do that when most of the pathology you prefer not to pass along exists in your blind spot? An accountability partner is the answer. Maybe it’s your spouse who annoyingly points out all the words and behaviors that get under their skin. Perhaps it’s your most trusted coworker who has your best interests at heart and is awkwardly trying to find a tactful way to give you sensitive feedback.

Sometimes it’s your middle-of-the-night epiphany when you realize you are stepping in the same pile of dog do you stepped in before. The source of your insight matters less than the choice about what to do about it. Insight is worthless without action. Action is, likewise, meaningless unless it is sustained.

It’s about how you show up – not under normal circumstances – but under stressful conditions when your blind spots get activated. Make the unconscious conscious. Listen to the whispers that you might be, once again, becoming the parent you were trying not to be. Instead, become the person that your kids, friends, and coworkers will see as a role model.

This is how nurture beats nature.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

The Power of Nonverbal Communication

The Power of Nonverbal Communication

by | Jan 6, 2025 | Career, Counseling, Marriage & Family, Parenting, Relationships

It doesn’t take much of a physics lesson to understand how people share energy. Often, you can feel the vibe of a room within seconds of entering. Sometimes it’s just the space but, most of the time, it’s the people in the space. Emotions are contagious, positive or negative. You can lift or sink someone with a glance. And whether your energy-sharing partner is a friend or a stranger, you can be knocked off balance by imperceptible shifts in their mood.

If you’ve ever ‘felt’ someone’s presence, you’ve experienced the power of physics. Back in middle school, we used to have contests to see who could get the targeted classmate to turn around and look because they sensed they were being stared at. It works. Recently, a colleague described her son’s surprise when she anticipated his question. “I could feel you,” was her reply when he asked her how she managed to read his mind.

Communication is constant and not limited to the exchange of words. Words are useful tools for capturing detail and clarifying misunderstanding. Usually, however, the message has already been previewed by unspoken expression.

Furrowed brows, deep sighs, folded arms, clenched teeth, and eye rolls are among the loudest forms of nonverbal communication. They are barely nonverbal, as they are intended to send clear messages. More subtle, though, is the way the temperature and atmospheric conditions change in a space that is populated by someone with strong emotions.

We are all mind-readers, though not always accurate. Most frequently, our misperceptions are the result of unconscious bias and our brain’s need to predict a future that doesn’t conflict with our biases. The faster you rush to judgment, the more likely you are to misperceive. You’re both wrong and certain at the same moment.

Seek understanding relentlessly. Double and triple-check dialogues with “So, what I heard you say was…” verifications. Then, listen with both ears and ask again. Factor in the nonverbals until the message both spoken and unspoken are aligned.

If they don’t align, it’s most likely that the nonverbals hold the truth.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Negotiating With Children

Negotiating With Children

by | Oct 15, 2024 | Marriage & Family, Parenting, Relationships

Multiple choice. What would you do with each scenario? Each option has longer term consequences beyond the immediate response to the challenge. Sometimes, that’s the decision: immediate relief versus lasting lesson.

Scenario #1

The challenge: It’s time to leave for school and your daughter refuses to wear the shoes you’ve selected.

Your options:

  1. Hold firm and brace yourself for a fight.
  2. Give in. Don’t sweat the small stuff.
  3. Threaten some delayed consequence if she doesn’t comply and hope she gives in.

Scenario #2

The challenge: The dinner you prepared (healthy) is met with protests from the kids. They are demanding an alternative (less healthy) or else refusing to eat.

Your options:

  1. Scramble to put a frozen pizza in the oven.
  2. Craft a lecture about the vicissitudes of healthy eating.
  3. Let them go hungry.

Scenario #3

The challenge: Your son times his tantrum with the arrival of your house guests. He insists on going to a friend’s house, which you’ve already nixed.

Your options:

  1. Let him go and save face with your guests.
  2. Hold the line and endure the embarrassment of your guests judging you as a bad parent.
  3. Provide an alternative version of entertainment that is better than hanging with friends.

Millennial parents have different priorities than their Boomer parents taught. Often, that’s the vibe of generational transitions – improve upon the experience of your family-of-origin. Of all the species on the planet, human lifespans have evolved to enable grandparent insight while the little ones are still little. Yet, the advice and guidance of the elders is not always relevant or welcomed.

What’s your scenario? How would your parents have handled it? Why would you manage it differently? Down the road, how would you imagine your kids will handle it when it’s your grandkids acting up?

Everything cycles.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

The Case for Co-treatment

The Case for Co-treatment

by | Jul 11, 2024 | Parenting, Relationships, Wellness

At Elmhurst Counseling, we often receive referrals that are best served by combining the expertise of multiple therapists. The most common examples are Occupational Therapy and Speech Pathology. OT and social work are similarly intuitive. The credentials and expertise of these specialists blend naturally on behalf of the child. Let’s consider these two examples.

Many kids fall short of school district thresholds for speech & language and/or occupational therapy services. Yet each of these children displays concerning symptoms, whether that be difficulties with motor planning or self-regulation. What is a parent to do?

You can wait for the kiddo to ‘grow out’ of their symptoms, assuming the lag is within the developmental norm. Or you can engage your own resource network proactively with the understanding that early detection pays dividends.

It is probably no surprise that both speech and motor delays are partnered with most kids. The same goes for sensory processing and social pragmatics. An hour with either the Speech Pathologist or the Occupational Therapist addresses many of the same developmental challenges. When you put them together in the same room with a child, magic happens.

The same magic occurs when you add a Social Worker to the mix. It is the rare ‘OT’ or ‘SLP’ client who doesn’t have a strong social-emotional component to their clinical picture. The ability to address the childhood traumas and family dynamics that impact normal development is, in essence, prevention. Speech/language, social work, and occupational therapy interventions thus all become strengthened in a multidisciplinary approach.

The cost/benefit analysis is clear. Collaborative interventions in co-treatment models have measurable clinical efficacy. It’s just hard to find a practice that offers hybrid services. Most often, parents need to act as project managers and patchwork professionals together on their own. If you can find a clinician that partners in an interdisciplinary practice, sign your kid up!

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.

Who Owns the Feeling?

Who Owns the Feeling?

by | Mar 13, 2024 | Parenting, Relationships, Wellness

Emotions are contagious. Any of us are capable of shifting the mood of a room by bringing our vibe into the space. We’ve all been altered emotionally by the power of someone else’s mood. Whether excitement, anger, sadness, or fear – one of the ways we manage feelings is to share them. When the other person experiences your emotion, you feel understood.

There are a few psychological defense mechanisms that explain this – projection, identification, and projective identification, to name a few. They are designed to selfishly bring relief to negative emotions and to generously share the wealth of positive feelings. Examples abound.

One guy cuts off another guy on the highway and, before you know it, guy #2 is tailgating guy #1 with elevated blood pressure. Guy #1 gave guy #2 the gift of his aggressiveness.  

A teenage girl arrives at the raucous sleepover party in a glum, tearful state. The girlfriends crowd around her and her emotional weight becomes the theme of the night.

A parent screams at their kid for something minor because the adult endured a stressful day in the workplace. The kid takes responsibility for the parent’s outburst and wonders what they could have done or not done to make the parent less upset.

The high school senior learns of the acceptance to her college-of-choice, and the whole family whoops it up in celebration of her accomplishment.

In clinical circles, we call this ‘parallel process.’ The contagion becomes a window to the world of another person. If you assess what you are feeling in a particular interaction, it is extremely likely that your dance partner feels the same way and shared it with you. This becomes a valuable tool for parents. Consider the chart below as a roadmap for how to manage your child’s emotional reaction:

When the                               

child is:                       I Feel…                         Intervention

angry                           frustrated                    de-escalation

scared                         worried                       reassurance

tired                            depleted                      resources                   

overwhelmed              stressed                       structure

hopeless                      ineffective                    encouragement

withdrawn                   sad                              contact

Of course, this works with two adults in the same way. In the heat of the emotion, step back and get perspective. Become a diagnostician of the macro-level interaction from that wider lens, and then step back into the fray with precisely the most helpful reaction. The emotion you are feeling might not be your own.

About the Author

Steve Ritter, LCSW is the Founder and Executive Director of Elmhurst Counseling. He has served as a teacher, author, consultant, human resources director, health care administrator, and licensed clinical social worker since 1977. A fellow of the American College of Healthcare Executives, Steve has provided coaching, therapy and team development services to thriving schools, businesses and organizations.