Published Articles
By Dr. William R. Morrow

“Hour of the Wolf Bad for Relationships”

Your relationships, especially intimate ones, should be protected from distorted thinking. You emerge from your God-given personal blueprint into real life by way of those you are close to. Who you are and who you are becoming, as you live out your life, is defined in part by the interaction you carry on with others around you. I believe the reason people seek out psychotherapists for their relationship issues is not just about happiness/unhappiness. It is also about the deeper issue of self-fulfillment.

For this reason you can cherish your mate since he/she is your sustaining mirror, the one who reacts to you and helps you to grow your self through all the stages of your life. I don't have to tell you that it is not always a smooth process. If this sounds heavy, it is because you probably need a reminder to avoid “stinking thinking” wherever you find it. I am posting an Orange Alert to be on guard against relationship distortions both night and day.

Decisions about relationships should not be made in the middle of the night. Especially for the sleepless (who are not in Seattle pining about some new love), these hours can be troublesome. There are dark thoughts in the darkness of your bedroom, where the light of day and clearer thinking are absent. You are left to your own tortured inner dialogues where the rational guy in that debate is at a distinct disadvantage.

Nighttime, when your bed becomes the rack of the Inquisition, brings on unnecessary suffering as one wrestles with the demons. It is like the invasion of the body snatchers, as your head becomes filled with disturbing and magnified worries. Some seemingly foreign reasoning power takes over.

It is a bad time to reach any serious conclusions because your brain is physically at a distinct disadvantage in the night. You are temporarily an emotional cripple. For some reason, which only the brain chemists understand, you do not generate your full reasoning juices in these dark hours. I call it the Hour of the Wolf because ravenous forces come out of hiding to gnaw at your psyche, scaring you with faulty conclusions. Like a bad disk jockey, the wolf plays real and/or imagined transgressions over and over to the point of a waking nightmare.

For example, if you indulge these irrational thoughts of the night time hours, you will likely blow things up out of proportion as you consider your next move in your relationship. Poor self-regard is born in these after-hours. You may find yourself thinking in extremes, and reviewing conversations in hurtful ways unnecessarily. It is in this bad hour that you imagine that you have done a really dumb thing, and although you ( face it!) really might have, this is no time to evaluate yourself hopelessly. Bad enough you may have said or done the inappropriate thing, worse if you try to figure it out at this juncture.

Rationality can be restored when you see things in the light of day, and tell yourself “I made a mistake, but I am capable of acknowledging it and working it out to mutual satisfaction with my partner”. Better to tell yourself this new mantra than the old one that immobilizes and depresses. David Burns has authored a helpful book in this regard entitled “Feeling Good”.

Daylight rational self-talk deserves as much of your energy as the old garbage. I usually tell people to write out the logical “mantras” and put it under their pillow. That way you know it's there, and you get the subliminal benefit of warding off the wolf.

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