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'Help! I Live Next Door To A Loud Masturbator'
With a population of over 8 million people ― many of them living in older apartments with paper-thin walls ― there's bound to be some issues with noisy neighbors in the city that never sleeps. This column's question comes from a New Yorker who's feeling secondhand embarrassment for her new neighbor ― a man who hasn't learned to use his indoor voice while masturbating. Help! I live in a New York City studio apartment with cement walls that are apparently a little too thin. I know it's expected that when you share walls with neighbors you'll hear, uh, intimate noises from time to time, but I have a new neighbor whose solo activities are so vigorous that I can hear the festivities quite regularly. It doesn't bother me personally, but I'm embarrassed for him and wondering if he has any idea he has so little privacy. Should I somehow let him know by slipping an anonymous note under his door? Or do I let him go on and mind my own business? ― Blushing In Brooklyn We asked Thomas P. Farley ― a nationally regarded etiquette expert who goes by Mister Manners ― to tackle this very specific noise complaint. (Loud neighbor sex we've heard of, but loud neighbor masturbation is a different story.) 'Noise issues arising from a space beyond one's own walls are among the most sensitive of topics for neighbors to discuss. As a member of my building's co-op board, I have heard innumerable tales of grief as adjacent neighbors recount the commotion emanating from above, next door or below ― from crying babies to loud music, piano lessons to hard-soled foot traffic. And yes, lest we forget, lovemaking. (Or in this case, solo love.) For the aggrieved party, the typical trajectory of these matters runs the course of surprise, annoyance, exasperation, and finally, either a temper eruption or frustrated resignation. Vexingly, the neighbor generating the noise is often completely unaware they are making any disturbance at all. This devolution is unfortunate. I believe firmly that if approached directly, politely and considerately, many (though certainly not all) offending parties will take steps to reduce ― if not completely eliminate ― clamorous incursions. I would advise anyone in a scenario similar to 'Blushing in Brooklyn's' to weigh the gravity of the matter and then tread carefully if at all. Is the peal of passion something you hear once or twice a month? Or is it morning, noon and night daily? A white-noise machine or a fan can drown out a whole lot. A pair of headphones even more. But if these tactics are incapable of restoring your peace and quiet, it is probably time to have a gentle word with this neighbor. Find a time outside of work hours (perhaps midday on a Saturday or Sunday) to knock on the individual's door and have a brief conversation that ― once the pleasantries have been exchanged ― segues into a version of: 'I'm sure you're not aware, and forgive me, because I know this is a bit awkward, but I've been having difficulty getting a decent night's sleep the past several weeks because of the activity that seems to be coming from your apartment around [fill in time] each night. I know sound travels in our building, and I'm wondering if there's anything you might be able to do to reduce the noise at all?' In the ideal world, the neighbor will apologize immediately and offer to make some significant adjustments. To which the petitioning neighbor should express great gratitude. Could an anonymous note do the job? In the interest of candor and transparency, I would counsel the neighbors have a respectful face-to-face conversation versus slipping any letter under the door of a noise offender. The moment a note is passed, a guessing game will begin and two possible outcomes may follow —neither ideal. First, the noisy neighbor may wrongly assume it was someone else who wrote the note and begin acting awkwardly around them with no hint as to why. Alternatively, by process of elimination, they may figure out the actual note-writer and — as their feelings quickly morph from embarrassment to incredulity — decide to take their decibels to the next level. If the neighbor is not conciliatory or makes a brief change only to lapse again into raucousness, the distressed party can elect to escalate the matter to a landlord or managing agent as a potential violation of a lease or of the building's house rules. In such scenarios, be aware that punitive action may be slow to happen ― if it happens at all. In this unfortunate instance, grim acceptance may wind up being the least contentious way forward, chalking the moans up to being among the many annoyances that arise when residing in such intensely close proximity with eight million other people.' When it comes to etiquette columns, the questions and advice tend to be a bit stuffy:Who really cares what fork you use at dinner? But that's not the case here: How To Be Decent will cover topics that actually affect people, like 'Should you recline on a plane?' and 'How do I tell my neighbors I can hear them having sex?' Got a question about a thorny interpersonal issue you're having? Email us at relationships@ and we'll get it answered. Related... Should I Call The Police If I Have A Noise Complaint? My Older Neighbor Asked For My Help. How Much Am I Supposed To Give Him? The Rudest Things You Can Do In Someone Else's House
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What Oldest Siblings Bring Up Most In Therapy
'Fiercely independent,' 'driven,' 'responsible' and 'caretakers' are words that are often used to describe oldest siblings. From a young age, firstborn children are tasked with watching out for their siblings while also being raised by first-time parents, which are experiences that show up in many ways, including in certain topics and beliefs that come out in therapy. What's more, there are no other children around when the oldest child is born, which means their role models are adults, their caregivers, according to Aparna Sagaram, a licensed marriage and family therapist and owner of Space to Reflect in Philadelphia. Younger siblings, on the other hand, have their older siblings around and look at them as role models. 'Generally, they say younger siblings are more relaxed and more carefree — it's interesting because their role models [are] actually a child,' Sagaram said. Combined with the lived experiences oldest children have, this creates specific challenges that are often discussed in therapy. Below are some of the most common issues oldest siblings bring up in sessions: Struggles With Perfectionism With the oldest child, there is a lot of trial-and-error parenting — new parents are learning how to raise their firstborn and don't yet have the knowledge that they'll bring to raising their younger children, said Altheresa Clark, a licensed clinical social worker and the founder of Inspire4Purpose in Florida. This may mean oldest children have to deal with extreme parenting styles, like a strict upbringing with lots of rules and expectations. 'So, how that translates to the oldest child, they now have to grow up and there are a lot of expectations. A lot of times [this creates a] Type A personality where they become perfectionists,' Clark said. Clark said she helps her oldest-sibling patients connect the dots and dismantle the perfectionist belief systems that have been with them for decades. 'We're helping them say, well, your parent was hard on you as the oldest child, which then translated as you had to be the best, you're a perfectionist, you're very self-critical.' It's important for oldest siblings to realize this connection to be easier on themselves when they don't meet their high expectations, she said. 'If they don't show up the way their parents enforced in them, they're very, very hard on themselves,' Clark said. Feelings Of Imposter Syndrome When you're very self-critical and constantly striving for more, it can be hard to ever feel like you're good enough, which can lead to imposter syndrome, according to Clark. When it comes to success or recognition, firstborn children may feel they 'don't deserve it because of this harsh self-critical analysis ... because of their strict upbringing or the expectations that their parents had [for] them,' Clark said. She added that she especially sees this in her high-achieving Black clients. Experiences With 'Parentification' According to Sagaram, many oldest children dealt with 'parentification' starting at a young age. This means they were given adult responsibilities to help their parents who either worked a lot, were emotionally unavailable or physically unavailable. 'So, having to take care of younger siblings, prepare their meals, put them to bed, watch them' are all examples of parentification, Sagaram said. What's tough about this, though, is in many cultures, helping your parents out is innate, Clark said. Especially in BIPOC communities where 'you are supposed to help your younger sibling — it's just expected of you to serve in those roles,' Clark added. Sagaram said children who are parentified grow into adults who aren't able to fully relax, constantly worry about other people and always feel like they have to be caretakers for their loved ones. And this shows up in both men and women, Sagaram said. Jealousy Toward Younger Siblings Sagaram said oldest siblings often feel like they had to pave the way for their younger siblings and can feel like their little sister or brother has it easier. For older siblings, both Sagaram and Clark noted, this can lead to feelings of jealousy or resentment. Oldest siblings may be jealous of the ease younger siblings feel around certain situations — like bad grades or breaking curfew — and may wish they got to experience life that way, too. In the end, it can feel like unfair treatment for the oldest sibling. Trouble Asking For Help 'Oldest siblings feel like they can't rely on others for support, or they feel like they have to have it all figured out on their own,' Sagaram said. This affects work, relationships and all parts of an eldest child's life, she said. 'When I'm working with oldest children, it's something we try to unlearn. Asking for help is OK; it doesn't mean you're weak in any way,' Sagaram noted. What's more, oldest siblings who outwardly seem to have a handle on their professional and personal lives have a hard time expressing when they are feeling down, Clark said. Oftentimes, when they do share their struggles, they are met with responses like 'but you make good money; why are you upset?' This further forces eldest children to hide any mental struggles. You Can't Change Your Birth Order, But You Can Treat Your Struggles 'Birth order is definitely something a lot of people talk about on social media, and it does play a role in how we are as people and especially the relationship with our parents,' Sagaram said, but 'it's definitely not the only factor.' If you have a strained relationship with people in your family and you want to blame your birth order, you can do that, but there are also ways to heal the relationship, she said. 'We can't change birth order. It's something that we were born into — to dwell on something like that can cause more harm,' Sagaram said. Regardless of your birth order, it's possible to have good and healthy relationships with your parents and your siblings, she said. If You're Struggling, Therapy Is A Tool For Healing 'I would definitely say if [you] are an oldest sibling and [you're] experiencing some of those things — being a perfectionist, imposter syndrome, feeling immense amounts of pressure to perform ... going to therapy is helpful,' Clark said. Therapy can help you deal with unhealed trauma, connect your behaviors to things in your childhood and uncover patterns in your life that need to change, she said. If you come from a family with broken bonds and toxic relationships, family therapy is an extra tool that can help improve your relationships with your loved ones, Clark added. If you need support, you can find mental health professionals through the American Psychiatric Association's search tool, on Psychology Today's database or through resources like Inclusive Therapists and Therapy for Black Girls. Related... Prince Harry Wants To Spill Family Tea And Reconcile. Is That Even Possible? The 6 Most Common Issues Introverts Bring Up In Therapy Is There A Best Time Of Day For Therapy? Here's What Therapists Say. Solve the daily Crossword
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Pitching injuries continue to be an issue in MLB. How it's impacting pitchers at all levels
Keith Meister is worried. The 63-year-old orthopedic surgeon feels as if he's screaming into a void, his expert opinion falling on deaf ears. Meister, whose slight Southern twang sweeps into conversation through his 20-plus-year career in the Lone Star State as the Texas Rangers' team physician, is a leading voice in baseball's pitching-injury epidemic. Meister wants the sport to err on the side of caution and create change to save pitchers' arms. The trend, Meister says, stems from the industry-wide push to increase speed, spin and break at all costs. While MLB and the Major League Baseball Players Assn. bicker about what's causing the problem and how to solve it, the doctor provides his perspective. He just wants the 17-year-old high schooler, the 23-year-old college pitcher, and the 32-year-old MLB veteran to stop showing up at his office. 'It's not going to change at the lower levels until it changes at the highest level,' Meister said in a phone interview. 'I don't see a motivation within Major League Baseball to change anything that would enhance the level of safety.' Read more: Four major questions the Dodgers face in the second half of the season MLB asked Meister to sit on a committee examining the growth in pitcher injuries about 18 months ago, he said. Meister says the committee never met. (MLB did not respond to a request for comment about the committee.) Injury is among the biggest risks for youth pitchers looking for the all-too-sought-after faster fastball. Their quest to emulate their heroes, such as hard-throwing veteran starters and stars Justin Verlander and Jacob deGrom, has caused them to need the same surgeries as the pros. Trickling down, it's the teenager, the budding pitching prospect desperate to land his Division I scholarship, who is hurt the most. MLB teams wave around multimillion-dollar signing bonuses for the MLB Draft. Those same pitchers hurt their elbows after pushing their abilities to the extreme, calling into action surgeons such as Meister. 'It's an even bigger problem than it appears,' said David Vaught, a baseball historian, author and history professor at Texas A&M. 'This goes back into high school or before that, this notion that you throw as hard as possible. … It's so embedded, embedded in the baseball society.' Tommy John surgery saves careers. But as pitchers across baseball push for higher velocity, more hurlers are going under the knife — for a first time, a second time and in some instances, a third or fourth procedure. MLB pitching velocity steadily rose from 2008 to 2023, with average fastball velocity going from 91.9 mph to 94.2. According to Meister, the total number of elbow ligament surgeries in professional baseball in 2023 was greater than in the 1990s altogether. A 2015 study revealed 56.8% of Tommy John surgeries are for athletes in the 15- to 19-year-old age range. 'It's like the soldiers on the front lines — they come into the tent with bullet wounds,' Meister said. 'You take the bullets out, you patch them back up and you send them back out there to get shot up again.' MLB released a report on pitcher injuries in December 2024. The much-anticipated study concluded that increased pitching velocity, 'optimizing stuff' — which MLB defines as movement characteristics of pitches (spin, vertical movement and horizontal movement) — and pitchers using maximum effort were the 'most significant' causes of the increase in arm injuries. Meister was interviewed for the report. He knew all that years ago. He was yelling from the proverbial rooftop as MLB took more than a year (the league commissioned the study in 2023) to conclude what the doctor considered basic knowledge. 'Nothing there that hadn't been talked about before, and no suggestion for what needs to be changed,' Meister said to The Times Wednesday. Read more: Hernández: Secret to Yoshinobu Yamamoto's 2025 success? His hero-like effort in NLDS Game 5 Although pitching development labs such as Driveline Baseball and Tread Athletics provide fresh ideas, Meister said he does not entirely blame them for the epidemic. It's basic economics. There's a demand for throwing harder and the industry is filling the void. However, Meister sees the dramatic increase in velocity for youth pitchers, such as a 10-mph boost in velocity within six months, as dangerous. 'That's called child abuse,' Meister said. 'The body can't accommodate. It just can't. It's like taking a Corolla and dropping a Ferrari engine in it and saying, 'Go ahead and drive that car, take it on the track, put the gas pedal to the metal and ask for that car to hold itself together.' It's impossible.' On the other end of the arm-injury epidemic is the player lying on his back, humming along to Kendrick Lamar's 'Not Like Us' as an air-cast-like device engulfs his arm, pressurizing the forearm and elbow. The noise of the giant arm sleeve fills the room of Beimel Elite Athletics, a baseball training lab based in Torrance — owned by former MLB pitcher Joe Beimel. It generates Darth Vader-like noises, compressing up and down with a Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo… Krissshhhh Hhhwoooo. Greg Dukeman, a Beimel Elite Athletics pitching coach whose 6-foot-8 frame towers over everyone in the facility, quipped that the elbow of the pitcher undergoing treatment was 'barking.' For professional and youth players alike, this technology, along with red-light therapy — a non-intrusive light treatment that increases cellular processes to heal tissue — and periodic ice baths, is just one example of how Beimel attempts to treat athletes as they tax their bodies, hoping to heal micro-tears in the arm without surgical intervention. With little to no research publicly available on how high-velocity-and-movement training methods are hurting or — albeit highly unlikely — helping pitchers' elbows and shoulders, Meister said, it's often free rein with little — if any — guardrails. Josh Mitchell, director of player development at Beimel's Torrance lab, said that's not exactly the case in their baseball performance program. Beimel will only work with youth athletes who are ready to take the next step, he said. 'You got the 9- and 10-year-olds, they're not ready yet,' Mitchell said. 'The 13- and 14-year-olds, before they graduate out of the youth and into our elite program, we'll introduce the [velocity] training because they're going to get it way more in that next phase.' Beimel uses motion capture to provide pitching feedback, and uses health technology that coincides with its athletes having to self-report daily to track overexertion and determine how best to use their bodies. Their goal is to provide as much support to their athletes as possible, using their facilities as a gym, baseball lab and pseudo health clinic. Mitchell knows the pleasure and pain of modern-day pitching development. The Ridgway, Pa., native's professional career was waning at the Single-A level before the Minnesota Twins acquired him in the minor league portion of the Rule 5 Draft. The Twins, Mitchell said, embraced the cutting-edge technique of pitching velocity, seeing improvements across the board as he reached the Double-A level for the first time in his career in 2021. But Mitchell, whose bushy beard and joking personality complement a perpetually smiling visage, turned serious when explaining the end of his career. 'I'm gonna do what I know is gonna help me get bigger, stronger, faster,' said Mitchell, who jumped from throwing around 90 miles per hour to reaching as high as 98 mph on the radar gun. 'And I did — to my arm's expense, though.' Mitchell underwent two Tommy John surgeries in less than a year and a half. Mitchell became the wounded soldier that Meister so passionately recounted. Now, partially because of advanced training methods, youth athletes are more likely to visit that proverbial medic's tent. 'There's a saying around [young] baseball players that if you're not throwing like, over 80 miles per hour and you're not risking Tommy John, you're not throwing hard enough,' said Daniel Acevedo, an orthopedic surgeon based in Thousand Oaks, Calif., who mostly sees youth-level athletes. In MLB's report, an independent pitching development coach, who was unnamed, blamed 'baseball society' for creating a velocity obsession. That velocity obsession has become a career route, an industry, a success story for baseball development companies across the country. Driveline focuses on the never-ending 'how' of baseball development. How can the pitcher throw harder, with more break, or spin? And it's not just the pitchers. How can the hitter change his swing pattern to hit the ball farther and faster? Since then, baseball players from across levels have flocked to Driveline's facilities and those like it to learn how to improve and level up. 'Maybe five or six years ago, if you throw 90-plus, you have a shot to play beyond college,' said Dylan Gargas, Arizona pitching coordinator for Driveline Baseball. 'Now that barrier to entry just keeps getting higher and higher because guys throw harder.' MLB players have even ditched their clubs midseason in hopes to unlock something to improve their pitching repertoire. Boston Red Sox right-handed pitcher Walker Buehler left the Dodgers last season to test himself at the Cressey Sports Performance training center near Palm Beach Gardens, Fla., before returning to eventually pitch the final out of the 2024 World Series. Driveline is not alone. Ben Brewster, co-founder of Tread Athletics, another baseball development company based in North Carolina, said high-school-aged players have been attracted to his performance facility because they see the results that MLB players and teammates achieve after continued training sessions. Tread Athletics claims to have a role in more than 250 combined MLB draft picks or free agent signings, and says it has helped more than 1,000 high school players earn college opportunities. Kansas City Royals left-hander Cole Ragans achieved a 4.4-mph increase from 2022 to 2023, the largest in MLB that year. With the velocity increase after his work at Tread Athletics, Ragans went from a league-average relief pitcher to a postseason ace in less than a year. So what makes Ragans' development different from that of a teenage prospect reaching out to Tread Athletics? 'Ragans still could go from 92-94 miles per hour to 96 to 101,' Brewster said. 'He still has room, but relatively speaking, he was a lot closer to his potential than, like, a random 15-year-old kid throwing 73 miles per hour.' Meister knows Ragans well. When the southpaw was a member of the Rangers' organization, the orthopedic surgeon performed Tommy John surgery on Ragans twice. (Ragans has also battled a rotator cuff strain this season and has been out since early June.) 'These velocities and these spin rates are very worrisome,' Meister said. 'And we see that in, in and of itself, just in looking at how long these Tommy John procedures last.' Throwing hard is not an overnight experience. Brewster shared a stern warning for the pitching development process, using weightlifting as an example. He said weightlifters can try to squat 500 pounds daily without days off, or attempt to squat 500 pounds with their knees caving in and buckling because of terrible form. There's no 100% safe way to lift 500 pounds, just like there is no fail-safe way of throwing 100 mph. There's always risk. It's all in the form. Lifting is a science, and so is pitching — finding the safest way to train to increase velocity without injury. 'The responsible way to squat 500 pounds would be going up in weight over time, having great form and monitoring to make sure you're not going too heavy, too soon,' Brewster said. 'When it comes to pitching, you can manage workload. You can make sure that mechanically, they don't have any glaring red flags.' Brewster added that Tread, as of July, is actively creating its own data sets to explore how UCLs are affected by training methods, and how to use load management to skirt potential injuries. Read more: Freddie Freeman MLB Network documentary showcases storied career, and his vulnerability MLB admitted to a 'lack [of] comprehensive data to examine injury trends for amateur players' in its December report. It points to a lack of college data as well, where most Division I programs use such technology. The Andrews Sports Medicine & Orthopedic Center based in Birmingham, Ala. — founded by James Andrews, the former orthopedic surgeon to the stars — provided in-house data within MLB's report, showing that the amount of UCL surgeries conducted for high school pitchers in their clinic has risen to as high as 60% of the total since 2015, while remaining above 40% overall through 2023. Meister said baseball development companies may look great on the periphery — sending youth players to top colleges and the professional ranks — but it's worth noting what they aren't sharing publicly. 'What they don't show you is that [youth athletes] are walking into our offices, three or six months or nine months later.' Get the best, most interesting and strangest stories of the day from the L.A. sports scene and beyond from our newsletter The Sports Report. This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.