A Psycholgist on the Loose
Archive for January, 2009
Well, Now You’ve Really Hurt My Feelings, You Have Taken Charge of ME…
Jan 30th
Reactivity. That’s what we’re talking about. Learning to manage our reactivity a little bit better. (See Wildebeest post)
Reactivity to other people and the world–not as it is–as we are AFRAID 
other people and the world might be. This is particularly easy to see with the SENSITIVITY to CRITICISM. And I know I’m not alone in this. I watch way too many shows on men and women in prison. Prisons are petri dishes of bubbling sensitivity to criticism.
While we’re not in prison, our homes and workplaces are where we dip into the BUBBLING, SEETHING, WRETCHED, EVER-WAITING POOL OF OVERSENSITIVITY MISERY. We are in prisons of our own making when we react to criticism. I like the prison example because when we give up power over our own sense of well-being we give up self-possession of our lives as inmates give up physical freedom.
Yoda Note: “The more things you take personally, the less happy life you will have.” 
Lighter Moment: Two old guy Austin musicians chatting on stage. One asks the other about an event they’d both played some years ago. The other singer knitted his forehead and explained, “I can’t tell you what happened that night. You see, I’m at the age where I can hide my own Easter Eggs.”
What’s Your Number? What Gets You Going?
Jan 29th
Picture yourself as having a telephone punch pad on your forehead.
Each button is a statement or subject that can make you go crazy (EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM 
in charge).
Which buttons in your system are just waiting to be pushed and you will lose charge of yourself? For me CRITICISM (real or imagined) is hardest for me to not respond to. Yep, fling me a criticism and I FUSE with the anxiety of the person doing the flinging.
Yoda Note: When someone says something ugly about you, it isn’t about you. It isn’t about you even when it is about you. 
Meaning, the other person wouldn’t be pointing out your weak suits if she wasn’t anxious. So even when the criticism is the truth, the criticism is about the person pointing out your less than perfect parts.
Statements about the right religion or right political party don’t get me going. I can accept that people, even family members, have the right (the “right,” cute, huh? like I’m running the world) to choose their religion or politics. No, my buttons have more to do with personal unsteadiness.
CRITICISM, mostly imagind, gets lead billing on my punch pad. I can get worked up if some movie star on television makes a crack I don’t agree with, but whoa– I’m much more vulnerable to a “tone” in the voice of my spouse. 
I get hooked because, while he’s backing up saying he was joking–I know what his tone meant. He’s really saying I‘m a horrible wife and he should have seen this before we married.
Right… 
This is the guy who said, “Hey, you’d look great in a string bikini!”
Losing It… Losing One’s Self
Jan 28th
The woman who lost 100 pounds on burgers is an example of someone who could listen to her THINKING self amidst the crowds telling her what she should do.
Well, doc, you say, when do we get to HOW to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM?
Now. A start. Your THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM is in gear when YOUR BEST THINKING is your point of reference for decisions. Remember, only your TGS considers options in a thoughtful way, your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM , has only one goal (no matter what rubberly rationalization you’re using) and that one thing is —-
do whatever you have to do to rid yourself of anxiety.
An easy place to start the task of recognizing when we are slipping from our thinking point of reference to an emotionally driven position, is to talk about FUSION. FUSION …is when your actions and “feelings” are determined, not by your own thinking point of reference, but determined by “catching” the anxiety of another.
Examples:
A woman on a plane is reading a novel. The man next to her asks what she’s reading. She shows him the title and says she really likes the author. The man sneers and replies staring out the window, “Yeah, I guess if you can’t read more complex works-you have to stay with books like that.” 
(Do you feel it?)
While in graduate school I went on a cruise with a friend who was doing a seminar for “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (a fad diagnosis that has, gladly, passed). I was able to pay minimal cost as an additional person in the seminar leader’s cabin. The first day I attended an introductory group session in which emotional overdrive and ”group-think” were in high gear. 
Group-think happens in low functioning gatherings in which each participant is encouraged to become “one” with the group by confessing similar experiences. Refusal to become “one” with the group is labelled as insanity or denial. When it was my time to “join” I thought back really hard to uncover how my life had been affected by addiction. Then I had it. 
I actually said that I was affected by addiction when my mother was ill and taking cortisone to stay alive. (Which didn’t work all that long. She died at barely 42.)
The point? Before I felt the suck of the group anxiety, I’d NEVER thought of my mother’s desperate efforts to deal with her fatal illness as CAUSING ME to GO THROUGH the wretched helplessness and personal trauma–of an adult survivor from a drug-distorted home. Never. But for those shining few minutes… I’d given up mom… and REALITY… to be part of the group.
The really scary part was that I didn’t realize until after the meeting what had transpired. How I’d lost (given up) my point of reference. What if I hadn’t realized what happened? What if the warm affirmation of the group had propelled me into a life living out a new label?
Just saying. Later. More fusion.
Lost 100 Pounds on Hamburgers
Jan 27th
First: This is not a new diet. No secret is included. All I’m doing is reporting what one woman decided to do and did based on her work to get a big more in charge her EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. Remember, no frowns or self-beatings. This is where your unconditional friend presides. And you are okay, so smile.
This woman, I’ll call her M, lived alone and had a limited social life. She was forty-six and had been divorced almost twenty-years. M worked at a good state job and enjoyed quiet evenings with her own company reading and watching favorite shows. She also enjoyed travelling. Limitation travelling was the reason she wanted to think through the weight issue.
To strengthen her access to her THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, she constructed methods to break the rhythm of reflexive,
non-thoughtful, eating. Then she came up with her own program. For breakfast and lunch (meals she didn’t really enjoy) she ate an apple and two rice cakes. At nine in the evening she went through the Whataburger Drive Thru and picked up a double meat cheese Whataburger with double onions. She went home and enjoyed her meal in front of her favorite show. She did this for months. She lost the weight.
I know, I can practically feel “Yes, but…” missiles about nutrition, what time of day a person ought to eat, the importance of your astrological sign, and your body frame, someone pointing to a pyramid and, of course, plastic food. Somewhere out there is even a joy-killer somewhere saying, “But, Doc, 
don’t you think it’s WRONG to enjoy such bad foods. Don’t you think we should ‘eat to live’ instead of ‘live to eat’?”
Grrrrrrrrrrr. M lost the weight. Did all those nutritionist talks ever change anyone’s behavior? I mean anyone except that rude guy in the back chanting, “eat to live instead of eat to live.”
And Dr. L, of course.
The Plastic Food Incident
Jan 25th
Lack of information is not the reason we persist in self destructive behaviors. Yet, more information (even if it’s absurdly dishonest) is what we throw at people and problems. What we throw at ourselves.
Change in our lives comes with MANAGING ANXIETY BETTER. More information doesn’t do it. And before I rant along here all serious, keep in mind the motto of this site: IF DO NOT TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING. IF YOU ONLY TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.
So, let’s not get a stranglehold, life or death on ourselves. We’re going to MUDDLE through.
Let’s take weight management. (Remember, humor. Smile, it keeps them guessing.) The facts: all diets work (short term). If you take in fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight. It’s not about your blood type, your personality type, what time you eat, or what order you eat foods in, secret fat-burning herbs or foods, or machines. 
and plastic balls. Neither is weight-loss about “shopping at Walmart” or all the pounds you’ll lose after you order a metal dectector–two of the more recent ridiculous claims. Grasping onto more information, buying a “new” diet is back to thinking 10 MINUTES AT A TIME.
Now I’m not into the double-message culture that has way too many women living lives constantly racked by self-hate, anxiety, and guilt.
But as I worked on an eating disorders unit for a while, I sometimes consult with women whose EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS have steered them toward eating to relieve anxiety and carrying the accompanying extra pounds. These women interested in working on managing their anxiety better as a way of thinking about eating patterns do not need me or anyone else to hand over another diet or a weight chart. I want to tell you about one woman who lost over a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.
But, first I digress to share with you the PLASTIC FOOD Incident.
After a early and complete hysterectomy I was (gratefully) put on hormones which required some adjusting. “Some adjusting” being a clinical term for IMMEDIATE CHANGE BECAUSE I AM NOW CRAZY and I don’t want to end up in prison.” Thus, I ended up with an appointment with a Gynocologic Endocrinologist Assistant. The GEA asked me to describe the symptoms I was experiencing. After saying “I’m not the lovely, gentle person I once could convince myself I was,” and ”I now consider climbing a staircase right up there with swimming the English Channel,” . . . I mentioned a bit of new flesh showing up around my middle without any changes in my behavior.
And this is what she did. No kidding. Now, keep in mind this helpful lass is about twenty and I’m not. This is what she did . . without even a stutter-step of questioning whether her approach might be a bit shop-worn. . . even bizarre?
She smiled as if, “Oh, I know just what you need,” 
and reached into a drawer. She then brought out a little plastic steak, a plastic clump of broccoli, and a rather appetizing slice of plastic chocolate cake. She set these items in front of me on the table. 
The innocent GEA then began to explain how calories function in the human body, adding that she finds demonstrating with the plastic food helpful in her explanation because so many people do not realize that PORTION size matters.
Oh. So, I guess that same stunning NEW IDEA would apply to making bank deposits, too? 
I never thought of that. Surely, this lass had not been listening when I mentioned, I WAS CRAZY and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE not as PATIENT with wasting time as I was before the surgery?
Okay, next I’ll fill you in on how the woman lost a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.
LIFE: 10 Minutes at a Time
Jan 23rd
Those of us following Nancy Grace and the Tot Mom who probably (used loosely) murdered her then two-year-old daughter have heard the jailhouse tapes and endless interviews with anyone who happens through the Tot Mom’s Florida neighborhood. Most remarkable has been the absolute ease with which Tot Mom
tells one lie after another trying to explain herself. Lies that are easily proved wrong.
The following is paraphrased. I’ve admitted I watch the show. But I deny memorizing it.
One of the interviewers asked an interviewee, “Why does she keep right on with the same self-destructive behavior after she can see that it isn’t working?”
The interviewee responded, “Because Casey Anthony only thinks ten minutes at a time. Just let me get myself out of this mess 
and I’ll worry about the rest later.”
I’ve been thinking about a simple way to introduce the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM. The quickest description is that the TGS is that part of our brain able to consider WHAT HAPPENS AFTER 10 MINUTES after we choose an action. I know, I don’t like it either, but just doing whatever we have to do to get rid of immediate anxiety, doesn’t work out so well.
10 Minute Fixes: TOO MUCH of something that’s okay in moderation–shopping, saving money, alcohol, internet surfing, food, dog scratching, sex, computer games [Solitaire should come with a warning: Kiss your life good-bye, this game is familystyle crack.], studying, partying, gardening, journaling, talking to strangers, talking, isolation, etc.
No guilt remember. Guilt is one of those 10 minute fixes.
Feathers and the Gold Lame Lady Incident
Jan 22nd
Do feathers count when they’re invisible? I’m asking because this morning, I slung a few criticism feathers which went completely unnoticed by the person I was gossiping about.
Okay, so I’m at the gym on the treadmill. Yes, I’m burping peppers from the slab of pizza I had for breakfast. I can take the irony of that. But then this limber chick in a gold lame (okay, it was red, but, hey, the top and bottom MATCHED), jogging suit hopped up on the treadmill next to me and cranked up the speed to sure-fire heart attack level. 
She popped her IPod into her ear and ran halfway across the state.
But I forgave her. I did not spit one feather at the gym. I stepped off the treadmill in my orthopedically altered shoes and staggered to my car. Pretend Gold Lame Lady left at the same time.
Here’s where, as they say, THE FEATHERS FLEW. On my way home I turned into the Walgreens parking lot to pick up one of my many life-extending prescriptions. As I gimped to the door a black BMW shot into the handicapped parking spot RIGHT in front of the door.
As I always do, 
I checked to see if the car had the appropriate sticker or tag. It had neither. And here’s comes the knife in the criticism pillow.
Out of the BMW sprinted the Gold Lame Lady!! I know. The feathers were STUCK ON ME.
The first lesson in becoming more in charge of the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is: Let Others Be.
Feathers At the Check-out Stand
Jan 21st
The feathers. As you all remember (Doubt entry) when the lady went up on her roof and split the pillow? She learned what happens when gossip, or any negative or positive bit 
(flake, feather, comment) is set free in the world. The effect is like thousands of little bits of what you say lands on, sticks to, and changes others. AND remember–NO GUILT here thinking about all the negative feathers you’ve shot into the atmosphere.
None. Stop it. 
You remember when something against the rules was done in your third grade class, and the teacher looked out across the room and said, “I’m not talking to all of you, only the one who did this…” You and I and the rest of the folks I see wanting to work on self… we cringed and felt bad and we hadn’t even done it.
And we’re not putting our energy there in 2009. We’re putting our energy on quieting the pillow-ripper, the feather blower in our own heads. Our INNER TORTURER.
Our ravaging EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. Because that’s where the work starts. Until we get in better charge of our own INNER TORTURER, we’re spitting downer feathers because all those “you can’t do it” flakes we’re spewing on our lives keep us from even VISUALIZING what is possible.
So, I’m in the Dallas-Ft. Worth airport, in my third hour of waiting for a late plane. The best I can do is wander the stores and read magazine headlines. Which is when I asked myself, “Do the feathers blown into our brains off magazines, do they stick? The following are the lead stories from two of these.
Men’s Health: Lose Your Gut! See results in 8 days. 15 Powerful foods that fight fat. Free workout poster.
Women’s Health: Lose Your Belly! See results in 8 days. No poster.
So, that’s been the problem. 
No flipping poster!
Feathers? The Spam Devil?
Jan 19th
About the woman told the priest about her dream and asked if gossip was a sin. He sent her on with instructions to take a pillow up to the roof of her house that night, plunge a knife into it, and return the next day.
She did and the priest asked what happened when she stabbed the pillow.
“Feathers,” she said. Now we have a little lesson here . . . but hark! The lesson has nothing to do with the kind of gossip that goes on BETWEEN PEOPLE. The lesson is that each of us has inside of us an
INNER TORTURER. . . 
stabbing our brain and poofing down all sorts of “WHO DO YOU THINK YOU ARE?” “YOU CAN’T DO ANYTHING RIGHT,” “YOU ARE JUST NOT UP TO THIS LIFE THING!”
In other words, your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is a big, fluffy sack of self-doubting feathers, just waiting for you to jab them into action.
And, I for one, in 2009 am going to do something about it! 
Note: The reason I do not keep up with or publish comments is because this computer has in it a monster with a pillow full of SPAM which makes life hell. 
No where in the ballpark with my lovely
INNER TORTURER, but them my PERSONAL I.T. has had many more years of, pretty much, uninterrupted experience.
Think Feathers?
Jan 17th
From “Doubt:” A woman was talking to a friend saying something unflattering about a man she did not know well. That night she had a dream in which a large hand hovered over her, the index finger pointing down to her head. The next day she goes to Confession and asks the priest: “Father is gossip a sin?”
The priest instructed the woman: “Go home and tomorrow morning take a pillow up to your roof and stab it open with a sharp knife. Then come back to see me.”
AND THEN . . . manana. It’s big and it’s about other and self esteem and how to make it on this planet. And about how our EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS . . . DESIGN WHAT WE SEE IN OURSELVES AND OTHER PEOPLE. 
Optimism from television ads: (I know, I’m giving away my secret hours.)
Ads that offer you a FREE advertising video, a FREE brochure, a FREE quote. Do they actually think that some of us out here watching are saying, “Look at that, babe! We can get a thirty minute commercial-free commercial DVD!” 
or “Do you hear that babe? We can get another paper advertisement in the mail! (thereby putting ourselves on a PRIMO sales list),” or “Babe, look we can call up the insurance company for a FREE QUOTE, thus providing them with an unsolicited opportunity to enter the high PRESSURE sales zone.”
What’s In Your Pillow?
Jan 15th
“Which is more important? The world you can touch, facts, or the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO?
The movie “Doubt” is a story about that question. In it, a priest is accused on very little, no, on no evidence of molesting a boy. Interesting statements of the accusing nun (not exact quotes):
See he IS who I THOUGHT HE WAS. Proving that the priest is WHO SHE THINKS HE IS quickly becomes more important than the truth. The priest: “What proof do you have?”
The nun pounds her chest as says, “None. But I have my ‘CERTAINTY’.”
The priest: “Your ‘certainty’ is no more than your ‘feeling’, it is not a fact.”
I’ve always been impressed by how we make other people up as we go along. How much of WHO WE ARE is our playing out of our parents’ “certainty” of who we would become? In what ways have we limited our goals playing out the expectations of others? 
Okay, here’s where I usually slip into a guilt bog thinking, “And what about the children I’ve influenced and limited? And my husband? 
He’d probably be president if I didn’t work out my anxiety by being critical of him?
Enough about that. I have to sleep at night.
Where I end up on this is another interesting question. If in my head I SEE OTHER PEOPLE AS DANGEROUS and CRITICAL . . . 
. . .how much of that is the WORLD I’M RESPONDING TO IN MY HEAD that doesn’t even exist?
In what ways am I LIMITING MYSELF by the ME I’ve CREATED IN MY HEAD that doesn’t REALLY EXIST?
ba-deep, ba-deep, ba-deep. More hard stuff to come trying to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM ain’t for sissies.
Optimism: A company running an ad on television which says, “Find all the gold in your house, put it in a brown envelope (that we will send to you for FREE!) and mail it to US! Then, once we receive your envelope, we’ll pick some random amount of money out of the AIR and send you a CHECK (for however much we decided, while giggling hysterically, we wanted to send!)
Oh, the pillow thing? Later. I won’t forget. Cause it’s important and has feathers in it.
Gotta Laugh or ?
Jan 13th
Samples of appeals to the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM as piped in on television:
Dateline: Kitchen in the real America. Recent high school graduate charges in to room. Kid excitedly tells well-preserved seemingly adult parents: “Yea! I got accepted at Polytech!” Good news, you think, (like there’s a polytech and an Emerald City). Now, what do you think the parents do as kid dashes out to make his big announcement to his friends? Of course, the attractive Mom grasps super-attractive Dad’s hand and says, “Oh, honey, how will we afford to pay for this?” 
Dad, apparently growing up under a rock, comes up with the PERFECT SOLUTION. Do you know what he says? I just know you do because it’s so logical. It’s the first thing that popped into my mind. He looks at proud, lovely Mom and decides to COLOR HIS HAIR SO HE CAN GET A BETTER JOB AND SONNY CAN GO TO POLYTECH. Yep.
Now that’s bludgeoning of the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM that actually makes me feel more in charge. Which ought to scare the hoochy out of you.
Here’s a test. If you are a grown man with a grown son and it does not occur to you to get a good job and make more money UNTIL YOUR SON HAS THE POLYTECH BREAKTHROUGH– you probably won’t be able to buy into the the idea of learning to use your THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM.
If you find yourself staring into the bathroom mirror watching the black rinse dribble down your neck after you learn that Sonny boy has flunked out of school 
and you ask yourself, “What was I thinking?” The good news is NO THINKING WAS INVOLVED in the dye-your-hair-and-make-your-son a proud graduate of Harvard scheme. And, thus, there’s so much room for improvement. It’s like failing a test where you didn’t study. Just think how well you can do now that you’ll have the notes. I’m not ahead of you on this little journey.
Learning to laugh at our humaness is an important step in dumping ANXIETY on its rear. Ha Ha. Guess what Anxiety Grip I know so well. HaHa. DON’T SWEAT THE SMALL STUFF.
IT’S ALL SMALL STUFF. Of course, this does not apply to those drivers I instructed earlier today on using their ##@ turn signals. Yeah. That was serious stuff.
Yikes! The EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM Won Again!
Jan 11th
What can I say? I’ve talked before about how hard it is, how bloody hard, to truly change daily functioning . . . so that life isn’t completely run by the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM. And, boy, is it. I promised to describe a time when my THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM was in charge-with the fettucine (see “The Fettucine Incident”-and what did I do? I described one more time when the EGS got the best of me.
That’s how hard this is. I’ve taken and taught programs taking several years and at the close, some folks (not me, of course, as I’ve proven I have this emotional maturity gig conquered) are not able to describe or “know” the difference between the EGS and the THINKING GUIDANCE system.
This happens, of course, since the EGS’s role in life is to GET RID OF ANXIETY. 
The EGS is always telling us that our feelings are thoughts. For example: ordering room service fettucine at eleven pm that fateful night, my “thoughts” are telling me there’s no problem having pasta this late. After all, I’m really hungry (somehow, this fact seems to justify all sorts of ill-conceived actions) . . . . My THINKNG GUIDANCE SYSTEM (had it had a flying chance) would have pondered my predicament and asked, “hmm, and the last time you missed lunch and ended up starving at almost midnight in a hotel room. . . and you ordered the pasta . . . Say, how’d that work out for you?”
Answer: let’s just say tv at three in the morning in Las Vegas features mostly smirky personal injury law firms and vegetable chopping instruments.
I’m not radio Dr.L. I mess up a lot. 
I’m writing about it because this is maybe a gift I can give. Maybe you guys out there (Welcome A from Canada.) can gain a little ground with me.
Or at least have a little fun. 
The Fettucinne, No Brain Connection
Jan 9th
Okay. 
We’ve had lots of examples of the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM messing life up for us. So where does the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM come in?
And what does it have to do with fettucine? 
Everything!!!
The THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM is:
The part of our brain which can TOLERATE ANXIETY.
The part of our brain which can GATHER and USE FACTS in decisions.
The part of our brain which can SLOW DOWN and consider, WHEN I TOOK THIS CERTAIN ACTION BEFORE, HOW DID THINGS WORK OUT?
The Fetteccinne Incident, a move made thousands of times a day. I’m working at a hotel and it’s four in the afternoon. I haven’t had lunch, so I grab coffee. This routine (thoughtlessly) is repeated until nine-thirty. I’m at the bar having a cool glass of wine before calling it a night. Boy am I starving! I order fettuccine alfredo to take up to my room. After all, I haven’t had a meal all day. The fettuccine was terrific.
OPTIMISM SIGHTING: That little readout at the bottom of a television ad that suggests you look up their advertisement in some random magazine.
But the heartburn at midnight was awful. At two, I got up and stumbled down the hall for a Coke hoping that would help. I didn’t get much sleep at all. NOTE: I’m not suggesting that “not eating” is good and holy and “eating fettucine or any other lovely food is bad.” Just as many people “don’t eat” under rule of the non-fact-based EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM as people who “eat” on decisions made by the same system.
The point is, the EMOTIONAL SYSTEM doesn’t pay attention to the FACTS. The EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM ignores past experiences. You can bet that wasn’t my first lonely midnight heartburn.
Why Change Is Hard: The Fettuccine Incident
Jan 8th
Later today. My fettuccine confession. MY EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM wins again.
Yep. Another night stuck with info-mercials. Could be I’m the only one messing up like this. There’s always the option of learning from Dr. L on the radio. Apparently, she makes no mistakes.
Not so with this psychologist, defeated again by fettuccine. 
Okay, How Can I Change?
Jan 6th
HOW is it possible to function better? Meaning, what can you and I do-actually-to make our lives fuller and more enjoyable? Not to mention increase our “personal magnatism?”
How can we work our way a little bit in from those dangerous edges of the thundering wildebeest herd? Remember the lions (the stress and depression lions, too) eat the wildebeests lagging on the edges of the herd. The wildebeests on the edges are the ones NOT IN CHARGE of their lives. All their energy goes into battling fear. 
I, for one, am tired of my “crouton lady” days and, more important–I’ve a few life goals I am only going to be able to reach if I am able to improve my capacity to manage anxiety and out-right fear.
Yeah. Fear. You know, the “what ifs?” 
The little fears that keep us from trying new things, shooting for the moon. The nagging worries about what other people think?
Here’s the goal. You have two guidance systems vying to run your life. One is your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM which emanates from the lower part of your brain. Your EMOTIONAL guidance system has one goal: to get rid of ANXIETY. Your emotional guidance system works the same way as the guidance systems of all the animals. This is not a bad thing. It’s just that we humans have more choice than other animals IF we learn to run our lives considering more than IMMEDIATE anxiety relief. 
People who make decisions and take actions based solely on the guidance of their emotional guidance systems take on the majority of life’s problems. Relationships are shakey, volatile, or distant. Professional and creative goals go unmet. And people who rely on guidance based on ridding the self of immediate anxeity actually end up experieincing MORE ANXIETY.
Behaviors when the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM IS IN CHARGE: Saying “yes” when you mean “no” to a project you’re not interested in. Eating to block anxiety rather than in response to hunger. Putting off a mammogram. Convincing yourself that there’s no point in excercizing if you only have twenty minutes. Interupting. Buying things you don’t need. Handling any piece of mail more than once. Putting off returning calls. Arguing. Making it clear that anyone who doesn’t think the way you do has real problems. (The experience of realizing another person does not think exactly the way you do on EVERYTHING, generates anxiety.) Deciding not to try something new because you might not be very good at it. Putting another person down. Believing there’s only one person able to see the members of your family clearly and that person is you. Being disorganized. (To rid ourselves of immediate anxiety we make no decisions, no progress.) Sheesh.
WE GOTTA GET A BETTER WAY. But, remember, change is very hard. 
You have to be your OWN BEST FRIEND to have the courage. I’ll go slow. A little bit at a time. Maybe just recognizing he ANXIETY is enough for today. Then, how do we escape the trap of self-defeating behavior? We’ll work at this together. Signed, Potential Crouton Lady.
The THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM. Manana.
Wildebeest Update
Jan 5th
On this journey struggling to be just a little bit more toward the center of the wildebeest herd (See Crouton Lady post), I’m pleased to say that while waiting for a flight which was two hours late in arriving at DFW where I was to pick it up–then another hour and a half late because of a terrorist alert which closed off that plane’s arrival gate, then after the flight attendants walked off saying, “Oh, no, there’s supposed to be another crew for this leg to Austin–and waiting another hour for the flight attendants–
I did not get arrested. 
I behaved and thus did not identify myself as an emotional straggler on the edges of the herd. (One man was not so “lucky.” Hint, don’t say certain words to TSA employees who are cordoning off an alert area.
However, as I was (horrors) computer-less and bored, I wandered in and out of the shops so many times I am pretty sure I was taken for a shoplifter.
Down with the Downers
Jan 2nd
Okay, the first step of this better living in 2009 is giving up the negativity. This means, not only avoiding the anxiety-builders on every newscast, not only learning to turn another person’s negative spin into something positive, but cutting our own NEGATIVITY. ME? CHANGE? Are you nuts?
Whoa. This is hard for me. Negative comments are the way people in my family show how in-the-know we are. 
I have been told by persons close to me that 
”You do know that it’s okay with us if you go through the world without evaluating it?”
What? 
You don’t NEED to know what I think of this television show? That politician? New Yorkers? Californians? Canadians? What about Paris Hilton? Do you really want to know?
Do you really need one more person to point out that those FREE male enhancement pills, the free computer instruction discs, the free energy tabs are about the “shipping and handling?” No, you know that. My comments add nothing except down energy. (Hey, I sort of got away with it, but we all have to have outlets.)
I recommend outlets in which no one is actually being damaged. Which means no one is in position to hear our negativity.
Which leaves talking back to the television (only when alone) and belligerent dialogues with that insanely saccharine voiced woman telling you how important your call is while you are on terminal hold. I personally have grave fear that my responses (a kind term) when she says, “I’m sorry, your call is so important–are being recorded. 
Let me try to get you the help you need by seeing if any of the following options meet your needs.”
**See previous entry for BLIND OPTIMISM, federal highway department.
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