A while back– before the results of being tossed on my head too many times started to become obvious– a friend and I took to the road following up a tip on a horse who just might turn out to be the next state Green Hunter Champion. For those engaged in more meaningful pursuits, in the horse world, ‘green’ means ‘new’ and ‘hunter’ means…’horse who jumps over fake gates, walls, and streams, and other obstacles of the sort you’d find on an old English estate’.
My friend and I parked the truck on the edge of a huge pasture and set out to find the five-year-old bay thoroughbred with the official track name of Parker Poker. Parker turned out to be a less-than-stunning boy, as far as I could see under the mud, the snarls, and the choppy mane. Still, having driven forty miles and walked a couple more through high grass, we led him back to the trailer, loaded him up, and gave him a ride to one of the finest show barns in the Southwest…or at least that’s the label I’ve used for many years to explain away the bizarre proportion on my income I deposited at that location.
Once Parker Poker was out of the trailer and cross-tied in the main barn, he looked more forlorn and out-of-place than ever. Always ready to absorb the fears of others and queen of the Don’t Expect Much and You Won’t Be Disappointed gang…I plunked down with my own forlorn look, a Coke and a long, knowing sigh.
Not my friend. Let’s call her N. N dragged out her best box of grooming tools and went to work. Heavier equipment was needed for Parker’s matted tail mud-caked hooves. N dug out shoeing tools, show day yarns, rubber bands, and oils. While N frittered away her time, energy, and equipment on the lost cause horse…I watched her through the dust, slightly bored, sipping my second Coke, and commenting on N’s commitment… in that way that passes for a compliment, but is really a thinly veiled crack about the other person’s judgment.
My remarks not having the intended effect of discouraging my busy friend, I finally stood and proclaimed, “I have no idea why you’re going to all this trouble.”
And N said, ‘I can’t say what will happen to this horse or if he’ll ever win a prize. But I have learned that if you want a horse to be a show horse, you have to treat him like a showhorse first.’
“Oh…” the future psychologistsaid, brilliantly. Thinking…hmm…maybe N has something with this ‘treat a horse like a show horse business’…Maybe N’s theory has something to say about marriage? What would happen if I treated my special person like a show horse…not the oats and hoof clippers…but with the good faith?
“Anyway, no matter how this horse turns out…I know I’m having a happy afternoon,” N said.
“Oh…” the therapist said. “Oh,” she said again, thinking…Maybe I’ll write about N and her showhorse theory someday.
Mysteryshrink’s You-Get-What-You-Pay-For Psychological Tip: Comparing yourself to wildlife can provide excellent excuses for your bizarre behavior. In general people feel possitively about the creatures of the forests and the trees…here’s how you can cash in.
Now, the wildlife comparison technique works best if you have already informed people, that, indeed you are nuts. As a refresher, the rest of your life will go much more pleasantly if you will cease and desist from further defending yourself as a sane person. Let it go.
When someone says–
What’s wrong wrong with you? Why do you do it that way? How could you think like that? How could you possibly have made the same mistake eight times?
Squench your face into a ‘very puzzled’ expression and answer: “Because…I think I’ve figured it out…it’s because I’m crazy and I’m getting worse!”
Comparing yourself to wildlife works in all sorts of situations. When you show up late to an event, you can say: At least I’m not a middle-aged Schnauzer. Did you know they sleep twenty hous a day? At least I’m not sea slug. Did you know they can impreganate themselves? At least I’m not river rat. Did you know they can get up to twenty pounds?
Now, about the chipmunks. (This part about chipmunks is factual, the above is just wild guesses, but facts matter so little when you’re defending yourself.) Chipmunks bury nuts all the time in all sorts of places. However, their memories are only good for three days. Lucky for the chipmunks, many tend to live in the same areas. Thus, many of the nuts the chipmunk finds and eats were left by other chipmunks who’d forgotten where they’d buried them… just as the feasting chipmunk’’s poorly remembered efforts were providing forgotten nuts for others. Pretty neat system, eh?
Now to the most recent opportunigy for comparing self to wildlife to distract from bizarre behavior. I’ve been traveling a lot lately (this is my human-based excuse). Last week, I was returning to town on a Wednesday, thus scheduled a slate of appointments for Thursday. Groggy and achey, I woke up Thursday and steeled my body with an Excedrin triple-shot. My special person wished me well as he left for his regular Wednesday bridge game. After he left, I showered and dressed in what would have to pass for professional togs.
Then I realized that my special person had just left for his WEDNESDAY bridge game. And, pow! Right there in front of me was one of those bonus…I didn’t hide it…nuts! I didn’t put the day aside, I didn’t sacrifice, I didn’t trade a nut for a nut. I just stumbled on a free nut!
What I didn’t expect was the direction the discussion took. The trim fellow across from me, who’d grilled the waiter for ten minutes regarding the no-fat preparation of his vegan pasta…leaned over the table to ask me, “You’re a psychologist, don’t you agree that drug laws will never be effective in this Hollywood-adoring, lazy society?”
“Hollywood?” I asked.
“Surely you agree that drug addicts, fat people, and slobs spending weekends on their cans watching football…they’re all simply morally weak people?
I pushed my fries to outer edges of my plate. “I beg your pardon?” I asked. I think. Could be I didn’t say anything out loud. Anyway, I didn’t want to get in a long discussion the Texas-Oklahoma game started in fifteen minutes.
“Sugar’s an addiction, too,” the lady with the herbal tea suggestion added. “Along with caffeine. I don’t know what makes all these people drinking diet drinks think they’ve kicked their addictions.”
“Sugar?” I asked, weakly.
“I know how we can fix the health care crisis. If you’re overweight and don’t do anything about it—no free health care for you. If you drink, no liver transplants and no insurance covered medications. If you smoked, you pay cash for every oxygen cost, and no insurance supported home health care or lung transplants.”
“Wow,” I said. “I think habits are a little more complicated…maybe…”
“I agree with him,” herbal tea lady said. “Why should I have to pay because someone else doesn’t take care of their body? I take care of myself. I make good decisions. I shouldn’t have to kick in because some fat slob with a weak character gets diabetes.”
“Oh,” I managed.
“If psychologists like you would stand up and admit that smoking, drinking, drugs, and food addiction are moral failures, instead of making excuses, the country would be a much better place to live in.”
“I know, we shrinks are a stubborn lot,” I said, standing up to go. “I’m going outside for a smoke.”
“Oh, I didn’t realize you used cigarettes,” the thin man said, popping the cap down on his water bottle.
“I don’t,” I said, heading out. “Who smokes tobacco since crack’s been around?”
P.S. Since then I’ve thought of a response……Next….
In my more mature Thinking Guidance System moments, I have admitted…even, gasp, … pointed out that our most frequent response to anxiety is criticism.
Thus, if I were able to learn from such an obvious statement…you’d never hear about the naked lunch. Because I’d be too cool to have been part of it…or at least I’d be cool enough to fake that I was too cool to have slid down the slope of maturity, totally in the grip of my Emotional Guidance System…but I’m not that good.
Oh forget it. I’m not even cool enough to stick with a pre-emptive apology for my anxiety-run-amok naked lunch….If you feel saddened and ache for a psychogist who’s perfect…(not a psychologist, really)…Dr. L’s out there, more than ready to tell you how much better she would handle absolutely everything…perfectly…and, for sure, better than I did.
I sat down for the luncheon. Just when I thought I could relax, unbutton that metal snap digging me a second naval…and enjoy sharing lunch with new buddies…the whole plan went dark. Just when I thought I could relax, unbutton that metal snap digging me a second naval…and enjoy sharing lunch with new buddies…the whole plan went dark.
When I slipped into this fiction writing gig, I imagined one of the pluses would be that I’d have the opportunity to hang with other writers…that we’d wile away the hours sharing our foibles over endless margaritas…confessing the dark transgressions inspiring our stories.
I pictured something rich like Hemingway leaning against the bar in a Madrid alley tavern, one arm around Scott Fitzgerald while F. Scott cried and admitted his wife’s Zelda’s insanity, one arm around a whiskey bottle. I thought it was a rule: To be a writer, you must be riddled with flaws.
Apparently, my expectation was no more than wishful thinking…and, perhaps, my rationalizing that my many spectacular screw-ups bring something useful into my life. Lunch went thusly. I sat down with other writers at the sponsored conference lunch….I looked around…right away I knew the black cowboy hat was a mistake….but, heck, I know my sneaky, anxiety-fueled Emotional Guidance System usually convinces me that I have nothing in common with new people I meet…people I love once I’ve calmed down. I settled in.
I ordered coffee. The man across from me began a lecture on why he’d given up all caffeine. The woman next to him suggested several herbal teas she enjoyed now that she had advanced from being a vegetarian to the more green-friendly lifestyle of a vegan. The man next to me took out his bottle of water to replace his iced water goblet…
Cue up the background music now…the soundtrack from Jaws…growing louder and louder. Cue up the killer shark, circling. I am but foolish tiny fish, so insignificant, I’m about to be sucked through the shark’s grinding digestive system without notice, spit out along with the plankton and algae.
I’ve had many people ask, “Don’t you think the best writers are depressed?”
Well, I’m not depressed that often, but I am the proud owner of many vices and disturbing failures acquired on this journey. I guess my mistake was thinking that among other mystery and thriller writers there were others whose characters and stories began with scarred knees and best forgotten nights on the border, and not just the Texas-Mexico border…the borders of love, law, sanity, and overindulgence. But, as usual, I gravely misread what I was up against.
Okay, back to the banquet luncheon. (Jaws soundtrack…picture yours truly as Tweety Bird in a black cowboy hat.) The subject of drugs and the border came up and, since border mayhem was a subject I knew something about, a readily jumped in. I mentioned the hardship of my friends in Mexico losing businesses built over generations because of the hideous actions of the drug cartels. I described how the police at the Mexico City Benito Juarez Airport wear masks because if a man is identified as working for the authorities, he will return home to find his family…wife, grandma, the babies…everyone dead.
I expected a cool reception since most strangers to the border have strong feelings about Texans and Mexicans. But, I was in no way prepared for what happened next…manana, promise.
Dateline: American Airlines flight from DFW to Indianapolis.
Emotional Status: Low. Emotional Guidance System in complete control. I feel like…think that…I don’t want to go to Indianapolis for six days. Slipping into an emotional swimming pool of exaggeration…I’m quite sure every moment of the trip will be a pain and I likely will never recover from the experience. So that’ the back story. Now. The challenge. I’m thinking about ‘decisions’ as I’m writing on decision making…
The flight is late. I lurk around the ticket counter trying to decide if I want to spring for an upgrade. And why would I cough up an extra hundred dollars for a two hour flight? Why because I’m on the edge and I’m hungry.
I ask and learn there is one seat left in first class if I want to upgrade…I wonder down the concourse, my stomach twisting with the decision. I find a Blue Mesa Fast Taco. I have three.
The urge to upgrade is gone. As I board the plane, I pass the empty first class seat. The ajacent seat is occupied with one of the largest men I’ve ever seen. He has two scotch minis on his tray.
I settle into my seat in the exit row. The middle next to me remains empty.
I am a WINNER! I guessed right. I have superpowers!
How pathetic is that? When your Emotional Guidance System is in charge…life is really scary. If the plane had been on time, I would have upgraded, and been a wreck because I guessed wrong. Life isn’t easy when you live it as a weenie.
Decisions. I’m doing several posts on decisions. For starters, it helps in making decisions to know to how our Thinking Guidance System and our Emotional Guidance System are sharing in the duties.
Cut to Brett Farve. Brett Farve didn’t do anything the rest of us haven’t. So why am I having such a tough time getting past that retirement speech? For those of you who still watch the regular news…Brett Farve is that quaterback for the Minnesota Vikings who turned 40 this weekend. Before quarterbacking for the Vikings he was the many-times-over award winning quarterback for the Green Bay Packers. In between was a one year run with the NY Jets.
Brett Farve who still looks good in Wranglers and he’s the football player…none of non-Wisconsin people knew all that well…until that speech.
What did Brett say? Here’s an excerpt:
“I’ve given everything I possibly can give to this organization, to the game of football, and I don’t think I’ve got anything left to give, and that’s it. I know I can play, but I don’t think I want to. And that’s really what it comes down to. Fishing for different answers and what ifs and will he come back and things like that, what matters is it’s been a great career for me, and it’s over. As hard as that is for me to say, it’s over.”
No big deal,a man retires from a sport and the world pays way too much attention (according to people who still watch the regular news). But Brett didn’t just retire…he took a bunch of us immature….see it and fuse with it people…down with him. Brett cried. To quote a president whose Emotional Guidance System driven decision in the Oval office is the one act most remembered by the general public….I felt Brett’s pain.
I lamented his decision, I was awed by his courage, I re-thought my hard-line refusal to consider moving to Milwaukee with that first great offer with the University of Wisconsin when I was first out of graduate school…
I’m not proud of this…Since people whose level of functioning has some gaps (all of us) are more likely to lose their boundaries and take on the other person’s feelings as if the feelings are their own…and therefore get stuck twisting ourselves into pretzels trying to fix THEIR feelings. We are driven to fix them, to fix ourselve.
Okay, back to Brett…and the sad truth about taking on other people’s feelings. You see, I believed Brett. I invested in what he was saying.
…And…Brett came back the next year to play with the Jets….and the next year with the Vikings…So, Brett, what am supposed to do with my feelings?
When we take on other person’s feelings, we get over-invested in the future choices that person makes…as if he or she owes us.
As for Brett, in reading his bio, I see that he married his girlfriend after 12 years of courtship. And the world was surprised when he reversed his retirement?
How much trouble can a person get into by speaking ‘off the top of his head’ to a televsion reporter?
Doesn’t talking ’off the top of your head’ boil down to simply blithering random words as they pop into consciousness? Yes, ‘off the top of your head’ can, and often does mean, talking without using your head at all. Using the Thinking Guidance System,you recall, means taking into acount the LONG TERM effects of your actions.
Which brings us to the ’Talkative Guy in Bicycle Shorts Incident’
A few weeks ago, a husband, obviously in the grip of his Emotional Guidance System…shot and killed his wife while she was packing up to leave him. Now, the actions of the murderer guy aren’t even the actions we’re talking about, but admittedly a good example of not taking LONG TERM effects into consideration.
But, jump ahead, if you will, to the reporter for a local television station who travelled to the small town outside Austin where the murder happened to provide that ‘on the spot’ illusion for the five o’clock story.
The little town hosting the murder is a rural haven left over from when the railroad first came through that part of Texas, though a few Austinites have moved to Red Rock to fulfill dreams of pastoral peace and to ride their bike instead of burning fossil fuels like the lesser forms of humanity. But, mostly Red Rock is a ranching and agricultural enclave. Our lively television reporter arrives in Red Rock ready to take the pulse of the townspeople.
Most of the town’s residents were busy with target practice, baking pies, and herding longhorns, but our reporter did find one unoccupied Red Rock resident who happened to be one of the Austin-transplants, a spry fellow riding his bike. Somehow the reporter didn’t notice that Red Rock regular residents don’t ride ten-speeds and they certainly don’t wear flashy bicycle pants and bodysuit tops…or red and green banana helmets or earrings, or scraggly beards.
Our reporter has the camera going and needed just the one clip to go with his story of the murder. Thus, his brief interview of the guy in bicycle shorts (GIBS) would come and go in his life without causing undo harm. The guy in the bicycle shorts, I fear, was not so lucky.
Because, you see, when the reporter asked the GIBS, “Do you find it hard to believe that a murder like this could happen in such a pleasant little town?”
The grinning GIBS looks right into the camera and says, “Not really. This town is full of POT-BELLIED, KNUCKLE-DRAGGING REDNECKS.”
Did I mention he LIVED in amongst the people he just so colorfully described? Or, at least he did.
Question: Should I dress up as supergirl?
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Psycho Ad Babble Update: We’re used to promises that taking a certain pill ‘could’ have all sorts of results…or ‘could not’. But, the ad babbles are really out there with this one. Michelin tires has a new add that says: Buy Michelen tires and you will (or was it ‘could’) save $109.00. Doesn’t say the 109 comes off the price…or compared to other tires, or if 109 is the pile you’ll save on fuel…over an unspecified time…Or if buying the tires will improve your stock portfolio by 109….or if, just maybe Michelin tested the pitch and learned that $109 is the amount we’ll accept without question?
Now before we get started here, I should describe my effort to engage my THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM and let go of something I cannot change. I am giving up arguing with and spewing sarcasm to the ‘virtual people’ (recorded voices, used by any company with more than one employee) trapping me into playing ‘Voice Recognition Hell’. You know, I say, “Jerry’s Bar and Grill,” and cheerful virtual person says, “Jerrold Barbill? Did I get that right?”…I am giving up the fight, joining technological reality… Now on to the elementary view.
We humans like to control our space. Maybe it’s an evolutionary element…maybe those who best managed to get take care of their space …survived.
Now, wait a sec, this doesn’t mean you get to walk on other people’s toes and blame it on evolution. We have a ‘fight or flight’ stress response hanging around in our psyche to save us from saber-toothed tigers, too. And, just like our stress response is not all that useful… (How many times in your life will you actually be called upon to lift a car off a person?)
…Our little desire (desperate need) to control our space can do more harm than good in our lives. Which brings us to the six houses across from the elementary school and the people who live there. Houses in the area around the school have sweeping St. Augustine front yards. Every school day, carloads of parents and children park along the curb across from school. In the morning, parents are busy covering last minute reminders, kids are searching for backpacks, and sliding out of the cars. Every afternoon parents return loading talking kids into cars. Morning and night neighborhood children close enough to walk to school converge from all directions.
So where’s the problem? Several years ago, one of the home owners with the elementary school view decided to reclaim the slightly beaten down St. Augustine along the curb in front of the house. He or she put up a homemade sign– cardboard tacked to a ruler…which read: “Please stay off the grass.”
The sign was beaten to the turf with the first car door swinging open. A few days later a larger sign, still cardboard and a Sharpie, but this time nailed to a stake from Home Depot, replaced the first effort. The homeowner’s efforts stirred the hearts of others along the street who had suffered the patter of little St. Augustine. Two other signs popped up…to no avail.
Homeowner number one then sticks two signs along the curb, this time printed in RED Sharpie. His or her fellow protesters next door followed suit. Still the kids with more on their mind did not notice the signs. Blades of grass were trampled. Little lives were not changed.
Next, the homeowner surrounds the contested strip along the curb with a low white wire Home Depot fence. Children think the little fence is fun to hop. More signs, more little wire fences….Until today. Today the distressed homeowner put up a two foot high white wire fence….about 50 feet long and two feet wide….think about it…this is really ugly…and the homeowner has planted spindly shrubs close together along the fifty feet of weird looking white picket fence. Children do not step on homeowner’s lawn.
Can we say the homeowner has won? How much time and money and stomach lining has gone into this project? Are you glad, as I am that I am not the spouse of the obsessed one? Can you imagine the evening conversations?
Oh, and yes, I have to say it…the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is that part of us that can convince us to persist in a LOSING ACTIVITY. The THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM…is telling us we can’t win this battle….or, that if we do win….(the homeowner still has the ‘sit out in the yard every morning and night with a shotgun’ strategy)…the victory will not be worth the cost.
Marriage and having siblings usually awaken us to the skill of ceding territory…but not always. We can’t have our territory OUR WAY all the time and share the planet or house with other people. I’ve awarded my special person the edges of the bed for his shoes…I thought of the ‘sitting watch with a shotgun’ ploy, but he’s sneaky, he’d distract me somehow. My picture of the world has all shoes in the closet. I do not get everything I want.
Now, as for giving up territory…let’s talk about Crazy Dog and her pushy ways….
A few years ago a man was murdered by a stranger on the shoulder of Interstate 35 in downtown Austin in the wee hours of the morning. Why?
Because the stranger beating the victim didn’t know when to ‘let it go.’ You see, the soon-to-be-dead guy had rear-ended the soon-to-be-a-murderer guy causing minor damage. The beater guy couldn’t get his head around how someone could not avoid his vehicle on the more or less deserted highway. He just couldn’t accept his world being invaded that way. The fellow who was rear-ended jumped the rear-ender once he stepped out of his car. He hit him about the face and head until the man collapsed.
Now here’s the kicker, so to speak. Realizing he’d truly hurt the guilty driver, the beater (who considered himself the victim) went into a 24 gas station and called 9-1-1. Then he returned to the fallen man and kicked the fallen man until he was dead.
The Point: You gotta know when to quit. And then quit.
How do you know when to quit? Just possibly, the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM could be a help.
CLASSIC SENTENCE: Put some facts around the situation. Factually- what are you really giving up by letting go of a grudge or injustice—real or imagined?
The EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is feeding us all sorts of malarkey:
Exaggerations on the degree to which we have been inconvenienced by an event or another person. (Everything I’ve worked for up to this point in my life is ruined!)
Exaggerations of physical and emotional harm. (I can’t take this, not on top of all the other unfairness I’m already suffering!)
Exaggerations of the other person’s motives (He didn’t even try to stop) and his or her overall character (You know the type.)
Challenge: Notice an irritation today…traffic, a co-worker doing what she always does, a spouse forgets to ___, a newspaper article that usually ticks you off,…and let it go.
Part Two follows…The Madwoman with the Elementary School View…How to Give Away Your Power…the war of little feet…
