Antidepressants, the Truth, and a Tribute, Pt.1

First, a Tribute 

It’s been a year now. 

Last summer a woman I met years ago when she was a new teacher full of ideas, ended her own life. She shot herself after a three hour stand-off with police. I mention the circumstances because it’s important for people to know this woman withstood many a hideous battle all by herself, including her last strugge.  A couple of years ago, she won her battles less often.  As she won less, she fought harder and harder, and with each loss she was more alone.  Doctors tried, but nothing worked and after a while of feeling helpless, professionals sometimes blamed her for her lack of success. I don’t blame them and neither did she.  She knew she was tough to be around.

Even on her last morning, she wanted to find some other way.

She was teacher of the year not that long ago.  She had lots of friends, a church family, and buddies who enjoyed hiking and kayaking and campfires with her. Emotional disorders sometimes come on fast…a manic episode…then the plummet to depression…the boat never quite in sync with the tide again.

What about medication, you ask?  What about therapy?  Why didn’t she try to get better?

She did. Just like everyone I’ve even seen with depression she tried very, very hard for days and weeks and then years. Does anyone really think that a depressed person would say “No!” if offered a way out?  

A person was trying to tell me about her depression once.  After the hour, we stepped outside.  The conference was being held in a beautiful city surrounded by mountains. I breathed in the crisp air at dusk and said, “What a great city, what a gorgeous sunset.”

She said, “That’s what I’m trying to tell you.  I don’t see a gorgeous sunset…ever.”

 

 

Stranger Anxiety….INVASION OF THE CRUISE PEOPLE…

Dateline: Seattle Hilton Branch Headquarters.    

Reasonable success is to be reported from the behind the lines attempt to approach a new experience with the Thinking Guidance System a bit ahead of Emotional Guidance System.  In other words, in the attempt to let the facts, rather than fears, direct behavior.

How many experiences have we not tried because we’ve made up scary barriers that do not exist?  Scary people who do not exist?  Who among us hasn’t approached an educational experience–like graduate school, for example–sure we are the only moron who slipped through the entrance requirements?  Personally, I always enjoyed the fantasy that brain surgeons were in a whole different category of brilliance from rest of us.  If someone is opening my skull, I wanted to think that person had something the rest of us didn’t….I especially wanted to believe their Emotional Guidance Systems never got the best of them.  Then I had to put out that marriage counselor shingle and shot the dickens out of that little fantasy. Oh well.

The ”Cruise People Fantasy,” is shared with the hope that the next time you are facing a new situation with new people, you can think of the Cruise People Fantasy and relax.

We were planning a cruise to celebrate our tenth anniversary.  That same summer the girls had a favorite retro show called “The Love Boat” featuring a cruise ship on which wonderful little romances happened. One evening we’re watching an episode which involved a gathering around the ship’s pool….and intermittently discussing what little tidbits we might need to add to our wardrobes before launching ourselves into the cruise people jet set.  The characters on the Love Boat were one hundred percent… women in bikinis and stilettos and men mostly preening in deck chairs with fancy cocktails siting on their  rock-hard abdomens.  Everyone had great hair and walked with grace. 

We studied the people around the Love Boat pool and concluded that investing in those expensive bathing suit covers was definitely called for.

Now picture what people on a cruise really look like.  Yep.  You got it.   We’re everyone of us…nuts.  Have a school reunion coming up?  Remember the Cruise People Fantasy and go forth.  And, don’t underestimate the value of a swimsuit cover.

Can People Change? Behind the Battlelines

I’m going in.

Teaching children with cerebral palsy to ride horses presented many challenges.  One I always remembered was when the child’s skills had advanced to the point she was ready to jump, I’d present the good news, then set a cross-bar.  Often my student would shrink back, saying she wasn’t ready, she was too afraid.  I’d insist, even urging the horse from behind if needed.  I’d explain…and this was a fact born of experience…that I’d push her forward even when she didn’t believe she was ready because I’d taught many students through this stage and… each and every one survived and was happy to have made it over that first jump, no matter how messy.

Now the truth was, in my head I’m thinking… “Take a jump on a horse chosen because he’s safe, a horse maybe not even awake?  You’ve got to be kidding!”  But I’d push, they’d limp over, and all ended up happy.

Often when I’m talking with someone in my office about working on managing anxiety, the picture comes back of the student rider on the ancient steed, and how I expected the rider to do what I didn’t have to do.

Thus, today…I’m going in behind the lines.  I’m going to knock the spider webs off my Thinking Guidance System and see if I can loosen up a self-defeating habit.

The Mission: Infiltrate a group of unknown people and function with an open heart and open mind.

To stretch…instead of allowing my (self protective) Emotional Guidance System’s warnings to run the show:  “You don’t have anything in common with these people.”  ”Just get in and out as quickly as possible, don’t obligate yourself or you will be sorry.”  And the biggee:  ”What if everyone there is a genius, is model thin, actually has spiffy coordinated outfits with scarves and big purses with designer buckles, drives a Bentley, has a house in the South of France, is a perfect wife who cooks and actually decorates her house instead of using the space to collect stuff from Mexico, is a great sister, a medal-winning mom, an acclaimed writer with a has a killer New York agent…What if?

Full Report to come.

Only One of Us Can Be Right, Right?

The Air Conditioning Controversy that Ended True Love

Our Emotional Guidance System is designed to rid us of anxiety.  Differences of opinion often, maybe even usually, generate anxiety.  Thus our Emotional Guidance Systemwill do whatever is necessary to obliterate differences of opinion.  The simplest method of disposing with differences of opinion is to insist on DUALISTIC thinking.  That is….Either I am right and you are wrong or….You are right and…naah…that’s unthinkable.

A woman was dating a fellow she really liked and he seemingly felt the same.  As they were leaving her house for their fifth date,

The lady paused and said, “Wait. I need to go back and turn up the air-conditioning.”

He said, “How high do you turn your air-conditioner up?”

She said, “I put it on eighty degrees.”

He said, “Eighty? Really?  I’ve heard that it’s actually harder on the system to turn it up that far, that it costs more to re-cool the house when you return, than if you’d just left the temperature down.”

She said, “That makes no sense at all.”

He said, “Well, actually, what I read was… etc.”

She said, “Ridiculous.  Do you believe everything you read?”

He said, “Ha.  Where are you getting your information?”

The rest isn’t hard to imagine.  The relationship ended without a fifth date.  Challenge:  To promote the development of the Thinking Guidance System, find at least one sticky situation today in which someone holds a different opinion, and allow the difference to ‘be’.  Strategy:  Have a freeing phrase handy such as, “That’s what makes for horseraces.”  Or, “That’s one of the things I like about working here, we’re not all alike on every issue.”  Or, “I guess none of us knows what we would really do if we were in someone else’s situation.”

Sometimes it helps to remember that each person has a right to their opinon.  I know, I don’t really buy it, either.  Secretly I believe that the only reason my spouse does not agree with me on absolutely everything is simply that I have not repeated myself often enough.  That one day, I’ll say, “You know, if you’d didn’t feed Crazy Dog from your plate, she’d be a more pleasant dinner companion.”  And, he’ll say, “Wow, you’re right.  I can’t believe I’ve been so thick-headed all these many years….Got any other ideas on how I can improve my life?” 

Sing Like the Whole World is Listening

How’s your “Own Little World?” 

How great would your own little world be if you were suddenly Star-Trek-rematerialized as a child beggar along a filthy bridge where no prospects came along beyond a few street drunks, a tourist or two from small Pacific Islands where newspapers are scarce….and one dopey blond who ignores the truth about Mexico today because her mother, who died suddenly at forty-two, had, along with Dad, every summer, loaded up the peach-colored van, the blond, her sister, and brother…to spend summers in Colonial cities and Indian villiages, while Mom wrote her travel column on Mexico adventures with children?

How great would your little world be if you were on that bridge?

Dateline: Tijuana, Mexico.  Crossing the riverbed bridge. 

Incident:  The day is hot and windy.  Sand swirls on the bridge stinging those very few of us who still dared to cross the Big Brown Line.  The landscape is grim.  The future looks worse.  The police wear masks to keep the drug lords’ slaves from taking their pictures then going to their homes and murdering their families. 

My Own Little World’s a mess.  My feet are killing me.  What’s wrong with me that I just had to come across?  What was I thinking?  I mean, the armed forces have banned their personnel from crossing into Mexico… Why do I get myself in these ridiculous situations? I hear a siren, and whirl heading back to the USA at a trot.  My head down, charging for the border, I hear a wild squeaking sound and tiny high-pitched shreiking voice.

What?  I spot her.  A little girl, in full Tarahumara modest garb–full-length dress, hightop leather shoes, leggings, and a straw hat.  Maybe five, probably four.  She sits with her back braced on the inner wall of the bridge, her legs stuck out in front of her.  Her blue-black Indian hair squirts off her scalp in pert ponytails.  On her lap she holds a squeezebox.  Her eyes are closed but still she’s grinning big-time.  She’s singing a tune only she knows as loud as she can and clutching her squeezebox in and out with her happy screeching.  She’s having a good time in the middle of all this.  She’s singing her song as if the whole world and all the angels are listening.

How can she do that?    Who knows?   Exactly, I mean.  If there was a formula, if it were as easy as positive thinking, there’d be no exaggerated braking and hand-signalling on the freeway, no relentless dieting and gaining and useless machine buying, no avoiding high school reunions, no picking at the spouse when we know that action never turns out well, no criticizing at all since criticism is only anxiety shot outward and stuck on someone else.

Behind me, in the bar of my San Diego Hilton national world branch office I hear an ESPN story asking if a quarterback with too many interceptions had considered suicide . . . And I see that little girl’s estatic face.  Sure, she had a dirty paper cup between her ankles, hoping.  Sure, her shawled four foot mother was only a block away holding the cheap bead earrings she’d strung last night into the path of every hopeful.

Why this blog?  I want what that little girl with nothing had.  I want you to have it, too.

But ours will not be a journey for the weak or the crowd looking for easy answers.  Take that back.  For I’m certainly among the weak.  However I am determined.  There’s no easy formula for managing what goes on inside our chest cavity….no list of tricks to change our hearts and our energies…  Speaking for myself, of course.  Could be for you…being told to “get over it,” “think positive,” and “Dr. L. on the radio telling you to grow up and do what she–as a descended goddess of all that is ‘right’…maybe that  works for you.  Naaah….

You’ve read this far, so you’re trying along with me.  You’re trying to better understand and learn to manage anxiety. 

“Which is more important?  The world of facts, the world you can touch?  Or the world you are making up to fit your fears?  The world you are responding to?”

Come along….Next we take a look at how we’ve put our own little worlds together….

The goal?  To sing like the world and all the angels are listening.  Nothing less.  I will settle for nothing less.  Yes…I’m going crazy.  Care to join me?  The music’s terrific. 

Note: For those of you still wondering, I haven’t forgotten I still owe a Mexico confession of utter Emotional Guidance System idiocy. 

 

 

 

How to Appreciate Breathing

Small animals, with their short lives, remind us to live in the now. 

Head colds remind us to enjoy good days when we can breathe and our head doesn’t feel like it’s caught in a fan belt.

This Human is Currently Being Serviced…

This human is “currently being serviced.” 

When a machine is broken at the gym, instead of a sign saying it’s broken, a placard is placed on the machine explaining, “This equipment is currently being serviced.”

The wording “is currently being serviced” takes into account that the inconvenience is temporary, that with time and tweaking, the equipment will return to regular duties.

Today is a Maintenance Day.   

A Maintenance Day is a day when you don’t try to “get any better” at anything.  When the best you can hope for is to keep from sliding backward…in your work, your relationships, in the journey toward your goals. 

A Maintenance Day is a day when every time you reach for an item, you knock something else over.

A Maintenance Day is a day when you turn corners, and bang your knees.

A Maintenance Day is a day when no good ideas are coming to the front of your brain.

A Maintenance Day is a day when you make a clever remark and realize you’ve hurt someone’s feelings.

A Maintenance Day is a day when the long-term goals you set for yourself mock you as impossible. “Who do you think you are?”

A Maintenance Day is a day when your Emotional Guidance System is running your show….you are taking everything personally….your refection in the mirror is a monster….you are throwing generalizing words—never, always, everyone, those (old, young, leftwing, rightwing, reality-television watchers, people who don’t like reality television, techno-geniuses, techno-duds,)…the guy who ran the yellow light, and the guy who honked when you ran the yellow light….

A Maintenance Day is a day when, first and foremost, you must be your very own very best friend and take care of yourself.  Breathe.  Cool air in, warm air out.  Remind yourself of the facts about you.  You are a hard worker. Most days you have good ideas.  Most days you can take a step toward that distant goal. Most days…but not today.

Today the goal is…to keep from sliding backwards.  To keep from turning everyone we meet into a target.  Sometimes we are the equipment “currently being serviced.”  

Say ‘Yes’ When You Mean ‘No’? Blame Other Person

How much of our lives do we spend doing things we don’t want (or need) to do because we say, “Yes” when we meant “No?”   I’m not talking about the things we do that make us uncomfortable, but are the ” right” things, such as family activities or the temptation we humans have to want to give up when we “feel” defeated, and claim we didn’t really choose the goals we’ve set for ourselves.  I’m talking about all the many opportunities when we know our participation is not necessary, but we say ”Yes” to escape the anxiety arousedwith displeasing another person…who by definition…can do without our contribution. 

And, you are never safe.  Never.  When you least expect it, someone else.. whose super-powers are hidden under the disguise of a being a “helper” will recognize your weakness and pounce… taking control of your feelings and your life with the skill of the ’Body Snatchers’.  Helpers.  Yeah, right.  

One of these “helpers” attacked me minutes ago.  She forced me to carry items she knew I couldn’t manage, and almost got me killed in a car accident….Okay, maybe not killed, but I did veer over onto the shoulder at the height of the action.  Also, the scene on the front seat was prit-tee messy.

I believe it is my duty to warn you about this woman.  There I was, all gears running with my Best Thinking in charge, my Emotional Guidance System on the back burner, at about 9:45 PM in Dallas picking up supper at Eatzi’’s to take to my Dallas Hilton branch headquarters.  Okay, just  to cover my bases.  Just maybe… when I had them box up five huge shrimp ($39,99 a pound), my Emotional Guidance System had a bit of influence. 

Back to the Dragon Lady.  She appeared from nowhere, a small woman really.  She was just there in front of me as I exited with her chef’’s desert tray locked and loaded. The Body Snatcher disguised as a chef  offers me a giant chocolate-covered strawberry or perhaps, a whipped cream-loaded mini tart with a strawberry, blueberries and fresh pineapple.  I say, quite nicely and sincerly as I’m  not really big on sweets, and I had my sidesaddle loaded down with shrimp,  ”No, thanks.”  You’d think  a person could see I wasn’t in the market and move on, but she didn’t.  Which only makes the resulting shoulder-veering incident more obviously the responsibility of this demon-disguised-as-helper person. 

You see, she kept on with level two presure…guilt. ”If you don’t take them, we’ll just throw them away.”  What could I do?  I took not one but three, thinking, oh well, I’ll say “yes” to escape the immediate anxiey, then throw them in the trash on my way out.  Did I mention these treats were on flimsy lacy things….maybe what happened is the responsibility of whoever made those lacy doily things…

I head of Eatzi’s for the car balancing the shrimp, two kinds of sauce, a container of coleslaw and now three gooey treats not in containers.  I reach the first trash can….I look back.  The Dragon Lady isn’t watching, but there are several peolple sitting at the outdoor table who saw me accept the goodies.  No way I can throw them away now.  After all,  what kind of person will these Total Strangers  think I am?

Thus I climb in, settle the seafood shotgun and the treats on the dash, handy to throw out when I reach hotel across the street.  Which would have worked maybe,  if they hadn’t started to slide when a car pulled out in front  of me, and I had’t jerked the wheel in a  fruitless attempt atpreveningt the treats sliding onto the seat and the floor.

Who is responsible for this debacle?  Eatzi’s.  They shouldn’t make more items than they can sell each day.  The Dragon Lady.  She should have picked up on my “not a sweets person” vibe and left me alone.  The people sitting at the table outside .  If they hadn’t so obviosly been judging me, I could have rid myself of the problem.  The guy who pulled out of the drive onto the road.  Well, that’s just obvious.  He knew it was me and that I was in a precarious situation,  but decided to pull out in front of me to show his disrespect. 

Me?  Nada….  I’m a victim.  What’s that you say?….I had a choice?  That I could have said “No” and the chef lady would probably gotten over it? 

Oh.  I know I only gave two elements of the Triple Blame Whammy.  Three’s coming.

Psychobabble Fun Break, In a Way

I am in bad shape and it’s not my fault!  Time for a break in the hard work.   I was very, very wrong about that ‘taking responsibility for your feelings’ idea. I’m a mess and it’s not my fault.  My condition is the responsibility of a certain personal trainer….who tied me down, drugged me, and forced me to lift things. I’ve seen him working with other people and he’s definitely got serious problems.  Probably his father was a ruthless, cold man…and now I’m paying for it….I think the personal trainer shouldn’t have suggested I do another rep. In fact, I think maybe he’s a sadist.   Either that or I didn’t take charge, let my Emotional Guidance System decide my pace. 

Dateline:  Imaginary ‘hospital’ bed in home office.  Definition: my regular side of bed, but with every human need within reach. Which means it’s pretty crowded in here with my laptop, remote for the television, remote for the overhead fan, remote for the alternate DVR….chips, salsa, two Cokes, three glasses of ice, Exedrin, bottles, Crazy Dog, Crazy Dog’s pink monkey, her ‘baby’, her ‘jingle bell’ ball, her squeaky penguin, her purple hippo, the yardstick for scratching Crazy Dog when her snoring block out all other sounds…and a dozen pillows arranged to shield my joints and muscles from movement.  

 

Once more, instead of governing my life according to ‘best thinking’ and painful mountains of past experience…when caught in the HOVER ZONE...that place between the cookie that was just enough and all the others…the place where the light turns yellow, you know you should hit the brakes, and you hurry on through…the moments of indecision before you hit the ’snooze’ one time too many…for me, the hover place occurred at the gym between the moment my body screamed, “Stop! Sure, you’re impressing yourself and keeping up with your partner…but stop!  If you keep going you are going to pay. You’ve done this before, many times, always with the same result,”…and when I’d gritted my teeth and said, “Sure, no problem at all.”

Come to think of it, my husband was there.  Why didn’t he stop me?  I think my current state is his fault. 

The hover.  The Emotional Guidance System.  Without it none of us would be overweight r afraid or smoke or drink too much or even do too many reps because you (I) couldn’t say, “You gotta be kidding” to the twenty-year-old guy at the gym who made the suggestion….but these aches and pains are not all his fault.  I think the personal trainer gets forty percent responsibility, the husband gets forty percent, and that chick in the spandex shorts-bikini who trots from one machine to another gets ten percent responsibility.  

How to Get Other People to THROW ROCKS at You…

During my first year of graduate school, one of my friends who’d married a wealthy man seventeen years her senior, called with marital troubles. Already after midnight, we met at an all night restaurant near campus for coffee and burgers. 

My friend was a mess (unlike me, already married, divorced, living on Fresca and Vienna Sausages in the back room of someone else’s house). “I’m so confused, I don’t even know what to order,” my friend, let’s call her ‘Jane,’ said. “I’m really hungry and French fries sound good, but I don’t think I like French fries….At least, I know I haven’t ordered fries in a very long time and I’ve been saying I don’t like them…. I think I only started saying that because my husband is worried I’ll get fat.”

One advanced psych course under my belt, I leaned forward, bubbling with stereotypic warnings about domineering men. Jane listened. She ordered French fries. I felt like a well-loved missionary.

Jane went on to explain that things with her husband had been bumpy from the start. He turned out to be a screamer, and she’d told herself if he ever went so far as to hit her, she’d leave him. He did and she didn’t. Six months into the marriage signs popped up indicating that her husband’s playboy ways were still active. Jane said she’d told herself if she ever knew for sure that he’d cheated on her, she’d leave him.  That afternoon she’d found irrefutable evidence of an ongoing affair.  She was leaving him and needed help.

Well, now ‘help’ was my new middle name.  I bought a newspaper and circled rentals in her price range. I made a list of the calls she needed to make to the electric company, cable company, and a good lawyer of course. I raved on and on about how much better my life had been since I’d split the blanket, how I’d learned my lesson, how now we could be better friends again.

Jane dipped fries in catsup and nodded.  A couple of hours later we hugged ‘good-bye’ with Jane saying how lucky she was to have a friend like me who knew what to do when she did not know where to turn.  She’d be in touch in a week or so, when she had things settled.      

I heard nothing for over a year. Then Jane and I ran into each other at a movie theater.  She’d moved out from her husband about two weeks before and had been thinking of calling me. (Only two weeks before?)   “I should have called you,” Jane said.  “But the funniest thing happened after we met at that restaurant. The next night I had a dream where I was walking alone on a deserted beach. It was evening and a storm was brewing, though I didn’t feel any danger. Then something hard hit me in the head. I turned and there you were, behind me. You were throwing rocks at me.”

… Oh.  

 

Reduce Stress, Stop Telling Other People What to Do

Dateline: San Diego Mission Valley Hilton Branch National World Headquarters.  Update on management of self-inflicted flight stress: minimal peanut delivery anxiety; mildly distracting doo-looping irritation with the man in the seat in front of me who thought just because his seat was adjustable, he was free to spend three hours crushing the book I was reading. Eight Hertz courtesy buses passed while I waited on the sidewalk for an Avis bus.  Potential personal insults from possible less-than-perfect television, still to be determined.

Okay.  To continue thinking about how we get ourselves in trouble with our human need to tell other people what to do…  “Helping” is sometimes nothing more than our effort to get rid of our own anxiety.  Anxiety is our physical and automatic response to real or perceived threat. 

One pretty useless, but highly seductive method of dealing with anxiety that pops up around another person’s behavior…is to try to change their behavior.  Of course, we do not admit that we are trying to change their behavior so that we can calm down—it doesn’t even seem to us that we could possibily be doing that.  The way we see it, we are only trying to help the other person to change because our way is better.  Because once they’ve changed they’ll agree.  Probably even be grateful and see us as really cool and smart.

Thus, when we make a royal pain of ourselves trying to change another person…No matter how bloody annoyed the person we are “helping” becomes…we can rock back on our heels and humbly say, “Gee, I was only trying to help.” 

And maybe we were.  But “helping,” particularly when our efforts are unsolicited (see Obsessed Stranger Lady and the Chicken Noodle Incident), is a tricky proposition. 

When are we “trying to help” and when are we merely “uncomfortable” with the behavior of another person and wanting them to change to keep us calm? 

Picture that you have two lists.  On one, you list the behaviors of the people around you that you wish were changed, but do not directly affect you.  Next make a list of the behaviors of other people that you wish were different, and that do have a direct affect on your life experience.

When your partner breaks the agreement the two of you have on spending, the behavior affects you directly; when your partner spends agreed upon leisure money in activities or on items you do not value—those are behaviors that do not affect you directly.

Okay…Right away, we have a problem.  Highly reactive people will claim that everything anyone does that they become aware of in person or from other sources, directly affects them.  And, before you jump to “Oh but that’s not me,” remember we’re all highly reactive some of the time.  It’s wired in to being human.

So, why is it so hard to let other people be?  Our faithful Emotional Guidance Systems.  The EGS is threatened easily and sends us into unattractive spins.  Our Emotional Guidance Systems scream:  “You SHOULDN’T be (drive, cook, eat, read, choose a husband, think, worship, email, talk, call, answer, vote, dress, spend money, etc.) the way you are!”  “The way you do (all those things) is terrible and awful and MUST be changed.”  “I can’t stand for you to continue (all those things) the way you do!”

It is quite exhausting going through the world in high threat, continuous evaluation mode.  The pay’s not too good either.

“Helping” others to slow our own anxiety is quite popular and will be the topic of the next several posts.

 

 

The Secret of Life . . .

A man of great wisdom, respected all over his land as a seer and a visionary, was on his death bed.  Thousands of students and followers lined up, single file, from his bedside out the door, down the sidewalk, out into the streets, down by the riverside, and winding for miles up into the hills.  His most loyal and favorite follower had the honor of standing next to the prophet.  Feeling his was surely drawing his last breath, the oracle motioned for his favored student to lean in to hear his last words.

He said weakly: “Life . . . is like a river.”

The student nodded, absorbing this great revelation.  He turned to the man behind him, motioned him in close and whispered, ”Life is like a river.”  He turned and passed along this secret of life to the man behind him . . . “Life is like a river” . . . and so the revelation was passed from one man to the next and on and on down by the riverside and up into the hills.  At long last the great man’s proclamation reached the last soul, “Life is like a river,” the next to the last man told him.  This last follower tipped his head to the side, and asked, “Hey, what does he mean, ‘Life is like a river’?” 

“Hmm…mm…the next to last man said, and tapped the student just in front of him on the shoulder, and asked him, “What does he mean ‘Life is like a river’?”  The listener nodded and asked the person in front of him, “What does he mean, ‘Life is like a river’?”  . . . and thus, the question passed down from the hills and along the riverside, along the streets, down the sidewalk, into the house, into the bedroom, and finally reaching the ear of the favorite student.  He leaned into the great man and asked, “What did you mean, ‘Life is like a river’?”

The sage blinked, looked up at the student and said, “Okay, then.  So life . . . isn’t like a river.” 

. . . Editorial in next post.

The Obsessed Stranger Lady takes the Psychologist Down 5

The Obsessed Stranger Lady couldn’t get me off her mind.  My very existence took away from her day.

 The next day, three films had gone by with only myself and one other faithful soul, the Innocent Movie-Goer (the daytime films are not well attended) in the theater.  Before the next film, I asked the Innocent Movie-Goer if it would take away from his film enjoyment if I went up into the back corner and opened my laptop?  “Of course not,” he said, a little worried now that the person asking such a bizarre question was in the dark theater with him.  Now, this time I wasn’t going to be so easily caught.  I went up to the top row of seats (huge theater….dozens of rows…big empty space….nobody…just me and the “okay, sure” guy.)  But, just to please the “Obsessed Stranger Lady,” I decided to forego even sitting in the seats.    

 I sat on the floor behind the rows in a little nook to the side of the projection booth. I turned with my back to the screen, just in case Obsessive Stranger Lady peeked in again, spotted me, and called the state police.

A few minutes later I hear the now familiar approaching steps.  Oh, yes.  The Obsessive Stranger Lady hovered over me and again asked me what I was doing.  I answered as factually as I could, sprinkling in apologies for disturbing the imaginary audience.  I was a little scared at the this point, kind of like the story where a person is tried for a crime and the jury comes back with this verdict, “We find the woman innocent.  But we think she should be locked up anyway.”

The Obsessed Stranger Lady let me in on the world she was responding to, turning away and saying.  “I just think there’s something wrong with a person who’d come into a theater and open their laptop.”

Well, okay.  At least she didn’t make that little call to the film police.

We all have an Obsessed Stranger Lady inside us and she’s a real bore.  But, ah-ha there’s a cure!  Later.

The Obsessed Stranger Lady and the Psychologist, Round Three, 4

How panicked should we be when another person gets us in their sites?  I’m not talking about a “stalker” in the criminal sense.  But when you feel as if you have a target on your back?  That someone has an opinion of you and you can’t change it?   Of course, I can’t write three sentences in a row without saying . . . There’s only one person we can change.  And, as we go lilting through this example, the most productive thing you can do (besides chuckle, chuckles always good) is to think of a time when you have “targeted” someone who doesn’t think like you or value what you value.

I do not believe that the Obsessed Stranger Lady is caught in ways I am not caught.  My obsessions are just different and better rationallized.  When I make comments about those clippy women walking through the airport in high heels and appropriate seasonall outfits, carrying giant garment bags like they’re nothing and rolling a computer without even breathing hard or stumbling or crashing into every out-stretched foot…really…”What’s wrong with those women?” …oh, yeah.  They’re vain and shallow and probably spreading flu viruses everywhere…surely,  “those women” couldn’t be all that bright…

Back to the Darkened Theater.  The Obsessed Stranger Lady approached once and suggested I stop bothering imaginary movie watchers.  (See previous two posts to catch up.) Not too scary, right?  I didn’t think about it again, until a few hours later when I was in a series of student short films as the only audience.  Wanting to open my laptop again, but wanting to make sure I wouldn’t disturb anyone who might come in, I climbed up to the corner of the huge empty theater, sat in the corner seat. . .  and lifted. . . the . . . lid of terror.    Clicking along and still alone in the theater, the woman spotted me when she peeked in the theater to count the audience (me).  Spotting me clinging from the back roof, the OSL rushed up the stairs to my side.  She demanded to know, what , exactly, I was doing?  I answered.  She responded by informing me of the prison sentence I would receive for taping the films . . . a sentence she clearly believed I deserved regardless of what I doing.  I explained I had no such intention and offered for her to check out my lowly laptop.  (”Nothing would thrill the student film students more than having their short films pirated and zipping around the Internet,” …I was thinking, but I didn’t say that either.)  OSL snarled.  I explained that, I would never want to disturb anyone’s viewing experience, which is why I’d positioned myself where I had (in the empty theater).  Obsessive Stranger Lady walked down the many empty rows, disgusted, wheels turning about what kind of person I was. Deep sighs all around.

You’d think I’d wise up about the importance of not annoying invisible people.  But no, I dared again.  I paid the price.  . . Manana, I promise.  I’m working on shorter posts.  So there you go.  Now, you KNOW  just what kind of person would do that.  Not really.  If you were that easy, you wouldn’t still be reading.

The Darkened Theater, the Psychologist and the Obsessed Stranger Lady, Round One, 3

“Which is more important when someone encounters you for the first time?  The world of facts about you?  Or the other person’s assumptions about people like you?”

When someone meets you or sees you or hears of you, who do they think you are?”  (Of course, what they think of you is none of your business, but we’ll get to that.)

In the Darkened Theater Incident involving the Psychologist, the Innocent Movie-Goer, and the Obsessed Stranger Lady (OSL), I happened to become important to the OSL. I didn’t want to be important to the stranger.  Yet, I was chosen.  And this is how is happened. . .

A local film festival has been showing movies of all lengths and types over the last several days.  As this is one of my favorite local activities, as usual, I settled for the show at a theater far from my personal International World Headquarters.  So far, so good. 

I arrived just as one film was rolling final credits, and as I could see no one remaining in the theater, I entered, walked about half-way up, and opened my laptop to check e-mail during the break.  Which I did.  When the lights came up, a woman I hadn’t seen walked over to say that my laptop screen was very distracting.  I apologized profusely, saying the last thing I would want would be to take away from anyone’s movie experience.  I hadn’t realized anyone was in the theater. (”Or felt they couldn’t stand to be slightly distracted as the last three credits rolled,” but I didn’t say that part.) I kept it to myself that I’d always assumed… to be rude, other people had to be present.

This was the first time.  But only the first time the Obsessed Stranger Lady was to hunt me down.  Round Two. . . Manana.

 

 

The Psychologist, the Movie-Goer, and the Obsessed Stranger, 2

 What happens when someone decides they know who you are based on one factor? 

“Which is more important?  The world of facts, or the world we are responding to?”

“Which is more important? The person we are?  Or, the person others think we are?”

Part of the world we are responding to is “what other people think” about us.       Keep in mind . . . Our version of  ”what other people think,” of course,  has little to do with “what other people actually think.” 

Note:  For now, we’re on how other people “make up who we are”, but no smugness here.  Since there’s only one person we can change–our focus on the “other people out there doing crazy things” will be brief.  Then we’re back to what we can do about the crazy world by managing ourselves.

Whew. . . . Let’s get back to the darkened theater, the Innoncent Movie-goer and the scary, Obsessed Stranger Lady.  We’re not talking a simple encounter. We are talking about what happens when a person decides they know who you are, using one feature, no matter how fleeting. (See previous post for lead.)

The Obsessed Stranger Lady in the movie theater decided that the Psychologist movie-goer had a “mental” or at least a serious “moral” problem.  The Innocent Movie-goer kept his opinion to himself, thereby, perhaps, remaining uncategorized in the story.  The “Obsessed Stranger Lady came at me out of the darkness . . . not once, but three times.  Before the hideous series of encounters were over–If indeed they are. . . .( I do suspect that someone is secretly going through our trash because of the rumors about… oh, never mind)– the Obsessed Stranger Lady asked me if I ever considered other people’s feelings (I thought to be rude, there had to be other people around). . . threatened to have me arrested . . . and topped it off by admitting she “just didn’t understand how anyone could be” like me and live with themselves . . . 

The Obsessed Stranger Lady knew only one thing about me. And from observing that one thing (it’s a behavior, not a purple horn or anything coming out of my head) she she . . . she couldn’t get me out of her mind.  She was very angry with me.  I do not know her.  I couldn’t pick her out of a line-up.  She’d like to see me in a line-up.  Or, in front of a firing squad.

Why? . . .  Manana.

The Psychologist, the Innocent Movie-Goer, and the Obsessed Lady, 1

Anyone who says they don’t care what anyone else thinks is lying.  So there, we’re all big ole liars.  But, hey.  Remember, those of us taking the journey with a sense of humor can find ways to survive.

Have you ever had someone make up their mind about you… when they didn’t know anything about you except for one element?  Say your size?  Your age?  Your skin color? Your lack of fashion sense?  Your outstanding fashion sense?  Your education?       Your television preferences?  (even though you only mentioned that reality show once and you never watched it again?), Your resemblence to a second cousin in prison? Or maybe the blogs you follow?(Eek!)

What do people think of you?  And why?   “Which is more important?  The world of facts about you?  Or the world of made-up beliefs, half-baked opionions about you?” 

It’s so confusing.  No one agrees what’s important and what’s not. The very people we decide to please, and twist ourselves into pretzels for, turn out to be unreliable.  Sheesh.  They change what they think of us because they hear one unfortunate story.   Or they hear a story in which we are really quite the star, but the listener doesn’t “like” the storyteller and so now they think less of us.  Oh, this is so confusing and hard to juggle.   Could be a person’s entire opinion could be determined by hunger.  I mean I’m over it now, but that twiggy little flight attendant who ran out of almonds just in front of my row… and those rude passengers, gloating and flapping their little foils packs over their heads…

The Psychologist, the Innocent Movie-Goer, and the Obsessed Stranger Lady . . . in the Dark Movie Theater….Manana.

How to Take Care of Yourself

Want to have a good day today?  You can.  Hold your hands waist high in front of  you about four inches apart.  Let the fingers curl slightly forming personal vessels.  Now imagine a little bird in each hand, bright little eyes, full of life.  These birds are “you.”

Imagine these birds are you, maybe one is “heart,” one is “soul.”  But they are you, and you are in charge of taking care of them.  How will you hold “you” through today?

Kindly, gently?  Off and on today they will flutter a little.  Will you crush your little bird selves with criticism and fear?  “What’s wrong with me?  When will I ever get things right?  Why don’t I have more self-control.  I’m an idiot!”

How forgiving should you be of your bird-selves?  What about when your birds are tweeting, even squealing in pain?  Should you clamp down then?  In pain, those tweety babies will cause the middle finger of your non-driving hand to jump out the car window and wave at a passing driver.  Struggling for air, those birdies will have you spreading gossip, trying to get air from others. Some people even make cuts on their birdies.

It’s such a responsibility to be your own best friend.  To take care of your birds.  It would be nice if we could manipulate someone else into taking over the job of holding our birds.  And we try, we audition for feedback, for a lover, a friend, a spouse to take over the job. In a movie titled, “Shopping to Belong,” immigrants talk about consumerism became a lifestyle once they were in the U.S., because “In America, people assume they know everything about you by what you have and what you look like.”

So we should spend our lives buying golden bird shelves, tightening up our little birds’ butts, and spend the time we have left over, decorating our birds?

That’s what our Emotional Guidance System says, because that loser, fear-driven part of our brain is incapable of making choices based on anything except “What if” and exaggeration.

You’re in charge of your little bird’s day.  No one else can do it for you, because their “hands are full” of birds.

Our Thinking Guidance System is capable of saying, “Hey, no need to panic little birdies.  We’re going to be just fine.  Because, I’m in charge.”  

Coming: The Incident of the “The Psychologist, Two Movie-Goers, and the Obsessed Stranger. ”

The Blob is Coming. Will the Blob Take You Down?

Down with the Blobs!  Stay in charge of you!

In 1958 one of the original horror flicks came out – “The Blob.”   In this movie, two teenagers (one of them Steve McQueen) see a streak of light coming to the Earth, as if something from outer space had fallen nearby.  They investigate and find a Blob of red waxy material.  A man touches the Blob and the Blob begins to devour him.  Now the Blob isn’t large compared to the man.  It’s about the size of a couple of mushed doughnuts.  But, when the Blob attaches, it begins to take whatever it touches into itself and becomes larger.

Imagine that what has landed at the end of that streak of light is a  Blob of negativity. Thus, when you are touched by the Blob and the pores in your emotional skin are too open, the Blob will take you over. You no longer can choose the quality of your inner state.  You feel what the Blob feels.

In the movie, the Blob takes on whole rooms full of people. In the most famous scene, the Bloboozes through a movie theater smooshing in all the people together in one single way of thinking, or a single huge rolling ball in this case. If you think that can’t happen, think back to the underground shelters and secret storage cellars collected to meet the disaster of 2000.  Think of a KKK rally fed by paranoia and hate.

So, here’s the challenge.  Can you encounter a Blob person and just flick that sucker off.  Can you say, “No thanks. Not buying negative today.  Keep rolling, rolling, rolling, right over me. No oozing up with the Blob for me, today.”

Oh, but you say—“Aren’t people whose pores are open the most sensitive people?  If by sensitive you mean “unable to stay separate,” then you are talking–not able people with the capacity to feel and care about the suffering of others– but about people who automatically absorb suffering.  Absorbing suffering immobilizes and helps no one.  Recognizing suffering can change the world. 

Okay, how did we get from dodging a monster red Blob to changing the world?  Let’s back up to changing our inner world, which will have the effect of changing the world.  If you have any doubts, as your special people if you being a more optimistic person would change their life. 

Here’s where we get back to the Emotional Guidance System.  The most likely Blob you’ll encounter will be that little Torturer on your shoulder, saying things in your ear like, “Who do you think you are? You’re not smart enough, strong enough, attractive enough.  Not to mention you’re too tired, frustrated and unlucky to reach your goals.  Time to flick that sucker.

Note:  Steve McQueen was paid $2500 for his part in the movie.

 

 

NOW…BE HERE… NOW

There is a man walking a hard and narrow high mountain path.  Below him all sorts of horrors await should he make one false step …tiny flies sting his eyes so desperately he’s tempted to close them and avoid even trying to continue his journey.

The lofty goals he set for himself are now lost in clouds so thick he cannot remember what they are.  Why is he even here?  What’s the point of one foot in front of the other, and by the way, his feet are hurting.  He’s thinking, “I’m too old for this.  I’m too fat for this.  I think I’m getting a headache which could mean another virus is about to ruin my week.”

He slips.  Suddenly, he drops off the side of the mountain. On the way down,  his hands grasping as he slides, his fingers close around a branch.  Not a strong branch.  Not a branch that will last forever, but a branch for NOW.

As he hangs there…. he sees just in front of his face a wild strawberry bush with one strawberry on it.  Only one, but it is a perfect strawberry. He picks it, enjoys the rich red color, then takes a bite.  Not looking down, not search the mountaintop for rescue, he pops the rest of the strawberry into his mouth.  His whole attention is on the wonder of that strawberry. 

This is you.   That is me.  Now.

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