The young psychology student came to me with a question. “Do you, as an experienced psychologist, think there is any value in reading the works of Sigmund Freud?”   I said, I thought so, but I can be entertained reading the back of a juice box, so I wouldn’t take my word as the final say.

She explained her reason for asking.  She’d been on a plane to New York reading her first real text on personality development which happened to focus on the theories of Sigmund Freud. The subject matter and new ideas had her excited about her chosen field of study.  As the plane taxied into the JFK terminal, her seatmate, whom we shall call Killjoy, asked her what she’d been reading. 

The Lady Who Loved Freud spilled forth with enthusiasm, sharing a couple of highlights.  Her seatmate, a Gentleman’s Quarterly dressed fellow (Why is the culprit messing with our world…always dressed better than we are?)…the sophisticated appearing man said, “Well, I guess some non-scientific people still read that kind of fluff.”

The Lady Who “Maybe” Loved Freud said to me, “I’m asking you because his remark took the edge off my mood. I started thinking maybe I’m not intellectual enough to ever be a psychologist.”

Whoa. 

The movie Inception is about a team of experts who can access your subconscious using secret sedatives and gadget machines.  Once into your subconscious, the team can “steal” your thoughts. The services of the “thought stealers” are bought by corporations who want to get a jump on impending company decisions and make a killing.

The thought stealing process is difficult for DiCaprio and his team to perform, but there is an even higher level of service offered.  This service is more complex and trickier and involves “planting” an idea or thought.  The thought plant technique used is a way to win the corporate wars.

As is said several times in the movie, once an idea is planted it multiples on its own in the brain.  “The idea grows and grows until it defines you or destroys you.” (Best guess at exact words.)

What I kept asking myself throughout the movie was, “Why are these guys going to all this trouble when planting an idea that grows and grows and changes behavior is really quite simple?”

This is not a movie review.  Just one freakish dame in cargo shorts sitting on the second row…thinking.

Remember the folks who built shelters and bought stockpiles of food to survive the turn of the millennium?  And what about the Heaven’s Gate followers who consented to castration and suicide as a way to meet up with the mother ship?  And Hitler?  Who hasn’t wondered how it was possible to convince Nazi underlings to load humans into freight train cars and worse?

The “Inception” technique was nowhere around.

Let’s go closer to home.  The girl who ends up battling anorexia switches to a food denial and compulsive exercise after a Saturday night when she and her friends are loading into a car and she is told to sit in front since she’s not “small.”  What about those careless words your special person said during an argument years ago, the cutting remarks you bring back to torture yourself when you’re down?  What about a criticism that remains with you as a secret fear….What if I am selfish like Mother said?

Sometimes an upset stranger in a passing car can do the trick.  Or, we can come up with thoughts, all by ourselves, that grow like bacteria.  What about the idea that “I not happy now, but when I lose the weight I’ll be happy….I’d love to write a memoir, but I’m not smart enough…I’d love to travel, but it’s too expensive for someone like me….”    

Maybe we step on the scales…or run into a friend who looks so much better than we do…or overhear an invitation to lunch when we haven’t been invited…or speak with a friend whose kids are incredibly successful…

And, thus, Mysteryshrink.com is about how to possibly make a dent in managing our emotions, thoughts, and actions…a little better…not collosal better like Budha or women who look good in shorts and cowboy boots….just a tiny bit better.  I’m in.

How would you recognize me here?  I’d be the only English speaker around. The rest of the U.S. reads the news before picking a destination. 

But then, it depends on which news you read.

#1 LA Times:   Mexican police say they have found 12 mutilated corpses in hidden graves on the outskirts of Cancun, the latest sign drug-related violence is spreading to the popular tourist destination. The grim find is at least the second such discovery this month…. Mexico City newspaper: A shootout between Mexican soldiers and gunmen Tuesday left at least 14 people dead in the nearby scenic mining town of Taxco, known to tourists for its silver jewelry. Fifty bodies were recently discovered in an abandoned silver mine shaft.

#2 Mexico City Travel Welcome:  2010 promises to be a banner year for tourism in Mexico as tourism promotion programs recently set into motion begin to bear fruit for the benefit of you, our welcome guests…

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists or the world you are responding to?  The one your making up as you go along?”

How can you tell if your fears are keeping you from an experience?  Or, if facttually, to attempt the experience would be be walk into real danger?  The fears that keep us chronically anxious and stressed are, almost always, imaginary fears. What if fears.  What if I embarrass myself?  What if others think I’m too fat? WHAT IF I WASTE MY WHOLE LIFE AFRAID of being a size larger than….Well, than I am?  What if I never get married?  What if I’m late? 

My goal with this post is to ask you to examine your fears and come a little closer, perhaps, to being able to recognize facts over fears.  Now, I’m talking about searching out facts, not about blindly following your dream like the star of the self-made movie,Grizzly.  Yes, in spite of every fact from experts who actually were in place to know….this man took his camera to Alaska to make his movie. Which he did. Well, someone else had to do the final editing since he was eaten by his movie stars. Yes, our man looked into his own camera and laughs saying, “Sure, I might die doing this, but just remember I’ll have died doing what I love.”

I don’t think what he loved was screaming bloody hell while a grizzly chewed on his head.  I don’t think any he experienced any profound joy watching the girlfriend he talked into coming shared by two grisslies.

Grizzley man ignored facts from those who knew first hand and then played victim, in his case, literally.  What I’m suggesting is that most of err in the opposite direction, helped along by media hype.  I’m not blaming the media….the job of every form of print, video, and, yes, internet page…is to get you to put your eyes to the screen or page…so that you will see the ads.  Therefore, without sensationalism, the system doesn’t work. How long would Nancy Grace last opening her program with, “No bombshells tonight…”

The quest for those of us (however shakily embarking on the journey toward a more self-designed life)…is to separate facts from emotionally driven claims.  And, none of us have time to follow-up more than the areas directly affecting our choices. 

My point here is that the death roles of the drug cartel wars here in Mexico do not include psychologists on ripped from their computers.  Get the facts.  Two of the excuses I hear most often when someone laments not following a dream are:  It’s too dangerous, or I can’t afford it.  People do what they choose to do (maybe just a lifetime of choosing to calm anxiety), and people have enought money to do what they choose.

I’d planned on finishing this up later, but I turned out to have a bit more time in the restaurant.  As I attempted to exit the hotel for the Zocalo, the valet pointed to the truckloads of armed federales headed the same way.  He strongly suggested I wait a few minutes.  I suspect he was a better source of facts than I was., so I had another Cafe Americana.  I’ll go later. 

Now to finish. Six hours later. After my walk, a good deal of which I spent lost.   I got to thinking as I casually looked around for tall buildings to guide me, I thought:  Wouldn’t it be just hysterical if I was actually hit by a stray bullet while traipsing around the Zocalo and wherever the hell else I was…Then people would dig out my laptop for clues as to why I was killed in that alley.  And the post would have the story of Grissly Man….and I’d have done the same thing, told the world I was happy doing what I was doing and then….It would be like one of those set ups where you look into a mirror and see another mirror…..

What would it take to get you to relax…Now?  What if…this is as good as it gets?

Dateline:  Second story veranda in Texas.  I am in my underwear power-hosing the doggie run…to be sure you have the full picture …see “How to Ruin a Relationship, the Power Hose Incident.”

In my right hand is the power hose.  In my left is a broom.  I am alternating hose spraying and broom pushing water off the edge and I soap and rinse the outdoor carpet.  I am doing my best to hurry, to get the job over.  This isn’t fun.  My arms ache.  Water keeps oozing back toward the wall.  I’m a bit peeved at the whole concept of spending a piece of my life hosing and sweeping…hosing and sweeping…hosing and sweeping.

Which is when a dangerous thought occurred to me….a thought which will change your life…if you ‘get’ it.  It’s a biggie…a toughie…but we can try this together.  In several sections.

What occurred to me was this question:  “Would I be ‘doing’ the job of hosing and sweeping differently if I were being paid for the job?”

Which led to the thought:  “How would my experience of hosing and sweeping be different if I were being paid by the HOUR to do the job?”   That is, I had to out on the veranda hosing and sweeping for a preset number of hours.  How would my internal experience be different if I wasn’t trying so hard to ‘get finished’?

I slowed down.  I stopped pushing the broom as hard and fast.  I danced in long, sweeping movements.  I slipped into a few stanzas of Delta Dawn….I noticed the beyond the balcony.  Corny, I know.  But, that’s what happened.  “Del-ta-uh Dawn…What’s that flower you have on?…”

Which is when I asked myself, “How would my life experience be different… if when my lifetime was assigned to me, God had looked at me and said, “You do realize you have been given an hourly job…that there’s nothing you need to finish?”

“People round Brownsville says she’s crazy…”