Dateline:  Laredo.  Restaurant La Posada, hotel backed up to the Rio Grande.  In thirty minutes, my special person and I will walk the long bridge dragging plastic garbage bags full of toothbrushes and toothpaste.  About a thousand of each.  Thank you dentists of Austin!

And I’m anxious as all get out.  I’m not sure our government at work will let us cross with our bounty. Years back dragging school supplies in a similar manner I was turned back before accused of taking mechandise across to sell.  So there’s that.  Then there’s the murder rate in Nuevo Laredo and the fact that there are no longer any police.  (The last police chief lasted three and a half hours.)

But mostly I’m anxious because, at long last, I’m putting myself where my mouth has been.  I’m going in and mingle with the real people with nothing.

As Mark Twain is famous for saying, “I can resist anything but temptation,” I can do anything that doesn’t require any true change or ’stretching’ on my part.  So here goes a wennie under the radar.

Report to follow.  If you never hear from me again, please forward this post to the proper authorities.

Dateline:  Hilton Branch Office, Las Vegas, Nevada.  For lead in to this post see “When Does Escaping Anxiety Work?”

Setup:  It is the last night of a several day trip during which I have been involved with others up and down the Strip, fun, but now I’m tired and looking forward to a couple of nights on my own off Strip in more luxury.  It’s three in the afternoon and, as I drag my luggage on the monorail,  I’m thinking fondly of my upcoming lovely late lunch with my computer at Hilton’s Paradise Café.  

I arrive at the hotel, dump my luggage and head for the Paradise Cafe.  It’s closed until five.  I pace outside, occasionally waving at cafe staff readying to open.  I’m the first one in, and ‘yes’ I could sit in the perfect booth. Ahhh. I flipped open the computer and studied the menu.  I would have the shrimp cocktail and fried shrimp.  I was ready for a couple of hours of editing and seafood…what everyone looks forward to in Vegas, right? 

(For more ideas on what to do in Las Vegas,see the Tourist Tips coming out with Jessica LeFave’s next adventure….What?   Are you thinking that anyone who’d think seafood and computer for two hours represents a good time in Vegas couldn’t possibly have any juicy ‘Tourist Tips’?…There’s a whole section on ‘How to Spot and Follow a Call Girl’, so there.)

But, alas, my joy in the perfect booth with shrimp x two was not to be.  The waitress stepped up to my booth, glared at my computer, and mentioned she’d seen me lurking around waiting for the Cafe to open and didn’t appreciate it….since, to her, the café opening signaled her return to a life of angry, indentured servitude.  I stayed on task.  I ordered the shrimp cocktail and the fried shrimp, asking her if she could wait on putting in the fried order for a while.

“Do What?” the displeased waitress asked.  “You want me to do what?”  I repeated my outrageous request.  She said, “What did you think I was going to do?  You ordered a shrimp cocktail.  I will bring you your shrimp cocktail and at that time I will place your entrée order.”

Well pooty.  I’m disappointed with the atmosphere, but then I’m an approval freak.  And, heck, I must have learned something from teaching all those anxiety management classes…I control what goes on inside my chest cavity….I couldn’t possibly be so ‘pourous’ that one unhappy waitress who clearly hates me and everyone like me….could put a blip in my day…”  

The less than wonderful-for-twenty dollars shrimp cocktail arrives.  Then, three minutes laterthe fried shrimp show up…in a BASKET…tiny little things, like fried catapillers crawling on a pile of soggy fries.   Okay.  Boo. Hiss.  What to do?   What to do?  Does mysteryshrink manage her anxiety and make the best of the situation?  Does making the best of the situation result in food poisoning and a basket phobia?

I looked inside my head for direction.  Both my ‘feelings’ and my ‘thoughts’ begged to direct my behavior.  Which side won?

 

Back in the ‘woo-woo-far-out-living-for-the-moment’ days…the notion that each person draws to her what she needs was bandied about.  Not being the easy-to-woo-woo type, I didn’t buy the idea right away. 

Yet, I couldn’t help but notice that the same day I decided to go to Spain, the woman in the next booth was telling her lunch mate about her trip to Spain, Spanish language magazines started being sold at the grocery store, and Univision carried the Astro games.

I couldn’t help but notice that when I made up my mind that driving home from my in-laws…I would point out one thing my mother-in-law did that I hadn’t appreciated…rather than start in with my usual self ego-massaging fear-based criticism…as if to remind my special person that he was better off married to me than deciding to go back home and live with his mother.  I know, pretty bleak, but why pull any punches?

Dr. L awaits those who need a psychologist who has never made a mistake and was born knowing everything.

What happened, with Spain and my mother-in-law, of course, was that a little pathway into my brain… sealed shut earlier…and not necessarily for any bad reason…a little pathway opened up to receive new information about the world.  And a new world opened.

What does opening a little pathway in your mind have to do with the Rugby Coach Who Changed the World?  Am I hoping to open a little pathway?   You betcha?

Picture a rugby coach.  Now add that this man is the rugby coach for Texas A and M University, a school not that long ago all men and all military trained. (If you have any doubts regarding the stringent masculine, tough-guy reputation of Texas A and M…catch a football game sometime and watch the all male cheerleaders in their hospital whites urging on the crowd with jerky motions, a show best described as what the Karate Kid would look like fighting his way out of coma.)

The rugby coach is on a plane from Missouri back to Texas.  A woman from Austin sits down next to Coach on the plane, a stack of ink-still-damp brochures on her lap.  And this woman is about to change the rugby coaches life forever…Tune in tomorrow  to find out what happened between the rugby coach and the lady…

Mysteryshrink’s You Get What You Pay For Psychology Tip:  It’s best to keep your limitations to yourself for as long as you can.  Once they are out there, they are etched in the minds of others forever.

Think of something you are uncomfortable doing…say, for example…you are one of those otherwise lovely people who has secretly avoided the role of being the candy-the-giver-outer on Halloween…for years and years.  

I’m just saying… maybe you’re one of those people who turn out all the lights and hunker down in a back bedroom with only the light of the television.  Maybe even, one time when your special person promised a certain group of teachers that he would bring a slab of Mississippi Mud Bars to a meeting on Novemeber 1st, maybe you and he whipped up a batch using only the light from the refrigerator…your heads stuck inside the door…

Dateline:  Not quite dark, Halloween Night, family gathering.

I hadn’t spent Halloween with my siblings and clan since we were kids.  When I walked into the house, I noticed the countertop in the den was stacked with all sorts of individually wrapped candy and I knew what that meant.  Now, usually, I could have gotten away with my “gee, I’m so busy doing something” expression and not been faced with wondering who was going to answer the door for the goblins and such.  But not on this night as my sibs had limitations to their mobility and the always faithful niece had her wonderful girls to manage.

I’m good at avoidance, but even I couldn’t pretend to be lost in the football game while my sister, recovering from a knee replacement, hobbled to the front door on her walker.  Or my brother, who had broken his hand, and on pain meds felt his way along the wall to the door.  Yikes.  What to do, What to do? 

I looked so deceptively capable…walking to the door-wise.  Thus, I decided the fairest thing to do was to step up and nip the old bud.  I announced that I would not be doing the giggling, good-neighborly handing out the candy thing as I am not constitutionally capable of the task.  I admitted my years of cowardly hiding and stated that if they were going to leave the porch light on, I would not be responsible.  My choice would be to leave the light off and go on with our evening as if we were a perfectly normal family.

I’d thought I’d done a gentle, firm job of stating my position.  My announcement was met with six sets of squenched eyes and headshakes of disbelief.  “Not my fault,” I claimed, “I thought you guys knew.”

Clearly they’d never even suspected.   My siblings and various other chips of my Danish father’s block were horrified.  Various gasps of distress filled the awkward space I’d created in the evening.   After the ugly truth that I was not kidding sunk in, the questions began.  “Why?”  “Was it some terrible Halloween experience?”  “Did we do something back when you were a kid?”  “Is it the children?”  “Are you against children?”

Now here’s the kicker.  My fellow evening partners were so absorbed in my admission, they forgot to turn on the porch light.  Not one innocent child or anyone else rang the doorbell.

Thus, I am now, and will be forever, the “one who can’t hand out candy on Halloween.”   Not that my reputation for other weirdnesses doesn’t precede me.  It’s just that I threw in a new quirk…when I didn’t have to.

Thus, my friends.  Learn from my mistake and don’t mention any of those odd little fears until you are absolutely positive you are about to be exposed.

But what if I find someone better? …the attractive high school senior asked.  People told him he was a great catch, and most girls would have glowed in his letter jacket.  He had a girlfriend and he’d just confessed that maybe he was in love.   

But he was not a happy fellow.  He obsessively worried that if he made a commitment, even for a month… as soon as  he’d made his move, he’d meet someone prettier, cooler, smarter…someone who’d turn even more heads when she was on his arm.  What the heck was he going to do then?

Ah, yes.  Here is one of the tricks of our old life-sucking enemy, the…you guessed it…the Emotional Guidance System(If you’re not familiar with the terms, search Guidance System on this site.).  One of the ways that Master of Anxiety Building…gets in the way of living.

The name of this trick is:  Exaggeration of  the Alternatives.  The trick has two parts.  The first is simple exaggeration…If I choose A, and learn later that B would have been a better dd choice…Well, that would be awful, terrible, and I can’t stand it!    From now on my only choice is to complain and fret.

Sound trivial?  Hey, don’t tell me you aren’t disappointed when you pick the slowest checkout line in the grocery…again.  And the drive-in bank.  Do you not, everytime, end up behind the guy who doesn’t do his paperwork until he’s number one in line?  What about choosing a job?  Or a career…Do you know anyone saying, “Oh, what I could have, should have done?”  And what about choosing that special person?… What if?  What could have been?

The second important feature of this trick of the EGS…happens because when we live by “What if?“ … “If only…” …and this is the really BIG PIECE. …The Emotional Guidance System, driven to accomplish one thing…get rid of immediate anxiety   …The really dirty part of the EGS trick…

Is that when we focus on the notion that the most important thing is making the RIGHT CHOICE…we are lost to the present.  We are obsessed with the past…”Why didn’t I see this was the wrong choice.”  And, we are obsessed with the future.  “Oh, no.  Woe is me!  Because I made the wrong choice…my future is a mess…and there’s nothing I can do.  Nothing…

We are in a VICTIM position.  We focus on what could have been…in our imagination…and do not pour our energies into what we have.   We spend time being critical of others, critical of ourselves.  “Here I sit, having made the WRONG CHOICE and there’s nothing I can do.”  

The EGS would have us invest our energy in these ‘worrying’ mess rather than dedicate ourselves to the PRESENT.

The Emotional Guidance System is never in favor of ‘doing the best we can with what we have’.  The EGS wants an easier way out than the effort it takes to deal with the present moment.

Think about that one.  I mean, since the present moment is all we have.  Wouldn’t it be a good idea to give the present our attention?

Is it possible our day, our relationship, our career is as great as we make it?  How about Now?…And Now….Whoops…missed a chance….How about now?

“Hi.  I’m in here.  Are you out there?”

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?

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….

Bumper sticker on the back windshield of a car:  I HATE STUPID PEOPLE.  Ouch.  

In the nonfiction I’ve started (See: Beyond Stress Management, Defining a Self with a Smile), I’ve asked fellow travelers to sign the following pledge.

I,_____________, am as nuts as everyone else on the planet.  As a start on freedom.  To get out from under the burden of a life spent trying to convince ourselves and others that we aren’t.

Is this asking too much?  Maybe.  My special person read the pledge and said, “Whoa!  Lots of people are going to balk at admitting that.”    “That’s just the point,” I say, “the whole point of the book is to quit taking ourselves so seriously all the time.”   He said, ”Maybe that’s what you’re thinking, but I think you will find out most people would rather believe in their superiority.”

“But defending our superiority, defending the idea that we are the only ones who know how to do things right, takes so much time and energy.  We have to be on guard all the time, fending off evidence, arguing, and uselessly trying to convince other people that we are ‘right’ and they are ‘wrong’.  I’m not saying each of us doesn’t have a point of view.  I’m not talking about religious beliefs or political leanings or decisions on how to raise children…I’m talking about the time wasted on issues that don’t matter, time wasted being anxious…whether you should pre-soak stains, avoid sugar, avoid television, drive in the right lane, private school over public school, seek plastic surgery…  I’m talking about letting go of ‘being right’ as a way of life.”

Still, my special person said, “I don’t think your pledge is going to fly.”  Which of course threw me instantly into trying to convince I was right and he was wrong about pledges and how they fly. 

And I held my ground that most people would enjoy the relief of admitting equal nuttiness with our co-inhabitants…I held it until I saw the “I HATE STUPID PEOPLE” sticker.  For sure the owner of the sticker finds stupid people all over the place.  People who spend money, treat their pets, choose professions, choose sports teams, choose books…stupidly.  I wouldn’t want to be married to someone who was ”sensitized” to ”stupid” people, since I’m sure I would fulfill his expectations on a regular basis.  I wouldn’t want to be in his family.  Egad, what if your boss was a “I hate stupid people” fan?   

Maybe “I..H..S..P” guy wouldn’t sign a pledge, maybe IHSPeople guy would say only stupid people would sign such a pledge.  But that’s okay.  I won’t even argue about his choice.  Who has time and energy for that struggle?

Fusion:  the naturally occuring process when what goes on emotionally inside one person is influenced by what is going on inside another person.

Let’s take what happens when one person is angry toward another person.  Fusion is the automatic transfer of anger and upset.  The degree to which this occurs depends on several elements.  One element is how important the angry person is to be person on the receiving end.  

Which leads me to report a minor victory in this project of becoming a person able to function according to my own BEST THINKING, instead of having my functioning TOTALLY DETERMINED by WHATEVER EMOTIONAL CHARGE  is pinging my way.

Now this is a minor victory, but, for me, it’s a start.  Have you ever pulled out on a busy street, in what you thought was plenty of time, only to see, looming in your rear view mirror as you accelerate….a young man in a baseball cap driving a pickup truck jacked up like a rabbit caught in mid-scare on seeing a snake….and the guy in the cap is shooting you the bird?  

 Usually, that sneering face and flicking finger stirs something in me.  Maybe something defensive and angry, like a comment or a hot face.  Sometimes I blame myself and WHAT’S GOING ON INSIDE me is a guilty, a wanna-slink-away sinking feeling.

Here’s the thing.  I got the sneer and the bird twice yesterday and I didn’t FEEL anything.  I only noticed… that I didn’t notice.  It was as if their opinions of my behavior didn’t matter anymore.  …Because their opinions didn’t matter anymore.  I realized my EMOTIONAL Guidance System was a little less in charge.  That my THINKING Guidance System’s statement that… the opinion of random strangers did not need my attention… was running the show.

One small step ahead for my Thinking System and emotional freedom…. maybe not real good news for the driving public.

FUSION…

What is fusion? ..Think of yourself a bean.  Say, half-cooked pinto bean with your skin in tact.  You are you, you have a skin, your brain is in your body and your brain is running your show.  For our purposes, let’s say at this moment, inside your bean self, your Thinking Guidance System is in charge.  You’re making thoughtful pinto bean choices….enjoying life.

Then another bean sidles up next to you.  This bean’s a little over-cooked (steamed by the catastrophizing of it’s Emotional Guidance System) so that her skin is a bit leaky.  This leakiness is uncomfortable for her…bursting the bean skin a bit…the mushy bean is leaky…out comes the ooze and it lands on you…on your tight skin…your skin which is…or was…keeping you separate, keeping you in charge of you. 

You hold on for a while, then you sense your mood changing, your anxiety going up and up.  You hear yourself complain.  You hear yourself on a defensive tear.  You don’t feel very good anymore.  Not very energetic.  A couple more oozes of anxiety from the anxious bean and…just forget it…you feel your pores opening further.  You topple into the pile of porous over-cooked beans and cease to exist as a separate thinking unit.

Human examples when we can feel our skins getting leaky, when what is going on inside of us is changed by the anxiety of another:  your co-worker tells you something negative about another co-worker… a person on the other side of the political fence gives a little speech suggesting anyone who doesn’t agree is stupid… a driver pulls out in front of you (on purpose, of course)… the fast food ghost inside the speaker gets your order wrong… a friend says she’s worried about your stress level and so are all your friends… the woman on the news says ‘emerging research suggests that maybe’ kids who take medication for ADHD are more likely to be meth addicts; the woman on the news says ‘emerging research suggests that maybe’ kids with ADHD and are not given medication have lower self-esteem…

Notice the question, “How much of ME do I give up to be with YOU? ….does not say….”How much of me do YOU MAKE ME give up … to be with you?”

Like everything else, learning to deal with fusion is a self-focused operation.  (Self-focus is not self-centered.  Self-focused is taking responsibility for what goes on inside of one’s chest, and responsibility for one’s actions.)

The scene is the rolling green lawn of a Southern plantation.  A lovely wedding has just taken place under the moss-dripping oaks and now most of the guests have gone.  The new bride and groom are each spending some time with the stragglers when the bride returns to the table showcasing the cakes and punch.  She’s glowing.  The day is gorgeous.  Her expression is one of complete joy in having this perfect day when she has married the man of her dreams.  The bride notices the saucer holding the leftover wedding cake from when she and her new husband had linked elbows and fed each other a piece in celebration and for photographers.  

The bride picks up the piece of cake and, still moony-eyed, takes a bite. …Her new husband walks up behind her, lightly grabs her hand with the cake, and frowns. “Not with your fingers!”  The glow fades from the bride’s face.  In her eyes is the slightest fear.

The next several entries will be about FUSION.  Fusion is a naturally occuring process, an emotionally intertwining of selves based on management of anxiety. (See “Avoidance Anxiety…Will You Calm Down So I Can Calm Down”)  Fusion is not good or bad.  Fusion just is. 

Whether or not fusion is helpful or self -or other- defeating depends on a number of factors.  Sometimes fusion has a temporary positive effect for the individual (calms anxiety) but a long term negative effect (lessens overall ability to manage anxiety on one’s own).  Programs in which cancer survivors visit recent cancer surgery patients sharing their fears and recovery use fusion toward a positive outcome.  The patient joins up a bit with the survivor and feels better which likely aids in his or her recovery.  Yet, later, if the mentor has a recurrence, the patient initially helped by identifying with the survivor, has a lower ability to work on recovery. The fusion of the audience at a rock concert revs up the good time, but the giving over of self to the group could result in injuries and arrests the individual would not have incurred.  

When you sit down across the table from a man trying to sell you a timeshare, he will ask questions as a way to create a bit of fusion, as a way for you to engage the emotions you experience with people who are actually your friends.  In a highly fused marriage, both partners broker all decisions through the relationship.  In highly fused relationships minor disagreements are experienced as stressful or as threats to the relationship.  In these marriages, sibling relationships, and friendships, the growth of each partner is limited. “We” takes over for “I.” 

Hightened sensitivity to keeping the other person calm… characterises the relationship.  This fusion business is why Crazy Dog and all the little beings like her are so darned popular.  Keeping Crazy Dog happy doesn’t take much of my time and energy.

More next time.

What if . . . when you die . . . there is an afterlife and that afterlife is this:  You live your same life over…exactly…

Except, instead of living events sequentially….have insomnia, shut off the alarm, get up, go to the kitchen, take out an apple because today’s the day you change how you eat, grab a piece of cold pizza because you just don’t have the energy to deprive yourself today, kiss your spouse, stub your toe on the dog dish, back out of the drive way hitting the garbage can, hit the steering wheel, look down and see that you’re late already….

However….in this afterlife….you live the same life…but each separate activity, no matter how brief.. .is lumped together.  Yep.  In this afterlife, you are talking yourself into climbing out of bed for two years, stubbing your toe for a week, you’re making dentist appointments for six hours, eating birthday cake for two hours, trying to decide whether you should give low-carbohydrate eating another try for a year….four months you spend driving around lost….two months saying you are not lost….six years worrying about thing that didn’t happen….a year with a cold….

And so it goes.  This notion is not my idea but comes from Sum by Dr. David Eagleman in whose audience I was privileged to be a couple of weeks ago.  Dr. Eagleman, a neuroscientist and Head of the Neuroscience Lab at Baylor Medicine, started his book as a way of considering afterlife possibilities but ended up with a wonderful set of forty possibilities that have the effect of directing his readers–not so much to think about afterlife–but about life.

Take a minute.  What if you knew that your afterlife would be everything over in lumps?  Would you choose your life moments more carefully? 

Would you learn to say “No” to the painful, time-robbing, ineffective strategies of your Emotional Guidance System? 

The “what ifs”…” the self torture… the bad decisions serving no purpose except to shake off anxiety?

I don’t have the big answers yet.  But I picked up a few hints from “Lockup/Raw” in the wee hours this morning.  For now, it’s enough to say I left Dr. Eagleman’s lecture a bit thoughtful. I went by Eatzi’s (incredible gormet take-out) which is my habit while bunked in my Hilton Branch Headquarters.  As I did every night, I headed straight for the cocktail shrimp.  Now the word cocktail is a bit miss leading.  These babies go for $39.99 a pound and a half-pound is four to five. I study the size of the shrimp….should I have four…which should be enough…or five…sheesh….what if that’s more than $20 bucks?  For a few shrimp?… Then I rememberd the possible afterlife….and ordered five. 

I didn’t want to spend another second than I already had in the bank under “time spent trying to decide between four or five shrimp.”

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.

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.

On the notion of finding (even welcoming) an opportunity to break the habit of  ‘push-pull’ power struggles over who is ‘right”… I can report two successes today, one mine and one my spouse’s.  And neither was easy.

Remember, acting out the need to be right is the body’s automatic self-defense (the Emotional Guidance System), the automatic action to rid ourselves of the anxiety that comes with not being seen as ‘right’.

The first occurred when a song came on the radio and my spouse said, “Who wrote that song, do you know?”

Sounds innocent, right?  Never.  If a person asks you a question like that, isn’t he obligated to accept my answer?… Well, apparently not. 

I said, “Hank Williams.”… He said, “No, I think it was Lefty Frizzell.”  (Okay, hold back on the disbelief and laughter on the age and music of reference.)  I say, “That’s not even possible because Hank Williams sang that song and he was dead before Lefty Frizzell started singing.” (I’m pretty smug at this point. And, by the way, I am RIGHT.)  He says, “No, I’m pretty sure you’re wrong on this one.”  (I know!  He’s the one who asked me!)… Now comes the big moment.  I felt the rise and fall of my chest, exasperated with the lack of cooperation of my listener….and then… I actually thought:  Hey, this is my chance!  Then I said, “I do think it was Hank Williams, but could be I’m not right on that.”

Yea!

A few minutes later, I was backing out of a tricky spot when my spouse said, “Come on back, you’re clear on this side.”  I said, “I don’t feel comfortable when I can’t see where I am.”  I pulled forward and repositioned.  “I’m telling you, you have plenty of room.  Why don’t you just trust me?” he asked.  I said, “It’s not that I don’t trust you, I’m just paranoid about this and I’d rather take it slow.  I know I probably overdo it, but that’s the way I’m comfortable.”  He says, “I don’t get you… (pause)… Then he said, “There’s no reason you have to back up my way.  I’m sorry.  I should just let you drive when you’re driving.”  He said this.  He really did. 

Doesn’t matter that I’m talking about two psychologists with years of training and experience.  This stuff is hard.

And… if you believe something to be true about a person…you will ’see’ it…you will prove that what you believe about him or her is true.  You will look for what you believe…what you fear…and you will find it.

The “Mean Farmers are Everywhere! Incident”

A man was out for an evening country drive when he had a flat tire.  On opening his trunk he discovered he had no jack to raise the car.  He’d seen no traffic, thus spotting the lights of a farmhouse in the distance, he struck out to ask for help.  After walking for a few minutes, the man started wondering about the people in the farmhouse.  What if they got mad at having their evening interrupted?  Maybe they were having supper and would feel like they had to interupt the pleasant meal just because a stranger was so careless he didn’t have a jack in his car?  What if they insisted he join them in supper?  He didn’t have time for supper, now they’d think he was rude.  What if they have a jack, but it’s out in the barn and they expect him to find it own his own?  What kind of people wouldn’t help a guy who just needed a jack?  Yes, but what kind of people would invite a stranger into their house?  What kind of person would expect him to find a jack in a barn?  It was pretty late.  They weren’t going to trust him to return the jack, that was for sure.  They’d say, “You didn’t have the sense to make sure you had your own jack. What kind of person is that foolish?”

About this time, the man reached the door of the farmhouse and knocked.  When the farmer answered, the man said, “Fine!  Just keep your damn jack!”

Other “Keep Your Damn Jack!” scenarios when the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM … (FEAR AND ANXIETY)  is running the show:

The wife waits at the airport for her husband who is late picking her up.  While she waits, she rehearses worst case  possibilities based on her fears.   ”Well, thanks a lot,” she says, climbing in when he arrives, “I can see how important I am to you!”  (This before knowing why he was late.) … Alternate (Just a suggestion, this is hard) “Hi, sweetie. Don’t worry about being late.  I’m sure you had a good reason.”  (Lose interest in whether or not you are right. That’s a dead end.  We’re just going for what works… the facts about what works….by way of the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM.)

A husband comes through the door with a dozen roses.  His wife is on the phone with her sister.  She smiles and shows excitement, but stays on the phone for another twenty minutes, then says, “These are gorgeous.  Thank-you!”  The husband shrugs and says, “Thank you doesn’t mean much to me now.”  …Alternate, (see above re: thinking running the show)… “I had to wait, honey, but you’re always worth it!”

What happens next after first responses?  After alternative responses?  Which outcome do you want?

If you believe you are not lovable, no one….absolutely no one…can convince you otherwise.  If you believe you are not lovable…you will not recognize love. 

Deciding to live “as if” you are lovable or “as if” you are not lovable… is something like deciding to live believing in an afterlife.  You have to go one way or the other.  There is no middle.

 

Triple Blame Whammy, Part 3, is for all the other people in your life who aren’t doing what they could to keep you on an even keel.

Sisters and brothers who consistently ‘make’ you uptight and are completely impregnable to your efforts to show them a better way to live.  And there are the friends you’ve tried to train…and also that sniggly therapist who isn’t buying into how you are the only person in your family who isn’t a complete wreck. 

Heck, I’m even including those people who cut in front of me.  (Okay, sometimes it’s the drivers ahead of me that let them in, but they are still slowing me down, they are still responsible for me gritting my teeth, still responsible for making me at least 20 seconds later getting home and that’s not fair!)  Coming off the freeway to reach our house, the road is two lanes.  Between the exit ramp and the main road heading to the hills, there are four stoplights.  Before the last light there are four signs indicating that only the right lane continues when the street breaks off to the right.  There are fifty foot fat painted arrows indicating the upcoming narrowing.  Any person looking out through the windshield can see that at the last light, the right lane, and only the right lanes peels off and continues through a yield.  I’m willing to wager that the majority of drivers in the five o’clock traffic drive the same route home every day.  Thus, the one lane only curving off to the right is no surprise. 

Yet, every day, a bunch of these people roar past the line of cars stacked up in the right lane –because we are kind, law-abiding, emotionally mature, just-plain-better-than-the-average people who can flippin read.  These people whizz past those of us in the stack–you know the rest.  They sit there in the left lane at the head of the line…and have the nerve to turn on their blinker, like, “Oh dear, I didn’t see this coming.”

As of this moment, I give those people the right to keep right on being themselves.  They no longer owe it to me to change.  I will find another way to deal with the extra 20 seconds I now choose to donate freely to my ride home. Now as for my siblings….

Have you ever told your version of a family situation from your own point of view making sure to highlight “bizarre and unacceptable” of another family member” …She made me furious!”  “He did xx again and just ruined my day.”  “I can’t believe xx is still xx.”  “Did you see what xx did?”…you say…only to have that person refuse to jump on your emotional bandwagon?  That’s what it felt like for me when I switched from a relationship-diagnosis-focus on-what-other-people-are-doing-wrong way of thinking about behavior change…to a self-focus model.

Before introducing the third leg of the Triple Blame Whammy, I thought a bit of a review on the self-focused way of thinking about bettering one’s life…might help.  Because taking responsibility for one’s feelings isn’t the popular way of thinking about human behavior and behavior change.  And it’s very hard to work on one’s own reactions.  At least I can be thrown off a good day by a random rude driver or a bit of discouraging news.                     Our Emotional Guidance Systems urge us to tell other people to change.  The easiest response to anxiety is to criticize.  The easiest response to criticism is defense.              And here we go. Not that other people aren’t making life difficult. Just because you’ve decided to take charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity… doesn’t mean other people aren’t going to go on being themselves.

Let’s face it, some people are easier to be around than others.  All people are easier to be around sometimes and harder at other times….depending on their level of anxiety and our levels of anxiety.  Technically, if we had ourselves perfectly together, it wouldn’t matter who we were around, we’d always be hunky-dorry happy.  But, I’ve never met anyone that together.  For most of us, while we could ideally be happy with anyone, it’s a lot easier to be happy with some people than it is with others.

Taking charge isn’t for everyone.  Words from a cartoon:  Guy A:  “My therapist says you are too controlling.”   Guy B: “My therapist says I need to take responsibility for my feelings.”  Guy A: “My therapist says you are narcissistic.” Guy B: “My therapist says I need to work on managing my anxiety.” Guy A: “My therapist says you have authority issues.” Guy B: “My therapist says….I think I should get a new therapist.”   

Wouldn’t the easy way be to blame the driver in front of us, our siblings, the right wingers, the left wingers, the cat people, dog people, our spouse, or our ex-spouse for the way we feel? 

Actually, no.  Because then we’d live out our lives as victims.  If we have no contribution to our negative feelings, if they are only something that happen “to” us.  Then there is nothing we can do to make our life better….and we are powerless husks in the wind.  This is hard.

While on the topic of  not wasting so much time and energy wishing other people weren’t themselves, why not really go for it and give parents permission to be themselves?

Which brings us to the infamous Triple Blame Whammy.

And, no, you don’t get the Triple Blame Whammy at Dairy Queen.

Part one of the Triple Blame Whammy:  “If only my parents had loved me enough… (and showed me appropriately)…I wouldn’t have the problems I do now.”

Take a look at the photo.  See how young these people are?  Your parents were them.  Yikes!

There was a time a few years out of graduate school when I was ready to switch professions.  This was the era when ’hospitals’ sprang up in every neighborhood for the treatment of addictions and insurance paid big money for 28 day programs for ’co-dependents’, ‘family jesters’, and ’scapegoats’.  Each family member was given a title to identify with and each was encouraged to take time out to remember all the ways they’d been wronged by family members… and how these wrongs caused their current problems.  The ‘theory’ was that by family members (courageously) taking turns describing just how they’d been terribly wronged, some sort of change miracle was supposed to happen.

And, as is true in lynch mob behavior, most participants do, for the moment, feel as if something life-changing has occured(I guess for the lynch-ees, something life-changing events has taken place), when all that’s happened is a big burst of emotional togetherness (momentary closeness based on fusion and group think) and…people swinging in nooses.

**Self-loathing alert!  I’ve vented with the best of them, justifying myself the whole time.  Pitching my version of victimhood…ala the family from my point of view…Oh, my view isn’t reality?  This is not a case to pretend nothing bad happen–our goal is to get free of  the powerless position of hanging on to ‘reasons’ we are the way we are…that define us into mindsets wasting time and energy and even hope.**

After all, can we really buy that we are the first generation of adults having children who have tried their hardest and done the best they could by the children?  Are we so arrogant as to think such a thing?  Are we really so different?

Of course, the relentless Emotional Guidance System encourages false superiority.  Could be…parents are products out their emotional systems just as we are.  Not that much worse, not that much better.  If this is too scary, you can cheat a little and hang on to the illusion of functioning way up the ladder from your parents. But it is kind of annoying.

Cheater phrase when others or self tempts you into discussing what messes your parents are and how they messed up your life….” Oh well. I guess everyone comes by who they are naturally. Say, did you here about that guy who tied a bunch of weather balloons to his aluminum lawn chair and floated up into the flight path at the local airport?”

How can we give people permission to be themselves when what they’ve done has hurt us?

In a Divorce Recovery Workshop I was leading, we’d reached the stage where I’d asked each person to come up with the one thing their former spouse did that they would never be able to forgive.  Going around the room, each person would have their chance to confess their favorite private grudge.  I’d started out by confessing an incident involving Cheetos and Ping Pong and must be kept private for the sake innocent bystanders. The idea was to soften hard edges by having some fun with ourselves….that once you’ve confessed, then mooshed around, and even laughed at whatever you have a death grip on, well…the death grip loosens a bit.

We were halfway around the room and having fun topping each other’s ‘hideous, unforgivable incident’ when the woman who’s turn it was, looked me straight-on and vowed: “My husband of thirty-three years left me to marry his twenty-two-year-old secretary. I will never forgive him and if my children forgive him I will have nothing to do with them.”

Well, that was a downer.  I don’t remember how the bump in the smooth workshop road worked out, but I never quite forgot the intensity with which that woman gripped the piece of the past.  And, I’m not saying I would be right in there gripping, if I’d been in her place.  She had a right to go at life however chose.  Thirty-three years is a big piece, but it’s not now…so’s it’s still a piece.  A piece that’s over. Over.  Nothing can change it. Keeping a death grip on the bad stuff cuts off our own circulation.  And the person who did us wrong….grrr…

The Emotional Guidance System isn’t logical or even reasonable, even when it’s trying to protect us from further hurt. Yet, just maybe ‘giving other people permission to be themselves’ when they’ve hurt us is the most important time to do so.  We don’t have to agree with their choices.  We don’t have to put ourselves near them again.  But we do have to let it go. 

Next, what about family?  Surely, we don’t have to give them permission?