A Psycholgist on the Loose
Love, Dating, and Marriage
How to Ruin Relationships, Part 2, Assume the Worst
If you’re not up to speed on the ‘Power Hose’ incident, review ‘How to Ruin a Relationship’, Part 1.
At the close of Part 1, I am standing in my underwear, soaked, and holding a power hose packing enough force to blow asphault off the interstate. This is not the pretty picture you may be imagining.
Having completed washing the ‘doggie pad’, I now need my special person to do the ONE THING I have asked that he do in the process…I need him to go downstairs and turn off the water at the spigot. That’s it. All I ask. I will do the scrubbing and rinsing (picture a bent woman, gasping for More >
How Much Are You Making UP? The Knock-Knock Incident
Dateline: Dallas Hilton Branch Office. Giant flat-screen television. Antique remote. The Sleep Timer can be set by using manual controls. Whew. It’s not easy being a walking Emotional Guidance System patsy.
Which is more important? The world of facts? Or, the world you are responding to?”
How much of what you are talking so assuredly about….is just made up? Our Thinking Guidance System would have us get the facts…before we act…but who has time for that?
So we respond to people AS IF they are the people, the characters, we’ve made up. If we expect them to be kind, we’ll get that. If we believe he or she is a More >
Second Ingredient in the Triple Blame Whammy, the Spouse
Part 2: If my spouse only loved me enough to treat me the way I should be treated, I wouldn’t be having these problems now.
Following this line of reasoning can mean wasting your whole life. I’ve spent many an hour explaining, I thought quite clearly, the specific personality flaws my spouse needs to work on and how 24 hour happy I would be if he’d cowboy up. And yet, he goes right on being himself.
Now, I’m not talking about extremes, where you really should start over–I’m talking about the 98 percent of us married to special someones with the same level More >
Guts, “The e-Harmony Lady”
The eHarmony Lady. There is a woman I’ve “overheard” many times but never met, who impresses the flip-flops off me. Being a creature of habit (off the charts obsessed), I have a regular booth at my my local international world headquarters, Jim’s Coffee Shop, and this lady prefers the booth just behind me.
Note: The booth behind me is not a good choice if you want your conversation to remain private.
About three times a week, eHarmony Lady shows up at around 11:45 by herself and with everything perfect–hair, outfit, nails, faint hint of perfume. She watches the front door of Jim’s. Eventually, a man will walk in alone, looking around….eHarmony Lady then jumps More >
Avoidance Anxiety… Will You Calm Down so I can Calm Down
I’m an “unabler,” the fella on “Intervention” admitted.
Of course, he meant to say he was an enabler. I like his version better. He was describing the “unabler” as someone who gets rid of her anxiety by taking the other person “off the hook”–paying their bills when they are spending their money on drugs or cars and apartments they cannot afford…for starters.
Bored? http://Twitter.com/mysteryshrink
Enabling is just way we respond because we are “intolerant” of other people being anxious. We are “allergic” the other person being anxious.
Well, guess what? No matter how perfectly we try to arrange our lives and how carefully we try More >
Valentine Psych Trip
What have I learned studying FAMILY SYSTEMS and the importance of family that can help out people who are dating?
Easy. The key is–get to know his family really well . . . and keep yours hidden in the basement. I’m kidding. There are very few basements around here and, if your family’s like mine, something like a cement door to the basement isn’t going to hold them back. Actually, the key is to listen to what your potential mate has to say about his parents, sisters, and brothers. If he claims he doesn’t have much of a relationship because he has nothing in common with the rest of More >
Well, Now You’ve Really Hurt My Feelings, You Have Taken Charge of ME…
Reactivity. That’s what we’re talking about. Learning to manage our reactivity a little bit better. (See Wildebeest post)
Reactivity to other people and the world–not as it is–as we are AFRAID other people and the world might be. This is particularly easy to see with the SENSITIVITY to CRITICISM. And I know I’m not alone in this. I watch way too many shows on men and women in prison. Prisons are petri dishes of bubbling sensitivity to criticism.
While we’re not in prison, our homes and workplaces are where we dip into the BUBBLING, SEETHING, WRETCHED, EVER-WAITING POOL OF OVERSENSITIVITY MISERY. We are in prisons of our own More >