How bright and appealing are the fruits in your future?

What if your participation in the food pyramid is determined by how well you manage anxiety?

I know.  Hello Big Mac.

But really….to what degree are your choices….influenced by your mood?….your current opinion of yourself?  How your career’s going?….heck….how work’s going today?   To what degree are your behavior choices influenced by how your special person is thinking about you? (Or, more correctly….how you THINK he is thinking…and, by the way, you’re wrong.)

“Which is more important?  The world as it exists?   Or the world we’re making up as we go along?”

Symptomatic behavior, from angry outbursts to staying in bed all day…. are a result of a combination of:  physical elements (including genetics and current state of health);   life events (including upbringing experiences);  the individual’s basic level of functioning (typical ability to manage stress and change);  the functional level and availability of the emotional system (family).

And behaving in anything like a healthy, reasonable manner is hard as trying to drag yourself out of a pot of setting taffy.  If it were any easier, no one would miss their daily walk, no one would be overweight, no one would overdrink….there wouldn’t even be a “Latest Stupid Diet Discovery Aisle) in the grocery store.  Oh, and there’s now a separate section called: Anti-Aging.  Now what kind of dream world is that?

I don’t have the answer on how to suddenly function better, how to easily conquer my ever-present, anxiety-driven,  Emotional Guidance System.  I haven’t taken my afternoon walk since….ahhhh…since we returned from Cabo San Lucas….since I returned to real life.  I’ve figured it out how to cure all of us.  If we can all stack up enough hotel and airline points to live permanently in a resort on the tip of Baja…I mean…we’re fixed.  What a miracle.

Let’s start with the symptom of not eating fruit.  Grazing the buffet overlooking the Sea of Cortez, I had no problem filling up my bowl every morning with strawberries, bananas, pineapple, apple slices.  “Beautiful fruit,” I’d exclaim.  “Omelet?” they asked.  “Oh, not for me.  This fruit looks great!” 

Now, I’m back at my Dallas national world headquarters Hilton…and I can hardly look at the fruit.  Gosh, all those healthy behaviors had come so naturally in Mexico.  What happened I ask, as I finish up my bacon and wash down my blood pressure pill with coffee?

Now BEFORE WE BLAME the ENVIRONMENT and slap on all the cliches…”work too hard…traffic…weather…mom late picking you up from kindergarten…”…JUST STOP IT already.

I, like all of you, can take more charge of the world I see and make up.  I can make those strawberries more colorful.  And, there’s a way you can start right now.  Say out loud, “Wow, what a beautiful, interesting sky.  What lovely______.”  Because remember, unlike the unfortunate Princess Diana…YOU ARE ALIVE.  (See post on What Do You Have that Princess Diana Doesn’t?)

And as long as you and I are alive, we’ve got a shot at changing what goes on inside our chest cavities.  We’ve got a shot at joy.

Jellybeans….Jellybeans were everywhere…and I didn’t have time or energy for the clumsy interruption. Who does have the time for messy interuptions?

Trudging my computer case across the tiled floor of my office and out to my car, I bent over to pick up a Coke can I’d earlier set by a chair…

When the opened box of Ike and Mike’s (tube-shaped jellybeans for those into adult foods) tucked into one of the case’s pockets splattered everywhere… I snarled, I cursed, I bent over to pick up the flying pieces….Of course, in the process, I spilled more as, in my hurry and misery, I hadn’t secured the box. I snarled and cursed some more.

Always ready to take control, my Emotional Guidance System, (search site, if unfamiliar) SAID: “Great! Just what I needed!  I’ve had it!  This is too much. My knees are alreadykilling me, I’m late for an appointment…. Crazy dog will be in here hogging these jellies down any second…and I’ll have multi-colored poop to deal with for days!

This is terrible, horrible, and unbelievable! I drop my computer case…on my foot… “%#@&”… This is just great.
That’s when “the moment” happened without any warning. After years of training in psychology, Eastern meditation, libraries of books, and many hours instructing others in emotional life….

The moment occurred without effort on my part.

Some little creature inside my brain hit me square between my squinty eyes. “What keeps you…from enjoying this moment just as much as you enjoyed playing fetch with Crazy Dog last night?”
What? Is it possible that all those psychologists saying each person is in charge or his or her own happiness…actually have something? And, if they (we) have…why is it so difficult If being alive is being in each and every second?

What is keeping me…you… from enjoying this moment….the one NOW… as much as the favorite moment you are planning this holiday?

I don’t have an answer.  When the ‘moment’ occurred, I felt something loosen.  And I smiled, just a little.
I know, this is heady stuff.   To think all this could come from splattered jellybeans.

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?”

How much of your life have you spent in activities you said “Yes” to, when you meant “No?”

The world is a constant demand situation.  If you do not define yourself to the world…and other people…the world and other people will define you. 

Could anyone convince you… that you were the sort of person who would like setting your alarm for five in the morning… dressing with a swimsuit as underwear… driving downtown to an ancient university gymnasium and… diving into a chlorine-heavy basement pool?  And that you would do this without someone holding a gun on you? 

….What could get a woman to not only do this once, but agree to do this insane routine five days a week for six weeks?

…Yep. The beast who agreed to the routine was, of course, my Emotional Guidance System.  The same critter that landed me in the Water Tower Place shopping mall.  (See previous post.)  I agreed to the bizarre morning swimming routine because when my special person claimed that something called “aerobic swimming” was not the work of the devil, but something that I’d be glad I’d completed, and that he was leaping on the opportunity…

My brain shot right out the window and, for ever how long it took for me to sign up… 

I ignored “the facts”… 1) I read into the late hours and get up grouchy; 2) I’m a terrible swimmer;  3)  Indoor pools are yucky;  4) There was zero possibility that I would continue ‘aerobic swimming’ if I should be fortunate enough to survive the course.  And the strongest fact of all, that if I had no intention of making ‘aerobic swimming’ part of my lifestyle…there really was no point outside a few weeks of bragging and living in the “lying to myself zone” that is what sells every new diet, new piece of exercise equipment, every project that depends on pretending we are on the verge of a personality transplant.

“Oh no,” he said.  “You’ll like it,” he lied.  “You are too rigid and unwilling to try new things.  This would be good for you.”  And yep. The challenge to my personality perfection along with the “good for you” baloney got me to question what I knew to be the facts about myself.

I did come to my senses.  But it took three times of me quitting…the last departure quite public and spectacular.  I did eventually engage my Thinking Guidance System, but not until I’d suffered through weeks of torture. 

Here’s the picture.  I arrived on the first day and hopped into my lane, ready.  From there it was downhill.  The pool was awful, the water was cold, I sucked royally at swimming, and nearly drowned on at least four occasions. Particularly amusing that first day was my exit when the class was over.  The coach Nazi blew his whistle and said something diabolically cheery and that we were done.  Everyone else, including my special person, bounded out of the pool and headed for the dressing rooms.  Now this is the pool the swim team used early in the last century, which means that the lanes area had no ladder.

Unable to pull myself out of the pool and now surrounded by bouncy college students readying for swimming class…I flopped desperately against the side of the pool, one foot stuck up over the edge.  I’d almost make it, then plop back in.  I supposed that once my special person was dressed and ready, he’d notice I was missing and re-trace steps until he found me half in, half out of the pool. Either that, or he’d find me in two days when the class started up again.

The point here is how persuasion…or FUSION…can get us to waste time and energy in activities that are someone else’s idea, someone else’s challenge.

What if Eagleman’s first possibility for the afterlife (Sum) is what happens?  What if, after you depart this life, what happens is that you are required to live your life over exactly as you did the first time…except now, instead of living experiences in sequential fashion…you have experience events in lumps…thirty years sleeping, fourteen having breakfast…so many arguing… (See “Choosing Life…”)

Four solid years of being lost would be tiring…. But imagine if you had to re-experience every moment you ever spent worrying…if you were required to go through every worry again… in one long, tedious, hand-twisting lump?  Yikes.

Worrying is the handiwork of the Emotional Guidance System since our Thinking Guidance System deals with facts, not “What ifs.”

The Emotional Guidance System burns anxiety for fuel to create more anxiety.  The Emotional Guidance System pokes us with, “What if you are wrong?” 

The Thinking Guidance System looks at that question and the facts.  The Thinking Guidance System says:  “You are probably are wrong a lot.  It’s not that big a deal.”

The Emotional Guidance System says:  “If you are wrong…Terrible things will happen!  Being wrong is horrible, embarrassing, and you won’t be able to stand it!”

The Emotional Guidance System applies the same formula of fear-generating anxiety with:  “What if you are late?”  “What if you are early?”  “What if you don’t get the promotion?”  “What if you have cancer?”  “What if she gets mad?”   “What if my kid has problems?”

The little big-mouthed fear-monger sitting on your shoulder, shouting in your ear is specifically tuned to scare you about the possibilites most meaningful to you.  Here’s the challenge.  Each time today when your little “What if” Inner Torturer takes hold and starts going on and on exaggerating consequences….Think about Eagleman’s afterlife idea.  Play with this notion: 

If you knew you were going to have to meticulously repeat every second of every day you spent worrying….would you still CHOOSE to worry today?

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.”

The woman who ended her life in a stand-off with police, (Antidepressants, the Truth, and a Tribute, Pt.1) wouldn’t have seen herself as worthy of a tribute. But if she could have one, she would have wanted something that could help other people. 

After she thanked everyone who tried to help her.

No one chooses to be depressed. 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 pill that would help? 

I make this tribute to the woman who tried hard, but lost, as she would have wanted it. That is, by honoring everyone of you who has, as she did, courageously taken medication in the face of exhausting and debilitating side effects.  Antidepressants aren’t magic and every one of them has side effects.  Few people can find the not-perfect, but best fit between side effects and positive results –with the first perscription.  The woman who finally gave up, bravely took one medication after another, always hopeful that one day she would see in a sunset the awe-inspiring beauty  typical people take for granted. 

And there’s how depression turns other people off.  Here was a woman who knew that when friends or relatives or even her doctors saw her coming, they felt dread.  She knew she’d gone from being a blessing to being a burden.  She took more medication hopeful that one day her friends and relatives would see her coming and feel some of the old welcome. She put up with the muscles twitches, the overpowering fatigue, the sleepless nights, the confusion…hoping that one day she’d approach others and see towards her… the kind of easiness her friends and relatives experienced around everyone…it seemed to her…everyone but her.

“What has happened to me?”  She’d ask.  “I’m not who I used to be and I can’t find her anymore.”

Taking medication is hard.  I have the greatest respect for each person willing to take antidepressents. Depression and Bipolar Disorder are biological realities that if we are lucky enough to not have in our genes, we should kiss the ground and never forget how blessed we are. Imagine, feeling blessed because a smile bubbles up when you watch a puppy at play.  Kiss the ground. We did not do anything to deserve this automatic response, this easy access to joy. Neither does a depressed person do anything to lose that easy access to joy.

 

Antidepressants are good medicine. The medications we have available now are a hundred times more patient friendly and side effect free when compared to what was available when I first worked at a hospital. I am most definitely not suggesting the use of medications contributed to suicide.  I’m saying that psychotropic medications are limited; medication isn’t the cure most people think. Less than one-third of people taking anti-depressants get an “adequate” response, one third experience a little positive change and life-dampening side effects, and one-third have more symptoms than they did without medications.

To each and every one of you who has braved medication, who has struggled to feel the joy most people take for granted–hats off.

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.”

 

 

  There was a time when I was ready to jump the psychology ship.  I’d decided that psychology was about fads and making up stories to fit theories.  Then I studied a way of accounting for human behavior which wasn’t consumed with the battle to prove “what is really going” on in a person’s head.

At that point I became a STRATEGEST.  “Let’s look at what’s going on . . . and your part in it . . . and consider ways YOU CAN MAKE your life better.”

Instead of spinning in circles trying to come up with answers to the question “WHY?” efforts are focused on making changes that work.  Hard, yes.  Slow, yes.

People are not that complex–as much as we like to think we are– and we know what works and doesn’t work.

We know which behaviors attract humans. 

  We know which behaviors repel humans.

So why is change so hard?

Anxiety and habit. 

Upcoming.  What works:  Learning to say what you are thinking.  Having your actions based on your BEST THINKING and NOT ON EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from others or from within yourself–your own fears and anxieties.

   I was nearly broad-sided (and rude) at the stop sign because I was hurrying home.  Because, out of my anxiety, I hadn’t been clear (and kind) with my husband about when I’d be home from the stable.  Details later.

   The time has come to rate commercials for the public good.  No, I’m not worked up that second graders talk casually about ED: “What? A four hour WHAT?    I’m going to stay a kid!”

I think consumers deserve a warning.  What I’m talking about is the current trend of showing giant, ugly, squirmy bacteria on all sorts of surfaces.    Sheesh.  I can’t hit the clicker fast enough.  Tell me these are giving kids nightmares.

At least we’re past flu season so we can stop hearing about (and seeing–life size) “mucous.”  Did you even talk about mucous before last winter’s barrage?

I want a heads-up.  “Warning:  the following commercial contains disgusting images that may offend normal people.   . . . particularly, those eating.”

Of course, I do notice that the ads on my favorite shows go for a certain under-employed, under-educated, and under-socialized demographic.  So, maybe it’s not for me to say. 

     Hey, in case you do not have a well-developed INNER TORTURER, or a spouse, relative, or friend willing to teach you to DOUBT YOURSELF, there’s always Dr. L. Perfect on the radio. 

     You can call in and she’ll give you the words to beat yourself up with.  Regularly.

  Oh, if only Dr. Perfect can guilt and browbeat women until they see that being a person is not only against the will of God, but shameful and deserving of Dr. P’s wrath.  

       That idea still has fans.  El Dorado, TX raid:    

American Girls.  Tonight I’m attending a showing of the film “American Girls.”   Here are a few words from the synopsis:

“Sisters Bianca and Lorena were just ten years old when they made the dangerous trip across the US-Mexican border.  They settled in Oregon with their mother so they could have everything she did not: a life beyond marriage, better education, more career choices.”     

Now, there’s a way to resolve the immigration issue.  According to Dr. P., the lives these girls risked their lived to leave behind, are just the ticket to be a star American woman.  The roles they left are still available, ladies.  The job requirements are all any woman should achieve– a uterus and a willingness to pretend that mopping floors and finding the best peanut butter is fulfilling.  Fifty cents to cross the bridge in Laredo,   and you’re in.

Hurry, there are only a few million openings.   

Tomorrow:  Back to “What do you think you think?” and the French who learns what love is.

  Okay, we’ve sucked it up and are ready to take on real change with the ONLY PERSON WE CAN CHANGE. 

**Those still hanging on to the hope that you’re going to fix your insides by training other people  to treat you the way you must be treated in order to stay calm, know two things.  You won’t be very happy for very long.     And other people will distance from you to avoid your complaints about how they treat you.  Well, three things.  Third is, I’m right there in the sinking boat with you.  I’m still not over American Airlines switching from peanuts to pretzels.  So, you know what kind of emotional maturity giant I am.

 BAD NEWS:  Trying to maintain self-esteem by training others is time-consuming, ineffective, and eventually humiliating.  (How many times to you want to tell some one to give you a kiss?)

GOOD NEWS:  You were in charge all along,    and that’s attractive like a bucket of money.

Later: SPEED KILLS!

     Now, it’s important here to say that no one takes our life away from us.  No one slips inside our brains and chests and TAKES OVER our feelings.  The only way to for another person to take charge of your life and your FEELINGS is for you to abandon yourself. 

You must abdicate responsibility for your feelings; you must abdicate responsibility for your goals and actions.  

     You have to get out of the way and turn the steering wheel over to the other.

    ”You always make me feel stupid.”  “Every time you say that I just give up.”     I can’t stand it when you say that.”  “You hurt my feelings.”  “After what you said I didn’t sleep all night.”  “I would have gone back to law school, but my husband didn’t encourage me.”  “I’ve always wanted to write a book, but my father wanted me to stick with medicine.”  “I started writing a book, but quit when I found out that no one is interested in new writers never get published.”  “I wouldn’t be so depressed but my therapist doesn’t validate my feelings.” 

But mostly, “YOU . . .      . . . MADE ME FEEL THIS WAY.”

Thus, the first step in becoming a free woman in marriage and the world, is to take back that steering wheel.  It’s not easy, we are accustomed to seeing ourselves as over-porous beings unable to do anything but soak up criticism, which wouldn’t be so bad.  Problem is, we’re in the habit of taking criticism personally.

And, oh yeah.  We’re even worse about praise.  We take praise WAY too personally.  So personally that we even believe if we could train others to give us those compliments we’d be okay.  (Talk about turning over the wheel.) 

Compliments are supposed to mean that we’re okay.  That we’re going the right direction.  That we’ve passed the audition–for now.  When did we give all that power away?  When did we buy that compliments said anything about whether or not we’re loved or LOVABLE?

“If he’d compliment me once in a while, I wouldn’t mind not having a life,” she said.

 “Does this outfit make me look fat?”         

Ladies, come on.  NO . . . MORE.  The question is a mistake.  You are worth more than that question.  NO MORE.

     The first thing we’re going to do on this journey is to take back responsibility for the way we feel.  “I’ll take care of my feelings, because I’m the only one who can do a good job.”     

     Setting:  The yard stretching between a Southern mansion and a river is scattered with leftover wedding guests.  The glowing bride steps over to the serving table and picks up the saucer with what was left from her slice of wedding cake used in the cross-over, feed-each-other ritual.  She smiles, gazes into the distance as if she sees a beautiful future.  She nestles the cake in her hand and takes a nip. 

     The groom rushes up, takes the saucer out of her hand, and stares hard at her.     “Not with your fingers!  There are people here!”

     The bride’s expression darkens, as if she is seeing   an . . .  entirely . . . different future.     

     I may have used this bride before, as I often recall and share her changing expression when I present to groups and teach.  I’m bringing it up here to say, her changed view of WHAT IS POSSIBLE is not his fault.  It’s not her “fault” either.  She is, however, the one in charge of that future.

     Does she smile at him, remove his hand sweetly, and say, “I love you so much, but your probably stuck with me eating with my fingers.  I’m actually better off than my sisters.  They can’t even identify the three main utensils.”  She smiles.  But she doesn’t adapt to keep him calmed down when she doesn’t agree with him.  She squeezes his hand, does a cute thing with her eyebrows.  

     She makes a boundary and takes responsibility for doing the best job she can to be clear without being defensive. 

   Later:  Shrink attempts Self Definition on airplane.

     Yesterday, I was flipping through the channels during a Court TV (Tru TV) break and there was Tyra interviewing guests.  Each woman in the audience had a large square of paper taped to the front of her shirt.  The square read, “My True Weght” (or something close).  The idea was that at the end of the show all papers would come off, including Tyra’s, and we’d have a chance to see just how worthwhile each woman was.

   Tyra chants, “One, two, three,” and off they come.  Under the paper?  “SCREW THE SCALES.”

   How great is that?  Just taking women’s number one reason to feel bad and stupid and laughing right in its face.  I’ve never had scales and suggest to the women I see to dump those ridiculous torture machines!

   But, “Oh, oh,” come the frightened cries.      “If a woman doesn’t weigh herself, won’t she lose all control and get fatter and fatter until she’s not worth anything at all anymore?  How will she possibly know what to do?”

      Well . . . NO.  Women are not stupid just because we’ve been brain-washed to believe it’s just real important not to just know what we weigh, it’s flipping critical to know our PERCENTAGE OF BODY FAT.  Now who came up with that one?  Women were actually PAYING to have a DOCTOR      tell us a set of numbers we were supposed to so seriously battle against.

     Hey, we have MIRRORS.  We have CLOTHES.  We can SEE our bodies and, more importantly, we are not such CHILDREN that we DON’T KNOW WHAT IT MEANS when we CAN’T FIT INTO clothes we wore before.

The Emperor Has No Clothes!  We have fallen for our own obsession.  And what hurts, what really, really hurts, is seeing so many wonderful, intelligent, funny, beatiful women convinced they would be better people if they lost weight.  When did butt-size become the measure of a woman?    When did we bow our heads and accept the “INTERNAL TORTURER?”

 The rant shall continue.  Having spent my first years out of graduate school working with eating disorders and the years since working with depression and marriages in trouble –I’m not getting off of this for a while. 

    Andy (Timothy Robbins) walks into Shawshank prison, an environment most of us would see as a hopeless place to survive, much less have a life of any quality.  He enters the mess hall and the yard, surveys his new neighbors, and joins the most sane group with the most balanced leader (Morgan Freeman).  He works in the library, teaches inmates to read, and every single night he scoops one teaspoon of sand out of the tunnel he’s digging for his escape.         

     Andy chooses to be in charge of himself rather than allow his surroundings determine what goes on inside him and how he conducts himself and he has a goal.        

     What are you perceiving if you’re the one walking into Shawshank?     

     You do not simply SEE the environment.  Your perception is an act of creation.  You will perceive in accord with the “AS IF” world you’ve made up.  You will PERCEIVE in accord to the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO, not the world as it IS.         

     How to talk someone else into thinking you’re fat:  A newly wed couple is enjoying a meal when the husband looks into his wife’s eyes and tells her how perfect she is.  The wife twirls a string of spaghetti, a shadow crossing her expression.  She says, “I know you think so, but I don’t.  Ever since I was twelve, I’ve always felt like my hips were huge.  I felt like a fat giant in junior high.  I can’t stand to think what’s going to happen as I get older.”  The husband says something sweet, but when the wife gets up to retrieve something across the kitchen, where do his eyes go?  How often and how many more times, in the years to come, will his eyes drift to the source of his wife’s junior high school misery?    

     It depends on how insistent is she that she SHOULD change the size of her derriere, and how insistent she is that IT IS AWFUL, TERRIBLE, AND UNBEARABLE to be a woman with a large (if it even is) posterior.   

     But now we’ve moved from PERCEIVING to INTERPRETING.  Oh, baby now our EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM can really take off!

     

   HOW YOU PERCEIVE OTHERS and the WORLD determines, to a large degree, how much fun your are going to have in this life.  Whether you are FREE or in YOUR OWN PRISON.

     Sometimes when I talk about working toward a Self Defined Life, people mistakenly assume being SELF DEFINED is the same as being Self-ish.  Nothing could be further from the truth.  Isn’t it more selfish to run your life on some kind of “auto-pilot” expecting others to change for you?  Could there be a more unselfish gift to a spouse, a friend, or relative than to say, “I’ve complained a lot about how you treat me as though it was your responsibity to see that I am happy, and that I never, ever doubt myself.  That wasn’t fair, and anyway, as dedicated as I’ve been to telling you how to change so that I stay calm–YOU KEEP BEING       YOURSELF.  I’ve realized, ‘Babe,’ since I’m making up the world as I go along, you’ll never be able to catch up with my needs.  Why don’t I work on my PERCEPTIONS instead of trying to change you?  Particularly, because, according to your limited view, you’re not doing the thoughtless things I accuse you of, anyway.”

     “I’m going to try something new.  I’m going to take more responsibility for my feelings.”  Now that’s un-self-centered.

     Operating in a self-defined way means working toward having your actions more determined by your BEST THINKING and less determined by EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from others, or EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from within yourself–that is, your own anxieties and       fears.  Freedom is both having charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity, and having the capacity to manage your anxiety so that your interactions with others and the world are in line with BEST THINKING rather than automatic, anxiety-driven, predictable responses.

     We’re going to look at four steps that go into our response to a situation.  The first step is PERCEPTION.             

     Let’s go back to Andy (Tim Robbins) walking into Shawshank Prison on a life sentence for a double murder he did not commit.  (Picture yourself at your job, class, party, dinner with family, involved in a disagreement with someone important.  For my writer buddies out there, imagine yourself sitting down to pitch an agent, facing a blank page, or adding another page to your rejection collection).  

     What and WHO DO YOU SEE?  Do they want to FIGHT?    What DO THEY WANT from you?   What do they think of you?  How is this meeting going to go?  “Which is more important?  The world you can touch, or the world you’re responding to?”

     This question of perception is particularly important as you approach your “Shawshank.”  You don’t walk into the same prison (party, bus, job, relationship, hospital, class) as any other person, though you are entering at the same moment at the same place.  Your emotions, your fears and anxieties, take a role in creating your situation.  In actually CREATING THE PEOPLE.        

    Thus, YOU have a lot to say about how the encounters in your life turn out.  (Big encounters, like marriage.  Little encounters, like the one with the stranger next to you on the plane. 

   But, oh, I’m getting ahead.  And, what kind of “woo-woo” idiot psychologist am I, to suggest that other people aren’t EXACTLY as I perceive them?  I’m supposed to even be right about what others are THINKING.  Since I can see inside people’s heads, I know WHY they do and say the things I PERCEIVE.  I know I see reality because it FEELS like what I see is reality.

     Tomorrow we return to poor Andy walking into Shawshank Prison.  What will the places you’re in until then be like?

   Before we hone our skills at driving ourselves and others crazy, a clear picture of what the non-crazy person looks like.

     Let’s start with a simple test of our current capacity to manage stress.  What would you do if you were sentenced to life without parole for a double murder you did not commit?  Life.  In a maximum security prison with no hope.  Bad, bad neighbors.

     Talk about a chance for your Emotional Guidance System to take charge.  To what degree would you be able to manage what goes on inside your chest cavity?  Me?  I’m writhing on the floor tearing my hair out.  They’d have to pry my teeth off the baseboards to load into the transport van.  I would be “shoulding”– like crazy.  “This shouldn’t be happening to me!  Someone should have saved me!  My parents should have raised me to be tougher!  And, you, warden guy, shouldn’t be smirking like that.”  As you notice, it doesn’t matter that according to law this shouldn’t be happening.  When it is, it is.

         Then, of course, I’d move into catastrophizing.  “This is horrible!  I can’t take this!  This is terrible!  I can’t stand to live in a prison!”  Again, the conditions might be awful in fact, the point is WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT? 

     “Which is more important?  The world we can touch, or the world we’re responing to?”

     Tim Robbins, playing Andy, in “The Shawshank Redemption” makes another choice.  (I know, you’re thinking, “Choice?  What kind of choice does someone unfairly imprisoned for life have?”  After all, Andy’s the VICTIM right?  He doesn’t have any control over his situation.  Andy takes on his fate in a remarkable way with remarkable results.   

     He thinks about his situation and arranges a fulfilling role for himself.  He locates and associates with the most emotionally stable group with the most solid self leader (Morgan Freeman.)  And he makes a long term goal, a plan for escape that will take many years of work and patience.

     A Self Defined Person:     is able to pull focus off surroundings . . . returning energy to managing anxiety and planning actions.  For starters. 

Practice Sentence:  “This is unpleasant, inconvenient, and less than perfect, but not a disaster unless I DECIDE TO MAKE IT ONE.”

  “Which is more real?  The world you can touch, or THE WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO?”

     Talk about your family issues.  Anthony Perkins in “Psycho” is definitely a person with a problem staying calm around his mother.  In fact, his Emotional Guidance System rules his behavior so thoroughly when he’s around his mother, he becomes his mother.  The view his mother’s subjective view, based on her fears, has become his view.  When he has thoughts unacceptable to his mother’s view of him as an innocent little boy, he punishes himself. 

      And, there was that unpleasantry in the shower.  Janet Leigh screaming, her bloody hands streaking down the tiles.  Actually, his mother (who was dead and drying in the main house) slashed up the beautiful blonde.  She was just trying to help.  Just trying to keep her/his view of the world steady. 

     Isn’t this what all of us are trying to do when we tell people the way they see the world, the way they do things is wrong.  We’re only trying to help.  Right?  Actually, like Anthony, what we’re doing is trying to calm our own anxiety.  When someone presents a view that doesn’t fit our picture of the “way things are” our anxiety goes up and we go into a defensive mode trying to get comfortable by convincing the other to change. 

      Hopefully, we stick to arguing, dismissing, or avoiding rather than murder.  But murders happen everyday between family members unable to accept disagreements in world view.  If I can bully you into agreeing, then you have to go.  For those folks, the cut-off method may be the best they can do to manage anxiety.