A Psycholgist on the Loose
Posts tagged joy
Flight of the Immature, Part 3
Conclusion of United Flight 6960 from Chicago to Columbia, South Carolina. Parts 1 and 2 immediately precede this tale of unusual punishment.
Whoa. Finishing up my tale of woe is going to be a bit more difficult than I’d planned. I’m now in my Hilton branch office the next day. I have the television on the History Channel…and, right there, splattered all over the big flat screen is a re-enactment of the Battle of Valley Forge. At the moment, three emaciated soldiers, their frozen bare feet wrapped in rags, their eyes blank from pain and starvation…are sitting against a tree. “Only the More >
Fear, Dust, and a Longing Under the Wire
Dateline: Nuevo Laredo, Mexico….Over the border and through the dust to many grandmothers’ cardboard and tin houses we went….
My first impression on the job with Bridging Hearts? A person should really get into this sort of project when she’s younger…a lot younger. My special person winced and agreed.
Our helping out the border economy started right off the bat. We had four huge and heavy black garbage bags full of 1000 toothbrushes and toothpastes… (Thank you Austin dentists!)…to cart over the Rio Grande Bridge into Nuevo Laredo. As soon as we cleared the gate, we hired a couple of fellows for outrageous amounts (what you send out comes back)…little did they know they More >
Think, then Speak, the ‘Talkative Guy in Bicycle Shorts Incident’
How much trouble can a person get into by speaking ‘off the top of his head’ to a televsion reporter?
Doesn’t talking ’off the top of your head’ boil down to simply blithering random words as they pop into consciousness? Yes, ‘off the top of your head’ can, and often does mean, talking without using your head at all. Using the Thinking Guidance System,you recall, means taking into acount the LONG TERM effects of your actions.
Which brings us to the ’Talkative Guy in Bicycle Shorts Incident’
A few weeks ago, a husband, obviously in the grip of his Emotional Guidance System…shot and killed his More >
To Contact MysteryShrink: bdeshong@austin.rr.com
The email links on Mysteryshrink are not functioning. To send a message please use: bdeshong@austin.rr.com
How Lovely it is in Our Own Little World
After a banquet with leaders of a school district, I was headed for the podium for my keynote when one of the administrators pulled me down slightly to share a secret. The look of concern on his face made me suspious that I was about to flash some part my anatomy I’d hadn’t planned on sharing. He said, “Don’t worry about what Mr. X said. He lives in his own little world.” I was thinking–”Don’t we all?” But I didn’t say my question out loud as this was the guy who’d hired me.
Which is more real? The world we can touch? More >
Just Stop with the Negativity
“What’s more important in determining our life?”
“The world of facts, the world we can touch? Or the world as WE HAVE DISTORTED it? The dangerous, and maybe even mean world, we are responding to in our head?”
Each of us has a chance to grow whatever parts of our world we want to grow. By paying attention to a piece of our experience, that piece takes up more and more space. Whatever we waters, grows.
I’m sitting in a restaurant booth, my roving office, and, as usual, the space behind me is filled, emptied, and refilled with more normal customers.
At least, I guess More >
Jacking Up and Calming Down with Family
The Movie Revolt Incident: It was Friday afternoon after Thanksgiving. After lunch, a group of six laws and in-laws in my husband’s family decided to go to a popular horror movie. On the way, one sister-in-law announced she’d drop off the rest of us and come back to pick us up, as she did not want to see this particular movie. That’s when things began falling apart. I opted to skip the movie as well. A third expressed doubts and the pro-movie people started suggesting other movies.
Yikes. We stopped to buy a paper and look for another movie, though More >