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 bravest, most loyal men stayed the winter,” the kind-voiced narrator explains.  “The weaker men long ago ran away in the night.  Those with wounds died horrible deaths, gangrene taking over their legs, inch by inch. The rest…too weak to break the frozen ground, can do no more than drag their comrades’ bodies a few yards into the woods to be devoured by animals in the night.”

Even the boney scavenger wolves competing over the gangrene ridden dead soldiers are starving.  This makes it really hard to complain about the meal I finally secured once I reached Columbia, South Carolina.  Really hard, but not impossible. I hesitate to continue….Much can be said for ignorance. …and whining is so unattractive…BUT, as I was saying…

Eventually, a guy in a blue jumpsuit delivered paperwork to United 696o on the tarmac at Chicago O’Hare  Airport.  Our plane is backing away from the gate–which you’d be thinking is a good thing. But aha!  Leaving the gate is only a delaying ploy…sort of a decoy move to keep passengers in the delusion that something is happening.  I glance over my shoulder to soak in Army Arnold’s admiration at how I’d called the situation perfectly.  How the guy in the jumpsuit delivered the needed paperwork.  In sort of in a long JIFF.  My Army pals and I sigh with relief.  It’s been fun getting to know each other…but all that was over…time to get back to our separate lives….Army Arnold and pal land cots at Ft. Jackson and I slide between cool sheets at the branch Hilton.

Army Arnold, hanging on to our relationship, punches the back of my seat asking if it is safe to fly in a blizzard such as the one outside his window?   Further flaunting my extensive flying experience and all-around travelling cool, I related several air travel stories for Arnold’s amusement.  He said he envied how I was so relaxed, so able to go with the flow.  “Oh, I dunno,” I say, “I’ve learned to take these little changes in stride.”

Once we’re in line for take-off, Arnold remarks at the number of planes ahead of us and I throw out some random number that I claim is the number of planes O’Hare handles every day. …Now our plane initiates a slow left turn out of line.  “I knew it!  Something’s wrong with the plane!” says Arnold.

Denial Danny, designated flight attendant, is already digging in his bag of fabulous free treats.  This is not good.  Pilot Positive Pete comes on the intercom:  “Well, folks, because we had to wait for the paperwork…well, enough time passed for ice to collect on the plane.  (Arnold gasps and punches the back of my seat.)  So, ladies and gentlemen, we’re now returning to the gate to have the wings de-iced.”

The plane goes a few yards and stops in a cross track.  Positive Pete amends his promise: “Actually, we cannot head into a gate to get in the line to be de-iced….We cannot locate an open gate, so we are now in in line to get a gate,  where we will get in line to be de-iced, then will return to get in line to take off.

Tick…tick.  We begin hour three on the plane.  

My Emotional Guidance System is going berserk, screaming:  This is horrible!  I can’t take this!  However, since I have Army Arnold behind me saying out loud what I am thinking, I must not crack, I must continue to feign sophistication and self-control.  Next to Army Arnold’s genuine terror of flying…if I were to unleash my relentless bitching over my inconvenience….Well, I’d look a bit petty.

Thus, I am repeating to myself: “While the changes in my plans… are unfortunate, uncomfortable, and inconvenient ….this is not a disaster unless I decide to make it one….While the changes in my plans are unfortunate, uncomfortable, and incon….”

Okay.  We’re in a gate, in line for de-icing. Denial Danny unleashes the beverage cart.  Not good. We aren’t going to be airborne in any hurry.  Army Arnold is asking his buddy if it’s true that if you’re in the military you can order alcohol on planes?  As Danny hands Arnold his Coke (full can, definite bad sign), Arnold asks Denial Dan if the pilot has ever flown in a snowstorm before.  After beverage service is complete, Danny is back to pushing ‘free’ pretzels.

6960 is now almost four hours old.  The Army boys aren’t going to make Ft. Jackson by midnight, but I should be under those comfy covers by then.  Because now the craned de-icer equipment is spraying us down.  The plane swaying like a baloon as the de-icer pressure spaxxrer sweeps along, ArmyArnold is starting to babble about how maybe he should have gone to college first, but he needs the Army money to go, but maybe college isn’t that important…..

“Alright!” Positive Pete exclaims as if we’d just safely swung across the Grand Canyon on a rope.  “De-icing is complete. We are ON OUR WAY, ladies and gentleman.”

You’d think the words…ON OUR WAY would indicate imminent movement.  But no.  We sit, tray tables in upright and locked positions. Denial Danny pops into the aisle with his plastic goody bag informing us that silly old Positive Pete meant that we were now waiting for a runway assignment. As he passes my row, D. Danny warns he only has two ‘free’ granola bars left.  I pretend I can’t hear him.  A move I shall deeply regret.  (Note eventual menu for the evening.)

Snow swirls outside.  Army Arnold pushes his knee into the now familiar dent in the back of my seat.  I turn around.  Nothing to worry about, time-wise, I say. Because we’re already late, traffic control is probably waiting to give us a good spot, I said, because I’m so cool and know everything.  Arnold squints at me.  “It’s snowing,” he says. “We never had snow in California…I should have taken the bus the whole way.”  He drains his Coke.

Tick…tick…tick…an hour passes since Pete’s jolly send-off. “While the changes in my plans….are unfortunate, inconvenient…”  Denial Danny comes by and asks me if I need anything.  From his expression I’m pretty sure that uncontrollable, self-destructive part of me that takes over when I’m pulled over for a speeding ticket…has now taken charge of my relationship with D. Danny.  Now that my true self had slipped out, like the many lawmen before him, Danny isn’t going to be cutting me a break.

Tick…tick…tick… Then Petey said, “Oops! Sorry about this ladies and gentlemen, but we’ve waited so long here in line to get in line that we’ve iced up again. We’re going back to get in line for the de-icer.”  He keeps making statements like the one above as if we were supposed to be thrilled.  An hour later the de-icer returns.  Tick…tick.  “Oh happy Day!” the de-icer runs out of anti-freeze.  We get de-iced.  We wait to get in line for take off. We are into hour six.  Six. Army Arnold is asking me stories about my childhood the way people do in movies where the players all know they are going to die. 

Tick…tick.  Take-offs currently suspended due to visibility. Denial Dan doesn’t come around much any more. He did take a bathroom break in the rear luxury spa, but he blew by me so fast I wasn’t able to stick my foot out in the aisle.

But, get this…this is the best part….It is now 3:15 in the morning.  We take off….and here it is…wait for it….Denial Danny picks up his mike and ACTUALLY SAYS…”We at United want to take this opportunity to thank you for choosing United Airlines and PERSONALLY extend an invitation for you to join the United Frequent Flyer Program….Just fill out the brochure you can find in the seat pocket in front of you….

 Oh, and the final menu on reaching my destination….to be revealed in next post.  Not a picture post.  No one should have to see what I stuck my plastic fork into that early morn…with dreams of granola bars in my head.

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 could have named their price.

Two poor guys crossed the bridge that morning feeling lucky and smiling…and we were feeling lucky and, well, like this day wasn’t as hard as we’d been imagining…

Wrong. From the bridge we piled the bags in with the other goodies and went to the orphanage where the girls had been up since five putting together bags for the families in the colonias…an orange, a sandwich, a bag of beans, and a box of cereal.  Pickups loaded, we headed out into the hinterlands outside of town arriving in Insurjentes, a colonia of tin an cardboard houses. The next several hours we held lines in place as people lined up as far as we could see.

Now, you have the picture, right?  Two pale-faced middle-aged psychologists who failed out of the Scouts…standing proud and brave in the dust and the sun…like the saviors in the Magnificant Seven (kick in the soundtrack, or maybe a few verses of Lonely Bull) …now hold that thought.

The truth?  My nose bleeding and my face cracked, feet killing me, and my arm muscles on fire…I leaned over to my special person and said, “You…me…room service…iced fume blanc…six hours.”

Somehow we climbed dizzily into Master Peggy’s giant pickup which is hiked up…as best as I can recall…four feet off the ground to take the enormous ruts and ’so-called’ roads. From there, back to the orphanage, then crawl back in the pickup with the grocery list–10 dozen eggs, boxes and boxes of oranges.  Forty bags of sugar… We smiled when Peggy said…”No, not a dozen potatoes…a dozen bags…

And, my special person tagged my trembling hand and whispered, “air-conditioning, room service, football…three hours..”

Kicked into a sort of fervent overdrive, we return to the home, cook, serve….when asked how we’re doing… we’d say, “Oh, no, really, we’re just fine…”

At least until around nine when we begged for a taxi.  The time waiting at the gate with the little old nun who insisted on waiting with us until the taxi arrived…was perfect.

The taxi dropped us off on the Mexico side and special person and I stared at the long bridge.   He said one word…”football,” and we launched…we dragged…we used the grab bar shamelessly.

I had an idea that readers might like to be part of Touching Hearts…in spirit, at least.

First let me say, I am opposed to the typical Christmas gift campaign reaching into your Emotional Guidance System saying a certain amount of profit will go to a charity.  And, to the dismay of my publisher, promotion is not my long suit….That said, after my experience in the colonias across the border, I’ve been thinking of fun ways to contribute to the lives of the very poor and I thought it would be kind of fun to make a game of the practice.

Thus, when you buy a copy of  TOO RICH and TOO THIN, Not an Autobiograpy, a gift for someone, perhaps,from whatever source, between now and Christmas, I will add $5.00 to the January pot. Now here’s the hard sell…

I will put the money in anyway.  I’m asking you to send me an email (bdeshong@austin.rr.com) and let me know you bought a book.  And here’s the good part…You don’t even have to tell the truth, I’m not checking.  You can just tell me you bought a book and I’ll add your $5.00 to the kitty.  This is not a way to collect email addresses, I’m not that promoter-sophisticated or sneaky enough for that.

I just think it will be fun.  And worth it.  You’ll get an update on “Weinnies Under the Wire.”

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 wife while she was packing up to leave him.  Now, the actions of the murderer guy aren’t even the actions we’re talking about, but admittedly a good example of not taking LONG TERM effects into consideration. 

But, jump ahead, if you will, to the reporter for a local television station who travelled to the small town outside Austin where the murder happened to provide that ‘on the spot’ illusion for the five o’clock story.

The little town hosting the murder is a rural haven left over from when the railroad first came through that part of Texas, though a few Austinites have moved to Red Rock to fulfill dreams of pastoral peace and to ride their bike instead of burning fossil fuels like the lesser forms of humanity. But, mostly Red Rock is a ranching and agricultural enclave.  Our lively television reporter arrives in Red Rock ready to take the pulse of the townspeople. 

Most of the town’s residents were busy with target practice, baking pies, and herding longhorns, but our reporter did find one unoccupied Red Rock resident who happened to be one of the Austin-transplants, a spry fellow riding his bike.  Somehow the reporter didn’t notice that Red Rock regular residents don’t ride ten-speeds and they certainly don’t wear flashy bicycle pants and bodysuit tops…or red and green banana helmets or earrings, or scraggly beards.  

Our reporter has the camera going and needed just the one clip to go with his story of the murder.  Thus, his brief interview of the guy in bicycle shorts (GIBS)  would come and go in his life without causing undo harm.  The guy in the bicycle shorts, I fear, was not so lucky.

Because, you see, when the reporter asked the GIBS, “Do you find it hard to believe that a murder like this could happen in such a pleasant little town?”

The grinning GIBS looks right into the camera and says,  “Not really.  This town is full of POT-BELLIED, KNUCKLE-DRAGGING REDNECKS.”

Did I mention he LIVED in amongst the people he just so colorfully described?  Or, at least he did.

                                                                                           The email links on Mysteryshrink are not functioning.  To send a message please use:   bdeshong@austin.rr.com

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?  Or the world we are responding to?  I hadn’t noticed that Mr. X had said anything of note.  Clearly Mr. Y had created a Mr. X in his head, and it was this co-worker he worried about.

   Mr. X stated the obvious.  Only, sometimes we lose touch with the fact that we are operating out of “our own little world.”  Sometimes we behave as if our little world is THE world. 

How can we tell when we’re behaving if our little world is all there is of reality?  One way is to notice when we are stuck in push-pull accelrating arguments about something that doesn’t matter–though, of course, we are behaving if convincing other person to agree with us will change the course of world events.  You can bet your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is running that show. It’s pretty easy to see from a factual THINKNG GUIDANCE SYSTEM perspective the long-term result you get with this kind of arguement is not what you get. 

You’ve been there.  You come in from work.  Both of you are in a good mood and looking forward to a pleasant evening.  Then one person says, I’ll really like to have pasta tonight, but you forgot to buy pasta when you went to the store.”  The other says, “Pasta wasn’t on the list.”  Person number one says, “You’re wrong, it was on the list.”  “No, it wasn’t.” 

Then we shift to second gear.  One says, “Why are you always like this?” ((Now we’ve switched from pasta to ‘what’s wrong with the person.)) The other says, “Me? You‘re the only who always has to make a big deal of things.” ((Best defense is a good offense.))  “You’re the one who gets loud and hurts my feelings.” ((Now we call into question the other person’s love.))  “Right. And you were the one who blew up at the poor parking meter reader?” ((Now begins the exchange of real life examples of each other’s least attractive moments.  That always works.))

Challenge:  At least one time tomorrow …when you find yourself chastising someone for being different than you…or having a different opinion…even a different political stance or solution to the economic situation…or even chastisg a stranger for being more interested in making good time on the freeway themselves…rather than devoting their driving efforts toward making sure you have a stress free and time-efficient drive…give them PERMISSION to be different from you.

This is VERY HARD. More….

“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 it’s normal to talk and talk and talk about what’s wrong with the world, what’s wrong with all the people in our world.  But then, what am I doing here?  Being negative about other people being negative.  

Recognizing the negative: 

“Why would anyone . . .?  I can’t stand . . .  What kind of an idiot votes for . . . Don’t they know how stupid . . . What’s wrong with someone who’d . . .  I hate it when . . . I can’t believe anyone’s that . . . Jerk . . . Stupid . . .

I’m watering some positive today.  Growing some grins.     I’m going to be ridiculous.  I’m turning laughing cartwheels (and I mean this in the most metaphorical way).

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 we three rebels were okay without one.  The start time for the horror movie past, one brother-in-law threw up his hands and criticized his wife for not listening to him when he said they should bring the paper with them from home.  I started apologizing for some random thing (and thinking how these family “togetherness” holidays were overrated).  The original “rebel” launched in on a story from childhood when she didn’t sleep for days after a horror movie.      Her husband added that she was “always like this with his family, but anything goes when they are with her family.”

All because one person attempted a INDIVIDUALITY move.

Thinking in terms of natural systems, each of us operates with a TOGETHERNESS force and a INDIVIDUALITY force. 

What?      Think of it like this when you are anxious and find relief calling a friend, your togetherness force was in affect.  If you feel calmer at Thanksgiving when you escape to the back den and the football game, your individuality force is in action. 

Forget the complexity.  In the next several days we will look at ways to manage anxiety when our force for individuality is overwhelmed by the presence of others, each of whom INSISTS ON BEING THEMSELVES instead of only being in ways to MAKE US COMFORTABLE.

Whew.  I’m tired just thinking about it. 

Oh yeah.    The accumulation of all your leftover junky thoughtstreams about your many failures and weakness.  Story later today.

   We’ve lived in the same house for years which has a large laundry room on the second level.  The dryer, like all, has a removable lint filter (cleaned often) which has behind it a tube leading through the wall to the outside.  Sometime during growing up I was told that if you didn’t keep that tube clean, it was a fire hazard.  Then I’ve seen thirty foot wire brushes designed to clear that pipe.  (Okay, it was that Air Mall catalog always in the front pocket of your seat with the marshmellow gun.)  Then there is the occasional unexplained house fire.

   Think of this pipe as a room in your brain.  This room is full of bad stuff about yourself that you remind yourself about and worry that if enough lint accumulates . . . Oh, who knows?  But it will be awful.  So we need to worry.  

  On the occasion of a new dryer I called in a chimney sweep to clear out the pipe, which after all these years, had to be disgusting.  I left him to pull the old dryer away from the wall and get to work.

   He called me in a few minutes later.

   ”Clear already?” I asked.

   “Yep.”   He stepped to the side of the pipe hole in the wall.  “Do you see that light, ma’am?”

   “Yes.”

   “That’s daylight.  There’s no pipe here accumulating anything.”

  Turns out I made the whole story up.

  Many people don’t have any idea what goes on when psychotherapy is effective. 

Effective psychotherapy is not:

FEELING BETTER when you leave the session because you’ve “vented.”    This kind of psychotherapy can make things worse by supporting the following misconceptions:

1.  Venting improves lives and relationships. 

2.  The psychologist, because he can tolerate your venting, is a much better person to be emotionally intimate with than your spouse or family.

3.  If people love you (spouse, family) they should put up with anything, including your venting which is laced with criticisms and claims of victimhood.

4.  Having not been challenged to THINK, you leave your session more convinced than ever that YOUR MADE UP VERSION of the WORLD and EVENTS and the PEOPLE in your relationship system    –is indeed correct. 

That’s where we’re going with this.  REAL CHANGE is difficult because to CHANGE your BEHAVIOR, you must first CHANGE YOUR MIND.

Really.  You have to accept that what you respond to on a daily basis is not THE WORLD, but the STORY YOU’VE MADE UP ABOUT THE WORLD   based on facts plus lots and lots of powerful ANXIETY.

Are you willing to challenge your own mindset? 

Are you willing to consider that your spouse IS NOT the person you’re convinced he is?    (Now, we’re not talking paranoia, but going the other way.  Is it just possible he’s a more caring, kinder, brighter person than you ever thought possible?)

What would your life be like if you gave him the benefit of the doubt?  Jumped to the best possible assumption instead of the worst?  (He’s late because he’s a selfish, disorganized, uncaring person.   Or add in a worse case senario that puts yourself down.  He’s late because he doesn’t respect me, because I’m a doormat, because I’m not attractive.)

Yes.  I know it sounds ridiculous to think a husband would not bother to be on time because his wife was not as attractive as she used to be–but somebody’s buying all those exercise machines, programed meals, four stage cosmetic routines.

   “Tell me, Doc.  How can I keep doing what I’m already doing, but get a DIFFERENT RESULT?” 

In relationship counseling, each person comes in essentially asking, “How can I keep doing what I’m already doing–but get a different response from by chosen other?”

After thirty years of “practicing” psychology, I don’t know specifically what actions will work to improve a particular relationship.  I do know which behaviors more or less guarantee failure.

Think of it as if you are standing in a clearing in a forest.  Narrow trails sprout from the edges of the clearning into the trees.  I don’t know which of the trails will end up where you want to be, but I do know which trails will lead you to a dead end or worse.

The first of these is the trail that reads:  I can improve this relationship and my pleasure in this relationship by CONVINCING THE OTHER TO CHANGE.

Who’s in charge?  Don’t you want to be in charge? 

I’ve had thirty years of marriage, too.  And, like any good spouse, I have applied this YOU CHANGE approach daily, even giving hour by hour suggestions.  And, yet, the man goes on being himself.  What’s up with that?

Where do I turn.  Then, there’s the mirror.  Eek!   Me?  I have to change me? 

But that’s hard.

Challenge One:  Take charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity.  Your feelings.  That bundle of energy or hope or whatever it is that determines the expression on our faces, the energy and optimism or lack of joy with which we approach each and every situation.

    The Horse In the Cattle Guard Incident

    Summers during college I taught riding at a day camp.  One morning I arrived driving a Volkswagen busload of kids to see Blackjack, a horse I’d bought at auction the day before, stood screaming, one of his legs jammed down in the cattle guard. 

Note:  Examples may be used more than once.  I cannot keep up with what I’ve used in a current clinical session or reported here.     Uncle.  Defeat.  Can’t do it.   

     Okay.  Back to Blackjack, the big, old, raw-boned, hundred dollar horse that was perfect for carrying beginners for a few weeks.  Unfamiliar with the cattle guard, he’d stepped through the bars and was ramming his bloody hoof upward, over and over, in an attempt to escape his problem.  He was clearly in terrible pain and desperate to improve his circumstances.

    So why didn’t he do what would work instead of doing the SAME THING, which clearly did not only NOT WORK, but was causing more and more DAMAGE? 

    If Blackjack could have called on his THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, he would have have thought . . .  “Hmm . . . if I got my hoof down between these bars . . . if it fit going down . . . then, if I slow down, study my situation, and THINK . . . I can get my hoof back up through the bars. 

    But Blackjack didn’t have access to his THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Later that morning he was put down.

    Now, we’re not ”putting anyone down” here, but how often do we do to ourselves what Blackjack did to his leg?

    When we worry about events we can’t control?  When we can’t stop bickering?  When we drive too fast?  When we hold a grudge?  When we refuse to apologize?  When we can’t stop apologizing?  When we get into someone else’s business?  When we complain and complain    even though we know we’re bringing other people down and turning them off?  When we say negative things about someone else?  When we say negative things about ourselves? 

     When we can’t say clearly what we will do and won’t do?  When we can stop criticising? 

     We are pulling a Blackjack.  We are being a Blackjack.   

    More tomorrow on being more in charge of your reactions. 

      But, I need help now!

      You have an idea now what it means to base your actions more on your BEST THINKING and less on EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from others or EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from within yourself.

     Still . . . how?  I need specifics, doc.    

     First step is to breathe.  Leave a space between what the other person says and your response.  Heck, let that other person say something, then you breathe, wait ten seconds, and THEN respond.  If you’re my “other person,” you’ll look stunned and clear your ears, thinking, surely, I’d jumped right in that tiny little space with my defensive remark and he’d missed it.

     Another advantage of slowing down.  You can think better when you’re not rushing your response.  Or, at least you can leave the impression you are thinking.  That’s pretty cool.     I’ll settle for that.

     This is the hard part.  I’ve had graduate students who, after two years on what it is to be a SELF DEFINED person, still don’t get this part.  And, without being able to know, feel, get a grip on SELF FOCUS, not much else is possible.

     How can you better manage your anxiety if you can’t get a grip on what you are focusing on? 

     How can you better manage your anxiety if you are convinced SOMEONE else     is CAUSING it? 

SELF FOCUS is pulling your energy back inside yourself and PAYING ATTENTION to WHAT’S GOING on    inside YOU instead of investing your energy in figuring what others are doing, particularly what they are doing wrong.

     

   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.”