A while back– before the results of being tossed on my head too many times started to become obvious– a friend and I took to the road following up a tip on a horse who just might turn out to be the next state Green Hunter Champion.  For those engaged in more meaningful pursuits, in the horse world, ‘green’ means ‘new’ and ‘hunter’ means…’horse who jumps over fake gates, walls, and streams, and other obstacles of the sort you’d find on an old English estate’.

My friend and I parked the truck on the edge of a huge pasture and set out to find the five-year-old bay thoroughbred with the official track name of Parker Poker. Parker turned out to be a less-than-stunning boy, as far as I could see under the mud, the snarls, and the choppy mane.  Still, having driven forty miles and walked a couple more through high grass, we led him back to the trailer, loaded him up, and gave him a ride to one of the finest show barns in the Southwest…or at least that’s the label I’ve used for many years to explain away the bizarre proportion on my income I deposited at that location.

Once Parker Poker was out of the trailer and cross-tied in the main barn, he looked more forlorn and out-of-place than ever.  Always ready to absorb the fears of others and queen of the Don’t Expect Much and You Won’t Be Disappointed gang…I plunked down with my own forlorn look, a Coke and a long, knowing sigh.

Not my friend.  Let’s call her N.  N dragged out her best box of grooming tools and went to work.  Heavier equipment was needed for Parker’s matted tail mud-caked hooves.  N dug out shoeing tools, show day yarns, rubber bands, and oils.  While N frittered away her time, energy, and equipment on the lost cause horse…I watched her through the dust, slightly bored, sipping my second Coke, and commenting on N’s commitment… in that way that passes for a compliment, but is really a thinly veiled crack about the other person’s judgment.

My remarks not having the intended effect of discouraging my busy friend, I finally stood and proclaimed, “I have no idea why you’re going to all this trouble.”

And N said, ‘I can’t say what will happen to this horse or if he’ll ever win a prize.  But I have learned that if you want a horse to be a show horse, you have to treat him like a showhorse first.’

“Oh…” the future psychologistsaid, brilliantly.  Thinking…hmm…maybe N has something with this ‘treat a horse like a show horse business’…Maybe N’s theory has something to say about marriage?  What would happen if I treated my special person like a show horse…not the oats and hoof clippers…but with the good faith?

“Anyway, no matter how this horse turns out…I know I’m having a happy afternoon,” N said.

“Oh…” the therapist said.  “Oh,” she said again, thinking…Maybe I’ll write about N and her showhorse theory someday.

First, DIETBABBLE ALERT: New Scientific Breakthrough! The reason you’ve had a hard time losing weight is because you haven’t been eating according to your DNA!  That’s right, folks.  Now you can send in a saliva swab, the “lab” reads your “sample” and POOF… the exciting secret foods you need to avoid will be revealed and the weight just falls off.  Of course, you have to coordinate this amazing scientific breakthrough with dieting according to your blood type and the phases of the moon.

Also, a thermos maker cashing in on “going green” by showing piles of plastic bottles (gallons) lists both ’saving the planet’ and ‘weight loss’ as results you can expect by using the thermos.

Still the favorite in my heart:  the man walking along the beach with a split piece of metal, ending his spiel saying, “And my wife can’t stop talking about the weight I’ve lost since I’ve had my new metal detector.”

Anxiety. How far will you go to push down your anxiety?

It’s interesting to notice that recent celebrity drug deaths are overdoses … not of a drug that would make a person ‘high’… their deaths have not been the result of going too far with a substance known to make a person ‘happy’.  Their deaths have been the result of taking drugs which make a person numb, even unconcious.

Anxiety. 

Anxiety is the fuel and the product of the Emotional Guidance System.  Anxiety is powerful, powerful enough to make a mess of a person’s life.  We are all anxious.  Dogs and cats and cows are anxious, too.  Some dogs chew through doors when left alone, some cats hide even when hungry, cows stampede sometimes.  People chew (overeat), hide (avoid), and stampede (run away), too.

The goal of this mysteryshrink journey we are on is to get a little better hold on anxiety. (See Wildebeest entry)..2 percent…a shift of only 2 percent can improve life experience.

What would happen if you could manage a 2 percent improvement in your ability to manage your anxiety when someone else is saying something that makes you anxious?  Aha!  Of course, no one can “make you anxious”… No one else can even reach your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM button… I was just giving you a little test…

Situation: The spouse and I are having breakfast in Kansas City during the Big Twelve Basketball tournament.  As it happens, several team members are enjoying the same hotel buffet.  My special other, being much better than I at realizing his importance or lack of importance in the world, is nudging me in the shin and teasingly suggesting I make up some story about a young nephew and collect a bunch of Texas Longhorn autographs.  Since my Emotional Guidance System is always ready to exaggerate things, always ready with the caution, ”Don’t call attention to yourself!  People will think you’re crazy! Your complete hick-dom background is going to show and you’ll never recover!  What complete strangers think of you is incredibly important!  A frown from a stranger will ruin your whole day!”  “When your special person does something that he thinks is cute and you think is embarrassing after you’ve TOLD him how he’s supposed to behave to keep you calmed down…his continuing to be himself means he doesn’t love you!” 

Okay, there I am, exposed for the sucker FUSION (See Fusion, think ropes twisted together.)  And how do I FEEL?  To what degree do the actions of another change (signal you to change) what’s going on inside you?

Anxiety 101.  Tune in tomorrow for miraculous 2 percent victory in the terrifying autographing incident!

 

 

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.

Triple Blame Whammy

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 of emotional functioning, but turn out to be different from ourselves. 

I know of only one exception so far and that would be my marriage.  My spouse surely must have snagged me during a temporary low functioning moment in my life.  Hey, you were thinking the same thing about your relationship.  I know it’s scary to think we are muddling through along at about the same level as our spouse, and we may have a better “front office,” but people marry people who are similar in level of emotional functioning.

So, what if we fired ourselves from consistently pointing out how our special other could be different and make us feel better?  Notice I said firing ourselves from our consistent efforts.  We’re not stones, we will slip.

Am I saying we should roll over and take whatever other people dish out?  Of course not.  I’m talking about switching our focus to more productive means of changing our lives to better fit what we want. Doing something that works and, just maybe, is less annoying.

Example.  When having friends over, the worst part, anxiety-wise, is the first few minutes.  My special other had the habit of finding himself conveniently occupied during the first fifteen to thirty minutes of a gathering.  Usually, “things came up” which rendered him unable to start his shower until showtime.  After many years of psycho-babbling why he was the way he was (running his parent’s through the wringer, making up all sorts of cute explanations), then trying to convince him to own up to his “problem” and promise to greet guests with me now and forever after.  Which of course he did.  The promise part I mean.  My harranges and psychobabble left him no choice but to promise to change as the trumped up alternative I provided was to admit to acceptance of life-long emotional disorder that was clearly “causing” me too lose my grip.

As for the being present when guests arrived?  You know the answer.  But, rolling over isn’t in my nature.  The next time we had guests coming over, I didn’t say a word and I stayed happy and pleasant.  I did, however, make sure that my getting ready procedures did not get out ahead of his.  If he hadn’t showered and he asked me if I was taking a shower, I’d answer, ”That’s okay, I’ll wait until after you…I’m not sure what I’m going to wear”….”But, people will be arriving soon,” he’d say.  “That’s okay, the door’s open,” I’d say. “I’ll just hollar down….I don’t know…I could wear the black Polo polo with the eagle…or the one with the white collar…what do you think, honey?”….”I think one of us should be downstairs when our guests arrive,” he’d say.  “Me, too,” I’d say, pausing to give him a long kiss that had him totally confused.  “It’s just that I have this eagle-white collar dilemma…”  Smooch, smooch.

Manipulation you say. Darn right, it was.  And exactly what was all that haranguing and psychobabbling?  At least this way, I didn’t have to pretend I didn’t want my way or that my way of doing things was some kind of moral imperative.  I also wasn’t mad. We ended up laughing about it and kind of playing a dare game about who was going to crack first and go down where the guests were helping themselves to hospitality.

During my first year of graduate school, one of my friends who’d married a wealthy man seventeen years her senior, called with marital troubles. Already after midnight, we met at an all night restaurant near campus for coffee and burgers. 

My friend was a mess (unlike me, already married, divorced, living on Fresca and Vienna Sausages in the back room of someone else’s house). “I’m so confused, I don’t even know what to order,” my friend, let’s call her ‘Jane,’ said. “I’m really hungry and French fries sound good, but I don’t think I like French fries….At least, I know I haven’t ordered fries in a very long time and I’ve been saying I don’t like them…. I think I only started saying that because my husband is worried I’ll get fat.”

One advanced psych course under my belt, I leaned forward, bubbling with stereotypic warnings about domineering men. Jane listened. She ordered French fries. I felt like a well-loved missionary.

Jane went on to explain that things with her husband had been bumpy from the start. He turned out to be a screamer, and she’d told herself if he ever went so far as to hit her, she’d leave him. He did and she didn’t. Six months into the marriage signs popped up indicating that her husband’s playboy ways were still active. Jane said she’d told herself if she ever knew for sure that he’d cheated on her, she’d leave him.  That afternoon she’d found irrefutable evidence of an ongoing affair.  She was leaving him and needed help.

Well, now ‘help’ was my new middle name.  I bought a newspaper and circled rentals in her price range. I made a list of the calls she needed to make to the electric company, cable company, and a good lawyer of course. I raved on and on about how much better my life had been since I’d split the blanket, how I’d learned my lesson, how now we could be better friends again.

Jane dipped fries in catsup and nodded.  A couple of hours later we hugged ‘good-bye’ with Jane saying how lucky she was to have a friend like me who knew what to do when she did not know where to turn.  She’d be in touch in a week or so, when she had things settled.      

I heard nothing for over a year. Then Jane and I ran into each other at a movie theater.  She’d moved out from her husband about two weeks before and had been thinking of calling me. (Only two weeks before?)   “I should have called you,” Jane said.  “But the funniest thing happened after we met at that restaurant. The next night I had a dream where I was walking alone on a deserted beach. It was evening and a storm was brewing, though I didn’t feel any danger. Then something hard hit me in the head. I turned and there you were, behind me. You were throwing rocks at me.”

… Oh.  

 

 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 his family . . . read: “My tastes, interests, and values are superior to theirs” . . . expect to being hearing soon of the ways you do not measure up.  If your man was married to a woman who seemed nice at first, then went crazy (like his sister and his mother),  plan on having a psychiatric history before you’re through. If he believes his only contribution to less than optimal relationships is poor judgment in falling for the wrong women, or because everyone BUT HIM n his family “has problems,” don’t expect much commitment to working on the relationship when things get rough.

What are the people around you like?  Pretty nice or pretty awful?  What would they reveal about themselves in what they would have to say about you? 

Remember, no matter what they might say, IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU, even when it is about you. It’s still them coming out of their day, them telling you or the world what’s going on in their brains and their chests.  If “their world” isn’t lovely, you are not lovely in their sight.

There’s an old joke about a couple driving through the New England countryside planning on moving to a nearby town. Seeing a farmer alongside the road, the couple pulled over and said, “Say, we were thinking about moving to this area. What are the people around here like?”

The farmer replied, “Well, I don’t know.  What were the people like where you came from?” 

  You will be seen through the other’s distorted lense.  So, when he offers to buy you a drink, ask what the people were like where he came from.

  While we’re tacking up things-that-don’t-exist on our PSYCHOBABBLE WALL OF SHAME, we might as well step up and face the TRIPLE MYTH about LOVE. 

Perhaps, you best snap on some sunshades.  The facts about TAKING RESPONSIBILITY for the WAY WE EXPERIENCE people, ourselves, and the world, are pretty flipping glaring to face.  Isn’t a psychologist supposed to help you out with identifying who messed you up and who’s messing up your experience now?  I know.  I’m disappointed myself. 

Myth One:  If my parents had loved me enough, I wouldn’t be having a hard time with life today. 

Myth Two:  If my spouse loved me enough, I wouldn’t be having a hard time with life today.  Excerpt from the next Jessica LeFave mystery:  “Las Vegas…the city of glitz and irresistable impulses…what better place to talk about love and addiction? After all, while Vegas is selling a dangerous fantasy, so is Cinderella.”

Myth Three:  If YOU (my therapist,   my friend, my sister, my brother, my boss, my teacher, my whomever) loved me enough, I wouldn’t be having a hard time with life today.

Tomorrow:  Self-Confidences, Part 2, Why praise can be the most dangerous thing that can happen to you.

  First, thanks all of guys for your good words on the news that Murray’s now “traveling” as they say in Jamaica.  What kind of self-esteem must that boy have had.  Everyone who met him loved him.

I’ve been thinking some about that.  Murray wasn’t the brightest or most playful.  He wasn’t the first to meet me at the door.  So what was it?  Murray was kind.    Always kind.  He let anyone who wanted a pat or even a squeeze to take their turn.  If someone in my office cried or even shouted, he’d hop up (back when he could hear) and move over close to them.  He forgave all human emotions without pushing himself on you.

I’ve been thinking about the Holidays and all the anxious pleasing we do in our “togetherness.”   What if we could be the gift of providing for others a “non-anxious” presence?

Notice the word “presence.”  We do not provide the gift of “non-anxious” caring when we are not fully in the presence of others. 

What does a non-anxious presence look like?

A man sits down with a friend and     asks what he thinks about the football rankings.  We women like to make fun of this scene.  But what we have is one man saying to another.  “Hi. I’m ‘in here’ for you.  Are you ‘in there’ for me?”

Your spouse (a friend, family member, co-worker) comes in complaining.  You ask them TWO questions about what’s bothering them.  You resist giving your opionion of what she should do or what you are just “so sure” you would do in her shoes. 

Oh, and to be with yourself with passion, compassion, dump your scales (no one needs that kind of detail) and if you find yourself in one of those hotels with three-way mirrors in the bathroom, well closing your eyes, is not only your option, it’s the thoughtful choice.  The way your clothes fit is the only guide you need.

At the gym, the slip of a girl at the front desk is always inviting members up for a free body fat percentage study.  What is she nuts? 

 

Yes.     The first time I attended a writers’ conference, I didn’t enter a single meeting room.  I just slinked (word?) past open doors and caught a word or two, pretending to be “just passing through.”  I also had a crying fit every night during the first six months of graduate school.     I was sure that somehow the admittance committee which had allowed a moron, me, to slip through the cracks, would one day realize their error and send me back to my extensive fast food career.    

Are you sure you want to read suggestions from someone who’d admit to such weaknesses?  There’s still Dr. L on the radio    who’s perfect and never would have made the mistakes you and I have.

Nah. 

 

And here come the holidays, marching forward like giant challenges to our maturity. 

Come along, we’ll laugh some, we will survive.

 

Anxiety comes not from the FACTS, but from our “WHAT IF’S.”   Mostly–

    WHAT IF I COME OFF LIKE AN IDIOT? 

   

Hey, grab a snack.  This exercise is going to be a lot of fun.

As you ready for Thanksgiving and family, comfortable in the knowledge that in spite of what you want from them, they are going to be themselves–

Think of the person you have the most difficulty with (No, you don’t get to defend and say it’s HIS/HER fault)–and

Give him or her YOUR PERSONAL PRECIOUS PERMISSION   to be just who they are. 

Whew.  That’s a relief.  You have your power back.  You’re in charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity no matter what others do.

I have more time and energy now.    And I’m not dreading because I’ve given my permission for my people to stay just the way they are.

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. 

  Thanksgiving.  Wasn’t it about inviting the natives of this country to a feast?  Well, it’s not anymore.  Now it’s about food, family, and football.  And, at least for me, it’s not that easy.

Maybe you’re different, but I find it easier to tell my goals to a stranger on a plane than it is to talk to a family member?  Why?  Because I care too much what a family member says.  What he or she thinks.

Thus I OVER-LISTEN and OVER-REACT. 

I have a picture in my head as to how my SISTER, MOTHER, BROTHER, BROTHER-IN-LAW, should respond to me.  When they do not . . . and they’re always failing me . . . I lose charge of my emotional steadiness.  In fact, as we all know, any problems I have in my life today are because of their failures.  Ask any psychologist. 

THE TRIPLICATE MYTH:  If I my parents and siblings had properly loved me, I would be an all-happy person now–effortlessly. 

If my spouse properly loved me, i would be an all-happy person, now–effortlessly.

If, you, my therapist could properly loved me, I will be an all-happy person–effortlessly.

Oh no.  I just blew my own cover.  This being IN CHARGE of self is going to be really hard if I can’t convince my family, friends, and casual acquaintances to give me the attention and support I MUST HAVE.

Particularly, since unlike me.  They are nuts. 

  I was going to lie low until the Spring as I have a book coming out in early summer, timing and all.  But I can’t wait.  Yesterday on the plane the man behind me chastised his wife, “You make decisions based on your emotions while I make decisions based on what I see and hear for myself.”

I had to mention this because so many times this argument is used as if WHAT YOU HEAR and WHAT YOU SEE isn’t determined by your emotions.  Example later.

  Lest there be any question, I did not intend to put down the struggling wife mentioned yesterday.  Never.  Some people have better “front offices” than the rest of us. 

They hold in their anxiety, and thus they come across cool   instead of HYSTERICAL like the rest of us.  But the husband in the example was no more functional than the wife, just using means other than obvious “relationship dependence” to calm himself down.  Who knows, maybe he had someone on the side (or gets someone) using relationship dependence in spades. 

“Relationship dependence” is when we need        a particular response from a particular other person    to CALM DOWN, START THINKING AND GET BACK IN CHARGE of our lives. 

And what’s particularly interesting and self-destructive about this method of calming ourselves down is that it DRIVES OTHER PEOPLE CRAZY.  It drives AWAY the person we want to keep close. 

How nuts is that?

  A supreme and successful effort to manage . . .  RELATIONSHIP DEPENDENCE.

I was seeing a couple, both of whom were university professors.  (All descriptions are disguised and combined to not apply to actual persons.  I have enough wacky people in my family to use anyway.)    The husband was frustrated with the marriage and had moved into his own apartment.  Things were improving with therapy as each learned more about their reactivity and anxiety management, but the husband was not ready to re-commit.  The wife had a research report tour scheduled which would take her on the road for two months and require her to make presentations to large groups, a process that was hard for her. 

In the last session before she was to leave, she asked her husband to promise   that their marriage was going to work out.  Though she made it very clear he could cure her current anxiety by saying what she wanted to hear, he held his ground that he was still unsure.  He was particularly worried that if they got back together she would end up leaning on him again for her sense of self.  Prior to separating the wife had suffered panic attacks if left alone and all night bouts of anger insisting that her husband was not caring enough.

She upped the ante saying she couldn’t go on the trip,   couldn’t fulfill her obligations unless he said they were going to make it as a couple.  He did not give in.

The wife headed out on the tour.  During the second week, while she was in New York, the husband called at around eleven to ask how she was doing.  The first few minutes was enjoyable for both.  The husband said “Goodnight,” as was pleasantly signing off when the wife shouted, “Stop!”    He did.  She started crying and saying he’d ruined her tour, that he’d never loved her, and that she was going out to find some man who did.  He pleaded to continue the discussion the next day.  She refused continuing to list his crimes and her own faults.  After several more attempts to close the conversation, the husband hung up.

The wife called him back with more emotional blasting.    After ten minues, he hung up.  She called again.  He hung up.  She called again.  He’d taken the phone off the hook.

The wife threw herself on the bed hysterical, more because she’d made such an absolute mess of things than anything else.  The urge to hear from her husband was almost unbearable.  She “felt” out of control and absolutely hopeless. 

THEN, she remembered a word or two about taking the energy she was using to TRY AND GET A RESPONSE from another person . . .

And using that energy to MANAGE her OWN anxiety. 

Instead of rolling around on the bed, feeling worse and worse, ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED SHE COULD NOT FEEL BETTER, until she got the feedback she wanted from her husband–SHE DECIDED TO TAKE CHARGE. 

As she told me:  “What did I have to lose,” I asked myself.  “I got up, got dressed and went out on the sidewalk and started walking.  I was in Times Square, so there were plenty of interesting people.  Even though every cell in my body (okay, that’s my phrase) wanted to either try to contact my husband or wallow in continuing misery, I started LOOKING at the interesting people.  I looked at the marquees.  I told myself I was going to walk and walk and walk until I WAS IN CHARGE OF MYSELF.    And I did.”

When her husband called, she apologized for dumping her anxiety into the phone call.  He heard, for the first time, that she understood what it meant to be responsible for self.

  Two phrases from two older movies will be the theme for a few days.

“I’M IN CHARGE!”    from Hustle and Flow.  (Think of both of these guys inside your head trying to be in charge.)

    and “I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF!” from a whole bunch of others.     Not to mention, these are the people who spend their lives in prisons — real and fabricated.

It’s about who’s deciding what goes on inside your chest cavity.  Who decides your level of motivation.  Who’s in charge.

Back later.

  Usually, when someone first comes into my office, what they’re wanting to know is:  “How can I keep doing what I’m already doing, and get a DIFFERENT RESULT? 

   People are fairly predictable, so why aren’t we using that to improve our lives?  We are each one predictable in how we manage anxiety.  Do you try to take control?  Try to get the other to change?  Do you withdraw?    Sink in defeat?  Have a cheesecake?  Gossip?

Oh, all these options are grim.  And we’ve CHOSEN to create a world for ourselves that is lovely and joyful.    We have decided to be like our grandfather who died with a great big smile on his face instead of meeting death screaming and crying like the other passengers in his car.

   What does it mean when a parent says, “She’s so sensitive?”

Does it mean she’s, INFLEXIBLE, FEARFUL, LIKELY TO EXAGGERATE, LIKELY TO TURN ON HERSELF, LIKELY TO TURN ON OTHERS?  (Fearful of what you ask?  All those bad things, those waiting-to-get-you thought-streams in your imaginary lint tube.  See yesterday.)

Ouch.  “Sensitive” doesn’t sound so good.  

When others see you as “sensitive,” in what ways do others change their behavior so that YOU DO NOT GET ANXIOUS?

  The saying goes, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”  This is not how the human mind works.  We cannot see what we do not “believe.”  We cannot STOP seeing what we DO believe.

What does this have to do with relationships?  What does this have to do with being a happier person?

When we BELIEVE the other person is noticing us for our IMPERFECTIONS, almost any comment they make is taken as CRITICISM.

More later.