A Psycholgist on the Loose
Posts tagged self-worth
The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” Incident
Jun 6th
The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” Incident
Dateline: Hilton World Headquarters Branch, San Francisco.
The Scene: A writers’ conference, the ballroom of the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel…high on Nob Hill. The room is magic. The guest speaker is to be a woman whose memoir (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less) was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.
As writers, we’re a thoroughly insecure lot…and before meeting the guest speaker, the room is electric with admiration and envy at the same time. The writer’s wonderful and supportive agent, Amy Rennert introduces the movie from the stage. We still haven’t seen the writing star.
The writer is Terry Ryan. Returning to her family home after the death of her mother, she had gone through closets and chests, as all of us must at those times. While clearing the out her mother’s things, Terry came upon the jingles her mother had written to win prizes from companies like Proctor and Gamble, and Post Cereals…prizes which literally kept the family of a housewife, a working man with a serious drinking problem, and ten children…afloat.
We watch the movie.
Terry Ryan had served in an advisory capacity for the film, Amy Rennert explains from the stage after the movie. Amy gives a signal. The huge ballroom crowded with would be storytellers…enjoying our wine and ready to praise the movie…wait. Wondering why the woman living out our dreams doesn’t bounce in from the wings.
Instead, we follow as Amy’s eyes drop to the floor in front of the stage. Four men lift Terry Ryan’s wheelchair up on the platform. Two men would have been plenty. Terry is bald and so whispy, she looks as if ready to blow away at any moment. She is in the end stage of cancer. She knows it. We know it.
The microphone is situated to catch her slight voice. She smiles…and shares with each of us how much finding those jingles changed her life. We’re thinking…well, yes…you’re the lucky woman whose story was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.
But we’re wrong. Terry’s excitement comes from remembering the incredible positive face her mother put on every family fear and disappointment, and there were many. Her father was frequently unemployed….and did I mention?…10 kids….
Terry is here to share her mother’s strength with a bunch of people she doesn’t know. She hopes people who see the movie realize how powerful her mother was in her life and the lives of many others. And we do. Oh, how we do. The night is magic and we know how privileged we are to hear this incredible, brave woman….We know her mother is with her now, speaking through her daughter’s beautiful face, taking time to pass on her wisdom to all of us fools in our ivory tower.
Fools? Oh, yes. Idiots. Idiots thinking….I’m not so happy now….but when ____happens….when I get a great agent….when I lose thirty pounds…when I fall in love…when…when…when…yes…fools, all.
Ms. Rennert asks if Terry feels up to a few questions and she agrees. The first questioner asks, “What about the movie-making process surprised you the most?”
Terry answers, “How many people are actually on the set for each shot…inches out of camera. There are hundreds.” Her genuineness comes through and we send her every healing vibe we can. “But the most fun was seeing things that actually happened come back to life.” She smiled then, and shared a few mother stories that didn’t make the cut. We laugh with the tiny fading woman on the stage.
She tells us how privileged she feels to have had the incredible childhood she had.
Then the “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” waving in the second row, is acknowledged by Ms. Rennert.
The “Woman Who” clears her throat and asks Terry Ryan: “I was wondering….Have you ever been able to forgive your father?”
The frail lady with the bald head and the shaky voice, tilted her face as if briefly confused. “Forgive him for what?” she asked.
The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” stayed true to her name. (Sometimes you have to up the ante, have to shout or repeat yourself to get another person to see things the way you do.) “But your father punched in a wall. He came home drunk so many times!”
Terry Ryan peered from her sunken shoulders as if looking at a creature from another planet. “I don’t know you, Ma’am (I’m paraphrasing, it’s been a while)…But I think you’re talking about how you see my life, not the way I see my life. I haven’t spent any of my lifetime forgiving anyone. I didn’t need to.”
Terry Alan died 5-17-2007 at 11:11:07 PDT.
STOP Being Yourself… You are “MAKING” me ANXIOUS!
Aug 12th
Now, back to … as the stomach turns, we return to the hotel dining room in Kansas City (See Previous Post) … and observe the terribly dangerous and relationship-determining autographing incident.
Not only would I never asked for an autograph, I have made an art out of being next to someone famous and pretending I don’t even notice….breathing normally as if being next to celebrity is such a common experience for me. (I had the opportunity to calmly pretend to read my book at a horseshow while Patrick Swayze stood next to me watching horses warm up in the coliseum in Albuquerque. He’s shorter than you’d think.) And here’s the thing. My special person says he loves me and I’m thinking he probably does. And he KNOWS I freak out and get all weird and over-excited around famous people or college basketball players and thus it is very important for me to PRETEND I DON’T NOTICE I’m surrounded by famous people or college basketball players.
My special person knows how I need things to go (I’ve certainly told him often enough) … and, yet, he just goes right on being himself. Nudging and teasing…chuckling, really. He really likes me, too, so he thinks I’m kind of cute all nervous like that. I give him the Disapproval Death Stare”, which only makes him giggle, nudge, and he hands me a napkin and a pen…”
My Emotional Guidance System is SCREAMING. I’m tempted to unleash the EGS monster and claim, “You couldn’t possibly care about me and keep doing this!” To which he’d likely chortle and say, “What are you going to tell the judge? That you were the victim of forced autograph getting?”
Here’s my 2 percent victory: First, I recognized the anxiety before I fired shots at my special person. I recognized my rising anxiety as something I could handle differently than I had in the past. Usually, I would go on the offense, “What’s wrong with you?” “You‘re acting like a child.” “You should not be doing this to me.”
Instead, I was able to take responsibility for once. I was quiet (but not pouty) for a few minutes. I engaged my Thinking Guidance System… The facts: no one cares one way or the other how I conduct myself in a hotel dining room in Kansas City; most people asked for autographs are flattered and don’t consider autograph askers to be hicks and fools; there isn’t a ‘right’ and a ‘wrong’ behavior code when in the presence of celebrities and college basketball players. … and I was able to say something like, “I really admire the way you are more comfortable in public than I am. I get all twitchy and weird even thinking about asking for an autograph, but it’s not your fault that I get all anxious.”
Okay, what I said wasn’t that good, but it was in the ballpark.
You get the idea.
Well, Now You’ve Really Hurt My Feelings, You Have Taken Charge of ME…
Jan 30th
Reactivity. That’s what we’re talking about. Learning to manage our reactivity a little bit better. (See Wildebeest post)
Reactivity to other people and the world–not as it is–as we are AFRAID 
other people and the world might be. This is particularly easy to see with the SENSITIVITY to CRITICISM. And I know I’m not alone in this. I watch way too many shows on men and women in prison. Prisons are petri dishes of bubbling sensitivity to criticism.
While we’re not in prison, our homes and workplaces are where we dip into the BUBBLING, SEETHING, WRETCHED, EVER-WAITING POOL OF OVERSENSITIVITY MISERY. We are in prisons of our own making when we react to criticism. I like the prison example because when we give up power over our own sense of well-being we give up self-possession of our lives as inmates give up physical freedom.
Yoda Note: “The more things you take personally, the less happy life you will have.” 
Lighter Moment: Two old guy Austin musicians chatting on stage. One asks the other about an event they’d both played some years ago. The other singer knitted his forehead and explained, “I can’t tell you what happened that night. You see, I’m at the age where I can hide my own Easter Eggs.”
How Dryer Lint Can Ruin Your Life
Aug 1st
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.
You See What You Believe
Jul 24th
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.
How to Be Fabulous
Apr 27th
“The most important, most life-determining, conversation you have, is the conversation you have with yourself.”
What have you told yourself about you so far today? Okay, now that we KNOW: People who SEE THEMSELVES as BETTER LIKED than they actually are . . . 
As more SUCCESSFUL than they are . . .
As more ATTRACTIVE than they are . . .
As more INTELLIGENT than they are . . .
Those people have MORE FUN in life.
Hey, I’m for more fun. 
But I’m tired and envious just from making the above list. Reading it doesn’t MAKE ME feel refreshed and ready to hit Broadway. What I’m thinking is, “Sheesh, what’s wrong with me that I’m not kicking up my heels every hour of everyday?”
Oh, noooooo. Now I remember. It’s hard to change.
If getting a grip on the on your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM were easy, EVERYONE WOULD DO IT.
Since it isn’t easy, we usually attempt an EXTERNAL solution– that is, we try to change other people’s response to us– by doing the list of things, and buying the endless image changers, offered every single month in every single magazine–
To an INTERNAL problem– the habitual conversation with have with ourselves. Since we’re strategists, we: 1) expect situations to repeat; 2) study what we did in the past; 3) rehearse new material; and, 4) practice, practice, practice.
First, there is an ACTION. Example: Someone says to you, “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening.” 
Second, you PERCEIVE. You hear and absorb, “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening.” I know, perceiving seems so obvious, but it’s not. How much of what you see and hear depends on the spounginess of your Emotional Guidance System, how “ready” to hear and see you are.
Third, you INTERPRET. You decide what– “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening,” –MEANS.
Forth, you MAKE UP A STORY. 
You take your INTERPRETATION of what you think– “It’s all your fault. As usual, you are not listening” –means, and develop a DRAMA. “Your saying that shows you do not love me, respect me, want to please me.”
Then, you RESPOND. (And, of course, if you’re me, the first words out are: “Now look how YOU MADE ME feel.”) 
So, what can you do? 
How can you take charge?
What does perception, interpretation, and making up stories have to do with the “conversation you have with yourself”?
Later . . . manana.
WHY depending on the OTHER PERSON for maintaining SELF ESTEEM does NOT WORK
Apr 5th
”Hey, buddy, I’m not feeling so good about myself. Do something to fix me!”
Bad news. No matter how hard you try–how skinny, sexy, funny, good at the house, cooking, or whatever, you are– Relying on other people to keep you liking yourself WILL NOT WORK.
Why and damn, you say?
1. People are UNRELIABLE. 
Here you are this lovely person, doing what you usually do, being yourself, which he liked yesterday and now he has a problem with you. You’re too controlling–
Truth from Last Therapist Standing: Everyone is controlling. We’re designed to “want” our own way. There’s nothing wrong with that. Some of us are just lousy at the game. Now, I assume all of you are nice people who want good lives. That being said, we also want others to have what they want. We’re better off admitting, “Yes, I do want my way, but I’m willing to listen.”
Okay, back to how you are being your usual self and today there’s something wrong with how you are. But you haven’t changed. People are unreliable in providing that approval feedback. Could be they’re hungry. Could be a bad day all around.
EVEN WHEN IT’S ABOUT YOU — IT’S NOT ABOUT YOU.
2. People preoccupied with THEIR OWN LIVES. 
I know. Pretty nervy, huh? Hey, I have needs here! Oh, that’s not attractive? What do you mean “egg shells?” 
Yep. It’s not about you, but now you know that’s good thing.
3. People are difficult to TRAIN.
Long term marriage is truth enough. No matter how METICULOUSLY we explain over and over what he’s supposed to say and do to keep me calm–he just keeps on being himself. You could write a script. Rehearse even. I don’t know why other people are so stubborn about this. So rigid and unwilling to TAKE CARE of MY FEELINGS at ALL TIMES.
Yep. There we were, happily married couple, rolling into the American Airlines gate at DFW. I wanted to do one thing. He thought my idea was a bad one. That I’d never make it back in time to catch the next leg of the flight. I really wanted to. He really didn’t want me to. I knew how to keep him calmed down. . . .
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