Whew! Good Thing You and I Aren’t Like Those Nutballs!
Anxiety Can Make You Crazy
Stress Set-up No.#1: Three people die in sweat lodge ritual in Arizona after ‘group think’ decision to stay inside.
Stress Set-up No.#2: Sixty people are in a four-engined charter plane, twenty minutes south out of Las Vegas. The windows on the right side of the plane are coated with black oil. Now we have three engines…now two. Say what? Fire, you say?…We’ll come back to that horrifying afternoon when I, along with the other passengers, had to decide to ignore fear and do as the wild bush pilot said…or make a break for the tent flap.
Stress Reduction STRATEGY One. Recognizing being human is okay all around.
Bowen theory reference: [“Families and other social groups tremendously affect how people think, feel, and act, but individuals vary in their susceptibility to a ‘group think’ and groups vary in the amount of pressure they exert for conformity. These differences between individuals and between groups reflect differences in people’s levels of differentiation of self…”]. ull text: http://www.thebowencenter.org/
Considering differences between individuals…is where we usually go off track and encourage difficulties for ourselves and for others. We hear about a situation such the sweat lodge incident, and immediately give the victims unflattering diagnoses or call them crazy. We point out that we would never make such self-defeating decisions. Psychological approaches focusing on individual pathology– rather than seeing the symptomatic person as acting out the problems of the system– are convenient and popular. Such methods allow us to park blame more easily in the least functional persons (or the least functional person today) in a system and excuse contributions of system emotional process. Such methods draw a line in the sand, crazies on one side—you and me on the other. See Intro: Too Rich and Too Thin
We develop an ‘us’ and ‘them’ way of relating to the world. The ‘us’, of course, is made up of not-crazy, not anxiety-driven, not emotionally controlled, not unstable people. The ‘them’ well… ‘them’ includes lots of people…the
driver you disagree with on the freeway… the councilman you didn’t vote for …some people include everyone who voted in an opposing political party in ‘them’… ‘them’ could be an especially twitchy in-law or the woman down the street who waters her lawn all wrong.
Most likely your spouse spends some time in each camp. He’s next to you as one of the good guys until he goofs, at which time he will be informed that his status from ‘intelligent’ and deserving of respect has been jerked out from under him. We usually make clear that his former status as person one of the good guys will be reinstated when he agrees with us on the matter in question.
When we define people who have made emotionally-driven, and obviously self-destructive, decisions as ‘them’… as unlike us…we deny just what sort of mayhem we are capable of given the right amount of anxiety, the right amount of floundering in the Sea of Emotion. Think: “a mile in her moccasins” … “third piece of pie”… “top five reasons I can’t go to the gym today… ‘Yes, sir, that’s what I said, I want fifty on the Astros to win the
National League pennant.’”
Why is addressing the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ defense important?
To be continued. Strategy to come which will save you time and effort for the rest of your life.
