Monthly Archives: January 2009

Well, Now You’ve Really Hurt My Feelings, You Have Taken Charge of ME…

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  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.”

What’s Your Number? What Gets You Going?

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 Picture yourself as having a telephone punch pad on your forehead. 

Each button is a statement or subject that can make you go crazy  (EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM  in charge). 

Which buttons in your system are just waiting to be pushed and you will lose charge of yourself?   For me CRITICISM (real or imagined) is hardest for me to not respond to.  Yep, fling me a criticism and I FUSE with the anxiety of the person doing the flinging.

Yoda Note:  When someone says something ugly about you, it isn’t about you.   It isn’t about you even when it is about you.  Meaning, the other person wouldn’t be pointing out your weak suits if she wasn’t anxious.  So even when the criticism is the truth, the criticism is about the person pointing out your less than perfect parts.

Statements about the right religion or right political party don’t get me going.  I can accept that people, even family members, have the right (the “right,” cute, huh? like I’m running the world) to choose their religion or politics.  No, my buttons have more to do with personal unsteadiness.

  CRITICISM, mostly imagind, gets lead billing on my punch pad.  I can get worked up if some movie star on television makes a crack I don’t agree with, but whoa– I’m much more vulnerable to a “tone” in the voice of my spouse.  I get hooked because, while he’s backing up saying he was joking–I know what his tone meant. He’s really saying I‘m a horrible wife and he should have seen this before we married.

Right…    This is the guy who said, “Hey, you’d look great in a string bikini!” 

Losing It… Losing One’s Self

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 The woman who lost 100 pounds on burgers is an example of someone who could listen to her THINKING self amidst the crowds telling her what she should do. 

Well, doc, you say, when do we get to HOW to engage the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM?

Now.  A start.  Your THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM is in gear when YOUR BEST THINKING is your point of reference for decisions.  Remember, only your TGS considers options in a thoughtful way, your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM , has only one goal (no matter what rubberly rationalization you’re using) and that one thing is —-

    do whatever you have to do to rid yourself of anxiety.   

An easy place to start the task of recognizing when we are slipping from our thinking point of reference to an emotionally driven position, is to talk about FUSION.  FUSION …is when your actions and “feelings” are determined, not by your own thinking point of reference, but determined by “catching” the anxiety of another. 

Examples:

A woman on a plane is reading a novel.  The man next to her asks what she’s reading. She shows him the title and says she really likes the author.  The man sneers and replies staring out the window, “Yeah, I guess if you can’t read more complex works-you have to stay with books like that.”  (Do you feel it?)

 While in graduate school I went on a cruise with a friend who was doing a seminar for “Adult Children of Alcoholics” (a fad diagnosis that has, gladly, passed). I was able to pay minimal cost as an additional person in the seminar leader’s cabin. The first day I attended an introductory group session in which emotional overdrive and ”group-think” were in high gear.   Group-think happens in low functioning gatherings in which each participant is encouraged to become “one” with the group by confessing similar experiences. Refusal to become “one” with the group is labelled as insanity or denial. When it was my time to “join” I thought back really hard to uncover how my life had been affected by addiction.  Then I had it.   I actually said that I was affected by addiction when my mother was ill and taking cortisone to stay alive. (Which didn’t work all that long. She died at barely 42.) 

The point?  Before I felt the suck of the group anxiety, I’d NEVER thought of my mother’s desperate efforts to deal with her fatal illness as CAUSING ME to GO THROUGH the wretched helplessness and personal trauma–of an adult survivor from a drug-distorted home.  Never.  But for those shining few minutes… I’d given up mom… and REALITY… to be part of the group.

The really scary part was that I didn’t realize until after the meeting what had transpired.  How I’d lost (given up) my point of reference.  What if I hadn’t realized what happened?  What if the warm affirmation of the group had propelled me into a life living out a new label?

Just saying.  Later.  More fusion.

Lost 100 Pounds on Hamburgers

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  First: This is not a new diet.  No secret is included.  All I’m doing is reporting what one woman decided to do and did based on her work to get a big more in charge her EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Remember, no frowns or self-beatings.  This is where your unconditional friend presides. And you are okay, so smile.

This woman, I’ll call her M, lived alone and had a limited social life.  She was forty-six and had been divorced almost twenty-years.  M worked at a good state job and enjoyed quiet evenings with her own company reading and watching favorite shows. She also enjoyed travelling. Limitation travelling was the reason she wanted to think through the weight issue.

To strengthen her access to her THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM, she constructed methods to break the rhythm of reflexive,non-thoughtful, eating.  Then she came up with her own program.  For breakfast and lunch (meals she didn’t really enjoy) she ate an apple and two rice cakes.  At nine in the evening she went through the Whataburger Drive Thru and picked up a double meat cheese Whataburger with double onions. She went home and enjoyed her meal in front of her favorite show.  She did this for months.  She lost the weight.

I know, I can practically feel “Yes, but…” missiles about nutrition, what time of day a person ought to eat, the importance of your astrological sign, and your body frame, someone pointing to a pyramid and, of course, plastic food.  Somewhere out there is even a joy-killer somewhere saying,  “But, Doc,      don’t you think it’s WRONG to enjoy such bad foods.  Don’t you think we should ‘eat to live’ instead of ‘live to eat’?”

Grrrrrrrrrrr.  M lost the weight.  Did all those nutritionist talks ever change anyone’s behavior? I mean anyone except that rude guy in the back chanting, “eat to live instead of eat to live.”

And Dr. L, of course.

The Plastic Food Incident

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  Lack of information is not the reason we persist in self destructive behaviors.  Yet, more information (even if it’s absurdly dishonest) is what we throw at people and problems.  What we throw at ourselves.

Change in our lives comes with MANAGING ANXIETY BETTER.  More information doesn’t do it.   And before I rant along here all serious, keep in mind the motto of this site:  IF DO NOT TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.  IF YOU ONLY TAKE LIFE SERIOUSLY, IT ISN’T WORTH LIVING.

So, let’s not get a stranglehold, life or death on ourselves.  We’re going to MUDDLE through.

Let’s take weight management.  (Remember, humor.  Smile, it keeps them guessing.)  The facts: all diets work (short term).  If you take in fewer calories than you expend you will lose weight.  It’s not about your blood type, your personality type, what time you eat, or what order you eat foods in, secret fat-burning herbs or foods, or machines. and plastic balls. Neither is weight-loss about “shopping at Walmart” or all the pounds you’ll lose after you order a metal dectector–two of the more recent ridiculous claims. Grasping onto more information, buying a “new” diet is back to thinking 10 MINUTES AT A TIME.

Now I’m not into the double-message culture that has way too many women living lives constantly racked by self-hate, anxiety, and guilt.   But as I worked on an eating disorders unit for a while, I sometimes consult with women whose EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEMS have steered them toward eating to relieve anxiety and carrying the accompanying extra pounds.  These women interested in working on managing their anxiety better as a way of thinking about eating patterns do not need me or anyone else to hand over another diet or a weight chart. I want to tell you about one woman who lost over a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

But, first I digress to share with you the PLASTIC FOOD Incident. 

After a early and complete hysterectomy I was (gratefully) put on hormones which required some adjusting.  “Some adjusting” being a clinical term for IMMEDIATE CHANGE BECAUSE I AM NOW CRAZY and I don’t want to end up in prison.”  Thus, I ended up with an appointment with a Gynocologic Endocrinologist Assistant.  The GEA asked me to describe the symptoms I was experiencing.  After saying “I’m not the lovely, gentle person I once could convince myself I was,” and  ”I now consider climbing a staircase right up there with swimming the English Channel,”  . . . I mentioned a bit of new flesh showing up around my middle without any changes in my behavior.

And this is what she did. No kidding.  Now, keep in mind this helpful lass is about twenty and I’m not.  This is what she did . .  without even a stutter-step of questioning whether her approach might  be a bit shop-worn. . . even bizarre?    

She smiled as if, “Oh, I know just what you need,”   and reached into a drawer. She then brought out a little plastic steak, a plastic clump of broccoli, and a rather appetizing slice of plastic chocolate cake.  She set these items in front of me on the table.   The innocent GEA then began to explain how calories function in the human body, adding that she finds demonstrating with the plastic food helpful in her explanation because so many people do not realize that PORTION size matters.

Oh.  So, I guess that same stunning NEW IDEA would apply to making bank deposits, too?  I never thought of that.  Surely, this lass had not been listening when I mentioned, I WAS CRAZY and MAYBE, JUST MAYBE not as PATIENT with wasting time as I was before the surgery?

Okay, next I’ll fill you in on how the woman lost a hundred pounds eating hamburgers.

LIFE: 10 Minutes at a Time

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  Those of us following Nancy Grace and the Tot Mom who probably (used loosely) murdered her then two-year-old daughter have heard the jailhouse tapes and endless interviews with anyone who happens through the Tot Mom’s Florida neighborhood.  Most remarkable has been the absolute ease with which Tot Mom tells one lie after another trying to explain herself.  Lies that are easily proved wrong. 

The following is paraphrased.  I’ve admitted I watch the show.  But I deny memorizing it.

One of the interviewers asked an interviewee, “Why does she keep right on with the same self-destructive  behavior after she can see that it isn’t working?”

The interviewee responded, “Because Casey Anthony only thinks ten minutes at a time.  Just let me get myself out of this mess  and I’ll worry about the rest later.” 

I’ve been thinking about a simple way to introduce the THINKING GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  The quickest description is that the TGS is that part of our brain able to consider WHAT HAPPENS AFTER 10 MINUTES after we choose an action.  I know, I don’t like it either, but just doing whatever we have to do to get rid of immediate anxiety, doesn’t work out so well. 

10 Minute Fixes:  TOO MUCH of something that’s okay in moderation–shopping, saving money, alcohol, internet surfing,  food, dog scratching, sex, computer games [Solitaire should come with a warning: Kiss your life good-bye, this game is familystyle crack.], studying, partying, gardening, journaling, talking to strangers, talking, isolation, etc.

No guilt remember.  Guilt is one of those 10 minute fixes.

Feathers and the Gold Lame Lady Incident

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 Do feathers count when they’re invisible?  I’m asking because this morning, I slung a few criticism feathers which went completely unnoticed by the person I was gossiping about. 

Okay, so I’m at the gym on the treadmill.  Yes, I’m burping peppers from the slab of pizza I had for breakfast.  I can take the irony of that.  But then this limber chick in a gold lame (okay, it was red, but, hey, the top and bottom MATCHED), jogging suit hopped up on the treadmill next to me and cranked up the speed to sure-fire heart attack level.    She popped her IPod into her ear and ran halfway across the state.

But I forgave her.  I did not spit one feather at the gym.  I stepped off the treadmill in my orthopedically altered shoes and staggered to my car.  Pretend Gold Lame Lady left at the same time. 

Here’s where, as they say, THE FEATHERS FLEW.  On my way home I turned into the Walgreens parking lot to pick up one of my many life-extending prescriptions. As I gimped to the door a black BMW shot into the handicapped parking spot RIGHT in front of the door. 

As I always do,   I checked to see if the car had the appropriate sticker or tag.  It had neither. And here’s comes the knife in the criticism pillow. 

Out of the BMW sprinted the Gold Lame Lady!!  I know.  The feathers were STUCK ON ME.

The first lesson in becoming more in charge of the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is: Let Others Be.