Tag Archives: anger management

Stress. The “Ha Ha, We’re Here to Help you…” Incident

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Dateline: Voice Mail Hell.

Dealing with the stolen luggage was nothing compared to the day I spent working for Dell.

I have a dream.

One day, I will take my seat on a plane and the person who plops down next to me will be the pathologically cheerful woman who makes all the sugar-laced phone tree recordings. She’ll say, “Welcome! Thank you sitting next to Time Warner, Dell, Hilton, American Airlines, Southern European Sushi.”

I cannot in a pubic medium give you the exact words I will choose. But my first sentence will begin with “Please choose from the following options…” And none of the options are going to be pretty.

Not since Hitler has any one person caused so much screaming by so many people.

Hour One

When my luggage was stolen in Albuquerque, I had two expensive Dell batteries inside. That very miserable day—anxious to get back to work–I called Dell and ordered replacement batteries. Today I’m calling Dell because they sent me the wrong batteries.

The call began, of course, when Bubble Voice Lady Sugar Voice greets me with: “Thank you for calling Dell!”  We all know what the woman THE VOICE is as really saying, which is:  “Hi, sucker. So glad you are willing to do this company’s work for us. Because by you spending your time trying to match the words I’m saying, we don’t have to pay real people to work for us. You can just imagine how this is helping our profits, since we don’t have to pay social security or benefits to machines!”

I punch one for English.

“Great! You are now with customer SERVICE and I want to help
you….Now TO SERVE YOU BETTER…”

Which really means: “To continue not having to provide you with services… please choose… between the following sixteen options…. And don’t even think you can skip this trial by fire, because if you do, you will be punished by having to start the game over….and over and over until you shoot yourself and we don’t have to take the chance that you will ever bother customer service again. Now aren’t we having fun?”

I punch buttons like a trained donkey and get to this message: “Okay! Great! Now I can get you right over to someone who can help you!”

I breathe a sigh of relief. I’d walked through the fire. I hadn’t thrown anything or cursed. Would this be the one time customer service solves my problem? Had I previously been too hard on invisible mankind?

Now I am on terminal hold…Every two minutes the Bubble Cheery Voice comes back on to gaily remind me how important my call is and ask, “Did you know you can have your order completed faster and more conveniently online at www.DoThisCompany’sWorkForNoPay? If you choose to stay on the line,
your call can take up to an hour or however long it takes to get you to give up.
Now wouldn’t you rather do this all online?”

I’m trying to remember where I keep the pistol….to be continued.

Anxiety, the Dented Cell Phone and the “Stolen Luggage Incident”

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Dateline: Albuquerque, New Mexico

Stress Management Update

Note: If you are the person who stole my luggage at the Avis rental counter while I ran through the rain to get my car…pox be upon you.

If any of you ever see a smug person with three twelve-cell computer batteries ($200 each), a Samsung tablet power cord and he or she doesn’t seem to own such a device, seven pair of black Olga underwear, a power cord for a Dell Studio for which he or she does not appear to have the matching computer or, say, seven tiny packets of vitamins and fish oil —Please deliver the cursed pox for me.

A message from the first session of the Fall Series on Bowen Family Systems Theory was:“It’s not what happens to you, it’s what happens after‘what happens’.”  Thus, your level of functioning can be determined by noting how well you manage anxiety. In other words, everyone looks good when things are rocking along planned.

And I like to think I would have handled the stolen luggage incident a bit better if the entire communication world was not at war against me. Yes, Time Warner Cable home and office phones still are not working. And, since we live in the hills, cell phone service is sketchy. Put those together and I was not able to contact my special person who usually is willing to take on some of my anxiety.

I called my insurance company hoping to drop some anxiety there, and I was pretty excited when the nicewoman who answered the phone said, “Sure, your umbrella policy will pay for your loss.”  Nice woman then sweetly explained that this
great policy I had would start paying after a $3000.00 deductable. I know, it’s an insurance company, what did I expect?
How much did my functioning change when presented with this stress?

Let’s just say, on a normal day I would never raise my voice to the police. On a normal day I can figure out how to turn off the interior lights in a rental car. Throwing my phone across the car was a new one for me. (I know, ouch, but I’m being honest here. And the thing died every thirty seconds when i was trying to hear directions to the hotel.)

Now the good news. I’m all better now having replaced all toiletries, ordered new batteries, etc. Surely level of functioning can also be measured by how long it takes to recover from cruelty and injustice random unpleasant acts. (Now, I’m assuming we are starting with a cleared slate and those six hours hammering airline ticket agents at London’s Gatwick Airport are off the table.)

And, while you are on alert for a shifty-eyed person with all sorts of cords and batteries and no devices…I have another thief for you to be on the look out for. A few months ago I was operating out of the San Diego Hilton International Branch Office. It was 9:30 p.m. and I’m lounging in my room. Just across Interstate 8 is my favorite California seafood restaurant, King’s Fish House. I’m weighing my options through my tired brain. I’m craving King’s incredible Shrimp and Crab Louie, but I’m already undressed and tucked in. King’s closes at 10:00 p.m., thus, I don’t have time to waver. I was leaving in the morning, so this was my last shot. I dragged my weary self out of bed, re-dressed, got the car, drove to the restaurant, ordered and waited for the Louie.

I return to my hotel room with my big white bag with King’s Fish House on the outside and my favorite salad inside. Alas, when I reached my door, my key wouldn’t work. I was the last room in the hall, rather out of the way. I set my food down and returned to the front desk for a refreshed key.

When I returned to my door, gone maybe three minutes, someone stole my Louie. Stole my dinner. Who does that?

If you spot someone with a King’s Fish House takeout bag and no shrimp shells, pox on him, too.

 

Chameleon. Stress Management Through Changing Colors

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Chameleon, Blending with Environment to Calm Anxiety
Dateline: Chili’s International Branch Office

The Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries went on– from our midnight burgers during my second year of college—to a lifetime of confusion and efforts to find her ‘self’ through other people. And though I tried to mold her myself that fateful night, the WWDKILFF continued to choose only men to form her ‘self’ against. Remember lack of ‘self’ is demonstrated by the inability to define oneself (her), and the inability to leave other people alone and running their own lives (me).

Think of the WWDKILFF as hot wax and men as molds at the ready.

The man she was leaving that fateful night she met at a country club party. He was 17 years older than her, wealthy, worldly, and dashing. WWDKILFF, uncomfortable at the university and not knowing what she wanted to study, became a country club wife. She traded generic beer for martinis and Manhattans, jeans for cocktail dresses, the casual look of poor students for regular visits to the manicurist, the personal trainer, the dermatologist, hair stylist, and personal shopper.

After the cocktail circuit, WWDKILFF returned to college where she met a charismatic protestor who headed up an organization opposing government military expenditures. She quit college again and traded her cocktail ways for old jeans, saggy T-shirts, vegetarianism, and pot. Now vehemently anti-materialistic, she cut ties with her middle-class family. The next time I heard from her she was standing in line at the free clinic in Houston to receive no-cost pills to treat gonorrhea.

Next she met a cowboy. Since I showed horses, she called thinking I’d be delighted with the news that she was learning to ride and rope. She traded her protestor ways for boots, and saddles, expensive beer, T-bone steaks, and thrill rides.

At our tenth high school reunion I learned that the WWDKILFF was now married to a man who sold life insurance and owned his own company. She’d traded her cowboy ways to take care of a big house in the suburbs, two kids, a maid, and twice weekly visits to her psychiatrist.

Couple Stress, the “Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries”

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Fusion and the “Woman Who Didn’t Know If She Liked French Fries Incident”

Dateline:  Bergstrom Interantional Airport, which is deep in the forests of northeast part of Germany or in south Austin.

Fusion is the emotional process that occurs when the way one person feels is automatically absorbed by another person. Every close relationship includes a certain amount of adaptation to calm the other, the question is, to what degree?  It’s only with too much fusion that we get into trouble.

For example:  the family member who avoids going home for Christmas because he or she feels like a different person (less confident) when around family. The usual rationalization is to claim nothing in common or to have a list of past injustices.)

The horse I had once who wouldn’t eat at horseshows unless his buddy in the next stall at home came along with him on the road. (Fusion can get expensive.)

The cheerleader’s mother who tried to murder the mother of one of her daughter’s rivals so that the girl would be too upset to be competitive.

The wife who longed to tour Italy but stopped bringing it up after a few years to avoid the anxiety in her that was stirred up by her husband’s anxiety at the thought of shaking up the routine.

The student who can only perform well when ‘liked’ by the teacher.

A loved spouse who only feels safe when his or her partner is happy.

and…

The Woman Who Didn’t Know if She Liked French Fries:

A college roommate, we’ll call her K, met an wealthy older man who promised her a new life.  Not all that happy with the life she had, she married him. K gathered up her country-raised self and welcomed the makeover into an upscale wife.  Three years later the new look wasn’t worth putting up with the all the other women her husband provided with new lives.  The night of their last big fight, K and I met at midnight at a 24 hour café.  I ordered the burger and fries, but K told the waiter she needed more time.

K picked up the menu and stared.  “I don’t know what to order,” she said.

“Burgers and fries are good here,” I said.

“That’s the problem,” K said. “Dave thinks I should lose weight, so I always order what I know he thinks I should eat. I don’t remember if I like French fries or not.”

The emotional process of calming self by calming the anxious other has many names and faces. The term co-dependent, no longer in vogue since insurance won’t pay for it anymore, was defined as calming self when next to an anxious other by ‘helping’ that person. The co-dependent is the person who lies for the addict, supplies money, and sometimes takes on responsibility for locating the ‘drug of choice’ for them.  In this situation the addict is very clear about what will calm them down—for the moment. He or she is good at promising that if the other doesn’t do what he or she commands worse consequences are to come.

The addict turns responsibility for his or her life over to the other. The addict learns to be very good at convincing others to listen to his or her claims about life and to ignore their own beliefs.  Through this process, a person can end up “living” another person’s life.  Much like the woman who didn’t know if she liked french fries.

Next: Anxiety and Potatoes Part Two, the “Woman Who Used Two Potato Peelers at Once” Incident.

 

 

 

 

 

Last Mexico Tourist Standing, Anxiety, Part Two

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Stress to the Max, The Togetherness Force in Mexico City Traffic and How It Can Get You Killed

Dateline:  The outer reaches of a traffic circle on the magnificent including impaired health. Whether or good or bad depends on whether driven by emotions or thinking.

What does the great leader of the Aztecs, Moctezuma have to do with the togetherness force and the individuality force? Well, he did lose touch with what he believed…when he was awed by the horses, the guns, and the facial hair of Hernán Cortés.  Some kind of rock star worship, I guess.  Allowing the conqueror to take over his “bests thinking” decision-making didn’t end well for the chief.

Now back to whether or not you are a relationship junkie, that is, unable to move if someone you care about is anxious.  Or unable to stop moving away if someone you care about is anxious.

Too much of the togetherness force (fusion) is when you can’t tell where you stop and the other person begins. When you feel what the other person feels. If when your important other (or, heck, could be a particularly annoying stranger) gets upset…and you automatically get upset. You automatically go into ‘fix-it’ behaviors. You know you will not be okay until the other person is okay. Fusion is not all bad. All intimate relationships have some fusion.

Too much of the separateness force can result in too much distance as occurs when marital partners or siblings share so little they do not have enough common experience to know who or what the other is talking about.  Separateness like fusion is not all bad and is a part of all relationships.

All of us experience both forces.  The forces are not descriptions of pathology, though some people and cultures value one over the other, such as when “true love” is seen as one person being unable to survive without the other, or in frontier days when a person could not compromise sufficiently to live with others and rode away as the admired “rugged individual.”  This same over-sensitivity to others contributes to homeless persons preferring to camp out rather than suffer the closeness of a shelter.

If driving in Sonoma, California, the relationship junkies will fare better than the loners who will get chewed out for being rude (?).  In Mexico City, relationship junkies on the road–looking left and right, letting drivers in from side streets, even obeying red and green lights–endanger not just to themselves, but also innocent drivers who play by the city’s rules.  As a relationship junkie you will likely be found months later babbling incoherently as you drive round and round, circling the Statue of the Angel…and praying a little.

As Jessica LeFave, the psychologist sleuth in “Too Rich and Too Thin, NOT an Autobiography” says: “The rule in the horseshow warm-up ring is: Pay attention to what’s in front of you, and only what’s in front of you. Go soft–try to take care of who’s behind you and to the side–and you’re just mucking up the show.  We fools hooked on jumping horses over fences learn anti-defensive driving to survive in the warm-up ring before each class. The warm-up ring is always a tiny space, usually cut into units by steel girders supporting the coliseum, dividers perfectly positioned so that should you lose control for a moment, slip slightly left or right in the saddle, your neck will snap back as your head cracks into the steel. In this insane space, several dozen giant and excited horses randomly charge over fences in zigzagging paths with no regard for on-coming traffic or flying poles.  The straight-ahead, terror-factor-focus learned in the horse show warm-up ring is why I can drive in Mexico City, and why I’d make it through tonight and tomorrow (confronting a killer).”

Next:  Beginning of the Relationship Dependence Series, the “It’s Only Thunder” Incident.  Also facinating updates from the Last Mexico Tourist.

 

 

 

 

Dirt Bike Daddy Meets Beetle Blondie

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Dateline:  Interstate 35 Outskirts of Dallas, Texas.  Volkswagen Beetle International Branch Office. (Flashback.)

This is part 2 of the “This Little Piggie Goes to Marketing” series…That is your on-the-scene report from a marketing conference in LA (starts this afternoon) where I am determined to break new ground…in other words…I’m going to the meetings. Regardless of how hard it is to stay in my seat when I get anxious or don’t agree with the speaker…I’m staying and I’m listening. (Success or lack thereof will be chronicled here.) This is a tough concept. I have to battle an enormous and well-honed pack of reasons (personal b.s.) why I shouldn’t stay in my seat.

To narrow down and clarify the nature of the project, below is a great example from a previous conference followed by an incident occurring before I left Texas.

The lesson:  Who’s in charge of you? How much do other people control your mood and your behavior?  How much do the people you’ve made up in your head…control your behavior? (And, you, Charlie Sheen…?)

GREAT EXAMPLE:  The conference speaker said:  “I was visiting a friend in New York when we headed out in the morning for coffee.  My friend stopped at a newsstand for a paper.  The newspaper seller was surly and rude as he handed over a copy of the NY Times.  As we walked away, I told my friend, ‘That guy is certainly unpleasant’.  My friend said, ‘I know. He’s that way every day.’ I said, ‘There are plenty of newsstands around.  Why not just buy your paper from another seller?’ My friend said, ‘Because I don’t like to let the way other people are change my behavior.’”

I know. Wow.

INCIDENT IN TEXAS:  Interstate 35 between Mexico and Dallas is one of the highest volume routes in the United States. The mostly two-lanes-each-direction death drive is three-quarters big rigs coming out Mexico. Amongst these beast I putt along in the right lane in my Beetle singing along with the radio. Alas!  Traffic slams to a standstill in the middle of nowhere (the ‘middle of nowhere’ is in Texas) because of an accident. This being Texas, those in vehicles designed for the open range bolt across the grassy shoulders to the frontage road. The rest of us wait.

Now before going further, I ask that, for a moment you hunch down in your chair and picture a truck grill over your shoulder. One wrong move and you join the other bugs decorating that massive steel plate.  But I’m cool.  Whirling lights can be seen ahead.  Since a wreck is usually dragged as quickly as possible to the shoulder, I wait for an opening in the inside lane. I spot one and pop over taking up a spot behind a Frito Lay truck. That’s when it happened. When my behavior started to control the behavior of the guy in the giant pickup truck now behind me loaded with his kid’s dirt bikes. Dirt Bike Daddy leaned on his horn, shot me the bird. 

Oh, well. Apparently, a tiny car like mine daring to be in the space in front of his Tonka truck was some kind of insult. Did I mention that the traffic is at a complete standstill? Inching along, if more than four feet stretched out between my front bumper and the truck in front of me Dirt Bike Daddy landed on his horn.  As the right lane was blocked ahead, other vehicles were trying to move over into the left lane as I had. I let one in. Oh, boy. Dirt Bike Daddy went nuts.  Horn blaring, jumping around in his seat, more birds, arm flapping up and down outside his window. I let in another car. He starts slamming his palm on his door.

I’ve ever been as in control of a man’s behavior as I was at that moment.

Goal: My behavior and openness to learning something new will not depend on the words or features or diabolical enthusiasm of the speakers at this Marketing Conference.  That’s what I’m shooting for. I’ll let you know. I mean, I do have sort of a headache…sort of…could be I’m coming down with something…