Would You Peek in Other People’s Windows to Prove You’re Right?

Posted on November 8, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: Threadgill’s International Branch Headquarters (Jimmy Dale Gilmore sang here)

How far would you go to prove you are right? Would you move a mountain?

Lesson Plan: Gain freedom…improving our relationships….saving time, money, and energy…. by seeing through our need to be right, the need to be recognized as right. The need to be right is a tool of the Pseudo Self (See previous on Doughnut Holes).

Pseudo Self is that part of the Self “up for grabs,” that part of the Self that is dependent on the responses of others to stay steady. How far will you go to protect the way you want others to see you?…. How far will you go to protect the the way you want to see yourself?

Well, I confess, I’m willing to go to great lengths. And don’t even try to say that, from time to time, this stronghold of emotional immaturity doesn’t turn you from mild mannered citizen into ridiculous puppet spouting reasoning that could be defeated by a four-year-old. Also, the holidays are coming…if you believe you are immune to the need to be right and the need to be seen as right…ask your relatives if they’ve ever noticed…And, yes. That time you flipped over the Monopoly board sending tiny hotels and fake money into the Christmas tree…that counts.

(I checked out the real instructions on how to play Monopoly…the truth about the rules instead of the “make up as you go along” method our older siblings forced on us when we were young and believed in fairness. The instructions said: The game of Monopoly is finished when a player screams and turns the board over.)

Would you move a mountain to prove you were right? The central example, and thus the title, of this several part section involves a man, a Sunburned Chap in the Fisherman’s Hat, who moved a mountain to prove he was right and his neighbors were wrong. This fella is, however, an extreme case, and the story and SCFH’s life turn out rather badly. We’ll warm up to his tale of woe by introducing a few examples of the need to be right…closer to home and not involving a shootout.

Set up: My Special Person (MSP) and I were enjoying an evening how-was-your-day discussion when the following interchange conversation ensued.

My Special Person referring to a client: “He drives a Nissan CRX or something.”

Me: “No, he drives a Mazda sports car.”

MSP: “I’ve seen his car in the parking lot plenty of times and he drives a Nissan.”

Me: “I, too, have seen his car in the parking lot plenty of times and he drives a Mazda.”

This lively discussion refers to the car driven by a client of my SP’s(Long, long, ago). And, you, as the objective observer are likely saying to yourself… “These guys are psychologists, the issue of what model car was in the parking lot will be recognized as trivial and they will move on.”

Ha. And bless the family you grew up in. My SP and me? We looked up this guy’s home address and hit the hard streets of the big city. The man lived in a semi-gated community .(there’s a gate that opens on approach)…a few miles out of town. His house was a four-car garaged mansion. Darkness is falling on his lovely neighborhood of wide lawns and who knows what kind of security systems. I look at my SP, he looks at me, and we agree, “This is so fun!”

We creep up to the side of the house, both struggling to hold in giggles like a couple of two-year-olds trying to get the jump on the cookie jar. My Special Person says, “I’ll run over, look through the little windows in the garage doors, and come back and tell you what kind of car it is.”

“No way! I’m not trusting you on this. I know you. You’d get a huge kick out of coming back telling me you were right…then when I spot the car in the parking lot again….Oh, you’d love that. No, we’ll both go.”

And we did and lived to move on to other entertainments. Our peeking occurred before the era of cameras everywhere. Too bad. Can’t you imagine if you were seeing a psychologist to help get your life back together….One night a few hours after your appointment….You hear a noise outside….You check out your front lawn cameras….Now that would be funny.

While proving each other wrong was a game on the evening described above…the results and the conversation over who’s right are not often so lovely. Other people being stubborn and all.

Part 2, of “Getting a Grip on the Need to be Right” next. Marriage Duels: The Pizza Rearranging Incident and the Ice Cube Counter Incident.

Every Screw-up is an OPPORTUNITY, “The Smashed Car Incident”

Posted on September 10, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Yeah. Right. “Every screw up is an opportunity…” the psychologist said. So why do I have this urge to punch something or use indelicate language….when “opportunity” after “opportunity” lands in my day. What? I’m supposed to feel like a privileged person because I have so many opportunities?

Dateline: King’s Fish House, San Diego, California. Five minutes after minor brush with a cement pillar.

I do not want to write this tale. Why? Because I must either admit defeat and entertain the notion that people…or at least this person… is incapable of change….Incapable of harnessing the crazy person inside myself who cannot happily tolerate my humanness. Who cannot appreciate the “opportunities” coming my way….The person who responds to errors as if the earth was going to split in two and land messy sides down on the bottom of the universe.

My goal in sharing is that I find many others have had similar experiences and just maybe my flailing toward better management of anxiety…can help…a little…

Setup: I just backed the Avis rental into a cement pillarin the garage of Mysteryshrink’s San Diego Hilton International Branch Office. White paint formerly on the rear bumper is now on the pillar and a black slash on the bumper marks my crime as clearly as if the police had marked the spot with one of those little yellow tent dealies.

Why do I not want to share my reaction to my latest opportunity? Because, now I must either get a grip…practice or at least attempt to practice what I say…or…. I end up as one more hawker of an elixir, a cure, or if not a cure, a method that has the power to make life better… for others…. While I, the hawker…cannot use the prescribed method to pull out of the level three funk hitting the pillar MADE ME FEEL….

Picture Here: the taunt, toothpaste smile, pony-tailed chick promising if you will put a lump of change on your credit cardto purchase your very own machine, shoes, bottle of pills, pre-measured food…you will look just like her…. Now, this example has nothing to do with the effort toward greater emotional maturity…better control of our moods and our lives….But, the comic relief, we need that.

If I can’t get to work on managing my anxiety…. My Inner Torturer, which jerked up front and center when I hit the pillar….If I cannot admit that I, alone, determine how this bump affects the rest of my day….Then, yes, I am no more than one more slimy salesperson promising change but who has never used or even taken seriously the product or process she is offering. If I can’t work the program when it counts…then I am the toothpaste smile gal…without the tiny shorts, the smile or the abs.

Change is hard. Pat yourself on the back if you’ve made it this far. The folks hoping for the quick fix or to be left alone to self-destruct….or the folks who’d agree with my blaming my special person for distracting me…those folks have all bailed and ordered whatever Toothpaste Abs is selling.

The rest of us, the Emotional Weenies of the World (See previous on the EEW)…the EWW…we are stuck working on our own functioning….on the only person we can change.

Official Pledge of the EWW: “What has happened is unfortunate, unpleasant, and inconvenient, but not a catastrophe unless I decide to make it one….unfortunate, unpleasant, and inconvenient…but not….”

The pledge must have worked. Because I’m all better now….Could be because when I turned in the car the Avis guy said, “Don’t worry about it.” I mean sorta, maybe, kinda that helped.

Are you a “BOUNCER” or a “CRACK-UP?”

Posted on August 18, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: London Heathrow International Branch Office, Several years ago, back when I was not the Emotioanl Maturity Queen I am now….

“What are the thoughts that determine you? What are the thoughts that destroy You?”

As the man says on NCIS, successful Black Ops are 80% planning and 20% execution. I agree with him with one…just one tiny…added thought. Planning only works when it works. When your plan tanks, what do you do next? How happy are you when your careful and time-consuming Plan A goes off track?

Does your fact-observing, what’s best in the long-term…Thinking Guidance System remain in charge or do you fall into the hideous crater of exaggerated emotions and victimhood, the home of your Emotional Guidance System?

At the point your Plan A falls apart, do FACTS or ANXIETY take charge?

You’d think that those of us who pride ourselves (pride…always a problem for those of us trying to be cool), You’d think in planning efficiently…we would build in a “what if” clause, a Plan B, but no way. We don’t need no stinking back-up plans….That’s just how great we are at what we do.

The Eight-Hour London Hysteria Incident, which was entirely not my fault, would not have occurred if I could be in charge of running the world….Okay, maybe Dictator of American Airlines would be enough.

We arrived at Heathrow Airport a full two hours ahead of the flight. (Why do I mention this? Because… the next time I report that yet another ticket agent has refused to re-open the door and let me aboard, even though I’m just the tiniest bit late…I can remind American Airlines that arriving early hasn’t worked that well for me in our relationship, either.)

Oh, well. Time for a hearty breakfast. I familiarize myself with the scant fast food options and, perhaps longing for home, choose a taco place. I know, Mexican food in England, I deserve what I get, right? The enchiladas were a bit frozen in the middle, but “Whatever,” I said, gaily to my special person who was, I could tell, pleasantly surprised at my flexible attitude toward dastardly mismanagement of my favorite dish. Oh, if the poor man only knew.

My months-ahead-of-time Perfect Plan A: Leave London on flight at 2:30 p.m. Just after the meal, I’d have a second glass of iced sauvignon blanc. I awaken to the smell of toast as we neared Dallas-Ft. Worth International. We’d take the 8:30 p.m. into Austin, be home around 10:00 p.m. I’d awaken to the sounds of hungry dogs and pop into the hospital ready to work.

Commence laughter. Though I wasn’t laughing. Because this is SERIOUS. At the time, I was convinced that my missing meetings or re-arranging appointments would alter major world events. Right. Now we’re back to the false pride, aren’t I indispensable…but the kind of pride locking my gears wasn’t worry that others would suffer….I went off the sanity grid because my efficient and economical plan was being messed with. I love it when my friends, family, or special person says, “I don’t know how you do it. Great schedules, good seats, and at what a price!”

Such an ego massage wasn’t going to happen today. The first notice of a late departure came at 2:30, which wasn’t a big surprise as we hadn’t loaded. Two hours they lied said. Then four. At this point, I am running from ticket counter to ticket counter pleading for a seat on another airline that can get me over the Atlantic on the day I’d planned… No one observing my efforts wouldn’t had used the word “pleading,” but “hysterically demanding” sounds so judgmental. At each counter I’d point over at the American Airlines desk indicating my torturers with a shaky finger.

Periodically, I return to where my special person is reading his book. I “explain” all the ways in which life will never be the same. He listens and doesn’t suggest I calm down. (This isn’t his first meltdown.) What he does suggest, however, takes me further around the bend.

He suggests that since my Plan A isn’t going to work out, perhaps I should establish a plan B….get some reading done. Catch up on correspondence. He is going with his Plan B….

What? Is he crazy? He obviously doesn’t get the situation. Can’t he see that my ranting and hovering over the American Airlines counter are preventing them from further ruining our lives? Read? How could he even suggest….

“You have the right to choose a Plan B,” he points out. And he was right. But, like the guy in handcuffs whose just been informed he has the right to remain silent…I had the “right” but not the “ability.”

Five hours. Tacos. Tears. Six…a sub sandwich…Eight hours later we board….

Thus, I’ve come to the conclusion that being able to establish and go with a Plan B or C, is a more important skill than the capacity to put together a perfect Plan A.

Devil in Blue Bathing Suit Invades Paradise

Posted on May 1, 2010 by mysteryshrink

But do not fret. There’s always something to worry about if you try. And I do try…

Dateline: International World Headquarters Hilton Cabo San Lucas, Baja California. The La Vista Restaurant, so named as it overlooks the Sea of Cortes… Sure, the scene is lovely…white beaches, blue-green water, palapas, fresh shrimp, fellas in white military-style shorts and shirts, meeting your every need even before you think of it…. “Yes, that’s perfect with shade, another pomegranate margarita? Certainly. And thanks, you remember I like extra ice….”

If you can’t make it here without complaining….Well, you’re at my level. We wouldn’t make it an hour on the bad side of town.

How easy is it for you to have what’s going on inside your chest cavity, your ongoing sense of well being, shaken by an outside person?

Doesn’t have to be a stranger. Could be your special person makes a comment, such as, “That yogurt’s not fat-free, you know…” (heard at the table to my left)… Or, “This is, too, the wrong way to the beach elevator! But, never mind, you’re happy as long as I do everything your way…” (couple passing by) …

You’ve seen us, the anxious ones… glancing side-to-side, noticing who’s seated where in an expensive café and how quickly. Which line is the shortest at the bank and the grocery. We may look cool, but, inside…we’re keeping tabs. Inside we want, we need, to have made the right choice in picking a line at the bank. You think not? You think, no one’s that pitiful. Just test the theory. Next time you pick a line that is made up of three people who waited until they were “up” to start their paperwork….and the person in the car with you points out your folly….see what happens.

It’s easy to come across mature when everything is going your way. In clinical training, the phrase is, everyone looks about evenly mature when there’s no stress. Put on the pressure, and it’s a different story. When trouble starts in paradise, each person distorts the scene as influenced by anxiety. For the lucky few, the new world is only slightly altered.

For those of us whose Emotional Guidance System can make a catastrophe out of the slightest inconvenience…well, it’s not pretty.

“Which is more real? The world you can touch? Or, the world you are responding to?”

Oh, yes. Back to Baja. Here we are overlooking the aquamarine Sea of Cortez, unimaginable and undeserved luxury. I’m floating on air, nary a complaint to be spoken as I roll my laptop toward the fabulous breakfast offering unimaginable and undeserved variety.

And, then…only yards from my destination…still in my cocoon of self management….the anxious lady in the blue bathing suit with the lace cover dress… the spiffy expensive “resort wear” cover I’d admired in the hotel store but couldn’t bring myself to spring for…comes toward me down the open air tile verandah. The part about the cover is important because we are more likely to be infected by people we perceive as having something going we don’t…

Anxious people are often lurking in hallways looking for victims. Did I say that? Did I suggest that victims are born, not made?

The Devil in the Blue Bathing Suit touches my arm, checks my expression for a clue on how this anxiety transfer is going to go….Am I a willing victim, primed to be infected…so that the two of us glob together in distress?

I land my best gotta-lot-of-work-to-do stare, which was not nearly as powerful as her well-practiced desire to share her anxiety. She says, “Pardon me, the bed in your room, is it terribly uncomfortable?”

And, now what’s my move? I feel her pull. She wants me to agree. My Emotional Guidance Systems says, “Surely, there’s some fault you can find with your accommodations so that the two of us can glob together waiting for prey, for other anxious guests to stick onto our blob….

We can quiz them, “Say, how’s your bed?…Ah ha… Thought so. Me, too.”

And, we’re off from the starting gate.

How to go?….How to go?….Mañana, baby.

Emotional Maturity of Oklahoma Native Stuns Texas Nutcase, Part 3

Posted on April 18, 2010 by mysteryshrink

One man, alone in a Lawton, Oklahoma motel room with an anxious, freaked out partner…does the IMPOSSIBLE. He responds using his THINKING instead of his EMOTIONS…..when I’d provoked and provoked and provoked…

At that moment, my belief that a person can change, that a person can learn to manage anxiety…soared.

If ever someone was out-of-control and unpleasant the night in the Value Inn, that person was me. (See previous two entries)…And, yet, the person with me, did not respond to my immaturity with anxiety-driven emotional immaturity of his own. Instead of ‘going with his emotions’ he responded to me in a differentiated way.

Definition of Differentiation: the degree to which a person can tell the difference between thoughts (fact based) and feelings (anxiety-driven)…and the degree to which a person is able to choose between acting on thoughts or feelings.

Examples: Prisons are occupied by persons with low differentiation. Low differentiation is in evidence when we are pre-occupied by the way things should be over how they are… When we buy what we don’t need, eat what we regret, cut-off from people who don’t agree with us, ruin a conversation by arguing, insist on being right–all behaviors which I, for one, have accomplished already today…(Not the prison. But I do have to fly again and I’m pretty fragile. Arrest is not out of the question.).

Now, I ask you to return to the horrid motel room described in the previous two parts on complaining. Picture the even more horrid person, me, compulsively exaggerating and pointing out every unpleasant element to my special person…Who is stretched out watching scores come in on ESPN. He’s not ignoring me, (He’s not stupid) he’s listening and nodding. He’s just not into the fireball of “This shouldn’t be happening! This is horrible, terrible, and I can’t stand it!”

He does not tell me to stop my immature behavior.

He does not claim my behavior has ruined his good time.

He does not remind me of times in the past in which I’ve behaved like a jerk.

He does not say I remind him of another person in my family.

He does point out that I have a been jerk to Mr. Sensible and spouse.

He does not suggest I was less than pleasant to the desk clerk at the lovely Lawton, Oklahoma, Value Inn.

He does not go on about how thousands of people sleep on sidewalks.

Most important, he does not go nuts trying to take the other side, refuting that each horror I point out is ‘not that bad’.

What he did: After inventorying the motel room, I said something like, “Okay, fine. I’m going down to that cafe in the parking lot and order something to go. Do you want to go with me?”

He asked: “Are you going to keep on with the bitching?”

I said: “Yes.”

He hopped up and slid back into his jeans. He said: “Well, then. I’m not about to miss that!”

The ‘Jellybean Incident’, the Moment that Changed Everything

Posted on December 18, 2009 by mysteryshrink

Jellybeans….Jellybeans were everywhere…and I didn’t have time or energy for the clumsy interruption. Who does have the time for messy interuptions?

Trudging my computer case across the tiled floor of my office and out to my car, I bent over to pick up a Coke can I’d earlier set by a chair…

When the opened box of Ike and Mike’s (tube-shaped jellybeans for those into adult foods) tucked into one of the case’s pockets splattered everywhere… I snarled, I cursed, I bent over to pick up the flying pieces….Of course, in the process, I spilled more as, in my hurry and misery, I hadn’t secured the box. I snarled and cursed some more.

Always ready to take control, my Emotional Guidance System, (search site, if unfamiliar) SAID: “Great! Just what I needed! I’ve had it! This is too much. My knees are alreadykilling me, I’m late for an appointment…. Crazy dog will be in here hogging these jellies down any second…and I’ll have multi-colored poop to deal with for days!

This is terrible, horrible, and unbelievable! I drop my computer case…on my foot… “%#@&”… This is just great.
That’s when “the moment” happened without any warning. After years of training in psychology, Eastern meditation, libraries of books, and many hours instructing others in emotional life….

The moment occurred without effort on my part.

Some little creature inside my brain hit me square between my squinty eyes. “What keeps you…from enjoying this moment just as much as you enjoyed playing fetch with Crazy Dog last night?”
What? Is it possible that all those psychologists saying each person is in charge or his or her own happiness…actually have something? And, if they (we) have…why is it so difficult If being alive is being in each and every second?

What is keeping me…you… from enjoying this moment….the one NOW… as much as the favorite moment you are planning this holiday?

I don’t have an answer. When the ‘moment’ occurred, I felt something loosen. And I smiled, just a little.
I know, this is heady stuff. To think all this could come from splattered jellybeans.

The Rugby Coach Who Changed the World

Posted on November 8, 2009 by mysteryshrink

Back in the ‘woo-woo-far-out-living-for-the-moment’ days…the notion that each person draws to her what she needs was bandied about. Not being the easy-to-woo-woo type, I didn’t buy the idea right away.

Yet, I couldn’t help but notice that the same day I decided to go to Spain, the woman in the next booth was telling her lunch mate about her trip to Spain, Spanish language magazines started being sold at the grocery store, and Univision carried the Astro games.

I couldn’t help but notice that when I made up my mind that driving home from my in-laws…I would point out one thing my mother-in-law did that I hadn’t appreciated…rather than start in with my usual self ego-massaging fear-based criticism…as if to remind my special person that he was better off married to me than deciding to go back home and live with his mother. I know, pretty bleak, but why pull any punches?

Dr. L awaits those who need a psychologist who has never made a mistake and was born knowing everything.

What happened, with Spain and my mother-in-law, of course, was that a little pathway into my brain… sealed shut earlier…and not necessarily for any bad reason…a little pathway opened up to receive new information about the world. And a new world opened.

What does opening a little pathway in your mind have to do with the Rugby Coach Who Changed the World? Am I hoping to open a little pathway? You betcha?

Picture a rugby coach. Now add that this man is the rugby coach for Texas A and M University, a school not that long ago all men and all military trained. (If you have any doubts regarding the stringent masculine, tough-guy reputation of Texas A and M…catch a football game sometime and watch the all male cheerleaders in their hospital whites urging on the crowd with jerky motions, a show best described as what the Karate Kid would look like fighting his way out of coma.)

The rugby coach is on a plane from Missouri back to Texas. A woman from Austin sits down next to Coach on the plane, a stack of ink-still-damp brochures on her lap. And this woman is about to change the rugby coaches life forever…Tune in tomorrow to find out what happened between the rugby coach and the lady…

MysteryShrink

A Psychologist on the Loose

Tag Archives: anger management