On a High, Part Two of Love, Money, and Stress

Posted on October 24, 2011 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: Main Location, Austin, Texas. Suzi and Sammie Davis, Jr. at the ready.
To accurately keep up with these wild hearts in Vegas, read Episode One first.

Set-up. Fusion…When one person is so merged with another person that he or she cannot make decisions or moves if these moves or decisions might their partner anxious. Usually, along with experiencing great anxiety when the other is displeased, we are afraid that if we continue in our path the relationship will change, or fall apart completely.

Remember, no judgment as we return to Mr. and Mrs.Travis in Las Vegas. When we slip into being judgmental, we see the other’s anxious behavior as unusual and foreign. This keeps us from exploring our own inability to tolerate anxiety or our inability to approach an anxious other person without sliding into a one-up or over-helping stance. Which accelerates anxiety in the other which boost anxiety in you and here we go.

…Mr. Travis, while at a convention in Las Vegas made and won two sports bets. He felt, alive and vibrant, the way he had felt when he first fell in love. Wow. Who wouldn’t like that?

Mr. Travis talked a lot about Vegas and complained less and worried less about his children and his wife. He wanted to return to Las Vegas desperately as the feeling began to fade. A trip not paid for on an expense account was out of the question. Then, in the last month of the football season, a friend turned him on to a bookie.

The first several weeks were fun for the whole family. Mr. Travis was betting five dollars a game and rarely lost much, twenty-five dollars on a bad day. As the game ended on Superbowl Sunday, Mr. Travis asked to speak with Mrs. Travis alone. They went for a drive. Mr. Travis confessed he’d been betting twenty-five and fifty dollars a game and he was down $1700.00. which he had two days to get together. Instant cash was pretty tough for the teacher’s salary, five person family. By taking the maximun cash from both of their low limit credit cards the bookie was paid.

Mrs. Travis was angry and hurt but kept her emotions to herself because if she expressed displeasure or pointed out lies, Mr. Travis shouted and asked what kind of a person was she? If she loved him, she should realize that he was already hurting and what he needed was comfort, not criticism.

Besides, Mr. Travis said losing the money was actually a good thing because he’d learned his lesson and was through gambling gambling forever. Mrs. Travis was relieved hear the news.

When statements came in for December on both credit cards, Mrs. Travis noticed several cash payouts during the last month. The couple, as far as she knew, had never taken a cash payout with a credit card since the interest rate is enormous. Hurt and angry again, Mrs. Travis decided to pretend she hadn’t noticed the cash withdrawals. After all, Mr. Travis’s gambling was in the past and he was making an effort in the family.

Keep the peace. That’s a wife and mother’s job. No matter what. And, afterall, things were going so well. It takes two…

Next: Episode Three, Swan Dive Off the Ledge.

How Much MONEY Are You Willing to THROW Away Chasing SELF-Esteem? “The Hotbox Incident, Pt.2”

Posted on September 3, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Featured content: IF ONLY I WERE RICH…I WOULDN’T HAVE ALL THIS ANXIETY…

Dateline: American Airlines flight…Austin to Los Angeles

I remember a study in graduate school measuring how much effort the average person will put out to fit in with a group… The study showed that we humans are most likely to sacrifice our ideals and spend money in order to be or try to be part of a group that is slightly out of our league. Usually, we maintain a delusion that the people in the group we wish we were a part of ….possess certain superior qualities. Or, sillier still, we pretend they have inferior qualities….Yeah…like…rich people are all stingy and have bad marriages.

Which explains why I willingly suffocated myself… locked inside an unair-conditioned hotbox on an August afternoon when I was a fair fourteen years old. (See previous entry for full embarrassing story).

The hotbox was my hiding place when a carload of my much wealthier riding buddies popped into the hamburger joint where I was working for the summer. I had to save my image. Not my real image. The facade I’d bought and paid for by working at the drive-in while my riding buddies went to camps around the nation. Like many Americans ranking others by the expensiveness of their buying habits…In fact, some would say that the “American Dream” has become nothing more than reaching a place in life where you own (or lease) certain high dollar items.

Well, I was a 14 year old on board with the Dream. Every Friday driving home, I stopped at the Citizens National Bank (Hardship licenses were easy to get when both parents worked and you had a job.). There I ceremoniously deposited my check and, occasionally, a few tips left in the three table diner. Money I was given for school clothes and school lunches also found its way into my bank account. The ill-gotten funds I received serving as my older sister’s slave along with the change I made selling my sister and brother my desserts….Yep…straight to the bank account.

I never minded making my own money and I understood perfectly well that my parents were not equipped financially or traditionally to underwrite a horsey set lifestyle. Ask me now and I’d say my early working independence contributed to what I’ve been able to accomplish in my life. But, back then, it seemed incredibly important to hide how I was different from my friends, how I scraped together money to fund my horse habit while their wealthier parents from wealthier parents rolled horseshow bills into the family budget without a hiccup.

Just how well does the buying-expensive-stuff method of trying to feel better inside your chest cavity…actually work? The method is certainly popular.

But, here’s the truth. Your own free psychological heads up.

Imagine you are in small clearing in a forest…feeling very anxious, though you don’t know exactly why. You are desperate to find a solution to your anxiety. Extending like spokes out of the clearing are trails, one of which leads back home. Let’s make “home” self-esteem, or self-acceptance. Some of the trails are unadorned and some are marked with neon signs and arrows screaming at you at the rate of 3000 times a day: This is the road home! Take this trail! Just pay shipping and handling.

Most of the time when I can be helpful to an anxious person…including the one in the mirror…I am helpful not because I can point the person to the trail out of the forest …but because I know some of the tempting trails that don’t work out. Trying to find someone to love you enough so that you will love yourself, that one is a dead end. The chosen supply-giver turns out to have a life of his own he needs to attend to. Not to mention, our chosen self-esteem provider turns out to be very hard to train. The buy-your-way-out-of-anxiety trip is another recipe for disappointment.

You are not your butt size. (Now you can stay wandering around in that delusion your whole, magazine-buying, label-reading, daily-weighing life…or start smiling right now…your choice.) You are not what you drive. You are not your address.

Just in case you’ve read the psychologist’s heads up and are tempted to see where other people are … in case anyone from Austin was on the flight, he or she could see how important I am….

Mexico City: Maturity Proving Ground

Posted on June 18, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: Mexico City Hilton Branch World Headquarters.

Let’s put it this way. The teenage police officers wear bullet-proof vests.

Mexico City provides an excellent ground zero for testing one’s ability to base decisions on facts or emotions. Make an emotion-driven mistake here and…well, you’ve seen the news.

No way I’m going to miss all my favorite places, which just happen to include Federal Police Headquarters and the Congressional Building where, at the moment, the president is calling for support in the effort to wipe out the drug cartels sucking the life out of this country.

Granted, even coming here was an Emotional Guidance System-driven decision. Joining the mob-filled streets…ditto.

I have, however, decided on a compromise. I make note of nearby doors and shops. When I notice more than two policemen with machine guns gathering, peering around corners, exchanging excited two-way radio conversations… I duck away from the street, a decidedly fact-based move. So far, so good.

Fling some money and Fly, Baby, Fly

Posted on December 2, 2009 by mysteryshrink

There I was in Vegas… with a surly waitress and some crummy little shrimp and… I was as disappointed as a four-year-old staring out the window at the rain. See the “Surly Waitress” incident.

What to do? What to do? sought direction. I called on my two guidance systems.

The Emotional Guidance System said: You are being a brat here. This meal costs twenty-five dollars, you CANNOT just leave an expensive meal. You’re making too much of this! You are too picky. Hundreds of thousands, no, millions of people around the world, are going to bed hungry, and you, you are turning away from an expensive meal of shrimp. There was a time when you and the special person travelled with a steno pad and wrote down every penny spent, staying in ratty motels and able to get lunch for a dollar (loaf of bread and a can of bean dip). What’s happened that you are now such a brat? It’s your fault for ordering seafood in the middle of the desert. These shrimp were flown in over many miles. Think of it, woman. These shrimp have given you their lives!

The Thinking Guidance System said: Okay, probably life would be easier if you were a bit more adaptable, but the FACTS ARE…you can afford to walk this joint and find a cozier place with a happier staff. While there was a time when you would have to do without something else that day if you spent five dollars extra on a meal…but that was then. This is now. You can afford to escape. The reality is, no one but you will be inconvenienced by your changing restaurants. No one.

I decided to split. I asked for a to-go box and packed up the shrimp. (Which I dumped in the trash on my way to the next restaurant, as intended…but I thought taking the shrimp to-go and faking a mild emergency made me look less foolish….Okay, I know…I didn’t say I escaped the waitress from the frowny side of the street and her tiny shrimp without some concessions to my Emotional Guidance System.)

I left the waitress a ten dollar tip and a smile, hoping her day might pick up and headed for the buffet and a really perfect booth where I computed and piddled for hours. (Did you know the buffets in Las Vegas now have all day passes for tourists wanted to have it all and often? I ask you, could this be a good thing?)

The Point: Sometimes you can escape. Remember the people who grew up in the depression and couldn’t spend money in accord with current circumstances? Of course, many people attempt to spend themselves out of anxious situations when they cannot afford the cost … and end up causing all sorts of long-term problems.

An important contribution of the Thinking Guidance System is in avoiding generalizations. The Emotional Guidance System lumps situations together saying, “If you allow yourself to switch restaurants and end up paying for two meals, what’s going to keep you from buying a bunch of timeshares in Tahiti you can’t use?”

What?

Friendly Persuasion Can Take Your Life

Posted on November 17, 2009 by mysteryshrink

The ‘Woman Who Didn’t Stop at the Bathroom’ Incident–

Dateline: Willie’s Place, I-35 between Dallas and Austin. If I can’t get a grip at Willie’s Place, I might as well just jerk that license off the wall and give up the pretense.

Hail to those of you tagging along on this rickety journey toward growing up just a wee little bit. Now, friends, we begin an examination of HOW MUCH of WHO WE ARE is the result of CHOICE and how much is no more than our automatically acting and re-acting in TO KEEP OTHER PEOPLE CALMED DOWN.

Figuring out when we are using our BEST THINKING and when we are doing the please CALM DOWN JIG is not an easy task. Because the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is not just a big fat liar, the EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM is tricky. U

Sometimes we make a choice against what we think…we say “Yes” when we mean “No” (this usually involves some sort of volunteering) or “No” when we mean “Yes” (This often involves FEAR).

We react automatically …because we pick up on the choice an important other person wants us to make….and the relief of going along FEELS like we’ve made a thoughtful choice. Example: a woman says to her husband, “I have decided to take up mountain biking.” The husband says, “What?”and proceeds to outline the costs, dangers, and generally neglect of others…should the woman persist with the mountain biking idea.

For a while she struggles. Then she gives up the idea. The tension in the couple goes down. The woman eats a pie and criticizes the man next door for leaving the lid off his trashcan. The whole neighborhood is ruined!

The relief experienced when ‘going along’ FEELS like we’ve made an actual choice. This sort of capitulating may look noble, but there’s nothing brave about deciding that the best way to stay calm yourself is by doing whatever will keep the other person calm.

Of course, after studying the costs, dangers, and time required the woman could have opted out of mountain biking following her own BEST THINKING. I’m just saying the glory of ‘relief’ makes it hard to tell ‘why’ a particular decision is made.

Now, about the woman who thought she needed to make a bathroom stop and over-ruled herself . Oops, here’s my chicken-fried steak. Tune in tomorrow to hear the exciting adventure of ‘Go-Along-Woman.’

How the Rugby Coach’s World was Changed Forever

Posted on November 9, 2009 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: A woman took her seat on the plane beside the Texas A and M Rugby Coach (See The Rugby Coach that Changed the World).

The woman was bubbling over with excitement as she looked through the stack of brochures she’d picked up on the way to the airport. “Sorry, sir,” she said, “I don’t mean to bother you, but I just have to show these to someone. They turned out so well….Can I show you?”

“Okay….” the coach said.

The woman smiled and showed the coach …the brochures for Bridginghope.org. Mostly the pages were filled with photographs taken at the home for abandoned girls in Nuevo Laredo. The coach would smile politely, then dive back into his Sports Illustrated, right?

Of course, a rugby coach isn’t going to be interested in a project to bring hope to throw-away girls crowded together in Nueveo Laredo, Texas. Of course not.

The next thing Coach knew, he was setting up a schedule for the A and M rugby team to visit the home. But this is still a joke, right? College jocks on a mercy mission in Nuevo Laredo? Come on.

How could he know that the woman with the pictures would change his life forever. The rugby team’s been involved ever since. Two young men changed their majors to service careers.

One player took the next semester off to work full time in the home because, he said, “I can go to college anytime. I couldn’t stop thinking about what the girls needed now and how I could help make their lives better.”

Anyone who’s been involved with Bridginghope.org had left saying, “I got so much more from being with the girls than I could ever give back.”

With Christmas coming, the girls each (there’s almost 700) were asked to make a ‘wish list’. And, the number one request? As any kid you know if he or she can guess what a poor girl in Nuevo Laredo would want for Christmas and I’m betting no one guesses.

The number one request? A toothbrush.

Please check out the website. And, oh yeah, I’m hitting you up, but not for money. PREPARE for a mysteryshrink contest. No cost to you, not even shipping and handling. When you win, I contribute in your name, so how’s that for everyone wins…. A toothbrush…

Downer . . . Part Two

Posted on February 19, 2009 by mysteryshrink

First we looked at that spark that gets us going (See “Just One Little Spark”) then we moved on to a closer examination of what it takes for us to LOSE that spark.

What happens to get you off your mark?

What does it take before you declare a STATE OF CATASTROPHE?

Or WHO? Who’s approval do you need . . . ALL THE TIME? Gad. Now you understand why some people solve the DOWNER problem–the problem of your emotions, your forward-seeking energy, your “zone” BEING UP FOR GRABS . . . all the time . . . by moving to Alaska and living in an abandoned school bus.

Next best alternative? I mean, until that brain transplant procedure is perfected? Work on our own brains. We can CHANGE our brains by what we think. When we change our brains, we change what “happens” in our lives. No magic. When your in you’re not anxious–

When you are in your ”zone:”

You have better judgment . . . You see more alternatives . . . You respond less defensively . . . You listen to what the other person is saying . . . You are less “black and white” . . . You do not see one person as all right and one person as all wrong . . . You open the door for better OUTCOMES. And, I’m just guessing on this, but I imagine I, uh, you would get fewer traffic tickets.

So, how do you get to that calmer place? For starters, copy the following sentence and keep it handy.

This (whatever) is UNFORTUNATE, UNPLEASANT, and INCONVENIENT, but NOT a CATASROPHE . . . unless I DECIDE to make it one.

Perma-weinnies, such as myself, will have to take on responsibility for our own “zone” a little bit at a time. Manana.

MysteryShrink

A Psychologist on the Loose

Tag Archives: better life