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The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

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The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders at the Renaissance Hotel

Dateline: Chili’s bar, Little League World Series Final. These kids are great fun.

What was your first thought when seeing the two boys in the pool. Was it, where were their parents? Not that the question is a bad one, just not the only one.t was your level of fear seeing pic? Remember herding sheep in other countries. The swimmers do look a bit younger than the third graders in the situation below.

Okay, one more shot at James Arthur Ray, then I’ll let him go. Maybe. The sweat lodge situation is just such a good example of one person saying to others (who ended up dead, by the way, even though they were good “Warrriors”) “Listen to me. Not your own mind. You are safe because I know you and you don’t know yourself. You are safe because I am with you and I am so cool and great, you should trust me with your bodies and your money.” Okay, I paraphrased a little. But you get the message. is the same.

Remember the pledge. No judgments. James Arthur Ray and both mothers came by their responses to anxiety honestly. A child’s anxiety is hard to resist. It’s hard to keep
ourselves calm and communicating confidence once our fears are stimulated, once
we know or think we know danger lurks.

The following situation came about accidentally, but taught one father a lot about his
daughter and himself. This particular weekend Mrs. W was out-of-town and Mr. W
was in charge of his ten, four, and two-year old daughters. The mother of one
of his ten-year-old’s best friends called and asked if she could attend a small
slumber party.

The friend’s aunt, staying at one of the best hotels in town which happened to include
an indoor pool and miniature golf course, had offered to arrange a room next
door for their niece and three of her friends. The niece was excited and happy that her aunt had made such a generous offer. The plan was for the aunt to supervise an afternoon in the pool, then take the girls out to dinner before settling in.

What actually happened: An hour after the girls were in the pool, the aunt got into a huge argument with her husband on the phone. After the battle, the aunt
left the hotel, then returned with a six-pack of Mike’s Lemonade. Afte the swim the now intoxicated aunt retreated to her room and room service alcohol.

The girls went down to the indoor miniature golf and played a couple of hours. Returning to their room, the niece peeked in on her aunt to find her passed out on the bed. The four third greaders were on their own and for some reason, probably the fun
night ahead, no one called parents.

They made a joint decision for everyone to shower and change into the dresses brought for dinner. The four girls escorted themselves to hotel’s fine-dining restaurant signing the check to their room. Afterwards, the evening was spent with television and games as planned. Ice cream sundaes were ordered from room service.

The next morning, the aunt still in bed, the girls enjoyed breakfast in the restaurant then returned to the miniature golf course to wait for parents to pick them up at the
assigned time.

Once the niece’s parents were beyond their anger at the aunt, they could step back and see how well their daughter and the other girls had handled themselves. Would they have allowed her to go if they’d known what was going to happen? Of course not. But instead of raging on about the irresponsibility of the adults, or about the fact that his daughter had not called him the night before, they were able to appreciate how the girls had managed a tough situation quite well–and without anyone having to instruct them along the way.

Hang on, no one’s saying leave your third grader with a drunk relative in a hotel. Ten-year-olds do herd sheep and tend to the store in other cultures. (When a young person tells me he or she just can’t do a chore, I tell them about the young herders. Straightens them out in a hurry, since they do not want to end up with more responsibility.)

Next: Relationship
Dependence, the “Woman Who Used Two Potato Peelers at Once.”

 

 

 

Anxiety, Stress, and All the Fascinating Little Drinkies, Part 2

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Anxiety, Stress, and All the Pretty Little Drinkies, Part 2

Anxiety and Thinking for Yourself

Do you think for yourself?   Are do you just think you think for yourself—and what you’re really doing is “what feels good at the moment” and expecting someone else to “lump” the consequences?  Remember our goal: To have more of our decisions, actions, and internal dialogue, more determined by our best thinking and less determined by emotional pressure from others or emotional pressures (fears and anxieties) coming from within our own minds.   A little thing called Differentiation of Self.

The “I Want It Now” feeling is one way we can know that our emotion system and not our “best thinking” is guiding our decision.  Another give-a-way is when we refuse to acknowledge the long-term downside of our actions. (Think full- body tattoos.)  The refusal to measure potential gain against potential loss keeps prisons over-occupied.  The same sort of refusal to accept the cost, also accounts for the series of broken bones I suffered on the series of show horses sucking up my time and money for years.

Teaching Your Teens to Avoid Stress

Here’s a bonus idea for teaching the “thinking for self” and “weighing the potential long-term downside” lessons to your teenagers. National Geographic has a new show, “Lockup Abroad,” (or is it “Lock Up A Broad”?) documenting otherwise straight-arrow people who “get talked into” carrying drugs on their body going through customs in foreign countries. Yeah, I know. The show demonstrates well what can happen with just one tiny bad decision.  And, yes, the misguided drug carriers are surrounded by persuasive people authoritatively pushing them to carry drugs, assuring them that “There’s nothing to it. It’s perfectly safe.”  Think James Arthur Ray giving his promise of “harmonic wealth in every area of your life.”

Anxiety Over the Border

All the Pretty Little Drinkies is the tale of a lazy Mexico afternoon when two teens who hadn’t learned the lessons of “Lockup Abroad.” Many bad decisions were made that lovely afternoon at the fabulous Mocambo Hotel (built in 1932, once the hide-a-way of Hollywood types) on the beach in Vera Cruz, Mexico. My brother and I, both young teens, had been at the hotel for several days with my father. During the afternoons, while Dad honored the siesta tradition, my brother and I lounged around the pool cooling off periodically in the water topped with fresh hibiscus blossoms tossed in every morning. There were iguanas. There were accommodating waiters. There were Galiceno horses, said to be the first breeds of horses arriving in the Americas with Cortes when he invaded Mexico from Cuba in 1519.

There was a drink menu with pictures of exotic mixtures of fruits and alcohols, each in differently shaped sophisticated glasses. Of course, we were going to order just one each, just to test the flavor and see the colors. Then, as is often the case when emotions are rolling, we decided to check out every refreshment that looked exciting. Key to our decision was the waiter’s lack of concern about our ages coupled with our unfounded belief that, since we’d been at the Mocambo awhile, when Dad was handed the bill for the hotel stay, our little afternoon research project would go unnoticed.

Ah, the stories we tell ourselves when we want what we want. As is so often true when we behave without fully considering the possibilities, the end result was less than perfect. My brother and I were waiting in the lobby as we readied to head for Mexico City when we heard a ruckus going on up at the front desk. Oh, yes. My father was stressed out and face-to-face with first the clerk and then the manager insisting the bar bill was not his. Oops. Bro and I slunk up behind him carefully and suggested that just maybe the charges were correct.

Next.  Thinking for yourself driving in Mexico City.

Letting Others Be Themselves

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   Which, of course, they are going to be anyway.  But since we’ve given our precious permission, what that means is that we CANNOT be all surprised when they are themselves.

Remember we expected that.  Gave permission.  Later in evolvement we’ll even recognize that others have THE RIGHT to be themselves.  But, not yet.  For now we’re just being generous.

Which means:

The person who cuts in front of you at the grocery store with 80 items, you said she could do that.

The person who’s late to Thanksgiving dinner–you said that would be fine.

You gave the person who doesn’t return your e-mail for four days–you gave permission.

The person who has too much wine at dinner–you gave them permission.

The one who cannot stop talking about the one who had too much wine–you gave her permission.

The one who spends Thanksgiving talking about how diets–you gave her permission.

The one who undercooks an item and the one who burns one–you gave them permission.

The people who’ve had their Christmas lights up since mid-October–you gave them permission.

All those people jamming up the roadways–you gave them permission.

The guy who will whack me in the head as he puts his bag in the overhead on the plane–I hereby GIVE HIM PERMISSION.

Are you getting a feel for HOW ABSOLUTELY FREEING IT IS to turn your focus away from CHANGING OTHERS to MANAGING YOURSELF? 

Who’s In Charge?

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2963_75x75.jpg  I was going to lie low until the Spring as I have a book coming out in early summer, timing and all.  But I can’t wait.  Yesterday on the plane the man behind me chastised his wife, “You make decisions based on your emotions while I make decisions based on what I see and hear for myself.”

I had to mention this because so many times this argument is used as if WHAT YOU HEAR and WHAT YOU SEE isn’t determined by your emotions.  Example later.

I’m A Big Wennie, Too

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avatarnemo.gif  Lest there be any question, I did not intend to put down the struggling wife mentioned yesterday.  Never.  Some people have better “front offices” than the rest of us. 

They hold in their anxiety, and thus they come across cool 04674828_.jpg  instead of HYSTERICAL like the rest of us.  But the husband in the example was no more functional than the wife, just using means other than obvious “relationship dependence” to calm himself down.  Who knows, maybe he had someone on the side (or gets someone) using relationship dependence in spades. 

“Relationship dependence” is when we need   mv5bmja5nji5ndy3of5bml5banbnxkftztywndmwnjq2__v1__cr340381381_ss100_.jpg     a particular response from a particular other person    to CALM DOWN, START THINKING AND GET BACK IN CHARGE of our lives. 

And what’s particularly interesting and self-destructive about this method of calming ourselves down is that it DRIVES OTHER PEOPLE CRAZY.  It drives AWAY the person we want to keep close.  mv5bmjeznji1nti2mv5bml5banbnxkftztywnta0mzc0__v1__cr00289289_ss100_.jpg

How nuts is that?

RELATIONSHIP DEPENDENCE

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frida1949.jpg  A supreme and successful effort to manage . . .  RELATIONSHIP DEPENDENCE.

I was seeing a couple, both of whom were university professors.  (All descriptions are disguised and combined to not apply to actual persons.  I have enough wacky people in my family to use anyway.)  marchpenguins007.jpg  The husband was frustrated with the marriage and had moved into his own apartment.  Things were improving with therapy as each learned more about their reactivity and anxiety management, but the husband was not ready to re-commit.  The wife had a research report tour scheduled which would take her on the road for two months and require her to make presentations to large groups, a process that was hard for her. 

In the last session before she was to leave, she asked her husband to promise  mv5bmtywnde4mjg4mf5bml5banbnxkftztywmdy4nzg2__v1__cr800324324_ss100_.jpg that their marriage was going to work out.  Though she made it very clear he could cure her current anxiety by saying what she wanted to hear, he held his ground that he was still unsure.  He was particularly worried that if they got back together she would end up leaning on him again for her sense of self.  Prior to separating the wife had suffered panic attacks if left alone and all night bouts of anger insisting that her husband was not caring enough.

She upped the ante saying she couldn’t go on the trip,  mv5bmtkzmta0ode1nf5bml5banbnxkftztcwmjgwmdkxmq__v1__cr00335335_ss100_.jpg couldn’t fulfill her obligations unless he said they were going to make it as a couple.  He did not give in.

The wife headed out on the tour.  During the second week, while she was in New York, the husband called at around eleven to ask how she was doing.  The first few minutes was enjoyable for both.  The husband said “Goodnight,” as was pleasantly signing off when the wife shouted, “Stop!”  mv5bmtm5mtqwmdq5ml5bml5banbnxkftztywnjgynzy3__v1__cr1040417417_ss100_.jpg  He did.  She started crying and saying he’d ruined her tour, that he’d never loved her, and that she was going out to find some man who did.  He pleaded to continue the discussion the next day.  She refused continuing to list his crimes and her own faults.  After several more attempts to close the conversation, the husband hung up.

The wife called him back with more emotional blasting.  forbidden-kingdom-movie-04.jpg  After ten minues, he hung up.  She called again.  He hung up.  She called again.  He’d taken the phone off the hook.

The wife threw herself on the bed hysterical, more because she’d made such an absolute mess of things than anything else.  The urge to hear from her husband was almost unbearable.  She “felt” out of control and absolutely hopeless. 

THEN, she remembered a word or two about taking the energy she was using to TRY AND GET A RESPONSE from another person . . .

And using that energy to MANAGE her OWN anxiety.  mv5bmtm0mje1oda0mv5bml5banbnxkftztcwotiwnzuymq__v1__sy140_sx100_.jpg

Instead of rolling around on the bed, feeling worse and worse, ABSOLUTELY CONVINCED SHE COULD NOT FEEL BETTER, until she got the feedback she wanted from her husband–SHE DECIDED TO TAKE CHARGE.  mv5bmti4mta0nzgwnl5bml5banbnxkftztcwmtg2ntkymq__v1__ss100_.jpg

As she told me:  “What did I have to lose,” I asked myself.  “I got up, got dressed and went out on the sidewalk and started walking.  I was in Times Square, so there were plenty of interesting people.  Even though every cell in my body (okay, that’s my phrase) wanted to either try to contact my husband or wallow in continuing misery, I started LOOKING at the interesting people.  I looked at the marquees.  I told myself I was going to walk and walk and walk until I WAS IN CHARGE OF MYSELF.  vm__cr00450450_ss90_.jpg  And I did.”

When her husband called, she apologized for dumping her anxiety into the phone call.  He heard, for the first time, that she understood what it meant to be responsible for self.

Who’s Life Is It, Anyway?

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mv5bmtm0mje1oda0mv5bml5banbnxkftztcwotiwnzuymq__v1__sy140_sx100_.jpg  Two phrases from two older movies will be the theme for a few days.

“I’M IN CHARGE!”  mv5bmtm2ntawmdywm15bml5banbnxkftztywmte3nju2__v1__cr620325325_ss100_.jpg  from Hustle and Flow.  (Think of both of these guys inside your head trying to be in charge.)

    and “I COULDN’T HELP MYSELF!” from a whole bunch of others.  vm__cr00334334_ss90_.jpg   Not to mention, these are the people who spend their lives in prisons — real and fabricated.

It’s about who’s deciding what goes on inside your chest cavity.  Who decides your level of motivation.  Who’s in charge.

Back later.