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Those Stress Relief Advice Givers are Just Making Stuff Up

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Stress. Some of These Advice Givers are Just Making Stuff Up

Dateline: Gold’s Gym International Branch Office.  A couple of Texas basketball players train here in the summer. Makes the treadmill more fun.

Stress Relief Advice for the Holiday Season

How to steam a turkey in a mop bucket, how to make a wreath out of old toothbrushes, how to bake cookies shaped like antlers using sun power, how to spice up your cocoa with plants from your backyard…and on and on.  

Are you ready for the feature writers to pull out those well-worn ‘seasonal’ features?  How many times do we all have to stand around in the kitchen on Thanksgiving Day and wring our hands trading salmonella rumors?

To honor the relentless nonsensical suggestions we endure this time of year, I’m sharing two bits of bizarre advice to represent the group.

 Stress and Fat Free Turkey

Want to enjoy turkey on Thanksgiving, but you are afraid of the fat? (Okay, let’s be honest here. If you are tackling some weight issue or just living your life beating yourself up…if your first concern is the fat in turkey??…Just saying.) This tip is courtesy of one of the doctor shows. The recommendation: “If you want to enjoy turkey on the Big Day but don’t want the fat, substitute that tasty turkey breast and gravy, that delicious turkey leg… with a fat free (read: so dry you could use it as a sponge) ground turkey CUPCAKE. The delusional doctor actually added, “Not only is a turkey cupcake low in fat, it’s fun to eat!”

Doggie Stress at the Turkey Table 

We don’t want to leave out the pet on this family holiday. This chunk of news is taken from some guy on the Animal Channel. “Is your pet a problem at the dinner table? Does your dog beg for a taste of that lucious turkey dinner the people are enjoying?”

Now, right away, the fact this guy can ask such questions should warn you to plug your ears with hot tar. Lucky for us dog owners, he answers his own questions.  He says, (You should probably sit down for this one.) “While it may seem like what your dog wants is a bit of food, all he really wants is your attention.” (I know. I almost choked I was laughing so hard.)

The dog man continues: “When your dog begs at Thanksgiving Dinner, just slip your hand under the table and give him a pat on the head.”

Right. And bring back a bloody stub. A guest tearing out of the house for the emergency room during Thanksgiving Dinner is such a downer. It’s a downer for the foolishly injured person, too, because the wait will be long at the hospital. Lots of people ‘full of in a holiday spirit’ who forgot to use a potholder taking the turkey out of the oven. Those folks often sport broken toes and charred shins. Then there are the domestic violence cases. Men with turkey legs wedged sideways in their mouths and women who lost the sweet potates and marshmellows food fight.On Thanksgiving day you have to wait forever to see a doctor….I mean, that’s what I’ve heard.

Coming:  Recipe Exclusive!  Famous Triple Stuffed Turkey

 

 

 

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Stress, Anxiety, and All the Pretty Little Drinks, Part 1

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Stress, Anxiety, and All the Pretty Little Drinks

“Thinking for Yourself” Therapy on Someone Else’s Dime

Dateline: Mi Terra Restaurante, San Antonio.  Davy Crockett died down the street not that many blocks in Fall of the Alamo.  (Played in the latest remake by Billy Bob Thornton who delivered the one good line in the movie.  As the Mexicans held him up to be shot, he shouted, “I gotta warn you, I’m a screamer!” ) The remains of the Alamo dead are in a vault a few blocks at Flores and Commerce in the San Fernando Cathedral.

Group Think versus Thinking for Yourself is a tricky proposition because it is much easier to run with our emotions when we are anxious.

A.E. Houseman:  “Most problems can be solved by three minutes of thought. The difficulty is that thinking is hard, and three minutes is a long time.”

When is thinking for yourself, breaking the mold, merely not taking responsibility for paying your way? What about the free thinker who rants about everyone else selling out to
“the man” but who is perfectly willing for you to pick up every check?

The Stress Multiplying Anxiety-Driven Mind of the Adolescent

What about when we were teens, excusing our over-the-top emotionally driven choices on our valiant effort to grow up and become independent. Of course, what we meant by “independent” was to decide our own curfew.  To our parents, our use of the word “independent” meant we were planning to someday pay our own way in the world. Excited by the thought of a time when they could return to lives of their own, our parents fell for our speeches.

Which is good, because each of us benefits learning the hard way during those years .  (Billy the Kid was only 18 years old when he killed his first man.)  Speaking as a proponent of Bowen theory therapy, the teenager who questions and goofs, is less scary than one who goes all the way through without ever putting his or her opinion to the test. (Did you know that, at one time, the credit card company sent the actual carbon of every use to the cardholder with the statement?  I learned this at the breakfast table when my father pulled one such carbon out of his pocket and asked, “Barbara, you want to tell me what you were doing in Eagle Pass just across the border from Piedras Negras?)

Stress Management…Manana

As I roll yet another fluffy tortilla with queso and mochahete salsa, and contemplate the “thinking for self” dilemma….—Stop what you’re doing just for a moment. Ask yourself, “Why am I hurrying to get to the next thing?  What makes me believe that I will be more able to be happy at some future time than I am able to be happy now?”—

See?  There’s all sorts of therapy, all sorts of ways to calm anxiety.  Okay, back to the mochahete, queso and freeloaders spending someone else’s money and calling their efforts “self defining.”  Oops, too late for the Pretty Little Drinks tale of how the decisions made by a couple of young teens….unsupervised lounging around a pool at the fabulous old Mocambo Hotel in Vera Cruz, Mexico….. with no vision of the future… came back to haunt them.

For now, as I stagger dripping and over-heated down Commerce Street, I’ll call up the breezes of the Pretty Little Drinks afternoon….Leaving the unfortunate tale of consequences till manana.

Who’s In Charge of You?

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Dateline:  San Jose Cabo Hilton Branch International Headquarters.  The “Hotel California” of Eagles fame is just up the road.

What if you made some New Year’s Resolutions that could actually make a difference in your next 365 days?  All this image talk now is to introduce a way of thinking about New Year’s Resolutions. It’ll be fun. You haven’t made these sorts of resolutions before.

Set-up:  How much of your precious resources go to self-defeating attempts to manage anxiety? How much time do you devote to worrying?  Trying to guess the future?  Overdoing?  

How much of your time, energy, and money goes into Pseudo Self (the image we present to the world) and how much goes into Basic Self (the basic beliefs about being human that direct our decisions)?  If this is new, search the site for Pseudo and Basic Self. 

Travel note:  Yes.  The branch office here in paradise is populated by people living the Designer Dream. (See previous post.) How do I know?  We both know it isn’t that hard to tell, but the dead giveaway for me was the preferred method of claiming your chaise.  Aha!  See even the phrase “claiming your chaise” gives the place away. Those of us living the American Delusion and who have siblings…know that a seat is claimed by yelling “Dibs!” and interlopers are dumped out onto the sand. Not so here in paradise.  Around the infinity pools, all along the cliffs over the Sea of Cortes…are chaise lounges with deep cushioned mattresses.  When you choose one, a white clad helper steps up and covers your chaise with a huge towel. You sit down and he brings you a cushion roll for your lumbar region and two more towels. If the weather is coolish…the towels are heated. The unspoken rule is, if you see a magazine, sunglasses, or any evidence that the chaise has been claimed, you are to choose another. 

Why do I suspect my wealth management account is below the average of those sunning around me?  The most common items I see holding chaises?  I-Phones. I-Pads. Blackberrys, and we’re not talking last month’s models.  Probably Hilton should establish a policy designed to limit which hotels can be used to cash in Honors Points.  For example, if you got caught dropping bagels from the buffet into your computer bag, say at the Las Vegas Hilton, you are not allowed to cash in your points at a luxurious resort. I mark my chaise by leaving one of my special person’s philosophy books. I may look a bit out of place in the over-stuffed cargo shorts, but it’s because I’m into Plato and above worrying about details of reality.

“Which is more important? The world, other people, and the you that actually exists? Or the world, other people, and the you, you are responding to?”

How can a person change the world she is responding to? Not easy. Hundreds of publications every month promise that the only way to change what goes on inside our head is to change other people’s reaction to us. Talk about a hopeless theory!  But it does sell magazines. The first self-help book I ever read, I bought in the grocery store as a sixth grader.  It was written by a plastic surgeon who was interested in why women who invested money and risked surgery to improve their faces always gave “improve my self-esteem” as the top reason for the venture.  And, yet, after surgery, with the expected improvements in place…his patients did not report improved self-esteem. This was true even when the surgery had been to correct a disfiguring deformity. So what’s that about? 

This is big. If working yourself into a daily froth toning the body, buying expensive cosmetics, and sacrificing for trendy clothes…like the plastic surgeon’s improved faces…don’t result in improved self esteem?… What now?

Note: Remember the danger of automatic dualistic, either-or thinking. Suggesting that the route to greater self esteem does not result from having an admired body, a better dressed, better coiffed, better detailed body…does not translate into “all these efforts are not worthwhile.” Come on, people, feeling healthy and strong and having nice clothes and lush fine-running cars are good things…a BMW or a size 2 rear are not bad things…just not cures for depression, fear, and anxiety.  If there was a pill I could take and have twiggy arms I’d swallow it right down.  Someone wants to give me a new car…well, I should be home in a few days, just park that baby outside of the left garage.

Why will it be difficult to accept New Year’s Resolutions that could actually make a difference but do not cost anything? Because being happy here…living the dream…is presented as a lifestyle which includes expensive objects…a lifestyle which engenders envy and maybe even insecurities in those who do not have the goods.

Man in my office upset because his fiance has split. “I don’t understand what changed. I told her, we were going to have the perfect marriage. The red BMW convertible and everything!”

Okay, this is noon on the last day of 2010.  So…make a list of all the events you need to worry about and get going…

 

Lose Weight! Eat Tacos!

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Yes. It’s official. We’ve gone around some kind of bend as the American television-watching public. I just saw a very thin woman explain how she lost weight by getting her treats at the Taco Bell drive through. I really did. I verify this statement because I’m aware there’s a television public that never goes near the sorts shows I have running…I respect you, but, I gotta let you know what kind of trash is out there….
Taco Bell…hmmm…This is the same company that had a campaign last year which said, “Late night snack? Don’t think of it as a snack, think of it as a fourth meal!”….Now that’s what America needs….a fourth meal.

Dangers of Friendly Persuasion

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swmmerdreamstime_5544572How much of your life have you spent in activities you said “Yes” to, when you meant “No?”

The world is a constant demand situation.  If you do not define yourself to the world…and other people…the world and other people will define you. 

Could anyone convince you… that you were the sort of person who would like setting your alarm for five in the morning… dressing with a swimsuit as underwear… driving downtown to an ancient university gymnasium and… diving into a chlorine-heavy basement pool?  And that you would do this without someone holding a gun on you? 

….What could get a woman to not only do this once, but agree to do this insane routine five days a week for six weeks?

…Yep. The beast who agreed to the routine was, of course, my Emotional Guidance System.  The same critter that landed me in the Water Tower Place shopping mall.  (See previous post.)  I agreed to the bizarre morning swimming routine because when my special person claimed that something called “aerobic swimming” was not the work of the devil, but something that I’d be glad I’d completed, and that he was leaping on the opportunity…

My brain shot right out the window and, for ever how long it took for me to sign up… 

I ignored “the facts”… 1) I read into the late hours and get up grouchy; 2) I’m a terrible swimmer;  3)  Indoor pools are yucky;  4) There was zero possibility that I would continue ‘aerobic swimming’ if I should be fortunate enough to survive the course.  And the strongest fact of all, that if I had no intention of making ‘aerobic swimming’ part of my lifestyle…there really was no point outside a few weeks of bragging and living in the “lying to myself zone” that is what sells every new diet, new piece of exercise equipment, every project that depends on pretending we are on the verge of a personality transplant.

“Oh no,” he said.  “You’ll like it,” he lied.  “You are too rigid and unwilling to try new things.  This would be good for you.”  And yep. The challenge to my personality perfection along with the “good for you” baloney got me to question what I knew to be the facts about myself.

I did come to my senses.  But it took three times of me quitting…the last departure quite public and spectacular.  I did eventually engage my Thinking Guidance System, but not until I’d suffered through weeks of torture. 

Here’s the picture.  I arrived on the first day and hopped into my lane, ready.  From there it was downhill.  The pool was awful, the water was cold, I sucked royally at swimming, and nearly drowned on at least four occasions. Particularly amusing that first day was my exit when the class was over.  The coach Nazi blew his whistle and said something diabolically cheery and that we were done.  Everyone else, including my special person, bounded out of the pool and headed for the dressing rooms.  Now this is the pool the swim team used early in the last century, which means that the lanes area had no ladder.

Unable to pull myself out of the pool and now surrounded by bouncy college students readying for swimming class…I flopped desperately against the side of the pool, one foot stuck up over the edge.  I’d almost make it, then plop back in.  I supposed that once my special person was dressed and ready, he’d notice I was missing and re-trace steps until he found me half in, half out of the pool. Either that, or he’d find me in two days when the class started up again.

The point here is how persuasion…or FUSION…can get us to waste time and energy in activities that are someone else’s idea, someone else’s challenge.

What Would You Give Not to Feel?

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celebritydreamstime_9555425First, DIETBABBLE ALERT: New Scientific Breakthrough! The reason you’ve had a hard time losing weight is because you haven’t been eating according to your DNA!  That’s right, folks.  Now you can send in a saliva swab, the “lab” reads your “sample” and POOF… the exciting secret foods you need to avoid will be revealed and the weight just falls off.  Of course, you have to coordinate this amazing scientific breakthrough with dieting according to your blood type and the phases of the moon.

Also, a thermos maker cashing in on “going green” by showing piles of plastic bottles (gallons) lists both ’saving the planet’ and ‘weight loss’ as results you can expect by using the thermos.

Still the favorite in my heart:  the man walking along the beach with a split piece of metal, ending his spiel saying, “And my wife can’t stop talking about the weight I’ve lost since I’ve had my new metal detector.”

Anxiety. How far will you go to push down your anxiety?

It’s interesting to notice that recent celebrity drug deaths are overdoses … not of a drug that would make a person ‘high’… their deaths have not been the result of going too far with a substance known to make a person ‘happy’.  Their deaths have been the result of taking drugs which make a person numb, even unconcious.

Anxiety. 

Anxiety is the fuel and the product of the Emotional Guidance System.  Anxiety is powerful, powerful enough to make a mess of a person’s life.  We are all anxious.  Dogs and cats and cows are anxious, too.  Some dogs chew through doors when left alone, some cats hide even when hungry, cows stampede sometimes.  People chew (overeat), hide (avoid), and stampede (run away), too.

The goal of this mysteryshrink journey we are on is to get a little better hold on anxiety. (See Wildebeest entry)..2 percent…a shift of only 2 percent can improve life experience.

What would happen if you could manage a 2 percent improvement in your ability to manage your anxiety when someone else is saying something that makes you anxious?  Aha!  Of course, no one can “make you anxious”… No one else can even reach your EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM button… I was just giving you a little test…

Situation: The spouse and I are having breakfast in Kansas City during the Big Twelve Basketball tournament.  As it happens, several team members are enjoying the same hotel buffet.  My special other, being much better than I at realizing his importance or lack of importance in the world, is nudging me in the shin and teasingly suggesting I make up some story about a young nephew and collect a bunch of Texas Longhorn autographs.  Since my Emotional Guidance System is always ready to exaggerate things, always ready with the caution, ”Don’t call attention to yourself!  People will think you’re crazy! Your complete hick-dom background is going to show and you’ll never recover!  What complete strangers think of you is incredibly important!  A frown from a stranger will ruin your whole day!”  “When your special person does something that he thinks is cute and you think is embarrassing after you’ve TOLD him how he’s supposed to behave to keep you calmed down…his continuing to be himself means he doesn’t love you!” 

Okay, there I am, exposed for the sucker FUSION (See Fusion, think ropes twisted together.)  And how do I FEEL?  To what degree do the actions of another change (signal you to change) what’s going on inside you?

Anxiety 101.  Tune in tomorrow for miraculous 2 percent victory in the terrifying autographing incident!