The Wrestler, Praise, and Self Confidence

Posted on February 11, 2009 by mysteryshrink

How much of who you are is just living out the expectations of others?

How much of who you are is just holding off your fears?

How much of who I am is just a reaction to too many episodes of Most Shocking Police Videos? (Gotcha.)

Back to The Wrestler. Warning: Plot busters revealed in this post.

Randy the Ram (Mickey Rourke), The Wrestler, is a man who split rather than figure out how to have close relationships with people who were actually close (wife, daughter, friends). Now, this is not to blame Randy or label him, because he, like the rest of us, came by his defense systems honestly. He reacted to anxiety by avoidance, which is actually a fairly popular method.

And, the Ram had the bad luck of success as a “professional” wrestler. If the Ram had had a thin build, a lack of discipline, or an allergy to steroids–perhaps he would have turned around, faced the real world, and managed lasting relationships. But, the Ram was good.

He fit in great with the other men who practiced their shows and reveled in the artificiality of what they were doing. Randy the Ram was good at fooling people. The fans screamed for him. He could hear them begging for him before he entered the ring. They asked for his autograph. The wife and the daughter never asked for his autograph. When he was with his wife and daugter he didn’t know what he was supposed to do, which didn’t feel good at all.

For the Ram, praise became his addiction. The fake part of him became the only part he valued because it was the only part of him valued by others. The movie begins when Randy the Ram is twenty years past his prime, broke, and broken. He pathetically comes alive for thirty minutes a week playing small town VFW’s and selling his own memorabilia to marginal fans.

Then the Ram has a heart attack and is told by the surgeon who does his bypass that if he does more drugs or wrestles it will kill him. At first he fights the idea, then he slides into a regular job in a deli, finds out he can deal with customers with humor and fun, and begins to think life as an ordinary (real) person might be possible for him. He looks up his daughter and has a great afternoon. Though he has disappointed the daughter all her life, with much effort he convinces her to meet him for dinner the next Saturday.

The only relationship the Ram has is with a stripper (Marissa Torme) who, like him, survives by faking emotions she doesn’t have. As part of his effort to build a life, the Ram asks the stripper if they might have a real relationship and she rebuffs him. Without experience or skills to deal with rejection, Randy the Ram loses it, goes on a drinking, drugging, sex with a stranger binge. He forgets about the ”one last chance date” with his daughter and stands her up one more time.

Randy the Ram tries to recover with the daughter, but she’s had enough. The Ram runs to the one place he feels comfortable like a junkie runs for the needle when times are tough. The ring. Under the spotlight, hearing the crowd. And it kills him.

Randy the Ram is a man whose EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM made all his decisions.

. . . Tomorrow: The Lawn Mower Fueling Incident . . .

Rachel Getting Married: The Myth of Sibling Rivalry

Posted on November 18, 2008 by mysteryshrink

The myth of sibling rivalry–the blanket acceptance that the main preoccupation of children is is garnering attention from their parents–doesn’t even make sense.

Yet it’s one of the simplistic and convenient drawers we use to account for behavior and sometimes to excuse immature relationships into adulthood and throughout our lives.

Now, everyone wants their way, thus sibs fight like other species, and husbands and wives–to get their ways. Nothing wrong with this. It’s the institutionalized idea and explainations and rationalizations where we get into trouble. The problem comes in when WE BELIEVE AND THEREFORE “CREATE A CORRESPONDING WORLD.”

Our freedom to become is reduced when WE RESPOND TO MEMBERS OF OUR FAMILY AS WHO WE THINK THEY ARE, INSTEAD OF WHO THEY ARE.

HOW TO NOT LIKE YOURSELF and get others to agree with you

Posted on March 3, 2008 by mysteryshrink

Andy (Timothy Robbins) walks into Shawshank prison, an environment most of us would see as a hopeless place to survive, much less have a life of any quality. He enters the mess hall and the yard, surveys his new neighbors, and joins the most sane group with the most balanced leader (Morgan Freeman). He works in the library, teaches inmates to read, and every single night he scoops one teaspoon of sand out of the tunnel he’s digging for his escape.

Andy chooses to be in charge of himself rather than allow his surroundings determine what goes on inside him and how he conducts himself and he has a goal.

What are you perceiving if you’re the one walking into Shawshank?

You do not simply SEE the environment. Your perception is an act of creation. You will perceive in accord with the “AS IF” world you’ve made up. You will PERCEIVE in accord to the WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO, not the world as it IS.

How to talk someone else into thinking you’re fat: A newly wed couple is enjoying a meal when the husband looks into his wife’s eyes and tells her how perfect she is. The wife twirls a string of spaghetti, a shadow crossing her expression. She says, “I know you think so, but I don’t. Ever since I was twelve, I’ve always felt like my hips were huge. I felt like a fat giant in junior high. I can’t stand to think what’s going to happen as I get older.” The husband says something sweet, but when the wife gets up to retrieve something across the kitchen, where do his eyes go? How often and how many more times, in the years to come, will his eyes drift to the source of his wife’s junior high school misery?

It depends on how insistent is she that she SHOULD change the size of her derriere, and how insistent she is that IT IS AWFUL, TERRIBLE, AND UNBEARABLE to be a woman with a large (if it even is) posterior.

But now we’ve moved from PERCEIVING to INTERPRETING. Oh, baby now our EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM can really take off!

MOVIES: 1. PERCEPTION and Defining a Self

Posted on March 2, 2008 by mysteryshrink

HOW YOU PERCEIVE OTHERS and the WORLD determines, to a large degree, how much fun your are going to have in this life. Whether you are FREE or in YOUR OWN PRISON.

Sometimes when I talk about working toward a Self Defined Life, people mistakenly assume being SELF DEFINED is the same as being Self-ish. Nothing could be further from the truth. Isn’t it more selfish to run your life on some kind of “auto-pilot” expecting others to change for you? Could there be a more unselfish gift to a spouse, a friend, or relative than to say, “I’ve complained a lot about how you treat me as though it was your responsibity to see that I am happy, and that I never, ever doubt myself. That wasn’t fair, and anyway, as dedicated as I’ve been to telling you how to change so that I stay calm–YOU KEEP BEING YOURSELF. I’ve realized, ‘Babe,’ since I’m making up the world as I go along, you’ll never be able to catch up with my needs. Why don’t I work on my PERCEPTIONS instead of trying to change you? Particularly, because, according to your limited view, you’re not doing the thoughtless things I accuse you of, anyway.”

“I’m going to try something new. I’m going to take more responsibility for my feelings.” Now that’s un-self-centered.

Operating in a self-defined way means working toward having your actions more determined by your BEST THINKING and less determined by EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from others, or EMOTIONAL PRESSURE from within yourself–that is, your own anxieties and fears. Freedom is both having charge of what goes on inside your chest cavity, and having the capacity to manage your anxiety so that your interactions with others and the world are in line with BEST THINKING rather than automatic, anxiety-driven, predictable responses.

We’re going to look at four steps that go into our response to a situation. The first step is PERCEPTION.

Let’s go back to Andy (Tim Robbins) walking into Shawshank Prison on a life sentence for a double murder he did not commit. (Picture yourself at your job, class, party, dinner with family, involved in a disagreement with someone important. For my writer buddies out there, imagine yourself sitting down to pitch an agent, facing a blank page, or adding another page to your rejection collection).

What and WHO DO YOU SEE? Do they want to FIGHT? What DO THEY WANT from you? What do they think of you? How is this meeting going to go? “Which is more important? The world you can touch, or the world you’re responding to?”

This question of perception is particularly important as you approach your “Shawshank.” You don’t walk into the same prison (party, bus, job, relationship, hospital, class) as any other person, though you are entering at the same moment at the same place. Your emotions, your fears and anxieties, take a role in creating your situation. In actually CREATING THE PEOPLE.

Thus, YOU have a lot to say about how the encounters in your life turn out. (Big encounters, like marriage. Little encounters, like the one with the stranger next to you on the plane.

But, oh, I’m getting ahead. And, what kind of “woo-woo” idiot psychologist am I, to suggest that other people aren’t EXACTLY as I perceive them? I’m supposed to even be right about what others are THINKING. Since I can see inside people’s heads, I know WHY they do and say the things I PERCEIVE. I know I see reality because it FEELS like what I see is reality.

Tomorrow we return to poor Andy walking into Shawshank Prison. What will the places you’re in until then be like?

Movies: What Does a Self Defined Person Look Like?

Posted on February 28, 2008 by mysteryshrink

Before we hone our skills at driving ourselves and others crazy, a clear picture of what the non-crazy person looks like.

Let’s start with a simple test of our current capacity to manage stress. What would you do if you were sentenced to life without parole for a double murder you did not commit? Life. In a maximum security prison with no hope. Bad, bad neighbors.

Talk about a chance for your Emotional Guidance System to take charge. To what degree would you be able to manage what goes on inside your chest cavity? Me? I’m writhing on the floor tearing my hair out. They’d have to pry my teeth off the baseboards to load into the transport van. I would be “shoulding”– like crazy. “This shouldn’t be happening to me! Someone should have saved me! My parents should have raised me to be tougher! And, you, warden guy, shouldn’t be smirking like that.” As you notice, it doesn’t matter that according to law this shouldn’t be happening. When it is, it is.

Then, of course, I’d move into catastrophizing. “This is horrible! I can’t take this! This is terrible! I can’t stand to live in a prison!” Again, the conditions might be awful in fact, the point is WHAT ARE YOU THINKING ABOUT?

“Which is more important? The world we can touch, or the world we’re responing to?”

Tim Robbins, playing Andy, in “The Shawshank Redemption” makes another choice. (I know, you’re thinking, “Choice? What kind of choice does someone unfairly imprisoned for life have?” After all, Andy’s the VICTIM right? He doesn’t have any control over his situation. Andy takes on his fate in a remarkable way with remarkable results.

He thinks about his situation and arranges a fulfilling role for himself. He locates and associates with the most emotionally stable group with the most solid self leader (Morgan Freeman.) And he makes a long term goal, a plan for escape that will take many years of work and patience.

A Self Defined Person: is able to pull focus off surroundings . . . returning energy to managing anxiety and planning actions. For starters.

Practice Sentence: “This is unpleasant, inconvenient, and less than perfect, but not a disaster unless I DECIDE TO MAKE IT ONE.”

MOVIES, “Psycho” and Defining a Self

Posted on February 19, 2008 by mysteryshrink

“Which is more real? The world you can touch, or THE WORLD YOU ARE RESPONDING TO?”

Talk about your family issues. Anthony Perkins in “Psycho” is definitely a person with a problem staying calm around his mother. In fact, his Emotional Guidance System rules his behavior so thoroughly when he’s around his mother, he becomes his mother. The view his mother’s subjective view, based on her fears, has become his view. When he has thoughts unacceptable to his mother’s view of him as an innocent little boy, he punishes himself.

And, there was that unpleasantry in the shower. Janet Leigh screaming, her bloody hands streaking down the tiles. Actually, his mother (who was dead and drying in the main house) slashed up the beautiful blonde. She was just trying to help. Just trying to keep her/his view of the world steady.

Isn’t this what all of us are trying to do when we tell people the way they see the world, the way they do things is wrong. We’re only trying to help. Right? Actually, like Anthony, what we’re doing is trying to calm our own anxiety. When someone presents a view that doesn’t fit our picture of the “way things are” our anxiety goes up and we go into a defensive mode trying to get comfortable by convincing the other to change.

Hopefully, we stick to arguing, dismissing, or avoiding rather than murder. But murders happen everyday between family members unable to accept disagreements in world view. If I can bully you into agreeing, then you have to go. For those folks, the cut-off method may be the best they can do to manage anxiety.

MysteryShrink

A Psychologist on the Loose

Tag Archives: Movies