Dateline: San Diego Mission Valley Hilton Branch National World Headquarters.  Update on management of self-inflicted flight stress: minimal peanut delivery anxiety; mildly distracting doo-looping irritation with the man in the seat in front of me who thought just because his seat was adjustable, he was free to spend three hours crushing the book I was reading. Eight Hertz courtesy buses passed while I waited on the sidewalk for an Avis bus.  Potential personal insults from possible less-than-perfect television, still to be determined.

Okay.  To continue thinking about how we get ourselves in trouble with our human need to tell other people what to do…  “Helping” is sometimes nothing more than our effort to get rid of our own anxiety.  Anxiety is our physical and automatic response to real or perceived threat. 

One pretty useless, but highly seductive method of dealing with anxiety that pops up around another person’s behavior…is to try to change their behavior.  Of course, we do not admit that we are trying to change their behavior so that we can calm down—it doesn’t even seem to us that we could possibily be doing that.  The way we see it, we are only trying to help the other person to change because our way is better.  Because once they’ve changed they’ll agree.  Probably even be grateful and see us as really cool and smart.

Thus, when we make a royal pain of ourselves trying to change another person…No matter how bloody annoyed the person we are “helping” becomes…we can rock back on our heels and humbly say, “Gee, I was only trying to help.” 

And maybe we were.  But “helping,” particularly when our efforts are unsolicited (see Obsessed Stranger Lady and the Chicken Noodle Incident), is a tricky proposition. 

When are we “trying to help” and when are we merely “uncomfortable” with the behavior of another person and wanting them to change to keep us calm? 

Picture that you have two lists.  On one, you list the behaviors of the people around you that you wish were changed, but do not directly affect you.  Next make a list of the behaviors of other people that you wish were different, and that do have a direct affect on your life experience.

When your partner breaks the agreement the two of you have on spending, the behavior affects you directly; when your partner spends agreed upon leisure money in activities or on items you do not value—those are behaviors that do not affect you directly.

Okay…Right away, we have a problem.  Highly reactive people will claim that everything anyone does that they become aware of in person or from other sources, directly affects them.  And, before you jump to “Oh but that’s not me,” remember we’re all highly reactive some of the time.  It’s wired in to being human.

So, why is it so hard to let other people be?  Our faithful Emotional Guidance Systems.  The EGS is threatened easily and sends us into unattractive spins.  Our Emotional Guidance Systems scream:  “You SHOULDN’T be (drive, cook, eat, read, choose a husband, think, worship, email, talk, call, answer, vote, dress, spend money, etc.) the way you are!”  “The way you do (all those things) is terrible and awful and MUST be changed.”  “I can’t stand for you to continue (all those things) the way you do!”

It is quite exhausting going through the world in high threat, continuous evaluation mode.  The pay’s not too good either.

“Helping” others to slow our own anxiety is quite popular and will be the topic of the next several posts.