Tag Archives: emotions

Stress. The Frog Who Flung Himself Off the Mountain

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Dateline: Lost in phone tree hell. Everyone’s been here. I see your tracks, the bloody scratches on the walls made when you tried to escape to the world of real people.

The Goal: The less you take personally in your life, the better life you will have. Thus, our goal on this site is to learn ways to live more easily and joyfully in this world. One more segment in the true life experience of a psychologist taking Dell Corporation personally.

There’s a highland jungle frog about the size of a nickel. His only means of protection is to hop, which often is not sufficient to escape his enemies. His nature is to fight and hop with everything he has, then, if these efforts fail, he clinches his little legs to his sides and throws himself off the mountain.

I now understand the wisdom of the highland jungle frog.

Set-up. To endure the following conclusion to a sad tale of society insanity, you will need to catch up reading part one and part two.

As we return to the Day of Dell, I have just been bumped out of regular Customer Service into the realm of the Executive Resolution Specialist. Executive Resolution Specialist Guy thanks me for choosing Dell and asks me to give him my name, date of birth, and the odds on Texas winning the National Football Championship. He apologizes for the day I have wasted on the phone and assures me he will solve the problem. Sigh of relief. Executive Resolution Specialist Guy puts me on hold.

He returns to the call, has the correct order, and asks for my credit card number, the only number Dell has been receptive to all day. The Executive Resolution Specialist pauses. It is that this juncture that I lose it at a psycho level.

In my family psycho enters the picture when money or getting the best deal comes into the discussion. The family crest is an emblem with the words: WE PAY OUR BILLS. In other families children grow up with warm stories of family holidays and traditions passed down from one happy generation to the next. In my family the stories are about how my predecessors made it through the depression by growing their own food in the backyard and going without shoes.

Thus–when the beast bearing the name Executive Resolution Specialist said the kryptonite words: “Ma’am your credit card has been declined,”…well, given the previous seven hours on the phone…I earthquake level lost it. I regret being in one of my favorite restaurants at that point because I would have liked to return.

We grew up in a cash up front atmosphere where paying interest or a late fee would be equal to armed robbery. Okay maybe equal to burning down a shed. Or amputating one of your own toes.

Remember the ole Pseudo Self? That part of who you are that’s negotiable depending on what other people think of you? My Pseudo Self is constructed such that when these words are said, “Your credit card has been declined” what I hear is, “Contrary to the image you give to the rest of the world…you are a DEADBEAT. You WILL go to prison!”

In response to being humiliated (strictly the realm of the pseudo self since you can only humiliate yourself) I launched a roaring rebuttal insisting that the Dell Executive Level Problem Resolver was WRONG WRONG WRONG. I went on to relate my life history as a faithful bill payer and threw around all sorts of high-sounding numbers regarding spending limits to make an impression and clarify my status in the world. I’m not saying I was upset, but one of the waiters came over and slipped a napkin into my view. A napkin that read, “Don’t worry about your check. You don’t owe us anything.”  I assume he meant the free meal as a parting gift.

The corker?  Still in a self-righteous melt-down, I called American Express where I was informed that Dell Executive Level Problem Resolver was RIGHT, RIGHT, RIGHT. Someone had called into American Express automated services and reported my card number as lost or stolen.  Yep. Screwed again in phone tree hell. And, now I sorta needed to call Dell back. I’m thinking put a towel over the phone and fake symptoms of a recent stroke.

 

 

 

 

 

Swinging on the Limbs of Phone Trees. Stress, Part 3

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Dateline:  Left hand on one phone tree limb…Right hand gripping another tree limb…oops.

PART THREE.  Hour Three. You will not be able to properly feel my pain or find some shred of forgiveness for my behavior unless you have read Parts One and Two of my torture history.

Hour Three in Phone Tree Stress

Now I’m bumped up to Level Three Customer Service since my request is
apparently too complicated for the first two levels. Level Three Customer
Service Guy thanks me for choosing Dell and asks me to give him all my
information again.  He assures me he will solve the problem. I let out a sigh of relief.

Level Three Customer Service Guy comes back on the call where I wait with gratitude and anticipatory excitement. LTCSG says, “I see the problem.  Your computer only fits with a six cell battery and what they sent you was a nine cell battery.”

I struggle to breathe. Okay. Just because common sense made no sense to Levels One and Two, maybe it will work with Level Three Guy. I begin, “Sir, I’m afraid you are mistaken. Yo see, the computer in front of me came with a nine cell battery and I have purchased several replacement nine cell batteries from Dell.”

Didn’t even make a dent. He continues, “Ma’am. No. Please listen. You have
the right battery for your computer. We just need to send you six cell batteries of the same type and you will be ready to go.”

“But–”

“Trust me. Your computer can only use a six cell battery edition of the same kind of battery you were sent. I will order two of these for you.”

At this point, I suspect I’m going insane. I give up. “Fine. Here’s my credit card number…though you are sending me an incompatible battery and wasting another week.”

To check out the insanity possibility I now drive to Best Buy to get checked out with a Geek Squad Guy. I run my story, show him my computer and ask if I’m losing it. Geek Squad Guy says: “No ma’am. That is a nine cell battery and your computer uses a nine cell battery.”

Trembling and nauseous. I know what hell lies ahead. I call Dell back. I trudge through levels one, two, and three spouting my name, address, and shoe size over and over.

Level Four Supervisor Guy apologizes profusely and says he’ll fix the problem. Could he please have my name, address, last four digits of my Social Security Number, and place of birth.

Hour Four

Fifty-six games of solitaire and four dropped calls (each requiring that I give them my birth certificate again), Level Four Supervisor Guy is back on the phone. I tell him my sad story. He looks up the order for the two batteries Level Three Guy ordered for me. He agrees that those batteries are not the correct batteries. He tells me not to worry, when I receive the batteries, my money will be refunded after I take the package to a UPS office, since I have nothing to do with my life except to do research and run errands for Dell.

Level Four Supervisor Guy has a special goodie for me since I’ve had so much trouble.  The goodie? “We are going to give you free shipping for these new batteries!” he says grandly.

I go back to the insanity possibility.  Did he just say Dell was generously going to
pay for shipping back to Dell the batteries to replace the wrong batteries for which I had paid Express Shipping?  I couldn’t hold in my glee and laughed. He asked me if I’d be interested in opening a Dell credit card.  Now I am roaring with joy.
“Oh, yes, that’s just want I want to do. I want to arrange my life to deal further with
Dell customer service, that is exactly what I want to do.”

Then, Level Four Supervisor Guy asked if I would stay on the line for a survey to help them out.  What?  I’m working for Dell Human Resources now?

Maybe I would have answered a few questions, but I was thinking margarita and a Jorge’s enchilada platter for lunch.  Oh, but wait.  My other phone is ringing….which was handy since my call with Level Four Guy had dropped before the survey commenced and before he’d ordered the correct batteries for me.

I answer the cell. “First, let me thank you for choosing Dell. We show that earlier today you ordered two six-celled batteries. We’d like to follow up on your call to Customer Service. Would you punch in your name, phone number, and the Day Lincoln was shot…and then choose from the following options…”

Lunch turned out to be a fantasy. You’d think this situation couldn’t get worse, but it does. Going insane seems like a small price for how I spent the afternoon.

 

Stress. The Global Village Is Missing Its Idiot.

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Dateline: American Airlines xxx

The point of all this: ’Brain changes’ occur when we are anxious. We go blind, deaf, and confused.

We lose our ability to respond according to priorities.  Finishing a minor task, such as learning how to pick up email on a new device, takes precedence over getting a good night’s rest or having a pleasant evening instead of picking a fight with your special person who has the nerve to point out your bizarre behavior.

We lose our judgment. We say things to customer service people in foreign lands, bad things that are not in line with the good person we want to be in life.

We lose our openness to new ideas–such as reading the instructions.

We DO NOT SEE a way out of our dilemma even when the solution is right in front of our face.

Part Two of Advances in Technology Have Made the World a Village, and I am its Idiot. Without part one the following will make no sense. With part one, it has a shot.

As we return to last night’s battle, no war, with the Freaking Samsung Techno Devil FSTD. I poked around on obvious buttons until the sucker came on. Well, a sunburst welcome screen lit up.

A few seconds later, the puppy went black. I refered to the miniature instruction booklet and was impressed with all the apps and task tools availble on the minuscule replica of the Home Page. The booklet read, “From your home page…” One problem, I couldn’t get past the sunburst to the Homepage. I wildly tapped the screen all over during the brief time it was alive.

I repeat this bizarre tapping and cursing routine twelve times before I am convinced there is no secret tap which will land me on the Home Page. I pack up my pile of device and assorted attachments, climb into my car (which is still 116 degrees in the garage) and return to Best Buy for some help. The nice Geek Squad guy says, “Sure, no problem,” when I tell him about the powering off problem. He taps the welcome screen ever so slightly dragging it sideways. I study his moves like a double agent spy. I need to know how to get to the Home Page without admitting I didn’t know how to get past the welcome screen.

The problem, he said, was that the “sleep function” was set to react in a very short stretch of time. That matter settled I head home to set up the device. I’m feeling pretty spunky, given that sleep function business could have thrown anyone off. I clear a space on my bed and lean back on a stack of pillows to continue my triumph. I put the tip of my finger where the Geek guy’s had been and drug it across the screen. Nothing. I repeated the move four times. Then the screen went black. My spouse suggests there’s not much evening left to pack, eat, and deal with the dogs. I reassure him I will only be a few more minutes. I notice a touch of pique and that “we’re been here before” look.

I remembered something about using a stylus. I’d bought two. I retrieved the Jaws of Life and unpackaged a stylus one. I dragged the stylus corner to corner. The screen went black. Except for the blue X. Turned out, the stylus doubles as a ball point pen.

A call to Best Buy Geek Squad and I’ll all set on the Home Page. I heard giggling on the other end of my phone line, but I’m sure there was a clown making funny animals near phone at Best Buy.

 

Stress, the “It’s Just Thunder” Incident

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Relationship Stress and the “It’s Just Thunder” Incident

I’m Okay and You’re Okay… as Long as I’m With You–

Dateline: Willie’s Roadhouse, Truck Stop Cafe in Abott, Texas. And, yes, the chicken-fried steaks lap over the edges of the plate.

Note: This entry, along with the next introduce the series: “Las Vegas Mary Grows a Self: Relationship Dependence, A Soap Opera in Four Parts.”

We live in anxious times. Whether the current era is more anxiety-producing than frontier times, I don’t know. What is different is that presently we have much greater access to other people in times of stress.

With magic phones, tablets, computers, most of us can make contact with others instantly. The result?

We don’t learn how to build personal tolerance for anxiety. We don’t learn and we do not model how to simply sit with disappointment, anger, hurt, or even joy. I’m not suggesting a return to dial-up, only noting that in our child-focused times, parents are instantly available both as resources and as supervisors. parents have bought into seeing instant availability as being a good parent and any less as being a neglectful parent.

We don’t rush in taking our childrens’ problems away from them and making them our problems because we want to undercut our children’s resilience. We do it because we love them and want the very best life for them and we are anxious critters.

Real Life Example with Fake Names: Mr. and Mrs. C are in my office to address a serious marital issue. During the session, Mr. C receives a cell phone call. He indicates it’s his childrenm, thus he must answer. He and the caller talk back and forth a few times. Then Mr. C turns to Mrs. C and reports on the fight over the television going on back at home. Mrs. C takes the phone and speaks to each of the three children twice until she senses the battle has been resoved, at least for the moment. Their children, like most, do not live on isolated farms without communication devices, but have strings of numbers to call and neighborhoods loaded with adults glad to help in an emergency. I’m wondering what would have happened had the parents turned off their phones, trusted their children could work out whatever came up, and focused on the issue at hand.

Consider the following dilemma:   It is two in the morning when a loud thunderstorm breaks over the city. A frightened child calls for her mother who shows up immediately. The experience is new to the child, we’d expect her to be anxious.

Mother number one hugs the child and says, “It’s a thunderstorm. You are safe because I am here with you.”

Mother number two hugs the child and says, “It’s a thunderstorm. You are safe because when you are inside a house, thunderstorms are not dangerous. Sure, there’s lightening, and that can be dangerous if you are outside, and loud noise, but that’s all there is to thunderstorms. Did you ever think what would happen to all the animals in the forest if it never stormed?”

Next:  “The Intoxicated Babysitter and the Third Graders.” More on what happens to us as adults if we have not developed the capacity to tolerate anxiety and find our own solutions. Or even try to find our own solutions.

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.

Whew! No more Stress. Good Thing You and I Aren’t Like THOSE Nutballs!

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Whew!  Good Thing You and I Aren’t Like Those Nutballs!

Anxiety Can Make You Crazy

Stress Set-up No.#1:  Three people die in sweat lodge ritual in Arizona after ‘group think’ decision to stay inside.

Stress Set-up No.#2:  Sixty people are in a four-engined charter plane, twenty minutes south out of Las Vegas. The windows on the right side of the plane are coated with black oil. Now we have three engines…now two. Say what? Fire, you say?…We’ll come back to that horrifying afternoon when I, along with the other passengers, had to decide to ignore fear and do as the wild bush pilot said…or make a break for the tent flap.

Stress Reduction STRATEGY One.  Recognizing being human is okay all around.

Bowen theory reference: [“Families and other social groups tremendously affect how people think, feel, and act, but individuals vary in their susceptibility to a ‘group think’ and groups vary in the amount of pressure they exert for conformity. These differences between individuals and between groups reflect differences in people's levels of differentiation of self…”]. ull text: http://www.thebowencenter.org/

Considering differences between individuals…is where we usually go off track and encourage difficulties for ourselves and for others.  We hear about a situation such the sweat lodge incident, and immediately give the victims unflattering diagnoses or call them crazy.  We point out that we would never make such self-defeating decisions.  Psychological approaches focusing on individual pathology– rather than seeing the symptomatic person as acting out the problems of the system– are convenient and popular.  Such methods allow us to park blame more easily in the least functional persons (or the least functional person today) in a system and excuse contributions of system emotional process.  Such methods draw a line in the sand, crazies on one side—you and me on the other. See Intro: Too Rich and Too Thin

We develop an ‘us’ and ‘them’ way of relating to the world.  The ‘us’, of course, is made up of not-crazy, not anxiety-driven, not emotionally controlled, not unstable people.  The ‘them’ well… ‘them’ includes lots of people…the
driver you disagree with on the freeway… the councilman you didn’t vote for …some people include everyone who voted in an opposing political party in ‘them’… ‘them’ could be an especially twitchy in-law or the woman down the street who waters her lawn all wrong.

Most likely your spouse spends some time in each camp.  He’s next to you as one of the good guys until he goofs, at which time he will be informed that his status from ‘intelligent’ and deserving of respect has been jerked out from under him.  We usually make clear that his former status as person one of the good guys will be reinstated when he agrees with us on the matter in question.

When we define people who have made emotionally-driven, and obviously self-destructive, decisions as ‘them’… as unlike us…we deny just what sort of mayhem we are capable of given the right amount of anxiety, the right amount of floundering in the Sea of Emotion.   Think: “a mile in her moccasins” … “third piece of pie”… “top five reasons I can’t go to the gym today… ‘Yes, sir, that’s what I said, I want fifty on the Astros to win the
National League pennant.’”

Why is addressing the ‘Us’ and ‘Them’ defense important?
To be continued.  Strategy to come which will save you time and effort for the rest of your life.

 

 

 

 

This Little Piggy Goes to Slaughter, Uh, I Mean Marketing, Pt.4

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Dateline:  The Pork Products International Branch Headquarters

Now it’s day two.  I’m trying like crazy to be like the guy who bought a newspaper everyday from a seller who was rude because the buyer didn’t want to change his behavior because someone else had issues. (See Previous Piggy Goes to Marketing).  Did I mention thtat superbly emotionally mature man is a rabbi? 

I’m ready to admit, he’s got more “self” going for him than I do.  I don’t want to think we’re all Charlie Sheen’s in attempted adult chothing, but we could be.  I’ve tried to sit still in this marketing conference, using that wise rabbi’s strength of character. But, alas. The truth is–instead of going back to my hotel room last night and lining up my friends on some kind of “you’re just not financially successful enough to be my friends” hit list—I spent my time flicking around the American Airlines site looking for a reasonably priced return ticket. 

Before you toss away prison shows as without value…(I feel a need to explain myself a little here…After I mentioned a gem from Lockup to a client who flinched, I said, “Oh, I guess you don’t watch prison shows?”…”Oh, I watch them,” he said, a little question about my stability in his eyes. “But I don’t admit it!”)

But you can learn something from prison reality.  Take the program on a prison where everyone in the unit is sentenced to “Life without Parole.” For example, I’m using skills I learned watching Lockup last night right now.  The motivational speaker screaming at us that we can all be millionaires…if we just use his 6 Steps or her 8 Principles or his 3 Secrets!  And I’m remembering how Jack the Spider kept his cool while the prison guard yelled at him.  

The prison guard was telling Jack the Scorpion, “Put your hands here!  Put your face there!”  And now the speaker is doing the same thing!  “Everyone who wants to make millions, stand up!” Then she’s going row by row and “forcing” everyone to stand.  I fake a terminal cough. She asks the standing crowd, “Are you willing to do everything I say?” The crowd yells, “Yes! I will do everything you say!”

With that… Since the goal on this site is to learn to make decisions based on one’s OWN best thinking….I changed my standard for what I considered a reasonably priced return ticket to Texas.

Though I’m failing miserably in my effort to remain open-minded, I do have a bit of encouraging progress to report. Now, back to the rabbi who didn’t switch newspaper sellers just because the seller was regularly ill-tempered.  That’s the kind of steady emotional functioning we’re going for, right?  

Well, put this in your maturity pipe and smoke it. The Hilton is about six blocks along Century Boulevard from the conference hotel.  As I walked from the conference hotel to the Hilton for lunch, I was accosted by a man in the Travel Lodge parking lot running the familiar, “I’m here with my wife and kids and our car won’t start. All we need is sixteen dollars and we can have our car towed to my brother’s house.” He was quite good, flashing his driver’s license and pictures of several cute children. I gave him my sympathy and went along to the hotel. 

Now here’s my big moment.  Think rabbi.  Returning along Century Boulevard twenty minutes later…I did not cross over to the opposite side of the street to avoid the scammer.  How cool is that?