Tag Archives: happiness

Stress, Addiction, Humility, and the “Stolen Identity Incident”

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Stress, Addiction, and the “Stolen Identity Incident”

Dateline: San Antonio River Walk International Branch Office. One block over, on March 6, 1836, all the well-armed and well-dressed Mexicans in the world, stormed the Alamo killing everyone inside.  Newspapers in the weeks following ran stories encouraging settlers to “Come on down!” As one of those news articles in the Texas State Library says, “Texas is still a great opportunity for you and your family. The report claiming that the men in the Alamo were killed is a false rumor, propaganda sent out by politicians.”  Sigh. Things haven’t changed much.

In thinking about stress management and addiction, I realized it was time for the periodic pledge, the pledge that can eliminate loads of stress right off the top.

The pledge: I can be as big an idiot as anyone else. Even as big an idiot as the people I’m calling idiots. Whew. What a relief not to have to go through the world upset when people don’t do things the way I do, or more honestly, the way I think they should do them.

My special person and I were married in Mexico City and before you pull up lofty visions of the “destination” weddings where the couple or parents rent a hotel for a weekend and fly in two hundred of their closest friends to Paris or Tahiti, the event included the Registro Civil, the two of us, and the taxi driver as a witness.  He was a graduate student and I was a college junior though not the typical age of that group due to several spectacular detours.

In other words. We had no money. Before our big adventure,we embraced our American citizenship and took out a Mastercard. The trip was great, Acapulco, villages, historicalcities. A good time was had by all. The trouble started when we received our Mastercard bill which was a huge amount way beyond our own frugal spending.Clearly, the credit card number had been stolen and whoever took it charged everythingin sight knowing once they were caught the party was over.

Incensed, we marched down to the bank issuing the card and met with the head of the fraud department who was very sympathetic and assured us the bank would help find the culprit. All we had to do was sit down at the computer screen and review the charges marking the ones we did not make. Much relieved we set to work. Thirty minutes later we waited until the fraud director was away from her desk, then we ducked our heads and sneaked quietly to the elevator and out of there.

Repeat after me: “I can be as big an idiot…”

For those who honestly believe they are not subject to all the craziness of being human, there’s always Dr.Laura who knows all.

For me, it’s a comfort to recognize we’re all nuts.

Love and Stress in Las Vegas, A Soap Opera in Four Parts

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Dateline:  Las Vegas Hilton Branch Office and Showgirl Headquarters, no one under six foot need apply. Which is the only thing holding me back from making money on my looks and high kick skills and why I am sequestered in the furthest booth in the Grand Buffet Hall. Yep, that’s me. The be-speckled blond chick in the over-stuffed cargo shorts behind the computer and the foot-high pile of shrimp shells.

Have you ever gotten high? …because someone gave you a compliment?

Have you ever given up a dream? … because someone else thought it was a dumb idea?

Have you ever said you enjoyed an activity? …to keep someone interested?

Have you ever been unable to stop a self-destructive habit? …and paid a terrible price?

Have you ever been unable to stand up to a person you cared about caught in an addiction? …and ended up in trouble yourself?

The following story is true and related with permission of the patient, Mrs. Travis. Names and details have been changed to protect her identity.

Fusion vs. Self: When decisions are made, not out of one’s best thinking, but to save a relationship or to keep a partner happy. Fusion is natural and is part of all close relationships. The problem comes in when a person with a shaky SELF matches up with a person and goes along out of fear to stand alone. The problem comes in when a person with an equally shaky SELF uses fear and threatening behavior to convince the other not to disagree with decisions when the decisions would be obviously absurd to someone outside the relationship.

Mrs. Travis called for an appointment in January with some questions regarding dealing with her three young children when she packed them up and left their father.She explained that she still loved her husband. Their marriage had been great until two years ago when it fell apart in a hurry.

The Inciting (exciting) Incident. All Self Doubts and Anxieties Are Gone

Stress Management Goes Wrong

Two years ago, the couple had gone to a conference in Las Vegas. Mr. Travis, whose only experience with gambling had been years ago when he was stationed in Malasia with the Navy. When he thought about those free and easy days being young and single and successful in dice games, he had a rush of good feelings.

An avid fan of professional football, Mr. Travis was pleased that he could bet on teams combining his remembered good times with sports. As he was knew alot about the National Football League, he thought he knew more than your average bettors.

He made two bets and won them both. He felt the problems of parenthood, marriage and career slip away. Mr. Travis felt better than he had in a very long time.

Episode Two: All I Want Is To Feel the Way I Felt When I Was First in Love

Stress? Drive If You Dare! Mexico City Anxiety, Part One

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Stress: The Last Words of the Great Moctezuma, “Drive if You
Dare!”

What Will Happen to You if You Drive in Mexico City?

If you are focused on not hurting anyone’s feelings or avoiding shouting matches in Mexico City, let’s just say you might as well find a hotel room since you will not  be able to find your way out of the madness traffic circles. You might want to check out nearby hospitals while you’re at it.

Dateline Mexico City, Blond Chick Behind the Wheel…Talk about Anxiety

The fabulous former Dateline: Mexico City, driving where once the feet of Moctezuma approached Hernán Cortés in 1517. The leader of the Aztec people presented Cortés the gift of an Aztec calendar, one disc of crafted gold and another of
silver. Cortés—with the spirit of the invaders who define the New World to this day–had the magnificent gift melted down into blocks to be used in trade almost immediately.

Moctezuma launched several lines of revenge against future invaders including the infamous gastro-intestinal uproar. The traffic in the modern city now covering Moctezuma’s beautiful Tenochtitlan is another tactic of the great king’s revenge.  Isn’t a vacation supposed to be about escaping stress? “The IBM Commuter Pain Index, which surveyed 8,192 motorists in 20 cities on six continents, gave Mexico City and Beijing the worst score.”

So, what does Bowen theory have to do with driving in Mexico City?

How about this?  If you are not familiar with exactly where the drivers around you stand on the issue of “group think vs. thinking as an individual” you just might die.  And you just might take others down with you.

Dr. Bowen describes two forces continually influencing behavior.  The first is togetherness and the second is individuality.  Both are natural forces which do not cause difficulties until either force is being driven by anxiety so that behavior becomes destructive.  Too much togetherness creates fusion and prevents individuality, or developing one’s own sense of self.  Too much individuality creates social and relationship problems. For example, some individuals “opt out” of paying their income tax in the name of standing up for themselves.  Paying taxes for the services used then falls more heavily on the others in the group.

There are television commercials advertising law services to settle with the IRS.  At the end of the ad, cheery couples declare, “We owed the IRS over $100,000, and we only paid $15,000!   We owed $45,000, and we didn’t have to pay a cent!”  Are we supposed to feel good about these results?  Who do they think has to make up the difference?

Okay, now an example of when the force for togetherness can cause a problem.  A flight was very late leaving Las Vegas for DFW.  The agents made the following announcement: “As this flight is late and because most of you have connections at DFW, we are going to board the plane in the most efficient way possible. Therefore, if you have a window seat, and only if you have a window seat, line up at the door to board first.  All other passengers please wait as this process will cut down on delay waiting in the aisle as people store their carry-ons and take their seats.”

Simple, right? Everyone wants to board quickly as possible, right?

Maybe if we humans didn’t make pretty much all of our decisions with our emotions.  Anytime a change is suggested that either increases or decreases the togetherness in the relationship anxiety is triggered.  Remember the powerful role the force for togetherness in the deaths of three people who sacrificed their individuality by turning their thinking over to someone else.  In the boarding the plane scenario, fusion didn’t kill anyone, but most of us did miss our connections because the couples on the flight just couldn’t handle it. Boarding as suggested required that passengers go on board “individually.”

Instead of smoothly moving with the plan, couples clumped at the exit door saying, “But we’re travelling together.”  “We’re married.” All sorts of resistance popped up taking agent time to “counsel” the couples who didn’t want their togetherness shifted in the slightest.

Oh, I know what you’re thinking.  How did we “elite level” passengers react when informed we would not be able to board first?  Much indignation was thrown around.  There was hair-pulling.  There were demands for exceptions. Doesn’t American Airlines realize that we have a very fragile self?  I, personally had no problem with the plan, but then I’m a cool traveler, everyone knows that.  (My seat? Window on row nine.)  Coming: Part Two.

 

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.

Are You Having Fun Yet? Why Not?

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Are You Smiling?  Cheering? 

Superbowl Plans.  It seems 2011 is going to be filled with victories in this struggle to be more of a self, meaning more in charge of what goes on inside my brain and my chest cavity. That said…while every smartass I’m-so-above-it-all-I-can’t-stand-Jerry-Jones…cell in my body wants to opt out on the Superbowl…

This morning I had this thought.  “Oh, here you are, saying you’re going to be different and yet you can’t watch one more story on that guy’s ankle hurt in the playoff game and WILL HE PLAY SUNDAY?              

So, I got a grip. I chanted the motto from the Giggling Marlin in Baja: THERE IS NO PLAN B. DIE TRYING.

Thus, I have made a small investment.  I have laid twenty bucks on the “over”, which means for those of you who watch the real news instead of ESPN…The “over-under” number for the game is 44.5…If you bet under, you’re saying the combined score of the gold and black team and the team cheered on by the fans wearing the cheese blocks on their heads….will score under 44.5… I trust the “over” is self explanatory.  This way I can cheer both teams.

What happened?  I looked around and thought: “Hey, you’re supposed to be looking for fun and joy and here you are letting an opportunity go by.  With no Plan B…I had to try.”

Feelings: “Get Hungry Enough and Dog Droppings Look Like a Donut”

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“I Love You…. No, I Hate You….I’m so confused….Yesterday he said ‘x’ I felt so good about myself….But this morning, he said ‘y’ and…”

Dateline:  Austin International World Headquarters, Twin baby deer were born in the front courtyard this year.

Feelings Rule 2:  Feelings cannot be trusted.

How many items have you bought trying to feel better about yourself?  And, yes, “shots” and brownies count.  How much money and time have gone into the project?  How many mistakes?….Hmmm….Let’s see, for me, there’s the ridiculous teenage marriage, the several ego-massage cars, the all-in-one body shaper that I rolled off barely still conscious after ten torturous minutes.   

Even worse consequences can occur when you encounter another person…who makes himself feel better…who registers a boost in self-esteem…precisely by playing to your need to feel better about yourself? 

Set-up:  My therapy office.  The man and woman in my office have been here before.  Or, at least the fella has.  We’ll call him Jake.  Jake is here today to initiate a series of sessions.  He and I have gone through a similar process on four previous occasions.  Jake’s goal today, is the same goal he’s presented in past encounters.  His plan is to extricate himself from marriage or a long-term committed relationship with the woman he’s brought in….by settling her ever so gently on my doorstep.  As on the previous four occasions, Jake’s mind wanders from our session to the woman who’s now providing his “good feelings” supplies, the woman he’s meeting later.

Now, before we group-jump on Jake, I should mention that Jake is not a happy man.  He is painfully aware and exhausted from following the dictates of his EMOTIONAL GUIDANCE SYSTEM.  Remember, he’s only obeying his feelings, too.  He’s crippled by his fast and easy “methods” of reducing his anxiety and trying to feel better about himself.

Jake, just like us when we spend when we can’t afford it, eat when we’re full….just like us when we crack and pass on a piece of gossip….Jake knows his way of propping up his self-esteem doesn’t work and he’s tired, not to mention broke, from his efforts.  Meeting with Jake solo, he admits, “I’m only good at the first part of relationships….In the beginning, I am charming and in love…then, after a year or so, she stops giving me all the good feelings she did in the beginning….Or, I start thinking her adoration (my word) isn’t worth much….After all, I didn’t have much trouble impressing her….And I start noticing little things about her I don’t like….My ‘feelers’ go out and before I know it, I’m chasing (impressing) a new woman who MAKES ME FEEL great.”

Hearing of Jake’s latest admiring, perfect woman, I had to ask, “Jake, where do you find these women?”

Jake said:  “Oh, that’s easy.  I can be at a convention or at a bar.  I see a woman looking ever-so-slightly forlorn.  I sit down and say, ‘You look like a woman who’s been hurt before’…and we’re off to the races.”

Feelings Rule Number 2:  Feelings cannot be trusted.  Why?  Because feelings can rather easily be manipulated….by others….By our own random thoughts….Such as, “I wonder what he meant when he said…”….Heck, my feelings jack me around according to the performance of a football team or the weather….

And to think I leave tomorrow for Las Vegas.  Talk about the proving ground for “feelings-based” decisions.  Report to follow.

The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” Incident

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sunflightdreamstime_5913332The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” Incident

Dateline: Hilton World Headquarters Branch, San Francisco.

The Scene:  A writers’ conference, the ballroom of the Intercontinental Mark Hopkins Hotel…high on Nob Hill.  The room is magic.  The guest speaker is to be a woman whose memoir (The Prize Winner of Defiance, Ohio, How My Mother Raised 10 Kids on 25 Words or Less) was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson.

As writers, we’re a thoroughly insecure lot…and before meeting the guest speaker, the room is electric with admiration and envy at the same time.  The writer’s wonderful and supportive agent, Amy Rennert introduces the movie from the stage. We still haven’t seen the writing star.    

The writer is Terry Ryan.   Returning to her family home after the death of her mother, she had gone through closets and chests, as all of us must at those times. While clearing the out her mother’s things, Terry came upon the jingles her mother had written to win prizes from companies like Proctor and Gamble, and Post Cereals…prizes which literally kept the family of a housewife, a working man with a serious drinking problem, and ten children…afloat.

We watch the movie. 

Terry Ryan had served in an advisory capacity for the film, Amy Rennert explains from the stage after the movie. Amy gives a signal. The huge ballroom crowded with would be storytellers…enjoying our wine and ready to praise the movie…wait.  Wondering why the woman living out our dreams doesn’t bounce in from the wings.

Instead, we follow as Amy’s eyes drop to the floor in front of the stage. Four men lift Terry Ryan’s wheelchair up on the platform.  Two men would have been plenty.  Terry is bald and so whispy, she looks as if ready to blow away at any moment. She is in the end stage of cancer.  She knows it.  We know it.

The microphone is situated to catch her slight voice. She smiles…and shares with each of us how much finding those jingles changed her life.  We’re thinking…well, yes…you’re the lucky woman whose story was made into a movie starring Julianne Moore and Woody Harrelson. 

But we’re wrong. Terry’s excitement comes from remembering the incredible positive face her mother put on every family fear and disappointment, and there were many. Her father was frequently unemployed….and did I mention?…10 kids….

Terry is here to share her mother’s strength with a bunch of people she doesn’t know. She hopes people who see the movie realize how powerful her mother was in her life and the lives of many others.  And we do.  Oh, how we do.  The night is magic and we know how privileged we are to hear this incredible, brave woman….We know her mother is with her now, speaking through her daughter’s beautiful face, taking time to pass on her wisdom to all of us fools in our ivory tower.

Fools?  Oh, yes.  Idiots.  Idiots thinking….I’m not so happy now….but when ____happens….when I get a great agent….when I lose thirty pounds…when I fall in love…when…when…when…yes…fools, all.

Ms. Rennert asks if Terry feels up to a few questions and she agrees.  The first questioner asks, “What about the movie-making process surprised you the most?”

Terry answers, “How many people are actually on the set for each shot…inches out of camera.  There are hundreds.”  Her genuineness comes through and we send her every healing vibe we can. “But the most fun was seeing things that actually happened come back to life.”  She smiled then, and shared a few mother stories that didn’t make the cut.  We laugh with the tiny fading woman on the stage.

She tells us how privileged she feels to have had the incredible childhood she had.   

Then the “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” waving in the second row, is acknowledged by Ms. Rennert. 

The “Woman Who” clears her throat and asks Terry Ryan:  “I was wondering….Have you ever been able to forgive your father?”

The frail lady with the bald head and the shaky voice, tilted her face as if briefly confused. “Forgive him for what?” she asked.   

The “Woman Who Couldn’t Stop Therapy” stayed true to her name. (Sometimes you have to up the ante, have to shout or repeat yourself to get another person to see things the way you do.)  “But your father punched in a wall.  He came home drunk so many times!”

Terry Ryan peered from her sunken shoulders as if looking at a creature from another planet.  “I don’t know you, Ma’am (I’m paraphrasing, it’s been a while)…But I think you’re talking about how you see my life, not the way I see my life.  I haven’t spent any of my lifetime forgiving anyone.  I didn’t need to.”

Terry Alan died 5-17-2007 at 11:11:07 PDT.