Anxiety, the Dented Cell Phone and the “Stolen Luggage Incident”

Posted on September 16, 2011 by mysteryshrink

Stress Management Update

Note: If you are the person who stole my luggage at the Avis rental counter while I ran through the rain to get my car…pox be upon you.

If any of you ever see a smug person with three twelve-cell computer batteries ($200 each), a Samsung tablet power cord and he or she doesn’t seem to own such a device, seven pair of black Olga underwear, a power cord for a Dell Studio for which he or she does not appear to have the matching computer or, say, seven tiny packets of vitamins and fish oil —Please deliver the cursed pox for me.

A message from the first session of the Fall Series on Bowen Family Systems Theory was:“It’s not what happens to you, it’s what happens after‘what happens’.” Thus, your level of functioning can be determined by noting how well you manage anxiety. In other words, everyone looks good when things are rocking along planned.

And I like to think I would have handled the stolen luggage incident a bit better if the entire communication world was not at war against me. Yes, Time Warner Cable home and office phones still are not working. And, since we live in the hills, cell phone service is sketchy. Put those together and I was not able to contact my special person who usually is willing to take on some of my anxiety.

I called my insurance company hoping to drop some anxiety there, and I was pretty excited when the nicewoman who answered the phone said, “Sure, your umbrella policy will pay for your loss.” Nice woman then sweetly explained that this
great policy I had would start paying after a $3000.00 deductable. I know, it’s an insurance company, what did I expect?
How much did my functioning change when presented with this stress?

Let’s just say, on a normal day I would never raise my voice to the police. On a normal day I can figure out how to turn off the interior lights in a rental car. Throwing my phone across the car was a new one for me. (I know, ouch, but I’m being honest here. And the thing died every thirty seconds when i was trying to hear directions to the hotel.)

Now the good news. I’m all better now having replaced all toiletries, ordered new batteries, etc. Surely level of functioning can also be measured by how long it takes to recover from cruelty and injustice random unpleasant acts. (Now, I’m assuming we are starting with a cleared slate and those six hours hammering airline ticket agents at London’s Gatwick Airport are off the table.)

And, while you are on alert for a shifty-eyed person with all sorts of cords and batteries and no devices…I have another thief for you to be on the look out for. A few months ago I was operating out of the San Diego Hilton International Branch Office. It was 9:30 p.m. and I’m lounging in my room. Just across Interstate 8 is my favorite California seafood restaurant, King’s Fish House. I’m weighing my options through my tired brain. I’m craving King’s incredible Shrimp and Crab Louie, but I’m already undressed and tucked in. King’s closes at 10:00 p.m., thus, I don’t have time to waver. I was leaving in the morning, so this was my last shot. I dragged my weary self out of bed, re-dressed, got the car, drove to the restaurant, ordered and waited for the Louie.

I return to my hotel room with my big white bag with King’s Fish House on the outside and my favorite salad inside. Alas, when I reached my door, my key wouldn’t work. I was the last room in the hall, rather out of the way. I set my food down and returned to the front desk for a refreshed key.

When I returned to my door, gone maybe three minutes, someone stole my Louie. Stole my dinner. Who does that?

If you spot someone with a King’s Fish House takeout bag and no shrimp shells, pox on him, too.

Stress: Woman Lost and Alone in Scary Alleyways of Istanbul

Posted on May 26, 2011 by mysteryshrink

Stress on the Cool, Blue Mediterranean

Stress and Group Think Invade Istanbul and Mexico City and a Cruise Ship in the Carribean, Part One

Isn’t Taking a Vacation about Escaping Stress?

The next three entries will be examples of ‘group think’ and pressure to conform from around the world.

These situations are not nearly as stressful as the persuasive tactics used by Jim Jones and James Arthur Ray in the Arizona sweat lodge, but the nature of the emotional process is the same.

Dateline One: Lost in Istanbul

“A person with a well-differentiated “self” recognizes his realistic dependence on others, but he can stay calm and clear headed enough in the face of conflict, criticism, and rejection to distinguish thinking rooted in a careful assessment of the facts from thinking clouded by emotionality. Thoughtfully acquired principles help guide decision-making about important family and social issues, making him less at the mercy of the feelings of the moment.” Bowen Theory

Turkish Stress

The pressure to conform part of the adventure in Istanbul did not actually occur in Istanbul, but later when I was telling a group of friends and co-workers about my stepmother’s time lost in the Turkish city. My parents had been on an extended
cruise involving many stopovers around the Mediterranean when my stepmother got separated from the group and ended up thoroughly lost among the city of five-hundred mosques and many, many thousands of bicyclists, Moped riders, and
taxi drivers with their eyes on martyrdom in the streets. As was the agreement between my parents, when my father couldn’t locate his wife, he sailed out with the group knowing she would catch up with him at a future port of call. Which is what happened in spite of the fact that my stepmother had no money or credit card on her….

The pressure to conform occurred as I shared my admiration for my father’s resourceful wife. What I thought was a lovely story was heard quite differently. What I thought was a compliment to my stepmother and my father’s relationship was seen as disturbing evidence that my father was not nearly the really nice guy I’d always portrayed him to be.

Here are the remarks I expected to hear: “Wow, she must be one confident woman.” “That’s a good idea—having a plan so that they don’t both end up lost.” “Your father must think a lot of his wife.”

Here are the remarks I heard: “That’s absolutely the most horrible thing I’ve ever heard a husband do!” “Why does your stepmother put up with that kind of treatment?” “That’s abuse. Just think of all the horrible things that
could have happened to her!” “How selfish can a man get?” “You read the papers, you read the news. He had to know what horrible things they do to womenthere! How could he just leave her there?”

Mostly I just blinked. I didn’t point out that my father’s staying would not have changed any of the “horrible things they do to women over there.” Agreement was reached that my father was an uncaring, selfish man. I blinked some more. I did not tell them I was driving to out-of-town horse shows on my own when I was fourteen or that I rode the train to Mexico City by myself the summer I was fifteen. Or that I’d headed back to that fabulous city in July.

Oh, and speaking of Mexico City. This fair city will be the next site of the‘group think’ ‘individual think’ dilemma.

If You Need to Be Right, Don’t Get Close to Strangers

Posted on September 15, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: Houston Post Oak Branch International World Headquarters. Crowded restaurant.

Setup: Currently I’m the lone wolf in jean shorts amongst a slew of dressed-for-success folks in Houston as part of training for a pyramid scheme… company… which, when you put down your “buy in”, provides you with lists of people in your area who are most likely to buy the company’s product. The product? Well, it’s not an actual product like a book or an apple. It’s an imaginary product.

Riches are being promised to those who’ve come together in Houston….those who sign up for the “small initial investment”….are told that all they will have to do is convince people to buy credit card “insurance” for each of their credit cards in case someone uses their cards. Not a lot of cash to make your buy-in? No problem. For a small ETERNAL fee on each of the credit cards of the people here at the conference who sign on…. The new sales force is encouraged to stretch their buy-in over as many months as fits their budget.

You can make a good living…I hear one table over…just by calling your family and friends, especially if you have some deadbeat friends with loads of credit cards on the verge of being awarded their own area code. The real money, though, comes with the list of people the company provides you. (Once you’ve paid your little “buy-in”) The “list” is guaranteed to be loaded with names of people likely to buy the said imaginary product.

Even more piles of money will be yours when you get others to sign on as distributors as you then get a percentage of their sales. And the thing that’s so great? “Even when a customer wants to cancel, they will usually put off completing the confusing and time-consuming cancellation process for a couple of months and, from that lag time alone, you’ll be be making more money than you ever imagined.”

Okay. Now I want to know two things. One: How did the people “likely to purchase the product” get on the list? Repeat business buying scratch offs at the Seven Eleven? Also, I’m thinking the real money has to be in promising people they will be taken off the list.

And, two…How did the people in this room get to this convention? And, here’s where the catch comes in. And why I’ll not sully the pages of Mysteryshrink with preaching and opinion. Because there I was plinking keys on my computer… all clever and superior….And, then I got to know the two enthusiastic new entrepreneurs at the next table. (Now, granted, we were off to a rough start. My involvement with the pair was initiated when one of the ladies asked the limited English-speaking waitress for the exact address of the hotel and when she didn’t understand, the lady asking landed into the waitress for being… “irresponsible and just the kind of person we don’t need in America”….

I stepped in with the address and stayed to hear their stories….I heard how they hoped to climb out of some bad life choices (medical bills, disastrous divorce) and didn’t have the education or family backing to get out quickly or in more traditional ways. Like in vampire movies when you get to know the weakness of the vampire… and you start hoping he’ll find a fresh victim…I sincerely wished the ladies success.

The lesson: If you get a chance to know someone, their “craziness” makes sense and making fun is a lot harder…. Or a fish out of water cannot understand the movements of a fish in the water. I think that’s the way it goes. And, one more from the Country Western song, “God is good, beer is great, and people are crazy.” All of us, everyone.

But…I’m still not holding the elevator for the kingpins of this pyramid scheme business opportunity.

Leonardo DiCaprio, Inception, and the “Lady Who Loved Freud Incident”

Posted on July 26, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Dateline: Home Office, Austin, Texas. Crazy Dog and Sammy Davis, Jr. in charge.

The young psychology student came to me with a question. “Do you, as an experienced psychologist, think there is any value in reading the works of Sigmund Freud?” I said, I thought so, but I can be entertained reading the back of a juice box, so I wouldn’t take my word as the final say.

She explained her reason for asking. She’d been on a plane to New York reading her first real text on personality development which happened to focus on the theories of Sigmund Freud. The subject matter and new ideas had her excited about her chosen field of study. As the plane taxied into the JFK terminal, her seatmate, whom we shall call Killjoy, asked her what she’d been reading.

The Lady Who Loved Freud spilled forth with enthusiasm, sharing a couple of highlights. Her seatmate, a Gentleman’s Quarterly dressed fellow (Why is the culprit messing with our world…always dressed better than we are?)…the sophisticated appearing man said, “Well, I guess some non-scientific people still read that kind of fluff.”

The Lady Who “Maybe” Loved Freud said to me, “I’m asking you because his remark took the edge off my mood. I started thinking maybe I’m not intellectual enough to ever be a psychologist.”

Whoa.

The movie Inception is about a team of experts who can access your subconscious using secret sedatives and gadget machines. Once into your subconscious, the team can “steal” your thoughts. The services of the “thought stealers” are bought by corporations who want to get a jump on impending company decisions and make a killing.

The thought stealing process is difficult for DiCaprio and his team to perform, but there is an even higher level of service offered. This service is more complex and trickier and involves “planting” an idea or thought. The thought plant technique used is a way to win the corporate wars.

As is said several times in the movie, once an idea is planted it multiples on its own in the brain. “The idea grows and grows until it defines you or destroys you.” (Best guess at exact words.)

What I kept asking myself throughout the movie was, “Why are these guys going to all this trouble when planting an idea that grows and grows and changes behavior is really quite simple?”

This is not a movie review. Just one freakish dame in cargo shorts sitting on the second row…thinking.

Remember the folks who built shelters and bought stockpiles of food to survive the turn of the millennium? And what about the Heaven’s Gate followers who consented to castration and suicide as a way to meet up with the mother ship? And Hitler? Who hasn’t wondered how it was possible to convince Nazi underlings to load humans into freight train cars and worse?

The “Inception” technique was nowhere around.

Let’s go closer to home. The girl who ends up battling anorexia switches to a food denial and compulsive exercise after a Saturday night when she and her friends are loading into a car and she is told to sit in front since she’s not “small.” What about those careless words your special person said during an argument years ago, the cutting remarks you bring back to torture yourself when you’re down? What about a criticism that remains with you as a secret fear….What if I am selfish like Mother said?

Sometimes an upset stranger in a passing car can do the trick. Or, we can come up with thoughts, all by ourselves, that grow like bacteria. What about the idea that “I not happy now, but when I lose the weight I’ll be happy….I’d love to write a memoir, but I’m not smart enough…I’d love to travel, but it’s too expensive for someone like me….”

Maybe we step on the scales…or run into a friend who looks so much better than we do…or overhear an invitation to lunch when we haven’t been invited…or speak with a friend whose kids are incredibly successful…

And, thus, Mysteryshrink.com is about how to possibly make a dent in managing our emotions, thoughts, and actions…a little better…not collosal better like Budha or women who look good in shorts and cowboy boots….just a tiny bit better. I’m in.

Lasagna Ends War on Drugs

Posted on May 23, 2010 by mysteryshrink

The advertising industry depends on the dominance of the Emotional Guidance System over the Thinking Guidance System, which isn’t a tough call. Otherwise, I wouldn’t have a five piece set of luggage for only $39.99 folded into a shoebox in my closet.

The method most often used is the LOOSE CONNECTION ploy. Advertisers use what we call a “loose connection” to establish a FALSE cause and effect. For example: Joe Montana (16 years in the NFL) is in good shape. Joe wears ”rollers” from Sketchers. Therefore: Roller shoes caused Joe Montana’s in-shapeness. Put on those Sketchers, baby, and, you too, will be ready to run onto the field at the new Cowboy Stadium….

Shop at Walmart and watch the pounds drop…and on and on and on….The weight loss industry depends on the EGS, particularly the Emotional Guidance Systems advice: “It won’t hurt to buy all this worthless equipment and all these pills.” Yeah, if you don’t count the soul-sucking loss of personhood.

Ah, but the weight issue can wait. We have the War on Drugs to bust first.

Swanson frozen food commercials suggest that thawing their products and sitting around the table as a family results in closer relationships with your children. As soft hymn-like music rises in the background, a blond family of four laughs and exchanges winning smiles around the table as they dish up lasagna.

According to Swanson, these early lasagna experiences mean you’ll have better relationships with your kids when they’re teenagers than will foolish parents who ignored the Swanson advice. Thus: Swanson Frozen Lasagna=Drug-Free Teens.

Why is thinking about loose cause-effect issues important? Because…cause-effect thinking sends us off onto all sorts of crazy generalizations, such as “I’m late, so I have to be in a bad mood….I’m not beautiful, so I can’t wear a bathing suit….my kid’s in jail because I had a job while he was in high school….even….I’m not happy because I married the wrong person…I know. That’s a biggie.

Swanson should maybe pass their incredible good news up the line, say share their genius with the folks in Washington. Stay with me here, this lasagna solution can solve all sorts of problems:

Swanson Frozen Lasagna=Drug Free Teens=Billions of Dollars Saved=Murders Down 40 Percent=Border Problem Solved=Millions Go Off Welfare=Less Unemployment=Fewer Houses Broken Into=Prisons Emptied…Who knows where lasagne can take us?

How to Win Friends and De-fuse People

Posted on May 18, 2010 by mysteryshrink

Returning to our “television or no television” interchange between the Green and Purple Sisters-in-law. (See “Television, Smellavison”)

Green Sister-in-law: “My husband and I choose not to have a television in our house. We want our children to spend more time reading.”

Purple Sister-in-law: “Really? I’ve heard kids who grow up without the opportunity to watch television are the kids who end up with the problems.”

Now you are the Green Sister-in-law. How do you respond to your sister-in-laws suggestion that your decision to not have a television in your house means you’re children are doomed?

Let’s just put your Emotional Guidance System in charge: “We’re do not have a television because we (unlike less wonderful parents) place our children’s needs ahead of our needs. What’s wrong with America is that parents have used television as a babysitter. Children who have the easy option of turning on the idiot box will not develop into adult readers. Not having a television means our family will eat meals together which is the time you can truly communicate with your children. The reason childhood obesity is such a problem is because of children watching television for hours every day without moving. Most parents wish they had our courage to resist having a television in their home.”

Fun, right?

Now, let’s invite the Thinking Guidance System. Think of the conversation as a tennis match. Once you served (you did that by making the original statement), the ball may be returned lightly or more competitively. In our situation, our sister-in-law opted for a straight shot. {Oh, I know. She would say, “Gee, I was only repeating what I’d heard….somewhere.” She’s correct. Yet, when relaxed, most of us do not usually (I hope) respond to our sister-in-law’s announcement she’s trying a new way of doing things by shooting holes in her plan.}

Your Thinking Guidance System recognizes you still have a choice in how you respond. If you’re totally relaxed, her potshot will land softly, the way a tennis ball hits a bed sheet blowing on a clothes line. You will smile and say something like, “Who knows about these things? For three decades we were told margarine was better for us than butter and that turned out to be whacky.”

And, now, perhaps we can lob the tennis ball gently back and forth. We can do this because we’ve realized we’re not playing in the finals of the French Open…we’re chatting with a person important to us. We realize there’s no need to convince our sister-in-law of anything. This is not life and death. It’s a chat.

The Emotional Guidance System is that part of us urging decisions based on anxiety. (The EGS is telling us IT IS VERY IMPORTANT THAT OTHER PEOPLE AGREE WITH US.)

The Thinking Guidance System is that part of us urging decisions based on facts. (The TGS is telling us that while it would be nice, convenient, and lovely, even, for other people to agree with us, convincing others of our position isn’t the most important element in a conversation.)

Next: How I Learned Everything I Know From Ann Landers.

Why You Must Keep Your Limitations to Yourself

Posted on November 3, 2009 by mysteryshrink

Mysteryshrink’s You Get What You Pay For Psychology Tip: It’s best to keep your limitations to yourself for as long as you can. Once they are out there, they are etched in the minds of others forever.

Think of something you are uncomfortable doing…say, for example…you are one of those otherwise lovely people who has secretly avoided the role of being the candy-the-giver-outer on Halloween…for years and years.

I’m just saying… maybe you’re one of those people who turn out all the lights and hunker down in a back bedroom with only the light of the television. Maybe even, one time when your special person promised a certain group of teachers that he would bring a slab of Mississippi Mud Bars to a meeting on Novemeber 1st, maybe you and he whipped up a batch using only the light from the refrigerator…your heads stuck inside the door…

Dateline: Not quite dark, Halloween Night, family gathering.

I hadn’t spent Halloween with my siblings and clan since we were kids. When I walked into the house, I noticed the countertop in the den was stacked with all sorts of individually wrapped candy and I knew what that meant. Now, usually, I could have gotten away with my “gee, I’m so busy doing something” expression and not been faced with wondering who was going to answer the door for the goblins and such. But not on this night as my sibs had limitations to their mobility and the always faithful niece had her wonderful girls to manage.

I’m good at avoidance, but even I couldn’t pretend to be lost in the football game while my sister, recovering from a knee replacement, hobbled to the front door on her walker. Or my brother, who had broken his hand, and on pain meds felt his way along the wall to the door. Yikes. What to do, What to do?

I looked so deceptively capable…walking to the door-wise. Thus, I decided the fairest thing to do was to step up and nip the old bud. I announced that I would not be doing the giggling, good-neighborly handing out the candy thing as I am not constitutionally capable of the task. I admitted my years of cowardly hiding and stated that if they were going to leave the porch light on, I would not be responsible. My choice would be to leave the light off and go on with our evening as if we were a perfectly normal family.

I’d thought I’d done a gentle, firm job of stating my position. My announcement was met with six sets of squenched eyes and headshakes of disbelief. “Not my fault,” I claimed, “I thought you guys knew.”

Clearly they’d never even suspected. My siblings and various other chips of my Danish father’s block were horrified. Various gasps of distress filled the awkward space I’d created in the evening. After the ugly truth that I was not kidding sunk in, the questions began. “Why?” “Was it some terrible Halloween experience?” “Did we do something back when you were a kid?” “Is it the children?” “Are you against children?”

Now here’s the kicker. My fellow evening partners were so absorbed in my admission, they forgot to turn on the porch light. Not one innocent child or anyone else rang the doorbell.

Thus, I am now, and will be forever, the “one who can’t hand out candy on Halloween.” Not that my reputation for other weirdnesses doesn’t precede me. It’s just that I threw in a new quirk…when I didn’t have to.

Thus, my friends. Learn from my mistake and don’t mention any of those odd little fears until you are absolutely positive you are about to be exposed.

MysteryShrink

A Psychologist on the Loose

Tag Archives: the self-defined life