A note to myself and whoever else cares.

2010: My hopes and thoughts on the New Year

2009-12-31T17:07:00.000-08:00

As we close 2009 it seems to me that the past 13 months has felt like 13 years. I still have hope.

Thirteen months ago we were thrown into a recession. We had just experienced what had seemed to be a near-crash of the financial system when the housing bubble popped. We talked about the great depression and made comparisons with it.

While I am not an economist, I would rather have called it the credit bubble. Too many people who would not have normally qualified for the regular 30-year conventional loan were getting these large adjustable rate mortgages (ARM's) with obscenely low rates that were attached to other economic indicators. They were living outside of their means, and when the interest rate went up on their mortgages, they were immediately in arrears.

The banks sold the bad loans and their buyers resold them and converted into securities and derivatives. They had been coined "toxic assets." In November 2008, the federal government bought with tax payer money much of the toxic assets from banks in essence bailing out the banks. The damage had been done to the economy.

We saw the pain slowly creep through the economy. Banks were laying off people. People were not buying cars and so General Motors and Chrysler both declared bankruptcy and reorganized. The pain trickled through the automotive sector and then into other economic sectors. We probably all knew someone who lost a job.

We probably all endured some of the pain passed on in some way. Restaurants were giving out smaller portions. Our employers did not give us raises. We did not get our holiday turkeys or any of the spiffs.

We were expected to draw within ourselves our own sense of intrinsic reward for having a job. Some of us (me especially) were expected to do more with less all the more. It was all the more difficult when you have abusive and neglect management not caring about morale. I sure felt exploited at times.

As different times bring different terms. The most poignant term to me for this recession was "under water." This referred to a mortgage holder who has or had a mortgage that was for more than the assessed value of their home.

There was one benefit to the recession. Gasoline/petroleum prices went down. This is my layman theory: there was less credit for speculators to compete for oil futures. When the credit dried up, the dollars dried up to inflate oil futures. The oil futures deflated and our gas prices practically dropped from around $4.67-$5.00 down to below $2.00 per gallon in late 2008.

When diesel and gas prices were high, we were getting a trickle-down effect of higher grocery and other consumer goods due to the dependence on trucking. When the fuel prices dropped, so did grocery prices, but then people without jobs and with lower pay still had an equal problem with buying power.

That aside, many of us have learned to be simple again in our expectations. Many of us have re-learned the difference between wants and needs. Many of us will do a better job in managing our personal affairs and in being sensible.

It sounds somewhat crazy but Nietzsche and the Bible were in half agreement about what trials do to you. Nietzsche said "That which does not kill us makes us stronger." The Epistle of James in the New Testament said
²Consider it pure joy, my brothers, whenever you face trials of many kinds,
³because you know that the testing of your faith develops perseverance.
⁴Perseverance must finish its work so that you may be mature and complete, not
lacking anything. (New International Version)

Trials do make you stronger in some form or another. For those who seek to learn, they will be more mature and will not make the same mistake twice.

We will lick our wounds, get up and figure out what we will do. Then we will make effort to do it.

We will not always get where where we want to go, but we will put the past and the present behind us and be somewhere that is at least different if not better.

So, at this point, I have hope. I am trying to take inventory of the different life and professional lessons I have learned in the past year. I have hope that I can put what I have learned to use in 2010.

As with most years, the new year is full of most of the same from the past year. People will be people like people have always been people. Some of the same things will be happening:

Politicians will sling mud
Babies will be born
Dogs will get run over in the road
Bosses will act dumb
Your crazy relatives will continue to be crazy
Your brain-less in-laws will continue to be brain-less
You will have moments of laughter
You will have sad moments
You will find yourself angry at times
What you hoped for is not all going to come true.

So, the year is ahead of us. We will have choices and we will be stuck in some situations where we did not seem to have a choice. We will only get out of those stuck-situations when it is time that we get unstuck.

I will do my best. I hope that you do too. It is all that we can do in the end.

A Message of Christmas Hope. December 26 comes 24 hours later

2009-12-24T11:17:00.000-08:00

I have have hated Christmas since 1977 when my mother said, "just bring the gifts in and we'll open them around the TV."

In my high school, college, and seminary years when I was home for Christmas, it was some of the most boring times. I could not wait to get into the next school term because a break from school was a trip into boredom.

For at least 32 years since my mom's thoughtless comment, Christmas has been a struggle. I have wanted fulfillment and meaning. There have been a few Christmases that were better than others, but Christmas for me is drudgery as the the holiday itself as the story of the Incarnation does not always move me emotionally.

It has been a little better with kids. They, in their child-like mindsets believe in the magic. Their happiness with the toys at least reminds me that there is more to the world than their problems.

The past few years when they have been able to read advertisements and comprehend TV commercials have been a little annoying: "Daddy, can I have that? Can I? Can I? Can I?" I am able to steel my annoyance with the memory that I did that to my parents at that age too. But it all feeds back into my cynicism.

Okay, while I have gotten little feedback about this blog and I am not sure if people really read this outside of one of the guys I go to church with, I seek to offer you an unique message of hope:

It is okay if you are having a depressing Christmas.

You do not have to have a merry Christmas if you are not feeling merry. There is nothing particularly wrong with you if you are depressed with Christmas as we know it. However,

You just need to survive it.

Commercialism and the music industry has been trying to sell us that we should buy . . . buy . . . buy. They and the news media have insinuated that it is our patriotic duty to go out and max out our credit cards because the retail sectors base their whole business plans on holiday sales. They pass on the not-so subtle message that jobs are on the line if stores do not make their sales projections.

Christmas has traditionally been a time where Christians remember the birth of Jesus Christ. The birth of Jesus is a magnificent story where God comes to earth in the form of a human baby to offer salvation to the world, but I wish to clarify. . .

Christmas as we know it is not in the Bible.

Christmas is an observance that was started by church leaders in the 4th Century AD as an alternative to a pagan celebration. There are certain pagan symbols that were mixed in over the years. For example . . . the Christmas Tree is not in the Bible, neither is the lamb talking to the shepherd boy in the apocryphal song "Do You Hear What I Hear?"

The problem with Families.

We long to have connection and intimacy with the people who get labeled family because we are genetically related to them. However, there are a number of humongous if not catastrophic problems with them.

Many of us out there have family members who do not return our phone calls. We and they have relationships where we are both control freaks and we can't really stand each other for more than two minutes at a time if even then.

Many of us have family members who are just evil perpetrators who have fooled other family members into thinking that they are just the greatest thing since sliced bread. We get around them and we feel sick and angry because we were abused and other family members are in total denial about it.

Many of us have family members who simply have their heads stuck up their own posteriors (I had to clean this one up). They do not listen, nor do they comprehend what we are saying or writing. Some of them are also addicted to substances, sex, work or gambling and they are not emotionally and mentally in gear.

I have no easy answers for your pain today. I have to admit that life is full of pain and coping means

tolerating the distress that we have.

We can only tolerate distress for so long. We must get away from it sooner than later. That is why some people attempt or commit suicide at the holidays--they are stuck in their emotions and days can feel like years.

Now that I mentioned the S-word, I am encouraging you NOT to consider it. It is a permanent solution to a temporary problem.

Don't get lost in your emotions.

When people get stuck in their negative emotions, they do not look at the facts. This is when people make mountains out of mole hills. So Let's look at these five (5) facts . . .

The Christmas holiday season lasts approximately 30 days each year.
December 25 lasts only 24 hours.
December 26 comes at the same time every year and marks the end to the regular Christmas season.
Being alive on December 26 means that you have survived another Christmas if you did not celebrate it.
Surviving Christmas is an acceptable option when you are not celebrating it.

I have my ideas of how to survive Christmas in a healthy way, but I am assuming that if you are reading this, you have a brain of your own to make your own decisions.

See you on December 26.

Thankful for simple things that I have

2009-11-25T16:10:00.000-08:00

I was feeling sorry for myself given my current condition, especially given that it was another holiday.

(Mind you, I bet if I really told you my condition, you might be one of those who would tell me that I have nothing to complain about. I would likely then say: shut up mother.)

An Epiphany

But anyway, I was feeling sorry for myself about my humiliating situation that does not meet my expectations in this holiday season . . . and then I had an epiphany after listening to one of my senior citizen patients talk:

When they had Christmas as a child, they got one pair of socks and one other clothing item. Their family was dirt poor.

The epiphany was this: "You at least have the simple things that you need. You are better off than you consider" (yes consider--not realize).

Of course my life and my situation is not what I want. I have the simple things that I need.

Yes, there are some humiliating aspects to my situation, but if I choose to dwell on or consider feeling humiliated, I will feel humiliated.

We are not guaranteed everything

I am being theological here, but I conclude that God does not guarantee that you will have a Turkey or all the holiday trimmings that you want Thanksgiving. God will give people what they need--the feast is beyond need. Jesus said that God will take care of our needs (see Matthew 6--the first book of the new testament).

I also conclude that that God does not guarantee that your family will get together and play nice-nice. While the Bible wants you and me to live at peace with all people if at all possible--sometimes it just is not possible. The people we do not get along with in our families can truly be toxic, ugly, mean, vicious, dysfunctional, sick, mentally ill or psycho--we just have the problem of being related to them, and we cannot merely find new family members like we can find new friends.

Feeling ashamed

With the recession going on and on, and with 10 percent of the people unemployed and people on commission making fewer sales, many of us are doing with less and less. We want to be able to give to others the holiday gifts but many of us cannot, and we feel ashamed.

There is no two ways about it. Many of us have had the "shoulds" "musts" and "oughts" about getting things for other people for Christmas. There is the feeling that something is very much wrong with us if we do not have the money to get people things for the holiday.

Then there is the "shoulds" "musts" and "oughts" about other people. Our relatives should come behave and exercise good manners and self-control at our holiday gatherings. But the reality is that they don't no matter how much individual therapy you get.

Moving from feeling ashamed to feeling thankful

So, I have concluded at this moment in time that I can live in the ashamed feeling or the humiliated feeling or I can truly live in the thankful feeling.

How does one get to the thankful feeling? It starts with agreeing with yourself that you are surviving in this time. You tell yourself that . . .

this is a bad time, but it will pass.
When you are surviving the rules change.
The rules are that you cannot afford stuff so you don't get it.

One may have to say this hundreds of times of day.

I think that when it is an overall bad time you do not have much and are seeking to be thankful, you are thankful for simple things. When you are without, you appreciate what you have in addition to identifying what matters to you and what you want.

Yeah, my life is very much NOT what I want it to be. There is so much more that I feel that I should have and should be doing. But for me, I have had to make the gratitude list that many of us therapists tell clients and patients to make.

My beginning of a simple gratitude list:
1) I am in good health.
2) My wife is recovering from her surgery earlier this year.
3) We are managing to pay the bills on time.
4) The cars work
5) My kids are healthy and doing well in school
6) We have the food we need
7) I do have a job (even with a toxic boss) that pays the bills
8) We have the clothes we need
9) I live in a free country that is relatively safe and not torn up by war
10) My name is written in the lamb's book of life.

If you think this technique might work for you. Try it.

This is not perfect and will not make you feel all better, but if it can give you a few moments of peace, what is there to lose? Feel free to comment.

I wish you a tolerable Thanksgiving Day.

The Holiday Season: When you do not have money you have relationships

2009-11-15T16:52:00.000-08:00

Today was a fruitful day for thinking along the lines of getting through difficult times.

The holiday season is coming. Or maybe it is here already.

What is likely going to make this holiday season worse this year is that money is tight for many people. Christmas is supposed to be a time for gift giving and extravagance.

There is such an intensity (especially in U.S. society) around the holidays. You are to have a cozy and warm Thanksgiving. You are to have a festive and merry Christmas. You are to have a happy new year.

There is all kinds of talk about what you are going to do, what you are going to buy, and where you are going? There are all kinds of decorations and clothing. There are special foods for Thanksgiving and Christmas. There are all kinds of special events.

The intensity is fueled by nonstop Christmas muzak in all kinds of stores starting after Halloween. The countless broadcast commercials and print advertisements seem to start earlier and earlier each year. A neighborhood store put out its Christmas displays three weeks ago before Halloween.

The intensity adds pressure to the expectation out there is that you should have a merry Christmas. The problem is that most people do not expect a merry Christmas for one reason or another.

The holiday season is a sad and depressing time where there are actually a lot of suicides. People feel abandoned and alone.

I have likened holidays to hurricanes. Everyone gets ready for weeks to run home, lock the door and wait for the storm to pass. They talk about it and get all kinds of survival gear to make sure they have what they need. Holidays have not exactly been joyful.

I have been analyzing the holiday season for some time. Why has it become the un-ignorable monster?

My first thought is a rather Marxian one: it has been exploited in the name of economics. Too much of the retail economy has become dependent on Christmas sales. Christmas is no longer holy or set apart as a sacred time.

However, my first thought is counter-acted by the second thought. Even if it is a sacred time, Christmas is not a magical time that is going to provide fulfillment to erase all of the pain we feel in this world. I have came to the conclusion that many people are nostalgic and looking for magic. Little children in their limited cognitive ability see the magic. Adults want that magic feeling, but the sad tragedy is that there is a bliss in the ignorance that little kids have.

Third, no matter how much nostalgia, the reality is that most of us have family members who are highly dysfunctional who will ruin holiday gatherings and any shot at nostalgia. We get tense and they get tense as we have ruminated over our fears that the other family member is going to just wreck things.

Anyway with all of those problems, to get a feeling of magic, people spend money. Maybe there is a sense of magic in the giving and getting of presents and feasting. We gain weight and usually pay credit card bills way off into April or May. We will buy the cans of diet shake power that are out there front and center in the stores in January where the Christmas candy used to be the month before.

Well, this year the money will not be there. If at best we will have the relationships. The relationships matter where you can have them.

I move that we all start a tradition that is cheap. It would be best that the tradition does not cost money.

The traditions that we have are not about themselves, but about the relationships in which we share the traditions. Good traditions exude love and laughter and meaning. Good traditions honor our relationships.

If your family is not going to be available for traditions this year, find someone to do something with to start a cheap tradition. When you do not have the money, you have the relationships--that is if you look for them.

More to come . . .

Of course it could always get worse

2009-11-15T16:28:00.000-08:00

Things at work have been difficult to say the least. There are multiple aspects and layers and I could discuss it all in detail, but I just had a conversation with a schoolmate today that helped me get perspective.

My schoolmate was truly clinically depressed. His thoughts were depressing.

My former schoolmate was divorced and his ex-wife in his words is a master manipulator. He discussed feeling suicidal due to all of her maneuvering and games. He felt hopeless. He talked about hating that he had few alternatives.

He had a new job that fell through. Some of the problem was that his ex-wife created some legal stir that took him out of work for one week that was part of his getting terminated shortly after taking the job.

His house is getting foreclosed on. He cannot get enough money together to get payments caught up.

He talked about being sabotaged in parenting his three kids.

He talked about his considering a federal job in another country. He had applied for two different jobs. The problem is that he would be abandoning his children, but he needs to preserve himself.

I empathized with him.

My thought to him was that he was essentially engaging in harm reduction. There was going to be pain either way with or without him given his wife's behaviors. He was just choosing over how his kids were going to be mad.

I told him that I would support him in any way I could. I discussed my concern for his safety, but I tired hard to be the friend and not the therapist.

There were limits as to what I could do to help him. He had some pretty crappy choices to make and it was a matter of deciding between which smelled less offensive.

My message to myself is that yes, it could always get worse. You may indeed have the greener grass in the situation. It may just not be as green as you think it should be. Sometimes you are reminded of the fact.

Time has gone on but pain stays around--so much for time healing all wounds

2009-09-06T09:11:00.000-07:00

It is difficult to come to grips with the reality that summer is already over. Well, it is not really over in terms of the calendar. (There are approximately three more weeks give or take a day until it is the first day of autumn.) Part of me is looking for my maturity and character in this time.

One of the difficulties in acting mature is that emotions still have a sense of childishness to them. You want to be able to put things behind you, but it can be just too difficult at times when you are thinking about your pain.

I spent most of the winter and spring waiting for summer. I was waiting for the days when all I had to wear was a t-shirt and shorts and no socks. (Yes, I like the beach bum look. I could wear it all year.

Why has the summer gone too fast? I have a number of thoughts amongst my feeling of pain. First, as you get older, you have had more experience of time and so it seems to go faster. Second, I have been been very busy with work. Third, my wife's medical condition has made my nights seem even more busy. Thus, I have been tired and I have had little time to do anything that I really wanted.

Regardless of the answer, I still lament the summer having gone so quickly. We did not go anywhere, nor could we go anywhere. I am still sad that the money went for hospital bills and not for a trip back to the Midwest or Disneyworld. I somewhat soothe myself that even if I had the extra money, my wife was not able to travel. However, for all my hard work as a social worker due to being understaffed, and do not feel any further ahead for a newly minted PhD. I honestly have had to deal with resentment in the mix. This is again difficult when trying to act mature.

I am still resentful of the University of Louisville administration short-changing my graduation in December 2008. They gave only 72 hours notice that we were not going to be recognized at commencement but would be graduated at the hooding ceremony. (well they gave advance knowledge for the spring commencement that it would be the same way for May 2009 Ph.D graduates, but at least they got to have a reception months in advance)

Furthermore, the hooding ceremony was not catered, not rehearsed, and undignified, with profanity used on stage by the faculty member in his opening comments. (Given the public circumstances at the time I felt that we were the expendable group and our achievement was cheapened to save the University any more P.R. expense for the Felner/Deasy catastrophe and its 'anonymous crap'). The president himself was not there, although it the story was that he had the flu.

There was no apology when I gave my feedback to the university's e-mail—they have not cared. I continue to feel short-changed for all of the work I put in and all the abuse I tolerated from a particular, dysfunctional faculty member who alone held my dissertation process up for two additional years—I deserved more recognition, like the 300 PhD graduates got in the when I graduated with my bachelors in May 1987 -- I sat through watching them walk across the stage over 90 minutes. (They got the privilege of public exhibition where we merely stood in our places).

Consensus of the Graduate School Senate that it should be this way? Yeah right.
Sometimes, at least writing or verbalizing it can at least help me get it out for now. Should someone of faith really have these resentments? I would say yes. People of faith have beliefs and practices, but they at least have a faith resource that can help them cope with the vicissitudes of life and give them more hope than they would either have. Also, they can eventually remember the perspective of their faith about depravity and the fall and how they themselves have hurt others and others hold resentments against them. Thus they can put it on the shelf.

I am still resentful of the vice president who I wrote about in the spring. Her management decisions lately have been quite bone-headed, which only remind me of her behavior that I have blogged about earlier this year. My cynicism has increased despite my other recent efforts to keep it in check.

So, part of me has times where I struggle with all three of these matters in my head. You would think that it should be easier to deal with these things. However, pain is pain and time does go by slowly when you are remembering the painful experiences.

Part of me says “Buck up soldier, this is life.” No one really cares about your pain except for you—and people will only think you are stupid for dwelling on it as they have their own lives to worry about. You are not going to get any kind of expected restitution from the University administration, nor from that poor excuse for a vice president. They are not going to believe they did anything wrong (especially the vice president).

Another part of me, says, “Yes, life is not fair and your expectations are not met, so cry, you're at least entitled to do that.

A third part of me says, find the balance. “Don't cry for long or nurse your resentments for long because you will only be dwelling on it to your own ruin.” Nursing grudges takes your energy. I am trying to forgive the University of Louisville administrators. I am trying to forgive the vice president. I am trying to pray and wait. Begin looking for another ship to come in that you can get on and move away.

Anyway, despite my emotions and attitude, the time has passed. My kids are back in school. The Halloween candy is already in the stores. I predict that in about six weeks from now, just before Halloween, the first Christmas candy will be out. On November 1, my local Walmart will have Halloween candy in carts up front and the Christmas stuff will be out in full-force.

By December 1, I will have been told by my kids 10 different things they want for Christmas because they have seen them on TV. The difficulty will be that 90 percent of those things will have been sold out due to black Friday and black Monday (that cyber-shopping day). The second difficulty will be evaluating what we can get because the hospital bills will still have balances.

There will be other things to occupy my mind. There will be other life business that must get done. People who dwell too much on their pain waste opportunities and the energy to look for those opportunities.

This is the difficulty of life in tough times when opportunity is sparse. The emotion is still tough in light of solutions that are simply stated or maybe just too simplistic. Life goes on even when your emotions continue to exist.

The intensity of your feelings makes you want to discount any kind of glib soothing comments from well-intended but (well okay stupid) individuals. The person who tells you to count your blessings (well, it is an achievement that you have your PhD) takes their life their hands.

Well, as I have bared my soul this labor day, my pain will have to be my responsibility. Just as your pain will be your responsibility. Time does not heal all wounds if the person holds onto the pain.

Yes, the pain will come back from time to time, and it will be each our our own jobs to deal with it and put it away when restitution never comes. Sometimes my resources will be better than others for dealing with pain. Sometimes I can tolerate the exhortations to count blessings than other times.

Coping is sometimes of varying quality. Getting by is till coping when the pain stays around.

Even bad times pass . . . while you're still going through them.

2009-08-09T19:41:00.000-07:00

It has been over one month since I have written. I have been busy and have chosen to blog about political issues in my neighborhood. It has gotten some attention and I have been taking my own advice and doing that which I have enjoyed. If you have been following and looking to me for thoughts, I am sorry (but at this point, I have not noticed anyone commenting, so I have no idea if anyone is reading these posts).

Otherwise, the month of July 2009 has come and gone and we are now in August. While this is trite, the month has been good and it has been bad. But the good news is 1) we made it through the month, 2) the good times were enjoyed for the most part, and 3) we got through the bad moments.

I still feel somewhat cheated that I really did not get to enjoy the summer. I have only grilled out twice, whereas I usually grill out every weekend. We did not get to go on the summer trip I wanted to go on to show my family where I was raised. The kids go back to school next week.

My wife's illness has been the major issue we did not go on vacation. She is getting better, but at the beginning of July, things seemed like they were not improving at that time. Now she is back to more of her old self. I am hoping that this VP Shunt works this time. Our major problem is her energy level and she can barely get through the grocery store.

If we get to go anywhere, such as my grandmother's funeral (she turned 99 last week and seems in good health, but she at that age could still go), it will be me going alone as my wife is not going to be able to tolerate the road trip. Overall, we were stuck at home but we did get to use the new "Sprayground" at our neighborhood park.

I have also been extremely busy with work as I am short one person (whose position the organization will not fill due to "economic conditions"), and our patient load has picked back up. I had brought work home much of the month. There was no room to take any more time off for me and my family. Yeah, I have the vacation time, but there is no room for me to take it given being short on staffing. Furthermore, if I do take the time off, my wife is not physically capable of going anywhere for any long period of time. I am trying to use my self-talk that this is life and that I need to accept it.

One of our cars had the "service engine soon" light come on again this week and it is running rough. I need to get that serviced, and it will mean the credit card. More credit card debt for something that is not foolish or extravagant really stinks.

Of course thinking about the summer vacations I was supposed to have taken my family on by this time in life is also depressing me. My salary (while decent for most standards) pays the bills and there is little discretionary income left over. It got worse when my organization declared without telling me that my son's antihemophilia medication is now a "Class 4" medication subject to a $200 co-pay. My wife's hospital bills will mean me paying them into Christmas because the neurosurgeon, and the two hospitals all have a $500 co-pay. Yeah, I have my Ph.D., but when do I get to take my kids to Disneyworld and Yellowstone Park?

Okay, so I try to look outward beyond myself. I do have a job. I am keeping the bills paid and I make a little more than the minimums. I know a guy from church who is an accountant and he has been unemployed since January--I tell myself that it could be worse.

My parents came for 11 days. They brought their new dog, a seven-year-old Brittany Spaniel named Coco. He turned out to be like a third child to me whom I greatly enjoyed. It was kind of cool too as I walked through the neighborhood with him, people would ask me what kind of dog he is? Brittany Spaniels are not common in Louisville. Otherwise, I had some good conversations with my mother and they helped out around the house while my wife continued to recover.

Taking everything into account, we did get some meaningful help and not those casseroles that only I would be eating. The people from my office and from church gave us some gift cards and some other simple foods that my kids would eat. While there were many evenings in late June and early July where I felt pretty drained from working like a fiend all day in the frying pain and then jumping into the fire with my wife and kids, people did help us and that was good. It was not all bad.

I go back to thinking that the summer is almost over. It was not always comfortable, and I am clearly not where I want to be, but we made it through. We were not entirely alone. I have made decisions day by day and week by week. I kept my priorities in mind, prayed frequently in both need and in praise, and made reasonable decisions. We had our daily bread every day.

We kept it together. We are keeping it together now.

I have worked hard to avoid the "What if" catastrophic thinking that keeps many people up at night. Being prepared does not require one to constantly dwell on the worst case scenario. We will most likely keep it together in the future. I am keeping hope that the bad times pass even when you're still going through them--it happens one day at a time.

A melancholy mid-summer

2009-07-05T11:24:00.000-07:00

When the times are hard, it is hard to enjoy the summer. I had looked forward to the summer where I could wear shorts when I am not at work or church and I could go without socks. Yeah, I can do those things, but I am not enjoying this summer. In thinking through it I have discovered how my perspective can get out of whack.
I felt a profound sense of melancholy as I was walking through a Target store yesterday with my son. The patio furniture section was practically cleared out with only one or two pieces on clearance. It was now full of 'back-to-school' merchandise (school supplies). The store also had school uniforms in several places. To me that was right up there with the Christmas merchandise being put out the third week of October before Halloween even happens.
As we were going through the store, My son and I were also talking about the plans I have had. We were going to go fishing. We were going to go camping. We still have not gone to Disneyworld as we have been talking about for years.
I thought that my life is wasting away. I need to get off my butt and get somewhere. We need to do something to live life.
I thought then that I have been just like my mother. I have been spending all my energy at work with nothing for me and the family on the weekends. I have spent my weekends recovering.
I asked myself: what have I been doing all this time? Why was I not where I wanted to be?
It took me until I was driving out of the parking lot to remember that my wife had been in the hospital and was still recovering from brain surgery. I then remembered that I have had to hold things together at home. I then remembered that I have spent the last seven years getting a Ph.D.
Yeah, I realized that I need to get somewhere during the evenings to figure out how to set up the fishing lines, but overall, sometimes you can get too stuck in the now and forget the rest of the story. We start to think "I always . . . or I never . . ." but it is not the real story. Many of us can forget everything that has happened. We as human beings can forget our humanity and that we can only take so much . . . we are not perfect.
I am about to figure how much I can take of my in-laws now who just walked through the door.

Birthdays suck even more when your wife is in the hospital.

2009-06-13T12:44:00.000-07:00

I have tried to be mature about birthdays rarely meeting my expectations. Things are supposed be different after you get an earned doctorate . . . well they are not. But even today . . . the day after my birthday I still feel the depression that comes with my birthday.

I admit that I sound rather juvenile to myself today, and I may to you. But then this is my blog, and if I feel the same way, I figure that others also feel the same way.Yeah, it is supposed to be a day where you mark the passing of another year of life.

Okay, being 44 does not bother me—I have lived two years longer so far than Elvis. I have hated birthdays because I have rarely got what I wanted: parties. At age 44, I am way beyond toys; I just wanted the people around me where I am locally to show that they care--it is called sympathy and respect.

Like many people I blame my parents for the childhood stuff. Mom was always chasing the ghost of self-worth. Mom was working all the time, showing everyone what a hard worker she was. She spent all her energy on her self-worth versus putting it into us kids. She will still rationalize that it was for us kids to go to college, but it still doesn’t wash and there is no discussion with her. It also sucked that it was never my birthday during school. Dad had to move us out to the country where there were no other kids around to play with or come to parties. There were only two birthday parties I remember as a kid.

Part of me is saying at this point, “Is your head up your butt?” Your wife is in the hospital with a serious medical condition and you’re pouting over no one remembering your birthday?

Well, today marks one week of my wife being in the hospital. What was a stomach ache one week ago Thursday (6/4/09) kept going and proved to be a shunt failure Saturday morning in the E.R. and a shunt replacement (brain surgery) Sunday night with her head getting half-shaved.

My wife was stepped down to an acute rehab facility on Thursday. My 6-year-old reminded my 9-year-old that it was my birthday and my 9-year-old wished me a happy birthday. My mother called me early in the morning to wish me happy birthday. She regressed yesterday and did not remember it was my birthday yesterday until late yesterday.

My birthday gift was watching her suffer from further pressure on the brain and a fear that she was going to have to have the shunt replaced again or perhaps even dying on my birthday. When her condition improved later in the day she remembered it was my birthday from my kids prompting and apologized for not remembering it--her I gave some slack--she is truly out of it. But I did not want my wife dying on my birthday--then it would really suck for the rest of my life.

Yeah, I bought a birthday cake last night because my 6-year-old asked about it--it was the $18.99 triple chocolate one from the refrigerated case--it was fair but not very good. My son did not get a piece of it because of his tantrum at a church miniature golf outing.

My one gift to myself was a quick-pick powerball ticket, maybe I will become an instant millionaire and be able to pay the large hospital bills that are coming my way.

The check last week and the phone call yesterday morning from mother were cheap consolation. The stingy birthday card written my airhead aunt on behalf of her household was sadly insulting. The two, automatically generated e-mails and the one e-mail car from family where slightly pleasant but not at all soothing to my pain.

It was not a happy birthday and anyone telling me happy birthday would have been terribly obtuse.

What I would have liked.

I would have liked someone locally to say in person, Gee, I am sorry that your wife is in the hospital on your birthday. That must really suck.

The inner parent is trying tell my inner child that it is okay—you will make it. My inner parent is trying to tell my inner adolescent that this is life--your birthday is going to be another day sometimes. You are going to have days where there is not going to be the money and there are going to be more pressing events and issues.

I am not sure what else there is to say at this point. This is a day where I am making the best of it. I am basically seeing that my kids have what they need, I am otherwise subsisting today. The times are still hard. The times are particularly hard right now. I am trying to reframe that I should be glad that I still have my job, my boss understands my situation (which is rare) , I have the medical benefits to pay for most of the medical care, and I have what I need right now—even if it is awkward, lonely and painful.

Mind you I am trying to be thankful in my attitude. The reality is that even being thankful does not make everything feel perfect and happy. Pain is pain. God does not always relieve us of pain. He enables us to endure it.

Life sometimes is like being stranded in Palm Beach Florida. You would think that it should be nice, but it is one of the most driven, unfriendly places that has been ruined by being overbuilt by overly aggressive developers. There are lots of people but they are not paying attention to you. That is what most of us are experiencing anyway in this world.

Balance in the Midst of Drama.

2009-05-31T18:28:00.000-07:00

It has been a few weeks since I last wrote about coping. I have had to do a bunch of it on my own. It has been drama at my office.
Being drug behind a 4x4 on a baja or off-road course
I have equated the experience of dealing with borderline personalities to be like being drug by an off-road 4x4 through an off-road or baja course.
I would like to be able to tell all of it, but the metaphor of the of baja course will have to suffice as there are too many bumps and curves to tell you the whole story. I will give just the highlights.
There was one moment where I almost got demoted. My boss was worried that I was spreading negativity about her because I was mad about her. She projected her behavior upon me—she is the one who spreads negativity. She called an immediate meeting with Human Resources and began interrogating me in from of the HR coordinator for the hospital. I talked better than my borderline personality boss and was able to distinguish myself from my boss. My boss was being immature, I was being mature and I held onto my position.
One of my departments has had two position cuts. One is an outright cut, and another position has been made contingent on patient population. It is difficult to tell whether my assistant vice president is making decisions to look good or whether she is taking orders to cut by a higher-level bean counter.
My narcissistic subordinate is being transferred to one of my old department. Someone quite and is moving on to a better job. He is moving because he believes he is saving his own job given the two cuts. He is only thinking about himself. On the one hand I think he is getting out of my hair, but he is also creating more work for me.
My hospital is going on probation again with the state. A psychiatric technician slapped a kid. As far as my information is accurate—people were fired. However, it was not enough to pacify the state. You heard it here fourth or fifth. It will probably get out into the local media in about one month.
My hospital has been cutting back since November. I figure someone high up is going to take the fall somewhere some how like they did back in September of last year. The hospital corporation wanted to cut back, and they cut back at the expense of the wrong things. Will they do right? We will see.
So what have I been doing to cope with it all?
1. Comfort eating and experimenting in the kitchen.
2. Talking to my friends
3. Praying a lot.
4. Being the adult.
5. Reading books.
6. Bike-riding
7. The Wii
8. Keeping my eyes open for other opportunities—avocational and career change
As you can tell I have been doing a multiple of things.
I have been reading the Four Agreements, Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, and Emotional Intelligence. I have been learning to be more adult and more real. The Four Agreements has some good stuff, but it is rather new age.
I have been experimenting with a pineapple pound cake recipe. It is just about there. I now have to perfect the glaze. I have gained some weight.
My faith has been very important here. I have prayed for God’s open door to happen but for him to take care of us while we wait and hang on. I believe that God was with me when was dealing with the immature rants and raves of my boss about one month ago. I do not care who you are, you need God. I admit that intelligence alone does not save you. Faith is what you lean on when the problem is outside of your ability to solve because you do not have the power or you are waiting for a day in the future.
Bike riding has been good to let off some steam. I have enjoyed the boxing on my Wii. Physical exercise has its place.
Talking to my friends has been good. My main support group has been the guys at church. The have been great. I reconnected with a school mate from my Ph.D. studies and we shared our travails. Sometimes getting things off your chest is good too.
The job search has been dormant. I got invited to apply for a job in Georgia that will likely pay $9000 less than I make. They really could not tell me what the salary was, but only estimate. I have been advised to apply for it to test out the waters to see what it is all about. It could been the open door I have been looking for.
Find your mix
The economy has been tight. My budget is getting even tighter. Many people I know are experiencing leaner, tighter times. Salaries are being cut or increases are being withheld. The mix of things we do to pass the time under stress is up to each one of us. I look back on the past month of drama and I can say that while it was not perfect, I made it. I did what I had to do and I kept things going.
For those who are unemployed, there is the concern about having what you will need, and perhaps some will need to take jobs that were formerly below them to pay the bills. Besides the worry of finances, getting through this time of recession and stress is a matter of successfully passing the time.
Passing the time
Passing time is something that people do not like in general. Passing time is what people do when they are waiting. We are supposed to be on the edge of the wave and moving ahead with our life. But I have decided that in life there will be times of waiting where you are not moving ahead. They will not make sense and they will not be pleasant. If you are reading this, you are likely waiting for something bad to pass.
Passing time is inevitable for everyone. Passing time successfully and meaningfully is the challenge. Whether you are waiting one minute, one month, one year or several years, it is possible to wait with yourself and your values intact. I think that you will need to choose your mix of activities that will help you pass time in the midst of difficult circumstances.
When finances are tight, what you do to pass your time may need to be creative. Maybe you may need to think of a business you can start. Maybe you can start to read those books you have always wanted to read. Maybe you go check out that video on Calculus at your library and finally understand the Integral and Derivative. How you pass your time is going to be up to you, I suppose a good standard for passing your time is doing things that do not make you feel guilty or which you can look back and be satisfied that you did what you could and that was that.

Setting Limits with your emotions

2009-04-26T18:56:00.000-07:00

The past two weeks for me have been quite difficult. My boss has really stirred up some drama and I suffered, but then I learned. My plan is to set limits with my emotions.

I have made no bones that I work for a person with Borderline Personality. Borderlines act in terms of "Drama." They start it and keep it going.

With drama there is a triangle of interactions between three people. There is a perpetrator, a victim and a rescuer. The roles are interchangeable between the three people.

Within a triangle of drama there is emotion, childish anger, and indirect expression of feeling and an absence of direct problem-solving. To stop it, you must clearly state your emotion and act like an adult.

I have decided that there is no integrity in drama. I have decided one of the problems with borderline personalities is that they have no integrity and that they have no insight that they have a character defect that includes no integrity.

I have been noticing my boss make comments that put her in a victim role.

"I felt like I was jumped in there. You need to be on my side."
"Now I am being made to look like the bad guy."
"Why is he doing this to me?"

I have also been noticing comments that put her in a rescuer role.

"I am working hard to save this department."
"This is causing me a lot of work to fix things."
"This is the cutting edge."

Now, she will be in total denial when she is in the perpetrator role. She is the perpetrator role quite a bit when she yells and makes abusive comments to groups of people. When I confronted her about making fun of me--she went into total denial and did not apologize. In fact she never apologizes.

I think in the recessionary times, we are more likely to let things slide. We are afraid to confront all the more as we are afraid of losing our jobs.

Without going into all of the detail of the past two weeks, I have been drug through the mud with my boss's drama.

I have to meet with her tomorrow. A major change is being made in one of my departments and the staff under me have a number of questions. She is acting like a victim when she really is the perpetrator.

My boss has made this repeated victim claim of being "jumped" in meetings when the staff ask good but tough questions. I made an effort to get the questions in writing first and I emailed them late Friday.

She wrote an e-mail response fairly quickly that indicated she was most bothered and that "We need to talk." She still feels jumped--borderlines do not like challenging questions--they can dish it but they cannot take it--again, they have no integrity, and as a result they create drama.

I will talk to her first thing Monday. She is likely going to make statements that make the staff look like perpetrators with all their questions, and that I am not rescuing her enough.

MY PLAN: I plan to put her emotion back on her.

I have decided to use an approach similar to Motivational Interviewing. In that I am going to repeat back to her what she says. If she says "I felt jumped in there, you should have backed me up in there." I am going to say something like "They jumped you" with a different inflection.
Then I will likely say "What is it about their questions that made you feel jumped?"

I have previously not said anything. The time has changed.

If she says, now I am made out to be the bad guy. I plan to say nothing, or at best, say "you feel you are the bad guy?"

I have decided that borderlines try to make others responsible for their emotions. I have learned lately through my time in the mud, that my borderline boss has been stating things only in feelings as to whether she is rescuing or she is a victim.

I expect this to be a very subtle approach and that this is the first line of defense. It is at best a Soft skill. It will be a lot of work, but I am going to have to start here. I do not think that she will have a clue what I am doing at first.

I think that it is tough enough coping with the economy as it is. I think that in this day and time we have to work on only owning our own feelings, and not those of someone else.

While we would like to empathize, many borderlines are willing to throw themselves out there as victims, depicting whether they are a victim of you or someone else. Things are not always safe out there.

For my boss, she needs to be responsible for her emotion. She probably never will be, she probably would die first. My plan is that I do not take responsibility for what she will not. Previously, I had gotten stirred by her emotion--it is time to start setting a limit--her emotion does not have to be my emotion.

Trying to maintain a sense of integrity and emotional intelligence

2009-04-12T19:18:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks have been one of survival and reflection.

There have been office games that I have been trying to avoid, but they have caught me anyway. The games are a product of working for a borderline. I have found myself asking myself many questions this weekend.

First, let me talk about the dynamic at work. I feel marginalized from management . . . period. I would really like another job now.

The assistant vice president has isolated herself into exec-u-land and I have only seen her through the glass door of the main conference room. I still have had no desire to talk to her due to her abuse and now my boss has now stepped back into borderline mode.

My boss told me on Friday at a meeting called under what are at best false-pretenses not to build my team at her expense. The meeting was supposed to be called “rounding.” The first question was a rounding question . . . the rest of the 50 minutes consisted of my boss's emotional immaturity.

For those who work at hospital organizations currently paying money to the Studer Group, “Rounding” is a management technique of communication where a manager asks subordinates what is going right, and ask what the subordinate would like? It is supposed to be a positive meeting where the boss is listening to the subordinate trying to make the workplace more pleasant.

After the first question, my boss talked about how she did not feel part of the team in one of my departments for the rest of the session. She talked about the one subordinate who has not been doing his work. She talked about the other subordinate who had been enabling the lax one. She told me that she did not want to build my team at her expense.

She repeated the part about “her expense.” From what I understood, she did not want me forming such a tight bond that I would get sucked into the team and turn against her. Can you say paranoid?

She wanted to know my opinion, and every time I gave it, she responded with criticism or some statement that she was hurt by it. This was not rounding.

She used what she called an “AA” term, “signing off on each other's sh*t.” I looked that up on Google. I found nothing. Her intent seemed to be calling that enabling. I asked an old soul at my church about his impression of it. He told me that it meant “not to take someone else's inventory.” Again, this was not rounding.

I called and left a message for my old boss, since she is big into AA and Alanon—surely she would know about the term. She has not returned my phone call, and her husband curtly dismissed me on the phone today when I called a second time. I wanted her to tell me her understanding of the phrase. I think that she is just too connected to my assistant-vice-president and my boss—but then I can only guess.

I think that I would have been better off just going to a local AA meeting and asking someone if they had heard the phrase and what it was supposed to mean?

Okay, well, so I have the boss trying to play expert here and she is greatly failing. I think now at this juncture, what the phrase means does not matter any more. This is now survival in a tyrannical situation.

Working for a borderline.

I have been reading some business management communication books lately and as I read them, I think that the authors are missing some things. From reading many of the case vignettes in those books, I have decided that many of the problem coworkers and tyrannical bosses are borderline personalities. I have stated elsewhere that I think that the occurrence rate for borderline personality disorder is much higher than research states.

The point is that many of the tyrannical bosses (males or females) are borderline personalities, especially in mental health agencies and hospitals.

Borderlines are not about order and process and principle. The borderline boss is problem-focused and controlling. They micromanage and their subordinates do not feel successful in their work as the boss only talks about the possible crises and what was wrong versus whether anything was right. Borderline bosses are never satisfied with things.

The borderline bosses are focused about themselves and their insecurities. The borderline will focus about things outside of their control. They are guarded, critical, moody, and emotionally tyrannical in their dealings with their subordinate. They will rage and say abusive things. They are on constant edge.

They do not say hi to people in the hallway unless they have an agenda,which is another form of emotional abuse. They will look angry, and subordinates who do not know the distance run and hide.

Well, that is what I am dealing with now. One more thing, my boss said in the meeting of false pretense that I have been caught in the middle of things. She was right about that. I have pretty much been able to stay in the middle successfully because I have done drama management, and it has worked so far, but I question how much more it will work?

Drama Management

Borderlines stir up drama. They cannot help themselves.

In drama, there are usually three people and at least two of them are angry. Someone is the victim. Someone is the perpetrator. Lastly, someone is the rescuer. The roles are interchangeable amongst the three. The perpetrator can all of a sudden become the victim if the rescuer goes to far. The victim can become the perpetrator. The rescuer becomes the perpetrator when the rescuer goes to far. The communication is usually indirect, highly charged and someone is hurt.

I have looked at the different events in light of that. I think drama management has at least nine principles

Choose very carefully what you repeat—you actually risk furthering the drama by saying something.
Be direct in communication when you have to talk.
Determine what the problem really is and work to resolve it if there really is a tangible problem.
Let stuff die if it really is not a tangible problem.
Be mature and adult in your words and tone of voice.
Educate people about drama management where appropriate.
Repeatedly tell yourself that you have power in the situation by what you do or not do.
Integrity in all matters.
Things are perfect neither are things total disasters.

My boss has repeatedly attempted to stir drama. My boss would make statements that someone said something inflammatory or cheap about me. I decided not to say anything. I let much stuff die. When it has come to dealing with my boss and the problem subordinate underneath me, I have sought to talk in a calm and mature tone. I have tried to impact the people around me with integrity and principle—I have repeated my philosophy of work to my subordinates and I have tried to walk it like I talk it. To the few that I judged appropriate, I explained my philosophy of drama management. It has worked for the most part and I have verbalized it as such.

What I think that has changed is that my boss is going to make drama happen regardless and I am not going to have a challenge as to how to manage it. As far as I can tell, she has tried to pit me against the other two subordinates. If I am not against them, I am against her. If she cannot pit me against anyone, she will transfer my problem-subordinate to another department and will create drama in the target department.

Integrity

I have decided the literature about borderline personalities has missed that they do not have integrity. They (in a Freudian sense) they lack the inner ego strength to have integrity. They do not have integrity within themselves and lack insight into their own contribution to their own problems. It is all about them, and if integrity does not work for them in the moment, they will distort, lie, back-stab, rage, cause a scene, withdraw, and abuse to control their fragile little realm.

My boss did not demonstrate integrity on Friday. In fact, she has demonstrated very little integrity for the two years she has been in the job. She especially did not call her meeting with me in the name of integrity. She had an agenda that was about her and her control. Was there a modicum of valid business concern in her meeting? Yes, but she was not straight forward and it is difficult to tell where the real matter lies.

I am not going to discuss what my plans are exactly tomorrow, but I have a plan where I am going to focus on maintaining integrity and principle. I am still at this time unsure whether or not is the right thing and whether I am going to follow that course of action because it is difficult.

Integrity in this day and time is difficult. When you are trying to survive and pay the bills, the temptation is there to do what seems to be needed. Sometimes that “need” is not moral or legal. But there is a generalized excuse in group-think that “everyone is doing it.”

Each of us is in charge of our own life. Sure we look to role models and mentors to guide us. But there are at least 10 tests we can ask whether something is going to help us maintain integrity. Any of them may cause pause to reconsider a planned course of action.

1. Is this going to get me fired?
2. Is it against corporate policy?
3. Is this illegal in the laws of the state or nation?
4. Does this violate any religious or moral code?
5. Is this good professional practice?
6. Is this of good principle that I can do again without getting burned?
7. Is this something I can look back on and say it seemed to be the right action at the time?
8. Is there going to be a consequence if I do not do it?
9. Am I crossing an interpersonal boundary and trying to do something that someone else really needs to be doing?
10. Does this actually feel right?

These are not perfect, but they are questions that we can ask to test whether I am maintaining integrity in matters. I am admit that I am feeling tenuous right now as nothing is perfect.

Working to Maintain Peace Inside and Out

2009-03-22T19:09:00.000-07:00

The past three weeks have had their moments. The challenge is to sum up the lessons and the the points of light.

As we progress into 2009, things are looking worse economically. Yet, it does seem that there are flecks of good things.

Here in Louisville, the unemployment rate has reached 9.4 percent. I do not see that as a mystery when much of the manufacturing is automotive based. If Ford is not selling trucks, they do not need the supplies from the local suppliers and so on and more people get laid off.

The chilling externality effect

I have decided that with the continued downturn in the economy, there is a continued negative emotional (not economic) externality, especially in Louisville. In Economics, an externality is a secondary effect or benefit that others feel on account of an action or person.

At my organization this effect is an chilling effect. I think that this is exemplified through my CEO's boss, and then my CEO's in turn passing on a blog from a hospital CEO in Boston about cutbacks.

It is best that I do not tell you what the e-mail said, but it was from another blog here on "Blogger."

The CEO in turn passed it on to the vice presidents and directors, and my director passed it on to us. I determined that other social workers in the hospital did not get it. My supervisor said that she got clearance to pass it on to us from her boss, the micro-managing assistant vice president.

I did a bit of a survey among my subordinates. The message they seemed to get was "Don't whine, it could be worse."

What has it really meant?

Right now I think the aftermath of that distasteful distribution of the blog entry is that I have paranoid people above me and below me.

I have considered my boss and her boss to be paranoid. After all, they are borderline personalities. They do not have the interior structure to stay calm in times of stress. They are paranoid about abandonment issues. It has seemed to show more so lately in my boss again.

My boss especially seemed to be having a mood swing in the past week anyway since she has Bipolar Disorder. The chilling effect seems to be playing especially on her. Those with Bipolar Disorder run the risk of being extra sensitive to stress.

My subordinates in one department have become extra paranoid after the blog distribution. They have been trying to pump me for information. I had to set some limits with them. I then decided to throw a small "YIPPEE SKIPPY IT'S SPRING" celebration where I am going to bake some chocolate pies.

Part #2: dealing with the micro-managing vice president and the bad news about my daughter.

On another front in terms of maintaining peace, I have found myself dealing with my own personal challenges. On Monday of this past week, my wife was told by school officials that my daughter has Asperger's Syndrome.

Asperger's is a form of Autism. It has several different forms. My daughter has a fairly mild case of it given that she is in touch with reality most of the time, but that she has certain quirks and perception issues. She also has some immaturity.

Mind you, I still have my irritation at the assistant vice-president for the abuse that was supposed to be a job interview. I have been avoidant of her. The problem was that I could not avoid her on Tuesday morning as we were both going down the stairs at the same time. We both said good morning to each other and then she asked me how I was doing? I said "eh."

She then asked "Angry?"

I waited to the bottom of the stairway and then said in almost a whisper, "I was told yesterday that my daughter has Asperger's."

I heard her gulp and then she said "I'm sorry."

The reality is that I was indeed angry with her, but that one could not have played better in emotional warfare with a borderline in power. I basically "zinged" her with a one-up, that was blessedly true in this case.

Otherwise, I have decided that I have got to give the anger up towards the assistant vice president. That is my power. It will not be easy to forgive her. I have been abused by people like her in the past, and I have sworn I will not get walked on again by her type.

As a medium stance I will try to have self-pity on her at this time. I think that she will burn out soon in her job since she does not have the emotional intelligence to be in that job.

It helps that her office has been moved off my hallway. I will not see her as much.

Not seeing her as much is good since I have decided with my wife not to look for another job until we have completed my daughter's assessment and consultation processes. My daughter is going to be assessed by some specialists at a center ran by the University of Louisville Medical School.

I have my challenges to stay in the clear and maintain my employment until it is truly time to move on. I have decided that my most concrete work goals will be to work for excellence in my job and smile more at work.

Points of Light

Not all is that bad these days. A friend of mine that I had mentioned in an earlier entry, who had quit his job under fire in a southern state has landed another job on the East Coast. I am very happy for him. Good things do happen.

Tying things together

Okay, tying everything together is going to be tough, but I think I can say something that makes more sense than a bad Southern Baptist Sunday School curriculum book.

Yes, the days and times are numbing. We do not know always what to think for feel given that so much comes at us.

In this tough day and time, peace inside and out is possible. We have an effect on others around us. We can work for positive events and experiences in our workplaces. We can work for positive experiences in our lives. I am making some personal goals, and I am going to focus on what matters.

Furthermore, not all is that bad. It is not all disaster. Some is actually pleasant at times--my friend getting a new job, and the fact that the daffodils are blooming and the Bradford Pears are budding.

What matters to you? Take an inventory of what matters to you. It is as simple as making a list. None of us can address everything on the list, but we can address some of it.

When we are addressing what matters to us, we feel a sense of peace inside and we are not dependent on what is outside of us.

Yep, It's Job Lock, but I SHOULD Be Happy I Have a JOB

2009-03-01T15:38:00.000-08:00

The past two weeks have been painful yet interesting. I have been the victim of emotional abuse and micro-management.

The assistant vice president that I have alluded to with the loud high heels has showed some true colors. I want out and I am not happy. It is job lock now but I should be happy that I at least still have a job in this time.

The Story.

There was another promotion available. I applied for it. I got a 12 minute interview with the now permanent assistant vice president. She played mind games.

She told me that if I was ever going to advance in management I was going to have to do something about my communication style. It was the words I used, the way I talked and the facial expressions.

She told me that the only way I was going to be able to make the changes was to get a mentor to watch and point out the problem. She said that this position was going to be in the schools promoting this program.

I tried to sell myself anyway about my style and my strengths. We did not go anywhere to my experience. It was not about my demonstration of management ability over the two work teams.

I just said, "Basically, if I understand what you are saying, you are not going to advance me in the process for this position." I then asked, "If my boss's position came open, would I be a candidate for that job."

The assistant vice president said, "You'll have to ask J---." I left.

I went back to my office and calmly told the narcissist that works under me that I wanted him to know that I was told I was not going to be considered for the job. He showed some empathy (false as he is a narcissist). I (probably too much) told him that I was told it was because of my communication style. He immediately decided to apply for the job.

I decided to write an e-mail to her about two hours thanking her for the interview and asking her for resources to address the concern.

She wrote back that night as her e-mail was time stamped at 9:30.

I would suggest that you reach out to other mentors to get their feedback and see what ideas you may have from there. Thanks,

Then she wrote again on Monday--a second response to the same e-mail.

That would really be a personal decision. I know that when I have been coached about things that I heard I could, and then I wanted, to increase my self awareness about, I have done some work in therapy, as well as worked ongoing with mentors who I felt like were safe and honest for me.

Hell-ohhhhhhh? You already responded. How dumb are you? What are you really hiding?

She did give the narcissist an 90 minute interview. He came back saying it was a waste of time. I had thought that he actually stood a good chance. He wrote an e-mail two days later saying that she called late at night and said "No Thanks."

I heard from someone else in that department with the opening that assistant vice president had already offered the job to a social worker in that department. The source (likely dependable) said that the assistant vice president had also talked money with the anointed. The particular anointed person only has had her clinical license three (3) months and communicates like a closed book.

I weighed whether or not to call the corporate complaint line about the ethics problem evident here. I cooled my jets enough to see that I did not have confirmation or any hard piece of evidence. If someone else came forward--particularly the anointed and bragged about it, I would definitely call the corporate compliance line.

My organization has a explicitly spelled out policy for how positions are to be filled. The assistant vice president essentially has executed two masquerades. She has put and is putting people who will not think but will do exactly what she says to do. They are what I would estimate to be not as smart as her. She is being a micro-manager.

Cult Leaders are Micro-Managers

Micro-managers are cult leaders such as Jim Jones was over the People's Temple and as the Reverend Moon is considered to be over the Unification Church. They are about mind control.
If your boss is a micro-manager, you are made to feel dumb. You are not trusted. They sit on your work.

If your micro-managing boss were a dictator of a country, you would likely be executed after a few years because they trust no one. It is all about them.

Insight from Previous Experience

Micro-managers are actually scared, immature people. They do not act like adults. They are not leaders of people. They usually have high turnover underneath them.

In a number of work situations in Social Work and Mental Health, I have experienced micro-management. The most notable of the micro-managers was at a mental health agency in eastern North Carolina. The Program Director had to know everything and sign off on everything. She would just spit out case material about the patients acting like she knew everything.

When you talked to her, she was anxious and fearful and extremely self-deprecating. Talking to her was like talking to a little girl. (Something like the current assistant VP).
I concluded that if I could get up into management, I would foster a better work environment. I was convinced that I could do better and that is why I went for my doctorate.

In fact I do do better. My subordinates are adults, and I treat them as such. They know what they are doing, and I let them do their jobs. I trust my people and my people trust me.

Furthermore, given the assistant VP's "concern" about my communication, is a red flag if not a red herring. If my communication were a problem, it would have showed up in all the Studer Group "rounding" they do at the hospital. All my subordinates would be complaining about it.

They haven't and it has not shown up in my job reviews in a number of years. Also, patients have not complained about my communication style. It was an excuse the assistant vice-president cooked up.

Furthermore, even if I went and found mentors, the assistant vice-president has established her as the existential judge of my communication style. Her criteria and her opinion are subjective--like all micro-managers. She would likely find something else.

The Current State of Affairs

The assistant vice president has now acted withdrawn and scared. Of course, I think that I am assuming what her thoughts are, and I am interpreting her behavior at therisk of being wrong.

I think that she is being assuming and reactive, but then so do a number of my colleagues. I think that she is projected much of her fear upon me, but then again, I am assuming what she is thinking, which no one can know unless she admits it. Micro-managers do not admit much of anything.

The Problem with Insight

Insight is knowledge that one uses to make decisions and cope. I think that I have insight into the situation--that is why I blog this stuff.

One of the things I have to admit is that insight only goes so far in making you feel better. I still have to live with the dynamic of the scared child that is the assistant vice president.

She is still in power and she walks by my department door in her loud heels. I have actually liked that she has been withdrawn, but it is a very unhealthy dynamic.

It is the oppressive dynamic present when there is a borderline personality is in control and I still have to experience it.

She is the one in power and she is going to have say something first. That is not going to happen given her demonstrated immaturity.

Job Lock

I am now motivated to get out of this place. I am confident that the assistant vice president is reinforcing her own fear. I see myself going nowhere else at this organization. If I could leave today, I would. I do not deserve the abuse. This is now about me.

However, there are no job openings except in Washington DC, where my wife said that she would not go. While I am working on her, I am in "job lock" and I should just be happy I have a job in the first place. "Job lock" was a buzz word of the late 1990's. It basically means that someone is hating their job, being abused in their job, in a lousy working environment or cannot move any further, but they need the money and benefits. That is my story right now.

However, I know some people who do not have jobs right now who probably would accept my situation right now for a paycheck, but then they do not have the necessary education and training.

There are employers that are exploiting their people right now in the name of the economy. It seems to be like the sweat shops of the late1800's and early 1900's where immigrant laborers were exploited by exploitative industrialists. Some things are cyclical--when the economy gets better, these exploitive employers will have high turnoverbecause people can leave.

What am I Doing Right Now?

There are several things I am doing to cope with the situation. None of them are perfect in taking away the pain, but they help.

I am doing the best that I can right now. It is not easy, but I am consoling myself with that idea.

I am reading some books on communication that are telling me to do basically what I am doing now. I am not finding any mentors nor do I have any mentors in mind.

I have got my wife looking for jobs online. She may yet be open to Washington DC.

I am praying hard and thinking about the Bible verses of God's assuances. God is bigger than the situation and the economy.

I am trying to keep my mouth shut at work. I read some of the Four Agreements by Miguel Ruiz which gives some rather "New Age" but good advice. I like the part about doing your best all the time.

I am trying to work on all my projects at home and focus my energy. I am blogging stuff like this to vent.

I figure that many others are in the same situation as me. I would love to have comments back on this. Let's complain and comiserate together. We will get through this time. It hurts now, but we will be okay.

Feeling trapped in a shrinking room.

2009-02-15T20:03:00.000-08:00

In talking to people this week, I have decided that the best metaphor for right now is "being trapped in a shrinking room." With the current world and national situation, things seem to be closing in on many of us.

We like our freedom. We like to have options.

At this time in our history it seems that we are feeling anything but our freedom and our options. The options that are available are few and we are feeling vulnerable.

In fact, it seems that many of us feel that the number of options available to us are diminishing in number as the economy contracts. We see this effect in both personal and global terms.

By this time it is very possible that you personally know someone who is a victim of the economy. You either know someone who has taken a bath in the stock market and lost a substantial part of their retirement or you know someone who has been laid off.

Furthermore, your workplace is probably flush with talk about options management is considering to reduce loss and survive--some seem reasonable, and some seem unethical. I have one friend who told me that he had quit his job because management told him that they were going to write him and others up and then fire him and them for cause the next week. (Naturally--firing for cause could mean no unemployment depending on what it is.)

In the media magnfied informational intensity we see frequent new stories about the poor performance of the markets and the rising unemployment rate. Congress just passed a stimulus package, but in the back-stepping language of the President and key congressional leaders, it will still take some time for the economy to recover. We are not exactly getting feel good stories out of Washington that make us feel any more assured that our pain is going to be alleviated tomorrow.

Of course, one particular friend has talked about his wife wanting to move back to near her parents. I can relate to this indirectly. While those of us who are married want to please our spouses in every sense of the word, we cannot deliver based on our limitations.

Houses are not exactly selling. Unless you paid outright for your house 15 years ago, it is very unlikely that you can sell your house for any meaningful gain. Furthermore, unless you paid the ton of money to be in one of those perennially hot neighborhoods in your city, your house is not going to sell quickly either. Many of us are trapped in mortgages which means good sense says we must stay where we are if at all possible.

Jobs are not exactly plentiful. While there are a few echelons of society that can move about because of the nature of their work, the 92 percent or so of us who have jobs are not going to be able to transfer or just move across the country.

Of course, then there is the situation (I am sure is existing) where someone lost their job and they can only get a job in another city and their house is not going to sell. This is the poor fortune of many in the formally hot real estate markets.

One personal story I can add comes from the recession of 1991-1992. (You can read previous posts to get other bits of it.) The guy I was renting a room from was being emotionally abusive out of the grief and loss of his mother. He was also beating the drum that he was going to sell the house in a few months and that I would have to find another place to live. His abuse increased so much that I called my parents and discussed my distress. My mom suggested that I look at the YMCA.

With the grace of God, I had a plan to be move out and to another city to pursue another life course before he sold the house. (He actually lived in the house another year before selling it.)
When I felt the world closing in around me, I did find that it did not close all the way. I felt claustrophobic in a sense, but I did not suffocate.

Of course I can look back on it now. But I remember that it was not pleasant in the least. It was still like being lost in a desert where I had miserable dry mouth and no water in sight.

How do we get through it?

The question is: how do we get through it? Of course, I have no easy answer. I can only suggest options. Options that I am willing to try myself.

1. Practice gratitude.

The vast majority of people have what they need: food, clothing, and shelter today and every day. Gratitude is practiced daily.

2 Practice mindfulness of your own situation and act accordingly.

Most of us do just fine managing our bills. So let's do what we do well. Make sure you stay up on your own bills and stay within your means.

3. Work on setting limits and boundaries.

When people cannot say "no" they get themselves into trouble. Of course the average kid whines because you are going to a restaurant today or this week. This is an opportunity to build character and inner strength. (No pain no gain).

On the other hand, when you are saying no to something, you are saying yes to something else. Homemade pizza may not be like going to Red Lobster, but kids are often happy to eat it.

We may have to apprise our loved ones of the truth, facts, and reality. Of course they are not going to like it. Sometimes they must wake up and appreciate the limits of life. There is less pain overall when we do it (mind you I said less pain--not no pain).

4. Stay in the moment.

Imagine yourself looking up at a mountain. The mountain looks large an impossible from a distance. However, each of us is only going to be able to take it one step at a time.

Staring at the big picture is unhealthy if that is all that we do. I think most of us already understand the big picture. It is going to be there . . . and be there . . . and be there.

You and I can only live today. We can only take care of the moment. We can negotiate with the world around us today.

Conclusion

You and I are going to feel like we are in a shrinking room for some time. I feel vulnerable at times.

If you are like me, you occasionally ask if you will have a job next week. This is when I find myself praying and thanking God for what I have today and that I trust him for the future.

This is when I focus on my list of personal goals to improve myself. This is when I create memories with my children that come out of my creativity as opposed to spending money.

Mind you I cannot get you over your own hump. It is okay to be hurting right now. That is what we do. But we will get over our humps and we will get through this time and we will get through the pain.

Character When the Pain is Real

2009-01-30T16:10:00.001-08:00

I can finally write this stuff. I have been unable to write for about eight days the pain of it all has been too great to write it.

I thought that I had applied for an internal promotion at work. I applied on the in-house, web-based system and uploaded my new resume. I told my supervisor that I had applied for it. I told the people around me that I had applied for it.

My goal was to be open with everyone to cut down on the gossip in the office and I also told people that I did not think that I would get it because I figured that the chosen one was going to get it, and I was not the chosen one.

About 13 days later, I called a particular person in human resources about the process. I wanted to know where things were? Well, the next day I found out the truth.

The Bomb Drops.

Two weeks after I thought I had applied, they announced the "winner." For me, my boss announced it in a department meeting the day after they had announced it. I (in a rare impulse) blurted that I did not get an interview for it.

I ran down to human resources after the meeting. I got a blank look from the clerk. She did not have me as having applied for the job.

I went home depressed. I had plans for going to the neighborhood association meeting and face all those vigilantes who soundly defeated me from being the chair. I forced myself to move.

I went into the bank after dinner and the branch manager handled my transaction. He asked me how I was doing? I told him that I probably could probably have complain about stuff but that I was okay given what I had under the circumstances.

This wowed me. He shook my hand and told me that I seemed to be someone of character. He at least had me thinking about the operative word Character.

I managed my way through the neighborhood association meeting even though vigilante #1 (on my block) walked by me in her borderline personality way without saying a word to me and avoiding eye contact with me for the whole meeting. I was able to get to sleep without the need for medication.

The day after.

My boss talked to her boss. My boss had been a cheerleader for my getting a promotion since I was open with her. Both sent me me either e-mails or copies of e-mails to human resources. My boss told me that another promotion was coming open. One human resource recruiter responded back in a cold, bureaucratic way without apology that there were only so many people who had applied for the job (he got an "F" in internal customer service from me).

The two human resources people that I had talked to were quite confused and it took a second conversation to get the point across that the *&#$ website did not work for me. I finally got an apology for the organization moving from the paper to web-based system.

The phone call with Human Resources took place in front of "Fritz" and the nurse who I have cited as being guilty of awfulizing. The nurse complimented me about how I talked to the H.R. rep. Both Fritz and the nurse gave me rare sympathy.

It also turned out that there was something of a human drama where me, my boss, and my boss's boss all made assumptions. I assumed that my application had gone through. My boss, who had interviewed two of the individuals assumed her boss was interviewing me separately. My boss's boss had assumed I had changed my mind because she had not received my application.

The Emotional Fallout

I was very mad. I felt that I was cheated. I felt stupid. I felt awkward. I was numb. I thought my boss's boss had made some serious mistakes because she had moved the hiring process at warp speed as it was only 14 days from first internal listing to actually announcing the winner.

I did not hear my boss's boss's high heals clunking in the hallway the next day. I knew she was in the office given her two e-mails, but I got the sense that she was avoidant. I thought that was good because I needed the distance. Everything she had done to that point was at warp speed.

She has identified herself as a "high performer." I have identified her as "driven" and a "bull in a china shop" because of her string of rapid decisions with subsequent recinds. Driven is really not a good state to be in because there is really no inner peace and the judgment in terms of management decisions tends to be poor.

I tried to logically tell myself that I was receiving divine redirection. To be truthful, it still did not end the pain.

I did have one conversation on the day after the announcement with my boss. My boss (being a borderline personality) was coping probably worse that I was. She was calling me again and again with some pretty weird concerns. She then called me down to her office.

She immediately started to discuss the problem about working for her since I was applying for other jobs. I told her that since I have the Ph.D. I owed it to my family to move off the line (I should have said myself included). We talked about the boffo of my not getting the inteview for the promotion. I told her openly that it was awkward, but it at least helped that finally someone from human resources apologized for the web-based system. The conversation was of marginal help.

The weekend aftermath.

In the midst of the next several days I had felt pretty dark. I was sad and but I had spurts of energy with my anger. I was mad at myself and I was mad at my boss's boss.

I had hopes for a promotion with a salary increase. I had hopes for the next promotion that I could actually have the title "manager" or "director." I found myself grieving.

So, I have been feeling stuck, like I imagine others to be feeling.

During the next few days, the news about increasing unemployment rates also made me depressed. I thought back to my days in early 1992 when I was looking for a ministerial job after I had graduated from seminary and I had received two flush letters from churches that were cold--and my hopes for being in parish ministry as an associate were dashed in the midst of a recession.

I still hurt eight days later. This kind of crap hurts. It is supposed to hurt. It is human to hurt.

We try to pose as tough, mature human beings, but no matter how tough the exterior shell or mask we put on we still hurt on the tender inside. Being tough can be a private hell if it is taken to extremes.

Accepting our tender side makes us real, and free. Being real has been one of my pursuits.

While we need interpersonal boundaries and not give too much information to people, telling trusted people that we are hurting in and of itself is healing and relieving of sorts--it is much of the basis of what helps people in individual therapy.

This last week of January 2009 has not been one of the worst in the history of the United States, but it has been painful. The joy of Barack Obama becoming the first African-American president appears to have been forgotten with all the news stories of layoffs and unemployment.

The pain will go on for awhile. Right now the news media is not exactly offering us any hope. The president is not exactly offering us any hope either. (Of course, I think that he is using the current rhetoric of pending economic depression to push his stimulus package through.)

Many of us are screaming inside. Many of us are anxious and worried if our jobs will be safe or if we will ever get another job? The current news is not helping.

I had a lot of restless energy to deal with during the days both from the national news, and my personal stuff. I wore myself out in two ways: I took a hatchet and chopped up a lot of tile on the garage floor, and I concentrated on my next journal article submission. I also baked a lot of pizza for an office pizza party.

During the chopping of the floor, I wondered if my whole chances of advancement in the organization were shot? I pondered what I needed to do to make some kind of recovery?

I asked myself "What was important?" What did I need to do? I also was grateful to the bank manager for supplying the word "character."

I sensed that there was a triangle of drama that I needed to nip in the bud like I have done in my current job. I decided that I needed to make myself indispensible. I decided that I needed to show character. I decided that I needed to press on in the pain.

I decided that this was possibly the best type of job interview where I had was going to show that I was one of the greatest employees they could promote. I also decided that this was a great test of whether or not the boss's boss was going to be someone I could work for. As quirky as those thoughts were, I made my my plans.

I decided that I needed to make every effort to show what character I had so that they were on my team the next time I applied for a promotion (should that opportunity present itself). The harder things of showing character meant making an apology. I needed to make an apology to my boss and my boss's boss for assuming that my application had gone through.

I decided that I have gained some trust or stature with the more difficult work team. They have seen me handle personal adversity with character.

Well, I did make the apologies. I made the pizza.

I did not get to serve the pizza given that there has been ice and snow in Louisville that shut down the city for the better part of the week. But since I made the apologies, I have ruminated less than I thought I would.

I also completed the draft of my journal article (where I cut 59 pages down to 36). I think that I used the adrenaline generated from the anger.

I have been jamming to angry or hard songs like Gotta Be Someboy by Nickelback and Paralyzer by Finger Eleven. My wife thinks that I am blowing out my one good ear. Maybe I am.

I think that I have been doing the best that I can do. It is all I can do in the moment.

The best that we can do is rarely ever perfect, but it is where character is shown when the pain is real. It is one thing to take solace in.

Victimhood aint going to cut it any more Rev Lowery

2009-01-20T18:49:00.000-08:00

Warning: this is not politically correct today--and I am not apologizing.

I tried to take in today to get a sense of what Inauguration Day meant to me. There is no denying what today means in the history of our country. It is a milestone in many different ways. Yes, it should be quite significant in terms of an bi-racial/black American becoming the 44th president.

But the message I am getting today is the following : Victimhood and self-righteous attitudes seem to go hand in hand.

Note Rev. Lowery's benediction that closed with the following lines:

Lord, in the memory of all the saints who from their labors rest, and in the joy of a new beginning, we ask you to help us work for that day when black will not be asked to get in back, when brown can stick around ... when yellow will be mellow ... when the red man can get ahead, man; and when white will embrace what is right. That all those who do justice and love mercy say Amen.

Rev. Lowery, I have a couple of questions. First, are you talking about UPS? Did UPS pay you for making that statement? (Brown can do a lot for you, but they would rather run off with your package than stick around--they get paid for being on the go.) Third, what is right? What does justice and mercy mean in your prayer?

I believe that you are guilty of prayer weaseling. You did not get my agreement in this prayer--you preached to me instead of praying for the country. We called it prayer weaseling in seminary because one is using prayer for something other than the purposes of prayer.

The victim card

Furthermore, I thought that you were guilty of playing the victim card, even on this day. Your prayer sounded pretty self-righteous out of such victimhood.

I think the victim thing was behind the "It's a black thing you don't understand" of the 1990's. It was an attempt to be existential. Oh yeah, it was existential.

However, I saw a number of African Americans (who called me a Euro-American) beat the dead horse of "it's a black thing" into dog food. In Social Work School. I had a very narcissistic black professor who I swear was trying to make us feel guilty for all the Jim Crow laws that were passed way before we were born. We were supposed to feel guilty because we were white.

Luckily, I had another black professor who was obviously more grounded and open and did not seem to act like I was responsible for all the history of the United States. It helped me see the distinction.

Today, victimhood was easy. It was apparently easy for Rev. Lowery.

Those who claim victimhood

Claiming victimhood is easy for any group that wants to claim it is oppressed. Victimhood is easy for many gays I have known who touted that anything in disagreement with them is Homophobia (and I found it very very difficult to see where they were snubbed, discriminated against or abused). Religious Fundamentalists claim victimhood. Victimhood is easy for Hamas who continues to exploit and waste the lives of the poor of the Gaza Strip. Victimhood is easy for a number of narcissts and borderline personalities I have had to deal with. However, the victimhood gets pretty old--especially for me.

Victimhood breeds self-righteous anger. Self-righteous anger is only so good for so long. Self-righteous anger often seems to lie beside self-loathing.

In today's world you may be a victim. You may be a victim of the recession and cut-backs at your job. You may be a victim of back-stabbing. You may be a victim of abusive family members and neighbors. You may be a victim of rape or violent crime.

But there is a difference between being a victim and latching onto victimhood. Being a victim is what happens. Holding onto victimhood is a negative choice.

Victimhood=irresponsibility

People who practice victimhood give themselves permission be irresponsible long after the traumatic event has happened. It gets old after awhile, and the one practicing victimhood only becomes a victim of themselves.

Reasonable people with fair self-esteem exit stage right because the are burned out dealing with the stress of an angry person. They see the different and are not going to tolerate it any longer.

In this day and age, I call upon people to take responsibility for themselves. We steer our own ships on the course of life. You and I will get made fools of, and we will be victims at some time or another.

We make choices every day. Sure we do not all have the same choices, but you and I must play the cards we are dealt every day. That is life--it is not particularly fair, whether you are white, black, yellow, red, or brown.

Be responsible for yourself today.

I am more of a culturalist than a structuralist in terms of my view of poverty, and I think that everyone willing to take the risk in choosing something better, can get somewhere different. It is all up to each one of us as it is the one life we get (and no I do not believe in reincarnation). This means, if you lose a job, look for another one. If you have bill collectors calling you, talk to them and do your best to negotiate deferrment of payments.

We all must decide what is right and what is just--even if it does not jive what Rev. Lowery thinks. Victimhood just is not it.

Okay Joy Behar, now listen to some reality

2009-01-19T17:41:00.000-08:00

There have been many things I could have written today. I thought about writing about how the economy has been said to have turned the corner. I could have written about the layoffs at work. I could write about the beer-flavored potato chips I have found intriguing tonight (for sale at ALDI).

I admit that I am writing with a harder attitude tonight. I am being critical of a public figure. I would be surprised if she reads this because I am sure this is not being picked up by Google.

But it is the eve of Barack Obama being ignaurated as the 44th president of the United States. Some of the idealistic black and white thinkers are expecting him to be the magical liberal who is really going to make changes.

I work during when The View is on but I get to see clips now and then. On this show, I see ignorant people talk about politics. They are far more personalities than they are intellectuals and it shows.

Joy Behar is someone that comes to mind the most. She comes across as the consumate ignorant, self-righteous liberal who talks in black and white terms in all the clips that I have seen. Bush was all bad. Obama is all good. According to my source, she wore her 01-20-2009 button today. Well Joy, you do not have my respect.

For the record, I respect educated liberals. My favorite was the late Patrick Moynihan, senator from New York. I also respected the late Paul Simon, distinguished senator of Illinois (whom I personally met in 1987). On TV, I like Allen Colmes, and I hope FOX puts him back on soon. Eleanor Clift also impressed me. Bob Bechtel also seems to impress me with his ability to give grounded analysis. But Joy is not one of them.

Also For the record, some Marxist analyses such as that by David Harvey and Christopher Pickvance makes sense to me. We can thank them for giving us Urban Political Economy and new objects for study and to give some critical thought about neoliberal economics.

But Joy, I say two words to you: disjointed incrementalism. It is the principle identified by Clarence Lindblom that says government moves slowly and in very messy directions. What this means in our current context is that President Obama is going to be obstructed by Congress--both the DEMOCRATS and the Republicans.

Did you get that Joy? There will be gridlock. We actually like it that way because we as Americans do not like change--contrary to Obama's election campaign slogan. It got the vote of all the overly-idealistic people. The majority of on-fire liberals have no concept of this.

Obama is not going to get all his plans accomplished. He will get very, very few things done. Surveys will show in a few years that the American public will be dissatisfied with him.

Yeah, he will pick a few pieces of low-hanging fruit by executive order, but he will not resolve the Middle-East wars. One of the greatest secrets, Joy, is that both Democrats and Republicans were in favor of us going over there, and many Democrat Representatives to the US House are going to keep their options open for spin purposes in the 2010 elections. They will keep voting for us to be over there to be the iron hand.

Now, if you are reading this, and you are not Joy Behar, I think that the first step in reducing your sense of disappointment about the upcoming months and years of more of the same Washington gridlock, is to accept disjointed incrementalism. Do not expect miracles out of Washington, D.C.

The only way we will get any dramatic change is if there is another national crisis like 09-11-01. The only way we will get nationalized medicine is if there is a national crisis in healthcare. Otherwise, it will be business as usual because to many people have their hands in the pot and have too much money at stake.

Last time I checked, this was America. Yes, you have a choice. You have a choice to think for yourself, even in this time of crisis. Getting some understanding on how government works makes for improved coping in times like these.

Pressing on with 2009. This too shall pass

2009-01-10T19:43:00.000-08:00

I have been pressing on with the new year. The first full work week of 2009 has come and gone.

Frankly, it is not much different for me. The same cast of characters I have had to deal with have been their dysfunctional selves.

I think that the unemployment rate of 7.2 percent and the announcement from Obama on Thursday that things are going to be bad for sometime has made some people just want to pull the covers over their heads. But Obama's announcement was smart--it is a subtle form of CYA as many expect him to be the savior--which he is not.

However, the media-magnification informational intensification effect truly is strong right now. There is an atmosphere of doom and gloom right now. For people who are looking at the big picture of the future, the future may look like one big black wall that everyone is going to run into and splatter and die.

In trying to think critically for myself right now, I find myself asking several questions. What really matters right now? What is the reality? What is the best thing to be doing right now? How much should I really be worrying?

What really matters right now?

I have decided that what really matters right now is that I take care of life on a daily basis. Life has its requirements from day to day. You can look too much at the overall and screw up the easy, little, but necessary things that require your attention.

I also think that in the times of recession, the intangibles of life come to the forefront. Character is what is there when the money is not. Character is more than integrity . . . it is the fortitude to do what needs to be done. Many ordinary, shy and timid people show character--it is just plain boring and will never make for a good movie or TV show.

What is the reality?

What the reality is . . . is what your eyes and ears tell you. You have a brain to sift it for you. My reality is that I and my family have what we need. Yes, life is not perfect, and there are some chinks in the armor, but the good news is that we are not in a hot, all out war.

What is the best thing to be doing right now?

I think that the best thing to be doing now is living your life. Make your list of priorities. Work on what you can work on. If you are out of work, look for a job. If you are feeling down about yourself, do something to improve your mind, body and spirit by getting an educational book for video at the library and turn off the TV news after 30 minutes. (I suggest learning statistics or something like accounting or the Linux system.)

I also think that it is important to sift your social circle. People who want to talk about the economy all the time are people who are obsessing. They are stuck in their fears. I have a few of them and I cannot change them--I can only walk away or put in my ear plugs.

How much should I be worrying?

I do believe that worry is a surprisingly normal human habit. So many thought patterns become worry. We truly feel vulnerable in so many ways. When we start to think about our vulnerabilities, we then go to those events or situations where our vulnerabilities will get us hurt. We realize our insecurities and then we start to worry.

We need to worry as little as possible. I know that doesn't do much for you, but I have yet to meet someone who got rich from worrying. I have yet to meet anyone who really benefitted from worrying.

This too shall pass!

Life is very much not what we as a nation want right now. We want an economy that is kicking butt and where people are spending away and are happy. (I sadly believe that we as a nation will never be happy--it is our right to be unhappy and we seem to take full advantage of it. It is what we do instead of pursuing happiness.) However, I offer the message of hope that this too shall pass.

As I have said in this blog before, the recession of 1991-1992 passed. I felt like I was in a desert. I made it through one day at a time and it ended.

There are 355 days of them left in 2009 and we will not live all of them at one time. We will live each of them one day at a time. January 1, 2010 will come.

Until then, there will be some difficult days and there will be some good days. Life is not that hard one day at a time. Each one shall pass.

Happy New Year: Goals and Not Resolutions

2009-01-01T12:09:00.001-08:00

January 1, 2009.

This is about the tenth time I have rewritten this lead. There are so many things I could start off with, but given the mission of this blog being coping, I will strive to stay focused.

It is a new year and a new milestone. Where am I aiming? What do I want to accomplish in the next 12 months? I have learned that if I want something, I must focus.

Focus indeed. I have learned something different about focus this week. I did a mens group where there were a number of men who had been hurt very badly in their past. They had trauma from childhood and younger adulthood (some pretty bad @*#& I cannot mention here). Two in particular indicated that they were often distracted by their flashbacks and lose focus on life in general. They would get irritable and upset quite often, and of course they wound up in the psychiatric hospital.

I think that the Christmas season is that time where people get so distracted by their pain and suffering that they cannot see anything else or think about anything else. I can relate.

December 31 comes somewhat as a day of mercy that the holiday is almost over and that we can get back to the regular suffering and not the extra-crispy suffering. For some, January 1 is a regular time for people like myself to think about the new year.

Of course with this January 1 there is still the recession talk. However, the recession news is being over-shadowed by the latest incursion by Israel in the Gaza strip; one piece of bad news being pushed away by worse piece of news.

As I have mentioned elsewhere, I can focus on the bad news, or I can put my mind somewhere more productive. As I mentioned up above, I am asking some questions of focus.

I am working with a legal pad right now. I am making myself a list with different categories of accomplishments: Academic, Home Improvement, Professional, Personal Improvement, Financial, Recreational. I plan to limit myself to 30 items on the list--too many items makes for feeling overwhelmed and frustrated.

I have decided that I do not like resolutions. Resolutions are too general and easily forgotten. Resolutions are also something negative in nature.

How do you decide what goals you want to work on?

It is my opinion that we decide our goals by looking at where we are dissatisfied in our lives. Goals should resolve our needs and dissatisfactions when they are accomplished. The accomplishment of a goal should bring us pleasure in the form of satisfaction.

Goals (if they are good ones) are measureable, concrete, specific, and achievable (and may I add legal and moral). Goals tend to be positive in nature.

Goals also are both long term and short-term. Long term goals are going to take some time--like redoing the floor in my garage. Short-term goals are tasks that can be done in a short period of time like rewriting my will, or reading Oliver Twist.

Even if the economy stays sour and I am still a social worker on the line at the end of 2009, I plan to have completed a number of goals on the list in the next 12 months that I can feel good about. I plan to create some feelings of satisfaction but more so feelings of accomplishment and contentment.

Satisfaction versus contentment

Satisfaction is probably what many of us are wanting in this day of discontent. Satisfaction is what we all want as human beings--it is a place where all our needs and wants are taken care of.

However, I think of what we are best to go for in this day of recession is contentment. Contentment is more accepting that our needs are met and that is okay. It is not terrible that we do not have everything we want as what we want changes from time to time.

We are powerless to get everything that we want when we want it. Even the richest men and women in the world cannot get everything they want when they want it.

Thoughts on making goals meaningful and getting them completed.

I am going to write the list down and then I am going upstairs and printing out several copies. I plan to put the copies in several places where only I can see them.

This year I am going to plan a schedule for different tasks. I am going to dedicate different days of the week to different types of goals. I think that will make life a little more interesting if not less boring. It will structure my time and leave less time for worrying and fretting.

The point of it all

In the end we can sit around and watch the news and fret about what is happening or what could happen. Making the list of goals for the new year can help focus on what you can do versus what you cannot do. Focusing on the possible things and the controllable things makes for a more stable and less anxious person.

Christmas: No Great Expectations and No Great Disappointments

2008-12-25T17:11:00.001-08:00

Christmas Day 2008.

We are at my parents for this holiday. Of course this holiday will be memorable. I have the Ph.D. now and this is a getaway of sorts.

Fun over the past few days

We will remember the food poisoning that my wife and I got in Georgia eating the salad at a friend's house. We will remember laying on our backs for about two days with cramping stomachs and having little energy.
I will probably remember taking my kids to the nearby McDonalds on Monday and only drinking Diet Sprite while my kids at their Happy Meals.
We will remember our daughter throwing up in our car yesterday on our way to the mall for lunch.

But today had its fun too.

Mom got sick before lunch and directed my wife and I to go out and find some side dishes because she did not want us to cook. Luckily, the Winn-Dixie was open and we got what we needed. Dad did not realize that the turkey breast he bought yesterday was seasoned with a southwest rub.

The normal disappointment of Christmas

I think that all of the different sicknesses and turns kept me thinking about my usual holiday angst. Normally, I have found Christmas to be a disappointing day in and of itself unless I am busy or distracted.

I suppose that for whoever may be reading this, it is not necessarily a great day for any number of reasons. In a sense, I became a social worker/therapist out of this quest for the most part.
Memories of Christmas are not always good or pleasant. Memories of Christmas are often horrifying or depressing. Some families have just too much garbage or dysfunction to be able to sit in the same building to be happy together. Being home for Christmas isn't worth much either.
For others the pain of the holiday is much more simple. I am recalling a patient in my program who talked about her mother dying on Christmas. She cannot stand Christmas.

The problem is that December 25 comes every year. It does not get excluded from any calendar. It is an official holiday.

The good news for those of us in pain or angst is that Christmas is almost over.
There are 24 hours to Christmas Day. It begins and ends. Tomorrow starts Kwanzaa—with a different celebration for different purposes.

In western culture, Christmas has become a season to meet the demands of the economy. The economy has stretched Christmas to start earlier and earlier. It no longer starts at Advent. When the economy tanks, Christmas tanks.
In 2008 there is all the angst and pain about the economy. Some have lost jobs. Some are worried about jobs. Some are worried about the amount they put on their credit cards this year. The news media speaks for our collective economic pain, whereby we as a nation have not spent enough money for the retailer's bottom line.
Because the economy is bad, Christmas is bad.

We want the pain to stop

Regardless of who we are, we want the pain to stop. We want peace. We want satisfaction and fulfillment.

The key to getting pain to stop is to find ways to stop thinking about it. Your pain and my pain will always be with us. We continue to give it power when we dwell on it.

You and I have the power to give today its own meaning and shape today.

I cannot get you over your own hump. I can only do for me. I can tell you what I do for me, and maybe you can make it work for you too.

I have found myself during this vacation thinking about painful times. I have had to be firm with myself and tell myself that it is only going to matter as much as I let it matter today.

Little things that worked today

Despite the quirkiness of the week, I think that I got lost in a number of little things that built up into a great deal of satisfaction. I would like to think that they all happened because I had them all thought out before, but I did not. They kind of happened, and I was willing to let them happen.

I have found myself creating meaning today by having a number of good long talks with my dad over the southwestern turkey breast and the potato soup. I found myself creating meaning by being with my kids at the pool and showing them how I can stand on my hands under water (to the consequence of continued pain in my right ear). I found meaning trying to help my kids look for shells at a beach with a rough sea.

Tomorrow I head back to my regular life and all the turmoil that the media-magnified information-intensity effect creates. I do not know what the future will hold or how things will work out. That is where I place my faith in God.

However, as simple and quirky as this day was, I think it was worth it and I will cherish it in the chapter of my memories. I did not have great expectations and so I did not have great disappointments.

Settling In for the Holiday

2008-12-14T10:10:00.000-08:00

Graduation is Thursday. I will get to be called "Doctor" officially, although some people have been calling me that already.

I have started to get signals that unless something remarkable happens, there is little future for me at the hospital. I started to look for other jobs.

December 2008 is a heck of a time to start looking for jobs. There is a recession going on.

I am mindful of my sales job that I held in 1991. I had a file full of leads that had told me in August to call them back in December. There was a recession in 1991 too.

I thought surely out of all those leads I was going to close some sales. I went though the file in no time. They all delayed me again.

I was desperately looking for a steady job. Sure I had the school bus company I was driving for, but I was a recent masters degree graduate and I was of the opinion that surely I would get something by the virtue of my having moved on beyond college. Surely, since I was a seminary graduate, I was going to get hired by a church. I was naive.

At that time in history, nothing was going to move. The days and weeks crept by slowly. I was not going to get anything immediately. September, 1991 through June, 1992 was one of the slowest time periods in my life. There were no job openings when I thought I needed one. I was suffering.

After a church committee in Columbia, Missouri sent me an insensitive shallow letter, I decided I was going to head to Social Work school. Church personnel committees were too sloppy for me to tolerate. I decided that I was not called to parish ministry.

That was a time of humility. I am mindful of that time now that I have made it to the Ph.D. level. I could still be a line-level social worker in one year from now.

There was one other time in November, 1999 when I decided to look for a new job after I felt abused at a mental health agency by an administrator. It took me five months before I found another job. I started looking in December.

The good news was that those times both passed. The economy had improved, and then there was a recession again in 2000-2002 after the "Dot-Com Bubble." The economy improved again.

I am quite sure that few employers are hiring in December. They are wrapping up the calendar year. They are all evaluating their budgets as to whether or not they are going to hire. They are putting things off until after Christmas. It is the way of organizational function in America. For those of us looking, we are now waiting.

Waiting is more painful when all the world can do is talk about hard times. It really is a heck of a time when you are in a position you do not want to be in and nothing good seems to be happening. Things are slow and things seem larger than life.

That is the reality. This is the time to be settling in. Settling in is difficult. But I think that is what is called for right now.

How do we settle in? First, expect things to move slower. Move slower yourself--not everything has to get done today. Discover other things than what needs to be purchased with money.

Read about history and the past--people made it through these times in the past. Most people did not sink--they pressed on. I can too.

Since I've Been Busy I've been Better

2008-12-09T16:10:00.000-08:00

I have have had my moments in the past week, but I have actually been better over the last couple of days. The reason: I have been busy.

Idleness only encourages anxiety

Yes, I am now waiting. I have found myself worried at times. The more bad news about the economy--the more I have worried. If I am worried, I am sure that others are worried.

I have found myself sitting around waiting. Of course, the things I have had to wait for included getting my paycheck so I could afford a few things. That was when my mind was really going.

My wife suggested that we put pictures back on the wall now that the siding is all on the house. That was actually quite meaningful. I put up my kids' baby and toddler pictures. It was low-demand concentration that made the walls look good.

My job also has been busy. I have someone out sick. I have had extra to do. It focused me on the business at hand.

Focusing on what you can do

Mind you, I am estimating that at least 92 percent of whoever is reading this has his or her job. They, like me are still working and bringing home the paycheck. That is something that can make us feel better or at least less stressed.

At my place of work, the economy talk has gotten old. That is a good thing given some of the characters I have to supervise. We are back to focusing on our main mission. It is a good thing.

At your place of work, this is a time to focus on your core product or your core service. Mind you not all of us like our jobs, but our work is what is in front of us.

Focusing on the details of your work is better than focusing your mind on things you have no control over. The quality of your work can get better when you focus on it which can lead to more personal satisfaction.

We want to avoid being driven

While focusing on quality in our jobs, it is important to maintain a sense of balance. I have been learning some non-examples of balance from my interim assistant vice president.

She has been literally driven in the way she has been doing her work. She has been driving my boss crazy. I have found myself irritated by her behaviors. I have had to put out some fires with my subordinates.

People who are driven are essentially distracting themselves from the pain or anxiety inside. They work all the time. They act like they are going a million miles an hour. They are restless. They cannot stop.

In their driven state, they burn bridges or they distance themselves from what really matters.
My interim vice president has been quite condescending to some professionals who have been in the business longer than my the VP has been alive.

Driven people are going so fast down the highway of life that they miss the details along the side of the road. Their end result is often job burnout if the burnt bridges did not get them first.

Enough!

To reduce the likelihood of being driven, it is important to set some boundaries. First, you must be able to tell yourself "ENOUGH!" Only so much quality work is going to get done in a day.

Manage your boss

I think that there is much flexibility with many of our bosses. I have found it necessary to say to my boss that I will get as much done as possible today. I have worked to stop saying I will get it all done today. The exceptions to this are if you are under a quota or you have a set route you must run.

Even with the pressure that many firms and corporations are under to be as economizing and miserly as possible, I think that it is possible to negotiate some projects and tasks. If you know your boss's tendencies, you have some tools for negotiation.

What is it all about?

Bringing it back to full circle, I am about feeling better, feeling some sense of peace and some sense of sanity in this otherwise stressful time. The message is to be busy if you are anxious. Work is a good thing. Being productive and active is better than being idle and fretful. There is a limit to how busy one can get--balance is important.

So, find something that needs to be done, and get to it. There is satisfaction in doing something and doing it well.

Keeping your head about Obama. Cool the anti-Christ talk.

2008-11-27T19:49:00.000-08:00

I am going to talk about religion today. More precisely, theology. I trust that this will still be interesting.

I was originally going to write about being thankful on this day. I am thankful. My dissertation has been accepted by the graduate school of the University of Louisville, and I am now just waiting for graduation. I am also pondering my next move in my career.

But it was far more interesting to write about Obama and religion. My sister-in-law and my brother were talking at Thanksgiving today about how Obama could be the anti-Christ. My wife discussed with me today on the way home about what other women are saying at our church about Obama. They feel that we are now in the last days or end times. One woman in particular is being very dogmatic about how she feels that we are in the end times (that woman is a borderline who is nothing but emotion).

For those of you who have had a little bit of Sunday School, the academic word for the end times is Eschatology. It comes from the Greek for end Eschatos + logy. It means the study of end things. There are people in our churches that throw around the word as if they know something.

Yes, they probably know something. What they do know is enough to be dangerous and irresponsible.

In my experience, the ones who have thrown around their knowledge about Eschatology have had an inflated sense of self-importance. When I have talked to some of them to flush out their views, they were pretty guarded. There many ways I could go with Eschatology. There are many aspects of it (death, Heaven, judgment). It is also supposed to be a source of comfort—that God knows how things are going to end. However, the parts of Eschatology that most people are interested in has to do with sensational topics of the rapture, the great tribulation and the anti-Christ.

My history or emotional baggage

I grew up in Des Moines in the 1970's. I swear that city was the center of rapture talk. Des Moines was where the movie A Thief in the Night was shot. People I knew or had met were in the movie as supporting actors such as Clarence Balmer (his son Randall is a scholar worth reading).

David Breese, (who had a show on TV before he died, and has a Wikopedia entry) came to my church several times in the 1970's before he became famous. I think mom even had him at the house once.

My pastor at the church preached almost every Sunday night about the end times. At the church I grew up at, the worship choruses included Larry Norman's I'd wish we'd all been ready and Signs of the Times

I was made to listen to Oliver B. Greene, a radio evangelist at bedtime. Greene was from Greenville, South Carolina. Greene only talked about the rapture and the anti-Christ. I had many dreams about the rapture as a child.

I would say that I was immersed if not submerged in it. As an anxious child, I was overwhelmed by it. I had wondered a number of times if I had been left behind?

On top of all that, I have a mother that continues to obsess about the rapture and the anti-Christ. Mom would say frequently that some world figure was the anti-Christ. She watches Jack Van Impe and his wife Rexella.

My Quest

One of my quests when I went to seminary was to decide what I believed in terms of Eschatology. I made it some of my pet projects during breaks to read Eschatology. I chose to make it my optional project in systematic theology. I was out to understand the essence of how people arrived at their views. I sought to understand the difference between pre-tribulation, post-tribulation, pre-millennial, post-millennial and amillennial (no millenium).

I also engaged in conversations with people from other countries around the world. The focus on the anti-christ turned out to be a North American distinctive. People from South America, Europe, India, and Africa were awmillenial.

I tried sitting with an open Bible watching Jack Van Impe and got dizzy. He went too blooming fast and lost me. However, much centered around how he interprets one particular chapter in Ezekiel.

My conclusions

I discovered that for those who were fundamentalists in the north, Dispensational Eschatology was the standard for inerrancy (versus orthodoxy). I moved to the South and found in the 1990's that Southern Baptists focused more on denying women in ministry as the standard for orthodoxy.

I decided that there are many people who hold very similar beliefs on Salvation, Sin, God, Jesus, the Church, but differ very much on how things are going to end. They all believed in the need for a personal faith. They believed in original sin and the need for holiness. They all believed that Jesus was coming back again.

I asked the question: Is it essential to have a particular belief in how the world is going to end? No, it is not. Your view of the rapture is not going to get you into Heaven. I believe that confessing your sins and believing in Jesus as your personal savior is going to get you into Heaven.

Dogmatism about the end times has been more divisive than unifying. I saw too many people obsessing about the end times and it was not productive. They made themselves worry warts.

I also saw that the obsession about the rapture was a North American trait. A fellow student in seminary from India pointed that people around the world have been suffering while people in North America have had it very easy for the better part of 150 years. North America did not have two world wars tear up the landscape like Europe did.

Am I an expert? Hardly. I have decided what I believed. For the record, I am a post-tribulationist. I question whether the 1000 years or millennium will be a literal thousand years or a figurative amount of time.

How did I arrive at my view: it was about the interpretation method. What is the context of the scripture? As a result, I do not let the newspapers interpret the Bible for me.

Did my mother like my own opinion? No. She questioned whether I was even saved?

Some lay people even tried to convince me otherwise in 1990. When I did a student chaplaincy in 1990, I stayed with a retired pastor and his wife. The second question that came out of the pastor's wife was about my view of the end times. They had some friends who wanted to argue with me. They had no insight into how they were reading things into the scripture.

People who tend to focus if not obsess about end times things tend to be overtly emotional. They are black and white in their thinking. When their little worlds get shaken, they jump to conclusions which includes labeling people as being the anti-Christ.

For many, Barack Obama is a powerful symbol of change. He is a (really bi-racial) black American who by his very ethnicity is a change. He is the second change of magnitude in the past eight years with the 9-11 attacks. Again, many people's world views are shaken—they are accustomed to a white man in the White House.

I frankly think that Obama at best will be a doctrinaire democrat. I expect that he will do many of the mainstream things that other presidents do. He will have a low popularity rate in year 3, and maybe years 6 and 7 (should he be re-elected).

I expect my taxes to go up with his policies. However, my freedoms as a United States citizen will be unchanged. I will still have the right to pursue happiness.

Obama may have some connections to some Arabs. Yeah, but he will be subject to the same laws and restrictions that all presidents have been subject to. He will not be a dictator. The United States is still a republic with a representative democracy.

My Admonitions

So, Republicans, let's lay off the anti-Christ talk. You have choices, go campaign for your candidates with passion in 2010 and 2012.

Otherwise, live your life and take care of your day to day business. It does no good to obsess about who is the anti-Christ. Work for justice, show mercy to others and walk humbly with God.

I also would recommend that you avoid the Left Behind books, the Left Behind movie and the Jack Van Impe TV show. The Left Behind books are not the Bible. Furthermore, I find the Van Impe show to be of little practical value for someone who really wants to learn about the end times.

I am not trying to take food from any one's mouth, but if you must read Hal Lindsey or John Walvoord, also read something from George Ladd or Millard Erickson (good book on the options) to balance your picture of Eschatology. If you are looking for these books, Amazon or any of the online book sellers can hook you up with these authors.

Well, if you have questions, feel free to post them.

Now that the dissertation is completed, I can start worrying about feeling small.

2008-11-16T18:44:00.000-08:00

Well, the dissertation is completed. I defended it on Wednesday, November 12, 2008. They signed it but assigned a large number of minor revisions. I finished all the of the revisions today and I am ready to turn it in again tomorrow for the final approvals. As I look at my life, I can tell how the dissertation just took over.

It is good and it is bad. The good news is that after seven years, I have completed my doctorate. The bad news is that I have to find other meaningful things to occupy myself with. The panic and angst of the current world situation is just waiting to take over.

November has set in with its shorter days and colder temperatures. The green leaves of the warm days have turned their colors and have fallen from the branches that once held them and they are on their way to landfills. The early dusk gives the depressing signal to burrow in and hibernate and have few expectations for the winter. Some people develop the mood disorder, Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) as a result of the shorter days.

The depressing feelings have intensified with the global changes, national changes, city changes, and the changes close to me.

Barack Obama campaigned on change. He is about change. He will change things. He is already signaling what he is going to change. He is planning on closing Camp Gitmo allowing all of those one-track terrorists onto American soil for their trials. He is planning on issuing executive orders reversing much of what “W” did in terms of moral issues such as stem-cell research. He is going to push his agenda early and fast. Some of the democrat types around me did not expect this kind of stuff when they voted for him, and I sense some worry on their part.

Of course the global economy is regressing. People are losing their jobs all over the world both near and far.

The oligopoly of the American “big three” auto makers are wanting to get a piece of the federal bailout. It feels close to me given that I have a friend who works at one of the Ford plants here in Louisville. He will only work two weeks between now and February 2009 and receive unemployment the rest of the time.

My job site been very chaotic over the past two weeks while I was finishing the ton of dissertation revisions. The interim vice president has been making so many changes and my program director has been overwhelmed, and she has let the other supervisor make inappropriate decisions. There has been retrenchment where programs have been closing down. One of my departments is moving into a smaller space. It has felt even more scary.

I am still trying to decide how to feel about the fact that the job I had interviewed for is empty again. Even though I was told I did not make the semi-final cut, it is two months later, and the job listing is open again and nothing else has been said to me. What happened?

Graduating next month only makes me wonder whether I have a future at my current organization? It makes me wonder if I am going to have job-lock for the duration of the recession? I will be a Ph.D. Working on the line making less than other Ph.D's. Job-lock was a term used about 10 years ago referring to those people who hated their jobs but could not leave the jobs because of the pay, their debts, and the benefits they were getting at the time.

Now that I have spelled out all this depressing doom and gloom, the challenge is to cope.

I think that it is first okay to say that it is too much pressure to believe that you should feel fantastic. None of the cognitive behavioral techniques are magic. Nor do they always make you feel great. They are about rational thinking and not letting your imagination carry you into the self-made abyss where you are torturing yourself with the worst-case scenarios.

The worst

Those who constantly prepare for the worst, continue to live in the worst. They make themselves live in a guarded state that only creates physical and emotional stress.

Preparing for the worst reminds one of how much control you do not have. Preparing for the worst usually leads to a feeling of being overwhelmed because of all the possibilities for failure. One is just too vulnerable and ironically, preparing for the worst only reminds you of your vulnerabilities.

Regardless, one normally feels vulnerable in times like these, and yes one feels small. I felt very small and puny in the recession of 1991. However, no one really knew it because I did not tell others about it. No one knows what the other feels unless someone asks or tells. (If it would help you . . . You can tell me if you feel small—just make a comment on this entry.)

As part of feeling small, it is very difficult not to live in the worst, given that most of the news media, and talk radio continue to talk about all that is bad. The easy answer is to stop listening to the news, but this is really not practical.

Now, I think that I would get into a fight of rhetoric with some columnist or editor or other pundit about whether or not the media is really doing a service to the general public to continue to repeat all the bad stuff. The news media with its intensification effect asks its questions on a day to day basis what is news worthy? We just are not going to get away from bad news.

I go back to the premise that is is going to have to be normal and acceptable to feel bad. That is what people do in this time. We feel bad. We are going to feel bad. We are going to feel bad for sometime until we start to hear that companies are hiring again and the economy is recovering.

The good news is that the economy will get better again—recessions surprisingly last for relatively short periods of time. Yes, some people will still lose jobs and houses and will probably have to file bankruptcy, but it will be a small portion of the nation.

Where I live, they are expecting 8 percent unemployment next year. What that means is that 92 percent will retain their jobs and most will be working as normal. Will I be one of the 92 percent? I hope so, but nothing is guaranteed.

My basic game plan

While nothing is guaranteed, I am forming a basic plan of coping to feel not so small. This coping plan is one that seeks balance, fulfillment and satisfaction.

The heart of this plan is to make a new list of personal goals. These goals have nothing to do with the economy and paying off my debts (although I will have a second list for financial purposes).

These goals are going to be things that I want to achieve. For example, I am going to remove the old tile from the work room in my garage. I am also going to scan all my papers from my doctoral program and store them on CD ROM and shred the papers. I am going to reduce all my other papers to CD ROM. My overall goal is to de-clutter my life. My list is not complete, but I think it will help me not think too much about the news.

I also plan to have family game nights now that I am available. We had a most interesting game of Dominoes Friday night. Now that the doctoral program is practically over I want to keep doing the family game nights.

Overall, I figure that the more one commits to a game plan that occupies them in a very intense and involved way, the less worse one will feel.

Everyone will have to figure out what to do for themselves. Times like these have possibilities. They do not only have to be about fretting and dwelling and obsessing.

Coping with Fears at Work

2008-11-07T16:37:00.001-08:00

Hello again.

I get to defend my dissertation this coming week, and I have some time to pontificate. I have some positives going in my life, but as usual there are the negatives.

A lot has appeared to have changed in this world since I last wrote in October. Barak Obama has been elected president--that is a lot in terms of history. I would have thought that many of my staunch democratic co-workers would have been happy and dancing.

Mind you, I am not trying to be partisan here, but many of the more histrionic types at work have been self-righteously angry about how Republicans were evil and anyone who did not vote for Obama were stupid. Okay, now he is elected, and there was only a bit of happiness. Why were they not dancing? I think that they can never be happy.

One particular self-proclaimed "Massacheutts liberal" was still depressed the day after election day. I told him that I thought he would be more ebullient?

These histrionic, self-righteous types have moved onto another fear: that of the economy. We are having some changes at the hospital in the way people will be moved around. The histrionic are afraid all the more. They are talking recession and depression Why?

I have decided that some of the most histrionic and pessimistic types are idealists that cannot see gray areas. I think that this is really true of the staunchest Republicans and the staunchest Democrats. I have some family members who are Republicans and I have co-workers who are Democrats who fit in this category. My coworkers have moved onto the next potential catastrophe.

Well the next catastrophe could be work. There is going to be reorganization. Some programs are going to be closed. Some people are going to be moved around. There is retrenchment on the way at work. There are fears.

I have not heard anything official yet. I was told by equal in the department that he was part of the meeting late yesterday afternoon. He heard the decision.

I had some decisions to make myself at that time. I decided to start telling people about the upcoming changes in a vague, general way.

It turned out to be a good deal, because right after I had started telling people, my equal came over to one of my departments and opened his big mouth and gave far more information than I did. He has poor boundaries.

I had to be the voice of calm and reason. I had to be the one to reassure people. It was not easy damage control.

I think that it is not easy to be calm and think with reason period when others are afraid at work.

We continue to be saturated with bad news. The media continues to intensify the bad news with the MMII (media magnified informational intensification) effect. There is almost a brain-washing effect.

While admitting I do not know what the future holds, I am willing to bet that it will not be as bad as people fear. Yes, the economy is in a downturn, but for 92-94 percent of us, we will keep our jobs. We will have what we need. We will keep busy. We will still be able to afford to go out to eat.

How do we maintain our sanity in times of change and retrenchment when there are fears at work? Here are 10 suggestions:

1. We commit to a simple philosophy of calmness--we do not have to join others in their hysteria.
2. We work hard at our jobs.

3. We turn off the TV and Radio at times.

4. We back away from the people who are obsessing about the recession and talking about it all the time. We eat lunch somewhere else.

5. We do things that we enjoy.

6. When we are not working we do things that matter for the people that matter in our lives.

7. We go to our houses of worship and we practice our faith.

8. We learn new things to better ourselves as people.

9. We choose our attitude each day.

10. We take care of ourselves by proper nutrition, and proper sleep.

These ideas are not going to eradicate the fears at work, but they will help us stay calm. Staying calm takes work and ongoing self-care.

When have you gotten enough news?

2008-10-11T16:42:00.000-07:00

I am quite sure that if you are reading this, I do not have to say much of anything about the economy this week. You are probably well-enough informed about the economy. The media has gone into overdrive to repeat again and again the gloomy, dark and depressing messages about recession, stock market decline and unemployment.

I tease with this quirky statement: I found that my life did not essentially change in the past week even with all the bad news.

But first, I have to go back to my favorite object lesson—that borderline and histrionic nurse I work with—Valerie. She came me more pause for thought with the question: when have you gotten enough information?

She had to go to watch President Bush's brief statement yesterday (Friday, October 10, 2008) morning. She announced that she was going to go to the other room to watch it and the other nurse went with her. Valerie came back sounding disappointed and informed those in the office that it was pretty much like his other statements this week. Well, yeah, I figured that.

In my managerial attempt, I made a philosophical comment that the President was trying to calm people down. It did not work because the semi-retired psychiatrist came with his I-phone and they (Valerie and the doctor) had to talk about the economy again.

The interesting part is that she had not heard anything new yesterday. She just kept repeating and repeating things. As I have mentioned before, Valarie has few limits and incessantly obsesses. She has a problem with setting limits and showing some self-restraint. She is constantly worried about missing something and she is a miserable soul for it, but I do not think she is missing anything.

Are you really missing anything?

I, like others, do not want to miss anything. The question is: in the course of a day, do you really miss anything? Anxiety makes us more sensitive and feel more vulnerable as if we have to stay more in touch.

Also, people with lower self-esteem pretty much do not want to look stupid. The effect of the Valeries of this world create the effect that if you do not know what Valerie seems to know, you are stupid. Gee, they need to pay more attention to the media just like Valerie so you are not looking stupid.

Well, just like the media, Valerie is just repeating things. I figure that 10 years ago, I would have gotten sucked in by Valerie.

I think I have grown personally to see through Valerie and I have found the power to choose not to be like her. So, I share with you my knowledge and whether it works for you is for you to decide.

Parsimony

In a grand sense Valerie serves as a metaphor for the media. The media repeats information. In fact, there is a broadcast principle called “Parsimony.” In the context of Broadcasting, “Parsimony” means that information is scarce and must be repeated and shared as much as possible. That is why the cable networks repeat their news commentary shows at least once in a given day—there is not enough newsworthy stuff happening every moment of the day. On top of that, the AP tends to do a number of rewrites of stories throughout a day or weekend to make the old news seem fresher even when the facts have not changed.

When considering parsimony with my term “media magnified informational intensity” (MMII), I think the media is saying the same things over and over through a given day but increasing the sense of distress for the viewer or listener. The media is kind of being like Valerie—making lots of noise and saying nothing much new, but the stress is being increased because you are exposed to it again and again.

The MMII can eventually give you the distorted sense that your life is going to “hell in a hand basket” with all the changes are are implied to be happening.

The different channels of information affect a number of our senses. You see the information in the digital video and audio clarity over and over again. You can feel the stress and immediacy in the stern tone of the anchors and commentators. You can see the vivid contrasts in the amazing graphs created by computers. You can feel the overwhelming emotion. Your stomach and muscles in your head begin to tighten as your imagination explores what could happen to you.

I think that with technology, and new ways of distributing information, the MMII can only get worse.

The essential luxuries

When it comes to news convenience is being blurred with necessity. It is my impression (perhaps a nostalgic one) that prior to 1979 before CNN came on the air, the news was limited to the 6:30 pm newscasts of the big three networks, the radio, the daily newspaper, and the weeklies. Information came at a slower rate because there were truly fewer opportunities to get the message out and the technology was limited compared to now. Now, there are numerous ways to get the message out.

The electronic age created the paradox of “essential luxuries.” The digital age has amplified the paradox. There are more ways to check information and there will be even more ways to check information in future. You can get information in your paper, on your radio, on your TV, on your home Internet connection, and now on your pagers and cellphones. Some people, in their anxiety have felt the need to constantly check all the different sources of information. Well, they do so at their own peril.

Not all on the cable channels is really news

Where I am going with this is that not all information that comes over the different news media is “fact.” Much of the information is nebulous “analysis” or “opinion,” which means it is an interpretation by the pundit or commentator or expert. For the most part, the political and economic news happens between 9am and 5pm. What happens after that are usually car accidents and crimes.

Furthermore the liberal commentators tend to be negative in their analysis (they more like “awfulize”), and what they say is of little practical use to the average person in the first place. (Conservative commentators are also mostly negative.) Commentators discuss what they think you should believe about a situation. The more negative the opinion, the more emotive and inflammatory they become.

Our bodies and minds are connected and I believe thus, increasing numbers of people are going to become sufferers of “Panic Disorder.” Those already having anxiety disorders such as Valerie will only have more panic attacks. They will not be able to pull themselves away from their TV's, I-Phones and Internet. They will suffer from the MMII effect and make themselves paralyzed.

So, I ask several questions. How much news and opinion do you really need to take in? How much do you really need to listen to so you know what is going on? How often do you really need to go to Drudge or Yahoo News to be sufficiently informed?

Some useful questions

There is a difference between being adequately informed and obsessing. I have decided that a few diagnostic questions are in order to decide how much is too much information? Some are pretty nebulous and vague, while some are blunt.

How much do I really need to know what is happening?
How much was a directly affected by the information on the news?
Did I really learn anything different over watching the news show on the cable channel at night?
How much new information was really there over the last hour?
How much of a consequence did I suffer because I missed the last hour's newscast?
Did I suffer any real consequence because I did not watch the news all day?
How much better do you really have it than other people?
How likely is it that you are really going to end up in the gutter homeless, broke and starving, and be totally abandoned by everyone you know?
(Six part) To gain insight about what is real and what is blown out of proportion by the people around you (family, friends or co-workers).

Who is constantly talking about all the bad news?
Are they the ones who are talking a lot about awful things and obsessing about the economy and politics?
Do they ever admit that they are human and are wrong sometimes?
Do they ever talk about positive things?
Do they talk to hear themselves talk?
How much of a control freak are they?

My answers to the questions

The diagnostic questions could go on and on. But I have determined that the news media pretty much chews my food for me. I have been extra busy at my job lately and I have been fine with catching the news once or twice a day. When I have listened to the news over a couple of hours, I did not learn anything new that I could use and I did not suffer any consequence for missing the news the whole day. And yes, Valerie is a control freak who seems to talk to soothe herself by talking loudly right when she comes in and she is hopelessly dwelling on stuff she can nether control nor change making herself miserable.

Concluding comments

You and I will still likely feel the weight of the current economic situation because it is all around us. People in all corners of society will talk about it, but they are saying nothing new. We can only take care of ourselves and no one else.

Okay, lets say you want to be able to fit in your office or at your family and social gatherings. You need something to talk about. I present to you that you only need to read the paper daily (hard copy or online) and one or two newscasts per day and you will be up to date.

If someone asks you a leading question about whether you have heard this or that on such and such a show? And you do not want to look stupid, I have two suggestions:

No. I have been limiting my intake of news for the sake of good mental health and so far it seems to be working.
No. I have been reading this really cool blog that suggests that only so much news is really necessary to be sufficiently informed.

Well, that is another note to myself and whoever else cares. Here is wishing yourself and me peace of mind in the midst of this turbulent time. Your feedback and comments are always welcome.

P.S. . . . I have been given what is hopefully my final set of revisions on my dissertation and I will get to defend in mid-November. If I do not write next weekend, please understand—I will be following my own advice in this blog by getting lost in the quagmire that I have been in for three years, and at least I have some hope that it is over soon.

Office conversations: The stock market and the financial crunch is currently the hot topic.

2008-10-07T20:19:00.000-07:00

I took notes today about what was going on in one of the departments I oversee at the hospital. The nurses were on a roll. The two could just not stop obsessing over the Stock Market and the financial crisis.

It did not help matters that a certain semi-retired psychiatrist came in with his I-Phone and was checking stocks in the nursing station as part of the discussion. He also went into a history lesson that I felt he was probably ill informed to give to the two nurses including something about 1932 and the Great Depression.

The psychiatrist expressed his concern about the possible slippery slope if the recession became a depression. He felt that it could affect us here in the psychiatric hospital as people might stop coming in for therapy and help. Maybe so but in my observation, it only fueled the two nurses to obsess more--they went on for another 10 minutes.

There was talk about retirement plans and the safety of 403-B's and 401-K plans. There was the sound of panic. Fritz made his comment about his retirement plan is to drop dead at age 60.

I got tired of it and wound up doing an unsolicited fatherly intervention by giving them a copy of a story in today's USA Today about how the economy was bringing on stress. It at least shut them up until lunch time.

I went to the other office I oversee. They were talking about the dog one of the social workers was 'expecting' and 'pregnant with.'

Bizarre but then it was not about the recession and finances. The one who is expecting the dog to be born admitted that it is futile to be thinking about the financial stuff because she cannot control it. In fact she cited how she heard a life coach on the radio talk about focusing on only what you can control is important for mental health.

Bravo. Bizarre is sometimes better. Thinking about baby golden retriever puppies sounds quite obtuse, but the stress level is bound to be much lower than dwelling on the economy at this time.

Next . . .

I listened to the debate between Obama and McCain tonight while I gave the toilet an enema. (True--the toilet snack from walmart did not work, so I had to take it off and take it outside and wash it out with the garden hose).

Obama and McCain are both talking about things not being as bad as people think they will be—a recession but no depression.

In a sense, they are saying the same things. They are giving their versions of hope.

Which label would you prefer? In reality with our congressional system, neither plan is ever going to get passed in its pure form. Furthermore, I honestly think that the economy will straighten itself out before either one of their plans actually gets out of committee.

I have decided that in the last 48 hours, the media has really kicked up the stress level of the country. Yeah, the president has made enough statements throwing gasoline on the fire.

But in reality, we all decide how much we are going to let ourselves get stressed—me included.

I just have too many other things to do than fret over what I cannot control. Making the toilet work was my contribution to my family's and my own well-being tonight.

It was pretty satisfying and reduced my stress level to know I could do something like take it off and put it back on and it still works! No leaks either!

The slippery slope that politicians, media pundits, academics, and histrionic nurses dwell on frequently is rarely the reality. Toilets having problems is much more real and much more resolvable.

More on the weekend.

The rhetoric of our discontent.

2008-10-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

The recession rhetoric is coming to a head again. The Labor Department figures came out this past week that 159,000 jobs were lost in September and the unemployment rate is now at 6.1 percent.

I assume that there will be more jobs lost and that there will be more lead stories on newscasts about how bad things are. I assume that there will be a multitude of analysts with opinions about who is to blame.

In addition to all the hard luck stories about retailers hurting for sales and consumers suffering because they will not be able to afford Christmas, there will be a lot of depressing rhetoric stories that will not accomplish anything but fill airtime and irritate and depress people.

Republicans will blame Democrats. Democrats will blame Republicans. Third party candidates will blame the two-party system. The hope is that enough people will buy into someone's argument to vote.

I do not think that everything is Republican or Democrat. When it comes to who is at fault for the recession, the answer is: everyone, but does it really matter? A recession will come around in 2018 or 2019—the economy goes in cycles.

Nevertheless, politicians have a tendency to blame the other party for recessions. It is blame for a political purpose in the here and now.

As it seems to me, political rhetoric in our day and age serves political purposes such as good sound bytes, and zingers to embarrass the other party. I am struggling to recall when rhetoric actually did something good.

Nevertheless, it is the way it is. It is also the way it is that the news media will continue to cover it as a news substitute.

Rhetoric is timeless. It has been around forever. People have been making cheesy and stupid arguments forever.

Rhetoric is someone's argument for some purpose. While it sounds logical, I tend to turn it off. Rhetoric is a form of logic, but it is of little substance. I tend to be rather dismissive of such office conversations around political rhetoric.

Rhetoric is a substitute for real stuff happening. It is like the non-dairy cheese or the non-dairy coffee creamer. Staying in touch with the political rhetoric does not seem to mean actual political knowledge.

There is actually little to know about news events. Rhetoric seems to puff things up to larger than necessary size.

Rhetoric in our current day is usually shallow. It is attached to passion and emotion. Again, it is of little substance so the emotion has to be there to carry it and make it seem like there is something there.

Because of its passion and emotion and shallowness, it is also nebulous. Try to narrow a politician on what they will precisely do in response to the sky falling, and you will likely get them to verbalize an enigmatic and obscure answer about some governmental action that is imprecise and incomprehensible.

You will regret you even asked 99 percent of the time.

Rhetoric usually works best in large groups of people already of the same opinion. Otherwise, rhetoric rarely convinces the other side to go along.

Rhetoric may lead to a “tit for tat” response that gets plays out in news stories and media pundit shows at night. I call this political drama. Some call it “mudslinging” where you are attempting to make the opposition look dirty.

Political drama is essentially wrestling in that gussied up pig sty called the political area. Again, it is stressful to watch, listen to, and read.

Concretely, coping for me in this time means limiting my news intake. Yes, I am currently looking through a “Time” or “Newsweek” and then reading the paper daily.

I look at Drudge Report online at least once a day. I will also listen to the news on the radio.

I just cannot watch morning news shows such as “CNN morning” or “Fox and Friends.” They sit and continue to perpetuate political drama at this time.

One other thing that works is to remind me that rhetoric is just people's opinions. Some opinions are going to be significant and others are going to be insignificant.

For example in today's democratic response to the president's weekly radio message, Ohio Governor Strickland, a Democrat, blamed the Republicans for the economy. Big whoop. (The fairness doctrine gets abused way too much.)

When President Bush or some other nationally prominent Republican blames Republicans for the economy then it is news. Likewise, if a prominent Democrat blames the Democrats for something, then it too will be news that will get my attention.

I guess the other coping issue is “discernment” of rhetoric. I aim to be a person of substance. I aim to discern when something or someone is real.

When someone is using lots of emotion and little specificity in their criticisms or judgments of someone or something, it is rhetoric. Once I hear the nebulousness and the vagaries, I usually turn it off.

You and I will not be able to escape the rhetoric that will be coming in the months to come. It will be everywhere. My message to myself and others is to practice discernment and turn it off as soon as I assess that it no longer has any value.

The $700 Billion Wall Street bailout. How not to cope.

2008-09-28T12:16:00.000-07:00

I thought I would go ahead and put my two cents in on the financial deal going on this week. I will make the usual disclaimer here that I am a social worker and at best a scholar in Urban and Public Affairs and I am not an economist. I am not a specialist in how the financial system works.

I am not going to tell you how the deal is going to work and what you should believe about it. I am not going to tell you how to believe one way or the other about whether the bailout is a technically correct way of dealing with the crisis at hand.

But I am a specialist in helping people cope, and I will aim to help you cope. So I will start with that.

This thing is really stressing people out, and some people are making it worse on themselves.

I presume that anyone reading this has a basic familiarity with what is going on. I use the terms “basic familiarity” because as I read to do my own research, there are many little nuances. If you are a financial analyst, you probably could go into a detailed analysis about derivatives and securities. For me, my knowledge stops at the news. Regardless, the public sentiment is that the whole 700 billion dollar thing seems daunting, overwhelming, and just plain scary.

It seems especially scary because the president got on the air and made a brief speech using strong terms. John McCain really drew attention to it by “suspending his campaign” and almost not making it to the first presidential debate. Congress worked until late last night coming up with a deal they at least are informally in agreement about.

It has been the constant talk of the news shows. The emotional effect is magnanimous. I have decided that I will coin a term, “Media magnified informational intensity.” McLuhan coined the term “Global Village” because of the sense the media gives us that things are closer than they really are. I have decided that the media repetition of topics and information adds an emotional intensity to the situation.

It started 09-11-01 when we all sat watching the news coverage of the attacks. We saw traumatic video repeatedly. We saw people die. We saw it over and over and over again. The media kept repeating it over again to ensure everyone saw it, but too many saw it over and over and over again. It was the same information over and over again, but it appeared like it was too much. The apparent increase amount of information adds emotional intensity and stress to the lives of people.

I think that this has been one of those weeks, where I especially urged my patients to stay away from the news. I wanted them to avoid the media magnified informational intensity of the $700 billion bailout.

I of course had run into some people who cannot get away from the the media effect he past week who are the most histrionic about this whole affair, including: 1.) the nurse I oversee who has Generalized Anxiety Disorder and Borderline Personality Disorder, 2.) the social worker who has identified himself as a “Massachusetts liberal,” and staunch Democrat and, 3.) another social worker who strongly votes democratic and hates Bush 43.

Okay, so they are all Democrats, and I am about to paint myself as the Republican that I truly am. But I think that there are lessons for coping using them as non-examples.

Here is the challenge for coping: “$700 billion dollars” is a *%& load of money. At face value, our government is going to spend this *%& load of money to bailout financial institutions who look like they acted foolishly.

Furthermore, I borrow this lead from the story by Charles Babington and Alan Fram of the Associated Press (AP) in the story they filed right after midnight today (09/28/08)

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative

deal early Sunday on a landmark bailout of imperiled financial markets

whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.

It is a journalistic lead. It has the who, what, when. The “where” was in the dateline.

The negotiation process is the how, and for that you will have to read the story (It was a textbook news story just like from my days in JLMC 201 at Iowa State).

But the part that is really notable to me in the emotional battle to stay calm is the last dependent clause of the sentence:

of imperiled financial markets whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.

That is where our emotions are . . . in the “could” of it all. The terms Babington and Fram use are extreme terms.

Back to the three people I surveyed—with or without their knowing it (Valerie, Ned and Meg). I will uses those pseudonyms to make this easier to read.

Valerie, the nurse

Right up front, I did not have to ask Valerie about this subject. I did not have to wait for her to start talking right after she sat her stuff down in the mornings—she just did.

Valerie usually comes in and generally spends the first 30 to 45 minutes of her workday being histrionic like Chicken Little. She tends to talk in a loud, distressed voice about all the problems of the world and how she does not know how we are going to survive? The sky is always falling with Valerie.

She did make a few such comments about the $700 billion in the past week. Valerie tends to catastrophize. She also has a negative mental filter. There is little hope coming out of her mouth and her mind is on the worst case scenario.

In my book Valerie has no insight into how she stirs herself up. Valerie claims to be a Baptist, but she also seems to have little sense of being able to practice the comfort and peace that Baptists assert they get from the Bible. I think that Valerie is fooling herself in thinking that she is preparing for the worst by dwelling on the catastrophic possibilities.

I think that the “I don't know what will happen” is something control freaks like Valerie dwell on out of their insecurity. It keeps them being control freaks about everything else.

Valerie is teaching me that inner peace and inner security is based on being able to accept that things are bigger than you. If you want to be calm, be aware that

Ned, the Massachusetts liberal.

I decided to ask Ned myself this week about this. I know Ned hates anything Republican, so I asked him in a hallway at work: “Ned, in 15 words or less, what is your opinion about the situation.”

Ned's response was terse “We're in big trouble.”

To me, Ned is a black and white thinker. I hate to say this again, but the people at the extreme ends of any philosophical matter are black in white in their thinking. Ned has said he is a liberal, and he acts like a staunch liberal.

In all fairness, my father is a black and white conservative. The last time I had any kind of conversation with him about politics, he was angry about the Democrats and he was angry about the liberal media.

Black and white thinkers cannot see the gray area of matters. “Gray” refers to the idea that things are not all bad or all good. Issues generally have many nuances and shades of meaning. “Gray” also points to the idea that the worst-case scenario that can happen is not going to happen. I go back to the AP story I quoted earlier,

of imperiled financial markets whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.

“Could” does not mean “it will.”

Meg "I just hate Bush"

The last one to talk about is Meg. Meg is someone I used to work closely with. I really like Meg even though her negative mental filter is a bit much. Meg has purchased a calendar for the past three years that have all of the “Bushisms” or alleged stupid comments from Bush 43.

Meg asked me on Thursday what I thought about the bailout? She also made a comment about Bush. When I told her what I thought, I recall her immediately talking about Bush screwing things up.

I invoked my scholar, expert tone of voice. I told her that people give the president too much power. Everyone in the federal government wants it and it will happen. The details are just to come and everyone has to get their two cents in to posture for their home districts. She immediately went from sarcastic to a like “o @#$&'” mode.

I went a little farther. I repeated my comment that I have made repeatedly—Gore would have done much of the same stuff that Bush did. Yeah, the U.S. President is the most powerful man in the world, but he does not have absolute power. That shut her up.

Meg taught me about the negative mental filter in this case. My impression is she obsessed in the following manner “I hate Bush, I hate Bush, I hate Bush.” I have known her for four years, I am confident in my observation—her constant entertainment of one thought has led to a bad attitude and a distorted perspective.

Yes, it is your freedom to hate George W. Bush. It is freedom of speech. But, when you dwell on something it will color the perspective just like a drop of food dye dissipates and colors a whole glass of water. Meg is a pretty sarcastic person overall.

Val, Ned and Meg are all likely guilty of the same thought distortions. Lesson for me.

The world will not end with this bailout—we will be okay.
If you actually read the stories today (September 28, 2008), it is not an all or nothing/black or white proposition—and some think that the Federal Government might actually turn a profit on this deal.
Watch what you think about—balance in your perspective means the difference between sleeping and not sleeping or no panic attack and the need for a Xanax.
Information is only information—the significance you give it is what does a number on your emotions.
I do not have to be like Val, Ned, and Meg.

Well, where we will be at the end of this next week is not exactly anyone's guess. Maybe this recovery will take a year or so, but to myself and whoever else cares . . . we will be okay. It does not mean that we will be perfect, but it does not mean that you and I will be in the middle of the disaster.

Out and up. A lesson in limits

2008-09-21T17:13:00.000-07:00

While in the midst of a Louisville natural disaster, there were some most interesting occurrences that made me look at going for a promotion. I am going as best as I can in chronological order.

There is a method to this madness I am going to describe, so please hang in there. It is a strange situation in which I am finding myself learning about my limits as a human being.

Let me give you a brief background on how my department at the psychiatric hospital works. Over the whole shooting match is a program director. There are two clinical leads (myself and the other one). Then below us are the social workers and program assistants.

For the purposes of telling this story, I am going to start giving the people that I work with monikers or pseudonyms (made up names). It is going to make things cleaner in telling this story, if not give me a chance to cover my backside.

Initial pushes.

About 3.5 weeks ago, Mickey the other clinical lead came up to my office and told me that he thought that I should apply for the clinical manager spot of the admitting department. Mickey said that he thought that I had the clinical skills for the job and that he thought I would would be good for the job. I thanked Mickey for his good thoughts of me and told him that I would think about it.

One of the social workers three weeks ago sheepishly told me that she heard a rumor that I was applying for the admitting department job. I told her that while the other clinical lead had not suggested that I apply, I had not really been motivated to do so because of my dissertation process being in the closing stages.

The day after the CEO and VP were terminated (see earlier entry about “assumptions”), Debbie, program director had wanted to address rumors with me about the hospital situation. I decided to be assertive and told her that there was a rumor that I was interested in the admitting job. I told Debbie that while Mickey had approached me and suggested that I apply for the job, I was really not going to do anything unless I was approached because of my dissertation process. Debbie said that Mickey had a big mouth.

About 1.5 weeks ago, the director of the admitting department approached me in the hallway and told me that he heard that I had been interested in the job. I told him that I had considered it, but was only going to move forward if I had been approached. He said, “let's proceed.”
Almost immediately, I told Debbie that the admitting department director had approached me in the hallway. Debbie then confessed (in the only way she can) that she had told the admitting department director that I might be interested in the job.

I told Debbie that I was still in the decision-making stage, but I would be honest with her as to if I proceed with the application process. She told me that it were her, she would ask for nothing less than $65,000 for the job due to everything they wanted. She immediately wrote me an e-mail about it would be sad to lose me, but would understand because the hospital needs the best person in the position.

This is a bit befuddling. Debbie wrote me an e-mail that she would be sad to lose me, but at the same time she had told the admissions director that I might be interested? She said that Mickey had a big mouth, but then she perpetuated the rumor too?

I decided to approach the former occupant of the job, now working somewhere else in the system. I know her. She is a nice person (or at least pleasantly codependent). I asked her about the last job she had as I was interested in that type of job too. (I dropped the idea after talking to her). We talked on the phone about one day later at night. She talked about having to work third shift as a necessary evil. She talked about the position being on a pager 24-7 and even having to wear the pager on her vacation to Colorado and she was paged at Pikes Peak, but could not respond because of cell phone coverage issues. (Again I felt like dropping the idea after talking to her.)

I thought about it for two days, and while still ambivalent, I decided to e-mail the Admitting Department director for an appointment. I was not going to hurt to talk further. The Admitting Department director scheduled me in on Monday, September 15, 2008. I sought some advice from a fellow church member who has been in management for years on such job interviews.
A subtle background theme is that the winds of “Hurricane Ike” hit Louisville on September 14 after church. The local school district closed because of all the damage to the schools and that power was out all over the county. That meant that I did not have work because when the schools are closed due to inclement weather—we are closed too.

I decided to go into work on my own time because of the meeting. I was cleaning my desk. I had a bunch of paper I needed to deal with. I made contact with the Admissions Department director, and he wanted to keep the appointment at 4:00. I stayed at work the whole day on my on time except for one crisis at home with the kitchen sink just to keep the interview.
I had my list of questions as I usually do in such job interviews. He answered them. I liked what I heard for the most part. I could do the job. I was still ambivalent though.

Really feeling pushed up and out.

The new, interim, assistant vice president of the hospital made a decision on Monday afternoon that they were going to open the outpatient programs whether or not the school system was going to open. I was drafted to call patients and employees.

I called all the team of workers in my departments. I then called all the patients that I could reach. I considered it my volunteering on behalf of the organization.

Enter in the matter of “Fritz.” Fritz is a social worker. I recall getting Fritz's cell phone voice mail and leaving a message that we would be open tomorrow and that if was a problem to call in.

Fritz came to work wearing bluejeans, a t-shirt and a baseball cap. The dress code for social workers is that they wear a shirt with a collar and slacks (they tolerate sneakers). Social workers are to maintain a neat and professional image. I have thought that only on two work days of the past six months in this job has Fritz really only maintained a professional image—otherwise he has slipped by through what I will call the letter of the dress code.

Fritz is the narcissist I have been alluding to in previous entries. There are no two ways about it.
I saw that he definitely showed himself to be a cluster B personality disorder when I went up to visit this department, and I confirmed his qualification for a Narcissism diagnosis as I have worked with him.

I called Debbie and informed her that Fritz was wearing bluejeans and a t-shirt and was out of dress code. She told me to send him home.

I asked the other social worker to take the first group—which that social worker dutifully did. I then called Fritz into the social worker office I share with him, closed the door and told him that he was out of dress code and that he would have to go home.

Fritz said that since we broke the rules while having program when the schools were out, he thought it was okay that he broke the rules of dress code. Fritz said that he had lost power and he had no clean clothes and the clothes he was wearing was the only clothes he had clean. With a facial expression that said “I caught you, ” he said that we had to pay him for coming in. He wanted to call Debbie and he wanted to call Human Resources. I got him the phone number, but the deal was still that he was out of dress code.

This was the most narcissistic thing I had yet to hear from Fritz. I had heard him make other statements. This was a strong case of non-manic grandiosity. (People with Bipolar Disorder have manic grandiosity, that you can easily tell that they are manic.)

Narcissists are not necessarily happy people in love with themselves. Narcissists have the need to be admired. They look sophisticated in taking on weird or sophisticated interests. Many narcissists simply have tiny kingdoms because they are not capable of trusting others in order to delegate to grow organizations. Narcissists also have their rules—they usually sound logical, but they are also grandiose.

As Fritz was making his phone calls of protest, I went down to Debbie's office and asked the intern in her office to excuse us while we talked about a personnel matter. We discussed Fritz's argument. She termed it his way of logic that confused her.

I outwardly labeled his his narcissism as I have in the past. I said that he was painting himself as a victim and that he was not a victim. He should have had the judgment to comply with dress code. I discussed that he was an adult and that as a licensed professional in this state, he was identified as being mature and should thus be held to those standards.

Well, I went back up to the department and heard Fritz talk on the phone. He talked very smoothly and calmly over the phone to Human Resources. I think he really believed his statement about it being okay to break the rule. I exchanged e-mails with my boss that he got paid for two hours. Okay, Fritz was able to manipulate, but at least he left.

Later in the day I met with Debbie to review the job performance of the staff under me. We reviewed Fritz's performance. At this organization, individuals have the opportunity to grade themselves first. Fritz did so, and gave himself very high marks for team work and professionalism. I argued that he needed lower marks as he was constantly late in getting his work done and that he was refusing to float to other departments, and he was refusing to provide supervision to the social workers working on getting their licenses to become LCSW's. Debbie only moved Fritz's marks down slightly.

We talked about Fritz's behavior earlier in the day. Debbie said that her boss said that Debbie should write Fritz up for it. Debbie admitted that she should. Debbie then called Fritz to see if Fritz was going to come in tomorrow.

Debbie sounded scared and subservient over the phone when she talked to Fritz. This is very different from all the times she has fumed in private about Fritz's behavior.

The concept of limits.

I concluded from how Debbie acted that I needed to formally complete the job application for the promotion in the Admitting Department. Yes, Debbie is a borderline and Fritz is a narcissist.

They will continue to perpetuate drama. I will be extremely surprised if Debbie follows through and writes Fritz up for the dress code violation.

Narcissists and borderlines seem to find each other like dogs in heat. They need each other because no one else is going to tolerate them. They interact in chaotic and dramatic ways. The borderline will either be sympathetic with or side with the narcissist when a third party comes into fight (this is one form of the triangle of drama). Narcissists and borderlines are emotional parasites that draw blood from other people in the process so they can continue in their drama.

I have not mentioned this, but Mickey tends to have antisocial traits. He will continue with Debbie because it serves Debbie's purposes. Together, they are like “Scar” and the hyenas in “The Lion King” who take over the Savannah and ruin it. The departments are in the process of being ruined and the statistics are evidence of it. It will be a matter of time before Debbie is fired unless she sees the signs to get out—but the damage will have been done.

Being a therapist who can analyze this pretty much stops there. I can see it, but I am fairly sure that I am not in any position to make any changes. I had no power in the situation other than what was delegated to me by the borderline. She is not going to make the situation healthy, but then to avoid the black and white thinking—she is not going to make it totally chaotic. If I analyze any further to guess what the different parties can do to make the situation more convoluted, it becomes worry.

It is close to the defense of my dissertation—give or take a term. I cannot own the departments I lead. I really care for most of the people I lead (Two people could leave and I would not miss them—did I just say that? Yes I did). I feel slightly responsible for them, but then again, my only reasonable actions really are to take care of myself and my family. This is the concept of having “limits.”

Limits are where you end and others begin and vice versa. To have limits is to have a sense of confidence in only owning what you can rationally own and not trying to get involved in other people's affairs.

To have limits is to be able to practice a sense of peace of knowing that you do not have to do something just because someone else has a problem. To have limits means you can let other people suffer when they do dumb things and you do not have to rescue them.

To have limits also means that you do not have to be a rescuer. In the book of “Proverbs” in the Bible it says that for a person to involve themselves in other people's problems is comparable to grabbing a dog by the ears. Whether you believe the Bible has any credibility or not, I note that it was observed long ago that people must have limits.

So, I feel that I am being pushed up and out of the department. I am not one of the three dysfunctional personalities. If you do not jive with the drama, it will spin you out either through abusing you or through the bizarre process I have described above. I had wanted to hang on because I had wanted Debbie's job, but my sense is that unless she has a catastrophe or suddenly moves on, she will stay in the job. Again, I am responsible to myself and my family.

I feel that if indeed I am being pushed up and out it is really okay. The last limit that I am experiencing is that “I do not have to act like I am in a tug of war” with Debbie and Fritz. There is nothing there to really win there with them. They are empty people where there is no real secret to find other than they are empty people.

It is not a sure thing that I am getting the job. There may be someone better than me who gets it. I have confidence that the nod will go to me if no one else in house wants it. I interviewed well for it and I think I would like working for the guy and that I would learn a lot in the job. However, the "up and out" thing is not something one would think is a motivation for going for a promotion. But it may be more common than I realize (please comment if you agree or disagree).

At this, I had better stop. There is a limit as to how much more time my wife will tolerate me writing this. It has least has been a note to myself and whoever else cares.

Power Out

2008-09-19T20:07:00.000-07:00

This entry is not about work, but about my general experience of the past week.

I am a week beyond than the time I had planned to write.

Even though Louisville is several hundred miles inland, it actually had a hurricane so to speak. In reality it had hurricane-force winds as a result of the weather system that had been “Hurricane Ike.” The Louisville Gas and Electric Company had over 200,000 households without power—two-thirds of its customers.

We lost our power, Sunday, September 14 at about 2:00pm. We just got out power back tonight at about 6:19 Eastern Daylight Time. We had no electricity for just over five days.

Of course like most others in the Louisville Metropolitan Area, we lost the contents of our refrigerator, but we saved most of the meat. We saved the milk. But all kinds of condiments and other items were history. The garbage trucks were extra-heavy with spoiled food.

It was a little freaky driving in my neighborhood in the early evening when none of the street lights or houselights were on. It reminded me of living out in the country.

I had a couple of lessons from this week.

Lesson one is about “awful-izing.”

I have a nurse that does something called “awful-izing.”

There are many ways I can take my analysis of the nurse and the situation. The nurse is clearly a borderline personality who tends to act like she must control. She has no limits and when she cannot control she freaks out.

Awfulizing is one of the feedback loops she has to reinforce her need to control. She talks in extremes.

She comes in each day loud and anxious. She tends to talk about all news as bad news, and she is worried about what will happen if something else happens. I feel sorry for her husband.

Well, for the past four days the recurring question she would ask each day was:did you get your power back? My answer of course for the past four days was “No.” She would reply: “It must be rough.”

I have had to repeat again and again, that we made it through the night just fine. Today I said that I decided that I cannot dwell on things. I do not think that it means anything to her, but it does to me.

Awfulizing is a truly miserable place to be. Very few things are going to be the worst that they could be.

Lesson #2 is about gratitude.

In many ways, I feel that I have little to complain about. For me, life got simpler while the bad news of the week was complicated. I was pleasantly distracted from the news of wall street investment banks Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch (more a brokerage firm) were floundering. I was also distracted from the AIG news for the most part. Sure, I listened to the radio a lot, but there was something good about not seeing the TV day in and day out.

We had to cook outside each day. We had to see in the dark by candle light and flashlight. We utilized the crank radio I found on discount at Walmart.

We had to use ice to keep things cold. Getting ice was far easier this time than the last time the power was out for an extended period of time several years back. I found an automated ice house that gave either a 16-lb bag or 22 lbs of bulk ice for $2.00 a shot. My employer gave out bag ice too. Walmart and Kroger (the primary local grocery chain) seemed to have ice when we needed it. We had the ice we needed in general.

What kept me grounded was thinking about how blessed we were. I remember reading about life in third-world/undeveloped world cities where people are crowded in urban areas where they do not even have the basic utilities of water and sewer, and law enforcement is crooked. I still had a decent house (not so great by American standards) that 95 percent of the world population would be thrilled to live in.

I thought it was cool that we were roasting marshmallows outside over the remaining charcoal.
It was good to talk to the kids around the charcoal and talk about how we really had a lot despite not having power.

I was more mindful in my saying the bedtime prayer for my kids. While I wanted to pray for the power to come back on, I was all the more mindful of how blessed we still were to have what we have.

I did have a few thoughts about what would happen if the power were turned off because of my losing my job or my not being able to afford the bill. To be honest with you, I did not let myself go there for too long. Maybe it was God's blessing, or maybe I was just too tired with going to work, and then coming home to have to cook each night on the camping stove or grill.

For now, the chapter is over. While I have had my lessons, I am actually glad that the power is back on. Not having your electricity in a house meant for electricity is stressful. I did not sleep as well despite actually going to bed earlier. My allergies got worse through the week without air conditioning in the house. But not having power for a week was tolerable and actually probably good for my soul overall.

In my next installment , I am going to talk about my work issues of the past week that were somewhat related to having the power out, but that may be more about tough times pertaining to work.

Oppression in the workplace

2008-09-07T19:50:00.000-07:00

I have felt that the past week has been one of oppression. Work conditions at the hospital truly have been oppressive.

There is a heavy air at the facility as it gets ready for state inspectors to come back at the end of this week to see if we did what we were supposed to have done.
There is still the shock and disbelief over the termination of the hospital CEO and vice president.
The replacement management is talking about cutting back even more in light the situation.
People around me, especially my boss are expressing their concerns as to whether they will have a job?
There are junior executives from the healthcare system asking lots and lots of picky questions trying to cover all of the bases to save the hospital and the healthcare system in general from losing Medicare and Medicaid. This has the net effect of slave driving given the current emotional state.
The hospital has continued to be under extraordinary scrutiny from the state. It is getting old. It is getting tiring.
The narcissist and borderlines that I supervise are even more wound up and reactionary, stirring up unwanted emotional turmoil and tension.

When this kind of stress keeps up at a steady rate I think that the effect is that of “oppression.”

It does not help that the unemployment rate in Louisville has reached 6.1 percent. It does not help that Seven Counties Services (the local public mental health agency) has laid off a bunch of people creating more competition for whatever few mental health jobs there might be in the local market. There are a number of environmental stressors outside the hospital that compound the feeling of oppression.

I have not heard much use of the word “oppression” in the past several years except when it was referring to the hot summer heat. In Louisville, the summer heat can be oppressive as it was the last few weeks.

Oppression usually means to be burdened mentally or spiritually. It can mean to be crushed. The connotation is that someone is acting in a tyrannical fashion, abusing or suppressing others.

However, as a actual MSW-bearing social worker, I also have been leery of the term “oppression.” The term “oppression” was thrown around at my Social Work school by anyone who wanted to call themselves and their ethnic or demographic group oppressed. Yep, they are victims and you should feel sorry for them and guilty for your more privileged status, and maybe you should be a nebulous advocate for them in ways that they cannot even think of at the time, which means that you should keep their victimhood and your guilt at the front of your mind 24-7 and feel oppressed along with them for no other rational reason.

There is only so much consciousness that can be raised, and I found oppressed by their claim of oppression, and I found myself turned off by it. While this is not politically-correct (read liberal)

I had begun to feel that the slogan “It's a black thing you just don't understand” was overused by certain people I knew at the time and I came to view their use of the slogan as their excuse to avoid their responsibilities for their own personal situations.

But I find myself concluding that I am feeling a sense of oppression now. I find a great weight on me. It is not just burnout. Burnout happens as result of the ongoing oppression. I think that any one can be burned out in any situation when they work too many hours—even if they enjoy the job.

In the oppressive situation, there is either a high degree of tension or anxiety that remains constant. The following are some examples that come to mind.

I believe that some work situations are oppressive by their very nature. For example I consider the entertainment field to be very oppressive. I consider any job in front of a TV camera to be oppressive. You have to look the part. You have prima donnas complaining about this or that imperfection. You have the paparazzi being intrusive and offensive all the time looking for that one photograph of someone being without underwear or being off guard or throwing a tirade. If you are successful, you have everyone wanting a piece of you in some way or another. Thus, many stars get addicted to drugs and alcohol to cope and have multiple marriages as a result of the pressure. (Thank God, I am an otherwise average joe bloke without acting or musical talent!)

I also consider the offices of politicians to be oppressive and working as a elected official's staff member to be oppressive. I have thought that a white house appointment would be fantastic. Spending more with your family is given as a standard reason for resigning from those jobs, but I really think that kind of appointment owns you, chews you up and spits you out. It is in that respect I am thankful that my wife has vetoed any jobs in Washington DC after I get my doctorate.

I think that many workplaces become oppressive when there is an especially dysfunctional boss. The boss in this case is a tyrant that rules by emotion and abuse. The boss acts by impulse and without judgment. The boss has no clue how to treat people with respect and dignity. People who grow up with an abusive mother or father figure likely migrate to this kind of tiny kingdom and stay that “realm” re-enacting family relationships. People who are otherwise stuck there (and despise it) because of lack of opportunity, engage in survival behaviors which make life a living hell for those around them—becoming perpetrators as bad as the boss.

One personal experience in this case was a mental health agency (that's right a mental health agency) in an east central Indiana city. The old woman who ran the department ruled by her emotional whims and insecurities. She was controlling and abusive and patronizing in the 1.5 years I worked there. She enabled the other borderline therapists to run things make decisions about my job performance. I was under some kind of probation half of the time for some b---s--t reasons that I almost walked. She acted stupid when I tendered my resignation. She and her lieutenant in retrospect were both borderline personalities and had no insight as to why they had such high turnover. I just knew that I had been treated better in other agencies. My personal responsibility to myself and my wife was to get out as soon as I could land another job in an area we wanted to live.

One other personal experience was when I was working at a Cellular Phone agency of “US West” in Minneapolis before I went to Social Work school. This was before I really developed emotional intelligence. I had no inventory to sell and little support in the way of good leads. The owners of the agency were somewhat exploitive—they controlled the phone calls in and made most all the sales while others scraped by. I sold very little during the one year I had been there. I look back and ask myself: “What were you doing in that crappy job?” My answer back to myself continues to be: “I did not know any better and it is okay. Nobody gets all the smarts at the beginning of life. You get them as you go.”

One last example of possible oppression that is relevant now is in times of economic hardship and recession. I have talked with numerous people over the years about their worries as to whether they will continue to have jobs? Will their factory or workplaces stay open? Employers seem to take great liberties when they have employees by the economic neck or male body parts in the lower half of the body that exhibit excruciating pain when grabbed or hit.

I have talked about examples of oppression, but what does it do to someone? In sum I think that it leads to burnout and depression.

In my current context, it has taken my mental edge off. I found myself forgetting today that I had already told my Sunday School class my story of work. I also found myself having less energy to do things.

I also find myself engaging in probably not the best coping activities. I also found myself engaging in comfort food snacking, which is not helping my diet.

I have had less motivation to do certain things like clean up my home office. I also believe that it is taking me back to job burnout again.

I have found myself preoccupied with work on the weekend when I have usually been able to forget about work and clients. I had a work dream last night, which is usually my signal to do something about it.

Okay, now what to do about work-place oppression? As usual, the answers are not easy.

First, I think first, it is important to be mindful of the oppression. I look back and I realize that I was not mindful of the oppression until later in the earlier jobs. I realize that what is going on is oppressing.

Second, try not to dwell on it. It does not mean that you are denying it. Denying means you are sticking your head in the sand. When you are refraining from dwelling on something, it means that you are seeing that there is more to life than just the oppression you are going through.

Third, try to see gray areas. Oppression is a time when people go to black and white thinking such as “always” and “never.” They also dwell on the most horrific or catastrophic possibility, even though there is only a remote chance it would happen.

Fourth, make choices thoughtfully. I think that the concept of oppression overall means that a person under oppression has no choices. You have some choice today. You have a choice to do something. Making a choice and being mindful that you have made a choice gives a sense of some power. Make a choice to have a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich today if that is a choice you can make.

Fifth, think about options (for a time-limited period). I have given a little thought as to what could happen if the hospital closes down due to some tyrannical state inspectors. I could be getting another job sooner than I expected. I may have defer the new siding and windows I am going to put in my house. I could be filing for unemployment. I could be applying to some hemophilia aid services to help my son continue to get his blood factor medication. My wife could be getting a better job as a necessity. But there limits to analysis—too much analysis leads to dwelling and dwelling leads to worry. Analysis is only good if you can really use it to improve a situation or take care of a problem.

Last (at least for now) make a survival plan. There are many times we have to make survival plans. My survival plan for this week includes: 1.) a cup of Starbucks coffee at least three times this week in the morning, 2.) video games where I destroy something, 3.) painting my garage floor at least one night this week, 4.) having something good for lunch every day, 5.) watching the “Big Brother” TV show, 6.) wear my ear plug and listen to the radio while at my desk in the afternoons so I do not have to listen to the borderline personality nurse who can't shut up about her worries, 7.) talk about it to my friends at church and of course 8.) write this note to myself and whoever else cares.

This as usual has been an imperfect discussion about dealing with a subject. I recognize that there is all kinds of oppression in the workplaces of the world. I close with this, while I may feel it and can do nothing about the sources of it, I can take some responsibility today for me. I hope that you will consider doing the same for yourself.

Assumptions get broken

2008-08-30T20:00:00.000-07:00

At a religious, church-related social services agency and administrator frequently told me if you cut “assume” three ways, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” (A heck of a statement by some guy in that position.) His message was don't ever assume. I had a journalism professor that also said “assume nothing.”

Despite their advice and admonishments, the reality is that we all make assumptions or we assume. We assume good things and we assume bad things.

In my job, one of the bell-ringers is that people with panic attacks and agoraphobia are people who assume the most. They assume that they are going to have bad things happen to them in Walmart and other big box stores and any public place and any time they are alone.

I have also learned that the grief and loss process has something to do with assumptions as the first stage is shock or denial. The shock or denial goes against assumptions that we make that the loss of the cherished person, thing or idea taught otherwise.

I think that we all tend to assume that things will go on as they have always gone on. I have learned that lesson this past week as I have found my assumptions crashed.

On Thursday, August 28, 2008 my boss came up to the floor I was on and had a special meeting to inform us that the CEO and Vice President of our hospital had been terminated that day. For the most part, I had assumed that the CEO and Vice President would always go on in their roles.

We loved them dearly and I respected the CEO greatly. I was most interested in how a nun came storming in saying that she would no longer volunteer at the hospital because of how unjust the terminations were. She really assumed hard.

One of the people I had talked with had been in a meeting with the Vice President the night before. She related that the Vice President had talked about details of future plans and what the hospital was going to do about several situations. The conclusion was that the Vice President was truly blindsided with the termination early in the morning. The CEO and Vice President had been called downtown for a meeting at 8am where they had been informed they were no longer with the organization.

My unit's medical director (a psychiatrist) also said later in the day that the terminations were a shock to him—and he had been at the organization a long time. A second psychiatrist made the comment that the changes going on were crazy.

Things have been happening very quickly at the hospital over the past 72 hours. I have had the advantage of walking by certain places in the hospital and have seen that there have been a lot of emergency meetings.

From what I can judge, the top brass at the healthcare system home office have acted amongst themselves out of what appears to be desperation. They have been acting so quickly secretively and in what seems to be a crisis mode that they have not changed the website to remove the photographs of the hospital CEO and Vice President.

The facts of the terminations are coming slowly. Some of the scuttlebutt has to do with allegations of fraud as to how a case was handled. Some of the more reliable “intel” is that the CEO and VP are being blamed for the state putting the hospital and the whole healthcare system under a 23-day probation to fix some problems or lose Medicaid and Medicare billing ability. I figure that more facts and factoids will be coming.

I got a call today from my supervisor saying that there will be a 8am meeting on Tuesday, immediately when we come back from Labor Day. There are going to be a series of emergency educations to achieve compliance.

I believe that there will be many other changes. I believe that my supervisor will probably be a basket-case. She has said to a number of people that she fears that she will be terminated too. For what I do not exactly know, but probably because they want to downsize even more.

Things are suddenly feeling like recession as like other corporations where they are talking possible cutbacks and layoffs. There is a air of instability. I am back in the spirit of why I started this blog!

I go back to the matter of assumptions. Only when this kind of stuff happens do you realize how you assumed that it would not.

I think that we must assume things will go on the way that they always have. Otherwise we would never move ahead with dreams and goals. Also, if we did not assume, we would likely be paralyzed in our generalized anxiety over every and all things.

I think that we must assume that reasonable people act in certain reasonable ways. People who are anxious assume the worst while claim they are hoping for the best.

In addition to making the normal human assumptions, it is important to trust in your own problem-solving abilities. You and I need them when our assumptions turn out to be wrong.

Problem-solving abilities and your belief in yours are two elements everyone needs as no one can tell what the future is and no one can be truly prepared for the future.

I have decided that my problem-solving abilities will be along the lines of staying calm and focusing on the job. I will try to allow others to vent feelings and share as they need.

I also feel that I will need to be careful about how I think about things, and how much I try to pry and find out new things. Curiosity kills cats. Otherwise, I am confident that more and more facts will come drifting out and I will learn all I want and need to know without looking like a busy body.

There could be advancement for me within the organization. I have wanted to stay with the organization, but I have not seen anywhere I could advance. Now that there are changes, more executive roles could be created.

I have given some thought to what could happen if the hospital gets closed down. I have thought what would happen. However, I also assume that things will get worked out as I see the state of Kentucky bureaucrats in Frankfort not wanting to get themselves stuck with closing down a non-profit facility they have made the De facto state psychiatry hospital for children and having no place else in the state to put these kids and explaining to the governor why they shipped 200-plus kids to out of state facilities.

However, I assume that I would file for unemployment and then I would begin looking for work. I would probably have my wife get a more substantial part time job. I would probably apply for factor assistance to get help acquiring my son's factor replacement therapy medication. I assume that I would get another job in my field, or my new field in which I am getting my Ph.D. Any which way, I assume at this time the options I will likely have.

Would I have the options? I don't know and I may never know as I assume that the potential situation is only a potential situation composed of a number of different variables. Thinking too much about this causes way too much stress that I really do not need.

Well, we win and lose, laugh and cry on account of our assumptions. It is okay and it is rather human to do, but be ready to work on picking up pieces and solving problems should the assumptions crash.

Character and values—It's happening here?

2008-08-24T20:31:00.000-07:00

(Note--this is a very different post than what I have done--it has my interest at this moment and I will probably write more along some of the themes in future entries.)

There is a local story going on in the city where I live at the University of Louisville. The former dean of the ”School of Education” is currently under federal investigation as to how he spent grant money.

Today (24 August 2008), the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the closest thing to an editorial that is not an editorial—a personality piece starting on the front page of the first section. It was more than a personality piece . . . it was actually an expose' of the guy's history and behavior. I conclude that this is the newspaper's not-so subtle statement that the guy should be ran out of town and fast.

The guy in question is under investigation for how he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Apparently, the grants were for the University of Louisville, and a big chunk was not spent at the University of Louisville, but the guy in question has reportedly spent them elsewhere.

I make the disclaimer that I am drawing my facts from the Courier-Journal and I am going to choose not to use names. I also am making the disclaimer that I am going in the order of the facts as they have usefulness to me in this blog (you can read the story for yourself if you want—your public library should have access to the story though its web-based database).

The former education dean was reported to have been emotionally abusive. The story said that he humiliated faculty publicly. He was also reported to have stood out in the hallway and mimicked the faculty member who had applied for his position but lost to him. (That faculty member moved on to another school). The story reported that a student got up and shut the door to the hallway. That is childish behavior if it really happened.

The story also had reports of the former dean engaging in sexual harassment at U of L and at one of his former places of tenure. Why is this surprising in light of this next piece of information?

The former education dean was married four times and is being divorced from his fourth wife. I think that secularism downplays how many times people get married. I want to say that it does matter. It takes maturity to stay in a marriage. Even if someone is not book-smart, they can be mature enough to be in a marriage and do just fine. I think that four marriages is indicative of someone's lack of maturity. (And this guy is a doctoral-level clinical psychologist?)

While I am not going to tell an abused person to stay with an abusive and tyrannical spouse, I have had numerous patients who have been married several times. In hearing their stories, I repeatedly found that they had tremendous abandonment issues and jumped from marriage to marriage impulsively without realizing that they were repeating the same mistake again and again. They needed to be good consumers of the person they were dating—and fight the negative thoughts that they were never-ever-ever-ever going to find someone again . . . and thus jump into bed and get married to the next person that said hello to them.

The more endearing part of the story is that two people I used to go to church with were quoted about how shady and hypocritical this guy was. These two people are of high character in my opinion—which had me all the more mindful.

Anyway, this guy was allowed to stay for awhile by the University. He was a “high performer.”
University administrative officials were quoted a number of times. The university president called the earlier complaints '”anonymous crap.”' The provost's comments were interesting as to how she dismissed early complaints because she took the view that faculty members were rigid in their ways and being naturally resistant to change. She also said that most organizations give '”high performers'” time to change their ways.

The term “high performer” then stuck with me. The guy had an appearance of being a high performer. He had done some good work earlier in his career. He worked fast and slashed and burned quickly. In his slashing and burning he was abusive and ruthless. He had enough success in bringing in the money, which likely bought him time and the appearance of being a high performer--but then he has had a number of short-term jobs in the process.

Money covered a multitude of character defects and sins . . . until the sins became too great to be covered by the money. The University of Louisville is striving to become a leading research university—something encouraged by the powers in Louisville and Kentucky. The University strongly encourages pursuit of grants and has some pretty verbose rules about spending the money.

Nevertheless, as I am learning from academia, many people are there who cannot function in the regular work world. I have had a number of professors who have few if any people skills—and would probably not make it past the 90 day probationary periods of a regular job because they cannot work well with others (clinically these are called narcissistic and borderline personalities).
I think that the University of Louisville has a number of them.

These low-emotionally intelligent types are protected by political correctness. They know how to invoke political correctness when it serves their interests—but will violate it in like manner too. What you get is a cloud of emotional dysfunction that ironically masquerades as acceptance. However, political correctness is really emotional and intellectual tyranny—academic freedom and freedom of thought on most campuses does not exist.

An example in the form of “a rabbit I want to chase” was when I was at Iowa State University back in the 1980's. The dean of students was a black lady who appeared to be a controlling borderline personality. Since I was a journalism student at that time, I had heard the story from the white “Iowa State Daily” editor who did the story himself. She wanted him to read back the quotes—which he did. However, she then reached across the table—grabbed his notebook—and read them for herself. I had one other second-hand encounter which told me something was not right with this woman—when I got into Clinical Social Work—she was one of the first that came up on my scope as a past example of a Borderline Personality who is a paranoid control freak.

All that being said, my gestalt is that the provost was thinking along these lines. The former education dean could hide in the cloud of emotional dysfunction until it became clearer and clearer, that the former dean was a problem. The story hinted that more and more complaints were made and insinuated that the former dean was leaving for such a reason. The elephant in the middle of the room is that he was leaving to take a job that paid $50,000 less per year than what he made at U of L. It appears that his high performance was not mattering anymore and his heavy-handed methods were bringing diminishing returns.

After the recitation of some of the details of the story, I have thoughts about leadership and character. There are multitudes of people in leadership around the world with bad character, little emotional intelligence and little moral fiber. I might have a little sympathy for the former dean given the details of his upbringing and my understanding of how personality disorders happen.

However, it comes back to me how this guy brought in money and made changes. It did not turn out until five years later how he spent the money and made the changes that something was supposedly done. Character took a back seat for such a long time.

I think that money will always replace character as the first standard in judging performance. It is becoming more evident that way in academia and in most work places--even with corporate statements of purpose and value.

Given this push for grant money it seems that the biggest message outside of the money piece is that universities are not proving to be places where character is nurtured and practiced. There are two many personality-disordered faculty members who can provide cover for the even sicker personality disordered faculty and administration who accidentally know how to manipulate situations under the cover of research grants and political correctness.

The story tells me that it is questionable whether the University of Louisville can honest say that character “is happening here.”

Insecurity

2008-08-16T18:49:00.000-07:00

When the economy starts to go south, or when the politicians really sling mud at each other, people feel dissatisfied and insecure. Satisfaction and security seem to be very much related.
My situation lately has been a study in insecurity.

While the economy appears to be stabilizing and the price of oil appears to be going down, the sense of security (at least in me) is improving. Maybe the war going on right now between Russia and Georgia is a little unnerving. But the Olympics and Michael Phelps' achievements remind me that there is more to the world than bad things. Nevertheless, I have been thinking a lot about inner security and insecurity.

Inner security and insecurity are both powerful motivators. They make people do things without thinking based on their level of inner security or insecurity. I also think that many people are not conscious about inner security versus inner insecurity.

Inner security is an important asset that hopefully is a component of maturity. It seems to be another way to look at self-esteem and self-concept.

Inner security is a sense of peace and calmness about what is. Inner security is matter of trust and faith. It does not necessarily mean happiness, but I think people who are secure on the inside tend to find more happy and satisfied moments.

Inner security is a matter of faith in your abilities and your knowledge, and your perceptions.
I think that someone with inner security also trusts their thoughts and senses. The thoughts and senses of anyone are not 100 percent accurate, but I think that the thoughts and senses of a person with inner security are far more accurate than inaccurate.

I have decided that the person with a lack of inner security obsesses on the future and goes “What if? what if? What if?” They look back on the past and say "if only . . . if only . . . if only." They might think "are they? are they? are they?" when it comes to what other people are doing. They try to read other people's minds and interpret everything in terms of themselves and their own insecurities.

Insecure people spend the present looking forwards and backwards and miss what is in front of them because they are so miserable in their obsessive imaginations.

The insecure person confuses imagination with analysis. Analysis can only go as far as the facts and logic. Imagination in this case is only a guess.

Insecurity creates a parallel myopia or tunnel vision. Imagination going too far makes the microscopic look massive. Oh it still is microscopic, but it takes some faith to pull your face away from the microscope and see the big picture as it is clearly a risk.

There was one occasion where there was a young woman, who was clearly a borderline in my group when I was doing group therapy. I had a bottle of water and I put some of that powdered flavoring in my bottle and it clumped. She got all upset because my powder clumped. Why? It was my water and my bottle. It was not her bottle of water and she was not going to drink it—but she was all bent out of shape. I learned something about insecurity.

Another thing I would do from time to time when I did group therapy every day was to put a box of tissue in the middle of the group on its end on the floor. I would then ask who was anxious about it? It became my codependent and borderline detector. They would begin to report anxiety, and irritability, and a strong urge to pick it up off of the floor. They had no inner security to be at peace with things.

Inner security provides a sense trust in your limits. Inner security allows you to be at peace when you have reached your limits as to what you know or what you can do. Insecure people worry and get irritated beyond what they actually know or what they can control.

I think back to the story of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor and the whole town tended to be insecure. They went along with the lies of the advisors because they did not trust their senses. It took the child calling the spade the spade—but mama . . . the emperor has no clothes on.

I have two people that I supervise who are extremely insecure. One is a narcissist and one is a borderline personality. Both in their own ways are control freaks. However, I have determined that their their own ways, they have bonded together in insecurity (I think that the “Frank Burns” and “Hot Lips Houlihan” characters from M*A*S*H* are examples of the borderline and the narcissist.) It is my estimate that the two I am dealing with are so insecure right now, they are latching onto whatever they can. They themselves are otherwise scared. The narcissist acts withdrawn and shy when he is not in control of the situation and the borderline constantly seeks to care-take and smother.

Normally, a narcissist thinks that the world revolves around them. A narcissist can be very challenging of strangers and very inappropriate. A narcissist can act in thoughtless and careless ways. A narcissist can also act grandiose. A narcissist tends to terrorize or hide depending where you are at or how you are feeling at the time. Narcissists also act autocratic and tyrannical. However, the narcissist is very insecure. The narcissist is short-circuited to look only within themselves.

The borderline personality is a person who is also insecure. They feel like they inwardly are abandoned all the time. Their response to the feeling of abandonment is to control everything that they can. There is no sense of peace as to when enough is enough! It is all or nothing with them, and they really cannot tell when they have all? But it sure feels like nothing all of the time.

One more . . . the dependent personality also has similarity to the borderline in terms of abandonment. They are so needy that they can control through their neediness. Borderlines and dependent personalities are very similar in their abandonment. They are always insecure and always anxious about everything. They have no sense of balance and limits.

As a person coming into my own in my 20's and 30's I began to trust my sense and knowledge. I admit that my mother was obsessed with the concept of the “blind spot.” My mother has always been an anxious person. As I figure out where I came from and from what I came from, I realize that my family did not teach inner security.

My mother did not get it from her family given all their alcoholism and emotional neglect. It taught many of the stereotypes of “family business is private business” and “don't air your dirty laundry in public.” Insecurity puts people in hiding and on guard 24-7, and when you do come out, you have to look perfect.

My mom did the best she could in retrospect, but I have had to learn inner security by myself. I wanted what other people had. By some luck or maybe bad luck, I have figured some of it out.

While life is complex and understanding it is always a learning experience, security says that, your experience is largely no different from everyone else's under the sun. So, you have problems—everyone has problems. Insecurity is a lack of faith that makes people not trust and go into their corners. Insecurity is always about protecting yourself even when there are no real threats because insecurity says you can never tell the difference between real and not real threats.

Inner security says—your eyes are as good anyone else's. Trust yourself. Use your brain and your reasoning. To gain inner security I think means to work on looking out at the world. I have had to create a sense of inner security for myself. Yes me . . . I wanted insight . . . I wanted to be happy . . . I wanted to be able to mix it up for myself in this world.

As one of my colleagues has said . . . there are no freebies. I cannot get you over what it will take. It will take you doing it.

I can tell you the beliefs that help foster inner security, but you have to choose. It is the power that you have over your life.

Here are some starting questions to challenge yourself to begin to develop inner security.

The vast majority of people in the world are living out there mixing it up in the world. Why can't you?

Other people do just fine in the world. You can be like them.

Other people have faults. Just like you.

There are very few things in this world that cannot be fixed.

You like all people have the ability to slow down, look at options and resolve situations.

The majority of situations in this world have more than one possible solution.

The vast majority of mistakes people make are small and can be resolved or worked through.

You are going to dwell on the few bad things in this world and continue to feel insecure or you are going to look the larger picture that has both good and bad.

The great news is that life goes on and the vast majority of the people forget what mistakes you have made because they have their own lives to get on with.

The few people who keep reminding you of your mistakes are family members, in-laws or other people who are insecure and are slaves to their insecurity. These people have few friends and have no other life. They keep their world small because they are insecure. They will burn bridges to places out of their world because in their tunnel vision, they cannot see anything else.

Closing comments.

In this time in history—as in all times—there will always be something to be worried about.

Some periods in history will be more stressful. People make it through these situations and periods. Whether it is recession or war, some sense of shock and insecurity is normal.
How you manage it is up to you.

Hopefully, my note to myself and whoever else cares gives you are start to feel less bad today and better tomorrow.

Coping with no spending money or being broke

2008-07-26T07:28:00.001-07:00

It has been said in a number of different ways that money is power. Money talks and Bull---t walks, right? One more—the new golden rule . . . He who has the gold makes the rules. (I have met people who practice this last one.)

When we do not have money, we tend to have lower self-esteem. We do not want to be without money. When we do not have it we vulnerable and insecure. We can worry about the worst possible things that can happen to our cars, houses, and our health.

Many people go to town in false confidence with credit cards as a money-substitute. But like the saccharin-based sugar substitutes, high interest rates and aggressive collection departments give a bad aftertaste. People can go bankrupt being unable to make the minimum payments on several maxed-out credit cards. You still need money if you have credit because the bills will come every month.

In the times of recession, people have less money. They tend to find themselves having to spread the money more and more thinly. They have to stretch their money farther and farther. The money runs out and you will not have any money sooner than later and they are broke!

Yes, we need money for necessary things and services, but there are many times when the necessities go up in price or we have just enough money for the bills and basic groceries. After that, the checking account has just a few dollars and there is no extra money for 10 to 13 to 25 days until the next paycheck.

Many people are in pain because they do not have the spending money they used to have, or feel they should have, or that other people feel that they should have. Well, the reality is that they do not have the money. They can either cope or fall apart.

I have decided that there are four concepts of personal growth that come into play here. The first is that one is going to have to grieve the reality that they do not have the spending money they want to have or feel that they should have. Second, they are going to have practice contentment and I do mean practice. Third, you are going to survive through the discovery of the character of other people and whether or not you will continue to have relationships with them. Lastly, you can thrive and use your creativity.

GRIEF AND LOSS

Yes, I think that people who are wanting to cope in healthy ways without money have to go through the grief process. Kubler-Ross (1969) identified the stages of the grief process as:

1.) being in shock or denial,
2.) being mad,
3.) trying to bargain within themselves,
4.) being depressed and feeling stuck, and then
5.) acceptance of the situation or reality.

It is easy to discuss this grief process. But when you are going through it, it is painful, disorienting, and just plain miserable. It is like your private dungeon, experience of being lost in the desert or wilderness after your plane has crashed. You have lost something that is of meaning to you when you do not have the money you think you should. Your pride is tremendously hurt and you do not know where you are at or whether you will survive. You may have based your identity on having money in your pocket to spend it whenever you wanted to and you are now embarassed.

You can feel like you are living on the edge of dying. It feels like all you can see is your lack of money. It is all you can think about.

My feeling is that you are reading this because you are reading it for you—you are likely grieving. You may or may not be experiencing this grief or loss exactly the way I am describing it.

Shock/Denial

Shock or denial can be a number of things. Someone in denial may continue to get things on credit cards even though they do not even begin to have the money to pay the bill (nor will they have the money to pay even the minimum). But it is probably more like the statement: “I cannot believe I have the money I want to have” rolling over and over in your mind.
Being mad is another stage of grief. I think that in this stage, there is anger towards oneself over not saving money or getting into such bad debt problems, not saving money, or buying large ticket items (this also means feeling guilty). There can be anger at oneself for getting fired or laid off (and thus even more guilt). There can be anger towards the former employer for not keeping things afloat. There can be anger at incumbent politicians for the way the economy is. There can be anger at spouses or significant others for the way they spent money or wanted to spend money. There can be anger at children who dare ask you for money to buy something frivolous. There can be anger at family members or friends who borrowed money when they needed it and who did not pay you back and still cannot or won't pay you back. People can be just irritable and miserable and guilty-feeling during this stage.

Bargaining

Bargaining is trying to make deals to get back to the old situation. It is a way of trying to re-establish control over the situation. I think that people will search over all their accounts for mistakes in numbers—looking for money. They might call their former employer back begging for the job back. They might try to keep hitting their debtors (people they lent or gave money to) again and again for the money.

Depression

Depression hits when someone is done bargaining. It is the reality that you are stuck, you cannot regain control of the situation, and you cannot go back, and the bargaining is over. It too is a miserable stage. People may fall like they are going to fall off the earth. You have always looked or played some part you thought you needed to, and now you can no longer do it. Some people can become clinically depressed. (If you are feeling clinically depressed and feeling like you want to die—GET SOME HELP—please call your local mental health agency, your police authority or go to your nearest hospital—the problem of not having money is a temporary problem that can be solved.)

Acceptance

The feeling of acceptance tends to creep in during the depression stage. Acceptance usually means that one begins to see that it is possible to move on and heal. In this case I imagine that one sees that other people cope without extra money, so you can do it too. A person also might begin to see (really see) that there is a difference between wants and needs, and that life is not all about money. Lastly, I think that acceptance means being able to see this time as a chapter in one's life that will end and a more prosperous chapter will begin.
Not everyone will experience grief over not having spending money in their pocket in the same way. Some will take it harder than others. More will be said about this.

PRACTICE CONTENTMENT.

Out of the acceptance stage I think people begin to practice contentment. I think for the purposes of this blog, contentment means being in a state of relative tranquility or peace about a situation in order to show self-control and self-restraint.
I use the term practice strongly here because contentment is generally something that does not just happen to someone. Contentment is a state one chooses to create and maintain.
I think that it is different from self-control and self-restraint. To maintain self-control and self-restraint, you need some level of contentment.

As children, we did not have contentment. We wanted stuff. We wanted what we wanted. We threw tantrums in stores when we did not get what we wanted or get our way. We learned to cope with not getting what we wanted in a round-about way. We got conditioned to the idea that we were not going to get the candy or toy in the store through consequences or through the hard reality of crying and recovering from the tears. Little by little we became content in a child-like way.

I think that well-adjusted adults gained a basic sense of contentment through the human development process. Those adults that never developed contentment are likely to have issues of addiction (food, spending, gambling, substances, work, control/codependency, etc). John

Bradshaw has defined an addiction as a pathological relationship with a mood-altering experience that has life damaging consequences (Bradshaw, 1986 Shame and Addiction Video). I suggest though, that there is a basic building block in every adult for contentment. You are just going to have to find a new way to apply it now. (I will discuss contentment in another blog soon.)

We begin to practice contentment in three ways: changing our negative self-talk to healthy self-talk, we do the self-talk everyday, and we change our behavior and habits.

We practice it by talking to ourselves in affirmations or slogans. We tell ourselves things like:

I have what I need today.
Nobody gets everything they want.
It is okay if I do not have everything I want.
I will make it.
It will be okay.
We all live life one day at a time.
I will be okay.
The world will not end because I do not have any extra money in my pocket.
I am a good person making it in this world and some days are going to be harder than others.
This too shall pass.
I am going to be a stronger person for getting through this.
Money is not everything.
I am thankful for what I have today.

Yes, we talk to ourselves. Some people hold conversations with themselves out loud, and some keep in their heads, but we all talk to ourselves. We are either going to tear ourselves down or build ourselves up with the talk in our heads. We originally learned to talk to ourselves from our families and we continue to talk to ourselves as our parents and grandparents did. For many of us adults, personal growth means taking charge of the talk inside our heads.

Next, we practice contentment daily. It is hard work and one must use these affirmations frequently to be content. Advertisers count on consumers not being content. Advertisers try to create the appearance of needs, and so our self-esteem is going to be under attack. It takes critical thinking when looking at advertising to maintain contentment. We must constantly ask ourselves if we honestly need that stuff?

Third, we practice contentment behaviorally by our choices. We avoid those places that lead to us to think “Gee, I wish I had that.” We choose contentment by making budgets. We choose contentment by taking up the practice of bargaining shopping and making a hobby out of how much can we squeeze our money, so we can save what little money we do have. (My original penny jar was a creation of my squeezing as much value as I could out of my money.)

CHARACTER

In a sense I find myself writing something that sounds like a recovery piece for someone recovering from addiction. A slogan in the different recovery programs or groups includes that you must change your playground. I think that in our reality of not having money in our pocket, we will find people who will continue to have money and who will not empathize with our plight and will make fun of us—or even shun us.

Yes, there are immature and cruel people in this world, and we discover them everyday. We always run the risk of discovering the immaturity and cruelty in our family and friends each and everyday we breathe. As one of my colleagues put it well: if you get to know me long enough, you will see me get stupid.

Well, the people who make fun of others in this plight are stupid and I have taken the attitude of “don't let the door hit you in the buttocks on the way out.” (I am trying to keep it clean here—so you can fill in the A-word). There may be another reason for grief and loss here over some friends who are no longer part of your life, but your life will move on. Tomorrow will come with or without them.

I have decided that people of good character are mindful or insightful that it could happen to them too. They also have respect for people in general. They have taste and manners. In other words, they are mature.

Some people are not as mature. As a social worker I have ran into them quite frequently. They never developed the insight as to the human plight so as to be sensitive to the suffering of others. They do not have the room in their hearts and minds to be respectful. They may actually be selfish and have their own private, childish agenda—believing that you are going to ask them for money—which is THEIR'S THEIRS THEIR'S and not YOURS YOURS YOURS. They would probably not be able to get through the grieving process themselves to the point of healthy coping and wind up in a psychiatric facility or institution.

So, when someone insults or belittles you for not having money in your pocket to go somewhere or do something—look at the other side of things and the character of people. Good people are mature people and sympathetic people in this case.

THRIVING

Thriving without money in your pocket I think means being able to be happy regardless of whether or not you have money in your pocket. Yes, it may feel like surviving at first, but in many cases, the difference between surviving and thriving is your perspective and attitude. In thriving, you are looking more at what you can do today, in surviving, you are more mindful of what you cannot do today because you do not have money.

Thriving and surviving become lifestyles. People build their lives around one or the other. I have decided that the people who are “survivors” from trauma usually build their lives around the idea of surviving. Everything they do . . . and most of what they think has to do with living in their pain and surviving the pain. Survivors become victims of themselves and tend to alienate others because of the survivor's whining. To start thriving means to start choosing to be happy and doing things to make you happy.

I suppose that this is a time where someone can start improving themselves by reading or learning new things. I think that the act of bettering yourself is a great way of thriving. My recommendation is to go down the video aisle of your nearby public library and start noting things that you have wanted to learn about. Make a list. Throwing yourself into a new pursuit that you can focus your energies on is a beginning start.

This is also a great time to start reading books. Reading is a great way to spend your time without spending money. Whether you are about fiction, non-fiction, or biographies, learning distracts you from unnecessarily dwelling on your pain.

Lastly, if you do not feel like reading, volunteer someplace. Make a difference in this world in some little way. Thinking about the help you are giving is a lot better than dwelling on not having any money.

CONCLUSION (FOR NOW OF COURSE):

I make the disclaimer that even though you can do everything I am recommending, the pain of not having the spending money you would like to have is never totally going away. We have to practice contentment everyday in some way and some days will require more work than others.

I have not discussed the matter of faith in this blog, but faith is a resource that helps people through these times. The Bible has much about contentment and material things, and human character. The Bible also has much about peace and being able to rest inside while the rest of the world seems to be in turmoil. It is a good book. If you comment on this blog, I will be more than happy to discuss what I mean and tell you where in the Bible that material can be found.

I close by emphasizing that getting the point of contentment is not going to be easy—whether you are a religious or non-religious person. I think if you are in enough pain about it and want to do something about it—you will follow the strategies I am recommending. They will work if you give it some time and keep doing them.

Vacation or No Vacation?

2008-07-11T16:15:00.000-07:00

Memphis--
I am writing from a moderate-priced hotel in the east end of the city. It was a small but tough decision as to whether or not on vacation given the economic environment and gas prices.
When the air conditioning broke and it cost almost $180 to fix, again, it was a tough decision whether or not to go on vacation? But we decided to go since a friend who lives five hours in another direction is going to meet us here tonight.

It is now on the backside of the short vacation. We went to Graceland and took the medium price tour—which means we saw his grave, got to go into his plane and see his cars. I saw some of the weirdest things to be branded with Elvis's image and name. We went to Beale Street and ate at B.B. King's restaurant (strawberry preserves on Fried Green Tomatoes was quite interesting). We went to the Sun Records Studio. We had some BBQ (barbecue/barbeque) at Corky's. We head home tomorrow.

We got a picture of all of us in front of Graceland. We got a picture of the kids by Elvis's music note on Beale Street. (Hollywood has stars—Beale Street has musical notes in the pavement.)
While this is not meant to be a commercial for Memphis, the point is we did stuff as a family. My wife and I took our kids to see things that we value and wanted to see.

We made memories in a worthy place for memories. At the end of the day it was cool to have a conversation with my five-year-old son about our favorite parts of the Graceland tour.

Well, like many people's vacation, this was one where we are putting balances on credit cards. I have a plan for paying them off. The assumptions of the plan are: 1.) my job is secure, 2.) the central air conditioning continues to work, 3. nothing else major breaks down and 4.) the cars don't break down.

Number four is looking shaky. The 8-year-old car that we have is quite dependable but the computer said to check tire pressures. Well I did this morning and took them all up to 41 PPS again this afternoon the same light came on as we headed back to hotel. I checked them again and they are back down to 35 PPS

I will check tire pressures again tomorrow and add air—worst case scenario means new tires—something I am not thrilled about. But if you own a car, you will need to maintain it.

Am I glad we have taken this mini vacation. Yes. There is a time where one must take risks.

There are some moments in times that will not come back. My kids are only going to be young once. While I would like to take them exotic places and have the best accommodations, I am like most people—I work for a living and we can afford what we can afford.

I think that at the end of this, life is a balance between risk and no risk. The miserly side of me said that this was a foolish thing, but then the other side of me said to seize the day. The conversation with my five-year-old last night about Graceland was worth it even in the midst of unsure economic times and high gas prices.

Vacation or no vacation? It was tough for me. It may be tough for you. It is okay if your better side says to do a "stay-cation." If you stay, just make some memories.

Thinking about Christmas in July

2008-07-04T12:58:00.000-07:00

Today is July 4, 2008. My wife is watching some Christmas movie on a cable channel known for having women as its prime audience. The channel has some gimmick going about playing Christmas movies this weekend.

My kids are watching a Christmas DVD. They had to get into the act. They started to talk about what they wanted for Christmas.

Okay. I will bite. I actually did not want to even think of Christmas until the end of September, but our western economies have exploited something that is to be the birth of grace and salvation for all into a time of expected profit-taking and meeting inflated sales goals.

I think in the recessions, people get distressed about Christmas. If you are reading this in July, or whenever, I hope I have something that can work for you. Hopefully, if you are reading this, you will get some kind of comfort today from it and it won't be boring.

The holidays are a time of the year where there tends to be the most suicides. I think that the shortened days causing “Seasonal Affective Disorder” (a form of depression) have something to do with it, but many people feel empty, depressed, hopeless, and abandoned at Christmas.

Well, since people are expecting a recession this year, the stress of Christmas likely becomes an increasingly severe stressor. Christmas is supposed to take a lot of money. You are supposed to spend a lot of money on your kids and others.

You are supposed to show how much you care by what you give. On the other hand, others are supposed to show how much they care about you by giving you stuff that hopefully shows they were thoughtful.

There are many ways I can take this. But lets assume that you are worried about what you will do for Christmas in five months if you are facing a short supply of money and that it will be a struggle to get through Christmas. Another stressor is: what will they think of you if you do not give them presents.? The main question is: how do we cope?

The following is a recipe. I cannot guarantee that it is perfect for you. Nor can I guarantee that it will work perfectly for you. Also, just reading it will not do. This stuff below needs to become a lifestyle if not a philosophy that guides what you do!

First, you will tell yourself that you will do the best that you can . . . whatever that will be. I think when we are looking far ahead we tend to get all black and white in our thinking, and we get the magnifier effect—very small things look larger than they actually are.

What is far more helpful is to begin to trust in yourself and your ability to solve problems. When it gets here, you will be able to come up with solutions when the time comes.

You and I have no way of predicting the future. It is stressful if downright painful to let your imagination run wild about all the different, possible, negative options.

It is also far more helpful to ask yourself repeatedly: do you think you are blowing this out of proportion?

A question that you may be thinking is: does this guy really know how I do not think I can do anything? Can he see what a joke (or other profanity-up) I think I am?

Well, know I don't. I don't know you or your unique problems. It is just like you do not know me or my unique problems.

What I do know is that people with low self-esteem do not believe in their ability to solve problems in general. People with low self-esteem carry on the messages from childhood abuse and neglect into the present.

Today it is a choice whether or not you are going to continue to believe those messages from childhood.
I made a choice to stop idealizing my mother—just because she is mom does not make her right about everything. (dads, brothers, grandparents, sisters, uncles and aunts all fit in this spot.)
I made a choice to stop believing that everyone was staring at me, and that strangers giving me dirty looks for no logical reason were being stupid or having trauma flashbacks from something in their way-back past.
I made a choice to stop worrying whether people were mad at me?
I made a choice to make others responsible for telling me if they were mad at me?
I made a choice to decide whether they were mad about something valid?
I made a choice to see that I was not the only one in the world who saw their own faults.
I made a choice to decide that I was in charge of my feelings.
I made a choice to write the book of my life with whatever ink is available at the time that I liked.
I made a choice to start seeing that I was not the cause of everybody else's anger.
I made a choice to pursue happiness.
I made a choice to believe that there are some good people in this world I can become friends with who are also looking for good friends.

I do not regret any of those choices—they were good choices.
But the most applicable for this blog entry . . .

I made a choice that I can do things as well as the average human being, and therefore since other people solve and resolve problems as the come . . . I WILL TOO!

A third thought that can be helpful is that if it is indeed a recession this year, other people will be economizing too. Other people will be cutting back. Other people will be relying on their creativity to express their thoughtfulness.

A fourth thought is that this is your opportunity to start shopping now and practice thriftiness.

Make a list of the people on your list and start going to the overstock stores—you know those stores that have either seconds or things that the other stores could not sell on the first try.
Do not buy anything just yet—but look through the stores at things that the people on your list might like and match things up on your list.
Buy at most for one or two people per paycheck between now and before the time you are to be giving gifts. Et voila—you have done your shopping.

Again, these ideas may or may not work for you today. If they are not your cup of tea, I hope that they have stimulated your good creativity and faith in yourself to solve your own problems.

Yes, Christmas is coming again. I predict that the nightly news will run lots of stories about the winter of discontent and about the poor retail chains who were hoping that their cash registers would ring loudly at Christmas. I will visit this subject again between now and then.

Basic Anxiety

2008-06-30T20:46:00.000-07:00

I thought that it would behoove to write about basic anxiety. Besides sadness and depression, anxiety is another emotion connected with recessions. We need anxiety and I think that it is important to accept it.

Anxiety according to “Webster” refers to a negative apprehensiveness. In my opinion anxiety is something we share with animals.

Anxiety is an emotion that keeps us safe or motivates us to act for our safety from all perceived threats. Yes, we may run when we are scared and feel like a chicken, but it is better to be a live chicken than a dead duck.

Anxiety is not all negative. Excitement is a form of anxiety in positive situations—like during the big game or getting to meet a celebrity. However, anxiety can be downright vicious in the form of jealousy (anxiety mixed with anger).

Anxiety can be healthy. Guilt is a form of anxiety that we feel when we have done or said something wrong. The physical and emotional symptoms motivate us to make things right.

Anxiety uses adrenalin. It can keep us up at night. It keeps us pacing. It keeps our mind stirring. When we are anxious we cannot stop moving or sit still.

I think that anxiety has been a human characteristic from the beginning of time. While this is not intended to be a religious letter, Jesus Christ talked repeatedly about anxiety and how to have peace. For those who are not Christians, other faiths have something to say about anxiety—people have used their faith to cope with anxiety throughout history.

Anyway, throughout my life, there has always been something to be anxious about. For the first 25 years of my life, we were anxious about the “Cold War.” Up through 1973, there was the Vietnam War. Russia and the United States had more than enough nuclear weapons to wipe out each other. It was something of a relief to see communism in Europe end.

Since 2001 the United States and European counties have been anxious about militant Muslim extremists—especially Al Qaeda and its activities. (It is practically the crusades all over again).

Now, on top of “the war on terrorism” gasoline is now at more than four dollars a gallon where I live and that is causing inflation on top of recessionary conditions. Will we have money to pay our bills? Will we have jobs? Will we being paralyzed in our sprawled cities where there is no bus service to take us to our jobs in another part of the metropolitan area? Will gas go further up to $7.00 per gallon? The list of possible anxieties can go on and on and on.

Many people put on a facade or front that they are not scared, but people get scared with all these things. I think that it is natural that all of these things incite anxiety.

We compound our anxiety when we obsess on our anxieties (national, world, and personal). Obsessing is going to lead to the sleepless nights, stomach pains, headaches, chest pains, and panic attacks. (Although when people are having panic attacks there is more than one cause.)

The concept that I think is applicable in this case of recession is “circle of control.” You and I alone by our own solitary actions are NOT going to change the world or the recessionary conditions. We can only take care of ourselves. Hopefully in time with a large enough people taking care of themselves, the economic situation with right itself as it usually has.

Now to be real about anxiety . . . feeling it is terrible. You not only can have non-stop thoughts that you cannot seem to shake, but your muscles get tight, and you may not feel hungry. Or you may feel empty and eat to feel full and satisfied—thus the concepts of “comfort food” and “stress eating.” You may get a headache.

If the thoughts continue, you can begin to paint yourself into a corner and begin to believe that the worst is going to happen and that you are going to be a total failure. That is black and white thinking coming back into play. Black and white thinking about small things makes them seem like they are the only things in the world.

Alcohol consumption seems to go up in recessions (or so I have heard). This happens, while it is an easy go-to-coping tool, it is not a healthy way of dealing with anxiety. Alcohol and other substances merely are mood-altering substances whose effects wear off and do not make your problem go away. In fact, one using one or both may find themselves with another problem called addiction.

If you are having panic attacks and are having high levels of anxiety, this is where professional help is needed. Seeing your doctor (if you can get into a psychiatrist—that is preferred), going to a therapist, getting assessed at your local psychiatric hospital, going to a support group are all good interventions to help with anxiety. One other cheap and easy way is to browse the Internet for coping websites (My personal favorite is http://www.coping.org/ and no they are not paying for this recommendation--it is just that good of a website and it is free to access). In the short term, hot baths and lots of deep breathing are the cheap (and sometimes the most helpful) interventions that most people can do.

There is no easy way to close this entry. I think that the best thing to say is that anxiety is normal, and it is not the end of your world if you have anxiety over the world situation. Naming and accepting it are the first steps to coping (and going somewhere for some help is good too if you really feel that you are at the end of your rope). Most of our families have not held this belief or imparted it to us, and so it can appear rather unappealing.

I think accepting that you are anxious is one way to begin reducing it. Denial or trying to stuff it only makes it worse. Telling yourself that it is stupid for you to be anxious is only going to make you more anxious as it puts pressure on you to be more than human. (You can only be human.)
Accepting anxiety usually leads to one to give oneself permission to start doing something to reduce it.

It is NOT stupid to be anxious over world events. It is what we do as humans.

What a recession teaches us.

2008-06-26T20:12:00.000-07:00

Forgive me if this sounds too much like a long platitude, but I offer thoughts that have no easy answers, but I think I have an idea where the answers are. There are no freebies—the answers for me are not necessarily the exact answers for you.

A recession is a time of depression and suffering. It is like a warped or evil holiday season that goes on and on and on beyond January 1 where the music does not stop, the decorations are still up and the holiday food has gone rancid. Even if someone is doing just fine economically and is not directly affected by the economic downturn, there is the tendency to be depressed in some form because of the nature of empathy and the pervasive nature of a recession.

Empathy is that ability to feel what other people are feeling. It is somewhat of a spiritual concept because it is a connection that we make with people. We feel the pain in a recession as it is reported on the TV, in the newspapers and magazines, church sermons, and the tales of others.

There is almost an addiction or compulsion or obsession to talk about the recession on TV. (Pain is one of the underlying factors of addiction and compulsion.) It is almost like the air around us. It is like a 90-degree day with 60 percent humidity that lasts for months where we are uncomfortable and cannot get relief.

Although things may actually be going better for some of us, we feel the pain because the recession is spoken of everywhere all the time. It monopolizes our senses and feelings and we are overwhelmed. A recession can have the same effect of “job burnout” on people where we are tired all the time, we do not perform well, and we need a break.

We do not want pain. Pain is a sensation that tells you that something is wrong. We as human beings want to avoid pain. Me included. The irony is that we cannot avoid it during a recession. We have to feel it as part of this existence called life and it teaches us intangibles that we can listen to or repeat the pain all over again because we did not get the lessons the first time.

The recession of 1991-1992 was a time of pain that taught me a lot. I was 26. I had a masters degree and I was not finding a job in my chosen field. I was driving a school bus and I was trying to sell cellular/wireless phones when they were still a high-ticket item and the airtime minutes were outrageously expensive. Few people wanted wireless phones during that time because they were a luxury. I learned about what a shyster the guy I was working for was—what was I thinking?

I was living essentially hand to mouth and month to month at that time. I found that I was not going to get a job in the area of my masters. I was not going to get a job in the field of my undergraduate degree either. I found myself feeling pretty stupid for my education choices as they were dead-ends at the time.

I had many thoughts and feelings. I was frustrated. I was ashamed. I was in a wilderness. I was in a desert of paradox: I was not where I wanted to be but I could not really tell where I wanted to be.

The first lesson that we learn from the pain of the recession is we learn where it is that we do not want to be. We learn the consequences of choices from frustration and shame. Two questions we do fear are: What do you do for a living? Tell me about yourself? Another question we don't want to have to answer is: Now why did your last job end?

We learn what it is that we value. I learned to value that I needed to find a profession that was practical and more recession-proof, while still finding a job that was significant and meaningful. Many of us will have to settle for not so glamourous jobs that are part of the regular grind and find our meaning and significance elsewhere outside of work.

The pain of a recession can also teach us simplicity. The United States is such a complicated culture where many luxuries have become essentials. While cable or satellite television is a nice convenience, they are necessities in the eyes of many. Eating out is as much a matter of convenience and prestige, but eating at home gets us by just fine—although my steak on my grill does not taste as good as the steak at the restaurant. We get back in touch with what it is that we need and do not need.

I think I learned simplicity. I had food and shelter. I had what I needed from day to day. Of course it would have been nice to have cable and the ability to go out, but my life did not end without those things. I learned how very little I really needed compared to what I thought I needed. I learned that in a sense we all live day by day even though we have huge plans for what the future should be like. It was a painful lesson.

The pain of a recession includes acquainting us with our vulnerability and learning to cope with it. There is power in having money in your pocket. You also may have had the confidence that if you have to incur debt with your credit card you can pay it off ( and won't default on your account because you can make the monthly minimum). With recessions, the money is not in our pocket and we think twice about the debt. I learned to be respectful of debt and to work to live more within my means.

We can become mindful that we too are vulnerable, and it can lead to dwelling on the worst possible things that can happen to us? Panic attacks are not uncommon as a body cannot only take so much anxiety. A panic attack is the fight or flight response jacked up a couple of notches where the anxiety comes out physically in an intense form that mimics a heart attack.

I think I came to be in touch with my vulnerability. I think that the people who deny that they are vulnerable are more likely to have panic attacks than those who accept that everyone is vulnerable in some way. I learned that other people were vulnerable too.

Pain and suffering also teaches character. My nice but sometimes misguided mother believed in “sanding” of people where the rough edges are taken off. A like analogy is “trial by fire.” We can be like gold purified by fire. The stuff that is not gold floats to the top. (Of course there are more profane things that are said to float to the top—but the effect is still the same—it is somewhat of a sifting process.)

I think I learned character. I had to be me. I had to be who I was. It really did not matter that I had a master's degree or that I had an internship where I did some really bad morning newscasts on morning TV as a college student. It was humbling because the things I had put stock in meant nothing—during the recession it was all about who I was in the moment in relationships. Who I was . . . was all I had.

There was an end to my recession. In 1992 I headed to another city with my family's help to begin another master's degree that has been my profession since. I learned that recessions do end.

I saw that the vast majority of people kept things together in a recession. While there is always the possibility that someone can wind up sleeping in their car because they are out in the street, it really is because their judgment is so extremely poor that they do so many stupid things. While jobs do get lost and mortgages get foreclosed on, cable and Internet gets turned off, people do figure out a way to keep roofs over their heads and food on the table. (The black and white thinking is what makes people think that all is going to be lost.) Keep your head on, and make careful, conservative choices and your odds begin to increase dramatically that you will be ok.

In a grand sense, there was meaning in my suffering--it had purpose and made me better. I was not looking for the lessons. They were all after-thoughts. They did not all strike me at one time nor did they strike me like lightning. The lessons were quiet that came in bits and pieces. I found myself praying many, many times a day for grace. Am I a better person because of my suffering? Yes I think so?

Does it matter to the people I know that I have had these lessons? They probably could care less because they are all busy with their own lives. However, it does matter to me because I live within my skin and know my own thoughts, and I am more at peace because of those lessons.

Some people will never learn these lessons. That is sadly also the pain of living this life, but again that is life.

Waiting in the recession: the process of powerlessness

2008-06-22T03:34:00.000-07:00

Waiting is something we do as people.

Webster essentially defined waiting to stand expectantly of something.

I decided that waiting is a period of time (whether defined or open-ended) where an expectation is unfilled, and you are powerless to fill the expectation in the here and now.

In its most basic sense waiting is painful. To wait means to suffer some sort of distress or discomfort while your need or expectation is unfulfilled. This is not necessarily delayed gratification—the things we wait for in a recession have little to do with pleasure, but with security needs and the need to feel secure.

Not all pain is equal. Waiting for a cup of tea in the microwave is not the same as waiting for the prospective employer to call with a job offer. The more something matters, the more pain.
Little kids in their impulsive natures have great difficulty waiting. Generally the average, mature adult can cope with waiting, especially if it is a simple matter. An adult in the western world generally has the expectation that it will take the microwave oven two minutes to boil the water. If you want to have the cup of tea, you will wait and you will be calm about it.

The development of coping through development of emotional maturing leads to tolerating waiting. A child's mind is not an adult's mind. Children do not handle waiting as well as adults do as a rule.

In the context of the recession, waiting concerns oppression. The oppression seems to add more complication to waiting. The rules change.

What especially makes waiting in a recession hard is the powerlessness. When there is not a recession, we have numerous choices because we have the power of money and can more easily make money.

The recession is like making a stop at a bad rural convenience store along the interstate because you have diarrhea. The place has putrid bathrooms and stale off-brand food and beverage items that are overpriced. If you complain about anything, the irritable owner-operator running the cash register will bluntly tell you to go someplace else. Pretty much people only stop there for the same reason and are stuck with the same few choices—but they make due because they have to.

There is no one oppressor that can be blamed in a recession. This is part of the powerlessness as you cannot identify the particular cause to do something. Furthermore, if you have lost your job and cannot get another job, you feel all the more oppression because you must conserve your resources as you are mindful that your unemployment insurance could run out before you find the next job.

The oppression cuts back on your ability to cope. It is an experience that gives you a taste of clinical depression, or it gives you a taste of what the emotional atmosphere is in the impoverished inner-city or ghetto areas that are also called “the hood.” Life is hard and you cannot stop but be mindful of that. You are surviving.

I think that there are two basic kinds of waiting in the recession. We tend to look expectantly for oppression to happen (more likely know as “the other shoe to drop”). Second, we also wait expectantly to be delivered from the oppression once it has happened. You may not even be sure what it is you are waiting for in the first place when you have a severe, unmet need that continues to increase in complexity?

In the waiting for the other shoe to drop, people tend to be anxious. They dwell on the fear of what if . . . what if . . . what if? They may dwell and are preoccupied on all the worst case scenarios or all of the possible negative scenarios their imagination will produce.
As a result their distress takes the form of being are edgy and guarded. (This is clearly a mode of survival.) They may drink more alcohol, smoke more cigarettes, engage in more stress eating.
They do not sleep at night. It is almost living in an 'already but not yet world,' where their emotions are with their thoughts in a future time and dimension despite causing bodily tension and stress in the present.

Once the shoe has dropped, waiting is a time of hoping for or expecting deliverance from the tyranny and oppression that a recession brings. There is the shock. There is the entertainment of regret: did I choose the right kind of career? I should have done this or that. There is depression where you feel stuck or helpless. Self-esteem is down the toilet. In essence, there is grief, but it is more than grief because it is more than your emotions.

I used to think that waiting was a process. However, a process also implies that you know what is supposed to happen? I do not think that anymore.

Appreciating the concept of waiting is more or less putting a name to the pain that we feel. The pain of the recession is more than just waiting because we hate that other people are having bad fortune, but the mind acts in ways that are that of waiting. This may be where we have to start.

What do we do? It is not easy. Essentially it is whatever we can in our own imperfect ways.

Getting a grip on the personal pain and powerlessness in a recession

2008-06-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

Sometimes understanding the nature of the pain is a step towards coping with it.

There is no doubt about it . . . living in the time of recession sucks. I figure that I have lived through four of them, and I will probably live through another four of them in my life time. Four more opportunities to survive the pain.

No amount of cheap platitudes is going to take away the emotional pain of a recession. A recession is a time period where we survive in the very sense of the word.

A recession has the same emotional effect as a dysfunctional Christmas or living in a city on the Atlantic Coast waiting for a hurricane to see if the city will be destroyed. It is all you hear about. It is all that the media seems to talk about, and the music can reflect the time (the group Matchbox 20 has some empathetic and insightful material right now in 2008 and Don Henley's "End of the Innocence" album in 1991 was reflective of that recession). When there is a recession, it is all that people seem to be preparing for or reacting to.

It is just too easy to become overwhelmed or get into a feeling of crisis in a time of recession.

I think that this crisis or sense of being overwhelmed happens during recessions because people become fearful and introspective. They lock themselves up and hide in fear. The goods they buy or don’t buy are in keeping with the times. There is the rumination or dwelling on the regret of taking past risks with credit cards. There is the dwelling on the regret of not saving money of this rainy day. There is the dwelling on the fear of whether you will continue to have a job? Will you lose your house or be evicted from your apartment? Will you wind up out in the street as a homeless person with nothing at all? If you give the fear a chance, it will act like it is your whole world . . . but there is more.

Some of our acquaintances and friends or even family members get hit by the recession through lay offs, closings and foreclosures. Recessions are not just figments of our imagination—they are real!

With recessions we do naturally feel vulnerable. The trappings of our otherwise comfortable environments go away with store closings and factory closings. We feel as if a chunk has been taken from us when a part of our social fabric goes. With every new, negative, news story of economic recession it feels that the fabric tears more and more. When someone we know gets the axe or gets evicted or foreclosed on, the vulnerable feeling intensifies.

If we do lose the job or if we cannot get a good job it hits us where we live and we may feel weak, worthless, or impotent. A hallmark of the economy of the United States is the identification that occupation or vocation gives. Self-esteem demands a good answer to the question: “So, what do you do for a living?”

Furthermore, we feel vulnerable because we get in touch with the ramifications of the debt we have. We can “what if” ourselves to death on the different debts that can be incurred quickly with car repairs or replacement of large appliances or heating and air conditioning or roof repairs.

Also, we have less money in our pockets and purses. We are less able to do what we want to do or what we used to do. Buying power is appreciated the most when we do not have it.

If we really never have the money during good times, we lean on the buying power that credit deceptively seems to provide. In recessions we awaken the truth of our powerlessness.

We tend to feel shame because of our situation and we retreat to our caves. This act of retreat magnifies our feelings of fear and anxiety and vulnerability.

Aside from this feeling of vulnerability and mortal fear, there is the resentment towards the talking heads on TV. The economists and politicians tend to give pat, academic answers in the course of 15 seconds as to what they think has happened? What should happen? And how long it should take for the remedy to occur? The answer as to what happened changes depending on whom the talking head is?

The heck of it is—no explanation on TV or radio really does anything about the pain now? The talking head’s explanation is not going to solve the problem of coming up with the rent or mortgage, nor is it going to soothe the fear of whether or not one is going to get laid off from work.

There is no comfort in the talking head’s explanation. There is only the impression that they can give a cold, intellectual opinion because they are not affected by the recession.

The only ones who really get anything out of the anger is the political party not in power. They can blame the problems on the party in power and maybe they can channel the anger to win the election. Political anger is one healthy way of expressing rage.

One more part of the pain has to be discussed in this imperfect piece—the effect on families. Both nuclear and extended families are non-exempt from the effects.

Will extended family have to double up in single households when one nuclear unit gets evicted? Will older parents have to take in children and grandchildren—creating tense living situations? (The one big happy family may happen, but all things being equal—it suggests that togetherness is likely going to be short-lived before conflict and family drama occurs.)

Money is another family issue. Will there be the pain of being hit up for loans that you would rather make because you need that money for your retirement? Will there be the sacrifice of your own well-being for a family member’s stupidity because you get a royal guilt trip from a third family member who does it themselves and expects everyone else to be like them?

This is only a picture of the pain. There are so many nuances I do not think I can even begin to touch on all of them.

Do I have all the answers? No Each of us will have to make our decisions as to how we are going to cope with the problems and survive the situations that come our way.

There are a variety of choices that can be made to cope and take the edge off the pain. I will explore some of those choices in coming entries.

Black and White Thinking

2008-06-14T14:02:00.000-07:00

It is 2008 and it would seem that the world is in quite a bit of chaos.

I am all about staying sane in the 21st century.

Many people say that the world is in a mess and something has got to be done about it.

I say the world has always been in a mess and don't give your self a hemorrhoid about it.

What the previous generations have done has not appeared to fix it and I do not think that this generation is going to fix it, and I do not think that the next generation is going to make things right either. There will always be something really wrong with the world as long it exists.

Does that sound realistic or pessimistic? You are your own person. You decide.

Actually, I think that I find it quite liberating. Here is why.

There have been countless wars and acts of brutality throughout human history. Civilizations have come and gone. There have been famines and plagues and tyranny before during and after the great civilizations.

I think that people have always been anxious about something. When the world was agrarian in nature, people worried about rains their crops coming up and being raided by foreign invaders.

The same kinds of sins and crimes have always been happening. Murder, rape, robbery, assaults, etc., have always been going on.

What do you think really makes this time any different from any other era in human history?

My answer is black and white thinking. The thinking that makes you forget about the past and deny that there will be a future.

In reality, the people who are screaming or being histrionic about the world being in a mess and in big trouble have this rigid and narrow, telescopic focus on the here and now. It is also called black and white thinking.

Black and white thinking is evidenced by perfectionists, depressed individuals, borderline and narcissistic personalities, fundamentalists, extremist liberals (a fundamentalist liberal) and little kids. Black and white thinking also happens in anyone who has either had something catastrophic happen to them and all they can think about is the worst case scenario.

Black and white thinking can really be good or bad. Black and white thinking only allows things to be wrong or right. It only allows for extremes and makes no room for shades of gray.

Black and white thinking usually is connected with extremes in emotion. For example, when political gatherings of very liberal people and very conservative people happen, you get this really convoluted mix of self-righteous anger that almost comes across as a pentacostal worship service. People at those gatherings are intensely emotive in ways that they would not otherwise be in social situations. It is safe for them to vent their emotion in that setting whether their feelings of emotion are pertinent or inpertinent.

For many emotion still wigs people out and makes unaccustomed people feel scared. Many people do not know what to do with the emotion and they get most uncomfortable.

I will say that the liberal gatherings seem much more intense than the "fundamentalist" gatherings. The reason why: liberals for the most part are idealists. Idealism is black and white.

I am branding myself early, but liberalism in the political and religious sense is still quite a source of irony to me. They are all about accepting others, except when those others do not agree with them. People may call me a conservative already.

However, many fundamentalists call me a liberal because I do not agree with them. The fundamentalist already has a narrow point of view, so you pretty much expect them to say "You are for me or against me." You just do not expect that of the extreme liberal--but really you get it.

I have decided that in election years the black and white thinking gets thrown around a lot. Both sides make the other side look like immoral, intolerable inbreds. The black and white thinking has people living in the worst case scenario all the time. The bottom line, the politician we elect to lead the nation will be a human and just a human with strengths and faults.

However, the idea behind much of political rhetoric (speeches and punditry) is that the voting public thinks in black and white terms and is easily moved by emotion. It really does not matter that things are not going to change dramatically whether the other side is in power--if I have you believing it, then you will vote with your emotions.

2008 is a lot like 1979. We have an issue with fuel and inflation. In terms of the world scene iIt feels like the United States is an impotent country in need of national erectile dysfunction medication. Yeah, we are learning all over again how much we are a petroleum-based economy where the price of oil is raising the price of pretty much everything else. Yeah, people are learning that it was not a good idea to get that house out in that new housing development with that adjustable rate mortgage. People are learning some hard lessons again.

The message to myself and others is: do not be black and white about this. The worst possible stuff will not happen.