While I was jogging at the track one day, I happened to see a dog running along the inside of the fence. As I was leaving, a young woman drove by rather hurriedly, then quickly turned her car around and began to drive away. Since she seemed to be scanning the track area rather intensely with a worried look on her face, I thought the dog that I had seen might be hers so I motioned for her to stop. She sped toward me, while rolling down her window and before I could say anything, she blurted out, “Have you seen my dog?” I indicated I had seen a dog and pointed to the far side of the track where the dog had been. She continued, “I’m going crazy. I haven’t been able to find him. Without him, I’m lost. Just the thought of losing him makes me hysterical.”
As you might imagine, in addition to her comments, she appeared very distraught. There were tears streaming down her cheeks and her face was ashen. I suggested that she park her car and walk the perimeter of the fence surrounding the track. However, walking must have seemed too slow for her because she quickly raced away in her car.
What was ironic was that since there was a railroad track and an expressway on the far side of the field, she would be unable to approach any closer than where we were talking. To her, however, driving fast probably seemed more active and goal oriented. As I walked home, I wondered if she would get in an accident, driving as fast as she was and “doing” upset so well.
In my view, this young woman was functioning in a typical or “normal” manner. She was creating (and experiencing) a great deal of distress within herself while she was looking for her lost dog. She was not aware of the possibility that she could search for her dog without adding so much distress. Incidentally, she might even have been more effective in her search pattern had she not been adding so much distress or upset. In addition, she would have been less likely to become involved in a car accident or run a stop sign. It’s hard to see stop signs through tears.
When I equate “normal” behavior to “typical” behavior, I am suggesting that she, like most people, was not aware of her options, that she had other choices about how to “manage her self internally” while she searched for her missing dog. I think this young lady might have judged me as heartless and uncaring had I suggested that she only add minimal distress while she was looking for her dog or that she could be more effective in her search if she did less upset. She might have responded by saying something to the effect that she couldn’t help it, with the implication that I didn’t understand or appreciate how much she cared about her dog. She might also have assumed that I don’t like dogs.
On the contrary, I like dogs. We have a border collie that I like a great deal. I take good care of her. I also take good care of me and my feelings. Fortunately, taking care of my feelings happens to be up to me and, therefore, my choice. You see, I don’t subscribe to the unwritten rules: that the situation causes the distress and that the amount of upset or distress that one does reflects the amount of caring for the lost dog. Most people follow these rules unwittingly (outside of awareness) because they learned the rules as youngsters. They probably heard their parents say, “We can’t help but get upset when you do that. If we didn’t care about you, we wouldn’t get upset when you act like that.” Although we are now adults, we are likely to follow the rules without being aware.
I think the distinction between in and out of awareness can be useful because of its implication for utilizing choice. I am suggesting that we make most of our decisions about managing our selves outside of awareness since, in my view, the aware region seems rather small compared to the unaware region.
Using a television set as an analogy, the one program that we are watching is in our awareness with the dozens of cable programs available to us being comparable to our unawareness. We can change channels any time we want but we can only watch one program at a time.
What I am suggesting is that, as adults, we are in charge of our selves and that we are making most of our “operating decisions” outside of awareness. As examples, we fold our hands, brush our teeth, put on our slacks, thread in our belts, and eat our ears of corn using the same patterns that we adopted early in life. In addition to these numerous “housekeeping” patterns, I am proposing that we are also making our emotional decisions outside of awareness, just as the young lady did when she was searching for her dog.
Perhaps the most complex of all our activities where we function with little awareness is our linguistic functioning. We have an idea in our awareness, yet we generate our sentences outside of awareness. If we attempted to form a sentence on the basis of consciously using our knowledge of grammar, we would probably end up tongue tied.
As an example of our behavior on “automatic pilot,” you may have had the experience of trying to show a youngster how to tie a shoelace in a step-by-step manner and discovering that you “don’t seem to know how in your awareness,” yet you “know that you know.” By going through the motions more and more slowly, we seem to relearn the task in a step-by-step fashion. Then we can teach it. I am suggesting that most of our decisions about which emotions we “choose to do” in various situations are also made outside of awareness. If we “slow down” our thinking for a moment and realize that we have been “left in charge” of our selves, perhaps we can appreciate this possibility.
As I mentioned, our parents inadvertently taught us the rule of adding upset to signal our caring. They taught us outside of awareness and we learned outside of awareness. We heard our parents say, “We’re only upset because we love you. If we didn’t care, we wouldn’t get upset.” This turns out to be a rather explicit instruction that we learned during our formative years.
In addition to their words, they were also modeling “not being in charge.” Further, they were demonstrating doing distress as a sign of caring. Over the years, we have generalized this rule to apply to all kinds of situations, such as losing a dog or even a game. The most generalized statement of this rule is: any time the world isn’t the way I want it to be, I agree to do upset and distress. In this way, we seem to be demonstrating not being in control of our feelings, they are being controlled by the external event or person. We are also following the rule of showing that we care.
Returning to the scene of the lost dog, let me ask two questions. First, does adding distress bring the dog back? Second, does adding distress feel good? I propose that the answer to both questions is no. Adding high levels of upset does not magically produce the dog. Also, “doing” distress well (higher blood pressure, adding acid in the stomach, crying, hysteria, etc.) is not good for the person doing it. In fact, doing distress has the opposite effect: it is downright harmful. When looked at from this atypical angle, an interesting paradox appears. To show that she cared about the dog, the young woman was uncaring about her self.
Had I suggested that she calm down and had she been aware of her options, she might have viewed me as very caring rather than heartless. Since I couldn’t explain all this in ten seconds or less to a young woman who was not open to listening to anything except information about her dog, I kept my “caring” comment to myself. As she drove away, I smiled and thought about how blind (“normal”) we are to the obvious when our decision making process is well practiced and outside of awareness.
Another interesting point is that losing the dog did not cause her upset or distress. She did. Without being aware, she chose to do upset in order to follow the invisible rule of demonstrating how much she cared for her dog, even though she seemed uncaring about herself. She demonstrated exquisite control as evidenced by her rapid breathing, her vaso-constriction (ashen face), and making water come out of her eyes (crying). You may be a little incredulous and point to the same behaviors as evidence that she was not in control. My question is if she wasn’t in control, who was? After all, there was nobody else in the car. However, using our control to “prove” that we are not in control is the “norm” or typical way of thinking that reflects our belief that we are the “victims” of circumstances, that the environment “makes” us feel a certain way.
I think we have an alternative. The reason I say it wasn’t the dog that caused her upset was that the dog wasn’t even there. How could an absent dog cause her reactions…by remote control? I think the clue is in her statement about thinking, “Just the thought of losing him makes me hysterical.” Who was doing that thinking? She was. She was in the car alone, free to think any thought she wanted. She used her freedom to decide (outside of awareness) that she could only think about the “disaster” involved in losing her dog.
The “invisible rule” of typical thinking is that we have little or no control over our feelings. She could not “help” feeling hysterical, at least with her model of reality.
I propose another option…that we feel or experience whatever we are thinking. This young woman was probably picturing (thinking) her dog as frightened, run over, dog-napped, starving to death, or being used for animal experiments by some sadistic scientist. (Perhaps all of the above and more.) Using these pictures in her mind, she created her experience that she labeled hysterical. She did not choose this in awareness, she made this choice outside of awareness so that her statement that she couldn’t help herself made sense to her. She thought she couldn’t help her hysteria so her experience was that she was helpless.
I am not disagreeing with the reality of her experience: I think she really did experience no choice. I am simply saying that she was the author of that experience, even though she was unaware of her role. It is exactly this kind of thinking that allows us to blind our selves in regard to our own authorship of our own experience.
I went into considerable detail with the lost dog example to illustrate the usual way of thinking and the possibility of another way of thinking and experiencing similar situations. Later on, I will take another example, unemployment, and explore that situation as well. Before that, however, I would like to develop a distinction between stress and distress.
First, some background, in recent years, there has been a considerable focus on stress and “burnout.” Numerous stress management courses and self-help books bear witness to this emphasis. Although there are some benefits from this focus, I think that there has been some unintended “side effects” as well.
For example, some researchers have surveyed individuals and devised a way of assigning numerical values to a variety of situations or circumstances. Some examples might be: death of a spouse, child, or parent, 200; divorce, 150; loss of job, 125; moving, 100, etc. These numbers seem to ignore individual differences. For one person divorce may be 800 while for another, it may be a cause for celebration. (I do not know how many points a “lost dog” counts for, it could be nothing for a dog hater but maybe 75 or even 350 for a dog lover.) Any time one’s score tops some arbitrary amount, say 400, the researchers indicate that the individual is likely to be “at risk,” both emotionally and physically.
Isn’t that great news—discovering that you are at risk? The unintended “side effect” of this kind of score keeping is that it can be viewed as a kind of “prescription” by those who “take it.” In other words, if a person reads this point assignment, adds up his score, and discovers that he/she is “at risk,” he may inadvertently use this information to legitimize “doing” substantial distress. Also, a person may become more sensitive to the items on the list, the so-called “stressors.”
Unfortunately, as the helping profession has continued to focus on this issue, they have evolved terminology that facilitates the “victim” role. They use the word “stressor” to describe the external situation or agent “out there” which does the stress to the person “in here.” As soon as there is a stressor, then logic would suggest that there is also a “stressee.” Guess who that is? The individual exposed to the stressor. In my example, losing a dog could be viewed as a “stressor,” with the owner being the “stressee.” However, that internal experience would be determined more by the mind of the individual rather than the absence of a canine companion.
The usual way of thinking about “stressors” certainly is consistent with the “victim” role that seems to be the “norm” for this culture. Thus, we have the linguistic practice of saying that the stress did this or the stress did that to the person. If the stress does this to me, how else can I be anything but the victim? When writers and stress management workshop leaders suggest an assessment of a person’s situation, adding up the points and saying, “You have a lot of stressors in your life, you had better watch out,” the unintended “side effect” could be that the person decides (outside of awareness) to add more distress. That is certainly reassuring, isn’t it? If a person didn’t feel close to a “nervous breakdown” before hearing this news, this could be a great excuse!
I might add that most so-called stress management seminars do not make any distinction between stress and distress, they lump them together under the word stress. Recently I received a brochure inviting me to attend such a workshop. The language was typical. The opening line was “A powerful seminar that will help you deal with stress.” If the seminar is “powerful,” then what are the attendees, “powerless?” Another phrase was “How to combat stress.” Doesn’t that sound relaxing? Sounds like a gun might come in handy. Another comment is “A high impact approach!” Not very relaxing.
On the second page, the brochure headlines, “14 Ways This Seminar Will Change Your Life!” I might ask, whether you like it or not? The list of 14 items presumes that the seminar is powerful and the participants will be changed by the seminar regardless. On the last page where there is a sign up, there is a statement with a box to check yes. The statement is, “Yes, I want to take control of my life.” I think that assumes that a person is not in charge of their life until they get changed by the “powerful” seminar. An interesting question would be, if they were not in control, how could they sign up for and get to the seminar?
It would appear that there is no personal choice or individual difference involved and yet we know better. As I mentioned divorce for one person may result (by unaware choice) in years of depression and withdrawal while another person may celebrate their “freedom.” Similarly, moving for one person may be gut wrenching and uprooting while another person may experience (again by a choice outside of awareness) a sense of adventure. Both decisions are totally justified, however, the decision resides within the individual not the situation, in contrast with the way most people think.
Fortunately, the usual view is not the only way stress and distress can be viewed. Although it certainly does not fit the norm, I can provide some options for you to consider. First, we can look at our thinking about stress, distress, and our selves in a different way. For example, stress and distress are abstract concepts as opposed to something tangible. To borrow a cliché, you can’t put them in a wheelbarrow. In other words, it’s not like a sack of sand that you can weigh nor a cloud of smoke that you can smell. It is internal to each of us and can’t be taken out and examined. Thus, in a reciprocal manner, it can’t be put in, either.
So the second thing to look at conceptually is that both stress and distress are internal responses that we are involved in and are therefore, to some degree, subject to our sovereignty. We are in charge of how much stress and distress we do since there is nobody inside of me except me, and there is nobody inside of you except you. Just like me, you are “doing” all of you—not just part of you. You are doing your own breathing, your own blood pressure, and your own feelings. (If you are not doing all that, who is?)
I know this is an unusual or abnormal way of thinking, but since the normal or standard way of thinking doesn’t seem to pay off in feeling better (it simply justifies feeling bad), maybe it is time to consider thinking about the situation “abnormally.” I might add that I am aware that we do not “do” blood pressure or emotions in our awareness. However, we are still in charge of our selves and if we think about something that we consider scary or dangerous, we can raise our blood pressure and increase our pulse while sitting still.
We may label this kind of control involuntary or unconscious, but it still does not undo our ownership. I recall the time I got a ticket for speeding even though I explained to the police officer that I was not aware and did not intend to speed. He simply said, “I don’t see anybody else in the car, so it must have been you. Here is your ticket.” That is good feedback; now I don’t speed quite as much and I am very alert to the presence of the police. If my excuse had worked and continued to work every time, I would be much more likely to drive with a heavy foot on the gas, wouldn’t I?
Just as we may choose our vehicle speed outside of awareness, we seem to be relatively unaware of many of our other, particularly emotional, choices. What I am suggesting is that our behavior is internally initiated. We chose our response to the environment—the phone ringing does not “cause” us to answer it, it is an “invitation” to answer, a bit of information in our environment. We decide. Another person’s comment about our ancestry does not “cause” our anger, we decide if we consider it an insult or not. In the extreme, a “brain dead” person may be alive because of external causes; however, that person is not “living.” They may be responding to the environment in a mechanical manner, but they do not know what anything means.
When we were born, we were, in a sense, on a “life support system” provided by our parents since we could not fend for our selves. At that time we had no mind, we did not know the meaning of an insult, or anything else for that matter. We developed a mind of our own as we “grew up” and now we have an internal interpretive framework (a mind of our own) that we use in lightning fashion to decide what anything means.
Before going any further in this issue of ownership or response ability, I want to make the long-promised distinction between stress and distress. I picked up the idea from the title of a book by Hans Selye, Stress Without Distress. What I make up, and perhaps this will be of value to you, is that there is a difference between stress and distress. Not only is there a difference, but I can conceptualize them as relatively separate and independent. Although I took my idea from the title, I am not going to focus on what Selye wrote.
Perhaps a useful way of conceptualizing a distinction between stress and distress is to view stress as primarily physical behavior or activity while distress can be seen as primarily mental (thinking) or psychological activity. I think of the former as more physiological and the latter as more psychological, although that separation is not always clear-cut.
Sitting here writing, sitting there reading, digesting a recent meal, breathing, etc., all are accompanied by stress, although a low level of stress. And, I hasten to add, stress is not “bad.” It is a part of or an accompaniment of living, just as producing carbon dioxide is a part of breathing.
What is important is that we can vary our stress level. Sitting down with my eyes closed will result in minimal stress, while jogging five miles will result in considerable stress for me and for most people. I have been jogging for many years and I have experienced a great deal of stress as a result. Just as much of my driving behavior is outside of awareness (or on automatic pilot), much of my stressing behavior is not in my immediate awareness.
With this distinction between stress and distress in mind, we can easily imagine that jogging does not necessarily result in high levels of distress. If I think of distress as a negative emotion similar to worry, anxiety, guilt, resentment, etc., then you can appreciate that I can jog without adding distress even while I am doing considerable stress. In contrast, I could sit still with my eyes closed (a low stress level) and “do” a great deal of guilt or worry (a high distress level). Or, I could meditate (a low stress and a low distress level). If I am being chased by a bear, I think I would be at the top of the scale on both dimensions.
Although this is not a precise analogy, we could imagine two separate scales numbered one to ten. In the first example of jogging and not worrying, I might rate myself a seven or eight on the stress scale but only a two or three on the distress scale. The second example, sitting still and worrying, could be seen as a two on the stress scale and an eight or nine on the distress scale. The third example of meditation might be a two on both scales and the last example about the bear might be a ten on both scales.
Thus, you can see that I can vary them somewhat independently, although by my choice…whether in or out of my awareness. A person lying in bed at night while worrying about a presentation in the morning could be one or two on the stress level and perhaps a nine or ten on the distress scale. The person skilled at panic attacks can be sitting and waiting to be introduced to the audience while scaring himself to the point of almost fainting.
In my opinion it is my option what I do in regard to my distress level while I am sitting still, driving a car, eating, making love, jogging, or watching a movie (all variations of my stress level). Thus, just as I can vary my stress level through my choice of physical activity, I can also vary my distress level by my choice of mental activity. I see these two dimensions as relatively independent, although “housed” and inseparably intertwined in each individual.
Therefore, just as I choose how much I jog (on an aware basis), I also choose how much worry or distress I do (even though I may make my choice without awareness). Perhaps you can appreciate better now why I chose the title “Minimizing Distress” rather than the usual label of stress management.
Unfortunately, we have two different sets of rules for jogging and worrying. The first we call voluntary behavior while the second we label involuntary. When we make this distinction, we often unwittingly assume that we are in control of the first (response able) and not of the second (not response able). However, it is like the speeding ticket: there is nobody in there but you. You must be the driver of the vehicle, if only by default.
If we want to feel better psychologically, I am suggesting that we do away with the assumption that there are two separate rules regarding who is controlling our behavior and experience. Instead, we can be “abnormal” and play the game of life (operate our vehicle) as if we “owned” all of us, while understanding that we are making decisions in both regions of the mind, aware and unaware, though primarily in the latter.
If we played the game of life that way, as soon as we begin to do worry or guilt and became aware of the negative feedback (psychological pain), we could choose to think and do something different. If we were doing worry, for example, we could ask our selves if there was any-thing we could do to change the situation externally. If we could, then we may go ahead and change it. If not, then we could stop worrying about it. We could stop worrying by “getting off it,” i.e., thinking about something else, changing channels.
Of course, if we think we can’t think about something different, then we will experience not being able to think about anything else. Hence, we will be right. Whether we think we can or we think we can’t think about something else, we will always be right, either way!
If you are at home in the family room and you decide, outside of your awareness at first, then bringing it into your awareness, that you might have left the stove on, then either get up and check it or stop worrying about it. However, if you are in an airplane at 30,000 feet when you have that thought and begin to worry, you might as well get off of it because at that moment there is no direct action you can take to check the stove. It is crystal clear that worrying about it and imagining your house burning down will not change what is happening on the ground. Furthermore, it is “uncaring” about your self if you continue to fret about it. That is kind of a far-fetched example, but I am using it to illustrate the principle.
If you are like most people (statistically “normal”) reading this, one of your likely reactions is to say, “But I can’t help myself, I have always been a worrier.” Implicit in this sentence (a “sentence” that you will “serve”) is that since you have always been a worrier, you always will be a worrier, no choice. I want to point out that you have only done you up until now; you have not done you tomorrow, at least not yet, although you will. Since you are the only driver in that vehicle (your body), you can do something different now and tomorrow as well. In a sense, you can “commute” your sentence.
As an analogy, I can offer this: even if you have always driven into your garage and backed out, starting today, you can back in and drive out. This is true even if you have done the other pattern for 20 years. All you need is an awareness of that option and an awareness of who is driving, plus an acceptance of the awkwardness that will accompany the change in your driving pattern.
It is important to label the feeling that we experience when we change as awkward, unfamiliar, or strange, rather than hard, difficult, or painful. Otherwise, we will create the experience of striving, straining, and struggling to change (while not changing) rather than creating the experience of playfulness, adventure, and excitement that seems to facilitate change. If there is nobody in there but you, who could stop you from doing you in the second manner?
Another reaction that you are likely to create if you are ”normal” is that what I am suggesting is “easier said than done.” We can use a phrase like that to obscure our freedom of choice, even though we freely choose to use that phrase to pretend that we don’t have any freedom. I suggest that our culture is still heavily puritanical and there is a very negative bias against “the easy way.” It is almost as if we say to our selves, “Beware of the easy way!” If somebody were to accuse you of taking the easy way, you would probably automatically disagree and say that you are not. Is it any wonder that people experience life as difficult?
I think a B.C. cartoon is appropriate here.
The pilgrim or seeker has climbed the mountain to ask the guru a question about life. As he approaches, he says, “Oh great guru, why is life such a hardship’!” The guru looks at him and replies, “You have the nerve to ask me that question after climbing this mountain with roller skates on?”
In addition, if we are feeling good, we are likely to interrupt this feeling because then we know “something bad is going to happen.” Saying this to our selves is a choice that we make outside of awareness. Sometimes we use other sentences to produce the same result. Examples include: I’m feeling too good, This can’t last, I’m going to have to pay for this , and, Am I just kidding myself!
We are also likely to make another choice outside of awareness, that of becoming apprehensive about easing up. Many people think (and feel) that if they were to lighten up or ease back, then they would lose their focus and become lazy or unproductive.
However, students and seminar participants report just the opposite. Many experience more creativity and productivity with less frazzle and fatigue. This sounds like a paradox, yet it is easily understood. When one tenses, pushes, and worries while at work, there is considerable energy that is siphoned off and not used productively. When one is internally more at ease, a person can redirect their energy into more positive and productive results. In addition, they report making fewer mistakes, which again increases productivity since there is less need to go back, correct mistakes, and redo what could have been done correctly the first time.
Another way of viewing this situation is that a person can operate from a base of enthusiasm, that “easing up” does not necessarily mean “slacking off.” One can learn new skills more quickly when he or she approaches novel situations with interest and curiosity. Of course, the standard puritanical response to this is that I am not being realistic, that I am selling pie in the sky. I admit that relatively few people manage themselves from this position; however, this does not mean that this stance is unavailable.
Back to the phrase, “easier said than done,” (a sentence that we use to pretend that we must struggle) I am proposing that as soon as we expand our awareness and “pretend” that we are driving (that we are in charge of our self) and can park our car in the garage facing in either direction, it is easy (albeit awkward) to do. This would result in more awareness of our freedom rather than “pretending” that we can’t park any other way, simply because we have not done so in the past. Go ahead, play around with this idea; surprise and delight your self with your awareness of freedom of choice. All you need to do is expand your awareness. You can even embrace the attendant awkwardness as a sure sign of change.
Perhaps an example from a recent seminar might be useful. A woman reported that she had gone into her basement to get a winter coat since it was the fall and beginning to get cold. When she pulled the coat out, the pole holding all her winter clothes collapsed and everything fell on the floor. She said that ordinarily she would have created a great deal of distress while she picked up the clothes. Because of her awareness of choice, she decided that doing distress didn’t get the clothes off the floor and did not feel good, so she simply picked them up in a calm, almost detached manner. She stated that she felt a little awkward but that overall, she was very pleased with herself. She added, “I can’t believe that it’s so easy, just changing my min about how I think!”
Yet another reaction you might create for your self is for you to focus on a current or past catastrophe (or even one you just read about) and freely dismiss your freedom of choice by saying, “Okay, I understand about the gas stove but what about________?” Fill in the blank with whatever catastrophe you want, and it is still the same. You are still in charge “in there,” no matter what is happening “out there.”
A recent example from the local paper once again illustrates that we have a choice about how we react. After the headline, Car C rashes Into House, the article goes on to say: After a runaway car crashed into Louise Swait’s house—buckling a wall, destroying the television set and practically demolishing the living room—the woman remained undaunted. “After you live 67 years and see all kinds of ups and downs, you learn to accept things you can’t control,” she said. “This could have been a lot worse.” The newspaper has a picture of her standing in her living room in the midst of the rubble and she appears relaxed. Admittedly, this is not in the same league as some catastrophes.
I am not suggesting that it is inappropriate to grieve or mourn when faced with a death, divorce, losing your job, etc. What I am suggesting is that you mourn, do upset or whatever, and then get off it. If sitting around in stunned silence and depression for two years got your job, marriage or whatever back again, I would say it would be useful—and I would give you some pointers on how to do depression better. However, since you don’t feel good while doing upset or depression and it is not effective in changing external circumstances, I would urge you to opt for getting off the negative emotion sooner rather than later.
As you recall, I began this article with the “lost dog” scenario to illustrate the possibility of an alternative way of viewing a situation where we would characteristically do upset. Notice I do not say viewing an upsetting situation because it is our thinking about the situation that we experience, not the situation. If I used the usual construction, an upsetting situation, then the implication is that the situation “caused” the upset; the person had no choice or freedom to react any other way.
You may wonder how we came to function in this manner, i.e., doing upset whenever the world isn’t the way we want it to be. As I suggested earlier, we probably learned this lesson from our parents. In addition, we learn this lesson and have it reinforced through the media. We hear about this principle on the radio and television. We read about it in the papers and magazines.
I have an excellent example from the paper that I clipped out of the front page of the St. Louis Post Dispatch, dated August 16, 1982. The first headline is “Life Without Hope.” This is followed by a slightly smaller headline, “The Crushing Impact of Joblessness.” Following these headlines are two articles, one national and one local. The national article is written in Washington and begins with: “When Americans lose their jobs, as they have in increasing numbers the last year and likely will for many years to come, they run a higher than normal risk of physical, emotional, and mental illness. The results include nightmares, murder and suicide, heart attacks, alcoholism, ulcers, and brutality directed at spouses and children of the unemployed. High unemployment is very destructive stuff. It cripples a person’s self-respect. It destroys families,” said E___ L___, chief of the Center for Work and Mental Health.
P___ R___, professor of sociology, said, “It makes people strangers in their own homes. The illness of unemployment progresses from individual to family to community to region.”
In addition to making unemployment an illness, this article goes on to describe some or the traditional behaviors that unemployed people do. Further, there is a chart that carries the message in the form of a graph. For each 1% increase in unemployment, the following also increase:
- 4. l % more people commit suicide
- 5.7% more people commit homicide
- I.9% more people die from liver, heart, and kidney disease
- 4.3% more men admitted to mental hospitals
- 2.3% more ,women admitted to mental hospitals
This is rather grim stuff! However, besides being a description of behavior, it could also be seen as a prescription (or set of options) for what to do in case you lose your job. A newspaper is as good an instruction manual as word of mouth or television. Once we have read something like this, it goes into the data bank in the back of our head. Then when we lose our job (not our dog), we access or retrieve what would be a typical response.
We decide all this outside of awareness and then produce the behavior without seeing our responsibility. When we do not see our selves as having the responsibility, we also do not see our response ability, our ability to respond differently.
Unfortunately, if we did not respond with upset and distress, people might assume that we didn’t care or that we were lazy. It is unlikely that they would view us as taking good care of our selves.
In addition to the invisible rules or traditions, there is also the linguistic form that we use to express the situation. For example, the local article deals with the trials and tribulations of an unemployed worker under the headline, “Job Quest Is Tearing Him Apart.” There is a picture of the worker sitting on his front lawn with the newspaper want ads open and a cup of black coffee. From the headline, one would anticipate that there were various body parts scattered across the lawn. However, he looks completely assembled. He is quoted as saying: “There’s a big pressure inside me. You’ve got a safety valve in you, and you don’t know when it’s going to blow. I read in the paper about these people who’ve held up banks and savings and loans and I know what they are going through. It’s like a psychological pressure and you can’t take aspirin for it.”
The linguistic form or tradition is passive rather than active. The job quest is tearing him apart. “The big pressure is about to blow and you don’t know when.” Clearly, the manner in which it is stated implies that he is not in control of himself; he is not his own response ability. The absence of a job seems to be controlling him. What I am attempting to point to is the distinction between the job (which he cannot directly control) and his own experience (which he does control, even if outside of awareness). The failure to distinguish between these two domains results in an assumption of little or no “apparent” control in the internal domain. Unemployment is the stressor and he is the stressee. Again, some distress would be appropriate. I am simply saying that there is some response ability involved.
The sentence is not stated in the active format. If it were it would be something like, “Worker is tearing himself up while seeking employment.” He is simply following the typical linguistic pattern or tradition. He certainly has a valid excuse. However, by tearing himself up, he is not caring for himself (although he is following the instructions embedded in the newspaper article). If he gives himself ulcers or high blood pressure, I don’t see where that will increase his job opportunities. He may “do” distress so well that he will end up in the hospital.
Another common form of attempting to “deal with stress” is to drink too much (again following the suggestions contained in the article, or following the example of an uncle or a neighbor). This would be another way of hindering his finding a job.
If he were told to reduce his distress level, he might say the same thing the young woman who lost her dog might have said, “I can’t help it.” The next piece of logic is a beauty in its appeal and simplicity, “If I could control my distress or my feelings, do you think I would do this to myself?” The answer is yes, if you thought you were not in control! You have to believe (think) that you are not responsible (response able) for your own thinking, and therefore, not responsible for your own feelings either. Further, the invisible rule that must be followed is that you must show how much you care about losing your job by adding large amounts of distress. The distress activity is a clear example of being uncaring about your self.
The upset or distress that he is experiencing is based on the way he holds the job conceptually or linguistically. He might say, “A soon as I get a job, I will feel good again.” What is implicit and invisible in this sentence (the sentencing of himself) is that, “Without a job, I can’t possibly feel good. Since I must experience what I am thinking, I must feel bad since I don’t have a job.” This is all done outside of awareness, although it is still his choice.
Another aspect of the linguistic tradition is the use of “you” in his descriptive sentencing. For example, “You’ve got a safety valve inside of you and you don’t know when it’s going to blow.” By using the word you, he makes it sound as if he is speaking a universal truth and that there is no other way of viewing the situation.
It is easy to translate this kind of thinking to many other situations that traditionally “call for” adding distress. This includes divorce, disobedient children, ill-tempered mother-in-laws, inattentive spouses, losing money in the stock market, a car that won’t start etc. I am not suggesting that these are occasions for celebration; I am simply suggesting that you recognize that feeling bad does not change the situation nor is it good for you. However, I am not saying don’t feel bad…momentarily. I think you could feel bad for a moment to remind your self to shift your focus to more positive and constructive thoughts. Use your mind for a change and keep the change.
Occasionally in a seminar, someone will “hear” and say, “You’re saying that the environment is unimportant or doesn’t count.” I will typically say that I certainly did not intend to say that. I will add that the environment is very important and write that on the board, underlining very. Then I’ll put a 2 in front of that statement and then I’ll write a 1 above it and add the following statement, “1. What you think about the environment is usually more important because that is what you experience.”
When I was a young man, I gave myself ulcers. Of course, I thought then that it was my job that did it to me. I now recognize (re-cognize) that work didn’t care; I was simply following an ineffective self-management strategy. I was “normal” and I was following in my father’s footsteps since he had ulcers too. I value myself much more now and I am aware of my control so I am not about to give myself ulcers again. If I were to think that I am not okay, that there is something wrong with me, then it makes even more sense to treat myself poorly, since I don’t deserve to feel good.
I enjoy much more the “pretense” or thought of being okay and seeing myself as worthwhile and in control. I invite you to play around with a similar pretense about your self for a while and see what the results are for you. You can begin this process immediately, you do not have to wait for somebody else’s permission or wait until you have made great achievements. The process will likely be a little awkward to begin with (which is one of the indications of change).
If you love your self (and this is up to you, what you think), you will treat your self lovingly. This means minimizing the amount of distress that you do within your self. When I say that loving your self is up to you, I mean you are in charge of your thinking and that you are free to think whatever you want. Since you experience what you think about, if you think positively about your self, you will experience high self- esteem. If you think poorly of your self, then you will experience low self-esteem. Remember, what you think about your self is self-esteem. What others think about you is other esteem. I might add that I do not think they are necessarily related. They may be, but there is no cause and effect.
Back to minimizing distress and using the analogy of driving, if you have driven a length of time on an expressway, you may have gotten tired and drowsy, almost fallen asleep. If your car drifts off toward the shoulder and ditch, the change in the feel of the steering wheel and the sound of the tires is usually enough to alert you to steer back toward the middle of the road. You don’t need to go all the way into the ditch and have an accident. Instead, just on the basis of the feedback, you can make the necessary adjustments to stay out of the ditch.
Similarly, as we become more aware when we begin to do upset or distress, we might just as well steer back toward feeling good at an early stage (rather than later) simply by changing our thinking. Ironically, most people are so accustomed to being in the ditch (doing distress), that they steer back toward the ditch when they begin to experience the smoothness of the highway (things are going too good).
I would like to put this decision about who we are and how we treat or manage our selves in a larger context, the context of life. To begin with, it doesn’t make much difference where you drive or how you treat your self. You see, everything turns out okay. Everybody dies. We all know the outcome, although we usually prefer not to think about it. And Life doesn’t care how you do your self. You will live until you die no matter how you do you. If you spend most of your lifetime in the ditch feeling bad, you are going to die. And if you spend most of your time on the highway feeling comfortable within, you are going to die. The only difference is in the quality of your life. You are the only one who experiences the direct consequence or the payoff of a predominantly smooth trip down the highway of life or the one who endures the rough ride of being in the ditch the majority of the time.
There are other examples besides losing a dog or losing a job. I think most people can see the application of these basic principles in regard to their own issues. This is the case whether it is the behavior of a spouse, child, mother-in-law or a boss.
Before I end, I would like to point out another invisible tradition: getting more and more serious about a serious issue or problem. I want to suggest that you can’t get out of a hole by digging it deeper. Similarly, you can’t get out of seriousness by getting more serious. Thus, when faced with a serious situation that one has little or no control over, one of the most constructive actions we can take is to do the opposite, namely do or think something light—while continuing the job search or looking for the lost dog. Unfortunately, our culture frowns on this and “normal” people often dismiss this action by labeling it ridiculous, which it is. That is precisely why it is effective in feeling good. However, it seems to be the last place serious people look. Also, it is noteworthy that the idea of tearing oneself up is not seen as ridiculous but as demonstrating that one is caring about his future. Some future when we give our selves ulcers and high blood pressure because the world isn’t the way we want it.
Thus, when you experience the distress (ditch) of serious situations, you are welcome to play around with (steer toward the smooth portion of the highway of life) relaxation, meditation, laughter, serenity, and even whimsy. Other people may not understand or approve, but if you are treating your self the way you would treat a friend, then you are already feeling at peace within—which is the point of minimizing distress.
Incidentally, I certainly do not see seriousness as “bad” or something to avoid at all costs. I am simply saying that spending long periods of time in seriousness doesn’t feel good and if we want to feel good, then it is important that we change our mind. Also, we have cultural norms for what is a serious issue and what is not. I am proposing that even if there is agreement that a serious topic is being discussed, this does not necessarily mean that the individuals discussing the issue have to be serious and grim. I am not suggesting a party atmosphere, simply that people can discuss what is important while they are taking good care of themselves psychologically. When people are dating, they discuss money, sex, children, and other “weighty” topics. After they have been married for a period of time, they discuss these same topics with more heat than light.
In ending, I would like to include a postscript about the lost dog. A few days later when I returned to the track, I saw the young woman with her dog. As I walked by I said, “It looks like a happy ending.” She responded, “Yes, I came back and he was right here. I should have waited here because I should have known that he would come back to this area.” Again, I didn’t say anything, but I thought about the upset and distress she could have avoided if she had not been “normal” and had been aware of other options regarding the way she managed her self. She could have made her search for her dog without adding all the upset she did. She could have been an example of someone who was minimizing her distress.
Perhaps this story and my comments may be useful in expanding your awareness. I certainly hope so. I would like to say that I have enjoyed the process of writing this booklet. Back when I was “normal,” I would have made writing this booklet distressing. I am glad that I am aware that I have choice about how I do me.
HAVE FUN!
Thoughts Marlowe Thought 