Has your doctor told you that you are making yourself sick, that your pain or disability will continue to get worse until you change your lifestyle? Perhaps you have had trouble complying with doctor’s orders about alcohol, cigarettes, street drugs, prescription pills, physical therapy, losing weight, getting exercise, eating a balanced diet, or changing your high-stress lifestyle.
If you read the rest of this article and get turned off, I hope you will at least have the courage and wisdom to ask yourself the question at the end of this article. Meanwhile, if you have tried over and over without success to change your ways, if your loved ones have asked you repeatedly to stop what's making you sick, if you know deep down inside now that you are your own worst medical enemy (and perhaps also your family’s), these insights and suggestions are for you.
1. Ask your doctor to predict your medical future, both if you do and if you don't shape up. Ask for specifics, about months and years, about the predicted dates of losing this or that ability or freedom, and about how the doctor believes it will affect your friends and family one way or the other.
2. Ask the doctor if there are any cost-effective ways to encourage or measure your compliance: nicotine substitutions, weighing daily on a digital scale, blood or urine tests, physical therapy reports, new medications for alcohol abuse, etc. Does the doctor know any other people who have made similar lifestyle changes, and would be willing to support you in this change of lifestyle?
3. Share this information (every single detail) with your family and friends, and ask them to tell you how they will be affected over time by your choosing medical compliance, or on the other hand, your choosing continued unhealthy behavior. Give this article to them, so they know what you can do, and what they can do. Another article is coming next week or soon, to guide them in how to help you.
4. Make a written analysis of why this is so hard for you. Start by listing and then rank-ordering the situations that tempt you to unhealthy behavior. Consider the following :
A. Mental triggers: dread, boredom, lack of hopes or goals, or unhealthy or unrealistic beliefs about God, your family, friends, work, health, control, revenge, entitlement, unconditional love, euphoria, nirvana, etc. (You might need a friend or counselor to draw your thoughts out, and help you identify the sick ones.)
B. Physical triggers: being hungry, tired, on a caffeine or junk food high or low, etc.
C. Emotional triggers: feeling unattractive, scared, insecure, angry, hurt, shameful, discouraged, elated, embarrassed, jealous, craving something or someone, dreading or craving sex, etc.
D. Situational triggers: the setting is too lonely, boring, structured, chaotic, stimulating, tempting, or you have failure, money in hand (or none), a tempting friend or group, etc.
E. Relational triggers: being rejected, ignored, refused, criticized, patronized, suckered, ordered around, etc.
A and B arise within you, and D and E are external situations you run up against, but you also seek and provoke. C comes from both inside and outside of you, but everyone is fully responsible for coping with their own emotions.
5. List constructive alternative responses that will reduce your frustration and temptation in these situations. For example, some people benefit from buying time (“I’ll think about this and get back to you”), prayer (the Lord's prayer, the serenity prayer, Google St. Francis’ “make me an instrument” prayer, write out your favorites), inspiring thoughts(Google AA slogans, list your favorite sayings and Bible passages, see the tab here for “New Proverbs”), calming behaviors (cardio or yoga exercises, deep breathing, muscle relaxation, visual imagery, visual and auditory relaxations and distractions), reviewing consequences(next section below). Keep a list of these coping strategies on your person at all times.
6. Plan and imagine rewards and punishments. Set up short, medium, and long-term goals for your behavior (the number of pounds lost, miles walked, weeks clean and sober, etc.). Plan to reward yourself at each of these points in time, and plan with others how they can best reward these accomplishments. (You may want to do this all by yourself, but this would be as foolish as a physician who tries to treat himself: both of you would have a fool for a patient.) So agree with two or three people on how they can react to you in ways that will help you stay on the right track, and report to them at regular intervals. (You might want to ask if there is anything in their lives that they want to be accountable to you about in return.) When you have had a bad day or time, remember that self-administered punishments (e.g., giving up TV shows, or doing household chores without being asked) work way better for stopping your unhealthy behavior than other people criticizing or punishing it.
7. Ask your loved ones to follow your lead. Tell them as much of this as you can: “When I've treated myself well, you treat me good too. When I've been bad, just leave me alone, and don't help me with anything. Wait till I have shown a change of heart by admitting my mistake, punishing myself in some way, and asking you to help me start over. Meanwhile, just walk off-- no lecture, no further interaction, no hanging out in the same room together, and especially, NO EMOTION FROM YOU. Let me feel all the emotional pain. Seeing yours just gives me a temptation and excuse to mess up some more, and distracts me from my own painful emotions. I need my painful emotions to motivate my healthier behavior, not yours. Whatever you need me for, find someone else for now.”
8. Ask your loved ones to speak your love language strategically. You might have a different one, but the five most common love languages are: words of affirmation, quality time, physical touch, receiving gifts, and acts of service. Know what your favorite love languages are, and ask your significant other to speak them to you only when you have been taking good care of your health. Otherwise, those parts of your loved ones go on strike.
For the public good, an evolving copy of this article has been posted on my website given above, under the homepage tab of “Doctor’s Orders”. I invite readers to send any suggested improvements for this piece to my email ([email protected]), because any help you can give may add years to someone’s life, and peace to someone’s home. The same will go for my next column written for the friends and family members of people who are defying doctor’s orders for their health.
One last question for you: if you think you can still enjoy and manage your life successfully without following these suggestions, how would you ever know if you were wrong—what would it take to convince you?
What is healthy faith, anyway, and who am I to judge it? As a psychologist, I can tell when people’s religious beliefs and lifestyles are enabling them to enjoy life, be enjoyable to others, and leave the world a better place each day. No matter what a person’s religious faith or denomination, most would agree this is healthy.
For defining sick and healthy religious or spiritual faith, an excellent book was written some years ago by a counselor Steve Arterburn and a pastor Jack Felton, called Toxic Faith. I really like their final chapter, "Seventeen Characteristics of Healthy Faith". Here they are:
1. Focused on God: trying to tune ourselves into harmony with God rather than getting God to meet our needs.
2. Growing: "healthy faith grows and matures over time." Every living thing grows, and faith that doesn’t evolve its beliefs and practices is practically dead.
3. Respectful: it’s good to believe and remember that all human beings are capable of inspiration and personal growth.
4. Free to Serve: believing that we don’t have to work for the welfare of others, but that we freely choose to do so, with our hearts in it.
5. Self-worthy: we see ourselves as having a high inherent value, bestowed upon us by God.
6. Vulnerable: "being real", and therefore open to feeling the very human heartaches of rejection, failure and loss.
7. Trusting: the authors urge us to trust ourselves with other people, trust ourselves with God, and trust God with ourselves.
8. Individualized: celebrating that God gave each of us unique talents and opportunities, so that we strive to be a unique expression of God’s ways.
9. Relationship Oriented: the focus is on relationships more than rules, on getting along with God and others vs. seeing oneself as an independent individual.
10. Personal: if we believe there’s a personal God seeking a personal relationship with each human being, then God’s word to each of us is personal.
11. Balanced: the authors mention balancing work, rest and play; witnessing and serving; obeying rules and being creative; avoiding the perspectives of either/or, black or white, all or nothing, and us or them.
12. Nondefensiveness: "healthy faith welcomes critical evaluation and tough questions as opportunities to learn and relate." I love that one.
13. Nonjudgmental: "stop judging others and listen to them", especially to what they need. This requires comparing ourselves with God, with what we are to become, not to other people.
14. Reality Based: healthy believers "see the problems before them, do what they can to resolve them, and trust God to do the rest."
15. Able to Embrace our Emotions: we need to feel our emotions and express them in constructive ways.
16. Able to Embrace our Humanity: we acknowledge our capacity to sin, and make mistakes. We forgive others to appreciate our own forgiveness, by God, by ourselves, and by trusted other people.
17. Loving: considering Jesus’ two great commandments to love God and to love our neighbors as ourselves, I find few people who come to me with a healthy balance of those three loves. So many love themselves much better than they love God or others, love God but dislike most people, love their neighbor instead of themselves, or love their neighbors and then themselves.
If you are called to love God and others, you have to take care of the caretaker, the one who does the loving, and that’s you. In many ways, if you don’t take care of yourself, no one else can, and then you can’t take very good care of others either.
Next time I’m going to wander into the country of sacred cows. I’ll take a meddling look atunhealthy faith, and in particular, at certain toxic religious experiences, beliefs and lifestyles. You’ll likely agree with me and with Toxic Faith that these are sick, but I don’t think you’ll have much trouble coming up with lots of examples from the people you’ve known and seen, and probably even one or two within yourself!
Think about your exposure to the news of the day—TV, newspapers, websites, radio, gossip and hearsay. What is it doing for you, or perhaps, TO you?
Just as with the food and medicine we take in, we need to examine the nutritional value and side effects of the news we get. To live the good life, we have to set healthy boundaries for ourselves, to guide what news we put into ourselves. So what kinds of filters do you use for the news?
Nutritional value: we all need to take in enough news to understand what is happening, why, what’s good and bad for the world, and what can be done to promote the good and defeat the bad.
I like to get my news by flipping through Time and Newsweek, and scanning the headlines and articles of newspapers, in hand or online. I think about what happens until I can answer the questions in the previous paragraph. Then I’ve made my peace with it, and I move on. No worries, no rehashing of bad news, no horrifying TV images. Those are my boundaries, my news filters.
Toxic side effects. Producers of news reports know how to hook us with excitement. They design their news reports to titillate us, arousing our pleasures and desires. Some of the desire and pleasure is innocent enough, like humor and gratitude, which flavor a little bit of the news. That’s good.
But to protect ourselves from psychological infection, we all need to ask ourselves with each news story we take in: What is this arousing in me? What will this do for my confidence and contentment, for my blood pressure? The news that doesn’t arouse laughter or gratitude usually arouses an attitude of arrogance: "I’m better than these other people. We should just rid of the bad guys, the foreign element, the criminals and we’d be fine."
We like to think nothing is wrong with us. Compared to the villains on the news, we feel like innocent victims, our vain virtues forever being vexed by their villainous vices.
To avoid this self-deceit, a good boundary is to realize that under their circumstances of genetics, childhood trauma and neglect, poverty, and poor role models, education and peers, we might have done the same as the worst of the newsmakers.
In addition to arrogance, beware if your news provokes envy, resentment, greed, laziness, lust, gluttony, or fear. (If the news you’re taking in doesn’t incite enough of this for you, the advertising that pays for it surely will.) These attitudes provoke behaviors that kill our bodies, bank accounts, and our relationships. So you may want to consider limiting or filtering out news that turns on these killer attitudes.
That last mindset of FEAR is clearly a favorite product of some politicians, radio personalities and news networks. I just prefer to experience faith (confidence and peace) over fear (worry and stress).
To that end, one helpful boundary to use is "so what?" When you ask "what if" you experience a tornado, earthquake, war, disease, burglar, rapist, or something tragic happen to a loved one, you can ask yourself, "So what if . . .?", and start imagining and praying for something good that could come out of such a tragedy. For extra peace of mind, imagine how you could help to create that silver lining.
In short, take care what goes into your three news gates: your eye-gate (TV, newspapers, magazines, computer), your ear-gate (radio and hearsay), and your thought-gate. That last gate is where you decide what the news means, whether you’re going to worry about it, or whether you are going to bring something good out of it. That makes all the difference.
1. Have realistic expectations. Don’t sentimentalize old memories too much. And don’t go the other way either, replaying empty, depressing memories of the past. Content yourself with reality.
2. Give to others, without expecting anything in return—especially appreciation. Let that be a pleasant surprise, and give just for the pure joy it.
3. Dust off two or three good holiday memories as annual keepers, and make at least one good new one this year.
4. Take time to slow down. Smell the candles and cookies. Look at the houses all lit up.
5. Expand your family of origin, to include a family of choice too. Invite friends over, and treat them like family should be treated.
6. Believe in holy spirit. If believe seems too strong and absolute for you, pretend that holy spirit once did take up full residence in a human being, and is still doing it. When you act like something’s true, it begins to feel true, which will get you into the Christmas spirit for real.
7. Believe in saints, not ghosts. If you think people’s spirits can hang around and affect other people after they’ve died, don’t look back at the Scrooges of Christmas past. Look at Jesus. Believe or pretend that for a week and see how it goes.
8. Act out forgiveness. Forget about trust, just wish a meanie well. It’s your gift to God and yourself even more than to the one who hurt you.
9. Go outside where it’s quiet and natural. Wrap up real good, and stay out long enough to take it in, letting it take you in too.
10. Make the New Year a new kind of year. Write down three ways you could do this, and ask three people to help you with these changes.
I believe that America here at the turn of the millennium is going to be remembered in history as a nation of gluttons. Whether it is with our calendars, our budgets, our relationships, or our palates, we can’t get enough. Just about every celebrity I can think of is known for being or doing the most something. Who is known for being the most well-rounded? Most of us try to grow our self-esteem by owning or doing more and more things, not doing a few of the better things better.
What situations do you find it most difficult to say no?
Whining, demanding children or grandchildren? Spoiled teens and young adults in your family? Adult loved ones with behavioral or chemical addictions? Your main squeeze that you’re afraid of turning off or losing altogether? Your parents or authority figures whose frowning disapproval you can’t stand to risk? Your chronically down-in-the-dumps friend who has a talent for becoming a victim? Your church or charitable organization that needs to get a job done? A party-animal or shopaholic friend who’s inviting you to have some fun? A status symbol you suddenly find on sale? A stray cat on the side of the road?
When should you say no, and how can you explain it if asked?
1. When you believe no one could possibly do what you’re being asked as well as you can do it. The problem here is you’re probably too vain, narrow-minded and workaholic, and folks could easily take advantage of you for this stuff, resent you for it, or both. Just say, "I want to see how somebody else would do it this time. It’s somebody else’s turn—let’s see some other ways it can be done." Or, "I don’t want to make it any easier for the people who created this problem to avoid taking more responsibility for solving it."
2. When you can’t decide what you’ll give up to make the time to do it. "My calendar is full right now, and I don’t see anything I can give up to make room for this."
3. When you’re having trouble honoring the commitments you’ve already made. "I’m so overcommitted I’m doing a poor job of several things, and I wouldn’t want that to happen here."
4. When you couldn’t do it well enough to satisfy yourself and those in charge. "The best I could do at this time would neither please you, me, nor the people I’d have to answer to."
5. When your family isn’t behind it. "This isn’t something my family could get very excited about or involved in, and I don’t need anything else to take me further away from them at this time."
6. When you haven’t been respectfully asked. Don’t reward people who tell, expect, guilt, or pressure you into things, like dropping something into your lap at the last minute. "I might have considered it if I had been asked and given some time, but I don’t do my best work under pressure, especially pressure I haven’t created. It’s not good for my immune system either."
7. Here’s the best reason of all to say no, because it is often a dashboard warning light, a sign that indicates one or more of the situations above: When your heart isn’t in it. "I don’t know why, but I just can’t find a passion for doing this. I’d rather wait and say yes to something I can put my heart into." This is reason enough to say no in my book, as long as my calendar is as it should be, pretty full of things I DO have my heart in, including a healthy balance of work, rest and play.
This gets us back to where we started. Doing fewer things allows us to do them better. Taking on too much erodes the quality of our performance, and with it, our reputation and self-esteem. Maybe it’s time you took a second look at saying yes to saying no. Often the times it’s hardest to say no are actually the times you and others most need you to do it.
For most people, and especially I believe most Southerners, "Thou shalt not hurt thy neighbor’s feelings" is right up there with the Ten Commandments, except higher. They would much more freely admit to lying, coveting and idolizing than to saying or doing something they knew would hurt someone’s feelings.
The problem is that the truth hurts, especially the truth that sets us free from illusions and bad habits. So who is a good enough friend to bruise our ego, and hurt our feelings with the truth we need but do not want?
Sure a good friend is one who helps you out (a do-good friend), one who compliments you (a feel-good friend), and one who makes time for you and includes you in things (a good-times friend). These are all signs of a good friend, and we all need friends like this.
But these things are rather easy to give. You know the friend will like it, and will be more likely to make you happy by doing you the return favor down the road.
Now here are eight things a really good friend would say to you, and you, if you were a true-blue good friend, would say to them. Score yourself and your friend zero to ten to see how good a friend you both are to each other. I’d say 6 to 8 is a true blue, honest-to-goodness friend, and 0 to 2, though perhaps a do-good, feel-good, or good-times friend, is also a false-front friend.
1. If you my friend are doing something you have admitted to me isn’t good for you, something like drug/alcohol abuse or an eating or spending disorder, but you go on acting like there’s nothing wrong with it now, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
2. If you my friend are enabling one of your loved ones to destroy his or her life with a bad habit like those in the previous paragraph, and you are excusing, funding, provoking or covering up the loved one’s bad habits, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
3. If you my friend have done something to insult me to my face but haven’t apologized for it, something you would certainly expect me to apologize for doing to you, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
4. If you my friend have done something to insult one of your loved ones (child, spouse, close friend) to their face but haven’t apologized for it, something you would certainly expect someone in your position to apologize for doing to you, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
5. If you my friend have cursed or degraded someone or something you know I hold dear (like taking God’s name in vain, or saying my best friend is no good), but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
6. If you my friend have left me out of a social event you know I would have loved to attend, inviting my friends while not inviting me and yet acting like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
7. If you my friend have been confirmed for saying to someone else something that is critical of me but which you have never said to my face, yet you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you it confuses and concerns me, and ask you what’s up.
8. If you my friend have obviously bad breath, or you have obvious food on your clothes, mouth or teeth, but you act like nothing’s wrong, I’m going to tell you about it.
So do you have a true-blue friend, and are you an honest-to-goodness friend for someone? If you don’t have a true-blue friend, and you aren’t one to anybody else, I’ll be the friend who tells you that you aren’t being a very good friend to yourself either.
Work, rest and play all affect each other. They are a spiraling interdependent cycle: doing well at one makes it easier to do the others, and doing poorly at any of them makes the others go harder. (Diet, exercise, sex and sleeping work the same way, as do praying, forgiving, and acts of kindness.)
Work includes the job you do for a living, but also child care, helping friends and family, volunteer service, and household maintenance. It usually takes up about two fifths of your time when the kids are at home and in need, and a little less after that.
Rest involves more than sleep. It includes all forms of relaxing down time, such as taking in music, pleasure reading, solitary TV or computer time, etc. We’ll include personal grooming and hygiene here. All this should take up roughly one third of your time, more if you need eight hours of sleep, or if you’re female, older, or retired.
Play is activity that leaves you recreated, refreshed. It includes things like exercise, playing sports, learning, worship, praying, lovemaking, visiting live or on the phone or the internet, and going to festivals, plays movies, concerts, ball games, etc. Shopping for clothes, tools, play equipment, or house furnishings is usually play, but solitary shopping for groceries and provisions is clearly work.
Play usually gets the leftover time, but if we give it less than one fifth of our time, we’re probably getting burned out. The quality of our work and rest is suffering, because the worker is not getting recreated by rest alone.
The quantity of time you spend in work, rest, and play is no more important than the quality of that time. Mental health requires that we change gears well, that we do only one thing at a time. Thinking about work when we should be at rest or at play, or vice-versa, is called worry—leaving the here-and-now to be there-and-then. Worry screws up whatever we should be doing at the time.
When we don’t do enough of our work, we often work on other people instead. When we have too few responsibilities, we tend to take on those of other people. This form of worry is called meddling, and it screws up the work, rest and play of both parties.
A key to being focused and efficient in our work, rest and play is how we make our transitionsfrom one into the other. We need to mark our changing gears clearly so that we and everybody else knows which gear we are in. If you have trouble shifting into the play of your personal life, get something going like Mr. Rogers’ slippers to remind you that work is over. How?
On your way home, turn your phone off and think about family and play. When you get in the door, put your cell phone away, or change it to a different ring that reminds you it’s family first, and it’s time for everybody’s recreation. If you can help it at all, don’t take business calls during family time.
As soon as you see your spouse, make it a point and habit to kiss your spouse--not just a peck, but a good, checking-in kiss. Sit down together and ask how each other’s day has gone so far. Review plans or hopes for the evening. Once in the door, change your clothes. Take off your watch. Don’t be waiting around for a hug or try to take one, but give the kids a hug.
One last tip: don’t try to go straight from work to rest, and then think you might play. Once you numb out, your emotional heart goes to sleep, and you’re pretty much shot for the day. Work and play first, then get your rest. You’ll sleep a lot better and do better work tomorrow.
1. You’re losing interest or passion. You’re burning out, forgetting what you’re really doing here, what’s the point.
2. You’re losing focus or concentration, so that your mind is often distracted by other things you’d rather be doing, other people you’d rather be with.
3. You’re obsessed, preoccupied, and giving too much focus and concentration. You’re thinking or worrying about something or someone when you can’t do anything about it.
4. You have too much passion for it, so that your devotion and enthusiasm is giving more important activities or relationships reason to feel neglected.
5. You’re stuck in a negative, self-defeating pattern of interaction. You know you should change, but don’t know how. You do the same thing over and over but still stupidly expect different results.
Until now we’ve been talking about taking a break to solve problems. The best use of breaks is to take them periodically to prevent problems, to keep the focus, passion, health and balance sharp.
Periodic preventive breaks like this are called sabbatical breaks. They come from the Jewish tradition which sees God as taking off on the seventh day after creating the world in six. The Old Testament God included as one of the Ten Commandments resting from all labor on the Sabbath day. The Torah even teaches farmers to rest their fields every seven years.
Colleges have realized the wisdom of this tradition by giving tenured professors a “sabbatical” from their duties for a semester or a year every seven years. Many churches prevent burn-out by letting their pastors take a similar sabbatical time-out for study, travel and rest every seven years.
However, most Americans do not take either periodic preventive time-outs for sabbatical rest or curative breaks for a prelude to their problem-solving. The result is a loss of mental health, such as in the five examples above.
One interesting testimonial to value of taking long breaks is the mental health industry in Japan. When Japanese people get anxious, depressed, explosively angry, addicted, or torn up in their relationships, the counseling wizards in Japan all prescribe morita therapy, and I’m embarrassed to say it appears to work about as well for them as psychotherapy or medication do for us Americans. So what is it?
Morita comes from the Japanese word for sleep. Therapy is solitary confinement from contact with the outside world. They give a two- to four-week break from all relationships and activities except meditation and sleep. It’s a little frustrating, frightening, and rather revealing how hard that is to do in America.
Reader: My pastor says I’m a peacemaker, a good thing. My friends and doctor say I’m a sponge for stress, a bad thing. How could making life easier for others be wrong?
Is physical pain a good thing? It doesn’t feel good, but it does good. It draws our attention to the problem that’s causing it, and motivates us to get it fixed. Without pain, we’d all die of infection.
Stress works the same way in the mental/emotional realm. Carrying stress in a relationship is like being IT in a game of Tag. Unless you can solve the problem, (and many problems you can’t solve), you have to run around exhausting yourself until you can touch somebody else with the awareness that it’s their problem.
Say a man you know has a quick and nasty temper—he gets furious at the drop of a hat. He has a problem, you’d say. Yes, but not if he can get you to feel the tension, to worry about not setting him off. Then it’s your problem, because you’ve taken it on. The feeling of stress is the tag of "IT" on whoever is carrying the problem.
Some people are masters at downloading stress. Maybe they bring it on themselves with self-generated expectations and bogus beliefs of entitlement. But if they can get others to even be silent while they bark out their complaints, they never have to solve their problems, or even realize where they came from. And whatever group or family they’re in will always be awash with distress.
Unless somebody sets a boundary, and says things like, "I’m sorry you feel that way" or "Your anger is not my problem," and walks away without blaming, worrying or stressing themselves. Then the stress stays where it can do some good, at its source.
So who needs stress? The person(s) creating the problem, because otherwise, problems will continue to be carried around by the people who didn’t cause them, and thus can never solve them. Worse still, the people generating the problems and the stress sleep like a baby so they can generate more distress again tomorrow on a full head of steam and a clear conscience.
We all have our fears. It’s what we do with them that makes our lives work out for the better or the worse. A big key to success in life is deciding what to believe we are afraid of. But you may ask, do we really have a choice about what we fear in life? Yes we do.
In any given situation, we have a choice to decide what force or possible outcome in that situation we are going to focus our fearful attention on. The last power we should let anyone take from us is our power to focus our attention.
Is your mind your servant, or is it your boss? Can your soul tell your mind what to believe in and what to fear? Or do you let your body and emotions tell your mind what to trust and what to fear? Optimism and common sense teach us to be careful what we choose to fear, because it may become our master.
For example, in a fearful situation, I could focus on the harm someone could do to my wallet, my body, or my reputation. But wouldn’t I do better to focus my fears on what I could do in this situation to harm my self-respect, and to damage the faith that others I value the most have put in me?
Sure, some frightened people think they have no choice what to be afraid of. Whatever their mind worries about, they just accept as the focus of their fears. They trust their hearts even when their hearts are scared to death. They trust their bodies even when they’re frozen in fear.
Other people try to convince themselves and others that they have no fears. Thinking like soldiers, they were influenced by the greatest generation, who heard and believed FDR before WWII when he said, "We have nothing to fear but fear itself." So they’re just afraid to be afraid. They’ve never heard of a healthy fear, and maybe you haven’t either.
Healthy fears are ones that make us and those around us more at peace with the world as it is. Maybe you don’t believe a fear can bring you peace. One key is to be afraid of things you can control, instead of things you can’t. Another key is to be afraid of losing touch with what’s good, instead of getting in touch with what’s bad. Think about these examples:
Healthy fears inspire action, not passivity. The fears of failure and rejection are not as healthy as the fears of never trying, or never loving at all. Better to be afraid of repeating old mistakes than to fear trying something new. Fears that we talk out with someone trustworthy are better for us than fears we act out alone. Better to work through a fear than give into one. The fear that I won’t give it my best beats the fear that in someone else’s eyes I won’t be the best.
Fears that lead us out of dependencies and addictions are better for us than those that lead us into them. Fears that make us stand up for ourselves are better than those that make us fall down for others. If I am working for things that leave the world a better place, and the other guys involved aren’t, worrying that I’ll let them walk all over me is healthier than worrying I’ll hurt their feelings.
Fears that make us love are better than those that make us hate. When I fear that another man will love my wife better than I do, it makes me love her more. If I feared she’ll be seduced into loving another man more than she loves me, it would shut me down. Cancer can make us afraid of death, or what’s better, afraid of dying without really having lived and loved.
Fears that build hope bless the world more than those that build despair. Better to fear that we will let someone discourage us than to worry that someone will prove unworthy of our trust and break our heart. But how do you avoid the fear of a broken heart? Try believing it’s just the hard shell around our heart that’s getting broken, and that a broken open heart is good.
Choosing or crafting healthier fears involves putting a new framework into your perceptions. It’s framing your fears differently to change your focus. For more tips on reframing your fears, check out www.living-mindfully.com/columns/ReframingFear0908.pdf
I’m afraid of growing old like I think most people do, becoming more passive, withdrawn, bitter, negative, worried about things that that might go wrong, and focused in on my aches, pains and lost functions. This fear makes me do just the opposite, stay young at heart, and focus on solutions more than problems. Of all my fears, that’s one of my favorites.
Which of your fears are bringing out the best in you? What new ones might you need to bring on board to replace the ones that are getting you down?
Imagine that you have messed up big time—physically abused your child, cheated on your wife, stole money at work, or lied to your husband about where you were. And let’s say you really want to make sure that both you and the people you’ve hurt can trust that you have learned your lessons of how and why not to do that again. How would you go about crafting an apology that would do all that?
The purpose of most apologies today is merely to minimize pain for the apologizers, protect their image, and enable them to avoid the work they need to do but don’t want to do. Like any other form of lying, over time, a weak apology fails at all three of these goals.
Most people don’t know how to go about restoring both the trust of others and their own trustworthiness. That’s because there are so few role models in America for genuine remorse. I can’t recall when I last heard a satisfactory apology from a public figure who had made a moral mess, can you? An effective apology needs to answer three simple questions.
Don’t blame it on the situation, or on anybody else’s behavior, because you can’t guarantee those won’t come up again. Besides, that doesn’t take responsibility for the choices you made about how to handle your feelings.
Sure, maybe you put yourself in a bad situation, and you can change that. But what else do you need to change? attitudes you have harbored that provoked your choice? beliefs you have used to rationalize or excuse your behavior? images you’ve had of yourself and the other people involved here? These ideas in your head can’t be proven right or wrong, but you and others can prove the kind of words and actions these beliefs will provoke and excuse.
Put yourself in their place. Imagine a situation where they could theoretically do something like this to you. Imagine how you’d feel, if there were no real remorse in the other person, how hard it would be to carry on like nothing had happened. What would this do to your mind, your heart, your ability to go on like before, doing things for that person, facing your friends and family, trying to go to sleep at night, or fighting off your own bad, stress-related habits, like eating or drinking to your frustration?
If you have hurt someone in your personal life, you can apply what you have learned to your situation, and to your loved one. “I understand that I have made you have to carry around feelings of ______ and _______, that I have embarrassed you in the eyes of ____, and that now you’re going to have to really struggle with your ________ and _______. This is what I have done to you. What else have I messed up in your life? I know that I have hurt _____ and _____, but who else do you think I have hurt, and how?”
How will you clean up your side of the street? What will you do to help heal the hurt, and earn back the trust you have broken? Again, put yourself in their place—what would you need them to do in this situation to resolve your hurt and mistrust?
Do you need to go have a talk with others you have hurt, to see how your actions have affected them, and tell them you were wrong and you are sorry? How can you show them that you are going to teach yourself a lesson, by making sure you suffer more than all the pleasure you have derived from your bad habit over the years, even if it is possible, more than they will have to suffer for your actions?
Do you need to get an education, like anger management training, or understanding another culture, gender, or generation? Do you need to talk with someone to learn new role models for your behavior in certain situations?
Do you need counseling to work through old feelings that you’ve never expressed toward people in your childhood, feelings that piggyback on your natural emotions to provoke and rationalize your bad habits? Do you need residential treatment to break an addiction, to let your family have a break from you to heal, and to get you away from temptations you can’t resist?
Changing your beliefs requires admitting that you can and should change them, because they caused harmful behavior. You first confess this to people you’ve hurt, but real change inside requires you to tell others who share these attitudes and beliefs, especially the friends and family who may have taught them to you in the first place, by their words and lifestyles. And your lifestyle will also have to change, to express and firm up your new attitudes and beliefs.
Why don’t we ever hear apologies that answer these three questions in America? Very few of us really believe in and practice personal growth. Spin doctors say the public would see repentance as weak, weird and wacko, but I think those words better describe the conscience of any nation which values image over substance, and anesthesia over the truth that hurts while it is setting us free, free of the illusions that we are better than others, and don’t need them.
I pray that America may soon see a genuine, effective apology from one of its celebrities. I pray that you and I will amend our wrongs by helping others get over our messes, by cleaning them up. That way we can bring some major good things out of the next bad situation we create.
Dr. Schmidt is a psychologist life coach with offices in Middletown, Lexington, and Shelbyville.