It won't suck forever. Really.

I get it. 

You're discouraged.  You're disappointed.  Someone has broken your heart.  You feel trapped, powerless and out of control.  Whatever is going on, right now, things just suck. 

It won't suck forever.  Remember that.  I know.  You don't believe me.  It's ok.  Hear me out.

Today's world is HARD.  We are overloaded, overstimulated and overwhelmed, mostly without adequate skills to manage our emotions.  We get taught from day one NOT to feel - or at least not to tell anyone about it.  We end up feeling alone and lost.  People act really shitty and think it's their right.  You're not making it up.  Sometimes things really do suck. 

Don't give up.  Wait a week.  Or a day.  Or an hour.  Recognize that not every minute is horrible, and that horrible is relative.  Don't fall for the trap that there is some way you can rig your life that everything will be wonderful and happy all the time.  There are significant moments, both happy and lousy, scattered throughout a whole lot of pretty darn boring.  That's the way it's supposed to be.  You've been sold a bill of goods in movies and TV that everything is exciting and dramatic.  It's not.  Remember, they're condensing several days, weeks or months into 40ish minutes.  People don't watch TV and movies to see reality.  It's drama.  Life isn't like that. 

There's this thing called "habituation."  It's hard-wired.  We can't NOT do it.  From the time we're babies, we pay attention to something new.  Over time, it gets boring, and it doesn't pique our interest anymore.  It would take greater and greater levels of happiness to achieve the same feelings over time.  Similarly, we habituate to hard times too, so even if whatever stressful thing that's going on keeps going on for a long time, our brains get used to it and it doesn't seem so stressful.  The thing is, most of the time, stresses come and go.  You have a fight with your friend.  In a week, either you've both forgotten about it, or at the very least you've gotten used to avoiding each other in the hallway.  Think about things that have happened that were awful and you thought they'd never end.  Then they ended.  And you were ok.  That doesn't mean it didn't suck.  It just means it didn't suck forever. 

A guy named Ken Baldwin jumped off the Golden Gate Bridge in 1985.  He reports that as soon as he let go, he realized that "everything in [his] life that [he] thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped."  I can tell you I hear this story over and over.  A 20 year old guy who got dumped by his girlfriend and decided to hang himself.  As soon as the rope got tight, he remembers thinking it was a bad idea.  He's pretty glad his grandparents heard him.  Another kid in his 20's who tried suicide a couple years ago and can't really remember why he even wanted to do it.  A 17 year old girl who overdosed and cut herself who is now 25, finishing school and pretty darn happy with her life.  I could go on and on.

Any animal caught in a trap is tempted to chew off a leg to get free.  It's pretty normal for any one of us to consider suicide from time to time as a way to avoid having to actually go through whatever crappy thing is happening at the moment.  There's a big difference between really wanting to die and just wanting the pain to stop.  You want the pain to stop.  I know.  Me too.  The thing is, a lot of people don't know that they have choices other than feel miserable, or think about suicide.  If someone were to give you another option that made sense, you'd probably take it. 

That other option is about TOOLS and SKILLS.  No offense to parents and other people in your life, but LOTS of people don't have those skills.  We have skills for avoidance.  Numb out with TV, video games, alcohol, drugs, sex, sometimes over-achieving, dieting, whatever keeps you from feeling the pain.  Yes.  Learning new skills and getting through it is hard.  The more you practice, the easier it gets.  So where would you learn these skills?  TV?  We covered that.  Friends?  Their skills might not be any better than yours, and they might be the ones causing the problem in the first place.  Parents?  That's hit or miss.  If you have a great relationship with parents who have great skills, you're probably not thinking about killing yourself (though that's not always true either).  And yeah, when you feel hopeless at the end of your rope it's hard to be really motivated about learning a whole bunch of new coping skills.  You don't have to do it alone. 

So many people are scared to go see a therapist, but therapists are great coaches and can give you a short-cut to feeling better.  Therapists aren't there to judge you, or lecutre you, or boss you around.  Don't waste your energy feeling ashamed, weak or embarassed.  They won't see you that way.  Yes there are bad therapists.  Most of them aren't.  If you get a bad one, walk out of their office and right straight into someone else's.  I'd be surprised if you find 2 bad ones in a row.  Call your local community mental health center.  Google "THERAPIST (your zip code or city)."  Talk to your parents, if that's a safe thing to do.  Talk to a teacher.  Talk to a friend.  Talk to a friend's mom or dad.  TALK TO SOMEONE.   Know that it doesn't always take a lot of money to talk to a professional.  Call a hotline.  1-800-273-TALK or 1-800-SUICIDE Somewhere, there is someone who will listen.  Remember, you're not calling to tell them you're going to kill yourself.  You're calling to tell them you want another option.   

You can do this.  It will be worth it because it won't suck forever.  I promise. 

Practice WINNING!!



GO JOE! 
Thanks to the Haeberle Family for this pic!

  One of the charming things I am often known to say is:

"You're either a therapist or you're not.  If you're a therapist, you'll be a therapist whether you're a licensed, practicing clinician, or a mechanic, or a landscaper, or an accountant . . . or a Cowboy.  If you're not a therapist, no amount of schooling can help you."  And then I write my student loan check. 

Recently, I was whining about how my life does not allow the time I'd like to get outdoors and ride my horse.  It's frustrating because there isn't a sense of continuity - like I'm making progress.  I ride 3 days in a row, and then don't get to touch a horse for 2 weeks.  My treasured friend the "non-therapist" sent me an email later that day, describing an endurance ride.  He talked about maintaining my steady trot all day, then seeing an opportunity at the finish and riding for it - picking up a faster gait and passing the leader to win the ride!  YAY!!!  His point was that I could ride in my head any time I wanted, that it WOULD improve my performance to practice in my head, and that it was more than vital for me to keep that part of me from getting buried under the rest of the junk in my life. 

What he didn't realize is that he made me think about more than that.  As he described my finish, all I could think about was the possibility that in that wild dash for the finish, my horse would probably shy at that Wal-Mart bag and toss me off into the bushes.  Then I started to wonder how other people I admire in this sport manage to pull off that race for the finish.  I've seen them do it.  It's totally exciting!!!  It occurred to me that these people probably practice between rides.  I bet they get out there with their friends and race just for fun, which teaches the horses how to do it. 

imgur.com

Then, because I am so unfaililngly me, I started thinking about the larger implications for life, and the need to practice winning.  We tend to think about the worst case outcomes of whatever we're doing.  In doing so, we practice losing.  We practice failing.  We even practice giving up.  We practice all the things that won't help us win AT ALL.  Kids practice winning in their heads.  They even practice in their play.  They tell us they can be superheroes, or cowboys, or doctors.  When they are little, we call it cute.  When we get bigger, we call it daydreaming, and tell ourselves to get our heads out of the clouds and face reality.  We kill those winning visualizations with efficiency and finality.

I'm here to tell you to get out there and get your head in the clouds as fast as you can.  Your brain will naturally want to focus on the squeaky wheel, so don't worry - it will get plenty of grease.  Make a decision to practice winning in your head whenever you're faced with a problem.  In the meantime, I'm gearing up for my first ride of the season which is, coinciedentally ON MY BIRTHDAY!!!         

What Week is it?

Did I mention my kids were going back to school?  Holy Cow what an ordeal!!  It's not the parenting that's tough, it's coordinating all the schedules!!! 

Anyway, that's what's been going on.  So I've been thinking a lot about time management, and how to orchestrate this production without losing my job, my mind, or most importantly for the self-esteem and well-being of my children, MY TEMPER. 

The rotating schedule:  I often say that in my life, there is time to take care of my kids, do my job, and one more thing.  That one more thing rotates.  Sometimes, it's friend week.  My friends start to get cranky that I haven't surfaced in any form for weeks, and I start getting texts and emails like:  "Are you dead?"  "Are we not speaking??" and the like.  And I set aside some time to spend with friends.  Often, after Friend week is sleep week.  I get tired and run down during friend week and spend a week making sure I get 8 full hours of sleep.  I'd settle for 7.  Sometimes, there is horse week, when I remind myself that spending time with my horses feeds my soul and that I NEED to do that.  It's not just a nice thing to do if I have time left over, it's a priority for me to be most fully ME.  Usually the last week of the month is paperwork week.  It used to be called billing week, but that was when I had the flexibility to keep up with my paperwork more regularly.  Interspersed in there somewhere is usually cleaning week.  Which (who am I kidding?) isn't a week. 

Case in point:  I started this post a month ago.  Sigh.  A few strategies to mention here:

• Accept where you are:  I am BUSY.  I am a mother of 2, have a full-time (plus) job and a farm to run.  There just flat aren't enough hours in a day to do everything I "need" to do.  I have chosen my life.  There are things I could do to simplify my life.  I could move off my farm and live in an apartment, drive less, use less gas . . . but I think those are some big changes to make.  I'm choosing to hang on a little more and see how things turn out before doing that.  The PRICE TAG on that choice is that sometimes, I'm running around a lot and have to bring in my crack team of babysitters to help me be in 2 places at once. 
• Recognize it won't last forever:  While I am actually NOT convinced of this, what I know is that my amazing marvelous brain will habituate over time, and the same amount of insanity will SEEM like less.  I'll keep you posted on how that turns out.
• Do what you can:  I have an awful habit of wanting to do things thoroughly, and the right way, and completely.  HA HA HA says the universe!!!  What ends up happening is that I spend a lot of time ruminating about how I don't have time to do _(it)__ right and I obsess about how it's going to feel to not get ______ done.  Funny thing though, if I spend that time actually DOING something?  Who would imagine that I make more progress than I think!!!  This is especially true with exercise.  My fabulous exercise inspirer Heather Ann and I came up with the brilliant idea that I could set my sights on a ridiculously small number of pushups, situps and squats.  I have a reminder on my phone every morning.  It says "you can do this."  Sometimes, I actually manage to do it.  What I know is that if I try to get all enthused about working out for an hour, I won't even get out of bed.   
• Be kind to yourself:  don't waste energy beating yourself up for what doesn't get done.  Pick the important stuff, give it your best shot.  The hardest part is getting over the power of momentum.  My favorite phrase is "it doesn't matter WHERE you start, it matters THAT you start."  Then I consciously DO something.  There's something that happens in our brains that equates obsessing about something with doing something about it.  Use that energy to think about how great it will feel to have done that 5 minutes of whatever it is you decided to do. 

The effect of using these strategies will decrease the overall level of stress, resulting in less physiological stress and reactivity, less toll on your body, and less toll on those around you. 

 Maybe soon, it will be BLOG week!!! 

Hey Look!! Grass!



Shamrock Endurance Ride 2012

One of the other things that sets us apart from our horses is the ability to reflect on events.  Thinking ABOUT things that aren't happening at the moment is a uniquely human characteristic. 

For example, horse people OFTEN speculate on how our horses comment on our activity.  At endurance rides, I often think my horse might say "good grief.  She hauls us in the trailer for 4 or 5 hours to this amazing field of perfect green grass, then she rides AWAY from that . . . only we don't go anywhere, just in a circle to come right back to the grass!  HUMANS!"  Their idea of a great weekend would be just munching grass the whole time.  To heck with this trotting business. 

If you ride long enough, you get hurt.  I always tell people who have just started riding (especially kids) that when (note not IF) you fall off the first time, you get your cowgirl/cowboy patch.  After that, every time you fall off you get a stripe to go under that patch.  No matter how long you've been riding, you know that there's always a chance that today is the day you're going to crash.

Yep.  Recently, I went on a ride and it happened to me.  I don't get stripes very often anymore, fortunately, but this one was a winner.  Now the other thing to know about horse people in general and endurance riders in particular is that Endurance Riders don't quit. Injuries are badges of honor.  A friend recently told me that AERC (American Endurance Ride Conference) actually stands for "All Endurance Riders are Crazy."  She's an endurance rider too.  And of course we finish the ride unless we're being air-lifted out on a stretcher.  Tough or Stupid?  You decide. 

About 3 miles from the finish, it happened.  Allie and I were coming out of the last pond after having a really great drink.  It was a no-brainer.  I reined back 2 steps (which was uphill) and cued her to turn on her hindquarters to bring her feet out of the mud and head back down the trail.  She responded like a champ.  And then something happened and her hind feet slipped.  Her back end went right out from under her and she fell hard on her right side.  And on my leg.  With the stirrup in between us.  Ouch.  It happened so fast I didn't even have time to be scared.  (Or maybe I've fallen so much in 15 years of riding that I've habituated to it!)  I got up and collected my horse, and decided that thankfully my leg did not seem to be broken.  We started to walk down the trail back to camp.  At some point I decided I was ok to get back on, and that I'd rather ride than walk.  So I did.  Allie seemed no worse for wear.  She was pulling my arms out of the sockets, whinnying, and trying to get back as fast as I would let her.  Yep.  It hurt.  But I'm an endurance rider :).

We got back to camp and everything looked just fine.  The vets checked Allie out (which happens during every ride - the vets determine at the finish if your horse looks good enough to continue.  If not, you can be disqualified at the end of the ride)  and said she looked great.  Gave me the big OK to ride her again the
 following day.  We went back to the trailer to get untacked, where my other horse waited, having worn a strip in the grass from pacing all day and missing her pal. 

My friends came around to help, and asked how my ride was.  I regaled them with the story of my adventures and proudly displayed the bulging bruise on my thigh.  I must have retold that story 10 times.  It's what we do.  Humans process through repetition.  We tell stories and create legends.  This was actually the 20th anniversary of this particular ride (To see the web page for this ride click here) and we sat around the candles (there was a burn ban - no bonfire this year) that night and told stories of rides we'd ridden and adventures we'd had.  Until it was very late.



Allie, after the ride. 
See why it was tough
to think she was just sore?

  Here's my thoughts about what Allie probably would have told Morgan as she walked into the pen that afternoon:  "HEY!  HI!  I know you!  Look!  Grass!"  And it was all over for her. 

There are two things that struck me about this experience.  The first is what a different experience humans have of trauma.  We spend years re-experiencing and being triggered by an experience.  We play it over and over in our minds, stay awake at night, talk to our friends about it . . . Allie experiences it, gets done with it, and is glad it's over - if she even thinks about it enough to be glad it's over, I'm pretty sure it just disappears from her consciousness until maybe we're back at that same spot next year.  She gets back to the business at hand of eating and staying alive.  I think humans do what we do for a good reason.  Our problem-solving skills are important.  However I think we can learn something from my horse.  Be sure to let the experience end.  When we repeat it in our heads, we tend to repeat the worst part.  One of the big things I focus on in EMDR is to be sure to play the video all the way to the end.  That's when it becomes a memory, when we recognize that it's over.  I think our brains try to rehearse the experience so if it ever happens again we'll do it differently.  Problem is, it's unlikely I will ever be in that exact circumstance again.  I've gotten a drink at the same corner at that same pond on that same ride each of the 16 times I've ridden it.  One of those times, I crashed.  It doesn't make a lot of sense for me to put a lot of problem-solving into that one.  It was just bad luck.  So I'm going with Allie's approach. 

Now, the part I did replay in my head over and over was that Allie started acting funny about 3 hours after the ride.  She lay down, and looked uncomfortable, and scared me to death.  So I had the vet come over and check her out, and he suggested that perhaps she was sore from the fall.  I actually questioned him a little bit on this, explaining that she'd been fine on the mad trot back to camp.  Strong, good energy, all the vets agreed that I should definitely do 50 miles on her the next day instead of 30.  (NO WAY).  But as I lay awake that night thinking about what was going on with her (it was confusing because she was eating . . . like a horse.  A colicking horse doesn't eat.  Allie would lie down and munch grass while she was down.  Weird), I remembered adrenaline.  That adrenaline rush of the fall for Allie produced endorphins.  Endorphins make us impervious to pain.  So while my leg was REALLY painful on the way back to camp, whatever hurt on her didn't start till later.  Everything in her little horsey head said that the best idea was to get back to camp to the safety of other horses, and to do that as quickly as possible.  She was probably more than a little irritated that I kept insisting we not get there at a dead run.  Thank you, Allie, for listening anyway.  And sorry, Tom, that I doubted you.  Lesson learned. 

While I'm at it here, I'm going to also put in a plug for Arnicare Gel.  Now, I am not prone to posting pictures of my thigh on the internet, but holy cow!  That's the difference in using Arnicare for 3 days, and not starting until about 30 hours after the injury.  I'm impressed, and will never travel to a ride without it again.  There's a coupon on the website for a dollar off. 

 

 

The Extinction of Anger

So how about I go for shock value in this post and just announce that anger is an obsolete emotion. 

Silence.  Hear the crickets? 

Yes that’s right.  In my humble opinion, true blue, bona fide unadulterated anger has very nearly NO place in today’s civilized world.

Let’s take anger back to an uncivilized world and see if we can figure out why this emotion that causes so much trouble exists anyway.  Besides, we’ve about beat the flight response to death, might as well hit the high notes on the other side of the coin.

Imagine that our good friend Joe Caveman has just returned from the hunt, anticipating a hero’s welcome as he drags in the mammoth he clubbed.  Instead, Joe and his pals discover that a pack of tigers has devoured pretty much the entire village.  Joe feels disappointed.  He feels despair.  Joe sits down on a log and bemoans the loss of his family, his community . . . and Joe becomes dessert for the tiger.  If Joe is going to stay alive, his best bet is to skip right over the devastation of it all and open up a can of prehistoric whup a** on those saber-toothed furballs.  Joe needs that adrenaline rush to defend himself, and rebuild.  Joe Caveman does NOT have time for grief.  When the danger is gone, and the defenses are secured, Joe will create a ritual for grief.  Perhaps he will call it a funeral. 

In today’s world, we have a shortage of true threats to life and limb.  Remember the instinct is FIGHT or FLIGHT.  Later suggested to be Freeze, flight, fight or fright (Bracha et al) which isn’t as catchy, but gets the order right.  Instinct says first freeze.  Senses are heightened, nerves are ramped up.  Next line of defense is to get the heck out of there.  Discretion is the better part of valor.  If you can’t get away, turn around and fight.  Get ANGRY and DESTROY the thing that threatens you.  Bracha suggested that if fight failed you and the end was near, your brain kicks into sort of a shut down fright state that is somewhat dissociative and protects you from a conscious awareness of the horribleness about to happen.  Really folks, when was the last time you experienced a situation on par with that response?  Ever??  Fortunately, that is the case for most of us.  Now raise your hand if you think the idea of life without anger is just crazy talk.  Every one of you with your hand in the air needs to work on boundaries and assertiveness.  There are those out there who do have big T trauma in their past.  You folks may need to address that before you tackle boundaries, but it’s part of the same deal anyway.

Anger protects us in a situation where other emotions make us feel vulnerable.  Assertiveness and healthy boundaries eliminate the NEED for anger because we recognize that when a person is stepping across the invisible line into our space, we recognize that, while inappropriate, it is not life-threatening, and we create a response that is strong ENOUGH to hold that invisible line (more to come on limits and boundaries).  We calmly and respectfully let the other person know that their behavior is not ok, and we would like them to stop.  They either will or they won’t, and then we have some more choices to make.  What we don’t have to do is use an emotional grenade launcher to blow them into the next county with our reaction. 



Photo by Freewine

 As I have mentioned before, as a society we don’t have good boundaries.  Back in Joe’s day, members of the community relied upon each other for survival.  Joe didn’t decide he didn’t feel like hunting that day because he knew if he didn’t hunt, his family didn’t eat.  If Joe got injured, the community stepped in if they could.  I imagine parents didn’t have to work so hard to get kids to do chores because it was easier for kids to see how the world worked better if everyone pulled their own weight.  There were social norms and customs that made sense.  Everyone understood WHY it was important to act a certain way, and they just DID it.  Those who didn’t were ostracized and shunned and did not do very well over the winter.  There were consequences for misbehavior, and the community wasn’t afraid to enforce them.  Today, we are disconnected from one another.  If you flip someone off on the highway, or snap at the waitress, there are no consequences.  Some people make a career out of seeing how far they can go in that direction.  Anyone who has ever waited tables knows that some people seem to think that part of the dining experience is being able to abuse your server because the customer is always right, right? 

There’s a lot that goes into these habits.  From a very young age, we get taught to ignore our boundaries.  Say YES when someone asks you to do something, whether it works for you or not.  Don’t make waves, don’t be a problem.  We don’t get taught how to resolve conflict.  We get taught to either pretend it doesn’t exist or get angry.  Not helpful.  Parents pull out the power card when they don’t want to deal with an issue.  “Because I said so” teaches children that their needs do not matter, and by the way who cares anyway so shut up and leave me alone.  A few years of that and anyone would get angry.  Throw in some role models who yell at each other and you pretty much guarantee that you’re perpetuating the problem.  Of course not all parents fit this bill, but from my view in the cheap seats, parents who practice some sort of strategy in raising kids are outnumbered by those who, at best, know they don’t want to do what their parents did, but have no plan and end up flying by the seat of their pants in a generational pendulum between too controlling and too permissive. 

Many people out there have 2 main emotions:  happy and mad.  Expand your feeling vocabulary and imagine a life predominantly without anger.  It’s a life with other uncomfortable feelings, feelings like disappointment, frustration, disappointment, grief, overwhelm, embarrassment and helplessness, but those feelings give us something to work with.  If you’re mad, about the only thing to do is wait for you to get over it.  And hope the damage isn’t too much to repair.  When we use anger as information that we're feeling something deeper and identify that feeling instead of just acting out of anger in a boundary-less, self-riteous way, we become more authentic.  Try it for a week.  Eliminate the word “anger” and all it’s cousins (mad, pissed, peeved, irritated, etc) from your vocabulary and substitute the feeling driving them.  When you’re really good at that, you can start addressing those real feelings and solving some relational problems instead of perpetuating the cycle of “blow up, sweep it under the rug till it comes up again, blow up . . . “  How cool would THAT be?  Resolve an issue for GOOD?  That’s just crazy talk, right?  ;-)

What's With the Horse Again?

In the horse/human/brain analogy I present here, I'd like to clarify what represents what.  As I ride down the trail on my magnificent steed, I'm pretty much riding an amygdala.  He's a big, fuzzy, loveable amygdala, but he's still an amygdala.  His whole world is about staying alive, and he is a prey animal.  In the world of "eat or be eaten," he is BE EATEN.  Grass is what he eats.  It's not hard to catch.  He doesn't need predatory skills.  He needs to RUN at the first sign of danger, and run FAST.  He's very good at it.  It's a family trait.  MY role in the relationship is to present the voice of reason.  To suggest, through the use of my riding aids (seat, legs, reins, etc) that perhaps there is another alternative to the presence of the Wal-Mart bag than to go flying off a cliff.  I am the pre-frontal cortex, offering support and guidance to my amygdala.  With me here? 



Over the last few years, I have had the magnificent fortune to create a workshop demonstrating this concept with my horsemanship guru and good friend Louis Wood.  In a few hours time, we can actually show people the transformation from a fear-based reaction to a thoughful, considered response.  (To see Louis at work, click here)  We use volunteer horses that Louis has never met before, and generally they come in the picture of fight or flight - high-headed, wide-eyed and ready to head for the hills.  Louis offers some stability and leadership in his relationship with the horse, and before you know it, you've got a horse literally yawning he's so relaxed.  It is a powerful thing to see, let me tell you, and workshop participants GET IT in a really different way than they would if I were sitting in a lecture hall (or in my office!) yapping at them.  Contact me for more info about this.  It's so extremely cool, and coming to a neighborhood near you.  Be ready though, because I can go on about it for a long long time.



Louis Wood

In our brains, we have to use the thinking power of our frontal cortex to offer that leadership to our amygdala.  That takes practice.  Remember, in that moment of crisis, instinct says we don't need to think, we need to react.  All those amazing coping skills?  They live in the part of the brain that takes a vacation when - um - STUFF hits the fan. 

There are a number of ways to outsmart our biology though:

• First is through resolving trauma issues.  There are a gazillion different techniques out there designed to help our brains move the storage of traumatic issues from our amygdalas to the file cabinets in the back room where we don't have to react every time we get close to a trigger.  EMDR is my favorite, mostly because it's what I use. 
• Second, when we install coping strategies, we fill our toolbox with positive ways to deal with stress.  Resolve the trauma isses and you can actually USE these tools in the moment of truth. 
• Third, and the thing my clients get so sick of hearing about, is rehearsal.  We tend to play over and over what actually happened.  This traces that neural pathway over and over and increases the liklihood that when the situation arises again, we will handle it EXACTLY the same way.  I say rehearse it the way you'd LIKE it to go.  Play it over and over with assertiveness, a sense of calm, and devoid of shame and panic.  Practice for the next time, when you want to do it differently.  That's the key, I think.  We tend to think of angry things we could have said.  That zinger that would have stopped someone in their tracks.  It wouldn't.  It would just add fuel to the fire.  What stops someone in their tracks is an assertive response that asks for a reasonable answer.  An expectation of relationship in which you respect both your needs and the needs of the other person.

What a concept.  You can learn this.  And, if you have the slightest hint of larceny in your veins, you'll begin to enjoy the ability to completely undo another person with healthy, assertive behavior full of boundaries.  Because when you invite someone who just wants to fight to a higher level of relationship, they don't know what to do!!  Try not to actually chuckle out loud when you do it.  And hopefully, they will join you there, in reciprocal relationship, and then the sky's the limit! 

Hey Bob? Do you remember what Marlin Perkins said about this?

A little more about the fight or flight response physiologically.  If you're running from a lion, your body wants to take every little smidgen of energy and use it to get the heck out of dodge.  

In that moment, NON-ESSENTIAL SYSTEMS IN YOUR BODY SHUT DOWN.  So at the moment your cardiovascular and respiratory system kick into high gear, your body stops using energy for things like digestion, immune response, visual acuity, storing short-term memory . . . and logical thought.  Ever wonder why in the moment you can never come up with just the right thing to say, or you can't remember to use the coping skills you've spent so much time storing in your prefrontal cortex?  If you're running from a lion, you do not need to remember the details about the episode of Mutual of Omaha's Wild Kingdom you saw as a kid where the lions brought down a wilderbeast.  You don't need logic, or details, or self-soothing, or a snappy comeback.  You just need to run. 

 Except in our world, fight or flight doesn't really make sense because we don't really face very many situations in which either choice is really warranted (thank goodness!).  If your boss corners you in the office and reads you the riot act about something or other, you're stuck.  A physical fight response will get you fired (though many people go there anyway) and it would look kind of silly to scream and run away as fast as you can.  So we freeze.  Tongue tied and tense, we're riveted to the spot.  Afterward, when blood flow returns to normal, we think of all the great things we could have said in that moment, or all the ways we could have handled it differently.  Cause those things live in our prefrontal cortex. 


Marlin Perkins

So how do we get there in the moment????  How do we convince our amygdalas to calm the heck down and let our thinking brain handle things?  It's the same way you get to Carnegie Hall.  Practice, practice, practice.  When we have a stressful experience, we tend to run the instant replay OVER and OVER and OVER in our heads, right?  Except we replay it EXACTLY as it happened.  Boss cornered us, we froze.  We rehearse being all amygdala-y in the moment, which actually increases the chances it will go just like that the next time.  If we rehearse the way we WANTED to handle things, we increase the chances it will go just like that the next time.  So catch yourself rehearsing what you DON'T want to have happen, and rewrite it in your head to handle it the way your thinking brain knows works best. 

Over time, your brain will develop the attitude that it CAN handle any situation rather than it CAN'T, and sensory input doesn't trigger an amygdala response nearly as often.  Ta DAH!!!!  What???  Handle STRESS without ANXIETY????   No way.       

Yes, Way. 

REVOLUTIONARY NEW ANXIETY MANAGEMENT THERAPY: THE STEEL EEL

Photo by Hagerman

I’m always talking about rehearsing anxiety management strategies in your head because there is no way to artificially create the unexpected in real life on purpose.  Well, I found one.  My daughter is 9 years old.  On a recent trip to Sea World, we stopped in at the “check your height” booth to see which rides she was eligible for.  Much to my utter and complete dismay, she towered over the height limit for (insert Beethoven’s 5th here) “THE STEEL EEL.” 

Aside:  I despise roller coasters.  Not since Space Mountain in high school have I had a positive experience.  Space Mountain was positive, I believe, because it was dark and I couldn’t see what was coming.  At the tender age of 16, snuggled in beside my equally adolescent boyfriend, I thought it was a blast.  I rode it about 20 times.  Since then, I have spent a great deal of time trying NOT to have that sick sinking feeling in my stomach.  In fact some might say I’ve made a career out of it. 

And yet, on this day at Sea World, I was faced with an impossible choice.  Ride (B’s 5th) “THE STEEL EEL” or deny my youngster this rite of passage.  I felt sick.  I was frozen to the spot, imagining that horrible feeling as the bottom drops out of the world and you are hurled into . . . oh hold on a minute.  That’s what I’m supposed to NOT do.  Anxiety is the negative anticipation of future events.  I know better.  Don’t I?  Sigh. Yeah, I do.  And so, I picked up my toolbox and kicked all my preaching into practice.  So, for your enjoyment, here are the strategies I used.

Use of powerful, rather than powerLESS language:  I don’t HAVE to ride “THE STEEL EEL.”  No one is forcing me.  It’s a choice.  I can do it, or I can choose not to.  I am choosing to do it, because no 9 year old should have to suffer because their mom is afraid of roller coasters.  Who knows how much therapy it might take to undo that.  So, I set limits.  I told her that I loved her.  Enough to go on THE STEEL EEL.  I made clear, however, that no amount of love could drag me onto the (insert psychotic scream here) GREAT WHITE.  It goes upside down.  That’s just not going to happen ever again.  (Even the adolescent boyfriend couldn’t get me on that one twice at 6 Flags.) 

Anticipate the entire experience, including (and usually especially) the end (when it is OVER):  What I know about roller coasters is that you wait in line for 45 minutes for a ride that lasts a couple minutes.  I could handle a couple minutes, right?  No matter how horrible it was, it would be over in a couple minutes.  I could do that.  And I would have the memory of that first roller coaster ride with my daughter for way more than a couple of minutes.   

Know your weak spots and Make a plan:  I anticipated that first drop.  (In writing this post, I estimated this sucker to be about 10 stories high.  Wanting to be accurate, I looked it up on the internet and discovered the actual height to be 15 STORIES.  Gulp.)  No way around it, that was going to suck.  I knew with every fiber of my being that my amygdale would not miss the opportunity to interpret danger in the sensation of a free-fall from 15 stories.  After that, just a sense of being thrashed around and up and down, one more big drop and then we were done.  (See: “it’s a couple minutes.  I can do that.”)  I planned to use distraction, perhaps counting the seconds, and taking a lot of deep breaths. 

My toolbox and I got in line.  My 9 year old was so excited, and I have a deeply held parenting philosophy that goes something like this . . . “DO NOT BE A WET BLANKET ON YOUR KID’S SENSE OF EXCITEMENT AND ADVENTURE ANY MORE THAN ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY.  LIFE IS TOUGH ENOUGH ON THEM.”  So I was trying to be excited.  The wait was not 45 minutes, but 5.  A good thing, I told myself.  Less time to anticipate and second-guess myself.  Bite the bullet and just DO it (Strategy Alert:  don’t spend more time anticipating how unpleasant something is going to be than it would take to DO that unpleasant thing.  Otherwise you just magnify your misery.)

The gates opened and we got in.  I reminded myself that the owners of Sea World do not want to be sued, so they have gone to great lengths to be sure that people will not fall out of their roller coaster.  I am highly unlikely to die in this experience.  (Strategy:  what’s the realistic probablility of the worst case scenario??)  I buckled my seatbelt.  Tightly.  I stopped myself from  noticing that the bar did not come down on my lap nearly as firmly as I wanted it to.  I visualized myself gritting my teeth and hanging on to that bar on that first drop.  I pictured terror.  Then I caught myself and DECIDED to ON PURPOSE picture myself getting OUT of the car after a couple minutes, to the sound of the cheering parent support group in my head, having delayed once more the moment when my daughter realizes her mom is a total nerd. 

We begin our ascent.  I take a moment to be conscious of the realization that it doesn’t seem as high as I thought it would, looked around a little, and took some deep breaths.  Then I guess some yahoo had his cell phone out and was trying to take a picture, and the whole train STOPPED on the 60 degree slope, and did I mention this was 15 STORIES ABOVE THE GROUND??  The person in the car behind me said “We’re going to slide back down!!” and I felt myself coming a little unglued.  Had a momentary flash of demanding to be let off, though I wasn’t sure how that would happen, and I decided that would take more therapy to undo than if I hadn’t gone in the first place.  So I decided to engage in some positive self-talk.  “I can do this,” I said to myself (though I believe I said it out loud).  “I’ve ridden 100 miles on horseback.  I’ve given birth twice.  Once without any drugs and that was the EASIER one.  I can totally do this.”  Went over the “this is safe – sea world doesn’t want to be sued” speech again in my head.  And the coaster began to move again.  Much to my chagrin, the phrase “this was a bad idea” slipped out between my teeth just as we went over the top.  But, as anticipated, that drop was over in a flash!  Looking back, I am amazed how much time it seemed like I had to go through the safety/liability talk with myself again, and to notice that my butt was held in the car only by a seatbelt and that there was noticeable air between MY seat and THE seat.  I consciously focused on holding on for dear life (a grounding exercise).  The ensuing twists and turns were fast and furious, but nothing over my threshold.  (I do enjoy the kiddie roller coaster . .. ).  At some point I opened my eyes and considered enjoying the experience, but noticed my daughter had slid down in the seat.  My amygdala was instantly positive she would go flying out at any moment, so I grabbed her wrist in a death grip and went through the safety speech again.  I tried to count, but discovered I had forgotten how.  I closed my eyes again, and reminded myself it was going to be over soon…. and then, a break.  The coaster slowed.  DEEEEP breath.  The second ascent to 15 STORIES was somewhat less idyllic than the first, but without the stupidity stop at the top, we were hurtling toward earth again in no time.  I decided this time to use the strategy of distraction, and searched for some memory piece to draw my brain function into my cerebral cortex and out of my limbic system.  “The Lord is my Shepherd, I shall not want . . . . “ and couldn’t remember another word.  Damn adrenaline.  Ok, something more familiar.  Went for the Lord’s Prayer this time.  Not that I am prone to reciting either one of these as a general rule, but it’s what my brain gave me, so I went with it.  Next time (HAHAHAHA!!) decide in advance what to recite in your head, Karen.  I practiced mindfulness, and took a moment to notice that I was reciting the Lords Prayer REALLY FAST.  I have no idea if I said it out loud or not, but then before I knew it, my daughter was prying my fingers off her wrist and saying “MOM!  It’s OVER!  I’m FINE!!!”  (Bonus points!  She thought I was holding on to comfort HER!!!)  So we sat there, as the coaster pulled back into the dock, and reveled in the emotional intimacy of our shared experience.  I smiled at her, scrunched down in her seat.  She looked at me, smiled back, and said “I don’t think I’ll do that again.”  I replied warmly, my heart swelling, “sweetheart, I’ve never loved you more.”   

And so there you have it.  There IS a way to practice all these strategies on purpose, and in an accelerated time frame.  If I were going to set my sights on enjoying roller coasters, I am confident that with enough practice, I could, and that the strategies I used in that pursuit would translate into the rest of my life dealing with cranky clients, bank tellers, traffic, angry kids, relationships … the list goes on.  Not that I’m getting on the STEEL EEL again anytime soon.  I’ll stick with the real world for now.    

What do you mean I have to REWARD him???

Let’s talk about anger for a minute.  All together now, what’s it called?  The FIGHT or FLIGHT response.  Option C is FREEZE.  Instinct says in that moment, the three most appropriate choices are (in this order):  hunker down under a bush and hope no one notices you, run like hell, or ATTACK.  Let’s say you have just been to the gas station where your card has been rejected even though you know there's money in there.  Instinct says freeze.  Picture yourself standing there like a deer in headlights, nozzle in hand . . . that doesn’t really make sense.  Option B:  instinct says flee.  Picture running screaming away from the pump.  Tempting . . . comical . . . but not too practical.  The only option left over in your limbic system is to fight.  Adrenaline is coursing through you.  You’ve seen people do it – kick a trash can (or the gas pump), pound a fist on the roof of the car, or somehow display anger in response to something unexpected.  Freeze doesn’t feel powerful.  That’s what we do when the consequences for fight are big.  Probably you’re not going to slug your jerk boss, though some people certainly do.  Freeze is gritting your teeth and holding it in.  Flee doesn’t make sense most of the time, though we retreat, throw up our hands and say “I’m done with this” or hang up on someone.  Fight is the endgame.  We don’t like to feel powerless, that’s for sure.  A good angry outburst is awesome for a rush of power. 

I had the opportunity to reflect on this a great deal lately.  My darling Max has not gotten enough exercise in recent years, and the first time I took him out this spring, he bucked like crazy down the trail.  Thank you very much, I made my 8 seconds and then some.  Scared the heck out of the people riding with me, though, one of whom was my daughter who got a stern advisement on the way home that she was NEVER to repeat ANY of those words Mommy said.  She thought that was hilarious.  Ok, so I’m out for Mom of the year and it’s only April.  This past weekend, I was reminded of a clinic I attended with Centered Riding clinican Becky Hart in which she suggested that the appropriate response to your horse who spooks at something is to pet him and reassure him.  Funny how I never thought about this.  From Max’s perspective, he’s trotting down the trail, sees the evil and clearly dangerous WalMart bag, from which he prepares to flee, and then is suddenly subjected to harsh scolding in a foreign language from up above – the position a predator would take.  Holy Jimmy Buffett!  Fins to the left!  Fins to the right!  And Max is sure he’s the only bait in town!  I can tell you with certainty that it is not the first thing on most rider’s minds after a sudden jolt to praise and soothe their horse.  From the rider's perspective, we just had a near miss and want to holler at them!!!  Let them know that they are IDIOTS for the shy at the same lousy tree stump that has been at that spot on the trail all 47,356 times we’ve ridden by it.  That’ll teach em . . . that every time they see that tree stump, they’re about to be startled by loud unpleasantries from above.  You bet they spook the next time.  Darnit.  In the words of Dr. Phil, “How’s that workin’ out for ya, Karen?”

 
So on my 18 mile training ride this past Sunday, I concentrated on managing my fight or flight response.  Every time he shied (windy day – lots of bags) I took a deep breath, re-balanced in the saddle, and petted him.  Instead of jerking back on the reins to stop the shy, I grabbed my saddle for support and urged him forward.  By the end of our ride, he was relaxed, responsive, and comfortable.  I did take full advantage of his lack of fluency in English, and expressed my frustration by, in the sweetest, most soothing voice I could muster, saying “Sweet darling Max, keep it up and our next stop is Purina.”   Who am I kidding?  Even if he could understand me he’d know I was bluffing.  Felt a little more powerful though . . . I guess I still have some work to do.  Anyone know a good therapist?    

Hey Goldilocks – there is no bear.

No, I wasn’t hijacked by a blue dot. Surprisingly, life gets in the way of blogging! Back to the subject at hand.



Balanced

 First, a little horsemanship lesson. Riding, you will not be surprised to learn, is dependent on balance. When I am coaching my kids on their riding, I often redirect them to focus on a point ahead of them and ride to it. “You will end up where you’re looking” I say, “if you’re looking at the ground under your horse’s feet, that’s not a good thing.”

Picture this: You’re trotting down a beautiful trail on your faithful steed – let’s call him Max. It’s a gorgeous Colorado day. The sun is shining, the flowers are blooming, the birds are singing . . . you’re singing, perhaps. Ok maybe that’s just me. Anyway. Suddenly, your horse’s head flies up, and he begins to shy away from the horse-eating whatever it is off the side of the trail. The HARDEST thing to learn to do as a rider is NOT LOOK. Seems reasonable, right? Horse spooks into the next county, you want to look and see what in the world he’s afraid of! Here’s what happens. When you’re turning your head and looking around for the rabbit/squirrel/leprechaun/rock/mailbox/WHATEVER, your center of gravity shifts and you are no longer balanced in the saddle. So in that moment, you become more likely than ever to perform my own personal favorite – the spontaneous left-shoulder dismount. In this precise maneuver, the rider is pitched forward in the saddle (as their momentum is still going and the horse has stopped), lose their balance, and wind up clinging ever so elegantly to the neck, sliding gracefully out of the saddle, and finishing with an up close and personal visit with the flora and fauna beside the trail. Which in Colorado is often cactus. Or poison ivy. Yeah. Better to stay on the top side of the horse.



Less Balanced.
(photo by Thowra_uk)

  It took me YEARS to learn not to look for the source of the spook. These days, (thankfully) I don’t come off that often. My balance and strength is better. Having said that, my next blog post will undoubtedly be from the hospital in traction. Malcom Gladwell proposes in his book Outliers that it takes 10,000 hours of practice at any given thing to become really really good at it, and I know I’ve gotta have at least twice that many hours in the saddle. So I’m a slow learner. Point is, I’ve stopped looking for the bear. What I know in my highly developed pre-frontal cortex that sets me apart from my horse is that 1) most of the places I ride, the most dangerous wildlife is a coyote. Coyotes are big ol’ chickens and want nothing to do with me or my horse. 2) The OTHER places I ride, where there might actually be bears and mountain lions, I am really really unlikely to run into them because I’m crashing down the trail making a heck of a lot of noise (and singing John Denver songs) and they are long gone before I get there. Thus, the assumption can be reasonably made then that whatever Max is freaking out about is of absolutely no danger whatsoever. Looking around trying to figure out the source of his angst only makes me more likely to fall off, and if, by some rare coincidence there actually IS a bear around, I will probably get the message loud and clear and being ON my horse gives me a better chance at staying on top of the food chain.

Case in point: on one cool July morning on a ride in Wyoming years ago, I trotted over what I thought from a distance was a stick across the trail. When I was on top of it, I realized (WHEN IT MOVED) that it was a rattlesnake. Did Max spook at that? NOOOOOOOOO. Didn’t give it a second look. My friend Carolyn, who was riding behind me, likes to add to the story that she never saw the stick that turned out to be a rattlesnake, but she clearly saw the subsequent 500 rattlesnakes that turned out to be sticks as her amygdala ran away with her the rest of the day. On another ride that season, after spooking at every single mailbox we passed (25 miles on a country road is a lot of mailboxes) Max flatly and fearfully refused to cross the chalk finish line. In his defense, he was only 4 at the time. Horses don’t get smart until 7. Ish. Still. The ride manager was waiting for me with a frosty beverage (did I mention the multitude of reasons I LOVE this sport?), and my silly youngster who had, 2 months earlier, trotted over a rattlesnake was now flipping out over a white line. One of us was motivated to cross it.

So here’s the take-home message: Stop looking for the bear. We are extremely unlikely, in the course of day to day events, to come across any sort of life threatening danger. Your amygdala is a light switch, not a dimmer. It’s on or off. We MISINTERPRET stressful circumstances in our lives as immediate, life-threatening dangers. Our bodies respond AS IF there were a bear. Remember my hero Dan Goleman? The sudden, intense emotional response is out of proportion to the situation. We don’t NEED adrenaline to survive getting a speeding ticket. Once we begin to recognize that those physical reactions in our bodies are unnecessary in MOST situations – did you hear that? That physiological anxiety response is NOT A FOREGONE CONCLUSION - we can start to anticipate that we could handle stressful situations without the adrenaline response. Imagine approaching a stressful situation with confidence. Imagine going in and asking for a raise, or speaking in public, or facing a jam-packed, non-stop busy day or cranky kids WITHOUT that feeling in your stomach. WITHOUT that tightness in your chest. WITHOUT tension in your shoulders. We are so conditioned to the expectation that the stress response is just part of the package, we don’t even consider that there might be something we could do about it. The first step is to recognize, in that moment, that even though we might have been hijacked, we aren’t a hostage.

Practice this today: any time you feel that anxiety, just have an awareness that you don’t NEED that level of physiological response. Think about the fact that you’re having all this physical stuff going on in your body, and there is no bear. Talk amongst yourselves.

Instruction Manual 2: Is this going to eat me or not?

The instinct that drives anxiety is the Fight or Flight response.  I would differ with Walter Cannon here and call it the Fight or Flight REACTION, but he is unavailable for comment at the moment, as he named this phenomenon in the 1920’s.  Since then, it has in fact been suggested that the name is not quite descriptive enough, and most recently it has been called “Freeze, Flight, Fight, Fright, Faint” by Bracha and his gang.  To-maaa-to, To-mah-to. 

The major players in the fight or flight instinct are shown here.  There are actually two (ok probably more, but I’m a therapist not a neurologist) process happening simultaneously.  One of these is totally and completely unconscious.  We want it that way.  We don’t want to have to THINK about whether or not it’s a good idea to move our hand if we accidently touch a hot stove.  (“Hmmm . . . what’s that smell?  And it kinda hurts . . . sizzling sound . . . probably should move my hand. . . ready set go!”) The reactive part of our brain takes over there, and we have a reflex reaction to jerk our hand back.  This is a good thing.  Information comes in through our 5 senses, and runs through the command center for survival, our mighty amygdala.  Though tiny, this structure has a lot of power and primarily answers the question is “IS THIS GOING TO EAT ME OR NOT???”  If the answer is no, the information flows smoothly through to be processed by our highly developed cerebral cortex.  We think about it . . . we decide what to do with the information.  If your amygdala decides that whatever it is evaluating poses some sort of a threat, it hits the big red panic button and triggers a complex chemical chain reaction throughout your body with the activation of the HPA (Hypothalmic, Pituitary, Adrenal) axis.  Rapid fire, your body responds to the threat.  We all know this feeling.  Your heart races, your muscles tense, you breathe faster.  Every single thing that happens in your body is oriented toward responding to that threat.  We need to either get the heck out of there or be ready to defend ourselves.   At the same time, the incoming information is also being analyzed by other brain structures.  The hippocampus is in charge of more rational responses, and can settle the amygdala down a bit.  Here’s the interesting part.  The amygdala response happens TEN TIMES faster than processing through the hippocampus.

The super in my office building gives me frequent opportunity to demonstrate this principle.  I swear he wears crepe-soled shoes to sneak down the hallway for the sole purpose of watching me jump out of my skin when he says “BOO” or something similar.  That’s the amygdala response.  There is no recognition of WHO spoke, or that this is the same guy who regularly lets me in to my office when I forget my keys, simply a chemical reaction to an unexpected event.  It doesn’t take long, of course for my hippocampus to put Charlie in context and realize that my life is not in immediate danger.  As my heart rate returns to normal, we laugh about how easily startled I am, and get on about the business of living ... which is at that moment usually about me NOT resisting the urge to get a Diet Coke out of the vending machine.  Oh that stuff is so bad for me. 

What makes this problematic in today’s world is that the amygdala is a light switch.  It’s off, or it’s on.  There’s no in-between.  From a survival perspective, it makes a heck of a lot more sense to overreact to a rustle in the bushes that turns out to be a bunny than to underreact to a rustle in the bushes that turns out to be a wolf.  In our amygdala, there is only YES this is an immediate, life-threatening danger to which I must react or NO, it’s not.  There is no maybe.  Maybe is a yes, which explains why we experience the physiological fight or flight reaction in the face of things we clearly know are NOT life-threatening.  We have a shortage of true, life-threatening dangers in today's world.  When's the last time you ran into a lion in the elevator at work?  Gee … it’s kind of like our Amygdala just takes over … and our brain is temporarily HIJACKED …..