Thursday, January 7, 2021
Boy, sleep did not come easily. I was so scared. I got up and meditated. I tried everything I could to calm my fears. My body was pounding. I felt as I did for those five weeks I spent with Mike in the hospital before he died. I finally talked to my fear directly. I told it that I knew it was kicking in because it wanted to protect me, but it was not helpful in this situation. I needed my sleep.
I have no idea what I/we all will be facing. That Trump would make leaving the White House a cause for insurrection is something I anticipated in 2016, along with all those who see him as I do: a man who defines a good person as one who gives him what he wants and a bad person as one who doesn't. I see him functioning like a two-year-old.
I think his two-year-old effect is a big part of his appeal. We are designed to find babies and their audacious behavior as cute, appealing. They bring out feelings of delight in us. They are so fresh, so honest. There are no inhibitions. It's all me, me, me- as it should be for a two-year-old. Unfortunately, having a two-year-old as our President doesn't work very well. There have seen tell-all books about Trump already. I wonder how many more will follow. I suppose it will be determined by how much the people close to him or Republican politicians will have to lose and value their jobs over the democracy. It's hard to believe that politicians think he's not lying. Of course, maybe he's not. Perhaps he believes all the things he said.
Yvette told an allegory about a monk and a mouse. A monk finds a nest of baby mice without a mom. He tries to save them. One by one, they die as predators snatch them. One survives. The monk turns the mouse into a cat to protect himself, and the monk can spend his time meditating instead of watching the mouse. He then changes him into a dog. That doesn't wind up being as good as one might hope. The monk converts the mouse into the lion. The only problem is the mouse knows he is only a mouse pretending to be a lion. No one knows this truth except the monk. The mouse kills the monk.
What is the moral of this story? Be careful who you give the gift of power? Was the monk showing compassion, or was he only being lazy? One point of the story is: don't give a mouse too much power. Hmm! I wonder why Yvette thought of this story this morning.
It was a yoga morning. There were only four of us, including Yvette, our heroic teacher, along with the four dogs. After yoga, I did the first of three infrared treatments on my leg. It made a difference. However, as it relaxes tense muscles, unused muscles are called upon. They are often too weak to support me – for now.
I checked my email. I got a notification from Dr. Marty's that I had ordered 12 packages of some powder. No. I didn't order the powder, but I did order his food Nature's Blend, a lot of that. I had difficulty navigating the site; that's how this error happened. I called the company immediately. The agent said, "Refuse delivery." Hmm. The postal service does not knock on my door. They just leave packages. I will have to take the box to the post office and announce that I refuse delivery. Damn! I hope to figure out which of the packages I don't want without opening them all first.
I spent time this morning working on the PowerPoint presentation for Step-Up Tutoring. When I finished the work I had planned, I called Dorothy and arranged a Zoom meeting to practice. I timed it. I had to stop the stopwatch several times as I talked, but I would say it's about half an hour plus or minus ten minutes. Dorothy said I had to practice, so I'm smoother. I feel awkward in making the presentation. I hope I sound that way because I am 'presenting 'it to her. She knows it all already. I am not trying to communicate the ideas to her. We are going through this for a very different reason.
I did another infrared treatment and tried to get some napping in before I headed to Kaiser to get my hip X-ray. I got there shortly after noon. When I arrived the other day at 12:30, I was told their lunch was from 12:30 to 1:30 pm. I went home. There was no one to check me in, and it was getting close to 12:30. I had visions of having to wait till 1:30 pm. Then one waiting man told me that they would see us shortly as long as we checked in before 12:30. Getting a shot of my left hip wasn't easy. It involved some special arrangements. She had to take the picture, placing a panel on the outside of my left hip. I had to get my right leg as close to my body as possible, and then she had to shoot through my right hip to get the image of my left. Unbelievably, after making all those contortions, my legs felt better, not worse.
I did a second infrared treatment and tried to nap a bit. I was tired after my sleepless night. I had an appointment with J at 2:30. He didn't respond immediately to the text. I had to call him. He had set up the session for that time. He never explained why he forgot.
We started with me asking questions about changes in his reading speed. He said he'd seen a little bit of difference. I had him practice his automatic processing while he was with me. He has to focus on the parts of the brain that remember words automatically instead of using his frontal lobe awareness. We have to make automatic whatever we can. There's not a lot of energy in that little bit of brain matter of our prefrontal lobe. He said it got faster as he practiced. Yeah.
We were going to switch to reading, but he decided he wanted to write another story. He couldn't think of anything. I did my usual cueing. Think of a color, any color." He came up with green. "What is green in your image?' Grass. "Where's the grass?" – and he had his story about how he learned to ride a bike. He is already doing much better, providing details. Sometimes, I just took dictation for sentences at a time. His English is not perfect yet, but good enough, so I don't feel a need to intervene.
I had an appointment with El immediately afterward. We haven't worked together for several weeks. El is a 16-year-old boy who I have known for years. Last time we worked on his weight. Sadly, he is badly overweight and already prediabetic. I am thrilled with his response to my work thrilled. He was fighting off depression when we started. The problem was resolved quickly. I don't believe it is all me; I can't be that amazing. However, I do have confidence in my work. The protocol I developed. It is designed to work with a person's limitations instead of immediately pushing through to the central issue. It moves in slowly.
The last time we worked together on his weight, the main issue was his anger at others for criticizing him. This caused him to eat more, not less. Today, we continued working on his anger. His relationship with his mother is similar to mine. She's a yeller as mine was. (His mother once expressed sadness to me that she wasn't better to her children. My mother had no such reservations. She believed to the end that her strategy was the best for her children.) I have devoted my life to being nothing like my mother. I suspected that he had a similar concern; he didn't want to be angry with everyone as she is. He confirmed my suspicions. (Yes, I propose possibilities. If someone says no, It's no. I have to find a way in that is safe, comfortable, easy, fun, and effective for that person.) When you have constant rage modeled for you, you fear any manifestation of anger in yourself. That makes you just like ______.
I teach that anger has a positive function. It is our friend. It tells us when our boundaries have been violated. There is a difference between receiving that signal and the actions we take. Some rage: some suppress. The ideal is to find a way to set a boundary that arises out of calm and consideration of others and ourselves. Are there those who don't deserve consideration? You bet. But as Mike liked to say, it's a problem to be solved. The problem is getting that person to back off. The goal is to do the best job with the least damage to ourselves and others. Separating the inner anger from acting out the anger helped him relax a bit.
I don't remember how we got there, but I suggested that shame triggered his mom's anger. If someone says to us, "I need for you to keep your room neat. This is important to me. Important enough that I will punish you if you don't do it voluntarily." Is different than, "What the hell is wrong with you? Why are you such a slob? You're disgusting." The second is guaranteed to upset the person but not get them to clean their room. Someone may feel they are doing more if they go on a full-frontal attack. However, the intensity of the attack is not a measure of its effectiveness. Is the goal doing as much damage as possible on the person who didn't give you what you want, or is the goal of getting that person to give you what you want? Of course, if you need everything YOUR way, you're in so much trouble there is no solution for you.
The load of shame was too much for El. I used the visualization of placing the emotion in an external container. Depending on size, the person chooses between a bread box, a garage or a mountain, or any image that comes to mind. Then they install a spigot on the container, much like a spigot on a beer keg. I instruct the person to think of the spigot as being digital. Then they punch in the number .001 or smaller if necessary. Then push the go button.
A small drop comes out. I have them put one finger out and absorb it through the skin. The next step is to watch this course throughout their body. It is an emotionally manageable amount because it is such a tiny bit. The second download can be much, much larger already. I don't think someone can empty the whole container in one shot. It's too much for our systems.
It is my position that shame is a normal healthy emotion. I believe it is comparable to pain. Pain warns us that we are injured and need to attend to ourselves. Shame warns us that we have violated someone's social norm and our lives are in danger. I'm sure you noticed the problem. Our lives are not in danger if we violate most social norms these days. However, our nervous systems weren't designed to live in our pluralistic social setting. It was designed to live in small social groups living close to survival, like a military group in action. Total conformity is required in those settings. This is where our nervous system learns to discern danger. We are afraid of snakes and spiders and dirty looks. Our nervous system needs to be assured that a few dirty looks do not equal a life-threatening situation. No shame need be applied.
As El sat with his shame, I told him I thought his mom was acting of her shame. He spontaneously started processing her feelings, or that's what it felt like. This boy has one huge loving heart. After we finished the session, I would have loved to know if his mom was in better-than-average spirits. The work we do on ourselves for others affects them.
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