Christmas: No Great Expectations and No Great Disappointments

Christmas Day 2008.

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

Fun over the past few days

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

But today had its fun too.

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

The normal disappointment of Christmas

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

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


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

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

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

We want the pain to stop

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

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

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

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

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

Little things that worked today

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

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

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

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

Settling In for the Holiday

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Since I've Been Busy I've been Better

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

Idleness only encourages anxiety

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

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

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

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

Focusing on what you can do

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

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

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

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

We want to avoid being driven

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

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

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

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

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

Enough!

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

Manage your boss

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

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

What is it all about?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My history or emotional baggage

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Quest

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

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

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

My conclusions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My Admonitions

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The worst

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

My basic game plan

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

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

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

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

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

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

Coping with Fears at Work

Hello again.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

5. We do things that we enjoy.

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

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

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

9. We choose our attitude each day.

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

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

When have you gotten enough news?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Are you really missing anything?

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

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

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

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

Parsimony

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

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

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

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

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

The essential luxuries

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

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

Not all on the cable channels is really news

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

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

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

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

Some useful questions

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

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

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

My answers to the questions

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

Concluding comments

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next . . .

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

More on the weekend.

The rhetoric of our discontent.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Congressional leaders and the Bush administration reached a tentative

deal early Sunday on a landmark bailout of imperiled financial markets

whose collapse could plunge the nation into a deep recession.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Valerie, the nurse

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ned, the Massachusetts liberal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Could” does not mean “it will.”

Meg "I just hate Bush"

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

1. The world will not end with this bailout—we will be okay.

2. If you actually read the stories today (September 28, 2008), it is not an all or nothing/black or white proposition—and some think that the Federal Government might actually turn a profit on this deal.

3. Watch what you think about—balance in your perspective means the difference between sleeping and not sleeping or no panic attack and the need for a Xanax.

4. Information is only information—the significance you give it is what does a number on your emotions.

5. I do not have to be like Val, Ned, and Meg.

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

Out and up. A lesson in limits

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

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

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

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

Initial pushes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

Really feeling pushed up and out.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The concept of limits.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Power Out

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

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

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

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

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

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

I had a couple of lessons from this week.

Lesson one is about “awful-izing.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Lesson #2 is about gratitude.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Oppression in the workplace

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

First, I think first, it is important to be mindful of the oppression. I look back and I realize that I was not mindful of the oppression until later in the earlier jobs. I realize that what is going on is oppressing.

Second, try not to dwell on it. It does not mean that you are denying it. Denying means you are sticking your head in the sand. When you are refraining from dwelling on something, it means that you are seeing that there is more to life than just the oppression you are going through.

Third, try to see gray areas. Oppression is a time when people go to black and white thinking such as “always” and “never.” They also dwell on the most horrific or catastrophic possibility, even though there is only a remote chance it would happen.

Fourth, make choices thoughtfully. I think that the concept of oppression overall means that a person under oppression has no choices. You have some choice today. You have a choice to do something. Making a choice and being mindful that you have made a choice gives a sense of some power. Make a choice to have a grilled cheese or peanut butter sandwich today if that is a choice you can make.

Fifth, think about options (for a time-limited period). I have given a little thought as to what could happen if the hospital closes down due to some tyrannical state inspectors. I could be getting another job sooner than I expected. I may have defer the new siding and windows I am going to put in my house. I could be filing for unemployment. I could be applying to some hemophilia aid services to help my son continue to get his blood factor medication. My wife could be getting a better job as a necessity. But there limits to analysis—too much analysis leads to dwelling and dwelling leads to worry. Analysis is only good if you can really use it to improve a situation or take care of a problem.

Last (at least for now) make a survival plan. There are many times we have to make survival plans. My survival plan for this week includes: 1.) a cup of Starbucks coffee at least three times this week in the morning, 2.) video games where I destroy something, 3.) painting my garage floor at least one night this week, 4.) having something good for lunch every day, 5.) watching the “Big Brother” TV show, 6.) wear my ear plug and listen to the radio while at my desk in the afternoons so I do not have to listen to the borderline personality nurse who can't shut up about her worries, 7.) talk about it to my friends at church and of course 8.) write this note to myself and whoever else cares.

This as usual has been an imperfect discussion about dealing with a subject. I recognize that there is all kinds of oppression in the workplaces of the world. I close with this, while I may feel it and can do nothing about the sources of it, I can take some responsibility today for me. I hope that you will consider doing the same for yourself.