At a religious, church-related social services agency and administrator frequently told me if you cut “assume” three ways, you make an “ass” out of “u” and “me.” (A heck of a statement by some guy in that position.) His message was don't ever assume. I had a journalism professor that also said “assume nothing.”
Despite their advice and admonishments, the reality is that we all make assumptions or we assume. We assume good things and we assume bad things.
In my job, one of the bell-ringers is that people with panic attacks and agoraphobia are people who assume the most. They assume that they are going to have bad things happen to them in Walmart and other big box stores and any public place and any time they are alone.
I have also learned that the grief and loss process has something to do with assumptions as the first stage is shock or denial. The shock or denial goes against assumptions that we make that the loss of the cherished person, thing or idea taught otherwise.
I think that we all tend to assume that things will go on as they have always gone on. I have learned that lesson this past week as I have found my assumptions crashed.
On Thursday, August 28, 2008 my boss came up to the floor I was on and had a special meeting to inform us that the CEO and Vice President of our hospital had been terminated that day. For the most part, I had assumed that the CEO and Vice President would always go on in their roles.
We loved them dearly and I respected the CEO greatly. I was most interested in how a nun came storming in saying that she would no longer volunteer at the hospital because of how unjust the terminations were. She really assumed hard.
One of the people I had talked with had been in a meeting with the Vice President the night before. She related that the Vice President had talked about details of future plans and what the hospital was going to do about several situations. The conclusion was that the Vice President was truly blindsided with the termination early in the morning. The CEO and Vice President had been called downtown for a meeting at 8am where they had been informed they were no longer with the organization.
My unit's medical director (a psychiatrist) also said later in the day that the terminations were a shock to him—and he had been at the organization a long time. A second psychiatrist made the comment that the changes going on were crazy.
Things have been happening very quickly at the hospital over the past 72 hours. I have had the advantage of walking by certain places in the hospital and have seen that there have been a lot of emergency meetings.
From what I can judge, the top brass at the healthcare system home office have acted amongst themselves out of what appears to be desperation. They have been acting so quickly secretively and in what seems to be a crisis mode that they have not changed the website to remove the photographs of the hospital CEO and Vice President.
The facts of the terminations are coming slowly. Some of the scuttlebutt has to do with allegations of fraud as to how a case was handled. Some of the more reliable “intel” is that the CEO and VP are being blamed for the state putting the hospital and the whole healthcare system under a 23-day probation to fix some problems or lose Medicaid and Medicare billing ability. I figure that more facts and factoids will be coming.
I got a call today from my supervisor saying that there will be a 8am meeting on Tuesday, immediately when we come back from Labor Day. There are going to be a series of emergency educations to achieve compliance.
I believe that there will be many other changes. I believe that my supervisor will probably be a basket-case. She has said to a number of people that she fears that she will be terminated too. For what I do not exactly know, but probably because they want to downsize even more.
Things are suddenly feeling like recession as like other corporations where they are talking possible cutbacks and layoffs. There is a air of instability. I am back in the spirit of why I started this blog!
I go back to the matter of assumptions. Only when this kind of stuff happens do you realize how you assumed that it would not.
I think that we must assume things will go on the way that they always have. Otherwise we would never move ahead with dreams and goals. Also, if we did not assume, we would likely be paralyzed in our generalized anxiety over every and all things.
I think that we must assume that reasonable people act in certain reasonable ways. People who are anxious assume the worst while claim they are hoping for the best.
In addition to making the normal human assumptions, it is important to trust in your own problem-solving abilities. You and I need them when our assumptions turn out to be wrong.
Problem-solving abilities and your belief in yours are two elements everyone needs as no one can tell what the future is and no one can be truly prepared for the future.
I have decided that my problem-solving abilities will be along the lines of staying calm and focusing on the job. I will try to allow others to vent feelings and share as they need.
I also feel that I will need to be careful about how I think about things, and how much I try to pry and find out new things. Curiosity kills cats. Otherwise, I am confident that more and more facts will come drifting out and I will learn all I want and need to know without looking like a busy body.
There could be advancement for me within the organization. I have wanted to stay with the organization, but I have not seen anywhere I could advance. Now that there are changes, more executive roles could be created.
I have given some thought to what could happen if the hospital gets closed down. I have thought what would happen. However, I also assume that things will get worked out as I see the state of Kentucky bureaucrats in Frankfort not wanting to get themselves stuck with closing down a non-profit facility they have made the De facto state psychiatry hospital for children and having no place else in the state to put these kids and explaining to the governor why they shipped 200-plus kids to out of state facilities.
However, I assume that I would file for unemployment and then I would begin looking for work. I would probably have my wife get a more substantial part time job. I would probably apply for factor assistance to get help acquiring my son's factor replacement therapy medication. I assume that I would get another job in my field, or my new field in which I am getting my Ph.D. Any which way, I assume at this time the options I will likely have.
Would I have the options? I don't know and I may never know as I assume that the potential situation is only a potential situation composed of a number of different variables. Thinking too much about this causes way too much stress that I really do not need.
Well, we win and lose, laugh and cry on account of our assumptions. It is okay and it is rather human to do, but be ready to work on picking up pieces and solving problems should the assumptions crash.
Saturday, August 30, 2008
Sunday, August 24, 2008
Character and values—It's happening here?
(Note--this is a very different post than what I have done--it has my interest at this moment and I will probably write more along some of the themes in future entries.)
There is a local story going on in the city where I live at the University of Louisville. The former dean of the ”School of Education” is currently under federal investigation as to how he spent grant money.
Today (24 August 2008), the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the closest thing to an editorial that is not an editorial—a personality piece starting on the front page of the first section. It was more than a personality piece . . . it was actually an expose' of the guy's history and behavior. I conclude that this is the newspaper's not-so subtle statement that the guy should be ran out of town and fast.
The guy in question is under investigation for how he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Apparently, the grants were for the University of Louisville, and a big chunk was not spent at the University of Louisville, but the guy in question has reportedly spent them elsewhere.
I make the disclaimer that I am drawing my facts from the Courier-Journal and I am going to choose not to use names. I also am making the disclaimer that I am going in the order of the facts as they have usefulness to me in this blog (you can read the story for yourself if you want—your public library should have access to the story though its web-based database).
The former education dean was reported to have been emotionally abusive. The story said that he humiliated faculty publicly. He was also reported to have stood out in the hallway and mimicked the faculty member who had applied for his position but lost to him. (That faculty member moved on to another school). The story reported that a student got up and shut the door to the hallway. That is childish behavior if it really happened.
The story also had reports of the former dean engaging in sexual harassment at U of L and at one of his former places of tenure. Why is this surprising in light of this next piece of information?
The former education dean was married four times and is being divorced from his fourth wife. I think that secularism downplays how many times people get married. I want to say that it does matter. It takes maturity to stay in a marriage. Even if someone is not book-smart, they can be mature enough to be in a marriage and do just fine. I think that four marriages is indicative of someone's lack of maturity. (And this guy is a doctoral-level clinical psychologist?)
While I am not going to tell an abused person to stay with an abusive and tyrannical spouse, I have had numerous patients who have been married several times. In hearing their stories, I repeatedly found that they had tremendous abandonment issues and jumped from marriage to marriage impulsively without realizing that they were repeating the same mistake again and again. They needed to be good consumers of the person they were dating—and fight the negative thoughts that they were never-ever-ever-ever going to find someone again . . . and thus jump into bed and get married to the next person that said hello to them.
The more endearing part of the story is that two people I used to go to church with were quoted about how shady and hypocritical this guy was. These two people are of high character in my opinion—which had me all the more mindful.
Anyway, this guy was allowed to stay for awhile by the University. He was a “high performer.”
University administrative officials were quoted a number of times. The university president called the earlier complaints '”anonymous crap.”' The provost's comments were interesting as to how she dismissed early complaints because she took the view that faculty members were rigid in their ways and being naturally resistant to change. She also said that most organizations give '”high performers'” time to change their ways.
The term “high performer” then stuck with me. The guy had an appearance of being a high performer. He had done some good work earlier in his career. He worked fast and slashed and burned quickly. In his slashing and burning he was abusive and ruthless. He had enough success in bringing in the money, which likely bought him time and the appearance of being a high performer--but then he has had a number of short-term jobs in the process.
Money covered a multitude of character defects and sins . . . until the sins became too great to be covered by the money. The University of Louisville is striving to become a leading research university—something encouraged by the powers in Louisville and Kentucky. The University strongly encourages pursuit of grants and has some pretty verbose rules about spending the money.
Nevertheless, as I am learning from academia, many people are there who cannot function in the regular work world. I have had a number of professors who have few if any people skills—and would probably not make it past the 90 day probationary periods of a regular job because they cannot work well with others (clinically these are called narcissistic and borderline personalities).
I think that the University of Louisville has a number of them.
These low-emotionally intelligent types are protected by political correctness. They know how to invoke political correctness when it serves their interests—but will violate it in like manner too. What you get is a cloud of emotional dysfunction that ironically masquerades as acceptance. However, political correctness is really emotional and intellectual tyranny—academic freedom and freedom of thought on most campuses does not exist.
An example in the form of “a rabbit I want to chase” was when I was at Iowa State University back in the 1980's. The dean of students was a black lady who appeared to be a controlling borderline personality. Since I was a journalism student at that time, I had heard the story from the white “Iowa State Daily” editor who did the story himself. She wanted him to read back the quotes—which he did. However, she then reached across the table—grabbed his notebook—and read them for herself. I had one other second-hand encounter which told me something was not right with this woman—when I got into Clinical Social Work—she was one of the first that came up on my scope as a past example of a Borderline Personality who is a paranoid control freak.
All that being said, my gestalt is that the provost was thinking along these lines. The former education dean could hide in the cloud of emotional dysfunction until it became clearer and clearer, that the former dean was a problem. The story hinted that more and more complaints were made and insinuated that the former dean was leaving for such a reason. The elephant in the middle of the room is that he was leaving to take a job that paid $50,000 less per year than what he made at U of L. It appears that his high performance was not mattering anymore and his heavy-handed methods were bringing diminishing returns.
After the recitation of some of the details of the story, I have thoughts about leadership and character. There are multitudes of people in leadership around the world with bad character, little emotional intelligence and little moral fiber. I might have a little sympathy for the former dean given the details of his upbringing and my understanding of how personality disorders happen.
However, it comes back to me how this guy brought in money and made changes. It did not turn out until five years later how he spent the money and made the changes that something was supposedly done. Character took a back seat for such a long time.
I think that money will always replace character as the first standard in judging performance. It is becoming more evident that way in academia and in most work places--even with corporate statements of purpose and value.
Given this push for grant money it seems that the biggest message outside of the money piece is that universities are not proving to be places where character is nurtured and practiced. There are two many personality-disordered faculty members who can provide cover for the even sicker personality disordered faculty and administration who accidentally know how to manipulate situations under the cover of research grants and political correctness.
The story tells me that it is questionable whether the University of Louisville can honest say that character “is happening here.”
There is a local story going on in the city where I live at the University of Louisville. The former dean of the ”School of Education” is currently under federal investigation as to how he spent grant money.
Today (24 August 2008), the Louisville Courier-Journal ran the closest thing to an editorial that is not an editorial—a personality piece starting on the front page of the first section. It was more than a personality piece . . . it was actually an expose' of the guy's history and behavior. I conclude that this is the newspaper's not-so subtle statement that the guy should be ran out of town and fast.
The guy in question is under investigation for how he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in federal grants. Apparently, the grants were for the University of Louisville, and a big chunk was not spent at the University of Louisville, but the guy in question has reportedly spent them elsewhere.
I make the disclaimer that I am drawing my facts from the Courier-Journal and I am going to choose not to use names. I also am making the disclaimer that I am going in the order of the facts as they have usefulness to me in this blog (you can read the story for yourself if you want—your public library should have access to the story though its web-based database).
The former education dean was reported to have been emotionally abusive. The story said that he humiliated faculty publicly. He was also reported to have stood out in the hallway and mimicked the faculty member who had applied for his position but lost to him. (That faculty member moved on to another school). The story reported that a student got up and shut the door to the hallway. That is childish behavior if it really happened.
The story also had reports of the former dean engaging in sexual harassment at U of L and at one of his former places of tenure. Why is this surprising in light of this next piece of information?
The former education dean was married four times and is being divorced from his fourth wife. I think that secularism downplays how many times people get married. I want to say that it does matter. It takes maturity to stay in a marriage. Even if someone is not book-smart, they can be mature enough to be in a marriage and do just fine. I think that four marriages is indicative of someone's lack of maturity. (And this guy is a doctoral-level clinical psychologist?)
While I am not going to tell an abused person to stay with an abusive and tyrannical spouse, I have had numerous patients who have been married several times. In hearing their stories, I repeatedly found that they had tremendous abandonment issues and jumped from marriage to marriage impulsively without realizing that they were repeating the same mistake again and again. They needed to be good consumers of the person they were dating—and fight the negative thoughts that they were never-ever-ever-ever going to find someone again . . . and thus jump into bed and get married to the next person that said hello to them.
The more endearing part of the story is that two people I used to go to church with were quoted about how shady and hypocritical this guy was. These two people are of high character in my opinion—which had me all the more mindful.
Anyway, this guy was allowed to stay for awhile by the University. He was a “high performer.”
University administrative officials were quoted a number of times. The university president called the earlier complaints '”anonymous crap.”' The provost's comments were interesting as to how she dismissed early complaints because she took the view that faculty members were rigid in their ways and being naturally resistant to change. She also said that most organizations give '”high performers'” time to change their ways.
The term “high performer” then stuck with me. The guy had an appearance of being a high performer. He had done some good work earlier in his career. He worked fast and slashed and burned quickly. In his slashing and burning he was abusive and ruthless. He had enough success in bringing in the money, which likely bought him time and the appearance of being a high performer--but then he has had a number of short-term jobs in the process.
Money covered a multitude of character defects and sins . . . until the sins became too great to be covered by the money. The University of Louisville is striving to become a leading research university—something encouraged by the powers in Louisville and Kentucky. The University strongly encourages pursuit of grants and has some pretty verbose rules about spending the money.
Nevertheless, as I am learning from academia, many people are there who cannot function in the regular work world. I have had a number of professors who have few if any people skills—and would probably not make it past the 90 day probationary periods of a regular job because they cannot work well with others (clinically these are called narcissistic and borderline personalities).
I think that the University of Louisville has a number of them.
These low-emotionally intelligent types are protected by political correctness. They know how to invoke political correctness when it serves their interests—but will violate it in like manner too. What you get is a cloud of emotional dysfunction that ironically masquerades as acceptance. However, political correctness is really emotional and intellectual tyranny—academic freedom and freedom of thought on most campuses does not exist.
An example in the form of “a rabbit I want to chase” was when I was at Iowa State University back in the 1980's. The dean of students was a black lady who appeared to be a controlling borderline personality. Since I was a journalism student at that time, I had heard the story from the white “Iowa State Daily” editor who did the story himself. She wanted him to read back the quotes—which he did. However, she then reached across the table—grabbed his notebook—and read them for herself. I had one other second-hand encounter which told me something was not right with this woman—when I got into Clinical Social Work—she was one of the first that came up on my scope as a past example of a Borderline Personality who is a paranoid control freak.
All that being said, my gestalt is that the provost was thinking along these lines. The former education dean could hide in the cloud of emotional dysfunction until it became clearer and clearer, that the former dean was a problem. The story hinted that more and more complaints were made and insinuated that the former dean was leaving for such a reason. The elephant in the middle of the room is that he was leaving to take a job that paid $50,000 less per year than what he made at U of L. It appears that his high performance was not mattering anymore and his heavy-handed methods were bringing diminishing returns.
After the recitation of some of the details of the story, I have thoughts about leadership and character. There are multitudes of people in leadership around the world with bad character, little emotional intelligence and little moral fiber. I might have a little sympathy for the former dean given the details of his upbringing and my understanding of how personality disorders happen.
However, it comes back to me how this guy brought in money and made changes. It did not turn out until five years later how he spent the money and made the changes that something was supposedly done. Character took a back seat for such a long time.
I think that money will always replace character as the first standard in judging performance. It is becoming more evident that way in academia and in most work places--even with corporate statements of purpose and value.
Given this push for grant money it seems that the biggest message outside of the money piece is that universities are not proving to be places where character is nurtured and practiced. There are two many personality-disordered faculty members who can provide cover for the even sicker personality disordered faculty and administration who accidentally know how to manipulate situations under the cover of research grants and political correctness.
The story tells me that it is questionable whether the University of Louisville can honest say that character “is happening here.”
Saturday, August 16, 2008
Insecurity
When the economy starts to go south, or when the politicians really sling mud at each other, people feel dissatisfied and insecure. Satisfaction and security seem to be very much related.
My situation lately has been a study in insecurity.
While the economy appears to be stabilizing and the price of oil appears to be going down, the sense of security (at least in me) is improving. Maybe the war going on right now between Russia and Georgia is a little unnerving. But the Olympics and Michael Phelps' achievements remind me that there is more to the world than bad things. Nevertheless, I have been thinking a lot about inner security and insecurity.
Inner security and insecurity are both powerful motivators. They make people do things without thinking based on their level of inner security or insecurity. I also think that many people are not conscious about inner security versus inner insecurity.
Inner security is an important asset that hopefully is a component of maturity. It seems to be another way to look at self-esteem and self-concept.
Inner security is a sense of peace and calmness about what is. Inner security is matter of trust and faith. It does not necessarily mean happiness, but I think people who are secure on the inside tend to find more happy and satisfied moments.
Inner security is a matter of faith in your abilities and your knowledge, and your perceptions.
I think that someone with inner security also trusts their thoughts and senses. The thoughts and senses of anyone are not 100 percent accurate, but I think that the thoughts and senses of a person with inner security are far more accurate than inaccurate.
I have decided that the person with a lack of inner security obsesses on the future and goes “What if? what if? What if?” They look back on the past and say "if only . . . if only . . . if only." They might think "are they? are they? are they?" when it comes to what other people are doing. They try to read other people's minds and interpret everything in terms of themselves and their own insecurities.
Insecure people spend the present looking forwards and backwards and miss what is in front of them because they are so miserable in their obsessive imaginations.
The insecure person confuses imagination with analysis. Analysis can only go as far as the facts and logic. Imagination in this case is only a guess.
Insecurity creates a parallel myopia or tunnel vision. Imagination going too far makes the microscopic look massive. Oh it still is microscopic, but it takes some faith to pull your face away from the microscope and see the big picture as it is clearly a risk.
There was one occasion where there was a young woman, who was clearly a borderline in my group when I was doing group therapy. I had a bottle of water and I put some of that powdered flavoring in my bottle and it clumped. She got all upset because my powder clumped. Why? It was my water and my bottle. It was not her bottle of water and she was not going to drink it—but she was all bent out of shape. I learned something about insecurity.
Another thing I would do from time to time when I did group therapy every day was to put a box of tissue in the middle of the group on its end on the floor. I would then ask who was anxious about it? It became my codependent and borderline detector. They would begin to report anxiety, and irritability, and a strong urge to pick it up off of the floor. They had no inner security to be at peace with things.
Inner security provides a sense trust in your limits. Inner security allows you to be at peace when you have reached your limits as to what you know or what you can do. Insecure people worry and get irritated beyond what they actually know or what they can control.
I think back to the story of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor and the whole town tended to be insecure. They went along with the lies of the advisors because they did not trust their senses. It took the child calling the spade the spade—but mama . . . the emperor has no clothes on.
I have two people that I supervise who are extremely insecure. One is a narcissist and one is a borderline personality. Both in their own ways are control freaks. However, I have determined that their their own ways, they have bonded together in insecurity (I think that the “Frank Burns” and “Hot Lips Houlihan” characters from M*A*S*H* are examples of the borderline and the narcissist.) It is my estimate that the two I am dealing with are so insecure right now, they are latching onto whatever they can. They themselves are otherwise scared. The narcissist acts withdrawn and shy when he is not in control of the situation and the borderline constantly seeks to care-take and smother.
Normally, a narcissist thinks that the world revolves around them. A narcissist can be very challenging of strangers and very inappropriate. A narcissist can act in thoughtless and careless ways. A narcissist can also act grandiose. A narcissist tends to terrorize or hide depending where you are at or how you are feeling at the time. Narcissists also act autocratic and tyrannical. However, the narcissist is very insecure. The narcissist is short-circuited to look only within themselves.
The borderline personality is a person who is also insecure. They feel like they inwardly are abandoned all the time. Their response to the feeling of abandonment is to control everything that they can. There is no sense of peace as to when enough is enough! It is all or nothing with them, and they really cannot tell when they have all? But it sure feels like nothing all of the time.
One more . . . the dependent personality also has similarity to the borderline in terms of abandonment. They are so needy that they can control through their neediness. Borderlines and dependent personalities are very similar in their abandonment. They are always insecure and always anxious about everything. They have no sense of balance and limits.
As a person coming into my own in my 20's and 30's I began to trust my sense and knowledge. I admit that my mother was obsessed with the concept of the “blind spot.” My mother has always been an anxious person. As I figure out where I came from and from what I came from, I realize that my family did not teach inner security.
My mother did not get it from her family given all their alcoholism and emotional neglect. It taught many of the stereotypes of “family business is private business” and “don't air your dirty laundry in public.” Insecurity puts people in hiding and on guard 24-7, and when you do come out, you have to look perfect.
My mom did the best she could in retrospect, but I have had to learn inner security by myself. I wanted what other people had. By some luck or maybe bad luck, I have figured some of it out.
While life is complex and understanding it is always a learning experience, security says that, your experience is largely no different from everyone else's under the sun. So, you have problems—everyone has problems. Insecurity is a lack of faith that makes people not trust and go into their corners. Insecurity is always about protecting yourself even when there are no real threats because insecurity says you can never tell the difference between real and not real threats.
Inner security says—your eyes are as good anyone else's. Trust yourself. Use your brain and your reasoning. To gain inner security I think means to work on looking out at the world. I have had to create a sense of inner security for myself. Yes me . . . I wanted insight . . . I wanted to be happy . . . I wanted to be able to mix it up for myself in this world.
As one of my colleagues has said . . . there are no freebies. I cannot get you over what it will take. It will take you doing it.
I can tell you the beliefs that help foster inner security, but you have to choose. It is the power that you have over your life.
Here are some starting questions to challenge yourself to begin to develop inner security.
The vast majority of people in the world are living out there mixing it up in the world. Why can't you?
Other people do just fine in the world. You can be like them.
Other people have faults. Just like you.
There are very few things in this world that cannot be fixed.
You like all people have the ability to slow down, look at options and resolve situations.
The majority of situations in this world have more than one possible solution.
The vast majority of mistakes people make are small and can be resolved or worked through.
You are going to dwell on the few bad things in this world and continue to feel insecure or you are going to look the larger picture that has both good and bad.
The great news is that life goes on and the vast majority of the people forget what mistakes you have made because they have their own lives to get on with.
The few people who keep reminding you of your mistakes are family members, in-laws or other people who are insecure and are slaves to their insecurity. These people have few friends and have no other life. They keep their world small because they are insecure. They will burn bridges to places out of their world because in their tunnel vision, they cannot see anything else.
Closing comments.
In this time in history—as in all times—there will always be something to be worried about.
Some periods in history will be more stressful. People make it through these situations and periods. Whether it is recession or war, some sense of shock and insecurity is normal.
How you manage it is up to you.
Hopefully, my note to myself and whoever else cares gives you are start to feel less bad today and better tomorrow.
My situation lately has been a study in insecurity.
While the economy appears to be stabilizing and the price of oil appears to be going down, the sense of security (at least in me) is improving. Maybe the war going on right now between Russia and Georgia is a little unnerving. But the Olympics and Michael Phelps' achievements remind me that there is more to the world than bad things. Nevertheless, I have been thinking a lot about inner security and insecurity.
Inner security and insecurity are both powerful motivators. They make people do things without thinking based on their level of inner security or insecurity. I also think that many people are not conscious about inner security versus inner insecurity.
Inner security is an important asset that hopefully is a component of maturity. It seems to be another way to look at self-esteem and self-concept.
Inner security is a sense of peace and calmness about what is. Inner security is matter of trust and faith. It does not necessarily mean happiness, but I think people who are secure on the inside tend to find more happy and satisfied moments.
Inner security is a matter of faith in your abilities and your knowledge, and your perceptions.
I think that someone with inner security also trusts their thoughts and senses. The thoughts and senses of anyone are not 100 percent accurate, but I think that the thoughts and senses of a person with inner security are far more accurate than inaccurate.
I have decided that the person with a lack of inner security obsesses on the future and goes “What if? what if? What if?” They look back on the past and say "if only . . . if only . . . if only." They might think "are they? are they? are they?" when it comes to what other people are doing. They try to read other people's minds and interpret everything in terms of themselves and their own insecurities.
Insecure people spend the present looking forwards and backwards and miss what is in front of them because they are so miserable in their obsessive imaginations.
The insecure person confuses imagination with analysis. Analysis can only go as far as the facts and logic. Imagination in this case is only a guess.
Insecurity creates a parallel myopia or tunnel vision. Imagination going too far makes the microscopic look massive. Oh it still is microscopic, but it takes some faith to pull your face away from the microscope and see the big picture as it is clearly a risk.
There was one occasion where there was a young woman, who was clearly a borderline in my group when I was doing group therapy. I had a bottle of water and I put some of that powdered flavoring in my bottle and it clumped. She got all upset because my powder clumped. Why? It was my water and my bottle. It was not her bottle of water and she was not going to drink it—but she was all bent out of shape. I learned something about insecurity.
Another thing I would do from time to time when I did group therapy every day was to put a box of tissue in the middle of the group on its end on the floor. I would then ask who was anxious about it? It became my codependent and borderline detector. They would begin to report anxiety, and irritability, and a strong urge to pick it up off of the floor. They had no inner security to be at peace with things.
Inner security provides a sense trust in your limits. Inner security allows you to be at peace when you have reached your limits as to what you know or what you can do. Insecure people worry and get irritated beyond what they actually know or what they can control.
I think back to the story of the emperor's new clothes. The emperor and the whole town tended to be insecure. They went along with the lies of the advisors because they did not trust their senses. It took the child calling the spade the spade—but mama . . . the emperor has no clothes on.
I have two people that I supervise who are extremely insecure. One is a narcissist and one is a borderline personality. Both in their own ways are control freaks. However, I have determined that their their own ways, they have bonded together in insecurity (I think that the “Frank Burns” and “Hot Lips Houlihan” characters from M*A*S*H* are examples of the borderline and the narcissist.) It is my estimate that the two I am dealing with are so insecure right now, they are latching onto whatever they can. They themselves are otherwise scared. The narcissist acts withdrawn and shy when he is not in control of the situation and the borderline constantly seeks to care-take and smother.
Normally, a narcissist thinks that the world revolves around them. A narcissist can be very challenging of strangers and very inappropriate. A narcissist can act in thoughtless and careless ways. A narcissist can also act grandiose. A narcissist tends to terrorize or hide depending where you are at or how you are feeling at the time. Narcissists also act autocratic and tyrannical. However, the narcissist is very insecure. The narcissist is short-circuited to look only within themselves.
The borderline personality is a person who is also insecure. They feel like they inwardly are abandoned all the time. Their response to the feeling of abandonment is to control everything that they can. There is no sense of peace as to when enough is enough! It is all or nothing with them, and they really cannot tell when they have all? But it sure feels like nothing all of the time.
One more . . . the dependent personality also has similarity to the borderline in terms of abandonment. They are so needy that they can control through their neediness. Borderlines and dependent personalities are very similar in their abandonment. They are always insecure and always anxious about everything. They have no sense of balance and limits.
As a person coming into my own in my 20's and 30's I began to trust my sense and knowledge. I admit that my mother was obsessed with the concept of the “blind spot.” My mother has always been an anxious person. As I figure out where I came from and from what I came from, I realize that my family did not teach inner security.
My mother did not get it from her family given all their alcoholism and emotional neglect. It taught many of the stereotypes of “family business is private business” and “don't air your dirty laundry in public.” Insecurity puts people in hiding and on guard 24-7, and when you do come out, you have to look perfect.
My mom did the best she could in retrospect, but I have had to learn inner security by myself. I wanted what other people had. By some luck or maybe bad luck, I have figured some of it out.
While life is complex and understanding it is always a learning experience, security says that, your experience is largely no different from everyone else's under the sun. So, you have problems—everyone has problems. Insecurity is a lack of faith that makes people not trust and go into their corners. Insecurity is always about protecting yourself even when there are no real threats because insecurity says you can never tell the difference between real and not real threats.
Inner security says—your eyes are as good anyone else's. Trust yourself. Use your brain and your reasoning. To gain inner security I think means to work on looking out at the world. I have had to create a sense of inner security for myself. Yes me . . . I wanted insight . . . I wanted to be happy . . . I wanted to be able to mix it up for myself in this world.
As one of my colleagues has said . . . there are no freebies. I cannot get you over what it will take. It will take you doing it.
I can tell you the beliefs that help foster inner security, but you have to choose. It is the power that you have over your life.
Here are some starting questions to challenge yourself to begin to develop inner security.
The vast majority of people in the world are living out there mixing it up in the world. Why can't you?
Other people do just fine in the world. You can be like them.
Other people have faults. Just like you.
There are very few things in this world that cannot be fixed.
You like all people have the ability to slow down, look at options and resolve situations.
The majority of situations in this world have more than one possible solution.
The vast majority of mistakes people make are small and can be resolved or worked through.
You are going to dwell on the few bad things in this world and continue to feel insecure or you are going to look the larger picture that has both good and bad.
The great news is that life goes on and the vast majority of the people forget what mistakes you have made because they have their own lives to get on with.
The few people who keep reminding you of your mistakes are family members, in-laws or other people who are insecure and are slaves to their insecurity. These people have few friends and have no other life. They keep their world small because they are insecure. They will burn bridges to places out of their world because in their tunnel vision, they cannot see anything else.
Closing comments.
In this time in history—as in all times—there will always be something to be worried about.
Some periods in history will be more stressful. People make it through these situations and periods. Whether it is recession or war, some sense of shock and insecurity is normal.
How you manage it is up to you.
Hopefully, my note to myself and whoever else cares gives you are start to feel less bad today and better tomorrow.
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