Feeling trapped in a shrinking room.

In talking to people this week, I have decided that the best metaphor for right now is "being trapped in a shrinking room." With the current world and national situation, things seem to be closing in on many of us.

We like our freedom. We like to have options.

At this time in our history it seems that we are feeling anything but our freedom and our options. The options that are available are few and we are feeling vulnerable.

In fact, it seems that many of us feel that the number of options available to us are diminishing in number as the economy contracts. We see this effect in both personal and global terms.

By this time it is very possible that you personally know someone who is a victim of the economy. You either know someone who has taken a bath in the stock market and lost a substantial part of their retirement or you know someone who has been laid off.

Furthermore, your workplace is probably flush with talk about options management is considering to reduce loss and survive--some seem reasonable, and some seem unethical. I have one friend who told me that he had quit his job because management told him that they were going to write him and others up and then fire him and them for cause the next week. (Naturally--firing for cause could mean no unemployment depending on what it is.)

In the media magnfied informational intensity we see frequent new stories about the poor performance of the markets and the rising unemployment rate. Congress just passed a stimulus package, but in the back-stepping language of the President and key congressional leaders, it will still take some time for the economy to recover. We are not exactly getting feel good stories out of Washington that make us feel any more assured that our pain is going to be alleviated tomorrow.

Of course, one particular friend has talked about his wife wanting to move back to near her parents. I can relate to this indirectly. While those of us who are married want to please our spouses in every sense of the word, we cannot deliver based on our limitations.

Houses are not exactly selling. Unless you paid outright for your house 15 years ago, it is very unlikely that you can sell your house for any meaningful gain. Furthermore, unless you paid the ton of money to be in one of those perennially hot neighborhoods in your city, your house is not going to sell quickly either. Many of us are trapped in mortgages which means good sense says we must stay where we are if at all possible.

Jobs are not exactly plentiful. While there are a few echelons of society that can move about because of the nature of their work, the 92 percent or so of us who have jobs are not going to be able to transfer or just move across the country.

Of course, then there is the situation (I am sure is existing) where someone lost their job and they can only get a job in another city and their house is not going to sell. This is the poor fortune of many in the formally hot real estate markets.

One personal story I can add comes from the recession of 1991-1992. (You can read previous posts to get other bits of it.) The guy I was renting a room from was being emotionally abusive out of the grief and loss of his mother. He was also beating the drum that he was going to sell the house in a few months and that I would have to find another place to live. His abuse increased so much that I called my parents and discussed my distress. My mom suggested that I look at the YMCA.

With the grace of God, I had a plan to be move out and to another city to pursue another life course before he sold the house. (He actually lived in the house another year before selling it.)
When I felt the world closing in around me, I did find that it did not close all the way. I felt claustrophobic in a sense, but I did not suffocate.

Of course I can look back on it now. But I remember that it was not pleasant in the least. It was still like being lost in a desert where I had miserable dry mouth and no water in sight.

How do we get through it?

The question is: how do we get through it? Of course, I have no easy answer. I can only suggest options. Options that I am willing to try myself.

1. Practice gratitude.

The vast majority of people have what they need: food, clothing, and shelter today and every day. Gratitude is practiced daily.

2 Practice mindfulness of your own situation and act accordingly.

Most of us do just fine managing our bills. So let's do what we do well. Make sure you stay up on your own bills and stay within your means.

3. Work on setting limits and boundaries.

When people cannot say "no" they get themselves into trouble. Of course the average kid whines because you are going to a restaurant today or this week. This is an opportunity to build character and inner strength. (No pain no gain).

On the other hand, when you are saying no to something, you are saying yes to something else. Homemade pizza may not be like going to Red Lobster, but kids are often happy to eat it.

We may have to apprise our loved ones of the truth, facts, and reality. Of course they are not going to like it. Sometimes they must wake up and appreciate the limits of life. There is less pain overall when we do it (mind you I said less pain--not no pain).

4. Stay in the moment.

Imagine yourself looking up at a mountain. The mountain looks large an impossible from a distance. However, each of us is only going to be able to take it one step at a time.

Staring at the big picture is unhealthy if that is all that we do. I think most of us already understand the big picture. It is going to be there . . . and be there . . . and be there.

You and I can only live today. We can only take care of the moment. We can negotiate with the world around us today.

Conclusion

You and I are going to feel like we are in a shrinking room for some time. I feel vulnerable at times.

If you are like me, you occasionally ask if you will have a job next week. This is when I find myself praying and thanking God for what I have today and that I trust him for the future.

This is when I focus on my list of personal goals to improve myself. This is when I create memories with my children that come out of my creativity as opposed to spending money.

Mind you I cannot get you over your own hump. It is okay to be hurting right now. That is what we do. But we will get over our humps and we will get through this time and we will get through the pain.

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.